South Africa: Working together on Limpopo's water woes

The Department of Water and Sanitation in Limpopo has urged stakeholders in the water and sanitation sector to work together with government in finding practical and lasting solutions to water and sanitation challenges in the province.

Speaking during a symposium on water and sanitation, hosted by Vhembe District Municipality, Water and Sanitation Limpopo Provincial Head, Lucy Kobe, emphasised that combined efforts will go a long way in developing a thriving economy in the region and the rest of the province.

"We need to unlock the economic potential in pursuit of reconstruction and development of the economy in the district. We need strategic persuasion among ourselves to place water security at the centre of our operations," Kobe said.

The two-day symposium, which followed a summit hosted by Water and Sanitation Minister, Senzo Mchunu in February, aimed at finding lasting solutions that will ensure water security and dignified sanitation services for the country.

Kobe reiterated that access to water services is a fundamental right enshrined in the country's constitution, and must be responded to with precision.

"Vhembe District is a hub to many strategic opportunities because of its rich endowment. A discourse on water security issues is a matter that can no longer be differed further."

Vhembe District has four Local Municipalities, including Thulamela, Makhado, Musina and Collins Chabane. The district covers an area of 21 407 kilometre square, where 89.7% of population reside in rural areas.

The municipality is both the Water Services Authority and the Water Services Provider charged with the responsibility of supplying water and sanitation services to the communities falling within its area of jurisdiction.

Kobe noted that on average, 73% of households had access to water supply within the municipality in 2019 which increased to 73, 7% in 2021. However, reliability of water supply decreased from an average of almost 50% in 2019 to 45.4% in 2021.

"This should be of concern to us all and I hope that the symposium will come up with plans with tangible targets that should be put in place to improve percentage of access and reliability to water supply by households within the district," she said.

Kobe also encouraged councillors to exercise their oversight roles to the implementation of the said plans.  SAnews.gov.za

This story has been published on: 2022-03-14. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
President of Sierra Leone begins official visit to Vietnam

President of Sierra Leone Julius Maada Bio, his spouse, and the countrys high-ranking delegation arrived at Noi Bai International Airport in Hanoi on March 14 afternoon, starting a seven-day official visit to Vietnam.









Vietnamese President Nguyen Xuan Phuc (R) and his Sierra Leone counterpart Julius Maada Bio meet on the sidelines of the general debate of the UN General Assembly's 76th session in New York on September 23, 2021. (Photo: VNA)



The visit is made at the invitation of President Nguyen Xuan Phuc and his spouse.



An official welcome ceremony for the Sierra Leone leader will be held at the Presidential Palace on March 15.



Following that, the two Presidents are scheduled to hold talks and witness the signing of agreements between their countries.



President Julius Maada Bio will have meetings with Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh and National Assembly Chairman Vuong Dinh Hue.



He is set to pay tribute to late President Ho Chi Minh, lay wreaths at the Monument to Heroes and Martyrs, visit the Temple of Literature and the FPT University, and attend a business forum in Hanoi. He will also take part in some other activities in Can Tho city and Ho Chi Minh City.



The official trip to Vietnam by the President of Sierra Leone is the first visit by a head of state between the two countries. It is also a stride in bilateral relations in the context that African countries, including Sierra Leone, attach importance to the establishment and development of their cooperative ties with Asia-Pacific nations, including Vietnam.
Richard Reynolds was hired last month to direct Annapolis' Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion program, a grant-funded initiative to connect people facing low-level criminal charges to mental health and other resources with a goal of diverting them from incarceration. (Courtesy Photo)

The new administrator of Annapolis police diversion program said hes looking forward to working at the intersection of policing and taking care of humans.

Richard Reynolds was named the head of the citys Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion program last month, and is preparing to launch the grant-funded initiative.

Advertisement

LEAD, which also stands for Let Everyone Advance with Dignity, is a national program that aims to steer those charged with low-level offenses away from arrest and incarceration, instead pushing them toward resources to address the root causes of crime, such as mental illness, drug involvement, poverty and other health issues.

Its just what its called  its diversion. It takes you from a system in which you dont belong, and gets you the help and care that you need, Reynolds said.

Advertisement

The city received more than $500,000 in grant money in 2020 for the program, which will be rolled out soon.

Some of the heavy lifting has been done, but were now preparing for implementation, Reynolds said.

Daily Top Stories Daily Get the day's top news, sports, opinion, features and local events. >

The citys African American Community Service Specialist, Adetola Ajayi, said it will take about six more months to start LEAD. When the program is in full swing, police officers will be able to direct eligible people who are charged with low-level offenses to meet with Reynolds and case managers for help in obtaining services.

The LEAD program, which started in Seattle about a decade ago, reports that more than 50 jurisdictions, including Baltimore, have adopted the program in some form, and more are developing initiatives.

Richard Reynolds was hired last month to direct Annapolis' Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion program, a grant-funded initiative to connect people facing low-level criminal charges to mental health and other resources with a goal of diverting them from incarceration. (Courtesy Photo)

Reynolds said he has been heavily involved in community activities that have prepared him for the job. He was formerly the policy director for Global 1000, a career-building nonprofit originally formed in Ferguson, Missouri, after the 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown.

More recently, he worked for IT-training company New Horizons Computer Learning Centers, where he commuted cross-country from Annapolis.

Reynolds said his background has shown him that the real need is in the high touch rather than the high tech. We have to take care of mankind as well as we do other things.

Annapolis is using a $528,000 grant from the Governors Office of Crime Control and Prevention over the course of three years to run the program.

Advertisement

Mayor Gavin Buckley said in a news release that the LEAD initiative is just one of the ways we are working not only to focus the workload of police, but to also upend a cycle of disadvantage that sees our residents who are experiencing poverty, mental health challenges and drug use experiencing unending interactions with the criminal justice system.
A Ronks man caused thousands of dollars in damage to two Paradise Township agricultural fields, then led law enforcement on a dangerous high-speed chase while driving drunk early Monday morning, according to state police.

Fredy Almanza, 37, was seen performing doughnuts in a field in the 100 block of South Belmont Road at 1:21 a.m., according to an affidavit of probable cause. Officers patrolling in the area spotted Almanzas truck kicking up snow and mud, causing an estimated $1,000 in damage to the field.

Almanza accelerated through the field when officers attempted to pull him over, reaching speeds of 80 mph, driving in the oncoming traffic lane and at one point dangerously passing a horse and buggy while troopers were in pursuit, police said.

Troopers arrested Almanza after his truck became disabled in the middle of a second agricultural field in the first block of South Belmont Road, causing another $1,000 in damage to the property.

Almanza, who court records show has previously pleaded guilty to DUIs in Berks County in 2008 and 2011, had a BAC of 0.138% at the time. He also previously pleaded guilty to driving while drunk as a minor in Chester County in 2004.

A search of Almanzas vehicle also uncovered multiple open containers of Fireball liquor. Almanza claimed the containers had previously been left in the vehicle by another person.

Almanza told police he had been drinking all day at a Delaware nightclub before driving back home, according to the affidavit.

Police charged Almanza with fleeing or attempting to elude an officer, two counts of agricultural vandalism, two counts of driving under the influence and eight summary traffic offenses.

Judge Jodie Richardson set Almanzas bail at $50,000 during a preliminary arraignment Monday morning. He remains in Lancaster County Prison, unable to post that amount.

Court documents did not list an attorney for Almanza.

A preliminary hearing has been scheduled to take place before Judge David Ashworth on March 24.
Didn't get a chance to check in with LancasterOnline over the weekend?

Here are six articles (and some photos) to bring you up to speed.

Two years since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic

As hospital loading docks erupted into cheers last year with the arrival of the COVID-19 vaccines and health care workers rolled up their sleeves for the first shots of hope, few imagined the pandemic would stretch into year three.

Reporter Nicole Brambila put together a package looking at the two years of the COVID-19 pandemic in Lancaster County.

One story looked at people who lost loved ones from the virus. The other was a panel discussion with health experts looking back at the last two years, and what lies ahead for the county.

Snowstorm causes crashes, power outages across Lancaster County; here's how much snow fell

Old Man Winter paid a very late visit to Lancaster County over the weekend.

As much as 5 inches of snow fell across Lancaster County on Saturday, according to a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in State College.

Snow began falling around sunrise, dropping between 4 and 5 inches across much of the county through the early afternoon, meteorologist Aaron Tyburski said.

Click here to read the full story.

Carlisle Proud Boy member targeted in search warrant tied to Jan. 6 plot

Federal investigators obtained a search warrant targeting a Central Pennsylvania man who they believe may have evidence documenting how a far right group planned to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden's presidential victory on Jan. 6, 2021.

A Justice Department court filing, made public on Tuesday, shows federal prosecutors obtained a search warrant for an unnamed individual living in Carlisle who is alleged to be an upper tier member of the Proud Boys, an all-male group whose members have a record of using violence and the threat of violence in support of former President Donald Trump and public demonstrations organized by conservative activists.

Click here to read the full story.

20-year-old admits to killing his 22-year-old sister in East Hempfield Township: police

A 20-year-old man is facing charges after police say he admitted to killing his sister at their East Hempfield Township home.

Joel Ayala Jr. is facing a single count of homicide for the death of his 22-year-old sister, Linnette Ayala.

Click here to read the full story.

The woman's family has also set up a GoFundMe fundraiser to pay for funeral expenses.

Caterer claims Lancaster Wyndham ruined 2019 Passover for hundreds, seeks $10M-plus

A New Jersey caterer is suing the Wyndham Lancaster Resort & Convention Center for more than $10 million, claiming the hotels unfinished renovations in 2019 ruined the caterer's annual sold-out Passover event for hundreds of families and severely damaged its reputation.

Greenwald Caterers claims the hotels disastrous handling of the event has cost it millions in lost business.

Click here to read the full story.
Locally, Mennonite Central Committee (mcc.org) is raising funds for Ukraine relief. That nonprofit, which has its U.S. office in Akron, says on its website that it is assessing the changing situation with local partners to determine the appropriate response. Its response will be focused on a longer-term scale-up of existing programs that support vulnerable people and extending those services to internally displaced populations. You can donate via the website or mail a check to MCC, PO Box 500, Akron PA 17501.

The watchdog website Charity Navigator (charitynavigator.org) has created a webpage listing highly rated nonprofits engaged in relief efforts in Ukraine. Among them:

 Save the Children (savethechildren.org). That nonprofits website notes that Ukraines children are in grave danger of physical harm, severe emotional distress and mass displacement. Donations to Save the Childrens Ukraine Crisis Relief Fund can help provide children and families with immediate aid, such as food, water, hygiene kits, psychosocial support and cash assistance.

 Direct Relief (directrelief.org) says it is mobilizing the delivery of medications that the Ukrainian Ministry of Health said are needed, as well as critical care medical items for blood pressure support, intubation/ventilation, IV antibiotics, fluids and combat application tourniquets and bandages. A large shipment of diabetes supplies was delivered last week to Ukrainian health care providers, the agencys website said, noting that Direct Relief has supplied Ukrainian health care providers with more than $27 million in medical aid since January 2021.

 GlobalGiving (globalgiving.org) says that all donations to its Ukraine Crisis Relief Fund will support humanitarian assistance in impacted communities in Ukraine and surrounding regions where Ukrainian refugees have fled. GlobalGivings local partners are bringing relief to terrified and displaced communities, and they need resources to continue their life-saving work. Donations will help to provide shelter, food, clean water and health support, as well as access to education and economic assistance, to Ukrainian refugees.

 International Medical Corps (internationalmedicalcorps.org) says that it is already on the ground in Ukraine, working with health agencies and local partners to provide primary and emergency health services, mental health and psychosocial support services, gender-based violence services and COVID-19 prevention and awareness services, to keep refugee and displaced populations safe from the pandemic.

 And Unicef USA (unicefusa.org) says that UNICEF is scaling up its emergency response in Ukraine as escalating conflict continues to pose an immediate and growing threat to the lives and well-being of the countrys 7.5 million children. Its also working with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to mobilize support for children and families who have fled the country to escape the violence.
Columbia Borough police

VANDALISM

COLUMBIA: A stop sign in the 200 block of Lawrence Street was discovered to have been defaced with spray paint at 11:57 a.m. on March 6, police said.

East Cocalico Township

CORRUPTION OF MINORS

EAST COCALICO TWP.: Melissa Marie Ferrell, 43, of Stevens, was charged with four counts of corruption of minors and six counts of furnishing liquor to minors after officers discovered an underage drinking party at her residence in the 100 block of East Church Street at 9:56 p.m. on Feb. 25, police said. Four juveniles and two 18-year-olds were charged with underage drinking, and one juvenile was also charged with false identification to law enforcement after providing a fake name, police said.

ROAD RAGE

EAST COCALICO TWP.: A motorcyclist punched the side view mirror of a car, breaking the glass, at the on-ramp from Colonial Howard Boulevard (Spur Road) onto southbound Route 222 at 1:30 p.m. on March 10, police said. The motorcyclist then fled south along Route 222, police said.

East Earl Township police

THEFT

EAST EARL TWP.: An unidentified man stole items from donation bins at a Goodwill store at 1367 Weaverland Road at 11:17 p.m. on March 7, police said.

East Lampeter Township police

THEFT

EAST LAMPETER TWP.: An unidentified man stole more than $950 in shirts by concealing them in a shopping bag at a Vineyard Vines store at Tanger Outlets at 4:41 p.m. on March 5, police said.

Ephrata police

FRAUD

EPHRATA TWP.: Two men paid for two computers worth a combined $1,000 using fake $100 bills at a Walmart around 2 p.m. on March 7, police said. One of the men also attempted to purchase air pods but was foiled by a cashier, police said.

THEFT

EPHRATA: Two enclosed trailers and their contents valued at a combined $22,500 were stolen from a construction company in the 400 block of Church Avenue in two separate incidents on Aug. 17 and Feb. 16, police said.

Pennsylvania State police

CRIMINAL MISCHIEF

LITTLE BRITAIN TWP.: A rock was thrown through the window of a residence on Ashville Road, causing $300 in damage, at 1:30 a.m. on March 6, police said.

THEFT

MARTIC TWP.: Two unidentified men wearing all-black were seen attempting to break into a locked vehicle at Pinnacle Overlook and Pinnacle roads at 4:14 p.m. on March 8, police said.

Pequea Township police

FRAUD

PEQUEA TWP.: An unidentified man was seen entering an Ulta Beauty store at 1575 Fruitville Pike and opening a credit card account using another persons information around 11:15 a.m. on Jan. 4, police said. The man then purchased $635 in various fragrances, police said.

Quarryville Borough police

TERRORISTIC THREATS

QUARRYVILLE: Chris Benjamin Clifton, 36, of Quarryville, was charged with terroristic threats, criminal mischief and harassment after threatening to kill a woman, spitting in her face and damaging her vehicle during a domestic disturbance in the 100 block of Groffdale Drive at 5:41 p.m. on March 7, police said. Clifton fled the scene before officers arrived, police said.

Susquehanna Regional police

STALKING

MARIETTA: Tracy Elizabeth Ford, 37, address unknown, was charged with stalking, harassment and public drunkenness after contacting a man continuously at his residence in the first block of Pajill Drive around 3 p.m. on March 3, police said.
South Coatesville Borough Council has called a special meeting March 14 to rescind a motion to appoint a resident to fill a borough council seat.

During the March 8 council meeting, Mayor John Long Jr. cast the deciding vote to appoint Gilbert Parker to fill a vacancy.

Council voted 3-3, with President Montez Jones and council members Renee Carey and Sylvia Washington voting yes. Council Vice President Ken Bond and council members Tom Roney and Bob Floyd voted no. Borough mayors can only vote to break a tie.

Parker, who was not at the meeting, has a criminal record that includes aggravated assault and stalking, according to public records.

Article II, Section 7, of the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania states any person convicted of embezzlement of public money, bribery, perjury, or other infamous crime is ineligible to hold any office of trust or profit in the Commonwealth. Pennsylvania courts have determined other infamous crime includes all felony convictions.

After the meeting, Borough Manager Allen Smith said the appointment will probably be changing. The person who fills the vacancy will be eligible to run in the 2023 municipal elections.

LNP | LancasterOnline reached out to Parker for comment but received no response.

We voted to appoint, not elect, Mr. Gilbert Parker, council member Carey said after the meeting. Gilbert has attended most of our council meetings. He has been a citizen of the borough for most of his life, Carey said.

Council will meet at 5 p.m. March 14 to rescind the motion.
When: Warwick school board committee of the whole meeting, March 1.

What happened: During its nonvoting meeting, the board focused on challenged materials procedures, appointing a new solicitor for the school district and previewing the upcoming 2022-23 budget.

Challenging material process: Assistant Superintendent Melanie Calender reported on updates to the process to challenge learning materials, noting that the current procedure was instituted back in 2011, and until recently, challenges had never gone beyond the first step. The first step involves contacting the school principal about the complaint. If the situation is not resolved at that point, a questionnaire will be completed and then sent to appropriate staff and administration. A review committee that includes the principal, teachers, teacher supervisor, curriculum director and assistant superintendent would be convened to make a decision on the validity of the complaint.

Adjusting timeline: At the March 1 meeting, board member Matt Knouse suggested that six years was too long and the review process should be able to be done every four years. Calender explained that the six-year cycle relates to the time period in which curriculum is written: every six years on a rotating basis. Warwick High School English teacher Joan Bohan reported that the six-year term also ties into the licensing of materials.

Public comment: Parent Elizabeth Radecic spoke up on behalf of her twin kindergarten children who are Black, expressing her concerns about deviating from an educational curriculum that creates an undue burden on educators. Moms for Liberty, who is driving this initiative, doesnt want their children to learn a real Black perspective, so they target resources like All American Boys and the 1619 Project, but then they have the audacity to believe they can make decisions for my kids. Make no mistake, what they are perpetrating on our district is racial harassment, Radecic said. Another parent, Jim Senft, identified himself as founder of a group called Fathers Understanding Critical Knowledge. He asked that the school district do what is best for students and teachers and not change the process, which would not be fiscally conservative.

Solicitor bids: Four law firms made presentations in order to be considered as solicitors for the district. Last fall, Knouse had requested that the board go through the review process to appoint a new solicitor. Those making presentations were Fox Rothschild, of Philadelphia; Sweet, Stevens, Katz & Williams LLP, of Hershey and New Britain; Appel, Yost & Zee LLP, of Lancaster; and current district solicitor Kegel, Kelin, Litts & Lord LLP, of Lancaster. The board will be reviewing the presentations and make their selection at a later date.

Mask policy questions: During the Kegel, Kelin, Litts & Lord LLP presentation, board member Emily Zimmerman asked whether the firm would have done anything different in advising the school district on the mask mandate issued by Pennsylvania last year. Bill Pratt, of the firm, responded by saying, We would not advise clients to do anything illegal or to defy orders.

Budget: CFO Nathan Wertsch provided an update on the 2022-23 school district budget. He reported that there are are still many major unknowns, on both on the revenue and expense side. In local revenue, assessed value increases have leveled off lately, but there are still projects in the pipeline. Tax assessment appeals have leveled off. Interest earnings have the potential for rate hikes, which could yield additional revenue. State funds are very much uncertain, with no idea as to what state funding increases might come.

Quotable: We still hope to be at or as close to a 0% tax increase as possible. I still don't see a potential increase on the higher end of the allowable range on the table at this time, said Wertsch, adding that next steps will include continued budget adjustment, with the proposed final budget due in May and a final budget vote in June.
THE ISSUE: Its Monday, the day we take a few moments to highlight the good news in Lancaster County and the surrounding region. Some of these items are welcome developments on the economic front or for area neighborhoods. Others are local stories of achievement, perseverance, compassion and creativity that represent welcome points of light during another winter of this long, sorrowful pandemic and other concerning developments in our world. All of this news deserves a brighter spotlight.

As the devastation and heartbreak surrounding Russias unprovoked invasion of Ukraine continues, we have some beacons of light here in Lancaster County.

Last week, LNP | LancasterOnline correspondent Laura Knowles told the story of the members of a Ukrainian family who were able to find refuge in Lititz.

It was just weeks ago that Inna Kozyar and her two daughters, 20-year-old Anya and 16-year-old Sophia, were living in their home just south of Kyiv, Ukraines now-besieged capital city.

They awoke the morning of Feb. 24  the start of the Russias invasion  to their house shaking from nearby explosions.

At first I thought it was a bad dream. The windows were shaking. I was so scared, Anya Kozyar told Knowles.

A little later, they looked out their windows, toward Kyiv, and saw that the sky was bright red.

It was not OK. We all knew that, Sophia Kozyar said.

They had to decide what to do. Fast.

Enter Inna Kozyars brother, Igor Kuzmenko. He and his wife, Sarah, have lived in Lititz since 2013, and they helped with the speedy arrangements needed to get their relatives from Ukraine to Lancaster County.

Once flights were secured, there was little time to prepare.

In a matter of minutes, the three had to pack their belongings, grabbing passports, paperwork, plane tickets, a few items of clothing and whatever else they could, Knowles reported in LNP | LancasterOnline. They could pack only small bags and backpacks they could carry. There was no time to think. They had to act quickly.

There was a harrowing 12-hour drive  past tanks at times  to the Polish border. The traffic was so bad that the trio had to abandon their car about six miles from the border and walk the rest of the way. Eventually, they made it to the airport in Warsaw, Poland.

Sorrowfully, a member of the family stayed behind. Inna Kozyars husband, Serhiy, remained in Ukraine to help defend their nation.

On the day before the bombing, we had a good life. It was a happy life, Inna Kozyar said. We are very grateful to be here. ... Thank goodness for my brother and his family. We are safe now.

They are safe here, in ever-welcoming Lancaster County, but a constant concern remains for the rest of their family members and their friends in Ukraine.

We share the Kozyars hopes for the safety of all those whose lives are threatened by the invading Russian military.

Meanwhile, were heartened by the story of a Lancaster County farmer who came up with a unique way to support Ukrainian refugees.

Nate Thomas, owner of Breakaway Farms & Butchery in Mount Joy Township, is producing two new flavors of sausages  one blue and one yellow  made with ingredients that mimic the colors of the Ukrainian flag, LNP | LancasterOnlines Enelly Betancourt reported last week.

All proceeds will go to Ukraine relief efforts.

The blue Savory Blueberry sausage is flavored with toasted fennel seeds, ginger and sage. Its sweetened with maple syrup, Betancourt reported. The yellow Ukrainian Plov is a pork sausage made with yellow rice and carrots flavored with cumin, coriander, garlic, chili powder, paprika and turmeric.

The sausages cost $15 per pound, with two yellow and two blue sausages per package. Theyll be available at Lancaster Central Market and can also be ordered online (lanc.news/Breakaway) for pickup at Breakaway Farms & Butchery, 2446 Valleyview Road.

Giving thanks

A winter roundup of thank-you letters was published in the Opinion section on March 8, providing a glimpse into some of the daily good deeds and random acts of kindness that characterize the spirit of Lancaster County.

There are always sweet stories of meals being paid for at local diners and restaurants. Here are a couple of other excerpts from letters that brightened our day:

 I want to thank the driver who stopped and allowed me to cross Hershey Avenue when you saw me waiting at Fremont Street on a weekday evening in January, wrote Robert Smith of Lancaster. Your thoughtfulness touched me deeply, as so few drivers would even think to do the same.

 Thank you to the kind Stoner Park neighbor who broke up ice and pushed the ice and snow from the parks walking trail on a weekday afternoon in January, wrote Nadine Leaman of Manheim Township.

 I would like to say thanks to the man who helped a lady who was holding onto a lamppost and could not walk, wrote Dorothy Griest of New Providence. You ran and got me a wheelchair and took me up to my doctors appointment. ... There should be more people like you.

The wonderful thing is that there are more people like that good Samaritan. The county is filled with them, and it cheers us to read about their good deeds in letters to the editor.
Since President Joe Biden imposed sanctions on Russian oil recently, U.S. gasoline prices have increased at the pump, even though we dont import much of Russias oil. If the United States had moved further in its transition to green energy, we believe that the U.S. wouldnt be in this predicament today. Meanwhile, our European allies are in a worse position. Russia supplies nearly 40% of the European Unions natural gas used for heat and electricity.

The U.S. Senate is seriously discussing a well-designed price on carbon. A steadily increasing price on carbon emissions would speed the transition to cleaner energy options. The money collected from this would be distributed to consumers as a dividend to offset the increased costs.

A border carbon tax is being planned by the European Union, and this could also be used here to impose international pressure on oil-exporting countries. Republicans in our Congress are expressing support for a similar idea.

In 2012, Republican Sen. Mitt Romney identified Russia as a threat. In January, he said, If youre serious about climate, put a price on carbon. Its time for our elected officials to get back into climate discussions. We cant wait any longer for the transition to green energy, and we have broad agreement on how to achieve it.

Our climate, energy prices and the stability of the world are at stake.

Wayne Olson

Manheim

Madeleine Para

Washington, D.C.
Lets all agree that we are a human civilization founded and grounded in war. And until humanity votes to change that, the need for a just war  justifiable to God  will continue.

I believe this condition of humanity will remain until we collectively decide to enforce the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928, in which nations pledged not to use war to resolve disputes or conflicts of whatever nature or of whatever origin they may be, which may arise among them.

Now we have the potential for World War III starting with Russias invasion of Ukraine. And we ponder this: What if peace, not war, had won the day?

President Joe Biden will go down in history with good marks for his courage to end the U.S. war in Afghanistan. For doing that, he felt the heat  the blowback from the military-industrial complex that President Dwight Eisenhower warned us about.

When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, George Kennan, who advocated for the U.S. policy of containment of Soviet expansion, stated that expanding NATO would be a major diplomatic blunder  essentially predicting Russias invasion this year.

Going into this trap, Biden chose to be power broker, taking a side in a Russia-Ukraine conflict that was hatched when the Berlin Wall came down.

I believe that Biden could have gone  and could still go  to the United Nations as a peace broker. The solutions seem obvious: a treaty and compromise under the watch of global eyes to ensure national independence and security. And Biden could end NATO, a relic of World War II, and earn himself a Nobel Peace Prize.

Instead, I believe that Bidens wag-the-dog response to the invasion of Ukraine represents a major diplomatic blunder and may be the defining moment in his presidency.

JanStephen Cavanaugh

West Hempfield Township
An environmental group says a program to save one of Kenyas most famous animals has returned a group of mountain bongos to the wild.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature, or IUCN, said disease, illegal hunting and forest loss have left fewer than 100 wild mountain bongos.

But last week, conservationists released five of the large creatures into the 3.1 square kilometer Mawingu Mountain Bongo Sanctuary near Mount Kenya.

"The mountain bongo is one of Kenya's most important iconic animals," said Najib Balala. He is the countrys minister of tourism and wildlife. He spoke after cutting the ribbon at the sanctuary's opening ceremony on Wednesday.

The bongo's release is the high point of a breeding and rewilding program that began in 2004.

Rewilding is a term that means planning the introduction of a rare animal back into the wild.

The goal is to have 50 to 70 bongos in the sanctuary by 2025, and 750 by 2050, the government says.

"This is like the first step in the recovery," said Isaac Lekolool, head of veterinary services at the Kenya Wildlife Service, or KWS.

Mountain bongos once moved in large numbers. But the few remaining animals live in forested areas around Kenya. Their bodies have thin, white stripes making them easy to recognize.

The IUCN said local people are hunting the animals including with dogs.

Robert Aruho is head of veterinary services at the Mount Kenya Wildlife Conservancy, or MKWC. He said, "This species is being driven to extinction in the wild unless something is done quickly."

Extinction is a term that means the complete disappearance of a species.

Aruho added that MKWC has set up community conservation, education, and empowerment programs to bring attention to and help reduce the human threats to the animal.

MKWC has also involved local communities in planting over 35,000 local tree species around Mount Kenya to help the damaged forest.

To help maintain genetic health in the breeding program, approval has been given to import bongos from Europe and America, Aruho said.

Im John Russell.

Jefferson Kahinju reported on this story for Reuters. John Russell adapted it for Learning English.

____________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

conservation  n. a careful preservation and protection of something such as animals or a natural place

sanctuary  n. a place where someone or something is protected or given shelter

iconic  adj. widely recognized and well-established

cut the ribbon  idiom to officially open a building or center

species  n. a group of animals or plants that are similar and can produce young animals or plants : a group of related animals or plants that is smaller than a genus
WASHINGTON  Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will deliver a virtual address to the U.S. Congress as the Russian war on his country intensifies.

Zelenskyy will speak Wednesday to members of the House and Senate, the Democratic leaders announced. The event will be livestreamed for the public.

Advertisement

Its such a privilege to have this leader of this country, where these people are fighting for their democracy and our democracy, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Monday during an event at the Brooklyn Bridge with New York lawmakers.

Pelosi said that Zelenskyy asked for the meeting when they spoke at the end of last week, and lawmakers are thrilled to have him address Congress.

Advertisement

The talk comes as the Ukrainians are fighting for their countrys survival in the escalating war as Russian President Vladimir Putin intensifies his assault, including airstrikes on the capital Kyiv. Civilians in Ukraine are taking up arms to hold back Putins regime, but the war has launched a mass exodus of more then 2 million people from Ukraine.

The Congress, our country and the world are in awe of the people of Ukraine, said Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in a statement Monday announcing the address.

In this image from video provided by the Ukrainian Presidential Press Office and posted on Facebook early March 12, 2022, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks in Kyiv, Ukraine. (AP)

They said all lawmakers are invited to the talk that will be delivered via video at the U.S. Capitol. It comes as Congress recently approved $13.6 billion in emergency military and humanitarian aid for Ukraine.

Daily Top Stories Daily Get the day's top news, sports, opinion, features and local events. >

Biden is expected to sign a big spending bill containing Ukraine aid into law on Tuesday. During Pelosis call last week, Zelenskyy said his country would need help rebuilding from the war.

We have to do more in terms of meeting the needs of some of the 2.7 million refugees, she said.

She said of the Ukrainians: Theyre fighting for democracy writ large.

In their statement Monday, the congressional leaders said Congress remains unwavering in our commitment to supporting Ukraine as they face Putins cruel and diabolical aggression.

Pelosi and Schumer said they intend to convey our support to the people of Ukraine as they bravely defend democracy.

Advertisement

Zelenskyy spoke by video with House and Senate lawmakers earlier this month, delivering a desperate plea for more military aid.

Associated Press writer Michelle L. Price in New York contributed to this report.
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
COZAD  The Cozad and Gothenburg fire departments had to drive up into the hills to fight a grass fire that broke out during the morning of Monday, March 14.

At 11:07 a.m., the Cozad Volunteer Fire Department was dispatched to an area in the hills south of Road 414 for the report for a grass fire. The fire itself wasnt easy to access, as firefighters had to cross a single bridge over the Tri-County canal.

The Gothenburg fire department was paged to provide mutual aid at the scene.

Dawson County was under near-critical fire weather conditions on Monday as winds were blowing out of the north at 25-35 mph with some gusts up to 40 mph. Humidity levels were in the high 20s.

The wind was spreading the fire to the south, with occasional plumes of black smoke marking the site of the fire.

The size of the area burned was not available on scene.

The fire departments were assisted by the Dawson County Sheriffs Office.
If not for Jane Does courage, former Rep. Aaron von Ehlinger, R-Lewiston,  a man who stands convicted of raping her and now faces spending the rest of his life in prison  would no doubt be on his way toward securing a second term representing this area in the Legislature.
By Kim Won-soo





The Russian invasion of Ukraine is an outright affront to the international norm of non-aggression. It is wreaking humanitarian havoc on a scale never seen in Europe since the end of World War II. Its impact on the global economy is devastating as Russia and Ukraine are major players in global fuel and food supply chains. Following the invasion, oil prices are spiking and food supplies to those in need in the developing world are at risk.



There is no doubt that the longer the invasion lasts, the more serious the humanitarian and other socio-economic consequences will be. South Koreans are watching the volatile situation in Ukraine with a great deal of concern mostly for economic and humanitarian reasons.



South Korean media has primarily highlighted those aspects of the invasion while largely disregarding the strategic side. This approach, however, is mistaken because the greatest impact will likely be felt on the strategic side. Here are three strategic considerations that require South Korea's attention.



Firstly, the invasion reflects the strategic tectonic shifts occurring along the fault lines between the United States and its allies on the one hand and China, Russia and their allies on the other. The fault lines are now drawn in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, the Middle East, the South/East China Seas and the Korean Peninsula. This phenomenon is akin to the ideological confrontation of the Cold War era.



While many in the West believe the rise of China is to blame, the bigger culprit would be the restructuring of U.S. overseas commitments. The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is a prime example. Those with an irredentist agenda on the fault lines may be tempted to change the status quo forcefully by exploiting the perceived power vacuum left by the retreating United States. This is why South Korea  a country surrounded by powerful neighbors embroiled in intense territorial disputes  must pay close attention to the developments in Ukraine.



Secondly, the Russian invasion raises the specter of a nuclear war, which has long been considered a taboo given how destructive nuclear weapons are. The invasion represents the first ever attempt by a nuclear power to alter the status quo by force, making threats of nuclear retaliation against any intervening power.



Russia is using the nuclear threat to deter any country from providing Ukraine with conventional military support. Without the protection of extended nuclear deterrence by a formal ally, Ukraine has fallen prey to brazen nuclear blackmail. South Korea, as a nuclear umbrella state, must learn the lesson and redouble its efforts to uphold the credibility of allied nuclear protection.



Last but not least, the invasion is the first serious stress test for the Biden administration's pivot to Asia. Before and after the invasion, Washington was quick to reassure the partners in Asia of its security commitments. It reaffirmed that the United States remained willing and ready to handle a two-front contingency.



But when it comes to demonstrating how robust one's commitment really is, actions speak louder than words. Extra effort is needed to prevent miscalculation and explore the space for diplomacy to narrow down the scope for misunderstanding. Unless Washington shows its resolve through action, those on the other side may miscalculate and embark on a risky venture.



These strategic undercurrents will continue to play out, but there are uncertainties as well. First of all, it is uncertain how the situation will evolve on the ground in Ukraine, although it is unlikely that President Putin will change course anytime soon. Therefore, it depends in large part on how determined the Ukrainian people are in opposing one of the top military powers of the world. It will also depend on how much the world can chip in diplomatically to help mediate the way-out. The type and extent of support provided by the U.S. and Europe will be crucial.



Regardless, one thing is clear. The developments in Ukraine will be closely watched by the major powers on both sides as well as the players along the fault lines. As one of the fault line states, South Korea cannot afford to remain an idle bystander to the Ukraine crisis. Korea should be clear in its solidarity with the Ukrainian people who are showing incredible courage to put up a seemingly unwinnable fight against a Goliath.



Korea needs to be steadfast in its opposition to aggression and condemn these crimes against humanity under any circumstances. Korea must be clear-minded in its analysis of the various factors influencing military decisions on the ground and how they affect the broader strategic considerations mentioned above.



Korea must be vigilant in its preparation for what its neighbors might be emboldened to do in case they learned the wrong lesson from the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Korea must also step up its diplomatic efforts to expand the common ground between major powers to reduce misunderstanding.



In the Northeast Asia region, there are high stakes for Korea in helping the U.S. and China manage their growing competition responsibly and in a peaceful manner. It is imperative that the South Korean President-elect make it a priority to review Korea's policy in light of these urgent and serious strategic implications from Ukraine upon taking office.



The need for cool-headed analysis is all the greater as polarized domestic politics has long muddled public discourse on what constitutes Korea's core national interests. South Korea must do everything it can to make sure it does not become another Ukraine. It requires our unity.





Kim Won-soo (wsk4321@gmail.com) is the former under secretary-general of the United Nations and high representative for disarmament. He is now the chair of the international advisory board of the Taejae Academy (Future Consensus Institute) and the chair professor of Kyung Hee University.


AUSTIN, Texas  Nicolas Cage brought his own distinct brand of movie stardom to the Paramount Theatre on Saturday night for the world premiere of "The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent," in which Cage plays a movie star named Nick Cage.

It's a movie with everything fans love about the screen persona of Nicolas Cage  absurdly funny, earnestly sincere, a bit out there and a lot of fun.

In the film, Cage plays an aging movie star, grown distant from his ex-wife (Sharon Horgan) and teenage daughter (Lily Sheen) and who would like to retire if he didn't have massive debts such as the $600,000 bill from the hotel he has lived in for a year. He often has conversations with his younger alter ego, known as Nicky, who brings out his vanity, ego and worst impulses. Cage begrudgingly accepts an offer to attend the birthday party of an olive grove magnate named Javi Gutierrez (Pedro Pascal) in Majorca, Spain, for $1 million.

Cage is soon enlisted by two U.S. government agents (Tiffany Haddish, Ike Barinholtz) who say the affable Javi is actually a dangerous international arms dealer and they need the actor's help to save a kidnapped politician's daughter. As an excuse to stay at Javi's fortress compound, Cage agrees to collaborate on a screenplay idea and it becomes more evident, particularly after the two take LSD together, that the movie itself is the script they are writing.

The movie is filled with references to Cage's prodigious filmography, from "The Rock," "Leaving Las Vegas" and "Face/Off" to "Captain Corelli's Mandolin," "Guarding Tess," "Mandy" and "The Wicker Man." There are also references to lots of other films, including "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" and "Paddington 2."

After the film, director and co-writer Tom Gormican was joined onstage by co-writer Kevin Etten, plus actors Jacob Scipio, Alessandra Mastronardi and Sheen. (Sheen makes her grown acting debut with the film and her mother, actor Kate Beckinsale, was in the audience.) Pascal and Cage also joined, each stepping onstage to wild applause.

Gormican admitted that he had never met Cage before the project and said of its origins, "We just started writing it, it's a colossally stupid decision that worked out nicely."

Cage said when he was first told of the idea, his initial response was, "No, I am not doing that." But after a letter from Gormican, Cage said, "I realized he wasn't trying to do like an Andy Samberg 'SNL' sketch mocking whatever so-called 'Nic Cage' is, but that he actually was interested in some of the earlier work and wanted to showcase that and brought some in  the references to gold guns and some of the other movies. So I thought, 'okay well this guy is serious and he's intelligent.' So I wanted to do it."

Adding another layer to the evening, a number of times during the Q&A, Gormican would recall something Cage said, doing an impression of the actor in front of him. Cage seemed unphased.

Pascal also declared himself a huge fan of Cage, much as his character is in the movie, saying that in his conversations with Gormican and Etten, "I knew more about Nicolas Cage movies than they did." He also noted how he and Cage would trade off horror film recommendations for each other.

During audience questions, a fan presented Cage with a single rose, which he held onto for the rest of the night, gesturing with it, sniffing at it, considering it, adding an unexpected lyrical quality to many of his responses.

"One of the main reasons why I wanted to make this movie  and there was a little more of this character in some of the earlier cuts  was I loved the Nicky character. I named him Nicky. Originally it was just 'young Nick Cage' and I saw an old interview I did in England on the 'Wogan' show, where I was literally front hand-springing, I was promoting 'Wild at Heart,' front hand-springing, doing karate kicks, throwing money out into the audience and I thought, 'Well, that guy is a really obnoxious arrogant madman, I think he needs to be in this movie.'"

"That was Nic, that's Nic in 1990. I'm so glad I'm nothing like that person anymore," he added. (Adding to the slippage or confusion between what's real and what's onscreen, the character of Nicky is credited to Nicolas Kim Coppola, Cage's birth name.)

Cage received strong reviews for his performance last year in the drama "Pig," and he added, "As you hopefully may have noticed, I've been trying to get back into my dramatic roots and back into independent films, which is my base, I'm always going to go back to that. And I was thinking a lot about Tony Curtis, how Tony Curtis could play the Boston Strangler and then he could be in movies like 'Sweet Smell of Success' and 'Some Like It Hot' and I'd think, 'well, that guy has range, let's get back to some comedy, let's flex a little bit and do the comedy and the drama.' So thankfully Kevin and Tom allowed me to do that with this."

Cage also said the moment when Nick Cage kisses his younger alter ego was his idea. As Gormican added, "it's the thing you only get with Nic; he comes to you and says, 'Tom, I'd like to French kiss myself.'"

"It was so symbolic of what was happening," explained Cage. "I'm actually making a movie about two versions of myself, what am I doing? It's like making out with yourself in the weirdest way. So we might as well do that symbolically and have them kiss each other."

Cage also referenced a line of Jeremy Irons' in "Reversal of Fortune"  "You have no idea"  as to what it was like playing a version of himself written by someone else.

"It was a high-wire, it was terrifying, no muscle in my body told me to play any version of myself in a movie, and because it scared the crap out of me I knew I had to do it," Cage said.

As the Q&A wrapped up, the festival's Janet Pierson presented Cage with an outsized belt buckle in recognition of "40 years of massive talent."

"I'm gonna wear this," Cage said. "I'm gonna wear it to dinner, I'm gonna wear it at the grocery store, I'm gonna wear it at 7-Eleven. And this is going to encourage me to keep trying to surprise you and entertain you."
One person was injured in the crash Sunday of a small plane at Brodhead Airport in the town of Decatur in Green County, authorities reported.

Shortly after noon on Sunday, Green County Sheriffs Office deputies, Brodhead police and fire personnel, Monroe EMS, and Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources personnel were sent to the airport in the N2600 block of Brodhead Airport Road in the town of Decatur after a plane crash was reported, Sgt. Zack Degner said in a statement.

The investigation determined that pilot Delbert D Devries, 56, of Browntown, and passenger John R Musser, 61, of Freeport, Illinois, were practicing landing techniques when the 1975 Cessna experienced mechanical troubles, Degner said.

Devries said he was attempting to land the plane when speed and weather conditions caused the plane to go beyond the landing strip, and overturn onto its top, Degner said.

Devries reported no injuries, while Musser was taken by ambulance to a hospital for treatment of injuries that werent specified, Degner said.

The FAA was notified of the crash and the aircraft was secured, Degner said.

Sign up for our Crime & Courts newsletter Get the latest in local public safety news with this weekly email. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
A request by Chandler Halderson to skip his sentencing later this week for the murder and mutilation of his parents is absurd and an affront to the publics interest, a Dane County prosecutor wrote to the judge in the case.

Deputy District Attorney William Brown, who tried Halderson in January, slammed his request to skip his sentencing this Thursday, saying that defendants must be present at their sentencing under state law.

The criminal justice system does not serve at the pleasure of convicted murderers, Brown said in a letter to Circuit Judge John Hyland on Sunday.

The defendant has no right to simply skip court hearings that might be uncomfortable or to avoid finally being held responsible for his behavior, Brown wrote.

Halderson, who turns 24 on Tuesday, was convicted in January of first-degree intentional homicide, mutilating a corpse and other charges in the murders of his parents, Bart and Krista Halderson, as well as lying to law enforcement for claiming his parents went missing after leaving the Windsor home they shared to visit the familys cabin over the Fourth of July weekend.

In reality, Halderson killed his parents after they uncovered an elaborate web of lies he had been telling about going to college and having a job. He then cut up their remains, burned them in the family fireplace and scattered what was left in southern Wisconsin.

On Friday, Haldersons attorney Catherine Dorl filed a motion asking the court to waive his appearance at the Thursday sentencing. Requests to forgo a sentencing appearance are rare.

In the letter to Hyland on Sunday, Brown noted that state law requires a defendant to be in court for sentencing and that the Wisconsin Supreme Court has said a defendant cannot be sentenced in absentia, or without being in court.

In her motion, Dorl argued that this requirement can be waived if the defendant refuses to be brought to court.

In an affidavit Halderson signed, he states that no one is threatening or forcing him to give up his rights. He states that he does not want to attend his sentencing in person, nor through Zoom or by phone.

Haldersons first-degree intentional homicide conviction carries a mandatory life sentence. On Thursday, attorneys can argue whether he can ever be eligible for parole.

There was no indication in online court records of when Hyland might rule on Haldersons request.

Sign up for our Crime & Courts newsletter Get the latest in local public safety news with this weekly email. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
A Sun Prairie woman pleaded guilty Monday to causing the hit-and-run death of a pedestrian in 2020 on Madisons Far East Side.

Sharnae M. Thomas, 23, pleaded guilty to hit-and-run causing death in the June 22, 2020, crash that later caused the death of Connie M. Estrada, 29, which happened on Cottage Grove Road near the intersection with Vernon Avenue.

Under a plea agreement, Assistant District Attorney Awais Khalil will ask for no more than seven years in prison for Thomas. Thomas will be sentenced by Circuit Judge Nicholas McNamara on May 20.

The maximum sentence for the conviction is 25 years of combined prison and extended supervision.

A second charge, driving with a suspended license and causing death, was dismissed as part of the agreement.

With her conviction, McNamara revoked Thomas signature bond and ordered her jailed until her sentencing hearing.

A criminal complaint states Estradas boyfriend told police he had walked with her from the Vernon Avenue area toward a Citgo gas station on Cottage Grove Road around 1 a.m., just prior to the incident.

He said as it began to rain he turned around near the Walgreens on Cottage Grove Road but Estrada continued walking and began to cross Cottage Grove Road. He told police he heard a thud and saw Estrada flying through the air, according to the complaint.

The driver initially stopped but left the scene. Estrada died at St. Marys Hospital on June 27.

Thomas turned herself in at the East Police District station about 12 hours after the crash and allowed her car to be impounded as evidence, the complaint states.

She told police she was driving a friend home when she heard a thud, and after briefly stopping her car, she said, she became scared and began to drive around in a panic, the complaint states.

Thomas attorney, Mark Hazelbaker, said in court Monday that Thomas has been severely depressed since the incident and at one point he considered questioning her competency to proceed in the case. While Thomas has improved, Hazelbaker said, she is still suffering from severe depression.

Sign up for our Crime & Courts newsletter Get the latest in local public safety news with this weekly email. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
Maryland is known for crabs and sailboats, and more recently, as a destination state for child marriage. Twenty-seven states have strengthened age restrictions on marriage since 2016. Maryland is not one of them.

More than 300 child marriages have occurred in Maryland since 2017. More than 90% involved adults marrying children, a third of whom were more than four years older than the child they married. Last year, a 40-year-old from Florida married a 16-year-old in Maryland. Four of nine marriages involving 15-year-olds were destination weddings.

Advertisement

Bills to reform our archaic marriage laws have been introduced and failed every year for six years. This year the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee weakened protections in Senate Bill 0029 before allowing it to be voted on by the full Senate. The amended bill was passed unanimously by the Senate, clearly demonstrating the strong support for reform in Maryland. People who know our laws, want to change them.

The amendment still raises the minimum age to marry from 15 to 17 but strikes the other protective provisions, including judicial review and emancipation. The amendment addresses the problem by allowing a married minor to be considered emancipated for the limited purpose of divorce. Talk about missing the forest for the trees. Marriage is a legal partnership; both parties must have equal individual rights. Otherwise, the state is allowing sexual predators to marry children.

Advertisement

Emancipation allows a married teen to enroll in school, sign up for public aid programs and seek shelter from an abusive spouse, which is important because the outcomes for these marriages mostly range from poor to dismal  80% end in divorce. The lifelong consequences of early marriage also include increased rates of poverty, chronic illness, and abuse.

Who is against protecting children from such a bleak future? In February, just two organizations submitted testimony in opposition, 14 submitted testimony in favor. MD Right to Life objected that the bill made pregnancy a crime, effectively coercing young couples into having abortions to avoid prosecution! This bill does not criminalize child marriage or pregnancy; it updates laws to provide better protection against forced child marriage. Indeed, the Maryland Catholic Conference submitted testimony in favor of ending child marriage this year as it has done every year since 2016.

So how did a bill with so few recorded objections get so emasculated before going to the Senate floor? Easy. Two Senate Democrats, Sens. Jill Carter and Mary Washington are aligning with Republican members to thwart a strong bill.

Carter recently cited concerns about inconsistencies in how minors will be treated in the justice system if the bill is enacted. This is a smoke screen. There are independent laws governing child marriage now!

Washington criticized advocates for being unconcerned about incarcerated juveniles. Huh? Most of us can walk and chew gum. Pitting one child protection issue against another undermines reform efforts for both. Her flippant dismissal of these victims as too few to care about is another case of missing the forest for the trees. Protection of everyones rights is a fundamental role of government, no matter how insignificant you are perceived to be.

Sen. Chris West and other Republicans opponents cite traditional values and the need to prevent children from being illegitimate. Who is criminalizing pregnancy now? Most of these couples do not live happily ever after and pretending that they do only adds insult to injury. Furthermore, legal and moral responsibilities of parents to their children remain regardless of marital status.

The unamended bill (HB0083) requiring judicial review and emancipation is now under consideration in the House. The House should pass the bill without eliminating these critical protections. Ultimately the fate of a law to protect vulnerable girls may be is in the hands of two men, the president of the Senate and the chair of the Judicial Proceedings Committee, Sens. Bill Ferguson and William C. Smith Jr., respectively. Lets hope they reject the Faustian bargain offered by the amended bill.
Three area high school students earned a chance to solo with the Middleton Community Orchestra only to have those performances put on ice for two years during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The concert will now take place from 8 to 9:30 p.m. Friday in the Memorial High School auditorium. Two of the soloists  Dexter Mott and Andrew Siehr  have already moved on to college but will be in town to rehearse and perform this week. The third winner  Ava Kenney  is a junior at Memorial High School.

It is unfortunate that the concert had to be postponed for so long, but my growth as a musician over the course of the pandemic and my first semester studying with (Columbus State University professor) Sergiu Schwartz will ultimately contribute to a more convincing performance, Mott said.

Kenney also said the wait is making the experience all the more sweet.

I guess if there is one thing I have learned from the pandemic, is having a live audience, just being able to perform, just means so much more, Kenney said. The meaning of it is a lot greater now.

Middleton Community Orchestra started a youth concerto competition, which was open to all high school students in Dane County, to create another opportunity for musicians to solo with an orchestra. The three winners were chosen in December 2019, rehearsals started in February 2020, and the concert was planned for that April. But due to the pandemic, they finally will share the stage with the orchestra this week.

Kenney will perform Violin Concerto in D minor, Op. 47  Allegro moderato, composed by Jean Sibelius. Mott, will play Violin Concerto No. 2 in D minor, Op. 22  Allegro moderato, by Henryk Wieniawski. Siehr, who plays cello, will play Silent Woods by Antonin Dvorak.

There arent many opportunities for talented youth to solo with an orchestra, said Mindy Taranto, co-founder of the Middleton Community Orchestra. As a community orchestra, we felt that we could play a significant role in expanding these opportunities for students residing in Dane County.

The initiative was launched in 2019, which was the 10th anniversary of the orchestras founding, and it will be an annual contest. Plans call for holding auditions this coming January so three new winners can play with the orchestra in February.

We had been thinking about it for awhile, and it seemed like a good time to start it, Taranto said.

The competition purposefully was not open to winners of the Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras concerto competition that year.

So that we were truly expanding the number of opportunities available to solo with an orchestra. That was important to us, Taranto said.

Because the Middleton Community Orchestra concert was postponed, however, Kenney also will perform with the Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestra May 27.

The orchestra had three judges choose three winners, who each received $200 in addition to the solo opportunity. Six students were given honorable mentions.

They are incredibly talented, said Larry Bevic, co-founder. Some will go on to music education. This is a stepping stone.

General admission tickets are $15 and available in advance at Willy St. Co-op West and at the door at night of show. Admission is free for all students through college. Masks are required.

Kenney also won the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra Stars of Tomorrow Competition in early 2020, and after that solo appearance also was postponed because of the pandemic, she will perform with the orchestra Wednesday . She will solo with the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra at one of the Concerts on the Square.

She gave credit to her private teacher, Eugene Purdue, adjunct professor of strings at UW-Madison, for helping her prepare for the competitions and solo performances.

Ive always enjoyed performing, and it is just really exciting to have a full orchestra behind you, said Kenney, who plans to pursue a career in violin performance. I am very grateful that I have been able to have these opportunities.

All three soloists know each other from their time with the Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestra.

Mott was attending the Early College STEM Academy at Madison Area Technical College when he competed for the chance to play with the Middleton Community Orchestra. He said performing a concerto is valuable experience for an aspiring professional musician and a good resume builder for schools and festivals. Mott is a first-year violin performance major at the Schwob School of Music at Columbus State University in Georgia.

Siehr, who competed when he was attending West High School, is a freshman at the University of Southern California, where he is majoring in cello performance under the guidance of professor Andrew Shulman.

I entered in this competition because it is an extremely valuable experience for any performer to be able to play with a full orchestra, Siehr said. It is an honor that I am able to perform accompanied by so many musicians in the community. Ive also never played accompanied by an orchestra before, so it definitely be an educational and memorable experience for me.

School Spotlight: Adventures in learning, inside and outside the classroom Each Monday, the Wisconsin State Journal features a story about learning in Wisconsin. Here are School Spotlight stories from the past year.
Six years after Wisconsin lifted a ban on nuclear power plant construction, a La Crosse utility company that operated the states first nuclear plant is exploring a return to atomic power.

Dairyland Power Cooperative has agreed with NuScale Power to explore using the companys small-scale nuclear generating technology as a carbon-free power source for about half a million customers in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois.

This agreement provides Dairyland an opportunity to explore this technology and evaluate whether it might be a viable long-term alternative to provide our members with safe, reliable and cost-effective electricity in a lower-carbon future, said Dairyland CEO Brent Ridge.

Maintaining reliability while cutting the coal-heavy utilitys greenhouse gas emissions will require out of the box thinking, said John Carr, vice president for strategic growth.

We think we have to explore all avenues, Carr said. Its there all the time. Its not subject to the intermittency that wind and solar might be.

While some experts contend its possible to operate the electric grid with just wind, solar and storage, others contend it will require some sort of on-demand source, such as nuclear power, a technology Dairyland abandoned more than three decades ago.

In a carbon-constrained world theres going to be, I think, a growing role for nuclear energy, said Paul Wilson, professor of nuclear engineering at UW-Madison. Particularly as we electrify more of the economy.

The technology Dairyland is exploring would be far different than the reactor it operated for 18 years on the banks of the Mississippi River, though Carr noted it could fit at any of the companys current sites.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission last year approved NuScales design for a factory-built reactor the company says will be simpler, safer and cheaper than conventional nuclear power plants. Less than a tenth the size of the average U.S. commercial reactor, it fits inside a below-ground pool and operates without the need for pumps.

Though it has yet to produce any commercial reactors, NuScale is developing a plant in Idaho that it hopes will begin generating energy in 2029, and says it has signed 20 agreements with companies in 11 countries interested in and considering deploying small-scale power plants.

While NuScale has yet to bring a product to market, Wilson said building reactors in a factory rather than on site could lead to efficiencies and would allow companies to build a plant in stages, generating electricity to pay for subsequent reactors rather than having to come up with billions of dollars up front.

I think theres this growing realization that we need to make a lot of things to get good at making things, Wilson said.

And the design should allow NuScale reactors to economically ramp up and down to provide power when cheaper sources like wind and solar are unavailable, said Ben Lindley, an assistant professor of nuclear engineering at UW-Madison whos been researching small modular reactors.

Cost-effective design?

NuScale, based in Portland, Oregon, says it can build modular plants for a fraction of the cost of a conventional reactor with lifetime operating costs on par with high-efficiency natural gas plants like the one Dairyland is attempting to build in Superior, though critics have questioned whether those cost estimates are realistic.

Wilson said the smaller reactors initially will still be costly to operate, but over time they may become cheaper and could even be deployed at factories for on-site heat and electricity currently supplied with coal and gas.

Wisconsin's nuclear power plants Wisconsin has been host to three nuclear power plants, though only one remains in operation and it has been nearly 50 years since the last one was completed. Built by the federal government as a demonstration plant, the 50-megawatt La Crosse Boiling Water Reactor in Genoa was operated by Dairyland Power Cooperative from 1969 until 1987. The buildings have been razed, but the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has yet to clear the site for redevelopment. Regulators are considering a proposal to sell the 560-megawatt Kewaunee Nuclear Power Station, shuttered since 2013, to the same contractor overseeing decommissioning of the Genoa plant, though a competitor says if allowed to bid on the job it could return more than $200 million to ratepayers. The operators of the Point Beach plant, the state's single largest source of electricity, are seeking license extensions that would allow the plant to run through 2050.

Physicians for Social Responsibility, which opposes nuclear energy, says small-scale reactors are not a viable solution to the climate crisis.

We think theyre too slow, too risky, too expensive and too uncertain, said Hannah Mortensen, executive director of the anti-nuclear groups Wisconsin chapter. It kind of boggles my mind  that theyre even considering this when we have such incredible technology of renewables and conservation at our door.

NuScale says its design, which doesnt require external power or water for cooling, is inherently safer. And unlike conventional nuclear plants, the NRC does not require a 10-mile emergency planning zone for NuScales design.

The total amount of radioactive material in any one reactor is much less and therefore poses a much smaller hazard, Wilson said.

Dairyland officials point out they are simply evaluating the technology and havent committed to building anything.

Its an exploration, Carr said. Theres no absolute definitive plans at this time. Were exploring the technology.

Spent fuel

Still, Dairyland is the first utility to express interest in nuclear power since 2016, when lawmakers passed a bill ending a 33-year effective ban on new construction by lifting the requirement that there be a repository for all the spent fuel from Wisconsins nuclear plants.

The federal government has yet to make good on its promise to develop such a repository, so radioactive waste remains on site, including five casks in Genoa, where Dairyland operated a 50-megawatt nuclear plant from 1969 to 1987.

That plant has been dismantled at a cost of more than $83 million, but the NRC has yet to declare the site fully decontaminated.

Wilson acknowledges that spent nuclear fuel storage is a concern for host communities like Genoa. But while a deep geological repository would be a better long-term solution, Wilson said theres no technical urgency.

I think the nuclear industry has done a great job of managing its waste, Wilson said. We know how to do it, and we know how to do it very well and efficiently and safely.

Be the first to know Get local news delivered to your inbox! Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
The state of Wisconsin is suing a Marinette manufacturer and an affiliated company over toxic forever chemicals that have contaminated waters in the northeastern Wisconsin community.

Attorney General Josh Kaul filed a civil lawsuit Monday against Johnson Controls and Tyco Fire Products for failing to notify the Department of Natural Resources that they had discharged firefighting foam containing compounds known as PFAS and for failing to clean it up.

Kaul is asking a Marinette County court to hold Johnson Controls and Tyco responsible for the states costs related to the contamination and to force the company to complete an investigation and cleanup near their Fire Technology Center.

When companies contaminate our water, they must fully remediate the harm theyve caused, Kaul said in a statement announcing the lawsuit. Every Wisconsinite should be able to rely on the safety of the water they drink.

A spokesperson for Johnson Controls, which merged with Tyco in 2016, said the company would vigorously contest the lawsuit while continuing cleanup efforts that include a groundwater treatment system that is expected to be completed this summer.

We stand behind the years of work and considerable resources we have invested in investigating and remediating PFAS related to historic operations, said Kathleen Cantillon, director of environmental communications. We continue to build on the progress we have made to address these issues in our community, including offering bottled water and in-home filtration systems several years ago to all households in the town of Peshtigo whose private wells were potentially impacted by PFAS from the FTC.

Marinette and Peshtigo are among the Wisconsin communities most affected by PFAS, which has also contaminated groundwater in La Crosse, Eau Claire and Wausau and has triggered consumption warnings for fish from Madisons lakes.

According to the complaint, Tyco and its predecessor, Ansul, have been testing foam since 1962, contaminating the air, soil, surface water and groundwater around the plant with the synthetic compounds, which have been linked to cancer and other illnesses.

Between 2013 and 2016 Tyco found high levels of PFAS in soil and groundwater around the site but did not report the results to the DNR until 2017, according to the complaint.

The complaint alleges the company has yet to complete a site investigation as required by state law and has taken only limited actions to remediate the contamination.

Since 2017, Johnson Controls has sampled 172 private wells, of which 22 were contaminated with two PFAS compounds at concentrations the Environmental Protection Agency says are unsafe. Another 38 had levels above the Wisconsin Department of Health Services recommended drinking water standards.

As part of a separate class-action lawsuit, Johnson Controls last year agreed to pay $17.5 million to Peshtigo-area residents whose water was contaminated with PFAS, and the company says it has set aside $140 million to cover cleanup costs.

Kaul acknowledged Johnson Controls has conducted a limited investigation and is working with residents and the DNR.

They have taken positive steps, he said. But we have reached a point in this process right now where we believe the path forward is through litigation.

The DNR says it will continue pushing Johnson Controls and Tyco to complete a site investigation and cleanup as well as to provide bottled water to residents with contaminated wells.

The suit comes as the states authority to require PFAS cleanup is being challenged by the states largest business lobby.

State law gives the DNR authority to regulate the discharge of hazardous substances, which the law defines as anything that can cause harm to human health and safety, or the environment, because of where it is spilled, the amount spilled, its toxicity or its concentration.

There is no definitive list of hazardous substances, which can include toxic chemicals as well manure, corn, or even milk and beer, which in high concentrations can foul public waters and kill aquatic life.

Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce and an Oconomowoc dry cleaner claim the DNR is subverting the law by requiring polluters to clean up spills without first going through a lengthy rule-making process that is subject to legislative approval for each individual substance.

A Waukesha County judge is expected to issue a ruling on that case next month.

The DNR policy board last month approved the states first PFAS standards for drinking and surface water but rejected groundwater regulations. The boards approved drinking water standards would allow concentrations of two compounds  PFOA and PFOS  at concentrations 3.5 times higher than what the Department of Health Services says is safe.

The regulations are subject to approval by the Legislature.

Your letters to the editor: Thoughts and prayers for new gun laws Thoughts and prayers for new gun laws  Michael Lindsay PFAS are biggest problem with F-35s  Allen Ruff School Board needs more common sense  Jerry Darda Editorial Madison School Board backs public safety again Funds diverted for wall hurt military  Peter D. Fox

Be the first to know Get local news delivered to your inbox! Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
Former state Supreme Court Justice and GOP-appointed special counsel Michael Gableman is set to address the legally impossible task of decertifying Wisconsins 2020 election as a featured speaker at two election data events in Utah, his office confirmed Monday.

One of those events  on March 25 in South Jordan  will feature a woman indicted last week for election tampering after the 2020 election, according to the event listing.

Gableman, who recently released the second interim report in his review of the Nov. 3, 2020, election in Wisconsin, is set to explain the decertification report, according to an event listing shared on Facebook. Angela Joyce, a spokesperson for Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, said on Friday that Gableman would be responsible for his own expenses.

Gableman staffer Zakory Niemierowicz confirmed on Monday that Gableman will be attending the event after being invited to speak. Niemierowicz said the former conservative justice will address the entire report, not just the part about decertification.

The Wisconsin State Journal reported last week that Gablemans interim report falsely claimed nursing homes in Dane and Milwaukee counties had 100% voter turnout, when in fact the percentage of registered voters who cast ballots in all but one Dane County facility ranged from 42% to 91%. Gableman insinuated that malign actors had filled out ballots on behalf of nursing home residents, even though there is no evidence of widespread fraud.

Gableman, who was hired by Vos last year to review the election at a cost of $676,000 to taxpayers, is also set to speak March 26 in St. George, Utah. The event listing misidentifies Gableman as a Wisconsin Supreme Court justice; he has not been on the court since 2018.

Tina Peters, indicted by a grand jury last week over election tampering after the 2020 election, is scheduled to tell her incredible story of exposing Dominion fraud at the March 25 event.

Thats a reference to Dominion Voting Systems, a company consistently targeted by people who question the results of the 2020 presidential election. It is one of the many entities or people Gableman has subpoenaed during the course of his investigation, despite no evidence that the company was complicit in widespread fraud, or that any widespread fraud happened at all. Dominion currently has several outstanding lawsuits against Fox News and prominent election deniers for allegedly spreading false claims that the company was involved in fraud.

A county clerk in Colorado, Peters faces felony and misdemeanor charges including criminal impersonation, identity theft, first-degree official misconduct and failing to comply with the secretary of state. She is currently running to be secretary of state in Colorado.

Reached for comment, event organizer Sophie Anderson said, I have no interest in contributing to a smear campaign. She added that Gableman is a hero.

Anderson then requested questions in writing but did not immediately respond to them.

The Utah events will be Gablemans next in a string of public appearances following the release of his second report. In the past two weeks, Gableman has appeared on podcasts or television shows  with the Gateway Pundit, Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon  that have consistently cast doubt or provided a platform for people to cast doubt on the 2020 election results. Both the Gateway Pundit and Carlson, through his Fox affiliation, are targeted in defamation lawsuits regarding alleged wrongful claims about the 2020 election that they made or helped circulate.

Gableman, who previously traveled to Arizona to observe that states widely criticized recount and to South Dakota for a symposium led by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, has had no shortage of election deniers working for him in his GOP-ordered review of Wisconsins 2020 election. Gableman also made a baseless claim at a pro-Donald Trump rally in 2020 that the election in Wisconsin had been stolen by bureaucrats.

Joyce confirmed Monday that taxpayer money Gableman used to travel to South Dakota and to a Chippewa County Republican Party event will be deducted from his future payments.

Documents revealed last year that Gableman had hired Andrew Kloster, a former member of the Trump administration, and Ron Heuer, the president of the Wisconsin Voter Alliance, which last year filed a lawsuit asking the Wisconsin Supreme Court to toss Wisconsins presidential election results and replace the will of voters with electors appointed by the states Republican-controlled Legislature.

Records ordered to be released last week by a Dane County judge show Gableman has also had regular communications with Erick Kaardal, an attorney for the conservative Thomas More Society, and Harry Wait, president of the conservative group Honest Open Transparent Government.

Kaardal is actively challenging the use of private election grants provided to the states five largest cities to help administer the 2020 election during the COVID-19 pandemic.

While Gableman ramps up his call for decertifying the 2020 election, he faces a growing number of state lawmakers, including a handful of Republicans, urging him to wrap up the probe.

I wish this whole 2020 election stuff would be done because we have to continue to look forward at 2022 and 2024, but we also have to make sure people have confidence in their elections and I think that falls on elected officials to push back against misinformation, Assembly Majority Leader Jim Steineke said in a Monday interview on the Wisconsin Eye program Newsmakers.

Recounts, reviews and court decisions have affirmed that President Joe Biden defeated Trump by close to 21,000 votes in Wisconsin.

86 subpoenas

Last week Gablemans office provided to Rep. Mark Spreitzer, D-Beloit, copies of 86 subpoenas. Spreitzer had requested the documents earlier this month.

Niemierowicz wrote in an email to Spreitzer the list included in-state subpoenas that were served along with the out-of-state subpoenas that were signed by Vos. Vos name was misspelled twice in the email.

Several of the subpoenas were issued to local and state election officials, the mayors of the states five largest cities and two companies that make vote-counting systems, Election Systems & Software and Dominion Voting Systems. Many of the subpoenaed parties have rejected Gablemans requests for in-person meetings or documents, while the former state Supreme Court justice has also withdrawn some requests, including one filed with immigrant rights group Voces de la Frontera Action.

Other subpoenas for out-of-state entities were never actually issued and further underscore the broad and unusual scope of Gablemans review. Drafted subpoenas that were never served include those for organizations Gableman has long criticized as part of his review  the Center for Tech and Civic Life, or CTCL, and the National Vote at Home Institute, including the groups consultant Michael Spitzer-Rubenstein.

CTCL, a group largely funded by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to help administer the 2020 election, provided millions in private election grants to cities across the state  funds that Republicans, including Gableman, have targeted as unfairly increasing turnout in the Democratic strongholds of Milwaukee, Madison, Green Bay, Kenosha and Racine.

Court rulings have found nothing illegal about the more than $10 million in grants CTCL distributed to about 214 municipalities in 39 of Wisconsins 72 counties, including many solidly won by Trump. Nor did CTCL turn down grant requests from any of the Wisconsin municipalities that made them.

Other subpoenas drafted by Gableman targeted two Hyatt Regency hotel employees and an engineering director for Airbnb.

Spreitzer, a member of the Assembly elections committee, described the list of subpoenas as a real fishing expedition.

Its clear to me that theres no actual organized plan here, that they dont know what theyre looking for and at this point it seems like the litigation around some of these subpoenas is being used as an excuse for the new contract that Speaker Vos signed that will continue to waste more taxpayer dollars over the coming months, Spreitzer said last week.

Vos recently signed a new contract extending Gablemans probe through April 30. Gablemans effort was originally planned to be completed last fall but failed to meet several deadlines.

The new contract maintains Gablemans existing budget, but does allow for the possibility of added funds to cover the costs of multiple lawsuits related to the probe. The contract also stipulates that Gableman consult with Vos after the lawsuits are concluded to determine if the review should end or if additional investigation is warranted.

We would all like it to end, quite frankly, but there are still some lawsuits out there, Steineke said of Gablemans review.

Get Government & Politics updates in your inbox! Stay up-to-date on the latest in local and national government and political topics with our newsletter. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.

Mitchell Schmidt | Wisconsin State Journal Follow Mitchell Schmidt | Wisconsin State Journal 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
Gov. Tony Evers has reversed a decision to steer federal funds toward people of color as part of a more than $92 million mortgage-assistance program after a conservative law firm contended the move would be unconstitutional.

The Democratic governor first announced the Wisconsin Help for Homeowners program in August. The program is set to provide about $92.7 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act funds to eligible homeowners across the state to help mitigate financial hardships associated with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic by preventing mortgage delinquencies, defaults and foreclosures and loss of utility and energy services.

However, a component of the initial proposal drew criticism from the nonprofit Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, which claimed the states plan to follow federal guidelines would constitute discrimination under the U.S. and state constitutions.

The federal government directs states to provide the grants to homeowners with incomes equal to or less than 100% of the area median income for their household size. However, states were allowed to increase the income eligibility pool to those earning 150% of the area median income if funding was being allocated to socially disadvantaged individuals, defined by the federal government as Black Americans, Hispanic Americans, Native Americans, and Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. Other individuals earning between 100% and 150% would be ineligible.

The program formally launched last week and focuses only on those with an income equal to or less than 100% of the area median income for their household size

Its a relief the Evers administration recognized the clear constitutional and legal problems we identified in the design of this program and fixed them before any money was distributed, WILL deputy counsel Dan Lennington said in a statement. The program is now open to all Wisconsinites, regardless of race, and thats great news.

The state Department of Administration estimated there are more than 914,000 Wisconsin households earning between 100% and 150% of the area median income, according to a letter WILL sent Evers earlier this year. Almost 60,900 of those households meet the federal governments definition of socially disadvantaged, while the remaining more than 850,000 households are white.

Evers office did not respond to a request for comment Monday. The Democratic governor said in a statement last week the program will provide a lifeline to homeowners who might otherwise be at risk of losing their homes because of hardships created by the pandemic.

DOA has partnered with Wisconsin Community Action Program Association agencies and Take Root Wisconsin to help assist with the grant application process. Applications are open on a first-come, first-served basis at homeownerhelp.wi.gov.

WILL has previously challenged the federal governments reasoning for allocating federal funds based on race, including a lawsuit brought forward last year on behalf of a handful of residents in several states including Wisconsin challenging President Joe Bidens proposal for allocating grants to farmers and ranchers, including $4 billion to more than 20,000 Wisconsin farmers.

The lawsuit alleged the Biden administration was engaging in unconstitutional race discrimination through a provision in the American Rescue Plan to provide debt relief to socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers. A temporary restraining order was granted last June.

WILL, on behalf of a handful of businesses, also successfully sued the U.S. Small Business Administration for the agencys prioritization of businesses owned by women, veterans and socially disadvantaged individuals when allocating $28.6 billion in Restaurant Revitalization Fund grants last year.

A federal appeals court ultimately ruled in favor of WILL, issuing a 2-1 opinion that said the government cannot allocate limited coronavirus relief funds based on race and sex. As a result, SBA notified 2,965 business owners who had originally been approved for grants that those funds would now be denied and the application process shifted to a first-come, first-served basis.

Get Government & Politics updates in your inbox! Stay up-to-date on the latest in local and national government and political topics with our newsletter. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
In 1970, a Wisconsin dermatologist first documented what would soon be called Lyme disease across the country.

Dr. Rudolph J. Scrimenti, a dermatologist in Milwaukee, reported the first case in the United States of the signature rash of early Lyme disease.

The patient had removed a tick from his skin three months earlier in north-central Wisconsin. Scrimenti treated the patient with penicillin based on medical literature he had read out of Europe.

The patient became symptom-free within 48 hours, he wrote in the journal article in 1970. There has been no recurrence of symptoms for the past year. However, Scrimenti said the cause of the disease was uncertain.

Scrimenti, who died in 2013, later began treating patients in Milwaukee and served on the review board of a journal on tick-borne diseases in the early 1990s.

During the past three decades, Susan Paskewitz, a medical entomologist at UW-Madison, has documented the growing prevalence of ticks in Wisconsin.

Paskewitz found that deer ticks, also called black-legged ticks, have moved steadily from northwest to southwest, and then into the central and eventually slowly into the eastern and southern Wisconsin.

They invaded our state entirely, Paskewitz said in a 2021 Wednesday Nite @ The Lab episode. She said the regeneration of forests decimated by logging in the early 1900s and rebounding of the deer population are the main drivers in Wisconsin. Paskewitz said warming temperatures caused by climate change are expected to lengthen the tick season and accelerate their northward march into Canada.

Xia Lee, a tick biologist in Paskewitzs lab, has studied the insects for more than a decade. Lee is soft-spoken, but when he talks about the parasites, he marvels at their beauty.

Lee explained that the Lyme-bearing ticks live between two and three years. They acquire blood meals from animal hosts at each stage of life  larva, nymph and adult.

These guys are always born uninfected, and they have to pick up the infections when they feed on their first animal (hosts), Lee said, pointing to the lab-raised larvae.

He said that larvae pick up pathogens during their first blood meal from infected small mammals, such as the white-footed mouse. They subsequently transmit those pathogens during their second meal as nymphs and their third meal as adults.

A Yale study has found that about 20% to 30% of the black-legged tick nymphs carry the bacterium that causes Lyme disease in southern New England, while the rate of infected adult ticks is 30% to 50%. The tick can also be infected with other microbes at the same time, carrying and transmitting other pathogens and making people sick with Lyme and other tick-borne diseases such as anaplasmosis and babesiosis.

Once an infected tick latches on a human, it falls off when full. If a tick is removed within 24 hours, the likelihood of transmission is very low, Lee said. However, when a poppy seed-sized nymphal tick firmly attaches itself to the skin, detecting and removing it is difficult, increasing the risk of infection.

Lee noted that Wisconsin never got the proper recognition as the site of the first case of the disease. That honor went to the town of Lyme in Connecticut, which remains one of the states with the highest incidence rates in the country.

We like to joke about it and say that Wisconsin was actually the first state where Lyme disease was detected, he said, but we never got the glory for naming (it).
Chicago has more important things to worry about, and we have more important things to write about, than the well-connected Empire actor Jussie Smollett.

His fake hate crime, including a starring victim role, was designed to increase his celebrity and the size of his TV paycheck. In so doing, he wasted police time, made it more difficult for real victims of these heinous crimes to be believed, made fools out of his fancy supporters on Twitter, and impugned an entire, fair-minded city that had initially risen as one to his defense.

After his attempts to clout his way out of trouble failed, he deservedly stood trial, was judged to be guilty by a jury of his peers on five of six counts and, alas for him, met a judge who clearly found his narrative shtick less than credible. All the way through, he showed not a smidgen of remorse.

Thus Smollett now finds himself in Cook County Jail.

Judge James Linn doubtless is well aware that, assuming he behaves himself, Smollett wont be behind bars for 150 days as sentenced, but should be out of there after a couple of months. Just as the weather gets nice.

That reality of credits for good behavior makes the statement by Cook County States Attorney Kim Foxx that Linns reasonable sentence was indicative of revenge all the more ridiculous. Smollett gets a couple of months to think about his future, a bill that accurately reflects real police overtime costs and an admonition to stay out of trouble. Plenty of folks without Smolletts connections and resources face a much tougher justice system, especially those whose crimes came out of poverty, rather than ambition.

And, as we all know from the musical Chicago, Smolletts career hardly is ruined. His name is more familiar than ever. His PR people will know how to craft a narrative of rebirth.

This is revenge? Seems to us like fair treatment.

Foxx, of course, is trying to cover up for her questionable initial decision not to prosecute Smollett, following a couple of well-placed phone calls made to her office on his behalf. Shes trying to downplay the seriousness of his crime for her own political purposes. And rather than apologize to Chicago for this tawdry business, Smolletts older brother, Joe, even rolled out the Al Capone cliche to impugn the proceedings and the city in which they were taking place.

The elder Smollett is supporting his family. But it is unbecoming of the states attorney to attack a judge for a sentence in line with what prosecutors sought. It does not aid the deficit of trust between police officers and her office. It does not serve the public good, nor the cause that people of all levels of resources should be treated the same way.

Chicagoans are decent, forgiving people. Most of us will wish Smollett some weeks of personal reflection, as prescribed, and then a chance to remake his life and rebuild his career. He might start by saying sorry. And Foxx could do the same.
Voters in Maryland support legalizing recreational marijuana by a 2-to-1 margin, a new poll from Goucher College found, including majorities of Republicans, Democrats and independents alike.

The finding largely confirms previous polls, which have shown steadily rising support for allowing the legal sale of the drug, and bodes well for a proposed referendum on legalizing recreational marijuana for adults thats been backed by Speaker Adrienne A. Jones and other lawmakers in the General Assembly.

Advertisement

Overall, 62% of voters polled support legalizing recreational marijuana, while only 34% oppose it. The proposal enjoys slightly higher support among Democrats and independents, both groups reported 62% for and 32% against. But the poll found that even 54% of Republican voters, a more conservative group that has historically been much more wary of loosening drug laws, now support legalization, while 44% oppose it.

The poll released Monday also found that a majority of Marylanders are feeling squeezed by rising prices, with 26% saying rising prices had caused minor hardships and another 30% saying costs had created a major hardship. But 43% of Marylanders said they hadnt been impacted by rising prices.

Advertisement

Marylanders are definitely feeling an economic pinch, said Mileah Kromer, director of the Sarah T. Hughes Center for Politics at Goucher College, who oversees the poll. But Kromer added that price increases have yet to dampen views of the states broader economic situation  the same as in October, though somewhat down from this time last year.

Poll respondents overall view of the economy in Maryland remains largely positive at 52%, with 41% holding a mostly negative view. A third said they are personally worse off financially compared to a year ago, but two-thirds of respondents described their personal financial situation as being either about the same (48%) or better (19%).

The poll also found that Republican Gov. Larry Hogan continues to enjoy high across-the-board approval ratings, even among Democratic voters. Among Democrats, the poll found 61% approve of the second-term Republican governor and just 28% disapprove. Among independents, Hogans approval rating was higher at 69%, compared to 22% disapproval.

Breaking News Alerts As it happens When big news breaks in our area, be the first to know. >

Hogan continued to enjoy particularly strong support from Maryland Republicans despite his frequent clashes with former Republican President Donald J. Trump. According to the Goucher Poll, 71% of Maryland Republicans approve of Hogan while 23% disapprove of him.

Maryland voters take a more mixed view toward current President Joe Biden, a Democrat who carried the state with 65% of the vote in the 2020 election. Overall, 48% of Marylanders approve of Bidens time in the White House (down from 62% in a similar Goucher poll last year), while 47% disapprove of his job (up from 31% last year).

A strong majority of Maryland Democrats still support Biden, 62% approval against 26% disapproval. But Bidens ratings are underwater with independent voters as well as Republicans: 62% of independents disapprove of the job Biden is doing while 82% of Republican voters disapprove.

Most Marylanders (55%) said the state is headed in the right direction, while just 32% said it was on the wrong track. Asked about specific issues facing the state, a quarter of those polled said crime and public safety should be a top priority for government. Other issues getting attention from voters, according to the poll, include education (17%), economic issues and jobs (14%) and health care (11%).

When asked about one of the biggest questions facing state lawmakers  how to spend a multibillion-dollar budget surplus  voters were nearly evenly divided between putting more money into social services (50%) vs. cutting taxes (49%). Luckily, perhaps, for both groups of voters, politicians in the state are currently on track to do at least a bit of both during the General Assemblys ongoing legislative session, which wraps up April 11.

Advertisement

The Goucher College Poll surveyed 635 Maryland adults from March 1 to 6 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.9 percentage points on the overall sample and 4 percentage points on the sample of registered voters.

Additional results are scheduled to be released Tuesday.
They have never once been right.

Did you ever notice that? Do you ever think about it? Never once.

Oh, in matters of, say, foreign affairs or military strategy, one might contend that conservatives have had their moments, made arguments that, arguably, made sense. But on matters of social evolution, theyve compiled a remarkable record: Theyve never been vindicated by history. Rather, theyve always been repudiated by it, always been wrong.

You think thats harsh? You think its overly sweeping? The record begs to differ.

They stood athwart the civil rights movement, William F. Buckley once arguing (and later repenting) that white peoples cultural superiority entitled them to dominate African Americans.

They opposed womens rights, Barry Goldwater once saying that he had nothing against a woman running for vice president, just so she can cook and get home on time.

Nor are the rights wrongs limited to matters of human freedom. Every art form that ever dared deviate from status quo  music, film, books, comic books  has had to run a gauntlet of conservative opprobrium. As far back as the 1920s, they were up in arms over a new music called jazz.

Its a history that provides a jaundiced context for the latest right-wing crusade. Meaning the one against LGBTQ kids. Floridas Legislature passed its obnoxious Dont Say Gay bill recently. Gov. Ron DeSantis, evidently determined to leave no principle untrampled in his hoped-for march to the White House, is expected to sign it.

The bill, which says educators may not encourage discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity, is just the latest front in the rights war on LGBTQ young people, particularly those who are transgender. The ACLU counts dozens of such bills working their way through legislatures in over two dozen states. This includes Texas, whose attorney general has defined gender-affirming health care as child abuse.

If you didnt know better, youd think transgender people just dropped onto the planet from space. They didnt. The former George Jorgensen made news way back in 1952 when he had sex reassignment surgery in Denmark and returned to the U.S. as a woman named Christine. No, the only thing that is new here is transgender peoples refusal to hide, their determination to live full, free and visible lives in the American mainstream.

Which brings them into conflict with conservatisms reflexive terror of anything that does not fit inside the white picket fence of its imagination. That tendency to look ever backward toward an imagined better past, that timorous inability to face the future  heck, to face the present  and the challenges of change, is what had conservatives at odds with everyone from Louis Armstrong to Martin Luther King to Gloria Steinem.

Now it has them standing between children and their teachers and doctors. It is cold comfort to know that these acts of invasive cruelty will one day stand condemned by history, but they will. Weve seen this movie too many times to doubt it. Youd think that would matter to conservatives. Youd think theyd think about it.

Then you remember that fear and thought are incompatible. Its almost impossible for them to exist in the same space.

So, LGBTQ kids and their allies can only put their heads down, work for change and take such satisfaction as they may find in knowing that, where social evolution is concerned, conservatives lost the 20th century.

Now theyre about to lose the 21st.

Pitts Jr. writes for the Miami Herald: lpitts@miamiherald.com.
The assault on womens reproductive rights in state legislatures across the country has ramped up since the U.S. Supreme Court signaled in December that it might uphold a Mississippi ban on abortion. That ban begins at 15 weeks of gestation and would dismantle the landmark ruling in Roe vs. Wade that protects a womans right to an abortion.

The Florida Legislature recently passed a 15-week ban, which Gov. Ron DeSantis is expected to sign. After the court let stand a diabolical law that deputizes private citizens to sue anyone who helps a woman get an abortion in Texas starting at six weeks of pregnancy, more than 10 states introduced copycat laws. One of those states is Oklahoma, which has been a refuge for nearby Texas women seeking an abortion after six weeks  a limit that defies the standard set by Supreme Court rulings legalizing abortion up to the point of viability of the fetus outside the uterus.

But no legislation tests constitutional and legal limits like an amendment  stuck into a Missouri House of Representatives bill on prescription drug pricing  that would make it a crime to help a Missouri woman get an abortion outside the state at any point in her pregnancy (unless her life is endangered by continuing the pregnancy.) Mimicking the Texas law, the measure would be enforced through lawsuits brought by private citizens.

If the bill passes with this amendment, no one could perform an abortion on a woman from Missouri or help her get an abortion regardless of where the abortion is or will be performed. That would restrict health professionals from performing the abortion and people from providing information, transportation or funds to someone seeking an out-of-state abortion. Even providing internet service that allows Missouri residents to access any website, that encourages or facilities efforts to obtain elective abortions would be banned.

Abortion is legal in Missouri up until 22 weeks, but because only one abortion clinic is in the state with an array of time-consuming rules, many pregnant women wanting an abortion travel to Illinois or other nearby states.

Setting aside the bills impact on abortion access, giving private citizens the right to control  via lawsuits  the behavior of Missouri residents outside the state is absurd. As much as they might like to, state legislatures cant pass laws that extend beyond their own jurisdiction, and they certainly dont have a right to control what legal activities women undertake outside the boundaries of the state. ...

One state cant reach into another state and tell that state what to do, says Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School. We have this thing called state sovereignty. The federal government has to respect that, and the states have to respect their sister states.

At least, thats the way it should work. However, since we have a Texas abortion law that is clearly unconstitutional but has been been allowed to stand, lawmakers in Missouri may have reason to believe their outlandish law could be upheld by federal courts. We truly are living in a moment where the rule of law is under threat, says Elisabeth Smith, the director of state policy and advocacy for the Center for Reproductive Rights.

Thats the fault of the Supreme Court. The court has created an environment that has prompted a legal free-for-all when it comes to thwarting abortion access. Thats reprehensible and a dereliction of the courts duty to protect the rights of all Americans.

The legislator behind this amendment is Missouri Republican and lawyer Mary Elizabeth Coleman, a mother of six. Coleman has gained some notoriety for her antiabortion bills and her embrace of the twisted logic that abrogating a womans right to abortion actually empowers her. The bizarre theory claims that the right to abortion is now unnecessary because bearing children no longer prevents professional achievement for women  and that having children empowers women.

There is no instance when the loss of rights has empowered anyone. The right to abortion has always been about choice  something that Coleman, 40, has enjoyed throughout their reproductive years.
Four weeks ago I visited the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol and spoke with residents about a possible Russian invasion. None of them imagined they would soon be besieged by a Russian military that has cut off their water, electricity and food supplies, and deliberately attacked civilian targets  including a maternity hospital and civilian convoys trying to leave.

My translator is now hunkered down in a basement with her mom, three cats and three other adults. Ive not been able to make contact with her in nearly two weeks.

Mariupol has become the symbol of an ugly truth that the White House and NATO allies have been too slow to grasp: Despite Russian losses, their leader Vladimir Putin does not want a diplomatic offramp from his Ukraine war.

Furious at Russian losses on the ground in this war, he wants to wipe out Ukrainian cities and towns from the air. Yet, so far, despite sending much military aid, the West has failed to provide Ukraine with the air defenses it needs to stop the slaughter.

That must change now.

A consensus is building among experts that Putin believes he cant afford any deal short of abject Ukrainian surrender, lest he face humiliation and possible ouster. Several Russian attempts to assassinate Ukraines heroic President Volodymyr Zelenskyy have been foiled.

CIA Director William J. Burns testified before Congress on Tuesday that the Russian leader is angry and frustrated right now after miscalculating that Ukraine would be quickly defeated. Hes likely to double down and try to grind down the Ukrainian military with no regard for civilian casualties, Burns said.

So any hopes that Russian-Ukrainian talks will lead somewhere are misplaced.

The war is likely to drag on, creating a massive humanitarian crisis as Russian missiles and bombs devastate cities, including Kyiv. But what if better Western assistance in defending the skies could help Kyiv fend off those bombs and missiles?

What if  and I know this challenges the imagination  Ukraine could actually win?

The very concept shakes Western preconceptions. U.S. and allied leaders were certain Kyiv would fall swiftly, and they planned to help Ukrainians resist the Russian occupier.

But Ukrainian successes in holding off the invader have impelled NATO countries to, belatedly, pour in anti-tank missiles and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles across the Polish border. This is all to the good. But these weapons wont stop Russian rockets, missiles and higher-flying planes from devastating cities from the air.

Yet the Biden team and its allies still appear conflicted about giving Ukraine some of the tools it is desperately requesting to stop Russias murder from the skies.

Consider the bizarre story of the used, Soviet-made MiG-29 fighter jets that Poland offered to Ukraine. The initial idea was that Ukrainian pilots would fly them from Poland into Ukraine, but the plan became public, making the Pentagon and Poland nervous. Then Poland suddenly announced it would hand the planes over to NATO in Germany to pass on to the Ukrainians. The Pentagon immediately nixed that plan and said Ukraine didnt need the planes.

President Zelenskyy begs to differ. And because the Ukrainian military has done so much better than NATO nations expected, some way should be found to get the Polish planes into their hands.

As for the vociferous argument over no-fly zones, it is understandable that NATO does not want to embroil its planes in direct combat with Russian aircraft. There is an often-repeated fear of escalating the conflict, lest Putin carry out his threat of using nuclear weapons.

Why cant NATO consider a lesser variant of a no-fly zone over the western part of Ukraine, which Russia has not yet besieged? That would permit refugee convoys to travel safely toward Poland and protect the city of Lviv, which is crammed with refugees from elsewhere in the country.

Moreover, Putin is escalating daily, apparently considering the use of chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine  according to U.S. intelligence sources  while falsely blaming any such episodes on Western countries. This is Putins modus operandi: Russian planes bombed hospitals and schools in Syria, while Russians or their Syrian allies also used chemical weapons, blaming their use on their opponents.

While the Biden team must be prudent, it cant afford to let Putin use the nuclear threat to prevent helping Ukraine to stop the destruction of its cities.

We should respond to Putins nuclear threat with contempt, former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst told me. Russia is as vulnerable as we are. He adds, If we let Putin get away with it, what is so different from his marching into Estonia [a NATO-member Baltic state]?

President Joe Biden insists that NATO will defend every member state. But if Putins nuclear threats enable him to destroy Ukraine, he isnt likely to believe Biden.

Better to help Ukraine defend its skies now.

Rubin writes for the Philadelphia Inquirer: trubin@phillynews.com.
TWIN FALLS  The canal company hopes to delay the start of water deliveries next month and will reduce water shares, its general manager said Monday.

Water shares will start at five-eighths of an inch, Twin Falls Canal Co. general manager Jay Barlogi said. In better water years, shares typically start out at three-quarters of an inch.

Only in a real short year do we start with less than three-quarters, Barlogi said.

Drought conditions in 2021 were unprecedented in recent memory, according to the Idaho Department of Water Resources. The canal company was forced to reduce shares twice, finally reaching a half-inch per share in August.

Last year was the 15th driest year Twin Falls has experienced since the towns inception, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Last year was tough, Barlogi said, but this year is potentially shaping up to be tougher.

Typically, headgates at Murtaugh Lake release irrigation into the canal system around April 15. This years start, however, could be delayed to allow the American Falls Reservoir to fill.

The earlier we all start drawing water, the earlier that natural flow can no longer contribute to reservoir fill, Barlogi said.

Reservoirs across the state are going into the growing season with low carryover. Magic Reservoir, which often carries 50,000 to 70,000 acre-feet from one irrigation season to the next, held about 8,000 acre-feet in October.

Barlogi said the start date depends on farmers needs and the weather.

Right now we are watching and waiting, he said.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 1 Sad 1 Angry 0
If your goal is to accumulate a large amount of wealth in time for retirement, then a 401(k) plan could be your ticket to meeting that objective. The great thing about 401(k)s is that they come with generous contribution limits -- much higher than those offered by IRAs.

But if you're hoping to amass $1 million or more in your 401(k) plan, you'll need the right strategy. Here's how to set yourself up with the nest egg you're hoping for.

1. Start saving early

When it comes to growing a lot of wealth for retirement, time is really your most powerful weapon. And so it pays to start funding your 401(k) from a young age -- even if you're not able to max out.

In fact, let's say you're never able to max out your 401(k), but rather, you consistently contribute $500 a month to your savings over a 45-year period. If your investments deliver an average annual 8% return, which is several percentage points below the stock market's average, you'll end up with a rather impressive $2.3 million.

2. Claim your full employer match

Many companies that offer 401(k) plans also match employee contributions to varying degrees. If your company offers a match, it pays to contribute enough to your 401(k) to snag that match in full. Otherwise, you'll effectively end up forgoing free money.

Remember, too, that when you claim your full company match, that's money you also get to invest. And so over time, getting a few thousand dollars a year from your employer could go a long way.

In fact, let's say your employer puts $3,000 a year into your 401(k), and your plan delivers an 8% average annual return. That will leave you with over $1.1 million after 45 years based on your employer contributions alone.

3. Avoid costly investments

You get a choice as to how you invest the money in your 401(k). You generally can't buy individual stocks, but you can choose what type of funds you want to put your money into.

Most 401(k) plans offer a mix of actively managed mutual funds and index funds. With the former, you can expect to incur higher fees because you're paying for the expertise of stock-picking experts.

But actively managed mutual funds aren't guaranteed to outperform index funds, which are set up to simply match the performance of the different market indexes they're tied to. And so you could end up losing money needlessly to fees without benefiting from stronger returns.

That's why you may want to stick to index funds in your 401(k). Saving all of that money on fees could lead to additional wealth over time.

Gear up for your dream retirement

The right approach to your 401(k) could set the stage for a very comfortable retirement. If your goal is to end up with a million-dollar nest egg, it pays to start funding your 401(k) as early as possible, snag your full employer match, and avoid pesky investment fees that eat away at your returns.

The $18,984 Social Security bonus most retirees completely overlook

If you're like most Americans, you're a few years (or more) behind on your retirement savings. But a handful of little-known "Social Security secrets" could help ensure a boost in your retirement income. For example: one easy trick could pay you as much as $18,984 more... each year! Once you learn how to maximize your Social Security benefits, we think you could retire confidently with the peace of mind we're all after. Simply click here to discover how to learn more about these strategies.

The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
OMAHA, Neb. (AP)  Three directors at newspaper publisher Lee Enterprises were reelected Thursday over the objections of a hedge fund that has been trying to buy the company since last fall.

Lee, which owns the Times-News, said its chairman, CEO and lead independent director were all reelected as expected at the Davenport, Iowa-based companys annual meeting, with each receiving support from more than 70% of the votes cast. Alden Global Capital had urged shareholders to vote against Chairman Mary Junck and longtime director Herbert Moloney after a judge blocked its effort to nominate its own directors, but the rules of the election had made no votes symbolic.

Alden, which is already one of the largest newspaper owners in the country, probably wont abandon its effort to buy Lee after this latest setback, but it wasnt immediately clear what the New York-based hedge fund might try next. Alden did not immediately comment on Thursdays vote, and an Alden spokeswoman did not immediately reply to phone and email messages from The Associated Press.

The directors were ensured they would be reelected because Lee decided to use a plurality standard in the elections. That meant that the directors only had to get one yes vote to get reelected because that is more than any other candidate could receive because the directors were running unopposed. Alden tried to force the directors to have to win a majority of the votes to keep their seats, but a judge also rejected that suggestion.

It appeared that the directors would have prevailed even under Aldens call for a majority of votes, since Lee said preliminary vote results showed each director receiving support from more than a majority of the companys outstanding shares.

The vote also showed high participation from Lee shareholders, with more than 75% of Lees outstanding shares casting votes on directors, an increase of over 20 percentage points from the companys average turnout in the previous three years, Lee said.

We deeply appreciate the record turnout and strong support we received from shareholders at this pivotal annual meeting, Lee said in a written statement. The results represent a resounding rejection of Alden Global Capitals campaign against Lee.

Final results will be tabulated and certified within four days, Lee said.

The publisher of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Buffalo News, Omaha World-Herald and nearly every other newspaper in the state of Nebraska rejected Aldens $141 million takeover offer in December because Lee officials said the $24 per share bid grossly undervalued the company.

Lee has been fighting hard against Alden, which it called a vulture hedge fund. Alden has a reputation for imposing severe cost cuts and widespread layoffs at the newspapers it owns.

Alden had argued that changes are needed at Lee because the company has delivered disappointing results since it bought all of Berkshire Hathaways newspapers in 2020. But Lee defended its approach and said it is making good progress in growing digital subscriptions and online ad revenue.

Two other hedge funds that own larger stakes in Lee than Alden have said they believed the company is worth significantly more than Alden offered. Alden has said it holds 6.3% of Lees stock.

Lee also received the backing of The NewsGuildCommunications Workers of America union that represents journalists at several of its newspapers.

We believe that Alden Global Capital has done more harm to the news industry than any single factor, including the online platforms, the union wrote in a letter to shareholders before the vote. Within a few years of acquiring a news organization, Alden quickly hollows it out, taking a liquidation approach of selling off historic offices, shutting down printing plants and slashing staff, while hiking subscription prices.

Alden built its group of newspapers primarily by buying up MediaNews Group and Tribunes newspapers. It owns the Denver Post, the Orange County Register and the Boston Herald.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
BOISE  Lawmakers on a House panel approved legislation Monday to boost reading skills among young students with optional full-day kindergarten.

The House Education Committee voted 9-5 to send to the full House the bill giving school districts the option of full-day kindergarten by using $73 million in literacy intervention money.

Republican Gov. Brad Little has made boosting reading scores among young students a priority, saying good reading skills make for life-long learners and give students the best chance for a successful academic career and life.

Backers of the bill said about 25% of third-graders arent reading at grade level, and full-day kindergarten will help.

Were going to change the trajectory of their lives, said Republican Rep. Ryan Kerby, one of the bills sponsors.

He said students who fall behind early end up having trouble as adults, and can become a drain on taxpayers through incarceration or needing financial help from the state.

The Idaho School Boards Association, Idaho Association of School Administrators and the Idaho Charter School Network spoke in favor of the bill.

Opponents said the Idaho Constitution only requires spending taxpayer money on education starting in first grade.

We are already going beyond our constitutional requirements of funding schools, said Republican Rep. Tony Wisniewski. Its common schools from age 6 through 17, 18.

Opponents also cited high gas prices faced by taxpayers as a reason not to spend the money on kindergarten, and a lack of confidence that kindergarten could jumpstart young students into becoming better at reading.

The legislation removes any ambiguity that the money can be used for all-day kindergarten, but gives school districts flexibility in whether to take that route. Half of the money will be based on enrollment of students in kindergarten to third grade. The other half will be based on students improving their reading skills, with districts with higher-improving students getting more.

Democratic Rep. John McCrostie, a working teacher, supported the bill.

The bill at its core really addresses third-grade literacy, he said. The statistics show that if a third-grader is proficient in reading by third grade, then they are likely to be successful with their reading by the time they get into eighth grade. Their eighth-grade reading level is going to show their high school success. At the end of the day, if they can read by the time theyre in third grade, they are much more likely to graduate from high school.

Republican Rep. Codi Galloway, who made the motion to send the bill to the House floor with a do-pass recommendation, said she likely wouldnt send her children to full-day kindergarten but said some children would benefit with the program.

Republican Rep. Gary Marshall, a former teacher, voted to send the bill to the House floor as well but would encourage his daughters and daughters-in-law to keep their children home until first grade.

He said that when he grew up there was no kindergarten, and he couldnt recall his mom reading to him.

My generation went to first grade, in our modern language, totally unprepared for first grade, he said. We didnt think of it that way, we just went to first grade, and started where we were at, and we were actually pretty successful.

The bill passed the Senate 31-2 last week, with two Republicans voting against it.

If approved by the House, the measure would go to Littles desk. Little on Monday indicated his support for the bill on Twitter by thanking the House Education Committee members who voted to approve the bill.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
Idahoans could start seeing their 2022 tax rebates later this month.

The Idaho State Tax Commission will begin issuing rebates in late March to full-time residents in 2020 and 2021, according to a news release from the department. Individuals also need to have filed income tax returns or filed for a grocery tax credit during those years.

By the end of the year, the department expects to have issued more than 800,000 rebates for a total of $350 million. The rebates follow a bill proposed by Gov. Brad Little and passed by the Idaho Legislature.

Taxpayers can track their rebate online at tax.idaho.gov/rebate or visit the departments website for more information. To use the online tools, taxpayers need to have their Social Security number and either an Idaho drivers license, state-issued identification number, or their 2021 income tax return available, according to the release.

Rebates are issued in the order the Idaho State Tax Commission receives 2021 income tax returns, with direct deposit users first. Then, people who are receiving paper checks should expect their rebate, according to the release. Additional information regarding rebates can be found at tax.idaho.gov/rebateinfo.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 1
TWIN FALLS  A pair of road projects on U.S. Highway 93 is due to begin night work starting this spring and running into mid-summer.

A portion of Pole Line Road from Blue Lakes to Grandview will be resurfaced to improve traction and enhance safety for motorists. The concrete surface will be milled to restore it to the surface texture it had when new. Idaho Transportation Department expects work to begin in late March and last through late May or early June.

The work on Pole Line Rd will take place overnight from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. and will involve nighttime lane restrictions. There will be no lane restrictions during the daytime in an effort to limit interruptions to traffic flow. ITD said some businesses will have brief limits to access during nighttime hours.

After the resurfacing project for Pole Line concludes, a second project will begin to resurface the roadway on Blue Lakes Blvd. from the Perrine Bridge to Pole Line Rd. The asphalt surface will be milled and reincorporated with new material.

A more involved rebuild of the right turn lane from southbound Blue Lakes onto Pole Line will require a full-depth road replacement, from dirt to asphalt.

Construction on this project will also take place between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. and will involve overnight lane closures. All lanes will be open during the daytime. Travelers in the right turn lane may encounter a gravel driving surface during construction..

The final portion of the work on Blue Lakes will include the replacement of the traffic signals at Blue Lakes and Bridgeview Street/Fillmore Drive, and replacing pedestrian ramps.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
TWIN FALLS  Idaho broke water records in March  not the good kind.

Across the state SNOTEL  Snowpack Telemetry sites  hit record low precipitation levels for January to March. Many of the data sets go back 40 years, making officials with the Idaho Water Supply Committee even more nervous.

Since about Jan. 7, weve really had a failure of normal precipitation in the state, said David Hoekema, hydrologist with the Idaho Department of Water Resources, during the March committee meeting.

The snow water equivalent (SWE), which stands for how much water is in the snowpack if it melted, has dramatically decreased, he said.

Hoekema described the fall and early winter as perfect conditions leading the entire state to have above 100% SWE coming into January. A dry spell in February undid that progress, with most of the basins in the state now sitting in the 70-80% range for SWE.

Idaho doesnt need a miracle March, however, anything less than normal precipitation would put a strain on irrigation water supplies, according to the Natural Resources Conservation Service.

March is shaping up to be a make or break month for our 2022 seasonal snowpack and eventual water supply, the service wrote in the March water supply outlook report.

South-central Idaho was one of the areas that received abysmal precipitation in February, according to the report. All basins south of the Salmon-Clearwater divide received 50% or less than normal amounts of precipitation.

The infrequent storms that did arrive via northwest flow mostly lacked meaningful moisture due to the ridge of high pressure in the eastern Pacific, which effectively blocked access to tropical moisture, the report said.

Magic Valley residents will still have chances to see rain in March. Weather forecasts are predicting above-normal precipitation, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Climate Prediction Center.

Unfortunately, the systems are more likely to hit northern Idaho and west-central mountains harder than southern Idaho, according to Link Crawford, National Weather Service Hydrologist in Pocatello.

'Beginnings of disappointment': Water outlook concerning Do you know how many days it's been since the Magic Valley had measurable precipitation?

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
Lindsay Lamb, of Lockport, holds onto a pendant bearing the thumbprint of her grandfather Richard Cieski, who was among the dozens of veterans who died in COVID-19 related deaths in November 2020 at a VA home in downstate LaSalle, March 14, 2022. (E. Jason Wambsgans / Chicago Tribune)

Richard Cieski for years received care at the veterans home in downstate LaSalle that his family recalled as amazing. The 89-year-old decorated Korean War Army veteran schmoozed with friends, participated in an array of activities and excelled in an environment even as he coped with escalating dementia and Alzheimers disease.

They had church. They had animals that came in. They had coffee and conversation. They had haircuts. Physical therapy. Everything. He was clean. His hair was combed. He had his room and it was clean, a granddaughter, Lindsay Lamb of Lockport, said. He was thriving in there until it happened.

Advertisement

That was in November 2020, when the COVID-19 coronavirus began to sweep through the state-run, long-term-care facility for veterans. As the coronavirus ran its deadly course through the LaSalle veterans home, the outbreak led to the deaths of Cieski and 35 other veterans.

Richard Cieski served in the Army in the Korean War. He joined the service on Jan. 3, 1951, and was discharged on May 19, 1954. (Cieski family)

Six of the men ate lunch with my dad and his whole table died. Theres no one left that ate lunch with my dad. They all died within a week of each other, said one of his daughters, Leslie Lamb of Seneca. It could have been prevented if protocol was followed.

Advertisement

The deaths have prompted a series of individual lawsuits against the state on behalf of the families of 26 veterans who died of COVID-19 or coronavirus-related illnesses. The lawsuits, which began being filed last week in LaSalle County, allege negligence and wrongful death and could cost the state millions of dollars.

The suits, being filed by the Chicago-based law firm of Levin & Perconti, come nearly a year after the Illinois Department of Human Services inspector general detailed systemic mismanagement from top leadership of the Illinois Veterans Affairs Department all the way down to the LaSalle homes administrator. The result, according to the 50-page report, was an inefficient, reactive and chaotic response to controlling the virus.

Then-state VA Director Linda Chapa LaVia, whom Gov. J.B. Pritzker appointed to the role, abdicated her responsibilities and left management to a nonmedical chief of staff who let each home manage itself while he issued rules contradictory to health guidelines and failed to seek outside help as the outbreak grew, the report stated. Both Chapa LaVia and the chief of staff resigned following the outbreak.

At the LaSalle home, the report said, staff treated COVID-19 as if it were the flu. It noted a lack of planning, training and communication among staff, including improper use of protective gear, sporadic mask wearing and veterans who had tested positive for the coronavirus being placed with residents who had tested negative.

The homes administrator, who was later fired, was described in the report as detached, while the homes infectious control nurse was overburdened and over his skis.

Surrounded by family, Richard Cieski, center, was among the dozens of veterans who died of COVID-19 related deaths in November 2020 at a VA home in downstate LaSalle. (E. Jason Wambsgans / Chicago Tribune)

The state thoroughly investigated itself and basically convicted itself with the conclusion that there was rampant negligence that resulted in unnecessary deaths, said Steve Levin, one of the attorneys filing the lawsuits. Thats the state. The state has done our investigation and concluded that they are guilty.

The LaSalle outbreak also carries political overtones. In his successful 2018 campaign, Pritzker made caring for veterans a key issue and assailed then-incumbent Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner for fatal mismanagement over a series of outbreaks of Legionnaires disease that began in 2015 at the Quincy veterans home and left 14 veterans dead.

In discussing the COVID-19 deaths at LaSalle, Pritzker acknowledged a failure of leadership in naming Chapa LaVia, a longtime Democratic state lawmaker from Aurora, to the post. Pritzker replaced Chapa LaVia with Terry Prince, a 31-year Navy veteran with a medical background who previously oversaw veterans homes in Ohio.

Advertisement

Republican state Sen. Sue Rezin of Morris, whose district includes the LaSalle facility, has proposed legislation to put in place recommendations made by the Illinois auditor generals office, which conducted a review of the outbreak at the Quincy home.

One such measure would require an immediate on-site review by state public health officials when an outbreak occurs at a veterans home. Public health officials didnt show up at the LaSalle home until 10 days after the start of the outbreak on Nov. 1, 2020, when two residents and two staff members tested positive for COVID-19. Within a week of the first positive tests, 60 veterans and 43 staff members tested positive.

Levin said the families agreed to proceed with the lawsuit after no progress was made in preliminary talks with the state, which began at least six months ago. Each lawsuit seeks damages that are capped at $2.3 million under the states Court of Claims Act, while separate civil suits also seek unspecified and uncapped damages. Suits on behalf of a 27th veteran who survived COVID claims improper treatment.

A spokeswoman for Attorney General Kwame Raoul said the office would not conduct negotiations in the media.

We are committed to achieving a just and appropriate resolution that demonstrates respect for the families who have suffered a loss and accountability to the taxpayers of the state of Illinois, Raoul spokeswoman Annie Thompson said.

Cieski was diagnosed with a positive COVID-19 test on Nov. 5, 2020, and family members said his condition worsened over time and by Nov. 14 they traveled to the home to say their goodbyes. Though Cieski had been prescribed morphine to ease his pain, the facility had failed to note it on his chart and didnt have any of the drug available for him. Administrators at the home were finally forced to order morphine and gave Cieski a dose shortly before he died in the early hours of Nov. 15, his family said.

Advertisement

They have all these men dying and theres no morphine to comfort them during their last hours of not being able to breathe, Leslie Lamb said.

Lawyers for Cieskis estate last year filed a court of claims suit against the state, but that case has not progressed. Among the new lawsuits filed over the LaSalle deaths, attorneys have added a civil action on behalf of Cieskis family against the state.

David Liesse of Berwyn recalled he noticed several lax COVID-19 protocols at the LaSalle home when he visited his father.

A decorated Army Air Forces veteran of World War II and former Illinois volunteer of the year for the Special Olympics, Jerome Liesse, 95, was mentally 100% and discussing the news, the stock market and keeping track of his investments when, David Liesse said, he visited him on Nov. 11, 2020, Veterans Day.

A photo of Jerome Liesse, who was a World War II Air Force veteran, as seen on Dec. 8, 2020. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)

Though David Liesse had to talk to his father through a window, he said the homes staff came into his fathers room to help him with crossword puzzles, but that staffers werent consistently wearing masks.

He was confined to his room. He was not allowed out of his room. He couldnt go out for his meals or socialize with other guys, Liesse said of his father, who was diagnosed with coronavirus two days after the Veterans Day visit. The only way he could catch COVID was by it coming into the room.

Advertisement

Three days after his father tested positive, Liesse said the home told him his fathers death was imminent and offered him a compassionate visit. He made the trip, spoke with his father and I had closure with him. But only later did he realize the nurse in the homes COVID-19 section came out to the lobby to meet him in her contaminated protective clothing and put her arms around him as they walked to the room.

I dont know if someone didnt give them any regulations or policies, Liesse said. They were very compassionate. But they really didnt know what they were doing.

After putting on protective gear to see his father for a final time, Liesse said he left the room and walked through the entire veterans hospital in these contaminated clothes after hugging a person who was literally hours away from dying of COVID.

Liesse said he received a call from Pritzker and Chapa LaVia after his fathers death, offering condolences. Then he read the inspector generals report.

Accountability, Liesse said. I think thats whatever anger, frustration, disappointment I may have, its just do what youre supposed to be doing. That isnt a lot to ask, and someone has to take the blame for it and eventually the state of Illinois is going to have to man up to it.

Mary Beth Schomas of Castle Rock, Colorado, whose father Bernard Schomas, 95, a decorated World War II Army veteran, died in December 2020 after contracting the coronavirus, said few in the LaSalle County area were cautious of COVID-19 or exercised proper mitigation techniques. She said that helped to lead to a lax system at the veterans home.

Advertisement

Bernard Schomas enlisted in the Army on April 23, 1943, and served during World War II under Gen. George S. Patton. (Schomas family photo)

The people didnt understand the impact and what it could really do. I think the state could have done more to manage that  within the facility and without, she said.

I feel guilty because I wasnt there to help him, so I felt I was at fault and thats why I cant get over this grieving so quickly, she said. I feel like it was my fault, but it really wasnt my fault. The state was accountable, and it was pretty much their fault, but I still take it on. They didnt respect these people who have done so much for them.

Levin, who has scheduled a news conference Tuesday to discuss the lawsuits, said the state should have learned lessons from the Quincy outbreak but didnt. In 2020, the attorney generals office reached a $6.4 million settlement with families whose loved ones died at the Quincy home.

The state tragically failed its veterans in Quincy, tragically failed its veterans in LaSalle, Levin said. This suit is brought by our clients to ensure that it doesnt happen again while at the same time compensating them for what theyve been through.

rap30@aol.com
A former Idaho lawmaker has been convicted of raping a 19-year-old legislative intern after a dramatic trial in which the young woman fled the witness stand during testimony, saying I cant do this. The verdict was returned Friday. The intern told a Statehouse supervisor that Aaron von Ehlinger raped her at his apartment after the two had dinner at a Boise restaurant in March 2021. He said the sex was consensual. At the time, von Ehlinger was a Republican state representative from Lewiston, but he later resigned. Von Ehlinger was found guilty of rape. He was found not guilty of sexual penetration with a foreign object. Afterwards, prosecutors lauded the victim for her courage in coming forward.
In this election season were seeing a hollowing out of the purple, as the red and the blue continue their expansion.

Almost everywhere. Even among real estate agents.

Consider Flee the City, A real estate firm for the vigilant based in Sandpoint, whose web site prominently features such central terms as American Redoubt, Strategic relocation, and bunkerssaferooms. Note the way the name was crafted: not about coming to the beautiful country of lakes and mountains (which Sandpoint certainly has) but more the imperative to get out of the city while you still can.

Its clients, the site says, share a Desire to live free anywhere in rural America  ultimately providing for a common defense from tyranny. You get the idea. Its part of a national trend, another marketing effort to appeal to conservatives who want to escape liberal areas. Flee the City and its counterparts arent reaching out to a liberal marketplace, but to a very conservative one which they didnt create but whose fearful attitudes are central to the appeal.

In fact, there doesnt seem to be much of a comparable liberal marketing effort.

Bonner County (of which Sandpoint is the seat) was mostly Democratic back in the eighties and some decades beforenever liberal, but overall moderate politically, a lot like Kootenai County to the south then was. Since, those counties have become destinations for people looking to move from more populous areasespecially the California coast, and around Seattle and Portlandwho are looking for  what exactly?

The Flee the City language suggests that safety fears and a desire to move back to an imagined past are big parts of it. Of course, the Idaho Panhandle really isnt significantly more or less safe than the larger communities on the coast, and physically they are about the samea neighborhood in Post Falls, Idaho, looks not a lot different from, say, one in Kirkland, Washington. The Idaho communities have moved politically far more to the right, however. And culturally and demographically, they are less diverse. Owning rural property, Flee said, gives you the freedom to be you, but that freedom is likely to feel comfortable only if you fit into certain categories.

Bonner County has been growing, and clearly importing people. Its population in 2001 was 37,088; in 2020 it was 47,100.

In a fine Associated Press article about all this, Sandpoint Mayor Shelby Rognstad (who is running as a Democrat for governor) said the trend pushes Idaho more and more into a playground for extremism. It quotes a resident of nearby Bonners Ferry saying it, feels like its been overrun with white nationalists who carry guns very visibly and seem to be preparing for war.

Check out the Panhandle legislative delegation as it has evolved over recent decades and yes, there seems to be no clear end point to how far right it may go.

Watching this from the vantage point of a small town in western Oregon theres also something else to put it into perspective.

One of the sources for this Bonner County influx is the Portland metro area, which as a whole was moderately liberal back in the eighties or so but has moved steadily to the left.

Did the departure of conservatives to places like Idaho contribute to that? Probably, but only a little. Consider these numbers for Multnomah County (which mostly is the city of Portland), and where voter registration by party is required to participate in any primary election, meaning that (unlike in Idaho) registration is a fair measure of actual local support for the parties.

In September 2001, Multnomah registered 181,455 voters as Democrats and 89,747 as Republicans. (The other counties in the metro area are more balanced.) Thats about two to one.

In September 2021, the numbers were 290,001 Democrats and 59,861 Republicansabout five to one. The number of Republicans shrank, and those of Democrats exploded.

I dont know offhand of any Portland real estate firms specifically advertising for a clientele looking to move to a more culturally and politically liberal area. Maybe they dont have to.

Randy Stapilus is a former Idaho newspaper reporter and editor and blogs at ridenbaugh.com. He can be reached at stapilus@ridenbaugh.com. His new book What Do You Mean by That? has just been released and can be found at ridenbaugh.com/whatdoyoumeanbythat and on Amazon.com.

Love 1 Funny 1 Wow 0 Sad 1 Angry 1
Years ago, when I was just beginning to practice immigration law, I remember hearing about two horrific genocides. They were almost back-to-back, happening within little more than a year of each other, and each became the focus of a war crimes tribunal at The Hague. The first one occurred in the spring of 1994 when Rwandan Hutus massacred hundreds of thousands of their Tutsi neighbors in a matter of months. A year later, in Bosnia, thousands of Muslim men and boys were murdered by their Serbian captors in a town called Srebrenica.

At the time, it was difficult to find any overt racism as we have come to view it in the United States, because both the victims and the victimizers in Rwanda were Black, and the victims and victimizers in Bosnia were white (although in the latter case there was the additional element of religion, which was the motivating factor for the Bosnian Serbs). All that mattered was that one group of people had terrorized and dehumanized another group of people based on hatred and ignorance, and the world looked on in horror. It was a replay of the Holocaust, only televised.

But when I listen to people like Joy Ann Why Is She Still On Television Reid, I realize that we Americans have lost any sense of reality. On her show on MSNBC, Reid made this statement about the deepening humanitarian crisis:

As the world watches the devastation unfold in Ukraine, nearly 4,000 miles away, another crisis is deepening that we dont hear much about in the U.S., and that is the war in Yemen. The coverage of Ukraine has revealed a pretty radical disparity in how human Ukrainians look and feel to western media compared to their browner and Blacker counterparts, with some reporters using very telling comparisons in their analyses of the war. She added that the world cared more for white Christians than it did for people who looked like her.

Interestingly enough, Reid has only recently become interested in Yemen, judging from her searchable public statements. I googled her name next to crisis in Yemen and came up with page after page of her most recent tirade against white Christians, but virtually nothing earlier than last week. Nothing. When you consider that the situation in Yemen has been going on since approximately 2011 and really picked up speed in 2014, you might think that Reid is a little slow on the uptake.

Then there were those I cant believe that happened! news flashes about people of color who were taken off of refugee trains to give space to Ukrainians attempting to flee their beleaguered country. When there was the suggestion that Black and brown foreign exchange students were taken off of trains, the first reaction should have been: Thats terrible, but people become desperate during war time and lose sense of their humanity.

Instead, it became those disgusting white people are racist, and they got even more racist when the bombs were falling on their heads and their children were being massacred. God, they are just white supremacists, like those parents at school board meetings.

Im exaggerating, of course. But instead of realizing that people act poorly in times of crisis, the mainstream media went right to the George Floyd narrative of white people hating on people of color. It never occurred to the observers that maybe, just maybe, the color of the students didnt matter. It was the fact, equally repellent but not racialized, that Ukrainians had more sympathy for other Ukrainians than they did for foreigners.

It was the same when we were evacuating Afghanistan and my friends were saying we need to get the Americans out, and I was saying we also need to rescue the Afghan allies who risked their lives for Americans. Country first is not a good thing, in times of crisis. But its not about race.

People can be inhuman in many different ways. The Bosnian Serbs hated the Bosnian Muslims because they saw these men, who looked and spoke and lived like them, side by side for generations, as the other. It was their religion that put the target on their backs.

In Rwanda, the Hutus went after men, women and children who looked exactly like them, sounded like them, worshiped like them (mostly Catholic Christians), and saluted the same flag. They did this because of tribal loyalties, and ethnic hatreds. And skin color was irrelevant, as it was with the Serbs.

Its sad that we have to fit every instance of horror and genocide into these nice little Black Lives Matter categories in the U.S., and twist the narrative so that it allows despicable people like Joy Ann Reid to exploit tragedy. There is a genocide going on in Ukraine, and the vast majority of the victims are white Christians.

The fact that this is a problem for people like Joy Ann Reid shouldnt make a damn difference.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at cflowers1961@gmail.com.
Saudi Arabian oil giant Aramco will invest in the development of a major integrated refinery and petrochemical complex in Northeast China, Zawya reports.

Huajin Aramco Petrochemical Company (HAPCO), a joint venture between Aramco, North Huajin Chemical Industries Group Corporation and Panjin Xincheng Industrial Group, will develop the liquids-to-chemicals complex, the worlds largest oil exporter said in a statement.

Per the joint venture agreement, the facility will be built in the city of Panjin, in Chinas Liaoning Province and is expected to be operational in 2024 and will supply up to 210,000 barrels per day of crude oil feedstock to the complex.

The greenfield project will include 300,000 bdp refinery capacity and petrochemical units. The decision is subject to finalization of transaction documentation, regulatory approvals and closing conditions.
The Egyptian Ministry of Trade and Industry has banned the exportation of a number of commodities including wheat, flour pasta, for three months.

Trade minister Nevine Gamea in a statement said the decision targets cooking oils, freekeh, corn, fava beans, lentils, pasta, wheat, and flour. The move in connection with the Ministry of Supply and Internal Trade plan to meet the citizens demand for commodities ahead of the holy month of Ramadan, the Egyptian official stressed.

The Arab country, Arab Finance notes citing the Egyptian supply ministry, is on his way to receive shipments of 189,000 tons of wheat from Russia, Ukraine, and Romania.

The ministry also indicated that the country has received cargoes of 126,000 tons of wheat from France and Romania on March 8th and March 5th. Egypt is the worlds largest wheat exporter.

Egypts strategic reserve of wheat according to the Minister of Finance, Mohamed Maait, is enough to satisfy the needs of citizens until the end of 2022, especially with the local harvest season starting in April, amid ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
The next presidential election is a year away, but the country is already entering the atmosphere of the pre-election campaign. On Saturday, the outgoing president, Ali Bongo Ondimba announced that he will be there as if to say he will be a candidate at a meeting held in Libreville for the 54th anniversary of the Gabonese Democratic Party, the PDG, the ruling party.

In a beige suit, President Ali Bongo Ondimba entered the room where the meeting was held without his cane, under the ovations of his supporters. When he took the floor, Ali Bongo Ondimba did not hide his joy to find his supporters: Four years already, we had not had the opportunity to meet here as a family. Personally, I have gone through terrible trials. Today, I have definitely and totally overcome it.

And then, President Ali Bongo Ondimba drew his future: Dear comrades, 2023 is fast approaching. I will be there with you. I will be there with you, for you. The only way out will be victory, a clear, indisputable victory.

Ali Bongo, 63, came to power after an early presidential election held in August 2009 following the death of his father, Omar Bongo, who led Gabon for 41 years. Re-elected in 2016, Ali Bongo can stand for re-election indefinitely under the 2017 revised constitution.
At least 11 people were killed Saturday in an attack on an artisanal gold mine in northern Burkina Faso, two days after a similar attack in the same area, local sources said Sunday.

Unidentified armed individuals carried out an attack on Saturday on the gold-mining site of Baliata, a locality located on the Dori, capital of the Sahel region, and Gorom-Gorom axis, said a local resident.

At least eleven people were killed by the attackers, who ordered the miners to leave the area, the source said.

The attack was carried out by around thirty men who burst in on motorcycles. They shot at people indiscriminately, explained another resident, also mentioning a death toll of about ten.

There were also wounded who were evacuated to Gorom-Gorom for treatment, he said, without giving further details.

On Thursday, a similar attack targeted a wild gold mine in Tondobi, a locality in the commune of Seytenga, near the border with Niger, killing about ten people, according to security and local sources.

Despite a ban on gold panning, which regularly causes deadly landslides, the authorities are struggling to control uncontrolled gold mining, which is carried out by 1.2 million people, according to official figures.

Like its neighbors Mali and Niger, Burkina Faso has been caught since 2015 in a spiral of violence attributed to armed jihadist movements affiliated with al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group that has left more than 2,000 dead and 1.7 million displaced.
Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta has officially announced that he will support his former rival Raila Odinga in the upcoming August presidential election. The endorsement seals the coming together of two of the great political dynasties that have historically fought each other at the ballot box to lead Kenya.

We have chosen Raila Odinga to be the 5th president of Kenya, President Kenyatta told several thousand of his supporters gathered in Nairobi.

In 2018, Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga had stunned the country by shaking hands and declaring a truce after the 2017 post-election violence that left dozens dead.

In 2007-2008, another wave of post-election violence had already left more than 1,100 people dead.

Last month, Kenyattas Jubilee party announced it was joining Raila Odingas Azimio la Umoja (Quest for Unity) coalition for the presidential and parliamentary elections in the summer.

We have no doubt that we have a team captain named Raila Odinga, said Uhuru Kenyatta on Saturday. He is completing a second term in office and cannot stand for re-election under the Kenyan Constitution.

At 77, Raila Odinga, who will run for a fifth presidential election, said he accepted this appointment with absolute gratitude and dedication to our people.

This alliance between Kenyatta and Odinga leaves out Vice President William Ruto, who was initially intended to succeed Kenyatta, but who is also planning to run in the presidential election next August.
Actually, real life has illustrated it well too. The history of planned communities, even aspirational utopias, in the Chicago area is long and rich. And also mixed, said Robert Bruegmann, an architecture historian at the University of Illinois at Chicago: "The problem inherent in many is that the founders tend not to know what demands will be. So conditions change, and they can't." In the late 19th century alone, there was the founding of Pullman on the South Side, created for employees of the Pullman rail car company; south suburban Harvey, started by a Moody Bible Institute associate and intended as a haven of religious values; and Riverside, next to Berwyn, a planned community designed in part by Frederick Law Olmsted. Said Tim Ozga, president of the Olmsted Society of Riverside, "I don't think he used 'utopia' exactly, but the idea was to put citizens in a happy mood. So, parks, riverside  lots of green space. Just not enough tax-revenue sources."
Black patients are still underrepresented in most trials relating to approval of new drugs, despite implementation of an action plan in 2015 to improve diversity, according to a report published in the March issue of Health Affairs.

Noting that in 2015, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration launched a five-year action plan, which aimed to improve diversity in and transparency of pivotal clinical trials for newly approved drugs, Angela K. Green, M.D., from the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, and colleagues analyzed Snapshots data to examine whether the initiative had led to an improvement in the inclusion of Black patients in clinical trials.

The researchers found that based on data from the FDA Drug Trials Snapshots website, there was no evidence that representation of Black trial participants had improved. In clinical trials for drugs, Black patients remained inadequately represented, with a median of one-third of the enrollment that would be required; this finding was seen regardless of whether the trials were started before, during, or after implementation of the action plan. Data regarding treatment benefits or side effects were reported for Black patients for fewer than 20 percent of drugs, with no improvement in either measure during the action plan period.

"These findings suggest that the FDA should consider a new approach to improving clinical trial representativeness, reaching beyond reporting- and transparency-centered measures to implement representational requirements," the authors write.

More information: Angela K. Green et al, Despite The FDA's Five-Year Plan, Black Patients Remain Inadequately Represented In Clinical Trials For Drugs, Health Affairs (2022). Angela K. Green et al, Despite The FDA's Five-Year Plan, Black Patients Remain Inadequately Represented In Clinical Trials For Drugs,(2022). DOI: 10.1377/hlthaff.2021.01432 Several authors disclosed financial ties to the biopharmaceutical industry. Journal information: Health Affairs

 2022 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
Black and Hispanic children are less likely to receive bystander CPR than white children, according to a new study.

The research, published Monday in the American Heart Association journal Circulation, focused on settings outside a hospital, before emergency medical services arrive to help. Past studies show racial disparities in adult out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, but less was known about how children 17 and under fare.

Researchers combed through a national EMS database and found 7,285 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests in children between January 2016 and December 2019. Cardiac arrests from 2020 and 2021 were excluded because of possible changes during the COVID-19 pandemic.

White children made up the majority of cases (52.3%) and received bystander CPR 75.1% of the time. CPR rates dropped to 67% for Black children (29.2% of cases) and 68.1% for Hispanic children (13.9% of cases).

The study's lead author, Aditya Shekhar, said the racial and ethnic disparities were similar to those seen in previous studies of adult cardiac arrests.

"Although it's alarming and tragic, it's not something that surprised us," said Shekhar, a researcher affiliated with the Center for Bioethics at Harvard Medical School in Boston.

"The first step toward eliminating these disparities is identifying them and improving our CPR knowledge and awareness across demographic lines, including race and ethnicity and socioeconomic status," he said.

The study also uncovered differences by age. Cardiac arrests outside a hospital were most common in children 1 and under and least common in 6- to 10-year-olds.

Looking deeper at those age categories, researchers found children ages 15-17 had the lowest rate of bystander CPR (62.6%). Children 1 and under had the second-lowest rate (71.9%).

While the study didn't look at the causes behind those numbers, Shekhar said the low bystander CPR rate for 15- to 17-year-olds might be because cardiac arrests caused by trauma, such as car accidents, increase as children get older. Another possibility is their cardiac arrests may be less likely to have a witness.

For infants, the low rate might be due to a lack of bystander CPR knowledge or fears about not performing CPR correctly, Shekhar said.

"Cardiac arrest is an incredibly time-sensitive condition, which makes bystander CPR so important in all of these cases," he said. "If I could shout one message from the mountaintops, it would be that everybody should learn CPR and know how to provide it."

Shekhar said future research is needed to learn more about CPR disparities and the best ways to improve CPR training and access to automated external defibrillators, or AEDs, in under-resourced communities that historically have lacked investment. An AED is a portable electronic device that analyzes the heart rhythm and, if needed, can deliver a shock to try restoring a normal rhythm.

Dr. Alexis Topjian, who who works in pediatric critical care at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and was not involved in the research, said that despite a lack of details and explanations for the different rates, it is "an important large study that highlights the racial and ethnic disparities in care. This begins to tease out what's happening in the out-of-hospital setting."

In the U.S., only about 40% of people who have an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest get bystander CPR, according to AHA statistics. While the numbers in this study are higherranging from 62.6% to 75.9%Topjian said there is still room for improvement.

"The general message is that bystander CPR saves lives. You should learn CPR and encourage your friends to learn CPR," she said. "And even if you don't know how to do it, get your hands on the chest and start chest compressions, and you'll be guided by (a 911 operator) on how to do it."

Explore further Bystander CPR less likely for black kids in poorest neighborhoods

More information: Aditya C. Shekhar et al, Age and Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Pediatric Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest, Circulation (2022). Journal information: Circulation Aditya C. Shekhar et al, Age and Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Pediatric Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest,(2022). DOI: 10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.121.057508

 2022 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Research in the March 2022 issue of JNCCNJournal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network examined data from the Ontario Cancer Registry from September 25, 2016 through September 26, 2020, to determine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the number of new cancer cases detected. They found 358,487 adult patients had a new cancer diagnosed during that time period. The week-to-week rate of diagnosis was steady before the pandemic, but dropped 34.3% in March of 2020. After that, there was a trend of 1% increase in new diagnoses every week for the rest of the study period.

"Our data demonstrates that many cancers have gone undetected due to the disruptions in the healthcare system in response to the COVID-19 pandemic," explained Antoine Eskander, MD, ScM, ICES, Toronto, Ontario. "This is concerning because a delay in diagnosis for cancer is associated with a lower chance of cure. Healthcare providers should encourage patients to catch up on their cancer screening if any have been missed during the pandemic, and should use a low threshold to investigate patients with any unusual symptoms that may be related to an undiagnosed cancer."

The drop in new diagnoses was found in both screening cancersthose that have formal screening programs such as cervical cancer, breast cancer and colorectal cancer (and sometimes lung cancer)and non-screening cancers. The researchers estimate approximately 12,600 cancers went undetected between March 15 and September 26, 2020. The largest decreases in diagnoses were found in melanoma, cervical, endocrine, and prostate cancers.

"The pandemic has caused dramatic changes in the health care system, including a worrisome decline in cancer screening," commented Harold Burstein, MD, Ph.D., Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, who was not involved with this research. "This study is a well done report from Ontario, Canada, where province-wide records are available, and it shows a huge decline in screening for colorectal (colonoscopy), cervical (Pap smear), and breast cancer (mammogram) in the early months of the pandemic. Similar findings have been reported at major health centers across North America, Europe, and other countries with widespread screening programs."

Dr. Bursteina member of the NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology (NCCN Guidelines) Panel for Breast Cancercontinued: "Despite the pandemic, it is critical that people continue to get recommended cancer screenings. With the COVID precautions that clinics have put in place, it is very safe for people to see their medical team for routine mammograms, pap smears, and other important testing. Fortunately, here in Boston and many other centers, our numbers of screening mammograms are recovering rapidly after the lull in 2020, and we are doing all we can to remind people of the importance of regular screening."

Explore further Pandemic upends breast cancer diagnoses

More information: Antoine Eskander et al, Incident Cancer Detection During the COVID-19 Pandemic, Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (2022). Antoine Eskander et al, Incident Cancer Detection During the COVID-19 Pandemic,(2022). DOI: 10.6004/jnccn.2021.7114

Provided by National Comprehensive Cancer Network
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

Childbearing women cardiologists can encounter adverse effects in their physical health, finances and career advancements due to discriminatory violations of maternity leave practices in the U.S., specifically the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). The study published today in the Journal of American College of Cardiology is the first of its kind to examine the experiences and policies specific to pregnancy and maternity leave in women cardiologists.

The study analyzed survey responses from 323 women cardiologists from the American College of Cardiology Women in Cardiology section and WomenAsOne.org membership who have been pregnant during their careers. About 75% of those examined experienced at least one potential illegal violation or potential evidence of illegal action on their maternity leave rights, including being asked to take on extra service coverage to frontload hours prior to taking maternity leave, salary deficits or delaying informing employers of their pregnancy due to fear of potential adverse treatment. Additionally, over half of respondents reported that pregnancy negatively impacted their career and 42.4% of these individuals experienced return-to-work pressure, discriminatory actions and delay in promotions. Each demographic observed (academic, hospital employed and private practice cardiologists) encountered prejudicial impacts to a similar degree, compared to a prior hypothesis of academic medicine physicians being more protected by maternal leave policies.

"Our findings indicate considerable heterogeneity in the experience of pregnancy and maternity leave among women cardiologists," said Martha Gulati, MD, MS, lead author of the study. "While many professions struggle to create environments supportive of pregnancy and child-rearing, the prevalence of illegal behavior in cardiology is quite high and presents substantial legal risk for employers."

Performing additional service or calls prior to taking maternity leave was associated with higher rates of being placed on bedrest prior to delivery. Almost 40% of the surveyed cardiologists experienced pregnancy complications, a rate that is significantly higher than the general population and other medical specialties. Additionally, previous studies have found that 65% of U.S. women cardiologists report experiencing some form of discrimination as compared to only 23% of their male counterparts.

The study authors said an increased awareness of FMLA and Title VII violations in the workplace and widespread training for cardiologists and their employers is critical in addressing an employee's privacy rights in respect to pregnancy and motherhood. The authors recommended employers consider making policy adjustments to align with obligations under the FMLA and Title VII, such as replacing doctors on maternity leave with "locums or deepen the bench of coverage for clinical work."

"Childbearing is difficult for women in cardiology with more than double the rate of gestational complications of the U.S. population, frequent income loss out of proportion to reduced productivity, and for nearly half, has an adverse impact on their career," Gulati said.

Adapting policies and practices to comply with pregnancy privacy rights can raise adherence to the law and improve the professional well-being and health of women cardiologists, as well as provide women an equal environment in the cardiology workforce.

"Over the last few years, there has been a great focus to improve representation of women in all areas of impact, including the scientific community, leadership, and among policymakers and the advisory boards that hold the financial and influential levers of institutions," said Laxmi Mehta, MD, vice chair of wellness for the Department of Internal Medicine at The Ohio State University and author of the accompanying editorial comment. "We are hopeful that data like this will lead to greater self-awareness, self-advocacy, leadership skills and empowerment, along with a shift in the culture and climate in cardiology, such that women are not penalized for pregnancy and parenthood."

The study authors noted while the survey response rate was quite substantial (35% of the target population in the U.S.), the results may not encapsulate all birthing individuals. Due to the data being self-reported, additional limitations include maternity happening outside the U.S., information on marital status or household finance pressures to take unpaid leave. Legal analysis was limited to the information provided by survey respondent comments, leaving the authors to determine illegal implications based on a complex set of assumption factors.

Explore further Pregnant women victims of microaggressions in the workplace
Residents line up for COVID test on Monday, March 14, 2022, in Beijing. Chinese authorities reported more than 1,300 locally transmitted cases of COVID-19 across dozens of mainland cities Monday as the fast-spreading variant commonly known as "stealth omicron" fuels China's biggest outbreak in two years. Credit: AP Photo/Ng Han Guan

China banned most people from leaving a coronavirus-hit northeastern province and mobilized military reservists Monday as the fast-spreading "stealth omicron" variant fuels the country's biggest outbreak since the start of the pandemic two years ago.

The National Health Commission reported 1,337 locally transmitted cases in the latest 24-hour period, including 895 in the industrial province of Jilin. A government notice said that police permission would be required for people to leave the area or travel from one city to another.

The hard-hit province sent 7,000 reservists to help with the response, from keeping order and registering people at testing centers to using drones to carry out aerial spraying and disinfection, state broadcaster CCTV reported.

Hundreds of cases were reported in other provinces and cities along China's east coast and inland as well. Beijing, which had six new cases, and Shanghai, with 41, locked down residential and office buildings where infected people had been found.

"Every day when I go to work, I worry that if our office building will suddenly be locked down then I won't be able to get home, so I have bought a sleeping bag and stored some fast food in the office in advance, just in case," said Yimeng Li, a Shanghai resident.

Residents line up for COVID test on Monday, March 14, 2022, in Beijing. Chinese authorities reported more than 1,300 locally transmitted cases of COVID-19 across dozens of mainland cities Monday as the fast-spreading variant commonly known as "stealth omicron" fuels China's biggest outbreak in two years. Credit: AP Photo/Ng Han Guan

While mainland China's numbers are small compared to many other countries, and even the semi-autonomous city of Hong Kong, they are the highest since COVID-19 killed thousands in the central city of Wuhan in early 2020. No deaths have been reported in the latest outbreaks.

Hong Kong on Monday reported 26,908 new cases and 249 deaths in its latest 24-hour period. The city counts its cases differently than the mainland, combining both rapid antigen tests and PCR test results.

The city's leader, Carrie Lam, said authorities would not tighten pandemic restrictions for now. "I have to consider whether the public, whether the people would accept further measures," she said at a press briefing.

Mainland China has seen relatively few infections since the initial Wuhan outbreak as the government has held fast to its zero-tolerance strategy, which is focused on stopping transmission of the coronavirus by relying on strict lockdowns and mandatory quarantines for anyone who has come into contact with a positive case.

A worker collects a delivery for residents under lock down in a community on Monday, March 14, 2022, in Beijing. Chinese authorities reported more than 1,300 locally transmitted cases of COVID-19 across dozens of mainland cities Monday as the fast-spreading variant commonly known as "stealth omicron" fuels China's biggest outbreak in two years. Credit: AP Photo/Ng Han Guan

The government has indicated it will continue to stick to its strategy of stopping transmission for the time being.

Officials on Sunday locked down the southern city of Shenzhen, which has 17.5 million people and is a major tech and finance hub that borders Hong Kong. That followed the lockdown of Changchun, home to 9 million people in Jilin province, starting last Friday.

On Monday, Zhang Wenhong, a prominent infectious disease expert at a hospital affiliated with Shanghai's Fudan University noted in an essay for China's business outlet Caixin, that the numbers for the mainland were still in the beginning stages of an "exponential rise."

China's vast passenger rail network said it would cut service significantly, and both China Railway and airlines said they would offer free refunds to people who had already bought tickets. Shanghai suspended bus service to other cities and provinces.

A delivery man sorts out parcels for delivery to a community under lock down after a case of coronavirus was detected, Monday, March 14, 2022, in Beijing. Chinese authorities reported more than 1,300 locally transmitted cases of COVID-19 across dozens of mainland cities Monday as the fast-spreading variant commonly known as "stealth omicron" fuels China's biggest outbreak in two years. Credit: AP Photo/Ng Han Guan

In a mostly empty departure lounge usually bustling with travelers, a long line of travelers wait to check in for a single flight to Singapore at the International airport in Hong Kong, Monday, March 14, 2022. China's mainland is seeing a widespread surge of new infections across its main cities. The numbers are small relative to Hong Kong, which had reported 32,000 cases Sunday. Credit: AP Photo/YK Chan

Workers line up for COVID test outside an office building on Monday, March 14, 2022, in Beijing. Chinese authorities reported more than 1,300 locally transmitted cases of COVID-19 across dozens of mainland cities Monday as the fast-spreading variant commonly known as "stealth omicron" fuels China's biggest outbreak in two years. Credit: AP Photo/Ng Han Guan

Residents line up for COVID test on Monday, March 14, 2022, in Beijing. Chinese authorities reported more than 1,300 locally transmitted cases of COVID-19 across dozens of mainland cities Monday as the fast-spreading variant commonly known as "stealth omicron" fuels China's biggest outbreak in two years. Credit: AP Photo/Ng Han Guan

A delivery man sorts out parcels for delivery to a community under lock down after a case of coronavirus was detected, Monday, March 14, 2022, in Beijing. Chinese authorities reported more than 1,300 locally transmitted cases of COVID-19 across dozens of mainland cities Monday as the fast-spreading variant commonly known as "stealth omicron" fuels China's biggest outbreak in two years. Credit: AP Photo/Ng Han Guan

Few travelers gather in the normally busy departure lounge of the International airport in Hong Kong, Monday, March 14, 2022. China's mainland is seeing a widespread surge of new infections across its main cities. The numbers are small relative to Hong Kong, which had reported 32,000 cases Sunday. Credit: AP Photo/YK Chan

Medical workers help residents to get tested for the coronavirus at a temporary testing center in Hong Kong, Monday, March 14, 2022. China's mainland is seeing a widespread surge of new infections across its main cities. The numbers are small relative to Hong Kong, which had reported 32,000 cases Sunday. Credit: AP Photo/Kin Cheung

A popular restaurant sits dusty and empty in the normally busy departure lounge of the International airport in Hong Kong, Monday, March 14, 2022. China's mainland is seeing a widespread surge of new infections across its main cities. The numbers are small relative to Hong Kong, which had reported 32,000 cases Sunday. Credit: AP Photo/YK Chan

People wearing face masks walk through the Central district in Hong Kong, Monday, March 14, 2022. China's mainland is seeing a widespread surge of new infections across its main cities. The numbers are small relative to Hong Kong, which had reported 32,000 cases Sunday. Credit: AP Photo/Kin Cheung

Residents walk their dog past shuttered shops in the Huaqiangbei area, the world's biggest electronics market, in Shenzhen, southern China's Guangdong province Monday, March 14, 2022. Officials on Sunday locked down Shenzhen due to rising coronavirus infections, which has 17.5 million people and is a major tech and finance hub that borders Hong Kong. Credit: Chinatopix Via AP

A woman wearing a mask walks by shuttered shops in Huaqiangbei area, the world's biggest electronics market, in Shenzhen in southern China's Guangdong province Monday, March 14, 2022. Officials on Sunday locked down Shenzhen due to rising coronavirus infections, which has 17.5 million people and is a major tech and finance hub that borders Hong Kong. Credit: Chinatopix Via AP

A medical worker takes swab samples from a girl for the Covid-19 screening in Yantai city in eastern China's Shandong province Monday, March 14, 2022. China banned most people from leaving a coronavirus-hit northeastern province and mobilized military reservists Monday as the fast-spreading "stealth omicron" variant fuels the country's biggest outbreak since the start of the pandemic two years ago. Credit: Chinatopix via AP

Workers line up for COVID test outside an office building on Monday, March 14, 2022, in Beijing. Chinese authorities reported more than 1,300 locally transmitted cases of COVID-19 across dozens of mainland cities Monday as the fast-spreading variant commonly known as "stealth omicron" fuels China's biggest outbreak in two years. Credit: AP Photo/Ng Han Guan

Shanghai has recorded 713 cases in March, of which 632 are asymptomatic cases. China counts positive and asymptomatic cases separately in its national numbers. Schools in China's largest city have switched to remote learning.

In Beijing, several buildings were sealed off over the weekend. Residents said they were willing to follow the zero-tolerance policies despite any personal impact.

"I think only when the epidemic is totally wiped out can we ease up," said Tong Xin, 38, a shop owner in the Silk Market, a tourist-oriented mall in the Chinese capital.

Much of the current outbreak across Chinese cities is being driven by the variant commonly known as "stealth omicron," or the B.A.2 lineage of the omicron variant, Zhang noted. Early research suggests it spreads faster than the original omicron, which itself spread faster than the original virus and other variants.

"But if our country opens up quickly now, it will cause a large number of infections in people in a short period of time," Zhang wrote Monday. "No matter how low the death rate is, it will still cause a run on medical resources and a short term shock to social life, causing irreparable harm to families and society."

Explore further China shuts business center of Shenzhen to fight virus surge

 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

A new, first-of-its-kind clinical trial will examine how the brain adapts to advanced, bionic arms in children born without a limb, with the ultimate goal of improving children's control of their prosthetic.

The work, which starts this spring, will be led by Limbitless Solutions, a nonprofit, direct support organization at the University of Central Florida, Wolfson Children's Hospital of Jacksonville and Nemours Children's Health, Jacksonville. The joint effort brings together expertise from pediatric research, neuroradiology, and bionics.

Approximately four babies in every 10,000 are born missing a limb, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Prosthetics can be a supportive tool for children to perform everyday activities, but little is known about how the brain responds to the addition of an artificial limb.

"Limited research has been conducted on how the brain's motor cortex structure changes from congenital limb loss and subsequent use of a prosthetic," says Albert Manero, executive director and co-founder of Limbitless Solutions.

The four-month clinical trial will examine if Limbitless' prostheticpaired with its custom training video gamewill impact the motor control center of the brain. Researchers will closely monitor any changes in the signals the brain sends to the muscle groups that direct the bionics' movement.

Credit: Limbitless Solutions

They will do this using advanced functional magnetic resonance imaging techniques before and after prosthetic use and training. Additionally, researchers will use a method known as tractographywhere MRI scans visualize the nerve pathwaysto identify new or more robust pathways resulting from the training.

The study is unique because it combines advanced imaging techniques with novel prosthetics and video-game-based training to evaluate motor cortex engagement.

"It may provide new insight to how the brain's motor cortex adapts to learning how to use our organic, or robotic, limbs," Manero says.

Manero will lead the research study on the Limbitless side as the investigator along with other UCF staff and faculty. Chetan Shah, MD, chair of radiology at Nemours Children's Health, Jacksonville, Florida, and based at Wolfson Children's Hospital of Jacksonville, will lead the imaging work.

"This research will help us see how the brain responds to the child's newly acquired ability to use a prosthetic hand," Dr. Shah says. "This is a novel way of using existing brain circuits to use an artificial limb, and most importantly, this is a life-changing device for a child both mentally and physically. We are extremely enthusiastic about this research."

Limbitless Solutions, which Manero co-founded as a graduate student at UCF along with John Sparkman and Dominique Courbin, specializes in developing advanced, muscle-based biosensing technology, such as bionic limbs, to increase accessibility and empower children and adults in the limb-different community.

The customized prosthetics they create are 3D printed and can be paired with a parent's smart phone. The devices even charge like a cell phone, via USB type C.

The exteriors of the devices are artistically designed and customized, with input from each participant. Existing muscles in the residual part of a limb are used to control their function, which is triggered by a person's own muscle flex.

In 2016, Limbitless and faculty members Matt Dombrowski with UCF's School of Visual Arts and Design and Peter Smith with UCF's Nicholson School of Communication and Media created video games to train children's muscles in anticipation of receiving bionic arms. These video games will be leveraged in the trial to support training for the use of the prosthetic limb.

Limbitless Solutions believes no person with a limb difference should be financially burdened to have a bionic arm and plans to provide prosthetics and training systems for the study free of charge.
Kristen Lee, teaching professor of behavioral science in the College of Professional Studies at Northeastern. Credit: Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University

I don't have to tell you, reader, that the past two years have been taxing, to say the least.

And it doesn't just feel like two years have passed anymore. Friday, March 11, marked the anniversary of the date on which the World Health Organization characterized COVID-19 as a pandemic. We have officially lived through two years of pandemic life. And, even though the United States has begun to put the pandemic in the nation's rearview mirror, tragedy just keeps on coming.

"It's just been one thing after another. We've been sitting with challenges that most of us in our lifetime haven't necessarily seen before. It's a lot to process, make sense of and adapt to," says Kristen Lee, teaching professor of behavioral science at Northeastern and author of "Worth the Risk: How to Microdose Bravery to Grow Resilience, Connect More, and Offer Yourself to the World." "Now, with the [Russian] invasion [of Ukraine] and the war, it feels just like an unbearable load."

For those observing from afar, violence and death fill newscasts, headlines, and social media. Pundits question whether there might be a third World War brewing. A deep uncertainty continues to dominate.

It is moments like these when hot tips on how to cope with a constant onslaught of heavy news start to circulate. But they are not magic, says Lee, who studies resilience.

"Healing is within our reach. We can heal through atrocity," she says. "But it's not a three-step pop psychology solution."

Here are a few things that Lee says to think about when feeling overwhelmed by the enormity of the world's problems:

What you're experiencing isn't completely new. But 

"People have suffered across human history," Lee says. "What makes it unique is we have access to unprecedented information. We can be tuned in continually. So that repeated news cycle in social media can really amplify our fears and anxiety to a whole different level than perhaps past generations, that didn't have those technology tools, had to experience. It is a lot for the human mind."

But, she adds, "We have a lot to leverage these days. We have a lot of resources and knowledge to harness."

Tune in  to yourself.

"Sometimes I think people feel like, "I need to watch [the news],'" Lee says. And "being informed isn't necessarily problematic. We can hold space for difficult news and difficult circumstances."

However, a reprieve from the barrage of news can give you time to assess what you need and focus on what is within your "locus of control," she says.

"There are things we can do to maneuver thoughtfully each day, to leverage our own strengths, our own values, and the resources we have," Lee says. "What's important is that we discover what helps nourish us each day. The micro-strategies, if you will, the break rituals, the small things we can do that have a positive cumulative effect.

"That doesn't mean we're cavalier or we're not socially conscious and we don't care and we're turning a blind eye. But if we do those things, we're more likely to sustain ourselves so that we can be conscious global citizens, so that we can show up intentionally and thoughtfully with active contribution in the world."

Resilience might not mean what you think.

"One of the big myths of resilience is that it's a trait-based thing. You're either born with it or not. It's this gritty, 'suck it up, don't let anyone see you sweat," mindset," Lee says. That's not true, she says; every human is resilient.

"Resilience is a process we're all capable of engaging with and we can cultivate it in our lives. It is a process of enduring adversity and being able to sustain, being able to renegotiate those initial provocative states," Lee says. "As a species, we are wired to adapt, and because we're metacognitive, we can think about our thinking, we can reflect, we can identify the tools and the strategies and the levers that help keep us going.

"We are tapping into protective factors like our sense of agency, our sense of solidarity and community, problem-solving skills, analytical skills," to keep going, she says.

Explore further How do you find emotional equilibrium during a pandemic?
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Newly released data from an ongoing research study at the University of Arizona Health Sciences in combination with the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's PROTECT study show that the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine has been a moderately effective tool for preventing the spread of COVID-19 and reducing the severity of infection among children and adolescents.

A total of 1,364 children ages 5-15 were tested for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, weekly from July 25, 2021, to Feb. 12, 2022. Researchers found that vaccination with two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine reduced the risk of infection with the omicron variant by 31% in children ages 5-11 and by 59% in adolescents ages 12-15.

The report showed declining protection in adolescents when comparing the omicron and delta periods, as vaccination was 87% effective at preventing infections among adolescents ages 12-15 years when the delta variant was the dominant strain circulating in the U.S. The Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA COVID-19 vaccine was recommended by CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices for adolescents ages 12-15 on May 12, 2021, and children ages 5-11 years on Nov. 2, 2021.

Researchers say the findings, published today in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), provide some evidence that all children and adolescents should remain up to date with recommended COVID-19 vaccinations.

The ongoing PROTECT study is among the largest studies with routine weekly COVID-19 testing, regardless of COVID-19-like symptoms. The study, initiated in July 2021, monitors SARS-CoV-2 infections among participants aged 6 months to 17 years in jurisdictions in four states: Arizona, Florida, Texas and Utah. PROTECT data includes UArizona Health Sciences research from the Arizona Healthcare, Emergency Response, and Other Essential Workers Surveillance (AZ HEROES) study.

"We are so appreciative that parents in our study are taking the time to test their kids weekly and provide us with this vital data," said AZ HEROES co-investigator Karen Lutrick, Ph.D., assistant professor in the UArizona College of MedicineTucson's Department of Family and Community Medicine and third author on the MMWR report. "Our findings inform science-based vaccine guidance. This shows the community support for research and the CDC's effort to provide the best public health recommendations possible."

Researchers also evaluated the severity of COVID-19 illness among unvaccinated children and adolescents who were infected during periods of delta and omicron circulation and found that omicron infections were less severe than delta infections. Among unvaccinated children who were infected, children with omicron infections were less likely to report COVID-19 symptoms (49%) than children with delta infections (66%).

Symptomatic omicron infection among children and adolescentsboth vaccinated and unvaccinatedresulted in an average of 5-6 days of symptoms and 1-2 days in bed.

The data also allowed researchers to gain a better understanding the factors that can affect infection risk within this age group, including socio-demographic characteristics, health information, frequency of close social contact, mask use, location and local virus circulation.

Jeff Burgess, MD, MS, MPH, a professor in the Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health, leads the AZ HEROES study. He and his team of researchers, including faculty, staff and students, continue to gather vital data on COVID-19 immunity and vaccine effectiveness.

Explore further BNT162b2 vaccine effectiveness 92 percent for teens ages 12 to 17

More information: Ashley L. Fowlkes et al, Effectiveness of 2-Dose BNT162b2 (Pfizer BioNTech) mRNA Vaccine in Preventing SARS-CoV-2 Infection Among Children Aged 511 Years and Adolescents Aged 1215 YearsPROTECT Cohort, July 2021February 2022, MMWR. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (2022). Ashley L. Fowlkes et al, Effectiveness of 2-Dose BNT162b2 (Pfizer BioNTech) mRNA Vaccine in Preventing SARS-CoV-2 Infection Among Children Aged 511 Years and Adolescents Aged 1215 YearsPROTECT Cohort, July 2021February 2022,(2022). DOI: 10.15585/mmwr.mm7111e1
Credit: George Hodan/public domain

Researchers have developed a new method for training people to be creative, one that shows promise of succeeding far better than current ways of sparking innovation.

This new method, based on narrative theory, helps people be creative in the way children and artists are: By making up stories that imagine alternative worlds, shift perspective and generate unexpected actions.

The narrative method works by recognizing that we're all creative, said Angus Fletcher, who developed the method and is a professor of English and a member of The Ohio State University's Project Narrative.

"We as a society radically undervalue the creativity of kids and many others because we are obsessed with the idea that some people are more creative than others," Fletcher said.

"But the reality is that we're just not training creativity in the right way."

Fletcher and Mike Benveniste, also of Project Narrative, discussed the narrative method of training creativity in a just-published article in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

The two researchers successfully used the narrative approach to train members of the U.S. Army's Command and General Staff College. Fletcher wrote a publicly available training guide based on his methods that was tailored to officers and advanced enlisted personnel.

They have also worked with the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, the Ohio State College of Engineering and several Fortune 50 companies to teach creativity to their staffs and students.

The current foundation of creativity training is the technique known as divergent thinking, which has been in use since the 1950s. It is a "computational approach" to creativity that treats the brain as a logic machine, Fletcher said.

It works through exercises designed to, among other things, expand working memory, foster analogical thinking and promote problem-solving.

But divergent thinking hasn't delivered the results that many hoped for, Fletcher said. A major issue is that its computational approach relies on data and information about the problems and successes of the past.

"What it can't do is help prepare people for new challenges that we know little about today. It can't come up with truly original actions," Fletcher said. "But the human brain's narrative machinery can."

The narrative method of training for creativity uses many of the techniques that writers use to create stories. One is to develop new worlds in your mind. For example, employees at a company might be asked to think about their most unusual customerthen imagine a world in which all their customers were like that. How would that change their business? What would they have to do to survive?

Another technique is perspective-shifting. An executive at a company might be asked to answer a problem by thinking like another member of their team.

The point of using these techniques and others like them is not that the scenarios you dream up will actually happen, Fletcher said.

"Creativity isn't about guessing the future correctly. It's about making yourself open to imagining radically different possibilities," he said.

"When you do that, you can respond more quickly and nimbly to the changes that do occur."

Fletcher noted that the narrative approach of training creativity through telling stories resembles how young children are creativeand research shows that young children are more imaginatively creative than adults.

But the ability of children to perform creative tasks drops after four or five years of schooling, according to studies. That's when children begin intensive logical, semantic and memory training.

The narrative approach to creativity can help people unlock the creativity they may have stopped using as they progressed through school, Fletcher said.

One advantage for organizations that train employees to be creative is that they no longer need to strive to hire "creative people," he said.

"Trying to hire creative people causes problems because the people that leaders identify as creative are almost always people just like themselves. So it promotes conformity instead of originality," Fletcher said.

"It's better to hire a diverse group of people and then train them to be creative. That creates a culture that recognizes that there are already creative people in your organization that you aren't taking advantage of."

While this narrative method of creativity training has already been received positively, Fletcher and his colleagues have started a more formal evaluation. They are conducting randomized controlled trials of the creativity curriculum on more than 600 U.S. Army majors who are part of the Command and General Staff College.

They are also continuing to work with new organizations, such as the Worthington Local School District in Ohio.

"Teaching creativity is one of the most useful things you can do in the world, because it is just coming up with new solutions to solve problems," he said.

Fletcher said this new method of training creativity "could only have come from Ohio State's Project Narrative.

"Project Narrative is all about how stories work in the brain. It is the foundation that helped us put together this new way of thinking about and training for creativity," he said.

"And Project Narrative is itself proof of the power of creativity. It's something that Ohio State created, something that would not have existed otherwise."

Explore further New book emphasizes key role social interaction plays in creativity

More information: Angus Fletcher et al, A new method for training creativity: narrative as an alternative to divergent thinking, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences (2022). Angus Fletcher et al, A new method for training creativity: narrative as an alternative to divergent thinking,(2022). DOI: 10.1111/nyas.14763
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Long-term use of implantable electronic medical devicessuch as pacemakers and cochlear implantsis hampered by the body's reaction to foreign bodies. Now, in a study in mice, a team led by scientists at the University of Cambridge has shown that this reaction can be dramatically reduced by incorporating an anti-inflammatory drug into the silicone coating around the implant.

Implantable electronic medical devices are already widely used for a number of applications, but they also offer the prospect of transforming the treatment of intractable conditions, such as the use of neural electrical stimulators for spinal injury patients.

There is one major problem, however: our body recognizes, attacks and surrounds these implants with a dense, 'protective' capsule of scar tissue that prevents electrical stimulation reaching the nervous system.

This so-called 'foreign body reaction' is driven by an inflammatory response against the implant. First, immune cells known as macrophages attack and try to destroy the device. Then a more long-term response kicks in, again coordinated by the macrophages, which leads to the build-up of a collagen-rich capsule to separate it from the surrounding tissue. This response then persists until the implant is removed from the body.

The mechanisms by which foreign body reaction occurs are poorly understood, meaning that there are no effective methods to prevent it without interfering with the tissue repair mechanisms, for example after nerve damage.

First author Dr. Damiano Barone from the Department of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Cambridge said: "Foreign body reaction is currently an unavoidable complication of implantation and is one of the leading causes of implant failure. At the moment, the only way we have of preventing it is to use broad-spectrum anti-inflammatory drugs such as dexamethasone. But these are problematicthey may stop the scarring, but they also stop the repair."

In a study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), scientists implanted an electrical device into mice to compensate for sciatic nerve damage and compared the response within the surrounding tissue to that in mice who did not receive an implant. As well as using normal mice, the researchers used mice whose genes controlling the inflammatory response had been 'knocked out', preventing a response.

This allowed the team to see how the body's inflammatory response generated the foreign body reaction, and which genes were involved. In turn, this showed that a particular molecule known as NLRP3 plays a key role.

The researchers then added a small molecule known as MCC950 to the device coating and tested its effect in the mice. MCC950 has previously been shown to inhibit the activity of NLRP3. They found that this prevented the foreign body reaction without affecting tissue regeneration. This contrasted with dexamethasone treatment, which prevents the foreign body reaction but also blocks nerve regeneration.

NLRP3 inhibitors are being developed for a number of clinical applications including inflammatory disease, cancer, sepsis, Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease. They are already being tested in clinical trials for certain conditions.

Joint senior author Professor Clare Bryant from the Department of Medicine at the University of Cambridge said: "There's a lot of excitement around this new class of anti-inflammatory drugs. Once they've been through clinical trials and have been shown to be safe to use, we should be in a good position to integrate them into the next generation of implantable devices.

"Combining these drugs with different materials and softer coatings for devices could transform the lives of individuals who need long-term implants to overcome serious disability or illness. In particular, this could make a huge difference to neuroprostheticsprosthetics that connect to the nervous systemwhere the technology exists, but scarring has not yet made their widespread use viable."

More information: Prevention of the foreign body response to implantable medical devices by inflammasome inhibition, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2022). Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Prevention of the foreign body response to implantable medical devices by inflammasome inhibition,(2022). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2115857119
A proposal to prohibit firing workers for trace amounts of marijuana in their systems moved closer to passage when the Illinois House of Representatives approved the measure earlier this month  but employers remain very leery about it.

The chief sponsor, state Rep. Bob Morgan, a Democrat from Deerfield and an attorney who does cannabis consulting, said the change would let people, especially medical cannabis users, use a legal product on their own time and not fear losing their job.

Advertisement

But employers fear the change will only lead to more fights in court over who qualifies and how the law is applied.

The House voted 61-41 to pass the bill, largely along partisan lines, with Democrats in favor and Republicans opposed.

Advertisement

State Rep. Bob Morgan arrives for the Illinois House Democratic caucus at the State Capitol in Springfield on May 30, 2019. Morgan is the chief sponsor of a proposal to prohibit firing workers for trace amounts of marijuana in their systems. (Zbigniew Bzdak / Chicago Tribune)

The measure underwent two amendments that helped get the Illinois Sheriffs Association and Illinois Manufacturers Association to drop opposition and go neutral. The bill now is being considered in the Senate.

In general, the proposal would prohibit employers from firing or refusing to hire someone based on a positive test for tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the main ingredient in marijuana that gets users high  unless the worker shows signs of impairment or tests higher than the threshold for driving under the influence, which is 5 nanograms per milliliter of blood, or 10 nanograms per milliliter of other bodily fluid such as saliva or urine.

Employers would still be able to set zero-tolerance levels to exclude workers in safety sensitive positions such as law enforcement, firefighters and federal workers or contractors, who are prohibited from using cannabis by federal law.

Certain workers could also be prohibited from marijuana use: those who carry a firearm; those who perform medical procedures or emergency services; those who work with hazardous or flammable materials or drugs; those who work with heavy machinery, aircraft, watercraft or motorized vehicles; and anyone who performs critical services and works with critical infrastructure.

While federal law still prohibits marijuana possession, medical marijuana has been legalized in 37 states, and 18 states allow recreational use. While legalization has expanded, the number of workers testing positive in the workplace generally has risen since 2016, testing company Quest Diagnostics reported.

The overall cannabis positivity rate in the U.S. workforce in 2020, the most recent year available, was 4.4%, down slightly from a 16-year high in 2019.

Workplace drug testing has disrupted the supply chain, as 72,000 truckers out of 3 million registered lost their jobs due to failed tests since the beginning of 2020, according to government data reported by the New York Post. More than half of those failed tests were due to cannabis.

THC remnants can remain in the body for weeks. Thats why the cannabis legalization advocate NORML has long called for testing performance, rather than testing for drugs, to determine if someone is impaired on the job.

Advertisement

Julie Schauer, board vice president of Parents Opposed to Pot, called the proposal a breach of the legislators responsibility to public safety. She predicted the proposal would lead to more workplace accidents and higher workers compensation and insurance costs.

Illinois lawmakers approved legalization effective in 2020 based in part on the promise that employers would have protections against workers being high on the job. The attempt to roll back those protections now, Schauer said, is typical of the marijuana industry getting its foot in the door, then trying to expand its market.

This is a grab by the industry, she said. They always ask for more.

Todd Maisch, president of the Illinois Chamber of Commerce, said the group agreed not to oppose the bill, but has serious concerns about how it will play out.

Nobody should be happier about this than trial lawyers, he said. This is going to lead to litigation, theres no doubt about it.

One concern is that research has not established a clear correlation between the amount of THC in a persons blood stream and the level of impairment. Employers also would like the definition of safety sensitive jobs to include ancillary duties, such as not just someone driving a truck, but those loading it.

Advertisement

Sponsoring Sen. Robert Peters, a Chicago Democrat, was hopeful the Senate would approve the measure before its scheduled adjournment April 8.

Attorney Brittany Robinson at her home office on March 11, 2022, in Chicago. Robinson was denied a job as an assistant public defender for Cook County after a medical screening that detected cannabis in her system. She has since started her own law business in Hyde Park. (John J. Kim / Chicago Tribune)

Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. >

Attorney Brittany Robinson knows firsthand how cannabis testing in the workplace can keep people out of a job. Last year, she was accepted for a position as an assistant public defender for Cook County, but lost the job due to testing positive for cannabis.

The situation has changed since then. A cannabis drug screening is no longer required to work non-safety-sensitive positions at Cook County, and assistant public defenders are no longer considered safety sensitive.

Robinson has since started her own law business in Chicagos Hyde Park, doing criminal defense work, with some real estate and business work.

Im running a viable business, she said. My clients are the ones I have to answer to. Im sure theyre not worried about my personal marijuana use.

She called the proposed change in the law a step in the right direction.

Advertisement

Its like drinking alcohol, youre not testing to see if theres alcohol in their system from last night, you just want to make sure theyre not drunk, she said. Its the same with cannabis. Its legal. As long as youre not putting other people in danger, and not impaired while conducting business, it shouldnt be a problem.

rmccoppin@chicagotribune.com
(AC) Tree visualizations for 3 large putative transmission clusters (N  10 isolates), each showing the location of cases in either the Moldova or Transnistria regions along with resistance/susceptibility to 12 anti-TB drugs, as identified by in silico prediction. (D, E) Spatial distribution of 3 largest clusters (Cluster 1, 2, and 7) in the Ural/Lineage 4.2.1 and Beijing/lineage 2.2.1 clades. The map data were extracted from the GADM database (www.gadm.org/download_country.html). MDR-TB, multidrug-resistant tuberculosis; TB, tuberculosis. Credit: PLOS Medicine (2022). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1003933

Public health experts are getting a better picture of drug-resistant tuberculosis in Moldova, thanks to the efforts of a coalition of researchers from across the world led by scientists at the Yale School of Public Health.

In a recent study published in PLOS Medicine, the team of scientists used new genome surveillance techniques to uncover key details about the spread of tuberculosis within the Eastern European country.

According to YSPH Professor of Epidemiology Dr. Ted Cohen, D.P.H., M.D., M.P.H., the study's senior author, the findings could help save lives and control further spread of the disease, which has reached epidemic proportions in some areas.

"A lot of the details about where multi-drug resistant TB was being transmitted, which variants of multi-drug resistant TB were most likely being transmitted and the cause of this problem, were not understood," Cohen said. "This study was really our attempt to use the most modern tools to get a high-resolution picture of transmission of TB and drug-resistant TB in the country."

Moldova, like other countries which were formerly part of the Soviet Union, currently struggles with containing a tuberculosis epidemic for which a large fraction of cases are resistant to rifampin and isoniazid, two of the primary drugs used to treat the respiratory disease.

Identifying the locations of specific strains of the bacteria that cause the disease helps local officials monitor the epidemic and better understand which drugs still work for treatment. But identifying and tracking dominant strains in a region can be difficult and costly, Cohen said.

By combining new approaches in genetic analysis with innovative statistical methods, the study was able to capture the spread of both drug-susceptible tuberculosis and all of the drug-resistant strains in the entire countrya study approach that offered unprecedented insights, Cohen said.

Their analysis of more than 2,000 tuberculosis samples from 2018 and 2019 revealed that three distinct genomic clades of drug-resistant tuberculosis had dominated in the country: two from a Beijing lineage and one from a Ural lineage. Interestingly, they found, that the clusters of the Beijing lineage were predominantly located in the eastern Transnistrian region, a breakaway area claimed by Russian-backed separatists, whereas the Ural lineage cluster had spread throughout the entire country. Cohen said that this finding could reflect the differences in local populations' behavior and potential obstacles to free population movement between Transnistria and the rest of Moldova.

The current conflict in Ukraine may make more concerted efforts to assist Moldova difficult, he said.

"We know that infectious diseases are another casualty of war," he said. "And I would expect disruptions in treatment and the large-scale movement of individuals to cause even worse outcomes for our patients."

Nevertheless, Cohen hopes that with the new data, health officials and public health researchers in Moldova will be better equipped to develop new interventions to help stop the spread of tuberculosis.

More information: Chongguang Yang et al, Phylogeography and transmission of M. tuberculosis in Moldova: A prospective genomic analysis, PLOS Medicine (2022). Journal information: PLoS Medicine Chongguang Yang et al, Phylogeography and transmission of M. tuberculosis in Moldova: A prospective genomic analysis,(2022). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1003933
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

People living with neurological or psychiatric conditions may have an increased likelihood of having a second such condition in the future, and their sex influences their risk, according to new research.

The study is Ontario's largest, both in population size and length of time studied, and was also the first to examine the effect that being a man or woman has on the relationship between conditions. Researchers from the University of Waterloo and the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Science conducted the work with funding from the Neurodegenerative Disease Research Initiative (ONDRI).

"Globally, neurological and psychiatric disorders are leading causes of disability and death," said Colleen Maxwell, a professor at the School of Pharmacy at Waterloo and lead author on the study. "Understanding which disorders or conditions are risk factors for, or early manifestations of, later disorders will help health-care providers and family provide proactive care for individuals living with these conditions."

Maxwell and the study collaborators used provincial health databases to analyze data from more than five million Ontario residents aged 40 to 85 years. Over the course of 14 years, they examined the associations between pairs of particularly common neurological conditionssuch as dementia, Parkinson's disease, or strokeand psychiatric disorders like depression and anxiety.

They explored the link between these conditions in both directions, including investigating how the experience of previous stroke related to future risk of dementia and vice versa. In almost all cases, the researchers found that the rate of developing a second condition increased. For example, individuals with prior Parkinson's disease had four times the rate of developing dementia, while those with prior stroke had more than double the rate of developing dementia. They also found that having a psychiatric disorder previously was associated with an increased rate of experiencing dementia later. For some conditions, the risk of developing the second disorder remained for 10 years or more after the first.

The team showed that women and men differed in their risk for developing a later condition after experiencing an earlier one. For example, comparing men and women who experienced an earlier stroke, women were more likely than their male counterparts to develop dementia later.

The researchers hope their work can inform not just the care that individuals with these conditions receive directly, but also the planning of the health system as a whole.

"We also hope to provide information for those designing medical, educational programs to ensure health-care providers are informed of and equipped to address these common comorbidities," Maxwell said.

The study was recently published in the journal Age and Aging.

More information: Colleen J Maxwell et al, Incidence of neurological and psychiatric comorbidity over time: a population-based cohort study in Ontario, Canada, Age and Ageing (2021). Journal information: Age and Ageing Colleen J Maxwell et al, Incidence of neurological and psychiatric comorbidity over time: a population-based cohort study in Ontario, Canada,(2021). DOI: 10.1093/ageing/afab277
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

More effective therapies are needed for acute leukemia, particularly for people over 50 years of age at diagnosis, according to research published today by the Medical Journal of Australia.

Led by Dr. Kerri Beckmann, a Research Fellow at the University of South Australia, the researchers analyzed data from the South Australian Cancer Registry for all South Australian residents diagnosed with primary acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) or acute myeloid leukemia (AML) during 19802016. Their aim was to examine population changes in 5-year survival, by socio-demographic characteristics.

"Crude 5-year disease-specific survival was 58% for the 1,035 people diagnosed with ALL during 19802016, and 18% for the 2,814 people diagnosed with AML," Beckmann and colleagues reported.

"Survival improved steadily across the study period: from 44% for people with ALL diagnosed during 19801984 to 69% for those diagnosed during 20102016; and from 9% to 23% for people diagnosed with AML.

"Disease-specific mortality increased with age.

"After adjusting for other factors, rates of change in risk of leukemia-related death were greater for younger than older patients with ALL or AML, but were not significantly influenced by socio-economic status or remoteness."

Beckmann and colleagues suggested several factors may have contributed to the sustained improvements in survival that they found.

"For ALL, intensive chemotherapy protocols for people changed little during the study period, but have been extended to older patients as management of toxicity and support services for infection and graft versus host disease improved," they wrote.

"For people with AML, the major change to treatment protocols has been the introduction of high dose cytarabine therapy and the addition of all-trans retinoic acid (tretinoin) and arsenic trioxide for treating some forms.

"Supportive measures for managing fungal infections, febrile neutropenia, and graft versus host disease have improved. The use of allogeneic stem cell transplantation has increased since the early 2000s, and at the Royal Adelaide Hospital eligibility was extended from 65 to 70 years of age in 2010. These factors may have contributed to improved survival since 2000."

Despite the improvements over the study period, Beckmann and colleagues wrote that "disease-specific survival of older patients with acute leukemia remains disappointingly low, particularly for people with AML."

"Further research, including clinical trials of new therapies tolerated by older patients, is vital to improving outcomes."

Explore further New study finds bortezomib improves survival in children with newly diagnosed T-cell lymphoblastic lymphoma

More information: Kerri Beckmann et al, Changes in fiveyear survival for people with acute leukaemia in South Australia, 19802016, Medical Journal of Australia (2022). Journal information: Medical Journal of Australia Kerri Beckmann et al, Changes in fiveyear survival for people with acute leukaemia in South Australia, 19802016,(2022). DOI: 10.5694/mja2.51423

Provided by Medical Journal of Australia
A new drug that can cure a certain type of malaria was approved in Australia on Monday for kids and teens.

The approval was announced on Monday by the nonprofit Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV), which helped develop the drug with GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). It is for a single dose of tafenoquine (Kozenis) for use in combination with the traditional malaria drug chloroquine. This is the first time the drug has been authorized for use in children and will likely lead to more such approvals worldwide.

Tafenoquine can cure a type of malaria caused by Plasmodium vivax, which is most common in South and Southeast Asia, South America and the Horn of Africa. P. vivax causes up to 5 million malaria infections every year. Children aged 2 to 6 are four times more likely than adults to contract it, MMV said.

"We are proud to have worked with GSK to develop this child-friendly treatment and are thrilled by today's announcement. P. vivax malaria is particularly dangerous for young children for whom repeated relapses can lead to cumulative severe anemia and, in some cases, be fatal. Today, we have a tool to put a stop to the relentless relapse both for adults and childrenwe are one step closer to defeating this disease," Dr. David Reddy, CEO of MMV, said in a statement.

The drug will be submitted for approval in nine countries, as well as to the World Health Organization, George Jagoe, an executive vice president with MMV, told The New York Times.

In July 2018, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved 300 milligrams of tafenoquine for P. vivax malaria in patients 16 and older, and Australia, Brazil, Thailand and Peru followed suit with similar approvals, the Times reported.

The new drug for children is a single 50-milligram tablet dispersed in water, which is much easier to take than the seven- or 14-day course of pills for adults.

About 62% of the children studied experienced some side effects. While none of the side effects were severe, the treatment caused vomiting in about one in five children. At four months, the treatment was 95% effective at preventing recurrence.

Malaria is among the deadliest of infectious diseases and caused 627,000 deaths worldwide in 2020.

Most of these deaths are in sub-Saharan Africa, home to another form of the malaria parasite called Plasmodium falciparum. In October, the World Health Organization backed the first malaria vaccine, also made by GlaxoSmithKline, against P. falciparum.

Explore further A PLOS Medicine Collection on Plasmodium vivaxa neglected cause of malaria

More information: Visit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for more on Visit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for more on malaria

 2022 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
A fresh review of recent government surveys suggests the well-being of 73 million American kids is under strain and seems to be getting worse.

The upshot: Anxiety, depression and behavioral problems appear to be on the rise, while the amount of time kids spent being physically active or getting preventive care has been on the decline.

Parental emotional well-being and mental healthas well as the ability of caregivers to meet the demands of parentingwere also found to be suffering in tandem.

And that was all pre-pandemic. Once the pandemic struck, the review found, behavioral problems appeared to worsen even more. That was accompanied by even steeper declines in access to pediatric preventive care; an uptick in unaddressed health care needs among children, and a rise in the number of parents who chose to change jobs or decline work specifically because of pressing child care needs.

"Our research highlights a critical need to support both children and their caregivers to improve families' mental and emotional well-being," said study author Dr. Michael Warren, an associate administrator with the Maternal and Child Health Bureau of the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) in North Bethesda, Md.

"This includes ensuring access to timely health care services, and addressing social determinants of health to support children and families' overall well-being," Warren added.

In the study, Warren and his colleagues looked at recent results from the U.S. National Survey of Children's Health.

The survey is conducted every year, to gain a broad snapshot of child health in terms of access to care, health care use patterns, behavioral trends and overall mental and physical health status.

Mental health declines for kids, caregivers

The researchers pored over surveys launched between 2016 and 2020, including information on nearly 175,000 children up to the age of 17.

The study team noted that the last survey stretched into January 2021 and included information collected during the first year of the pandemic.

Childhood health concerns covered by the survey included asthma, headaches and migraines, anxiety, depression, behavioral issues, autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), dental issues, obesity and special care requirements.

The survey also looked at childhood health behaviors deemed beneficial and/or essential, such as daily reading habits, activity patterns, access to health care (preventive care, specifically), and overall well-being of the family.

Barriers to health care access were assessed in terms of insurance status and outstanding medical debt, among other things.

In the end, the team found that between 2016 and 2019, childhood diagnoses of anxiety rose by 27%, while depression risk rose by 24%. Yet the analysis also indicates that about a fifth of kids who need mental health services are not getting them, a figure that held steady across all surveys.

At the same time, physical activity levels plummeted by more than 24% and parental or caregiver mental health cratered by almost 70%. The ability to cope with the demands of parenting dropped almost as much (67%).

The team further found that when compared with the year leading up to the pandemic, the first year of the pandemic saw an almost 21% additional rise in childhood behavioral and conduct problems.

The pandemic also appeared to trigger a more than 9% rise in the onset of disruptions to child care that undermined the ability of parents to workduring the pandemic there was a 34% rise in the proportion of children whose parents decided to quit, change jobs or decline work altogether because of child care needs.

At the same time, the bottom continued to fall out on access to preventive pediatric health care, which dipped by another 9%. Preventive dental care also dropped by 7% among kids, while the percentage of children with unmet medical needs rose 32% overall.

The study team did not explore which factors might be driving the trends; more research will be needed to uncover what exactly is afoot.

"[But] as the president made clear in the State of the Union, children's mental health needs are a national priority," said HRSA administrator Carole Johnson.

"Today's findings reinforce the president's call for action to support children and their families' mental health and well-being," Johnson added. "At the Health Resources and Services Administration, we are answering his call by focusing on expanding pediatric mental health services, training more mental health care providers, and making mental health a key part of primary care to ensure that children get the quality care they need and deserve."

The findings were published online March 14 in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.

As for the pandemic's role in all of this, Dr. Paul Wise and Dr. Lisa Chamberlain, both from Stanford University School of Medicine, offered a cautiously optimistic take on the findings.

Silver lining: Child poverty rate dropped during pandemic

In an accompanying editorial, Wise and Chamberlain wrote that COVID-19 had clearly "disrupted the fabric of family and community life."

But the editorial also pointed out that during the pandemic, childhood poverty "has fallen to historic lows," from 14% in 2018 to less than 5.6% by 2021. That is largely due to new policy initiatives that have dramatically expanded the federal safety net.

Yet at the same time, the authors warned that many of those hugely beneficial initiatives have already expiredsuch as the Child Tax Creditor are slated to expire if new action isn't taken.

Copyright  2022 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

Having dense breasts (more fibroglandular tissue than fatty tissue, as visualized on a mammogram) reduces the sensitivity of mammography by masking breast cancers and carries a 1.6- to 2.0-fold increased independent risk for breast cancer. To inform women about these risks, 38 U.S. states and the federal government have enacted legislation requiring a written dense breast notification (DBN) of a patient's breast density after a mammogram, but there still is limited evidence about what breast density means, and what the implications are, to women.

According to a new study, while women are receiving these notifications about their breast density, not all recipients are fully understanding what they mean in terms of future health implications. Boston University School of Medicine researchers suggest that knowledge about breast density and its associated risks is partly linked to women's race/ethnicity and health literacy.

"Our findings, together with prior reports suggest that DBNs alone are not adequately educating women, suggest that development of future notifications warrants further refinement and testing," says corresponding author Nancy Kressin, Ph.D., professor of medicine at BUSM.

To assess women's knowledge about breast density after receiving a notification, the researchers conducted a telephone survey and interviews among a racially/ethnically and health literacy level diverse sample. Although most women responded correctly that breast density is related to the amount of fatty versus connective tissue, the researchers observed significant variations by women's race/ethnicity, whereby non-Hispanic white women were less likely to respond correctly than non-Hispanic Black women.

Only 47 percent of women correctly indicated that having dense breasts increases one's risk of breast cancer; women with low health literacy were more often correct. Fifty-eight percent of women correctly indicated that breast density is not related to touch, with higher accuracy among non-Hispanic white women and those with greater health literacy. Eighty-seven percent of women recognized that breast density is identified visually via mammogram, with no significant differences in responses by race/ethnicity or health literacy.

Qualitative results revealed additional dimensions of understanding: Some women incorrectly reported that density could be felt, or dense breasts were lumpier, thicker, or more compacted; others identified ''dense'' tissue as fatty. Interpretations of risk included that breast density was an early form of breast cancer.

"The ultimate goal of DBNs is to educate women about breast density, to guide their future decisions about breast cancer screening. Thus, in-depth characterization of women's knowledge after receiving a DBN can help ensure that future health communications are accessible and understandable to all recipients," adds Kressin.

Explore further Family breast cancer history tied to breast density on mammo

More information: Nancy R. Kressin et al, Women's Understandings and Misunderstandings of Breast Density and Related Concepts: A Mixed Methods Study, Journal of Women's Health (2022). Nancy R. Kressin et al, Women's Understandings and Misunderstandings of Breast Density and Related Concepts: A Mixed Methods Study,(2022). DOI: 10.1089/jwh.2021.0343
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

A new study by researchers at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) shows that linking a tumor-killing prodrug to a macromolecular carrier of the Poloxamer family improves retention of the drug in treatment-resistant neuroblastoma tumors, leading to rapid tumor regression and lasting therapeutic responses in several preclinical models. The findings were recently published in The Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology Journal.

Despite aggressive therapy, less than half of patients with high-risk neuroblastoma survive. Some tumors are inherently treatment resistant, due to the overexpression of cell transporters that pump drugs out of tumor cells as a defense mechanism, preventing drugs from killing the tumor. Alternatively, tumor cells may acquire drug resistance following intensive treatment as a result of mutations that cause dysfunction of tumor suppression genes, like TP53.

To circumvent these challenges, CHOP researchers developed a polymer-linked prodrug, a medication that is inert until it is converted by the body into a pharmacologically active drug. The active drug, SN22, belongs to a family of camptothecins, compounds known to promote death of rapidly dividing cells and thus destroy tumors. Other camptothecins, such as irinotecan and topotecan, have been used to treat different types of cancer, but they have serious side effects on healthy tissues, and they are often ineffective against high-risk disease because the tumors are either intrinsically resistant to the drug or develop resistance over time. SN22, however, was structurally optimized so it has advantages over these other camptothecins. It is not recognized by the transporters that pump other drugs out of cells, allowing it to enter, remain in, and kill tumor cells much more effectively. It is also designed to avoid the dose-limiting side effects often encountered with irinotecan.

In earlier studies, the research team led by Michael Chorny, Garrett Brodeur, and Ivan Alferiev created a prodrug that is heading into a phase 1 clinical trial run by Peel Therapeutics, where four residues of SN22 were linked through a breakable bond to a polyethylene glycol carrier. In the latest study, the researchers investigated linking SN22 to a biocompatible polyalkylene glycol block co-polymer of the Poloxamer (Pluronic) family, which they predicted would allow the treatment to circulate in the blood longer, enhance the uptake by cancer cells, and extend the therapeutic exposure time of the bioactive drug in the tumor. In essence, the Poloxamer carrier would disguise the active drug like a Trojan horse, allowing SN22 to be taken up by the tumor, and this in turn would lead to rapid and robust tumor cell death. Remarkably, by integrating several design enhancements, the researchers demonstrated that this prodrug not only promotes cell killing with high efficiency, but it also protects healthy tissues from severe side effects, like intractable diarrhea and low blood counts.

The researchers tested this prodrug in three preclinical models of neuroblastoma driven by MYCN, a protooncogene associated with high-risk disease: 1) a tumor model established using a neuroblastoma cell line derived form a tumor before any treatment and retaining most of its drug sensitivity; 2) another reproducing multidrug resistance acquired after several rounds of treatment; and 3) a genetically engineered mouse model where both MYCN and the drug efflux pump are both overexpressed by the tumor, mimicking an intrinsically drug resistant human neuroblastoma.

The Poloxamer-linked prodrug achieved protracted tumor exposure to the bioactive SN22 at levels at least 40 times higher than the levels required to kill tumor cells, whereas conventional treatment with irinotecan showed only trace amounts of the drug in the tumor after 24 hours. The increased and lasting exposure to SN22 after four weekly doses of the prodrug led to the rapid disappearance of neuroblastoma tumors in all tested models, including those with intrinsic and acquired multidrug resistance. In many cases, there was complete tumor regression with no regrowth even several months after the last administered dose of the prodrug.

"Our results demonstrate that by adjusting the polymeric carrier in our prodrug, we can take full advantage of the unique pharmacology of SN22 and make possible rapid tumor regression and lasting therapeutic responses in models of newly diagnosed and relapsed, MYCN-amplified neuroblastoma," said Michael Chorny, Ph.D., an investigator at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and senior author of the study. "The ability of Poloxamer-linked SN22 to markedly extend survival and to overcome mechanisms governing drug resistance at different phases of refractory disease is an important step toward addressing the urgent need for more robust therapeutic strategies effective against high-risk tumors."

Explore further New treatment developed shows success in high-risk solid tumors

More information: Ivan S. Alferiev et al, Poloxamerlinked prodrug of a topoisomerase I inhibitor SN22 shows efficacy in models of highrisk neuroblastoma with primary and acquired chemoresistance, The FASEB Journal (2022). Journal information: FASEB Journal Ivan S. Alferiev et al, Poloxamerlinked prodrug of a topoisomerase I inhibitor SN22 shows efficacy in models of highrisk neuroblastoma with primary and acquired chemoresistance,(2022). DOI: 10.1096/fj.202101830RR
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

Racialized leaders are considerably under-represented in high-level health care leadership in Canada, although there is gender parity, according to a national study of 3056 leaders published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal).

The study included 135 of Canada's largest hospitals and all provincial and territorial health ministries.

A diverse team of authors of South Asian, Indigenous, Middle Eastern, Latinx and Southeast Asian backgrounds conducted a national study to analyze the effect of race and gender on hospital and health care leadership in Canada. The authors reviewed health leaders' names and photos from institutional and professional websites and documented the race and gender that they perceived for each leader.

"First impressions, or assumptions made rapidly and often unconsciously on the basis of external appearance, strongly affect valuation of a person," writes Dr. Fahad Razak, an internal medicine specialist and researcher, Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute, St. Michael's Hospital, Unity Health Toronto, with coauthors. In describing their methodology, the authors note that they "used perceived race and gender measures to understand how individuals applying for health leadership roles would be initially viewed by a selection committee."

Some key findings:

At the health ministry level, fewer than 5 (< 7%) of 80 leaders were perceived as racialized. Only 5 (7.1%) of 70 leaders in provinces with centralized hospital leadership, 24 (11.5%) of 209 leaders in provinces with regional hospital leadership, and 243 (9.2%) of 2633 leaders in provinces with individual hospital leadership were perceived as racialized.

At the provincial level, the gap between hospital executives perceived as racialized compared with the self-identified racialized population of the provinces was 14.5% for BC, 27.5% for Manitoba, 20.7% for Ontario, 12.4% for Quebec, 7.6% for New Brunswick, 7.3% for PEI, and 11.6% for Newfoundland and Labrador.

Fewer than 5% of hospital leaders in all provinces were perceived as racialized women, except for British Columbia, where 14.7% (15/102) racialized women held leadership positions. There were no racialized women in health ministry leadership roles across the country.

Men and women were equally represented in leadership across the country, including the highest-ranking CEO and deputy minister positions.

Racial diversity in leadership offers benefits, such as promoting culturally sensitive care by addressing discriminatory policies, increasing inclusivity for patients and staff, and providing a broader perspective on racial inequity that can affect health and access to care.

"Evidence suggests that when patients see their race represented in their health care providers, they are more likely to have positive care experiences and agree to essential preventive care," write the authors.

Increasing racial diversity in health care leadership can help address systemic racism.

"Given calls to address systemic racism in Canada's health care systems, increasing racial diversity and inclusion in leadership teams and improving data collection to support this aim are clear ways for institutions to take action," the authors conclude.

Explore further Women underrepresented in U.S. health system leadership

More information: Anjali Sergeant et al, Diversity among health care leaders in Canada: a cross-sectional study of perceived gender and race, Canadian Medical Association Journal (2022). Journal information: Canadian Medical Association Journal Anjali Sergeant et al, Diversity among health care leaders in Canada: a cross-sectional study of perceived gender and race,(2022). DOI: 10.1503/cmaj.211340
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Tyler Sandberg, Center for Infectious Medicine (CIM) at the Department of Medicine, Huddinge is defending his thesis "B cell responses to human flavivirus vaccination and SARS-CoV-2 infection" on March 18, 2022. Main Supervisor is Professor Hans-Gustaf Ljunggren.

What's the main focus of your thesis?

In summary, my thesis is about how antibody producing cells also known as B cells, become activated and produce antibodies after vaccination with different kinds of vaccines or during infection with SARS-CoV-2. B cells are part of our immune system and they produce antibodies and contribute to preventing future infections.

Which are the most important results?

Our most important results were probably the detection of antibodies and memory B cells in vaccinated patients and in recovered COVID-19 patients after infection, likely contributing to prevent future severe disease. The studies included in my thesis, focused on describing how B cells become activated and produce antibodies in adults after either vaccination against different flaviviruses such as yellow fever, TBE, and Japanese encephalitis or during and after SARS-CoV-2 infection. We collected blood samples from hospitalized patients and were able early on to assess the COVID-19 specific B cell and antibody responses. We were also able to collect samples from the patients after recovery, and found that they still had detectable levels of virus-specific antibodies, B cells, and T cells 9 months after infection. T cells are part of the immune system which help protect the body from infection.

How can this knowledge contribute to the improvement of people's health?

When the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, we used the knowledge and skills learned from our vaccine studies, to help understand early B cell responses during SARS-CoV-2 infection in hospitalized patients. Hopefully the knowledge and information generated from our studies, can help in designing new vaccines and treatments against SARS-CoV-2 infection and other viral infections.

What are your future goals?

After my doctoral thesis defense, I will be joining the Swedish biotech company Mabtech that produces monoclonal antibodies used in academic and industry research settings. My goal is to help other researchers and companies improve their research utilizing the antibodies and other products designed and produced by Mabtech, with the hope of generating new knowledge and therapies against infections, cancer and more.

More information: B cell responses to human flavivirus vaccination and SARS-CoV-2 infection. B cell responses to human flavivirus vaccination and SARS-CoV-2 infection. openarchive.ki.se/xmlui/handle  921065814.1617881313
Credit: Trinity College Dublin

Researchers from TrinityHaus, a research center in the School of Engineering in Trinity, today launched the world's first set of Universal Design Guidelines for improving quality of life and enhancing COVID-19 infection control in existing residential care settings for older people. There are 581 such residential care settings in Ireland.

The guidelines take into account many aspects of the physical environment across all parts of a setting and therefore, take a holistic and integrated approach across all spatial scales, from the location, access, and overall site layout, down to building layout, building components or specific applications of technology.

Dimitra Xidous, Co-Applicant and Research Fellow at TrinityHaus, said:

"The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted that Residential Long-Term Care (RLTC) is vulnerable to infectious diseases and recent research shows that RLTC settings have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19, with serious impacts on residents, staff, and family members.

"Like many other airborne infectious diseases, COVID-19 has serious implications for spatial practices and the design of the built environment, which is why this project was such an important one. The new guidelines we are launching today outline how the built environment in RLTC settings can be adapted and retrofitted to enhance the quality of life for residents; improve the visitor experience for friends and family members; and improve COVID-19 infection control, pandemic preparedness and resilience while still protecting the psychosocial health and well-being of residents."

Adopting a universal design approach ensured that the research and resulting guidelines have been created in collaboration with key stakeholders, are people-centered, and address the diverse needs of residents, staff, and visitors regardless of their age, size, ability, or disability.

This research examined the key spatial scales, from site layout to individual internal spaces, space management (i.e., function, use, and circulation), and the elements and systems (i.e., materials and finishes); fit-out; internal environment; and technology, of existing settings.

Credit: Trinity College Dublin

Furthermore, the research and guidelines prioritize design for quality of life in RLTC and emphasize the importance of universal design, including dementia-friendly design. COVID-19 and infection control issues were carefully examined, but at all times through a quality of life lens.

Tom Grey, Co-Principal Investigator and Research Fellow at TrinityHaus, said:

"Throughout this research a set of quality of life domains was used to provide indicators for an environment where residents have the support and freedom to live full and meaningful lives.

"It is vital that we learn from this pandemic and identify how the design, layout, management, and modification of the built environment can support quality of life for residents and improve pandemic resilience. This knowledge will help inform adaptation and retrofit of the 581 public, private, and voluntary RLTC settings in Ireland to protect the people who live and work in RLTC settings from the current pandemic situation and the possibility of future waves of COVID-19.

Additionally, at a policy level, research in this area will support the 'Our Shared Future' program for Government with its commitment to protecting those living in RLTC, while also supporting the work of the COVID-19 Nursing Homes Expert Panel tasked with providing learnings from the crisis and recommendations for the RLTC sector."

In terms of COVID-19 and infection control, the research highlights how respiratory viruses are transmitted through contact, droplets, and airborne routes and that infection control strategies should take account of all transmission routes. However, there is now good evidence that COVID-19-related contact transmission is generally lower risk and that the principal modes of transmission involve respiratory droplets and airborne transmission.

Furthermore, research shows that risk of transmission is reduced outdoors due to air movement removing and diluting COVID-19 virus particles, and environmental conditions such as sunlight damaging the virus particles and decreasing transmission.

Professor Desmond O'Neill, Co-Principal Investigator and Geriatrician at Tallaght University Hospital, said: "Architecture and the design of the built environment has hitherto been a much-neglected issue in terms of nursing homes, yet it is clearly critical to quality of life and the support of long-term care of older people and staff in residential long-term care facilities."

Explore further Care homes that rely on agency staff more than twice as likely to spread COVID-19
Angel Clark laughs with her children as they play a game at their Edgewater neighborhood home on Jan. 25, 2022. Clark creates candles and wax tarts as part of her small business, Minesntheirs, that she runs out of her apartment. (Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)

Angel Clark often awakes from her dreams and jumps into action to make new creations for her at-home business, Minesntheirs, which operates from the two-bedroom Edgewater neighborhood apartment she shares with her 19-year-old daughter.

But it wasnt always like this, Clark said on a frigid Sunday afternoon in February. With no residue of bitterness in her cheery voice, Clark explained how, years before, she was homeless.

Advertisement

No one would take me and my kids in, said Clark, 48. Even friends I had helped. No one. But the refusal ended up being one of the best things I had to go through.

Advertisement

Angel Clark displays her wax tarts in the form of chairs adorned with glitter on Jan. 25, 2022. (Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)

The story of Clarks life can bring confidence to a broken spirit, and shows how perseverance can help turn things around.

As a young girl, Clark grew up in a neighborhood plagued with homelessness and rival gangs. Despite that, she never imagined life would lead her to a Salvation Army shelter near Lawrence Avenue and Marine Drive after no one would take her and her four children in, she said.

Clarks turbulent road began after giving birth to her eldest son at age 17. By the time she was 21, she would have three sons. Even though some thought her life was quickly headed for a dead end of young single-motherhood, Clarks mother remained the flicker of light at the end of a tunnel full of uncertainty.

My mother always talked to me about going to college and not giving up on myself, Clark said. But I liked bad boys and didnt listen.

Clark managed to graduate from Senn High School in the Edgewater neighborhood, but bad luck would visit her years later, all at once it seemed. Her mother experienced an onslaught of illnesses, and was placed in nursing home care in 2006. In March 2007, Clark remembers being on the Clark Street bus and getting a phone call that her mother had died.

Her nephew was later killed in Chicago street violence, and eventually she lost her mothers apartment, where at one time she slept on the floor with her baby daughter. It was around that same time that Clark suffered her first transient ischemic attack, most commonly known as a mild stroke, and lost her job  all while faced with trying to secure a place for her and her children to live.

I remember feeling so defeated entering the (Salvation Army) shelter, Clark said. But something on the inside told me, Whatever they offer you, do it.

Advertisement

She accepted the guidance of Housing Opportunities for Women (HOW), an agency that works to put an end to poverty and homelessness by helping people rebuild their lives. Clark received counseling to address life issues through the program, leading her to continue her education, and within two months was placed in permanent housing.

Eventually, I was speaking in front of people about homelessness and the need for more affordable housing in more neighborhoods in Chicago, said Clark, who became an ambassador for the agency.

Later, she did exactly what her mother had hoped, and went back to school to earn an associates degree from the University of Phoenix.

I told myself, why stop there? she said. Later she earned a bachelors degree in human service management, also from University of Phoenix.

After years of working to help other young women escape homelessness, Clark decided to take a back seat from her ambassador position to give another woman the same experience. But throughout the years, Clark kept experiencing bouts of TIA, and in 2016 she had a big one.

I was cleaning and the next thing I knew I was on the floor, Clark said.

Advertisement

She was immediately taken to the hospital, where she received an injection of TPA, a recombinant tissue plasminogen activator. This treatment, if given within three hours of an attack, greatly increases at patients chances of recovery.

At first, Clarks right arm and leg were limp, and she was bedridden in the hospital, getting ready to be sent to a nursing home. But as her doctor was doing rounds on a Saturday, as a caregiver attended to her, her right toes moved.

I was sent to rehab for a month. The first week was horrible, Clark said. But I knew it was something I had to do. I had survived everything else thrown at me, so I knew I could get through this as well.

Her sisters, Allean Clark, 58, and Amelia Clark, 56, stayed by Angels side, encouraging her to keep going. The trio of sisters agree their supporting each other was instilled in them by their late mother, Rosemary Clark.

My sisters and I leaned on one another for strength through our Heavenly Father, Clark said.

Her sons Eric, 32, Andre, 29, and Adrian, 27, are working; and her 19-year-old daughter, Ahleeyah, is a sophomore at Malcolm X College on Chicagos Near West Side. Clark enjoys the love of her fiances granddaughter, who calls her GiGi.

Advertisement

Angel Clark hugs her son Adrian goodbye at her Edgewater neighborhood apartment where she runs her small business, Minesntheirs, on Jan. 25, 2022. (Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)

Clark still has motor issues with one hand and she limps but creating items for her at-home business is her therapy, she said.

Clark recently shared a photo of her new collection of tarts on Facebook inspired by a group of streets in the Uptown neighborhood where she grew up. Minesntheirs is also showcasing the Uptown Boogie Seat collection, a box of tarts that includes 12 of her scented glitter chair wax melts.

Lately everyone is making candles, soaps and creams, Clark said. The difference with mine is I research ingredients to make sure my creations arent harmful.

Her research was the reason she prefers to make tarts over candles, which increase the chance of fires if pets or small children are around, she said. Her offerings also include goats milk soaps and creams.

Advertisement

I really appreciate the guidance of HOW, and the road I am on now, Clark said. I enjoy creating tarts, soaps and creams for my business. I am so thankful for all these blessings. I am thankful to be an example to never give up.

On its website, HOW says, In 2019 we worked with over 1,300 individuals to harness their potential and rebuild their lives.

Angels potential is still flourishing.

dawilliams@chicagotribune.com
The rhythm is swinging back like it's normal times at one of Missoulas longest-running music festivals.

The 42nd annual Buddy DeFranco Jazz Festival at the University of Montana on Thursday-Friday, March 17-18, brings about a thousand students from the region and a combo of talented guest artists for two days worth of music, including two evening concerts for the public.

IF YOU GO The 42nd annual Buddy DeFranco Jazz Festival concerts are taking place on Thursday-Friday, March 17-18, in the Dennison Theatre at the University of Montana. On both evenings, the show starts at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $7.50 for students, $12.50 for seniors and $22.50 general. Go to griztix.com. After the Friday concert, the guest artists, faculty and students will perform an after-hours session at Stave & Hoop.

Theyre all phenomenal players, theyre all outstanding educators," said Rob Tapper, the director of the UM Jazz Program. "Theyre all wonderful people, and great examples for all of the middle school, high school and our own college musicians to learn from, and to try to ultimately emulate in all aspects of their professionalism."

The concerts run Thursday and Friday. On Thursday, theyll have the UM faculty, which happen to make for a full combo: Johan Eriksson on saxophone, Tapper on trombone, Jeff Troxel on guitar; Tommy Sciple on bass; and Robert LedBetter on drums. Then the outstanding high school musicians from the day, including best sections of big bands, soloist, and the festival guest quintet. In the second half, UMs Jazz Ensemble will play with different guest soloists. They often send charts theyve written or arranged for big band, so therell be a lot of music performed thats their own, Tapper said.

On Friday night, you'll hear more from students and guests. The festival judges will give out a new honor, the Chuck and Brooke Florence Saxophone Section Award, which joins others named after local musicians whove contributed to the music community. Larry Gookin, an alum will have an award given in his name for trombone sections along with that of Lance Boyd, the former program director.

After the concert on Friday, UM students and faculty, festival guests and locals will have an after-hours session at Stave & Hoop.

Almost 50 groups from Montana and around the region are registered, and there would be more had it not been for a shortage of bus drivers in Washington. Festival registration opened in late January and within 24 hours, we had like 25 groups, Tapper said.

The guests

Fans of Lyle Lovett and His Large Band have likely heard saxophonist Brad Leali, whos held the alto down in the group for 10 years. Hes also performed with the Harry Connick Jr. Orchestra as music director and with the Count Basie Orchestra. During his run, their album Count Plays Duke won a Grammy Award and he was nominated for his solo on The Star-Crossed Lovers.

Originally from Denver, he teaches at the University of North Texas, which is known for its One OClock Lab Band. This is his second trip to Missoula for the festival.

Trumpet Jared Hall of Seattle earned a doctorate in music and has performed with Paquito DRivera, Arturo Sandoval, Maria Schneider, Dave Liebman, Jeff Tain Watts, Gloria Estefan and more. A review in All About Jazz said his expressive, probing trumpet style offers a masterful wide-ranging sound and varied emotional landscape.

Pianist Ben Markley has been recognized for his composing and arranging. Hes the director of Jazz Studios at the University of Wyoming and plays regularly in the Denver area. His project, the Ben Markley Big Band, recorded an album, Clockwise: The Music of Cedar Walton, that earned a four-star review in DownBeat in 2017, which called it addictive music that will make you want to grab a partner and hit the dance floor.

Bassist Ashley Summers is another returning guest. A Canadian based in Chicago whos won awards for her writing, such as 2017s Outstanding New Music Composition, award in 2017 for True North, from the International Society for Jazz Arrangers and Composers.

Drummer Brian Claxton teaches at the University of Northern Colorado, where he got his doctorate. KUVO in Denver called him a drummers drummer who just bursts with energy.

Behind the scenes

Outside of public view, the guest artists will be giving master classes, clinics, critiques and workshops with the student groups.

Theyre inviting everything from small middle-school combos all the way up to high school and college big bands, so everybody's gotta do a little of everything, Tapper said. I'm totally confident that all of them can really make a difference in kids and directors lives.

Tapper said the jazz program has been rocking and rolling, with enough students to fill six small combos and three big bands. The music school recently renovated rehearsal rooms upstairs and downstairs.

The transition back to normal has been tricky for everyone but he said the students have been excited.

They're all into it. And we want to make sure this is a great experience, not only for everybody visiting, but our students and make sure they remember, Oh, yeah. This is cool,  he said.

You must be logged in to react.

Click any reaction to login. Love 4 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0

Stay up-to-date on what's happening Receive the latest in local entertainment news in your inbox weekly! Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
What Missoulians get paid isn't nearly enough to pay for housing here.

Last summer in Missoula, the median rent for a two-bedroom home was $979 a month.

The income required to afford a rent like that is $39,160 a year, but the median renter income was a paltry $27,456, according to Heather McMilin, the project development director for the affordable housing nonprofit Homeword. McMilin was part of a City Club Missoula forum on attainable housing on Monday.

Its a very large difference and why we have such a large attendance on this webinar, she explained. Were all feeling it across all sectors.

The median price of a home in Missoula was $485,000 in January, and the income needed to afford that home is almost $147,000. However, the median homeowner income is just about $72,000.

McMilin noted that the cost of homes are affected by laws, lumber, land, lending and labor.

Of those five things, usually maybe two or three are difficult and the rest are manageable, she said. With whats going on in Montana with everybody moving here, all five of those points within the development process are strained.

Josh Slotnick, a county commissioner, said the county is working on a deed restriction program that would create more affordable housing. Its based off a model that was recently implemented in Big Sky, Montana. Its also been used in expensive ski towns in Colorado like Vail and Crested Butte.

Its basically the purchase of a deed restriction, Slotnick explained. Its kind of like what happens in a conservation easement but it happens on a house.

Essentially, the county is considering offering homeowners money to put a deed restriction on their house that would cap the appreciation of that home.

We give you 10% right now in trade for a deed restriction that caps appreciation for 5% a year, Slotnick explained. So in 10 years, that house has only increased 50%.

By comparison, housing prices rose roughly 30% between 2020 and 2021 in Missoula.

So for 10% of the cost of a house were creating affordability instead of building a new one, Slotnick said. Its really low cost compared to the construction of new housing. And we would limit the purchase of these houses to people who earn wages in Missoula County.

The offer would only be made to homeowners whose property is worth 120% of the median home value or less.

Slotnick said the goal is to make housing available to people who live here who are being outbid by people from outside the community or people who are making coastal wages.

The county is investing $17 million in federal funds into infrastructure for the Mullan area to essentially create a new town, he added, so its not as if the county is turning away from encouraging new development as well.

Eran Pehan, the director of the citys office of community development, planning and innovation, noted that they permitted 1,308 new homes in 2020. Thats a 140% increase from 2019.

We made a strategic decision to dedicate more staff resources and time to getting shovel-ready projects approved and getting more housing on the ground immediately, Pehan said.

Pehan was asked by state representative Danny Tenenbaum if the city is considering allowing four-plexes in all parts of the city, much like Walla Walla, Washington has done.

Pehan replied that the city is embarking on a historic comprehensive code reform effort over the next several years. Changing land-use ordinances such as zoning and density will be part of the community conversation thats involved in that effort.

Slotnick said the county is looking to overhaul its zoning code and design codes as well to encourage the construction of more multi-family housing.

Another community member wanted to know how many housing units have been removed from the market by short-term rentals like Airbnb and what the city and county is doing about the situation.

Pehan said the city is in the process of inventorying how many of those short-term rentals are in the city. She noted that because those companies don't share addresses unless they're booked, it's difficult to pin down exactly how many there are and where they're located.

"What we hope is that data gathering process does inform our next steps," she said.

Slotnick said the county is embarking in a similar process.

One listener asked if rent price controls or laws that give renters the right to renew leases can be implemented. Mike Nugent, a City Council member and moderator of the panel, said the city has received a legal opinion on the issue. Essentially, the Montana Legislature has prohibited cities from interfering with private contracts, such as those between landlords and tenants.

"Things like, 'could the city of Missoula do rent control' is something that the Legislature has specifically said 'no, they can't'," Nugent explained. "So what the city can do in that area is limited."

Pehan agreed, saying the city is very limited by state law in what they can do in that area.

"At this point in time, advocacy at the Legislative level is probably the most effective effort," Pehan said.

You must be logged in to react.

Click any reaction to login. Love 0 Funny 1 Wow 3 Sad 1 Angry 4

Get local news delivered to your inbox! Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
LONDON (AP)  Sci-fi epic "Dune" won five prizes and brooding Western "The Power of the Dog" was named best film as the British Academy Film Awards returned Sunday with a live, black-tie ceremony after a pandemic-curtailed event in 2021.

New Zealand filmmaker Jane Campion was named best director for "The Power of the Dog," becoming only the third woman to win the prize in the awards' 75-year history.

Lead acting trophies went to Hollywood star Will Smith and British performer Joanna Scanlan, as an event that has worked to overcome a historic lack of diversity recognized a wide range of talents  including its first deaf acting winner in Troy Kotsur for "CODA."

Last year's awards ceremony was largely conducted online, with only the hosts and presenters appearing in person. This year's return to in-person celebration at London's Royal Albert Hall took place in the shadow of Russia's brutal invasion of Ukraine.

British film academy chairman Krishnendu Majumdar opened the show, hosted by Australian actor-comedian Rebel Wilson, with a message of support for Ukraine.

"We stand in solidarity with those who are bravely fighting for their country and we share their hope for a return to peace," he said.

After that came the glitz, with 85-year-old diva Shirley Bassey and a live orchestra performing "Diamonds Are Forever" to mark the 60th anniversary of the James Bond films.

"Bond is turning 60, and his girlfriends are turning 25," joked host Wilson, who toned down her usual bawdy material for the ceremony's early-evening TV broadcast on the BBC.

Denis Villeneuve's "Dune," a space epic set on a desert planet, took five trophies from its 11 nominations: visual effects, production design, sound, Greig Fraser's cinematography and Hans Zimmer's score.

"The Power of the Dog," set in 1920s Montana and starring Benedict Cumberbatch as a ranch owner, was nominated in eight categories and won two big ones: best film and best director. Campion is only the third female winner in that category, but the second in two years after Chloe Zhao for "Nomadland" in 2021.

Cumberbatch lost to Smith, who was named best actor for his performance as the father of Serena and Venus Williams in "King Richard."

Scanlan was a surprise best-actress winner, beating contenders including Lady Gaga to win for "After Love," a first feature by Aleem Khan about a woman who makes a life-changing discovery after her husband's death.

"Some stories have surprise endings don't they?" said a disbelieving Scanlan.

Kenneth Branagh's semi-autobiographical "Belfast," the story of a childhood overshadowed by Northern Ireland's violent "Troubles," was named best British film.

Ariana DeBose was named best supporting actress for her performance as Anita in Steven Spielberg's lavish musical "West Side Story." The supporting actor prize went to Kotsur for "CODA," in which he plays the deaf father of a hearing daughter. Kotsur, who is also Oscar-nominated, is the first deaf actor to win a BAFTA.

"Have you considered maybe a deaf James Bond?" he asked in his speech, delivered in sign language.

Lashana Lynch, who made a splash as a double-0 agent in Bond thriller "No Time To Die," took the rising star award, the only category chosen by public vote. She thanked "the women of this country who taught me what it is to be in this industry as a dark-skinned woman. I thank you for laying the foundation for people like me."

"No Time to Die" also won the prize for best editing.

Japanese director Ryusuke Hamaguchi's Oscar-nominated drama "Drive My Car" was named best film not in English. "Encanto," the story of a Colombian clan with magical powers, was named best animated feature, and 1960s Harlem music extravaganza "Summer of Soul" won the best documentary prize.

Sian Heder won the adapted screenplay prize for "CODA." Best original screenplay went to Paul Thomas Anderson for coming-of-age story "Licorice Pizza."

The British awards are usually held a week or two before the Academy Awards and have become an important awards-season staging post. This year's Oscars take place March 27.

The British film academy has expanded its voting membership and shaken up its rules in recent years in an attempt to address a glaring lack of diversity in the nominations. In 2020, no women were nominated as best director for a seventh consecutive year, and all 20 nominees in the lead and supporting performer categories were white.

Majumdar said this year's more diverse field showed that "change has come." But the celebration of cinema was subdued, with many attendees reflecting on the war raging on the other side of Europe.

Cumberbatch wore a lapel badge in the blue and yellow of the Ukrainian flag. He said it was to oppose the "megalomaniac" Russian President Vladimir Putin "raining down terror" on Ukraine.

"It's a very scary and sad time," he said on the red carpet. "Although this is a gesture, and people can say it's hollow, it's just something I can do tonight"  along with pressuring British politicians to take in more refugees from the war.

Jonas Poher Rasmussen, director of animated feature "Flee," the story of an Afghan refugee, said it was "surreal" to be at an awards show when "the world is burning."

But he said images of the millions driven from their homes in Ukraine underscored the message that "these stories need to be told."

___

Hilary Fox contributed to this story.
6-year-old missing boy found unharmed

After a frantic search began when 6-year-old Curtis Bryan Mull went missing Monday afternoon in the Antioch community in Burke County, rescuers in an Army National Guard helicopter finally spotted him in a nearby wooded area Tuesday morning.

The search was conducted by the Burke and Caldwell County Sheriffs offices, rescue squads from both counties, the North Carolina State Highway Patrol, the National Guard and numerous volunteers.

Sgt. Maj. Lewis Sigmon of Valdese, assigned to the 109th MP Battalion from Asheville, and Maj. Gen. Ferd Davis, commander of the North Carolina National Guard, thought they saw three dogs lying together in a small cleared section of the woods about a mile and a half south of Antioch Baptist Church as their helicopter flew over the area.

Volunteer searcher Turner Snipes from the Chesterfield community of Morganton saw the helicopter circling the area and decided to investigate on foot. He eventually came across Mull, who was snuggled up with the three dogs, two German shepherds and a collie, that belonged to the Mull family. Mull appeared to be unharmed. The helicopter crew watched from above as he was rescued.

It was a beautiful sight, said Capt. H.R. Matthews, the helicopter pilot.

Suspects sought in high school break-in

Vandals broke into Valdese High School sometime between Friday night and Saturday morning looking for various sources of cash, according to the Valdese Police Department and school principal Jim Draughn.

In addition to raiding a money box in the office that had no money in it at the time, the thieves also plundered the infirmary, making off with a sanitary napkin vending machine that had $1.50 in change in it.

The incident is still under investigation.

Residents break ground for community center

Residents of the Lake James community of Morganton held a ground-breaking ceremony for a new community center Tuesday. Jerry Wilkerson will construct the 40-foot by 60-foot concrete block recreation center, which is scheduled to be completed this summer.

The old frame house on the property has been moved back about 20 feet to make way for the new structure. The home will still be used after the new center opens, primarily for classes and dinners.

The community center will include a day care center and a recreation area for young people. The cost of the project is estimated at $2,800, and residents are still raising funds, but teenagers from the Lake James area have already obtained the concrete blocks.

Chamber celebrates outstanding c

itizens

For the first time in its history, the Burke County Chamber of Commerce will present Outstanding Citizen awards to four men who have made major contributions to the Burke County community.

A committee formed within the Chambers board of directors recently announced plans for the awards ceremony, as well as the award recipients:

Albert F. Garrou, retired longtime executive head of hosiery in Valdese, which developed into Alba-Waldensian Inc.

Robert O. Huffman, former chair of the board of Drexel Enterprises and the Morganton Hosiery Mills Co.

Robert L. Patton, retired longtime superintendent of Burke County schools

J.P. Rostan, founder of Waldensian Bakeries in Valdese

While many people with outstanding records were considered for the honor, the committee members said they chose people whose contributions have made countywide significance.

The awards banquet will take place April 6 at the Morganton Moose Lodge.

Editorial: Resident reacts to new Morganton city dog ordinance

I, for one, have been bothered more by cats than by dogs. My automobile cost me more than $3,000, and for some time, it seemed every time it rained, some big-footed cat would get its feet all muddy and then slide all over my automobile. I know how it feels when my automobile was all washed and waxed up for Sunday, just to find Sunday morning that some cat has used it for a muddy sliding board.

Some of these uncontrolled cats have also used my yard, as they have used my neighbors yard, as an uncovered outhouse, and that is no nutty April Fool joke.  Frank Causby, Morganton

This article is sponsored by the History Museum of Burke County, where the archives of The News Herald are stored.
Students in Chicago Public Schools are slated to shift to a mask optional policy Monday, despite an agreement with the teachers union, which had successfully negotiated for the COVID-19 safeguard to remain in place through the end of the school year.

The vast majority of Illinois schools ended masking requirements late last month, following Gov. J.B. Pritzkers halting of the school mask mandate and prompted by new federal guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Advertisement

But CPS officials had continued to uphold their mask mandate, in large part due to an agreement theyd reached with the Chicago Teachers Union following five days of canceled classes in January, after union members declined to teach in person due to safety concerns.

On Monday, our members will be in schools just like any other Monday  trying to keep themselves, their colleagues and students safe, CTU spokesman Ronnie Reese said in a Friday email.

Advertisement

As expected, Mayor (Lori) Lightfoot and her Chicago Public Schools team capitulating to Tom DeVore, and breaking the agreement with our union on universal masking, has opened the door to more of his foolishness, Reese said in a statement.

Students leave Back of the Yards College Preparatory High School in Chicago on March 7, the day Chicago Public Schools announced plans to end its COVID-19 mask mandate on March 14. (Terrence Antonio James / Chicago Tribune)

DeVore, a downstate attorney who has said he plans to seek the Republican nomination for attorney general, has led legal challenges to Pritzkers pandemic mitigation efforts, including lawsuits against CPS by parents seeking an end to masking, and by city educators opposed to vaccine requirements.

Some CPS families have lambasted the districts decision to end the mask requirement, especially given the union agreement, while other parents have applauded the easing of restrictions in light of the new federal guidance.

The union filed an unfair labor practice charge with the state labor board earlier on March 7, asking for the CPS mask mandate to remain in place until the CTU complaint is resolved.

With the ink barely dry on the new 2022 COVID Safety Agreement, CPS determined to rescind one (of) the agreements central safety mitigation measures, a union attorney said in a Thursday letter to the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board.

The Union fought CPS hard to achieve its 2021 and 2022 COVID Safety Agreements, engaging in remote work actions prior to both agreements, resulting in lost work days and loss of pay for bargaining unit members, CTU officials said. The parties engaged in round-the-clock negotiations to achieve these written agreements, and mandatory masking of all persons entering CPS schools was a critical element of these agreements.

CPS officials could not be immediately reached for comment Friday.

But in a Friday letter to parents, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez reminded families that beginning Monday all CPS schools will move to a mask-optional model.

Advertisement

Im excited that we are taking this step, not because I want our students and staff to stop wearing masks, but because we are now at a point in the pandemic where it is safe to give our families and staff this choice, Martinez said.

Far fewer people are getting sick, ending up in the hospital, and losing their lives to COVID-19, he added. However we feel about masks, I think we can all agree that this is positive progress.

Martinez also noted that CPS was one of the first major districts to require universal masking, and we are one of the last school districts to relax this mandate. We will continue to follow the science, and CPS may require masks again if community transmission reaches a moderate or high level.

CPS CEO Pedro Martinez, shown March 3, announced the mask-optional change despite an agreement with the Chicago Teachers Union that calls for universal masking to continue. (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune)

Martinez also outlined certain situations when students and staff members will still be required to wear a mask, including when visiting with the school nurse or other medical professionals in the school building, when exhibiting COVID-19 symptoms, and following exposure to the virus.

In addition, Martinez said an entire class may be required to wear masks, at the direction of Chicago Department of Public Health.

Monday will be a change for our CPS community, but I want families to know that our schools are ready. Weve given our educators the tools they need to open up a dialogue with students, and we hope that you will have these conversations with your children as well, he added.

Advertisement

At Pulaski International School of Chicago, principal Diana Racasi asked parents in a Friday letter to continue sending at least one mask every day in your childs book bag in the event that students need to wear a mask due to one of the above circumstances or other unforeseen scenarios.

This is one example of how we can work together to ensure that all our students have the supplies they need as we continue to navigate our path forward, Racasi said.

kcullotta@chicagotribune.com
Here's a look at today's COVID-19 news around the country.

Obama diagnosed with COVID

Former President Barack Obama said on Sunday that he had tested positive for the coronavirus, though he's feeling relatively healthy and his wife, Michelle, tested negative.

Ive had a scratchy throat for a couple days, but am feeling fine otherwise, Obama said on Twitter. Michelle and I are grateful to be vaccinated and boosted.

Read more here:

A near-death experience changed her

The doctor pleaded with Paige Deiner to close her eyes and sleep. But she refused to listen. She was terrified.

"If I go to sleep, I'm not going to wake up," she told him.

It was an October night in 2021, and Deiner was fighting for her life, and the life of her 24-week-old baby. She was in the intensive care unit of a Delaware hospital after being diagnosed with Covid. She had lost 30 pounds in 12 days after being put on a ventilator. A doctor later told her that at one point he estimated she had a 5% chance of survival.

Read more here:

Why are gas prices soaring?

There's pain at the pump for American drivers as US gas prices soar to record highs.

Although the United States barely uses Russian oil, Russia's invasion of Ukraine is still a big factor in the gas-price spike  among other reasons.

Confused? We'll walk you through it.

Read more here:

A 4th dose of Covid-19 vaccine will be needed, according to Pfizer's CEO

To help fend off another wave of Covid-19, people will need a fourth dose of vaccine, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla told CBS on Sunday.

"Many variants are coming, and Omicron was the first one that was able to evade -- in a skillful way -- the immune protection that we're giving," Bourla told CBS' "Face the Nation."

"The protection we are getting from the third (dose) it is good enough -- actually quite good for hospitalizations and deaths," Bourla said.

***

Check out more of today's COVID news here:

***
CHICAGO (AP)  A longtime area staple with its wagon wheel decor and "Roy Rogers ribeye," The Ranch Steak House is fighting to reopen as one of the last sit-down restaurants in the once-flourishing Black Chicago neighborhood of Roseland.

About 13 miles (21 kilometers) away near Indiana, Christopher Cain and wife Deja Cousins-Cain sought a new market for their wine bar that promises "Good Vibes Only," settling on the suburb of Lansing, where growth has included a steady increase in Black residents.

The two enclaves of roughly 30,000 people reflect how Black migration patterns in the 21st century are changing the makeup of metropolitan areas nationwide. For decades, Black residents have been leaving some of the nation's largest cities while suburbs have seen an increase in their Black populations. Those two trends have now spread to even more areas of the country, according to the 2020 U.S. census.

The patterns echo the "white flight" that upended urban landscapes in the 20th century. Like those who left cities before them, Black residents often move because of worries about crime and a desire for reputable schools, affordable housing and amenities. But there are key differences: Leaving Black city neighborhoods that are starved for investment is often more of a necessity than a choice, and those who do settle into new suburban lives often find racial inequities there, too.

From 1990 to 2000, 13 of the United States' biggest cities lost Black residents. By 2020, it was 23. According to the census, roughly 54% of Black residents within the 100 biggest American metro areas were suburbanites in 2020, up from 43% two decades ago, according to Bill Frey of the Brookings Institution.

While New York, Los Angeles and Philadelphia all lost Black residents from 2010 to 2020, the change was especially notable in Chicago, which gained population but lost 85,000 Black people, the highest number after Detroit, according to the 2020 census. Those numbers could vary slightly, as the Census Bureau reported last week that 3.3% of the Black population was undercounted in the 2020 census, a rate higher than in 2010.

The official count found that a section of Roseland measuring less than 1 square mile lost 1,600 Black residents. Now, the area near where former President Barack Obama was a community organizer  located about 20 minutes south of downtown  doesn't even have a grocery store. That makes Judy Ware, who bought the Ranch restaurant in 2018, more determined to hang on.

"We take pride in trying to keep this institution in the neighborhood," she said. "It's needed."

For others, though, the suburbs offer a fresh choice.

Cousins-Cain and her husband surprised themselves in choosing Lansing, which wasn't always friendly to Black people.

Settled by Dutch and German immigrants, the city has seen a roughly 50% increase in its Black residents, who now represent almost half the population. Lansing recently elected its first Black trustee.

"It just feels like we are finally getting an opportunity to bring something to the table and bring something to the conversation," Cousins-Cain said.

___

The trends are nuanced. Part of the explanation is that Black residents are continuing to move to Southern cities in a reversal of the Great Migration, a movement that began in the 1910s and resulted in millions leaving the South for northern cities to escape discrimination. But more recently, some of the starkest changes are happening within metro areas as suburbs of major cities see Black population growth.

Black residents, who represented roughly 40% of Chicago's population in 1980, now make up less than 30%. Their presence increased, meanwhile, in dozens of Chicago suburbs from 2010 to 2020.

Chicago residents and demographers offer no shortage of reasons for the urban exodus:

 The decline of the steel industry and blue-collar jobs starting in the 1970s.  The war on drugs.  The dismantling of public housing in the 2000s that displaced thousands of Black residents.  School closures in 2014 that disproportionately affected Black and Latino children.

"It's really hard to point to one specific thing," said Dan Cooper, director of research with Chicago's Metropolitan Planning Council. "And when you look at the confluence of factors, Black folks haven't been centered in policy or they are centered in wrong ways."

Chicago, long a segregated city, continues to report disparate outcomes by race when it comes to home ownership, income, transportation access and more. In Roseland, residents note persistent crime, delayed city services and a train line that ends at Roseland's northern edge. Worries persist about population loss diluting Black political power as drafts of a political remapping show fewer majority-Black wards.

Many said those issues forced them to leave.

Truck driver Chris Calhoun, 32, sought more peace in suburban South Holland in 2014.

The deciding factor for him, he said, was, "Where can I live where my kids can go outside and ride their bikes, or we can take a walk around the block as a family without looking over my shoulder?"

Crystal Fenn left in 2015 for law school in suburban Atlanta, where she's now an attorney.

"If you could do anything better for yourself, why would you want to be there?" she said. "The lack of economic dollars, it's almost like the city doesn't care about Roseland anymore."

Once a Dutch enclave, Roseland was annexed into Chicago in 1892. Within decades, there was an influx of Black families.

Marc Pullins, 56, recalls four nearby grocery stores and has fond memories of Kohn Elementary School.

"Half the neighborhood went to that school," said Pullins, a current resident and activist. "They're all gone."

Kohn is located within the section of Roseland that lost more than 1,600 Black residents. The school sits vacant, a green "For Sale" sign out front. It is among the roughly 55 schools targeted by former Mayor Rahm Emanuel in the nation's largest mass school closure.

Nearby homes and businesses, including a candy shop, are shuttered. The vacancies extend down a once-thriving business corridor that Preservation Chicago has deemed among Chicago's "most endangered places."

Kisha Pleasant, 41, bought her first home in Roseland, but violence and dwindling amenities pushed her out.

"I can't retire in this area," she said. "I want to come outside, and I don't want to be scared that somebody will be shooting at me."

Last year, she moved to Lansing.

___

Sameerah and Jerrell Miller moved with their daughter to a leafy Lansing street six years ago after living in Chicago and neighboring Oak Park.

They bought a home near a top school for less than what they would have paid in Chicago. Lansing's median home price is about $195,000, less than half the city's median.

"Lansing, to this day, still has kids outside in the summertime playing," said Jerrell Miller. "You don't really get that in the city without worry."

The growing Black population prompted Micaela Smith, who moved to Lansing in 2002, to seek office. She became the suburb's first Black trustee last year, after a challenging campaign in the predominantly white suburb.

"I had to do more persuasion to convince the voters," Smith said.

Activists say Lansing has had its fair share of issues involving race. In 2017, a Black teenager was held down and threatened by a white off-duty police officer, a confrontation that led the city to enter a memorandum of understanding with activists and the U.S. Department of Justice.

Pastor David Bigsby of In The Upper Room Ministries recently held a community call about disproportionate traffic stops, noting a major thoroughfare largely divides Black and white residents.

"It's still segregated in town," he said.

Still, the 76-year-old, who moved into the parsonage six years ago, has about 250 congregants now, an increase of about 20%.

Lansing is also seeing a boost in Black-owned businesses. Cain and Cousins-Cain opened their chic S.L. Wine Bar last year, with R&B and jazz setting the mood. Support, particularly from Black customers, has been strong.

"We want our own version of 'Cheers,'" Cousins said.

___

Roseland residents who remain take pride in Obama's work there, and say they've seen signs of a turnaround.

Chicago officials recently launched a $750 million program to improve neglected neighborhoods, including Roseland, and have detailed plans for a train line extension. The Greater Roseland Chamber of Commerce hopes a community hospital will grow into a medical district.

Judy Ware is preparing to resume table service at the Ranch after struggling through the coronavirus pandemic. A fire set during unrest following George Floyd's killing in Minneapolis destroyed the restaurant's interior, and takeout-only couldn't sustain the business, which has been operating for more than 50 years.

After renaming it Ware Ranch Steak House and installing new flooring and orange booths, Ware is feeling optimistic as she prepares to reopen this month.

"If we can weather the storm, I think we'll come out good on the other side," she said. "There is a lot of stuff waiting to happen in Roseland."

___

Associated Press writer Mike Schneider in Orlando, Florida, contributed to this report.

___

Sophia Tareen is a member of The Associated Press' Race and Ethnicity Team. Follow her on Twitter: https://twitter.com/sophiatareen.
Workers, renters and young families are getting priced out of Montanas premier cities in an affordability crisis that reached new heights last year. But its not just competition over scarce housing from pandemic buyers that is driving up home prices. Strict local zoning regulations exclude low and middle-income residents and worsen Montanas housing shortage.

The new Montana Zoning Atlas report from Frontier Institute reveals just how hard it is to build affordable housing in Montana. As a result of exclusionary zoning regulations like Single-Family Zoning and Minimum Lot Areas, the atlas finds 70% of primary residential areas in Montanas most in-demand cities either outright prohibit or penalize affordable multi-family housing development.

Its time for Montana leaders to end these exclusionary zoning practices. Our leaders can adopt pro-housing reforms that give landowners the freedom to build new homes where they are needed most. The best part? These reforms can be implemented at no cost to taxpayers.

Exclusionary zoning practices restrict the types of homes allowed in a particular neighborhood, often separating single-family homes from multi-family homes like duplexes and triplexes, which are more affordable by design.

Exclusionary Single-Family Zoning can either outright prohibit multi-family homes or penalize them by conditioning approval on public hearings, special requirements or a long and costly discretionary permit process.

Similarly, Minimum Lot Areas require a certain size of property for different types of homes. Minimum Lot Areas effectively prohibit multi-family development when the lot area required exceeds the dimensions of existing lots, creating de facto Single-Family Zoning. Minimum Lot Areas can also penalize multi-family housing by requiring larger and more expensive lots for each additional unit added to a building.

Together, Exclusionary Single-Family Zoning and Minimum Lot Areas effectively serve as invisible billboards at the gates of growing Montana neighborhoods which read: low and middle income residents are not welcome here".

It's not surprising to learn that cities at the epicenter of Montanas housing shortage are the least welcoming to affordable types of housing. More than half the primary residential areas in Bozeman and over three quarters of residential land in Missoula prohibit multi-family housing using a combination of Exclusionary Single-Family Zoning and Minimum Lot Areas. Whitefish is a close second with 63% of residential areas that prohibit multi-family development. Its no wonder why median home prices in these communities exceed $450,000.

Among all the cities assessed in the Montana Zoning Atlas report, two-family housing is welcomed without regulatory penalties on just 29% of primary residential land, while three-family housing is welcomed on only 8%.

While regulations certainly arent the only factor driving the cost of housing, the Montana Zoning Atlas demonstrates a clear need for cities to reduce or eliminate exclusionary Single-Family Zoning practices and Minimum Lot Areas.

Montana officials should start with restoring landowners right to build two-to-four family housing in zones which currently only permit single-family homes. Next, officials should eliminate Minimum Lot Area penalties on multi-family homes or follow the City of Helenas lead by eliminating Minimum Lot Areas entirely.

State lawmakers should consider prohibiting Minimum Lot Areas greater than 1/8 of an acre (approximately 5500 square feet) and Minimum Lot Widths greater than 40 ft. in municipal areas already connected to water and sewer.

Everyone will benefit from a more welcoming Montana. Building more homes is the only way to ensure that our communities can grow while remaining vibrant, entrepreneurial, and affordable for low and middle-income Montanans.

Kendall Cotton is president and CEO of the Frontier Institute, a think tank dedicated to breaking down government barriers so all Montanans can thrive.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 1 Angry 1
ARCHIVED - 20 tonnes of contaminated oranges from Egypt seized in Alicante



Seven people are under investigation in Alicante, Valencia and Murcia for being part of a criminal gang and crimes against public health

The Guardia Civil in Alicante has seized 20 tonnes of oranges that were contaminated with chlorpyrifos, a pesticide that has been banned for use in the food industry in the European Union since 2020.

As a result of the operation, carried out in partnership with the Valencia Government's Directorate General of Public Health and Addictions, seven people are under investigation for crimes against public health, trade and consumers, false documentation, and being part of a criminal group.

Over the last few days, searches have been carried out in various fruit company facilities: one in Barcelona - where the consignment was initially analysed; one in Alicante at a company owned by the alleged ringleader; one in Castellon; two in Valencia; one in Castellon; and another warehouse in Murcia.

In a statement, the Guardia Civil confirmed that the oranges - now withdrawn from the market - came from Egypt and were purchased in Barcelona by the leader of the criminal organisation, "who was aware the citrus fruit was contaminated with this banned pesticide".

You might like: Heavy rain saves condemned Alicante crops

"The importer, whose company is located in the province of Alicante, told the authorities that the oranges detected in Barcelona had been sold to a company in Murcia, and subsequently in Valencia. Once purchased by a businessman in the province of Valencia, it was assumed that the latter had contracted with another company in the same province to destroy the contaminated oranges."

However, information provided by the health authorities proved this to be untrue and investigators uncovered a network of companies involved in the distribution of the fruit across eastern Spain, under the direction of the Alicante ringleader.

"Those investigated had allegedly falsified invoices and even the destruction documents in an attempt to convince the authorities that the oranges would be withdrawn from the market and destroyed," added police sources.

Image: Guardia Civil
Ryanair launches 5 new summer routes in Spain



The airline will operate 687 connections in Spain this summer season

Irish carrier Ryanair, the top airline now in Spain, has announced yet another expansion of its summer 2022 schedule, with five additional routes to Europe.

The airlines summer schedule will offer its customers more travel options than ever before, with a total of 687 connections in Spain. The carrier now has 90 bases and more than 2,400 routes operating this high season across Europe.

The 5 new routes are as follows:

Madrid  Faro

Barcelona  Poitiers

Valencia  Perpignan

Castellon  Brussels Charleroi

Girona  Rome Fiumicino

Last week, Michael OLearys company indicated that, while the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine has not impacted demand, prices are likely to be higher across the board this year , and Ryanair recommends that anyone planning a trip should book well in advance to get the best deal possible.

You might also like: Ryanair drops mask-wearing on flights from April

Image: Ryanair
MUSCATINE  No comments were heard Monday during the second public hearing for the 2022-23 budget at the Muscatine County Board of Supervisors regular meeting, and the proposed budget was approved.

No discussion was made by supervisors, other than to close the hearing and move on. Two public hearings were required to approve the levy. The completed levy needs to be to the state by March 31. Supervisor Santos Saucedo commented on the lowering of the budget rate this year.

I wanted to make sure to get that into the record because that is a big positive change for us this year, he said.

The budget is expected to be about 7.5% lower than the 2021-22 budget, as the Iowa legislature has removed the cost of funding mental health off property taxes and is using state funding. The change in funding has resulted in forward funding to the Eastern Iowa Mental Health and Disability Services Region that Muscatine County belongs to as well as an increase in funding.

In June 2021, Gov. Kim Reynolds signed legislation that included dedicated mental health funding from Iowas general fund.

According to the draft budget approved by the supervisors, the property tax levy will be $6.86 per $1,000 of assessed valuation, down from $7.59 per $1,000. The removal of the mental health levy is responsible for a 62-cent drop in the levy. The remaining 11-cent decrease is due to a drop in debt services, as several debts have been paid off.

The board also held a public hearing on elected officials salaries for the coming fiscal year,

The supervisors also approved the pay rates for elected officials during the meeting that were previously lowered from the recommended rates from the Muscatine County Compensation Board. The new rates are a 3% increase for most county-elected officials, a 6% increase for the sheriff and a 1.5% increase for supervisors.

The compensation board on Feb. 16 issued a recommendation to give all elected officials a 4% increase, except the sheriffs position, which would get an 8% increase. The compensation board reported recommendations were based on other counties of similar size and on input from the elected officials. The sheriffs salary increase was based on the salary of police chiefs and sheriffs throughout the state, and the board said it intended to make similar increases over the next several years to bring the salary in line with other public safety officials.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
Most kids wore face coverings as they entered Park Manor Elementary School on Monday, even as Chicago Public Schools relaxed its mask rules for students and staff.

The school  in the Greater Grand Crossing community on the South Side  has struggled with COVID-19, especially as winter break began in December. Twenty-four people were in quarantine or isolation Sunday, after a positive case was detected at the school last week, according to CPS data. Some Park Manor parents expressed concern about kids being unmasked in classrooms for the first time since the pandemic began more than two years ago.

Advertisement

Im not comfortable with the masks getting taken off. Its too soon. Its really too soon, parent Rosheena Green said Monday as she dropped off her 12-year-old daughter at Park Manor, a school with about 250 students.

People are still getting sick, and the summer is coming. The weather is changing, so theres still a chance that these kids could get sick.

Advertisement

Alex Mercado drops off son Leo at Blair Early Childhood Center Monday, the first day that CPS went mask-optional. (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune)

CPS cited a decline in cases and test positivity as reasons why it made masks optional for students and staff members this week even as it faces opposition from the Chicago Teachers Union. The district and the union reached a COVID-19 safety agreement, which includes a masking provision, in January after days of canceled classes amid the omicron surge. The district is still recommending masks.

The union safety deal is set to expire in August. CTU filed an unfair labor practice charge to the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board, which has placed the case on the agenda for its Wednesday meeting.

In the meantime, some parents celebrated the end of the mask mandate Monday. Lacey Cox, a parent of four Park Manor students, said its up to her kids to decide if they want to wear a face covering. They are each carrying one just in case it would appease some teachers, she said.

Personally, I dont do masks. You know, I have breathing issues and the constriction ... its hard for me to deal with it. And I understand (it) being hard for them to deal with it too, Cox said about her children.

CPS announced Friday that masks still must be worn in certain situations, such as when visiting the school nurse; when exhibiting COVID-19 symptoms; and when returning from five days of learning or working from home after contracting COVID-19 or being exposed to it.

Preschoolers are escorted into Blair Early Childhood Center, a CPS school, on Monday, the day the mask rule was lifted. (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune)

CPS  the largest school district in Illinois, with about 330,000 students  was one of the last locally to transition to a mask-optional policy even as Chicago lifted its mandate for most indoor spaces and the statewide school mask requirement ended amid new guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The mask rules were among the COVID-19 protocols challenged by downstate attorney Tom DeVore, who scored some recent legal victories.

Parents on both sides have been making their voices heard on masks. Some have long called for an off-ramp to the districts COVID-19 policies while others say its CPS responsibility to protect the most vulnerable students, including preschool and prekindergarten students not age eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine.

John Rodriguez dropped off his 4-year-old daughter Monday morning at Blair Early Childhood Center on the Southwest Side. He said later she was excited not to wear a mask to school, and hes not concerned about the policy change, even though shes not old enough to get vaccinated. The Rodriguez family successfully battled the virus in December, he said.

Advertisement

The first couple months of school, every couple of weeks, she had a new cold. So I was kind of like, well, is this mask protecting us from COVID? said Rodriguez, who lives in the Garfield Ridge neighborhood. And then at some point, around Christmastime, someone brought COVID into the house. It could have been her at school. It could have been me at work or my wife at work. Were not really sure, but we all wore masks, and we still got it.

John Rodriguez drops off his preschool daughter, Saoirse, Monday at Blair Early Childhood Center, run by Chicago Public Schools. He welcomed the end of the mask rule and said he was skeptical masks offered much protection against COVID-19. (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune)

Jessica Munoz, who has a 5-year-old at Blair and an older child, said she was somewhat apprehensive about the end of universal masking in CPS.

I mean, I want to see. I believe if youre vaccinated, it works, she said, but added that in CPS, not a lot of kids I know are vaccinated. So its like, I dont know how it works.

Sophia Ramos, mother of a 4-year-old at Blair, said she was really happy that theyve gone mask optional. I was really frustrated with the teachers union and not having a voice in whether or not to mask my child.

Paul Bruton, father of a 4-year-old Blair student, said his daughter will continue to wear a mask because she is too young for the vaccine and she has a baby brother at home.

Its been really tough the last couple of months because a lot of people are talking like the pandemics over, and I guess maybe it is if youre vaccinated and youre ready to move on, Bruton said as he wore a KN95 mask.

Advertisement

But for families with kids under 5, thats not an option still  and obviously people who are immunocompromised or anything like that. So, yeah, I get why the district is doing it. Were going to still mask up at least until theres a vaccine available for kids under five.

Blair serves 218 students between preschool and first grade, according to CPS. The school reported a few COVID-19 cases in early February, but none since then, CPS data shows. About 14% of the Blair student population is fully vaccinated, according to CPS vaccination data from late last month.

CPS said districtwide, nearly half of age-eligible students and more than 91% of staff are fully vaccinated. About 1 in 5 Park Manor kids is fully vaccinated.

Teresa Collins dropped off her 12-year-old son at Park Manor Elementary on Monday. She expressed concern that the school will continue to experience COVID-19 troubles. Park Manor has reported, on average, at least one new case every other week this school year. Thirteen cases were reported over a 10-day period in December, according to CPS data.

So its gonna, you know, probably happen again, but Im just praying that it dont, Collins said about a surge in school cases. Im just praying that they keep the masks  that the kids keep the masks on, you know? Thats my personal opinion.

oolander@chicagotribune.com

Advertisement

tswartz@tribpub.com
South Africans with backup power systems at home must ensure that their insurance is aware of their installation and that it has been safely and correctly set up and configured.

King Price Insurance spokesperson Wynand van Vuuren recently told CapeTalks Refilwe Moloto that those who failed to do so might not be covered in the event of a fire, flood, or power surge.

Many households now have some form of alternative energy source that can supplement their consumption or provide backup power during load-shedding.

A popular option is photovoltaic solar power, which uses panels on a houses roof to capture energy from the sun.

This requires an inverter that can convert energy from the panels into useable electricity for your house.

There might also be a battery in the configuration to store excess energy for dispatching when the sun isnt shining.

This combination of equipment  panels, inverter, and battery  can cost tens or hundreds of thousands of rand, depending on your households electricity requirements.

Van Vuuren said that communication on your backup power system with the insurer should be a first priority.

The primary purpose of this is to ensure that the insurer is aware of the system and that it is included in your building cover.

In addition to keeping your insurer in the loop, the solution and its installation must be reliable and safe.

You must make sure that what you buy and how it is installed is also correct, Van Vuuren said.

First, go and make sure that it is SABS-approved, and that there is some or another quality assurance or warranty on the item, Van Vuuren advised.

He said that consumers must do their homework on this by going online and checking the specifications and reviews of the products.

Finding the right installer

Once a homeowner has found their preferred solution, it is crucial that a qualified electrician install it.

You cant just go and read the manual and put that alternative power on your house yourself, Van Vuuren stated.

The short-term insurance policies in our country require that the construction must be perfectly done, workmanship must be professional, and it must be certified.

Then you know that you have got nothing to worry about.

Once the installation is done, it is important to call the insurer and inform them of its cost, so your premium can be adjusted accordingly.

Van Vuuren added that any other alternative power sources  such as fuel-based generators or gas-powered systems  should also be installed by professionals.
FNBs Merchant Services has recorded an explosion of growth in ecommerce sales and variety in South Africa since 2019.

The bank said the Covid-19 pandemic has exponentially accelerated the adoption of ecommerce in the country.

Originally dominated by digital goods such as airline travel and accommodation, the nature as well as the scale of the ecommerce sector has changed, with restrictions on travel and gatherings pushing consumers to turn to ecommerce for an increasing array of goods and services, FNB explained.

FNBs statistics showed that the local online ecommerce market was currently estimated at just under R200 billion per annum, up from R90 billion in 2019 and R142 billion in 2020.

FNB Merchant Services CEO Thokozani Dlamini said the sector had already exceeded FNBs conservative estimates initially published at the pandemics peak.

His division had observed the following noteworthy trends in ecommerce in South Africa:

Ecommerce accounted for 14% of retail card payments in 2021, up from 8% before the pandemic.

Total online sales jumped 41% in 2021, after 55% in 2020, driven by increased spending in less traditional ecommerce industries.

Excluding Travel and Accommodation (T&A), online spending grew 39% in 2021, following a 102% rise in 2020.

Transaction volumes were estimated at 500 million, up from 345 million in 2020 and 200 million in 2019.

Average purchase values declined, from R450 in 2019 to R390 now, as smaller retail and lower basket items gain traction.

While most of the trends were positive, FNB said spending on T&A still lagged significantly behind pre-pandemic values and volumes as borders were tightly controlled and travel restrictions remained in place.

Despite this, FNB estimated that the countrys ecommerce market would reach more than R400 billion in value by 2025 on the back of more than 1 billion annual transactions.

Dlamini said not all major retailers were prepared for the sudden change brought about by the pandemic, but those that were successful were the ones who could adopt a fast, reliable logistical solution in meeting the delivery demand.

Key challenges to overcome were consumer trust in the fulfilment of sales where physical products had to be delivered, and logistical solutions to meet spiking demand, Dlamini said.

He emphasised there was still time for retailers without a digital presence to catch up, but that this would depend on the nature of their industries and client base.

Large-ticket items such as household electronics and decor would likely still see consumers wanting the touch/feel/witness experience before committing to an expensive purchase, he explained.

This highlights the urgent need for retail companies to focus on their omnichannel retail strategy.

FNB said that some smaller companies, who were unable to invest in their professional and specialist digital environments, turned to platforms like Takealot, Bid or Buy, and Facebook Marketplace or similar solutions such as super merchants, payment gateways and even banking solutions.

An interesting result of the shift to e-commerce has been the increasing competitiveness of smaller, independent retailers, Dlamini explained.

Larger retailers have bargaining power and with that potentially significantly lower input costs than an SME going virtual, but even so, their digital costs are significantly higher since they need to maintain a unique digital offering while data security is paramount.

FNB added the ability to recognise that window shopping was migrating to browser shopping would dictate how future retail developed.

Companies that offer the best online experience backed by pricing will become most successful, the bank said.
A biotech firm is seeking permission to release genetically modified mosquitoes into the open air of California for the first time later this year, aiming to reduce the expanding populations of invasive mosquitoes and prevent deadly disease.

The controversial research project  planned for the Tulare County community of Visalia, with potential expansion into Fresno, San Bernadino and Stanislaus counties  will over time introduce 2 million male mosquitoes with a "kill switch" built into their DNA. When they mate with wild insects, their offspring die, causing an eventual collapse of the population.

Quality journalism doesn't happen without your help. Subscribe today! Support local news coverage and the people who report it by subscribing to the Napa Valley Register.

Their target: Swarms of the mosquito, first detected in Los Angeles County in 2011, which have since spread northward into 20 California counties. While California's native mosquito emerges at dusk, these black-and-white-striped invaders hunt for blood during the day, when people are outside. Elsewhere, they transmit potentially fatal Zika, dengue, yellow fever, chikungunya and other viruses.

The lab-bred insects  trademarked under the name "Friendly" by British company Oxitec  are male, so they don't bite or spread disease. Modified they only mate with others of their species, not California's native mosquitoes. Only the female offspring die; the males live and become carriers of the deadly gene, passing it on to shrinking future generations.

Approved by federal regulators this week and now under review by the state's Department of Pesticide Regulation, the research project is welcomed by Tulare County's Delta Vector Control District.

It's a more ecologically beneficial way to control mosquitoes than spraying insecticides, said the district's Mustapha Debboun, a medical and veterinary entomologist and retired U.S. Army colonel who has worked more than 27 years in the field of insect-borne diseases. Insects are increasingly resistant to pesticides, he said. And the engineered mosquitoes do not harm beneficial bugs like bees and butterflies.

"It's ingenious," said Debboun, who worries that Zika and Dengue virus could quickly spread if introduced into the U.S. by travelers from a country where the pathogens are found.

"Instead of using a human being to apply a pesticide to kill these mosquitoes, we're using male mosquitoes to do the job for us," he said. "It's nature against nature."

Some Tulare County residents complain that the invasive mosquitoes, which arrived in the region five years ago, are a growing nuisance. At a meeting of Visalia's City Council, Councilman Brian Poochigian said that he and his family were bitten six or seven times every time they left home.

"I'm scared to send my kids outside without spraying them down," he said, according to the Visalia Times-Delta. "We can't eat outside in our backyard because we get bitten."

But others say the project is being rushed into field testing without sufficient review and public consultation.

"We're lab rats," said Angel Garcia, a native of Tulare County's citrus-growing town of Lindsay.

"The community was not included in the process. If they really want to protect public health, we need to be at the table," said Garcia, of Californians for Pesticide Reform. "There seems to be no transparency, no independent review and no public participation."

According to critics, there's no publicly available data to support Oxitec's claims that the introduced mosquitoes will reduce incidence of mosquito-borne diseases. According to an independent peer-reviewed study from Yale University scientists, two years of continual releases of the mosquitoes at a test site in Brazil failed to reduce populations of .

Furthermore, none of the worrisome viruses have been transmitted within California, opponents say.

"The California release would be the largest release of any genetically engineered insect in the United States," said Sacramento resident Dana Perls of Friends of the Earth. "It's much larger than we feared. And it's irresponsible."

The male mosquitoes carry two introduced genes.

One, called the self-limiting gene, prevents offspring from surviving to adulthood. It disrupts the proper functioning of the young insect's cells by over-producing a protein, interfering with the cells' ability to produce other essential proteins needed for development.

The other is a fluorescent marker gene. It produces a protein throughout the body of the insects, which glows red under a special light. This helps researchers track the insects in the wild.

It is part of a growing effort to explore the use of genetic engineering as an alternative to pesticides. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is seeking to enlist such techniques to eradicate an invasive diamondback moth in New York, which eats vegetable crops, and a cotton-munching pink bollworm in Arizona.

Millions of the Oxitec mosquitoes were released in the Florida Keys last year. The company says that the results of that project will be shared in the coming months as data is evaluated.

For the California experiment, the male mosquitoes and eggs will arrive in just-add-water "Mosquito Rearing Boxes."

The pilot project will take place in residential neighborhoods of Visalia, the gateway to Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks in the agricultural San Joaquin Valley. The precise locations and start date will be announced if the project receives state approval.

Visalia was selected because the problem with the invasive mosquito is greatest in urban settings, such as backyards, said Debboun. The insect can breed in tiny wet spaces, such as soda bottle caps.

If Oxitec later finds female mosquitoes with the gene surviving to adulthood, it must stop the project and apply pesticides to the treated area where the surviving females were detected, according to the EPA. Animals that eat mosquitoes are not expected to be harmed.

The experiment will be contained naturally because the invasive mosquito is a homebody, rarely venturing more than 500 feet from its birthplace, say supporters. But in the event of storms, wildfires or other significant natural disasters, the company is required to move the rearing boxes to a secure facility with triple shatter-proof containment.

The assurances do not appease critics such as UC San Francisco-based Dr. Robert Gould, president of San Francisco Bay Physicians for Social Responsibility.

"Once released into the environment, genetically engineered mosquitoes cannot be recalled," he said. "Rather than forge ahead with an unregulated, open-air genetic experiment, we need precautionary action, transparent data and appropriate risk assessments."

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Former state Sen. John F. Dunlap, who represented the North Bay in the state Legislature for a dozen years and was the last of four family members who formed a 124-year political dynasty, died Monday at his home in Napa. He was 99.

His family is awaiting official confirmation of the cause of his death.

Dunlap, an attorney and World War II veteran, was best known for supporting farmworkers' rights and protecting the environment, issues that didn't resonate in his district at the time.

"John was at the cutting edge of the environmental movement at a time when the district was pretty conservative," said Doug Bosco, a Santa Rosa attorney and friend of Dunlap since the 1970s. "He had to do a lot of explaining."

Bosco, a Democrat, was elected to the Assembly in 1978, the same year that Dunlap narrowly lost his bid for a second state Senate term to Republican newcomer Jim Nielsen.

Quality journalism doesn't happen without your help. Subscribe today! Support local news coverage and the people who report it by subscribing to the Napa Valley Register.

Dunlap, who grew up on the family prune ranch in Yountville, worked with then-Gov. Jerry Brown to pass a 1975 law that created the Agricultural Labor Relations Board, extending collective bargaining rights to farmworkers, Bosco said.

Congressman Mike Thompson, a St. Helena Democrat who served in the state Senate in the 1990s, said that was an example of Dunlap's willingness to take "a courageous stand" on issues.

Farmworker rights were not popular here at the time, but "it was certainly the right thing to do," Thompson said, noting that Dunlap became a "national leader" of the movement.

"He was a very intelligent man, very thoughtful, who cared a lot about the district he represented," he said.

Thompson said their friendship dates to 1988, when he became a candidate for the state Senate. "I knew him. I respected his work," he said.

In the 1990 Senate race, Thompson defeated Nielsen, the man who had displaced Dunlap 12 years earlier. Nielsen returned to the Senate in 2013.

"I always had great respect for Sen. Dunlap, who was a former opponent," Nielsen said in an email. "He was a man of strong and true convictions, and one whom I considered a friend."

Dunlap's home in Napa was the setting when the late environmentalist Bill Kortum and others hatched the concept for Proposition 20, the 1972 ballot measure that created the state Coastal Commission and took control of seaside development away from local government.

With backing from then-Secretary of State Jerry Brown, the measure was approved by 55% of state voters, despite hefty donations from opposing special interests.

It came as local environmentalists were fighting a plan to develop a 5,200-home project called The Sea Ranch on an untrammeled stretch of the Sonoma Coast south of Gualala, which had gained approval from county supervisors.

Proposition 20 was the first law of its kind in the nation and brought plans for subdivisions on dozens of sprawling coastal properties to a "grinding halt," according to the late Peter Douglas, who served as chairman of the Coastal Commission for 25 years.

The commission ultimately cut the number of Sea Ranch lots by more than half and mandated multiple public access points.

When Dunlap arrived in Sacramento in early 1967, he was part a freshman class that included Assemblyman Pete Wilson, who went on to become a U.S. senator and governor, and George Moscone, who resigned in 1976 to become mayor of San Francisco.

Another newcomer was Ronald Reagan, who started his first term as governor the same day Dunlap was sworn into office, according to Capitol Weekly.

The Coombs-Dunlap family's 124-year legislative dynasty began with John Dunlap's great-grandfather, Nathan Combs, who came over the Oregon Trail to California and founded the city of Napa in 1847.

He served two terms in the Assembly, including the bloody session of 1860 in which Assemblyman John C. Bell was stabbed to death on the Assembly floor by a rival lawmaker.

Nathan's son, Frank L. Coombs, served in the Assembly from 1886 to 1930 and his son, Nathan F. Coombs represented Napa County in the Senate from 1948 to 1960. His nephew was John Dunlap.

All of his ancestors were Republicans, with Dunlap the lone Democrat.

Dunlap's chances for a second Senate term in 1978 were initially promising, with a well-known name in his community, an incumbent's fundraising advantage and a comfortable Democratic majority in his district, the Capitol Weekly said.

But as the campaign year wore on, public safety and property taxes became the primary issues and Nielsen, then a young farmer who received endorsements from former Democratic legislators, squeezed out a narrow victory.

Dunlap graduated from Napa High School in 1940 and enrolled at UC Berkeley. He served four years in the Army Air Corps during the war, then finished his degree at Berkeley and went to UC Law School in San Francisco.

After graduation he joined Coombs and Dunlap, the family law firm in Napa.

John and Janet Dunlap met in 1945 when she was traveling by train to visit her brother in Southern California and he was a young soldier from Napa returning to his Southern California Army base.

They married in 1947 and raised four children. In 2007, Janet died of acute leukemia at age 84, after 60 years of marriage. John Dunlap remarried after nearly a decade as a widower.

"My father was a truly good man with a great imagination, an offbeat sense of humor, a commitment to the Earth and above all else, his children and wife," his daughter, Jane Dunlap of St. Paul, Minn., said in an email.

"I will miss him beyond measure and recognize how lucky we are to have had him with us for so long," she said.

"What a guy, huh?" said Maggie Fishman, a Santa Rosa Junior College board member, who said she was impressed by Dunlap's speech to one of her Sonoma State University classes in the early 1970s.

After graduating, Fishman called Dunlap and wound up with a job as campaign worker in his successful state Senate bid in 1974.

"He had a real empathy for people who were struggling," she said. "He found a positive role for government in people's lives."

Reflecting on his lifetime in Napa County in a 2017 interview, Dunlap noted the town's considerable changes.

When he graduated from high school in 1940, Napa County had 28,000 residents and a close community, he said. Now grown to more than 100,000 people, the county "has become a fancy wine-celebrated area," but there is nowhere else he'd rather live, Dunlap said.

His most recent campaign work was for Barack Obama's presidential campaign in 2008.

In addition to his daughter Jane, Dunlap is survived by his wife, Mary Lu Kennelly of Napa; sons Peter Dunlap of Petaluma and David Dunlap of Napa; daughter Jill Dunlap Golis and son-in-law Pete Golis of Santa Rosa; daughter-in-law Margaret Dunlap of Petaluma; five grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

Plans for a memorial service, likely in May, are pending.

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Dollar goes up, euro also rises in Armenia

EU studying possibility of providing military assistance to Moldova

Opposition supporters move toward Armenian parliament building

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

Mirzoyan, Nuland discuss Armenia-Azerbaijan peace agreement process

Civil disobedience actions are carried out in some Armenia cities

Armenia 2nd-President Kocharyan, ex-deputy PM and now lawmaker Gevorgyan trial to resume

Pashinyan to Morawiecki: This year we mark 30th anniversary of Armenia-Poland diplomatic relations

No new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia

Armenia Central Bank leaves refinancing rate unchanged at 9.25%

Demonstrators demanding PM Pashinyan's resignation block Sevan-Yerevan motorway

Police: 117 demonstrators apprehended in Yerevan

Kansas National Guard leadership visiting Armenia

Bloomberg: EU new gas partners

Armenian member of Turkey legislature says he was thrown at table of wolves

Italian PM slams Lavrov for his 'Hitler' statements in interview with local television

South Korea and US plan to start air force exercises on May 9

Police special forces apprehend Armenia ex-president Robert Kocharyans son

Police: 70 people apprehended from Yerevan streets

World Press Freedom Index 2022: Journalism as a profession is humiliated in Armenia

Newspaper: Armenia ruling party MPs are worried

Borrell speaks on possible disconnection from SWIFT of new Russian banks

Cyprus becomes first EU country with full 5G coverage

Police apprehending participants of civil disobedience actions in Yerevan

State Department: Deepening US-Armenia cooperation in nuclear energy will strengthen bilateral relations

Peaceful disobedience actions resume in Yerevan early morning

Mirzoyan: Armenia appreciates US support for developing energy sector

Blinken underscores US commitment to help Armenia, Azerbaijan find sustainable peace, prosperity

Eurozone economic sentiment falls much more than expected in April
The task of our delegation is clear: to do everything to make the meeting of the Presidents of Russia and Ukraine take place. This was stated by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, UNIAN reported.

He noted that the representatives of the Ukrainian and Russian delegations speak to each other every day in video format.

"The task of our delegation is clear: to do everything so that the meeting of the presidents takes place; a meeting which, I am convinced, people are waiting for. It is understandable that this is a difficult story, a difficult road, but a road that is needed. And our goal is for Ukraine to get the necessary result in this struggle, in this difficult negotiation work, which is necessary for peace and security so that we have normal and effective guarantees. Not as it was according to the Budapest memorandum, not as it is in our skies, but such guarantees that the Ukrainians can say: Oh, this works. Oh, these are guarantees," Zelenskyy said.
During their telephonic conversation, French President Emmanuel Macron and US President Joe Biden agreed to tighten sanctions against Russia, the Elysee Palace reported.

According to a statement issued by the Elysee Palace, the two presidents reaffirmed their support for Ukraine and the initiatives to end hostilities.

But it was not clarified what sanctions are in question.

And in a separate conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Macron expressed support for Ukraine, and spoke in detail about the additional assistance that the European Union will provide to the Ukrainian government.
Russia has asked China for military support, including drones, as well as economic assistance for its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, according to conversations CNN had with two US officials, the news agency reported.

The requests came after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, one of the officials said. That official declined to detail the Chinese reaction, but indicated that the Chinese had responded.

When asked by CNN about the reporting of Russia's request for military aid, Liu Pengyu, spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in the US, said in a statement, "I've never heard of that."

Liu expressed concern for "the Ukraine situation"calling it "indeed disconcerting", and said China has and will continue to provide humanitarian assistance to Ukraine.

Liu said: "The high priority now is to prevent the tense situation from escalating or even getting out of control. ... China calls for exercising utmost restraint and preventing a massive humanitarian crisis."

News of Russia's request comes before White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan will meet with his Chinese counterpart, Yang Jiechi, in Rome on Monday.

Sullivan told CNN on Sunday that China providing Russia with support is a "concern."

"We also are watching closely to see the extent to which China actually does provide any form of support, material support or economic support, to Russia. It is a concern of ours. And we have communicated to Beijing that we will not stand by and allow any country to compensate Russia for its losses from the economic sanctions," Sullivan said.

Sullivan added that the US has made it clear to Beijing that there will "absolutely be consequences" for "large-scale" efforts to give the Kremlin a workaround to US sanctions.
Russia, Ukraine to hold online negotiations on Monday

Xinhua) 08:05, March 14, 2022

Photo taken on March 7, 2022 shows a view of the third round of talks between Russian and Ukrainian delegations at the Belovezhskaya Pushcha. (Belta news agency via Xinhua)

"On Monday, March 14, a negotiating session will be held to sum up the preliminary results," Podoliak tweeted.

MOSCOW/KIEV, March 13 (Xinhua) -- Russian and Ukrainian delegations will resume talks on Monday via video link, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Sunday.

"Negotiations go non-stop in the format of video conferences. Working groups are constantly functioning. A large number of issues require constant attention. On Monday, March 14, a negotiating session will be held to sum up the preliminary results," Mykhailo Podoliak, advisor to the Head of the President's Office of Ukraine, tweeted on Sunday night.

Ukrainian and Russian delegations have held three rounds of peace talks in-person in Belarus since Feb. 28, though the negotiations ended without a significant breakthrough.

(Web editor: Peng yukai, Liang Jun)
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot will give city workers who didnt get their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine by Sunday a chance to get the shot before placing them on no-pay status, she said Monday.

Lightfoot implemented a rule requiring city workers get vaccinated by March 13 or lose pay. Asked Monday how the city would enforce its policies, Lightfoot said supervisors would call workers in to verify that they arent vaccinated and give them an opportunity to comply. They will then be given an order to get vaccinated and if they dont, she said, then theyll be placed on no-pay status, which is considered nondisciplinary.

Advertisement

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoo, shown Feb. 22, t reset the first-dose deadline for March 13 after the courts upheld a police union arbitration ruling that sided with the city. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)

That gives the city flexibility as it balances its public health rules with staffing issues, particularly in the Chicago Police Department.

Were not doing mass firings today, Lightfoot said.

Advertisement

Lightfoots latest pronouncement comes after the city won another round in court last week in its legal battle with the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police over the vaccine mandate. But she faces pressure not just from the police union  which has appealed the latest legal ruling and claims the mandate will results in an exodus of officers  but also from a group of aldermen still seeking to undo the rule.

The lawsuit filed last year by Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7 and other police unions against the city resulted in a February arbitrator ruling that upheld the requirement for city employees to be vaccinated, and set this Sunday as the deadline to get the first shot.

A judges decision last week to deny the unions request to reconsider, and to lift a previous order pausing the vaccine policy, were additional setbacks for the local FOP, whose president, John Catanzara, has for months insisted the mandate violated union collective bargaining agreements.

The FOP has appealed that ruling, but Catanzara acknowledged to his membership in an online video Friday that unvaccinated officers could be placed on no-pay status Monday. However, he said the arbitrator indicated Friday that officers who have pending vaccine exemption requests will be excused from the rule until they receive a determination, and that those denied exemptions will get a six-week reprieve. Catanzara said hundreds of officers could fall into that category.

As of Monday morning, 30 Police Department employees and 19 Fire Department employees were on no-pay status, a city spokesperson said. Some city employees previously had their pay cut because they refused to report their vaccine status or submit to regular COVID-19 testing.

According to city data, 2,367 Police department employees still have not reported getting vaccinated, down from 2,777 last week. Nearly 80% of the department is vaccinated, compared to nearly 89% of the whole city workforce.

Chicago Tribunes Alice Yin contributed.

gpratt@chicagotribune.com
The US Embassy in Armenia informs that 306 thousand doses of the Pfizer vaccine against the coronavirus has arrived in Armenia Sunday.

And the Ministry of Health of Armenia informed Armenian News-NEWS.am that this is a donation of the US government to Armeniaand within the framework of the Biden-Harris administration's initiative to make vaccines available globally.

In addition to the Pfizer vaccine, the US government has provided more than $15 million in assistance to the government of Armenia to mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Contradictory information is circulating about the movements taking place on the Azerbaijani side of the line of contact. Tigran Abrahamyan, an MP from the opposition "With Honor" Faction in the National Assembly of Armenia and a security expert, wrote this on Facebook Monday morning. He added as follows, in particular:

"As far as I know, there are small but very limited movements in some directions, and this does not give me grounds to draw conclusions that Azerbaijan is preparing for large-scale [military] operations or regrouping.

At the moment, I do not consider the probability of large-scale actionsespecially in the direction of Artsakh [(Nagorno-Karabakh)]high, which naturally does not mean that local operations or provocations of various kinds are not possible on the border of Artsakh or Armenia.

Moreover, the events can accelerate, and new scenarios can be outlined in a short time. But at this moment I have no grounds to give unequivocal assessments."
The OSCE has placed great importance on the protection and preservation of objects of cultural heritage since the organizations inception, the Polish OSCE Chairmanship said in a statement in response to a query from Armenpress regarding multiple local and international reports that the Azerbaijani authorities are destroying Armenian cultural heritage in Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh), as well as regarding the possible measures of the OSCE structures on the matter.

The OSCE has placed great importance on the protection and preservation of objects of cultural heritage since the organizations inception. As early as June 1991 at the Cracow Symposium on Cultural Heritage, the then-CSCE participating states pledged to endeavor to protect cultural heritage in compliance with relevant international agreements. Additionally, the participating states committed to cooperating closely with religious faiths, institutions and organizations regarding the preservation of the cultural heritage and pay due attention to monuments and objects of religious origin, the Polish OSCE Chairmanship said, referring to the full text of the Symposium document.

The Polish OSCE Chairmanship noted that the preservation of Armenian historical and cultural monuments has been on the agenda of the Permanent Council, and that the Polish OSCE Chairmanship fully supports all relevant OSCE structures, including the OSCE Minsk Group and its Co Chairs in their endeavors towards achieving a comprehensive and lasting peace.

The Polish OSCE Chairmanship considers the protection of all historical and cultural monuments as our joint commitment. The preservation of Armenian historical and cultural monuments has been on the agenda of the Permanent Council. Against this backdrop, the Polish OSCE Chairmanship fully supports all relevant OSCE structures, including the OSCE Minsk Group and its Co Chairs in their endeavors towards achieving a comprehensive and lasting peace. It would considerably improve the security, stability and prosperity of the entire region and safeguard the protection of all historical and cultural monuments, the Polish OSCE Chairmanship added.

The Polish OSCE Chairmanship, however, did not comment on the implementation of the ICJ rulings and the activities of other international organizations in the region.
It has been for over a week, the Azerbaijani side is not allowing the representatives of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) to restore the alleged disruption of the natural gas pipeline. Hence, as a result, more than 100,000 people have been deprived of heating in cold weather conditions. In parallel, the electricity is being regularly cut. The Human Rights Defender (Ombudsperson) of Armenia, Kristine Grigoryan, noted about this in a statement she released Monday morning. The statement continues as follows:

This further worsens the difficult humanitarian conditions which has been emerged during and after the war.

As a result, hospitals, schools, kindergartens, temporary shelters for displaced persons are

deprived of their basic living conditions; it is impossible to exercise the right to health care of people, and the right of children to education.

Moreover, it has been a week since the Azerbaijani military forces have been shooting intensively in the direction of the peaceful villages of Artsakh; Khramort village and Askeran city of Askeran region, and Karmir Shuka and Khnushinak villages of Martuni region. In Khramort village, a peaceful civilian was injured.

All these are aimed at maintaining an atmosphere of fear and terror among the people living in Artsakh, with ultimate aim of making Armenians to leave and annihilate Artsakh from its indigenous Armenian population.

I strongly condemn the ongoing criminal policy of the Azerbaijani state. I call on international organizations to clearly respond to the situation and to increase the pressure on

Azerbaijan to stop this criminal behavior.

Human Rights are universal, and they should be viewed outside the geopolitical framework.

This statement has been sent to international organizations and diplomatic missions.
Meta Platforms said it was further narrowing its content moderation policy for Ukraine to limit calls for the death of heads of state, Reuters reported, citing an internal company document.

The move comes after Reuters reported last week that Meta was temporarily allowing some Facebook and Instagram posts calling for the death of Russian President Vladimir Putin or Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.

Following this, Meta said a temporary change to its content policy, applicable only to Ukraine, is necessary to allow users to express opposition to the Russian attack. On the same day, Russia opened a criminal case against the social network.

We are now narrowing the focus to make it explicitly clear in the guidance that it is never to be interpreted as condoning violence against Russians in general, Meta global affairs President Nick Clegg wrote in a post on the companys internal platform on Sunday that was seen by Reuters.

We also do not permit calls to assassinate a head of state...So, in order to remove any ambiguity about our stance, we are further narrowing our guidance to make explicit that we are not allowing calls for the death of a head of state on our platforms, Clegg said.

Clegg wrote that Meta plans to take how it adapted the guidelines to an independent oversight board.
The matter of restoring the natural gas supply in Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) is under negotiation. Lusine Avanesyan, spokeswoman for the Artsakh President, told Armenian News-NEWS.am about this on Monday morning.

She, however, has not been able to give any details about this matter yet. Avanesyan informed that the Artsakh residents currently provide heating for themselves with the use of electricity and woodthe latter mainly refers to villages.

"This is now considered an alternative. We are waiting for the end of the negotiations. Let's see what will happen," added the press secretary of the Artsakh President.

The natural gas pipeline in the territory currently controlled by Azerbaijan and supplying natural gas to Artsakh was damaged on March 8. Since then, negotiations are being held with the Azerbaijanis, but the latter are hindering the repair work. Despite numerous calls for an immediate solution to this problem and the assurances of the Artsakh authorities that this issue is being resolved jointly with the Russian peacekeepers, the people of Artsakh are deprived of natural gas for the seventh day now.
Around 450 to 600 cars from Armenia have accumulated at the Upper Lars checkpoint on the Russia-Georgia border. Armenias customs attache at Upper Lars, Aram Tananyan, told about this to Armenian News-NEWS.am on Monday morning.

He informed that this checkpoint has been closed since March 9, and assured that the reason is solely the adverse winter weather conditions.

"It is forecasted that the precipitationin the form of snowwill continue for another week. The Georgian side has closed the Khachi mountain pass," Tananyan added.

The customs attache noted that more than 3,000 vehicles had built up near the Upper Lars checkpoint.

"It is already impossible to count. Fifteen to 20 percent of them are Armenian cars," Aram Tananyan added.
A trip to the supermarket in Dolton turned fatal this weekend when a 3-year-old boy found a gun in the back seat of a vehicle, picked it up and accidentally shot his mother, killing her.

Dejah Bennet, 22, was pronounced dead at University of Chicago Medical Center at 9:34 p.m. Saturday, according to information from the Cook County medical examiners office. She was rushed to the hospital after emergency responders located her suffering from a gunshot wound at the Food 4 Less Fuel Center, 1000 E. Sibley Blvd. in Dolton, officials said.

Advertisement

Andrew Holmes, a trustee for the city of Dolton and a community activist, said the shooting happened at Food 4 Less after Bennet and her son went grocery shopping. Soon after Bennet put the child in his car seat and she sat down in the drivers seat, the toddler found and picked up a gun that had been left unattended.

Dolton police did not return multiple calls requesting information. It wasnt immediately clear whether the boy pulled the trigger or if he may have dropped the gun or it otherwise malfunctioned, but when it discharged it sent a bullet into Bennets upper body, killing her.

Advertisement

This child has to go through this trauma for the rest of his life, Holmes said. Hes going to miss his mother.

Holmes, who distributed 400 gun locks in Chicago on Feb.26 and an additional 400 in Dolton outside the supermarket Sunday, said accidental shootings such as this happen all too often. Making sure a gun is locked and stored away should be a priority for all gun owners, but especially for parents and guardians, Holmes said.

Guns kill, especially when it gets in the hands of children and its not the childs fault, Holmes said. Its the adults fault because they have a responsibility to keep these guns locked down and away from these kids.

Holmes said people often forget theyve left their gun in the car, underscoring the importance of having the weapon locked  no matter where its stored.

Some people put these guns in the seat, they dont take it in the house and they forget when they come out in the morning that their children are getting inside of the car. And all of a sudden, that gun rolls out from underneath the seat of the car and the child gets a hold of it, Holmes said.

Check back for updates.
Toivo Klaarthe European Union (EU) Special Representative for the South Caucasus and the Crisis in Georgia, who is currently in Armenias capital Yerevan, told the RFE/RL Armenian Service that he has been discussing with both Armenia and Azerbaijan the matters of the recent ceasefire violations and of the natural gas pipeline entering Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) from Armenia.

The EU Special Representative, in a written comment to the RFE/RL Armenian Service, said that the latest developments on the ground are really very worrying.

Klaar noted that in recent days he has had several conversations with representatives of both Yerevan and Baku on these issues.

He added that, naturally, these issues concern the EU, too.

The EU Special Representative noted that it is very important that the natural gas pipeline entering Artsakh be repaired as soon as possible and the shootings stop.

Klaar stated that he is holding high-level consultations in Yerevan, and that these issues will naturally be on the agenda of his meetings.

Also, the EU Special Representative tweeted as follows Monday morning: Back in Yerevan for two days of meetings. As the international environment has become more tense, the EU is more than ever committed to the goal of a peaceful and prosperous South Caucasus.
If NATO does not close off our skies, Russian missiles will fall on the homes of citizens of the Alliance. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy noted this in a video address.

According to him, last year he had warned NATO that without imposing preventive sanctions on Russia, the latter would begin a war.

"We were right. I have been saying for a long time that the Nord Stream 2 [natural gas pipeline] is a weapon that will strike the whole of Europe. Now its obvious. Now I repeat again: If you do not close our sky, it is only a matter of time before Russian missiles fall on your territory, on NATO territory, on the homes of NATO citizens," Zelenskyy said.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has repeatedly stated that the Alliance will not establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine, as this will be fraught with escalation of the conflict within the territory Allianceeven with the start of a third world war.
YEREVAN.  Deputy speaker Ruben Rubinyan of the National Assembly (NA) of Armenia on Monday received a delegation led by Toivo Klaar, the European Union (EU) Special Representative for the South Caucasus and the Crisis in Georgia, the NA informed Armenian News-NEWS.am.

Armenia-EU cooperation, as well as ensuring regional stability were discussed.

Reference was made also to the attempts of the Azerbaijani side to use provocations and pressure on the civilian population in Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh), as well as to the facts of Azerbaijan creating artificial problems in the restoration of vital infrastructure in Artsakh.

The parties exchanged views also on the process of normalization of Armenia-Turkey relations.
NATO is starting its biggest military exercise this year in Norway.

The Cold Response maneuvers, which will last until April 1, involve about 30,000 soldiers, 200 aircraft and 50 ships from 27 countries. The exercises are carried out on water, in the air and on land, the defense of Norway is being worked out in difficult climatic conditions, DW reports.

The exercises are taking place several hundred kilometers from the Russian border. According to NATO, the alliance informed Russia in detail about the upcoming maneuvers and invited it to send its observers to them, but Russia refused.

Close NATO partners Sweden and Finland also participate in the Cold Response exercise. From Germany, the Bundeswehr ship Berlin with a crew of 200 people takes part in the maneuvers.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) issued a statement Monday noting that Armenia had responded to the proposals submitted by Azerbaijan.

"The Republic of Armenia responded to the proposals of the Republic of Azerbaijan and applied to the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairmanship to organize negotiations on peace agreement between the Republic of Armenia and the Republic of Azerbaijan on the basis of the UN Charter, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Helsinki Final Act," reads the aforesaid statement.

Earlier, Armenian News-NEWS.am reported that Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov stated that Azerbaijan had submitted a new five-point proposal to Armenia on normalization of bilateral relations.
Stopping energy imports from Russia could cost Germany up to 3% of its gross domestic product (GDP) in the short term, simulation-based estimates from EconPol Europe's network showed.

The costs of stopping energy imports will be significant, given that the coronavirus pandemic has cost about 4.5% of economic production, said Andreas Peichl, head of the Ifo Center for Macroeconomics and Research, according to Reuters.

He added that larger economic downturns and shocks cannot be ruled out as the magnitude of the potential shock entails a high level of uncertainty.

In addition, according to him, it must be taken into account that a significant part of the industry has not yet recovered from the effects of the pandemic.

Oil and coal could be replaced by imports from other countries, but gas will not be so easy, the authors write.

Germany should quickly and decisively reduce its dependence on Russian gas, said Karen Pittel, head of the Ifo Center for Energy, Climate and Resources.

Above all, she said, policies should aim to increase incentives to replace and conserve fossil fuels as soon as possible, even if an embargo is not imminent.
Israel will not be route to bypass sanctions imposed on Russia, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid assured during a visit to Bratislava, Jpost reports.

According to him, Israel will not be a way to circumvent the sanctions imposed on Russia by the United States and other Western countries.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is coordinating this issue with partners including the Bank of Israel, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Economy, the Airports Authority, the Ministry of Energy and others, he addd.
YEREVAN.  Secretary Armen Grigoryan of the Security Council of Armenia on Monday met with Toivo Klaar, the European Union (EU) Special Representative for the South Caucasus and the Crisis in Georgia, the Security Council office informed Armenian News-NEWS.am.

The sides touched upon the situation on the Armenia-Azerbaijan border, and the steps being taken to increase the level of security and stability along this border. In this context, the need to start the process of demarcation and delimitation of the Armenia-Azerbaijan border was stressed.

Also, the secretary of the Security Council of Armenia briefed the EU Special Representative the humanitarian crisis and the security situation in Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh).

The interlocutors stressed the importance of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflicts settlement within the mandate of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs.
We have cases where the remains of fallen soldiers have been identified, those results have been confirmed twicesometimes three timesin other countries, but the relatives are not yet ready to take the remains and bury them. The minister of health of Armenia, Anahit Avanesyan, told this to reporters Monday.

"Until now, these samples have been sent to the Netherlands, Moscow, Georgia, Germany, and a number of other countries for additional examination. And they all have corresponded 100 percent to the results given in Armenia," she said, not wanting to mention, however, how many such remains they have.

And when asked how long these remains can be kept, whether this is a problem, and whether the Armenian government can decide on its own and bury these remains, Avanesyan responded: "It's quite a difficult process, and the government is doing everything so that the parents [of these fallen soldiers] have time to go through that painful decision and make a decision to bury [the remains]. But on the other hand, we understand that we need to address this issue after some time, and bury [these remains] in individual graves.
Actor Jussie Smollett leaves the Cook County Jail on March 16, 2022, after he was ordered to be released pending appeal of his conviction and 150-day sentence. (Terrence Antonio James / Chicago Tribune)

Jussie Smolletts attorneys want a state appellate court to release the actor from jail while his appeal is pending, according to recent court filings arguing that Smolletts time in custody could put his mental and physical health at risk.

Smolletts family, meanwhile, is echoing the actors extraordinary statement after sentencing, saying he is strong and has no desire to hurt himself.

Advertisement

The Cook County sheriffs office, which operates the jail, has said detainee safety is a top priority. At his attorneys request, a judge ordered Smollett placed in protective custody, with cameras in his cell and an officer with a body-worn camera outside his door at all times. Smollett will have no contact with other detainees, but can have time outside his cell to make phone calls and watch TV, the office has said.

While Smollett was sentenced last week to 150 days in jail, he is eligible for good behavior credit that would cut that time in half, putting his anticipated release date in late May.

Advertisement

Records show Smollett is being held at Cermak Health Services, the jails on-site medical facility. In a video posted to Smolletts Instagram, his brother Jocqui stated that Smollett is in a psych ward with a note in his cell saying he is at risk of self-harm.

A statement from the Cook County Sheriffs Office on Monday noted that Smollett has been placed in housing often used for people who require extra care for mental health needs. But that housing may also be utilized solely for security reasons due to the enhanced monitoring that can occur in this setting, and it would be inaccurate and irresponsible to make any assumption about his mental or medical condition based on where he is currently housed.

Smollett is not currently on suicide watch, the statement said.

A spokesperson for Cook County Health, which operates Cermak, declined to comment, saying they could not release someones medical information without that persons signed consent.

He is very stable, he is very strong, he is very healthy and ready to take on the challenge that ultimately has been put up against him, Jocqui Smollett said in the video.

Smolletts team on Monday morning released audio of a menacing phone call received by one of Smolletts siblings, which uses racist and homophobic terms and threatens harm to Smollett in jail.

The sheriffs office strongly urges the family to report these alleged calls to local law enforcement, their statement read. As with all individuals in custody, the safety and security of Mr. Smollett is the Sheriffs Office primary concern.

Smolletts attorneys want him released from jail while they argue to a higher court that his conviction should be thrown out. Among other arguments, they said in a filing Friday, Smolletts second prosecution violated his double-jeopardy rights.

Advertisement

Smollett was convicted of low-level felonies in December when a jury found that he had lied to police about being the victim of a hate crime attack. Prosecutors argued at sentencing that he denigrated real victims of hate crimes when he staged a phony assault on himself involving racial slurs, homophobic epithets and a noose.

Judge James Linn sentenced Smollett to 30 months of probation, with the first 150 days to be served in Cook County Jail. In addition, he must pay a $25,000 fine as well as $120,106  the amount of restitution the city sought to pay for its overtime costs investigating the case, minus the $10,000 Smollett forfeited to the city when his first case was dropped.

Smollett declined to speak before sentencing, but after Linn handed down his decision, Smollett surprised the whole courtroom by standing up to proclaim his innocence.

If I did this, then it means I stuck my fist in the fears of Black Americans in this country for over 400 years, and the fears of the LGBT community, he said. Your honor, I respect you, and I respect the jury, but I did not do this. And I am not suicidal, and if anything happens to me when I go in there, I did not do it to myself.

In response to Smolletts comments and his attorneys prior remarks about COVID-19 at the jail, a sheriffs office statement Thursday evening noted that like all individuals ordered into custody at the jail, Mr. Smollett will be given a comprehensive medical, mental health and security assessment and will be placed in appropriate housing.

Smollett will be tested for COVID-19 upon intake, which is the jails protocol, the statement noted.

Advertisement

As of Monday, there were 15 jail detainees out of more than 6,100 who were positive for COVID, the Sheriffs office noted.

mcrepeau@chicagotribune.com

jmeisner@chicagotribune.com
The US president's bid to cushion the oil shock retaliation continues to meet resistance from the two allies he needs most, writes The Guardian.

Saudi Arabias de facto leader, Mohammed bin Salman, and his counterpart in the United Arab Emirates, Mohammed bin Zayed, are yet to agree to a phone call with the wests most powerful man  a scenario all but unthinkable during previous administrations.

Bidens immediate priority is for both countries to help exert maximum economic pressure on Russia by cranking up their oil output. Each capital is a major supplier of oil, with excess capacity, which would soften the effect on US consumers through fuel prices before midterm elections in November that threaten Democratic control of Congress," the article reads.

However, with relations between the Middle East oil powers and Washington at their lowest point, it's time for a reckoning that could change the regional order on terms favoring Riyadh and Abu Dhabi. Both leaders have made it clear that they will not settle for less.

As if trying to show the Biden administration what they can do, UAE Ambassador to Washington Yousef al-Otaiba said last Wednesday that he was in favor of increasing production and will encourage OPEC to consider increasing production levels, which would lead to a fall in oil prices. by 13% the next day. But no action was taken to increase supply, and by the end of the week the price per barrel had risen again to almost $130.

However, the confrontation is connected not only with oil. In Riyadh, Prince Mohammed feels insulted by Biden's refusal to engage with him since he took office. The assassination of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi, the war in Yemen, the imprisonment of human rights activists and the boycott of Qatar have made him a pariah for the administration.

The differences with Abu Dhabi are almost as sharp. The US has been particularly stunned by the UAE's repeated abstention from UN votes.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE have been outraged that the Biden administration has removed the Iranian-backed Houthis from the global terrorist list as Washington continues talks with Iran to restart the Obama-era nuclear deal that Donald Trump tore apart.

Beyond that, however, there is a strong sense in both capitals that Biden has approached the region with deep criticism of countries that have long been security allies and a condescending attitude towards Iran, which remains an enemy.

Having tried last week to involve Venezuela in the cause of isolating Russia, the White House sees efforts to restore relations with Saudi Arabia and the UAE as an acceptable price.

In February, the administration sent Brett McGurk, the White House's Middle East policy coordinator, and Amos Hochstein, the State Department's special energy representative, to Riyadh to meet with the crown prince. On the eve of the invasion of Ukraine, the Ministry of Finance announced sanctions against the alleged Houthi funding network.

Former British Ambassador to Riyadh and Senior Fellow at the British think tank Policy Exchange, Sir John Jenkins believes that the ties that have grown between Riyadh and Moscow, especially since Biden's sidelining of Prince Mohammed, should probably be recalibrated.

I think its very complicated, he said. I wouldnt make a one-way bet on Putin myself. But thats how the Saudi position in particular will look to many in DC. That will just piss people off. And tempt them in turn to bet on Iran instead. You have to deal with [Prince Mohammed]. But if he demands a complete climbdown from Biden, I dont think hell get it.

There has to be some way of squaring this circle. A renewed US promise to defend KSA [Saudi Arabia] and the UAE from Iran is one way. Redesignation of the Houthis and a renewed commitment to settling Yemen in a way that would suit Riyadh and Abu Dhabi is another. But I cant see Biden saying hes simply going to forget Khashoggi.

I personally dont think Russia matters that much to KSA. Chinas far more important. Beijing wants to avoid a collapse of global trade  or a prolonged western recession. And there are signs Beijing is trying to position itself appropriately. The risk then is that a hard line from Riyadh will just backfire.

Robin Mills, CEO of UAE-based consultancy Qamar Energy, said that increasing oil supplies and therefore lowering prices at filling stations is a relatively simple technical process, but comes with political and economic risks in dealing with the global oil organization OPEC, of which OPEC is a member. Riyadh and Abu Dhabi.

They could ramp up supply within one month and reach full capacity within 90 days, he said. Opening chokes on wells, restarting wells entirely, perhaps restarting gathering and production stations.

Everyone has always cheated on Opec agreements when it suited them. Can you do it quickly? Not tomorrow, certainly. But unless somethings gone seriously wrong, KSA should be able to make a three-month difference. That in itself would help  to a degree  in calming oil markets.
Davit Galstyan, the head of a company that was supplying weapons to Armenia, has released from custody on a 50mn-dram (approx. US$96,000) bail.

Galstyan is a defendant in the criminal case, which the National Security Service had launched, on obsolete missiles.

Former Minister of Defense Davit Tonoyan, former Deputy Chief of General Staff of the Armed Forces Stepan Galstyan, and former Chief of Military Aviation Avetik Muradyan are still arrested along the lies of this criminal case.

Davit Tonoyan and Davit Galstyan are accused of embezzling about $4.7 million from the state, and committing falsifications and publicly dangerous acts.

They, however, do not accept these charges.

According to the information, Davit Tonoyan has even refused to testify.
Meta Company overplayed with the rules and manipulation, which makes its future work in Russia hardly possible, said presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov, RIA Novosti reported.

According to him, although the company is trying to somehow distance itself from the previously made very unflattering mistakes, but it also indirectly admits that it still goes about such decisions.

Peskov added that this makes it little possible for such companies to operate in the country.

Meta Platforms has temporarily lifted its ban on calls for violence against the Russian military on Facebook and Instagram in light of the events in Ukraine, company spokesman Andy Stone said earlier.

According to Reuters, the new policy also allows calls for the death of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko. The Russian Prosecutor General's Office then said it was asking the court to declare Meta (which owns the social networks Facebook, Instagram and the messenger WhatsApp) an extremist organization and ban its activities in Russia.

As reported by Reuters, Clegg's statement appeared on the internal forum of Meta. According to the deputy director, the company clarifies its position so that it could not be interpreted as justifying violence against Russians in general.
Official Baku has announced the conditions on which it agrees to "make peace" with Armenia.

A statement of the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry published in Azerbaijani mass media reads:

Azerbaijan offers the following principles for the normalization of relations:

- mutual recognition of each other's sovereignty, territorial integrity, inviolability of international borders and political independence;

- mutual confirmation of the absence of territorial claims of states to each other and the legal obligation not to make such claims in the future;

- to refrain from threatening each other's security in interstate relations, from the use of threats and force against political independence and territorial integrity, and from other circumstances inconsistent with the purposes of the UN Charter;

- delimitation and demarcation of the state border, establishment of diplomatic relations;

- the opening of transport and communications, the establishment of other relevant communications and cooperation in other areas of mutual interest.

"On these basic principles the two states, by holding intensive, substantive and result-oriented negotiations, can conclude a bilateral peace agreement," the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Earlier, the Armenian Foreign Ministry said that Armenia appealed to the co-chairmanship of the OSCE Minsk Group to start negotiations with Azerbaijan to negotiate a peace agreement.

However, Azerbaijan's listed demands essentially imply a veiled rejection of Nagorno-Karabakh's independence.
The fourth round of talks between Russia and Ukraine is underway, taking place in the online format, the head of the office of the Ukrainian President Mykhailo Podoliyak said in his Telegram channel.

"The negotiations are in the fourth round. About peace, ceasefire, immediate withdrawal of troops and security guarantees. A difficult conversation," the politician wrote.

Earlier, a member of the Ukrainian delegation to the negotiations with Russia, the head of the parliamentary faction of the ruling party Servant of the People Davyd Arakhamia specified that the parties will negotiate On Monday morning in the online format.

The same date was called by the press secretary of Russian President Dmitry Peskov.

There have already been three rounds of talks between the Russian and Ukrainian sides. After the last meeting, the Ukrainian side said that there was "positive progress" on the issue of humanitarian corridors, but there were no results that would significantly improve the situation in Ukraine. The Russian delegation said that expectations of another round of talks with the Ukrainian side were not justified.
Minister of Territorial Administration and Infrastructure of Armenia Gnel Sanosyan and Georgian Deputy Minister of Economy and Stable Development Romeo Mikautadze discussed cooperation in the energy sphere, the press service of Armenian Ministry of Territorial Administration informed NEWS.am.

During the meeting, Sanosyan praised the level of the Armenian-Georgian cooperation. Sanosyan said it's important for Armenia to develop collaboration in the energy sector because both countries have great potential in this sector which, given the appropriate infrastructure, can be successfully implemented. Minister Sanosyan highlighted the construction of the Armenia-Georgia 400-kilowatt electric power line, which according to him, will become a new impetus for expanding bilateral cooperation in the energy sphere and will give a new impetus to regional cooperation.

Mikautadze, in turn, highlighted effective cooperation between the countries in this sphere. The deputy minister particularly informed that Georgia will move to the next stage of energy market liberalization starting from 1 September this year. He expressed hope that cooperation with Armenia on this platform will also prove successful.
SPRINGFIELD  Facing mounting criticism from Republicans over a rise in violent crime, Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker has proposed spending $20 million on a long-neglected witness protection program for people whose lives are put in danger by helping law enforcement.

The program was created under a nearly decade-old state law that requires law enforcement to pay for moving and relocation expenses for witnesses and victims who fear retaliation for testifying against those accused of violent crimes.

Advertisement

But the program has not been funded under Pritzker or his predecessors. While law enforcement authorities say retaliation against witnesses is rare, and relocation is not often necessary, the move to fund the state program has backing from members of both parties.

The fact that we did not fund the program was a dangerous miscalculation on our part as budget people in the state of Illinois because there are so many people in Illinois, especially Chicago, that are willing to help solve these crimes but they are afraid because theres no protection for them, said state Rep. La Shawn Ford, a Chicago Democrat.

Advertisement

State Rep. La Shawn Ford speaksJan. 25, 2022, at the Thompson Center in Chicago about about the need for more resources and support for families of gun violence victims. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)

The program was established under a 2013 law known as the Gang Crimes Witness Protection Act. Ford worked on the legislation with state Rep. Emanuel Chris Welch, now the House speaker. The measure requires the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority to administer the program.

In his budget address last month at the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Pritzker acknowledged that disappointingly, the program was never funded.

Pritzkers $20 million proposal for the program comes as he says the state is on its best fiscal footing in years, projecting a $1.7 billion surplus ahead of his proposed budget for fiscal year 2023.

In response to several questions about the program from the Tribune, a Pritzker spokeswoman said revenue outperformance and prudent fiscal management has allowed the state to fund the program and other services instead of paying interest on debt.

A spokeswoman with the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority said the office was still working out details with the Illinois attorney generals office and various states attorneys on how the money would be spent, should Pritzkers approval be part of the final budget approved by legislators.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker after he speaks to the media during a visit at Navy Pier in Chicago on Feb. 28, 2022. (Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune)

Pritzker is making the proposal as he seeks reelection and tries to fend off Republican candidates whove sought to paint him as being weak on crime.

The governor has been criticized by the GOP for signing sweeping criminal justice reform legislation that, among other things, will end cash bail next year. While Democrats have said the legislations aim was to address inequities in the criminal justice system, Republicans have accused the governor and the Democratic-controlled legislature of supporting policies that embolden criminals and undermine law enforcement.

House Republican Leader Jim Durkin of Western Springs, one of Pritzkers most vocal critics and a former Cook County prosecutor, said he supports the allocation of $20 million for a witness protection program. But he said Pritzkers funding proposal shows the governor is deathly afraid of the politics of the criminal justice reform package and the public attitudes toward criminal justice.

Advertisement

Illinois House Minority Leader Jim Durkin speaks on Jan. 13, 2021, at the Bank of Springfield Center in Springfield. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)

He knows that this is a very, very serious issue on all Illinoisans. Itll be a major campaign issue. said Durkin. So, if he thinks that this $20 million is going to erase the problems of what he and his legislative cohorts have done, I dont think its going to happen.

Ford said allocating money to protect witnesses and victims could show voters that the Democratic Party cares about putting actual killers in jail.

This is a perfect example of Democrats being tough on crime. You cant ask for a better scenario, he said. You cant ask for a better program to show that we want to catch the actual criminals. Thats smart and tough on crime. We dont want to just throw everyone in jail on a whimsical warrant.

The witness protection funding law took effect during Gov. Pat Quinns administration. The law calls for the state to provide funds to county prosecutors to cover temporary living costs, moving expenses, rent, security deposits and other relocation funds for witnesses or victims of violent crimes that are being prosecuted in court.

Law enforcement has long bemoaned the reluctance of many crime witnesses to cooperate for fear of retaliation. The so called no-snitching mindset has been reinforced through social media and song lyrics by underground rappers demonizing those who dare talk to the police.

There is ample reason for such fears. In one high-profile example from September 2019, 18-year-old Treja Kelley was shot and killed just months after testifying in the murder trial for a man accused of killing her teenage cousin in Chicagos Back of the Yards neighborhood.

Advertisement

Posters and balloons are left by the Chicago home of Judy Fields, grandmother of 18-year-old Treja Kelley, during a nonviolence gathering organized by several different groups on Sept. 12, 2019. (Erin Hooley / Chicago Tribune)

Treja Kelley in an undated photo. (Family photo)

After she helped win a guilty verdict, a $5,000 bounty was placed on her head, according to Cook County prosecutors. A man was charged in her killing and is awaiting trial.

However, law enforcement authorities say retaliation is rare, and so is the need for witnesses or victims to be relocated.

On the federal level, for example, the witness security program has been active since the early 1970s and has protected roughly 19,000 people, according to the U.S. Marshals Service. While not insignificant, thats only a fraction of the total number of witnesses to or victims of federal criminal cases nationwide over the last half a century, according to federal authorities.

Under the federal program, victims and witnesses, as well as their family members, typically get new identities with authentic documentation, the Marshals Service website says, and theyre offered basic living expenses, medical care, job training and help seeking employment. The marshals also provide 24-hour protection to witnesses through the adjudication processes of their cases.

Cook County provides relocation services for victims or witnesses, though those services are limited. The Cook County states attorneys office said that during roughly the first 10 months of 2021, prosecutors relocated, or were in the process of relocating, individuals or family members connected to about three dozen cases out of the thousands of cases the office handled that year.

In October, Lois Smith, then-director of the states attorneys offices victim witness assistance unit, said that money is limited for these services and that arranging to move at-risk victims or witnesses is not easy.

Advertisement

What weve come to learn is people dont want to leave their community, their families, their friends, the institutions that are important to them, she told the Tribune.

Theres no comprehensive research that measures the effectiveness of witness protection, especially as it relates to rates of crime and how often crimes are solved. But proponents of the state funding are hopeful that it could help improve clearance rates for homicides and shootings, which have dropped in Chicago in recent years.

The Rev. Ira Acree, pastor of Greater St. John Bible Church in Chicagos Austin community, has advocated publicly for more witness protection funding. He believes such a program can help improve the fractured relationship between the police and communities.

The truth of the matter is, its not about breaking the code of silence. Our challenge today is to break a culture of fear, said Acree. People are afraid. And these are some dangerous hardcore criminals out here and shooting grandmothers and 7-year-old kids.

The Rev. Ira Acree looks over his notes before a press conference outside State's Attorney Kim Foxx's office to demand that Foxx set up a witness protection program and funding to help stem gun violence in Chicago on July 28, 2020. (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune)

State Sen. John Connor, a Lockport Democrat, said that as a Will County prosecutor in the 2000s he prosecuted a murder case in which his star witness was shot 10 times after it apparently became known that the person had been subpoenaed to testify at trial.

The witness survived, and Connor said his office and the Joliet Police Department, which investigated the slaying, pulled together money seized from other crimes to relocate this witness away from danger, paying for his rent and other expenses.

Advertisement

Connor estimated that this cost more than $100,000 over a period of roughly 18 months, at the end of which time he was able to secure a conviction.

Even if such services are only used once in a while, what if the individual who is convicted is also a suspect in other homicides, and then suddenly now theyre in custody and nobody else is in danger? Connor asked.

Theres an opportunity to really break some cycles by using this because youve got to understand, if somebody grows up in a neighborhood where every person who testifies dies, Connor said, then youre really not getting a whole lot of incentive to cooperate with the police.

Tribune reporter Stephanie Casanova contributed from Chicago.

jgorner@chicagotribune.com
Armenian News - NEWS.am presents the daily digest of top news as of 14.03.22:

Official Baku has already announced the conditions on which it agrees to "make peace" with Armenia, which includes mutual recognition of each other's sovereignty, mutual confirmation of the absence of territorial claims of states to each other, to refrain from threatening each other's security in interstate relations, delimitation and demarcation of borders and opening of transport and communications.

Bayramov, who was in Turkey to attend the Antalya Diplomacy Forum (ADF), told Anadolu Agency (AA) that Azerbaijan is waiting for Armenias response.

However, Azerbaijan's listed demands essentially imply a veiled rejection of Nagorno-Karabakh's independence.

Armenian MFA, in turn, issued a statement Monday noting that Armenia had responded to the proposals submitted by Azerbaijan.

Yerevan has also applied to the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairmanship to organize talks on a peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan on the basis of the UN Charter.

The situation in Ukraine remains highly tense during the weekend.

Air raid sirens were sounded in almost all regions of Ukraine on Saturday. The cities of Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Sumy and Mariupol remain surrounded by Russian forces, the Ukrainian forces said.

The Ukrainian authorities added on Sunday that about 100 aerial bombs have been dropped on Mariupol. The city council of besieged Mariupol has said 2,187 residents have been killed.

More than 5,550 people have been evacuated from front-line cities on Sunday via nine humanitarian corridors, Ukraines deputy PM Iryna Vereshchuk said in a video statement.

She added that 3,950 were evacuated from towns and cities in the Kyiv region.

Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov, in turn, said Russian troops have destroyed 3,687 Ukrainian military infrastructure facilities so far.

Nearly 1,300 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, says, giving the death toll for Ukraines forces for the first time. Russia said on March 2 it had lost 498 soldiers. Zelenskyy, however, says it is close to 12,000.

Podoliak added that Ukraine's position in talks with Russia regarding peace, a ceasefire, the immediate withdrawal of troops and security guarantees remains unchanged

The Russian and Ukrainian delegations have already met three times in Belarus. The parties discussed, among other things, the opening of humanitarian corridors.

By the way, the Kremlin said it had never denied the possibility of a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, but would first like to understand what will be on its agenda and what outcome is expected.

Zelenskyy, in turn, said that the main task of the Ukrainian delegation in the negotiations with Russia is to agree on a meeting between the presidents of Russia and Ukraine.

The international community continues to support Ukraine.

US President Joe Biden authorizes $200m in additional military equipment for Ukraine. Washington has already authorized $350m of military equipment  the largest such package in US history.

Lately, however, there were reports that Israel helps Russia to avoid Western sanctions.

14 private jets that have taken off from Russia have landed at Ben Gurion Airport in the past 10 days, Channel 12 news reported Friday, as Israel continues to avoid joining Western sanctions against Russian oligarchs.

The unknown identity of the passengers, and the timing of the journeys, has prompted speculation that those on board were Russian oligarchs who have been slapped with sanctions over the assault on Ukraine, the TV report said.

Meanwhile, Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid assured Monday during a visit to Bratislava that Israel will not be en route to bypass sanctions imposed on Russia.

Even despite sanctions and the tense situation created worldwide, Russian natural gas company Gazprom, however, said on Monday it was continuing gas shipments via Ukraine, with volumes at 109.5 million cubic meters per day, marginally down from 109.6 million a day earlier.

In the meantime, CNN reported that Russia has asked China for military support, including UAVs, as well as economic assistance for its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

According to conversations CNN had with two US officials who said that requests came after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The official declined to detail the Chinese reaction, but indicated that the Chinese had responded.

However, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov noted that Russia has the independent potential to continue a special military operation in Ukraine and has not requested help from China.

When asked by CNN about the reporting of Russia's request for military aid, Liu Pengyu, spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in the US, said in a statement, "I've never heard of that."

Russia's Investigative Committee has opened a criminal case against Facebook parent company Meta Platforms accusing the company's employees of "illegal calls for murder and violence" against Russian citizens, according to a statement the committee published Friday.

The case follows a temporary change to Meta's hate speech policy that allows some Facebook and Instagram users to express violence against Russia. Reuters first reported the policy change Thursday.

Roskonadzor, Russia's information watchdog, said Friday it will restrict access to Instagram

Meanwhile, Meta global affairs President Nick Clegg said they are now narrowing the focus to make it explicitly clear in the guidance that it is never to be interpreted as condoning violence against Russians in general.

We also do not permit calls to assassinate a head of state..., Clegg added.

In turn, Russian president spokesperson Dmitry Peskov noted that despite Metas news statement, it is unlikely that the platform will work in the future in Russia.

Since a natural gas pipeline in the territory currently controlled by Azerbaijan was damaged on March 8, talks are being held with the Azerbaijanis, but the latter are hindering the repair work.

Despite numerous calls for an immediate solution to this problem and the assurances of the Artsakh authorities that this issue is being resolved jointly with the Russian peacekeepers, Artsakh people have no gas supplies yet.

The matter of restoring the natural gas supply in Artsakh is under negotiation, Lusine Avanesyan, spokeswoman for the Artsakh President, told NEWS.am.

Avanesyan informed that the Artsakh residents currently provide heating for themselves with the use of electricity and woodthe latter mainly refers to villages.

Meanwhile, Toivo Klaarthe European Union (EU) Special Representative for the South Caucasus and the Crisis in Georgia, who is currently in Armenias capital Yerevan, told the RFE/RL Armenian Service that he has been discussing with both Armenia and Azerbaijan the matters of the recent ceasefire violations and of the natural gas pipeline.

Klaar noted that in recent days he has had several conversations with representatives of both Yerevan and Baku on these issues.

His inauguration ceremony took place at a special session of the Armenian parliament boycotted by its two opposition factions.

In his inaugural speech, Khachaturyan acknowledged that he was assuming office at a pivotal time for Armenia amid complicated regional and international challenges.

We are witnessing rapidly changing geopolitical developments as a result of which current global security systems are being transformed. Today, more than ever, we need wisdom, confidence, stability and unity, he said.

Khachaturyan was elected by parliament on March 3 for seven years as the fifth president in the country's history.

The 62-year-old politician, who previously served as the minister of high technology, was nominated by the ruling Civil Contract party.

Former president Armen Sarkissian resigned on January 23, citing lack of constitution

Sarkissian said he did not have the necessary power to deal with the country's political issues.
The UN will allocate another $40 million from the Central Emergency Response Fund to provide humanitarian aid to Ukrainians, the organization's Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters.

"I am announcing today that the United Nations will allocate a further $40 million from the Central Emergency Response Fund to ramp up vital assistance to reach the most vulnerable, as we wait for the nations to come. This funding will help get critical supplies of food, water, medicines, and other lifesaving aid into the country, as well as provide cash assistance to the needy," Guterres said.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan had a phone conversation with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the press service of the Armenian Prime Minister informed.

The interlocutors touched upon the issues on the US-Armenian agenda, attached importance to ensuring the continuity of the strategic dialogue in order to develop and strengthen bilateral cooperation in various spheres. The Prime Minister thanked the American side for its consistent support to Armenia in the democratic reforms, stressed that the further strengthening of democracy is the absolute priority of the Armenian Government and that our country will resolutely continue to move in that direction.

Nikol Pashinyan and Antony Blinken referred to the processes taking place in the South Caucasus, the situation around Nagorno Karabakh and the escalating tensions.

The parties stressed the need for stability and peace in the region, emphasizing the need for a comprehensive settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict within the framework of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs, which will contribute to the establishment of peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia and the US Secretary of State exchanged views on the delimitation and demarcation of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border, the chances for unblocking communications in the region, as well as the ongoing dialogue between Armenia and Turkey.

The sides also referred to the processes taking place in the international arena, including the situation in Ukraine, the statement reads.
European Union ambassadors have approved a new package of sanctions against Russia, they will come into force after publication in the Official Journal of the EU, the French presidency of the EU Council said this on Twitter on Monday.

The Committee of Permanent Representatives of EU countries in coordination with international partners has agreed on a fourth package of sanctions, which targets individuals and entities involved in the aggression against Ukraine, as well as several sectors of the Russian economy.

It specifies that the new package of restrictive measures will come into force after the publication of the decision in the Official Journal of the EU.

It also says that the permanent representatives approved a statement to the World Trade Organization (WTO) about Russian aggression against Ukraine, regarding the suspension of the most favored nation clause in relation to Russia, and the suspension of consideration of Belarus' candidacy to the WTO.
Story Highlights Favorable rating of Canada is 87%, Great Britain 86%, France 84%, Japan 82%

North Korea, Afghanistan, Iran, Russia, Iraq are rated worst

Favorability fell significantly for seven countries this year; none improved

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Canada, Great Britain, France and Japan are rated favorably by more than eight in 10 Americans this year in Gallup's annual World Affairs poll. The survey, which was conducted before Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, finds five countries at the other end of the spectrum with favorable ratings under 20%: North Korea, Afghanistan, Iran, Russia and Iraq.

Bar chart. Americans' ratings of 19 foreign countries as very or mostly favorable. Canada, Great Britain, France and Japan top the list with more than eight in 10 Americans rating them favorably. North Korea, Afghanistan, Iran, Russia and Iraq are rated least favorably with less than two in 10 Americans viewing them favorably.

Ten of the 19 countries and territories asked about in the Feb. 1-17 survey receive majority-level favorable ratings from the U.S. public. In addition to the four countries with ratings above 80%, Germany (78%), India (77%), Israel (71%), Egypt (64%), Mexico (63%) and Ukraine (62%) are viewed favorably by majorities.

The ratings of Russia and Ukraine were collected as Russia was building up troops along Ukraine's border and the Biden administration was warning that an attack was imminent. It is likely that ratings of Ukraine would be more positive, and ratings of Russia more negative, if the poll were conducted today.

Meanwhile, along with the five countries at the bottom of the list that have favorable ratings under 20%, four others are rated favorably by less than half -- China (20%), the Palestinian Authority (27%), Saudi Arabia (33%) and Cuba (40%).

Whether Americans view a country favorably or unfavorably typically depends on relations between the U.S. and that country. Gallup has historically found that the U.S. ally nations are viewed positively by Americans, while the countries that have fraught relationships with the U.S. receive negative ratings on balance -- and those ratings have historically been responsive to changes in relations with the U.S. At times in the past, for example, majorities of Americans have had positive opinions of Russia and China and negative opinions of France and Egypt.

Favorable Ratings Mostly Lower or Stable

Except for Ukraine, Gallup has tracked Americans' favorable ratings of these 19 countries over the past two to three decades. None have seen a significant increase in favorability since 2021, but ratings of seven countries have fallen significantly.

Afghanistan saw the greatest decline in its favorable rating, down nine percentage points from a year ago -- spanning the U.S. military's chaotic withdrawal from that country last August. The current 12% is its lowest point on record.

Russia's favorability dropped seven points to a new low of 15% in the latest (pre-invasion) reading.

Americans' opinions of Cuba and Iraq each dipped five points in the past year.

Favorable ratings of three U.S. allies -- Germany (down six points), Canada (five points) and Great Britain (five points) -- also edged down; however, their ratings remain robust.

Changes in Americans' Views of Foreign Countries % Very/Mostly favorable 2021 2022 Change % % Pct. pts. Afghanistan 21 12 -9 Russia 22 15 -7 Germany 84 78 -6 Canada 92 87 -5 Great Britain 91 86 -5 Cuba 45 40 -5 Iraq 21 16 -5 Gallup

After falling precipitously last year amid the coronavirus pandemic, China's 20% rating remains its lowest on record.

While no country has seen a significant increase in favorability since 2021, India's 77% ties its record high from last year.

Partisans' Ratings of 11 Countries Differ Significantly

Partisans hold similar views of eight countries: India, Afghanistan, North Korea, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Great Britain and Russia.

At the same time, Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents are significantly more likely than Republicans and Republican-leaning independents to view 10 countries favorably: Mexico, the Palestinian Authority, Cuba, France, Canada, China, Germany, Ukraine, Iraq and Iran. Mexico has a 77% favorable rating among Democrats and 49% among Republicans, a 28-point difference. The gap in ratings of the Palestinian Authority is 21 points -- 38% among Democrats and 17% among Republicans.

Just one country -- Israel -- has a higher favorable rating from Republicans than Democrats. Both groups view it positively, but Republicans' rating is 15 points higher, at 80%.

Differences in Partisans' Views of Foreign Countries % Very/Mostly favorable Republicans Democrats Difference (Rep-Dem) % % Pct. pts. Mexico 49 77 -28 Palestinian Authority 17 38 -21 Cuba 31 49 -18 France 77 93 -16 Canada 80 95 -15 China 13 25 -12 Germany 73 84 -11 Ukraine 58 68 -10 Iraq 12 21 -9 Iran 9 18 -9 Israel 80 65 +15 Countries without significant partisan differences are not shown. Gallup

To stay up to date with the latest Gallup News insights and updates, follow us on Twitter.

Learn more about how the Gallup Poll Social Series works.

View complete question responses and trends (PDF download).
Since she was a young girl, Zsa Zsa Goldstrom has been fascinated by the world of finance and always knew that she wanted to help others succeed in entrepreneurship.

Now a first-year student at the University of Miami, Goldstrom, who is pursuing a Bachelor of Business Administration at the Miami Herbert Business School, has co-authored and produced a workbook that she said anyone interested in cryptocurrency and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) should read.

The Entrepreneurs Guide to Creating and Selling Cryptocurrency and NFTs is a carefully crafted beginners book that Goldstrom wants her peers and others to use.

Her inspiration comes from her father, who owns an exotic car dealership in Fort Lauderdale. One day while visiting her dads dealership, she met and spoke with a customer who changed the trajectory of her future. She co-authored the book with the customer, Robert Carp, and his son, Douglas.

The workbook, which is sold online, is divided into two halves. One half features an understandable guide that details the basics of cryptocurrency, blockchain, and the NFT marketplace. In this half of the book, the three authors also provide readers with step-by-step instructions on how to build a successful business model, white paper, and road map to create your own cryptocurrency initial coin offering (ICO) or NFT project, along with how to market them through social media and other advertising means.

The second half of the book offers readers 20 business model templates for cryptocurrency ICOs, tips on NFT creation and sales, and additional information about businesses in the Web3 industry. Published white papers, which provide real-world examples and inform readers about crypto assets that will create value for them long term, are included on a USB drive.

Zsa Zsa Goldstrom and Henrik Cronqvist, professor of finance at the Miami Herbert Business School.

Goldstroms mentor, Henrik Cronqvist, professor of finance at the Miami Herbert Business School, said that he believes her workbook is an awesome new resource that students can use to learn more about cryptocurrencies and NFTs.

My first impression of Zsa Zsa was entrepreneurial, smart, and driven to have an impact on business as well as society more broadly, said Cronqvist. She is a great role model and advocate for young entrepreneurs in South Florida and beyond.

Across the globe, cryptocurrencies and NFTs, or one-of-a-kind digitally represented assets, are growing exponentially in popularity. According to Reuters, sales are currently mounting at billions of dollars and new interests are entering the market every second.

Goldstrom initially hesitated to invest in cryptocurrencies and NFTs in 2018 until she witnessed someone close to her excel in the markether younger brother.

But after seeing him get involved and become prosperous within just two years, coupled with meeting Carp and his son that day at her fathers dealership, she felt it was fate positioning her to bring her idea to fruition to help educate others.

I felt I have been educating myself in the industry for the past few years. I couldnt just stand around watching, said Goldstrom. I really needed to pursue a path in it.

Today, Goldstrom is deeply enthusiastic and involved with the educational and service side of the industry. Currently, she is looking to work with universities and colleges around the country to implement the book into their curriculums.

Im specifically looking into connecting with educational institutions because many people my age are looking into building their crypto startups and need direction, said Goldstrom. She is currently helping create a NFT project specifically for the Miami Herbert Business School.

The University of Miami is a great place to be for students who are interested in getting involved with cryptocurrency and NFTs to thrive, said Goldstrom, who is in the early stages of founding a blockchain club on the Coral Gables Campus.

The path that I personally enjoy more is teaching a person to build their own startup by giving them the tools to educate themselves so that they can create a long-term successful business, she said. I really believe in the value of this book and what it can do for someones future.
HK's Covid infections to stay high for weeks: experts

HK's Covid infections to stay high for weeks: experts

Medical experts on Monday said they expect the number of Covid-19 infections in Hong Kong to remain high for some weeks, with one saying the daily caseloads will probably only drop to around a thousand in late May.



Kwok Kin-on, public health and primary care assistant professor from the Chinese University, said their projection model suggests that up to five million people may eventually be infected in this wave of outbreak, with as many as 9,000 deaths.



He said on an RTHK programme that the daily tally is not expected to drop to around a thousand until late May or early June, and it will take another month or so for the number to fall to around a hundred.



Our assessment has an assumption based on the ratio of people reporting their self-test results. According to figures in the United States and the United Kingdom, out of ten patients, only around three to four are identified, said Kwok.



He also expressed concern that cases may rebound in the coming weeks, as people may start to get together more often due to fatigue with strict social-distancing restrictions.



Speaking on the same programme, a government advisor on vaccines, Lau Yu-lung, also said he expects the number of infections to stay high for weeks, despite authorities belief that this wave of outbreak has peaked.



The University of Hong Kong professor added its wrong for people to think getting infected is a better way than vaccination to acquire antibodies against the coronavirus because infection could cause death.
A Newton County judge has denied Lake County Sheriff Oscar Martinez Jr.'s request to dismiss criminal charges against him. (Craig Lyons / Post-Tribune)

The criminal case against Lake County Sheriff Oscar Martinez for allegedly resisting law enforcement and reckless driving will move ahead to trial, a judge ruled Monday.

Newton County Circuit Court Judge Jeryl Leach, who is presiding over the case, issued a court order Monday stating he has denied a motion by Paul Stracci and J. Michael Woods, Martinezs attorneys, to dismiss the case.

Advertisement

In October, the Lake County Board of Commissioners sent a letter to Prosecutor Bernard Carter seeking an investigation into the alleged misuse of some of the countys new police vehicles.

The state charges stem from a Sept. 18 incident in which Crown Point police officers conducting a traffic stop at about 11:30 p.m. in the 9000 block of Taft Street saw a black SUV traveling northbound on Main Street at what appeared to be at a speed well above the 45 mph posted limit.

Advertisement

The SUV continued onto Taft Street in Merrillville, passing the stopped officers. In seeing the speeding violation, officers attempted to catch up to curb the vehicle, according to a police report.

The report continues, saying the SUV was seen making a right-hand turn onto eastbound U.S. 30 in Merrillville. As officers were catching up to the vehicle, the driver activated emergency red and blue police lights, giving notice that it was an unmarked police car. In seeing the lights, officers stopped trying to catch up.

The indictment states that Martinez did knowingly or intentionally flee from Crown Point police and that he did recklessly operate a motor vehicle by driving at such an unreasonably high rate of speed as to endanger the safety or property of others.

Martinezs attorneys filed a motion to dismiss the case Feb. 16 stating the grand jury proceeding yielding the indictment was defective and conducted in violation of Indiana code and the due process clause of the 14th amendment.

The motion to dismiss states that special prosecutor Stanley Levco, of Evansville, unduly influenced the neutral and detached atmosphere of the grand jury proceedings and constituted a flagrant imposition of the grand jurors will or independent judgment so as to now require dismissal.

Levco and David Thomas, co-special prosecutor, filed a motion in response stating the grand jury statute states a prosecutor shall identify the offense committed.

The prosecutors motion points to Levco stating I had originally told you we were looking at two charges, reckless driving and resisting law enforcement. You theoretically could indict him on speeding, and I told you that you can do what you want to do. Later on, Levco said: If you do it, Ill pursue it.

During a hearing March 7, Leach took the motion to dismiss under advisement.

Advertisement

Having considered the defendants motion to dismiss and the states response, the court now denies the defendants motion to dismiss, Leach wrote in the one-page order.

Stracci did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

During the March 7 hearing, Stracci requested to push back the April 11 jury trial scheduled for the case because his team was not done conducting basic discovery, and they are waiting on subpoena responses.

I dont think its humanly possible, Stracci said, of being prepared for April 11. Stracci and Levco agreed to setting trial for June 13.

Leach said last week that June 13 works, but that he will set the trial date during a telephonic conference. The telephonic conference has not yet been held.

Martinez, who is up for reelection, faces challengers in the May 3 Democratic primary.
Chief Executive Carrie Lam said on Monday that shes been assured by authorities in Shenzhen that supplies to Hong Kong wont be affected even though the mainland city is being locked down for mass testing after a surge in Covid-19 cases there.At a daily press briefing , Lam said cross-border truck drivers will pick up and unload goods at centralised transfer yards set up at border checkpoints.She also said she believes the Shenzhen government will be able to handle its outbreak under the leadership of the central government.When asked why Hong Kong is unable to put together a universal testing exercise in a few days the way Shenzhen does, the CE said people should not make such comparisons, noting differences in the two cities systems, their resources and their ability to mobilise manpower.For us to learn from Shenzhen and conduct three universal tests in a few days, Im afraid we are not yet able to do so, she said.Lam was also asked whether the government will consider setting up an inquiry to look into the fatality rate in this wave of outbreak  which is higher than what other major cities like London, New York and Singapore had experienced in the past two years.In response, the CE said the government had put in all necessary resources and effort to keep the city safe in the past two years until the highly transmissible Omicron variant hit the territory.She said she hoped authorities will in future be able to tackle problems that surfaced during this outbreak, such as the operation of elderly homes and collaboration between medical and social workers, to prepare Hong Kong for another health crisis in the future."The most saddening part of it is vaccination. We have spent over one year to promote, encourage and coerce people to take the jab. But unfortunately, the entire society, partly because of the low infection rate in the last year or so, and partly because of anxiety, worries and so on, we have not achieved this high rate of vaccination, especially among the elderly," she said."I would hope that the opportunity will come for us to review the existing practices to enhance the safety of the people of Hong Kong.Meanwhile, Lam said the government has no plan yet to further tighten social-distancing measures because it has to take into account peoples mental well-being and their acceptance.
Amanda Quirk pulled off a feat of galactic proportions at this years Grad Slam competition in downtown Santa Cruz.

She compressed billions of years of galaxies history into a humor-laced three-minute mini-talk, drawing cheers from the audience and winning over the judges with her discussion of galaxy mergers and galactic cannibalism.

At the competition held at the Kuumbwa Jazz Center, Quirks presentation, The Tale of Two Galaxies: Studying How Galaxies Change Over Time, won $3,000 and the opportunity to compete in the systemwide UC Grad Slam on May 6 in San Francisco.

Next stop for Quirk is Columbia University, where she earned her B.A. in astrophysics in 2017. She will be a teaching post-doc in astronomy for the next three years.

Grad Slam gives graduate students three minutes to share their research, concisely and compellingly, with a public audience. Currently enrolled graduate students are eligible to participate, with the exception of previous winners.

A community panel of leaders in government and the nonprofit sector judged the event. The audience was invited to vote on its favorite presentation.

Grad Slam has a great track record when it comes to fostering unforgettable presentations. The 2019 winner, Sarah Kienle, turned the sexual dimophism and foraging differences of male and female elephant seals into comedic gold. The UC Santa Cruz Grad Slam champion of 2017, John Felts, earned top marks for his talk about creating environmentally friendly surfboard foam from the shells of shrimp.

The competition is always fierce, and the challenge is formidable. How do you cram years of knowledge into an elevator pitch while keeping the audience engaged?

Spying on stars

But Quirk, in the words of Sonya Newlyn, professional development coordinator for the Department of Graduate Studies, gave a star performance with a presentation that demonstrated poise, wit, and skillful timing. It was a delight to watch and listen to.

Quirk is a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate,working with Professor Puragra Guha Thakurta, who had high praise for Quirks presentation.

I am very happy to see her go from one success to another, said Thakurta, professor and chair of the Astronomy and Astrophysics Department. She is a terrific scientist, educator, mentor, and communicator. It has been a privilege to work with her as we explore the mysteries of our neighboring Andromeda and Triangulum galaxies.

Her presentation began with a vexing problem: If we were to truly study a galaxys life, we would need billions of years to watch it form and grow. Now, that is way longer than I plan on being in graduate school.

To figure out how galaxies change over time, astronomers must look for clues that represent tiny snapshots in their history, Quirk explained.

A whole lot can happen to a galaxy in a few billion years, including the energetic deaths of massive stars, the violent burst of star formations, and collisions between galaxies, she said.

Quirk is especially interested in galaxy mergers or galactic cannibalisma colorful term for mergers that tear apart smaller galaxies while building up larger ones, a process that changes how galaxies function and behave.

Her research focuses on the relatively close-to-Earth Triangulum and Andromeda galaxies, which she studies by using data gathered with the help of the Keck II telescope, one of the largest telescopes on Earth, to observe their stars. Keck II is located on Mauna Kea on the big island of Hawaii.

Stars are gossips, Quirk told the crowd. They give away many of their secrets through their light.

Quirk compares how fast younger and older stars move and makes note of the differences, especially if one is moving much more quickly than the other.

If there is a noticeable difference in their speed, it means that something must have happened to the galaxy in the time between when the young and older stars were born," she said. That something could be a merger.

Using this comparative technique, Quirk found that the Andromeda galaxy likely had a major merger at some point in the past 4 billion years.

This actually changes what we know about the kinds of mergers that spiral galaxies can survive, she said.

Quirk explained that spiral galaxiesnamed for their beautiful spiral structureare relatively fragile. When one collides with a bigger galaxy, the spiral pattern can be destroyed, and you get an elliptical galaxy that looks just like a blob.

Quirk, spying on the stars in Triangulum, noticed that there was not much difference between the speeds of its older and younger stars, suggesting that so far, Triangulum has been left alone by the smaller galaxies that have passed by recently. But it wont stay that way forever. Triangulum will collide with Andromeda in billions of years.

She also noted that our own galaxy, the Milky Way, is also on a crash course with Andromeda at some point in the far future.

We wont be around to watch that merger but the work Im doing today gives us a glimpse into the future of our own galactic home, she said.

When asked about winning the competition, Quirk said it was an honor, but she mostly wanted to talk about how much she enjoyed the other presentations.

Because in the Astronomy Department, I am so used to just hearing about astronomy that I forget all about the amazing research thats being done on the campus, she said. I loved hearing about what other grad students are doing.

A strong advocate for students with disabilities

Aside from her scientific prowess, Quirk is known at UCSC for her compassion and common cause with disabled scientists. She has been living for years with chronic pain, which can be incapacitating.

She convened a support group for disabled grad students to come together and talk about their experiences. She also communicates with her department and others across the university.

We talk about how to make classrooms more flexible in their structures so students with chronic health issues can honor their bodies instead of just prioritizing classroom learning, Quirk said.

The group has been a boon for Quirk.

Its been really comforting just to know that Im not alone in this, and to hear about other students experiences, she said. It broadened my horizons.

An impressive field of Grad Slam competitors

Jessica Kendall-Barr, a fifth-year ecology and evolutionary biology Ph.D. candidate, was the runner-up award winner with her presentation, Eavesdropping on the Brain at Sea: A First Glimpse at Sleep in Wild Marine Mammals.

Melissa Marini Svigelj, a fourth-year education Ph.D candidate, was the Peoples Choice winner, getting the audience in her corner with the presentation, The Limitations and Potentialities of Educational Civil Rights Protections under IDEA for Incarcerated Children.

The other finalists were Elise Duffau, psychology Ph.D., third year, The Particularities of Politeness, Sara Gonzalez, ecology and evolutionary biology Ph.D., sixth year, Untangling Giant Kelp: Causes and Consequences of Different Shapes, Andrea Paz-Lacavex, coastal science and policy M.S., second year, SPORA: Rockin Kelp Restoration, Ontario Alexander, musicology Ph.D., 1st year, Joseph Boulogne: Restoring a legend, and Amanda Carbajal, molecular, cellular, and developmental biology, track in biomedical science and engineering Ph.D., 4th year, Leveraging biotechnology and basic science to stay a step ahead of the next global pandemic.

Watch Quirks award-winning performance

, and the rest of the memorable ceremony.
"We are closely monitoring the extent to which China actually provides material and economic support to Russia," Sullivan was quoted as saying by Ria Novosti, RT reported.

According to him, "The US authorities informed Beijing that they would not tolerate or allow any country to try to compensate Russia for its economic losses."

The adviser to the President of the United States stressed that "this will entail consequences for the PRC."

Earlier, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said that Western countries are putting pressure on China in order to limit Russia's access to its yuan reserves.

Western sanctions on Russia will affect the recovery of the global economy and harm all parties, said Premier of the State Council of China Li Keqiang.

"The global economy is already under the heavy influence of the pandemic, the corresponding sanctions will hit the recovery of the global economy and will not benefit either side," Ria Novosti quoted him as saying.

Keqiang also noted that China has always adhered to an independent and peaceful foreign policy.

"China has always pursued an independent peaceful foreign policy and developed bilateral relations not directed against any third party," Keqiang concluded.

--IANS san/skp/

( 249 Words)

2022-03-13-21:26:03 (IANS)
The Centre for Countering Disinformation at the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine said in order to consolidate Russian society in support of the war with Ukraine, Russian special services plan to conduct an operation aimed at discrediting Ukrainians living in Russia, Ukrayinska Pravda reported.

As part of the special operation they are planning to disseminate appeals to Ukrainians living in Russia to lead a protest movement to overthrow the Putin regime. Leaders of public opinion outside Russia with a supposedly pro-Ukrainian position will be involved in the proclamation of the appeals, the report said.

The plan includes giving protests related to the sharp deterioration of living conditions of Russians an ethnic "Ukrainian" colour.

It is also proposed to implement a series of provocations of a violent (terrorist) nature which will be "organized" by ethnic Ukrainians.

Intensifying propaganda to explain to the citizens of the Russian Federation the inevitability of war with Ukraine and the need to exterminate Ukrainians is also part of the said plan, Ukraine has claimed.

--IANS san/skp/

( 204 Words)

2022-03-13-21:42:03 (IANS)
According to the City Council: "In 24 hours, there have been at least 22 bombings of the peaceful city. Altogether, nearly 100 bombs have been dropped on Mariupol... 2,187 residents of Mariupol have died to date because of the Russian attacks."

The City Council said that the Russian troops are deliberately targeting residential buildings and densely populated areas, razing children's hospitals to the ground, and completely destroying the city's infrastructure, Ukrayinska Pravda reported.

They also noted that the gravest threat for the city's 400,000 blockaded residents is from the sky, and urged the skies to be closed or for them to be given air defence systems.

The City Council also stated that the situation in Mariupol remains very difficult. There is no light, water, heat in the city, almost no mobile communication, the last stocks of food and water are running out, Ukrinform reported.

The Russians reportedly caused the worst humanitarian catastrophe in Mariupol. Unable to defeat the Ukrainian army, the invaders bomb unarmed people and block humanitarian aid, it said.

--IANS san/

( 202 Words)

2022-03-13-22:08:03 (IANS)
US journalist, Brent Renaud, has been shot dead in the town of Irpin outside Kyiv, police say, BBC reported. Kiev's police chief Andriy Nebytov said he had been targeted by Russian soldiers. Two other journalists were injured and taken to hospital. It is the first reported death of a foreign journalist covering the war in Ukraine, BBC reported. Photographs are circulating showing a press ID for Renaud that was issued by the New York Times. In a statement, the newspaper said it was saddened to hear of Renaud's death but that he had not been working for the newspaper in Ukraine. He last worked for the newspaper in 2015, the NYT said, and the press ID he was wearing in Ukraine had been issued years ago. It was not immediately clear who Renaud was working for in Ukraine. US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan says the US will impose "appropriate consequences" on Russia. News of the death was "shocking and horrifying", he said, and US officials would be consulting with Ukrainian officials to determine "how this happened", BBC reported. Another US journalist, Juan Arredondo, was taken to hospital after the incident. He told an Italian reporter that he was with Renaud when they came under fire. "We were across one of the first bridges in Irpin, going to film other refugees leaving, and we got into a car, somebody offered to take us to the other bridge and we crossed a checkpoint, and they start shooting at us. "So the driver turned around, and they kept shooting; there's two of us. My friend is Brent Renaud, and he's been shot and left behind." --IANS san/ ( 285 Words) 2022-03-13-22:10:03 (IANS)
R. Sainikesh's family who lives in Tamil Nadu's Coimbatore, has told media that they had found he wanted to return when they talked to him.

In 2018, Sainikesh joined the National Aerospace University in Kharkiv and since then he had been there. Following the fighting, he had joined the Georgian National Legion, a paramilitary group helping Ukrainian soldiers, to fight against the Russians.

As his father Ravichandran asked what he was doing in war-torn country and why he was not coming back, Sainikesh said that he wished to be back in his country and stay with him family.

Recently, intelligence officials contacted the family of the student after which they came to know that Sainikesh was fighting against Russia.

The family hopes that their son will be brought back safely by the Indian authorities under their ongoing evacuation operation.

Sainikesh wanted to join the Indian Army but failed to qualify twice due to his height, and was sad over this. It is also said to be one of the reasons behind his joining the paramilitary unit.

In Ukraine, Sainikesh, had got a job at a video game developing firm, before the war started.

--IANS atk/vd

( 235 Words)

2022-03-13-23:20:03 (IANS)
Colonel-General Mikhail Mizintsev, head of the National Defense Control Center of the Russian Federation, said on Monday that the successful operation to unblock Mariupol made it possible to open humanitarian corridors and begin mass evacuation of the population. "The successful operation to unblock the city made it possible today to open humanitarian corridors for the exit of civilians and to begin mass evacuation of the population, which had been held hostage by neo-Nazis for a long time," Mizintsev said, RT reported. He also announced the destruction of almost all neo-Nazi firing points that were equipped in the suburban areas of Mariupol. In addition, he reported the liquidation of the main forces of neo-Nazis in positions in residential areas along the perimeter of Mariupol. He said almost all the neo-Nazi firing points that were equipped in the suburban areas of Mariupol had been destroyed. As emphasised in the Russian Ministry of Defense, 200 buses have already been organised to take people out of the city. Fifty buses have arrived in the city and are ready to pick up people. Mariupol remained one of the hottest spots on the map of Russia's special operation in Ukraine. Russia said the 'neo-Nazis' who settled here held civilians hostage and sabotaged the work of any humanitarian corridors. --IANS san/arm ( 228 Words) 2022-03-14-20:50:04 (IANS)
Western nations should not get involved in the conflict between Moscow and Kiev, he said, arguing that a confrontation between Russia and NATO would mean nothing short of nuclear world war, RT reported.

"Russia is a nuclear power and we are well aware that if this conflict turns into [a conflict] between NATO and Russia, we will roll down into the Third World War," the former Belgian Prime Minister told El Pais on Saturday, following Friday's EU summit in Versailles, France.

Michel advocated for dialogue, warning that "all conflicts are dramatic, extreme and often difficult", but Russia's nuclear capabilities add a whole new "dimension of a different nature" to any potential military standoff with Moscow.

"I advocate pragmatism," he said, adding that Europe should focus on pressing issues at hand like humanitarian access to areas affected by the military action, the status of Ukraine's nuclear power plants, and peace negotiations between Moscow and Kiev.

"We need to talk to whoever is in Kremlin today, because democracies should talk to nations even if they are deemed not democratic," Michel said.

--IANS san/arm

( 218 Words)

2022-03-14-20:54:04 (IANS)
"In large cities such as Kharkiv, Odessa and Nikolaev, members of nationalist formations, under the threat of physical reprisals against men family members aged 18 to 60 years, forcibly push them to enroll in territorial defence battalions," Mizintsev said, RT reported.

He added that the inhabitants of Ukraine are intimidated, so they are forced to agree.

The Russian side is strictly complying with the ceasefire obligations for the withdrawal of civilians along the humanitarian corridors during the special operation in Ukraine, Mizintsev claimed.

"Despite the endless streams of lies and disinformation, the Russian Federation continues to fully fulfil its humanitarian obligations," he said.

Mizintsev added that Russia is opening humanitarian corridors in Kiev, Chernihiv, Sumy and Kharkiv directions.

"The silence regimes introduced by the Russian armed forces are strictly observed," a spokesman for the Russian Ministry of Defense said.

Earlier, Russia said that the successful operation to unblock Mariupol made it possible to open humanitarian corridors and begin mass evacuation of the population.

"The successful operation to unblock the city made it possible today to open humanitarian corridors for the exit of civilians and to begin mass evacuation of the population, which had been held hostage by neo-Nazis for a long time," a spokesman said, RT reported.

--IANS san/arm

( 256 Words)

2022-03-14-22:14:05 (IANS)
James Holt realized both his own and his grandmother's long-cherished visions the day he got his visa stamp to come to China seven years ago.

Holt's grandma, Kay Engel, was a medic who wanted to go to China to help injured soldiers and civilians during World War II, but she was sent to Italy instead. "My grandma's favorite food is Chinese, so she cooked Chinese food as much as she could to pretend that she was there," Holt told Beijing Review.

She taught her grandchildren how to use chopsticks to eat her Chinese dishes. "She made us click our chopsticks 100 times in a row when we were little. It would make the food taste even better," Holt said. He is the first in his family to have set foot on Chinese soilon August 16, 2014.

Holt copied some of his grandmother's recipes before embarking on his journey. "She posted her recipes on Facebook, waiting for 'likes'," Holt said.

But when he arrived in Beijing, Holt was surprised by the number of foreign restaurants in the city. Nonetheless, he made a deal with himself: "I'm not eating any foreign food for the first two years."

Drama matters

Like most foreigners from English-speaking countries, Holt's first job in China was teaching English in training centers and middle school. Since November 2021, he has been a teacher at New Channel, a Beijing-based language training institute. "I teach them theater," he said.

Holt was very shy as a kid. In the first grade, he was invited to "star" in Romeo and Juliet. He declined. But his teacher insisted on giving him the biggest part. "He gave me the power to empower myself," Holt explained. He wanted to pass on that same feeling his elementary school teacher did. So he studied theater and education at Evergreen State College, the U.S., and then ventured out to Asia; first the Republic of Korea, then China.

"Teaching theater and public speaking in China is wonderful," he said. Training aside, he and his colleagues also adapt Chinese stories, like The Monkey King, into English screenplays for students. "Children really want to be as dramatic as possible instead of just reciting the words," he said.

But teaching is not all it's cracked up to be. "The biggest challenge is to get the introverted kidsor adultsto speak up," Holt added. Making the shyest kid the director is one of his methods to build them up. And the change within them becomes palpable: Students who'd barely utter a word before end up being the loudest person in the room. "I love to see that turnaround," Holt said.

His future plan is to get as many children as possible to feel more empowered, and "have theater be a little bridge" between China and other countries.

Art makes for a universal conversation starter. Although there are disagreements and frictions in economic and trade areas between China and the U.S., people from both countries can get along through art. "I think it's a really powerful thing that we can all share," he said.

Life in Beijing

Holt didn't leave China when the coronavirus first struck. "China's COVID-19 measures have been wonderful. Most people here are wearing masks; everybody's really looking out for one another," he said. "I'm just blessed to be here."

For him, not wearing a mask during a pandemic doesn't make any sense. "Wearing a mask just seems like a pretty basic thing to do to help yourself and others by reducing the risk of infection," Holt said.

During the pandemic, Holt first taught online for a period of time and tried to create better theater curriculums. "I think the pandemic really helped people refocus on what's important to them. That's kind of the silver lining," he said.

He further wrote a script and staged his original comedy Always and Forever: My Book and I on February 22. It's about life in Beijing during COVID-19 and how, in the end, everyone came out stronger. "I hope it can reach people and help them deal with loneliness during pandemic times," Holt said.

Over 100 people came to see his comedy at a bar in east downtown Beijing. Musab Abdikadir from Somalia was one of them. "It's about quarantining, an experience we've all shared. The way they perform, the book, Holt himself, and his inner voice, were fantastic. I laughed at the beginning and almost cried at the end," the 25-year-old told Beijing Review. He is an international student majoring in ethnology at Beijing's Minzu University.

Holt's life has been back on track ever since China gained control over the pandemic. "Now we're really just looking around, looking at each other, just trying to make something beautiful," he said. He also joined a Beijing writer collective. "We have a storytelling night and a poetry night. Everyone can attend and just read what they've jotted down," he said. Men and women, Chinese and foreign; they all gather every week to create some art and try to help each other, he added.

Putting down roots

When Holt moved to China, his family was concerned about Beijing's air quality. Today, they can feel at ease because every year since Holt's arrival, the air has improved.

Beijing stepped up its fight against air pollution in 1998. Many factories were either shut down or relocated outside the capital to improve its ecological environment. The efforts have paid off. Beijing witnessed 288 days of good air quality last year, up 112 days from 2013, the year before Holt came to the city. "This is the bluest-sky winter I've seen in seven years. That means the environment is getting better. I would like to live here forever," he said.

The cheap and swift public transportation is another reason for him to stay. "The subway system in Beijing is amazing. For over 20 million people, it's a very fluent city," he said. When he was living in Seattle, a city with rolling hills and cars zooming about, he had to spend much more money on transportation.

Convenient online shopping services and food delivery also add to the appeal. "You can get anything anytime. If you're really sick, too sick to walk down the street, you can just get your medication delivered. That's really handy," he said.

Now, Holt has a new dream: to obtain a Chinese green card. "Instead of applying for a new residence permit every year, I would love to get a permanent residence. That's my dream," he said.
New Delhi [India], March 14 (ANI/SRV): The India Africa Trade Council organized the India Namibia Summit which was attended by the Business community in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. The President of the Indian Economic Trade Organization, Dr Asif Iqbal, welcomed the High Commissioner of Namibia, HE Gabriel Sinimbo, to India and pledged the commitment of support between the two nations for a robust partnership. There is a huge interest in India for Namibian Diamonds, a country with great scope for bilateral trading opportunities in Skill Development, Affordable Housing, Agriculture, Minerals, and Gold. The event was attended by various diplomats, industrialists, and businessmen from Telangana. Dr Tasneem Shariff, Trade Commissioner who was presented her appointment by His Excellency Gabriel Sinimbo, spoke about accelerating India's relationship with the Southern African region and its port proximity Walvis Bay for the various other nations around the region. There were various business delegations recently from South Indian states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala. "As the trade office bridge between India and Namibia, I will explore all strategic opportunities between the two countries. I am thankful to the Indian High Commissioner in Namibia Shri, Prashant Agrawal IFS, for giving the virtual address to all our business houses in Telangana. This creates a sense of confidence and credibility for our trade mechanisms. I will work on requesting the cheetahs and other wild cats from Namibia to be brought to the Hyderabad Zoo and work on the Diamond Park project that can enable students to learn Diamond trade and other related self-reliant skill sets. Very soon our students will go to Namibia to learn the intrinsic details of the diamond sector," said Dr Tasneem Shariff who will be driving the India Namibia trade relations in the state. His Excellency Gabriel Sinimbo said global trade relations were essential and it was gratifying to see the development of trade relations between India and Namibia also appealed Telangana businessmen to invest in Namibia. He said the role of the Indian IT sector from the state was essential for economic development. "As a President of the organization, my goal is to build bilateral relations reach new heights between India and Namibia and our delegation a few months back saw tremendous interest from the Indian side. Next delegation from Telangana will go in the month of May 2022" said Dr Asif Iqbal who is looking to connect the companies for business in Namibia. Indian delegation will explore opportunities in areas of contractual farming, poultry industry, meat processing, diamond trade, and agricultural collaborations and also identify other opportunities for building up a robust infrastructure needs of the country in the field of setting up gold refinery. "There is a renewed interest on the event of 75th Anniversary. Our bilateral trade has grown immensely with Namibia, especially after the pandemic, and is a very good sign. The real volume of trade is much higher than official figures because a lot of trade through South Africa. A strong business delegation visited Namibia just a few months ago and the High Commission is always ready to help and support the Telangana business delegation" said the High Commissioner of India in Namibia, His Excellency Shri Prashant Agrawal, IFS. The High Commissioner also inaugurated the office of the India Namibia Trade Forum(INTF) with all other dignitaries and expressed interest in supporting the various MOUs signed during the event in Hyderabad. The High Commissioner also expressed great interest in supporting the trade relations between the two countries and invited the trade community to explore all the available choices for investors. Trade between the two countries stood at approximately USD 80 million. Namibia's main imports from India were drugs and pharmaceuticals, chemicals, agricultural machinery, automobile and automobile parts, glass and glassware, plastic and linoleum products. India primarily imported nonferrous metals, ores, and metal scraps. Indian products are also exported to neighbouring South Africa and re-imported to Namibia as South African imports. Namibian diamonds are often exported to European diamond markets before being again imported to India. In 2009, the first direct sale of Namibian diamonds to India took place. In 2008, two Indian companies won a USD105 million contract from NamPower to lay a high-voltage direct current bi-polar line from KatimaMulilo to Otjiwarongo. Namibia is a beneficiary of the Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation (ITEC) program for telecommunications professionals from developing countries. Namibia has the richest known marine diamond deposits in the world, estimated at more than 80 million carats. They represent around 65 per cent of Namdeb Holdings' total diamond production and 90 per cent of its diamond resources. Hyderabad will form a network of businessmen and will be taking delegations to the country to strengthen mechanisms created for enabling these trade opportunities between both countries. This story is provided by SRV Media. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/SRV)
Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], March 14 (ANI/NewsVoir): SwissBake, a leading bakery and culinary ingredient brand announced, its expansion plans into Frozen Foods. The company also celebrated 10 years of successful operations in Asia and the Middle East. Currently, SwissBake has over 350 products in its portfolio, serving 16 international markets. The key to SwissBake's rapid growth lies in its novel B2B approach. With clients like Taj, The Park, Hyatt, and over 3000 clients including star hotels, industrial bakers, cafes, Quick Service Restaurants (QSR), fine dining restaurants, the brand has pivoted strongly towards building a demand-centric business. SwissBake has also inked annual supply contracts with major bakeries and star hotels across the country. The brand is reportedly the only Indian manufacturer for European bread mixes and specialized bakery ingredients. SwissBake was founded by a Swiss food scientist and master baker, Josef Eicher and he still holds the key role & responsibility of heading research and development activities of the company. The brand reportedly has the largest portfolio of products in the bakery ingredient segment in Asia & Middle East. Along with regular products like egg-free cake premixes and sandwich bread improvers, SwissBake has made its mark in European Bread Premixes ranges like Norlander, Pumpernickel, Rye Breads, Ciabatta, Baguette, Croissants, Sourdough breads, Dark Multigrain breads and specialized bakery flours. SwissBake Morcote 00 pizza flour for the pizza industry has established itself as one of the best-selling products under their specialty flour category. Under the cake premixes category some unique premixes offered by SwissBake include Weiner Cakes, Swiss Sponge cake, Cream cakes, Matcha cakes, Cookies, Donuts, Choux Pastry, etc. Under wellness range, SwissBake offers some exclusive products like low carb & high protein breads, Gluten-free breads, and one of the most innovative healthy bread premix "Grainy Slim" (No Flour, No Sugar, No yeast). As the team works relentlessly for customer satisfaction, they recently added a new range of products for patisserie enhancement. Cake Glazes launched in January 2022 will be followed by fruit fillings, cream fillings, and cake gels by the year-end. On the 10-year anniversary of SwissBake in India, Sir Josef Eicher shared the secret behind the success of his Indian venture. He stated, "Holding on to Swiss heritage and focus on developing tailor-made solutions remains our key success factors. SwissBake's real success comes from innovating and developing customized solutions for the bakers by collaborating and working closely with them. Bringing innovation, ease, and customization to the global bakery marketplace is Swiss Bake's core strength." With strong support from their technical partner Trade'n'Bake Switzerland, SwissBake has access to extensive know-how and latest research thus offering a wide range of quality international bakery ingredients to the bakery sector. SwissBake further plans to support the growth of the retail segment by making professional quality products available to home bakers. In years to come, SwissBake will be focusing on easy and instant solutions to support its clients in the QSR segment. Frozen breads and frozen cakes would be the next big step in this direction. SwissBake also plans to explore global opportunities and markets, while setting up additional production bases in different geographies. This story is provided by NewsVoir. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/NewsVoir)
New Delhi [India], March 14 (ANI/TPT): The entrepreneur duo Om Prakash and Amit Chauhan, owners of Rugs In Style (Manufacturer exporter of Handmade Carpet ), have recently launched KIAASA, a women's ethnicwear retailing brand. The brand is aimed at fulfilling the demand in the women's clothing segment by providing a wide range of ethnic wear like kurta sets, suit sets, lehenga sets, dresses, bottom wear, dupatta, accessories, and many more. Since the acquisition of KIAASA by the new promoters, the ethnic clothing brand has been successful in gaining a huge support base with around 100 operational stores in 60+ cities spread across 20 states. The brand caters to a plethora of daily clothing items for ladies and is gaining huge tractions because of its design and quality which is a perfect blend of traditional techniques coupled with modern weaving at an very attractive price point. The owners are also planning to aggressively expand their stores and for the same, they aim to open about 250 retail outlets across India by 2023. Talking about KIAASA, the directors Om Prakash and Amit Chauhan says, "We have always felt that our vibrant Indian culture and heritage should be promoted in every possible way, and through KIAASA, we are doing the same in the women's clothing segment. After in-depth research and market study, we came to realize that there is a massive demand for ethnic Indian wear among women but then there is no such brand that delivers quality and the right price for masses. This is the reason why we acquired KIAASA, which has now become a one-stop destination for all your daily outfit needs. Further, being in the handmade carpet industry with our brand- Rugs In Style, we are aware of the logistics of the industry and this could be one of our advantages in scaling up KIAASA to become one of the leading retailing women's clothing brands." The clothing brand is focused on providing stylish yet comfortable clothing for women and for the same, KIAASA has hired a team of professionals experts that takes care of everything be it checking on the set quality standards or be it focusing on customer buying patterns. The aggressive discount format of the store has gained fabulous response from the market, increased their customer base & revenue. KIAASA is aiming to position itself as a 360-degree solution to all urban style fashion and catering to this, they have scaled their operations and are building a strong web of network among the retailers across the country. For more information above the brand please visit: https://kiaasa.com/ This story is provided by TPT. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/TPT)
Flybig, India's newest scheduled commuter airline, on Monday launched its maiden flight service from GMR Hyderabad International Airport to Maharashtra's Gondia. The service is a UDAN initiative, which is aimed to bolster the regional connectivity to the travelers to Tier 2 and 3 cities. GMR Hyderabad International Airport Ltd CEO Pradeep Panicker flagged off the flight. The daily flight S9401 will depart from Hyderabad at 6.20 a.m. The return flight number S9402 will arrive at Hyderabad at 1.50 p.m. With this service, the number of domestic destinations from the Hyderabad International Airport has reached 70. Before the outbreak of Covid-19, this number was 55. "With the rising demand of passenger traffic since the beginning of the second quarter of 2021, we have added new domestic and international destinations from the Hyderabad International Airport. Air travel demand has grown significantly in the last couple of years. With travel bouncing back, travellers are revisiting their favourite destinations and exploring new places like never before," Panicker said. "To cater to this travel demand there has been a constant effort to add destinations that have not been connected across India, especially from Tier 2 and Tier 3 towns. Hyderabad city has the advantage of location in making this possible. As an airport operator, it gives a great deal of satisfaction that we have enabled it for those who want to fly from such remote places," he added. Gondia, which has a large number of rice mills, is known as 'Rice City'. It is also famous for the Navegaon National Park, Nagzira Wildlife Sanctuary, Kachargadh Caves, Hazra Fall, and other tourist spots in and around. Flybig has connected Hyderabad, Gondia, and Indore. The Indore-Gondia-Hyderabad flight was flagged off on Sunday virtually by Union Civil Aviation Minister, Jyotiraditya Scindia. The flight reached Hyderabad from Gondia on Sunday. The flight from Hyderabad was flagged off early Monday morning. Flybig has announced plans to rapidly increase its national footprint and operational network, by adding 3 more cities viz. Indore, Gondia and Hyderabad, taking the total number of cities in its network to 11. --IANS ms/vd ( 354 Words) 2022-03-14-20:26:03 (IANS)
His appearance at the Hello! Hall of Fame Awards 2022 ceremony on Sunday night is proof of the fact why he is considered as the gem of a person.

A video has been doing the rounds in which Sidharth can be seen picking up the train of actor Kriti Sanon's lavender-colored dress so that she can comfortably pose for shutterbugs on the red carpet.

Sidharth's thoughtful gesture has left netizens in awe of him.

Reacting to the video, a Twitter user wrote, "Siddharth is definitely a gem. The way he held Kriti's gown when the media were clicking her pictures. He earns my respect even in such small things."

Another user hailed him as a "gentleman."

"Find a guy who is gentlemanly as Sidharth Malhotra. Kriti was blushing so hard," the social media user tweeted.

Meanwhile, on the work front, Sidharth will be seen in Mission Majnu', which will hit theatres on June 10 this year. On the other hand, Kriti is busy promoting her film 'Bachchan Pandey' -- co-starring Akshay Kumar. (ANI)
A video has been doing the rounds on the internet in which Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan's daughter can be seen reciting a few lines in Hindi.

In the clip, the little girl, who was seen dressed up in her school uniform, talked about the importance of the Hindi language. She stated that if anyone wants to learn a language, they need to learn it through poetry.

Sharing the particular video, a social media user praised Aaradhya and wrote, "The legacy continues."

The netizen's comment caught Abhishek's attention. In response, Abhishek dropped a folded hands emoji as a mark of respect.

For the unversed, Aaradhya was born in 2011, four years after Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai's wedding. (ANI)
Rohit's close friend and actor Ajay Devgn shared a heartfelt note on Twitter. Sharing a picture featuring Rohit and himself, he wrote, "Our collaborations have always left me thrilled, ROFL-ing and pumped for more! This marks another year of your brilliance, hard work and creativity. Happy birthday, my friend."

Actor Katrina Kaif, who has worked with Rohit in 'Sooryavanshi' showered birthday love for the filmmaker. Sharing a photo of Rohit on her Instagram Story, Katrina wrote, "Happiest Birthday @itsrohitshetty. May u have all the love and happiness u bring to others."

Katrina's husband and actor Vicky Kaushal also wished the director. "Happy Birthday @itsrohitshetty sir. Have a blockbuster one," he wrote along with a picture of the producer.

Actor Rakul Preet Singh, who is currently busy with her movie 'Runway 34' posted a stunning picture of Rohit, "Happy Birthday Rohit Sir! Wishing you an amazing birthday and a blockbuster year ahead! @itsrohitshetty," she captioned the story.

Actor Shilpa Shetty also showered birthday wishes on the 'Khatron Ke Khiladi' host by sharing a video where she can be seen recreating the popular scene from 'Chennai Express'. She captioned, "Happy birthday @itsrohitshetty. May the year ahead be filled with more such crazy and funny moments. I hope the bottle-phod paagalpan yield some magic soon. Bigg hugg!"

Actors Parineeti Chopra, Siddharth Malhotra, Sonakshi Sinha and Huma Qureshi also extended birthday wishes to the filmmaker with adorable pictures on social media. (ANI)
Superstar Aamir Khan, who turned 57 on Monday, is looking back at the time when he took his family member for granted. In a recent interview with News18 India, the actor opened up about his personal life, career, family and value system. Opening up about how he could not give enough time to his near and dear ones, he shared, talking in Hindi, "Somewhere I didn't shoulder my responsibilities. My parents, my siblings, Reena ji--my first wife, Kiran ji, Reena ji's parents, Kiran ji's parents, my children...all these people are very close to me. I was 18 when I joined the film industry and I got so absorbed, I wanted to learn so much and do so much. Today I realise that, these people, who were so close to me...I couldn't give them my time the way I would want to." Apart from his family, he also talked about the values he considers important, including following the three pillars of Jainism. He said, "When there is someone whose thoughts you do not agree with, one should keep an open window in their minds that maybe the other person is right. Atleast one should understand that just like you have thoughts, others have their own thoughts, and have an equal right to express them as you do. This is one of Jainism's three pillars which I try to follow in my life. One is non-violence, second is use as less as you can, don't waste. And the third is this, that the other person has the complete freedom to feel different from your ways of thinking." For the unversed, Aamir married Reena Dutta in 1986 and are parents to Junaid Khan and Ira Khan. They separated in 2002. He married Kiran Rao in 2005 and they share son Azad Rao Khan. The couple announced their separation last year in 2021. Meanwhile, on the work front, the superstar will be next seen in the highly anticipated film 'Laal Singh Chaddha' that also stars Kareena Kapoor Khan, Mona Singh and Naga Chaitanya in pivotal roles.The comedy drama is slated to release in theatres on April 14, 2022. (ANI)
Taking to her Instagram Story on Monday, Shaheen posted a picture of her sister and wrote, "As you can see we're very happy to be on holiday."

She also posted a happy selfie of them together, followed by a serene picture of a beach.

Alia also posted Shaheen's pool picture on her Instagram Story with a sticker that read, "today's view."

Meanwhile, on the work front, Alia is all set to make her Hollywood debut with Netflix's international spy thriller 'Heart of Stone'.

She will be next seen in Ayan Mukerji's 'Brahmastra', co-starring her beau Ranbir Kapoor. The movie will also feature megastar Amitabh Bachchan, Nagarjuna Akkineni and Mouni Roy. The film will release on September 9, 2022.

Alia is also awaiting the release of SS Rajamouli's magnum opus 'RRR' which will also feature Ram Charan, Jr NTR, and Ajay Devgn in pivotal roles. (ANI)
Taking to Twitter, Yami and Aditya shared their reviews of the film and urged people to give it a watch.

"You might have seen numerous videos of Kashmiri Pandits breaking down in the theatres after watching #TheKashmirFiles. The emotion is real. It shows how long we kept our pain and tragedy repressed as a community. We didn't have any shoulder to cry on and no ear to hear our pleas," Aditya tweeted.

Sharing her husband's tweet, Yami said her marriage to Aditya, a Kashmiri Pandit, has made her more aware of their exodus from the valley.

"Being married to a Kashmiri Pandit, I know first hand of the atrocities that this peace-loving community has gone through. But majority of the nation is still unaware. It took us 32 years and a film to get to know the truth. Please watch and support #TheKashmirFiles," she emphasised.

'The Kashmir Files' stars Anupam Kher, Mithun Chakraborty, Pallavi Joshi, Darshan Kumaar, and others. (ANI)
A medical worker takes a swab sample from a child for nucleic acid test at a community in Dongjing Township, Songjiang District of Shanghai, east China, March 13, 2022. [Photo/Xinhua]

China is taking strict and swift measures to stem new COVID-19 infections that have emerged in multiple regions recently.

The Chinese mainland on Saturday reported 1,807 locally transmitted COVID-19 cases in 19 provincial-level regions, the National Health Commission (NHC) said Sunday.

Chinese Vice Premier Sun Chunlan on Saturday urged regions experiencing severe epidemic outbreaks to clear COVID-19 cases among the general public in the shortest time possible.

Efforts should be made to expand the coverage of nucleic acid testing, accelerate epidemiological screening and patient transportation and isolation, and apply quarantine measures in a strict way, said Sun.

As part of the swift COVID-19 responses, China has added antigen detection as an option for COVID-19 testing among the public, in efforts to boost the early discovery of COVID-19 cases, the NHC said Friday.

Local authorities have also tightened measures to contain the new infections.

Shanghai on Saturday required citizens not to leave the city if not necessary and those who do must hold a certificate for a negative nucleic acid test results taken 48 hours before departure.

In the first two months of 2022, the megacity, with a population of nearly 25 million, has logged 1,243 confirmed COVID-19 cases arriving from outside the Chinese mainland, accounting for about 38 percent of total such cases on the mainland. The number is also roughly equivalent to 80 percent of Shanghai's total imported cases last year.

The city has required primary and secondary schools to switch to online classes and temporarily closed kindergartens and nurseries from Saturday after 11 locally transmitted COVID-19 cases and 32 imported cases were reported Thursday.

In northeast China's Jilin province, which reported 1,412 local cases Saturday, local authorities have conducted multiple rounds of mass nucleic acid testing in face of the Omicron variant, which spreads easily and is hard to detect.

The city of Jilin conducted six rounds of mass nucleic acid testing and the Jiutai district in the provincial capital Changchun completed three rounds, while the rest of the city conducted two rounds.

Zhang Yan, deputy head of the provincial health commission, said the mass health screenings have allowed potential infections to be discovered in communities.

In face of the surging cases, the city of Changchun is building a makeshift hospital at an exhibition center that can provide more than 1,500 beds. In the city of Jilin, local authorities have built three makeshift hospitals, which can offer over 1,200 beds. The fourth one with over 2,000 beds is under construction.

Communities workers are in full swing to make sure COVID-19 prevention and control measures are implemented.

"We set up health checkpoints, organize nucleic acid tests, and deliver daily supplies to residents under quarantine during the day and work on shifts at night on epidemiological investigations, so we just slept in the office," said Shi Dan, a community worker in the city of Jilin.

"Despite this, no one backs down," she said. "We all want to win over the epidemic soon."
In a major breakthrough, Israeli scientists claim to have extended women's fertility by successfully reversing the ageing mechanism in eggs using antiviral drugs. In humans, egg cells begin to accumulate damage to their genetic material when a woman is relatively young. Often by the time she is in her late thirties, her eggs have accumulated so much damage to the DNA that they are unable to mature and be fertilised. Researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU) showed that antiviral drugs could indeed reverse the process in mouse and human egg cells and return to their former youthful selves. There has also been similar success using genetic manipulation to insert two genes into the mouse egg cell DNA - the implanted genes produce enzymes which prevent the chain of events that leads to the activation of the damaging parts of the DNA. "Within a decade, I hope we will be able to increase fertility among older women using antiviral drugs," said Michael Klutstein, head of the Chromatin and Ageing Research Lab in the Faculty of Dental Medicine at the HU. The findings were published in the journal Ageing Cell. The team successfully identified one of the ageing processes that prevent the successful maturation of an egg cell. Most importantly among them is the loss of the regulation processes that normally stop the damaging parts of DNA from becoming active. The HU team's research, using mouse and human egg cells, not only identified the details of these processes but showed how they are interrelated and ultimately prevent an egg cell from maturing. To confirm their findings, the team then used chemicals that mimic the actual processes that stop repression of sections of the egg cell's DNA and liberate the DNA-damaging viruses. Reproducing the ageing processes artificially enabled the team to link the processes of loss of genomic regulation and the expression of damaging elements in ageing egg cells. The final stage of their research tested ways to reverse the destructive aging processes at work in an egg cell. If viruses or parts of viruses were released and activated in ageing eggs, then perhaps antiviral drugs could prevent this process and the resulting damage, the team said. --IANS rvt/vd ( 380 Words) 2022-03-13-19:02:03 (IANS)
The Supreme Court on Monday reiterated its concern regarding fake claims for Covid death compensation and that it may direct a probe by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) in this matter. It suggested that inquiry into alleged fake death claims could be entrusted to the government auditor's office. A bench of Justices M.R. Shah and B.V. Nagarathna said: "We never visualised that this kind of fake claims could come. It's a pious world. We never thought this scheme could be misused." The bench added that if some officers are also involved in it, then it is "very serious". As advocate Gaurav Kumar Bansal pointed out at the Section 52 in the Disaster Management Act, which addresses such concerns, Justice Shah said: "We need somebody to file a complaint." Counsel suggested a random examination of the compensation claims by the state legal services authorities. During the hearing, the top court said its earlier order regarding ex-gratia of Rs 50,000 to the family members of those who succumbed to Covid is "very clear" and the payment is to be made for each death. The bench made this observation while dealing with an application filed by the Assam government, seeking clarification whether each of the children of the deceased parents would be paid compensation, in case there is more than one child. The bench clarified that ex gratia payment of Rs 50,000, ordered by it, is to be paid for each death due to Covid-19 and not to each child of the affected family. In January, the top court had directed all the state governments to reach out to those children, who have lost their parents to the viral disease, and pay them compensation. On March 7, the Supreme Court expressed concern at doctors issuing fake medical certificates to people for claiming ex-gratia compensation for Covid deaths, and added that it might order a probe into the matter. The Centre had submitted that an outer limit may be fixed for submitting Covid death related claims, otherwise the process will become endless, and added that some state governments have come across fake medical certificates issued by doctors. Solicitor General Tushar Mehta also pointed out that the apex court's order on ex-gratia compensation, through a doctor's certificate, has been misused in certain cases. Expressing concern on fake medical certificates, the bench said: "What is worrying is the fake certificate given by doctors... it is a very serious thing." It also agreed with Mehta's submissions that there should be a time limit for registering Covid death claims. "There must be some time limit, otherwise the process will go endlessly....". The top court was hearing a plea filed by Bansal in connection with the disbursal of ex-gratia compensation by state governments to the families of Covid victims. It is monitoring the disbursal of Rs 50,000 ex-gratia for Covid-19 deaths by various state governments. --IANS ss/vd ( 498 Words) 2022-03-14-19:18:04 (IANS)
Paytm CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma was arrested by the Delhi Police for allegedly ramming into a senior police official's car in February and later was released on bail, a senior official confirmed the incident on Sunday. Delhi Police Spokesperson Suman Nalwa told IANS that the incident took place on February 22 in south Delhi's Malviya Nagar area. "The accused rammed the car of south Delhi Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP), Benita Mary Jaiker. However, the DCP was not present inside the car at the time of the incident," the official said. Meanwhile, a Paytm spokesperson, responding to the media reports, said that a complaint was filed in connection with an alleged minor motor vehicle incident. "There was no harm caused to any person or property in the said incident. Media reports claiming the nature of the arrest are exaggerated," the spokesperson added. Sharma, 43, is the founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of financial technology company Paytm. According to Forbes, he was ranked as the 62nd richest person in India in 2020. According to the police official, the accident happened outside Mother International School, Sri Aurobindo Marg on February 22 when DCP's driver Constable Dipak Kumar had taken out the car for refueling. None was injured in the accident and DCP's driver immediately noted down the number of the alleged Land Rover that hit his car and informed DCP Jaiker about the incident, who asked him to file a complaint. The accused driver of the Land Rover had fled the spot after the accident. In the FIR, Constable Kumar alleged that he had gone to re-fuel his car and around 8 a.m. on that day when he reached outside the Mother International School's Gate No 3, there was a heavy traffic jam as parents had come to drop their children to the school. Seeing the traffic jam, Constable Dipak slowed down and it was at that time when the speeding Land Rover hit his vehicle from behind. Accordingly, based on the Constable's complaint, the police registered an FIR under section 279 (Rash driving or riding on a public way) of the Indian Penal Code at the Malviya Nagar Police station. "On investigation, the offending vehicle was identified and its driver Vijay Shekhar Sharma was arrested after identification on February 22 and released on bail on the same day," PRO Nalwa said. Both the vehicles were impounded and mechanically inspected. Investigation in the case is still in progress, the official added. --IANS uj/skp/ ( 426 Words) 2022-03-13-19:12:01 (IANS)
Left-affiliated student organisations, the SFI and the AISF, and the Congress's KSU have come out strongly against Kerala Transport Minister Antony Raju over his remarks on student concession in buses. The minister, while interacting with media persons on Sunday, said that a hike for bus ticket charges is imminent and that the student concession amount will also be hiked. He made a controversial statement that even the students feel embarrassed at the minimum charge of Rs 2 that they are paying for bus charges. This statement infuriated the student bodies. The SFI, the student wing of the ruling CPI-M of which the present state Secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan was the state President said: "The minister should not have made such a statement. The student concession is the rights of the students and it is not a benevolence of the government." The AISF, the student wing of the CPI also came out heavily against the minister and conducted a protest march in Thiruvananthapuram against the statement of the minister. The KSU said that the concession was the right of the students. Its state President, K.M. Abijit, told reporters here on Sunday said that the KSU will never allow the government to hike the minimum bus fare for students from Rs 2 and said that the bus concession was the right of the student community. The ruling Left Democratic Front (LDF) led by the CPI-M is meeting at the party state headquarters AKG Centre on Tuesday to finalise the hike in bus fares. --IANS aal/vd ( 263 Words) 2022-03-13-19:18:03 (IANS)
Vice President of India and Rajya Sabha chairman M. Venkaih Naidu on Sunday said that language of administration should be regional and education should be imparted in mother tongue. Speaking at the ninth meeting of the Hindi Salahkar Samiti of the Rajya Sabha Secretariat, he said that now technology has advanced so much that it is possible to translate from English to any other regional languages simultaneously. Naidu also stressed that there is no opposition to the English language but it should not be binding for anyone. "All languages are supreme; however, as Hindi is spoken by a large number of people, therefore it should be given importance. People who have received education in their mother tongue hold important positions today," he said, adding that a positive outlook should be encouraged in this regard. Earlier, when the meeting began, the members of the Committee were apprised of the actions taken on the decisions made in the eighth meeting of the committee. The members of the committee gave their valuable suggestions to promote the use of Hindi Language in the functioning of the Rajya Sabha Secretariat. The members expressed that Hindi used in documents and in law and judiciary should be simple. Apart from Naidu, Deputy chairman of the Rajya Sabha Harivansh, 11 members of the Rajya Sabha and two members of the Parliamentary Committee on Official Language, a representative of the Akhil Bhartiya Hindi Sanstha Sangh, the Secretary and Joint Secretary of the Department of Official Language of the Ministry of Home Affairs, Secretary General of Rajya Sabha, Additional Secretary and the Joint Secretary in-charge of the Official Language Section of the Rajya Sabha Secretariat are the members of the Hindi Salahkar Samiti. --IANS ams/skp/ ( 296 Words) 2022-03-13-19:52:03 (IANS)
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is certain to come to power with a clear majority in the 2023 Karnataka Assembly election, Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai said on Sunday. Bommai said, "We have Prime Minister Narendra Modi's popularity and our organizational strength. If we work with unity and work with a coordinated agenda, BJP is sure to come to power in 2023 on its own strength." Speaking at a function to felicitate the State BJP leaders on Sunday, who worked as election in-charge in the five states which went to polls recently where BJP scored a massive victory, Bommai said, BJP would get a clear majority in the 2023 Assembly election in the state. Bommai advocated the need for reaching the party's programmes and ideology to the electorates. "The victory could be achieved if we all work hard unitedly. I am ready to dedicate myself 24X7 for this cause," he said. "Government and the party are like our two eyes. We reach out to every nook and corner of the state strengthening BJP where it is weak and further consolidating our position where we are already strong," Bommai Stated. "We have learned our lessons from the previous election and in 2023 we will see the Lotus bloom 100 per cent on the third floor of Vidhana Soudha," said Bommai. Union Ministers Prahlad Joshi, Shobha Karandlaje, BJP National General Secretary CT Ravi, and State BJP General Secretary Mahesh Tenginakai were felicitated for their success as poll in-charges of the party in the 5 states where elections were held recently. (ANI)
The Supreme Court has issued a notice to a wife on the husband's plea seeking divorce on the ground that he has been cheated as the medical history of his spouse did not reveal she was not a 'female'. A bench of Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and MM Sundresh on Friday asked the wife to file a reply to the husband's petition challenging a Gwalior bench of Madhya Pradesh High Court order dated 29-07-2021. "Learned counsel for the petitioner has drawn our attention inter alia to page 39 to contend that the medical history of the respondent shows "Penis + Imperforate hymen" thus respondent is not a female. Issue notice returnable in four weeks," the court said. The man has challenged judgment dated 29 July 2021 passed by the High Court of Madhya Pradesh, Bench at Gwalior whereby Trial Court's order dated 6 May 2019 taking cognizance against respondent that was set aside and the private complaint filed by the petitioner (man) was dismissed on the ground that, only on the basis of oral evidence and sans any medical evidence, no offence under Section 420 (cheating) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), 1860 is made out. The petition filed through advocate Praveen Swarup said that the man and woman's marriage was solemnized in July 2016. The petition said that after solemnization of marriage, the wife did not consummate for a few days on the pretext that she is undergoing a menstrual cycle and thereafter she left the matrimonial house and returned after a period of 6 days. The petition also said that later when the husband again tried to consummate, he found that there was no presence of vaginal opening and she had a small penis, like a child. Post this discovery, the petitioner took his wife for a medical check-up, where it was diagnosed that she has a medical problem called 'Imperforate hymen' (A medical condition in which hymen covers the whole opening of the vagina), the petition said. The petition further mentioned that the woman was advised to undergo surgical repair but the doctor also told the petitioner that even if an artificial vagina is created through surgery, consummation may take place but the chances of getting pregnant are close to impossible. After this medical examination, the petitioner felt cheated and called up the father of his wife, to take his daughter back. According to the petition, the woman underwent surgery and then returned to her husband's house after the woman's father allegedly forcibly entered the man's house threatened him to keep his daughter at his house. The man later filed a complaint before local police and a petition in court seeking a divorce. (ANI)
Senior BJP leader and former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Uma Bharti, who has been demanding liquor prohibition in the state, vandalised a liquor shop in Bhopal on Sunday. After pelting stones at the liquor store located in Barkhera Pathani area, she barged into it and began destroying the stock. She was accompanied by several men and women who hailed her actions. After her act, Bharti said she has warned the local administration to shut the shop within a week. "Today, I have warned the administration to shut the liquor shop within a week, otherwise more action will be taken." The incident came two days after Bharti met Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and demanded to make Madhya Pradesh a liquor free state. Her action against liquor came on ground at the time when the state government has announced a new liquor policy, which also allows liquor sale at the Indore and Bhopal airports, while announcing a cut prices for both country-made and foreign liquors by 20 per cent. The state government is set to implement the new excise policy, as the state cabinet approved it recently and tendering process is underway. This incident also gave opportunity to the opposition Congress to take a dig at the ruling BJP in the state. Calling Bharti CM in waiting, a senior state Congress leader said: "It showed that how the CM in waiting (Bharti) wants to get back on the CM's chair. But, she should have pelted stone on office where excise policies are been made, instead of vandalising liquor shops." Drama over this liquor issue and new liquor schemes likely to continue in the state for the next few days. The Congress has also planed to corner the Chouhan government on the liquor issue during the ongoing Budget session of the Assembly. --IANS pd/vd ( 312 Words) 2022-03-13-23:10:02 (IANS)
Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Sunday lauded Prime Minister Narendra Modi calling him 'a man of tremendous vigour and dynamism' and gave credit to him for the BJP's victory in the recently concluded Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections. "Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a man of tremendous vigour and dynamism and has done some things which are very impressive, especially politically. We did not expect him to win with such great margins but he did," said Tharoor while interacting with the media at the Jaipur Literature Festival. Congress leader Shashi Tharoor at an event on Sunday said regarding the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections that one day, the Indian voter will surprise the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), but today the people have given them (BJP) what they wanted. after the words of praise for the Prime minister, the Congress leader, however, also criticized him and said, "He has unleashed such forces in the society that are dividing our nation on communal and religious grounds which according to me is introducing a toxin that is unfortunate." Tharoor further said that he was surprised over the political analysts describing the UP poll results as a "foregone conclusion", and said that very few predicted BJP's victory until the exit polls came out. "Until the exit polls came out there was no question in my mind that most of the people were expecting a very, very close fight, and some were saying anecdotally that Samajwadi Party was ahead," he said. The Congress leader said, "The Indian voter has the capacity to surprise, and one day, they will also surprise the BJP. But right now they have given the BJP what they wanted." "Many people had not expected that BJP will come in power once again with such a majority. Samajwadi Party's (SP) seats have increased and hence they will prove to be a good opposition," added the Congress leader. On Congress' performance in the UP Assembly elections he said that Priyanka Gandhi Vadra did remarkable and energetic campaigning for the party, and "from my point of view, I don't think that the Congress per se can be faulted on the grounds of one person's campaigning." "I think the issues are rather larger for the party as well as for party viability in some states where our presence has been systematically going down over the last 30 years," he said. "You would have seen her everywhere, including getting arrested a couple of times by the Uttar Pradesh Police. You have seen her very much on the spot and running through the state," said the Congress leader. Tharoor was in Jaipur on Sunday to take part in the Jaipur Literature Festival 2022. The 15th edition of Jaipur Literature Festival 2022 is taking place from March 5 to March 14 in a hybrid format with its on-ground events from March 10 to March 14 at Clarks Amer, Jaipur, Rajasthan. (ANI)
In the notice, the Congress MP said, "War in Ukraine has consequences - political, economic and strategic for humanity as a whole. In addition, the new world order is being created behind a new iron curtain. It has serious implications for India's approach to international relations. In addition to the plight of our students who despite being evacuated continue to face a grim future."

Amid declining COVID-19 cases in the country, the Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha are set to resume their normal sittings for the second part of the Budget session.

However, the two Houses will continue with most of the restrictions, following the COVID-19 protocol, seen in the earlier parts of the Parliament sessions.

The two Houses of Parliament will continue to follow the social distancing norms in the seating arrangements of the members by utilizing both the chambers and visitors' galleries.

The second half of the Budget session will conclude on April 8. The first half of the Budget session began on January 31 and concluded on February 11. (ANI)
You are here: China

A Mirage 2000 jet belonging to China's Taiwan region crashed into waters some 10 miles off the eastern coast of the island at around 11 a.m. on Monday, local media reported.

One pilot managed to eject and was rescued, the report said.

The incident occurred while the jet was on a training mission.

The cause of the crash was not immediately clear.
On Sunday, India reported 3,116 new COVID-19 infections and 47 deaths.

The Ministry also informed that 27 fatalities in the last 24 hours have pushed the death toll to 5,15,877. Of these fatalities, Kerala reported 15 deaths, as per its state health bulletin.

The country's total tally of COVID-19 cases has moved up to 4,29,93,494. The active caseload currently stands at 36,168 accounting for 0.08 per cent of the total cases, the health ministry said.

As many as 4,377 recoveries were reported from this virus in the last 24 hours thereby taking the total tally of recoveries to 4,24,41,449 in the country. The recovery rate is currently at 98.72 per cent.

The government data informed today that as many as 5,32,232 COVID-19 tests have been conducted in the last 24 hours wherein a daily positivity rate of 0.47 per cent was observed.

Further, total tests conducted so far reached near 77.90 crores and the weekly positivity rate touched 0.47 per cent.

The health ministry informed that about 180.19 crore vaccine doses have been administered so far under the nationwide COVID-19 vaccination drive. (ANI)
"Greetings at the start of the Sikh New Year. May Waheguru bless everyone with good health and prosperity. May the teachings of the Guru Sahibs keep illuminating the world with their brightness," tweeted PM Modi today.

The first month of the Sikh Calendar is Chet. Today marks the first day of Chet, which is the first day of the calendar. (ANI)
Addressing a press conference here on Monday, State Home Minister Narottam Mishra said, "Four suspects of banned organization Jamaat-e-Mujahideen have been apprehended from Bhopal and police recovered Jihadi literature, electronic equipment and suspicious documents from their possession."

"An SIT is being formed to investigate the whole matter. By issuing an alert in the state, the suspects are being identified and interrogated," he said.

On Sunday, the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) of Madhya Pradesh detained four Bangladeshi nationals allegedly associated with a terror group Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB).As per an official statement, these four Bangladeshi nationals were involved in preparing a remote base for sleeper cells.

The accused persons have been identified as Fazhar Ali alias Mehmood (32), Mohd Aqeel alias Ahmed (24), Zahooruddin alias Ibrahim alias Milon Pathan alias Jauhar Ali (28) and Fazhar Zainul Abdeen alias Akram Al Hasan alias Hussain.

A huge amount of radical literature, electronic equipment and suspicious documents were recovered from their hideout during the raid. (ANI)
The Kulgam police on Monday busted a terror module of proscribed terror outfit Hizbul Mujahideen (HM), involved in the killing of Sarpanch Shabir Ahmad Mir and arrested three terrorist associates actively involved in it, said Inspector-General of Police (IGP) Kashmir range Vijay Kumar. Sarpanch was killed by HM terrorist Mushtaq Yatoo on the direction of HM Chief terrorist Farooq Nalli, who received directions from Pakistan terror handlers to target the Panchayati Raj Institution (PRI) Members of Kulgam, Police said. The police have seized vehicles used in the commission of the crime and recovered incriminating materials including two pistols on their disclosure. Incriminating materials seized from their possession also include three Pistol Magazines, 11 Pistol rounds, two grenades, one Magazine of AK 47, and 15 rounds of AK47. During the investigation, it was learnt that the Sarpanch was killed by Mujahideen militant Mushtaq Yatoo on the directions of HM chief terrorist Farooq Nalli, police said. "Kulgam Police busted terror module of proscribed terror outfit HM involved in the recent killing of Sarpanch Shabir Ahmad Mir and arrested three terrorist associates actively involved and recovered incriminating materials including two pistols on their disclosure," Kashmir Zone Police tweeted quoting IGP Kashmir. "Vehicles used in the commission of crime have also been seized. During the investigation, it was learnt that the Sarpanch was killed by HM terrorist Mushtaq Yatoo on the directions of HM Chief terrorist Farooq Nalli: IGP Kashmir," it said in another tweet. Police said that during the course of investigation it was learnt, Nalli received directions from Pakistan terror handlers to target the Panchayati Raj Institution (PRI) Members of Kulgam and identified the target and later further directed active HM terrorists. "Investigation is going as more arrests and recoveries are expected. Also, massive searches are going on to neutralise the terrorists involved in this heinous crime," police said in a statement. According to police, on March 11, terrorists barged into the residential premises of Sarpanch Shabir Ahmad Mir in Adoora, Kulgam and fired indiscriminately upon him. The Sarpanch was rushed to the district hospital in Kulgam where he succumbed to his injuries. An FIR under relevant sections of the Arms Act and UAPA was registered in Police Station Kulgam and a Special Investigation Team has been constituted. (ANI)
The Delhi High Court on Monday observed that the habeas corpus plea of extradited gangster Abu Salem challenging his extradition by Indian authorities is not maintainable as the petitioner was awarded a sentence by a competent court. The court has granted time to his counsel to take instruction to withdraw the plea. The bench of Justice Sidharth Mridul and Justice AK Mendiratta said that they are of the view this petition is not maintainable and asked the counsel for the petitioner if he would withdraw the petition or they shall dismiss it. Thereafter, Advocate S Hariharan sought time to take instructions to withdraw the petition. The court adjourned the petition for May 2022. Earlier, the counsel had sought four weeks' time on the ground that another petition is pending before the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court had asked the Central Government to file an affidavit. The counsel argued that the conviction and sentence awarded by the trial court has been challenged. According to the treaty, the petitioner could not be sentenced for a period of more than 25 years but was awarded life imprisonment, which is in violation of the treaty and thus the sentence was illegal. To which the bench said that if extradition is illegal, then he should not be tried here. "The petition is not maintainable as the habeus corpus doesn't lie against an order of conviction," the bench said. "Unless your conviction is set aside, can we say that your detention is illegal? It is not maintainable. You can withdraw the petition," the bench told the counsel. The counsel said he has no instructions to withdraw the petition and has sought time to take instruction to this effect as the petitioner, Abu Salem, is lodged in Taloja jail in Mumbai. Earlier, the bench had orally observed that once a court of law held Abu Salem guilty, he could not say that the custody was illegal. The bench had further observed that even if initially his detention was bad in law, after the conviction by a court of law, the custody does not remain illegal. The plea had stated that in view of the breach of solemn sovereign assurance given by the respondents seeking the extradition of the petitioner and which formed the basis of his extradition to India. The Hebeas Corpus petition of Gangster/Underworld don Abu Salem sought appropriate direction declaring his detention as illegal and to be released and repatriated to Portugal. Last year, the Supreme Court of India had declined to entertain a petition of Abu Salem and had said, "We dismiss the plea under Article 32 with the liberty to approach High Court." In the apex court, the plea also sought a direction to transfer Salem from Taloja jail to Tihar jail so that amicus curiae can speak to him and procure some documents. Salem argued that the Indian authorities had violated the extradition treaty. Salem, an accused in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts, had been extradited from Portugal on November 11, 2005, after a prolonged legal battle. The gangster is serving a life sentence in jail after being convicted in the 1993 Mumbai blasts that had killed 257 and injured 713 people. He has also been sentenced to seven years of rigorous imprisonment in a 2002 extortion case by a Delhi Court. (ANI)
As many as eight persons have been rescued so far, while a few persons are feared to be trapped under the debris.

"Eight persons rescued from the site after an under-construction building collapses at Nicholson Road near Kashmiri Gate; search and rescue operation underway," police said.

Delhi Fire Service further added that National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) and Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) teams have been called.

Further details are awaited. (ANI)
Four suspected members of Bangladeshi terror outfit Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), arrested by the Madhya Pradesh anti-terror squad (ATS), have been sent to 14-days police custody on Monday by a Bhopal court. "Four Bangladeshi nationals arrested in Bhopal were sent to police remand for 14 days, said Nilendra Sharma, Special Public Prosecutor. As per Madhya Pradesh ATS, the accused are allegedly associated with terror group Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh and involved in preparing a remote base for sleeper cells. According to Police, the accused had prepared fake documents like Aadhar card, Voter ID and PAN card from Uttar Pradesh's Saharanpur. The four terrorists will also be taken to the Bangladesh border from where they had infiltrated into India. The arrested Bangladeshi nationals told the court that it has distributed objectionable material in the Nishatpura area. Nilendra Sharma added, "We demanded police remand from the court on two grounds. Firstly, on the basis of fake documents like Voter cards, Aadhar cards, pan cards from Saharanpur. The identity of all those people who were involved in making these fake documents has to be ensured and they will be questioned. Secondly, in the Nishatpura area of Bhopal, these people have contacted some people and distributed their 'jihadi' booklets. The identity of those people also needs to be ensured and they will be questioned." Out of the four accused, three are from Bangladesh while one is a resident of Bihar. The accused persons have been identified as Fazhar Ali alias Mehmood (32), Mohd Aqeel alias Ahmed (24), Zahooruddin alias Ibrahim alias Milon Pathan alias Jauhar Ali (28) and Fazhar Zainul Abdeen alias Akram Al Hasan alias Hussain. A huge amount of radical literature, electronic equipment and suspicious documents were recovered from their hideout during the raid. (ANI)
The incident occurred on the school premises. The young girl was a student of Class 10th. The accused consumed poison after stabbing the girl as informed by Rohidas Pawar, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Pune.

The DCP said, "The accused consumed poison after stabbing the girl, both are admitted to the hospital but the motive of the incident is not known yet."

Further investigation is underway, said the police. (ANI)
Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu on Monday expressed concern over the decline in attendance this year in the meetings of parliamentary panels with the House and called for the nomination of members with interest in the committees. Naidu gave an account of the work done in this regard by the eight Committees of the Rajya Sabha after the second part of Budget Session resumed following a 30-day recess for Department Related Parliamentary Standing Committees (DRSCs) to examine the Demands for Grants of various ministries. He informed the House that these eight committees have held 23 meetings for 73 hours and 33 minutes with an average duration of 3 hours 30 minutes per meeting. "This marked an increase of one hour 17 minutes per meeting over that of last year, constituting a rise of 56 per cent," Naidu said a few minutes after the House assembled for the day at 11 am. He said three Committees on Education, Personnel and Public Grievances and Commerce reported an average duration of meetings of over four hours during the recess period. Expressing concern over the decline in attendance in these Committee meetings this year, he referred to a couple of chairpersons of the committees having met him this morning and reiterated the need for nominating members with interest in specialized and technical matters on committees dealing with those issues. He further noted that the members should give priority to attending the meetings of the parliamentary panels even during the time of elections. The Chairman also urged the members to facilitate a productive second part of the budget session that began on Monday guided by the positive spirit of the first part that resulted in productivity of 101.40 per cent. Referring to the first part of the budget session, the Vice President said it witnessed eight full consecutive sittings without disturbances and forced adjournments, after about three years and stressed on the need to sustain that spirit. Referring to the situation in Ukraine, the chairman noted that evacuation of students from the country was a challenging task and complimented the central and state governments for putting in praiseworthy efforts in this regard. Urging the members to follow COVID-19 appropriate behaviour both within and outside the House, Naidu informed the members that another safety measure was recently installed in the Rajya Sabha Chambers in the form of Ultra-Violet C-Band radiation which is very effective in killing the virus. (ANI)
SG Mehta, appearing for the Centre, submitted that when there is a violation of visa condition, "what would be the scope of the right of foreigners to approach the local courts?"

His submission came before a bench of Justices AM Khanwilkar and CT Ravikumar, which was hearing a batch of petitions filed by foreign nationals challenging the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) order blacklisting them for alleged participation in the Tablighi Jamaat congregation.

The Court has listed the matter for further hearing on April 8 asking parties to file their written submission.

Around 900 foreign nationals were charge-sheeted by the Crime Branch of Delhi Police for participating in the Nizamuddin congregation in March this year, which allegedly had become an epicentre of coronavirus spread across the country in March 2020.

In the last hearing, the Court had said that an important and short question is involved, which needs to be addressed expeditiously.

The petitioners include Maulana Ala Hadrami and various others. (ANI)
 Flash

Iraq on Sunday demanded a "frank and clear explanation" from Iran about the ballistic missile attack on its semi-autonomous Kurdish region's capital Erbil.

The Iraqi Ministerial Council for National Security, headed by Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, held an emergency meeting to discuss the Iranian missile attack, which came against "the principle of good neighborliness between Iraq and Iran, as well as a violation of international laws and norms," according to a statement by the ministerial council.

"Iraq has requested, through diplomatic channels, frank and clear explanations from the Iranian side, and is awaiting a position from the Iranian political leadership in rejecting the aggression," said the statement.

The council stressed Iraq's constant rejection of settling scores between countries and entities by violating Iraq's sovereignty, noting its lands cannot be used to attack neighboring countries.

Earlier in the day, the Kurdish regional Interior Ministry said in a statement that 12 long-range ballistic missiles were fired at 1 a.m. local time (2200 GMT Saturday) from the east outside Iraqi borders toward the new building of the U.S. consulate in Erbil and the surrounding residential areas.

The attack resulted in injury of a civilian and damage to several buildings, according to a statement.

Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) has claimed a missile attack on an Israeli intelligence base in Erbil.

U.S. forces stationed at Erbil's international airport complex have come under rockets and booby-trapped drones attack by unknown militias in the past.
Dr Rajeev Jayadevan, the co-chairman of the National Indian Medical Association (IMA) Covid Task Force on Monday said that through multiple battles with different coronavirus variants, China has perceived a "Zero Covid strategy" from the beginning, which has increasingly been considered unfeasible. Speaking to ANI, Jayadevan said, "China, unlike most other countries of the world, perceived a Zero Covid strategy from the beginning, opting for lockdown in large cities and provinces, disrupting life severely in the process." "There are contrasting methods of approach to the pandemic and zero Covid is increasingly considered unfeasible because of the experiences of places like New Zealand Australia and Hong Kong where they had severe outbreaks after keeping the disease out of bounds for a long time," he added. Jayadevan further explained that the strategy followed by India to flatten the curve and said, "In India, the strategy has been to flatten the curve and to reduce the speed of spread to the extent possible so that the healthcare systems would not be overwhelmed." "Multiple layers of mitigation strategies were used, including limitation of social gatherings, wearing of masks, particularly in indoor spaces, contact tracing and isolation. This has helped India cope with the pandemic, and in the process, gradually natural infection provided a large umbrella of immunity in the community, supplemented nicely with a sustained vaccination drive," he added. He also said that in India, vaccine hesitancy is low as compared to other countries like Hong Kong and the US. "Even before Omicron arrived, a vast majority of India's population had already been either infected or vaccinated or both. Thus, even though Omicron cases were higher in number, the damage inflicted was relatively small for the size of India's population," Jayadevan said. The doctor also said that China has not even shared the actual spread of COVID 19 but they had been vaccinated which does not protect against infection in the long run. "China, on the other hand, has not had its share of natural spread of the pandemic in the past two years. It is true that they had been vaccinated, but we know that vaccination is not protective against infection after a few months: this is the case for all COVID vaccines. That's because respiratory mucosal immunity is short-lived," he said. Jayadevan suggested that the pandemic cannot be stopped by using any single strategy. "Multiple layers or strategies are to be followed over prolonged periods of time, to reduce the suffering and death rates in the long run," he said. Meanwhile, India logged 2,503 fresh COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said on Monday. (ANI)
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and Assembly Speaker Vijay Kumar Sinha entered into a heated exchange of words in the Legislative Assembly on Monday over the investigation of the Lakhisarai case and accused the Speaker of "openly violating" the constitution by raising questions against his government. The matter is related to COVID protocols violation during the Saraswati Puja celebrations in Lakhisarai last month in which two persons were arrested by Bihar Police. Raising objection against the Police action, Assembly Speaker argued that two innocent people were made scapegoats in the case as Bihar Police arrested them and no action has been taken against the organisers of the event. A counter objection was made by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar over the persistent uproar in the Assembly on the issue of Lakhisarai. It is pertinent to mention that BJP leader Vijay Kumar Sinha was raising the matter related to his own constituency, Lakhisarai. Speaking at the Assembly, Nitish defending the Police action, said, "No one will be spared whoever commits a crime. Our government saves no one and does not implicate anyone." Lashing out at the Speaker, he reminded that Legislative Assembly is not the place to discuss the crime report card. Nitish accused the Speaker of violating the Constitution, "You are openly violating the Constitution. This way the House will not run. There is no point in raising the same issue every day. We will definitely consider the Privilege Committee report. The system is run by the Constitution. The report of any crime goes to the court and not to the House." Replying to Nitish, Speaker Vijay Kumar Sinha said, "As far as the Constitution is concerned, Chief Minister, you know more than us, I learn from you. Bihar Assembly Speaker said that the Chair should not be discouraged." Questioning further, Sinha said, "Why is the government not taking serious action on this? You people have made me the speaker of the assembly. The DSP and SHO could not give answer." Notably, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLAs moved a privilege motion notice against the Deputy Superintendent of Police and two other officers in Lakhisarai for violation of the protocol and alleged misconduct with the Speaker. When the Speaker tried to intervene, the Deputy Superintendent of Police and two other officers allegedly misbehaved with him. In the assembly, Sinha had been asking the government to act against the policemen. BJP leaders have also been pressing for action against the policemen. (ANI)
In a revised order, MoCA removed the clause mentioned in its earlier order which stated that no employees at any domestic or international airport terminal be allowed to carry Kirpan in person.

In its earlier notice, on March 4, the BCAS issued an order banning the Sikh aviation employees to carry Kirpan that was criticized by Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC).

BCAS mentioned that the Indian Sikhs can carry Kirpan in domestic flights with the blade length, not more than six inches and the total length of the kirpan is not more than 9 inches, and no Sikhs employees are allowed to carry Kirpan to the airport, working in any terminal, national or international.

"a. Kirpan may be carried by a Sikh pax, on his person, provided the length of the blade doesn't exceed 15.24 cms and the total length of Kirpan doesn't exceed 22.86 cms. Allowed while traveling on Indian aircraft within India operating from Domestic Terminals only."

"b. This exception shall be for Sikh passengers only as stated above. And, no stakeholder or its employee at the airport (including Sikh) and working in any terminal, domestic or international, shall be allowed to carry Kirpan on person." reads the notice.

Ministry of Civil Aviation(MoCA), on March 12, lifted the ban by removing clause 'b'.(ANI)
Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla on Monday met the Austrian parliamentary delegation and said the two countries have deep faith in democracy and democratic values which strengthen their bilateral relations. The Speaker expressed concern over the Russia-Ukraine conflict and said that India seeks the establishment of peace in Ukraine through diplomatic efforts. He added that development is possible only in a peaceful and harmonious world and everyone must work together in this direction. Birla said that India and Austria share similar views and both of them have always stood for peace and stability in the world. Speaking about Indian values, Birla said that in the spirit of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, it has been India's effort that the whole world progresses towards advancement and welfare of humanity. The two sides held a detailed discussion on global terrorism. Noting that India is a victim of terrorism, the Speaker stressed that there is a need for the entire world to fight against the menace and its financing. He recalled that India has taken many steps for the protection and promotion of the environment, keeping in view the global problem of climate change. The Speaker said that under COP-26, India is seriously working towards reducing carbon emissions by 50 per cent by 2030 and that the Parliament has held extensive discussions on this issue a number of times. Birla added that India has taken a leading role in international parliamentary cooperation and has always been an active participant in international parliamentary fora such as the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) and the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA). He expressed faith that regular meetings between parliamentary delegations would further enhance mutual understanding between the two countries and their peoples. Noting that there has been regular interaction between the parliaments of the two countries, the Speaker expressed happiness that an Austria-India Friendship Group has been constituted in Austria and a similar group is in the process of being formed in India. Earlier, the Speaker along with the Austrian parliamentary delegation visited the under-construction new Parliament House building. Led by Wolfgang Sobotka, President of the Austrian National Council, the Austrian delegation is on a five-day visit to India. President of the Federal Council of Austria Christine Schwarz-Fuchs and other Austrian parliamentarians were part of the delegation. Several union ministers, Deputy Chairman of Rajya Sabha Harivansh, and members of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha were also present on the occasion. (ANI)
As per the press release from Governor's Office, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has a courtesy meeting with Governor Phagu Chauhan at Raj Bhavan in Patna.

Meanwhile, earlier in the day, Nitish Kumar and Assembly Speaker Vijay Kumar Sinha entered into a heated exchange of words in the Legislative Assembly over the investigation of the Lakhisarai case and accused the Speaker of "openly violating" the constitution by raising questions against his government.

The matter is related to COVID protocols' violation during the Saraswati Puja celebrations in Lakhisarai last month in which two persons were arrested by the Bihar Police.

Raising objection against the Police action, Assembly Speaker argued that two innocent people were made scapegoats in the case as Bihar Police arrested them and no action was taken against the organisers of the event.

A counter objection was made by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar over the persistent uproar in the Assembly on the issue of Lakhisarai. (ANI)
India on Friday said that a missile was accidentally fired from a military base and expressed regret that it landed in Pakistan on March 9.

Pakistan Army had said that an Indian projectile had entered the Pakistani airspace and caused some damage to surrounding areas after it fell near a place called Mian Channu in their territory.

The Indian Defence Ministry said that it has ordered a court of enquiry into the incident adding that it was a matter of relief that there was loss of life due to the accidental firing.

"On 9 March 2022, in the course of routine maintenance, a technical malfunction led to the accidental firing of a missile. The Government of India has taken a serious view and ordered a high-level Court of Enquiry," the Defence Ministry said in a statement.

"It is learnt that the missile landed in an area of Pakistan. While the incident is deeply regrettable, it is also a matter of relief that there has been no loss of life due to the accident," it said. (ANI)
Karnataka Speaker Vishveshwara Hegde Kageri has arranged a special show of 'The Kashmir Files' movie for the ministers and legislators in the state. Speaker Kageri announced in the House on Monday that the special show has been organised on Tuesday (March 15) at the Mantri Mall at 6.45 p.m. in Bengaluru. The special screening has been arranged from the secretariat of the Legislative Assembly. Speaker Kageri has congratulated Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai for making the movie tax free. Bommai who watched the movie in the multiplex in Bengaluru on Sunday showered praises on the film makers. "Kudos to Vivek Agnihotri for 'The Kashmir Files', a blood-curdling, poignant and honest narrative of the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from their home land. To lend our support to the movie and encourage our people to watch it, we will make the movie tax-free in Karnataka," he announced. After watching the movie, the Chief Minister said, "the movie shows the magnitude of attacks on the Kashmiri Pandits. Many have lost their lives at the hands of terrorists. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has abrogated Article 370 for the same reason. I thank PM Modi for the same and I urge every Indian to watch this movie," he said. 'The Kashmir Files' movie has received warm response from the audiences in the state like all over the country. It remains to be seen how Congress legislators respond to the decision of the Speaker to host a special screening of the movie. --IANS mka/skp/ ( 259 Words) 2022-03-14-19:16:04 (IANS)
Delhi High Court's Justice Chandra Dhari Singh on Monday recused himself from hearing the ED's plea challenging an order that allowed accused persons in INX Media Pvt Ltd, including former Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram and his son Karti Chidambaram, to inspect the documents seized during the investigation. The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has been approaching the High court seeking the earlier trial court order which has given relief to the Chidambarams. In November last year, the High Court had rejected a similar petition filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) challenging the order that allowed to inspect the documents, which were seized during the investigation. The central probe agencies have been opposing the inspection of documents on the grounds that allowing the accused persons inside the 'Malkhana' -- room to store case-related materials in court -- may lead to the tampering of evidence in the ongoing high-profile money laundering case. While the accused had a right to a fair trial, the collective interest of society cannot be impinged, as per the agencies. The Chidambarams are currently out on bail. P. Chidambaram was arrested by the CBI on August 21, 2019, in a case registered on May 15, 2017, alleging irregularities in a Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) clearance granted to the INX Media group for receiving Rs 305 crore overseas funds in 2007, when he was the Finance Minister. --IANS jw/vd ( 246 Words) 2022-03-14-19:42:08 (IANS)
The Delhi High Court on Monday directed the Delhi Waqf Board to file an application before the police station concerned seeking permission for the reopening of the entire masjid premises in Nizamuddin Markaz for offering prayers. A bench of Justice Manoj Kumar Ohri, dealing with the Waqf Board's plea for reopening of the religious place considering recent guidelines issued by the Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA), asked it to make an application with the SHO of Hazrat Nizamuddin Police Station immediately. During the course of the hearing, Centre's counsel Rajat Nair assured the court that the application will be considered as per law immediately and fairly. The Markaz has remained shut since March 3, 2020, following a spurt in Covid positive cases on the premises. In the earlier hearing, advocate Nair, appearing on behalf of the Centre, had said that the offering of namaz' by five people was allowed earlier, and can be done this year also in the religious festivals. In the previous hearing, the bench asked: "Mr Nair, you please seek instructions as to in case there is no objection to the opening of the first floor, what objection may be there for the opening of the remaining portion, de hors your submission that you have no objection as far as religious festivals are concerned. Why not for every day?" Petitioner's counsel argued that there was no reason as to why any restriction should be placed and the mosque premises should not be opened. --IANS jw/vd ( 265 Words) 2022-03-14-19:44:07 (IANS)
The Indian delegation was led by Ministry of External Affairs's Secretary, East, Saurabh Kumar, while the Canadian delegation was led by Deputy Minister of Foreign and Global Affairs Marta Morgan. The last FOCs were held in March 2021 in a virtual mode.

"The discussions were cordial and friendly. Both sides reviewed the progress of bilateral cooperation in domains such as political, security, trade and investment, education, science and technology, consular and mobility. They agreed that the two countries should continue work to renew the momentum in relations and convene meetings of bilateral dialogues and working groups," the MEA said in a statement.

The FOCs also provided a timely opportunity to exchange assessment on regional, multilateral and global issues of mutual interest.

Both sides agreed to continue their productive consultations, and the next round will be held in Ottawa at convenient dates.

--IANS miz/vd

( 174 Words)

2022-03-14-19:52:03 (IANS)
You are here: World

 Flash

At lease 10 people were killed on Saturday in an attack that targeted a gold mine in Burkina's Sahel region, local media reported on Sunday.

Around 20 unidentified armed individuals attacked the artisanal gold mining site of Baliata, in the Sahel region, killing at least 10 miners and injuring several others, reports said.

Fourteen people were killed Thursday in a similar raid on a gold mining site in the region's Seytenga.

Security in Burkina Faso has worsened since 2015, with terrorist attacks killing more than 1,000 people and displacing over one million others in the west African nation.
The Telangana High Court on Monday suggested three BJP MLAs, who were suspended from state Assembly last week, meet the Speaker. Hearing a petition by the MLAs challenging their suspension, a division bench suggested that they meet the Speaker and hoped that he would take an appropriate decision. The suggestion came when counsel of the three legislators pleaded that the court pass an order directing the Speaker to allow them to attend the session from Tuesday. The court observed that the final decision on revoking the suspension of the MLAs has to be taken by the Speaker. It directed that the Legislature Secretary take the responsibility of facilitating a meeting of the suspended MLAs with Speaker Pocharam Srinivas Reddy. Raghunandan Rao, Eatala Rajender, and T. Raja Singh filed a petition before the division bench after a single judge refused to stay the suspension from the House for the entire business session. Earlier in the day, on the direction of the court, the judicial registrar of the court went to the Assembly and served the notice personally on Legislature Secretary Narasimha Charyulu. The court had also directed the city Police Commissioner to ensure that registrar get access to the Assembly building and personally serve the notice. The division bench gave the direction after counsel of the BJP MLAs brought to its notice that a notice earlier ordered by a single judge could not be served on the Legislature Secretary. All three MLAs of BJP were suspended from the Assembly for the entire session by the Speaker on March 7. Protesting over the government's move to commence the budget session without the Governor's address, the BJP legislators tried to disrupt the proceedings. On a resolution moved by the government, the Speaker announced their suspension for the entire session. The MLAs argued that their suspension was against the rules of the Legislative Assembly and the Constitution. --IANS ms/vd ( 327 Words) 2022-03-14-19:56:02 (IANS)
The protest is being staged in Freedom Park. The agitation would continue overnight.

U. Basavaraju, the honorary president of the Karnataka Rajya Devdasi Mahileyara Vimochana Sangha, stated that the Sangha along with the Karnataka State Devdasi Women's Children's Struggle Committee has submitted memorandums many times but their demands have been totally ignored till date.

The pension of Devdasis should be increased from a minimum of Rs 3,000 to Rs 15,000, he said.

The loan amount given to Devdasis has been reduced from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 30,000. This should be increased to Rs 5 lakh, he stated.

A survey of Devdasi women's children should be conducted and the government should place no conditions to claim subsidies on marriages. Now, there is a rule that if the boy and girl of two Devdasi women get married, they will not be subsidized. They have to be married to a man or woman outside the community of Devdasis, he explained.

--IANS mka/bg

IANS AAA

( 191 Words)

2022-03-14-20:08:02 (IANS)
The matter has been listed in the first half of the day.

The three-judge bench, which also comprised Justice Krishna S. Dixit and Justice Khaji Jaibunnesa Mohiyuddin had reserved the matter for judgement earlier after hearing arguments and counterarguments.

Six students from the Udupi Pre-University College for girls had started a protest over being refused to enter classes wearing a hijab, and the protest spread to other districts to become a major controversy, and even led to tension, as some Hindu students started coming in saffron shawls.

The girls approached the High Court and demanding that they should be allowed to enter class rooms while wearing hijabs. As it issued interim orders that no hijab or saffron shawl is allowed in the schools and colleges, petitioners have challenged this in the Supreme Court. However, the apex court refused to hear the matter and asked the petitioners to seek relief from the High Court.

--IANS mka/vd

( 192 Words)

2022-03-14-20:20:04 (IANS)
The BJP is keeping its aspirants guessing in three states as the party has not decided who will be the Chief Minister in Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur with the delay in calling the legislative party meetings. The party emerged victorious in four state assembly polls and there is no certainty over the chief ministers except in Uttar Pradesh. Aspirants for the chief minister post in Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur are keeping their fingers crossed and leaving no stone unturned to lobby for themselves. "The delay has kept everyone guessing about the party leadership's decision and has also provided them with an opportunity to lobby for themselves," a party insider said. Many in the party feel that wirh no clear message from the central leadership even four days after the declaration of results, ir has fuelled speculation that the leadership might go in for a change of chief minister in Goa, Manipur and Uttarakhand, where sitting chief minister Dhami lost. In Uttarakhand, the BJP has won the assembly polls by a two third majority but incumbent chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami lost from Khatima. After Dhami's defeat many aspirants are eyeing the post of chief ministers which include Members of Parliament and MLAs. Many MLAs have visited the national capital to seek support from senior leaders to become chief minister of the hill state. A senior party functionary in Uttarakhand told IANS that while almost five MLAs have offered to resign for Dhami to re-contest, many others have started lobbying for the post. In Goa, while incumbent Pramod Sawant is the frontrunner for the post, many other aspirants are also trying their luck to become chief minister in the coastal state. "With extra time everyone is trying to become chief minister and pushing their candidature before seniors," a party leader in Goa said. Similarly in Manipur incumbent N Biren Singh is the strongest candidate for the post but with a delay of four days a few are thinking that they might get the chance to lead the party. The BJP on Monday appointed central observers and co-observers to elect the leader of the legislative party (chief minister) in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur. --IANS ssb/bg ( 382 Words) 2022-03-14-20:34:02 (IANS)
In Sikh religion, 'kirpan' or a dagger is considered a holy object.

The Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS) amended its order issued on March 4 by deleting the para restricting the entry of Sikh employees inside the airport carrying 'kirpan' of specified size. The new order issued on March 12 restored the position prior to March 4.

As per the order, the length of the kirpan's blade should not be more than six inches, and its total length should not exceed nine inches.

In its earlier circular, Sikh travellers on domestic flights were allowed to carry the specified length 'kirpan' on their body.

--IANS rv/arm

( 142 Words)

2022-03-14-21:34:03 (IANS)
The Delhi High Court on Monday sought the Central government's stand on a plea seeking its diplomatic intervention in a case of Kerala nurse Nimisha Priya, who was awarded a death sentence by a Yemeni Court, in connection with the murder of a Yemini citizen five years ago. During the course of the hearing, counsel appeared for 'Save Nimisha Priya International Action Council' pleaded before the High Court to issue direction to the Centre to facilitate negotiations with the family of the victim on behalf of the nurse to save her life by paying the 'blood money' -- compensation paid by an offender or his kin to the family of the victim -- in accordance with the law in Yemen. Justice V. Kameswar Rao, however, asked, "This happened in Yemen. How does this court have jurisdiction then? How is this maintainable?" The counsel argued that under the Shariat law, legal heirs can be compensated and in turn, the death sentence can be commuted. "Due to the socio-political situation in Yemen, travel to the Western Asian country is not allowed and there is no way for her family or well-wishers to visit Yemen and pay the 'blood money' to secure her release," the counsel said, seeking a direction to the Central government to facilitate negotiations through proper channels. Accordingly, the bench asked the stand of the Central government through its counsel. The hearing into the matter will continue on Tuesday. "It is learnt from the lawyer who represented her (Nimisha) before the appeal court that the option for 'blood money' is kept open by the appeal court. A copy of the judgment is yet to be received and the limitation for appeal before the Supreme Judicial Council is 40 days only. If the appeal before the Supreme Judicial Council is dismissed, execution may take place any time," the plea read. It was alleged that Nimisha has been held guilty of murder after she gave sedatives to a man named Talal Abdo Mahdi who "kept her passport and kept her like a slave" in Yemen, the plea said. It also said the deceased physically and financially abused her and locked away her passport so she could not come back to India. Nimisha and a friend then gave sedatives to the deceased, leading to his death due to overdose. It also alleged that Mahdi had forged documents to show that he was married to her. She had sought his help to start her own clinic but he cheated on her financially and later started torturing her. On March 7, a Yemen court had dismissed the appeal of Nimisha in the murder case in which she, along with another person, is the prime accused. Hailing from Palakkad, Nimisha, a nurse by profession, reached Yemen in 2012 with her husband. --IANS jw/shs ( 485 Words) 2022-03-14-21:52:01 (IANS)
Considering the deteriorating security situation in Ukraine, including attacks in the western parts of the country, the Indian Embassy in Kyiv, will be temporarily relocated in Poland, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said on Sunday. The Ministry further said that it is keeping an eye on the developments in Ukraine and the situation will be reassessed as per that. "In view of the rapidly deteriorating security situation in Ukraine, including attacks in the western parts of the country, it has been decided that the Indian Embassy in Ukraine will be temporarily relocated in Poland. The situation will be reassessed in the light of further developments," read the MEA statement. Russia launched a "military operation" in Ukraine on February 24, which it claimed was a response to calls from the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk for protection against attacks by Ukrainian troops. The Russian Defense Ministry continues to maintain that the "special operation" is targeting Ukrainian military infrastructure only and the civilian population is not in danger. However, the West has refuted these claims and has imposed sanctions on Russia. A number of countries including the US, Canada, and Australia have rolled out a comprehensive sanctions campaign against Russia, prompting many international businesses to leave the Russian market. (ANI)
Khairkhwa said that an agreement with Doha and Ankara is nearing to a close, TOLOnews reported citing Turkey's Daily Sabah.

"Turkey and Qatar and the Afghan government have been nearing an agreement, so hopefully in the near future it will be finalized," Khairkhwa said.

This comes after the Islamic Emirate delegation visited Turkey and met with Turkish officials.

Both sides discussed the pending deal on operating Kabul airport and several other international airports in Afghanistan, TOLOnews reported.

On Saturday, acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi met with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu and discussed a range of issues, including the Afghan airports. The two sides agreed to resolve the remaining issues in the near future, according to TOLOnews.

"The two sides talked on Kabul Airport and other Afghan International Airports, assessing provisions of the contract that needed further discussions, pledging that both countries, including Qatar, would work on solving outstanding issues through technical discussions at the earliest," said the country's Foreign Ministry. (ANI)
"Our position is open and clear: sanctions will not solve the problem," Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told a press conference, reported Russian News Agency Sputnik.

In the backdrop of the ongoing war, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu on Saturday said that he has discussed the situation in Ukraine with EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell during the Diplomatic Forum in Antalya.

On February 24, Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine after the Donetsk and Luhansk people's republic requested help in 'defending themselves.'

The Russian Defense Ministry said the special operation is targeting Ukrainian military infrastructure only and the civilian population is not in danger.

The West however denies these claims by the Russians and in response, Western nations have imposed comprehensive sanctions on Moscow. In addition, they introduced sanctions on Belarus for supporting Russia's operation in Ukraine. (ANI)
Issuing a release on Sunday evening, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, "Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia His Highness Prince Faisal bin Fahran Al Saud is paying an official visit to Nepal from March 14 to 15, 2022."

During the visit, Saudi Foreign Minister is scheduled to pay courtesy calls on the President and the Prime Minister, the Ministry announced.

Alongside, Minister for Foreign Affairs Dr Narayan Khadkais also scheduled to hold a meeting with his Saudi counterpart on 15 March 2022 as well as host a luncheon in honour of the visiting dignitary, the ministry announced. (ANI)
4th mainland-aided COVID-19 isolation facility starts operation in Hong Kong

Xinhua) 08:23, March 14, 2022

Aerial photo taken on March 12, 2022 shows the newly-built community isolation facility located in Fanling, south China's Hong Kong. The fourth community isolation facility (CIF) in Hong Kong constructed with the support from the China mainland has been put into operation after it was handed over to the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government. The newly-built CIF provides over 350 rooms with more than 1,000 beds for emergency isolation. (Xinhua)

HONG KONG, March 13 (Xinhua) -- The fourth community isolation facility (CIF) in Hong Kong constructed with the support from the China mainland has been put into operation after it was handed over to the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government.

John Lee, chief secretary for administration of the HKSAR government, visited on Sunday the newly-built CIF located in Fanling, Hong Kong, which provides over 350 rooms with more than 1,000 beds for emergency isolation.

The facility, which covers an area of about 20,000 square meters, is composed of modular cubicles, with each room equipped with basic furniture and bedding, air conditioner and smoke sensor, among others.

Designed and built by the China State Construction International Holdings Ltd., the construction of the facility was completed in less than 20 days.

To speed up the moving-in process, the Security Bureau of the HKSAR government introduced an electronic self-registration form, which allows occupants to scan a QR code and fill out a simple form with information such as meal requirements and contact numbers after they are assigned a room.

During his visit, Lee expressed his gratitude to the central government's aid towards the construction of CIFs in Hong Kong.

Lee said that under the staunch support of the central government, as well as the effective coordination of the Liaison Office of the Central People's Government in the HKSAR and the efforts of the construction personnel from the China State Construction International Holdings Ltd., four CIFs providing a total of 8,900 beds for emergency isolation were handed over to the HKSAR government in less than two weeks' time.

"This assists Hong Kong in achieving the anti-epidemic strategy of 'early identification, early isolation and early treatment'," said Lee.

On Sunday, Hong Kong registered 13,335 new COVID-19 cases by nucleic acid tests, and 19,095 additional positive cases through self-reported rapid antigen tests, official data showed.

Photo taken on March 11, 2022 shows the newly-built community isolation facility located in Fanling, south China's Hong Kong. The fourth community isolation facility (CIF) in Hong Kong constructed with the support from the China mainland has been put into operation after it was handed over to the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government. The newly-built CIF provides over 350 rooms with more than 1,000 beds for emergency isolation. (Xinhua)

(Web editor: Peng yukai, Liang Jun)
You are here: World

 Flash

A second batch of emergency humanitarian aid supplies provided by the Red Cross Society of China to the Ukrainian Red Cross Society arrived in Ukraine on Sunday.

The new supplies, including food, sleeping bags and moisture-proof pads, left Beijing on Saturday and were transited via Budapest.
"It is a wonderful place, a marvellous place, an ancient monument. Agra has changed very much, a great work," said one of the members of the delegation.

The delegation was gifted the miniature of the Taj Mahal as a souvenir by the Indian side. The Delegation from Austria is expected to visit the Indian Parliament on Monday.

The officials of the Lok Sabha have made seating arrangements for all the members in the parliament chambers galleries, said a press release on Friday.

Seats have been earmarked for Prime Minister, ministers and party leaders, lone members and other Independent members outside any alliance.

A delegation from Austria led by Wolfgang Sabotka, President of the National Council of Austria, is on an official visit to India from March 13 to 17. The delegation will witness the proceedings of Lok Sabha from 'Special Box' on Monday. (ANI)
Yang who is also director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the CPC Central Committee will exchange views with Sullivan on China-US relations and international and regional issues of common concern, spokesperson Zhao Lijian said in a statement cited by Xinhua News Agency.

Key issues of the meeting include the implementation of the important consensus reached by the Chinese and US heads of state in their virtual summit in November last year.

The two sides have been in contact on the matter since late last year, stayed in communication about the meeting, and set a time for the meeting according to their schedules, Zhao added. (ANI)
Responding to Russia's claim, Ukrainian Defense Ministry spokesperson Markiyan Lubkivsky said: "This is not the truth. Pure Russian propaganda," adding that there are still no foreigners confirmed among the dead in Yavoriv military base.

"Russia claims it killed 180 'foreign mercenaries' in the missile strike on Yavoriv military training ground in western Ukraine. The Russian government added that it will continue to kill foreign nationals in Ukraine whom it considers mercenaries," The Kyiv Independent said in a Tweet.

Meanwhile, Ukraine's National Energy Company (NEC) Ukrenergo completed repair work and resumed power supply to the Chernobyl NPP, the company announced on Sunday.

"Ukrainian specialists of NEC "Ukrenergo" completed repair works on the 330 kV line... and resumed power supply to the Chernobyl NPP and town of Slavutych," Ukrenergo posted on its Telegram channel, as per CNN.

Chernobyl nuclear power plant's electrical system was damaged during a Russian attack on March 9. (ANI)
The Iranian side has "unilaterally and temporarily" suspended the talks which was slated to be held in Iraq next week, according to the report.

The report did not specify the reason for the pause or give a date for resuming the negotiations, Xinhua News Agency reported.

Following several rounds of talks brokered by Iraq, Iran sent three diplomats to Saudi Arabia in January as a delegation to the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation to resume their activities in Jeddah after a six-year hiatus.

Saudi Arabia cut diplomatic ties with Iran in early 2016 in protest against the attacks on Saudi diplomatic mission in Iran after the Saudi execution of a Shiite cleric.

--IANS int/skp/

( 138 Words)

2022-03-13-20:56:02 (IANS)
"Regular international talks. With President of the Council @eucopresident, we discussed the issue of increasing financial support for and sanctions pressure on the aggressor. Special attention was paid to the further negotiation process on Ukraine's EU membership," Zelenskyy tweeted.

Earlier, Zelenskyy spoke with UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Petr Fiala Prime Minister of the Czech Republic, and spoke about Ukraine's struggle against Russian aggression.

"Held talks with PM @BorisJohnson and PM @P_Fiala. Talked about Ukraine people's struggle against Russian aggression, about Russia's criminal attacks on civilians. Thanked the partners for their important support. We appreciate it," he said in another Tweet.

On February 24, Russia began a special military operation in Ukraine.

Following Russia's military operation, the US and its European allies have introduced sanctions targeting several major Russian banks and high-rank Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, besides ousting Russia from the SWIFT financial system. (ANI)
Meanwhile, the program said that most of the children in Afghanistan have access to nutritious treatment offered by the international aid agencies.

Earlier, UNICEF had said that half of the Afghan children under the age of five will face severe malnutrition in 2022, Khaama Press reported.

Mass poverty in Afghanistan that is triggered by people's displacement, unemployment, conflicts, and now political transformation have led millions of people to starve.

Children are the most affected among them as they are now suffering from the spread of measles in the country, Khaama Press reported.

The international aid agencies have been calling on the World Community to support the Afghan people at a time when they are experiencing the worst humanitarian situation in decades, the media outlet added. (ANI)
The talks will be held virtually today.

Taking to Twitter, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's aide Mykhailo Podolyak said: "Again. Negotiations go non-stop in the format of video conferences. Working groups are constantly functioning. A large number of issues require constant attention. On Monday, March 14, a negotiating session will be held to sum up the preliminary results..."

Previously, Podolyak and Russian negotiator Leonid Slutsky both confirmed there was progress and that results could materialize in the coming days.

Meanwhile, Russian forces completely destroy 7 hospitals, damage an additional 104, said Ukrainian media.

Moscow's troops have also killed six medical personnel while severely injuring 12 more since the start of the all-out war, The Kyiv Independent quoted Health Minister Viktor Lyashko reported.

On February 24, Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine after the Donetsk and Luhansk people's republic requested help in 'defending themselves.' The Russian Defense Ministry said the special operation is targeting Ukrainian military infrastructure only and the civilian population is not in danger.The West however denies these claims by the Russians and in response, Western nations have imposed comprehensive sanctions on Moscow. In addition, they introduced sanctions on Belarus for supporting Russia's operation in Ukraine. (ANI)
Both the leaders reviewed recent diplomatic engagements and underscored their commitment to hold Russia accountable for its actions and support the government and people of Ukraine.

"President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. spoke today with President Emmanuel Macron of France to discuss Russia's war against Ukraine. They reviewed recent diplomatic engagements and underscored their commitment to hold Russia accountable for its actions and to support the government and people of Ukraine," White House statement read on Sunday (local time).

On February 24, Russia began a special military operation in Ukraine. (ANI)
The accident occurred on Saturday on the Ontario highway and two injured students were rushed to the hospital.

Taking to Twitter, Ajay Bisaria expressed deepest condolences to the families of the victims.

"Heart-breaking tragedy in Canada: 5 Indian students passed away in an auto accident near Toronto on Saturday. Two others in the hospital. Deepest condolences to the families of the victims. @IndiainToronto team in touch with friends of the victims for assistance," India's High Commissioner to Canada said.

According to Quinte West Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) the deceased students were identified as Harpreet Singh, Jaspinder Singh, Karanpal Singh, Mohit Chouhan, and Pawan Kumar.

They were traveling west in a passenger van on Highway 401 Saturday morning when they collided with a tractor-trailer at around 3:45 am.

The investigation into the crash remains ongoing, and no charges have been laid. (ANI)
Indian-American supporters of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) held victory celebrations across the US on Sunday after the ruling party at the Centre retained power in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Manipur, and Goa after the recently concluded Assembly polls. "For over two months, from more than 12,000 kilometres away, the volunteers of 'Overseas Friends of BJP-USA (OFBJP)' participated in phone bank 'call-a-thons' to make calls to people in India, asking them to vote for the BJP in support of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath," said Adapa Prasad, national president of OFBJP. "After the win, we received a call from the BJP president JP Nadda and he congratulated us for the efforts of the OFBJP," Prasad told ANI. The supporters of the BJP went into the celebration mode by dancing to the beat of the UP election jingle of the party, 'Phir se BJP'. Supporters at the victory party asserted that it was now the turn of the southern states for the BJP. Prasada said that the party is making all efforts to strengthen its base in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana and expressed optimism that the BJP would emerge victorious in these two states. Speaking to ANI, Prasad said that the victory of the BJP in four out of five States, which went to the polls, indicates that the voters are staunchly behind the Modi government. Another Indian-American body in New York celebrated the BJP's win over the weekend. "It is a historic win for the BJP in Uttar Pradesh, where after 37 years, voters have re-elected the same party. This shows the people's trust in Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and his governance," said Jagdish Sewhani, president of 'American India Public Affairs Committee'. "This is an endorsement of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's pro-poor, pro-farmer and pro-development policies," Sewhani said in the statement. (ANI)
You are here: World

 Flash

The Ukrainian delegation is seeking a ceasefire and a troop withdrawal during the peace talks with Russia, Ukrainian Presidential Advisor Mykhailo Podolyak, also a member of the delegation, said Monday.

"Our positions remain unchanged: peace, immediate ceasefire, withdrawal of all Russian troops," Podolyak said in a video statement on Twitter.

Ukraine will be ready to talk about any neighborly relations and political settlements with Russia only after the implementation of these positions, Podolyak said.

The fourth round of negotiations between Ukrainian and Russian delegations was scheduled for Monday via video link.
"My best wishes @BarackObama for your quick recovery from COVID-19, and for your family's good health and wellbeing," PM Modi tweeted.

Obama on Sunday announced that he has tested positive for COVID-19. Taking to Twitter, the former US President informed that his wife, former first lady Michelle Obama, has tested negative.

"I just tested positive for COVID. I've had a scratchy throat for a couple of days, but am feeling fine otherwise. Michelle and I are grateful to be vaccinated and boosted, and she has tested negative. It's a reminder to get vaccinated if you haven't already, even as cases go down," he tweeted.

Barack Obama served as the 44th President of the United States. (ANI)
This protest has been going on in Islamabad for more than ten days.

Balochistan National Party (BNP) chief and National Assembly member Sardar Akhtar Mengal and other leaders also joined the demonstration on Sunday.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) earlier had expressed alarm over reports of a fresh wave of enforced disappearances in Balochistan and the rest of Pakistan, including most recently, Hafeez Baloch, a postgraduate student at the university in Islamabad.

In a statement, the commission said Baloch was allegedly disappeared while in Khuzdar, where he volunteers at a local school. Reports suggest that he was abducted in front of his students, the Dawn newspaper reported.

Cases of enforced disappearances are endemic to Pakistan and there are reports of a fresh wave of "missing persons" in the country.

Experts believe that the missing persons may be dead, their mutilated bodies dumped into ditches. They may be interned, locked in some detention centre of dubious legality. (ANI)
"Deeply mourn the passing away of 5 Indian students in Canada. Condolences to their families. Pray for the recovery of those injured. @IndiainToronto will provide all necessary support and assistance," Jaishankar tweeted.

India's High Commissioner Ajay Bisaria on Monday informed that five Indian students were killed in a road accident in Ontario, Canada.

The accident occurred on Saturday on a highway in which two other students got injured. Taking to Twitter, Ajay Bisaria expressed deepest condolences to the families of the victims.

"Heart-breaking tragedy in Canada: 5 Indian students passed away in an auto accident near Toronto on Saturday. Two others in the hospital. Deepest condolences to the families of the victims. @IndiainToronto team in touch with friends of the victims for assistance," India's High Commissioner to Canada said.

The local police said the deceased students were identified as Harpreet Singh, Jaspinder Singh, Karanpal Singh, Mohit Chouhan, and Pawan Kumar.

They were traveling west in a passenger van on Highway 401 Saturday morning when they collided with a tractor-trailer at around 3:45 am.

The investigation into the crash remains ongoing, and no charges have been laid. (ANI)
Ahead of the no-confidence motion against Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman on Sunday asked the public to be ready, as they would be called at any moment to be in Islamabad by the Opposition. While talking to the media, Rehman said that the Pakistani PM has lost the majority as well as the trust of his allies, Pakistani news channel Geo News reported on Sunday. "The matter is out of PM Khan's hands now," Rehman claimed, adding that "he should gather 172 members against the Opposition in the National Assembly rather than gathering one million people for the Islamabad rally." Taking a swipe at Pakistani Interior Minister Sheikh Rasheed, who claimed he is standing in support with PM Imran Khan "like a wall", the PDM chief said that the so-called support is nothing short of feeble. He further criticized Sheikh Rasheed and said that he is a betrayer. "He is someone who bites the hand that feeds him," Rehman was quoted as saying by Geo News. The National Assembly Secretariat advised Speaker Asad Qaiser to summon a session before March 22 after declaring that the no-confidence motion against the Pakistani Prime Minister is filed as per the rules, Geo News reported citing sources. According to the rules, the NA speaker is bound to summon the session of the National Assembly by March 22. A Pakistani channel citing sources reported that a total of 86 lawmakers from the Opposition parties have signed the no-confidence motion. At present, the government has a 17-member lead over the Opposition but the latter has claimed that it has enough support to prove that PM Imran Khan no more commands the people's trust. (ANI)
China, which considers Pakistan as its 'Iron brother', has invested billions of dollars in the country. Rising militancy and increasing political upheaval in Pakistan has jeopardized that investment.

Pang Chunxue, Deputy Head of Mission of the Chinese Embassy, held a meeting with the PML-Q leaders, during which she conveyed that China wants "political and economic stability" in Pakistan, The Express Tribune newspaper reported.

"China wants political and economic stability in Pakistan," Chunxue was quoted as saying in PML-Q's statement.

Chunxue also called on senior PML-Q leaders and discussed in detail the current political situation in Pakistan.

Ahead of the no-trust motion later this month, political instability has gripped Pakistan. Unemployment and deteriorating law and order situation, coupled with economic challenges, the focus has shifted from the core issues, the Tribune reported.

Notably, the Opposition parties in Pakistan are jettisoning mutual hatred to oust Imran Khan as they submitted a no-confidence motion in the National Assembly secretariat last Tuesday.

Calling Imran Khan government's decision to prevent Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf's (PTI) members from participating in the no-confidence resolution unconstitutional, Pakistan People's Party (PPP) chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari has asked the Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) and Chief Election Commissioner to intervene and ensure the protection of lawmakers' right to vote.

Bilawal termed the government's decision a violation of Article 6 of Pakistan's Constitution.

"I will appeal to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and the CEC. You must have heard the statements of the Prime Minister. You must have seen the government's tactics," the PPP chairman said at a news conference on Sunday in Islamabad.

"I appeal to you that every member should be allowed to use his right to vote and no one should be allowed to stop them," Bilawal was quoted as saying by Pakistani newspaper Dawn. (ANI)
The training involved the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force and the Solomon Island Assistance Force, with the involvement of Australian forces such as tactical response officers of the federal police, the Solomon Times newspaper reported.

The law enforcement forces have worked out measures for preventing unrest, while the preparations also include patrolling the parliament's premises with the use of helicopters and monitoring the operation of transport, according to the report.

In November, a series of violent protests erupted in Honiara, calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare. The protests were primarily fueled by residents of the Malaita province dissatisfied with the government's policy of developing relations with Beijing instead of Taiwan.

The unrest claimed three lives, while over 100 arrests were made. The situation was stabilized with the arrival of foreign forces, including troops and police from Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Papua New Guinea. (ANI/Sputnik)
Saying that the opposition should take back its no-confidence motion against Imran Khan, Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry has said that the PTI government "will see what can be given in return", reported The News International.

"If the Opposition withdraws the no-trust motion, let's see what can be given to them in return," the media outlet quoted him as saying.

Chaudhry added that the no-trust motion had caused bitterness in politics and the current political situation could harm the country.

However, he ruled out the possibility of declaring an emergency by saying that the "emergency powers are limited after the 18th Amendment."

Terming the PTI's upcoming public gathering at Islamabad a "mini referendum" on the no-confidence motion, Chaudhry said that the MNAs will cast their votes in the National Assembly after passing through the crowd, according to the publication.

Notably, the Opposition Parties in Pakistan are jettisoning mutual hatred to oust Imran Khan as they submitted a no-confidence motion in the National Assembly Secretariat last Tuesday.

At present, the government has a 17-member lead over the Opposition but the latter has claimed that it has enough support to prove that Imran Khan no more commands the people's trust. (ANI)
Pakistan, which has been trying to elude accusations for keeping banking laws lax to help terrorist groups move funds, has suffered a major blow after two US banking regulators fined the National Bank of Pakistan over USD 50 million for not complying with anti-money laundering laws, said a think tank, Policy Research Group (POREG). The Pakistani bank, which operates in the US as a foreign bank, was slapped with a penalty of USD 20.4 million on February 24 this year by the US Federal Reserve Board. In another blow to the bank, the New York State Department of Financial Services imposed an additional penalty of USD 35 million on the bank in relation to investigations carried out in 2014 and 2015. Notably, the penalty was imposed by the Board for Pakistan's continuous violation of international norms and regulations despite several warnings from different organizations, reported the think tank, adding that the Board has mandated the bank to set up an acceptable suspicious activity monitoring and reporting mechanism. Further, in the investigations conducted by the New York Department of Financial Services, it was found that the Pakistani bank had failed to meet mandated oversight requirements and had serious issues with its transaction monitoring system. However, citing previous examples the think tank reported that this is not the first time that Pakistani banks have come under international scrutiny for anti-money laundering laws violations. "In 2007, Habib Bank was sued by the widow of assassinated US journalist Daniel Pearl for running the financial pipeline for al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. In 2017, the Habib Bank Limited (HBL) of Pakistan was forced to close its New York Branch," the think tank reported citing several such examples. Notably, the global anti-terrorist watchdog, Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which has retained Pakistan on its grey list, has time and again threatened to raise the sanction to the blacklist if Pakistan continues its laxity in anti-money laundering laws. However, continuous gross violations of international banking norms have raised serious concerns regarding Pakistan's intentions to rein in terrorist financing. (ANI)
Drinking Water Supply Project, built under India grant assistance, was inaugurated in Nepal's Solukhumbu district on Monday. According to the Indian embassy here, this is one of the 75 projects being inaugurated this year in Nepal as part of "India@75 Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav" which celebrates 75 years of India's independence. According to the embassy, the project was jointly inaugurated by Sonam Gyalzen Sherpa, Member, National Assembly, and Priyadharsini R, First Secretary, Embassy of India, Kathmandu and in the presence of officials from Solukhumbu District Coordination Committee, Khumbu Pasanlhamu Rural Municipality, Water User Committee Management as well as local government representatives. This project has been constructed at a cost of NRs. 42.39 million under India-Nepal Development Cooperation with the Government of India's financial assistance. It is an important project for the Khumjung and Kunde Villages, Solukhumbu for serving clean and safe water to nearly 600 households and schools, hospitals, government offices and tourists in this area. Mainly, this project will improve the quality of life for households and reduce the daily burden of water collection, the embassy said. According to the embassy, since 2003, India has taken up over 523 HICDPs in Nepal and has completed 467 projects. Amongst these, 78 projects have been undertaken in Province-1 Nepal including 2 projects in Solukhumbu District. In addition to these, the Government of India has gifted 3 ambulances for Solukhumbu District. As close neighbours, India and Nepal enjoy multi-sectoral and multi-faceted cooperation. The implementation of this project reflects the continued support of the Government of India in bolstering the efforts of the Government of Nepal in the water-management sector, the embassy added. (ANI)
According to the sources, the woman, identified as Samargul, was killed in Dorbafan village of Mahmud-e-Raqi, reported Afghanistan-based media outlet, Payk Media.

Notably, the Taliban regime which took over Kabul in August last year has curtailed women's rights and freedoms, with women largely excluded from the workforce due to the economic crisis and restrictions.

Expressing concern over the situation of Afghan women, many humanitarian and women's rights watchdogs observed that the women in Afghanistan have been facing challenges since the fall of the former government, Tolo News reported.

Further, the crimes against the protesters or whoever raises their voice against the Taliban-led government has also increased significantly in Afghanistan. (ANI)
The development came during the second Project Monitoring Committee (PMC) meeting on the construction of Nepal Bharat Maitri Polytechnic (NBMP), funded by the Indian government in Hetauda city of Nepal's Makwanpur district.

As per an official statement, the PMC, held in Kathmandu and co-chaired by Satish Sivan, Joint Secretary (DPA-III Division), Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India and Kamal Prasad Pokhrel, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, Government of Nepal, reviewed overall implementation and progress of the project and directed the contractor and the consultant of the project for timely completion.

Noting that the COVID pandemic had posed a major challenge to the project's progress, both sides noted that it has now come out of those challenges and is in the final stages of completion.

During the meeting, the Indian side expressed its happiness at the fruitful cooperation with the Government of Nepal and the joint efforts made towards strengthening the educational infrastructure in Nepal. (ANI)
Traders in Nepal recently organised anti-China demonstrations in what they call Beijing's 'undeclared blockade' against Nepal. They say the blockade imposed under the guise of preventive measures against Covid has severely disrupted the traffic of consumer items across the border and has caused losses worth millions of rupees for Nepalese. A few observers say that China is trying to tighten its grip on Rasuwagadhi and Tatopani, the two most crucial trading points. China is allowing a maximum of two-three truckloads of goods per day at places where there used to be heavy traffic until a few years back. Traders say that around 300 trucks have been stranded at Kerung and Tatopani border points for the last 16 months. The Nepalese traders have also accused the Chinese government of not issuing visas to them. In addition to the blockade, the Chinese side has also banned the entry of Nepali citizens under the pretext of Covid prevention. As per Trade and Export Promotion Centre in Nepal, Chinese exports to Nepal have shrunk by 3 per cent from 17.6 pc to 14.6 pc in a span of just two years. China mainly exports electronic goods and garments to Nepal. Nepal exports to China have been reduced to the lowest ever percentage in these countries' trading history. It has come down to 0.4 pc from 1.8 pc. Nepal mainly exports carpets, handicraft items, and traditional items to China. Several experts have argued that China's heavy-handedness in dealing with Nepal including the imposition of the undeclared blockade could have emerged from its tactical move of preventing Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba's perceived inclination towards the west and India. It is to be noted that the Nepalese MBBS students, who are enrolled with Chinese institutions, are also barred from entering the Chinese mainland under the pretext of Covid-19. (ANI)
According to Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Lal Dhwaj Subedi of District Police Office, Sankhuwasabha, the 28-year-old man named Zhou Zhenzhen was arrested from Makalu Barun National Park on Friday morning.

DSP Subedi said that he was taken into custody on the basis that the Chinese national entered the restricted area without the permission of the Immigration Department, reported Pradeshportal, a Nepal-based digital portal.

Foreign nationals or tourists are prohibited from entering this protected area without the approval of the Immigration Department.

Some area of Makalu Barun National Park falls in Bhotkhola village municipality. Passports have also been recovered from the arrested Chinese nationals. The arrested Chinese National arrived in Nepal on March 3 But the immigration department has a record that he entered Nepal by bike.

"We have arrested him on the grounds that he had entered a restricted area. We are investigating why he came to Sankhuwasabha," said DSP Subedi. According to Subedi, the suspects were sent to Kathmandu by helicopter due to knee injuries, reported the portal. (ANI)
Syed Salman Haider Rizvi, general secretary of the Pasban-e-Aza and former president of the Masjid Khair-ul-Amal, was shot dead on Saturday night.

The incident took place outside Rizvi's residence near the Masjid Khair-ul-Amal in Ancholi Society within the jurisdiction of the Samanabad police station.

Investigators probing the murder of a senior leader of Pasban-i-Aza feared the return of sectarian terrorism in the metropolis as they believed that Rizvi was killed because of sectarian reasons, Dawn newspaper reported.

While talking to Dawn newspaper, Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) official Raja Umar Khattab recalled that such a killing apparently based on sectarianism took place after a considerable period.

He feared the "sectarian terrorism was again rearing its ugly head in the metropolis", said the Pakistani newspaper. (ANI)
He also expressed his gratitude towards the leadership for providing humanitarian support to Ukraine in this hour of need. Taking to Twitter, Zelenskyy wrote, "Held talks with PM @kmitsotakis. Reported on the course of countering Russian aggression. We appreciate the defence, humanitarian support of Greece. Stressed the need to ensure the work of humanitarian corridors, especially in Mariupol. Also discussed movement towards EU membership."

Notably, while discussing the fallout from Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the EU leaders, last Thursday, ruled out fulfilling Ukraine's call for a fast-track integration with the bloc during a meeting in Versailles Palace near the French capital, Paris, reported DW.

EU leaders discussed the bloc's relationship with Ukraine but stopped short of offering immediate membership. They condemned Russia's war in Ukraine calling it a breach of international law.

"Two weeks ago Russia brought war back to Europe. Russia's unprovoked and unjustified military aggression against Ukraine grossly violates international law and the principles of the UN Charter and undermines European and global security and stability," the statement from EU leaders said.

On February 24, Russia launched a special military operation in Ukraine after the Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics requested help in 'defending themselves'.

The Russian Defense Ministry said the special operation is targeting Ukrainian military infrastructure only and the civilian population is not in danger.

The West however denies these claims by the Russians and in response, Western nations have imposed comprehensive sanctions on Moscow. In addition, they introduced sanctions on Belarus for supporting Russia's operation in Ukraine. (ANI)
"A technical pause has been taken in the negotiations until tomorrow. For additional work in the working subgroups and clarification of individual definitions. Negotiations continue...," tweeted Podolyak.

This comes as the fourth session of talks was being held virtually with the Ukrainian negotiating team present in Kyiv.

Meanwhile, Zelenskyy on Monday termed the negotiations as "difficult talks".

"Difficult talks continue. Everybody is waiting for news. This evening we will report on the outcome," he said in a video message, according to CNN.

Notably, the first round of talks between the two sides was held in the Gomel region of Belarus on February 28. The second round of talks between Russia and Ukraine over the crisis in Ukraine was held in Belarus on March 3.

The third round of negotiations between the delegations of Ukraine and Russia were held in Belarus on March 7.

Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine on February 24 after the Donetsk and Luhansk people's republic requested help in 'defending themselves.' The Russian Defense Ministry said the special operation is targeting Ukrainian military infrastructure only and the civilian population is not in danger.

However, denying these claims by the Russians, the Western nations have imposed comprehensive sanctions on Moscow. In addition, they introduced sanctions on Belarus for supporting Russia's operation in Ukraine. (ANI)
Last week, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said he had sent Armenia a five-point plan on how to normalize relations after the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

"The Republic of Armenia responded to the proposals of the Republic of Azerbaijan and applied to the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairmanship to organize negotiations on the signing of a peace agreement," the Armenian Foreign Ministry said.

The group is co-chaired by Russia, France and the United States. They have been spearheading the OSCE's efforts to find a peaceful solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict over the past three decades. (ANI/Sputnik)
Russian troops have damaged the power line of Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant on Monday (Local Time), a day after the electricity supply was restored at the facility. Ukraine's National grid operator Ukrenergo said that a high-voltage power line was damaged a day after electricity supplies were restored to the nuclear power plant. The critical cooling system at the plant needs the power to operate normally, reported The Kyiv Independent, Ukraine's media outlet. Earlier, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said that Ukraine has restored the power at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) four days after the electricity was cut off at the Russian-controlled site. The IAEA Director-General, Rafael Mariano Grossi received the news from the head of Ukraine's nuclear power company Energoatom, Petro Kotin, who told him that the specialists had fixed one of two damaged lines and would now be able to deliver all required off-site power to the NPP, where various radioactive waste management facilities are located following the 1986 accident. However, as per the latest update by Ukraine's media outlet, the power line to the Chernobyl NPP is now again damaged. The agency also informed that Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia NPP which is also under the control of Russia is not in a position to deliver the necessary spare parts, equipment, and specialized personnel to carry out planned repairs. Furthermore, Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov asserted that Russia may seize large Ukrainian cities. As of March 14, Russian troops have seized only one Ukrainian regional capital - Kherson - but they are also trying to enter Ukrainian capital Kyiv, Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv and Mariupol, reported the Ukrainian media outlet. On February 24, Russia launched a special military operation in Ukraine after the Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics requested help in 'defending themselves'. The Russian Defense Ministry said the special operation is targeting Ukrainian military infrastructure only and the civilian population is not in danger. The West however denies these claims by the Russians and in response, Western nations have imposed comprehensive sanctions on Moscow. In addition, they introduced sanctions on Belarus for supporting Russia's operation in Ukraine. (ANI)
"People continue to flee the war in Ukraine every minute. As of today, more than 2.8 million people have fled to neighboring countries, including 1,27,000 third-country nationals. They need continued support," IOM - UN Migration tweeted.

Meanwhile, in the latest development, the fourth round of peace talks between Ukraine and Russia has been paused until Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's aide Mykhailo Podolyak on Monday.

Notably, the first round of talks between the two sides was held in the Gomel region of Belarus on February 28. The second round of talks between Russia and Ukraine over the crisis in Ukraine was held in Belarus on March 3.

The third round of negotiations between the delegations of Ukraine and Russia was held in Belarus on March 7.

Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine on February 24 after the Donetsk and Luhansk people's republic requested help in 'defending themselves.' The Russian Defense Ministry said the special operation is targeting Ukrainian military infrastructure only and the civilian population is not in danger.

However, denying these claims by the Russians, the Western nations have imposed comprehensive sanctions on Moscow. In addition, they introduced sanctions on Belarus for supporting Russia's operation in Ukraine. (ANI)
Amid soaring political temperature in Pakistan, the next 48 hours remain crucial for the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf's (PTI) government, during which its allies are likely to announce their stance on the no-confidence resolution moved against Prime Minister Imran Khan, local media reported. The decision of the government allies - Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q), Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P), Balochistan Awami Party (BAP) and Grand Democratic Alliance (GDA) - will decide if Imran Khan remains in power in the country, The News International reported. Notably, even if one of these allies decides to abstain, the no-confidence motion moved by the Opposition will fail. The resolution needs to be passed by 172 MNAs and the Opposition faces the tough task to bring that number not only in the National Assembly but also ensuring that they remain inside the Assembly hall during the voting time. Further, it still remains to be seen whether the dissident PTI MNAs are allowed to vote in the assembly or are restrained by the government through their convenient interpretation of the floor-crossing clause. However, with the allies choosing the government's side, Imran Khan would be in a much better position to defeat the no-confidence resolution as the dissident PTI members might not be allowed to vote, according to the media outlet. But if the opposition succeeds in ousting the Imran Khan government, the ruling party would be further divided and may join the government-in-making. Thus, the no-confidence resolution is a 'make-or-break' situation for both sides as the victory for either would boost their chances in the upcoming local government elections and the next year's general elections. According to the Pakistani publication, the Speaker is likely to call the assembly session in a day or two but whether he would put the motion to the House before the conference of Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC) or after would also be cleared once the session is called. Notably, if Imran Khan is voted out through the motion, it would create history as a vote of no-confidence has never been carried against the prime minister in Pakistan. Acting over mutual hatred against the Imran Khan government, the opposition parties submitted a no-confidence motion in the National Assembly Secretariat last Tuesday. (ANI)
As per the media outlet, after breaking into the mansion, squatters unfurled a Ukrainian flag and declared the property "liberated" and prepared for refugees from the war-torn country.

Notably, Oleg Deripaska is an oil tycoon and metals billionaire who is worth USD 2.6 billion, according to the British government.

In response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the British government had last week added Deripaska to the country's sanctions list, alongside his former business partner Roman Abramovich and five others who the government claimed had close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The mansion is a white stucco building located in Belgrave Square, dubbed "billionaire row" by British tabloids, according to the media outlet.

As the squatters made their presence known with the Ukrainian flag and banners hung outside the mansion that read "Power breeds parasites" and "This property has been liberated", the street was filled with police vans on Monday. As per images on social media, police with riot shields entered the property.

The squatters said that they broke in around 1 am on Monday, The Washington Post reported.

Notably, Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine on February 24 after the Donetsk and Luhansk people's republic requested help in 'defending themselves.' The Russian Defense Ministry said the special operation is targeting Ukrainian military infrastructure only and the civilian population is not in danger.

However, denying these claims by the Russians, the Western nations have imposed comprehensive sanctions on Moscow. In addition, they introduced sanctions on Belarus for supporting Russia's operation in Ukraine. (ANI)
Taking to Twitter, MEA Spokesperson Arindam Bagchi wrote, "Foreign Secretary @harshvshringla met Deputy Foreign Minister of Canada @MartaMorganUSS. Had a productive exchange of views on bilateral, global and regional issues of mutual interest,"

earlier today, India and Canada held Foreign Office Consultations (FOCs) to review the progress of bilateral cooperation in domains such as political, security, trade and investment and education and science and technology.

A Ministry of External Affairs release said the FOCs provided a timely opportunity to exchange assessments on regional, multilateral and global issues of mutual interest.

The Indian delegation was led by Saurabh Kumar, Secretary (East), Ministry of External Affairs. The Canadian delegation was led by Marta Morgan, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Global Affairs Canada. The last FOCs were held in March 2021 in a virtual mode.

"The discussions were cordial and friendly. Both sides reviewed the progress of bilateral cooperation in domains such as political, security, trade and investment, education, science and technology, consular and mobility," the release said.

The delegations agreed that the two countries should continue work to renew the momentum in relations and convene meetings of bilateral dialogues and working groups.

Both sides agreed to continue their productive consultations. The next FOCs will be held in Ottawa on a mutually convenient date. (ANI)
As Russian troops intensified their advance in various major cities in Ukraine, the fourth round of peace talks between Kyiv and Moscow has been paused until Tuesday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will address the US lawmakers virtually on March 16 at 9 am (13.00 GMT). "The Congress remains unwavering in our commitment to supporting Ukraine as they face [Russian President Vladimir] Putin's cruel and diabolical aggression, and to passing legislation to cripple and isolate the Russian economy as well as deliver humanitarian, security and economic assistance to Ukraine," read the statement. Zelenskyy will not be able to address the extraordinary plenary session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), and instead, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal will give a speech on Zelenskyy's behalf, PACE Chairman Tiny Kox said on Monday. The two-day extraordinary plenary session of PACE is being held from Monday to Tuesday in the French city of Strasbourg due to Moscow's special military operation in Ukraine. The consequences of the operation were put on the agenda of the session. Zelenskyy held talks with the Prime Minister of Greece Kyriakos Mitsotakis where he discussed the integration of the war-torn country within the European Union bloc. Squatters in London broke into a mansion reportedly owned by Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. After breaking into the mansion, squatters unfurled a Ukrainian flag and declared the property "liberated" and prepared for refugees from the war-torn country. Over 2,500 Mariupol residents have been killed since Russia invaded Ukraine, said Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Zelenskyy. Russian troops have damaged the power line of Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (Local Time), a day after the electricity supply was restored at the facility. Ukraine's National grid operator Ukrenergo said that a high-voltage power line was damaged a day after electricity supplies were restored to the nuclear power plant. The critical cooling system at the plant needs the power to operate normally. Pfizer will donate all profits of its Russian subsidiary to provide humanitarian support to the people of Ukraine, said the company in its statement. "Today we are announcing that effective immediately, Pfizer will donate all profits of our Russian subsidiary to causes that provide direct humanitarian support to the people of Ukraine. This will be in addition to all other recently announced donations from Pfizer to Ukraine," the statement by the company read. United Nations chief Antonio Guterres announced USD 40 million from the UN emergency fund for providing humanitarian aid to Ukraine. The UN chief, in his address to the media on Ukraine, said, "As millions of people in Ukraine face hunger and dwindling supplies of water and medicine, I am announcing today that the United Nations will allocate a further 40 million USD from the UNCERF to ramp up vital assistance to reach the most vulnerable." The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said that more than 2.8 million people fled Ukraine to neighbouring countries as of Monday to seek support. As the war between Moscow and Kyiv rages on, India's Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations, R Ravindra said that New Delhi has been consistent in calling for an immediate end to all hostilities in Ukraine. While addressing a UNSC briefing, Ravindra said our Prime Minister Narendra Modi has repeatedly called for an urgent ceasefire and that there is no other path left but of dialogue and diplomacy. (ANI)
The Taiwanese Ministry of National Defense said 13 military aircraft of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) entered Taiwan's airspace on Monday during a two-week reservist exercise on the island's north. "13 PLA aircraft (Y-8 EW, J-16*5 and J-10*7) entered #Taiwan's southwest [air defence identification zone] on March 14, 2022," the ministry tweeted, reported Sputnik. The aircraft include one Shaanxi Y-8 medium-range transport aircraft, seven J-10 multipurpose fighter jets, and five J-16 destroyers, according to the ministry. China directs military aircraft to Taiwan's airspace almost on a daily basis, yet ordinarily, the number of planes does not exceed five per day, with occasional cases of more than 10 jets. A two-week training program for reservists began in Taiwan's northern city of Taoyuan on March 5, with around 400 people participating in the program voluntarily. Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense said last year that starting in 2022, it will reinforce the training of reserve forces amid escalating tensions between Beijing and Taipei. The duration of mandatory retraining for some reserve forces will be increased to 14 days from the five to seven days of the previous program. The first week of the retraining course under the new program will be devoted to firing practice, with an increase in the total number of firing hours. The exercise will include instructions in and usage of different types of weapons, training in combat situations, and honing troops' command and control skills, reported Sputnik. Official relations between Beijing and Taipei broke down in 1949 after the Kuomintang forces led by Chiang Kai-shek defeated by the Chinese Communist Party in the civil war moved to Taiwan. Business and informal contacts between the island and China resumed in the late 1980s. Since the early 1990s, the two sides have been in contact through nongovernmental organizations, including the Beijing Association for the Advancement of Relations across the Taiwan Strait and the Taipei Cross-Strait Exchange Foundation. (ANI)
A meeting between these allies will be held at the residence of PML-Q Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain. Post the meeting, a final call will be taken regarding staying with the coalition government or joining the opposition ranks.

"The allies will look into the assurances given by PPP and PML-N," they said adding that Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) President is facilitating the talks with the coalition partners of the federal government, reported ARY News.

An MQM-P delegation led by Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui will meet the Chaudhry brothers while a meeting of BAP is also scheduled with PML-Q leadership. "The ministers from the allies will decide on resignation from the federal cabinet today," they said.

The Opposition parties in Pakistan are jettisoning mutual hatred to oust Imran Khan as they submitted the no-trust motion in the National Assembly secretariat on Tuesday. However, the Imran Khan government has exuded confidence to defeat the no-trust motion.

As per sources, it has been recommended to the Speaker to summon the assembly session any day before March 22. (ANI)
Ukraine-Russia war proves to be additional trouble for China, which is already facing disruptions in logistics, supply chain, and manufacturing operations due to multiple outbreaks of COVID-19. According to Policy Research Group, if China continues to be perceived as a supporter of Russia in its aggression against Ukraine, the Western allies including the US and EU may harden their restrictions against Chinese technology companies and impose tariff and non-tariff barriers against Beijing. US National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan has already warned Beijing of consequences for helping Moscow bypass sanctions. Sanctions in the wake of the Russian-Ukraine conflict would have implications for Beijing as well. Following Russia's military operation, the US and its European allies have introduced sanctions targeting several major Russian banks and high-rank Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, besides ousting Russia from the SWIFT financial system. The Biden administration's export controls apply to goods produced in any country as long as they use US technology. War chip makers like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and the Shanghai-based Semiconductor Manufacturing Industry Corporation (SMIC) continue to rely on the US for certain components and manufacturing technology. If these entities maintain supplies to Russia, they could be cut off from US technology, reported Policy Research Group. China, however, would also face the risk of other major technology exporters, like Japan, South Korea, and the Netherlands, "adopting Washington's tougher line." Its state-owned banks may also face problems for continuing to trade with Russia as they are still reliant on the US dollar. Apart from this, the European Union (EU) is China's largest trading partner as it overtook the US in 2020. China's international trade is worth above USD 4 trillion and any disruption in trade due to the Russia-Ukraine war would negatively impact about USD 700 billion of Chinese trade with the EU, Policy Research Group said. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) of China may also be negatively affected. Especially the European countries in the neighborhood of Ukraine who are members of BRI could face difficulties in BRI-related operations. These countries include Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Hungary, besides Italy and the Baltic states. It is further reported that an estimated 85 per cent of Chinese rail traffic to Europe transits through Belarus, which could also be adversely impacted by renewed hostilities in the region and the trade being carried out through the BRI may diminish with China losing its position as the largest trading partner of many European countries. (ANI)
"Sullivan raised a range of issues in US-China relations, with substantial discussion of Russia's war against Ukraine. They also underscored the importance of maintaining open lines of communication between the United States and China," a White House readout said.

The meeting between the US and Chinese diplomates was held in Rome, Italy.

"Their meeting followed up on the November 15, 2022, virtual meeting between President Biden and President Xi," the readout said.

Earlier, the US had warned China of the consequences of helping Russia bypass sanctions.

According to Sullivan, the US believes that China was aware in advance of what Washington describes as an "invasion" of Ukraine, Sputnik reported.

On February 24, Russia began a special military operation in Ukraine after the Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics requested help in defending themselves.The Russian Defense Ministry said the special operation is targeting Ukrainian military infrastructure only and the civilian population is not in danger.

The West however denies these claims by the Russians and in response, Western nations have imposed comprehensive sanctions on Moscow. In addition, they introduced sanctions on Belarus for supporting Russia's operation in Ukraine. (ANI)
"Earlier today, our correspondent Benjamin Hall was injured while newsgathering outside of Kyiv in Ukraine," Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott said in a statement.

"We have a minimal level of details right now, but Ben is hospitalized and our teams on the ground are working to gather additional information as the situation quickly unfolds," the statement said further.

"The safety of our entire team of journalists in Ukraine and the surrounding regions is our top priority and of the utmost importance. This is a stark reminder for all journalists who are putting their lives on the line every day to deliver the news from a war zone," the statement added.

On February 24, Russia began a special military operation in Ukraine after the Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics requested help in defending themselves.

The Russian Defense Ministry said the special operation is targeting Ukrainian military infrastructure only and the civilian population is not in danger.

The West however denies these claims by the Russians and in response, Western nations have imposed comprehensive sanctions on Moscow. In addition, they introduced sanctions on Belarus for supporting Russia's operation in Ukraine. (ANI)
US President Joe Biden's National Security Adviser warned a top Chinese official on Monday (local time) about Beijing's support for Russia's military operations in Ukraine, even as the Kremlin denied reports stating that it had requested Chinese military equipment to use in the war. US adviser Jake Sullivan and senior Chinese foreign policy adviser Yang Jiechi met in Rome earlier today. Sullivan held an "intense" seven-hour meeting with his Chinese counterpart and laid out potential consequences of Beijing assisting Russia in the war in Ukraine. "The national security adviser and our delegation raised directly and very clear our concerns about the PRC's support to Russia in the wake of the invasion, and the implications that any such support would have for the PRC's relationship not only with us but for its relationships around the world," said State Department spokesman Ned Price, using the initials for the People's Republic of China. "We are watching very closely the extent to which China or any other country provides any form of support, whether that's material, economic or financial support to Russia, any such support from anywhere in the world would be of great concern to us," added the spokesperson. In advance of the talks, Sullivan bluntly warned China to avoid helping Russia evade punishment from global sanctions that have hammered the Russian economy. "We will not allow that to go forward," Price said. Russia, however, on Monday (local time) denied it needed China's help. President Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said reports Russia had asked China for military assistance were not true. "Russia possesses its own independent potential to continue the operation. As we said, it is going according to plan and will be completed on time and in full," he said. Russia has asked China for military support and China had signaled willingness to provide military assistance to Russia., including drones, as well as economic assistance for its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, according to US officials. Potential assistance from the Chinese would be a significant development in Russia's invasion. It could upend the hold Ukrainian forces still have in the country as well as provide a counterweight to the harsh sanctions imposed on Russia's economy. The Chinese foreign ministry accused the US of spreading disinformation. Russia denied asking Beijing for military help. In response, a spokesman for the foreign ministry in Beijing, Zhao Lijian, said the US had "been spreading disinformation targeting China on the Ukraine issue, with malicious intentions". Russia expanded its offensive to western Ukraine on Sunday, firing missiles near the city of Lviv and hitting a large military base close to the Polish border, reportedly killing dozens of people and drawing the war closer to the borders of a NATO country. The attack came the day after the Kremlin threatened to attack Western weapons shipments to Ukraine. (ANI)
New York [US], March 15 (ANI/Xinhua): UN General Assembly President Abdulla Shahid said Monday that the next UN secretary-general should be female. Just four women have been elected president of the General Assembly in its 76 sessions. However, no woman has ever been chosen as the secretary-general. This needs to be corrected, Shahid told the opening of the 66th session of the Commission on the Status of Women. "The UN cannot call for the implementation of gold standards throughout the world as far as gender equality and women's empowerment is concerned, but not implement this standard at home," he said. "I personally would lead from the front calling for the next secretary-general to be a woman. Join me in this clarion call," he said. In the past 76 years, all the nine UN secretaries-general have been male. The current secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, is in the first year of his second five-year term. (ANI/Xinhua)
The US State Department stands ready to assist injured Fox News correspondent Ben Hall in any way they can, spokesperson Ned Price said Monday (local time). "I'm heartbroken by reports that my colleague, a State Department correspondent, was injured in Ukraine today. Our thoughts are with him, his family, and all of his colleagues, and we wish him a full recovery. We stand ready to assist in any way we can," Price said in a tweet. Fox News journalist Benjamin Hall was injured in Ukraine today while reporting Russia's military operations in Kyiv. "Earlier today, our correspondent Benjamin Hall was injured while newsgathering outside of Kyiv in Ukraine," Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott said in a statement. "We have a minimal level of details right now, but Ben is hospitalized and our teams on the ground are working to gather additional information as the situation quickly unfolds," the statement said further. "The safety of our entire team of journalists in Ukraine and the surrounding regions is our top priority and of the utmost importance. This is a stark reminder for all journalists who are putting their lives on the line every day to deliver the news from a war zone," the statement added. On February 24, Russia began a special military operation in Ukraine after the Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics requested help in defending themselves. The Russian Defense Ministry said the special operation is targeting Ukrainian military infrastructure only and the civilian population is not in danger. The West however denies these claims by the Russians and in response, Western nations have imposed comprehensive sanctions on Moscow. In addition, they introduced sanctions on Belarus for supporting Russia's operation in Ukraine. (ANI)
The Netflix logo is displayed on a smartphone screen. Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Netflix suspended its service in Russia and halted all productions there.

Four original Russian shows were impacted, which accounted for 1% of Netflix's upcoming slate.

It's more of a loss for local production companies than it is for Netflix.

Netflix recently suspended its service in Russia, after announcing it would pause all productions in the country, over Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The announcement came as Netflix was starting to commission original series in Russia. Netflix had four TV shows in development or production in Russia before pulling out of the region, all of which have been halted. They made up just 1% of Netflix's upcoming slate, according to the data firm Ampere Analysis.

Netflix's first Russian original series would have been a modern retelling of "Anna Karenina," called "Anna K," based on the classic novel by Leo Tolstoy. It was being produced by the Russian company 1-2-3 Production, which was also producing another Russian drama series for Netflix, "Nothing Special."

The other two series were both thrillers: an untitled series starring the Russian actor Alexander Petrov, and "Zato," which Netflix described as a "neo-noir detective drama."

As a region Netflix had yet to fully tap into, it represents more of a loss of income for local production companies.

"The largest loss for Russia here is in the future Netflix commissions the [Russian film and TV] industry could have expected," said Ampere Analysis research manager Fred Black.

Netflix's presence in other markets has been a boon for local TV industries, such as Germany and South Korea. Two of Netflix's biggest TV shows, "Squid Game" and "All of Us Are Dead," have come from the latter. And it is trying to make inroads in markets where growth has slowed, like Latin America, by ramping up local content productions there.

The company has 222 million subscribers worldwide, and its global footprint has pushed rivals like Disney to focus more on their international originals.

Story continues

"Netflix has a five-year advantage," Nicola De Angelis, co-CEO of the Italian production company Fabula Pictures, previously told Insider.

Along with originals, Netflix also paused all acquisitions in Russia, multiple outlets reported, including Variety and The Hollywood Reporter.

Black said that Netflix licensed and distributed 174 non-original Russian titles outside of Russia, which could hurt the Russian entertainment industry as Netflix suspends business there.

Below are details on the four Netflix Russian originals that have now been halted:

"Anna K"

Svetlana Khodchenkova was set to star as Anna Karenina in "Anna K." Netflix

Netflix's first Russian original would have been "Anna K," which it described in its announcement as a "lavish and contemporary retelling of Leo Tolstoy's classic novel 'Anna Karenina.'" The Russian actress Svetlana Khodchenkova was set to star as the title character. It was announced in May 2021.

Untitled psychological drama

Petrov. Netflix

The Alexander Petrov-starring thriller would have followed "a celebrity who finds himself in the center of tragic events that destroy his personality," according to Netflix.

"Nothing Special"

"Nothing Special." Netflix

Netflix said "Nothing Special" was about "a young actor Lyokha and his volunteer work at a charity that supports people with disabilities." It was announced in December, 2021

"Zato"

"Zato." Netflix

Netflix described "Zato" as a "neo-noir detective drama" about an "ambitious journalist Kristina and a cop Dashkin leading an investigation into the disappearance of a child in a restricted access town." It was officially announced in February.

Read the original article on Business Insider
The Daily Beast

Claudio Peri/Pool/ReutersROMESince the beginning of Russias invasion of Ukraine, Pope Francis has floated the idea that he wants to take a trip to Kyiv to try to broker a ceasefire. But now he says he would prefer to go to Moscow to try to talk some sense into Vladimir Putin, who he has not outwardly condemned in the now nearly three-month-old war and only did so lightly in a lengthy interview with an Italian newspaper.I feel that before going to Kyiv, I must go to Moscow, he told Corriere D
In August, Rep. Terri Sewell stood at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in her hometown, Selma, Alabama, to tout H.R. 4, the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.

Sewell, Alabama's only Black member of Congress and the delegations only Democrat, had high hopes after she introduced the legislation named in honor of her late mentor and friend.

The House voted soon afterward to pass the bill, but it stalled in the Senate last year. In January, a modified measure called the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act failed to clear the chamber.

Were at a great inflection point in our nations history, said Sewell, a Harvard-educated lawyer who was elected to Congress in 2010. We have to remember Johns words: Ours is the struggle of a lifetime, or maybe even many lifetimes, and each one of us in every generation must do our part.

Sewell returned home this month and headed to the infamous bridge for the 57th commemoration of Bloody Sunday.

On March 7, 1965, Selma was catapulted into the nations consciousness. Hosea Williams of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Lewis, then the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, led more than 500 peaceful protesters over the bridge en route to the state Capitol. The march was sparked by the killing of a young local man, Jimmie Lee Jackson, and demands around the right to vote.

Armed state troopers and a deputized posse met the men, women and children with brute force, firing tear gas and swinging billy clubs, bullwhips and cattle prods. The violence was captured on television and in newspaper images. A second march was cut short, but weeks later, Martin Luther King Jr. led thousands of nonviolent demonstrators who completed the 50-mile march from Selma to Montgomery, where a rally took place on the Capitol steps. Their actions spurred passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The weekend of March 7 was another anniversary for that pivotal chapter of the civil rights movement, as hundreds congregated for the annual Selma Bridge Crossing Jubilee. The event drew Vice President Kamala Harris and Cabinet members, members of Congress, relatives of King and Lewis, activists and people from around the country.

Story continues

Today, we stand on this bridge at a different time, Harris said, calling the site hallowed ground. We again, however, find ourselves caught in between  between injustice and justice, between disappointment and determination  still in a fight to form a more perfect union. And nowhere is that more clear than when it comes to the ongoing fight to secure the freedom to vote.

Image: Civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Ala., and Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. (J. Scott Applewhite / AP file)

For Sewell, voting rights are deeply personal. A native of Alabamas so-called Black Belt, she has roots that run as deep as the rich black soil that helped define the region. She was raised with two brothers by a librarian mother and a father who was a teacher and coach.

Im a daughter of Selma, said Sewell, whose 7th Congressional District also includes Birmingham, Montgomery and Tuscaloosa, as well as smaller rural enclaves. I stand on the shoulders of freedom fighters and foot soldiers.

One of them was Amelia Boynton Robinson, the organizer who in 1964 became the first Black woman to seek a congressional seat in Alabama. She was beaten unconscious during the bridge protest. In 2015, Boynton was Sewells guest at President Barack Obamas penultimate State of the Union address. She joined the march that year and died months later at 103, Sewell said.

On that fateful morning decades before, Boynton and fellow marchers started out at Brown Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Selma. Sewells family has worshiped at the church, now a national historic landmark, for decades. It was where she first met Lewis and many in the movement as a youngster.

After Sewells historic election to Congress, Lewis became a mentor on Capitol Hill and a close friend. She fondly called him the Boy from Troy, referring to Kings nickname for Lewis, a native of Troy, Alabama. Lewis dubbed his protege the Girl from Selma in return.

They served together on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee; Sewell was recently named a co-chair of its new Racial Equity Initiative. In 2013, the two sat side by side in the gallery as the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case Shelby County v. Holder. For decades, the Voting Rights Act helped ensure equal access at the ballot box by requiring states and localities with histories of voter discrimination to get preclearance from the Justice Department before they could change their voting laws.

The Shelby case stripped key provisions of the landmark legislation, Sewell said. Then, last year, the courts ruling on Brnovich v. DNC further gutted the law.

According to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, legislatures have introduced more than 400 bills in 49 states that Democrats contend would restrict access to the ballot and disproportionately affect voters of color. The GOP and supporters have termed them voter integrity measures, and dozens have become law.

In Alabama alone, 23 bills have been introduced that would allow for excessive voter purging, permit racial and partisan gerrymandering, and encourage voter intimidation, and implement stricter voter I.D. requirements, leaders of multiple civil rights organizations said in a recent statement.

Sewell said bolstering federal voting law is especially critical given the 2022 midterm elections and the congressional redistricting cycle.

The Supreme Court halted a lower court order last month requiring Alabama to redraw its new congressional map. Last year, a panel of federal judges struck down the map because it did not provide for two majority-minority districts. While Black people are about 27 percent of Alabamas population, they are represented in only one of its seven congressional seats.

The court order is yet another blow to the fight for fair Black political representation that is at the heart of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, said Sewell, a co-chair of the Congressional Voting Rights Caucus and a co-chair of the Congressional Black Caucus Voting Rights Task Force. The ruling allows the votes of Black Alabamians to be diluted and further undermines Section 2 of the VRA.

Previous versions of H.R. 4 have also passed the House but faltered in the Senate. The bill was renamed for Lewis after his death on July 17, 2020. It would restore a section of the Voting Rights Act that stopped discriminatory voting changes before they were implemented, restore another section to remedy denial of voting or dilution of the right of people of color to vote, expand voting access (that is, early voting and same-day voter registration), establish Election Day as a federal holiday, ensure access for people with disabilities and more.

It would re-establish much-needed federal oversight to ensure that minority voters are fairly represented, Sewell said.

While advancing federal voting rights has been a major focus for Sewell, so have issues like jobs, education and health care access.

Helping her constituents access Covid-19 care and other health conditions has also been a priority. She watched her father, Andrew Sewell, who died in 2017, battle a series of strokes. Her mother, Nancy Gardner Sewell, the first Black woman on Selmas City Council, died in June. Like Lewis, she had pancreatic cancer.

Sewell is lead sponsor of a measure that would help ensure that new, innovative blood-based cancer screenings are covered by Medicare after they are approved by the Food and Drug Administration. She was invited to the White House for President Joe Bidens announcement of the relaunch of the Cancer Moonshot.

Sewell, who also holds degrees from Princeton and Oxford, has championed Alabama schools and colleges. As vice chair of the Bipartisan Congressional HBCU Caucus, she has sought increased funding and support for Tuskegee University, Alabama State University and other nearby institutions.

Ever mindful of the sacrifices of civil rights heroes  many of them unsung  she says she views what has transpired around voting rights as a roadblock, not the end of the road. For example, New York is considering its own version of the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act.

Sewell, who is up for re-election this year, vowed that if voters return her to the 118th Congress, she plans to reintroduce the bill.

Change rarely comes in the halls of Congress without agitation, said Sewell, who said she believes senators have to be pressured and that the public must mobilize, organize to revamp voting rights. We can be disappointed or frustrated. But we must never be deterred. Your vote does matter.

History doesnt end here, she added. As long as I have breath in my body, I will continue to fight for voting rights.

Follow NBCBLK on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Inu-Oh, the acclaimed Japanese animation that debuted in Venice and Toronto last year, has been sold widely by Fortissimo Films and Asmik Ace.

Amsterdam and Beijing based Fortissimo is collaborating with Tokyo-based Asmik Ace on two titles, Inu-oh by Yuasa Masaaki and Missing by Katayama Shinzo, a former assistant director to Parasite director Bong Joon Ho on Mother.

More from Variety

Rock musical animation Inu-Oh was licensed to Sun Distribution for Latin America, to Rapid Eye for Germany, Front Row in the Middle East and Cinemaran in Spain. Asmik Ace handles Asian territories, North America, France, U.K. and Benelux. The theatrical release in Japan will be early Summer, followed by all other territories.

Missing, which premiered in Busans New Currents section, has sold to Dark Star Pictures for North America. It will have a limited theatrical release and festival screenings before being released in other windows. With Asian sales handled by Asmik Ace and other territories by Fortissimo, multiple other discussions are under way.

Encore Inflight has acquired airline rights to Hot Soup, which had its world premiere in Warsaw 2020 and is set to release theatrically in China soon. Directed by Zhang Ming, the picture focusses on four young, modern women in contemporary Shanghai who are pursuing personal happiness.

Fortissimos Amsterdam GM Gabrielle Rozing are attending this years online version of Hong Kong FilMart and will be continuing negotiations on these titles and We Might as Well Be Dead, which it launched in Berlin. There it was the opening film of the Perspective Deutsches Kino section.

Best of Variety

Sign up for Varietys Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Click here to read the full article.
As Russian shells hit Irpin, on the outskirts of Ukraine's capital, two Ukrainian soldiers took cover against a wall Sunday, heads down on the bare ground. Another soldier dug a foxhole.

In an Irpin park, a woman's body lay amid downed trees and debris. Underground, many people sheltered in basements without electricity.

Irpin is also where Russian troops on Sunday opened fire on the car of U.S. video journalist Brent Renaud, killing him and wounding a colleague.

Video: Biden on possible consequences of U.S. involvement in Ukraine

AP photographers captured scenes of devastation in Irpin and around Ukraine on Sunday, the 18th day of the war. The shells of bombed-out buildings and a damaged kindergarten classroom in Kharkiv. Rubble in besieged Mariupol. Firefighters trying to douse flames in a ruined food storage facility in the capital, Kyiv.

Since their invasion, Russian forces have struggled in their advance across Ukraine, and have besieged several cities, pummeling them with strikes and leading to a series of humanitarian crises.

In a hospital in Brovary, the photos show doctors and nurses working on people who were injured and lost limbs.

Other images showed life for refugees in shelters in western Ukraine and in neighboring countries. A boy worked on a puzzle; a family huddled behind a pile of suitcases; a mother read to her young child in a room crowded with beds.

Yahoo Immersive: Snapshot of events in Ukraine last week
The Cincinnati Bengals went right to free agency for their biggest area of need, agreeing to contracts with a pair of offensive linemen on Monday.

People with knowledge of the deals confirmed to The Associated Press that the Bengals reached agreements with Tampa Bay Buccaneers guard Alex Cappa and offensive lineman Ted Karras, formerly of the New England Patriots.

The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because the contracts cant be made official until Wednesday.

The 27-year-old Cappa, who allowed just one sack last season for the Bucs while protecting Tom Brady, agreed to a four-year, $40 million deal. Cappa earned a Super Bowl ring with the Bucs in 2021.

Karras, 28, agreed to a three-year, $18 million deal. The six-year veteran allowed three sacks last season.

The Bengals had among the worst pass protection units in the NFL, and it was laid bare in the playoffs. Cincinnati allowed a record-setting nine sacks in its playoff game against the Tennessee Titans, and in the Super Bowl, the Los Angeles Rams sacked Joe Burrow a record-tying seven times in beating the Bengals.

___

More AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl and https://apnews.com/hub/pro-32 and https://twitter.com/AP_NFL
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australian authorities on Monday warned the slow rollout of COVID-19 vaccine booster shots could unleash a new wave of infections amid the threat from the highly contagious BA.2 sub-variant of the Omicron coronavirus strain.

Australia battled record cases and hospitalisation rates during the initial Omicron wave, but they have steadied over the past six weeks. Most states have been easing social distancing rules, with mask requirements being rolled back at indoor venues and businesses asking staff to return to offices.

But daily infections could likely double in the next four to six weeks as the new sub-variant looks set to become the dominant strain, New South Wales Health Minister Brad Hazzard told broadcaster ABC on Monday, leaving "more people in hospital and more people possibly to pass away sadly."

Around 20,000 new cases were reported in Australia by midday on Monday with two states due to report later, while four deaths were registered. More than 3.1 million cases and 5,590 deaths have been recorded since the pandemic began.

According to official data, just over 57% of people above the age of 16 have received a third dose of the COVID-19 vaccine in New South Wales, home to a third of Australia's 25 million people, trailing the national average of 65%. Around 95% have received two doses.

"There is a degree of confusion," Hazzard said, admitting there was "a big problem" with people coming forward to get their boosters. More than two million people in the state - with a total population of eight million - are currently eligible for their booster dose but have still to get the shot.

The World Health Organization, based on initial data, said last month that the BA.2 variant appears to be more transmissible than the original BA.1 sub-variant.

Health experts and epidemiologists have asked authorities to consider reintroducing some restrictions, including making masks mandatory in supermarkets and other indoor venues.

But Prime Minister Scott Morrison over the weekend said the nation's political leaders want to move to a new phase of living with COVID-19 as though it were the common flu.

(Reporting by Renju Jose; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell)
LONDON (Reuters) - Norwegian robotics firm AutoStore's legal action against British rival Ocado comes to the High Court in London on Tuesday when its patent infringement claim is heard.

The two pioneers in warehouse storage technology are facing off in multiple jurisdictions around the world to protect their intellectual property. Ocado licences its technology, like AutoStore, and uses it for its British grocery delivery service.

Ocado won the latest round of litigation in the United States, where the International Trade Commission affirmed a December ruling that AutoStore's patent claims against Ocado were either invalid or not infringed.

Analysts said the verdict was a significant win for Ocado as the United States is its biggest market, although AutoStore plans to appeal the ruling in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

In Britain, AutoStore initially claimed Ocado infringed six patents, covering three different inventions or patent families. But AutoStore decided in January to focus on three particular patents, known collectively as its Central Cavity Patents.

Ocado is counterclaiming for declarations of invalidity in relation to all six patents and is seeking to recover millions of pounds of costs in relation to the abandoned part of AutoStore's claim.

The legal battle is also proceeding elsewhere, with claims brought by Ocado against AutoStore in Germany.

In theory the litigation could lead to AutoStore or Ocado's technology being excluded from a jurisdiction by the other, or the loser could settle with the victor.

The contest has been bad news for both groups. Ocado's shares are down 44% over the past year, while shares in AutoStore, which is backed by Softbank and went public in October, have fallen 25% in the past three months.

Both companies say they are confident of victory in the trial in London, which is expected to last four weeks and during which the court will pore over intricate engineering design details. The judge is expected to rule after three months.

(Reporting by James Davey; Editing by Edmund Blair)
Baftas 2022 host Rebel Wilson drew cheers and applause from the audience on Sunday night (13 March) for a joke she made about Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Introducing Emilia Jones  the star of CODA, a film about a child of deaf adults  she explained that there were two interpreters on stage: one for American sign language and another for British.

She then put up her middle finger and said: Luckily, though, in all sign languages, this is the gesture for Putin.

The joke went down very well with the crowd, many of whom made statements of solidarity with Ukraine amid the Russian invasion of the country as they spoke to press and accepted awards.

Benedict Cumberbatch said on the red carpet that he hopes to take part in a government scheme to offer Ukrainian refugees a place to live.

Everyone needs to do as much as they can, he said. Theres been a record number of people volunteering to take people into their homes, I hope to be part of that myself.

At this years Baftas  which took place at the Royal Albert Hall in London  Denis Villeneuves sci-fi epic Dune led the pack with 11 nominations, closely followed by Jane Campions western The Power of the Dog, which amassed a total of eight.

Rebel Wilson hosting the Baftas (Guy Levy/Shutterstock for BAFTA)

See the full winners list here.

You can follow along with updates on the Russia-Ukraine crisis at The Independents live-blog here.

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.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom delivers his annual State of the State address in Sacramento on March 8. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

It might seem like an odd time to be devoting a lot of energy to create a longitudinal education database for California when the greatest challenge has been just to get students back to class while keeping them and their families Covid-free.

Yet despite the distractions of the past two years, California is ratcheting up work to create a cradle to career data system that has been a dream of researchers and advocates for years.

One goal is to pinpoint the most effective strategies and programs  beginning at birth  that contribute to student success. Its also designed to give practical assistance to parents and students, including helping them take the right courses for college admission, and to get the financial aid they need once they get there.

California has already spent $25 million over the past two years planning the system, which will link data from multiple state agencies and education institutions. Now Gov. Gavin Newsom has called for $33 million more in his budget for the coming year to move it to the operational stage.

The system has a newly appointed governing board, as well as its first executive director, Mary Ann Bates, who started work on Feb. 1.

The hope is that the cradle to career system will be something that is incredibly powerful and useful at many different levels and for many different purposes, and that we do this work in a way that is understandable, accessible, and, yes, really exciting and salient for people, she told me shortly after assuming her post.

What has been frustrating if not infuriating to many researchers and others is that California has been way behind many other states that long ago established systems like these. But once Californias data system is up and running, it is likely that it will be further ahead than others, Bates says. Theres a real opportunity to learn from whats already out there, and to go beyond that and really build a landmark data system for California, Bates said.

Story continues

Former Gov. Jerry Brown fiercely resisted pleas to establish the system. By contrast, Gov. Newsom has emerged as its principal champion. It will be key to fulfilling the hugely ambitious pledge he made when he ran for governor to create a cradle to career education system. That will require more fully integrating all levels of education in the state, including early childhood education.

To assuage privacy concerns, and for other practical reasons, the system will not have a unique identifier for each student, as was originally envisaged. Rather it will use an approach called master data management in which all information is essentially placed in a data vault and then extracted depending on the project. Even researchers would not be able to get information that would reveal an individual students identity.

A big chunk of the $33 million Newsom is asking the Legislature to invest in the data system next year will be to expand the California College Guidance Initiative and its CaliforniaColleges.edu website. It will be a core element of the new data system.

Ana Castillo, a senior at Heritage High School in Menifee, south of Riverside, relied on the website during her college search. Her experience shows how it could be valuable to all students.

Unlike most of her high school peers, her career goals were relatively well-defined  and ambitious. She is set on a career in medicine. But how to get there? What college should she go to? What should she major in? And how to pay for it?

Castillo, who was born in Venezuela and came to California with her family when she was 6, took the career assessment tool on the site in her freshman year in high school. That helped her choose microbiology as her major. And then she was able to find colleges that offered that as a major.

It helped me narrow down my major, which moved my college planning along so much faster, she said. It saved me a lot of time.

The site automatically populated her applications to the California State University with her transcripts and grades, as well as her progress on completing the A-G course sequence needed for admission. By contrast, she spent three hours manually inputting her courses and grades for her applications to University of California campuses.

As for financial aid and filling out the dreaded Free Application for Federal Student Aid forms, she stayed on track by sticking to the monthly checklist of tasks on the CaliforniaColleges.edu website. Mini-online tutorials, each of which only took about 12 minutes to complete, were also helpful, she said.

She has already been admitted into four CSU campuses and two UC campuses  and is just waiting to hear from her dream campus, UC San Diego.

So if the website works so well, why does Newsom need to invest millions more on developing it further?

Thats because the website still has its shortcomings. So far only just over 100 California school districts serving 700,000 sixth to 12th grade students participate, substantially short of the target 3.4 million students who could be using it. It also isnt available to older adults who wish to go to or return to college. Nor is it set up to input dual enrollment college courses that students like Castillo have completed through a program that allows high school students to simultaneously take high school and community college courses.

Whats more, there is often a discrepancy between the names districts assign to A-G courses, and those assigned by CSU and UC, and students might not get credit for courses they have already taken. So getting uniformity in course names will be a crucially important step.

Regardless of the challenges, it is gratifying to see the data system taking shape. It is long overdue. California should not be a laggard when it comes to using data for research and policymaking, and for improving the lives of its youth. Its now on track to be a leader to do so.

Louis Freedberg, formerly executive director of EdSource, is a veteran reporter and analyst of education in California and nationally. He can be reached at louisfreedberg@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: California's ambitious 'cradle-to-career' data hub taking shape
I have never been more embarrassed in my entire life. I felt like crying in that moment, said Brooklyn Crockton.

A law student at Roger Williams University says she forgives the courtroom sheriff who she said delayed her from entering a courtroom with other attorneys because he thought she was a defendant.

As reported by WPRI, Brooklyn Crockton says a white sheriff blocked her from entering a courtroom at Garrahy Judicial Complex in Providence, Rhode Island, going so far as to pull her out of line to inquire about the absence of her name on the docket for defendants, she said in a TikTok video about the experience.

He asked if I was the defendant, Crockton recalled. It kind of threw me off balance. I was aware that situations like this had occurred with other law students, but I just couldnt believe in that moment that it was happening to me, she told WPRI.

Crockton said the sheriff apologized after she explained that she was representing a client as part of the university criminal defense clinic. According to the universitys website, the clinic offers law students an extraordinary opportunity to experience the actual practice of law, representing real defendants in pending criminal cases under the direct supervision of a full-time member of the School of Laws tenured faculty.

Law students such as Crockton personally handle all stages of criminal litigation in the Criminal Defense Clinic, beginning with interviewing the client and including investigating the case, counseling the client, negotiating with the prosecution, and ultimately, if the case proceeds that far, trying the case, the site continues.

Crockton recounted her experience in a viral TikTok video. I have never been more embarrassed in my entire life. I felt like crying in that moment, Crockton said in the video. She noted that she was dressed appropriately for the hearing.

Story continues

Speaking to WPRI, Crockton said, You cant outdress racism. She added, It doesnt matter how well you are dressed or what you put on. Someone will still look at the color of your skin and judge you based on that.

The law student said the sheriff approached her repeatedly after he admitted her into the courtroom. I was getting anxious each and every time because I really just wanted the interaction to be over, Crockton told the Rhode Island station.

Symbol of law and justice in the empty courtroom, law and justice concept.

You hear about these stories all the time with Black attorneys, but when it happens to you, it is just so visceral that you dont even know what to say, she says in her TikTok post.

Crocktons supervising attorney and law professor Andrew Horwitz also spoke to the station and said such incidents are not uncommon among attorneys of color.

I dont think we can train bias out of people, Horwitz said. I think the best we can do is make people aware and conscious of their bias. The right kind of training will help us all recognize the biases that we carry, he added.

Crockton agrees.

This just fits into a larger conversation we need to be having about implicit bias, Crockton said. Its not only in the legal industry. Its in every single industry thats out there.

A spokesperson for Roger Williams University said in a statement that officials addressed the situation with the Rhode Island Judiciary and the states Division of Sheriffs.

Roger Williams University School of Law is grateful that Brooklyn is sharing her personal experience with bias in the legal system to help bring attention to a pervasive and national problem, the statement reads. This requires collective and concerted action, and we are committed to being part of the solution. We are extremely proud of Brooklyn for her strength and leadership to bring light to these issues.

The Rhode Island Judiciary clarified that the Division of Sheriffs is not under their supervision, WPRI reported, but acknowledged that Crocktons case provides an opportunity to talk about and challenge the assumptions we make about the people that come through our courthouses every day.

TheGrio is FREE on your TV via Apple TV, Amazon Fire, Roku, and Android TV. Please download theGrio mobile apps today!

The post Black law student says court deputy mistook her for a defendant appeared first on TheGrio.
WASHINGTON  As Russia massed troops along its border with Ukraine over the last few months, it was unclear whether Russian President Vladimir Putin would invade. But if he did, experts warned, Russia would bombard the nation with a series of cyberattacks to sow confusion and weaken its resolve.

On Feb. 24, Putin unveiled his plans. Moscows war machine rolled into the Eastern European nation. The combined Russian air, land and sea assault was preceded by waves of cyberattacks, the sort of gray-zone meddling analysts and defense officials had foreseen. Websites were hamstrung. Malware coursed through computers. Communications were hampered.

But the full-fledged cyberwar some feared has not materialized. There has been no digital devastation of critical infrastructure, no damning disinformation.

Apparently, its less than we thought would have happened at this point, said Charles Munns, a retired U.S. Navy vice admiral who has advised the Defense and Energy departments. Its more of a 20th century invasion, with tanks and missiles and airplanes.

A brief cyber history of Ukraine

Both Russia and Ukraine have a history with cyberattacks  the former leveraging the domain to wreak havoc, and the latter often finding itself on the receiving end.

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, an arm of the Department of Homeland Security, found Russia previously used cyber tools and disinformation to project its force, to varying degrees of success.

In 2014, hackers besieged Ukraines elections, targeting networks and planting malware. Pro-Russia group CyberBerkut claimed responsibility. In 2015 and 2016, the Ukrainian power grid was compromised, resulting in thousands of outages. And in 2017, perhaps most infamously, NotPetya malware incapacitated vital systems the world over, resulting in enormous financial losses. The American, British and Ukrainian governments pointed their fingers at Russia.

It spread across the West ... and cost billions of dollars worth of damage, even shut down the English health care system for awhile, even responded back and hit Russian systems, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., said of NotPetya during a Feb. 28 Washington Post event. Those kinds of pieces of malware, once theyre out in the wild, you dont know where they end up.

Story continues

In late 2020, six officers of the GRU, a Russian intelligence agency, were accused of infiltrating and disrupting networks worldwide as a means to advance the Russian agenda. The U.S. and Ukraine were among those targeted.

No country has weaponized its cyber capabilities as maliciously or irresponsibly as Russia, wantonly causing unprecedented damage to pursue small tactical advantages and to satisfy fits of spite, then-Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Demers said when a federal grand jury returned an indictment with charges of conspiracy, computer hacking, wire fraud, aggravated identity theft and false registration of a domain name.

But the Russia-Ukraine conflict so far has not included that level of damage. Exactly why is not quickly discernible.

I think it goes, overall, into President Putin underestimating how easy it would be to take over Ukraine, said Craig Albert, the director of intelligence and security studies at Augusta University in Georgia. I think he might be holding some more cyberattacks in his back pocket. He doesnt want to unleash them yet.

Throughout January and February this year, Ukraine was peppered with distributed denial-of-service attacks, a tactic that paralyzes websites with an overwhelming stream of traffic.

On Feb. 23  just hours before Russia began its physical invasion  the websites for Ukraines defense, foreign affairs and interior ministries, among others, were knocked offline, the government said. Later, malware was discovered on hundreds of machines. Metadata cited by cybersecurity firm ESET suggested the attack may have been in the works for weeks.

The attack involved new data-wiping malware dubbed HermeticWiper  a destructive malware that can delete or corrupt data on a targeted computer or network, the CyberPeace Institute in Switzerland wrote in reporting the timeline of cyberattacks on Ukraine. The wiper has been detected in Ukraine, Latvia and Lithuania, and targets include financial organizations and government contractors.

The State Service of Special Communication and Information Protection of Ukraine said it and its cyber partners worked to counter the attacks and glean information from them. Prompt updates were promised.

Most analysts assumed the next war by Russia would be something where we would see actual, physical destruction or death as a result of the cyberattacks, something like [former U.S. Defense Secretary] Panettas infamous cyber Pearl Harbor that was warned about, Albert said.

Blame game

Attributing cyberattacks to any one specific actor can be difficult  but both Ukraine and the U.S. were quick to blame Russia for the attacks in recent months, pointing to digital footprints and other evidence.

The Russian government has perpetrated cyberattacks against Ukraine, President Joe Biden said Feb. 24. We saw staged political theater in Moscow, outlandish and baseless claims that Ukraine was about to invade and launch a war against Russia, that Ukraine was prepared to use chemical weapons.

Days prior, the White Houses National Security Council publicly linked the attacks to the GRU.

The U.S. has technical information linking Russian GRU to this weeks distributed denial of service attacks in Ukraine, the council tweeted Feb. 18. Known GRU infrastructure has been noted transmitting high volumes of communications to Ukraine-based IP addresses and associated banking-related domains.

Moscow has historically denied responsibility. The Russian Embassy in the U.S. in mid-February said Russia has never conducted and does not conduct any malicious operations in cyberspace and described related remarks made by a U.S. official as purely anti-Russian.

The US and NATO respond

Both the U.S. and NATO have responded to the cyberattacks, with the Western alliance working to bolster Ukraines cyber defenses and Biden threatening retaliation if attacks bleed into NATO-aligned countries.

The NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence in Estonia recently granted Ukraine contributing participant status, after rejecting its membership last year. The new relationship, expected to sharpen Ukraines cyber skills, was announced March 4.

Capability and knowledge comes from experience and Ukraine definitely has valuable experience from previous cyber-attacks to provide significant value to the NATO CCDCOE, Estonias minister of defense, Kalle Laanet, said in a statement.

The director of the center, Col. Jaak Tarien, in a separate statement suggested Ukraines expertise would bolster research, exercises and training.

Should the Kremlin ramp up its cyber operations and set its sights farther west, the U.S. is prepared to respond, according to Biden.

For months, the president said Feb. 24, weve been working closely with the private sector to harden our cyber defenses and sharpen our ability to respond to Russian cyberattacks.

While the president did not say what the response would be, and U.S. Cyber Command did not respond to requests for comment, the country has plenty to bring to bear.

Should we keep all our capabilities on the table? Should we be prepared to use those capabilities? Absolutely, yes, Warner said. I dont believe, though, that we should pre-commit on those until we see what kind of Russian activities take place here.

A study published in 2021 by the International Institute for Strategic Studies ranked the U.S. as the worlds No. 1 cyber superpower, with decades of development and investment across military, industry and academia. The same study put Russia in the second tier, alongside China and others.

Russias strategy, Munns said, historically focused on collecting intelligence, like many big countries do, and sowing discord. Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election is a prime example. Divisive topics were identified, amplified and exploited, much to the detriment of stateside discourse.

What most people dont understand is the United States and Russia are in cyber conflict constantly, Albert said. Its not cyberwar, its not warfare that weve known.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has said there are no credible cyberthreats bearing down on the U.S. Nonetheless, the agency issued a Shields Up notice earlier this year, indicating every organization, large and small, should be ready to respond to irregularities.

If [Putin] views any of these actions as an act of war, if he views them as a provocative, assertive gesture by NATO and the U.S., one way for him to retaliate without risking full-scale kinetic warfare between NATO member states and Russia would be to respond through cyber means, Albert said. I assume thats happening in some scaled version already.

Warner and other lawmakers have expressed similar worries about spillover.

I think one pressing concern is that what the Kremlin is directing at Ukraine may not stay in Ukraine, in terms of the cyberattack, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said late February. The other possibility is that Putin lashes out at the United States and NATO, and in this kind of hybrid warfare, it deploys cyber tools to attack American companies or American infrastructure.

Schiff, D-Calif., said as of Feb. 24 he hadnt seen evidence of Russian cyber action directed at the United States over Ukraine.

But there is always the risk of escalation, he cautioned, and it is very early in the conflict.
Andrew Smeaton said it was the right thing to do to try to save his colleague (Boston25)

A man from Boston has launched a daring rescue mission to save a coworker and his family who were trapped in Ukraine.

Andrew Smeaton, a 53-year-old from Quincy, flew from Boston to Frankfurt, Germany, then onto Krakow, Poland, last week before driving across the Ukrainian border into the war-ravaged country.

He eventually reached his colleague Kris van Huystee in the western city of Lviv, driving him, his wife, their 12-year-old son, and pet dog and cat to safety in Poland.

The chief information security officer at Boston-based tech company DataRobot told Boston25 that he made the 4,500 mile journey after learning that several of his 250 Ukrainian colleagues were stranded in the country following Russias invasion.

I think it was just the right thing to do. Anyone would have done it, he said.

When he reached Poland, Mr Smeaton said that he came up against the challenge of getting a car to make the journey across the border.

In the end, he managed to trade his wristwatch for a battered car which was low on oil and had its hood held in place with duct tape and set off on the journey with nothing but one container of gas, a pen knife and two bottles of water.

On the drive into Ukraine, he said he passed several checkpoints and people questioned why he was headed into the country - while most were fleeing in the opposite direction.

One of the Ukranians asked, Where are you going? I said, Ukraine and he said, I know, but why? I said, Ive got to pick up a friend, he told Boston25.

He pointed and said, [But] the Russians, the Russians. I said, Yeah, I know. He just looked at me and said goodbye.

Andrew Smeaton said it was the right thing to do to try to save his colleague (Boston25)

Mr van Huystee, an automation specialist for DataRobot who has lived in Ukraine for the last decade, said he and his family had been getting pretty desperate, with him becoming increasingly concerned for his familys safety.

It was very difficult for us to arrange transportation through the border I was very scared for my family, he said.

Story continues

When he first saw his coworker arriving in Lviv, he was super relieved, saying it really meant the world to him that Mr Smeaton had risked his own life to save the lives of him and his family.

Seeing a familiar face, a guy who went out of his way to risk his life to come and get me, it really meant the world, he said.

However, the danger wasnt over yet, with the group making the fraught journey back towards the border with Poland.

Kris van Huystee (left) and Andrew Smeaton (right) in Poland after they made it back across the border (Boston25)

It took 15 seconds for them to get in the car and we didnt speak the entire journey back until they got over the Ukraine border. Then there were tears, said Mr Smeaton.

He added that it was far from being like the movies, saying that theres no James Bond. Theres no Aston Martin.

Now, Mr van Huystee feels he owes my life to Mr Smeaton and the colleagues are now working together to help others also fleeing Ukraine.

Now we feel safe. Were in a good place. Andy and myself at DataRobot, were just doing our best to get as many other people over here as possible, Mr van Huystee said.

I owe him my life. He saved us. When I first got here, I told him Id do whatever I can to help out with the operation.

The two men said they are staying in Krakow to work with World Central Kitchen, a nonprofit that is providing meals to Ukrainian refugees who have evacuated their homes and arrived into Poland.
Chris Cleave Facebook

A few days before Chris Cleave was shot in the head in his red Audi convertiblewith his 14-year-old daughter beside him in the passenger seatthe 54-year-old British real-estate agent received an ominous message in Mexico.

We are coming for you and the sale of your shit. Also for you Cris, with the red Audi, read the message, or narcomantra, written in Spanish on a white cloth often used by narcos trying to extort money, according to local media reports. The message was pinned to the popular restaurant Bistro Playacar, owned by friends of Cleave. It was signed by Comandante Cobra, a fictional character made popular by the G.I. Joe comic series.

A few days later, Cleave, who had been living in Cancun, where he relocated from Cornwall, England, in 2013, was slumped over his steering wheel in Playa del Carmen as his daughter screamed in horror. Two men on a motorcycle pulled up beside them and shot the real-estate agent execution-style, police said. The daughter, who has not been officially named, suffered non-life-threatening injuries from bullets that ricocheted off the dash. No motive has yet been released.

Fernando Dominguez/Reuters

Police immediately arrested two suspects who are believed to have been involved in the murder. A gun thought to have been used to kill Cleave was also retrieved, according to local media.

A spokesperson for the Quintana Roo State Prosecution Service confirmed the arrests on social media. We can confirm the arrest of two men who probably participated in the incident that took place on Saturday morning in which a foreigner living in the area lost his life. The weapon that was used has been recovered.

Authorities say they believe Cleave and his daughter left their home in Cancun for a Saturday morning drive to Playa del Carmen, a popular resort town crawling with foreign tourists in the leadup to Spring Break. The two men, said to be ages 30 and 18, then allegedly pulled up to Cleaves red Audi convertible and opened fire.

Story continues

Police immediately gave chase to the suspects, finding one hiding in the underbrush nearby and stopping the other on the motorcycle shortly after. Police have maintained a heavy presence in Mexicos popular tourist areas after an uptick in random violence targeting foreigners in recent months, including the murder of two Canadians by a beachfront gang in January. Last month two other foreigners were killed when gunmen opened fire at the Art Beach restaurant on the Mayan Riveria about an hour from Playa del Carmen, a spot where Leonardo Di Caprio and Sting have been spotted in the past.

The British consulate in Mexico confirmed the death of a British national, but did not confirm his identity, instead issuing a statement that said, We are supporting the family of a British man who has died in Mexico and are in touch with the Mexican police/local authorities.

Cleaves Facebook page, which was still online Monday, was filled with photos of his daughter and messages of love. You are and will be the energy of the good, thank you for everything and I hope to see you, Andres Prado wrote. Fly high my friend.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Get the Daily Beast's biggest scoops and scandals delivered right to your inbox. Sign up now.

Stay informed and gain unlimited access to the Daily Beast's unmatched reporting. Subscribe now.
MILAN  Brunello Cucinelli has inked his first M&A deal, although the entrepreneur typically shied away from that definition, rather calling it an operation of gratitude.

On Monday, Cucinelli revealed that his namesake company is buying a 43 percent stake of Cariaggi Lanificio S.p.A., its longtime cashmere supplier.

More from WWD

Exactly 44 years ago around this time, I pulled up at Cariaggis plant with a small truck, asking for 20 kilograms of cashmere to launch my business. I was a long-haired 25-year-old but I had no money and [founder] Aurelio Cariaggi told me he would help, he gave me the cashmere and said I could pay him when I had the means to, recalled Cucinelli. My dream was to start my cashmere pullover brand and without Cariaggi I would not be here, his faith in me made me feel like a young lion. Cariaggi was the source of my economic sustenance. Gratitude for me lasts a lifetime, he added, citing the aphorism that states the opposite.

The purchase price was pegged at over 15 million euros, proportionally close to the current net worth of Cariaggi Lanificio, and entirely self-financed.

Control and day-to-day management of the company will remain in the hands of the Cariaggi family, which holds 57 percent of the shares.

Cucinelli explained that Cariaggi is solid and profitable and that he is buying the stake owned by Arnaldo Caprai.

The acquisition will help guarantee the supply and quality of the cashmere we employ, support the Made in Italy pipeline and provide a future for the second generation and third generation of both my company and that of Cariaggi, and for this wonderful fiber that we call golden fleece for decades to come, thus contributing to improving the living conditions of our people, continued Cucinelli.

Cariaggi is known for its top quality cashmere and is headquartered in Cagli, a one-hour drive from Solomeo, where Cucinelli is based.

Story continues

Yearly, cashmere accounts for around 60 percent of Cucinellis knitwear production and 95 percent of it is supplied by Cariaggi.

Cucinelli, who holds the role of executive chairman and creative director of his company, said Cariaggi is one of the jewels of Italian manufacturing, with products of great quality and craftsmanship; there is no doubt that it should be counted among the first industries in the sector in the world, if not the first, and that it represents something important for our territory and its culture.

We are very pleased to have completed this acquisition, which will allow the company to continue developing products of excellence, said Piergiorgio Cariaggi, chief executive officer of Lanificio Cariaggi Cashmere. We are more than happy with the agreement with Brunello Cucinelli S.p.A., our longstanding customer, with whom we share a vision of quality, service, innovation and a focus on our people, commitments that have always featured in our company, recognized worldwide as an excellence.

The acquisition is the latest in a brisk M&A activity in Italys supply chain, further triggered by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and much of it meant to support the know-how and craftsmanship of the countrys fashion pipeline.

For example, last year, the Prada and Ermenegildo Zegna groups joined forces to acquire a majority stake in Filati Biagioli Modesto SpA, which specializes in the production of cashmere and other precious yarns, sharing the goal to ensure continuity of the excellence of the company and to develop their own Made in Italy production chain. The acquisition came a few weeks after Zegna bulked up its textile division with the takeover of Tessitura Ubertino.

It is similar to the rationale behind Gruppo Florence, the luxury production pole established in 2020 by industry veteran Francesco Trapani through private equity fund VAM Investments together with Fondo Italiano dInvestimento and Italmobiliare. The goal is to supply high-quality Made in Italy products to major luxury fashion brands by acquiring family-owned Italian SMEs.

Trapani has said he expected the pole to quickly become the primary point of reference for Made in Italy production, building a rich portfolio including, for example, knitwear manufacturer Metaphor.

Last week, reporting its fourth-quarter and year-end results after the close of the Milan Stock Exchange, Cucinelli said that despite the war in Ukraine and the pandemic, he was confident the company will achieve its 10-year goal unveiled in 2019, expecting to double revenues by 2026 rather than 2028 as originally planned.

In 2021, net profit totaled 56.3 million euros compared to a loss of 32.1 million euros in 2020 and a profit of 53.1 million euros in 2019. Revenues last year amounted to 712.2 million euros, up 30.9 percent compared with 2020, and 17.2 percent higher compared to the pre-pandemic year of 2019.
A state agency revoked law enforcement certification from two former Norwalk cops who were accused of drinking on duty after they were discovered together in a local hotel during a midnight shift.

The Police Officer Standards and Training Council stripped certification from Sara Laudano and Michael Dimeglio, agency administrator Karen Boisvert said Monday. Both had resigned from the police department last year. The state panel found at its meeting Thursday that both engaged in conduct that undermines public confidence in law enforcement, Boisvert said.

Norwalk police arrested Laudano and Dimeglio in January 2021, accusing the pair of downing beers in the police station parking lot and another location before supervisors found them together in a local hotel, both unfit for duty, according to arrest warrants.

Dimeglio faces charges of second-degree larceny and second-degree reckless endangerment. His next court appearance is set for March 24. Laudano also faces second-degree larceny and reckless endangerment charges, along with risk of injury to a minor and is due in court again on April 21.

The investigation began in October 2020, when Laudano, who was 31 at the time, could not be raised on the police radio, police said. Second-degree larceny, a Class C felony, includes a section on stolen property obtained by defrauding a public community.

The risk of injury charge involved Laudano drinking and driving while her baby was in her patrol vehicle, the warrant for her arrest says. The warrants say the babys father is Dimeglio, who was 38 at the time of the incidents.

On Oct. 10, both officers were supposed to be on early-morning patrol. But at 12:47 a.m., a dispatcher could not reach Laudano by radio or on her cellphone, police said. A vehicle locating system showed her marked Ford Explorer at the EVEN Hotel, 426 Main Ave., where police found the SUV with empty beer packaging on the front seat, and Dimeglios Ford Crown Victoria in the parking lot, police said.

Story continues

Hotel management said the two officers were in a room. A police sergeant said Dimeglio answered the door in his uniform, but barefoot with his shirt untucked and not wearing his equipment belt, the warrant said. Dimeglio asked the sergeant, Did I miss a call?, the warrant says. Laudano was in the bathroom, police said.

The officers were not in a condition to respond to calls for service, a news release said.

Both were relieved of duty and placed on administrative leave.

Through witnesses at a local restaurant and liquor store, surveillance footage and DNA testing of discarded beer bottles, investigators found that both Laudano and Dimeglio were drinking beers and peanut butter shots at a local restaurant just before going on duty on Oct. 9 and that they continued drinking during their patrol shift that night in a side lot of police headquarters and another lot, warrants for their arrests say.

Surveillance video showed Laudanos vehicle near a liquor store at about 5:40 p.m. A civilian friend who had been drinking with Laudano at the restaurant was a passenger in the Explorer, which police rules do not allow, the warrant said. Laudanos friend bought a six-pack of Blue Point Mother Pumpkin Ale and a four-pack of Ithaca Flower Power beer and paid the $24.97 bill with Laudanos American Express card, the warrant says.

Laudanos friend had been caring for Laudanos baby, and the officer drove the woman and baby to meet a person described in the warrant as Laudanos wife to drop off the baby. Laudanos friend told police that besides drinking several beers, both she and Laudano took hits from a vaping device loaded with a THC cartridge.

Dimeglio, whose hourly rate for the overtime shifts on Oct. 9 and 10 was $66.12, answered a burglar alarm with another officer on the evening shift and drew his gun during a search of a home, police said. The warrant said an officer drawing his weapon while searching for potential intruders was not uncommon, but Dimeglio had been drinking just before answering the call.

The warrant also says Dimeglio had been caught sleeping on duty on March 14. He had been dispatched to a call, but did not answer and was later found at his home in the city, police said. Dimeglio had been with the department for eight years and Laudano for five, a press release said.

Jesse Leavenworth can be reached at jleavenworth@courant.com
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (AP)  The trial for four men accused of plotting to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer that was scheduled to resume Monday has been postponed at least until Thursday because an essential participant tested positive for COVID-19.

U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker ordered the delay Sunday. Undercover FBI agents and informants were expected to testify in the coming weeks, as were two co-conspirators who pleaded guilty prior to trial as prosecutors build their case against four defendants accused of plotting to kidnap Whitmer.

The trial could last more than a month.

In testimony last week, prosecutors sought to counter defense claims that the four were entrapped, tricked by the FBI into joining a kidnapping conspiracy that wouldnt have occurred to them otherwise. Prosecutors laid the groundwork of their case by calling FBI investigators to explain how they obtained covert recordings and social media posts. They entered some of that key evidence.

On Thursday, jurors heard for the first time a recording of one of the defendants specifically talk about kidnapping the Democratic governor. Barry Croft Jr. could be heard saying there should be a quick, precise grab of Whitmer.

Jurors heard him and defendant Adam Fox in social media postings and recordings ranting about purported government abuses and saying violence was a valid response. Prosecutors say Croft and Fox were plot ringleaders.

Prosecutors said authorities arrested Fox, Croft, Daniel Harris and Brandon Caserta in October 2020 to thwart the kidnapping and to ensure the men couldnt follow through on bids to buy powerful explosives.

In 2020, Whitmer was trading taunts with then-President Donald Trump over his administrations response to COVID-19. Her critics regularly protested at the Michigan Capitol, clogging streets around the statehouse and legally carrying semi-automatic rifles into the building.

Whitmer, who is seeking reelection this year, rarely talks publicly about the case and isnt expected to attend the trial. She has blamed Trump for stoking mistrust and fomenting anger over coronavirus restrictions and refusing to condemn hate groups and right-wing extremists like those charged in the plot. She has said he was also complicit in the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection.

Story continues

___

White reported from Detroit.

___

Find APs full coverage of the Whitmer kidnap plot trial at: https://apnews.com/hub/whitmer-kidnap-plot-trial
SAN DIEGO, CA  As the weekend wraps up, we've rounded up all the stories you may have missed Saturday and Sunday to prepare you for Monday.

But before we jump into the Golden State's top stories, SoCal residents should know that while gas prices are continuing to creep up, prices made their smallest increase in weeks on Sunday.

On Sunday, the state average was $5.74, according to AAA. Read more here.

Also, the deadline for gubernatorial candidates to file their bid for Gov. Gavin Newsom's seat passed on Friday. None of the Republicans who attempted to unseat him in the gubernatorial recall election appeared in the unofficial lineup for the November election.

Read more about Newsom's seemingly simple path to securing a second term in November's election.

From free anti-COVID-19 pills offered in Los Angeles to a manhunt for a California resident after his girlfriend's missing child was possibly found dead in his home  here are some of the stories you might have missed.

Free Anti-COVID Pills Offered In LA

The county is offering pills that are used to treat COVID-19 as part of President Biden's "test to treat" program.

Man Sought After Missing Child's Body Possibly Found In CA Home

Authorities launched a manhunt after a child was found dead inside a central California home.

Studio City Hiker Airlifted To Safety After Fryman Canyon Fall

A woman was airlifted to a hospital after she fell and sustained an apparent ankle fracture while hiking on or near the Fryman Canyon Trail.

LA Police Search For Murder Suspect

Authorities sought a person who was involved in the fatal shooting of a 31-year-old man in Los Angeles this week.

Long Beach Homicide Detectives Investigating Death of Woman

A woman believed to be in her 30s was found dead Sunday on a sandy beach area in Long Beach.

Police Search For Missing Woman In La Jolla Village Neighborhood

A police helicopter broadcast an announcement about a missing, at-risk woman above a La Jolla Village neighborhood Sunday.

Story continues

Average RivCo Gas Price Sees Smallest Increase Since Feb. 28

Following increases of 14.2 cents Wednesday and 11 cents Thursday, the average price rose 3.5 cents Friday and 2.4 cents Saturday.

Widow Alleges Husband's Death Related To Knee Pressure to Neck

The widow of a man killed in a confrontation with LA deputies want a court order excusing her from missing the deadline to file a claim.

2 Men Arrested In Palm Desert; Cache Of Guns Seized

Two men were arrested after deputies seized several guns, including a fully automatic rifle, from a business and a hotel in Palm Desert.

Boy, 16, Shot In Thigh In City Heights Alley

A 16-year-old boy was shot in the thigh Saturday in a City Heights alley.

1 Killed, Driver Arrested in 2-Vehicle Crash Near LA County Line

A motorist was arrested in connection with the early morning crash, which left one person dead.

Man Arrested On Suspicion Of Having Sex With 17-Year-Old Relative

A 51-year-old man in Santa Ana was arrested on suspicion of child molestation for allegedly having a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old.

Man Hospitalized After Being Shot Multiple Times In Vista

A man was hospitalized after being shot several times outside a Vista apartment complex.

CA Settles Case Against Senior Care Facility For $3.5 Million

As part of the settlement, Brookdale will be required to stop engaging in the illegal practices alleged in the complaint.

170+ Californians Accused Of Purchasing Alcohol For Minors

In the latest statewide underage drinking sweep conducted by Alcoholic Beverage Control agents, more than 170 people were cited.

CA Average Gas Price Sees Small Rise; Relief Could Be Coming

The average price for gasoline in California on Sunday made its smallest increase in weeks.

Kevin Faulconer Says He Won't Run For CA Governor Again

The former San Diego mayor was among the dozens of Republicans who ran for Newsom's seat in the 2021 recall election.













This article originally appeared on the San Diego Patch
Hillsborough, California  This quiet town has seen an increase in burglaries over the past four months and, reports CBS San Francisco, police say a specific group could be responsible.

Many of the sophisticated burglary crews are coming from South America for "criminal tourism" and targeting wealthy communities, according to a community alert sent Sunday.

Residential security video shows a suspect dropping to the ground before looking around at about midnight on March 11.

A getaway car pulls up as burglars carrying stolen property load up the vehicle. Police say the thieves also stole an SUV from the garage. Detectives announced Sunday they'd recovered the stolen car and processed it for evidence.

Investigators say they believe the suspects in this case are responsible for additional burglaries in Hillsborough and throughout the region. Local authorities are working with other agencies including Southern California law enforcement and federal partners in the ongoing investigation.

Police believe South American Theft Groups (SATG) often enter the U.S. legally and rotate members out of the country in a matter of weeks. Such crime rings were first investigated in Hillsborough in 2018. Suspects often use luxury cars to easily blend into their target communities, police said.

"I've been seeing more policemen driving around at night, people being more concerned recently; because I'm very young and drive a black van. Recently I was stopped by a woman thinking I was a burglar  thief  and asking me what I'm doing here," said Hillsborough resident Matt Gouley.

Earlier this month, surveillance video captured four people carrying a safe away from a home to a dark-colored SUV. Police say credit cards that were in the safe were later used in Modesto and Los Angeles County. Hillsborough Police say previous investigations of this nature also led them to the same areas.

"I do have a lot of friends that live in Hillsborough. We live in Burlingame, and they did mention that they're concerned about burglars breaking in," Joana Khatib told CBS San Francisco. "[It] gets me a little concerned 'cause it feels very safe but it reminds me that maybe we should lock our doors and have actually a Ring camera."

Story continues

Former National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster on Russia's invasion of Ukraine, U.S. response

Ukrainian citizens in Mauripol could be in a "worst-case scenario": CBS News Flash, March 14, 2022

Authorities search for man who allegedly shot five homeless people in New York and Washington
While Dolby Laboratories, Inc. (NYSE:DLB) might not be the most widely known stock at the moment, it received a lot of attention from a substantial price movement on the NYSE over the last few months, increasing to US$96.28 at one point, and dropping to the lows of US$70.59. Some share price movements can give investors a better opportunity to enter into the stock, and potentially buy at a lower price. A question to answer is whether Dolby Laboratories' current trading price of US$70.62 reflective of the actual value of the mid-cap? Or is it currently undervalued, providing us with the opportunity to buy? Lets take a look at Dolby Laboratoriess outlook and value based on the most recent financial data to see if there are any catalysts for a price change.

Check out our latest analysis for Dolby Laboratories

Is Dolby Laboratories still cheap?

Great news for investors  Dolby Laboratories is still trading at a fairly cheap price according to my price multiple model, where I compare the company's price-to-earnings ratio to the industry average. In this instance, Ive used the price-to-earnings (PE) ratio given that there is not enough information to reliably forecast the stocks cash flows. I find that Dolby Laboratoriess ratio of 28.19x is below its peer average of 38.3x, which indicates the stock is trading at a lower price compared to the Software industry. However, given that Dolby Laboratoriess share is fairly volatile (i.e. its price movements are magnified relative to the rest of the market) this could mean the price can sink lower, giving us another chance to buy in the future. This is based on its high beta, which is a good indicator for share price volatility.

Can we expect growth from Dolby Laboratories?

Future outlook is an important aspect when youre looking at buying a stock, especially if you are an investor looking for growth in your portfolio. Buying a great company with a robust outlook at a cheap price is always a good investment, so lets also take a look at the company's future expectations. With profit expected to grow by 33% over the next couple of years, the future seems bright for Dolby Laboratories. It looks like higher cash flow is on the cards for the stock, which should feed into a higher share valuation.

Story continues

What this means for you:

Are you a shareholder? Since DLB is currently trading below the industry PE ratio, it may be a great time to accumulate more of your holdings in the stock. With an optimistic profit outlook on the horizon, it seems like this growth has not yet been fully factored into the share price. However, there are also other factors such as financial health to consider, which could explain the current price multiple.

Are you a potential investor? If youve been keeping an eye on DLB for a while, now might be the time to enter the stock. Its prosperous future profit outlook isnt fully reflected in the current share price yet, which means its not too late to buy DLB. But before you make any investment decisions, consider other factors such as the strength of its balance sheet, in order to make a well-informed investment decision.

So while earnings quality is important, it's equally important to consider the risks facing Dolby Laboratories at this point in time. For example, we've discovered 1 warning sign that you should run your eye over to get a better picture of Dolby Laboratories.

If you are no longer interested in Dolby Laboratories, you can use our free platform to see our list of over 50 other stocks with a high growth potential.

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



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

The shooting occurred in the 9100 block of Kernel Circle near Zaragoza Road and North Loop Drive, police said.

Patrol officers responding to the scene arrived to find a man with life-threatening wounds.

Crime of the Week: Cigars, cash stolen in armed robbery of Circle K store in East El Paso

More: Man stabbed while trying to help bartender in Five Points in Central El Paso

Details had yet to be released as the incident was under investigation by detectives with the Crimes Against Persons Unit.

*This is a developing story. Check back later for updates.

Daniel Borunda may be reached at 915-546-6102; dborunda@elpasotimes.com; @BorundaDaniel on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: El Paso police investigate shooting in Lower Valley that wounded man
By Alexander Schummer

TORONTO (Reuters) - Jerry Dias, who retired as the president of Canada's largest private sector labor union due to health issues over the weekend, is being investigated by the union for an alleged breach of the union's constitution, the union said in a statement on Monday.

Unifor launched the independent investigation after receiving a written complaint against Dias on Jan. 26, the Unifor statement added. Unifor did not give the specifics of the complaint. Unifor's National Executive Board will meet on March 21, to discuss the matter.

Dias, who went on medical leave on Feb. 6, announced his retirement on March 11 citing unspecified health issues, the statement said. Dias was not available for comment on Unifor's investigation.

Dias has been the national president of Unifor for eight and-a-half years and three successive terms and was due to retire at the upcoming constitutional convention in August in Toronto, Unifor said in a separate statement on Sunday.

Dias fought for Canadian labour rights after U.S. President Donald Trump demanded the North American Free Trade Agreement be rewritten, resulting in nearly two years of negotiations.

"I have all the confidence the leadership, staff and locals will continue to build Unifor into a bold and progressive force for working people from coast to coast to coast," Dias said in the Sunday statement.

Unifor is Canadas largest union in the private sector, representing 315,000 workers. It was formed in 2013 through the merger of the Canadian Auto Workers union and the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada.

(Reporting by Alexander Schummer; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
By Marianna Parraga and Matt Spetalnick

HOUSTON/WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Chevron Corp. is preparing to take operating control of its joint ventures in Venezuela if Washington relaxes sanctions on Caracas to boost crude supplies after banning Russia's oil imports, according to three people familiar with the situation.

The U.S. oil major has begun assembling a trading team to market oil from Venezuela, two of the people said. If U.S. approvals are received, Chevron aims to expand its role in the four joint ventures it shares with state-run company PDVSA, they added.

Chevron has asked the U.S. government for a license broad enough to have a greater say at its joint ventures in Venezuela, a first step to recovering crude output and exports, and to control where oil is sent, the three people said. Since 2020, Chevron has delegated most decision making to state-run PDVSA.

U.S. officials have made clear, however, that any new authorization will depend on whether Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro takes further political steps, two sources said, such as releasing more jailed Americans and setting a firm date for resuming negotiations with the Venezuelan opposition.

Chevron's proposed moves could revitalize Venezuela's oil output and exports after years of underinvestment and sanctions shrank it to about 755,000 barrels per day (bpd) last month from 2.3 million bpd in 2016. Chevron's joint ventures with PDVSA had produced about 200,000 bpd before U.S. sanctions and lack of financing cut their output.

LOGISTICS TEAM

A date has not been set for issuing the authorization. But Chevron has begun preparations for employees to get Venezuelan visas in Aruba, ready to head to Caracas if the U.S. Treasury eases restrictions, the people said.

Last week, U.S. President Joe Biden banned U.S. imports of Russian oil, adding to an array of sanctions after Russia invaded Ukraine, an action Moscow has called a "special military operation."

Story continues

Chevron aims to begin moving Venezuelan oil to refineries as soon as next month. Last week's U.S. ban on Russian imports allows oil under existing contracts to arrive in the country through April 22.

"Since Venezuelan barrels were banned in the United States in 2019, and Colombia and Mexico reduced key exports to the United States, Russian barrels have been feeding the Gulf refiners", said one person involved in the talks.

Chevron had vastly reduced its presence in Venezuela after Washington tightened sanctions on Venezuela in 2020. For years, Chevron and other PDVSA venture partners have requested more operating oversight.

The United States is drafting a new license that would allow Chevron to assume a more active role in Venezuela, a person familiar with the matter said. Washington is considering similar oil-for-debt authorizations for Spain's Repsol and Italy's Eni SpA. They collectively are owed billions of dollars by their Venezuela joint ventures.

Chevron declined to comment, but reiterated in a statement its operations in Venezuela comply with U.S. sanctions and remain "a constructive presence in Venezuela."

PDVSA and Venezuela's oil ministry did not reply to requests for comment.

A State Department spokesperson said the U.S. government "does not preview sanctions actions" but added: "We have made clear that we would review some sanctions policies if the Venezuelan parties made meaningful progress in the Venezuelan-led negotiations in Mexico toward a democratic solution."

The U.S. Treasury Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

POLITICAL TALKS

This month, Washington quietly restarted diplomatic engagement with Venezuela, a close ally of Russia. Last week, Maduro released two jailed Americans, and Washington has insisted others also be freed. Maduro has expressed a willingness to resume a dialogue with the opposition after he suspended talks in Mexico in October. U.S. officials want a firm commitment to discussing free elections.

On Sunday, U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan told NBC any sanctions relief for Venezuela must be tied to "concrete steps" by Maduro.

The Biden administration had not previously made Venezuela a foreign policy priority. That changed when Middle East and U.S. shale producers would not boost their crude supplies when the White House asked them to do so after the Ukraine invasion.

Congressional Republicans and even some of Biden's fellow Democrats such as U.S. Senator Bob Menendez have opposed any deal that would benefit the socialist president. Washington condemned Maduro's 2018 re-election as a sham.

The United States imported 670,000 barrels per day (bpd) of Russian oil and fuel last year. One of the few countries in a position to replace those imports is Venezuela. Before sanctions, its oil went mainly to U.S. Gulf Coast refiners.

TIMELY APPROVAL

Chevron-marketed barrels could help PBF Energy, Valero Energy, and Phillips 66 fill their supply gap, the source said. All have operations geared to run heavy oils.

Chevron has held parallel talks with PDVSA to expand its joint ventures' governance. Any agreements likely would be temporary unless Venezuela enacts deep reforms of its oil legislation, which require PDVSA to be the majority stakeholder in any joint venture.

While PDVSA President Asdrubal Chavez supports an expanded operating role for Chevron, some Venezuelan top officials resist the change, three sources familiar with the matter said.

Venezuela holds about 300 billion barrels of oil reserves, the world's largest, but has not been able to hit its production targets due to underinvestment, poor maintenance, lack of supplies and U.S. sanctions.

(Reporting by Marianna Parraga in Houston and Matt Spetalnick in Washington; editing by Gary McWilliams and David Gregorio)
The claim: A photo shows a Ukrainian farmer towing a captured Russian jet

Some social media users are claiming a photo of a tractor towing a jet shows a Russian jet captured by a Ukrainian farmer.

"BREAKING: Ukrainian farmer captured a Russian military jet," reads a March 11 Facebook post that features the image.

The photo has also made the rounds on Twitter, where a March 10 post received more than 60,000 interactions in a day.

However, the photo is not associated with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as independent fact-checking organizations have reported. The image was taken more than a decade ago in Croatia.

Follow us on Facebook! Like our page to get updates throughout the day on our latest debunks

USA TODAY reached out to the Facebook users who shared the post for comment.

Photo taken in Croatia in 2011

In May 2011, several Croatian news sites published the image pictured in the post.

According to a Google translation of an article from the newspaper Vecernji list, the jet was towed through Zagreb, Croatia. It was taken to a neighborhood called Jarun to be displayed for the 20th anniversary of the Croatian Armed Forces.

The news reports don't explicitly say the jet is Croatian, but the plane bears the Croatian coat of arms.

Fact check roundup: What's true and what's false about the Russian invasion of Ukraine

USA TODAY has debunked multiple photos falsely claiming to show events associated with the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Our rating: False

Based on our research, we rate FALSE the claim that a photo shows a Ukrainian farmer towing a captured Russian jet. The photo shows a jet being towed through the streets of Zagreb, Croatia, in 2011.

Our fact-check sources:

Story continues

Thank you for supporting our journalism. You can subscribe to our print edition, ad-free app or electronic newspaper replica here.

Our fact-check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fact check: Old photo shows tractor towing jet in Croatia, not Ukraine
(Reuters) - The World Health Organisation said a flow of medical gear and equipment is reaching Ukraine to prop up a health care system grappling with a shortage of supplies during Russia's invasion.

DEATHS AND INFECTIONS

* Eikon users, see COVID-19: MacroVitals https://apac1.apps.cp.thomsonreuters.com/cms/?navid=1592404098 for a case tracker and summary of news.

EUROPE

* Russia plans to increase the state-sponsored allowance for hospitals to buy healthcare equipment, as its prime minister stressed the importance of keeping drugs affordable even if Western sanctions make them more expensive.

* Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin cancelled a requirement for people to wear masks in public, citing an improving COVID-19 situation and the need to support businesses facing sanctions.

* French health authorities reported 18,853 new infections on Monday, a figure showing a week-on-week increase for the 10th consecutive time on the day France lifted most of the restrictions.

* Britain plans to ditch its last remaining travel restrictions from Friday.

* Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has tested positive for COVID-19, he said in a video message on Instagram.

* Demand for the vaccine produced by U.S. firm Novavax has been underwhelming in the European Union's main countries in the early rollout.

AMERICAS

* Mexico plans to uphold existing agreements with Russia for its Sputnik V vaccine, as well as those with other countries.

* The Biden administration wants to expand a federal COVID-19 tracking system to provide more detail on how respiratory and other infectious diseases affect patients and hospital resources, according to a draft proposal.

* The U.S. Transportation Security Administration has recorded more than 900 civil penalty fines and 2,700 warning notices against maskless passengers since February last year, a report said.

* Former U.S. President Barack Obama said on Sunday he had tested positive and was feeling fine other than a scratchy throat.

Story continues

ASIA-PACIFIC

* A northeastern Chinese province imposed a rare travel ban as the region's Omicron outbreak helped drive China's tally of new local cases so far this year higher than any recorded in 2021.

* China's efforts to curb its largest COVID-19 outbreak in two years has forced Apple suppliers such as Foxconn to automakers Toyota and Volkswagen to suspend some operations.

* Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam said there were no plans to tighten strict social distancing measures as it fights to contain surging hospitalisations and deaths.

* Hong Kong international airport said its transfer ferry services from China's Shenzhen Shekou Port to the Hong Kong airport terminal would be suspended from March 15 until further notice.

* India will start administering COVID-19 shots to 12- to 14-year-olds from March 16, as schools reopen with standard restrictions amid significantly lower cases.

AFRICA AND MIDDLE EAST

* Nigerian banks have suspended individual withdrawals with local debit cards abroad, as its central bank battles to protect reserves that have dwindled since the pandemic triggered a sharp fall in prices of the country's main export, oil.

* Kenya lifted its remaining COVID-19 restrictions on Friday.

* Africa's top public health agency has agreed on a memorandum of understanding to bring Pfizer's antiviral COVID-19 pills to the continent.

MEDICAL DEVELOPMENTS

* One in four children with COVID-19 symptoms develop "long COVID," according to data pooled from 21 studies conducted in Europe, Asia, Australia and South America.

ECONOMIC IMPACT

* U.S. Treasury yields hit two-and-a-half year highs on Monday, while oil prices fell as investors weighed positive comments from ceasefire talks between Russia and Ukraine alongside expectations of the first rate hike by the U.S. Federal Reserve. [MKTS/GLOB]

(Reporting by Sarah Morland, Dina Kartit and Juliette Potala; Editing by Grant McCool)




The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) on Monday issued guidance for workers, clarifying that discriminating against employees or job applicants with family caregiving responsibilities may violate federal law.

Employment discrimination is already considered unlawful when it is based on protected characteristics like sex - including pregnancy, sexual orientation, or gender identity - race, religion, disability or age.

But the pandemic has also created an environment where caregivers may be more easily discriminated against, given quarantine requirements and the rapid onset closing of schools and child care facilities, the EEOC said Wednesday.

America is changing faster than ever! Add Changing America to your Facebook or Twitter feed to stay on top of the news.

"As the pandemic evolves, and the country moves to a new normal, we cannot assume caregiving obligations have ended," EEOC Chair Charlotte A. Burrows said in a statement. "The work that caregivers do - whether as employees or as unpaid workers in the family- is in all of our interests. By ensuring that caregivers know their rights and employers understand their responsibilities, the EEOC will help ensure that America's recovery from the pandemic is an equitable one."

Employment laws do not explicitly cover caregivers, but discrimination can still occur when employers act on assumptions or stereotypes, the EEOC said, providing an example of an employer who refused to hire an applicant because they are a primary caregiver of a person with disabilities, meaning that the employer's health care costs would likely increase.

It would also be unlawful for an employer to refuse to promote a woman based on the assumption that she would focus primarily on her children while they are quarantined or attending school remotely because she is a woman.

"The pandemic has heightened our awareness of the vital role that caregivers play in our society," EEOC Vice Chair Jocelyn Samuels said in a statement. "The real-world scenarios in this technical assistance show how federal EEO laws apply to employees who have caregiving responsibilities and how employers can, within those laws, better support caregivers in balancing work and family responsibilities."

Story continues

READ MORE STORIES FROM CHANGING AMERICA

FLORIDA'S FIRST OPENLY GAY STATE SENATOR ON 'DON'T SAY GAY' PASSING: 'THE AIR WAS TAKEN OUT OF THE ROOM'

WHY MILLIONS OF GENETICALLY MODIFIED MOSQUITOES MAY BE RELEASED IN FLORIDA AND CALIFORNIA

FLORIDA SENATE APPROVES BAN ON LESSONS ABOUT HISTORICAL EVENTS THAT MAKE PEOPLE FEEL 'GUILTY'

EXERCISE COULD TREAT SYMPTOMS OF LONG-COVID, RESEARCHERS SAY

FLORIDA'S 'DON'T SAY GAY BILL' HEADS TO DESANTIS'S DESK
WILTON MANORS, Fla. (AP)  Police have made an arrest in connection with fentanyl overdoses that involved five cadets of the U.S. Military Academy at a Florida vacation home during spring break.

The Wilton Manors Police Department said six men and a woman overdosed on fentanyl-laced cocaine and were taken to hospitals on Thursday.

Authorities said late Friday that they have made an arrest but did not offer more specifics about the persons identity. Florida officials have only identified the patients as college students from the state of New York. However, a spokeswoman from the U.S. Military Academy said Saturday that five West Point cadets were involved and four of them were transported to the hospital.

The United States Military Academy at West Point's Thayer Gate as seen from Highland Falls, NY on Monday, December 21st, 2020.

West Point: Cadets involved in overdoses during Florida spring break

Army: Hockey team swept out of league quarterfinals

Megan McDonald: Police inch closer to arrest in Orange County homicide

A West Point official told the Associated Press on Friday that two of the cadets involved were football players, and one of them was hospitalized. West Point officials said they did not have any update on Monday morning.

Florida officials told the AP on Friday afternoon that two of the patients were critically ill and on ventilators. The rest were in stable or good condition and at least one had been released from the hospital.

This incident serves as a stark reminder to all, especially those visiting for Spring Break, of the deadly impacts of Fentanyl, the Wilton Manors police said in a statement.

The investigation is continuing.

This article originally appeared on Times Herald-Record: West Point cadets overdose on fentanyl-laced cocaine; arrest made
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said a fourth dose of the Covid vaccine will be needed because of waning protection after a third dose, in comments on CBSs Face the Nation on Sunday.

Host Margaret Brennan asked if Americans should expect to get a Covid shot every fall similar to a flu shot.

I think so, Bourla replied. Variants are coming and Omicron was the first one that was able to evade in a skillful way the immune protection that we were given.

Bourla said his company is attempting to develop a vaccine that will protect against all potential variants of Covid, and whose protection will last at least a year. A fourth Covid shot will be necessary, Bourla said.

The protection that we are getting from the third [dose], it is good enough, actually quite good for hospitalizations and deaths, its not that good against infections, but doesnt last very long, Bourla said. We are just submitting those data to the FDA and then we will see what the experts also will say, outside of Pfizer.

Pfizer CEO @AlbertBourla tells @margbrennan his company is working very diligently to make a covid vaccine that will protect against variants & will protect for at least a year. pic.twitter.com/yf2baRwy4K  Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) March 13, 2022

The Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have already authorized Covid booster shots for most Americans.

Bourlas comments come after the highly contagious Omicron variant of Covid swept through the U.S. The appearance of the variant and resulting high number of workers out sick snarled flights over the Christmas-New Year holiday week, with the Biden administration struggling to rectify a nationwide shortage of Covid tests.

More from National Review




A Fox News correspondent was injured while covering the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the outlet confirmed on Monday.

Journalist Benjamin Hall was injured while reporting in Ukraine and is currently hospitalized, Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott said in a memo to staff on Monday.

"This is news that we hate to pass along to you, but it sometimes happens in the middle of a conflict," television host John Roberts said of the incident on air Monday afternoon.

Roberts said the network had "very few details" and that teams on the ground were "working to gather more information."

"The safety of our Fox team is of the utmost importance and our highest priority," Roberts said. "More on this as we get it."

Hall currently serves as Fox's State Department correspondent and joined the network in 2015. He has reported extensively on the front lines of conflicts, from Syria and Iraq during the battle against ISIS to the wars in Afghanistan and Gaza. He was previously a foreign correspondent based in London.

Once news of Hall's hospitalization was reported, Fox News journalists and personalities quickly took to social media to share support for their colleague.

"Covering a war is dangerous business," anchor Bret Baier said. "Please keep all of the crews on the ground - and the people there in your prayers - but today - especially Ben."

"Praying fervently for [Hall] and all our co-workers in harm's way. Please join me," tweeted anchor Shannon Bream.

The incident comes just days after an American photographer and videographer Brent Renaud was killed in Ukraine and another journalist was injured covering Russia's ongoing invasion.

Both the Pentagon and White House press secretaries acknowledged Hall's reported injury during briefings on Monday.

"Our thoughts, the president's thoughts, our administration's thoughts are with him, his family, and all of you at Fox News," Jen Psaki said, speaking to a reporter from Fox.

"We certainly wish him all the best a speedy recovery and a safe return," Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said. "This is a war that didn't need to be fought ... [but] there are journalists from around the world on the ground trying to discover the truth and to show that truth and to tell these important stories."

Updated: 3:50 p.m.
By Sarah Wu and Norihiko Shirouzu

TAIPEI/BEIJING (Reuters) -China's efforts to curb its largest COVID-19 outbreak in two years has forced companies from Apple supplier Foxconn to automakers Toyota and Volkswagen to suspend some operations, raising concerns over supply chain disruptions.

Multiple Chinese provinces and cities have tightened restrictions in line with Beijing's zero-tolerance goal of suppressing contagion as quickly as possible, among them the southern Chinese tech hub of Shenzhen.

Shenzhen, China's Silicon Valley, is carrying out mass testing after dozens of new local cases were recorded. Officials have suspended public transport and urged people to work at home this week as much as possible.

White House press Secretary Jen Psaki said on Monday that the Biden Administration was monitoring the lockdown of the tech hub "incredibly closely."

"What we're looking at is of course ... the impact on some of these ports around the impacted areas of China," she said in a Monday afternoon briefing.

China has reported more local symptomatic COVID-19 cases so far this year than it recorded in all of 2021.

Foxconn, formally known as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd, said its Shenzhen operations would be suspended until further notice, adding it would deploy backup plants to reduce disruption.

Two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters that Foxconn and its subsidiaries' operations in Shenzhen would be suspended for the first half of the week.

One of the people said the government was allowing companies to operate if they could create a "closed management" system where employees would live and work in a bubble. Such a system was in place during the Beijing Winter Olympics.

Other Taiwan companies which said they had suspended Shenzhen operations included chip substrate and printed circuit board maker Unimicron Technology Corp, which also supplies Apple and Intel, and flexible printed circuit board maker Sunflex Technology Co Ltd.

Story continues

Sunflex said its plant would be closed until Sunday.

Apple did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Intel declined to comment.

Paul Weedman, who runs manufacturing consultancy Victure Industrial Co., Ltd in Shenzhen, warned that the restrictions were having a ripple effect beyond Shenzhen to the wider Guangdong province. Production for some of his customers' orders have been suspended, and many factory visits cancelled, he said.

"Imagine you have a factory of 100 people and all of a sudden you cant do anything - you cant fulfil your existing orders, you cant accept new orders. The impact is not 2 or 3 weeks, but 3-6 months."

Shenzhen's Yantian International Container Terminal (YICT), one of China's busiest ports, said in a WeChat statement it was operating normally, although two companies with warehouses at the port said they needed to temporarily suspend operations.

CHANGCHUN LOCKDOWN

Other cities have enacted restrictions to varying extents. Officials have locked down Changchun city, the capital of northeastern Jilin province, shut schools in the financial hub of Shanghai and suspended public transport in the manufacturing centre of Dongguan.

Toyota said on Monday its joint venture with China's FAW Group had suspended production in Changchun, while its Tianjin city operations remained unaffected.

Volkswagen, which also has a joint venture with FAW, said it had suspended production at its vehicle and component plants from Monday to Wednesday. FAW, which is headquartered in Changchun, did not respond to a request for comment.

A factory owner in Dongguan, who gave his surname as Lau, said his plant was forced to shut down from Sunday until Tuesday. They were also experiencing some issues in obtaining materials from suppliers due to the virus restrictions, he added.

"Hopefully they will let us carry on with the production soon," he said. "There's not much we can do. The whole world has moved on, except for China. They should just let go of the zero-COVID strategy."

(Reporting by Sarah Wu, Ben Blanchard and Yimou Lee in Taipei, Norihiko Shirouzu in Beijing; Additional reporting by Josh Horwitz in Shanghai, Stella Qiu in Beijing, and Alexandra Alper in Washington; Writing by Brenda Goh; Editing by Jane Wardell, Nick Macfie and Richard Pullin)
PARIS (Reuters) - France's Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said on Monday that he would travel to Corsica later this week and hold talks with local elected officials after violent protests erupted on the weekend, a few weeks before the presidential election.

Calm must be restored immediately, the minister said in a statement.

Darmanin will head to Corsica on Wednesday and Thursday.

Protesters in the northern Corsican town of Bastia attacked public buildings and threw projectiles at police on Sunday in the latest demonstration over an attack on a jailed nationalist at a mainland French prison.

Colonna, a Corsican shepherd, is serving a life sentence for the 1998 murder of Claude Erignac, who as prefect of Corsica embodied the power of the French state on an island with a history of separatist violence.

The attack left the Corsican militant in a coma and led to renewed calls for nationalist prisoners to be transferred from the French mainland to the island, closer to their families. [L5N2V62VV]

Authorities have long rejected these demands, saying nationalist prisoners were special status prisoners.

In a bid to ease tensions, Prime Minister Jean Castex last week removed this status for Colonna and two other detainees, members of the so-called "Erignac commando". But the move was seen as too little too late by Colonnas supporters in Corsica.

French prosecutors have also launched a terrorism investigation as Colonna's attacker was serving a nine-year sentence for planning terrorist attacks.

(Reporting by Tassilo Hummel, Editing by Dominique Vidalon and Kim Coghill)
FRANKFURT (Reuters) - German refineries have started reducing imports of Russian crude and oil products, a domestic industry group said on Monday, adding that the adjustment would not threaten domestic supply.

The European Union has so far stopped short of a ban on Russian oil in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine that began on Feb. 24, but some operators have voluntarily ceased imports.

"The mineral oil industry has started reducing imports of Russian crude oil and mineral oil products, especially diesel," the Berlin-based German Fuels & Energy Association (en2x) said in response to an enquiry.

It gave no further details.

"The most important thing is that domestic supply can be upheld for the time being, despite these adjustments," it added.

Shell, one of the association's prominent members with refineries in Cologne-Godorf and Wesseling, last week stopped buying oil from Russia and said it would cut all links to the country.

The association said replacing oil imports from Russia, which make up a third of Germany's total, would be possible, but would take time and the industry would have to rely on more seaborne oil rather than on pipelines.

The group, formerly called the mineral oil association, last December renamed itself to reflect its target of moving away from fossil fuels and reducing Germany's energy import dependency.

Russian oil company Rosneft's refinery in Schwedt, eastern Germany, did not immediately reply to an inquiry regarding oil flows, which it receives via the Druzhba pipeline through Poland.

In 2021, Germany's total oil imports fell 1.6% year-on-year to 81.4 million tonnes, trade statistics office BAFA reported. Oil product imports totalled 36.8 million tonnes, up 5.6%.

Official numbers up to March 2022 will be available in May at the earliest.

The European Commission and Germany's government aim to quickly become independent of Russian oil and coal.

But weaning Germany off its gas dependency will be harder, due to its lack of import capacity for liquefied natural gas (LNG).

($1 = 0.9137 euros)

(Reporting by Vera Eckert, editing by Barbara Lewis)
FRANKFURT, Germany (AP)  German prosecutors have charged the former CEO of payments company Wirecard and two other ex-managers with fraud and false accounting in connection with the firm's collapse last year amid allegations that much of its revenue and assets were faked.

Prosecutors in Munich said Monday that ex-CEO Markus Braun signed off on financial reports he knew were false. They said the firm booked nonexistent revenue it attributed to multiple partnerships in other countries and used fake documents to show it had funds that it did not.

The firm's former head of accounting and the managing director of a Dubai-based subsidiary also were charged.

The fraud cost banks 3.1 billion euros ($3.4 billion) in loans and writedowns, according to the prosecutors' statement.

One of the central figures in the case, the company's former chief operating officer Jan Marsalek, is being sought by authorities, prosecutors said.

Braun's attorney said the charges were seriously flawed and assumed a false picture of the facts," the dpa news agency reported. The defense says Braun was unaware of machinations by others. He remains in custody.

Wirecard grew rapidly and wound up being listed among Germany's top blue-chip stocks before the firm filed insolvency proceedings in 2020, saying 1.9 billion euros that had been on its balance sheet could not be found.

A court must first agree that the case can proceed before a trial can be held.
FRANKFURT (Reuters) - The German insurer and asset manager Allianz said on Monday that it had put a stop to insuring new business in Russia and was no longer investing in the nation for its own portfolio.

The announcement by Allianz follows a raft of similar announcements from the financial industry in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

"Our operating entities are no longer underwriting new insurance business in Russia, and are decisively reducing exposure in an orderly manner," the company said.

Allianz has until now been operating numerous business lines in Russia.

The company's operations in Russia and Ukraine contributed to 0.2% of group operating profit in 2021, while its overall investment exposure is 0.3% of the group's own portfolio of 808.5 billion euros ($885.71 billion).

($1 = 0.9128 euros)

(Reporting by Tom Sims and Alexander Huebner; Editing by Miranda Murray)
Ferndale Police have arrested the girlfriend of the man charged with murdering another man outside a large gathering earlier this year after suspecting she aided him as he fled to Arizona.

Kimberly Trujillo Mendoza, 21, was booked into Whatcom County Jail on Thursday, March 10, on suspicion of first-degree rendering criminal assistance, according to a news release Monday, March 14, from the city of Ferndale.

During the investigation into Jose Esquivel Hernandezs death on Jan. 23 outside a large gathering, police discovered that Trujillo Mendoza was the girlfriend of Miguel Miranda, who previously was arrested and charged with second-degree murder in Hernandezs death, according to the release. Trujillo Mendoza and Miranda have a child in common, the release states.

Witnesses at the gathering reported seeing Trujillo Mendoza and Miranda at the party together before the shooting, according to the release.

Traffic cameras captured a photo of Trujillo Mendozas car traveling south from Kingman, Arizona, on Jan. 24, the release states, which helped lead investigators to Phoenix, where Miranda was arrested.

During a search of the car, receipts were located from businesses in Las Vegas and Phoenix, according to the release. The receipts reportedly led investigators to find security footage and bank records confirming that Trujillo Mendoza was in the vehicle along with another person, who police suspect is Miranda, the release states.

Trujillo Mendoza told investigators that she was in the car with Miranda, according to the release, and admitted to purchasing new phones in Las Vegas after picking Miranda up in Portland, Oregon, after the shooting.

The Whatcom County Sheriffs Office and Ogden (Utah) Police Department aided in the investigation, according to the release.

Miranda was arrested Jan. 28 in Phoenix, Arizona, after the car he was believed to be driving the night of the killing was spotted in Kingman, Arizona. Miranda was booked into the Whatcom County Jail on Feb. 9, where he remains incarcerated in lieu of $5 million bail, according to court records.

Story continues

Miranda pleaded not guilty to the charges Feb. 18, according to earlier reporting in The Bellingham Herald.

The Ferndale Police Department is still searching for two other witnesses to Hernandezs shooting death previously identified as Jimmy Abitia and Michael Archouletta. City of Ferndale spokesperson Riley Sweeney said Abitia and Archouletta have not been located as of Friday, March 11, and the search is ongoing.

Miguel Angel Miranda pleaded not guilty Feb. 18 to second-degree murder for the Jan. 23 shooting death of Jose Esquivel Hernandez outside a gathering in Ferndale.

The shooting

Ferndale police were called at 12:18 a.m. on Jan. 23 to the American Legion building on Second Avenue in Ferndale for the report of a shooting at a large party, according to court records.

Officers found Hernandez outside the building with two gunshot wounds to his mid-torso. Hernandez was taken to St. Josephs hospital in Bellingham, where he later died, court records state.

Witnesses told police there was an altercation before Hernandez was shot, the records show.

Hernandez denied Miranda and two other people he was with entry to the building, a witness told police. The witness and Hernandez then escorted Miranda and the two people toward the parking lot, where an argument between them began, according to court records.

One of the two people Miranda was with allegedly told Miranda to pull out a gun and shoot Hernandez. Miranda pulled a black handgun from his waistband and shot Hernandez, according to court records. Miranda and the two others fled in a vehicle, the records state.

Witnesses provided a photo of Miranda, who is a known gang member, and identified him as the man who shot Hernandez, according to court documents.

Miranda has a previous felony conviction for first-degree criminal assistance from a 2016 drive-by shooting incident, in which he was the driver in a shooting that occurred on Haxton Way. He was sentenced to six months in jail, according to court records.

Miranda also has previous juvenile convictions for malicious mischief, criminal trespassing, obstructing law enforcement and assault, court records show.
Copyright 1995 - . All rights reserved. The content (including but not limited to text, photo, multimedia information, etc) published in this site belongs to China Daily Information Co (CDIC). Without written authorization from CDIC, such content shall not be republished or used in any form. Note: Browsers with 1024*768 or higher resolution are suggested for this site.

0108263 License for publishing multimedia online



Registration Number: 130349 Registration Number: 130349
Mar. 14More than $72 million in federal COVID-19 assistance funds has been awarded to Hawaii public schools, and a handful of charter and private schools, to help close the "digital equity " gap suffered by students who don't have a way to connect to the internet at home.

The money is to be used to cover costs of laptop and tablet computers, Wi-Fi hot spots, modems, routers and broadband connectivity purchases for off-campus use by students, school staff and library patrons.

The $72 million is from the Federal Communications Commission's Emergency Connectivity Fund, which is part of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan that Congress passed in March 2021.

More than 20 % of Hawaii's public school students couldn't get online from home at the height of pandemic distance learning in 2020 and 2021, according to state Department of Education statistics, U.S. Rep. Ed Case, D-Hawaii, told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser on Friday.

"This was true nationally, " Case said. "In some cases, broadband didn't reach into their neighborhoods. ... In some cases it was that students didn't have sufficient tools in the home. In some cases they had the tools in the home, but those tools had five or six people who all were competing for computer time every day. ...

"These students were literally struggling on remote learning, or they weren't learning at all."

In remote neighborhoods such as Puna on Hawaii island, Case said, Wi-Fi hot spots have had to be driven to parking lots so students could work on laptops in their families' cars.

The funding helps to "ensure digital equity especially for those Hawaii children who don't have the equipment or internet access necessary to stay connected and get their work done, " Case said.

And even while schools in Hawaii and nationwide largely have returned to in-person learning, educators say improving connectivity is more important than ever because the pandemic has permanently changed the way education and many other services are delivered.

Story continues

Internet connectivity is now widely considered a basic need, as schools are increasingly expecting students to be able to work and conduct research online from home. The state Legislature is considering a measure to create an online learning center to train teachers to maximize use of online tools.

Already, more students and teachers than ever are using online platforms such as Google Classroom regularly, said Alex Teece, founder and director at DreamHouse 'Ewa Beach public charter school, one of the fund recipients.

DreamHouse has not yet received its $29, 400 allocation, but Teece said money is needed because every student at DreamHouse is loaned an iPad and a hot spot if needed, and the school is expecting enrollment to rise by about one-third to 400 in 2023.

Almost all of Hawaii's Emergency Connectivity Fund allotment$71.5 millionwill go toward purchases by DOE, which oversees the state's 257 public schools. But some private schools and public charter schools are getting portions as well after demonstrating need through applications, Case said.

Meanwhile, Hawaii's broadband network will get a boost from the separate $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package enacted in November. It includes a $65 billion "generational reinvestment " in broadband, with at least $100 million going to Hawaii, plus more possible via competitive grants.

Case said people sometimes are surprised to learn that broadband internet serv ice is still nonexistent even in parts of his urban Honolulu congressional district, such as portions of Oahu's valleys.

He added, "Puna, south Big Island, East Maui, parts of Kauaithey're just not on the grid. That just leaves them out of a whole range of the next generation of health care, education, business, social. We've got to fix that."

Case will hold a live conversation at noon Wednesday via his official Facebook page titled "Talk Story : Hawai 'i Broadband, " to discuss the state's broadband network and digital equity, and how federal resources can be best used to advance connectivity. Guests will include Burt Lum, state strategy officer in the Hawaii Broadband and Digital Equity Office, and David Miya shiro, founding executive director of HawaiiKidsCAN.

FEDERAL FUNDS FOR ONLINE LEARNING More than $72 million in federal funding will be given to Hawaii public and private education entities via the Federal Communication Commission's Emergency Connectivity Fund Program. They include :

StatewideDepartment of Education : $71, 520, 353State Public Library System : $119, 331 Congressional District 1Mid-Pacific Institute : $398, 829Hawai 'i Technology Academy Public Charter School : $182, 475Halau Ku Mana Public Charter School : $57, 855DreamHouse 'Ewa Beach Public Charter School : $29, 400Holy Nativity School : $47, 400Mary, Star of the Sea School : $41, 526St. Andrew's Schools : $19, 812School for Examining Essential Questions of Sustainability Public Charter School : $1, 960 Congressional District 2Kanu o ka 'Aina New Century Public Charter School : $131, 631St. Anthony Catholic School : $106, 000Kihei Public Charter School : $91, 596Ka Waihona o ka Na 'auao Public Charter School : $77, 152Kanuikapono Public Charter School : $71, 412Island School : $58, 054St. Joseph School : $31, 982Malama Honua Public Charter School : $6, 426
BENGALURU (Reuters) -India will start administering COVID-19 vaccinations to 12- to 14-year-olds from March 16, the country's health ministry said on Monday, as schools reopen across the country with standard restrictions amid a significant fall in cases.

The government also decided to remove the condition of co-morbidity for people above 60 years to receive a booster shot, the ministry said in a statement https://bit.ly/3CJ4J1c.

India has so far been vaccinating children aged 15 and above. According to government figures, more than 90 million children aged between 15 and 17 have been inoculated, mainly using Bharat Biotech's homegrown shot Covaxin.

India's third wave of COVID-19 cases driven by the Omicron variant has receded, with the country reporting 2,503 infections on Monday compared to more than 300,000 in late January.

The health ministry said children in the age group of 12 to 14 years would be inoculated using vaccine maker Biological E. Ltd's Corbevax, which received an emergency use approval in February for 12- to 18-year-olds.

(Reporting by Anuron Kumar Mitra in Bengaluru; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu)
If you want to know who really controls Australian Clinical Labs Limited (ASX:ACL), then you'll have to look at the makeup of its share registry. Large companies usually have institutions as shareholders, and we usually see insiders owning shares in smaller companies. We also tend to see lower insider ownership in companies that were previously publicly owned.

With a market capitalization of AU$980m, Australian Clinical Labs is a small cap stock, so it might not be well known by many institutional investors. Our analysis of the ownership of the company, below, shows that institutional investors have bought into the company. We can zoom in on the different ownership groups, to learn more about Australian Clinical Labs.

See our latest analysis for Australian Clinical Labs

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Australian Clinical Labs?

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

As you can see, institutional investors have a fair amount of stake in Australian Clinical Labs. This implies the analysts working for those institutions have looked at the stock and they like it. But just like anyone else, they could be wrong. When multiple institutions own a stock, there's always a risk that they are in a 'crowded trade'. When such a trade goes wrong, multiple parties may compete to sell stock fast. This risk is higher in a company without a history of growth. You can see Australian Clinical Labs' historic earnings and revenue below, but keep in mind there's always more to the story.

We note that hedge funds don't have a meaningful investment in Australian Clinical Labs. The company's largest shareholder is Crescent Capital Partners Management Pty Ltd., with ownership of 35%. In comparison, the second and third largest shareholders hold about 9.7% and 9.4% of the stock. Furthermore, CEO Melinda McGrath is the owner of 1.4% of the company's shares.

Story continues

A more detailed study of the shareholder registry showed us that 3 of the top shareholders have a considerable amount of ownership in the company, via their 54% stake.

While studying institutional ownership for a company can add value to your research, it is also a good practice to research analyst recommendations to get a deeper understand of a stock's expected performance. There are plenty of analysts covering the stock, so it might be worth seeing what they are forecasting, too.

Insider Ownership Of Australian Clinical Labs

While the precise definition of an insider can be subjective, almost everyone considers board members to be insiders. Company management run the business, but the CEO will answer to the board, even if he or she is a member of it.

Most consider insider ownership a positive because it can indicate the board is well aligned with other shareholders. However, on some occasions too much power is concentrated within this group.

Shareholders would probably be interested to learn that insiders own shares in Australian Clinical Labs Limited. As individuals, the insiders collectively own AU$45m worth of the AU$980m company. It is good to see some investment by insiders, but it might be worth checking if those insiders have been buying.

General Public Ownership

The general public-- including retail investors -- own 17% stake in the company, and hence can't easily be ignored. This size of ownership, while considerable, may not be enough to change company policy if the decision is not in sync with other large shareholders.

Private Equity Ownership

With an ownership of 35%, private equity firms are in a position to play a role in shaping corporate strategy with a focus on value creation. Sometimes we see private equity stick around for the long term, but generally speaking they have a shorter investment horizon and -- as the name suggests -- don't invest in public companies much. After some time they may look to sell and redeploy capital elsewhere.

Private Company Ownership

We can see that Private Companies own 10%, of the shares on issue. It might be worth looking deeper into this. If related parties, such as insiders, have an interest in one of these private companies, that should be disclosed in the annual report. Private companies may also have a strategic interest in the company.

Next Steps:

While it is well worth considering the different groups that own a company, there are other factors that are even more important. For instance, we've identified 3 warning signs for Australian Clinical Labs (1 is significant) that you should be aware of.

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

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

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



This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.
BAGHDAD (AP)  Iraqs prime minister met with Kurdish officials on Monday and inspected the site of an Iranian missile attack near the American consulate in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil.

Mustafa al Kadhimi was received by Masrour Barzani, prime minister of the semi-autonomous Kurdish-controlled region. The Iraqi premier also inspected damage caused by some 12 ballistic missiles that landed near the U.S. consulate, which is new and unoccupied, and caused damage to a nearby local television channel.

Iran claimed responsibility for Sunday's the missile barrage, calling it retaliation for an Israeli strike in Syria that killed two members of its Revolutionary Guard earlier last week.

No injuries were reported in the attack on the city of Irbil. But it marked a significant escalation between the U.S. and Iran and upset Iraq's leadership which called it a violation of international law and norms and summoned the Iranian ambassador to Baghdad in protest. Hostility between the U.S. and Iran has often played out in Iraq, whose government is allied with both countries.

A government official in Baghdad said al-Kadhimis visit to Irbil Monday was meant to express solidarity with the Kurdistan region and show support for its government. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on the visit.

The United States also condemned the attack. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said in a statement the attack targeted a civilian residence in Irbil without any justification.

"We will support the Government of Iraq in holding Iran accountable, and we will support our partners throughout the Middle East in confronting similar threats from Iran, he said.

U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken on Sunday called al-Kadhimi and Barzani to express solidarity and denounce the attacks.
TOKYO (Reuters) -Japanese authorities ordered crypto exchanges on Monday not to process transactions involving crypto assets subject to asset-freeze sanctions against Russia and Belarus over the war in Ukraine.

The step was taken after a Group of Seven (G7) statement on Friday that said Western nations "will impose costs on illicit Russian actors using digital assets to enhance and transfer their wealth."

There are growing concerns among G7 advanced economies that cryptocurrencies are being used by Russian entities as a loophole for financial sanctions imposed upon the country for invading Ukraine.

The U.S. Treasury Department issued new guidance on Friday that required U.S.-based cryptocurrency firms not to engage in transactions with sanction targets.

"We decided to make an announcement to keep the G7 momentum alive," said a senior official at Japan's Financial Services Agency. "The sooner the better."

The Japanese government will strengthen measures against the transfer of funds using crypto assets that would violate the sanctions, the FSA and the Ministry of Finance said in a joint statement.

Japan has lagged a global shift among financial regulators in setting stricter rules on private digital currencies, while the G7 rich powers and the Group of 20 powerhouses have all called for greater regulation of "stablecoins".

Unauthorised payments to targets under sanctions, including through crypto assets, are subject to punishment of up to three years in prison or a 1 million yen ($8,487.52) fine, the FSA said on Monday.

There were 31 crypto exchanges in Japan as of March 4, according to an industry association.

Global regulators remain concerned about the safety of the new market for investors, given its surge in popularity. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has cited the potential for market manipulation as one of the primary reasons for rejecting several applications for spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds.

($1 = 117.8200 yen)

(Reporting by Tetsushi Kajimoto, Daniel Leussink and Kantaro Komiya; Editing by Jacqueline Wong and Sam Holmes)
John Oliver didnt hold back in his criticism of Disney CEO Bob Chapek and his response to LGBTQ-hostile legislation such as Floridas Dont Say Gay bill on Sundays episode of HBOs Last Week Tonight.

Oliver began the segment by remarking that its been a bleak few weeks for the LGBTQ community and then explained the intricacies of Floridas bill, concluding that its not about sex at all, its about denying the existence of gay people.

More from The Hollywood Reporter

The host said it was all the more galling given the financial support the Republicans who voted for this bill have had from corporate America, including Disney and HBOs soon-to-be-ex business daddy, AT&T. Oliver explained that in the last two years, Disney has donated nearly $300,000 to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Republicans backing the Dont Say Gay bill.

Are they morally bankrupt for [donating the money]? Whos to say? Ill tell you: I am. I am to say. After all, Im Zazu, he said, in reference to his role in Jon Favreaus live-action remake of The Lion King.

Citing The Hollywood Reporter, Oliver then spoke about the reaction of Disney employees to the companys silence about the bill, adding that when they found out about the donations, they were understandably outraged. Describing Chapek as a business thumb, Oliver excoriated the executive for his initial reaction to the controversy, the bland and nonsensical corporate statement that alludes to the diverse stories the company produces that are more powerful than any tweet or lobbying effort.

Thats obviously nonsense, Oliver said.

Seemingly warming to the task of documenting Chapeks missteps, Oliver then played tape from a Disney shareholder call in which the CEO said, When we donate money to different political candidates, we have no idea how theyre going to vote going forward into the future.

Story continues

That is such bullshit, it is actively insulting! Oliver said, before reiterating that when you make political donations, you generally know what the recipient is going to do with it. He added that Disney should have had a very good idea what way a pol like Florida State Sen. Dennis Baxley would vote when it donated money to him, as he was open about removing protections for LGBTQ workers and legalizing gay conversion therapy.

Concluding the segment with Chapeks apology last Friday and Disney pausing all political donations in Florida pending a review, Oliver seemed dismissive about the CEOs claims of being an ally. He added, marginalized creators have made billions of dollars for Disney. Now, should it embarrass them that it took them until this week to realize that they shouldnt take that money and use it to actively undermine those creators interests? Whos to say? Ill tell you: I am. Im Zazu, remember, and while I havent been invited back for the prequel yet, after tonight Ive got a pretty good feeling about it.

Best of The Hollywood Reporter

Click here to read the full article.
China to build on good business climate

08:54, March 14, 2022 By LIU ZHIHUA ( China Daily

A staff member works on the production line of a semiconductor manufacturer in Binzhou, Shandong province. [Photo by Chu Baorui/For China Daily]

China is expected to further improve the business climate, unleashing more market vitality and adding resilience to the economy, and thereby propelling high-quality development, analysts and business leaders said on Sunday.

The country will further deepen reforms to streamline administration and delegate power, improve regulation and upgrade services to create a market-oriented, law-based and internationalized business environment, they said.

"A sound business environment with a level playing field enables market entities to trust each other and leverage their respective advantages to effectively allocate resources and make the most of production factors," said Zhou Mi, a senior researcher at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation.

"As enterprises currently face more uncertainties amid the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is especially important to establish a market environment that facilitates cooperation rather than encourages distrust," he added.

At a news conference after the fifth session of the 13th National People's Congress, which concluded on Friday in Beijing, Premier Li Keqiang said that when there are good reform measures, a sound business climate and many market entitiesas there are in many places in Chinathere will be greater prospects for economic development.

Reforming government functions is like improving the soil for the growth of market entities, policies of tax reductions are like adding fertilizers and water, and the initiative of mass entrepreneurship and innovation helps market entities to take root and grow, he said.

According to Zhou, China should intensify reform efforts to provide a more predictable business environment with transparent and accurate information so enterprises can make well-informed and more productive decisions.

That will eventually help reduce the enterprises' costs and improve market resources allocation and utilization, to enhance the quality of overall economic development, he said.

He also said that to raise the efficiency of the Chinese economy, the government should take more measures to encourage innovation so more advanced technologies will be better applied in businesses' production and operations, and that innovative business models and formats will take form and grow.

Zheng Lei, vice-president of the Hong Kong International New Economics Research Institute, said to improve the business environment, it is important for the government to streamline administration and delegate power, and, most importantly, to adopt a mindset of "serving and regulating" enterprises rather than "managing" them.

Hiroshi Hamaguchi, chairman and president of Astellas China, said he thinks China will continue to introduce new measures that ensure a more transparent and favorable market environment for foreign companies.

In November, Astellas invested in a corporate structure upgrade in China to synergize its long-term development in China.

Rogier Janssens, managing director and general manager of Merck China Healthcare, said he looks forward to China adopting more measures to facilitate an even more favorable and open business environment. Merck fully intends to continue to invest in China, he said.

Premier Li Keqiang said in Friday's news conference that there are now 150 million market entities in China, 100 million more than 10 years ago. Most of these market entities are privately held firms and some 100 million are self-employed households.

China has either canceled or delegated to lower-level authorities some 1,000 administrative approval items, and the non-administrative approval requirement has become a thing of the past.

In the past, it took dozens, even up to 100 days to open a business in China, but it now takes four days, on average, and even just one day in some places. About 90 percent of government services can be accessed online or through cellphone apps.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
Credit - Illustration by Cecilia Castelli for TIME

Growing up, I never kept a diary. There were no journals hidden beneath my twin mattress, no spiral-bound collection of ruffled notebooks stuffed with private confidences. I was a voracious reader who devoured books in secret, in defiance of my strict evangelical parents, but when it came to my personal feelings, I allowed nothing of myself to migrate onto the page. Writing felt treacherous; a way to accidentally reveal too much. The few times that I did manage to pen any of my feelings, I immediately shredded everything, crumpled papers stuffed at the bottom of the garbage can, hidden beneath scraps of the previous nights dinner.

Those scribblings were too unruly, I thought at the time, unwilling to let any of it live outside the privacy of my head. Regardless, my hopes and fears sometimes erupted from the watched pot of my brain, boiling over to reveal truths I was desperate to hide. A swirl of images spit and hissed steam beneath the lid: friends changing out of wet bathing suits after a pool party, the heart-shaped sweat mark on a girls back during gym class on an especially sweltering Central Florida afternoon, the sun tracing shiny golden tinsel into a womans plaited hair. The memories flickered neon red at the edges, warning of danger. There was something unacceptable about them. Something scary.

I know now why I couldnt write them down. My words were too gay.

As an adult, I can see that the smothering of the queerness that lived inside me led to long, tumultuous years of depression and misery. So much of that overwhelming despair could have been abated by the simple act of voicing the unsaid thing. All those times I cried myself sick and prayed for death, I needed the words. Whenever I sliced at my skin, or when I pulled the hair from my head in order to feel something other than the self-loathing of my secret burden, I needed that frustratingly inaccessible language. If only I were allowed a sentence. Even a word. If I could tell someone, anyone, without fear of repercussion, then Id have found relief. Im gay, I would have said. And the immediate follow-up: Im gay and Im scared.

Story continues

Read More: After Fleeing Ukraine, LGBTQ Refugees Search for Safety in Countries Hostile to Their Rights

It was fear that kept me silent. Because I knew that the things I felt were not acceptable. Not to my parents or my friends, and certainly not in Orlando. I found places online where I could hide, small hubs of support. But there was none of that relief in high school in the late 90s. The few teens I knew who had the label gay attached to them suffered through continuous shame and abuse. Most of them fled after graduating, out of Central Florida to anywhere with an existing LGBTQ+ community. Young people, already faced with the stress and anxiety of coming out, knew that the additional obstacles placed in front of them by the edicts of our conservative state meant they wouldnt be able to thrive. It took years of stewing in anguish for me to finally come out. It took finding the words. Those words led me to queer community, allowing me to understand that I wasnt alone. Only then did the fear begin to dissipate.

Its been more than 20 years since I graduated high school, yet the repression of LGBTQ+ youth in Florida remains much the same. With the passage of the Parental Rights in Education billmore commonly (and accurately) called the Dont Say Gay billwhich bans public schools from teaching kindergartners through third-graders about sexual orientation or gender identity or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students and allows parents to sue the school districts for violationsthe state is trapped in the same cycle of wordlessness, with queer and trans people unable to speak the truth of our lives. It is a blanket meant not to comfort, but to stifle and to smother. It wants to eradicate us by denying our voices. The young people affected by this are in the same position I was in as a teenager. They are left with nowhere to turn, denied the language necessary to their continued survival and growth.

Read More: Florida Just Passed The Dont Say Gay Bill. Heres What It Means for Kids

Though Central Florida is home to many queer people, there are only a handful of LGBTQ+-designated establishments. Last year the nonprofit Come Out with Pride in Orlando held one of its biggest festivals yet, but the community struggles to find space and funding and room to grow. Were offered Gay Days, Pride-themed Mickey Mouse ears, a parade float. Were told that the little we get has to be enough to last, because we wont be given more. The new legislation tells educators not to say gay, not to acknowledge the lived experiences of our queer and trans children, but those people who work to silence us will offer up their thoughts and prayers after a mass shooting kills and injures dozens at one of our only gay nightclubs.

Disney CEO Bob Chapek initially refused to condemn the bill, claiming our diverse stories are our corporate statements, and yet the corporation has spoken in other ways about its prioritiesdonating to some of the bills backers, an action that would harm its own extensive pool of LGBTQ+ employees. Backlash from staff was immediate, and many went online to voice their anger at the decision. Chapek reached out to Governor Ron DeSantis to express disappointment and concern over the bill only after a significant amount of pressure was applied from the community. He later apologized for his failure to speak out and said Disney would pause political donations in Florida. Meanwhile, employees of Pixar, a subsidiary of Disney, have accused the company of censoring same-sex affection in its movies.

It is a disconnect of morality; a space where the people who most need assistance are shunted to the side, left voiceless. We have been provided conflicting storiesyou are accepted and loved, but you cannot speak about it, everand are expected to believe that these narratives can exist simultaneously.

We know that they cannot.

There is no hope in trusting corporations who would take our money and give us rainbow-hued T-shirts instead of investing in our community. It is one thing to tweet the word gay in a measure of actionless solidarity; it is another thing entirely to put in the work of supporting queer communities. Its those small spaces, the underfunded nonprofits in Orlando, that are doing the real, lasting labor. Zebra Coalition in Central Florida has worked tirelessly for years to help LGBTQ+ youth, working to combat teen homelessness and providing crucial access to mental-health care and education. They do this all on a shoestring budget, while Disney, with its billions, has made it abundantly clear that were supposed to take the facsimile of a possibly queer cartoon character and feel supported.

Read More: Its Creating a Witch Hunt. How Texas Gov. Greg Abbotts Anti-Trans Directive Hurts LGBTQ Youth

What I do know: if there is no support for our queer and trans teens, then there is no hope for Floridas future. Our community will suffer. Where there is no safety for our youth, there is no safety at all.

As a writer, I think about communication a lot. How we think and speak and act. I dig my fingers into the meat of text and massage it, poking at the gristle and fat, seeking to somehow tenderize it. To be tender, I think, means to be vulnerable. And there is wild vulnerability in speaking the truth, regardless of our fear; a blessing to open our mouths and speak the hard thing into existence. I think back on the closeted lesbian teenager I used to be, crying and frightened, alone with my silence, and I want tenderness for her. I want it for every queer and trans youth. I want it for Florida, my community; my home. To love a place that refuses to love you back is a heavy burden to bear. But this place is mine, which means it is queer too. How could it not be? I have helped make it. Our LGBTQ+ community has shaped it.

If I say the words aloud, I am doing the harder work. The tender, vulnerable work. The loving work. Im gay, I say, but now I follow it with something thats not fear. Its outrage. Its a call to action, one that means throwing out the disingenuous narratives that have made Florida complicit in denying our voices. Were gay and were still here, Florida. Even if you choose not to hear us.

If you or someone you know is struggling with self-harm, text HOME to 741741 to reach the Crisis Text Line. In emergencies, call 911, or seek care from a local hospital or mental health provider.
Camille Cottin has said Lady Gaga would not speak to her outside of shooting scenes for House Of Gucci as their characters were rivals within the film.

The French Killing Eve star plays Paola Franchi in Ridley Scotts crime drama, who drives a wedge between Adam Drivers Maurizio Gucci and his wife Patrizia Reggiani, played by Gaga, when she begins an affair with the fashion mogul.

Gaga has previously revealed the lengths she went to in her method acting for the role, including spending a year-and-a-half in character and speaking with an Italian accent for nine months.

Cottin, 43, told The Guardian that as Gaga would not break character at all, she told her co-star that she could not talk to her outside their scenes because their characters were enemies.

She added: She did it in a very lovely way. I didnt know her, but Id seen the documentary about her.

And you can see how she wouldnt be where she is if she wasnt such a hard worker. Very focused. I have a lot of admiration and respect.

The actor said she hopes to meet with Gaga again and that she was unhappy about the pop star being snubbed for her role in the Oscar nominations as she thinks she is fantastic.

House of Gucci centres around Gagas Patrizia, a socialite who had her fashion dynasty heir husband Maurizio Gucci murdered in a case that scandalised Italy.

Lady Gaga in House of Gucci (AP)

When asked whether she had ever considered method acting her role, Cottin admitted: To be honest, I would have loved to do this.

But as a mum, if I come and pick up my children as an assassin trainer? Handing them a croissant and saying: Be careful, were being watched, pushing them into a black car?

The Parisian star is also known for her role as assassin trainer Helene in seasons three and four of the spy thriller Killing Eve, where she plays a high-ranking member of the secret organisation The Twelve.

She teased that the recently released season four will see the characters trying to track down Helene.

Story continues

Cottins career has also seen her star in the short-lived French remake of Phoebe Waller-Bridges Fleabag, called Mouche, and in the French series Call My Agent! (known as Dix Pour Cent in France).

The comedy was a hit on Netflix and follows the employees of a Parisian talent agency who must scramble to keep their star clients happy and the business afloat after the death of the founder.

Amazon Prime Video is now developing a UK remake of the series which will feature cameos from stars including The Crowns Helena Bonham Carter and Emma Corrin and Bridgertons Phoebe Dynevor.

Cottins character Andrea will inspire a character for the UK version called Rebecca, who will be played by Lydia Leonard.

The actor said: I have a great trust and faith in the British remake.

Im a huge fan of British fiction, and TV, and I think youre doing amazing things.

Additional reporting by Press Association
Life sentences in Louisiana used to come with the opportunity for release after 10 years and six months of good behavior. When the state changed the rules in the 1970s, many were trapped facing true life sentences. A so-called 10/6 lifer, Henry Montgomery, is shown here being released in November after 57 years in prison. (Photo: Akasha Rabut for HuffPost)

Until 1973, most people sentenced to life in prison in Louisiana went home after 10 years and six months of good behavior. But after the U.S. Supreme Court temporarily halted the death penalty, the state decided to make life sentences more punitive. First, the state legislature required life sentences for murder to carry a 20-year minimum in prison, which was later amended to 40 years. In 1979, lawmakers took away parole eligibility for anyone with a life sentence.

As a result, many people who went to prison before 1973, expecting to come home after 10 years, wound up trapped, facing true life sentences after the state changed the rules. The overwhelming majority of those who are still alive are Black.

Since last year, several so-called 10/6 lifers have been released from prison, largely the result of Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason Williams asking the courts to resentence them to time served. But that effort applies only to the 18 people who were convicted in Orleans Parish.

Now there is a bipartisan push in the Louisiana State Legislature to provide relief to 10/6 lifers in other parts of the state.

Earlier this month, two state lawmakers introduced separate bills that would provide parole eligibility to 10/6 lifers. One, introduced by state Sen. Regina Barrow (D), would provide immediate parole eligibility to anyone facing a life sentence for a crime committed before July 2, 1973. The other, introduced by Sen. Franklin Foil (R), would only provide parole eligibility to 10/6 lifers who pleaded guilty, excluding those who went to trial and were convicted.

Foils bill would provide a pathway to release for fewer than 20 of the roughly 45 10/6 lifers who are still incarcerated outside of Orleans Parish, estimated Andrew Hundley, the executive director of the Louisiana Parole Project, which has provided reentry support to recently released 10/6 lifers.

These bills affect the men who have been incarcerated longer than anyone else in Louisiana, said Hundley, who supports Barrows bill. They are in their 70s and 80s and have served 50 or more years. We have to ask ourselves: Whats the value to public safety for their continued incarceration?

Story continues

Last year, HuffPost met with several 10/6 lifers shortly after they left the Louisiana State Penitentiary, better known as Angola. Most of them had spent more than 50 years in prison despite being told they would likely be released after 10 years and six months. They spoke about the joy of leaving prison  and the challenges of adapting to a world so different from the one they lived in when they were last free.

Some also spoke of the ways they still didnt feel entirely free. Those who were convicted of or pleaded guilty to sex offenses were forced to register as sex offenders, even though the registry didnt exist at the time of their crime. They described their shame at having to register and their fear of accidentally violating the rules and returning to Angola.

One 10/6 lifer, Willie Ingram, gave the cops a fake name when he was arrested in 1970, a name he continued to use at Angola. When he got out last year, he had been locked up for so long that it took months for staff at the Parole Project to track down records verifying his real identity so that he could get an ID card and apply for government assistance.

Willie Ingram thought he would get out of prison in 1981. His freedom didn't come until 40 years later. (Photo: Akasha Rabut for HuffPost)

Another 10/6 lifer, Louis Mitchell, pleaded guilty to crimes he says he did not commit because he was afraid of being sentenced to death by an all-white jury. Mitchell, who is Black, was accused of raping two white women, including one who was his girlfriend at the time. A medical examination of his girlfriend did not reveal any evidence of recent trauma, and the other woman did not identify Mitchell as her attacker even when the police specifically asked her if he was the perpetrator. Mitchell wanted to fight the charges, but prosecutors warned his lawyer that if he went to trial, he would likely be convicted and executed.

Foil, whose bill would provide parole eligibility only to 10/6 lifers who had pleaded guilty, did not respond to a request for an interview, but its likely that his bill was written with people like Mitchell in mind. But if Foil is trying to limit relief only to people who are innocent of the crimes they went to prison for, his approach is flawed. Its possible that some people pleaded guilty because they did commit the crimes they were accused of  and its highly likely that some people who went to trial were convicted despite being innocent. Mitchells own story shows how commonly understood it was in Louisiana at the time that Black defendants didnt have a chance of a fair trial.

Moreover, even the 10/6 lifers who did commit the crimes they were accused of have now done decades more time in prison than the state told them they would do. These are clear broken promises, Williams, the Orleans Parish district attorney, said in an interview last year.

When the 10/6 lifers first got to prison, most of them received a rap sheet that showed the date at which they would have completed 10 year and six months and been eligible for release. After state law changed, some were asked to hand over their old rap sheets in exchange for modified paperwork. But many held on to their original paperwork  proof of the promise the state had made. Mitchell is friends with a 10/6 lifer who is outside of Wililams jurisdiction and is still at Angola.

Mitchell is holding on to a copy of his friends rap sheet, which shows he was supposed to be eligible for release on Dec. 20, 1983.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.

Related...
As millions of people flee Ukraine as the war rages on, many pets and animals have been stranded in the rush for safety. A German organization has set up a shelter at the Ukraine-Poland border to help.

Sonja Mortensen-Dissing, a 53-year-old volunteer from Denmark, told the Associated Press that the volunteers are trying to make the animal as comfortable as they can. All of the animals, she said, are "very traumatized and very stressed" coming from a war zone.

With tears in her eyes, Mortensen-Dissing said the situation is "very hard."

Footage of the shelter shows several large pet cages housing numerous animals. In one cage, three small dogs are seen huddled together, hiding their heads and shaking. These three, volunteers said, "aren't used to humans at all."

"Some of them are street dogs, they have never been in human hands," she said. "Other ones are family dogs that are just left, and sometimes with a letter where they write, 'We hope we can find our dogs and cats again.'"

The volunteers are doing their best to comfort the animals, petting them, playing with them and providing them with essentials.

But providing things such as food and water is not easy. In the war zones, there is no dog or cat food, 35-year-old Sasha Winkler told the AP.

"100 kilometers or so around, nobody is there to bring them food," Winkler said. Along with trying to get their own resources, volunteers are gathering aid that they take to Lviv in western Ukraine. From there, additional volunteers drive food, aid and other essentials to smaller areas that have been affected by the war.

For Winkler, "a life of an animal is the same life as a human." The volunteer is a dog trainer who has six dogs himself, including two from Romania who are "from the streets."

"The only good thing is for the dogs and cats to have an option now, with the war, for a better life," Winkler said.

Story continues

At least three people, including 26-year-old Anastasiia Yalanskaya, have been killed attempting to deliver dog food to a shelter in Ukraine. On March 4, Yalanskaya and two others were driving to deliver dog food to a shelter where animals hadn't eaten in three days when their car was ambushed by Russian forces, Global News journalist Ashleigh Stewart reported.

26-year-old Anastasiia Yalanskaya was killed while attempting to bring dog food to a shelter in Ukraine, where the animals had gone without for three days.Her car was ambushed by Russian fire. https://t.co/ZwjO0T6shk pic.twitter.com/KV1cVAqK1H

 CBS News (@CBSNews) March 6, 2022

Her final Instagram story, posted hours before her deaths, showed Yalanskaya sitting in the backseat of the car, smiling next to the bags of food.

Stewart, who was in touch with Yalanskaya's family, reported that the three volunteers' bodies were found at the home of the father of one of the volunteers who died. The father had asked for Ukrainian military help in taking their bodies, but they were unable to help because of the war, Stewart said, and the family buried the three volunteers in the backyard.

Shelter at Ukraine-Poland border takes in pets stranded in war

Protecting new life in Kyiv as Ukraine comes under Russian attack

68 college basketball teams set for battle in March Madness
PHOTO: Social media

SINGAPORE  A man was captured on video sauntering in the middle of a two-lane road in Buangkok Crescent as he brandished a sword on Monday (14 March) afternoon.

Dressed in a tank top and pants, and sporting a crew cut, the man hit a car with the sword and repeated the act on two other cars.

At one point, the man can be seen running the blade of the sword along the road and hitting it on the ground.

The man then lunged at a member of the public before being overpowered by the latter and three other men. Another member of the public can be seen using a mobile phone.

Police responded to the incident at around 1.55pm, and arrested the man for criminal intimidation and possession of an offensive weapon. The sword was seized as a case exhibit.

The police said the man damaged at least three cars outside Buangkok Square shopping centre and allegedly swung the sword towards members of the public.

Two members of the public, and the man himself, sustained minor injuries. Police did not specify how the injuries were sustained.

In response to queries from Yahoo News Singapore, the Singapore Civil Defence Force said it received a call for assistance at about 2pm along Buangkok Crescent, near Buangkok Square.

A person was conveyed to Sengkang General Hospital for minor abrasions. Two others were assessed for minor injuries and declined to go to the hospital.

Investigations are ongoing.

Stay in the know on-the-go: Join Yahoo Singapore's Telegram channel at http://t.me/YahooSingapore
STORY: "Russian troops continue to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ukraine, erasing any difference with their Nazi predecessors eighty years ago," Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya told the U.N. Security Council.

Kyslytsya called on the United Nations Security Council and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe to facilitate the release of Ivan Fedorov, mayor of Melitopol, a city in southeastern Ukraine that fell under Russian control during the invasion.

Ukraine says Russian forces kidnapped him after falsely accusing him of terrorism.
TEHRAN, March 14 (Xinhua) -- The Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Monday that Iran does not tolerate the presence of a "center of conspiracy" near its borders, official news agency IRNA reported.

Saeed Khatibzadeh made the remarks at a weekly press conference, referring to a retaliatory missile strike by Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) on an Israeli intelligence base in Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish region's capital Erbil.

It is in no way acceptable that one of the neighboring states, which has deep relations and interactions with Iran, become a center for threats against the country, Khatibzadeh said.

Tehran has on several occasions called on the Iraqi government not to allow anti-Iran groups to use its soil for such activities, he added.

Iran expects the Iraqi government to terminate such situation once and for all and to prevent its borders from being utilized against Iran, the Foreign Ministry spokesman noted.

He warned Israel that Iran has complete intelligence dominance over every location of its presence.

Two Mossad training centers were targeted by ballistic missiles early on Sunday, Iraq's Sabereen News reported, citing security sources.

The IRGC announced in a statement on Sunday that the missile strike was in response to an Israeli airstrike on Syria's capital Damascus last week, which killed two IRGC officers.

The Iraqi foreign ministry has summoned the Iranian ambassador to Iraq to protest against the Iranian missile attack. 
SAN FRANCISCO (AP)  A Mexican man acquitted of murder in the 2015 shooting of a woman on a San Francisco pier that became a national flashpoint over immigration pleaded guilty Monday to federal gun charges.

Jose Inez Garcia Zarate, 51, entered his plea nearly seven years after shooting Kate Steinle on July 1, 2015, while she walked on the crowded waterfront. The case helped fuel a fierce national debate on immigration and sanctuary cities, which limit local cooperation with federal immigration authorities.

In late 2017, a San Francisco Superior Court jury acquitted Garcia Zarate of various charges including murder. But shortly after his acquittal, federal prosecutors charged him with two counts of illegal gun possession.

The federal gun charges had been pending since 2017 after U.S. District Court Judge Vince Chhabria raised concerns about Garcia Zarate's mental capacities. Two doctors diagnosed Garcia Zarate with schizophrenia and found him unfit to stand trial because he couldn't follow the court proceedings.

One of the doctors reported to the court last month that Garcia Zarate was competent to stand trial after regularly taking his medication.

On Monday, Chhabria asked Garcia Zarate to summarize the charges against him as a way to confirm his competency.

The charges are because I was in the country illegally and I had a firearm, Garcia Zarate said in Spanish through a court interpreter.

Garcia Zarate had been deported five times and was wanted for a sixth deportation proceeding when he fatally shot Steinle, 32.

He acknowledged holding the gun that killed Steinle but said it fired accidentally when he found it wrapped in a T-shirt under a bench on Pier 15, where she was walking with her father.

The shooting turned into a major campaign issue in multiple national and local races across the country. President Donald Trump repeatedly referred to the shooting during his 2016 campaign to bolster his argument for tougher immigration policies and his opposition to so-called sanctuary cities that limit cooperation with immigration officials.

Story continues

Garcia Zarate faces a maximum of 10 years in prison. He is scheduled to be sentenced on June 6.

___

This version has been updated to correct the spelling of Jose Inez Garcia Zarate.
At least two Republicans have lined up to run for a Midlands-area State House seat currently held by a suspended lawmaker facing criminal charges.

Tammy Johns and Joe White, both business owners, announced their intentions to run for House district 40, which includes parts of Newberry and Lexington counties.

Johns announced March 8 she will file to run for the seat.

In her announcement video, Johns touted her business experience and her volunteer activities. She also laid out plans to support investment in schools and to push for new infrastructure projects across the district.

Im running because its time for fresh, new conservative leadership, said Johns, whose campaign is being run by well-known Republican strategy shop Starboard Communications.

In a statement Monday, White, a veteran, vowed to work to improve educational opportunities to lift people out of poverty. He also said he would protect parental rights in public schools.

We need new, honest, and determined leadership in South Carolina that will listen to the people, White said. Having raised my family here, and having built a successful small business here, I care deeply about our state and my community. My goal is to end the political gamesmanship and put We the People ahead of politics.

Its unclear if Johns and White will have to face off with suspended incumbent Rep. Rick Martin, R-Newberry, in a primary.

Martin was suspended from the House of Representatives in December after he was indicted on multiple charges that included trying to influence an investigation by the states child-welfare agency. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday morning.

Martins lawyer, House Minority Leader Todd Rutherford, D-Richland, told The State last week he was unsure if Martin will run. Martin has served in the House since 2017.

Filing for state House and other statewide races opens Wednesday and closes March 30.

Martin pleaded not guilty in December to charges of misconduct in office and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. He is currently awaiting a criminal trial.

Story continues

Both charges stem from allegations that he provided a foster daughter under the age of 21 in his care with alcohol in January 2019. When the children were removed from Martins house, the lawmaker allegedly threatened officials at the state Department of Social Services, the states child welfare agency, to use his position as a lawmaker to cut their budget between December 2019 and the end of January 2020.

Law enforcement officials also investigated allegations of sexual misconduct made against Martini.

No charges were made in that case.

South Carolinas primary is June 14.
Millie Bobby Brown and her boyfriend Jake Bongiovi are red carpet official.

The Stranger Things star and Jon Bon Jovis son, who first confirmed they were dating in November 2021, snuggled up to each other while posing for pictures at the 2022 BAFTA Awards on Sunday.

BRITAIN-ENTERTAINMENT-FILM-AWARDS-BAFTA (TOLGA AKMEN / AFP via Getty Images)

Brown, 18, strutted down the red carpet in a black velvet dress that also included lace, a plunging neckline, and a long train.

Bongiovi, 19, complimented his girlfriend in a classic black suit with a matching bowtie. He also pinned the Ukrainian flag to his lapel.

EE British Academy Film Awards 2022 - Red Carpet Arrivals (Stephane Cardinale - Corbis / Corbis via Getty Images)

Since confirming their relationship on Instagram in November, the couple have posted multiple pictures together.

Brown shared their first photo which was a blurry snap of them embracing on the London Eye.

That same day, Bongiovi uploaded a picture of them drinking tea to Instagram.

Were starting a band, he wrote in the caption. Send name ideas.

They shared a glimpse into their holiday celebrations with more posts the following month. One showed the couple putting on their masks in front of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree.

On Browns birthday in February, she uploaded pictures of them sporting matching bleach blond hairstyles for her celebration.

Hey ken! Brown captioned the Instagram photo, referencing their Barbie and Ken attire.

Bongiovi commented, Ur rly pretty.

The couple were two of many celebrities to make a grand entrance at the 2022 BAFTA Awards, which was held at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

Lady Gaga, Florence Pugh, Emma Watson, Naomi Campbell, Benedict Cumberbatch and Salma Hayek also attended.
BELFAST (Reuters) - Pro-unionist politicians on Monday lost an appeal against a High Court judgment that the Northern Ireland protocol governing post-Brexit trade was consistent with British and European Union law.

The court ruled in 2021 that Britain's EU withdrawal pact,which effectively left Northern Ireland within the EU's trading orbit given its open border with EU member Ireland, overrode earlier precedents due to the sovereignty of Britain's parliament and the deal's status as constitutional legislation.

Siobhan Keegan, Lady Chief Justice of Northern Ireland, said the protocol was "a distinctly political process which is not amenable to judicial review" but it was correct that the court had considered these matters because of the public interest.

Northern Ireland's High Court rejected all five main arguments made by the parties based on both British and European Union law. The Court of Appeal on Monday dismissed the challenge to those rulings.

The protocol has disrupted some trade between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom since it took force at the start of 2021, angering pro-British unionists. Britain and the EU are trying to rework it to ease the burden on trade.

The perception that the protocol undermines Northern Ireland's place in the United Kingdom has sparked anger in pro-British communities, helped fuel some street violence last year and led to the resignation of the region's first minister last month.

Opponents of the Protocol had seized on the High Court's assertion in its judgment that the withdrawal agreement qualified as constitutional legislation and was on a par with the 1800 Act of Union that united Britain and Ireland.

(Reporting by Amanda Ferguson; Editing by Gareth Jones and Mark Heinrich)
Naomi Osaka wipes her eyes while crying at Indian Wells. Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports

Naomi Osaka addressed the crowd after a fan's heckling drove her to tears at Indian Wells.

She referenced fan abuse Venus and Serena Williams experienced at the tournament many years ago.

The Williams sisters boycotted Indian Wells for 14 years in response to racist abuse they heard from fans.

Naomi Osaka crashed out of the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells after a fan's incessant heckling brought her to tears during her Round of 64 match against Veronika Kudermetova.

But the four-time Grand Slam champion is just the latest tennis star to face harassment from the crowd at the Southern California tournament. At the peak of their tennis careers, Venus and Serena Williams boycotted the Indian Wells Masters for 14 years after they were the targets of racist abuse, epithets, and overwhelming boos from the unfriendly audience.

Serena Williams (right) hugs her father, Richard, as Venus looks on after a match at Indian Wells. SSM/JP; Reuters

The Williams sisters' issues at Indian Wells date back to 2001  when Osaka was just three years old. That year, both Venus and Serena rode hot streaks all the way to the semifinal of the tournament, where they were set to face one another, but the elder sister pulled out of the match 20 minutes ahead of its scheduled start time with a knee injury.

Fans were furious about the last-minute scratch, which fueled speculation that the sisters' father, Richard Williams, predetermined which of his daughters would win their head-to-head matchups. So when Venus and Richard arrived to watch Serena compete in the finals of the tournament a few days later, all three were bombarded with boos and far more vicious jeers.

"I stepped onto the court a couple minutes before [my opponent], and right away people started booing," Serena recalled in her 2009 autobiography, On the Line. "They were loud, mean, aggressive... pissed!"

Serena Williams competes in the 2001 Indian Wells final. SSM/HB; Reuters

"What got me most of all was that it wasn't just a scattered bunch of boos," she continued. "It wasn't coming from just one section. It was like the whole crowd got together and decided to boo all at once."

Story continues

"The ugliness was just raining down on me, hard," Williams added. "I didn't know what to do."

Williams noted in the book that she was surprised by the audience's response at the time, especially considering "tennis fans are typically a well-mannered bunch." She couldn't figure out what she'd done to become the subject of fans' ire, and didn't initially make the connection to her sister's injury from the round prior.

Venus Williams and Richard Williams walk to their seats as Serena competes in the 2001 Indian Wells final. SSM/JP; Reuters

"I looked up and all I could see was a sea of rich people  mostly older, mostly white  standing and booing lustily, like some kind of genteel lynch mob," Williams wrote. "I don't mean to use such inflammatory language to describe the scene, but that's really how it seemed from where I was down on the court. Like these people were gonna come looking for me after the match."

"I wanted to cry, but I didn't want to give these people the satisfaction," she added.

It was quickly apparent to Serena that race played a role in the abuse. She "heard the word n----- a couple times" through the chorus of boos, she wrote.

The racial slurs left her feeling physically unsafe, not to mention singled out as the crowd swapped its jeers for standing ovations whenever her opponent, Belgian star Kim Clijsters, did anything. Note that the Riverside County, Calif., city boasted a population that was 96.4% white at the time, according to data collected in the 2000 Census.

"Just before the start of play, my dad and Venus started walking down the aisle to the players' box by the side of the court, and everybody turned and started to point and boo at them," Serena wrote. "It was mostly just a chorus of boos, but I could still hear shouts of 'N-----!' here and there."

"I even heard one angry voice telling us to go back to Compton," she added. "It was unbelievable."

Though the younger Williams  who was just 19 years old at the time  dropped the first set, she bounced back to beat Clijsters 4-6, 6-4, 6-2 and take home the tournament's trophy. After securing the win, Williams walked over to her family, then hugged her dad and sister in an outpouring of emotion.

The Williams sisters chose to boycott the tournament for years after the incident transpired. Only in 2015  14 years removed from the harrowing episode with the acrimonious crowd  did Serena choose to return to Indian Wells.

"I feel that was 14 years ago and this is now," Williams said upon ending the boycott. "I did the best I could at this event and am really happy to have put a lot of that behind me."

Venus returned to the tournament the following year. And in 2016, Serena made her way back to the Indian Wells final but fell against Belarusian star Victoria Azarenka.

Serena Williams plays in the 2016 Indian Wells final. AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill

Osaka wasn't subjected to race-based abuse during Saturday's match, as the wayward fan who caught her attention was repeatedly caught shouting "You suck!" Still, the heckling brought to mind the Williams family's experience, and that triggered Osaka's emotions, she said later while addressing fans after her straight-set loss.

"To be honest, I've gotten heckled before. It didn't really bother me," Osaka said into the microphone. "But [being] heckled here, I watched a video of Venus and Serena [Williams] getting heckled here, and if you've never watched it, you should watch it."

"I don't know why, but it went into my head, and it got replayed a lot," she added. "I'm trying not to cry."

Osaka addresses the crowd at the BNP Paribas Open. Robert Prange/Getty Images

Neither Venus nor Serena has spoken publicly about Osaka's experience with the Indian Wells heckler  or her post-match comments  since her exit from the tournament. But when Osaka was in the news for refusing to fulfill her media obligations at last summer's French Open, both Williams sisters were firmly in the young star's corner.

Serena said she wished she "could give her a hug" because she knows "what it's like" and has "been in those positions" before. Venus, meanwhile, offered Osaka some blunt advice about dealing with the press  which could easily double as advice for dealing with hecklers.

"For me, personally, 'how I deal with it' was that I know every single person asking me a question can't play as well as I can and never will," the elder Williams said. "So no matter what you say or what you write, you'll never light a candle to me."

Read the original article on Insider
A nurse was left with three broken ribs and a broken clavicle after she was thrown down the stairs of a Seattle rail station in a brutal unprovoked attack (Twitter/JasonRantzonKTTHRadio)

A nurse was left with three broken ribs and a broken clavicle after she was thrown down the stairs of a Seattle rail station in a brutal unprovoked attack.

Alexander Jay, 40, was caught on camera repeatedly throwing the victim and then kicking her during the vicious assault, say King County prosecutors.

Police say that the attack was unprovoked and that the 62-tear-old victim needed surgery to fix her broken clavicle.

As she got to her feet after the initial attack, security video shows the victim being grabbed again and thrown down another stretch of the concrete steps.

The suspect then allegedly tried to grab her and throw her for a third time, but the victim is seen clinging to a railing.

After kicking and punching the victim, the suspect then ran up the stairs and fled the scene.

The male who assaulted her was in the same car on the light rail train with her, facing her, a detective stated in the probable cause certificate.

NEW: Prosecutors allege prolific offender Alexander Jay randomly attacked a nurse as she exited a light rail station in Seattle. She broke 3 ribs & her clavicle. Police say Jay is homeless. He has at least 22 convictions to his name.



READ THE DETAILS: https://t.co/x8qSS9mUwN pic.twitter.com/BmgOLYtspJ  Jason Rantz on KTTH Radio (@jasonrantz) March 13, 2022

She was standing, and he was seated. They had no interaction or confrontation. He continued to pull his mask down while on the light rail, and she got a good look at his face. The cross (tattoo) on his face stood out to her, and she recognized him as the same male who later assaulted her.

A security guard eventually came to the womans aid

The suspect was arrested by Seattle police the day after the attack and faces arraignment on second-degree assault on 24 March, according to KIRO7.

Story continues

As of Monday he remains in prison on a $150,000 bail.

Court documents state that the suspect has criminal convictions in the state of Washington including burglary, theft, selling stolen property and several instances of domestic violence.

He also has prior convictions in California for theft, drug possession, auto theft and burglary.

Courts in Washington have issued more than 15 bench warrants for the suspect failing to attend hearings.
SANAA, March 14 (Xinhua) -- Yemen's Houthi militia said on Monday that they killed at least 95 Saudi-led coalition soldiers in a battle in the country's northwestern province of Hajjah in the past two days.

The battle that killed 15 Saudi and 80 Sudanese soldiers "drove the mercenaries out of the western part of Harad city near the Red Sea," Houthi-run al-Masirah TV quoted a Houthi military statement as saying.

Dozens of Saudi and Sudanese soldiers were captured in the battle, the statement added.

There have been no confirmations yet from the coalition or the Yemeni government army.

The Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces have been fighting the Iran-backed Houthi militia for nearly seven years, with Hajjah as one of the critical battlegrounds.

In February, the Houthi militia drove the government forces out of Harad, a city in Hajjah, and has since controlled large areas of the province.

The Houthis have recently intensified cross-border missile and drone attacks against Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, a key member of the Saudi-led coalition. Most of the cross-border attacks were reportedly intercepted.

The escalation came after the militia lost several strategic districts in Yemen's oil-rich provinces of Shabwa and Marib.

Yemen has been mired in a civil war since late 2014 when the Houthi militia seized control of several northern provinces and forced the internationally recognized government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi out of the capital Sanaa.

The Saudi-led coalition intervened in 2015 to support the Yemeni government. 
The officer appears to kneel on the 12-year-olds neck (Facebook/Jerrel Perez)

An off-duty police officer is under investigation after video emerged of him appearing to kneel on the neck of a 12-year-old girl, in a disturbing reminder of the murder of George Floyd.

The male officer was responding to a fight between two students in the cafeteria at Lincoln Middle School in Kenosha, Wisconsin, back on 4 March.

Video, captured on a smartphone by another student, shows the officer trying to separate the brawling teens before he is knocked to the ground.

The officer is seen quickly scrambling up and restraining the 12-year-old girl on the ground.

In the footage, which has gone viral on social media, the officer appears to pin the teenager down with his knee on her neck.

The 17-second clip does not reveal what happened before or after the moment caught on camera.

The incident has sparked outrage, drawing comparisons to Floyds death at the hands of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin and taking place in the city where Kyle Rittenhouse infamously shot dead two men and wounded a third during racial justice protests that followed.

After Floyds murder, police forces across the country banned the use of such restraints.

In Wisconsin, lawmakers banned police from using chokeholds except in life-threatening situations or where an officer has to defend themselves back in June 2021.

The officer appears to kneel on the 12-year-olds neck (Facebook/Jerrel Perez)

Even before the bill passed, several local police departments introduced similar policies outlawing the technique.

Attorney Drew DeVinney, who is representing the girl and her father Jerrel Perez, told ABC News that the incident in the school should never have occurred following the ban on chokeholds.

He said that the 12-year-old suffered head and neck injuries in the incident and was undergoing medical treatment.

Kenosha Police Department said that one staff member was injured during the incident.

Mr Perez wrote on Facebook that his daughter said her neck was hurting bad as he slammed the clown officer for his treatment of her.

Look how this coward put his knees on a 12 year old girl neck best believe this aint going the way they think my daughter been complaining of her neck hurting bad and they have the nerves to lock her up and finger print her yea ok Ill see yall real soon ididnt yall just kill a grown man like that but yall wanna do it to my 12 year old daughter you clown KPD, he wrote in a post on 4 March.

Story continues

Video shows the off-duty officer being knocked to the ground as he tries to break up a fight (Facebook Jerrel Perez)

The girls father has posted several times since then, sharing the footage and calling for swift justice for his daughter.

Prominent civil rights attorney Ben Crump also shared the footage online calling for the officer to be held accountable.

An off-duty Wisconsin police officer placed his KNEE into a 12-year-olds neck after she was involved in an altercation w/ another student! he tweeted.

We KNOW just how dangerous this incident could have been, yet the officer has NOT faced any repercussions! He needs to be held accountable!

The officer, a 37-year-old male whose identity has not been released, has been a Kenosha police officer for four years.

He was working off duty for Kenosha Unified School District (KUSD) at the time of the incident, the police department said.

An off-duty Wisconsin police officer placed his KNEE into a 12-year-old's neck after she was involved in an altercation w/ another student! We KNOW just how dangerous this incident could have been, yet the officer has NOT faced any repercussions! He needs to be held accountable! pic.twitter.com/mnRV325yYk  Ben Crump (@AttorneyCrump) March 10, 2022

The department said that it had seen the video clip and the photo which has been widely shared on social media and is keenly aware of the significant sensitivity surrounding the photo.

The incident is under investigation by both the police department and the school district.

K.P.D., together with K.U.S.D. is investigating the incident in its entirety while being cautious not to make conclusions based off of a small piece of information shared on social media, Kenosha Police Department said.

Both agencies will look to our respective policies and procedures for guidance in this circumstance.

It is the highest priority of those officers who work in our schools to provide a safe and secure learning environment for our children and staff.

KUSD said that the officer was on paid leave from the school.

It is not clear if the officer is on paid leave or continuing with his normal duties for KPD.

The Independent has reached out to KPD for information.
Good morning, Patchogue! Let's get you all caught up to start this Tuesday, March 15, off on an informed note. Here's everything worth knowing around Patchogue today.

First, today's weather:

Intervals of clouds and sun. High: 55, low: 40.

Here are the top 5 stories in Patchogue today:

Chops Steakhouse opens on Patchogues Main Street. General manager John Paul Gunderson said the week lunch menu will be available within a month. Chops Steakhouse is at 38 W. Main St. In Patchogue. Contact 844-382-4677 for more information. (Newsday/Subscription Required) Four seats are up for election on the Patchogue Village Board today! Polls will run from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Susan Henke Brinkman, Joseph Keyes, and Patrick McHeffey are being challenged by Dennis Ross. Trustees Lisbeth Carrillo and Village Justice Patricia Romeo are running unopposed. (Patch) The Plaza Cinema & Media Arts Center in Patchogue will screen the Oscar-nominated film "Belfast" on Wednesday in celebration of St. Patrick's Day. The screening will begin at 7 p.m. For tickets, click here.(Patch) Mastic pizza shop owner Angela Nuccio announced her retirement from John's Pizza after nearly five decades. The local business will reopen under new management in the coming weeks. The Mastic Beach community was very well served by the Nuccio family and wishes Angela a happy retirement! (Greater Long Island) Nearby News: A student was arrested on Long Island after being caught damaging school property. According to authorities, the 16-year-old student was breaking windows and damaging parked cars at Little Flower Children and Family Services in Wading River on Friday, March 11. (Daily Voice)

Today in Patchogue:

CAN  Spring Pictures  Patchogue-Medford UFSD. (All Day)

EAG  Fun with Numbers Bingo  Patchogue-Medford High School. (6:30 p.m.)

SO  PTA Meeting  Patchogue-Medford UFSD. (7 p.m.)

From my notebook:

Suffolk County publishes coronavirus case update for March 12. (Press Release Desk)

" Police have asked the public for help locating a man accused of stealing a package from a porch on Long Island. A man stole a package from the porch of a home near Main Avenue in Centereach at about 1:50 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 24, according to the Suffolk County Police Department." (Daily Voice)

"The Smithtown High School East Varsity Whisperettes Kickline team are the Small High Kick National Champions for the 23rd year in a row. The Whisperettes returned from Orlando after attending the Contest of Champions Nationals from March 2 to 7, according to the team. The contest was hosted at the ESPN Wide World of Sports." (Patch)

Story continues

More from our sponsors  thanks for supporting local news!

Featured businesses:

Events:

Queen of Hearts Raffle fundraiser and live music at American Legion. (March 18)

Metal for Tesla at Tesla Science Center. (March 19)

Golden Girls Gone Wild Murder Mystery Dinner Show at Anthony's Live. (March 25)

Add your event

Announcements:

NY Jet Jamison Crowder Delivers for Local Man with Down Syndrome (Details)

Add your announcement

Gigs & services:

Job listings:

Loving the Patchogue Daily? Here are all the ways you can get more involved:

Send a friend or neighbor this link so they can subscribe

Get your local business listed in front of readers

Send me a news tip or suggestion at Patchogue@Patch.com

That's it for today! I'll catch up with you bright and early tomorrow morning with another update.

 Debora Whitehead

About me: Have a story idea? Please contact me! I would love to hear from you!Wife, mom, foodie, traveler, and nature lover.

This article originally appeared on the Patchogue Patch
Pfizer logo provided by Pfizer Media Relations on Jan. 7. 2021.





Pfizer on Monday said it will donate all the profits from its Russian subsidiary to programs that provide direct humanitarian support to the people of Ukraine.

Medicines are excluded from the international sanctions placed on Russia for humanitarian reasons, and health companies have said they have an ethical duty to keep their supply chains open and continue supplying the Russian people with needed drugs and medical devices.

"A voluntary pause in the flow of our medicines to Russia would be in direct violation of our foundational principle of putting patients first," Pfizer said. "Ending delivery of medicines, including cancer or cardiovascular therapies, would cause significant patient suffering and potential loss of life, particularly among children and elderly people."

Pharmaceutical companies are facing increasing pressure to divest from doing business in Russia in protest of the country's invasion of Ukraine. Hundreds of businesses from automakers to fast food companies have announced they are stopping operations in Russia.

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla last week on CBS's "Face the Nation" said Russia accounts for only half a percent of the company's total revenue. While Pfizer manufactures some treatments in Russia, it does not export them.

On Monday, the company said it would cease all planned investments with local suppliers planning to expand manufacturing capacity in the country.

Additionally, Pfizer said it would no longer initiate new clinical trials in Russia, and will stop recruiting new patients in its ongoing clinical trials there. But the company said it will continue providing medicines to the patients already enrolled in clinical trials.

In response to the announcement, Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) called on other drugmakers to take a similar stance.

"The Russian people need these medicines. The Ukrainian people need so much more and I hope every penny earned in Russia by every drug company is used to help them," Eshoo said.
MANILA (Reuters) - The Philippines summoned China's ambassador on Monday to explain what it called the "illegal intrusion and lingering presence" of a Chinese navy vessel in waters between some of the archipelago nation's largest islands.

The foreign ministry in a statement said a Chinese navy reconnaissance ship entered Philippine waters without permission and lingered from Jan. 29 to Feb. 1, ignoring repeated demands to leave.

It was detected off the Cuyo Group of Islands, close to Palawan, and Apo island off Mindoro, a presence the ministry said "did not constitute innocent passage and violated Philippine sovereignty".

China has been accused by Western countries of aggression by deploying hundreds of coast guard and fishing vessels in the exclusive economic zones of its neighbours and disrupting fisheries and energy exploration work, far off its mainland.

The deployment of military vessels in waters to which China has no claims is rare, however. China's embassy in Manila did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Philippines foreign ministry did not say why it waited six weeks to report the incident. The defence minister did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Despite efforts to build closer ties with China, the Philippines has become more critical of its actions, including what it calls "swarming" by fishing vessels manned by militias off the disputed Spratly islands, and its blockade of a military resupply mission.

The last time a Chinese ambassador was summoned was in April last year.

China's foreign minister Wang Yi in January said Beijing would not use its strength to "bully" its smaller neighbours.

(Reporting by Karen Lema; Editing by Martin Petty)
A man wounded in air strikes at a nearby military complex is assisted by medical staff outside Novoiavorivsk District Hospital in Novoiavorivsk, Ukraine, on March 13, 2022. Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Russia attacked a military complex located 15 miles from Poland, a NATO member, on Sunday.

Poland's deputy foreign minister told the BBC the attack was an attempt to "threaten" NATO.

Attacking Poland would constitute an attack on NATO, and the bloc's members have pledged to defend NATO territory.

Poland slammed a Russian attack near its border on Sunday as "highly provocative" and said it was trying to "threaten" all of NATO.

"This step taken by Russia we consider as highly provocative as it is so close to our borders," Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Marcin Przydacz told Sky News on Sunday.

"I do believe that the Russian army knows very well where the border is, and this is not only the border between Poland and Ukraine but between NATO and a non-NATO country."

In another interview with the BBC's "Today" show on Monday, Przydacz said the attack was an attempt to "threaten" NATO.

"They wanted to send a message threatening NATO," Przydacz said.

Russia fired more than 30 rockets at the International Peacekeeping and Security Center in Ukraine on Sunday, killing 35 people and injuring 134 others, USA Today reported, citing a local official.

The military complex is located in Yavoriv, which is about 15 miles from Poland  a NATO and European Union member nation. The explosions reportedly shook the homes of people living on the Polish side of the border.

Ukraine has repeatedly called on NATO to impose a no-fly zone, a move that the bloc has so far refused to do. A NATO no-fly zone would give the bloc the power to shoot down any Russian plane that enters Ukrainian airspace, a move that officials say would provoke a wider war.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy repeated calls for the no-fly zone, saying in an early Monday video address: "If you don't close our sky, it is only a matter of time before Russian rockets fall on your territory, on NATO territory."

Story continues

The US responded to the Russian attack near Poland by reiterating its commitment to NATO allies.

"An armed attack against one is considered an armed attack against all," Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby told ABC News on Sunday.

Since the start of Russia's invasion of Ukraine on February 24, Poland has welcomed more than one million Ukrainian refugees who crossed the border, according to the United Nations.

Insider's live blog of the Russian invasion is covering developments as they happen.

Read the original article on Business Insider
Photograph: Kena Betancur/AFP/Getty Images

Police in Washington DC and New York said they were searching for a man believed to have attacked people sleeping on the streets in both cities, killing two and injuring three.

Related: MoMA stabbing: New York police still searching for man who attacked staff

District of Columbia police said on Sunday investigators were working with the New York police department to find the man who left a victim in a burning tent after fatally shooting and stabbing him on Wednesday, then killed another man on Saturday in New York.

The suspect shot and injured two other people earlier in the month in Washington and one other person on Saturday in New York, police said.

We are committed to sharing every investigative path, clue and piece of evidence with our law enforcement partners to bring this investigation to a swift conclusion and the individual behind these vicious crimes to justice, said the Metropolitan police chief, Robert Contee, in a news release.

Police determined the same person committed the attacks based on similarities in each shooting and evidence recovered. The victims were attacked without provocation, police said.

Given the similarity in the modus operandi of the perpetrator, common circumstances involved in each shooting, circumstances of the victims and recovered evidence, the NYPD, MPDC and the ATF [federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives] will jointly investigate these offenses, a joint statement said.

The New York police commissioner, Keechant Sewell, said the homeless population is one of our most vulnerable and an individual preying on them as they sleep is an exceptionally heinous crime.

The New York mayor, Eric Adams, said a taskforce composed of police officers and a homeless outreach team would focus on finding unhoused people in subways and other locations and urge them to seek refuge at city shelters.

In a joint statement, Adams and the DC mayor, Muriel Bowser, said: The rise in gun violence has shaken all of us and it is particularly horrible to know that someone is out there deliberately doing harm to an already vulnerable population.

Story continues

We are also calling on unsheltered residents to seek shelter.

At a news conference, Adams said: The case is a clear and horrific intentional act of taking the life of someone, it appears, because he was homeless. Two individuals were shot while sleeping on the streets, not committing a crime but sleeping on the streets.

Authorities are offering $55,000 for information resulting in an arrest, with the MPD offering up to $25,000, NYPD $10,000 and the ATF Washington Field division $20,000.

The attacks are reminiscent of the beating deaths of four homeless men as they slept on the streets in Chinatown in New York in the fall of 2019. Another homeless man, Randy Santos, has pleaded not guilty to murder charges.
VoteVets: "Donald Trump's appeasement of Putin wasn't just a personal act of treason, it's the Republican Party's official position."

PolitiFact's ruling: Mostly False

Here's why: The progressive veterans advocacy group VoteVets made several accurate statements in an attack ad that seeks to tie former President Donald Trump and fellow Republicans to Russian President Vladimir Putin. But it followed up those statements with an exaggerated and misleading conclusion.

Here are the ads central claims:

"Remember, Donald Trump was impeached for threatening to withhold military aid from Ukraine." This is accurate. The House on Dec. 18, 2019, impeached Trump on two charges  abuse of power, in holding up security assistance and a White House meeting to put pressure on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and obstruction of Congress to cover up that campaign.

"And remember, 52 out of 53 Republican senators voted to let Trump get away with it." This, too, is accurate. The Senate on Feb. 5, 2020, acquitted Trump of both charges. The only Republican voting to convict was Utahs Mitt Romney, on the abuse of power charge.

More: Fact-checking Bidens claim that there are 9,000 unused oil drilling permits

The ad, launched six days after Russia invaded Ukraine, then ends with an incendiary claim that lacks the same level of accuracy. It declared:

"Donald Trumps appeasement of Putin wasnt just a personal act of treason, its the Republican Partys official position."

Trumps act not treason

What the ad described as Trumps appeasement of Putin did not amount to treason, because Trumps acts did not occur during wartime or during an armed rebellion.

The U.S. Constitution mentions very few crimes specifically, but is clearly defines treason:

"Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.

Story continues

"The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of treason, but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, or forfeiture except during the life of the person attainted."

Fact-check: With time and money, US can replace banned Russian imports with domestic oil

On the most basic level, treason has to occur in wartime, or during an armed rebellion against the U.S. government. While there are tensions between Putin and the United States amid Russias war in Ukraine, President Joe Biden has been very pointed in saying the United States would not join the conflict.

Trump faced accusations of treason after he and Putin held a news conference on July 16, 2018 following a one-on-one meeting in Helsinki, Finland. Asked if he believed his own intelligence agencies or the Russian president when it came to the allegations of Russia meddling in the elections, Trump said: "President Putin says it's not Russia. I don't see any reason why it would be."

Trump later claimed he misspoke, saying: "The sentence should have been, I don't see any reason why I wouldn't, or, why it wouldn't be Russia."

GOPs softening position on arming Ukraine

To back the second part of its claim, VoteVets, whose senior advisers include former National Security Council official Alexander Vindman, cited the Republican Partys change of position on arming Ukraine.

In 2016, as Trump claimed the Republican nomination for president, the GOP originally wrote a platform that was to call for providing Ukraine with weapons in addition to the substantial nonlethal aid the U.S. already provides, news outlets reported at the time. After Trump surrogates reportedly intervened, the final passage supported "providing appropriate assistance" to Ukraine, but didn't mention providing arms to the government in Kiev, the Los Angeles Times reported. PolitiFact found there was evidence that Trumps campaign was involved in making the change.

Fact-check: Does Facebook video show Ukrainian talking about a Russian armored carrier?

VoteVets argued that appeasing Putin is the GOPs official position because of that platform change; because Romney was the only Republican senator who voted to convict Trump; and because the Republican National Committee decided not to adopt a 2020 platform, leaving the 2016 platform in place.

The 2016 platform softened language on helping Ukraines armed forces, but issued warnings to Russia and complained that "a weak (Obama) Administration has invited aggression":

"We support maintaining and, if warranted, increasing sanctions, together with our allies, against Russia unless and until Ukraines sovereignty and territorial integrity are fully restored. We also support providing appropriate assistance to the armed forces of Ukraine and greater coordination with NATO defense planning.

"Repressive at home and reckless abroad, their (Kremlin officials) policies imperil the nations which regained their self-determination upon the collapse of the Soviet Union. We will meet the return of Russian belligerence with the same resolve that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. We will not accept any territorial change in Eastern Europe imposed by force, in Ukraine, Georgia, or elsewhere, and will use all appropriate constitutional measures to bring to justice the practitioners of aggression and assassination."

In 2020, the party declined to adopt a platform at all. Instead, the Republican National Committee reiterated its "strong support" for Trump and his administration.

Republicans positions in 2022

In 2022, Trump praised Putin, at least tactically, for his invasion of Ukraine. He said:

"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. So, Putin is now saying, Its independent, a large section of Ukraine. I said, How smart is that? And hes going to go in and be a peacekeeper. Thats the strongest peace force Ive ever seen. There were more army tanks than Ive ever seen. Theyre going to keep peace, all right. No, but think of it. Heres a guy whos very savvy I know him very well. Very, very well."

Many Republicans, however, have not embraced Trumps remarks.

Former Vice President Mike Pence told GOP donors, according to CNN: "There is no room in this party for apologists for Putin. There is only room for champions of freedom."

Asked about Trumps comments, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said: "What President Putin did as a ruthless thug is just invade  invaded another sovereign country and killed thousands of innocent people."

Senate Minority Whip John Thune, R-S.D., said about Trumps comments: "Putin is a murderous thug and I think the world is now seeing that. Thats my view of it and I think thats going to be most Americans view of it. That was before, and will be for sure after, what were seeing on display."

Other Republican lawmakers have moved to provide arms to Ukraine in the wake of the invasion or to stop the U.S. from buying energy from Russia and other sanctions.

"Trump wanted to create a different relationship with Russia, because none of the traditional barriers to cooperation, such as human rights, violating the territorial integrity of the neighbors, or kleptocracy, bothered him," said Yuval Weber, a professor at Texas A&M University's Bush School of Government and Public Service in Washington. "He was much more interested in leveraging Russia against China and shaping a less constrained international order that would allow larger powers to run roughshod over others, without the limitations of international law, institutions, or norms."

Our ruling

VoteVets said: "Donald Trump's appeasement of Putin wasn't just a personal act of treason, it's the Republican Party's official position."

Trumps acts regarding Ukraine that resulted in his impeachment did not rise to the level of treason. And the Republican Party does not have an official position to appease Putin.

In 2016, the party removed from its platform language about arming Ukraine in its fight against Russia, but the platform contained language threatening action against any future Russian aggression.

Meanwhile, as Trump has said complimentary things about Putin, other Republican leaders have heavily criticized Putins actions.

The statement contains only an element of truth. We rate it Mostly False.

Sources

YouTube, VoteVets "Party of Putin" ad, March 2, 2022

Twitter, VoteVets tweet, March 2, 2022

Email, VoteVets spokesperson Eric Schmeltzer, March 7, 2022

Email, Republican National Committee spokesperson Emma Vaughn, March 8, 2022

Roll Call, "As Ukraine burns, Washington splits over how to help," March 2, 2022

PolitiFact, "Timeline: The Trump impeachment inquiry," Oct. 3, 2019, updated Feb. 6, 2020

PolitiFact, "A closer look at claims of treason after Trump's meeting with Russian President Putin," July 23, 2018

PolitiFact, "Did Trump campaign soften platform language to benefit Russia?", Aug. 4, 2016

The Hill, "GOP senators push back hard on Trump's praise of Putin," March 1, 2022

Los Angeles Times, "In a shift, Republican platform doesnt call for arming Ukraine against Russia, spurring outrage," July 21, 2016

Politico, "How senators voted on Trumps impeachment," Feb. 5, 2020

Republican National Committee, resolution on no 2020 platform, accessed March 7, 2022

CNN, "Pence condemns Republican Putin 'apologists' in speech to RNC donors," March 5, 2022

U.S. Constitution, treason provision

"Republican Party 2016 platform," accessed March 7, 2022

ClayAndBuck.com, "Full Interview: President Trump With C&B From Mar-A-Lago," Feb. 22, 2022

Email, Yuval Weber, professor at Texas A&M University's Bush School of Government and Public Service in Washington, March 8, 2022

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: PolitiFact: GOP platform does not officially appease Putin
CANBERRA, March 14 (Xinhua) -- Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison is facing calls from within the government to temporarily scrap taxes on fuel to address record high prices.

The price of unleaded petrol has spiked to above 2.2 Australian dollars (1.6 U.S. dollars) per liter across the country from about 1.7 as a result of rising global oil prices.

Amid the spike, Morrison and Treasurer Josh Frydenberg have been urged to cut the fuel excise -- a flat tax placed on the sale of petrol, which is currently 44 cents per liter -- in order to ease the cost of living pressures.

Susan McDonald, a government senator from Queensland, on Monday joined calls for the excise to be reduced, saying it was the "bluntest instrument" available to address the crisis.

"The idea of pausing the fuel excise, or a portion of it, I think is something that we're going to have to look at," she was quoted as saying by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

"Because we just can't afford to absorb the prices that we're looking at currently," she said.

Her comments came after Morrison on Sunday said that any move to lower the excise would be contained in the federal budget, which he and Frydenberg are expected to hand down later this month.

On Sunday afternoon, Assistant Treasurer Michael Sukkar conceded that the cost of living was a significant issue with a general election due to be held in May.

"There is no doubt the budget will seek to build the recovery, ensure that we keep our foot on the economic accelerator, but will also take into account the fact households are feeling the pressures of cost of living," he told Sky News Australia. 
A pregnant woman pictured being carried from a Ukrainian maternity hospital after it was badly shelled by Russian forces has died along with her unborn baby, Ukraine's Foreign Affairs Ministry said Monday.

The woman, who hasnt been named publicly, was photographed Wednesday on a stretcher as she was being taken to an ambulance in the devastation and ruin of the besieged city of Mariupol.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the attack an atrocity and said three people died in the bombing. It is unclear whether the unnamed woman was one of them.

The foreign ministry announced the womans death in a tweet and repeated the governments plea for Western powers to enforce a no-fly zone over the country to prevent future airstrikes.

On Saturday, The Associated Press spoke to Dr. Timur Marin, the surgeon who tried to save the womans life, who said her pelvis had been crushed and a hip had been detached. The baby was delivered by cesarean section but showed no signs of life, he said.

More than 30 minutes of resuscitation of the mother didnt produce results, Marin said told the AP. Both died.

The woman's father and husband arrived to retrieve her body, the AP reported, citing medical staff members, saving her from being buried in one of Mariupol's mass graves. Medics said they didn't have time in the chaos to ask for her name.

Emergency workers and volunteers carry an injured pregnant woman from a maternity hospital that was shelled by Russian forces in Mariupol on Wednesday. (Evgeniy Maloletka / AP)

An image of the white-faced woman was widely shared on social media last week, and for many people it epitomized how even the most vulnerable have come under fire since the Russian invasion began Feb. 24.

A tweet from Russias embassy in London claimed last week that the hospital was no longer a medical facility but instead was being used by armed forces and radicals, namely the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion.

While Russian President Vladimir Putin has sought to paint Ukraine as a Nazi hotbed and the Ukrainian National Guard is home to the Azov Battalion, which has historical ties to neo-Nazis, there is no evidence to suggest widespread support for such extreme-right nationalism in the government, the military or the electorate.

Story continues

The tweet placed a FAKE slogan over the picture of injured pregnant women and quoted Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Twitter later deleted it for breaching its rules related to the denial of violent events.

Mariana Vishegirskaya lies in a hospital bed after she gave birth to a daughter, Veronika, in Mariupol. (Evgeniy Maloletka / AP)

The Red Cross warned Sunday that hundreds of thousands of civilians in Mariupol faced a worst-case scenario unless there was an agreement to ensure safety and access to humanitarian aid.

The head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Peter Maurer, said in a statement that people in the city are facing extreme or total shortages of basic necessities like food, water and medicine.

Dead bodies, of civilians and combatants, remain trapped under the rubble or lying in the open where they fell, the statement said.

Life-changing injuries and chronic, debilitating conditions cannot be treated. The human suffering is simply immense.

The Red Cross called on the parties to agree on the terms of a cease-fire and routes for safe passage and to ensure that the deal is respected. It offered to act as a neutral intermediary in negotiations.

There was better news for expectant mother Mariana Vishegirskaya, who was in the same maternity hospital in Mariupol during the shelling but escaped with minor injuries.

She gave birth to a girl, named Veronika, on Friday.
Pregnant woman punched by man for refusing to give up her bus seat (FOX29)

A pregnant woman was attacked and punched in the face on a crowded late night bus in Philadelphia after she allegedly refused to give up her seat.

Authorities say the 62 attacker assaulted the woman at around 1.45am on Sunday. The bus driver alerted transit police, but the man fled.

Police said the suspect approached the woman, who was seated, and demanded that she give her seat to him. When she refused, he punched her in the face and pushed her, then fled, said SEPTA.

The woman was taken to hospital and treated for non-life threatening injuries.

Officials say that the suspect, a homeless man, was arrested on Monday, a SEPTA spokesperson said. His name was not immediately released.

A police report states that after the attack the suspect threatened to follow her and beat her up and that the victim wanted to go to hospital to check on condition of the fetus.

It is the second incident involving an attack on a pregnant woman on the transit system in the last six months, according to FOX29.

UPDATE: IDENTIFIED: Man who was WANTED for punching pregnant woman on @septa bus because she would not give up her seat to him.has been found,Law Enforcement sources tell FOX 29 News, Septa police say he is homeless,vulnerable as Septa managers refer to homeless @FOX29philly pic.twitter.com/6Se2lZDnrL  Steve Keeley (@KeeleyFox29) March 14, 2022

In September a knife-wielding suspect left a pregnant woman with minor injuries after an attack at a SEPTA station.

During that horrifying incident the suspect grabbed the 20-year-old woman from behind and held a knife to her neck.

She escaped by kicking the suspect and was left with a minor laceration, police said.
Prince Harry will not attend a Service of Thanksgiving for Prince Philip. Victoria Jones - WPA Pool/Getty Images, Pool/Max Mumby/Getty Images

Prince Harry won't return to the UK for a Service of Thanksgiving for Prince Philip on March 29.

However, he will reportedly travel to the Netherlands for The Invictus Games in April.

The prince recently said that the government denied him police protection in the UK.

The Duke of Sussex will not return to London for his grandfather's memorial service on March 29, according to royal author Omid Scobie.

Scobie, who co-wrote Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's biography "Finding Freedom," wrote on Twitter that Harry's spokesperson had confirmed the news.

"A spokesperson for the Sussexes confirms that Prince Harry will not be returning to the UK for the Service of Thanksgiving for the life of Prince Philip on March 29. He does, however, hope to visit the Queen as soon as possible," Scobie wrote.

Prince Philip died at the age of 99 on April 9. His funeral service, held at St George's Chapel in Windsor Castle, was limited to a select 30 guests due to the UK's COVID-19 restrictions at the time.

The Service of Thanksgiving, due to be held at Westminster Abbey, will provide an opportunity for representatives of the charities and organizations that Philip worked with to honor his legacy, People reports.

Although Harry won't travel to the UK, he is planning to go to the Netherlands in April for The Invictus Games, according to the Daily Mail. The sporting competition for wounded or injured service personnel, which Harry founded, will be held at The Hague from April 16, the publication added.

On Saturday, The Invictus Games' Twitter account shared a video of the prince taking Dutch lessons in anticipation of his visit.

Invictus Games The Hague 2020 (@InvictusGamesNL) March 12, 2022

Harry's reason for not traveling to the UK has not been confirmed. In September, the royal appealed for a judicial review of a government decision that barred him from personally paying for police protection, Insider reported in January.

Story continues

"The Duke and Duchess of Sussex personally fund a private security team for their family, yet that security cannot replicate the necessary police protection needed while in the UK. In the absence of such protection, Prince Harry and his family are unable to return to his home," read a statement issued by the prince's spokesperson at the time.

Representatives for the Duke of Sussex did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

Read the original article on Insider
(Reuters) - Russia on Monday passed a law allowing the country's airlines to place airplanes leased from foreign companies on the country's aircraft register - a manoeuvre likely to stoke Western fears of a mass default involving hundreds of jetliners.

The bill, signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, has rattled global leasing firms days before a March 28 deadline to repossess aircraft worth $10 billion as a result of Western sanctions imposed following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Russian airlines have almost 780 leased jets, with 515 leased from abroad.

The new law, part of Russia's measures to combat the sanctions, says it aims "to ensure the uninterrupted functioning of activities in the field of civil aviation".

It comes after Bermuda and Ireland, where virtually all foreign-leased jets operating in Russia are registered, said they were suspending airworthiness certificates on the jets because they could no longer be sure they were safe.

Re-registering jets in Russia would aim to keep them flying domestically by granting access to new safety approvals.

But adding Russia as a second host country could put Moscow at odds with international rules barring the registration of civil planes in more than one country at a time.

Unless Western lessors agree to Russian requests to release their jets from foreign registries - widely seen as unlikely while they struggle as it is to regain control of assets - the new policy also paves the way for a major contractual debate.

"It is illegal to register an aircraft without proof of deregistration from the previous registry as well as the agreement of the owner. This would be a default under leasing contracts," said aviation adviser Bertrand Grabowski.

AIRLINE DILEMMA

Technically, the new law does not instruct airlines to re-register their planes without the permission of owners led by Dublin-based AerCap, the world's largest air lessor.

But experts said it puts the onus on the airline to apply for new registration to keep flying inside Russia - at the risk of poisoning relations with powerful lessors once the crisis is over - or else do nothing and see their fleets grounded.

Story continues

Not all of Russia's 35 airlines, about 15 of which represent 95% of the country's traffic, are relishing what experts have already warned could spiral into aviation's largest default.

"We hope to avoid registering our planes in Russia; we want to return them to leasing companies," a source at one of the airlines said.

"The airline would become an accomplice. The law provides a way to register in Russia, but does not oblige the airline to do so....It is the first step to the kidnapping of the airplanes."

Moscow's government insists special measures are needed in the face of sanctions on the economy that President Vladimir Putin has described as "akin to a declaration of war".

Lawyers say a three-way legal battle between airlines, lessors and insurers could last for a decade.

AerCap and other major lessors declined comment on the law. Major Russian airlines Aeroflot and S7 also declined comment.

The Russian Federal Aviation Agency said 776 planes were registered abroad as of Feb. 24, the day Russia invaded Ukraine. Russia calls its actions in Ukraine a "special operation" to demilitarise and "denazify" its neighbour.

Dozens of older planes that found homes in Russia during the pandemic may never be returned and are said to be worth less than their owners may be able to claim in insurance.

But the world's 11th largest aviation market also includes some of the newest jets including a state-of-the-art Airbus A350 delivered to Aeroflot on the day of the invasion.

The United States and Europe on one side and Russia on the other have blocked their airspace to each others' airlines.

Russia's state aviation authority recommended last week that airlines with foreign-leased aircraft suspend flights abroad, making it harder for lessors to make repossessions. Some 425 jets are most at risk, the consultancy Ascend by Cirium says.

(Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Tim Hepher, Edmund Blair and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
Russian President Vladimir Putin addresses the nation in the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Monday, Feb. 21, 2022. Alexei Nikolsky/Kremlin Pool Photo via AP Images

Russian leader Vladimir Putin has botched his invasion of Ukraine by almost every metric.

But Putin's status as a global pariah could spark his most brazen election interference campaigns yet.

"Russia has to show a sign of dominance" on the global stage to make up for its failures in Ukraine, said a former NSA hacker.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine has been been an unexpected and historic challenge for Russia: the Russian military is suffering global embarrassment over its inability to tamp down fierce Ukrainian resistance; the Russian economy has been decimated; and the last shreds of Putin's international reputation are in tatters.

But experts say Putin's military failures and his status as a global pariah could make him more likely to double down on another of his goals: manipulating foreign elections and sowing distrust in democratic systems.

"Because of the resistance Russia has gotten and NATO becoming even stronger, Russia has to show a sign of dominance on the cyber side, just from a playbook perspective," David Kennedy, a former NSA hacker and the CEO of TrustedSec, told Insider. "So Putin and the intelligence agencies are going to look at how to cause as much damage as possible."

He added that the voting and election process in the US "is a ripe target" because of its vulnerability and the success Russia saw with its 2016 election interference efforts.

The US intelligence community concluded that Russia meddled in the 2016 US election to damage Hillary Clinton and propel Donald Trump to the White House. Its interference campaign featured three major cyber components: hacking into the Democratic National Committee and disseminating stolen emails via WikiLeaks; using troll farms, bots, and fake accounts to spread propaganda and disinformation; and breaching voting systems in dozens of US states to try to steal voter data.

The intelligence community and the special counsel Robert Mueller determined that Putin ordered the interference campaign and that Russia's military intelligence unit hacked the DNC. Putin also sanctioned the social media influence campaign, but it was carried out by proxies and financed by Putin's allies to give the Russian president plausible deniability.

Story continues

Robert Mueller. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas

'The cheapest form of manipulation and intelligence collection on the planet'

The US had already levied economic sanctions targeting the ringleaders of Russia's 2016 and 2020 election interference campaigns before Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine.

But Emerson Brooking, a resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, told Insider that while sanctions are a "useful deterrent," finances don't play a big role in Russia's influence operations because they can be carried out "relatively cheaply."

Mueller's team indicted 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities for conducting a social media influence campaign to interfere in the 2016 election.

According to the indictment, the disinformation campaign was carried out by a St. Petersburg based troll farm called the Internet Research Agency. Its work was primarily bankrolled by the wealthy Russian businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, a longtime ally of the Russian leader sometimes referred to as "Putin's chef."

Prigozhin and the other Russian defendants charged in the Mueller investigation will almost certainly never be extradited to the United States to face trial.

The indictment said that the IRA's annual budget was "millions of U.S. dollars," adding that by September 2016, its monthly budget "exceeded 73 million Russian rubles (over 1,250,000 U.S. dollars.)"

Mueller's office also indicted 12 Russian military intelligence officers on hacking charges. The charging document said the GRU, Russia's military intelligence unit, hacked into the DNC and the Clinton campaign and funneled stolen emails to WikiLeaks via the digital persona "Guccifer 2.0," which Mueller's team said was created by the GRU.

The indictment did not detail how much the hacking operation cost.

But experts say the cost of the disinformation and hacking campaigns is not nearly enough to put a dent in Putin's and his allies' pockets.

Russian President Vladimir Putin looks on during a boat trip with his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko off the Black Sea coast, Russia May 29, 2021 Sputnik/Sergei Ilyin/Kremlin via REUTERS

Money in Russia "lives at the top," Karim Hijazi, the CEO of Prevailion and a former intelligence contractor, told Insider. "Putin himself commands an immense amount of leverage and liquidity to make things go the way he wants them to go. It's not subsidized by any sort of economy."

"This is not an expensive enough endeavor that it'll get impacted significantly by sanctions or financial constraints on the rest of Russia's economy," he added.

Chris Rouland, the CEO of Phosphorus Cybersecurity, echoed that view.

"Manipulating social media is incredibly inexpensive compared to Javelins and ammunition," he told Insider. "If anything, Russia would get more aggressive in its manipulation of social media because it's almost free compared to a tank."

"They're isolated. They've got economic problems," he added. "And cyber is the cheapest form of manipulation and intelligence collection on the planet. There's nothing cheaper."

Kennedy, the former NSA hacker, noted that while the type of hacking operation the GRU carried out is inexpensive, it's time-consuming.

"It takes a lot of people and time to understand the infrastructure you want to infiltrate, gain access to it and maintain that access over time, and then exploit that access to cause issues," he said. "So what the GRU did and the exploratory intrusions Russia conducted on voting infrastructure are not financially costly but require a lot of time."

'This war is just drawing a clearer line in the sand about us and them'

The severity of the consequences Russia has faced coupled with its threats to cordon itself off from the western world could also further ingrain Putin's zero-sum mentality and provoke more brazen election interference efforts.

Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine, the US and NATO allies announced that some Russian banks would be disconnected from the SWIFT financial system. Many of the biggest tech companies have boycotted Russia, and the US is leading an effort to starve Russia of advanced technology and weapons systems.

Putin has also tightened his grip on the Russian digital sphere, restricting access to mainstream social media sites to stop Russian citizens from getting information from sources other than state-controlled media.

Russia could go in the direction of North Korea and "hermetically seal itself off from the greater internet," Hijazi said. "On one side that's obviously damaging to them. But they're also starting to unravel their reliance on anything that has to do with us or a system that they benefit from presently."

"If they are removed from something like that, there's no compunction for them to go on a full board attack on these systems," he added. "So I don't see this as something that's going to be demoralizing or deter them from things. In fact if anything, this war is just drawing a clearer line in the sand about us and them."

Brooking agreed, saying that "any illusion of peaceful coexistence has vanished for the foreseeable future. So one should absolutely expect that Russia will use what tools they can to undermine the United States, NATO, and Europe."

'Russia has a problem, for years, that they need to address'

Russian President Vladimir Putin's options are narrowing as his military struggles in Ukraine. Richard Baker

But Russia's miscalculations on the battlefield and its failure to execute a swift invasion of Ukraine could deal a blow to its propaganda efforts.

"In all my years I spent as a career diplomat, I saw too many instances where we lost information wars with the Russians," CIA Director Bill Burns testified to Congress on Thursday. "In this case, I think we have had a great deal of effect in disrupting their tactics and calculations and demonstrating to the entire world that this is premeditated and unprovoked aggression built on a body of lies and false narratives."

That said, although Russia's attention and resources may be diverted elsewhere during the war on Ukraine, Putin still has a vested interest in undermining American democracy. That interest is amplified amid the global humiliation the Russian leader has suffered as a result of his botched invasion.

Laura Edelson, a misinformation researcher and Ph.D candidate at New York University, told Insider that Putin is laser focused on breeding "confusion, destruction, and distrust" in US democracy.

Elevating Trump in 2016 was "at most a secondary goal" for Putin, Edelson said. The "primary goal was just causing chaos and distrust of systems."

And if Russia fails in its effort to topple the Ukrainian government, Edelson said it could open a pathway for the Kremlin to redirect its resources toward meddling in the 2022 midterms and crippling the West from a cybersecurity standpoint.

That said, "even if this conflict were to end tomorrow, sanctions would not," Edelson said. "Russia has a problem, for years, that they need to address."

"The degree to which this has been a blunder is not yet widely understood," she continued. "I don't know what else could have united Europe and the rest of liberal democracies other than something like this."

Read the original article on Business Insider
Russia's President Vladimir Putin (R) shakes hands with his Belarus counterpart Alexander Lukashenko (L) following their talks at in Moscow on February 18, 2022. Sergei Guneyev/Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images)

Putin ally Alexander Lukashenko said that the two countries could help each other out with sanctions.

Both countries' economies have been devastated by western sanctions in the past few weeks.

"We sell you this, you sell us that. We'll build a joint economic policy," Lukashenko told Putin.

During a bilateral meeting on Friday, Belarusian president and Putin ally Alexander Lukashenko told the Russian president that his country could help Russia overcome Western sanctions, despite both countries' economies being on the verge of a default.

"In a month, we will forget that there are sanctions," Lukashenko told Putin. "We should get together at the table in Moscow & come to an agreement: we sell you this, you sell us that. We'll build a joint economic policy."

On Thursday, the World Bank's chief economist, Carmen Reinhart, told Reuters that Russia's and Belarus' economies were on the verge of defaulting following the sanctions unleashed on the two countries. Major companies have also ceased operations in Russia due to its war in Ukraine.

Ahead of Russia's war in Ukraine and throughout it, Lukashenko has been one of Putin's strongest allies, allowing Russian troops to operate from Belarus' border with Ukraine during the invasion.

"Both Russia and Belarus are in square default territory," Reinhart told Reuters. "They're not rated by the agencies as a selective default yet, but mighty close."

In late February, Russia launched a military assault on neighboring Ukraine  including Russian troops moving through Belarus to attack. A week into the military campaign, Belarus held unsuccessful negotiations for Ukraine and Russia.

Russian forces have launched attacks on civilian targets and recently bombed a maternity ward, killing at least three.

Read the original article on Business Insider
WASHINGTON (AP)  Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, said Monday that he opposes the nomination of Sarah Bloom Raskin to a key position on the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors, endangering her prospects of winning Senate confirmation.

Raskin's nomination has been stuck in the Senate Banking Committee since Republicans last month unanimously refused to vote on it in order to prevent her being approved on a party-line vote. Manchin is not a member of the committee but his opposition means that for Raskin to win Senate approval, she would need to pick up a Republican vote.

Committee Republicans led by Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey, have opposed Raskin on the grounds that she has been an outspoken supporter of having the Fed consider the threat to climate change in its regulation of banks. President Joe Biden has nominated Raskin to serve as the Fed's vice chair for supervision, a top financial regulatory post.

Toomey has asserted that Raskin would seek to use the Fed's regulatory authority to discourage banks from lending to oil and gas drilling companies. Raskin denied that in a February hearing. But Manchin, who has long been a strong advocate for energy companies, expressed similar concerns.

Her previous public statements have failed to satisfactorily address my concerns about the critical importance of financing an all-of-the-above energy policy to meet our nations critical energy needs, the senator said. I have come to the conclusion that I am unable to support her nomination.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Raskin is one of the most qualified individuals to ever be nominated to this position. Raskin previously served on the board from 2010-2014 and as deputy Treasury secretary.

The White House will keep working with Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, to garner bipartisan support, Psaki said.

A spokesperson for Brown said that he is working to move forward Ms. Bloom Raskins nomination. Raskin was confirmed unanimously by the Senate the first time she was nominated to be a Fed governor.

Story continues

Four other Biden nominees to the Fed's board are also on hold because of the committee Republicans boycott of a vote on Raskin. Biden has nominated Chair Jerome Powell to serve a second four-year term; Powell is now serving as acting chair. The president has also nominated Lael Brainard, a Fed governor, for the central banks No. 2 post, and economists Lisa Cook and Philip Jefferson for positions on the board.

Psaki said the Biden administration supports moving all five nominees through the Senate together, and urged Republicans on the committee to show up so that they can go through the banking panel and to the Senate floor.

Some analysts said Manchin's opposition could doom Raskin's nomination.

We do not see how Raskin can be confirmed without the support of Joe Manchin as we expect every Republican will oppose her nomination, said Jaret Seiberg, a banking analyst at Cowen Washington Research Group.

Raskin was considered likely to take a much tougher line with banks than did Randal Quarles, a Trump appointee who previously held the position of vice chair for supervision. But the opposition to her came mainly from the energy industry, while many banking lobbyists saw her as at least a known quantity. Raskin served as Maryland's top banking regulator from 2007 to 2010 and had been endorsed by banking representatives in the state.

___

Associated Press Writer Josh Boak contributed to this story.

___

This story has been corrected to show that it was a spokesperson for Sen. Sherrod Brown who said Brown would seek to advance Raskin's nomination, not Sen. Brown himself.
Oscar-winning actress Marlee Matlin was asked during a red carpet interview to respond to the death of William Hurt, her former co-star and romantic partner whom she once accused of sexual assault.

Matlin, 56, was heading into the Critics Choice Awards Sunday when she was asked about Hurts death, which had occurred several hours earlier.

Youre the first person to ask me about him, she told a reporter from Entertainment Tonight.

Matlin and Hurt met while co-starring in Children of a Lesser God, which netted Matlin her Best Actress Academy Award in 1987, making her the first-ever deaf actress to win an Oscar.

Back on the red carpet, Matlin responded after a moment.

Weve lost a really great actor and working with him on set in Children of a Lesser God will always be something I remember very fondly.

He taught me a great deal as an actor and he was one-of-a-kind, she added.

While Matlin and Hurt played romantic partners in the film, their real-life relationship was much more complicated.

She wrote in her 2010 autobiography Ill Scream Later that Hurt raped her at least once and verbally abused her after her Oscar win. The book details several other instances of Hurt, who met Matlin when he was 35 and she was 19, abusing the actress.

In 2009, the two gave conflicting accounts about the abuse to Access Hollywood.

My own recollection is that we both apologized and both did a great deal to heal our lives, Hurt told the show in a statement. Of course, I did and do apologize for any pain I caused. And I know we both have grown. I wish Marlee and her family nothing but good.

Matlin said she saw Hurt in public unexpectedly and experienced extreme anxiety.

I had no contact with him. Really, I had nothing to say to him, Matlin said. He knows what happened, I know what happened. We both were there.
Afghans stand in line to leave the country at Islam Qala, a town along the border with Iran in the western Herat province of Afghanistan, March 3, 2022. The U.S.-led coalition force's 20-year war in Afghanistan caused poverty and forced hundreds of thousands of Afghans to leave homeland. In the wake of the withdrawal of the U.S.-led forces in August last year, Washington imposed sanctions on Kabul's new rulers, freezing nearly 10 billion U.S. dollars worth of assets of Afghanistan's central bank, which further worsened the country's smashed economy and forced many Afghans to migrate for livelihood. (Photo by Mashal/Xinhua)

HERAT, Afghanistan, March 14 (Xinhua) -- The U.S.-led coalition force's 20-year war in Afghanistan caused poverty and forced hundreds of thousands of Afghans to leave homeland.

In the wake of the withdrawal of the U.S.-led forces in August last year, Washington imposed sanctions on Kabul's new rulers, freezing nearly 10 billion U.S. dollars worth of assets of Afghanistan's central bank, which further worsened the country's smashed economy and forced many Afghans to migrate for livelihood.

U.S. President Joe Biden in a decree in February moved 7 billion dollars of the frozen Afghan assets to fund humanitarian assistance to Afghan people and compensate victims of the 9/11 terror attacks.

The decision has been blasted by Afghans as unjust and illegitimate.

On Monday, a large number of children took to the streets in the western Herat city, condemning the U.S. for stealing Afghanistan's fund and calling on the international community to press Biden to unfreeze the assets.

Many Afghans are leaving homeland to immediate neighbors including Iran, which borders Herat province.

Mohammad Alam Amini is one of the destitute Afghans who has left his home in the northern Sari Pul province for Iran.

"We have nothing to eat. It is a daunting challenge, for which I left for Iran hopefully for one or two years, and then I will return home with full hands," Amini said.

Waiting at the Islam Qala crossing point, a border town connecting Afghanistan to Iran, Amini told Xinhua, "I wish that Afghanistan would become a stable and prosperous country one day and our people do not need to go abroad," Amini said.

Afghanistan has been facing poverty and high unemployment rate.

More than 22 million out of the 35 million population in Afghanistan, according to aid agencies, are facing acute food shortage.

Many infrastructures were destroyed during decades of war and the new administration in Kabul has been facing cash scarcity.

Some, however, seem optimistic about the future of the country.

"The security has been improved and criminal activities including theft, robbery, kidnapping and killing have drastically dropped down in Afghanistan and the future of the country seems promising," another Afghan migrant Barakatullah Gulzar told Xinhua at the border crossing point.

Having tourist visa, Gulzar, a resident of Herat province, said he is going to visit Iran for merely a few days and then return home.

Mawlawi Hamayon Humat, the deputy commissioner for Islam Qala border point, told Xinhua that the number of refugees has reduced due to improved security in Afghanistan.

"In the past years, between 3,500 to 4,000 Afghans crossed the border to Iran daily but the number has reduced to 1,500 nowadays due to the improved security and increasing optimism about the future," Humat said. 

Migrating Afghans are seen at Islam Qala, a town along the border with Iran in the western Herat province of Afghanistan, March 3, 2022. The U.S.-led coalition force's 20-year war in Afghanistan caused poverty and forced hundreds of thousands of Afghans to leave homeland. In the wake of the withdrawal of the U.S.-led forces in August last year, Washington imposed sanctions on Kabul's new rulers, freezing nearly 10 billion U.S. dollars worth of assets of Afghanistan's central bank, which further worsened the country's smashed economy and forced many Afghans to migrate for livelihood. (Photo by Mashal/Xinhua)

Afghans stand in line to leave the country at Islam Qala, a town along the border with Iran in the western Herat province of Afghanistan, March 3, 2022. The U.S.-led coalition force's 20-year war in Afghanistan caused poverty and forced hundreds of thousands of Afghans to leave homeland. In the wake of the withdrawal of the U.S.-led forces in August last year, Washington imposed sanctions on Kabul's new rulers, freezing nearly 10 billion U.S. dollars worth of assets of Afghanistan's central bank, which further worsened the country's smashed economy and forced many Afghans to migrate for livelihood. (Photo by Mashal/Xinhua)

Afghan men leave the country at Islam Qala, a town along the border with Iran in the western Herat province of Afghanistan, March 3, 2022. The U.S.-led coalition force's 20-year war in Afghanistan caused poverty and forced hundreds of thousands of Afghans to leave homeland. In the wake of the withdrawal of the U.S.-led forces in August last year, Washington imposed sanctions on Kabul's new rulers, freezing nearly 10 billion U.S. dollars worth of assets of Afghanistan's central bank, which further worsened the country's smashed economy and forced many Afghans to migrate for livelihood. (Photo by Mashal/Xinhua)

An Afghan woman holds her child as she leaves the country at Islam Qala, a town along the border with Iran in the western Herat province of Afghanistan, March 3, 2022. The U.S.-led coalition force's 20-year war in Afghanistan caused poverty and forced hundreds of thousands of Afghans to leave homeland. In the wake of the withdrawal of the U.S.-led forces in August last year, Washington imposed sanctions on Kabul's new rulers, freezing nearly 10 billion U.S. dollars worth of assets of Afghanistan's central bank, which further worsened the country's smashed economy and forced many Afghans to migrate for livelihood. (Photo by Mashal/Xinhua)

Afghans stand in line to leave the country at Islam Qala, a town along the border with Iran in the western Herat province of Afghanistan, March 3, 2022. The U.S.-led coalition force's 20-year war in Afghanistan caused poverty and forced hundreds of thousands of Afghans to leave homeland. In the wake of the withdrawal of the U.S.-led forces in August last year, Washington imposed sanctions on Kabul's new rulers, freezing nearly 10 billion U.S. dollars worth of assets of Afghanistan's central bank, which further worsened the country's smashed economy and forced many Afghans to migrate for livelihood. (Photo by Mashal/Xinhua)

Migrating Afghans are seen at Islam Qala, a town along the border with Iran in the western Herat province of Afghanistan, March 3, 2022. The U.S.-led coalition force's 20-year war in Afghanistan caused poverty and forced hundreds of thousands of Afghans to leave homeland. In the wake of the withdrawal of the U.S.-led forces in August last year, Washington imposed sanctions on Kabul's new rulers, freezing nearly 10 billion U.S. dollars worth of assets of Afghanistan's central bank, which further worsened the country's smashed economy and forced many Afghans to migrate for livelihood. (Photo by Mashal/Xinhua)
BEIRUT (AP)  A Lebanese judge on Monday froze the assets of five of Lebanons largest banks and those of their board of directors as she investigates possible transfers of billions of dollars aboard during the countrys economic meltdown.

The state-run National News Agency said the decision by Judge Ghada Aoun with Mount Lebanon district court covers real estate, vehicles and shares that the five banks or their directors own in other companies.

The move came days after Aoun imposed travel bans on the directors of the five banks. Local TV stations said the travel bans were precautionary as auditors look into transfers by the banks worth $5 billion.

Lebanese banks have imposed informal capital controls since the economic crisis began in October 2019 after decades of corruption and mismanagement by the countrys political class. Since then, people do not have full access to their savings and those who withdraw cash from their U.S. dollar accounts get an exchange rate far lower than that of the black market.

In January, Aoun also imposed a travel ban on Lebanons central bank governor after a corruption lawsuit accused him of embezzlement and dereliction of duty during the crisis.

Separately, Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati said Monday he will not run for parliament in the May 15 vote, but vowed to continue work to pull Lebanon out of its crippling economic and financial crisis that has left more than 75% of the countrys 6 million people, including 1 million Syrian refugees, in poverty.

Two other prominent Sunni Muslim politicians, former prime ministers Saad Hariri and Tammam Salam, have also said they would not run for parliament. Doors closed for candidacy later Monday.

Lebanese opposition groups have struggled to form a united front while the powerful militant Hezbollah group will be running on a joint list with its allies, including President Michel Aouns Free Patriotic Movement and parliament speaker Nabih Berri's Amal group.

Hezbollah and its allies hold majority seats in the 128-member legislature. Their opponents hope to deprive them of the majority in Mays vote, riding on the wave of public anger against the countrys political class.

Under Lebanon's power-sharing agreement, the prime minister is selected from the country's Sunnis. The president is Christian and the parliament speaker a Shiite. Parliament and Cabinet seats are equally divided between Muslims and Christians.
The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City star Jen Shah has revealed why she didnt take a plea deal in her ongoing fraud trial.

The reality TV star is currently awaiting trial after being arrested while filming in March 2021. She was charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud in connection with telemarketing and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

Shah has continued to maintain her innocence, while her assistant Stuart Smith, who was arrested alongside her, changed his plea to guilty in November.

If found guilty, she could face up to 50 years in prison.

Appearing on Sunday (13 March) nights RHOSLC reunion, Shah was asked by host Andy Cohen about her decision to fight the case in court.

Im fighting this. I am innocent, Shah said.

I will fight for every person out there that cant fight for themselves because they dont have the resources or the means, so they dont fight.

Shah continued: I will fight because number one, Im innocent and number two, Im going to f***ing represent every other person out there that cant fight and hasnt been able to.

Asked what she had learnt filming this season of RHOSLC, she explained: Youre stronger than you think you are. If you can get through the impact of the initial news or whatever youre going through, youre going to be OK.

Shah is accused of carrying out a fraudulent nationwide telemarketing scheme with the help of others from 2012 to March 2021.

She and Smith are accused of defrauding hundreds of victims, including 10 or more people over the age of 55.

Her trial was recently pushed back to July.
Squatters display banners and a Ukrainian flag as they occupy a London building believed to be owned by a Russian oligarch





Riot police on Monday were called to a London mansion linked to billionaire Oleg Deripaska, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, after it was taken over by squatters who said they were reclaiming the property for Ukrainians.

As the BBC reported, protesters were seen on the balconies of the central London mansion where they had hung banners declaring the property to be "liberated" and decrying Putin.

The group that took over the property is reportedly called the London Makhnovists, named after Ukrainian anarchist Nestor Makhno, who revolted against the Russian White Army.

The Metropolitan Police said that no one was found inside the property when they entered it, but added that it is "continuing to engage with those on the balcony as we balance the need for enforcement with the safety of all involved."

Deripaska, the founder of numerous businesses including the metals and hydropower company EN+, was placed last week on a list of Putin allies to be subjected to sanctions by authorities. CNBC noted that the sanctions state that his assets will be seized and his travel restricted. Deripaska has been the subject of U.S. sanctions since 2018.

Deripaska's wealth largely comes from the privatization of Russian state assets, according to CNBC.

The protesters gave statements to journalists while standing on the balcony, the BBC reported, with one addressing British Home Secretary Priti Patel and saying, "Don't worry, we did your job - we did the housing, just send them here, we did the housing. Refugees welcome!"

"We're demanding this property belong to Ukrainian refugees. Their houses have been destroyed and this guy [Deripaska] supported the war," the protester added. "He knew the war was coming but he said nothing. His silence is violence."

Some of the protesters appeared to imply that they had entered inside the house, telling reporters it was "massive," with about 200 rooms inside.

A spokesperson for the British prime minister's office told the BBC that squatting in a residential building is illegal, but added that the government was "working to identify the appropriate use for seized properties while owners are subject to sanctions."
Roman Abramovich's private jet flew from Israel to Istanbul on Monday, flight tracking data indicates.

The UK froze the Chelsea FC owner's assets last week as part of sanctions against Russian oligarchs.

Abramovich has citizenship in Israel, where planes owned by other oligarchs have landed.

A private jet said to be owned by the sanctioned Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich flew from Moscow to Israel to Istanbul on Monday, according to multiple reports.

Data from flight-tracking website Flightradar24 showed Abramovich's plane make the short trip from Tel Aviv across the Mediterranean Sea earlier on Monday.

Reuters reported that the jet left from Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport.

Monday's flight to Turkey comes a day after the Gulfstream G650ER jet with the registration LX-RAY took off from Moscow on Sunday afternoon and landed in Tel Aviv in the evening, data from Flightradar24 indicates.

Video: Vladimir Putin may be one of the wealthiest men in the world

The flight to Istanbul lasted a little under two hours, while the flight to Tel Aviv lasted 5 1/2 hours, the Flightradar24 data shows. It's unclear whether Abramovich was onboard.

The jet had previously flown to Moscow from Istanbul on Saturday, the Flightradar24 data indicates.

Various reports have identified Abramovich as the owner of the plane. A Twitter user who made headlines tracking Elon Musk's jet and now tracks the whereabouts of jets owned by Russian billionaires has also identified Abramovich as the jet's owner.

Gulfstream says its G650ER jet can seat up to 19 passengers and sleep up to 10 people. A private-jet comparison site suggests it costs $65 million.

Abramovich, the owner of Chelsea Football Club, was among the seven Russian oligarchs the UK sanctioned on Thursday. The sanctions include freezing the oligarchs' assets and barring them from doing business with the country.

Abramovich has an estimated net worth of $13.6 billion, according to Bloomberg's Billionaires Index.

Story continues

He announced earlier this month that he would sell Chelsea FC, but the UK's sanctions mean he can't go ahead with the sale.

The billionaire was reportedly granted Israeli citizenship in 2018 after facing delays in renewing his UK visa.

Over the past two weeks, at least 14 private jets from Russia are said to have landed in Israel, whose government has not sanctioned any Russian oligarchs, The Times of Israel reported.

Read the original article on Business Insider
A crowd of Ukrainian men stand outside in Melitopol in protest of the abduction of their mayor. Via Reuters

Russian forces kidnapped the mayor of Melitopol on Friday and installed a new one.

The new Russian-backed mayor, Galina Danilchenko, said Russian TV was broadcasting in the city from Sunday.

Russian state media has been heavily censoring news of the Ukraine invasion.

The newly installed mayor of a Ukrainian city occupied by Russian forces said the city and surrounding region would start broadcasting "Russian TV channels."

Russian forces occupied Melitopol shortly after the invasion of Ukraine began on February 24. On Friday, Russian troops kidnapped and detained mayor Ivan Fedorov and replaced him with Galina Danilchenko.

Before her elevation, Danilchenko was a representative on the city's municipal council and a member of Opposition Bloc, a pro-Russia political party founded in 2014.

In a video address Sunday, Danilchenko said that Russian TV was now broadcasting across the region.

"Today, we are experiencing an acute lack of authentic information. Because of that, from today on the territory of Melitopol and Melitopol region starts a digital broadcast of Russian TV channels," she said. "Reconfigure your receivers to obtain reliable information."

The coverage of the war in Ukraine by Russia's state-run media has been heavily censored, and outlets have painted the war as an unbridled success, referring to the invasion as a "special military operation."

News outlets have outright denied Russia was invading Ukraine or attacking cities  echoing the Kremlin's line  and dissenters have been silenced on air.

Earlier this month, President Vladimir Putin approved legislation that would see Russians sentenced to 15 years in prison if they reported "fake" information about the Russian army or invasion of Ukraine.

Earlier in March, Meta, the parent company of Facebook, said it was restricting all Russian state-owned media across its platforms due to their coverage of the invasion. In response, Russia's prosecutor general submitted an application to designate Meta as an "extremist" organization, which would lead to all its services being cut in Russia.

Story continues

The Ukrainian parliament said Friday that Fedorov, the Melitopol mayor, was kidnapped by 10 "occupiers" and that a plastic bag was placed over his head.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Saturday that Fedorov's kidnapping was an attempt to "bring the city to its knees."

"They have transitioned into a new stage of terror, in which they try to physically liquidate representatives of Ukraine's lawful local authorities," he said.

Residents of Melitopol protested Fedorov's disappearance on Saturday, chanting "Bring back the mayor" and "Where's our mayor?" The Washington Post reported.

Read the original article on Business Insider
COLOMBO, March 14 (Xinhua) -- Sri Lanka's Colombo Port has moved up one notch in the world's best port ranking to 22nd this year, due to a healthy 6 percent growth in volumes to record 7.25 million TEUs in 2021, local media quoting the Sri Lanka Ports Authority (SLPA) reported here Monday.

SLPA chief Prasantha Jayamanna told the local Daily FT that the improvement was welcome, adding that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has requested elevating the port's position to within top 15 by 2025.

According to official statistics, the Colombo Port saw a volume increase of 5.8 percent in 2021 from the previous year. Transhipment grew by 4.2 percent to 5.85 million TEUs.

The SLPA terminals on their part saw a 5 percent growth to 2.2 million TEUs in 2021.

There are currently three container terminals at the Colombo Port -- the Jaya container terminal (JCT) operated by the SLPA, the South Asian gateway terminal (SAGT), and Colombo international container terminal (CICT), which is operated and managed by China Merchants Port.

As the only deepwater container terminal in South Asia capable of handling the largest vessels afloat, CICT has helped the Colombo Port to significantly enhance its position in the world shipping industry since its opening in 2013. 
Russia has asked China for military equipment and economic support following the Kremlins protracted invasion of Ukraine, severalmedia outlets reported Sunday.

The request comes as Russian President Vladimir Putin expanded his assault on Ukraine to the countrys west, killing 35 people in an attack on a military base not far from its border with Poland. But Russia has faced fiercer than expected resistance, particularly around Kyiv, and there is evidence the country is running low on weaponry, the Financial Times reported.

Its unclear how China responded, and U.S. officials only spoke to the outlets on condition of anonymity to preserve Russian intelligence gathering efforts. Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington D.C., said hed never heard of the Russian request for support.

The current situation in Ukraine is indeed disconcerting, Pengyu said in a statement to The New York Times. The high priority now is to prevent the tense situation from escalating or even getting out of control.

Russia and China are close political allies and Beijing has refused to condemn Putins invasion, instead saying it hoped for a negotiated end to the conflict. The Biden administration has increased diplomatic pressure on China in recent weeks, exchanging barbs about the Kremlins disinformation campaign. Beijing has said it blames the U.S. and the United Nations for the invasion.

A Ukrainian firefighter drags a hose inside a large food products storage facility which was destroyed by an airstrike in the early morning hours on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, March 13, 2022. Waves of Russian missiles pounded a military training base close to Ukraine's western border with NATO member Poland, killing 35 people, following Russian threats to target foreign weapon shipments that are helping Ukrainian fighters defend their country against Russia's grinding invasion.(AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda) (Photo: via Associated Press)

Jake Sullivan, the White House national security adviser, is set to travel to Rome on Monday to meet with a senior Chinese official and deliver warnings about any support Beijing may offer to Russia.

We have communicated to Beijing that we will not stand by and allow any country to compensate Russia for its losses from the economic sanctions, Sullivan said on CNNs State of the Union on Sunday. We will not allow that to go forward and allow there to be a lifeline to Russia from these economic sanctions from any country, anywhere in the world.

Story continues

The Times notes that China has traditionally bought its military equipment from Russia, but Beijing has advanced missile and drone programs that could aid Putins invasion of Ukraine. The paper, citing independent analysts, also added that there is evidence Russia may be running low on missile supplies.

The request comes amid a raft of harsh economic sanctions against Russia and the swift departure of many Western businesses from the country. The ruble collapsed in the days after the invasion began and the Kremlin has taken steps to limit foreign currency withdrawals and threatened to seize the assets of companies that leave.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.

Related...
Russian Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church and an ally of President Vladimir Putin, has refused to publicly denounce Russia's invasion of Ukraine. KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV/AFP via Getty Images

A Russian Orthodox Church in the Netherlands has split from Moscow and asked for "canonical dismissal."

The clergy said they had received threats after speaking out against the invasion of Ukraine.

An archbishop had told them that Russia was watching their actions closely, according to Nederlands Dagblad.

A Russian Orthodox Church in Amsterdam announced on Saturday that it would split from the Moscow church over threats it has received for its stance against Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The parish of St. Nicholas of Myra in Amsterdam said it had held a special meeting to discuss "the threat to the parish and the clergy," it said in a statement on its website.

"During the meeting, the clergy unanimously announced that it is no longer possible for them to function within the Moscow Patriarchate and provide a spiritually safe environment for our faithful," the statement read.

The parish said it had asked the Netherlands' diocese for "canonical dismissal," which would effectively remove it from the Russian Orthodox Church.

"This decision is extremely painful and difficult for all concerned," wrote the church.

It also asked to join the Constantinople Orthodox Church, which it said had expressed a "willingness to consider the request." The Istanbul-based branch is seen as a rival to the Russian Orthodox Church, The Guardian's Pjotr Sauer reported.

The church's Saturday statement didn't specify the exact threat to its clergy. However, according to Dutch Christian news outlet Nederlands Dagblad, Archbishop Elisey of the Netherlands had paid an unscheduled visit to the church on March 6 to warn them after they spoke out against the invasion of Ukraine.

The day before, the parish clergy had written on the church's Facebook page of their "shock at the invasion of Ukraine by the armed forces of the Russian Federation." They added that the attack had caused "extreme violence, destruction, and suffering of the population of Ukraine."

Story continues

The clergy also wrote that they had removed the name of Patriarch Kirill  the head of the Russian Orthodox Church  from the church's liturgy because he had blamed Ukraine for the attack. "We distance ourselves from Patriarch Kirill's narrative," the Facebook post said.

According to ND, Elisey had insisted that Kirill's name be added back into the liturgy and told them that Russia's foreign affairs ministry was watching their actions "with great interest."

The Russian Orthodox Church has allied itself with Russian President Vladimir Putin and has refused to condemn the invasion of Ukraine publicly. Kirill himself had called Ukrainian troops "evil forces," and in 2012 called Putin a "miracle of God," according to Agence France-Presse.

However, around 280 Russian Orthodox priests from various churches around the world have signed an open letter calling for an end to the invasion.

"We remind you that the life of every person is a priceless and unique gift of God, and therefore we wish the return of all soldiers  both Russian and Ukrainian  to their homes and families safe and sound," the letter said.

Read the original article on Business Insider
(Reuters) -The prime ministers of Russia and Belarus reaffirmed their commitment to a union state between their two countries on Monday and stated the importance of cooperation in the face of Western sanctions.

Western nations have taken unprecedented measures to punish Russia and its ally Belarus over the war in Ukraine, threatening both countries' economic health.

"We are taking coordinated measures to protect our economic security and the technological sovereignty of Russia and Belarus," Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said after meeting his Belarusian counterpart Roman Golovchenko in Moscow.

"Above all, we consider it necessary to strengthen integration in the union state," he added.

The two Slav neighbours are formally part of a "union state" and have been in talks for years to move closer together, a process that accelerated after Russian President Vladimir Putin propped up Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko in 2020 when his rule was threatened by months of mass street protests.

Western nations imposed sanctions on both countries after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24. Moscow calls its actions in Ukraine a special military operation designed to de-militarise and "denazify" the former Soviet republic.

"We are grateful to our Belarusian friends for their constructive position on the situation around Ukraine," Mishustin said. "For us this is very important and valuable."

"I am convinced that the illegitimate economic sanctions will not hinder the advancement of integration in the union state and the further development of our fraternal relations," he said.

Golovchenko appealed to Russia for economic support, saying Belarus was ready to implement the agreements on economic integration contained within the union state's framework.

"Given the high vulnerability of the Belarusian economy to external shocks, we are counting on support from the Russian Federation at this difficult time," he said.

He also called for urgent implementation of support measures including delaying the restructuring of Belarusian debt, transitioning to a new pricing system for Russian oil and fixing natural gas prices for Minsk in Russian roubles pegged to Russian domestic prices.

(Reporting by ReutersEditing by Gareth Jones)
(Reuters) - Saudi Arabia has invited Chinese President Xi Jinping to visit the kingdom in a trip that could happen as soon as May, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.

The visit could help the kingdom deepen its ties with Beijing at a time of strained relations with Washington.

Since U.S. President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, the strategic partnership between Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil exporter, and the United States has been tested by Riyadh's human rights record, particularly in light of the war in Yemen and the 2018 murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

In an interview with The Atlantic published earlier this month, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman said he did not care whether Biden misunderstood things about him.

Saudi Arabia is planning to replicate the warm reception it gave to former U.S. President Donald Trump in 2017 when he visited the kingdom on his first trip abroad as president, the Journal report said.

"The crown prince and Xi are close friends and both understand that there is huge potential for stronger ties," the report https://www.wsj.com/articles/saudi-arabia-invites-chinas-xi-to-visit-kingdom-amid-strained-u-s-relations-11647284211?mod=latest_headlines quoted a Saudi official as saying. "It is not just 'They buy oil from us and we buy weapons from them'."

Saudi government and China's foreign ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Reuters.

(Reporting by Akriti Sharma in Bengaluru, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien and Tim Ahmann)
An Upstate man who led a pack of rioters on a rampage through the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 riot is back in jail on charges he tampered with a witness in his case, a federal magistrate judge ruled Monday in Greenville.

William Robbie Norwood III, of Greer, had been free on bond awaiting trial on multiple charges.

But evidence in his case, reviewed Monday morning by Magistrate Judge Kevin McDonald, found that Norwood had sent thousands of text messages to his estranged wife, whom he was under court order not to contact. McDonald then revoked Norwoods bond and ordered him confined.

A review of the small sample of text messages presented by the government in support of their motion and supplemental motion to revoke pretrial release... reveal that the defendant has attempted to obstruct justice with these communications, McDonald ruled.

McDonald also ordered Norwood transferred to a jail in the District of Columbia area, where trials for the alleged participants in the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol are being held.

Norwood was one of the first rioters inside the Capitol on Jan 6. Once inside, he led other rioters to House Speaker Nancy Pelosis office, shouting, This is our house. ... Where you at Nancy? according to government evidence in the case.

In a January hearing, federal prosecutors asked U.S. Judge Emmet Sullivan to put Norwood in jail because, they said, he had tried to intimidate his estranged wife, an important witness in his case.

Norwood carried out what appears to be a sustained campaign ... to coerce, intimidate, threaten, and corruptly persuade a potential government witness to recant her statements to law enforcement and to obstruct justice, according to a January prosecution motion.

The judge said he would allow Norwood to stay out of jail, but only if he only if he behaved himself.

If I hear one more allegation under oath by your estranged wife that you have contacted her, I will issue a sealed bench warrant and have you arrested, the judge told Norwood at the Jan. 16 hearing.

Story continues

Im concerned about potential danger to any witness. There are too many times when we pick up the newspaper following day after one of these domestic violence hearings and see where someones head has been blown off. Im going to do whatever I can to avoid that, the judge continued.

The prosecutions motion in the case said Norwood had been pressuring his estranged wife to recant her statements to the FBI, to lie and to keep [her] mouth shut.

The estranged wife also was quoted in the January prosecution motion.

Robert Norwood has been trying to [coerce] me into emailing you, stating that, anything from my statements to the FBI were not true, she said. However, I do not feel comfortable lying [sic] about anything. ... I do not feel comfortable in anything that he was telling me to do.

A Trump supporter, Norwood was arrested in February 2021 after a person close to his family tipped off the FBI that he had been bragging about his actions on that day, according to a federal complaint in his case.

He is one of 11 people from South Carolina facing charges connected to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

He faces multiple charges in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, including stealing government property, obstruction of an official proceeding, entering and remaining in a restricted building, disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building, entering and remaining in certain Capitol rooms.

Two charges are felonies, and Norwood faces a prison sentence of up to 20 years if convicted.

In the 14 months since Jan. 6, more than 775 individuals have been arrested in nearly all 50 states for crimes related to the breach of the U.S. Capitol, including more than 245 individuals charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement, according to the U.S. Attorneys office in Washington.

The average age of those arrested is 39 years old, and 87% were men and 13% were women, according to the George Washington University Capitol Siege Extremism Tracker.

So far, 227 people, or about 27% of those arrested, have pleaded guilty.

Approximately 140 police officers were assaulted in the Jan. 6 riot, including about about 80 U.S. Capitol Police and about 60 from the Metropolitan Police Department, according to the U.S. Attorneys office.

The investigation remains ongoing, according to the U.S. Attorneys office in the District of Columbia.

This is a developing story. It will be updated.
Global flashpoints, including the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Chinese actions in Xinjiang, share a common background: a previous history of invasion and occupation.

The northwestern region of Xinjiang, for example, became an autonomous region under Chinese rule in 1955. Officially known as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, this mainly Turkic, Muslim area is viewed by the Chinese as a possible threat to Chinas security and territorial integrity.

The government in Beijing encouraged mass migration of Han Chinese into Xinjiang, which fomented resentment among the local Uyghur people. After clashes in 2009 that caused more than 200 deaths and a 2013 terrorist attack in Tiananmen Square, the Chinese cracked down with aggressive policing and extreme surveillance. Hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs have been jailed, more than 1 million detained in reeducation camps, and China has been accused of genocide.

These tactics of invasion and occupation can also be seen in the way 250,000 Russians moved to Crimea after it was annexed in 2014.

Academics sometimes refer to these tactics as settler colonialism. As a strategy of subjugation, it has many historical precedents and it provides an important lens for understanding geopolitics in various parts of todays world.

Two types of empire

History is studded with empires. Broadly speaking, there are two types.

British rule in India exemplifies an empire of control, where imperialists extract wealth and resources without large-scale emigration from the colonizing country. The importation of the wealth of India, especially its textiles, was an essential requirement of Britains Industrial Revolution.

There are also empires of settlement that occupy colonial territories by moving in large numbers of settlers. Across the world, especially in the lightly settled open grasslands of Australia and the Americas, the original inhabitants were displaced and marginalized as their homeland was taken by treaty, sale, guile and theft.

Story continues

The process often involved brute force or ethnic cleansing as land was seized and handed over to immigrants. In Australia, the British justified colonization by declaring the continent terra nullius  that is, empty and uninhabited.

Settler colonies were used to safeguard the edges of empires. A policy used by the Qing dynasty (1644-1912) that moved ethnic Chinese settlers into recently captured territory is still used today in Tibet and Xinjiang. Both imperial Russia and the former Soviet Union encouraged citizens to settle border regions, so today at least 20% of the population of Ukraine is ethnic Russian.

Settler colonialism

Many settler empires rose in the 18th and 19th centuries and continued well into the 20th century. In Africa, for example, settler societies were established by the British in Kenya, the French in Algeria and the Dutch in South Africa.

The colonists who moved in, often in large numbers, were typically white Europeans who took control over the land, lives and economy of Indigenous peoples. There were exceptions, though. In Liberia, Black Americans settled in the land of Black Africans; in Israel, mainly Jewish immigrants took over the land of Arab populations; and in China, the majority Han people moved into non-Han areas.

My research into the interactions between Indigenous people and European settlers in North America and resistance to cultural integration by an Indigenous art movement in central Australia has offered me a different way to view history. Looking at the past through a lens of settler colonialism substantially changes how we view histories of many countries, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and the U.S.

Todays issues, viewed through a colonial lens

Most settler societies are steeped in a prejudiced history in which racial categories define who has power. One strategy has been to make full citizenship available only to settlers and their offspring. Some of the more extreme examples include racialized rule in South Africa that created brutal apartheid and traumatized generations of aboriginal Australians.

There is also a long history of child abuse, with Indigenous children taken from their homes to be assimilated into settler society. Emerging evidence of these practices, including those experienced by Indigenous children in Canadas residential schools, is helping to rewrite the history books from the Indigenous  rather than just from the settler  perspective.

By restricting immigration, some countries  including Australia, Canada and the U.S., among others  have tried to maintain their racial or ethnic identities and their power. Many of these policies were weakened only in recent years.

[More than 150,000 readers get one of The Conversations informative newsletters. Join the list today.]

But in acts of amazing resilience, Indigenous societies have resisted cultural assimilation, political marginalization and economic insecurity.

Land is a key issue, as Indigenous groups continue to pursue land claims and resist land grabs. From ongoing Mapuche claims in Chile to aboriginal Australians successful campaign to overturn the legality of terra nullius, land seized by settlers is being disputed.

New facts and greater awareness of the racist nature of settler societies are challenging the triumphalist view of progress. New information is providing a darker understanding of the impact of settler colonialism on Indigenous peoples, including ethnic genocide and the devastating impacts of the loss of both land and cultural identity.

This isnt just history. Unequal, brutal treatment of settlers and indigenous peoples continues in todays settler societies, not least of all in Xinjiang and in Ukraine.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: John Rennie Short, University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Read more:



John Rennie Short does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
BRATISLAVA, Slovakia (AP)  Slovakia's Foreign Ministry says it has decided to expel three Russian diplomats following its assessment of information from the countrys intelligence services.

The ministry said the decision was made Monday and the diplomats based at Russian embassy in the capital of Bratislava have 72 hours to leave the country. It said their activities violated the Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations.

The ministry said it has also strongly urged the Russian embassy to make sure the activities of their diplomats were in line with the convention, which both countries are obliged to do.

No more details on the situation were immediately given.
COPENHAGEN, March 14 (Xinhua) -- Food prices in Denmark increased by 5.7 percent in February compared to the same month last year, outpacing the consumer price index as a whole, according to figures published by Statistics Denmark on Monday.

The consumer price index increased 4.8 percent year-on-year in February owing primarily to rising energy prices and global shortages.

Between February 2021 and February 2022, the price of butter increased 16.3 percent, that of cooking oils went up 20 percent, and pasta prices surged an astounding 24.3 percent in the country.

Prior to the current spike in food prices, the last significant increase -- five percent -- was registered in 2012, Statistics Denmark said.

"Food manufacturers rely heavily on heating and petrol. As a result, food prices are highly correlated with energy prices," Danish news agency Ritzau quoted Marie Moesby, consumer economist at Nordea Bank, as saying.

"Another reason is that global shortages have occurred as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Shutdowns harmed some producers by preventing them from growing and transporting their produce. This had a pronounced effect on the price of cooking oils," she said. 
Newport News Shipbuilding delivered the Navys newest submarine, the Montana on Saturday, shipyard president Jennifer Boykin said in a message to employees.

The formal handing over of custody to the Navy is a key milestone for any warship. Montana is set to be commissioned as an active member of the fleet later this year, when it earns the designation USS, for United States Ship.

Delivery of Montana is a milestone for the shipyard, too.

Montana  our first new construction delivery since the COVID-19 pandemic upended life as we knew it  is a testament to the resolve and dedication of the women and men of NNS, Boykin told shipbuilders.

Jason Ward, the shipyards vice president for the Virginia-class submarine program, said he was struck by shipbuilders focus on the complexity of their work, the attention to detail thats required ... during the COVID pandemic.

At delivery, the prospective commanding officer of a warship formally signs a document taking custody. With delivery, the pre-commissioning crew, which has been at the shipyard for the past year, normally moves onboard and starts standing watch, training and working there.

The results of the Navys board of inspection and survey during sea trials are a testament to our priorities of safety and quality, Ward said.

Construction of Montana began in 2015. It is the 10th Virginia-class submarine to be delivered by Newport News Shipbuilding and the 21st Virginia-class submarine built as part of the partnership of Newport News Shipbuilding and General Dynamics Electric Boatyard in Connecticut.

Montana is also the third of the 10-ship group of Virginia-class submarines known as Block IV. Those incorporate design changes focused on reduced cost by making it possible to increase the time between maintenance stops. That, in turn, can increase the number of the boats deployments.

Dave Ress, 757-247-4535, dress@dailypress.com
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - They eat in the dark, sleep in their clothes and take turns keeping watch at night.

Air raid sirens randomly send them scrambling to a makeshift basement bomb shelter. Distant explosions leave them praying artillery is not headed their way.

During the day, they struggle to find food and medicine in a city where many lack electricity.

In their apartment in Kherson, a Ukrainian river port city of about 280,000 near the Black Sea, Yuliya Makiyevskayas brother, his wife, son and daughter-in-law are trying to survive in the first city occupied during the Russian invasion.

Map of Ukraine showing some of the cities affected by invading Russian troops during the first week of the conflict.

More than 5,400 miles away, Makyevskaya anxiously keeps in contact with them from her Louisville home, communicating through encrypted apps so the Russians don't discover their whereabouts.

She is one of many Ukrainian immigrants across the U.S. with relatives caught up in a war whose impact is rippling across the globe.

"I spend my days in fear for my loved ones," Makiyevskayas 58-year-old brother, Valeriy, texted his sister, who left Kherson for the U.S. when she was 14 years old.

Yuliya Makiyevskaya, a Ukrainian immigrant

'A complete state of terror'

More than 2 million Ukrainians have fled the Russian invasion. But military checkpoints and uncertainty over proposed humanitarian corridors have left Valeriy and his family stuck in place with many of their countrymen.

Despite reaching out to elected officials and groups aiding refugees, so far shes been able to offer little more than moral support.

"My family is in a complete state of terror," she said.

'My heart is breaking': Louisville Paralympian born in Ukraine speaks about Russia

Makiyevskaya, 39, who works in information technology, manages to keep in touch daily with her relatives through encrypted apps.

Her brother agreed to answer several of The Courier Journal's questions through her, but asked that his last name not be published for fear of reprisals.

Valeriy and Yuliya text on Skype or Telegram, avoiding cellphones because there's a lot of fear about telecommunications being intercepted and listened to, she said.

Story continues

And they do so in Russian, which Makiyevskaya grew up speaking while learning Ukrainian in school as a second language  a sign of the areas overlapping cultures.

We have Russian and Ukrainian roots, she said of her family.

But as Russian troops massed on Ukraines borders, she begged them to leave for another country or western Ukraine.

Her relatives initially believed the invasion wouldnt happen  that the U.S. was exaggerating the threat.

Live updates: Russia assault stalls, US officials says; Zelenskyy to address Congress on Wednesday

'I am always on watch'

By the time the invasion seemed inevitable, it was too late to flee.

The family first heard the shelling amid days of fighting that left about 300 Ukrainian fighters and residents dead, Khersons mayor, Igor Kolykhaev, told the New York Times.

He confirmed the city had fallen on March 2 and that the fighting had disrupted gas, electricity and phone lines.

In their apartment block in Kherson, Valeriy said he saw Russian tanks and armored vehicles and exchanges of gunfire. Artillery zoomed overhead.

Across from our home, snipers were on the roof of another residential building shooting at the street," he said by text. "That is why we were afraid to use lights and had to eat in the dark. The city announced a curfew and blackout."

According to a report by The Independent, the mayor warned residents not to provoke the Russian troops and said cars would only be allowed to enter the city to bring food and medicine and other essentials.

While major combat has moved on, the city remains tense. Valeriy and his family hear explosions in the distance and are unsure what they mean.

We have not been sleeping, and I am always on watch. Whenever shooting is within earshot, I wake up (my) son, daughter-in-law and wife, so they can run to the hallway or the space between flats  or the building basement, he said.

China and Russia: A 'cold-blooded' alliance? China could be a pivotal force in Russia's war against Ukraine

Protests in the streets

Russian state media reportedly called the fall of Kherson a liberation."

But earlier this month, the BBC reported that there was a protest of about 2,000 residents waving flags, shouting slogans such as Russians go home to protest the occupation. Russian troops fired in the air to deter the crowd.

Kherson Shelter pup eating food in Ukraine.

The family didnt go. But Valeriy said a work colleague who did attend was hit in the leg by a ricocheting bullet.

Another protest broke out March 9, and Ukraine's military said more than 400 people were detained by the Russian National Guard, though it couldn't be independently confirmed. Protests reportedly continued to break out.

Meantime, Valeriy said many people in the city were without work. His tech factory was shuttered. His daughter-in-law lost her job when the shopping mall where she worked was destroyed by artillery and fire damage.

Worst still, he said, there is a shortage of "groceries or basic medications, specifically and importantly  insulin. Insulin used to be available for free, and now no money can buy it.

Last week, the city's mayor said the city had a dwindling food supply, NBC reported. Other reports said people were sharing the names of stores or pharmacies that were functioning on the communication app Telegram.

On Saturday, Valeriy went out to shop, finding some stores still empty.

"They found some potatoes and bread from local independent vendors," Makiyevskaya said. "The most concerning thing is that all pharmacies are closed, and my brother will run out of life-sustaining asthma and heart medications in a few weeks."

The family says they are lucky to have water, electricity and internet access. Ukrainian journalists in Kherson, writing anonymously, reported in The Guardian that power in suburbs was being restored.

But the snowy streets were still full of Russian vehicles.

Feeling hatred for Russia

Another thing keeping the family inside: fear of Russian checkpoints.

Valeriy said one friend had to identify the body of his mother at a packed morgue after she took a car to a nearby village and was fired upon.

His son, in his 30s, worries about being conscripted by the Russian Army.

Yuliya Makiyevskaya, a Ukrainian immigrant

Just over 250 miles to the east, more than 1,300 people have died during Russia's siege of Mariupol, Ukrainan officials have said. Residents are desperate for food and fuel. They have no heat and many are without electricity in a place where nighttime temperatures regularly dip below freezing.

Makiyevskaya said the misery harkens back to World War II, when her grandmother hid in basement bomb shelters and Germany occupied the city. Her grandfather, who served in the Soviet Army, was killed in the war.

That's why it's so unimaginable to see Russia invading and fighting Ukraine, she said.

Her brother, despite the familys Russian roots, said he now feels nothing but extreme and indestructible hatred toward Russia. Nothing else.

His son and daughter-in-law want to leave. But he and his wife are still hoping that this nightmare will end and the Ukrainian military will beat back the Russian attackers.

If not, he said, he will consider resisting as a partisan.

I had a nice job which I loved. My wife did too. My daughter-in-law and son were also doing well," he said.

"Now, all we had is destroyed! We were working on remodeling our flat and now we dont know how all this will end."

Chris Kenning can be reached at ckenning@gannett.com

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Kentucky woman secretly talks with brother trapped in Ukraine
Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, right, and wife Ginni Thomas arrive for a State Dinner with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and President Donald Trump at the White House in 2019. AP Photo/Patrick Semansky

Ginni Thomas said she attended the January 6, 2021 rally but got cold and left early.

Thomas denied that she had any ties to the January 6 rally and efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

News outlets previously reported that Thomas was linked to organizers of the rally.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' wife, Virginia "Ginni" Thomas, said she attended the Ellipse rally in Washington on January 6, 2021, but got cold and left early before then-President Donald Trump took the stage.

Thomas made the comments during an interview with the Washington Free Beacon published Monday, in which she also denied having any ties to organizing the rally and to efforts to challenge the 2020 election results.

"I played no role with those who were planning and leading the Jan. 6 events," Thomas, a longtime right-wing activist, told the conservative news outlet.

Both the New York Times Magazine and The New Yorker previously reported that Thomas was linked to organizers of the January 6 rally and served on the board of a conservative group that distributed documents about challenging the 2020 election results.

And in December 2021, Thomas signed a letter from the Council for National Policy's political arm condemning the House committee investigating the events of January 6, arguing the committee amounts to "legal harassment" of "private citizens who have done nothing wrong" and "brings disrespect to our country's rule of law."

The Times reported that Dustin Stockton, who helped organize the rally at Washington's Ellipse where President Donald Trump gave a speech, said Thomas had played a peace-keeping role between organizers at the rally.

"The way it was presented to me was that Ginni was uniting these different factions around a singular mission on January 6," Stockton said. The Times noted that other rally organizers disputed Stockton's account of Thomas' involvement but didn't offer specifics.

Story continues

Thomas rejected the claims, telling the Free Beacon: "There are other stories saying I mediated feuding factions of leaders for that day. I did not."

The Washington Post reported last month that Thomas shared a Facebook post on January 6, before Trump supporters violently stormed the Capitol. "LOVE MAGA people!!!! GOD BLESS EACH OF YOU STANDING UP OR PRAYING," she wrote. Thomas has since taken down her Facebook page, and later apologized to her husband's former law clerks over her support for the "Stop the Steal" rally.

"I owe you all an apology. I have likely imposed on you my lifetime passions," Thomas wrote in an email. "My passions and beliefs are likely shared with the bulk of you, but certainly not all. And sometimes the smallest matters can divide loved ones for too long. Let's pledge to not let politics divide THIS family, and learn to speak more gently and knowingly across the divide."

Thomas told the Free Beacon she was "disappointed and frustrated that there was violence that happened following a peaceful gathering of Trump supporters on the Ellipse on Jan. 6."

The Times also reported that Thomas served on the board of the political arm of the Council for National Policy, a secretive group of powerful conservatives, which circulated a document shortly after the 2020 election urging Republican state lawmakers to challenge the results.

According to The Times, the group also shared a newsletter titled "Five States and the Election Irregularities and Issues," featuring five swing states where Trump sought to overturn the results. The newsletter pointed to "historical, legal precedent for Congress to count a slate of electors different from that certified by the Governor of the state."

Thomas told the Free Beacon that she didn't play any part in crafting the documents, and she hadn't seen them or distributed them.

"I must admit that I do not attend many of those separate meetings, nor do I attend many of their phone calls they have," Thomas told the news outlet. "At CNP, I have moderated a session here and there. I delivered some remarks there once too."

Thomas' advocacy has raised concerns about a conflict of interest for the Supreme Court. But Thomas insisted that her work has no impact on her husband's work on the nation's highest court.

"Like so many married couples, we share many of the same ideals, principles, and aspirations for America," Thomas said. "But we have our own separate careers, and our own ideas and opinions too. Clarence doesn't discuss his work with me, and I don't involve him in my work."

Earlier this year, the Supreme Court rejected Trump's request to block the release of some of his White House records to the House select committee investigating January 6. Justice Thomas was the sole dissenter.

Read the original article on Business Insider
"The N-word is used against me each and every day," said Susquehannock High School 10th grade student Amanda Diggs in her speech at a school board meeting in February. "As a sophomore, I should never have to go through this in a place of education."

That particular board meeting was devoted to discussing the school mascot issue, a topic that has been up for debate in the community for over a year.

In her speech, Diggs said the mascot debate has actually has heightened the racial bullying she and her peers have been targets of.

Amanda Diggs, a sophomore at the Susquehannock High School, talks about the hate and bullying that has occurred as a result of the logo controversy during the Southern York County board meeting about the district's Warrior logo.

Although Diggs has reported incidents of racially targeted bullying to her counselor and principal in the past, the school board meeting was the first time she spoke publicly about her experiences.

Some of this bullying is in person, but often through social media.

Cyberbullying

Screenshots have been shared around school in which Diggs' classmates jokingly use racial slurs and offensive language such as the "N" word when talking about students of color.

These conversations take place through social media apps such as Instagram and Snapchat  but for Amanda, it is not a joke.

Assistant Supt. Robert Bryson acknowledged that administrators see students use comments on social media and bring those conversations into school.

"Whether you want to reference it as bullying or actual discrimination based upon the student, a lot of it is taking place on social media, and then brought into the schools," Bryson said.

He added, "I think it then becomes very challenging for us to address discipline consequences, etc. for things that are happening outside of school."

More on the mascot meeting: Susquehannock Warrior logo spurs passionate debate at Southern school board meeting

More on bullying in York county: 'I'm always looking over my shoulder': Students report bullying in Hanover area high schools

The warrior logo is in the center of the gym, during a Southern York County board meeting where people spoke for, against keeping the logo.

Bullying in school

Diggs said several examples of racially targeted bullying she and other students experienced include having "rocks and pebbles" thrown at them by other students, being called offensive names, and other students "making monkey noises" towards her.

Story continues

"Hearing words like this really hurt, and they stay in my head forever," she said. "I feel like a target, and I worry about my friends and anyone else who has a different background from the people who are saying these things."

She is an athlete and president of the Multicultural Club while balancing her school work, which she says is challenging at times because of how frequently she is called down to the office. When reporting an incident such as bullying, students complete paperwork that must be done in response to the occurrence, which can be time consuming.

"Some days I'm called down to the principal's office in the morning, and kept down there for several class periods," she said.

Diggs said she has made an effort to de-escalate certain incidents by "talking it out" with students involved in bullying, but she believes the student body is "divided."

She also expressed her discomfort in recently seeing classmates wear articles of clothing displaying the confederate flag  a symbol she believes is inflammatory.

According to the Susquehannock Student Hand Book, "Clothing and jewelry displaying slogans/pictures which suggest the use of alcohol, drugs, obscene language, lewd or illegal behavior, cults, gangs, inflammatory, discriminatory or harassing subjects, or weapons."

In regards to the confederate flag, Assistant Supt. Bryson said, "It's not an easy topic because students do have some free speech."

"Understandably school administrators, not just at Southern, are challenged with not just confederate flag topics, but many symbols that could be considered or taken offensively by a student or student population."

He added action may be taken, but on a case-by-case basis.

"If it creates a significant disruption  the challenge is what is a significant disruption and what isn't."

District's approach to bullying

After an increased concern over bullying at Southern York County Schools throughout the school year, staff members from all over the district took part in a presentation at the January school board meeting.

During the presentation, Bryson described bullying as an intentional electronic, written, verbal or physical act or series of acts directed at another student or students, which occurs in a school setting and/or outside a school setting.

Bryson added that bullying can impact children in three ways, by interfering with a students education, creating a threatening environment, or disrupting the orderly operation of the school.

"We call it bullying in school, and harassment when you're an adult," said Officer Bill Hanson, a full-time school resource officer with the district.

Every two years, SYCSD conducts a survey to understand the school experience as a whole among students, with bullying being part of that.

Assistant Principal Melissa Bell at Susquehannock High School said when a concern is brought to an administrator's attention, a three-step process is used "to investigate, take action, and support all parties involving the incident."

The process begins with an investigation as soon as a report is made, either by speaking to a staff member, or through a written incident report. The investigation is followed by determining proper consequences, and later support, in which administrators find ways to support the victim, bully and bystanders involved.

Yes, we do have a zero-tolerance policy, but we know those situations do occur. If we know about it, we can do something, if you see something, say something, Southern Middle school Principal Leonard Reppert said.

Reppert explained how communication between staff and parents is critical, as well as confidential communication, during an investigation.

Getting the information immediately helps us break down and identify how to start going about the concern," he said.

Once an investigation concludes, Bell said administrators' goal is to provide both positive and negative reinforcement to the students involved  and to prevent reassurance of the behavior.

Actions are taken for all parties, generally, in an effort to support the victim, and to educate and work to change the behavior the individual who acted inappropriately," she said.

Consequences include documenting the investigation, additional education to the students involved, progressive discipline, which may include legal action, and even expulsion.

The final step in the process is finding ways to support the victim, bully and bystanders.

Angela Miller, a counselor at Shrewsbury Elementary, said her role is to support the students, to reshape their behavior, through instruction and through advocation.

Another 16-year-old sophomore and member of the Multicultural Club who has also experienced racially targeted bullying while at Susquehannock said he hopes for change.

"I want to feel like I belong in this school," the student said. "The school says we need to treat everybody equally and we're a 'family,' but family doesn't call you names like that, family doesn't discriminate against each other."

Lena Tzivekis is a reporter for the Hanover Evening Sun/York Daily Record. Email Lena at etzivekis@eveningsun.com or message her on Twitter at @tzivekis.

This article originally appeared on York Daily Record: Racial bullying brought to attention Southern York County school board
TAIPEI (Reuters) - Taiwanese personal computer maker ASUS said on Monday that its shipments to Russia are at an "effective standstill" and that it abides by international regulations, after a Ukraine minister asked it to leave the country.

Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine's deputy prime minister and minister of digital transformation, tweeted a letter on Thursday to ASUS Chairman Jonney Shih calling on the company to end its business in Russia. Moscow has invaded Ukraine in what the Russian government calls a "special military operation".

"@ASUS, Russians have no moral right to use your brilliant technology! It's for peace, not for war!" Fedorov said in a separate tweet.

The company, formally called ASUSTeK Computer Inc, said in a statement that it was "deeply concerned about the growing humanitarian crisis in Ukraine".

"ASUS routinely abides by all international regulations, and this situation - combined with complex challenges across supply chain, logistics and banking, plus other factors - has created an effective standstill of shipments to the Russian market," it added.

The company will donate T$30 million ($1.05 million) to the Taiwanese relief agency which is in charge of humanitarian donations for Ukraine, it said.

"We hope that peace will be restored soon and timely humanitarian aid will reach everyone in distress."

Speaking earlier in the day Taiwan Economy Minister Wang Mei-hua, asked about the letter, said Taiwan stands with other democracies and has taken action against Russia, but could not comment on what individual companies were doing.

Wang said her "initial understanding" was that the company would conduct "relevant business and personnel evacuation as soon as possible" following the outbreak of the war.

Her ministry later clarified she was talking about Ukraine, not Russia.

ASUS has faced calls on its social media channels for a boycott after the letter was tweeted, and began being picked up by Taiwanese media late on Saturday.

Story continues

Russia is not a big market for any major Taiwanese firm.

ASUS has a Russian sales unit, though it has similar units all over the world, and in Ukraine it has a product support unit, its latest quarterly report said.

($1 = 28.4620 Taiwan dollars)

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Additional reporting by Sarah Wu; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell and Barbara Lewis)
TAMPA  On the other side of retirement, tomorrow never seems as exciting as it used to.

Oh, there are joys. There are hugs, there are vacations, there are pleasures you never had the time to appreciate. But for the competitor, the man in the huddle, the greatest of all-time, there is a void.

Tom Brady had 40 days and nights to consider this. He dabbled in some new business ventures, he played some golf, he visited his parents back home in California. And then, at the last possible moment before free agency, he decided to get the gang together again for one final ride.

Yes, Tampa Bay, the joy is back in football.

Heck, in these uncertain times, the joy is back in waking up.

This is good for Tampa Bay. Very, very good. Brady brings attention, energy, an unmistakable buzz wherever he goes. Its also good for the Bucs and the NFL. He is, after all, the Microsoft of football investments. Heck, its even good for the Tampa Bay Times. No one drives readership quite like TB12.

But is it good for Brady?

Thats a question that should not be overlooked in all the revelry and laughter. This has a chance of being the one misstep in an otherwise flawless journey.

The beauty of Bradys career was that he was always on top, or at least close enough to smell the champagne. The Deflategate controversy may have wounded him, but it wasnt enough to change the narrative. As far as the world knew, Tom Brady was the guy who was never in the wrong place, never said the wrong thing, never made the wrong gamble.

And now he is risking a 20-year hot streak on the hope that there is still enough talent on Tampa Bays roster and enough magic in his soon-to-be 45-year-old self to defy the reality of salary caps and hourglasses.

Dont get me wrong. I am thrilled Brady is coming back.

He makes the Bucs relevant and he makes the 2022 season a whole lot more enticing around here. If I had to guess, I would say Brady will throw for another 4,000 yards and another 30 touchdowns.

Story continues

And thats enticing because most of us watch sports to see something special. Something memorable. Something awe-inspiring. A great ballgame or individual moment is something we all get to celebrate.

But there is a flip side to that equation. We appreciate the remarkable because there is so much disappointment surrounding it. Thats been an inevitability for nearly every athlete from an overweight Babe Ruth trying to recapture his glory in a Boston Braves uniform, to Michael Jordan looking oddly mortal after a three-year retirement.

So why would Brady risk that kind of denouement to his career? Im not sure anyone outside of his immediate family and friends knows that answer.

If youre a black-and-white kind of person, you take Brady at his word and assume he simply changed his mind. If youre conspiracy-minded, you wonder if Brady had decided a Super Bowl was no longer likely in Tampa Bay and his retirement was an unsuccessful ploy to get the Bucs to trade him elsewhere.

If youre a Bucs fans, you probably dont give a crap why he came back. Youre just worried grandpa is going to want to keep his season tickets now.

And for now, thats the proper takeaway. We can worry about the age of the defensive line, the holes in the offensive line and the prices on StubHub later.

The real news this morning is Tampa Bay has already won the offseason. Think about it. Theyre excited in Washington about getting quarterback Carson Wentz. Carson Wentz!

Packers fans are supposed to be thrilled that Aaron Rodgers  with his one Super Bowl ring  has decided to hog the salary cap to himself. And fans in Houston are relieved their estranged quarterback was not indicted as a sexual predator.

Meanwhile, back here in the land that ESPN forgot, its time to tap another keg. Brady is back, Rob Gronkowski is hovering nearby and that mischievous glint has returned to Bruce Arians eyes.

Instead of worrying about which free agents might return or whether Kyle Trask was ready to take over an NFL offense, weve already switched gears and are imagining tailgate parties outside Raymond James Stadium, the sound of cannons and the opening kickoff on Sept. 11.

Reservation for Mr. Brady, party of 65,000.

John Romano can be reached at jromano@tampabay.com. Follow @romano_tbtimes.
Yang Jiechi (1st L), a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the CPC Central Committee, meets with U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan (1st R) in Rome, Italy, March 14, 2022. (Xinhua/Jin Mamengni)

ROME, March 14 (Xinhua) -- Yang Jiechi, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, met with U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan on Monday in Rome, capital of Italy.

Both sides conducted candid, in-depth and constructive communication over China-U.S. relations, as well as international and regional issues of common concern.

The two sides agree to jointly implement the consensus reached by the two heads of state, increase understanding, manage differences, expand consensus and strengthen cooperation, so as to accumulate conditions for bringing China-U.S. relations back to the track of sound and steady development.

Yang, also director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the CPC Central Committee, said the implementation of the consensus between the two heads of state is the most important task for China-U.S. relations.

He said that Chinese President Xi Jinping has proposed mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation as the three principles in developing China-U.S. relations in the new era, which has charted the course for the development of the bilateral ties.

U.S. President Joe Biden responded positively with such important commitments as that the United States does not seek a new Cold War or to change China's system, nor will it oppose China through strengthening alliances, support "Taiwan independence," or seek confrontation with China, Yang said.

The Chinese side always views and handles bilateral relations in accordance with the three principles put forth by President Xi, Yang said, expressing his hope that the U.S. side can truly deliver on President Biden's promises.

Under the current international situation, China and the United States should strengthen dialogue and cooperation, properly manage differences and prevent conflict and confrontation, which not only serves the interests of the two people but also meets the expectation of the international community and the interests of people across the world, he added.

Stressing that the Taiwan question concerns China's sovereignty and territorial integrity, Yang said in the three Sino-U.S. joint communiques, the U.S. side explicitly recognized that there is only one China and that the one-China principle is the premise for establishing diplomatic relations between China and the United States as well as the political foundation of their relations.

The current U.S. administration has pledged to adhere to the one-China policy and not to support "Taiwan independence" in regard to the Taiwan question, but its actions are obviously inconsistent with its statements, he said.

The Chinese side expresses grave concern over and firm opposition to the recent wrong words and deeds of the U.S. side on Taiwan-related issues, Yang noted, adding that any attempts to condone and support "Taiwan independence" separatist forces, or play the "Taiwan card" and use the Taiwan question to contain China will be futile.

China urges the U.S. side to recognize the high sensitivity of the Taiwan question, abide by the one-China principle, the provisions of the three Sino-U.S. joint communiques and the commitments made by the U.S. side, and stop going further down the dangerous path.

Yang expounded on China's solemn position on issues related to Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong, pointing out that these issues concern China's core interests and are China's internal affairs that allow no foreign interference. Any attempt to use these issues to suppress China will fail, he said.

Yang noted that seeking common ground while shelving differences and building a bridge of cooperation on top of proper settlement of differences is the right way for China and the United States to get along with each other, which has been tested by practice since the Shanghai Communique was issued 50 years ago.

The two sides should learn from history, grasp the premise of mutual respect, hold the bottom line of peaceful coexistence and seize the key of win-win cooperation, he said.

The two sides also exchanged views on international and regional issues including the Ukraine issue, the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue, the Iran nuclear issue and the Afghanistan issue. 
A monument in Melitopol, Ukraine. Pierre Crom/Getty Images

Galina Danilchenko, the newly-installed mayor of Russian-occupied Melitopol, Ukraine, is now under investigation by the Ukrainian prosecutor general.

Several members of the Melitopol City Council requested criminal proceedings begin against Danilchenko "for the high crime of treason" and "for attempting to set up an occupying government in Melitopol," CNN reports. They said Danilchenko is part of the "Opposition Bloc" and has dissolved the city government, transferring its powers to a "People's Deputies Committee."

The elected mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Federov, was abducted by several armed men on Friday. Later, the prosecutor's office in the separatist Luhansk People's Republic accused Federov of terrorist offenses. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called Federov's detainment a "crime against democracy."

After Federov was detained, Danilchenko was introduced on television as Melitopol's acting mayor, and she told residents her "main task is to take all necessary steps to get the city back to normal." She also called on residents to "keep your wits about you" and not give in to any "provocations."

Thousands of protesters hit the streets of Melitopol this weekend, demanding that Federov be released and returned to the city. Danilchenko delivered another televised address on Sunday, saying Russian television channels would start broadcasting in the region due to "a great deficit of trustworthy information being circulated."

You may also like

GOP senator says a war between NATO and Russia 'would end pretty quickly'

There's a way to bring down gas prices, but you won't like it

The price China won't pay for Russia's war
US National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster in the Oval Office of the White House on March 20, 2018 in Washington, DC. MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images

Trump's former national security advisor said China is "providing cover" for Russia.

HR McMaster also slammed Russia's "mass murder" of Ukrainian civilians during the ongoing war.

Russia has reportedly asked China for military and economic aid.

Donald Trump's former national security advisor said on Monday that China is "providing cover" for Russia's "mass murder" of Ukrainians.

HR McMaster, who served as Trump's advisor from 2017 to 2018, said in an interview with CBS Mornings that Russians were killing "innocent civilians."

China has been "spouting the same narrative that this isn't really a war, calling it a 'special military operation,' also supporting these kinds of false claims of military biolabs in Ukraine," McMaster said, referring to baseless allegations by Russia that Ukraine and the US have bioweapons labs in the country.

He added: "I think this ought to be hung around China's neck, this horrible assault on Ukraine."

McMaster suggested that the US should extend economic sanctions against China to break Russia's economic dependence on China, saying economic measures could serve as a "wake-up call."

President Joe Biden's National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan is set to meet with a top Chinese official to discuss the ongoing war in Ukraine, the White House said on Sunday.

The meeting comes after it was reported that Russia asked China for economic and military support to help its war efforts against Ukraine.

Sullivan said on CNN earlier that the US told China there "will absolutely be consequences" if it tries to help Russia navigate crushing the Western sanctions it faced as a result of its invasion of Ukraine.

Read the original article on Business Insider
ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan will discuss the war in Ukraine with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz at talks in Ankara on Monday, his office said, as both countries press on with efforts to secure a ceasefire 19 days into Russia's invasion.

NATO member Turkey shares a maritime border with Ukraine and Russia in the Black Sea and has good ties with both. It has said the invasion is unacceptable and voiced support for Ukraine, but has also opposed sanctions on Moscow, while offering to mediate.

Ukraine said on Sunday it was working with Turkey and Israel as mediators to set a place and framework for talks with Russia, after Turkey hosted the foreign ministers of the warring nations for the first high-level talks last week.

Monday's visit will mark Scholz's first trip to Turkey since taking office in December 2021 and comes amid efforts by Germany to engage with Russian President Vladimir Putin to end Moscow's invasion. Germany and France have taken leading roles within the European Union to end the war.

"Aside from bilateral ties, an exchange of views is expected to be held on other regional and international issues, primarily Ukraine and Turkey-EU relations," the Turkish Presidency said.

Turkey says it can facilitate peace talks between Ukraine and Russia, but says that a ceasefire and humanitarian corridors are needed first.

Turkey says it has citizens in areas hit by the fighting and has asked Moscow for support in evacuating them while delivering humanitarian aid to Ukraine.

Russia calls its operation a "special military operation" aimed at capturing what it regards as dangerous nationalists in Ukraine.

(Reporting by Tuvan Gumrukcu; Editing by Jonathan Spicer and Gareth Jones)
By Nevzat Devranoglu and Ali Kucukgocmen

ANKARA (Reuters) -Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan's AK Party and its nationalist MHP allies said on Monday they had presented a draft election law to parliament that analysts said would reduce the likelihood of early elections this year.

The draft law would lower the minimum required votes for a party to enter parliament to 7% from 10%, and adopt new regulations on parliamentary seat distribution in alliances between parties, the AKP and MHP said.

Analysts said the move aims to divide the opposition and earn more seats for the current governing parties.

The bill is likely to become law given the ruling alliance's majority. It would take effect about a year later, suggesting Erdogan - whose opinion polls have touched their lowest in years - could hold off calling an early election.

Before the draft law was introduced, some analysts had said Erdogan might want an earlier vote before a possible further slide in the polls, amid economic turmoil and soaring inflation caused by his push for low interest rates late last year and, more recently, the conflict in Ukraine.

But on Monday the AKP and MHP repeated that parliamentary and presidential elections will be held as scheduled in June 2023.

"This means there will not be an early election. But we shall see how effective this step (draft law) is because the opposition will insist on its request" for an earlier vote, said Mehmet Ali Kulat, chairman of MAK Consulting.

'DIVIDING THE OPPOSITION'

Seeking to topple the long-ruling Erdogan, six opposition parties formed an alliance and announced a sweeping new governance plan to be implemented if elected.

Under existing law, parties can enter parliament if votes for their alliance exceed 10%.

Lowering the threshold to 7% could serve as a "carrot" to lure smaller parties to defect from the opposition alliance, Kulat said. "The main desire is to divide the opposition. This is the whole aim of the draft law as far as I can see."

Story continues

Regulatory changes in the distribution of votes would help the AKP-MHP alliance gain more seats with the same percentage of votes, Kulat added. "This affects some 14-15 members of parliament based on the 2018 election results."

Support for the AKP has dipped to around 31% from its 42.6% in the 2018 election, according to recent polls that also show MHP falling to around 7% from 11.1%.

Together they now hold 333 seats in the 600-seat parliament, with one parliamentarian from a third party in their alliance.

The opposition has repeatedly called for early elections, citing mismanagement of the economy with inflation soaring to near 55%.

(Reporting by Nevzat Devranoglu and Ali Kucukgocmen; Editing by Jonathan Spicer and Mark Heinrich)
Two men are accused of killing a man during an attempt to steal his truck in Johnson County, according to media reports.

Tyler Waldrop, 22, was found dead inside his camper at about 7 a.m. March 4 after a friend went to check on him in the 1400 block of County Road 904 in Joshua, KXAS-TV reported. He had been stabbed multiple times and had blunt force injuries, according to the Tarrant County Medical Examiners Office.

At the time, investigators described it as a violent murder, WFAA-TV reported. Investigators believe Waldrop died either late March 3 or early March 4.

The Johnson County Sheriffs Office arrested arrested Tommy Joe Krumm, 22, of Burleson, and Mark Allen Groom, 22, of Joshua, in connection to Waldrops death, WFAA reported. Both men were in the Johnson County Jail with bails set at $1 million each. They face charges of first-degree murder, WFAA reported.

The men were trying to steal Waldrops truck, the Cleburne Times reported, when the robbery went wrong and ended in Waldrops death.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is adding a stop in Bulgaria to a trip to Europe this week that will be focused on bolstering NATO allies as a war rages on its eastern borders in Ukraine, the Pentagon said on Monday.

Austin leaves on Tuesday for Brussels, where he will attend a NATO meeting before traveling to Slovakia, the Pentagon said. In Bulgaria, Austin will meet military and civilian leaders, it said, without offering further details on his agenda.

Bulgaria, Moscow's closest ally during the Cold War, is now a European Union and NATO member state that has condemned Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart and Eric Beech; Editing by Chris Reese)
(Reuters) -AstraZeneca Plc said on Monday the U.S. drug regulator declined to approve its asthma medicine, Fasenra, for treatment of chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyps, a condition characterised by benign growths that cause pain and stuffiness.

The London-listed drugmaker said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had issued a complete response letter following AstraZeneca's application to extend use of the treatment and requested additional clinical data from it.

Fasenra was AstraZeneca's first respiratory biologic and raked in $1.26 billion in sales in 2021, jumping 33% from the previous year. It belongs to a class of medicines called monoclonal antibodies and is used against severe asthma.

The treatment rivals GlaxoSmithKline's Nucala and Teva's Cinqair from the same drug class, while AstraZeneca has also developed a newer medicine, Tezspire, with Amgen which would compete with Fasenra.

An approval would have challenged Sanofi's Dupixent and Novartis's Xolair, the two biologic respiratory drugs that have so far won approval to treat chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyposis.

The setback for AstraZeneca's Fasenra comes after the drugmaker said on Friday the FDA had approved its and Merck's cancer drug, Lynparza, as a treatment for patients with early-stage breast cancer with certain mutations.

(Reporting by Pushkala Aripaka in Bengaluru and Ludwig Burger in Frankfurt; Editing by Rashmi Aich)
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Alexei Druzhinin/AFP via Getty Images

Russia has requested military equipment from China since the invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, U.S. officials told The Washington Post and CNN on Sunday.

During an appearance Sunday on CNN's State of the Union, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told host Dana Bash that the U.S. is "watching closely to see the extent to which China actually does provide any form of support, material support, or economic support, to Russia. It is a concern of ours. And we have communicated to Beijing that we will not stand by and allow any country to compensate Russia for its losses from the economic sanctions." Sullivan is scheduled to meet with his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi on Monday in Rome.

One senior U.S. official told CNN Russia has asked China for drones. In response, Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in the United States, told CNN, "I've never heard of that. China is deeply concerned and grieved on the Ukraine situation. We sincerely hope that the situation will ease and peace will return at an early date." China, he added, has "provided Ukraine with humanitarian assistance, and will continue to do so."

You may also like

There's a way to bring down gas prices, but you won't like it

Russian stock exchange won't reopen on Monday

Saudi Arabia conducts mass execution of 81 people
By Patricia Zengerle

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Forty-nine of the 50 Republican U.S. senators said on Monday they will not back an emerging new nuclear deal between Iran and world powers, underscoring their party's opposition to attempts to revive a 2015 accord amid fears talks might collapse.

Citing press reports about a new deal, which has yet to be finalized and could be torpedoed by Russian opposition, the lawmakers said in a statement that Democratic President Joe Biden's administration might reach a deal to weaken sanctions and lessen restrictions on Iran's nuclear program.

They pledged to do everything in their power to reverse an agreement that does not "completely block" Iran's ability to develop a nuclear weapon, constrain its ballistic missile program and "confront Iran's support for terrorism."

Tehran denies it has ever sought atomic bombs.

Senator Rand Paul was the only Republican member of the Senate who did not sign Monday's statement. In an emailed statement, he said: Condemning a deal that is not yet formulated is akin to condemning diplomacy itself, not a very thoughtful position."

No congressional Republicans supported the 2015 nuclear agreement between Tehran and major powers, reached under Democratic President Barack Obama, which curbed Iran's uranium enrichment program in exchange for a lifting of international sanctions against Tehran. A handful of Democrats also objected.

The 2015 Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act (INARA) gives Congress the right to review an agreement, but lawmakers are unlikely to be able to kill a deal outright after failing to do so in 2015 when Republicans controlled Congress.

Democrats now hold slim majorities in both the House of Representatives and Senate and are unlikely to turn against Biden in sufficient numbers to stop a major initiative like an Iran deal.

The 2015 accord made it harder for Tehran to develop material for nuclear weapons. It fell apart after Republican President Donald Trump withdrew the United States in 2018.

Story continues

Talks resumed after Biden became president last year.

Attempts to clinch a new deal were left in limbo after a last-minute demand by Russia - at odds with the West over its invasion of Ukraine - forced the powers to pause talks in Vienna despite having a largely completed text.

A spokesperson for Iran's foreign ministry said on Monday that Washington needed to make a decision to wrap up a deal.

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; editing by Mark Heinrich)
Unpopular Opinion: Rebellion is not bad. It is just an act of or for change.

Hear me out on this one.

The dictionary describes the noun rebel as someone who refuses allegiance to, resists, or rises in arms against a form of authority, control, or tradition. Whilst order and regulations are not a poxy act, society has forced predetermined categories upon us that are considered norms and values of life. These categories innately cause us to develop a line of thought and either limit our creativity or hinder our sense of individuality.

So if we are aware of this, why is it that we still refuse to disengage in systematic practices that form our identity or even try to employ different styles of getting the job done?

Well, the simplest four-letter answer is FEAR.

As human beings, we fear being rejected, mocked, insulted, and criticized by our peers, family, and colleagues. We dont want to upset or challenge the conventional thought or cycle of society. However, Steve Borner posited that successful change can be traced back to one attitude and that is a rebellious attitude.

Seeds of BAD-ness

Rebellion is good seeds added to good and solid principles.

I remember doing research and coming across what would have seemed to be a biblical 1-hour video. Two men used doctrine and circumstances to determine that the root of rebellion is youths transitioning to university, growing up in an unstable family, absentee parents, and/or falling out of line with the guidance their parents have taught them.

Though some of these overgeneralized claims are true, they vary based on each situation and individual.

Not every person is trying to rebel for global impact like civil rights. Some are rebelling for personal discovery: to see what they like, dislike, enjoy, and are passionate about without the box of society.

It is remarkable to see parenting evolving to the point where parents allow their children to discover more and not just provide them with the answers to every obstacle they face.

One such noteworthy parent is my friend, Tashuana. Recently, her sons school hosted Career Day and tradition would have it that the kids dress up in the conventional career paths taught to them. All the children were clad as doctors, nurses, teachers, soldiers, and policemen, aside from Tyler  who was a Video Director. The choice of this non-traditional career path is a sign of creativity and passion.

Oftentimes we do life too safe and neglect trying to be the best versions of ourselves each day, not by societal standards, but by our own. We discard the independent thought of having a narrative that does not necessarily align with such of the masses.

A dear friend of mine would say that why cant it be that something is wrong with everyone else and youre just unique?

I pose that same question to you today with the encouragement that you are not berserk in your thoughts and actions, but a sui generis human being.

It's giving REBEL

Difference is pejoratively seen as irregular and abnormal. Rebels are described as outcasts, troublemakers and people who break rules.

Nevertheless, it is our social responsibility to acknowledge that not completing identity categories does not make you second-rate to another but musters a solid foundation for an unstoppable changemaker.

Rebels are creatives, risk-takers, inventors, and world-class leaders that believed in the vision first and were able to push forward amidst the repercussion from society.

It is being a Rosa Parks in product pitch or a Malcolm X in a board meeting. Flex those muscles of persistence, confidence, innovation, critical thinking, and problem-solving.

Shifting ones perspective of rebels will open the door to endless benefits of being the drama. Not just accepting the answers generically provided but questioning these answers and pivoting seamlessly in difficulties like Captain Sully Sullenberger.

Screw It!

Does it have to be the absence of something that causes us to rebel, or could it be the intrinsic presence of discovering the possibilities of life?

I remember early high school Math classes learning about possibilities and ratio versus final year Economics classes learning about opportunity cost. Both heavily spoke about weighing ones options before deciding. Whether it be based on what you will lose or gain, in the end, you would have to make a choice.

Life is all about choices. It is for you to say, screw it, make an intentional choice, and dont look back.

Go against conventional wisdom, if you must, and become the master of your world. Find the change you want to make in yourself and follow that path to the very end.

Embrace the rebel in you and challenge the status quo.
LONDON (Reuters) - Russian missile strikes on a Ukrainian base near the Polish border are deeply concerning but will not deter Britain from continuing to provide Ukraine with defensive weapons, Prime Minister Boris Johnson's spokesman said on Monday.

The Russian defence ministry said the strike had destroyed "foreign mercenaries and a large amount of foreign weapons".

"These strikes are deeply concerning," Johnson's spokesman said.

Asked whether they would deter Britain from sending further weapons, he said: "No. We will absolutely carry on providing this defensive, lethal capability to the Ukrainian government. It is vital we do so, we know it has been helpful, we know it has been successfully deployed."

(Reporting by Elizabeth Piper, Writing by Kylie MacLellan; editing by William James)
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain will donate more than 500 mobile generators to help Ukraine and weaken Russia's attempts to cripple its power supply, Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said on Monday, adding that they would be enough to power 20,000 buildings.

"Sending portable electricity generators to Ukraine will help keep essential services running, weaken (Russian President Vladimir) Putin's attempts to cripple Ukraines power supply, and help support the extraordinarily brave Ukrainian response to the Kremlins war waging," Kwarteng said in a statement.

The government said the generators would be provided by British commercial suppliers.

(Reporting by Kylie MacLellan; writing by Muvija M)
A Ukrainian soldier holding a Next Generation Light Anti-tank Weapon used to destroy a Russian armoured personal carrier. Russia now appears to be admitting the slow progress of the invasion - Sergei Supinsky/AFP

A top Russian official has become the first of Vladimir Putins inner circle to admit the Ukraine invasion is not going to plan, as Washington reported Moscows forces stalling on almost all fronts.

Viktor Zolotov, head of the Russian National Guard and the presidents former personal bodyguard, said that things are not moving as fast as we would like.

He claimed that this is only because Nazis are hiding behind civilians, the elderly, women and children and set up firing positions at kindergartens, schools and residential buildings.

Last week, Sergei Shoigu, Russias defence minister, said everything was going according to the plan. In public, Putin has not shown any frustration with the pace of the invasion.

But Russian troops appear to be increasingly bogged down in Ukraine, where they have come up against fierce military resistance and an overwhelmingly hostile population.

Ukrainian soldiers reportedly in combat with Russian troops near Kyiv. Kremlin forces have become bogged down since the launch of the invasion - Reuters

Mr Zolotov oversees Russias riot police, which are used to crush opposition protests at home and have been involved in Russias military operation in Ukraine. The National Guard is expected to act as the main law enforcement in the territories occupied by the Russian army.

Russian officials continue to deny having caused any civilian casualties and have repeatedly blamed Ukrainian nationalists for using the population as a human shield.

Russias defence ministry warned Kyiv on Monday that it would be carrying out retaliatory air strikes on Ukraines military sites, after what it said was a deadly shelling of civilians by Ukrainian forces in the separatist-controlled city of Donetsk.

The Russian military urged Ukranians who work at military facilities or live nearby to leave the potentially dangerous areas.

Meanwhile, peace talks between Russia and Ukraine on Monday failed to bring any significant progress.

Peace talks between Ukraine and Russia do not appear to have moved any further forward, although some of the Kremlin's rhetoric has softened

Mykhail Podolyak - an adviser to Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president - said the latest round talks would pause for a technical break, so that the parties could do some extra work to clarify unspecified issues.

Story continues

Vladimir Medinsky, Russias lead negotiator, said meetings would continue on Tuesday. Mr Medinsky made no mention of any change to Russias negotiating position, but Kremlin officials in recent days have appeared to be scaling back their demands.

Shortly after the invasion, Putin branded the Kyiv government a gang of drug users and neo-Nazis and suggested that Moscow would not rest until Mr Zelenskys administration was toppled. The rhetoric has somewhat softened since.

Sauli Niinisto, the Finnish president, who spoke to Putin on Friday, said the Kremlin had ditched the idea of a regime change in Kyiv.

It seems that changing the government of Ukraine is not on the list anymore, he told CNN. He said that when he confronted Putin, the Russian leader claimed he never demanded it.

Meanwhile, a senior US official said at a briefing on Monday that almost all of Russia's advances remain stalled.

Russian forces approaching Kyiv from the east remained some 15 miles from the capital and faced "heavy resistance" from Ukrainian forces, making no noticeable progress, the official said.

Russia at the weekend launched a deadly air strike on a military range in western Ukraine, just 12 miles away from the Polish border.

The US official said on Monday that there were no US military personnel, contractors or US civilians at the base in Yavoriv at the time of the attack.

The attack at the military site near a Nato member state has pushed Kyiv to renew its call to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine - an idea that the UK and other Nato allies have rejected, fearing that it might trigger a wider military confrontation.

The US official said the missiles that hit the military range were launched by Russias long-range bombers form Russian airspace.

"For advocates of a no-fly zone, it would have had no effect on these strikes, the official said.
As the world doomscrolls through the grim news from Ukraine, its time to reassess the risks created by sizing the U.S. military to fight a single major conflict.

The 2018 National Defense Strategy was a watershed document that shifted DODs focus toward defeating Chinese or Russian aggression, defending the U.S. homeland, sustaining nuclear deterrence, and deterring  but not defeating  a lesser aggressor in another theater.

The 2018 NDS also broke with DODs long-established requirement to size its forces for two theater conflicts. The risks associated with maintaining a one-war force are apparent as Russia continues to assault Ukraine and China expands its influence in the Pacific. Its not too late for the Defense Department to address this in its forthcoming National Defense Strategy.

Chief among these risks is a one-war force invites opportunistic aggression in a second theater. As DOD informed Congress after the Cold War, a two-war military was critical to preventing a potential aggressor in one region to be tempted to take advantage if we are already engaged in halting aggression in another. This is an increasingly plausible scenario given Russias willingness to forcibly recreate a geographic buffer between itself and NATO, and the growing strategic relationship between China and Russia.

This does not mean China and Russia will soon form a pact to fight a war with the United States. Rather, China could decide to take advantage of a Russian campaign against NATO in Europe, or Russia could make a move after China launches an attack on Taiwan. Its also plausible they could coordinate the timing of their actions.

In either case, a one-war U.S. military lacks the forces, munitions, logistics, and other capabilities needed to respond in both theaters. Force cuts in search of a peace dividend and the failure to modernize our military as it fought small wars in the Middle East have resulted in a force that is too small and too old. China and Russia know the U.S. Air Force now has about half the aircraft it had in 1991, and the Navy lacks enough ships, carrier aircraft, and undersea forces to meet its global commitments.

Story continues

Critics of rebuilding a two-war force are concerned with its cost and its potential to dilute the resources DOD needs to modernize for a China fight. China first advocates are not completely wrong if our military services fail to ask for what they would need. Today, they accept what they are given  and less than they need  to develop their plans and programs. This is based on their anticipation of future budgets, not future threats.

This does not mean DODs budget should grow to unrealistic levels. Increasing defense spending beyond its current level of roughly 3% of GDP is not unreasonable, given it averaged about 6% of GDP during the Cold War. Even 1% of GDP growth would give DOD about $200 billion more a year, enough to buy a larger fleet, adequate next-generation combat aircraft, AI-enabled unmanned systems, advanced munitions and other capabilities to defeat a Chinese attack and deter Russia.

Selectively reallocating budget shares across the services would be another step toward rebuilding a two-war force. This reallocation should be based on the predominant forces needed for a conflict in the Indo-Pacific and another in Europe  not every service needs to chase the Chinese pacing threat. The fact is a conflict with China would take place mostly at sea and in the air, space, and cyberspace; it would not be a boots-on-the-ground land war. On the other hand, a fight to defend NATOs eastern frontier would be dominated by land, air, space, and cyberspace.

In other words, a two-war force would be more affordable if DOD exerts some discipline and reduces investments in overly redundant and costly capabilities some services are developing for the Pacific. This includes long-range hypersonic weapons the Army desires that cost $40 million to $50 million each. DOD could better use these resources to acquire more air, space, and cyber forces that can respond within hours to strike invading forces in the Indo-Pacific and Europe.

This approach would be a major step toward creating a force that can credibly deter opportunistic aggression. The next NDS will maintain China as the Defense Departments pacing challenge and unlikely to support rebuilding a two-war force. Its time to acknowledge that a China first strategy is really a China only strategy that creates a path for Russia to win in Europe if the U.S. military is fully engaged in the Pacific.

Our European allies have heard the wake-up call and understand the need to bolster their defenses to counter Russia. DOD and the Congress must also acknowledge this reality. The choices they make should be informed by a strategy that reduces risk of opportunistic aggression in a second theater, not a spending level proposed by the administration. This should be the purpose of the 2022 National Defense Strategy.

Retired U.S. Air Force Col. Mark Gunzinger is director for future concepts and capability assessments at the Mitchell Institute. He previously served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for forces transformation and resources within the policy office of the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Kamilla Gunzinger is a senior program director at the Mitchell Institute.
(Reuters) - Ukraine on Monday urged the Council of Europe, a European body designed to uphold human rights and the rule of law across the continent, to expel Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.

The Council of Europe, which is separate from the European Union, suspended Russia's membership on Feb. 25 and is now debating whether to bar it altogether, which would be a first since the pan-Europe institution was set up after World War Two.

"We demand that a decision is approved to immediately oust Russia from the Council of Europe," Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmygal told Council of Europe lawmakers via videolink.

Those responsible for "this unprovoked and unjustified aggression (against Ukraine) cannot stay in the single European family where human life is the highest value," he said.

Russia's foreign ministry last week said Moscow would stop participating in the Council of Europe.

The Russian delegation to the council's parliamentary assembly is suspending its participation and will not take part in meetings, Russia's RIA news agency cited a member of the Russian delegation as saying on Monday. [nS8N2UP03Y

The Kremlin had said last month that the suspension of Russia's membership in the Council of Europe was "really unfair" but added the move provided a good reason "to slam the door" for good on the organisation, giving Moscow an opportunity to restore the death penalty for dangerous criminals.

Russia describes its invasion of Ukraine as a "special operation" to demilitarise and "denazify" Ukraine. Ukraine and Western allies call this a baseless pretext for a war of choice.

"We need to join our efforts, not only to help Ukraine, but to help all of Europe," Shmygal told the Strasbourg-based assembly on Monday, before receiving a standing ovation.

(Writing by Ingrid Melander; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
JERUSALEM (AP)  Israel is grappling with how to deal with dozens of Jewish Russian oligarchs as Western nations step up sanctions on businesspeople with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

A worried Israeli government has formed a high-level committee to see how the country can maintain its status as a haven for any Jew without running afoul of the biting sanctions targeting Putins inner circle.

Israel will not be a route to bypass sanctions imposed on Russia by the United States and other Western countries, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid declared Monday during a stop in Slovakia.

Several dozen Jewish tycoons from Russia are believed to have taken on Israeli citizenship or residency in recent years. Many have good working relations with the Kremlin, and at least four -- Chelsea FC owner Roman Abramovich, Mikhail Fridman, Petr Aven and Viktor Vekselberg -- have been sanctioned internationally because of their purported connections to Putin. Some of the sanctions stretch back even to before Russia's invasion of Ukraine last month.

Israel, which has emerged as an unlikely mediator between Ukraine and Russia, has not joined the sanctions imposed by the U.S., Britain, European Union and others. But as the war in Ukraine drags on, and other names are added to the list, the pressure is increasing.

In an interview with Israels Channel 12 TV station over the weekend, the U.S. undersecretary of state for political affairs, Victoria Nuland, called on Israel to join the group of countries that have sanctioned Russia.

What we are asking among other things is for every democracy around the world to join us in the financial and export control sanctions that we have put on Putin, she said. You dont want to become the last haven for dirty money thats fueling Putins wars.

Aaron David Miller, a now-retired veteran U.S. diplomat, said on Twitter that Nuland's comments were the "toughest battering of Israeli policy since crisis began or of any policy in very long while."

Story continues

Israel, founded as a haven for Jews in the wake of the Holocaust, grants automatic citizenship to anyone of Jewish descent. Since the disintegration of the Soviet Union 30 years ago, an estimated 1 million Jews from Russia and other former Soviet republics have moved to Israel. In recent years, a growing number of tycoons from the former Soviet Union have joined them.

Some, such as former energy magnate Leonid Nevzlin, came after falling out with Putin. Others appeared to have done so as hedges against trouble abroad.

Abramovich, for instance, took Israeli citizenship in 2018 after his British visa was not renewed, apparently as part of British authorities efforts to crack down on Putin associates after a former Russian spy was poisoned in England. Although he appears to spend little time in the country, he has bought some choice real estate, including a home in a trendy Tel Aviv neighborhood reportedly purchased from the husband of Wonder Woman actress Gal Gadot.

Some of the tycoons have kept low public profiles, while others have embraced their Jewish roots, emerging as major philanthropists to Jewish causes or investing in Israels high-flying technology sector. With a limited number of places to go, a growing number of Jewish tycoons, especially those with Israeli citizenship, could find themselves spending more time in Israel.

Israeli media have reported private jets belonging to oligarchs coming in and out of the country in recent days. Channel 12 said late Sunday that one of Abramovich's planes had landed in Israel, though it was unclear if he was onboard. Israeli media reported he was seen at Israel's Ben Gurion International Airport on Monday, around the same time as his private jet flew to Istanbul.

While Israel weighs its moves, Jewish organizations already are taking a closer look at their relations with Russian oligarchs.

Last week, Yad Vashem, Israels national Holocaust memorial, said it was suspending a reported donation of tens millions of dollars from Abramovich in light of recent developments. In Ukraine, the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center, built at the ravine where over 30,000 Jews were massacred in just two days in 1941, said that Fridman, who was born in Ukraine, had resigned from its advisory board due to the sanctions.

Lior Haiat, spokesman for Israels Foreign Ministry, said the government has formed a special inter-ministerial committee to study the sanctions issue. The fate of affected oligarchs is a central part of that mission.

On Monday, Lapid said the ministry was working with other government bodies, including Israel's Central Bank, to make sure tycoons do not use the country to avert sanctions.

Lapid also has advised his colleagues to keep their distance from the oligarchs.

You have to be very careful because those guys have connections and they can call you on the phone and ask you for things, Lapid recently told the Cabinet. Dont commit to anything because it could cause diplomatic damage. Say you cant help them and give them the number of the Foreign Ministry.

His comments, first reported in Israeli media, were confirmed by officials who attended the meeting. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were discussing closed Cabinet proceedings.

Israel, one of the few countries that has good relations with both Russia and Ukraine, may be able to insulate itself from the international pressure as long as it continues to mediate between the warring sides. Joining the sanctions would risk drawing Russian ire and jeopardize Israel's unique role.

Ksenia Svetlova, an international-affairs expert and former Israeli lawmaker born in Russia, said Israel would hold out from taking a stance as long as possible.

It depends on what kind of pressure they will exercise against Israel, she said. Not voluntarily, certainly.
(Reuters) -Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy will deliver a virtual address to the U.S. Congress on Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a joint letter to lawmakers.

"The Congress remains unwavering in our commitment to supporting Ukraine as they face Putin's cruel and diabolical aggression, and to passing legislation to cripple and isolate the Russian economy as well as deliver humanitarian, security and economic assistance to Ukraine," they wrote on Monday.

Zelenskiy has sought to drum up support for Ukraine with video briefings of foreign audiences that have included the U.S. Congress and the British parliament. Zelenskiy will speak at 9 a.m (1300 GMT) on Wednesday to U.S. lawmakers.

More than 280 members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives took part in a video call with Zelenskiy on March 5 in which he is said to have made a "desperate plea" for aircraft to fight Russian invaders.

On Tuesday, he is scheduled to address the Canadian parliament and is also due to address Israel's parliament at some point.

The Democratic-controlled U.S. Congress approved $13.6 billion in aid to Ukraine on Thursday as part of a $1.5 trillion spending bill that funds U.S. government operations through Sept. 30.

The United States, along with its allies, has imposed broad sanctions on Russia after the invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24. On Friday, President Joe Biden took more steps to punish Russia economically, targeting trade and shutting down development funds while also announcing a ban on imports of Russian seafood, vodka and diamonds.

Zelenskiy on Friday asked Biden in a phone call to broaden the U.S. economic campaign against Russia, telling him that more should be done to cut off Russia from international trade, the Washington Post reported on Sunday, citing people familiar with the call.

(Reporting by Ismail Shakil in Bengaluru; editing by Susan Heavey and Grant McCool)
WASHINGTON (AP)  A U.S. official said Russia asked China for military equipment to use in its invasion of Ukraine, a request that heightened tensions about the ongoing war ahead of a Monday meeting in Rome between top aides for the U.S. and Chinese governments.

In advance of the talks, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan bluntly warned China to avoid helping Russia evade punishment from global sanctions that have hammered the Russian economy. We will not allow that to go forward, he said. China in turn accused on Monday the U.S. of spreading disinformation.

Chinese state broadcaster CCTV said the talks with the U.S. were underway around 11:50 a.m. Rome time (1050 GMT), but gave no other details.

The prospect of China offering Russia financial help is one of several concerns for President Joe Biden. A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, said that in recent days, Russia had requested support from China, including military equipment, to press forward in its ongoing war with Ukraine. The official did not provide details on the scope of the request. The request was first reported by the Financial Times and The Washington Post.

The Biden administration is also accusing China of spreading Russian disinformation that could be a pretext for Russian President Vladimir Putins forces to attack Ukraine with chemical or biological weapons.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan speaks during a press briefing at the White House, Feb. 11, 2022, in Washington. President Biden is sending his national security adviser for talks with a senior Chinese official in Rome on Monday, March 14, 2022. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

Russias invasion of Ukraine has put China in a delicate spot with two of its biggest trading partners: the U.S. and European Union. China needs access to those markets, yet it also has shown support for Moscow, joining with Russia in declaring a friendship with no limits.

In his talks with senior Chinese foreign policy adviser Yang Jiechi, Sullivan will indeed be looking for limits in what Beijing will do for Moscow.

Im not going to sit here publicly and brandish threats, he told CNN in a round of Sunday news show interviews. But what I will tell you is we are communicating directly and privately to Beijing that there absolutely will be consequences if China helps Russia backfill its losses from the sanctions.

Story continues

We will not allow that to go forward and allow there to be a lifeline to Russia from these economic sanctions from any country anywhere in the world, he said.

Without giving details, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said Monday that the Ukraine situation will definitely be a hot topic at the meeting, which had been scheduled before Russia invaded its neighbor.

Asked at a daily briefing about the reported Russian request for assistance, Zhao responded: The U.S. has been spreading disinformation targeting China recently over the Ukraine issue. It is malicious.

What is pressing now is that all parties should exercise restraint and strive to cool down the situation, rather than fueling the tension, Zhao told reporters. We should promote diplomatic settlements instead of further escalating the situation.

In a statement posted on the ministrys website late Sunday, Zhao did not mention Ukraine, but said the sides would exchange views on China-U.S. relations and international and regional issues of common concern.

The White House said the talks will focus on the direct impact of Russias war against Ukraine on regional and global security.

Biden administration officials say Beijing is spreading false Russian claims that Ukraine was running chemical and biological weapons labs with U.S. support. They say China is effectively providing cover if Russia moves ahead with a biological or chemical weapons attack on Ukrainians.

When Russia starts accusing other countries of preparing to launch biological or chemical attacks, Sullivan told NBCs Meet the Press, its a good tell that they may be on the cusp of doing it themselves.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby, on ABCs This Week, said we havent seen anything that indicates some sort of imminent chemical or biological attack right now, but were watching this very, very closely.

Ukrainian servicemen stand in a foxhole in Irpin, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 9, 2022. A Russian airstrike devastated a maternity hospital Wednesday in the besieged port city of Mariupol amid growing warnings from the West that Moscow's invasion is about to take a more brutal and indiscriminate turn. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

The striking U.S. accusations about Russian disinformation and Chinese complicity came after Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova alleged with no evidence that the U.S. was financing Ukrainian chemical and biological weapons labs.

The Russian claim was echoed by Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao, who claimed there were 26 bio-labs and related facilities in which the U.S. Department of Defense has absolute control. The United Nations has said it has received no information backing up such accusations.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki called the claims preposterous.

There is growing concern inside the White House that China is aligning itself with Russia on the Ukraine war in hopes it will advance Beijings vision of the world order in the long term, according to a person familiar with administration thinking. The person was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Sullivan told Face the Nation on CBS that the Russian rhetoric on chemical and biological warfare is an indicator that, in fact, the Russians are getting ready to do it and try and pin the blame elsewhere and nobody should fall for that.

The international community has assessed that Russia used chemical weapons in attempts to assassinate Putin detractors such as Alexei Navalny and former spy Sergei Skripal. Russia also supports the Assad government in Syria, which has used chemical weapons against its people in a decade-long civil war.

China has been one of few countries to avoid criticizing the Russians for its invasion of Ukraine. Chinas leader Xi Jinping hosted Putin for the opening of the Winter Olympics in Beijing, just three weeks before Russia invaded on Feb. 24.

During Putins visit, the two leaders issued a 5,000-word statement declaring limitless friendship.

The Chinese abstained on U.N. votes censuring Russia and has criticized economic sanctions against Moscow. It has expressed its support for peace talks and offered its services as a mediator, despite questions about its neutrality and scant experience mediating international conflict.

But questions remain over how far Beijing will go to alienate the West and put its own economy at risk. Sullivan said China and all countries are on notice that they cannot basically bail Russia out ... give Russia a workaround to the sanctions, with impunity.

Chinese officials have said Washington shouldnt be able to complain about Russias actions because the U.S. invaded Iraq under false pretenses. The U.S. claimed to have evidence Saddam Hussein was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction though none was ever found.

On CNN, Sullivan said the administration believes China knew that Putin was planning something before the invasion of Ukraine. But he said the Chinese government may not have understood the full extent of it because its very possible that Putin lied to them the same way that he lied to Europeans and others.

Sullivan and Yang last met for face-to-face talks in Switzerland, where Sullivan raised the Biden administrations concerns about Chinas military provocations against Taiwan, human rights abuses against ethnic minorities and efforts to squelch pro-democracy advocates in Hong Kong.

That meeting set the stage for a three-hour long virtual meeting in November between Biden and Xi.

Sullivan is also to meet Luigi Mattiolo, diplomatic adviser to Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, while in Rome.

Associated Press writer Hope Yen contributed to this report.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping meet in Beijing, China on February 4, 2022. Getty Images

Senior US officials told multiple outlets that Russia has asked China for military assistance in Ukraine.

National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told CNN Sunday the administration is concerned about this.

Sullivan said China has been warned that the US won't stand by and allow any country to help Russia.

US officials have said Russia asked China for military assistance and economic aid to help with their invasion of Ukraine and counteract sanctions, The New York Times first reported on Sunday.

The Washington Post, CNN, and Fox News also reported the news, citing unnamed US officials. The Times and The Post reported that the US officials declined to release any additional information on the types of weapons Russia requested.

The Chinese Embassy did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment but spokesperson Liu Pengyu told CNN that he's "never heard" that Russia requested help from China.

"China is deeply concerned and grieved on the Ukraine situation. We sincerely hope that the situation will ease and peace will return at an early date," Pengyu told CNN.

Russia was hit with crippling sanctions from the West after it launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24. The US, UK, and European Union were among those to impose sanctions on the country as well as Russian officials, businesses, and President Vladimir Putin.

Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping met as recently as February 4, after which they released a statement criticizing the US and declaring that the friendship between Russia and China has "no limits." But Xi has stopped short of fully siding with Putin on the war in Ukraine, Insider's Mattathias Schwartz reported.

Ukrainian forces have been able to hold off the invasion in much of the country but military assistance from China could be a major boon to Russian forces. Meanwhile Ukraine has recieved military support and weapons from western allies.

Story continues

The White House on Saturday approved $200 million in weapons to be delivered to Ukraine, following the US Senate last week approving $13.6 billion in emergency humanitarian and military aid for Ukraine.

White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told CNN's Dana Bash on Sunday that the administration is concerned about the possibility of China providing help to Russia. He also said there's reason to believe China might have known Russia was planning something before the invasion.

"We also are watching closely to see the extent to which China actually does provide any form of support, material support or economic support, to Russia. It is a concern of ours. And we have communicated to Beijing that we will not stand by and allow any country to compensate Russia for its losses from the economic sanctions," Sullivan said.

Sullivan said the administration has told China that there would "absolutely be consequences" if there are efforts to help Russia circumvent the impact of US sanctions. He did not say whether or not the US would impose sanctions on China if it helped Russia.

The White House did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

Read the original article on Business Insider
Hey, Healdsburg! It's Nicole again, filling in for Simone through tomorrow. Here's everything you need to know to get this Monday started off right.

First, today's weather:

Mostly cloudy. High: 66 Low: 49.

Shoutout to our premier local sponsors:

Do you need courier or delivery service in the Healdsburg area? Healdsburg Express provides dependable, on-call and scheduled delivery services 24/7. They work with local businesses, title companies, health care providers, real estate agents and anyone who needs a delivery nearby. Use a local, family-owned courier you can trust. Visit Healdsburg Express to schedule a pick up or to learn more.

Have you stopped by Amy's Wicked Slush near Memorial Bridge lately? Amy's has Slush in glorious flavors like root beer, mango, and orange cream and soft serve in flavors like Cupcake, Blueberry and Brown Sugar Cinnamon. Cant decide? Get the Split  half-slush, half-soft serve layered up like a parfait! Do yourself a favor and stop by ASAP.

Click here to get your business featured in this spot.

Here are the top three stories today in Healdsburg:

During its Mar. 17 hearing, the Sonoma County Planning Commission will consider updates to the Vacation Rental Ordinance. The proposed changes would create a new vacation rental license permit program, performance standards, enforcement strategies, and permanent caps on vacation rentals in areas that are disproportionately impacted by vacation rental businesses. (Press Release Desk) People in Sonoma County are expected to gather for a "Russian River Rally for Ukraine" where a bridge will be lit up in the colors of the Ukrainian flag. The event is scheduled to begin at 6:30 p.m. Friday at the Guerneville pedestrian bridge. This makes the Guerneville bridge the third over the Russian River to be lit in yellow and blue. The first bridge was the Healdsburg Memorial Bridge which was lit up back on Feb. 28. (KGO-TV) Wondering what the weather will look like in the Healdsburg area this week? Thursday is expected to bring the warmest temperatures with a high of 72 degrees. You can expect window weather starting Tuesday, with gusts of wind reaching up to 14 mph, while Wednesday and Thursday winds can reach 16 mph. (Healdsburg Patch)

Story continues

From our sponsor:

Today's Healdsburg Daily is brought to you in part by Newrez, a leading nationwide mortgage lender. Make a smart move for your future and refinance with Newrez today. Call 844-979-1707 to connect with a Newrez loan officer. Newrez, LLC (NMLS #3013)

Today in Healdsburg:

Free COVID-19 Testing At Alliance Medical Center (10:00 AM)

The Art Of Sabrage: An Outdoor Winery Experience At Breathless Wines (1:00 PM)

Favorite Things Mixed Media and Collage Works At Upstairs Art Gallery (2:30 PM)

From my notebook:

The Hollywood Reporter has given a Healdsburg hotel a shout-out in its piece on reasons to visit Napa and Sonoma! For places to stay, the article recommended The Madrona, "a sprawling 1881 residence ... reimagined" as a 24-room hotel with a "distinctive spin on Sonoma hospitality." (Hollywood Reporter)

Sonoma County and Logistics Health Incorporated (LHI) are offering free and confidential COVID-19 testing for all ages at Alliance Medical Center today from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Walk-ins are welcome, but appointments can be made online at LHI's website or by calling (888) 634-1123. (SoCoEmergency.org)

Join AERENA Galleries on Mar. 18 to meet some of the extraordinary women featured in the popular Wine Country Women of Sonoma County. Author Michelle Mandro and four other prominent women in wine will be at 115 Plaza Street from 4:30 to 6:00 p.m. RSVP here for Mandro's book signing. (Facebook)

More from our sponsors  thanks for supporting local news!

Events:

American Diabetes Association Diabetes Alert Day: Understand Your Risk (March 22)

All-You-Can-Eat Crab Feed to Benefit Disabled Veterans (March 26)

Add your event

Job listings:

Loving the Healdsburg Daily? Here are all the ways you can get more involved:

Send a friend or neighbor this link so they can subscribe

Get your local business featured in front of readers

You're all caught up for today. See you all tomorrow for another update!

 Nicole Fallon-Peek

About me: Nicole Fallon-Peek is a journalist and copywriter with a degree in Media, Culture and Communication from New York University. She has served as a freelance reporter, managing editor, copy editor, and editorial director for a variety of B2B news outlets. She currently co-owns and operates content creation agency Lightning Media Partners.

This article originally appeared on the Healdsburg Patch
ABC News

Several hosts of The View on Monday suggested that the Department of Justice should investigate Fox News host Tucker Carlson and former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard for peddling Russian propaganda, with one panelist even noting how in the past such transgressions may have resulted in arrest.

In recent days, both Gabbard and Carlson have been proponents of the theory that the United States is developing dangerous bioweapons in Ukrainea centerpiece of a Kremlin disinformation campaign to justify the invasion of its neighbor and potentially blame a Russian chemical weapons attack on a false-flag operation.

Clips of the ex-lawmaker on Carlsons show discussing bioweapons in Ukraine have been showcased across Russian state media, alongside the Fox News host saying Russian disinformation is true. Furthermore, it was reported this weekend that Moscow has pushed the state-controlled press to promote Carlson as much as possible because he sharply criticizes the actions of the United States [and] NATO.

With Republican Sen. Mitt Romney calling out Gabbard on Sunday for parroting false Russian propaganda that may well cost lives, the women of The View took turns on Monday describing the former Democratic presidential candidate and the Fox News star as apologists for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

I think Mitt Romney is absolutely right, by the way. So what this is, is the Russians are spreading propaganda to try to create a pretext for potentially using chemical weapons against the Ukrainians, said conservative guest host Alyssa Farah, a former Trump official who is now a CNN contributor. Theyre parroting what Tucker Carlson parrots on Fox News and Tulsi Gabbard is sayingits helping them get away with acts against Ukrainian civilians.

Co-host Ana Navarro then weighed in, imploring the Fox board of directors to step in and say we cannot be Russian state TV, prompting fellow panelist Sunny Hostin to wonder aloud whats in it for Carlson.

Story continues

Money, liberal co-host Joy Behar chimed in.

Is it money? Hostin replied. Whos paying him that money? Im not making any allegations, but its justit doesnt make sense that he would do this kind of thing. I mean, he also says that the United States helped encourage the Russian invasion.

After Hostin checked off a number of pro-Russian talking points that the Fox host has peddled recently, Behar quipped: I hope hes planning to move to Moscow. Hes not going to be welcome here for much longer.

Asserting that Carlson isnt getting dropped at all by Fox News, Navarro went on to urge the Justice Department to probe Carlson, Gabbard and others. (Gabbard, by the way, was recently revealed to be the only American politician that received conations from an accused Russian agent.)

I think DOJ, in the same way that it is setting up a task force to investigate Russian oligarchs, should look into people who are Russian propagandists and shilling for Putin, she declared. If you are a foreign asset to a dictator, it should be investigated, and, in fact, I remember when Tulsi Gabbard, and I hate that were discussing it because I think to myself, who is this woman? Shes a, you know, shes no longer in Congress. Shes a failed presidential candidate.

Navarro continued: She only practically exists on Twitter, and if that is correct, were giving her oxygen is what makes her relevant, but we are talking about her on Hot Topics. But on the other hand, how do you not call out something that is repeating false Russian propaganda and that has been brought down?

Moderator Whoopi Goldberg, meanwhile, took Navarro's suggestion several steps further.

They used to arrest people for doing stuff like this, she exclaimed. If they thought you were colluding with a Russian agent or putting out information or taking information and handing it over to Russia, they used to investigate stuff like this.

She added: And I guess now, you know, there seems to be no bars. And people are not being told to hate Putin. Putin doesn't need a reason to be hated. Its pretty much clear.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Get the Daily Beast's biggest scoops and scandals delivered right to your inbox. Sign up now.

Stay informed and gain unlimited access to the Daily Beast's unmatched reporting. Subscribe now.
(Getty Images)

Oligarchs deploy hypermasculinity to justify their own power and aggression. Thats true of Russian leader Vladimir Putin. But its also true  in a geekier, self-parodic, but still wearisomely predictable way  of Tesla CEO and tech billionaire Elon Musk.

Today Musk bizarrely tweeted, I hereby challenge N NN [Vladimir Putin] to single combat. He added, Stakes are NN [Ukraine]. Do you agree to this fight?

The director general of Russias space agency, Dmitry Rogozin, quickly replied, You, little devil, are still young. Compete with me weakling; It would only be a waste of time, came the reply.

The spectacle of Musk and Russian officials engaging in WWE-style boasting and chest-thumping to gin up publicity for themselves is inappropriate and ugly, to say the least. Russias aggressive invasion of Ukraine has already left thousands dead and forced millions from their homes. Its a massive humanitarian tragedy, not an opportunity for Musk to market himself.

Yet, Musks comments also highlight the way in which self-promotion, hypermasculinity, and violence are often grotesquely intertwined. As just one obvious example, Putin cultivates a cult of vigor and strength in Russia. Hes constantly having himself photographed shirtless as he does manly, outdoor things, often with horses.

Putins also tried to define Russian national identity around hatred of feminized western decadence, which he often associates with LGBT people. This rabid homophobia descended to yet another nadir recently when the leader of the Russian Orthodox church said that Russias invasion of Ukraine was justified as part of an effort to eradicate gay parades. Toxic hypermasculine bigotry justifies horrifying militaristic excesses.

Elon Musk didnt invade any countries, and his own leveraging of a quirkier, more cerebral masculinity can look at least somewhat more benign. In the past hes performed his toughness not by taking up arms, but by working 120-hour weeks. His public persona is about strength of brain, not physical strength. His company Tesla is devoted to developing green tech electric cars, while SpaceX promises to put humans on Mars in five years. This is hypermasculinity, yes, but with a geeky, supposedly socially conscious swagger.

Story continues

On closer inspection, though, Musks billionaire masculine geek energy doesnt look all that different from standard alpha-male posturing. His intense work ethic is weaponized against his own employees: hes been convicted of illegal union-busting and violating labor laws. Hes also been accused of mistreating workers  especially Black workers.

Musks ex-wife says that Musk treated her as an employee in many ways, his big man at the office schtick fitting neatly into sexist dynamics at home. Hes dabbled in transphobia, as well tweeting Pronouns suck, which most people interpreted as a veiled sneer at nonbinary peoples nonstandard pronoun choices. His on-off partner Grimes, who identifies as nonbinary and has said she is impartial to pronouns, asked Musk publicly not to target trans people, and he deleted the tweet. But kicking a marginalized community to look edgy remains ugly  not least when its a marginalized community that you know your significant other identifies with.

Musks weird offer to fight Putin isnt really out of character; its just another illustration of how his smart-guy masculinity can slide easily into traditional, aggressive, militarist masculinity.

Its also an example of how the financial and social power of oligarchs is built on and feeds into hypermasculine fantasies of physical dominance and control. Musk is joking on some level, but he obviously enjoys the image of himself battling Putin (with fists? Swords? Guns at twenty paces?) And he enjoys putting himself in the position of chivalrous heroic savior, rushing in to rescue a prostrate Ukraine so that he can  what? Declare himself king? Marry Ukraines daughter and ride off into the sunset? Accept the universal applause of Ukrainians grateful that a tech billionaire is willing to wrestle for their freedom while they are being bombed?

The exact details of the heroic narrative are fuzzy. But its clear that Dmitry Rogozin welcomed the opportunity to participate. Putin is happy to frame the war in Ukraine as a test of personal strength and masculine resolve, rather than as a brutal, callous power grab which involves shelling maternity hospitals and sending teen conscripts to be shot.

Again, Musk isnt Putin. But his empty-headed musing about physically fighting for Ukraine suggests he maybe would like to be. Powerful billionaire men often speak and act as if the only people in the world are themselves and their masculinity. At best, they sound callous and out of touch. At worst, they do what Putin is doing now.
March 14 was Wes Unselds birthday. It was also Pie Day.

Since the 1990s, the late Baltimore Bullets Hall of Fame center celebrated his birthday by baking or ordering pies to be delivered to the Unselds School in Baltimore that he and his wife Connie opened in 1978. The pies were a culinary tool to preach to the students the significance of 3.14  the mathematical proof also known as Pi and  that is defined as the ratio of a circles circumference to its diameter.

Hed have a big math lesson, recalled Kim Unseld, his daughter and principal of the Unselds School. He would write the entire number out as far as it would go on the chalkboard and then tell the students, If you dont have it memorized They would all freak out like, Oh my gosh, I have to remember all of this? But he would come in with big pieces of pie. One time, he had a McDonalds around the corner deliver 200 cherry and apple pies, and he was giving out pies to everyone.

So it seemed fitting that on what would have been Unselds 76th birthday, the Washington Wizards announced a plan to help renovate the Unselds School as part of its legacy campaign to celebrate the NBAs 75th anniversary.

The project, which will be unveiled next month, includes installing teaching areas, learning gardens, eco-friendly benches and stools, and murals in an outdoor courtyard where the students play and participate in school activities. The plan will also entail building a parent lounge area, updating school signage, and erecting in the lobby a memorial dedicated to Unseld, who died on June 2, 2020.

Kim Unseld, whose brother Wes Unseld Jr. is the head coach of the Wizards, said her father would have balked at the attention.

My father probably would have been delighted to be acknowledged, but he really felt that with all of the basketball, he just enjoyed playing the game, she said. As he always said, If you know the rules of the game, play. This, however, was another part of him that very few people truly understand how much he embraced. This was more about children getting to the best of their abilities and receiving a good education and being self starters and lifelong learners. That was my dad more than anything.

Story continues

Washington is footing the $25,000 bill for the enhancements, and team owner Ted Leonsis said the franchise wanted to honor Unseld, the Hall of Famer who served as the organizations vice president, head coach and general manager after his playing career ended in 1981.

The celebration of the 75th Anniversary of the NBA provided us the perfect opportunity to continue to shine a spotlight on Wes  as he was named to the NBA 75th Anniversary Team of all-time greatest players  and highlight the school that he and Connie started as a labor of love more than 40 years ago, Leonsis said via email. Wes poured as much of himself into this school as he did into his play of basketball and into his leadership as part of then-Bullets front office operations. Upon retirement from basketball, he was a known fixture at the school  he drove buses to field trips, served lunches to the students, and was a regular morning greeter, just to ensure each child felt exceptionally loved.

Connie Unseld, who had been married to her husband for 50 years, said she approved of the project to educate current and future generations of students about the crucial role he played in the schools beginnings.

I wanted the children to know that the Unselds School was more than just me just because Im here every day and they see me in the administration and as a teacher, said Unseld, the schools director and English and math teacher. I didnt want them to forget the fact that Mr. Unseld was the reason for the school. Without him, we couldnt exist, and we couldnt have even been established. When I asked him, Could I do this?, he said unequivocally yes. He said, Im going to support you because you supported me, and I think its a splendid suggestion, and Im happy to do it. So we went into partnership.

Kim Unseld said she was too old to attend the school, which instructs grades one through eight. But she said her brother was the schools first graduate.

He was serious, and I dont think that came lightly from my mom or my dad, she said of her father. They were very serious about their education, the education that they saw was needed, their ability to travel the world and see children learning in different environments and bring that focus home here.

Connie Unseld said her husband often greeted students when they arrived in the morning and would quiz them on their spelling and math before classes began.

He was, yes, a wonderful basketball player, but he was a man that was committed to quality in education, she said. He believed that children should be in a climate for learning and that they should be exposed to all sorts of activities. That is what we do here, and without him, it couldnt have happened.

That Washington could pay tribute to Unseld by focusing on his school in the city where he spent much of his playing career seemed appropriate to Leonsis.

Baltimore is such a special place for us, and we sought to remind fans of our deep history with the city  which we integrated in our City Edition jersey for this season, he wrote. And we started this season with an open practice at Morgan State University  and will be back towards the end of the season when we cut the ribbon on this renovation in April and bring it full circle.

The coronavirus pandemic has reduced the student body at the Unselds School to 20  less than a third of its pre-COVID enrollment. But Kim Unseld, who lost her sight 12 years ago, said she feels confident the school will rebound.

She is just as confident that her father would have appreciated the Wizards contributions.

Im sure he would have with a wink of the eye, she said. Of course, he had a game face, and we all know that game face. So hed give you the illusion, Look, Im going to tear your throat out, but with the children, my father would always have a lighthearted laugh and a ho-ho-ho. Kids would say to him, Youre the Jolly Green Giant, and he would say, Yup.
Pharmacies prepare stocks as virus antigen detection products cleared for sale

By Chu Daye, Qi Xijia (Global Times) 09:01, March 14, 2022

A number of pharmacies across China have begun to stock their shelves with COVID-19 antigen detection products, which give faster testing results than nucleic acid testing, right after the state's drug authorities cleared such products for the domestic market on Friday and as a new wave of cases hit China.

Several leading chain store pharmacies announced over the weekend that they had entered into agreements with Guangzhou-based coronavirus test kit maker Wondfo Biotech Co, a leading manufacturer of COVID-19 antigen detection products, for the sale and distribution of the products. However, it seems that the products will need a few days' time to arrive at physical stores.

A staffer with Guangzhou-based Dashenlin, a pharmacy chain that covers 16 provinces in southern and eastern China with 7,600 stores, confirmed to the Global Times on Sunday that its physical stores are stocking the antigen detection products. However, stocks were not available as of press time on Sunday.

A staff member at LBX Pharmacy in Shanghai told the Global Times on Sunday that the stores received a notice to sell COVID-19 antigen kits on Saturday, and the first batch of products will hit the market as early as Wednesday.

"A box with 20 kits will be priced at less than 600 yuan ($94.64). There will be no restrictions on purchases," the staff member said.

Chinese delivery giant Meituan also began pre-sales of the products on its site, and it said that delivery would begin on March 20 for pre-orders. The platform also teamed up with a number of chain stores to provide 30-minute delivery services within the week, Meituan said in a statement sent to the Global Times on Sunday.

On Friday, the National Health Commission announced that the general public will be able to use rapid antigen testing, a move it believed will be helpful in identifying COVID-19 cases sooner as the country has decided to promote monitoring by using both "antigen screening and nucleic acid diagnosis."

In a trial protocol announced on the same day, it stated that the groups who can use antigen testing include those who need to go to hospitals with symptoms such as respiratory tract infections or fevers, as well as people who are under quarantine observation. The products can be purchased at citizens' own accord and at pharmacies, online sales platforms and other channels.

As the antigen test product can yield a result in about 15 minutes and does not require professionals or special equipment, it is viewed as having potential. On a single test basis, the antigen test is cheaper than a nucleic acid testing, but multiple tests are suggested by experts to ensure accuracy.

A report by Zhongtai Securities Co estimated the market demand of antigen detection products may swell to the range of 212.4-319.2 billion yuan a year measured by annual sales.

The Chinese mainland reported more than 1,800 locally transmitted COVID-19 infections on Saturday, including local asymptomatic infections.

The National Medical Products Administration on Saturday approved five COVID-19 antigen self-testing products for sale, which will be used as a supplement to the standard nucleic acid testing to help fight the spread of the virus.

In addition to Wondfo, products made by Vazyme Biotech in Nanjing and Jinwofu Bioengineering Tech in Beijing were also among the approved items, according to China Central Television.

A sales manager with Beijing Jinwofu Bioengineering Technology Co said the company's daily output, now being ramped up to 1.7 million units per day for the domestic market, is being prioritized for Northeast China's Jilin Province and "demand far outstrips supply."

In Jilin, where case numbers have increased rapidly, a resident told the Global Times that the test kits might be handed out to those in need by the government as current community lockdowns to prevent purchases at physical stores.

On Meituan, test kits made by Jinwofu cost 32.8 yuan per unit.

Industry insiders said that the antigen tests can be conducted by those in need at home, and they could meet the needs of grass-roots medical institutions that lack sufficient nucleic acid testing capacity.

Compared with nucleic acid testing, the antigen testing kits are much cheaper and more convenient. The results of antigen testing also have a strong value, even though the kits are less sensitive than nucleic acid testing, said Zhang Wenhong, head of the Center for Infectious Diseases with the Shanghai-based Huashan Hospital of Fudan University, in an interview with Shanghai Media Group on Friday.

Experts said that amid the recent spread of the Omicron variant, antigen self-testing products could help shore up the nation's prevention capacity against the possible larger scale of imported cases when the international community further reduces restrictions and China gradually opens up in the future.

(Web editor: Peng yukai, Liang Jun)
A woman interrupted a Russian state TV broadcast on Monday evening to call condemn the Moscow-led invasion of Ukraine and warn viewers of propaganda, journalists for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Meduza have reported.

The protester burst out behind what's said to be a veteran news anchor during the 9 p.m. broadcast with a homemade sign that read: "Stop the war. Don't believe in propaganda. They're lying to you."

The woman, reportedly named Marina Ovsyannikova, said in a message recorded beforehand that she is of both Russian and Ukrainian descent, and she's ashamed about working for Kremlin propaganda, per a translation from Meduza's Kevin Rothrock.

According to the Times' Anton Troianovski and Rothrock, Ovsyannikova is an employee of the network that aired the broadcast  Channel One. She has now been arrested, says the Journal's Matthew Luxmoore.

Channel One is one of the most popular state-run channels in Russia, and "pushes Putin's propaganda about the war in Ukraine," The Daily Beast reports. The network is now conducting an "internal review" of the incident, according to TASS news agency.

In the wake of a new censorship law that threatens those who challenge the government's official war narrative with up to 15 years in prison, Russian news outlets reporting on Ovsyannikova's protest have had to blur out her sign, Rothrock notes.

Less than 2 hours later, thousands have commented on Ovsyannikova's Facebook page, thanking her for taking a stand, per Troianovski.

You may also like

GOP senator says a war between NATO and Russia 'would end pretty quickly'

Shock and awe: An unprecedented financial conflict

There's a way to bring down gas prices, but you won't like it
On a stormy Florida day, beachgoers at Fort Myers Beach found themselves fleeing a waterspout as it moved onshore, causing light damage to property and enveloping two people.

As a large storm system brought winter weather to the northeastern United States on Saturday, March 12, parts of the Southeast were being struck by severe weather, including tornadoes.

At first, people on the beach seemed to be admiring and cheering on the developing waterspout, which was clearly visible as it churned up the ocean water just offshore. However, the mood soured as the rotating column of water quickly made a beeline for the shore, with screams of fear drowning out the music playing on the beach.

When a waterspout moves onshore, meteorological nomenclature dictates that the vortex is renamed a tornado. Once this one moved onto the beach, it tossed sand and debris into the air as it passed over the Lani Kai Island Resort, according to reporting from the Fort Myers News-Press.

Video from that day shows two people getting swallowed up by the storm as it raced ashore. Thankfully, according to WINK News Meteorologist Dylan Federico, both were uninjured.

One waitress at a local beachfront restaurant, Shucker's At The Gulfshore, had a great view of the tornado as it started tossing items into the air as it moved ashore.

"I was just trying to check out a patch at a table because it started to rain a little heavy," said Lisa Wanjiku, a waitress at Shucker's told the Fort Myers News-Press. "When I turned around, it was picking up chairs and strollers, and trashcans were flying all over the place."

Thankfully, the damage sustained was minimal, and the tornado was rated an EF0 with peak winds of around 65 mph, according to the National Weather Service.

"We've enjoyed the atmosphere and the weather here in Fort Myers Beach for years now. Of course, we know it can change on occasion, and that's what happened today," Dale Groombridge, a tourist visiting from Canada, told WINK News.

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.
The video shows a Russian missile launcher sitting in the open. Suddenly, it is enveloped in a huge fireball.

Ukrainian officials say what looked like a video game was actually the work of a small, relatively cheap Turkish-made drone that has had a surprisingly lethal impact on Russia forces.

A U.S. defense official said Monday that Ukraine has made terrific use of Turkish Bayraktar TB2 unmanned aerial vehicles, which can loiter over tanks and artillery and destroy them with devastatingly accurate missile fire. The official said the U.S. is working to help keep the drones flying.

Ukraine received a new shipment of the drones this month, Ukraines defense minister said on Facebook. He didnt say how many. Its unclear whether the U.S. has made efforts to facilitate the supply of the Turkish drone or other similar systems to Ukraine, in addition to the Javelin anti-tank and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles it is providing.

Before the war began, military experts predicted that Russian forces would have little trouble dealing with Ukraines complement of as many as 20 Turkish drones. With a price tag in the single-digit millions, the Bayraktars are far cheaper than drones like the U.S. Reaper but also much slower and smaller, with a wingspan of 39 feet.

As so often has been the case in this war, however, the experts misjudged the competence of the Russian military.

Its quite startling to see all these videos of Bayraktars apparently knocking out Russian surface-to-air missile batteries, which are exactly the kind of system thats equipped to shoot them down, said David Hambling, a London-based drone expert.

That is confounding, Hambling said, because the drones should be easy for the Russians to blow out of the sky  or disable with electronic jamming.

It is literally a World War I aircraft, in terms of performance, he said. Its got a 110-horsepower engine. It is not stealthy. It is not supersonic. Its a clay pigeon  a real easy target.

Story continues

If nothing else, the Russians should be able to down the drones with fighter jets, Hambling said. But without air superiority, Russia hasnt been flying regular combat air patrols. As for electronic jamming, one of the mysteries of the Ukraine invasion is why the Russians havent made more use of what experts believe is their advanced electronic warfare capability.

The bottom line is that the Turkish drones continue to star in videos shared across Twitter and other social media platforms that feature them blowing Russian vehicles to smithereens. Ukrainians have even praised them in song. Its unclear how many have been shot down, but some, at least, remain effective, U.S. officials said.

It is puzzling, Hambling said. It may be massive incompetence by the Russians. It may be that the Ukrainians have discovered some sneaky tactics they can use.

Its hardly the first time the Bayraktar has played an important role in an armed conflict.

Azerbaijan used small Turkish-made drones to devastating effect against the Armenian military in 2020, bringing a decisive end to a stalemate over a disputed enclave that had gone on for years.

Video released by Azerbaijan shows the drones pummeling artillery, tank and troop emplacements surrounded by trenches that offered no protection whatsoever from the fiery death raining down from above.

The Turkish drones also had a significant impact in battles against Russian-made military gear in Libya and Syria.

The drones are manufactured by Baykar Technology, whose chief technology officer, Selcuk Bayraktar, is a son-in-law of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Im sure its going to be selling extremely well, Hambling said.

Many experts have argued that another type of unmanned weapons system would be even more helpful to Ukrainian forces: a so-called kamikaze drone, a vehicle packed with explosives that is essentially a smart guided missile launched miles away from a target. Two Israeli companies make versions of those drones, the Harop and the Hero. The U.S. military fields a system called the Switchblade, the larger version of which can destroy tanks. That weapon isnt approved for export except to the U.K.

Turkey, which has sought to maintain friendly relations with both Russia and the West, was sanctioned by the U.S. in December 2020 over its purchase of Russian S-400 missile defense systems. Erdogan declined to say Monday whether Turkey would buy more Russian weapons.

Under the current circumstances, it would be premature to talk about what the future shows right now, he said Monday during a visit to Germany, according to Reuters. We have to see what the conditions bring. We have to maintain our friendship with Mr. Zelenskyy and Mr. Putin.
Niki Nikoubin (AP)

A woman has been arrested for allegedly stabbing a man in revenge for the 2020 death of Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani by the United States.

Nika Nikoubin met her victim at the Sunset Station hotel on 5 March when she stabbed him half-way through having sex, according to the Henderson Police Department.

The man, who was blindfolded, told police he felt a pain on the side of his neck following the alleged stabbing by 21-year-old Ms Nikoubin, who has since been arrested on attempted murder charges.

A police report seen by KLAS-TV said Ms Nikoubin pushed the man away from her and ran from the room before phoning 911, who were told a man was stabbed. She also told hotel workers.

When talking to police, Ms Nikoubin told an investigator that she wanted revenge against US troops for the killing of Qassem Soleimani in 2020, and that the song Grave Digger had provided motivation for attacking the man, who she met on an online dating app.

Soleimani was the top Iranian military leader killed in a US drone strike in January 2020 following his reported involvement in Irans foreign operations, including against ISIS prior to 2017, and was described by former US president Donald Trump as the number-one terrorist anywhere in the world.

Ms Nikoubin has also been charged with battery with a deadly weapon and burglary, and is due to appear in court on 24 March, KLAS-TV reported. The mans condition meanwhile remains unclear.

The Las Vegas Review Journal reported that Ms Nikoubin, who is being held on a $60,000 (46,000) bail. told police she did not intend to kill the man. It remains unclear if she has a lawyer.

Additional reporting by The Associated Press.
Thirty years after the disappearance of his wife, a Georgia man was found guilty of murdering her and concealing her death, authorities say.

Kevin James Lee was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole  the only allowable sentence under the law that applied at the time the crime was committed, according to the District Attorneys Office of the Coweta Judicial Circuit.

Ann Margaret Berry was reported missing by her sister after she disappeared in 1991.

Her body wasnt found until 20 years later, in 2011. Her husband, Lee, was charged with her death shortly after, according to the release. But it took another 10 years for Lee to finally face a jury.

A tumultuous marriage

The mystery surrounding Berrys disappearance began in 1991.

In the spring of 1991, Berry was pregnant with her third child and seemed very excited about it, District Attorney John Herbert Cranford said in a news release.

But friends and family described the relationship between Berry and Lee as tumultuous and said that Lee was often physically violent with the woman.

The victims family saw bruises and marks on the victims body and face, and saw holes in the walls of the home where the victim had been thrown into the walls, Cranford said in the release.

On July 4, 1991, authorities say Berry called her sister asking if she and her children could move in with her as she could no longer endure the abuse. The sister received a similar call on July 31, 1991 when Berry told her she was packing and would drive to her sisters house shortly.

Berry never made it to her sisters home and was never heard from again, the district attorney said.

When the sister asked Lee about Berry, the defendant said that she had left with her boyfriend. Within a week, Lee took the children and moved to Kansas, according to the release. He never filed a police report.

When the victims sister went to the home to clean it out, she found the victims clothing, jewelry, makeup and other personal effects still in the residence, the district attorney said.

Story continues

The sister filed a missing persons report in 1991 and 1997, but for years, there was no development in the case.

Until 2011, when two boys were camping in the woods  less than 100 yards behind Berrys home, according to the release.

As they dug a fire pit, they came across a buried plastic bag containing skeletal remains, the release said.

Remains identified

Authorities were able to identify the remains as Berry.

CCSO Major John Lewis started an investigation and, 20 years after Berrys disappearance, he obtained a warrant against Lee for murder and concealing the death of another.

In 2018, Lee was arrested after he was found living in California. He was extradited to Coweta County in 2019.

Thirty years after her murder, on March 7, 2022, the case was finally brought to trial in the Superior Court of Coweta County.

After two days of trial, it took the jury about an hour to reach a verdict. They found Lee guilty on both counts.

In the release, Cranford conveyed his immense respect for the victims sister, who never stopped looking for her and who fought for justice for 30 years. Without her, this case would not have resulted in a guilty verdict.

She was an amazing woman, loved her kids. I always babysat for her, she was my best friend, one commenter said on a Facebook post about the news. And it was so hard when I found out what he had done to her. But now Ann is at (rest) and peace.

If you are experiencing domestic violence and need someone to talk to, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline for support at 1-800-799-7233 or text START to 88788.

Georgia man vanished before Christmas 43 years ago. His body was just identified in WA

Woman was found dead under bridge in 2009. Her cab driver was just arrested, SC cops say

Bite mark leads police to suspected killer of CA woman in 28-year cold case, cops say

Car found at the bottom of a Mississippi canal was stolen 17 years ago, deputies say
By Andrea Shalal and David Lawder

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The World Bank on Monday approved nearly $200 million in additional and reprogrammed financing to bolster Ukraines support of vulnerable people as Russian forces continued the biggest attack on a European state since World War Two.

The funding comes on top of $723 million approved last week and is part of a $3 billion package of support that the World Bank is racing to get to Ukraine and its people in coming weeks.

World Bank President David Malpass told a virtual event hosted by the Washington Post that the bank hoped to finalize the $3 billion package within six to eight weeks.

"The magnitudes are astronomical," he said of Ukraine's needs, adding that the rebuilding effort would involve highways, bridges and other major infrastructure.

"That amounts to tens of billions of dollars," he said.

To help Ukraine now, the bank was bringing forward "as much cash as we can," Malpass said. He said it was also working on specific projects to help Ukrainians, some of whom were now living in Poland and elsewhere, under the $3 billion package.

"Our immediate focus right now ... is how do we help the people that are under attack at the moment?"

Malpass later met with Polish economy minister Piotr Nowak and told him the World Bank was ready to support Poland through financing and advisory services as it grapples with an influx of Ukrainian refugees.

The two leaders also discussed the impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on the global economy, including vulnerabilities related to food inflation and insecurity and surging energy prices, the World Bank said.

Separately, it said Austria had provided 10 million euros ($11 million) for a multi-donor trust fund set up by the World Bank to facilitate channeling grant resources from donors to Ukraine. That brought the total amount in the fund to $145 million, the bank said.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal and David Lawder; Editing by Tim Ahmann)
LUSAKA, Zambia (AP)  Zambia has declared seven days of national mourning following the death of the country's fourth president, Rupiah Banda, at the age of 85.

Banda, who was president from 2008 until 2011, died after a long battle with colon cancer, his son Andrew Banda has confirmed.

President Hakainde Hichilema declared the period of national mourning and said that Banda's state funeral will be held Thursday and he will be buried Friday at the presidential burial site at Embassy Park. Hichilema had visited Banda a day before his death on Friday last week.

Banda became president following the death of his predecessor Levy Mwanawasa who had earlier brought him out of political retirement to become vice president.

Banda's political activism began when he was a youth and was involved in demonstrations calling for Zambia's independence from Britain, which was achieved in 1964. He later served as a diplomat and a soccer administrator.

Banda was known for a warm personality that helped him to lead the nation when Zambia needed a unifier upon the unexpected death of Mwanawasa.

When President Mwanawasa died, we needed someone to unite the nation and his (Banda's) personality fitted him to become president, he said.

Civil society activist Laura Miti tweeted, the death of president Rupiah Banda feels like being orphaned or when the last of your parents' siblings dies  who will be the adult in the room?
A Romanian national has been sent to prison in relation to an ATM-skimming conspiracy in parts of Virginia, West Virginia and North Carolina.

Marius Catalui, 47, pleaded guilty in June to access device fraud and aggravated identity theft, and on Monday he was sentenced to 30 months in a federal prison, a release from the U.S. Attorneys Office in the Western District of Virginia stated.

Catalui had been indicted on 23 fraud and theft counts by a grand jury, court records show.

According to court documents, between December 2018 and May 2019, Catalui and others worked together to obtain personal identifying information, including debit and credit card numbers and PINs from bank customers, and used the data to make unauthorized cash withdrawals.

The group utilized device-making equipment, commonly referred to as skimming devices, to facilitate the scheme by installing them into card readers on ATMs at federally insured banks throughout the region. They also placed small hidden cameras on the ATMs allowing them to see and then steal the PIN and account numbers, the release said.

Once they had the information, Cataluis group would re-encode the information onto blank plastic cards and use them to withdraw over $300,000 before they were caught, the release stated.

The criminal complaint against Catauli states that skimming devices installed by the group were placed at banks in 11 areas including Henry, Appomattox, Campbell, Montgomery and Roanoke counties; Rocky Mount; Roanoke; Vinton; Mars Hill, N.C.; and Raleigh County and Sophia in West Virginia.

The U.S. Secret Service was assisted by sheriffs offices in the counties of Henry, Patrick, Botetourt, Roanoke and Campbell and the police departments in Farmville, Blacksburg and Lynchburg, the release said.

Court records show Catalui was also ordered to pay $351,642 in restitution to the banks that were affected by the thefts.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Coleman Adams prosecuted the case, the release stated.
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
LA VISTA  Southern Sarpy County will get $3.5 million closer to completing a massive sewer project that opens the less developed part of the county to new housing, businesses and jobs.

North Omaha and the people who visit, shop and dine in its historic 24th Street corridor will see $3 million in improvements for new sidewalks, traffic signals, roundabouts, parking, bus stops and bike lanes.

La Vista walkers and cyclists near the site Walmart once occupied near 84th and Harrison Streets will get $5 million for two new trails and a path underneath 84th Street. The tunnel will connect both sides of La Vista Central Park, east and west of 84th Street, to the new $300 million La Vista City Centre redevelopment project.

South Sioux City residents should be able to flush toilets with confidence come June 2023 because the citys planned new wastewater treatment plant is getting a $5 million infusion.

And people hospitalized because of gang violence will get counseling from peers about services they might need to find a way out, through $527,000 in funds for a program of the University of Nebraska Medical Center and University of Nebraska at Omaha.

These projects represent Nebraskas $17 million slice of earmarked funds, secured as part of the $1.5 trillion spending bill Congress passed last week to keep the government running.

Congressional leaders revived earmarks  what they now call member-directed spending  last year, and Republicans and Democrats alike requested funding for thousands of projects.

Only two members of Nebraskas five-member congressional delegation got earmarks approved in the omnibus spending bill: 2nd District Rep. Don Bacon of Omaha and 3rd District Rep. Adrian Smith of Gering.

Bacon secured $12 million in projects for the Omaha area. He said he tried to spread projects throughout the district after getting input from city, county and Chamber of Commerce leaders.

He said he wishes Congress would vote on spending in a normal process instead of lumping it into Christmas-tree bills that include vital operations that need immediate funds.

Im not a fan of earmarks, but once part of the process, I did not want to leave NE02 out of consideration, he said.

Smith, who represents the states most conservative district, declined to comment about his $5 million earmark. But in South Sioux City, City Administrator Lance Hedquist celebrated it.

The Smith earmark, on top of a $12.2 million federal grant in 2020, offset more than a third of the $45 million cost of building a new sewage treatment plant.

The northeast Nebraska city has sent its waste to a plant run by Sioux City, Iowa, since the 1960s. But Sioux City leaders recently gave its Nebraska neighbors four years to build a plant of its own.

South Sioux City aims to have the new plant up and running by June 2023.

This helps ratepayers in town move through this crisis, Hedquist said. Its a great help to the project.

Nebraska Examiner is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Nebraska Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Cate Folsom for questions: info@nebraskaexaminer.com. Follow Nebraska Examiner on Facebook and Twitter.
We have used your information to see if you have a subscription with us, but did not find one. Please use the button below to verify an existing account or to purchase a new subscription.
Malian authorities, dominated by the military, announced on Sunday that they were banning the movement of civilians in the border area with Mauritania, where a number of Mauritanians disappeared in early March.

They also announced the opening of an investigation by the military court in Bamako.

These disappearances, two months after the death of seven Mauritanians on Malian territory in early January, triggered tension with Mauritania at a time when the Malian junta, under international pressure, was trying to strengthen ties with its neighbor.

Mauritania has openly accused the Malian army of recurring criminal acts against its citizens.

Mali sent a mission to Mauritania on Friday and Saturday to try to appease Nouakchott.

The two countries have agreed to create a joint mission to investigate the disappearances, a joint statement issued Saturday said.

Mali will share as soon as possible the fruits of the investigation it promised after the January deaths, the results of which are still pending, much to Mauritanian frustration. The two countries have agreed to establish joint patrols in the border area.

Malian government spokesman Colonel Abdoulaye Maiga announced in a statement Sunday that the military authorities (had) decided to strictly prohibit any movement of civilians in the areas of the Wagadou forest and the Gringale forest, in the area where the Mauritanians disappeared.
US has exported more gas to Spain than Algeria so far this year as new players seek a foothold in the Spanish gas market.

Spanish authorities have often complained at the insufficient gas flow through the Medgaz pipeline which couldnt match the amount the Spanish market was receiving through the Maghreb-Europe pipeline that used to cross Morocco until it was unilaterally halted by Algiers last October.

According to statistics by Enagas, a company that runs Spains gas supply and network, Spain has imported 37,000 Gwh worth of gas in the first two months this year.

The US supplied 12.5 Gwh, or 32% of the Spanish gas market share, far ahead of Algeria with only23.2 % or 8.8 Gwh.

Nigeria has supplied 21% of Spains gas needs threatening to further eat into Algerias market share.

Analysts say the drop in Algerian gas exports are largely to blame for the lack of vision by the Algerian leadership after unilaterally halting a pipeline with 13 billion cubic meter capacity of gas.

The Medgaz pipeline has already been operating at full capacity of 8 bcm per year when the decision to halt the Maghreb-Europe pipeline was announced.

Besides, using only one pipeline exposes Algerian exports to the risk of rupture in the case of a breakdown or reparations of the pipeline, further raising fears in Spain regarding the reliability of Algeria as a stable gas supplier.

The war in Ukraine has added a strain to the international gas market as Spain seeks to diversify its gas suppliers.

In May 2017, the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies issued a report entitled Algerian Gas: Troubling Trends, Troubled Policies. The document points out to the depletion of Algerian gas and the declining export capacity.

Algeria would be left with only 15 bcm/year to export by 2030. In a lower production or high demand scenarios, it will cease exporting all together, therefore importing gas beyond any such a point, said the report.
Jaouhar Ben Mbarek, leader of Citoyens contre le coup dEtat [Citizens against the Coup dEtat], a movement opposed to President Kais Saieds July 25 exceptional measures, has indicated that he has been banned from leaving the country.

Mbarek on his facebook account did not reveal the rationale behind authorities move. The politician and activist is a harsh and outspoken critic of the President over what his movement brands as a coup detat.

Saied on July 25 seized all major powers after he fired the then Prime Minister, seized the executive power and froze the activities of the parliament. He argued that the move was meant to restore the country.

Mbarek, who is Professor of constitutional law, lately laid into Saied for using the judiciary power to settle his political scores.

The Tunisian President last month dissolved the High Judicial Council, the countrys judicial independent body that he accuses of being in league with some politicians and refusal to rule over some corruption and assassination cases in the country.

He who keeps quiet before injustice, becomes accomplice, that is the reason why the High Judicial Council has been dissolved and will be replaced by a temporary council, in view of ending impunity, Saied told the ministers.

Mbarek however argued that removal of the councils members is illegal and null.
The 15th energy conference of the MENA region opened Monday in Rabat, under the theme Energy transition: progress report and prospects for 2035, with the participation of the United Arab Emirates as guest of honor.

The conference, held under the High Patronage of King Mohammed VI, brings together Moroccan and foreign institutional personalities who will discuss the future prospects of a highly strategic sector.

The aim is to take stock of the new energy demand, taking into account the health crisis and its economic repercussions on the national, continental and international scale.

The conferences themes will be debated at the level of four panels, in particular the acceleration of the deployment of renewable energies; the introduction of natural gas as a vector of competitiveness for national industry; hydrogen; and the decarbonization of industry.

The conference provides opportunity for Morocco and the UAE to exchange experiences in matters of renewable energies and to explore ways of strengthening cooperation and developing partnerships between the two countries in the field.

Morocco, which is pioneer in energy transition in Africa, intends to go further in its ambition, as evidenced by the New Development Model (NMD) which makes of energy transition a crucial choice.

The Kingdom has already implemented an ambitious strategy in this area, and ambitions to make of energy a lever of attractiveness and development, and a tool of competitiveness around price criteria and low-carbon production methods.

Emirati minister of Industry and Advanced Technologies, Sultan bin Ahmed Al Jaber, who is leading his countrys delegation to the energy conference, held side talks with his Moroccan peer Ryad Mezzour that focused on means to promote trade and industrial bilateral relations and the possibility to carry out joint industrial projects.

During their meeting, the two officials agreed to create a joint task force entrusted with exploring avenues of cooperation in industrial complementarity between the two countries.
For years, Joe Schulz had talked to his father about one day taking over the family farm in Seward County and becoming the fifth generation to do so.

But the path seemed uncertain, if not impossible, when he graduated from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2018.

I always figured Id farm at some point, but I didnt know when, Joe Schulz said. I had conversations with my dad in high school and college, but, with farming trends, it didnt make a lot of sense.

Years of low commodity prices had hurt family farms across the state and nation, including the Schulz operation, which was focused on growing 1,300 or so acres of corn and soybeans near Goehner.

That was, until 2018, when a new company showed up in Seward County looking for farms to raise thousands of chickens for a proposed processing plant near Fremont. Lincoln Premium Poultry wanted ag operations in eastern Nebraska and western Iowa to produce rotisserie chickens for Costco.

And though the Schulzes were hesitant at first, they decided the poultry barns offered a new potential revenue stream  and an opportunity for Joe Schulz to become the latest generation in his family to farm near Goehner.

We decided it was a good way to expand the family business while bringing another family member in and diversifying our operation, he said.

While both of the proposed poultry operations in Lancaster County met opposition  one in the southwest part of the county will be built after litigation; the other near Raymond Central High School was denied a permit by county commissioners  the poultry barns were welcomed with open arms one county to the west.

Jonathan Jank, president and CEO of the Seward County Chamber and Development Partnership, said the Schulzes are one of seven families in the county raising chickens for Lincoln Premium Poultry.

Nearly all of them have similar stories, Jank said, with the new barns often bringing a young person back to their hometowns to become the latest to work in the family business.

Its been amazing to see fourth and fifth generations come back to the farm, he said. Thats what Ive realized when analyzing commodity prices going up and down: Livestock diversifies operations.

Though Schulz Poultry is less than 4 years old, it tapped into a branch of Joe Schulzs family tree that was nearly a century old.

His great-grandfather, Erle Smiley, founded and ran a hatchery in the Seward area in the 1930s, later becoming an international poultry judge. But, between then and now, the family had switched its focus to row crops.

In that time, large-scale poultry barns largely disappeared from Nebraska  so much so that the Schulzes held a town hall meeting to inform their neighbors about the barns they hoped to build.

We held an open house in Goehner because people didnt know what poultry barns looked like, said Jim Schulz, Joes uncle and a partner in Schulz Poultry. It was more curiosity than opposition.

In the end, the Schulzes proposal to build the barns sailed through the Seward County Planning Commission and county board before becoming reality. The first chickens arrived at four barns on the Schulz property in March 2019. Four more opened in January.

Each of the eight barns holds 45,000 birds, which arrive at just a couple hours old and spend the next 42-44 days in the barns. During that time, producers follow a regimen regarding temperature, food, light, etc., prescribed by Lincoln Premium Poultry.

Once birds reach the right age, theyre transported from their home barns to Fremont, where Lincoln Premium Poultry processes 2 million birds a week, said Jessica Kolterman, a Seward native and spokeswoman for the company.

The seven poultry farms in Seward County represent just a small portion of the companys operations, which stretch from York County on the west into Iowa and from Dixon County to  eventually  southwestern Lancaster County.

The plant in Fremont processed its first chickens in September 2019.

The whole organization was about a $550 million investment by Costco, and farmers invested close to that collectively, Kolterman said. In Seward County alone, its probably about a $35 million investment.

Jank had similar numbers, citing a 2018-19 estimate that placed the increase in property tax valuation for Seward County subdivisions at $35 million, and that was before the Schulzes built four more barns. Latest figures linked 40 new jobs to the 40 broiler barns.

The ripple effect doesnt stop there, either, he said.

These poultry facilities are the best of both worlds, Jank said. You talk to local implement dealers, the bank, the car dealerships  all have been positively impacted by projects.  It impacts insurance, restaurants, all those things.

Joe and Jim Schulz echoed those sentiments, noting that those working to build the barns often visited restaurants in Goehner, Utica and Seward, and if they needed equipment, they headed to the hardware store in Beaver Crossing.

I think it helped a lot in that way, Joe Schulz said. Weve got a full-time guy and a part-time guy, so were adding to the economy, and were paying a lot of property taxes to our school district.

And helping guarantee the future of the Schulz farm relied heavily on revisiting its past, something that isnt lost on Jim Schulz.

It means a lot, he said. My grandfather had five sons, so he had a built-in succession plan for his business. My dad and uncle farmed together for 50 years.  Theres probably a tear in the eye of my dad and grandpa looking down.
A 39-year-old North Platte man was sentenced Monday to six to 12 years in state prison on a weapon possession charge.

Aaron D. Kirts received the term during an appearance in Lincoln County District Court for the Feb. 24, 2020, incident.

He also was handed a three-year prison term to run at the same time for resisting arrest in a separate case.

He was credited with 779 days served.

Kirts pleaded no contest Jan. 18 to the charges, which included an amended count of possession of a firearm by a prohibited person, first offense.

Kirts, who has a lengthy criminal history, had been convicted previously of possession of a deadly weapon by a prohibited person in 2005, 2016 and 2018.

According to court records, the Lincoln County Sheriffs Office located Kirts  who had an active arrest warrant  and a 22-year-old woman in a vehicle at the Kansas Point Campground at Lake Maloney on Feb. 24, 2020.

The 22-year-old, who was driving, attempted to flee from the pursuing deputies, but lost control of the vehicle and hit a tree.

The woman was arrested at the scene, but Kirts fled into a nearby wooded area.

He was arrested about 1 a.m. after a resident saw him on their property southwest of the lake.

The next day, Kirts placed a call from the Lincoln County Detention Center in which he asked Audie E. Hazen to do him a favor and retrieve a black tactical bag from the bushes at the Kansas Point Campground.

Deputies went to the campground after they received a tip about the phone call. They found a small black shoulder bag with a pistol grip sticking out of the bag.

An H&R Sportsman .22 revolver with eight rounds in the cylinder was found in the bag.

Hazen was sentenced in March to one to two years for being an accessory to a felony.

Sign up for our Crime & Courts newsletter Get the latest in local public safety news with this weekly email. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
David Solomon, chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Photo: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Over the weekend, Time published an interview with Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon that started off with a question about what the Wall Street investment bank should be doing about Russia following its invasion of Ukraine. Solomon, who recently pulled his bank out of the country and is winding down its contracts there, took an interesting stance in his response:

Well, I dont know that its the job of large financial institutions to ostracize Russia. We operate in a financial system that has a regulatory and government overlay. The [U.S.] government, I think in this case appropriately, has decided to place sanctions on Russia. And its our job to make sure that we are executing against the legal letter of the law of those sanctions, but also the spirit of those sanctions, which basically require us to wind our business down in Russia 

I dont think businesses are supposed to decide how global trade works in the world. Government sets policy and then businesses follow that policy. I happen to agree very strongly with the policy. Whats going on in Ukraine is absolutely horrible. I think the actions taken are reasonable and powerful actions. But you ask, are we doing a good job, ostracizing Russia? Thats not our job. And by us, I mean the financial industry broadly. But its not  I know on social media at the moment, theres a call for companies to ostracize Russia. I dont understand how we ostracize Russia. We follow the laws  both in the letter and the spirit.

What is a Wall Street CEO to do these days? Lloyd Blankfein, Solomons predecessor, told me that Russias invasion had crossed everyones moral threshold, and supported the unprecedented economic sanctions that governments around the world implemented. Goldman, as Solomon mentions in the interview, has already pulled out of the country and is winding down contracts, even though it is still reportedly pitching Russian bonds to hedge funds and advising them to sock it away in personal accounts to avoid scrutiny. (This is allowed by U.S. sanctions, and the bank told CNBC, which broke the story: Winding down our operations in Russia and supporting our clients around the globe in managing and closing out their market obligations are not mutually exclusive.)

But unlike the tone that Solomon struck in the interview, Goldman has not taken a passive role on Russias economic policy during the last 30 years. In 1992, the bank rushed in to advise former President Boris Yeltsin on the shock treatment transition to capitalism after the fall of the Soviet Union. It has collected more than $114 million in fees there over the years. During the Clinton administration, former Goldman co-chairman Robert Rubin  who was then Treasury secretary  was one of the architects of a failed loan from the International Monetary Fund to prop up the country, before Russia devalued its currency. Its not like the term Government Sachs came out of nowhere.

Wall Streets overall record on activism has also been mixed at best. Back in 2018, Citigroup, Bank of America, and other major banks stopped doing business with companies that sell firearms. That led more conservative and gun-friendly states to say theyd stop doing business with them. Texas passed a law that would bar the state from doing some of its underwriting business with companies that discriminate against gun companies, and legislatures in Arizona, Kentucky, Missouri, Ohio, South Dakota, and West Virginia have proposed similar bills. And if that had any effect on the firearms industry, it doesnt appear to have shown up in recent sales  as 2020 and 2021 were the two biggest years for gun sales on record.

In reality, Goldman has a history of ignoring the social costs of doing business with unsavory governments. As Bloomberg reporter Sridhar Natarajan points out, Solomon didnt wait too long to show his face in Saudi Arabia after Mohammed bin Salmans elite security detail lured a Washington Post journalist to his death. Solomon has also aggressively moved into China after the country cracked down on Hong Kongs independence.

Still, the U.S. is engaged in an economic war against Russia, and Goldman  as a private-sector agent of that economy  is caught in the middle. Even saying were just going to follow the law amounts to a kind of policy prescription, at least for how other companies should act. Its also a bit of a rebuke to companies like Facebook parent Meta, which went out of its way to play footsie with nation building by briefly allowing for users to call for the death of Vladimir Putin.

Goldman has a history of entering and leaving Russia as its economy has gone up and down. Solomon, as the head of an investment bank that does business with oil producers and miners and governments, wouldnt want to stop doing business with one of the worlds largest and most natural-resource-rich countries in the world if and when the war is over.

Sign Up for the Intelligencer Newsletter Daily news about the politics, business, and technology shaping our world. Email This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice and to receive email correspondence from us.
You can sign up to follow the Larry Ray trial by email. Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photo: Jane Rosenberg/Reuters

The photo showed three Sarah Lawrence College roommates smiling gleefully on a trip to a museum. Their expressions are easily recognizable  a group of young friends enjoying a day away from campus.

The jury saw that photo of Santos Rosario and his friends on the first day of the trial of Larry Ray, who is accused of verbally, physically, and psychologically abusing a group of his daughters former college roommates, and of turning those students into a criminal enterprise that engaged in racketeering and sex trafficking.

By the end of the second day, the jury had heard a recording of Ray ordering Rosario to get on all fours and crawl like a dog across his living room floor.

Not even two years separate that photograph from that recording.

In the first few days of the Ray trial last week in federal court in lower Manhattan, the prosecutions first job was to make sense of this strange and awful story, as bright-eyed college sophomores become Rays miserable disciples.

When you have cases like this one, its really important to reduce the sense of otherness that can happen when people have been victimized as part of a coercive control group, said Moira Penza, a former assistant U.S. Attorney who prosecuted NXIVM leader Keith Raniere, who last year was sentenced to 120 years for sex trafficking and other charges similar to those faced by Ray.

There are a lot of people who instinctively think, That could never be me. That could never be my son or daughter. That could never be my friend, Penza said. Prosecutors will attempt to break this notion down by showing the jury how vulnerabilities are exploited, about how its a slow creep, about how trust is built at the beginning  about how information that can be used against someone is gathered.

The trip to the museum.

For Rosario, now 30, it all started with a girl. During his freshman year at Sarah Lawrence, he dated Talia, Rays intensely devoted daughter, who raved about her heroic, righteous father. By the time Ray moved into Talias dorm sophomore year, she and Rosario had broken up. Still, they remained close friends and Rosario, 19 at the time, looked to Ray, who was then 50, for all manner of advice and guidance.

I thought he was very cool, very smart, very composed, and very inspirational, Rosario said, describing the first night he met Ray in 2010. Ray offered him both emotional and physical guidance. Sarah Lawrence students remembered Ray encouraging Rosario to work out, making him and others do push-ups daily. I ended up confiding in him a lot about issues I had with my family, my depression that I struggled with in high school, Rosario said.

From there, the relationship quickly became a nightmare.

Rosarios indoctrination began with Ray forcing Rosario to write and frequently revise dubious confession statements. Ray would accuse Rosario of harming him or others in various ways; Rosario would deny it. Ray would then insult him, attack him, or threaten to abandon him, which would spur Rosario to admit to doing things which, he said now in court, that he didnt actually remember doing.

Larry kept insisting I was lying, Rosario said. I was convinced that if Larry said it wasnt true, it couldnt be true because hes such an honest man, and hes been my friend, so I must be confused, and I must be misremembering or I must not want to remember what I did.

These accusations started small: Ray told Rosario he wasted his time on purpose, or distracted his daughter from schoolwork. But they grew increasingly baroque. The jury heard audio of Rosario confessing under pressure to poisoning Ray and recording their conversations at the behest of a shadowy conspiracy.

They were shown a video in which Rosarios sister Felicia is sitting on a leather couch in Rays living room, rocking back and forth in distress. Rosario is standing over her; whenever she speaks he slaps himself in the face. Ray had instructed him to slap himself every time Felicia spoke, in order to keep her from talking. Stop talking, Felicia! Rosario screamed. Im no longer going to enable it.

The prosecution then showed a photo of Rosario with his face so swollen and red that he looked like a different person  the consequence, he explained, of slapping himself repeatedly for over an hour.

Prosecutors presented several long audio clips in which Ray threatened Rosario repeatedly, after accusing him of posting Rays address online. Ray picks up a hammer and brandishes it in front of Rosario. I swear Ill put this through your skull, he says. Someone opens a window, and Ray says: Go out that window, an order to Rosario, who has told Ray at length about his suicidal thoughts. Gesturing at Rosario and his sister Felicia, Ray suggests, Why dont you hold hands and jump together? Then he begins to hit Rosarios legs with the hammer. Be careful, he growls. Those legs break really easily.

Ray eventually began extracting money from Rosario, accusing him of damaging property and demanding repayment. Under pressure, Rosario turned to his parents and friends to cover the tens of thousands of dollars Ray was asking for. This list of debts grew and grew  eventually, Rosario said, the list expanded to include every item he could conceivably have come in contact with in the entire apartment, totaling $100,430 in supposed damages.

As heinous as Rays behavior may be, his motives are often inscrutable. (Ray has pleaded not guilty to the 17 charges against him.) Why wreak havoc on a college students life and convince him that hes part of a convoluted plot? It will be up to the jurors to consider whether Ray was a sophisticated con artist driven by money and sex, or an irrational actor caught in his own grim conspiracy. In the end, does that distinction even matter? Rays defense team seems to think so.

In the defenses opening statement, Allegra Glashausser, one of Rays attorneys, described Ray and his victims not as a criminal enterprise but as a group of storytellers who erected around themselves a bizarre, semi-fictional world. It was as if, Glashausser said, they leapt through Alices looking glass.

Through the looking glass, the truth became complicated. At times the storytellers couldnt separate truth from fiction, Glashausser said. Thats the thing about a good story: It makes you believe. And Larry believed most of all.

In court, Rosario spoke slowly, his voice quavering. Often, long gaps of silence preceded his answers. Speaking in court about Ray, he said, was a stressful experience. Until recently, Rosario seemed to be one of the people least likely to speak against Ray. During our reporting for the article that, after its publication in 2019, spurred an investigation into Ray that eventually resulted in his arrest, we tried and failed many times to reach Rosario. It was unclear whether he was ignoring our interview requests or hiding (whether from us, from someone else, or from everyone, we didnt know).

Eventually, we visited his parents home in the Bronx. When they came to the door, we told them we were writing a story about Ray. The couple was visibly shaken. Through an interpreter, the Rosarios told us that they had not spoken to their son, or his two sisters, in years. They estimated that, between their children, theyd given Ray some $200,000. They paid because their children said they might commit suicide if they didnt come up with the money. The Rosarios were forced to sell their home to make ends meet.

They appeared heartbroken: After immigrating from the Dominican Republic, they seemed to have achieved the American Dream, sending their children to Sarah Lawrence, Harvard, and Columbia, only to watch all of them disappear from their lives under Rays influence.

We did eventually find Rosario in a surprising place  the comments section of the story we published about Ray. Soon after publication, he posted a long comment defending his mentor. (We were able to verify that his email was connected to the username that posted it). Larry Ray has only ever offered his friendship, attention, and care to me, he wrote:

He fed us, never skimping on the quality or healthiness of meals. He offered a listening ear, always making himself available to us, no matter the time. He taught us about and exemplified the notions of honesty, integrity, honor, and compassion. He encouraged us to enhance and educate ourselves, constantly suggesting that we read all kinds of books ranging from philosophy, history and current events, to science and mathematics  Without a doubt, I owe whatever independence, clarity, emotional balance, and resilience I have to Larry Ray and the time that I have spent with him.

The comment certainly seemed to indicate that he remained under Rays influence. According to the prosecution, he was  the government entered that comment into evidence during pretrial litigation and said Rosario had written it under pressure from Ray.

How does someone seemingly so devoted to Ray, and for so long, suddenly become a star witness in the case against him? How does someone apparently so coerced find their way to a new truth? Thats what the jury will be asking as they make their way through the early stages of this case.

After Rosario finishes his testimony, prosecutors will try to show a similar pattern in Rays treatment of the other two students in the picture at the museum, Dan and Claudia, and of Rosarios two sisters, Yalitza and Felicia.

What youre trying to do is have one witnesss testimony corroborate the other witnesss testimony, said Penza. Wherever you can show that the same behaviors were being used over and over again, thats going to be persuasive to a jury.

Even in court, Ray shows signs of still wanting to be in control of the story. The other morning, before Judge Lewis Liman called the jury into the 24th-floor courtroom, he had a message for Ray.

At various points yesterday during the testimony of the witness, my staff observed Mr. Ray either nodding in approval or shaking his head in apparent disapproval of what the witness was saying, Judge Liman said. Im prepared to assume for now that that was just reactions in the heat of the moment. That assumption is not going to last into today. The caution seems to have been effective.
DUBLIN, March 14, 2022--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The "Africa Fertilizer Market - Growth, Trends, COVID-19 Impact, and Forecasts (2022 - 2027)" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The African fertilizer market is projected to register a CAGR of 5.1% during the forecast period (2021-2026).

COVID-19 has a direct and negative impact on the value chain of the African fertilizers market. The lockdown in different countries of the region has affected the transportation systems adversely. This has led to the use of the emergency stock of raw materials by manufacturers for continuing production.

Fertilizer consumption is the key to Africa's food security, as it increases agricultural production. The region continues to offer the greatest growth opportunities with respect to fertilizer sales. However, a few challenges, such as an uncertain policy environment, limited access to finance, and infrastructural constraints are hampering its growth to a certain extent.

In Africa, opportunities for the fertilizer market's growth can be materialized if certain aspects, such as improved regional trade cooperation, increased private sector involvement, and improved infrastructure and transportation arrangements, are successfully combined to support the growth the potential of the market.

Key Market Trends

Increasing Food demand and Need for Sustainable Agricultural Development

Africa has the highest population with the largest area of arable land. For instance, the Sub-Saharan Africa region has 13.0% of the world population and has approximately 20.0% of the global agricultural land by area. However, the region faces severe food insecurity, which is primarily attributed to inadequate food production due to a lack of access to modern mechanization and limited use of fertilizers.

For instance, according to FAO, the count of undernourished people in Sub-Saharan Africa has risen from 232.0 million in 2017 to 239.0 million in 2018. The governments are consistently implementing various policies for improving agricultural productivity to reduce undernourishment in the region. By focusing on this, governments are partnering with private entities to boost fertilizer production in the region.

Story continues

In 2016, the Ethiopian government partnered with a leading phosphate export firm, OCP, which is 95.0% owned by the Moroccan government, to construct a USD 3.7 billion fertilizer plant for sustainable agricultural development across Africa. In addition, current regional policies favoring domestic fertilizer production in countries like Kenya and Morocco can stimulate market growth during the forecast period.

Increasing Investments in Fertilizer Production

There is an increase in domestic fertilizer production (including potassic fertilizers) in the region due to the investments to develop new fertilizer manufacturing plants. Favorable tax slabs promoting the domestic mining of ammonia and potash have further augmented the investments across various regions. Ethiopia, in recent years, has become a hotspot for the potassic fertilizer market, accompanied by ongoing investments in the country's fertilizer sector.

For instance, in 2017, Yara signed an agreement with the Ethiopian government to develop the Yara Dallol potash mine. The mine production capacity is about 600,000 metric ton of SOP (sulfur of potash) per year, equivalent to 10.0% of global production. Similarly, in 2020, other investments (for example, Dangote is constructing an ammonia urea complex of 2.6 million metric ton in Lagos, Nigeria) are likely to stimulate market growth during the forecast period.

Competitive Landscape

The African fertilizers market is fragmented with the presence of many global and local players in the region. Yara International ASA, Israel Chemicals Ltd, Haifa Group, Groupe OCP, and Omnia Holdings Limited are some of the major players who have their operations in the region. These companies are expanding their presence by building new fertilizer manufacturing plants to boost domestic fertilizer production.

Companies Mentioned

Yara International ASA

Israel Chemicals Ltd

Haifa Group

Omnia Holdings Limited

Groupe OCP

Kynoch Fertilizer

Notore Chemical Industries Plc

UPL Limited

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/v8ex7c

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220311005362/en/

Contacts

ResearchAndMarkets.com

Laura Wood, Senior Press Manager

press@researchandmarkets.com



For E.S.T Office Hours Call 1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call 1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900
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.
Russia striking so close to the Polish border is concerning... It seems like they're trying to bait NATO into getting involved by dancing right up to the line.

Reply

Thread

Link

this war makes less and less sense the more i think about it. i think i need to just understand that putin is not following logic and self-preservation thouhts.



Edited at 2022-03-13 11:27 pm (UTC)

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

I feel like theyre trying so hard to bait NATO/US into direct conflict or even just make NATO/US look weak (to their standards).



Whats even more disturbing is a lot of the sentiment I see online of people just straight up not understanding why direct involvement isnt a good idea. Oh they do get it but think lol hes bluffing or thats why we strike first! It makes me sick to my stomach.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

If something lands in Poland I can see the UK and US not go in full force and defend every inch of nato as theyve been saying but consider options discussions are ongoing we support Poland etc etc



I can see Putin using any hesitation to create division in nato which would help him get away with what hes doing. It blows my mind how bold he is when his military is almost at full capacity running out of fuel and is like 10 days over his expected victory

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

idk. I actually think NATO countries are itching for any excuse to point at Article 5 and get involved because Russia's military seems to be pretty underwhelming and if Putin is seen to be attacking any NATO country, NATO forces can jump in and probably crush what is left of the Russian forces in Ukraine.

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

lol yeah ppl really don't seem to understand that declaring a no fly zone will literally be declaring war on Russia

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

I'm glad people are realizing what a no fly zone means, I think people just consider it the same as closing airspace like countries have already done with Russian commercial flights.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

That was certainly the case with my mother-in-law! She thought it meant closing the airspace to fighter jets, and that Russia would just respect that (meaning, she didn't think it would need to be, ya know, enforced). I think you're right.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

This is pretty bad but I don't know how much you can actually blame Americans for being dumb when there was such a concerted effort a few years ago to sell the euphemism to the public. Like every Republican (and Hillary) was cheering for no-fly zones in Syria back then.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

We need a rolling eye reaction. Or the flat face. This -->



People really don't understand what maintaining a no fly zone MEANS.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Unbelievably, that Soviet-era drone which last week somehow flew from Ukraine over three NATO member states and then crashed in the Croatian capital of Zagreb was also *carrying a bomb*. https://t.co/pv3r1wbpra  Shashank Joshi (@shashj) March 13, 2022



Oh, my. Oh, my.

Reply

Thread

Link

oh boy

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Oh Christ on a pony. Great. GREAT.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Putin aint shame with begging China for help. He is such a flop.

Reply

Thread

Link





New: Russia has asked China for military assistance in Ukraine, a senior US official tells me. Moscows request includes drones.



Such aid - if Beijing were to agree - could have battlefield impact and would have China/Russia & US/NATO supporting opposing sides of the war.  Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) March 13, 2022



Note: P*tin has ASKED for military aid from China. There is nothing stating or confirming that Xi is actually going to give said aid.



What does this mean? This war is going way worse for Russia. WAY worse. Especially if Russia is asking for material help and for all intents and purposes, offering itself up as a vassal state to China. Right now, China is the only major economic power that hasn't sanctioned the shit out of this  P*tin and his cronies. Of course the only major news service NOT confirming this is Rueters, which might as well be Russian Press at this point. However, Chinese and US aides plan on meeting in Rome on Monday about the war in Ukraine. (



In Zelenskyy Watch today: Besides visiting wounded soldiers Mar 13th (thanks barbarbarian



And Ukraine's official Twitter account got jokes (and intercepted calls of Russian soldiers letting Mama about how much shit they be looting):



pic.twitter.com/5cArSZ2KcH  Ukraine /  (@Ukraine) March 12, 2022





Salva Ukraini. Heroiam slava.  Let's not forget to give the First Lady of Ukraine her flowers too .  Olena Zelenska could have been airlifted out of Ukraine with her kids, but she didn't want a ride either. Uplift her and every other parent in places where war is happening and harming innocent civilians.Note: P*tin has ASKED for military aid from China. There is nothing stating or confirming that Xi is actually going to give said aid.What does this mean? This war is going way worse for Russia. WAY worse. Especially if Russia is asking for material help and for all intents and purposes, offering itself up as a vassal state to China. Right now, China is the only major economic power that hasn't sanctioned the shit out of this  P*tin and his cronies. Of course the only major news service NOT confirming this is Rueters, which might as well be Russian Press at this point. However, Chinese and US aides plan on meeting in Rome on Monday about the war in Ukraine. ( source ABCNews In Zelenskyy Watch today: Besides visiting wounded soldiers Mar 13th (thanks), in his Mar 13th speech, Zelenskyy talked about continuing the good fight Mar 14th speech already up.And Ukraine's official Twitter account got jokes (and intercepted calls of Russian soldiers letting Mama about how much shit they be looting):Salva Ukraini. Heroiam slava. 

Reply

Thread

Link

Yeah, Putin asking for China help is in the post writeup, NSA Sullivan is going to Rome to meet with China.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Shoot I thought I deleted that out! I was gonna put this in EOD 3/13.

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

If China does end up giving Russia stuff, they're not going to do it out of the kindness of their hearts. They're going to charge a lot and make Russia dependent on China.

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

FUCK P*TIN



belongs on the first page

Reply

Thread

Link

i hope the meeting with china doesnt turn into "dont help taiwan and we wont help russia".

Reply

Thread

Link

I really don't think China is willing to wreck themselves for Putin tbh

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Would the gains outway the losses for China...

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

true. i think putin doesnt care if he destroys the world, and xi wants to run it. but you cant rule over people if everyones dead.

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

Especially with the party congress this fall. A guy who wants stability to (permanently?) cement his power should probably not introduce the variable of a European war.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

China would be stupid to get involved, cos where does it end?



Say Russia wins, it'll be Afghanistan 2.0 dragging on for years with rebels fighting against the occupiers. Then what? How much money does China want to invest in Russia winning something they shouldn't have started. What's in it for them?



Especially since Russia won't want to stop with Ukraine. And Russia would be useless helping them with Taiwan, when they can't even win against one country. Does China want to start a world war that will impact their economy and waste their resources?



Edited at 2022-03-14 12:03 am (UTC)

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

I mean, Putin will be a big idiot if he relies on China. Xi will own Putin and I honestly can't see Putin wanting to owe someone that much. But, then again, he doesn't really have many other options.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

CNNs response to Brents death felt a little icky to me

Reply

Thread

Link

What was it? :T

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

What was their response??

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

That and New York Times response its insane how during the trump era these big news outlets said how dare he speak about the press as he does when they put their lives on the line and here we have an example of it and theyre essentially like well anyways my mind is just blown





Ive been astounded by journalists on the front lines even when getting information saying this isnt independently verified yet helping people when possible too its incredible and brave



Edited at 2022-03-14 01:26 am (UTC)

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

The NYT response was disgusting.

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

The idiots in the comments going on about him wearing a NYT press pass when he wasnt working for them like a) theyre often valid for 1-2 years and b) he probably thought hed be safer wearing a pass from an established American news publication with clout. That he wasnt just proves the thuggery and likely stupidity of the guys delivering orders on the Russian side.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Do y'all think that if worse comes to worse and Putin's crazy ass orders a nuclear attack that someone, one of his generals or something, would put a bullet in his head? or do you think they would be crazyily compliant enough to oblige?

Reply

Thread

Link

Depends on how much they want to survive a nuclear war. Once Russia fires, multiple countries will fire back.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

I really don't think people would go through nuclear fall out for him, but a lot of other people seem to think otherwise.



Even Hitler had generals who disobeyed him, it's not unheard of.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

There are also technicians who can refuse to actually launch, as well as other people in the chain that I dont remember. But my anxiety has me thinking the worst, if Putin can place members of the FSB under house arrest, what stops him from threatening these same people/their families if they disobey orders?



I truly dont know enough about their inner workings but it doesnt make me feel any better knowing we could be at the mercy of someone disobeying orders.



Edited at 2022-03-14 01:21 am (UTC)

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Tbh theyd die either way. If they dont follow orders then sure there would probably be repercussions for them and their family. If they do follow orders then a nuke would be launched back on them and theyd die also. Save millions vs save only yourself or family. If someone wants to defy him then I think they made up their mind which is the right option for them.

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

Iirc three ppl from the government (p*tin included) are holding the cases, three military engineers are holding the keys, out of the six 4 have to agree for the launch to be approved, basically two cases have to be activated. Hoping that the engineers are more or less sane and carry weapons.

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

He just put one of his FSB leaders on house arrest at the very least they have to be thinking something but maybe Im giving too much credit

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

I'd be surprised if those nukes have even been properly maintained, which needs to be done regularly and is extremely expensive.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Im honestly devastated by Brent Renauds murder. Ive also seen some gross ass conspiracy takes on Twitter which make me want to set some people on fire.

Reply

Thread

Link





Moschun () village NW of Kyiv, before and after "denazification" by the Russian military https://t.co/k0n9pZhsQj almost every single house damaged or destroyed, inhabitants evicted https://t.co/yTGTZfFTAT pic.twitter.com/zMa0348gUq  Samir (@obretix) March 13, 2022 

Reply

Thread

Link

truly awful to see. seeing those side by side pictures... god. so many people are suffering. and for what?

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

That's what is doing my head in. For freaking what?

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

The devastation is so visceral when you see it like this, not unlike the photos you see after a natural disaster; except in this grim reality, the destruction is deliberate and evil. God help us.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

I hope China doesn't supply them and they just let Putin collapse on his own.

Reply

Thread

Link

That would be the smart thing to do and I don't see Xi being that dumb.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link





As he always does, the phenomenal @christogrozev telephoned the FSB generals reported to have been placed under house arrest to see if they answer the phone. They didnt pick up the receiver while others, did.

The arrests seem to be connected to literally billions that were  Andrzej Kozlowski (@akoz33) March 13, 2022 These two tweets are interesting. Yet again, not surprised at the corruption going on in Putin's government.

Reply

Thread

Link

Ok in reading that thread, apparently the FSB was supposed to have spent (b)illions (?) to recruit military, security services, and university students to produce a coup that would help Russia take control of Ukraine, but instead they pocketed the money



(or they were deemed to be militarily incompetent in this fiasco of an invasion, or both?)

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Jesus. Yet again, Navalny has been proven right.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Russia's commercial aviation falls apart, because Bermuda withdraws the licences from 745 of Russia's 1,400 airplanes, meaning they can no longer fly internationally. This is one of the many costs of having become a rogue state.https://t.co/0VSNg0Y2Or  Anders Aslund (@anders_aslund) March 13, 2022

Reply

Thread

Link

They're refusing to return the planes they've leased and will have to be very circumpsect of where they use them, so they don't get siezed.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

So on top of Yacht Repo, we might get Jetliner Repo?



I never realized HOW MUCH of Russia's infrastructure was built on other countries' parts and material. WOW.



Edited at 2022-03-14 02:04 am (UTC)

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link
OSHA Finds Zip-Line Tragedy Could Have Been Prevented

The agency said that required safety measures could have prevented a fatal fall at a zip-line attraction in California.

An OSHA investigation into a fatal fall at a California zip-line attraction found that the incident could have been entirely avoided had the company implemented required safety measures.

The incident, which happened last year, involved a customer and a worker. It was determined by the investigation, according to a press release, that after grabbing a zip-line harness on a customer to steady them as they landed on the tower platform, the worker and the customer were both pulled off the zip-line tower. The worker let go of the harness and fell about 50 feet to the valley floor.

Inspectors found La Jolla Zp Zoom Ziplines failed to install a guardrail, safety net or personal fall arrest system. The company also did not properly train employees on fall hazards and how to recognize them, as required.

OSHA said in the release that the company failed to assess the workplace to determine the presence of hazards and did not report a work-related hospitalization within 24 hours.

La Jolla Zip Zoom Ziplines failed to meet their obligation to protect their employees, OSHA Area Director Derek Engard in San Diego in a press release. If they had simply provided the proper protective equipment, this senseless tragedy could have been prevented.

The company has been cited for four serious safety violations and proposed $24,861 in penalties.
Governments around the world are pushing for the rapid development of renewable energy projects in an attempt to move away from fossil fuels. But as Europe and the U.S. speed ahead with new solar and wind projects, the criticism these projects are facing is ramping up as well. Whether or not energy firms can develop the largescale projects necessary for an energy transition in the face of such opposition remains to be seen.

During COP26, many governments made bold promises to introduce radical climate targets and invest heavily in the renewable energy sector. The recent Russian invasion of Ukraine has only added fuel to the fire, as the potential oil and gas shortage has political powers looking to renewables as an alternative energy source. But many of these grand plans have been met with significant opposition from local residents, often because of a not in my backyard (NIMBY) mentality.

In Vermont, residents argue that giant wind turbines destroy the mountainous landscape and create noise that keeps them up at night. When it comes to solar farms, people argue that the expansive sea of solar panels takes away from prime agricultural land. Others have environmentalism at the core of the argument, as each renewable energy project requires new roads and infrastructure to bring vast amounts of equipment to rural areas. Often, explosives are used to carve out the landscape and make it accessible for workers to construct wind and solar farms. But more-often-than-not people have a NIMBY response to renewable operations.

This seems ironic in a state often hailed as a green leader, with 99.9 percent of its in-state-produced electricity coming from renewable sources. Yet, many of these largescale renewable projects emerged around a decade ago, with no new major projects currently in the pipeline.

In fact, renewable energy projects often face the same level of opposition as fossil fuel developments. In France last year, fishing boats blocked a ship in Brittany with the aim of preventing a $2.9 billion wind farm from being developed. The fishermen argued that it could disrupt the marine life in the region as well as negatively affect their livelihoods. Due to the large area of land or water required to install renewable energy projects, agricultural workers and fisherfolk around the world are increasingly protesting new developments by energy firms.

Related: Oil Rises As UAE Backtracks On OPEC Output Boost Statement

But as governments make net-zero carbon emissions pledges, and courts put pressure on oil and gas companies to invest more heavily in renewables and cut their emissions, there is a new era of resistance over energy projects. Residents opposing the projects find themselves battling against both the companies doing the project and environmentalists who want the developments to go ahead. For rural workers, there is also a fear that supporting renewable energy projects in their area could cost them their jobs. This sentiment is being felt not only in Europe and the U.S. but also in Korea, Colombia, and Mexico, to name a few.

A whole other conundrum emerges when it comes to environmentalists, who, on the surface, support renewable energy projects but when wind and solar farms crop up across the country many of these activists complain about the environmental impact. Wind farms inevitably disrupt the wildlife in their vicinity due to noise pollution and the power of their huge blades. Wind turbines often kill migrating birds that fly into their path. In areas where there are endangered species, this is seen as even more of a problem.

In the U.K., a wind farm on the Norfolk Coast being backed by Prime Minister Boris Johnson could power 10 percent of UK homes, around 3.9 million houses, once up and running. And Swedish firm Vattenfall, which is running the project, believes offshore wind will be the backbone of our energy system as we tackle climate change. By 2050, its estimated that renewable energy will provide 80% of our electricity needs, and much of this will need to come from offshore wind farms. And Norfolk Vanguard and Norfolk Boreas are part of the next generation of wind farms. By working with communities, the supply chain, skills and environmental experts, we have designed projects that can bring real lasting benefits, it stated.

Meanwhile, land-use conflicts in the U.S. have meant that 31 big wind and 13 major solar projects were halted across the country in 2021. So, just what are governments and energy firms supposed to do as they are pushed to develop the renewable energy sector while facing constant opposition from one side or another? With pledges of net-zero and worries over fossil fuel energy shortages, it has never been more important to expand the renewable energy sector, but it will not be an easy ride. Governments will need to work with communities to give residents and rural workers the support they need as huge new solar and wind farms are constructed to secure the future of energy.

By Felicity Bradstock for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
The longer that high oil and gas prices are sustained, the greater the economic damage for highly developed and industrialized countries that are not self-sufficient in energy supplies and it is at times like these that those countries find out who their real friends are, and are not. In this context, the current oil pricing/global economic matrix underlines once again the seismic geopolitical shift that has taken place in the Middle East since the end of the 2014-2016 Oil Price War  broadly away from the U.S. and its allies and towards the China-Russia sphere of influence - with both Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the UAEs Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan reportedly unavailable to talk to U.S. President, Joe Biden, about how they could help to lower oil and gas prices. This means that Biden is now considering all options [for lowering oil and gas prices on a sustained basis] that are not directly connected to Russia, according to a senior energy source close to the European Union leadership spoken to exclusively by OilPrice.com last week.

Several countries in the region that had been regarded by Washington as reliable allies over the years  and which have taken huge sums of financing, technology, and military support from the U.S. and its allies for decades  have sought to portray this extraordinarily significant geopolitical shift since 2016 as simply being a move towards a more balanced approach to the West and the East. Such portrayals are disingenuous and in reality reflect only the twin awareness that at this point in history it is still unwise to incur the anger of the U.S. and that China is not yet ready to assume the mantle of top global superpower. Another recent sign of their increasing confidence in being able to treat the U.S with the contempt evident in declining to take calls from President Biden was the high-level meetings in Beijing between senior officials from the Chinese government and foreign ministers from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain and the secretary-general of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). At these meetings, the principal topics of conversation were to finally seal a China-GCC Free Trade Agreement and deeper strategic cooperation in a region where U.S. dominance is showing signs of retreat, according to local news reports. Another was the news just before Christmas that Saudi Arabia is now actively manufacturing its own ballistic missiles with the help of China, and the similarly recent discovery by the U.S. that China may have been in the process of building a secret military facility in the UAE port of Khalifa. As also examined in depth in my new book on the global oil markets, such moves by Saudi Arabia have grown increasingly bold ever since Russia stepped in to prop up the credibility of Saudi Arabia and OPEC after both were shattered in the disastrous aftermath of the 2014-2016 Oil Price War.

With Saudi Arabia and the UAE having shown such disrespect to the U.S.  and OPEC+ having done the same with its simply rolling over the 400,000 barrels per day (bpd) production increase that was ineffective at bringing oil prices down even before they spiked again after Russia invaded Ukraine  the pressure on Biden to look for help elsewhere is now more intense than ever. Biden knows full well that the economic damage that will result from continued high oil and gas prices for the U.S. and its allies is enormous (Russia and OPEC know this too). Historical precedent highlights that every US$10 per barrel change in the price of crude oil results in a 25-30 cent change in the price of a gallon of gasoline. The corollary longstanding rule of thumb is that for every one cent that the U.S.s average price of gasoline increases, more than US$1 billion per year in discretionary additional consumer spending is lost.

The political risk for Biden of enduring high oil and gas prices is also huge. It is a matter of historical fact, as shown in my new book on the global oil markets, that since World War I, the sitting U.S. president has won re-election 11 times out of 11 if the U.S. economy was not in recession within two years of an upcoming election. However, presidents who went into a re-election campaign with the economy in recession won only once out of seven times (Calvin Coolidge in 1924, although strictly speaking he had not won the previous election but rather had taken up the position on the death in office of Warren G Harding). President Biden  or whomever the Democratic candidate may be  will face another presidential election in 2024, but even before that he faces critical mid-term elections in November 2022, when his Democrats could lose their narrow majority in the House of Representatives.

Given these unenviable prospects, then, there are three main options to reduce oil and gas prices to less economically and politically damaging levels right now, given that a potential fourth option  of encouraging more output from U.S. shale producers - seems stretched currently. First, although the U.S. only just committed to a release of 30 million barrels of oil from its Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), as part of a globally coordinated release of over 60 million barrels led by the International Energy Agency (IEA), U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said on 9 March that it may have to do the same again, depending on market conditions. Only a day before that, IEA executive director, Fatih Birol, stated that the organization is ready to release as much oil as is needed and that 60 million barrels were only 4 percent of IEA members total strategic oil reserves. As highlighted some time ago by OilPrice.com, it is interesting to note how ill-thought-through airy-fairy green energy initiatives disappear in the cold hard light of political self-interest. The danger zone for U.S. presidents has historically started at around US$3.00 per gallon and at US$4.00 per gallon they are being advised to pack their bags in Pennsylvania Avenue. The point was underlined by Bob McNally, the former energy adviser to the former President George W. Bush that: Few things terrify an American president more than a spike in fuel [gasoline] prices.

A second option is to conclude a new iteration of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, colloquially the nuclear deal) with Iran, and this is tantalizingly close, according to sources close to the deal spoken to exclusively by OilPrice.com. In this scenario, Iran could see an 80 percent recovery of full production within six months and a 100 percent recovery within 12 months, with Iranian production increasing by as much as 1.7 million bpd (including 200,000 bpd of condensate and LPG/ethane), in a 6 to 9 month period from when sanctions are lifted and an immediate impact of a 5-10 percent fall in the oil price. For obvious reasons, Moscow is currently in the process of trying to destroy or delay the chance of this happening, with Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, on 5 March, demanding written guarantees that Western sanctions over Ukraine will by no means affect our right to free and full-fledged trading, economic, investment, military and technical cooperation with Iran. Russia is one of the five countries that constitute the United Nations Security Council (UNSC)  the others being the U.S., U.K., France, and China  that signed the original JCPOA, along with Germany, and would seemingly be required to sign any new deal. It may be, though, that a new form JCPOA might be done between the other four UNSC members plus Germany, omitting Russia. Additional attempts to sabotage a new deal  as highlighted with Irans attack over the weekend on a U.S. consulate complex in the northern Iraqi city of Erbil - come from elements of Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps who see such a deal as a threat to the continuation of their own business interests.

The third option that has appeared in earnest over the past week is to partially lift the current U.S.-centric sanctions on Venezuela, which has the largest amount of oil reserves in the world  at 304 billion barrels, according to BP and others statistics. According to several reports last week, Venezuela has released two jailed U.S. citizens following talks with a high-level U.S. delegation in Caracas. White House Press Secretary, Jen Psaki, confirmed that energy security was one of the issues raised at the talks in Caracas. In the first instance, if U.S. sanctions were partially lifted allowing for oil exports to resume from Venezuela, the expectations are that they would go to the U.S. itself to compensate for lost supplies from Russia, following Washingtons recent ban on oil imports from there but this would, in any event, have a ripple effect on oil prices elsewhere.

By Simon Watkins for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Both India and Russia have interest in continuing, and even strengthening, their energy and oil ties.

Shunned by the West, Russia is looking to the East for partners in its oil and gas sector and for willing buyers of its crude. The closest partner east of Moscow is China, the worlds top oil importer, which is reportedly already taking advantage of the exodus of western companies from oil, gas, and metals projects in Russia.

Now Russia is setting its sights on forging closer energy ties with another major economy, India.

India, the third-largest oil importer in the world, has abstained in several United Nations votes condemning Russias invasion of Ukrainea sign that the Indian government is keeping its ties to Moscow intact, although it has also warmed up to the United States in recent years. India has been largely adhering to the U.S. sanctions on Irans oil exports, for example, regardless of the price discounts which Iran offers to those willing to risk buying it.

But India has looked to Russia in recent years to diversify its oil imports, which make up 85 percent of Indias consumption, and most of them come from the Middle East.

Both India and Russia have interest in continuing, and even strengthening, their energy and oil ties. India will get crude at discount pricesseaborne crude that is not selling very well (if at all) west of St Petersburg  while Russia will continue to have a large and expanding market for its oil in one of the fastest-growing demand markets.

Related: Shale CEO: U.S. Can Easily' Replace Russian Gas



So, its no surprise then that Russias Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak and Indias Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas, Hardeep Singh Puri, discussed last week strengthening bilateral cooperation in fuel and energy, as the Russian government said in a statement last Thursday.

What we have is a particularly privileged strategic partnership; the leaders of our countries maintain regular contact. Mutually beneficial cooperation is actively promoted, including the Arctic LNG 2 and Sakhalin 1 projects. Gazprom supplies LNG to India, and Rosneft continues its systematic work with its Indian partners. We are interested in further attracting Indian investment to the Russian oil and gas sector and expanding Russian companies sales networks in India, Novak said.

Russias oil and petroleum product exports to India have approached $1 billion, and there are clear opportunities to increase this figure, the Russian official said.

There is apparent willingness from both India and Russia to deepen their energy ties, but they have to find ways how to continue oil trade without the SWIFT banking system and how to get bank guarantees and insurance for cargoes.

There was an open offer over the last two-three days that Russia was giving it (crude oil) at some sort of a discounted price but we dont know how it can be of effect because a whole lot of factors will have to be weighed in and we will have to get it from some port to ship it and then whether it can come to India, and whether it is workable, a senior Indian government official told The Times of India last week.

Do they get the insurance or not? The nitty-gritty, if at all it can be worked out, needs to be worked out, the official added, referring to cargoes from Russia.

India is also considering ways to keep trade with Russia, not only in crude oil, by setting up an alternative payments system with an account at a bank, an Indian official told Hindustan Times this weekend. This could prove tricky to do because neither the Russian ruble nor the Indian rupee are widely used in international trade, analysts say.

India could offer some additional outlet for Russias oil unwanted in the West, but it will not be unable to offset all the volumes which Western importers are shunning.

Russia will have to shut in some of its oil production as it will be unable to sell all the volumes displaced from European markets to other regions, with Russian crude production falling and staying depressed for at least the next three years, Standard Chartered said last week. Even before the U.S. ban on energy imports from Russia, trade in Russian commodities had become toxic for many global players.



By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Europe was the biggest buyer of U.S. LNG over the last three months, but it remains unclear if this will become a long-term trend.

While it would be technically possible for the U.S. to produce more natural gas, there are logistical problems to deal with such as a lack of import terminals.

The chief executive EQT believes that the U.S. could easily replace Russian natural gas in Europe, claiming that there is both the ability and the desire to do more.

U.S. natural gas can easily replace Russian gas in Europe, the chief executive of EQT, the country's largest producer of gas, told the BBC in an interview.

"We've got the ability to do more, the desire to do more," Toby Rice told the BBC, estimating that the United States had enough gas to quadruple current output by 2030.

However, boosting exports of natural gas to Europe is not only a question of availability and willingness on the part of gas producers. There are other obstacles preventing U.S. gas from taking the place of Russian gas in Europe.

These include a lack of import terminals on the continent as well as export terminals in the United States itself. Currently, there are eight operating export terminals on the Gulf Coast, and 14 more have been approved for construction. However, the process of taking an LNG facility from final investment decision to operation takes several years.

There has also been political opposition to increasing LNG export capacity on climate change grounds. Recently, a coalition of more than a hundred advocacy groups called on the six largest U.S. lenders to stop financing new LNG export facilities on the Gulf Coast.

Yet even if this opposition was absent, the purely technical problems to a major boost in U.S. LNG exports to Europe would remain. There is also the question of cost. LNG is costlier than pipeline gas, and the longer the distance it has to travel to its final destination, the more expensive it becomes.

Be that as it may, Europe was the biggest buyer of U.S. liquefied natural gas over the last three months, taking in more than half of the total LNG exports in December and February.

Europe, however, is running out of regasification capacity. Spain and France have the biggest import capacity in the EU, with the UK coming in second in Europe as a whole with 50 billion cubic meters in annual nameplate LNG import capacity. Germany, on the other hand, the biggest gas market in Europe, has zero LNG import terminals.

By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Oil prices fell below the $110 per barrel mark early on Monday after China locked down several cities because of a surge in COVID cases and Russia and Ukraine separately signaled progress in talks that continue today.

As of 7:30 a.m. EDT on Monday, WTI Crude was down 5.75% at $103.12 and Brent Crude was falling by 4.92% to $107.13.

After largely remaining on the sidelines of the newsflow over the past month, COVID again returned to make headlines in China, where it originated. China locked down all 17.5 million residents in the business hub Shenzhen and limited bus services to Shanghai after COVID cases spiked over the past few days.

This will raise concern over the potential hit to demand. But also importantly, it suggests that China is not ready to let go of its zero-covid policy, ING strategists Warren Patterson and Wenyu Yao said on Monday.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine was the other driving force behind oils move lower early on Monday after both sides signaled during the weekend that there could be some progress with talks.

Russia is already beginning to talk constructively, Ukraine negotiator Mykhailo Podolyak said in a video online cited by Reuters. I think that we will achieve some results literally in a matter of days, Podolyak added.

Leonid Slutsky, a member of the Russian negotiating team, was quoted as saying by Russian media: According to my personal expectations, this progress may grow in the coming days into a joint position of both delegations, into documents for signing.

The hope of progress in the talks and the Chinese COVID surge offset bullish developments for oil prices. Iranian nuclear talks have been paused, it became clear on Friday, while Iran launched missiles on Erbil, a city in Iraqs semi-autonomous Kurdistan region this weekend, appearing to target a U.S. consulate building.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
An oil terminal was shut down in Nigeria after an attack caused a blast on the facility, and the operator of the terminal declared force majeure that will see crude production falling by 25,000 bpd at a time when Nigeria is struggling to pump to its OPEC+ quota.

Italian major Eni, the parent company of Nigerian Agip Oil Company (NAOC), declared force majeure on the expected oil production at the Brass Terminal on Monday, Nigerian outlet Premium Times reported.

An incident occurred on the Ogoda/Brass 24 oil line at Okparatubo in Nembe Local Government Area of Bayelsa. The incident was caused by a blast, consequently causing a spill, Eni said in a statement carried by Premium Times.

All wells connected to that pipeline were immediately shut whilst river booms and containment barges were mobilised to reduce the impact of the spill, the company added.

The blast was the result of an attack on the facility, according to Eni.

This was the second such attack on an oil infrastructure facility in Nigeria in three weeks, following a similar incident at Enis Obama flow station, Premium Times notes.

Force Majeure has been declared at Brass terminal, Bonny NLNG and Okpai Power Plant, according to Enis statement.

Nigeria, the largest OPEC producer in Africa, has been struggling for months to increase its oil production as much as its quota under the OPEC+ deal allows. Thus, Nigeria has been contributing to the tightening of the oil market together with the other OPEC+ producers who either lack the capacity or investments to raise output. Nigeria is also besieged by frequent oil theft, oil spills, and attacks on infrastructure, which further complicate production and discourage investments from the biggest oil firms in the country.

Nigerias quota under the OPEC+ agreement was 1.701 million bpd for February, but the country pumped 1.398 million bpd on average last month, according to OPECs secondary sources in the Monthly Oil Market Report (MOMR) for February.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Rosneft Deutschland, the German subsidiary of Russian state oil giant Rosneft, reported over the weekend a hack on its systems, German newspaper Die Welt reported on Sunday, quoting Germany's information security watchdog Bundesamt fur Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik (BSI).

Rosneft Deutschland reported a cyberattack incident on Saturday night, BSI told Die Welt. The German unit of the Russian oil giant is obligedalongside other companies operating so-called critical infrastructureto report such incidents to the cyber security watchdog. BSI has offered to Rosneft Deutschland support in analysis and restoring the systems, Die Welt reports.

Security sources suspect that the hacker collective "Anonymous" was behind the attack, which is not affecting Rosneft's ongoing business. However, the systems are affected, with various processes being disrupted, including the possibility of closing contracts, Die Welt reports.

After Russia invaded Ukraine at the end of February, the "Anonymous" group said it was launching a "cyber war" against Russia. The hacker group has claimed it had hacked the websites of gas giant Gazprom, the state-controlled RT news agency, and many government agencies in Russia and Belarus, including the Kremlin's website.

After the cyberattack on Rosneft's German unit, the German watchdog BSI issued a cyber security warning to other companies in the oil industry in the country, Die Welt reported. Supply of petroleum hasn't been disrupted, according to the newspaper's report, which added that Rosneft Deutschland had not responded to a request for comment.

Early last month, before Russia's invasion of Ukraine, operations at the oil terminals of some of northwest Europe's biggest ports  including Germany's Hamburg  were disrupted by a large-scale cyberattack. Antwerp in BelgiumEurope's second-largest port after Rotterdamand the major German port Hamburg were among those targeted in the cyberattack.

The disruption to oil terminal operations at major ports in northwest Europe came days after a cyberattack on a German oil storage and logistics firm disrupted fuel supply chains in Germany, where supermajor Shell was forced to reroute supply to alternative depots.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
India is considering a Russian offer to buy crude oil and other commodities at discounted prices through a rupee-ruble transaction.

So far, India has not condemned Russias invasion of Ukraine, nor has it joined in with the West's tough sanctions imposed on the country.

An Indian government official told Reuters: Russia is offering oil and other commodities at a heavy discount. We will be happy to take that. We have some issues like tanker insurance cover and oil blends to be resolved. Once we have that we will take the discount offer.

India is the worlds third-biggest oil consumer and importer.

Currently, it brings in around 85 percent of its oil needs  but typically only buys 2-3 percent of its supplies from Russia.

Despite prices faltering in recent days  there remains a near $25 discount for Urals grade oil compared to Brent Crude  as businesses shun Russian supplies in fear of unwittingly violating sanctions.

However, with oil prices up 40 percent this year, Prime Minister Narenda Modis government is considering boosting supplies from Russia amid fears its import bill could spike to $50bn for the fiscal year starting in April.

Work is currently ongoing to set up a rupee-rouble trade mechanism, which could be used to pay for oil and other goods.

It is also looking for cheaper raw materials from Russia and Belarus for fertilizer, as the cost of its subsidy program has rocketed.

The government expects the fertilizer subsidy bill to rise 200- 300bn rupees in the next financial year from 1.05trn rupees.

The Kremlin has maintained it is committed to trading with global markets, although it warned it could restrict natural gas supplies following UK and US sanctions targeting its commodity trade.

Last week, Russian firm Surgutneftegaz, allowed Chinese buyers to receive oil without providing letters of credit (LC) payment guarantees in order to bypass sanctions, sources told Reuters.

All eyes are on Saudi Arabia as the West aims to boost output

The possibility of a deal with Russia could antagonize Indias Western allies.

However, the country has previously revealed it is prepared to release additional crude from its national stocks  in support of efforts by other major oil importers to mitigate surging global prices.

This compares favorably to OPEC+, which is sticking to modest commitments to boost oil production to only 400,000 barrels per day.

Multiple members have failed to meet raised production quotas, while reports from the UAE pushing the group to boost supplies were later denied by its government.

Boris Johnson is trying to persuade leading member Saudi Arabia to increase its oil output, with the Prime Minister reportedly set to travel to the OPEC heavyweight later this week.

Saudi Arabia, along with other OPEC nations, has consistently snubbed White House calls to use its spare output capacity to tame rampant crude prices, which could trigger a global recession following Russias invasion of Ukraine.

Despite formal alliances, Saudi Arabias ties with the West have worsened in recent years amid criticism of both the Yemen war and the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.

When questioned over the UKs ties with Saudi Arabia, following its execution of 81 men in a single day last week, Health Secretary Sajid Javid insisted the UK had a frank relationship with the country.

However, he also argued it was important to recognise, whether we like it or not, that Saudi Arabia is one of the worlds largest oil producers.

Speaking to Times Radio, he explained: At a time of a major global energy crisis that has been caused by this war in Europe, it is right for the prime minister and other world leaders to engage with Saudi Arabia and try to work together where that makes sense.

Earlier this month, the International Energy Agency reached an agreement with the US and multiple members to flood the market with 60m barrels  as the West seeks to drive down the cost of living for its consumers.

Oil rallies have already seen fuel and petrol prices spike  and while rallies have subsided in recent days, prices remain well above $100 per barrel.

By CityAM

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Boris Johnson, the UKs prime minister, is reportedly planning a trip to Riyadh to discuss a potential replacement of banned Russian oil.

According to Sky News, the trip has not been confirmed by Downing Street, and it has not been finalized, but Conservative legislators have been calling on the Prime Minister to approach Saudi Arabia for oil.

According to the Sky News report, Downing Street insiders believe Johnson has a better chance of success with the Saudi rulers because hes closer to Crown Prince Mohammed, the de facto ruler of the Kingdom, than any other head of a G7 government.

But Saudi oil may not prove to be more favorable than Russian oil after the country just beheaded 81 people in a single daythe largest mass execution in the Kingdoms modern history.

Rising oil prices have dealt a severe blow to UK households and companies. The Guardian reported last week that many British companies were struggling to make ends meet as the price of gasoline hit a record high of almost $2.10 per liter (1.60 pounds).

In less than a year, fuel prices have jumped from 1.16 to 1.61. Because I cannot pass these costs on to our customers, I am having to swallow about 37% of my profit margin. Its becoming really hard to keep my drivers on, one delivery company owner told The Guardian.

Oil and fuel prices have soared following the Russian incursion in Ukraine, but they have been on a climb for quite a while. A decision by Downing Street to phase out Russian oil imports by the end of the year did not help matters, although public opinion seems to be in support of any punitive move against Moscow.

The phasing out of imports will not be immediate, but instead allows the UK more than enough time to adjust supply chains, supporting industry and consumers, the Department for Business Energy & Industrial Strategy said.

The government will work with companies through a new Taskforce on Oil to support them to make use of this period in finding alternative supplies.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Ask any professional chef to name the most important ingredient in their kitchen, and odds are salt that will top the list. In plenty of home kitchens, however, salt hasnt received that top billing, rather its purchased without much thought to its provenance, uses and styles. But not all salts are created equal.

Here, we offer six American-made brands of salt that stand out from the pack for their sustainability practices and community-focused efforts  and, of course, their superior flavor and texture.

Theres a lot to love about this brand besides the fact that its founders came up with the idea for salt making during their honeymoon on the shoreline of southeast Alaska. According to co-founder Jim Michener, the couple spent five years experimenting, while also working full-time jobs, to be able to consistently produce a true, delicate sea salt. Pairing science and artistry, they handcraft their additive- and chemical-free pyramidal salt flakes from Sitka Sound water.

What started as a local, small business in 2011, has grown to a nationally recognized brand of flake and kosher sea salt, earning plenty of accolades in the process. Despite its growth, the companys dedication to craftsmanship and community has stayed the same. Harvested from the pristine waters of Netarts Bay on the Oregon Coast and created with minimal natural processing, each flake of Jacobsen salt is hand-graded and sorted.

With its landlocked location, Utah may not be the first place you think of when it comes to salt production. But since 1958, Redmond Real Salt has been working hard to challenge that. Mined from what geologists think was an ancient inland sea, known as the Sundance Sea, Redmond Real Salt has a subtly sweet flavor. Produced under ethical labor standards and sustainable practices, this unrefined, unprocessed salt is additive-free and contains trace minerals from the ancient sea bed.

A couples passion for fine food and life by the ocean helped drive the creation of this Long Island salt company, which is well known for its superior finishing salt. Using seawater from the Atlantic Ocean, collected bucket by bucket, Amagansett salt is crafted entirely by hand in small batches using just the sun, ocean breezes and open-air salt pans for evaporation. This salt, which is free of anti-caking agents, bleaching, additives or other chemical additions, is prized for its distinct texture and briny taste of the Atlantic Ocean.

For more than a century, this family-owned business has been creating all-natural salt, sourced from a brine aquifer located below the Appalachian Mountains. The brine is processed naturally by the sun, and the salt is then hand-harvested. Free of contaminants and heavy metals that may be found in other water sources, J.Q. Dickinson salt is naturally high in minerals, contains no preservatives or artificial additives and is free of microplastics.

When Lily Leedom couldnt find the high-quality, domestically made salt she was looking for, she took matters into her own hands (literally) and created this Duxbury, Massachusetts-based artisan salt company. Chemical- and additive-free, SalterieOnes 100-percent-natural sea salt is notable for its fluffy texture, which allows it to melt quickly on food. Rich in naturally occurring minerals, this hand-harvested salt is intended to be used throughout the cooking process.
More Nebraskans are returning to such activities as concerts, movies and sporting events as the states COVID case counts continue their downward trend.

The state reported only 650 new COVID-19 cases last week, the lowest number in nearly eight months. Nebraska continues to have among the nations lowest case rates, last week trailing only Louisiana. Cases were down 98% from omicron peak levels seen seven weeks earlier.

An average of 180 Nebraskans were hospitalized with the coronavirus last week, down 28% from the previous week. The 152 people hospitalized on Friday represented the lowest number since mid-July.

Dr. Mark Rupp, chief of the infectious diseases division at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, said Monday that its now OK for residents to enjoy the easing of the pandemic.

I think we do have this hiatus right now that Im telling people they should be enjoying, he said.

That doesnt mean throwing caution to the wind, he said, but enjoying some of the venues they havent visited for some time.

Many people, Rupp said, already are voting with their faces and choosing not to wear masks in indoor public places. Some venues and retail stores, however, continue to require them, as do health care facilities.

Rupp said Nebraskans need to realize that the situation can  and likely will  change. If it does, people will need to adapt to changing public health recommendations and return to such measures as masking and distancing.

Some countries in Europe and Asia are seeing upticks in COVID cases, driven by omicron or its relative, a variant known as BA.2.

In the meantime, Rupp said, its critical to boost defenses by encouraging more people to get vaccinated and boosted. From what researchers have seen so far, a third dose continues to provide protection from serious illness, hospitalization and death.

Health officials have, however, already been advising people with compromised immune systems to get a fourth dose.

Albert Bourla, CEO of vaccine maker Pfizer, told CBSs Face the Nation on Sunday that people eventually will need a fourth dose to help fend off another wave of COVID-19.

Many variants are coming, and omicron was the first one that was able to evade  in a skillful way  the immune protection that were giving, Bourla said. The protection we are getting from the third (dose) is good enough  actually quite good for (preventing) hospitalizations and deaths.

But protection after three doses, he said, is not that good against infections and doesnt last very long when faced with a variant like omicron. Pfizer, he said, will be submitting data on fourth doses to the Food and Drug Administration.

Federal health officials have not yet weighed in on the likelihood of recommending a fourth dose.

Rupp said he has not yet seen Pfizers data; the FDA typically makes it available to the public after it is submitted. But one small study in Israel indicated that a fourth dose didnt provide much additional protection. Breakthrough infections still occurred, although protection against serious illness continued.

I dont think theres an imperative right now for otherwise young, healthy people to be clamoring for a fourth dose, Rupp said.

He added that his guess would be that fourth doses may be recommended for more people this fall, which will be about a year out from the third shot for many people.

Nebraska recorded 13 confirmed and probable deaths last week, bringing the total for the pandemic to 4,026. That was down from 57 the previous week. The state has recorded 476,844 cases of COVID-19.

<&rule>

Omaha World-Herald: Live Well News, advice, a calendar of fitness/race events from Live Well Nebraska and occasional offers will keep you in shape and informed. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.

Julie Anderson Julie Anderson is a medical reporter for The World-Herald. She covers health care and health care trends and developments, including hospitals, research and treatments. Follow her on Twitter @JulieAnderson41. Phone: 402-444-1066. Follow Julie Anderson 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
All registered voters in Douglas and Sarpy Counties should watch their mailboxes for a yellow election postcard listing their polling place and political districts in coming weeks, according to election officials.

Residents of both counties may be assigned a different polling location for the May 10 primary from the last election due to redistricting. About 40% of Douglas County voters will see a change, according to the Douglas County Election Commission.

Polling locations are reevaluated every election year, but the 2021 redistricting following the 2020 Census meant more changes. Voters polling location is determined by their address and the new district boundary lines.

The Sarpy County Election Office began mailing out election postcards several weeks ago, and all voters should receive a postcard by the end of the month, election Commissioner Emily Ethington said.

In Douglas County, postcards will begin going out March 21. Valerie Stoj, public relations coordinator for the Douglas County Elections Office, said voters who are planning to vote by mail or vote early should still keep their postcard.

It also tells people what their political districts are, and that, of course, determines what races are on their ballot, she said.

In Douglas County, the postcards are mailed to all voters once every 10 years following the redistricting cycle, according to a press release. Voters also receive the cards when they first register or reregister to vote and when their polling place changes.

Voters can check their polling place by visiting sarpy.gov/pollingplace or votedouglascounty.com. Douglas County residents can also call 402-444-VOTE.

Election Day for the statewide gubernatorial primary is May 10. Early voting ballots will start going out on April 4 and early in-person voting will begin on April 11, according to the Nebraska secretary of states website.

Nebraska residents can register to vote online, by mail and at any location other than an election office until April 22. Residents can register in person at an election office until May 2.

May 2 is also the deadline to request an early ballot by mail. Mail ballots can be returned to a local election office or drop boxes until 8 p.m. May 10. Douglas County has 13 drop box locations for its residents, according to the commissions website.

Sarpy County residents should note that the election office has changed locations since the 2020 election. The office is now located at 1102 E. First St. in Papillion, Ethington said.

While Douglas County has filled all poll worker shifts for the primary election, Sarpy County is still seeking poll workers, Ethington said. Poll workers in Sarpy County are paid for their time and those interested can apply on the election commission webpage at www.sarpy.gov or by calling the office at 402-593-2167.

Get Government & Politics updates in your inbox! Stay up-to-date on the latest in local and national government and political topics with our newsletter. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
Despite the dirt, the rips and the wear and tear, Erin Sorensen knew that somebody out there had to love the battered stuffed bunny she rescued from a Dundee neighborhood street.

Its the whole reason I picked it up, she said. It had the look of Someone is missing this rabbit.

Her dog, Scout, spotted the bunny on a March 3 walk. Sorensen waited for the traffic to clear near 52nd and Burt Streets and then raced out and grabbed the grimy animal.

She got a few looks as she carried it home, but as she posted pictures of it on various social media platforms, she just knew shed have it home, safe in the arms of its owner, by dinner.

But it didnt happen. What happened instead is kind of cool, too.

On her posts, people told her about their favorite stuffed animals and how it still hurts that they were lost. Others shared stories of the loveys of their childhoods that they cherish today as an adult.

Sorensen is a deputy editor for Hail Varsity, and others suggested she share her bunny tale with Husker Nation via its social media channels.

I dont know how many Husker fans want to know about a pale violet bunny, she said, joking.

A few wanted to know why she was wasting her time, rescuing a stuffed bunny that looked like it had been run over once too often. Didnt she have better things to do?

Those were easy to answer.

Im somebody who notoriously lives on the internet. Im very consumed by the internet, Sorensen said. The world stinks right now. It can be overwhelming some days, especially when there is a war on the other side of the world. When you find a little piece of good, its worth fighting for.

One of her posts caught the eye of Danielle Allore-Taylor of Spring Arbor, Michigan, who has 1 million followers of her TikTok channel, A_tall_glass_of_anxiety.

It just so happens that she restores stuffed animals to their former selves, and her followers love the stories of transformation.

She liked Sorensens lost rabbit tale as well.

It pulled on my heart strings. This bunny is in really rough shape, Allore-Taylor said. Since its my specialty, I wanted to help out in some way.

So away went bunny to Michigan, where it has been given new life. Allore-Taylor gave it a wash, new stuffing and a makeover, which revealed its true colors.

As with many of the hundreds of restorations that she has done, she put a little heart memory envelope inside its body with a piece of its old stuffing and some pink and purple thread that had been ripped off.

I really, really hope we find the owner of that little bunny, she said. You know someone was walking with their kid and it fell out of the stroller. I thought it was super heartwarming that Erin went out of her way to rescue it, and I got to be part of the story.

Sorensen, who can be reached at hello@erinsorensen.com, is sharing new posts of the transformed bunny in hopes that it will be more easily recognizable to its owner.

She knows it could still be a long shot. But she takes heart from someone who told her how they found a ring, tried to find its owner and failed and then miraculously connected with them by accident 23 years later.

I hope it doesnt take 23 years, she said.

If no one steps forward, shes still mulling ways to make a difference with her rabbit, which has reminded many people of the Knuffle Bunny book series. Maybe, she said, she can bring bunny along and read one of those books to some elementary school students.

And rest assured that bunny will have a home with her, and will be well loved.

I still feel hopeful we can find the true owner, she said. What is driving me, even though its small, in this corner of the world in Omaha, Nebraska, is it could just bring some joy. I want to see that joy through, and Im really hopeful that we do.

Omaha World-Herald: Afternoon Update The latest headlines sent at 4:45 p.m. daily. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
LINCOLN  The day after Nebraskans set their clocks ahead one hour, state lawmakers advanced a bill that would stop that practice for good.

Legislative Bill 283 would make daylight saving time permanent, effectively keeping Nebraskas time in the hour-ahead schedule residents just switched to. The bill cleared the first of three rounds of debate Monday in a 40-3 vote.

State Sen. Tom Briese of Albion, who introduced the bill, said most residents hes heard from support keeping clocks the same year-round. He said preserving the same time all year is beneficial to peoples overall health.

A 2020 study by the peer-reviewed journal Current Biology showed that fatal traffic accidents in the U.S. rose by 6% immediately following the spring transition to daylight saving time.

Briese also argued that adding an extra hour of daylight in the evenings would also have financial benefits. He said daylight saving time is linked to an increase in consumer spending, and an overall increase in economic activity, which, in turn, decreases following the switch to standard time in the fall.

The time change is also costing us money, Briese said.

If LB 283 is approved, daylight saving would only become permanent in Nebraska if federal law changes to allow it and if three neighboring states also make it permanent. So far, 19 states have passed legislation to make daylight saving permanent, but only one of them  Wyoming  neighbors Nebraska. Lawmakers in Colorado, Iowa and Missouri are pushing similar measures.

Under federal law, states only have the choice between changing their clocks twice a year, or sticking with standard time year-round. Briese said he preferred sticking with daylight saving time because of the economic benefits.

But several lawmakers said they preferred standard time. Sen. Steve Erdman of Bayard argued to keep standard time, saying maintaining the hour-ahead schedule would be difficult for students in the morning. Erdman also argued that when God created time he intended to have the sun in the middle of the sky at noon.

If its good enough for God, its good enough for me, Erdman said.

Sens. Machaela Cavanaugh of Omaha and Robert Clements of Elmwood echoed Erdmans arguments about daylight saving time being too early for children to go to school, particularly in the winter. Cavanaugh said it would be excruciating to try to get her children to school in the morning; Clements said that if daylight saving time becomes permanent, the sun would rise in Lincoln at 8:46 a.m. on Dec. 21, the shortest day of the year.

In response, Briese argued that school schedules are handled locally by school boards, and thus can be changed if necessary. He also said that several years ago, a former lawmaker introduced a bill to make standard time permanent, but it never went anywhere because it was met with a firestorm of opposition.

Erdman later proposed a compromise to have Nebraskans change their clocks by 30 minutes twice a year rather than an hour, although no other lawmakers expressed support for this plan.

We can dare to be different, Erdman said.

Supporters of LB 283 all largely said the same thing  that their constituents want to keep their clocks the same all year long, regardless of whether that is through daylight saving time or standard time.

The key is consistency, said Sen. John Cavanaugh of Omaha.

Get Government & Politics updates in your inbox! Stay up-to-date on the latest in local and national government and political topics with our newsletter. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
State Sen. Adam Morfeld is qualified to run for Lancaster County attorney, the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled Monday.

Republicans had objected to Morfelds candidacy, alleging he didnt meet the qualifications set out in state law that he had practiced law actively for the past two years.

Based on the plain and ordinary meaning of practiced law and actively, we conclude that Morfelds routine activities with Civic Nebraska fall within the meaning of practiced law actively and that he has engaged in such activities for the relevant 2-year period, the court opinion said.

That means Morfeld, a Democrat, will be on the May 10 primary ballot.

The high court affirmed the ruling by Lancaster County District Judge Kevin McManaman, who disagreed with arguments of the state and Lancaster County GOP.

The GOP had filed its objection to Morfelds candidacy with the Lancaster County election commissioner. The election commissioner denied the objection, the GOP appealed to Lancaster County District Court and McManaman denied the appeal, finding that Morfeld did meet the qualifications.

At issue was whether Morfelds work as executive director of his nonprofit Civic Nebraska, as co-chair of a group trying to get the medical marijuana issue on the ballot and as a member of the Legislatures Judiciary Committee fit the requirement in state law.

In a decision signed by five of the justices, the high court noted that the courts attention is focused on qualifications to be placed on the ballot.

Ultimately the electors of Lancaster County are charged with determining whether a candidates experience is meaningful and worthy of support, the opinion said.

Morfeld is challenging incumbent Pat Condon, a Republican and longtime deputy county attorney appointed to replace Joe Kelly when he became U.S. attorney for Nebraska. Condon ran unopposed in 2018.
Bob Beverage named CFO for Heartland Bank

BLOOMINGTON  Heartland Bank and Trust Company proudly announces Bob Beverage has been named Chief Information Officer. Having joined the bank in 2009 as a Network Administrator, Bob has most recently served as IT Director overseeing Networking and Information Technology.

As Chief Information Officer, Bob will continue to oversee Information Technology and Networking in addition to ensuring the banks information and cyber security. Bob will continue to report to Lance Carter, Chief Operating Officer from the offices located at Hershey Road in Bloomington.

This promotion of Bob recognizes the role he has grown into over the years, as a leader at the bank, said Lance Carter, Chief Operating Officer.

Heartland Bank and Trust Company is a community bank with assets of approximately $4.2 billion. Headquartered in Bloomington, Illinois, the bank has offices in central and northern Illinois and eastern Iowa. The bank offers a complete line of financial services to commercial and retail customers. More information is available on the banks website at www.hbtbank.com.

Business Achievements are paid content. To submit an item, visit https://www.pantagraph.com/place_an_ad/achievement.
BLOOMINGTON  A Normal man is accused of driving a stolen car.

Normal police observed Darrius D. Robinson, 29, drive into a parking lot Sunday and recognized him for having an outstanding warrant for his arrest, prosecutors said.

Police learned that a rental car company at the Des Moines, Iowa, airport reported the Honda vehicle Robinson drove to be stolen in March 2021, a prosecutor said.

Robinson is charged with one count of possession of a stolen or converted motor vehicle.

The prosecutor said that Robinson told police he paid cash to an employee of the rental car agency in exchange for using the car because the employee was aware Robinsons drivers license was suspended.

The rental car company told police there was no explanation why the vehicle was missing, the prosecutor said.

Robinson remains jailed in lieu of posting $1,535.

An arraignment is scheduled for April 1.

Contact Kade Heather at 309-820-3256. Follow him on Twitter: @kadeheather

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0

Sign up for our Crime & Courts newsletter Get the latest in local public safety news with this weekly email. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
BLOOMINGTON  An environmental nonprofit is seeking a roughly $350,000 grant to monitor McLean County's air quality, citing an increased risk of violating federal standards that have been tightened in recent years.

The Ecology Action Center in Normal said the county's ozone levels are of particular concern. Research shows that ground-level ozone, which forms when industrial pollutants chemically react in the presence of sunlight, can cause respiratory problems, including asthma and chronic bronchitis.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2015 tightened federal ozone standards from 0.075 ozone parts per million to 0.07 ppm. The EAC says that McLean County's averaged roughly 0.067 ppm from 2018 through 2020, according to the federal EPA records.

Additionally, using the county's pollution rates combined with socioeconomic factors, a state program has deemed a specific region of west Bloomington as an environmental justice area, meaning it has a higher risk of exposure to pollution.

But there is just one air monitor in central Normal to collect data for the entire county.

"It's that one monitor that decisions are made on," said Michael Brown, executive director of the Ecology Action Center. "There is data; we're just looking to get more detailed data on specific areas of the community."

Thats why the organization is applying for a U.S. EPA grant to fund a three-year project that would provide three stationary air quality monitors, 10 small mobile monitors for educational use, and a public website for real-time air quality data sharing. The grant's amount is not yet finalized, but it would be in the range of $350,000, Brown said.

The public health impact is kind of invisible, he said. The things that hit the wallet of consumers and the local community are often most noticeable, but there is respiratory disease in our community that can be correlated to ozone.

Ozone pollution is formed by a combination of chemical reactions between nitrogen and volatile organic compounds (VOC).

This nitrogen and the VOCs, these are emitted as pollutants, and its their reactions with sunlight and heat that form the ozone that is the pollutant that has the more direct health impacts, Brown said.

The NAACP Bloomington-Normal branch is a working partner in the grant effort, along with Illinois State University environmental and community health faculty and other community organizations.

Bloomington-Normal NAACP President Linda Foster said the organization meets regularly with the EAC about the proposed three-year project and other environmental justice issues.

We know that for many years, Blacks and the vulnerable population have endured poor air qualities in the area in which they live and so right here in Bloomington, we want to make sure that is not happening here, Foster said.

The portion of west Bloomington designated as an environmental justice area also has the highest racial and ethnic diversity in the city; however, it also has the lowest life expectancy, about 68 years, and the highest COVID exposure risk, according to a city health dashboard.

While the Illinois Power Agency and Elevate Energy, through the Illinois Solar for All program, has designated kind of a triangle in west Bloomington as an environmental justice area, residents and groups also have self-designated their areas the same and so basically, the bulk of the west side of Bloomington now falls into what theyre calling an environmental justice area, said EAC Assistant Director Larissa Armstrong.

Brown said the project would focus on west Bloomington, but the EAC also would look at monitoring a part of north Normal that is also designated an environmental justice area.

And not only health impacts are at risk if pollution levels rise. Economic development in the city and town could be in jeopardy if the area breaks federal air pollutant standards.

Bloomington-Normal and McLean County would lose out on federal transportation funding opportunities and there could be restrictions on permits for development projects if its air pollution increases.

McLean Countys Community Health Needs Assessment recognized air pollution and ozone as an issue that needs to be addressed, Brown said.

McLean County Board Chairman John McIntyre also wrote a letter in support of the grant funding, which the county board approved at its latest meeting.

Poor air quality is correlated with a number of serious public health issues, however the lack of good data is a serious barrier to addressing the issue, McIntyre wrote. McLean County recognizes the need for increased air quality monitoring in our community and fully supports the EACs application to the EPA.

Applicants will not know who is rewarded the grants until fall, Brown said, but that doesnt mean the EAC is waiting to strengthen its effort to increase McLean Countys air quality.

The EAC has tied its existing tree planting efforts into its grant proposal and in the meantime, its working to create larger-scale tree planting specifically on Bloomingtons west side to help provide more pollution sinks that remove pollutants from the air.

Areas of town that have high pollution sources but not good pollution sinks, theres going to be disproportionate impacts to residents, Brown said.

Planting trees helps to mitigate the issue, but more funding to better understand what truly is emitted is needed to fully address it.

Brown said what comes next if the EAC is granted funding and examines the data is to be determined.

He said it would at least begin with building relationships, and increasing communication and awareness around the community.

Foster added that obtaining air quality monitors would just be the beginning of a multi-year process to make a quality-of-life difference.

We believe that with the help of these monitors, they will help determine if, in fact, there is a concern, Foster said. We believe that there is. We believe that because of the ongoing air quality issues for citizens on that side of the community (west Bloomington) that we need to find a way in which we can justify and also quantify whats on over there.

Contact Kade Heather at 309-820-3256. Follow him on Twitter: @kadeheather

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0

Be the first to know Get local news delivered to your inbox! Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
CHICAGO  Officials recovered a body Sunday from water near Lake Michigan and the Calumet River, just west of the Illinois-Indiana state line, officials said.

The Chicago Fire Department recovered the body from water near 90th Street, the agency tweeted.

The Cook County medical examiner's office responded to the 9100 block of South Lakeshore Drive and pronounced the person dead about 4:15 p.m., records showed.

Officials did not release the person's identity, which was pending further investigation.

However, authorities had not yet found the remains of an Indianapolis man who fell through shelf ice into Lake Michigan on Feb. 21 at West Beach at Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore.

Bryce Dunfee, 22, was visiting the dunes with four friends when he fell into the frigid waters, Indiana Department of Natural Resources conservation police said.

Emergency crews searched for Dunfee the night of Feb. 21 and morning of Feb. 22, but their efforts were hampered by deteriorating weather conditions and melting shelf ice.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 1
CHICAGO - Seven people were shot and injured Sunday afternoon in the citys South Chicago neighborhood, authorities said.

The people were shot at a strip mall in the 7900 block of South Exchange Avenue a little after 3:30 p.m., police said.

All of the victims were taken to area hospitals in serious to critical condition, according to the Chicago Fire Departments Twitter account.

Chicago police were expected to provide an update to reporters at the scene Sunday afternoon.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
Jussie Smolletts attorneys want a state appellate court to release the actor from jail while his appeal is pending, according to recent court filings arguing that Smolletts time in custody could put his mental and physical health at risk.

Smolletts family, meanwhile, is echoing the actors extraordinary statement after sentencing, saying he is strong and has no desire to hurt himself.

The Cook County sheriffs office, which operates the jail, has said detainee safety is a top priority. At his attorneys request Smollett has been placed in protective custody, with cameras in his cell and an officer with a body-worn camera outside his door at all times. Smollett will have no contact with other detainees, but can have time outside his cell to make phone calls and watch TV, the office has said.

While Smollett was sentenced last week to 150 days in jail, he is eligible for good behavior credit that would cut that time in half, putting his anticipated release date in late May.

Records show Smollett is being held at Cermak Health Services, the jails on-site medical facility. In a video posted to Smolletts Instagram, his brother Jocqui stated that Smollett is in a psych ward with a note in his cell saying he is at risk of self-harm.

A spokesperson for Cook County Health, which operates Cermak, declined to comment, saying they could not release someones medical information without that persons signed consent.

He is very stable, he is very strong, he is very healthy and ready to take on the challenge that ultimately has been put up against him, Jocqui Smollett said in the video.

Smolletts team on Monday morning released audio of a menacing phone call received by one of Smolletts siblings, which uses racist and homophobic terms and threatens harm to Smollett in jail.

Smolletts attorneys want him released from jail while they argue to a higher court that his conviction should be thrown out. Among other arguments, they said in a filing Friday, Smolletts second prosecution violated his double-jeopardy rights.

Smollett was convicted of low-level felonies in December when a jury found that he had lied to police about being the victim of a hate crime attack. Prosecutors argued at sentencing that he denigrated real victims of hate crimes when he staged a phony assault on himself involving racial slurs, homophobic epithets and a noose.

Judge James Linn sentenced Smollett to 30 months of probation, with the first 150 days to be served in Cook County Jail. In addition, he must pay a $25,000 fine as well as $120,106  the amount of restitution the city sought to pay for its overtime costs investigating the case, minus the $10,000 Smollett forfeited to the city when his first case was dropped.

Smollett declined to speak before sentencing, but after Linn handed down his decision, Smollett surprised the whole courtroom by standing up to proclaim his innocence.

If I did this, then it means I stuck my fist in the fears of Black Americans in this country for over 400 years, and the fears of the LGBT community, he said. Your honor, I respect you, and I respect the jury, but I did not do this. And I am not suicidal, and if anything happens to me when I go in there, I did not do it to myself.

In response to Smolletts comments and his attorneys prior remarks about COVID-19 at the jail, a sheriffs office statement Thursday evening noted that like all individuals ordered into custody at the jail, Mr. Smollett will be given a comprehensive medical, mental health and security assessment and will be placed in appropriate housing.

Smollett will be tested for COVID-19 upon intake, which is the jails protocol, the statement noted. As of Thursday there were 12 jail detainees who were positive for COVID at the jail, all of whom were identified during the intake process, the statement read.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
CHICAGO - A man who is believed to have burglarized a Ukrainian Church in the Humboldt Park neighborhood has been arrested and remains in custody, according to a notification from Chicago police.

Around 1:10 a.m. Saturday, a man reportedly stole several items from the Holy Protection Parish of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine in the 900 block of North Washtenaw Avenue.

Police met with a custodial worker who said the church had been burglarized. Investigators determined a broken window on the side of the church was one of the points of entry.

A man was seen on video surveillance taking several unidentified items from the church, according to the police notification.

Area three detectives are investigating and charges were pending Sunday morning.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
CHICAGO - The realistic painting in vivid colors by Adolfo Davis shows two sides of the same street, one bathed in sunlight with a college and an art center and the word choices written along the curb. On the other, a prison, a Chicago police surveillance camera, crime scene tape, a memorial and protest signs reading Stop the violence and Enough.

Smack dab in the middle of the painting  Choices, which hangs in one of the reporting centers for court-involved youths in Cook County  is a young person straddling both a place of promise and one of despair.

This high-stakes intersection that Chicagos youths find themselves in has been brought into sharp relief in recent months in a series of troubling crimes: a 16-year-old already serving a probation sentence for three carjackings accused of fatally shooting 8-year-old Melissa Ortega; another 16-year-old on electronic monitoring for two gun cases charged with killing a 15-year-old by shooting him first in the head, then nine times as he lay on the sidewalk; and an 11-year-old cited in six different carjacking incidents, including some that involved armed robbery.

About 900 youths are currently under the jurisdiction of the Cook County juvenile probation office, sentenced to either probation or supervision or awaiting trial. A portion of them are on electronic monitoring. Just 78 are housed in juvenile detention.

Children have not been spared in the recent surge in gun violence, with an increase in shootings, both fatal and nonfatal, for youths 17 and younger over the past two years. Still, the number of young people being monitored by the probation office has been declining in recent years, along with arrests in the city of Chicago.

The recent surge in gun violence, including carjackings, has led to increased calls for a more punitive response for offenders in general.

But those working in the system strongly caution that juveniles need to remain a special consideration in the criminal justice system, stressing that brain research does not support a return to punitive responses, which were deployed years ago to address violence. They also point to the challenges young offenders face, saying before they were a shooter or a carjacker, they were likely some combination of hungry and poor and traumatized by the violence happening on the blocks where they are supposed to thrive.

And this was before the pandemic produced more challenges, including limiting in-person schooling and other chances for social interaction and guidance.

Juvenile court files, interviews and public records of some recent cases reviewed by the Tribune show the cases to be complicated by underlying challenges and trauma for the young people involved. They have lost parents to incarceration and to violence. Some were coping with the loss of loved ones before they were arrested. One appeared in court virtually on the very day he committed a new offense, with prosecutors noting he was shirtless; a judge instructed him to dress properly.

Davis, the artist who painted Choices, was initially sentenced to life in prison for a double murder he committed at age 14, only to be released in 2020 after a resentencing. He said he knows all of this firsthand because he lived it.

A lot of people just look at the crime itself and they never ask themselves, How did this young person wind up at this place in his life? said Davis, now 45. Like myself, I come from an unstable home. I had went to the streets to take care of myself. I didnt start off in a gang. Being in the street, and being used by other people, yall become friends. And it leads to one thing to another.

Community-based intervention

The concept of a juvenile court was originated in Chicago more than 100 years ago, when activists pushed for a separate system that helps children and their families while protecting the public.

In the wake of both the two-year surge in violence and increased concerns about the role of youth, the Cook County juvenile probation office is now directing all young people on electronic monitoring to report to one of five community-based social service agencies that are contracted by the county. And Chicago Public Schools officials are about to launch a new project to target students who are failing to turn up at school with intense outreach.

The courts and juvenile justice system are directed by state statute to try to avoid detention or incarceration of juveniles and to instead exhaust all community-based options for rehabilitation.

When young people are severely penalized for committing a crime, they are more likely to recidivate, meaning harsher penalties apparently do not reduce juvenile crime, explained Stephanie Tabashneck, senior fellow in law and applied neuroscience at the Center for Law, Brain and Behavior and the Petrie-Flom Center at Harvard University.

One of the challenges is that most children get out of prison and they dont stay there, Tabashneck said. And so then we release kids who are far more traumatized and are ill equipped to manage the real world because they have been in highly restrictive environments that do not mirror the real world.

On the flip side is the potential to reach children in trouble with interventions, she said. Children need mentorship and opportunities to engage in social activities in their community, Tabashneck said.

Developments in neuroscience and behavioral research have really been groundbreaking in terms of how we understand youth criminal behavior, Tabashneck said. We know that children are teachable, their brains are wired for learning and they have a tremendous capacity for change.

Today the management of cases for young offenders falls to the office of Juvenile Probation & Court Services, which has about 200 officers available to manage cases.

At the end of February there were just over 900 youths who were either serving a sentence, of probation or supervision, or had a pending case. The office also was monitoring 250 youths on electronic monitoring.

The mission of the department has not changed in the more than two decades since Miquel Lewis, the acting director of juvenile probation services, was first hired to work as a probation officer, he told the Tribune recently during a tour of one of the departments reporting centers.

Officers assigned to the cases are tasked with establishing a relationship with every child and family in their caseload, determining what is driving the criminal conduct and finding social services close to their homes.

This means constantly finding and vetting local community organizations in neighborhoods, which has been a challenge, Lewis said, given the inherent instability in funding for such organizations.

County probation officers averaged 13 cases in 2020, but Lewis also acknowledged that some officers can carry caseloads as high as 20. And while he has recently filled 10 positions, some of his budgeted positions remain unfilled, Lewis said without giving a number.

Lewis said the recent surge in violence has ramped up the pressure on a system that was already lacking what adults need to help most children readjust their behavior: time.

A key (thing), which is not always on probations side is time. Because every young person requires some time to receive the message, the support, and then for them to have the moment when it will all make sense, he said. And of course when we are talking about public safety, communities want their communities to be safe now. ... And of course residents of our communities dont care about the process. They want to see the outcome.

Lewis has directed his probation officers to refer all their youth on EM to also report to one of five supervised day and evening programs for court-involved youth that are run by city social service agencies.

But it can take just one tragic case, an example of a youth who defies the orders of a judge and doesnt totally accept the help offered in the community, to challenge the mission, said Matt DeMateo, executive director of New Life Centers, which works with both victims and offenders in the Little Village neighborhood.

Love, grace and mercy

DeMateos organization was counseling teenager Emilio Corripio when he was accused in the January shooting of 8-year-old Melissa Ortega. And his staff has since also helped Melissas family cope.

This is a space where I would say love, grace and mercy  they are the only things big enough to take in both sides of a gun, DeMateo said. Its only the grace of God and boundless love and compassion, and that we try to lead with that can take in all sides of a community and all sides of an argument.

The shooting death of 8-year-old Melissa happened in broad daylight on Jan. 22 on a bustling Little Village street.

Authorities say Corripio, who was 16 at the time, opened fire on gang rivals. Prosecutors said he struck one on the street and also sprayed a car, forcing a father inside to take cover with his young daughter, and also fatally hit Melissa, who was walking nearby with her mother.

In charging Corripio as an adult, prosecutors announced he had been cited in three armed carjackings in juvenile court, where just a month earlier hed been sentenced to intensive probation.

Public opinion quickly swayed against Corripio, as social media rippled with posts about how he should have been locked up in the wake of the carjackings.

Meanwhile, Melissas mother issued an extraordinary public statement in which she called for the justice system to proceed, but also forgave Corripio.

To the aggressor. I forgive you. You were a victim too. As a 16-year-old, the community failed you, just like it failed my precious baby, her mother said.

Corripios sentence to three years of probation came with requirements that he cut gang ties and continue with mentoring and counseling.

Several observers familiar with juvenile court told the Tribune that it is not surprising that Corripio was sentenced to probation, based on the current directives to exhaust all efforts to rehabilitate a youth close to home, rather than in custody of the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice.

Those who work with youths say its challenging work, given youth brain development, temptation on the street and the sheer scope of the problem now in the city.

We are trying our best to slow the bleeding, to heal the families, said New Lifes DeMateo, whose team continues to support Corripio today. But  weve buried over 140 young people in the past 25 years.

On March 4 Corripio appeared in court, having just turned 17 and wearing thick glasses and a face mask as he sat at a table in juvenile detention center listening to the adults discuss his case. His attorney, Edith Rios, entered a plea of not guilty for him.

Corripios family declined to comment through Rios. The attorney said that at the time Corripio was accused of committing the carjackings, he was struggling with the loss of his best friend from a shooting he witnessed, she said.

It caused him to stop even trying, she said.

Rios said his family is also hardworking, but struggles financially. In the first two weeks Corripio was locked up, his eyeglasses were broken  and the family was struggling to find money to fix them, she said.

Im dealing with a child, Rios said of her client. We are going to have to start taking into consideration that they are kids, and their brains are not developed and not just throw them away.

Peer pressure and teens

Tabashneck, the psychologist and lawyer, noted that adolescent brains are indeed wired differently, and that fact affects their understanding of split-second decisions. Their brains are present-focused and seek stimulation, which renders reckless behavior and poor decision making neurological, she added. That means youth grow out of these characteristics as they enter adulthood, she said.

The majority of adolescents who commit crimes including serious crimes, like assault and homicide, do not go on to commit future crimes as adults, Tabashneck said. They desist from criminal behavior.

Research also shows that the mere presence of a peer can cause youth to act more recklessly, she added.

Chicago police officials recently described an 11-year-old charged in a series of violent carjackings as prolific and a strong participant, but in most cases he was among a group of teens, critical to understanding a young offenders ability to regulate their actions.

Its not even necessarily peer pressure, or, you know, peer coercion. Its just peer presence, Tabashneck said. And weve seen this in things like driving studies, where adolescents will behave more recklessly, even when a peer is just watching them.

That peer presence effect goes away in a persons early to mid-20s as a shift happens in their brain, Tabashneck said.

So peer presence is really key, she said. I mean, in my work, it is very rare that Ive seen crime involving a minor that did not involve peers. So these crimes tend to happen in groups. And thats because peer presence increases risk taking behaviors and impulsivity.

Influence of adults

In Corripios case, the pressure might have been even greater. According to the charges against him, he was with a 27-year-old when authorities say he opened fire on a street.

The same dynamic was present in the case of Adam Toledo, 13, who was shot and killed by Chicago police during a foot chase in which the teen was allegedly carrying a gun that had just been fired by a 21-year-old he was with on a Little Village street.

In Corripios case, the 27-year-old, an off-duty cabdriver, allegedly drove the teen to rival gang territory, where Corripio got out and opened fire.

Rob Castaneda, co-founder and executive director of Beyond the Ball, a sports-based youth and community development organization in Little Village and on Chicagos West Side, said its sometimes difficult for young people, especially those experiencing social or educational challenges, to distance themselves from older gang members who are sometimes their family or their only social circle.

Castaneda said hes noticed a lot of the young men in these situations have a learning or cognitive disability.

They are a lot of times young people who dont maybe necessarily see themselves as being successful in school or in traditional society, he said. And theyre able to get attention from older guys in the streets that theyre not getting in other traditional places.

Castaneda said theres opportunity for community organizers to intervene at earlier stages, instead of once a child is already involved in street life.

I think its important for us to have like street intervention programs that are building relationships with people who are out there, Castaneda said. But I also think its important to have more supports for them. Supports that arent dependent on them being involved in the street, but them just being people. People with high level of needs.

Last week Chicago Public School officials told the Tribune they were finalizing contracts with two of the citys larger social service agencies for intervention. Outreach workers will be tasked with finding students who are enrolled in school but not turning up.

This year, about 1,500 students failed to appear for classes, and school officials were able to track down information on all but about 300.

Its this group of ultra high needs students that will be the focus of the new pilot. For now, 100 students have been targeted and will be the subject of the outreach, which will include caseworkers first looking for the youth and then trying to steer them back to school and offer other supports, including employment or therapy. The estimated cost to run the program is between $14,000 and $16,000 per student, officials said.

The project has been in planning stages for some time, but Jadine Chou, the chief of safety and security for CPS, said last week that the devastation of the pandemic has increased the pressure on everyone to start delivering more intervention.

The stakes feel higher than ever before, said Chou. Everything that has happened with the pandemic has just made challenges harder for everyone, but especially for our students from high-risk situations.

They gonna release all that anger

The road to Adolfo Davis life sentence at age 14 started when he was 9 years old and hungry, he told the Tribune.

Looking to make cash, Davis, the artist whose work hangs in the reporting center, was trying to muscle his way in at a local gas station, where hed offer to pump gas for customers. This, and hustling outside grocery stores to carry shoppers bags for them, was how he compensated for a family that was not able to take care of him, he said.

His efforts to find a spot at the gas station led to a confrontation with other youths working there, and after he defended himself with an empty whiskey bottle, they invited him to join their group. Those kids had older brothers who were selling drugs, and it was only a matter of time before Davis was more deeply involved in the street life, he said.

In the past year or so since his release, Davis worked at Precious Blood Ministry in the Back of the Yards neighborhood, a program that works directly with court-involved young people  and one that helped him survive incarceration when he was locked up 30 years ago.

As he reflected on his case and the youths he has mentored, Davis lamented that those kids today are still struggling for basic needs like food and to feel loved, and they are also now turning to drugs to self-medicate through their pain. And hes not persuaded incarceration is any better an option today than it was for him.

When they get released, they gonna release all that anger on society, Davis said. And who gonna get it the most? The people close to them, the people in their communities.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
Volodynyr Zelenskyy has made quite a quick and dramatic transition.

In less than six years hes gone from a comedian and TV actor to politician to president of Ukraine to global hero.

Zelenskyy has become Ukraines voice of resistance  the brave leader who refuses to surrender or flee in the face of the brutal and massive invasion of his country by Vladimir Putins military machine.

While Putin has become the free worlds Great Satan, people everywhere are praising Zelenskyy and even comparing him to historic war-time leaders like Winston Churchill and Benjamin Franklin.

Not to diminish Zelenskyys personal courage or the moral power of his calls for military help from NATO and the United States, but when it comes to great leaders in the world today, there isnt much competition.

Joe Biden? Boris Johnson? Emmanuel Macron of France? Not exactly modern day Reagans, Thatchers and Pope John Pauls, are they?

To defend his country Zelenskyy needs some deadly stuff  modern jet planes and lots more advanced shoulder-fired Javelin anti-tank and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles.

While hes waiting to see what weapons hell get, hes just received a freedom award from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute.

Its a fitting award to give to Zelenskyy for standing up to the Russians.

Its been given in the past to the likes of Mikhail Gorbachev, Margaret Thatcher, Colin Powell, Polands Lech Walesa and a fellow comedian/actor, Bob Hope, aka, Americas ambassador of good will.

The award represents the values and principles of freedom that Ronald Reagan fought for all his life and is considered the highest civilian honor bestowed by the Reagan foundation.

In a way, what Zelenskyys doing reminds me of what my father did on a much smaller scale in Hollywood in the late 1940s. My father, then a liberal Democrat, was in his first presidency  as president of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG).

It was a violent time when the Communist Party was trying to take control of the movie industrys unions. The unions were fighting each other and strikebreakers outside studio gates and the movie moguls were hiring gangsters to intimidate and undermine the unions.

Working to keep SAG and other Hollywood unions free of communist influence, my father was not afraid to fight for what he thought was right  and do it publicly. He stuck to his democratic principles and was a tough negotiator who forced the studio bosses to provide better pay and benefits for the actors who had elected him over and over again.

At one point he even put his life on the line. In 1946, he got anonymous death threats and a warning from police that he was in danger from the members of a new left-leaning union that was trying to replace SAG.

He not only started packing a gun, he slept with it under his pillow, which scared the heck out of my mother Jane Wyman.

In 1960, SAG brought him back as union president and he led a major strike by actors that shut down the movie industry. He ultimately forced the studios and producers to create a residual payment system for the first time that continues to this day and has paid out billions to actors.

My father was a natural leader and anti-communist long before he became president of the United States and orchestrated the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Obviously, Ronald Reagan never had to risk his life to defend his homeland against a Russian invasion the way Zelenskyy is today. But just as some people are calling Zelenskyy the Reagan of Ukraine, I like to think of my father as the Zelenskyy of Hollywood.

I hope Zelenskyy wins for freedom the way my father did.

Michael Reagan is a columnist for Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
The President of Association of Moroccan Exporters (AMEX) Hassan Sentissel El Idrissi, has identified three major obstacles currently hampering export and import trade in Africa.



He said collaborations in Africa that relate directly to export and import businesses within the continent, have always struggled unjustifiably because of these challenges.



These include the many years of language barrier between French speaking African countries and English speaking countries.



He observed that the deterring language barrier in the region, has not only created an unwarranted inconvenience among traders, but has placed serious impediment on the way of exporters and importers along the value chain of marketing of products and services.



Another obstacle, he said that confronts exporters and importers in the continent, is the poor transport sector required to handle goods and services that

are being exported or imported from one country to another within the continent.



The last, but not the least challenge, he observed ,has been the payment of disturbing custom duties, nuisant taxes and levies that turn to hurt exporters and importers doing business directly and indirectly at cross borders.



He said while identifying these challenges, he also believes strongly that blame game would not address them except the stakeholders determination to apply pragmatic solutions.



He added that the challenges mentioned above have therefore become a shared responsibility for all Africans especially those in the business circle.



Again, he indicated that despite all the aforementioned challenges, the continent could still pull the trigger in addressing all these problems by harnessing individual strengths and potentials to improve export and import of products in the region.



"We have to accelerate our progress in order to legitimize our trade relations. We have to multiply our meetings " he submitted.



The President of the Association of Moroccan Exporters said the primary responsibility of countries is to build networks and create harmonious atmosphere for other countries through a win-win situation.



He called for realistic analysis of the situation while projecting into the futuristic vision of ASMEX in playing an important role to shape the technical knowledge of organizations involved in export and import in Africa.



In doing all these, he acknowledged the significant role ASMEX, established in 1982, with regional branches across fourteen (14) regions of Morocco, could play to drive change in the continent.

Source: Peacefmonline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
The Poultry Farmers Association of Ghana has announced an increment in the prices of eggs by 10% effective Monday 14 March 2022.



Per the new prices, a crate of eggs is now selling between GHC27 and GHC35 depending on the size and place of purchase.



Napoleon Agyemang, the national president of the association has been explaining the reasons for the increment to Asaase Business.



With the percentage increase, we usually will go by the difference between the previous price and the recent price. We can get about 5%, 8% or 10%. It comes in different areas; some farmers in the Western, Ashanti, Brong Ahafo regions are all selling at different prices so you cannot really point to a general percentage increase. But, theres been some increase, maximum 10% so that if you used to sell it at GHC20, it moves to GHC22, Agyemang said.



Factors

Everything that we use for poultry has increased. Talk of the feed; every now and then you see feed cost going up. If you consider the increase in the feed by feed manufacturers; you can see that every week the prices are going up and we as farmers have no option but to shift it to the sales price. Feed cost has gone up; medication has gone up even day-old chicks prices have gone up, he said.



It starts immediately since the increase came last Friday. So, immediately it is starting. But then itll take time to get to the membership. Not every poultry farmer is a member of the association so itll come in circulation then everybody will do the adjustment till we all get to uniform prices, Agyemang said.

Source: asaaseradio.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
The Vice-Chancellor of the Koforidua Technical University (KTU), Professor David Kofi Essumang, has cautioned newly admitted students on the issue of sex for grades at the 26th matriculation ceremony.

Addressing the matriculants last Saturday, he warned that management of the school frowned on sex for grades and any form of harassment by either lecturers or students and would ruthlessly deal with anyone who would be caught in the act.



He stated that issues of sex for grades could happen in institutions of higher learning, adding that he was alerting the new entrants about such unscrupulous acts and its penalty, as well as channels to use in reporting such issues.



"We need to alert these new students that certain things can happen. Issues of sex for grades, we do not permit it. We don't allow that; whether a lecturer or a student. We are alerting them so that they know where to seek redress when it happens. We have suggestion boxes all over; if you can't come and inform me personally, just write and put it into the suggestion box and it would get to my attention. Any lecturer or student caught in these acts will be sacked if found guilty.



If you are a student or whoever and you want to do that, stay home and do that. Don't come here and disturb anybody and bring the school's name into disrepute. Sex for grades won't be tolerated here," he cautioned.



Admitted students



On the number of newly admitted students into various programmes, the Vice-Chancellor remarked that "the university received applications for admission from 4,243 applicants. Out of this number, a total of 4,014 applicants were offered admission to pursue various programmes.



At the close of registration, 2,854 students had registered as fresh students of the Koforidua Technical University and out of the number, 1,767 of them are males while the remaining 1,087 are females.



The 26th matriculation ceremony was on the theme "Industrialisation for self-reliance: the impact of technical universities".



Industrialisation



Professor Essumang expressed worry over the unemployment situation in the country, saying technical and vocational skills had proven to be the answer to the menace.



He said it would be a surprise to see persons with vocational skills lining up to be employed by government or other businesses, explaining that the technical and vocational skills rather equipped students with the required skills to make them self-employed or a needed hand on the job market.



The Vice-Chancellor added that very strategic job fields such as oil and gas had over the years been dominated by expatriates, but technical skills were being taught in the technical universities would position our students to take over from them.



"When you look at our oil and gas sector, it is dominated by expatriates. Here, we teach people very strategic courses such as wielding, a very important aspect of the oil and gas industry. Hopefully, some time to come, these locally trained persons from our technical universities will take over from them," he said.



Assurance



The Student Representative Council (SRC) President of KTU, Prince Sosu Asante, assured the students of the support of the SRC.



"We want to assure all the students that we exist because of them and we will do anything to serve their interest. On the issue of sex for grades, there are rumours everywhere but with the commitment of the school's management in weeding out persons engaged in such acts if caught, we also assure the students of the same commitment in helping them preserve themselves against such incidents," he said.









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.

Featured Video
The Reverend John Ntim Fordjour, Deputy Minister of Education, has challenged winners of the Presidents Awards to lead the country's quest for more creativity and innovation.



Ghana is looking up to you to be the next person to bring out inventions that would be patented in your name,  he said.



Rev Ntim Fordjour made the remarks when 36 students who emerged overall best students in the 2020 Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) paid a courtesy call on the Ministry in Accra, ahead of the Presidents Independence Day Awards.



The Presidents Independence Day Awards since its inception in 1993, seeks to recognise and reward deserving students for displaying academic excellence at the BECE.



It continues to provide scholarships annually to young brilliant students between the ages of 14 and 19 from all the regions of the country.



Rev Ntim Fordjour urged the Awardees to utilize the opportunity they were given to distinguish themselves and not to rest on their oars, but with the zeal to be committed to their studies to become the best.



Know that what brought you to be the best and brightest in BECE may not just be enough to make you the best and brightest in WASSCE, so a lot more needs to be done,



It is possible that you will not just do Science and again come out with the best grades at the end of your study and the WASSCE but your name will be celebrated as part of the people who invented a certain solution that addressed challenges in sectors of the economy including transportation, environment, health, and education, he added.



The Deputy Minister noted that 90 percent of them were offering Science, Industrial Engineering and Industrial Mechanics which were indications of the critical minds that the country was expecting to lead the transformation of the country.



He congratulated the Awardees, four of them with special needs who would be honored.



It will be a demonstration of the Governments commitment to inclusive education, making sure that equitable inclusive education was accessible to all and promote life-long learning opportunities.



Rev Ntim Fordjour commended them for the feat they had attained and for being the epitome of the quality education outcomes that the Ghana Education Service, MOE and the Government had been investing heavily into the past few years.



He emphasized on the Governments continuous commitment to ensure that every child received free quality education and continued to the apex to realise his or her dreams.



The results, he said, of the 2020 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) was a testament to the quality of education that was on the rise and the 2021 WASSCE results also justified the sustainability of the improved outcomes that they hoped to see in the educational system.



Mr Ntim Fordjour assured the citizenry that, with the introduction of the free SHS policy, the narrative where children would have to truncate their learning at the BECE level as the highest point of their education would be a thing of the past.



He noted that the Ministry received Government, senior officials and ministers of education of other African countries who desired increasing opportunities for their learners to enlighten them on the operations and management of the free SHS policy.



Miss Bernice, an Awardee, on behalf of the others expressed appreciation to the MOE, GES, teachers, and sponsors for their support.

Source: GNA









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
A medical doctor at Ridge hospital in Accra, Dr Jonathan Juwerie, has called for intensive public education on breast cancer in deprived communities across the country.



He said it was important for women in rural and deprived communities to have a better understanding of the causes, symptoms and prevention of the ailment to better protect themselves against it.



The medical Doctor made the call at a free breast cancer screening organised by Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) at Gbetuori community in the Jirapa Municipality of the Upper West Region.



The programme presented an opportunity for women and girls in the community to screen for the disease, while they were also educated on the causes and possible preventive measures of breast cancer.



Dr Juwerie said educating women to understand the disease would help clear the negative perceptions and encourage women to seek early treatment, adding that they will be able to self-examine the breast for signs and symptoms of the disease.



He encouraged women to regularly visit the hospital for check-ups since early detection was the surest way to fight against breast cancer.



Dr Juwerie said the lack of support from men had become a major challenge and said it was time men understood the important role they played in the lives of women.



He advised the women to consult medical doctors if they noticed lump, swelling, redness and darkening, change in size, dimpling and nipple discharge in the breast because early detection of breast cancer was important in saving lives.



Mr Matthias Berthold, Project Manager-Resilience Against Climate Change(REACH), said the GIZ was ready to partner private organisations to promote quality healthcare delivery, and urged women in the area to take advantage of the exercise to know their status.



He urged the members, especially women not to take lightly any change in the breast but to report promptly to a health facility and urged the participants to extend the education to their communities to ensure that no woman died of breast cancer.



The project manager explained that the screening also sought to educate women in the community on how to detect abnormalities in their breasts at the early stage.



He urged women to adopt healthy lifestyles to reduce their chances of getting the disease, and advised those who already have it to comply with the treatment as prescribed.

Source: The Ghanaian Times









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
Christians in the Oti Region have donated an amount of GHC 34,000 towards the construction of the National Cathedral.



Most Reverend T.K. Titus Awotwi Pratt, a member of the Board of Trustees said, the Cathedral would serve as a centre and a symbol of national cohesion amongst the various Christian denominations in Ghana, and that, it would be for 'all who believe that Jesus is Lord.'



He said the Cathedral will have an auditorium, chapels, baptistery, a music school, an art gallery and a biblical museum among others.



Reverend Dr Joyce Aryee, a member of the Board of Trustees of the National Cathedral Secretariat said support from the public would help quicken the construction of the edifice.



She told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) that the Cathedral was a unique structure that would not only serve as a place of worship but also as a tourist destination.



Mrs Aryee, who is the Executive Director, Salt and Light Ministries, said the appeal had an overwhelming response and urged other organizations to come on board to help complete the facility on schedule.



Mr Joshua Gmayenaam Makubu, the Oti Regional Minister said, Ghana, as part of the global community, is fast losing the family values and we cannot continue in that direction.



He said 'for those of us who belong to the Christian religion we are aware of what the priests and prophets in the olden days achieved by building temples for the Lord'.

Source: GNA









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
The Greater Accra Regional Minister, Hon. Henry Quartey has led a team of Municipal Chief Executives (MCEs) to pay a courtesy call on the Director-General of the National Lottery Authority (NLA), Sammi Awuku.



The visit was to have a good working relationship between the NLA and the Assemblies within the metropolis.



Mr Awuku commended the Regional Minister for his initiatives and efforts in making Accra Clean.



We are pleased to have you visit us today. We work with various stakeholders in our industry and we hope that we can have a good Working relationship as you work to make Accra clean. There are a lot we can collaborate on thus the NLA can support the Assemblies with our widows might as our people operate within the remit of the law.



He further reiterated the challenges facing NLA and illegal operators in the Region and called on the MMCEs to help them root out the illegal operators in the system.



There are few challenges we encounter in the area of Tudu, Ayawaso and some parts of Greater Accra and I will apply to our MMDCEs to help us root out all illegal operators in the Region, he said.



Mr Awuku further stated; NLA and our good course foundation, we support culture and a lot of invitation come on us to support some festival and we dont know which of the festivals are big or strong so going forward management have decided some of this challenge will be channel to the RCC accordingly. We want to support the new Namei but it must be managed properly.



He appealed to the Minister to have a dialogue on the demolition of lotto operators structures to see how best the problem can be resolved amicably.



Hon. Henry Quartey, on his part, emphasized his unrelenting desire to making the Greater Accra Region work again, hence reiterating his promise to President Nana Addo Dankwah Akufo-Addo.



Indeed we have enjoyed tremendous support from other stakeholders and by the grace of God operation clean your frontage law has been passed and crossed all the 29 MMDCEs and its municipality.



He also iterated that currently we have about 1200 undergoing training to be deployed into the assemblies to help with the implementation of the new by laws.



Hon. Quartey also suggested to the NLA boss to think about rebranding their lotto kiosk in order not for their operators not to be affected by the demolition exercise.

Source: Peacefmonline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
The Attorney-General and the Minister of Justice, Godfred Dame, has urged the management of the Council for Law Reporting to digitise fully its law reporting operations to improve the speed of law reporting.

He said the Council for Law Reporting was at the heart of the training of law students and continued legal education of lawyers and judges in the country.



Besides, he said, by section 17 of NRCD 64, the Ghana Law Reports was designated as the official law reports of Ghana which might be cited in proceedings in the courts.



He, therefore, said a failure to embrace technology and digitise might imply extinction of the Ghana Law Reports, and other publications the council was authorised by law to engage.



With the proliferation of rival law reports and the availability of same on the world wide web at the click of a button, there is an immediate need for your Council to go fully digital and improve the speed of law reporting, he stated.



Swearing in the new governing board of the Council for Law Reporting in Accra last Friday, Mr Dame said It is imperative to underscore the urgent necessity for the Council to bring its operations in tune with the demands of modernity.





The rapidly evolving technological world implies that law reporting also ought to keep step with the dictates of the times. The tendency for the Ghana Law Reports to lag behind, in terms of time, must be a phenomenon of the past, he said



The six-member board is chaired by a Justice of the Supreme Court, Mr Justice Gabriel Pwamang. The other members are a representative from the office of the A-G, Ms Frederica Sala Hiasu; the former President of the Ghana Bar Association, Mr Anthony Forson Jr; a representative from the Ghana Publishing Company Limited, Mr Samuel Kusi Donkor.



The rest were a representative of the Faculty of Law of the University of Ghana, Legon, Dr Samuel Obeng Manteaw, and the Editor of the Ghana Law Reports, Mrs Margaret Awuku-Gyekye.



Eminent role

The A-G said currently professional services were rapidly changing, a reason the Council for Law Reporting had to adapt in response to the disruption forced on the Council by technology.



While informing the board that he and the Editor of the Ghana Law Reports had commenced discussions on how to ensure a complete digitisation of the operations of the Council, he urged the board to assist in making such an enterprise a reality.



He indicated that the common law jurisprudence of relying on binding decisions of superior courts of judicature as a guide for adjudication rendered the role of the Council for Law Reporting eminently important in the legal landscape of our country.



In my respectful view, the work of the Council for Law Reporting is at the heart of the training of law students and continued legal education of lawyers and judges in this country.



In spite of this eminent role of the Council in the legal life of the nation, the state of affairs of the Council is a sorry one, he said.



Sorry state of affairs



Mr Dame was worried that the performance of the institution had, for years, been dogged by severe logistical, infrastructural and financial difficulties.



Since the premises on which it operated is in a complete state of dilapidation, he said the council lacked the funds required to prepare, publish and market the Ghana Law Reports and other publications it was mandated by law to do.



He, therefore, entreated the board to present to him a comprehensive assessment of what was required for a retooling of the Council for Law Reporting as a step to address the severe difficulties facing it.



Support



Speaking on behalf of the board, Mr Justice Pwamang, promised that the board would approach its work with the best of their knowledge, experience and skill to ensure the Council produced the highest standard of products.



He, therefore, called for support and cooperation from the A-G and the government such as the upgrading of the office block of the Council to help it achieve its objectives.



We have plans to digitise our law reporting system for people to purchase or subscribe to law reports and to ensure that the high product that we produce become beneficial to the people, he said.













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.

Featured Video
Algeria's President Abdelmadjid Tebboune has banned the export of foodstuffs that the country imports, the state news agency has said.



The commodities include sugar, oil, pasta, semolina and wheat derivatives.



A source is quoted by the agency as saying that the president called it economic sabotage to sell commodities that the country does not produce locally.



The president's decision also bans importation of frozen meat products, agency said.



President Tebboune made the announcement after listening to a presentation by trade and agriculture ministers on the availability for food staples.



He did not give any reason for the ban but it comes amid fears of a sharp increase in the global prices of basic foods such as wheat because of the conflict in Ukraine, which is one of the worlds biggest exporters.



Algeria imports most of its foodstuff. There have been protests in the past over increase in food prices in the country.



Last week, Egypt banned the export of wheat, flour, pasta and pulses for three months. It is one of the largest importers of Ukrainian wheat.

Source: BBC









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
Residents at the Weija ridge and reservoir areas in Accra live in danger due to ongoing illegal sand winning activities in the area.



The activities have created deep gullies on either parts of the ridge, which resulted in landslides whenever there was a heavy rainfall.



This came to light when a multi-sectorial team on Friday embarked on a verification tour of Weija to access the level of risk caused by the activities of illegal mining to the ridge.



Referred to as the Liaison group, the team included officials from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Water Resources Commission, Minerals Commission, Forestry Commission, Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources (MLNR), Ghana Chamber of Mines, Ghana Geological Survey Authority (GGSA) and Ga South Municipal Assembly.



In an interview after the tour, the Acting Deputy Executive Director of EPA in charge of Operations, Ransford Sakyi, said the group observed that activities of illegal mining had destabilised the ridge, posing danger to residents and affected the buildings on top and beneath it.



He explained that the situation since the last visit had worsened and could lead to disastrous consequences if not curtailed.



I think it is time that we act as a nation on this problem. We are not doomsayers, but the fact must be said that there is a potential problem if nothing is done, he added.



Mr Sakyi said the best approach now was to stabilise the ridge and rehabilitate it with a channel created for free drainage while recoveringthe surface.



He reiterated the need for landowners to be engaged and educated on the impending danger looming at the site.



The Principal Seismologist at the GGSA, Nicolas Opoku, said the mining activities had exposed the softer rocks which were responsive to weather conditions.



Overtime, where we are standing will be eroded and it will start eating deep into the lower parts of the mountain, he said.



He cautioned against continuous mining and sand winning around the ridge and reservoir areas, adding that it could have devastating effect on residents and the country at large if not checked.

Source: The Ghanaian Times









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
Minister of Trade and Industry, Hon. Alan Kyerematen has addressed participants at the ongoing Business Forum in Dubai and deemed it necessary and a timely conversation to have, as Ghana and United Arab Emirates (UAE) seek to advance cooperation in strategic investments needed to harness our vast resources for industrial transformation and to boost trade and investment among our two countries.



According to him, the platform will not only enhance the partnership between Ghana and UAE, but will enable participants to share experiences, as well as exchange information on priority sectors, special initiatives, and opportunities readily available for investments by our respective private sector operators.



In his address, he said the United Arab Emirates has emerged as one of Ghanas major trading partners with the value of trade averaging over $1.7 billion between 2011 to 2019. Trade continues to be strong even with disruptions from the COVID-19 Pandemic where total trade stood at over $2 billion with Ghana consistently recording Balance of Trade Surplus over the past 10 years



Mr. Kyerematen is optimistic that Ghana can be used as the strategic entry point for Emirati Businesses with the coming into force of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Agreement and effective implementation of other preferential trade agreements such as the Ghana-EU Economic Partnership Agreement, and Ghana-UK Trade Partnership Agreement. This will ensure that our citizens will enjoy the mutual benefits that are likely to emerge from our close economic cooperation.



Going on, the hon. minister intimated that, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has further increased the opportunity for enhancing the productive capacity of the Ghanaian private sector through strategic partnerships with foreign counterparts. The disruption of global supply chains caused by the pandemic has therefore reinforced the necessity for closer collaboration, so that we can boost our mutual self-sufficiency, strengthen our local economies, and reduce our dependence on the production of critical goods by companies operating from outside Ghana.



It is against this background that Ghana has since 2017 focused attention on laying a strong foundation for economic transformation by restoring macroeconomic stability, stimulating the private sector through business regulatory reforms, and restructuring the financial sector to ensure easy access to finance.



We also embarked on ambitious and transformative flagship programmes such as the One District One Factory (1D1F) Initiative, and Planting for Food and Jobs programme aimed at repositioning the country to become the Manufacturing Hub for Africa he said.



Ghana is empowering its private sector to focus on selected value chains including Industrial Starch, Textiles & Garments, Pharmaceuticals, Cashew, Horticultural Products, Fish & Fishery Products, Cocoa, Automobiles & Vehicles, Industrial Salt, and integrated aluminium and bauxite, among others.



The Trade and Industry Minister is of the belief that, the ongoing Business Forum and Ghanas participation in the Expo 2020 Dubai, will boost the already strong bond of economic cooperation through strategic partnerships among our private sectors.



He therefore, seized the opportunity to invite UAE investors to take advantage of the emerging opportunities offered by Ghana in the strategic areas in the Petrochemicals, Automobile, Garment and Textiles, Iron and Steel, Bauxite and Aluminium, and Pharmaceutical sectors.



The Ministry of Trade and Industry is looking forward to working with its counterpart in UAE through the establishment of a new strategic framework, Ghana-Emirati Business Council, which seeks to significantly boost cooperation in Trade, Finance, and Investments he concluded.

Source: Peacefmonline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, has challenged Russian President Vladimir Putin to a fight.

The Tesla CEO wants to face Putin in single combat and if he wins, Ukraine gets freedom.

The SpaceX and Tesla boss made this known on Twitter though the platform has been banned in Russia.

He went on to tag Kremlin to his tweet challenging Putin and asked: "Do you agree to this fight?"



Putin, 69, is an ex-KGB officer and a black belt in judo. He has practiced judo since his childhood and became the first Russian to achieve the eighth dan black belt in 2012, before being awarded the ninth dan black belt in taekwondo a year later.

I hereby challenge

 

to single combat



Stakes are   Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 14, 2022

    ? @KremlinRussia_E  Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 14, 2022









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
A Nigerian national who acquired a Ghana national identification card (Ghana Card) by using false information has been convicted by the Asokore Mampong District Magistrate Court.

Usman Emmanuel, a resident of Sawaba in Kumasi was convicted on the offence of falsely providing information about himself contrary to section 17 (C) of the National Identification Authority Act 707 (Act 2006).



He has been sentenced to a fine of 250 penalty units, equivalent to GH3,000.00 or in default serve six months in prison.



A statement dated March 13, 2022, signed and issued by the acting Head of Corporate Affairs of the National Identification Authority (NIA), Abudu Abdul-Ganiyu, said the convict presented a Ghanaian birth certificate which enabled him to register for the Ghana Card.



According to NIA, the convict went through the registration and was at the point of being issued with the Ghana Card. It was at that point that he was detected to be a foreigner.



The convict was therefore handed over to the police for investigation.



Police investigations established that despite being in possession of a valid Ghanaian Birth Certificate, Usman Emmanuel was not a Ghanaian.



Usman Emmanuel was arraigned before the Asokore Mampong District Magistrate Court and was charged with the offence of falsely providing information about himself contrary to section 17 (C) of the National Identification Authority Act 707 (Act 2006).



At the end of the trial, the court found him guilty of the offence and was sentenced to a fine of 250 penalty units, equivalent to GHC 3,000.00 or in default 6 months imprisonment.

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.

Featured Video
It was his advertised wedding day and it was supposed to be, as it usually is, one of his happiest days  a day he would share with his bride but luck eluded them in the most disastrous way.



Today, March 14, 2022, the death of Mohammed Zakari, the groom, has left his would-be bride, Mariam Osman, with nightmares of all the good things they expected Sunday, March 13, 2022, to bring to them.



In a 3news.com report, Mohammed Zakaris life was snuffed in a sad way when he was involved in a car accident at Fumesua en route to the grounds of their marriage ceremony.



The accident, which occurred on the Kumasi-Accra Highway around 1:00pm, involved a Ford Escape vehicle with registration number AS 3222-21, the police said.



Mohammed Zakari is said to have been the driver, chauffeuring four of his friends when he lost control and ran into a ditch, dying on the spot.



His other friends, except for one whose situation is a life-threatening one, are said to have made it but are currently being attended to at the KNUST Hospital.



The critically injured occupant is reported to have since been transferred to the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH).



The report added that the Ejisu Motor Transport and Traffic Directorate (MTTD) has commenced an investigation.



The would-be bride is still in a coma after suffering from the traumatic shock.



In accordance with Islamic rites, the deceased groom has been buried.















Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
Joyce Bawah Mogtari, the special aide to former President John Dramani Mahama, has taken a swipe at New Patriotic Party (NPP) stalwart Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko for criticising her boss over last Wednesdays Supreme Court ruling.



Following last weeks Supreme Court ruling that Deputy Speakers of Parliament can be counted and vote on decisions in the House, Mahama described the decision as shocking but not surprising.



He added: An unfortunate interpretation for convenience that sets a dangerous precedent of judicial interference in Parliamentary procedure for the future.



In direct response, Gabby tweeted: You may choose to forgive John Mahama because his elementary understanding of the law is evidently small, going by his reactions to Supreme Court decisions  except ex-presidents are expected not to speak loosely against the 3 arms of Govt. But, what about lawyer Alban Bagbin?



Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko is the senior partner in the Accra-based corporate law firm Africa Legal Associates and the chairman of Asaase Radio.



Mahamas aide, Mogtari also took to Facebook to fire back at Gabby for questioning the legal proficiency of the 2020 flagbearer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC).



Below is her full Facebook post:



And who says one must have a knowledge of the law to proffer an opinion, share a view or criticize rulings of the Supreme Court.



Some students of the law and even lawyers lack basic understanding of the Law; the fact that they are lawyers notwithstanding. The SC is not above criticism or scrutiny.



The bedrock of every democracy is freedom of speech first and foremost. To say nobody should criticize an institution created for the people, is within itself absurd.



We should stop making a myth about these Judges; most of them were students at some point, had colleagues at the Bar before becoming judges. They are mandated to defend and protect our rights in a democratic dispensation.



In any case, who is Gabby, in comparison to President John Dramani Mahama? Did Mr. Mahama not support his disagreement with the SC with more cogent, intelligent and practical constitutional arguments than President Akufo-Addo did in his poorly arranged no-question interview?



John Mahamas understanding of the law, parliamentary and governance experience, practical use of the law etc cannot be disrespected in any way, unless by persons steeped in arrogance, outright disrespect and despotic behaviour.

You may choose to forgive John Mahama because his elementary understanding of the law is evidently small, going by his reactions to Supreme Court decisions - except ex-presidents are expected not to speak loosely against the 3 arms of Govt. But, what about lawyer Alban Bagbin?  Gabby Otchere-Darko (@GabbyDarko) March 12, 2022









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
The Supreme Court has held that the 1992 Constitution does not place any restriction on a Deputy Speaker from being part of the quorum for decision-making and to vote on matters for determination.

It is the considered view of the apex court that Deputy Speakers are Members of Parliament, elected as representatives of constituencies and, therefore, causing them to lose their casting votes will amount to disenfranchising their constituents.



The Supreme Court last Wednesday, March 9, 2022 ruled that a Deputy Speaker presiding over proceedings in Parliament has a right to vote on matters for determination and gave the reasons for their ruling on Friday, March 11, 2022.



Explaining the reasons for giving a judgment that a Deputy Speaker presiding over proceedings in Parliament has a right to vote on matters for determination and be counted as part of the quorum for decision-making in the House, the Supreme Court declared, To cause a member to forfeit their vote in Parliament merely on account of having to preside over the business of the House in the Speakers absence would unfairly disenfranchise not only the presiding member but also their constituents. Such an interpretation would likely give rise to certain perverse outcomes.



For example, it could lead to opportunistic absences by a Speaker or one or the other Deputy Speakers, as an absence would mean a vote loss by the presiding members and their party, the court held.



The unanimous decision of the seven-member panel was authored by Justice Emmanuel Yonny Kulendi.



Constitutional sovereignty



The court in its judgment also declared as unconstitutional Order 109(3) of the Standing Orders of Parliament, which barred a Deputy Speaker from casting a vote on matters for determination.



That declaration raised the question of whether the court could interfere in the operations of Parliament or what has been termed as the political doctrine.



In answering that question, the court held that the country had over the years practised constitutional sovereignty as opposed to parliamentary sovereignty.



In view of that, the court held that the 1992 Constitution granted it the power to declare any act by any arm or agency of government which violated the 1992 Constitution as null and void.



Consequently, parliamentary standing orders are subservient to the Constitution and in any case, no arm of government or agency of the state, including Parliament, is a law unto itself because without exception, everyone and everything in Ghana is subject to the constitution, the court held.



Quorum



On the issue of quorum, the apex court is of the view that the 1992 Constitution distinguishes between a quorum for business of Parliament, which is Article 102, and the quorum for decision-making, which is Article 104.



It held that whereas Article 102 prevented any person presiding, either Speaker or Deputy Speaker, from being part of the quorum for business of the House, Article 104(1) prevented only the person elected as Speaker and not the deputies from forming part of that quorum.



As to the non-voting quorum, Article 102 makes it clear that a presiding Deputy Speaker, who is a Member of Parliament and present, shall not be counted in determining the number.



However, when it comes to determining the voting quorum under Article 104(1), no such restriction or limitation is placed on a presiding member or Deputy Speaker. The non-inclusion of the phrase apart from the person presiding in Article 104 (1) must have been deliberate. To hold otherwise would amount to impugning the wisdom of the framers of the constitution and supplanting their clear intent, the court stated.



Voting



On the issue of a Deputy Speaker voting, the court said there was a clear distinction between a person elected as Speaker and a Deputy Speaker.



The court was of the view that per Article 97(1), a Speaker cannot be an MP, but all Deputy Speakers were MPs.



It further held that Article 104(2) specifically mentioned that The Speaker was prevented from casting a vote and not other persons, such as Deputy Speakers, presiding over proceedings of Parliament.



Significantly, the voting disqualification in Article 104(2) is specific to the Speaker and, therefore, does not apply generally to the person presiding.



The Speaker is disqualified from voting not because he or she presides over sittings of Parliament, but because the Speaker is not a Member of Parliament, voting being a right only for Members of Parliament, the court held.



It was also the considered view of the court that the only instance whereby a Deputy Speaker or any MP was barred from voting on the floor of Parliament was under Article 104(5), which is when the MP had a conflict of interest in a specific contract under consideration.



"Presiding at a sitting of Parliament is not intended by the framers of our constitution to be a disqualifying conflict of interest and, therefore, a presiding Deputy Speaker does not forfeit his or her right to vote merely by virtue of presiding in the absence of the Speaker," the court held.

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.

Featured Video
Member of Parliament for Akuapem North, Nana Ama Dokua Asiamah-Adjei has described the Speaker of Parliament, Rt Hon Alban S.K. Bagbin's reaction to the Supreme Court ruling on the voting rights of Deputy Speakers as totally baseless.



According to her, the speakers augments on the ruling are clearly devoid of fact but full of emotions.



In a post made by the Deputy Minister for Trade and Industry on Facebook, she maintained that Mr Bagbins position as Speaker of Parliament doesnt warrant him the status to interpret the constitution of the country.



Throughout his response, save for the mere mention of the Political Question doctrine, speaker Bagbin provides no legal basis for his disagreement. No law, no precedent, no persuasion. This, to a greater extent, does not portend and add to the advancement of the argument.



His disagreement, not backed by any legal argument is certainly not superior to the detailed legally reasoned position of the 7 Justices of the Supreme Court. Indeed Mr Speaker is not the one clothed with the power to interpret the constitution. The Supreme Court is.



I encourage all who are interested in this matter to take time to READ the ruling of the court and that of Speakers' statement side by side for an informed exposition, portions of her post read.



She there urged the speaker not to insult the wisdom of the Supreme Court.



How will the Speaker take it, if tomorrow, someone who also disagrees with him, choose to hurl unprintable words at him? Would it be proper for Members to also describe his positions as, say, goofy when we disagree with him? She questioned.

Source: King Edward Ambrose Washman Addo/peacefmonline.com/ghana









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
THE SPEAKER of Parliament, Alban S.K. Bagbin, appears to have stirred up the hornets nest with his unverified statement that he is the least travelled Speaker in the Fourth Republic.



According to DAILY GUIDE checks, the Speaker is turning out to be the most expensive, as well as unproductive Speaker in the Fourth Republic, using the first 14 months of every parliamentary tenure as a yardstick.



Mr. Bagbin, in his 14th month as Speaker, may have not travelled to several countries, but his constant trips to Dubai for medical care, and number of days spent surpass any Speaker, a source in Parliament told DAILY GUIDE.



On March 7, 2022, Mr. Bagbin, in the course of defending his lavish Dubai medical trips, claimed that he is the least travelled Speaker, asking his critics to turn their attention to other members of the leadership of the House.



Even within the hierarchy of Parliament, there are members of the leadership whose frequency of travel is far higher than that of Mr. Speaker. It is also on record that Rt. Hon. Bagbin, in his 14 months as Speaker, is the least travelled of all previous Speakers of Parliament within the same time frame.



The public is advised to see in such publications the political mischief that is intended and ignore such publications with the contempt they deserve, Speaker Bagbin said in a statement issued on his behalf.



However, the statement, according to insiders, is palpable false, as the Speaker hardly stays in the jurisdiction.



Since July last year, when he started his Dubai medical trips, Mr. Bagbin stays outside more than in the country, thereby impeding parliamentary works.



According to information picked from Parliamentary corridors, the Speaker is in his fifth Dubai trip, where he spends average of $200,000, saddling the state with over $1.1million expenses.



Sources indicated that, Mr. Bagbins claims of travelling less is because of his ill health, which has kept him outside the jurisdiction, mostly in Dubai, and that there is no basis for the comparison.



Another source in Parliament also berated the Speaker over claims that he travels with few people.



For purposes of clarity, Mr. Speaker travelled with the medical doctor in charge of Parliament Medical Centre, his spouse as carer and two other officials of Parliament as the least in practice. There is no advance party, no children, and certainly no other member on his entourage, he said in his statement about his current trip.



According to checks, Mr. Bagbin only scaled down the number of his entourage when he realised it was becoming scandalous given the large retinue.



For instance, in his first trip to Dubai in July 2021, he was said to have travelled with 13 people, including his wife and other family members, spending over $200,000 with SOS call for extra cash.



His next trip was scaled down to nine with $150,000 spending money.













Source: Daily Guide









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
Former Member of Parliament for Okaikwei North, Issah Fuseini has slammed the Speaker of Parliament, Rt. Hon. Alban Bagbin over his utterances in response to President Nana Addo's comment on the recent Supreme Court ruling.



Court Ruling



A seven member panel of the Supreme Court, on Wednesday, March 9, 2022 ruled that Deputy Speakers presiding over proceedings in Parliament can vote on issues and be counted as part of a quorum for decision-making.



The court said a "Deputy Speaker is entitled to be counted as a Member of Parliament for quorum" and can "vote and take part in the decision of Parliament".



President Akufo-Addo Opines



Following the court decision, the President of the Republic explained why it's legitimate for the Deputy Speakers to participate in voting during parliamentary proceedings.



He argued if they are ''denied the right to vote, [it will mean] it is tantamount to denying the right of the people you represent to have a say in the decision of the Assembly. That will not be right. So, I couldn't understand all this furore and controversy artificially generated''.



''We are being told that the decision of the court amounts to judicial interference in the work of Parliament. I'm not quite sure that the people who are saying have actually taken the time to read the constitution of our country. It says so in black and white.



''The legislative power of Parliament [that is vested] that is of the State which is vested in Parliament is subject to the provisions of the constitution. All organs of the Ghanaian State including me as the Head of Executive, we are all subject to the teachings of the constitution. There is nobody in the Ghanaian State that is above the fundamental law of the land'', he added.



The President further averred that any defiance to the court ruling will ''lead to the very matter that we have striven so long to avoid; the concentration [of power] of unregulated power in our State. We don't want that. We've had that experience before and we brought about this constitution in order not to allow that to reoccur'' and expressed shock over what he believes is over-concentration on this subject matter, saying ''I'm astonished about how much public energy has been wasted, I say so with the greatest of respect, been wasted in an area on an issue where there is so much clarity and I'm happy that the court''.



Speaker's Reply



The Speaker, issuing a statement on the ruling, described the President's comments as ''myopic''.



Excerpts of the statement read; ''Good morning comrades. I have resisted the temptation of making a comment on the judgment of the Supreme Court on the issue of the voting rights of Deputy Speakers when presiding. But the unfortunate and myopic comment of the President has compelled me to let it out. The SC decision, is to say the least, not only an absurdity but a reckless incursion into the remit of Parliament.



''The trend of unanimity is equally troubling. It doesnt help explore and expand our legal jurisprudence. The Presidents comment is myopic and unfortunate. It only goes to worsen the schism between the Executive and Parliament.''



Fuseini Punches Speaker



Critiquing the Speaker's reply during Peace FM's ''Kokrokoo'' Monday morning, Hon. Issah Fuseini considered the feedback as an insult to the President.



According to him, it is unparliamentary for Rt. Hon. Alban Bagbin to use such words which to him are harsh on the President.



He admonished Hon. Bagbin to refrain from exhibiting such character in the House.



''I think he didn't accord the President respect...When someone shares his opinion on an issue, you don't have to use words like reckless, absurd and myopic. For me, it's an insult''



''...as a former Member of Parliament, when I look at the arrangements and incidents in Parliament, I am not proud of it and a lot of Ghanaians are not proud of it. And for the institution of Parliament and the role it plays in our national developmental agenda, we need to be very careful because Parliament is losing grounds'', he hollered.



He also emphasized that the Speaker, by his utterances and actions, is destroying the noble institution of Parliament, hence cautioned him saying ''the Speaker must tone down...He's destroying the institution called Parliament''.



Hon. Fuseini also advised the Speaker to leave a good legacy behind.







Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
Leading member of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), Captain Retired Nkrabea Effah Dartey seems to doubt the propability of his party remaining in government should elections be conducted presently.



Even though he believes in the Nana Addo-led government, he posed the question to seek opinions on how the NPP governance is faring.



We should ask ourselves, will the NPP win power if an election is conducted today? he questioned in an interview with NEAT FMs morning show, Ghana Montie.



Captain Retired Nkrabea Effah Dartey was discussing the recent coup agitation by some activists linked to the National Democratic Congress (NDC).



According to him, the Nana Addo-led government's focus is to make living better for Ghanaians as well as work towards how the NPP will retain power in the next election.



Coup is totally out of the equation, the situation in Ghana is not that bad to call for a coup, he noted.

Source: King Edward Ambrose Washman Addo/peacefmonline.com/ghana









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
The Progressive People's Party (PPP) has turned 10 years today and to celebrate its anniversary, the party's National Chairman, Nana Ofori Owusu is calling on all Ghanaian electorates to vote for the PPP during the next general elections.



Nana Ofori Owusu, speaking to host Kwami Sefa Kayi on Peace FM's ''Kokrokoo'', presented the PPP as the best alternative for Ghana as he expressed disgust over the turn of events at the 8th Parliament under the leadership of Rt. Hon. Alban S. Bagbin.



The 8th Parliament has been characterized by violence and disturbances with many people expressing their disappointment in the members of the House.



From intense arguments to wrestling in the chamber, the August House's notoriety seems to be growing faster but to Nana Ofori Owusu, Parliament would be balanced and the disorder ceased with the presence of a PPP representative.



In respect of this, he urged Ghanaians to exercise the power of their thumb in favor of the PPP, the party he believes is the 'most powerful' in Ghana.



" . . you can imagine a Parliament that if one PPP MP was there, the PPP would have been the most powerful party in Ghana with just one person in Parliament . . . one person can make a difference and if they vote for PPP, it's not a wasted vote," he said.







Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
Senior Psychologist, Professor Joseph Osafo, has bemoaned the character of some Parliamentarians in the country.



Prof. Joseph Osafo, commenting on the Supreme Court ruling in relation to Deputy Speakers in Parliament's right to vote or be counted as Members of Parliament, warned the House against the use of rude and uncouth language.



His comment comes on the heels of Speaker Alban Bagbin's reply to President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo's position on the court ruling.



President's Stance



President Nana Addo, siding with the Supreme Court, explained ''our Speaker is expressly not a member of the Assembly, that's why he doesn't have the right to vote. In fact, he is really not even to participate in the deliberations of the House. He is the referee making sure that the debate is conducted properly and the rules of procedure or the orders of the House are complied with. That's his role''.



He expounded; ''That is not the case with the Deputy of Speaker and that matter is transparent on the face of our constitution. Indeed, even the Presiding members of our district Assemblies, they have the right to vote. Look at the district Assembly law because they are members of the Assembly and once you are a member of the Assembly, you are representing certain constituencies.''



''The legislative power of Parliament [that is vested] that is of the State which is vested in Parliament is subject to the provisions of the constitution. All organs of the Ghanaian State including me as the Head of Executive, we are all subject to the teachings of the constitution. There is nobody in the Ghanaian State that is above the fundamental law of the land," he added.



Speaker Rebukes Prez



In response, the Speaker said; ''Good morning comrades. I have resisted the temptation of making a comment on the judgment of the Supreme Court on the issue of the voting rights of Deputy Speakers when presiding. But the unfortunate and myopic comment of the President has compelled me to let it out. The SC decision, is to say the least, not only an absurdity but a reckless incursion into the remit of Parliament.



''The trend of unanimity is equally troubling. It doesnt help explore and expand our legal jurisprudence. The Presidents comment is myopic and unfortunate. It only goes to worsen the schism between the Executive and Parliament.''



Minority Leader's Take



The Minority Leader in Parliament, Haruna Idrissu, on his part, described the Supreme Courts ruling as judicial interference in time-tested Parliamentary practice and established conventions, and nothing but a way to show their support for E-Levy.



Our attention has been drawn to a very disappointing ruling of the Supreme Court of Ghana with more or less amounts to judicial interference in time-tested Parliamentary practice and established conventions....judicial support for e-levy and nothing more, judicial support for a struggling economy in distress and a judicial support for the restoration of a matter that they have said is constitutional, is repugnant to the provisions of 102 and 104, he said.



Sham!



But perhaps the most fiery outburst was from the Member of Parliament for Ningo-Prampram, Sam Nartey George, who in an enraged tweet called the decision not only "despicable", "sham", but further dared anyone to try to implement the ruling in the Chamber of Parliament.



The sham called Justice delivery in our Republic. Despicable! he said in a tweet. "Abi we all go dey the Chamber inside. Come and give the referee the ball to play some let us see. The sweetness of the pudding is in its eating," he added in a subsequent tweet.



Prof. Scolds MPs



Addressing the Speaker and Members of Parliament, Prof. Joseph Osafo cautioned them saying ''if we don't respect our democratic architecture, we are preparing ourselves for abuse and violence. If we disrespect consensus and diplomacy or skills of negotiation in the evolution of democracy, we will succeed in destroying the proper governance structure of this nation.''



He noted that some of the legislators are speaking in anger, so warned that ''an anger that is unmanaged, uncensored can be very destructive''.



He advised the Parliamentarians to stay away from parisan politics in the House but adopt diplomatic ways to address national issues, build consensus and desist from unnecessary engagments in unparliamentary incidents.



''As we rise through the ranks to serve this nation, we should be careful about the roles given us...We are not talking to our party members. We are talking to Ghanaians.''

Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
Credit: Department of Defence, Bradley Richardson

From Brisbane to Sydney, many thousands of Australians have been reliving a devastating experience they hopedin 2021, 2020, 2017, 2015, 2013, 2012 or 2010/11would never happen to them again.

For some suburbs built on the flood plains of the Nepean River in western Sydney, for example, these floods are their third in two years.

Flooding is a part of life in parts of Australia. But as climate change intensifies the frequency and severity of floods, fires and other disasters, and recovery costs soar, two big questions arise.

As a society, should we be setting up individuals and families for ruin by allowing them to build back in areas where they can't afford insurance? And is it fair for taxpayers to carry the huge burden of paying for future rescue and relief costs?

Considering 'managed retreat'

Doing something about escalating disaster risks require multiple responses. One is making insurance as cheap as possible. Another is investing in mitigation infrastructure, such as flood levees. Yet another is about making buildings more disaster-resistant.

The temporary levee in Maryborough that's prevented much of the CBD from being inundated. Floodwaters are slowly dropping @abcnews pic.twitter.com/Vpxccl1Ej7  Johanna Marie (@JohannaMarie_) March 1, 2022

The most controversial response is the policy of "managed retreat"abandoning buildings in high-risk areas.

In Australia this policy has been mostly discussed as something to consider some time in the future, and mostly for coastal communities, for homes that can't be saved from rising sea levels and storm surges.

It's a sensitive subject because it uproots families, potentially hollows outs communities and also affects house pricesan unsettling prospect when economic security is tied to home ownership.

But managed retreat may also be better than the chaotic consequences of letting the market alone try to work out the risks to individuals and communities.

Grand Forks: A case study

The strategy is already being implemented in parts of western Europe and North America. An example from Canada is the town of Grand Forks, a community of about 4,000 people 300 kilometers east of Vancouver.

The town is located where two rivers meet. In May 2018 it experienced its worst flooding in seven decades, after days of extreme rain attributed to higher than normal winter snowfall melting quickly in hotter spring temperatures. Deforestation has been blamed for exacerbating the flood.

The flood damaged about 500 buildings in Grand Forks, with lowest-income neighborhoods in low-lying areas the worst-affected.

In the aftermath the local council received C$53 million from the federal and provincial governments for flood mitigation. This included work to reinforce river banks and build dikes. About a quarter of the money was allocated to acquire about 80 homes in the most flood-prone areas.

The decision to demolish these homesabout 5% of the town's housingand return the area to flood plain has been contentious.

Some residents simply didn't want to sell. Adding to the pain was owners being paid the post-flood market value of their homes (saving the council about C$6 million). There were also long delays, with residents stuck in limbo for more than year while authorities finalized transactions.

Flooding in Grand Forks, British Columbia. Credit: Shutterstock

A sensitive subject

Grand Forks shares similarities to Lismore, the epicenter of the disaster affecting northern NSW and southern Queensland.

Lismore is also built on a flood plain where two rivers meet. Floods are a regular occurrence, with the last major disaster being in 2017. Insuring properties in town's most flood-prone areas was already unaffordable for some. In the future it may be impossible.

Last week NSW premier Dominic Perrottet said about 2,000 of the town's 19,000 homes would need to be demolished and rebuilt, a statement the local council general manager downplayed, saying in the majority of cases "people will not have to worry".

For a community traumatized by loss, overwhelmed by the recovery effort and angry at the perceived tardiness of government relief efforts, discussing any form of managed retreat is naturally emotionally charged.

But there's never an ideal time to talk about bulldozing homes and relocating households.

Uprooting communities

Managed retreat has far-reaching financial ramifications. As in Grand Forks, the first questions are what homes are targeted, who pays, and how much.

Some residents may be grateful to sell up and move to safe ground. Others may not, disputing the valuation offered or being reluctant to leave at any price.

Managed retreat policies also affect many more than just those whose homes are being acquired. Demolishing a block or suburb can push down values in neighboring areas, due to fears these homes may be next. Those households are also customers for local businesses. Their loss can potentially send a town economy into decline.

No wonder many people want no mention of managed retreat in their communities.

Pricing in climate change

Markets, however, are already starting to "price in" rising climate risks.

Insurance premiums are going up. The value of homes in high-risk areas will drop as buyers look elsewhere, particularly in the wake of increasingly frequent disasters.

The economic fallout, both for individual households and local communities, could be disastrous.

The Reserve Bank of Australia warned in September 2021 that climate-related disasters could rapidly drive house prices down, particularly in areas that have previously experienced rapid house price growth.

These disasters are also amplifying inequality, with poorer households more likely to live in high-risk locations and also to be uninsured.

In Lismore, for example, more than 80% of households flooded in 2017 were in the lowest 20% of incomes. These trends will intensify as growing climate risks translate into higher insurance premiums and lower house prices.

A deliberate strategy of managed retreat, though distressing and difficult, can help to minimize the upheaval in housing markets as climate risks become increasingly apparent.

We can do better than leaving the most socially and economically vulnerable households to live in high-risk areas, while those with enough money can move away to better, safer futures. Managed retreat can play a key role.

Explore further Homes sell for 8.2 percent less after catastrophic floods

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
The New Caledonian storm petrel (Fregetta lineata) running across the sea. (Petrel is thought to be derived from Peter, an allusion to the biblical account of Peter walking on the water.) This bird was photographed in January 2020, off New Caledonia. Credit: Hadoram Shirihai (Tubenoses Project)

A new seabird scarcely bigger than a swallow and endemic to New Caledonia is described in the Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club (11 March 2022) by a team including CNRS and INRAE scientists from the Chize Centre for Biological Studies (CNRS / La Rochelle University). The discovery is all the more remarkable because the New Caledonian storm petrel, sighted since 2008, is represented by three "forgotten" museum specimens. It is believed that, with an estimated population of 100 to 1,000 pairs, the species is already endangered.

There are currently a little over 10,000 known species of birds on the planet and, on average, one to five new ones are discovered annually. Among the 430 species of seabirds, a third are petrels, close cousins of the albatross. Because petrels are nocturnal, discreet, and primarily nest on secluded islands, we still know little about many of them.

An unknown bird of the storm petrel family had been spotted off of Noumea, New Caledonia, as early as 2008: its streaked underside distinguished it from other birds in this group that have white bellies. Regular sightings of birds of the same appearance in the Coral Sea (east of Australia), beginning in 2010, attracted the attention of specialists.

Other seemingly unconnected clues had also long intrigued ornithologists. In particular, five museum specimens of petrels with streaked bellies, collected at least a century ago during Pacific expeditions and kept in various museums throughout the world, had been erroneously assigned to three different species. Recently, three of these museum specimens were formally identified as the New Zealand storm petrel (Fregetta maoriana), a bird previously thought extinct but rediscovered in 2003. Indeed, this is the species ornithologists initially thought that they had spotted off Noumea in 2008.

The 1839 Samoan specimen held by the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC. It is the type specimenthat is, it serves as the reference for the species. Credit: Vincent Bretagnolle / CEBC / CNRS

Through painstaking study of the birds' morphology and genetics, as well as of museum archives and birds at sea, the petrels seen south of Noumea and in the Coral Sea have now been positively identified as members of a "new" speciesdubbed the New Caledonian storm petrel (Fregetta lineata)along with two of the five mysterious old museum specimens (one collected from the Marquesas Islands in 1922; the other from Samoa in 1839) and a third, more recent specimen collected in 1973, on an island off Brisbane, Australia.

The authors of the study provide proof that F. lineata breeds in New Caledonia: a photograph taken in September 2014 showing a chick from the island still partially covered in down. Specimen collection dates strongly suggest that the Marquesas Islands and Samoa are in its non-breeding range.

So, where exactly in New Caledonia do the storm petrels breed? All the islets in the southern lagoon of New Caledonia have been visited and carefully searched, and researchers have spent many nights on most of them; yet no storm petrel has been seen or heard. The new species might breed on islets in the unexplored Bouloupari Lagoonor inland, possibly in the Tontouta River valley, which is the breeding territory of another species of petrel. Based on the number of individuals sighted at sea, the total population may be in the order of 100 to 1,000 pairs, and now critically endangered. Thus, it is urgent that the breeding grounds of F. lineata be found, to immediately take action for its protection.

Explore further Removing invasive mice from the Farallon Islands would benefit threatened birds

More information: Vincent Bretagnolle et al, Fregetta lineata (Peale, 1848) is a valid extant species endemic to New Caledonia, Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club (2022). Vincent Bretagnolle et al, Fregetta lineata (Peale, 1848) is a valid extant species endemic to New Caledonia,(2022). DOI: 10.25226/bboc.v142i1.2022.a6
Ruins of Palenque. Image: Jan Harenburg/Wikipedia.

Human civilizations depend on the climate. Changes in climate affect the production of food and other resources that support our populations and economies. Paul Hooper, alumnus and adjunct associate professor of anthropology at The University of New Mexico, recently published Human Social Complexity Was Significantly Lower during Climate Cooling Events of the Past 10 Millennia in Cliodynamics: The Journal of Quantitative History and Cultural Evolution. The research confirms that human civilizations thrive or decline depending on the climate around them.

In the 1990s, American geologist Gerard Bond uncovered the signal of climate cooling events based on the expansion of ice sheets in the North Atlantic. The Seshat dataset is a cross-cultural database published by a team from Oxford and the University of Connecticut that contains historical information about societies all over the world, including a measure of social complexity. Hooper reanalyzed this dataset to examine how complexity during cooling periods compared to other periods.

Social complexity is a set of characteristics that typically come together in large-scale societies, including population size, government, writing, and urbanization. Social complexity has tended to increase over the last 10,000 years, particularly after the transition to agriculture, he noted.

"I looked at how much human civilizations were affected by climate cooling events that occurred repeatedly over the past 10,000 years. I found that societies were substantially less complex during the coldest centuries of these climate events. For societies in northern regions, cooling was associated with a loss of about 300 years of accumulated social complexity," Hooper explained.

"The research shows that the success of civilizations depends on favorable climatic conditions. Departures from these conditions are associated with stagnation and collapse. The historical record makes it clear," Hooper said. Average temperatures were roughly 2 degrees Celsius (4 degrees Fahrenheit) colder during cooling events.

"Societies based on agriculture, like our own, are productive within a surprisingly narrow range of climatic conditions," Hooper said. "Too cold, too hot, or too little water, and productivity suffers. Complex societies have never faced the climate conditions that are now on the horizon, and they're going to be a shock to our social and economic systems. In addition to higher temperature, precipitation will also be key. While some areas will dry up, others will receive more water due to higher rates of evaporation from the oceans."

More information: The paper is The paper is available for download here
Recycled patinated flint tools from Revadim. Credit: Tel Aviv University

A first-of-its-kind study at Tel Aviv University asks what drove prehistoric humans to collect and recycle flint tools that had been made, used, and discarded by their predecessors. After examining flint tools from one layer at the 500,000-year-old prehistoric site of Revadim in the south of Israel's Coastal Plain, the researchers propose a novel explanation: prehistoric humans, just like us, were collectors by nature and culture. The study suggests that they had an emotional urge to collect old human-made artifacts, mostly as a means for preserving the memory of their ancestors and maintaining their connectedness with place and time.

The study was led by Ph.D. student Bar Efrati and Prof. Ran Barkai of the Jacob M. Alkow Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Cultures at TAU's Entin Faculty of Humanities, in collaboration with Dr. Flavia Venditti from the University of Tubingen in Germany and Prof. Stella Nunziante Cesaro from the Sapienza University of Rome, Italy. The paper appeared in the prestigious scientific journal Scientific Reports, published by Nature.

Bar Efrati explains that stone tools with two lifecycles have been found at prehistoric sites all over the world, but the phenomenon has never been thoroughly investigated. In the current study the researchers focused on a specific layer at Revadima large, open-air, multi-layered site in the south of Israel's Coastal Plain, dated to about 500,000 years ago. The rich findings at Revadim suggest that this was a popular spot in the prehistoric landscape, revisited over and over again by early humans drawn by an abundance of wildlife, including elephants. Moreover, the area is rich with good-quality flint, and most tools found at Revadim were in fact made of fresh flint.

A picture of the prehistoric site of Revadim during excavation. Credit: Tel Aviv University

Bar Efrati: "The big question is: Why did they do it? Why did prehistoric humans collect and recycle actual tools originally produced, used, and discarded by their predecessors, many years earlier? Scarcity of raw materials was clearly not the reason at Revadim, where good-quality flint is easy to come by. Nor was the motivation merely functional, since the recycled tools were neither unusual in form nor uniquely suitable for any specific use."

The key to identifying the recycled tools and understanding their history is the patinaa chemical coating which forms on flint when it is exposed to the elements for a long period of time. Thus, a discarded flint tool that lay on the ground for decades or centuries accumulated an easily identifiable layer of patina, which is different in both color and texture from the scars of a second cycle of processing that exposed the original color and texture of flint.

In the current study, 49 flint tools with two lifecycles were examined. Produced and used in their first lifecycle, these tools were abandoned, and years later, after accumulating a layer of patina, they were collected, reworked, and used again. The individuals who recycled each tool removed the patina, exposing fresh flint, and shaped a new active edge. Both edges, the old and the new, were examined by the researchers under two kinds of microscopes, and via various chemical analyses, in search of use-wear marks and/or organic residues. In the case of 28 tools, use-wear marks were found on the old and/or new edges, and in 13 tools, organic residues were detected, evidence of contact with animal bones or fat.

Recycled patinated flint tool from Revadim. The yellow-orange areas are the old patinated surfaces of the item, while the new minimal modifications created a new edge that expose the fresh color of the flint. In the case of this items one can see that the morphology, surfaces, and colors of the original item are almost fully preserved, while the recycled modification is minimal and specific. Credit: Tel Aviv University

Close-up on the new active edge of four flint tools from Revadim. One can see the differences in colors and texture between the new modified edges and the outer patinated, old, surfaces. Credit: Tel Aviv University

(Left to Right): Prof. Ran Barkai & Bar Efrati. Credit: Tel Aviv University

Surprisingly, the tools had been used for very different purposes in their two lifecyclesthe older edges primarily for cutting, and the newer edges for scraping (processing soft materials like leather and bone). Another baffling discovery: in their second lifecycle the tools were reshaped in a very specific and minimal manner, preserving the original form of the tool, including its patina, and only slightly modifying the active edge.

Prof. Ran Barkai: "Based on our findings, we propose that prehistoric humans collected and recycled old tools because they attached significance to items made by their predecessors. Imagine a prehistoric human walking through the landscape 500,000 years ago, when an old stone tool catches his eye. The tool means something to himit carries the memory of his ancestors or evokes a connection to a certain place. He picks it up and weighs it in his hands. The artifact pleases him, so he decides to take it 'home." Understanding that daily use can preserve and even enhance the memory, he retouches the edge for his own use, but takes care not to alter the overall shapein honor of the first manufacturer. In a modern analogy, the prehistoric human may be likened to a young farmer still plowing his fields with his great-grandfather's rusty old tractor, replacing parts now and then, but preserving the good old machine as is, because it symbolizes his family's bond with the land. In fact, the more we study early humans, we learn to appreciate them, their intelligence, and their capabilities. Moreover, we discover that they were not so different from us. This study suggests that collectors and the urge to collect may be as old as humankind. Just like us, our early ancestors attached great importance to old artifacts, preserving them as significant memory objectsa bond with older worlds and important places in the landscape."

Explore further Early humans used chopping tools to break animal bones and consume the bone marrow

More information: Bar Efrati et al, Function, life histories, and biographies of Lower Paleolithic patinated flint tools from Late Acheulian Revadim, Israel, Scientific Reports (2022). Journal information: Scientific Reports Bar Efrati et al, Function, life histories, and biographies of Lower Paleolithic patinated flint tools from Late Acheulian Revadim, Israel,(2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-06823-2
Seamus Anderson with the meteorite at the location it was found using the drone seen in the background. Credit: Curtin University

Curtin researchers have recovered a freshly fallen meteorite after pinpointing its exact location on the vast Nullarbor Plain in Western Australia, with a new technique that uses a drone to collect footage of the landscape that is then scanned using artificial intelligence.

Lead researcher, graduate student Seamus Anderson from Curtin's Space Science and Technology Centre (SSTC), said the find at Kybo Station late last year was a successful demonstration of the new method, which had the potential to greatly increase the number of recovered meteorites, particularly those observed as they fall through the atmosphere.

"A camera-fitted drone flies over and collects images of the fall zone, which are transferred to our field computer where an algorithm scans each image for meteorites and features that resemble them," Mr. Anderson said.

"Although our algorithm was 'trained' on data collected from past meteorite searches, we brought with us previously recovered meteorites and imaged them on the ground at the fall site, to create local data with which to further train the algorithm.

"Meteorite searches usually involve a group of people walking over a large predicted impact area but our new method requires only about one tenth the amount of labor and time and has a much higher likely success rate, which is evident in the fact we located and recovered the meteorite within four days of being on site at Kybo Station."

Mr. Anderson said such meteorites, which are tracked by the Desert Fireball Network (DFN), were special because they gave a geologic sample of the particular region of the solar system from which they originated, contributing to an overall understanding of the geology of the solar system.

"New solutions such as our drone technique help make investments in space science and the study of meteorites more cost-effective and impactful," Mr. Anderson said.

"Beyond increasing our understanding of the solar system, the study of meteorites is useful for many reasons. For example, meteorites often contain a higher concentration of rare and valuable elements such as cobalt, which is crucial to the construction of modern batteries.

"Also, by gaining a better understanding of how extraterrestrial material is distributed throughout the solar system, we may one day mine asteroids for precious resources, instead of scrounging for the finite amounts of them on Earth and perhaps harming precious ecosystems in the process.

"Other potential applications for our new approach using drones and artificial intelligence include wildlife management and conservation, as our model could be easily retrained to detect objects other than meteorites, such as plants and animals."

Explore further A meteorite recently crashed into Australia, and a drone scoured the area and found it

More information: Seamus L. Anderson et al, Successful Recovery of an Observed Meteorite Fall Using Drones and Machine Learning (2022). arXiv:2203.01466 [astro-ph.EP] Seamus L. Anderson et al, Successful Recovery of an Observed Meteorite Fall Using Drones and Machine Learning (2022). arXiv:2203.01466 [astro-ph.EP] arxiv.org/abs/2203.01466
MBARIs autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) is recovered after completing a successful seafloor mapping mission in the Arctic Ocean. The remotely operated vehicle (ROV, foreground) is used to conduct visual surveys of the newly mapped seafloor. Credit: Charlie Paull  2016 MBARI

A new study from MBARI researchers and their collaborators is the first to document how the thawing of permafrost, submerged underwater at the edge of the Arctic Ocean, is affecting the seafloor. The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on March 14, 2022.

Numerous peer-reviewed studies show that thawing permafrost creates unstable land which negatively impacts important Arctic infrastructure, such as roads, train tracks, buildings, and airports. This infrastructure is expensive to repair, and the impacts and costs are expected to continue increasing.

Using advanced underwater mapping technology, MBARI researchers and their collaborators revealed that dramatic changes are happening to the seafloor as a result of thawing permafrost. In some areas, deep sinkholes have formed, some larger than a city block of six-story buildings. In other areas, ice-filled hills called pingos have risen from the seafloor.

"We know that big changes are happening across the Arctic landscape, but this is the first time we've been able to deploy technology to see that changes are happening offshore too," said Charlie Paull, a geologist at MBARI and one of the lead authors of the study. "This groundbreaking research has revealed how the thawing of submarine permafrost can be detected, and then monitored once baselines are established."

While the degradation of terrestrial Arctic permafrost is attributed in part to increases in mean annual temperature from human-driven climate change, the changes the research team has documented on the seafloor associated with submarine permafrost derive from much older, slower climatic shifts related to our emergence from the last ice age. Similar changes appear to have been happening along the seaward edge of the former permafrost for thousands of years.

"There isn't a lot of long-term data for the seafloor temperature in this region, but the data we do have aren't showing a warming trend. The changes to seafloor terrain are instead being driven by heat carried in slowly moving groundwater systems," explained Paull.

Repeated mapping surveys with MBARIs autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) revealed a massive sinkhole developed over just nine years. Credit: Eve Lundsten  2022 MBARI

"This research was made possible through international collaboration over the past decade that has provided access to modern marine research platforms such as MBARI's autonomous robotic technology and icebreakers operated by the Canadian Coast Guard and the Korean Polar Research Institute," said Scott Dallimore, a research scientist with the Geological Survey of Canada, Natural Resources Canada, who led the study with Paull. "The Government of Canada and the Inuvialuit people who live on the coast of the Beaufort Sea highly value this research as the complex processes described have implications for the assessment of geohazards, creation of unique marine habitat, and our understanding of biogeochemical processes."

Background

The Canadian Beaufort Sea, a remote area of the Arctic, has only recently become accessible to scientists as climate change drives the retreat of sea ice.

Since 2003, MBARI has been part of an international collaboration to study the seafloor of the Canadian Beaufort Sea with the Geological Survey of Canada, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada, and since 2013, with the Korean Polar Research Institute.

MBARI used autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) and ship-based sonar to map the bathymetry of the seafloor down to a resolution of a one-meter square grid, or roughly the size of a dinner table.

Paull and the team of researchers will return to the Arctic this summer aboard the R/V Araon, a Korean icebreaker. This trip with MBARI's long-time Canadian and Korean collaboratorsalong with the addition of the United States Naval Research Laboratorywill help refine our understanding of the decay of submarine permafrost.

Two of MBARI's AUVs will map the seafloor in remarkable detail and MBARI's MiniROVa portable remotely operated vehiclewill enable further exploration and sampling to complement the mapping surveys.

Explore further Researchers discover mysterious holes in the seafloor off Central California

More information: Rapid seafloor changes associated with the degradation of Arctic submarine permafrost, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2022). Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Rapid seafloor changes associated with the degradation of Arctic submarine permafrost,(2022). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2119105119
Local and FEMA Urban Search and Rescue workers and U.S. Coast Guard members search for residents needing assistance after Hurricane Katrina left New Orleans neighborhoods flooded in 2005. Credit: FEMA/Jocelyn Augustino

"Where were you when ?"

This question frequently ends in disasteror rather, with the naming of one: " the pandemic began"; " Hurricane Katrina struck"; " the 9/11 terrorist attacks took place."

Disasters loom large in the pantheon of historical events, capturing attention, striking a deep chord of empathy for those affected, and motivating a desire among the public, policymakers and governments to be more prepared for the next one.

The United States possesses a comparatively robust system for anticipating and governing emergencies, but it still holds much room for improvement. Understanding how the current system came to be serves as a sold first step in making it better.

Andrew Lakoff, professor of sociology and anthropology at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, provides this foundation with a comprehensive look at the U.S. emergency management system's evolution from the early 20th century to the present. His work is presented in his latest book, "The Government of Emergency: Vital Systems, Expertise, and the Politics of Security" (Princeton University Press, 2021).

Lakoff and his co-author, Stephen Collier of the University of California, Berkeley, became interested in the government's system of risk and emergency managementhow it came to be and why it addresses problems as it doesin the early 2000s, following the 9/11 terrorist attacks and Hurricane Katrina.

"We saw government officials drawing analogies among a range of very different kinds of occurrencesfrom terrorism to natural disasters, environmental catastrophes and pandemics, and even to financial crisesand we were curious to understand what linked these seemingly disparate events," Lakoff said.

The two "historically inclined anthropologists," as Lakoff describes himself and Collier, share an interest in biopolitics, a field of study focusing on how experts and governments seek to foster the health and well-being of populations.

A patchwork system with surprising root

As it now stands, the country's risk management and emergency preparedness system comprises a patchwork of cooperating groups.

"It's a distributed system with a fairly limited federal role that depends on flexible coordination among government and non-governmental agencies at multiple scales, across multiple jurisdictions," Lakoff explained. For example, after a catastrophic storm, the Federal Emergency Management Agency may coordinate with the local governments of affected cities and disaster relief nonprofits, such as the American Red Cross, to deliver aid to citizens.

This distribution of authority, responsibility and action avoids the danger of an overly centralized bureaucracy that relies on those at the top to make all key decisions, Lakoff says, but it can also make a timely and well-coordinated response difficult.

The arrangement has advantages: It can quickly address short-term needs, such as providing needed supplies or rapidly evacuating an area.

The system falls short, however, when it comes to larger issues, such as unequal access to relief and preventive programs among different communities.

"We have seen this repeatedly," said Lakoff, "whether in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, or in the disparate experience of suffering during the coronavirus pandemic."

To determine how the present-day system of emergency government came to be, says Lakoff, he and Collier took a "genealogical approach" to the work, looking at current agencies and protocols and tracing back through their evolution.

"We began in the present, looking at areas such as homeland security and pandemic preparedness, and asked about where the tools used by experts in these areas to anticipate and manage an uncertain future had come from," Lakoff said.

The pair dug through tomes of historical accounts and records, finding much of it in "the neglected archives of now-forgotten federal government agencies," said Lakoff.

In doing so, they reveal, for the first time, how the country's complex and dispersed emergency system for anticipating and governing emergencies came to be woven together, somewhat unexpectedly, from a variety of theories and planning efforts, much of it based on mobilization for war.

"It turned out that we had to go back to some surprising settings, such as interwar strategic bombing theory, which asked about how to disrupt the vital nodes of enemy industrial production systems, and Cold War nuclear preparedness, which used some of the first digital computers to develop detailed simulations of the likely damage that a future attack would cause," Lakoff said.

History lessons that could help with future emergencies

The result proves to be a fascinating history lesson, one that could prove invaluable to future generations.

"As we anticipate ever more catastrophic events linked to climate changehurricanes, floods, wildfires or droughtsit will be important to assess whether our existing system for dealing with emergencies is adequate for the tasks ahead," Lakoff said.

And by unveiling how government has transformed itself to tackle past crises without undermining the country's democratic principles, The Government of Emergency provides insight into how best to move forward and address future threats.

And, in fact, the lessons Lakoff and Collier describe for governing emergencies have been adopted beyond the U.S., including the World Health Organization's approach to pandemics and in various humanitarian relief operations.

Lakoff says awareness of past successes should give some comfort to those worried about what tomorrow holds. "Given our current sense of pervasive crisis, including anxiety about climate change, exhaustion from our failures to adequately deal with the pandemic, and ongoing problems of social inequality, there have been previous episodes of existential crisis that the country has in the past managed to address."

And knowing the capabilities and shortcomings of our current system of risk assessment and emergency responsewhich evolved from our successful responses to such notable emergency situations as the Great Depression, the threat of Nazi Germany and the Cold Warshould help us better focus our efforts today.
Pictured is a continuously spouting cauldron of near-boiling water, one of a dozen spanning a 10-acre geothermal field at Mangra in southern Tibet. Helium-isotope geochemistry shows it sits above the northern edge of the Indian plate 50 miles below, where India is underthrusting Asian crust to build the Himalayas and Tibetan Plateau. Credit: Ping Zhao

In the classic example of mountain-building, the Indian and Asian continental plates crashedand continue colliding todayto form the world's largest and highest geologic structures: the Himalayan Mountains and the Tibetan Plateau.

Despite the importance of these formations, which influence the global climate through atmospheric circulation and seasonal monsoons, experts have proposed contradicting theories about how tectonic plates below the surface created the iconic behemoths. Now, using geochemical data from 225 hot springs, scientists have mapped the boundary between the Indian and Asian continental plates, shedding light on processes occurring deep below the surface. The findings, which have implications for mineral formation, appear in the current issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"A principal debate amongst geologists is whether or not continental collision looks like oceanic collision," said senior study author Simon Klemperer, a geophysics professor at Stanford's School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences (Stanford Earth). "Because there are too few measurements, seismology wasn't giving us the answerthat's why I took up geochemistry as a totally different way to measure things."

Klemperer has spent the better part of a decade traveling to Tibet and India to collect samples to support his theory that chemicals bubbling to the surface could be used to understand what's happening 50 miles below. He and his colleagues tracked down remote geothermal springs for hundreds of miles across the mountains and plateauabout the distance from Canada to Mexico in the western U.S.

Using the noble gas helium, which doesn't react with other chemicals, the study authors determined which springs originated from each continental plate. One helium isotope signature revealed when the gas came from the hot mantlethe Asian platewhile a different signature indicated the much colder Indian plate. The research shows that the colder plate is only detected in the south, beneath the Himalayas, while further north, India is no longer touching Tibet above itit's separated from Tibet by a wedge of hot mantle. The results indicate that an old theory that the Indian plate lies flat beneath Tibet is no longer tenable.

"It's amazing that we now have this remarkably well-defined boundary just a few kilometers wide at the surface above a plate boundary that is 100 kilometers deep," Klemperer said.

Subduction vs. collision

In oceanic subduction, material in the subsurface is recycled into the Earth's mantle when the cooler, heavier plate dives under a continental plate and sinks. The process occurs in zones like the Ring of Fire, which is known for frequent earthquakes and active volcanoes.

In continental collision, researchers have hypothesized that subduction of ocean crust dragged the two continents closer together until they collided, closing up the subduction zone for mountain building to occur. This evidence of the continental boundary below Tibet introduces the possibility that the continental crust is releasing fluids and meltingjust as it would happen in oceanic subduction.

"This says that we shouldn't be looking at continental collision and oceanic subduction as two different thingswe should be looking at them as the same thing with somewhat different flavors because geometrically, they look the same," Klemperer said.

This map shows the Indian plate colliding with the Asian plate under the Himalaya and Tibet. The yellow dots locate hot springs with helium isotope signatures showing the gas came from the hot mantle, where the Asian plate is in the subsurface. The blue dots represent the colder Indian plate. The thin white solid line lies directly above the boundary separating the Indian plate samples from the Asian plate samples. Credit: Simon Klemperer et al.

Tectonic sea change

In the 1960s, the theory of plate tectonics revolutionized the Earth sciences by explaining how geologic plates drift apart and into each other, causing mountain building, volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. But researchers understand little about why plates move the way they do.

Klemperer said the new findings add an important element of understanding, with potential ramifications about what controls the convection that drives plate tectonics. Even though it's a continental collision, the Indian plate diving into the mantle helps control the pattern of convectionit changes the way we understand how elements and rock types are distributed and re-distributed on the Earth, he said.

The study builds on previous research in which Klemperer and his colleagues imaged the Himalaya collision zone using seismic data and found that as the Indian tectonic plate moves from the south, the thickest and strongest part of the plate dips beneath the Tibetan plateau and causes tears in the Indian plate. Those tears were in the same location as helium fluxes in the hot springs.

"We're seeing the same processes through these different lenses, and we have to figure out how to put them together," Klemperer added.

Mineral implications

Ever since the Spaniards conquered South America in search of gold, civilizations have known about rich mineral deposits in places like the Andes Mountains, which are part of the Ring of Fire. Southern Tibet has more recently also been recognized as a rich mineral province, with gold, copper, lead, zinc and other deposits, which are difficult to explain using only the old models of continental collision.

"The largest copper deposits occur in granites that are produced by melting of the hot mantle wedgethat shouldn't happen in continental collision if it looks like the old model, but we know it did happen because we have all these minerals in Tibet," Klemperer said. "Our work tells us about the large-scale tectonics of continental collision and suggests that we might expect to see the same sort of mineral deposits in continental-collision environments as oceanic-subduction environments."

As the only active continental collision on our planet, the Himalayas and Tibet also offer a glimpse into how other mountain ranges have formed in the past and may form in the future.

"Australia is just beginning to collide with the Indonesian blockthat's continental collision beginning to happen," Klemperer said. "Tibet is the type-example to be solved and we hope it's an analog for everywhere else about how this happens on Earth."

Tianze Liu, who worked on the project as a Stanford PhD student, is a co-author on the study. Additional co-authors are from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, The Ohio State University, the University of New Mexico and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Explore further Seismic data explains continental collision beneath Tibet

More information: Limited underthrusting of India below Tibet: He/He analysis of thermal springs locates the mantle suture in continental collision, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2022). Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Limited underthrusting of India below Tibet: He/He analysis of thermal springs locates the mantle suture in continental collision,(2022). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2113877119
A research team led by the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) has successfully tested the irradiation of tumors with laser protons for the first time. Credit: HZDR / Juniks

Irradiation with fast protons is a more effective and less invasive cancer treatment than X-rays. However, modern proton therapy requires large particle accelerators, which has experts investigating alternative accelerator concepts, such as laser systems to accelerate protons. Such systems are deployed in preclinical studies to pave the way for optimal radiation therapy. A research team led by the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) has now successfully tested irradiation with laser protons on animals for the first time, as the group reports in the journal Nature Physics.

Radiation therapy is one of the main cancer treatment methods. It usually leverages strong, focused X-ray light. Protonsthe nuclei of hydrogen atomsaccelerated to high energies and bundled into small, precisely targetable bunches are an alternative. They can penetrate deep into the tissue where they deposit most of their energy in the tumor, destroying the cancer while leaving the surrounding tissue largely intact. This makes the method both more effective and less invasive than X-ray therapy. "The method is particularly suitable for irradiating tumors at the base of the skull, in the brain, and in the central nervous system," explains HZDR researcher Dr. Elke Beyreuther. "It is also used in pediatric cancer patients to reduce possible long-term effects."

However, the method is significantly more complex than X-ray therapy as it requires elaborate accelerator facilities to generate the fast protons and transport them to the patient. This is why there are only a few proton therapy centers in Germany, including one at Dresden University Hospital. Currently, experts are working to steadily improve the method and adapt it to patients. Laser-based proton accelerators could make a decisive contribution here.

Customized laser flashes

"The approach is based on a high-power laser to generate strong and extremely short light pulses, which are fired at a thin plastic or metal foil," explains HZDR physicist Dr. Florian Kroll. The intensity of these flashes knocks swaths of electrons out of the foil, creating a strong electric field that can bundle protons into pulses and accelerate them to high energies. Fascinatingly, the scale of this process is miniscule: The acceleration path is merely a few micrometers long.

"We have been working on the project for 15 years, but so far, the protons hadn't picked up enough energy for irradiation," Beyreuther reports. "Also, the pulse intensity was too variable, so we couldn't make sure we were delivering the right dose." But over the past few years, scientists finally achieved crucial improvements, in particular thanks to a better understanding of the interaction between the laser flashes and the foil. "Above all, the precise shape of the laser flashes is particularly important," Kroll explains. "We can now tailor them to create proton pulses that have sufficient energy and are also stable enough."

New research requirements

Finally, the parameters had been optimized to the point that the HZDR team was able to launch a crucial series of experiments: the first-ever, controlled irradiation of tumors in mice with laser-accelerated protons. The experiments were carried out in cooperation with experts from Dresden University Hospital at the OncoRayNational Center for Radiation Research in Oncology and benchmarked with comparative experiments at the conventional proton therapy facility. "We found that our laser-driven proton source can generate biologically valuable data," Kroll reports. "This sets the stage for further studies that will allow us to test and optimize our method."

Another special feature of laser-accelerated proton pulses is their enormous intensity. While in conventional proton therapy, the radiation dose is administered in a span of a few minutes, the laser-based process could occur within a millionth of a second. "There are indications that such a rapid dose administration helps spare the healthy surrounding tissue even better than before," explains Elke Beyreuther. "We want to follow up on these indications with our experimental setup and conduct preclinical studies to investigate when and how this rapid irradiation method should be used to gain an advantage in cancer therapy."

More information: Florian Kroll, Tumour irradiation in mice with a laser-accelerated proton beam, Nature Physics (2022). www.nature.com/articles/s41567-022-01520-3 Journal information: Nature Physics Florian Kroll, Tumour irradiation in mice with a laser-accelerated proton beam,(2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41567-022-01520-3
A residential property subject to tent fumigation or "tenting", a process in which the property is sealed over with a canvas and filled with a pesticide gas for a number of days in order to kill pests such as termites and cockroaches. Los Angeles, California. Credit: Mfield, Matthew Field, http://www.photography.mattfield.com/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

Termites are destructive, and notoriously hard to kill. Structural fumigationtenting a house and piping in chemicals to kill the bugsis the most effective way to do it.

One common chemical used for termite fumigation is sulfuryl fluoride (SO 2 F 2 ), the only fumigant approved by the EPA for use in residential structures. Sulfuryl fluoride is popular because it is relatively cost-effective and does not contribute to ozone destruction, but it also happens to be a potent greenhouse gas that can remain in the atmosphere for decades, contributing to climate change.

To get a better handle on the prevalence and location of sulfuryl fluoride in the atmosphere, as well as its possible impact, a team of researchers led by Dylan Gaeta, a Ph.D. student in the Whiting School of Engineering, used atmospheric observations from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to show that the large majority of sulfuryl fluoride emissions in North America came from California in 20152019. Emissions were especially large from the Greater Los Angeles Area, where structural fumigation for termites is common. Their findings were recently presented at the American Geophysical Union's fall meeting.

We spoke with Gaeta about his research into the use of sulfuryl fluoride, and the implications for public health and climate.

Why did you choose to study this?

I first heard about the sulfuryl fluoride problem from my Ph.D. advisor, Scot Miller. He had run a preliminary atmospheric inversion using NOAA data, and I remember him showing that the emissions map of SO 2 F 2 "lights up like Christmas" over California. This was around the time when I first started my Ph.D., and I thought the problem sounded interesting and policy-relevant, so I picked up the project and have been working on expanding Scot's preliminary work to finer spatial scales and daily time scales. I find there is usually cause for concern when an entirely human-made chemical is accumulating in the atmosphere, especially in the case of a potent greenhouse gas like sulfuryl fluoride.

Why is this problem concentrated in California?

California's year-round warm climate is favorable for termite colony growth, both indoors and in nature, so it is very common for buildings there to have termite infestations that require fumigation.

Termites also can be found in the Southeast, especially in Florida, where the climate is also conducive to termite colony growth. Unfortunately, NOAA does not operate a greenhouse gas monitoring station downwind of Florida, and so it is difficult for us to infer much about sulfuryl fluoride emissions from there. NOAA does operate a tower in South Carolina, but concentrations of sulfuryl fluoride, which would indicate large emissions, are rarely detected at this lone Southeastern site. However, it is still possible that fumigations occurring in Florida could be swept up and carried over the Atlantic Ocean without being detected at the closest NOAA monitoring sites.

In addition, California is the only state that publicly releases a statewide record of sulfuryl fluoride use.

Aside from being a greenhouse gas, is sulfuryl fluoride bad for human health?

The gas is often referred to as a pesticide or an insecticide, but more generally it is a biocide: It will kill all living organisms that are exposed to it at sufficiently high concentrations for a sufficiently long period of time. That includes humans, pets, plants, and wildlife. The EPA has set an exposure limit of 1 part per million for sulfuryl fluoride, and fumigators must ensure that every room in a fumigated structure falls back below 1 ppm before humans and pets can reenter. There have been several documented cases of inadvertent deaths caused by sulfuryl fluoride fumigations, and the EPA is currently reviewing public health and safety regulations for its use.

What are the climate implications for sulfuryl fluoride use?

Sulfuryl fluoride is a potent greenhouse gas that is entirely human-made, with no significant natural sources. The buildup of this gas in our atmosphere is an entirely human-caused problem. Sulfuryl fluoride was first discovered in ambient air in La Jolla, California. This discovery prompted a series of studies into the chemical and physical properties of the gas, including an investigation of potential removal mechanisms and quantification of the global warming potential. The results of these seminal studies were published in 20082009, with the main takeaway that sulfuryl fluoride has a much longer atmospheric lifetime than initially thought: 36 (plus or minus 11) years.

With such a long lifespan in the atmosphere, the global warming potential was revised upwards to 7,510 over a 20-year interval. In other words, 1 ton of sulfuryl fluoride traps as much heat in the atmosphere as 7,510 tons of carbon dioxide. After these studies were released, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change added sulfuryl fluoride to its list of greenhouse gases in 2013, and the California Air Resources Board added the chemical to its list of short-lived climate pollutants. However, despite the evidence from the 2008 study that sulfuryl fluoride is a potent greenhouse gas, global emissions of the gas have continued to rise. The gas has been left out of most major greenhouse gas inventories and emissions reductions targets.

What real-world impact do you hope this research will have?

Our main goal is to increase awareness of sulfuryl fluoride, what it's used for, and what the dangers of its use are. We would also like to see sulfuryl fluoride included in future greenhouse gas inventories at the national, state, and local levels. Keeping track of where and how much of the gas is used is a crucial step to rein in emissions. Our research shines a spotlight on California, which has arguably been a world leader in greenhouse gas emissions reductions efforts. However, California's large sulfuryl fluoride emissions are a prime example of how uncounted emissions can threaten hard-earned progress toward emissions reductions goals.

At the local level, there are potentially steps that governments and fumigators can take to minimize the amount of sulfuryl fluoride that escapes to the atmosphere during fumigation. At the national level, it is important that the EPA properly characterize the gas as a greenhouse gas and include the compound in its Greenhouse Gas Inventory. At the international level, SO 2 F 2 was included in the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, but hasn't been included in any international treaties that aim to curb global emissions, including the 2015 Paris Agreement. As SO 2 F 2 grows in popularity worldwide, it becomes increasingly important to monitor and regulate how the gas is used and how much ends up in the atmosphere.
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Mumbai announced detailed plans to zero out carbon emissions by 2050, a target that puts it two decades ahead of India's national goal and makes it the first city in South Asia to set such a timeline.

In the plan announced Sunday, India's financial center, home to south Asia's biggest corporations, stock bourses and the central bank, has proposed exhaustive changes to the way it manages energy, water, air, waste, green spaces and transport for its 19 million residents.

"We don't have the luxury of time," said Aaditya Thackeray, environment minister of the state of Maharashtra of which Mumbai is the capital. Without intervention, the effects of climate change could cost India $35 trillion over the next 50 years.

India's richest city, Mumbai is also home to tremendous poverty, with slums and fishing villages along the southern coast that date to British rule. By 2050, rising sea levels are expected to flood those parts of the city. In total, unabated climate change could cost the city $920 million.

Drawing on inputs from officials, citizens, researchers and companies, Mumbai's plan lists changes across six domains. This includes investments in housing, electrifying public transport and more walkable roads; flood-resistant drainage and water conservation apart from adding open spaces, investing in clean water and sanitation, and rooftop solar capacities.

Mumbai may consider raising funds through green bonds announced by the federal government, according to Saurabh Punamiya, government adviser. It will receive funding from Maharashtra, which also plans to raise funds for climate mitigation projects through the federal government and global lenders, said Tanmay Takle, policy adviser to the state government.

This access to investments, along with a $6 billion annual budget, give the city an advantage over peers to implement climate targets. "The policies are actually opening the doors for such investments to come in," Thackeray said.

Mumbai's plan could help India rethink current models of development that put economic growth ahead of environmental stewardship, said Nikhil Anand, who teaches anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. If Mumbai is successful, it could turn India's focus to other pressing issues, including access to clean water and services for the city's significant homeless population.

"To pursue development that secures climate justice in the near future is a non-negotiable," said Anand. "The Climate Action Plan needs to take care of stabilizing those systems, if it wants to make a meaningful difference in the life of its citizens."

In the coming three decades the city aims to cut to zero its total greenhouse emission which in 2019 stood at 23.42 million tons or 1.8 tons per capita. The largest investments will have to come into energy, which accounts for 72% of total emissions, according to the plan documents. Vehicle emissions and waste comprise the rest.

Mumbai's short-term priorities include the purchase 2,100 electric busses by 2023 at a cost of 130 billion rupees ($1.7 billion). The city will also spend on projects like retrofitting low-income homes with electricity-efficient equipment.

Plans for some crucial aspects of Mumbai's transitionswitching its peak 3,400MW electricity consumption to renewable power sources for instanceremain unclear. Private conglomerates including the Tata Group and billionaire Gautam Adani's companies, which supply power to the city mostly from coal plants, have said they will make investments in order to meet their own net-zero transition goals.

South Asia's other megapolises including New Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata, Dhaka and Karachi are also preparing climate action plans. Indian cities are also bracing for an influx of some 870 million migrants seeking refuge from crop failures, water scarcity and storms caused by rising temperatures.

"There are policy changes today which will move forward with every government," Thackeray said. "Across India, there is a certain sense of urgency everyone feels."

2022 Bloomberg L.P.

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Kittiwake pair. Credit: Chris Cachia-Zammit / ZSL

Offshore windfarm developments could avoid adding to the plight of wild birds such as the black-legged kittiwake by ensuring that the most recent data on local populations is considered when planning, reports a new study led by a University College London (UCL) and Zoological Society London (ZSL) researcher.

Research published today in Conservation Science and Practice shows that although the UK has some of the best seabird monitoring activity anywhere in the world, key data is being ignored during offshore windfarm planning assessments.

Around the world, seabirds are experiencing long-term population decline, with climate change and reduction in food sources as the key drivers. These threats are compounded for seabirds in the UK, which now face additional risks from poorly planned offshore wind energy development.

Renewable energy from wind farms is set to quadruple within the next decade, and although this is good news for reducing carbon emissions, seabirds are at risk of displacement from feeding sites, and even death due to collisions with turbine blades.

Developers often rely on a tool called a population viability analysis (PVA) to assess potential impacts to vulnerable species, such as seabirds. These assessments typically use summary data to predict how future seabird populations might fare. However, many species of seabird such as cliff-nesting gulls like the kittiwake (Rissa tridactyla) are experiencing ongoing population decline due to other pressures. Not taking these existing drivers of change into consideration when assessing the potential impacts from wind farms could influence developers' understanding of how already struggling species are likely to respond.

ZSL and UCL conservation scientist and lead author of the study Dr. Catharine Horswill (UCL Centre for Biodiversity & Environment Research) said, "If existing drivers of population change are not considered during assessments, future threats are likely to be underestimated. We need wind farms to tackle the climate crisis but protecting biodiversity must also be a priority. We need to tighten up assessments to make sure that potential impacts to already struggling wildlife, such as the kittiwake, are better understood.

"There have been great developments to help protect vulnerable wildlife in the rise of renewable energy developments, but more still can be done."

The study focused on a colony of black-legged kittiwakes breeding on Skomer Island in Waleswithin close proximity of an offshore wind energy development currently under planning assessment. Skomer is home to other seabirds including the largest Atlantic puffin colony in southern Britain, and over half of the world's Manx shearwater population. The population of kittiwakes at Skomer declined rapidly between 2005 and 2020 and is experiencing ongoing decline in rates of breeding success (number of chicks that successfully fledge each year). This is thought to be due in part to rising sea surface temperatures and reduced sources of food.

By incorporating the ongoing rate of decline in kittiwake breeding success into current wind farm planning assessments (PVAs), the team saw the levels of predicted impact dramatically increase. This showed that current assessments may underestimate long-term risk.

Lisa Morgan, Head of Islands and Marine at The Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales (WTSWW), said, "In principle, we support the development of the marine renewables industry. However, we recognize that uncertainties exist regarding the levels of impacts of these technologies on Welsh marine life and therefore a precautionary approach needs to be applied to their development. This means the location, scale and type of marine renewable energy schemes should be determined by proper environmental assessment, using the best available data.

"We don't know for sure what's driving the decline of kittiwakes on Skomer, although we do know that the number of chicks that fledge is low in recent years. This work by Catharine and the team illustrates the importance of our long-term seabird monitoring on Skomer. If used correctly, our data can help developers and government to determine whether proposed floating offshore wind projects near Skomer are likely to make matters worse for a species already struggling."

Black-legged kittiwakes are listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List. Overlooking current declines in rates of breeding success when assessing a colonies' response to new offshore renewable energy developments could therefore have drastic long-term consequences for this species.

Dr. Horswill added, "Datasets of seabird breeding success and populations counts are openly available for UK colonies on public databases. Our study shows that declining breeding success is widespread across the UK and Ireland, with many colonies showing even faster rates of decline than seen at Skomer. I hope this study spurs change to the guidance surrounding data requirements for impact assessments for offshore renewable energy developments."

Explore further Climate change threat to seabirds must be properly considered for their conservation to be effective

More information: Catharine Horswill et al, Impact assessments of wind farms on seabird populations that overlook existing drivers of demographic change should be treated with caution, Conservation Science and Practice (2022). Catharine Horswill et al, Impact assessments of wind farms on seabird populations that overlook existing drivers of demographic change should be treated with caution,(2022). DOI: 10.1111/csp2.12644
A New Model of Pathogen Transmission in Developing Urban Landscapes. Credit: Annabel Slater--ILRI

Scientists from the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), the University of Liverpool, the University of Edinburgh and elsewhere have traced how diverse strains of a common pathogenic bacteria spread in Nairobi, Kenya, shedding light on how diseases might emerge and proliferate within a complex cityand how they might best be controlled. The study appears in the April edition of Nature Microbiology.

Urban settlements in low-income countries are sites of enormous economic energy and cultural dynamism but also potential havens for new and emerging diseases, particularly zoonoses and antimicrobial-resistant bacteria. In Nairobi, Kenya, some 60 per cent of the population live in crowded low-income settlements characterized by poor sanitation and home to a wide variety of livestock and urban, synanthropic animals (undomesticated animals that live in close proximity to and benefit from humans such as rodents and scavenging birds). Yet relatively little is known about how bacteria are shared among hosts and potential reservoirs, and how such hosts and reservoirs themselves create connectivity between different sections of the city.

"These settlements are mega concoctions of people and animals," said lead author Dr. Dishon M. Muloi, currently with ILRI and former Ph.D. student at the University of Edinburgh, "with a chance of a flow of bacteria from either direction, from animals to humans or from humans to animals."

In the most extensive epidemiological study of its kind, a team led by Professor Eric Fevre of ILRI and the University of Liverpool sampled Escherichia coli from humans, livestock and peri-domestic wildlife in 99 households across Nairobi. "We wanted to understand the urban environment through the eyes of an organism that could move between hosts and potentially create a pathogenic problem," said Fevre. "We know that urbanization is a risk multiplier for emerging diseases, but we need a better understanding of how the physical environment influences pathogen emergence and transmission."

E. coli was chosen as a proxy for bacteria in general because of its ubiquity and because the tools for understanding its genetics are already well developed.

The findings were sobering. The first is that the diversity of bacteria are extensive: If you find an organism in one location, you're likely to find it in a wide variety of locations, not only within Nairobi but globally. Secondly, the study found that pathogens are being shared by humans and between human and animal populations. "The same strain of E. coli that we find in a chicken might be found in a human," said Muloi.

This result is particularly concerning because of the widespread and somewhat indiscriminate use of antibiotics in both humans and livestock in many developing countriesraising the specter that antimicrobial-resistant bacteria may emerge in one organism and move to others.

In fact, since humans and livestock have similar genetic mechanisms for resistance, it may not be the bacteria itself that transmits but the resistance mechanism that is independent of the bacteria. Known as plasmids, these are independent bits of DNA that can move from one bacteria to another. "They have their own population biology that we are only beginning to understand," says Fevre.

But perhaps the most intriguing finding is that households serve as the key gateway through which bacterial transmission occurs. "Those within a household, including humans and animals, share bacteria," explains Muloi. "But then from one household to another, there is something like a guard, a security person, who will ensure that you don't cross that particular barrier. So while sharing commonly occurs within the household, the household selects, by its own particular micro-biology, which bacteria to admit."

"To get in the door of the house might present some difficulties," says Fevre. "But once it gets in, then it will infect everybody who's in there and so to speak lounge very comfortably on the living-room sofa."

The household transmission model offers some critical lessons for the study and surveillance of future pathogens. As Fevre explains: "We often discuss transmission using the analogy of a wave, but in fact it's a story of multiple short infections or transmission events that then lead to a multitude of infections within those micro populations. It's not moving as a wave, in other words, but it's moving through a much more structured series of events. So we now have a much better understanding of how cities both can be colonized by new infectious agents, and how those infectious agents spread through a complex city. And knowing that we can start to think about how to control those events and stop them from happening."

Ultimately, as Muloi explains, the lessons learned in the project have implications not just for the developing nations: "The E. coli in Nairobi represents the E. coli across the entire world. What is being seen in Nairobi today could easily be in New York or Paris by tomorrow morning."

The study is part of the multi-center "Epidemiology, ecology and socio-economics of disease emergence in Nairobi" project funded by the UK Research Council Environmental and Social Ecology of Human Infectious Diseases (ESEI) initiative.

Dr. Carolyn Johnson, a program manager at the Medical Research Council, says that "the Environmental and Social Ecology of Human Infectious Diseases initiative, which was established to respond to new and emerging pathogen threats, was developed to support novel approaches to study the ecology of infectious disease."

"This MRC funded project is an excellent example of a novel, interdisciplinary project, aiming to tackle the growing problem of E. Coli infection at the intersection between livestock and humans."

"The project involved both the national and international research community and has the potential to significantly aid our understanding of antimicrobial resistance."

Dr. Bryan Wee, Senior Research Fellow at The University of Edinburgh and co-lead author of the paper, says that "understanding more about transmission of microbes between livestock and humans is crucial to protecting health, globally. This paper is an excellent example of work co-led by The Universities of Edinburgh and Liverpool as part of a wide collaboration, working with the team in Nairobi to offer insights of global relevance. The rapid development of the city along with practice of keeping livestock within urban households has offered a powerful setting to develop our understanding of how antimicrobial resistance arises."

Explore further Probe into farm animals could help treat drug-resistant bacteria

More information: Mark Woolhouse, Population genomics of Escherichia coli in livestock-keeping households across a rapidly developing urban landscape, Nature Microbiology (2022). Journal information: Nature Microbiology Mark Woolhouse, Population genomics of Escherichia coli in livestock-keeping households across a rapidly developing urban landscape,(2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41564-022-01079-y

Provided by International Livestock Research Institute
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Researchers warn that permafrost peatlands in Europe and Western Siberia are much closer to a climatic tipping point than previous believed.

The frozen peatlands in these areas store up to 39 billion tons of carbonthe equivalent to twice that stored in the whole of European forests.

A new study, led by the University of Leeds, used the latest generation of climate models to examine possible future climates of these regions and the likely impact on their permafrost peatlands.

The projections indicate that even with the strongest efforts to reduce global carbon emissions, and therefore limit global warming, by 2040 the climates of Northern Europe will no longer be cold and dry enough to sustain peat permafrost.

However, strong action to reduce emissions could help preserve suitable climates for permafrost peatlands in northern parts of Western Siberia, a landscape containing 13.9 billion metric tons of peat carbon.

The study, published in Nature Climate Change, emphasizes the importance of socio-economic policies aimed at reducing emissions and mitigating climate change and their role in determining the rate and extent of permafrost peatland thaw.

Study lead author, Richard Fewster is a Ph.D. researcher in the School of Geography at Leeds. He said: "We examined a range of future emission trajectories. This included strong climate-change mitigation scenario, which would see large-scale efforts to curb emissions across sectors, to no-mitigations scenarios and worse-case scenarios.

"Our modeling shows that these fragile ecosystems are on a precipice and even moderate mitigation leads to the widespread loss of suitable climates for peat permafrost by the end of the century.

"But that doesn't mean we should throw in the towel. The rate and extent to which suitable climate are lost could be limited, and even partially reversed, by strong climate-change mitigation policies."

Study co-author Dr. Paul Morris, Associate Professor of Biogeoscience at Leeds, Said: "Huge stocks of peat carbon have been protected for millennia by frozen conditions but once those conditions become unsuitable all that stored carbon can be lost very quickly.

"The magnitude of twenty-first century climate change is likely to overwhelm any protection the insulating properties of peat soils could provide."

The large quantities of carbon stored in peatland permafrost soils are particularly threatened by rapid twenty-first-century climate change. When permafrost thaws the organic matter starts to decompose, releasing greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane, which increase global temperatures and potentially accelerate global climate change.

Study co-author Dr. Ruza Ivanovic, Associate Professor in Climatology at Leeds said: "Peatland permafrost responds differently to changing climates than mineral-soil permafrost due to the insulating properties of organic soils, but peatlands remain poorly represented in Earth system models.

"It is vitally important these ecosystems are understood and accounted for when considering the impact of climate change on the planet."

Study co-author Dr. Chris Smith, from the School of Earth and Environment, said: "More work is needed to further understanding of these fragile ecosystems.

"Remote sensing and field campaigns can help improve maps of modern peat permafrost distribution in regions where observation data is lacking. This would enable future modeling studies to make hemispheric-scale projections."

Explore further How much carbon will peatlands lose as permafrost thaws?

More information: Richard Fewster, Imminent loss of climate space for permafrost peatlands in Europe and Western Siberia, Nature Climate Change (2022). www.nature.com/articles/s41558-022-01296-7 Journal information: Nature Climate Change Richard Fewster, Imminent loss of climate space for permafrost peatlands in Europe and Western Siberia,(2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41558-022-01296-7
The discovery photograph of Pluto found by Clyde W. Tombaugh of Lowell Observatory in 1930. Astronomers today suspect that there might be a previously unknown Planet 9 in the distant solar system, but a new search at millimeter wavelengths has failed to find any convincing candidate. Credit: Lowell Observatory; Tombaugh

The solar system has eight planets. In 2006, astronomers reclassified Pluto as a dwarf planet, the same class that contains Eris, Sedna, Quaoar, Ceres and perhaps many more solar system small bodies. These are defined approximately as bodies that orbit the sun but that are not massive enough (unlike regular planets) to gravitationally dominate their environments by clearing away material. Astronomers wonder, though, whether there might not really be a ninth planet previously undiscovered but lurking in the outer reaches of the solar system, perhaps in the giant Oort cloud of objects that begins hundreds of astronomical units (au) from the sun and extends outward.

The notion that there may be a ninth massive planet in the outer solar system has taken on new appeal with recent data that show that the orbital parameters of some small bodies beyond Neptune (their inclinations, perihelions, and retrograde motions) seem to behave as though they had been influenced by the gravity of a massive object in the outer solar system. Although these data suffer from observational biases and statistical uncertainties, they have triggered renewed interest in the idea of the presence of another planet.

This speculative Planet 9, according to estimates, would be about 5 to 10 Earth masses in size and orbit about 400 to 800 au from the sun. A planet at this distance would be extremely difficult to spot in normal optical sky searches because of its faintness, even to telescopes like PanSTARRS and LSST. Most solar system objects were discovered at optical wavelengths via their reflected sunlight, but the sunlight they receive drops, as the inverse square law for electromagnetic radiation says that measured light intensity is inversely proportional to the distance squared from the source of radiation; moreover, the reflected portion then travels back to telescopes on Earth and so declines again by a similar factor.

The potential Planet 9 spectra compared to the 5 detection limit of current and upcoming wide-area surveys. Credit: The Astrophysical Journal (2021). DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ac2307

In the outer reaches of the solar system these objects, although cold, might emit more infrared radiation than the optical light they reflect, and astronomers in the past have used infrared surveys like the Wide-field Infrared Explorer (WISE) to search, but without success.

CfA astronomer Benjamin Schmitt was a member of a large team that used the 6-meter Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) in Chile to search for Planet 9 at millimeter wavelengths. Although ACT was designed to study the cosmic microwave background radiation, its relatively high angular resolution and sensitivity makes it suitable for this type of search.

The astronomers scanned about 87% of the sky accessible from the Southern Hemisphere over a six year period, and then processed the millimeter images with a variety of techniques, including binning and stacking methods that might uncover faint sources but at the expense of losing positional information. Their search found many tentative candidate sources (about 3,500 of them) but none could be confirmed, and there were no statistically significant detections.

The scientists, however, were able to exclude with 95% confidence a Planet 9 with the above-estimated properties within the surveyed area, results that are generally consistent with other null searches for Planet 9. The results cover only about 10 to 20% of the possibilities, but other sensitive millimeter facilities are coming online and should be able to complete this search for Planet 9 as hypothesized.

Explore further Lighting a path to Planet Nine

More information: Sigurd Naess et al, The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: A Search for Planet 9, The Astrophysical Journal (2021). Journal information: Astrophysical Journal Sigurd Naess et al, The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: A Search for Planet 9,(2021). DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ac2307
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

More than 2.5 million Ukrainians have fled to neighboring countries as Russia has launched attacks against civilians to capture their homelandand more are expected to leave.

As the violence escalates, USC experts say that reports of Russian war crimes against civilians are flooding into the U.N. Security Council for referral to the International Court of Justice in The Hague. The allegations include sexual assault and unlawful targeting of civilians in places such as schools, hospitals and utilities.

Those crimes and the massive displacement of Ukrainians "may amount to crimes against humanity," said Hannah Garry, the founder of the International Human Rights Clinic at USC Gould School of Law. "Russia's threats to wipe out Ukrainian statehood and national identity could amount to claims of genocide."

Horrific memories of war refugees in the former Yugoslavia's civil war

For David Schwartz, the war is triggering horrific memories of the 1990s civil war in former Yugoslavia. An associate professor of psychology at USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, Schwartz served as a consultant to the United Nations' aid organization UNICEF after the war, amid international rebuilding efforts to help the people of what became Croatia and Bosnia. He saw firsthand how trauma scars children and their families for generations and decades following war.

"The parallels between the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the horrific events of World War II and the Cold War seem apparent," Schwartz said. "However, an even clearer connection may exist with more recent events in modern Europe. In the early 1990s, Bosnia and Herzegovina sought to establish a multiethnic nation from the ashes of the former Yugoslavia. A brutal civil war then ensued, marked by genocide, the systematic murder of unarmed civilians, mass rape and ethnic cleansing."

Many of the Ukrainian refugees are fleeing to Poland. Faculty fellow Katarzyna Pisarska, from the Center on Public Diplomacy at USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, has been assisting them.

"There is this connection between Poland and Ukraine, which I think also plays a very important role in the war [that] is happening as we speak. We already had 2 million Ukrainians living in Poland before the war," said Pisarska, who is also the founder and director of the European Academy of Diplomacy in Poland. "Poland actually over the last few years issued the highest number of work visas for citizens outside of the European Unionhigher than any other EU country."

Will the U.S. welcome Ukraine refugees?

The question many policy analysts are wondering about is whether the United States will also open its arms to Ukrainian refugees.

"Advocates will pay close attention to whether and how the Biden administration creates a safe pathway for those fleeing Ukraine, and whether these next steps incorporate best practices learned in the wake of the Afghan evacuation in August 2021," said Henna Pithia, a visiting clinical professor at USC Gould School and leader of the school's International Human Rights Clinic.

"Of note, many will be watching to see what happens to the [U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services] Humanitarian Parole program and whether refugee processing abroad can be expedited," she said. "Similarly, many will look to whether the U.S. government will offer expedited consular services for Ukrainian nationals in third countries, and whether the United States will grant Ukrainian nationals temporary protected status here in the United States."

For war refugees, the trauma continues

Schwartz worries most about the children of Ukraine. He said the international community should do everything possible to end the war.

He knows trauma does not end when the war ends.

"A new generation of traumatized children and adolescents will need considerable services as they recover from the impact of exposure to war violence, flight from their homes, and forced separation from family members and friends," Schwartz said.

"Put simply, these youth will need to learn how to move forward in a world that has fundamentally changed. The tasks ahead are formidable, and the world must respond with a multipronged mental health intervention."

Explore further Ukrainian PTSD will resonate far deeper than the bombs and bullets
An international team of scientists led by KAUST has combined the latest DNA sequencing techniques to assemble the genome for bread wheat. Using this genome, the researchers identified and cloned a key gene that helps crops resist stripe rust. Credit: 2022 KAUST.

Pests and diseases result in the loss of one-fifth of the global wheat harvest each year, which is enough to make around 290 billion loaves of bread. Resolving the persistent problem of the fungal rust diseases that attack wheat could help ensure future food security.

KAUST researchers, along with collaborators from South Africa, France and the U.S., have assembled the highest quality genome to date for bread wheat. This is a key South African wheat cultivar called Kariega, which has robust resistance to stripe rust, one of the three species of wheat rust. Using this genome, the researchers identified and cloned a key gene that confers stripe rust resistance.

"Rust spores are dispersed by winds and can travel thousands of kilometers, meaning new and highly virulent strains spread rapidly," says Naveenkumar Athiyannan, who worked on the project alongside KAUST's Michael Abrouk and Simon Krattinger. "Unlike humans, plants don't have an adaptive immune system that helps them 'memorize' past infections. Instead, their ability to withstand specific diseases is encoded by disease resistance genes."

"Wheat has a dynamic and complex genome, five times larger than the human genome. This makes it extremely challenging to pinpoint the location of a specific gene," says Abrouk. Moreover, disease resistance genes often differ between wheat cultivars. Sequencing the Kariega genome, in particular, is important for understanding stripe rust resistance.

The team combined the latest DNA sequencing techniques to assemble the genome, before conducting extensive analysis using molecular markers to identify the exact chromosomal region that confers stripe rust resistance.

"The Kariega assembly allowed us to look in detail at the DNA sequence of this region and identify all possible candidate genes," says Abrouk. "This step would have taken months or even years in the past."

The team identified the stripe rust resistance gene as Yr27, which they then cloned to study the gene function and molecular mechanisms of resistance. In future, the cloned genes could be transferred to cultivars during breeding, and could even be modified to alter a plant's disease recognition and resistance.

"We were excited to discover that Yr27 is a version, or allele, of a known leaf rust resistance gene," says Athiyannan. "Now that we know the exact sequences of both alleles, we may be able to engineer a new version of the gene that recognizes both diseases simultaneously."

"We've developed a fast and cost-effective strategy to clone disease resistance genes," adds Krattinger. "The long-term goal is to clone the 400 resistance genes found in wheat, providing scientists with a real shot at eradicating major wheat diseases."

The research was published in Nature Genetics.

Explore further New study identifies wheat varieties that resist the destructive stripe rust disease

More information: Renee Prins, Long-read genome sequencing of bread wheat facilitates disease resistance gene cloning, Nature Genetics (2022). www.nature.com/articles/s41588-022-01022-1 Journal information: Nature Genetics Renee Prins, Long-read genome sequencing of bread wheat facilitates disease resistance gene cloning,(2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41588-022-01022-1
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

The road salt that makes your drive to work easier on snowy days may be damaging the water quality in local rivers and streams long after winter is over.

A new study led by University of Maryland scientists sheds light on how salinization from winter road salt combined with other pollutants creates "chemical cocktails" that can jeopardize the ecological balance of waterways, including those in the Washington, D.C. area. The researchers developed a new five-stage scale to track the progression of this damage, a tool that could inform public policy in the future. The study was published online March 14, 2022 in the journal Limnology and Oceanography Letters.

"We realize this is a really diverse problem that's caused by road salt, but also other sources of salt pollution in our environmentthe fertilizers we put on crops, the sewage we put out, the roads that break down," explained the study's lead author Sujay Kaushal, a professor in UMD's Department of Geology and Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center. "And it's not just sodium chloride that's increasing, it's all these salt ions that are dissolved in water that contribute to salt pollution."

Over time, many streams and rivers around the world have become saltier and more alkaline. Salt in this case refers to a wide variety of different compounds in water, which can affect drinking water supplies as well as aquatic organisms and biodiversity. It can also enhance the mobilization of pollutants including nitrates, phosphates, radionuclides and metals.

Kaushal has been studying this problemwhich he and his team named Freshwater Salinization Syndromefor nearly two decades. In this new study, they found that road salts combined with other human-made pollutants are creating conditions that periodically exceed certain regional Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) limits for aquatic life and other limits around the world for good drinking water and agriculture.

After analyzing and reviewing data from around the world, the study's authors identified five major risk factors for Freshwater Salinization Syndrome. The research team defined stages of its progression, developing a five-tier scoring system for the salt pollution that's making our rivers sick.

"We've developed this five-stage system to identify and track unhealthy progression of salinization in our rivers in much the same way we would track an illness or disease like cancer," Kaushal said. "We have to look at this unhealthy Salinization Syndrome from a systems-level perspective if we're going to develop guidelines for diagnosing harmful levels and treat the problem."

Using a combination of data spanning decades in some of the world's major rivers and sensors that monitor electrical conductivity in streams and rivers around Washington D.C., Kaushal and his team identified major risk factors that make some waterways more susceptible to salt pollution than others.

These fundamental risk factors included climate, geology, flow paths, human activities and time. The research team then developed a five-level scorecard to track the damaging impact of Freshwater Salinization Syndrome and its water quality symptoms based on risk factors:

Stage 0: Highest water quality, minimally disturbed

Stage I: Abnormally elevated concentrations of one or more salt ions across one season

Stage II: Chronically elevated concentrations of salt ions across multiple seasons

Stage III: Formulation of harmful chemical cocktails exceeding water quality thresholds

Stage IV: Systems-level failures in infrastructure and ecosystem functions and services (drinking water and biodiversity)

Kaushal's research team found D.C.-area waterways have salt levels exceeding water quality thresholds, scoring higher than Stage II at various times during the year.

"If you look at the Potomac River, it can exceed the EPA regional aquatic life criteria for salt, and the Anacostia River can exceed the United Nations salt limit for crop growth," Kaushal said. "Parts of the Potomac, the Anacostia and Rock Creek waterways are in Stage III on the scale for at least part of the time, depending on weather, road salt and other factors."

Gene E. Likens, noted ecosystem ecologist from the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies and the University of Connecticut, indicated that this new study is an important step forward in understanding the impact on road salts on waterway ecology.

"The identification and analysis of critical state factors is a major advance in our understanding and management of Freshwater Salinization Syndrome," he said.

The new salinization scorecard could be a useful tool in diagnosing and treating Freshwater Salinization Syndrome in waterways locally and worldwide. Armed with this type of data on salts accumulating in our waterways and new knowledge of environmental symptoms across stages, policymakers could address the issue with regulations to manage winter salt application as well as other forms of salt pollution that contribute to the freshwater salinization problem and its growing impacts on water quality.

The research paper, "Five State Factors Control Progressive Stages of Freshwater Salinization Syndrome," Sujay S. Kaushal et. al., was published in Limnology and Oceanography Letters on March 14, 2022.

Explore further Government guidelines insufficient to protect freshwater ecosystem from salt pollution

More information: Five State Factors Control Progressive Stages of Freshwater Salinization Syndrome, Limnology and Oceanography Letters (2022).
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

A new study by University of Liverpool has provided new insight into the impact of climate change on ant populations.

Ants are one of the most dominant insects in the world. They are hugely abundant, both in terms of sheer numbers and biomass, and can be found on every continent except Antarctica. They play a significant role in ecological networks and processes, yet their ability to respond to changes to the climate is largely unknown.

Published in the journal Global Change Biology, researchers reviewed the published academic literature and studies relating mainly to ants and their responses to changes in temperature.

Ants are social insects that form complex and highly organized colonies which can be small or large. Their lifecycle is built on the work of sterile worker ants who support a small number of reproductive individuals.

The study highlights that this social structure of ant populations will enable them to adapt to or tolerate, climate change in ways that solitary organisms cannot.

It also revealed that ant species that nest underground where they can move their brood to lower temperatures are more protected, and conversely some ants can benefit from elevated temperate, especially those in temperate regions.

University of Liverpool ecologist, Professor Kate Parr, who lead the study, said: "How climate change affects ant populations and the wider impact this will have on the ecosystem is not particularly well understood. This study sheds new light on this issue. Ants are the most dominant insect in almost all ecosystems and play key roles in many ecosystem processes so any changes to their abundance and loss of some species will therefore have cascading consequences through the ecosystem."

"Our research highlights those species and regions at risk from climate change but also those that may be capable of adapting to it. However, further research is needed in particular to better understand how ants respond to altered precipitation, CO 2 , or UV regimes and how this affects the wider ecosystem."

Explore further Hemipteranant mutualism could represent symbiotic invasion

More information: Catherine L. Parr et al, The response of ants to climate change, Global Change Biology (2022). Journal information: Global Change Biology Catherine L. Parr et al, The response of ants to climate change,(2022). DOI: 10.1111/gcb.16140
China fights severest COVID-19 outbreaks with swift responses

By Cao Siqi, Liu Caiyu, Wan Hengyi (Global Times) 09:05, March 14, 2022

As China faces its severest domestic COVID-19 outbreaks in two years with a record 1,807 new cases reported on Sunday, the country has launched a swift response to contain the virus spread, including allowing rapid antigen tests for public use and sacking senior officials for their slack response to the ongoing health crisis.

The latest spikes in Northeast China's Jilin, East China's Shandong, South China's Guangdong provinces, Shanghai and Beijing municipalities, which forced several major cities to go into lockdowns, saw a sharp rise in the number of asymptomatic patients. The daily increase in asymptomatic infections exceeded the daily increase in confirmed cases for six consecutive days from March 7 to 12. Meanwhile, the Omicron variant has replaced Delta to become the dominant strain, once again breaching the country's defenses by spreading from campus to community.

However, compared with the situation when the first round of COVID-19 outbreaks, initially reported in Wuhan in February 2020, swept the entire nation, Chinese society has shown greater calm and orderliness toward the latest round of health challenge.

Epidemiologists and observers pointed out that based on the abundant experience China had accumulated in the previous battles and the dynamic zero-COVID policy, which has proven to be effective in curbing severe cases and deaths, it is tougher for the country to win the battle this time, as "victory" not only means the containment of new cases, but also minimizing the impact on the economy and livelihoods.

More concealed

Many local cases have been reported across the nation in the past month. From February 10 to March 13, the number of confirmed domestic cases increased from seven to 1,807, affecting 26 provinces and regions.

One of the hardest hit places is Jilin Province, which registered more than 2,100 positive infections in a day on Saturday, with 1,412 confirmed cases and 744 silent carriers.

At Sunday's press conference, Jilin provincial authorities attributed the significant rise in infections to the highly contagious Omicron variant and the fact that more potential infections were screened out through citywide testing within communities.

The infectivity of the variant that triggered the outbreak was about 30 percent higher than that of the previous variant, and the replication capability was 70 times higher than that of the Delta variant, a local health official said at the press conference.

Jilin's provincial capital, Changchun, has imposed a total lockdown to curb the virus spread, while the city of Jilin, which has the same name as the province and is only 120 kilometers from Changchun, has conducted six rounds of citywide nucleic acid testing.

Another reason is insufficient medical resources in some places in the face of a rapidly rising epidemic situation and defective emergency response of some local governments which failed to test, quarantine, and treat residents as required, Jilin officials said.

The Party chief at a university in Jilin was sacked on Thursday after cluster infections were detected in the campus, which shocked Chinese social media and led to a heated discussion on the school's lack of transparent and effective management.

Furthermore, Wang Lu, the mayor and deputy Party chief of Jilin city, Li Xin, the head of Jiutai district of Changchun, and Gao Yutang, director of the Changchun Health Commission, were also sacked for their slack response to the grave situation.

Jilin provincial Party chief Jing Junhai on Sunday vowed to take firm actions to prevent concealment and delays in reporting.

Authorities of Shenzhen, South China's Guangdong Province, on Sunday decided to put all residential communities under closed management, close stores and business, suspend transportation and launch three rounds of city-wide testing, starting from Monday, as the local COVID-19 epidemic situation continues to worsen.

Also on Sunday, six officials from Dongguan, Guangdong Provincewere removed from their posts for the defects and loopholes in the daily epidemic prevention tasks at key venues in the city, especially their poor execution of duties which caused cluster infections in Dalang township in late February.

Wang Guangfa, a respiratory expert at Peking University First Hospital who was also one of the experts of the National Health Commission who visited Wuhan in early January 2020, told the Global Times on Sunday that Omicron shows the characteristics of atypical infection symptoms and has a more hidden transmission process, making it difficult to detect infected persons in a timely manner.

Meanwhile, cluster infections in campuses have become a prevalent phenomenon in recent outbreaks. In the city of Laixi, Shandong Province, 304 confirmed cases have been reported since March 4, of whom 217 are students. In this case, the epidemic had already spread insidiously in the school before three students tested positive at a fever clinic. The source of the infection remains unknown.

In addition to Omicron being more likely to infect children, the low inoculation rate among the age group is still a major problem, Wang said.

Wang noted the country's dynamic zero-COVID policy has also been adjusted according to the new situation, citing the newly approved five COVID-19 antigen self-testing products, which will be used as a supplement to the standard nucleic acid testing to help fight the spread of the virus.

Experts said the adjustment was made based on the features of the Omicron variant, which shows that China is adjusting its COVID-19 policy to be more scientific and targeted.

Wang said the products could help detect patients earlier, but more accurate technologies could be adopted. For example, China is studying the use of a type of detection equipment which could be set up in public venues to detect patients through testing aerosols in the air.

A number of pharmaceutical e-commerce platforms have posted messages announcing that self-testing kits for COVID-19 antigen will be sold in stores as of Sunday.

Yang Zhanqiu, a professor of the pathogen biology department at Wuhan University, told the Global Times on Sunday that the severity of the outbreaks is closely linked to the short incubation period of the Omicron variant.

Yang noted that the virus' incubation period was as long as two weeks for some people in the initial outbreak in Wuhan, but the time has now been reduced to two or three days, which has led to more people being infected.

Both Wang and Yang are taking an optimistic attitude to the early arrival of the turning point and the complete control of the outbreaks this time. Due to the short incubation period, infected people can be diagnosed, quarantined and treated in the shortest possible time when they become sick, which in turn reduces the chance of their infecting others.

"If the measures are effective, the country could contain the virus spread in a week and the confirmed cases will be significantly reduced in two weeks. Zero cases can be expected within 28 days," Wang said.

Calmer approach

It seems that the Chinese society is taking a calmer approach toward the latest flare-ups.

Photos and videos circulating online show that life is proceeding in an orderly manner in Changchun, where residents in the city are under closed management.

On Chinese social media, a message left by a delivery man from Shenzhen for the local health commission went viral on Sunday, which touched Chinese netizens' hearts.

"Contactless delivery without having to climb up stairs has been a great convenience for us, but I don't like doing this. I'd rather climb nine floors just to tell my customers 'Enjoy your meal'," he said.

Chinese observers warned local governments to avoid taking extreme measures such as city lockdowns, as they would harm the local economy and people's lives despite having been proven to be effective.

China must strive to achieve a new breakthrough in its dynamic zero-COVID policy. In fighting against the latest outbreaks, if a city can take meticulous, scientific actions to control the spread of the virus and gradually eliminate cases, it can be regarded as a "true hero" of city governance and thus merit being a lesson for the whole country to learn from, they said.

In the face of the resurgence of the epidemic, voices that question China's dynamic zero-COVID policy and advocate "coexistence with the virus" have once again increased.

It's too early to put "coexistence with virus" on the table, as the outbreaks are at a critical phase when thousands of domestically transmitted cases are being registered every day. Behind the current outbreaks is a sign that decisive and strict measures must be adopted to achieve dynamic zero cases in the shortest time, as a large-scale outbreak may once again occur, an immunologist told the Global Times on condition of anonymity.

The expert believed that openness is a future direction and trend, but as for when and how this is achieved is a question which may require different approaches.

(Web editor: Peng yukai, Bianji)
Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Stanford Univ./M. de Vries; Optical: NSF/AURA/Gemini Consortium

Astronomers have imaged a beam of matter and antimatter that is 40 trillion miles long with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. The record-breaking beam is powered by a pulsar, a rapidly rotating collapsed star with a strong magnetic field.

With its tremendous scale, this beam may help explain the surprisingly large numbers of positrons, the antimatter counterparts to electrons, throughout the Milky Way galaxy.

Astronomers first discovered the beam, or filament, in 2020, but they did not know its full length because it extended beyond the edge of the Chandra detector. New Chandra observations by the same pair of researchers taken in February and November 2021 show the filament is about three times as long as originally seen. The filament spans about half the diameter of the full Moon on the sky, making it the longest one from a pulsar as seen from Earth.

"It's amazing that a pulsar that's only 10 miles across can create a structure so big that we can see it from thousands of light-years away," said Martijn de Vries of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, who led the study. "With the same relative size, if the filament stretched from New York to Los Angeles the pulsar would be about 100 times smaller than the tiniest object visible to the naked eye."

The pulsar is named PSR J2030+4415 and is located about 1,600 light-years from Earth. This city-sized object is spinning around about three times a second, faster than most ceiling fans.

This result may provide new insight into the source of the Milky Way's antimatter, which is similar to ordinary matter but with its electrical charges reversed. For example, a positron is the positively charged equivalent to the electron.

Credit: Chandra X-ray Center

The vast majority of the universe consists of ordinary matter rather than antimatter. Scientists, however, continue to find evidence for relatively large numbers of positrons in detectors on Earth, which leads to the question: What are possible sources of this antimatter?

The researchers in the new Chandra study think that pulsars like PSR J2030+4415 may be one answer. The combination of two extremesfast rotation and high magnetic fields of pulsarsleads to particle acceleration and high-energy radiation that creates electron and positron pairs. (The usual process of converting mass into energy, famously determined by Albert Einstein's E = mc2 equation, is reversed, and energy is converted into mass.)

The pulsar may be leaking these positrons into the galaxy. Pulsars generate winds of charged particles that are usually confined within their powerful magnetic fields. The pulsar is traveling through interstellar space at about a million miles per hour, with the wind trailing behind it. A bow shock of gas moves along in front of the pulsar, similar to the pile-up of water in front of a moving boat. However, about 20 to 30 years ago the bow shock's motion appears to have stalled, and the pulsar caught up to it, resulting in an interaction with the interstellar magnetic field running in almost a straight line from left to right.

"This likely triggered a particle leak," said co-author Roger Romani, also of Stanford. "The pulsar wind's magnetic field linked up with the interstellar magnetic field, and the high-energy electrons and positrons squirted out through a nozzle formed by connection."

As the particles then moved along that interstellar magnetic field line at about one third the speed of light, they lit it up in X-rays. This produced the long filament seen by Chandra.

Previously, astronomers have observed large halos around nearby pulsars in gamma-ray light that imply energetic positrons generally have difficulty leaking out into the galaxy. This undercut the idea that pulsars explain the positron excess that scientists detect. However, pulsar filaments that have recently been discovered, like PSR J2030+4415, show that particles actually can escape into interstellar space, and eventually could reach Earth.

A paper describing these results will appear in The Astrophysical Journal and is available online.

More information: Antonio C. Rodriguez et al, Application of a Steady-state Accretion Disk Model to Spectrophotometry and High-resolution Spectra of Two Recent FU Ori Outbursts, The Astrophysical Journal (2022). Journal information: Astrophysical Journal Antonio C. Rodriguez et al, Application of a Steady-state Accretion Disk Model to Spectrophotometry and High-resolution Spectra of Two Recent FU Ori Outbursts,(2022). DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ac496b
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Within two months, Australians will vote in a federal election. It comes after a political term marked by major societal challenges, including catastrophic drought, bushfires and floods.

Such natural hazards are expected to become worse under climate change. So how does a person's experience of disasters affect the way they vote?

This is the question I set out to answer in my new research into the last federal election. I found when people experienced drought, they tended to place more importance on economic security, not environmental policies, in deciding how to vote.

Crucially, on election day this translated to more votes for micro-parties and fewer votes for the incumbent Coalition. The findings may provide insight into how the current floods in southeastern Australia will influence the next election.

Cast your mind back

Heading into the May 2019 election, much of Australia was gripped by heatwaves and drought.

The four months to April had been the hottest period on record. Dams were low and farmers were barely getting by.

The parched MurrayDarling Basin had experienced mass fish kills and nationally, rainfall in Australia that year would be 40% below average, the lowest on record.

In light of these conditions, political parties and candidates took drastically different drought strategies to the election.

Labor and the Greens promised significant cuts to Australia's greenhouse gas emissions, to varying degrees. Labor also pledged to promote renewable energy and offered farmers climate adaption programs, and the Greens promised to help farmers implement sustainable agricultural systems.

In contrast, the Liberal-National government largely offered economic relief for rural communities, rather than pledging to mitigate climate change and future drought.

Various micro-parties largely favored the Coalition's compensation approach. But importantly, they also tended to advocate strongly for local measures.

For example, Katter's Australian Party agitated for more money to local councils. One Nation said Australia should withdraw from international climate agreements and advocated for greater local ownership of water resources.

Research shows a local experience of abnormal weather tends to increase public belief in climate change, as does low rainfall.

In some cases, extreme weather events lead to support for "green" policies and politicians. And incumbent governments that fail to prepare for or remedy harm from disasters can do worse in elections.

But belief in climate change does not always translate into political support for climate action. For example, previous research has shown how after a natural disaster, voters in the United States favor politicians who offer disaster relief spending over those who invest in disaster preparedness.

I wanted to discover whether the same dynamic played out in Australia. Specifically, how did voters affected by drought in 2019 change their voting patterns compared with the drought-free 2016 election?

What I found

My research drew on the Australian Election Study's first ever panel survey of Australian voters. The study surveyed the same 968 participants after both the 2016 and 2019 elections.

By matching the participants' postcodes with rainfall maps from the Bureau of Meteorology, I separated voters into those who were impacted by drought in 2019, and those who were not.

I found that if voters experienced drought, they placed more importance on the management of the economy and government debt when deciding how to vote. In addition, counter to my expectations, they placed less importance on the environment.

The Coalition is traditionally seen as better at economic management than other parties. And as the incumbents, the Coalition could credibly promise drought compensation and relief to Australians.

But this apparent advantage did not translate into voting patterns in 2019.

Compared with the 2016 election, the Coalition lost votes in drought-affected areas. I calculated that drought decreased first-preference vote share by 3% in the House of Representatives and 1.6% in the Senate, across 7,443 national polling places.

Support for local micro-parties in drought-exposed areas increased by almost 5%. Drought did not significantly impact the vote share of Labor or the Greens.

I looked for reasons, other than the drought, which might explain the trend. These included a region's employment profile and population density, climate skepticism, and rates of political disaffection such as the number of blank ballots cast.

But the voting patterns remained consistent across these variables.

Balancing short and long horizons

So while drought-hit voters at the 2019 election were worried about economic security, they did not reward the Coalition for its promises of economic relief. Instead, they favored smaller parties that emphasized both economic security and strong local leadership.

Minor party support may indeed bring local economic benefits. For example, analysis has found since 2013, electorates represented by independents or minor parties received the most per-capita funding from national grant programs with ministerial discretion.

My research suggests in the aftermath of a natural disaster, voters place higher importance on economic security than climate solutions.

Yet, prioritizing relief and recovery, without disaster prevention and preparation, is highly detrimental in the long run.

Climate change threatens to supercharge both droughts and heavy rain which leads to floods. And as the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change shows, Australia is on the frontline of these worsening disasters.

So what does all this mean for politicians and parties wanting to tackle climate change?

My research suggests they should pursue policies that not only reduce emissions and protect Australians from the effects of an unstable climate, but bring immediate and tangible economic benefits.

Explore further Why are there so few women Members of Parliament? Research shows discrimination against women candidates

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) frolicking at the ocean surface. Credit: Tony Wu/WWF, Author provided

A humpback whale we tagged while it was feeding off the Western Antarctic Peninsula made a nearly 19,000 km-round trip in 265 days, traveling north from Antarctica to its breeding area off Colombia and back. Whales migrate thousands of kilometers each year, gathering to mate and give birth in the tropics and subtropics during winter and then heading for cooler waters in higher latitudes to feast on abundant prey during summer.

Theories abound, but scientists still can't agree on why whales undertake these epic migrations, or even how they manage to navigate vast ocean basins.

In a new report from WWF, a global environment charity, scientists compiled the migration tracks of over 1,000 whales worldwide, recorded using satellite tags. For the first time, the global scale and extent of the routes whales traverse during their migrations were illuminated. The report adds to the growing understanding among scientists that the routes between critical feeding and breeding habitats are as important to whales as the endpoints themselves.

These routes also reveal how perilous the ocean is becoming for these giants. Climate change is shifting the places and times that whales can reliably find food, while fisheries are discarding nets and ropes that can ensnare and drown whales. Meanwhile around 11 billion tons of cargo is moved by sea each year. The routes these ships use cross the paths of migrating whales and other marine animals which may be struck and killed.

Six out of the 13 largest whale species are either endangered or vulnerable according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, even after decades of protection following the end of most commercial whaling in 1986.

Marine protected areas created by individual countries are one way to shield whales from some of these threats. These are zones where certain activities, like fishing, are restricted or prohibited. Currently, marine protected areas cover less than 8% of the ocean.

But whales move through the waters of multiple countries during their migration and spend much of this time in the high seas, where only 1.2% of the ocean is under some form of protection. Clearly, protecting whales requires a global effort.

Migration tracks of over 1,000 whales worldwide, from the WWF Protecting Blue Corridors report. Credit: WWF, Author provided

Whales beyond borders

Geopolitical boundaries are invisible to whales but have extraordinary consequences for them. Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, countries have rights to fish and pursue other activities in 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zones (EEZ) extending from their coastlines. Countries designating marine protected areas within their EEZs can help conserve local ocean habitats.

But since laws vary substantially from country to country, it's difficult to coordinate efforts to protect whales, although international agreements like the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals try to do just this.

It does little good protecting whales in one country, using measures like marine protected areas or rules restricting shipping and fishing, when they may face looser regulation in another country's EEZ during a single migration. The WWF report showed that 367 humpback whales tracked by satellite in the southern hemisphere together traversed the EEZs of 28 countries during their migrations.

The 64% of the ocean which encompasses the high seas is beyond any EEZ and the authority of any single nation. Whales migrate between habitats thousands of kilometers apart, so it's unsurprising that many species spend much of their lives there. The 367 tracked humpbacks spent half their time in these areas of the ocean beyond national jurisdictions.

A 2018 study tracked 14 large species, from leatherback turtles to white sharks, throughout the Pacific Ocean and revealed that 29% of all the positions recorded by satellite tags were in the high seas. In a 2020 study, we estimated that only 27% of important areas for marine mammals and seabirds in the Southern Ocean were within EEZs.

Some whales congregate in cool, productive waters to feed. Credit: Chad Graham/WWF-Canada, Author provided

Marine protected areas on the high seas

International negotiations are underway to figure out how to protect ocean species, including whales, outside of EEZs. In the more than 222 million km that make up the high seas, there are almost no marine protected areas.

United Nations member states agreed in 2017 to negotiate an international treaty for the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity of the high seas. The fourth and final session of these negotiations takes place in New York on March 718. The treaty will include ways that marine protected areas could be designated in the high seas, and these areas could restrict activities that threaten whales and other marine species in areas critical for their survival.

The treaty won't design and implement these marine protected areas, though. That will rely on organizations like the Marine Mammal Protected Areas Task Force, which, with the help of scientists, has located at least 159 important marine mammal areas that could become protected. The migration tracks in the WWF report will be essential when it comes to identifying them.

Marine protected areas are only one measure among several which will be needed to make the high seas safer for marine mammals. Conservationists have to address mounting threats from climate change, fisheries, shipping and pollution.

There are glimmers of hope, however. The International Maritime Organization and the International Whaling Commission are collaborating to prevent ships from striking whales. Meanwhile, modifications to fishing equipment and other tools have reduced the number of dolphins caught in eastern tropical Pacific yellowfin tuna fisheries by 99%. Critical to any successful conservation effort is a solid foundation of scientific evidence and cooperation on local, regional and international scales.

Explore further New map and report expose growing dangers along whale 'superhighways' across the globe

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

A massive winter storm is bringing gusting winds to much of the eastern U.S. this weekend and is expected to dump a foot snow in some areas of the northeast as it brings freezing temperatures to the southeast.

The storm has been described as a bomb cyclone, which refers to the process known as bombogenesissimilar to a winter hurricane.

Snow is expected to fall at a rate of one to two inches an hour from the central Appalachians into the Northeast, combining with wind gusts of up to 50 mph to create drifting snow, according to The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Snow accumulations of 6 to 12 inches are forecast for much of the interior Northeast.

Moderate to heavy snow has already hit "a rather large area" of the eastern U.S., including as much as 8 to 12 inches in the Tennessee Valley and central Appalachia, said National Weather Service meteorologist Andrew Orrison.

Strong winds were reported in southern statesgusts, possibly a tornado, hit early Saturday in Ocala, a city in central Florida, damaging buildings and homes. More than a hundred thousand power outages were reported from Pennsylvania to Florida midday Saturday, according to Poweroutage.us.

The storm will also bring threats of flooding, hail and possible tornadoes to much of the coastal southeast, according to AccuWeather.

And much of the northeast is also expected to see severely reduced visibility and white-out conditions, making road travel "extremely dangerous at times," according to NOAA.

Amid the storm, Route 581 in Pennsylvania was shut down Saturday after 73 vehicles were involved in a crash, Pennsylvania State Police said. Multiple, non-life threatening injuries were reported.

The Virginia Department of Transportation cautioned residents to stay off roads.

Police in Charleston, South Carolina also reported high winds causing the container of a truck to fly off and land on a police car. Two bridges also closed. Winds above 60 mph have already been reported in Charleston, according to the local National Weather Service.

Several St. Patrick's Day celebrations were canceled due to weather over the weekend, including in Albany, New York and multiple cities in Pennsylvania. In Knoxville, Tennessee, a St. Patrick's Day parade was canceled after several inches of snow led to multiple crashes on interstate highways.

After the storm recedes, much of the Southeast will see record low temperatures that could plunge Mississippi into colder temperatures than Alaska, according to AccuWeather.

Temperatures could drop rapidly on Saturday, AccuWeather said.

But the colder weather isn't expected to last long, and temperatures should be back to normal by Monday, said AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Rob Miller.

"The cold shot is going to be a quick one, with very cold low temperatures Saturday night into Sunday a.m., then Sunday afternoon temperatures should be a good 10 to 15 degrees warmer, and already closer to normal by Monday," Miller said.

Explore further Winter storm whipping northeast US with snow, thunderstorms

(c)2022 USA Today

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Credit: Shutterstock/crbellette

The government's plans to fast-track a long overdue review of large tracts of ecologically important land, known as "stewardship land," could result in the loss of legal protections for some conservation land.

A third of all land in Aotearoa New Zealand is managed by the Department of Conservation (DOC). When DOC was formed in 1987, it was allocated land that had been carefully assessed for conservation values and then classified into national parks, scenic reserves or similar. But this classification job was only two-thirds completed at the time.

The remaining third of the land was called "stewardship land", which takes in pristine areas such as the Southern Alps between Mount Aspiring and Aoraki/Mount Cook national parks.

About 2.7 million hectares (9%) of New Zealand's land area is stewardship land. Officials put stewardship land in a holding pen with the same level of protection as other conservation land to make it relatively easy to add protections and hard to sell or swap.

Only 100,000ha of this has been reclassified since the 1980s, including recent additions to the Kahurangi National Park, but successive governments have not had the appetite to finish the job.

Last year, the government announced plans to reclassify all remaining stewardship land, but we argue the process is flawed. It opens the door to vested interests, including sale or disposal of public conservation land, in particular for mining.

Speed versus care

The government appointed national panels to assess the land and make recommendations to the minister. Cabinet papers show the assessments were supposed to be a "genuine technical assessment" of conservation values.

The panels are due to report their recommendations for Westland next month. Credit: Sam Genas/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

But the panels are due to report their recommendations on all of Westland by next month, before moving on to other regions at similar speed. The need for speed has never been explained in light of the care required for this once-in-a-generation task.

The panels replace the statutory reclassification and advisory functions of conservation boards and the New Zealand Conservation Authority (NZCA)without changing the Conservation Act. The process was never put out for consultation.

The panels' terms of reference are loose, with expertise that does not fully overlap with conservation boards or the NZCA. The information the panels used and the stakeholder consultations they have been undertaking have yet to be made public.

The conservation values the panels should be assessing have not been clarified, despite long established guidelines.

Most importantly, buried in the cabinet paper, the minister has given interim direction that panels must prioritize "the assessment for reclassification of any stewardship land where applications are sought for mining access arrangements."

Any disposals for mining will automatically compromise later assessments of conservation values for surrounding land, resulting in weaker classifications. This could pave the way for fragmentation of ecosystems at the margins of conservation land like Kahurangi, Paparoa and Westland/Tai Poutini national parks.

In South Westland, any weak classifications, or disposals for mining within the world heritage area Te Wahipounamu/South-West New Zealand would endanger its very status.

The Environmental Law Initiative (ELI), of which we are members, raised these and other concerns directly with DOC.

Our view is that, when combined, these flaws undermine the assessment process and could open the door to vested interests. This may lead to weak classifications, sale or disposal of public conservation land to mining interests. Although stewardship land can only be disposed of if it has low or no conservation values, if there is no genuine assessment, this seems more likely.

Stewardship land often borders national parks, and if any is opened up to mining it would fragment ecosystems at the margins of conservation land. Credit: Mike Dickison/Wikimedia Commons

More mining on conservation land

Our concerns are reinforced by key issues in a current DOC consultation on improving the reclassification process and disposing of stewardship land through legislative reform.

This consultation places disposal on the table by proposing to remove a key Conservation Act barrier. This would make it easier to dispose of land before any value assessments have actually been made.

In other proposals, the hand of vested interests is clear. DOC proposes to leave commercial activities, including mining proposals, on reclassified land unaffected. This means if stewardship land were to be designated as a national park, this reclassification would have no effect on existing concessions or mining permits.

In our view, this could undermine the very conservation values the reclassification process is supposed to protect. It would also allow for even more mining on conservation land, decisively ending the 2017 Labour/New Zealand First government's policy of "no new mines on conservation land."

The current proposals would also cement the ouster of conservation boards and the NZCA, and shorten public consultation time frames. The combined effect of these proposals is that the public will have less say on the fate of large swathes of public land.

We call on the government to slow down the reclassification and increase the transparency of the process, particularly with regard to vested interests. Failure to confront these issues is likely to attract years of delay, serious legal challenges and possibly even new mines in pristine areas.

Explore further Expanding renewable energy need not hinder conservation efforts

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Gov. Kathy Hochul announced the seven-day average statewide COVID positivity rate has been under 1.5% for five consecutive days.

The seven-day positivity rate was at 1.4% on Sunday.

Despite the recent decrease in cases, Hochul continues to encourage parents to vaccinate their children.

The weather is warmer, and the days are longer, but now is not the time to let our guard down in the fight against this virus, Hochul said in news release Sunday.

Of the 115,749 test results reported, the state identified 1,770 positive COVID cases.

The report states, 134 residents were newly admitted to the hospital and only 12 deaths were recorded.

Hospitalizations have decreased, making the total number of New Yorkers in the hospital 1,052.

Warren County

Warren County does not report daily COVID data on Sundays. State vaccination data indicated on Sunday that 51,443 Warren County residents have received one dose of the vaccine and 48,284 have received the complete vaccine series, out of the countys 64,265 residents.

Washington County

According to state data, six new COVID cases were recorded in Washington County out of the 201 tests administered on Saturday. The seven-day rolling positivity rate in the county was down to 3.2%.

Jana DeCamilla is a staff writer who covers Moreau, Queensbury, and Lake George. She can be reached at 518-742-3272 or jdecamilla@poststar.com.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
Sign up for our newsletter to keep reading.

Get local news delivered to your inbox! Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter. Sign up! Already a Subscriber? Already a Subscriber? Sign in Terms of Service Privacy Policy
QUEENSBURY  The Queensbury Union Free School District is facing a $5 million federal lawsuit after two students allegedly experienced bullying, harassment and discrimination while riding the school bus.

An unnamed parent of two students who attended the William H. Barton Intermediate School filed a lawsuit against the district and its officials, claiming that the administration was aware of the incidents and chose to take ineffective remedial measures.

According to documents filed by the plaintiff with Finn Law Offices, the brother and sister were threatened with rape and told to engage in sexual acts with each other by older students riding the bus.

The childrens mother is bringing the lawsuit against the district as a whole as well as school officials and employees named in the complaint, including Superintendent Kyle Gannon, assistant superintendents Amy Georgeadis and Denise Troelstra, school psychologist Monique Agans, Principal Michael Branningan and the driver of bus 233, Kenneth Bee.

The mother claims that school officials attempted to downplay and cover up the behavior occurring on the bus by stating the isolated incident would be investigated.

The documents, filed in U.S. District Court, state on Jan. 29, 2021, while on the bus the young boy was told to allow his sister to perform sexual acts on him and the same student threatened to rape the young girl and her mother.

Their mother states that this repeated pattern of sexual harassment has affected both her children to the point they now visit therapists and have trouble carrying out daily tasks or going to school out of fear.

The lawsuit claims the school showed the mother only a partial clip of video footage from the bus when she requested to see the taping of the day in question.

When she was granted access to the full video, she claims the driver (Bee) had no control over the children. The documents state children were watching and sharing pornographic images and videos, shouting rape, and threatening other students based on physical appearance.

According to the New York State Department of Educations guidelines, school districts must report all incidents involving discrimination, harassment or bullying even if no disciplinary action is taken.

The documents filed by Ryan Finn on behalf of the childrens mother states that schools often underreport these incidents to avoid losing funding or jeopardizing the administrators positions.

Despite the mothers claims of harassment and discrimination being founded, the district reported zero incidents for the 2020-2021 school year.

Before the January 2021 incident, the documents state the girl told her mother that her brother was being made fun of on the bus in October 2020, just a month after the children began attending the school. The incidents were promptly reported, according to the mother, and she was assured action would be taken. The lawsuit claims the boy was repeatedly called gay and ugly, which drove him to threaten to hurt himself.

School officials were allegedly aware of the severity of the bullying and left the incidents unreported.

It is alleged that all individual defendants had knowledge of the bullying/harassment endured by the ... plaintiffs yet failed to take appropriate action to address the serious situation, thereby condoning the behavior and sending a message that the behavior was acceptable, the March 10 lawsuit reads.

Superintendent Gannon offered a statement regarding the claims.

The district is always committed to working with families to ensure the well-being of our students. We continue to work to maintain a safe and nurturing environment. We always take these matters seriously and do not believe there has been any wrongdoing by the district or the individuals named in the lawsuit. Federal privacy laws prohibit us from speaking further on this pending litigation, Gannon said.

Jana DeCamilla is a staff writer who covers Moreau, Queensbury, and Lake George. She can be reached at 518-742-3272 or jdecamilla@poststar.com.

Love 1 Funny 6 Wow 13 Sad 3 Angry 22

Get local news delivered to your inbox! Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
GLENS FALLS  Rabbi Joshua Gray reminded the crowd of all ages draped in yellow and blue flags of the words of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel after he marched for civil rights alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1965.

Rabbi Heschel, when he was asked by his peers why did you not just pray in a synagogue, he said, I prayed with my feet. Today, we, like Rabbi Heschel, have this unique opportunity to pray with our feet, Gray said.

The independent rabbi and member of Temple Beth El spoke to members of the community who bundled up on Sunday afternoon to show their solidarity with the Ukrainian people, before they began the march from Glen Street to Bay Road.

Gray and his wife, Meghan, were instrumental in organizing the event to benefit Ukrainian refugees.

When we heard about the events in Ukraine, we wanted to take action because Judaism is about taking action and standing up for other people and whats right, he said.

He explained the march was a way to not only donate to Ukrainians, but show solidarity with those journeying to safety.

We can emulate what so many Ukrainians have been doing since late February, we can walk. We can carry the people of Ukraine on our figurative shoulders as we walk together, he said.

The rabbis wife agreed that the idea of a physical march was the perfect way to stand with Ukraine.

One of the members of the congregation suggested we do a walk and we thought that was the perfect symbol to do this in the winter facing the adversity of the cold and the elements, she said.

Meghan Gray then began researching organizations to donate the proceeds to and, ultimately, chose Global Giving. She said 100% of the money that goes to the accredited, nonprofit organization is used for food, water, shelter and psycho-social support.

As people continued to gather, she stood behind a table to take donations and give out sunflowers, stickers and Ukrainian flags.

In the crowd, with the sign she uses to stand at Centennial Circle in Glens Falls, was Kate Roos, who has been holding a daily vigil calling for Peace in Ukraine.

I have a voice, thats all I have and Im going to use it, Roos said.

She said it is time to stand up and remind people this tragedy affects everybody.

March attendee Ed Donohue echoed the thoughts of the Grays, saying solidarity brought him to the walk.

We need to show our solidarity in this time of unnecessary war by doing whatever we can to help: pray, send money, send food or ammo, whatever we can do, he said.

Another member of the crowd was a veteran of the Balkan Army in southeastern Europe.

I am afraid of what happened in the Balkans, happening to Ukraine, Samuel Pickands said.

At 1 p.m., after Gray had spoken to the crowd and words from the temples Rabbi Norman Mendel were read, a final speaker approached the microphone.

Before singing the Ukrainian national anthem, first-generation immigrant Tetyana Denford shared her familys history.

Ukrainian is my first language. I am the daughter of immigrants who narrowly escaped their homes during World War II and ended up in a German labor camp, she shared with the crowd.

She said even after settling in New York City her parents lived life looking over their shoulders fearing their freedom and livelihoods could still be taken from them.

The news recently isnt news for many Ukrainians. History will always repeat itself. We have lived with these stories for over 90 years, Denford said.

Despite the war taking place in her familys country, she was not discouraged, but instead offered words of hope for the future.

We live with tragedy, and yet we find joy and celebrate hope, she said. We play music and embroider our stories on our clothes. The world watches us now, but yet there is hope because to cower in defeat isnt built into us and our foundation.

Jana DeCamilla is a staff writer who covers Moreau, Queensbury, and Lake George. She can be reached at 518-742-3272 or jdecamilla@poststar.com.

Love 20 Funny 15 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0

Get local news delivered to your inbox! Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
Once seen as a vice for rebels, outlaws and musicians, cannabis has gone mainstream, becoming the subject of job fairs and investment portfolios.

Atlantic City officials have touted its potential to drive convention business, and Stockton University offers a cannabis studies minor, along with hosting events on cannabis careers and its impact on tourism.

You still cant legally buy cannabis in New Jersey without a medical card, however, and no one can say for certain when that will change. On Tuesday, the application process opens for distribution licenses for the new recreational market, although the review process is expected to take months.

Most observers, and Gov. Phil Murphy, say the regulated adult market is coming soon, but how long soon will take remains a guessing game.

Its taking a long time and theres a lot of frustration from potential business owners, said John Fanburg, who is the co-chair of the cannabis industry law practice at the Brach Eichler law firm.

He expects the first legal sales of the recreational cannabis market to come from the existing medical marijuana companies, but again, the when remains uncertain. That was set to happen already.

Based on whats been implied from Trenton, the existing medical dispensaries may be given a special license to sell to adults, Fanburg said in a recent interview. It could be a month. It could be two months.

Once that takes place, demand could be high. Fanburg said the first day of licensed sales could see lines around the block, as happened in other states that created a legal market.

The question is, will there be enough product for the medical dispensaries to satisfy the needs of their patients and people over 21 who want to buy cannabis legally for the first time in their lives? Fanberg said.

Ensuring enough supplies for the medical market is a state requirement of expanding any license for the current medical marijuana suppliers, which in New Jersey are called Alternative Care Centers.

Its been more than a year since Murphy signed the package of legislation that created the framework for a taxed and regulated cannabis market in New Jersey, and longer still since residents voted strongly in favor of legalization.

Since then, towns have struggled with how to handle a newly legal market, with many in the area voting to keep out dispensaries and more limiting where they may open.

In December, New Jerseys Cannabis Regulatory Commission approved 30 new permits for the medical marijuana market, a huge expansion of the overall number in New Jersey. The commission is in the process of evaluating license applications for companies seeking to grow cannabis for the recreational market, and on Tuesday, it will accept the first applications for licenses for retail sales.

At the last meeting of the commission, executive director Jeff Brown asked for patience with the lengthy review process, which is all the more time consuming because of a decision to give applicants a change to amend submissions that have been found to be deficient.

Here we are, moving through hundreds of applications, ready to kick off this legalized market under an entirely new framework, Brown said. We are making tremendous progress.

The application review was supposed to take 90 days, but Brown said that deadline would be extended. March 15 will be 90 days since the application process opened.

Our goal is to get as close as we can on the 90-day clock, he said.

According to Brown, the commission has received eight requests for the expanded certification that will allow medical marijuana dispensaries to sell to all adults. He said he would have updates on that at the March meeting.

Once the applications are in for regular dispensary licenses, those, too, will go through a review process, which Fanburg said will likely take months at least. After that, he expects to see lawsuits filed from some of the businesses that do not get approval.

There will always be lawsuits, he said.

Fanburg said he can see the issue from two sides.

People are getting frustrated. On the other hand, its a brand-new, heavily regulated industry. Its going to be a billion-dollar industry, he said. The emphasis is on making it right, not making it fast.

While multiple other states have legalized, New Jersey is in an unusual position, with millions of people in New York and Philadelphia just a bridge away from New Jersey. It remains against the law to carry marijuana across state lines, wherever it was purchased, but realistically, Fanburg expects out-of-state customers to drive up demand.

The next meeting of the Cannabis Regulatory Commission is planned for 1 p.m. Thursday, March 24, to be held remotely.

Katie Majeski, a spokesperson with The Botanist, a cannabis company with three medical marijuana locations in New Jersey, including in Egg Harbor Township and Atlantic City, said there were no updates on plans for the adult use market.

Steve Reilly, the co-owner of the Massachusetts-based cannabis company Insa, said his company will not apply for a distribution license on Tuesday. He said the company still plans to grow cannabis at a site in Middle Township.

We are looking of a dispensary site, but we havent found one yet, he said Friday. The company is set to finalize its purchase of a former seafood packaging plant on Indian Trail Road, and has applied for a license to grow for both the medical market and the recreational sales.

Thats pending with the state, Reilly said.

At 1 p.m. Tuesday, Stockton University plans to present a panel discussion on recreational marijuanas impact on tourism, calling it Destination Cannabis. The free event will focus on destination marketing, cannabis agritourism and food and beverage tourism.

Contact Bill Barlow: 609-272-7290 bbarlow@pressofac.com Twitter @jerseynews_bill

Get local news delivered to your inbox! Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
WILDWOOD  One of the Jersey Shores most popular amusement park companies is upping seasonal workers pay as it looks to attract employees.

Moreys Piers employees this year can earn up to $16.50 per hour. Benefits from free access to rides and water parks to discounted passes for friends and family will also be included to lure applicants, the company said Monday.

We dont want people to lose sight of the value of a summer job, said Maggie Wisniewski, spokesperson for Moreys Piers.

In addition to working at the beach and meeting new friends, teens and young adults will have the opportunity to learn many valuable lessons like time-management skills, communication and customer service skills, working within a team environment, and more.

Workers must be at least 14. A limited number of positions are available for those under the age of 18, and those interested are encouraged to apply as soon as possible, Moreys said.

Positions are currently available with flexible hours and schedules, as well, Moreys added.

Moreys said it began accepting applications in February and still has employment opportunities for ride and game operators, lifeguards, bartenders, food servers and others.

While most jobs last through summer, some may be needed in fall.

We truly believe that our seasonal positions carry just as much learning opportunities as they do fun, said Denise Beckson, Moreys Piers vice president of human resources.

Fifty percent of our full-time staff started in a seasonal role, which speaks to our companys commitment to training, mentoring, and retaining good employees.

Contact Eric Conklin: 609-272-7261 econklin@pressofac.com Twitter @ACPressConklin

Get local news delivered to your inbox! Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
A group of activist investors says it has offered to pay up to $5.50 a share, or roughly $106 million, for a controlling stake in Republic First Bancorp, the company that operates Philadelphia-based Republic Bank.

The group is led by George Norcross, head of the insurance agency Conner Strong & Buckelew, chairman of Cooper Health, and a longtime Democratic Party leader, and former TD Bank executive Greg Braca. The offer would increase the ownership stake of the group from about 10% to 51% of the companys shares.

The group is expected to raise the money to finance the share purchase, according to Dan Fee, a spokesman for the Norcross and Braca group. Norcross was previously part-owner of The Inquirer.

With the purchase, the group would gain the power to elect directors to replace Republic chairman and chief executive Vernon Hill. The groups proposal also includes an additional $50 million for unspecified improvements and expansion of business at the bank, according to a statement.

Bank rules, up until now, have limited investors from owning more than 10% of the company. But the offer on the table could increase pressure from other shareholders on management to waive that limit, as the Norcross and Braca group has requested. A spokesman for Republic did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

Norcross and Braca have also backed a rival slate of three candidates in this years as-yet-unscheduled board election. The board is evenly split between Hill and Norcross backers.

Critics of the banks current leadership have denounced Hills penchant for opening new branches at a time when many people do their banking on smartphones and laptops. The bank now has 33 branches, mostly in the Philadelphia area, with locations in Egg Harbor Township, Northfield and a new one in Ocean City.

Hill has maintained that efficient branch banking is still attractive as a way to build a bank brand. He previously ran Marlton-based Commerce Bancorp and London-based Metro Bank and invested in Burger King and Saladworks restaurants and other area businesses.

The Norcross and Braca group has also criticized Hills long-standing practice of hiring contractors controlled by members of his family, including his wife Shirleys design company. Hill has said his companies have gotten value for their purchases.
GALLOWAY TOWNSHIP  The 1.1-million-acre expanse of flora and fauna that is the New Jersey Pine Barrens was on display at Stocktons campus this weekend.

The 15th annual Lines on the Pines took place inside the schools Campus Center on Sunday. About 1,500 people gathered for the free event to celebrate the history and culture of the New Jersey Pine Barrens, mingling with the nearly 100 local artists, writers and historians who came to honor the region.

They have music, local artists doing their presentations and displays of their crafts and artwork, said Robert Switzer, of Smithville, who was attending with his wife, daughter and grandchildren. Its a nice, casual visit to see everybody.

Scores of displays showcasing the Pine Barrens natural treasures spanned multiple rooms in the campus center. Onlookers walked among paintings and photographs of the idyllic Pinelands scenery; perused handcrafted jewelry, clothing and engravings; and looked at books detailing the legacy and folklore of the South Jersey landmark.

The local nonprofit group Its a Sign of the Pines organizes Lines in the Pines each year. Linda Stanton, founder and president of the group, started the event in 2005, prompted by a conversation with friends in a local bar. After starting out with only a handful of guests, the event has since sprouted to its current size of 93 Pine Barren celebrities and hundreds of visitors.

We thought we were only doing it for one year, Stanton said. It got bigger every year.

Rebecca Kline, of Bridgeton, set up a display titled Uniquely Native, crafted from natural materials native to the Pine Barrens she collects on hikes. Among Klines work were baskets, smudge fans, styled sea shells, as well as paintings and pieces of a small, model menagerie of the Pine Barrens native animals.

Her husband, Leo Kline, added to the collections, carving Pine Barrens crystals into different shapes and sizes. There was a special emphasis on owls, with dream catchers evocative of piercing owl eyes.

Its really nice being able to get out, see the people, see new artisans, to meet and greet and just share our creativity together, Kline said.

Dianne Snodgrass  an instructor at the South Jersey Guild of Spinners & Handweavers from Haddonfield, Camden County  helped set up a display with different handspun cloths and fabrics.

Also a member of the Haddonfield Historical Society, Snodgrass said the event Sunday was a great way to get people to find new hobbies and get engaged in local history.

I enjoy sitting with people and working on projects, where we all have the same thing in common, Snodgrass said.

Lines in the Pines was not held in 2020. It was canceled with four days notice due to the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was canceled last year as well due to coronavirus concerns, but made a triumphant 2022 comeback Sunday.

This will be one of our biggest year, especially after being shut down for two years with COVID, Stanton said. I think so many people are anxious to get out, and we have such a great following.

There were more eccentric exhibits on display as well. Mark and Joanne Thomson brought one of their dozens of goats to the event. A biochemist by trade, Thomson manufactures goat milk into moisturizer, which was on sale at the event Sunday. People could come to their stand and take a picture with a young goat kid named Casper the Friendly Goat.

Also featured prominently Sunday was the folklore of the region  especially the story of the fearsome Jersey Devil, which is said to menace people of the Pine Barrens. Bill Sprouse, a local author, had a stand with his book The Domestic Life of the Jersey Devil, telling the history of the myth and how he is a descendant of Deborah Leeds  the monsters supposed mother.

David Crawford, a former environmental science teacher at Egg Harbor Township, had a display of local tree logs carved with chainsaws into the shape of animals, as well as local folkloric creatures, including the Jersey Devil. Having attended Lines in the Pines for about 15 years, Crawford said the event was a great opportunity to exchange knowledge about the region.

Its like a cornucopia of knowledge, and you come up with some pretty interesting things here, Crawford said.

One of the exhibits Crawford pointed to was one by the Dr. James Still Historic Office & Education Center  an organization dedicated to honoring the family and legacy of James Still  an accomplished Black businessman and writer who penned an autobiography about his life in the 19th century Pine Barrens. Center Chairman Samuel C. Still III, a descendant of James Still, said he was glad to be a part of the Lines in the Pines community, especially after the pandemic layover.

I love this event, I really do, because we meet so many people, Still said

There was a wealth of other historic displays at the Lines in the Pines. James Gilbert, of Little Egg Harbor Township, presented a painstakingly detailed diorama he had made of a 1971 military plane crash in the Pine Barrens. He also had a panel honoring the pilot who had lost his life that day, New Jersey Air National Guard Maj. William Dimas.Greg Vizzi, a naturalist and author, was showcasing the book The Original People, an account of the history, practices and culture of the Lenni-Lenape  the indigenous people of much of New Jersey. Vizzi said he transcribed the book from the words of his late friend, Chief Quiet Thunder, of the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape.

He said events such as Lines on the Pines allowed other naturalists and history enthusiasts to connect with resources like The Original People to learn more about the land around them and the culture of its indigenous people.

The Pine Barrens is the focus, and of course the Pine Barrens has been preserved, and its a good way to really connect with nature, Vizzi said. Everybody here is a lover of the Pine Barrens.

Finding a community has been a crucial feature of the event for Stanton too. This year, Stanton was hosting the event without her husband James, who died in March 2021. She said Sunday marked the first anniversary of the end of life ceremony that was held for James, and she was grateful to be able to spend it with the community she has made in the heart of the Pine Barrens.

Its like a family, Stanton said.

Contact Chris Doyle cdoyle@pressofac.com

Get local news delivered to your inbox! Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
PLEASE BE ADVISED: Soon we will no longer integrate with Facebook for story comments. The commenting option is not going away, however, readers will need to register for a FREE site account to continue sharing their thoughts and feedback on stories. If you already have an account (i.e. current subscribers, posting in obituary guestbooks, for submitting community events), you may use that login, otherwise, you will be prompted to create a new account.
A bill to allow election officials in New Jersey to open and process mail-in ballots 10 days before Election Day is advancing in the state Senate. The bill would also allow the counting of those votes and those cast early at machines a day before Election Day (24 hours after the conclusion of the early voting period, which will be midnight June 6 for the upcoming June 7 primary election).

Processing and counting ballots early is portrayed as an advantage and convenience for county election boards and officials. The massive and poorly executed increase in mail-in ballots during the pandemic  sent by the state to voters whether they needed or requested them or not  was a difficult and costly challenge to handle in a secure, accurate and credible way.

Thats no reason at all, though, to abandon the fundamental fairness principle of all elections that votes not be counted until the voting is done. Tabulating preliminary voting results makes it much easier to do just the amount of election fraud necessary to change an outcome.

This should be obvious to everyone in South Jersey who has witnessed Atlantic Citys long history of tainted and manipulated elections.

In the 2001 city election, ballot harvesting delivered 1,500 votes against the reelection of popular Mayor Jim Whelan, overturning the result of voting in person at polling-place machines.

When Whelan was subsequently elected to the state Legislature, he succeeded in having the number such ballots produced by so-called messengers reduced to three each, saying the evidence showed they resulted in widespread fraud and abuse of elections. That made it a bit more difficult for political operatives, requiring them to multiply the number of paid messengers producing ballots to achieve the votes needed to sway an election.

In the 2010 mayoral race, incumbent Don Guardian accused the campaign of opponent Frank Gilliam of preparing 2,000 fraudulent ballots, paying messengers $30 each for their three ballots allowed. Gilliam was elected and later federally convicted of wire fraud in an unrelated case.

Democratic congressional candidate Brigid Callahan Harrison in 2020 requested federal monitoring of the primary in Atlantic County, after the Board of Elections received two ballots signed by Atlantic City vote-by-mail organizer Craig Callaway. Craig Callaway and his organization of family members and others have repeatedly been at the center of election disputes involving paper ballots submitted by mail and messenger, she said. Callaway said he was acting as a messenger for city resident Chris Perry, taking a duplicate ballot to him, and mistakenly voted and signed Perrys ballot and put it into a pre-printed envelope with Perrys name on it.

Allowing ballots to be counted early creates the possibility of knowing just how many harvested ballots need to be submitted to change an elections outcome. In an infamous case, Chicago political boss Richard Daley wouldnt release city vote counts in the 1960 presidential election until he saw how many more votes John F. Kennedy needed to win the state. Then Daley released a city count giving his party a win by less than 9,000 votes statewide, with Illinois handing the presidency to Kennedy.

There are attempts all over New Jersey to override the choices made securely and freely by voters. Theyre simply more amateurish and obvious in Atlantic City.

No wonder the only vote against the bill to allow counting ballots before Election Day was by Sen. Vince Polistina, R-Atlantic.

The bill cleared the Senate State Government, Wagering, Tourism & Historic Preservation Committee with bipartisan support. The tolerance of campaign and election manipulation by the Democratic and Republican parties suggests it may be useful to them in maintaining their near-monopoly of political power.

Polistina urged, Rather than allow the potential release of information, why not get more machines and people (to count the votes on Election Day)? Lets get the right number of machines and people.

Quite right. Government in New Jersey wastes billions, but now officials are reluctant to spend a little to ensure another path to election fraud isnt opened? How little they seem to value self-government and peoples faith in it.
As state transportation officials get closer to a decision on the location of a new Interstate 80 bridge between LeClaire and Rapids City, local lawmakers are making known they support the Bison Bridge concept.

If the Illinois and Iowa departments of transportation determine it is best to relocate the new bridge upstream or downstream of the existing crossing, Bison Bridge has a chance. If it is rebuilt in its current location, the concept goes away.

State Rep. Mike Halpin, D-Rock Island, earlier this month introduced a House resolution that seeks to convey legislative support of the Bison Bridge Foundation and its mission.

The concept came from Living Lands & Waters founder Chad Pregracke, who wants to use the old bridge as a wildlife-and-human crossing that could become a national park and tourist destination.

National park coming to the Quad-Cities? Pregracke reveals plans for Bison Bridge Pregrackes plan would use the vacated Interstate 80 bridge and state-owned land on either side of it to create either two state parks or  ideally  a national park that crosses over the Mississippi River.

Pregrackes plan would use the vacated bridge and state-owned land on either side of it to create either two state parks or  ideally  a national park that crosses over the Mississippi River.

The Illinois-bound span would become a bike and pedestrian span while the Iowa-bound span would become a path for bison to travel between park acreage.

"As part of the Phase 1 process, the Illinois Department of Transportation has been asked by the Bison Bridge Foundation to consider as an alternative the re-purposing of the existing I-80 structure; a potential savings of over $30 million is possible by the elimination of the removal of the existing structure and not having to implement a multi-use facility on the proposed new structure," the resolution by Halpin and other supporters states.

"... by re-purposing the existing structure, in addition to offering savings to taxpayers, the project has the potential to generate additional funds from increased tourism, economic development, improved quality of life, and the retention of the younger workforce in the area."

Halpin this week said the intent of the resolution is simply to "express the will of the House" and make the Illinois Department of Transportation and Gov. J.B. Pritzker aware of the public support behind the project and the support of both Republican and Democratic lawmakers.

Pregracke said Monday that he was grateful for it.

"It's super important to me and super important to the project because it's getting a lot more eyes on it in Springfield," he said of the resolution, which has not been scheduled for a vote. "It needs to be visible beyond the Quad-Cities.

"I'm not a political person, but it stuck out to me that both sides like it. Any sensible person would support Bison Bridge. We're not asking for any taxpayer money."

A decision on the alignment of the new bridge is not expected for many months, possibly longer. The Illinois DOT is expected to seek more public input on multiple matters related to the bridge this summer.

Becky Marruffo, engineer of program development for the Illinois DOT, is involved with the I-80 bridge and was involved from the beginning with the plans that ultimately led to construction of the new Interstate 74 bridge.

"One thing that's different is that we have funding (for I-80)," Marruffo said earlier this year. "The 74 was initially a little pie in the sky."

When the first phase of engineering and the environmental studies are complete, another consultant will be hired to conduct the second engineering phase, frequently referred to as "the blue print," she said.

"It'll take at least a couple of years for Phase 2," she said. "It'll be several years before construction occurs."

Love 1 Funny 1 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 1

Get Government & Politics updates in your inbox! Stay up-to-date on the latest in local and national government and political topics with our newsletter. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
In her first "State of the City" address Monday morning, Moline Mayor Sangeetha Rayapati said the city has moved "from chaos to calm" and opportunities have improved for people who live and work in the city.

With the theme of "People, Possibilities and Progress," Rayapati said the city is in a strong position as it strives to be a leader in the Quad-City region.

"Careful planning and judicious use of resources are essential to providing what the community needs," Rayapati said. "Recently these efforts have resulted in a bold strategic plan, detailed action plans and an expansive three-year budget, all of which are essential tools for delivering public services and moving the city forward.

"These efforts taken together are helping the city chart a path more toward a flourishing future; one marked by efficiency, community engagement and improved opportunities for those (who) live in, work in or visit Moline."

Rayapati addressed the crowd of local city officials, staff, Rock Island county board members, business leaders and residents gathered inside Spotlight Theatre, 1800 7th Ave., Moline, as sunlight poured in through towering stained glass windows still in place from when the building was a church.

Since the election of Rayapati and four new aldermen in April 2021, Rayapati said Moline "must be guided by overarching values" to influence decisions.

"The belief in our people, the possibilities that surround us and the progress that can be made in Moline have been the guiding forces for our work."

Focusing on the theme of people, Rayapati revisited a campaign promise of hers to restaff the city after four straight years of turnover and departures that left Moline lacking key department directors. Since the fall, the city has filled positions in all departments and installed interim directors while the city seeks permanent replacements.

"We have invested in the people who work for the city and are tasked with making it the place we believe it can be," Rayapati said. "These steps were crucial in rebuilding and right-sizing the organization and facilitating improved service delivery for our residents. We will continue on this path in a judicious manner."

Rayapati highlighted improved community engagement through monthly listening posts and surveys; the successful use of grant and loan programs offered through the city; reinstatement of the Human Rights Commission; and increased participation in city boards and commissions through the "Mayor's Talent Pool," an online application any resident can fill out to serve the city.

Rayapati credited the parks and recreation department and library staff for their "tireless focus" to improve programming and facilities for residents, including the construction of new pickleball courts and redevelopment of the Aquatic Center. She said expanded broadband internet installation was improving opportunities for many residents.

"We know that place-making like this is crucial for maintaining and growing our city," she said.

Rayapati said although the city continued to advocate for a land transfer from the Illinois Department of Transportation for the Interstate 74 redevelopment zone, the city continued to explore possibilities for development along the Avenue of the Cities corridor, Illinois 92 and SouthPark Mall.

"Visible signs of progress are still emerging, but as you've heard, we are on our way with solid guideposts and capable staff making the moves to get us there," she said. "We look forward to progress on increasing housing options across the city, passenger train and quiet-zone developments, annexation possibilities, and a new comprehensive and downtown master plan that will take us confidently into the middle of this century.

"Moline is strong and in a great position to live up to her potential, but we can't do it alone. While the focus on people, possibilities and progress has been effective, we also need to focus on our partnerships," Rayapati said, naming the Moline-Coal Valley School District, Renew Moline, the Quad Cities Chamber, World Relief, the Rock Island Arsenal and others that have partnered with the city to move it forward.

Rayapati said the city's vision and values had helped when making difficult decisions.

"We have moved from chaos to calm; we are resilient, creative, always learning, always evaluating and always ready to implement new strategies to work most effectively for you," she said.

City Administrator Bob Vitas said the city was in a strong financial position with a balanced budget of $147 million for 2022, which aligns with the city's strategic plan and its three pillars: quality of place, infrastructure and the economy.

"We have a significant amount of investment going on across the board," he said, noting the city hopes to have a full-time community and economic development director in place by May or June.

Vitas credited council members for decreasing property taxes by $500,000 and lowering the tax levy below $2 to $1.93; he commended city staff for their hard work; and he praised Finance Director Carol Barnes and her staff for coming up with a plan to save the city $3 million annually over the next 20 years through pension obligation bonds.

"The city is in excellent financial condition," he said.

Alexandra Elias, president & CEO of Renew Moline, said the organization had had a public-private partnership with the city since 1989. She highlighted the recent adoption of a public art installation and placemaking plan and collaboration with the Urban Land Institute to generate ideas for the I-74 redevelopment zone.

"Redeveloping Moline's front porch in partnership with the city and the community is a great opportunity that comes once in a generation," Elias said. "It is both a blessing and a great responsibility. In this singular opportunity, our focus is to create memorable and beloved spaces and places."

Love 0 Funny 1 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0

Get Government & Politics updates in your inbox! Stay up-to-date on the latest in local and national government and political topics with our newsletter. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
Four Quad-City nursing homes have been cited by the Illinois Department of Public Health and fined a total of $125,000 related to the abuse and neglect of residents, including an accident that left a man with a broken nose, according to recent reports from the state.

The nursing facilities that were cited are Allure in East Moline, River Crossing and Heartland in Moline, and Generations in Rock Island.

Allure of Moline

Allure of Moline, 430 30th Ave., East Moline, was fined $25,000 and cited for six licensure violations related to a vehicle crash in which a male resident broke his nose when he was thrown from his wheelchair because his seat belt had not been secured.

According to the IDPH report, the resident was being transported in the facility's van to a medical appointment April 14, when the driver had to brake suddenly to avoid a collision with a semi-tractor trailer on the highway.

The resident was thrown from his wheelchair and hit the center console, causing multiple lacerations to his face that required stitches above both eyebrows, his nose and his upper lip, in addition to bruising to both eyes and facial swelling.

The following morning at 3:55 a.m., the resident was taken back to the hospital for a severe nose bleed. After X-rays were taken, multiple nasal fractures were discovered and the resident was admitted to the hospital.

The resident told investigators he had not unlatched or manipulated his seat belt.

"In my opinion, both (facility) drivers follow too close to the car ahead of them," the resident said. "(The driver) was driving too fast and following too close."

The resident said after the accident, the driver apologized to him repeatedly.

Katie Hughes, administrator for Allure of Moline, said she could not speak about the incident since it occurred before her being hired in June.

"I was not involved in that plan of correction," Hughes said. "There is a whole new system in place, and rigorous training has been done since that incident. We are doing a lot to make positive changes."

Allure of Moline was previously Aperion Care.

River Crossing of Moline

River Crossing of Moline, 7300 34th Ave., was fined $50,000 and cited for 10 licensure violations related to the abuse and neglect of two residents.

In one case, staff was cited for neglect for failing to report possible suicidal behavior exhibited by an elderly male resident and for failing to provide mental health services and increased supervision in a timely manner.

The resident had been transferred from an out-of-state care facility on Aug. 5, 2020, with a seizure disorder, diabetes, anxiety and recurrent depression. According to the IDPH report, nursing staff observed the resident was sleeping more than normal and kept the curtains in his room closed. He told a physician that he would no longer take his medications.

In May, the resident asked an employee to read a journal he kept in which he wrote: "I want to die. I'm so alone. I have massive depression. My son lives nearby but rarely visits. If only I could die. If only I could. To think I went to war, was wounded and lost body parts, got a few awards and wound up here?"

The man was admitted to the hospital for evaluation later that month.

The IDPH report states the facility "failed to provide behavioral health care services and interventions" after the resident expressed "feelings of worthlessness, recurrent thoughts of wanting to die and expressions of emotional pain."

The director of nursing stated to IDPH investigators that she would have sent the resident to the hospital immediately after reading his journal.

Tara Wassell, administrator for River Crossing of Moline, did not return calls seeking comment.

In the second case, River Crossing was cited for failing to construct a secure barrier between the COVID-19 positive unit and the non-COVID unit; failure to provide dedicated staff for the COVID-19 unit; failure to follow proper use of personal protective equipment; and failure to ensure non-quarantined residents, staff and vendors wore PPE while in the facility during a COVID-19 outbreak.

"These failures resulted in the spread of COVID-19 among residents and staff and have the potential to affect all 102 residents residing within the facility," the report states.

The facility was formerly Rosewood Care Center.

Heartland of Moline

Heartland of Moline, 833 16th Ave., was fined $25,000 and cited for three licensure violations after the facility failed to give a 78-year-old male resident thickened liquids, resulting in his hospitalization for aspiration pneumonia in June.

According to the IDPH report, the "facility failed to provide thickened liquids as ordered by a physician" after the resident was diagnosed with dysphasia (difficulty swallowing).

In June, a registered nurse observed the man drinking a glass of water that didn't contain thickening nectar. Shortly thereafter, he had a crackling cough, poor color, low oxygen levels and a fever. He was transported by ambulance to a nearby hospital.

Human Resources Director Michelle Dankert said Heartland changed its name in recent months to ProMedica Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation.

Kelly Kessler, director of marketing and communications, said ProMedica Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation in Moline "has high standards of delivering quality care to our community," and any issues raised during the survey process were addressed and corrected "as quickly as possible."

"It is ProMedica's intent to be in full compliance, and we have internal measures in place such as employee in-services and monitoring systems to review and improve the quality of care provided to our residents," Kessler said. "We feel we have appropriate safety and care protocol measures in place to ensure resident safety.

"In accordance with federal and state laws and regulations and due to our commitment to patient confidentiality and resident rights, it is our policy not to discuss individual patients who reside or have resided in the facility."

Generations at Rock Island

Generations at Rock Island, 2545 24th St., was fined $25,000 and cited for two licensure violations related to its failure to secure a catheter with adequate slack in a male resident, resulting in a permanent tear to his penis.

According to the IDPH report, the resident was admitted to the facility with diabetes and chronic kidney disease requiring dialysis. The man told IDPH investigators that in October 2020 a certified nursing assistant (CNA) removed his pants too quickly, ripping the catheter through his penis.

"I don't have the catheter anymore," the man said. "I tried to use the urinal, but urine comes out the side of my penis and gets everywhere, so now I have to go in my (adult brief). I've tried urinating in the toilet, but I have the same issue of urine going everywhere."

The report states the facility's failure resulted in the resident "experiencing skin breakdown around the penis and subsequent ventral penile tearing resulting in permanent ventral penile erosion."

Amy Berhen, administrator for Generations, referred questions to Patrick Baalke, chief operating officer for Generations Healthcare Network.

Baalke said the company was contesting the allegations.

"Generations at Rock Island prides itself on providing high-quality care to each of its residents," Baalke said. "Its staff provide compassionate care that complies with all state requirements. HIPAA and privacy concerns prevent the facility from commenting any further regarding this matter."

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 2 Angry 11

Get local news delivered to your inbox! Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
A Jan. 31 demand letter to the Hanover County School Board from the ACLU of Virginia threatening federal legal action on behalf of a transgender student was the catalyst behind an impromptu closed special session on Feb. 22 by the School Board as well as the boards 4-3 vote last week to engage Arizona-based Alliance Defending Freedom for legal review of the countys equal education policy at no cost to HCPS.

The demand letter, in which the students name and school were redacted in a copy provided to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, ordered the School Board to immediately comply with federal law by allowing the student to use the boys restrooms at his school, per Title IX, which prohibits discrimination based on ones sex, and the Equal Protection Clause affirmed under the 4th U.S. Circuit decision in 2015 in the Gavin Grimm case.

Grimm, a transgender man, sued the Gloucester County School Board after it barred him from using the boys restrooms.

A federal court  the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals  ruled that the action taken by the school division was unconstitutional and violated his rights under Title IX.

Last summer, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case, which means the 4th Circuits decision stands.

The ACLUs letter was met with a response from Hanover School Board Attorney Lisa Seward on Feb. 11.

That response said the communal boys restrooms at [the school] are available for your clients usage effective immediately, and that the schools administration stands ready to support the student should there be any additional questions or concerns.

In December, the ACLU filed a lawsuit on behalf of the parents of five transgender students. The lawsuit alleges that Hanovers School Board violated a 2020 state law that requires school boards to create policies that address the treatment of transgender and nonbinary students.

Hanovers board voted unanimously on Nov. 9, 2021, to approve policy revisions that allow school officials to use the name and gender consistent with the students gender identity upon request of the student and parent. But it did not approve the bathroom policy, as its widely known both at the state and federal levels.

The difference with the Jan. 31 letter is that it refers to students constitutional rights under federal law rather than the boards actions under state law.

The letter offered this context: The student is a transgender 18-year-old man who transitioned while in middle school and since that time, has been addressed as a boy by Hanover teachers and staff at his middle and high schools.

However, throughout middle and high school and until just recently, he was not allowed to use the boys bathrooms, but was instead given access to the nurses bathroom.

That changed in October 2021, the letter said, when the board began debating its transgender policies. At that time, the student was given a key to a bathroom that was kept locked during the day but was identified as a bathroom for transgender students, it said.

Excluding [this student] and other transgender students from using the common restrooms consistent with their gender identity, and segregating them into separate facilities, is a flagrant violation of federal law, the letter states.

The Hanover County School Board has placed each individual school board member  and each school employee  in the perilous legal position of violating rights that have been clearly established by binding circuit precedent.

Under that legal precedent, it continues, school officials and employees who violate clearly established constitutional rights are not protected by qualified immunity and can be held liable in their personal capacity for compensatory and punitive damages.

The letter goes on to say that this student may be the first student to take this step, but if the Hanover County School Board persists in its flagrant disregarding of federal law, he will not be the last.

School Board members did not talk about their decision publicly last week when voting to engage ADF, a Christian conservative legal advocacy organization known for its anti-LGBTQ stance.

It was, however, the subject of the closed board meeting on Feb. 22.

Board members have said previously that they are not allowed to speak publicly on topics discussed in closed session.

When asked whether last weeks action to engage ADF was a direct result of the Jan. 31 letter, School Board Chair Ola J. Hawkins, one of three board members who voted against ADFs involvement, said in an emailed statement that I do not have anything further to add other than what has been discussed and decided upon at our meetings and in official correspondence.

Calls and emails to an ADF spokeswoman were not returned.

The ACLU, along with Equality Virginia, the Hanover County NAACP, He She Ze and We, and Side by Side, issued a joint statement last week, condemning the boards vote on ADF.

The organizations are collectively hosting a virtual public meeting Wednesday at 6 p.m.

A link to RSVP for the meeting can be found on Equality Virginias Instagram page. Organizers said that as of Monday, more than 230 people have registered to participate.
Global life sciences company Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. is planning to invest $97 million to expand its clinical research operations in the Richmond region in response to increased demand for its services.

The company will create three bioanalytical labs  two in Henrico County and one in Richmond  over the next three years, adding about 500 new workers to its local workforce of more than 1,200 professionals.

The bulk of the expansion will take place in the immunochemistry and chromatography areas as well as subsequent enhancements in biomarker and vaccine sciences, the company said. The facilities will support increasing demand across biopharma for laboratory services to accelerate drug development.

Thermo Fishers announcement expands the local laboratory operations that it acquired in December with the purchase of PPD Inc. in a deal valued at $17.4 billion plus the assumption debt.

PPD, formerly called Pharmaceutical Product Development, operates a bioanalytical laboratory on Dabney Road in Henrico. It also has local administrative offices at One Holland Place on Staples Mill Road. The company uses more than 300,000 square feet of space.

Thermo Fisher now plans to expand by creating two new bioanalytical labs in Henrico  one by renovating the former Toys R Us building at 8700 Quioccasin Road across from Regency mall and the other by occupying space at 2250 Dabney Road near its existing Henrico lab.

The company also will establish a third bioanalytical lab at the Virginia Bio+Tech Park in downtown Richmond.

The expansion bodes well for the Richmond region and its growing presence of pharmaceutical and life sciences companies and manufacturers, said Leonard Sledge, the citys economic development director.

I think todays announcement continues to demonstrate the strength of the life sciences industry in the greater Richmond region, Sledge said. As much as were able to continue to demonstrate our ability to collaborate and grow the life sciences industry within and across our borders, it creates economic opportunities for everybody.

Anthony J. Romanello, executive director of the Henrico Economic Development Authority, said Thermo Fishers announcement speaks to the ability of multiple localities collaborating on the project.

The fact that weve got a life sciences company that is doing such important work and they continue to expand in our region, its just really good for the entire Richmond region. It speaks to our business environment. It speaks to our labor environment that they continue to want to grow here, Romanello said.

The Richmond region has more than 30 pharmaceutical companies and manufacturers, said Chandra Briggman, president and CEO of Activation Capital, the nonprofit associated with the bio tech park that supports the startup business community through grants and other services.

Having a well-established life sciences services firm like Thermo Fisher Scientifics clinical research business move to the Virginia Bio+Tech Park will further strengthen the region as a biopharma research and innovation hub, she said in a statement.

The average salary for the 500-plus employees expected to be hired is $62,395, Romanello said. These are high-paying, lab-type jobs, he said.

Over the next three years, Thermo Fisher expects to add nearly 150,000 square feet of space to its existing portfolio in the region.

Work has been underway since last summer to renovate and expand the former Toys R Us building. About 15,814 square feet has been added onto the front of the existing 43,131-square-foot store building. (The Toys R Us chain built the Quioccasin Road store in 1981 and operated there until 2012, when the retailer opened a new store across from the Short Pump Town Center, which eventually closed.)

Thermo Fishers second new Henrico lab would be at 2250 Dabney Road. That space is currently occupied by another user, then it will need to be renovated for lab space, Romanello said.

In Richmond, Thermo Fisher will take over about 20,000 square feet in the 262,000-square-foot Biotech 8 building at 737 N. Fifth St., Sledge said. That building in the Virginia Bio+Tech Park had been the former downtown headquarters of bankrupt blood-testing lab Health Diagnostic Laboratory.

We have a rich history in the Richmond and Henrico County region, a talent hub with respected universities, and an attractive place for our employees to live and work, said David M. Johnston, senior vice president and president of research for Thermo Fisher, in a statement.

We value our strong collaborative relationship with the Commonwealth of Virginia, Henrico County and the City of Richmond, he said. These vital relationships are an important reason our laboratories employ more than 1,200 professionals and that we have expanded our bioanalytical, biomarker and vaccine sciences operations to include more than 300,000 square feet of scientific work space. Investing in clinical research is essential to delivering on our promise of helping develop life-changing medicines for patients in need.

This is the second major expansion planned by PPD in recent years.

In September 2019, the company announced a $63.7 million expansion to its bioanalytical laboratory on Dabney Road, adding 200 new jobs at the time.

The lab has grown and operated in Henrico under different owners since it was founded in 1985 as Cal Lab East, an East Coast division of California Analytical Laboratory. The ownership and name of the laboratory changed several times in the 1980s and 1990s because of various mergers and acquisitions in the industry. The Henrico facility became part of PPD in 1996 as part of the companys acquisition of Applied Bioscience International.

The Virginia Economic Development Partnership worked with the Henrico Economic Development Authority, the city of Richmond and the Virginia Bio+Tech Park to secure the projects.

Then-Gov. Ralph Northam had approved a $1 million performance-based grant from the Virginia Investment Performance program, an incentive that encourages capital investment by existing Virginia companies, for the Henrico expansion. Northam also approved $2 million from the Commonwealths Opportunity Fund to assist Henrico and $151,952 for the Richmond project.
Vinshaun Johnson didnt make it to graduation. He was 18.

Sharnez Hill never got to see the child shed always wanted grow up. She was 30.

Neziah Hill hardly even lived. She was 3 months old.

They were gunned down, and four others wounded, in two separate shootings in the span of 20 days last April.

The only common denominator, prosecutors said, was Kevon Bynum. The 19-year-old was sentenced Monday in Richmond Circuit Court to serve more than 50 years in prison.

Its not going to bring them back, said Barbara Johnson, Vinshauns mother, after court on Monday. The 18-year-old was the youngest of her 10 children.

I know hes here with me, she continued. I always keep him in my heart. There is not a day that goes by that I dont think of my son. But I do know he is resting now, and justice has been served for him.

The family accepted Johnsons diploma from Varina High School on his behalf in June. He would have been the first boy in his family to walk across that stage, his older sister, Quantrice Fields, told a Richmond judge on Monday.

Instead, in the early morning hours of April 7, he was lured to Montvale Avenue in North Richmond, ambushed by Bynum and at least two others, and left in the street to die.

Thirty-two cartridge casings were recovered from the scene. Police said a juvenile in his late teens was also injured in the shooting.

Caitlin Kelly, an assistant commonwealths attorney, said the only reason for the shooting was because Bynum didnt like Johnson.

Twenty days later, on April 27 at around 6:30 p.m., Bynum was among a group of masked gunmen who opened fire in the courtyard of The Belt Atlantic apartment complex on Midlothian Turnpike, just east of Belt Boulevard.

More than 48 shell casings were recovered. Several matched a gun found in Bynums home, according to Brooke Pettit, an assistant commonwealths attorney who supervises homicide prosecutions.

Sharnez Hill was shot in the back of the head, and killed. Her infant, Neziah, suffered a fatal shot to her right thigh that exited through the left side of her abdomen. An 11-year-old girl, a 15-year-old girl and a 29-year-old woman also were injured.

All were innocent bystanders.

The intended target had an ongoing beef with Bynum, according to Greg Russell, a Richmond detective who investigated the case. The man had apparently posted a Facebook Live video saying, Here I am, showing him in a playground near the apartments.

During his interview with Russell, Bynum appeared to show little remorse for any of the victims.

Why should I give a [expletive] about them, he could be heard saying on a video of the interview.

Despite pleading guilty in December to seven felonies that carried a maximum penalty of three life sentences plus another 63 years behind bars, Bynum wrote a letter, which he read in court on Monday, denying involvement in the shootings.

Stop looking at me as an animal, Bynum told the court. Dont judge me.

Prosecutors sought the maximum sentence, saying his lack of remorse couldnt be rehabilitated, while Bynums attorney, James Johnson, asked for a 15-year term, saying Bynum had taken responsibility by pleading guilty.

These incidents were gravely out of character, Johnson said. Bynums mother and mentor testified on his behalf, describing him as a good student and athlete, a Christian who acted out parables from the Bible at Sunday school, and bound for the military.

Judge Claire Cardwell sentenced Bynum to 52 years with another 131 years suspended.

You destroyed not one, not two, but three families, Cardwell said. One of them was your own.

No one from the Hill family testified Monday, but several wrote letters to the judge describing the impacts of the loss.

If he had gotten 53 years, a life sentence, two life sentences or three life sentences, it wouldnt change our situation, said Inez Christian-Clarke, Sharnez Hills grandmother and Neziahs great-grandmother, in a phone call on Monday. Were still without a grandchild and a great-grandchild.

Christian-Clarke lives in Georgia and did not attend Mondays hearing, but several family members were there and filled her in.

Justice would have them back here with us, she said. Her and her daughter, theyre together.

Bynum is only the first person charged in the two incidents to go to court.

Donald Hemmings, 23; Shyheem Martin, 24; Shamondrick Perry, 20; and Bynums twin brother, Kavon, each are charged with two counts of first-degree murder, three counts of malicious wounding and five firearm charges in the April 27 shootings at The Belt Atlantic.

Juhwaan Barnes, 19, and Justin Oliver, 18, face murder, malicious wounding and two firearm charges each stemming from the April 7 shooting.
Investigators found no signs of foul play in the death of a Virginia State University student whose body was found Saturday inside her off-campus home at University Apartments in Ettrick.

Chesterfield County police on Monday identified the student as Anisa M. Sistare, 21, who is from Chesterfield.

Police were called about 2:30 a.m. Saturday to University Apartments in the 4000 block of J. Mitchell Jones Drive after VSU campus police discovered Sistares body.

The body showed no obvious signs of trauma and there was no evidence of a drug overdose, police said. Her remains were taken to the state medical examiners office for an autopsy to determine her cause of death.

Sistares death is the second of a VSU student at University Apartments in three months.

In December, Daniel N. Wharton, 19, a VSU student from Alexandria, died of injuries he received in a shooting at University Apartments. Isaac K. Amissah Jr., 21, a VSU student living in the apartments, was charged with second-degree murder and felony use of a firearm in Whartons death.

Police said a dispute between the two students led to the shooting. Wharton lived in student housing on campus.

Amissah is scheduled to appear in Chesterfield General District Court on May 25 for a preliminary hearing on the charges.
Police are investigating the shooting of a 7-year-old boy who was seriously wounded Sunday afternoon in South Richmond.

NBC12 reported that the shooting appears to be accidental - that family members were home at the time and that authorities are not looking for a suspect.

Police said in a news release that about 3:30 officers were called to the 6000 block of Glenway Court for a report that a child had been shot. Police took the boy to a local hospital for treatment, where "he continues to recover at this time," authorities said.
EASTON, Md.  Marylands last public monument honoring Confederates who fought for the South during the Civil War is coming down.

The Baltimore Sun reports that the century-old Talbot Boys Statue on the Eastern Shore will be hoisted off its base by a crane on Monday.

The 13-foot-tall, copper sculpture features a boy holding a Confederate flag and names the Talbot County men who joined the Confederacy and died in the war. Its on the county courthouse lawn in Easton.

The Talbot County Council voted to approve its removal in September. A group called the Move the Monument Coalition raised $80,000 to relocate the statue to a private park in the care of the Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Foundation, a nonprofit. The monument will go to Cross Keys Battlefield in Harrisonburg, Va., where it will remain.

Many memorials to the Confederacy have been taken down in the wake of the May 2020 death of George Floyd, a Black man who died in Minneapolis police custody. The monuments have long been viewed by many as symbols of white supremacy.
Together, the people of our nation and this commonwealth have successfully navigated a pandemic amid great domestic social change, and now we peer into another great global crisis that has the possibility of negatively impacting our economy.

From continued supply chain disruptions that emerged during COVID to the human catastrophe unfolding in Ukraine, our economic outlook is not as clear today as it was a few months ago, when we planned for a return to normal.

In his recent State of the Union address, President Joe Biden noted weve seen historically high levels of new business applications, and he pledged to help those small businesses grow and create jobs. I would hope that is true but just hours before he made that commitment, the U.S. Congress heard a proposal that would make it harder for small businesses.

In its current form, House Resolution 6416, the Banning Surveillance Advertising Act of 2022, would stifle the market-making growth weve seen arise from internet-based commerce. This bill would make it harder and more expensive for small businesses to use online advertising to connect with their customers and grow their businesses. The internet is so vital to doing business in todays world, so its unfortunate Congress didnt invite a single small-business owner to testify at the hearing and share their perspectives.

According to a 2020 study, Virginia is home to nearly 302,000 internet-related jobs. The study, commissioned by the Interactive Advertising Bureau, shows tremendous growth in internet jobs. In just under a decade, Virginias growth in internet jobs has increased by 329%  from 70,000 in 2012 to 301,900 in 2020.

Internet jobs also contribute a total of $106.6 billion to the states gross domestic product, translating into positive economic effects well beyond direct employment. Clearly, our state has a lot at stake when politicians start talking about changing and regulating the way online business is conducted.

Entrepreneurs and small-business owners across Virginia have benefited from online ads and social media platforms. In fact, during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the ability to reach customers online was one of the only ways to remain afloat, and to keep customers up to date on operating hours, new services and other real-time changes taking place as we all tried to sort out this new way of doing business.

Small businesses are the backbone of our economy. We cannot cut off their primary means of effectively finding customers and expect them to survive the current economic conditions.

As Congress continues to hold hearings and consider legislation on how best to protect consumer privacy, its important members understand how businesses of every size use not only online advertising, but hundreds of other internet-related services  payment systems, websites, e-mails, social media  to grow their businesses and create jobs.

Nine of our states 11 congressional districts have at least 10,000 internet-dependent jobs, and four of those have at least 20,000 internet jobs. Focusing on the future means protecting the digital ecosystem that is contributing to this tremendous growth and opportunity.
An unexpected discovery of previous family ties to Roanoke recently startled a current resident, prompting her to want to know more.

Q: What is known about Crozer Iron and Steel Co., a defunct Roanoke business that operated around the turn of the 20th century?

Nancy Roeder Trussell

A: To the question shortly but first the interesting story of what prompted the query to begin with.

Nancy Trussell moved to the city seven years ago after living all over the country, she wrote in an email.

The motivation for moving here?

We believe we had zero connection to this city  we just fell in love with the mountains.

The mountains have always been here. The family connection took a while to emerge. It seems the questioners sister was researching family history recently in Philadelphia when she discovered that Samuel Aldrich Crozer, their great-great-great-grandfather, had business ties to Roanoke.

That sparked the curiosity of the current resident, who was particularly interested in the location of the business.

According to the 1898 City Directory, the furnace was on the part of Norfolk and Western Railways yards at the corner of Ninth Street. Madeline Forbes and Irma Moseley have it near the confluence of Glade and Tinker Creeks in their history of Vinton. That was just a fraction of the Crozer operations in Virginia.

(As an aside, the name was incorrectly spelled in the Directory and by historian Raymond Barnes among others including an earlier column here as Crozier. The business was variously identified elsewhere as Crozer Iron and Steel Works and Crozer Steel and Iron depending on the source.)

Not only did the Chester, Pennsylvania-based Crozer own the furnace but also the Upland Coal and Coke of Roanoke, a controlling stake in the Roanoke and Southern Railway Co., and thousands of acres of land in the Virginias, according to his June 29, 1910, obituary in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The acreage in Virginia and West Virginia comprised productive coal fields, reads a biographical sketch in One Hundred Years, The Delaware County National Bank Chester, PA 1814-1914,) an institution Crozer was identified as first president.

Crozer, a tycoon of the first order  an enormous fortune which makes the Crozer family one of the richest in this section of the country, read his obit  also owned what was described in the sketch as exceedingly valuable real estate in Roanoke, Philadelphia, Chicago and other cities. One of his properties in downtown Philly was the Crozer Building.

Gilded Age indeed, the gentleman had a knack for business. Part of that came with his upbringing by John Price Crozer (1793-1866), who built a Pennsylvania cotton milling empire that at its peak operated three mills with a collective appetite for ninety bales of cotton to produce 82 cases of weekly output, according to John W. Jordans 1914 history of Delaware County.

Samuel Crozer divided an inheritance with three brothers, his share being one of the mills. It was a natural fit for him given that he was made partner in the business at age 20, a station he enjoyed for 19 years until the death of the senior.

Despite sundry late 19th century financial panics the cotton mill had never been idle.

As for the Roanoke & Southern  some wag dubbed it the Pumpkin Vine line  it was completed in 1891 to connect Roanoke and Winston-Salem and operated as a private enterprise until being absorbed by the Norfolk and Western, which had been the plan all along, in 1896.

Then there was the Roanoke furnace, opened in 1882 and expanded in 1889, according to Patrick Dalton Dickersons 2011 masters theses for James Madison University The Virginia Iron, Coal, and Coke company and the growth and decline of Southern Appalachia s iron industry: 1880-1930.

Crozers company operated two furnaces employing six Whitwell stoves fueled by Pocahontas coke to reduce local hematite ores, Dickerson wrote, adding that by the turn of the century the product line expanded from foundry and forge pig iron to include locks, engine, carriage and bridge works. Sales representatives waved the flag in New York, Boston and Philadelphia.

The concern that was the subject of the Dickerson paper was organized chiefly by a Carroll County man born in 1857 named George L. Carter, who rose from humble commercial beginnings as a Hillsville store clerk to an executive position with Wythe Lead and Zinc Co. and his own private projects.

Next came a partnership with N&W contractor George T. Mills, the developer of Pulaskis Dora Iron Furnace. Any doubt one may have about the iron content of that countys real estate need only to trout fish for a morning in downtown Pulaskis Peak Creek.

Mills died before Dora, begun in 1891, was finished but by that time, the enterprising Carter had been appointed vice president/general manager. Through the rest of the decade, Carter expanded holdings to four more charcoal furnaces along Cripple Creek in Wythe County, coincidentally another of todays better trout fisheries.

Financial panics be damned, Carter borrowed heavily to expand taking on Wise County coal mining interest to keep the flames burning hot. Successfully seeking assistance from New York banking interests, Carter staged his takeover of Crozer in 1898.

That companys namesake continued enterprises elsewhere as well as concentrating on his lifes work in philanthropy on behalf of the Baptist Church. Among good works was founding of Crozer Theological Seminary in Upland, Pennsylvania, an institution that succeeded a Normal School at the same location established by his father in 1858.

Other contributions include longstanding executive positions at Pennsylvanias Training School for Feeble Minded Children and the Deaf and Dumb Asylum of Philadelphia. Another title was board of trustees president at the seminary. Establishment of multiple churches was also in his portfolio.

After all that, he still had time to cross the Atlantic eighty-odd times, and had visited all sections of the East, save China, Japan, and India, and the great islands of the Indian Ocean. In the Western Hemisphere, his journeys have been through all sections of the United States, Canada, Mexico, and the West Indies, his biography noted.

Death came at age 84, the culprit identified as an affection of the heart in the words of the Philly paper.

Prior personal visits to properties in what was then being called the Magic City are unclear. Certainly he would be delighted to know resident relatives are reading about his good deeds in the local newspaper 112 years later.

If youve been wondering about something, call Whats on Your Mind? at 777-6476 or send an email to whatsonyourmind@roanoke.com. Dont forget to provide your full name (and its proper spelling if by phone) and hometown.
Global life sciences company Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. is planning to invest $97 million to expand its clinical research operations in the Richmond region in response to increased demand for its services.

The company will create three bioanalytical labs  two in Henrico County and one in Richmond  over the next three years, adding about 500 new workers to its local workforce of more than 1,200 professionals.

The bulk of the expansion will take place in the immunochemistry and chromatography areas as well as subsequent enhancements in biomarker and vaccine sciences, the company said. The facilities will support increasing demand across biopharma for laboratory services to accelerate drug development.

Thermo Fishers announcement expands the local laboratory operations that it acquired in December with the purchase of PPD Inc. in a deal valued at $17.4 billion plus the assumption debt.

PPD, formerly called Pharmaceutical Product Development, operates a bioanalytical laboratory on Dabney Road in Henrico. It also has local administrative offices in One Holland Place on Staples Mill Road. The company uses more than 300,000 square feet of space.

Thermo Fisher now plans to expand by creating two new bioanalytical labs in Henrico  one by renovating the former Toys R Us building at 8700 Quioccasin Road across from Regency mall and the other by occupying space at 2250 Dabney Road near its existing Henrico lab.

The company also will establish a third bioanalytical lab at the Virginia Bio+Tech Park in downtown Richmond.

The expansion bodes well for the Richmond region and its growing presence of pharmaceutical and life sciences companies and manufacturers, said Leonard Sledge, the citys economic development director.

I think todays announcement continues to demonstrate the strength of the life sciences industry in the Greater Richmond region, Sledge said. As much as were able to continue to demonstrate our ability to collaborate and grow the life sciences industry within and across our borders, it creates economic opportunities for everybody.

Anthony J. Romanello, executive director of the Henrico Economic Development Authority, said Thermo Fishers announcement speaks to the ability of multiple localities collaborating on the project.

The fact that weve got a life sciences company that is doing such important work and they continue to expand in our region, its just really good for the entire Richmond region. It speaks to our business environment. It speaks to our labor environment that they continue to want to grow here, Romanello said.

The Richmond region has more than 30 pharmaceutical companies and manufacturers, said Chandra Briggman, president and CEO of Activation Capital, the nonprofit associated with the bio tech park that supports the startup business community through grants and other services.

Having a well-established life sciences services firm like Thermo Fisher Scientifics clinical research business move to the Virginia Bio+Tech Park will further strengthen the region as a biopharma research and innovation hub, she said in a statement.

The average salary for the 500-plus employees expected to be hired is $62,395, Romanello said. These are high paying lab type jobs, he said.

Over the next three years, Thermo Fisher expects to add nearly 150,000 square feet of space to its existing portfolio in the region.

Work has been underway since last summer to renovate and expand the former Toys R Us building. About 15,814 square feet has been added onto the front of the existing 43,131-square-foot store building. (The Toys R Us chain built the Quioccasin Road store in 1981 and operated there until 2012, when the retailer opened a new store across from the Short Pump Town Center, which eventually closed.)

Thermo Fishers second Henrico lab would be at 2250 Dabney Road. That space is currently occupied by another user, then it will need to be renovated for lab space, Romanello said.

In Richmond, Thermo Fisher will take over about 20,000 square feet in the 262,000-square-foot Biotech 8 building at 737 N. Fifth St., Sledge said. That building in the Virginia Bio+Tech Park had been the former downtown headquarters of bankrupt blood-testing lab Health Diagnostic Laboratory.

We have a rich history in the Richmond and Henrico County region, a talent hub with respected universities, and an attractive place for our employees to live and work, said David M. Johnston, senior vice president and president of research for Thermo Fisher, in a statement.

We value our strong collaborative relationship with the Commonwealth of Virginia, Henrico County and the City of Richmond, he said. These vital relationships are an important reason our laboratories employ more than 1,200 professionals and that we have expanded our bioanalytical, biomarker and vaccine sciences operations to include more than 300,000 square feet of scientific work space. Investing in clinical research is essential to delivering on our promise of helping develop life-changing medicines for patients in need.

This is the second major expansion planned by PPD in recent years.

In September 2019, the company announced a $63.7 million expansion to its bioanalytical laboratory on Dabney Road, adding 200 new jobs at the time.

The lab has grown and operated in Henrico under different owners since it was founded in 1985 as Cal Lab East, an East Coast division of California Analytical Laboratory. The ownership and name of the laboratory changed several times in the 1980s and 1990s because of various mergers and acquisitions in the industry. The Henrico facility became part of PPD in 1996 as part of the companys acquisition of Applied Bioscience International.

The Virginia Economic Development Partnership worked with the Henrico Economic Development Authority, the city of Richmond and the Virginia Bio+Tech Park to secure the projects.

Then-Gov. Ralph Northam had approved a $1 million performance-based grant from the Virginia Investment Performance program, an incentive that encourages capital investment by existing Virginia companies, for the Henrico expansion. Northam also approved $2 million from the Commonwealths Opportunity Fund to assist Henrico and $151,952 for the Richmond project.
Were at the time of the year where there gets to be some frustration between the bodies, and we get to hear from senators that are unhappy with the House, began Sen. David Suetterlein, R-Roanoke County. But I want to speak today about something thats very disappointing to me here in the Senate.

His speech came during the wind-down of the March 4 Senate session, the conclusion of what was supposed to be the penultimate week of the 2022 General Assembly session, although indications are that legislators might stay in session longer than planned to hash out the budget.

His speech came during a period governed by tradition  we hesitate to use the adjective time-honored  in which bills of all sorts meet their final fates: postponed for further study, killed in committee, and so on.

You could call it, were you inclined to whimsy, an annual revival of Arthur Millers play Death of a Salesman, with every piece of legislation potentially playing the role of the down-trodden, tossed-aside, ill-fated Willy Loman.

There is at least one fundamental difference. Loman, confronted by failure, retreats into fatal delusion. Legislators, confronted by the failures of their bills, resort to blame-casting. Not that the finger-pointing is entirely unjustified.

A realistic view of a divided General Assembly  the Senate held by Democrats, the House of Delegates held by Republicans  has to presuppose that quite a few ventures will end in stalls and stalemates, if they dont simply fizzle into limbo.

Even under those circumstances, however, triumphant survivors emerge. Contemplating why one good bill gets uplifted while the next gets crushed can seem an exercise in futility, yet on balance the proceedings feel more exasperating, deserving of a facepalm, as opposed to tragic.

Nonetheless, even seasoned elected representatives at least sometimes chafe under these circumstances, occasionally revealing that they, like Willy Loman, are tired to the death, as the following mini-drama shows.

Suetterlein continued, Especially disappointing to me, was a bill to help the children of veterans, presented to the Senate Rules Committee that same day. He was referring to House Bill 1333, sponsored by A.C. Cordoza, R-Hampton, which sought to ease the strict standards that determine whether children of members of the U.S. Armed Forces who were stationed in Virginia during their service can qualify for in-state college tuition.

If you are stationed here in Virginia, and you have four years of service, four years of filings in Virginia, your children are eligible for in-state tuition, Cordoza told the rules committee. The current standard is 10 years. Cordozas bill was passed by the House of Delegates with overwhelming bipartisan support, 99-0.

We even heard a senior Democratic member speak favorably for the bill, Suetterlein said, referring to Sen. John Edwards, D-Roanoke.

I think this is one of the things we can do to help our veterans, the children of veterans, to get an education in Virginia, Edwards said during the March 4 rules meeting. We ought to go ahead and do this.

At that moment, out of view of the camera, but picked up by the microphones, a woman said, Remember, we were all going to vote no?

Edwards muttered an acquiescence, and voted along with the other 11 Democrats to pass the bill by indefinitely. The three Republican committee members voted in support of Cordozas bill.

More disappointing for Virginians, listening to it at home, they could hear another senior Democratic member telling them, No, were to kill this, Suetterlein said as he described what happened to Cordozas proposal.

The point Suetterlein wanted to make was that Democrats in the Senate were going out of their way to kill Republican bills  even bills that Democratic politicians personally looked on favorably.

Republicans who reached out to Democrats for support for their bills werent getting it. That undercuts the entire system, and events like what happened erode confidence in this body, and I hope that we will not continue down this path.

Suetterleins finger-wagging at his Democratic colleagues didnt go unanswered for long. I listened carefully when the gentleman from Roanoke County lamented the issue of partisan imbalance, said Joe Morrissey, D-Richmond. I lived in Australia for three years, in New South Wales, and theres an expression called, Right back atcha, mate.

In a House committee where his own bills came up for review, Morrissey said, There was a partisan imbalance there, 5-3, and my bills were summarily killed, all of them, 5-3. Two of those bills came out of this Senate 40-0.

He suggested that the reason Republicans killed his criminal justice reform bills was simply because they could. I would ask my friend from Roanoke County, for those exact same thoughts that he shared with the body today, perhaps he share them with the folks on his own side of the aisle.

The final word of that days session, though, came from Sen. Tommy Norment, R-James City. Ive enjoyed the eloquence and the edification, he said. Do you realize that we were trying to adjourn so that the senators, both Republicans and Democrats, would try to protect their bills that are being summarily killed without presentation in the House Appropriations Committee, which continues to meet?

On Norments reminder, the Senate adjourned in a hurry.

To be fair, that meeting of the House Appropriations Committee wasnt a slaughterfest. A bill sponsored by Edwards, one that the Editorial Board favored (Feb. 21, Still hope for signs of better laws), granting juvenile courts the authority to review and approve or deny foster care plans filed by local social services boards, was endorsed by the full committee. On Wednesday, it passed the House unanimously.

A measure by Bill Stanley, R-Franklin County, making prevision for payments for Medicaid members using telehealth services appeared to stall in that same appropriations meeting, but got revived after the weekend and has also been unanimously passed by the House.

In fact, a number of the pieces of legislation we cheered for back during the crossover period, when the two houses exchanged bills, are still kicking and could well become law. These include the call for a study to investigate reopening a hospital in Patrick County introduced by Del. Wren Williams, R-Patrick; a bill from Del. Marie March, R-Floyd, that would require local government meeting minutes to be posted online; Suetterleins own bill that would make parole board votes public, and another proposal from Suetterlein to have absentee ballots tallied in the precincts where voters reside.

Its great that these strong swimmers have the source of the river in sight. Its too bad so many of their worthy companions wont make it.
" " This diagram shows how the rhino was likely exposed by a glacial flood 200 feet (60 meters) above the surface of Blue Lake in Washington. Note the bubble-filled basalt from an earlier lava flow, the light-colored sandy sediments, which were once a lake bottom, and the pillow basalt surrounding the cave. Courtesy of the Burke Museum

Not all fossils are bones. (Or shells. Or teeth.) Most of us would agree that mammoth tusks and Stegosaurus spikes are pretty darn cool. And yet, the fossil record is not limited to old body parts. "Fossils" are defined as any "naturally preserved remains or traces of [life forms] that existed in the geologic past."

If you'll excuse the pun, that covers a lot of ground. A fossil can take the form of a footprint, a leaf impression or a filled-in tunnel left behind by prehistoric land beavers.

One of the strangest fossils ever discovered is actually a cave. About 15 million years ago, in eastern Washington state, a volcanic fissure eruption sent lava streaming into a shallow river or lake where a rhino happened to be wallowing.

A layer of basaltic rock formed around the beast, preserving the outline of its (well-cooked) body. For millions of years, this rhino-shaped hole in the earth lay hidden in the cliffs of Washington's Grant County, near Blue Lake, a popular hiking destination.

By the 1930s, erosion had worn a hole into one end of the subterranean creature mold, exposing it to the open air. Here's the story of how the "Blue Lake Rhino Cave" came to be  and how four Seattle rock hounds accidentally discovered it.

" " The great Grand Coulee and the vast Channeled Scabland, which dissect most of the Columbia Plateau, were probably formed in only a few weeks during the last Ice Age when an ice dam to the northeast was suddently washed away. Courtesy of the Burke Museum

Advertisement

American Rhinos

Only five rhino species are alive today, and none of the living five species are indigenous to North or South America. However, from about 40 to 70 million years ago, rhinos were common in North America. Some  like the barrel-chested Teleoceras  were hippo-like, semiaquatic animals. Others had wicked tusks instead of the nasal horns we see in their modern-day counterparts.

Paleontologists think the Blue Lake Rhino Cave likely formed around the corpse of a Diceratherium. This type of rhino was sexually dimorphic, meaning that males and females looked visibly different from one another. While female Diceratherium were hornless, each adult male had a pair of small horns sitting side-by-side near the tip of his snout.

The dimensions of the Blue Lake cave tell us that the Diceratherium who left it behind was about 8 feet (2.4 meters) long from snout to rear and stood a little less than 4 feet (1.2 meters) tall at the shoulder. In life, the animal probably weighed 1 ton (0.9 metric tons) or so.

Nobody knows if the creature had already died when it became entombed. However, judging by the contours of the mold, it seems the body was rather bloated. This could indicate that decomposition was already setting in. Also, the legs are pointed skyward, telling us the rhino may have been floating on its back in a state of rigor mortis.

The cave's walls are made of 15-million-year-old pillow basalt, a kind of igneous rock that normally forms when lava contacts cold water and rapidly cools down. So dead or alive, the Diceratherium must've been hanging out in a body of water during a volcanic eruption. Then the lava came pouring in.

Lava can hit temperatures of more than 1,600 degrees Fahrenheit (900 degrees Celsius). Ordinarily, this ultra-hot material would've burned right through the beast's skin, flesh and bone. But instead, the cold water converted the molten rock into a tightly packed layer of hardening pillow basalt.

The corpse eventually rotted away and most of its bones disappeared. Yet the mold that enveloped the body stayed largely intact.

Largely, but not entirely.

" " The rhino cave (seen here on the right) was originally located in the summer of 1935 by two couples hiking high on the cliff in search of petrified wood. Courtesy of the Burke Museum

Advertisement

A Chance Discovery

When you think about it, the fact that we even know this weird little cave exists is pretty amazing. Millions of years after the thing formed, flowing water carved an opening in the mold, right about where the rhino's hindquarters used to be. Yet, erosion hasn't destroyed it completely.

Today, the cave's entrance is big enough for an adult person to enter. But getting inside may prove difficult for some visitors. You see, the Blue Lake Rhino Cave is located in the face of a cliff, about 300 feet (91 meters) above the lake that shares its name.

During the summer of 1935, the Peabodys and the Frieles  two adventurous couples from Seattle  were hiking around the cliff in search of petrified wood. On their trip, the quartet happened to discover the cave; Mr. Haakon Friele had the honor of becoming the first person in recorded history to enter the prehistoric rhino mold.

Inside, he noticed a handful of fragmentary animal bone fossils, including a partial jaw. These were sent to paleobotanist George F. Beck of Central Washington University, who couldn't resist visiting the site for himself. Upon gathering more bones, he enlisted California Institute of Technology paleontologist Chester Stock to identify them.

Stock determined that the bony bits came from an extinct rhino. Soon, the scientific community realized that the cave itself was a full body cast of that very same animal, a beast who last drew breath 15 million years ago.

In 1948, a team from the University of California at Berkley heroically scaled the cliff and filled the cave with plaster, creating a three-dimensional duplicate of the interior. Also, an exact, hollow replica of the cave was put on display at Seattle's Burke Museum.

Attempting to enter the real thing can be dangerous  the surrounding cliff face is quite steep. But hey, you can always listen to the musical tribute! The Ratfish Wranglers, a science-savvy rock band led by paleoartist Ray Troll, play a fossil-tastic song called "Blue Lake Rhino."

NOW THAT'S INTERESTING One of the largest land mammals of all time was Paraceratherium, another relative of modern rhinos. The long-necked herbivore was about 26 feet (8 meters) long and could've weighed more than 22 tons (20 metric tons).
" " The San Gabriel Mountains are visible under clear skies just beyond downtown Los Angeles after weeks of reduced traffic as coronavirus has Californians at home. Southern California is just one area across the globe experiencing improved air quality. David McNew/Getty Images

To contain the coronavirus pandemic, billions of people have been told to stay at home. In China, authorities placed almost half a billion people under lockdown, the equivalent of nearly 7 percent of the world's population. Many other countries have since taken similar measures, initially in hard-hit Italy and Spain, and more recently in the United States and India.

The restrictions have sent financial markets into freefall. But they have also given residents in some of the world's most polluted cities something they have not experienced in years: clean air.

These visualizations, based on data from NASA's Global Modeling and Data Assimilation team, show how concentrations of some pollutants fell drastically after the lockdowns started.

Satellite observations record information on aerosols in the atmosphere. NASA's model is then able to provide estimates of the distribution of these pollutants close to the Earth's surface.

Advertisement

China

The maps below show how levels of PM2.5 nitrate fell in China's Hubei province after the government imposed travel restrictions. Nitrate is one of the components that make up PM2.5, tiny particles, about 3 percent of the diameter of human hair, that can penetrate deep into the lungs and enter the bloodstream, leading to heart disease, strokes or cancer.

Nitrate aerosols are formed from nitrogen compounds, which can be emitted by human activities, especially burning fuel and diesel.

" "

"We may soon learn how much of an impact this temporary pause in pollution has had on human health and the environment, but the clearest takeaway from this event is how satellite measurements of nitrogen compounds can be used as an indicator of economic activity," says Ryan Stauffer, a research scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

Ground station metrics from Wuhan, where the pandemic originated, show how certain pollutants including nitrogen dioxide were at record lows during the first few months of the year.

Some of the major sources of nitrogen dioxide are vehicle exhausts, power plants and wastewater treatment plants.

Scientists say nitrogen dioxide pollution has been steadily decreasing over the last few years. However, the lockdown may have contributed to this year's drop.

The following charts show monthly averages of pollutants over the last seven years.

" "

"Most important to health would be reductions in PM2.5, as that is the single pollutant most associated with severe adverse health effects, such as heart attacks and death," George D. Thurston from the New York University School of Medicine, told Reuters.

Beyond China, many other countries have experienced big drops in PM2.5 and other pollutants in recent months.

Advertisement

South Korea

In early March, South Korea reported a large increase in COVID-19 cases. Since then, ground stations have been measuring the lowest levels of some pollutants for seven years. Although South Korea did not impose major restrictions on residents, changes in daily activity could have contributed to the drop.

" "

Advertisement

Italy

Similar patterns unfolded across Italy following the introduction of a nationwide lockdown on March 9. Restrictions had already been implemented in late February in some northern regions, where COVID-19 cases had surged.

The industrial belt across northern Italy often experiences high levels of air pollution, but estimates show otherwise this year.

" "

Of the pollutants that fell most significantly in northern Italy, nitrogen dioxide stood out, according to data recorded at ground stations. Bergamo, one of the provinces most affected by the virus, has experienced improvements in air quality.

" "

Advertisement

India

Every winter, New Delhi and other big cities in the north are enveloped in a blanket of smog as farmers burn crop residue. The air tends to clear a little in spring.

However, in the first few months of this year, India experienced a significant decline in some pollutants. The lockdown imposed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the country's 1.3 billion people could be a major contributing factor. However, there may also be other factors impacting air quality, according to Pallavi Pant, an air quality scientist at the Health Effects Institute in Boston.

"Air pollution levels are often influenced by local meteorology, like temperature or wind speed. Several early analyses are showing declines in air pollution in regions where shutdowns have taken place. However, any such analyses should consider all relevant factors," Pant says.

" "

Ground stations in northern India also show a downward trend in overall PM2.5, according to data from local authorities.

" "

Beyond improvements in outdoor air quality, scientists are also curious how lockdowns have affected indoor air quality, with millions of people staying at home for far longer than usual.

"As we continue to talk about improvements in outdoor air quality, people are spending a lot more time indoors and the exposure patterns for indoor air pollution might be different at this time too," says Pant.

Sources: Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO), NASA. China National Environmental Monitoring Centre. Wuhan Environmental Protection Bureau, Hubei Environmental Protection Agency. U.S. Embassy and Consulates' Air Quality Monitor in India. India Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB). Delhi Pollution Control Committee. South Air Korea Environment Corporation, Seoul Clean Air Pollution Information. World Air Quality Index Project. Regional Agency for Environmental Protection (ARPA) Lombardy.

This story originally appeared in Reuters and is republished here as part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.
Florence County School District Three is seeking public input on the use of federal funds before submitting federal grant applications for the 2022-2023 school year.

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), as amended, is now known as the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 (ESSA) and replaces the No Child Left Behind Act.

This law provides substantial federal support for programs to serve students in kindergarten through 12th grades.

South Carolinas ESSA Consolidated State Plan includes the following sections:

Title I, Part A  Improving Basic Programs Operated by Local Educational Agencies;

Title I, Part C  Education of Migratory Children;

Title II, Part A  Supporting Effective Instruction;

Title III, Part A, Subpart 1  English Language Acquisition, Language Enhancement, and Academic

Achievement;

Title IV, Part A  Student Support and Academic Enrichment Grants; and

Title IV, Part B,  21st Century Learning Centers.

The deadlines for these grants range from June 1 through July 1.

The district anticipates receiving funds from Title I, II, III, and IV. Because these grants deal with federal funds, the district is asking for comments and suggestions from parents and community stakeholders.

There will be a public informational meeting about Title I, II, III, and IV on March 25. The meeting will be held from 12-1:30 p.m. at Florence County School District Three in the Board Room located at 125 South Blanding Street, Lake City, SC 29560.

Any private schools within Florence County School District Threes enrollment zone interested in participating or anyone interested in submitting comments or suggestions should contact Linda Hair at lhair@fsd3.org or call 843-374-8652, ext. 10131.
 New DOJ memo says plea agreements should generally not require waivers of compassionate release rights | Main | "The Constitutional Guarantee of Criminal Justice Transparency" 

Many folks like calling March 14 "Pi Day," and for sentencing fans today is especially worth celebrating because the amazing folks at the Prison Policy Initiative have today posted their latest, greatest version of PPI's amazing incarceration "pie" graphic and associated report. "Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2022" provides a spectacular accounting of the particulars of who and how people are incarcerated in the United States. As I have said in the past, the extraordinary "pies" produced by PPI impart more information in one image than just about any other single resource. Here is part of the report's introductory text and the concluding discussion:

Can it really be true that most people in jail are legally innocent? How much of mass incarceration is a result of the war on drugs, or the profit motives of private prisons? How has the COVID-19 pandemic changed decisions about how people are punished when they break the law? These essential questions are harder to answer than you might expect. The various government agencies involved in the criminal legal system collect a lot of data, but very little is designed to help policymakers or the public understand whats going on. As public support for criminal justice reform continues to build  and as the pandemic raises the stakes higher  its more important than ever that we get the facts straight and understand the big picture.

Further complicating matters is the fact that the U.S. doesnt have one criminal justice system; instead, we have thousands of federal, state, local, and tribal systems. Together, these systems hold almost 2 million people in 1,566 state prisons, 102 federal prisons, 2,850 local jails, 1,510 juvenile correctional facilities, 186 immigration detention facilities, and 82 Indian country jails, as well as in military prisons, civil commitment centers, state psychiatric hospitals, and prisons in the U.S. territories.

This report offers some much-needed clarity by piecing together the data about this countrys disparate systems of confinement. It provides a detailed look at where and why people are locked up in the U.S., and dispels some modern myths to focus attention on the real drivers of mass incarceration and overlooked issues that call for reform....

The United States has the dubious distinction of having the highest incarceration rate in the world. Looking at the big picture of the 1.9 million people locked up in the United States on any given day, we can see that something needs to change. Both policymakers and the public have the responsibility to carefully consider each individual slice of the carceral pie and ask whether legitimate social goals are served by putting each group behind bars, and whether any benefit really outweighs the social and fiscal costs.

Even narrow policy changes, like reforms to bail, can meaningfully reduce our societys use of incarceration. At the same time, we should be wary of proposed reforms that seem promising but will have only minimal effect, because they simply transfer people from one slice of the correctional pie to another or needlessly exclude broad swaths of people. Keeping the big picture in mind is critical if we hope to develop strategies that actually shrink the whole pie.
Forrest Li. (PHOTO: Bloomberg)

By Yoolim Lee and Olivia Poh

(Bloomberg)  Last Monday, Sea Ltd. employees were starting their week when an email from Chief Executive Officer Forrest Li arrived. In the 900-word memo, the billionaire adopted a contrite tone, addressing head-on a $150 billion plunge in his companys value since late 2021.

This drop is painful, and you might be feeling frustrated, disheartened, or worried about Seas future, the 44-year-old wrote in his email seen by Bloomberg News, sent company-wide the first working day after Sea notched its third-biggest stock decline. Do not fear: we are in a strong position internally, and we are clear on our next steps. This is short-term pain that we have to endure to truly maximise our long-term potential.

Lis missive was unusual and underscores changes underway at the gaming and e-commerce giant. In recent years, with the business growing rapidly, the founder addressed his troops mainly to celebrate key milestones. But after a run of extraordinary setbacks this year  including Indias abrupt ban of its most popular mobile game  the company is showing signs of acceding to demands from shareholders and employees for more openness.

Global investors that rode a 2,300% rally from 2017 to 2021 had long been content to let Sea go about its business. That began to change in November, when a disappointing quarterly report prompted a bout of profit-taking. The selloff quickened in January when biggest backer Tencent Holdings Ltd. announced it was selling part of its stake, then accelerated with Indias ban in February before culminating in horrendous quarterly earnings this month. All told, Sea lost three-quarters of its value in five months.

Seas Market Decline Hits US$132 Billion as Stock Tumbles Again

Fund managers in recent months began to urge Sea to be more transparent about its strategy and numbers, according to people familiar with the matter. During an earnings call last week, Li made unusually long and detailed remarks. He rarely talks about his ambitions at public forums, deferring communications to Group Chief Corporate Officer Yanjun Wang, a tight-lipped lawyer.

Story continues

During the call, Sea provided new and more specific data including its first annual guidance for financial-services arm SeaMoney and unit economics for online-shopping arm Shopee in Brazil, as well as for Southeast Asia and Taiwan.

If not for the declining share prices, Sea might not have disclosed so many metrics, said Kelvin Seetoh, a shareholder and co-founder of Singapore-based investor group 10X Capital. They could be doing this to allow investors to understand their business better and its not too late.

Sea said additional disclosures reflect the growth and evolution of the business. As our businesses continue to grow and evolve around the world, we continue to share relevant information about those changes and our performance consistent with our long-standing commitment to our investors, the company said in a statement to Bloomberg News.

Employees, too, are requesting more information. In early March, Singapore-based consulting startup Momentum Academy organized a webinar enticingly titled Off the Record  Behind Shopees Doors to discuss inner workings at the Sea unit. Among the more than 400 people attending were Shopee employees, eager to hear from the researchers with no ties to the company.

The pressure has triggered an internal debate among some teams as to how much the company should share publicly, said the people, who asked not to be named as the matter is private.

Seas early tendency to share as little as possible stands out in industries where publicity is often sought. Unlike most gaming companies, its Garena unit almost never discloses upcoming titles. Senior executives began talking about Seas ambition to become a global internet company only two years after Shopee started operating in Brazil. A French business was started with little advance warning and then abruptly shut down.

Investors have resorted to creative ways to navigate the culture of secrecy  nurtured by Seas top echelon including billionaires Li and co-founder Gang Ye. The two own about a fifth of the company, while Li has majority voting control. The firms six-member board includes an executive each from Tencent and billionaire tycoon Robert Kuoks Kerry Group. Both firms are famously low-profile and among Seas earliest investors.

Tencent Sells $3 Billion in Shares of Singapores Sea

During Seas early days as a publicly traded company, U.S. hedge funds hired local teams in Indonesia to collect data to verify whether Shopee was gaining traction, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The firms increased their bets on Sea as Shopee went on to become a major e-commerce player in Southeast Asia and Taiwan. Soon, value investors, pension funds and sovereign wealth funds piled on.

Many emerging-market fund managers had over-concentration in Sea, an off-benchmark stock, said Gaurav Patankar, head of emerging market equity strategy at Bloomberg Intelligence in New York. The people left holding the bags are good old long-only investors, so panic sets in.

Fred Liu, founder of New York-based hedge fund Hayden Capital, is among Sea investors who fly to Southeast Asia regularly to gain insights. Passionate traders in Singapore keep close tabs on Li and Ye. They show up when the executives appear at public events, hoping to throw some burning questions, get some fresh business clues or even just to read their body language, one of the people said.

You have to get in front of investors when times are bad, said Liu, a Sea investor since 2018. You cant hide in a corner and not say anything. Investors will kill you for that. You have to communicate and be more open.

Some even try to track down three corporate jets Sea is believed to have purchased for its top brass to figure out which country the company plans to expand in next. The trio driving Seas global business is Li, Ye and Chris Feng, who is widely credited for Shopees success and was recently promoted to Seas group president.

After the India app ban, Ye, whos in charge of government relations, traveled to the country and met Union Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla, according to a person familiar with the matter. The government is unlikely to reverse its ban on Seas Free Fire game, though it probably wont block Shopee, another person with knowledge of the matter said. A government spokesman didnt respond to a text message seeking comment.

On March 1, Li and Ye traveled to Jakarta to host Indonesian President Joko Widodo at a Sea event, part of a campaign to expand operations in Southeast Asias biggest economy. The live-streamed event showed a rare public appearance of the two low-profile executives.

In his email to staff, Li defended the managements decision to continue spending on growth for the next few years, rather than pursuing profitability to appease shareholders. The stock fell for a fifth consecutive session that day, resulting in a drop of about 40% over the week.

Some investors may prefer a different approach, but this is us taking a longer-term view, Li wrote. We believe it is best for us to invest in capabilities now that will let us capture huge growth opportunities in our future.

2022 Bloomberg L.P.
A man stands near an advertisement of a cryptocurrency exchange in Tokyo

TOKYO (Reuters) -Japanese authorities ordered crypto exchanges on Monday not to process transactions involving crypto assets subject to asset-freeze sanctions against Russia and Belarus over the war in Ukraine.

The step was taken after a Group of Seven (G7) statement on Friday that said Western nations "will impose costs on illicit Russian actors using digital assets to enhance and transfer their wealth."

There are growing concerns among G7 advanced economies that cryptocurrencies are being used by Russian entities as a loophole for financial sanctions imposed upon the country for invading Ukraine.

The U.S. Treasury Department issued new guidance on Friday that required U.S.-based cryptocurrency firms not to engage in transactions with sanction targets.

"We decided to make an announcement to keep the G7 momentum alive," said a senior official at Japan's Financial Services Agency. "The sooner the better."

The Japanese government will strengthen measures against the transfer of funds using crypto assets that would violate the sanctions, the FSA and the Ministry of Finance said in a joint statement.

Japan has lagged a global shift among financial regulators in setting stricter rules on private digital currencies, while the G7 rich powers and the Group of 20 powerhouses have all called for greater regulation of "stablecoins".

Unauthorised payments to targets under sanctions, including through crypto assets, are subject to punishment of up to three years in prison or a 1 million yen ($8,487.52) fine, the FSA said on Monday.

There were 31 crypto exchanges in Japan as of March 4, according to an industry association.

Global regulators remain concerned about the safety of the new market for investors, given its surge in popularity. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has cited the potential for market manipulation as one of the primary reasons for rejecting several applications for spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds.

($1 = 117.8200 yen)

(Reporting by Tetsushi Kajimoto, Daniel Leussink and Kantaro Komiya; Editing by Jacqueline Wong and Sam Holmes)
Utah Sen Mitt Romney fiercely criticised former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii on Sunday and suggested that her remarks about the existence of so-called US biolabs in Ukraine would result in people being killed.

The Republican senator accused his ex-House counterpart, who served as a Democrat but has shifted far to the right since leaving office, of spreading treasonous lies that amounted to Russian propaganda. His statement came in reference to a video posted by Ms Gabbard that claimed the existence of 25 to 30 US-funded biolabs that she went on to assert if breached would release & spread deadly pathogens to US/world.

There are a handful of Ukrainian-run biological threat analysis and defence labs in Ukraine, but theres no evidence to suggest that they are working on biological weapons as far-right commentators and the Russian government have claimed. Its also not a certainty that the labs would release dangerous pathogens if damaged in the ongoing conflict, as experts have worked to destroy any dangerous substances on site.

The US and Ukrainian governments have both denied the existence of bioweapons facilities in Ukraine. Ms Gabbard did not assert the existence of bioweapons in Ukraine or anywhere else, but did suggest in her video that the labs contained dangerous pathogens that would be released accidentally if the sites were attacked.

She did, however, expand her criticism to US-funded biomedical research around the world, pointing to the hundreds of research facilities funded by the US to research and cure dangerous diseases. The former congresswoman would go on to claim that all such laboratories were conducting dangerous research and should be shut down.

Now, after realising how dangerous and vulnerable these labs are, they should have all been shut down two years ago, she claimed.

The Ukrainian government directed all such labs in the country to dispose of any samples of pathogens following the beginning of Russias invasion, an action the Department of Defense said limit[s] the danger of an accidental release of pathogens.

Story continues

It wasnt clear what particular claim that Ms Gabbard was making amounted to what Mr Romney called false Russian propaganda.

Tulsi Gabbard is parroting false Russian propaganda. Her treasonous lies may well cost lives, Mr Romneys tweet read in full.

The Independent has reached out to the former congresswoman for comment.

While Ms Gabbard did not directly accuse the US of nefarious purposes in funding the labs operated by Ukraines government, the narrative plays into the hands of the Russian government, according to US officials, given that the Biden administration has said in recent days that their Russian counterparts are spreading false claims about supposed US-supported manufacturing of bioweapons in Ukraine which US officials say could be pretext to the deployment of chemical or biological weapons by Russias military in its bloody onslaught through Ukrainian territory.

Russias invasion has already reportedly killed thousands of civilians and US officials are now openly warning that the use of chemical or biological weapons by Moscow would escalate the conflict significantly.

US national security adviser Jake Sullivan warned on Sunday that the Biden administration would make Russia pay a steep price if chemical or biological weapons were used in Ukraine, but did not define what specific punishment Moscow would face. The White House has remained firm that US or Nato troops will not be used to defend Ukrainian territory.
FILE PHOTO: Shadow of worker is seen next to logo of Russia's Rosneft oil company at central processing facility of Rosneft-owned Priobskoye oil field outside Nefteyugansk

BERLIN (Reuters) - The German subsidiary of the Russian energy company Rosneft has reported a hacker attack, die Welt newspaper reported on Sunday, citing the country's BSI cybersecurity watchdog.

The paper said the BSI had offered support to overcome the problem, which occurred on Friday night or early Saturday morning, and had issued a cybersecurity warning to other companies in the energy sector.

So far, there had been no effect on Rosneft's business or the supply situation even though the company's systems had been affected, the newspaper said.

Die Welt cited security sources as saying that the hacker group "Anonymous" was suspected of being behind the attack which, it said, was due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

No-one was immediately available at the BSI or at Rosneft Deutschland to comment.

Der Spiegel also reported on the cyber attack, adding that the BKA federal criminal police office was investigating. No-one at the BKA was immediately available to comment.

(Reporting by Madeline Chambers; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
Chief Minister of Indias Uttar Pradesh state Yogi Adityanath with his supporters after Bharatiya Janata Partys (BJP) win in the state assembly elections (Getty)

Dressed in saffron robes, the hardline monk-turned politician and leader of Indias most populous state, Yogi Adityanath entered the stage in Lucknow to mark his victory in the state elections on Thursday surrounded by supporters chanting Jai Shri Ram [Hail Lord Ram].

Adityanath, who is the first chief minister of UP to retain a second term in 37 years, marked the occasion by applying gulaal (colour powder), a ritual for the Hindu festival of Holi, days before the festival as he stood on stage, joining hands with his ministers in a show of unity.

Narendra Modis Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won the state, home to more than 220 million people and more voters than in the country of Brazil, with 255 seats out of 403, well above the number required for an outright majority. Although this is 57 seats down from the landslide victory the party recorded five years ago.

Nonetheless the victory sparked celebrations across the major cities of the state, with party workers riding bulldozers to their party offices to chants of Jai Shri Ram, a slogan that has become synonymous with BJP victory parades in recent years. Other chants hailed Adityanaths role in the win, such as: UP mein rehna hai to Yogi-Yogi kehna hai [follow Yogi if one has to live in UP].

This is a modified version of a slogan Adityanaths supporters have been chanting since he was elected as a member of the legislative assembly in 1998, and has won five consecutive terms since then.

In the last five years of BJP rule in UP, Adityanath has consistently pursued policies that appeal to his Hindu nationalist base. He has changed the names of places including cities like Allahabad and Mughal Sarai to more Hindu-sounding ones, such as Prayagraj and Deen Dayal Upadhyaya. He banned the slaughter of cows, an animal that is holy to Hindus, and also introduced a law against love jihad, a conspiracy theory among right-wing Hindus that Muslim men deceive women to coerce them into changing their religion.

Story continues

Adityanaths victory comes following alarm calls over the decline of secularism in India and the rise of Hindutva politics, and in spite of a horrific Covid-19 pandemic and massive farmers protests that analysts might have expected to play against the incumbent. When Indias healthcare system was brought to its knees last summer, dead bodies were seen floating down the rivers of Adityanaths state.

The result has been credited to Adityanaths crackdown on crime and his high popularity among Hindu nationalists, despite UP having a large Muslim demographic of around 20 per cent of the population. It is a victory that will dramatically increase talk among the BJP faithful about Adityanath as a potential successor to Modi.

These state elections, with UP voting alongside four other states, were seen as an important test for the BJP ahead of the general elections in 2024 when Modi will be vying for a third term. And the results were particularly devastating for Indias once-formidable National Congress party, the countrys oldest political party and the main national opposition to the BJP.

A BJP supporter wears a mask depicting Narendra Modi on the back of his head during a roadshow for Adityanath (Getty)

Manisha Priyam, a professor and political analyst who has been tracking the BJPs rise for years, says the thumping win in a crucial state like UP certainly makes Mr Yogi very powerful within the BJP, with no other competitor in sight.

Uttar Pradesh is a very significant state and it is large in size, the politics of UP definitely has an impact on other neighbouring states, Priyam says.

The BJP may have lost its heavy majority but its still a comfortable win, says Maya Mirchandani, a fellow with the Observer Research Foundation think-tank. So theres no question that this is being seen as a win for Yogi Adityanath.

Mirchandani says she saw a somewhat lower participation from Modi himself in the UP campaign than expected, with the prime minister normally playing a key role as the partys most popular and important vote-winner.

Across the rest of the country, we have seen it has always been about the charisma of prime minister Modi that kind of wins over chief ministerial candidates on the field, she says. But I think in UP there was a realisation that Mr Yogi himself has a strong following and a lot of his electorates see him as a natural leader.

In an interview with Reuters before the elections, Adityanath refused to answer a question on whether he should be looked at as a successor.

I am just a monk, he said, adding: I will serve the people of the state till the party wants or else I will serve people through my  temple.

BJP spokespersons also refused to comment to The Independent on the future of Adityanath in the party.

Right after the election results were announced on Thursday, BJP member Aparna Yadav said that the party has received support from all the religious communities in Uttar Pradesh.

Hindu-Muslim-Sikh-Isai Sabke Sab Hein Bhaajpayee [BJP is with everyone, every religion], she said.

Its a message of communal harmony that is at odds with the reality of Adityanaths almost three-decades-long political career and his five-year rule in the state. The 49-year-old is the poster child for the most hardline brand of Hindutva politics that has come to dominate the country in recent years, and as such represents a deeply divisive figure.

He heads a key Hindu temple in eastern UPs Gorakhpur, the Gorakhnath Math, a position he has held since the death of his spiritual father, Mahant Avaidyanath, in September 2014.

He also ran a private Hindu militia organisation called Hindu Yuva Vahini (Hindu youth army) that works toward religious causes like protecting cows and preventing forced religious conversions and love jihad, both of which target Muslims as alleged perpetrators. Its activists have been accused of converting minor local incidents into communal conflagrations.

Before taking over as chief minister, Adityanath made several controversial speeches against the countrys Muslim minority. He once said non-Muslims are not safe in Muslim majority areas in the state and warned against converting western UP into Kashmir (Indias only region where Muslims are in the majority) after a spell of rioting there.

His tone did not entirely change after taking over charge of a multi-cultural state. Just a few weeks before the elections, Adityanath said that 80 per cent people are with BJP and 20 per cent always oppose us, taken as a clear reference to the states religious demographics. He nonetheless later denied this, saying the comment was not in the context of religion or caste in an interview with Indian news agency ANI.

Analysts say Adityanaths controversial statements did not harm him at the ballot box because they play to a deep communal divide that exists among the states voters  Thursdays result suggesting that in UP at least, a majoritarian appeal can translate to an emphatic election victory.
 18  1.1%  818 10%  1.2%      1.33% 3%12% 57%  27% 510.4 62  10% 8844.4 Jupiter Lai  6% 6 810 15%  4% 62 Twitter 5% 8844.4   102  2.45 68.66% B.Duck 2021 5% THE HENLEY II3.8  LYOS23 1088
An inmate and a former prisoner filed a federal lawsuit Monday against Gov. Ned Lamont and Attorney General William Tong in hopes of getting rid of a state law that requires former inmates to pay for the time they spent in jail, according to the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Connecticut.

They also are seeking the courts permission to make it a class-action lawsuit on behalf of tens of thousands of present and former incarcerated people, said Meghan Holden, an ACLU spokeswoman.

Advertisement

Every inmate owes hundreds of dollars for each day behind bars, said the ACLU in a news release. Lawyers from the ACLU and from Hurwitz, Sagarin, Slossberg & Knuff LLC represent Michael Llorens and former prisoner Teresa Beatty on behalf of everyone owing prison debt to the state because they were incarcerated on or after Oct. 1, 1997  about 30,000 people, according to the lawsuit.

The suit challenges Connecticuts prison debt law under the excessive fines clause of the U.S. Constitution, the ACLU said.

Advertisement

Elizabeth Benton, a spokeswoman for Tong, said staff members were reviewing the lawsuit and could not comment on its specific claims. State statutes require the state to recover the cost of incarceration, she said, and the job of placing liens on former prisoners falls to the Department of Administrative Services. There is a proposal at the legislature to repeal the statute, she said.

The Office of the Attorney General becomes involved in certain contested cases but has had no involvement in the specific cases involving Ms. Beatty or Mr. Llorens, she added.

Beatty, of Stamford, was in prison on drug charges from 2000-2002, the ACLU said. Today, she is a certified nursing assistant, a mother, a grandmother and a caretaker for her older brother who is disabled. In 2020, her mother died, leaving her part of the money from eventual sale of the home where Beatty, her brother and her family live.

Once that home is sold, Ms. Beatty will desperately need her inheritance to put a roof over her and her familys heads, the organization said. But the state came after Ms. Beatty, demanding $83,762.26 for her time in custody, including when she was incarcerated pre-trial because she could not afford bail.

Breaking News As it happens Get the latest updates on Coronavirus and other breaking news events happening across Connecticut >

Llorens, who is serving time for burglary, owes the government of Connecticut an astonishing $272,655 in prison debt for his three-year sentence, the lawsuit said.

Under Connecticuts prison debt law, the state charges people $249 dollars a day, or $90,885 a year, for the cost of their incarceration, the ACLU said, adding that the amount is more than what an in-state student would owe for 2.5 years of attendance at the University of Connecticut, including housing, food and books.

The debt follows the former prisoners for years, decimating inheritances and even settlements from lawsuits filed against the state by inmates who were harmed in prison, the ACLU said.

Connecticuts prison debt laws inflict a form of extreme punishment that locks people, especially Black and Latinx people, into unbelievable debt that can haunt them and their loved ones even after their deaths, said Dan Barrett, ACLUs legal director and an attorney in the case. The law also rewards the states own bad behavior by collecting money from payouts in prison brutality lawsuits and funneling that money right into the general fund. Attorney General Tong and Governor Lamont should immediately cease using these statutes.

Advertisement

David Slossberg of Hurwitz, Sagarin, Slossberg, & Knuff said, Connecticuts prison debt law flies in the face of the idea that someone has paid their debt to society after lawfully serving their prison sentence. It is unconstitutional and morally abhorrent. Anyone caring about social justice in our state should care that this law is being used every day.

Beatty said the case is not just about me, its about the tens of thousands of people coming out after me. I am speaking out because I dont want anyone else to go through what Im going through.

Christine Dempsey may be reached at cdempsey@courant.com.
In the world of business, location (as they say) is everything. That theory isnt lost on Lily Leedom, who spent 15 years in corporate real estate investment and development. In her current career, however, that concept has struck closer to home, both figuratively and literally. In 2018, Leedom founded SalterieOne, an artisan salt company inspired by and sourced with the pristine sea water from Duxbury Bay, Massachusetts, a coastal bay near her familys home.

The path to creating a thriving salt company  which, in just a few years, has built sales channels that include supermarkets and specialty stores as well as direct-to-customer retail sales with a long list of loyal subscribers  wasnt a direct one. As part of a personal journey to healthier eating, Leedom began searching for a high-quality, domestically made, handcrafted sea salt. What she found instead was salt that was typically imported and, more often than not, highly processed (stripping it of its natural essential nutrients and minerals) and made with chemicals and additives.

Thats when Leedom began taking a closer look at what was around her. I live by a beautiful bay, which has a really high tide turnover and is full of millions of oysters that naturally filter the water, she shares. When I couldnt find the salt I wanted  and made that connection that I lived in an area with this incredible natural resource  I decided to try making it myself.

Armed with 5-gallon buckets, Leedom would haul water from Duxbury Bay back to the kitchen of her nearby 10-acre farm. I knew nothing about salt, other than it made my food taste better, she says of the early days of experimenting with making salt, which included the help of friends and Google as well as her entrepreneurial spirit.

Taking the plunge

After some trial and error, Leedom created an all-natural, flaky sea salt that she felt was good enough to give to friends and family. The journey to that milestone, however, wasnt without its challenges, including the time Leedom almost lost her Volvo station wagon to the ocean. Harvesting alone one winter, Leedom reversed her car, as usual, down a ramp, parked and then got to work. I was sloshing around in the freezing cold water with a bucket, and I started to see my car sliding backwards, she recalls. Have you seen those situations where someone is able to lift a car? It felt like that. I ran and pushed the car up the icy hill.

With both car and determination intact and armed with positive feedback from her salt recipients, Leedom was ready to take her project further. While researching next steps, she came across some local historical documentation that reinforced she was on the right path. Once I discovered that Duxbury Beach used to be called Salters Beach, and that salt harvesting was once prolific in our area, I was immediately excited to revitalize a centuries-old industry, she says.

In August 2019, production at SalterieOne, formerly Duxbury Saltworks, took off when the company moved to a waterfront manufacturing facility, where water can be pumped directly into the building, eliminating the time-consuming bucket-hauling. Having Island Creek Oysters, another company that takes from the sea to create a quality product, as a neighbor was another plus for Leedom, who values connecting with her local community.

From the earth

Equally as important among the companys values is sustainability. That was one of reasons I loved the business idea at the start, says Leedom. We are only using a natural resource that exists in abundance and seek to be as efficient as possible. To that end, Leedom is in the process of researching solar panels for the manufacturing facility.

While most salt is mined from old salt mines and then processed and packaged, its a different story at SalterieOne. The first step in creating their sea salt involves collecting and filtering water from Duxbury Bay. To further refine the main ingredient of their flavorful sea salt, SalterieOne triple-filters the water. From there, the water is slowly heated to form a rich, condensed brine in which sea salt flakes form naturally.

At this point, SalterieOnes harvesters know exactly when the salt is ready to be removed from the brine and dried at a very low temperature to maintain the integrity of the flakes. Our salt is fluffy and breaks apart in your fingertips when you pinch it, explains Leedom. It is designed to melt on food and really elevate the profile of whatever youre putting it on. The careful and deliberate process helps ensure that each flake is perfectly textured and retains key minerals  such as magnesium, potassium, calcium  and other nutrients that are important to the bodys natural day-to-day functions.

Over time, SalterieOne has honed its manufacturing process with the goal of making the most beautiful flakes possible. Its a lot of experimentation with time and humidity and the way those things interact in our lab during different times of the year, says Director of Sales and Partnerships, Emily Goodman-Simeone, of the exponential number of variables that go into the work they do at SalterieOne.

When we say hand-harvested it means that somebody is watching the flakes all the time and making sure its exactly what we want the end result to be.

Transforming taste

In addition to its popular Classic Sea Salt, which is designed to be used at any point in cooking process, SalterieOne also offers special salt blends, all of which use the Classic Sea Salt as a foundation. Goodman-Simeone says that conversations with the companys loyal customers have sparked ideas for some of the blends. The close relationship that SalterieOne has with their customers and the local community is due, in part, to a direct line of communication. They call us, and I call them back, she says, matter-of-factly.

One customer shared with Goodman-Simeone that she regularly uses SalterieOnes North Blend, which includes organic maple sugar, cinnamon and orange peel, in her coffee to cut bitterness. Another customer swore that having a variety of SalterieOnes salt blends at the dinner table helped turn her daughter into a vegetable-lover.

I think a lot of us now understand that theres a huge quality difference between craft and noncraft products, such as with chocolate, beer and wine, says Leedom, who recognized salt was a category that had yet to be transformed. People really didnt know that you could use a salt that is as pure, flavorful and flaky as ours. We saw that market opportunity and went for it.

Browse SalterieOne products available in the Feast and Field Shop:

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
OMAHA -- A proposal heading before the Omaha City Council on Tuesday would strip decision-making powers from the city health director in the event of an epidemic.

Under the proposed ordinance, the city health director would only have the power to certify the presence of an epidemic. After a threat is recognized, a newly established special epidemic health director would be responsible for coming up with a plan to manage it.

The ordinance states the special epidemic director would assume the powers previously held by the city's health director during an epidemic. However, any order from the new epidemic director could be rejected by the mayor. The City Council also would have the ability to weigh in on the order.

Omaha Mayor Jean Stothert, who requested the ordinance along with Councilman Vinny Palermo, told the World-Herald that the measure is intended to provide accountability during future epidemics.

Nearly two months ago, Douglas County Health Director Lindsay Huse issued a mask mandate for Omaha amid a surge of COVID-19 infections. Huse issued the mandate under her authority as the city's health director. She cited an astronomical spike in cases and already overburdened health care system as her justification for the mandate.

At the time, it appeared to have the backing of a majority of City Council members. Some health officials, including the chief of the University of Nebraska Medical Centers infectious diseases division, also voiced support for the mandate.

But a trio of council members vocally opposed it, as did Gov. Pete Ricketts and Stothert, though she conceded Huse had the authority to issue the mandate. The mayor said neither she nor the council could void the mandate, which Huse eventually lifted in February.

It was something that I opposed and the council had no say in it, Stothert said. Those making the decisions for the people of Omaha should be those elected to serve them.

Huse could not be reached for comment Saturday. A spokesperson for the Douglas County Health Department declined to comment on the proposal.

Previous mask mandates in Omaha were voted on by the city council.

Under the ordinance, the newly created special epidemic health director position would be filled by the physician medical director at the Omaha Fire Department. The Fire Department's current medical director is Dr. Paul Schenarts, a trauma surgeon at UNMC.

Stothert said they opted to designate someone already on the citys payroll so the city wouldnt have to scramble to hire a new person during an epidemic.

The Douglas County health director would still serve as the city's health director. But during an epidemic, their role would be limited to activating the new special epidemic director, who would then make recommendations regarding precautions and regulations.

The mayor would have the power to approve or reject those recommendations. If she decided to take no action, the order would go into effect after 24 hours. The proposed actions would also be placed on the agenda at the City Council's next meeting, during which the council could uphold or reverse the mayor's decision.

"We learned how the citizens feel about mandates and forcing them to do things," Stothert said Saturday. "We hope that we dont have another one of these, but if we do we have to be prepared."

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
SIOUX CITY -- The Sioux City Council, by voting to approve its consent agenda Monday, awarded a purchase order and a service provider agreement for Cone Park summer tubing equipment.

Sioux City Parks and Recreation Director Matt Salvatore told the council that summer tubing operations are expected to be up and running by the second week in June.

Two lanes of the plastic-type surface will be installed at the park annually on the hill at the beginning of the summer season and be removed at the end of the year to make way for snow tubing.

Salvatore said his department looked at the cost of three lanes, but a third lane was over budget.

"You can see how it goes," Councilman Alex Watters said. "If there's high demand, then build on another lane."

Salvatore previously told The Journal that summer tubing will be offered in 2 1/2-hour sessions with 85 participants per session.

The city needs to purchase 7,235 square feet of underlayer, edging, ramps and lubricant, as well as 85 tubes for the initial startup, according to city documents.

City staff contacted both known summer tubing equipment vendors. Neveplast USA, LC, of Basye, Virginia, was the lone bidder at $195,449.54.

The bid will be fulfilled and shipped from Italy, according to the documents, which also noted that the contract would be governed by Italian law and have "very limited warranties."

A third party, Shenandoah Ground Works LLC, of Basye, Virginia, will install the equipment at a cost of $2,000.

"Shenandoah Ground Works is doing the installation, but we will be observing, so we that we can do it ourselves," Salvatore told the council.

Summer tubing and a mountain bike trail system, which is expected to begin construction in 2023, will make the acclaimed winter park a year-round destination.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0

Get Government & Politics updates in your inbox! Stay up-to-date on the latest in local and national government and political topics with our newsletter. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
GRANVILLE, Iowa  Iowa Department of Natural Resources staff are investigating a manure release from a dairy barn about three miles south of Granville in Sioux County, the DNR announced Monday.

At about 8 a.m. Monday, owner Nate Zuiderveen saw a manure discharge flowing from the barn into an underground tile line. Manure had backed up in the barn after a pump plugged. Zuiderveen immediately stopped the pump, ending the flow.

Its unknown how much manure reached a tributary of Deep Creek, but Zuiderveen said he saw manure two miles downstream, according to a DNR press release.

DNR staff will look downstream for environmental impacts and determine the extent of the manure flow. The DNR will monitor clean up and consider appropriate enforcement action.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0

Get local news delivered to your inbox! Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
Let's take a look at COVID-19 news from today, March 14.

What could lie ahead for the US in the third year of the pandemic

Things seem to be looking up as the US crosses into year three of the Covid-19 pandemic. Vaccines still do a good job of keeping people alive and out of the hospital. There's increasing access to tests and treatments. The numbers of cases, hospitalizations and deaths are heading in the right direction.

If living in a Covid world has taught us anything, however, it's that the coronavirus can surprise even the smartest public health experts, and the world certainly isn't out of the woods yet.

Read more here:

White House requests supplemental Covid funding from Congress

White House Covid-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients on Monday renewed the Biden administration's urgent call for Congress to pass pandemic supplemental funding or face "severe consequences."

His remarks came amid uncertainty for the legislative path forward for additional money for the federal government's pandemic response.

The Biden administration requested $22.5 billion in supplemental Covid-19 relief funding in the massive government funding package, known as the omnibus. Negotiators had proposed a scaled-back $15.6 billion for Covid relief, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that Covid provisions would be stripped from the funding bill.

Read more here:

China battles multiple outbreaks, driven by stealth omicron

China banned most people from leaving a coronavirus-hit northeastern province and mobilized military reservists Monday as the fast-spreading stealth omicron variant fuels the country's biggest outbreak since the start of the pandemic two years ago.

The National Health Commission reported 1,337 locally transmitted cases in the latest 24-hour period, including 895 in the industrial province of Jilin. A government notice said that police permission would be required for people to leave the area or travel from one city to another.

Read more here:

For kids with COVID-19, everyday life can be a struggle

Eight-year-old Brooklynn Chiles fidgets on the hospital bed as she waits for the nurse at Children's National Hospital. The white paper beneath her crinkles as she shifts to look at the medical objects in the room. She's had the coronavirus three times, and no one can figure out why.

Brooklynn's lucky, sort of. Each time she has tested positive, she has suffered no obvious symptoms. But her dad, Rodney, caught the virus when she was positive back in September, and he died from it.

Read more here:

***
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)

LVIV, Ukraine  Russian forces destroyed a theater in Mariupol where hundreds of people were sheltering Wednesday and rained fire on other cities, Ukrainian authorities said, even as the two sides projected optimism over efforts to negotiate an end to the fighting.

The airstrike ripped apart the center of the once-elegant building, where hundreds of civilians had been living since their homes had been destroyed in the fighting, Ukraines foreign ministry said in a statement.

Advertisement

Many people were buried in the rubble, officials said, though there was no immediate word on how many had been killed or injured. Satellite imagery from Monday showed the word children written in large white letters in Russian in front of and behind the building, the Maxar space technology company said.

Another horrendous war crime in Mariupol, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Twitter, calling the bombing a massive Russian attack.

Advertisement

The Russian defense ministry denied bombing the theater or anywhere else in Mariupol on Wednesday.

In Kyiv, residents huddled in homes and shelters amid a citywide curfew that runs until Thursday morning, as Russian troops shelled areas in and around the city, including a residential neighborhood 2.5 kilometers (1.5 miles) from the presidential palace. A 12-story apartment building in central Kyiv erupted in flames after being hit by shrapnel.

And 10 people were killed while standing in line for bread in the northern city of Chernihiv, the Ukrainian General Prosecutors Office said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, meanwhile, went before the U.S. Congress via video and, invoking Pearl Harbor and 9/11, pleaded with America for more weapons and tougher sanctions against Russia, saying: " We need you right now.

U.S. President Joe Biden announced the U.S. is sending an additional $800 million in military aid to Ukraine, including more anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons and drones. He also called Vladimir Putin a war criminal in his sharpest condemnation of the Russian leader since the invasion began.

Ukrainian soldiers and firefighters search in a destroyed building after a bombing attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, March 14, 2022. (Vadim Ghirda/AP)

International pressure against the Kremlin mounted and its isolation deepened as the International Court of Justice, also known as the World Court, ordered Russia to stop attacking Ukraine, though there was little hope it would comply. Also, the 47-nation Council of Europe, the continents foremost human rights body, expelled Russia.

While Moscows ground advance on the Ukrainian capital appeared largely stalled, Putin said the operation was unfolding successfully, in strict accordance with pre-approved plans. He also decried Western sanctions against Moscow, accusing the West of trying to squeeze us, to put pressure on us, to turn us into a weak, dependent country.

Another round of talks between the two sides was scheduled for Wednesday. After Tuesdays negotiations, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said a neutral military status for Ukraine was being seriously discussed by the two sides, while Zelenskyy said Russias demands for ending the war were becoming more realistic.

Advertisement

Hopes for diplomatic progress to end the war rose after Zelenskyy acknowledged Tuesday in the most explicit terms yet that Ukraine is unlikely to realize its goal of joining NATO. Putin has long depicted Ukraines NATO aspirations as a threat to Russia.

Lavrov welcomed Zelenskyys comment and said the businesslike spirit starting to surface in the talks gives hope that we can agree on this issue.

A neutral status is being seriously discussed in connection with security guarantees, Lavrov said on Russian TV. There are concrete formulations that in my view are close to being agreed.

Russias chief negotiator, Vladimir Medinsky, said the sides were discussing a possible compromise for a Ukraine with a smaller, non-aligned military.

Prospects for a diplomatic breakthrough were highly uncertain, however, given the gulf between Ukraines demand that the invading forces withdraw completely and Russias suspected aim of replacing Kyivs Westward-looking government with a pro-Moscow regime.

Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak denied Russian claims that Ukraine was open to adopting a model of neutrality comparable to Sweden or Austria. Podolyak said Ukraine needs powerful allies and clearly defined security guarantees to keep it safe.

Advertisement

Another source of dispute is the status of Crimea, which was seized and annexed by Russia in 2014, and the separatist-held Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, which Russia recognizes as independent. Ukraine considers both part of its territory.

The fighting has sent more than 3 million people fleeing Ukraine, by the United Nations estimate. The U.N. reported that over 700 civilians have been confirmed killed but that the real number is higher.

In going before Congress, Zelenskyy said that Russia has turned the Ukrainian sky into a source of death for thousands of people. But Biden has rejected Zelenskyys requests to send warplanes to Ukraine or establish a no-fly zone over the country because of the risk of triggering war between the U.S. and Russia.

The head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Peter Maurer, arrived in Ukraine to try to obtain greater access for aid groups and increased protection for civilians.

Amid the vast humanitarian crisis caused by the war, the Red Cross has helped evacuate civilians from besieged areas and has delivered 200 tons of aid, including medical supplies, blankets, water and over 5,200 body bags to help ensure the dead are treated in a dignified manner.

Nowhere has suffered more than the encircled city of Mariupol, where local officials say missile strikes and shelling have killed more than 2,300 people. The southern seaport of 430,000 has been under attack for almost all of the three-week war in a siege that has left people struggling for food, water, heat and medicine.

Advertisement

Local authorities said Russian forces took hundreds of people hostage at a Mariupol hospital and were using them as human shields.

Bodies have been buried in trenches in Mariupol, and more corpses lay in the streets and in a hospital basement.

Using the flashlight on his cellphone to illuminate the basement, Dr. Valeriy Drengar pulled back a blanket to show the body of an infant 22 days old. Other wrapped bodies also appeared to be children, given their size.

News @3 Daily Catch up on the days top headlines sent directly to your inbox weekdays at 3 p.m >

These are the people we could not save, Drengar said.

Nearly 30,000 people managed to escape the city on Tuesday in thousands of vehicles by way of a humanitarian corridor, city officials said.

But with humanitarian aid unable to get in amid the constant bombardment, people burn scraps of furniture to warm their hands and cook the little food still available.

Advertisement

Kyiv regional leader Oleksiy Kuleba said Russian forces had intensified fighting in the Kyiv suburbs and a highway leading west, and across the capital region, kindergartens, museums, churches, residential blocks and engineering infrastructure are suffering from the endless firing.

In other developments, the mayor of the city of Melitopol, who was seized by Russian forces five days ago, has been freed, said Zelenskyy chief of staff Andriy Yermak. No details were given about how he became free.

Ukraine also appeared to have successes, with satellite photos from Planet Labs PBC analyzed by The Associated Press showing helicopters and vehicles ablaze at the Russian-held Kherson airport and air base after a suspected Ukrainian strike on Tuesday.

Associated Press journalists around the world contributed to this report.
OMAHA -- In a novel approach to address racial inequity and inspire interest in mathematics for Black Omaha high school students, a Chicago-based entrepreneur will pay them to pass a calculus test.

Known as the Alpha Mission Calculus Awards, the program is open to Black students at Omaha high schools in grades 10, 11 and 12. Participants sign up to learn calculus, take a test and earn $1,000 if they pass. The money is not a scholarship  students can spend it any way they wish.

Philanthropists, nonprofits and politicians have spent decades attempting to address Omahas long history of racial inequity. Entrepreneur Robert Blackwell Jr. thinks that empowering young people to put effort into a subject as difficult as calculus could be a part of the solution.

Blackwell, who is Black, is the CEO of IT consulting firm EKI Digital and the founder of Alpha Mission, an organization working to strengthen Black business communities through partnerships and mentoring.

Ive benefited from a lot of great mentorship, Blackwell said. I think all of us owe it to those who came before us to do something for those who are going to come after us.

Omaha was selected for the initiative because of the citys history of inequity, and because of what Blackwell sees as a potential for real progress. Blackwell befriended Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts at a Republican Governors Association meeting and the two discussed ways to strengthen the states relationship with the Black community.

I told him that the way to mend that relationship is to focus on economics, Blackwell said. Omaha is big enough and small enough to be impactful in this area, and there are a lot of people with good will.

Economic inequality is stark in Omaha. A recent report from the Omaha Economic Development Corp. indicates that Black Omahans experience significantly higher rates of poverty than any other group: nearly 44% of Black households have incomes at or below $24,999.

Blackwell got the calculus competition idea from a young man he met at a university speaking engagement. When the student asked for a meeting, Blackwell obliged. While talking, he learned that the student had spent a summer teaching himself calculus after a subpar math teacher left him confused.

I remember thinking that anybody who has the desire  who is willing to put in the work  to teach themselves calculus is going to be somebody, Blackwell said.

Inspired by the story, Blackwell gave the student an analytics project and promised him $1,000 if he liked what he saw. He did, and the man ended up working for Blackwell for years.

After that success, Blackwell sought to find a way to bring the same opportunity to Black students in similar situations.

One such student is Arianna Hill, 16, a junior at Omaha North High School. Hill is looking toward a future in health care, and she was immediately interested in the contest.

I think its really important to have opportunities like this, Hill said. Its an easy and inclusive way to get people in our community to realize how important STEM and math subjects are. And the thousand dollars draws people in.

Hill is currently taking precalculus but is ready to challenge herself to learn calculus on top of that. She and the other students will attend monthly tutoring sessions until October, but will be able to take the test earlier if they feel ready. If Hill succeeds, she said she will save the money.

Blackwell said this will be the first of many annual calculus competitions. He sees it not only as a way to get Black students interested in math, but also as a way to build a community.

The most important thing for these kids is to find out that somebody loves and cares for them outside of their mother and father, he said. Thats what a community is about: knowing that people are there who care about you and your outcomes.

Eight students are currently registered to participate, and registration closes on March 15. Interested students can register by submitting their information on the Contact Us page on the Alpha Mission website.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
Felipe Vazquez's mother Monday described conversations she had with her son about the 2020 shooting that took the life of Lincoln Police Officer Mario Herrera.

"I asked him what happened, to tell me the truth," Adela Gonzalez, of Albuquerque, New Mexico, told the jury, her words translated from Spanish.

As Vazquez's trial for first-degree murder, attempted first-degree assault on an officer and five other felonies moved into the second week, jurors heard from both of his parents.

On Monday, his mother. Gonzalez, said her ex-husband, Epignio Vazquez, picked up Felipe for a summer vacation when he was 10 or 11 and never brought him back.

Their divorce when he was about 3 had been hard on Felipe, she said. So she didn't report it when he took their son first to Colorado and then Nebraska. And she didn't have much contact with her son after.

But after his arrest for the shooting at the age of 17, Gonzalez said she got video phone calls from him while he was in custody. He told her that on Aug. 26, 2020, police had surrounded his dad's house at North 33rd and Vine streets.

She didn't know it, but police were looking for Velazquez on a felony warrant and he'd barricaded himself inside his stepbrother's bedroom.

"He told me that he was afraid," Gonzalez said. "He broke a window with his hand, and he had to run away."

She asked him why he didn't just come out and turn himself in.

"And what did he say?" Lancaster County Attorney Pat Condon said.

"That he was just afraid and wanted to run away," Gonzalez said.

Vazquez told her he had a gun and fired it into the air.

In fact, police say he fired three shots. One struck Herrera in the torso.

He ultimately died from his wound on Sept. 7, 2020.

Condon asked her about one recorded conversation.

"He told you he didn't think the state could prove their case, correct?" he asked her.

"Yes," she said.

"And that he didn't intend to shoot the officer?" Condon continued.

"That was not his intention. He didn't want to do it," Gonzalez said.

"That's what he told you," Condon clarified.

"Yes, correct," she said.

In the end, that will be a question for the jury.

The case continues in Platte County District Court where the trial was moved due to pretrial publicity.

Reach the writer at 402-473-7237 or lpilger@journalstar.com. On Twitter @LJSpilger

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
A reading of Wyoming Game and Fish Departments annual Grizzly Bear Relocation Report is a window into a wild world.

Beyond the numbers  45 bears trapped, 30 euthanized, 19 relocated  are some surprising details on bear behavior. For comparison, in 2020 WFGD recorded capturing 26 bears. Eighteen of the bears were euthanized.

Included in the unusual incidents was the subadult male captured in Park County that exhibited bold behavior around guest lodges and trailheads, including following horseback riders on several occasions. The bear was euthanized.

Brian DeBolt, large carnivore conflict coordinator for WGFD in Lander, said the bears behavior is a good example of an animal that has lost its fear of humans.

It obviously associated people with some sort of food source, he said.

County

Park County, which includes the East Entrance to Yellowstone National Park and the gateway community of Cody, recorded 43% of all the WGFD bear capture events in 2021, down from 56% in 2020.

Its darn sure the busiest, Debolt said, adding the county has the longest season of bear conflicts in the state and the most varied types.

Thats partly because Park County is so big, he added.

Park County residents had close encounters with other bears, based on WGFDs annual report, including these two in June: a bear hanging out at a guest lodge and eating hay in the feed bunks with the lodges horses; a bear that was captured after chasing a dog through a group of people.

In the fall, a bear was captured after feeding in a pumpkin patch and corn maze while another was trapped and euthanized after hanging out about two miles downstream from Cody and exhibiting aggressive behavior towards people rafting the [Shoshone] river.

He was a really old male, DeBolt said. Im sure he was half starved to death.

The bear would bluff charge rafters, slapping at the water with its paws, he added, estimating the bears age at around 25 years old. A photograph on the cover of this years WGFD report shows the old boars worn down teeth.

Twenty is pretty old for a bear, DeBolt said. You live out there, walking every footstep in the woods, that takes a toll on you.

The oldest bear ever identified in Wyoming was 34. The animals are aged by counting annual rings in their teeth.

DMA

Many of the Wyoming bear problems were outside the Designated Monitoring Area, a zone created by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service identifying the best biologically suitable habitat for Yellowstone-area grizzlies.

The DMA was established in 2012 as the area within which the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team counts the bears and their mortalities to monitor the population. Bear deaths outside the DMA are also counted but dont figure into the mortality thresholds. The mortality thresholds help guide the agencies as they work to maintain bear populations inside the DMA and watch for concerning trends.

Across the three states where the DMA has been drawn  Montana, Wyoming and Idaho  65 grizzly mortalities were recorded by the IGBST last year, 11 of those in Montana (three of which were in Carbon County) and six in Idaho. Seven of those were bears that likely died in 2020 but not found until 2021.

Of the total, 39 died within the DMA and 19 outside.

"The total number of mortalities inside has been pretty constant," said Frank van Manen, supervising research wildilfe biologist for the IGBST. "Now we're seeing a greater proportion of the total mortalities outside that area."

Fifteen of the bears that died or were killed were females, seven of which were subadults along with one female cub killed by another bear. Fifteen of the deaths are classified as known, under investigation. Some of these are likely "self-defense" mortalities caused by hunters in run-ins with bears, van Manen said. Others may be illegal kills.

The most bear deaths recorded in the past decade occurred in 2018 when 68 grizzlies died, five likely in the previous year and 50 within the DMA.

It's difficult to point to a reason why mortalities rise, van Manen said. Last year's drought didn't affect important food sources like whitebark pine seeds, cutworm moth sites or berries. More important to bear managers is the estimated mortality rate in comparison to the population.

Population

As of 2021, at least 1,069 bears were estimated to be living in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem  the highest count since studies began in the 1970s.

This figure is up dramatically from an estimated 727 the year before thanks to a revision in the methodology used to estimate grizzly numbers, van Manen explained. In the past, he said bear managers were conservative in their estimates to ensure bear populations were growing, undercounting by around 40% to 45%.

"This new number reflects enhancement of the technique," van Manen said, which is backed up by extensive analysis using telemetry of marked bears.

"Now that we have a biologically recovered population ... it's much less of a concern," he added.

The grizzly bear's population structure seems to be "pretty stable," van Manen said. In the early 2000s bear ages increased, but now age classes are relatively well distributed.

"There are probably more older animals than in other bear populations," simply because there's no hunting in the park, he added. As bear density increases, it can result in fewer young bears surviving. Males will kill cubs to induce a female to breed with them.

Full

With the grizzly population up, due to protection of the animals under the Endangered Species Act, the prime habitat inside areas like Yellowstone is occupied, forcing some bears out of the protection of the mountains.

Yellowstone is the bucket and the bucket is full, DeBolt said. Thats why they keep pouring out of there.

The Bighorn Basin, the region between the Absaroka Mountains to the west and the Bighorn Mountains to the east, is one of those areas where grizzlies cant or wont be able to make a living. There, three bears were killed, two yearlings and an adult female, in mid-May after falling into the cement-sided Heart Mountain Canal.

Other bears were captured after following the Shoshone River east, similar to an expansion onto the plains seen east of Glacier National Park and the Bob Marshall Wilderness in northwest Montana.

Were seeing bears as close to the Bighorns as to the Absarokas, DeBolt said. Weve had confirmed grizzly bear sightings closer to Fort Collins [Colorado] than the center of Yellowstone. The bears are definitely expanding.

Break-ins

Hank the Tank, a black bear believed responsible for breaking and entering about 30 properties in Californias Lake Tahoe area last month, has nothing on Wyomings grizzlies for forced entries. Hank was later identified by DNA as three bears.

A Fremont County bear was captured and killed for numerous conflicts associated with breaking into trailers, trucks visiting camps, [and] attempted entry into [an] occupied tent along the East Fork of the Wind River. In Park County, a grizzly was captured and killed for breaking into a barn through the wall.

The incidents emphasize the strength of grizzly bears. Males range from 300 to 700 pounds and females can top the scales at 200 to 400 pounds.

Depredation

One of the most common reasons for grizzly bears to be captured and euthanized is livestock depredation. Twenty-eight bears were captured in 2021 as WGFD targeted bears killing livestock. Out of these, 16 were euthanized. In 2020, livestock depredation led to the deaths of 13 Wyoming bears, with another six euthanized elsewhere in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem for killing sheep or cows.

The worst offenders killed multiple cattle or sheep. One bear captured in Fremont County, an adult female, was euthanized after killing at least six calves in 11 days. In Sublette County a subadult male killed six yearling cattle in two weeks prompting officials to trap and euthanize the bear.

Theres no rhyme or reason why there are more one year and not the next, DeBolt said. And not all bears take advantage (of livestock).

Bears caught incidentally, or who are not repeat offenders, may be released elsewhere. In 2021 in Wyoming bears were relocated 19 times compared to nine in 2020.

Keeping bears out of trouble is almost a year-round task anymore, with little down time for bear management officials, DeBolt said.

I dont know what the cause is, but we definitely have bears going to bed later and getting up earlier, he said. Out in the Bighorn Basin, they have to stay awake as long as they can to put on enough fat to make it through the winter.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
SIOUX CITY -- Using a flexible camera smaller than a pencil, Dr. Kosta Antonopoulos, a podiatrist at UnityPoint Clinic Foot and Ankle, was able to treat Tanya McPeek's painful ankle in November in a procedure room right in his office.

Rather than go back into the operating room for a second surgery, Antonopoulos suggested that McPeek have a minimally invasive procedure performed with the NanoScope, an operative arthroscopy imaging system. The Sioux City woman said it took a couple of conversations with Antonopoulos before she felt comfortable with the idea.

"It's scary when you say office instead of the operating room, but I really didn't have anything to lose. He's a great doctor. If he says he can do it, let's give it a try," said McPeek, who manages Hot Topic in Southern Hills Mall. "I work 70 hours a week and I have kids. I just didn't have that much time to put down again for operating room surgery."

McPeek first injured her ankle three years ago, while interacting with her Chihuahua, Jack Russell Terrier and Norwegian Elkhound in her backyard.

"We were moving too fast with the dogs and I tripped," she recalled. "I suppose I had the injury for a good 10 days before I saw my physician and, then, she referred me to Dr. Antonopoulos."

Antonopoulos found that McPeek had a "really bad" ankle sprain, or tearing of the ligaments, and some tendonitis on the outside of her ankle, as well as some swelling within it. Antonopoulos said he tried some nonoperative treatments on McPeek, but she wasn't getting any better, so he performed surgery at that time to clean out the swelling and inflammation and stabilize McPeek's ankle, as well as repair the tendons on the outside.

"She was doing good and, then, started to have pain again. Most of the pain this time was along her tendons," Antonopoulos said. "At that point, we, once again, did physical therapy. We did bracing. We did a boot. It just was not getting better."

Antonopoulos said he has been doing procedures with the NanoScope in the operating room for several years. But, in the last year, he said it was granted in-office approval. He said the procedure room is made to be a sterile environment, just like the operating room.

"Equipment's a lot smaller. In the next year, it's going to get even smaller," Antonopoulos said of the reason why such a procedure can now be done in the office. "Patients do so much better when it's in the office. They're not having to undergo anesthesia."

Sometimes, Antonopoulos said an MRI before the procedure can be avoided to further reduce costs. That was the case for McPeek. During her procedure on Nov. 15, Antonopoulos said he was able to visualize her tendons and clean them out. Whether a patient is a candidate for an in-office procedure or not, all depends on what Antonopoulos needs to do to treat the patient.

"A lot of times, if it's just doing an ankle scope, cleaning out the ankle or a joint, or even like this tendon work, yes, they're good for the office," he said. "When I have to do other things, like stabilize the ankle, I can't do that in the office because it's different equipment."

When Antonopoulos pitches the idea of doing the procedure in the office, he said patients usually "freak out" at first and would rather be under general anesthesia in the operating room.

"What they don't realize is they do really, really well here. It's so much easier. You're not having to recover from anesthesia on top of my surgery," he said. "A lot of times, you're walking that day."

When McPeek arrived at Sunnybrook Medical Plaza for the procedure, she was given medication to calm her and reduce pain. Then, Antonopoulos numbed up her ankle twice, before making four total tiny incisions in her ankle -- two on the front and two on the right side.

"It's a little incision in the front of the ankle and then another incision on the other side in the front of the ankle. Then, I stick the camera in and I look at the ankle," he said. "A lot of times, we have synovitis (an inflammation of the tissues that line a joint) within the ankle, so I fully clean out the ankle. Anybody who has problems on the outside of their ankle, 92% of them, according to the literature, have problems within the ankle, too."

McPeek described her recovery from her first surgery as "very rough." She didn't walk for 51 days. She said the in-office procedure, which took between 30 and 45 minutes, was "a piece of cake." She wore a boot for about a week after the procedure, before transitioning into shoes.

"With my first surgery, my foot had to be elevated. I couldn't put my foot anywhere close to the floor for a couple of weeks. With this one, if I'm honest, I went back to work two days later," she said. "I was back the next week for

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0

Be the first to know Get local news delivered to your inbox! Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
SIOUX CENTER, Iowa -- Is it possible to complete a bachelors degree in three years? For eight programs of study at Dordt, the answer is yes, says director of online education Joe Bakker.

Degree in Three is a series of course plans that show a pathway for students to finish a bachelors degree in three years, Bakker says. This includes information on what courses should be taken when and what speed in order for students to achieve their education goals.

In recent years, more students have reached out to Bakker about the possibility of graduating in three years. Given student interest, Bakker put together a series of course sequences for business, communication, criminal justice, digital media production, English, health and human performance, history, and social work. These sequences make it easier for students to understand whats possible when considering graduating within three years.

Graduating in three years isnt for everyone; students who want to participate in Degree in Three must be driven and dedicated.

Saying that you want to finish college early and actually finishing college early are two different things, says Bakker. Participating in Degree in Three takes sacrifice. It means students work on coursework during the summer months, and it likely means students complete extra coursework in high school. Its not that students are doing less work overall; they are simply doing more work faster and finishing college earlier.

These students should also have a plan. If students are confident in their major choice, it can be a great option, especially for those considering going to graduate school and beyond.

Students who plan to go on for four to seven years of additional schooling after a bachelors degree might find that a Degree in Three will help them achieve their career goals faster, adds Bakker.

Degree in Three also helps students make college more affordable, too. By reducing the number of semesters they attend college, they will likely see financial savings.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
NORFOLK, Neb. -- A new agreement between Northeast Community College and Wayne State College holds the promise of strengthening the regions industrial technology workforce, according to college officials.

The presidents of the two colleges on Tuesday signed a memorandum of agreement that creates an Associate of Applied Science (AAS)/Bachelor of Science (BS) Technology program. It allows graduates who complete their associate degrees at Northeast to transfer all of their completed academic credits to Wayne State to study industrial technology and earn a bachelor's degree.

Northeast Community College is looking for opportunities to give our students options beyond the AAS degree and this agreement does that, Northeast President Leah Barrett said.

In addition, with fewer industrial technology faculty in high schools, Barrett said the new agreement may also help fill that pipeline.

"Combining AAS and bachelor degrees creates a pathway for our students to continue their education, which will lead to more opportunities that may include higher paying supervisory or management positions," she said.

Wayne State President Marysz Rames said the unique agreement allows Wayne State to accept up to 80 credit hours, rather than the usual 60, which "lets us meet students where they are in their community college experience."

"Our colleges proximity to one another also opens the doors for students to simultaneously enroll in both schools to create a seamless academic pathway without the hard stop and start typical of some transfer programs," Rames said.

Students enrolled in a number of concentrations qualify for the new program, including agriculture, business services, computer, construction, drafting, industrial management, industrial trades, management services, manufacturing and safety-related occupations. Transfer students from Northeast will have the opportunity to apply for transfer student scholarships through Wayne State.

College officials pointed out that graduates who earn bachelor's degrees in technical fields have the prospect of earning higher salaries -- over $600,000 more than individuals with a two-year degree over the course of a 40-year working career, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Such degrees can also lead to better job opportunities as an increasing number of careers are requiring or preferring applicants with a bachelors degree, in addition to faster advancement opportunities in management and supervisory roles, they said.

Northeast and Wayne State College have had a longstanding working and transfer relationship to serve students, going back to 1986. Over the years, various institutional and programmatic agreements have been signed to create a seamless transfer of pathways for students between the two colleges. In addition, both institutions offer classes in the College Center in South Sioux City.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
On this day in 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt established the first national wildlife refuge. The site, Pelican Island in Florida, was home to a variety of exotic birds that were hunted for their plumage. Big game hunting on the island continued, but the site established the tradition of the federal government setting aside land in order to protect threatened species.

You may use this page to discuss this history of wildlife conservation, or pursue your own areas of freewheeling, off-topic discourse. Find previous discussions in the Open Thread archive. Excepting the entreaty that you remain on topic, all of Slates usual commenting policies apply.

If you depend on this community and Slates journalism, please consider joining Slate Plus. We appreciate your support.
This week, Anita Hill appeared on Slates Amicus podcast to discuss next weeks history-making confirmation hearings for Judge Ketanji Brown Jacksona watershed moment for American jurisprudence as the president seeks to confirm the first Black women to the US Supreme Court. Hill talked about the possibility for these hearings to restore the declining legitimacy of the high court and how ideas about judicial objectivity and neutrality are still mired in racist and sexist ideas about the ways judges think. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Advertisement

Dahlia Lithwick: Im mindful of the fact that we are about to haveassuming that Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is confirmeda court in which we have for the first time in history three women who will persistently be writing dissents. And they will be, I also imagine, in the voice of what we now get from Elena Kagan, absolute fury in Brnovich on voting rights; Sonia Sotomayor, absolute fury on police misconduct, absolute fury on racial discrimination; and now Judge Jackson, who I actually think probably is going to be a more temperate writer, at least initially, but again, writing from a place of sadness, loss, anger, frustration.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

So I wanted to hear your thoughts on what it means that we are going to have this, in some sense, truly historic court with real, at least close to, gender parity, and a depressing fear I have is that the women are going to be relegated to the land of feelings, dissent, upset, and fury. And I just wonder, as somebody who thinks about race and gender the way you do, what it signals that we are going to have three justices largely dissenting, all of whom are women.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Anita Hill: I think its important. I think dissents are important because they can become future majority positions. But I hear exactly what youre saying. But part of what is coming through in your commentary about women is this presumption that when men write their opinions, that its all about logic, its not about their feelings, its just rational thinking thats leading them there. There is nothing in any of these opinions that I have read by Sotomayor or Kagan or Ruth Bader Ginsburg to me that says, oh, these are all about that touchy-feely women kind of thing. They are clear, brilliant thinkers. And I think Justice Jackson will be the same. Theyre not going to all think alike, which is also wonderful, but they are going to be saddled with this label of being emotional when in fact all of them are being emotional. The men are too. Theyre just pretending that somehow there is no emotion behind what theyre saying.

Advertisement

Advertisement

So I think thats just a prejudice that we have, and we need to understand that their actions are based on their feelings, just like any judges actions are. And theres nothing wrong with that. What would be better is if they were transparent and told the truth about it. And I think women are more willing and able to tell the truth about where theyre coming from. And I think that people respect that. Theyre not trying to hide from those feelings and convince people that, oh, its all about my brain, because they can admit that these decisions will change lives. And we ought to have a court full of judges and justices who understand that.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Lithwick: So first of all, Anita, thank you. Ive never enjoyed being checked and corrected more than that. Its really, really an important corrective that when women write from a place of anger, its seen as emotional. When Justice Alito writes from a place of anger or Justice Gorsuch, we see that as reasoned and principled.

I dont think its so bad. I think youre reflecting what will be the assessment of those opinions. And its seen as something thats a negative when in fact it is important. Its important. And maybe if we were more honest about it, the public would have more confidence in the court because thats what they care about.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Hill: Right. And I think thats why, in a deep way, when Ruth Bader Ginsburg became the Notorious RBG, in a sense it was when she allowed herself principally in dissent to really reflect, I am deeply dismayed. This is ridiculous. You know? Skim milk marriagethat suddenly didnt sound dispassionate and logical, and as though she had come from the planet Vulcan. She really inhabited her own experiences and her own feelings. And I think youre right that theres some virtue to that transparency and that the public really falls in love with that. I mean, when the public hears Justice Sotomayor wringing her hands because things are going askew and were moving backwards in her view, it doesnt just resonate because its emotion, it resonates because we see that these are real people really dredging from their own experience. And thats the transparency youre describing.

Advertisement

Justice Sotomayor is a perfect example of dealing with dissonance, if you will. She is a former prosecutor, but she is also very clear that she wants the criminal justice system to be responsible. Shes not lets prosecute at all costs. She wants fairness in the criminal justice system. As a prosecutor, she realizes that the system is only as good as it is fair and balanced. And so I think its important for us to really value the fact that she is dealing, not only from her perspective as a former prosecutor, but she is addressing these issues as a person who is a member of the bar and who is seeking justice across the board.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Lithwick: Lets turn to what youre expecting from Ketanji Brown Jacksons upcoming confirmation hearings, and I want to hear what youre seeing in the ether and what youre thinking about. But I think I want to frame my question this way. Judge Jackson, when President Biden tapped her, talked about standing on the shoulders of Constance Baker Motley. I know you have spoken about Constance Baker Motley yourself recently, and that you think about that legacy. And one of the things I wish you would give us a moment on is this notion that she had to recuse because people claimed she was biased, because theres a built-in bias to being a Black woman. That means that you cannot sit and judge fairly. And I think weve seen it in other contexts. Weve seen litigants try to get gay judges to recuse in LGBTQ rights cases. Give me your thoughts on this question of judicial objectivity and the conversation around race and gender, and the presumption that no matter what you achieve in the world, youre always biased because of who you are.

Advertisement

Hill: Well, the presumption is that because of your skin color, because of your biology, your anatomy, there is a built-in bias. And the worst part of that presumption is that if you are a white male, then you dont have any of those biases, that whiteness and male genitalia really is just a reflection of your lack of bias. And of course, that presumption is a built-in prejudice. And we need to understand that the standard that we are applying to objectivity doesnt exist in reality; that there are not people who come in with no perceptions, no bias, no differences in their thinking. The question is, have you actually assessed your own bias and do you understand that in fact you bring a perspective, and understand how that perspective can be valuable in some instances and in some other instances it can actually be harmful to the judicial process? But if we allow white male judges to just presume their own objectivity, then we are not getting the best judges. Because the best judges will be constantly questioning their objectivity and testing it.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Unfortunately, women of color, women generally, and I would say even Black male judges or men of color, have had their objectivity questioned throughout their lives. And so to recognize that objectivity is not owned only by white males, that the standards that we assume are not real standards. And what we should be looking for is for people to understand what their biases are, what their prejudices are, and be able to put them aside in ways that allow them to think very clearly about what the law is as well as what the outcomes will be, and what the impact will be. All of those things are very difficult. All of that juggling is difficult, but its important and its something that we should be welcoming. And thats why we want judges that have that ability. Thats why I was talking about Sonia Sotomayor, because, yes, she brings in her background as a prosecutor, but shes not stuck in that perspective. Shes able to understand other perspectives, a perspective of the accused as well as the prosecutors in cases.

Advertisement

Lithwick: Are you seeing anything leading up to these confirmations that makes you feel sanguine that maybe we are going to have the conversation you just laid outthat we are going to have a sane, coherent conversation about Judge Jacksons accomplishments and her merits and her judicial writing and her achievements? Or do you think we are hurtling toward yet another confirmation hearing that gets stuck in the loop of the wise Latina woman conversation we had around Sonia Sotomayor?

Advertisement

Hill: Yes. Well, that all depends on the we. Who is the we? Is the we the Senate Judiciary Committee? I mean, perhaps we will have some of this conversation in front of the public during the testimony that will be brought not only by Judge Jackson, but also the others who are going to be called to comment on her ability and fitness for the role. But I think right now, because we have all of these different platforms, we have ways that conversation can take place and go as directly to the public as the hearings themselves. And it is for us, whether its in media or commentary or reporting, to make sure that conversation is happening. I dont know, with politics being as they are, that we can have it completely in the hearing room, but theres nothing to stop us from having it outside.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Lithwick: And does that lead you to think about the confirmation process and both the failings in the process you were involved in, and then the future failings? I remember your op-ed saying heres how to fix it before Christine Blasey Ford testifies, and none of your fixes were taken seriously. But the process writ large feels to me very much like television and spectacle and sound bites and puffery and pretty toxic performance art.

Advertisement

Advertisement

And I know you and I both feel this is not the way you give Article III lifetime tenure to the nine justices who will decide the law of the land for decades. But do you have a sense of things weand I am now using we to mean all of uscould do to take some of the oxygen out of a process that just feels like a wood chipper on both sides? Theres a part of me that just wants to wrap Judge Jackson in bubble wrap and maybe give her a bourbon and wish her the best. I wonder if you have thoughts about what could be done. Or is it just a reflection of the culture, the moment, the polarization, this is how we roll now?

Advertisement

Hill: Yeah. I think one of the words you didnt use when you talked about the theater was that its political theater and its politics that arent elevated enough to see the court as something that in this country needs to be protected from the politics. Were not there at this moment. And I think the evidence of that came very quickly even before Justice Jackson was named. There was evidence that this was going to be political theater. All of the accusations about preferential treatment and reverse discrimination just showed that they were going to start throwing political bombs to derail this nomination process. So were already coming into this with that in the background.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

I think if we could, if I had a correction, it would be to keep in mind two things: one, the sanctity and integrity of the court; and two, the need for the public to understand the importance of this body to their lives. The third piece of advice would be to save the politics for elections. I dont have any doubt that theyre going to ignore those three things, just as they ignored my advice on how to handle Christine Blasey Fords testimony, but if we can start to get our senators, the committee members minds on why this nomination is important to the people of this country, and why the court is important to the people of this country, and how it can become a moment where we rise above politics, if we can get there, I think that we will have a hearing that will be fulfilling. And I think there will be absolutely no basis, if I have to predict, no basis for denying Judge Jackson a position on the Supreme Court.

Advertisement

Lithwick: A lot of folks who listen to this podcast are feeling a little dispirited. That was probably the understatement of my lifetime, but theyre feeling as though were not moving in the direction youre describing, and were not even moving in the direction of fulfilling that 1964 promise. Tell me what it means to you, in the arc of your lifetime, to see the first Black woman elevated to the U.S. Supreme Court, and maybe tell the young women particularly who listen to this show and are just trying to figure out how this all is going to work out what this really, truly singular moment in your life history and the history of the country means to you.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Hill: Well, in that sense, I would like to not only speak to them, but Id also like to speak to the senators who are going to be vetting her. This is a crucial moment. We have been telling our young people that if they do all the right things, if they do the things that Judge Jackson has done, they go to school, get good grades, be on Law Review, clerk with a Supreme Court justice, spend time doing public defense work, all of those things we say are the things that you do to prepare you to have whatever you want in life, then we have to acknowledge that in this process, thats what we should be looking for. And thats what our young people want and need to see: that we have actually been telling them the truth when we say you can be whatever you want to be if you do the right things to get there.

If we take a detour and reject Judge Jackson, then I think we will have reason for our young people to be discouraged. And they should be discouraged. But I also like to tell young women in particular that this one decision does not determine the direction that the country will take. That to me is a lesson of 1991, because after 1991 and what happened with me after 2018, what happened with Christine Blasey Ford, the country could have said, OK, these issues no longer matter. Were going to continue to allow people to be left out of the conversation. Were going to continue to allow abuse. But we didnt. We saw this as a moment to disrupt a whole lot of myths and lies and to try to get to the truth of our experiences. And whatever happens with the Jackson confirmation hearing, I have every confidence that we will continue to look for ways to get to equality.
A few hundred people, including Gov. Ned Lamont, Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz and West Hartford Mayor Shari Cantor, turned out for a vigil for the people of Ukraine on Sunday afternoon in front of the West Hartford Town Hall. (Steve Smith)

WEST HARTFORD  Vladimir Rozvadovskiy was born in Ukraine and has lived in West Hartford for the last 20 years. He has many family members in Ukraine.

Sunday afternoon, Rozvadovskiy was joined by a few hundred people at a vigil for the embattled country, including Gov. Ned Lamont, Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz and West Hartford Mayor Shari Cantor, among others, in front of the West Hartford Town Hall.

Advertisement

Were here to support Ukrainians fighting for their freedom and their homeland, Rozvadovskiy said. This was a very surprising attack on our country. I dont think anyone expected it. This is an atrocity thats happening, and we want it to stop as soon as possible. We want governments to understand they need to continue to pressure [Russian President] Vladimir Putin.

The invasion of Ukraine by Russia is entering its third week, with over 2 million refugees having left the country, causing a humanitarian crisis. Thousands of Ukrainians are believed to have been killed.

Advertisement

Rozvadovskiy said many of his family members are still in Ukraine, but five family members were able to leave and arrived in Connecticut last Monday to stay with his family.

Myron Kolinsky, organizational director of the Ukrainian National Home of Hartford at the vigil for Ukraine in West Hartford today pic.twitter.com/bJOqWAfW55  Lori Riley (@lrileysports) March 13, 2022

A lot of us are from the west, he said. Part of my family is in Ivano-Frankivsk. A lot of bombs have been going off this week, but otherwise theyre pretty safe.

Were thankful that Poland is opening up their borders, but it just stinks people are having to leave their homes and they may not have a place to come back to, and thats just chilling to think about.

Cantor read a statement from Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who is in Poland with a group of senators to assess the situation and see how the U.S. and Connecticut could help.

Five Things You Need To Know Daily We're providing the latest coronavirus coverage in Connecticut each weekday morning. >

Myron Kolinsky of Wethersfield, the organizational coordinator of the Ukrainian National Home of Hartford, said that one tractor trailer truckload of donations dropped off at the Ukrainian Home left for Poland via New Jersey last week and another load is set to leave March 24.

Last Monday, we had a lot of residents who provided food, clothing, medical supplies for the airlifts, Kolinsky said. Were very grateful to our neighbors; were overwhelmed.

Kolinskys parents came from Ukraine following World War II to Hartford, where they were married in 1952.

Advertisement

They were displaced persons; they were refugees; they were forced out during World War II, said Kolinsky, who still has cousins in Ukraine. My mother was 10 in 1944. They were evacuated from their village. They burned the village down, which is kind of whats happening today.

Whats happening today, the humanitarian crisis, is similar to what my parents went through.

Lori Riley can be reached at lriley@courant.com.
Jo-Ann Yoo lives in New York City, but she rarely takes the subway anymore. It makes her nervous. Yoo is nervous because the subways are a strange place to be right now. There arent as many commuters as there used to be, and a few weeks back, there was a string of violent attacks. I used to love the subway, Yoo says. But now shes on high alert. Youre underground. Sometimes the ride from one station to the next is a long, long ride, and youre basically in a little metal box.

Advertisement

One more thing to know about Jo-Ann Yoo: Shes Asian. In fact, shes the executive director of New Yorks Asian American Federation, which means that for the past two years, shes been counting up one attack after another. Between 2020 and 2021, one advocacy group tallied up nearly 11,000 hate incidents against Asians Americans. And its hard not to feel like these attacks are getting more brutal, not less.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Yoo says she knew from the time the pandemic started what could come. It began with the Chinese restaurants emptying out. But shes surprised its lasted this long. I did not expect this to be this long, and Ill say that my anxiety and my fear is increasing. For two years, weve been talking about increased violence against Asian Americans. On Mondays episode of What Next, I spoke with Yoo about why this story hasnt changed. Our conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Mary Harris: Tell me about that first moment when you suspected things were going to take a turn for the Asian American community, back in March 2020.

Jo-Ann Yoo: I was at my sisters house, and I was working on my laptop, and the story popped up that said they discovered this virus in Wuhan, and I stopped typing and said, Oh no, because we saw what happened with the Muslim community after 9/11. All of the Americans with nothing to do with what happened but yet they were targeted. They were vilified. They were marginalized, and everyones anger was directed toward them. And I thought, Here we go again. Its now the East Asians turn.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Given that you had this foresight, how quickly were you meeting with city officials to create a plan?

We did reach out to the city. My response was: Whats the city doing? Whats the plan?

Did they have one?

No. Let me be candid here: No, they do not have a plan. They said, We were going to do something, but now that nobodys riding the subway, were not going to do it.

What were they going to do?

Subway campaigns and things like that.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertising.

Yeah. To be fair, I dont think anybody imagined the level of violence that my community was going to face. Those were some really tough days and nights.

When did you realize that what you feared could happen was actually happening? I saw that you had even started seeing incidents in your own neighborhood.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Oh, absolutely. It happened to me. I was restless, so I went out in the afternoon just to go check it outthis was sometime in April. And I remember it being a really nice day, and I had my mask on, and I was just going to walk around the block to see what has closed. First of all, everything was boarded up. It was really scary, and it was like, Oh my gosh, I think Im walking through a deserted town. And when I got to the end of my block, somebody stood in front of me, and I said, Oh, excuse me. And I turned right to pass him, and he moved with me; I moved left, he move with me. And I just had to tell myself, You need to keep calm. So I needed to just backtrack, turn the corner, and get home. And Im sure to this person, it was funny because Im not big and it was easy to intimidate me.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

But that was a moment when I thought, Im going to be really careful when I go out at night. And because of what was happening, I developed these bizarre rituals.

Like what?

I would walk down the street, but when I heard people running, any time I heard footsteps behind me, my stomach would be in knots, and I would immediately turn around either facing a wall or just bracing myself for something to happen. And every time that happened, Id turn around and it was people who were running. They were going out for their exercise. And it made me so angry with myself that I could not trust my fellow New Yorkers. I thought, Why are you so paranoid? But that paranoia has proved to be justified.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Youve put your finger on something when you talk about how the community thinks about these crimes. Youve said that half of the community worries about too much police presence, and the other half wants a police officer attached to every Asian person. And Im kind of curious about how you negotiate that. When youre in a conversation with a bunch of the people you work with and youre hearing those kinds of back-and-forths, what do you say? How do you negotiate there?

Advertisement

I am really committed to getting my communities, both sides, to come in and talk, but oftentimes its like herding cats because theyre political opinions, and people run hot on everything these days.

Advertisement

For all of the conversations we have about the role of law enforcement in our communities, the reality is that there are times when were going to need law enforcement to help us. When somebody gets slashed

Theres no one else to call.

Right? You need to call somebody so that the person whos harming other people can be stopped and they dont harm many others. But theyre not the only solution. The other solution is how do neighbors look out for each other? How do we have safe walks? How are people keeping an eye on each other?

Because law enforcement isnt the answer to everything, and to be honest, there has been some negative interactions. Weve had stories where police officers refused to take any statements of what happenedsaying its not a hate crime. Weve heard those stories over the past two years. Theres a language barrier. Theres a cultural barrier. There might be immigration reasons why you dont tell anybody. There may be many, many other reasons why you dont go to the police, and those are all valid reasons.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

But we also need to figure out an outlet for those people with discomfort with law enforcement. How do they get to report these stories? And that role was taken up by all of the amazing nonprofit organizations who kept their doors open. So some of those numbers that we have and that were keeping track of, those came from the community organizations themselves. Thats really extraordinary.

I remember in the last year or so seeing reports about violence that was inflicted on Asian people. And it was notable to me that it wasnt a report from the NYPD. I believe it was reporting from local organizations. Do you think thats how things should work? Or is that more a sign that theres a problem that local organizations need to step in and start trying to track how Asian Americans may be being abused in this moment?

Advertisement

This is a problem we need to fix. Nonprofits should never have to take the place of what government can do. They have all the resources. And a lot of people did ask me, So what should government do? And there are times in just my sheer anger Id said, How the hell do I know what to do? Because Im not the mayor. I dont know what all the resources are available that can be put to helping people. Im just trying to figure out how to keep people from getting punched in the face on their way to work. I dont know the entire range of city services that could be deployed to work on this. And so sometimes, I would have my moments of Why do you ask the victims what the solution is?

Advertisement

Advertisement

I look at the past couple of years and whats taken place at the government level, and I see some of the hallmarks of what youve been talking about here, which is police and the government working hand-in-hand with community organizations. The NYPD formed an Asian Hate Crime Task Force, and there was a law passed in Congress that appropriated money to community organizations to fight against anti-Asian hate, the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act. So I see a lot of things happening, but I have to wonder in your mind whether all of those things have made any difference and if not, why?

Advertisement

I think theyre slowly making a difference. Money from government, as you know, takes a long time. Theres a lot of bureaucracy involved. But that money is helpful because its a short-term fix. It immediately puts support systems on the ground. Where we need to have a conversation is long term. And its not just how do we keep people safe? But how do we prevent this from happening? And those conversations are happening now.

Advertisement

Sounds like youre saying this is a Band-Aid, basically, and actually we need maybe surgery.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Youre right. We need to have our fellow New Yorkers realize that we are not the other. Its the long-term game plan to have people realize, Oh, Asian Americans, theyre Americans, too. Weve been invisible. And weve been painted with this horrible myth of you are the model minority. You always find your own solutions. We dont need to do anything for you. And my community has been stymied by that. Some of the poorest New Yorkers are Asian Americans. We have this unprecedented population growthnot just in New York City but in the state and the countryand the resources to support our community dont match the growth.

Advertisement

I feel like this year, 2022, as a New Yorker, it started with this shock to the system, which was the death of Michelle Go, who was pushed in front of a subway. And then very quickly after that, just a month later, the death of Christina Lee, where a man followed her into her apartment in Chinatown and stabbed her. Of course, both of these women were Asian. And in both of these cases, the people who assaulted them had a history of assaulting other people. One assailant had a history of mental illness. Do you think that complicates the story here? And does it frustrate you that neither of these cases has been classified as a hate crime, even though they were both attacks on Asian women?

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

It doesnt frustrate me. It gives me a great moment to pause for a lot of empathy.

Empathy toward the perpetrators?

Yeah and the homeless population in general. And thats what makes it even harder for the victims. Because after Christina Lees death, as a Korean American woman, I fell into a deep depression. There were days when I would just sit at my computer and look out the window and just cry all day long because I think about her and I think about her life and I think about her death and I think about her family.

I dont know what justice looks like when you are vulnerable. But I know theres a lot of anger in the community because theyre saying, There are homeless people. How come nobody is helping them, so theyre out harming other people? Thats a very real question. Thats not a question for me. Thats a question for the elected leaders

Advertisement

What do the elected leaders say when you ask them. I mean, you speak to them regularly.

We have not gotten answers. But right now, theres going to be more shelters in Chinatown. And the Chinatown residents are very, very angry.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Some would say its good for people to have a place to live, right?

Absolutely. But the challenge is that the community has not been outreached to in a way that they would like. They found out this is whats happening. So theyre angry. And that anger has been building and building. After Christinas death, there was a town hall where there were 600 people who are very angry. And one of the things Ive been saying has been when these things happen in our neighborhoods, you need to engage us and you need to engage us early. You cant wait till the eleventh hour. Theres a lot of anxiety and anger in the community. They have the right to be frustrated. And the community engagement is not happening fast enough.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Its interesting you say that its hard to get a hold of someone and make sure that theyre listening in government because we do have a new mayor, Eric Adams, former police officer, who also talks about mental health a lot and the importance of mental health. It sounds like youd actually have a lot of things to talk about.

We just had our very first meeting. I was grateful that the mayor convened that space, and I did ask him, Could we meet again and again and again? I dont expect the mayor to have all the answers. We need to convene and really look at the systemic changes that need to happen so that there arent any more victims, so that we have residential services where people are fed and they can see a doctor and they can get treatment. We need that. We need to look at what holistic services look like. I took up more than my time, and I think the mayor was kind enough to indulge me.

Are you optimistic that if I call you up in a year, things will have changed?

Thats a tough one. I want to say Im optimistic. I want to be hopeful, but I think the reality is government works slowly. Anytime we go outside the system, it becomes uncomfortable. So were never allowed to be innovative and try anything new. And this is a time that we need to try new things and we need to have innovations. I hope everybody is patient enough.

Subscribe to What Next on Apple Podcasts

Get more news from Mary Harris every weekday.
Should Russian President Vladimir Putin be charged with war crimes for deliberately killing civilians and bombing hospitals in Ukraine? Could he be charged? Will he be?

Those are three very different questions, with possibly three different answers. This fact points up the problem with enforcing the law of armed conflict between nations: International law cant easily be pried apart from international power.

With very few exceptions, national leaders, senior officials, or even high-ranking officers havent been indicted or convicted for war crimes except when theyve been overthrown or their country has lost a major war. Just as the winners write history, they also sometimes prosecute the losers; rarely, if ever, does the reverse happen.

Advertisement

And so, shortly after World War II, at Nuremberg and Tokyo respectively, the Allies tried 34 high officials of the defeated Nazi regime and 28 high officials of imperial Japan for specific war crimes and crimes against humanity, among other charges. They deserved to be tried and punished. However, as Gen. Curtis LeMay, who led the firebombing raids over Japan, privately told one of his aides, if the Allies had lost the war, he and other American commanders who ordered the bombing of explicitly civilian targets, which is a war crime, would have been put on trial instead.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Subscribe to the Slatest Newsletter A daily email update of the stories you need to read right now. We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try again. Please enable javascript to use form. Email address: Send me updates about Slate special offers. By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms Sign Up Thanks for signing up! You can manage your newsletter subscriptions at any time.

The point here is not to draw moral equivalents. Among other considerations, Japan and Germany started World War II and, in Germanys case, did so with genocidal aims. Rather, the point is that politics and power often determine who sits in the judges chair and who sits in the docket.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Gary Solis, a retired law professor at West Point, told me in a phone conversation Friday, Early on in my course, I would remind my students to remember the first law of armed conflict: Dont lose.

So where does this leave Putin? I asked Faiza Patel, a former lawyer at the International Criminal Court in the Hague, now co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, whether Putin could be charged with war crimes. She replied, Leaving aside the practical problems? Yes.

The practical problems are several. First, as Solis suggests, it would be very difficult to drag Putin before a tribunal unless hed lost the war or been ousted from power (a likely consequence of losing this war). It would also help if a Kremlin insider flipped on his erstwhile boss, testifying against him and handing the prosecutor incriminating documents; the prosecutors at Nuremberg and Tokyo had access to tens of thousands of captured documents.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Intent is key, Solis said. Films and photographs of hospitals getting bombed or civilians being killed on humanitarian corridorsthats not evidence. Its evidence that war crimes were committed. But it doesnt pin the charge on anybody, except maybe the field commander of the unit that dropped that bomb. To get the guys on topand Im speaking as an international lawyeryou need memos, orders, records of conversations. Did Putin write anything down? Would one of his confidants turn on him? These are the questions.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Without that depth of evidence, Putin could plausibly be tried for the crime of aggressionwhich holds that starting an aggressive war is itself a crime, quite aside from any specific acts committed while fighting it. Four of the Nuremberg defendants were charged with crimes of aggression (among other crimes), but nobody else has in the 77 years since, in part because its so broad. Taken literally, it would mean just about any act of war is a crime.

Advertisement

Advertisement

There are other practical challenges. First, where would Putin be tried? Russia doesnt recognize the ICC (neither does the United States), which doesnt try anyone who isnt present in the courtroom. The U.N. Security Council could create a special tribunal, but Russia has a permanent seat on the council and would likely veto any such measureunless Putin is ousted in a revolution and Russias new leaders want to see him prosecuted.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Lawyers might try to lean on the principle of universal jurisdiction, in which any country can try anyone from any other country on charges of war crimes, citing the universal principle of human rights. In recent years, German authorities have arrested, tried, and even sentenced Syrians for torture and other crimes against rebels or dissidents in their home country. (The war criminals happened to be on German soil when they were nabbed.)

Advertisement

Cases of this sort can be brought against those who either have hands-on involvement in the alleged crimes or command responsibility over the underling who committed them. However, Wolfgang Kaleck, general secretary of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights in Berlin, said in a phone call that, under the principles of universal jurisdiction, presidents of a state have immunity. So maybe we could go after the higher-ups, but not Putin, Kaleck said.

Advertisement

Then again, the case that inspired universal jurisdiction occurred in 1998, when Augusto Pinochet, the former dictator of Chile, was arrested for crimes against humanity while in a hospital in Britain. The warrant to arrest him had been signed by a judge in Spain. Pinochet was held prisoner in Britain for 503 days, and a British judge ruled that he could be extradited to Spain for trialuntil British Home Secretary Jack Straw, citing Pinochets poor health, let him go home.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Lawyers around the world are now almost certainly drawing up bills of indictment against Putin so that, if he survives the war, a warrant might be handed to him while abroad on vacation or for a medical procedure. Its possible and it would be worth a lot to make Putin nervous about showing his face in public ever again.

Olivia Swaak-Goldman, former head of the International Relations Task Force in the International Criminal Court prosecutors office, told me in an email that, while Russia rejects the ICCs jurisdiction, Ukraine has accepted it. It may be difficult for the court to conduct a trial as a practical matter, she said, but it could still indict Putin, and this in turn could send a powerful message. If he were still president, he could no longer represent Russia in international negotiations, which could further marginalize Putin domestically.

Advertisement

So, yes, lawyers should draw up the indictments against Putin, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, and the commanders of the brigades and battalions who are committing these awful deeds in Ukraine. If Russia loses catastrophically, if Putin loses power, if his successors in the leadership riffle through the Kremlin archives and find incriminating memos, then maybe we will someday watch them cowering on some tribunal. But its not something anybody should count on. Keep in mind that the only sitting president ever indicted by the ICC was Sudans Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir, who was charged in 2009 and 2010 with two counts of war crimes and five counts of crimes against humanity for his acts of genocide in Darfur. He was deposed by popular protests in 2019 after 30 years of iron rule. Authorities promised to turn him over to the ICC in the Hague last August, but they havent yet.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

The question of whether Putin winds up in a foreign or international court for his crimes shouldnt distract us from the true stakes of this war, which are considerable enough. Ukraine is fighting for its independence, its right to exist as a sovereign nation, and by extension for the principles of independence and sovereignty. Russia invaded Ukraine in an ill-calculated attempt (a) to restore a chunk of its erstwhile empire and (b) to demonstrate the weakness of the Western democracies in the course of doing so. Putin has failed at (b), and everything should be doneshort of triggering World War IIIto ensure that he fails at (a) as well. If that happens, Putin and his lackeys will suffer plenty of consequences. A tribunal would be a nice capper, but its not the main arena where justice will be meted.
Parliament will discuss the proposal on Tuesday or Wednesday.

Font size: A - | A + Comments disabled

Villages at the border crossings Ubla, Vysne Slemence and Vysne Nemecke will get funding for humanitarian aid. They will receive money as soon as the municipalities request it, said Labour Minister Milan Krajniak (Sme Rodina) during a political discussion on TA3 private television.

Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement

He said that the government can offer tens of thousands of euros immediately and more assistance in the future. This financial aid will be given regardless of how much aid the EU offers Slovakia.

More than 205,000 refugees have crossed the Slovak-Ukrainian border as of the morning of March 14. Some 23,000 have requested temporary protection. Many others have travelled on to other countries.

Among those people who requested temporary protection in Slovakia are people who have accommodation because they have relatives here or they arranged accommodation in advance, Krajniak said, as quoted by the TASR newswire.

Slovakia provides temporary protection to Ukrainians. What does it mean? Read more

He opined that Slovakia still has thousands of vacant beds. The state will provide funding for people who accommodate refugees, either private people or companies. It will be possible to ask for a refund retrospectively too. This stems from the law called Lex Ukraine, which parliament will discuss on Tuesday or Wednesday.

Funding for refugee accommodation
The police detained people from the intelligence service, Defence Ministry and disinformation website on espionage charges.

Font size: A - | A + Comments disabled

At least three people have been detained on suspicion of having spied for Russia in Slovakia.

The Dennik N daily reported that since Friday, the police have been on an operation unprecedented in Slovakia's history. The National Criminal Agency (NAKA) detained a lieutenant from the Defence Ministry, a member of the Slovak Information Service (SIS) and a person with ties to the Hlavne Spravy disinformation website, which was taken down after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement

At least one of the detained confessed to the crime, the daily wrote. An employee of the Russian Embassy reportedly bribed the detained persons. As a result, the Foreign Ministry has decided to expel three Russian Embassy staffers from Slovakia.

Russians expelled
https://sputniknews.com/20220314/agreement-on-russia-ukraine-settlement-may-require-approval-by-unsc-resolution---russian-diplomat-1093848339.html

Agreement on Russia-Ukraine Settlement May Require Approval By UNSC Resolution - Russian Diplomat

Agreement on Russia-Ukraine Settlement May Require Approval By UNSC Resolution - Russian Diplomat

The fourth round of negotiations between Moscow and Kiev on the settlement of the Ukrainian crisis is scheduled for 14 March. 14.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-14T06:42+0000

2022-03-14T06:42+0000

2022-03-14T07:40+0000

situation in ukraine

world

ukraine

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e6/03/0e/1093849093_0:44:2413:1401_1920x0_80_0_0_7f965fe2b8933b1bb45419fe2d279c0c.jpg

Moscow does not rule out that a possible agreement on the settlement between Russia and Ukraine will require approval by a UN Security Council resolution, Pyotr Ilyichev, the head of the Russian foreign ministry's international organizations department, said.Though the Minsk agreements were approved by UN Security Council Resolution 2202, "this did not affect their implementation by the Ukrainian side in any way," the diplomat noted.Since the moment the Minsk agreements were signed, the Ukrainian authorities have openly declared their "insignificance," the diplomat said, adding that Kiev did not want to fulfill them, categorically refusing to have a direct dialogue with Donbass.The Minsk agreements on the Donbass settlement have become invalid, but it is now unrealistic to talk about adopting a document on the termination of Resolution 2202 in the UN Security Council, Pyotr Ilyichev added.Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Minsk agreements had been killed by Kiev's actions long before Moscow's recognition of the breakaway Donetsk and Lugansk republics.Russia supports the idea that it is necessary to move the UN headquarters from New York to a neutral country, this would make the organization's work less politicized, Potr Ilyichev stressed.According to the agreement between the United Nations and the US government of June 26, 1947, on the location of the UN headquarters, its seat may be transferred from the headquarters area, which is New York, only by the organization's decision, the diplomat recalled.Russia demands more persistent action from UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to resolve the problems caused by Washington's non-constructive line, including issuing visas to Russian diplomats, the head of the Russian foreign ministry's international organizations department said.Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations Dmitry Polyanskiy told Sputnik in February that Guterres does not rule out launching an arbitration procedure to resolve the issue of the United States failing on numerous occasions to grant visas to diplomats at the UN headquarters building in New York.Last week, Russian diplomats expelled from the United Nations by Washington over alleged espionage left New York with their families. UN Secretary General spokesman Stephane Dujarric also said the United States had decided to expel a Russian employee of the UN Secretariat. Moscow pledged to retaliate.In the early hours of 24 February, Russia launched a special military operation in Ukraine after the Donetsk and Luhansk Peoples Republics (DPR and LPR) appealed for help in defending themselves against the Kiev forces. Russia said that the aim of its special operation is to demilitarize and "de-Nazify" Ukraine and that only military infrastructure is being targeted - the civilian population is not in danger. Moscow has repeatedly stressed that it has no plans to occupy Ukraine.According to Russian President Vladimir Putin, the goal is to protect the people of Donbass, "who have been subjected to abuse, genocide by the Kiev regime for eight years."Let's stay in touch no matter what! Follow our Telegram channels to get all the latest news:Sputnik News US - https://t.me/sputniknewsusSputnik News India - https://t.me/sputniknewsindia

ukraine

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

2022

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

News

en_EN

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

1920 1080 true

1920 1440 true

1920 1920 true

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

world, ukraine
https://sputniknews.com/20220314/as-energy-crisis-escalates-us-tries-to-woo-iran-but-will-tehran-join-in-isolating-russia-1093863421.html

As Energy Crisis Escalates, US Tries To Woo Iran But Will Tehran Join In Isolating Russia?

As Energy Crisis Escalates, US Tries To Woo Iran But Will Tehran Join In Isolating Russia?

Fuel prices have gone through the roof in the US since Joe Biden decided to ban all energy imports from Russia. In a bid to stabilise the market, Washington... 14.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-14T14:39+0000

2022-03-14T14:39+0000

2022-03-14T14:39+0000

us

iran

russia

energy

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e6/03/0e/1093864038_0:0:3072:1728_1920x0_80_0_0_8fe5d12239e61796c63eafde5f226cfa.jpg

It has also tried to build bridges with Tehran by making concessions in nuclear talks.Since the beginning of Russia's military operation in Ukraine on 24 February, Iran has been standing by the side of Moscow.Holding the US ResponsibleNo condemnation has been issued: Iran has repeatedly called for an end to the crisis through diplomatic means, and has pointed the finger of blame at the US for instigating the crisis."Iran recognises that the war was provoked by the US," says Prof Mohammad Marandi, a lecturer at the University of Tehran and a political analyst.It was this understanding that stopped Tehran from joining a United Nations General Assembly resolution that condemned Russia. And it was because of this realisation that Iran refused to back anti-Moscow western sanctions designed to destroy the Russian economy.Attempted IsolationBut Iran's refusal doesn't mean that Washington will stop trying to isolate Moscow. After its decision to ban all energy imports from Russia - which supplies some 8 percent of America's total needs - fuel prices in the US have gone through the roof.To stabilise the situation, the White House has tried to approach its traditional allies, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, to encourage them to pump more oil. But those calls have gone unanswered.Further to that, American officials have approached Venezuela but when Caracas indicated that it had no intention to participate in the isolation of Moscow, attempts were made to woo the Iranians.Where Is the Deal?Until recently, the international press was packed with reports about an almost signed nuclear deal between Iran and the West. The general feeling was that the Islamic Republic was getting many western concessions, much more than it had originally hoped for.According to those reports, not only were most of the western sanctions imposed by the Donald Trump administration in 2018 lifted from Iran, it managed to convince the US to unfreeze its assets, exchange prisoners and even disconnect, rather than dismantle, the cascades of advanced centrifuges at three sites in Iran, as a guarantee that Washington would not pull out from the deal again.Marandi, who serves as a media adviser to Iran's negotiations team in Austria's capital, Vienna, acknowledged that there have been concessions but he also stressed that there are still a number of disagreements that need to be resolved before the agreement is inked.One such is the refusal of the Americans to remove the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from their list of terrorist organisations. Another is their reluctance to lift sanctions off all companies, businesses and individuals.Moscow is worried that an agreement between the West and Iran would limit Tehran's ability to trade or have any nuclear dealings with the Kremlin. But Marandi says Russia has nothing to fear."Of course, Iran is in a very strong position because all parties involved need Tehran ... but Iran won't cooperate in the isolation of Russia, as we consider both sides to be responsible for the conflict".

iran

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

2022

Elizabeth Blade

Elizabeth Blade

News

en_EN

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

1920 1080 true

1920 1440 true

1920 1920 true

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

Elizabeth Blade

us, iran, russia, energy
https://sputniknews.com/20220314/as-it-giants-purge-russian-media-from-their-platforms-what-lessons-can-india-learn-from-campaign-1093859545.html

As IT Giants Purge Russian Media From Their Platforms, What Lessons Can India Learn From Campaign?

As IT Giants Purge Russian Media From Their Platforms, What Lessons Can India Learn From Campaign?

As western firms have announced restrictions on Russian media, strategic thinkers and IT experts in India have questioned the credibility of Silicon Valley... 14.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-14T13:25+0000

2022-03-14T13:25+0000

2022-03-14T13:25+0000

situation in ukraine

india

russia

ukraine

social media

violence

meta

twitter

google

censor

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e6/03/02/1093520413_0:187:3237:2008_1920x0_80_0_0_5179f12cf3112175b34df71f144efee7.jpg

"Censorship is normally associated with autocracies. But today, the social media platforms of Silicon Valley have become the new censors with extraterritorial powers," Brahma Chellaney, professor emeritus of strategic studies at India's Centre for Policy Research (CPR), says. "Google's YouTube, for example, has blocked access to RT from India, without the Indian government's approval," he adds.Days after special military operations began in Ukraine, the European Union suspended the broadcasting activities of Sputnik and RT/Russia Today (RT English, RT UK, RT Germany, RT France, and RT Spanish) throughout the bloc.US-based firms, which have cast themselves as politically neutral platforms, have not only followed the decision of the European Union but went ahead by suspending the operation in India."The EU is not at war with Russia, yet it doesn't want Europeans to hear or read Russian media perspectives. In contrast India has been involved in a Chinese border aggression which has lasted nearly two years without blocking China's state media. If anything, Indian media liberally quotes Chinese media reports," Chellaney said.Experts highlighted a series of events in the past few years when western social media platforms have refused to follow instructions given by the Indian government, primarily related to curbing of fake news which could incite violence in society.The Indian government threatened them with severe action after Twitter and Facebook invoked "freedom of expression" and democratic rights for not responding positively to censoring Twitter handles and websites spreading misinformation.Despite several requests, these platforms continue to avoid full compliance with the Indian government's demands.Contrary to its behaviour several times in the past, Google's Youtube has restricted the telecast of RT in India without any request for so doing by the Indian government.Jain notes the Ukraine conflict has clearly shown that the social media and news platforms held by private companies can be weaponised in times of war by the countries they are headquartered in."India must reduce critical foreign dependencies in the telecom and IT sectors for India's critical security," Jain concludes.India is the largest market for US-based social media companies such as Google, Twitter, Meta, and others.

ukraine

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

2022

Rishikesh Kumar https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e4/08/04/1080055820_0:0:388:389_100x100_80_0_0_40018ee210946d65d49ffba4f4c008e1.jpg

Rishikesh Kumar https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e4/08/04/1080055820_0:0:388:389_100x100_80_0_0_40018ee210946d65d49ffba4f4c008e1.jpg

News

en_EN

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

1920 1080 true

1920 1440 true

1920 1920 true

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

Rishikesh Kumar https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e4/08/04/1080055820_0:0:388:389_100x100_80_0_0_40018ee210946d65d49ffba4f4c008e1.jpg

india, russia, ukraine, social media, violence, meta, twitter, google, censor, rt, sputnik, us, eu
https://sputniknews.com/20220314/azovmazon-ukrainian-neo-nazi-regiment-themed-merch-appears-on-us-online-retail-giants-site-1093865819.html

A(zov)mazon: Ukrainian Neo-Nazi Regiment-themed Merch Appears on US Online Retail Giants Site

A(zov)mazon: Ukrainian Neo-Nazi Regiment-themed Merch Appears on US Online Retail Giants Site

Accused by the UN of war crimes ranging from extrajudicial killings to torture and mass looting, Azov has nevertheless enjoyed substantial support from... 14.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-14T15:16+0000

2022-03-14T15:16+0000

2022-03-14T17:08+0000

ukraine

azov

azov battalion

azov regiment

amazon

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/102541/48/1025414814_0:230:4289:2643_1920x0_80_0_0_3c49193a6b3d0c59db6aac98ea63e20e.jpg

At least five Azov Battalion-themed t-shirts and a coffee mug have appeared on Amazon.com in recent weeks, each featuring the groups infamous neo-Nazi fighting forces 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich-style rune logo and the light blue and yellow colours of the Ukrainian flag.The shirts go for the low-low price of $18.99, while the Azov Unisex Support Mugs are on offer for between $15.95-$19.95, depending on the size. All of the merch appeared on the site over the past two weeks, with the first item spotted on 3 March.Amazon users roundly condemned the retailer for offering the items. This is neo-nazi filth. Get it off the store! one person urged. Its well documented that the Azov battalion is a neo-nazi organization. That symbol is the Wolfsangel and is an original Nazi symbol used in Nazi Germany, another wrote. Using Ukraine conflict as an excuse for neonazi propaganda, a third chimed in. I dont understand why [Amazon] is selling neo-nazi merch, a fourth complained.The shirts and mug are the latest merch dedicated to the neo-Nazi fighting group thats appeared on Amazons site in recent years. In 2017, the retailer offered the self-published book Valhalla Express: The story of a nationalist, revolutionary, and volunteer (the book has since sold out or been removed).Amazons Italian and UK sites have featured their own Azov-themed merch, including at least one t-shirt design and an official-looking rubber patch, with the latter described as an item used by soldiers anti terror operation Ukraine [sic].Formed in late 2014 as a group of neo-Nazi volunteer paramilitaries, Azov has since grown into a full-size regiment of over 2,500 troopers and been integrated into the Ukrainian National Guard, giving it access to weaponry ranging from howitzers, mortars and anti-aircraft guns to tanks. The regiment is based in Mariupol, the southeastern Ukrainian coastal city presently surrounded by Russian and Donetsk Peoples Republic forces. There, Azov has been accused of indiscriminately targeting civilian areas during its retreat, and of using local residents as human shields against Russian and Donetsk Peoples Militia forces.Notwithstanding its UN-documented history of crimes, and openly neo-Nazi ideology and symbols, Azov has enjoyed strong support from the US security state and the Pentagon. A 2019 attempt by a group of over three dozen Democratic members of Congress to have the regiment designated a terrorist entity alongside the likes of al-Qaeda* and Daesh (ISIS)* was shot down by the State Department. Between 2019 and 2020, Foreign Policy magazine and the neo-conservative Atlantic Council think tank lobbied to make sure the group was not designated.Late last month, after Russia and its Donbass allies launched a military operation to demilitarize and de-nazify Ukraine, Facebook inexplicably removed prohibitions against praising Azov on its platform.* A terrorist group outlawed in Russia and many other countries.

https://sputniknews.com/20220305/dpr-head-some-200-people-buried-under-rubble-as-azov-militants-set-off-explosive-device-in-mariupol-1093607780.html

https://sputniknews.com/20220309/evidence-suggests-us-may-have-supported-neo-nazi-azov-battalion-1093714960.html

ukraine

azov

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

2022

Ilya Tsukanov

Ilya Tsukanov

News

en_EN

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

1920 1080 true

1920 1440 true

1920 1920 true

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

Ilya Tsukanov

ukraine, azov, azov battalion, azov regiment, amazon
https://sputniknews.com/20220314/brent-renaud-worked-on-time-refugee-project-prior-to-his-death-in-ukraine---time-studios-1093841388.html

Brent Renaud Worked on Time Refugee Project Prior to His Death in Ukraine - Time Studios

Brent Renaud Worked on Time Refugee Project Prior to His Death in Ukraine - Time Studios

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - US journalist Brent Renaud, who died near the Ukrainian capital of Kiev, had been working on a video project for the American Time, the... 14.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-14T00:29+0000

2022-03-14T00:29+0000

2022-03-14T00:27+0000

ukraine

russia

us

death

journalist

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e6/03/0e/1093841306_0:156:3001:1844_1920x0_80_0_0_220ff03da70456f4834ff65bf43b5069.jpg

"We are devastated by the loss of Brent Renaud," Time Studios said in a Sunday statement. "As an award-winning filmmaker and journalist, Brent tackled the toughest stories around the world often alongside his brother Craig Renaud."The New York Times said on Sunday that it was very saddened to learn about the death of the American in Irpin, a suburb of Kiev, but added that he was not on any assignment for the newspaper there. US photographer Juan Arredondo was traveling with Renaud and was injured in the same attack near a Ukrainian security checkpoint. According to the newspaper, Renaud was wearing a journalist press badge, which had been issued to him by the New York Times "many years ago."White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Sunday that the US was going to work with the Ukrainians to investigate Renauds death "to determine how this happened and then to measure and execute appropriate consequences as a result of it."In the early hours of February 24, Russia launched a special military operation in Ukraine after the Donetsk and Lugansk Peoples Republics (DPR and LPR) appealed for help in defending themselves against the Kiev forces. Russia said that the aim of its special operation is to demilitarize and "denazify" Ukraine and that only military infrastructure is being targeted. Moscow has repeatedly stressed that it has no plans to occupy Ukraine. According to Russian President Vladimir Putin, the goal is to protect the people of Donbas, "who have been subjected to abuse, genocide by the Kiev regime for eight years."Let's stay in touch no matter what! Follow our Telegram channel to get all the latest news: https://t.me/sputniknewsus

ukraine

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

2022

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

News

en_EN

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

1920 1080 true

1920 1440 true

1920 1920 true

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

ukraine, russia, us, death, journalist
Dozens of pages of new details became public Monday about the strange standoff between the state Judicial Branch and Superior Court Judge Alice Bruno, who has collected more than $350,000 in salary while missing nearly 2 years of work for what she describes as health-related reasons.

[ Kevin Rennie: A Superior Court judge hasnt shown up for work in years and has collected more than $350,000 in salary. Does anybody care? ]

Bruno prepared the information herself in an unusual  and very long  affidavit in which she alleges the state judicial branch has exacerbated her health problems by creating a stressful work environment related to the hostility toward my medical conditions and appointments.

Advertisement

The judiciary has not responded to Brunos granular recitation of what she recounts as years of snubs and rebuffs to her demand for an accommodation that would allow her to work at a location reasonably close to her home in New Britain and in a setting that provides a supportive, not hostile, work environment.

Bruno, 66, asked the court to seal her affidavit and related medical attachments, which were filed as part of her effort to postpone an order requiring her to appear before the court on April 5 to demonstrate why her failure to perform judicial functions for at least the last two years is not a violation of the following Rules contained within the Code of Judicial Conduct.

Advertisement

The court declined to rule on her request to seal the material from public view and, as a result, the affidavit was posted on the judicial branch website after most medical information had been removed.

The court scheduled the unusual hearing after years of negotiation failed to resolve the impasse with Bruno. She wanted to postpone the hearing until after a related inquiry by the Judicial Review Council, which investigates judicial misconduct such as unanticipated or prolonged absences by judges that can upend the orderly operation of the courts, in extreme cases leading to dismissal of cases.

Bruno filed her affidavit in an effort to postpone her April 5 appearance until after the Judicial Review Council completes its work. The Supreme Court denied the postponement in an order dated Friday and made public Monday.

Although most of Brunos recent medical history was redacted from the affidavit, her lawyer, Jacques J. Parenteau, told Courant columnist Kevin Rennie last year that following emergency hospitalization for a cardiac procedure in November 2019, Judge Bruno has been on a leave of absence to address several health issues.

In the affidavit, Bruno also claims the judicial branch contributed to the stress she has suffered by opposing her desire to obtain therapy for an injured ankle and treatment for an infection that followed a vaccination.

She implies in her filing that the judicial branch now is asking that she submit to a competency review under a state law authorizing Chief Court Administrator Patrick L. Carroll III to order such an examination if a judge cannot fully perform his or her judicial or magisterial duties by reason of mental infirmity or illness or because of drug dependency or addiction to alcohol.

Bruno opposes such an examination, according to her affidavit. She argues it is harassment and shows the judicial branch is not interested in finding a reasonable accommodation that would allow me to return to a supportive Judicial District in order to work as a Judge of the Superior Court.

On November 16, 2021, through counsel, I informed the Judicial Branch that no reasonable person would cite to (statute)  51-45b as authority for a mental fitness examination based on the medical information that had been provided to the Judicial Department, she wrote. Rather than have a meeting to discuss the accommodation sought and the rationale for that accommodation, the Judicial Branch had abandoned the good faith interactive process by seeking an unwarranted medical examination.

Advertisement

Bruno last reported to work on Nov. 14, 2019. In her affidavit, she claims the stressful work environment related to the hostility toward my medical conditions and appointments to treat ongoing health issues reached a peak two weeks earlier when she left work to see her primary care physician about an undisclosed medical condition. By that point, the judicial branch administration had become concerned about absences by her and other judges and had initiated an audit.

Bruno alleges that, While I was in the doctors office Judge (Anna) Ficeto continued the harassment directed by Chief Court Administrator Carroll in leaving a voice mail on my phone that was critical of my taking time to attend to health issues.

Rhonda Stearley-Hebert, Judicial Branch spokeswoman and manager of communications, said Carroll and Ficeto declined to comment about Brunos claims.

According to Brunos affidavit, in the voice mail message, Ficeto, who was supervising the Waterbury Courthouse, said she had become aware from a colleague that Bruno was taking a week off for medical purposes. Ficeto asked Bruno to provide a medical note. Ficeto also said there was an audit underway of sick time taken by judges and Bruno was likely to be included, the affidavit states.

Five Things You Need To Know Daily We're providing the latest coronavirus coverage in Connecticut each weekday morning. >

 So you just need to be aware of the fact that your attendance, your doctors appointments and all those things are being scrutinized at every level. I understand youve got doctors appointments coming up, once again theyre in the middle of the day, the affidavit recounts Ficeto as saying on the voicemail. You keep digging this hole for yourself Alice, I dont know how many ways to tell you that what youre doing is not acceptable. Call me when you get a chance. . Thank you.

Bruno, appointed by former Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, submitted a letter from her doctor on Nov. 26, 2019 and said she would be back at work Dec. 11, 2019. But she submitted another note before then, saying she was unable to return to work, the affidavit says.

Advertisement

In her affidavit, Bruno claims that at one point the Judicial Branch proposed having her return to work in Waterbury  which is relatively close to her home, but also where Ficeto was working  as a proposed accommodation. Bruno said she rejected the officer because Ficeto allegedly had been hostile to her in the past, apart from what Bruno said she considered to be the antagonistic voice message.

For example, after I was appointed to Waterbury Judicial District she would not say hello to me when passing me in building, Bruno wrote.

Bruno said what she considers her mistreatment by colleagues began as early as 2015.

I was assigned to domestic violence docket in the Judicial District of Hartford in July of 2015, she wrote. During this assignment, I contracted a severe infection following a Shingles vaccination such that I was forced to work with a high temperature and fever because Chief Court Administrator told me that I could not take time off.

It was also during this assignment that I was informed that I could not schedule doctors appointments on Monday or Friday, or even during the workday. As will be seen these unreasonable restrictions on my ability to obtain medical treatment eventually caused me to experience severe, physical stress and mental distress that resulted in hospitalization for cardiac distress symptoms in November of 2019, she wrote.
https://sputniknews.com/20220314/downright-dangerous-netanyahu-blasts-jcpoa-talks-following-erbil-strike-1093842348.html

Downright Dangerous: Netanyahu Blasts JCPOA Talks Following Erbil Strike

Downright Dangerous: Netanyahu Blasts JCPOA Talks Following Erbil Strike

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) of Iran claimed responsibility for a nocturnal missile attack on the Iraqi city of Erbil on Saturday. The strike... 14.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-14T03:31+0000

2022-03-14T03:31+0000

2022-03-14T03:53+0000

iraq

iran

erbil

joint comprehensive plan of action (jcpoa)

benjamin netanyahu

israel

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e6/03/0e/1093842994_0:27:2595:1486_1920x0_80_0_0_dcd47ee3d1cb16ba9d8f1cb7056011e7.jpg

Former Israeli PM and current opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu chastised world powers who are still negotiating a nuclear deal with Iran amid a recent missile strike near the US consulate in Iraqi Kurdistan.In video messages posted to social media on Sunday evening in both Hebrew and English, Netanyahu claimed it was "absurd" for countries in nuclear negotiations to continue to debate with Tehran in Vienna, while addressing Israelis and Americans, respectively."Yesterday, Iran fired missiles in the vicinity of the American consulate in Iraq, and the US continues to charge ahead, along with the other powers, to sign a nuclear agreement that will give the ayatollahs a nuclear arsenal, the ex-prime minister claimed.According to him, a new nuclear deal with Iran "would also relieve sanctions and give them hundreds of billions of dollars in order to continue the terror that they waged yesterday and wage every day throughout the Middle East and the world.""This agreement is even worse than its predecessor, because in three years time, under this agreement, Iran will be a threshold nuclear state. It will have enough enriched uranium to create dozens and dozens of nuclear bombs and it will have the ICBMs [intercontinental ballistic missiles] to deliver them to any place in the United States," he asserted.Netanyahu, who remains under a high-profile cloud of corruption litigation, accused what he characterized as the "surrender government of Bennett, Lapid, and Gantz" of being mute and doing nothing "instead of going out and fighting this, on every stage, at every forum," in the Hebrew version of his video message, per the Times of Israel.When Netanyahu was in government, he was an outspoken opponent of the original 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action deal, giving a speech against it to a joint session of the US Congress. In June 2021, Netanyahu claimed that Naftali Bennett, who succeeded him as the prime minister that month, would bow to US pressure to return to the Iran nuclear deal.According to Netanyahu, the deal is "not merely unacceptable, it endangers not only my country, Israel, but your country, the United States, and the entire world. We should not let an aggressive rogue terrorist regime like Iran have nuclear weapons. Have we learned nothing?"The final details of the developing nuclear deal between Iran and world powers are still being worked out, according to reports.Iranian and EU officials this Friday said that talks on resurrecting the nuclear deal, which had reportedly been close to conclusion, had been placed on pause, citing "external factors." One of the reasons for the halt could reportedly be a decision by US authorities to arrest two Greek ships transporting "Iranian oil."For months, diplomats in Vienna, Austria, have been discussing the resurrection of the nuclear deal, which the US withdrew from in 2018 under then-President Donald Trump. In response to the withdrawal from the deal, Iran announced that it would step up its uranium enrichment process and continue its nuclear research programs.According to the Israeli media reports, Prime Minister Bennett has spoken out against the agreement on several occasions, but has not taken Netanyahu's hawkish posture in negotiations with US officials."Our position regarding the agreement is well-known. The disadvantages of the agreement far outweigh its advantages. In any case, the agreement does not obligate the State of Israel in any way," he reportedly said at his cabinet meeting last week.Let's stay in touch no matter what! Follow our Telegram channel to get all the latest news: https://t.me/sputniknewsus

https://sputniknews.com/20220313/iran-nuke-deal-talks-were-paused-due-to-us-seizing-tankers-with-iranian-oil-media-claims-1093828527.html

iran

erbil

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

2022

Kirill Kurevlev

Kirill Kurevlev

News

en_EN

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

1920 1080 true

1920 1440 true

1920 1920 true

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

Kirill Kurevlev

iraq, iran, erbil, joint comprehensive plan of action (jcpoa), benjamin netanyahu, israel
https://sputniknews.com/20220314/french-interior-minister-urges-restoration-of-calm-in-corsica-ahead-of-visit-to-riot-gripped-island-1093853460.html

French Interior Minister Urges Restoration of Calm in Corsica Ahead of Visit to Riot-Gripped Island

French Interior Minister Urges Restoration of Calm in Corsica Ahead of Visit to Riot-Gripped Island

Last week violent clashes broke out on the French island of Corsica following rallies in support of jailed pro-independence activist Yvan Colonna, who was... 14.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-14T10:12+0000

2022-03-14T10:12+0000

2022-03-14T10:12+0000

gerald darmanin

france

emmanuel macron

corsica

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e6/03/0e/1093852341_0:81:3330:1954_1920x0_80_0_0_f2bb7fc6e7567e7d9013711066de4ac6.jpg

French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin has announced that he will be going to Corsica on Wednesday and Thursday to hold talks with local elected officials after violent clashes broke out on the French island on the weekend.Darmanin said in a statement that calm must be restored immediately.About 7,000 people in the northern Corsican town of Bastia had gathered for what initially appeared to be a peaceful protest that spiralled into violence as some 300 hooded participants attacked public buildings and lobbed projectiles at police and state institutions on Sunday. A public tax office was torched, according to the local prefecture. It added in a statement that 38 were injured, including 24 police officers, as part of a spate of demonstrations in outrage over the attack on jailed Corsican pro-independence activist Yvan Colonna by an inmate on 2 March. French prosecutors have charged Colonnas alleged assailant, Franck Elong Abe, with attempted murder in association with a terror group.Abe allegedly confessed to the attack, which he claimed was prompted by Colonnas blasphemous statements, according to Frances top anti-terror prosecutor, Jean-Francois Ricard, cited by AFP.Colonna was hospitalised in critical condition, and has been in a coma since then.After a five-year manhunt, Colonna was convicted in 2003 for the 1998 assassination of then-French prefect in Corsica, Claude Erignac, and has been serving his sentence in the Toulon-La Farlede detention centre, with authorities rejecting his demand to be transferred to Corsica due to the detainees special status.In an attempt to defuse the tensions, French Prime Minister, Jean Castex, on Tuesday revoked Colonnas status, with the move failing to impact the protests.After the attack on him in jail, rallies broke out in the main cities of Ajaccio, where the courthouse was set on fire on 9 March, as well as in Calvi and Bastia. The protests descended into violent clashes between police and protestors, who threw stones and flares at law enforcement and state institutions.On 10 March, Molotov cocktails and projectiles were thrown at police outside a Calvi government building, while cars were set ablaze in downtown Ajaccio.The attack on Colonna has revived calls for jailed pro-independence activists to be transferred from the French mainland to the island.The developments come as the first round of the 2022 French presidential election, set for 10 April, is fast approaching.Incumbent French President Emmanuel Macron, who is to face strong opposition from his rival Marine Le Pen, head of the right-wing National Rally party, in the presidential election, traveled to Corsica in February for a two-day visit. The trip came days after thousands of local nationalists staged a rally demanding greater autonomy for the Mediterranean island.Macrons visit to the island  his first as French president - marked the twentieth anniversary since the assassination of French Prefect Claude Erignac by Yvan Colonna. Macron attended a ceremony honoring the slain politician, held talks with nationalist leaders, Gilles Simeoni and Jean-Guy Talamoni.Corsica has been calling for constitutional changes that would grant the island a special status with real autonomy.Macron, who previously ruled out making any changes to the constitution, thus effectively rejecting Corsicans demand that the Corsican language be given official status, stressed during the visit that there would be "no forgetting and no amnesty" for Colonna.Emmanuel Macron also outlined his vision of Corsica, emphasizing that the island is part of the "unwavering France," and promised to try give it "the future it aspires to, without giving into demands that would take it out of the Republican fold."

https://sputniknews.com/20220310/riots-in-corsica-leave-at-least-40-people-injured-reports-say-1093745562.html

https://sputniknews.com/20220302/poll-shows-le-pen-as-most-serious-rival-to-macron-in-april-presidential-race-1093528494.html

france

corsica

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

2022

Svetlana Ekimenko

Svetlana Ekimenko

News

en_EN

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

1920 1080 true

1920 1440 true

1920 1920 true

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

Svetlana Ekimenko

gerald darmanin, france, emmanuel macron, corsica
https://sputniknews.com/20220314/germany-reportedly-plans-to-buy-over-thirty-f-35-jets-from-us-firm-lockheed-martin-1093854302.html

Germany Reportedly Plans to Buy Over Thirty F-35 Jets From US Firm Lockheed Martin

Germany Reportedly Plans to Buy Over Thirty F-35 Jets From US Firm Lockheed Martin

Currently, Germany owns only one class of fighter jets capable of carrying nuclear weapons - the Tornado. 14.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-14T13:12+0000

2022-03-14T13:12+0000

2022-03-14T13:17+0000

germany

f-35

lockheed martin

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e6/03/0e/1093857749_0:194:3072:1922_1920x0_80_0_0_32e696b6e38cb6cfe80fd4fc0da23b9f.jpg

Germany is going to purchase F-35 fighter jets made by US firm Lockheed Martin to replace its ageing Tornado aircraft, Reuters reported, citing two government sources. Berlin is considering buying up to 35 jets, one of the sources reportedly added. The German Air Forces have been flying the Tornado jets - their only fighters capable of carrying nuclear bombs - since the 1980s. Berlin is reportedly planning to replace the Tornado between 2025 and 2030. Under the previous defence minister, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, Germany was considering signing a deal with Boeing for the purchase of its F-18 fighter jet. Also, Berlin has been in talks with Paris on the development of a joint Franco-German fighter jet that was expected to be unveiled after 2040. Earlier this month, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz reportedly supported the joint programme with France. He added that the Franco-German Airbus project would further develop the Eurofighter jet that will have electronic warfare.This comes amid escalating tensions between NATO and Russia over the latter's special military operation in Ukraine. Like many other members of the alliance, Germany has provided different kinds of defence equipment and weapons to Kiev. However, Scholz emphasised that Germany will not send warplanes to Ukraine.

https://sputniknews.com/20220314/turkey-says-it-has-no-interest-in-patriot-missile-system-considers-f-35-issue-closed-1093857324.html

germany

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

2022

Sofia Chegodaeva

Sofia Chegodaeva

News

en_EN

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

1920 1080 true

1920 1440 true

1920 1920 true

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

Sofia Chegodaeva

germany, f-35, lockheed martin
https://sputniknews.com/20220314/giant-prehistoric-crater-in-greenland-may-shed-light-upon-climate-after-death-of-dinosaurs-1093847001.html

Giant Prehistoric Crater in Greenland May Shed Light Upon Climate After Death of Dinosaurs

Giant Prehistoric Crater in Greenland May Shed Light Upon Climate After Death of Dinosaurs

Dinosaurs went extinct about 65 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous Period, after dwelling on the Earth for about 165 million years. 14.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-14T06:21+0000

2022-03-14T06:21+0000

2022-03-14T06:27+0000

denmark

greenland

environment

mass extinction

dinosaurs

climate

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/107725/12/1077251217_0:218:2865:1829_1920x0_80_0_0_badb3bc75b552a7d64813c66398aa79a.jpg

A giant crater of with a diameter of 31 kilometres, buried under Greenland's massive ice shield, may cast more light on the historical climate, in particular how it changed following the extinction of the dinosaurs.The Hiawatha crater, the remains of a huge asteroid impact one kilometre deep into Greenlandic ice, appeared to be many millions of years older that initially assumed, a joint research crew has established.While initial research suggested that the impact could have happened some 13,000 years ago and played a role in a 1,000-year Ice Age, subsequent dating using rocks and sand grains from the crater suggested that we need to look much further back in history  millions of years back. In a study published in the scientific journal Science Advances, researchers have found that the Hiawatha crater, initially found in 2015, is no less than 58 million years old, significantly older than the first version of 13,000 years.It is very surprising that there is such a big difference with our first guess, Nicolaj Krog Larsen, Nicolaj Krog Larsen, professor at the Globe Institute at the University of Copenhagen, told TV2.Given its age, the crater that predates all human life by millions of years opens up a new understanding of how the Earth evolved after the extinction of the dinosaurs, which occurred at the end of the Cretaceous Period some 65 million years ago.The asteroid exploded with a force equivalent to several million atomic bombs. The powerful impact created one of the largest craters on the planet, which nevertheless still is much smaller than its 200-kilometre-wide cousin Chicxulub in Mexico.The Mexican crater is believed to be the remnant of the impact that wiped out the dinosaurs from the Earth. That explosion had catastrophic consequences and plunged the Earth into a protracted warming period that lasted about five million years.Due to that warming, Greenland was a far cry from the rugged and bleak icy wasteland it is today. On the contrary, there was temperate rainforest and rich wildlife with temperatures up to 20 degrees in the summer, Nicolaj Krog Larsen explained.As of now, ice-covered Greenland and Antarctica may be the only places in the world where undiscovered craters may possibly remain.Finding a crater is in itself extremely rare, for the vast majority have been found, Nicolaj Krog Larsen concluded.Let's stay in touch no matter what! Follow our Telegram channels to get all the latest news:Sputnik News US - https://t.me/sputniknewsusSputnik News India - https://t.me/sputniknewsindia

denmark

greenland

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

2022

Igor Kuznetsov

Igor Kuznetsov

News

en_EN

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

1920 1080 true

1920 1440 true

1920 1920 true

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

Igor Kuznetsov

denmark, greenland, environment, mass extinction, dinosaurs, climate
https://sputniknews.com/20220314/gop-lawmakers-express-concern-over-biden-supreme-court-pick-representing-guantanamo-prisoners-1093874361.html

GOP Lawmakers Express Concern Over Biden Supreme Court Pick Representing Guantanamo Prisoners

GOP Lawmakers Express Concern Over Biden Supreme Court Pick Representing Guantanamo Prisoners

With a 6-3 majority, conservatives wield decisive control over the US Supreme Court, the ostensibly nonpartisan high court that exercises final and... 14.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-14T21:43+0000

2022-03-14T21:43+0000

2022-03-14T21:44+0000

us supreme court

guantanamo bay detention center

habeas corpus

us

nominee

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e6/02/1b/1093408962_0:0:3072:1728_1920x0_80_0_0_e05dd1f804db5b37acc7ffb2156ef383.jpg

Several conservative lawmakers have fretted in recent days over news that US President Joe Bidens nominee for an open seat on the US Supreme Court, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, served as legal counsel for detainees at the US prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.We did talk about her representation of Guantanamo Bay detainees. I expressed some concern about this, US Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) said recently, according to The Hill.Jackson was nominated by Biden last month to replace Justice Stephen Breyer on the high court after Breyer announced his retirement. She is presently a federal judge on the US Court of Appeals in Washington, DC, and if her nomination is confirmed, Jackson would become the first Black woman to sit on the Supreme Court.One major subject of scrutiny in Jacksons career has been her defense of Khi Ali Gul, an Afghan man who was arrested in 2002 and transferred to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp the following year, according to US documents published by WikiLeaks. When Gul sued the Bush administration in 2008 in an attempt to obtain a writ of habeas corpus - a legal right for US prisoners to hear the charges against them - in 2008, Jackson assisted in his representation. At the time, she worked as a public defender, a lawyer in the US legal system who is employed by the court to represent defendants who cannot afford their own legal representation.Guls appeal was denied and he was released and repatriated in 2014 without having been charged with a crime.After Jackson entered private practice, she submitted an amicus brief in at least one other case involving a Guantanamo detainee.In all of those situations, the views that were expressed were the views of my clients that I represented, Jackson told Grassley about the Guantanamo detainee cases. The briefs did not necessarily represent my personal views with regard to the war on terror or anything else.

us

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

2022

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

News

en_EN

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

1920 1080 true

1920 1440 true

1920 1920 true

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

us supreme court, guantanamo bay detention center, habeas corpus, us, nominee
https://sputniknews.com/20220314/im-here-for-all-the-witches-emma-watson-appears-to-take-aim-at-jk-rowling-over-transgender-row-1093856885.html

'I'm Here for All the Witches': Emma Watson Appears to Take Aim at JK Rowling Over Transgender Row

'I'm Here for All the Witches': Emma Watson Appears to Take Aim at JK Rowling Over Transgender Row

JK Rowling has been under fire for her controversial views on transgender people. Recently she was criticised for a tweet about International Womens Day in a... 14.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-14T11:16+0000

2022-03-14T11:16+0000

2022-03-14T11:16+0000

jk rowling

harry potter

emma watson

transgender

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e6/03/0e/1093857491_0:0:3071:1728_1920x0_80_0_0_3308a0de538a9e6c09ff6b3731ad6720.jpg

Emma Watson has been both praised and criticized for the subtle dig she appeared to take at JK Rowling as she presented the award of Best Outstanding British Film at this year's BAFTA Film Awards on Sunday.The actress best known for her role as Hermione Grainger in film adaptations of Rowling's books was introduced by host Rebel Wilson, who said:In response, Watson quipped: I'm here for ALL the witches!Many viewers homed in on the jibe, praising Watson for throwing subtle shade at JK Rowling, long under fire for her stance on trans rights and accused of "transphobia."Social media users went on Twitter to applaud Queen Watson for destroying JK.Earlier in the ceremony, Rebel Wilson took aim at the acclaimed author while joking about her recent weight loss. As she referred to a picture of herself at the 2020 ceremony, shown on screen, she said:However, not everyone echoed Watsons stance. Many viewers took the opportunity to slam both her and Rebel Wilson for what they saw as bowing to the woke mob.Some pointed out that Watson, made famous by her role in the film adaptations of Rowling's books, should count her lucky stars JK Rowling stuck with her.Viewers suggested that Emma Watson ought to stop biting the hand that feeds.Controversy around JK Rowlings position on transgender issues has been gaining traction for quite some time. Rowling was accused of "transphobia" by activists and members of the LGBTQ + community after publishing an essay on her website in July 2020, where she argued that biological sex was real.She had also liked a post on Twitter that referred to trans women as men in dresses".More recently, Rowling criticised Britains Labour Leader Keir Starmer, accusing him of "misrepresenting" the Equality Act after he said in an interview for The Times in an interview that "trans women are women", citing the Equality Act of 2010.Rowling tweeted to claim the Labour Party could not be counted on to defend womens rights. She also added that women are organising across party lines, and their resolve and their anger are growing."Passed in 2010, the Equality Act boasts a provision that greenlights "changing the definition of gender reassignment, by removing the requirement for medical supervision". The legislation is ostensibly aimed at providing legal protection "from discrimination in the workplace and in wider society".However, the reform has drawn criticism from activists, particularly feminists, who voiced concerns that the bill would effectively limit the amount of women-only spaces - like hospital wards, restrooms, and changing rooms.Rowling has also denounced a law proposed by Nicola Sturgeon in Scotland - the Gender Recognition Reform Bill seeking to simplify how trans peoples genders are recognised - claiming it will harm the most vulnerable women if passed.JK Rowling earlier in 2021 revealed that besides open criticism, her stance on the issue has resulted in her receiving so many death threats I could paper the house with them and I haven't stopped speaking out.

https://sputniknews.com/20220313/trans-rights-row-jk-rowling-slams-labour-leader-starmer-for-misrepresenting-equality-act-1093832122.html

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

2022

Svetlana Ekimenko

Svetlana Ekimenko

News

en_EN

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

1920 1080 true

1920 1440 true

1920 1920 true

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

Svetlana Ekimenko

jk rowling, harry potter, emma watson, transgender
https://sputniknews.com/20220314/india-happy-to-take-offer-to-buy-discounted-russian-crude-on-rupee-ruble-exchange---reports-1093856341.html

India 'Happy' To Take Offer to Buy Discounted Russian Crude On Rupee-Ruble Exchange - Reports

India 'Happy' To Take Offer to Buy Discounted Russian Crude On Rupee-Ruble Exchange - Reports

India imports 80 percent of its oil and gas from the Middle-East but only 2 to 3 percent from Russia. However, now that major crude benchmark prices have hit... 14.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-14T13:14+0000

2022-03-14T13:14+0000

2022-03-14T13:15+0000

russia-nato row on european security

india

russia

oil

petroleum

rupee

rouble

swift

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/107188/18/1071881816_0:104:1920:1184_1920x0_80_0_0_bac75d2a5829b3a24ea874e063189594.jpg

India is considering Russias offer to buy crude oil and other commodities at discounted prices and the decision to proceed with the deal by setting up a rupee-ruble payment mechanism could be taken this week, several news outlets reported on Monday.Bloomberg quoted Indian officials as saying that the government-backed State Bank of India (SBI) and UCO Bank are part of ongoing consultations to set up a rupee-rouble trading scheme.According to the report, the Indian government is in favour of having a floating exchange rate with Russia. India is also in the process of preparing a list of items it could export to Russia in order to narrow the $5 billion bilateral trade deficit between the two nations, officials have said.A rupee-ruble exchange would also help Indian exporters to clear payments to the tune of $500 million, which have been in limbo since the US, the European Union and other western allies slapped economic sanctions against leading Russian banks, including the central bank, because of Moscows security operations in Ukraine. Top Russian banks have also been excluded from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) network, a financial intermediary that helps execute international transactions.Further, India is also reportedly looking at sourcing raw materials for the manufacture of fertilisers from Russia and Belarus, as New Delhi looks to contain its fertiliser subsidy bill. Indian officials reckon that the fertiliser subsidy bill could rise 200 percent - by $2.6 billion to $3.9 billion - in the next financial year.

https://sputniknews.com/20220307/indian-economist-calls-for-rupee-rouble-trade-to-bypass-western-sanctions-over-ukraine-1093655329.html

india

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

2022

Dhairya Maheshwari

Dhairya Maheshwari

News

en_EN

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

1920 1080 true

1920 1440 true

1920 1920 true

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

Dhairya Maheshwari

india, russia, oil, petroleum, rupee, rouble, swift
https://sputniknews.com/20220314/iran-warns-iraq-against-becoming-hub-of-israeli-threat-against-tehran-1093858047.html

Iran Warns Iraq Against Becoming 'Hub' of Israeli Threat Against Tehran

Iran Warns Iraq Against Becoming 'Hub' of Israeli Threat Against Tehran

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Tehran has warned the Iraqi authorities not to allow their territory to be used by third parties to conduct attacks against Iran, Iranian... 14.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-14T11:28+0000

2022-03-14T11:28+0000

2022-03-14T11:28+0000

middle east

iraq

iran

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e4/07/14/1079933917_0:146:1280:866_1920x0_80_0_0_153c0b66fa7d2cc46c629582d56d1d7c.jpg

"It is, by no means, acceptable that one of our neighbours, which has deep ties and interactions with us, to be a hub of threats against Iran," Khatibzadeh told reporters, as quoted by the Iran Front Page news portal.The spokesman said this is not the first time that Israel has organized "destabilization" on the Iraqi soil and invoked "anti-Iranian revolution gatherings" and "terrorist groupings" in the Iraqi Kurdistan.Iraqi media reported on Sunday morning that a missile strike was carried out on a US military base and consulate in Erbil, located in northern Iraq. According to reports, two training centres of the Israeli special service Mossad were destroyed during the strike. The Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps claimed responsibility for the missile attack on Erbil, which they said targeted Mossad strategic centres for Israeli forces.

iran

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

2022

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

News

en_EN

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

1920 1080 true

1920 1440 true

1920 1920 true

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

middle east, iraq, iran
https://sputniknews.com/20220314/israel-rules-out-providing-route-to-bypass-sanctions-imposed-on-russia-1093865749.html

Israel Rules Out Providing 'Route to Bypass Sanctions' Imposed on Russia

Israel Rules Out Providing 'Route to Bypass Sanctions' Imposed on Russia

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - The Israeli government is making efforts to avoid the country becoming a detour for anti-Russia sanctions, Israeli Foreign Minister Yair... 14.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-14T15:17+0000

2022-03-14T15:17+0000

2022-03-14T15:17+0000

israel

russia

sanctions

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e5/06/13/1083190728_0:198:2048:1350_1920x0_80_0_0_7b84ec9859f8022634115432a72115e6.jpg

"Israel will not be a route to bypass sanctions imposed on Russia by the United States and other Western countries. The Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs is coordinating the issue together with partners, including the Bank of Israel, the Finance Ministry, the Economy Ministry, the Airports Authority, the Energy Ministry, and others," Lapid said on Twitter.Israel calls for an end to fighting in Ukraine and will do everything it can to "assist mediation efforts, to stop the shooting and restore peace," Lapid said."We are working together with our greatest ally, the United States, and our European friends, to prevent the continuation of this tragedy," he added.Lapid made the statement after meeting with Slovakian Foreign Minister Ivan Korcok in Bratislava. The ministers have discussed the continuation of cooperation at the Vysne Nemecke crossing between Ukraine and Slovakia to help Jews and Israelis escape from conflict zones, the foreign ministry said.On 24 February, Russia began a military operation in Ukraine, responding to calls for help from the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. The Russian Defence Ministry said the operation is targeting Ukrainian military infrastructure only.

https://sputniknews.com/20220313/how-could-us-sanctions-on-russia-speed-up-de-dollarisation-and-help-rise-of-the-yuan-1093835850.html

israel

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

2022

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

News

en_EN

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

1920 1080 true

1920 1440 true

1920 1920 true

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

israel, russia, sanctions
https://sputniknews.com/20220314/january-riots-in-kazakhstan-resulted-in-death-of-230-people---prosecutor-general-1093845137.html

January Riots in Kazakhstan Resulted in Death of 230 People - Prosecutor General

January Riots in Kazakhstan Resulted in Death of 230 People - Prosecutor General

NUR-SULTAN (Sputnik) - A total of 230 people died as a result of the January riots in Kazakhstan, the countrys Prosecutor General, Berik Assylov, said on... 14.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-14T05:06+0000

2022-03-14T05:06+0000

2022-03-14T05:16+0000

asia-pacific

kazakhstan

riots

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e6/01/06/1092064652_0:120:1280:840_1920x0_80_0_0_46328c8a2de3c84d52168bd1ecb727dd.jpg

"In total, 230 people died in the country, including 19 military and security officials," Assylov said during a parliamentary meeting.Last month, Kazakh presidential spokesman Berik Uali said that President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev was expected to announce the preliminary results of the investigation into the January events during his address to the nation in mid-March.Mass protests in Kazakhstan began in the early days of 2022 - residents of the cities of Zhanaozen and Aktau in the west of the country opposed a twofold increase in prices for liquefied gas. Later, protests spread to other cities, including Almaty, the republic's largest city: looting began there, militants attacked state institutions and took weapons. In response, the authorities declared a state of emergency across the country until 19 January and launched a counter-terrorism operation.The country's president requested assistance from the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), which is comprised of Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. As a result, CSTO Peacekeeping Forces were deployed to Kazakhstan to help normalise the situation there. On 13 January, it was announced that the CSTO mission was successfully completed. The peacekeepers began to return home from Kazakhstan.

asia-pacific

kazakhstan

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

2022

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

News

en_EN

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

1920 1080 true

1920 1440 true

1920 1920 true

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

asia-pacific, kazakhstan, riots
Federal investigators have subpoenaed records from Hartford and questioned a city engineer about a school construction project during which the city claims it was required by the state office financing the construction to hire two consultants to perform much the same work.

The grand jury subpoena is another on a growing list issued by federal prosecutors looking for possible irregularities in more than a billion dollars in state spending, most of it since 2018 under a program that finances public school construction across the state.

Advertisement

The state is financing almost all of the cost of multiple school projects in Hartford, but investigators have zeroed in on the $150 million overhaul of Bulkeley High School on the citys southside, according to public records and interviews with more than a half-dozen people familiar with the project.

Bulkeley High School Sport and Medical Sciences Academy Field House. PATRICK RAYCRAFT | praycraft@courant.com (Patrick Raycraft / Hartford Courant)

In particular, the investigators appear interested in whether Konstantinos Diamantis, the politically-influential former director of the state school financing program, persuaded Hartford to hire a second consultant and how that consultant, Construction Advocacy Professionals, was awarded the contract even though two competitors submitted lower bids.

Advertisement

Diamantis was deputy secretary of the state Office of Policy and Management and closely involved in school construction as the hands-on director of the Office of School Construction Grants Review  until Gov. Ned Lamont ousted him from both positions in late October, about a week after federal prosecutors served the state with a wide-ranging subpoena for spending records.

No charges have been filed.

The subpoena for state records demands more than three years of email and other electronic communications involving Diamantis. It also directs the state to search specifically for records associated with Construction Advocacy Professionals, known as CAP; its owner, Antonietta DiBenedetto-Roy; and Diamantiss daughter, Anastasia. Roy hired Anastasia Diamantis at her fathers request, according to public records and other sources.

In addition to gathering records from the state and Hartford, the grand jury has issued subpoenas for records of school projects in at least two other towns, Tolland and Bristol. Diamantis was involved in both projects. In Tolland, several officials there have complained he used his authority over state financing as leverage to persuade the town to hire DiBenedetto and another contractor, DAmato Construction, for an elementary school project.

[ A federal grand jury is investigating Connecticut projects. Heres what you need to know ]

Hartford will not discuss its subpoena, nor a subpoena to city engineer Frank Dellaripa, who was ordered to appear before the grand jury earlier this month and interviewed by federal investigators. Dellaripa could not be reached; others said the city has retained a lawyer for him.

Several Hartford officials said Diamantis pitched the idea of hiring a second consultant early in 2020 as what he suggested could be a long-term cost-saving measure. At the same time, they said he was critical of Arcadis/O&G/C&R, the joint venture Hartford hired a decade earlier as manager for its broader school building and renovation program.

Diamantiss idea, the officials said, was to hire a smaller construction administrator solely for the Bulkeley project. His thinking, they said, was that a smaller, presumably nimbler and more efficient project manager could identify savings overlooked by a manager with a broader portfolio of projects. Diamantis also promised that the state would pick up the cost of the second consultant.

The Hartford officials said Diamantis did not suggest hiring CAP or even mention the firm, but one official said he referred to Roy more than once as a model for the kind of smaller consultant he had in mind. Whats more, one official said, Diamantis said Roys firm was woman-owned and that it would be good if she could get a toehold on some of these projects.

Advertisement

Most Hartford officials, wary of being drawn into a federal investigation, would not discuss Diamantis, his former Office of School Construction Grants Review, or CAP. Those who did would do so only in general terms.

I had a conversation with the state of Connecticut Office of School Construction Grants Review regarding ways to save costs for the school construction program, said Melvyn Colon, who chaired the Hartford School Building Committee in 2020.

This included an idea from OSCGR regarding the hiring of construction administrators to oversee management costs, instead of a typical construction management process, which provides comprehensive services of high quality but can be very costly. Eventually, this idea gained enough traction for implementation at the Bulkeley High School project, with the understanding that the state would pay for it.

Others said Diamantis not only wanted, but required the city to hire a second consultant. Since Diamantiss office was reimbursing Hartford for almost all its construction costs, the citys school building committee paid attention  especially when he agreed to pick up the cost of an additional consultant.

Since the state is largely responsible for the funding of school construction projects, the committee followed the requirement of the state official responsible for school construction that the city hire an additional owners representative, said Jesse Sugarman, senior advisor for Strategy and Institutional Advancement for Hartford Public Schools. As has been previously reported, the committee was given assurances by that state official that those costs would be largely reimbursed.

Mayor Luke Bronin said earlier this year that, Since the state covers the overwhelming share of school construction costs, the citys school building committee gave a great deal of deference to the state official in charge of school construction  including his direction that an additional owners representative should be hired to oversee project costs, at the states expense.

Advertisement

One Harford official closely involved in the school building process said Diamantis compared his idea of hiring an additional, but smaller, construction administrator to an experiment in cost savings, with the city being the laboratory. If it saved money, it could be used elsewhere.

In February 2020, the Hartford School Building Committee instructed its existing consultant, Arcadis/O&G/C&R to prepare a request for proposals and solicited bids from firms competing to become construction administrator for Bulkeley High School job. It got four responses.

Records show that the bids ran from about $1.3 million to about $4.1 million. CAP bid about $2.4 million but revised that down to about $2.2 million before the close of bidding in March 2020.

During whats known as a scope review process, when the school building committee and staff analyze bids and compare them against requirements of the job, CAP was told it had included in its bid the cost for a position  an assistant project manager/engineer  that wasnt needed. The city told CAP it could remove the position if it chose, allowing for a more apples to apples comparison with proposals from competing bidders

CAP dropped the line item, cutting another $526,000 from its bid and reducing the total to about $1.77 million. There were still two lower bids, $1.3 and $1.74 million.

A Hartford official familiar with the bid and review process said a subcommittee of the school building committee narrowed the choice to two finalists: CAP and the slightly lower bid of $1.74. The official said CAP was hired because, in the subcommittees view, the company appeared best suited to complete the work and it was a woman-owned business, an important criterion in a city that strives for minority representation in contracting.

Advertisement

After Diamantis left his state jobs, the state rescinded his promise to Hartford to reimburse it for costs associated with hiring CAP because the state will not reimburse any project for more than one construction administrator. Hartford fired CAP after paying about half the cost of the contract for work already performed.

Five Things You Need To Know Daily We're providing the latest coronavirus coverage in Connecticut each weekday morning. >

Some Hartford officials defended Diamantiss work in the city. They said he could be blustery and abrasive with contractors who he suspected of wasting money, but spent long hours on Hartford projects and appeared sincerely interested in the city schools, which he thought have been short-changed by past state spending decisions.

Norm Pattis, Diamantiss lawyer, said he would like to meet with federal prosecutors and explain how he ran the construction financing office.

The grand jury is supposed to protect peoples reputations from unwarranted speculation, Pattis said. The U.S. Attorneys office knows people are talking about it, and it wont talk to us. So we extend the same offer to them that we have all along. Pick up the phone and call. We are not afraid to talk.

In an hourlong radio interview on WTIC-AM last week, Diamantis defended his work, saying he never pressed towns to hire particular contractors and arguing that all of his decisions were designed to save money. He referred specifically to the Bulkeley High School project, saying his decision to include administrative offices in the rebuilt school saved Hartford hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Advertisement

He suggested the grand jury investigation is political and the result of a rift with the Lamont administration.
https://sputniknews.com/20220314/kiev-washington-responsible-for-failure-of-minsk-peace-agreements-ukraines-former-president-says-1093866063.html

Kiev, Washington Responsible for Failure of Minsk Peace Agreements, Ukraine's Former President Says

Kiev, Washington Responsible for Failure of Minsk Peace Agreements, Ukraine's Former President Says

Ukraine descended into an eight-year-long political and economic crisis and civil war in the aftermath of the 'Revolution of Dignity' - the February 2014 coup... 14.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-14T15:17+0000

2022-03-14T15:17+0000

2022-03-14T18:37+0000

ukraine

donbass

victor yanukovych

volodymyr zelensky

interview

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/104763/02/1047630240_0:160:3077:1890_1920x0_80_0_0_1c672de6f5130116282ba2357db50003.jpg

Kiev and its US patrons are squarely to blame for the failure of the Minsk Agreements on peace in eastern Ukraine, former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych has told Sputnik."An initiative group was formed from a variety of regions and countries - Ukraine, Russia, Israel, the US, and others. These were industrialists, businessmen, religious leaders, academics, journalists. A plan to implement the Minsk Agreements was quickly developed," Yanukovych said.Kiev ended up deliberately sabotaging Minsk, according to Yanukovych, while the Biden administration maintained that "complex internal discussions were taking place, with many internal contradictions."The former president said he offered Volodymyr Zelensky a concrete plan to end the crisis over the Donbass, but that his overtures were rejected."My team began to work with his inner circle. Several meetings were organized. At these meetings we proposed a plan for a ceasefire in the Donbass, it was outlined in a detailed, step-by-step way. The end result would have been the signing of a peace agreement between Ukraine and the Donbass and the creation of an international fund for the reconstruction of the Donbass, and the political, economic and social reintegration of the Donbass back into Ukraine," Yanukovych recalled.The meetings continued, according to Yanukovych, but without any clarity or certainty of purpose. "As my negotiators said, there is nothing to talk about with them," he recalled.Yanukovych emphasised that he had a good opinion of Zelensky as a person and as an artist (Zelensky was a famous comedian and actor in Ukraine before he became president in 2019) and that personal contacts were formed between them. "I understood very well that with his [lack of] experience working at such a level would be very difficult. I really wanted to support and help him," he said.Yanukovych is convinced that there is still a chance to stop the tragedy unfolding in Ukraine.Eight Years of ChaosViktor Yanukovych was overthrown in a Western-backed coup d'etat in February 2014 over his decision to reject the Ukraine-EU association agreement in favour of the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union in late 2013. That move, combined with long-standing allegations of corruption against Yanukovych and his inner circle, sparked mass protests in Kiev. The protests turned violent after mystery snipers opened fire on the crowds, killing 49 protesters and four police officers in one day. Yanukovych was blamed for the bloodshed, but it subsequently emerged that the snipers were hired and coordinated by far-right elements of the opposition in a bid to further destabilize the situation and ensure his fall from power.The United States and its European allies played a key role in the coup, with US undersecretary of state Victoria Nuland spotted handing out cookies in central Kiev in a show of support and self-assuredly telling then-ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt about the composition of the next government in a leaked phone call.The coup in Kiev sparked widespread unrest in eastern and southern Ukraine, where support for close ties to Russia remained widespread after the destruction of the Soviet Union. In March of 2014, authorities in Crimea organized a referendum on the peninsula's status, with the vast majority of residents electing to break off from Ukraine and to rejoin Russia. The next month, hundreds of thousands of residents of regions across Ukraine's south and east including Kharkov, Nikolayev, and Odessa held rallies in opposition to the new pro-western regime in Kiev, with some expressing support for an independence push. Many of the leaders and supporters of these movements were forced to flee or faced being imprisoned or murdered. Nowhere were the anti-coup sentiments stronger than the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk in the Donbass - the long-time industrial and coal-mining heartland of Ukraine. Political forces in these regions proclaimed themselves as "people's republics" in the spring of 2014 after Kiev sent the military to try to crush the resistance by force, sparking a civil war which has since claimed the lives of over 13,000 people.On 21 February 2022, after over seven years of frozen efforts to reach a lasting peace, and amid escalating shelling, sniper and sabotage attacks against the Donbass republics, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree to recognize the republics as independent states. Three days later, on 24 February, after a request for military assistance from the Donbass, Russian forces began an operation which Putin said was aimed at "demilitarising and denazifying" Ukraine.

https://sputniknews.com/20220309/live-updates-us-does-not-support-giving-more-aircraft-to-ukrainian-air-force-1093727933.html

https://sputniknews.com/20190213/bolton-biscuits-for-venezuela-1072390442.html

https://sputniknews.com/20220314/agreement-on-russia-ukraine-settlement-may-require-approval-by-unsc-resolution---russian-diplomat-1093848339.html

ukraine

donbass

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

2022

Ilya Tsukanov

Ilya Tsukanov

News

en_EN

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

1920 1080 true

1920 1440 true

1920 1920 true

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

Ilya Tsukanov

ukraine, donbass, victor yanukovych, volodymyr zelensky, interview
Russian Prime Minister Temporarily Bans Grain Exports to EAEU

Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin signed a temporary ban on the export of grain to the countries of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) until June 30, as well as white sugar and raw cane sugar to third countries until August 31, the government's press service said in a statement.



Russia is introducing a temporary ban on the export of grain to the Eurasian Economic Union countries, as well as on the export of white sugar and raw cane sugar to third countries. The resolutions on this were signed by Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin. Restrictions on grain will be in effect until June 30, on sugar - until August 31, 2022," it said.



According to the cabinet, the grain ban applies to wheat and meslin, rye, barley and corn.



"Supplies of these products outside of Russia will be possible, including for the provision of humanitarian assistance, as well as within the framework of international transit traffic," the government said.



This decision was made to protect the domestic food market in the face of external restrictions, the cabinet said.
https://sputniknews.com/20220314/moscow-will-respond-to-bratislavas-decision-to-expell-russian-diplomats-1093867779.html

Moscow Will Respond to Bratislava's Decision to Expel Russian Diplomats

Moscow Will Respond to Bratislava's Decision to Expel Russian Diplomats

Earlier, there were reports that Slovakia intends to expel three Russian diplomats on suspicion of espionage. 14.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-14T16:11+0000

2022-03-14T16:11+0000

2022-03-14T16:55+0000

slovakia

russia

diplomats

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e6/02/19/1093357769_0:14:3114:1767_1920x0_80_0_0_3586691da92b22ded0a1baab86975dba.jpg

Moscow will respond to Bratislava's decision to expel Russian diplomats, the Russian Foreign Ministry said. Moscow's move comes after reports appeared to the effect that Slovakia's foreign ministry was going to expel three Russian diplomats. They must leave the country within 72 hours, the reports added. The Russian Embassy in Bratislava is not commenting on the reports about the diplomats' expulsion right now, the press secretary said.

slovakia

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

2022

Sofia Chegodaeva

Sofia Chegodaeva

News

en_EN

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

1920 1080 true

1920 1440 true

1920 1920 true

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

Sofia Chegodaeva

slovakia, russia, diplomats
https://sputniknews.com/20220314/never-heard-of-that-chinese-embassy-to-us-rejects-claim-russia-asked-china-for-help-in-ukraine-1093840504.html

'Never Heard of That': Chinese Embassy to US Rejects Claim Russia Asked China for Help in Ukraine

'Never Heard of That': Chinese Embassy to US Rejects Claim Russia Asked China for Help in Ukraine

Earlier, the Financial Times alleged that Russia had asked China for weapons and other supplies to back the Kremlin's special military operation in Ukraine... 14.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-14T01:14+0000

2022-03-14T01:14+0000

2022-03-14T01:12+0000

situation in ukraine

russia

us

china

ukraine

ukraine crisis

military & intelligence

military operation

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e6/03/0d/1093840705_0:320:2949:1978_1920x0_80_0_0_c4614f19d1579cc68e486209bc547cdc.jpg

A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy to the United States rejected media allegations that Moscow had approached Beijing for military equipment and other logistical support, Reuters reported on Sunday.Liu Pengyu, a spokesman for the embassy, reportedly told the news agency that he had "never heard of that." China's aim, according to Liu, is to keep the Kremlin's special military operation in Ukraine from spiraling out of control.According to a Financial Times report, citing unnamed US officials, Washington will issue a warning to its allies in the wake of reports that China is preparing to assist Russia in its military operation in Ukraine. The sources alleged that the Kremlin is running out of weapons and ordnance.The Chinese diplomat noted that he had no information about such discussions, adding that Beijing maintains the hope "that the situation will ease and peace will return at an early date."This comes as Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser, prepares to meet with Yang Jiechi, a high-ranking foreign policy official in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), in Rome on Monday. Before leaving on Sunday, Sullivan warned the CCP against attempting to "bail out" Moscow by assisting the Kremlin in evading the tough sanctions placed on the federation.The US is said to be increasingly concerned about the CCP's relationship with the Kremlin, which has been stronger as both countries unite in their opposition to Washington on issues ranging from NATO to the ongoing sanctions.Last month, the leaders of the two nations signed a joint statement in Beijing suggesting that the Beijing-Moscow alliance had "no limits," signaling that the two nuclear powers had become closer.On Saturday, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang stressed that the CCP is pursuing a peaceful independent foreign policy, and called for all member nations to respect the UN charter that states, in part, "to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest."Pressure on China has been applied in response to the Kremlin's ongoing special military operation in Ukraine. The Russian government has stated that it seeks to demilitarize and achieve a "de-nazification" of Ukraine. The special military operation, launched on 24 February by Russian President Vladimir Putin, is stated to be only aimed at Ukraine's military infrastructure and has clearly asserted that it poses no threat to civilians, according to the statements from the Kremlin.Let's stay in touch no matter what happens! Follow our Telegram channel to get all the latest news: https://t.me/sputniknewsus

https://sputniknews.com/20220307/chinas-wang-slams-us-over-bid-to-create-indo-pacific-nato-calls-russia-main-strategic-partner-1093654546.html

china

ukraine

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

2022

Kirill Kurevlev

Kirill Kurevlev

News

en_EN

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

1920 1080 true

1920 1440 true

1920 1920 true

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

Kirill Kurevlev

russia, us, china, ukraine, ukraine crisis, military & intelligence, military operation
https://sputniknews.com/20220314/north-korea-reportedly-preparing-another-icbm-missile-test-as-soon-as-this-week-1093843136.html

North Korea Reportedly Preparing Another ICBM Missile Test as Soon as 'This Week'

North Korea Reportedly Preparing Another ICBM Missile Test as Soon as 'This Week'

North Korea launched a short-range missile from the Sunan area near Pyongyang on March 5, marking the country's ninth missile test since the start of the year. 14.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-14T04:17+0000

2022-03-14T04:17+0000

2022-03-14T04:15+0000

north korea

asia & pacific

south korea

missile tests

icbm test

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e6/03/0e/1093843720_0:0:2917:1642_1920x0_80_0_0_eccc3e3f7410c07836d0949a14b8add7.jpg

South Korea and the US have announced that North Korea is readying another intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) system test as soon as this week, the South Korean Yonhap news agency reported on Monday. According to the outlet's sources, the signs of the forthcoming test arose after Pyongyang was accused of testing new ICBM systems on February 27 and March 5. Officials from South Korea and the US suspect the Hwasong-17 ICBM, which was revealed during a military parade in October 2020, was involved.The timeframe of the prospective launch is expected to be influenced by weather and other factors, per the report. Sources reportedly noted that if North Korea goes ahead with a launch, it could use a transporter erector launcher (TEL) to fire a missile at the Sunan airfield, which was the site of the two previous tests.Earlier, the missiles were fired at a high angle from the airfield, and it was reportedly adjusted to follow the trajectory of a medium-range ballistic missile. According to the South Korean military, the missile that was launched on February 27 flew roughly 300 kilometers at a height of 620 kilometers, while that launched on March 5 traveled some 270 kilometers and had a top altitude of 560 kilometers. North Korea said that the launches were "reconnaissance satellite" development experiments.After talks between North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-un, and then-US President Donald Trump in late June 2019, the DPRK announced a moratorium on long-range ballistic missile and nuclear tests. Kim, however, claimed a year later that he was no longer bound by the non-binding verbal agreement.Let's stay in touch no matter what happens! Follow our Telegram channel to get all the latest news: https://t.me/sputniknewsus

https://sputniknews.com/20220306/north-korea-says-latest-test-part-of-reconnaissance-satellite-development-1093627831.html

south korea

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

2022

Kirill Kurevlev

Kirill Kurevlev

News

en_EN

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

1920 1080 true

1920 1440 true

1920 1920 true

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

Kirill Kurevlev

north korea, asia & pacific, south korea, missile tests, icbm test
https://sputniknews.com/20220314/peace-with-russia-could-be-reached-by-may-zelensky-adviser-reveals-1093875621.html

Peace Treaty With Russia Could Be Reached by May, Zelensky Adviser Believes

Peace Treaty With Russia Could Be Reached by May, Zelensky Adviser Believes

Earlier, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky submitted to the nation's parliament a bill to extend the martial law regime in Ukraine for another 30 days... 14.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-14T22:20+0000

2022-03-14T22:20+0000

2022-03-14T23:02+0000

situation in ukraine

russia

ukraine

peace

adviser

volodymyr zelensky

agreement

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e6/03/0e/1093876014_0:0:3072:1728_1920x0_80_0_0_d96c2323cba4ad105991a4fd8ba5d5b4.jpg

Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to the head of Zelensky's office, reportedly believes that a peace agreement with Russia in the ongoing special military operation can be reached within one to two weeks at the earliest, and at the latest in May.He added that that if an agreement fails, then "by the end of May, after another round [of negotiations]," hostilities will continue. Despite a possible peace agreement, Arestovych suggested that local fighting could last throughout the country for a year.A fourth round of negotiations between Moscow and Kiev was held on Monday via videoconference. Following the results, Mikhaylo Podolyak, an adviser to the head of Zelensky's office, said that a technical pause in the talks had been taken, and that negotiations would continue on Tuesday.The first three rounds of negotiations were held in Belarus: on February 28 in the Gomel region, on March 3 and 7 in Belovezhskaya Pushcha, in the Brest region, after which talks switched to a video format. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin a task of negotiation. israel and Turkey have both volunteered to help with its organization.Russia launched its special military operation in Ukraine in response to late February pleas for protection from Ukrainian soldiers by the Donetsk and Lugansk people's republics. The special military operation is only targeting Ukrainian military facilities, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. Moscow has stated repeatedly that it has no plans to occupy Ukraine. Russia has been subjected to a slew of sanctions imposed by Western and many other countries.Let's stay in touch no matter what! Follow our Telegram channel to get all the latest news: https://t.me/sputniknewsus

ukraine

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

2022

Kirill Kurevlev

Kirill Kurevlev

News

en_EN

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

1920 1080 true

1920 1440 true

1920 1920 true

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

Kirill Kurevlev

russia, ukraine, peace, adviser, volodymyr zelensky, agreement
https://sputniknews.com/20220314/pentagon-officials-have-no-evidence-russian-troops-deliberately-targeting-journalists-in-ukraine-1093873941.html

Pentagon: Officials Have No Evidence Russian Troops Deliberately Targeting Journalists in Ukraine

Pentagon: Officials Have No Evidence Russian Troops Deliberately Targeting Journalists in Ukraine

WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  The United States has no evidence to suggest Russian troops are deliberately targeting journalists during its military operation in... 14.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-14T21:03+0000

2022-03-14T21:03+0000

2022-03-14T21:02+0000

situation in ukraine

ukraine

russia

journalists

pentagon

evidence

john kirby

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e6/02/0f/1093058091_0:104:3114:1856_1920x0_80_0_0_d14ddb2290d48287a1395a18306d0c6e.jpg

"I don't have evidence of that specifically," Kirby told a press briefing when asked whether Russian military in Ukraine are deliberately targeting journalists.On Sunday, American journalist Brent Renaud, 50, was shot and killed at a Ukrainian security checkpoint in the city of Irpin, where he had been working on a video project for American magazine Time. US photographer Juan Arredondo was traveling with Renaud and was injured in the same attack. The city is controlled by Ukrainian forces.On Monday, Fox News said its reporter was injured in Ukraine while covering the conflict outside Kiev.On February 24, Russia began a special operation to demilitarize and "denazify" Ukraine, responding to calls for help from the Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics in countering the aggression of Ukrainian troops. The Russian Defense Ministry said the special operation is targeting Ukrainian military infrastructure only. Several days into the operation, the Russian armed forces accused the Ukrainian military of using typical terrorist methods, such as hiding behind civilians and civilian quarters.Let's stay in touch no matter what! Follow our Telegram channel to get all the latest news: https://t.me/sputniknewsus

ukraine

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

2022

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

News

en_EN

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

1920 1080 true

1920 1440 true

1920 1920 true

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

ukraine, russia, journalists, pentagon, evidence, john kirby
https://sputniknews.com/20220314/russia-has-just-cause-unlike-a-legion-of-usnato-criminal-wars-1093856017.html

Russia Has Just Cause Unlike a Legion of US/NATO Criminal Wars

Russia Has Just Cause Unlike a Legion of US/NATO Criminal Wars

Russias military operation in Ukraine, now in its third week, was a justified response to aggression based on self-defence. The threat from the NATO-backed... 14.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-14T10:49+0000

2022-03-14T10:49+0000

2022-03-14T10:51+0000

columnists

ukraine

russia

us

situation in ukraine

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e6/03/02/1093506174_0:123:3207:1926_1920x0_80_0_0_1a059bfc21cd18ce6cf83e0802a64a5a.jpg

Of course, the US and its NATO allies, their governments, media and think tanks, and so on, have all triggered a tsunami of propaganda claiming that Russia launched an unprovoked war and is a criminal aggressor. They are compelled to do that because of the need to conceal their primary responsibility and guilt over the conflict.Christopher Black, a Canada-based international lawyer and authority on laws of war, contends there is a just cause for Russias actions in Ukraine. In a recent article, he says that under the UN Charter, Article 51, Russia had several legitimate grounds for self-defence. In follow-up personal communications, Black discussed his legal reasoning and historical background for this column.The NATO-backed Kiev regime was ramping up deadly offensive attacks on the Russian people of Donbass in southeast Ukraine. Those attacks included artillery strikes and incursions into the territory of the Russian Federation. This was but a continuation of the war that the Kiev forces had launched in 2014 with the support of the United States and NATO powers. But the offensive intensified in the weeks leading up to Russias operation on 24 February.Western media dismiss these claims made by Russia and the Donbass republics as if they are fabricated or exaggerated. Thats largely because these media virtually ignored the aggression by the Kiev regime, again because their governments were weaponizing and supporting the regime.However, there is a much bigger threat problem, says Black. That emanates from how Ukraine was being gradually used by the US as a projection point for NATO to destroy Russia. The neighbouring country was being established as a de facto member of NATO and a staging territory for US missiles capable of hitting Moscow within minutes. This is made all the more disturbing in light of the discovery of biowarfare laboratories in Ukraine sponsored by the Pentagon. Again the Western media dismiss Russia's claims because the implications are so damning and incriminating for their governments.In Blacks opinion, Russia had no choice but to act in order to pre-empt the growing existential threat to its security. Russia could do nothing and watch as the weapons for its destruction were installed and made ready to fire; to commit suicide in other words, or it could defend itself, says the lawyer. It warned the US that it would do so It had to act or face destruction and subjugation.The bitter irony is that American and other NATO powers are trying to condemn Russia while they have a historical record that is as criminal and bloody as it is long.How many wars have the United States and its Western allies waged since the Second World War? How many nations were destroyed? How many millions of lives were destroyed? It is an awesome, disturbing toll.And yet the ultimate condemnation is that not one of those wars was legal or justified. They were all criminal. From the US-led Korean War (1950-53), through the Vietnam War, wars in Latin America and Africa, to the bombing of former Yugoslavia, the Middle Easts Gulf Wars and the ongoing military operations in Syria and Iraq. More than seven decades of non-stop wars of aggression including covert and proxy wars. The death toll from all of these US-led conflicts is estimated to be 25-30 million.The United States launched all of these military operations unilaterally without any authorization from the United Nations. All it had in support was a so-called coalition of the willing  a small group of Western nations, primarily Britain, that were willing to violate international law to give Uncle Sam some dubious moral and political cover with a veneer of consensus.According to Christopher Black, every war that the US engaged in along with its allies has been illegal. None of them meet the criteria for just cause. Under Article 51 of the UN Charter  to which all nations are signatories and therefore bound by  the only criteria for a just war are authorization by the Security Council; and, secondly, a claim to self-defence from attack by another nation or group of nations. The latter is what gives Russia just cause.In all of its dozens and dozens of wars (the sheer number is itself indicative of rogue conduct), the United States never had a UN Security Council mandate. Claims of self-defence  as in attacking Afghanistan in 2001 after 9/11 and occupying that country for 20 years with NATO accomplices  were flagrantly baseless.What the US and its allies indulged in were self-anointed authorizations, such as war on terror or responsibility to protect human rights or eliminating weapons of mass destruction. None of these supposed principles are recognized in international law, says Black. They all boil down to imperial might is imperial right.The US is right now illegally occupying parts of Syria while its bombs are massacring Yemeni civilians. Its economic sanctions are killing thousands of innocents in Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea, among others. The distorted condemnation of Russia by Western powers is a window to the audacious brainwashing that the US and its NATO allies propagate through their media.

https://sputniknews.com/20220312/whats-behind-washingtons-denial-of-biowarfare-weapons-programme-in-ukraine-1093810839.html

ukraine

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

2022

Finian Cunningham https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e5/01/0c/1081745381_0:429:2048:2477_100x100_80_0_0_02c0961b33c51d5d1a17db3237ef3811.jpg

Finian Cunningham https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e5/01/0c/1081745381_0:429:2048:2477_100x100_80_0_0_02c0961b33c51d5d1a17db3237ef3811.jpg

News

en_EN

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

1920 1080 true

1920 1440 true

1920 1920 true

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

Finian Cunningham https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e5/01/0c/1081745381_0:429:2048:2477_100x100_80_0_0_02c0961b33c51d5d1a17db3237ef3811.jpg

columnists, ukraine, russia, us
https://sputniknews.com/20220314/russian-armed-forces-disable-nearly-4000-ukrainian-military-facilities---mod-1093850499.html

Russian Armed Forces Destroy 3,920 Targets of Ukrainian Military Infrastructure, MoD Says

Russian Armed Forces Destroy 3,920 Targets of Ukrainian Military Infrastructure, MoD Says

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - The Russian armed forces have disabled 3,920 facilities of the Ukrainian military infrastructure as part of the special military operation... 14.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-14T07:44+0000

2022-03-14T07:44+0000

2022-03-14T07:46+0000

situation in ukraine

world

ukraine

russia

military

military operation

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e6/03/0e/1093850399_0:0:3640:2048_1920x0_80_0_0_34a18e4ca04e9f2290b0f40c2753d61f.jpg

"In total, 3,920 facilities of Ukrainian military infrastructure were disabled since the start of the special military operation," Konashenkov told reporters.A total of 143 unmanned aerial vehicles, 1,267 tanks and other armoured combat vehicles, 124 multiple rocket launchers, 457 field artillery guns and mortars, 1,028 units of special military vehicles were destroyed, he noted.Over the past night, the Russian military have also downed four Ukrainian drones, including one Bayraktar TB2 combat drone, the official added.In the early hours of 24 February, Russia launched a special military operation in Ukraine after the Donetsk and Lugansk Peoples Republics (DPR and LPR) appealed for help in defending themselves against the Kiev forces. Russia said that the aim of its special operation is to demilitarize and "de-Nazify" Ukraine and that only military infrastructure is being targeted. Moscow has repeatedly stressed that it has no plans to occupy Ukraine. According to Russian President Vladimir Putin, the goal is to protect the people of Donbass, "who have been subjected to abuse, genocide by the Kiev regime for eight years."The West scaled up military assistance to Kiev, as well as anti-Russia sanctions, after Moscow launched a special military operation in Ukraine.

ukraine

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

2022

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

News

en_EN

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

1920 1080 true

1920 1440 true

1920 1920 true

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

world, ukraine, russia, military, military operation
https://sputniknews.com/20220314/taiwan-scrambles-jets-as-13-chinese-aircraft-enter-air-defence-zone-1093857670.html

Taiwan Scrambles Jets as 13 Chinese Aircraft Enter Air Defence Zone

Taiwan Scrambles Jets as 13 Chinese Aircraft Enter Air Defence Zone

This comes just hours after a Mirage 2000 fighter jet of the Taiwanese air force crashed into the sea during a training flight. 14.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-14T11:20+0000

2022-03-14T11:20+0000

2022-03-14T12:00+0000

asia

taiwan

china

jets

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e6/03/0e/1093859009_0:261:3072:1989_1920x0_80_0_0_6751771d0a726dc14add34bdf806605a.jpg

The Taiwanese air force was scrambled to ward off thirteen Chinese aircraft that entered its air defence zone, Taiwan's Defence Ministry said.Earlier on Monday, a Taiwanese Mirage 2000 fighter crashed into the sea during a training flight, but the pilot managed to escape, the office of Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen said. Taiwan has been governed independently from mainland China since 1949, but Beijing sees it as a breakaway province. China has repeatedly condemned US assistance to the government in Taipei as interference in the country's domestic affairs. Since Russia launched its special military operation in Ukraine on 24 February, speculation has increased among some Western politicians and analysts that China could undertake a similar step against Taiwan. Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi has rejected such allegations, stressing that Russia's operation to demilitarise and de-Nazify Ukraine and China's intention to peacefully unify with Taiwan "are not comparable at all".

https://sputniknews.com/20220308/cia-director-burns-says-chinese-calculus-on-taiwan-altered-but-warns-not-to-underestimate-xi-1093698920.html

asia

china

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

2022

Sofia Chegodaeva

Sofia Chegodaeva

News

en_EN

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

1920 1080 true

1920 1440 true

1920 1920 true

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

Sofia Chegodaeva

asia, taiwan, china, jets
The past two years have imposed unprecedented challenges on our schools and communities. Schools are feeling the full force of everyday stressors compounded by pandemic fatigue. This has led to an increase in uneasiness, anxiety, outbursts and mental health issues among students, teachers and administrators.

There is an opportunity to address the impacts of this shared trauma proactively. We applaud the Connecticut State Legislatures bipartisan focus on mental health in schools and hope for quick passage of SB 1, SB 2, and HB 5001.

Advertisement

The need for mental health support in schools is not new. Everyday experiences at home and in a childs neighborhood such as neglect, abuse, addiction, financial strain, violence, medical crises, divorce and death lead to states of toxic stress that negatively impact a childs capacity to think, behave and relate to others. Even before the pandemic, many of our students were arriving at school each day with a backpack full of fear, shame, rage and loss.

Children who do not have the tools to handle these stressors are easily triggered, resulting in disruptive behaviors that require time and energy to resolve. COVID-19 has only exacerbated these realities, depriving students of a sense of safety and stretching educators beyond capacity.

Advertisement

Connecticut needs to invest in social models that support the whole child, not only academic achievement. With legislative support, mental health measures in schools should start with open conversations. Children need to know that there are caring, supportive and listening adults in the school.

Opinion Weekly Perspective on the week's biggest stories from the Courant's Opinion page >

Proactive intervention

Empowering students to share their fears and worries is a big step in helping them bolster their psychological immunity, especially if that groundwork is laid before behavioral issues erupt. Providing simple but schoolwide systems of support is essential, especially those that encourage students to share their opinions, feelings, thoughts and personal experiences.

Preventative programs shift the paradigm from issue-focused discipline to honoring a childs experience and helping kids to build lifelong skills. Every adult in the school is potentially a powerful social buffer against the stressors bearing down on students. Open conversations, however difficult, are the key to this transformational journey.

Effective and efficient

Solutions will require a transformation in the scope, mission and culture of the school, from merely educating children about how they should feel to creating opportunities for students to share how they feel, providing solace and a listening ear, and being a place where distress can be expressed. This means normalizing the act of asking children what they need, how they are doing, what is going on with them and what they may need to talk through.

Asking these important questions does not take a lot of time; asking does not take a lot of money; asking does not require experts. Asking only takes courage to hear the truth of what is happening in our childrens lives. By funding these efforts, the state legislature can make a significant contribution to the health of our children.

David Read Johnson is a licensed clinical psychologist in Connecticut and is CEO of Miss Kendra Programs and co-director of the Post Traumatic Stress Center. He has worked with schools in several states to provide trauma-informed social emotional learning programs.
https://sputniknews.com/20220314/turkey-says-it-has-no-interest-in-patriot-missile-system-considers-f-35-issue-closed-1093857324.html

Turkey Says It Has No Interest in Patriot Missile System, Considers F-35 Issue Closed

Turkey Says It Has No Interest in Patriot Missile System, Considers F-35 Issue Closed

Turkey was unceremoniously booted out of the F-35 programme in 2019 over its decision to buy Russias S-400 air defence system, notwithstanding its membership... 14.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-14T11:14+0000

2022-03-14T11:14+0000

2022-03-14T11:47+0000

turkey

united states

s-400

f-35

patriot missile

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/104570/75/1045707529_0:271:5340:3275_1920x0_80_0_0_0f29389b2269e839bbf74f143f4685e3.jpg

Turkey has no interest in purchasing US Patriot surface-to-air missile systems, and considers the F-35 issue closed for the moment, Turkish Defence Industries president Ismail Demir has said.Turkey already has four types of air defence systems in operation today, according to the official, up from zero 3-4 years ago. Of course, until now, Turkey has used aircraft to counter air attacks. But now it has very significant capabilities at the [ground] level. The S-400 cannot be disregarded. It is one of the best air defence systems in the world. I believe it will provide a great advantage in terms of air defence, Demir said.Demir also commented on the state of the F-35 negotiations recently started up with the US.Russia and Turkey penned a $2.5 billion deal for the delivery of 4 batteries of S-400 air defence systems in 2017, after years of fruitless negotiations between Ankara and Washington on the possible sale of Patriot missile systems to the country. Turkeys S-400s were delivered in 2019. Washington responded by kicking Turkey out of the F-35 programme, notwithstanding Ankaras role in developing the fighter, and status as the producer of parts for the jets centre fuselage, cockpit display systems and other 900 other components. In late 2020, the US slapped sanctions on Demir and the Presidency of Defence Industries over the S-400 issue. In mid-2021, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he had no doubts that Ankara would buy a second S-400 regiment from Russia.

https://sputniknews.com/20211116/turkey-negotiating-f-16-contract-with-us-defence-minister-says-1090776880.html

https://sputniknews.com/20220223/turkey-to-use-russias-s-400-systems-in-event-of-missile-attack-on-country---erdogan-1093309787.html

turkey

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

2022

Ilya Tsukanov

Ilya Tsukanov

News

en_EN

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

1920 1080 true

1920 1440 true

1920 1920 true

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

Ilya Tsukanov

turkey, united states, s-400, f-35, patriot missile
https://sputniknews.com/20220314/uk-tate-gallery-severs-ties-with-russian-billionaires-under-sanctions-report-says-1093854909.html

UK Tate Gallery Severs Ties With Russian Billionaires Under Sanctions, Report Says

UK Tate Gallery Severs Ties With Russian Billionaires Under Sanctions, Report Says

LONDON (Sputnik) - The London-based art gallery Tate has severed ties with Russian billionaires Viktor Vekselberg and Petr Aven, who are under Western... 14.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-14T10:18+0000

2022-03-14T10:18+0000

2022-03-14T10:20+0000

uk

russia

gallery

sanctions

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e6/03/0e/1093855115_0:161:3077:1892_1920x0_80_0_0_c0af75eddea083639184886944d8910e.jpg

Aven was included in the EU sanctions list in February amid the situation in Ukraine. Last Saturday, the US Department of the Treasury also imposed new sanctions on Vekselberg, who had been previously included in Washington's sanctions list in 2018. The United States blocked a private plane and mega yacht from Vekselberg."Any historic relationships with former donors associated with the Russian government have now ended," the Tate gallery said, as quoted by the news outlet.In particular, the Tate removed Vekselberg as an honorary member of Tate Foundation, despite his contribution to the development of art."Mr Vekselberg donated to Tate seven years ago and no longer holds his honorary membership title," the gallery reportedly said.The Tate also severed ties with Aven, who participated in two donor programs at the gallery."Mr Aven's support of Tate has now ended," the gallery added, as quoted by the newspaper.The Tate reportedly pledged to take further steps if sanctions are extended to its other partners and donors to support Ukrainians and "join the international condemnation of Russia's invasion."On 24 February, Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine after the breakaway Donbass republics appealed for help in defending themselves against the Ukrainian military. In response, Western nations have rolled out a comprehensive sanctions campaign against Russia.

https://sputniknews.com/20220301/munich-orchestra-fires-conductor-gergiev-for-refusal-to-decry-russian-operation-in-ukraine-1093484690.html

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

2022

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

News

en_EN

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

1920 1080 true

1920 1440 true

1920 1920 true

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

uk, russia, gallery, sanctions
https://sputniknews.com/20220314/ukraine-no-fly-zone-can-only-be-approved-by-un-eus-top-general-says-1093864062.html

Ukraine No-Fly Zone Can Only Be Approved by UN, EUs Top General Says

Ukraine No-Fly Zone Can Only Be Approved by UN, EUs Top General Says

A cacophony of Western lawmakers and media figures have called on their leaders to institute a no-fly zone over Ukraine, notwithstanding the risks of sparking... 14.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-14T13:41+0000

2022-03-14T13:41+0000

2022-03-14T13:41+0000

no-fly-zone

ukraine

nato

european union

russia

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e6/03/0e/1093858162_0:250:3072:1978_1920x0_80_0_0_fd2a1acb716a42391e2596698fa61f71.jpg

Any effort to institute a no-fly zone over Ukraine would require approval from the United Nations Security Council, and the only alternative is war with Russia, European Union military committee chairman Claudio Graziano has said.The general praised Western sanctions against Russia, calling them a dutiful, extraordinary and unanimous response to Moscows military operation in Ukraine, and emphasizing that their impact will increase over time. He admitted that the restrictions will undoubtedly also have a very high cost for those who applied them  such as Italy, which over the years has not diversified their energy supply.Graziano promised that the European Union would achieve full rapid deployment capacity of 5,000 troops by 2025, and that a common European defence force of at least 60,000 troops, usable up to 6,000 km beyond European borders, was in the offing. The general also called on EU nations to optimize military spending, saying the blocs annual 230 billion euros in outlays includes up to 100 billion euros in waste caused by duplication of systems and the loss of economies of scale.No-Fly Zones: A Brief HistoryThe US and its NATO allies have used no-fly zones three times since the end of the Cold War, targeting Iraq, Bosnia and Libya. The no-fly zone instituted over Iraq between 1991 and 2003 was implemented unilaterally by the US and its allies, and did not receive approval from the UN, which called them illegal. The no-fly zone was repeatedly used by coalition forces to attack ground targets, with Baghdad estimating that some 1,400 Iraqi civilians were killed in US and British strikes through the 12 years the zone was implemented.Between 1993 and 1995, NATO aircraft implemented a UN-authorized no-fly zone over Bosnia. The Western alliance used the authorization to carry out airstrikes against hundreds of targets, including Serbian forces, but also civilian infrastructure such as waterworks, bridges, hospitals and television and radio broadcast facilities, killing over 150 civilians and polluting the region with depleted uranium.In March 2011, the United Nations Security Council approved the creation of a no-fly zone over Libya with Russia, China, India, Brazil and Germany abstaining from the vote after receiving assurances that the measure would be solely aimed at preventing attacks against civilian targets by the Libyan government. Instead, the resolution was used by the US and its NATO and Gulf allies to bomb Libyan government forces with impunity. Vladimir Putin, who was serving as Russias prime minister at the time, called the resolution authorizing the no-fly zone defective and flawed, and suggested that it resembles medieval calls for crusades.The campaign of NATO bombings succeeded, Gaddafi was overthrown and tortured to death by rebels, and Libya was turned into a failed state rife with open-air slave markets and terrorist activity.

https://sputniknews.com/20220312/russia-could-resume-security-dialogue-with-us-if-washington-is-ready-deputy-fm-says-1093803083.html

https://sputniknews.com/20220113/serbia-to-file-2-more-lawsuits-against-nato-over-uranium-bombing-1092236013.html

https://sputniknews.com/20220307/us-senators-fear-setting-up-no-fly-zone-over-ukraine-could-spark-world-war-iii-1093663413.html

ukraine

european union

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

2022

Ilya Tsukanov

Ilya Tsukanov

News

en_EN

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

1920 1080 true

1920 1440 true

1920 1920 true

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

Ilya Tsukanov

no-fly-zone, ukraine, nato, european union, russia
https://sputniknews.com/20220314/us-abuses-status-of-un-headquarters-host-county---russian-foreign-ministry-1093842491.html

US Abuses Status of UN Headquarters Host County - Russian Foreign Ministry

US Abuses Status of UN Headquarters Host County - Russian Foreign Ministry

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - The United States is increasingly abusing its position as the host country of the United Nations headquarters for political gain, Petr... 14.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-14T02:32+0000

2022-03-14T02:32+0000

2022-03-14T02:31+0000

russia

un

un headquarters in new york

russian foreign ministry

abuse

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e5/07/0a/1083353164_0:123:2367:1454_1920x0_80_0_0_f737657aeb0f3247f1acb3025a8ed9ad.jpg

"Recently, the United States has been increasingly abusing its position as the host country of the UN headquarters to extract unilateral political benefits and put pressure on the missions of other countries," Ilichev said.He emphasized that such actions by Washington violate fundamental international legal norms, including those enshrined in the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1961 and the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations of 1963.Earlier this month, 12 diplomats from Russia's permanent mission to the UN, as well as their family members, arrived in Russia after they were declared personae non grata by the United States and ordered to leave the US by March 7.At the time, the US mission to the UN explained that the diplomats were being expelled because they had allegedly "abused their privileges of residency in the United States by engaging in espionage activities that are adverse to our national security.""We are taking this action in accordance with the UN Headquarters Agreement. This action has been in development for several months," officials further noted.The development, however, was blasted by Vasily Nebenzia, who serves as the Russian envoy to the UN body. Per Nebenzia, the move was yet "another hostile step" toward Russian officials. Incidentally, news of the US' measure came just as Nebenzia was set to announce the end of his time as the head of the UN body.

un headquarters in new york

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

2022

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

News

en_EN

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

1920 1080 true

1920 1440 true

1920 1920 true

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

russia, un, un headquarters in new york, russian foreign ministry, abuse
https://sputniknews.com/20220314/us-must-immediately-stop-cyberattacks-against-china---chinese-foreign-ministry-1093858401.html

US Must Immediately Stop Cyberattacks Against China - Chinese Foreign Ministry

US Must Immediately Stop Cyberattacks Against China - Chinese Foreign Ministry

BEIJING (Sputnik) - The United States must take a more responsible position on cyberspace and immediately stop cyberattacks against China, Chinese Foreign... 14.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-14T11:35+0000

2022-03-14T11:35+0000

2022-03-14T11:35+0000

world

cyber security

china

us

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/105359/80/1053598099_0:225:3501:2194_1920x0_80_0_0_bd7e963174b4150449ce810ef1541ef7.jpg

"China urges the US government to take a more responsible position on cyberspace and stop malicious network activity immediately," the diplomat said.Zhao called the US a "hacker empire" and expressed great concern over cyberattacks carried out from the country, which uses China as a bridgehead to harm other states.Last Friday, the Chinese Xinhua news agency reported that foreign hackers had taken control of China's computers to attack Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. In 87% of cases, the cyberattacks aimed to target Russia. According to the media, the majority of the cyberattacks came from the United States. The rest of them were carried out from Germany, the Netherlands and other countries.On 24 February, Russia began a military operation in Ukraine, responding to calls for help from the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Lugansk in countering the aggression of Ukrainian troops. After that, the Anonymous hacking group declared a "cyberwar against the Russian government" in protest against the operation.

china

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

2022

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

News

en_EN

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

1920 1080 true

1920 1440 true

1920 1920 true

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

world, cyber security, china, us
https://sputniknews.com/20220314/us-police-fear-serial-shooter-is-targeting-individuals-living-on-the-streets-in-nyc-washington-dc-1093844163.html

US Police Fear Serial Shooter is Targeting Individuals Living on the Streets in NYC, Washington DC

US Police Fear Serial Shooter is Targeting Individuals Living on the Streets in NYC, Washington DC

In New York City and Washington, DC, there already exists an understandable amount of fear among the houseless community. Now, a murderer is ramping up that... 14.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-14T04:09+0000

2022-03-14T04:09+0000

2022-03-14T04:08+0000

homelessness

new york city

washington dc

serial street shooter

us

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/105034/36/1050343647_0:0:1920:1080_1920x0_80_0_0_1b3b4341dd4eb2d756f9e70e395f128f.jpg

The suspect has killed two men in New Yorl City so far, and police say they are investigating whether or not those murders may be linked to three attacks on individuals living on the streets in the nations capital. The shootings took place between March 3 and March 12.Due to the similarities in the nature of these crimes, as well as the images of the suspect, police in both major cities have teamed up in their investigative efforts.According to the NYPD, the first assault took place on March 3 near the 1100 block of New York Avenue in DC, at around 4 a.m. local time. The man who was shot was taken to a nearby hospital, according to police. Although the individual suffered from a gunshot wound, they were not fatal.A few days later on March 8, another shooting was reported around 1:21 a.m. local time near 1700 H Street in DC, in which a second man was shot and injured.On March 9, the first homicide in what police suspect are related murders took place. Local authorities detailed that the individual was stabbed multiple times, shot, and left for dead in his tent before the suspect lit it on fire. That was on 400 New York Ave in DC, at around 3:00 a.m.On March 12, a 38-year-old man in NYC was shot while sleeping on King Street between Varick Street and 6th Ave around 4:30 a.m. The man was shot in his arm, woke up and started screaming, causing the suspect to flee the scene.According to the NYPD, the next attack took place outside 148 Lafayette St. The victim was shot in his head and neck while resting in his sleeping bag on the street.Our homeless population is one of our most vulnerable and an individual praying on them as they sleep is an exceptionally heinous crime," Police Commissioner Keechant L. Sewell said in a statement. "We will use every tool, every technique and every partner to bring the killer to justice.Adams called the crime a chilling act of cold-blooded murder. Both Adams and the NYPD have asked for the publics assistance in sharing information in their investigation to find the killer, who remains at large.If you were walking in the area, if you heard the shots, if the face or clothing seem familiar, if the sneakers he was wearing was something you saw on the train or on the streets- we need your help to find this person, said Adams.The demonization of homeless people is the wrong mindset. There but for the grace of God go I. These are our brothers and sisters who have fallen on hard times. We have an obligation to provide them with the services they deserve, noted Adams.One in every 106 New Yorkers are homeless. In DC, 681 people are without shelter and sleeping on the streets, while 3,352 are in emergency shelters.A reward for information on the shooting has increased to $10,000. The suspect was caught on camera dressed in black, wearing a balaclava, black sneakers, and blue medical gloves. He appears to be a man with a tall, slim build.Let's stay in touch no matter what! Follow our Telegram channel to get all the latest news: https://t.me/sputniknewsus

washington dc

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

2022

Mary Manley https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e6/01/0b/1092187887_0:0:2048:2049_100x100_80_0_0_0c2cc4c84f89aff034cc55bb01fb6697.jpg

Mary Manley https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e6/01/0b/1092187887_0:0:2048:2049_100x100_80_0_0_0c2cc4c84f89aff034cc55bb01fb6697.jpg

News

en_EN

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

1920 1080 true

1920 1440 true

1920 1920 true

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

Mary Manley https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e6/01/0b/1092187887_0:0:2048:2049_100x100_80_0_0_0c2cc4c84f89aff034cc55bb01fb6697.jpg

homelessness, new york city, washington dc, serial street shooter, us
https://sputniknews.com/20220314/us-watching-very-closely-for-chinese-support-to-russia-amid-ukraine-op-state-department-says-1093871012.html

US Watching 'Very Closely' for Chinese Support to Russia Amid Ukraine Op, State Department Says

US Watching 'Very Closely' for Chinese Support to Russia Amid Ukraine Op, State Department Says

Earlier, Chinese and Russian officials each dismissed claims made by anonymous US officials to Western media that the People's Republic was prepared to assist... 14.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-14T18:26+0000

2022-03-14T18:26+0000

2022-03-14T19:37+0000

ukraine

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/107649/46/1076494695_0:235:2805:1813_1920x0_80_0_0_eb4ca702f77458951e904e78a75a4c1c.jpg

Washington is watching 'very closely' to what extent if any China is providing support to Russia during its operation in Ukraine, State Department spokesman Ned Price has said.Biden National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan met with senior Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi in Rome on Monday to discuss 'a range of issues' in bilateral relations, with talks reportedly including "substantial discussion of Russia's war against Ukraine," according to the White House.Sullivan, Price said, "raised directly and very clearly our concerns about the PRC's support to Russia" during the meeting, as well as "the implications that any such support would have for the PRC's relationship not only with us but for its relationships around the world."The State Department spokesman also suggested that China has special "leverage" with Russia and said Beijing "could do more" to stop the Russian military operation in Ukraine. "We have communicated very clearly to Beijing that we won't stand by. We will not allow any country to compensate Russia for its losses," he warned.The spokesman further indicated that the US has "coordinated very closely" with its allies and partners on a possible retaliation against China, if it was demonstrated that Beijing has provided Russia with any tangible economic or military assistance. "We're not going to preview where this might go. Obviously we don't want to entertain a hypothetical like that at this point," he said."We have been very clear both privately with Beijing, publicly with Beijing that there would be consequences for such support," Price said. Price went on to accuse Russia and China of sharing a "vision of the world that is in stark contrast to the vision that the United States and our allies and partners have not only built and promoted and defended, but that the system itself has advantaged countries like the PRC and Russia."Moscow and Beijing have each dismissed reporting by Western outlets and news agencies citing anonymous officials about the alleged delivery of Chinese weapons and/or economic support to Russia, or offers of such support being made."The US has been spreading disinformation targeting China on the Ukraine issue, with malicious intentions," Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said in a statement Monday when asked to comment on the reports. Zhao's statement were preceded by comments by a spokesman at the Chinese Embassy in Washington who rejected claims that Moscow had approached Beijing for help. "The current situation in Ukraine is indeed disconcerting. The high priority now is to prevent the tense situation from escalating or even getting out of control," Embassy spokesman Liu Pengyu said.Russia also dismissed the claims, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov telling reporters Monday that Moscow has not requested military aid from the PRC or any other country. "Newspapers write a lot nowadays, and shouldn't be used as a primary source. Russia has the capability to independently continue the operation, as we have said, it is developing according to plan and will be completed on time and in full," Peskov said.Russia began a large-scale military operation in Ukraine on 24 February aimed at demilitarizing the country and ridding Kiev of the outsized influence of neo-nazi forces in the security forces, the military and politics. The operation was started after weeks of escalating shelling, sabotage and sniper attacks by Ukrainian forces against the Donbass republics, which Moscow recognized as sovereign nations on 21 February.

https://sputniknews.com/20220313/us-national-security-adviser-beijing-will-face-consequences-if-it-helps-moscow-dodge-sanctions-1093837483.html

https://sputniknews.com/20220314/never-heard-of-that-chinese-embassy-to-us-rejects-claim-russia-asked-china-for-help-in-ukraine-1093840504.html

https://sputniknews.com/20220314/china-slams-claims-about-russia-asking-for-military-assistance-in-ukraine-op-as-us-disinformation-1093849869.html

ukraine

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

2022

Ilya Tsukanov

Ilya Tsukanov

News

en_EN

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

1920 1080 true

1920 1440 true

1920 1920 true

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

Ilya Tsukanov

ukraine
https://sputniknews.com/20220314/watch-indias-sacred-city-varanasi-celebrate-colour-festival-holi-with-cremains-snakes-and-smoke-1093866593.html

Watch Indias Sacred City Varanasi Celebrate Colour Festival Holi with Cremains, Snakes and Smoke

Watch Indias Sacred City Varanasi Celebrate Colour Festival Holi with Cremains, Snakes and Smoke

Holi - the festival of colours - is underway in India. Though celebrated differently depending on where you are in India's vast country, Holi commemorates the... 14.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-14T17:54+0000

2022-03-14T17:54+0000

2022-03-14T17:54+0000

india

holi

festival

varanasi

narendra modi

colour

snake

smoke

toxic smoke

crematorium

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/107834/28/1078342801_0:125:3199:1924_1920x0_80_0_0_e80aa499515284eba76d13ff8987aa89.jpg

0People in Varanasi - Indias ancient city which has also been dubbed the Jerusalem of Hinduism - started celebrating the week-long color festival on Monday with Bhasma Holi.Bhasma (cremated remains or "cremains") Holi is a unique tradition in Varanasi whereby youths and elders congregate at the centuries-old crematorium located on the bank of the holy Ganges river on Ekadashi (the 11th day of the Hindu month Falguna) every year.According to popular mythology, Lord Shiva played Holi with ghosts, spirits, and invisible forces at that very crematorium, a day after his marriage to the Goddess Parvati.Monday witnessed the onset of Bhasma Holi with youngsters cheering and joining the wise counsellors in the fanfare at Manikarnika Ghat (cremation ground where thousands of corpses are burnt each day according to Hindu ritual) of Varanasi. The celebrations started with the sages lifting their voices to lord Shiva and smearing the co-revellers with ashes collected from the pyres and throwing them into the air. Some hermits were also seen dancing in a trance with snakes wrapped around their neck. Smoking strange herbal substances is also an integral part of the celebrations. After Bhasm Holi, people of Varanasi - which is the parliamentary constituency of Prime Minister Narendra Modi - celebrate Holi by throwing about Rang (differently coloured bright powders). The festival will end on 18 March with people from all round the country celebrating in their own ways - although the delights of playing with colorful balloons, getting drenched in coloured water, taking a dip in muddy puddles and throwing coloured powder in the air are all pretty universal throughout the country.

varanasi

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

2022

Rishikesh Kumar https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e4/08/04/1080055820_0:0:388:389_100x100_80_0_0_40018ee210946d65d49ffba4f4c008e1.jpg

Rishikesh Kumar https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e4/08/04/1080055820_0:0:388:389_100x100_80_0_0_40018ee210946d65d49ffba4f4c008e1.jpg

News

en_EN

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

1920 1080 true

1920 1440 true

1920 1920 true

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

Rishikesh Kumar https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e4/08/04/1080055820_0:0:388:389_100x100_80_0_0_40018ee210946d65d49ffba4f4c008e1.jpg

india, holi, festival, varanasi, narendra modi, colour, snake, smoke, toxic smoke, crematorium
https://sputniknews.com/20220314/wikileaks-julian-assange-denied-right-to-appeal-extradition-decision-to-uk-supreme-court-1093869242.html

WikiLeaks' Julian Assange Denied Right to Appeal Extradition Decision to UK Supreme Court

WikiLeaks' Julian Assange Denied Right to Appeal Extradition Decision to UK Supreme Court

The US Department of Justice unveiled in 2019 a series of 18 charges against WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange, accusing him of violating the Espionage Act... 14.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-14T17:01+0000

2022-03-14T17:01+0000

2022-03-14T18:14+0000

julian assange

wikileaks

uk supreme court

extradition

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e5/0c/0a/1091415757_0:320:3073:2048_1920x0_80_0_0_1cd1f9de8a4f756ccf9702ffcbaf6460.jpg

The UK Supreme Court has denied Assange's appeal of a December 2021 decision by the London High Court to allow his extradition to the United States. The decision now falls to UK Home Secretary Priti Patel to authorize the extradition, WikiLeaks said in a Twitter statement.According to a statement by Birnberg Peirce, Assange's solicitors, the Supreme Court decided that "the application does not raise an arguable point of law."The DOJ has accused Assange of violating the 1917 Espionage Act because WikiLeaks printed documents revealing US war crimes in Iraq, including a 2007 incident in Baghdad in which a US Army helicopter was filmed shooting unarmed civilians, including two Reuters journalists, which the Pentagon had tried to cover up. The video, along with a slew of other documents, was found and given to WikiLeaks by then-US Army analyst Chelsea Manning, who was sentenced to 35 years in prison for doing so in 2013. Manning was later pardoned in 2017 by outgoing US President Barack Obama.In January, the high court decided to allow Assange to appeal their decision to the Supreme Court. The high court had hesitated at first to extradite Assange due to conditions in US prisons, initially rejecting the US request before granting it following an appeal by the Biden administration.

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

2022

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

News

en_EN

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

1920 1080 true

1920 1440 true

1920 1920 true

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

julian assange, wikileaks, uk supreme court, extradition
A Virginia State University student was found dead in an off-campus apartment early Saturday.

In a release from Chesterfield County Police Department, officials said they were called to University Apartments at Ettrick about 2:30 a.m. after campus officers alerted them to the body. Police said there were no signs of trauma.

Chesterfield County police are investigating the death and an autopsy is underway at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Richmond. The students name and age is not being released until the family has been notified.

This students death was the second at the University Apartments in Ettrick in three months. Another VSU student was killed there in a December shooting.

Richmond TimesDispatch
New outbreak calls for quick response

09:06, March 14, 2022 By China Daily editorial ( Chinadaily.com.cn

A medical worker takes a swab sample from a child for nucleic acid test at a community in Dongjing township, Songjiang district of Shanghai, East China, March 13, 2022. [Photo/Xinhua]

In a country where any local outbreak of the novel coronavirus is sufficient to trigger the lockdown of a neighborhood or a citywide epidemiological investigation, the appearance of 1,807 local cases on the Chinese mainland on Saturday poses a grave challenge due to the Omicron variant.

Although 1,412 out of the 1,807 cases have been reported in Jilin province, with the two largest cities, Changchun and Jilin, accounting for 831 and 571 respectively, the virus is appearing in 20 provincial-level regions. There are now 13 high-risk areas and 209 intermediate-risk areas scattered across the mainland.

That hundreds of asymptomatic cases are also being reported every day, along with confirmed cases, points to the fact that the resurgence of the epidemic is the worst in nearly two years, featuring a fast increase in cases, which means prompt actions and effective measures are needed to control the latest wave of the virus.

The instructions Vice-Premier Sun Chunlan gave on Saturday in response to the epidemic situation serve to show that the country will continue to uphold its dynamic clearing policy.

On behalf of the central authorities, Sun urged local governments to take resolute measures to bring the clusters of infections under control as soon as possible to ensure the achievements the whole country has made in the battle against the virus are not undone.

That means the hard-hit regions, including Jilin, Shandong and Guangdong provinces, must strictly carry out the epidemic prevention and control work, repeatedly screen their populations with nucleic acid tests, rigorously implement centralized and home quarantines and stringently manage the containment and control areas in a bid to completely block community transmission as quickly as possible.

At the same time, attention should be given to guard against imported cases, especially at port cities, by strictly implementing a closed-loop management model. The members of staff in charge of this management in hotels, airports, terminals and hospitals should also be subject to closed-loop management.

That the public health authorities on Friday gave the green light to the public buying antigen test kits will improve the sensitivity of the monitoring and early warning system. Although generally less accurate than nucleic acid testing, which is employed for the country's mass testing campaigns, antigen tests provide quicker results. Sun said that adopting a model of "antigen tests for screening, nucleic acid tests for diagnosis" will improve the early warning mechanism in response to the rapid transmission characteristics of the Omicron variant of the virus.

Clearly in light of Omicron's ease of transmission, people must keep their vigilance high and do all they can to make their due contribution to the country's addressing of the latest challenge from the virus in the shortest time possible.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, second from left, visits with Ukrainian refugees in Poland over the weekend. (Photo courtesy of Sen. Richard Blumenthal)

HARTFORD  On a three-day trip to Poland, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal said Sunday that he saw misery and desperation in the eyes of Ukrainian refugees as they were fleeing their homeland from constant bombings and shelling by Russia.

On Sunday, bombs landed within 15 miles of the border crossing where Blumenthal had visited earlier with fellow senators as part of a bipartisan American delegation.

Advertisement

One of our clear takeaways from this is the urgency of providing more military support  whether planes like the MiG29s or anti-aircraft batteries or drones to give Ukraine a better means of air defense, Blumenthal said in a telephone interview Sunday from Poland. These bombings today emphasize the urgency of providing this immediate assistance because [Russian President Vladimir] Putins air superiority is enabling him to slaughter and terrorize the Ukrainian people.

As valiant and as skilled as the Ukrainian fighters are on the ground, they need more Javelin and Stinger missiles to counter the tanks and the artillery, as well as the aircraft. They need more effective means of air defense. They need more Javelin missiles to fight the tanks. They have proved enormously effective. As a member of the Armed Services Committee, I have a clear to-do list when I go back to colleagues this week, and I will be telling them what weve seen and heard.

Advertisement

The biggest problem Sunday was the Russian missiles that hit a military post in western Ukraine, killing 35 and wounding about 135 others. As the war in Ukraine continues and the resistance remains strong, the Russians are now asking China for military equipment, American officials said.

Blumenthal remained with the delegation in Poland and did not enter the war zone in Ukraine to directly witness the damage.

Our ever-vigilant security would not allow us to cross the border, Blumenthal said. The authorities didnt want us to go anywhere near the site. We didnt see the destruction. We were 12 miles away. But we met refugees, and we talked to Polish authorities who were there at the time.

On a bipartisan trip with three other U.S. senators, Blumenthal met with troops from the Armys 82nd Airborne Division, including some from Connecticut. They also met at the American embassy with U.S. Ambassador Mark Brzezinski, the son of former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and brother of television journalist Mika. The ambassador is working ably to assure that we and our NATO allies are solidly united in support of Ukraine, Blumenthal said, adding, Our standing strong together is Putins worst nightmare.

The delegation included Sen. Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican who serves on the Armed Services Committee. They traveled with Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, and Sen. Rob Portman, an Ohio Republican. The same foursome had traveled to Ukraine in January over the Martin Luther King weekend.

In a picture tweeted by Blumenthal, the four senators could be seen serving hungry refugees through the World Central Kitchen that provides meals across the globe under often-difficult circumstances on an emergency basis.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy shakes hands with a wounded soldier during his visit to a hospital in Kyiv, Ukraine. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP) (AP)

In an ongoing battle against Ukrainian civilians that has included the bombings of a maternity hospital and nursery schools, Putin should be prosecuted as a war criminal, Blumenthal said.

The Polish people are now coming to the aid of Ukrainian victims because of Vladimir Putins absolutely savage, ruthless, criminal invasion, Blumenthal said. The more I have seen and heard from eyewitnesses to Putins terrorist campaign, the more convinced I am that he should be held accountable as a war criminal.

Advertisement

That would be done at the International Criminal Court at The Hague in the Netherlands.

In the real world, the chances of Vladimir Putin being apprehended and tried may seem remote, but it is an important part of the picture to understand that what he has done constitutes war crimes, Blumenthal said.

As part of the trip, the four senators spoke with refugees who described gut-wrenching stories about fleeing their homeland as the war rages, he said. More than 2 million refugees have fled Ukraine with many headed west to Poland  and the total could eventually reach millions more.

They are terrified, grief-stricken and deeply anxious about their future, Blumenthal said. Its on their faces, in their voices, and the tears are so moving and powerful.

Republican Robert Hyde, one of five candidates seeking the partys nomination to run against Blumenthal in November, said Blumenthal should not have traveled to Poland and dismissed the trip as a series of photo opportunities.

Wasting fuel, resources and polluting the environment when he couldve done this ... on Zoom, Hyde said. Couldnt it be done on Webex, satellite phone or whatever satellite devices the government utilizes for classified communications?

Advertisement

Blumenthal declined to comment on Hyde, saying politics could be discussed later during the campaign as the candidates head toward the November election.

This bipartisan trip, Blumenthal said, put us on the ground in a very moving and powerful way to see and hear refugees and visit with American troops, as well as diplomats and Polish officials and report back to my colleagues so that America can provide more and better assistance to the courageous, determined freedom fighters of Ukraine.

Christopher Keating can be reached at ckeating@courant.com
In terms of Nebraska history, it doesn't get more high-profile than to have a congressman on trial for three felonies while he's running a reelection campaign.

Historic. Climactic. Dramatic? That's left to be seen.

Certainly, the result will be dramatic, as Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, Nebraska's 1st District congressman, fights for his political life. In the past century, Nebraska has seen other high-profile elected officials face felonies, including a Nebraska attorney general in 1984.

As a sitting U.S. congressman, Fortenberry takes that potential ignominy to a new level.

But that doesn't mean Fortenberry's trial, which starts Wednesday in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom, will be cinematic.

In fact, strip away the fact that he's a congressman, and Fortenberry is no different from the hundreds of federal defendants who get charged every year with lying to the FBI. In other cases, such charges are exactly as they appear in Fortenberry's case: essentially secondary charges to the underlying charge. In his case, Fortenberry was being investigated on suspicion of accepting a foreigner's campaign contributions through a conduit. It is illegal for U.S. politicians to accept money from foreigners or to use U.S. citizens as conduits to obtain foreigners' money.

Fortenberry's campaign raised $30,000 of such money at a 2016 fundraiser. And prosecutors say Fortenberry, despite having misgivings about the source of that money, later asked a connection if he would be able to put a second fundraiser together.

Federal prosecutors allege he lied to agents about the contributions during two separate interviews.

Fortenberry and his attorneys deny he lied. Attorneys John Littrell and Ryan Fraser said the congressman was set up and that he was misled when he was assured he was "trending towards a witness," not a target, in the investigation into the illegal campaign contributions. They will argue that any misstatements were simply a product of a fallible memory of a 61-year-old man, not of a deliberate attempt to deceive.

The four- to five-day trial  which will take place where Fortenberry's fundraiser did, in Los Angeles  is as high-stakes as it gets.

A preview of the key players and issues, based on numerous court filings and public statements in the case:

Fortenberry

A graduate of Catholic High School in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Fortenberry was an executive for Sandhills Publishing in Lincoln and was an at-large member of Lincolns City Council from 1997 to 2001 before running to replace Doug Bereuter, who retired at the end of 2004. His win in 2004 was the only time he faced a Republican primary challenger. He has been reelected eight times and is now seeking a ninth term.

He is stringently anti-abortion and has advanced several conservative causes during his time in office. He also has experience in foreign policy matters. He once co-sponsored the Middle East Partnership for Peace Act, which aims to ease tensions between Israelis and Palestinians by giving grants and loans to startup businesses. In 2014 and 2015, Fortenberry led efforts to obtain the passage of two resolutions publicly condemning the persecution of Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East.

At some point, those interests led to a relationship with Toufic Baaklini.

Baaklini

In 2014, Baaklini founded In Defense of Christians to advocate for the protection of Christians in the Middle East.

A U.S. citizen of Lebanese descent, Toufic Baaklini has served as a go-to guy for a controversial figure and Nigerian billionaire at the center of this case, Gilbert Chagoury. Baaklini assisted Chagoury with financial and political dealings in the United States, according to federal prosecutors.

One of the aims of Baaklinis group was to get more U.S. congressional involvement surrounding these issues, and (Fortenberry) became an important political ally for Baaklini and his organization, prosecutors wrote.

In turn, the two developed a close relationship, texting and emailing often.

How many of you have ever been able to tell Toufic Baaklini no? Fortenberry once asked at an IDC dinner in 2018, looking into the audience for a show of hands. Its unanimous: no one, he said.

Prosecutors say that Fortenberry had his own request of Baaklini. In late 2015, after introducing the resolution to condemn the persecution of Christians, Fortenberry asked Baaklini to assist him in identifying supporters who would contribute to his reelection campaign.

Baaklini advised defendant that he had a group of Lebanese donors in Los Angeles who wanted to support defendant, and defendant, in turn, directed his fundraising consultant, Alexandra Kendrick, to coordinate the event with Baaklini.

Baaklini is now a cooperating witness in the governments case and has agreed to pay a $90,000 fine for his actions.

Chagoury

He is Nigerian-born, of Lebanese descent and lives in Paris.

Prosecutors allege that Gilbert Chagoury is the source of $180,000 in illegal political contributions to four political candidates, including the $30,000 that was funneled to Fortenberrys campaign.

It is not the first time Chagoury has sought to purchase influence or been linked to corruption.

A household name in Nigeria, Chagoury is well-known among people who look into corruption challenges around the world and among people who know about some of the most "corrupt episodes in recent Nigerian political history, said Matthew Page, a former U.S. State Department expert.

Chagourys role of adviser to a notorious Nigerian dictator in the 1990s is well-documented, and he has had other brushes with scandal since. In addition to the $180,000 in illegal contributions to four political candidates, Chagoury separately routed $50,000 to then-U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, in the form of a purported loan that LaHood never disclosed, as required.

In 2015 and 2016, national news outlets reported that he was a top Clinton Foundation donor. Such a donation was legal but was nonetheless controversial as Hillary Clinton was campaigning for president at that time.

He was a key initial financial backer for Baaklini's nonprofit.

Through Baaklini, Fortenberry also came to know Chagoury based on their shared commitment to (In Defense of Christians) and the cause, and the two personally met twice: once in Washington D.C. and once in Paris, prosecutors wrote.

Chagoury agreed to cooperate with the federal investigation and pay a fine of $1.8 million for his actions.

Individual H

Fortenberry developed a third friend over his work for In Defense of Christians. Prosecutors have referred to the Los Angeles physician in court documents only as Individual H, who also is of Lebanese descent. A former board member of IDC, he also has agreed to cooperate with the government.

In January 2016, Baaklini provided $30,000 of Chagourys money in cash to Individual H at a restaurant in LA with instructions that Individual H host a fundraiser for Fortenberry and recruit other individuals (conduits) to contribute Chagourys money to defendants campaign, prosecutors wrote.

Kendrick

At the time, Alexandra Kendrick was a fundraising consultant for Fortenberry.

In early February 2016, Baaklini introduced Kendrick to Individual H as the host of the Los Angeles fundraiser. In the lead-up to the 2016 fundraiser, Kendrick repeatedly emphasized to (Fortenberry) the potential risk of illegal foreign and conduit contributions with this event, prosecutors said.

She relayed ... a cautionary tale in which she coordinated for a different client a fundraiser that similarly had ties with foreign nationals from the same community. (She) later learned that the contributions from that event were illegal foreign and conduit contributions.

Kendrick was so concerned that she told Fortenberry that she would insist that the donors complete the contribution forms in person at her table, given her concerns about possible conduit contributions.

The critical issue

The trial beginning Wednesday will come down to the ability of prosecutors to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Fortenberry knowingly and intentionally lied or tried to conceal the contributions?

It is not enough for Fortenberry to just have been mistaken; he has to have been deliberate in any lies to federal agents.

Prosecutors say Fortenberry wasnt just mistaken.

A short time after the 2016 fundraiser, (Fortenberry) saw Baaklini in Washington, D.C., prosecutors wrote. In a private conversation, defendant asked Baaklini if he thought anything was wrong with the 2016 fundraiser. Baaklini falsely told him no and inquired why defendant was asking.

In response, defendant noted that the money had all come from one family. Baaklini again falsely told defendant nothing was wrong with the fundraiser.

A month later, Fortenberrys resolution condemning the persecution of Christians in the Middle East passed.

Over the next two years, Fortenberry and Individual H kept in contact, largely through texts. In the spring of 2018, Fortenberry was readying for reelection. He went back to Individual H.

Fortenberry "asked Individual H if he would host another fundraising event in Los Angeles for him," prosecutors Mack Jenkins and Susan Har wrote. "Individual H agreed to look into it."

On June 4, 2018, Individual H, who by then was cooperating, called Fortenberry while FBI agents were recording, according to prosecutors.

"During that nine-minute call, Individual H repeatedly discussed with defendant that Baaklini had given Individual H $30,000 cash to contribute to the 2016 fundraiser. He mentioned that Chagoury 'was probably the ultimate source of the money ... because he was so grateful for (Fortenberrys) support (for) the cause.'

Fortenberry did not express surprise or concern or seek clarification about Individual Hs admissions that illegal foreign cash had been funneled to his campaign, prosecutors wrote.

Instead, defendant continued to push the second fundraiser, explaining that he hoped to have some continuation of the fine generosity that he had received from the first fundraiser, prosecutors said.

The defense

Fortenberry's attorneys, John Littrell and Ryan Fraser, have argued that the call was a setup, that Fortenberry relied on assurances he was trending toward being a witness and that he never deliberately misled authorities. Littrell and Fraser also tried to introduce a memory expert to testify to the unreliability of memory. But the judge has declined to allow that person's testimony, in part because, he says, the expert is simply stating the obvious when it comes to memory. The attorneys can argue such matters, the judge ruled.

Chad Kolton, Fortenberry's campaign spokesman, said the "case centers on an approximately 10-minute-long phone call prosecutors directed their informant (Individual H) to make to Jeff Fortenberry to implant information with him they knew he did not have."

"FBI agents then used false pretenses to interview Fortenberry in his home nearly a year later, and when he failed to recall the details of the brief call to their satisfaction, California prosecutors moved to indict him," Kolton said. "Something the FBI's own materials show they planned to do before the interview even took place."

The judge

Judge Stanley Blumenfeld Jr. is a longtime judge in California who was on the state bench for 15 years before becoming a federal judge. He was appointed to two judgeships by celebrities-turned-politicians  to the state court bench by then-California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2005 and to the federal court bench by then-President Donald Trump in 2020.

No-nonsense but polite, he comes to hearings with a command of issues and pointed questions. He cuts off attorneys who veer off topic. Notably, he has bristled at the Fortenberry teams requests to delve into the political views of jurors, and the political donations of Mack Jenkins, the lead prosecutor.

He once was incredulous at an attorneys comment that the judge should recuse himself unless he was planning to dismiss the case against Fortenberry. Maybe give me a serious response, the judge scolded.

Blumenfeld himself served for four years, early in his career, in the same U.S. Attorneys Office that houses the prosecutors in this case. Blumenfeld was, however, an attorney on the civil side. As a state court judge, he presided over more than 200 criminal trials.

The jury

As often is the case in federal court, the judge will do all questioning of prospective jurors. Fortenberrys team fought hard to have the case moved to Nebraska, in part because Fortenberry is from here but also because of their fear of the political views of Californians.

Its vital that we know if people have a bias against Republicans in our jury pool, Littrell told the judge last week.

Blumenfeld wasnt so sure. He agreed that he would try to detect biases, but said a blanket political party inquiry can lead to jurors seeing an easy way out of jury duty by flatly declaring they dont like one party.

The judge suggested that very few jurors review matters only through a political lens  and he questioned if it will even come up that Fortenberry is Republican. Littrell countered that some jurors will figure it out and might assume that Fortenberry is Republican because hes from Nebraska.

In that downtown L.A. courtroom, Nebraska "will seem like a foreign place, Littrell said. I think jurors will assume there are different values there.

The consequence

It's hard to overstate this. A conviction would mean Fortenberry would face up to five years in prison on each of the three counts, though supervised release also is a possibility.

In an interesting twist, it wouldnt necessarily mean that he would be booted from Congress. Congress has had its share of felons over the years  and unless that felony involves treason, it doesnt require automatic dismissal.

That said, Fortenberry is facing a Republican primary challenger for the first time since his original 2004 run. Republican state Sen. Mike Flood of Norfolk has made the indictment the center of a recent ad. Two Democrats are vying to battle the Fortenberry-Flood winner.

Make no mistake: Fortenberry is fighting for his life as a politician and as a free man.

"Jeff Fortenberry has always had great faith in the American people's ability to judge what is fair and just," Kolton said Friday. "When the jury hears the facts in this case, they will recognize his innocence."

The World-Herald's Sheritha Jones and Sara Gentzler contributed to this report.

Submit Your News We're always interested in hearing about news in our community. Let us know what's going on! Go to form
Country

United States of America US Virgin Islands United States Minor Outlying Islands Canada Mexico, United Mexican States Bahamas, Commonwealth of the Cuba, Republic of Dominican Republic Haiti, Republic of Jamaica Afghanistan Albania, People's Socialist Republic of Algeria, People's Democratic Republic of American Samoa Andorra, Principality of Angola, Republic of Anguilla Antarctica (the territory South of 60 deg S) Antigua and Barbuda Argentina, Argentine Republic Armenia Aruba Australia, Commonwealth of Austria, Republic of Azerbaijan, Republic of Bahrain, Kingdom of Bangladesh, People's Republic of Barbados Belarus Belgium, Kingdom of Belize Benin, People's Republic of Bermuda Bhutan, Kingdom of Bolivia, Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana, Republic of Bouvet Island (Bouvetoya) Brazil, Federative Republic of British Indian Ocean Territory (Chagos Archipelago) British Virgin Islands Brunei Darussalam Bulgaria, People's Republic of Burkina Faso Burundi, Republic of Cambodia, Kingdom of Cameroon, United Republic of Cape Verde, Republic of Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad, Republic of Chile, Republic of China, People's Republic of Christmas Island Cocos (Keeling) Islands Colombia, Republic of Comoros, Union of the Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, People's Republic of Cook Islands Costa Rica, Republic of Cote D'Ivoire, Ivory Coast, Republic of the Cyprus, Republic of Czech Republic Denmark, Kingdom of Djibouti, Republic of Dominica, Commonwealth of Ecuador, Republic of Egypt, Arab Republic of El Salvador, Republic of Equatorial Guinea, Republic of Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia Faeroe Islands Falkland Islands (Malvinas) Fiji, Republic of the Fiji Islands Finland, Republic of France, French Republic French Guiana French Polynesia French Southern Territories Gabon, Gabonese Republic Gambia, Republic of the Georgia Germany Ghana, Republic of Gibraltar Greece, Hellenic Republic Greenland Grenada Guadaloupe Guam Guatemala, Republic of Guinea, Revolutionary People's Rep'c of Guinea-Bissau, Republic of Guyana, Republic of Heard and McDonald Islands Holy See (Vatican City State) Honduras, Republic of Hong Kong, Special Administrative Region of China Hrvatska (Croatia) Hungary, Hungarian People's Republic Iceland, Republic of India, Republic of Indonesia, Republic of Iran, Islamic Republic of Iraq, Republic of Ireland Israel, State of Italy, Italian Republic Japan Jordan, Hashemite Kingdom of Kazakhstan, Republic of Kenya, Republic of Kiribati, Republic of Korea, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Republic of Kuwait, State of Kyrgyz Republic Lao People's Democratic Republic Latvia Lebanon, Lebanese Republic Lesotho, Kingdom of Liberia, Republic of Libyan Arab Jamahiriya Liechtenstein, Principality of Lithuania Luxembourg, Grand Duchy of Macao, Special Administrative Region of China Macedonia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Madagascar, Republic of Malawi, Republic of Malaysia Maldives, Republic of Mali, Republic of Malta, Republic of Marshall Islands Martinique Mauritania, Islamic Republic of Mauritius Mayotte Micronesia, Federated States of Moldova, Republic of Monaco, Principality of Mongolia, Mongolian People's Republic Montserrat Morocco, Kingdom of Mozambique, People's Republic of Myanmar Namibia Nauru, Republic of Nepal, Kingdom of Netherlands Antilles Netherlands, Kingdom of the New Caledonia New Zealand Nicaragua, Republic of Niger, Republic of the Nigeria, Federal Republic of Niue, Republic of Norfolk Island Northern Mariana Islands Norway, Kingdom of Oman, Sultanate of Pakistan, Islamic Republic of Palau Palestinian Territory, Occupied Panama, Republic of Papua New Guinea Paraguay, Republic of Peru, Republic of Philippines, Republic of the Pitcairn Island Poland, Polish People's Republic Portugal, Portuguese Republic Puerto Rico Qatar, State of Reunion Romania, Socialist Republic of Russian Federation Rwanda, Rwandese Republic Samoa, Independent State of San Marino, Republic of Sao Tome and Principe, Democratic Republic of Saudi Arabia, Kingdom of Senegal, Republic of Serbia and Montenegro Seychelles, Republic of Sierra Leone, Republic of Singapore, Republic of Slovakia (Slovak Republic) Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia, Somali Republic South Africa, Republic of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands Spain, Spanish State Sri Lanka, Democratic Socialist Republic of St. Helena St. Kitts and Nevis St. Lucia St. Pierre and Miquelon St. Vincent and the Grenadines Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Suriname, Republic of Svalbard & Jan Mayen Islands Swaziland, Kingdom of Sweden, Kingdom of Switzerland, Swiss Confederation Syrian Arab Republic Taiwan, Province of China Tajikistan Tanzania, United Republic of Thailand, Kingdom of Timor-Leste, Democratic Republic of Togo, Togolese Republic Tokelau (Tokelau Islands) Tonga, Kingdom of Trinidad and Tobago, Republic of Tunisia, Republic of Turkey, Republic of Turkmenistan Turks and Caicos Islands Tuvalu Uganda, Republic of Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom of Great Britain & N. Ireland Uruguay, Eastern Republic of Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of Viet Nam, Socialist Republic of Wallis and Futuna Islands Western Sahara Yemen Zambia, Republic of Zimbabwe
The New Zealand Defence Force will sell two decommissioned Royal New Zealand Navy Inshore Patrol Vessels ex HMNZS Rotoiti and HMNZS Pukaki to the Republic of Ireland Department of Defence.

The vessels are being sold for NZ$36 million.

A condition of the sale is for work to be undertaken to regenerate and modify the ships to an operational seaworthiness standard.

This work will cost about NZ$16-$19 million and be carried out in New Zealand commercial shipyards.

Were very pleased that the ship maintenance will be providing a local economic boost prior to them leaving the country, says Commodore Andrew Brown, Commander of Defence Logistics Command.

Built in Whangarei and commissioned into the Navy in 2009, during their service the two ships have been deployed on fishery monitoring, search and rescue, border security and maritime surveillance operations around New Zealand's 15,000km coastline.

However, a few years ago a project team within the RNZN identified that a better capability outcome would be achieved utilising the current offshore patrol vessels HMNZS Otago and HMNZS Wellington, supplemented with a Southern Ocean Patrol Vessel planned for the future.

Our Navy has a greater need to project a presence further afield, says Chief of Navy, Rear Admiral David Proctor and that's something the inshore patrol vessels simply weren't built to do.

Ex HMNZS Rotoiti.

Formally decommissioned in October 2019, the two ships have been the subject of interest from a number of overseas navies but it was the Republic of Ireland that identified a key role they could perform.

RADM Proctor says the two remaining IPVs in the RNZN fleet, HMNZS Hawea and HMNZS Taupo, still have a valuable role to play in meeting the tasks required of the Navy.

Local fishery monitoring and border protection patrolling will still be conducted but these ships also provide important Officer of the Watch training and command opportunities for our junior officers.

Once the upgrade and modification work is completed on the vessels, they are expected to be commercially sea-lifted to the Republic of Ireland in late March or April 2023.
This article was originally published by CalMatters. Read more of their coverage of California state government on their website, calmatters.org.
Editors note: Information is provided by the Cowlitz County Corrections Department and local law enforcement agencies. Each individual named in this report is presumed to be innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

Possession of stolen vehicle  Kalama police Sunday arrested Jamesha Solana Berryman, 29, of Kelso, on suspicion of possession of a stolen vehicle.

Possession of stolen vehicle  Longview police Sunday arrested David Glenn Barker, 37, of Longview, on suspicion of being a fugitive from justice, possession of a stolen vehicle, first-degree criminal impersonation, making a false statement, violating a trip permit and driving without a license.

Malicious mischief  Longview police Sunday arrested Bradley Joseph Will, 42, of Longview, on suspicion of first-degree malicious mischief and resisting arrest.

Burglaries

1200 block of Sixth Avenue, Kelso. Saturday. Can hear clicking upstairs and things being dropped. No one should be at the house.

400 block of Fourth Avenue, Kelso. Saturday. Burglary with theft.

400 block of 15th Avenue, Longview. Sunday. Cannabis, Xbox, lighter torch and grinder taken from garage.

Stolen vehicles

3800 block of Cherrywood Street, Longview. Sunday. White 2008 Dodge Ram. Oregon 828JHF. Taken around 5:20 a.m. A couple dents on the back and front left bumper damaged. Diamondback binoculars, car seat and $80 inside the truck.

700 block of Triangle Center, Longview. Sunday. Red 1997 Honda Civic. Unknown Washington license number.

Thefts

700 block of Triangle Center, Longview. Sunday. Husky toolbox and cans of break cleaner taken from back of truck.

1500 bock of 15th Avenue, Longview. Sunday. Bicycle taken.

1400 block of Goerig Street, Woodland. Sunday. Dine and dash around 8:00 a.m. $19 loss.

Vandalism/malicious mischief

1200 block of 11th Avenue, Longview. Saturday. Damage to vehicle, known suspect.

Vehicle prowls

200 block of Fourth Avenue, Kalama. Saturday. Occurred overnight.

1100 block of Mill Street, Kelso. Saturday. Possible vehicle prowl.

200 block of 21st Avenue, Longview. Sunday. Paperwork and change taken from glovebox.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0

Sign up for our Crime & Courts newsletter Get the latest in local public safety news with this weekly email. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
The three final candidates for the vacant Longview City Council seat will be interviewed Tuesday night.

Not included on that list was Longviews former mayor Don Jensen, who applied for the vacant City Council seat earlier this month. Jensen was one of the 13 city residents who sent in applications for the council seat and one of two people with elected experience who were ultimately left off the short list.

Jensen was the citys mayor from 2012 until MaryAlice Wallis took over in 2020. Jensen lost his re-election bid in 2019 after 20 years on the council.

The other elected official not included on the final list was Crystal Moldenhauer. Moldenhauer has served on the Longview School Board of Directors since November 2020 and was re-elected to her position last year.

The council subcommittee placed in charge of the application process chose Erik Halvorson, Randy Knox and Christopher Ortiz as the three finalists. They will be interviewed by the full council during a special meeting Tuesday night and a final appointment could be made later that evening.

The finalists had tangential political experience on their resumes, even if it wasnt an elected office. Halvorson ran for City Council in 2019 and finished in third place during the primary. Ortiz is a former school superintendent and currently works as an assistant superintendent for an Oregon school district. Knox works in the Washington Attorney Generals office.

The city of Longview provided The Daily News with the full applications of 14 people who applied for the vacant council seat, including one person later determined to live outside the city limits. The other eight eligible applicants for the seat were:

Rayleen Aguirre, chairwoman of the Longview Parks and Recreation Advisory Board and community volunteer

George Brajcich, a former president of United Steel Workers Local 1097 who regularly attends and comments during Longview City Council meetings

Amanda Buhrmann, social service caseworker

Kalei LaFave, politically connected city Planning Commission member who listed MaryAlice Wallis and state Rep. Jim Walsh among the references on her application

Tom Lee, attorney who ran against Spencer Boudreau for a City Council seat last year

Mary Lyons, grandmother and frequent community volunteer

Raymond Van Tongeren, advisory committee member for Consolidated Diking Improvement District 1 and longtime former Planning Commission member

Keith Young, senior sales engineer for Cascade Networks

The vacant council seat opened in February when Christine Schott announced she was stepping down to move outside the city limits with her family. Longview, Kelso and Woodland all have needed to appoint someone to fill a vacant council seat in the last three months.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0

Get Government & Politics updates in your inbox! Stay up-to-date on the latest in local and national government and political topics with our newsletter. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
Newport News Shipbuilding delivered the Navys newest submarine, the Montana on Saturday, shipyard president Jennifer Boykin said in a message to employees.

The formal handing over of custody to the Navy is a key milestone for any warship. Montana is set to be commissioned as an active member of the fleet later this year, when it earns the designation USS, for United States Ship.

Advertisement

Delivery of Montana is a milestone for the shipyard, too.

Montana  our first new construction delivery since the COVID-19 pandemic upended life as we knew it  is a testament to the resolve and dedication of the women and men of NNS, Boykin told shipbuilders.

Advertisement

Jason Ward, the shipyards vice president for the Virginia-class submarine program, said he was struck by shipbuilders focus on the complexity of their work, the attention to detail thats required ... during the COVID pandemic.

At delivery, the prospective commanding officer of a warship formally signs a document taking custody. With delivery, the pre-commissioning crew, which has been at the shipyard for the past year, normally moves onboard and starts standing watch, training and working there.

The results of the Navys board of inspection and survey during sea trials are a testament to our priorities of safety and quality, Ward said.

Construction of Montana began in 2015. It is the 10th Virginia-class submarine to be delivered by Newport News Shipbuilding and the 21st Virginia-class submarine built as part of the partnership of Newport News Shipbuilding and General Dynamics Electric Boatyard in Connecticut.

Montana is also the third of the 10-ship group of Virginia-class submarines known as Block IV. Those incorporate design changes focused on reduced cost by making it possible to increase the time between maintenance stops. That, in turn, can increase the number of the boats deployments.

Dave Ress, 757-247-4535, dress@dailypress.com
Before the launch of the Redmi K50 series happens in just a few days, many details regarding the devices have been officially revealed. Today, the company has told us more about the display, including a Samsung-made OLED panel and a Gorilla Glass Victus protection.

The official posters reveal that the devices will feature a Samsung 2K OLED panel with 1,440 x 3,200px resolution, Dolby Vision, DC dimming and Gorilla Glass Victus protection. Furthermore, DisplayMate also tested the panel and awarded it an A+ score for setting or matching 16 display records.

Besides a great screen, the Redmi K50 will offer Hi-Res Audio (wired and wireless) and feature stereo speakers with Dolby Atmos. The series will also be the first to offer Bluetooth 5.3 and LC3 audio. It's worth mentioning that LC3 is a high-quality successor to the SBC audio codec. Other connectivity features of the devices will include Wi-Fi 6 (ax) with 160 Hz bandwidth, dual-frequency GPS, NFC and an IR blaster.

The Redmi K50 will be launching on 17 March, and that's the day we'll get to find out everything about the highly-anticipating devices. Stay tuned to TechNave.com for more smartphone reports.
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will investigate Michigan's environment department to determine whether it racially discriminated against a lower-income, majority-Black neighborhood in approving an emissions permit for a new Jeep plant in Detroit.

The EPA is acting after five residents whose properties now back up to the Mack Assembly Plant on the city's east side filed a civil rights complaint in November against the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy.

It failed to do its diligence, the Beniteau Street residents argued, by not conducting a cumulative impact analysis of the plant owned by Stellantis NV before approving its permit. The result, they say, is discrimination on the basis of race, color and national origin in violation of federal law.

The EPA's External Civil Rights Compliance Office determined the complaint meets its jurisdictional requirement and will begin gathering information to assess the merits of the complaint, according to a letter from the agency obtained by The Detroit News. The EGLE will have 30 days to respond to the complaint. The parties also have the option of mediation and an informational resolution agreement.

"Michigan EGLE looks forward to EPA's review of Michigan permitting decisions and processes," spokeswoman Jill Greenberg said in a statement, "to ensure that the state is doing everything within its authority to protect vulnerable communities, and to receive guidance from EPA in doing so most effectively."

A request for comment was left with the Great Lakes Environment Law Center, which is representing the Detroit residents, on Saturday afternoon. Stellantis declined to comment on the EPA's step.

Months after the Mack plant began deliveries of the three-row Jeep Grand Cherokee L SUV in June, the EGLE hit the plant with three air-quality violations following complaints from neighbors about a smell from its new paint shop and is working with the automaker on a compliance plan, which is expected to include a fine. Air sampling around the plant has found no immediate health concerns, according to multiple government agencies.

Stellantis in December installed ducting to route paint emissions into equipment to destroy potentially harmful compounds that is required by its permit, but was missing in a section of facility. The automaker also has said it will install additional control measures after a third-party investigation found a high frequency of odor concentrations at the plant that now also makes the two-row Grand Cherokees.

Stellantis invested $1.6 billion into the former Mack Avenue Engine Complex to turn it into Detroit's first assembly plant in nearly 30 years. The expanded plant property now borders Beniteau homes.

The residents allege EGLE violated Title VI that requires "no person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance."

At the crux of their argument is that the Mack Assembly Plant has a disproportionate impact on a majority-Black community that already faces increased risks for health conditions such as asthma.

In order to obtain the permit, Stellantis had to decrease emissions at another site, because it was increasing them at the former Mack Avenue Engine Complex with a new paint shop. The plants emit volatile organic compounds that when combined with the atmosphere create the toxic gas ozone. Southeast Michigan has failed to meet the EPA's National Ambient Air Quality Standard for ground-level ozone since 2018. EGLE can require the offsets be made in the seven-county region, but doesn't have the power to specify where.

Stellantis decreased emissions in Warren, an action that is reducing 30% of VOC emissions in southeast Michigan, according to the company. The Mack plant in Detroit has the lowest volatile organic compound emissions rate of any U.S. assembly plant in the country, the automaker also has said.

Within a one-mile radius of the Warren plant, however, 52% of residents are people of color compared with 98% around the Detroit plant, according to the EPA's environmental justice screening and mapping tool.

By not including an impact analysis during the permit processing, the EGLE cannot know if it is in compliance with Title VI, according to the complaint. The residents demand assistance for people wishing to leave the neighborhood, more money for home repairs and a requirement that EGLE conduct a cumulative impact analysis during its permitting process.

Explore further Tennessee factory to become GM's 3rd electric vehicle plant

2022 detroitnews.com.

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Top: thermal runaway behavior of all-solid-state electrolyte Li-S batteries under abused conditions. Bottom: the decisive role of cross reaction between electrodes on triggering the thermal runaway of Li-S batteries. Credit: Huang Lang

Lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries offer great potential for use in energy storage systems because of their large energy capacity. However, safety problems related to their thermal behavior continue to be a concern for scientists.

Now, a research team led by researchers from the Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology (QIBEBT), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), have revealed the thermal runaway routes of Li-S batteries, which may help to address the safety issues of next-generation batteries.

This study was published on Mar. 14 in Joule.

"One of these safety concerns with Li-S batteries is thermal runaway, a phenomenon where the battery begins to overheat uncontrollably. As the temperature in the battery rises, the electrolyte can be ignited, possibly leading to a fire," said Huang Lang, assistant professor at QIBEBT and lead author of the study.

The research team set out to investigate the safety characteristics of large-format pouch-cell Li-S batteries. In particular, they examined inorganic all-solid-state electrolytes because of their high thermal stability, which may provide a strategy for overcoming the safety problems. They then analyzed the thermal runaway behaviors of the pouch-cell batteries.

The results showed that even all-solid-state electrolytes cannot stop the thermal runaway that occurs in Li-S batteries at high temperatures. This understanding will benefit scientists looking at ways to build safer next-generation Li-S batteries.

The team examined the thermal features of Li-S batteries from the aspect of the material. They started at the whole pouch cell and worked down to the electrode level.

They discovered that the exothermic chain reactions of Li-S batteries were initially triggered by sulfur cathode derivatives that reacted with the electrolyte. This reaction then accelerated as the lithium metal anode reacted with the electrolyte or cathode active species. As the sulfur cathode and Li metal anode melted, they immigrated and cross-reacted at high temperatures, playing a decisive role in the battery's thermal runaway behavior.

The study reveals that as-assembled Li-S batteries using electrolytes with different thermal stabilities, including inorganic all-solid-state electrolytes, all undergo rapid thermal runaway because of the unavoidable short circuiting that occurs when the sulfur cathode and Li anode melt.

"The in-depth depicted thermal runaway routes will shed fresh light on the way forward for building next-generation Li-S batteries with enhanced safety performance," said Cui Guanglei, professor at the QIBEBT.

Explore further Reactive electrolyte additives improve lithium metal battery performance

More information: Guanglei Cui, Thermal runaway routes of large-format lithium-sulfur pouch cell batteries, Joule (2022). www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(22)00096-4 Journal information: Joule Guanglei Cui, Thermal runaway routes of large-format lithium-sulfur pouch cell batteries,(2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.joule.2022.02.015
Former Sen. David Perdue and his wife Bonnie didnt have to wait long in line Monday to cast their ballots for the May 24 primary, which will determine who will receive the Republican nomination for the race to serve as Georgias next governor.


remaining of

Thank you for reading! On your next view you will be asked to log in to your subscriber account or create an account and subscribepurchase a subscription to continue reading.
NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico  Gunfire and burning vehicles in the Mexican border city of Nuevo Laredo led U.S. officials to briefly close a border crossing at Laredo on Monday.

The gunfire erupted late Sunday after the arrest of a leader of one faction of the Northeast Cartel, the successor group to the old Zetas cartel, Mexico's most bloodthirsty gang.

Suspected cartel members then opened fire and hijacked and burned vehicles, apparently in retaliation for the arrest.

U.S Customs and Border Protection said that southbound traffic into Nuevo Laredo at Juarez-Lincoln and Gateway to the Americas Bridges was suspended, but reopened early Monday.

The arrested suspected was not identified by his full name, in keeping with Mexican law.

The Mexican army said he was the leader of cartel gunmen known as "The Troops of Hell." They are an extremely violent and heavily armed gang of hitmen.

The suspect's nickname  "The Egg" corresponds to Juan Gerardo Trevino, a nephew of imprisoned Zetas cartel leader Miguel Angel Trevino.

The suspect was reportedly detained with two illegal guns and faces charges of extortion, homicide, terrorism, and is wanted for extradition on U.S. charges of conspiracy to traffic drugs and launder money.
Andrew Wheeler had been nominated to oversee environmental and other policy issues as secretary of natural and historic resources before Senate Democrats rejected his appointment to the Cabinet role. (Cliff Owen)

RICHMOND  Andrew Wheeler, the former Trump administration Environmental Protection Agency administrator, will serve as a senior adviser to Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkins administration after Senate Democrats rejected his appointment to a Cabinet role.

Wheeler had been nominated to oversee environmental and other policy issues as secretary of natural and historic resources. Travis Voyles, previously the deputy secretary of natural and historic resources, will serve as acting secretary while Wheeler takes on the advisory role, Youngkin spokeswoman Macaulay Porter said.

Advertisement

She didnt immediately respond to questions about the scope of Wheelers new position or how long he intends to stay on.

In Virginia, the governors cabinet nominees are subject to confirmation by the part-time and currently divided General Assembly, though lawmakers rarely reject nominees. This year, Democrats who narrowly control the state Senate united against Wheeler as he faced criticism from environmental groups and some ex-EPA employees for an EPA tenure criticized as overly deferential to corporate interests. In February, the Senate voted along party lines to reject his appointment.

Advertisement

Youngkin repeatedly said he hoped Democrats would reconsider. But earlier this month, legislators gave final approval to all Cabinet members but Wheeler.

Lawmakers adjourned their regular session Saturday but are expected to return to Richmond soon for a special session to deal with unfinished business, including the state budget.

Daywatch Weekdays Start your morning with today's local news >

While legislators were meeting, the partisan fight over Wheelers nomination spiraled into a broader back-and-forth over other appointments and confirmations. The GOP-controlled House effectively removed a nominee of former Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam from the power State Corporation Commission by letting her appointment expire and booted 11 other Northam nominees from other boards and commissions.

The Senate then retaliated by removing four Youngkin parole board members.

Lawmakers left town before any resolution was reached on those or other vacancies, including two spots on the Supreme Court of Virginia. It was not immediately clear how soon the governor would call lawmakers back for the special session or how the sparring over the appointments would end.

Voyles, the acting secretary, most recently served as oversight counsel for the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works under Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia.

In this role, he served as the lead coordinator of the Committees efforts for environmental, energy, economic development, and infrastructure issues, including primary oversight over a wide range of federal agencies programs and funding, according to a biography provided by the governors office.

Voyles, who holds a law degree, also served in multiple appointed roles at the EPA, the biography said.

Advertisement

The last time a governors cabinet appointee was rejected, in 2006, then-Gov. Tim Kaine, a Democrat, took the same approach as Youngkin. He appointed Daniel LeBlanc, a former president of the state AFL-CIO, to serve as a senior workforce adviser.
HASTINGS  The Hastings High School Student Council will host a craft and vendor fair from 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturday in the schools south gym.

The craft show will feature local vendors, concessions and lunch as well as a silent auction. This event will also host young entrepreneurs from Hastings Senior High and Hastings Middle School who will be selling items they have created.

Items will include a variety of food, craft, art and possibly music.

There is no entry fee for attendees. Lunch and concessions will be provided with all proceeds going to Make-A-Wish. There will also be a basket silent auction to raise money for the Nebraska Make-A-Wish Foundation.

Parking will be available in the east lot directly off of Burlington Avenue.
The best bang for your buck! This option enables you to purchase online 24/7 access and receive the Sunday, Tuesday & Thursday print edition at no additional cost * Print edition only available in our carrier delivery area. Allow up to 72 hours for delivery of your print edition to begin. Print edition not available for Day Pass option.
MARION  Joseph Barnaby is an extraordinary young man.

At 32, he is studying accounting at SIU and wants to be certified public accountant, but that is not what makes him extraordinary.

Barnaby also is a recovering addict. He has been sober for two and a half years.

I broke my arm and I was prescribed pain pills for a couple months. I had never taken pain pills or anything else, for that matter, Barnaby said.

He started taking pills recreationally, then finished a couple years in college at Southeast Missouri College in Cape Girardeau and at SIU.

Barnaby began using pain pills more often.

They were all doing it, so I started doing it more, he said.

Barnaby was back in college at SIU and began skipping classes. He ended up having to drop out. He said things got worse and he was using drugs daily.

At first, he took pain pills. When they became hard to get, he switched to heroine. Toward the end of his drug use, Barnaby said he would take whatever he could get.

Barnaby couldnt hold a job. He was begging his family for money to buy drugs. He even stole items from his parents to sell for drug money.

Ive overdosed multiple times. Luckily, someone was there to call an ambulance, he said.

Barnaby also did a couple unsuccessful terms in rehab at Gateway in Carbondale. He got to the point of being depressed and wondered if life was worth it.

He began looking at the lives of his high school friends. Some of them were doctors, lawyers and CPAs. Barnaby was a dropout living with his parents.

It was the most devastating thing in my life, seeing my child addicted to drugs, his mom Sherry Barnaby said.

Sherry Barnaby said the addiction affected her health, her marriage and her home. She had high blood sugar, blood pressure and frequent anxiety. She and her husband hid items that they thought Joseph might steal. She had clothes and jewelry disappear.

Sherry Barnaby feared he would end up dead or in prison.

Finally, Barnaby returned to Gateway for a third time. After going through the program, he went to a halfway house to get more time in a controlled environment.

I think that really helps, he said.

I was the happiest mom in the world when he became drug-free, Sherry Barnaby said.

Barnaby said on his worst days, he felt sick if he didnt have something to take. He couldnt get out of bed and lost weight. He would wake up in places where he did not know anyone.

He said when he was using he couldnt walk up stairs and was constantly yelling at his parents.

Today, his life is much better and a complete 180 from those days.

It really gave me an appreciation for little things. I wake up early, have energy and am happy to be alive and have another chance at life, Barnaby said.

He no longer associates with friends who do drugs. He got a new phone and deleted all those phone numbers. He spends time with his family and goes to class. He still feels the pain of using, but said it cannot compare to how he used to wake up.

He now has a normal appetite and eats three meals a day, adding that his current favorite meal is lo mein. He also has more money and nice things.

Barnaby also has goals, including becoming a CPA. He will have to work under a CPA for a year to qualify to take the exam.

As a CPA, he would be licensed to work in any state, but he knows every state has people who do drugs. Barnaby said anyone who wants drugs can find the almost anywhere.

He said avoiding drugs is probably the hardest thing he has ever done.

If you or someone you know is fighting addition, help is available by calling the Gateway Foundation 24-hour hotline at (877) 505-HOPE or visiting gatewayfoundation.org.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0

Be the first to know Get local news delivered to your inbox! Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
Six individuals recently charged with gun-related offenses are just part of Jackson County States Attorney Joseph Cervantezs increased focus on gun crimes since the summer of 2021.
The Air Force Agile Battle Lab's C-3 exercise demanded airmen operate outside their specialties to set up a field command, control and communications operation. (U.S. Air Force)

It made for an unusual exercise at Langley Air Force Base. A group of intelligence specialists were handed some new communications gear and directed to set up a C3 operation  command, control and communications  as if theyd just been dispatched to a remote and unused airfield.

Unusual because the observers  a team from Air Combat Commands new Agile Battle Lab operation  werent there to grade the airmen. They were there to learn.

Advertisement

The lessons were about a new Air Force focus on preparing airmen for tasks outside their specialties and to move the force to a mindset more like the expeditionary units at the Navys Little Creek base, the Marines who board Norfolk-based amphibious ships and the Armys Fort Eustis-based 7th Transportation Brigade.

We dont want them to have to wait for a comms specialist, said Master Sgt. Andrea Murray, the Agile Battle Labs Langley-based intelligence integration manager.

Advertisement

They did great. They got everything up and running in 10 minutes ... their web was running I think at 10 times the usual speeds, she said.

And they showed a new technology developed by the lab and its contractor, including satellite links, on-the-ground gear, software and stuff Im not going to tell you about was simple to set up in difficult terrain and then operate.

Even a pilot could do it, she said, grinning at the labs commander, Lt. Col. Adam Chitwood.

Looking at the Langley exercise as a learning experience, rather than a way of assessing what airmen know and how well they do already-defined tasks, is emblematic of the Air Forces new Agile Combat Employment push, Chitwood said.

Its about technology, its about training, its about unit structure, he said. But really, its about human beings. "

It is also about moving fast, he said.

Thats why the lab has developed its chat-bot, an app that lets airmen, like the ones at the Langley exercise, give staff real time feedback about what theyre experiencing.

Thats information an exercise observer cant always see, Chitwood said. And it can be information about issues the lab might never otherwise hear about in any kind of focused way.

Advertisement

That feedback doesnt always involve the labs new hardware, either.

If youve got one airman saying his hands are cold, well thats one thing, Murray said. If youve got 40 saying it, you probably need to ask about whether theyre getting gloves.

To keep the C-3 initiative on a fast track, Murrays already been out to DavisMonthan Air Force Base in Arizona to introduce the C-3 systems that the intelligence airmen tested at Langley to the 354th Fighter Group, which files A-10 Thunderbolts in the challenging missions of close air support and forward air control.

Shes heading out shortly to Hill Air Force Base in Utah, on the same mission.

Since the Langley exercise, shes also been hosting groups at her Langley offices, introducing the system and other Battle lab initiatives.

Daywatch Weekdays Start your morning with today's local news >

The work does involve some changes in mindset, Chitwood said.

Advertisement

The focus on technology thats easy to set up and use, and robust enough to stand rough handling in difficult environments by airmen who arent necessarily expert is a design challenge thats different than what a lot of engineers are used to.

Once ready to use, acquiring equipment can mean moving faster than procurement departments sometimes like to move.

And as for the airmen, he said:

Theres a mindset thing, in terms of taking risk. When you try something new, youre going to worry youre not going to do it as well as what you already know ... but you know, we sign up because we want to serve and we want to do the best job we can.

That, he said, is what makes the battle labs efforts work.

Dave Ress, 757-247-4535, dress@dailypress.com
Joseph Barnaby is an extraordinary young man. At 32, he is studying accounting at SIU and wants to be certified public accountant, but that is not what makes him extraordinary. Barnaby also is a recovering addict. He has been sober for two and a half years.
Hey everyone, dont accept anything from me. Its not me!

How many times has a message like this come across your social media feed?

A researcher at Southern Illinois University Carbondale is working on technologies to stop sock puppet requests that can lead to profile hacking, identity theft and other havoc for social media users.

Sajedul Talukder, assistant professor in SIUs School of Computing and director of the Security and Privacy Enhanced Machine Learning Lab, has received a $158,000 grant from the National Science Foundations Computer and Information Science and Engineering Research Initiative to investigate ways to prevent sock puppet connection requests, which are false online identities and user accounts created for deceptive purposes.

Talukder aims to build a digital framework rooted in cognitive psychology, user-centric research and machine learning methods to defend against such accounts and requests in online social networks. The work will begin in April and last at least two years.

In 2019, identity theft cost victims almost $17 million. The work could not only help prevent identity theft but also cut down on fake accounts that push propaganda during ongoing conflicts, such as currently in Ukraine, and a hostile governments attempts to influence American politics.

A growing problem

Social media sites generate revenue with targeted advertising, using personal information to hone and deliver such messaging. The more info you provide, the better targeted the ads, but that also means crooks have more opportunities than ever to steal identities or perpetrate fraud.

Attackers often use connection relations on social media to access private and sensitive user data, post false or abusive information, or scam and influence the perceptions of victims, Talukder said. People who actively use social media are 30% more likely to be affected by identity fraud.

The massive growth of social media usage has incentivized perpetrators to connect to users through identity deception, which is often successful due to the lack of adequate verification of declared information, Talukder said.

Understanding the issues

Talukders goal is to significantly expand the understanding of identity deception and abuse in online social networks, and design and build ways to defeat those types of attacks. The first steps involve developing survey instruments and user studies to investigate the pending connection decisions, motivations and behaviors in online social networks.

Sock puppets are automatic or semi-automatic profiles that mimic human profiles. Fake profiles or their operators send requests to follow or friend social media users, who often accept them. If a user has friends in common with the fake account, for instance, the chance of accepting the request is 80%.

Other times, a fake profile is created to essentially duplicate a users online presence. Such attacks, called identity clone attacks, are devised to collect personal information and direct online fraud.

But fake accounts can still be detected by examining characteristics such as profile history, posting frequency, posting pattern, profile age, befriending pattern and like/follow patterns. Ultimately, the researchers will develop an app platform aimed at collecting detailed, baseline truth behavior data from social network users based on those characteristics.

The underlying assumption is that the behavior of a true profile would be different than that of a fake one. In order to devise mechanisms for identifying and eliminating fake accounts on a near real-time basis, we need to collect the truth behavior data that will help us to differentiate between fake and real ones, Talukder said.

Improving user interfaces

Talukder will use his findings to create a pending connection decision classifier for Facebook, which will route suspicious connection attempts to a spam folder. The researchers will combine sock puppet education and motivation in developing this new interface, which will reduce clutter and cognitive load for users by displaying each pending friend request on a single screen, with a large, centrally-placed profile photo.

When the user taps on the profile photo of a pending friend, a screen that includes the profile summary of the pending friend will appear. Users can navigate their pending friend list using the next and previous buttons on the sides of the profile photo.

Further, the interface will transform the Confirm button into an inhibitive attractor, by displaying it in the same gray color as the Delete button. To address the case where the user does not feel comfortable making a decision, we also will include a Skip button shown in the same gray color, Talukder said.

Getting into the minds of both sock puppeteers and their victims will allow researchers to address the dynamic that exists between them, Talukder said.

The work not only will enhance the understanding of just-in-time motivations and behaviors related to social network risks, he said, but it will also help sociologists gain deeper insights from underexplored social and spatial dimensions provided by social networks in order to test relevant theories.

SIU to help lead crowded field

As the founding director of SIUs Security and Privacy Enhanced Machine Learning Lab, Talukder and his group develop protective systems with machine-learning, artificial intelligence applications. Soaring demand for privacy research has crowded this field in recent years, but the NSFs efforts have a top reputation for funding only the most promising research. In addition to his recent grant, Talukder also has received funding from the NSFs Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace program.

These types of grants are extremely competitive, Talukder said. The NSF has recognized my efforts at SIU as an emerging leader in this area of research.

This latest grant will pay for survey work and user studies that will help the researchers develop apps, collect data and build solutions. The grant also will support several new doctoral students, along with existing graduate students, working with Talukder in SIUs School of Computing.

A free, public symposium on Russias invasion of Ukraine featuring Southern Illinois University Carbondale faculty and a peace rally will take place on campus on Wednesday, March 16.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
U.S.-based Twitter (and a host of other social media platforms) deleted accounts months ago of former President Donald Trump simply because they did not like his politics. The site is owned by a commercial company and its owners exercised their right to censor speech.

Trump did not order the killing of innocent civilians or an invasion of Canada or Mexico. The leaders of Twitter just did not agree with his speech.

Twitter has not taken a similar approach toward Russias leader even as that nation, while aggressively attacking Ukraine, feeds a steady dose of propaganda about Ukraine on its various Twitter accounts.

The big tech company is apparently not offended by a tyrant who has started an aggressive war based simply on his megalomania.

As civilians are being slaughtered by Putins forces, Twitters official page for Russian President Vladimir Putin is fully operational with 1.5 million followers.

One tweet is a seemingly inoffensive posting.

Vladimir Putin discussed the special military operation to protect Donbass with Prime Minister of Israel Naftali Bennett

There are also links (which I advise against trying to access) to readouts of phone calls to various world leaders and photos of Putin sitting very close to Russian politicians. He does not sit at the giant table as he does with foreign visitors and his own generals.

Of course, since the whole world knows whats happening it certainly is offensive. Nobody really believes Putin is protecting anyone. But this one passes through Twitters censors unimpeded.

On the Russian embassy account in the U.S., there are propaganda messages that are demonstrably bogus and other retweets including one from the Chinese embassy in the U.S. blaming the U.S. most of the worlds wars. (Of course, they were careful to leave off World War II, the war in which the intervention of the U.S. saved both Russia and the Chinese).

Want to read about Russias statement recognizing the so-called independence of Donetsk and Lugansk, both of which happen to be in the sovereign nation of Ukraine? Just click on the official Russia and NATO page. Theres plenty of more propaganda there for you to view as well. Still, not banned by Twitter.

If an international flavor is for you, click on the Russian embassy account in the UK. On this page you will be fed a dose of anti-Ukrainian falsehoods and even a tweet condemning a media censorship (presumably from the west) on an unprecedented scale. Yes, Russia is suddenly a pro-free speech country.

On the same page, you will learn from Russian foreign minister, Sergei Viktorovich Lavrov, that it is the policy of the Washington-led collective west which is to blame for the fact that the Kiev (Russian spelling) regime has been at war with its own people since 2014.

Never mind that 2014 was the year Russia last invaded Ukraine, installed puppets in the eastern part of Ukraine -- and stole Crimea.

On the Russian Mission in Geneva page, you can read of how Russia wants you to know neo-Nazism, nationalism, and hatred towards Russia (represented by a Russian flag emoji) was forced on the Ukrainian society and eventually led to the #DonbassTragedy.

The Russian embassy in Australia asks that you kindly communicate in a decent manner. In accordance with our moderation policy (the) embassy reserves the right to remove any derogatory or obscene content ... Presumably they could be offended.

Yet, the page contains graphic postings related to alleged war crimes by Ukraine and is replete with much of the same propaganda appearing on other Russian official Twitter accounts.

On Russias United Nations account, there is a mention of 10 years of aggression by Ukraine, and denunciations of Ukraines violation of fundamental rights of people in eastern Ukraine.

One striking tweet denounces Ukrainian actions about keeping women and children from being safely evacuated.

(Ukraine) Armed Forced (sic) do not let civilians out of #Mariupol, keeping them, including women and children, in one of local schools. They force back all those who try to leave the city via the established #humanitarian corridors.

The question for the Twitter censors who find offenses everywhere is will a threshold be met when they are sufficiently offended and moved to eliminate these propaganda bulletin boards or at least label horribly false or misleading postings?

Twitter chose its method of handling those whose free speech they do not agree with by deleting them. When will Russia feel this pain?

James Hutton is a former assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and is a retired colonel in the U.S. Army. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
This subscription will allow existing subscribers of The World to access all of our online content, including the E-Editions area.

NOTE: To claim your access to the site, you will need to enter the Last Name and First Name that is tied to your subscription in this format: SMITH, JOHN

If you need help with exactly how your specific name needs be entered, please email us at admin@countrymedia.net or call us at 1-541 266 6047.
(TBTCO) - Hiep inh oi tac toan dien va Tien bo xuyen Thai Binh Duong (CPTPP) co hieu luc voi Viet Nam uoc gan 3 nam (tu nam 2019). en nay, doanh nghiep buoc au a tan dung uoc co hoi tu CPTPP. at uoc ket qua nay co su ho tro cua cac bo, nganh ma ien hinh la Bo Tai chinh trong viec kip thoi noi luat hoa cam ket ve uu ai thue quan - ba Nguyen Thi Thu Trang, Giam oc Trung tam WTO va Hoi nhap, Phong Thuong mai va Cong nghiep Viet Nam chia se.
Today

Partly cloudy. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 83F. Winds WNW at 5 to 10 mph.

Tonight

Partly cloudy. Low 58F. Winds light and variable.

Tomorrow

Some sun in the morning with increasing clouds during the afternoon. High 87F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph.
Wyoming just wrapped up its most lucrative state oil and gas lease sale in three years.

The first of three annual auctions generated $2,650,138, the biggest profit since before the pandemic, according to the Wyoming Office of State Lands and Investments.

Thats more than 10 times higher than the state brought in last March ($258,981) and nearly double this time two years ago ($1,422,293). But its just over half of the $4,535,748 earned in March 2019.

Most of the revenue will go toward K-12 education, with the remainder distributed among recipients like the state library, agricultural college, state penitentiary and miners hospital, according to Holly Dyer, assistant director of the Trust Land Management Division at the Office of State Lands and Investments.

While the results from our latest auction are still preliminary, we do feel it was a success, Dyer wrote in an email to the Star-Tribune.

Producers bid on 63 of the 196 available parcels. Those bids span 25,451 acres of state lands  36% of the acreage offered for sale.

Were hopeful that increased auction participation will lead to continued development of the (states) oil and gas resources and continued revenue stabilization, Dyer said.

Gas prices are rising. Whose fault is it? President Joe Biden cant set the price of gasoline. Neither can the U.S. companies that sell it.

Oil and gas lease sales often serve as indicators of operators long-term expectations. Its possible to start producing on a new lease in as little as six months, but in Wyoming, operators can  and often do  hold onto non-producing state leases for up to five years.

The drilling rig count offers a nearer-term picture of industry activity. Because oil wells output drops off over time, companies must drill new wells to keep production steady; aside from one week in the early months of the pandemic, Wyomings rig count has always been above zero, though it remained in the single digits for a year.

Since August, the rig count has hovered between 14 and 18, according to Baker Hughes  roughly half of where it stood before 2020.

High oil prices are boosting rig counts in other states, including Texas, typically the fastest state to respond to favorable market prices. As usual, production in Wyoming has been slower to respond.

The states oil and gas industry is worried about how uncertainty regarding the future of drilling on Wyomings federal leases will affect producers willingness to ramp up. Oil and gas companies already hold millions of acres of non-producing federal leases in Wyoming, but the state hasnt seen a federal oil and gas lease sale in more than a year.

Strong interest in state leases reinforces that companies are interested in Wyomings natural resources, Ryan McConnaughey, communications director for the Petroleum Association of Wyoming, said via email, and reminds us just how much is at stake as the Biden Administration continues its refusal to uphold the law and conduct quarterly lease sales on federal lands.

A range of factors drive U.S. production decisions, including the price of oil, which is driven primarily by international actors, and individual companies willingness to take on the risks embedded in todays volatile market.

In Wyoming, where the rig count inched up last week from 14 to 15, its too soon to know whether drilling on state leases will prove any more appealing than on federal ones.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0

The business news you need Get the latest local business news delivered FREE to your inbox weekly. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
Wyoming Medical Center Foundation, which provided financial support for the Casper hospital since 1977, has officially changed its name to the Natrona Collective Health Trust.

Health trust CEO Meredith Benton said in a statement that the new name encompasses the organizations goals and purpose to work collaboratively to offer long-term support and resources for Natrona County.

The health trust partners with Natrona County nonprofits to provide grant funding, technical assistance and advocacy, according to its website. The foundation that supported the medical center converted from a public fundraising charity to a private philanthropic foundation when Banner Health, a Phoenix, Arizona-based nonprofit health system, acquired the Casper hospital in October 2020.

The medical center is the states largest hospital. It has two campuses and 14 clinics and serves over 250,000 people in 11 Wyoming counties. In addition to the medical center, Banner Health also operates other Wyoming health care facilities in Torrington, Worland, Wheatland and Thermopolis.

The former foundation provided financial support for the hospital through fundraising, whereas the current foundation increases its pot of money by accumulating interest on the approximately $250 million endowment it received when Banner Health purchased Wyoming Medical Center. The health trust will give the hospital about 3% of this endowment every year. That amount can only go to the hospital and isnt to be used by Banner Health corporate.

About 2% of the health trusts endowment will go to various community organizations; the group distributed its first round of two-year unrestricted funding, totaling about $4 million, in December. This funding went to organizations such as Casper Pride, the Wyoming Food for Thought Project and Arc of Natrona County that support health, behavioral health and mental well-being among marginalized populations.

Benton said in a statement that the philanthropic legacy of the foundation will continue under the complete rebrand, which will include a new look and strategic plan in addition to the name change. The trust also launched a new website, collectivehealthtrust.org, last week.

These changes accompany many others for the hospital itself following its acquisition by Banner Health.

The hospital, previously called the Wyoming Medical Center, is now the Banner Health Wyoming Medical Center. Signage on the hospital building is in the middle of switching over to reflect this change. The hospitals website will also fold under the Banner Health website.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 1

Be the first to know Get local news delivered to your inbox! Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
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.
The Point is to Change the World, a collection of writings by Guyanese political activist Andaiye, was in the spotlight on Thursday, the first day of the 2022 Bocas Lit Fest, which kicked off with a series of virtual events.

Thursdays conversation centred on Andaiyes writings and legacy.

Journalist Sunity Maharaj said while Andaiye left a legacy through her work, she also used her platform to be open and honest about every aspect of her life, including her battle with cancer.
A U.S. Navy sailor fatally shot his wifes boyfriend after catching them engaged in a sexual act inside their Virginia Beach home Friday, according to court documents.

Tyler Lamar Jenkins, 26, was arraigned Monday on one count of second-degree murder and a firearms charge in the killing of a 28-year-old California man, Timothy Talley III.

Advertisement

A bail determination sheet filed in Virginia Beach District Court said Jenkins wife called 911 to report that her husband had shot her boyfriend in their residence. Police responded to an apartment complex in the 4800 block of Crystalline Place at 9:47 p.m., where they found Talley with multiple gunshot wounds and pronounced him dead.

Tyler L. Jenkins, 26, of Virginia Beach, was charged in the slaying of a 28-year-old California man on March 11, 2022. (Virginia Beach Sheriff's Office)

Court documents filed in the case state the wife told police that Jenkins entered the room where she was engaged in a sexual act with Talley, and Jenkins fired a gun at Talley. The incident, she said, made her fear for her life.

Advertisement

A police news release issued Saturday described the slaying as a domestic related shooting death, but did not describe the relationship between Talley and Jenkins and didnt provide a motive for the shooting.

Court records state that after Jenkins told police someone was having sex with his wife in their house, he asked What am I doing wrong? Jenkins admitted to police that he shot Talley three times. The gun was recovered at the scene.

According to the bail determination sheet, Jenkins has been employed by the U.S. Navy since 2014. He was denied a public defender due to his income and is scheduled to appear in court on May 12. A bond hearing may be scheduled once he retains a private attorney.

Caitlyn Burchett, caitlyn.burchett@virginiamedia.com
A POINT Fortin man and his teenage son were among four people detained yesterday by residents of Beach Road, Fullerton Village, Cedros, who fought back against cable theft on their street.

The suspects, of Techier Village, Mahaica, were blocked by villagers from leaving the street and nabbed in the bushes as they attempted an escape.
And so it has come to pass. One week after the island-wide blackout of February 16, we told you in this space that, from among the best authority available, there would be, there could be no one to blame for what happened.

We told you that the determination had already been made as to what happened, how and why, and that nobody could have been held responsible for that. It was a warning against the natural national tendency to go for blood. Loud had been the shouts of sabotage, the result of worker discontentment, and a clamour for heads to roll.
Andrew Smith, right, a Hampton University professor in the School of Engineering & Technology, assists Monta' Williams, a junior at Hampton, inside the robotics lab. (Hampton University/Hampton University )

Hampton  Several years ago, Hampton University began looking for ways to pique students interests in computer science through a robotics pathway. That plan came to fruition this year when Amazon invested in the university to create a new degree program.

The program will help students obtain advanced degrees and fill positions in the STEM and robotics field.

Advertisement

Students completed their first capstone in the fall and school officials are planning an event this spring after its pilot year, Alissa Harrison, vice president of information technology, said in an email.

Amazon funding is assisting with establishing the new research laboratory at Hampton University. (Hampton University/Hampton University )

The historically Black university already partners with Amazon for the companys web services training and certifications for students. But the retailers investment aims to increase the overall talent pipeline, according to the companys blog.

Advertisement

We wanted to do something that allowed us to both build up our infrastructure and increase our core competencies campus-wide, Harrison said in a prepared statement. We wanted to do something different and innovative.

Some of Hamptons computer science faculty have experience with artificial intelligence, but not as much with machine learning. The universitys new venture with Amazon will allow Hampton to bring in professionals to assist in that area, according to the schools website.

Funding from the online retailer will help pay for a research laboratory, hire one faculty position for artificial intelligence and machine learning, create mentorship opportunities for seniors and expand K-12 programming, the university said on its website. Programs for middle and high school-age students will include a drone camp for those with historically underrepresented backgrounds to pursue an education in STEM and robotics.

This will not only build infrastructure inside the school, but it also provides funding for Hampton to go out into the community, Tye Brady, chief technologist for Amazon Robotics, said. That will allow Hampton to share the excitement of robotics and the excitement of engineering with those who may not have had exposure to it yet.

Amazon is known to invest in higher education institutions to boost the number of people pursuing jobs in computer science. The Seattle-based company gave $3 million to community and technical colleges in Washington state to help fill vacant tech jobs with qualified workers. The retailer also announced earlier this month it will partner with nine Texas school to pay for its local hourly employees tuition to increase career advancement opportunities.

Hampton hopes to offer a masters degree in the future.

Sierra Jenkins, 229-462-8896, sierra.jenkins@virginiamedia.com
I was surprised to learn this week that Tucson was founded by Hugh OConor, an Irish soldier serving the Spanish King Charles. OConor oversaw the construction of the first presidio, or fort, north of San Xavier del Bac in 1775  at the time of the American Revolution.

OConor, whose name is sometimes spelled more conventionally as OConnor, called the new presidio San Agustin de Toixon, later shortened to Tucson. OConor may have been trying to echo the Tohono Oodham name for the area, Stjucson (or Schook-shon), meaning at the foot of black hill or mountain and transliterating it into a word that his Spanish commanders could pronounce.

Theres a statue honoring OConor in front of the historic Manning House downtown. Hes pointing off into the distance, but Im not sure what the significance of that is, or what he wants us to look toward.

Tucsons Irish community hasnt forgotten OConor. Theres a great deal of pride about his accomplishments here in the Sonoran Desert, and the lively community recognizes his achievements as part of its St. Patricks Day celebrations.

This Irish stew is good any time its chilly but seems especially appropriate in this season.

My research over the years has shown that Irish stew is most traditionally made with Guinness stout and lamb, usually using shoulder but sometimes made with the leaner leg. But Americans are more comfortable with beef than with lamb, and many a good Irish stew is made with beef chuck or round. Either way, trim away excess fat before browning the meat  the stew should be flavorful, but not greasy.

You want a deeply flavored, dark beer for this stew, but it doesnt have to be Guinness. Tucsons craft brewers offer a wide variety of stouts, porters and Irish reds, and any will work beautifully in this stew. Pop by your favorite brewery to pick up a growler or two and enjoy a glass alongside a bowl of stew. Irish soda or brown bread is a good accompaniment, too, and both are easy to make. Or grab a loaf of any hearty, rustic bread, like the ones Barrio Bread makes and sells around the city.

By the way, Irish bacon is considerably leaner that American bacon because its made from a different cut of pork. If youd rather skip the bacon, substitute a couple of tablespoons of olive oil.

Irish stew





Makes about 6 servings

Like all stews, this one is good the first night and better the second. Use Guinness or a locally brewed stout or porter for this hearty stew. The stew is traditionally made with lamb, but you can substitute beef chuck or round if you like. Whether you use lamb or beef, trim it well of excess fat.

Ingredients





4 slices bacon, cut into small pieces

2 1/2 pounds boneless lamb leg or shoulder, cut into 2-inch pieces

1 teaspoon salt, or more to taste

Freshly ground black pepper to taste

2 onions, coarsely chopped

1/2 teaspoon salt

4 cloves garlic, minced

2 cups dark beer

1/4 cup tomato paste

1 teaspoon dried thyme or 4 sprigs fresh thyme

1/2 teaspoon pepper, or to taste

2 1/2 cups beef stock, or as needed to cover

3 carrots, cut into 1-inch pieces

3 medium russet potatoes, cut into 1-inch pieces

Preparation





Cook and stir bacon in a heavy skillet over medium-high heat until bacon is browned and crisp, 3 to 4 minutes. Turn off heat and transfer bacon into a large stew pot, reserving bacon fat in the skillet.

Season lamb generously with 1 teaspoon salt and black pepper to taste. Turn heat to high under skillet and sear lamb in the hot fat on both sides until browned, about 5 minutes. Place lamb in stew pot with bacon, leaving fat in skillet. Turn heat down to medium; cook and stir onions in the retained fat in the skillet until lightly browned, 5 to 8 minutes; season with a large pinch of salt.

Cook garlic with onions until soft, about 1 minute; pour beer into skillet and stir with a wooden spoon, scraping up and dissolving any browned bits of food into the liquid. Pour cooking liquid from skillet into the stew pot. Stir in tomato paste, thyme sprigs, carrots, black pepper and enough broth to cover.

Bring stew to a gentle simmer, stirring to combine; reduce heat to low and cover pot. Simmer stew until beef is fork-tender, about 2 hours. Stir stew occasionally and skim fat or foam if desired.

Remove cover and raise heat to medium-high. Add carrots and potatoes. Bring stew to a low boil and cook until stew has slightly thickened, 15 to 20 minutes. Remove and discard thyme sprigs if you used them and adjust salt and pepper to taste.

Subscribe to stay connected to Tucson. A subscription helps you access more of the local stories that keep you connected to the community.


The Arizona Auditor Generals Office released its annual School District Spending analysis last week, which showed that most school districts throughout the state and in Pima County failed to achieve Gov. Doug Duceys 2018 plan to increase teacher pay by 20% by the 2020-2021 school year.

The Tucson Unified School District, the largest in Pima County, showed the lowest teacher pay increase in the county with a 3.6% increase over the past four years, according to the state report.

But information provided by TUSDs Executive Director of Finance Renee Weatherless showed that the average teacher salary increase over the last four years was a much higher total of 18.4%.

Its a relative report, Weatherless said of the Auditor Generals spending analysis. But to take that and measure a separate initiative with it isnt really apples to apples because we can show our salary schedule did, in fact, increase by that percentage.

According to the data provided by TUSD, the district had a starting salary of $35,700 for new teachers and a base salary of up to $45,200 for teachers with more years of experience during the 2016-2017 fiscal year, the base for the 20x2020 plan.

Those base salaries were then increased by an increment of $700 in Fiscal Year 2018; $3,800 in Fiscal Year 2019; and $1,500 each in Fiscal Years 2020 and 2021.

That salary schedule meant that TUSD teachers saw between a 16.6% and 21% increase to their salaries over that four-year period. According to Weatherless, that brought the districts overall average teacher pay to an 18.4% increase.

Thats all because we gave a flat dollar (increase), as opposed to percentages, Weatherless said of the difference in increases for each salary schedule based on the teachers experience.

She added that the states spending report might reflect a lower average increase because it does not take into account certain factors that affect the districts average teacher salary increases, such as teachers who were hired or retired in the middle of the school year.

We do hire a lot of teachers late in the school year. Their average salary should be $40,000 and some, but we only pay $30,000-something because they started late, Weatherless said, adding: If from one year to the next, you retire all your highly paid teachers, that Auditor General report is just automatically going to go down.

Vicki Hanson, the director of the Division of School Audits at the Arizona Auditor Generals Office, said that the report was completed by taking each districts total expenditures for teacher salaries in its accounting records divided by the districts total number of teachers.

Additionally, we send these numbers to the districts for confirmation before we issue our analysis. Therefore, they should be accurate if the district accurately reported its information, Hanson said in an email.

The Catalina Foothills and Tanque Verde Unified school districts were the only two in Pima County that achieved the 20x2020 promise, according to the Auditor Generals report, with 31.5% and 20.3% increases, respectively.

The teacher pay increases at other Pima County Districts ranged from 3.6% at TUSD to 18.5% at the Sahuarita Unified School District.

School districts throughout Arizona received additional funds based on student enrollment to help fulfill the 20x2020 promise, though districts were not required to use that money toward teacher pay and could instead use it for other areas of its budget.

Weatherless said that the district had not received the amount of money needed to fulfill the 20x2020 initiative.

To do that calculation of the base year, we would have needed an incremental $20 million, Weatherless said. And we have not received $20 million for different reasons. We have a pandemic and lost enrollment, so theres that piece of the picture as well.

Overall, TUSD says, the state allocated just under $24,600,000 to the district for the 20x2020 plan. TUSD paid out more than $27,600,000 in teacher raises, the district said.

Contact reporter Genesis Lara at glara@tucson.com

Subscribe to stay connected to Tucson. A subscription helps you access more of the local stories that keep you connected to the community.



Want to see more like this? Get our local education coverage delivered directly to your inbox. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
After navigating through the pandemic for two years, the Tucson Festival of Books made its way back to the University of Arizona campus for its 14th year, drawing in its usual large crowd.

Since 2009, TFOB has contributed over $2,000,000 to agencies that improve literacy in the community. This year, the festival included 267 presenting authors that represented over 15 genres.

After a two-year hiatus, Melanie Morgan, the executive director of TFOB, said she was not sure how many people to expect, given the pandemic, but the festival was as full as it has ever been. The festival typically sees 140,000 people over the two days.

Everyone is so happy to be back, Morgan said. Were all working together, and everyone seems to be having a great festival.

Sue Labuda, who has been to TFOB every year, brought her grandson to the festival on Sunday to watch some Irish dancing. She said it was so nice to be back, and they were excited to visit Science City, which included 24 STEM-based exhibitions and activities.

Aside from the large crowds, Morgan said she had also seen many people walk around with books in hand. She said she had been hearing great things from vendors about the traffic they have been getting and the numbers of sales.

This years festival seemed to have one common theme: people were happy to be back to normal.

I am so thrilled we were able to be in person, Morgan said. Being able to actually see others and be with the crowds is just amazing.

This year was the first year at TFOB for Brie Chillious, a childrens librarian. In 2020, Chillious was supposed to moderate for an event in the childrens section of the festival. Unfortunately, the festival ended up getting canceled that year.

Im happy to be here two years later, Chillious said. Im hoping to see a childrens author walking around and tell them Ive read their books during story time.

Most of all, Morgan was happy to see the community gather together and enjoy the festival.

For me, the board of directors and all of the people planning it, its a gift to the community, Morgan said. To see the community coming and enjoying it, interacting with the authors in the sessions and out here with the vendors and entertainers really makes a huge difference for me.

Photos: 2022 Tucson Festival of Books Tucson Festival of Books: Final Day Tucson Festival of Books Tucson Festival of Books Tucson Festival of Books Tucson Festival of Books Tucson Festival of Books Tucson Festival of Books Tucson Festival of Books Tucson Festival of Books Tucson Festival of Books Tucson Festival of Books Tucson Festival of Books Tucson Festival of Books Tucson Festival of Books Tucson Festival of Books Tucson Festival of Books: Final Day Tucson Festival of Books: Final Day Tucson Festival of Books: Final Day Tucson Festival of Books: Final Day Tucson Festival of Books: Final Day Tucson Festival of Books: Final Day Tucson Festival of Books: Final Day Tucson Festival of Books: Final Day Tucson Festival of Books: Final Day Tucson Festival of Books: Final Day

Subscribe to stay connected to Tucson. A subscription helps you access more of the local stories that keep you connected to the community.


Pradeep Rawat was appointed as the next Ambassador of India to China in December last year.

Beijing: India's new envoy to China Pradeep Kumar Rawat assumed charge on Monday.

Pradeep Rawat was appointed as the next Ambassador of India to China in December last year. Rawat earlier served as the envoy to the Netherlands.

Ambassador Rawat succeeds Vikram Misri, who was appointed as the Deputy National Security Advisor.

"H.E. Shri. Pradeep Kumar Rawat, Ambassador of India to the People's Republic of China assumed charge @EOIBeijing today," Indian Embassy in China said in a tweet.

According to a Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) release, Rawat has spent the majority of his diplomatic career handling Beijing from Delhi and was the joint secretary (East Asia) from 2014 to 2017.

Rawat's appointment comes at a time when engagement with China has become "complex."

The MEA said in its annual report that the two sides have agreed to manage their differences and not allow differences on any issue to become disputes.

Further, India and China agreed that pending the final settlement of the boundary question, maintenance of peace and tranquility in the border areas is an essential basis for the overall development of the bilateral relationship.

However, since April-May 2020 the Chinese side undertook several attempts to unilaterally alter the status quo along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the Western Sector, which seriously disturbed the peace and tranquility along the LAC in the Western Sector.

"These attempts were invariably met with an appropriate response from Indian Armed Forces," MEA said and added that the continued unilateral attempts by China to change the status quo have impacted the bilateral relationship since then.
Legal murder

contemplated

Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita, R-Scottsdale, wants to be your secretary of state, and she wants to legalize what I believe would be murder. No trial, no jury, just death.

SB 1650 would allow business owners, or their employees, to kill someone damaging or defacing property, without calling the cops, if they suspect, (no verification needed) that the person might have a weapon or, dangerous instrument. The spray can in the hands of a tagger teen could count. A dumpster diver with a penknife in his pocket would qualify. She calls these, "violent crimes." They arent. She cites the false-flag dog whistle of defunding police, which hasnt happened in Arizona.

Most businesses have insurance, but she equates property with human life. Life is cheap to Ugenti-Rita. Surely Scottsdale and Arizona can do better.

Christi Driggs

Northwest side

Time to ditch

fossil fuels

Paraphrasing Naomi Klein, "(Coming climate devastation) changes everything." The scientists studying climate have issued another stark warning: the "window" for action is closing. Some recently resigned in desperation after the last Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, saying, "No one is listening."

According to Bill McKibben, "There's no longer an economic or technological problem. Sun, wind and storage batteries are the available "off the shelf" technology (we need)," safer and cheaper than nuclear, coal, oil and gas.

We face our own toxic inertia and vested interests. However, if we do develop alternative energies, we will remove the power of autocrats across the globe.

If you value freedom, we must address our addiction to fossil fuels. Let's look to the future and stop being led astray by leaders stuck in the 1980s, including Putin. Join Citizens' Climate Lobby, Third Act, Sunrise or Extinction Rebellion.

Our descendants are calling. Answer with action.

Gaye Adams

Midtown

Russia sanctions:

dribs and drabs

It seems a bit absurd that our government keeps adding sanctions. The Russians have invaded Ukraine, killed numerous people and destroyed many buildings. Cant we apply all possible sanctions now? It is a war, isnt it?

Michael Blaney

East side

Ukraine needs

a no-fly shield

I was stationed six years in Europe sitting nuclear alert in various places to nuke Eastern Europe and Russia. You knew if you launched, you would have no base, family or friends surviving the enviable retaliation. To help ensure no flights might be mistaken for an attack, a buffer zone was established. You could enter if authorized.

With the Ukrainians, we should establish a no-fly shield over Ukrainian escape routes. The talk of making matters worse if we do is plain stupid. Vladimir Putin will only do what he wants to do. He has been at this ever since he came into power.

We have spent untold billions for aircraft carriers, warships, aircraft and training for this more or less since 1945. Our carriers should be in flight range of Ukraine. Let's have a practice run and level one of Putin's billion-dollar palaces.

William Hewe

Benson

Costly climate

consultants

Re: the March 6 article "City's $400K climate plan is causing a stir."

The City Council's action and the sensible objection by council member Steve Kozachik because of the lack of implementation of programs already in place reminds me of a story from my Peace Corps days 50 years ago.

A poor country wanted to improve its cattle herd. The very well funded United States Agency for International Development offered assistance. At great expense to the American taxpayers a prize bull was selected in Texas and flown to the country. After a few months a complaint was made because the bull was just standing around eating grass. A Texas rancher was sent over to ask the bull why he wasn't doing his job. The bull said, "I'm here in an advisory capacity."

Susie Morris

Midtown

Tighten economic

screws on Russia

The very least that I will do for our Ukrainian sisters and brothers is to drive less and not complain about $4, $5 or, like in California, $7 for a gallon of gasoline. Applauding the University of Arizona, ASU and NAU to divest of Russian holdings is positive. So should all who have the ability to divest their personal portfolios invested in Russian assets and companies. I, too, vow to utilize and frequent those companies who have pulled out of Russia, including Starbucks, McDonald's, Pepsi and Coca-Cola. I understand our administration's position not to escalate this unjust aggression by active military involvement, but I also implore leadership to do all that is possible to bring more economic rain down on Vladimir Putin and to partner with the international community in condemnation of Russia and provide bountiful humanitarian aid for Ukraine. So sad, so unjust, so heartbreaking. My prayers are with them.

John (Jay) Van Echo

West side

Support schools

and teachers

Re: the March 9 letter "Funding public education."

The letter writer who responded to Funding Public Education by stating that parents are fed up with their children being indoctrinated rather than educated appears to be saying that it is OK to defund public education. Children go to school to socialize, to learn, and to develop into citizens of the world. The negativity surrounding educational professionals and the defunding of public education will harm all of us. Public schools should be showplaces of American democracy. Teachers are not interested in spouting personal political beliefs or indoctrinating students; they are too busy planning lessons to meet the needs of a diverse population, assessing how much students have learned, and developing relationships with students that open doors to learning. The best gift we could give our children is to give the utmost respect to teachers and all other school personnel, and to support them in all ways possible.

Judith Nelson

Foothills

We've reached a

fork in the road

The war in Ukraine is not about communism or capitalism or socialism. It is about fascism  the ideology that calls for a centralized autocratic government led by a dictator, severe economic and social regimentation, forcible suppression of opposition that favors state over individual, and conquering of weaker nations. Sound familiar?

It appears that the world is at a crossroads now. Do we choose freedom or do we choose subjugation? It shocked me in 2018 when the U.S. president spoke with such envy about Kim Jong-Un saying, "He speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same."

Be aware that, under fascism, the "little guys" have no worth. And they are encouraged to "turn in" those who don't obey. If we do not stop it where it is, we are all at risk. I support stopping Putin at the border of Ukraine by any means now because he will not stop there.

Cindy Soffrin

Northeast side

World's tyrants

are watching

Vladimir Putins reckless decision to invade Ukraine has upended the international order, hurling it back to the 19th century, when the big fish could swallow the little fish with near-total impunity. If the U.S. and its European allies fail to restore world order by preventing Putin from absorbing Ukraine, this will give the green light to other dictators, such as Chinas Xi Jinping and North Koreas Kim Jong-un, to pursue their expansionist schemes. Will the U.S. have the stomach to enter a war with either China or North Korea to defend its allies in Taiwan and South Korea?

Adnan J. Almaney

Southwest side

Political instincts

make Joe freeze

Vladimir Putin was asked after the election what he thought of Joe Biden. His answer simply was that Biden is nothing more than a "politician." In other words he didn't really respect Biden at all. Biden has been a Washington figure for five decades. I think everything he favored he's now against, everything he was against he now favors. That's a "politician." He has no convictions. Which way does the wind blow? What are the optics? How do the polls read? That's the guidance of a "politician." The record shows he's plagiarized, he's cheated, he spins and he lies  it's Bidens brand of politics and all true. It appears that ideology has now created the debacle and carnage in Ukraine. One thing for sure, he never has been, and still isn't, a competent leader! And yet, here he is at the top and unable to be decisive and act in face of the facts. Yep, Biden is nothing more than a politician.

Dave Efnor

East side

Subscribe to stay connected to Tucson. A subscription helps you access more of the local stories that keep you connected to the community.


After another record average U.S. price late last week, skyrocketing gasoline prices may be leveling off at least in the short term, AAA Oklahoma and a national analyst said Monday.

Were about to see WTI (West Texas Intermediate oil) fall under $100/bbl! $100.61 and falling  thats a great way to start the week, tweeted Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis for GasBuddy, a fuel-price tracking company.

The national average #gasprice continues to slowly decline as well, oils drop could mean we break the 11 week incline at the pump this week, he said.

The national average price of a gallon of gas hit $4.33 on Friday, before falling a penny and holding throughout the weekend and Monday at $4.32, AAA Oklahoma said.

After cresting above $123 per barrel shortly after Russias invasion of Ukraine, the price of crude oil has gradually fallen below $110. If this trend holds, it may remove some of the extreme upward price pressure consumers have found at the pump, but not all, the auto club said.

Meanwhile, industry analyst Trilby Lundberg of the Lundberg Survey said Sunday that Tulsa had the lowest average gasoline prices in the U.S., at $3.80 per gallon.

The prevailing price observed at Tulsa-area QuikTrips was $3.73 per gallon on Monday evening.

Statewide, the average price was $3.85 per gallon, AAA said.

Only Kansas and Missouri have slightly lower averages. Still the pain at the pump exists, with a 20 cents jump over last Monday, the organization said.

That jump included Tulsa-area QuikTrips, which raised prices by 20 cents per gallon overnight Monday into Tuesday last week from $3.59 to $3.79.

It bears reminding that the cost of oil accounts for about 50% of what drivers pay at the pump, AAA Oklahoma spokeswoman Leslie Gamble said.

This war is roiling an already tight global oil market and making it hard to determine if we are near a peak for pump prices, or if they keep grinding higher. It all depends on the direction of oil prices.

Crude prices have eased as the market continues to find replacement barrels of oil and further supply growth for the tight market becomes apparent, AAA said.

However, the market remains volatile and additional disruptions or escalation of the current crisis in Ukraine could cause prices to surge again this week, AAA said.

Benchmark U.S. crude oil for April delivery fell $6.32 to $103.01 a barrel Monday. Brent crude for May delivery fell $5.77 to $106.90 a barrel.

De Haan also said while prices may be leveling out or even falling in the short term, I do think there is risk we could go higher in the weeks ahead.

The Energy Information Administration reported that total domestic crude stocks decreased by 1.8 million bbl last week to 411.6 million bbl. The current stock level is approximately 17% lower than at the end of February 2021, contributing to pressure on domestic crude prices, AAA said.

The statewide average price hit a record of $3.954 per gallon in July 2008, according to AAA Oklahoma.

Tulsas record average of $3.927 was also set in July 2008, the auto club said.

Subscribe to Daily Headlines Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.

The business news you need Get the latest local business news delivered FREE to your inbox weekly. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
Williams announced Monday that it has agreed to acquire the Haynesville gathering and processing assets of Houston-based Trace Midstream (Trace), a portfolio company of Quantum Energy Partners, in a transaction valued at $950 million.

The combination of the Trace system with Williams existing footprint provides expanded scale in one of the largest growth basins in the country, increasing the Tulsa-based companys gathering capacity in the Haynesville basin from 1.8 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) to more than 4 Bcf/d.

The Haynesville basin extends from east Texas into Louisiana and southern Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama and parts of western Florida.

The acquisition is expected to result in an investment at roughly six times 2023 EBITDA, with strong growth anticipated and minimal expansion capital required. EBITDA stands for earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization.

As part of the transaction, Trace customer and Quantum affiliate Rockcliff Energy (Rockcliff) has agreed to a long-term capacity commitment in support of Williams Louisiana Energy Gateway (LEG) project. The LEG project is designed to gather responsibly sourced natural gas produced in Haynesville and connect it to premium Transco markets, as well as expanding industrial and LNG export demand along the Gulf Coast.

In further support of the LEG project, Williams signed a memo of understanding to form a joint venture that will enable Quantum to become an equity investor and partner in the project.

Williams continues to increase scale and connectivity in the best and most efficient natural gas basins, and these transactions with Trace, Rockcliff and Quantum represent an important extension of our natural gas-focused strategy, Alan Armstrong, Williams president and chief executive officer, said in a statement. We are excited for the opportunity to help Rockcliff continue their success and connect them to growing markets with Quantum as our new partner in LEG.

Importantly, this is going to be the flagship of our low-carbon wellhead to water venture, proving up what an important role natural gas can play in reducing emissions, lowering costs and providing secure reliable energy here and around the world.

Williams owns gathering lines in the Haynesville basis that connect wells to its processing facilities and ultimately its transmission system. Haynesville-Williams operates about 600 miles of gathering pipelines with compression and treating services and system capacity of 1,650 million cubic feet per day.

We have been rapidly expanding our Haynesville system to support growth from existing and new customers, Chad Zamarin, Williams senior vice president of corporate strategic development, said in a statement. By leveraging our scale, value chain integration and unique capabilities, including our Sequent Energy platform and New Energy Ventures clean energy solutions, we are facilitating the delivery of responsibly sourced gas to meet the climate goals and the energy needs of our customers and our country.

Founded in 1998, Quantum Energy Partners is a leading global provider of private equity capital to the responsibly sourced energy and energy transition and decarbonization sectors.

We are grateful for our partnership with the Trace management team who developed a strategic infrastructure platform with high ESG standards, Blake Webster, Quantam managing director, said in a statement.

Partnering with exceptional entrepreneurs like the Trace and Rockcliff teams and building businesses of scale have been hallmarks of Quantums success over the years. We are also excited to establish a partnership with Williams on the LEG project, which we view as a critical bridge to connect responsibly sourced Haynesville natural gas with Gulf Coast LNG markets.

Trace has operations in the Haynesville and Midcontinent regions.

We are proud of the team and the business weve built at Trace, and we are grateful to see its success continue with Williams, Trace CEO Josh Weber said in a statement. Over the past four years, we have positioned ourselves in one of the most prolific resource plays in the country to transport responsibly sourced natural gas to premium markets along the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast.

Our safe, reliable, and competitive midstream services are what our producer customers have come to expect, and we are confident that Williams will continue to be a good steward of these assets.

Subscribe to Daily Headlines Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.

The business news you need Get the latest local business news delivered FREE to your inbox weekly. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
Police arrested a 19-year-old reportedly in possession of a pound of marijuana and two 50-round drum magazines after officers said they could see firearms in his car during a traffic stop.

Caleb Cannady reportedly was laying rubber while driving in the 4700 block of Mingo Road around 10:30 p.m. Saturday, according to a Tulsa Police Department press release.

When officers pulled him over after observing the burnout, as the release called it, they reportedly saw two pistols on the floorboard in the back seat. Cannady denied that he had guns in the car, and he at first refused officers commands to get out of the vehicle, police said.

Officers said the presence of the guns was enough cause to search the vehicle. Police found two pistols loaded with 50-round drum magazines, as well as a pound of cannabis in multiple plastic bags in the trunk of his car, the release states.

Cannady was arrested on complaints of possession of marijuana with intent to distribute, resisting officers, and firearms charges. He was booked into the Tulsa County jail with bail set at $51,800.

Officers noted in Cannadys arrest report prior felony convictions out of Wisconsin, which would disqualify him from being able to possess a gun.

Cannadys address in jail records is listed as Pine Bluff, Arkansas, but a felony case still being adjudicated in Dane County, Wisconsin, lists him as a Broken Arrow resident having recently relocated from Madison, Wisconsin.
Support staff award finalists: On Tuesday, Tulsa Public Schools announced the five finalists for its Support Employee of the Year Award.

The finalists are Miranda Beachy, a teachers assistant at Robertson Elementary School; Jeff Cox, the building grounds site supervisor at Will Rogers College High School; Andrew Horowitz, a library teachers assistant at Carver Middle School; Ilse Mendoza, a zone manager on the districts Plant Operations team and Helen Lee, a manager on the districts Operations team.

Open to non-certified TPS employees, the winner will be announced later this spring.

Additionally, Broken Arrow Public Schools announced the finalists for their Beyond and Above award, presented annually to a support employee.

The finalists are behavior techs Jason Cleghorn and Houda Lbadaoui, Karen Harris with Plant Operations, Eric Robles Madera with Maintenance and Derrek Younger with Campus Security.

The winner will be announced the districts Star Gala, scheduled for April 7 at the Stoney Creek Hotel and Conference Center.

Financial accolades: For the 30th consecutive year, Union Public Schools Finance Division was recently recognized by the Association of School Business Officials International, receiving the organizations Certificate of Excellence in Financial Reporting for the districts annual comprehensive financial report for fiscal year 2021.

Focus group session: In conjunction with the Oklahoma State School Boards Association, Owasso Public Schools is hosting a focus group on March 22 to gather feedback on the districts search for a new superintendent. The event is scheduled to start at 6:30 p.m. at the Owasso Education Service Center and will also be live streamed.

COVID-19 by the numbers: Thanks to Spring Break, parent-teacher conferences and Fridays inclement weather, only four area school districts published COVID-19 case counts on Friday.

Tulsa Public Schools had two reported cases among its students and two among its employees.

Broken Arrow Public Schools reported four cases among its students and none among its employees. The district does not differentiate among campuses in its public facing reporting.

Owasso Public Schools reported two cases among its students and none among its staff. OPS does not differentiate among sites in its public-facing reporting.

Skiatook Public Schools reported two cases among its students and none among its staff.

Classes were not in session Friday at Bartlesville, Berryhill, Bixby, Collinsville, Glenpool, Jenks, Sand Springs or Sapulpa.

With the district not receiving any reports of positive COVID-19 tests in several weeks, Sapulpa Public Schools is no longer publishing daily updates. Union Public Schools is now publishing updated case counts on Mondays rather than daily.

School board calendar: The boards of education for Glenpool and Verdigris have meetings scheduled for Monday. Skiatooks previously scheduled school board meeting for Monday has been postponed by one week.

The Statewide Virtual Charter School Boards previously scheduled Tuesday meeting in Oklahoma City has been canceled.

Want to see more like this? Get our local education coverage delivered directly to your inbox. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
New delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday chaired a meeting of the high-level Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) to review Indias security preparedness, and the prevailing global scenario in the context of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, the Prime Ministers Office (PMO) said in a statement, adding that Mr Modi was briefed on latest developments and different aspects of Indias security preparedness in the border areas as well as in the maritime and air domain. According to media reports, discussions also took place at the CCS on efforts to attain self-reliance in the Indian defence sector as per the Make in India initiatives and the latest global technology in the defence sector.

The PMO meanwhile also said that Mr Modi was briefed on the latest developments in Ukraine, including the details of Operation Ganga to evacuate Indian nationals, along with some citizens of Indias neighbouring countries, from Ukraine, adding that the PM directed that all possible efforts should be made to bring back the mortal remains of Indian student from Karnataka Naveen Shekharappa, who died recently in Kharkiv, the war-torn city in eastern Ukraine.

Those who attended the CCS meeting included defence minister Rajnath Singh, external affairs minister S. Jaishankar, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman and national security adviser Ajit Doval. Foreign secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla also attended the meeting. Discussions are also believed to have taken place on the energy security implications for India, particularly in the wake of the Ukraine conflict, galloping global oil prices and the sanctions imposed by the West on Russia.

Sources had said recently that the Indian authorities are making all efforts to transport back to India the body of Mr Shekharappa, who was killed in shelling at Kharkhiv a few days ago. The sources said the body was still at a morgue in Kharkhiv, which continues to see heavy shelling and raging battles between the warring sides.

Indias Operation Ganga, which has so far led to the evacuation of about 22,000 Indians from Ukraine via its western neighbouring countries in about 90 flights, has nearly ended with the recent safe return of about 700 students to India from Sumy in war-torn north-eastern Ukraine.

Referring to the war in Ukraine on Thursday evening, Mr Modi had said India believes in peace and resolution of issues through dialogue, adding that developing nations are suffering because the global prices of crude oil, palm oil and sunflower oil are increasing rapidly. Mr Modi had also noted that India has economic, security, educational and political ties with the nations directly engaged in the war and that its needs are linked with them. While Mr Modi did not then directly name Russia or Ukraine, the reference to them was obvious, particularly as it is well known that India has strong time-tested security and political ties with Russia, spanning decades, as well as growing economic ties with Moscow and robust educational ties with Ukraine as a large number of Indian medical students were studying there.

Meanwhile, commenting on the return of about 700 Indian students evacuated from Sumy in Ukraine as part of Operation Ganga earlier on Thursday, Mr Jaishankar had said: Their evacuation was particularly challenging. Operation Ganga, undertaken at the direction of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has delivered due to both leadership and commitment. We are thankful to all those who facilitated its objectives. Our particular gratitude to the authorities in Ukraine and Russia as well as the Red Cross for the evacuation assistance. Ukraines neighbours --Romania, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Moldova -- gave us exceptional support. My sincerest thanks to them.
The Tulsa County Election Board isnt moving into the old Macys building at Promenade mall.

County Commissioner Stan Sallee said Friday that the county was unable to agree to terms on a purchase agreement with the mall owner.

It didnt work out for either party.  We loved the location, we loved the area because it is so centralized, but there are other areas around that have other buildings and facilities that were looking at, Sallee said.

County commissioners signed off in September on a nonbinding letter of intent to purchase the old Macys with the hope of making it the Election Boards new home.

The letter of intent gave the county at least 120 days to determine whether it wanted to complete the purchase of the 179,312-square-foot building for $2.55 million.

Sallee said the county has already identified at least one new potential site but that it was too early to provide any details.

We are hoping that whatever facility we find that we can have it ready for the presidential elections in 2024, Sallee said. That could be a tall challenge, but that is really where we are focused right now.

The county Election Board currently operates out of an old grocery store at 555 N. Denver Ave.

Election Board Secretary Gwen Freeman has been advocating for a new facility for years, citing the need for more space. That need became more acute during the pandemic, when spacing requirements and a spike in absentee voting left her scrambling to find more room.

When the demand for mail-in ballots increased by like 500%, then obviously we had a department that was not equipped either in terms of manpower or space to be able to take that kind of increase in absentee ballot processing, Freeman said. Basically, what happened is we had to move the Absentee Department itself into one of our existing departments to make room for the additional people that would be working back there (and) for the additional supplies.

When we did that, it displaced an entire department into our warehouse, which took up space in the warehouse that is needed. It was sort of a domino effect.

Freeman said her goal is to find a site that is centrally located for all Tulsa County residents.

Unfortunately, when you are looking for a building the size that would accommodate the Election Board and the voters and the parking, there are not that many buildings that are on the market, Freeman said.

Tulsa World Newsroom: The story behind U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe with politics reporter Randy Krehbiel.

Get Government & Politics updates in your inbox! Stay up-to-date on the latest in local and national government and political topics with our newsletter. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
Taylor Hanson posted the video to social media along with a link to support the Vernon A.M.E. Church in the Greenwood District.
Oklahomas policy banning transgender people from amending their birth certificates to reflect their gender identify violates the equal protection, due process and free speech guarantees of the U.S. Constitution, according to a federal lawsuit filed by three Tulsa-area residents.

The birth certificate policy facially and intentionally discriminates on the basis of transgender status, says the lawsuit, filed Monday in Tulsa federal court.

The lawsuit seeks a judgment that prohibits the state from enforcing the policy and requires it to provide amended birth certificates to those who seek them based on gender identity.

The lawsuit follows an executive order issued by Gov. Kevin Stitt in November after the Oklahoma State Department of Health issued an amended birth certificate with a nonbinary gender marker to an individual as part of a court settlement.

Stitts order barred the issuance of amended birth certificates that altered the designated gender or sex of individuals.

Stitt claimed in his order that state law backed him up, but he called on the Legislature to pass legislation further clarifying it.

The executive order also reversed a prior Health Department practice that permitted individuals with a court order to change the gender on their birth certificates based on their gender identity, according to the lawsuit.

Gov. Stitts executive order deprives transgender people born in Oklahoma of equal treatment under the law, said Shelly Skeen, senior attorney for New York-based Lambda Legal. Other people have access to birth certificates that match who they are, but the government has singled out transgender people to take away their ability to access birth certificates that match who they are.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of two Tulsa residents  Rowan Fowler and Allister Hall  and one Creek County resident, identified only by the initials C.R.

Fowler is a transgender woman; Hall and C.R. are transgender men, according to the lawsuit.

All three claim that the state Health Department recently rejected their attempts to amend their birth certificates to reflect their gender identities.

Having a birth certificate that reflects who I am as a human being is crucial and can present a basic issue of safety for me, Fowler said in a statement.

The states denial of my existence is discriminatory and puts me in harms way, Fowler said. There was no reason for Oklahoma to take away this basic tool that transgender people need to simply go about their everyday lives with dignity, safety, and respect.

In addition to naming Stitt in his official capacity, the lawsuit also names in their official capacities Keith Reed, now Oklahomas commissioner of health, and Kelly Baker, registrar of vital records at the Oklahoma State Health Department.

In addition to seeking a ruling that permits them to change the gender identities on their birth certificates, the plaintiffs ask a judge to prohibit the state from designating on amended birth certificates that information has been modified from its original issuance.

Such protections are necessary to protect the privacy of individuals who are transgender, according to the lawsuit.

The issue came to light in October after the state of Oklahoma approved a settlement agreement with an Oregon resident who had sued the state to amend their Oklahoma birth certificates gender designation.

Kit Lorelied was the first person in the state to have their Oklahoma birth certificate amended to reflect a nonbinary gender marker.

Nonbinary individuals do not identify specifically as male or female. They do not feel that male or female is their clear gender identity.

A Senate panel on Feb. 28 approved a bill that would prohibit the designation of nonbinary gender markers on Oklahoma birth certificates.

The proposed legislation, Senate Bill 1100 by Sen. Micheal Bergstrom, R-Adair, passed by a vote of 7-3.

A spokeswoman for the State Health Department issued a statement in response to a request for comment, saying, We are unable to comment on this piece of litigation, at this time.

Stitt's office, through a spokeswoman, responded that the governor does not comment on pending litigation.

Featured video: Over 60 companies urge Texas to drop anti-transgender legislation

Get local news delivered to your inbox! Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
Oklahomas policy banning transgender people from amending their birth certificates to reflect their gender identify violates the equal protection, due process and free speech guarantees of the U.S. Constitution, according to a federal lawsuit filed by three Tulsa-area residents.

The birth certificate policy facially and intentionally discriminates on the basis of transgender status, says the lawsuit, filed Monday in Tulsa federal court.

The lawsuit seeks a judgment that prohibits the state from enforcing the policy and requires it to provide amended birth certificates to those who seek them based on gender identity.

The lawsuit follows an executive order issued by Gov. Kevin Stitt in November after the Oklahoma State Department of Health issued an amended birth certificate with a nonbinary gender marker to an individual as part of a court settlement.

Stitts order barred the issuance of amended birth certificates that altered the designated gender or sex of individuals.

Stitt claimed in his order that state law backed him up, but he called on the Legislature to pass legislation further clarifying it.

The executive order also reversed a prior Health Department practice that permitted individuals with a court order to change the gender on their birth certificates based on their gender identity, according to the lawsuit.

Gov. Stitts executive order deprives transgender people born in Oklahoma of equal treatment under the law, said Shelly Skeen, senior attorney for New York-based Lambda Legal. Other people have access to birth certificates that match who they are, but the government has singled out transgender people to take away their ability to access birth certificates that match who they are.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of two Tulsa residents  Rowan Fowler and Allister Hall  and one Creek County resident, identified only by the initials C.R.

Fowler is a transgender woman; Hall and C.R. are transgender men, according to the lawsuit.

All three claim that the state Health Department recently rejected their attempts to amend their birth certificates to reflect their gender identities.

Having a birth certificate that reflects who I am as a human being is crucial and can present a basic issue of safety for me, Fowler said in a statement.

The states denial of my existence is discriminatory and puts me in harms way, Fowler said. There was no reason for Oklahoma to take away this basic tool that transgender people need to simply go about their everyday lives with dignity, safety, and respect.

In addition to naming Stitt in his official capacity, the lawsuit also names in their official capacities Keith Reed, now Oklahomas commissioner of health, and Kelly Baker, registrar of vital records at the Oklahoma State Health Department.

In addition to seeking a ruling that permits them to change the gender identities on their birth certificates, the plaintiffs ask a judge to prohibit the state from designating on amended birth certificates that information has been modified from its original issuance.

Such protections are necessary to protect the privacy of individuals who are transgender, according to the lawsuit.

The issue came to light in October after the state of Oklahoma approved a settlement agreement with an Oregon resident who had sued the state to amend their Oklahoma birth certificates gender designation.

Kit Lorelied was the first person in the state to have their Oklahoma birth certificate amended to reflect a nonbinary gender marker.

Nonbinary individuals do not identify specifically as male or female. They do not feel that male or female is their clear gender identity.

A Senate panel on Feb. 28 approved a bill that would prohibit the designation of nonbinary gender markers on Oklahoma birth certificates.

The proposed legislation, Senate Bill 1100 by Sen. Micheal Bergstrom, R-Adair, passed by a vote of 7-3.

A spokeswoman for the State Health Department issued a statement in response to a request for comment, saying, We are unable to comment on this piece of litigation, at this time.

Stitt's office, through a spokeswoman, responded that the governor does not comment on pending litigation.

Featured video: Over 60 companies urge Texas to drop anti-transgender legislation

Get Government & Politics updates in your inbox! Stay up-to-date on the latest in local and national government and political topics with our newsletter. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
Its questionable whether the Republican lawmakers supporting Senate Bill 1583 and Senate Bill 1647both sponsored by Senate President Pro Tem Greg Treat, Oklahoma Cityare trying to help students struggling in school.

SB 1647, called the Oklahoma Empowerment Act, would give money intended for public schools to individual students at private schools in the form of a voucher worth between $3,600 to $5,300. SB 1583 would allow a student in a public school with an F on its state grade card to go to any private school with taxpayer dollars.

SB 1583 passed the Senate Education Committee 9-6 and has been sent to the Senate Appropriations Committee. SB 1647 passed the Senate Appropriations Committee 12-8 and the Senate Education Committee 8-7. Both remain alive.

Supporting legislators say they want to help the students get a better education by giving them a small amount of money to attend private schools, but their solution wont work, notwithstanding any good intentions.

Giving kids a per pupil amount of money based on (and from) the public school funding formula to attend a private school falls astoundingly short of what is needed to afford the school. Their parents would need enough wealth to afford the difference. In fact, private schools can easily raise their tuition to remain out of reach for so-called voucher kids.

Even for kids who are struggling in public schools, the bill would provide funding only for students whose parents have the time and energy to apply. Often, its precisely those parents who also struggle to find the time, ability and resources to help their children who are having the most problems.

Nor do the bills require private schools to admit anyone who wants to attend. Private schools can deny entrance to the very kids who need it most.

I would like to believe the framers of these bills seek the best interests of the students who are not benefitting from public education. The unfortunate reality, however, is that SB 1583 and SB 1647 seek to undermine public education by directing tax dollars to private schools who retain power to deny entrance.

Many public schools already lack the resources and teachers to cover classes and reach all students, resulting in kids who cant keep up. Unlike private schools that legislators are so eager to support, public schools must serve everyone. Now they are targeted for privatization.

If parents with time and resources move their kids to private schools, fewer resources will remain for the growing percentage of struggling students attending many public schools. Its worth noting that children coming from families with the time, resources and wealth to attend private schools are likely to be successful even in a lower-performing public school.

Kids who are not performing well at school all too often face issues at home, such as poverty or trauma. Some are learning to adapt to learning disabilities or working through mental health needs.

Oklahomas lawmakersespecially those supporting these billsconsistently and perversely withhold the resources to help those kids. They seek to punish those students for their lack of progress without regard to those extenuating circumstances.

If the lawmakers really cared about helping kids struggling in public school, they would go back to the drawing board and focus on providing real alternatives or the resources for public schools to succeed.

But, they wont do that if their motivations are to eliminate public schools. I hope they prove me wrong.

Adam Kupetsky is a former member of the Tulsa World Community Advisory Board and public school advocate.

Subscribe to Daily Headlines Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
A ceremony was organized in Ha Tinh Province, north-central Vietnam on Monday to commemorate 64 naval soldiers who laid down their lives protecting Gac Ma (Johnson South) Reef in the country's Truong Sa (Spratly) Archipelago in 1988.

Held in Thien Cam Town, Cam Xuyen District, the event was attended by about 100 people who are relatives and comrades of the fallen heroes.

The participants recalled the historic moments and called out the names of the 64 soldiers who perished protecting Gac Ma Reef in Vietnams Truong Sa on March 14, 1988, when China used force to seize the reef.

Le Huu Thao, a Gac Ma veteran, speaks at the ceremony to commemorate the fallen soldiers in Ha Tinh Province, Vietnam, March 14, 2022. Photo: Le Minh / Tuoi Tre

Commemorative activities for the 64 Gac Ma heroes have been organized annually for many years to express the Vietnamese peoples deep gratitude for their sacrifice, Le Huu Thao, a Gac Ma veteran, said at the ceremony.

Following memorial rituals, the event sponsors presented gifts to family members of the fallen heroes and to veterans of the Gac Ma battle.

Veterans attend the ceremony to commemorate the 64 Gac Ma heroes in Ha Tinh Province, Vietnam, March 14, 2022. Photo: Le Minh / Tuoi Tre

I am proud to have a son who served and dedicated his life to protecting the fatherland, but I am also heartbroken, Nguyen Thi Hang, mother of late soldier Hoang Anh Dong, said.

Dong enlisted in the army in 1987 and died a year later during the Gac Ma battle when he was just 22 years old.

On Sunday evening, family members of the martyrs and Gac Ma veterans released lanterns at a beach in Cam Nhuong Commune, Cam Xuyen District as part of the activities to commemorate the fallen combatants.

Nguyen Thi Hang, mother of late soldier Hoang Anh Dong, reacts at the memorial ceremony in Ha Tinh Province, Vietnam, March 14, 2022. Photo: Le Minh / Tuoi Tre

A Gac Ma veteran offers incense to the fallen soldiers at the memorial ceremony in Ha Tinh Province, Vietnam, March 14, 2022. Photo: Le Minh / Tuoi Tre

Veterans offer incense to the fallen soldiers at the memorial ceremony in Ha Tinh Province, Vietnam, March 14, 2022. Photo: Le Minh / Tuoi Tre

A wreath is laid at Thien Cam Beach at the end of the memorial ceremony in Ha Tinh Province, Vietnam, March 14, 2022. Photo: Le Minh / Tuoi Tre

People release lanterns at a beach in Cam Nhuong Commune, Ha Tinh Province, Vietnam to commemorate the fallen soldiers, March 13, 2022. Photo: Quoc Nam / Tuoi Tre

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!
Vietnam-based chambers of commerce from the U.S., the UK, Canada, Australia, and Europe have entered into a commitment to jointly promote gender diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) for the sake of women in the Southeast Asian country.

The leaders of AmCham (the U.S.), BritCham (the UK), CanCham (Canada), AusCham (Australia), and EuroCham (Europe) in Vietnam signed the Panel Pledge Vietnam as a commitment to strengthen womens voices in the workplace and in society.

The signing was made at the event entitled 'Champions of Diversity and Inclusion Panel Pledge,' co-hosted recently in Ho Chi Minh City by an informal coalition of these five chambers dedicated to advancing DEI, according to AmCham Vietnam.

The event attracted the participation of many business leaders who also signed the same commitment.

The Panel Pledge Vietnam is derived from the Panel Pledge, which is a leading panel parity initiative which originated in Australia as an achievable step to advance gender equity, AmCham Vietnam said.

This initiative focuses on creating gender equality at professional events and forums, which is considered an important step toward achieving the goals of gender equality.

With their commitment, the five business associations will actively increase the participation of female speakers at events, seminars, conferences or public forums.

They will also be committed to working with event organizers about speaker composition, including recommending female or male speakers where appropriate, and helping create a positive mindset about womens participation in all agendas.

Van Ly, an AmCham representative, said that efforts to recognize many different voices from gender-diverse speakers can open up more interesting perspectives on various issues.

The commitment of the foreign business associations will have a positive impact on work culture, promote gender equality, and empower women in Vietnam, she said.

Currently, many businesses in Vietnam are pushning for the building of a gender equality policy as a business mission and the inclusion of it in actual action goals.

By advocating a culture of inclusion and prejudice elimination, and acting as the representative of equal voices, these businesses work together to help everybody to deal with issues related to gender equity.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!
A man was killed after being crushed by an excavator that fell off a truck in a road accident in Nghe An Province, north-central Vietnam on Sunday.

The incident took place in Dong Hop Commune, Quy Hop District at around 8:00 am on Sunday, the district police unit confirmed later the same day.

Preliminary information showed that a truck, which was transporting an excavator, exited an alley at high speed before running across the street, mounting the sidewalk, and crashing into a house.

A man, about 60 years old, had just parked his motorbike on the sidewalk at the time.

He did not get hit by the truck.

Police examine the crash site in Nghe An Province, March 13, 2022 in this photo supplied by a Tuoi Tre reader.

However, after the truck crashed into the house, the excavator it was carrying fell off and crushed the victim.

Local residents rushed to help him but he was already dead.

Another man was also present at the scene, but managed to get out of harms way.

The accident was caught on CCTV installed in front of a local house.

Police are now working to determine the reason behind the crash.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!
Nearly 600 Vietnamese people fleeing conflict-hit Ukraine to Poland and Romania safely returned home on two Vietnam Airlines flights on Sunday, bringing the total number of Vietnamese repatriated from the European country past 1,100.

They are the first two repatriation flights operated under an agreement between national flag carrier Vietnam Airlines and Vietnamese realty giant Sun Group.

Pursuant to the deal, the Vietnamese group covers the entire cost for the arrangement of the flights.

The flight from Polands Warsaw with 288 passengers on board touched down at Noi Bai International Airport in Hanoi at 9:30 am.

The other from Romanias Bucharest landed at 11:00 am, carrying 291 people.

Ninety of the passengers were children aged under 18, 70 were the elderly, and 12 others were pregnant women.

The Vietnamese embassies in Poland and Romania had cooperated with Vietnamese associations in those countries to help the evacuees travel to the airports and complete pre-departure procedures.

The first two repatriation flights, funded by the state, brought 287 people back to Vietnam on March 8 and 300 others on March 10.

With four evacuations so far, a total of 1,166 Vietnamese people have been brought home from Ukraine.

As of 4:00 pm on Saturday, more than 4,500 Vietnamese people had been evacuated from Ukraine to neighboring countries.

They included some 950 to Romania, 2,800 to Poland, 660 to Hungary, nearly 130 to Slovakia, and over 40 to Russia.

The Vietnamese missions are busy cooperating with local authorities and multiple Vietnamese associations to arrange travel and temporary accommodations and provide food for the evacuees, while helping them resolve document issues and fulfill legal steps to prepare for the next flights home.

Russia has been attacking Ukraine since February 24, saying it wants to demilitarize and denazify the neighboring country.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!
New Delhi: In his first meeting after the BJPs sweeping victory in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, as the party returned to power with an absolute majority, chief minister-designate Yogi Adityanath on Sunday met the BJP top brass, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, party chief J.P. Nadda and Union ministers Amit Shah and Rajnath Singh. Yogi Adityanath also met vice-president M. Venkaiah Naidu. During his meeting with Mr Shah at the latters residence, the BJP president was also present.

The UP CMs meeting with Mr Modi at the latters official residence lasted for nearly two hours. Mr Modi, who was personally invited by Yogi Adityanath for the oath-taking ceremony of the new government in UP that is likely to take place on March 19, expressed confidence that he will take the state to new heights of development in the coming years.

Had a meeting with Yogi Adityanath today and congratulated him over the historic win in the Uttar Pradesh polls. He has worked tirelessly to fulfil the peoples aspirations in the last five years. I have full confidence that he will take the states development to new heights in the coming years, the PM later tweeted. Yogi Adityanath is the first Uttar Pradesh CM to be re-elected to office after 37 years.

Earlier, Yogi Adityanath also met BJP national general secretary (organisation) B.L. Santosh and Union minister Sarbananda Sonowal.

The UP CM is in the national capital to discuss the composition of his new ministerial team, which is expected to have many new faces and also the representation of BJP allies Apna Dal (S) and Nishad Party in the new government. Speculation is rife in Lucknow that the new Cabinet could make take important decisions, including on stray cattle and free electricity to farmers, after its first meeting. The fate of two deputy CMs in the previous government -- Keshav Prasad Maurya, who lost the election, and Dinesh Sharma -- is also to be decided by the partys central leadership.

In Uttarakhand, meanwhile, another state where the BJP has retained power, the new government is likely to take the oath on March 20. The senior BJP leaders from the hill state are likely to meet the partys top brass on Monday over the formation of the government.
Executive Producer of Four Corners, Sally Neighbour will leave ABC later this year after a 7 year run leading the current affairs program.

Neighbour reported for Four Corners from 1996 to 2009 before becoming Executive Producer of 7:30 in 2012. She returned to Four Corners in 2015.

She has also undertaken overseas postings in Beijing and Hong Kong and presented Lateline

Its been an extraordinary honour and privilege to lead this amazing program for the past seven years and to work with the fearless, dedicated team of journalists and program makers who keep it at the forefront of Australian journalism, she said.

I have absolutely loved the role and the people I work with and I want to thank them all for their tireless commitment to holding power to account in this country and abroad.

I know Four Corners is safe and strong in their hands. For me, its time for a long holiday and some new adventures.

ABC Managing Director David Anderson said, Sally Neighbours career, both as an award-winning reporter and as Executive Producer of Four Corners, stands as an exceptional contribution to Australian journalism.

She has led a ground-breaking team of journalists at Four Corners and under her leadership the program has delivered some of the most important public interest investigations of recent years. I would like to congratulate her on all of her achievements.

Acting Director News Gavin Fang added, Four Corners has for 60 years been Australias premier investigative reporting program and Sally Neighbour has played a key role in that achievement.

She has brought to the public hundreds of important and compelling stories which have had a significant impact on this nation.

She has been a warrior of public interest journalism, fearless in holding the powerful to account on behalf of the Australian public.

John Lyons, Head of Investigative & In-Depth Journalism added, During her seven years as Executive Producer of Four Corners Sally Neighbour has been a powerful advocate of investigative journalism.

Under Sallys tenure the program has exposed injustices across the Australian community. During her time, four Royal Commissions were called following investigations by the program  into the banking and financial services industry, water theft in the Murray Darling Basin, the aged care industry and the NTs youth justice system. Under Sallys leadership the program has won a remarkable 17 Walkley Awards.

After 60 years, Four Corners is the longest-running current affairs program on Australian television. Sally has ensured that after six decades it is as committed as it ever has been in its determination to inform the Australian public.

While there have also been headlines surrounding Four Corners friction with government, and Neighbour attracting attention over tweets, the announcement is the latest change with ABC News department.

ABC is yet to appoint its next news boss following the departure of Gaven Morris, while Leigh Sales will finish at 7:30 in June but remain at ABC.

A replacement for Neighbour is yet to be announced.
Tyler, TX (75702)

Today

Mostly cloudy skies. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 88F. Winds SSE at 10 to 20 mph..

Tonight

Mostly cloudy skies. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 71F. Winds SSE at 10 to 20 mph.
The University of Dayton has received the Jesse L. Moore Supplier 2022 Diversity Award, a national recognition from INSIGHT Into Diversity magazine honoring colleges and universities that take proactive steps to support and engage with minority-owned businesses.

The publication selected winners for their efforts in recruiting, hiring and retaining suppliers from underrepresented groups through institutional supplier diversity offices, innovative programs and other initiatives. Winners will be included in the April 2022 issue of INSIGHT Into Diversity magazine.

As a Catholic institution of higher education, supplier diversity is intrinsic to our mission to advance the common good, said University of Dayton President Eric F. Spina. The University of Dayton has placed a high priority on expanding supplier diversity, identifying it as one of the University's key components in our effort to support equity and inclusion on our campus and in the Greater Dayton community. We are appreciative that this award acknowledges this work and our progress, and I am very grateful to Executive Director for Procurement Sara Harrison and her team for their leadership and hard work."

INSIGHT Into Diversity magazine noted UDs decade of participation as a committed buying organization with the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce Minority Business Partnership, an economic development initiative to grow the local economy through stronger engagement with the regions minority businesses. For example, about 20% of contractors in the construction of the Universitys new 1401 S. Main building and the Roger Glass Center for the Arts currently under construction are minority- or women-owned businesses.

In 2018, the University launched the Greater West Dayton Incubator. Its work aligns with the Universitys supplier goals, and fosters support for underrepresented, under-resourced, and underserved entrepreneurs in the Greater Dayton startup community.

On campus, the University strengthened its supplier diversity program through the launch of an centralized e-procurement system in 2017 that helped identify and feature diverse suppliers. Other internal efforts included the development of a procurement advisory council, education and training for campus units and buyers, and creating strong local relationships with higher education supplier diversity teams.

The COVID-19 pandemic also created opportunities for the University. UD found new supply chains from new suppliers, Harrison said, with diverse and small suppliers often proving to be the best partners for reliability, cost, speed and agility. While many employees were working remotely at the start of the pandemic, the University held Zoom training and education sessions with employees about the importance of supplier diversity.

Sourcing from minority-owned, women-owned and local businesses allowed our diverse suppliers to touch and help every person on campus through personal protective equipment and cleaning supplies, Harrison said. Relationships established through outreach events were leveraged and we were pleased to form new strategic partnerships with diverse suppliers.

UD has a five-year goal to spend 20% of its annual purchases with minority- and women-owned suppliers by fiscal year 2025-26.

This is the third award for UD in less than a year recognizing its diversity, equity and inclusion work. Diverse: Issues In Higher Education highlighted Tiffany Taylor Smith, UD vice president for diversity and inclusion, among its 25 outstanding women for Womens History Month. Last fall, UD was among a small group of schools nationally honored by INSIGHT Into Diversity with a Higher Education Excellence in Diversity (HEED) Award, which recognizes U.S. institutions of higher education that demonstrate a notable commitment to diversity and inclusion across campus.

When it comes to diversity, equity and inclusion, colleges and universities have traditionally put their resources into recruiting and retaining diverse students and employees  however, there is a third leg of DEI that focuses on supplier diversity, said Lenore Pearlstein, co-publisher of INSIGHT Into Diversity. The INSIGHT Into Diversity Jesse L. Moore Supplier Diversity Award, named in honor of longtime advocate and economic development pioneer Jesse L. Moore for his leadership in promoting supplier diversity and the success of minority-owned businesses, is our way of ensuring this critical area of DEI also gets recognized for the important role that it plays.

INSIGHT Into Diversity magazine is the oldest and largest diversity-focused publication in higher education.
'Jessie and the Elf Boy' is inspired by the old legend of Ghillie Dhu, building on it in a fun and imaginative way. Teenager Jessie is disorientated by the sudden arrival of Ghillie Dhu, a peculiar boy dressed in leaves and moss who has a talent for creating wacky hairstyles. (Oh, and he's invisible to everyone except Jessie.) But she soon realizes that he can help her make a splash in the hairstyling scene, as well as finally reconnect with her distant mother.

Ghillie's invisibility leads to a stream of comic episodes as other people unwittingly encounter him.

As Jessie's career takes off, it seems like all her dreams are coming true, but it becomes increasingly difficult to keep her elf companion a secret.

Cast

The Film stars Julia Brown, an accomplished Scottish actress who is known for BBC shows such as 'World on Fire,' 'Shetland' and 'M.I. High'. Alongside her, in the role of Ghillie Dhu, is 11-year-old Huck Whittle, a newcomer to the screen and certainly one to watch. Jessie's mother is played by veteran Scottish actress Gail Watson, whose screen work includes 'Katie Morag,' 'River City,' and 'Annika.'

In addition, the film features a host of other brilliant Scottish actors and includes hilarious performances from Belle Jones and Eloise King Anderson.

Production company Fellowship Film

'Jessie and the Elf Boy' is the latest feature film from the emerging Scottish production company Fellowship Film. Their debut feature film, 'The Gaelic King,' was a fantasy action/adventure set in 800AD Scotland, telling the story of warrior-king Alpin mac Eachdach as he fights to regain his kingdom.

The film was so innovative in its approach that it received a commendation from the Scottish Parliament as a triumph of resourceful filmmaking.

Fellowship Film is based in Glasgow and run by five brothers from two Scottish families: Philip Todd, Matthew Todd, Nathan Todd, John Walkinshaw, and Tom Walkinshaw. They believe in the power of positive and authentic communities in making bold and inspiring films.

Philip Todd, the writer, director, and producer of 'Jessie and the Elf Boy' describe it as "an uplifting Scottish movie for the whole family." He says: "We filmed in the height of the pandemic, which was certainly a challenge, but we were motivated by the belief that in difficult times people need a story like this all the more  a story with laughter, friendship, magic, and a big heart."

Family film

This is a film that the whole family can enjoy together; it is all-ages-approved by Dove.org. Children will have fun watching Ghillie as he gets up to mischief and causes chaos in the chic hair salon, and parents will find Jessie's quest to heal her relationship with her mother resonant and moving.

Those who like a good drama will be satisfied by the film's ending, which is surprising and emotionally impactful. Of course, the story will also appeal to those with interest in Scottish legends.

'Jessie and the Elf Boy' will be available from April 1, 2022, in the US, Canada, and the UK on all major digital platforms, including Amazon, iTunes, and Google Play.
The Cuadrilla hydraulic fracturing site at Preston New Road (Cuadrilla/PA) (PA Media)

The governments focus on slashing dependence on foreign fossil fuel imports amid the energy crisis and the war in Ukraine is sending mixed messages to the power sector, with both clean energy firms and domestic fossil fuel companies aiming to capitalise on the uncertainty.

On Monday, following reports that fracking could be explored as part of plans to boost the UKs energy security, the boss of drilling company Cuadrilla called on the government to lift the moratorium on shale gas extraction.

Despite major opposition to the practice on climate grounds, and warnings from experts that shale gas cannot make a material difference to supplies in the UK, Francis Egan has made an eleventh-hour request to the business department to allow fracking to go ahead.

The plea comes as the company nears a deadline to concrete its exploratory wells.

In a statement, he said: If the words from Downing Street and the House of Commons are to have any practical meaning I urgently request the Business Department and the OGA (Oil and Gas Authority) to formally withdraw their instruction to plug the wells.

They should also put sensible protections in place to ensure that companies like Cuadrilla and others arent forced to suffer the risk and financial cost of operating in a position where a government can keep changing its mind and require wells to be cemented whilst they are eminently useful.

If we are serious about energy security, as a very basic, first step we must not concrete up these wells, and then we need urgently to lift the shale gas moratorium and use these and additional wells to produce domestic shale gas.

The business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, has repeatedly signalled his opposition to fracking, and recently wrote on Twitter that introducing supplies of fracked shale gas would not be sufficient to have an impact on wholesale prices of gas.

He said: "Additional UK production wont materially affect the wholesale market price.

Story continues

"This includes fracking  UK producers wont sell shale gas to UK consumers below the market price. Theyre not charities."

However, a government spokesperson told The Independent: In light of Russias unjustified invasion of Ukraine and rising global gas prices, its right we move away from dependence on Russian gas and increase our self-reliance in our energy security.

We are considering all our options. We will set out an energy supply strategy which will supercharge our renewable energy and nuclear capacity as well as supporting our North Sea oil and gas industry.

The International Energy Agency has said if the world is to avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis, then no new fossil fuel projects should go ahead.

The government is also looking at expanding drilling in the North Sea.

The drive for new fossil fuels comes just four months after the UK hosted the UNs Cop26 climate summit, designed to rally support for slashing greenhouse gas emissions, and just days after the UNs Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that "billions" are now highly vulnerable to environmental collapse, while the window for taking the necessary action was "rapidly closing".

The UK currently gets around 45 per cent of its gas from the North Sea, 36 per cent from Norway, Qatar provides 7.3 per cent, and the remaining 11.7 per cent comes from other sources including Russia, which contributes between 1  4 per cent of UK gas.

All of the gas used in the UK, including from domestic sources, is bought on the open market, but the wholesale price of gas has quadrupled in the UK and Europe.

The cheapest way to generate power in the UK is through renewables, and in particular solar and wind power, however, much industry along with domestic heating systems remain dependent on gas.

In order to cut the countrys remaining gas demands, experts are urging the government to prioritise insulating homes and putting measures in place to enhance energy efficiency.

Analysis by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) found the UK could wipe out the requirement for Russian gas in just five years  as early as 2027  through better insulation and installation of electric heat pumps, which they said would help protect 6.5 million homes from volatile gas prices.
What a Wally! The marvellous marine visitor was first sighted on his European tour a year ago today, March 14. Main picture: Gareth Davies Photography; inset: Scott Reid.

Whose whiskered countenance launched scores of seaside souvenirs, with their mighty tusks damaging a dozen boats?

Who else, indeed, but Wally the Walrus, who wallowed into the public eye a year ago this week to bring smiles to a Pembrokeshire public as the coronavirus pandemic entered its second year.

The marvellous mammal won world-wide fame for his European antics while on an unexpected visit from the Arctic.

Western Telegraph: Wally quickly found a 'gull-friend'. Picture: Gareth Davies Photography

Wally quickly found a 'gull-friend'. Picture: Gareth Davies Photography His characteristics included a fondness for hauling his impressive bulk onto vessels and maritime platforms, a huge appetite for shellfish and an endearing stubbornness to shift out of the way of marine traffic.

The world first became aware of Wally  who was then, of course, un-named  when he landed on the west coast of Ireland on Sunday March 14, 2021.

Within a week, he popped up at Broadhaven south in Pembrokeshire and then made a grand appearance in Tenby on March 27.

Western Telegraph: The sight of Wally lounging on the Tenby RNLI slipway was an unforgettable one. Picture: Gareth Davies Photography

The sight of Wally lounging on the Tenby RNLI slipway was an unforgettable one. Picture: Gareth Davies Photography

His arrival co-incided with the relaxation of the stay local restrictions, and visitors from far and wide crowded the vantage point of Castle Hill to watch Wally swimming, scoffing and sunbathing from his adopted home base of the RNLI lifeboat station slipway.

Western Telegraph: Wally was a star fisherman. Picture: Amy Compton

Wally was a star fisherman. Picture: Amy Compton

In one adorable incident, he surfaced with a starfish on his nose.

Western Telegraph: Wally's RNLI slipway stand-offs were regular events. Picture: Amy Compton

Wally's RNLI slipway stand-offs were regular events. Picture: Amy Compton

While his stand-offs with the Tenby lifeboat crew became legendary.

But there were also frequent warning to those who ventured too close - on land or sea - that the wilful Wally was a wild animal, and should not be disturbed.

And dinghy owners needed no reminding that their craft could be easily sunk under his 800kg bulk.

Wally even had a local beer named in his honour, and in true celebrity fashion, had his own merchandise, including face masks, tea towels and cuddly toys.

Story continues

Western Telegraph: The rhyming tale of Wally was a local best-seller

The rhyming tale of Wally was a local best-seller

And he starred in a book in aid of Welsh Marine Life Rescue, whose volunteers had closely monitored him.

But all good things come to an end and by the end of May, Wallys Tenby vacation had ended and he set off on an astonishing European tour, taking in Cornwall, France, Spain and the Isles of Scilly.

There he was videoed as he got up to his boat-boarding antics.

Western Telegraph: Isles of Scilly artist Steve Sherris captured Wally's likeness.

Isles of Scilly artist Steve Sherris captured Wally's likeness.

And even had his portrait painted.

By the end of September, it appeared that Wallys inbuilt sat-nav had kicked in and he was on his way back to the Arctic where he began his incredible journey.

As one of his many friends on Facebook said:
Photo credit: Jonas Bendiksen

In Iceland, as the locals are quick to inform you, its not the cold or the rain that will get you  its the wind. In October 2017, a pair of hunters were enjoying a day outdoors in the east of the country. The weather at that time of year, while not exactly warm, can still be clement, and the terrain has an almost extraterrestrial feel, with hot springs, volcanic rock and rough edges that spread out into the north Atlantic like a drop of ink.

Having shot 16 birds and buoyed by their haul, the hunters  a pair of well-equipped, highly experienced men  decided to press on a little further. Then the sky darkened. The weather is known to change both quickly and often. Suddenly, the two men were being battered by rain and winds that whipped their skin at speeds of 40m per second. They tried to call for help but their mobile phone signal failed, and even if they had been successful in their attempts to raise the alarm, they couldnt have given an accurate location. These two men, who had done everything right, now found themselves fearing for their lives, disoriented and exposed, and at the mercy of an Icelandic storm.

The terrain here is not necessarily the hardest in the world, says Orn Smarason, a project manager for Icelands sprawling network of search and rescue teams known as Slysavarnarfelagi Landsbjorg, or the Icelandic Association for Search and Rescue (Ice-Sar) in English. Its the wind that really causes problems.

When it comes, its no laughing matter. An Icelandic gale will rip tents in half and snap poles, strip roofs and knock people off their feet. In this case, it pinned the hunters to the side of a mountain, preventing them from seeking shelter or escaping. Trickling streams became raging, impassable torrents and the pair quickly lost their bearings. But minutes after they were reported missing, the alarm was raised with Ice-Sar, and its network of volunteers began mobilising to rescue the two hunters.

Story continues

Looking for Trouble Membership of the 4,000-strong Ice-Sar network demands more than just a happy-to-help attitude. To negotiate the inaccessibility of much of Icelands landscape, members must be proficient navigators, mountaineers, divers, sailors and even parachutists. After completing 18 months of basic training, volunteers can then undergo specialist programmes in their chosen discipline, from avalanche search missions to white-water rescue.

Ice-Sar members are permanently on call and can be drafted at any time of the day or night. (Smarason once abandoned his Christmas lunch on receiving an urgent rescue call.) Often, they must head out in conditions that are not merely unpleasant but dangerous.

Photo credit: Jonas Bendiksen

Ice-Sar organises rescue teams with the requisite skills for any given mission using a live database of respondents. In the case of the lost hunters, information had to be gathered quickly. Where were they headed? Where were they last known to have been? Their level of experience was also taken into account. Practised hunters will react very differently when lost to, say, a group of tourists.

These things start small and get bigger, says Smarason. If you get lost, first, the local teams will look for you. If theres no sign of you after nine hours of searching, well call on [more members], and so on, until we find you. It can end up with 400 volunteers searching for you.

The local teams searched for the hunters all night without success. At 9am [the following day], there was a status meeting. They hadnt found anything, any tracks, anything at all, says Smarason. It was raining like hell and everyone was now 10 hours into the search. Then they mobilised all of the available volunteers in the area  over 70 rescuers. Even more were on their way when the hunters were found.

It turned out that, in an effort to protect themselves, the hunters had dug a hole under a rock, climbed inside and covered themselves with a plastic sheet. They spent 16 hours huddled in their improvised shelter before finally being rescued. By that point, they were unable to stand from exhaustion, but otherwise safe.

When you find the person, it fills you with a sense of power, says Smarason. Its like completing a piece of Ikea furniture. You need so many pieces to make a whole. Youre solving this puzzle together. You might be working with someone you dont know from the other side of the country, but because youve had the same training, theres a sense of community.

Saving Strangers

From a young age, many volunteers have felt a strong sense of duty to protect their fellow citizens. Smarasons parents and grandparents were members of Ice-Sar, and he began his training in one of the youth units, which could be described as a slightly more advanced version of the Scouts. There, he learned to read maps and administer first aid, as well as receiving a schooling in the principles of mountain safety. This training had a dual purpose: to help him stay safe outdoors, but also to equip him with the knowledge to help others in peril.

A number of disasters are said to have galvanised the Icelandic people into developing Ice-Sar. Smarason tells me the story of the Doon, a British fishing trawler that sailed from Hull in the 1940s. Trawlers would head up towards the Arctic Circle in search of deep-sea fish, and accidents were not uncommon.

After running aground against Icelands north-western coast during a raging storm, the Doon was wrecked at the bottom of an 18m cliff. With no way off the ship, the 13 crew members were trapped on board as the vessel rapidly began to disintegrate into the freezing water.

At that time, there was no official rescue team, no organisation responsible for helping them. So, a group of local farmers stepped in. These men were adept at scaling the cliffs, often doing so in search of bird eggs in the spring. A team of 20 set off on a six-hour hike to reach the wreck, where they lowered themselves down onto a ledge at the foot of the cliff. The makeshift rescue squad worked through the night, pulling the sailors off the boat and up the sheer rock to safety. Why did they risk their lives to save strangers? Because they knew what to do, Smarason puts it, simply. These farmers had a great deal of knowledge about the local surroundings. They thought, Nobody else has this knowledge, and nobody else has this equipment. If we dont help them, these people are not going to be here to talk about it tomorrow.

Photo credit: Jonas Bendiksen

In the intervening years, a large accident prevention programme has been implemented, spearheaded by Icelands women who were sick of losing their husbands, fathers, sons and brothers to the sea. It has made fishing and, indeed, most other activities that take place on the island, much safer. From changes as rudimentary as proper fire drills to investment in rescue suits that enable wearers to float in the ocean for hours, reforms carried out by Ice-Sar (along with changes in Icelandic maritime law) have led to a significant reduction in the number of fatalities at sea. Indeed, as recently as 2017, there were no deaths recorded that year. Compare that with one particularly disastrous three-week period in January 1968, when 58 people lost their lives on British fishing boats alone, and its clear how far the country has come.

Prepare for Action

Ice-Sar also works closely with the Icelandic coastguard, for whom Gumundur Ragnar Magnuss works as a helicopter winchman. Like many people accustomed to operating in highly pressurised situations, Magnuss has a calm, understated manner. (Icelandic people are not exactly known for their hyperbole.) Mostly, he explains, his job involves ensuring that the coastguard is informed about all maritime traffic in and out of Iceland. There was one incident, however, in which he was winched onto a burning ship in the middle of a slapper  a particularly violent storm. The height of the waves was so great that every time the ship rose and fell, it would crash down with such force that it sent shock waves rippling through the steel hull.

We rescued a crew from a cargo ship carrying fishmeal that was burning south of the island, maybe 20 nautical miles offshore. There were 13 people on board and the whole ship  the bridge, everything  was on fire, he recalls. Of course, Im not used to being lowered onto a burning ship. But its just procedure. Maybe the conditions were a little bit worse than those we usually train in, but it was still basic stuff for me.

Missions such as this might not fit most peoples definition of basic, but emergency protocols are drilled and drilled again until they become second nature. In the heat of the moment, theres little time to strategise.

Once I was lowered onto the ship, we sent people up to the helicopter on a rescue strap, two at a time. It took 10 minutes to get everyone off. It was quick, but we practise a lot. This is a sentiment echoed by all members of Ice-Sar: what saves lives isnt brute strength, or daring. Its knowledge. There are no minimum physical fitness requirements, though many rescue missions are very physically challenging and the organisation is careful about who it sends out. What it does ask is that members rehearse.

Iceland has no standing army and its police force is spread thin, which makes the service of volunteers not just useful but invaluable. Ice-Sar receives no government funding; ironically, for a safety-minded organisation, it raises most of its funds through the sale of fireworks, ahead of the countrys extensive New Years Eve celebrations. (It also sells Christmas trees and receives donations.)

Icelandic citizens are only too happy to support their civilian saviours. Years of hard-earned experience have instilled in them a deep respect for the environment they live in and its dangers. But should you ever find yourself in peril, dont be surprised if the members of Ice-Sar who come to your rescue appear totally unfazed. After all, theyve been preparing for this their whole lives.

You Might Also Like
Two years since Covid-19 was declared a pandemic -on March 11, 2020 - finally, for India, there seems to be some light at the end of the pandemic tunnel. The daily new Covid-19 cases in the country have come down to around 4,000 to 5,000, the lowest in 22 months since May 2020. This has revived some of the discourses -- (a) whether the third wave of Covid-19 pandemic is over in India? (b) Has Covid-19 become endemic in the country? (c) Will there be another wave? and (d) Does everyone need a Covid-19 vaccine booster dose? These are some of the many questions that people have in the mind.

To start with -- in a pandemic or epidemic -- when the number of daily new cases comes down and stabilises at low levels, for at least two weeks, it is considered an end of the wave in that specific setting. If on a graph, these new cases are plotted on y-axis and the time on x-axis, a curve with a flattened pattern would appear towards the end. Moreover, at present, the daily new Covid-19 cases in India are lower than the cases before the third wave in the country. In this backdrop, it is logical to conclude that the Covid-19 third wave is over. However, a wave getting over does not mean that SARS CoV2 has gone. In fact, the newer pathogens including viruses, once detected, stays with humanity for long, possibly forever. This seems to be the most probable scenario with SARS CoV2 as well. It clearly is time for us to prepare to live with SARS CoV2.

That brings another question: Has Covid-19 become endemic in India? To start with, we need to understand that Covid-19 becoming endemic is not a binary that today it is a pandemic and tomorrow it is endemic. Also, endemic does not mean the end of the virus transmission. So, when do we call a disease endemic? An epidemic or pandemic starts with a pathogen (in this case a virus) but ends with a socio-political consensus. Therefore, when Covid-19 would be considered endemic in any setting or country is going to be determined by every country at different points of time. There is going to be some risk associated with SARS CoV2, which would be greater than pre-Covid period. Therefore, a decision on endemicity would be influenced by societal consensus and political leadership based upon how much risk any society or community is willing to accept, in the return to normalcy, in other spheres of life? Sweden, Denmark and Britain, without explicitly declaring Covid-19 as endemic, removed nearly all Covid-19 related restrictions. When these countries removed restrictions, the number of daily new Covid-19 cases were far higher than even the peak of the earlier waves in those settings.

The third wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in India can be considered over. But in the last week of February 2022, a pre-print mathematical modelling study by a group of researchers at a reputed educational institution in India claimed that the fourth wave in India would start in June 2022. Since then, the study has been criticised for lack of rigour and methodological flaws, including by not taking relevant epidemiological aspects in the consideration, the findings are on a weak scientific footing and as good as an intelligent guess. Considering high population level immunity after either natural infection in the second and third wave and nearly 95 per cent of the adult population receiving at least one shot of Covid-19 vaccines, there is a situation of hybrid immunity in the country. Though immunity and protection decline over a period, two shots of the vaccines continue to provide protection from severe disease and hospitalisation for long. In this backdrop, the possibility of a fresh large-scale wave in India is very low. This is also to argue that there is no urgency to get a booster for a healthy adult population.

What would endemicity or living with SARS CoV2 mean? It would mean that for most people adherence to Covid appropriate behaviour of face masks and physical distancing - in public places - would become a voluntary decision. However, it would be pragmatic to remove the restrictions in a graded manner. First, the restrictions may be removed for the outdoor public spaces, then for closed spaces and before finally being removed for everyone. However, even when Covid-19 becomes endemic, it would be advisable for high-risk individuals - adults with co-morbidities or the 60-plus population, to voluntarily adhere to masks and distancing as deemed appropriate. It is very likely that for many months to come, some people will voluntarily wear masks in public places. The Covid-19 pandemic has underscored the relevance of staying healthy. Therefore, living with SARS CoV2 essentially would mean every individual needs to do their bit of adopting a healthier lifestyle, which would minimise their risk.

Living with Covid-19 would not mean no policy intervention would be needed. In fact, some areas would require sustained and priority policy attention. As an example, among all age groups, school-age children are at lowest risk of severe disease. Therefore, proactive interventions will be needed to bring everything for them to normalcy, urgently. The policy interventions needed to reopen schools with 100 per cent attendance in physical classes. The end of a wave or entering into the endemic stage also means that the face mask mandates for school-age children should be done away. Every effort by all state governments would have to be made to ensure continuity of school, which should not be disrupted by a temporary rise in cases. It is also the time to focus upon the physical and mental health of children through strengthened school health services.

At a broader level, even now, tackling misinformation (about various aspects of virus and disease) should remain a priority. Science communication with the public should be strengthened and sustained to counter misinformation. The general health services, both government and private facilities, for post and long Covid conditions need to be expanded and strengthened. The strengthened mental health services should get renewed attention. For both, post Covid and mental health services, tele consultation services should be strengthened.

One thing is certain -- the Covid-19 pandemic will be over. However, SARS CoV2 is likely to stay with humanity for long. All epidemiological and immunological evidence suggests that India is inching towards a Covid-19 endemic stage. It is time we as a society start preparing to live with Covid-19. This requires actions at individual, societal and policy level.
After a nine-month tour in East Africa, the brigade arrived home at Lincoln's National Guard base, where six soldiers got to hold babies that hadn't been born when they left.
WATERLOO  A woman was arrested shortly before 2 a.m. Sunday morning on West Airline Highway after allegedly pulling a gun on a man she had an intimate relationship with and attempting numerous times to run him over with a vehicle.

Shonta Mongule Mabry, 34, of Waterloo, was charged with a felony for intimidation with a dangerous weapon and an aggravated misdemeanor for a domestic abuse assault, in addition to a serious misdemeanor for the second time being found in possession of marijuana.

She was booked at the Black Hawk County Jail, and according to the Sheriffs Office, posted a $15,000 bond at about noon Sunday.

According to the affidavit, police were dispatched to the 900 block of West Airline Highway in Waterloo at 1:48 a.m. for a woman who potentially was armed and trying to run over a man in the roadway.

The sound of a gunshot had also been heard by the reporting party.

Authorities later located a dark blue 2008 Audi Quattro, believed to be involved in the alleged assault, in a parking lot at 1850 West Airline Highway, once Porsches Theater of Arts but now known as Fantasy Theatre.

Police reportedly found Mabry in the drivers seat and the man in the passenger seat with a bloody injury to his head. He was unsure how he received the injury to his head.

After investigating, police determined an altercation unraveled inside the vehicle as it traveled down West Airline Highway, and Mabry later pulled the vehicle over and the man got out.

The defendant then attempted numerous times to run the victim over. A short time later, the defendant stopped the vehicle and got out with a gun. At some point, the defendant fired a shot off and made the victim walk back to the vehicle at gunpoint, the affidavit said.

Two witnesses gave accounts consistent with the details of the mans allegations. A firearm was reportedly located in the vehicle, as well as a spent shell casing in the drivers seat and a plastic bag with loose marijuana inside the center console.

Mabry and the man had been living together for about two years, the affidavit states.

Love 0 Funny 3 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 3

Sign up for our Crime & Courts newsletter Get the latest in local public safety news with this weekly email. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
At 10:30 p.m. one February night, Amy Hammen took off for Storm Lake after reading a news story on Facebook  her infant sons formula was being recalled.

It was late and a 20-mile drive.

Living in kind of a more rural area, theres not a lot of places, said Hammen, whose family lives and farms near Fonda. My husband was kind of like, Why are you going to Storm Lake at 10:30 at night? I was like, Cause I dont know what the shelves are going to look like tomorrow morning, and I dont want to be scouring the county for formula to feed him.

When Hammen reached the Walmart in Storm Lake, there was only one canister of her sons formula, Similac Pro-Advance.

Like Hammen, some Iowa parents and caregivers are still scrambling to find safe milk for their babies. The supply of infant formula was already tight when the voluntary recall by Abbott Nutrition, which manufactures Similac, was announced Feb. 17, the night Hammen read the news story on social media.

Parents are also watching for signs of a rare but serious bacterial infection from potentially contaminated formula at a time when health anxiety is already high.

As of Feb. 28, at least five U.S. infants had been hospitalized after consuming Abbott Nutrition products believed to contain Cronobacter sakazakii or Salmonella Newport, bacteria that can be lethal in young infants or babies with pre-existing health problems. Two of those infants have died.

70,000 recalled

In Iowa, Sarah Ekstrand of the Iowa Department of Public Health, said on March 3 that 70,000 containers of the initially recalled product had been distributed by Women, Infants & Children (WIC) program in Iowa.

Changes made quickly by Iowa WIC program officials and the U.S. Department of Agriculture enabled families to exchange recalled cans of formula for brands that werent recalled at stores like Hy-Vee and Fareway.

In Storm Lake, it wasnt unusual to see lean offerings on the Walmart shelves, said Hammen. Her son, Isaac, was born in August, and the formula shelves have never been fully stocked, a pandemic-related shortage that she didnt experience with her three older children.

The Walmart employees didnt know about the recall, Hammen said. She gave the employees the lone can of recalled Similac Pro-Advance and then purchased a comparable off-brand of formula for her son.

The 6-month-old didnt respond well, she said.

He wasnt napping well, and he was extremely fussy and didnt want to drink his bottles anymore, Hammen said. Its hard. Its not like when theres a chicken shortage or cream cheese shortage, you can switch to something else for us to eat. This is their only food.

The recall, which was expanded Feb. 28, involves powdered formula manufactured at an Abbott Nutrition facility in Sturgis, Michigan. The second infant who died had been fed Similac PM 60/40, which was not part of the previous recall.

No Iowa cases

Iowa has no confirmed cases of illness associated with the formula recall, IDPH spokeswoman Sarah Ekstrand said in an email on March 3.

Information to help caregivers determine whether their formula is subject to the recall is available at similacrecall.com. They can also call (800) 986-8540 for help.

Dr. Abigail Allard, a pediatrician at Broadlawns Medical Center in Des Moines, said she and her Broadlawns colleagues have not seen or treated any children who developed bacterial infections because of contaminated formula.

Allard emphasized that the infections are very rare, but that parents should remain attentive to their childs symptoms if the child has consumed one of the recalled formulas recently.

If theyre going to make you sick, theyre going to usually start with fever, diarrhea, just lethargy  big changes in a kids normal activity level. Whereas a baby might wake up to feed, they dont wake up to feed. Or theyre vigorous when you put a wet wipe on their bum to change them, they dont really respond. Those are concerning signs to go to the ER, Allard said.

The recall has been especially hard on low-income families and foster parents who receive formula from WIC, a federal nutrition program that provides food and other services to pregnant women and children younger than age 5.

Caregivers have peppered pediatricians with lots of questions since the recall began, Allard said. Many families at Broadlawns speak little or no English, and many receive WIC benefits.

Formula distributed by WIC offices in Iowa was part of the recall, including Similac, Alimentum and EleCare.

Switching brands

Switching formula brands is safe and healthy, although some children will have a change in bowel habits, Allard said.

It depends on the child, if theyre going to be sensitive to one (formula) and not the other, Allard said. If you do need to switch, I would recommend going halfsies. If you have a little Similac left and you have to switch to Enfamil, do half Similac, half Enfamil for a couple bottles to slowly get their stomachs introduced. But when were getting down to basic needs, formula is formula, and its important just to be fed.

In Iowa, the WIC program is administered by the Iowa Department of Public Health.

Ekstrand, the Iowa Department of Public Health spokeswoman, said in an email Feb. 28 that the supply of alternate formulas for WIC program families is stable.

During a phone call with IowaWatch, Ekstrand said that our WIC hotline has received a lot of phone calls asking for help and assistance in finding formula and replacing formula.

Still, some families struggled.

What Im finding as time has gone on is that the shelves are bare, said Allard, the Broadlawns pediatrician. People did that snowstorm shopping kind of thing with the formula. Like, Oh my gosh, it got recalled, I need to get it. And the shelves are getting emptied, which is a concern. Theyre getting emptied of the Similac.

After the initial recall was announced, worried parents exchanged tips for finding safe formula in closed Facebook groups for moms. Some moms offered to donate their own breast milk or unrecalled formula.

Homemade recipes

Others shared old formula recipes that included ingredients such as Karo syrup and evaporated milk or goats milk, a practice that health experts strongly discourage in part because of concern about whether infants would get sufficient vitamins and minerals.

The infants kidneys are not prepared to handle goats milk or some Karo syrup recipe off the internet, Allard said.

Helping out

Some grassroots groups decided to purchase non-recalled formula themselves to distribute to parents and caregivers in need.

Ventica Woods of Urbandale is one of four young women who formed Sister Queenz when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in spring 2020. The groups goal is to help single parents and children in need, as well as the greater community.

Woods said that her baby is breastfed, but that she used formula to feed her older child. She could relate to the parents searching for non-recalled formula.

Formula is so expensive. It doesnt make sense that these parents would be out of meals for their babies. We know how it is, as a parent, not knowing where your childs next meal is going to come from, so we all decided to chip in and buy as much as we can afford, Woods said.

Sister Queenz also received help purchasing formula from area churches, she said.

Another central Iowa charity group, The Supply Hive, collected nearly $3,000 in donations and formula. The group held a free formula pickup Feb. 21 in Evelyn K. Davis Park in Des Moines.

Cindy McCarthy, the food pantry manager at Waukee Area Christian Services in Waukee, said the formula recall hit as families were already struggling with higher prices at the grocery store and a recent reduction to their SNAP benefits.

The families that are coming in are having a more difficult time with finances, McCarthy said.

The formula that the food pantry stocks is mostly donated by members of the community, although the pantry receives some from an Iowa WIC office occasionally and from food recovery via Costco.

McCarthy said that her food pantry volunteers had to throw out 30 canisters of recalled baby formula.

She said the food pantry continues to see a couple new families every week, and that many people are struggling to buy groceries right now.

Theres just a lot of need, McCarthy said.

McCarthy said that the pantry will continue to accept donations of non-recalled formula, and that volunteers always check the formulas expiration dates and whether it has been recalled.

Hammen, the northwest Iowa mother, said that around when her son was born, she got a trial package of Similac. It hadnt been used, so she grabbed it after the recall announcement in case it could be donated.

They were actually part of the recall, she said. And so that just made me think, if that went back that far, is everything Ive been feeding my son had that potential to be contaminated?

Hammen was able to find larger canisters of her sons preferred Similac Pro-Advance brand that were not recalled. She said she feels fortunate  she knows of other families, including foster parents, who are struggling.

Experts said that Iowans who want to help babies in need can donate one canister of unrecalled formula to a local food bank, but to not clear the shelves and inadvertently make the situation worse.

While youre out shopping or just picking up something from the store, if you can just grab one can, that can actually mean so much to a parent who has a child that is solely dependent on that food, Woods said.

Nicole Grundmeier is a freelance reporter and writer for IowaWatch. She has previously worked as a reporter and copy editor for The Des Moines Register. She earned a bachelors degree in journalism and mass communication from Iowa State University and a masters degree in journalism from Northwestern University.

This story was produced by the Iowa Center for Public Affairs Journalism-IowaWatch, a nonprofit, online news website that collaborates with news organizations to produce explanatory and investigative reporting. Read more at www.IowaWatch.org.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
4th mainland-aided COVID-19 isolation facility starts operation in HK

(People's Daily App) 10:12, March 14, 2022

The fourth community isolation facility (CIF) in Hong Kong constructed with the support from the mainland has been put into operation after it was handed over to the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government on Sunday.

(Web editor: Peng Yukai, Liang Jun)
Election victories sanctify the actions of a political party; they do not validate them. Sanctification is the giving of a blessing and has nothing to do with the real world. Validation is based on facts.

At this point in time, now that the Assembly election results are in, one can claim that the voter was attracted to a party because of its welfarism or its competence at governance or delivery of services. This is what is happening in the wake of the BJPs spectacular success in Uttar Pradesh and elsewhere. And it happens each time there is a BJP victory, of which there have been many and will continue to be. One reason is that the BJP needs secular validation because it operates in a world and under a Constitution that does not tolerate overt communalism. This is the reason that its supporters feel the need to trot out non-communal factors to justify the BJPs success.

Those who wanted the Trinamul Congress to win in West Bengal, and were fortunate to see it triumph over the BJP, did not pretend that it was welfarism or competent governance or messianic leadership that carried the day. They were just relieved that the divisive ideology that is tearing this nation apart was stopped at one frontier. It is mostly the BJP and its backers who seek to find granular reasons for its electoral success. So, what was the win of the BJP on March 10 due to?

The truth lies in front of us. What the BJP itself did and say to the voters, how its leaders behaved and what they said, is important. What they asked votes for and in the name of is relevant: the rest is punditry.

The chief minister of Uttar Pradesh had said that 80 vs 20 is a reality. This was definitely an 80 vs 20 election. The dividing of Indians by religion for votes is a reality for the BJP and it pursues this reality. If it believed that votes would be won mostly on the basis of performance and delivery, why would it engage with such things? Again, this is a rhetorical question and it will be bizarre if one does not know the answer.

This month Haryana has become the seventh BJP state since 2018 to write up a bill against love jihad. On February 4, 2020, the Lok Sabha was told by the Union home minister that there were no love jihad cases in India and that the phenomenon does not exist. So why are BJP states, including UP (which passed its love jihad law in 2020), chasing a phantom? This question will only be asked by those who are innocent of what the BJP wants and what it does, which is the constant harassment of our minorities, especially Muslims.

It is comical that instead of looking at what the BJP itself is saying to its voters, analysts and supporters look at tarot cards to divine what the factors for voting were.

The BJP has got more than 40 per cent of the votes in Uttar Pradesh in four consecutive elections (2014, 2017, 2019, 2022). We are now asked to believe that this is on the basis of the UP governments performance and not the incessant focus on the Ram temple, beef, love jihad and the violence that they have produced.

Consider the fact that if communal mischief were not important or only marginal to the BJPs electoral success, why their leaders would focus on it. Why put off minority voters if the burden of your song is development and delivery? The answer is that the burden of the BJPs song is not development and delivery. It is communalism and division and the stoking of hatred, and even violence.

Consider also that this is successful and has always been so. The BJP did not have a majority of its own in any state in India from the time that the party (as Jan Sangh) was founded till 1990, when Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and later Uttar Pradesh got BJP chief ministers. It had a national vote share in single digits for four decades till it suddenly doubled to 18 per cent, and then doubled again. What happened in a short time for the party to become nationally popular? Of course it was the movement that mobilised Hindus against the mosque in Ayodhya that was destroyed, triggering pogroms across the country.

There was no delivery of services from any government and no competence to show in anything to the voter then, and there is none now.

Will this continue to attract voters in the future? This is interesting to consider, given that the Union government has made a total mess of the economy according to its own figures. Perhaps it will continue and perhaps it will not, we will see. But it would be a relief if we were not told that the BJPs success is not on the back of what the partys leaders themselves repeatedly demanded votes for but some mystical factors that have only now come to light in the wake of these results.
In a properly run dictatorship, Dear Leader always wins thunderous electoral victories. You wont see Vladimir Putin in any late-night cliffhangers. Regardless of how many of his political opponents fall out of windows, get shot dead in the street, find neurotoxins in their underwear or get thrown into prison  or, in the case of Putins outspoken critic Alexei Navalny, both of those last two  the Little Tsars faithful supporters can be depended upon to keep cheering.

Or, at minimum, to avert their eyes.

The awful truth, you see, is that under the right circumstances, fascism can be very popular. Most people are instinctively nationalistic, and Putins basic message of Make Russia Great Again, as Kevin Drum puts it, can be counted upon to resonate. So long, that is, as he maintains complete control of Russian media and prevents foreign news from filtering into the country.

Last year, the Russian military outlawed the possession of smartphones by soldiers. Last week, Margaret Sullivan reports, its parliament banned the words war, invasion and attacks from being used to describe Russias assault upon Ukraine. Instead, its called a special military action, supposedly to protect Russian-speaking Ukrainians from their Nazi oppressors.

Ukraines defiant President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, of course, is a Jew, which makes the lie particularly grotesque. But then sheer audacity is often the key to effective propaganda.

Inside Russia, reporting and publishing fake news, a phrase borrowed from Putins biggest American fan, Donald J. Trump, is now a criminal offense, punishable by 15 years in prison. Moscow police have been reportedly spot-checking peoples cellphones on the street, hunting for dissenters. Western news organizations such as the BBC, CNN and The Washington Post have quietly quit sending bylined dispatches from inside Russia lest their reporters get thrown into dungeons.

Even Fox News, where the pro-Putin cheerleading stopped only last week, and whose brand-name personalities Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham had become regular fixtures on Russian state TV, no longer report directly from Moscow. Its too dangerous.

Russia has banned Facebook and Twitter.

And yes, its certainly working. Wave the flag, beat the drum and report only thunderous victories over fiendish enemies  Oceania was at war with Eurasia; therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia, Orwell wrote in Nineteen Eighty-Four  and the great majority will support the Little Tsar for as long as the illusion survives.

The Two Minutes Hate is always well-attended.

An extraordinary report in The New York Times documents the stunning experiences of besieged Ukrainians trying vainly to make their Russian relatives understand whats going on. Instead, they encounter a confounding and almost surreal backlash from family members in Russia, who refuse to believe that Russian soldiers could bomb innocent people, or even that a war is taking place.

Reporter Valerie Hopkins interviewed Misha Katsurin, a Ukrainian restaurateur, who phoned his Russian father to describe his efforts to evacuate his wife and children. Instead of sympathy, he got yelled at for siding with Nazis.

Far from bombarding Ukrainian cities and villages, the older man insisted, Russian soldiers are handing out blankets and food to victims of Nazi atrocities. His sons eyewitness accounts counted for less than state TV propaganda  where Russian artillery barrages are definitely not targeting civilian neighborhoods. Also, theres certainly no 40-mile-long tank convoy stalled impotently on a Ukrainian highway, a show of military incompetence that has astonished observers worldwide.

One couple told the Times it was easier to explain the invasion to their 7-year-old daughter than to some of their [Russian] relatives. For his part, Katsurin says, I am not angry at my father  I am angry at the Kremlin. Im angry about the Russian propaganda. Im not angry at these people. I understand that I cannot blame them in this situation.

Problem is, the Little Tsar cant keep Russians in the dark forever. As the coffins of Russian soldiers begin to come home, and embittered soldiers start telling their war stories at family gatherings and in bars, the awful truth will begin to emerge.

Historically speaking, Russians have had a lot of bitter experience decoding government propaganda. Under the Soviet Union, the nations two leading newspapers were Pravda (truth) and Izvestia (news).

Russians told a bitter joke that became proverbial: There is no truth in news and no news in truth.

So yes, the Russian people have seen this movie before. Which could very well be, come to think of it, why Vladimir Putin has resorted to crazy talk about nuclear weapons. Isolated from the outside world and surrounded by the worst kinds of sycophants and yes-men, it may be dawning upon him what a terrible trap hes set for himself and for Russia.

Invading Ukraine was supposed to weaken NATO and divide America from Europe. Instead, its made the Western democracies more united than ever. The hard part will be finding the Little Tsar a survivable way out.

Arkansas Times columnist Gene Lyons is a National Magazine Award winner and co-author of The Hunting of the President (St. Martins Press, 2000). You can email Lyons at eugenelyons2@yahoo.com.

Love 1 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
Career politicians are endemic, in Waverly, Bremer County, Iowa and the United States. Nancy Pelosi has been in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1987. Chuck Grassley is running for Senate again; he has been on the public payroll since 1959, just seven years after King George VI died.

Republican legislators are taking over primary and secondary school, city, county and corporate governance. State-level legislation is overruling local government and businesses management of school books and curriculum, masks, vaccinations, camera enforcement of speed laws, concealed-carry of guns, management of safe potable water sources, disposal of animal waste, what gas to provide at gas stations and even fireworks. I never thought I would see Republicans argue that state government should overtake local government and corporate responsibilities. But here they are, entering businesses, schools, city halls, and homes to help us live our daily lives, not providing funding, only providing oversight. Are there some alternatives? Of course.

Iowas population is now about 3.15 million, with 99 counties. We pay for about 300 county supervisors and 99 sheriffs, county attorneys, auditors, treasurers, and engineers. That is about 800 employees. Lets assume an average salary of $40,000, for about $32 million! Fairfax County in Virginia has 1.15 million people; Orange County in California has 3.18 million people. Each of these counties gets along with one board of supervisors, one law enforcement agency, etc. Could we right-size government in Iowa? Do we need 100 seats in the Iowa House of Representatives and 50 Iowa senators? Could this lead to fewer career politicians?

We could come at this from another direction. Bremer County population is about 25,000 persons. Among the eight incorporated towns, population ranges from 204 in Frederika to 2,030 in Sumner and Waverly with 10,394. Career politicians reside in county government, also. Our board of supervisors voted this month to kill the proposed new supervisor districts plan (which would have required two incumbent supervisors to run against each other or move to a new district). Job insurance is important.

Rumor has it the Bremer County Board of Supervisors is discussing a courthouse expansion with architects. Maybe the supervisors could discuss sharing workloads with adjoining counties, using information technology to get work done outside of government offices and re-examine job descriptions and responsibilities. Could all law enforcement in the county become a county responsibility? Perhaps the supervisors would lead and support economic development activity, using available bonding and financing authority.

Unless some new activity is approved by July 1, the county will have no outstanding debt after July 2023. The county has a valuation of over $2.3 billion, and with current conditions could borrow up to $115 million to promote economic development for the entire county. Right-sizing and change of mission and organization comes to us all, like it or not. Career politicians delay change, because, as my friends in Thailand said, We dont want to break our rice bowls.

David Fredrick of Waverly is a retired diplomat and college employee.
Freedoms of thought and speech are indisputable American rights. Our Constitution protects unpopular ideas as vigorously as mainstream ones.

Open debate is essential to intellectual health and national vibrancy. For that reason, some declare, there can be no such thing as unAmericanism. There cannot be, in a country where men have the liberty to believe however they see fit.

But that is spuriousness. It falls to pieces under examination. A definition of Americanism would begin with the Constitution and the principles it embodies.

Of course, those not inclined to respect that document are still American citizens, but their status is merely geographic. They are unAmericans in America.

By design, the Constitution is open to democratic alteration. So, of course one can disagree with a given passage. But to challenge the entire documents validity, and declare this nation, itself, to be illegitimate, are not matters of marginal amendment, but wholesale rejection.

America has always had subversive elements. In Revolutionary War times, shadowy confederates of the Monarchy plotted to foil the courageous fighters for independence.

In 1943, under the pseudonym John Roy Carlson, Arthur Derounian published his best-selling Under Cover: My Four Years In the Nazi Underworld of America. The author put himself in great danger, infiltrating numerous subversive fascist groups that were hostile to the United States and its WWII effort.

I dont know what Carlsons political affinities may have been. But he and I would have agreed that enemies of America deserve ruination.

Lets turn our thoughts from the unpatriotic among us. Better we recall a time when nationalist sentiment was a sturdy bridge that united even Americans of divergent pursuits.

(My country, right or wrong, went the adage.)

In 1941 film Roar of the Press, reporter Wally Williams and numbers racket boss Sparrow McGraun discuss an anti-American network active in their hometown of New York:

Sparrow: Me, Im mixed up in a good, clean racket. But theres some people runnin around loose who aint. Theyre out to get this country into trouble. And thats the mob youre runnin up against. Theyre tough. Plenty tough. Foreigners, mostly. And they wont stop at nothin!

Wally: How do you know about this?

Sparrow: They propositioned me. Wanted to know how much you know about their set-up. They figure youre gettin too nosy.

Wally: Wait a minute. Did they send you to scare me off?

Sparrow: Certainly not! I dont want any part a-them. Theyre un-American. Theyre against this country, and they oughta be exposed. Me, I got me a racket, sure. And the cops dont like it. But that aint nothin against this country.

Wally: Thanks, pal!

Sparrow: Ah, its nothin. Us Americans gotta stick together.

DC Larson is a Waterloo writer whose credits include Daily Caller, Western Journal and American Thinker.
Gerald Gerry Frank passed away on March 13, 2022, at age 97. He was one of the longest-serving trustees on Willamettes board and a proud fourth-generation Oregonian with deep roots in the retail, restaurant, political, civic, and business activities throughout the state.

The Willamette community  along with the entire state of Oregon  has benefited from Gerry Franks lifetime of service and leadership. Although he did not attend Willamette, he was long an integral part of our community, and his life was the embodiment of our motto, Not Unto Ourselves Alone Are We Born, said Willamette University President Steve Thorsett.

Born in Portland, Oregon in 1923, Gerry attended Stanford University, where he enrolled in the Reserve Officer Training Program. After nearly two years at Stanford, Gerry was called to active duty in the U.S. Army in 1943, and served in World War II in the field artillery of the 89th Infantry Division. After his discharge in 1945, he remained in England and attended Cambridge University, where he received a bachelors degree in economics in 1948 and a masters degree in politics in 1950.

After graduating from Cambridge, Gerry returned to Portland and worked at his family business, the Meier & Frank department store. He opened the Meier & Frank store in Salem in 1955 and managed it until the business sold in 1966, after which he became chief of staff to the late U.S. Senator Mark Hatfield, earning the moniker Oregons third senator in the process.

In 1982, Gerry opened the beloved Salem dessert shop, Gerry Franks Konditorei, a favorite of the Willamette University community. He also wrote for The Oregonians travel section for over 28 years, and authored the guide Where to Find it, Buy it, and Eat it in New York.

Gerry joined Willamettes Board of Trustees in 1959, and became a life member in 2000. He was honored with several awards during his lifetime, including the Salem First Citizen award in 1964, Glen Jackson Medallion Award in 1984, and Oregons Premiere Citizen Award in 2000. In 2017, Willamette University awarded him an Honorary Doctorate of Public Service in recognition of his leadership and sense of civic duty to Oregon.
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 Friday looking to have the strongest peak winds. Anticipate wind gusts of 35-45 mph Thursday, and 35-55 mph Friday, locally stronger in wind prone locations. 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. * 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.
Gaze up at the stars from one of these Bay Area vantage points.

Billy Goat Hill

Billy Goat Hill is Insta-famous for its elevated swing set and expansive views of San Francisco. Four hundred feet above sea level, this urban green spot also offers an excellent vantage point to a starry nightbe it from the steps, a picnic table, or mid-swing. Parking can be tricky, especially along Ladley Street. Opt to hug the curb on Beacon Street. // 2442 Castro St. (Glen Park), sfrecpark.org



Editors' tips:

For an extra hit of cardio, Billy Goat Hill offers a great place to stair climb.

The swing is only meant to hold one person at a timeso don't test your luck.





Hawk Hill

One of the most serene slices of the city, Hawk Hill is popular among yogis and meditation junkies. Nearly 1,000-feet above the Pacific, it is also among the highest points in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA) and is accessible via a trying bike ride or calf-straining hike. Also, for the bird watchers among us, Hawk Hill, as the name would suggest, is the highest lookout point for the largest known flight of diurnal raptors anywhere along the Pacific-clasped states. Bust out the binoculars hereday or night. // 948 Fort Barry, (Sausalito), parkconservancy.org

Editors' tips:

Bring a yoga mat to mentally unwind and stretch out the body before straining your neck to look up at the sky.

Raptors are most active during the early hours of the morning; bird watchers will want to perch here early.





Mt. Hamilton / Lick Observatory



One of the highest publicly accessible summits in all of the South Bay, Mt. Hamilton is popular amongst wannabe and well-seasoned astronomers alike. Perched 4,500-plus feet above sea level and about an hour from San Jose, the darkness afforded by the area's non-existent light pollution makes it one of the best vantage points to stargaze south of Bernal Heights. The UC owned-and-operated Lick Observatory is located off Highway 130, just shy of Mt. Hamilton's peak visitor center and gift shop remain temporarily closed due to Covid, . // Mt. Hamilton Rd. (San Jose), alltrails.com



Editors' tips:

Refilling stations are few and far between here, so fill your canteen to the brim at home.

Mt. Hamilton is dog friendly, just be sure to keep Spot on a leash.





Skyline Ridge Open Space

Few know that such a secluded, dark space can be found just 15 minutes from Silicon Valley. But sitting on over 2,000 acres of pristine scenery, Skyline Ridge Open Space ebbs and flows with rolling hillsides, most of which are accessible via well maintained trailheads. Whether it's appreciating a star-studded sky from a trail bench or seeing the moonlight refract off of either Horseshoe Lake or Alpine Pond, there's little this place can't offer celestial enthusiasts. // Page Mill Rd. and Skyline Blvd. (San Jose), openspace.org

Editors' tips:

Trails are easy to moderate in difficulty; no need to bust out the hiking poles.

Packing a picnic? Alpine Pond has two tables on its shore.

Parking along Page Mill Road is plentiful.

Corona Heights Park

Sandwiched between the Castro and Haight-Ashbury, Corona Heights Park is a somewhat enigmatic green space, even to locals. Swaths of checkerbloom, California poppies, and more wildflowers sit between towering evergreens, and when the sun retreats beneath the horizon, the park offers sweeping vistas of a lit-up SF and, weather permitting, a starry Bay Area sky. The base of the hill always sits 300 feet above sea level, but hiking the dirt trail up to the peak will put you at 520 feet above the tide. // Roosevelt Way and Museum Way, (Buena Vista), sfrecpark.org



Editors' tips:

Wear your favorite hiking shoes, the rocky outcrops can be strenuous.

Embrace your phone's flashlightthe trails are somewhat tricky to navigate at night.





Muir Woods Beach Overlook

There may be no better place to gaze up at the heavens than from the sands of Muir Beach. Those who wish to, say, smolder s'mores while stargazing can do so at the designated fire pits. Looking to gawk at the stars from a higher standpoint? Make a beeline to the rocky, cliffside Muir Woods Overlook. Cell phone service is notoriously spotty throughout the park, so screenshot things like trail maps and parking prior to heading out. // Muir Beach Overlook, (Muir Beach), nps.gov.com



Editor's tips:

Dogs are allowed on leashes, but be mindful that Muir Beach is a popular seal pupping ground.

Whale watching at Muir Beach is among the best anywhere in the state.

Mt. Tamalpais

Ahh, Mt. Tamhow we love your rich hiking trails and windswept vistas. But rarely do we stick around to partake in the stargazing opportunities afforded by the summit and surrounding highlands. Friends of Mt. Tam have suspended their regular astronomy classes due to Covid but they feature astronomy programs on their YouTube channel, providing a window to the skies for those exploring the vast universe on the other side of Karl the Fog. // 801 Panoramic Highway (Mill Highway), parks.ca.gov

Editors' tips:

The campgrounds around Mt. Tam are among the few places you can have a bonfire in the Bay Area without repercussions.

Drones cannot be flown overhead hereleave it at home.

Tables, drinking fountains, and restrooms can be found by East Peak off Verna Dunshee Trail.

Point Reyes National Seashore

Few natural spaces can compare to the awe-inspiring beauty and sublime stillness supplied by Point Reyes' oceanside viewpoints. Limantour beach is one of the better, less popular beaches within the confines of Point Reyes National Seashore, perfect for laying out a blanket and taking in Cassiopeia. // Bear Valley Road and Shoreline Hwy (Point Reyes Station), nps.gov

Editors' tips:

Check out AccuWeather to see if the night's appropriate for stargazing.

Pick up fire and camping permits at the Bear Valley Visitor Center.

Bring your coattemps along the shore are often several degrees cooler than what you see on Weather.com.

Strawberry Hill, Golden Gate Park

Smack in the middle of Stow Lake, Strawberry Hill is an isolated island where greenery and scenery merge into jaw-dropping views. Space is tight at the overlook so don't bother lugging up your telescope: A good pair of binoculars will do the trick. Wear your hiking boots! // 50 Stow Lake Dr. (Golden Gate Park), goldengatepark.org

Editors' tips:

Pack some snacks and bottles of water for the trek up.

Check local forecasts to ensure they'll be minimal cloud coverage.

Check for park closures before heading out.

(Photo courtesy of SFAA)

Land's End and Point Lobos

In the northwestern corner of the Golden Gate National Recreational Area sits two geological gems, each perfect for stargazing: the higher elevations at Point Lobos and the ocean vistas at Land's End. San Francisco Sidewalk Astronomers occasionally host an amateur's star watching night at both locations, but its BYO binoculars and telescope. // 80 Point Lobos Ave. (Sea Cliff), nps.org

Editors tips:

Check local forecasts to assure clear skies for the evening.

Bring flashlights for trail navigation; wear hiking shoes.





The Presidio

With soft mulch and ample parking spaces, the low-light areas of the Presidio offer quality, easily accessible stargazing opportunities within the confines of the city. Plus, SFAA often hosts lectures inside the grounds, sharing insights on what exactly you're straining your neck toward. // Veterans Blvd and Hwy-101 (Presidio), presidio.gov

Editors' tips:

Crissy Field and Southern Wilds are known for being two of the calmer, quieter parts of the grounds.

No need for hiking shoes here.

(Photo courtesy of Berkeley Side)

Grizzly Peak

Sip a chocolate shake, munch on a burger, and ponder your special place in the big ol' thing we call the universe. An East Bay favorite, Grizzly Peaks is thought of as the Twin Peaks of the East Bay, offering up Instagram-worthy landscapes. Just fill up your tank and goand maybe stop at your favorite drive-thru on the way. // Old Fish Ranch Rd. (Berkeley), yelp.com

Editors' tips:

Parking can be tight here, so try to get there before 9pm.

Bring a pair of binoculars, if you wish.





Sibley Volcanic National Reserve



You'd be hard-pressed to find a more enchanting, light-pollution-free area in the Bay Area than Sibley Volcanic National Reserve. Now, this one's a hike, so be sure to lace up your boots, fill your water bottles, and enjoy the acres upon acres of open space. Stop by the quarry pit labyrinth on your way back to the car. // 6701 Skyline Blvd. (Berkeley), ebparks.org

Editors' tips:

The clearings are adequate for the use of both binoculars and telescopes.

Bring your four-legged best friend on a leash.





Redwood Regional Park + Chabot Space and Science Center



Every Friday and Saturday evening, weather and light permitting, the Chabot Space and Science Center's observatory is open to the public, free of charge. Just park, follow the signs to the back of the center, and be amazed by the cosmos. If you're yearning for more, head back toward the entrance and grab a general admission pass to explore the entire center. // 10000 Skyline Blvd. (Oakland), chabotspace.org

Editors' tips:


The magical elixir that is boba tea goes a little like this: creamy milk tea poured over ice with bb-sized chewy tapioca pearls at the bottom, which you suction up the oversized straw. Its half snack, half caffeinated heaven, and it's pretty much all over the Bay Area.

From local, artisanal teashops that handcraft each individual tea using the finest ingredients to Taiwanese chains that crank out these sugary beverages in mass, here's where to go the next time you're craving some boba.

(Courtesy of Boba Guys)

Boba Guys



Boba Guys gets credit for kicking off the boba craze in San Francisco and remains the gold standard for the highest quality boba tea made with ethically sourced and local ingredients. They dont used condensed milk (unless you order it) and they brew their loose-leaf tea in house (many other places use tea concentrate or tea that is pre-brewed and shipped to the store). The horchata (rice milk and cinnamon) and Thai tea varieties are both wonderful if you ever tire of the classic. // Multiple locations Bay Areawide; bobaguys.com







Tea on Piedmont

This new kid on the block in Oakland is offering some top-notch boba drinks (add the chewy tapioca balls to their best-selling hojicha latte) and even sells those cute Betty Boba reusable glass tumblers with wide glass straws for all your future drinks to go. But you wont find any over-the-top, candy-filled drinks here and boba is only the start of it. Cafe owner Grace Shen, who holds a tea sommelier certification from Taiwan, sources quality teas directly from Asia. Skipping caffeine? The herbal chrysanthemum cold brew is a must-try. // 4098 Piedmont Ave (Oakland), teaonpiedmont.com





Sharetea



This Taiwanese chain serves tried-and-true recipes at over 300 locations worldwide, including two in San Francisco and several more around the Bay Area. Their classic milk tea is creamy-delicious, and their Okinawa (roasted brown sugar) and Hokkaido (caramel-toffee) variations are both great if you're looking for something super sweet. // Find your nearest location at1992sharetea.com.

(Courtesy of Teaspoon)

Teaspoon



Teaspoon serves an extensive menu of bevvies ranging from a classic milk tea to a host of refreshing fruit teas as well as several creamy options. If you're here for boba, you'll find it in a variety of options including a silky mango or strawberry, caramel cream with brown sugar syrup, and Thai tea. // Locations Bay Areawide; teaspoonlife.com.





Purple Kow

Purple Kow is known for their fresh-brewed tea, fat cups, and long lines. Avoid going when school lets out, as its a popular hangout for kids in the Outer Richmond (3620 Balboa St). Their signature is the D3a diabetes-inducing blend of caramel, pudding, and boba. For a healthier drink, you can order one of the oolong or the fruit teas (we like mango) and request less sugar or none at all. The tapioca itself is soft, sweet, and heavenly, and if you want to go all out, add on grass jelly to your drink for a texture mash-up. // Locations in SF, Berkeley, and Concord; purplekow.com





Fifty/Fifty Coffee & Tea

Enjoy your boba in a cool coffee shop atmosphere with free WiFi. Aside from the standard, you can ask for boba in any of Fifty/Fiftys coffee shop drinks (just know they dont start serving boba until noon). Try their jasmine green tea, honey coconut latte, or matcha lattehot or coldwith boba, of course. Their tapioca is sweet and pleasantly chewy, and holds up just fine in hot drinks. Added bonus: They also have a variety of coffee beverages, as well as pastries for snacking. // 3157 Geary Blvd. (Inner Richmond), fiftyfiftysf.square.site





Milk Tea Lab

For folks who are seriously serious about boba, Milk Tea Lab has it down to a science: Each month, they release a special drink crafted by one of their Scienteaists. There's alway a fun new formula or flavor to try, and this boba shop really goes above and beyond in making their drinks fun. There is the Alien Tonic, a sour green apple drink with mango stars; and the LovelyDew milk tea, which gives you a sweet combination of HoneyDew milk tea with honey boba. // Multiple locations Bay Areawide; milktealabs.com

(Courtesy of @urbanritualcafe)

Urban Ritual

For an elevated boba experience, head to one of Urban Rituals three Bay Area locations. They pride themselves on using natural ingredients, loose leaf tea, and homemade syrups. If youre looking for something sweet and decadent, order the Matcha Toffee (matcha green tea with milk and bite-sized toffee brittle). For something more refreshing, the Bae-Sil (strawberry basil lemonade with strawberry syrup, basil, and lemon) is a no-fail pick. // Locations in SF, San Mateo, and San Jose; urbanritualcafe.com





Boba Binge

B is for binging on bahn mi along with boba tea at this new spot in Oakland's Chinatown. Their tea comes in all shapes and forms, from freshly brewed peach oolong to the creamy Panda milk tea (assam milk tea with honey and crystal boba). Another favorite is their Vietnamese coffee, which pairs great with some chewy boba pearls. If youre really feeling adventurous, try one of their salted cream cheese drinks, a classic tea beverage topped with a layer of creamy salted cheese foam. // 1004 Webster St. (Oakland), boba-binge.com





Yi Fang Taiwan Fruit Tea

First-timers at Yi Fang Taiwan Fruit Tea should order the signature fruit tea infused with fresh chunks of passionfruit and pineapple. Also look out for their variety of drinks made with sago, which is comparable to tapioca except that its made from a palm plant rather than cassava. // Multiple locations Bay Areawide;yifangteausa.com
Ive learned over the years that interacting with [recipients], just giving them a warm hello or showing genuine concern  helping them feel seen  is whats really the important part of the program, Arnold says.

Volunteers also serve as what Hollander calls eyes and ears, observing whether someone is experiencing physical or mental challenges that might require further attention, and taking note of other needs that should be addressed, like a tripping hazard in someones home.

Facing the pandemic

The coronavirus pandemic brought new challenges for Meals on Wheels programs, which had to quickly implement safety protocols to keep both volunteers and recipients safe, Hollander says. That included figuring out how to deliver meals to peoples homes while social distancing and converting senior centers into grab-and-go meal sites  all while facing rising operational costs and increased demands for service and isolation among older adults.

Despite these challenges, deliveries aren't slowing down. In fact, as of July 2021, Meals on Wheels programs were serving an average of 57 percent more meals weekly than before the pandemic began.

The nutritious meals and visits it provides to older adults have been a lifeline during the COVID-19 pandemic, when seniors have struggled with greater food insecurity and have often been cut off from friends and family for long periods of time, says Lisa Marsh Ryerson, president of AARP Foundation. Over the years, AARP Foundation has proudly worked side by side with many great organizations like Meals on Wheels America to achieve our common goals of reducing food insecurity and isolation among older adults.

June De Sena, 79, of Pacific Grove, California, is one such older adult. At the suggestion of a neighbor, she signed up for Meals on Wheels during the pandemic because of foot and ankle issues that make it difficult to stand while cooking or shopping.

De Sena lives along Arnolds route in Pacific Grove, and she looks forward to seeing the volunteers who deliver to her apartment five days a week  especially Arnolds grandson. I just love him, De Sena says. And shes fond of her adult visitors, too. Its pretty obvious when they come to the door that they care, that theyre observant [of whether] things are OK. If I had a problem  I know they would help me.

The future of Meals on Wheels

Despite success in facing the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, Hollander notes that theres still more work to be done to fight hunger and isolation across the country. According to one pre-pandemic estimate, 83 percent of low-income, food-insecure older adults eligible for Meals on Wheels were not receiving meals through the program  and by late 2020, nearly 9 in 10 local programs reported an unmet need for home-delivered meals in their communities.

To address this need, Hollander says continued support of Meals on Wheels programs is vital, both in terms of funding (the programs rely on federal funding through the Older Americans Act Nutrition Program, as well as state and local resources and private donations) and advocacy.

The three things I always ask [of] people are to donate, advocate and volunteer, she says. This 50-year model  its always been a public-private partnership, and its going to have to continue to be.

As for her vision of Meals on Wheels 50 years in the future? No matter what, that personal touch is really important, Hollander says. Fifty years from now  we still want to be able to have that face-to-face connection.

Sarah Elizabeth Adler joined aarp.org as a writer in 2018. Her pieces on science, art and culture have appeared in The Atlantic, where she was previously an editorial fellow, California magazine and elsewhere.

Editors note: This article has been updated to reflect the relationship between Meals on Wheels America and Meals on Wheels community programs.
scyther5/Getty Images

En espanol

Consumers arent paying more at the gas pump alone. Rising jet fuel costs and increasing demand for travel are driving up domestic and international airfares  in some cases by double digits. In February, airline fares in the U.S. rose 5.2 percent, according to the latest Consumer Price Index, and its gotten worse since then.

According to Hopper, an airfare comparison tool, round-trip airfare to Mexico and Central America is 17 percent higher month over month in March, and flights to Canada are up 9 percent. Domestic airline tickets, meanwhile, are 13 percent more expensive.

It makes sense. Jet fuel is the second-highest expense for airlines, after labor, representing about 30 percent of the industrys expenditures. Cost increases are generally passed along to consumers, and with the price of jet fuel rising 30 percent so far this year and the impact of Russias invasion of Ukraine still a few months away, consumers should prepare to pay even more for flights.

Domestic airfare is up about 23 percent year over year, says Hayley Berg, head of price intelligence at Hopper. Theres increasing demand compared to 2021. The other piece is jet fuel. Even before the crisis in Ukraine began, jet fuel prices are double what they were at this time last year. The good news is that there are ways to save on airfares. Here are four strategies.

Be flexible where and when you travel

Being flexible can go a long way toward saving money. Flying during off-peak times, heading to less popular destinations and visiting cities in the off-season can reduce the cost of airfare. Let the price decide where you travel, says Kathleen Peddicord, founder and CEO of Live and Invest Overseas. You can go to Skyscanner, for instance, type your city into the from box, type everywhere into the to box, and sort the price from lowest to highest.

According to FareCompare, the cheapest days to fly within the U.S. are Tuesdays and Wednesdays. For European flights, aim for Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Flights with a stopover may be an inconvenience, but they tend to be cheaper.

Berg advises consumers to consider flying to a regional airport to get a better deal. It may be an hour away from your destination, but the cost savings could be worth the inconvenience. Oftentimes, low-cost carriers offer the lowest or match the prices of the major carriers that fly in and out of more regional airports, Berg says. Southwest and Frontier both have a huge presence in Providence, which is about an hour from Boston. Prices can be better than flying into Boston.

Book early

Last-minute flights cost a lot more than those booked in advance. But how far ahead do you have to reserve a seat to save the most? According to CheapAir, purchasing your ticket 134 to 320 days in advance is the sweet spot. Book too early or too late and youll likely overpay for your flight. That may get tricky with COVID-19 still around or if a health issue may preclude you from future travel. Travel insurance is an option if you are concerned about booking a trip so far in advance. We do not think that trip insurance for airfare is worth the cost, Peddicord says. However, for older people with potential health issues that could have them canceling their trip, it may make sense to do so.
loading.........

Toronto, Mar 14, 2022 AEST (ABN Newswire) - In this segment of The Ellis Martin Report we speak with Dr. Paul West-Sells, the President and CEO of Western Copper and Gold Corporation, ( TSE:WRN )( NYSE:WRN ).Mr. Martin chats with Dr. West-Sells discussing the myriad of reasons why there is dramatic upward momentum in the copper market.Visit with Western Copper and Gold's Dr. Paul West-Sells at the 121 Mining Conference in Las Vegas March 30-31, 2022. Accredited Investors Register here:Western Copper and Gold Corporation is developing the Casino Project, Canada's premier copper-gold mine in the Yukon Territory and one of the most economic greenfield copper-gold mining projects in the world.The Casino Project hosts approximately 7.6 billion pounds of copper as well as 14.5 million ounces of gold, one of the largest projects of its kind held by a junior mining company.Major Mining Operator Rio Tinto Canada made a $25.6 million dollar strategic investment to advance the company's Casino Project in the Yukon. What are the implications of this investment?Dr. West-Sells has over 25 years experience in the mining industry. After obtaining his Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia in Metallurgical Engineering, he worked with BHP, Placer Dome, and Barrick in increasingly senior roles in Research and Development and Project Development. Dr. West-Sells has worked for Western Copper and Gold since 2006.To listen to the interview, please visit:About Western Copper and Gold Corporation

Western Copper and Gold Corporation (NYSE:WRN) (TSE:WRN) is developing the Casino Project, Canada's premier copper-gold mine in the Yukon Territory and one of the most economic greenfield copper-gold mining projects in the world. The Company is committed to working collaboratively with our First Nations and local communities to progress the Casino project using internationally recognized responsible mining technologies and practices.
PHOENIX  Authorities have identified a man who was fatally shot after he tried to drive off in a police vehicle following an encounter with officers on a city bus.

Police said 39-year-old Adam Vespoli died from his injuries at a Phoenix hospital Saturday.

They said one police officer was taken to a hospital for treatment of minor leg injuries.

Police said the incident occurred at a bus stop around 7:30 a.m. Saturday after Vespoli and another man fused to get off the bus.

At least one officer got on the bus and spoke to the men.

Police said both men eventually got off the bus before Vespoli got into the police vehicle and tried to drive away, striking the leg of one officer.

According to police, the unidentified officer feared for his life and opened fire and the vehicle ended up stopping on the other side of the street.

Police said their investigation into the fatal shooting was continuing.
TUCSON, Ariz.  A Pima County Sheriffs deputy has been seriously injured after an altercation on Tucsons southwest side that led to the fatal shooting of man, authorities said Sunday.

The Pima Regional Critical Incident Team is investigating Saturdays incident in which deputies responded to a 911 call Saturday.

After arriving on the scene, deputies were involved in an altercation that led to a deputy-involved shooting.

Sheriffs officials said a man was declared dead at the scene and hes been identified as 38-year-old Ronnie Ray Yslas.

The name of the injured deputy wasnt immediately released and sheriffs officials didnt disclose any other information about the shooting.
GILA BEND, Ariz.  A freeway was closed in the southern Arizona desert for about an hour Saturday as authorities negotiated with a kidnapping suspect, authorities said.

Interstate 8 east of Gila Bend was closed until the suspect was taken into custody without incident, said Sgt. Calbert Gillett, a Maricopa County Sheriffs Office spokesman.

The child from this incident was found uninjured, Gillett said in an email.

No additional information on the alleged kidnapping was immediately available, he said.

During the closure, the Arizona Department of Transportation advised drivers that they could make a lengthy detour by looping north into metro Phoenix before heading back south to return to I-8.
Copyright  2022 Albuquerque Journal

SANTA FE  Attorney general candidate Brian Colon won support from 61% of the delegates at the Democratic Partys nominating convention, ensuring his name will appear first on the June 7 ballot, according to results released Sunday.

His rival for the Democratic attorney general nomination, Raul Torrez, also made the ballot, picking up support from 39% of convention delegates.

Candidates must secure at least 20% of the convention vote to guarantee a spot on the June 7 ballot. Anyone who finishes under that threshold, however, can collect more petition signatures to make the ballot.

The only Democratic candidate who appears in danger of failing to make the ballot is 2nd Congressional District hopeful Darshan Patel, who just missed at 19.6%.

A Democratic Party spokeswoman said it would be up to state election officials to determine whether Patels vote total would be rounded up to 20% or whether he must submit more signatures. Patels campaign contends the number must be rounded up and that he qualified.

The party released the results from its convention Sunday after conducting the vote online and by phone. More than 1,140 delegates  a group that includes party activists and leaders  cast ballots during the voting period, which ended last week.

The winner in each contested race has his or her name listed first on the June 7 ballot, when voters will choose the nominees who advance to the general election.

Near the top of the ticket is the Democratic race for attorney general, which attracted two strong candidates, including Colon, the state auditor, and a former Democratic Party chairman.

Colon and other winners thanked supporters Sunday when the party reopened the convention during a video call to report the voting results.

Weve got a lot of work to do, he said. The election is right around the corner.

Torrez is the 2nd Judicial District attorney and a former federal prosecutor.

The winner of the attorney general nomination will face Republican Jeremy Gay, a Gallup lawyer and former judge advocate in the Marine Corps, in the Nov. 8 general election.

Attorney General Hector Balderas, the Democratic incumbent, has served two terms and cannot run for reelection this year.

Many of the Democratic races arent contested. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, for example, is unopposed for the Democratic nomination in her race.

But in contested races at the Democratic convention:

 Las Cruces City Councilor Gabe Vasquez won 80.4% of the vote in the 2nd Congressional District race, easily outdistancing Patel, a physician.

The Democratic nominee will face Republican Yvette Herrell this fall in one of the most closely watched congressional races in the country. The district was recently redrawn with new census data and is much more friendly to Democrats.

 Former Sandoval County Treasurer Laura Montoya received 58% of the vote in the state treasurers race. Finishing second and also making the ballot was Heather Benavidez, a former municipal and magistrate judge.

The winner would face Republican Harry Montoya in the general election.

 Zack Quintero, a former state ombudsman for nursing home residents, took 62% of the vote in the state auditors race over Joseph Maestas, a member of the Public Regulation Commission.

Theres no Republican candidate for auditor.
Copyright  2022 Albuquerque Journal

Editors note: Todays story is another in The Literacy Project series, a collaboration of the Albuquerque Journal, KOAT-TV and KKOB News Radio. The stories explore issues and seek potential solutions to New Mexicos ongoing literacy crisis.

At age 17, and in her junior year at Pojoaque Valley High School, Cristian Olivas was feeling overwhelmed and decided to drop out.

I was far behind in my credentials for high school graduation and knew I couldnt catch up with the limited time that I had, so I made the decision to drop out and take a different route, she said.

Olivas instead enrolled in the adult education program at Northern New Mexico College in Espanola, encouraged by her mother who was already in the program. Olivas earned her high school equivalency, or HSE, credential, which set her up for a more extended relationship with the college.

My experience with them has been incredible. They definitely helped me out and answered all my questions and guided me in the right direction in terms of where I wanted to go, she said.

Among the classes she took was a course in basic computer skills and a college and career-readiness class, which helped her focus on her goal of being computer literate and working in data entry.

Olivas, 22, became so proficient, she was hired by Northern New Mexico College as an intake and data technician for the adult education program, where she processes student intake and admission forms and enters other data.

Olivas said she intends to continue her own education and eventually get a college degree.

I definitely want my experience to count and I want to encourage others who are basically afraid to get their credentials because of the stigma associated with people who dropped out of high school, Olivas said. I just want them to know that they can succeed and they have no limitations.

And there is no shortage of adult education programs that lead to a high school equivalency credential.

The New Mexico Higher Education Department funds adult education under the larger umbrellas of the Adult Education and Family Literacy Program, and the New Mexico Adult Literacy Program. Both of the similarly named programs are primarily made available through university and college campuses and non-profits around the state.

They are both free and intended to strengthen core literacy skills, which go far beyond learning to read, said Amber Gallup Rodriguez, the departments adult education director.

There are, however, important distinctions.

All around NM

The Adult Education and Family Literacy Program is actually 26 individual programs offered by different service providers. They are funded by a combination of $6.5 million from the state and $5 million from the federal government under the Adult Education and Family Literacy Act, These AEFLA-funded courses teach literacy skills to all adult learners who enter anywhere on the literacy spectrum through the 12th grade level, and help students get their high school equivalency certification.

Another main focus is providing workplace readiness skills to help people participate in the workforce, Gallup Rodriguez said. The AEFLA-funded programs track when students leave, student attainment of work and attainment of workforce credentials, and their median earnings after they leave.

When we talk about literacy, were talking about not only the ability to read and write, but also how people can use those skills in the 21st century, she said. We know that many more jobs in the future are going to require a more highly educated workforce, and the largest gaps in New Mexico are in middle skill jobs, those that require more than a high school diploma, but maybe less than a four-year post secondary degree. In the Adult Education Division, we see that we have a really important role in supporting adult learners to prepare for those more family sustaining, high demand careers, Gallup Rodriguez said.

In the last pre-pandemic year for which they had a full year of data, she said, programs under Adult Education and Family Literacy served:

 2,286 people at the basic literacy level, which covers those with a reading ability up to grade level 3.9

 3,476 people at the basic education level, which is fourth grade through 8.9 grade equivalency.

 3,528 people who are learning English as a second language.

Meanwhile, the New Mexico Adult Literacy Program is available at 14 locations around the state and is funded with $680,000 from the state. These courses are primarily taught via one-on-one tutoring and are geared for adults who test at a sixth grade equivalency level or below.

These individuals have emerging levels of literacy and are in courses that are appropriate to more foundational skill development, Gallup Rodriguez said.

Many of them have goals other than jobs or college and may be motivated by a desire to support their children in their schools and being able to help them with their homework, or being able to read a newspaper or become a U.S. citizen, she said.

The New Mexico Adult Literacy Program is relatively new and there is still little data available to track success, in addition to complications caused by a pandemic-related decline in attendance, she said.

Affordable assistance

Adult education programs represent a bargain for the state, Gallup Rodriguez said. The state expenditure for an adult education student averages about $655 per year; and that student, after receiving a high school equivalency credential, can see an increase in earnings that averages $9,620 per year and a 53% income increase over 10 years, she said.

That not only increases a familys income, but also brings more money into the community. We are serving adult students at a low cost per head, but a very high return on investment in terms of the number who enter the workforce and generate wages and those who transition to college, she said.

There are nearly 232,000 New Mexicans age 18 and older who lack a high school diploma or certification, according to 2019 U.S. Census data.

New Mexicos organizations that promote literacy say that people with higher literacy levels are:

 Less likely to drop out of high school and more likely to go to college;

 More likely to have better health, fewer teen pregnancies, fewer addictions;

 Less likely to become involved with the criminal justice system;

 More likely to have children who are also healthier and achieve higher literacy levels.

Further, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reports a 43% reduction in recidivism rates among former inmates nationwide who participated in adult education programs while in prison.

Battling inequalities

Because much of New Mexico is rural, there are a lot of systemic inequities that lead to literacy-related challenges, Gallup Rodriguez said. But rather than focus on that, its important to look at the systemic inequities that undergird these things and think about how we might make access to literacy education more equitable.

Among the inequities that need to be resolved is making sure people in rural areas have access to these programs and that the programs are strong, and that we address the digital divide, particularly in rural parts of the state where many people lack consistent access to the internet or computer technology, she said.

Were also working to develop a centralized professional development system, so teachers and administrators can further ensure the quality of services.

The bottom line is we can address the inequities through literacy education, she said.
Copyright  2022 Albuquerque Journal

A lawsuit alleges that a former educational assistant at Sandia High School had a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old special education student in 2020.

School officials became aware of the relationship after the employee angered the girl by pursuing a second special education student, according to the lawsuit.

The suit identifies Stephon Laabs, 27, as the employee who kindled the relationship by inappropriately touching the girl at a school media room during school hours.

Laabs worked as an educational assistant for Albuquerque Public Schools from Jan. 7, 2020, to March 11, 2020, APS spokeswoman Monica Armenta said in a written statement. Laabs resigned the post, she said.

Armenta declined additional comment about the lawsuit, saying APS does not comment on pending litigation.

Efforts to reach Laabs on Tuesday were unsuccessful.

The suit also identifies APS and two Sandia High administrators as defendants, alleging they endangered students by failing to properly train and supervise special education employees. The suit seeks unspecified damages.

These are very vulnerable kids, and this is what predators do, said Laura Schauer Ives, an Albuquerque attorney representing the girl. Predators confuse children into thinking they are in a relationship. Thats how they groom people.

New Mexico Public Education Department records show the agency permanently revoked Laabs certification as an educational assistant in June 2020.

Laabs first obtained the certification in July 2019.

Lauren Rodriguez, a District Attorneys Office spokeswoman, said Tuesday the DAs office said the DAs office has the case and plans to pursue criminal charges.

The 2nd Judicial District Court civil case sets out a series of events that led to Laabs termination by APS.

The girl, identified in the suit as G.R., was a junior at Sandia High School in January 2020 when she returned from winter break. Laabs was a new educational assistant assigned to her sixth-period history class.

Laabs flirted with the girl at school and the two regularly exchanged text messages.

Laabs routinely took the girl to a media room during class where he inappropriately touched and kissed the girl, the suit alleges.

Laabs also met with her outside of school several times without her parents knowledge and had sex with her in February 2020, it alleges.

Several weeks later, the girl became upset and physically attacked Laabs at school after she learned that he was involved with another girl in the schools special education program.

Laabs was sent home after Sandia High staff learned that he had used his position to prey on at least two female students, the suit alleges.

Police investigated and forwarded the case to the 2nd Judicial District Attorneys Office for prosecution, the suit said.

Editors note: An earlier version of this article misstated the District Attorneys intention to pursue criminal charges.
WHERE ARE THE EV CHARGERS? If you have ever wondered that, the New Mexico Tourism department has your answer in a handy color map with more than 120 electric-vehicle charging stations complete with hours of availability, if they are open to everyone, and who to see for the access code, if applicable.

Sites are in and around Albuquerque, Farmington, Las Cruces, Santa Fe, Taos, on Interstate 25 between Albuquerque and Las Cruces, and at seven sites across southern New Mexico from Portales on the east to Rodeo on the west. And more are on the way: Tourisms news release says New Mexico has designated multiple Alternative Fuel Corridors along I-25, I-10, U.S. 70 and U.S. 285. These corridor designations identify near-term and long-term EV charging needs and locations at strategic locations along major national highways.

You can check out the map at www.newmexico.org/plan/charging-stations/.

WHY DID THE DL RENEWAL DATE CHANGE?

Bill Cella emails why did New Mexico stop giving drivers a month to renew their drivers license?

Before 2019, the expiration date was the day of your birthday in the following month regardless of the date you renewed the license. Beginning in 2019 the expiration date is one day ahead of your last renewal date. This ultimately reduces the drivers license to less than a full year from your birth date for those of us who, because of age, must renew every year, especially if you renew a few days ahead of the expiration date. My last expiration date was on my birthday, so I renewed a few days ahead and now my expiration date is in the month before my birthday. This seems to be unjustified nickel-and-diming the public.

We go straight to one of the state lawmakers who sponsored the change in 2019.

Sen. Daniel Ivey-Soto, D-Albuquerque, says the reason we changed to renewal date is because under the federal Real ID Act a drivers license can be good for no more than eight years from the date it is issued. If we had stuck with birthdate, then most people renewing before their birthday would have received a seven-and-a-half-year license instead of an eight year license in order to stay compliant with federal law. This seemed like the path of lesser resistance and was recommended by MVD.

FYI, the federal government delayed Real ID implementation until May 3, 2023  though New Mexicos MVD has been supplying them for years and gives drivers the option of a Real ID (needed to fly commercial or enter certain federal buildings) or a standard drivers license. For more information, go to realid.mvd.newmexico.gov.

Meanwhile, drivers license renewals over age 79 are free at state-run Motor Vehicle Division offices.

MORE I-25 REPAVING ON WAY: Mary Kennedy called to report a bad crack on the new paving on northbound Interstate 25 between Comanche and Jefferson.

Except thats not new paving.

Kimberly Gallegos, spokeswoman of the New Mexico Department of Transportation District 3 Office, says this portion has not been repaved on I-25 between Comanche and just north of Jefferson. Comanche to just north of Montgomery (to the canal) will be redone under the Montgomery/I-25 project slated for mid-2023. From the canal to just north of Jefferson is under consideration for a pavement preservation project within the next fiscal year.

WHATS UP ON I-25 AT ALGODONES AND LA BAJADA? While were on I-25, Gary Cordova asks in his email what the purpose of the Algodones project is, and when will La Bajada be resurfaced?

Gallegos says the Algodones work is a roadway stabilization project and will have daily lane closures from 6:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. through March.

And Jim Murray, NMDOTs public information officer for District 5, says there are no plans at present to repave La Bajada.

Editorial page editor DVal Westphal tackles commuter issues for the metro area on Mondays. Reach her at 823-3858; dwestphal@abqjournal.com; or 7777 Jefferson NE, Albuquerque, NM, 87109.
WASHINGTON  Face to face, President Joe Bidens national security adviser warned a top Chinese official on Monday about Chinas support for Russia in the Ukrainian invasion, even as the Kremlin denied reports it had requested Chinese military equipment to use in the war.

U.S. adviser Jake Sullivan and senior Chinese foreign policy adviser Yang Jiechi met in Rome, with the Biden administration increasingly concerned that China is using the Ukraine war to advance Beijings long-term interest in its competition with the United States.

Sullivan was seeking clarity on Beijings posture and was warning the Chinese anew that assistance for Russia  including helping it avert sanctions imposed by the U.S. and Western allies  would be costly for them.

The national security adviser and our delegation raised directly and very clearly our concerns about the PRCs support to Russia in the wake of the invasion, and the implications that any such support would have for the PRCs relationship not only with us, but for its relationships around the world, said State Department spokesman Ned Price, using the initials for the Peoples Republic of China.

Meanwhile, two administration officials said the U.S. had determined that China had signaled to Russia that it would be willing to provide both military support for the campaign in Ukraine and financial backing to help stave off the impact of severe sanctions imposed by the West. The officials said that assessment had been relayed to Western and Asian allies and partners earlier Monday.

Moscow has received a positive response from Beijing, said one official, describing a diplomatic cable sent to U.S. embassies asking for them to inform their host governments of the information. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive information.

Sullivan made clear during an intense seven-hour meeting that the Biden administration has deep concerns about Chinas alignment with Russia at this time, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said.

Psaki declined to comment on whether the U.S. believes China has already provided the Russians with military, economic or other assistance.

In advance of the talks, Sullivan bluntly warned China to avoid helping Russia evade punishment from global sanctions that have hammered the Russian economy. We will not allow that to go forward, he said. Russia, however, on Monday denied it needed Chinas help.

No, Russia has its own potential to continue the operation, which, as we have said, is unfolding in accordance with the plan and will be completed on time and in full, said Dmitry Peskov, President Vladimir Putins spokesman.

Meanwhile, White House officials are discussing the possibility of Biden traveling to Europe to meet with allies for in-person talks about the crisis in Ukraine, according to three U.S. officials. The officials, who were not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the trip hasnt been finalized. One possibility is a visit to NATO headquarters in Brussels on March 24 with other potential stops in Europe, according to one of the officials.

The prospect of China offering Russia financial help is one of several concerns for Biden. A U.S. official said that in recent days, Russia has requested support from China, including military equipment, to press forward in its ongoing war with Ukraine. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, did not provide details on the scope of the request.

The Russians have seen significant losses of tanks, helicopters and other materiel since the start of the war more than two weeks ago. Ukraine, while overmatched by Russian forces, is well-equipped with anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles. Russias and Chinas weapons systems have limited interoperability, and its not clear what weapons China has that Russia would be in short supply of.

The Biden administration is also accusing China of spreading Russian disinformation that could be a pretext for Putins forces to attack Ukraine with chemical or biological weapons.

Russias invasion of Ukraine has put China in a delicate spot with two of its biggest trading partners: the U.S. and European Union. China needs access to those markets, yet it also has shown support for Moscow, joining with Russia in declaring a friendship with no limits.

Asked at a daily briefing about the reported Russian request for assistance, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said: The U.S. has been spreading disinformation targeting China recently over the Ukraine issue. It is malicious.

What is pressing now is that all parties should exercise restraint and strive to cool down the situation, rather than fueling the tension, Zhao told reporters. We should promote diplomatic settlements instead of further escalating the situation.

Biden administration officials say Beijing is spreading false Russian claims that Ukraine was running chemical and biological weapons labs with U.S. support. They say China is effectively providing cover if Russia moves ahead with a biological or chemical weapons attack on Ukrainians.

When Russia starts accusing other countries of preparing to launch biological or chemical attacks, Sullivan said Sunday, its a good tell that they may be on the cusp of doing it themselves.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby, on ABCs This Week, said we havent seen anything that indicates some sort of imminent chemical or biological attack right now, but were watching this very, very closely.

The striking U.S. accusations about Russian disinformation and Chinese complicity came after Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova alleged with no evidence that the U.S. was financing Ukrainian chemical and biological weapons labs.

The Russian claim was echoed by Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao, who claimed there were 26 bio-labs and related facilities in which the U.S. Department of Defense has absolute control. The United Nations has said it has received no information backing up such accusations.

There is growing concern inside the White House that China is aligning itself with Russia on the Ukraine war in hopes it will advance Beijings vision of the world order in the long term, according to a person familiar with the administration view who spoke on condition of anonymity because the official wasnt authorized to comment publicly.

China has been one of few countries to avoid criticizing the Russians for its invasion of Ukraine. Chinas leader Xi Jinping hosted Putin for the opening of the Winter Olympics in Beijing, just three weeks before Russia invaded on Feb. 24. During Putins visit, the two leaders issued a 5,000-word statement declaring limitless friendship.

The Chinese abstained on U.N. votes censuring Russia and has criticized economic sanctions against Moscow. But questions remain over how far Beijing will go to alienate the West and put its own economy at risk.

Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares said Monday that he had asked his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi to use Beijings influence over Moscow to end the war.

We are at a historical moment that requires responsibility and vision of all world leaders, Albares told Wang during a telephone conversation on Monday, according to a statement from the Spanish ministry.

-

Associated Press writer Ellen Knickmeyer contributed reporting.
PRZEMYSL, Poland  As Russias war in Ukraine becomes a grim new reality for millions of Ukrainians, the tens of thousands who make the increasingly treacherous journey toward safety each day in the European Union are left with no sense of when, or if, theyll ever return home.

More than 2.8 million people have fled Ukraine in the wake of Russias invasion, according to the U.N. refugee agency, the vast majority seeking refuge in Poland, which has taken in more than 1.7 million refugees in the last 19 days.

In the Polish border town of Przemysl, some of those fleeing, mostly women and children, are exhausted and express a simple wish that the war and violence would stop.

All day crying from the pain of having to part with loved ones, with my husband, my parents, said Alexandra Beltuygova, 33, who fled from Dnipro, a city between the embattled metropolises of Kyiv and Mariupol.

I understand that we may not see them. I wish this war would end, she said.

At a refugee center in Suceava in northern Romania, 28-year-old Lesia Ostrovska watched over her 1-year-old son as her daughter, who is 8, played nearby with other children displaced by the war.

I left my husband, my father, my mother, my grandparents, said Ostrovska, who is from Chernivtsi in western Ukraine. Its hard with kids, in the bus, here in this situation  We hope that the war is finished soon and we can go back home.

As the fighting, now in its third week, continues to exact a grievous human toll in Ukraine with Russian troops bombarding many of the countrys most populous cities, the number of those crossing into the EU has begun to slowly wane in recent days.

In Hungary, where around 255,000 refugees have entered so far, only 9,000 people crossed the border with Ukraine on Sunday, compared to more than twice that on March 1, according to police.

In Slovakia, where more than 200,000 people have fled, fewer than 9,000 crossed the border on Sunday, down from more than 12,000 four days earlier. In Poland, about 82,000 refugees were admitted, down from an earlier daily peak of around 129,000. Also Sunday, 14,475 Ukrainians entered Romania, down 13% compared to the previous day, border police said.

Gabriela Leu, spokesperson for UNHCR in Romania, said it was difficult to determine what is causing the slowdown in the exodus from Ukraine, but said I can see the possibility of this being something temporary.

The situation is very fragile and very fluid  its maybe more difficult for people to move, but its just speculation, Leu said. But the bottom line is that the numbers continue to grow.

Even as the pace of those leaving Ukraine has slowed, people fleeing the violence continued to arrive in large numbers in countries on Ukraines western border.

In Przemysl, some recounted seeing military attacks on civilians, something that Russia continues to deny.

I saw destroyed houses and fighting. I saw a lot of tanks when I was driving from Kyiv. I know that a house near us was completely destroyed this morning, said Inessa Armashova, 40, a resident of the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv. Many people fled. But many cannot leave, sick children or sick elderly people.

The continued push by Russian forces toward Kyiv comes a day after Russia escalated its offensive by launching airstrikes close to the Polish border, raising fears in the West that the fight was edging closer to the EU and NATO.

Those strikes, which involved waves of deadly Russian missiles hitting a military training base Sunday less than 25 kilometers (15 miles) from Ukraines border with NATO member Poland, killed at least 35 people. It appeared to be the westernmost target struck during Russias invasion of Ukraine.

Residents of the Polish village of Wielkie Oczy, just 2 kilometers (over a mile) from the border, were jolted awake in the middle of the night by the sounds of the blasts.

My son went out to the balcony. And the neighbors were already awoken and the dogs in the whole village started to bark, said Franciek Sawicki, 77, who heard the missile attack. We could see the glow above the forest. It was very noisy and I could hear a loud explosion. And at that moment I knew it was an attack near the border.

The proximity of the attack to Poland dashed the sense of safety in western Ukraine, which until now had mostly remained free of Russian attacks, and raised the possibility that the NATO alliance could be drawn into the fight.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called it a black day, and again urged NATO leaders to establish a no-fly zone over the country, a plea that the West has said could escalate the war into a nuclear confrontation with Russia.

But Anjela, 55, a Ukrainian refugee from Poltava who wouldnt give her last name, said after arriving in Poland that only a NATO intervention could end the violence in Ukraine.

I dont know when I will see my husband. I dont know when my children will return home, she said. I beg you, it depends only on you! Close the sky, everything else we will do ourselves.

___

Justin Spike reported from Budapest, Hungary. Stephen McGrath in Suceava, Romania, Monika Scislowska in Warsaw, Poland, and Karel Janicek in Prague, contributed to this report.

___

Follow the APs coverage of the Ukraine crisis at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
PHOENIX  A man accused of opening fire on two Phoenix police officers has been arrested, police said Monday.

Authorities identified the suspect as 28-year-old Devonte Thornton, who was booked into the Maricopa County Jail on attempted homicide charges.

The shooting occurred around 1 a.m. Sunday as the two officers were riding together to stop a vehicle for traffic violations.

The officers lost sight of it but then spotted the same vehicle a short time later, according to police.

They said someone standing along the road shot then at the two officers in their patrol car

Police said one officer was shot and taken to a hospital with a non-life-threatening injury to the wrist. The second officer was treated for minor injuries from flying glass.

Police have since arrested the vehicles 18-year-old driver, Javon Beasley, who reportedly is Thorntons younger brother.

Beasley has been booked into jail on suspicion of one count of felony flight, according to police.

It wasnt immediately known Monday if either Thornton or Beasley has a lawyer who can speak on their behalf.
PHOENIX  Prosecutors in Arizonas most populous county have dropped nearly 200 criminal cases because charges were not filed before the statute of limitation expired.

A supervisor never delegated 180 misdemeanor cases to prosecutors, Ryan Green, a division chief in the Maricopa County Attorneys Office, told The Arizona Republic.

The cases include drunk driving, domestic violence, assaults and criminal damage incidents that happened in 2020.

Most were initiated by the Arizona Department of Public Safety and the county sheriffs office. Arizona law requires misdemeanor cases to be filed within a year of the alleged crimes.

It was human error. However, it was human error that happened in the context of high volume, heavy caseload and not enough staffing, Green said.

He confirmed that Karen Sciarrotta was the bureau chief who failed to inform anyone about the problem. All of those cases sat untouched in a virtual queue for more than a year. She has since received a written reprimand, Green said.

Letters to alleged victims about the failure to prosecute the cases were sent at the beginning of the year.

But they did not contain an explanation or an apology, the newspaper reported. They simply stated an attorney has reviewed the report and has made the decision that the case cannot be prosecuted.

The lapse in case handling came as County Attorney Allister Adel continues to be questioned about her abilities to lead the office.

Some, including Green and former County Attorney Rick Romley, have urged Adel to resign. They say her sobriety struggles have caused her to be absent from crucial day-to-day tasks.

Adel told the newspaper a failure of a few employees does not mean she cannot do her job.

I reached out to the most significantly impacted law enforcement agencies, provided them detailed information about the problem, owned the mistake, and committed to ensuring it does not happen again, Adel said.

Adel, a Republican, has previously vowed that she will not resign.

When she was elected in November 2020, Adel underwent emergency surgery on election night for a brain bleed after a fall.

She was back at work full-time the following spring. but in August she went into treatment for alcohol abuse, an eating disorder and other issues.
The state auditor is the latest top Democratic official to push back against an independent audit of the 2020 election in one rural New Mexico county, as questions about irregularities and fraud continue to circulate in more conservative pockets across the U.S.

State Auditor Brian Colon's office sent a letter Monday to Otero County commissioners saying the county is deficient in its ability to properly oversee contract compliance, pointing specifically to a recent contract signed with the private company it hired to review election records.

The letter also stated that the audit isn't in the best interest of residents and amounts to political grandstanding.

It appears that the County Commission failed to treat their government position as a public trust and instead used the powers and resources of their public office to waste public resources in pursuit of private interests concerning unsubstantiated claims of widespread election fraud, the letter reads.

County Commissioner Couy Griffin was quick to address the letter's allegations. If the state has nothing to hide, he said there would be no harm in following through with the audit.

The state wants to say that they have done audits on our election, but in my opinion that is like the criminal heading the investigation, Griffin told The Associated Press, saying he did not trust the secretary of state and only becomes more suspicious as New Mexico politicians apply more pressure on the county to stop the audit.

Nearly a year and a half after the 2020 election, the U.S. continues to grapple with claims surrounding President Joe Biden's win. Ballot reviews have been conducted across the country, from Arizona's Maricopa County to Fulton County, Pennsylvania.

In Wisconsin, a former state Supreme Court justice examining the 2020 election in that battleground state laid out his interim findings just weeks ago and recommended that legislators consider decertifying that state's presidential result  a move attorneys have said is illegal. An Associated Press review of votes cast in battleground states contested by former President Donald Trump also found too few cases of fraud to affect the outcome.

In conservative-leaning Otero County, Griffin said door-to-door canvassing has turned up cases in which the people who voted did not live at the addresses provided. A ballot scan also is being conducted.

I can honestly say I don't have skin in this deal. I just want to be able to sleep at night knowing that there's not fraud happening, Griffin said. The question of fraud is not going to go away until we have independent audits at the county level. That's all we're trying to do  find out the truth.

Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver, New Mexico's top election regulator, issued a warning about the audit last week. She told residents to be wary of what she called intrusive questions and potential intimidation by door-to-door canvassers.

The commission in January authorized a $49,750 contract for a countywide review of election records and voter registration information linked to the 2020 general election. They accepted a proposal from EchoMail  one of the contractors hired by Arizona's Republican-controlled state senate to review election results in Maricopa County.

Though Trump won nearly 62% of the vote in Otero County in 2020, county commissioners have said they are not satisfied with assurances of an accurate midterm election in 2022 by their county clerk or results of the state's risk-limiting audit.

The state auditor's office pointed to three audits done by the county clerk after the 2020 election, saying no inaccuracies were noted and that the error rate between hand counting and machine counting ballots was so low that no additional testing was needed.
WENN/Adriana M. Barraza Celebrity

Selena Gomez, Kristen Stewart, Halle Berry and 'Squid Game' favorite Jung Ho-yeon are also among celebrities who turn heads at the award-giving event, which is held in Los Angeles.

Mar 14, 2022

AceShowbiz - Celebrities are making a stylish entrance on the red carpet at the 2022 Critics' Choice Awards at the Fairmont Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles on Sunday, March 13. Among those who turned heads at the award-giving event are Lady GaGa, clad in a dramatic plunging dress, and Elle Fanning, who glitters in a gold ball gown.

For the event, Lady GaGa rocked a revealing plunging black-and-gold Gucci dress which featured black lace embellished long sleeves with attached gloves. Further oozing sexiness, the "House of Gucci" star's sleek ensemble gained a daring accent with a large front cutout punctuated by two black bra-like cups.

Meanwhile, Elle glittered in gold at the annual event. The "Maleficent" actress, who slicked her hair down in a low ponytail, looked stunning in a strapless gold ball gown by Oscar de La Renta. To complete her look, she wore stud earrings and a thick gold bracelet.

Also bringing style to the star-studded event was Selena Gomez. The Mabel Mora depicter on "Only Murders in the Building" hit the red carpet in a custom red silk Louis Vuitton halter neck dress with a matching long scarf that served as a train. She paired the gown with a statement arrow earring.

Another star showing her best style at the event was Kristen Stewart. For the night, the actress, who was up for Best Actress for her role in "Spencer", donned a slinky silver dress. She went all out with her hair, styling it into glam waves.

In the meantime, Halle Berry walked the red carpet with her "X-Men" inspired hairstyle. She rocked a partially shaved and bleached style similar to what she wore when she played Storm in the film. She paired her bold hairstyle with a sleek black velvet Dolce & Gabbana suit over a white corset.

Also gracing the red carpet with a unique look was "Squid Game" star Jung Ho-yeon. The South Korean actress arrived at the night event wearing a metallic beaded dress from Louis Vuitton. The dress featured a loose-fitting bodice paired with a sculptural bustle skirt embroidered with crystals and silver beads. She paired the look with earrings and a ring from Louis Vuitton's High Jewelry Collection.

Other stars showing up at the event with their best styles were Will Smith and his wife Jada Pinkett Smith, Kirsten Dunst as well as Serena Williams. Will, who was nominated for his role in "King Richard", looked dapper in his brown suit as he walked arm-in-arm with his wife Jada, who wore a gold dress.

Kirsten looked pretty in her simple baby blue gown. In the meantime, Serena turned heads in a silver gown with a long, flowing train that trailed behind her as she posed on the red carpet of the annual show.

The 27th annual awards show is being co-hosted by Taye Diggs and Nicole Byer. The event was originally scheduled to occur on January 9 but was postponed due to the surge in COVID-19 cases due to the Omicron variant.

The new date, however, conflicts with another major awards show, the BAFTAs, which took place on March 13. Though so, it's reported that the CCAs and BAFTAs have been in communication over the issue and have a mutual understanding amongst one another.
Warner Bros. Movie

Going into the British equivalent of the Oscars with 11 nominations, Denis Villeneuve's epic sci-fi film takes home the most awards with five wins, while Jane Champion's western drama bags Best Picture and Best Director.

Mar 14, 2022

AceShowbiz - The 75th British Academy Film Awards has handed out the prizes for the best in films of 2021. Held two weeks before this year's Academy Awards, the Sunday, March 13 ceremony saw "Dune" as the biggest winner in terms of number.

Leading the nominations with 11, Denis Villeneuve's epic sci-fi film unsurprisingly took home the most awards with 5 wins. It nabbed the best Original Score for Hans Zimmer, Cinematography for Greg Fraser, Production Design for Patrice Vermette and Zsuzsanna Sipos, Sound as well as Special Visual Effects.

Meanwhile, "The Power of the Dog" shone that night as it bagged the coveted awards of Best Film and Best Director for Jane Champion. "Belfast", which scored six nominations, won one for Outstanding British Film.

Paul Thomas Anderson scored his first major industry win with best Original Screenplay for his work in "Licorice Pizza". "Drive My Car" was named best Film Not in the English Language, while "Encanto" won the best Animated Film.

In acting categories, Will Smith ("King Richard"), Ariana DeBose ("West Side Story") and Troy Kotsur ("CODA") got a major boost ahead of Oscars by winning in the Leading Actor, Supporting Actress and Supporting Actor category respectively. Meanwhile, "After Love" star Joanna Scanlan won the Leading Actress prize.

Held at the Royal Albert Hall in London, the event was hosted by American actress Rebel Wilson. Lady GaGa, who was nominated for Leading Actress for her role in "House of Gucci", introduced the moment and the award presenter.

Full Winner List of 2022 BAFTA Awards
Ruby's Tuna TV

At the 27th Annual Critics' Choice Awards, South Korean series 'Squid Game', meanwhile, bags two awards, one of which is for star Lee Jung-jae who is named Best Actor in a Drama Series.

Mar 14, 2022

AceShowbiz - The full list of winners in the TV department at the 2022 Critics' Choice Awards has finally been revealed. Held on Sunday, March at The Century Plaza hotel, the event saw "Ted Lasso" coming out as the biggest winner.

It led the TV winner after collecting all four awards that it was nominated for. Earlier in the night, the comedy won two awards for stars Brett Goldstein and Hannah Waddingham who took home the Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series and Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series awards respectively.

The hit comedy series added two more trophies to take home as Jason Sudeikis was named as the Best Actor in a Comedy Series. He won over Ian Armitage ("Young Sheldon"), Nicholas Hoult ("The Great") and Steve Martin ("Only Murders in the Building)" who were also nominated for the category. Not stopping there, "Ted Lasso" also won the Best Comedy Series race.

"Succession", which received the most nods with eight, trailed behind with three wins. It bagged Best Drama Series in addition to nabbing Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series award for Kieran Culkin and Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series award for Sarah Snook.

South Korean series "Squid Game" was also among the honorees. Lead actor Lee Jung-jae ultimately was named as the Best Actor in a Drama Series, winning over fellow nominees Sterling K. Brown ("This Is Us"), Mike Colter ("Evil"), Brian Cox ("Succession"), Billy Porter ("Pose") and Jeremy Strong ("Succession"). It also won the race for Best Foreign Language Series.

Also collecting two trophies was HBO's "Mare of Easttown", which took home the Best Limited Series prize that night. It also earned star Kate Winslet a trophy for Best Actress in a Limited Series or Movie Made for Television.

"What If..?" won Best Animated Series, with "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver" bagging the Best Talk Show trophy. Meanwhile, "Bo Burnham: Inside" special won the title of Best Comedy Special at the annual event. As for the full list of movie winners, it can be seen here.

Full TV winners of the 2022 Critics' Choice Awards:
Instagram/Twitter Celebrity

Also turning heads at the annual event in London's Royal Albert Hall is Benedict Cumberbatch, who shows support to Ukraine by wearing the country's flag pin on his classic tuxedo.

Mar 14, 2022

AceShowbiz - The 2022 BAFTA Film Awards has finally arrived. Celebrities hit the red carpet at the Royal Albert Hall in London on Sunday, March 13 in style. This year's event also featured one couple making their romance red carpet official.

The said couple was none other than Millie Bobby Brown and her boyfriend Jake Bongiovi. While making their arrivals, the "Stranger Things" star donned a black velvet dress featuring black lace detailing, which she paired with a matching set of gloves and silver jewelry.

In the meantime, Millie's plus one Jake went with a simple black suit. The 19-year-old son of musician Bon Jovi added a Ukraine flag pin in a show of support for the country amid Russia's invasion.

Emma Watson also served looks while gracing the red carpet. The "Harry Potter" star turned heads in a unique gown featuring a plunging black halter-neck top and a cream tulle skirt with an elegant train. To complete her look, she added a pair of pointed black heels adorned with beaded ankle straps.

Also taking the opportunity to show some support for Ukraine was Benedict Cumberbatch. The 45-year-old actor, who was up for Best Actor for his role in "The Power of the Dog", could be seen wearing a pin of the war-torn country on his classic tuxedo. For the afternoon event, he was accompanied by his wife Sophie Hunter, who looked glamorous in a gold gown.

Lady GaGa also looked stunning for the star-studded event. The "House of Gucci" actress hit the red carpet at the 75th annual awards show in an emerald green velvet and silk taffeta evening gown by Ralph Lauren. To match her style, she styled her hair in a soft side-swept waves.

Meanwhile, host Rebel Wilson graced the red carpet with a unique look. The "Pitch Perfect" actress showed off her glamorous sense of style in a tiered black mesh Giambattista Valli SS19 Couture dress with blue sequin detail.

As for Florence Pugh, she debuted her new hairstyle at the award-giving event. The Yelena Belova depicter in "Black Widow" rocked her new pixie haircut as she walked the red carpet. She wore a sexy strapless black mini Carolina Herrera dress which featured long sleeves and a pink bow at the back with a long train.

The 75th British Academy Film Awards saw "Dune" as the biggest winner in terms of number. Meanwhile, "The Power of the Dog" nabbed the coveted awards of Best Film and Best Director for Jane Champion. "Belfast", which scored six nominations, won one for Outstanding British Film. See the full winners here.
WENN/FayesVision Celebrity

In their conversation shared by 'SNL' writer Dave Sirus, the comedian says he's 'done being quiet' and challenges Ye to meet in person after the latter once again blasts Kim over the custody of their kids.

Mar 14, 2022

AceShowbiz - Pete Davidson is now feuding with Kanye West as the latter continues to feed the drama between him, Pete and Kim Kardashian. The "Saturday Night Live" star, who had remained largely quiet despite the rapper's diss at him, has finally clapped back after Ye reignited his war with Kim over the custody war of their children.

On Sunday, March 13, Ye posted a screenshot of his text message to Kim in which he called her out for not bringing their kids to his Sunday service as he demanded. "When I say bring my kids somewhere," he wrote. "I'm not going through this no more. Why the f**k is it up to you where my kids are if we so called have joint custody."

In another now-deleted post, he uploaded a screenshot of North on TikTok and captioned it, "My daughter will not be lead by people who don't believe in Gold. I am in a very good place and a very God place. Inside the will of God I am being still right now. This all feels like a set up. They want me to react. I flew back from Miami and none of my kids are coming to Sunday Service. I am public about this because we are a famous Praying and expressing how I have no rights to my children is the only thing I can legally do."

Apparently catching wind of this, Pete decided to defend his girlfriend Kim. In a conversation shared by "SNL" writer Dave Sirus, the 28-year-old wrote to Ye, "Yo it's Skete. Can you please take a second and calm down. It's 8am and it don't gotta be like this. Kim is literally the best mother I've ever met. What she does for those kids is amazing and you are so f**king lucky that she's your kids mom." He continued, "I've decided I'm not gonna let you treat us this way anymore and I'm done being quiet. Grow the f**k up."

When Ye asked where Pete was, the comedian taunted the rapper by replying, "In bed with your wife," along with a picture of him shirtless in bed. The Atlanta native clapped back by bringing up Pete's rehab stint, writing, "Happy to see you're out the hospital and rehab," to which Pete responded, "Same here. It's wonders what those places do when you go get help. You should try it."

Pete then challenged Ye to see each other in person. "I'm in La for the day if you wanna stop being a little internetb***h boy and talk," he wrote. Ye suggested that they meet at his Sunday service, but Pete asked to meet in private. "This isn't public dude. I'm not here for pictures and press. Which is obviously all you care about."

"I wish you'd man up for once in your life," Pete begged to Kanye. He said he wants to help Ye with his mental health issue and claimed that he asked "SNL" to stop making fun of the Yeezy designer.

Ye, in return, posted a video on his Instagram page in which he ranted about being framed as "crazy." He claimed they want to see him having a "meltdown" while asking, "Why I have to pray to see my children?" He declared that he will not be silenced, saying, "And you're not gonna mouthful me. And you're not gonna write me off as crazy. We can play fair. But I'm not gonna stop using my voice."

Meanwhile, social media users got distracted by Pete's shirtless selfie, which seemed to unveil his tattoo of Kim's name on his chest. "OMG you guys: PETE HAS A KIM TAT," "Not Skinny But Not Fat" podcast host Amanda Hirsh wrote when resharing the image. "I genuinely gasped," a fan reacted, while another gushed, "My brain can't handle all of this information today."
Twitter/BAFTA Celebrity

The 'Pitch Perfect' actress, who hosts the U.K. equivalent to the Oscars, also talks about her recent weight loss as well as J.K. Rowling's controversial statements about transgender community.

Mar 14, 2022

AceShowbiz - Rebel Wilson made sure everyone knows that she's against Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The actress, who served as the host of the 2022 BAFTA Awards ceremony in London, had a rather direct approach to show support for Ukraine at the Sunday, March 13 event.

Introducing Emilia Jones' musical performance, she explained that there would be two sign language interpreters on stage. "And this is the gesture for [Vladimir] Putin," she said, giving the middle finger to the President of Russia.

The "Pitch Perfect" actress wasn't the only one who made use of the annual ceremony to make a statement regarding the waging war in Ukraine. BAFTA chair Krishnendu Majumdar opened the night by paying tribute to those suffering in the country.

"Together with our colleagues at the Ukrainian Film Academy, we stand in solidarity and hope for a return to peace," so he said. "We're hugely grateful to the journalists covering Ukraine, many of whom are BAFTA members. Our thoughts are with the people of Ukraine as well as those affected by other conflicts around the world."

That aside, Rebel also talked about her recent weight loss, James Bond, COVID-19 as well as J.K. Rowling's controversial statements about transgender community. "I might look a bit different from the last time you saw me here. That was me two years ago and since then I've done quite a transformation - I hope J.K. Rowling still approves," the Australian actress said.

Addressing her weight loss, she joked that it had something to do with Robert Pattinson. "Everyone is asking me, why did you lose weight? Clearly it was to get the attention of Robert Pattinson," she said. "I didn't lose weight just to get a guy, I did it to get more acting roles. Now I can play the non-funny love interest in an Adam Sandler film."
WENN/Avalon/FayesVision Celebrity

Taraji likens his 'Empire' co-star to lynching victim Emmett Till when calling to free the actor, while Samuel and his wife LaTanya Richardson write a letter to judge asking for leniency.

Mar 14, 2022

AceShowbiz - Taraji P. Henson, Samuel L. Jackson and more stars have shown their support for Jussie Smollett after he's sentenced to 150 days in jail for his role in creating a hate crime hoax. Taking to her Instagram page on Sunday, March 13, "The Karate Kid" actress likened his former "Empire" co-star to lynching victim Emmett Till when calling to free the actor.

"I am not here to debate you on his innocence but we can agree that the punishment does not fit the crime," Taraji wrote along with a picture of the message #FreeJussie. She continued, "Emmett Till was brutally beat and ultimately murdered because of a lie and none of the people involved with his demise spent one day in jail, even after Carolyn Bryant admitted that her claims were false. No one was hurt or killed during Jussie's ordeal."

She went on arguing, "He has already lost everything, EVERYTHING! To me as an artist not able to create that in itself is punishment enough. He can't get a job. No one in Hollywood will hire him and again as an artist who loves to create, that is prison. My prayer is that he is freed and put on house arrest and probation because in this case that would seem fair. Please #freejussie."

Meanwhile, Samuel and his wife, actress LaTanya Richardson, have reportedly penned a letter to Judge James Linn not to give Jussie jail time. "My husband, actor Samuel L. Jackson, and I have known Jussie since he was a baby living down the street from us in New York City. We have often broken bread with this young man as we discussed the right and wrong ways to live," she reportedly wrote of the disgraced actor.

"It is incredulous to Sam and to me that this entire criminal situation even exists," she added. Echoing Taraji's sentiment, LaTanya claimed, "Jussie has already suffered a great deal of punishment, as this situation has destroyed his career and impugned his reputation."

Actress Alfre Woodard allegedly also wrote a letter with a similar plea. "My dear friend Jussie Smollett has been convicted of a nonviolent crime...," she wrote in her own letter. "He has already paid a personal and professional price that few in real power have even for crimes against the health and safety of millions... Through it all, Jussie has stood like the good man I know him to be. If he is incarcerated, I fear for his safety."

Meanwhile, Jussie's sister Jurnee Smollett took to Instagram on Saturday to ask to #FreeJussie. "Black Americans are incarcerated in state prisons at nearly five times the rate of White Americans," she pointed out, before declaring, "Jussie is innocent."

"And...you don't have to believe in his innocence to believe he should be free," she demanded, adding the hashtags "#FreeJussie #StopLockingUpOurPeople."

In December 2021, Jussie was found guilty of five of the six counts of felony disorderly conduct pertaining to making four false police reports relating to his hate crime hoax. On Thursday, Judge Linn handed down an overall sentence of 30 months probation, $120,106 in restitution to the Windy City, and a further $25,000 fine. He also ruled that Jussie will spend the first 150 days of his probation in the Cook County Jail.

Upon learning of his sentence, the 39-year-old star went off on the judge, maintaining his innocence and declaring his concern for his own safety. "I am not suicidal. I am innocent," he yelled. "If anything happens to me when I'm in there, I did not do it to myself and you must all know that."

Jussie was taken into custody at the Cook County Jail on the same day and has been placed in protective custody. His brother Jocqui Smollet later denied rumors suggesting that his sibling was "at risk of self harm."

"So Jussie is currently in a psych ward at the Cook County Jail," Jocqui said in a video shared on his brother's Instagram account on Saturday. "What's very concerning - is that there was a note attached to his paperwork today saying that he's at risk of self harm."

"I want to make it clear that he is in no way, shape, or form at risk of self harm," Jocqui emphasized. "He wants to let folks know that he is very stable, he is very strong, he is very healthy and ready to take on the challenge that... has been put up against him."

"This is not right. This is completely lack of justice," the former child actor continued. "So please, make sure you all spreading facts... We really need our people to support us."
Instagram Celebrity

Audiences at the comedian's show at the Nashville Municipal Auditorium have to be evacuated 10 minutes before the end of his set because of the bomb scare, the venue says.

Mar 14, 2022

AceShowbiz - Katt Williams' latest comedy show was cut short due to a bomb threat. Audiences at the comedian's Nashville show on Saturday, March 12 had to be evacuated 10 minutes before his set was due to end because of the bomb scare, the Nashville Municipal Auditorium has confirmed.

"On the evening of March 12, comedian Katt Williams had to abruptly end his show at the Municipal Auditorium in Nashville 10 minutes before the end of his set due to a bomb threat," read a statement issued via the venue's official website.

According to the venue, "Williams made the decision not to notify attendees of the bomb scare to avoid panic and possible injury." It added, "The building was successfully cleared by the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department without incident."

"Due to an ongoing investigation, specific details regarding the threat are not being released at this time," the venue declared. The bomb threat was received via telephone at 10:36 P.M., Nashville police spokesperson Don Aaron told CNN. The call was believed to have come from out of state. Police combed the venue, but found nothing. There are no suspects in custody at this time.

Local security consultant told News 2 JC Shegog that Katt made the right call by not telling the crowd about the bomb threat. "When the crowd becomes scared, if you tell them certain information that will arouse their fear then there is no order," he explained. "It's 'me,' self-preservation, I'm going to get out of here as quick as I can and I'm going to run over whoever I can in the process."

Katt was in Nashville as part of his "World War III" comedy tour. He has not made a statement regarding the incident.

This isn't the first time Katt has put the safety of his fans first. Back in November 2021, he paused his performance in Louisville, Kentucky when one of his fans passed out. According to TMZ, the 50-year-old comic was performing at the KFC Yum! Center when someone in the crowd suddenly screamed, "Stop the show!" as one person lost consciousness. He then halted his set for 10 minutes as medical workers helped the individual.

"I'm sorry if I won't move on, but that s**t that happened at - that Astroworld s**t - I mean, we can never continue til' we know somebody is motherf**king good," the funnyman told the audience, citing Travis Scott (II)'s disastrous Astroworld Festival. "I'm not goin' to be leaving with that on my conscious."

The "School Dance" actor then told the crowd, "I may be selfish, but if I fall out of my chair, ain't nobody better not tell another joke til' I get on the f**king stretcher and s**t, b***h." He was reportedly applauded by the crowd for his decision.
WENN/Michael Wright Movie

The 'Harry Potter' star says that he doesn't see Marvel will choose him to star as Logan after Hugh Jackman, who played the 'X-Men' character for years, said he'd no longer be reprising his role.

Mar 14, 2022

AceShowbiz - Daniel Radcliffe has responded to fan-casting rumors claiming that he'll be playing Logan for any upcoming "The Wolverine" films. In a quick interview, the "Harry Potter" star brushed off the speculations.

On Saturday, March 12, the 32-year-old English actor discussed the matter while he's at the SXSW festival premiere of his film "The Lost City" in Austin's Paramount Theatre. He told ComicBook.com, "So many times, people come to me like, 'Hey man, heard the 'Wolverine' news. That's pretty cool.' And I'm like, 'Mate, it's not, I don't know anything about it.' "

Though so, Daniel pointed out that he appreciates fans wanting a "short guy" to play Wolverine in keeping with comics canon. "Like, I appreciate that somebody is clearly going like, 'Wolverine's actually short in the comic books, you should get like a short guy to do it!' " said "The Woman in Black" actor.

"But I don't see myself, I don't see them going from Hugh Jackman to me," Daniel continued. However, the "Escape From Pretoria" star seemingly hinted that he liked the idea as saying, "But who knows? Prove me wrong, Marvel."

Hugh last played Wolverine in "Logan", which was released back in 2017. At the time, the 53-year-old actor said he made the decision to retire from playing the character after meeting comedian Jerry Seinfeld.

When Hugh asked Jerry why he ended his smash-hit sitcom "Seinfeld" after nine seasons, Jerry told him, "I've always believed, you should never spend everything creatively because it's almost herculean to start up again. You should always have something in the tank.' Leave the party before it gets too late kind of theory." The answer allegedly inspired him to retire as Wolverine.

However, last July, Hugh appeared to tease that he might reprise his role as the mutant. Taking to social media, "The Greatest Showman" actor reuploaded a piece of fan art from Bosslogic that featured Wolverine extending his claws. He further fueled the rumors by posting a picture of himself and Kevin Feige, the CEO of Marvel Studios.
Instagram Celebrity

According to her 'Succession' co-star, Kieran Culkin, the actress portraying Shiv Roy on the show is doing 'okay' as she 'just won an award' for Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series despite being diagnosed with the virus.

Mar 14, 2022

AceShowbiz - Sarah Snook is apparently doing good after contracting COVID-19. According to her "Succession" co-stars, the actress portraying Shiv Roy on the HBO series is "fine" following the COVID diagnosis that forced her to miss the 2022 Critics' Choice Awards.

The 34-year-old actress was supposed to attend the star-studded event as she won the award for Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series. Speaking to reporters backstage in the press room, her castmate, Kieran Culkin, shared the reason she was forced to miss the event.

"She tested positive for COVID this morning," Kieran shared, "She's okay. She's stuck in a really nice hotel room with her husband who also has it. They are both feeling fine." The "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" actor, who was also honored with the Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series, added, "I think it's okay. She just won an award, she's fine."

In the meantime, Sarah's co-star Brian Cox jokingly added, "F**k Covid, she could have got here." Brian later teased that the cast would be heading over to Sarah's room to celebrate their show's Best Drama Series award and "to see which one gets tested for Covid next."

News of Sarah's COVID-19 diagnosis came just one day after she attended the 74th Director's Guild of America Awards in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles as "Succession" director Mark Mylod took home the Outstanding Directorial Achievement in a Drama Series award. At the time, Sarah was joined by her co-stars, Brian and Kieran.

For the award-giving night, Sarah donned a lovely black sequin dress. The "Jessabelle" actress also rocked a set of matching gloves and velvet heels as well as a sparkly necklace and gold bracelet.

In the meantime, Kieran opted for a pinstripe vest and a matching set of pants worn underneath a black jacket. As for Brian, he kept it classy in a black suit and a blue shirt that were both accentuated by a deep purple tie.
WENN/Johnny Louis Celebrity

Thankfully, the former U.S. president only has mild symptoms as he reveales on Twitter that he 'had a scratchy throat for a couple days,' but is 'feeling fine otherwise.

Mar 14, 2022

AceShowbiz - Barack Obama was the latest prominent figure to have contracted COVID-19. On Sunday, March 13, the former U.S. president announced that he tested positive for the virus.

"I just tested positive for COVID," he wrote to his 131M followers on Twitter. Thankfully, he only had mild symptoms as he revealed that he "had a scratchy throat for a couple days, but am feeling fine otherwise."

Obama added that he and his wife Michelle Obama "are grateful to be vaccinated and boosted, and she has tested negative." He went on to encourage people to get vaccinated, saying, "It's a reminder to get vaccinated if you haven't already, even as cases go down."

Barack Obama announced COVID-19 diagnosis.

According to CNN, Obama recently returned to Washington, D.C. after spending much of the winter in Hawaii.

Obama has been vocal about the importance of the COVID-19 vaccine. Back in March, Obama joined fellow former presidents Jimmy Carter, George W Bush, Bill Clinton and the former first ladies in a PSA to encourage Americans to get vaccinated.

"This vaccine means hope," Obama said in the video. "It will protect you and those you love from this dangerous and deadly disease."

Obama wasn't the only world figure to contract coronavirus in the recent weeks. Last month, Buckingham Palace announced that Queen Elizabeth II was diagnosed with the disease.

"Her Majesty is experiencing mild cold like symptoms but expects to continue light duties at Windsor over the coming week," a statement read on February 20. "She will continue to receive medical attention and will follow all the appropriate guidelines."

Prior to that, Clarence House announced that Prince Charles' wife Duchess Camila tested positive for COVID-19 just days after Charles' own diagnosis. "Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Cornwall has tested positive for COVID-19 and is self-isolating," Clarence House confirmed in a statement on February 14. "We continue to follow government guidelines."
Instagram Celebrity

The acclaimed filmmaker, who won a Peabody Award in 2015, was fatally shot when Russian forces fired at his car while he and other journalists crossed a checkpoint in Irpin.

Mar 14, 2022

AceShowbiz - A U.S. journalist has died in mission. Award-winning documentary filmmaker Brent Renaud has been killed by Russian forces while he was covering the war in Ukraine. He was shot to death in Irpin, a suburb of Kyiv, on Sunday, March 13. He was 50 years old.

Juan Arredondo, a photographer and adjunct professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism who was also injured in the same attack, told The Associated Press that he was traveling with Brent. He said the group of journalists were filming civilians evacuating through one of the bridges in Irpin, when the Russian soldiers fired at their car and shot Brent in the neck.

"We crossed the first bridge in Irpin, we were going to film other refugees leaving, and we got into a car, somebody offered to take us to the other bridge, we crossed the checkpoint, and they started shooting at us," Juan told Italian journalist Annalisa Camilli in a video interview shared with the AP. Juan himself was hit in the lower back, but is stable.

Capt. Oleksandr Bogai, the deputy chief of police in Irpin, confirmed Brent was shot in the head when Russian forces fired at his car, which was being driven by a local civilian across a Ukrainian checkpoint near the northern border of Irpin.

Kyiv Chief of Police Andrey Nebitov wrote on Facebook, "A 51-year-old world-renowned media correspondent was shot in Irpen today. Another journalist is injured. Now they are trying to remove the victim from the war zone. Of course, the profession of a journalist is a risk, but U.S. citizen Brent Renaud paid his life for trying to highlight the aggressor's ingenuity, cruelty, and ruthlessness."

Brent, who was a former contributor to The New York Times, won a Peabody Award in 2015 for "Last Chance High", an HBO series about a school for at-risk youth on Chicago's West Side created with his brother Craig Brent.

Craig, who was not in Ukraine with Brent at the time, said his brother was working for the television and film division of Time magazine on a multipart series about refugees around the world called "Tipping Point" at the time of the incident.

"Brent was in the region working on a Time Studios project focused on the global refugee crisis," the editor in chief of Time, Edward Felsenthal, and the president of Time and Time Studios, Ian Orefice, said in a statement. "Our hearts are with all of Brents loved ones. It is essential that journalists are able to safely cover this ongoing invasion and humanitarian crisis in Ukraine."

While close to 600 civilians have died since Russia's invasion of Ukraine on February 24, this is the first reported death of a foreign journalist in the war. Hours after the shooting of Brent, Irpin mayor Oleksandr Markushyn said journalists would be denied entry to the city. "In this way, we want to save the lives of both them and our defenders," the mayor said.

Besides his brother Craig, Brent is survived by his parents and sister Michele Purifoy.
The Hermione Granger depicter in the film adaptations of the author's best-selling books is praised by online critics for throwing 'savage dig' at the latter following her recent anti-trans post on International Women's Day.

Mar 14, 2022

AceShowbiz - Emma Watson has earned praises from her fans after she appeared to throw "savage dig" at "Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling at the 2022 BAFTA Awards. The Hermione Granger depicter in the film adaptations of Rowling's best-selling books has been applauded for "destroying" the novelist.

On Sunday, March 13, the 31-year-old actress took the stage to present the award of Best Outstanding British Film at the Royal Albert Hall in London. After being introduced by host Rebel Wilson, she appeared to throw shade at the best-selling author following her controversial comments on transgender women.

"Here to present the next award is Emma Watson. She calls herself a feminist, but we all know she's a witch," said Wilson. Watson then emphasized as saying, "I'm here for all the witches."

Shortly after, many viewers at home took to their Twitter accounts to react to Watson's subtle shade. "Emma Watson destroying JK," one wrote. A separate person added, "Live for Emma Watson throwing subtle shade at JK Rowling at the #BAFTAs #LGBWithTheT #JKDoesntSpeakForMe."

Someone else dubbed the "Little Women" star "queen," writing, "Was that a jibe by emma watson at jk rowling? what a QUEEEEENNN." One fan said, "Loving Emma Watson's vibe tonight. Hitting JK Rowling where it hurts." Meanwhile, a fifth joked, "JK Rowling is somewhere shaking after that comment from Emma. What a classy woman."

Earlier the night, host Wilson also made a dig at Rowling. The "Pitch Perfect" actress, who has been documenting her weight loss journey on Instagram for the past year, addressed the fact that she's "looking different" and that she has had a "transformation," quipping, "I hope J.K. Rowling still approves."

The shades came after Rowling made another anti-trans post on International Women's Day. On March 8, she first responded to a tweet addressing the Labor Party. "Dear god, Labour Equalities Shadow Minister, Annalise Dodds, has just said she is not sure how adult and female is defined in answer to 'how do you define a woman?' on @BBCWomansHour," read her tweet.

"Someone please send the Shadow Minister for Equalities a dictionary and a backbone. #HappyInternationalWomensDay," Rowling, who has repeatedly denied claims that she's transphobic, added in a separate post. "Apparently, under a Labour government, today will become We Who Must Not Be Named Day," she continued, referring to her infamous book villain, Voldemort.

Many have since slammed the 56-year-old writer, with one critic arguing, "Please, please stop. You are hurting so many people. I know you really believe you're right, but is it so important to be at the expense of others?" Tinashe, who also caught wind of the tweet, simply replied, "Oh my god, SHUT UP."
WASHINGTON, March 14, 2022  One of the worlds largest curated collections of scientific artifacts, books, journals, photos and prints related to the history of chemistry is being honored with the American Chemical Societys (ACS) National Historic Chemical Landmark designation. The dedication ceremony will be held on March 15 at the University of Cincinnati.

The collections bear testimony to our fields rich heritage and its central importance in society, says Angela K. Wilson, Ph.D., president of ACS. They show how chemistry has touched everyday life for centuries.

The collections, which date from the 16th through 21st centuries, are available to view and study at the University of Cincinnati in the department of chemistry. Founded in 1986 by Professor William B. Jensen, with an endowment from Professor Ralph E. Oesper, they include 4,000 scientific artifacts, 28,000 books and journals, and 2,500 photos and prints. The collections are a joint undertaking of the chemistry department and the universitys library system.

As part of the landmark celebration, Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval issued a proclamation designating the week of March 14 as Oesper Collections in the History of Chemistry Week. Additionally, two members of Congress and a U.S. senator sent letters of congratulations to the university.

ACS established the National Historic Chemical Landmarks program in 1992 to recognize seminal events in the history of chemistry and to increase awareness of the contributions of chemistry to society. Past landmarks include the discovery and production of penicillin, the invention of synthetic plastics and the works of such notable scientific figures as educator George Washington Carver and environmentalist Rachel Carson. For more information, visit www.acs.org/landmarks.
BOLT, an All-in-One EV Infrastructure Provider, today announced its appointment as Principal Sponsor for Delhi Capitals. The BOLT brand logo will be sported on the leading arm of the Delhi Capitals match jersey through the upcoming season of the Indian Premier League.

Through this partnership, BOLT aims to amplify the message of Electricity Is The New Fuel, thereby highlighting how the brand is enabling EVs across India, and encouraging the adoption of e-mobility in the country. The BOLT-Delhi Capitals partnership also aims to promote efforts in enhancing the air quality index in the National Capital Region, by promoting the availability of safe, easy access, and affordable EV charging solutions.

Speaking on the association, Jyotiranjan Harichandan, Cofounder, BOLT said, We are proud to be chosen as the EV Charging Partner of Delhi Capitals. The scale and reach of IPL provide a great platform for us to rapidly drive awareness and familiarity for the brand across the country, as we expand our geographic footprint. This gives us the opportunity to introduce our affordable and easy-to-access EV charging infrastructure to a wider audience thereby accelerating the adoption of EVs across the country. By providing a ubiquitous EV Charging network, we look forward to playing a key role in Indias transition towards EVs. We wish Delhi Capitals good luck for IPL 2022.

Vinod Bisht, Interim CEO, Delhi Capitals also added, I am delighted to welcome BOLT to the Delhi Capitals family. Both brands have multiple values in common, such as our vibrant, youthful spirit, and the determination to leave an impression. BOLTs vision of creating a healthier and pollution-free environment is exemplary, and we are honoured to be a part of it.

BOLT is Indias largest EV charging network, comprising the universal BOLT Charging Point and the BOLT Operating System. Developed with the objective of building a strong EV charging infrastructure, it is Indias first dedicated network of IoT-enabled EV charging points connecting riders across the country. Currently, the charging points have already been installed across 60 different cities in India with an installed capacity of over 33,000kW. The universal charging point is compatible with any portable charger that comes with EVs and works with the existing AC power supply everywhere.
Cleartrip, India's fastest growing online travel company, has announced a series of senior appointments to spearhead the companys aggressive growth expansion plans and focus on execution of its strategic priorities. The appointments include the heads of Strategy, Hotels & Accommodation, Flights, Corporate Communications and B2B. With these appointments, the company is gearing us for its next phase of growth across its business verticals and further plans to ramp up its employee strength by 60% by the end of the year. The hiring encompasses redefining the organizational culture and strengthening values inline with its growth plans.

Speaking of the senior appointments, Ayyappan Rajagopal, CEO at Cleartrip, said, Cleartrip is at a pivotal point in its growth trajectory, and we seek to excel in every area we operate in. Building the right leadership team across verticals is crucial as senior leaders serve as catalysts in exponentially accelerating our overall growth. The new leadership team and I have a clear vision to take the Cleartrip brand forward and I believe that the new appointments will be invaluable additions to our senior management team on our journey to bringing disruption and innovation in the travel industry.

Karthick Prabhu D, who will Head Strategy at Cleartrip has been a part of the travel tech industry for over 17 years with various travel brands such as Treebo hotels, Sabre, IDS Next, to name a few. As a product management leader, he has helped launch products that solve customer pain points, boost revenue, introduced an industry-first product as a tablet-based property management system, and got one of the apps featured in the "Best In India'' category in the Apple Appstore and Google Play Store.

Gaurav Patwari has been named Vice President  Air category. Gaurav who was most recently associated with GoFirst, will use his 16 years of rich experience in the travel and aviation industry to help further build Cleartrips air travel vertical. He will be responsible for meeting the air businesss P&L targets while also developing a multi-year strategy for the company's evolution and expansion.

Flipkart veteran Manu Sasidharan who has taken over as Senior Director  Hotels & Accommodation was the business head of Myntra's men's fashion segment prior to joining Cleartrip. Manu has worked with companies such as General Motors India and Bajaj Auto Limited. He intends to use his diverse expertise to structurally rebuild and relaunch the hotels and accommodation category, with a strong emphasis on greater customer experience.

Divya Kumar has been appointed as Director of Public Relations. In her new role, Divya will focus on building and spearheading the development, advancement and execution of the companys corporate communications strategy. Divya was previously leading the Public Relations and Sustainability mandate at AirAsia India. Before joining the field of corporate communications, Divya started her career at NDTV Hindu, in the News & Events department. Throughout her career spanning over 11 years, Divya has worked closely with the senior leadership team as a strategic advisor providing in-depth expertise in change management, crisis response, maneuvering corporate and consumer crises.

A Cleartrip veteran with over 21 years of experience, Sukesh Shetty has been roped in to head the B2B and API business, with a focus to bring automation and growth in the online B2B travel experiences. In his previous stint, Sukesh was the Co-Founder of Tripsforbusiness, a B2B focused travel tech platform involved in building a content-rich, metasearch and book travel product for B2B customers. His journey resumes with the purpose of contributing to the success of the B2B business at Cleartrip.
We, at Adgully, have always saluted and honoured women managers and leaders across diverse fields. W-SUITE is a special initiative from Adgully that has been turning the spotlight on some of the most remarkable women achievers in M&E, Advertising & Marketing, PR & Communication industry. In the refurbished series, we seek to find out how women leaders have been managing their teams and work as well as how they have been navigating through the toughest and most challenging times brought about by the global pandemic.

Aparna Acharekar is Co-founder, Eve World. She has OTT content experience for a global audience, proven successful track record, innovator in OTT content programming with broad cross-functional operational management expertise. She has over 20 years of expertise in consumer insights, audience growth strategies and OTT content creation. In conversation with Adgully, Aparna Acharekar, Co-Founder, Eve World, speaks about how women have donned several roles during the pandemic period, womens strength in multi-tasking, lessons that she learnt as a woman leader and more.

How do you think the role and scope of women leaders has widened in the post-pandemic world?

The pre-pandemic corporate world had set expectations of their leaders  being present in office, dedication of set time to the role, and such. However, the pandemic and the ensuing work-from-home norms gave management teams, world over, the understanding that leadership is not bound by such limitations.

As a result, this opened up avenues for women to step forward and take on roles irrespective of their personal commitments. The change in work patterns has also made companies acknowledge the importance of multi-tasking skills in teams, an inherent strength in most women.

Events of the past two years have, thus, accelerated the acceptance of women in leadership roles across companies and sectors. Our ability to draw out results in exacting situations, collaborate as a team, devise win-win solutions, empathise with colleagues and so on have found acknowledgement.

The post-pandemic world holds much promise for women in the corporate space.

The rapid transition to digital, an uncertain economic landscape, charting unknown waters, working from home  how have you been navigating during the COVID-19 times? How are you maintaining work-life balance in the new normal?

Thankfully for me, being part of the digital landscape was not an unknown territory. I got an opportunity to step into digital back in 2006 and hence, using technology in day to day work life was given. The shift to becoming an entrepreneur after 20+ years of corporate life was definitely different. I have to unlearn everyday to learn new things.

My work-life balance comes from focussing on one thing at a time and not trying to become a superwoman or a supermom. I believe in working to solve things that fall in my circle of influence than worry about things that fall in my circle of concern.

Multiple studies have shown how women leaders performed better during the COVID-19 crisis. According to you, what makes women the best in crisis management?

There are several inherent abilities in women that render us better placed in crisis situations. Women leaders are more empathetic and connect better with fellow colleagues and team member.

Resilience in the face of tough situations, ability to hold the team together, working around challenges to arrive at solutions, channeling the teams energies appropriately, are some of the abilities that have held women in good stead. And in the pandemic, when individuals have had to deal with crisis on their personal and professional lives, this style of leadership has been the panacea for many.

Harvard Business Review, in fact, conducted a survey of more than 500 leaders with similar results, and women were rated as more effective leaders than men.

What are the five most effective lessons that you have learned as a woman leader?

The five lessons that I have learnt are:

Never let anyone decide on your behalf Believe in your capabilities and be authentic Never stop learning and always upskill Be empathetic, but not vulnerable See the best in others and magic happens

Gender sensitivity and inclusion in the new normal  how can organisations effectively encourage and groom women leaders in challenging times?

I have often seen assumptions being made on behalf of women employees and decisions that involve their careers taken without consulting them. I think simply starting with giving all genders an equal space in our conversations is a good start.

I hate tokenism and while many big organisations only talk about gender sensitivity and inclusion, it is often less practiced. Gender sensitivity is not about celebrating Womens Day or Pride Month in the organisation. It is about walking the talk and putting it in action. Why can we simply not recognise talent, potential and attitude and go away from judging basis gender?
Lighthouse India Fund III, Limited has invested Rs 200 crore ($27 million) in Ferns N Petals. Indias leading gifting platform.

Starting its journey from a single flower store in Delhi, FnP has grown to become India's largest, most well-known gifting platform, delighting more than two million customers annually. The Company offers over 40,000 products across various categories, such as cakes, flowers, plants, chocolates, and personalized merchandise. The Company operates through a network of more than 400 franchised FnP stores across India, serving 99% of the Indian pin codes and delivers the majority of its orders within 24 hours. Beyond India, the Company has on-ground operations in the UAE, Singapore, and Qatar and plans to further expand into Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and the UK soon. Despite Covid related disruptions, the Company has maintained a 40%+ growth rate and expects a turnover of nearly INR 600 crore in the current financial year.

Gifting is all about Delight and at FnP, we are committed to offering the best curated experience to our customers and their loved ones. We are very excited to partner with Lighthouse and look forward to learning from their deep consumer insights,developed through a focused investment approach, shared Mr.Vikaas Gutgutia, Founder & Managing Director at Ferns N Petals.

On the partnership, Mr.Pawan Gadia, CEO, Retail & Online at Ferns N Petals India, GCC & APAC Regions, said, Online gifting has its nuances which significantly differentiates it from other online D2C categories. The delivery experience plays as critical a role as the gift itself, if not more. With this fundraising, we plan to invest in improving our systems and technology to ensure a superlative customer experience for all gifting occasions.

Gifting is a large but highly fragmented market in India. Online gifting has hardly scratched the surface and has huge headroom to grow, with digital tailwinds supporting such growth. FnP has all the required ingredients, including leading brand recall, its extensive supply chain network, a robust tech stack, and a seasoned management team, to capture a large share of this growth, shared Sachin Bhartiya, Founding Partner at Lighthouse Advisors.

Lighthouse is a leading mid-market private equity firm focused on growth investments in India. Lighthouse has over half a billion dollars of assets under management and has invested in over 25 companies across consumer brands, digital transformation, healthcare, and specialty manufacturing. Lighthouses marquee investments include leading Indian brands like Bikaji Foods, Nykaa, Duroflex Mattresses, Fabindia, Cera Sanitaryware, Dhanuka Agritech, Kama Ayurveda, Poly Medicure, Shaily Engineering, Tynor Orthotics, Unibic Foods and Wow! Momo.
In a first, Indias leading online travel company, MakeMyTrip, has launched limited edition non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to celebrate the spectacular beauty and diversity of Indias myriad landscapes, varied flora and fauna, and more. The artworks have been conceptualized and designed to commemorate some of the popular as well as the unexplored travel gems of India. This will give travellers a chance to own digital collectibles of their favorite destinations. The first batch of these digitally crafted, immersive artworks unravel the majestic landscapes of Goa, Ladakh, Orissa, Himachal, Kashmir, Kerala, Meghalaya, Rajasthan, and Andamans.

Each artwork has been designed using Advanced AI Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) wherein the AI tool is uploaded with several images and trained to produce realistic, creative and unique images. The artwork is conceptualized and designed by AI Bots, an online community of digital artists. Overall, the limited-edition artwork will present a kaleidoscopic meta-world view of the explored and the relatively lesser explored destinations in the country. For instance, the NFT on Goa captures the incredible natural beauty of its beaches while highlighting the less frequented tourist spots including Pandava Cave, Basilica of Bom Jesus, Dudhsagar Falls and the splendid Fort Tiracol.

This limited collection of NFTs can be accessed through MakeMyTrips website / app https://www.makemytrip.com/nft.html and bought on ngageN https://ngagen.com/makemytrip starting March 09, 2022. With a starting price of INR 14,999, the company has launched 25 tokens per artwork  and these will be available for purchase on a first-come-first-serve basis. These artworks have been minted on Polygon Blockchain, a leading platform for Ethereum scaling and infrastructure development.

The limited edition NFTs are a confluence of new-age technology with the world of travel as it captures the beauty of some of the exotic locations of India. We are offering travel enthusiasts a never before chance to be owners of this beauty in the digital domain, said, Sunil Suresh, Group Chief Marketing Officer, MakeMyTrip. These NFTs are in line with our overall marketing and communication objective of inspiring every Indian to discover and explore the majestic beauty of India.

Sharing his thoughts on the launch, Praphul Chandra, Founder of KoineArth, shared "We are proud to partner with MakeMyTrip to immortalize the legacy of India as NFTs on our ngageN platform. With the launch of MakeMyTrips NFTs, Indians around the world can digitally own the beauty of India, make it part of their personal legacy and even gift it to their loved ones. The artwork of NFTs are a great example of how brands-with-a-purpose are working with digital artists to create art that captures their spirit.

MakeMyTrip will be passing on all proceeds from the sale of these NFTs to support projects focusing on promoting sustainable tourism in the country.
PokerBaazi.com, Indias biggest online poker platform from the house of Baazi Games, today, launched the #BaaziBillion campaign to mark the unique milestone of clocking a total of 1 billion hands on the platform and commemorate the seven-year journey of the brand in contributing to the poker economy of India.

To thank the Baazigars of India, who have believed in the brand and has helped it grow from the ground up to become a 2 million+ community, PokerBaazi.com launched a digital campaign video featuring the entire PokerBaazi team accompanied by an infographic featuring key consumer insights from over the years indicating Indias poker playing preferences.

The video focuses on bringing forth the mood of excitement, exuberance, and anticipation amongst the PokerBaazi family who eagerly await the countdown to 1 billion hands on the big screen and burst into a frenzy as soon as the golden number is achieved. On the other hand, the infographic showcases some key trends from amongst the PokerBaazi community over the last seven years, showcasing Indias most active poker communitys choices.

Interesting facts that stand out in the consumer findings include:

India prefers to play their poker online and, on a Sunday

Tournaments are the key attractions for the players, featuring 3X more hands than regular cash tables with National Poker Series

With 1.8 LAC hands, the Golden Rush tournament, a part of the National Poker Series 2021, was the tournament with the most played hands in the history of the platform.

Texas Holdem Poker has stood out to be the format of choice and 2 out of every three hands are in Texas Holdem

At a gameplay level, 57% of winning hands are decided without going to the showdown while on 0.01% of winning hands are royal flush

The biggest win ever has been of over 1 Crore

It has been an overflow of millionaires since 2014 with over 10,000 players making the cut and eight players playing over a million hands

Speaking about the milestone, Mr. Navkiran Singh, Founder, and CEO, Baazi Games said, It has been a journey that has helped all of us grow at PokerBaazi along with the brand. Todays achievement is no small feat as it includes the contribution of each member of our team who has worked relentlessly to make this dream possible. We have stayed true to our goal of creating a new poker ecosystem in India and in the last seven years we have clearly been able to create resonance amongst the poker lovers of India and the same has resonated in our companys continued growth trajectory. With our users at the core, we have not only redefined technology but have been able to interact and analyze the clear trends which make the difference. While we sit at a billion hands, we will continue to strive to do better and match up to the expectations of Indias poker community.

Continuing with the celebrations PokerBaazi.com will host the final three tables of the marquee tournaments (last stage) of National Poker Series in Goa between 23-25 March. This will be followed by three key events- Baazi Poker Tour, Endboss, MoneyMaker in the coming months.
Brotherhood is where friendship begins and love stays forever. Bringing alive this sentiment, Mera Bhai Meri Jaan, Star Bharat is all set to launch yet another relatable show that defines brotherhood, celebrates love, positivity, and family values, with Woh Toh Hai Albelaa, starting 14 March, 2022, Monday to Friday at 9:00 pm.

Producer Rajan Shahis Directors Kut offering, Woh Toh Hai Albelaa' will feature one of televisions most adored names Shaheer Sheikh as Krishnafamously known as Mast-Maula, Agra ka Ajooba, handsome hunk Anuj Sachdeva portraying his doting elder brother and an ideal son Chiranjeev and chocolate boy Kinshuk Vaidya as the youngest brother Nakul will complete the terrific trio. Hiba Nawab as the female lead of the show will complete the picture.

Set against the backdrop of Agra, the undying bond and love of these brothers and the support and sacrifices they make for one another promises to leave a lasting impression on the viewers minds. This is also the story of one brother who ends up sacrificing his love for his familys sake. The show also boasts of a stellar ensemble cast including Sucheta Khanna, Pallavi Pradhan, Mehul Buch, and Somesh Agarwal among others.

*A spokesperson of the channel states,* At Star Bharat, we firmly believe in storytelling that entertains and engages the viewers while being relatable and uniquely conceptualized. We always strive to keep our audiences enthralled with shows that keep us connected to them. With Woh Toh Hai Albelaa, we hope to extend Star Bharats long-standing relationship with the audiences.

(Nandini's approval required for the same )

Producer Rajan Shahi said, We are extremely pleased to present our project on Star BharatWoh Toh Hai Albelaa showcasing a beautiful bond between three brothers. Through Krishnas journey, the viewers will witness how a carefree younger brother steps into his elder brothers shoes to fulfil his responsibilities. Its a classic case of, Life Is what happens to you, while you are busy making other plans, that almost everyone has experienced at some time or the other and will relate to. Hope the show receives much love from the audience.

Lead actor Shaheer Shaikh further added, Woh Toh Hai Albelaa on Star Bharat, will find an audience in everybody as the story is intriguing, which drew me towards the show. Portraying Krishnas character is challenging but has been an utmost joyful experience. I am glad that the creators believed in me for bringing Krishnas character to life, and I am sure that the Star Bharat audience will instantly form a connection with him.

Get ready to witness this journey of brotherhood through this brand-new show Woh Toh Hai Albelaa, filled with incredible twists, turns and tons of tickles, only on Star Bharat starting 14 March every Monday to Friday at 9pm.
Authored by Shriya Garg, Co-Founder and Marketing Director of Content Ninja

A little girl has come to meet the CEO, announced the receptionist as I arrived for a meeting with a prospective client. Back then, I was just 22 years old, fresh out of college, having quit a cushy job at a Big 4 to start something of my own. I had no past experience in the industry, no financial backing, or VC funding.

My gender and age had become my albatross.

Today, women represent half of the working population in the world. Yet, there is a stark difference between male and female representation in leadership roles, even in the year 2022.

Despite ample evidence of female-led organisations faring better than their counterparts, women leaders are expected to work harder to reach where their male peers begin their careers.

Leadership roles dont need hard-working women. They just need more women representation, period, and those open to fresh perspectives must embrace their true value.

In honour of this years International Womens Day and #WomenHistoryMonth, I want to shed light on how female leadership can help organisations thrive  based on my personal experience as a female entrepreneur and the founder of a hyper-growth company.

Here are three advantages that female leaders bring to the board room.

Harness the power of soft skills

While tech skills, expertise, and wisdom are the gold standards for leadership, soft skills are equally critical to success and work-readiness. Soft skills are synonymous with emotional intelligence, and women outperform men in 11 of 12 key EI competencies, which include:

Professionalism  Accountability, self-motivation, ethics, and resilience

Networking and collaboration

Interpersonal relationships

Critical thinking

Better mentorship

Mentorship is vital for career progression, job satisfaction, and lower employee burnout. Mentors dont judge your ideas or dreams  they help you reach them. Pew Research found that women make better mentors than men, which also leads directly from their soft skill prowess.

Diverse solutions-oriented approach

Having a diverse leadership cohort leads to more innovations within an organisation. It means that there is diversity of thought, that leads to a solution-driven approach, and significantly higher business outcomes. In fact, women-led organisations that prioritise innovation see higher financial gains, improved employee productivity, and higher turnover. The study also indicates that having more women in leadership roles predicts higher job satisfaction and commitment to the organisation  for individuals across genders.

Back in 2015, when working from home wasnt a common option in India, I opened the doorways to women far off to join my team, by offering fully remote roles, deliverable-based goals, a flexible work environment, and even soft loans, in some instances.

I hired women in smaller cities in India, where elders would not allow them to step out of the home to work, or where women were caregivers and needed flexibility. A single mother who worked for us part-time was able to use that income to enable her sons cancer treatments. One young trans man, struggling to find fully remote roles, even told me that this job saved him from ending his life!

When women integrate their soft and hard skills to fuel their leadership, they bring innovation to the organisation and lead others towards sustainable growth. I believe thats what being on the margins does to little girls: they close the gap, one way or another.
The Federal Council

Bern, 14.03.2022 - The Federal Council met with representatives of all parties in Parliament on Monday 14 March at Hotel Bellevue to discuss the war in Ukraine and its repercussions for Switzerland.

The Federal Council invited the leaders of the political parties and groups of Parliament to discuss the war in Ukraine and its repercussions for Switzerland.



President of the Swiss Confederation Ignazio Cassis led a Federal Council delegation composed of federal councillors Karin Keller-Sutter (FDJP), Viola Amherd (DDPS) and Simonetta Sommaruga (DETEC) as well as members of the Federal Chancellery.



"The war in Ukraine is already having and will continue to have extremely far-reaching geopolitical consequences. This is why the Federal Council thought it important to bring together Switzerland's main political players to take stock of the challenges facing our country in the short and medium term," said Cassis after the meeting.



All parties represented in Parliament were invited to this meeting, during which they had a constructive exchange of views with the federal councillors whose departments are most directly involved in addressing the conflict. Among the topics discussed were how to manage the crisis, the sanctions regime, refugees and the consequences for foreign and security policy.

Address for enquiries

For further information:

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




Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup.
You have permission to edit this article.

Edit Close
When Age of Autism launched in 2007, a source of great pride and revenue was that we were Google News Indexed. Our headlines were scooped up and distributed to thousands of potential readers and supporters. This was a good draw for our sponsors and advertisers. Then? Little by little, we were dropped from searches because we discussed vaccine injury. And now? It's nearly impossible to reach anyone except those who click into our site intentionally. And we haven't a single sponsor or advertiser. We DO have amazing, wonderful readers though! I had switched over to Duck Duck Go, and now also use a search engine called BRAVE.



This weekend, The Washington Post ran an article about search engines and platforms are under pressure to take explicit stands against Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Messaging and information are always part of war, the good guys use it too. Deplatforming was rife during the height of the Covid pandemic. and now, we have a powder keg in Europe. Propaganda will always be with us, with every government, it has been part and parcel of media and government forever. When we do it, its education. When they do it, its propaganda. But now that the public has a platform, the rules are changing. What we saw during Covid, and continue to see, vis a vis vaccines, was Orwellian, to use the overused adjective. No other adjective fits as well. Weve seen the messaging change for autism too. Acceptance and awareness crept in and took over, treatment and cure were quashed. Here comes April.



###

From The Washington Post In Ukraine, tech platforms abandon the illusion of neutrality From Facebook to TikTok to DuckDuckGo, companies that once claimed to be 'unbiased are showing that they can take a side after all.

Search results should be unbiased. Social media platforms should be neutral. The Internet should be for everyone.

Though theyve taken beatings over the years, these sorts of cyber-utopian ideals have proven surprisingly durable  in part because tech companies have insisted that theyre true. The Ukraine war, however, is putting them through a wringer.

From Facebook to TikTok to DuckDuckGo, tech companies are facing pressure to take explicit stands against Russias ongoing invasion of Ukraine. With some exceptions, tech has responded to the call, at the cost of its relationships with Russia.

But theres another cost to doing what many see as the right thing in Ukraine. It requires the tech companies to acknowledge in a very public way that their products and policies arent neutral after all  and it reminds us all of their own unchecked power over the worlds information systems...
Farmers of the Lemonweir Valley host a tour of two watershed-group member farms in February. From left are Wis. Rep. Tony Kurtz, R-50-Wonewoc; Sarah Fleck, soil-conservation technician with the Juneau County Land and Water Department; Dustin Ladd, conservationist, Juneau County Land and Water Department; Bill Powers, member of Farmers of the Lemonweir Valley; Keith Riley, member of Farmers of the Lemonweir Valley; and Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection Secretary Randy Romanski.
During a press conference at Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas during the first week of Janaury, John Deere revealed a fully autonomous tractor that's ready for large-scale production.
Dear Michael: We want to do our estate planning, but we have had a meeting with the local attorney and all of it has just sat there for the pa
Get 25% off of the regular $65 annual All Access rate. With this subscription you will get:

 Digital access to ElPasoInc.com and archives (value $45)

 Print subscription home or business delivered (value $65)

 Book of Lists (annual rate only, value $50)

 El Paso Inc. Magazine (value $20)

 El Paso Kids Inc.

 Special sections

- OR -

Get 15% off of the regular $45 annual Digital-only rate. With this subscription you will get:

Complete digital access to ElPasoInc.com.
March is a month of celebrations. In 2022, daylight savings time begins on March 13 and the first official day of spring is March 20. Also of note is International Womens Day, which is celebrated March 8, and National Ag Day on March 22. All of these significant days are important to the profession of agriculture.

Springtime means the days are getting longer, the weather is getting warmer, and planting season is right around the corner. It is also a time to take an opportunity and thank not only the men, but the women who have helped build and shape the industry of agriculture.

In Montana, there are currently two women who are selflessly serving the agriculture industry as leaders of grassroots organizations. What makes these women particularly deserving of appreciation is the fact that both of them are the first women ever to hold their current positions.

Cyndi Johnson of Conrad, Mont., is the first-ever female president of the Montana Farm Bureau Federation (MFBF), and Lesley Robinson of Dodson, Mont., sits as the second vice president of the Montana Stock Growers Association (MSGA), a role that will eventually see her transitioning to first vice president and eventually, president.

As the fourth generation on her familys ranch in rural Phillips County, Lesley Robinson grew up the quintessential ranchers daughter. Looking back, she said it was her father that initially sparked her passion for leadership.

My dad was really active while I was growing up, so it was just a part of my life, she reflected.

Robinson was elected to the MSGA Board of Directors in 1996 at the tender age of 30. Her position as a director for one of Montanas largest ag industry organizations kick-started a long line of leadership positions. She served 12 years as a county commissioner, being heavily involved on the national and regional levels, and she even ran for lieutenant governor alongside Greg Gianforte the first time he sought election in 2016. Since then, Robinson has gone on to serve Gianforte as his state director while he was a U.S. congressmen, and most recently she was appointed chair of the Montana Fish and Wildlife Commission.

Bear in mind, Robinson has held all of these leadership roles while also ranching full-time alongside her husband. She admits being this busy can seem overwhelming, especially when there is always lots to do on the ranch, but her involvement has allowed her to collaborate and gain insight she may otherwise not have been able to attain.

There is a value to being active in organizations and staying up on everything. I think I have a lot to offer the organizations and I feel like I am giving back for things that I have gained, Robinson articulated.

Coincidentally enough, Cyndi Johnsons life parallels Robinsons in many aspects. Born and raised on a ranch in Powder River County, Johnson also credits her father with inspiring her to step up and lead.

My dad was actually a county Farm Bureau president, so I understood that Farm Bureau was important and I learned that stepping up was important, she stated.

Johnsons first taste of leadership came in high school as she was involved in just about everything she could be. Transitioning into adulthood, she moved to north central Montana and stayed true to her passion of stepping up and giving back. Like Robinson, Johnson served as a county commissioner for several years all the while helping her husband farm as much as possible.

Johnson became involved in Farm Bureau about 10 years after moving to Conrad, and she chuckles because by doing that it opened a leadership can of worms.

Like all small communities and county organizations, once they find someone who is willing to come to the table, all of a sudden you are an officer, she laughed.

For both Robinson and Johnson, stepping into high-up leadership positions just seemed like the most natural thing to do. Both women have their heart and souls anchored in production agriculture and giving back to the industry that shaped them as human beings seemed like the very least they could do.

In a time when feminism is such a discussed topic, both Robison and Johnson say that the moment they were seated in their leadership roles, the last thing on their mind was the glass ceiling they had shattered.

I have never done anything trying to be the first women. I have four brothers, so I think it is just natural for me to serve alongside men, Robinson said.

Johnson had similar feelings.

I didnt even think about the fact I was the first female president. The first thing I thought about was, Man, what would my dad think now? Not because I was a women, but because I was his child, she said passionately.

Stereotypically, the west is thought of as this shoot 'em up, masculine-dominated society, but while men were out conquering the landscape, it was women that were defining the culture. Moreover, for generations women have staked homesteads on their own and proved up land alongside their husbands. It took both the man and the women to shape the west, so it is only natural that it takes both sexes to lead rural America. Interestingly enough, Johnson pointed out there are currently five female state Farm Bureau presidents. And of those five, four of them are from western states.

I think that fact speaks to the whole western attitude about being an American. It is not about being a man or a women, its about getting the work done. Sometimes your partners are men and sometimes your partners are women, but you never do it alone and you always do it for the right reasons, Johnson stated.

The Prairie Star Weekly Update Get the latest agriculture news delivered to your inbox from The Prairie Star. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
Its hard finding an American, anywhere, who believes Russias invasion of Ukraine is a good thing. Im no exception. War is ugly, and innocent people suffer as the pseudo-elites play their geopolitical chess games driven by power-lust, pocketbook and politics. This also isnt about rooting for the good guys. For Vladimir Putin cannot be counted among them, and, for that matter, neither can ex-actor and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy or our globalist leaders. Rather, this concerns something else.

When I was on some medication a while back and wanted to take Benadryl as well, for a more frivolous reason, I hesitated because I couldnt determine how the drugs would interact. I didnt take the Benadryl; as someone close to me put it, You dont want to risk dying over something stupid.

The same point could be made here as our leaders, who cant even figure out what boys and girls are, and who tiptoe around WWIII in the backyard of the nation with the worlds largest nuclear weapons stockpile:

Do we really want to risk dying in an atomic holocaust over something stupid?

This isnt emotion-driven fear-mongering. Trends forecaster BCA Research is predicting a 10 percent chance of a civilization-ending nuclear war within the next year  and I fear the probability may be greater still.

Before anyone starts going on about the moral imperative of taking up the cudgels for Ukraine  with the pretensions about how higher gas prices are worth it (vaccinating was the previous moral obligation)  lets review the stupidity in question.

In 1991-92 the Soviet Union, in the grip of reformers, allowed the Berlin Wall to come down, dissolved into 15 nations, pulled the Red Army back within Russian borders and even began behaving, arguably, in a more pro-American fashion. For example, Russia did not use its veto in the Security Council to block the U.S. war to drive Saddam Hussein, an ally, out of Kuwait, commentator Pat Buchanan reminded us in 2007. When 9/11 struck, Putin gave his blessing to U.S. troops using former republics as bases for the U.S. invasion.

In other words, we had a perhaps once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reboot our relationship with Russia. We possibly couldve even turned the Bear into an ally, a valuable asset in what is the current cold war against our main geopolitical adversary: China. For certain is that the United States and Russia have far more in common than either country does with Beijing, sharing both European heritage and essentially the same foundational religion.

But our globalist pseudo-elites didnt seize this opportunity. What they did instead was take NATO  which had lost its raison detre as it was created to counter an empire no longer extant, the USSR  and expand it to Russias very borders.

In fact, despite then-U.S. secretary of state James Baker assuring Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990 that NATO would extend not one inch [farther] eastward, there are now on Russias borders four NATO members: Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.

Our globalist pseudo-elites perhaps couldnt help themselves, being both relatively stupid and morally corrupt. They possibly couldnt dispense with the Cold War mentality and shake the one-worlder obsession with never, ever shrinking but always expanding international alliances and unions. But you dont have to believe Putin is a good guy  you just have to not be a dumb guy  to grasp that getting along with a fellow nuclear power is both an imperative and requires being reasonable.

Now, question: How would we react if China forged a mutual defense alliance with Mexico and then, later, drew Canada, Cuba and the Bahamas into it? Would we view this as friendly? We certainly made clear with our Monroe Doctrine and during the Cuban Missile Crisis that such meddling was a red line for us.

And so has Putin made clear repeatedly  after decades of NATO expansion  that NATO inroads into Ukraine constitute a red line for him.

Despite this, our pseudo-elites entertained Ukraines NATO membership for years and armed the nation with Western weapons. And the stupid bull-in-a-china-shop foreign policy just continues flowing forth and escalating the crisis. Kamala Harris recently said while doing diplomacy in Europe that she appreciated President Zelenskyys desire to join NATO. Were currently waging total economic war on Moscow, too (though Russia expert Clint Ehrlich claims the sanctions have increased Putins approval rating 10 points). There also are more Western arms shipments into Ukraine, which Moscow now warns are legitimate targets. Are you at ease with this?

Demagogues would call my talk un-American; this label has already been applied to Ukraine realists just as those rejecting vaccines and COVID regulations were called unpatriotic. This is not only a childish reaction in a very dangerous time but is the precise opposite of the truth.

Reality: Our Founding Fathers warned against entangling alliances and involving ourselves in European wars. Yet against all reason, this is precisely what our pseudo-elites are doing  in spades. They are the ones being un-American.

To be clear, I was never one to say Better red than dead even back when red meant communist and Russia was still the Marxist Soviet Union (you know, back when our leftists had sympathy for it and long before they started kowtowing to Beijing). If China or Russia lands troops on our shores, then we do what we must; we perhaps even fight to the last man. But just as the Cuban Missile Crisis was at our doorstep, Ukraine is in Russias backyard.

And you must tread softly in another great powers backyard  like it or not. For that power cannot back down at its own doorstep without losing unacceptable face and credibility. Its quite as when chasing a man who has repeatedly avoided conflict to his very front door, screaming and shouting and refusing to leave. You may force his hand and have a fight youll end up wishing you didnt start.

Note, too, that many have reveled in likening Putin to Adolf Hitler. While Nazi comparisons are overdone (including by Putin himself), if anyone really believes this, what are the implications?

Well, imagine its April 1945, Hitler knows WWII is lost and hes sitting in his bunker. Now also imagine, however, that he has Putins 6,000 nuclear weapons a buttons touch away. What would he do?

We all know.

The point: Many have theorized that Putin may be physically and/or even mentally unwell. A renowned psychiatrist posits that he may even have Paranoid Personality Disorder. He also wields something uncomfortably close to absolute power in Russia, and it has been said that he has staked everything on this war and cannot lose it. So, while we cant read his mind, do we really want to risk turning him into a man with nothing to lose, a man who maybe, just perhaps, could descend to a point where all he wants is to see the world burn?

Not over a Red Dawn kind of situation, either, mind you  but Ukraine?

If I could snap my fingers and undo Russias invasion, I would; I also would, if I could, reverse the decades of foolish NATO expansionism. But thats water under the bridge. So whats the solution now?

As Professor Thomas Sowell has pointed out, sometimes in life there are no solutions, only trade-offs. The best trade-off here, I believe, is a quick Russian victory in Ukraine. For the longer this crisis continues, the greater the chances that our pseudo-elites and a possibly unhinged Putin could spark nuclear carnage.

Secondarily, also worth mentioning is that the longer the war continues, the greater the probability there will be a dangerous accidental release from the Ukrainian bio-labs (Son of COVID?), which Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland recently admitted do exist.

Perhaps this is worth it to certain pseudo-elites. Some have posh fallout shelters they can retreat to, after all, and killing off billions sure would be a great reset. But for the rest of us, it would be a pretty stupid reason to die.

Photo credit: geralt Pixabay license

Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on MeWe, Gettr or Parler, or log on to SelwynDuke.com.
For two weeks now, the world has watched the Russian war machine move into Ukraine. We have witnessed the shelling of cities and towns; we have seen crowds of women and children fleeing the country to escape.

We have watched hospitals, business districts, and apartment buildings emptied of people, emptied of vehicles; their storefronts destroyed, their windows blown out.

Its a war zone. Thats what war zones look like. And if our hearts bleed for these refugees, then thats as it should be. Our hearts should care.

But thats not where our minds should be.

Our minds should be half a planet away, on the coast of Mainland China, and the little economic powerhouse just off its shore: the island of Taiwan, Republic of China (R.O.C.).

If you were a betting man, on January 20, 2021, asked to bet whether a Russia-Ukraine war or a China-Taiwan war would come first, you would have been hard-pressed to decide. Now that one has occurred, the world is waiting for the other shoe to drop.

If and when that happens, no one expects it to be anything like the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Although these things cannot be predicted with certainty, the odds are that a China-Taiwan war will be far more reciprocal; Taiwan wont allow that war to be fought entirely on its own land.

Mainland China has been preparing for this attack for generations; and the Republic of China has been preparing to defend itself for just as long. On top of that, most analysts anticipate that Japan and other Pacific seaboard allies will rush to Taiwans aid immediately as well, not to mention the United States. Unlike the (so far) narrow Russia-Ukraine conflict, a rapidly expanding arena is likely.

If, Heaven forbid, this dark day comes, the bombed-out cities, factories, and cargo terminals on your television screen will be the ones that produced and shipped your television, the ones that produced the tires on your car, the ones that produced the appliances in your kitchen and the furniture in your living room.

Port and city of Kaohsiung, Taiwan

This war will therefore have a much greater effect on North America, and in particular, on our economy.

Over the past thirty to forty years, our business schools have produced graduates who believed the idea that low-cost country sourcing is the greatest service they could provide to an employer. These brainwashed graduates have been hired as buyers, engineers, CFOs and CEOs. And these new hires took that message to the purchasing department, the marketing department, and the executive boardroom.

As a result, the United States (and too many other Western nations as well) became incredibly dependent on China, Taiwan, and the many other low-cost countries of Asia, for everything from small parts to finished goods, from luxuries to necessities.

Not satisfied to buy the low-end lines from Asia while making the high-end lines here, we integrated our economies through strategic vendor partnerships (how often have you heard that phrase at company meetings?).

American businesses select a respected Chinese vendor and give him our tooling, our plans, our designs. From this partner, we buy not only the finished goods we resell, but also the custom components that we need to make our USA-made products too.

That washing machine we make here depends on a motor and pump from Taiwan. That sump pump we make down the road depends on an impellor and casting from China. That SUV that we proudly make in a Midwest assembly line contains computer chips, printed circuit boards, water pumps, power locks and dashboard instrument clusters sourced from all over Asia.

What happens to the American manufacturing sector when war breaks out in Asia, and the factories we depend on are reduced to rubble?

Remember too that those strategic partnerships went further than just ordering products. Americans  and other western nations  have spent the past three decades establishing their own subsidiaries in Asia, especially in China building plants in Asia, especially in China and moving staff to Asia, especially to China.

One of the reasons that China isnt as afraid of American action if they attack Taiwan is that they have thousands of American-owned (well, to the extent you can own something in a communist country but we think of them as American-owned, anyway) manufacturing plants and distribution centers, full of our machinery and assembly lines, our injection molds and stamping dies, all up and down the coast of China.

There are countless billions of parts and finished goods, from work-in-progress (WIP) to cargo already on the shelves, ready to truck to port, all over China and Taiwan at any given moment. The value of all this property is incalculable. Tens of billions of dollars? Hundreds of billions? There are no records, but whatever youre guessing right now youre probably low.

And then there are the people. American (and other Western) companies have sent countless plant managers, LEAN engineers, buyers and quality inspectors, line leads and customer service partners, to work in these Chinese properties, for a week, a month, a year, for three years, for ten and some of these have moved their families there for the duration. Counting their families too among the billion-plus Chinese who populate that largest of the worlds nations, there are an awful lot of Americans there at any time, counting both the permanent expats and the businessmen who are there on business trips.

Dare we call them hostages?

The politburo in Beijing does nothing by mistake. They have carefully made the most of this American (and other Western) cost-above-all-else focus over the years. If we didnt teach history in our schools - if our business school graduates didnt know what China did to its own people in the Chinese Land Reform, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution  then China certainly wasnt going to tell them and risk scaring them off.

And if Americas business tax structures, regulatory policy, and labor union combativeness all combined to drive American manufacturing into their open arms, they werent going to say no.

These events  and these conscious choices  have put us where we are now, almost unimaginably dependent on a supply source in what may be the biggest powder keg in the world.

If you own a manufacturer or reseller, if you work in supply or engineering or finance for one, the drive to reduce or eliminate your businesss dependency on Asia should have been your single-minded focus for the past decade or more.

But its never too late to start. Every part, every model, every product line that you move back to North America today is another positive step to insulate your business from the storm that is ever more likely, as every day goes by.

Those of us who have not yet been able to complete that move have one thought in mind, as we drive home from work each night: will my Taiwanese or Chinese vendor be in business tomorrow morning? Will that last email be my last communication with my friend there? Will our factory be one of the heart-wrenching images that flashes across a news screen tomorrow?

The Chinese have a famous saying: May you live in interesting times. Some Americans may assume that its a good luck blessing. They are mistaken.

Photo credit: Padai CC BY-SA 4.0 license

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.
President Joe Biden's announcement March 11 that the U.S. and its allies will revoke Most Favored Nation trade status for Russia should drive the final nail into the coffin of economic globalization theory. So sacrosanct was MFN status to transnational business that during the debate over granting it to China as part of its admission to the World Trade Organization in 2001, the term was changed to Normal Trade Relations so it did not seem that we were "favoring" Beijing's communist regime, only doing business with it like any other entity. The only values that mattered were measured in dollars.

The atmosphere is changing. Even before Biden's reluctant decision to cut off oil imports from Russia, energy firms BP and Shell cut ties to Russia. The Econ 101 theory of trade (which I taught for many years, but not in isolation) sees resources, particularly capital, allocated to where they would be the most productive without regard to borders in pursuit of aggregate economic growth and profit. The results would show on corporate accounts, not on any international balance of power, which was deemed an obsolete worldview.

Another change in terminology reflected the change in perceptions. Distinguished American academic John G. Ruggie, then U.N. assistant secretary-general for strategic planning, said in a November 20, 2000 speech, "Simply put, postwar institutions, including the United Nations, were built for an inter-national world, but we have entered a global world."

Yet the world is not a single polity, as economic theory assumes. Where strategic industries exist is as important as where naval bases and airfields exist in a world still divided by political and ideological struggles for power and resources. Territory is still the foundation of nation-states and imperial aspirations. The notion that societies can always trade for what they need rather than control sources outright depends on an autonomous commercial system that does not exist. Economic warfare has always been a part of the larger arena of conflict. In that sense, there has been a "global" world of strategy for at least the last five centuries, but it is not an alternative to international relations; it is the landscape that those relations play across.

Flowing from trade theory was the concept of interdependence, which would prevent war because contending states could not afford to sever their economies ties without suffering prohibitive costs. History has not treated this idea kindly. The current situation adds a new twist. Interdependence is not preventing war; it is aiding aggression by raising the costs of resistance. Putin knew that his only chance of conquering Ukraine was to isolate it from outside military support. President Biden has constantly assured him that America would not intervene to fight a Russian invasion. Even more to the point, NATO did not bring Ukraine under its protection before the fighting started to deter an attack. Instead, the alliance relied on a "sanctions only" strategy. Yet President Biden has admitted that "no one expected the sanctions to prevent anything from happening," and "for weeks, we have been warning that this [invasion] would happen."

Putin did not fear sanctions, though they have done more damage to the Russian economy than he expected. He believed that most measures would not last once he had won the war, and Russia would then recover.

China has watched these developments closely. Beijing plays a much larger role in global markets than Russia, so much larger that it believes it has the world on a string. An op-ed in the Global Times on Feb. 27 was entitled "West's potential sanctions on China over island won't work. " The island is Taiwan. The Chinese Communist Party paper argued, "It is the largest trading partner of most countries worldwide, with an irreplaceable position in the global industrial chain, supply chain, value chain, and regional and global influence. Any severe sanction against China will significantly backfire. It will be a lose-lose situation from any point of view. The question is whether the island of Taiwan is important enough for the West to squander decades of economic gains, which the welfare of their people depend on." This is part of Beijing's larger argument that since the U.S. will not fight for Ukraine, it will not fight for Taiwan  a conclusion that makes Chinese aggression much more likely.

The prosperity of the Chinese people is also at risk in a war, as is the CCP, which has built its post-Tiananmen legitimacy on creating material progress. The question is whether autocracies can survive economic stress better than democracies, where consumers get to vote. Presidents Putin and Xi Jinping are betting they can, and President Biden fears they are correct.

Thus, President Biden has continued the efforts to decouple the U.S. economy from China started by President Donald Trump. On February 24, the Departments of Defense, Energy, Commerce and Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, Agriculture, and Transportation released their one-year reports on developing more resilient, diverse, and secure American supply chains in accordance with Executive Order 14017. That this effort is motivated primarily by national security concerns is shown by the fact that Jake Sullivan, assistant to the president for national security affairs, is the lead co-chair of the effort, along with Brian Deese, director of the National Economic Council. They issued a capstone statement along with the six departmental reports.

The report from the DoD is the most comprehensive, setting the tone and presenting many of the topics addressed in the other reports such as electric batteries, microelectronics, critical materials, the role of small business, a skilled workforce, and a culture of innovation. And then how these economic factors combine to produce weapons. The report stresses the need to expand and rebuild domestic industrial capacity after decades of allowing key sectors to offshore capacity to vulnerable, even hostile, locations. While reshoring strategic production is vital, the report also discusses "ally-shoring," where supply chains are redirected from potential adversaries to trusted strategic partners. Other of the reports are less robust, indicating that the Biden administration is losing the momentum left to it by the Trump administration.

The report from Health and Human Services shows little progress in securing supply chains in the high-priority area of pharmaceuticals. The report admits, "At present, the U.S. Government has limited visibility into the supply chain for most pharmaceuticals. ... The U.S. Government has relatively limited information about KSM [Key Starter Materials] supply chains. Little KSM manufacturing takes place in the United States." Unfortunately, most of such production takes place in China.

Another disappointing report is from the Department of Energy, where climate change is the focus and fossil fuels are the enemy. At least nuclear power is counted along with solar and wind as sectors that need secure supply chains. Natural gas, once thought to be the prime green alternative to coal, is not. Europe has embraced natural gas as a green energy source, which is why it has become so dependent on Russian supplies. If the United States is to not only secure its own energy future, but help allies find secure sources as well, natural gas will have to boost production to provide exports. A slower transition from oil and coal will have to take into account the speed with which green alternatives can be realistically fielded.

An "all of the above" approach to energy independence from hostile disruption is needed. What energy secretary Jennifer Granholm said in Houston on March 9 was welcome: "In this moment of crisis, we need more supply ... right now, we need oil and gas production to rise to meet current demand." The keys to energy are reliability, affordability, and security. Eventually, some green innovations may meet these necessary requirements  especially security, because they will be located domestically by design.

In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith carved out an exception in economic theory for national security: "It may be advantageous to lay some burden upon foreign imports for the encouragement of domestic industry, when some particular industry is necessary for the defense of the country. ... It is of importance that the kingdom depends as little as possible upon its neighbors for the manufactures necessary for its defense." Today, the number and scope of strategic industries are broader than in Smith's day at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. In the Biden administration reports, the term "Fourth Industrial Revolution" is used.

As Great Power competition is renewed as the norm in international relations, the scope of economics in national strength and warfare must expand. Reactive ad hoc sanctions will not suffice. A long-term strategy to produce a favorable balance of power built upon superior economic capabilities is required. Policies must speed our own development while curtailing the advancement of rivals by deny access to capital, technology, and markets. Only this kind of strength can deter aggression and prevail if deterrence fails. The task has only started and will have little impact on the Ukraine war, but it can revive a more realistic set of policies to prepare us for future conflicts.

William R. Hawkins is president of the Hamilton Center for National Strategy. A former economics professor, he has written widely on defense and foreign policy issues for a variety of scholarly and popular publications. He has also served on the staff on the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Image: Public Domain Pictures via Pixabay.
Perhaps the most notable achievement of the war criminal Vladimir Putin is his gift for disinformation and deception, the creation of an alternative reality. His shameful mastery is illustrated by his justification not simply of his aggression against the independent country of Ukraine, but of the brutal attack on the hospital and maternity ward in Mariupol by the allegation that neo-Nazis, with Nazi flag and photos of Hitler, were hiding in the medical facilities of the city which in fact had been without water, electricity, and heat for a week. Putin informs us that Russia is bringing justice by a variety of actions: by attacking the care home for disabled, near Kharkiv, and destroying a kindergarten in Dnipro in central Ukraine, destroying 48 schools, and apartment buildings. The gifted propagandist Yevgeny Prigozhinm , close to Putin, has released a film Blazing Sun which depicts Russian mercenaries entering Ukraine in order to prevent Ukrainian authorities for committing genocide against its own people.

Harry Potter lovers will be surprised they are unaware that U.S. government is training birds infected with or carrying bacteriological weapons to fly from Ukraine to Russia.

The world is still searching to explain the root causes of the unprovoked aggression by Putin against a neighboring country. His actions are reminiscent of the tragedy in 1932-33 when the mania of Joseph Stalin forced famine, the Holodomor, which caused the death of four million Ukrainians who were forced to eat grass, tree bark, flowers, rats, dogs, and even children. Ostensibly, Putin claims his policy is to prevent expansion of NATO, which has been unjustly expanded, and the desire of Ukraine to be a member of NATO. The brutal attack ironically stems from the fact that Ukraine wanted protection from a Russian attack.

In bizarre fashion Putins misrepresentations throw guilt on the West and are the basis for justifying Russian offensiveness. Accordingly, Western shipments of weapons, anti-tank and anti-aircraft, to Ukraine become legitimate targets for Russian armed forces, missile strikes and bombings, and raise the risk of escalation of the conflict. The result, as expressed by NATO and by President Joe Biden is that neither NATO nor the U. S. will take action that might enter into direct conflict with Russia or send fighter jets from Poland to the Ukraine air force, for fear, as Putin has stressed, this would lead to World War III.

Western public opinion polls in recent years indicated that support for NATO operations in the Baltic NATO countries was not high. Paradoxically, Putins aggression has caused a change, leading to greater action and agreement by NATO countries in their defense capabilities, and congruently the increase of the standing of the EU on the global stage. In view of the increasing stages of its terrorist acts, the present security threat of Russian aggression appears to be a turning point in the history of Europe. Germany, after hesitation, has decided to increase defense spending, as have countries like Finland and Sweden, usually neutral in military issues. The EU agreed to use its resources to provide weapons, initially 500 million euros, to a third country through the European Peace Facility, the new off-budget fund which is part of its collective responsibilities to aid Ukraine with military equipment, fuel, medical supplies, and humanitarian assistance.

Ukraine is articulating desperate pleas for more aid to bolster its defenses. For NATO and the U.S. the question arises: is there a red line, which does or will determine the extent to which they will engage in that aid and raises the problem of the possibility of direct confrontation with Russian forces, in the air, on the ground, or the sea? The immediate controversial problem is the proposal by Poland to deliver, and by what method, fighter jets to Ukrainian pilots.

In recent years a number of events have emboldened Putin, who now perhaps is following the adage of Lenin that the Western capitalists will sell the rope with which we will hang them. After Syria had used toxic gases to kill at least 1,400 people including 426 children, the British House of Commons voted 285-272 not to support a U.S. led punitive raid on Syria for deploying biological weapons. On August 20, 2012, President Barack Obama declared that use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government would be crossing a red line, requiring U.S. military intervention. But when, a year later, Syria fired rockets filled with sarin gas, killing 1,400, no action was taken. Putin saw this as the beginning of an American retreat.

At the core of Putins galaxy of lies and misstatements is the allegation that the West tricked the former Soviet Union by breaking promises made at the time when the Soviet Union was ending, that NATO would not expand to the East. Though Putin has little real regard for international law, in his speech in 2007 to the Munich Security conference he accused the West of violating that law, breaking assurances, lying, and betraying Russia.

That allegation should be examined. The basis of the betrayal assertion can be traced to the conversations and commitments allegedly made by U.S. Secretary of State James Baker while George H.W. Bush was president and the treaty signed on September 12, 1990, on how NATO troops would operate in the territory of the former East Germany, the German Democratic Republic, GDR.

The assertion by Putin is that James Baker in discussion on February 9, 1990 with Soviet Head of State Mikhail Gorbachev promised that NATO would not expand to the East if the Soviet Union and its successor Russia accepted unification of the two parts Germany. Baker is alleged to have said the current military sovereignty of NATO will not extend eastwards.

On February 10, 1990 Chancellor Helmut Kohl told Gorbachev that naturally NATO could not extend its territory to the current territory of the GDR.

Similarly, NATO Secretary-General Manfred Werner on May 17, 1990 said that the very fact that we are not ready to station NATO forces behind the borders of the Federal Republic of Germany gives the Soviet Union solid security guarantees, but he was referring to NATO forces in East Germany, GDR, not making a broader commitment. Werner said that once Soviet forces had withdrawn, the German forces assigned to NATO could be deployed in the former GDR.

But the conclusion is arguable, even mistaken. According to the final treaty in September 1990 and reunification of the two states, foreign stationed NATO troops could cross the old Cold War line at the discretion of the German government. There were no written guarantees about the limits of NATO expansion.

Gorbachev in an interview in 2014 said that NATO expansion had not been discussed in 1990, and there was no NATO promise not to expand, and that the discussions were all about GDR territory. The reality is that, after the end of the Soviet Union, the issue of the expansion of NATO did not depend on Russias attitude, but on the general geopolitical situation, and on the degree to which U.S. presidents made it a priority, and on whether Russia itself might join the alliance. Gorbachev criticizes NATO enlargement but made clear there was no promise made about broader enlargement.

The NATO-Russia Founding Act and a new forum the NATO-Russia Council were established in 1997, creating a new relationship between NATO and Russia that allowed Russian diplomats access to NATO headquarters in Brussels. The Council is supposedly a mechanism for regular consultation and decisions on security issues. At first, the two sides did not consider one another as adversaries, but relations have deteriorated, though the channels of communication remain open.

The record is clear. The Act has no impact on NATO enlargement. It does not prohibit permanent NATO bases in Central and Eastern European countries.

NATO, founded with 12 members, now has 30 and three aspiring members, ranging from Greenland, with a population of 56,000, to the U.S., with 334 million. its newest member is North Macedonia, with two million, admitted in 2020.

It is not easy for NATO with its 30 members, and the EU with 27 countries with different aims and priorities to establish a common foreign and defense policy facing the issue of how to deal with Putin. Moreover, Western leaders including Biden have acquiesced in the conviction, asserted by Putin, that a confrontation between NATO and Russia could provoke World War III. But it is important that the attitude and policies of NATO and the U.S. not be determined by threats or false statements by Putin.

The champion Mike Tyson got it right. Everyones got a plan until they get punched in the face. The free world must be concerned not simply with the future of Ukraine but with principles of civilized existence.
Krakovets, Lyviv Oblast Ukraine: As Russias invasion of Ukraine now targets military bases and supply lines here in the far west of Ukraine just miles from one of the busiest Polish border crossing, the letter Z has morphed from a proud symbol of Russian arms symbol into of the mark of Russian terror. What did the nearly two million women and children passing through this corridor ever do to have their homes, hospitals, and factories destroyed by Russian artillery?

Ukraines guilt is manifold. She is guilty of not surrendering; guilty of defending herself against impossible odds; guilty of standing up to the tyrant of a mighty and aggressive neighbor. Shes guilty of celebrating her national identity and independence and worst of all, shes guilty of not succumbing to the ever-growing terror from the east nor the neglect from an uncertain and terrified west, led by the United States.

Ukraine officially now puts the number of its dead war fighters at nearly 1500, but as in all wars, the heaviest price is paid not by those who bear arms, but those who cannot fight back. Those who cant find refuge even in the hospitals and apartment blocks Russian heavy guns now target.

Ukraines armed forces are now joined by a tragically growing army of inconsolable mothers and orphaned children. Recently vibrant urban landscapes are rendered lifeless by Russian armor. Tanks are parked where cars should be. Churches are without spires. The longer it takes Russia to occupy Ukraine the more it is turning this country into ever-growing heaps of uninhabitable rubble. The more valiant the Ukrainian defense stifles Putins plans, the more his war becomes a war of vengeance that Russia has by no means yet lost.

What must go through the minds of Russian soldiers as they are given their orders to fire upon civilian neighborhoods. Do they think it to right the wrongs against a Russia more sinned against that sinning? Do they think of themselves are actual victims of real western aggression? One can only wonder what it is they see themselves fighting for as they traduce the fields villages and cities of Ukraine. Not to mention whether they think it worth dying for

Such is not the case among those they are fighting against. If they didnt before, Ukrainians certainly now know what they are fighting for. Like the citizens of Russian-occupied Maritipol, who by the thousands surround Russian tanks outside city hall chanting bring back our men.

Putin may question the right of Ukraine to exist as a free and sovereign nation, but with every shell he lobs into parks filled with pram-pushing mothers, every cluster bomb be targets on maternity hospitals, Putin makes their case for them better than they could themselves. As never before, Ukraines identity as Ukraine is being forged on the anvil of this brutal and unforgiving war.

The opera company of Odessa serenading citizen volunteers working round the clock filling sandbags to defend this historic Black Sea city from an expected Russian naval assault with the Ukrainian national anthem proves yet again that history is not destiny and the so-called fate of man is but the necessary fiction of those who seek to deny others the freedom to prove otherwise.

Putins entire rationale is that the Ukraine we see with our own eyes, does not in fact exist. Ukrainians are not Ukrainians at all, says he, but Russians longing to be reunited with the Motherland and are prevented from doing so by a gang of Nazis, led of course by a Jewish president. But then why are these supposedly nonexistent Ukrainians fighting like fearless lions against their deluded liberators?

If the war is, as Putin says, about the very existence of Ukraine, then Putin has already lost. and today, as the entire world knows, Ukraine most certainly does exists and will fight to its last man to keep existing.

To those Blame America Firsters who proclaim that it was NATO that somehow provoked Putins invasion of Ukraine, how is it that none of those the thousands who pour through this border every hour believe so? As former Vice President Mike Pence asked during his visit here, were it not for NATO, how far west would Russian tanks be today? Would the Baltics states still be free?



Blame America Firsters might want to recall that NATO is an open and purely defensive alliance that has repeatedly invited Russia herself to join. The Russians themselves were signatories to the 1991 German Reunification Act that included folding the former East Germany into NATO. In 1994, addition to signing the Budapest Memorandum in which Russia herself solemnly agreed to guarantee Ukraines sovereignty and territorial integrity, Russia also joined the Partnership for Peace program which established a pathway for Russia herself to join NATO. In 1997, Russia signed the Founding Act of on mutual relations, cooperation and security with NATO, and in 2002, Russia cofounded the NATO-Russia Council which gave Russia a permanent seat in Brussels NATO HQ. The notion that NATO provoked Putins invasion is nothing more than a revisionist expression of Blame America Firsters.



Not to mention that the very notion that Russia, the worlds largest country that stretches across 11 times zones and encompasses 10% of the earths landmass is herself in need of buffer states. What threat of invasion does Russia face and from whom? Estonia?

To those who breathlessly speculate what might come next, they need look no further than Syria for Its the self-same Vladimir Putin who is behind Grozny, Aleppo, and Homs but with one key difference. In Syria, while Russian chemical weapons and barrel bombs were dropped from Russian planes, on the ground it was Syrians slaughtering other Syrians. That isnt so here. Not only are bombs being dropped from Russian planes, but it is Russian soldiers killing Ukrainians on the ground.

Russians and Ukrainians are not enemies, or at least they didnt used to be. While they went their separate ways after the fall of the USSR, they did so as friends, neighbors, and families. Ukrainians and Russians are to each other in many ways what Americans and Canadians are to us. Kindred peoples, who share nearly identical lifestyles, languages, and cultures, but who are distinctly different nations.

Putins everlasting legacy will be his turning of these long fraternal peoples into blood enemies.

The freedom and security we take for granted dont spontaneously emerge nor do they independently sustain themselves. There is no historical process that preordains them. There come moments in time when individual choices are essential. This is one of them. For each day Ukrainians resist gives the rest of us another year of the kind of life our forebears sacrificed to bequeath to us. Every day they fight allows us to reflect on their struggle in a way that helps us recommit ourselves to defending what we have.

Putins vision rejects the idea of peoples' capacity to create things anew. Putins vision is all about the past. That what happened in the past must determine what will happen in the future. Ukraine shows this is to be true. Ukrainians lived under the same tyranny as Russians when part of the Soviet Union, worse in fact. Yet Ukraine chose differently and fought repeatedly to protect their independence.

It is to Ukrainians that we owe not merely thanks and gratitude for reminding us of these hard-learned truths. We owe them our support.

Graphic credit: -5- CC BY-SA 4.0 license
Anybody want to take bets that Joe Biden will know what to do when the next crisis hits? His presidency is one crisis after another, and his record, well...

The next crisis is bound to be a doozy.

Based on Russia's horrible war against Ukraine, grain and fertilizer prices are skyrocketing, and shortages are on the way. Ukraine's and Russia's customers already are hoarding supplies. Based on the little-discussed stories out there, this crisis is bound to be felt in all countries and looks certain to happen. Joe is nowhere to be found on this, as we shall shortly see.

With its rich black soil, Ukraine's always been known as the breadbasket of Europe. The story is obvious enough in this land rendition of the Ukraine flag  from Lviv:

Ukraine and Russia are huge exporters of grain and fertilizer, accounting for about 30% of world exports.

Start with prices. According to BloombergQuint, which has a dramatic chart:

Wheat futures swung wildly between gains and losses Tuesday after climbing to unprecedented heights as Russia's attack on Ukraine disrupts global food supplies. Prices in Chicago earlier leaped to a record $13.635 a bushel before plunging as much as 7.1%. The world is facing a huge supply shock as the war cuts off shipments from a region that accounts for a quarter of the grain's trade. Prices in Chicago earlier leaped to a record $13.635 a bushel before plunging as much as 7.1%. The world is facing a huge supply shock as the war cuts off shipments from a region that accounts for a quarter of the grain's trade. Futures have climbed by the exchange limit for the past six days. "Traders are taking their profits, but a turn back to the upside would not be a surprise," CHS Hedging analyst Kevin Stockard said in a blog post.

The United Nations says food prices are likely to rise 20% worldwide as a result of this war. That figure is an average. Obviously, the poorer countries that can't grow their own grain are going to suffer much more. A Russian grain and fertilizer oligarch now under sanctions, who's calling for an end to the war, also warns about coming food shortages.

Reuters adds that it isn't just grain that either can't be planted, harvested, or shipped (the ports are blocked); it's also fuel and fertilizer:

Ukrainian farmers  who produced a record grain crop last year  say they now are short of fertilizer, as well as pesticides and herbicides. And even if they had enough of those materials, they can't get enough fuel to power their equipment, they add. Elena Neroba, a Kyiv-based business development manager at grain brokerage Maxigrain, said Ukraine's winter wheat yields could fall by 15% compared to recent years if fertilizers aren't applied now. Some farmers warn the situation could be much worse. Some Ukrainian farmers told Reuters their wheat yields could be cut in half, and perhaps by more, which has implications far beyond Ukraine. Countries such as Lebanon, Egypt, Yemen and others have come to rely on Ukrainian wheat in recent years. The war has already caused wheat prices to skyrocket  rising by 50% in the last month.

As Reuters notes, countries such as Lebanon, Yemen, and Egypt are going to be hit hard by this crisis. But other analysts note that the Pacific nations will be hit, too. Politico reports that the Philippines is making its largest-ever grain orders just to get some kind of cushion for what's coming down the pike.

Making matters worse, some countries that could fill the void, such as Argentina, Hungary, and Turkey, are blocking exports to ensure that they have no shortages of their own.

In the U.S., a major problem of another sort is out there  drought and reduced crops owing to bad weather. That isn't going to be helpful in helping alleviate this problem overseas, either.

While it's tempting for Americans to think that that is their problem, not ours, it's probably not just their problem: last time there was a global grain shortage, and it wasn't as dangerous as this one, was 2008  the year the Arab Spring happened. That presaged revolts and toppled governments, which pretty well had potential for realigning U.S. alliances and friends, usually not in our direction.

According to BloombergQuint:

The last time the staple grain was near these levels was during a 2008 food crisis that sparked political unrest worldwide. Rapeseed futures in Paris topped 900 euros ($980) a ton for the first time ever, and canola futures also reached a fresh record. Corn has risen by more than a quarter this year.

What do hungry people do aside from revolt about it?

A lot of them head north, to the migrant-welcoming West, and they come in their millions. The countries most likely to be hit by the food shortages, include sub-Saharan Africa and Pacific countries such as the Philippines, are already major exporters of illegal aliens. Don't bet on these countries' poor not leaving their countries in even greater numbers this time, for the understandable reason that they can no longer afford or find a reliable food supply.

So what is Biden's master plan for countering this incipient crisis?

Well, we can start by looking at his previous reactions to food shortages. Here's one 2020 summary:

He blamed President Trump. He blamed companies. He blamed others. And his solution? Harness "the restaurant industry" to feed the hungry. Today, he's substituting Putin. It will be interesting to see how that goes over internationally, as it doesn't include much in the way of solutions.

Politico reports that some activity is taking place  and as one might expect of the Biden administration, it's pretty feeble:

After the wheat market reached an all-time high earlier this week, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and agricultural ministers from six other major economies warned on Friday that countries refusing to export food products would only drive further price spikes, saying it "could threaten food security and nutrition at a global scale, especially among the most vulnerable." The G-7 officials, who met virtually to discuss Ukraine, called on countries to keep their food and agricultural markets open and "to guard against any unjustified restrictive measures on their exports."

Stern warnings all around.

There also was this:

Vilsack said later that Ukrainian Agrarian Policy and Food Minister Roman Leshchenko spoke to the group from a bunker and asked the countries to provide fuel to help Ukrainian farmers harvest and plant new crops this spring, as the nation faces a rapidly escalating humanitarian crisis.

He wants the other guy to do it. He doesn't seem to be offering much from the U.S. to head off the crisis.

There isn't much else going on as the crisis burns through. For Biden, the prices will rise, and the refugees will flow, and it'll be come on in, but don't do it in front of the cameras, as his response. We'll be the ones to pay for it. Based on these responses, anybody got confidence that Joe's on top of this? Don't hold your breath.

Image: Raimond Spekking via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
COVID-19 plandemic politicians falsely promised freedom and safety, while increasingly suffocating people with mandates and restrictions, but Florida's Governor Ron DeSantis fought back despite an endless barrage of criticism. And significantly, he proved that his policies worked. Could he be just as tough in defending the U.S. Constitution? Yes.

The media attacked Governor DeSantis for his "irresponsible policies." The Biden administration's Fauciism tried desperately to force vaccinations on people, including threatening their livelihoods. Other governments, both domestic and international, have enforced high fines, sanctions, and punishments to bully people to become vaccinated. But in Florida, the vaccine always remained a choice.

One of the main themes discussed at CPAC 2022 was freedom. DeSantis initiated his CPAC 2022 speech saying, "Let me welcome you to the freest state in these United States." He then explained to CPAC attendees that freedom is proved only through action, not Fauciism.

DeSantis's freedom-focused policies let Florida set a record for U.S. tourism in 2021  and allowed him to lambaste leftist government officials who vacationed in the Sunshine State, even as they imposed lockdowns and harsh restrictions on their own people. He snarkily suggested dumping in Delaware...on Biden's lawn...the illegal aliens Biden's administration brought into the country.

Florida's policies kept small businesses in business. Meanwhile, Democrats pretended to protect small businesses with stimulus packages that proved to be largely worthless for businesses that are truly small or newly started. The Small Business Administration completely failed this group of business-owners.

While Florida's students eventually went back to school, leftist activists (AKA some teachers) still demanded radical COVID-19 restrictions. These are absurd demands for children and should have been grounds for immediate termination. The unions weaponized the students for political gain shamelessly.

The established media and social media bombarded people with scare campaigns, bullying them into submission nationwide. Worldwide, the E.M. and S.M. have become the influence arms of government control over citizens. They don't police the government; they enable it.

In Denmark, which is increasingly totalitarian, legislation was introduced to sanction bloggers and influencers who speak out against government policies pertaining to COVID-19. Fortunately for the people and freedom of speech, the legislation fell through. That mindset, though, is indicative of a clandestine dictatorship. Americans must take this into consideration as they consider whoM they want to lead their state and the nation in November.

Florida stood strong, and many could learn from Florida. In addition to Governor DeSantis, other leaders who exhibited real leadership and a fundamental understanding of the Constitution were South Dakota's Kristi Noem and Texas's Greg Abbott.

Controlling people is never great leadership. Instead, it demonstrates the exact opposite. We cannot allow government officials to compromise leadership that should be based on the concept of the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Allowing such compromises inevitably destroys those rights. This is a battle that the people must be willing to take on.



Image: Ron DeSantis at CPAC (edited). YouTube screen grab.

If an elected official does not introduce legislation consistent with the U.S. Constitution, that official should be removed. It's absurd to think freedom can be achieved through government control. It's even more mind-boggling that the entire world fell for the preposterous COVID-19 scamdemic.

DeSantis reminded his audience about President Eisenhower's warnings against the despots of technological and scientific development. There is, he said, "a danger that public policy can be held captive by this scientific elite." Today, are those not the same groups attacking freedom-loving people? Are they not the ones who seek to control the world with an iron fist? These are the people who have banned, silenced, barred, criminalized, and de-platformed great leaders and conservative members of society, such as President Trump, Mike Lindell, Rudy Giuliani, Candace Owens, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and many others.

When government officials divert responsibility to health officials and international organizations, it's a sign they are unwilling to take responsibility for their actions. They're using a planned, cowardly defense mechanism to avoid accountability. Governor DeSantis refused to do this. He stood with the people, unlike the far-left former governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, or the current far-left governor of California, Gavin Newsom. DeSantis demonstrated that freedom is achieved through actions, not politically correct babbling.

Many Americans often take freedom for granted, and it is easy to understand why. For centuries, they have been raised with the idea that freedom is their God-given right, but, as that great patriot, President Ronald Reagan, said, "freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction." Millennials are largely clueless about what this means due to progressive indoctrination in schools, while their parents have been asleep.

Americans have assumed that freedom is only lost in other countries. They feel superior to communist countries, even as communism is growing right in their own backyard.

It's time, however, to consider objectively whether the United States under Democrat rule is so different from communism. Just think about how fast "free" nations like Austria and Australia lost their freedom. Germans are still wearing face masks everywhere.

While the Danish government lifted all restrictions in January 2022, it still uses the government email system, to which everyone is required to be connected, to "remind" people to get vaccinated, and the government still uses the school system's intranet to blast reminders of vaccinations available for the students in Danish schools. That is not freedom.

The people have a responsibility to fight back to provide for the next generation the same rights we have enjoyed during our lifetime. Events in 2020 have revealed to us how leftists have abused power around the world. We must hold our elected officials accountable for their actions, and when they violate our rights, we have the responsibility to vote them out. (You can see me develop these ideas further on You & the Truth with the host of the Mike Essen Show.)

Governor DeSantis looked at what Americans are dealing with in 2022 and summed it up well:

The threats we face to freedom, the threats we face to a just society are much more pervasive than they were just ten years ago. Think about what the left wants to do. What are their political aims? If they had elected just a couple more senators, they were going to pack the U.S. Supreme Court. They were going to make D.C. a state, so they could have two radical, Democrat, left-wing senators for life. They were going to abolish the electoral college, so California could elect the president, and they wanted to federalize the fraudulent ballot practices.

Think about these words, and ask yourself if Democrat plans prove that they are for freedom or freedom's end. For the Democrats, the word "freedom" is what the F-word is to Republicans  it's a curse. When they talk about "democracy," they are not envisioning America's constitutional republican democracy predicated on individual rights and small government. They will not take action to support our constitutional rights, and everything they say is deceptive.
Florida's Legislature has passed a bill that forbids sexual instruction to children pre-K through third grade such as instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity. Governor DeSantis said it is "entirely inappropriate" for teachers to be having conversations with students about gender identity, including picking their gender when they are older.

Opponents of this bill have criticized it by saying it marginalizes LGBT people. Amit Paley, CEO and executive director of The Trevor Project, said, "Lawmakers should be supporting LGBTQ students and their families and encouraging schools to be inclusive, not pitting parents against teachers and erasing the LGBTQ community from public education." Activists say this law implies that students should be ashamed of their sexual orientation and suppress it.

Governor DeSantis is correct.



DeSantis speaks in favor of the bill (YouTube screen grab).

Sexual orientation instruction is completely improper. This type of instruction is not about the birds and the bees. Instead, children are taught you can be anything you want to be. Therefore, you can change from a boy to a girl and vice versa, that there are more than two genders, that you can be addressed any way you desire, and so on. This instruction can and will psychologically harm children who are just beginning to grasp the facts of reality and now are getting the message that reality not only is unstable, but that they can change it at a whim.

The criticism against the bill is unconvincing. How can a five-year-old child feel shame over his sexual orientation when he is too young to have a strong sexual attraction for someone he loves? He isn't even close to puberty! In addition, the statement that this law marginalizes LGBT people is a weak argument. Who is being marginalized? It can't be the children who are not developed enough physiologically to really understand the topic. Apparently, it must be the "feelings" of those in the LGBT community.

Being marginalized happens to almost everyone at some time in his life for various reasons such as religion, disagreements, behavior issues, and philosophical positions, to name a few. Part of growing up is learning how to deal with it. Mature people do not whine and demand that the rest of the world revolve around them. They learn how to navigate the world through the use of reason.

Paley thinks LGBT people are "erased" because they aren't allowed to talk about their sexuality with young children who have no knowledge of sex or of its role in human life. Since when are teachers and other instructors allowed to talk to children about their sex lives? When I was growing up, adults who did that were considered predators.

The act of interacting with a child with the objective of sexual abuse is called grooming. Children have become targets because many people in the LGBT movement define themselves by their sexual orientation. Rather than their sexuality being a part of their identity, it is their complete identity, and they feel insecure about it. Instead of getting help, they feel obsessed with gaining approval, and when approval is not given, they go after children and try to sexualize them. This behavior is sexual abuse.

Some interesting observations about grooming children were made on Sunny Lohmann's podcast on March 10, 2022. Sunny said everyone she knows who is confused about his sexuality is messed up, is unhappy, is taking anti-depression drugs, and has low self-confidence. Yet these are the people who are lecturing the rest of us on how we should think and live. These are the people who are trying to indoctrinate children with the view that anything goes in sexuality, which is not healthy.

Sunny's friend, Doug, agreed and explained the thought process and motivation of child indoctrinators who hold no standards for proper behavior. They want children to be as messed up as they are so they can be accepted:

Anything goes, anything I want to do is okay, cause I'm doing it. I'm gonna do what I want to do and who are you to tell me otherwise? So my behavior and everything I do is okay. And I want to feel okay about all this stuff I'm doing, even if it's self-destructive. ... I have to inculcate generations of children into having no standards and no values and that anything goes so that I can feel good about myself. I can feel good about my own deviancy now because everyone acknowledges that there are no standards. So you can't judge me now.

Sunny pointed out that if a law needs to be passed in order for teachers to refrain from sexualizing children, we are in big trouble. We need a cultural revolution, and all those teachers need to be fired. "We can't be passive or meek about fighting this." To that, Doug replied, "Culturally ostracize [them] and return values and standards to human relations."

Sunny and Doug are exactly right. We can't sit idly by, hoping this malevolency will somehow go away. Now is the time to speak up. Let the child-abusers know that child abuse is evil. As Sunny said, "I have compassion for messed up people, but not when they dictate to me how I should live or think, and I'm not going to let them teach my kids. And if I have to get in their faces and tell them they are messed up in order to achieve that, I will. They are not nice to us, and we need to stop being nice to them. It is time we get tough. We need to say to them, 'Don't impose your misery on innocent little kids.'"

Charlotte Cushman is a Montessori educator who taught for over 40 years and co-owned and operated two Montessori schools. She authored Montessori: Why It Matters for Your Child's Success and Happiness, Effective Discipline the Montessori Way, and Your Life Belongs to You. She has been involved in the study of Ayn Rand's philosophy since 1970. Her website is Cushmanbooks.com.
Israel is likely to maintain democratic values and practices over the long haul. Longstanding biblical ethics still affect political behavior via an emphasis on self-restraint as a moral mandate, something that is necessary for democratic societies. (This essay speaks of small "d" democratic societies, as opposed to anything involving the Democrat party.)

One key principle of Jewish life over the millennia has been that each Jew must remember they he was a slave in Egypt. This principle means that Jews must not oppress the (non-Jewish) stranger living among them. This is big. In other ostensibly democratic states, minorities commonly have been poorly treated simply because they were not of the majority. In Israel, there is always that principled biblical floor, derived from the Jews' past status as slaves, that cannot be breached when dealing with those who are not members of the tribe.

And while we are at it, let's mention the obvious, which is that the leftists who want everyone to be treated equally actually limit "equality" to those who agree with them. This intolerant attitude has its source in the early communist practices of Lenin and Stalin, both of whom believed that minority cultures needed to be subsumed by the Revolution. History repeats itself today in the form of multiple leftist acts of repression because that is the easiest path to follow for under-witted ideologues.

Another ancient, un-cancelable Jewish value is not to favor either the rich or poor in legal judgments. This principle expects fairness in the courts. When it is not forthcoming, its absence spoils all pretense to a democratic system. The logic of this principle makes perfect sense to everyone yet decays to dust under the influences of money and politics. Unfortunately, a corollary to the effects of money on justice is that in America, government becomes a major source of non-democratic legal judgments because it is our government that produces and distributes money at will.



Image: The Torah. Pxfuel license.

The Bible states that "you should not place a stumbling block in front of a blind man" (Leviticus 19:14). Of course, only a crude and total cynic would suggest that the Bible wanted this principle applied only to blind men and large rocks. This is a wondrously broad behavioral definition that encompasses all deceptive practices.

When this biblical injunction sits in the background, a true democratic society has a different flavor from when it does not. Indeed, without self-imposed limitations on deception, how we define "democratic" itself becomes an exercise in manipulation. Manipulation negates freedom and implies that ends justify means. Deception is expected in war, but not when the goal for society is a peaceful existence.

Those are just three biblical principles among many, all of which find their expression in the daily life of Israeli law and custom. When principles that contain elements of self-restraint are seen as anachronistic, simplistic, stupid, naive, ineffective, or inefficient, it follows inexorably that the culture must then be propped up by repression, an expensive and debilitating practice for both the individual and society.

Indeed, there is something even worse than repression that flows from ignoring these values. When a society and its members fail to support self-limitation as a principle, they invariably come to misunderstand how the world works. Reality is so complex that people must continually admit to infinite ignorance, no matter how much they think they know.

The purpose of applying self-restraint is to fill the gaping holes in human knowledge and understanding. Until artificial intelligence at the level of quantum computers can parse all variables affecting all possible outcomes to a problem, strong humanist "principles" must suffice in bringing about solutions that may be imperfect but are still good enough to maintain our existence. If we modestly accept our mental limitations in understanding how events unfold, our dependence upon principles of self-restraint will help us adapt to the immutable Mick Jagger rule: "You can't always get what you want."
Mitt Romney has disgraced himself by reacting hysterically to a tweet by former representative Tulsi Gabbard calling for a ceasefire in Ukraine around the U.S.-funded biological laboratories where hazardous pathogens exist. Romney, to his eternal disgrace, accused her of "treasonous lies." Treason itself is a death penalty crime, but perhaps in the senator's mind, "treasonous lies" are a different offense.

Here is Gabbard's tweet that drew Romney's ire:

There are 25+ US-funded biolabs in Ukraine which if breached would release & spread deadly pathogens to US/world. We must take action now to prevent disaster. US/Russia/Ukraine/NATO/UN/EU must implement a ceasefire now around these labs until theyre secured & pathogens destroyed pic.twitter.com/dhDTH5smIG  Tulsi Gabbard  (@TulsiGabbard) March 13, 2022

And here is the junior senator from Utahs response:

Tulsi Gabbard is parroting false Russian propaganda. Her treasonous lies may well cost lives.  Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) March 13, 2022

The existence of such labs in Ukraine was confirmed by undersecretary of state Victoria Nuland last week in congressional testimony:

Ukraine has biological research facilities which, in fact, we are now quite concerned Russian troops, Russian forces, may be seeking to gain control of, so we are working with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach.

The World Health Organization (WHO) last week warned of the hazards of the labs:

The World Health Organization advised Ukraine to destroy high-threat pathogens housed in the country's public health laboratories to prevent "any potential spills" that would spread disease among the population, the agency told Reuters.

Twitchy has collected responses on Twitter that mostly either question the treason charge or castigate Romney and his five sons for not having served in the armed forces:

Treason? Seriously? Get a grip.  Christina Pushaw  (@ChristinaPushaw) March 13, 2022

It's only treasonous if our country is Ukraine.



I don't think it's Ukraine.  Ron Coleman (@RonColeman) March 13, 2022

Thats LTC Gabbard to you. I dont need to hear one damn word from anyone in your non-serving family about patriotism.



And I dont even agree with her, but at least she and I served - unlike you and your entire family of free riders - and well both say whatever we want. Jerk. https://t.co/G5dXBzhBvu  Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) March 13, 2022

I am agnostic on the number of U.S.-funded labs in Ukraine, but surely getting that number wrong, if Tulsi is wrong, does not constitute treason.

Romney owes Gabbard an apology.
For me, work is a reason to get up in the morning that defines me as a useful and competent person. It is a moral and dignified way to support myself and my family, and part of my being a useful member of society. However, thanks to the economic policies the federal and state governments enacted during the past two years, we not only destroyed the economy and wiped out thriving small businesses, but also converted millions of Americans into idlers who will not work if the government subsidizes them.

A dangerous misconception driving the professional classes in academia and politics is that everyone wants the good things in life: a professional reputation, a nice home, a good car (electric is best, of course), and money to have fun on vacations, nights out, etc. To achieve these goals, people willingly work in a nice office environment or at home for a decent paycheck. They believe these goals and workstyles are every American's dream and aspiration. They are so very, very wrong.

I have a friend who, like me, has worked her entire life. However, her life choices have meant that she doesn't hang out with the professional class. Instead, her friends have less pleasant jobs. Their paychecks are smaller, and their work is both less satisfying and more physically demanding than in the professional classes.

But it's not the quality of the jobs that divides her friends from my world. It's what her friends want from life. Their goals, often, are beer, pot, a car that runs, and a rental home in a neighborhood that's not downright dangerous.

Because these are minimal desires, many have discovered that they can achieve them without working at all. If your needs are few, government handouts will do.

My friend recently told me that two young men of her acquaintance have given up work entirely in the past year or so. One was a short-order cook, and the other was in construction, and both hated their jobs. Losing those jobs due to COVID restrictions and then getting a no-strings-attached check that covered their minimal expenses was a revelation to them. Neither has any intention of returning to work again if the free money continues to flow their way.

What's most striking is that these young men are no longer limited to a narrow subclass. They are the face of myriad Americans who have discovered the joy of government subsidy checks.



Image: Now hiring by Rick Obst. CC BY 2.0.

E.J. Antoni, an economist at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, has written a fascinating article about the long-term damage from COVID-era policies, a toxic blend of destroyed jobs and free money. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

It's bad enough when politicians enact witless economic policies with huge price tags, but it's even worse when those policies destroy American lives and livelihoods. New research shows that this will be the pandemic-era legacy of the politicians that forcibly closed businesses, made people stay home, then incentivized millions of out-of-work Americans to give up the opportunity to get their lives back on track. It's now clear that half the states kept destructive policies in place even after their devastating effects were known. What should have been a temporary bridge to keep people afloat while America tackled COVID-19 became a nightmare of dependence and depression.

The problem was that the COVID checks often exceeded people's paychecks:

Eliminating people's jobs and paying them to be unemployed was robbing millions of Americans of the dignity that comes with finding purpose and achieving self-sufficiency. It destroyed lives, driving dependency on government, contributing to drug and alcohol addiction, and exacerbating isolation and depression.

(And as noted, I know that many of these people already considered drugs and alcohol a primary pleasure in life.)

Twenty-six states realized that destroying incentives to work was disastrous and stopped handouts. Democrat states, however, did not, and we know now just how poorly they've served their citizens:

But new research from the Texas Public Policy Foundation shows that the states that ended the benefits early had superior job growth, ending the soul-crushing dependency inflicted upon millions by the misguided policy. By the end of 2021, only Texas and three other states that ended the bonuses early had regained all the jobs that they lost during the pandemic. In the states that continued paying the unemployment bonuses through September 2021, job growth was anemic. Roughly 3 million more people stayed on unemployment in states that maintained the increase in benefits versus the states that ended the program early.

One doesn't need to be an economist to know that if you pay people not to work at unsatisfying jobs, they won't. Leftists may feel smug about freeing people from such jobs, but you've also destroyed those people's dignity, self-reliance, ambition, and maturity, turning them, instead, into selfish children looking at dead-end futures.
Now that Joe Biden has defined his wretched presidency with his focus on TikTok and its "influencers," even Saturday Night Live is lampooning his TikTok obsessions.

They ran this one on Saturday:

It wasn't the funniest thing they've ever run, but it does demonstrate two things: that Biden is focused on symbolism and popularity rather than solutions, and SNL is no longer afraid to point it out.

The context of the skit was that doddering and senile old Biden had reportedly met with TikTok "influencers" to brainstorm with them about what they could do to end Russia's Ukraine war. None of the characters consulted  a grab bag of various clowns such as a dog make-up specialist; a guy who said his own name over and over; AnnaLynne McCord, the blonde Hollywood ditz who recited Putin poetry claiming he needed a better mother; and some guy with a toilet plunger over his bare-chested nipple  had any ideas, of course.

It was a lampoon on Biden's politics of symbolism, not results, which is wretched stuff in this day and age, demonstrating the enfeebled nature of his administration in a country that actually does have the reputation of being the most militarily powerful nation on Earth. But here goes Joe Biden, focusing on the important thing, which is TikTok "influencers," and the skit was based on something that really happened.

According to the Washington Post, he "briefed" TikTok "influencers" about the war in Ukraine.

It was not all that funny  not just because of weak writing, but because America's actually a nation that could do something to help Ukraine win its war, and Biden instead really did turn to TikTok influencers.

It's not just polls-focused politics. It's also hubris. The idea behind the real meeting was that doddering Joe could actually influence the "influencers." In Biden's mind, all he needs to do is influence these people instead of making his message clear to the American public, and he's got it made. It must be a lot easier than co-opting the press, I suppose, but it's still co-opting and corrupting a media outlet of sorts with "narratives," which has been done on the rest of the press for years. The public sees through it now.

Instead of helping Ukraine, the Biden administration is focusing on getting TikTok "influencers" to win over U.S. voters. It's about him, not Ukraine. Nobody in Ukraine needs to be influenced about what it takes to win its war, not with bombs falling, nor does anyone in Russia. Signs, symbols, and all that are feel-good devices targeting U.S. voters and polls in the states, and no substitute for victory.

And in any case, the skit wasn't nearly as grotesque as the real one the White House came out with a few months before  remember this one?

Sometimes, satire cannot match reality.

All this SNL skit does is point out that Biden is a total loser on the war front and basically unfit as commander in chief. SNL can take a bow for getting that point across, but it's been known for months as the White House dotard slides in the polls.

Image: Screen shot from SNL video, posted on YouTube.
As Russia ramps up its war against Ukraine, Western media and Western politicians ramp up their moral outrage and indignation.

There is, to be sure, much to be morally outraged about in Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine and war against the Ukrainian people. The scenes in cities under attack are horrific. But the West's indignation is misplaced. The Russia-Ukraine War has its roots in misguided U.S. and Western policies which poked the Russian bear. And while poking the bear does not justify the bear's reaction, American and European leaders would be wise to tone down the rhetoric about "war crimes" and "assassination" and "no-fly zones" before their indignation produces policies that lead to a wider and far more destructive war.

That is the theme of University of Chicago political science professor John Mearsheimer's recent article in The Economist. In his Economist article, Mearsheimer [i] rightly blames Putin for the war and how the war is being waged, but he is more concerned with a deeper question: why did Putin invade Ukraine? "The mainstream view in the West," Mearsheimer writes, "is that [Putin] is an irrational, out-of-touch aggressor bent on creating a greater Russia in the mould of the Soviet Union." Mearsheimer disagrees.

"The West, and especially America," he writes, "is principally responsible for the crisis[.]" He traces the West's missteps to NATO's Bucharest summit in April 2008, when the George W. Bush administration "pushed the alliance to announce that Ukraine and Georgia 'will become members.'" Russia's leaders, he notes, reacted by characterizing such a move by NATO as a threat to Russia's security. Putin moved against Georgia in 2008, but this did not deter NATO's and the European Union (E.U.)'s public calls for Ukraine to become part of the West.

After the United States supported an uprising in Ukraine that resulted in the installation of a pro-American regime in Kyiv, Putin in 2014 moved against Ukraine in the Crimea and supported pro-Russian elements in the Donbas region of Ukraine that sought to break away from Kyiv's rule. Three years later, Mearsheimer notes, the Trump administration began selling military supplies to Ukraine, and other NATO countries did likewise. Mearsheimer notes that NATO even held joint air and naval exercises with Ukraine in the Black Sea. That was more than a "poke," and Russian warships came close to firing on a British destroyer that entered what Russia believes is its territorial waters.

Then, in November 2021, Mearsheimer notes, Ukraine and the United States signed the "U.S.-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership," which held out the possibility of Ukraine joining the E.U. and perhaps NATO. NATO, with full U.S. support, appeared to be moving to Russia's border. Viewed from Moscow, that was an unacceptable development  as unacceptable as a Russian or Chinese alliance with Mexico or Canada would be to the United States.

But, as I have previously noted here, the roots of the current crisis go back farther than 2008. They go back to the mid-1990s, when the Clinton administration first set in motion the expansion of NATO in the wake of the West's victory in the Cold War. George Kennan criticized it at the time and foresaw Russia's likely reaction. But Clinton's diplomatic hubris was followed by successive administrations in Washington so that NATO expansion pressed to the very frontiers of Russia. Ukraine, which had been part of Russia for centuries, was a bridge too far for NATO to cross.

The great danger to world peace now is that a jingoistic Western media and reckless Western statesmen playing at being Winston Churchill will compound Putin's miscalculation and take measures that will transform a terrible regional war into an even more terrible world war. Let's be clear about that. The more NATO nations contribute to Ukraine's war effort  no matter how emotionally satisfying that is  the more we risk widening the war. As Mearsheimer writes, "we are in an extremely dangerous situation, and Western policy is exacerbating these risks."

There is, Mearsheimer writes, "a serious threat of escalation beyond Ukraine, not to mention the danger of nuclear war." He concludes with this warning: if we do not understand the "deep cause" of the current Ukraine crisis, "we will be unable to end it before Ukraine is wrecked and NATO ends up in a war with Russia." God help us all then.

Photo credit: President of the Russian Federation.

[i] Editor's note: Mearsheimer is co-author with Stephen Walt of The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, a highly controversial book that some critics accuse of shoddy scholarship.
According to the last 11 polls, Governor Greg Abbott leads former representative Beto O'Rourke by 8.8 points.

So what do you do when you've been struggling around 40% in the polls? Maybe you break with your party on CRT or refine your position on taking people's AR-15s away?

A few days ago, Mr. O'Rourke said this about CRT:

When asked by a member of the audience if he thought the indoctrination scheme should be taught in schools, O'Rourke broke with many in his own party, replying, "No, I don't think it should be taught in our schools, yeah."

Beto said CRT is for law schools and not for kids, or something like that.

It's a risky move because it won't persuade his critics but may turn off his followers. Beto needs a strong turnout, and it won't help when they are reminded of these flip-flops. As you can hear, the reaction at his campaign stop was one of anger.

O'Rourke is running in a totally different political environment. Simply put, 2022 is not 2018. Governor Greg Abbott is not Senator Ted Cruz.

Lately, his attacks against Governor Abbott have become a bit bizarre and desperate. This is from the Texas Tribune:

Beto O'Rourke, the Democratic nominee for Texas governor, called the Republican incumbent, Greg Abbott, "a thug" and an "authoritarian" on Saturday and compared Texas energy executives to Russian oligarchs in a blistering critique that presages an election that is about eight months away.

Sounds a little desperate? Yes, he does. The 2018 Beto was more of a charmer, calling on all Texas to come together. The 2022 version has a mean streak, and we have not reached St. Patrick's Day yet.

PS: Click for my videos and podcasts at Canto Talk.

Image: Gage Skidmore.
(Image source from: Twitter.com/JSPShatagniTeam)

Janasena Formation Day: Pawan Kalyan to unveil Future Plans:- Powerstar Pawan Kalyan joined politics and floated his own political party Janasena. The party completed eight years and Pawan along with the leaders are all set to celebrate the occasion in a grand manner this evening. Janasena contested in 2019 polls but failed to make an impact. Pawan Kalyan is keen to make his impact in the upcoming 2024 polls. The meeting will take place in Ippatam village in Mangalagiri near Amaravati. Pawan Kalyan is expected to reveal the future plans of the party during today's meeting in Amaravati. Fans are gathering in large numbers to Ippatam village for the Formation Day celebrations. Pawan will speak about the hardships of Janasena from the past two and a half years in the state.

Pawan is also expected to speak about the various issues in Andhra Pradesh and he will criticize the government of AP on its failures. Pawan Kalyan reached Gannavaram airport last night and he will be meeting various leaders today before the evening meeting. Massive arrangements are made for the meeting that will be held near the highway. The party supporters made arrangements and LED screens are set for the audience. Pawan Kalyan appealed to the people to be extra cautious and reach the venue safely. Jana Sena political affairs committee Chairman Nadendla Manohar urged the cops not to create any disturbance. The banners that were erected on the highway have been removed by the cops yesterday.

Pawan's brother Naga Babu reviewed the arrangements of the Formation Day meet. Pawan Kalyan is expected to deliver a powerful speech this evening and the entire state is focused on the Formation Day meeting.

(Video Source: NTV Telugu)
Janasena Formation Day Live: Naga Babu and Manohar Speech Highlights:- Janasena completes eight years and the Formation Day is celebrated today in a grand manner. Fans and followers of Janasena attended in lakhs and they reached the venue by afternoon. Pawan Kalyan reached Vijayawada last night and he reached the venue this evening. Mega brother Naga Babu spoke at the event and he slammed the YSRCP government for their poor governance. He asked the people to vote carefully in the next elections and if YS Jagan wins in the polls, the people of AP will have to move to the neighboring states. He said that YS Jagan ruled the state for three years without a capital. "YS Jagan is the worst ever Chief Minister of AP" told Naga Babu.

(Video Source: NTV Telugu)

The venue has been named as 'Sri Damodara Sanjeevaiah Chaitanya Vedhika'. The party supporters made the seating arrangements from the past one week and provided with water and butter milk. The government officials and the cops tried hard to interrupt the supporters and the banners placed on the Amaravati highway are removed. With protests erupting widely, the government stepped down and granted all the permissions for the meeting. Nadendla Manohar slammed YS Jagan and his party for bringing dacoit culture in the state. Pawan Kalyan reached the venue and cheered up his fans and followers. He thanked them for the support.

(Video Source: TV9 Telugu Live)
(ANSA) - ROME, MAR 10 - A Venetian businessman who has been held in Sudan for almost a year is set to be freed, foreign ministry sources said Thursday.

Sudanese authorities have lifted a travel ban on Marco Zennaro, they said.

The foreign ministry's director general for Italians abroad, Luigi Vignali, is in the African country to carry out the final operations to enable Zenarro to return to Italy. (ANSA).


(ANSA) - ROME, MAR 14 - Italian police on Monday arrested four Albanian men who have lived in Italy for many years on suspicion of plotting ISIS-inspired terror attacks in Italy.

The arrests were made in the southern city of Bari in Puglia and the northern city of Cuneo in Piedmont.

Police said wiretaps had found the four voicing hatred for the west in conversations about Ukraine, which they said was a target of Western gas ambitions, and COVID-19, which they said was a "minuscule soldier of Allah, sent to Earth to punish the unbelief of the westerners".

One of the four, 33-year-old Elsio Ramku, is a municipal employee at the technical office in Bari.

Police said the four exchanged videos and documents of ISIS/Daesh on Telegram, calling for holy war.

The four also funded a jihadi imam in Albania, police said.

(ANSA).


(ANSA) - ROME, MAR 14 - Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio has said that 34 Italians are currently unable to get out of Ukraine after the Russian invasion.

"There were 2,000 Italians in Ukraine (before the invasion)," Di Maio told La7 television.

"Today there are 400 and we have saved 200 of them. Of the 400, 34 are stuck.

"We are working every day to get them out thanks to the (foreign ministry's) crisis unit.

"But if the evacuation cannot take place in safety, we prefer to tell them to wait".

Di Maio said some of the Italians were trapped in Mariupol.

Italy's Ambassador to Ukraine Pier Francesco Zazo also commented on the situation, telling RAI television that some of the Italians in Ukraine "want to remain because there life is here" but others are "unfortunately trapped and cannot get out of the country". (ANSA).


Emporia, KS (66801)

Today

Thunderstorms this morning, then cloudy with rain likely during the afternoon. High 56F. Winds E at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 90%..

Tonight

Thundershowers overnight following a period of rain early. Low 53F. Winds ENE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall may reach one inch.
Qatari Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani said Qatar is ready to make all possible efforts to find diplomatic ways to resolve the situation in Ukraine.



Al-Thani is in Moscow on Monday to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, said Interfax.



"During today's negotiations, I expect us to discuss the situation in Ukraine and hope that peaceful solutions to the conflict will be found in the near future," said Al-Thani.



Lavrov said Russia is evaluating Qatar's interest in helping to achieve results on the situation in Ukraine.



Lavrov said Russia and Qatar want to promote cooperation on the global energy market.




Ukraine: rising prices concern Maghreb Accentuated by upcoming Ramadan in April

(ANSAmed) - TUNIS, 14 MAR - In the Maghreb countries, there's a race to buy flour and semolina.



Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, both of which are major suppliers of wheat to the Maghreb, the prices of these products have been increasing throughout the region.



The upward trend is further accentuated by the shopping frenzy typical just ahead of Ramadan, which this year starts in April.



In a supermarket in Ariana, north of Tunis, there were no bags of flour or semolina on the shelves, and only three packages of sugar left, next to a sign reading: "Please no more than 1 kg".



Generally, each shopper can buy a maximum of two kilos of pasta.



Tunisian authorities denied a shortage in the shops, and said rather it was a "rush on semolina and flour".



Houda Hjeij, a 52-year-old housewife, said the government didn't foresee the war in Ukraine.



"For two weeks I have neither rice nor flour in the kitchen," she said.T The representative of the owners of Hedi Bacco supermarkets said this frenzy, in which daily semolina consumption has risen 700% and sugar consumption has tripled, comes from the fact that in times of crisis, Tunisians buy more from the shop.



Tunisian authorities said the country has three months' worth of stock, and basic products (coffee, sugar, pasta, semolina) are largely subsidised.



For example, the price of a baguette that has remained unchanged for 10 years at around six euro cents.



This system was intended to avoid bread riots as in the 1980s and also exists in Algeria, which wants to abolish it but has not yet done so.



Tunisia is the second-largest consumer of wheat in Africa, following Egypt, which consumes 10 million tons per year.



The Algerian Interprofessional Office for Cereals (OAIC) said Algeria does not import soft wheat from Russia or Ukraine.



"There will be no shortage, grain carriers continue to transport large cargoes to the port of Algiers," Mustapha, a port authority office worker, told AFP.



Despite this, in Tizi Ouzou and Bejaia, in Kabylie (east), semolina reserves have recently been reduced to zero, causing a shortage.



"The war in Ukraine and all the semolina warehouses taken by storm", said Mouh Benaeur, a resident of Mechtras, on Facebook.



Food prices were already rising throughout the Maghreb long before the Russian invasion of Ukraine.



Fouzi Lekjaa, Delegate Minister for the budget in Morocco, said it is explained by "the unexpected post-Covid recovery around the world, which has led to an increase in the price of cereals and petroleum products on the international market".



Mourad, 37, a customer in a Rabat market, blamed "unscrupulous merchants".



"Agricultural products in general have become very expensive due to rising fuel prices, but also due to drought", the worst for 40 years in Morocco, he said.



Morocco doesn't have hydrocarbons, and therefore has been hard hit by soaring fuel prices.



In recent weeks hauliers went on strike, and Moroccan government spokesman Mustapha Baitasis said the government is "studying the possibility of subsidies to protect citizens' purchasing power and keep prices at reasonable levels".



Libya is an oil and gas country but is highly dependent on its food imports, with 75% of its wheat from Russia and Ukraine.



It has also seen prices rise, especially for flour, milk, oil, canned food and sugar.



The Ukrainian conflict has exacerbated these increases with now three rolls for one dinar (0.22 euros) instead of four, on a subsidized product.



Saleh Mosbah, a father who was shopping in a wholesale market in Tripoli, blamed "unscrupulous merchants who take advantage of all the crises".



Soumaya, a young woman in her thirties, managed to grab two large five-pound bags of flour.



"The government reassures the people and says there is enough wheat and flour, but I don't think that's true," she said.



(ANSAmed).




France: Protests and violence on Corsica, Darmanin visits On Sunday 67 injured in demonstration for activist Colonna

(ANSAmed) - PARIS, 14 MAR - French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin travelled to the island of Corsica on Monday amidst in a climate of high tension.



In a statement, Darmanin said he intends to "open a cycle of discussions with representatives and the island's active forces".



The government's positive response to the "requests of the Corsican representatives on the island's institutional, economic, social or cultural future" were taken into consideration, especially "those of the President of the Executive Council, Gilles Simeoni", a former independence activist elected representative of the island, who is requesting a special statute of autonomy.



The government's initiative comes as daily demonstrations and protests are now accompanied by violence and unrest that the government said it firmly condemns.



The government said dialogue cannot begin unless there is an immediate return to calm.



On Sunday, unrest broke out in Bastia at the end of the demonstration for Yvan Colonna, the pro-independence activist sentenced to life imprisonment for the 1998 murder of prefect Claude Erignac.



Colonna was attacked in prison on March 2 and remains in very serious condition in hospital.



Riots at the end of the demonstration left 67 injured, including 44 policemen.



On Friday, Prime Minister Jean Castex attempted to defuse the tension by announcing the end of the status of "particularly monitored detainee" for two other separatists in prison, Pierre Alessandri and Alain Ferrandi.



This measure paves the way for their possible transfer to a Corsican prison. (ANSAmed).




Ukraine: France says it can host 100,000 refugees Interior Minister Darmanin says working to receive even more

(ANSAmed) - PARIGI, 14 MAR - France has the means to welcome and host "up to 100,000" refugees from the conflict in Ukraine, several French ministers said Monday, adding that the government is also preparing to "welcome more".



French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said border police checks have identified about 13,500 Ukrainian refugees on French soil thus far, more than two weeks after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.



"Today we can welcome up to 100,000 in national territory," he said.



"It is a big effort that the state and local authorities have made. We continue to work on a plan in which we will be able to welcome more," he said. (ANSAmed).




Benedict Cumberbatch says he hopes to be part of the UK effort to provide homes for victims of Russias invasion of Ukraine.

The Oscar-nominated actor acknowledged that we have brothers and sisters who are suffering as a result of the conflict and that people should do what they could to help.

He currently stars in Jane Campions dark western The Power Of The Dog, which was awarded best picture at the 2022 Baftas, though Cumberbatch lost out to Will Smith for best actor.

Speaking on the Bafta red carpet, he told Sky News: We need to donate, we need to pressure our politicians to create some kind of refugee safety and a haven here for people who are suffering.

Everyone needs to do as much as they can, and I think already today the news has broken that theres been a record number of people volunteering to take people into their homes.

I hope to be part of that myself.

And also obviously donating to charities who can help people in a very real way on the ground in Poland or just over the border if its safe to do so.

The Batman star Andy Serkis said the arts hold humanity together (Ian West/PA)

Andy Serkis used his presentation of the best director award to criticise Home Secretary Priti Patel over the Governments hostile treatment of Ukrainian refugees.

The English actor said world-class directors were charged with bringing together and leading a huge family of supremely talented strangers on a difficult and chaotic journey whilst hopefully creating an atmosphere that inspires inclusivity and values every single member of that family equally.

So it is no surprise that Priti Patel on her debut feature Hostile Environment found enormous problems.

And that her follow up movie All Refugees are Welcome, Some Are More Welcome Than Others is a complete nightmare, Serkis, who starred alongside Cumberbatch in 2018s Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle, added.

The 57-year-old actor best known for playing Gollum in The Lord Of The Rings then announced the nominees, with Paul Thomas Anderson (Licorice Pizza) among those to lose out to New Zealands Campion.

Reflecting on the Russian invasion of Ukraine while on the red carpet, Serkis said it is important to celebrate the arts as they hold humanity together.

Its a difficult situation having a celebration like this when such horrendous, horrific things are happening not too far away from here, he told the PA news agency.

But I think its also important that arts are celebrated because arts do hold humanity together, and actually freedom of speech and the power of storytelling is something that I think Ukrainians would totally applaud.

So if we hold them up tonight and reflect the enjoyment and the passion back to them, I dont think its a bad thing.

Host Rebel Wilson was another to raise the invasion at the ceremony, with the Australian taking a swipe at Russian President Vladimir Putin.

As she introduced the performance by Coda star Emilia Jones to Joni Mitchells ballad Both Sides Now, Wilson explained that the actress would be accompanied by two sign language interpreters who signed the song in both British Sign Language and American Sign Language.

She added that luckily though in all sign languages, this is the gesture for Putin as she gave the middle finger to the Russian leader.

The actress also paid tribute to the people of Ukraine after the In Memory Of segment of the award ceremony.
Billionaire Elon Musk has challenged Russian President Vladimir Putin to single combat, with the stakes being Ukraine.

With Mr Putins name written in Russian and Ukraine written in Ukrainian, the Tesla chief executive tweeted: I hereby challenge (Vladimir Putin) to single combat.

Stakes are (Ukraine).

I hereby challenge  to single combat Stakes are   Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 14, 2022

Mr Musk tagged the Kremlin in a follow-up tweet.

Do you agree to this fight? he asked in Russian.

Mr Musks challenge to Mr Putin is one of several posts he has shared on the war in Ukraine.

A video shared on March 5 showed him speaking directly with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The same day, he tweeted: Hold strong Ukraine.

He added: And also my sympathies to the great people of Russia, who do not want this.

And also my sympathies to the great people of Russia, who do not want this  Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 5, 2022

Following Russias invasion on February 24, Mr Musk gave Ukraine access to SpaceXs satellite-internet system Starlink  a system of some 2,000 satellites designed to bring web access to underserved areas of the world.

Mr Zelensky thanked Mr Musk for that support, tweeting: Im grateful to him for supporting Ukraine with words and deeds.
India's 'accidental' missile fire into Pakistan raises questions, concerns

By Liu Xuanzun (Global Times) 11:01, March 14, 2022

The remains of a supersonic missile are found in Pakistan on March 9, 2022. Photo: Screenshot from China Central Television

After an Indian supersonic missile was allegedly accidentally fired into Pakistani territory last week, Pakistan demanded a joint probe on Saturday, as Pakistan said it doubts India's internal inquiry will answer its questions over India's capabilities to handle such weapons properly. Other countries neighboring India including China should also be concerned about India's lack of effective security protocols or technical safeguards, as this could potentially lead to unexpected consequences under complex situations, analysts said on Sunday.

Pakistan's foreign office said in a statement on Saturday that this serious matter cannot be addressed with the simplistic explanation proffered by the Indian authorities, and Pakistan demands a joint probe to accurately establish the facts surrounding the incident, Reuters reported on Sunday.

The Pakistani demand comes after India said on Friday it had accidentally fired the missile into Pakistan on Wednesday because of a "technical malfunction" during routine maintenance, and it would hold an internal inquiry.

No casualties were caused by the accident, reports from both countries said.

Pakistan's foreign office also listed a set of questions and issues, asking the Indian authorities to explain the measures and procedures in place to prevent accidental missile launches, and if the missile was indeed handled by its armed forces or some rogue elements given the profound "level of incompetence," Pakistani news outlet Dawn reported on Saturday.

"The grave nature of the incident raises several fundamental questions regarding security protocols and technical safeguards against accidental or unauthorized launch of missiles in a nuclearized environment," Pakistan's foreign office said.

A Pakistani defense analyst familiar with the matter told the Global Times on Sunday on condition of anonymity that the incident has inherent risks, and it could have led to retaliation and escalation.

The Pakistani forces exercised restraint in the incident after thoroughly evaluating the situation while taking into account a number of factors, the analyst said, noting that restraint may not be the case every time.

If the incident turns out to be indeed an accident, it is very worrisome in terms of India's safety mechanisms that are in place for launching a missile. Most worrisome is that India did not inform Pakistan immediately after firing, even if accidental, and only confirmed two days later. This aspect raises concerns about irresponsible behavior, lack of professionalism in Indian armed forces and command and control of strategic weapons. It shows India is not capable to be entrusted with such weapons in name of regional and global peace, the analyst said.

This concern should apply not only to Pakistan, but all countries neighboring India. What if an Indian missile accidentally landed close to the China-India Line of Actual Control? So it is a clear and persistent risk for all countries in the region, the analyst said.

China and India just concluded the 15th round of commander level meetingon Friday, as the two sides reached consensus on agreeing to maintain dialogue via military and diplomatic channels to reach a mutually acceptable resolution to the remaining issues at the earliest time, continuing the positive atmosphere since the 14th round of talks.

But an unintentional accident caused by India's incapability to handle its weapons could seriously complicate the situation, experts said.

Despite India's claims saying the incident is accidental, the Pakistani analyst said it could well be intentional, and India's motive could be to test the response options of Pakistan's defense systems which could be the reason probably that Pakistan side intentionally kept some aspects of the incident vague.

It takes a lot to fire a missile, including the aligning of the missile with fire control system, feeding it with certain parameters and more, so an accidental firing is supposed to be difficult, the analyst said. Accordingly there are a lot of queries which India needs to respond to in order to clear its record.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
Treason and patriotism in Canada and the current-day world  updated to 2022 (Part Three) By Mark Wegierski

web posted March 14, 2022 In the case of totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, conflicts have inevitably emerged between loyalty to a nation, and loyalty to a regime, and the degree of permissible collaboration with a regime while claiming to be serving one's nation. One highly controversial case is that of Boleslaw Piasecki, who, in pre-World War II Poland, was the fanatical though extremely intellectually energetic leader of a small, extremist, far-right party, at the margins of Polish political life. However, there is still disagreement among historians as to how little  or how much  of an influence he had on pre-World War II Polish politics. After the war, he embarked on a painful strategy of collaboration with the new Communist authorities, which was perhaps an involuntary course, as his young son was under permanent threat from the Communists  and of course, he himself could have been shot  or gruesomely tortured to death -- immediately, out-of-hand. Indeed, his son was eventually kidnapped, and brutally murdered, allegedly in a "ritualistic" fashion. The father was taunted for over a year with the possibility that he might yet ransom his son. Yet, the accusation of gross, opportunistic collaboration is often made against Piasecki, especially considering that men of clearly greater stature endured torture and death rather than show any kind of allegiance to the Soviet-imposed system. And it was only rarely possible to withdraw into a quiet, apolitical life, even if one were so inclined. The Polish patriots were hounded by the Communist regime. The Polish conservative journal Stanczyk (named after the famous, sixteenth-century court jester of the Polish Kings, known for his political wit and wisdom), had in an issue some years ago drawn attention to what they considered the questionable actions of a few post-World War II Polish emigres in the early 1950s, who signed an agreement of cooperation (at the small Bavarian town of Berg) with American military intelligence, in exchange for monetary compensation. In the opinion of the Stanczyk journal, such an agreement then fatally compromised the Polish-Government-in-Exile in London, England. If so much of the Government-in-Exile's funding was dependent on U.S. goodwill, it could not convincingly argue for such initiatives like a nuclear-free zone in Eastern Europe, something which might have potentially had enormous importance for Polish survival had war actually broken out. It turned out, furthermore, that the signatories to the agreement diverted much of the funds for their private use, thus exposing the underground network of Polish patriots working on their behalf in Poland to unnecessary risks, suffering, and, sometimes, execution. Indeed, the journal sees the signatories of this agreement with the Americans as real traitors. There is also some division of opinion expressed in the journal concerning Colonel Kuklinski, who was among the highest-ranking East Bloc personnel to defect to the West. Some argue that, after the breakthrough of 1956, the Polish People's Republic was an authoritarian, not a totalitarian regime, and that the weakening of Polish military capability vis-a-vis the West was not an unqualifiedly positive action. It later emerged, for example, that in the late 1950s to early 1960s, U.S. military planners had conceived a strategy for fighting in Europe called "Plan Vistula". While some Poles, when hearing the plan's name, might naively think this meant an offensive drive to liberate Poland, what it actually entailed was the creation, through nuclear saturation bombing, of a "zone of death" of about 200 kilometers wide across the breadth of Poland, in order to prevent Soviet armies from quickly reinforcing their main lines in East Germany. This would have resulted in the deaths of at least 20 million Poles. So, U.S. military planning of that time absolutely disregarded the anti-Soviet potential of the Polish population. It took a surprisingly long time for U.S. grand strategy to see the peoples of Eastern Europe and Russia as potential allies, rather than enemy assets, in the Cold War conflict. The Soviet Union had always had an uneasy relation with Russian nationalism. During the NEP (New Economic Plan) period, the regime was able to diffuse some of the Russian emigre opposition by appealing to Russian nationalism, and contriving to suggest that it would soon transform itself into a "true organic conservative" regime. These emigre supporters called themselves "the Changing Landmarks movement." Many of them were lured back to their homeland, and soon thereafter disappeared. The NEP and disinformation strategy gave the Soviet Union a breathing space before its next lunge into totalitarian madness under Stalin. Indeed, the so-called kulaks (or more prosperous peasants) -- who were the typical targets of massive campaigns of genocide under Stalin  had themselves largely come into existence as a result of the more relaxed period of the NEP. However, especially after Stalin's death in 1953, the history of the Soviet Union did indeed move increasingly away from totalitarianism in the direction of authoritarianism and Russian nationalism. To be continued. Mark Wegierski is a Canadian writer and historical researcher. Home
Ireland has sent 5,000 ready-to-eat meals and 200 units of body armour to Ukraine, as the war against Russia continues.

The country, while military neutral, has committed itself to providing non-lethal aid to Ukrainian forces battling the Russian invasion.

Taoiseach Micheal Martin, alongside a host of senior Irish ministers, have repeatedly stressed that Ireland is not politically neutral in the conflict.

The move was confirmed on Monday by Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney, who said that the 10 tonnes of ready-to-eat meals and the body armour was coming from Irish Defence Forces stocks.

Appearing at an Oireachtas committee last week, Mr Coveney had indicated that the Government was preparing to send spare equipment to the war-torn country.

The Department of Defence confirmed that the equipment and food had already been shipped and will shortly arrive at a Polish logistics hub.

In a statement, Mr Coveney said: This contribution is a specific element of the Governments approximately 11 million euros contribution through the European Peace Facility and the further 20 million euros in humanitarian assistance.

Minister for Foreign Affairs and Defence Simon Coveney (Niall Carson/PA)

This practical assistance is a further tangible demonstration of Irelands support for and solidarity with the people of Ukraine.

The war in Ukraine has reignited debate in political circles about the longstanding policy of Irish neutrality.

My view right now is our focus is, and the people united on this, is to make sure that there is a speedy response from the European Union on all of the issues that require a such speedy response, Mr Martin told the BBC on Sunday.

We will have to reflect on this military neutrality position more generally .

Were not a military power in that sense, what Ireland does best is on the humanitarian side, and on the peacekeeping side. Those are our strengths.

The bottom line now is that we need to keep a unified focus within Ireland on the Ukrainian situation and what we do best.

One cannot, in the middle of a crisis, change a long-held policy overnight.

Earlier, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said understanding what it means to be a country in the relationship between the UK and the Republic of Ireland tells us something about the war in Ukraine.

In a speech at the London Irish Centre ahead of St Patricks Day, Sir Keir said it was key to focus on the UK and Irelands rich and long history.

The Labour leader said it was easy to see the relationship between the two countries in narrow issues, the (Northern Ireland) Protocol at the moment.

But he said the long partnership with the Republic, through Irelands ambassador to the UK Adrian ONeill, was important.

Sir Keir said: This relationship requires respect  equal respect  and understanding what it means to be a country.

He added: I think it tells us something about whats going on in the world, particularly Ukraine, because at the heart of the conflict in Ukraine is a simple thing, the wish of a country to decide for itself its own future.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer attends the Labour Party Irish Society Annual St Patricks Day reception at the London Irish Centre. (Stefan Rousseau/PA)

Sir Keir said: I didnt think in my lifetime I would see Russian tanks rolling into a European country, soldiers kissing their children goodbye as they then stay to fight for their city and for the country, the awful bombing of hospitals. None of us thought we would see that.

The Labour leader said behind those images was that sense of democracy, of sovereignty, the right of a country to decide for itself on what it does.

He added: But when it comes to what does the UK stand for, what does Ireland stand for, when it comes to issues of sovereignty and self-determination, we stand together in the face of Russian aggression because theyre our deep, deep values.

Sir Keir also said: It is about the relationship between UK and Ireland, but its also about the way in which we view the world which is being challenged at the moment in a really profound way.
The Northern Ireland Protocol is lawful, the Court of Appeal in Belfast has upheld.

DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson said the legal challenge will now go to the Supreme Court.

Sir Jeffrey, whose partys first minister, Paul Givan, resigned over the impact of the protocol, insisted it is undermining the position of Northern Ireland within the UK.

Unionists regard the post-Brexit trade arrangements, which see checks on goods arriving into Northern Ireland from Great Britain, as a border in the Irish Sea.

This joint unionist legal challenge has always been destined for the Supreme Court but todays ruling reminds us that the NI Protocol led to the abandonment of consensus politicsCross community voting was ditched by the Protocol." @J_Donaldson_MPhttps://t.co/RRXVatdC2s  DUP (@duponline) March 14, 2022

The legal challenge is another aspect of unionist action against the protocol, taken in the name of TUV leader Jim Allister, former Brexit Party MEP Ben Habib and Baroness Hoey among others.

However, that received a blow on Monday when the Court of Appeal in Belfast dismissed challenges pursued in the name of unionists and Brexiteers from across the UK.

Senior judges upheld the ruling last June by Mr Justice Colton, rejecting arguments that the protocol breached the terms of the 1800 Acts of Union and the 1998 legislation that underpins the Good Friday Peace Agreement.

An adjoined case was taken by Belfast pastor Clifford Peeples.

Appeals in both cases were dismissed.

Lady Justice Keegan said the senior judges determined none of the legal arguments prevail, and accordingly the appeals are dismissed and the decision of the trial judge affirmed.

Jim Allister, front, Kate Hoey and Ben Habib, left, leaving the High Court in Belfast (Michael Cooper/PA)

Addressing the Court of Appeal on Monday, Lady Justice Keegan said the judicial review applications were out of time, but an extension was granted because they raise issues of constitutional importance.

It is in the public interest that these issues be considered and determined by the highest court in this devolved administration, she said.

She said the European Union Withdrawal Act, which includes the protocol, the Acts of Union and the Northern Ireland Act are all of a constitutional character, adding the issue is the interplay between them and how they should be interpreted.

In the ruling, senior judges ruled that while the Withdrawal Act conflicted with the Acts of Union, Parliament knew the legislation involved and acted lawfully in enacting the latter.

They also found that the Northern Ireland Act 1998 has no impact on the legality of the changes enacted by the Withdrawal Agreement.

In terms of the argument of a democratic deficit being caused by European laws that the people of Northern Ireland had no say in being imposed on them, the judges held that the justification for differential treatment fell within the choices made in a highly visible, political process', and rejected this ground of appeal.

Meanwhile, no merit was found in any of the additional arguments raised by Mr Peeples.

DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson (Brian Lawless/PA)

Sir Jeffrey reacted, saying the challenge has always been destined for the Supreme Court.

But todays ruling reminds us that the NI Protocol led to the abandonment of consensus politics as the Government and the pro-protocol parties embraced majority rule. Cross community voting was ditched by the protocol, he said.

Not one single unionist MLA supports the protocol because it undermines our place in the United Kingdom and separates us from our main market. It is driving up costs of doing business with the rest of the United Kingdom, hampering government efforts to help us in this cost-of-living crisis and even threatening our supply of medicines.

The protocol has cast a long shadow over devolution and far from protecting stability, it has undermined the foundational principles of devolution.

Northern Ireland only moves forward when we move forward together. Any deals will require the support of unionists and nationalists.

I was patient when I warned the governments in London, Dublin and Washington last September that the protocol was not compatible with devolution. I gave space for talks and action but they failed to listen.

However, Sinn Fein MLA Declan Kearney welcomed the court ruling, adding the protocol is here to stay.

This ruling is clear and unequivocal and the legal challenge by the unionist parties has been dismissed on all grounds, he said.

The ruling underlines the need for stunt politics to stop. There is no credible alternative to the protocol.

Sinn Feins focus will remain on promoting the benefits of the protocol for our economy and society, to create jobs, to support people through the cost of living crisis, and to tackle the problems in the health service.

Meanwhile, SDLP MLA Matthew OToole responded to the ruling by urging unionist politicians to focus on the cost of living crisis.

With families struggling to heat their homes and the continent of Europe facing humanitarian catastrophe, the sight of politicians fixating on the protocol would be absurd, if it wasnt so irresponsible, he said.

Where there are issues on GB-NI trade that require smoothing, the solution is through discussion and engagement  rather than collapsing political institutions and mounting quixotic legal challenges.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla.  Abortion and immigration restrictions. A new election fraud police force. Limits on classroom discussion and instruction about sexuality, gender and race.

The Florida Legislature has become a front line in the nations culture wars, and its regular lawmaking session ends Monday after it provided a springboard for Gov. Ron DeSantis November re-election campaign, as well as his White House ambitions.

Now one major test remains to cement DeSantiss first-term legacy as the strongest conservative governor in decades: undoing whats known as a minority access congressional seat in north Florida held by a Black Democrat.

Ultimately, DeSantis wants a court fight aimed at provisions in the federal Voting Rights Act, as well as in the states Constitution, that generally prohibit the dilution of minority voting strength, according to sources familiar with the governors thinking.

And to do that, DeSantis is taking on the same Republican-led Legislature that has given him everything else he wanted in the run-up to his bid for a second term.

Over DeSantis objections, the congressional seat in question survived in one form or another in proposed congressional maps the Legislature passed 10 days ago. Because legislators defied him by refusing to wipe out the seat and take up his own proposed map  the drafting of which was an unprecedented move for a Florida governor and which would eliminate not only the north Florida seat held by Democratic Rep. Al Lawson but also the Orlando-area district held by another Black Democrat, Rep. Val Demings  DeSantis announced he would veto the legislation.

Now Republicans are bracing for DeSantis to keep his promise and haul them back into a special session, worrying that he might hit the campaign trail and use his popularity and the bully pulpit to bring election-year pressure on those who bucked him.

Dragging legislators back to Tallahassee, which would be the ultimate power play for DeSantis, is on brand for a governor who became a top 2024 Republican presidential contender  second only to former President Donald Trump  for his willingness to fight anyone who hints at crossing him.

This is DeSantis M.O.: What he cares about, he cares about deeply. And if you get in his way, hes going to roll through you, said state Sen. Jeff Brandes, a Tampa Republican. Members dont know him and dont know what hes going to do. And that not knowing is part of the reason they fear him.

Brandes said DeSantis is particularly tough for Florida Republicans to go up against because of his skyrocketing profile within the party.

This whole session was a showcase for DeSantis  a trial balloon for a White House campaign  and nationally hes a 600-pound gorilla with the possibility of becoming an 800-pound gorilla, especially if he gets his way with these maps, Brandes said.

'A win-win' for DeSantis

From drawing his own map to threatening that veto, DeSantis involvement in congressional redistricting hasnt been seen before in Florida, said University of Florida political science professor Michael McDonald.

McDonald, an expert in redistricting, said he cant think of a single governor in the country who vetoed congressional maps passed by a legislature controlled by his party in recent history.

McDonald, whos involved in a lawsuit against the university for trying to block him and other professors from lending their expertise in court cases that would challenge DeSantis policies, said that the governor knows how to exercise power and that he wants more Republican congressional seats created in Florida  despite the Fair Districts requirements in the state Constitution.

The 2010 voter-approved constitutional amendments prohibit legislators from intentionally drawing seats that favor or disfavor incumbents or parties or that reduce the ability of minority voters to elect candidates of their choice.

Its a win-win situation for him, McDonald said. DeSantis wants to stand up for Republican interests because he doesnt want to be labeled as the Republican who gave control of the U.S. House of Representatives to the Democrats. And second, he has a much larger agenda where hes challenging Fair Districts and seeks to unravel parts of the Voting Right Act.

The governors office declined to comment for this article beyond pointing to a Feb. 18 memo his office issued that argued that the north Florida seat, currently Floridas 5th Congressional District, was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander under a 2017 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a North Carolina case.

The ruling was issued two years after the seat was drawn by the Florida Supreme Court.

Last month, DeSantis office also dispatched a redistricting expert, Robert Popper, of the conservative group Judicial Watch, to warn state House legislators that their map preserving the north Florida district was vulnerable to court challenges.

'This is about the presidential election of 2024'

Ellen Freidin, a Democrat who founded the Fair Districts political group that successfully put the anti-gerrymandering amendments before voters, said the memo and Poppers involvement show that DeSantis has a litigation strategy that dovetails with a broader nationwide conservative effort to reduce minority voting power.

This is not just about Florida redistricting. This is about the presidential election of 2024, said Freidin, whose group is still active.

People familiar with DeSantis thinking agree that he wants to put Floridas case in the national spotlight in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, alongside another case in Alabama over whether legislators should have drawn a second Black district in the state.

Referring to the influential Washington-based legal group, a Republican said: All of the constitutional lawyers he speaks with, both in the Federalist Society and elsewhere, believe that both Fair Districts and the Voting Rights Act when it comes to racial gerrymandering are illegal. The Republican asked not to be identified, lacking authorization to speak publicly about private conversations with DeSantis about redistricting. It should be color-blind. It should be based on geography and political boundaries, not on race, this Republican said.

The source said DeSantis is in regular email contact with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, a leading opponent of racial set-asides, which the conservative-leaning court has scaled back in recent years.

The seven-member Florida Supreme Court also became more conservative after DeSantis appointed three members, noting along the way that he was seeking more conservative interpretations of Floridas Fair Districts law. The states high court, however, declined DeSantis request to weigh in on the north Florida congressional seat he has targeted.

All sides agree that the courts will ultimately rule on the maps, but its unclear whether the issue will be decided in federal or state court because of the complicated nature and case law of congressional redistricting.

Democrats sue first

On Friday, national Democratic lawyer Marc Elias law firm struck first by asking state courts to create a new congressional map, which must be drawn every 10 years under the U.S. Constitution. Florida is gaining an additional House seat under reapportionment, for a total of 28.

The filing came before the Legislature even sent DeSantis the maps and therefore before he could veto them. Once he gets them, its not certain whether he will call legislators back into session, and even if he does, theres no guarantee theyll pass his maps.

To that end, some in DeSantis orbit want him to add additional pressure by forcing legislators into a special session that would include not just redistricting but also restrictions on unions or the right to openly carry guns without permits. Others say DeSantis should just veto the redistricting maps, not attack members of his own party, and then head to court.

Some Republicans in the Legislature, asking not to be identified so as not to defy DeSantis openly, say the governor may not call them back into session because they ultimately wont accede to this one demand of his and he wont want the embarrassment of a loss.

DeSantis ostensibly isnt seeking to eliminate all four districts held by Black Democrats in the state. Two of them, in South Florida, are majority-minority seats that probably cant be undone under the current interpretations of the Voting Rights Act.

Instead, hes targeting the north Florida and Orlando-area districts held by Lawson and Demings, respectively, which dont have majority-minority populations but are still considered minority access seats drawn to better ensure that minority voters elect members of Congress who are of the same race or ethnicity. Black voters arent a majority of voters in either district, however.

Lawsons district stands out because its not compact, running for 200 miles from Jacksonville to Tallahassee. It was drawn by the Florida Supreme Court in 2015 to make sure that Black voters in Jacksonville still had an opportunity to elect a Black lawmaker after a different, gerrymandered minority-heavy seat, which ran south from Jacksonville to Orlando, was eliminated after the passage of Fair Districts.

The states high court drew the seat after prolonged litigation from Fair Districts backers  who were overwhelmingly Democratic  exposed how the Republican-led Legislature intentionally gerrymandered it to benefit the GOP.

But in light of the 2017 U.S. Supreme Court ruling and the 5th Districts sprawling nature, Republicans might have an easier task eliminating it compared to the Alabama case over whether to draw a hypothetical second Black-held district, which would have been far more compact, said law professor Doug Spencer, a redistricting expert at the University of Colorado.

I think that is the ultimate goal [of DeSantis]: provide a vehicle for the court with the best possible facts to strike down the Voting Rights Act. And this would be the best way to do it  hes not wrong, he said. I think he would probably actually win.

Mindful that DeSantis could be right, the Legislature passed two versions of its congressional map. The first map would curtail Lawsons district to just the Jacksonville area; the second would keep the district essentially as it is now. Demings seat would also be largely preserved under the Legislatures maps.

DeSantis disliked both.

I will veto the congressional reapportionment plan currently being debated by the House. DOA, DeSantis tweeted March 4 before he held a news conference in Jacksonville, where he emphasized how serious he was.

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 asked reporters. I dont bluff.

Republicans in the Legislature say they were taken aback by DeSantis power play, with one describing him as being hyperfocused on redistricting compared to other issues.

In meetings, he would just demand: Pass my maps! My maps! My maps! Hes just bizarrely obsessed with this. He wont let it go. He wont listen to reason, said a Republican who didnt want to criticize DeSantis publicly.

Republicans who served in the state Capitol during the last star-crossed redistricting process say they have redistricting PTSD and want to make sure that this time legislators adhere to the voter-approved Fair Districts constitutional amendment.

But then here comes Ron, and he just blows the whole thing up because he wants to be president, a top Republican said. And this is after we gave him everything he could want: the most conservative legislative session and all his budget priorities.

During the session, legislators passed restrictions on abortion, immigration and teaching about race and sexual orientation and gender. They gave him an election fraud police force he called for, and they heeded his veto threat and made changes to a controversial water bill backed by the sugar industry and hated by Everglades advocates.

But its not enough.

In the old days, in a session like this, everyone would be raising their hands in victory because everyone got something, said a second source close to DeSantis who discusses politics with the governor. But DeSantis  like his voters  lives in a world of absolutes. He doesnt remember the 99 times you were with him. He remembers the one time you werent. And hell make sure the base knows.

DeSantis became a magnet for controversy  and thereby a darling of conservatives nationwide  for his early resistance to Covid mandates. He showed a knack for earning national media coverage and liberal outrage as he fought the teaching of racial history in schools, berated high school students for wearing masks at a media event and tussled with Disneys CEO over the controversial parental rights bill concerning sexual orientation and gender.

DeSantis has carved out his own lane in the GOP: the Voldemort lane, said Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber, a Democrat who clashed with DeSantis over Covid lockdowns and who was involved in Democrats redistricting efforts in 2010.

DeSantis has shown that theres now a political premium on throwing kerosene on every fire, Gelber said. He just fights everyone, even his own Republican Legislature, if they try to follow the law.
While the actual BAFTA film awards ceremony on Sunday may have been largely apolitical, the red carpet leading up to it was awash with political commentary.

The Power of the Dog star and BAFTA best actor nominee Benedict Cumberbatch, who attended the event with his wife Sophie Hunter, wore a badge depicting the Ukrainian flag.

Cumberbatch said the awards are a celebration of an industry thats about imagery, and images speaking as loud as if not louder sometimes than words. So its a small gesture, the actor told BBC News.

But away from this, what we all have to do is continue to put pressure on our politicians as far as the refugee crisis goes, continue to put pressure on the Putin regime, continue to help in any which way we can  whether thats through donations or housing refugees, all of which Im looking to do and have done.

The U.K. government has launched a local sponsorship scheme for Ukraine, which will match British people, charities, businesses and community groups to Ukrainians who do not have established families in the country, so they are able to come to the U.K.

Cumberbatchs fellow best actor nominee Stephen Graham wore a blue and yellow bow and said: I want to show my support and solidarity for what were going to go through.

Venom: Let There Be Carnage director Andy Serkis, who presented the best director award, told PA News on the red carpet: Its a difficult situation having a celebration like this when such horrendous, horrific things are happening not too far away from here. But I think its also important that arts are celebrated because arts do hold humanity together, and actually freedom of speech and the power of storytelling is something that I think Ukrainians would totally applaud.

So if we hold them up tonight and reflect the enjoyment and the passion back to them, I dont think its a bad thing, Serkis added. Its really important to remember what is going on in the context of having an event like this, but as I say, what it stands for is so positive, because its about inclusion, because actually BAFTA have really, really moved, in the last few years, towards inclusion.

Other stars who displayed solidarity with Ukraine at the awards included The Girl Before actor Jessica Plummer who wore a blue and yellow ribbon and Made in Chelsea actor Millie Mackintosh who sported a ribbon in Ukrainian colors.

Cumberbatch has been repeatedly vocal about the invasion. Its more now for all of us to do than just have thoughts and prayers, Cumberbatch had said, as he was honored with a Hollywood Walk of Fame star in February, days after Russia attacked. We need to actwe need to see what we can do as citizens of the world.

On March 9, the Doctor Strange star held up a Ukrainian flag at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival and shouted out: Stand united with Ukraine.

Subscribe to Variety Newsletters and Email Alerts!
Despite Marlee Matlin's history with ex William Hurt, she had nothing but kind things to say about him following his death Sunday of complications from prostate cancer. He was 71.

Matlin dated the star of Body Heat and The Big Chill for two years, after they met as co-stars in the 1986 movie Children of a Lesser God, for which both were nominated for an Oscar. She won. But, as Matlin wrote in her 2009 memoir, I'll Scream Later, the relationship included physical and emotional abuse. She alleged that one night, while Hurt was making Broadcast News, he raped her.

"CODA" actress Marlee Matlin attends the Critics Choice Awards on March 13 in Los Angeles. (Photo: Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic)

"You're the first person to ask me a question about him," Matlin told ET Canada, via sign language, Sunday on the red carpet at the Critics' Choice Awards, when a reporter asked her about Hurt's death. "We've lost a really great actor and working with him on set in Children of a Lesser God will always be something I remember very fondly. He taught me a great deal as an actor and he was one-of-a-kind."

In April 2009, Matlin told Access Hollywood that she "always had fresh bruises every day" during the relationship, which began when she was 19 and he was 35. She also said that she had struggled to leave.

Hurt gave a statement to the outlet at the time: "My own recollection is that we both apologized and both did a great deal to heal our lives. Of course, I did and do apologize for any pain I caused. And I know we both have grown. I wish Marlee and her family nothing but good."

William Hurt and Marlee Matlin attend the Tony Awards in June 1987. (Photo: Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images)

Matlin said she hadn't even considered reporting the abuse to law enforcement because she was also struggling with drug addiction. Hurt reportedly had addictions of his own.

"I was so wrapped up in his world and my drugs. The drugs took over my life, took over my brain," Matlin told Access Hollywood. "I was 19 and I was alone in New York City. I had no friends there except my drug dealer."

Matlin is one of the many in Hollywood, including Russell Crowe, Antonio Banderas, Mark Ruffalo and Albert Brooks, who have commented on Hurt's acting legacy in the wake of his death.
William Hurt and Raul Julia in the landmark 1985 indie film, Kiss of the Spider Woman. (Photo:  Island Alive/courtesy Everett Collection)

Editor's Note: This story was originally published in 2015. It has been updated to reflect William Hurt's passing.

From Body Heat to Broadcast News, William Hurt was one of the defining faces of '80s-era Hollywood hits. But the late actor, who died on Mar. 13 at age 71, played an equally important role in that decade's nascent independent film movement. In 1985, Hurt starred alongside Raul Julia in the groundbreaking indie film, Kiss of the Spider Woman. "Im proud we did it," the actor told Yahoo Movies in an emotional 2015 interview ahead of the film's 30th anniversary. "Its hard to describe how grateful an artist would be to have an experience like that. Its one of the proudest things of my life."

An immediate art-hour sensation, Kiss of the Spider Woman grossed $17 million during its theatrical run  a then-astronomical sum in the independent film world. The film went on to receive four Oscar nominations including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay. Hurt himself was nominated for, and won, a Best Actor statue, beating out such nominees as Harrison Ford in Witness and Jack Nicholson in Prizzis Honor. He also became the first Hollywood star to win an Oscar for playing an out gay character, just four years after Harry Hamlin found himself ostracized for doing the same in the 20th Century Fox film, Making Love.

Adapted from Argentine author Manuel Puigs 1976 novel and directed by Brazilian filmmaker Hector Babenco on location in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Kiss of the Spider Woman depicts the intense bond that forms between two men imprisoned in a Brazilian jail during the countrys three-decade military dictatorship. Julia plays political activist, Valentin, while Hurt portrays gay movie lover Luis, who regales his cellmate with vivid descriptions of his favorite films. (The Spider Woman of the title, played by Sonia Braga, is one such cinematic creation.) Initially antagonistic, Valentin comes to respect and care for Luis, who in turn falls in love with the revolutionary, even as hes being pressured into betraying him by the secret police.

Given the difficult subject matter and the lack of an established indie film community in the early 80s, getting the movie made was a Herculean challenge. As producer David Weisman told Indiewire in a 2010 interview, he and Babenco spent years trying to raise the funds to make the film and lost various collaborators  including Hollywood legend Burt Lancaster, who originally intended to play Luis  along the way. The producer also recalls early cuts of the film as being problematic, forcing significant post-production work.

When Kiss of the Spider Woman finally premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May 1985, though, the reaction proved universally positive. Scooped up by the new distributor, Island Alive, and released domestically on July 26, the movie won instant acclaim from critics  as well as from the LGBTQ community  for Hurts sensitive portrayal of a man whose sexuality makes him a criminal in societys eyes.

The AIDS crisis and the still-widespread discrimination against gay men only made Kiss of the Spider Woman all the more timely and relevant. "We had to say something about not just gay rights, but about feminine and masculine relationships, and the nature of courage and what it means to speak truth to a power so much greater than you are," Hurt observed in 2015. "We didnt make any money while we were shooting, so there was no angling for gratuitous reward. This was just a glorious opportunity to do the right thing."

Despite reports that he and Babenco clashed during production due to their language barrier, Hurt described the shoot as being filled with "miracles [that] littered our entire experience." One particular miracle that stands out in his mind occurred while he and Julia swung by the set to rehearse during what was supposed to be their day off.

"The set was just this simple platform with breakaway walls in a warehouse-type location," Hurt recalled. "I noticed a glint in a faraway corner and climbed off the platform to look more carefully. I saw one of the films construction workers, who was amazed that these two American actors would take time out of their day to come to that warehouse and work so hard. He was standing there with tears rolling down his face and that was the glint I saw. He didnt even speak our language. I thought, 'Okay, Im doing this for him.'"

Hurt won a Best Actor Oscar for his role in 1985's Kiss of the Spider Woman. The actor described his role as "one of the produest things of my life." (Photo: Island Alive/courtesy Everett Collection)

While Hurt received the lions share of acclaim and awards for taking on what at the time was a risky role, Julias carefully modulated performance as Valentin is also essential to Spider Womans success. It was the role that launched the Puerto Rican-born stage actor to such high-profile films as Tequila Sunrise, Presumed Innocent and The Addams Family.

Speaking of his co-star  who passed away in 1994 after suffering a stroke  Hurt sounded genuinely moved by their time together. "I miss him. I miss a lot of people nowadays. It was way too early." The two stayed friends in the years after Kiss of the Spider Woman, often calling each other to play chess over the phone from wherever in the world they happened to be shooting a film. "The rule was, He who loses the last piece pays for the next phone call,'" Hurt recalled. "Of course, he was a much better chess player than I was, so I was paying exorbitant rates! Then one day, he didnt call, and that was the day he died."

Hurt and Julia play two very different Brazilian prisoners who find common ground in Kiss of the Spider Woman. (Photo: Strand Releasing/Courtesy Everett Collection)

Despite its importance to indie film history, Kiss of the Spider Woman has never been an easy film for viewers to find. A thorny legal dispute kept it out circulation for years, until it was re-released theatrically in 2001 courtesy of Strand Releasing. Spider Woman later debuted on DVD and Blu-ray in 2008, but those discs are now out of print and the film is unavailable to stream. Now that Hurt's passing has renewed interest in the film, fans on Twitter are hoping that might finally change.

Criminally, due to strange rights issues, William Hurts glorious Oscar-winning performance as Molina in Kiss of the Spider Woman is out of print and not streaming anywhere. Hopefully @Criterion or @KinoLorber can rescue it someday. #RIPWilliamHurt  Bryan Cogman (@cogman_bryan) March 13, 2022

In light of William Hurt's passing, it's worth noting that Kiss of the Spider Woman, a Best Picture nominee and his only Oscar win, is unavailable to watch in the states. No streaming presence, region 1 DVD/blu-ray out of print...another important film trapped in rights limbo.  Robert Joseph (@robertgjoseph) March 14, 2022

First saw William Hurts work in Kiss of the Spider Woman for a college fiction/film class. What a fantastic role for him. Won him an Oscar. (Excellent film score, too.)



Rest In Peace, William Hurt. Thank you for your art. pic.twitter.com/aWVR5Pjbp0  SoCalCitoyen (@CitoyenSo) March 14, 2022

When William Hurt won the 1985 Best Actor Oscar for his performance as Luis Molina in KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN, it was the first time that an actor won an Oscar for a performance of an explicitly stated LGBT+ character.  Dashiell M. Silva (@dashiellsilva) March 14, 2022

I became a fan of William Hurt when I first saw him in Kiss of the Spider Woman - part of an amazing cast with Raul Julia & Sonia Braga.  Grissele Camacho (@GrisseleCamacho) March 14, 2022
Children enjoy the playground while their parents wait for admission to the crisis centre in Brussels, Belgium. (Photo by Thierry Monasse/Getty Images)

No limit will be placed on the number of Ukrainians who can be offered a home in Britain, Michael Gove has said.

The Government launched the sponsorship scheme  Homes for Ukraine  to allow people and organisations to give Ukrainians fleeing the war a place to stay on Monday afternoon.

Communities Secretary Michael Gove told MPs Ukrainians will be able to live and work in the UK for up to three years under the scheme, with full and unrestricted access to benefits, healthcare, employment and other support.

Those offering a place to stay will receive a tax-free monthly payment of 350 which will not affect benefit entitlements or council tax status.

Michael Gove announced the scheme in the Commons on Monday (David Parry/PA)

Speaking in the Commons, Mr Gove said the number of Ukrainians now arriving in the UK is rapidly increasing, and the numbers will grow even faster from tomorrow, adding that the unfailingly compassionate British public wants to help further.

He said: Today we are answering that call with the announcement of a new sponsorship scheme, Homes For Ukraine.

The scheme will allow Ukrainians with no family ties to the UK to be sponsored by individuals or organisations who can offer them a home. There will be no limit to the number of Ukrainians who can benefit from this scheme.

The scheme will be open to all Ukrainian nationals and residents. They will be able to live and work in the United Kingdom for up to three years. They will have full and unrestricted access to benefits, health care, employment and other support.

The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities later clarified that the scheme will be open to Ukrainian nationals and immediate family members who were residents prior to January 1  but did not include residents who are not Ukrainian nationals as an eligible group.

The Homes for Ukraine webpage also does not mention residents of Ukraine who are not Ukrainian nationals.

UK sponsors can be of any nationality with any immigration status, provided they have at least six months leave to remain within the UK and will need to provide accommodation for a minimum of six months.

The Government wants to minimise bureaucracy and make the process as straightforward as possible, while also doing everything we can to ensure the safety of all involved, he added as he set out how sponsors will need to submit to vetting while Ukrainians will also be subject to security checks.

Initially the scheme will facilitate sponsorship between people with known connections so it can be up and running as soon as possible, Mr Gove said, but added that it will rapidly expand by working with charities, faith and community groups.

Mr Gove said the UK has a long and proud history of supporting the most vulnerable in their darkest hours, adding: The British people have already opened their hearts in so many ways, Im hopeful that many will also be ready to open their homes and to help those fleeing persecution find peace, healing and the prospect of a brighter future.

Shadow communities secretary Lisa Nandy said Labour was relieved to hear Mr Gove would announce the sponsorship scheme after weeks of delay, adding: A press release is not a plan and we are really deeply concerned about the lack of urgency.

Ms Nandy insisted the visa application process could be simplified, telling Mr Gove: We could keep essential checks but drop the excessive bureaucracy.

NEW  UK individuals, charities, community groups & businesses can now record their interest in supporting Ukrainians fleeing the war through our new Homes for Ukraine scheme. Express an interest in becoming a sponsor now  https://t.co/Tnh1cpJEle#StandWithUkraine  pic.twitter.com/vbbINAz3XP  Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (@luhc) March 14, 2022

The web page experienced some difficulties minutes after launching, with people trying to register their interest as individuals and organisations being timed out, but this appeared to be resolved shortly after.

In less than an hour, 1,500 people had already registered for the scheme, Mr Gove told MPs, adding that he hopes the first Ukrainians to receive support under the project will arrive within a week.

Amnesty International UK accused the Government of trying to save face rather than setting out measures which genuinely respond to the needs of people fleeing the war in Ukraine, adding: After the Home Offices chaotic and coldly bureaucratic response, the sponsorship scheme smacks of emergency PR from a Government which has totally misread the public mood.

Well need to see the full details, but the UKs refugee sponsorship schemes do not have a good track record. A similar sponsorship arrangement for Syrians led to only a few hundred people being accommodated.
It is not impossible that Russia will launch an attack which could hit Nato territory, a Cabinet minister admitted as fears rose about an escalation of the conflict in Ukraine.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky warned it was only a matter of time before the alliance was struck following a Russian attack on a base less than 15 miles from the border with Nato member Poland.

Health Secretary Sajid Javid said he believed a direct attack on a Nato member was still very unlikely but warned it would trigger a response from the alliance, which has a policy of mutual defence.

Mr Javid told BBCs Today programme: Weve made it very clear to the Russians even before the start of this conflict.

Even if a single Russian toecap steps into Nato territory, then it will be considered an act of war.

The attack on the Yavoriv base, which has previously been used by Nato to train Ukrainian soldiers, was one of the western-most targets struck by Russia during the invasion.

(PA Graphics)

Mr Zelensky, who spoke to Boris Johnson on Sunday, used the attack near the Polish frontier to renew his call for Nato allies to close the skies above Ukraine.

In other developments:

 The UK Government will set out further details of its sponsorship scheme allowing individuals and organisations to provide a home to Ukrainians fleeing the war,

 Peace talks between Ukraine and Russia will resume.

Tomorrow, Deputy Prime Minister @dominicraab will visit the @IntlCrimCourt to offer the UKs support in gathering and preserving evidence for the investigation and prosecution of war crimes. More: https://t.co/qHw5qeWl6t https://t.co/bcr6YMlnZI  Ministry of Justice (@MoJGovUK) March 13, 2022

 Justice Secretary Dominic Raab was visiting The Hague on Monday to offer UK legal expertise and technical support to the International Criminal Court as it considers allegations of war crimes.

 The UK will supply Ukraine with more than 500 portable generators to provide energy for essential services, including at hospitals and shelters.

 NHS England will provide treatment for 21 Ukrainian children with cancer forced to flee Ukraine.

More than 20 Ukrainian children will receive lifesaving cancer treatment in the NHS in England. Children and their family members will be supported by NHS clinicians to understand their health needs before continuing their care in NHS hospitals. https://t.co/Djat9A70lD pic.twitter.com/DlsS0G8Y3f  NHS England and NHS Improvement (@NHSEngland) March 13, 2022

The escalation of the war in western Ukraine came as Mr Johnson prepared to host leaders from the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF), an alliance of northern European nations.

Representatives from Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Sweden and Norway will attend the gathering on Monday and Tuesday.

During a call with Mr Zelensky on Sunday, Mr Johnson said the UK would continue to pursue more options for bolstering Ukraines self-defence including at the JEF meeting on Tuesday.

Mr Johnson said Russian president Vladimir Putins barbaric actions were testing not just Ukraine but all of humanity.

An aerial view of refugees queuing for transport at the border crossing at Medyka, Poland (AP)

People keen to offer refugees shelter in the UK can register their interest in sponsoring Ukrainians through the Governments new humanitarian scheme from Monday.

Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove, who is expected to give further details on Monday, said he expects the first refugees to use the new route will make their way to the UK by the end of the week.

More than 3,000 visas had been issued to Ukrainians seeking refuge in the UK under the existing family reunification scheme, with tens of thousands potentially set to benefit from the new humanitarian route.

Local authority areas will be entitled to more than 10,000 per Ukrainian refugee using the new route to the UK, while Britons offering to take in someone fleeing the war will receive a thank you payment of 350 per month.
A vision is needed, not pragmatism By Mark Wegierski

web posted March 14, 2022 Mark Towheys recent article (March 9, 2022) in The National Post Tories need to worry less about how conservative they are and focus on being pragmatic. arguably does a disservice to those hoping to rally the Conservative Party of Canada. Mark Towhey, who currently advises political and business leaders, served as chief of staff to Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, and later as editor-in-chief of Canadas Sun newspapers. (Obviously, this response was submitted to The National Post, but they chose not to run it.) Let us look at the example of Brian Mulroney. Mulroney clearly lacked what the neoconservative political writer William Kristol and others have called the ability to "govern strategically", something which Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau did so successfully for so long. To "govern strategically" means to have a set of certain fundamental policy objectives (i.e., what is commonly called an "agenda"), which springs from one's personal philosophical framework, and to clearly enunciate it and fight for it in the political arena. Those who do not "govern strategically" find themselves perpetually on the defensive, reacting to developments shaped by others, fighting on other's terrain, at someone else's chosen time and place, and being judged by other's criteria. Without a fundamental intellectual framework or overarching "vision" (something to really believe in and fight for), Brian Mulroney was condemned to failure. Although successful in gaining formal power, he was incapable of exercising it de facto. His two terms ended in disaster. The two most memorable accomplishments of Mulroney were the Canada-U.S. Free Trade deal (something that had long been opposed by the Conservative Party  and supported by the Liberal Party -- for most of Canadian history), and the Goods & Services Tax (GST), Canadas version of a value-added tax, which largely helped only the Liberals after 1993 in allowing them to have huge government spending and balance the budget at the same time. The two major attempts to conciliate Quebec, the Meech Lake Accord, and the Charlottetown Agreements, both failed. To use the terminology of the political thinker Vilfredo Pareto, Mulroney could be seen as a super-cunning "fox", who lacks the backbone and principles of a "lion", and so was unable to effectively exercise his power, however successful he was in attaining it in the purely formal sense. To a large extent, the failure of Brian Mulroney in the 1980s reflected the general failure of the federal Progressive Conservative party in enunciating a clear and consistent philosophy and set of policies, a signal failure to take advantage of one of their rare and fleeting moments of electoral triumph. PC party members proved incapable of turning around the direction of the party even for purely personal, selfish reasons. The PC party appeared incapable of acting even in its narrowly-conceived self-interest, let alone for the sake of higher principles. Purely from the standpoint of pragmatic politics, the embracing by the federal PCs of Liberal and New Democratic Party positions, policies, and programs, was a path to political suicide. While alienating and confusing core PC supporters (who indeed turned in large numbers to Preston Manning's Reform Party), these sorts of policies failed to win over convinced liberals and socialists. Given the choice between PCs enacting liberal policies, and Liberals enacting liberal policies, whom were the more liberal-oriented sections of the electorate more likely to choose? It does not seem likely that Mulroney was handed the second-largest majority in Canadian history to continue and extend the policies of previous Liberal governments. The adoption by the federal PCs of Liberal and NDP policies and programs could be seen as a frustration of the democratic process, which presupposes that the voters have the right to choose from a variety of widely-differing, widely-contrasting, platforms and philosophies, to make at least some fundamental choices. As Mulroney drew ever closer to Liberal and NDP policies and programs, he weakened not only the future electoral prospects of the federal PCs, he also made a mockery of that trust which people put in him. By "governing strategically" with his 211-seat majority, Mulroney could have, even in four years, dramatically changed the shape and direction of all of Canadian society, as Trudeau had done during his sixteen years in power. As society changed in response to his initiatives, Mulroney would have found that his social base and support would have grown, rather than shrunk. Rather than a helpless pawn of other tendencies and powers, Mulroney would have himself become the chief focus of power in Canadian society, as befits a democratically-elected Prime Minister. Canada has today reached a situation driving towards the most extreme forms of political correctness and of the ideological hegemony of what critics have called the managerial-therapeutic regime. Its possible that only the vast, resource-based wealth of Canada allows the country to avoid some more obviously dystopic and violent outcomes. The weakness and incoherence of the Centre-Right Opposition, especially in the 1980s, has contributed to the inability of Canadian society today to somehow temper vast, onrushing societal velocities and trajectories. Mark Wegierski is a Toronto-based, Canadian writer and historical researcher, published in Alberta Report, Calgary Herald, Ottawa Citizen, and The Hill Times (Ottawa), among others. His article about Canada was reprinted in Annual Editions: World Politics, 1998-99 (Dushkin/McGraw-Hill, 1998). Home
Julian Assange has been denied permission to appeal against the High Courts decision in December 2021 to extradite him to the United States, the Supreme Court has confirmed.

On Monday, the UKs highest court said that senior judges had refused Assanges bid to challenge the decision as his application did not raise an arguable point of law.

In a statement, his lawyers Birnberg Peirce Solicitors said they regretted that the court would not consider the troubling circumstances by which governments requesting extradition can add terms to the extradition post-hearing.

However, Assanges legal team previously said there were other parts of his appeal that had not yet been heard by the High Court.

The statement continued: No appeal to the High Court has yet been filed by him in respect of the other important issues he raised previously  That separate process of appeal has, of course, has yet to be initiated.

Assange, 50, is wanted in America over an alleged conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information following WikiLeaks publication of hundreds of thousands of leaked documents relating to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

US authorities brought a High Court challenge against a January 2021 ruling by then-district judge Vanessa Baraitser that Assange should not be sent to the US, in which she cited a real and oppressive risk of suicide.

Julian Assange (Dominic Lipinski/PA)

After a two-day hearing, the Lord Chief Justice Lord Burnett, sitting with Lord Justice Holroyde, ruled in favour of the US last year.

The senior judges found that Judge Baraitser had based her decision on the risk of Assange being held in highly restrictive prison conditions if extradited.

However, the US authorities later gave assurances that Assange would not face those strictest measures either pre-trial or post-conviction unless he committed an act in the future that required them.

Lord Burnett previously said that if the original judge had been given those assurances at the time of her ruling, she would have answered the relevant question differently.

The WikiLeaks founders lawyers had sought to appeal against that decision at the Supreme Court, arguing it raises serious and important legal issues.

Following the Supreme Courts decision, the case is now expected to be formally sent to Home Secretary Priti Patel for approval.

In January, Lord Burnett, sitting with Lord Justice Holroyde, refused permission for the appeal, adding that the decision of whether to hear the appeal was up to the Supreme Court.

In her January 2021 ruling blocking the extradition, Judge Baraitser found in favour of the US on all issues except Assanges mental health.

Assange has previously indicated that he wants to challenge the original judges other findings.

The decision comes after the WikiLeaks founders fiancee Stella Moris announced on Sunday that the pair will marry in Belmarsh Prison in south-east London on March 23  weeks before the third anniversary of his dramatic arrest when he was dragged out of the Ecuadorian embassy in the capital.

Ms Moris, who has two children with Assange, previously said just four guests and two witnesses will be allowed to attend the ceremony, as well as two security guards.
People keen to offer refugees shelter in the UK can register their interest in sponsoring Ukrainians through the Governments new humanitarian scheme from Monday.

Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove has said the process of matching Britons with people fleeing the conflict will take place from Friday, while he expects the first refugees to use the new route will make their way to the UK by the end of the week.

Mr Gove said more than 3,000 visas have so far been issued to Ukrainians seeking help in the UK, with the Cabinet minister estimating tens of thousands more will be provided.

 What is the scheme?

The Homes for Ukraine programme will allow individuals, charities, community groups and businesses to bring people escaping the war to safety  even if they have no ties to the UK.

Anyone with a room or home available can offer it to a Ukrainian individual or a family, though those offering will be vetted and Ukrainian applicants will undergo security checks.

 How long can refugees stay with a family or individual?

Members of the public will be able to nominate a Ukrainian family to stay with them for at least six months.

Sponsored Ukrainians will be granted three years leave to remain in the UK, with entitlement to work and access public services.

 What security checks will be carried out?

Russian invasion of Ukraine graphic

The exact detail is not known, but Mr Gove has said steps will be taken to ensure people who might be intent on exploitation are prevented from abusing the new scheme.

The Cabinet minister told Sky News: We absolutely do need to make sure, first of all, that the people in Ukraine are who they say they are, so there need to be some security checks there.

Theres been understandable concern about the scheme being exploited possibly by criminal elements. So, thats the first thing.

Then the second thing is we do need to make sure that people here  are in a position to provide that support, which is why there will need to be security checks as well to make sure that those  and I think it would only ever be a tiny minority, but still  those who might be intent on exploitation can be prevented from abusing the system.

A spokesperson for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) said the charity did not want to see unnecessary barriers built into the process, but it is vital child protection is built into every stage of the Governments and local authorities response to this crisis.

 Is there any compensation for hosting?

Britons offering accommodation to Ukrainian refugees will receive a thank you payment of 350 per month.

Mr Gove has also said local authority areas will be entitled to more than 10,000 per Ukrainian refugee using the fresh route to the UK.

Additional payments will be available to support school-age children who need to be accommodated within the education system, he said.

 NEW: We're making changes to the Ukraine Family Scheme to make it quicker & simpler. This will mean from Tuesday Ukrainians with passports don't need to visit a Visa Application Centre to provide biometrics before coming here. Security checks will continue on all cases. pic.twitter.com/cpJjgmSwXo  Home Office (@ukhomeoffice) March 10, 2022

 How do you apply?

The Government is due to launch its website gathering expressions of interest from potential hosts on Monday.

 What has been the response?

Mr Gove has said he would personally take in a Ukrainian refugee and Academy Award-nominated actor Benedict Cumberbatch said from the Baftas red carpet on Sunday that he hopes to take part in the scheme.

But there has been criticism too, with the Refugee Council noting unlike the UK all EU countries have waived visa requirements for Ukrainians in the short term.

Council chief executive Enver Solomon told The Guardian the UK scheme was effectively a managed migration route, which is not suitable to use to respond to a humanitarian crisis.

Mr Solomon also said the programme should only be one part of Britains response to the crisis.

But if its going to work, it needs to be delivered with all the right resource and all the necessary entitlements for Ukrainians  so theyre able to get all the healthcare they need, access housing benefit  because the reality is, the sponsor arrangement will be a short-term measure, he said.

This conflict doesnt look like its going to end quickly. There needs to be a clear pathway to longer-term accommodations.

There have been also concerns about the tight timeframe the Government has provided, with the NSPCC in its statement calling it an ambitious turnaround.

The charity said it was essential that the Government works closely with local authorities, the fostering community, charities and other key local partners to ensure this sponsorship scheme is ultimately safe; has appropriate levels of support for traumatised Ukrainian children who have fled bloodshed, and on-going assistance available for their sponsors.
Could a tongue, lip or cheek-tie be the reason your baby is crying or struggling to feed? Doctors say the condition is common and often passed through genetics. (Photo: Getty Creative)

Newborns are known for being fussy: In those first weeks after birth, babies often struggle to get the hang of sleeping and feeding properly. But, while every new parent prepares for many sleepless nights, there are some babies who continue to struggle with the basics for months on end with seemingly no cause in sight.

If a baby is struggling to latch while breastfeeding, is constantly hungry or is losing weight, the reason could be a hidden ailment that impacts five percent of of all newborns: tongue-tie. Tongue-tie, also known as ankyloglossia, is a condition that can affect a child's ability to eat or speak, due to the tongue being tethered to the floor of the mouth.

But how are tongue-ties treated? And how can a parent tell if their baby is tongue-tied?

What is a tongue-tie?

"Each of my children has been born with a tongue-tie," shares Marisa Tolsma, a mom of four from Colorado. Tolsma says she suspected a tongue-tie with her firstborn, but after her midwife assured her nothing was wrong, she set her concerns aside. It wasn't until her third child was born that she revisited the potential issue.

"I had switched to a different midwife who knew how to recognize tongue-ties," Tolsma recalls. "She suspected a tie right after my third child was born and recommended I go to a dentist experienced in frenectomies (a procedure to correct tongue-ties in which the soft tissue responsible for the tie is cut) for an evaluation and diagnosis. I took my baby and other two children and he diagnosed tongue and lip-ties in all three of them."

When her fourth child was born, Tolsma took him to the same dentist who diagnosed him right away.

Arizona orthodontist Todd Dickerson says, put simply, a tongue-tie is a condition present from birth that restricts the tongue's range of motion: The tongue is tethered to the bottom of the mouth by tissue.

In addition to tongue-ties, some children suffer from lip-ties, where the skin of the upper or lower lip is attached to the gum in a way that is restrictive to the function of the lips. And, there are cheek-ties, a condition where a child's cheek connects to the bony ridge on the upper or lower jaw, further restricting movement of their mouth.

What causes tongue-ties?

Tongue-ties often run in the family: Deborah Rothschild is a newborn care specialist and mom of two who says after her sons were diagnosed, she and her husband learned they had tongue ties as well.

"It's genetic," Rothschild tells Yahoo Life, explaining her family's experience with the condition. "It's the tongue's job to rest at the roof of the mouth, however when someone is tied and the tongue is tethered to the bottom of the mouth, the tongue can't reach the roof of the mouth or perform its correct functions."

What are the symptoms of a tongue-tie?

Rothschild shares early on her children, who are now teenagers, showcased signs and symptoms of being tongue-tied like reflux, projectile vomiting, sleeping with their mouths open and colic (prolonged fussiness and crying). Still, she and her husband learned the hard way that not all pediatricians are trained to make the correct diagnosis.

"We saw so many doctors," she says, "a pediatrician, speech therapist, neurologist, gastroenterologist and even a developmental pediatrician. They kept saying our kids would grow out of it but they were completely wrong."

"We finally got a correct diagnosis from a dentist that specializes in tethered oral tissues," Rothschild adds, "[My kids] were miserable before treatment but afterward all the symptoms went away. They could drink more at each feeding and started burping naturally. Their bodies were more relaxed, they slept with closed mouths, became nasal breathers and had no more digestive issues."

How does a baby's tongue-tie affect breastfeeding?

Leigh Anne O'Connor is a lactation consultant and mom of three children, two of which were born with tongue-ties.

In addition to the tongue-tie symptoms babies may show, O'Connor says breastfeeding moms may notice physical symptoms of their own that could be clues to the presence of a tongue-tie in their baby. In addition to low milk supply, moms may notice their nipples are sore: When a baby is tongue-tied, their range of motion is limited and the way they are only able to suck on the tip of the nipple can cause compression of the nipple, cracks or soreness.

"This also limits the amount of milk a baby gets," O'Connor says. "Think cocktail straw for a smoothie as opposed to a full-sized straw, which can lead to poor weight gain."

What happens when a tongue-tie is untreated?

Dickerson says tongue- ties can lead to more than just feeding issues.

"An excessive attachment under the tongue often leads to speech issues," he explains. "Most people can make that connection, but what most do not understand is that excess attachment often leads to poor tongue posture as well, which can cause significant issues in jaw development."

Dickerson says many of these oral issues are related and can have a cascade effect. "Low tongue posture may lead to a narrow palatal vault, posterior skeletal crossbite as well as anterior open bite, which are all major dental issues," he says.

"A tongue-tied person cannot easily keep their tongue on the roof of the mouth, where it should be all of the time, including when you swallow," Dickerson adds."Not having the tongue on the roof of the mouth ... leads to a more narrow jaw and crowding of the teeth."

In addition, Dickerson says people with an untreated tongue-tie are more likely to have allergy and sinus issues, as well as an increased chance of needing dental surgery for impacted cuspids.

"Cuspids, also known as canines or fangs, are the third tooth in each quadrant of the mouth," Dickerson explains. "Since the cuspids come in later, they may become blocked or deflected due to a tongue-tie and not have the ability or room to erupt. When a tooth cannot erupt, it becomes impacted."

How is a tongue-tie treated?

And a tongue-tie doesn't resolve on its own: Long-term tongue-tie symptoms in growing children include poor oral hygiene, stunted oral growth, sleep apnea, mouth breathing and even tension in the neck and shoulders. "All of these can impact children in other areas of development," O'Connor says, "including learning struggles, speech impediments and a multitude of issues while eating."

But there's hope. O'Connor says the surgical release of a tongue-tie is simple.

"As difficult as it can be to have these oral issues diagnosed, the procedure to release the ties is simple, especially in babies," she says. "[The tie is] released using a laser or surgical scissors and generally takes about five minutes."

Dickerson suggests children see an orthodontist by age 7: That way if a tongue, lip, or cheek-tie went previously undetected, it can be caught before causing long-term health problems in the teen and adult years.

Relief for tongue-tied babies

Krissy Hadick, who lives in California and blogs at The Hadicks, says her son had a tongue-tie that went undiagnosed until he was 4 months old. Hadick says her baby showed symptoms of colic from birth, but neither his pediatrician nor lactation consultants ever caught the tongue-tie.

"He would nurse around the clock every hour," she recalls. "Being a first-time parent, I assumed he just had colic."

Hadick shares having a diagnosis, followed by what she describes as a "fairly simple procedure" to correct the condition was life-changing.

"It was when I described the patterns of my son's constant feeding and not sleeping that our local sleep training consultant suggested I should get him analyzed for a tongue-tie," she says. "It was like night and day. After our son's tongue-tie was fixed, the crying finally began to subside."

Want lifestyle and wellness news delivered to your inbox? Sign up here for Yahoo Lifes newsletter.
More experienced teachers in England are more likely to teach in schools with affluent intakes than other developed countries, new research has found.

In an international survey of teaching and learning (Talis) published on Monday, teachers in England with over 10 years in the classroom were found to be less likely to work in schools with a higher proportion of disadvantaged pupils.

The findings show attracting high-quality teachers to poorer schools needs to be a top priority, said James Zuccollo, director for school workforce at the Education Policy Institute (EPI)

The quality of teaching is the most important element of childrens schooling and it is essential to ensure that all children have access to great teachers, he said.

Todays Talis report shows that England is below the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) average when it comes to the distribution of more experienced teachers, with those who are in the profession longer more likely to be teaching in more affluent schools.

Given that countries with a more even distribution of quality teachers tend to perform better in international PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) tests, it is imperative that the Government continues to focus on policies that incentivise effective teachers into areas with low pupil outcomes.

Ensuring that challenging schools have the tools to attract and retain great teachers and the resources to support them must remain a top priority.

The report finds that experienced teachers are more likely to work in schools with more affluent intakes across all countries.

There are exceptions to the rule, however  more experienced teachers in Colombia, Shanghai and Israel were actually more likely to work in schools with high levels of economically disadvantaged pupils.

The report also found that, across all countries, teachers in more affluent schools were more likely to spend more of the lesson time teaching.

That said, it is not necessarily the case that teachers who know how to optimise actual teaching time are distributed more heavily in advantaged schools, the report said.

It is also possible that teachers in schools whose students are, for the most part, less well-off are unable to maximise their teaching time because classes are frequently disrupted by disciplinary problems.

Although the report draws on data from before the pandemic in 2018, it also notes that school closures have highlighted the continued presence of digital divides.

However, England was found to have a higher proportion of teachers trained in ICT working in disadvantaged schools than many other countries across the OECD.
The Russian missile strike on a Ukrainian military base close to the border with Poland has raised new fears that Nato could be drawn into the conflict.

 What is Nato?

The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is a military alliance founded in the aftermath of the Second World War primarily to counter the threat posed by the Soviet Union.

It initially comprised 10 European states  including the UK  plus the United States and Canada and was intended to bind the US to the defence of Europe.

Boris Johnson meets Nato troops in Estonia (Leon Neal/PA)

In 1955, West Germany was permitted to join, prompting the Soviet Union to form the rival Warsaw Pact marking the two sides in the Cold War.

 What is Natos purpose?

Under Article 5 of the founding North Atlantic Treaty  signed in April 1949  an attack on one member state is treated as an attack on all and requires other members to come to their assistance.

Since the 2014 Wales summit, alliance members have been formally committed to spending at least 2% of national income on defence.

 What happened to Nato after the Cold War?

Following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the subsequent break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, Nato agreed significant military reductions while seeking better relations with the former communist states of central and eastern Europe.

Boris Johnson and Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg stage a news conference at alliance headquarters in Brussels (Daniel Leal/PA)

In 1999, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic became the first former Soviet bloc countries to be admitted as Nato members. It has since expanded further and now has 30 members.

The move has led to tensions with Russia which believed it contravened assurances given to president Mikhail Gorbachev that there would be no eastward expansion of the alliance.

 Has Article 5 ever been invoked?

Just once, after the 9/11 terror attacks on the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington in 2001.

It saw troops deployed to Afghanistan under the Nato-led International Security Assistance Assistance Force (Isaf).

Prior to that, Nato was involved in the conflicts in Bosnia and Kosovo following the break-up of the former Yugoslavia and in 2011 it enforced a no-fly zone over Libya.

Russian President Vladimir Putin (Mikhail Klimentyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

 What is President Vladimir Putins view of Nato?

Nato insists it is a purely defensive alliance and does not represent a threat to Russia or to anyone else.

However President Putin has long chafed at its expansion into areas which Russia has traditionally regarded as falling within it sphere of influence.

He has pushed for the draw back of forces from eastern Europe and has been particularly exercised at the prospect that Ukraine could eventually be admitted.
Nearly 3 million refugees have fled Ukraine since war erupted on Feb. 24. Among them is Hassan Al-Khalaf, an 11-year-old boy from Zaporizhzhia, a southern Ukrainian city along the Dnieper River where Russia has taken control of a nuclear power plant.

Hassan is one of the estimated 1 million children who have made the dangerous journey out of the war-torn country.

"Reports from the border suggest that some children are arriving unaccompanied after being sent by family members who were unable to leave Ukraine but wanted their children to be safe from ground attack and aerial explosions," the charity Save the Children said in a release. "Others have been separated from their families in the chaos of fleeing their homes. Many of the solo arrivals are under 14 and showing signs of psychological distress."

The boy arrived in Slovakia by train and foot, traveling over 620 miles west. The 11-year-old brought with him only a plastic bag with his belongings, including his passport. A phone number was written on his hand.

PHOTO: An 11-year-old boy fled Ukraine by himself, with only a phone number written on his hand. He arrived in Slovakia and was later reunited with his brother in Bratislava. (Slovakia Police)

Border guards in Slovakia and volunteers banded together to help Hassan during his harrowing trek, using the phone number to help reunite the boy with his older siblings including his brother, who has been studying in the Slovakian capital of Bratislava.

MORE: How to help Ukraine amid Russian attacks

At a pro-Ukraine and anti-war rally in the Slovakian capital Friday, Hassan said in an interview, "I got my hope from my mom wanting me to go."

"My hope carried me on my way," he said, according to Reuters.

PHOTO: An 11-year-old boy who fled Ukraine by himself is helped by adults after arriving in Slovakia. He was later reunited with his brother in Bratislava. (Slovakia Police)

Hassan's mother, Pisecka Yulia Volodymyrivna, a widow, made the heartbreaking decision to send her 11-year-old out of Ukraine for his safety and stayed behind to care for her 84-year-old mother, who is unable to walk.

In a video statement, Volodymyrivna thanked the border guards and volunteers in Slovakia, saying in part, "Border guards met him, they guided him holding his hand. They helped him to cross the border and let him to the other side of Slovakia. Then Slovakian volunteers met him. They fed my child. They took him to Bratislava. I thank you very much for saving my son's life."

"I can't leave my mother, who is 84 years old and who can't walk on her own. That is why I put my son on a train to the Slovakia border where he was met by people with big hearts," she continued. "There are people with big hearts in your small country. Please, save our children. Please protect our Ukrainian children."

11-year-old boy escapes Ukraine by himself, safely reunites with siblings in Slovakia originally appeared on goodmorningamerica.com
It was a humanitarian gesture gone wrong  depending upon whom you ask.

A Florida man called 911 to ask for a quality control check on the meth he had just bought, saying he wanted to protect others from buying the fake product. Police obliged, coming to his door and testing the meth, which was legit, and then arresting him.

The call came in to the Hernando County Sheriffs office at about 7 p.m. on Thursday, the department said in a statement.

Upon arrival, deputies met with Thomas Eugene Colucci, police said. Colucci told deputies he had recently purchased methamphetamine from a male he met in a local bar, and after having used a bit of it, believed it was actually bath salts. Colucci went on to tell deputies he was an experienced drug user, having used methamphetamine in the past, and knew what it should feel like. "

Thomas Eugene Colucci





Thomas Eugene Colucci

He brought out the suspect products, two small baggies containing a white crystalline substance, and handed them over, explaining that the substance had not provided the sensation hed been expecting. Worried that other people might buy the fake methamphetamine from the same person, and determined to protect fellow contraband-buying humans, Colucci wanted the meth tested and its seller held accountable for any irregularities.

Colucci wanted deputies to put the person in trouble for selling dangerous drugs; however, he was unable to provide a name or any contact info for this individual, police said. As requested, a deputy performed a field test on a sample of the white crystal-like substance from each of the baggies. The substance from both baggies tested positive for methamphetamine.

FILE - Methamphetamine, also known as crystal meth.





FILE - Methamphetamine, also known as crystal meth.

Colucci, 41, was charged with possession of methamphetamine and two counts of possessing drug paraphernalia. As he was being settled into the back of a patrol car, Colucci complained of chest pains, so he was first brought to a local hospital and then, when cleared by a physician, taken to the Hernando County Detention Center.

Police eagerly broadcast their slate of illicit-drug services to the wider community.

If you, or someone you know, have doubts about the authenticity of any illegal narcotics you have on-hand or have obtained from another person, the Hernando County Sheriffs Office is pleased to provide this service, FREE of charge, the cops said.
The Kremlin asked Russian media to highlight Fox News host Tucker Carlsons broadcasts as much as possible earlier this month, due to his criticisms of the U.S. and its NATO allies in his coverage of the Ukraine crisis, Mother Jones reported.

A leaked 12-page memo from a Russian government agency to media on March 3 said it is essential to use as much as possible fragments of broadcasts by Carlson, according to a translation by Mother Jones, which said it obtained the note from a contributor to a national Russian media outlet.

Carlson sharply criticizes the actions of the U.S. and NATO and their negative role in unleashing the conflict in Ukraine, the memo said, per the news site.

Carlson is also critical of the defiantly provocative behavior from the leadership of the Western countries and NATO towards the Russian Federation and towards President Putin, personally, it reportedly continued.

The document was titled For Media and Commentators and sent from Russias Department of Information and Telecommunications Support, according to Mother Jones.

The outlet said Carlson was the only Western journalist referenced in the memo.

Retired Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the former director for European and Russian affairs at the National Security Council, weighed in on the report, tweeting at Carlson to Live your life in such a way that the Russian government and state TV apparatus doesnt think youre an ally.

Tucker Carlson was understood to be the only Western journalist referenced in the memo. (AP)

Carlson has evidently landed in the Kremlins good books after consistently amplifying Russian propaganda on his show. On Thursday, ABCs chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl reported that Carlsons rhetoric was almost a plagiarism of Russian President Vladimir Putins.

In the days before Russia invaded Ukraine, Carlson defended Putin and questioned why he was expected to dislike him. Has Putin ever called me a racist? Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him? he asked.

Since the invasion, Carlson has blamed the U.S. for Russias attack and parroted baseless Russian conspiracy theories about secret American biological warfare labs in Ukraine.

He also complained that he was falsely accused of rooting for Russia. (He has openly admitting to doing so in the past.)

Why do I care what is going on in the conflict between Ukraine and Russia? Carlson said in 2019. And Im serious. Why do I care? Why shouldnt I root for Russia? Which I am. He later claimed he was joking.

Multiple excerpts from his show have been translated to serve as propaganda on Russian state-sponsored TV, including one in which he argued that Ukraine is not a democracy but a client state of the Biden administration.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.

Related...
FILE - This undated file booking photo provided by the San Francisco Police Department shows Jose Inez Garcia-Zarate. Garcia-Zarate, acquitted of murder in the 2015 fatal shooting of a woman on a San Francisco pier that became a national flashpoint over immigration pleaded guilty Monday, March 14, 2022, to federal gun charges. Garcia-Zarate entered his plea nearly seven years after shooting Kate Steinle on July 1, 2015, while she walked on a crowded pier. (San Francisco Police Department via AP, File) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

SAN FRANCISCO (AP)  A Mexican man acquitted of murder in the 2015 shooting of a woman on a San Francisco pier that became a national flashpoint over immigration pleaded guilty Monday to federal gun charges.

Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, 51, entered his plea nearly seven years after shooting Kate Steinle on July 1, 2015, while she walked on the crowded waterfront. The case helped fuel a fierce national debate on immigration and sanctuary cities, which limit local cooperation with federal immigration authorities.

In late 2017, a San Francisco Superior Court jury acquitted Garcia Zarate of various charges including murder. But shortly after his acquittal, federal prosecutors charged him with two counts of illegal gun possession.

The federal gun charges had been pending since 2017 after U.S. District Court Judge Vince Chhabria raised concerns about Garcia Zarate's mental capacities. Two doctors diagnosed Garcia Zarate with schizophrenia and found him unfit to stand trial because he couldn't follow the court proceedings.

One of the doctors reported to the court last month that Garcia Zarate was competent to stand trial after regularly taking his medication.

On Monday, Chhabria asked Garcia Zarate to summarize the charges against him as a way to confirm his competency.

The charges are because I was in the country illegally and I had a firearm, Garcia Zarate said in Spanish through a court interpreter.

Garcia Zarate had been deported five times and was wanted for a sixth deportation proceeding when he fatally shot Steinle, 32.

He acknowledged holding the gun that killed Steinle but said it fired accidentally when he found it wrapped in a T-shirt under a bench on Pier 15, where she was walking with her father.

The shooting turned into a major campaign issue in multiple national and local races across the country. President Donald Trump repeatedly referred to the shooting during his 2016 campaign to bolster his argument for tougher immigration policies and his opposition to so-called sanctuary cities that limit cooperation with immigration officials.

Garcia Zarate faces a maximum of 10 years in prison. He is scheduled to be sentenced on June 6.
This blog covers software patent news and issues with a particular focus on wireless, mobile devices (smartphones, tablet computers, connected cars) as well as select antitrust matters surrounding those devices.
Editor's note: This page recaps the news from Ukraine on Monday, March 14. Follow here for the latest updates and news from Tuesday, March 15, as Russia's invasion continues.

Almost all of Russias assaults on Ukrainian cities remain stalled, and there have been little or no advances made over the weekend, a senior U.S. Defense Department source said Monday.

Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion remains strong, particularly around the cities of Kyiv and Cherniv, according to the official who was not authorized to speak publicly about intelligence assessments.

The assessment comes the same day Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the military operation is "proceeding in accordance with the original plan and will be completed on time and in full."

The U.S. official acknowledged that some cities have been surrounded and face increasing bombardment from Russian long-range artillery and missile attacks. Russia has fired more than 900 missiles at Ukrainian targets since the invasion began, and the attacks have become increasingly indiscriminate, the official said.

The attack over the weekend on the Yavoriv military training base in western Ukraine consisted of dozens of cruise missiles launched by Russian bombers inside Russian airspace, the official said. The attack from a distance, the official said, showed that a no-fly zone over Ukraine sought by the battered nation would not necessarily prevent Russia from assaulting by air.

There were no U.S. troops, contractors or citizens at the base when the missiles struck, the official said. Florida National Guard troops had trained Ukrainian forces there, but left the base before the Russian invasion. At least 35 people died in the attack.

Russia, despite its advantages in warplanes, has not dominated Ukrainian airspace, the official said.

Elsewhere in Ukraine, about 50 Russian vehicles moved southeast of Kharkiv, apparently seeking to link up with Russian forces in the south, the official said. They appear intent on cutting off Ukrainian troops fighting in the eastern part of the country.

The long-stalled Russian convoy north of Kyiv remains mostly stuck, the official said.

LATEST MOVEMENT: Mapping and tracking Russia's invasion of Ukraine

FULL COVERAGE: updates, analysis, commentary on Ukraine

'EVERYTHING WE CAN': Polish border city throws its doors open to Ukrainians fleeing war

Latest developments:

 Russian forces abducted the mayor of Melitopol, Ukraine to Russian-occupied Luhansk, where he is being accused of terrorism, the Kyiv Independent reported, citing the Zaporizhzhia Regional Military Administration.

 A Russian rocket attack on a television tower in the western village of Antopol on Monday morning killed nine people, according to the governor of the Rivne region. The village is only about 100 miles from the border of NATO member Poland.

 Tesla CEO Elon Musk wrote on Twitter that he wants to fight Russian President Vladimir Putin in "single combat," saying it's for Ukraine.

Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares said he has asked his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi to use Beijings influence over Moscow to end the war in Ukraine. We are at a historical moment that requires responsibility and vision of all world leaders, Albares said.

A convoy of 160 civilian cars left the besieged port city of Mariupol along a designated humanitarian route, the city council reported. Previous efforts to open humanitarian corridors collapsed amid missile attacks and gunfire.

A pregnant Ukrainian woman and her unborn child have died, days after images were seen around the world of her being rushed on a stretcher to an ambulance amid the devastation of a maternity hospital bombing in Mariupol. The images epitomized the horror of Russian attacks on innocent Ukrainian civilians.

Ramzan Kadyrov, the hard-line leader of Russia's Chechnya region accused of rights abuses by U.S. and European human rights groups, said he was meeting with Chechen troops aiding the Russian assault on Kyiv. Ukrainian forces he said, should surrender or you will be finished."

 At least 2.8 million Ukrainians have fled the country, the U.N. refugee agency said. Over 1.7 million of them exited through Poland.

Biden could travel to Europe in coming weeks, reports say

The White House is considering for President Joe Biden to travel to Europe in support of Ukraine and allies in the coming weeks, according to multiple media reports.

The discussions have included considering Biden stopping in Brussels, home to NATO and the European Union, according to the reports from NBC News, Politico and Reuters. In addition, there are talks of Biden visiting Poland after a stop in Brussels, according to Reuters.

Any potential trip would come after Vice President Kamala Harris' visit to Poland and Romania last week. The aim of her trip was to show unity among NATO allies amid Russia's war in Ukraine.

Biden has traveled abroad twice during his administration, both times in Europe.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Monday would not confirm the president's potential travel plans or preview what the trip may entail.

"There's not been any final decision about a trip," Psaki said. "So I don't have anything to preview about what that would look like if you were to take a trip."

 Rebecca Morin

Russia could be planning 'false-flag' attack, British Defense Ministry says

Russia could be planning a chemical or biological weapon attack in Ukraine as a false-flag operation, according to the British Defense Ministry.

Such an operation could take the form of a faked attack, a staged discovery of agents or munitions or fabricated evidence of alleged Ukrainian planning to use such weapons, Mick Smeath, the British Defense attache, said in a statement. A false-flag attack would almost certainly be accompanied by extensive disinformation to complicate attribution.

Russian accusations that Ukraine intends to use chemical or biological weapons continue but are not backed by evidence, Smeath said. Instead, intelligence suggests Russia likely intended to use false-flag operations to justify their invasion of Ukraine in February.

On Sunday, Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby told ABC News that there are no indications of an imminent chemical or biological attack by the Russians. However, Kirby added that the Pentagon is closely monitoring for such an operation.

 Tom Vanden Brook

Anti-war protester disrupts Russian state TV, is detained by Kremlin

A woman protesting Russia's war in Ukraine was detained after disrupting the live main evening news program on Russias state television while holding an anti-war sign.

The woman was identified as Marina Ovsyannikova and reportedly works for the station Channel One in Moscow, according to Meduza, an independent Russian news outlet based in Latvia.

As a news anchor was broadcasting on the network, Ovsyannikova dashed behind the anchor and held up a sign. She repeatedly said "Stop the war!" and "No to war!" before the audio and video were cut. Her sign read "No War" in English and included other messages in Russian reading, "Don't believe the propaganda" and "you are being lied to."

Meduza reported Ovsyannikova was detained and would be charged under a new Russian law barring the spread of information against Kremlin's official stance on the war. The new law carries a penalty of up to 15 years in prison and has led to most major outlets pulling out of the country, along with the banning of most major social media outlets.

Before the demonstration, Ovsyannikova posted a video explaining she has family in both countries and that Russia was responsible for the bloodshed and aggression. She urged other Russians to join in protesting against the war.

 Christal Hayes

Russia's war in Ukraine threatening global food supply, UN says

Russias war against Ukraine is threatening the global food supply and putting some of the worlds poorest countries at risk, the United Nations chief and the executive director of the World Food Program warned on Monday.

More than 40 African and least-developed countries import at least one-third of their wheat from Ukraine and Russia, and 18 of them import at least 50%, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters. These countries include Egypt, Congo, Burkina Faso, Leban, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, he said.

All of this is hitting the poorest the hardest and planting the seeds for political instability and unrest around the globe, the secretary-general warned.

David Beasley, executive director of the World Food Program, told The Associated Press during a visit to the Ukrainian city of Lviv that 50% of the grain the program buys to feed the 125 million people we reach on any given day, week or month comes from Ukraine, as does 20% of the worlds supply of corn.

Fox News correspondent hospitalized after being injured in Ukraine

A Fox News correspondent was injured in Ukraine and was hospitalized, the network said Monday, announcing what is likely one of the first American journalists from a major media outlet injured in the war.

State Department correspondent Benjamin Hall, who is based in Washington, was injured while reporting outside Kyiv. Suzanne Scott, the network's chief executive officer, said details are minimal but Hall was hospitalized.

"This is a stark reminder for all journalists who are putting their lives on the line every day to deliver the news from a warzone," Scott said in a statement.

Both the Pentagon and White House secretaries during press conferences Monday wished Hall a speedy recovery and said their thoughts are with him and his family. State Department spokesman Ned Price similarly expressed his heartbreak and said the State Department is "ready to assist in any way we can."

On Sunday, American photojournalist Brent Renaud was killed in Ukraine when Russian soldiers opened fire on a car in Irpin, a town outside the capital of Kyiv. A second American journalist, Juan Arredondo, was rushed to a hospital with shrapnel wounds, police said. Arredondo, 46, told Italian journalist Annalisa Camilli that the two men were filming refugees fleeing the area when their car rolled up to a checkpoint and the Russians began shooting.

Ukraine President Volodymy Zelenskyy posted a photo to Twitter on Monday of a letter he sent to Renaud's family in Arkansas, extending his sympathies and calling him a "talented and brave journalist" who died "documenting human tragedy, devastation and suffering of the millions of Ukrainians."

"May Brent's life, service and sacrifice inspire generations of people all around the world to stand up in fight for the forces of light against forces of darkness," Zelenskyy said in the letter.

 Christal Hayes

US won't 'stand by' if China helps Russia in Ukraine

National security adviser Jake Sullivan told Chinese officials Monday the U.S. is concerned about any potential support for Russia's invasion of Ukraine. And he said any such assistance would have implications for Beijing's relationship with Washington and allies in Europe and the Indo-Pacific, a State Department official told reporters Monday.

"We have communicated very clearly to Beijing that we won't stand by," spokesman Ned Price said. "We will not allow any country to compensate Russia for its losses."

Sullivan met earlier with Chinese foreign policy adviser Yang Jiechi in Rome.

He "raised a range of issues in U.S.-China relations, with substantial discussion of Russias war against Ukraine," according to a White House readout of the meeting. "They also underscored the importance of maintaining open lines of communication between the United States and China."

Price declined to confirm whether U.S. officials believe Beijing has conveyed its support for Moscow's assault on Ukraine but said the U.S. is watching very closely whether China or any other country is providing any form of support including material, economic or financial assistance.

A member of the Ukrainian military stands amid the debris from a damaged residential apartment block caused after a Russian rocket was shot down by Ukrainian air defenses in Kyiv, Ukraine.

 Courtney Subramanian

'Technical pause' temporarily halts Russia-Ukraine talks

A fourth round of talks aimed at ending or curtailing the devastating bombardment of Ukraine began Monday with the Russian side claiming significant progress and the bloodied but unbowed Ukrainians demanding a cease-fire, immediate withdrawal of all Russian troops and security guarantees.

The talks were halted for a "technical pause" and will continue Tuesday, an adviser to Ukraine President Volodymy Zelenskyy said. Mikhail Podolyak said additional work was needed in subcommittees, and that clarification of some terms was taking place. Podolyak said Ukraine's demands remain unchanged despite a growing humanitarian crisis in some cities that has left hundreds of thousands of civilians struggling to obtain basic necessities such as food, water and medical supplies.

"Although Russia realizes the nonsense of its aggressive actions, it still has a delusion that 19 days of violence against peaceful cities is the right strategy," Podolyak said on Twitter earlier Monday.

Russian delegate Leonid Slutsky had said the talks could "develop in the very next few days into a unified position of both delegations, into documents for signing," Russia's RIA news agency reported.

The talks are taking place via videolink after previous negotiations were held in neighboring Belarus, a Russian ally. The last round of talks were held a week ago, although on March 10 Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba met while at a diplomatic forum in Turkey.

Polish official accused Russia of state terrorism

Polands foreign minister is accusing Russia of state terrorism for targeting civilians, schools, hospitals and infrastructure. Zbigniew Rau told the U.N. Security Council Monday that Russias unprovoked, unjustified and premeditated aggression against Ukraine aimed at breaking the people's spirit. He said the Russian assault was poorly planned and executed and has become a strategic and tactical failure.

Instead of preventing further unnecessary deaths in its own ranks, the Kremlin changed its tactics, he said. The invading force started to target the civilian population in violation of the Geneva Conventions and international humanitarian law.

Zelenskyy to address Congress on Wednesday

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced Monday that Ukraine President Volodymy Zelenskyy will address Congress virtually on Wednesday morning, saying the address is only open to members of Congress.

Congress remains unwavering in our commitment to supporting Ukraine as they face Putins cruel and diabolical aggression, and to passing legislation to cripple and isolate the Russian economy as well as deliver humanitarian, security and economic assistance to Ukraine, Pelosi and Schumer wrote in a letter to colleagues. We look forward to the privilege of welcoming President Zelenskyys address to the House and Senate and to convey our support to the people of Ukraine as they bravely defend democracy."

 Dylan Wells

A woman walks past a burning apartment building after shelling in Mariupol, Ukraine, on March 13, 2022.

'Time is running out' for Mariupol

The Red Cross warns of a "worst-case scenario" for hundreds of thousands of civilians in the besieged city of Mariupol unless the parties agree to ensure their safety and access to humanitarian aid. The agency said in a statement that hundreds of residents of Mariupol are "facing extreme or total shortages of basic necessities like food, water and medicine."

The Red Cross statement described Mariupol as overwhelmed by "dead bodies  of civilians and combatants  that remain trapped under the rubble or lying in the open where they fell. Life-changing injuries and chronic, debilitating conditions cannot be treated. The human suffering is simply immense.

The agency called on the parties to agree on the terms of a cease-fire and routes for safe passage and to ensure the deal is respected. It offered to act as a neutral intermediary in negotiations.

"Time is running out for the hundreds of thousands trapped by the fighting," the statement said. "History will look back at what is now happening in Mariupol with horror if no agreement is reached by the sides as quickly as possible."

'Russian TV channels' will begin broadcasting soon, says new mayor of Russian-occupied Melitopol

The newly installed mayor in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian city Melitopol said "Russian TV channels" would be broadcasting in the region soon. Galina Danilchenko said in a televised video Sunday claimed there was "a great deficit of trustworthy information being circulated," as the decision for the broadcasting, according to CNN.

Her televised address was later posted on social media by pro-Russian Telegram channels and by the Ukrainian-controlled Zaporozhye regional administration.

Danilchenko was installed as mayor after elected mayor Ivan Fedorov was detained by armed men on Friday. The prosecutor's office for the Russian-backed separatist region of Luhansk later accused Fedorov of terrorism offenses.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called for Federov's immediate release, saying his "abduction" was a "crime against democracy."

Contributing: The Associated Press

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Ukraine recap: UN warns war is threatening the global food supply
WASHINGTON  When he invaded Ukraine, Vladimir Putin almost certainly expected a quick, decisive conquest that would restore the Kremlin's influence in Eastern Europe and burnish his own status as a Russian leader on par with Peter and Catherine the Great.

Weeks later, Russia is a hobbled pariah, while the dogged Ukrainian resistance  led by charismatic President Volodymyr Zelensky  has attained admiration in much of the world.

There is little doubt that the Russian army has the firepower to level its smaller neighbor if it chooses to. But the costs to Russian society could be enormous for years, even generations, to come.

"Russia is done," said New School political scientist Nina Khrushcheva, whose great-grandfather was Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, an ethnic Russian whose rise through the communist ranks mostly took place in Ukraine. In fact, it was Khrushchev  who grew up in a peasant family on the Ukrainian border  who returned Crimea to Ukraine in 1954 as a Soviet administrative region, putting in motion the geopolitical shifts that would, much later, result in war.

Nina Khrushcheva at an event in Doha, Qatar, in 2016. (Scott Mc Kiernan/Zuma Wire)

Six decades later  in 2014  Putin first invaded Ukraine to recover Crimea, as well as two eastern territories home to many ethnic Russians. When he launched a full-scale invasion last month, he blamed his Soviet predecessors for making mistakes he said it was now his duty to correct.

Few outside the Kremlin see it that way. "Russia is hated by the rest of the world," Khrushcheva said, predicting a period of deepening international isolation. "Russia is the global enemy. That doesn't end quickly," she said, pessimistically envisioning "another 100 years of us being villains of the universe." On Friday, President Biden announced that the United States, the European Union, Canada and Asia were all revoking Russias status as a favored trading partner, a move that comes on top of several rounds of sanctions and an exodus by Western corporations like McDonalds.

Though it is not clear how long the sanctions will last, it's pretty clear that Russia will become poorer and more technologically backward. The choices for its citizens will be radically diminished and for many, many years to come," Edward Alden of the Council on Foreign Relations told The Hill.

The Kremlin tower in Moscow is reflected in the window of a McDonald's, which has temporarily closed all 847 of its restaurants in Russia. (Oleg Nikishin/Getty Images)

Moscow will certainly look to Beijing in response, and while China has avoided joining the chorus of condemnation directed at Russia, its own vast ambitions could leave Putin indebted to a dangerous degree.

What is already clear, however, is that three decades of hoping that Russia would emerge from the Cold War, like Germany, as a full-fledged modern democracy have been decisively dashed. The departure of McDonalds, which opened on Red Square in 1990 to surging fascination, was a poignant symbol of disappointment in how little has changed since communisms collapse.

The initial sanctions were not a surprise to the Kremlin, which almost welcomed them with a show of defiance. Nor, so far, have they served as a deterrent. In Putin's own speeches and writings  including a remarkably frank English-language essay two years ago in the National Interest, an American publication  he discusses history in geopolitical terms, and he may be willing to countenance collective suffering to achieve his vision of a restored Russian empire that encompasses Ukraine and perhaps other ex-Soviet states. But achieving that vision has already caused widespread suffering for Russians and Ukrainians alike, leading to the kind of near-universal condemnation that is rare in a world of complex and competing national interests.

"Vladimir Putin is isolated and morally dead," the lead editorial in a recent issue of the Economist thundered, with the magazine comparing him to Joseph Stalin, the brutal Soviet dictator whose image Putin has assiduously worked to rehabilitate.

A protester in Madrid holds a placard with the face of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the word "Killer" during a rally on March 3. (Miguel Candela/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Khrushcheva thinks such comparisons are unfair  to Stalin. "Even Stalin had an idea," she said, adding that she has no sympathy for the ruthless Soviet despot who sent millions of his citizens to death and prison. The point of the comparison, rather, is to underscore Putin's failure to articulate a reason for invading Ukraine, a nation that does share many cultural and historical ties with Russia but has been sovereign since 1991.

She deemed Putin's vision of a "pan-Slavic state" encompassing Russia, Ukraine and Belarus as "beyond backward-looking," not to mention out of touch with a Russian populace whose appetite for war he may have misjudged.

Still, war is being waged in the Russian name. And the longer it continues, the more dangerous Putin arguably becomes. Projecting strength is a key feature of his foreign policy  and has been for decades. "You must hit first, and hit so hard that your opponent will not rise to his feet," he told Russian interviewers in 2000 about the second war he launched against Chechnya. The conflict reduced the breakaway republic to rubble, leaving little but grief and destruction in the wake of the Russian army.

Similar fears are mounting with Russian troops approaching Kyiv, though Putin may not be willing to outright destroy the historically significant city. Failing to seize the Ukrainian capital, however, would be tantamount to defeat. "I dont think Russia has a 'best outcome,'" Khrushcheva believes. "Russia doesn't have a good solution  at all."

An outcome short of clear victory could prove personally devastating for Putin, who has wielded his power virtually unchallenged for two decades. So far, attempts at a negotiated peace have failed while confusion over the path ahead  on both diplomatic and military fronts  appears to be deepening.

The political scientist Francis Fukuyama believes that a Ukrainian resistance bolstered by the West will ultimately prevail against a Russian military that has the advantage of size but suffers from poor leadership and low morale. The war will end in an "outright defeat" for Russia, Fukuyama argued in a recent blog post, and the subsequent collapse of Putins regime: "He gets support because he is perceived to be a strongman; what does he have to offer once he demonstrates incompetence and is stripped of his coercive power?"

Khrushcheva thinks that even if Putin is replaced as president, the kleptocratic power structure he created will remain, simply allowing a successor to take over without making reforms, the way Dmitry Medvedev did when he became president in 2008. (Putin could not serve a third term at that time because of term limits; he has since changed that law, assuring his own rule into near perpetuity.)

"The system is not going anywhere," Khrushcheva told Yahoo News. And she finds discussion of a post-Putin Russia far too premature. "His popularity is rising," she said. Though polling can be inaccurate in Russia, his approval rating last month was above 70 percent. "People will rally around the flag," Khrushcheva predicted. And she did not have in mind the banners of Ukrainian yellow and blue that have become commonplace in many Western cities.

People in Tel Aviv at a protest on Saturday against the Russian invasion of Ukraine. (Ariel Schalit/AP)

_____

What happened this week in Ukraine? Check out this explainer from Yahoo Immersive to find out.
By Patricia Zengerle

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Forty-nine of the 50 Republican U.S. senators said on Monday they will not support an emerging new nuclear deal between Iran and world powers, underscoring their party's opposition to attempts to revive a 2015 accord amid fears talks might collapse.

Citing press reports about the as-yet-unfinalized agreement, which could be torpedoed by Russian opposition, the lawmakers said in a statement that Democratic President Joe Biden's administration might reach a deal to weaken sanctions and lessen restrictions on Iran's nuclear program.

They pledged to do everything in their power to reverse a an agreement that does not "completely block" Iran's ability to develop a nuclear weapon, constrain its ballistic missile program and "confront Iran's support for terrorism." Tehran denies it has ever sought atomic bombs.

No congressional Republicans backed the 2015 agreement between Tehran and major powers, reached under Democratic President Barack Obama. A handful of Democrats also objected.

Congress may have the right to renew an agreement under the 2015 Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act (INARA), but they are unlikely to be able to kill a deal after failing to do so seven years ago, when Republicans controlled Congress.

Democrats now hold slim majorities in both the House of Representatives and Senate.

The accord eased sanctions in return for limits on Iran's enrichment of uranium, making it harder for Tehran to develop material for nuclear weapons. It fell apart after Republican President Donald Trump withdrew the United States in 2018.

Talks resumed after Biden became president last year.

Attempts to clinch a new deal were left in limbo after a last-minute demand by Russia - at odds with the West over its invasion of Ukraine - forced the powers to pause talks in Vienna despite having a largely completed text.

A spokesperson for Iran's foreign ministry said on Monday that Washington needed to make a decision to wrap up a deal.

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; editing by Grant McCool)
WASHINGTON (AP)  More than two weeks into a war he expected to dominate in two days, Vladimir Putin is projecting anger, frustration at his militarys failures and a willingness to cause even more violence and destruction in Ukraine, in the assessment of U.S. intelligence officials.

Officials in recent days have publicly said they're worried the Russian president will escalate the conflict to try to break Ukraine's resistance. Russia still holds overwhelming military advantages and can bombard the country for weeks more. And while the rest of the world reacts to horrific images of the war he started, Putin remains insulated from domestic pressure by what CIA Director William Burns called a propaganda bubble.

Putin's mindset  as tough as it is to determine from afar  is critical for the West to understand as it provides more military aid to Ukraine and also prevent Putin from directly taking on NATO countries or possibly reaching for the nuclear button. Intelligence officials over two days of testimony before Congress last week openly voiced concerns about what Putin might do. And those concerns increasingly shape discussions about what U.S. policymakers are willing to do for Ukraine.

Over two decades, Putin has achieved total dominance of Russia's government and security services, ruling with a tiny inner circle, marginalizing dissent, and jailing or killing his opposition. He has long criticized the breakup of the Soviet Union, dismissed Ukraine's claims to sovereignty, and mused about nuclear war ending with Russians as martyrs. Burns told lawmakers that he believed Putin was stewing in a combustible combination of grievance and ambition for many years.

Putin had expected to seize Kyiv in two days, Burns said. Instead, his military has failed to take control of major cities and lost several thousand soldiers already. The West has imposed sanctions and other measures that have crippled the Russian economy and diminished living standards for oligarchs and ordinary citizens alike. Much of the foreign currency Russia had accumulated as a bulwark against sanctions is now frozen in banks abroad.

'No regard for civilian casualties'

Burns is a former U.S. ambassador to Moscow who has met with Putin many times. He told lawmakers in response to a question about the Russian president's mental state that he did not believe Putin was crazy.

I think Putin is angry and frustrated right now, he said. Hes likely to double down and try to grind down the Ukrainian military with no regard for civilian casualties.

Russia's recent unsupported claims that the U.S. is helping Ukraine develop chemical or biological weapons suggest that Putin may himself be prepared to deploy those weapons in a false flag operation, Burns said.

There's no apparent path to ending the war. It is nearly inconceivable that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has won admiration around the world for leading his country's resistance, would suddenly recognize Russia's annexation of Crimea or support granting new autonomy to Russian-friendly parts of eastern Ukraine. And even if he captures Kyiv and deposes Zelenskyy, Putin would have to account for an insurgency supported by the West in a country of more than 40 million.

He has no sustainable political end-game in the face of what is going to continue to be fierce resistance from Ukrainians, Burns said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting with members of the government via teleconference in Moscow. (Kremlin via AP)

Avril Haines, President Biden's director of national intelligence, said Putin perceives this as a war he cannot afford to lose. But what he might be willing to accept as a victory may change over time given the significant costs he is incurring.

Intelligence analysts think Putin's recent raising of Russia's nuclear alert level was probably intended to deter the West from providing additional support to Ukraine, she said.

The White House's concern about escalation has at times frustrated both Democrats and Republicans. After initially signaling support, the Biden administration declined in recent days to support a Polish plan to donate Soviet-era warplanes to Ukraine that would have required the U.S. to participate in the transfer. The administration previously delayed sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and would not send Stinger air-defense missiles to Ukraine before changing course.

Questioned on Thursday, Haines said Putin might see the plane transfer as a bigger deal than the anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons already going to Ukraine. Haines did not disclose whether the U.S. had intelligence to support that finding.

U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley, an Illinois Democrat who sits on the House Intelligence Committee, said the Biden administration had been always a step or two late out of fear of triggering Putin. He urged the White House to agree quickly to the transfer of planes.

I think it comes off as quibbling, Quigley said. If anyone thinks that Putin is going to distinguish and differentiate  Oh, well, they're taking off from Poland'  he sees all of this as escalatory.

Meanwhile, as the violence worsens and more Russians die, the West is also watching for any sign of holes forming in Putin's propaganda bubble. One independent Russian political analyst, Kirill Rogov, posted on his Telegram account that the war is lost and an epic failure.

'Four mistakes in making one decision is a lot'

The mistake was the notion that the West was unwilling to resist aggression, that it was lethargic, greedy and divided, Rogov wrote. "The idea that the Russian economy is self-sufficient and secure was a mistake. The mistake was the idea of the quality of the Russian army. And the main mistake was the idea that Ukraine is a failed state, and Ukrainians are not a nation.

Four mistakes in making one decision is a lot, he said.

Before the invasion, polling conducted by the Levada Center, Russias top independent opinion research firm, found that 60% of respondents consider the U.S. and NATO the initiators of conflict in eastern Ukraine. Just 3% answered Russia. The polling was in January and February, and the Levada Center has not published new polling since the war began.

Outsiders hope ordinary Russians will respond to the sharp decline in their living standards and find honest portrayals of the war through relatives and online, including by using VPN software to bypass Kremlin blocks on social media. Russian state television continues to air false or unsupported allegations about the U.S. and Ukrainian governments and push a narrative that Russia can't afford to lose the war.

Otherwise, it will lead to the death of Russia itself, said Vladimir Solovyov, host of a prime-time talk show on state TV channel Russia 1, on his daily radio show last week.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has said understanding what it means to be a country in the relationship between the UK and the Republic of Ireland tells us something about the war in Ukraine.

In a speech at the London Irish Centre ahead of St Patricks Day, Sir Keir said it was key to focus on the UK and Irelands rich and long history.

The Labour leader said it was easy to see the relationship between the two countries in narrow issues, the (Northern Ireland) Protocol at the moment.

But he said the long partnership with the Republic, through Irelands ambassador to the UK Adrian ONeill, was important.

Sir Keir said: This relationship requires respect  equal respect  and understanding what it means to be a country.

He added: I think it tells us something about whats going on in the world, particularly Ukraine, because at the heart of the conflict in Ukraine is a simple thing, the wish of a country to decide for itself its own future.

Labour leader Keir Starmer attends the Labour Party Irish Society Annual St Patricks Day reception at the London Irish Centre. (Stefan Rousseau/PA)

Sir Keir said: I didnt think in my lifetime I would see Russian tanks rolling into a European country, soldiers kissing their children goodbye as they then stay to fight for their city and for the country, the awful bombing of hospitals. None of us thought we would see that.

The Labour leader said behind those images was that sense of democracy, of sovereignty, the right of a country to decide for itself on what it does.

He added: But when it comes to what does the UK stand for, what does Ireland stand for, when it comes to issues of sovereignty and self-determination, we stand together in the face of Russian aggression because theyre our deep, deep values.

Sir Keir also said: It is about the relationship between UK and Ireland, but its also about the way in which we view the world which is being challenged at the moment in a really profound way.

Earlier this month, Nicola Sturgeon was forced to insist there was no connection between the war in Ukraine and the campaign for Scottish independence after prominent SNP members appeared to make comparisons between the two.

SNP president Mike Russell was criticised after he used his column in the National newspaper to liken Ukraine potentially being ruled by Russia to Scotland remaining in the UK as a result of an eight-year-old referendum.

Scotlands First Minister Nicola Sturgeon during First Minsters Questions at the Scottish Parliament in Holyrood, Edinburgh. (Andy Buchanan/PA)

SNP MSP Michelle Thomson also apologised after tweeting about Ukraines application to join the European Union accompanied by the message: Just goes to show what political will can achieve. Remember this Scotland!

Asked about the remarks, First Minister Ms Sturgeon told the PA news agency it would be overstating things to suggest that comparisons had been made, and she added: There is no connection between a war in Ukraine and the support and campaign for independence in Scotland.
The UK has announced it is providing cancer treatment for 21 seriously ill Ukrainian children as Britons were urged to open their homes to people fleeing the war.

The children and their immediate family members arrived from Poland on Sunday evening and will be assessed before being sent to NHS hospitals to continue their care.

Announcing their arrival, Health Secretary Sajid Javid said: I am proud that the UK is offering lifesaving medical care to these Ukrainian children, who have been forced out of their home country by the Russian invasion while undergoing medical treatment.

I can confirm that 21 very ill Ukrainian children with cancer have landed safely in UK this evening. @NHSEngland will now ensure they get life-saving care in safety. Hugely grateful to everyone involved in helping get these children and their families here.  Sajid Javid (@sajidjavid) March 13, 2022

The childrens arrival came after a Russian attack on a military training base near Yavoriv in western Ukraine, less than 15 miles (24km) from the border with Poland, a Nato member.

During a call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday, Mr Johnson said the UK would continue to pursue more options for bolstering Ukraines self-defence, working with partners including at Tuesdays meeting of the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF) in London, a No 10 spokesman said.

Representatives from Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Sweden and Norway will attend the summit of the northern European security coalition.

Putins barbaric actions murdering Brent Renaud and other innocent civilians are testing not just Ukraine but all of humanity. Speaking to President @ZelenskyyUa I assured him that we will continue to do all that we can to bring an end to this disastrous conflict.  Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) March 13, 2022

Mr Johnson said Russian president Vladimir Putins barbaric actions were testing not just Ukraine but all of humanity.

People keen to offer refugees shelter in the UK can register their interest in sponsoring Ukrainians through the Governments new humanitarian scheme from Monday.

Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove has said the process of matching Britons with people fleeing the conflict will take place from Friday, while he expects the first refugees to use the new route will make their way to the UK by the end of the week.

Tory MP Danny Kruger told the BBC the scheme would provide Ukrainian refugees with friends as well as support.

When a family arrives, often what they really need is friends. They need people to introduce them to the area, to take them to the church or show them where the playgroup is, the MP for Devizes said.

These arent services that the local council is always best able to provide, but where theres a need for professional support  particularly if theres counselling or training for job opportunity  then we need professional services.

(PA Graphics)

Meanwhile, the UK will supply Ukraine with more than 500 portable generators to provide energy for essential services, including at hospitals and shelters.

Mr Johnson said they will help ease the power cuts currently crippling the country.

During his call with Mr Zelensky, the men also condemned the murders of Brent Renaud and countless innocent Ukrainians, and the abduction of the mayors of Dniprorudne and Melitopol, Downing Street said.

It was reported on Sunday that Mr Renaud, an acclaimed US filmmaker, was killed after Russian forces opened fire on his vehicle near the Ukrainian capital Kyiv.

Today, Russian war criminals abducted another democratically elected Ukrainian mayor, head of Dniprorudne Yevhen Matveyev. Getting zero local support, invaders turn to terror. I call on all states & international organizations to stop Russian terror against Ukraine and democracy. pic.twitter.com/jEPTBTLikY  Dmytro Kuleba (@DmytroKuleba) March 13, 2022

Mr Zelensky has accused Russia of kidnapping the mayor of Melitopol, a port city in the south of Ukraine.

And Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba tweeted on Sunday that Russian war criminals had abducted another democratically elected Ukrainian mayor, head of Dniprorudne Yevhen Matveyev.

Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said the UK was doing all we can to support including defensive weapons and humanitarian aid after speaking to her Ukrainian counterpart Mr Kuleba.

Good to speak to @DmytroKuleba. The bravery of the Ukrainian leadership and people is immense.  is doing all we can to support including defensive weapons and humanitarian aid.  Liz Truss (@trussliz) March 13, 2022

Mr Kuleba said the pair had talked about next steps to apply more sanctions on Russia.

He tweeted: Pressure must increase until Russia ceases its meaningless aggression and stops barbaric war crimes. Grateful to the UK for stepping up support for Ukraine.

Mr Johnson is preparing to embark on a series of meetings with Nordic and Baltic leaders this week as he seeks to bolster European resilience following Russias invasion of Ukraine.

During this weeks JEF summit in London, he will urge leaders to work together to ensure no further nations fall victim to Mr Putins aggression, No 10 said.

A group of people, who have fled Ukraine, arrive at the border crossing in Medyka, Poland (Daniel Cole/AP)

Mr Johnson will host the group for dinner at his official country residence, Chequers, on Monday night.

The coalition will then meet in London on Tuesday, before the Prime Minister is joined by the leaders of Finland and Sweden at Downing Street in the afternoon.

Earlier on Sunday, it was disclosed that more than 3,000 visas had been issued to Ukrainians seeking refuge in the UK, with tens of thousands potentially set to benefit from the new humanitarian scheme.

Mr Gove also announced that local authority areas would be entitled to more than 10,000 per Ukrainian refugee using the fresh route to the UK.
Feature Your News Online

$25.00 / for 30 days

Highlight your business' news for just $25! We'll feature your content on our News From Local Business section & our Marketplace front page to give it maximum exposure for the next 30 days.
YEREVAN, MARCH 14, ARMENPRESS. Presidents of France and the United States, Emmanuel Macron and Joe Biden respectively, agreed during their telephone conversation to step up sanction measures against Russia, TASS reports citing the statement of the press office of the French president.

The heads of two countries agreed to tighten current measures regarding sanctions against Russia, to provide support for Ukraine and to adopt jointly all initiatives aimed at stopping combat activities, the statement reads as quoted by TASS.

On February 21, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed decrees at a ceremony in the Kremlin recognizing the Donetsk Peoples Republic (DPR) and the Lugansk Peoples Republic (LPR). Putin met with DPR leader Denis Pushilin and LPR leader Leonid Pasechnik, and signed treaties with them on friendship, cooperation and mutual aid between Russia and both republics.

President Putin said in a televised address on February 24 that in response to a request from the heads of the Donbass republics, he had decided to carry out a special military operation in order to protect people.
YEREVAN, MARCH 14, ARMENPRESS. Armenia applied to the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairmanship to organize negotiations for the signing of peace agreement with Azerbaijan, the foreign ministry said in a statement.

The Republic of Armenia responded to the proposals of the Republic of Azerbaijan and applied to the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairmanship to organize negotiations for the signing of peace agreement between the Republic of Armenia and the Republic of Azerbaijan on the basis of the UN Charter, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Helsinki Final Act.
Safran Electronics & Defense Australasia has been awarded a contract by Collins Aerospace to provide its full suite of advanced portable optronics to the Australian Defence Force (ADF) as part of the Land 17 Phase 2 Digital Terminal Control Systems (DTCS) Capability Assurance Program. Safran will complete the delivery of this equipment by mid-2023.

Follow Army Recognition on Google News at this link



Safrans JIM Compact, Moskito TI and Sterna systems, along with tripods, will all be integrated by Collins Aerospace into the Australian Amy's next-generation DTCS (Digital Terminal Control Systems). (Picture source: Safran Electronics & Defense)

Through this contract, Safran continues its long-standing support of Collins Aerospace and the ADF. Safrans JIM Compact, Moskito TI and Sterna systems, along with tripods, will all be integrated by Collins Aerospace into the ADFs next-generation DTCS (Digital Terminal Control Systems).

Safran Electronics & Defense offers a wide array of portable optronic products, including state-of-the-art multi-spectral binoculars, target locators and laser rangefinders, all deployed worldwide by Joint Fires Observers (JFOs), Joint Terminal Attack Controllers (JTACs) and Special Forces. These devices feature the latest digital software functions and are compatible with standard battle management systems for dismounted combat.

Safrans Sterna is a gyro-based target acquisition system that accurately finds true north in virtually all terrains. It will give the Australian Defence Force a brand-new capability, offering critical assistance to operators who require a high level of accuracy regardless of weather, battlespace interference or GPS-denied environments.

Michael Hall, Head of Sales & Marketing at Safran Electronics & Defense Australasia, said, Were very proud to deliver our suite of optronic systems to the ADF. This contract marks an important milestone for Safran Electronics & Defense, expanding our footprint for portable optronics and allowing the ADF to discover Sternas unrivaled capabilities. We look forward to continuing our longstanding and productive relationship with Collins Aerospace.
The International Space Station (ISS) is jeopardized with no Russian support to operate critical systems of the space station as the sanctions had this unforeseen effect.

Threats of getting struck by space junk, even having a US astronaut marooned in space, and worse, a possible crash in US territory. NASA has been alerted to this by warnings sent by the Russian Space Agency, Dmitry Rogozin.

International Space Station Compromised

According to Russian Space Agency head Dmitry Rogozin, who issued this threat due to the sanctions imposed by the US and NATO, dangers like space junk hitting the international space station are more likely. Still, the loss of assistance saw the space vehicle crash inadvertently, the Express UK reported.

The Russian Space Agency head said that one of the worst consequences of the sanctions is that US astronaut Mark Vande Hei, who is scheduled to hitch a ride back on Russian spacecraft, could be abandoned.

Without it, he'll be on his own if the return to Earth in three weeks does not push through, which the sanctions have impacted the safety of the US astronaut.

Russian Claims To Crash the ISS

NASA got a harsh reminder from Rogozin that space station needs Russian operators to help move from dangerous space junk; blaming NASA if parts of the massive space station would crash on the United States, cited the Mirror UK.

Former US astronaut Scott Kelly had stated the threats were senseless. Kelly said they were wild claims done by the Russian Space Agency.

He commented on the possible crash of surviving parts of the ISS on US territory as farfetched and not based on reality. He added the claim for Russian support is not realistic, he said.

Read Also: Vladimir Putin Net Worth 2022: Does Anyone Know Russian President's Hidden Wealth?

The US can control the space station without the Russian Space Agency's assistance as the space station is composed of two sections, the US and Russian, as it was put together.

This critical component of the station is the Orbital Segment controlled by Russia and United States Orbital Segment that play a significant part in steering the large spacecraft in orbit, noted Space.

After Moscow sent forces rolling from the Donbas and Lugansk separatist regions, a political contest started. The key point is the sanctions that are supposed to hurt the Kremlin have extended to financial assaults of non-combatant Russians, which have been highlighted as ineffective.

A dragged-on online scuffle between Rogozin and Kelly, in disparaging remarks on social media, has gone viral. One video shared by the Russian Space Agency official recorded cosmonauts covering British and United States flags on their Russian Soyuz rockets. He added that their rockets better do without the unsightly flags of other countries.

Kelly answered that these flags represent the countries that assisted the Russian space program. He spat back at Rogozin to instead look for a job at McDonald's, a restaurant that recently abandoned its business in Russian due to the recent conflict with Ukraine. Many firms left Moscow due to the effect of sanctions on its economy, affecting consumers the most.

Russia's space agency, Roscosmos, states that it will not sell any more rocket engines used on US spacecraft, affecting the US space program. Recently, Russia also refused to send OneWeb satellites into space despite the scheduled launch.

Related Article: NASA, CERN Bans Russian Federation due to Ukraine Invasion, Imposes Consequences on Scientific Research

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Benedict Cumberbatch is keen to take in Ukrainian refugees.

The 45-year-old star has been nominated for the Leading Actor gong at the BAFTAs for his role in 'The Power of the Dog' and although he's looking forward to the ceremony, Benedict admits it's impossible to ignore the war in Ukraine.

Speaking before the event at the Royal Albert Hall in London on Sunday (03.13.22), he shared: "We have brothers and sisters who are suffering.

"It is a really shocking time to be a European, two-and-a-half hours' flight away from Ukraine. It's something that hangs over us."

Benedict is keen to do everything he can to support the people of Ukraine, following the Russian invasion of the country.

The actor revealed he would even like to be part of a programme to take in Ukrainian refugees.

He told Sky News: "Everyone needs to do as much as they can. I think already today the news has broken that there's been a record number of people volunteering to take people into their homes, and I hope to be part of that myself."

Stephen Graham has also voiced his support for the people of Ukraine.

The 48-year-old actor insisted the war in eastern Europe cannot be ignored.

Speaking on the red carpet, he said: "It's lovely to be here with my family but at the same time it's important for me to acknowledge in public what is happening over there."

Meanwhile, Sir Kenneth Branagh has spoken out about the war, saying he hopes it ends "very soon".

The acclaimed filmmaker can see tragic parallels with the conflict in Ukraine and his BAFTA-nominated movie 'Belfast', which is set amid The Troubles in Northern Ireland.

He reflected: "The situations are utterly different but the human costs are the same. It is painful and tragic to see - I hope it ends very soon."
The latest spike is being described as the severest COVID-19 outbreaks in two years

Residents line up for coronavirus screening during the COVID-19 lockdown in Changchun in northeastern China's Jilin province. (Photo: AP)

Beijing: Amid a rapid resurgence of COVID-19 cases in China, two of the country's biggest cities, Shenzhen and Shanghai, have imposed strict virus measures.

The recent spike in coronavirus cases has led to allowing rapid antigen tests for public use and resulted in the dismissal of senior officials for their slack response to the ongoing health crisis. The latest spike, described as the severest COVID-19 outbreaks in two years, has forced several major cities to go into lockdowns.

Shenzhen officials imposed a lockdown for one week. Nonessential workers are ordered to stay home and adults have been asked to undergo three P.C.R. tests. Similarly, Shanghai has entered a partial lockdown. Residents are barred from leaving the city unless it is necessary.

On Sunday, China's National Health Commission reported 3,122 new virus cases, a rise from previous totals from 1,524 on Saturday. The average number of new virus cases in the country has reached 1,370 per day over the past week, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Chinese state media reported that Chinese observers warned local governments to avoid taking extreme measures such as city lockdowns, as they would harm the local economy.

China isolates all virus cases, including those in the community, as part of its COVID Zero policy. State media tabloid Global Times reported that China must strive to achieve a new breakthrough in its COVID policy.

Meanwhile, the situation is not at ease even in the autonomous region of Hong Kong. About 300,000 Covid-19 patients and their close contacts in Hong Kong are now under home quarantine, according to the city's Chief Executive Carrie Lam.

The city chief also highlighted that it would be challenging for the authorities to keep up if the cases keep rising at the current rate.
An explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986 killed hundreds and spread a radioactive cloud west across Europe

This satellite image provided by Maxar Technologies shows a close view of Chernobyl nuclear facilities, Ukraine, during the Russian invasion. (Photo: AP)

Kyiv: Electricity supply has been restored at Ukraine's retired Chernobyl nuclear power plant that was seized by Russian forces in the first days of the invasion, energy officials in Kyiv said Sunday.

"Today, thanks to the incredible efforts of (Ukrainian energy) specialists, our nuclear power engineers and electricians managed to return the power supply to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which was seized by the Russian occupiers," Ukraine's Energy Minister German Galushchenko said in a statement.

"Our Ukrainian energy engineers, by risking their own health and lives, were able to avert the risk of a possible nuclear catastrophe that threatened the whole of Europe," he added.

Power had been cut to the site of the world's worst nuclear disaster, though the UN's atomic watchdog said there was "no critical impact to safety".

An explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986 killed hundreds and spread a radioactive cloud west across Europe.

Ukraine said on Wednesday power had been cut to the plant, but the UN's atomic watchdog said there was "no critical impact on safety".

Russian forces also shelled and captured the Zaporizhzhia plant, Europea's biggest atomic power plant, on March 4, causing a fire that raised alarm in Europe over a possible nuclear catastrophe.

Russian engineers arrived at Zaporizhzhia earlier this week to check radiation levels.

In his statement, Galushchenko also reiterated calls on the international community to help secure Ukraine's nuclear facilities and establish a 30-kilometre (18 miles) demilitarised protective zone around them.

"It is now extremely important to force the enemy to leave our our nuclear power plants," he said.
by Shafique Khokhar

Although the robbers injured Mr Mushtag Masih in the leg, police took his two sons into custody, releasing them only after bail was paid. Shirjeel Zafar, a lawyer, slams police for their biased action in seeking justice.

Lahore (AsiaNews)  Another Pakistani Christian family has become the victim of a grave injustice in Lahore.

On the night of 23 February, three people tried to rob a Christian family who live near their fields, far from the residential area of Mohladan.

While fighting to protect his family and save his daughter's dowry, Mushtag Masih caught one of the criminals. The other two thugs managed to escape but before they opened fire and hit Mr Masih in the leg.

After calling the emergency number, the family handed the outlaw  alive  to Pakistani police. However, the next day, police filed a First Information Report against Masih and his family, accusing them, under the Penal Code of Pakistan, of killing the criminal.

The police took Masih's two sons into custody and only released them last Saturday after a court accepted their bail application. We are poor and Christian and they are putting pressure on us," Mushtag explained.

Shirjeel Zafar, a lawyer, spoke to AsiaNews about the affair. It is very sad to see that Pakistani Christians are going through a hard time, he said. Eventually, he found out that the robbers were aware that the family was putting aside gold and other goods for the daughter's wedding.

Prejudice governs police behaviour when it comes to providing justice to poor families", the lawyer said. Still, he hopes that the family will obtain justice and all those who broke the law will be brought to court.

The fate of the Masih family is not the unique. Scores of Christians have suffered as a result of the same attitude by police.

Meanwhile, a Christian sub-inspector, Rose Mary, committed suicide at the city division police station in Sadiqabad, a township (tehsil) in Rahim Yar Khan district, for unknown reasons.
Today's headlines: China has imposed a lockdown on Shenzhen; in the Philippines Marcos continues to lead the polls, but is the last choice of investors; Iran has launched 12 missiles against Erbil; today in Kyrgyzstan professional cowboy competitions begin.

WAR IN UKRAINE

US national security adviser Jake Sullivan and Chinese diplomat Yang Jienchi are meeting in Rome today after at least 35 people died and 134 others were wounded in a Russian air strike yesterday at the Javorinsky military range near L'vov, 25 kilometres from the Polish border. Meanwhile, the US said China will face harsh consequences if it sends military aid to Moscow.

RUSSIA

Moscow Patriarch Kirill (Gundjaev) presided over the solemn celebration of the Feast of Orthodoxy, on the first Sunday of Lent, in the presence of many metropolitans and high prelates together with representatives of the government and institutions. At the end of the ceremony, the Patriarch awarded various personalities with ecclesiastical honours for their service to the homeland and the Church, and pronounced the special "prayer for the restoration of peace" read in all the Churches of Russia, which calls for the restoration of "the spirit of fraternity of the peoples who came out of the common baptismal font" and to prevent "the lies of the foreign language of those who want to divide them".

CHINA

China has reported 1,437 new cases of Covid-19 across the country and put the 17 million inhabitants of Shenzhen, where 66 new infections were recorded yesterday, on lockdown. Mass testing will be carried out and public transport will be suspended for at least a week. Yesterday in Hong Kong there were 32,430 new cases.

PHILIPPINES

Ahead of the presidential elections in May, the namesake son of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos continues to hold a strong lead in the polls, but investors believe that current Vice-President Leni Robredo would be the "best person to lead the economy" in the Philippines. Sixty percent of the population favour a Marcos presidency, while Sara Duterte, daughter of the current president continues to be the first choice for the vice-presidency.

INDIA - PAKISTAN

Pakistan has called for a joint investigation into the accidental firing of a missile by India. In recent days, New Delhi has acknowledged that a technical malfunction caused the launch of the rocket (which was unarmed). On 11 March, Pakistan's Foreign Ministry summoned India's charge d'affaires to Islamabad to protest against what it called an unprovoked violation of its airspace.

AFGHANISTAN

The humanitarian crisis continues in Afghanistan: since the beginning of the year, almost 16,000 children have contracted measles and more than 120 have died. The main cause is unhealthy and insufficient food. 97% of the population lives below the poverty line.

KURDISTAN

In the night between Saturday and Sunday, Iran launched 12 ballistic missiles against the US Consulate in Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. The Guards of the Revolution wanted to strike an Israeli "strategic centre", they said on their channels. Only damage to buildings and one wounded person were reported. Meanwhile, Iran has suspended talks with Saudi Arabia.

KYRGYZSTAN

A delegation of professional cowboys from the United States is arriving in Kyrgyzstan today to take part in the 'Kocmon and Cowboy Ride Together' project, which will feature competitions in Kok-Boru, the typical Kyrgyz horse race. The 30 years of relations between the two countries will be celebrated, with an exchange of cultural values and respective traditions. The events will take place in various Kyrgyz cities until 21 March.
Reports of four Mossad agents killed and seven others wounded. The Chaldean Patriarchate proposes "dialogue" to resolve disputes and the urgency of a "national government". The Arab League and the Gulf monarchies speak of a "terrorist attack" at the hands of Iran. Haaretz writes of a "secret war" between Iran and Israel thathas become "public" because of drones.

Baghdad (AsiaNews) - From the Chaldean Patriarchate to the Arab world, there is unanimous condemnation of the Iranian attack on Erbil, in Iraqi Kurdistan, where between March 12-13 at least 12 ballistic missiles rained down on the US consulate.

According to some sources, the target of the Guardians of the Revolution (the Iranian Pasdaran) was an Israeli "strategic centre", a "prime" facility used by the Mossad and not a secondary element as reported in the hours following the launch. Some "authoritative witnesses", reported by the pan-Arab broadcaster al-Mayadeen, say that "four Israeli officials" died, while seven others "were wounded, four of them in critical condition".

Among those expressing concern and condemnation for the attack in Iraqi Kurdistan, a relatively quieter area compared to the rest of the country although there have been episodes of violence in the past, is the Iraqi Church. The rockets, says a note from the Chaldean Patriarchate sent to AsiaNews, "terrorized" civilians and caused "material damage" to the homes of "some citizens". Problems and disputes must be addressed with "civil dialogue" for a better future for all and not "through catastrophic weapons".

Addressing the community, the Church leaders called for calm and to "close ranks", joining efforts to "accelerate the formation of a national government" that would be able to guarantee unity and "preserve the security of citizens". This urgency is even more evident now that Baghdad "has resumed relations with many countries", especially in the area, with the hope that "wars can be avoided and peace and stability in the world can be achieved", from Iraq to Ukraine where the Russian offensive is underway with its victims and devastation.

In recent hours, several Arab nations - from Egypt to Jordan, from Bahrain to Yemen - have condemned Tehran for the attack in Erbil. Amman's diplomacy speaks of a "terrorist attack", while the Egyptian Foreign Ministry condemns "in the strongest terms" an operation that has endangered the country's security. Nayef Al-Hajraf, secretary general of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), also uses the definition of "terrorism", while his counterpart in the Arab League, Ahmed Abuol-Gheit, confirms his "full support" for Baghdad's efforts to tackle "criminal acts" that undermine "the stability and security of Iraq".

With regard to the attack, Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi announced the opening of an investigation to shed light on those responsible. Meanwhile, the Iraqi news website Sabereen News reports that two Mossad centres were hit by Iranian rockets. Al-Mayadeen adds that the base, located in Masif-Saladin street, was "completely razed to the ground" and several elements were "killed or wounded in the precision attack".

The headquarters was reportedly used in the past for "intelligence and offensive" operations against "Iranian targets". The last one was on 14 February, when six drones from the base in the heart of Iraqi Kurdistan hit an Iranian training centre in Kermanshah, causing "significant losses". The Israeli daily Haaretz, in an in-depth article published today, speaks of a "secret war" between Israel and Iran, which "became public" with the "launch of missiles over Iraq".
by Nirmala Carvalho

Elected by the general chapter in Calcutta, she takes the place of Sr. Prema, who had led the sisters since 2009. Brought up in Calcutta alongside Mother Teresa, 68 years old, she was currently superior for Kerala.

Calcutta (AsiaNews) - 68 year old Sr. M. Joseph Michael from India, is the new superior of Mother Teresa's sisters., The Missionaries of Charity. She was elected by the general chapter of the religious who met in the mother house in Calcutta and takes the place of Sr. Prema, the German-born nun who led the Missionaries of Charity for two mandates from 2009 to today.

Sr. Joseph becomes the fourth nun called to lead the sisters in the white and blue sari, known throughout the world for their presence next to the poorest. After St. Teresa of Calcutta, foundress of the Missionaries of Charity who died in 1997, the congregation was led by the Nepalese Sr. Nirmala Joshi, who also founded the contemplative branch of the sisters.

Sr. Joseph thus became the first Indian to hold the office of superior general. Originally from Thissur in Kerala, she joined the Missionaries of Charity at the age of 20 and was one of Mother Teresa's closest collaborators. She also ministered in the Philippines, Poland and Papua New Guinea. She was currently living at the Shishu Bhavan (children's home) in Ernakulam, where she was superior of the Missionaries of Charity for Kerala. Previously, until 15 months ago, she was the Assistant General beside Sr. Prema.

Speaking from Ernakulam, Sr John Mariette commented to AsiaNews on her election: "I am sure that God will use all her talents and qualities to bring good to society according to His plans".

The chapter of the Missionaries of Charity - which also elected the general council that will flank Sr Joseph - was attended by representatives of all the communities of the order, now present in 110 countries around the world.
by Arundathie Abeysinghe

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet calls for sanctions against Sri Lanka for its failure to identify those responsible of killing 40,000 civilians during the 1983-2009 civil war. The Sri Lankan government fears that the arrest of a suspect near London could lead to the detention of current military officers and government officials.

Colombo (AsiaNews)  For United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet, sanctions and international prosecutions for war criminals are needed in Sri Lanka as Sri Lankan authorities have repeatedly failed to ensure accountability for wartime atrocities committed during the countrys 25-year civil war, which ended in 2009.

According to Bachelet, the island nation has drifted towards militarisation after President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, a former lieutenant colonel, took office as president in 2019.

She expressed her displeasure with regard to militarisation of civilian government functions, including in law enforcement, as military officers facing allegations are placed in high positions in government administration.

The high commissioner also noted that many military checkpoints remain in place in Sri Lankas Northern Province, which is predominantly inhabited by Tamils, pointing out that there are complaints of discriminatory treatment or harassment particularly of women.

For this reason, she has urged the UN Human Rights Council to invoke universal jurisdiction in order to prosecute Sri Lankan officials facing credible allegations of war crimes.

Bachelet requested member states to explore the possibility of targeted sanctions against credibly alleged perpetrators of grave human rights violations and abuses in Sri Lanka.

In the last two years, the independence of the judiciary and other key institutions have been eroded, and democratic space, including for human rights advocacy, constricted, the UN Human Rights chief said.

The failure to promote reconciliation, accountability and human rights in the country by the current Sri Lankan government, including its policies and actions aimed at reversing the limited progress made, cause serious concerns about the probability of obtaining justice for the victims of human rights violations.

Based on the information in a report to be unveiled reviewing Sri Lankas record, Bachelet noted that Sri Lankan authorities had dropped investigations into emblematic cases, refusing to put in place a UN mechanism to preserve evidence, following allegations that Sri Lankan troops killed approximately 40,000 civilians during the last stages of the war.

The request came a day after a 48-year-old suspect was arrested in Northamptonshire (United Kingdom) in connection with the murder in 2000 of Tamil reporter Mylvaganam Nimalrajan, a high-profile journalist in Jaffna, the main city in Sri Lankas northern Tamil heartland.

Sri Lankan authorities dread that the arrest of the unnamed suspect may set a precedent for the detention of military officers or government officials from the current government.

Jayanath Colombage, permanent secretary of Sri Lankas Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told Sri Lankan media (before the release of an advance draft of Bachelets report) that the British action could have repercussions for current office holders.

For him, invoking universal jurisdiction is another very debatable topic and any country can use this as an excuse to target people of another country, calling it a very big danger.

Several Western countries have imposed travel bans on Sri Lankan military officials, including current Army Commander Shavendra Silva.

According to the report by the UN High Commissioner on Sri Lanka issued on 25 February, 2022, the human rights situation in Sri Lanka is dreadful, despite government claims that there is improvement.

It includes charges against the government for discriminating against religious and ethnic minorities as well as targeting civil society groups by security forces.

Bachelet points out that in addition to Tamils and Muslims, Christians also face abuses and discrimination, including in connection with the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings, when a militant Islamist group targeted churches and hotels, killing over 260 people.
The Aspen Jewish Congregation is seeking approval from the Elected Officials Transportation Committee for long-term access to this property next to the Brush Creek Park and Ride near Highway 82. The AJC has preliminary plans to develop a single building at the site for a place of worship and Hebrew school with an adjacent 75-space parking area. The concepts have yet to be vetted through Pitkin Countys land-use review process.
Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a thug whose government is not what it claims as there is more than meets the eye.

His comment was against the official stand of the majority of the Republican party who support the Ukrainians.

Since the start of the conflict, the US economy has been hit, and the Democrats have been criticized for protecting a foreign country under crisis.

Cawthorn Calls Ukraine Government Incredibly Corrupt

According to Cawthorn, Zelensky is a criminal, and his government is unjust, reported the Epoch Times.

Republican strategist, Karl Rove, took note of the representative's remarks as he addressed a crowd in Ashville. WRAL-TV posted footage of the controversial speech during the freshman lawmakers' public address.

Cawthorn, a representative from North Carolina, made this sensational statement about Kyiv, saying that Zelensky is not what he claims to be. He added there had been reports of the evil corruption of Ukraine, and it gets worse by advocating unjust ideologies that are reprehensible.

Republican lawmakers called him out for the controversial statements, saying he is for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Lawmakers Respond to Cawthorn's Claims

Like Cawthorn, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) broke a taboo by saying openly that someone opposed to Putin should assassinate him, drawing condemnation, calling the rookie congressman lawmaker an outlier of the party. Many Americans don't like Putin and want him out of the way, 90 percent say so.

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) told Cawthorn in the Lower House to say it is Russia doing the invasion, not the other way around, cited Boston Globe.

Read Also: Volodymyr Zelensky Wife: Who Is Olena Zelenska, the First Lady of Ukraine?

In Cawthorn's home state in North Carolina, there are two Republicans in the same state hoping to win the elections by condemning the remarks.

On social media, Senator Chuck Edwards spoke about the Ukraine issue, saying Putin is the thug. He added America should pray for the Ukrainian leader and his people fighting for freedom, noted News 12.

Michelle Woodhouse, another candidate, noted her bewilderment that anyone in a position of power in the United States could consider Zelensky a 'hoodlum' while Kyiv is now under invasion.

Republicans in the district are terrified that if Cawthorn gets the nomination, they will forfeit this position to a liberal Biden Democrat. The North Carolina congress members have previously said that Russia is just as at fault.

Last March 10, he posted on social media that Vladimir Putin is as disgusting. He drew the line at the Ukrainian leader whom he accused of misleading the US into a deadly conflict. Unlike other US leaders, he hopes it gets better for the Ukrainian people and not to allow others to pull in the US via dishonest means. No comment was given by his office yet.

Cawthorn is one of the few Republican lawmakers to blame Ukraine, though a larger number of lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have urged for the US not to send troops or establish a no-fly zone. He says the disinformation of Ukrainian President Zelensky to force the US to enter conflict is inappropriate. He added that using lies to pull the country in a deadly way is incorrect.

Related Article: Poland Berates Reports of Sending MiG-29 Fighters to Ukraine; Says Claims Provokes War Despite EU Hesitation

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
The new Aspen City Hall, where city council will meet today at 4 p.m. for its first consideration of Ordinance 6, which has been noticed with 24 hours per the states Open Meeting Law to essentially replaced the now-defunct Ordinance 27.
You are the owner of this article.
Congress hates changing the clocks just like everyone else
Stay up to date on COVID-19

Get Breaking News

Sign up now to get our FREE breaking news coverage delivered right to your inbox.
Vladimir Putin can fight a nuclear war with his supersonic bomber that can travel across continents without refueling. The bomber flies at 1,349 miles per hour and is capable of bombing or firing standoff missiles in midflight. For Vladimir Putin, they are physical reminders of what Russian air power is capable of, and the west knows it.

Russian Warheads

With the war in Ukraine approaching its third week, Putin's choices are extremely alarming if the conflict escalates into Europe and NATO gets embroiled in the issue, reported the Express.

Tupolev TU-160 bombers called Blackjack by NATO could make a run at Mach 2.3 and reach the continental US in a few hours to drop nuclear bombs in the American capital, cited Military History.

Possessing 12 nuclear missiles and zooming at a high speed of 7,600 miles, refueling can be done after releasing the payload. This bomber could fly at 52,000 feet, making interceptions impossible. It is one of the biggest and heaviest combat aircraft, the fastest bomber capable of high and low-speed flight, and one of the largest variable-sweep wing bombers to boot.

Americans have the same type of bomber called the Rockwell B-1 bomber, unique among NATO forces. Size is one of Russia's attributes in their arms and hardware, and the TU-95 has been around since the Cold War.

All silver and overwhelmed, Russia's TU-95, codenamed the Bear has four engines mounted and one of the last surviving relics called turboprop bombers that has serviced the Soviet Union, now the Russian Federation in its struggle against the west.

They would be seen above the North Sea and Atlantic whenever the allies would be seen scrambling their interceptor to stop and check. This has been going on since the cold war as Vladimir Putin is getting ready for nuclear war if need be.

Read Also: Vladimir Putin Net Worth 2022: Does Anyone Know Russian President's Hidden Wealth?

Used in 1956 for the first time, Russia's TU-95, an equivalent to the B-52 Stratofortress, can fly as fast as 575 miles per hour with six nuclear missiles on board, which is still in use today.

Russians love the MiG-29 and Su-27, but it's getting old despite the upgrades. The new aircraft will be a stealth-engineered fighter with the 5th generation fighter avionics and packages for new aerial warfare.

The F-35 presents a threat to the Russians, and the first low observable aircraft is brought to service to exploit what the Americans have in their stealth planes.

Su-57 has air to air and racks of pinpoint bombs for strike missions as well, noted the EurAsian Times. It is faster at Mach 2.2 and has supercruise, which the F-35 lacks. Its ceiling is 60,000 feet high better than a Blackjack bomber.

Russia Develops Nuclear Equipments

All this airpower is a chunk of Putin's arms, but atomic weapons are bringers of doomsday that remind the US and NATO that Moscow can defend itself. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) says that Russia still has the most warheads, even more than the US.

As reported in 2021, Russia holds, even after the Cold War, with 6,255 versus the 5,550 that the US stores. The Kremlin has never trusted the west, and Ukraine is its expression.

Russia also stores intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of going anywhere worldwide. Like the Samarat intercontinental ballistic missile, weapons can hit 7,000 miles away with a nuclear warhead.

Russia was also rumored in 2017 to develop personal equipment like a high-tech suit and an exoskeleton that harnessed power and stamina. Vladimir Putin's threats and his arsenal of equipment to wage nuclear war are serious with the developments for Russia.

Related Article: China Gives Russia Classified Intelligence Shared by the Biden Administration

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Share This: Tesla CEO Elon Musk once said Tesla Insurance could someday represent about 30% to 40% of Teslas automotive business.

Before this could happen, the in-house service must be expanded worldwide. It appears Tesla has been busy in its efforts to grow its insurance service to more states, with recent filings revealing the company is looking to start selling vehicle insurance in Oregon and Virginia.

So far, Tesla Insurance has been expanded to California, Arizona, Ohio, Illinois and Texas. Tesla Insurances upcoming expansion into Oregon and Virginia will be a bit different than usual, however, as the services policies will be underwritten by Tesla General Insurance. Previously, Tesla has partnered with existing insurance providers to offer coverage for its all-electric vehicles.

Considering Teslas efforts to create an in-house ecosystem for its products, it would not be surprising if future areas served by Tesla Insurance would also be underwritten by Tesla General Insurance.

An in-house insurance service provides a number of advantages for Tesla owners. In previous earnings calls, Musk and CFO Zachary Kirkhorn noted the companys in-house insurance is directly tied to a Tesla electric car. This allows the company to specifically assess a drivers risk based on real-world driving data.

Tesla has improved the use of its vehicle data for its in-house insurance service, with the company initially using anonymized, aggregated data from its vehicles to set rates. The company has since moved on to using data based on a drivers actual driving behavior.

As per comments from Kirkhorn during the companys Q3 2021 earnings call, Tesla used a number of factors such as Safety Scores to help determine a vehicles insurance premium. Teslas Safety Score system was launched to...
But maybe, just maybe, there are a handful of solid selections from America in this time frame? The most famous example is likely the Buick Regal Turbo. But we're bold enough to say this 1986 Pontiac Grand Prix also deserves to be amongst that group.Hailing its name from the iconic 60s muscle car that helped spawn the iconic GTO, the Grand Prix sure did have one nasty fall from grace. Especially as the 1973 oil crisis and subsequent new EPA regulations caused the muscle car era to come to a crashing halt abruptly. By the mid-1980s, the Grand Prix was an entirely different beast.It was smaller, lighter, and much more practical than its forbearers as a result. Clearly, people had stopped tolerating automobiles that averaged two or three gallons to the mile in the U.S. by this point. The 305-cubic inch (5-liter) V8 under the hood in this example may not have been a fuel sipper in its own right. But with 18 combined miles per gallon on offer, it is at least leaps and bounds more economical than its 60s namesake. But let's be real, that isn't saying much.This is, of course, a good thing in this case. Mainly because the two-tone light and dark grey paint with red accenting on this example do at least make it a handsome-looking thing. Even if the stock 150 horsepower isn't going to beat anything less than a city bus. But the wonderful thing about American cars is, no one looks at you like a fool when you modify them, the way they would if you did the same to a European car of the same vintage.Performance parts for the GM 305 engine are readily available from reputable retailers like Summit Racing. With enough skill and a little bit of money, it's possible to remove the archaic 80s emissions restrictions to make for an engine that can sing as it should. The fact that the grey cloth interior and fake wood-grain are in fantastic shape for a car with 53,225 miles (85,657.3 km) means you can spend more money tuning the engine. A check for $32,900 to Hanksters Hot Rods of Homer City, Pennsylvania, will award you that privilege.
A very convincing 1992 Ferrari F92A Formula 1 car popped up for sale earlier this month with Collecting Cars in The Netherlands, where seller JamesBond listed it. It was convincing because it was not a real F1 car, but a replica  and a hand- and home-built one, at it.As the story goes, Gianni Pascal was a huge Ferrari enthusiast, and he was also a huge fan of Jean Alesi, one of the three drivers behind the wheel of the Jean-Claude Migeot-designed Ferrari F92A, which competed in the 1992 Formula 1 season. At some point in 1992, Pascal decided to build his own Ferrari Formula 1 car, and he clearly had the skill and the connections to see it through.His son has confirmed the story, including how word of Pascals little project got out, eventually reaching a bunch of Ferrari factory employees, some of whom had been directly involved in the construction of the original. Once the originals spare collection was returned to Maranello, they salvaged some parts that were then sent over to Pascal  specifically, the front and rear wings.Despite the amount of work and expense that went into the replica, its not powered by a Ferrari heart, let alone an F1 one. Power comes from a four-cylinder Alfa Romeo twin-cam 2.0-liter engine from the Alfa Giulietta, coupled to a five-speed manual transmission. The tubular steel chassis is custom, as are the wheels and the detailed and functional cockpit.Pascal completed the project in four years and then took the replica car to various auto events and track drive demonstrations. He didnt get to enjoy it much longer because he fell ill, and it was soon rolled into storage and forgotten there. As per the listing, it was discovered in the summer of 2021, restored and fixed, and offered for sale for the first time. The Rosso Corsa paintwork is still original, but some parts had to be replaced to make it functional again.As noted above, despite the 37 bids on it, the 1992 Ferrari F92A Formula 1 replica failed to sell
Eugene Shvidler is an oil tycoon worth an estimated $2 billion, and hes also the chairman of UK-based company Millhouse Capital, which manages the assets of another Russian billionaire, Roman Abramovich. Shvidler himself has not been personally sanctioned by UK authorities, the BBC reports, but a private jet believed to be his has been impounded at Farnborough Airport in Hampshire.According to the media outlet, the private jet, a Bombardier Global 6500 business jet, estimated at $44-56 million, touched down at the airport with Shvidler supposedly on board. It was then supposed to fly out to Dubai, but it was prevented from doing so by an order from Transport Secretary Grant Shapps.Under current sanctions, it is a criminal offense for a private jet owned or chartered by a Russian oligarch to enter national airspace. This Bombardier is staying put for now until authorities determine its origin and/or ownership since its registered in Luxembourg.For instance, if the investigation determines that the jet is permanently leased to Shvidler, it will fall under current sanctions and become a frozen asset. At the same time, the report adds, determining that a plane is Russian is detective work that goes beyond just tracking it by radar because many Russian oligarchs charter aircraft registered in third countries  as seems to be the case here.We will always work to deny [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and his cronies the right to continue as normal while innocent Ukrainians suffer, Shapps says in a statement.Days into the Ukraine invasion, several European countries and the United States have adopted economic sanctions against Russia, ranging from impounding mega- and superyachts , luxury villas, and other assets to altogether ceasing operations and business partnerships. The goal is to economically isolate Russia and thus cut funding for the war effort.
At the beginning of the year, the Chinese AAV manufacturer reached a milestone , when the CAAC (Civil Aviation Administration of China) officially established the airworthiness requirements for the EH216-S aircraft, giving the company green light for taking its AAV to the next level. The first unmanned tests for the EH216 were carried out in 2021 in Japan, where helicopter operator AirX also placed EHangs largest pre-order in Japan, for the same model.But the good news for EHang did not stop there. A recent agreement with Aerotree Flight& Services marks the largest pre-order for the Chinese company in Malaysia. Aerotree is one of the local leaders in transportation infrastructure, and together with EHang, it plans to offer not just passenger transportation, but also aerial firefighting and aerial logistics services, as part of a wider UAM network.That will be possible through the operation of two EHang models, the EH216 and the VT30. The first one is a short-range two-seater that can reach a top speed of 80.7 mph (130 kph), while flying at altitudes of up to 9,800 feet (3,000 meters). Designed for short-to-medium distance operations, it can travel for 22 miles (35 km) on a single charge, with its battery capable of fully recharging in two hours.The VT30 , on the other hand, offers a bigger range of up to 300 km (186 miles), with a battery life of 100 minutes. The manufacturer hasnt revealed too many details about either model, but it seems that the two could cover a wider area of UAM operations.In addition to the 60 units that were recently ordered, Aerotree will also build a Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) center and a training center for EHang operations in Malaysia.
ACC

One such activity is jumping out of perfectly functional aircraft and right into harms way, with the stated goal of saving lives. And some of the daredevils who do this for a living are called PJs.Thats (kind of) short for pararescuemen, a highly trained breed of humans tasked with aiding in the recovery of personnel during disasters, combat, and even after coming back from space. Set up immediately after the Second World War, pararescuemen are generally deployed by the United States Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) and Air Combat Command ().We see one of the brave men who made saving others his lifes mission in this pic here, released by the U.S. Air Force (USAF) a couple of weeks ago. The soldier is assigned to the 31st Rescue Squadron, and is seen here jumping from an HH-60G Pave Hawk assigned to the 33rd Rescue Squadron.The jump was not part of an actual rescue mission, but took place during exercise Cope North 22, held back in mid-February at the Island of Tinian, near Andersen Air Force Base in Guam. The exercise involved Japanese, Australian, and U.S. Air Force personnel, and focused on combat air forces large-force employment and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief training.For such missions, the aging Pave Hawk still is one of the best machines around. Introduced about four decades ago, the helicopter will soon be retired, to be replaced with the Jolly Green II , but that doesnt mean its not still up to the task, as clearly shown here.The Pave Hawks primary mission remains to conduct day or night personnel recovery operations into hostile environments. To do that, it relies on automatic flight controls, night vision goggles, infrared systems, and blade anti-ice systems.The Pave Hawk is powered by a pair of General Electric engines that give it a speed of 184 mph (296 kph). It can extract people located 580 miles (933 km) from the take-off point.
New Mexico could become a hydrogen hub for aviation in the next few years. Universal Hydrogen has acquired a 50-acre property close to the Albuquerque International Sunport, which also provides strategic access to a runway.This is where the company will build its newest facilities for manufacturing and distributing its proprietary hydrogen storage modules. This is also where it will assemble retrofit kits and provide maintenance for retrofitted airplanes.The project is a complex one, with an estimated two-year construction time and an investment of more than $250 million, including support from the City of Albuquerque. Universal Hydrogen has developed capsules that can be used for storing hydrogen during transit and that can be loaded directly inside the aircraft, as modular tanks.One of the main advantages of this technology is that it enables the transportation of hydrogen using infrastructure that already exists so that there are no additional costs related to new pipes or storage facilities.The Los Angeles company has big plans for its modular fueling solution , aiming to implement it on large airliners and drones, as well as extending it to land-based transportation and industrial equipment. Until then, its focusing on retrofitting existing regional turboprop aircraft. More than ten air carriers have already agreed with Universal Hydrogen to retrofit their regional aircraft, adding up to almost 100, which will start flying on hydrogen as soon as 2025, when they will be certified by the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration). These are mostly Dash 8-300 and ATR 72 models.The future New Mexico facilities for decarbonizing aviation are planned to kick off operations by 2024.
In early March, news broke out that Pete Davidson was in negotiations for a place in the upcoming space trip on Blue Origin, Jeff Bezoss space company.At first, rumors were that Pete is excited, according to a source. He got on really well with Jeff when they met.The comedian and actor got a chance to talk to Bezos when he attended a dinner at his house with his famous girlfriend, Kim Kardashian . The two mustve talked and bonded, because Davidson is now to go to space as the sixth member of the upcoming space flight next week.He will be the only non-paying guest, which means the Saturday Night Live comedian truly impressed Bezos. Forbes Richest Man of 2021 initially claimed the prices for the space flights would be ranging between $200,000 and $300,000, but never actually confirmed the figures.So far, there have been four human flights (the first one including Bezos himself), and the most expensive ticket was rated at $28 million for the first manned flight on Blue Shepherd.Other famous names that got a chance to hop in Bezos spaceship were Star Trek actor William Shatner and GMA host Michael Strahan According to Blue Origin , Pete Davidson is to blast off for the eleven-minute flight on the New Shephard rocket from the companys Launch Site One in West Texas on March 23, at 8:30 am.Alongside Davidson, there will be CEO and investor Marty Allen, husband and wife Sharon and Marc Hagle, who have a non-profit business, Jim Kitchen, who is a teacher and explorer, and Dr. George Neid, the founder of a company that promotes commercial space activity.Petes girlfriend, Kim Kardashian, is not on the list, so hell be enjoying this adventure all by himself... And five other people.
EV

Well, as it turns out, the Hollywood megastar is quite a fan of a Swedish-maker Polestar, which of course, is owned by Volvo.Recently, he attended a launch event for the Polestar Precept, which will soon be known as the Polestar 5, serving as the brands flagship product going forward. Stallone was incredibly impressed by the Precept, calling it a work of art. Naturally, he didnt get to drive it yet, so he was only complimenting the vehicles looks.During that event, Stallone took to social media to announce that more Polestar-related content would be coming and sure enough, he then went and saw the O2 Concept in person and posted about it on Instagram.This is unbelievable, said the man who took down Ivan Drago. This is a step into the future, and luckily, theyve invited me along...to see the future!Look at this car! Wow [] This is magnificent [] Incredible, he goes on to say while admiring the stunning exterior and interior design of the Polestar O2 Concept, which only broke cover less than two weeks ago.The O2s styling is clearly inspired by that of the Precept, even though one is a roadster, and one is a four-door fastback. Whats particularly appealing about the O2 Concept is the fact that it comes with its own autonomous cinematic drone, integrated behind the rear seats  too bad Sly couldnt see that in person, because we would have loved to gauge his reaction to something so futuristic, its straight out of Demolition Man.According to Polestar, that drone can follow the car automatically at speeds of up to 56 mph (90 kph), capture footage, and then return to the vehicle autonomously.
Some have gone as far as calling it a cinematography video essay. Frankly, I agree. And  The Batman  should rank high on the moviegoer list along with last years Dune: Part One, for example, if people love Sci-Fi and fantasy. Alas, no matter what the PG-13 rating might say, this is very close to an R label and kids should be steered clear of it.No need to take my word for granted. Just take a look at the darkly menacing related artwork. Such is the matching way someone decided to portray the transportation aids of the titular character! Ash Thorp, the virtual artist better known as ashthorp on social media, was the one tasked with the CGI work on this occasion. Then, and only then, the regular production teams went on with the actual fabrication.Now, after first presenting us with the Batmobile, it is time to switch gears and talk about the Batcycle. Frankly, the couple of posts (links embedded here and another one over here ) that have been shared on the two-wheeled matter so far will make any explanation on my behalf a little superfluous. Thus, I advise you to take a few minutes and read them through. They are well worth your time.Instead, I want to express my gratitude for this raw and visceral two- and four-wheeled take on The Batmans wheeled sidekicks . They do make the story even more profound. And I am not even a Pattinson fan, just so you know. Still, I put up with his tortured Bruce Wayne because there is such a big promise for more. Like that heart-breaking yet somehow uplifting The Bat and The Cat dual-motorcycle scene...
Former President Barack Obama said on Sunday that he had tested positive with COVID-19. After spending part of the winter in Hawaii, Obama, 60, had lately returned to Washington, DC. According to a source close to him, he tested positive in DC.

After then-President Donald Trump claimed he tested positive in October 2020, before vaccines were widely accessible in the US, Obama became the second US President to get the illness.

Barack Obama Recently Endorses US Vaccination Campaign

Throughout the pandemic, Obama has been a strong supporter of public health efforts. He canceled his 60th birthday party on Martha's Vineyard last August due to concerns about the Delta variant at the time, according to CNN.

I just tested positive for COVID. Ive had a scratchy throat for a couple days, but am feeling fine otherwise. Michelle and I are grateful to be vaccinated and boosted, and she has tested negative.



Its a reminder to get vaccinated if you havent already, even as cases go down.  Barack Obama (@BarackObama) March 13, 2022

In a one-minute film broadcast last March, Obama, along with past presidents Jimmy Carter, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and the former first ladies, endorsed the US vaccination drive and shared what they missed about life before the pandemic.

After Democrats chastised Donald Trump's administration for holding several maskless events at the White House, conservative political opponents slammed the former president for planning an outdoor party - where attendees were required to be vaccinated - that was expected to draw hundreds of guests.

In a tweet on Sunday, Obama reaffirmed his support for the vaccine, saying that his positive result was "a reminder to get vaccinated if you haven't already, even as cases go down."

Despite a prominent anti-vaccination lobby in the country, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that more than 80% of all Americans aged five and up have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.

According to the (CDC), daily case counts in the United States have dropped dramatically, with an average of roughly 35,000 cases per day in mid-March, compared to an average of 810,000 cases per day in mid-January. NDTV reported.

Read Also: Joe Biden Blames Vladimir Putin for Crazy Inflation, But Economists Say It's Because of $1.9 Trillion Spending in 2021

US COVID-19 Cases

The death toll in the country now stands at 965,000. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Health and Human Services, the total number of confirmed cases in the United States has topped 79.4 million. Hospitalization rates are steadily declining across the country.

According to federal data, the number of hospitalized COVID-19 positive Americans fell below 30,000 for the first time since July on Thursday. Since the nation's high, when 160,000 people were hospitalized roughly two months ago, the number of individuals requiring care for the virus has dropped by more than 80%.

According to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, just 2% of the US population - roughly 7 million people - live in a county with a "high" COVID-19 community level. The others are in "low" or "medium" community levels, where masking isn't recommended, and immunocompromised persons and those at high risk of severe disease are encouraged to take extra precautions against COVID-19, respectively.

President Joe Biden stated earlier this month in his first State of the Union speech that the US is "moving forward safely" toward a less disruptive phase of the pandemic. The president discussed his strategy for overcoming the COVID-19 pandemic during his speech, as per ABC News.

Related Article: Queen Elizabeth Pulls Out of Commonwealth Service; Is This Another Health Trouble-Related Cancelation?

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
????????Ukrainian farmers have taken to their tractors to tow away Russian military hardware worth millions of pounds https://t.co/cKEEC99CqY  The Telegraph (@Telegraph) March 14, 2022

Putin: Anyone who intervenes with our military operation in Ukraine will face consequences greater than any you have faced in history..



Ukrainian Farmers.. pic.twitter.com/Bd88SSkINu  Johnny Mercer (@JohnnyMercerUK) March 8, 2022

After 12 days of stealing Putin's tanks, Ukrainian farmers are now unofficially the fifth-largest military in Europe pic.twitter.com/ImLfDYrcjU  Business Ukraine mag (@Biz_Ukraine_Mag) March 8, 2022

The Ukrainian Farmers' Union now has more armour than the British Army... pic.twitter.com/c1d7Oe0gX3  Ric CoIe ???? (@ric_cole) March 5, 2022

For the Ukrainians, a hero stepped up on the very first day of the war. He is a sort of mythical air force pilot, riding a MiG-29 Fulcrum into battle against much more technologically advanced enemies. Nicknamed Ghost of Kyiv, hes said to have shot down no less than six Russian aircraft on the first day of the war, and, depending on the source, up to 30 since that time.But the Ghost of Kyiv is at his core military, trained to do combat. And as we all know by now, its not only soldiers that are opposing the Russians in Ukraine. Civilians do it too, and to them, a heros myth is the Ukrainian Farmer.His legend started in the first days of the war as well, when the humans on Earth saw unbelievable images of a Ukrainian tractor towing a captured Russian tank. Since then, the real world has been flooded with equally real short clips (some of them are attached below the text) of other tractors doing the same thing to other military hardware, including tanks, different types of armor, missile launchers, and troop carriers.But the myth around the Ukrainian Farmer, his tractor and their exploits has grown well past whats going on in the real world. As usual, the Internet is the driving force behind the push to make this into another unsung hero of a besieged country that needs him.It is on the Internet where we find more or less successfully doctored images of farmers and tractors towing Russian submarines and aircraft carriers, MiGs, not on the ground, but in full flight, the Soyuz rocket the Russians are no longer allowing anyone to use for flights into space, and even buldings.Weve spent some time digging up these instances of a made up hero in action, and you can see the best ones we found displayed in the gallery attached to this piece.
kW

Sadly though, that hasn't made it any easier to get somebody to purchase one of the very last airworthy Mars flying boats left on the planet. With its scarcely believable sixth year on the open market passing this month, we can't help but think there has to be at least one wealthy aviation enthusiast that's enamored enough with this quad-engined leviathan to take it home.That just hasn't been the case in the last 72 or so months since this enormous red and white warbird dubbed Hawaii Mars II took to the skies for the EAA's 2016 Air Venture. There, it conducted simulated firefighting drills over a crowd of cheering spectators at Oshkosh Airfield in Wisconsin. Ever since, the aircraft's been sitting in a lake in Mayne Island, British Columbia, Canada waiting for someone to buy it.Powering this aircraft is a set of four Wright R-3350 Duplex-Cyclone 18-cylinder radial engines generating 2,500 hp (1,900) each. The very same engines that powered the iconic Boeing B-29 Superfortress when it dropped two atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, to end the Second World War. Hawaii Mars II received a comprehensive avionics and glass cockpit upgrade before its last big show in 2016, so everything should be all ready to go as soon as someone is bonkers enough to actually buy this plane.A plane of this size is bound to need one heck of a big crew to keep it going. Ultimately, a shift to smaller, less maintenance-heavy water-bomber aircraft in North America is ultimately the reason this near one-of-a-kind winged boat has stayed on the open market for so long.
In their most recent joint interview, the Kardashian family revealed they prefer driving their cars, instead of employing chauffeurs . Mainly, because it helps them be responsible and independent.And Khloe Kardashian is proving just that, as she was out and about, driving her marvelous 2022 Rolls-Royce Ghost.But, when she returned to the car from her errands, the Keeping Up with the Kardashians star found herself locked out. She tried to pull the doors handle to no avail and then called one of the people on her team to help her out.She waited by the white-painted luxury car until help arrived, and she was finally ready to get moving again. After that, she was photographed filming with her mother, Kris Jenner, in Los Angeles, California. Probably for the upcoming Kardashian show that will debut on Hulu.Khloe Kardashian had added the vehicle to her collection early this year, at the end of January . She introduced it on social media with a photo shoot of her giving us a good look at both the interior and exterior of the Ghost.For the project, she had worked with star-studded San Diego dealership Champion Motoring, which customized the 2022 Ghost, which is a Black Badge model, to her liking.Coming from the British luxury manufacturer, the 2022 Rolls-Royce Ghost looks intimidating. Rolls-Royce put the company's 6.75-liter V12 engine under the hood, pairing it to an eight-speed automatic transmission, that sends resources to all wheels. The power unit puts out 563 horsepower (571 ps) and a maximum torque of 627 lb-ft (850 Nm). The Ghost can sprint to 62 mph (100 kph) from a standstill in 4.8 seconds and has a top speed limited to 155 mph (249 kph).Khloe seems to be a fan of the brand, as her family car is a black Rolls-Royce Cullinan.
We want to use this space to thank the team behind Awwwards for trusting us with designing the voting platform for the Annual Awards 2021. Its been quite the ride (or should we say flight?) to create the platform displaying the best and most beautiful web creations in the world.

The result is a floaty, bright, and minimalistic website  made in Webflow, celebrating the Awwwards community and all the beautiful, creative work from designers and developers worldwide.

The front page of the Annual Awards website

Awwwards recognizes the talent and effort of the worlds best designers, developers, and agencies in the world. Its a meeting point, where digital design professionals from across the globe find inspiration, impart knowledge and experience, connect, and share constructive, respectful critiques.

We knew from the start that the Annual Awards website had to honor all the talented people out there. We wanted the website to celebrate the many hopes and aspirations connected to Awwwards and dreaming together as a community. But how to capture intangible emotions as dreams and aspirations?

Lets dive into some initial thoughts, dreamy mood boards, technical tweaks, and a handful of nerdy details from the work behind the platform.

We wanted the website to celebrate the many hopes and aspirations connected to Awwwards and dreaming together as a community.

Designed & developed in Webflow

As a creative challenge, we designed the website in the no-code CMS system Webflow  the main sponsor of this year's Annual Awards. To create the desired effects, we took advantage of all the opportunities Webflow offers, combined with other technologies like WebGL and JavaScript code.

Webflow site and CMS structure

Being on Cloud Nine

We started by looking at the design from the previous years. They all had a few things in common: typographic, interactive, and characterized by a dark look. We agreed that we would try going for something different  a more light and floating design.

Former Annual Awwwards sites from Locomotive (2018), Bornfight (2019) & Tubik Studio (2020)

We wanted the visual to be dreamy and have a heavenly feel to it. One image kept coming back to our minds and ended up being the moment we wanted the website to stage:

"Imagine the feeling when lying in the grass on top of a hill. You look up at a bright sky of floating, soft clouds. Your mind starts to wander, and you dream about being nominated or even winning one of the most prestigious prizes in the world of web design  an Annual Award."

With this in mind, we started creating a few mood boards to reach the feeling we were looking for. We ended up with the idea of being on Cloud Nine  the feeling you get as a designer when being nominated or even winning an Annual Award. We think many in the Awwwards community can relate to this feeling

We ended up with the idea of being on Cloud Nine  the feeling you get as a designer when being nominated or even winning an Annual Award.

Our 'Cloud Nine' mood board that we presented for the great people at Awwwards. Work from Zhenya Rynzhuk, Niccolo Miranda, Pangram Pangram, Barkas, Thibaud Allie & Leonard Agency.

Clouds raise many questions: How do they look? How do they behave? What do they mean?

Playing around with clouds

We were happy with the idea but as we moved on we realized that clouds are not just clouds. They are in fact surrounded by a lot of mystery. Clouds raise many questions: How do they look? How do they behave? What do they mean?

One of the things we discovered was: Pink Sky At Night, Sailors Delight, meaning that if theres a pink sky at night, it means good weather tomorrow. With that in mind, we tried different clouds and ways to create clouds.

We tested a mix of naturalistic-, 3D- and more painted-looking clouds. They all had something special about them, but what caught our attention the most was the true-to-life look. The contrast between dreams and realism gave an exciting dimension to the design. We wanted the user to feel they were looking up at the sky when entering the website. The naturalistic-looking clouds gave that feeling the best.

Different cloud and design tests

We also did some different tests with the cloud background. Rendering clouds in WebGL is not easy as it quickly ends up in many loops since it usually requires noise and fractional brownian motion or FBM. We figured out that simple images would look better.

Different WebGL cloud tests. Top left: testing Inigo Quilez beautiful clouds rendering on ShaderToy. Top right: testing noise and FBM. Bottom left: testing on ShaderToy  pouet.net. Bottom right: testing 200000 instanced Mesh with cloud png texture running at 60fps

Now that we knew how the clouds looked and what they meant, we needed to figure out how to make them behave the right way. We build up the website in four layers to create a feeling of clouds moving at different speeds. It helped give the sense of randomness that clouds usually have.

Website layer builds

Creating the Awwwards trophy

On top of the layers of skies, the website has a 3D visualization of the Awwwards Trophy. We used Blender to create the trophy 3D model based on SVG images of the actual trophy. The 3D model was then exported as a GLTF with Draco compression, giving us a lower file size (162 kB) and imported into the browser using Three.js.

Playing with the trophy 3D model in Blender

While deciding on the clouds and design for the website, we explored different styles for the trophy and ways to make the trophy stand out  a simple matcap with the nominees reflection, a black and stone material, and a phong reflective. We eventually ended up with the glass effect using refraction since the concept was evolving in the sky.

We eventually ended up with the glass effect using refraction since the concept was evolving in the sky.

We could go with MeshPhysicalMaterial from Three.js, but decided to go with the multisite refraction technique from the talented Jesper Vos. Find tutorial by Jesper Vos here. This technique allowed us to add some barrel distortion and chromatic aberration to the custom ShaderMaterial and it offered better control of the refraction.

As a final touch, we used simple MatCap Materials for the golden and dark WWW to simulate light reflection.

Different styles and looks for the trophy

The Backend  Voting

One of the important elements of the Annual Awards website was the voting platform. On the backend side, the Webflow CMS had to be synchronized with the data from the Awwwards API.

We used the Webflow API to create and update the nominees and different projects. Because the voting process was made through the Awwwards API, we didn't have to take care of anything else than providing data. The votes and score updates were updated every hour with a node js script running on an heroku server with a CronJob scheduler.

Cloud community

The website finally went live on January 10th, 2022. The Awwwwards community embraced the cloud universe  just like we hoped  and we were thrilled to see how many agencies and independent designers posted clouds on their social media. Thank you for the support and congratulations to all nominees and winners!

The Awwwards community sharing clouds on social media

Technologies

Frontend: Webflow, WebGL, Three.js

Webflow, WebGL, Three.js Backend: Webflow CMS

Webflow CMS 3D model: Blender

Company Info

Granyon is a Copenhagen-based branding- and design agency with a team of strategists, copywriters, and designers. We deliver campaigns, strategies, content, and digital/analog solutions to Danish and international clients. Read more about us here or connect with us on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter.
Data: Generation Lab/Axios research; Map: Kavya Beheraj/Axios

Seattle is America's most desired post-graduation destination for college students, according to the new Axios-Generation Lab Next Cities Index, which tracks rising U.S. work and culture trends through geographic preferences.

Why it matters: The Emerald City, with its superstar tech-hub status, cool climate, green-energy embrace and music and art scene, eclipsed two top-dollar coastal destinations  New York and Los Angeles  among young adults looking to move. Seattle also drew a more bipartisan appeal.

It feels like a young-person city," says Riley Harbick, a computer science major in his senior year at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, who aspires to move to Seattle.

The big picture: Half of the survey's 2,109 respondents said they want to live outside of their home states after graduation; about one in four want to live back in their hometowns.

Denver and Boston filled out the top five wish list, after Seattle, NYC and L.A.

Health care was the top industry choice for careers (29%), followed by education and research (15%) and tech (12%).

Between the lines: Party identification correlated with students' preferences. Austin, Texas, was the top choice for young Republicans who want to leave their home state after graduation. New York topped the list for young Democrats. Seattle won big with independents.

Austin didn't appear among the top 15 cities for Democrats, and New York didn't appear among the top 15 cities for Republicans.

Democrats (54%) were more likely to want to leave their home state than Republican students (41%).

Be smart: The pandemic didn't dictate the destination calculus for any of the students interviewed by Axios. But the resulting explosion of remote work did shape some students' thinking about how far from family they choose to move  and whether work from home is all it was cracked up to be.

Henry Ballard, a native of Birmingham, Alabama, and a graduate student at UAB, told Axios, "I'm a family-focused person, and this is where my family is." The greater chances of finding remote work in his field of IT means more job possibilities closer to home, he said.

University of Arkansas student Morgan Wilson, who wants to be a therapist, concluded some interactions are simply more effective in person. "I used to think it would be amazing to do everything from home, but it is not that great, as it turns out."

The ability to do more jobs now from virtually anywhere is also adjusting calculations on the importance of moving to established centers for specific professions  or whether that can take a back seat to preferences about a city's cultural, natural or ideological offerings.

Yes, but: Reality and dreams don't always align; 45% said they want to live somewhere different than they think they will live.

Aubree Rodriguez, 19, a student at Blinn College in Texas, told Axios that while she wants to be in Seattle, she's unlikely to go without her family and that "my family has lived in Texas for decades, and the majority of them are not the biggest fans of cold weather."

Harbick, the JMU student with sights on Seattle, says he expects it will be his second post-college move. His first is about a two-hour drive from school  to Virginia's capital, Richmond, where he's already accepted a job that starts after graduation.

Methodology: This study was conducted in two waves from Nov. 18, 2021, through Feb. 14, 2022, from a representative sample of 2,109 students nationwide from 2-year and 4-year schools.
An Idaho bill outlawing abortions after six weeks, before many women know they are pregnant, is now heading to the governor for a signature.

Why it matters: Following Texas' six-week abortion ban, Idaho could become the second state in the U.S. to effectively ban the procedure after six weeks.

Driving the news: Idaho's House voted 51-14 on Monday to approve legislation, the Washington Post reported. The Idaho Senate approved the Republican-backed bill earlier this month and the law now heads to Gov. Brad Little's (R) desk to be signed.

Little has 10 days to sign the bill and the legislation would potentially take effect 30 days later, ahead of the Mississippi abortion case currently being litigated in the Supreme Court, per the Post.

Planned Parenthood says it will not continue to perform abortions past six weeks at its clinics if the legislation becomes law, 19th News reported.

While Idaho's bill does copy elements of Texas' abortion ban, the two differ in certain aspects.

The Texas abortion ban does not provide any exceptions for rape or incest and allows private citizens to sue anyone suspected of helping a woman obtain an abortion.

The Idaho abortion ban does allow for some exceptions in cases of incest or rape, but requires the pregnant person to have reported their rape or incest to the police and to provide the abortion provider with a police report, 19th News reported.

Idaho's ban only permits the person receiving the abortion or their family to sue for damages and only allows for the doctor to be sued, per 19th News.

Worth noting: The number of abortions performed in Texas fell by 60% in the first month after its restrictive ban took effect, forcing travel to neighboring states to access abortion providers, Axios' Oriana Gonzalez reported.
Power has been restored to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, Ukraine's minister of energy announced on Sunday.

Driving the news: Ukrainian Minister of Energy German Galushchenko said the plant's cooling system will operate normally once again, rather than from backup power.

The plant was disconnected from the power grid on Wednesday after a power line was damaged, leading to concerns that the cooling of the plant's radioactive material could be disrupted.

Chernobyl currently remains in Russian hands after troops seized the plant on Feb. 24, the first day of the invasion.

What they're saying: This is a positive development as the Chornobyl NPP has had to rely on emergency diesel generators for several days now," director general Rafael Mariano Grossi of the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a press release Sunday.

He added: "However, I remain gravely concerned about safety and security at Chornobyl and Ukraines other nuclear facilities.

Grossi said the IAEA was also informed by the Ukrainian regulator on Sunday that the staff at Chernobyl are no longer carrying out repair and maintenance of safety-related equipment due to physical and psychological fatigue.

He said the situation "added further urgency to an IAEA initiative aimed at ensuring safety and security at Ukraines nuclear power plants." Grossi has proposed a framework that would allow the IAEA to deliver technical and other assistance to help operate Ukraines nuclear facilities.

The big picture: The plant was the site of the world's worst nuclear disaster in 1986 when one of its reactors exploded, causing radioactivity to spread through the wind over Europe.

What's next: Galushchenko appealed to the European Commission, IAEA, the United Nations and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe to help Ukraine protect its nuclear facilities.
Data: Sedgwick Brand Protection 2022 State of the Nation recall index; Chart: Baidi Wang/Axios

The number of recalls in major product categories fell in the first full year of the pandemic.

Why it matters: Product safety oversight is a critical function of federal regulators. But in 2021 most regulatory inspections were conducted remotely, making oversight more logistically difficult.

By the numbers: Companies conducted 2,560 recalls of autos, consumer goods, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, food and beverages in 2021, down 12% from 2020 and down 17% from 2017, according the Sedgwick Brand Protection 2022 State of the Nation recall index.

Recalls were lower in each category from 2017 to 2021, according to data analyzed by Sedgwick for Axios  though autos and food and drink were up slightly from 2020 to 2021.

There were probably some things the lack of inspections or remote inspections didnt find, Chris Harvey, senior vice president of client service for Sedgwick, tells Axios. Obviously the pandemic has had an impact.

The intrigue: Harvey noted that Democratic administrations are typically more likely than Republican ones to more closely scrutinize business operations.

The lower numbers correspond to the first year of the Biden administration, and were lower compared with the first and last years of the Trump regime.

Keep in mind: Other factors could also be reducing recalls, most of which are voluntary. Those may include improvements in manufacturing quality.

The Food Safety Modernization Act of 2011 has led to across-the-board upgrades in food manufacturing, Harvey says.

Yes, but: The total number of products recalled reached 1 billion in 2021 for only the second time in a decade, with three different recalls each involving more 100 million units, according to Sedgwick.

There have also been several high-profile recalls during the Biden administration, including most recently a massive recall affecting a slew of products from more than 400 Family Dollar stores after FDA inspectors discovered a rat infestation at the retailers distribution center in West Memphis, Arkansas.

The FDA will continue to work with companies to minimize the American publics exposure to potentially harmful products, the FDA said in a statement.

What were watching: Whether recalls spike now that the number of COVID-19 cases has subsided and in-person inspections are resuming.
Hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped in the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol face a "worst-case scenario" unless a humanitarian agreement can be brokered, the International Committee of the Red Cross said Sunday.

Driving the news: Mariupol has been under siege by Russian forces and has sustained devastating shelling that has destroyed a children's hospital as well as a local mosque.

Conditions in the city have been deteriorating, with food scarce and many without heat, water or electricity. Residents this week began burying their dead in a mass grave.

What they're saying: "Hundreds of thousands of the city's residents are now facing extreme or total shortages of basic necessities like food, water and medicine. People of all ages, including our staff, are sheltering in unheated basements, risking their lives to make short runs outside for food and water," the ICRC said in a statement.

"The human suffering is simply immense."

"All those participating in the fighting need to agree to the modalities and timing of a ceasefire, the precise locations of the safe passage route, and then ensure that the agreement is respected."

"The ICRC stands ready to act as a neutral intermediary to facilitate dialogue on such humanitarian issues."

The bottom line: "Time is running out for the hundreds of thousands trapped by the fighting. History will look back at what is now happening in Mariupol with horror if no agreement is reached by the sides as quickly as possible."

Go deeper:
The Kremlin has asked China's government for military equipment and other assistance to support the Russian invasion of Ukraine, per multiple reports citing U.S. officials on Sunday.

What to watch: American officials said there were indications that Russia's military was running out of weaponry and one added that the U.S. was "preparing to warn its allies" due to signs that Beijing may be prepared to help Moscow, according to the Financial Times, which first reported the news.

It was not immediately clear what types of arms Russian officials had requested, or whether U.S. officials knew of how China's government has responded, per the Washington Post.

Meanwhile, national security adviser Jake Sullivan is due to travel to Rome on Monday for a meeting with senior Chinese foreign policy adviser Yang Jiechi to discuss Russia's invasion.

What they're saying: Sullivan told CNN earlier on Sunday that U.S. officials were "communicating directly, privately to Beijing that there will absolutely be consequences for large-scale sanctions evasion efforts or support to Russia to backfill them."

He added that the U.S. "will not allow that to go forward and allow there to be a lifeline to Russia from these economic sanctions from any country anywhere in the world."

The other side: Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in D.C., said he hadn't heard of any request from Russian officials, per the New York Times.

"The current situation in Ukraine is indeed disconcerting," he said, stressing Beijing wants to see a peaceful resolution. "The high priority now is to prevent the tense situation from escalating or even getting out of control."

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov also denied that Russia had asked China for military assistance, insisting "Russia has the independent capacity to continue the operation," per Bloomberg.

The big picture: Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir have forged closer ties, including military cooperation, Axios' Zachary Basu notes.

Flashback: As Russia's military was building the capacity to invade Ukraine last month, Putin and Xi issued a joint statement ahead of their meeting at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics that voiced opposition to the further enlargement of NATO.

The Kremlin had repeatedly made comments previously over negotiations on NATO's expansion, using the threat of military action to demand a legal guarantee that Ukraine would never join the alliance, Basu notes.

Representatives for the Biden administration did not immediately return Axios' request for comment.

Go deeper: Western sanctions tie Russia even tighter to China

Editor's note: This article has been updated with new details throughout.
According to Jussie Smollett's enraged brother, jail officials relocated the former 'Empire' star to a mental ward after determining he was a risk of self-harm.

Jussie Smollett's sibling Jocqui Smollett criticized his confinement in a psych unit as "a complete lack of justice" two days after he was sentenced to five months in Cook County Jail in Chicago for lying to police about a made-up homophobic and racial attack.

Jussie Smollett's Brother Says He Has Been in Psych Ward

Jussie Smollett was sentenced on Thursday, more than three years after he told police in January 2019 that he was attacked by two men who screamed racist and homophobic slurs at him, tied him up, and poured a chemical on him.

Jussie was suspected of staging the attack by paying two brothers to attack him, according to the inquiry. Jussie Smollett was convicted of five counts of disorderly conduct and lying to the police in December.

Jussie, who is 39 years old, has always maintained his innocence. Following his sentencing last Thursday, the actor stated that he "is not suicidal." In an Instagram video, Jocqui also emphasized his brother's innocence and opposed his placement in a psychiatric facility. Jocqui's claim has elicited no public response from Cook County Jail officials, according to New York Daily News.

In court on Thursday, Jussie stressed that he is not suicidal for the public to know if something bad happened to him in jail - a reference to Jeffrey Epstein's jail cell hanging, which many believe was an "inside job."

Judge James Linn awarded him "day for day" eligibility, which means that if he behaves well in prison, he will be released after 75 days, or slightly over two months. According to TMZ, Smollett is being held in the psychiatric ward, which is also where high-profile convicts are housed.

Read Also: Elon Musk, Grimes Reportedly Break Up Again After Welcoming Second Child via Surrogate

The 'Empire' Actor Says He Would Get Harsher Sentence

The Cook County Sheriff's Office confirmed to DailyMail.com that Smollett is not being detained in solitary confinement and that he spends significant time outside of his cell but declined to confirm or refute allegations that he is being placed in a psychiatric facility.

Jussie Smollett's brother claims he hasn't received clear answers from jail officials as to why his brother is purportedly in a psych unit. He advised people to use social media to figure out what was going on.

Despite his short sentence, Smollett informed his attorneys before his Thursday court hearing that since he is black, he would receive a heavier penalty than other people convicted of a non-violent misdemeanor. He called this proof of institutional racism in the justice system.

Smollett told his defense team after his sentencing that his prediction was right, that the 150-day sentence was "unfortunate" and "sad," and that he blamed it on Judge Linn's anger toward him.

Smollett will serve his term in the Cook County Jail, which is a short distance from the court and is one of the country's largest jail complexes. The Cooks County Sheriff's Office stated on Friday that the 39-year-old will be held in his cell and would be monitored by the camera at all times, as requested by Smollett's legal team.

Smollett faced up to three years in prison, and his counsel tried one final time to persuade Judge James Linn not to sentence him to prison, but it wasn't enough to persuade him.

Throughout, the actor has claimed that the Chicago Police Department and prosecutor's office have engaged in a racist and homophobic campaign against him. He and his supporters argue that he is being unfairly punished because of his notoriety and that any other person would not have been sentenced to prison for the offenses he was found guilty of.

Instead, he will spend the next two and a half months in the Cook County Jail, a short distance from the court and one of the country's largest jail complexes. He is currently being kept in Division Eight, primarily for inmates who have been injured or are unwell. It's unknown whether he'll be held there for the duration of his sentence or if he'll be relocated after undergoing health exams, the New York Post reported.

Related Article: Jussie Smollett Net Worth 2022: How Much Wealth Does the Actor Have After Fake Hate Crime?

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Peace talks between Russian and Ukrainian officials paused Monday, according to Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak, who said the negotiations would resume on Tuesday.

The latest: Negotiations were held as Russian forces escalated their attacks on Kyiv. The Ukrainian state emergency service said Monday that two people were killed and at least nine were injured after a strike hit an apartment block on the north side of the capital.

A technical pause has been taken in the negotiations until tomorrow. For additional work in the working subgroups and clarification of individual definitions. Negotiations continue, Podolyak said in a tweet about the talks, which were held virtually.

A convoy of at least 160 cars carrying civilians left the besieged city of Mariupol on Monday, Reuters reports.

"In the first two hours, 160 cars left. There are probably already many more now. The city continues to be bombed but this road is not being shelled. We don't know when the first cars can get to Zaporizhzhia as there are still many Russian checkpoints that need to be passed," Andrei Rempel, a representative of the city council who is now in Zaporizhzhia, about 140 miles from Mariupol, told Reuters.

It's the first successful attempt at opening a humanitarian corridor for civilians to flee the city since Russia began its attacks more than two weeks ago.

Mariupol has been under constant bombardment by Russian forces, with several reports of civilians being targeted. More than 2,400 civilians have died in the city alone, a EU official said. AP reported from Mariupol that a woman whose suffering was captured in an image that showed the immense human cost of Russia's war has died along with her baby.

The woman was photographed by AP last Wednesday as rescue workers carried her on a stretcher following a Russian attack on a children's and maternity hospital in the city.

Earlier Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that it's "only a matter of time" before Russian missiles strike a NATO country, amid reports that Russia's invading forces had escalated airstrikes on western Ukraine over Sunday night.

Zelensky said in a televised address that Sunday was a "black" day as Russian missiles struck from "east to west" and hit a military training base near Ukraine's border with Poland, killing 35 people and wounded 134 others, per an English translation provided by the president's office.

Zelensky again called for a no-fly zone  which Western leaders have repeatedly ruled out due to concerns about escalating the war and potentially bringing NATO into a conventional conflict with a nuclear power.

"If you do not close our sky, it is only a matter of time before Russian missiles fall on your territory. NATO territory," Zelensky said. "On the homes of citizens of NATO countries."

State of play: "Indiscriminate Russian shelling and air attacks are causing widespread destruction," per a U.K. Ministry of Defense intelligence update Monday.

"Russian naval forces have established a distant blockade of Ukraines Black Sea coast, effectively isolating Ukraine from international maritime trade," the Defense Ministry said in an update Sunday evening.

"Russian naval forces are also continuing to conduct missile strikes against targets throughout Ukraine. Russia has already conducted one amphibious landing in the Sea of Azov and could look to conduct further such operations in the coming weeks."

 U.K. Ministry of Defense

The big picture: While Ukraine is not a member of NATO, Poland is and U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan told CBS on Sunday that the U.S. would "defend every inch of NATO territory."

He said even if an accidental shot struck a NATO member country, the "alliance would respond to that."

What to watch: Sullivan met with senior Chinese foreign policy adviser Yang Jiechi on Monday to discuss the invasion.

Go deeper:

Editor's note: This article has been updated with new details throughout.
Aid workers in Afghanistan tell Axios the Taliban has granted them an unexpected level of access to do their work, but that they still lack resources needed to combat wide-spread hunger.

Why it matters: Afghans will die without humanitarian assistance and aid groups say that to provide that assistance, they must engage with the Taliban  no matter whether the group tries to use them to prove its international legitimacy.

The big picture: More than half of the country has recently experienced serious food insecurity, with millions at risk of starvation. The economy has crashed as many countries have cut or frozen funding, unwilling to work with the Taliban.

There is "serious, serious food insecurity across the country," International Rescue Committee's Bob Kitchen told Axios.

That is "balanced off by genuinely weird, but hopeful meetings with the Taliban government, who are really playing the long game, trying to empower NGOs."

The Taliban has a history of brutality and subjugation of women, including since taking power last August. But the militant group is also seeking international legitimacy.

Between the lines: The aid workers expressed surprise about the Taliban's willingness to cooperate, at least so far  including a commitment to allow girls to return to school this month.

The group still clearly intends to enforce its strict interpretation of Islam in daily life, but Kitchen says the Taliban is also considering the needs to the population and the views of the international community "because they want to stay in power."

That has provided an opening that could help prevent at least some humanitarian worst-case-scenarios.

What's happening: Save the Children negotiated with the Taliban to allow female staff to work in provinces across the country.

"If you want to talk about kids, you have to talk to women. If you have to talk to women, you have to do so with female staff," Save the Children President & CEO Janti Soeripto told Axios over Zoom from Kabul.

Without female data collectors and community leaders you will get a skewed view of the situation on the ground, she added. The group is currently teaching 900 Afghan girls to be teachers.

At the same time, working in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan comes with additional dangers and hurdles for aid workers.

Female staff members for Save the Children are now required to have a male staff member accompany them, even to travel to the office or into communities.

The economic devastation and lack of a national bank in a cash-based economy has severely hurt efforts to provide support to Afghan families  whether through cash transfers from humanitarian groups, or remittances from Afghan family members elsewhere.

That forces families to make "terrible decisions," Soeripto said: "Do I send my girl to school? Do I send her to work? Or do I marry her off ?"

By the numbers: Millions of Afghans, including children, lived on the brink of starvation during the winter season. There are reports of families only being able to eat once every three days  whether because they cannot afford food or do not have access to more.
The tech industry is lobbying statehouses across the country to pass privacy bills that critics call weak.

Why it matters: Most tech firms would prefer a nationwide law, but since Congress hasn't budged on the issue, the industry now seeks to preempt states from approving tougher privacy rules like California's.

"The states are where this conversation has happened," Tom Foulkes, senior director of state advocacy for software industry trade group BSA, told Axios. "Absent action by Congress, the states will act and that's being proven every single day, especially here in 2022."

What's happening: Utah lawmakers considered and passed a state privacy bill in less than two weeks, and it's now awaiting the governor's signature.

Utah would become the fourth state with a privacy law, following Colorado, Virginia and California.

A bill similar to the Utah measure is under consideration in Iowa, and other states, including Tennessee and Maryland, are also weighing privacy bills.

The intrigue: Consumer advocates say industry groups TechNet and the State Privacy and Security Coalition (SPSC) are pushing weak privacy bills in states while Congress dithers.

SPSC describes itself as a coalition of leading tech, telecom, media and retail companies. Members include AT&T, Apple, Google, Amazon and Meta.

"I really want to be upfront about this and my hope that a Utah model could be copied in other states," Anton van Seventer, counsel to SPSC and a DLAPiper attorney, said during a Utah hearing on the bill.

"It could serve as the most updated and streamlined model for state privacy legislation in the U.S. today."

In a statement to Axios, SPSC said, "Our multi-sector coalition provides substantive expertise to state policymakers, including context on the operational implications of policy proposals and how to help align state privacy laws given the absence of federal law.

Details: The Utah bill is meant to give consumers greater control over their data, such as allowing them to delete the information or opt-out of some data collection.

Yes, but: Consumer groups say it's unclear how much control consumers would have over whether their information is used for targeted advertising, and the enforcement mechanism is weak.

"It's not as strong as some of the consumer advocates would like, but I think getting something on the books is better than where they were," Republican state Sen. Kirk Cullimore told Axios, adding that while SPSC offered suggestions to his bill this year, it was in the works for two years.

Between the lines: Advocates say the industry groups are targeting red states where national consumer groups, such as Common Sense Media, don't have the relationships with lawmakers.

"They know they can get these bills through without too much trouble because there's not as many advocates on the ground there to be able to really make some noise to try to argue against it," Common Sense policy counsel Irene Ly told Axios.

What they're saying: "What were seeing is this race to the bottom where industry is having a major influence on these bills," Consumer Reports senior policy analyst Maureen Mahoney told Axios.

"Theyre getting weaker and weaker to pass legislation over consumer groups' objections."

The other side: TechNet argues the Utah bill gives clear protections for consumers and gives Utah's businesses the clarity they need.
The United Kingdom's Supreme Court on Monday denied WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange permission to appeal a decision to extradite him to the U.S.

Why it matters: If he is extradited, Assange will face trial in the U.S. on 18 counts related to WikiLeaks' release of vast troves of confidential U.S. military records and a potential sentence of up to 175 years in prison.

What they're saying: The U.K. said the appeal was denied because "the application does not raise an arguable point of law."

The big picture: The High Court in London overturned a lower court ruling in December to allow Assange's extradition process to continues, then gave him permission to appeal to the U.K. Supreme Court in January.

A lower court in 2021 had blocked Assange's extradition over concerns about his mental condition.

What's next: The U.K.'s Home Secretary Priti Patel can now ratify the extradition decision, though Assange will have an opportunity to challenge that, according to Reuters.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Monday that the prospect of the nuclear conflict is "within the realm of possibility" as Russia continues its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

What he's saying: "Raising the alert of Russian nuclear forces is a bone-chilling development. The prospect of nuclear conflict, once unthinkable, is now back within the realm of possibility," Guterres said.

"Ukraine is on fire," Guterres added. "The country is being decimated before the eyes of the world."

He also called for the security of nuclear facilities in Ukraine, some of which have been attacked by Russian forces.

Guterres said that he has been in "close contact" with several countries, including China, France, Germany, India, Israel and Turkey, to discuss mediation efforts to bring an end to the war.

The UN chief also announced that the organization will allocate a further $40 million from its Central Emergency Response fund as humanitarian aid for Ukraine.

Go deeper:
A woman was reportedly detained for protesting the invasion of Ukraine during a live newscast on Monday, calling for an end to the war with Ukraine.

Driving the news: The woman stood behind a state-run Channel One broadcaster, holding a sign that read "Stop the war. Dont believe propaganda. Theyre lying to you." She simultaneously shouted Stop the war! No to war!

Between the lines: The woman is Marina Ovsyannikova, an employee at Channel One, according to OVD-Info, an independent Russian human rights media group.

Ovsyannikova appears to have filmed a video prior to the demonstration, which OVD-Info also released, where she apologized for helping manufacture "Kremlin propaganda."

"What's happening in Ukraine is a crime, and Russia is the aggressor," Ovsyannikova said in the video, according to a translation. "The responsibility for this aggression lies with one man: Vladimir Putin."

She added: "Unfortunately, for the last few years I've been working for Channel One. I've been doing Kremlin propaganda and I'm very ashamed of it  that I let people lie from TV screens and allowed the Russian people to be zombified."

Pavel Chikov, whose legal defense fund is representing Ovsyannikova, confirmed that the Channel One worker has since been arrested. She's facing charges of "discrediting the Russian armed forces."

The big picture: The Kremlin has cracked down on independent media and social networks since the start of Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
Toivo Klaar, the EUs special representative for the South Caucasus and the crisis in Georgia, said on Monday that these issues will certainly be on the agenda of his meetings in Yerevan where he has arrived to engage in another series of high-level consultations.

The latest developments on the ground are indeed very worrying. I have had numerous conversations with representatives of both Yerevan and Baku over the past days on these issues. Obviously, these developments are of concern to the EU. It would be essential that the gas pipeline is repaired as soon as possible and that the shootings stop, Klaar said.

The EU envoy also posted a message on Twitter today, saying: Back in Yerevan for two days of meetings. As the international environment has become more tense, the EU is more than ever committed to the goal of a peaceful and prosperous South Caucasus.

For nearly a week now ethnic Armenian residents of Nagorno-Karabakh have been deprived of natural gas as the gas pipeline through which the fuel is supplied to the region from Armenia was damaged at a section passing via territory that has been controlled by Azerbaijan after the 2020 war. Authorities in Stepanakert accuse Azerbaijan of not allowing Nagorno-Karabakh maintenance workers to approach and repair the damaged pipeline to restore gas supplies vital for heating homes in Stepanakert and elsewhere in Nagorno-Karabakh amid subzero temperatures.

What authorities in Nagorno-Karabakh and many human rights activists in Stepanakert and Yerevan describe as an unfolding humanitarian crisis has been accompanied by more ceasefire violations along the line of contact between ethnic Armenian forces and Azerbaijans military in Nagorno-Karabakh that both sides have blamed on each other. Armenia and Azerbaijan have also accused each other of escalating tensions along their border that remains un-demarcated since the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

Last week, military authorities in Yerevan said that at least one Armenian soldier was killed and another wounded along the border with Azerbaijan. Authorities in Stepanakert said that one ethnic Armenian resident of Khramort was wounded as Azerbaijan opened mortar fire on the village in the east of Nagorno-Karabakh. Baku has denied any responsibility for both incidents.

On Friday, a spokesman for Armenias Foreign Ministry said that official Yerevan considered requesting that the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group (the United States, France, and Russia) initiate peace talks between Yerevan and Baku.

Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov, for his part, said the same day that Baku had passed to Yerevan a new five-point proposal for the normalization of relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia. He said that official Yerevan had not yet responded to Azerbaijans proposal.

But in a statement issued on March 14, Armenias Foreign Ministry explained: The Republic of Armenia responded to the proposals of the Republic of Azerbaijan and applied to the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairmanship to organize negotiations for the signing of a peace agreement between the Republic of Armenia and the Republic of Azerbaijan on the basis of the UN Charter, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Helsinki Final Act.
In a statement made last Friday a spokesman for Armenias Foreign Ministry said that official Yerevan considered requesting that the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group (the United States, France, and Russia) initiate peace talks between Yerevan and Baku.

Later that day, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov said that Baku had passed to Yerevan a new five-point proposal for the normalization of relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia. He said that Baku was awaiting an answer from Yerevan.

We have recently sent a new proposal to Armenia as a sign of goodwill. We have proposed some fundamental principles that include the normalization of relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia. We expressed our readiness to develop relations on the basis of certain principles. Armenia should consider this and give its answer. If Armenia sincerely wants to normalize relations, then this is a very good opportunity for them. Armenias response will be known in the near future, and of course we will take appropriate steps, Bayramov said, as quoted by Azerbaijani media.

All the principles mentioned in this document are the principles of international relations, the Azerbaijani minister added, noting that the proposal includes the issue of border demarcation as well.

In a statement issued today, Armenias Foreign Ministry said: The Republic of Armenia responded to the proposals of the Republic of Azerbaijan and applied to the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairmanship to organize negotiations for the signing of peace agreement between the Republic of Armenia and the Republic of Azerbaijan on the basis of the UN Charter, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Helsinki Final Act.

The OSCE Minsk Group has for decades spearheaded international efforts to negotiate a settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The two neighboring nations waged a second war over Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020, with Baku regaining control over all seven districts surrounding the Armenian-populated region as well as parts of the former autonomous oblast of Soviet Azerbaijan proper. The war ended with a Russian-brokered peace deal.

Since then, Azerbaijan has repeatedly claimed that the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict has been resolved. In his public statements Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has sought a peace treaty with Armenia that would reaffirm the current status quo in the region. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian has also publically called for an era of peace in the region, indicating that Yerevan was ready to negotiate a peace accord. Meanwhile, opposition members and many political observers in Armenia fear that signing a peace accord with Azerbaijan would mean abandoning aspirations for independence or some other status for the mostly Armenian-populated region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

In a statement today Azerbaijans Foreign Ministry named the five fundamental principles on which it wants the future peace accord with Armenia to be based, including mutual recognition of each others sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual reaffirmation of the absence of territorial claims to each other and a legally binding obligation not to make such claims in the future, abstaining from threatening each others security, demarcation of the border and unblocking of transport links.
Among key principles that Azerbaijan wants to underlie the future peace accord with Armenia is mutual recognition of each others sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual reaffirmation of the absence of territorial claims against each other and a legally binding obligation not to make such claims in the future.

The five-point proposal made by Azerbaijan also includes the principle of abstaining from threatening each others security, the need for the demarcation of the border and unblocking of transport links.

Armenias Foreign Ministry said in a statement today that responding to Azerbaijans proposals, official Yerevan has turned to the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairmanship to organize negotiations for the signing of a peace agreement between the Republic of Armenia and the Republic of Azerbaijan on the basis of the UN Charter, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Helsinki Final Act.

Critics of the Armenian government as well as pundits fear that by negotiating around these principles and later signing a peace accord with Azerbaijan based on these principles Armenia will compromise on aspirations of ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh for full independence or some other status outside Azerbaijan.

Armenia has never had any claims regarding Azerbaijans territorial integrity. It is about the people of Nagorno-Karabakh living safely in their native land, and this has been the whole context since the 1990s, Eduard Aghajanian, head of the parliamentary foreign relations committee, told RFE/RLs Armenian Service.

According to the pro-government lawmaker, this is exactly what Armenias position at the negotiating table has been in the past 30 years.

As to whether it is possible to achieve the security for Nagorno-Karabakhs Armenians within Azerbaijan, Aghajanian said: I think that this should be discussed and the ultimate status should be decided as part of the process of finalizing the Armenia-Azerbaijan peace agreement.
Russia has allegedly asked China for assistance, including military support, amid its invasion of Ukraine, as the fighting enters its third week, United States officials claim.

The incident has caused concern among White House officials and signals that Beijing could undermine Western efforts to assist Ukraine to defend its territory from Russia. In an interview, US officials said Russia's plea for help included military equipment and other support but did not detail specifics.

China Helping Russia?

One person familiar with the situation said that the American government was already preparing to warn its allies after indications that China might lend a helping hand to Russia. Several other American authorities said they had seen signs that Moscow was starting to run out of certain equipment as its invasion of Ukraine continued.

The Chinese embassy spokesperson in Washington, Liu Pengyu, said that he had no knowledge of any suggestions that his home country may be willing to assist Russia. In a statement, he said that China was deeply concerned and grieved regarding the Ukraine situation, as per the Financial Times.

Recently, Chinese President Xi Jinping strengthened his country's partnership with Russian President Vladimir Putin and has supported him as he continued his continued aggression on Ukraine. Moscow's forces have destroyed cities and have allegedly killed hundreds or thousands of civilians.

Read Also: Russia Attacks Ukrainian Port City as It Advances Towards Kyiv; Issues Stern Warning to US

American officials are closely monitoring the situation and are observing China to see whether or not Beijing moves to help Russia in any way. The White House national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, is also scheduled to meet with Yang Jiechi, a member of the Chinese Communist Party's elite Politburo and director of the party's Central Foreign Affairs Commission, on Monday in Rome.

According to the New York Times, the American official is expected to warn Yang regarding the future of Chinese efforts to bolster Russia's movement in the war or efforts to undercut Ukraine, the United States, and their allies. In an interview on Sunday, Sullivan said that the US government was privately communicating with Beijing and warning them of consequences should they assist Russia.

Chemical or Biological Weapons

United States officials also hinted that China already had knowledge that Russia was planning something but argued that they may not have had full information of what Putin was scheming. Despite Moscow's continued aggression on Ukraine, Beijing has avoided publicly rebuking Russia and abstained in multiple United Nations votes to censure the region.

On Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki claimed that "China has seemingly endorsed this propaganda" regarding the conspiracy theory that the US was developing chemical weapons in Ukraine.

Russia allegedly started the disinformation, which doubled down on its baseless claims that the weapons are set to be used against its forces. The conspiracy theory has spread further due to Chinese propaganda outlets and some American voices echoing the claim.

The situation has prompted concern among several US and Ukrainian officials that Russia itself was planning to use chemical or biological weapons in its invasion. In a televised address on Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that Russia's conspiracy theories suggest what it could be actually planning to do itself, ABC News reported.

Related Article: Russia's Richest Businessman Warns Vladimir Putin About 'Taking Us Back' to 100 Years

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Thank you for reading!

Please log in, or sign up for a new account and purchase a subscription to continue reading.
On Sunday, Russia struck a crucial military post just outside the once-safe city of Lviv in western Ukraine, killing at least 35 people and injuring over 100 more as the Biden administration faced rising demand to engage more forcefully on behalf of the besieged Ukrainians.

Nonetheless, it is becoming increasingly evident that the current amount of Western assistance will not be enough to stop Russian gains in Ukraine. Even though Moscow's invasion is moving more slowly than expected, Russian forces are making progress in the south and are getting closer to Kyiv.

The suspected shooting death of an American journalist by Russian troops outside of Kyiv has added fire to the swelling chorus of critics who argue that the US can and must help expedite the delivery of fighter jets to Ukraine, enforce a no-fly zone, and take other measures to reject the invasion. Officials from the White House have again dismissed those calls, claiming that the Kremlin would take them as an American escalation, perhaps setting the stage for a horrific global nuclear catastrophe.

On Sunday, Ukrainian officials called the US to enact and enforce a no-fly zone over the nation, robbing Russia of its air superiority. They also requested airplanes, anti-tank missiles, anti-aircraft guns, and a slew of other military hardware, claiming it would assist turn the tide against the Russian invaders, Washington Times reported.

Ukraine Military Site 15 Miles From Poland Border Was Attacked

Russia fired a salvo of lethal missiles at a military location just 10 kilometers from Ukraine's NATO-member Poland border, shelling a train carrying 100 refugees, according to Ukrainian officials.

According to Ukraine, a series of bombings hit a training center in the western city of Yavoriv on Sunday, killing at least 35 persons and injuring another 134. According to the administration, the location was being used to acclimate foreign soldiers as part of Ukraine's new International Legion, which was founded to help battle Russia.

Then, in Donetsk, Russian artillery hit a train carrying refugees, killing a male conductor and wounded a woman, according to a report from the country's national railroad. The train was attacked near the Brusyn station as it traveled north to Lyman to pick up more fleeing citizens, according to the firm.

Meanwhile, a Ukrainian official claimed that the country's army is gearing up for a fresh war for control of Kyiv. On a more positive note, Ukraine and Russia both reported considerable progress in their ongoing informal peace talks over the weekend, delivering their most upbeat evaluations since the conflict erupted and negotiations began.

According to Russian state media, Russian negotiator Leonid Slutsky also stated that "progress may grow in the coming days" and that both parties might sign agreements. Government and news agency estimates some 1,300 Ukrainian soldiers and 12,000 Russian troops have perished since the war began, as per New York Post.

Read Also: UN "Gravely Concerned" as Ukraine Death Toll Increases Amid 'Merciless Shelling' by Russian Forces

Russia Accused of Using Chemical Weapons To Attack Ukraine

Meanwhile, Russia has been accused of attacking people in eastern Ukraine with illegal phosphorus bombs. Ukraine's human rights ombudswoman, Liudmila Denisova, reported on Sunday that Moscow deployed banned phosphorus munitions in a nighttime bombardment on Popasna, in the eastern Luhansk area.

Russian forces deployed phosphorous munitions in the region, according to Oleksi Biloshytsky, the head of police in Popasna, around 60 miles west of Luhansk, although the claims have yet to be independently corroborated.

White phosphorus munitions are not classified as chemical weapons under the Chemical Weapons Convention, and their primary purpose is to produce a thick smoke that can conceal military personnel or identify targets. However, because white phosphorus is a highly flammable material that can inflict severe casualties, international law prohibits its use in densely populated civilian areas.

On Sunday, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg warned that if Russia invaded Ukraine, it could deploy chemical weapons, which would constitute a war crime, I World reported.

Related Article: India Claims 'Technical Malfunction' Leads to Accidental Missile Firing to Pakistan

@YouTube

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Lucas Babin, the District Attorney in Tyler County is suing Netflix over the French film Cuties.

The movie is described as a coming-of-age tale and social commentary about the negative influence of social media and the hyper-sexualization of young girls.

The movie follows a dance troupe of preteen girls who exploit themselves by dressing and dancing suggestively to win dance competitions and attract older boys. Cuties was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize and won the Directing Award in the World Cinema-Dramatic category at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.

The suit was initially a charge for lewdness, but was changed to four counts of child pornography. The original count of the suit was dropped after a judge in another case ruled that the charge was unconstitutional.

Netflix was indicted last Wednesday, the day before they were to begin their defense on the first charge. Netflix accused Babin of gamesmanship in dropping the earlier charge, which was filed under Texas state law and swapping to the four new charges under the stricter child pornography statutes.

Netflix attorneys said, without court intervention, Netflix will suffer irreparable harm from being forced to continue Babins game in state court and defending itself against even more baseless charges.

Netflix attorneys made the claim in a civil complaint filed last Thursday in Federal Court in Lufkin. Netflix is asking for a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction against Babin and the criminal charges which are set to begin in the federal court in Beaumont.

The court case is known as Netflix Inc. v. Babin, 9:22-31, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Texas (Lufkin).
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Community complaints have lead to arrests at houses allegedly being used to distribute narcotics in Jefferson County.

Several law enforcement agencies teamed up to execute search warrants at the two houses located in Beaumont last week as a result of a few tips, a Beaumont Police Department news release said.

Both addresses were the subject of numerous complaints from the community to both the Beaumont Police Department and the Jefferson County Sheriffs Department, the release said. Investigation showed heavy traffic at these addresses, indicating that the residences were being used in the distribution of narcotics.

The Beaumont PD Narcotics Unit, with the assistance of BPDs SWAT, Special Assignment Unit, K-9 and Homeland Security Investigations, executed a Narcotics Search Warrant on Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. at a home in the 9000 block of Shepherd Drive in Beaumont.

During the search of the property, detectives located a quantity of Xanax as well as Trazodone, the release said.

A 32-year-old Beaumont woman was arrested in connection with the search and taken to the Jefferson County Jail for possession of a controlled substance and possession of a dangerous drug.

The team of law enforcement officials joined by Jefferson County Narcotics executed another search warrant on Wednesday at 3:30 p.m. at a home in the 2000 block of Victoria Street.

During the search of the property, detectives located numerous narcotics in the residence as well as hidden in different locations on the property, the release said.

The search allegedly yielded multiple types of controlled substances, police said, including 87 grams of suspected crack cocaine, 31.4 grams of suspected Cocaine HCL, 343 grams of suspected methamphetamine and 3.6 oz. of suspected marijuana

Charges are pending further investigation, police said.

The Beaumont Police Department would like to thank the community for reporting the suspected illegal activity and would like to remind our citizens to See Something, Say Something, the release said. If you believe suspicious or illegal activity is going on in your neighborhood, call Beaumont Police.

The police can be reached at 409-832-1234.

meagan.ellsworth@beaumontenterprise.com

twitter.com/megzmagpie
Bandera might not seem like a destination town. About 25 miles west of Boerne, the city's population is less than 1,000, but people still flock to this authentic western town. The history is rich and most days you can see horses ride through the streets.

Known as the "Cowboy Capital of the World," Bandera's a town where residents tie up their mules as they pick up their lunches. Yet every night there is music playing somewhere.

"It is truly an amazing little community because you don't know what to expect," said Patricia Moore, Bandera County Convention and Visitors Bureau Executive Director.

Bandera got the name "Cowboy Capital of the World" when they became a staging area for western cattle trails in the late 1800s, where cattle droves made the journey from Bandera to Ogallala, Nebraska. It's a town that has drawn families back for as many as four generations, Moore said. The visitors bureau sends out a schedule of events that look like a month of activities, but they're only for one week.

In February, Bandera welcomed over 15,000 visitors for the first party of the year, Cowboy Mardi Gras.

Gabriel Romero

"You're guaranteed to meet a character and see something that makes you say, 'I don't believe what I just saw,'" Moore said. "For anyone visiting the town, go get lost and have fun doing it."

I stepped into the Spirt of Texas store, where they had samples of alcohol visitors could try. As I looked around for any cool "I love Bandera" magnets, a worker, came up to me and asked me where I was from. I told him California and he looked at me with a straight and said, "Oh, you mean West Texas? Everyone is family here."

The name, Bandera, comes from Bandera Pass, the site of a battle between Apache and Comanche American Indians and Spanish Conquistadors 15 miles north of the present day city. A flag (bandera) was flown to set the boundary between the two combatants.

Gabriel Romero

Bandera was named one of "The Best Small Towns in Texas" by Travel + Leisure in 2021.

Bandera County Commissioner Jack Moseley has lived in the town his entire life. He fondly remembered seeing half his high school class ride horses to school for Western Day.

"That's what you did, you rode your horse to school," Moseley said. "You'd tie it up to the back of someone's pickup truck, grab your saddle and head to school."

Gabriel Romero

Moseley said visitors and residents want to keep Bandera from changing. He added, if people really want to have a great experience head to Bandera on the weekend.

Shady Llama: Taking in the views at Wimberley's Shady Llama

Gabriel Romero

The town has at least 13 restaurants that aren't chain-food spots. The O.S.T. (Old Spanish Trail) celebrated its 100-year anniversary last year. The O.S.T. menu has a mix of Tex-Mex items, along with some southern comfort food like fried chicken and pork chops-- all meals, I'd expect a cowboy to eat. I ordered the Chicken Bacon Ranch Sandwich, which had two pieces of fried chicken, thick bacon, fresh lettuce, tomato and topped off with Swiss cheese and ranch dressing.

Horns Down: Texas State upsets No. 1 ranked Texas Longhorns in Austin

There are a few museums for guests to explore. The Bandera Natural History Museum features animal scenes on display and outdoor dinosaur displays. I'm definitely making another trip just so my son can see these prehistoric creatures, he is in the dinosaur phase and I never grew out of that phase

"Nothing makes sense in Bandera," Moore said.

Moseley added that up until a few years ago there were more beer joints than churches. At the 11th Street Bar, people can bring their own steak to cook on the grills provided by the bar every Wednesday night. The Bandera General Store has old wooden floors that creak when stepped on. They sell gently used boots, novelty items and they are also an ice cream parlor.

Gabriel Romero

Right next to the entrance of the general store is a red door that says, "Silver Dollar." Going inside leads guests downstairs to a bar with a stage for music and wood shavings on the floor. Arkey Blues Silver Dollar Saloon is almost hidden if you didn't pay attention. You can hear the foot steps from the general store above, play the pinball machines or just sip on a Lone Star. I can only imagine what it's like on a weekend.

Highway Construction: TxDOT breaks ground on $36.5M project along I-35

The next event happening is the Bandera Ham Rodeo on March 19, where visitors are sure to stop the "Cowboy Capital of the World." For a full schedule of events visit Bandera County convention and visitors bureau's website.
Self-test kits OK'd for earlier detection

11:04, March 14, 2022 By ZOU SHUO ( China Daily

China has granted approval to five COVID-19 antigen test kits made by local companies to be used for self-testing as a way to beef up early detection capabilities to cope with the more evasive and transmissible Omicron variant.

In two separate notices, issued on Friday and Saturday, the National Medical Products Administration allowed five companiesBeijing Savant Biotechnology, Nanjing Vazyme Biotech, Guangzhou Wondfo Biotech, Beijing Jinwofu Bioengineering Technology and Shenzhen-based BGI PathoGenesis Pharmaceutical Technologyto revise its COVID-19 antigen test kit's certificate to allow self-test use.

The approvals come after the State Council joint prevention and control mechanism against COVID-19 said on Friday that it would allow the public to buy COVID-19 antigen self-test kits in stores and online.

The COVID-19 antigen test is a supplementary diagnostic method to the mainstream nucleic acid testing to improve early detection capability, according to a notice published on the National Health Commission's website.

The antigen test kits can be used by people who have had fever or respiratory symptoms within five days, by people who are under quarantine and other residents who simply want to take a test, the notice said.

People who test positive with COVID-19 antigen kits should immediately contact local authorities regardless of whether or not they show symptoms, it said.

A nucleic acid test result is still needed to confirm novel coronavirus infection. People who test positive with an antigen test but negative with a nucleic acid test should undergo quarantine, close observation and repeated nucleic acid testing, the notice added.

LBX Pharmacy said in a WeChat post on Saturday that the first shipments of COVID-19 antigen test kits will be available at its stores in 12 provincial-level regions within days and that the kits can show test results within 15 minutes.

Cowell Pharmacy said the antigen test kits will be available at its stores in Henan, Jiangxi and Liaoning provinces and its online store on WeChat soon.

Zhang Wenhong, head of the infectious disease department at Fudan University's Huashan Hospital, said the nucleic acid test is more accurate than COVID-19 antigen tests but it takes longer to get the results.

China has successfully maintained a zero-COVID policy through its rapid mass nucleic acid tests, but the Omicron variant is more transmissible and requires faster testing, he told Paper.cn.

Nucleic acid tests require sophisticated machines and professional personnel, while the antigen test can be done at home or in ordinary hospitals, he said.

But the antigen test is less sensitive than the nucleic acid test, he said, and at the early stage of the infection the antigen test might not be able to detect infection due to a low amount of the novel coronaviruses in the body, he said.

Many COVID-19 patients contracting the Omicron variant are asymptomatic, so the COVID-19 antigen test helps boost testing abilities, and the authorities can quickly identify infected people through home testing to reinforce the zero-COVID policy, he added.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
The U.S. State Department is allegedly spending more than $2 million per month for former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's and a former top aide's security detail as the two individuals are the subject of "serious and credible" threats from Iran.

On Saturday, reports allege that the department has already spent $13.1 million between August 2021 and February 2022 on protection for Pompeo and former Iran envoy Brian Hook. The reveal cited a report from the State Department released in February that was labeled "sensitive but unclassified."

Monthly Security Detail

The two individuals, who are reportedly receiving 24-hour security, headed the U.S. "maximum pressure" campaign against Iran during former United States President Donald Trump's administration. The recent report found that threats from Iran have allegedly continued even after the Republican businessman stepped down from his position.

After Pompeo departed office, he was automatically qualified for 180 days of protection from the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security due to his high-ranking position. However, current Secretary of State Antony Blinken is believed to have extended the security in 60-day blocks several times due to a "serious and credible threat from a foreign power or agent," as per The Hill.

Furthermore, the threats from Iran persist amid United States President Joe Biden's efforts to have indirect negotiations with the country's officials over a U.S. return to a landmark nuclear deal from 2015.

Read Also: Russia-Ukraine War: White House Fears China Could Help Russia

Hook was often the public face of the Trump administration's imposition of crippling sanctions against Iran along with Pompeo. Blinken granted the former top aide the same level of security as the former secretary of state after he left office.

According to the Associated Press, the most recent 60-day extension of the security detail for the two individuals will soon expire and the State Department will decide if the protection should be extended again. The department will work together with the Director of National Intelligence to make the decision.

Iran Nuclear Agreement

While the State Department is spending a hefty sum for the security of Pompeo and Hook, they are the only ones who are under threat. U.S. intelligence has found that there may be assassination attempts on John Bolton that could be conducted by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. However, the Biden administration is currently not acting on the issue.

Biden's continued negotiations showcase his desire to resume the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) Iran nuclear accord. Former President Trump withdrew the U.S. from the deal, prompting Iran to suspend its compliance and immediately start working on the development of nuclear weapons.

There are more recent negotiations in Vienna, Austria that aim to work on a new nuclear deal with Iran that is believed to be nearing completion. American officials said that the talks include the threats against the two individuals. Iran demanded the removal of all Trump-era sanctions which include a "foreign terrorist organization" designation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The negotiations in Vienna have been expected to result in a deal to salvage the 2015 nuclear agreement, the Dailymail reported.



Related Article: Russia Attacks Ukrainian Port City as It Advances Towards Kyiv; Issues Stern Warning to US

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
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.
Bedford, PA (15522)

Today

Cloudy skies this morning will become partly cloudy this afternoon. Slight chance of a rain shower. High 69F. Winds WNW at 10 to 20 mph..

Tonight

Partly to mostly cloudy. Low 49F. Winds NNW at 10 to 15 mph.
The Death Sentence of 81 people was done on Saturday by Saudi Arabia that included deviant beliefs as the charge; for this time many were put to death because of it.

Nationalities included in those sentenced were seven Yemenis and one Syrian national they were in particular guilty of being terrorists.

This crackdown on terrorism in KSA is the most severe in recent years, becoming a concern for officials in the kingdom.

Most Executions in the region

The Saudi state news agency inform the media of the execution and its circumstances, also who were executed, reported the Express UK.

According to Amnesty International has data that the KSA is one of the few nations serious about the death penalty as part of its justice system.

This organization added that trials for its capital cases are done in secret with the defendant without counsel; it is called preposterous by the KSA government.

Some of the convicts were identified as part of the Islamic State group (IS), al-Qaeda, or the Houthi rebels of Yemen.

The last group, based on the SPA, was tried by 13 judges and conducted through a three-stage judicial process.

All the accused were charged with planning attacks on critical economic targets, assassination, or going after security forces; other criminal activities like kidnapping, torture, rape, and smuggling weapons into the kingdom.

Executions last Saturday are the most done compared to 2021 which is the most in recent years.

A statement issued by the interior ministry of Saudi Arabia said the crimes included the murder of innocent men, women, and children deserving the death sentence.

Read also: Justin Trudeau Net Worth 2022: Overall Wealth, Salary of Canada's Prime Minister

Low tolerance for terrorists was observed especially for those involved in terror activities which is increasing in frequency of late. Activities of IS and Houthis are not taken for granted.

Much like their western counterparts, they view these activities in the extremist ideologies could causing unwanted instability.

Kinds of Executions and impact of the Death Penalty

In KSA the most popular way to commute the death sentence is beheadings shown to the public, a small number is done by firing squad.

These spectacles would be shown in full view done in public squares in a town or city; it is not acceptable by western standards.

Amnesty International stated in a report about Death Sentences and Executions; which was released on April 2021 say that about 55 countries are still using it actively, noted Al Jazeera.

Many countries still use the method of execution but do not say anything to cancel it in their states.

Government statistics, media reports, and data from people who have been condemned to death, and also their families and advocates, are being used to generate estimates.

During 2020; the list of nations with government-sanctioned executions that were held in China, Iran, Egypt, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia, cited France 24.

Though the Chinese data is not available that is a state secret and not open to foreign inquiry. Despite this; many have been put to death by Beijing.

So based on the 88 percent without the China data, it represents the four countries that were part of the statistics.

A total of 1,477 death penalties are part of the information from 54 countries; less than 36 percent less (2,307) compared to 2019.

While executions in 18 nations about 483; less than 26 percent in 2019.

The death sentence of 81 people in Saudi Arabia is the most from 2021, which has caught the attention of the west. Though the KSA is not fazed by criticism.

Related article: Death Row Inmate Kills Other Prisoners to Express Refusal to Get Lethal Injection, Prefers Electric Chair Execution Instead

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Bangladeshis line up to buy onions from a Trading Corp. of Bangladesh mobile stand in Dhakas Mirpur area, March 6, 2022.

Bangladeshis are feeling pinched by rising prices for food and vegetable oil ahead of Ramadan, which usually sees a surge in shopping, with consumers complaining that merchants are using the Russia-Ukraine war as a pretext for hiking prices.

Bangladesh imports two-thirds of its wheat from Russia and Ukraine  the price of the grain and other edibles have increased from levels before Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered military forces to attack and invade the country next-door on Feb. 24.

We are highly worried about the Russia-Ukraine war. There is a fear of chaos in the food market, Commerce Minister Tipu Munshi told reporters during a news conference at his office on Monday.

Most of our wheat is imported from Ukraine. If the Russia-Ukraine unrest is to linger, it will be a matter of great concern.

On Monday, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her cabinet directed the National Board of Revenue (NBR) to cut the value-added tax (VAT) as much as possible among imports of essential commodities, including cooking oil and sugar.

The board waived the 20 percent VAT on soybean oil until June 30, but kept the existing 15 percent VAT on the import of other cooking oils, according to a document signed by board Chairman Abu Hena Md. Rahmatul Muneem.

Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in the weeks before Muslims across the globe are preparing for their month-long holy month of fasting. Ramadan will begin in early April, and the months official start is determined by the sighting of the new crescent moon.

There is a tendency among Bangladeshi businessmen that they want to make a profit for the whole year in just one month of Ramadan. As a result, the prices of daily commodities increase before the month of Ramadan every year, Ghulam Rahman, president of the Consumers Association of Bangladesh, told BenarNews.

This year the Russia-Ukraine war added a new hardship for consumers, he said, adding, Traders are hiking the price out of fear and to make some extra profits.

Food Minister Sadhan Chandra Majumder said deputy commissioners and local officials have been told to take action against traders who attempt to horde supplies to raise prices.

One food shopper questioned the source of the price hikes.

Vendors are saying that the prices have been increased due to the Russia-Ukraine war. But I do not understand why they give such an excuse while the war began just three weeks ago and every shipment of imported items takes at least three months to arrive in Bangladesh, Shairful Islam told BenarNews while shopping at the Kawran Bazar.

Price hikes

Almost all commodities have increased by at least 3 percent and up to more than 53 percent for onions, a staple in the South Asian country, according to the Trading Corp. of Bangladesh (TCB).

Small retailers said they were being forced to pass on rising prices to their customers.

The prices of wheat and cooking oil had slightly increased before the war started  but those prices suddenly jumped on the day the war began, Subal Saha, a retailer in the Mirpur area of Dhaka, told BenarNews.

He said a kg of flour (2.2 lbs) sold for 32 taka (U.S. 37 cents) about six weeks ago, now sells for 45 taka (52 cents). A five-liter (5.3-quart) bottle of cooking oil sold for 600 to 620 taka ($6.96 to $7.19) about a month ago now sells for 800 taka ($9.28).

Masud Rana, a small trader at the Kawran Bazar market, sold onions for 30 taka (35 cents) about six weeks ago, but he is selling them for 50 taka (58 cents) while others are selling for 55 taka (64 cents).

The owner of a flour mill said he and others are forced to purchase at higher prices.

Importers used to purchase a kg of wheat for 28 taka (33 cents) from Ukraine and up to 27 taka (31 cents) from India, Nahiduzzaman Nishad, owner of Nishita Flour Mills in Bogura, told BenarNews.

Meanwhile, a former vice president of the Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industries said those who want to say that the war in Ukraine has not affected prices in Bangladesh are wrong.

Of course, it has affected the market, Md. Helal Uddin told BenarNews while questioning the governments actions.

Our market management and price review process have serious flaws. Authorities are blaming the business community or business people without addressing the flaws. At the end of the day, the government and opposition are raising fingers against business people.
Ahmad Zahid Hamidi (center), president of the United Malays National Organization, and other senior party officials celebrate the Barisan Nasional coalitions win in the Johor state election, in Johor Bahru, Malaysia, March 12, 2022.

Malaysian Prime Minister Ismail Sabri will come under mounting pressure to hold an early general election after a coalition that his party leads pulled off a big win in the Johor state assembly polls at the weekend, analysts told BenarNews.

The PM appeared to resist such calls early on, saying late on Sunday that moving up nationwide polls was a major decision that the party leadership needed to discuss seriously. Ismail Sabri may be PM but, as vice president of the United Malays National Organization (UMNO), he is only the partys third highest official.

There will be pressure on Ismail Sabri to capitalize on BNs second huge victory at the polls in just five months, said James Chin, an analyst with the University of Tasmania, told BenarNews, referring to Barisan Nasional (BN), an UMNO-led coalition that won the election held in Johor on Saturday.

The Johor win can be seen as Barisans third consecutive state win, counting the victory of its ally in the December 2021 Sarawak state election, he said.

Barisan won 40 of the 56 legislative assembly seats in Johor, with UMNO securing 33 seats. Opposition coalitions Pakatan Harapan and Perikatan Nasional won 11 and 3 seats, respectively, while opposition leader Anwar Ibrahims Peoples Justice Party (PKR) won a single seat, and youth party MUDA took only one seat in the first election it was contesting.

While it became clear late on Saturday night that Barisan was cruising to victory, UMNO members chanted bubar Parlimen (dissolve Parliament) at the partys state headquarters. Under the parliamentary system of government, parliament has to be dissolved before national elections are called. In Malaysia, the king has to agree to call a general election.

As it happens, UMNO is scheduled to hold its annual general assembly this week, and political analyst Bridget Welsh expects there to be a heated debate on the issue at the gathering.

Were seeing the jockeying already beginning with Ismail Sabri saying it would not be so soon and others pressuring for an early election. The question is, how early? Welsh, with the University of Nottingham Malaysia, told BenarNews.

Yet, she believes, the Johor win will likely lead to a general election sooner.

Nationally, Johors election will pave the way for an early general election, Welsh wrote for Between the Lines, a local online journal on politics.

UMNO and BN are in a triumphant mood. It is now a matter of timing. Open calls for parliaments dissolution have started with pressure to call elections soon while the opposition remains divided and weak, she added.

Malaysias next general election has to be held by or before July 2023. The current government led by UMNOs Ismail Sabri has signed a pact with the opposition Pakatan bloc to not call national elections before July 31, in return for its support on key bills such as the budget.

The grassroots is ready for national elections but is leaving the decision to the partys top leaders, UMNO supreme council member Mohd. Razlan Rafii said.

We are ready for an election soon, he told BenarNews.

Its usual for elections to be called before full term  We are ready and the support is already on our side as PH has failed to fulfill its promises, he said, referring to Anwars Pakatan coalition.

He added that the party had previously given the party leadership the mandate to decide when to hold the general elections.

The win in Melaka and Johor would give more confidence to UMNO for the next general election, he told BenarNews.

A voter holds a flyer that displays the logo of the Barisan Nasional coalition at Sekolah Kebangsaan Sungai Danga in Johor Bahru, Malaysia, March 12, 2022. [S. Mahfuz/BenarNews]

Meanwhile, opposition leader Anwar expressed worry about the low voter turnout in Johor, where only a little more than 50 percent of the electorate showed up to vote.

We are very concerned about the percentage of the voter turnout trend which is very upsetting and can threaten the democratic process, Anwar wrote in a Facebook post on Sunday.

This [election result has] also turned out to be an important reminder for political parties to regain their strength in the run-up to the next general election, he added.

The low voter turnout is also something that UMNO should keep in mind, Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM) Associate Professor Mohd Azizuddin Mohd Sani.

The dynamics are different when it comes to by-elections and state elections [compared to general elections]. BN should study everything in regards to policies and other factors before making a decision [on calling early elections], he told BenarNews.

Opposition coalition communications director Fahmi Fadzil said that votes for the opposition were split and that cost it seats in the Johor election.

He believes that former Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassins Bersatu-led Perikatan Nasional coalition  another opposition group  muddied the waters for voters.

So, how do we handle this issue? Do voters know the difference between the two [Pakatan Harapan and Perikatan Nasional]? Fahmi told BenarNews.

Is this something that we have to address strategically, or tactically? These are the issues the leaders will be looking into in the weeks and months ahead.

Noah Lee in Kuala Lumpur contributed to this report.
In an unusually bold move, the Vietnam government has commemorated the 34th anniversary of a battle against the Chinese navy in the South China Sea with a ceremony led by the prime minister and a front page editorial in the ruling partys mouthpiece on Monday.

Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh made an unprecedented visit to the Memorial for the Johnson South Reef Battle in the south-central province of Khanh Hoa province at the weekend. He paid tribute to the 64 Vietnamese soldiers who were killed in the incident on March 14, 1988. Chinh was the first top Vietnamese leader to lead such a commemoration of the fallen soldiers.

Johnson South, or Gac Ma in Vietnamese, is a reef in the Spratly islands in the South China Sea. In mid-March 1988, the Vietnamese navy sent two transport ships and a landing ship to try to claim some of the reefs in the disputed Union Banks, including Johnson South.

While the Vietnamese troops were moving construction material onto the reef and putting up a flag, they came under fire from the Chinese troops. According to China, the Vietnamese opened fire first.

In just a couple of hours, 64 mostly unarmed Vietnamese were killed and nine were captured, the largest loss suffered by the Vietnamese military at sea since the end of the Vietnam War. Johnson South Reef has been under Chinas control since.

For a long time, the battle was not talked about in public and up to now, is still not included in the school curriculum. When mentioned by Vietnamese state-controlled media, they tend to omit the word China and replace it with foreign forces.

Vietnamese leaders have seemingly wanted to avoid offending China, and for the public not to dwell on the command mistakes that might have led to the defeat.

Netizens and activists, however, have been asking on internet forums why the soldiers were not armed and why were they not allowed to fight back.

Nhan Dan front page includes an editorial with the headline: Eternal glory to the sea defenders, March 12, 2022. [Nhan Dan]

Front page news

Things have changed this year.

Nhan Dan daily, the Communist Partys official newspaper, on Monday ran three articles on the Johnson South Reef battle and the Spratlys on its front page.

The main article, titled Eternal glory to the sea defenders, condemned the Chinese navy for being a blatant force, ignorant of justice and reason, and said their military action was totally unprovoked.

Another report covered an incense-offering ceremony to commemorate the martyrs on the 34th anniversary of the Gac Ma Battle in Danang.

The top article reported on Prime Minister Chinhs visit to Khanh Hoa province, the administrative headquarters of Vietnams Spratly islands.

Chinh was quoted as ordering the local government to develop the Spratlys into an economic, cultural and social center in the South China Sea.

This is a clear message of maritime sovereignty and self-reliance, said a Vietnamese analyst who doesnt want to be named as he is not authorized to speak to foreign media.

Another political analyst and prominent blogger, Huy Duc, wrote on his Facebook page: This [the prime ministers order] is a strategic step towards setting up our policy fortress to defend Vietnams sovereignty at sea and our islands.

No country can pick its neighbors but a dignified nation would never be imprisoned by geography, Duc said.

Zachary Abuza, a professor at the National War College in Washington, said the Vietnamese government is trying to signal resolve, especially as the world is pre-occupied with the war in Ukraine.

I think you also have to look at it in the context of the war in Ukraine, Abuza said.

In his opinion, the Vietnamese government has been overtly pro-Russia and abstained on the U.N. vote against Moscow due to their long historical relations and the fact that they are one of the largest consumers of Russian weaponry.

And yet the [Ukrainian] war should leave the Vietnamese very nervous, Abuza said.

(President Vladimir) Putins justifications to launch an offensive war on the flimsy basis of having once controlled that territory and historical affinity sets a very dangerous precedent for Chinese aggression in Southeast Asia, in general, and Vietnam, in particular, he said.

China claims sovereignty over nearly all of the South China Sea where Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam all have claims.
Protesters call for Beijing to leave disputed waters in the South China Sea as they march to the Chinese embassy in the Makati business district of Metro Manila, July 12, 2019.

The Philippine government summoned Beijings ambassador Monday to explain the illegal incursion by a Chinese navy reconnaissance ship in the Sulu Sea, Manilas foreign office said, in the latest maritime incident between the nations with competing South China Sea claims.

The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said it had called on Ambassador Huang Xilian to meet with Acting Undersecretary Theresa Lazaro over Chinas alleged action in the southwestern area of the Philippine archipelago.

An electronic reconnaissance ship of the Peoples Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) had entered Philippine waters without permission from Jan. 29 to Feb. 1, the department said in a statement that called the action illegal.

In its statement, the department did not say why it waited six weeks to confront the Chinese ambassador. Officials at the department did not immediately respond to follow-up requests from BenarNews seeking more information.

The Dongdiao-class PLAN ship communicated that it was exercising innocent passage when the Philippine Navy challenged it in Sulu Sea waters, the department said. The ship reached the Cuyo Islands in the Palawan region of the central Philippines.

Its movements, however, did not follow a track that can be considered continuous and expeditious, lingering in the Sulu Sea for three days, the DFA said, adding that the ship did not immediately leave despite being warned off by the Philippine Navy.

On Monday, the department said Manila recognizes the right of any ship to pursue innocent passage through its waters in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). However, the action of the Chinese ship did not constitute innocent passage and violated Philippines sovereignty.

Lazaro reminded the Chinese government through its envoy to respect international law and to direct its ships to desist from entering Philippine waters uninvited and without permission, it said.

The Chinese Embassy in Manila did not respond to BenarNews requests for comment.

Nearly five years ago, bilateral relations were more positive as Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte hinted at a possible training exercise with China in the Sulu Sea. Duterte made the statement during a May 1, 2017, port call by Chinese warship Changchun in his hometown of Davao, PLANs first such visit in seven years.

For years, the Philippines and China meanwhile have been locked in a territorial row in the South China Sea, which is known to Filipinos as the West Philippine Sea.

In 2012, the Philippine Coast Guard engaged the Chinese in a stand-off over the Scarborough Shoal, a rich fishing ground that is well within the countrys exclusive economic zone in the South China Sea. China reneged on a deal to leave the region and its ships stayed put.

In 2013, Manila filed a case against Beijing and in a landmark verdict three years later, the International Court of Arbitration in The Hague ruled in favor of the Philippines and threw out Chinas expansive territorial claims in the sea region.

China claims nearly all of the South China Sea as its own, but five other Asian governments  Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam  have territorial claims. While Indonesia does not regard itself as a party to the South China Sea dispute, Beijing claims historic rights to parts of the sea overlapping Indonesias exclusive economic zone (EEZ).

The Philippines occupies nine islands and areas in the South China Sea, the largest of which is Thitu, the island Filipinos call Pag-asa, where the military has been constructing an improved airstrip and port.

Manila has been complaining about Beijings presence within its EEZ for about a year. It summoned Ambassador Huang after about 220 Chinese ships were spotted in March 2021 around Whitsun Reef in the Spratly Islands, a South China Sea chain contested by the two governments.
Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-o-cha (fourth from left) and others alight from the first official commercial flight to arrive at the new Betong Airport in Yala province, March 14, 2022.

Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-o-cha inaugurated a new airport with international ambitions in Thailands insurgency-ridden Deep South on Monday, after the COVID-19 pandemic had delayed the aviation facilitys opening by 18 months.

Prayuth and some of his cabinet members boarded the first official flight, a Bombardier Q400 turboprop plane operated by Nok Air, to Betong Airport in the picturesque Yala province, from the capital Bangkok late Monday morning.

The PM said he hoped the 1.9 billion baht (U.S. $57 million) airport would boost tourism and help strengthen the economy of the impoverished southern border region, battered by a long-running separatist insurgency. Betong, a district on Thailands frontier with Malaysias Perak State, is relatively untouched by violence from the conflict that has afflicted other parts of the Deep South for decades.

The government strives to make Betong a model for tourism and border trades, in line with the governments policy of developing the economic triangle project, Prayuth said, referring to a development project covering the mainly Muslim and Malay-speaking Deep South.

Betong Airport will help boost tourism, support air transportation in the region to facilitate and accommodating both domestic and foreign visitors, Prayuth said about the airport.

Betong, Thailands southern-most district situated 667 miles south of Bangkok, is a uniquely designed town surrounded by scenic mountains.

Officials said they anticipated more than 300,000 visitors a year, and planned to make the airport an international one so that travelers from Malaysia and other countries in Southeast Asia could fly directly to Betong.

Yaowadee Samu, a tourist from Bangkok who arrived in Betong before the airports inauguration, said she expected the airport would attract more tourists.

Betong has such beautiful nature and nice air, but the curvy roads are quite unpleasant, she told BenarNews, while clicking photographs of the new airport.

This new airport, its a good choice for the journey. The airfare is just a bit over 3,000 baht (U.S. $90)  and more Thai and foreign tourists would fly here.

People stand by the front of the new Betong Airport in Yala, a province in Thailands Deep South, in this file photo taken in January 2021. [BenarNews]

Thailands cabinet approved the Betong Airport project in March 2015 and anticipated opening it by 2019, but the project was delayed and only completed in September 2020 due to the COVID pandemic. Openings were scheduled in December 2020 and then March 2021, but they were postponed.

The central government lifted an emergency in Betong in March 2018 because of the relative calm in the district compared with the other districts of Thailands far south. Currently, the emergency decree is in force in 29 of 37 districts in the Deep South, which comprises the provinces of Yala, Narathiwat and Pattani, and four districts of Songkhla.

Duangporn Suwanmanee, director of Narathiwat Airport, who also oversees Betong Airport, said that as of February this year, Nok Air, a domestic airline, had announced a plan to fly round-trip flights from Bangkok to Betong three times a week.

Betong airports 30- by 1,800-meter runway can support an 80-seat ATR-72 or Q400, both turbo-propeller passenger planes, she said.

Muhammad Adamdang, a resident of Yala town, said the airport is geared more for tourists than locals.

[But] the good point is that if we have more tourists coming, there will be more money pouring into the local community and it will reach the hands of villagers, he told BenarNews.
On Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky paid a visit to wounded servicemen at a military hospital in Kyiv, boosting their spirits and presenting them with medals for valor.

He bestowed the title of "Heroes of Ukraine" on 106 members of the Ukrainian military forces, 17 of whom were posthumously honored.

Senior Lieutenant Hutsul Volodymyr Olesksandrovych acquired the title for his exploits in the Kherson region, where he destroyed 25 hostile units and around 300 invaders.

Zelensky Warns About "Pseudo-Republic" Formation in Ukraine's South

Zelensky warned against the establishment of a "pseudo-republic" in his country's south in a speech on Sunday. Russians are attempting to push local officials to construct a breakaway area in the south, similar to those in Donetsk and Luhansk, which Putin declared 'autonomous' at the start of the war.

Russia exploited the protection of two eastern districts where pro-Russian separatists started battling Ukrainian soldiers in 2014 as a pretext to launch the invasion. Kherson, a strategic Black Seaport with a population of 290,000, was the first major city to fall earlier this month, according to Daily Mail.

After a devastating Russian missile assault on a Ukrainian training camp about 10 miles from the Polish border, Zelensky warned that Russia is on the verge of striking NATO territory.

In a video message released just after midnight Monday, Zelensky urged NATO countries to put their fears of escalation aside and establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine, claiming that conflict is already on their doorstep and will flow into their land if one is not established.

The Biden administration has been cautious to make certain moves, such as sealing the sky over Ukraine, that officials warn may pull the US into direct battle with the Russian military. The President Joe Biden administration has been cautious to make certain moves, such as sealing the sky over Ukraine, that officials warn may pull the US into direct battle with the Russian military.

President Zelensky said in a video speech posted on Facebook that Russia is already fighting the West in some ways. He referred to the death of American photojournalist journalist Andriy Nebitov, who was slain by Russian forces in the town of Irpin, according to authorities in the Kyiv region, Washington Examiner reported.

Read Also: Russia Threatens To Crash the ISS Into US Due To Sanctions; NASA on Alert as American Astronaut's Safety Compromised

Ukraine Urges West To Immediately Punish Russia Economically

According to the United Kingdom Ministry of Defense, Russia's military advance in Ukraine has been sluggish, but its forces have made gains, notably its naval blockading Ukraine's Black Sea coast, effectively shutting the country off from international marine traffic. Even though peace talks have made little headway, Zelensky stated conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin are continuing.

President Zelensky and the Ukrainian government have insisted that Western allies move faster to punish Russia economically for its invasion, with Zelensky pushing for a global trade boycott on all Russian commodities and products. Ukraine also wants the US to prohibit Russian ships from entering its ports and shipping lanes.

The US. Sanctions against Russian politicians have primarily targeted Kremlin elites and members of the State Duma, one of Russia's two legislative houses. According to those familiar with the situation, Zelensky requested Biden on Friday to extend the sanctions to members of Russia's regional administrations as well.

President Biden called President Zelensky on Friday morning, shortly before formally announcing the sanctions in a speech at the White House, to brief the Ukrainian president about the administration's latest set of sanctions against Russia, according to a source familiar with the situation.

According to the individual, Zelensky informed Biden that the sanctions are having a substantial impact on Russia, but that he wanted them to be expanded as soon as possible. The individuals talked on the condition of anonymity in order to protect the confidentiality of the private phone call, as per The Washington Post via MSN.

Related Article: India Claims 'Technical Malfunction' Leads to Accidental Missile Firing to Pakistan

@YouTube

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
If you'd like to leave a comment (or a tip or a question) about this story with the editors, please email us

We also welcome letters to the editor for publication; you can do that by filling out our letters form and submitting it to the newsroom.
A Pittsfield man was sentenced in federal court Monday for failing to register as a sex offender.
PITTSFIELD  Workers at a Pittsfield waste-to-energy facility risked breathing in smoke containing arsenic, cadmium and lead, the federal government says, a finding that confirms other accounts of hazards at the bankrupt plant.

The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration has ordered Community Eco Power LLC, of Pittsfield, to respond by April 4 to violations it lodged Feb. 15 against the Hubbard Avenue plant, when it imposed $26,107 in penalties.

Quote Community Eco Power of Pittsfield is contesting $26,107 in penalties lodged by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which cited unauthorized releases of arsenic, cadmium and lead.

The company, which filed for bankruptcy protection in June, is contesting the fines. At the same time, correspondence shows it to be in talks with the state Department of Environmental Protection related to environmental problems, according to records in U.S. Bankruptcy Court.

Two former plant employees tell The Eagle that after Community Eco Power bought the facility in 2019, its top managers repeatedly failed to properly maintain the plant and protect workers and the surrounding area from hazardous releases. The plant uses trash as fuel to generate electricity and steam, both of which it sells.

Its the most toxic environment Ive ever experienced, one of the workers said. Its unhealthy. Its hard enough to work there with the temperatures.

The workers say they were required to sign nondisclosure agreements and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The state DEP installed monitors on a plant building after receiving video evidence of improper smoke releases July 9, 2021. Videos obtained by The Eagle show smoke billowing from a structure on the plants grounds on the east side of Hubbard Avenue, about 300 feet from a Wendys restaurant. The plumes rise from a building, not smokestacks.

The former employees said the releases captured on video appear to have resulted from a failure to properly remove what is known as fly ash from the plants combustion system. That ash resembles brown sand and is a byproduct of waste-to-energy production. It normally is removed and taken to a landfill after it cools enough to allow it to be moved to containers.

In this case, the workers say it is believed that the ash was moved before it had cooled properly during a shutdown, leading a container bag to burn as the ash was pushed through a vacuum process, leading to releases into the atmosphere.

They were spewing that up in the air, like, 60 feet, a worker said. A report to the DEP led the agency to deploy an emergency response team, according to one of the workers.

The management was totally negligent, the worker said. This is all due to poor management.

Youre blowing [out] cadmium and lead, the other worker said.

On Sunday, The Eagle emailed Richard Fish, the plants president and CEO, as well as its environmental manager, seeking comment on the companys handling of environmental issues. No response was received.

The DEP later collected air samples on a roof at the plant near bay doors and vents, had them analyzed, then turned over the results to OSHA. Last month, the agency issued eight violations it ranked as serious. In addition to citing workplace exposure to lead, cadmium and inorganic arsenic, the agency faulted Eco Power for not properly communicating with workers about hazards.

Separately, the DEP placed monitors along a fence at the edge of plants property, to assess any wider release of toxic substances in the ambient air of the neighborhood, according to Eva V. Tor, deputy regional director with the DEPs Bureau of Air & Waste.

In a January email to the Berkshire Environmental Action Team, Tor said the releases detected by the DEP in October and November, well after the July incident captured on video, were fugitive emissions from what she characterized as leaks that the facility has been attempting to repair.

The emissions are deemed fugitive because all gases resulting from combustion are supposed to be routed through air-pollution equipment, according to people familiar with the process, and up the facilitys stack.

That is required by the plants DEP permit, which calls for pollutants to be captured and for gases going up the stack to be monitored in accordance with its permit. As of October, stack emissions were in compliance, Tor said in her January email.

Maintenance work at the plant included repairs to seals and gaps in the incineration system, as well as patches to ducts carrying flue gas.

Outside help

Filings in U.S. Bankruptcy Court reviewed by The Eagle show that the company sought permission to hire Deltaway Energy International of California to help it confront emissions problems. Peter M. Kendrigan, the companys president, said in a letter filed with the court that this firm would help Eco Power resolve issues with the DEP for the mitigation of smoke.

In her January email to BEAT, Tor said that the plant had made progress in reducing fugitive emissions. The highest emissions were detected in October.

Jane Winn, BEATs executive director, said she has not yet obtained findings from the DEPs air sampling along the companys fence.

Its going into the air. They bloody well should be concerned, she said, referring to the DEPs decision to test at the edge of the property. Lead is a problem at any level. If the lead was in the air, it was bound to have fallen on the ground. None of that was supposed to be there.

In the short term, breathing high levels of cadmium can produce flulike symptoms and damage lungs, an OSHA health warning states.

Inhalation of inorganic arsenic can cause lung cancer and is a skin irritant, according to OSHA. The agency calls lead a potent, systemic poison. DEP monitoring Oct. 16 and Nov. 5, 11 and 18 also found releases of mercury, chromium, cobalt, nickel, selenium and manganese.

Winn said that tests should be conducted to determine the extent of pollution of the 500 Hubbard Ave. property, ahead of a proposed sale to Casella Waste Management of Massachusetts. That needs to be addressed before anyone else uses the site, Winn said, to see what the levels of contamination are. This site needs to be remediated.

The DEP is represented in the bankruptcy proceeding by the Attorney Generals Office. That oversight is meant to ensure that the facility comes into compliance and that fugitive emissions will cease, according to Tor. She said the DEP will continue to evaluate whether the plant is complying with air quality standards.

As recently reported, Eco Power is seeking bankruptcy court approval to sell the property to Casella for $1 million. The buyer would decommission the waste-to-energy plant and use the site as a transfer station that would ship waste to distant landfills. The plants permit allows it to burn 84,000 tons of trash a year, which translates to about 240 tons a day. Only about one-fifth of that fuel has come from Eco Powers contract with the city of Pittsfield. The rest is trucked in from other sources.

Pittsfield Mayor Linda Tyer met late last week with city officials to discuss the pending sale and its impact on how the city disposes of its waste. At the time of the bankruptcy filing, Tyer was told the company was seeking only to restructure its debt, not leave the business.

In 2016, the plants former owner, Covanta Energy Corp., said it would close in 2017 because of high maintenance costs. The city agreed to steer $562,000 in Pittsfield Economic Development Authority money to the facility for updates, staving off that closing. Covanta sold the plant to Eco Power in 2019.

Quote Its going into the air. They bloody well should be concerned." Jane Winn, executive director, Berkshire Environmental Action Team

In August, Pittsfield reached a new three-year agreement with Eco Power, then two months into its bankruptcy proceeding. Tyer said the agreement included a provision requiring Eco Power to give the city one years notice if its service was to end.

And now here we are, Tyer said as a possible shutdown nears, a move that is expected to increase the citys trash-disposal costs. Facilities of this type are a thing of the past. From an environmental standpoint, this is better in the long run.
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm speaks during a Nov. 23, 2021, news conference the White House. Granholm said the newly created Clean Energy Corps is meant to help America meet its goals of a carbon-free power sector in 2035 and a decarbonized economy in 2050.
The Queen's diary is being examined, and she is unlikely to return to some large public appearances, such as investing.

The 95-year-old monarch is not ill, according to sources, and is as committed to her duties as ever.

Senior royal advisers, as well as the Queen herself, are said to have realized that the 'frailties of a long life are finally catching up with her.

Queen Elizabeth Suffers Debilitating Health Concern, Unlikely to Meet Lilibet, Archie

She will continue to attend public events as much as possible, but her public appearances will be considerably reduced. That means she will no longer be required to stand for hour-long public investitures, which will now be done by the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Cambridge, and Princess Royal.

Buckingham Palace did not respond to a request for comment. The Royal Family, however, appreciates the importance of investments in recognizing service and celebrating people's contributions to society, according to a royal source, and there has been a strong push to catch up on the backlog generated by COVID-19 restrictions.

The announcement comes after the old monarch was forced to miss today's Commonwealth Day celebration due to illness. Buckingham Palace said on Friday that she had asked the Prince of Wales to represent her at Westminster Abbey, despite earlier in the week insisting she 'hoped' to be there.

Buckingham Palace had announced that she planned to attend three big events in March: the annual Diplomatic Reception, which was canceled owing to the situation in Ukraine, the Commonwealth Day service, and the Westminster Abbey ceremony of thanksgiving for her late husband on March 29, Daily Mail reported.

Apart from skipping the Commonwealth service, Queen Elizabeth is unlikely to meet Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's grandchildren. According to top royal sources, Prince Harry gave Queen Elizabeth only 15 minutes' warning before publicly announcing that he would be skipping his grandfather's impending burial service, as per The Sun.

Prince Harry said on Friday that he will not attend the March 29 memorial ceremonies for his grandfather, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, who died at the age of 99 on April 9, 2021. The prince, who has pushed for protection for his family during any visit to the UK, said they would forgo the memorial because of safety concerns.

Lilibet Markle, Meghan Markle's and Prince Harry's second child, was born on June 4, 2021. Due to the prince's aversion to travel abroad, the Queen, who is 95 years old, is unlikely to meet her great-granddaughter, according to Page Six.

Read Also: Prince Andrew Pays Settlement with Virginia Giuffre Using 'Family Money'; Can Duke Return to Royal Duties?

Prince Harry Snubs Queen Elizabeth II

In the meantime, Prince Harry was accused of snubbing Queen Elizabeth after saying he will miss her late husband's memorial service on Saturday, amid a legal dispute about his security protection in the United Kingdom.

While a spokeswoman confirmed that Prince Harry will not attend the Westminster Abbey service on March 29, he is expected to attend the Invictus Games, which begin two weeks later in the Netherlands.

After the UK government withdrew his royal biographer detail, royal author Angela Levin accused Harry of "blackmail" surrounding his grandpa Prince Philip's service.

Levin informed UK reporters that Prince Charles' second son has snubbed the Duke of Edinburgh (Philip), but actually, he is snubbing the queen. Prince Philip, who had been married to the queen for 73 years, died two weeks before his 100th birthday last April.

Only 30 mourners, including Harry, attended his funeral, which was held under tight coronavirus restrictions. The queen sat alone, following the rules of the government. Given the limited nature of the funeral, the Duke of Edinburgh's memorial ceremony this month is intended to serve as a national commemoration of his long life and service.

The burial was one of just two times Prince Harry has visited the UK since he and his wife Meghan left the royal family two years ago and came to North America. The UK government withdrew his taxpayer-funded protection on visits back to the UK as a result of their decision, a decision that Harry is contesting in court, South China Morning Post reported.

Related Article: Queen Elizabeth Pulls Out of Commonwealth Service; Is This Another Health Trouble-Related Cancelation?

@YouTube

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Ryker Audiss (Belle Fourche baseball): Audiss, a senior outfielder, was a force at the plate and a major contributor to the Broncs wins over Lead-Deadwood, St. Thomas More, and Chamberlain/Kimball/Lyman. His cumulative Stats for the week: three games, nine hits in 11 at bats, two doubles, nine RBIs, seven runs scored, two stolen bases. 0.818 batting average, 0.833 on base percentage, and a 1.000 slugging percentage.

Garrett Winkler (Newell boys track and field): Last week Winkler competed at the Northern Hills Invite in Belle Fourche and finished second in the 3,200-meter run, and had a 16 second improvement from his previous best. He also anchored the boys Medley Relay to a sixth place finish.

Vote

View Results
BURLEY  A Burley woman is running for the state senate seat in District 27.

Jeanie Hakes, 56, has lived in Burley for 26 years.

I feel like so often people in leadership positions have their decisions influenced by power, money or fear, Hakes said. I am not seeking power or money and Im not afraid to stand up to big business or bullying tactics.

Hakes and her husband Dennis Hakes have six children who were raised in Mini-Cassia.

The couple owns a family business that produces products used on dairy farms worldwide.

We design, patent and sell them around the world, she said.

Hakes received a degree in education in Brigham Young University with a teaching certificate for ages K-8.

She has not held any prior political offices.

Im running because I love my state and love this way of life and I want to preserve this way of life for my children and my grandchildren.

In 2019 Hakes and her husband began holding general and political prayer rallies.

Through that, we made connections with people in politics, she said. It got us thinking more seriously about how we could help more.

Hakes said she decided to run this year because It feels like the time is urgent and things are slipping away.

She is concerned about the states dependence on the federal government and will defend state sovereignty and the Idaho peoples Constitutional rights.

Idaho should repeal the grocery sales tax, she said, and she was concerned that legislative leaders did not allow a bill on that to be heard by the legislature.

What Ive been told is that the legislators received more phone calls about the grocery tax repeal than any other issue, she said. To not allow the legislature to vote on it is disregarding what Idaho citizens want and what they are requesting.

Hakes opposes critical race theory in schools and stands against tax breaks for big businesses when the state wont give a grocery tax break to citizens.

She is concerned about citizens medical freedom to choose whether they get vaccinated and says big pharma should not have any control in those decisions.

I am a courageous person who will stand up for the people in this district, Hakes said.
A new Iron Curtain falls over Russia, Joe Biden blames high gas prices on Vladimir Putin, spring breakers descend on Florida, many shoppers are asking Wheres the Beef?

Plus, Bill's Message of the Day, listeners sound off.
Welkom's schools and community centres are looking decidedly more leafy, thanks to the addition of 1,020 new trees planted by Konica Minolta South Africa in partnership with Food & Trees for Africa.

Pupils alongside an educator planting trees at Hoerskool Riebeeckstad in Welkom, Free State. | Source: Supplied

Small efforts, big results

The greening of the Free States second largest city kicked off with a planting ceremony hosted by Konica Minolta Welkom at the Hoerskool Riebeeckstad, which took place on 2 March. With the six trees taking root at the school offering a shade for learners, Konica Minolta South Africa is poised to change the outlook of the school.Its such a privilege for us to be able to take part in this greening project, said school principal, Mrs Betsi Schoeman. We know that the conducive environment created by planting trees will have a wonderfully positive effect on our children.Many more children and community members are set to benefit from the plantings which will take place at 19 more schools and four community organisations. In fact, the 1,020 trees to be planted in total will have a significant impact on the city as a whole, helping to offset 376.38 CO2e throughout their lifetime.The company has, to date, donated 59,339 trees in locations throughout the country, offsetting 21,896.31 tCO2e in the process. The project represents an ongoing effort to green the country, in line with Konica Minoltas belief that continued small efforts make the world of difference in benefiting nature.Frans Wessels, director of Welkom Dealership commented: We all know that greening the environment helps to reduce pollutants in the air and soil, which is naturally important for our long-term wellbeing.However, we are also concerned with the more immediate benefits of living in a treed environment: studies have shown that green surroundings have a positive effect on mood, helping to relieve stress and anxiety. Given the trials that all South Africans experienced during the past two pandemic years, this is something that we can all value.
The Hospice Palliative Care Association of South Africa (HPCASA) are assisting with the advertising of this event to South Africa.The conference will be hybrid to accommodate both physical and virtual participants. As the world is currently navigating the Covid-19 pandemic, the APCA and partners decided to focus on the theme:Palliative care experts, researchers, health workers, carers, donors, and people living with palliative care needs will all find content of interest at this conference. It is also expected to attract several country ministers of health and dignitaries as well as government technical officials. Previous conferences have been very successful and this will be the first conference to held in pandemic context.The APCA invites participants to submit abstracts for the conference.Abstracts may include research, best practice models developed over the pandemic and recommendations to help us respond better in similar situations in the future. There are six broad conference tracks.To submit, participants must please register here . Once registered, you can submit your abstracts here The organising committee for the 7th International African Palliative Care Conference invites interested individuals or organisations to submit a workshop proposal for the conference. All workshops will be virtual, and we recommend that all speakers join the session live if possible. If necessary, speakers may record their presentations in advance for the moderator or workshop organiser to play during the live session.APCA is co-hosting the conference in partnership with the Worldwide Hospice and Palliative Care Alliance (WHPCA). The conference is co-sponsored by the International Childrens Palliative Care Network (ICPCN), Palliative Care in Humanitarian Aid Situations and Emergencies (PallCHASE), The International Association for Hospice and Palliative Care (IAHPC), and Global Partners in Care.
The Cannabis Expo returns to Cape Town after a two-year pandemic break. This time, the event is hosted on the back of President Ramaphosa's recent SONA address, in which he announced government's renewed focus on this flourishing industry and plans to review current frameworks and polices to help the cannabis sector grow.

Source: Supplied

Source: Supplied

Source: Supplied

Whats new?

What to expect

Hosted at GrandWest from 24 to 27 March, The Cannabis Expo Cape Town is the largest cannabis-focused trade and consumer expo on the African continent and includes over 150 exhibitors, networking and entertainment spaces, The Cannabis Food Market where visitors can buy foods, drinks and treats with a cannabis buzz, as well as The Cannabis Convention that hosts moderated panel discussions and presentations from global industry leaders.With a huge selection of cannabis-related products and services already legally on the market, The Cannabis Expo hosts businesses and professionals from all sectors of the industry: agriculture, healthcare, medicine, technology, product retailers and innovators, legislation groups and government departments.Throughout the event, visitors are able to participate in talks, presentations and panel discussions with cannabis industry leaders, experts, activists and government representatives on a variety of cannabis-related topics. Attendees can get clued up about the laws around cannabis, how to get a grower's permit, what tools, lights and fertilisers are needed to grow the best crops, the wide range of health benefits of cannabis, the vast business opportunities the cannabis industry has to offer, and so much more.Its great to be back in Cape Town, and after the recent government moves to further open up the cannabis industry we have seen a huge increase in exhibitors with new cannabis opportunities on offer, says expo director Silas Howarth. Whether youre interested in cannabis and finding out about the latest cannabis products, or just want to have a good time with cannabis vibes, or if youre serious about getting into the cannabis industry, you need to be at The Cannabis Expo.New to the upcoming Cape Town event, The JuicyFields Freedom Festival at the expo is the ultimate space for cannabis enthusiasts, providing a vibrant outdoor festival environment where visitors, delegates and exhibitors to the accompanying cannabis expo and convention events congregate throughout the four days.The festival includes a Festival Stage hosting popular bands, artists and DJs throughout the event, comfy relaxation areas and catering spaces including The Cannabis Food Market where visitors can browse and enjoy the latest in cannabis-infused and cannabis-inspired culinary delights. The festival and food market is accessible at no charge to all visitor and VIP delegate ticket holders who attend the expo. Over 150 exhibitors - Representing the entire cannabis industry The JuicyFields Freedom Festival - A vibrant outdoor festival environment hosting bands, artists and DJs The Cannabis Food Market - Browse and enjoy cannabis-infused meals, treats and drinks The Shroom Expo - A first in Africa, find out more about all things shrooms The Convention Stage (Thursday and Friday) - Global industry leaders presenting talks and taking part in moderated panel discussions The Expo Stage (Saturday and Sunday) - Presentations around cannabis-related topics that cover health, agriculture, legislation, finance and more A private space at The Cannabis Expo where members can legally use cannabisFind out more at TheCannabisExpo.co.za.
Mid-Level Community Manager

Remuneration: negotiable Benefits: Contribution towards Medical aid and Pension Location: Johannesburg Remote work: Some remote work allowed Job level: Mid Type: Permanent Reference: #Comm.Manager_Tumi Company: Eclipse Communications

Job description

Requirements

Create monthly content calendars with engaging, discussion-worthy content in line with the social media strategy -content calendars

Build and manage the client's social media communities, profiles and presence on different platforms, including LinkedIn (including LinkedIn Groups), Facebook (Facebook groups), Twitter, Instagram and YouTube and potentially additional channels (upon client request)

Help define and develop the social media strategy for assigned clients

Execute social selling programs to reach and convert target buyers

Daily social media engagement and platform management

Report and provide feedback and insight on clients audiences and the success of social activity across various platforms each month.

Developing target lists of new community members and the outreach messaging to reach and invite these prospects to the relevant communities.

Engage with clients regarding content calendars and reporting

Engage and interact in relevant social discussion about client brands, solutions and factors that influence their industry

Work alongside Paid Media and Creative teams to develop paid media campaigns and video/graphic content for social accounts

Setting and implementing social media content plans or campaigns that align with the brands marketing strategy

Responding to comments and customer queries in a timely manner

Monitor and report on community activity and growth

Organize and participate in events to build community and boost brand awareness

Coordinate with Marketing, PR and Communications teams to ensure brand consistency

Liaise with Development and necessary departments to stay updated on new products and features

Build relationships with customers, potential customers, industry professionals and influencers

Stay up-to-date with digital technology trends

Experience in managing social media on behalf of clients

Digital copywriting experience

Ability to identify and track relevant community metrics

Excellent verbal and written communication skills

Hands on experience with social media management for brands

Ability to interpret website traffic and online customer engagement metrics

Knowledge of online marketing and marketing channels

Attention to detail and ability to multitask

Broad experience across all digital trades

Experience working with B2B or technology clients

Being able to think both analytically and creatively

Social media or Digital agency experience (3 years +)

A relevant bachelor's degree would be beneficial

Paid Media advertising experience

Content Creation

Personal skills/attributes:

Must be able to manage their time and expectations

Proactive and solution-driven

Works well under pressure across multiple clients

Ability to work well independently and as part of a team

Great communicator and highly organised

Have an incurable natural curiosity and eagerness to learn

Shows dedication to the tasks and is willing to go the extra mile

Ambitious and hardworking

We are looking for a Community Manager who is ambitious and eager to join the Eclipse Communications Social team and who will have the opportunity to work on global and local accounts.The role would be to act as the bridge between a brand and the community it is aiming to create (i.e. a loyal audience or group of core consumers connected by a similar interest). They should be the brand's ambassador, engaging with potential customers and building relationships with existing ones.The candidate should have 3+ years of Community Management with a degree of independence. The candidate will be responsible for creating content, managing, and maintaining a selection of social media platforms for our client accounts.Due to the high volume of applications, please note that we will only be able to contact shortlisted candidates within the next six weeks to set up interviews accordingly. Posted on 14 Mar 13:33, Closing date 13 May
New York police officers are looking into a recent series of shootings by an alleged serial killer who is believed to be targeting homeless men in the city and in Washington, D.C.

Officials reported that the five shootings that left two men dead occurred over a nine-day period this month and were conducted by the same suspect. The New York Police Department (NYPD) and Washington's Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) are coordinating with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) to investigate the case.

Potential Serial Killer

The agencies made the announcement in a joint statement and described the victims in each of the five incidents as "experiencing homelessness." Authorities cited similar circumstances and characteristics among all of the shootings, saying they recovered evidence as to the basis for the joint investigation.

On Sunday night, the mayors of both cities issued a joint statement saying that there was a "cold-blooded killer on the loose." Officials noted that the first incident took place roughly 4:00 a.m. on Mar. 3 in the 1100 block of New York Avenue Northeast, as per CNN.

Police responded to a call of shots fired and later found a man who was suffering from apparent gunshot wounds. Medical professionals treated the victim for non-life-threatening injuries, said a statement issued by the MPD.

Read Also: Jussie Smollett Update: Why Is the 'Empire' Actor Put in Psych Ward?

The second incident reportedly happened at around 1:21 a.m. on Mar. 8 in the 1700 block of H Street Northeast. At the scene of the crime, officers found a second man with gunshot wounds who they immediately took to a hospital to be treated.

According to Sky News, on Sunday, the District of Columbia said they were working with the NYPD to locate the suspect who fatally shot and stabbed a man on Wednesday last week in the capital. The killer is also believed to be responsible for the death of another man in New York on Saturday.

String of Shootings

During a news conference on Saturday evening, Deputy Chief Hank Sautner of the NYPD said that the victim was sleeping when he was shot by the suspect. Allegedly, the man shouted "What are you doing?" as the assailant fled after the shooting.

Roughly 15 blocks away from the shooting on Saturday, officials said that the same suspect shot a man who was lying asleep inside a sleeping bag outside 148 Lafayette Street in SoHo. Police who responded to the incident said they found the man dead before 5:00 p.m. The victim was found with gunshot wounds in the head and the neck.

Despite the number of shootings, the police have not yet offered a potential motive for the case. In a statement, New York's police commissioner, Keechant Sewell, said that the region's homeless population was one of the most vulnerable. He added that an individual who was targeting these people was committing an "exceptionally heinous crime."

The string of shootings has caused some people to recall similar serial attacks that targeted homeless people in New York City. The cases include one in 2019 where a spree left four homeless men dead in Chinatown while another incident in February 2021 where the stabbings of four homeless victims caused the death of two, the New York Times reported.



Related Article: Gabby Petito's Parents File Lawsuit Against Laundrie Family For Allegedly Helping Brian Flee

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
A bipartisan group of senators expressed concern about the possibility of massive Russian cyberattacks in the United States as revenge for the brutal sanctions imposed by Washington on Moscow for its decision to invade Ukraine.

Twenty-two senators, led by Nevada Democrat Jacky Rosen and South Dakota Republican Mike Rounds, sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. The letter, obtained by CNN, presented questions on the details on the US preparedness for cyber threats from Russia, which has a history of "disruptive cyber and disinformation activities."

The senators expressed concern "that the United States may be targeted in retaliation" for its imposed sanctions on Russia for attacking Ukraine. Senators sought a briefing from Mayorkas on what the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is doing to proactively protect against Russian government-backed online threats and which sectors might be targeted.

The senators also inquired in the letter if a strategy is in effect if a significant infrastructure gets breached and how CISA is working with "international partners" regarding the matter.

Biden Administration Assures the US Is Ready To Handle Cyber Attacks

Since Russia invaded Ukraine last month, the Biden administration has been on high alert for potential Russian criminal or state-sponsored cyberattacks on vital infrastructure targets in the United States, a position the White House adopted months ago.

In the wake of the war, Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated earlier this month that the US is highly prepared for possible Russian cyberattacks., So far, there were no notable reports of the high-impact cyberattacks on transportation or energy infrastructure that some have expected though some Ukrainian companies have been hacked.

Meanwhile, according to a report by Reuters, three sources disclosed that intelligence agencies in the West had launched investigations on a cyberattack conducted by unidentified hackers, which disrupted broadband satellite internet access in Ukraine when the Russian invasion started.

Read Also: US Spends $2 Million Monthly for Security Detail of Pompeo, Aide Amid 'Serious,' 'Credible' Threats From Iran

Cyber Experts Spot Threats

Experts for the United States The National Security Agency, the French government's cybersecurity organization ANSSI, and Ukrainian intelligence are probing whether the remote sabotage of a satellite internet provider's service was the operation of hackers backed by the Russian government in preparation for the war by attempting to cut off communications.

On Feb. 24, between 5 a.m. and 10 a.m., the satellite provider initiated a digital blitz. And 9 a.m., just as Russian forces entered Ukraine and began firing missiles, targeting key cities across the country, including Ukraine's capital of Kyiv.

According to an official of Viasat, which controls the impacted network, satellite modems belonging to tens of thousands of users in Europe were knocked offline, with the repercussions still being assessed. Since Viasat works as a defense contractor for both the US and its allies, the openly disclosed incident, which seems to be one of the most substantial wartime cyberattacks, has sparked the interest of Western intelligence.

For decades, the US has not considered Russia a top hacking priority, cyber experts told Politico. But things changed when Russian hackers attempted to affect the 2016 US Elections. At present, the United States is also severely engaged in Russian infrastructure.

Related Article: Joe Biden Vetoes Plans To Send Polish Jets to Ukraine Fearing Putin's Wrath of Nuclear Threats

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Pope Francis on Sunday strongly condemned the continued attacks on Ukraine, saying that the "massacre" must end.

Since President Vladimir Putin launched the invasion on February 24, the Pope has avoided using the term "Russia" in his denouncements of the invasion. However, the Pope's statements increasingly appear to be targeted at dismissing Moscow's explanations for the assault on the Eastern European nation, wherein millions suffer.

Pope Francis Calls for Peace

Speaking to the faithful gathered at St. Peter's Square, the head of the Catholic Church called the bombings of children's hospitals and attacks on civilians in the ongoing war "barbaric" and unreasonable that is why he is calling to end the Russian-Ukraine war.

'In the name of God, I ask you, stop this massacre," the 85-year-old spiritual leader said in front of an audience holding banners and signs calling for peace, as the Angelus prayer is being recited, as per Daily Mail.

The head of the Catholic Church also prayed to the Virgin Mary and the city bearing her name - Mariupol, which has become a city of martyrs in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war.

Thousands of its inhabitants remain without food, water, electricity, or heat as relentless shelling continues to blast shops and residential apartments.

On Wednesday in Mariupol, Russian forces bombed a children's and maternity hospital, killing at least three people, including a girl, who is six years old.

Prayers for Ukraine

Amid the dreadful situation in Ukraine, Pope Francis also requested all diocesan and religious communities to intensify their prayers for peace, saying that "God is only God of peace, not of war."

Pope Francis urged people to welcome Ukrainian migrants and commended those who served those fleeing the war.

The war in Ukraine has forced not less than 2.5 million migrants to leave the country. Per Reuters, the majority of whom moved to Poland.

Read Also: Russia's Richest Businessman Warns Vladimir Putin About 'Taking Us Back' to 100 Years

'Hell' in the City Named After Virgin Mary

According to a report from the Catholic News Agency, one priest evacuating Mariupol, a port city in southeastern Ukraine on the Azov Sea, informed the Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need about the dire condition in the city named after the Virgin Mary.

The priest identified as Father Pavlo described Mariupol as "like Armageddon. "It is hell" as there are "random" shootings happening, and the city surrounded by Russian Forces is "like one big battlefield." "Everywhere bombs are falling. Everywhere you just hear shooting ... The people are just sitting in their basements," the priest said.

In a video message, Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk reported that Mariupol, a city with 400,000 people, is "under complete siege" and people are dying from hunger and the cold weather, while "on their heads, there are falling on rockets, shells, bombs."

Shevchuk encouraged everyone to remember the victims of the "tragedy" and called to open humanitarian corridors.

"Give women, children, and the elderly an opportunity to leave this cold, besieged city. Give us the opportunity to send food and medicine there. Give us an opportunity to rescue people," he said.

The United Nations Human Rights Office estimated 1,424 civilian casualties in Ukraine, including 516 individuals deceased and 908 injured in the ongoing war. The true figures are expected to be "considerably higher," according to the report.

Related Article: VP Kamala Harris' Poland Visit Proves US Commitment to NATO as Washington Sends Missiles to Warsaw Amid Russian Invasion of Ukraine

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Et tu, Brute?

What a week. It started with a trip to Palm Beach to meet with Florida Surgeon General Joe Ladapo and Governor Ron DeSantis (big success), then a quick turnaround to testify with the Tennessee state legislature regarding COVID legislation (partial success), then addressing questions regarding the Ukraine Biolab situation with Glen Beck, then a meeting with opinion leader Dr. David Martin, and finishing up with dinner with heroic local physician (and cattle rancher) Dr. Brooke Miller and his wife Ann, who works as a Nurse Practitioner. Next week it is off to my childhood home Santa Barbara for another rally  Stand UP Santa Barbara. All supporting the mission of stopping mandated SARS-CoV-2 genetic vaccination of our children.

I am exhausted. Which is why Jill and I took a day off from writing a substack article yesterday.

Well, I suppose that it is a win that the HHS bureaucrats and their many paid enablers are not just backslapping and giving each other medals over how well they have managed COVID-19. At least not yet.

But we do have a modicum of chatty condescending acknowledgment of mistakes made by Drs. Rochelle Walensky (Director, CDC) and Paul Offit (notoriously smug co-inventor of a rotavirus vaccine, Maurice R. Hilleman Professor of Vaccinology, Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania. Former member of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices).

An excellent commentary summarizing the stunning self-owning admissions of incompetence and culpability for massive unnecessary loss of life has been provided by Thomas Harrington writing for the Brownstone Institute, entitled Drs. Walensky and Offit: Its All in Good Fun. Personally, I can hardly bear to watch their breezy smugness as they casually chat with friends. I am reminded of the famous Hannah Arendt phrase the banality of evil. Mr. Harrington points to a series of clips of the Walensky interview compiled by Phil Kerpen (unfortunately on Twitter), and another excellent thread by Alexandros Marinos focusing on the self-amused Dr. Offit. Quoting from Alex-

How was the decision made to ignore immunity from prior infection? In this clip, Paul Offit describes how he and another person advised in favor of accepting natural immunity, while two others voted against it. A thread on why that was possibly the worst decision of the pandemic:

I recommend both of those abridged versions of the interviews for those (like me) who just cannot stomach the full interviews. I strongly recommend that you read Mr. Harringtons succinct summary, particularly including the following three paragraphs, which nicely summarize my feelings about the situation.

All those moves to censor and professionally destroy those who had opinions different from the CDC, actions rooted precisely in the presumption that science is, in fact, black and white, and that those who get it wrong need to be professionally punished, well, thats all a figment of your primitive imagination. Or as Harold Pinter put it in his Nobel Prize speech when referring to the US penchant for wantonly destroying other cultures, It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasnt happening. It didnt matter. It was of no interest. So yes, excessive psychic detachment turns fellow human beings into self-referential objects or our own minds can be rather problematic. Indeed, I think, though I cant be sure, that psychologists even have a term for it: psychopathy.

Bill Gates, Klaus Schwab, Anthony Fauci, Rochelle Walensky , Paul Offit, Janet Woodcock, Rick Bright, Jessica Cecil and her Trusted News Initiative. Dont forget these names. They should live in infamy. And they all share a common personality profile.

I have been getting the question How does it feel to be vindicated?

Dr. Jill (Glasspool-Malone) keeps noodling me to write a piece describing my feelings on this topic. Personally, I dislike focusing on the psychology of how these last two years have impacted on me (and us). Much as I am very wary of the cult of personality aspect of my newfound fame. I have not spoken out because I sought attention, I have done this because it was the right thing to do, and I seemed to have a unique widow of opportunity to speak for those whose voices were so actively suppressed. But I certainly have had to take hits for it. The slander, defamation, gaslighting, and globally coordinated character assassination have been non-stop. But as time has gone by, and more and more has been revealed about the hidden hands that seek to manage what we are allowed to hear, see, and think, I have been transformed.

The biomedical world that I thought I was living in has been revealed to be a sham. The legitimacy of the industry and discipline that I have committed my entire professional life to is in shambles. I am now embarrassed to call myself a vaccines and biodefense expert, because the fundamental corruption inherent in those domains has been so clearly revealed. I cannot unsee what I have seen. I cannot recapture all of those years spent in a profoundly corrupt academic system, spent supporting a deeply compromised discipline which appears primarily driven by financial interests rather than by what I had naively believed was a commitment to saving lives. I chose to not pursue the careers of my father and father in law, which were spent building weapons of war. Only to find that I had inadvertently played a significant role in enabling one of the most tragic medical follies in the history of man.

When first asked how it feels to be vindicated, I did not know what to say. It feels a long, long way from vindication. Those directly responsible are unlikely to face any form of reckoning. And rather than remorse, they seem to find the whole thing amusing. The unnecessary lives lost, the destruction of faith in the public health enterprise, vaccines in general, the entire medical/hospital system, the US Department of Health and Human Services, and government in general. Ha ha. Oh well, not our fault. Just the way things are.

I looked inwards, deep into my heart and soul, and asked the question. How does it feel? Demoralizing and depressing. I experience absolutely no pleasure whatsoever in seeing my worst fears come to pass, and in having accurately predicted so many things during the last two years. Jill and I have put everything on the line. Parked our lives, our farm, our family, in a sustained effort to try to save lives and help average people understand what was going on, what the actual Science was, and to try to help people to think through the issues. Going back to ground zero, to try to enable informed consent in a time where that fundamental bedrock of medical ethics was thrown into the dumpster. We have experienced extraordinary efforts to delegitimize us, to re-write history, to deny us credit for intellectual and technical contributions, to slander and defame. They have destroyed the consulting business that we had built up together over decades. We have drained ourselves with the constant travel and stress of the speaking engagements. A constant stream of podcasts (up to nine per day) as a way to break through the wall of globally coordinated censorship and propaganda. I have been labeled a right wing extremist and Nazi.

Here is a little story about Santa Barbara. I left my job as a carpenter and attended Santa Barbara City College between 1980 and 1982, graduating with straight As as President of the Student Council. This was made possible in part by financial assistance from the Santa Barbara Foundation. When invited to come speak by Stand Up SB in Santa Barbara regarding COVID, I suggested it would be nice to do a fundraiser for the Santa Barbara Foundation. An opportunity to give back to the community and organization that had made my journey from carpenter and orchard farmhand to physician/scientist possible. Upon being contacted, the foundation decided that they did not want to receive any support from a far-right wing person such as myself. Et tu, Brute? This is an example of the price that has had to be paid.

And we would do it again in a heartbeat. Because it has been the right thing to do. And we found ourselves in a position where we had a chance to make a difference. We have made new friends all over the world. I now have a very different worldview than I had two years ago. I have no regrets. But I take no pleasure in the thing.
Klaus Schwabs globalist cabal, the World Economic Forum (WEF), announced that it has severed all relations with the Russian government and President Vladimir Putin due to the ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

We are not engaging with any sanctioned individual and have frozen all relations with Russian entities, spokesperson Amanda Russo told Politico this week.

Looks like Vladimir Putin was removed from WEF website this week. pic.twitter.com/MfAso3hhdG  Teddy Fenton  Critical of the Intelligence State. (@teddyfenton1) March 1, 2022\

The WEFs decision comes as the United States, European Union, Canada, and several other countries have put crippling sanctions on Russias economy and banking sector, as well as Russian politicians, oligarchs, and Putin himself. There are also dozens of major corporations that have followed suit, cutting off business operations in the country entirely.

However, the public decoupling for the WEF is somewhat surprising because of the close relationship it has maintained and Russia in the past. Not only has Putin been a keynote speaker for the Schwab-led organization several times over the years, but he is also a graduate of the WEFs Young Global Leaders program, which has also produced other notable globalist-puppets like Canadian PM Justin Trudeau, US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, New Zeland PM Jacinda Ardern and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The WEF uses these loyal graduates of its programs to infiltrate governments around the world in order to further their globalist utopia agenda, and thats not a wild conspiracy theory that emerged from the dark recesses of the far-right interweb  Schwab openly, and often, brags about corrupting governments by infiltrating them from within.

Just take a look at this one clip from a speech in 2017:

Head of the World Economic Forum Klaus Schwab at Harvards John F. Kennedy School of Government in 2017: What we are very proud of, is that we penetrate the global cabinets of countries with our WEF Young Global Leaders like Trudeaupic.twitter.com/D6odR5mqI6  Maajid   (@MaajidNawaz) January 25, 2022

With Putin being a graduate of the WEF program, does this public decoupling signal that troubles are brewing in the globalists utopia agenda?

Whats more, the Ukrainian government has also announced that they are planning on evacuating all sensitive data and servers to other countries overseas if Russian forces continue to gain control of the country.

Although the WEF has made the decision to cut Putin off, they have left the possibility of a return to good graces on the table if he decides to come around and play ball again.
The system is being provided free of charge, CEO Hoan Ton-That told Reuters, adding that they had not offered the technology to Russia.

While Ukraine's MoD won't say what they're using it for, possible uses include vetting people of interest at checkpoints, identifying the dead more easily than trying to match fingerprints, reuniting refugees with their families, identifying Russian operatives, and helping to debunk misinformation related to the war.

Ton-That told Reuters that the company has over 2 billion images from the Russian social media service VKontakte in its database of more than 10 billion photos total.

The VKontakte images make Clearviews dataset more comprehensive than that of PimEyes, a publicly available image search engine that people have used to identify individuals in war photos, Wolosky said. VKontakte did not immediately respond to a request for comment; U.S. social media company Facebook, now Meta Platforms Inc, had demanded Clearview stop taking its data. -Reuters

The software has raised privacy concerns in the United States, to the point where Sens. Jeff Merkley and Bernie Sanders attempted to block its use with a bill that would require Clearview and similar companies obtain consent before taking your biometric data.

In 2020, the ACLU sued Clearview AI, calling it a 'nightmare scenario' for privacy.

Clearview, which primarily sells to U.S. law enforcement, is fighting lawsuits in the United States accusing it of violating privacy rights by taking images from the web. Clearview contends its data gathering is similar to how Google search works. Still, several countries including the United Kingdom and Australia have deemed its practices illegal. -Reuters

"Were going to see well-intentioned technology backfiring and harming the very people its supposed to help," said Albert Fox Cahn, executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project in New York, who added that the technology could misidentify people at checkpoints and in battle - which could potentially lead to civilian deaths.

Ton-That argued that Clearview shouldn't be used as the sole source of identification, and that he wouldn't want it used in violation of the Geneva Conventions.

Cahn, however, warned that "once you introduce these systems and the associated databases to a war zone, you have no control over how it will be used and misused."
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky thanked Facebook for its role in helping him win the propaganda war after the platform announced it would permit calls for violence against Russians.

Following its move to allow praise for the pro-Ukraine neo-nazi Azov Battalion last week, Facebook said they would permit calls for violence against Russians.

As a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine we have temporarily made allowances for forms of political expression that would normally violate our rules like violent speech such as death to the Russian invaders. We still wont allow credible calls for violence against Russian civilians, a Meta spokesperson said in a statement.

Moscow responded by banning both Facebook and Instagram in Russia.

EXCLUSIVE Facebook and Instagram to temporarily allow calls for violence against Russians https://t.co/dhcObdoDk6 pic.twitter.com/QVokunNzyx  Reuters (@Reuters) March 10, 2022

President Zelensky took to Twitter to thank Zuckerberg for standing with Ukraine in the informational space.

War is not only a military opposition on UA land. It is also a fierce battle in the informational space, Zelensky tweeted. I want to thank @Meta and other platforms that have an active position that help and stand side by side with the Ukrainians.

War is not only a military opposition on UA land. It is also a fierce battle in the informational space. I want to thank @Meta and other platforms that have an active position that help and stand side by side with the Ukrainians.    (@ZelenskyyUa) March 13, 2022

In other words, Facebook is directly aiding Ukraine by allowing pro-Ukraine propaganda to spread while banning any pro-Russia propaganda.

This despite the fact that there have been numerous huge fabricated stories in just a few weeks alone, including the Snake Island hoax and the supposed attack on a Holocaust memorial in Kiev that never happened.

Facebook has helped Zelensky himself spread endless disinformation to try and con NATO into World War III, comments Chris Menahan. Most recently, they helped Zelensky spread the lie that Russians attacked the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant with tanks and it was leaking radiation and could lead to a nuclear holocaust wiping out all of Europe (if NATO doesnt immediately get involved in the war and start WW3).

They also helped Zelensky spread the lie that Russians attacked the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and were trying to trigger a meltdown.

Facebooks decision to allow its platform to be used to advocate for violence against Russians was also made despite actual real world violence being directed towards Russians.

A Russian cultural center in Paris was firebombed last weekend, while a man in Dublin also drove a truck into the gates of the Russian embassy.
Bad news for Instagram users in Russia! Instagram has just shut down its operations today, March 14, and known bloggers from the country are not happy with it.

Among the said bloggers who shared their sentiments are Olga Buzova, and Karina Nigay.

Fortunately, there are other Russian native social media platforms including VKontakte (VK), and OdnoKlassniki (OK).

Russia Shuts Down Instagram

Agence France-Press (AFP) reported through The Moscow Times that Moscow cut down access to the Meta-owned social media platform Instagram this week, accusing Meta of ignoring incitement to violence against Russians.

To further emphasize, it occurred after Meta announced last week that the platform would allow Ukraine users to post messages such as "Death to the Russian invaders," per Reuters.

The parent company of Instagram also stated through Reuters that the temporary change in its hate speech policy only applies to Ukraine. This move helps Ukraine users in "expressing their resistance and fury at the invading military forces."

In order to prevent Russian users from losing their content, the country's official communications regulator advised people to back up their photographs and videos to another platform before the Instagram shutdown.

Several Russian bloggers have expressed their grief over the death of Instagram in their country.

Read Also: Silicon Valley's Ro Khanna: Hire Philosophers and Liberal Arts Thinkers to Fix Social Media

For instance, the reality TV star Olga Buzova, who has more than 23 million Instagram followers, shared her sentiment over the shutdown hoping that this issue is not true.

Apart from Buzova, fashion blogger Karina Nigay, who has nearly 3 million followers on the platform, was still in shock and processing the fact of the ceasing operation.

Instagram has been shut down during the midnight of March 14.

Other Platforms That Russians Can Use After Instagram Shutdown

According to a study from Statista, the video streaming platform YouTube has been the most popular in Russia for the past years. In 2020, YouTube accumulated 85.4% of users' share in Russia.

Placing in fourth place, Instagram accounted for 61%. Instagram's active users are mostly 25 to 35 years of age.

Since the Instagram shutdown affected most of its Russian users, Startup.info shared several platforms that citizens can use such as VKontakte (VK), OdnoKlassniki (OK), Moi Mir (My World), and Rutube.

VKontakte (VK) has more than 97 million active users per month which are considered the largest social media platform used in the country. In terms of its usage, Startup.info stated that this Russian app has similarities with Facebook works.

To emphasize its style and functionality, users can also create their profile, search and add friends, keep updated on their friends' status posts, videos, and photos.

With regards to the age target of this platform, it aims to reach people younger demographic under 35 with its integrated file sharing capability. Apart from Facebook, it also has similarities with YouTube when it comes to uploading video and audio files.

Moreover, VK has an English interface which is ideal for international brands to share their content with young audiences.

Aside from VK, the platform OdnoKlassniki (OK) is also one of the apps that Russian users can use after the Instagram shutdown.

With the popularity among older users, OK is the second largest Russian social media platform with more than 71 million users. Similar to UK's native app, Friends Reunited, this platform also reconnects users with their old friends and school classmates.

For those who do not know, the Russian word Odnoklassniki means classmates.

OK also allows users to create a profile, share their status and images, as well as search for friends.

Related Article: How to Permanently Delete Your Social Media Accounts: Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, and More
Watch closely. The hat is completely empty, see? But now, as I wave this handkerchief across it and intone a spell derived from ancient Babylonian high priests, poof, here is a large white rabbit crawling out of the hat. And now again, as I wave the cloth, boom, the rabbit is gone. And that is how 400 billion dollars of plaintiffs claims are asserted and then rejected. Case dismissed.

Childrens Health Defense, 3/4/22: A hearing today in federal court will set the stage for upcoming litigation against Syngenta, manufacturer of Paraquat. More than 600 lawsuits alleging the agrochemical giant knew its flagship weedkiller causes Parkinsons were combined into what is known as multidistrict litigation.

What is Parkinsons disease (PD)?

Parkinson.org: Scientists believe a combination of genetic and environmental factors are the cause of Parkinsons disease (PD). PD is an extremely diverse disorder. While no two people experience Parkinsons the same way, there are some commonalities. PD affects about one million people in the United States and ten million worldwide. The main finding in brains of people with PD is loss of dopaminergic neurons in the area of the brain known as the substantia nigra.

There is no cure. And as you can see from that quote, no definite cause has been established. But its a disease. We know that because it has a label. PD. And the label is the proof.

If you buy that, visit my site, ConJobCondosontheMoon.com.

For the moment, lets go with the notion that PD is defined by loss of those dopaminergic neurons in the brain.

If Im a lawyer defending Syngenta, the maker of the toxic pesticide Paraquat, part of my argument will go this way:

ONE: There are people who have this neuron loss whove never been exposed to Paraquat.

TWO: And there are people whove been exposed to Paraquat who dont develop this neuron loss.

THREE: Therefore, the claim that Paraquat causes PD is unfounded.

FOUR: Therefore, blaming Paraquat for the plaintiffs PD has no merit.

Poof. Magic.

Once you accept the notion that PD is a distinct disease, even though no definite cause has been found and no cure existsand even though the neuron loss could occur for who knows how many different reasonsyoure in a hole.

Why?

Because of the above lawyers argument I just sketched out. In fact, the same argument has been used many times to deny compensation to parents of vaccine-injured children:

Your son has been diagnosed with autism. You claim it was caused by the injection. But we know there are many autistic children who never received that particular injection. And there are many children who received the injection who never developed autism.

Rejection by definition. By sleight of hand. By con.

We say we have a distinct disease. Our definition of the disease AUTOMATICALLY precludes law suits, because we can claim the purported cause of the disease cited in the law suits is unproven

Whereas, there is a much simpler way to assess causationif the courts would allow it. It goes this way:

The defendant struck my son on the head 12 times with a heavy hammer. My sons brain was damaged. Aside from criminal charges, I want the man who destroyed my sons life to pay. To pay everything he has.

See? No disease label at all. No magic trick.

A worker in the field sprayed Paraquat all day long. Thats the hammer. Now he cant walk, he has uncontrollable tremors, he can hardly speak, and he needs around the clock care for the rest of his life.

No PD, no disease label, no neuron loss, no doctors and researchers on the witness stand. Just the plain facts.

Because in the end, when you put all the medical and legal mumbo jumbo aside, thats the best case anyone can make. It may not be absolute perfectionwhich is impossiblebut its the closest thing to it.

The worker, who was healthy, used Paraquat. Now hes very badly damaged. Period.

The young boy was injected with a vaccine. Then he checked out of the world and sat in a corner for the next year. Period.

No disease labels. No magic tricks.

Ill run this by you one last time:

PLAINTIFFS ATTORNEY: My client, Jim, worked in the fields for six months. He sprayed Paraquat dozens of times. Now here, as you can see from the brain scans, he then experienced a loss of neurons

SYNGENTA ATTORNEY: And here are 20 studies that show the same brain scans and same loss of neurons in people who never sprayed Paraquat or even worked on a farm

Thats not evidence. Thats a trap.

The good news is: playing the legal-medical game can have a self-incriminating rebound effect.

Since the Syngenta scientists accept their own non-scientific disease-labeling approach as Holy Scripture, there will be memos in internal Syngenta files that show these scientists were warning of Parkinsons as an effect of Paraquat for years.

And THAT could very well sink them in court.

But, again, the truth is much simpler. Its the hammer and the head. The hammer strikes the head. Then, DAMAGE.

No hats, no handkerchiefs, no ancient spells, no rabbits. Just straight-out CRIME.

CODA: If the pseudo-scientific fog were cleared away, and if stripped-down straight-out CRIME were accepted as the argument in court, there would be a righteous bonus. The corporation executives and scientists who knew they were major criminals would be sent to prison for 50 years.

That BANG would wake up the world.

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.
China has amplified Russian claims, dismissed as disinformation in the west, that the United States has a network of biological labs in Ukraine that are being used to research how to spread pathogens through animals.

The US State Department insists that the secretive biolabs are purely focused on securing Cold War era Soviet bioweapons, although this hasnt stopped accusations flying about more nefarious purposes.

Such concerns were bolstered after Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland expressed fears that the labs would fall into the hands of Vladimir Putin.

We are now in fact quite concerned that Russian troops, Russian forces, may be seeking to gain control of [those labs], so we are working with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach, said Nuland.

This prompted journalist Glenn Greenwald to note that Nuland had destroyed any hope to depict such facilities as benign or banal.

Now Beijing has upped the ante by amplifying Russian claims that the labs are part of a secret biological warfare research program.

Such claims are being circulated in the run up to a crucial meeting between Yang Jiechi, Chinas top foreign policy official, and Jake Sullivan, US national security adviser, after it was reported Russia had asked China for military equipment.

Xinhua, the official state news agency, on Sunday published a satellite investigation, posting satellite images of supposed US labs identified by Russia. Xinhua repeated Russian claims that the US was seeking to learn how to spread pathogens through animals, reports the Financial Times.

The Global Times, a nationalist tabloid, ran a story based on an article published in Russian daily newspaper Izvestia, in which an unnamed former Ukrainian official claimed that Ukraine had a network of military research facilities under the supervision of its security services and modernised by the US.

Zhang Jun, Chinas permanent envoy to the UN, also sought to discredit US assertions that claims about the biolabs were without merit, insisting that concerns raised by Russia should be properly addressed.

The US always says they advocate transparency. If they believe the relevant information is fake, they can just provide us with relevant data for clarification, so that the international community can draw a conclusion by itself, Zhang said.

According to Beijing, US biological military activities in Ukraine represent merely the tip of the iceberg.


Borsa Italiana non ha responsabilita per il contenuto del sito a cui sta per accedere e non ha responsabilita per le informazioni contenute.

Accedendo a questo link, Borsa Italiana non intende sollecitare acquisti o offerte in alcun paese da parte di nessuno.

Sarai automaticamente diretto al link in cinque secondi.
The chief executive of the U.S.-based facial recognition Clearview AI announced that Ukraine started using their tool to identify people of interest at checkpoints, recognize deaths, and more.

Some of the data used are from Russia's social media platform VKontakte.

Ukraine Uses Clearview AI Facial Recognition Technology

In an exclusive report from Reuters, Clearview AI company chief executive stated that the defense ministry of Ukraine started using the Clearview AI facial recognition technology on Saturday, March 12.

This move occurred after the facial recognition company offered to reveal Russian assailants, identify deaths, and combat misinformation.

Reuters also reported that an adviser to Clearview AI and former diplomat under the Barack Obama and Joe Biden administration Lee Wolosky informed the news site that Ukraine has free access to Clearview AI's search engine technology.

Moreover, this technology was used to search for faces, allowing authorities to identify people of interest at checkpoints.

For background information, this move occurred after Clearview AI Chief Executive Hoan Ton-That sent a letter to Kyiv offering assistance following the invasion of Russia to Ukraine, according to a copy seen by Reuters.

Even though a copy of a letter was acquired, Ukraine's Ministry of Defense did not release a statement addressing this issue.

To provide details about its effectiveness and data-gathering capabilities, the Clearview AI founder explained that out of a database of over 10 billion photos, a total of more than 2 billion images are from the Russian social media service VKontakte.

Read Also: ID.me CEO Admits Usage of Facial Recognition: 3 Use and Advantages of Facial Recognition

How Clearview AI Facial Recognition Works

According to Kaspersky, facial recognition technology works through identifying or confirming a person's identity using their facial features. This technology can be used to recognize people in photos, videos, and more.

Since it involves the unique identification of people, this system falls into a biometric security category.

Other biometric security categories include voice recognition, fingerprint recognition, and iris recognition. Kaspersky also explained that facial recognition technology is "mostly used for security and law enforcement, though there is increasing interest in other areas of use."

In relation to this, Clearview AI uses this technology claiming that they are "the world's largest facial network."

For those curious to know how it works, Vox reported that if: "You have an image of a person, but you don't know their name. You could input that photo into Clearview's app, and it will turn up any image of the person that it had scraped from the internet, as well as links to websites from which those images came."

On the other hand, the company explained that "Clearview AI is a privately-owned, U.S.-based company, dedicated to innovating and providing the most cutting-edge technology to law enforcement to investigate crimes, enhance public safety and provide justice to victims."

Through their web-based intelligence platform, it helps law enforcement to have high-quality investigative leads.

With regards to their acquired data, Clearview AI stated that they have more than 10 billion facial images sourced from public-only web sources. The said sources include news media, mugshot websites, public social media, and other open sources.

Moreover, the company further stated, "Our solutions allow agencies to gain intelligence and disrupt crime by revealing leads, insights, and relationships to help investigators solve both simple and complex crimes, increase officer and public safety, and keep our communities and families safer."

Despite the benefit it brings, Vox also stated that Clearview AI received cease-and-desist letters from several major online sites including LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Venmo, Google, and YouTube for allegedly violating their respective terms and conditions.

Related Article: Self-ID Cameras Can Guess Your Age When Buying Alcohols In Supermarket
 Unlimited website access 24/7

 Unlimited e-Edition access 24/7

 The best local, regional and national news in sports, politics, business and more!

With a Digital Only subscription, you'll receive unlimited access to our website and e-edition. Our digital products are available 24/7 and are accessible anywhere, anytime.
By the time the last shell had fallen, most of the neighborhood buildings had been turned into rubble.

But not all of them.

Somehow, despite all the destruction raining down, the church that Yana Sherdis father built was still standing.

And the sight of its steeple cross silhouetted against the morning sky provided some much-needed encouragement.

When I saw the photos from Mariupol of the church, I was so happy for the people there, said Sherdis, one of many former Ukrainian refugees whove settled in Tulsa over the last decade.

Since Russias invasion of Ukraine began Feb. 24, most images pouring out of the conflict have been heart-rending.

A few, though, like the one of the church, have inspired hope.

Built in 1990 by Sherdis late father, the churchs former pastor, the structure withstood the heavy Russian bombardment of its section of the eastern port city of Mariupol.

Images surfacing on social media showed it standing almost alone on its rubble-strewn block.

Members also sent out video of a service held in the church basement. They wanted the outside world to know that they are standing firm.

For Sherdis, who has felt so powerless following the war from a distance, it was encouraging to see.

Still, the overall picture of whats going on  the bloodshed and mounting casualties  is devastating, she said.

Sherdis, who was born in Russia, moved to Mariupol as a child. Its been hard to watch the horrors unfold from afar.

Not in my worst nightmare could I have imagined this happening, she said.

Refugee is not a bad word

Sherdis, who teaches at Jenks West Elementary School, attained a long sought-after goal last week.

Completing a journey that began after she arrived in 2016, she officially took the oath to become a U.S. citizen.

But the naturalization ceremony, held Wednesday in Tulsa, was not as joyful for her as it should have been.

Overshadowing everything was the news out of Mariupol, where the Russian siege continued to exact a staggering toll.

Sherdis still has many family and friends in the city. On top of the Russian shelling, they are experiencing loss of electricity, heat, water and other basic necessities.

Sherdis said she and her husband, Nikolay, have not heard a word from his parents in Mariupol in two weeks.

Their neighbor did tell us last week they were OK, she said. He had to climb a tree to get cell reception. But he was able to call.

Sherdis mother and brother are in the capital, Kyiv.

Communication is better there, and she talks to her mother every day.

But with Russian forces closing in on that city, she worries for their safety.

One thing thats helped Sherdis emotionally during the crisis is the presence of fellow Ukrainians in Tulsa.

I never knew there were so many before this, she said.

Along with her husband and their two boys, Ted and Peter, Sherdis attends South Tulsa Baptist Church, which has made serving refugees and immigrants one of its main missions.

In addition to a few Ukrainians who are members, others come there to attend English language classes.

How many more Ukrainians might eventually come to Tulsa is hard to predict.

So far, its estimated that over 2 million people have left Ukraine since Russia invaded, seeking refuge in neighboring countries.

But however it works out, Sherdis and her fellow church members will be ready to step up.

Refugee is not a bad word here, said the Rev. Eric Costanzo, South Tulsa Baptist Church pastor. People here just immediately hear that now and say, Whats our next step? They know its a frontline ministry for us.

The church has played a big part in Tulsas ongoing Afghan refugee resettlement, organizing airport welcomes and helping prepare houses for three families.

The idea that another huge refugee crisis might follow on the heels of the Afghans never crossed anyones mind, Costanzo said.

Right now, its just chatter. Nothing from official channels. But with so many refugees pushed out, its hard to imagine a significant population not coming into the U.S. Were all waiting to see, he said.

And with many Ukrainians already in Tulsa, Costanzo added, it would make even more sense for others to move here after arriving in the U.S.

The plight of Ukraines children is also a special concern for Sherdis.

Before his death, her father started a ministry called Open Doors that supports the nations orphans and helps facilitate adoptions.

Sherdis previously served as director of the organization, which is supported by her church.

There are already so many orphans in Ukraine for economical reasons and because of previous (conflicts), she said. But now, with this, the numbers are huge, and theyre growing.

God had a plan

Though she and her family were classified as refugees, Sherdis doesnt like to compare their situation to the present groups.

It was so much different for us, she said of when they left Ukraine six years ago.

At the time, her family was fleeing the possibility of religious persecution, not actual death and destruction, she said. And also, she added, they just wanted better opportunities for their children.

Whats created the current refugee situation is so much worse, she said.

One of the saddest aspects of the war, Sherdis added, is that it pits brother against brother.

We look the same. We speak the same language. We have the same faith.

But Ukraine has no choice but to defend itself, she said. It is a war for freedom. People are fighting for their land, for their freedom.

Since leaving Ukraine, Sherdis has been back only once.

It was last summer, and the trip offered her a chance to visit family members she hadnt seen in years.

She also took the opportunity to show her children her fathers church in Mariupol.

It was such a challenge for him to get it built, she said.

Also, some complained that the basement was too big. But my father knew God had a plan.

She saw that plan come to fruition in the cellphone video that recently emerged. It showed a worship service being held in the church basement, a safer location during the siege.

Sherdis said she cant help but feel some survivors guilt that shes safe in the U.S. and not facing what her friends and family are in Ukraine.

But she has to trust that, again, God has a plan, she said.

And whatever it is, shes sure that being in Tulsa  and her new status as an American citizen  are part of it.

I feel if God brings me here, if Im a citizen now, then its because he wants it, Sherdis said. He knew why he brought me here. Maybe he will use me here.
Samsung is releasing new phone models under the A series.

The company confirms a new launch through a virtual invitation for this month's Samsung Awesome Galaxy A Event.

Samsung Awesome Galaxy A Event

Samsung starts sending virtual invitations for their annual event, this time, it is called the Samsung Awesome Galaxy A Event. Samsung is expected to reveal its latest mid-range smartphones under the A series.

As reported by Engadget, the A event is will be aired online on Samsung's website or on Samsung's official YouTube channel on March 17, starting at 10 AM Eastern time.

Samsung's Galaxy event this month will be the second event the company has held this year. During Samsung Unpacked last month, the tech giant revealed its Galaxy S22 Ultra, Galaxy S22, Galaxy S22+, Galaxy Tab S8, Tab S8+, and Tab S8 Ultra.

Last year, the recently unveiled Samsung Galaxy S22 also bears distinctive resemblances to the company's previous Galaxy Note models.

Designed to look like Samsung's Galaxy Note 20 Ultra from 2020, the Galaxy S22 Ultra is a 6.8-inch Android phone with a curved screen.

The Samsung Galaxy A52 model was released at the same time as the A72. Following the release of A52, the company launched A52s, as an upgraded version of the A52 with a newer processor, a few months later in select regions.

There is very little information about the product that Samsung intends to launch. However, the digital art of numerous letter As Samsung has published is very telling.

A quick glance at the invitation reveals that more than one Samsung Galaxy A series device will be on display on Thursday.

Read Also: Anonymous Continues Hacking of Russia, Targets Streaming Services

Samsung Galaxy A Series

Samsung's available A series models here in the United States are A03, A12, A13, A20, A32, A42, and A52.

According to the rumors surfacing, Samsung is expected to introduce two new smartphones to its lineup: the Galaxy A73 and A53.

As reported by The Verge, both phones are due for an upgrade, and it is possible that the audience will get a first look at the new models at this month's event.

According to rumors and leaks, the Galaxy A73 and A53 have a huge possibility to be equipped with 5G. This would be a much-needed upgrade for last year's A72 device.

Spectators believe the 5G upgrade is coming since Samsung's A52 already offers a 5G variant. In addition, the A53 is rumored to have a 6.5-inch display and will be powered by Samsung's Exynos 1200 system on a chip (SoC).

Samsung's A73 is expected to have the same 6.7-inch display as the A53 and will be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 750G processor.

The Samsung A Event invitation reads:

"The Galaxy A series is Samsung Electronics' most popular smartphone category, leading the democratization of Galaxy innovations that is giving people the power to create, connect and thrive.

This year, Samsung is taking the impactful Galaxy innovations for the A series even further. The awesome new Galaxy A series devices are designed to provide the fully-loaded experience that people want from a smartphone."

Related Article: Lapsus$ Group Leaks Alleged Samsung Confidential Data
Brent Renaud, an acclaimed filmmaker who traveled to some of the darkest and most dangerous corners of the world for documentaries that transported audiences to little-known places of suffering, died Sunday after Russian forces opened fire on his vehicle in Ukraine.

Brent Renaud, an acclaimed filmmaker who traveled to some of the darkest and most dangerous corners of the world for documentaries that transported audiences to little-known places of suffering, died Sunday after Russian forces opened fire on his vehicle in Ukraine.

The 50-year-old Little Rock, Arkansas, native was gathering material for a report about refugees when his vehicle was hit at a checkpoint in Irpin, just outside the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv. Ukraine's Interior Ministry said the area has sustained intense shelling by Russian forces in recent days.

Peabody Award Recipients Craig Renaud, left, and Brent Renaud attend the 74th Annual Peabody Awards at Cipriani Wall Street on May 31, 2015, in New York. Brent Renaud, an American journalist, was killed in a suburb of Kyiv, Ukraine, on Sunday, March 13, 2022, while gathering material for a report about refugees. Ukrainian authorities said he died when Russian forces shelled the vehicle he was traveling in. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)

Renaud was one of the most respected independent producers of his era, said Christof Putzel, a filmmaker and close friend who had received a text from Renaud just three days before his death. Renaud and Putzel won a 2013 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University journalism award for "Arming the Mexican Cartels," a documentary on how guns trafficked from the United States fueled rampant drug gang violence.

This guy was the absolute best, Putzel told The Associated Press via phone from New York City. He was just the absolute best war journalist that I know. This is a guy who literally went to every conflict zone.

The details of Renaud's death were not made immediately clear by Ukrainian authorities, but American journalist Juan Arredondo said the two were traveling in a vehicle toward the Irpin checkpoint when they were both shot. Arredondo, speaking from a hospital in Kyiv, told Italian journalist Annalisa Camilli that Renaud was hit in the neck. Camilli told the AP that Arredondo himself had been hit in the lower back.

We crossed the first bridge in Irpin, we were going to film other refugees leaving, and we got into a car, somebody offered to take us to the other bridge, we crossed the checkpoint, and they started shooting at us," Arredondo told Camilli in a video interview shared with the AP.

Craig Renaud, left, and Brent Renaud attend the 74th Annual Peabody Awards at Cipriani Wall Street, May 31, 2015, in New York. Brent Renaud, an American journalist, was killed in a suburb of Kyiv, Ukraine, on Sunday, March 13, 2022, while gathering material for a report about refugees. Ukrainian authorities said he died when Russian forces shelled the vehicle he was traveling in. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)

A statement from Kyiv regional police said that Russian troops opened fire on the car. Hours after the shooting of Renaud, Irpin mayor Oleksandr Markushyn said journalists would be denied entry to the city.

In this way, we want to save the lives of both them and our defenders, Markushyn said.

The U.S. State Department said it would not comment on Renaud's death out of respect for his family members but that consular assistance was being offered to them.

The U.S. State Department condemned attacks on news professionals and others documenting the conflict.

We are horrified that journalists and filmmakersnoncombatantshave been killed and injured in Ukraine by Kremlin forces," the department said via Twitter. "This is yet another gruesome example of the Kremlins indiscriminate actions.

Responding to news of Renauds death, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists called for an immediate halt to violence against journalists and civilians.

This kind of attack is totally unacceptable, and is a violation of international law, the committee said on Twitter.

TIME released a statement deploring Renauds death and saying he had been in the region working on a TIME Studios project focused on the global refugee crisis.

We are devastated by the loss of Brent Renaud, the statement said. Our hearts are with all of Brents loved ones.

Along with his brother Craig, Renaud won a Peabody Award for Last Chance High, an HBO series about a school for at-risk youth on Chicagos West Side. The brothers' litany of achievements include two duPont-Columbia journalism awards and productions for HBO, NBC, Discovery, PBS, the New York Times, and VICE News.

Renaud was also a 2019 Nieman fellow at Harvard and served as visiting distinguished professor for the Center for Ethics in Journalism at University of Arkansas. He and his brother founded the Little Rock Film Festival.

Among other assignments, Renaud covered wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the devastating 2011 earthquake in Haiti, political turmoil in Egypt and Libya and extremism in Africa.

Putzel, who worked with Renaud for 12 years, paid tribute to his courage and passion.

Nowhere was too dangerous," Putzel said. It was his bravery but also because he deeply, deeply cared.

He is survived by his brother Craig, Craig's wife, Mami, and a nephew, 11-year-old Taiyo.

___

AP journalists Sylvia Hui in London and Maria Grazia Murru in Przemysl, Poland, contributed to this report.
Film Training Manitoba and Assiniboine Community College teamed up for a special workshop over the weekend to teach students critical skills that will be essential in helping grow the provinces thriving film industry.

Advertisement Advertise With Us

Film Training Manitoba and Assiniboine Community College teamed up for a special workshop over the weekend to teach students critical skills that will be essential in helping grow the provinces thriving film industry.

The seminar at ACC took place Saturday and Sunday through a partnership with the Media and Communications program, said ACC Media and Office Technologies chairperson Jana Sproule.

"This is a really great opportunity for our students to get some hands-on industry experience with industry professionals," she said. "The film aspect is a new part for us, which really serves the needs of the film industry in Winnipeg that is quite booming."

CHELSEA KEMP/THE BRANDON SUN Film Training Manitoba lighting department instructor Joao Luis Holowka teaches students at Assiniboine Community College on Saturday.

The newly vamped media and communications program launched this year, with an emphasis placed on developing technical film skills, Sproule said.

It was the first time offering a workshop of this kind with Film Training Manitoba (FTM), and the seminar saw 15 students participate in learning the technical skills of working in the lighting and grip departments.

FTM managing director Adam Smoluk described the seminar as learning a trade using a relationship of an apprentice working with a master. The workshop featured two instructors both with more than 20 years of experience in their departments.

The goal is to help the students be able to hit the ground running and be ready to work on a set.

CHELSEA KEMP/THE BRANDON SUN Film Training Manitoba managing director Adam Smoluk (right) and ACC media and office technologies chairperson Jana Sproule showcase film equipment on Saturday.

"We have an exceptional record of people taking this course and then transitioning within even a matter of days to work in the industry," Smoluk said. "What we want to do is be encouraging and ensure that they feel supported and also know that they have staff members that they can reach out to and be helped and be encouraged to come work in the industry."

FTM offers workshops centred on workforce development and training for the provinces film industry. Smoluk estimated FTM holds between 45 to 65 individual specialty workshops each year. The organization works closely with specialized technicians to focus on the skills and technology needed in the film industry.

Students were able to complete some mock shooting using an FTM camera system and one-of-a-kind lighting technology in Manitoba to learn the process of set design during the workshop.

"Its the magic of cinema. Its really what we all want to see and be a part of when we watch films," Smoluk said.

During the pandemic, ACC has been able to offer hands-on experience to students when possible, Sproule said, offering them tastes of different types of media including film and radio.

The core of the media program is centred on creating content, she added, be it film, television, live sports, radio, social media or something else. The college focuses on teaching students skills in digital audio, digital video and communication along with digital design. The goal is to ensure they have the skills to secure a job in their chosen industry.

"Like any trade, you take your program and it gives you that foundation and as you continue to work you build your skill set," Sproule said.

The film industry in Manitoba has seen an exceptional level of growth in the past 20 years, and there is a need to have trained professionals who can work in the sector, Smoluk added. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the province saw about $270 million generated from productions each year.

"The amount of money [they] productions pour into a community is just incredible," Sproule said. "Youre talking about the purchasing of hotel rooms, of food, of the rental vehicle, gas. The economic benefits to attracting production are enormous."

He cited the recent $50-million Sony film "A Dogs Purpose" that shot in Manitoba as an example of the funds films can inject into the economy. He added the recently shot series "Tales from Loop" marked the provinces largest film ever, bringing with it a production budget of around $70 million.

The booming film sector in Manitoba is part of the overall growth of the industry in Canada, Smoluk said.

With the growing number of productions, there is a need for training in the industry to ensure there are skilled workers ready to work on sets.

"It is so critical because we generate that recruitment and training that we do partner with post-secondaries and do target specific outside of the Winnipeg area to bring those new people into our industry," Smoluk said. "We need more people working within the film industry."

One of the tricky parts of recruitment into the film industry is that people are not always aware of available jobs including accounting, technical and administrative workers, co-ordinators on set and other opportunities.

The industry is doing its best to bring in local talents, Smoluk added, but at times they do have to bring in workers from other provinces to meet industry demands.

It helps to have locally based skilled workers available for production because it can help attract and retain more films in Manitoba.

"Its a competitive labour market, and we are trying to attract skilled labour, so its very challenging, and its why Film Training Manitoba is doing this  training folks to work in media productions," Smoluk said.

 ckemp@brandonsun.com

 Twitter: @The_ChelseaKemp
An art sale Saturday featured hundreds of pieces from Westman artists for sale, with all proceeds raised going to support Ukraine amid its ongoing humanitarian crisis.

Advertisement Advertise With Us

An art sale Saturday featured hundreds of pieces from Westman artists for sale, with all proceeds raised going to support Ukraine amid its ongoing humanitarian crisis.

"We have just had our spirits lifted so much because we were all feeling very, very sad and hopeless and helpless as to the situation with Ukraine," said Artist Heart Collective member and co-organizer Linda Tame. "We wanted to do something."

The idea is to host the fundraising art show took root during a regular meeting of the Artist Heart Collective in early March. A member suggested they could use their skills as artists to help raise money in support of the country under siege.

"We were all just sitting there wringing our hands thinking what we can do, sitting there with all our art around us," Tame said. "I think it was a brilliant idea."

As soon as the idea to host a fundraising art show was suggested, everyone jumped on board. Tame hopes the initiative inspires others to use their unique skills to support Ukraine. The overall message of the show, she said, was to encourage community members to do what they can in support of the humanitarian effort.

"We just feel really honoured that we can do that because I think when that suggestion came out to just use what we already do anyway, it was a relief in a way to us because were all feeling so desperate to want to do something," Tame said. "We feel like weve been able to do a little small part."

The show came together quickly, she said, because the humanitarian crisis is at the top of everyones minds, and everyone is looking to provide aid in any way they can.

She noted the Artist Heart Collective reached out to Park Community Centre for the site of the sale because it is a cultural hub in the city. The community centre is a beloved art space, and the artists believed the art show could also serve as a chance to revitalize the community centre.

Park Community Centre donated the space for the sale, and Melbas Restaurant was also on site providing support.

The event featured pieces by all seven Artist Heart Collective members, along with other artists from the Westman community.

"Its been really nice to have so much generosity and willingness [to participate]. Everybody wants to do something, so it just worked out," Tame said.

The show of support speaks to the strong Ukrainian ties in Brandon and Westman, she added. Ukrainians have been a critical part of the community since the founding of the city and are a beloved part of the citys cultural fabric.

"We love them, we want to help and we hate whats happening," Tame said. "I was just filled with the generosity of everybody, and I know everybody cares. Its been very encouraging."

She and the other members of the Artist Heart Collective appreciate the support they received from the community during the sale. Tame added it is helping lift the spirits of everyone and can help people feel like they are taking action.

During the event, local art community member Becky Chinn was on hand selling watercolours and playing the Ukrainian anthem on her violin. She encouraged others to join in and sing in solidarity with sheet music featuring the lyrics.

The war against Ukraine has been devastating to witness, she said, adding that it has been horrifying hearing the stories of the invasion and the tales often leave people in tears.

"Atrocious things are happening and innocent people are getting killed," Chinn said. "As a cultural person, I was watching the cultural life crumble, so I Googled the national anthem and violin and I found a recording of this wonderful talented Ukrainian violinist."

She was inspired by the online videos she discovered of other musicians playing instruments in solidarity with Ukraine.

Chinn has played the anthem every day since she learned it and she has been teaching herself to sing the anthem phonetically.

She called the anthem a "global protest," and she hopes Brandonites can be a part of this practice of singing in solidarity.

It was powerful sharing the anthem with others, Chinn said, and she appreciates those in attendance who stood and sang alongside her.

"It was my dream that everyone here will learn it and everyone will go home and sing it," Chinn said. "I just feel like this kind of energy can help the world."

The anthem can remind people they are united as human beings, Chinn said. The art show was an opportunity to help and think people were compelled to contribute in any way they could to the humanitarian crisis.

"They are struggling. They are refugees," Chinn said. "Its just so damaging."

The proceeds of the Artist Heart Collective and Friends art show will be provided to St. Marys Ukrainian Catholic Church, who in turn will pass the funds on to the Ukrainian Canadian Congress.

 ckemp@brandonsun.com

 Twitter: @The_ChelseaKemp
WINNIPEG  With the clock ticking on COVID-19 isolation rules, the Manitoba Federation of Labour is renewing its call for the provincial government to give all workers 10 days of mandatory paid sick leave.

Advertisement Advertise With Us

WINNIPEG  With the clock ticking on COVID-19 isolation rules, the Manitoba Federation of Labour is renewing its call for the provincial government to give all workers 10 days of mandatory paid sick leave.

MFL president Kevin Rebeck said he is worried about what will happen to workers when the last public health mandates come off the board, leaving nothing but recommendations Tuesday.

"I think it is terrible," Rebeck said. "Workers have always felt pressure to come in when they were sick.

"Now we have a premier [Heather Stefanson] saying we have to learn how to live with COVID, at the same time groceries and gas prices are going up. Staying home sick and not getting paid could be the difference between paying a bill or putting food on the table.

"This is the time when people should keep other people safe."

The MFL is asking the province to follow the federal governments lead and put in place 10 days of paid sick leave for all Manitoba workers.

"It needs to be standard for everyone," Rebeck said. "This needs to be done in legislation.

"The federal government did it, but only eight to 12 per cent of the workers here are federally covered  the other 90 per cent dont have it."

Rebeck said he has asked the Stefanson government to at least begin consultations about the issue, but doesnt know if it will happen.

"It may well take an election to make it happen."

The Tory government announced last month, beginning March 15, public health orders requiring mask use in public places would end. Last week, Shared Health said Manitobans would still need to wear masks inside at a health-care facility.

As well, March 15 will also see the end of anyone who tests positive for COVID-19 being ordered to isolate. The province says it will now be recommending people with symptoms stay home and isolate for five days after symptoms start until they have no fever or symptoms; people who test positive with no symptoms can come out of isolation five days after the test.

A provincial spokesman said in a statement: "Manitobas public health emergency leave provides unpaid job protection for workers who are required to take time off due to COVID-19."

"As well, under the employment standards code, employees are entitled to three unpaid days for family-related leave and up to 17 unpaid weeks for long-term leave for serious injury or illness."

The spokesman said employers can provide additional benefits beyond what is in the employment standards code. Manitoba is watching what other provinces are doing regarding paid sick time, and is working with both the federal government and other provincial and territorial governments to look into it further, he added.

Manitoba Teachers Society president James Bedford said teachers have sick leave benefits and the union supports teachers staying home if they are feeling sick.

But Bedford admits that isnt always easy.

"The challenge to staying home arises in cases where substitute teachers are in short supply  as they have been throughout the pandemic," he said.

"Teachers can feel obligated to go to work if there may be no one to fill in and keep their classroom running. MTS is working with the Department of Education, the provinces faculties of education and the Manitoba School Boards Association to make it possible for education students to substitute in classrooms and alleviate the impact of shortages across the province."

Winnipeg epidemiologist Cynthia Carr said North American workers have always been challenged between working and feeling guilty about staying home "with just a cold, for example, when this is still an infectious illness."

"It should not have to be mandated that you stay home when sick  especially if infectious for the well-being of co-workers as well as consumers, clients, [and] patients with whom the worker interacts," Carr said.

"I understand employers have been impacted by employee absenteeism, however, encouraging people to come to the workplace when carrying an infectious disease will result in more disruption to the workplace, not less."

Carr said she doesnt believe it is time for employers and anyone else to ease up on vigilance against the virus.

She said employers should still have virus screening of employees and send them home for the first few days or have them wear a mask if they have symptoms or are coughing or sneezing.

"We should be making workplace and community safety part of our routing and not just attended to properly because theres a mandate."

Tory McNally, director of human resources services at Legacy Bowles Group, said every workplace should make their own rules based on a safety assessment.

"If an assessment reveals that social distancing cannot be properly maintained, then the employer can keep mask orders in place for staff," McNally said.

"If an employee is feeling nervous about taking their own mask off, they have the right to request accommodation to be allowed to stay masked while at work. I know that many businesses are strongly encouraging that their employees continue to wear masks, but are leaving it up to individual choice."

She said the federal government is continuing with the Canada Recovery Sickness Benefit until at least May, so even if the employer refuses to give paid sick leave, income assistance is available.

"Disability is a protected human right and employers cannot discriminate against someone who is ill."

 Winnipeg Free Press
Hope has faded quickly for a handful of Western companies eager to recover planes leased to airlines in Russia, with authorities there intent on keeping foreign-registered aircraft within the country and President Vladimir Putin openly discussing nationalising the assets of foreign businesses.

As of Thursday, there were 523 aircraft leased to Russian carriers by companies outside the country, according to IBA, a consulting firm. Of those, 101 are on lease to S7 Airlines and 89 to Aeroflot. Both airlines have stopped flying internationally, eliminating any chance of repossessing the planes on foreign soil.

The stranded planes have a collective value of more than $US12b. Credit:The New York Times

The general consensus is: Thats it, we will not be able to recover them, said Vitaly Guzhva, a finance professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

Guzhva and others who attended a recent industry conference in San Diego said the predicament for the leasing companies was the talk of the event, held by the International Society of Transport Aircraft Trading. Experts there generally aligned around the view that the companies were facing the possibility of huge losses, they said. All told, the planes are worth as much as $US12 billion ($16.5 billion), according to Ishka, an aviation consulting firm.
The news that Oscar-winning actor William Hurt had died on the weekend, aged 71, from complications of the prostate cancer he first disclosed in 2018 prompted me to dig out an interview, never before published, I did with him on the set of a movie he made in Australia in 2015.

Listening back, I find him as engaging now as I did all those years ago, his discourse far-ranging, fascinating and way more philosophical than film-focused.

The movie was then known as The Moon and the Sun but was later retitled The Kings Daughter. Is it any good? No idea. The film has yet to see the light of day in Australia, or most other places, though it has had a limited online-only release in some territories. Come to your own conclusions.

William Hurt as the Jesuit priest Pere la Chaise in The Kings Daughter, which was shot in Melbourne in 2015. Credit:Gravitas/AP

Hurt was wearing a dressing gown and slippers when I spied him on the far side of a crowded canteen at Docklands Studios Melbourne. While everyone else ate at tables of eight, he sat on his own, gazing out the window, lost in thought. He was the only one of the big names not eating lunch in their trailers.
The criticism arrived as swiftly as the praise.

Just a day after Jane Campion was applauded for the candour with which she pushed back on disparaging remarks made about her film The Power of the Dog, the filmmaker herself caught flak for a comment she made while accepting best director at Mondays Critics Choice Awards.

Jane Campion accepting the award for best director for The Power of the Dog at Mondays Critics Choice Awards in Los Angeles. Credit:AP

After pointing out that the other nominated directors in her category were all men, Campion turned to Serena and Venus Williams, who attended in support of the film King Richard. She said, You know, Serena and Venus, you are such marvels. However, you do not play against the guys like I have to.

The audience broke out into cheers and applause while the camera cut to Venus Williams, a seemingly uncomfortable smile on her face. The response online mirrored Williams (minus the smile). Many people expressed how unnecessary it was for Campion, a white woman, to compare her experiences of sexism with the uphill battles fought by the Williams sisters, two black women who have faced unrelenting racism and sexism while working toward remarkable levels of success in tennis, a white-dominated sport.
A police officers collision with a motorcycle on the NSW Central Coast was deliberate and substantially or significantly contributed to the riders death, a court has heard.

Jack Roberts, 28, died when the NSW Police Force Kia Sorento hit the rear of his Honda trail bike while in pursuit at Blue Haven in the early hours of April 16, 2020.

Sergeant Matthew James Kelly is on trial in the NSW District Court. Credit:Brook Mitchell

Sergeant Matthew James Kelly, 50, is on trial in the NSW District Court after pleading not guilty to manslaughter by criminal negligence and the alternative of dangerous driving occasioning death.

In his closing address on Monday, Crown prosecutor Craig Everson, SC, said Sergeant Kelly had on at least one notable matter, incorrectly recalled what happened.
I am grateful that I have received all of my vaccination shots.

I am following the isolation rules and will be working from home, Ms DAth wrote on Twitter.

Health Minister Yvette DAth urges people to have their COVID-19 vaccination shots after testing positive. Credit:Matt Dennien

She announced on social media on Monday she was experiencing mild symptoms.

It is a timely reminder for all Queenslanders that COVID is still in our community.

On Monday, protesters converged on Parliament House while a committee discussed the emergency powers to manage the pandemic.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, who addressed media on Monday afternoon, said she wished Ms DAth a speedy recovery.

Shes just like everybody else and I expect other ministers will probably come down with it. Members of the public are still getting COVID-19 out there, she said.

I do wish her and anyone else out there that is experiencing COVID-19 a speedy recovery.
South Africa: Charlotte Maxeke Hospital refurbishment remains a top priority

The Gauteng Health Department has reiterated its commitment to getting the Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital (CMJAH) refurbished as "soon as humanly possible".

Large parts of the hospital have not been functioning since a fire gutted most of the facility in April last year.

MEC [Dr Nomathemba] Mokgethi acknowledged that public calls and concerns for the health sector about the pace of the work to refurbish CMJAH, following the fire incident that occurred almost a year ago, are not without merit.

[This is] given the impact of a partially functioning CMJAH on other nearby facilities, such as Helen Joseph Hospital and Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital, the department said.

The hospital plays a critical role in Gautengs health care services and when in full working condition, can accommodate some 1 068 in-patients, offers services at 52 clinics and offer specialised services.

At its peak, the hospital treats at least 74 000 people per month.

Last week, the department conducted a partial hand over of the hospitals Accident and Emergency Unit.

The department said preparation for the full handover of the unit will include:

Deep cleaning of the areas being handed over;

The City of Johannesburg will conduct compliance checks and issue operational licences;

Health technology equipment will be installed;

Evacuation procedure retraining for staff; and

Recall of staff who were temporarily placed at other hospitals.

According to the department, incidents at the site and hospital have caused a setback in the refurbishing of other units.

The work to complete the casualty section suffered a setback recently due to the theft of copper piping, electrical wiring and circuit breakers from the works and disruption of the site by local communities.

The department appeals to the community to help safeguard this facility, as it provides much needed health services. Those who have information that can assist law enforcement to apprehend perpetrators are urged to contact their nearest police station, the department said.  SAnews.gov.za

This story has been published on: 2022-03-14. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Frugal octogenarian donates book collection, 100,000 yuan to set up fund at university for promoting reading

People's Daily Online) 11:30, March 14, 2022

Tang Guoliang, an 85-year-old retired faculty member of Jiangsu University in east Chinas Jiangsu Province, recently donated 100,000 yuan (about $15,813.8) to the universitys library to set up a fund that promotes reading, the first of its kind in the university.

Photo shows Tang Guoliang, an 85-year-old retired faculty member of Jiangsu University in east Chinas Jiangsu Province. (Photo courtesy of Jiangsu University)

Tang, who lives a thrifty life, also donated 167 medical books he has collected over the past years, including 15 medical notebooks.

Tang said he would like to contribute his remaining energy to do more meaningful things.

I hold special feelings for poor students. I always support those poor students who are self-reliant, Tang said. Over the past 25 years after his retirement, he has been helping students with difficulties in their studies and life at the university.

Photo shows the books Tang Guoliang donated. (Photo courtesy of Jiangsu University)

Ten years ago when Tang heard that a girl in his hometown was experiencing financial difficulties, he managed to contact the girl and donate 1,000 yuan to her.

I was from a poor family. So I understand how hard life is for poor people, and know the significance of reading, Tang said.

I know from my own experience that reading can build ones future. I really hope that young people can read more excellent books, the retiree said.

Photo shows Tang Guoliang presenting his books during the donation ceremony. (Photo courtesy of Jiangsu University)

Tang is a bookworm. As a regular visitor to the universitys library, he still borrowed about 50 books annually from the library in recent years. He also developed the habit of taking notes while reading. The old man wrote down about one million characters of notes in the 15 medical notebooks he donated.

These notes include many important medical cases I recorded. I hope that they are of reference value for medical teachers and students, Tang said.

According to Tang Jingxia, the octogenarians daughter, reading and thrift are a part of her family tradition. She introduced that her father has remained economical after retirement in order to save up more money for donation to others.

Photo shows Tang Guoliangs notebooks. (Photo courtesy of Jiangsu University)

Photo shows the books Tang Guoliang donated. (Photo courtesy of Jiangsu University)

(Web editor: Hongyu, Liang Jun)
Apple's production of its devices might be affected if COVID continues its outbreak in Mainland China.

Apple is rumored to be releasing its iPhone 14 this fall, however, on top of the global chipset shortage, Omicron remains a global threat.

China's Silicon Valley, the largest manufacturing tech hub in the country, has closed its doors due to the widespread COVID virus.

China's Silicon Valley Tech Hub

China's Silicon Valley halts production of tech devices due to another COVID outbreak.

The country's mainland is now experiencing a widespread outbreak since the country declared a state of emergency in 2020 to combat the pandemic.

China's tech hub lockdown further threatens to cause global supply-chain disruptions.

Disruptions due to the pandemic have already been occurring as a result of the lockdowns. On top of that is the semiconductor shortages and Russia's conflict with Ukraine.

In November, Foxconn predicted that electronic shipments would be slowed until the second half of 2022 due to production traffic.

Businesses in Shenzhen, the most populous city in the manufacturing hub of Guangdong province, have been told to suspend production or have employees work from home for a week,

Since the end of February, more than 400 confirmed cases have been reported in Shenzhen, China's Silicon Valley Hub. Not only are businesses closing but also public transportation and the third round of city-wide testing has also begun.

Among the companies affected by the production halts were Foxconn, a supplier to Apple.

CNBC reports that as of Sunday, mainland China has 1,437 new confirmed cases, with just 100 of them linked to overseas visitors, for a total of 8,531 active cases that were transmitted within the country's borders, bringing the overall number of verified cases to 1,437.

This is the biggest total since March 2020, when the previous record was set.

Read Also: Samsung Galaxy A Series Leak: Samsung's Awesome Galaxy A Event Confirmed!

Apple iPhone Assembly

Apple's supplier, Foxconn, has also halted operations at its Shenzhen facilities, one of which manufactures iPhones, in response to a government-imposed lockdown on the tech hub city.

Hon Hai Precision Industry, more prominently known as Foxconn, planned to suspend operations in Shenzhen for a period of time until the number of cases starts decreasing.

A company spokesperson of Sina Finance stated that the company required government approval before it could resume operations in the city.

In a recent announcement, Foxconn said it would offer significant sign-on bonuses to employees in Zhengzhou, a central Chinese city that is home to the company's largest iPhone assembly line, according to Business Insider.

The company said in a statement that it is suspending operations at the two sites and that it has reallocated production to other locations in order to minimize the impact of the disruption.

Non-essential businesses in Shenzhen are required to close their doors until March 20, according to the Chinese government's regulations.

For residents and businesses in mainland China, lockdowns, closures, and repeated testing have become part of the "new normal" as a result of Beijing's "zero-tolerance" policy toward the coronavirus.

This approach is somewhat contrary to Singapore's "living with Covid-19" approach to combat the pandemic. However, initial indications of success in combating the spread of Omicron on the mainland have come as a result of such tight controls.

Related Article: iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max Leak: Apple's A16 Chipset Release Will Be Limited
Police investigating the attack that claimed the life of a teenager in Melbournes north at the weekend say they were shocked by the brutality of the targeted assault after reviewing CCTV of the incident.

Declan Cutler, 16, died on a residential street in Reservoir after allegedly being chased, beaten and stabbed multiple times by a group of about six people.

Detective Superintendent Paul OHalloran said Declan was at a house party in Coburg about 2.40am when the group arrived looking for him and his friends. Declan and several friends ran from the home, chased by the group in a small dark car. Declan became separated from his friends and was unable to outrun the vehicle.

The young male was separated from his friends and he was attacked by that group of offenders, Superintendent OHalloran said.
Four Corners executive producer Sally Neighbour will depart the ABC later this year after seven years leading the public broadcasters flagship investigative program that included coverage of major political stories, earning the ire of the Morrison government.

Neighbour confirmed on Monday she would leave the organisation in May, posting on Twitter that it was time to move on.

Sally Neighbour, executive producer of Four Corners, will leave the ABC in May. Credit:ABC

After 7 yrs as EP of #4Corners, Ive decided its time to move on. Its been an extraordinary honour to lead this great program and the team of brilliant, dedicated journos and staff who keep it at the forefront of Australian journalism, Neighbour tweeted.

There is no better team, and I want to thank and pay tribute to them all, along with the ABC and the Australian public for supporting what we do. Ill be finishing up in May and heading off for a long holiday and some new adventures. Thanks for everything.
You have to worry about any potential risks for trafficking  but also exploitation, and sexual exploitation and abuse. These are the kinds of situations that people like traffickers  look to take advantage of, she said. A volunteer at the international humanitarian group Save the Children sits next to a banner giving advice on personal safety at the Romanian-Ukrainian border, in Siret, Romania. Credit:AP Tamara Barnett, director of operations at the Human Trafficking Foundation, a UK-based charity which grew out of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Human Trafficking, said that such a rapid, mass displacement of people could be a recipe for disaster. When youve suddenly got a huge cohort of really vulnerable people who need money and assistance immediately, she said, its sort of a breeding ground for exploitative situations and sexual exploitation. When I saw all these volunteers offering their houses  that flagged a worry in my head. The Migration Data Portal notes that humanitarian crises such as those associated with conflicts can exacerbate pre-existing trafficking trends and give rise to new ones and that traffickers can thrive on the inability of families and communities to protect themselves and their children.

The UN refugee agency says more than 2.5 million people, including more than 1 million children, have already fled war-torn Ukraine in what has become an unprecedented humanitarian crisis in Europe and its fastest exodus since World War II. In countries throughout Europe, including the border nations of Romania, Poland, Hungary, Moldova and Slovakia, private citizens and volunteers have been greeting and offering help to those whose lives have been shattered by war. From free shelter to free transport to work opportunities and other forms of assistance  help isnt far away. But neither are the risks. Human trafficking is a grave human rights violation and can involve a wide range of exploitative roles. From sexual exploitation  such as prostitution  to forced labour, from domestic slavery to organ removal, and forced criminality, it is often inflicted by traffickers through coercion and abuse of power.

A 2020 human trafficking report by the European Commission, the EUs executive branch, estimates the annual global profit from the crime is 29.4 billion ($44.1 billion). It says that sexual exploitation was the most common form of human trafficking in the 27-nation bloc and that nearly three-quarters of all victims were female, with almost every fourth victim a child. Madalina Mocan, committee director at ProTECT, an organisation that brings together 21 anti-trafficking groups, said there were already worrying signs with some refugees being offered shelter in exchange for services such as cleaning and babysitting, which could lead to exploitation. On the lookout for traffickers: Former French Foreign Legion member identified as Mornay at the Ukraine border crossing in Medyka, south-eastern Poland, on Friday. Credit:AP There will be attempts of traffickers trying to take victims from Ukraine across the border. Women and children are vulnerable, especially those that do not have connections  family, friends, other networks of support, she said, adding that continued conflict will mean more and more vulnerable people reaching the borders. At the train station in the Hungarian border town of Zahony, 25-year-old Dayrina Kneziva arrived from Kyiv with her childhood friend. Fleeing a war zone, Kneziva said, left them little time to consider other potential dangers.

When you compare ... you just choose what will be less dangerous, said Kneziva, who hopes to make it to Slovakias capital of Bratislava with her friend. When you leave in a hurry, you just dont think about other things. A large proportion of the refugees arriving in the border countries want to move on to be with friends or family elsewhere in Europe and many are relying on strangers to reach their destinations. The people who are leaving Ukraine are under emotional stress, trauma, fear, confusion, said Cristina Minculescu, a psychologist at Next Steps Romania who provides support to trafficking victims. Its not just human trafficking, there is a risk of abduction, rape ... their vulnerabilities being exploited in different forms. At Romanias Siret border after a five-day car journey from the bombed historical city of Chernihiv, 44-year-old Iryna Pypypenko waited inside a tent with her two children, sheltering from the cold. She said a friend in Berlin who was looking for accommodation for her has warned her to beware of possibly nefarious offers.

She told me there are many, very dangerous propositions, said Pypypenko, whose husband and parents stayed behind in Ukraine. She told me that I have to communicate only with official people and believe only the information they give me. Ionut Epureanu, the chief police commissioner of Suceava county, told the AP at the Siret border that police were working closely with the countrys national agency against human trafficking and other law enforcement to try to prevent crimes. Loading We are trying to make a control for every vehicle leaving the area, he said. A hundred people making transport have good intentions, but its enough to be one that isnt  and tragedy can come. Vlad Gheorghe, a Romanian member of the European Parliament who launched a Facebook group called United for Ukraine that has more than 250,000 members and pools resources to help refugees, including accommodation, said he was working closely with the authorities to prevent any abuses.

Loading No offer for volunteering or stay or anything goes unchecked, we check every offer, he said. We call back, we ask some questions, we have a minimal check before any offer for help is accepted. At Polands Medyka border, seven former members of the French Foreign Legion, an elite military force, were voluntarily providing their own security to refugees and are on the lookout for traffickers. This morning we found three men who were trying to get a bunch of women into a van, said one of the former legionnaires, a South African who gave only his first name, Mornay. I cant 100 per cent say they were trying to recruit them for sex trafficking, but when we started talking to them and approached them  they got nervous and just left immediately. We just want to try and get women and kids to safety, he added. The risk is very high because there are so many people you just dont know who is doing what.
Psaki declined to comment on whether the US believes China has already provided the Russians with military, economic or other assistance. In advance of the talks, Sullivan bluntly warned China to avoid helping Russia evade punishment from global sanctions that have hammered the Russian economy. We will not allow that to go forward, he said. Russia, however, on Monday denied it needed Chinas help. Barricades partially block a road at dusk in Kyiv. Credit:AP No, Russia has its own potential to continue the operation, which, as we have said, is unfolding in accordance with the plan and will be completed on time and in full, said Dmitry Peskov, President Vladimir Putins spokesman. The Russians have seen significant losses of tanks, helicopters and other materiel since the start of the war more than two weeks ago. Ukraine, while overmatched by Russian forces, is well-equipped with anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles. Russias and Chinas weapons systems have limited interoperability, and its not clear what weapons China has that Russia would be in short supply of.

The Biden administration is also accusing China of spreading Russian disinformation that could be a pretext for Putins forces to attack Ukraine with chemical or biological weapons. Russias invasion of Ukraine has put China in a delicate spot with two of its biggest trading partners: the US and European Union. China needs access to those markets, yet it also has shown support for Moscow, joining with Russia in declaring a friendship with no limits. An aerial view of dark smoke rising from several buildings and a flash of light from an apparent blast in Mariupol, Ukraine. Credit:AP Asked at a daily briefing about the reported Russian request for assistance, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said: The US has been spreading disinformation targeting China recently over the Ukraine issue. It is malicious. In Ukraine, Russian forces let a first column of cars escape Ukraines besieged port of Mariupol on Tuesday AEDT but blocked an aid convoy trying to reach the city, Ukraine said.

Mariupol Loading The column of refugees comes after 10 days of failed attempts to rescue civilians under relentless bombardment. The south-eastern port, totally surrounded by Russian troops since the first week of the invasion, has suffered the worst humanitarian impact of the war, with hundreds of thousands of people sheltering in basements without food or water. Local Ukrainian authorities say as many as 2500 civilians have died so far in the city, a toll that cannot be independently confirmed. Russia denies targeting civilians.

At one oclock (1100 GMT) the Russians opened a checkpoint and those who have cars and fuel began to leave Mariupol in the direction of Zaporizhzhia, Andrei Rempel, a representative of the Mariupol city council who is now in Zaporizhzhia, a Ukrainian-held city further north, told Reuters. In the first two hours, 160 cars left. There are probably already many more now. The city continues to be bombed, but this road is not being shelled. We dont know when the first cars can get to Zaporizhzhia as there are still many Russian checkpoints that need to be passed. But Kyrylo Tymoshenko, a senior aide to president Volodymyr Zelensky, later said Russia had yet again blocked a humanitarian aid convoy trying to reach the city with supplies.

Obtaining safe passage for aid to reach Mariupol and civilians to get out has been Kyivs main demand at several rounds of talks. All previous attempts at a local ceasefire in the area have failed. Drone video footage released by Ukrainian forces in Mariupol showed a desolate wasteland of bombed-out buildings, many in flames, with smoke pouring into the sky. People salvage belongings from a residential apartment block that was hit by Russian shelling in Kyiv. Credit:Getty A pregnant woman who became a symbol of Ukraines suffering when she was photographed being carried from a bombed maternity hospital in Mariupol last week has died along with her baby. The number of refugees fleeing Ukraine since Russia invaded on February 24 climbed to more than 2.8 million, United Nations data showed on Monday, in what has become Europes fastest growing refugee crisis since World War II.

Russia-Ukraine Russia and Ukraines latest negotiations, which were held via video conference, were the fourth round involving higher-level officials from the two countries and the first in a week. The talks ended without a breakthrough after several hours, with an aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky saying the negotiators took a technical pause and planned to meet again Tuesday. The two sides had expressed some optimism in the past few days. Mykhailo Podolyak, the aide to Zelensky, said at the weekend that Russia was listening carefully to our proposals.

He tweeted Monday that the negotiators would discuss peace, ceasefire, immediate withdrawal of troops & security guarantees. Air raids Air raid alerts sounded in cities and towns around the country, from near the Russian border in the east to the Carpathian Mountains in the west, and fighting continued on the outskirts of Kyiv. Ukrainian officials said Russian forces shelled several suburbs of the capital. Ukrainian authorities said two people were killed when the Russians struck an aircraft factory in Kyiv, sparking a large fire. The Antonov factory was Ukraines largest aircraft manufacturing plant and was best known for producing many of the worlds biggest cargo planes.
University of Bristol spinout companies generate higher average returns on investment than those of any other UK university, a new study has found.

The University Spinout Report revealed that over 20 years the average UK spinout - a business started off the back of university research - generates a return on investment of double the original capital raised.

But Bristol topped the list, with its spinouts averaging a return on capital of 285%. That means that for every 1 invested there was 2.85 of additional value added, compared to an average of 2.30 for other universities spinouts.

The report reveals that the University of Bristol's most successful spinout of the last decade is Ziylo, which is valued at 616.6 million and was acquired by global healthcare company Novo Nordisk in 2018.

Marty Reid, Director of SETsquared Bristol, the Universitys world-leading incubator for high growth tech businesses, said: It is great to see the recognition this report gives to Bristols entrepreneurial and research talent, from biotech to data science and quantum technologies.

This success hasnt come overnight and so many teams across the University are instrumental to providing tailored support to ensure our ventures have the best chance to scale.

Whats exciting is that from the inside this only feels like the beginning, with big plans currently underway to deliver a significant step change in innovation and enterprise for both the University and the wider city-region innovation ecosystem.

The University Spinout Report 2021 was produced by IP specialists and Research and Development tax credit experts GovGrant to celebrate the UKs proud history of innovation.

It is based on analysis of just under 1,000 UK spinout companies, a sample that comprises 19.08 billion of capital invested, 4,489 deals and 1,907 investors.

The top 10 most successful universities for spinout success includes Bristol, Oxford, Imperial, UCL, Cambridge and Dundee.

The pharmaceuticals and biotechnology industry has 8 of the 10 highest-valued spinout companies to come from UK universities in the last decade.

Adam Simmonds, Investment Research Analyst at GovGrant, said: This report highlights the huge value to the economy of UK universities, as well as their incredible depth of creativity and talent.

Its no surprise to see pharmaceutical and biotech spinouts feature prominently: the UK is particularly renowned for innovation in these areas. You only need to look at the recent development of Covid-19 vaccines in the UK to see how accomplished we are in pharmaceutical innovation.

The fact that the top investor in spinouts is a government agency - Innovate UK - shows you the immense faith placed in university research and development. But with 5 out of the top 10 investor groups being venture capital firms, you can also see that the private sector realises just how profitable spinouts can be.
Latest News Big four banks lift variable interest rates Increases across board for home loan customers

Commercial lending market flourishing 40% to 50% uplift, says brokerage

The national rental vacancy rate is at its lowest point on record sitting at 1.1%, according to property group Domain.

Releasing Februarys national rental vacancy results, Domains report showed that the rental market was still heavily strained due to minimal properties being available for rent.

Hobart has the lowest vacancy rate across the country sitting at 0.2%, followed closely by Canberra and Perth sitting at 0.5%.

Renters across the country are finding it harder than ever to secure a property. Now that international borders have reopened, bringing an influx of people to our capital cities and regional towns, the already tight sector faced further pressure.

Read more: Rental prices continue to soar

Arjun Paliwal (pictured), head of research and founder of data-led investor buyers agency InvestorKit, said there were multiple factors contributing to Australias rental crisis.

The first factor coming into play is the existing restrictions from years prior, Paliwal said.

One can corelate these restrictions from investor lending, APRA intervention, and credit policy changes. Investors are largely dominating and responsible for creating properties for rent, so reduction across investment activity seen by data as well as impact made by policies has compounded together to make a dwelling deficiency for renters.

Paliwal said government assistance was needed to plateau the rental crisis including a mixture of policy and visionary factors.

Any policies which are anti the investor needs to be re-reviewed to incentivise people investing in property. These can include reversing extra costs for people purchasing investment properties, paying a higher price on stamp duty, changing rules around land tax, and micro council levels charging higher rates depending on the type of property you own.

Paliwal said a long-term vision for connecting cities and regional areas across Australia should be revised.

We need to start thinking of smaller cities and looking at infrastructure and planning policies to connect regional Australia to capital cities, he said.

The issue is our highest concentration population is in just a few cities, so when people think of a rental crisis it does exist, however its less prominent in our regions. If we can allow more infrastructure in regional areas allowing for more zoning and land releases, this will increase volume of rental dwellings and create a longer-term future for investors considering investing in regional Australia.

Paliwal said a combination of this long-term vision with policies that wont sting investors would slowly improve the rental crisis affecting Australia.
Latest News Big four banks lift variable interest rates Increases across board for home loan customers

Commercial lending market flourishing 40% to 50% uplift, says brokerage

Strong price increases in the property market over the past year means investors would now require higher budgets to secure a strategic real estate investment, a Sydney buyers agent said as he identified five affordable investment house locations.

Ben Plohl (pictured), BFP Property Buyers founder and principal, said investors could buy a house in a strategic growth market for about $500,000 before the pandemic, but those days were now mostly over.

Savvy investors have been adopting a nationwide approach to their portfolios for a while now, which meant they could use equity from more expensive markets to purchase in more affordable locations, Plohl said. However, with property prices now about 20% or more higher than they were two years ago, investors need to spend more to achieve the same result. It must be said, though, existing property owners prior to the pandemic have recorded strong price growth in their own homes as well, which they can leverage into investment properties elsewhere.

In 2020, Plohl identified Kippa-Ring, Bracken Ridge, and Wynnum West in Greater Brisbane, Bateau Bay on the NSW Central Coast, and Maryland in Newcastle as the five strategic investment locations for investors with a $500,000 budget, but prices in these locations have surged between 49% and 89% since that time.

CoreLogic data showed the national median house value is now $728,000  a figure Plohl said is the new affordable house price benchmark now.

To ensure that investors are purchasing properties with a superior growth forecast, its vital that they recognise that buy-in prices have changed, Plohl said. Rather than blindly try to find a house for $500,000  like they could two years ago  they need to be realistic about market conditions as well as selective about the best locations to invest their money.

The five locations Plohl said investors should consider included Albury-Wodonga (NSW/Vic), the City of Onkaparinga (SA), Tamworth and Wagga Wagga (NSW) and Toowoomba (Qld).

Each of these locations appear to have strong market and economic fundamentals which generally underpin property price performance over the medium-term, he said. That said, investors need to complete the necessary due diligence to ensure they are purchasing the best house in the best location and ensure they are working with experts who have experience purchasing in these areas.
President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol talks to reporters about his transition committee plans at the headquarters of the People Power Party (PPP) in Yeouido, Seoul, Sunday. Yonhap



By Yi Whan-woo



The employees of state-run financial institutions are concerned about the growing possibility of the relocation of their respective institutions out of Seoul after Yoon Suk-yeol won the presidential election last week, according to industry sources, Sunday.



Yoon has pledged to move Korea Development Bank (KDB) to Busan as part of efforts for balanced regional development. He also hinted at pressuring other state-owned institutions to move their headquarters by saying, "The sole relocation of KDB will not be sufficient."



The relocation issue of government-owned financial institutions has been brought up in past elections.



However, Yoon's promise is unnerving employees of the targeted companies more than ever, after Busan Metropolitan City attributed the failure of the Busan International Finance Center (BIFC) in housing enough leading financial companies and convinced Yoon to bring such companies from Seoul.



The BIFC is supposed to help the port city propel itself as a maritime financial hub in Northeast Asia.



Among the targeted institutions are the Export-Import Bank of Korea (Eximbank), Industrial Bank of Korea (IBK) and Korea Investment Corp. (KIC).



All four institutions were unavailable for comment, Sunday.



However, the KDB union has for months opposed the idea of relocation, arguing that it is "merely based on political interests without considering the unique role of the bank."



A union representative warned of mass departures of talented workers and inefficiency, saying, "Many workers are seriously thinking about leaving their jobs."



KDB Chairman Lee Dong-gull also criticized the election pledge. During a press conference in January, he called the idea, "penny wise and pound foolish."



On March 7, Yoon's pledge was soon met with protest from unionists from nine major banks.



They were KDB, Eximbank, IBK and four private lenders  KB Kookmin, Woori, Hana and NongHyup  plus foreign banks operating here such as Standard Chartered Bank Korea and Citibank Korea.



In a joint statement, they said the relocation would result in a "collapse" of the system and the network they have built over decades in the nation's capital.


On the back of a successful electrification of 1000 kms across multiple national highways with its unmanned electric vehicle (EV) points, Vadodara-based CHARGE+ZONE is now looking to raise $100 million for network expansion.

Having set up 20 such EV points, including 15 company-owned company-operated (COCO), across 1,000 km on national highways like Ahmedabad-Rajkot, Mumbai-Nashik, Mumbai-Pune and Delhi-Jaipur, CHARGE+ZONE is now looking to cover over 10,000 km in the country.



Deployed at convenient and strategic locations along the highway, CHARGE+ZONE's unmanned stations are rapid DC charging points with CCS2 as charging protocol, catering to electric four-wheelers. These stations can provide up to 80 per cent charge in 45-60 minutes and full charge in 90-120 minutes, depending on the EVs battery size.

According to CHARGE+ZONE founder and CEO Kartikey Hariyani, apart from its larger goal of electrifying 10,000 km of national and state highways over the next 3-5 years, the company also plans to have a robust network of one million EV charging points by 2030.

"Through our national highway electrification program, we have successfully implemented full stack EV charging solutions across multiple cities and states that are accessible, affordable and easy to use. We have already spent a million US dollars on fast chargers and are looking forward to engaging with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) even as we set up more charging stations and more points at each station. Now, as part of the expansion, we are looking for a 'Series A' round of $75-100 million," Hariyani told Business Standard.

With the charging points being Internet of Things (IoT) enabled, the same are unmanned and connected with the company's mainstay operating system (OS) Charge Cloud, thereby managing not just payments and charging but also data around usage and duration, among other things.

Since its inception, CHARGE+ZONE has created an active B2B and B2C network for EV charging stations for both fleet and retail customers by setting up over 1,250 charging points across 650 EV charging stations serving around 4000 EVs on a daily basis. The company also operates on a dealer-operated company-owned (DOCO) model for the charging points.

Going forward, the company is also working on a separate vertical for battery swapping even as it awaits the policy from Niti Aayog.
on Monday said it is fully compliant with the data localisation rules of the and the entire data of the bank resides in the country.

The RBI last week directed Vijay Shekhar Sharma- promoted Ltd (PPBL) to stop opening new accounts amid "material supervisory concerns" observed in the bank.

"All of the Bank's data resides within the country. We are true believers of the Digital India initiative, and remain committed to driving financial inclusion in the country," PPBL said in a statement.

Shares of the parent company of PPBL, One97 Communications, were hammered on BSE and National Stock Exchange after a report claimed that Ltd's servers were sharing information with China-based entities that indirectly own a stake in Paytm Payments Bank.

The company has rejected the report. In an interview with Reuters, Paytm CEO said "there is no access of any bank customer data to anyone, any investor".

Sharma added Paytm was confident of addressing RBI's concerns at the earliest.

Sharma holds 51 per cent stake in Paytm Payments Bank (PPBL), while the remaining 49 per cent is held by One97 Communications.

China-based Alibaba group is the biggest shareholder in One97 Communications with about 31 per cent stake through its subsidiaries.

Shares of One97 Communications declined by 12.84 per cent to settle at Rs 675.35. On NSE, the stock tumbled 12.21 per cent to close at Rs 680.40.

(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.)
Reliance New Energy Ltd, a subsidiary of Ltd (RIL), has signed a definitive agreement to acquire assets of Werks BV for $61 million, as it builds technology and material wherewithal for its new energy foray.

The assets include the patent portfolio of Werks, manufacturing facility in China, key business contracts and hiring of existing employees. It has 200 MWh annual production capacity including coating, cell and custom module manufacturing capability

Werks is a leading provider of cobalt free and high-performance Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP) batteries.

Incorporated in 2017, Lithium Werks has operations in the US, Europe and China and customers worldwide.

Its batteries are used in industrial, medical, marine, energy storage, commercial transportation and other highly demanding applications.

Reliance recently acquired Faradion Limited, which has a patented sodium-ion battery technology. The company has a wide-reaching and extensive intellectual property portfolio on several aspects of sodium-ion technology. This strengthens Reliances technology portfolio and provides it access to one of the worlds leading portfolio of LFP patents and a management team.

Reliance aims to establish an end-to-end battery ecosystem that will allow it to deliver not only manufacturing at large scale certain key supply chain materials, such as cathode, anode, electrolyte, but also a cell manufacturing facility including leading IOT/AI capabilities giving Reliance the flexibility to produce batteries and battery module systems consisting of different chemistries for various applications across energy storage and mobility.

LFP is fast gaining as one of the leading cell chemistries due to its cobalt and nickel free batteries, low cost and longer life compared to NMC and other chemistries. Lithium Werks is one of the leading LFP cell manufacturing globally and has a vast patent portfolio and a management team which brings tremendous experience of innovation across LFP value chain. We are looking forward to working with the Lithium Werks team and are excited about the pace at which we are progressing towards establishing an end-to-end battery manufacturing and supply ecosystem for India markets, said Mukesh Ambani, Chairman of Limited.

Along with Faradion, Lithium Werks will enable us to accelerate our vision of establishing India at the core of developments in global battery chemistries and help us provide a secure, safe and high-performance supply chain to the large and growing Indian EV and Energy Storage markets, he further added.

Reliance has been on an acquisition spree in the renewables sector ever since it announced, at the companys AGM, an ambitious plan to invest Rs 75,000 crore in a new green and clean energy business.
on Monday said it will launch 60 new this summer.

The summer schedule starts from March 27 and ends on October 29.

In a statement, the airline said it will launch eight industry-first flights, which will operate on the Gorakhpur-Kanpur, Gorakhpur Varanasi, JaipurDharamshala and TirupatiShirdi sectors, in the summer schedule.

"The airline has added 60 new to its schedule, including seven UDAN flights, eight industry-first flights, new connections and additional frequencies," it said.

Under the UDAN scheme, financial incentives from the Centre, state governments and airport operators are extended to selected airlines to encourage operations from unserved and underserved airports, and keep airfares affordable.

Indian carriers have increased their domestic services by 10.1 per cent to 25,309 weekly flights in the upcoming summer schedule as compared to 22,980 last season, aviation regulator had said last Friday.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
has 2,657 cases pending against it in Indian and international courts on matters related to employee service, customer complaints and commercial issues, Minister of State for Civil Aviation V K Singh said on Monday.

Since its disinvestment last year, has been under the control of the .

"Total number of cases pending in Indian courts and international courts against is 2,657," Singh said in his reply to a question in .

These cases related to issues such as employee service matters, consumer complaints, commercial matters, he said.

"These cases are against Air India as a legal entity and will remain with Air India," Singh said.

The minister said the Centre will not deal with the cases against Air India.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
As the day nears for the swearing-in ceremony of Aam Admi Party (AAP) leader as Punjab Chief Minister, preparations are underway in full swing with the involvement of all officials from Chief Secretary to Director General of Police.

An area of nearly 100 acres is being used for the ceremony in Khatkar Kalan in Shaheed Bhagat Singh (SBS) Nagar district on March 16.

Speaking to ANI, A Venu Prasad, Additional Chief Secretary to Punjab Government, said four-five lakhs people are expected to attend the event.

"A seating arrangement for 1 lakh people has been done. More seats are being placed. The venue will be of 100 acres size-50 acres for the main event and 50 acres for parking," he said.

He also said that a travel advisory will be issued for the day for the general public in view of the ceremony.

Vishesh Sarangal, Deputy Commissioner, SBS Nagar said that "micro-level" planning has been done for basic facilities like drinking water, sanitation, medical emergency services etc.

"A high-level meeting was held with the Chief Secretary, Punjab DGP and other senior officials to plan the event at a micro-level," he said. The Deputy Commissioner also said that civil and police officers from various districts have been deployed here.

On the security of the event, he said, 8,000 to 10,000 police personnel will be deployed. "DGP has said that more security personnel will be provided if needed," Sarangal added.

"As per protocol, three stages will be set up. There would be total of eight parking places - divided into different sectors," he said.

The Aam Admi Party (AAP) bagged a landslide victory in the Punjab Assembly elections. Mann, who was the party's Chief Ministerial candidate, will take the oath on March 16 at the freedom fighter Bhagat Singh's native village, Khatkar Kalan. Mann has invited Delhi Chief Minister and convenor Arvind Kejriwal to the oath-taking ceremony.

According to sources, apart from Kejriwal, no other Chief Minister of any state will be present in the swearing-in of . Similarly, no Union Minister or any big leader of the level has been invited for this oath-taking ceremony. Only leaders and local leaders of Punjab will be present at the swearing-in ceremony.

Sources said current caretaker Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi has also not been invited to the swearing-in ceremony of Mann. However, all 117 MLAs have been invited to the ceremony. Further, the family and people close to have been invited. These include several artists associated with Punjab.

Earlier on Monday, Mann invited people of Punjab to come to the swearing-in ceremony through a video message.

Mann, who was contesting from Dhuri assembly constituency in Sangrur district, won by a margin of 58,206 votes over Congress' Dalvir Singh Goldy.

AAP registered a landslide victory in the Punjab polls with 92 seats, pushing most of its rivals to the margins. Congress had won 18 seats in the 117-member Assembly.

(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.)
Even as many countries have completely relaxed Covid restrictions in the hope of returning to normalcy, infections have begun gaining momentum, particularly in and .

This has fuelled concerns about the possibility of another global surge, which scientists, including the World Health Organization (WHO) has been warning.

According to data from Johns Hopkins University, the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland and Italy were among those that saw an upswing in cases this past week, USA Today reported.

Germany saw a spike in cases from a low of 1,570 cases per million people on March 2 to 2,330 cases per million people as of March 12, and cases in the Netherlands are up from a recent low of 1,956 cases per million people Feb. 27 up to 3,955 cases per million people March 12, the data shows.

Among the countries whose data has charted an increase in cases, some have also seen a rise in hospitalisations, including Ireland, the UK and the Netherlands.

Latest estimates from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), showed that Covid infections are increasing across the UK with about one in 25 people infected, the BBC reported.

In Scotland, 300,000 people -- one in 18 -- have coronavirus, the highest level recorded during the pandemic, while in Wales one in 30 people is testing positive and in Northern Ireland one in 13 people.

The number of people being admitted to hospital with Covid also began rising last week, and on 9 March 1,521 were admitted in England - the highest number since the end of January, the Guardian reported.

Scientists blame the rise on the BA.2 version of Omicron, which is more transmissible. And as more people are mixing socially and the effectiveness of booster vaccines is also starting to wane. They argued the need for a fourth dose, for the elderly.

The possibility of a new variant or a spike in cases always exists given the nature of viruses, said Ogbonnaya Omenka, an assistant professor and director of diversity at the Butler University College of Pharmacy and Health Science.

"Because it is an infectious disease, unless we eradicate it, there is bound to be that possibility of its return ... As the virus variants have shown, even the possible return is not predictable in terms of its severity or degree of similarity to the previous forms," Omenka told USA Today.

He added the wave may likely spread to "the US as well".

Meanwhile, China is facing its severest domestic Covid-19 outbreaks in two years with a record 1,807 new cases reported on Sunday, the Global Times reported.

The latest spikes in Jilin, Shandong, Guangdong provinces, Shanghai and Beijing municipalities, which forced several major cities to go into lockdowns, saw a sharp rise in the number of asymptomatic patients.

The daily increase in asymptomatic infections exceeded the daily increase in confirmed cases for six consecutive days from March 7 to 12.

The Omicron variant has replaced Delta to become the dominant strain in the country, the report said.

Other Asian countries seeing a record surge in Covid cases include South Korea, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand and Vietnam.

--IANS

rvt/ksk/

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Justifying her action of throwing a stone at a liquor shop in Bhopal, senior leader and former chief minister on Monday asked the Madhya Pradesh government to immediately close down alcohol shops and 'ahatas' that are operating in prohibited areas in violation of rules.

As per government rules, are not allowed near schools and places of worship in the state.

In a letter to chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Bharti, who has been demanding a total ban on liquor in the BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh, said the government should at least shut down those and 'ahatas' (enclosed places in vicinity of these outlets) that are operating in prohibited areas (near schools and religious places). The former Union minister shot off the letter a day after she walked into a liquor shop in Bhopal and hurled a stone at alcohol bottles kept on a shelf there. In the letter, the leader explained the circumstances in which she vandalized the liquor shop. At the request of women from the Barkheda Pathani area of the city, I went to meet them. They told me that in the vicinity of a liquor shop, there is a labourer colony which has schools and temples. These women have been agitating for the last three years to get the liquor shop closed, but in vain," she said. Bharti said she was moved by the plight of women in the area and assured them to take up the issue with the government.

The administration had given them assurances several times, but nothing has happened so I assured them to take up the issue with the government. Some of the women with tears in their eyes told me that men after drinking liquor relieve themselves in the open at the back of the shop. This is very embarrassing for women and girls residing in the colony Bharti said. At that point, I asked those near the shop to move aside... picked up a stone and throw it with full force to damage the liquor bottles in protest, she said. Bharti asserted her act was to protect the "honour" of women and girls residing in the residential colony. For long, the firebrand leader had been demanding total prohibition in the state and had met Chouhan in the past over the issue. The CM had told her that for achieving the goal of total prohibition, government and social organisations will run an awareness campaign. Bharti had said whenever such a campaign is launched, she will take part in it.

(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 Mumbai municipal corporation has asked Union minister to remove "unauthorised" construction at his bungalow in suburban Juhu within 15 days, civic officials said on Monday. According to a notice issued last week, the owner/occupiers of Adish bungalow, owned by the BJP leader, has/have been directed to remove the said "unauthorised" construction within 15 days from the date of the issuance of the notice, said the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) officials. As per the notice, if the illegal construction was not removed within the stipulated time, the civic body will raze it and charges incurred on the demolition will be recovered from him by the BMC's assessment department. The notice warned that "if you (the owner) fail to comply (with the direction), you will be liable for prosecution under section 475 A of the MMC (Mumbai Municipal Corporation) Act." On February 21, a team of civic officials had inspected the bungalow, located in the upscale Juhu area, for alleged violation of CRZ (Coastal Regulation Zone) norms. The said the bungalow owner has not given any explanation for alleged illegalities in the structure or produced documents showing permission to carry out the construction in question. "It can be seen that you have no explanation for the illegalities mentioned in the notice and you have failed to show any authorisation/permission/sanctioned plans in support of the said illegalities. "Further, there is no sufficient documentary evidence submitted by you to prove the e works are authorised. In view of the above, I have come to the conclusion that as mentioned in the notice the construction carried out by you is totally illegal, unauthorized and liable for demolition," the notice said. The civic body, in the notice dated March 4, has pointed out several changes of use in the basement of the bungalow and on all floors of the house barring the seventh one. was not available for comment on the issue. When contacted, his son and BJP MLA Nitesh Rane did not reply to a query about the notice.

(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.)
Further expanding its Covid vaccination drive, India will start vaccinating children aged 12-14 years from this week with two doses of Biological E-manufactured Corbevax vaccine. The Union also opened up vaccination to all those aged 60-plus, thereby removing the clause of comorbidity.

In a tweet, Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya said on Monday: I am happy to inform you that from March 16, Covid vaccination of children in the age group of 12-14 will start. Also, everyone aged 60-plus will now be able to get precaution doses. I urge families of children and people in the age group of 60 and beyond to get the vaccine.

The said after due deliberations with scientific bodies, it has decided to start Covid vaccination for 12-14 year olds (those born in 2008, 2009, and 2010) from March 16.

Stirring up a controversy, JP Muliyil, epidemiologist at CMC Vellore and member of the working group of National Technical Advisory Group (NTAGI) said that the NTAGI had not yet recommended to go for vaccinating children below the age of 15 years yet.

"There is no scientific evidence to suggest that children who have been already infected with Omicron will be better protected if they are given a vaccine now. The NTAGI has not recommended such usage. Typically, the NTAGI recommends the vaccine and also the strategy for vaccinations for all public vaccination drives in the country. This time the government has gone ahead with their decision," Muliyil told Business Standard.

His peer T Jacob John, senior virologist and former head of the departments of clinical virology and microbiology at Christian Medical College, Vellore said that it is better to go ahead with vaccinations, collect evidence and then if evidence shows that vaccination is not necessary, then do away with it.

"But deciding to not vaccinate because of lack of scientific evidence may prove to be risky. Even if there is a single child's death in that case, it would be on our conscience," John said.

There are 71.1 million children in India falling in this age group, according to the .

Therefore, around 142 million doses of Corbevax would be required to cover the entire population in this age group.

The Centre has not given any specific reason behind the decision to use only Corbevax for this age group. Already children aged 15-17 years are being administered only Covaxin, the inactivated virus-based vaccine manufactured by Bharat Biotech.



ALSO READ: Recovery tracker: Workplace visits continue to rise as Covid-19 cases drop

Experts like Gagandeep Kang, microbiologist and professor at Christian Medical College, Vellore, said that while Corbevax is understood to be safe, we do not know whether it is effective yet.

We know that Corbevax is a safe vaccine to be administered in children. It uses an adjuvant, which is not used in vaccines in our country so far, but this vaccine is understood to be safe. Here we do not have clinical efficacy data as the trial that resulted in emergency-use authorisation was done to compare the immune responses between Corbevax and Covishield, said Kang.

She added that previous vaccines were approved, based on clinical efficacy in up to 30,000-40,000 people, but this was not possible because when the trials were done, there was hardly any Covid-naive population available for the study.

We know that this vaccine induces antibody response in children, but whether that response is effective, we do not know yet but we have the expectation that will be the case. However, in order to understand how well the vaccine really prevents disease in children, the aim now should be to collect the effectiveness data in all the children who will be administered Corbevax  and this should be done in several hundred thousand children at least. This can easily be done by linking CoWIN with the Covid-testing data, Kang told Business Standard.

Already a handful of vaccines are approved by the Drugs Controller General of India for use in children above 12 years  Covovax (the Novavax vaccine manufactured by Serum Institute of India), ZyCoV-D (Zydus Lifesciences), and Covaxin (Bharat Biotech), apart from Biological Es receptor-binding domain protein sub-unit vaccine Corbevax.

Vaccine industry sources feel that the decision may be triggered by a huge inventory of Corbevax that the Centre now has.

The Centre had placed orders for 300 million doses last year, and the supplies too had begun in February. Therefore, the government is sitting on a huge stockpile of this vaccine. This may be one of the reasons behind using only Corbevax for this age group. As more population segments are opened up, more vaccine candidates may be used, said a senior executive of a vaccine manufacturing firm.

Last September, Biological E received approval to conduct a Phase II/III clinical trials on Corbevax in children and adolescents aged 5 to 18 years. Based on the no-objection certificate, Biological E initiated the clinical study in October 2021 and evaluated the available safety and immunogenicity results of the ongoing Phase II/III study, which indicated that the vaccine is safe and immunogenic.

The Corbevax vaccine is administered through an intramuscular route with two doses scheduled 28 days apart and is stored at 2 to 8 degrees Celsius.

Doctors felt that the success rate of vaccination in this age will determine whether or not vaccination is opened up for children below 12.

Meena J, senior consultant, paediatrician and neonatology, Aakash Healthcare in Dwarka, said: The government will decide on the success rate of childrens Covid vaccination and how future Covid-19 waves behave for children under the age of 12. This decision will be totally based on facts.

Meanwhile, the government has also decided that the condition of comorbidity for Covid precaution dose for population over 60 will be removed forthwith. Hence, from March 16 onwards, the entire population above 60 years of age will be eligible for precautionary dose of Covid vaccine.

The move is expected to boost demand for the booster shot among senior citizens. Around 35-40 per cent of the eligible population above 60 years (27 million) has taken precaution shots so far. The total population above 60 years is 111 million.

Harsh Mahajan, president, NATHEALTH, said Removal of this requirement will not lead to a dramatic rise in those above 60 years of age coming for vaccination. There was previously no need for a doctors prescription, regarding the presence of comorbidities, and all those wanting and eligible for a booster dose would have got it by now.


The headquarters of KB Life Insurance, left, and Prudential Life Insurance of Korea in Seoul / Courtesy of KB Financial Group



By Anna J. Park



KB Financial Group's two life insurance subsidiaries, KB Life Insurance and Prudential Life Insurance of Korea, are set to be completely integrated into a single firm by early 2023, aiming to create differentiated services for customers.



After KB Financial acquired a 100-percent stake in Prudential Life Insurance for 2.3 trillion won ($1.8 billion) in August 2020, the newly acquired unit and KB Life had been operated independently for a time. The acquisition deal marked the top U.S. life insurer's exit from the Korean market after 30 years.



Yet, under the group's master plan of merging the two insurers by 2023, they have since 2021 been increasingly coming under joint management, ranging from their computer systems, to their accounting and human resources, as well as their administrative support.



The integrated firm's official company name is expected to be decided in the second half of this year.



The financial group expects the complete merger of the two insurers to bring about improved services in a diverse range of differentiated products and premium finance consulting services available for customers.



According to KB Financial Group, the newly integrated life insurance subsidiary will also raise the capital soundness as well as growth potential of the firm, as the merger will put it in a better position to achieve economies of scale.



"The financial group plans to complete the integration process smoothly, aiming to raise value for customers, shareholders and employees," an official from KB Financial Group said.



"The group will do its best so that the two companies not only achieve a physical merger of workspaces and IT systems, but also accomplish the chemical integration of two different corporate cultures along with harmony among the employees."



Under KB Financial's plan, the integrated life insurance company will provide comprehensive financial services throughout customers' entire lives. The company is also planning to build strengths in the realm of inheritance  including family business succession  and in the redesign of financial management for senior citizens.


Airline industry that suffered heavy losses during the Covid pandemic is returning to pre-Covid levels, and has recorded a traffic of 3.8 lakh passengers per day, Civil Minister informed the Rajya Sabha on Monday.

Replying to supplementaries during Question hour, the minister said the civil sector is on its way back to recovery and is roughly about 5-6 per cent off from pre-Covid levels.

"I am pleased to report to the house that pre-Covid our maximum number of passengers in India per day was about four lakh and we reached a level of 3.83 lakh per day in the month of December," Scindia said.

"We are looking at resuscitation and with that we are hopeful that we will see a rebound in terms of employment levels," he said.

For domestic sector, the minister said, the government has instituted airfare caps to ensure there is no predatory pricing.

He said controlling prices for international sector was beyond their power.

I am very confident that with the opening up of the international sector as announced from March 27, when the summer schedule of all airlines comes in, there will be enough supply of seats, both coming into India and going out of India.

Therefore, I think the pricing issue is something that the market will certainly take into account," Scindia said.

The minister informed the house that high fuel rates too have contributed to heavy losses suffered by the airlines.

He said fuel contributes to about 37 per cent of the cost of running an airline, which suffered a loss of about Rs 19,000 crore last year because of COVID.

Fuel price has gone up close to 4.5 times, with 11 states charging VAT on turbine fuel (ATF) ranging from 10 per cent to 30 per cent, he said.

"We pleaded with states to reduce tax on ATF. Before I took charge, we had 11 states that charged 1-5 per cent VAT on ATF and we had 25 states that charged between 15 and 30 per cent.

"We have now reversed that equation and 12 states have reduced VAT from 25-30 per cent to 1-4 per cent. There are 23 states now that charge VAT ranging 1-4 per cent, and only 11 states that charge it at 15-30 per cent," the minister said.

On job losses, Scindia said the sector was affected very deeply world over, but bounced back with an equal amount of growth as soon as Covid waves subsided.

The minister said he sees civil aviation becoming the backbone of transportation across the country and achieving high levels of growth.

The CAGR for the aviation sector is close to about 10.6 per cent per year, he said, adding that the government has allowed the domestic sector to operate at their full capacity.

"We had brought back the sector to 100 per cent capacity on October 15 after the second wave," said the minister.

By the time of summer schedule, international flights can also operate at 100 per cent capacity, he said, adding that it is for the free market to choose their routes.

(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.)
Citing environmental concerns, the government on Monday once again urged the Centre to drop the proposal to set up the India Based Neutrino Observatory (INO) at Theni district in the state.

Chief Minister wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, recalling he had submitted a memorandum in June 2021 where he had made a specific request to the Government of India to drop the proposal of setting up the particle physics observatory at Pottipuram village in Theni district of TN.

"This request was made in the larger interest of conservation of the rich wildlife and biodiversity of the region, as the project would cause irreversible damage to the fragile and sensitive ecosystem," Stalin said.

The site which is being proposed for the Neutrino project falls within the Mathikettan Periyar Tiger Corridor as mapped by the Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA). The corridor has the critical function of maintaining the genetic flow, which will be destroyed due to project activities, he said.

Quoting from the State Environmental Impact Assessment Authority (SEIAA), the chief minister said tunnelling work involves carrying out blasting in the hard and composite rock mass and requires a huge quantity of high strength explosives to break it. Further, the tunnelling work involves the excavation of 6 lakh cubic metres of Charnockite rock from the mountain.

The tunnel and cavern will be at a depth of 1,000 metres from the top of the mountain. At this depth, mountain rock would be under "tremendous pressure and the vertical stress is expected to be greater than 270 kg per sq.m."



This will create problems like rock bust and roof collapse. The proposals will have to be scrutinised using geotechnical studies for safeguards, Stalin told Modi.

"The proposed project is located about 4.9 km from Mathikettan Shola Park. The project site also falls within the Bodi Hills West Reserve Forest, which lies in the Southern Western Ghats. The Western Ghats is considered as a global biodiversity hotspot harbouring numerous endemic species of flora and fauna."



"This area also links ecologically to the eastern habitats where Srivilliputhur Meghamalai Tiger Reserve is located and hosts tigers from the region and assists in genetic dispersal across the Western Ghats and their South-Eastern projections through the Cumbam Valley. Along with tigers, its co-predators, several other species of mammals including the ungulates, reptiles and amphibians move around the slopes of these hills," he said.

The area also forms a significant watershed and water catchment for Sambal and Kottakudi rivers.

"Small streams on the west side of Bodi hills join the Kottakudi river which joins the Periyar river before draining into the Vaigai dam. This watershed is the lifeline of the local communities as it supports their livelihood and provides water for drinking and agricultural needs for five districts of Tamil Nadu," he said.

A state ministerial delegation had in September last year met Union Minister for Industries and Commerce, Piyush Goyal and requested him to drop the project considering the serious repercussions that can be caused by it, the Chief Minister recalled.

"Therefore, I once again request you to kindly intervene in this matter and advise the authorities concerned to drop the Neutrino Observatory (INO) Project in Tamil Nadu," he urged Modi.

(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 Monday called for direct contacts and negotiations between and to cease the hostilities between the two countries and said New Delhi has been and will continue to remain in touch with both Moscow and Kyiv.

India's Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador R Ravindra said India continues to underline the need to respect the UN Charter, international law and the sovereignty and territorial integrity of States.

India has been consistent in calling for an immediate end to all hostilities in . Our Prime Minister has repeatedly called for an urgent ceasefire and that there is no other path left but of dialogue and diplomacy, he said.

Speaking at the UN Security Council briefing by Foreign Minister of Poland Zbigniew Rau, Chairperson-in-Office of Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Ravindra said India calls for direct contacts and negotiations with a view to cease hostilities.

India has been in touch with both the Russian Federation and and will continue to remain engaged. We continue to underline the need to respect the UN Charter, international law and the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states, he said.

Voicing concern over the mounting human toll and the humanitarian situation in Ukraine, he said India undertook intensive and immediate steps to evacuate its nationals from conflict zones in Ukraine.

Till date, about 22,500 Indians have returned home safely. We are grateful to all our partners for their support in our evacuation efforts, he said, as he thanked the Polish foreign minister for the generosity and help extended to Indian citizens, in their safe return from conflict zones in Ukraine.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has held several phone conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and called for an immediate cessation of violence as well as concerted efforts from all sides to return to the path of diplomatic negotiations and dialogue.

Ravindra said OSCE has been playing an important role in facilitating the implementation of the package of measures across both sides of the contact line in eastern Ukraine.

However, recent developments in Ukraine and consequent deterioration of security situation have halted the functioning of the Special Monitoring Mission, he said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on February 24 announced a military operation in Ukraine and warned other countries that any attempt to interfere with the Russian action would lead to unprecedented consequences.

More than two weeks of war has created a humanitarian crisis in Ukraine that has accelerated in recent days. The United Nations estimates that over 2 million Ukrainians have fled their country, and the number is expected to grow.

Ravindra said India also supports OSCE Minsk Group's continued efforts for a peaceful resolution of the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

India believes that any lasting resolution of the conflict can only be achieved peacefully through diplomatic negotiations and we call on Parties to implement the agreement reached, he said, noting with concern that steps that have been committed have yet to materialise.

Noting that the challenges confronting the OSCE community come from different sources, he said they include not only challenges to sovereignty but threats to peace from ethnic tensions and violent separatism within States.

The OSCE, as the world's largest security organisation, is also addressing some of the toughest transnational threats such as the proliferation of weapons, terrorism, cyber security, migration, environmental damage and drug trafficking, he said.

"While noting the ongoing global counter-terrorism efforts and contributions of OSCE, we would like to take this opportunity to reiterate the importance of this issue. OSCE was among the first regional organisations to strongly condemn the terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament in 2001.OSCE needs to take into account such cross-border terrorist acts and other new and emerging threats, he said.

India said in this context, the eight-point action plan on counter-terrorism proposed by External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar in January last year while addressing the Security Council, also merits serious consideration" of the OSCE.

The action plan included a call to summon the political will and not justify terrorism, not glorify terrorists; no double standards and not to place blocks and holds on listing requests without any reason.

(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 new ambassador to Pradeep Kumar Rawat assumed charge on Monday.

Rawat arrived in on March 4 and underwent mandatory quarantine as per China's COVID-19 protocols.

"HE Shri. Pradeep Kumar Rawat, Ambassador of to the People's Republic of assumed charge @EOIBeijing today, the Indian Embassy here tweeted.

Rawat succeeds Ambassador Vikram Misri, who was appointed as the Deputy Security Advisor.

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 Beijing. Rawat served as the ambassador of to Indonesia and Timor-Leste from September 2017-December 2020.

He speaks fluent Mandarin.

(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.)
International kabbadi player from Nangal Ambiyan village was shot dead by assailants during a match at Malian village in Jalandhar district on Monday.

At least 20 bullets were pumped into his head and chest. The disturbing video of the crime went viral.

A former captain of the Indian team, Sandeep hailed from Nangal Ambian village in Shahkot. He is survived by his wife and two sons, who are currently in England, where he was settled.

--IANS

vg/arm

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Delimitation Commission, mandated to redraw the assembly and parliamentary constituencies in Jammu and Kashmir, put its report in the public domain on Monday and invited objections and suggestions from people.

The Delimitation Commission has published its report in the gazettes of India as well as regarding the proposals.

"The Commission invites objections and suggestions in relation to the same", Commission Secretary K N Bhar said in the notification.

According to the notification, any objections and suggestions regarding the proposals should reach the secretary, Delimitation Commission Office on or before on March 21.

These (suggestions) will be considered by the Commission during public sittings in the Union Territory on March 28 and 29, it said.

"The location and timings of the aforesaid hearings will be notified separately", it added.

The copies of the gazette are available for reference with the chief electoral officer of Jammu & Kashmir and the election officials in all the districts of the UT.

The Commission was given two months extension on March 6 and had to submit a report before May 6.

According to the draft proposal which was put in public domain on Monday, there has been no increase in the number of seats in J&K.

Similarly, there is no reservation for Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) in the parliamentary seats of the union territory, it said.

The report said the total number of seats in the assembly has been increased to 90 with reservation of seven seats for SCs and nine for STs.

The Jammu division will have Jammu-Reasi and Udhampur-Doda constituencies while the Kashmir division will have Srinagar-Budgam and Baramulla-Kupwara.

Anantnag-Poonch seat will be part of both the divisions, the draft said.

The three-member commission, which was setup in March 2020 and was headed by Justice (Retired) Ranjana Prakash Desai, proposed six more seats in the Jammu region and only one additional seat in Kashmir in proposed 90-member house.

Kashmir will be have 47 seats and Jammu region 43 seats.

(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 full bench of the High Court, which concluded its hearing in the case, is likely to pronounce its verdict on Tuesday.

The case seeking permission to allow Muslim girls to attend classes in schools and pre-university colleges where there is a prescribed school uniform had led to tension on the campuses of educational institutions in the state.

According to the lawyers appearing for the petitioner girls from Udupi district, the matter pertaining to case has been listed for Tuesday as serial No. 1 and the court may spell out the operative part of the verdict from 10.30 am onwards.

The full bench of the High Court comprising Chief Justice Ritu Raj Awasthi, Justice Krishna S Dixit and Justice J M Khazi was constituted on February 9 on a petition filed by girls from Udupi who prayed that they should be allowed to wear even inside the classroom along with the school uniform as it was part of their faith.

On January 1, six girl students of a college in Udupi attended a press conference held by the Campus Front of India (CFI) in the coastal town protesting against the college authorities denying them entry into classrooms wearing headscarves.

This was four days after they requested the principal permission to wear hijab in classes which was not allowed. Till then, students used to wear the headscarf to the campus, but entered the classroom after removing it, college principal Rudre Gowda had said.

"The institution did not have any rule on hijab-wearing since no one used to wear it to the classroom in the last 35 years. The students who came with the demand had the backing of outside forces," Gowda had said.

As the issue of Hijab versus saffron scarves spread to several educational institutions in many parts of Karnataka, the state government announced holiday from February 9 to February 15 in all the pre-university colleges and from February 9 to February 16 in degree and diploma colleges.

The girls then approached the High Court seeking relief and quashing the government order on February 5 restraining students from wearing any cloth that could disturb, peace, harmony and public order.

The full bench of the High Court has been hearing the case on a day-to-day basis since February 10. In its interim order, the bench asked the state government to reopen the educational institutions, which were hit by the agitation, and restrained students from wearing Hijab and saffron scarves in the class-room till the final order is delivered.

(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.)
Twenty states and union territories have internet connection at less than 10 per cent of their government schools, Lok Sabha was informed on Monday.

The information was shared by Union Minister of State for Education Annpurna Devi in response to a written question in Lok Sabha.

The minister quoted the Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE), 2019-20, data in her response.

According to the minister, the states with less than 10 per cent with internet coverage are -- Andhra Pradesh (9.10 pc), Arunachal Pradesh (3.44 pc), Assam (4.32 pc), Bihar (2.05 pc), Chhattisgarh (3.35 pc), Goa (8.46 pc), Jammu and Kashmir (5.18 pc), Karnataka (7.75 pc), Ladakh (1.86 pc), Madhya Pradesh (3.81 pc), Manipur (2.36 pc), Meghalaya (1.27 pc), Mizoram (2.35 pc), Nagaland (3.03 pc), Odisha (2.72 pc), Telangana (8.03 pc), Tripura (1.61 pc), Uttar Pradesh (2.94 pc), Uttarakhand (6.40 pc), and West Bengal (9.65 pc).

The list was topped by Chandigarh, which had 100 per cent of its connected with internet facilities, followed by Lakshadweep (93.33 pc), Delhi (88.18 pc), and Kerala (87.16 pc).

"To improve the internet connectivity in rural areas, the CSC e-Governance Services India Ltd (CSC-SPV) of MEITY has been assigned the task of providing Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) connectivity to the government institutions, including schools," Devi 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.)
announced detailed plans to zero out carbon emissions by 2050, a target that puts it two decades ahead of Indias goal and makes it the first city in South Asia to set such a timeline.

In the plan announced Sunday, Indias financial center, home to south Asias biggest corporations, stock bourses and the central bank, has proposed exhaustive changes to the way it manages energy, water, air, waste, green spaces and transport for its 19 million residents.

We dont have the luxury of time, said Aaditya Thackeray, environment minister of the state of Maharashtra of which is the capital. Without intervention, the effects of climate change could cost India $35 trillion over the next 50 years.

Indias richest city, is also home to tremendous poverty, with slums and fishing villages along the southern coast that date to British rule. By 2050, rising sea levels are expected to flood those parts of the city. In total, unabated climate change could cost the city $920 million.

Drawing on inputs from officials, citizens, researchers and companies, Mumbais plan lists changes across six domains. This includes investments in housing, electrifying public transport and more walkable roads; flood-resistant drainage and water conservation apart from adding open spaces, investing in clean water and sanitation, and rooftop solar capacities.

Mumbai may consider raising funds through green bonds announced by the federal government, according to Saurabh Punamiya, government adviser. It will receive funding from Maharashtra, which also plans to raise funds for climate mitigation projects through the federal government and global lenders, said Tanmay Takle, policy advisor to the state government.

This access to investments, along with a $6 billion annual budget, give the city an advantage over peers to implement climate targets. The policies are actually opening the doors for such investments to come in, Thackeray said.

Mumbais plan could help India rethink current models of development that put economic growth ahead of environmental stewardship, said Nikhil Anand, who teaches anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. If Mumbai is successful, it could turn Indias focus to other pressing issues, including access to clean water and services for the citys significant homeless population.

To pursue development that secures climate justice in the near future is a non-negotiable, said Anand. The Climate Action Plan needs to take care of stabilizing those systems, if it wants to make a meaningful difference in the life of its citizens.

In the coming three decades the city aims to cut to zero its total greenhouse emission which in 2019 stood at 23.42 million tons or 1.8 tons per capita. The largest investments will have to come into energy, which accounts for 72% of total emissions, according to the plan documents. Vehicle emissions and waste comprise the rest.

Mumbais short-term priorities include the purchase 2,100 electric buses by 2023 at a cost of 130 billion rupees ($1.7 billion). The city will also spend on projects like retrofitting low-income homes with electricity-efficient equipment.

Plans for some crucial aspects of Mumbais transition  switching its peak 3,400MW electricity consumption to renewable power sources for instance  remain unclear. Private conglomerates including the Tata Group and billionaire Gautam Adanis companies, which supply power to the city mostly from coal plants, have said they will make investments in order to meet their own net-zero transition goals.

South Asias other megapolises including New Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata, Dhaka and Karachi are also preparing climate action plans. Indian cities are also bracing for an influx of some 870 million migrants seeking refuge from crop failures, water scarcity and storms caused by rising temperatures.

There are policy changes today which will move forward with every government, Thackeray said. Across India, there is a certain sense of urgency everyone feels.
Prime Minister on Monday wished a quick recovery to former US President Barack Obama who has tested positive for COVID-19.

"My best wishes @BarackObama for your quick recovery from COVID-19, and for your family's good health and wellbeing," Modi tweeted.

Obama had said he tested positive for the novel infection, though he is feeling relatively healthy.

"I just tested positive for COVID. I've had a scratchy throat for a couple days, but am feeling fine otherwise. Michelle and I are grateful to be vaccinated and boosted, and she has tested negative," Obama tweeted.

(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.)
Busan Port / Korea Times file





Korea had 77 top-selling products globally in 2020, placing it 10th in the world, data showed Monday.







The number of top-selling goods was up six from a year earlier, and the country retained the No. 10 spot for the second year running, according to the Korea International Trade Association (KITA).







China had the most items with 1,798, followed by Germany with 668, the United States with 479, Italy with 201 and Japan with 154.







By segment, Korean-made chemicals (29 products) and nonferrous metal products (20) accounted for 63.7 percent of the country's export items with a top global market share.







Polarizing sheets used in making liquid crystal displays, laser equipment and 15 other products newly made the list of Korea's top-selling items, with 11 goods dropping off the list.







Of the new entrants, exports of polarizing sheets came to $2.47 billion in 2020, with overseas shipments of laser equipment amounting to $2.24 billion.







KITA said China outpaced Korea as the top global seller of memory chips thanks mainly to increased production and exports by foreign-invested firms operating in the world's No. 2 economy. (Yonhap)


Oil Minister on Monday slammed Congress leader for his comments asking consumers to tank up in preparation for an imminent hike in and diesel prices, saying that one statement led to "hoarding" of 20 per cent fuel.

Replying to supplementaries during Question Hour, Puri said consumption went up by 20 per cent following the comment.

and diesel prices hit the freeze button just as electioneering for five states including Uttar Pradesh picked up. The record 130-day freeze was despite the cost of raw material jumping from USD 81 per barrel to USD 130 per barrel.

It was anticipated that once the elections are over, state-owned fuel retailers will start adjusting the prices, which was as much as Rs 12 a litre below cost. But the rates haven't been changed even after the counting of votes ended, possibly not to give the opposition a handle before the beginning of the second half of the budget session on Monday.

"On 5th March, a political leader made a statement, saying, fill up your tanks quickly because prices are going to go up as elections are over. And the consumption went up by 20 per cent," Puri said without naming Gandhi. "It is a matter of shame that one statement led to hoarding of 20 per cent."



On March 5, Gandhi had asked people to get tanks up as the "election offer" will end soon.

"Quickly get your petrol tanks full. The 'Election' offer of the Modi government is going to end soon," Gandhi said in a tweet in Hindi and used a picture of a petrol pump saying "Hike" and "Coming back soon to fuel stations near you".

The Congress has been accusing the BJP government of stalling the hike in fuel prices during elections and raising the prices soon after the polls are over.

The assembly elections in five states, including Uttar Pradesh, started on February 10, and ended on March 7. The counting of votes took place on March 10.

Puri said international oil prices had gone up from USD 19.56 per barrel in 2020 to USD 130 per barrel earlier this month and are now down to USD 109 per barrel.

"Oil marketing companies will take their decisions (on fuel prices). They will proceed once they can no longer bear it. If they don't have the margin or cushion, they will take the appropriate step," he said.

Amid repeated interruption by opposition members who said he has sidestepped the original questions with his political statements, the minister said, "the decisions regarding increase are taken by companies."



"I find it amazing that instead of celebrating that prices have not gone up, my hon. friend is lamenting that they have not gone up. Another one makes a statement, and hoarding takes place... So, what is it? Should we be controlling prices or should we be making statements to encourage hoarding?"On taxes being raised on petrol and diesel at the outset of the pandemic, Puri said they were raised for a particular purpose.

"The question is, raising of taxes, levying of taxes are done depending upon the situation at that point of time," he said.

After the Union government's decision to cut excise duty on petrol by Rs 5 a litre and diesel by Rs 10 per litre on November 4, 2021, all but nine states also cut local sales tax or VAT.

"We are willing to take such steps as are necessary to control the price," he said.

He said rates in India have gone up only by 5 per cent as compared to over 50 per cent in countries like the US, Canada, Germany, and the UK.

"We should be rejoicing that. Instead, what we are hearing from the distinguished Member is why it has not gone up," 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.)
Caretaker Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh on Monday called on President .

This is the first meeting of Adityanath with President Kovind after the party's historic victory in Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls and sources said that it was a courtesy meeting.

Earlier today, Adityanath also met Union Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari. After the meeting, Gadkari tweeted: "Met ji today at Delhi residence. This year's Uttar Pradesh election was historic, people have put their stamp on the development in Uttar Pradesh under the guidance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and under the leadership of Yogi ji.

"I am sure that the double engine government of Uttar Pradesh will stand the test of the people. Congratulations and best wishes to the people of Uttar Pradesh and all the workers of the Bharatiya Janata Party on the victory in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, Gadkari said.

After the meeting, Adityanath tweeted: "Your (Gadkari) special support is being received in realising the concept of 'New Uttar Pradesh'."

On Sunday, the chief minister paid a courtesy visit to Vice-President M. Venkaiah Naidu. He had also met Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and BJP chief J.P. Nadda to discuss the formation of a new cabinet in Uttar Pradesh.

As per the sources, has extended an invitation to the Prime Minister for the swearing-in ceremony of the new BJP government in Uttar Pradesh.

He had also met BJP general secretary (organisation) B.L. Santhosh and discussed cabinet formation.

--IANS

ssb/shb/

(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.)
Around 21.5 million people, involved in the tourism industry, have lost their jobs due to the three waves of COVID-19 that first hit the country in early 2020, Union Tourism Minister G Kishan Reddy said on Monday.

Reddy said tourist arrivals in the country were down by 93 percent during the first wave of COVID-19 outbreak, 79 percent in the second wave and 64 percent during the third wave.

"We have conducted a study on the impact of the pandemic on tourism. As per the study, there were 14.5 million job losses during the first wave, 5.2 million job losses in the second wave and 1.8 million job losses in the third wave," he said in Lok Sabha during Question Hour.

Reddy said 38 million people were involved with the tourism industry in the country before the pandemic hit the country.

The minister said the tourism economy was down significantly during the three waves of coronavirus, which hit this sector badly not only in India but across the globe.

He, however, said with the administering of 180 crore doses of COVID-19 vaccines, the government was hopeful that there would be improvements in the .

To help this sector, Reddy said, an interest-free loan of Rs 10 lakh is given to travel and tourism stakeholders and up to Rs 1 lakh to tourist guides.

"I appeal to all state governments to help the in whatever way they can," he said.

The minister said due to the pro-tourists initiatives of the Narendra Modi government, India's rank in global tourist destinations has gone up by about 20 positions from 52 in 2013 to 32 in 2019.

To encourage more international tourists, the government has already decided to waive the visa fee of the first five lakh arrivals, he said.

He said after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, till March 7, 2022, as many as 51,960 regular visas and 1.57 e-visas were given by India.

Replying to a question by National Conference leader Farooq Abdullah, who said that there should be control over air fare as travelling has become costly, affecting tourism industry, Reddy said the government has deliberated upon the issue and has been giving subsidy to the airfares under the 'Udan' scheme to the airlines flying to tourist destinations.

Speaker Om Birla said about 300 MPs have visited Jammu and Kashmir in the recent past and it should be highlighted.

Abdullah also urged the minister to restart the Srinagar-Sharjah flight as early as possible.

(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 government on Monday sought Parliament nod for net additional spending of over Rs 1.07 lakh crore, including about Rs 15,000 crore towards fertilizer subsidy, in the third batch of supplementary demands for current fiscal year.

As per the third batch of supplementary demands for grants tabled in the Lok Sabha, approval is being sought for gross additional expenditure of over Rs 1.58 lakh crore.

Of this, proposals involving net cash outgo aggregate to over Rs 1.07 lakh crore and gross additional expenditure, matched by savings of ministries/departments or by enhanced receipts aggregates to over Rs 50,946 crore.

For payment towards fertilizer subsidy, the government has sought additional fund to the tune of Rs 14,902 crore and Rs 13,049 crore for capital infusion in National Bank for Financing Infrastructure and Development. This also includes Rs 5,000 crore as grant in aid.

In addition, the government also sought Rs 5,000 crore for recapitalisation of public sector general insurance companies, according to document.

There are four public sector general insurance companies-- New India Assurance Company, National Insurance Company Limited (NICL), United India Insurance Company Limited (UIICL) and Oriental Insurance Company Limited (OICL).

The government has also sought funds for recapitalisation of Regional Rural Banks, the third and final batch of supplementary demands for grants said.

In the Rajya Sabha, Minister of State For Finance Pankaj Chaudhary tabled the supplementary demands for grants, 2021-22, and also Budget 2022-23 for Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir.

The total expenditure of the central government for 2021-22 is estimated at Rs 37.70 lakh crore (Revised Estimate), which is higher than the Budget Estimate of Rs 34.83 lakh crore.

For 2022-23, the total expenditure of the central government has been estimated at Rs 39.45 lakh crore in Budget 2022-23, representing an increase of 13.3 per cent and 4.6 per cent over Budget Estimate and Revised Estimate of 2021-22, respectively.

(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.)
Dear Reader,

Business Standard has always strived hard to provide up-to-date information and commentary on developments that are of interest to you and have wider political and economic implications for the country and the world. Your encouragement and constant feedback on how to improve our offering have only made our resolve and commitment to these ideals stronger. Even during these difficult times arising out of Covid-19, we continue to remain committed to keeping you informed and updated with credible news, authoritative views and incisive commentary on topical issues of relevance.

We, however, have a request.



As we battle the economic impact of the pandemic, we need your support even more, so that we can continue to offer you more quality content. Our subscription model has seen an encouraging response from many of you, who have subscribed to our online content. More subscription to our online content can only help us achieve the goals of offering you even better and more relevant content. We believe in free, fair and credible journalism. Your support through more subscriptions can help us practise the journalism to which we are committed.



Support quality journalism and subscribe to Business Standard.



Digital Editor
The government plans to invite expression of interest to sell its stake in LIC-controlled by the next month-end, a senior official has said. As part of the divestment, the government plans to sell its entire 45.48 per cent stake eventually.

The government may look to sell around a 26 per cent stake in the bank, along with management control to attract investors, the official said. became a subsidiary of LIC with effect from January 21, 2019, following the acquisition of an additional 8,27,590,885 equity shares.

On December 19, 2020, was reclassified as an associate company due to the reduction of LIC shareholding to 49.24 per cent following the issuance of additional equity shares by the bank under a Qualified Institutional Placement (QIP).

"We have been working on the proposal for a while now and most of the details have been finalised. We expect to invite the expression of interest from investors by end of next month or May," the official said.

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs had given in-principle approval for strategic disinvestment and transfer of management control in IDBI Bank in May last year.

Necessary amendments to the IDBI Bank Act have already been made through the Act 2021, and transaction advisors have been appointed.

IPO-bound Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) plans to retain some stake in IDBI Bank so that the insurer continues to reap the benefits of the bancassurance channel.

Going forward, we would like to have some stake in IDBI Bank. The whole idea of us picking up stake in the bank was strategic in nature and that has not gone away at all, LIC Chairman MR Kumar had said last month. In fact, IDBI Bank has been the strongest contributor for the bancassurance channel, he said, adding that this was something that would help LIC to grow that particular channel in the post-IPO scenario.

Bancassurance is an arrangement between a bank and an insurance company, allowing the latter to sell its products to the bank's customers and others through the branch network.

"I, as LIC Chairperson, would like to see the relationship continuing in the future as well," he had said.

On how much LIC would like to retain out of 49.24 per cent stake in IDBI Bank at present, Kumar said as of now there was no sense of the number as it was up to the Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM) to kick off that exercise.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Brent Renaud, an acclaimed filmmaker who travelled to some of the darkest and most dangerous corners of the world for documentaries that transported audiences to little-known places of suffering, died Sunday after Russian forces opened fire on his vehicle in .

The 50-year-old Little Rock, Arkansas, native was gathering material for a report about refugees when his vehicle was hit at a checkpoint in Irpin, just outside the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv. Ukraine's Interior Ministry said the area has sustained intense shelling by Russian forces in recent days.

Renaud was one of the most respected independent producers of his era, said Christof Putzel, a filmmaker and close friend who had received a text from Renaud just three days before his death. Renaud and Putzel won a 2013 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University journalism award for "Arming the Mexican Cartels," a documentary on how guns trafficked from the United States fueled rampant drug gang violence.

This guy was the absolute best, Putzel told The Associated Press via phone from New York City. He was just the absolute best war journalist that I know. This is a guy who literally went to every conflict zone.

The details of Renaud's death were not made immediately clear by Ukrainian authorities, but American journalist Juan Arredondo said the two were traveling in a vehicle toward the Irpin checkpoint when they were both shot. Arredondo, speaking from a hospital in Kyiv, told Italian journalist Annalisa Camilli that Renaud was hit in the neck. Camilli told the AP that Arredondo himself had been hit in the lower back.

We crossed the first bridge in Irpin, we were going to film other refugees leaving, and we got into a car, somebody offered to take us to the other bridge, we crossed the checkpoint, and they started shooting at us," Arredondo told Camilli in a video interview shared with the AP.

A statement from Kyiv regional police said that Russian troops opened fire on the car. Hours after the shooting of Renaud, Irpin mayor Oleksandr Markushyn said journalists would be denied entry to the city.

In this way, we want to save the lives of both them and our defenders, Markushyn said.

Responding to news of Renaud's death, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists called for an immediate halt to violence against journalists and other civilians.

This kind of attack is totally unacceptable, and is a violation of law, the committee said on Twitter.

Along with his brother Craig, Renaud won a Peabody Award for Last Chance High, an HBO series about a school for at-risk youth on Chicago's West Side. The brothers' litany of achievements include two duPont-Columbia journalism awards and acclaimed productions for HBO, NBC, Discovery, PBS, the New York Times, and Vice News.

Renaud was also a 2019 Nieman fellow at Harvard and served as visiting distinguished professor for the Center for Ethics in Journalism at University of Arkansas. He and his brother founded the Little Rock Film Festival.

Among other assignments, Renaud covered wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the devastating 2011 earthquake in Haiti, political turmoil in Egypt and Libya and extremism in Africa.

Putzel, who worked with Renaud for 12 years, paid tribute to his courage and passion.

Nowhere was too dangerous," Putzel said. It was his bravery but also because he deeply, deeply cared.

He is survived by his brother Craig, Craig's wife, Mami, and a nephew, 11-year-old Taiyo.

(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 White House is weighing the possibility of President travelling to in the coming weeks for face-to-face talks with European leaders about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, according to three U.S. officials familiar with the deliberations.

The prospective trip is yet to be finalised. One possible destination for the meetings would be Brussels, which is the headquarters for NATO, one of the officials said Monday. Another official said the White House was looking at Biden visiting NATO headquarters on March 24, with other potential stops in .

All of the officials spoke on the condition of anonymity as none was allowed to comment publicly.

Biden's potential trip would follow Vice President Kamala Harris' visit to the eastern flank NATO countries of Poland and Romania last week to discuss with leaders there the growing refugee crisis in eastern sparked by the Russian invasion.

The trip would underscore the Biden administration's support for NATO allies. NBC News first reported that the discussions for a potential Biden trip are underway.

(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 Australian and New Zealand dollars slipped on Monday as hints of progress in Russian-Ukraine talks saw global commodity prices come off the boil, while the U.S. looked forward to the start of an extended cycle of rate hikes this week.



The Aussie was back at $0.7253, having fallen 0.9% last Friday and away from resistance at $0.7368. The retreat under the 200-day moving average of $0.7312 could put pressure on support at $0.7245.



The kiwi fell back to $0.6780, after topping out at $0.6875 on Friday. The break under $0.6800 was bearish for a move to $0.6740.



The Aussie fared better on the yen as the Bank of Japan is keeping bond yields near zero and high resource prices are weakening Japan's trade account. The Aussie was near a five-month high at 85.55 yen and approaching a peak from last October at 86.74.

A rate rise from the Federal Reserve is considered a certainty this week and have already priced in six or seven for this year. Investors are wagering the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) will follow with a hike as early as June and have pushed bond yields sharply higher in anticipation.



Yields on 10-year debt were at their highest since late 2018 at 2.42%, keeping the spread over Treasuries at a fat 38 basis points.

While some commodity prices had pulled back, those for major Australian exports were still historically high with thermal coal having climbed more than 70% in the past few weeks. Iron ore has also been supported by expectations for more infrastructure spending by China.



With supply for many commodities constrained, Westpac has sharply revised up its forecasts for Australian resources this year.

"Given our new commodity price forecasts, fair value AUD models that do not include a subjective proxy for risk are screaming that it is heavily undervalued," said Westpac chief economist Bill Evans. "Accordingly we have lifted our AUD forecast by end 2022 from $0.73 to $0.76 above its long term average," he added. "With relatively high commodity prices through 2023, the AUD is expected to move back to $0.80."

Domestically, the main events this week are minutes of the RBA's March meeting on Tuesday and the February jobs report on Thursday which should show another solid rise in employment.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
US President and his French counterpart have reaffirmed their commitment to hold Russia accountable for its war on Ukraine, according to the White House.

The two leaders made the commitment during a phone call on Sunday during which they discussed the current situation in Ukraine as Russian forces engaged in continued bombing and shelling of major cities.

In a statement, the White House said Biden and Macron also "reviewed recent diplomatic engagements and underscored their commitment to hold Russia accountable for its actions and to support the government and people of Ukraine".

The two leaders' conversation came hours after a military training base in the western city of Yavoriv was struck by a barrage of Russian cruise missiles.

--IANS

ksk/

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol, center, and his camp officials tasked with issues concerning young people pose with a large certificate issued by the National Election Commission for his March 9 election victory at the National Assembly in Yeouido, Seoul, March 10. Yonhap



By Yi Whan-woo



A government-assisted installment savings product being planned by President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol to support young people is drawing keen interest, but it is also fueling concerns that it will cause bigger problems than a similar one already introduced by the Moon Jae-in administration.



The envisioned product, translated as "Youth Leap," is aimed at helping young people save up to 100 million won ($80,000) over the next 10 years, while the Moon administration's existing "Youth Hope" product offers young people maximum interest returns of 10 percent annually for the next two years.



Both programs are open to those aged between 19 and 34. But Yoon's "Youth Leap" is available to more people since it does not impose restrictions on annual salary as an eligibility criterion, whereas Moon's "Youth Hope" requires the subscriber's yearly income not to exceed 36 million won.





A promotional image for the "Youth Hope" installment savings product introduced by the Moon Jae-in administration in February / Korea Times file
A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said on Monday that assertions from US officials that Russia asked Beijing for military equipment for its campaign in Ukraine were disinformation from the United States.

A US official had said Russia asked China for military equipment to use in its invasion of Ukraine, a request that heightened tensions about the ongoing war.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan had bluntly warned China to avoid helping Russia evade punishment from global sanctions that have hammered the Russian economy.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Monday said Russia had not asked China for military assistance and has sufficient military clout to fulfil all of its aims in Ukraine in time and in full. Beijing, a key trading partner of Russia, has refused to call Moscow's actions an invasion, although Xi last week did call for maximum restraint.
U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, who is due to meet with China's top diplomat Yang Jiechi in Rome on Monday, warned Beijing it would "absolutely" face consequences if it helped Moscow evade sweeping sanctions over the war in .



asked for military equipment after its Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, sparking concern in the White House that Beijing may undermine Western efforts to help Ukrainian forces defend their country, several U.S. officials said.



Sullivan plans in his meeting with Yang to make Washington's concerns clear while mapping out the consequences and growing isolation would face globally if it increases its support of Russia, one U.S. official said, without providing details.



Asked about Russia's request for military aid, first reported by the Financial Times, Liu Pengyu, spokesperson for China's embassy in Washington, said: "I've never heard of that." He said found the current situation in "disconcerting" and added: "We support and encourage all efforts that are conducive to a peaceful settlement of the crisis." Liu said "utmost efforts should be made to support and in carrying forward negotiations despite the difficult situation to produce a peaceful outcome."



Sullivan told CNN on Sunday that Washington believed China was aware was planning some action in Ukraine before the invasion took place, although Beijing may not have understood the full extent of what was planned. After the invasion began, Russia sought both military equipment and support from China, the U.S. officials said.



Sullivan told CNN Washington was watching closely to see to what extent Beijing provided economic or material support to Russia, and would impose consequences if that occurred. "We are communicating directly, privately to Beijing, that there will absolutely be consequences for large-scale sanctions evasion efforts or support to Russia to backfill them," Sullivan said. "We will not allow that to go forward and allow there to be a lifeline to Russia from these economic sanctions from any country, anywhere in the world."

The meeting, planned for some time, is part of a broader effort by Washington and Beijing to maintain open channels of communication and manage competition between the world's two largest economies, a senior Biden administration official said.

No specific outcomes were expected, the source added, speaking on condition of anonymity.



Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said the meeting's focus was to "implement the important consensus" reached during the virtual meeting held between Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Joe Biden in November, which discussed "strategic stability" and arms control issues. The two sides will exchange views on U.S.-China relations as well as and regional issues of common concern, he said in a statement published on the ministry's website.

Wang Huiyao, head of a Beijing think tank and adviser to the Chinese government, warned of "an escalatory spiral" in a column published in the New York Times on Sunday, and said China was "uniquely positioned to act as a neutral mediator between a Western-supported Ukraine and Russia" to end the war.



"Unpalatable as some in the West may find the idea, it is time to offer the Russian leader an off-ramp with Chinaas help," Wang wrote.

U.S. officials were skeptical about the proposal given China's ties to Russia and its spreading of misinformation related to the war.



CHINA, RUSSIA TRADE TIES

The United States on Saturday said it would rush up to $200 million worth of additional weapons to Ukrainian forces as they try to defend against Russian shelling in the largest war in Europe since World War Two. Washington and its allies have imposed sweeping, unprecedented sanctions against Russia and banned its energy imports, while providing billions of dollars of military and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine.



Individually and together they have appealed to China, Gulf nations and others that have failed to condemn the Russian invasion to join in isolating Russia from the global economy. Beijing, a key trading partner of Russia, has refused to call Russia's actions an invasion, although Xi last week did call for "maximum restraint" in Ukraine after a virtual meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron.



Xi also expressed concern about the impact of sanctions on global finance, energy supplies, transportation and supply chains, amid growing signs that Western sanctions are limiting China's ability to buy Russian oil.



However, Hu Xijin, former editor-in-chief of the state-backed Chinese Global Times newspaper, said on Twitter: "If Sullivan thinks he can persuade China to participate in sanctions against Russia, he will be disappointed."



While in Rome, Sullivan will also meet with Luigi Mattiolo, diplomatic adviser to Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, to continue coordinating the strong global response to Russian President Vladimir Putin's "war of choice," the U.S. official said.



Washington and the Group of Seven advanced economies on Friday ratcheted up pressure on Russia by calling for revoking its "most favored nation" trade status, which would allow them to jack up tariffs on Russian goods. Trade made up about 46% of Russia's economy in 2020, much of that with China, its biggest export destination.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Diplomatic efforts to end the war in stepped up on Monday, with Ukrainian and Russian negotiators set to talk again after both sides cited progress, even after attacked a base near the Polish border and fighting raged elsewhere.



A barrage of Russian missiles hit Ukraine's Yavoriv Centre for Peacekeeping and Security, a base just 15 miles (25 km) from the Polish border that has previously hosted NATO military instructors, killing 35 people and wounding 134, a Ukrainian official said on Sunday.



Russia's defence ministry said up to 180 "foreign mercenaries" and a large number of foreign weapons were destroyed. Reuters could not independently verify the casualties reported by either side. Thousands of people have died since on Feb 24, when Russian President launched what he called a special military operation to rid of dangerous nationalists and Nazis.



The United States, which had watched Russia's build-up on Ukraine's borders with mounting alarm for weeks, says it was a premeditated, unjustified and unlawful "war of choice".



In a telephone call late on Sunday, U.S. President Joe Biden and France's Emmanuel Macron underscored their commitment to holding accountable for the invasion, the White House said. U.S. Secretary of State and his Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba, also discussed diplomatic efforts to stop Russia's invasion, the State Department said.



and gave their most upbeat assessments after weekend negotiations. "Russia is already beginning to talk constructively," Ukrainian negotiator Mykhailo Podolyak said in a video online. "I think that we will achieve some results literally in a matter of days."

A Russian delegate to the talks, Leonid Slutsky, was quoted by the RIA news agency as saying they had made significant progress and it was possible the delegations could soon reach draft agreements. Neither side said what these would cover. Three rounds of talks between the two sides in Belarus, most recently last Monday, had focused mainly on humanitarian issues.



Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the countries' delegations have been speaking daily by video link and a clear aim of his negotiators was to "do everything" to arrange for him to meet Putin. "We must hold on. We must fight. And we will win," Zelenskiy said in a late night video speech.

HARSH SANCTIONS

While Western nations have sought to isolate Putin by imposing harsh economic sanctions and supplying Ukraine with weapons, the United States and its allies are concerned to avoid NATO being drawn into the conflict. Russia asked China for military equipment after its invasion, sparking concern in the White House that Beijing may undermine Western efforts to help Ukrainian forces defend their country, several U.S. officials said.



U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, who is due to meet China's top diplomat Yang Jiechi in Rome on Monday, warned Beijing it would "absolutely" face consequences if it helped Moscow evade sweeping sanctions over the war in Ukraine.



Asked about Russia's request for military aid, Liu Pengyu, spokesperson for China's embassy in Washington, said, "I've never heard of that." He said China found the current situation in Ukraine "disconcerting" and added, "We support and encourage all efforts that are conducive to a peaceful settlement of the crisis." Still, violence and bloodshed continued.



Air raid sirens sounded before dawn in many cities and regions of Ukraine, including Kyiv, Lviv, Odessa, Ivano-Frankivsk and Cherkasy.



In the capital, authorities said they were stockpiling two weeks' worth of food for the 2 million people who have not yet fled from Russian forces attempting to encircle the city. An American journalist was shot and killed by Russian forces in the town of Irpin, northwest of Kyiv, and another journalist was wounded, the regional police chief said.



Britain's defence ministry said Russian naval forces had established a distant blockade of Ukraine's Black Sea coast, isolating the country from maritime trade. In eastern Ukraine, Russian troops were trying to surround Ukrainian forces as they advance from the port of Mariupol in the south and the second city Kharkiv in the north, it added.

Russia's invasion has sent more than 2.5 million people fleeing across Ukraine's borders and trapped hundreds of thousands in besieged cities. "It is terrifying how violent and inhuman it is," Olga, a refugee from Kyiv, told Reuters after crossing into Romania.



The United Nations says at least 596 civilians have died since the invasion began and the toll is probably considerably higher as it is difficult to confirm deaths in places such as Mariupol. The city council in Mariupol said 2,187 residents had been killed since the start of the invasion. Reuters was not able to verify that toll.



Moscow denies targeting civilians. It blames Ukraine for failed attempts to evacuate civilians from encircled cities, an accusation Ukraine and its Western allies strongly reject.

Kharkiv, in northeastern Ukraine, has suffered some of the heaviest bombardment and dozens of civilians have been killed.

"We will stitch up the wounds and the pain of our country and our city," said Aliev, a 23-year-old musician. "We're not going anywhere."

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A flow of medical gear and equipment, including trauma kits, is reaching to prop up a health care system grappling with a shortage of supplies amid Russia's invasion, the World Health Organization said on Monday.



Supply chains have been severely disrupted, with many distributors knocked out, some stockpiles out of reach because of military operations, supplies of medicine running low, as hospitals struggle to care for the sick and wounded, it said.



"The current estimated number of people impacted in is 18 million, of which 6.7 million are internally displaced," the agency said in a statement. "Nearly 3 million people have fled the country." was working with partners to alleviate shortages of critical equipment and medication such as oxygen and insulin, surgical supplies, anaesthetics, and transfusion kits, it added.



Items being shipped included oxygen generators, electrical generators, defibrillators, monitors, anaesthesia drugs, rehydration salts, gauze and bandages. said supplies were being distributed in coordination with Ukraine's health ministry, backed by a support hub in neighbouring Poland.



"The coming days and weeks will see a constant flow of medical supplies, as part of an effort to ensure people's access to essential drugs and medical care," it added. The agency again condemned attacks on health care providers, saying it had verified 31 such attacks from the time Moscow invaded on Feb. 24 until March 11.



These led to 12 deaths and 34 injuries, with health workers accounting for eight of the injured and two of those killed. More attacks were being verified. Russia denies targeting civilians in what it calls a "special operation" to disarm and "de-Nazify" .

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Visiting German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will on Monday hold talks with Turkish President in Ankara, followed by a news conference.

According to a Turkish presidency statement, the two leaders are expected to discuss the Russia-Ukraine war and the Turkish-EU relations, along with bilateral relations, in the German Chancellor's first official visit to the country.

NATO-member has close relations with both and Ukraine and brought the two countries' foreign ministers together last week for negotiations. Though those talks did not yield results, diplomatic efforts continue.

and have significant trade relations, with bilateral trade in 2021 rising above USD41 billion. Some three million people of Turkish origin live in Germany, closely linking the two countries.

Relations between the two nations have, however, been tested by Turkey's human rights record, including the imprisonment of German journalists and an activist, as well as Erdogan lashing out against European leaders.

considers an important partner in handling the ongoing refugee crisis with people trying to reach Europe from Turkey. The German government is also aware that Turkey has an important geo-strategic position as a member.

In her 16 years in office, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel struck a delicate balance between cooperation and criticism, meeting with Erdogan numerous times. Her last visit was in October before she left office.

(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.)
An motion against Nepal's Cholendra Shumsher JB Rana was tabled in parliament for further discussion on Sunday, a month after as many as 98 lawmakers registered it in the House of Representatives.

Dev Gurung, a lawmaker from the CPN (Maoist Center), tabled the motion in the House of Representatives (HoR), amid obstruction from lawmakers of the main opposition CPN-UML.

Gurung presented the 20-point motion which is backed by 95 lawmakers.

Speaker Agni Prasad Sapkota allotted time for Gurung to present the proposal in the HoR. Following the presentation of the motion, the meeting of the HoR was postponed till March 16.

As many as 98 lawmakers of the Nepali Congress, the Maoist Centre and CPN (Unified Socialist) had registered the motion on February 13, charged Rana with corruption and cited his failure to run the Supreme Court smoothly.

While tabling the impeachment motion, Gurung accused Rana of being incompetent and incapable of performing his role as the and that he couldn't maintain transparency while fixing benches and finalising the cause list.

Gurung said that Rana demonstrated unprofessionalism by not going on a leave even when he was hospitalised after contacting Covid-19, the Kathmandu Post reported.

Rana was hospitalised in the last week of November for treatment for Covid-19 at the Armed Police Force Hospital in Balambu, on the outskirts of Kathmandu. He, however, didn't take a leave, the report said.

Gurung also said that the fact that justices and law professionals had boycotted him proves that he was not capable of leading the judiciary.

The next meeting of the lower house called for Wednesday will start deliberations on the motion, announced Speaker Sapkota.

On March 6, Parliament formed an 11-member study committee to study allegations against Rana.

The ruling coalition partners that have filed the impeachment motion against Rana, however, lack the numbers to endorse it.

The motion against Rana must be passed by the two-thirds members of the House. Given the current strength of the House at 271, as many as 181 votes are required.

The UML, which has 97 members in the House of Representatives, must vote in favour of the motion to pass the impeachment motion against Rana.

(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.)
Japan's stock index advanced on Monday, supported by a retreat in crude oil as investors turned more optimistic over the Russia-Ukraine crisis.



Travel-related stocks jumped on a decline in COVID-19 infections and hopes of resumption of a government programme to boost tourism. Financial shares rallied as higher long-term global bond yields improved the outlook for profits. Automakers stood out too, as a weaker yen boosted the value of overseas sales.



The share average ended the morning session 0.69% higher at 25,337.39, although that was off the early highs when the benchmark gained as much as 1.86%. Of the Nikkei's 225 component stocks, 193 advanced.



Real estate was the best performing sector, followed by financials and then consumer cyclicals. Only utilities, a traditional defensive sector, declined. The broader Topix climbed 0.92% to 1,816.03.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said on Sunday that Russia was showing signs it might be willing to have substantive negotiations over Ukraine, allowing commodity prices to fall back from their highs. Resource-poor is dependent on imports for its energy needs.



Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said on the weekend the government was preparing to restart the "GoTo Travel" subsidy programme.



Travel agency H.I.S. jumped 7.04% and airline ANA Holdings rose 2.4%. Department store operator J.Front Retailing advanced 4.58%.



"Although the outlook remains unclear for Ukraine and other overseas factors, the decline in cases and the restart of "GoTo" is lifting sentiment by raising hopes for improved corporate profits in coming quarters," said Jun Kitazawa, an equity strategist at Miki Securities.



Toyota rallied 3.09% to be the Nikkei's biggest mover by index points. Nissan added 2.41% and Mazda leapt 4.34%. Chipmaking giant Tokyo Electron was the next biggest contributor to the Nikkei's rise, adding 0.53%, followed by peer Advantest, which gained 1.72%.

(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.)
Authorities in Ukraine's Luhansk have said that a mass evacuation of citizens from the separatist region has been planned for Monday as Moscow's war on Kiev has continued for 19 days now.

In a Facebook post late Sunday night, Head of Luhansk Military/State Administration Serhiy Haidai said that people from local settlements will be brought to the Novozolotarivka railway station from where they will be evacuated in a train scheduled to leave at around 2 p.m. time (at about 6 p.m. IST), Ukrayinska Pravda reported.

Haidai said that women, children and the elderly will be given first priority and the evacuation will start during a ceasefire.

The Luhansk Military Administration has already informed residents of the time and place from where they should board the buses that will take them to the station.

The evacuation is primarily for the residents of Lysychansk, Severodonetsk, Rubizhne, Zolote, and Hirs'ke, according to Haidai.

Due to constant Russian shelling of humanitarian corridors on Sunday, there were no evacuation from Popasna, Shchastya and Hirs'ke.

On February 24, launched a military operation in Ukraine's separatist Donbas region, which comprises Luhansk and Donetsk, which paved the way for the ongoing war.

Since then, the region has come under heavy fire by the Russian forces

On Sunday night , the forces dropped phosphorus shells in Luhansk's Popasna, said the Ukrayinska Pravda.

This type of ammunition is prohibited by the Geneva Convention.

--IANS

ksk/

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Polish State Secretary Maciej Wasik said on Monday that over 1.8 million refugees from had crossed the border with since the start of the Russian military operation.

"Eighty-two thousand people have crossed the Polish-Ukrainian border yesterday. The situation is stable today. The influx is almost half of what it was at its peak a week ago. Nevertheless, the influx of refugees is very large, and we already have 1.8 million people who have fled from to since the beginning of the conflict," Wasik told a briefing.

Earlier in the day, the Polish Permanent Representation to the European Union said on Twitter that over 2.5 million refugees have left . On March 8, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said that the European Union expects up to 5 million refugees from Ukraine in total.

On February 24, began a military operation in Ukraine, responding to calls for help from the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk in countering the aggression of Ukrainian troops. The Russian Defense Ministry said the special operation is targeting Ukrainian military infrastructure only.

According to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, almost 600 civilians have been killed and more than 1,000 injured in Ukraine since the start of the conflict.

(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.)
Dozens of cars drove through the Serbian capital of Belgrade on Sunday in support of Russia's invasion of .

The occupants waved Russian and Serbian flags, honked horns and chanted pro-Putin slogans. Some cars had the letter Z painted on them a symbol of support for the Russian president.

The protest was organised by a small far-right group.

Serbia has refused to join sanctions against its ally despite formally seeking EU membership and voting in favour of the U.N. resolution condemning Moscow's aggression.

Serbia's dominant state-controlled media are daily carrying Moscow's war propaganda, creating a strong pro-Putin mood among Serbia's ultranationalists and far-right groups.

(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 top nuclear envoys of South Korea, the United States and Japan talked over phone Monday to denounce North Korea's recent missile tests and call on Pyongyang to cease acts that could escalate tensions, Seoul's foreign ministry said.





Noh Kyu-duk, special representative for Korean Peninsula peace and security affairs, his U.S. counterpart Sung Kim and Japan's Takehiro Funakoshi held the phone conversation amid rising tension on the Korean Peninsula over the possibility of Pyongyang's intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) system test.





The trio denounced the North's recent spate of ballistic missile launches as violations of U.N. Security Council resolutions and urged it to return to dialogue at an early date, the ministry said in a release.





They also agreed to closely monitor Pyongyang's moves and remain in close cooperation to respond to its acts, it added.





South Korea and the U.S. accused Pyongyang on Friday of having tested a new ICBM system on Feb. 27 and March 5 ahead of a full-range missile test.





Seoul and Washington have detected signs that North Korea is preparing to conduct another ICBM firing as early as this week, according to informed sources.





Concerns have persisted that the North could engage in more provocative acts as it made a veiled threat in January to lift its yearslong self-imposed moratorium on nuclear and ICBM tests. (Yonhap)


claimed it killed 180 "foreign mercenaries" in a missile strike on Yavoriv military training ground in western Ukraine, according to a media report. Kyiv, however, denied the report terming it "pure Russian propaganda".

Responding to Russia's claim, Ukrainian Defense Ministry spokesperson Markiyan Lubkivsky said: "This is not the truth. Pure Russian propaganda," adding that there are still no foreigners confirmed among the dead in Yavoriv military base.

" claims it killed 180 'foreign mercenaries' in the missile strike on Yavoriv military training ground in western Ukraine. The Russian government added that it will continue to kill foreign nationals in Ukraine whom it considers mercenaries," The Kyiv Independent said in a Tweet.

Meanwhile, Ukraine's National Energy Company (NEC) Ukrenergo completed repair work and resumed power supply to the Chernobyl NPP, the company announced on Sunday.

"Ukrainian specialists of NEC "Ukrenergo" completed repair works on the 330 kV line... and resumed power supply to the Chernobyl NPP and town of Slavutych," Ukrenergo posted on its Telegram channel, as per CNN.

Chernobyl nuclear power plant's electrical system was damaged during a Russian attack on March 9.

(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 US and are sending top aides to on Monday as tensions between the two countries mount over the Russia-Ukraine war and worries spread that the conflict will take even darker turns.

In advance of the talks, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan bluntly warned to avoid helping Russia evade punishment from global sanctions that have hammered the Russian economy. We will not allow that to go forward, he said.

U.S. officials are also accusing of spreading Russian disinformation that could be a pretext for chemical or biological weapons attacks launched by Vladimir Putin's forces in Ukraine.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has put China in a delicate spot with two of its biggest trading partners: the U.S. and European Union. China needs access to those markets, yet it also has made gestures supportive of Moscow, joining with Russia in declaring a friendship with no limits.

In his talks with senior Chinese foreign policy adviser Yang Jiechi, Sullivan will indeed be looking for limits in what Beijing will do for Moscow.

I'm not going to sit here publicly and brandish threats," he told CNN in a round of Sunday news show interviews. But what I will tell you is we are communicating directly and privately to Beijing that there absolutely will be consequences if China helps Russia backfill its losses from the sanctions.

We will not allow that to go forward and allow there to be a lifeline to Russia from these economic sanctions from any country anywhere in the world, he said.

The White House said the talks will focus on the direct impact of Russia's war against Ukraine on regional and global security.

Biden administration officials say Beijing is spreading false Russian claims that Ukraine was running chemical and biological weapons labs with U.S. support. They say China is effectively providing cover if Russia moves ahead with a biological or chemical weapons attack on Ukrainians.

When Russia starts accusing other countries of preparing to launch biological or chemical attacks, Sullivan told NBC's Meet the Press, it's a good tell that they may be on the cusp of doing it themselves.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby, on ABC's This Week, said we haven't seen anything that indicates some sort of imminent chemical or biological attack right now, but we're watching this very, very closely.

The striking U.S. accusations about Russian disinformation and Chinese complicity came after Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova alleged with no evidence that the U.S. was financing Ukrainian chemical and biological weapons labs.

The Russian claim was echoed by Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, who claimed there were 26 bio-labs and related facilities in which the U.S. Department of Defense has absolute control. The United Nations has said it has received no information backing up such accusations.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki called the claims preposterous."



Now that Russia has made these false claims, and China has seemingly endorsed this propaganda, we should all be on the lookout for Russia to possibly use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine, or to create a false flag operation using them, Psaki tweeted last week. "It's a clear pattern.

Sullivan told Face the Nation on CBS that the Russian rhetoric on chemical and biological warfare is "an indicator that, in fact, the Russians are getting ready to do it and try and pin the blame elsewhere and nobody should fall for that.

The community for years has assessed that Russia has used chemical weapons in carrying out assassination attempts against Putin detractors such as Alexei Navalny and former spy Sergei Skripal. Russia also supports the Assad government in Syria, which has used chemical weapons against its people in a decade-long civil war.

Testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday, CIA Director William Burns also noted grave concern that Russia might be laying the groundwork for a chemical or biological attack of its own, which it would then blame on the U.S. or Ukraine in a false flag operation.

This is something, as all of you know very well, is very much a part of Russia's playbook, he said. They've used these weapons against their own citizens, they've at least encouraged the use in Syria and elsewhere, so it's something we take very seriously."



China has been one of few countries to avoid criticizing the Russians for its invasion of Ukraine. China's Xi Jinping hosted Russian President Vladimir Putin for the opening of the Winter Olympics in Beijing, just weeks before Russia launched the Feb. 24 invasion.

During Putin's visit to China last month, the two leaders issued a 5,000-word statement declaring limitless friendship.

The Chinese abstained on U.N. votes censuring Russia and has criticized economic sanctions against Moscow. It has expressed its support for peace talks and offered its services as a mediator, despite questions about its neutrality and scant experience mediating conflict.

But questions remain over how far Beijing will go to alienate the alliance and put its own economy at risk. Sullivan said China and all countries are on notice that they cannot basically bail Russia out ... give Russia a workaround to the sanctions, with impunity.

Chinese officials have said Washington shouldn't be able to complain about Russia's actions because the U.S. invaded Iraq under false pretenses.

(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.)
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Monday urged North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to impose a no-fly zone over his country or see its member states attacked by Russia.

In his virtual address on Monday, Zelenskyy said: "I reiterate that if you do not close our sky, it is only a matter of time before Russian missiles fall on your territory, on territory, on the homes of citizens."

He spoke a day after thirty-five people were killed and more than 130 injured when Russian troops launched airstrikes on a military training ground, near the border with member Poland.

The Ukrainian President also said that he had warned NATO that without preventive sanctions, Russia would begin a war and that Moscow would use Nord Stream 2 as a weapon.

"I had warned NATO that without preventive sanctions, Russia would begin a war & that Moscow would use Nord Stream 2 as a weapon," he said.

Earlier Russia claimed that it killed 180 "foreign mercenaries" in a missile strike on Yavoriv military training ground in western Ukraine, according to a media report. Kyiv, however, denied the report terming it "pure Russian propaganda".

Meanwhile, Zelenskyy said that in a discussion with European Council President Charles Michel, special attention was given to the further negotiation process on Ukraine's EU membership.

"Regular talks. With President of the Council @eucopresident, we discussed the issue of increasing financial support for and sanctions pressure on the aggressor. Special attention was paid to the further negotiation process on Ukraine's EU membership," Zelenskyy tweeted.

He spoke with UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Petr Fiala Prime Minister of the Czech Republic and spoke about Ukraine's struggle against Russian aggression.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Shares of Jubilant FoodWorks plunged 15 per cent to hit a 52-week low of Rs 2,445.35 on the BSE in Mondays intra-day trade after Pratik Rashmikant Pota stepped down as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Wholetime Director of the company with effect from June 16, 2022.

Jubilant FoodWorks said in an exchange filing that the management accepted the resignation of Pratik Pota in its board meeting held on Friday, March 11, 2022. Pota will continue in his current role till Wednesday, June 15, 2022.

Pota joined the Board of Directors of Jubilant FoodWorks as chief executive officer and whole time director on April 1, 2017.

Jubilant FoodWorks is part of Jubilant Bhartia group and is Indias largest foodservice company. Its Dominos Pizza franchise extends across a network of 1,380 restaurants in 298 cities. The company has the exclusive rights to develop and operate Dominos Pizza brand in India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal. At present, it operates in India, and through its subsidiary companies in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

The company also enjoys exclusive rights to develop and operate Dunkin Donuts restaurants in India, has in operation 27 restaurants across 8 cities in India. Jubilant FoodWorks has ventured into Chinese cuisine segment with its first owned restaurant brand, Hongs Kitchen, which now has 11 restaurants across 3 cities. The company has added Indian cuisine of biryani, kebabs, breads and more to the portfolio by launching Ekdum! which now has 7 restaurants across 3 cities.

The stock of Jubilant FoodWorks has fallen below its previous low of Rs 2,475.30 hit on March 7, 2022. In past three months, the stock has underperformed the market falling 35 per cent as against a 4.4 per cent decline on the S&P BSE Sensex. The stock had hit an all-time high of Rs 4,577 on October 13, 2021.

To enhance the liquidity of the company's equity shares and encourage the participation of small investors by making it more affordable, the board on February 2, 2022 had approved stock split in the ratio of 1:5 i.e. existing one equity share of the company having face value of Rs 10 each into Rs 2.

Starting October-December quarter (Q3FY22), the company would now only disclose Like-for-Like (LFL) growth and not SSSG as it believes that LFL (i.e., same store growth for non-split stores) is a far accurate indicator of their underlying growth, as it will be strongly implementing fortressing, which is a deliberate strategy going forward.

Restrictions due to the third covid wave at the end of Q3FY22 (peak period for restaurant industry) had an impact on the recovery in the dine-in business, bringing down the overall growth rate for the quarter for Jubilant FoodWorks. Input costs increased YoY and QoQ, but despite that the company delivered EBITDA margin expansion on the back of productivity measures and pricing action taken in Dec21, analysts at Nirmal Bang Equities said in Q3 result update.

Going forward, at an industry level we do expect delivery business to moderate slightly with dine-in coming back, it will still remain at a significantly elevated level compared to the pre-covid period, the brokerage firm said.
All eyes will be on the US Federal reserve (US Fed) this week as it is most likely to lift rates at the end of its two-day meeting March 15 & 16. The development comes at a time when war clouds over Russia and Ukraine have intensified and impacted several key commodity prices, and especially that of crude oil.

ALSO READ: Hawkish Fed to cast a shadow on markets this week? Most analysts see the US Fed hiking aggressively and expect up to seven hikes in 2022, with the one later this week to be around 25 basis points (bps). Markets, analysts believe, are pricing this in at the current ...
fell on Sunday at the start of the session, extending last week's decline, as a U.S. official said Russia was showing signs it might be willing to have substantive negotiations over Ukraine.

Brent crude futures fell $1.82, or 1.6%, to $110.85 a barrel by 6:47 p.m. ET (2247 GMT). WTI crude futures fell $2.41, or 2.2%, to $106.92 a barrel.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine in late February, which Moscow calls a "special operation," has roiled globally. Brent last week was down 4.8% after hitting $139.13 on March 7. U.S. crude recorded a weekly drop of 5.7% after touching a high of $130.50 on March 7. Both contracts last touched those price peaks in 2008. [O/R]

Investors have been concerned about a tighter oil market following Russia's action. Prices fell last week as traders assessed potential improvements to the supply outlook that has been disrupted by the Ukraine crisis.

Russia is showing signs it might be willing to have substantive negotiations over Ukraine, even as Moscow is intent on "destroying" its neighbor, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said on Sunday.

Russia-Ukraine talks are not taking place right now but will continue on Monday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov was quoted as saying on Sunday by the RIA news agency.

Peskov made the comments after Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said Ukraine and Russia were actively conducting talks on Sunday.

Russia said on Sunday it was counting on China to help it withstand the economic blow from Western sanctions over the war in Ukraine, but the United States warned Beijing not to provide that lifeline.

U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, who is due to meet with China's top diplomat Yang Jiechi in Rome on Monday, warned Beijing it would "absolutely" face consequences if it helped Moscow evade sweeping sanctions over the war in Ukraine.

(Reporting by Stephanie Kelly; Editing by Richard Chang)

(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 key benchmark indices are likely to start trade on a tepid note as indicated by the SGX Nifty futures. As of 07:05 AM, the SGX Nifty March futures quoted at 16,598  down 30-odd points when compared with Fridays close back home. Meanwhile, here are the stocks to focus in trade on Thursday.

Gail India: The state-owned gas utility company declared a record second interim dividend of 50 per cent (Rs 5 per share) for the current fiscal year ending March 31, 2022. The company had earlier declared an interim dividend of Rs 4 per share for the current fiscal.

Maruti: The premium sub-brand of Indias largest car-maker Nexa, established in July 2015, has sold well over a million cars and contributes almost 20 per cent of the total Maruti Suzuki passenger vehicle sales.

Maruti wants sub-brand Nexa to contribute a larger share of the top line. READ MORE

Paytm: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has barred Payments Bank ( PB) from onboarding new customers with immediate effect because of certain supervisory concerns. Furthermore, it has directed PB to appoint an IT audit firm for conducting a comprehensive system audit of its IT system. READ MORE

Lupin: The pharma company has received approval from the US FDA for the abbreviated new drug application Vigabatrin for oral solution USP. The annual sales for Vigabatrin is estimated to be around $275 million in the US as per IQVIA MAT data of December 2021.

Hindalco: ICICI Prudential Mutual Fund has reduced its stake in the company from 3.07 per cent to 3.01 per cent, by selling 11.81 lakh equity shares via open market transactions, through its various schemes.

SAIL: The company has scheduled its board meeting on March 16 to consider a proposal for second interim dividend.

Welspun India: The company informed BSE, that its newly formed wholly-owned subsidiary, Welspun Advanced Materials has commenced its operations with effect from March 12, 2022. The companys facilities at Telangana has installed capacity of 17,729 MTPA of Sunplace with estimated revenue of Rs 370 crore per annum at around full capacity utilization.

The companys board approved a proposal to raise up to Rs 88.65 crore by way of issue of equity shares and warrants to non-promoters on a preferential basis.

Marsons: The companys board is scheduled to meet today to discuss and approved a proposal to venture into EPC for setting up EV charging stations. The board will also approve and accept Technology Transfer Agreement as per LOI with US company Micro Power Global Limited in lieu of equity shares to be issued on preferential basis.
The Life Insurance Corporaiton may get its valuation reworked for its Initial Public Offer (IPO) if the listing gets pushed beyong May 2022. and may hold fourth round of peace talks today through online mode. Walk through these headlines in our morning newswrap.

LIC may need to be revalued if the listing is pushed beyond May



The government may have to rework the valuation of Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) for its initial public offering (IPO) if the listing is pushed beyond May, an official said. The current embedded value of LIC, pegged at Rs 5.4 trillion as of September 30 and for the six-month period ended September, will have to be re-evaluated if the issue is pushed beyond May 12, as approved by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi). Read more







working on consultation paper to deal with cryptoassets



The is working on a consultation paper to devise a domestic regulatory framework on how to deal with cryptoassets and may invite public comments on it in six months time. At present, we are engaged in consultation with institutions like the (IMF), World Bank, and the Financial Stability Board (FSB). While a global consensus on the issue may take time, we are working on a consultation paper on cryptoassets to formulate our own views on the matter. Read more Russia, will hold the fourth round of peace talks today, said an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The talks will be held online as Zelenskyy's aide, Mykhailo Podolyak said, "A large number of issues require constant attention. On Monday, March 14, a negotiating session will be held to sum up the preliminary results..." Waves of Russian missiles pounded a military training base near Ukraines western border with NATO member Poland, killing 35 people, Ukrainian authorities said Sunday. The strike followed Russian threats to target foreign weapon shipments that are helping Ukrainian fighters defend their country against Russia's grinding assault. Read more
People wait in lines to receive a COVID-19 test at a screening center near Seoul Station, Monday. Yonhap



Critical cases hit all-time high of 1,158



By Lee Hyo-jin



Korea is grappling with record-high deaths and critical cases due to the sheer volume of new infections fueled by the fast-spreading Omicron variant, although the variant has been found to be less lethal than previous variants of the coronavirus.



According to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA), the country reported 309,790 new infections for Sunday, raising the aggregated total to 6,866,222.



The number of patients in severe condition in total came to 1,158, breaking the previous record of 1,151 set in the midst of the Delta wave on Dec. 29, 2021.



The KDCA added 200 COVID-19-related fatalities for Sunday, down from Saturday's 251. Daily new deaths hit a record high on Friday at 269.



Health ministry data showed that 60 percent of hospital beds reserved for severely ill COVID-19 patients were occupied as of last week, up by 10 percent points from the previous week.



Although the Omicron variant is known to be three to four times less lethal than the Delta variant, with a current fatality rate of 0.15 percent, the highly transmissible variant is leading to larger overall volumes of deaths and critical cases than its predecessor.









Since the Omicron variant was first identified in Korea in early December, a total of 5,032 fatalities were reported as of Sunday, accounting for nearly half of the 10,595 total deaths the country has seen in the last two years of the pandemic.



But the worst is yet to come, according to medical experts, who view that the country will be seeing its deadliest days of the pandemic in the coming weeks.



"Starting from late March to early April, daily new deaths will soar to 300 and reach as many as 400. This means that the virus will take the lives of about 10,000 to 15,000 people in this short period. The warm spring month of April could be the cruelest month for some people," Kim Tark, an infectious disease specialist at Soonchunhyang University Medical Center in Bucheon, wrote on Facebook.



Jung Jae-hun, a professor of preventive medicine at Gachon Medical University, called on the government to secure sufficient hospital beds in preparation for a further surge of seriously ill patients.



"The worst situation of the current Omicron wave will begin from late March and continue through early April, when the number of critical patients is expected to peak. Whether the government will be able to save the precious lives of the patients will depend on the effective management of hospital beds," he said.



Vaccinations expanded to children aged 11 and under





Students of an elementary school in Seoul head to classes, Monday. Under eased quarantine measures, starting Monday, students with a cohabiting family member who has tested positive for the virus are allowed to attend classes without having to self-isolate. Yonhap
The key equity barometers came off the day's high in afternoon trade. The Nifty traded below the 16,750 mark. Metal shares snapped their two-day wining streak as they witnessed across the board selling.

At 12:20 IST, the barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex, was up 493.01 points or 0.89% to 56,043.31. The Nifty 50 index gained 110.55 points or 0.66% at 16,741.

In the broader market, the S&P BSE Mid-Cap index fell 0.73% while the S&P BSE Small-Cap index shed 0.07%.

The market breadth was positive. On the BSE, 1,722 shares rose and 1,620 shares fell. A total of 124 shares were unchanged.

Derivatives:

The NSE's India VIX, a gauge of market's expectation of volatility over the near term, rose 2.54% to 25.99. The Nifty 24 February 2022 futures were trading at 16,735.70, at a discount of 5.3 points as compared with the spot at 16,741.

The Nifty option chain for 31 March 2022 expiry showed maximum Call OI of 22.8 lakh contracts at 18,000 strike price. Maximum Put OI of 44.9 lakh contracts were seen at 16,000 strike price.

Buzzing Index:

The Nifty Metal index fell 1.32% to 6,108.55. The index had advanced 2.75% in the past two sessions.

National Aluminum Co. (down 3.45%), Hindustan Copper (down 2.99%), Coal India (down 1.80%), Hindalco Industries (down 1.66%), Vedanta (down 1.37%), Jindal Steel & Power (down 1.35%), SAIL (down 1.20%), Tata Steel (down 1.15%) and JSW Steel (down 1.10%) declined.

Stocks in Spotlight:

Krsnaa Diagnostics slipped 1.19% to Rs 541.80 after the company informed that Shivananda Rao has tendered his resignation from the post of chief operating officer (COO) of the company citing personal reasons. The resignation is effective from closing of business hours on Monday, 14 March 2022.

Sobha tumbled 5.32% to Rs 706.30. The company said that Jagdish Chandra Sharma has tendered his resignation for the position of director, vice chairman, managing director and key managerial personnel of the company with effect from 1 April 2022. He will hold the said position till 31 March 2022.

Powered by Capital Market - Live News

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Bharat Heavy Electricals (BHEL) said that it has dispatched forty-second nuclear steam generator to the Nuclear Power Corporation of India (NPCIL).

The steam generator is to be installed for a 700 MWe unit at NPCIL's Rajasthan Atomic Power Project (RAPP).

BHEL has been catering to the nation's nuclear programme since 1976 by way of design, manufacture, testing and supply of critical nuclear components like reactor headers, steam generators, steam turbine generators, other heat exchangers and pressure vessels.

The first stage of the indigenous nuclear power program of the country has attained maturity with 18 operating pressurised heavy water reactors (PHWRs). Twelve PHWRs accounting for 74% of the indigenous nuclear power capacity are equipped with BHEL-supplied steam turbine generator sets (10 units of 220 MW each and two units of 540 MW).

BHEL is the only Indian company associated with all the three stages of the Indian nuclear power programme - the first stage pressurised heavy water reactors (PHWR), the second stage fast breeder reactor (FBR) and the third stage advanced heavy water reactor (AHWR) - and has been a partner for over four decades in the development of the indigenous nuclear power programme since its inception.

State-run BHEL is engaged in design, engineering, construction, testing, commissioning and servicing of a wide range of products and services to the core sectors of economy. As of 31 December 2021, the Government of India held 63.17% stake in the company.

The PSU company posted a standalone net profit of Rs 14.26 crore in Q3 FY22 as compared to a standalone net loss of Rs 230.99 crore registered in Q3 FY21. Standalone net sales grew by 17% to Rs 4,918 crore in Q3 FY22 from Rs 4,203 crore posted in Q3 FY21.

The scrip was currently trading 1.35% lower at Rs 51.20 on the BSE.

Powered by Capital Market - Live News

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
On 14 March 2022

CSB Bank announced that United Forum of Bank Unions (UFBU) has given notice that members of all the constituent unions of UFBU propose to go on strike on Monday, the 14 March 2022, demanding resolution of several issues.

ln case the proposed strike materialises, employees and officers of the Bank belonging to the constituent unions of UFBU in the Bank, may partake in the same which may affect the normal functioning of the branches/ offices of the Bank at a minimum level, as only less than 30% of the total work force of the Bank is affiliated to various unions.

Powered by Capital Market - Live News

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
HDFC Bank gained 1.72% to Rs 1,421 after after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) lifted restrictions on its business-generating activities planned under the bank's Digital 2.0 program.

The RBI vide its letter dated 11 March 2022 has lifted the restrictions on the business generating activities planned under the Bank's Digital 2.0 program. The members of the Board of Directors have taken note of said RBI letter, HDFC Bank said in an exchange filing.

HDFC Bank was directed by the RBI in December 2020 to stop issuing fresh cards until it had sorted out its tech problems. The bank also couldn't launch any new digital initiatives.

The private sector bank's net profit rose 18.08% to Rs 10,342.20 crore on 8.33% increase in total income to Rs 40,651.60 crore in Q3 December 2021 over Q3 December 2020.

HDFC Bank is one of India's leading private bank. As of 31 December 2021, HDFC Bank's distribution network was at 5,779 branches and 17,238 ATMs/ cash deposit & withdrawal machines (CDMs) across 2,956 cities/ towns as against 5,485 branches and 15,541 ATMs/ CDMs across 2,866 cities/towns.

Powered by Capital Market - Live News

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Larsen & Toubro (L&T) announced that The Gujarat Water Infrastructure (GWIL) placed the engineering, procurement and construction orders for the design and construction of the Dhanki-Navda Bulk Pipeline project to the company in Gujarat.

As per L&T's classification, the value of the significant project is Rs 1,000 crore to Rs 2,500 crore. The project aims to enhance water supply capacity to meet the future demands of Amreli, Junagadh, Botad and Rajkot districts of Gujarat. The scope includes the design of L&T construction of 99 km bulk transmission MS pipeline, 10.5 ML RCC raw water sump L&T pumphouse and associated electro mechanical L&T instrumentation works.

The business is also executing another bulk pipeline project at the same location for GWIL. Further, the international arm of the business has been awarded a project from a client for the supply, installation, testing, and commissioning of water distribution network and large meter connections in Dubai. The scope includes water distribution networks of 137 km GRE pipelines, micro tunnelling works, SCADA and associated Civil, Mechanical and Electrical Works.

The company's consolidated net profit fell 16.70% to Rs 2,054.74 crore on 11.14% increase in net sales to Rs 39,562.92 crore in Q3 FY22 over Q3 FY21.

Shares of Larsen & Toubro (L&T) gained 0.64% to Rs 1,738.85 on BSE. L&T is an Indian multinational engaged in EPC projects, hi-tech manufacturing and services. It operates in over 50 countries worldwide.

Powered by Capital Market - Live News

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Equity indices traded with modest gains in early trade. The Nifty traded near the 16,700 mark. Banking and financial stocks saw buying demand while auto and FMCG shares fell.

At 9:20 IST, the barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex, rose 169.62 points or 0.31% at 55,719.15. The Nifty 50 index gained 41.65 points or 0.25% at 16,672.90.

In the broader market, the S&P BSE Mid-Cap index rose 0.17% while the S&P BSE Small-Cap index gained 0.4%.

The market breadth was strong. On the BSE, 1,726 shares rose and 758 shares fell. A total of 144 shares were unchanged.

Foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) sold shares worth Rs 2,263.90 crore, while domestic institutional investors (DIIs), were net buyers to the tune of Rs 1,686.85 crore in the Indian equity market on 11 March, provisional data showed.

Stocks in Spotlight:

One97 Communications (Paytm) tumbled 10.4%.The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) directed Paytm Payments Bank to stop, with immediate effect, onboarding of new customers. The bank has also been directed to appoint an IT audit firm to conduct a comprehensive system audit of its IT system. Paytm Payments Bank is one of the payment instruments of Paytm.

Tech Mahindra rose 1.17%.The IT company on Saturday announced that it has approved the proposal to acquire 100% equity shares in Thirdware Solutions. Thirdware, headquartered in Mumbai, is a global player in Enterprise Applications focused in the areas of ERP, BIA, Cloud and business technologies.

Jubilant FoodWorks slumped 10%. The pizza maker said that the board of directors has accepted the resignation of Pratik Rashmikant Pota as the CEO and wholetime director of the company as he wishes to pursue opportunities outside the firm.

Global Markets:

Asian stocks were trading mixed on Monday as investors monitor a Covid wave in China. Meanwhile, oil prices continued to be volatile amid the Russia-Ukraine war.

Investors continued watching developments on the Russia-Ukraine war, which is disrupting shipping and air freight. Elsewhere, markets also monitored a recent wave of Covid infections in China including the major city of Shenzhen.

U.S. stocks dropped on Friday as the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict continued to unnerve investors. The U.S. government will revoke Russia's most-favored nation trade status amid the conflict, the White House said Friday, noting that it will work with Group of Seven (G7) countries and the European Union to roll out new sanctions.

In U.S. economic reports, data from the University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey showed a fall to an initial March reading of 59.7 from February's level of 62.8.

Powered by Capital Market - Live News

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
One 97 Communications (Paytm) slumped 11.98% to Rs 682 after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has directed Paytm Payments Bank to stop, with immediate effect, onboarding of new customers.

The stock had tumbled 13.26% in early trade to hit a record low of Rs 672.10 in intraday trade today.

The action by the RBI is based on certain material supervisory concerns" and the restrictions will continue pending a comprehensive audit of its information-technology systems, the central bank said in a statement on Friday.

Onboarding of new customers by Paytm Payments Bank will be subject to specific permission to be granted by the central bank after reviewing the report of the information technology auditors, it added.

In a statement late Saturday, One 97 Communications said that Paytm Payments Bank (PPBL) is taking immediate steps to comply with RBI directions, including appointment of a reputed external auditor to conduct a comprehensive System Audit of its IT systems. PPBL remains committed to working with the regulator to address their concerns as quickly as possible. One 97 Communications is Paytm's parent company.

Paytm Payments Bank is one of the payment instruments of Paytm. Paytm is one the largest payments platform in India based on the number of consumers, number of merchants, number of transactions and revenue ended March 2021. The company launched Paytm in 2009, as a mobile-first digital payments platform to enable cashless payments for customers giving them the power to make payments from their mobile phones. It started with bill payments and mobile top-ups as the first use cases, and Paytm Wallet as the first Paytm Payment Instrument.

One 97 Communications (Paytm) reported a consolidated net loss of Rs 778.50 crore in Q3 December 2021, higher than net loss of Rs 535.50 crore in Q3 December 2020. Consolidated net sales jumped 88.6% to Rs 1,456.10 crore in Q3 December 2021 over Rs 772 crore in Q3 December 2020.

Shares of Paytm listed on the bourses on 18 November 2021 at Rs 1955, representing a discount of 9.07% to the issue price of Rs 2150. It further declined 20% on the same day to close at Rs 1564.15.

Powered by Capital Market - Live News

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
SGX Nifty:

Trading of Nifty 50 index futures on the Singapore stock exchange indicates that the Nifty could fall 96 points at the opening bell.

On the macro front, IIP grew by 1.32% on an annual basis in January 2022, which is an improvement from the 0.7% annual growth in December 2021 according to the data released by the National Statistical Office (NSO) on March 11. The Index of Industrial Production (IIP) had contracted by 0.6% in January 2021.

Global markets:

Overseas, Asian stocks are trading mixed on Monday as investors monitor a Covid wave in China. Meanwhile, oil prices continued to be volatile amid the Russia-Ukraine war.

Investors continued watching developments on the Russia-Ukraine war, which is disrupting shipping and air freight. Elsewhere, markets also monitored a recent wave of Covid infections in China including the major city of Shenzhen.

U.S. stocks dropped on Friday as the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict continued to unnerve investors. The U.S. government will revoke Russia's most-favored nation trade status amid the conflict, the White House said Friday, noting that it will work with Group of Seven (G7) countries and the European Union to roll out new sanctions.

In U.S. economic reports, data from the University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey showed a fall to an initial March reading of 59.7 from February's level of 62.8.

Domestic markets:

Back home, the benchmark indices ended with small gains on Friday, rising for the fourth straight session. The barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex, rose 85.91 points or 0.15% at 55,550.30. The Nifty 50 index gained 35.55 points or 0.21% at 16,630.45.

Foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) sold shares worth Rs 2,263.90 crore, while domestic institutional investors (DIIs), were net buyers to the tune of Rs 1,686.85 crore in the Indian equity market on 11 March, provisional data showed.

Powered by Capital Market - Live News

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Tech Mahindra: The IT company on Saturday announced that it has approved the proposal to acquire 100% equity shares in Thirdware Solutions. Thirdware, headquartered in Mumbai, is a global player in Enterprise Applications focused in the areas of ERP, BIA, Cloud and business technologies.

Gail (India): Gail (India) said that its board has approved the payment of second interim dividend of Rs 5 per equity share on the paid-up equity share capital of the company for the financial year 2021-22.

One 97 Communications (Paytm): The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has directed Paytm Payments Bank to stop, with immediate effect, onboarding of new customers. The bank has also been directed to appoint an IT audit firm to conduct a comprehensive system audit of its IT system. Paytm Payments Bank is one of the payment instruments of Paytm.

Steel Authority of India (SAIL): The public sector enterprise on Saturday announced that a meeting of the board of directors will be held on Wednesday, 16 March to consider the recommendation of a second interim dividend for the financial year 2021-22.

Lupin: Lupin on Friday announced that it received approval from the United States Food and Drug Administration for its Abbreviated New Drug Application (ANDA), Vigabatrin for Oral Solution.

Sobha: The realtor on Friday announced that Jagdish Chandra Sharma vide his letter dated 11 March 2022, tendered his resignation for the position of director, vice chairman, managing director and key managerial personnel of the company with effect from 1 April 2022. He will hold the said position till 31 March 2022.

Jubilant FoodWorks: Jubilant FoodWorks said that the board of directors of the company has accepted the resignation of Pratik Rashmikant Pota as the CEO and wholetime director of the company as he wishes to pursue opportunities outside the firm.

Shree Ganesh Remedies: Shree Ganesh Remedies made a winning bid of Rs 26 crore for Jaiswal Pharmachem's 20,100 sq. m. plot in Ankleshwar, Gujarat.

Rama Synthetics: India Ratings and Research (Ind-Ra) has upgraded Indo Rama Synthetics (India)'s (IRSL) Long-Term Issuer Rating to 'IND A-' from 'IND BBB+' while the outlook remains stable.

Torrent Power: The power utility completed acquisition of 100% equity share capital of Surya Vidyut (SPV), wholly owned subsidiary of CESC.

Powered by Capital Market - Live News

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Indian ambassador to Korea Sripriya Ranganathan, first from right, and Minister of Patriots and Veterans Affairs Hwang Ki-chul, second from right, tour the "Indian 60th Para Field Ambulance: a journey of 39 months" exhibit at the War Memorial of Korea in Yongsan District, Seoul, March 3. Courtesy of the Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs



By Kwon Mee-yoo



India was one of the countries that sent a large-scale medical unit to South Korea during the Korean War as part of humanitarian aid. They were known as "the angels in brown berets," referring to their iconic reddish-brown berets, and treated some 220,000 soldiers and civilians alike from November 1950 until they withdrew in 1954.



The Embassy of India in Korea and the War Memorial of Korea are co-hosting a photo exhibition revisiting the efforts of the Indian medical support unit, commemorating the 72nd anniversary of the Korean War.



"Indian 60th Para Field Ambulance: a journey of 39 months" sheds light on the contribution of the Indian soldiers who practiced humanity amid the harsh environment of the Korean War.



India was a neutral country and did not send combat forces during the Korean War, but dispatched the medical support unit 60th Para Field Ambulance (PFA) and the Custodian Forces of India (CFI), which was in charge of protection and repatriation of prisoners of war to South Korea.



"I've spoken with many Koreans regarding the difficult times you endured during the (Korean) War and have found that many have a deep appreciation for the humanitarian contributions made by the 60th Para Field Ambulance Unit, led by Korean War hero Lieutenant Colonel Rangaraj. That unit rendered selfless service during those difficult times to treat over 220,000 patients," Indian Ambassador to Korea Sripriya Ranganathan said during the opening ceremony of the exhibit on March 3.



"Many are also familiar with the heroism of India's Colonel Unni Nair, for whom a memorial has been erected in Daegu."



She also pointed out lesser-known parts of India's participation in the Korean War.



"Very few know of India's leadership within the framework of the Neutral Nations Repatriation Commission and the truly remarkable role played by the Custodian Forces of India."



An Indian officer of the 60 Para Field Ambulance Unit treats patients during the Korean War. Courtesy of the War Memorial of Korea
Former Punjab chief Sunil Jakhar slammed outgoing Punjab chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi and senior party leader Ambika Soni over the drubbing the party got in the assembly polls, referring to the CM as liability.

In an apparent reference to reports that Channi was praised at the Working Committee meeting on Sunday, Jakhar tweeted,An asset - r u joking?



Thank God he wasn't declared a ' Treasure' at CWC by the 'Pbi' lady who proposed him as CM in first place. Maybe an asset for her but for the party he has been only a liability, he said.

Not the top brass, but his own greed pulled him and the party down," Jakhar said, targeting Channi in the tweet that underscored the persisting infighting in the Punjab unit of the .

The tweet also included a picture of Channi and a headline, "ED seizes Rs 10 crore from Channi's nephew; CM cries foul".

He did not mention Soni by name in the tweet or while talking later to PTI, but appeared to be referring to her.

Jakhar was a frontrunner for the CM post after the Congress unseated Amarinder Singh last year. But Ambika Soni told the party leadership that a Sikh should be made Punjab chief minister, possibly scuttling Jakhar's chances.

Channi then became the first Dalit CM of the state, just months ahead of the assembly polls. The Congress, however, faced a rout, winning just 18 seats. The Aam Aadmi Party won 92 of the 117 seats.

Jakhar told PTI that the perception that Channi was trying to create about his humble background was shattered after the alleged recovery of cash from his nephew's premises in an Enforcement Department raid.

We cannot fight corruption with corruption, he said.

He questioned why Channi wasn't sent to Uttar Pradesh to campaign if he was an asset' to the party. The Congress got just two seats in UP.

Accept the truth. There is a problem and you promoted him and now you are trying to give him a clean chit, he said, apparently targeting Soni as well as the top leadership of the party.

Jakhar said that he had once told party leader Rahul Gandhi that he did not accept Channi as his leader.

On Monday, Amarinder Singh, who left the Congress after being ousted as Punjab CM, also slammed the party high command. He said the Gandhis were entirely to blame for their party's defeat.

Last month, Jakhar had claimed that 42 Congress MLAs wanted him to be the chief minister of the state after the unceremonious exit of Amarinder Singh.

(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.)
When Chandrima Bhattacharya, finance minister of West Bengal with independent charge but ranked only as a minister of state, presented the state Budget last week, it was reasonable to expect that she might have been clueless about the finer points in the document she was reading.

She had no role in its drafting. The states former finance minister, Amit Mitra, who stepped down from the position because of ill health but continues to enjoy a coveted place as principal chief advisor to the CM on finance and economy, was the one, in all likelihood, who authored the ...
In wake of Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar having a heated exchange with Speaker Vijay Kumar Sinha in the Assembly on Monday, RJD leader claimed the former's working style is fast becoming of a dictator.

"Chief Minister Nitish Kumar wants to centralise power in his own hand. He is behaving like a dictator. Whatever happened in Bihar Vidhan Sabha on Monday reflected his dictatorship attitude to common people. I want to ask the people of Bihar to decide whether they live under a dictator or under democracy," he said at a party event in Muzaffarpur.

"Speaker Vijay Sinha pointed out that the officialdom is so dominant in Bihar that a 'Thanedar' (SHO) is not listening to him, the one who is sitting on the highest constitutional post of Bihar. Imagine what would happen to MLAs of opposition and ruling parties of the state. They are not listening to MLAs like me," said.

"Jitan Ram Manjhi or Mukesh Sahani pointed out that the bureaucrats are not listening to them despite being coalition partners in the Nitish Kumar government. Mukesh Sahani claimed that a peon is not giving him any respect despite he being the Animal Husbandry and Fisheries Minister in the government.

"I want Nitish Kumar to clarify whether he is running a 'sarkar' (government) or circus," he added.

Tejashwi Yadav, who is the Leader of Opposition, also alleged that if law enforcement agencies conduct raids on the Chief Minister's Principal Secretary, "they would find billions of rupees".

"The bureaucrats are directly involved in liquor operations in Bihar," he alleged.

--IANS

ajk/vd

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
At a crucial Working Committee meeting, some G-23 leaders on Sunday said they have been seeking corrective measures only to strengthen the party but a few have vilified them as those working at the BJP's behest, and asserted that this must stop as they remain "lifelong Congressmen".

They also said that they are "not political tourists" and the leadership must be conscious of rumour-mongers giving mischievous twists to their suggestions.

Ghulam Nabi Azad, Anand Sharma and Mukul Wasnik were the only three from the Group of 23 leaders, who have repeatedly pressed for organisational overhaul, present at the meeting of the CWC, which has a large number of Gandhi family loyalists.

"Today, when we talk of introspection and accountability, words are mischievously twisted, giving an impression by some within the party that it is a rebellion. We have been lifelong members and have remained so in the party for 50-long years," a G-23 leader was quoted as saying at the meeting.

The leaders also said that those coming from other parties should not be made state Congress chiefs and squabbling in state units should stop.

One of the G-23 leaders also pointed out that "we are not political tourists" and said the party leadership has to be conscious of "rumour-mongers and naradmunis".

The G-23 leaders present at the meeting said they were part of the organisation and would remain so and would do everything to strengthen it to ensure its success at the hustings, sources said.

According to sources, Sharma said the Congress has to revive itself in the Hindi heartland by adhering to its core ideology and not flirt with any form of fundamentalism or communalism of any community.

He also said that the recent defeat in assembly elections cannot be viewed in isolation and immediate corrective measures must be taken.

The deputy leader of the Congress in Rajya Sabha said that in continuity of the string of defeats, the question to be pondered over is "why are we being rejected?", according to the sources.

Sharma also pointed out that the defeat of the Congress in Punjab and Uttarakhand were ominous signs for the party as it prepares for the Himachal Pradesh polls later this year.

He said the surge of the Aam Aadmi Party in Punjab is a challenge and a collective effort is required to strengthen the party, and it cannot be business as usual.

The sources said Azad stated at the meeting that an honest dialogue and discussion should take place in the CWC which has been the Congress' tradition since the days of Jawaharlal Nehru when there used to be heated discussions, arguments and walkouts during brainstorming sessions.

Azad said they were making suggestions for strengthening the party but some within the party dubbed them as working at the behest of the BJP. He also called for collective introspection.

One G-23 leader also suggested a dialogue with like-minded parties and bring them on one platform to help displace the BJP from the Centre in 2024.

The sources said Wasnik shared data to point out that the Congress had only 14 seats in Lok Sabha from Jammu to Nagpur, and must correct itself to win back people's faith.

Wasnik also pointed out that the Congress has lost 39 out of 49 elections held since 2014 and questioned why the party has embarked on a soft Hindutva ideology.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
New Delhi [India], March 14 (ANI/SRV): On the glamorous night of 12th March 2022, a total number of 100+ doctors & dentists from various cities & states were honoured on the platform of Asia Pacific Dental Excellence Awards 2022 & 6th edition Indian Health Professionals Awards which was organized in collaboration of International Research Organization for Life & Health Sciences, Smile Nation & Association of Indian Dental Professionals.

The event was held at The Orchid Hotel, Vile Parle, Mumbai, which witnessed awards bestowed upon top-notch doctors, dentists, hospitals & institutions, recognising their extraordinary contribution during Corona Pandemic as Corona Warriors and in the healthcare industry for many years.

The event was graced by guests ranging from Bollywood celebrities to several VVIPs. To list a few who were present are Ranjit Bedi, Legendary Indian Bollywood Star, Actor Mukesh Rishi, Popular Actor and film producer & Ali Khan (Bollywood Actor & Social Worker) & Faiyaz Ali Khan, Film Producer.

Other dignitaries present were Dr. Rahul Hegde, Member, Dental Council of India, Dr. Arun Dodamani Member, Dental Council of India) & Principal, ACPM Dental College, Dhule, Dr. Sameer Patil, Principal, Singhad Dental College, Pune, Dr. Ravindra SV, Principal - MNR Dental College & Hospital, Sangareddy, Telangana. Also present were Dr. Sunil Bumb & Director, Smile Nation, Mrs Sneha Bumb, Director, Vasu Healthcare.

To enlist a few winners of the 6th Indian Health Professional Awards, the list starts with Dr. Mohana Rao Patibandla received Best Neurosurgeon of the Year, Dr. Rao's Hospital / Patibandla Narayana Swamy Neurosciences LLP grabbed Best Neurology and Neurosurgery Hospital of the Year, Dr. Nivethitha Krishnamoorthy received Young Dental Achiever of the Year, Dr Bhratri Bhushan received Excellence in Oncology & Medical Students' Association of India grabbed Best Student Medical Organisation & Best Medical Organisation.

For Asia Pacific Dental Excellence Awards 2022, to enlist a few winners the list starts with Dr. Paloma Parulkar receiving Best PG of the Year (Prosthodontics), Dr. Aashree Verma grabbed Dental Talent of the Year & Budding Dentist of the Year, Dr Nupur Trivedi received Young Dental Achiever of the Year & Dental Entrepreneur of the Year awards, followed by (Dr.) Bhakti Porwal received Student of the Year (UG), Dr. Shalinee Rana received Pedodontist of the Year award & Dr Pratik Bumb won the Best PG Student of the Year (Prosthodontics) award. Braces & Aligners, Pune owned by Dr. Apoorv Sahu, Orthodontic Specialty clinic grabbed the Best Clinic Interiors of The Year award.

Speaking about the evening, Dr. Swapnil Sunil Bumb, the man behind this event, renowned healthcare professional nationally, based in Pune, Founder & CEO, IROLHS, Smile Nation & Doctota Health Private Limit said, "Since 2016, we are rewarding healthcare professionals from all over India covering all states and union territories. Doctors from the most rural parts of the country are also been picked for this national award. We have rewarded around 1000+ doctors in past 6 years. We started this mega event with the vision to acknowledge the medical and dental fraternity. This year we have rewarded doctors from 20 states and from around 30 cities and villages.

For the past 2 years, all healthcare workers have been facing the challenging situation and fighting the pandemic selflessly. We feel blessed that we created a national-level platform to appreciate and reward doctors for their hard work.

We strongly feel IHP Awards & APDE Awards in future becomes a platform rewarding doctors from all sectors of healthcare and its stakeholders.

This story is provided by SRV Media. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/SRV)

DISCLAIMER

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
New Delhi [India], March 14 (ANI/PNN): Dudigital Global Limited (formerly Known as Du Digital Technologies Limited) (DU Digital) (NSE: DUGLOBAL), One of the leading players in Visa Processing will once again start operating its all 35 Visa centres in India and other countries like UAE, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Nepal, Sri Lanka after more than 2 years due to COVID 19 Pandemic.

DUdigital Global Limited started its operations in the year 2015 as an outsourcing and Technology Solution specialist for Governments and diplomatic missions. The company manages non-administrative and non-judgmental tasks related to Visas, Passports, Identity Management and other citizen services. The Brand manages the Human Interface between the Visa Applicants and the Technical visa processing units of the Embassy of the Country for which we are awarded the contract or sub-contracts.

Although essential travel to all these countries was open but normal travel was restricted. To cater to this company was operating through the limited centres. Greece had lifted travel restrictions in December 2021 but the restrictions to Malaysia were still in place which will be lifted from the 1st April 2022.

As all major client governments of the company are lifting travel restrictions the company has decided to start operating all its Visa processing centres.

Commenting on this, Rajinder Rai, Chairman of the Company said, "This is a very big moment for the company after the hibernation of almost 2 years we will be operating at full capacity. This will provide a much-needed financial boost to the company as all 3 countries for which we handle Visa processing are popular Travel and Business destinations for Indians.

For FY23 we are expecting to see multifold growth in our financial performance and hope to be at par or exceed our pre-pandemic performance."

Dudigital Global Limited (Formerly known as Du Digital Technologies Limited) (NSE: DUGLOBAL) started its operations in the year 2015 as an outsourcing and technology solutions specialist for governments and diplomatic missions. The company manages administrative and non-judgmental tasks related to visas, passport, identity management, and other citizen services.

The Company manages the human interface between the visa applicant and the technical visa processing unit of the embassy of the country for which we are awarded the contract or subcontract. The Company's role is administrative and non-judgmental tasks related to visa application, digitalization, document verification and biometric data collection for its customers. This, in turn, enables the respective government authorities to focus entirely on the critical task of assessment.

Apart from this, Dudigial also provides citizenship and residency programs by investment for various countries in association with partner Migrate World.

This story is provided by PNN. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/PNN)

DISCLAIMER

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
American Standard to host Design Catalyst L!VE, an industry event to inspire the future with the future with purposeful design

Singapore, March 14 (ANI/PRNewswire): American Standard, one of the most iconic brands in sanitary ware and part of the LIXIL Group, is hosting the American Standard Design Catalyst L!VE, a webinar bringing together thought leaders in Architecture and Design from across the Asia Pacific region.

The United Nations Development Programme estimates that, globally, cities account for 55% of humanity, 70% of GHG emissions and 80% of global GDP[1]. Continuing rapid urbanization will place increasing pressure on how we design and use public and private spaces that promote health, well-being and sustainable living. This creates new challenges for planners and designers to work with smaller spaces, smarter design and new urban lifestyles.

American Standard Design Catalyst L!VE will engage in that conversation with key subject matter experts in architecture and design. We will expand on the issues with insights, practical frameworks and strategies centered on three key themes: Health and Well-being, Sustainability, and Urbanization.

The two-hour event will be streamed free on Wednesday, 23 March in English, Bahasa Indonesia, Thai and Vietnamese; and will feature the following panelists and speakers from across the region:

Hayley Mitchell, Director, Mitchell and Eades, Australia

Ivy Almario, President & Co-founder, Atelier Almario, Philippines

Samantha Eades, Director, Mitchell and Eades, Australia

Chat Fores, Founder, Chat Fores Design Studio, Philippines

Arch. Jojo Tolentino, President & CEO, AIDEA Incorporated, Philippines

Ary Indrajanto, Founder, Aboday, Indonesia

Alan Kueh, Managing Director, AK+ Archipedia Pte Ltd, Singapore

Arch. Le Truong, Founder & CEO, TT- Associates, Vietnam

Rahul Kadri, Partner & Principal Architect, IMK Architect, India

Rakesh Kumar, Chief Design Officer, Godrej Properties Ltd, India

Hun Chansan, Principal Architect & Founder, re: edge Architecture, Cambodia

Naresh V Narasimhan, Managing Partner, Venkataraman Associates, India

Satoshi Konagai, Leader, LWT APAC, LIXIL

Priyanka Tanwar, Leader, Communications & Corporate Responsibility, Asia, LIXIL

Antoine Besseyre Des Horts, Leader, Global Design, Asia, LIXIL

American Standard invites all architecture and design professionals and interested persons to register for the virtual event to engage in the conversation and help build and inspire a future with purposeful design. Further event information is also available at the American Standard Design Catalyst website (https://www.americanstandard-apac.com/asdc), American Standard Facebook and https://bit.ly/3MNQU63) LinkedIn pages.

To register for the free webinar, please visit: (https://www.americanstandard-apac.com/asdc)

[1] United Nations Development Programme, An Analytical Review: A Decade of Urban Resilience: Lessons and recommendations, October 2021

As one of the most iconic brands in sanitary ware, American Standard has earned the trust of its customers by constantly delivering style, quality, and reliability to their bathrooms. Today, backed by more than 140 years of pioneering legacy, American Standard continues to raise the bar in delivering dependable bathroom solutions that combine thoughtful designs and innovative technologies to create inviting bathroom spaces offering ultimate hygiene, comfort, and convenience. For more information, kindly visit (https://www.americanstandard-apac.com).

LIXIL makes pioneering water and housing products that solve everyday, real-life challenges, making better homes a reality for everyone, everywhere. Drawing on our Japanese heritage, we create world-leading technology and innovate to make high quality products that transform homes.

But the LIXIL difference is how we do this; through meaningful design, an entrepreneurial spirit, a dedication to improving accessibility for all, and responsible business growth. Our approach comes to life through industry leading brands, including LIXIL, GROHE, American Standard, INAX, and TOSTEM. Over 70,000 colleagues operating in 150 countries are proud to make products that touch the lives of more than a billion people every day.

This story is provided by PRNewswire. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/PRNewswire)

DISCLAIMER

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], March 14 (ANI/NewsVoir): Axis Bank, India's third-largest private sector bank has been awarded IFR Asia's Asian Bank of The Year, for its breadth of coverage and depth of expertise in the Asian investment banking space. The award acknowledges the bank's outstanding performance in equity and debt issuance, across all major products and segments. Axis Bank was the only local house to serve as a global coordinator for the record Rs. 183 Bn Paytm IPO, and was also the global coordinator for Macrotech Developers' Rs. 25 Bn IPO.

As per Refinitiv data, Axis Bank ranks first in India in DCM with 17.1 per cent market share, which is twice than that of its nearest challenger. With the most senior team of 80 investment bankers in the counts, Axis Bank was able to climb to the third position in ECM despite strong competition from foreign houses. The bank has also helped open new markets for different issuers, such as HDFC's Rs. 30 Bn three-year floating-rate bond offering.

In a bid to strengthen its ESG commitments, Axis Bank has worked on numerous significant deals such as the Renew Sun Waves' Rs. 10.02 Bn bond offering and, Vector Green Energy's offering, which was the first AAA-rated deal from the renewables sector. The bank also sold India's first sustainable AT1 issue, a USD 600 Mn perpetual non-call five issue priced at 4.1 per cent, while acting as a joint global coordinator.

Commenting on this achievement, Axis Bank's Deputy Managing Director Rajiv Anand said, "We are honored and extremely proud to be recognized for our efforts by the prestigious IFR Asia Awards. Our 'One Axis' philosophy has been a key area of distinctiveness to showcase our ability as a one-of-a-kind, full-service Wholesale Bank. Our synergized efforts have helped us establish leadership across the capital markets."

This year, the bank has also won the 'Best DCM House in India' Award at the Finance Asia's Country Awards. Axis Bank has been No. 1 on the Bloomberg League Table ranking for 15 consecutive calendar years and has maintained its leadership position in the domestic Debt Capital Market.

Axis Bank is the third-largest private sector bank in India. Axis Bank offers the entire spectrum of services to customer segments covering Large and Mid-Corporates, SME, Agriculture and Retail Businesses. With its 4,700 domestic branches (including extension counters) and 11,060 ATMs across the country as on December 31, 2021, the network of Axis Bank spreads across 2,665 centers, enabling the Bank to reach out to a large cross-section of customers with an array of products and services. The Axis Group includes Axis Mutual Fund, Axis Securities Ltd., Axis Finance, Axis Trustee, Axis Capital, A.TReDS Ltd., Freecharge and Axis Bank Foundation.

For further information on Axis Bank, please refer to the website: (https://www.axisbank.com).

This story is provided by NewsVoir. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/NewsVoir)

DISCLAIMER

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
New Delhi [India[, March 14 (ANI/TPT): Delhi based Edtech startup, KiCo-India's Kitaab Copy to provide funding for strengthening the education sector in rural areas. They have raised investment in Angel Investment round and now they are coming up with an initiative to establish 1000 digital educational centers across the country. These centers will be using different languages for conversing and explaining the students, including Hindi, English, and regional languages.

They provide excellent educational opportunities and guidance to students belonging to grades 1 to 12 as well as for JEE/NEET exams. The students who are a part of this program get many privileges such as, they can clear their doubts with no time limitations or location barriers using the online education platform.

KiCo has been praised by Delhi's Deputy Chief Minister, and it has also contributed to the digital education of students in Delhi's government schools. The knowledgeable instructors and teachers ensure that students receive high-quality learning assistance while remaining in the comfort of their own homes. KiCo stands out from the competition as it has customized lesson plans and cutting-edge digital content. The dependability of their services is attested to by over 50,000 downloads and 20,000 daily users in their apps.

Private school teachers in Tier-1 regions have long ignored regional languages, while the majority of students fail to adapt to English-medium instruction as they proceed through their academic careers. (https://ikico.in) KiCo has done an excellent job of reaching out to rural residents by delivering information in their native tongue. The online teaching company is currently raising USD 1 million to expand its employees and improve its teaching abilities.

The edtech company also intends to expand its services to India's under served Tier 2 and Tier 3 regions, ensuring that every kid has an equal shot at success. They also realize the necessity of bringing a hybrid learning model to India's rural areas, with a goal of establishing 1,000 hybrid classrooms and 500 affiliates. Thousands of children have been influenced by KiCo-classroom hybrid models across the country, and the project's goal now is to grow to 1000 hybrid classrooms. It would help around 20,000 students who, due to financial constraints, are unable to obtain a proper education.

Many industry heavyweights and potential investors have stepped forward to invest in the platform, playing a key role in helping it scale to new heights of success, owing to the tremendous growth that it has brought to the Indian education system.

This story is provided by TPT. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/TPT)

DISCLAIMER

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
New Delhi [India], March 14 (ANI/SRV): Multipl, the ace smart saving app announced a plethora of women-specific options in its app to honour the spirit of Womanhood. The initiative was launched to commemorate the significance of Women's Day throughout the month. The offers mostly focus on jewellery purchase, holidaying, insurance premiums, and upskilling expenses. Women who start their smart-money journey on the app by saving for their future spending through creating goals, stand a chance to win Diamond Jewellery and rewards worth Rs 10 Lacs in March.

Jags Raghavan, the COO of Multipl, said, "ThoughMultipl's initial adopters were mostly men, we have been, for the past six months, seeing a surge in the number of women who have been using Multipl for managing their lifestyle spends. Multiple goals are being created specifically to purchase jewellery, travel, and pay for children's educational expenses. We are making, saving and investing to ensuring that no one leaves behind money when they are spending on their lifestyle. Women being natural savers and more diligent with money, in general, are a natural user-fit for the app."

Financial independence has been a significant challenge for women in India. Even though the percentage of working and independent women has increased significantly, financial know-how remains limited. Nimisha, the Marketing Head of the firm, said, "Before coming up with this launch, we interviewed multiple women across the age groups of 20 to 40. We were surprised to find that more than 60 per cent of women who have built quite a successful career for themselves have their husbands and family (mostly males) handle their finances. However, a surprisingly high number of women weren't sure about where their money has been invested." She further added, "As a woman myself, I felt that this is exactly what we wanted to address and at the soonest because if such a majority populace is being left out, then the Multipl Movement cannot be complete in the truest sense."

Multipl has been in the news for all the right reasons. From being selected as one of the top FinTech start-ups in India by a leading Indian publication to registering a record number of downloads and app usage in just four months since its public launch. Upon signing up, the user has the option to create goals of their choice. One can choose a goal for vacation, insurance premium, educational spend, buying a vehicle, home furnishing, etc. Once a goal is created, one can save for these goals either through one-time payments or a monthly auto-deduction. They can auto-invest in a set of direct mutual funds curated specifically for each user based on their individual profile, risk, and goal duration. This way, the money that would be spent in the future earns returns from the market, and one ends up making more than a meagre 3-4 per cent bank interest. Once a goal target is met, one can redeem their savings and make their purchases. At the time of purchase, they get exclusive prices from top brands such as Yatra, MakeMyTrip, Tanishq, BlueStone, Vedantu, Croma, Pepperfry, and many more. Not only this, but this app also rewards its users for saving positively for their spending.

Vikas, Chief Investment Officer at Multipl, said, "The biggest security that Multipl offers its users is that one need not worry about when and where to invest. Instead, they can focus on their lives while our Robo advisory personalizes their investments per their profile. Further, the investments are monitored continuously and re-balanced as per the market situations so that our user's capital stays safe. Also, the exclusive brand offers that app members get further adds to their savings."

Multipl's revolution is causing the right waves in the fintech sector. However, how effective it would be to promote financial literacy and independence among women remains to be seen.

This story is provided by SRV Media. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/SRV)

DISCLAIMER

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Students of Seoboo elementary school in Ulsan head to classes on the first day of spring semester, March. 2. Korea Times photo by Kim Kang-min



School admission hobbled by Korean parents' protests



By Lee Hyo-jin



ULSAN  While students of Seoboo elementary school in Ulsan headed to classes on the first day of the spring semester on March 2, 9-year-old Zainab from Afghanistan, who moved to the southeastern port city last month, had to stay at home.



She asked her parents when she would be able to join her peers at school, but neither of them gave her a clear answer, which left the girl more puzzled.



Her father, Gul Agha (as he prefers to identify himself), could not tell his daughter the truth: due to fierce protests from their Korean neighbors, it remains unclear when Zainab would be able to attend the public school.



Zainab is not alone.



In fact, she is among 28 Afghan children in Ulsan who could not make it to school on the first day after vacation. They settled in their new homes in early February after their parents found jobs at a subcontractor for shipbuilder Hyundai Heavy Industries based in the port city some 300 kilometers from Seoul.





Afghans who helped the Korean government's activities in their country arrive at Incheon International Airport with their family, Aug. 27. Yonhap



In August of last year, 391 Afghans  156 adults and 235 children  who were designated as "special contributors" by the Korean government were airlifted to the country after their homeland fell into the hands of the Taliban.



After completing a six-month social integration program in Jincheon, North Chungcheong Province and Yeosu in South Jeolla Province, 157 of them resettled in Dong District of Ulsan.



As elementary school admission in Korea is determined by a child's home address, the children aged between 7 and 12 were set to begin their school life at Seoboo elementary school.



However, some parents of the school have been protesting against the government's "unilateral" decision to move the Afghan evacuees to their region, as well as allocating their children to the school.





Parents of students attending Seoboo elementary school in Ulsan hold a press conference in Dong District Office, Feb. 17, in protest against the authorities' decision to admit 28 Afghan students to the school. Newsis



On Feb. 17, the angered parents organized a press conference calling on the city government to retract the decision. They held placards reading, "Come up with measures to send our children to school in peace," and "Consider sending them to international school."



Their presence being unwelcomed in the local community has made the Afghan evacuees become extremely anxious about their future.



"I'm very concerned," Gul Agha said during an interview with The Korea Times, March 9. "When my children ask me when they can go to school, I tell them there are some technical issues in registering their names. Telling them about the protests would very bad for them"





Zainab's father, who wished to be identified as Gul Agha, speaks during a Zoom interview with The Korea Times, March 9. Captured via Zoom



"My wife is very concerned about our future. She is very stressed and depressed," he said.



Gul Agha said he would like to rectify the misunderstanding some Korean residents have about the cultural and religious backgrounds of Afghan evacuees and let them know that they are not "extremists" who misuse the name of religion.



"We have worked a long time with the Korean government. We are familiar with Korean culture and we respect all culture and religious beliefs," he said. "My wife was an English teacher. We are not dangerous people."



"If we get a chance to meet them (Korean parents), we will explain our situation, feelings and our beliefs regarding our children," he added.











Separation or segregation?



Nevertheless, the Korean parents insist that the Afghan children should receive basic education at a separate facility for at least six months before letting them into local schools to study with their children.



"Everything happened so suddenly. We heard about the settlement of the Afghan evacuees through news articles only three days before they moved in here," said Hong Hyun-jin, a mother of two children who go to Seoboo elementary school. "We, the residents, were totally left out from the decision-making process."



Lee Jae-won, who represents the parents of the school, said the authorities should not push ahead with the admission of the Afghan students.



"The city education office says the school will be ready to accept them in a couple of weeks, but we don't think so," said Lee.



"Realistically speaking, with their level of Korean language, it will be extremely difficult for them to properly communicate with their classmates and teachers. It will take more than a year for them to adapt to school life," he added.



Hong and Lee expressed concerns that conflicts may arise in the classroom between the Korean and Afghan students due to language and cultural differences.



"For instance, seeing people wearing a Hijab is unfamiliar even for a grown-up like me. Accepting new cultures would be more difficult for the young children. The Afghan children will also find it difficult to adapt to Korean school life," Hong said.





Seen in this photo taken on March 2 is Seoboo elementary school in Ulsan. Korea Times photo by Kim Kang-min



She stressed that the parents protesting the admission of Afghan students are not "exclusionists" as described by some local media reports.



"We are concerned about the education and well-being of both Afghan and Korean children. And from that perspective, the children should be provided with a separate learning environment, at least for a few months."



But the Afghan families think differently.



"Afghan and Korean children will be better together, because that way, they can adapt easily and more quickly. But if they are separated from the beginning, they will have their own way of thinking, speak in different languages. Everything would be separated" said Gul Agha.





Kim Ji-hoon, head of Ulsan People's Solidarity speaks during an interview with The Korea Times at the civic group's office in the southeastern port city, March 2. Korea Times photo by Kim Kang-min



Kim Ji-hoon, head of Ulsan People's Solidarity, said the latest conflict shows that refugees are still unwelcome in Korean society, where discrimination and exclusion against nationality and religion remain prevalent.



"When news that the Afghan evacuees were to move to our region spread among online communities, some residents worried that their settlement would badly affect housing prices. And many others seemed to be hostile due to religious reasons," he said.



When asked why Ulsan residents should support the settlement of Afghan evacuees, Kim said the influx of foreign workers would help the local economy, as the shipping sector in the industrial city of Ulsan has long been suffering from a labor shortage.



Kim said that the Afghan children, who haven't been able to receive proper education for several months, should be guaranteed the right to learn within the public education system.



But at the same time, he expressed concerns that the Afghan students may face blatant racism at school.



"This is somewhat similar to what black students in the U.S. had to go through in the 1950s and 60s. When students of color were first accepted by schools, they faced threats on their way to school. It will be a tragedy to see such conflicts arising in 21st century Korea," he said.



The civic activist urged the city government and education authorities to actively engage in discussions involving both parties.



The Ministry of Justice, which oversees the settlement of Afghan evacuees in Korean society, admitted there was a lack of involvement by Ulsan residents in the decision-making process.





Afghan children attend a taekwondo class on a playing field at the Leadership Campus of the National Human Resources Development Institute in Jincheon, North Chungcheong Province, Oct.13, 2021. Joint Press Corps
New Delhi [India], March 14 (ANI/PNN): Bharatiya Railways Mall Godam Shramik Union (BRMGSU) hosted a function for giving honour to the Ministry of Labour, Government of India at the Constitution Club of India in New Delhi on Saturday 12 March 2022.

The ceremony started at 12 noon.

The event was organized by BRMGSU President Parimal Kanti Mandal and General Secretary Vidyadhar Mallick, Chief Labour Commissioner (Centre) (CLC (C)) Ajay Kumar Samantray was present as the chief guest, as well as additional- Chief Labour Commissioner (Central), Deputy Chief Labour Commissioner (Central), Assistant Labour Commissioner (Central), Labour Enforcement Officer, Deputy Chief Labour Commissioner (Central) from New Delhi, Regional Labour Commissioner (Central) from Uttar Pradesh and Abhishek Dixit from Rail Board, Ministry of Railways had a dignified presence.

The Ministry of Labor of the Government of India has taken a very big step towards giving dignity to the Railway Mall Godam workers, by recognizing the inclusion of Railway Mall Godam workers in the e-shram portal under the Ministry of Labour, it is a big step. This recognition by the Ministry of Labor will be considered as a milestone in the advancement of Railway Mall Godam Workers. This ceremony is in honor of this great work of the Ministry of Labour. On this occasion, the President of BRMGSU, Parimal Kanti Mondal has presented Shawl and BRMGSU's Momento as gift on honor to the Chief Labour Commissioner (Central), Hon'ble Ajay Kumar Samantaray,

During the felicitation ceremony Ajay Kumar Samantray, R.G. Meena, Rimis Tiru, Niranjan Kumar along with all the officers present while addressing appreciated the work and efforts being done by Indian Railway Mall Godown Shramik Union and President Parimal Kanti Mandal Ji and conveyed their best wishes for the bright future of BRMGSU, And agreed on full cooperation for the upliftment of railway goods warehouse workers.

At end of the part of the event, all the guests present from the Ministry of Railways & Ministry of Labour & Employment at the event unveiled the Railway Mall Godam Workers Survey Form. Ministry of Labour & Employment considered the request of BRMGSU to survey the details of Railway Mall Godam Workers across India.

Hon'ble Minister of State for Labor Rameshwar Teli and Hon'ble Minister of State for Railways and Minister of State for Textiles also sent greetings.

This story is provided by PNN. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/PNN)

DISCLAIMER

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], March 14 (ANI/NewsVoir): Beauty is a key strategic growth pillar at Shoppers Stop, India's leading fashion and beauty destination.

Today, Shoppers Stop has launched Mumbai's second Jo Malone London store at Jio World Drive, BKC. With the launch of this new store, Shoppers Stop now operates 4 Jo Malone London stores in India.

Through Shoppers Stop's partnership with Estee Lauder Group of Companies the brand operates stand-alone MAC Cosmetics, Estee Lauder, Clinique, Bobbi Brown, Jo Malone London, and Too Faced stores and websites.

Known for their bespoke and potent British fragrances, this luxury lifestyle brand provides a wide range of complementary products to go with your scent, like fragrances for body, bath, and home.

Commenting on the launch, Venugopal Nair - Customer Care Associate, Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer, Shoppers Stop Limited said, "Beauty continues to be a strategic pillar for us. Our partnership with Estee Lauder Group of Companies has been growing strong and we are actively pushing our beauty strategy to expand the brand. With the launch of the second Jo Malone London store in Mumbai, we are catering to the upmarket consumers, intensifying our luxury brand offering."

"British luxury fragrances and our customers have consistently shown great enthusiasm and dynamism, making our commitment to expand our presence in India stronger. Shoppers Stop has continued to be a great strategic partner and with its physical and online presence and this partnership, we hope to grow our presence exponentially," said Rohan Vaziralli, General Manager, Estee Lauder Companies India.

The Jo Malone London store at Jio World Drive will provide experiences for beauty aficionados like perfume mixology where fragrance stylists will combine perfumes to form a distinctive and unique blend. Jo Malone London is also your perfect gifting choice with their exclusive calligraphy engraving and other personalization possibilities.

Shoppers Stop Ltd. is the nation's leading premier retailer of fashion and beauty brands established in 1991. Spread across 87 department stores in 47 Cities, the company also operates premium 11 home concept stores, 2 exclusive beauty stores in the name of SSBeauty, 130 Specialty Beauty stores of M.A.C, Estee Lauder, Bobbi Brown, Clinique, Smash box, Jo Malone and 24 Airport doors, occupying an area of 4.5M sq. ft.

Shoppers Stop is home to one of the country's longest running and most coveted loyalty program 'First Citizen'. The company's one-of-a-kind shopping assistance service, 'Personal Shopper' is revolutionizing the way Indians shop, bringing more value, comfort, and convenience to customer experiences.

The brands diversified Omni channel offering spans over 500+ recognized and trusted brands across an incomparable range of products that together serve our overarching objective of delivering customer delight.

Follow us on:

Shop - (https://www.shoppersstop.com)

This story is provided by NewsVoir. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/NewsVoir)

DISCLAIMER

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
New Delhi [India], March 14 (ANI/ATK): Yesha Patel in collaboration with Krish Developers has taken up social initiatives for building sustainable cities and communities under the vision of United Nations Sustainable Development Goals 2030, India.

As part of the initiative, the duo has made up several projects to help the children of the workers to receive their primary education and medical relief too. The collaboration with Krish Developers and United First will benefit people in many aspects of life. Since the pandemic has impacted several nations, they have started supporting the country with creative social initiatives in the collaborations of 23 NGOs in India.

Joining hands with United first was the vision to impact more lives as it is the biggest social consortium of India. With such collaborations, Yesha believes that the execution becomes easy and effectively goes to the next level.

During COVID-19 when the world was suffering from a huge impact, Yesha with Krish Developers served the nation by providing more than two lakh community meals to the people in need along with 60,000 sanitary napkins to all orphanages, 10,000 Medical kits to all the community centres with the support of 56 NGOs of the nation. She further participated in building 100 Tribal marts for Gujarat, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh for improving the economic conditions of the people.

"Doing work does not make a person lose the right to receive education--in any dire case it is a necessity by which the world runs. India is a country with a large population, helping in small steps will lead to a better ground where the vision where each dignified person would be standing, making their alibis count", says 16 years old Yesha Patel.

Recently, Yesha has completed over one million plantation movements in 15 States and 2 UT in India. Yesha believes that it is our moral responsibility to serve the nation in need. Her social contribution and services have also been blessed by several cabinet ministers and spiritual leaders of the nation.

Studying in Kameshawar school, Ahmedabad, Yesha has always been a keen student striving for the upliftment of the underprivileged and deprived. Starting off with her support in various projects she partook in across the nation, she was always ready to help those in need-- she said, "like my father, who supported the underprivileged by providing them educational scholarships, it was the very trait that I think I wanted to inherit--to be kind and courageous enough to unhesitatingly offer a hand to someone in need", she further added.

With an aim to improve the conditions and working of society--adding to her contribution towards the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals 2030 India--Yesha has been connecting with more people globally to create a sustainable environment for the underprivileged and deprived.

This story is provided by ATK. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/ATK)

DISCLAIMER

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Short-distance rural tourism grew more popular in Chinas capital during this years Labor Day holiday amid curbs on travel to control the pandemic. Bookings for hotels and homestays outside urban areas started earlier than usual for this years five-day national holiday, with volumes climbing since April 10. Despite Covid control measures, most scenic spots in suburban areas remain open, though visitors are required to present negative Covid-19 test results to enter

May 04, 2022 03:50 PM
Oleksii Omelianovych drinks beer with his mom in Kvasy, Ukraine, in January. / Courtesy of Oleksii Omelianovych



By Arlo Matisz



Oleksii Omelianovych comes across as very friendly and earnest, managing to convey honest humor even while his home country is under invasion. He seems more like a new friend you've made at your dormitory than the very accomplished researcher he has become, and maybe that's because he became one in so short a time.



Leaving his small hometown at just 13 to attend a science high school with its own dormitory in Kyiv, he entered adulthood early, entering Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv three years later. He describes pleasant memories of home, but his early ambition becomes apparent as he explains what brought him to Korea.



"There was an opportunity found by my brother (a student at KAIST at the time) to do a summer internship at Chungnam National University, and for me as an ordinary Ukrainian dude, it was an amazing chance to go abroad, especially to Korea," he says during an interview . "It's half the world apart from Ukraine new culture, new people, new buildings, everything. Without hesitation I took the opportunity."



Oleksii was fortunate to meet his future adviser, a professor that had some fairly progressive ideas for research collaboration. This professor believed in the benefits of international students working together with Korean researchers. The use of English with its importance as the international language of research and publication, combined with  in Oleksii's words  the really strong technologies being developed in Korea, would benefit the research environment for all involved.



"The way of thinking, how I analyze the problem and see the solution, may be really different from a guy with a different background and education. I believe exchange and this synergy between ideas is really amazing and could lead to something really fruitful and productive," he explains.



Oleksii gushes about the experience. "I really enjoyed this summer in Korea, and wanted the dream to continue." And it did. After completing his bachelor's degree back in Ukraine, he returned to Korea for his Master's degree and PhD. He is now a postdoc in Chungnam's Department of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry working on the next generation of solar cells.





Oleksii Omelianovych visits the Motherland Monument in Kyiv, Ukraine, August 2019. / Courtesy of Oleksii Omelianovych



Throughout the interview, Oleksii pauses frequently to check his phone. The civil alarm siren was activated in his mother's town, and he is worried for her. When asked whether he wants to return to take up arms against the invader, he looks torn.



"To be honest, I have an emotional and rational part. So emotional part, yes, I really want to go back, and take a weapon and fight for my country, but from the rational point of view, I don't know one thing about military or being a soldier. I was studying my whole life," he says. "I believe that even now that I can help more efficiently from here by donating to the army. Also going to protests in Seoul, asking the Korean government to do something, and spreading the message."



Prior to the invasion, did he think that Putin would actually attack? He still seems shocked.



"I'm an engineer, so any decision I take after rational analysis of the consequencesI address this issue with the same logic," he says. "I do not understand; why is he doing this?"



His tone begins shifting from incredulous to determined. "Alright, his aim is to destroy Ukraine's military, right? So he kills all our soldiers, he goes and changes the flags on government buildings, and then what, all Ukrainians become Russians, automatically? I don't think so! I am from eastern Ukraine and my first language is Russian but I am not Russian and I will never be. I carry Ukrainian culture. I speak Ukrainian. I am Ukrainian and nothing could ever change that!"






Interview: U.S. private prisons "big business" at expense of human rights -- expert

Xinhua) 15:02, March 14, 2022

MEXICO CITY, March 13 (Xinhua) -- Driven by a motive to seek profits, a system originally designed for rehabilitation has become "big business" that thrives on violations of the human rights of migrants and minorities, said a Mexican expert in strategic studies, referring to private prisons in the United States.

Private prisons were founded in the 1980s to make up for bed shortages in federal and state ones. The U.S. government pays private prison management companies for each inmate, so the more prisoners, the higher the earnings, said Raul Benitez Manaut, a professor at the Center for Research on North America at Mexico's National Autonomous University, in an interview with Xinhua.

This money-making endeavor has been supported by what he calls the U.S. "iron fist" policy on street crime, which for the past 30 years has "given the police incentives to send more people to prison for minor crimes, in collusion with prosecutors and judges."

Prison privatization in the United States, on the rise in the last three decades, has adulterated the essence of the prison system by turning it into business whose profitability relies on the number of inmates, said Benitez.

The United States has the largest prison population of more than 2 million and the highest prison population rate of 629 prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants, according to the latest data from the Institute for Crime and Justice Policy Research at the School of Law of Birkbeck of University of London.

Low-income groups and ethnic minorities are the main victims of the police and judicial practices feeding private prisons, which can be defined as discriminatory practices that violate human rights, said Benitez.

Black and Latino Americans were incarcerated at about 5 times and 1.3 times respectively the rate of white Americans, according to the U.S. News and World Report in October 2021.

The Black population is larger than the white one in U.S. prisons because many Afro-descendants do not have the money to pay for a lawyer and avoid jail, said Benitez, adding that "judges normally favor the white population, and often punish the Black and Latino population, so those are human rights violations."

Benitez also noted that the rise in undocumented migrants heading to the United States has benefited owners of private detention centers, as they receive money for each migrant held, and employ detainees as extremely cheap labor.

The criminalization of immigration has contributed to the high number of people behind bars in the United States, and many migrants are held in detention centers operated by private companies, where their human rights are violated or limited, according to organizations and activists.

As of September 2021, 79 percent of people detained each day in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody were held in private detention facilities, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

The GEO Group and CoreCivic are the two largest owners, managers and operators of private prisons in the United States, with combined revenue in 2020 of more than 4 billion dollars.

The companies are also large donors to political campaigns, such as that of former U.S. President Donald Trump, and hire firms to lobby for their interests among lawmakers and in the upper echelons of U.S. power.

Benitez said that government officials, from the local and regional levels and up, and operators of private prisons benefit from the current system, with which in mind the federal government "cannot and does not want to" eradicate prison privatization. "It's a vicious circle."

(Web editor: Peng yukai, Liang Jun)




A 35-year-old woman admitted abandoning her 4-year-old daughter on a deserted road on a freezing cold night during a court hearing of her trial on charges of child abuse, Monday.







A 25-year-old man, known as the woman's acquaintance, also pleaded guilty as an accessory to the child abuse at the Incheon District Court in the port city, 50 kilometers west of Seoul.







The woman, whose identity was withheld, was indicted on child abandonment and neglect charges after leaving her young daughter on a back road near her daycare center in Goyang, northwest of Seoul, at about 10 p.m. Nov. 26 last year, when the temperature dropped below zero.







The man, who allegedly became acquainted with the woman through an internet game, was also indicted for aiding and abetting her.







They are accused of having gone to a nearby motel after taking the child out of the man's car and leaving her on the deserted road.







The woman told police earlier parenting was difficult for her and her acquaintance suggested abandoning the child. (Yonhap)


White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan speaks during a press briefing at the White House, Feb. 11, 2022, in Washington. President Biden is sending his national security adviser for talks with a senior Chinese official in Rome on Monday, March 14, 2022. The meeting comes as concerns grow that China is amplifying Russian disinformation in the Ukraine war. Last week the White House accused Beijing of spreading false Russian claims that Ukraine was running chemical and biological weapons labs with U.S. support. The White House says talks between national security adviser Jake Sullivan and senior Chinese foreign policy adviser Yang Jiechi will center on efforts to manage the competition between our two countries and discuss the impact of Russias war against Ukraine on regional and global security." (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
Iran has claimed responsibility for a missile barrage that struck near a sprawling U.S. consulate complex in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil, saying it was retaliation for an Israeli strike in Syria that killed two members of its Revolutionary Guard.
Glen, NH (03838)

Today

Rain likely. High 51F. Winds W at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%..

Tonight

Rain showers this evening with clearing overnight. Low 43F. Winds WNW at 15 to 25 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
Mills sexual misconduct allegations were being investigated by no fewer than four state agencies, including the Illinois Attorney General, DHS Office of the Inspector General, the Department of Children and Family Services, and two divisions of the Illinois State Police.
Photo: The Canadian Press Contents from a tailings pond is pictured going down the Hazeltine Creek into Quesnel Lake near the town of Likely, B.C. on August, 5, 2014. Three engineers have been disciplined nearly eight years after British Columbia's worst mining disaster. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward

Three engineers have been disciplined nearly eight years after one of Canada's worst mining catastrophes.

Engineers and Geoscientists British Columbia, a provincial regulatory and licensing body, said in a statement that its years-long investigation into the Mount Polley disaster was among its most complex cases.

As a result, two former engineers have been ordered to pay a combined $226,500 while a third has been temporarily suspended and ordered to complete additional training.

"This marks the final chapter in a long and difficult story for our province and our professions," CEO Heidi Yang said in the statement.

The tailings dam at the Mount Polley copper and gold mine, owned by Imperial Metals, failed in August 2014, releasing more than 20 million cubic metres of mining wastewater into surrounding waterways in B.C.'s Interior.

The regulator reviewed thousands of documents including contracts, technical reports and drawings, correspondence and daily site reports, it said.

During the disciplinary hearings, it did not make allegations or findings as to the cause of the embankment failure, it said.

Former engineers Todd Martin and Stephen Rice were ordered to pay $94,000 and $132,500, respectively, in fines and legal fees after the panel found both acted unprofessionally.

Martin resigned his licence in 2020, while Rice resigned in 2018. Neither is permitted to practise professional engineering in British Columbia, however they can reapply under conditions.

The regulator said Martin, who was responsible for the geotechnical engineering work at the mine, admitted in a consent order that some of his work was not consistent with prudent engineering practices, including his failure to recommend drilling to improve embankment foundation soils and his failure to record important field observations in 2011.

Rice's unprofessional conduct included failing to properly fill the role of review engineer and allowing a junior engineer with little experience in embankment design to act in a senior role on the project, the regulator said.

Laura Fidel, who was the junior engineer in question, was found to have failed to ensure sufficient observation of the dam and to monitor seepage flows that could provide evidence of unsafe embankment conditions. The panel ordered her to undergo more training and suspended her registration as a professional engineer for two months.

Martin, and lawyers for both Fidel and Rice, could not immediately be reached for comment.

In June, British Columbias chief auditor of mines found changes in 2016 to the provinces requirements for tailings storage facilities made after an independent investigation into the disaster have generally improved the management of mining waste. However, it also found the Mines Ministry is not consistent in its approach to enforcement at tailings storage facilities that aren't in operation, in contrast to its systematic approach for operating ones.

The Mines Ministry and Environment Ministry could not immediately be reached for comment.

After the breach, Engineers and Geoscientists B.C. says it also took actions to improve dam safety, including producing professional practice guidelines relating to dam foundations, updating existing guidelines to clarify certain duties and hosting professional development seminars.

It is currently updating guidelines on legislated dam safety reviews, it said.

"The conclusion of these cases, combined with resources weve developed to improve dam safety, will strengthen our professions and our provinces environmental safeguards, Yang says in the statement.
Re. Developer lobbying gov't (Castanet, March 11)

Its very sad to hear that Canadian Horizons just wont listen to the public or our elected officials.

We dont want the forest cut down and the hillside scraped off to make room for a 300-plus, Surrey-style, concrete sub-division.

The neighbours dont want it, the farmers dont want it, 44 businesses along the Naramata Bench dont want it, the Penticton Indian Band doesnt want it, the environmentalists dont want it and the City of Penticton doesnt want it.

But like a spoiled child who runs to their other parent when told no, Canadian Horizons is not willing to accept the clear, decisive, unanimous decision Penticton city council handed down in February 2021. No!

And just like a playground bully throwing a temper tantrum, Canadian Horizons is now suing the City of Kelowna because that city council had the nerve to say no.

I find it very insulting that Canadian Horizons is now trying to convince the provincial government that the resident of Penticton are not qualified to make their own decisions. The ability to decide on our own vision for Penticton should not be taken away from us and handed over to the province.

So what happens when the province turns them down? Are they going to run to the federal government and stomp their feet while they hold their breath?

Canadian Horizons, youre just not getting it.

We can make our own decisions and no means no.

John Bilodeau
Photo: The Canadian Press Minister of Public Safety and Solicitor General Mike Farnworth leaves the podium after speaking at a press conference in the press gallery at Legislature in Victoria, B.C., on Monday Feb.5, 2018. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chad Hipolito

The British Columbia government has moved to prevent thefts of catalytic converters, a crime that costs millions every year.

The province has changed the regulations for metal dealers and recyclers to require them to report each transaction, including seller information, to police.

Catalytic converters control exhaust emissions to reduce pollutants, but they have been a target for thieves because of an increase in the price of metals they contain.

The Insurance Corporation of B.C. says converter theft claims have climbed from 89 in 2017 to 1,953 last year, totalling more than $4 million in claim costs for 2021.

Up until the regulation changes on Monday, the converters could be sold without providing information about the seller, allowing them to remain anonymous.

Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth says changing the rules will help police find offenders and work to reduce the incentive for people to steal them in the first place.
A man allegedly bear sprayed a TransLink bus driver in the face in Vancouver, says the Metro Vancouver Transit Police

On Sunday, Feb. 20, at around 2:45 a.m., a man boarded a bus near the 900 block of Main Street in Vancouver and made his way to the back, explains a news release.

After sitting on the bus for several minutes, he got up from his seat while the bus was moving and stumbled and fell. After he fell, he dropped some of his belongings when the bus moved. After collecting his things, the man moved to the front of the bus, sitting directly across from the driver.

When the bus stopped, the suspect allegedly "reached around the plexiglass barrier that separates passengers from the operator, and sprayed the contents of a canister, believed to be bear spray, into the face of the operator."

Prior to the assault, there was no interaction between the transit operator and the suspect. He was last seen running northbound on Main Street.

The assault immediately impaired the driver's breathing and he was treated by Vancouver Fire and Rescue Services. Police say he did not suffer serious physical injuries, but the assault has had an impact on his mental well-being.

This employee was providing an essential and highly valuable service to the public. Everyone deserves to be free from fear of harassment or assault while on transit, including the frontline employees who keep the system moving. Violence of any kind will never be tolerated," said Cnst. Amanda Steed

The suspect is described as an Indigenous male, 35-45 years of age, slim build, and short black hair. He was seen wearing a black hooded jacket, dark pants, black runners, a black backpack with a Naloxone kit hanging from the shoulder, sunglasses, surgical mask and a necklace with a medium-sized pendant or keys hanging near his mid-section.

Anyone with information regarding the identity of this suspect or who witnessed this incident is asked to contact the Metro Vancouver Transit Police by phone at 604.515.8300 or by text at 87.77.77
Members of women's advocacy groups hold a press conference in Jung District, Seoul, Friday. The slogan in Korean on the orange signs reads, "Stop politics of hatred, Go politics of gender equality." Yonhap



By Lee Hae-rin



Women's rights activists called on President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol to withdraw his campaign pledge to close down the Ministry of Gender, Equality, and Family. Yoon has proposed shutting down the ministry by claiming it devotes itself too much to women's rights.



A coalition of 27 women's advocacy groups held a press conference in Jung District, Seoul, Friday criticizing Yoon and the main opposition People Power Party (PPP) of inciting hatred and exacerbating the gender divide during the presidential race.



"President-elect Yoon is given a responsibility to recognize Korea's structural gender discrimination and actively seek ways to solve the issue," the coalition said in a statement, condemning his campaign promise to increase punishment on false accusations of sexual assault and shut down the gender ministry.



The women's rights groups said such pledges resulted from Yoon's lack of understanding of structural gender discrimination and could end up justifying and intensifying discrimination and violence against women and minorities.






Photo: The Canadian Press Conservative leadership candidate Leslyn Lewis rises during question period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Dec. 2, 2021. Lewis says a Quebec law restricting public servants in positions of authority from wearing religious symbols at work is "explicit religious discrimination." THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

Conservative leadership candidate and rookie MP Leslyn Lewis says a Quebec law restricting public servants in positions of authority from wearing religious symbols at work is "explicit religious discrimination."

Lewis, who is running for the leadership a second time, says the party must make decisions "based on principle" and not how it will be viewed by a particular demographic

Her statement on Quebec's controversial secularism law, know by its legislative title of Bill 21, comes as other candidates have staked out their positions on the matter.

Some Tory MPs have called for the party to take a stronger stance on Bill 21 and criticized former leader Erin O'Toole for saying that while he personally opposes the law, it's an issue best left up to Quebecers to decide.

Lewis vowed that if elected as party leader she would condemn religious discrimination regardless of "who it is against or where it is happening."

Fellow leadership candidate Pierre Poilievre, a longtime Ottawa-area MP, also says he opposes the law.

"It is wrong. If anyone proposed it federally, my government would not allow it to pass. I respect Quebecs right to make its own laws, but hope the province repeals the bill," he said in a statement.

Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown, who officially entered the race Sunday, has made a point of saying he's forcefully stood against the law and believes the party can win while doing so.

Former Quebec premier and leadership candidate Jean Charest has also said he opposes the law.
Photo: The Canadian Press Shaw logos are shown on display at the company's annual meeting in Calgary, Jan. 17, 2019. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh

Anthony Lacavera says Globalive is interested in buying Shaw Communications Inc.'s Freedom Mobile wireless assets.

Lacavera founded Wind Mobile and built it into the country's fourth-largest wireless business before selling it in 2016 to Shaw, which rebranded it Freedom Mobile.

Rogers Communications Inc. has signed an agreement to buy Shaw, however the deal faces reviews by three different federal regulators including the Competition Bureau and the CRTC as well as spectrum regulator Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED).

The deal faces opposition in part due to concerns about what it would mean for competition in the wireless industry. Industry watchers expect that Shaw will have to sell some of its assets as a condition of any approval of the deal.

Federal Industry Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne has said that the wholesale transfer of Shaw's wireless licences to Rogers is fundamentally incompatible with the government's policies for spectrum and mobile service competition.

Lacavera, Globalive's chairman, says the company is well-capitalized and has a successful track record of bringing competition to the Canadian marketplace.

"We brought prices down for consumers with Wind Mobile and we will do it again," he says.
An Afghanistan rights group recently organised a public rally in Kabul to demand women's basic rights in Afghanistan. The group Movement of Change for Afghanistan demanded access to work, education, and political participation of the women in Afghanistan. The United Nations high commissioner for human rights, Michelle Bachelet recently visited Kabul, during which she held meetings with representatives of the de facto authorities and civil society representatives.

In a statement on Thursday, Bachelet had stressed that Afghan women must be given the space to lead if the country is to find peace and progress.

The High Commissioner for Human Rights has stressed that girls should be able to go to schools and universities and be empowered to contribute robustly to the future of their country.

"With schools due to reopen on 22 March, I look forward to seeing that the commitments made for all girls and boys to have access to education be fulfilled. Girls and women need to have access to primary, secondary and tertiary education. Such significant steps will go a long way in securing the future of the country," the UN chief said.

Since the Taliban took over Afghanistan in August last year, there have been more drastic changes in the country, with the decline in hostilities afterwards the conflict-related causalities have reduced dramatically.

Notably, the Taliban regime which took over Kabul in last August has curtailed women's rights and freedoms with women largely excluded from the workplace due to the economic crisis and restriction.

(ANI)
Bishop Gorman High School in the Diocese of Tyler, Texas is looking for a few great faculty to join their team. As of 3/14/22, the ... continue reading

What's the difference between a deacon and a priest? Why can't a deacon hear my confession and forgive sins? We asked Catholic Online's ... continue reading

To all our readers, Please don't scroll past this. We interrupt your reading to humbly ask you to defend Catholic Online School's independence. 98% of our readers don't give; they look the other way. If you are an exceptional reader who has already donated, we sincerely thank you. If you donate just $10.00, or whatever you can, Catholic Online School could keep thriving for years. Most people donate because Catholic Online School is useful. If Catholic Online School has given you $10.00 worth of knowledge this year, take a minute to donate. Show the world that access to Catholic education matters to you. Thank you.



Help Now >





The Associated Press published an article detailing the challenges many priests face. It is time for a change in how the Church ... continue reading

A newly-formed group of Catholic mothers in Rochester, New York has committed to praying regularly for the flourishing of vocations from ... continue reading

Canon law should be re-written to institute a global zero-tolerance policy against priests who commit sexual abuse, a clerical abuse ... continue reading

Marian shrines in more than 50 countries throughout world will join in a 24-hour rosary initiative on Friday to intercede for and honor the ... continue reading

To all our readers, Please don't scroll past this. We interrupt your reading to humbly ask you to defend Catholic Online School's independence. 98% of our readers don't give; they look the other way. If you are an exceptional reader who has already donated, we sincerely thank you. If you donate just $10.00, or whatever you can, Catholic Online School could keep thriving for years. Most people donate because Catholic Online School is useful. If Catholic Online School has given you $10.00 worth of knowledge this year, take a minute to donate. Show the world that access to Catholic education matters to you. Thank you.



Help Now >





Prayer is the first part of missionary work Watch

Every Christian is called to be a missionary through prayer, working in collaboration with the Holy Spirit, who gives prayer efficacy, Pope ... continue reading

The Vatican has asked nuns to spend less time on social media and more time in prayer and contemplation. The request follows consultation ... continue reading

Twins consecrated to the Virgin Mary both chose religious vocations Watch

As infants, Monica and Cristian Moya were hovering on the verge of death. But after their mother consecrated them to the Virgin Mary, they ... continue reading

The investiture of Sister Maria Vittoria della Croce last month marked the first ceremony of its kind to be held in the Italian city of ... continue reading
Golden Bay Cement orders two hydrogen trucks

14 March 2022

Golden Bay Cement will receive two Hyzon-600HP 58t hydrogen-powered trucks in September 2022.

It is another step towards lowering the New Zealand cement producers carbon footprint across the business having leased the trucks from TR Group.

The hydrogen fuel cells combine hydrogen (stored on-board the vehicle) and oxygen (from the atmosphere) to generate electricity that powers the vehicle. They only emission is water vapour. This will prevent approximately around a tonne of CO 2 emitted on a daily use.

Our Green trucks will have an expected range of 550-600km depending on weight and terrain.

Gian Raffainer, the general manager of Cement Industrial, explains, Theres a total of 20 Hyzon trucks being brought to New Zealand by TR Group and for us to obtain two, its a total privilege. These trucks will demonstrate how hydrogen can be a reliable and how achievable is to reduce payload compared with a diesel truck.

Initially Golden Bay Cement will be trialling these trucks in the Auckland area and will assess further expansion as infrastructure for fuelling stations continues to grow.

Published under
Police were informed by employees at the Speedway, 1330 E. 3rd St., of a female who was causing a disorder and refusing to leave, and a man in the men's room who had been in there

for 40 minutes refusing to leave. Police identified the woman and the man. Warrant checks

were conducted for both of them, showing no active warrants. Both were informed they have been trespassed and needed to leave the property. Both of them left without incident.

* * *

A man on West MLK Boulevard told police he had come out to his vehicle, a black Toyota Sequoyah, where he discovered the catalytic converter had been stolen from it. He said he had not driven the vehicle in two days. His estimate for repairs was $500.

* * *



An EPB technician, who was at the 2400 block of Hickory Valley Road, told police that at approximately 10:05 p.m. EPB received an alert that Internet and phone services in the area were down. When the technician came to check the cable box in the area, he found the fiber optic wire cut in half. No suspect information is known.



* * *



A woman told police she was walking her dog down Sequoia Drive when she spotted a Kia Optima sitting abandoned in the middle of the roadway. Police ran the tag and it came back stolen. Police contacted the owner who came and recovered the vehicle. Police took the vehicle out of NCIC.

* * *

Police were notified by dispatcher that an East Ridge investigator had located a stolen vehicle from Catoosa County. The owner of the vehicle was unable to respond to pick up the vehicle and requested to have it towed. A vehicle recovery report was completed and the vehicle was removed out of NCIC.

* * *



A man on Standifer Gap Road told police he parked his 2016 Kai Sedona van last night about 10:30 p.m. He said he returned to his vehicle this morning at about 9 a.m. and discovered that the catalytic converter had been stolen.

* * *



A woman on Sylvan Drive asked for police assistance due to her wanting to serve another person with court paperwork. She said she needed to serve the person the paperwork; however, the person was not on scene. The woman left without incident.

* * *



An employee at a business at 3536 Brainerd Road told police there was a man going through their dumpster. Police spoke with the man and gave him verbal commands to exit the dumpster. He was told that it was illegal for him to be in the dumpster. Police trespassed the man and told him that if he came back he would go directly to jail.

* * *



A man on Greenway View Drive told police that yesterday he rented a 2021 Chevrolet Silverado from U-Haul at 2022 Broad St. He said that he had been to Walmart on Greenway View Drive and this morning discovered that the left side rear tail light had been busted. He said there is no

other damage to the area of the tail light and therefore he believes this to be vandalism. He said he purchased the insurance for the vehicle through U-Haul.

* * *

A man contacted police and said vehicles were blocking the entrance of a parking lot at 19 Patten Pkwy. Police were able to locate the owners of both vehicles and both vehicles were moved. Police

have assisted the man several times and this report is for documentation.

* * *

A man told police he left his phone on the counter by the check out at the Mobil gas station, 7420 Bonny Oaks Dr. He said 18 minutes later he returned and the phone was gone. Police observed security footage which showed two white males, who appeared to be working together, take the phone.

* * *

An employee at McDonald's, 6220 Lee Hwy., told police that a white male was in the restroom washing his clothes. The employee said that they would like the person to leave and for him to be trespassed from the property. Police spoke with the man in the bathroom and he was told to leave. He left without incident.
The John Sevier Hunter Education Center in Knoxville is hosting a shotgun sight-in day for hunters prior to the spring turkey hunting season.

On March 24, from 1-6 p.m., hunters are invited to pattern their shotguns on the bench rest range out to 50 yards. The cost is an $8 range permit fee but is free for licensed big game hunters.

The spring turkey hunting season begins on March 26-27 with the Young Sportsman hunt, followed by the regular season opening statewide from April 2 - May 15.

John Sevier Hunter Education Center is at 2327 Rifle Range Road, Knoxville, Tn.

37918.

For more information, contact range manager Chad Gann at 865 594-6279.
Local author and teacher John V. Suter, of Sale Creek, will release the second novel of the action

adventure series Brett Wilson and De Sotos Cross on June 7.

About the book:

The hunt for Cibola continues as Brett Wilson returns home from the canyons of New Mexico ready to locate her missing father. With the information from Dr. Mies, Brett ventures into the mountains of

Tennessee in search of the mystical cross of de Soto.



If she can find the cross, the doorway to Cibola can be opened.

Rock Wilsons life hangs in the balance as Brett races across Tennessee with her best friend, Natalie. They will use her dads field book once again to uncover the clues hidden inside. Unfortunately, she isnt the only one looking for the relic and the door to Cibola.
It appears Amal Clooney has it all: career, wealth, family, respect, andto top it offmarital bliss. Now, the human-rights lawyer and activist has been named one of Time magazines Women of the Year for 2022 for her work defending some of the most inspiring and noble causes the world over. Heres a look at Amal Clooneys history with husband George Clooney and the many ways she is working to make the world a better place.

Amal Clooney and George Clooneys dating days

At its root, Amal Clooney and George Clooneys relationship mirrors many fledgling romances, with the seed of romance growing from humor.

In a series of emails sent in the voice of his dog, Einstein, George Clooney pleaded for legal assistance from Amal Clooney, who says she fell in love with George Clooney as a result of the notes. The pair then began dating in 2013 after meeting again in London, with their dating culminating in Georges impromptu proposal while the couple was on safari in Kenya.

Time magazine names Amal Clooney a Woman of the Year

"I'm guided by what I'm really outraged about."



Amal Clooney is waging justice for victims of human-rights abuses https://t.co/KV4R5ifQEn pic.twitter.com/7vFTwfnkYE  TIME (@TIME) March 3, 2022

Along with her seven-year marriage to George Clooney, Amal Clooney is effectively slaying life as a successful human-rights lawyer, activist, and champion of lost causes. Recently named one of this years Women of the Year by Time Magazine, Amals work includes cases that fight against sexual abuse and womens enslavement as well as one recent case this past November against ISIS for genocide. She is also a special adviser to the International Criminal Court prosecutor on Darfur, working on the case of former Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir.

And, along with being happy at home, Amal and George Clooney are also co-founders for the Clooney Foundations Waging Justice for Women, which champions causes like that of Tanzanian girls being able to continue their education despite being pregnant or marriedsomething previously banned.

With the incredibly long list of noble causes Amal Clooney currently has underway, it would be easy to think that family life would come second to her purpose, but it seems Amal has found balance. Amal tells Time: Marriage has been wonderful. I have in my husband a partner who is incredibly inspirational and supportive, and we have a home filled with love and laughter. It is a joy beyond anything I could ever have imagined. I feel so lucky to have found a great love in my life, and to be a motherthis is how I get my balance.

And, after nearly eight years of marriage, George Clooney is still sending Amal Clooney notes, with the pair now exchanging routine love letters, though no longer from the dog.

Marriage and family were never planned for the Clooneys

Amal Clooney and George Clooney attend the premiere of Hulus Catch-22 | Rachel Murray/Getty Images for Hulu

Amal Clooney and George Clooney, who have a 17-year age gap, got engaged and later wed in an elaborate ceremony in Venice in 2014. Though both seemed enamored with one another from the beginning when they met at George Clooneys home in Lake Como, Italy in 2013, their wedding came as a surprise to the public and to the couple who claim they never planned to get married. Another unplanned but joyous surprise came in 2017 when the couple welcomed the arrival of their twins, Ella and Alexander, who are now going on five years old.

RELATED: George Clooney and Amal Never Planned To Get Married or Have Kids
President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol attends a ceremony to disband his presidential election team at the National Assembly Library in Seoul, March 10. AP-Yonhap





More than half of Koreans expect President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol to do well on state affairs, a survey showed Monday.







According to the survey of 1,018 adults conducted by Realmeter last Thursday and Friday, 52.7 percent of respondents expect Yoon to perform well on state affairs.







In contrast, 41.2 percent say they did not expect him to do so, the survey showed. The remaining 6.1 percent say they were unsure.







Yoon won a tight election last week by a razor-thin margin of 0.73 percent with 48.56 percent of the vote.







According to previous Realmeter surveys on expectations of a president-elect's job performance, 79.3 percent of respondents were positive about former President Lee Myung-bak and 64.4 percent were positive about former President Park Geun-hye.






Below Decks Rhylee Gerber described her Alaskan glacier adventure as one of the most intensely breathtaking experiences shes ever had  and fans may end up seeing the encounter on a show shes currently filming.

The Knik Glacier trek is just one of many authentically Alaskan experiences Gerber offers through her curated The Life of Rhylee tours. From ice fishing to hunting, Gerbers services allow clients to see the true heart of Alaska and glacial trekking is often on most adventurers bucket lists.

A few friends joined Gerber for the latest trip up a frozen waterfall  but first, they had to get there. Ive been glacial trekking before, she explained to Showbiz Cheat Sheet. But this is the second time Ive ever been in a helicopter and the first time Ive ever done ice climbing.

Rhylee Gerber went from Below Deck to hovering over a glacier

So, yeah, it was amazing, she shared. I was able to get a trip booked through another affiliate in Alaska who is well-versed in Alaska tourism and we were able to get on this trip with the Alaska Helicopter Tours.

Rhylee Gerber | photo by Rhylee Gerber

Even the trip in the helicopter was stunning. First of all, flying over anything is always kind of exhilarating to me, she said. But when you fly over something like beautiful scenery in Alaska and especially a glacier, it was intense. Not only are the colors as vibrant as they are in a glacier, but its also just so vast.

Its like youre falling, Rhylee recounts

We ended up coming up on this frozen waterfall that was 200 something feet, the former Below Deck deckhand recounted. The tour guides secured Gerber and her friends in harnesses, showed them the technique to climb the frozen waterfall, and then allowed them to explore.

Rhylee Gerber | photo by Rhylee Gerber

Gerber recalled how one of her friends took to ice climbing with ease. But Gerber had a few stressful moments. My legs started shaking uncontrollably, she recalled. Because you slip sometimes. They tell you to step and throw your pick a certain way. But sometimes, the ice doesnt hold. So your legs slip or your hands slip. This happened while Gerber was perched a few hundred feet above the ground.

Its like youre falling, she described. Meanwhile, climbers rely on the person holding the ropes to ensure a safe climb. I think there was one time when I just fell like two or three inches and then my legs would not stop shaking after [laughs].

Rhylee goes beyond Below Deck in her latest adventure

Gerber said the entire encounter was filmed. They wanted to get good drone shots, she said. And my cameraman thought it would be a brilliant idea to send the helicopter out. And get a shot of the helicopter literally like hovering right by us on the waterfall.

So they told us that but within seconds it was up, she continued. At that moment we were already at the top of the anchor, so we couldnt climb anymore. So we were just standing there, but I had also fallen a bit. So I was sort of standing slash hanging. It was an exhilarating adventure and I would gladly do it again.

Rhylee Gerber | photo by Rhylee Gerber

The entire encounter lasted about half of a day. We also went walking around the glacier, she said. That was really cool and of course saw all the crevasses. We saw moose droppings on the glacier! Which was like where the f*** did this moose go?

Then we got back in the helicopter and we convinced our pilot to take us on a little ride. We landed 7,000 feet up on top of a ridgeline on Chugach Mountain where it was so intense. Just all white all around us, and its spooky because there wasnt a lot of room to land. And then were walking out and you could trigger an avalanche. It was so insane to be on top of that mountain, just looking over this frozen barren, beautiful Alaska.

Gerber couldnt offer many specifics about the show she was filming but said fans should stay tuned.

RELATED: Rhylee Gerber from Below Deck Shares Her Awe-Inspiring Road Trip to Alaska
Sam Elliott stirred up some controversy with some heated criticisms about director Jane Campions The Power of the Dog. While the film is nominated for 12 Academy Awards including Best Picture, it didnt do enough apparently to win over Elliott. Campion has now come back with a scathing response toward Elliott.

Sam Elliott called The Power of the Dog a piece of s***

Jane Campion | Randy Shropshire/Getty Images for Critics Choice Association

In an interview on Marc Marons WTF podcast, Elliott was asked whether he liked Campions film and called it a piece of s***. His main criticisms were regarding the references to homosexuality that are present throughout the film and compares the characters to Chippendale dancers.

Thats what all these f**king cowboys in that movie looked like, running around in chaps and no shirts, Elliott told Maron. There were all these allusions to homosexuality throughout the f**king movie.

While he doesnt criticize her talent as a director, Elliott also questioned Campions background in regards to making a western. Campion is from New Zealand and Elliott believes that this gives her little understanding of the American West.

Well, what the f**k does this woman from down there  shes a brilliant director  know about the American West, and why the f**k did she shoot this movie in New Zealand and call it Montana and say, This is the way it was, Elliott remarked.

Jane Campion responds to Elliotts comments in a brutal fashion

Jane Campion responds to Sam Elliott's #ThePowerOfTheDog comments: "I'm sorry, he was being a little bit of a B-I-T-C-H. He's not a cowboy; he's an actor. The West is a mythic space and there's a lot of room on the range. I think it's a little bit sexist." https://t.co/I32wQ8lCiF pic.twitter.com/Tftq4AoXCy  Variety (@Variety) March 13, 2022

Campion was unfiltered in her response to Elliotts comments. Speaking with Variety on the red carpet for the DGA (Directors Guild of America) awards, Campion gave her response to the 1883 actors controversial quotes.

Im sorry, he was being a little bit of a B****. Hes not a cowboy; hes an actor, Campion said.The West is a mythic space and theres a lot of room on the range. I think its a little bit sexist.

Campion accused Elliott of being sexist as he criticized her for being a foreigner making a film about the American West, but didnt share the same critiques toward male western filmmakers who were also foreigners or didnt direct a film in America.

When you think about the number of amazing Westerns made in Spain by (director) Sergio Leone, the director said. I consider myself a creator. I think he thinks of me as a woman or something lesser first, and I dont appreciate that.

The Power of the Dog cast share their thoughts on this issue

Benedict Cumberbatch defended #ThePoweroftheDog following comments made by Sam Elliott, noting what he called "massive intolerance within the world at large toward homosexuality still, toward an acceptance of the other, of any kind of difference" https://t.co/90tkXHlb1d pic.twitter.com/73oatQOrj6  The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) March 12, 2022

In addition to Campion, the rest of the cast of The Power of the Dog responded to Elliotts comments. Benedict Cumberbatch, Kodi Smit-McPhee, and Jesse Plemons have shared reactions with Plemons telling The Hollywood Reporter that Elliotts statements made [him] laugh.

Regardless of what Elliott thinks, the film is nominated for 12 Academy Awards and is currently the frontrunner for Best Picture. Campion is the first female filmmaker to be nominated twice for Best Director; the first time being in 1994 for The Piano. She has a strong chance of winning this year, however, she has some stiff competition like Steven Spielberg for West Side Story and Kenneth Branagh for Belfast.

The Power of the Dog is currently streaming on Netflix.

RELATED: The Power of the Dog Star Kodi Smit-Mcphee Was Blindsided By Twist Ending
Julia Child, featured in the new Food Network limited series The Julia Child Challenge, is arguably one of the most influential chefs in the modern era. Her love for exploring French cooking and making these traditional recipes accessible to the home chef cemented her place within the culinary world. However, it wasnt until 36 years old that her life path was inexplicably changed. This shift was due to one meal Julia Child shared with her husband Paul that transformed how she looked at food.

Julia Child | Bob Sacha /Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images

Where did Julia Child eat the meal that changed her life?

Julia met her husband Paul Child in Ceylon in the summer of 1944.

After marrying in 1946, Julia and Paul lived in Washington D.C. before transferring to France. There, he took a job at the American Embassy.

Raised in Pasadena, California, Julia had not visited France before her marriage to Paul.

As they drove to their new home, Paris, the couple subsequently passed through Rouen.

It was there that the couple arrived at Restaurant La Couronne (The Crown). They sat down for what would be Julias first and most memorable meal in France.

What did Julia eat that altered her life forever?

Sole Meuniere | Chris Walker/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images

At the restaurant, Julia and Paul sat down for what would be a lunch that inexplicably changed her life.

In the book My Life in France, the Smith College graduate details the unforgettable culinary experience.

After beginning their meal with a half-dozen oysters on the half shell served with rye bread, Paul ordered sole meuniere.

The fish was subsequently browned in a butter sauce with a sprinkling of chopped parsley atop it.

The website Flavorful Journeys reprinted Julias comments regarding the meal.

The waiter carefully placed the platter in front of us, stepped back, and said: Bon appetit! I closed my eyes and inhaled the rising perfume. Then I lifted a forkful of fish to my mouth, took a bite, and chewed slowly, Julia explained.

The flesh of the sole was delicate. It had a light but distinct taste of the ocean that blended marvelously with the brown butter. I chewed slowly and swallowed. It was a morsel of perfection, she concluded.

The meal, which she said was the most exciting of her life, was finished with cheese and black coffee.

Julia Childs body of work is honored in a new Food Network limited series

Paul and Julia Child | Rick Friedman/Corbis via Getty Images

Julias body of work is recalled in the new Food Network limited series The Julia Child Challenge.

In this series, eight home cooks and self-professed Julia Child superfans compete. They work in a replica of her home kitchen to cook some of Julias most recognizable dishes.

After weekly eliminations, the winner subsequently has the chance to follow in Julias footsteps. The grand prize is a three-month living experience in Paris, France, with culinary classes at Le Cordon Bleu.

In the inaugural episode, head judge Antonia Lofaso challenges the cooks to find inspiration from the meal that changed Julias life.

They will make the dish that changed their lives for guest judges Francis Lam and Michael Voltaggio.

Julia inspired decades of cooks after her, including Ina Garten, Martha Stewart, and Lidia Bastianich.

The Julia Child Challenge debuts tonight at 9 p.m. EST on the Food Network.

RELATED: Julia Child Used Over 700 Pounds of Butter While Filming 1 Show
Keanu Reeves has had a hand in a variety of movies over the years in a range of genres. From sci-fi to action thriller to horror, Reeves has shown hes not above any subject matter or material. But even Reeves believes hes made some mistakes when it comes to picking movies. And theres one horror film Reeves starred in that he finds absolutely horrible.

Keanu Reeves was tricked into starring in The Watcher

Keanu Reeves | Jorg Carstensen/Getty Images

As some may know, Keanu Reeves starred in the 2000 horror film The Watcher. In the film, he went against type a bit by portraying a serial killer, starring alongside Oscar-winner Marisa Tomei. But if Reeves had it his way, he wouldnt have had anything to do with the film in the first place.

I never found the script interesting, but a friend of mine forged my signature on the agreement, Reeves told the Calgary Sun newspaper (via The Guardian.) I couldnt prove he did and I didnt want to get sued, so I had no other choice but to do the film.

Reeves then had to wait a full year to disclose his feelings towards the situation. Until then, Guardian reported that Reeves hardly promoted the film before its release.

Keanu Reeves called The Watcher terrible

To make matters worse for Reeves regarding The Watcher, he had a much more prominent role in the film than he expected. In the movies earlier drafts, Reeves presence in the film was much smaller.

The script did change, Watcher director Joe Charbanic told Inside (via Hollywood). It got bigger than [he] wanted. He wanted it to be a little boutique film.

As asserted by Reeves himself, Hollywood also reported that The Matrix star tried to back out of the movie. But it was an attempt his lawyers strongly advised against. Reeves instincts were spot-on, however, as the movie went on to earn an almost overwhelming amount of negative reviews. In a much later interview, Reeves revealed that he shared the same opinion as critics. Although he briefly confused The Watcher for another horror film he starred in.

Reeves discussed with IndieWire his 2015 horror flick Knock Knock. The publication mentioned that he hadnt starred in a horror movie prior since The Gift.

Yeah, that was a horror of a different sort, he said, at first referring to The Gift.

When asked to elaborate, Reeves told them that it was a disaster. I hate that movie. Its terrible. Its a disaster.

But quickly, Reeves realized his error. It wasnt The Gift he had in mind, but rather the critically panned Charbanic film.

Oh, The Gift! I was thinking The Watcher. Oh, The Gift is fantastic. Sam Raimi! Thats great. You said The Gift and my brain went to The Watcher. Donny Barksdale. So fantastic, he corrected.

Why Keanu Reeves returned to the horror genre with Knock Knock

Knock Knock was a 2015 horror film directed by Eli Roth. In the movie, Reeves plays an architect who offers two stranded women a chance to spend the night at his house. But the invitation leads to a frightening situation. Before this movie, Reeves hadnt touched the horror genre in years since 2000s The Gift.

As far as why Reeves decided to star in the film? It started with the narrative.

Fantastic story, fantastic script, Reeves told JoBlo. Meeting with Eli, I met him over Skype, he was in Santiago, Chile. He was like, Man, were doing this crazy movie. Heres the script. And I read it, and I thought it was fantastic.

RELATED: Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss Different Worries Re: Matrix 4 Roof Jump
Love Is Blind Season 2 star Shaina Hurley may not have found love in the pods, but she did find love in the real world. Shaina is finally showing off her new man, who she bragged about during the Love Is Blind Season 2 reunion.

Shaina Hurley | Cr. Netflix

Shaina leaves Kyle in Mexico

In episode 2 of Love Is Blind, Kyle Abrahms asked Shaina to be his wife despite their conflicting religious views. Shaina, whose Christian faith is a huge part of her life, wants a husband with the same values. Despite Kyle being an atheist with no interest in religion, Shaina said yes to his proposal.

Shaina Hurley and Kyle Abrams, Love Is Blind Season 2 | Netflix

Upon meeting, Shaina expressed her concerns about compatibility. Once in Mexico, Shaina put their budding romance to a sudden halt after she left Kyle at the resort.

Kyle tried to pursue Shaina when the cast returned to Chicago. After meeting her family, Shaina realized that she and Kyle had no future. So she put an end to the relationship, once and for all.

Shaina shows off her boyfriend

While Shaina hinted at having a new man, she had kept her relationship secret up until now. On March 13, Shaina posted a series of photos to her Instagram showing off her boyfriend. Shaina captioned the post, My ride or die forever. Check out the Instagram post below:

In the photos, Shaina has fun in the sun with her boyfriend in Mykonos, Greece. The first photo shows her wearing a bikini, sunglasses, and a large tote with her shirtless new beau.

Who is Shainas boyfriend, Chris Lardakis

In the first photo, Shaina tagged the man @clardakis. His Instagram profile reveals his name, Chris Lardakis. According to the website, Lardakis is a general contractor for CL Development.

Shaina Hurley, Love Is Blind Season 2 | Netflix

Lardakis also owns the Greek-infused American breakfast/lunch cafe, Kanela Breakfast Club, with four locations around Chicago.

According to his Linkedin, Lardakis has a Bachelor of Business Administration (B.B.A.) focused in Business Administration and Management, General from DePaul University.

Lardakis Instagram bio also includes a quote from Socrates and a Greek flag. Since the photos from Shaina include pictures of them together enjoying Greece, fans are speculating hes Greek.

Love Is Blind fans are happy to see Shaina so happy and in love. This time, it appears that she may have found the right fit for her. One question remains  is he a Godly man?

RELATED: Love Is Blind: Are Natalie Lee and Shayne Jansen Together in 2022?
Fresh off her brilliant performance in Nine Perfect Strangers, Regina Hall is tackling new kinds of demons in her upcoming Prime Video thriller, Master. Hall serves as lead star and executive producer. Heres what she and writer/director Mariama Diallo revealed about the exciting new movie they introduced at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival.

Regina Halls Master is a haunting thriller

Master is an occult drama that follows two Black women, Gail Bishop (Regina Hall) and Jasmine Moore (Zoe Renee), who arrive at Ancaster, a predominantly white Massachusetts college. But as they navigate the institutions culture of racism, the women come upon a sinister force lurking on campus. The films official synopsis reads:

Professor Gail Bishop has recently been promoted to Master of a residence hall, the first time at storied Ancaster College that a Black woman has held the post. Determined to breathe new life into a centuries-old tradition, Gail soon finds herself wrapped up in the trials and tribulations of Jasmine Moore, an energetic and optimistic Black freshman. Jasmines time at Ancaster hits a snag early on when shes assigned a dorm room that is rumored to be haunted. Things get worse when Jasmine clashes in the classroom with Liv Beckman (Amber Gray), a professor in the middle of her own racially charged tenure review. As Gail tries to maintain order and fulfill the duties of a Master, the cracks begin to show in Ancasters once-immaculate facade. After a career spent fighting to make it into Ancasters inner circle, Gail is confronted with the horrifying prospect of what lies beneath, her question ultimately becoming not whether the school is haunted, but by whom.

The Master cast also includes Ozark star Sofia Hublitz and Law & Order: SVU actor Joel de la Fuente. Talia Ryder and Ella Hunt also star.

Filmmaker Mariama Diallo reveals how Master brings her perspective to horror

Master is Diallos first feature film. Her short, Hair Wolf, won a jury award at the Sundance Film Festival in 2018. When talking to IndieWire, the filmmaker talked about bringing her unique perspective to the horror genre and what it means.

I think that theres a way in which horror films made by Black artists are being received as kind of teaching tools for non-Black artists to receive, Diallo said. And also just as a novelty.

How could I never make a film and not talk about my perspective? she added. Then were doomed. I am glad to be able to now add my voice and say what the hell I want to say.

Nine Perfect Strangers star Regina Hall | RB/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images

Regina Hall finds similarities in her roles in Master and Scary Movie

Master isnt Halls first horror project. In the early 2000s, the actor portrayed Brenda Meeks in the Wayans Scary Movie film series.

She told Collider that in both the Scary Movie films and Master, she honed in on the fear her characters faced. And she praised Diallo for helping her bring the most out of her performance.

Excited to share #MasterFilm with you! Its out on @PrimeVideo and select theaters on March 18 pic.twitter.com/B9xxAUKgDD  Regina Hall (@MoreReginaHall) March 2, 2022

It feels great and to do this, the way I think Mariama wrote the script and the way she directed it, its so grounded and its so real  but its like whatever world youre getting to in whatever genre, its really real, Hall said. As crazy as it sounds, Brenda was really real. You werent playing the parody, youre not playing the horror.

You kind of go into this world, you go into these characters, you go into these relationships, she added. And whats great about having a really good director  like Mariama is shes watching the monitor and shes watching your performance, and shes fine-tuning it and helping you create nuances that are so subtle, and giving you the opportunity to do it until it clicks.

Master is scheduled to hit select theaters and Prime Video on March 18, 2022.

RELATED: Candyman Movie Review: Say It, See It
Tarek El Moussa and Heather Rae are spending some time together and traveling to Mexico. As the couple made their trip to a sunny beach, El Moussa dedicated a sweet post to his loving wife that fans are loving.

Tarek and Heather Rae El Moussa | Christopher Polk/E! Entertainment/NBCUniversal/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images

What did Tarek El Moussa say about his wife?

With some free time on his hands, Tarek took to social media to express all the love he has for his wife. The Flip or Flop and Selling Sunset star tied the knot in 2021 and have been spending a lot of time together enjoying their marriage. On their way to a getaway in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, Tarek shared a photo of himself and Heather all dressed up for a nice evening out.

Most of the time @heatherraeyoung and I have such a fast-paced life, always on the go filming, traveling, with the kids, Tarek posted on Instagram. We are so blessed to have so many opportunities and live this crazy life!! I was just looking through some old pics of us while on the flight, so figured Id share a quick throwback!!

The HGTV personality continued, I have to say, whenever we get a chance to get dressed up and spend the night together, even for an appearance we have so much fun, I mean how could I not just look at her.

Its obvious that Tarek is very much in love with his wife and he ended his post with the following words: But really, it really makes a difference when you find your person, soul mate, and best friend all in one it makes everyday feel like the best day ever!! Today were off to Mexico!

RELATED: Flip or Flop: Tarek and Heather El Moussa Reveal How Heather Really Feels About Tarek Working With Ex Christina Haack

Tarek El Moussas fans react to the loving post dedicated to his wife

After Tarek shared that loving post to Heather, it wasnt long before fans weighed in on the couple and shared their thoughts.

Im obsessed with you guys, a fan replied.

You both are such beautiful people. Its a pleasure to see you ecstatically happy Tarek! You deserve the best because you are the best! a follower noted.

Have Fun in my beloved Mexico, an Instagram user said.

I feel the same way about my fiance. Weve been together for over 3 years and still every day together is better than the day before. Sharing life with someone that I love so much has been an amazing experience, another fan added.

Watched you since episode 1 and to see the evolution of your life its great to see your happiness! Blessings to your family! another follower mentioned.

You guys are the cutestour couple goals, another Instagram user commented.

RELATED: Flip or Flop Fans React to Christina Haack and Tarek El Moussas Show Ending on HGTV

Tarek El Moussa reflects on his time on Flip or Flop

Tarek recently confirmed that Flip or Flop was ending after 10 seasons on HGTV. The real estate agent starred on the show alongside his ex-wife Christina Haack. When Tarek confirmed the news that the show would wrap after season 10, he reflected on his time doing the show.

You guys have been with us through it allyou watched me beat cancer, youve watched the babies grow up into the most amazing little humans, and everything in between but Im not going anywhere and I can promise that you are going to love what comes next! he posted on Instagram.

Flip or Flop airs its series finale on Thursday, Mar. 17 on HGTV.

RELATED: Christina Haack Beats Tarek El Moussa at His Own Game on Flip or Flop as Series Comes to an End
Before country icon Willie Nelson announced the death of his piano-playing older sister, Bobbie Nelson, the siblings spent the better part of a century making legendary music together. He said it wasnt an easy life at first, working alongside their grandparents for money starting at three or four. But through hardships and over almost nine decades, he said he remained as close to Sister Bobbie as when she once held him on her knee.

(l-r) Bobbie Nelson and Willie Nelson | Paul Drinkwater/NBCU Photo Bank

Willie Nelson: It wasnt an easy life, but it was the one I was born into

In The Tao of Willie, a collection of autobiographical advice, Nelson described himself as a hardheaded little cuss. He and Bobbie Nelson grew up in Abbott, Texas, born at the tail-end of the Great Depression. So, they experienced the hardships of poverty along with their grandparents, who cared for them.

He said their grandmother, Mama Nelson, would wake them up by throwing ice water on them. With chores and work waiting to be done, he explained, she didnt have time for coddling sleepy-headed children.

For his part, he said he was full of spit and vinegar and had red hair. The combination earned him the childhood nickname Booger Red.

Sister Bobbie says when I was a toddler, I was so bent on roaming that Mama Nelson had to stake me out in the backyard on a rope like a wandering goat, he wrote.

The Nelson kids joined their grandparents in the cotton fields at three or four years old. He wrote they desperately needed the money, though it didnt make him like the work.  It wasnt an easy life, but it was the one I was born into, the Crazy songwriter concluded.

Willie Nelson and Bobbie Nelson remained close all their lives

Bobbie Nelson, the older sister of Willie Nelson and the pianist in his band for nearly five decades, has died at 91.

She was inducted into the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame, and Willie always refers to her as "little sister" even though she is the older of the two. pic.twitter.com/6VTyDM3iCe  Eric Alper (@ThatEricAlper) March 11, 2022

RELATED: Willie Nelson Revealed His Drinking and Smoking Habits Started at Age 6

Theres a guy with a lot of lines on his face in my mirror every morning, Nelson wrote in The Tao of Willie, but the boy from Abbott is there, too.

He explained how he and Sister Bobbie formed a bond with each other and with the great mysteries of the universe in their childhood. When I was a boy in Abbott, he wrote, the stars seemed closer, the fireflies shone brighter, and the mockingbirds had yet to hear the car alarms they imitate today.

Despite the decades which had passed and the many things which had changed for Nelson by then, there was one thing that hadnt  his steadfast companion. Im as close to Sister Bobbie as when she held me on her knee, he shared.

Bobbie Nelson didnt join Willie Nelson on tour before her kids were adults

RELATED: Willie Nelson Wrote a Hilarious Song About Heartbreak When He Was Just 7

Nelson has spoken at length about the ups and downs of building a country music career through the years. Before getting off the ground, he sold songs to legends like Patsy Cline for a while before returning to Texas.

According to NPR, Bobbie Nelsons marriage fell apart around 1955, and she lost her three sons for playing in honky-tonks  a scandalous choice for a woman at the time. That was the hardest part of my life, she said. And I couldnt play with Willie at that time, because I wasnt supposed to even enter into a club. They would not have agreed to let me have my children back.

She joined her brother in the 70s when her children were adults. Then, she spent more than 50 years in his band before her death at age 91.

RELATED: Willie Nelson Announces Death of Bobbie Nelson on Instagram: Our Hearts Are Broken
This figure shows the semitransparent structure of germanium manganese oxide (GeMnO3), one of the newly discovered 2D materials, superimposed on its surface magnetic structure. The collor pattern depicts regions in the vicinity of magnetic ions where the magnetization points out of the plane (red) or into the plane (blue). This strong spatial variation of the magnetic information could for instance play a crucial role for data storage applications.

Two-dimensional (2D) materials possess extraordinary properties. They usually consist of atomic layers that are only a few nanometers thick and are particularly good at conducting heat and electricity, for instance. To the astonishment of many scientists, it recently became known that 2D materials can also exist on the basis of certain metal oxides. These oxides are of great interest in areas such as nanoelectronics applications. A German-American research team, led by the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), has now succeeded in predicting twenty-eight representatives of this new class of materials by using data-driven methods.

There is a substantial difference between conventional 2D materials such as graphene and the novel materials that can be synthesized from metal oxides such as ilmenite and chromite. The latter do not form weak interactions  what are known as van der Waals forces  in their crystal structure, but instead form stronger ionic bonds that point in all directions. For this reason, only a few experiments have so far succeeded in detaching novel 2D materials from 3D material blocks. The results of the study can now lead to success in further experiments of this type. Using theoretical methods, the scientists predict which compounds are actually worthwhile for experimental research.

With our data driven method, we built upon the first available information from the initial experiments. From this information, we developed structural prototypes and then ran them through a huge materials database as a filter criterion, explains the leader of the study, Dr. Rico Friedrich from the HZDR Institute of Ion Beam Physics and Materials Research. The main challenge was figuring out why these materials form 2D systems so easily with particular oxides. From this information, we were able to develop a valid generalized search criterion and could systematically characterize the identified candidates according to their properties.

For this purpose, the researchers primarily applied what is known as density functional theory, a practical computational method for electronic structures that is widely used in quantum chemistry and in condensed matter physics. They collaborated with several German high-performance data centers for the necessary computing stages. A decisive factor was determining the exfoliation energy: this defines how much energy must be expended to remove a 2D layer from the surface of a material.

Materials database with approximately 3.5 million entries

The study also utilized the AFLOW materials database (Automatic Flow for Materials Discovery). It has been under development for more than twenty years by Prof. Stefano Curtarolo from Duke University (USA), who also contributed as author of the study. AFLOW is regarded as one of the largest materials science databases and classifies approximately 3.5 million compounds with more than 700 million calculated material properties.

Together with the associated software, the database ultimately provided the researchers with not only the chemical composition of twenty-eight 2D-capable materials, but also enabled them to study their properties, which are remarkable in electronic and magnetic as well as topological respects. According to Rico Friedrich, their specific magnetic surface structures could make them particularly attractive for spintronic applications, such as for data storage in computers and smartphones.

Im certain that we can find additional 2D materials of this kind, says the Dresden physicist, casting a glance into the future. With enough candidates, perhaps even a dedicated database could be created entirely specialized in this new class of materials. The HZDR scientists remain in close contact with colleagues from a subject-related collaborative research center (Sonderforschungsbereich) at the TU Dresden as well as with the leading research group for synthesizing novel 2D systems in the United States. Together with both partners, they plan to pursue further study of the most promising compounds.
Rep. Yun-ho-jung, center, floor leader and emergency committee chief of the liberal ruling Democratic Party of Korea, presides over a party meeting at the National Assembly on Seoul's Yeouido, Monday. Joint Press Corps



DPK seeks support from women, progressive voters for local elections to be held in June



By Jung Da-min



The liberal ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) has been seeking an image makeover after its presidential election loss to the main opposition conservative People Power Party (PPP).



Mindful of the upcoming June local elections, the DPK has especially been reinforcing its strategies targeting young swing voters, vowing to pass an anti-discrimination bill in the National Assembly and expand the party's quotas for women as well as young members.



Political watchers said the party is trying to consolidate its support base among members of the liberal bloc by adding progressive policies to its agenda, as it is preparing for the June 1 local elections in which voters will select the leaders of local governments across the nation.



On Monday, the DPK held a meeting of its emergency committee at the National Assembly in Seoul to nominate leaders for the committee.



Two-term lawmaker Rep. Kim Young-jin, one of the closest aides to DPK presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung who had taken the secretary general position for Lee's election camp, was named secretary general of the emergency committee.



The emergency committee has also vowed to implement its earlier pledge to allocate more than 30 percent of its candidacy nominations for members of municipal governments to the party's young members.



Earlier on Sunday, Park Ji-hyun, a 26-year-old activist who has worked toward eradicating online sex crimes, was appointed interim co-chair of the DPK's emergency committee, three days after its leadership resigned en masse following the presidential election loss.





Park Ji-hyun, on the screen, the co-chairwoman of the liberal ruling Democratic Party of Korea's emergency committee, speaks during a committee meeting at the National Assembly on Seoul's Yeouido, Monday, where she participated by video. Joint Press Corps
Chickasha, OK (73018)

Today

Variable clouds with strong thunderstorms. Damaging winds, large hail and possibly a tornado with some storms. High around 70F. Winds ESE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 80%..

Tonight

Thunderstorms. A few storms may be severe. Low 59F. Winds SE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%.
I have never been able to understand why anyone would worship a wooden statue. Or a tree or an Asherah pole, a cow or an elephant, or a god who looks like a frog. I think I get it at an intellectual levelthey represent fertility or whateverbut I cannot get my head around people being spiritually drawn to adore them, rejoice before them, or sacrifice to them. If I had been born an ancient pagan, I wouldnt have been the idol-fashioning, maypole-dancing type. (At least, I struggle to imagine myself that way.)

But I can see why people used to worship the sun. Im not saying they should have, obviously, but I can relate to the instinct. So far as anyone knew until quite recently, the sun was by far the largest thing in the sky and the source of all light, heat, power, and life. Especially in Northern Europe, where I come from, the difference between sunshine and darkness, summer and winter, is so great that it must have been tempting to rush outside in the springtime and prostrate yourself before the giant yellow ball of fire. Were it not for Christianity, I suspect many of us still would.

Unsurprisingly, this presented a challenge to ancient Israel. Moses had to urge the people not to worship the sun, with fairly drastic legal consequences for anyone who did (Deut. 4:19; 17:25), and the prophets revealed that it was still a problem many centuries later (Jer. 8:2; Ezek. 8:16). The risk of idolatry is partly why Scripture keeps pointing out all the things the sun is not. It is not eternal: The Bibles opening chapter makes clear that the sun was not created until day four, and its last chapter tells us that the sun is no longer needed, for the Lord God will be their light (Rev. ...

1

You have reached the end of this Article Preview You have reached the end of this Article Preview To continue reading, subscribe now. Subscribers have full digital access.

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.
When we sing praise to God, we often confess what we, in joy, know of the God we worship: Gods goodness and mercy, his glorious handiwork in creation, his gracious covenant with Abraham, his mighty and loving work in Jesus. Weve been given knowledge of the Lords great acts that we offer back in praise.

And yet, when we consider the mighty works of God, the King who took on flesh, died, and rose again in Jesus, our praise can also recognize the limits of our understanding. In a posture of awe, we can admit that the God we worship is incomprehensible, that even in our knowledge, we are blinded by the mystery of Gods light.

This wonder is at the heart of our faith: The Holy God has taken on our flesh in Jesus Christ, who suffered, died, and rose for our sake. Our words are laughably inadequate in expressing the depths of this mystery, the mystery of Gods covenant faithfulness. Yet, in song, even our incomprehension can bow before the incarnate, crucified, and risen Lord, in awe of the mystery of his extravagant love.

Words of Wonder and Bewilderment

In his hymn And Can It Be, Charles Wesley (17071788) gives us a song that overflows with this form of praise, exaltation, and wonder. As the writer of thousands of hymns, Wesley displays an exquisite love for language that reflects the extraordinary acumen of his first teacher, his mother Susanna, who took joy in languages, including Latin, Greek, and French along with English. By the time of the writing of this hymn in 1738, the language of Scripture had been shaping Wesleys imagination for many years. Wesley had even studied the churchs theology formally, leading to ordination in the Church of England in 1735.

And ...

1

You have reached the end of this Article Preview You have reached the end of this Article Preview To continue reading, subscribe now. Subscribers have full digital access.

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.
In the highest-profile statement yet of its kind, the leader of the Russian Evangelical Alliance has announced his bitterness and regret over decisions taken by his government.

Will it be enough to rebuild bridges with fellow Ukrainian believers across the border?

I mourn what my country has done in its recent military invasion of another sovereign country, Ukraine, stated REA general secretary Vitaly Vlasenko in a March 12 open letter. In the worst-case scenario, I could not imagine what is now being observed.

His language is precise, but also careful.

On March 4, the Russian parliament amended its criminal code to impose prison terms for up to 15 years for spreading fake news that discredits the military.

Notably, Vlasenko did not use the Russian governments designated label of special military operation to describe the violence in Ukraine. Utilizing conflict and invasion instead, he avoided describing itthough he did implywith terms that have been officially banned, such as war. And alongside recognition of Ukraines fear of occupation, he cited Russias goal of demilitarization.

Two days earlier, a Russian court fined an Orthodox priest 35,000 rubles ($261) for discrediting the army during his Sunday sermon. His congregation helped pay the fine.

Russian media lawyers are debating whether the law prevents citizens from questioning the special military operation or calling for it to end.

Vlasenkos statement (the full text is below) toes the line.

Everything I could do to prevent war, I did, Vlasenko lamented. I apologize to all those who have suffered.

Chief among his efforts was a statement released two days before the invasion, endorsing the appeal of Ukrainian religious leaders for a peaceful solution. And spiritually he has led Russian initiatives for fasting and prayer as well as joint meetings with European and Ukrainian believers to pray and seek reconciliation.

And since the war began, he said he has coordinated aid for 500 refugee families that fled east into Russia.

Two peoples closely related to each other, many of whom are deeply devoted to the Christian (primarily Orthodox) faith, are now in a fierce battle, Vlasenko stated. Peaceful feelings are being destroyed amidst the bombing and shelling.

So are Christian buildingsand lives.

On Saturday the shelling damaged the highest-profile location so farthe 16th-century Holy Dormition Svyatogorsk Lavra, a monastery complex revered as one of the three most sacred sites in Ukraine. A church statement said people inside were wounded, though it did not attribute blame.

In a statement released March 8, the Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations condemned Russian aggression against civilian areas. It listed three churches damaged in the fighting, including an evangelical prayer house near the besieged city of Kharkiv.

To that number can now be added Christ the Savior church in Mariupol.

The port city of 430,000 residents has been without drinking water for a week. The mayor stated 1,500 have died since the Russian attack began. Among them is Mykola, an evangelical, who was helping with evacuations, according to CT sources. Fellow believer Katya, a paramedic with the Ukrainian army, also perished.

Pope Francis is outraged at the unacceptable armed aggression. Noting the city is named after the Virgin Mary, he issued his strongest statement yet.

Put an end to the bombings and the attacks! Francis said on Sunday. Let there be real and decisive focus on the negotiations, and let the humanitarian corridors be effective and safe. In the name of God, I ask you: stop this massacre!

President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday that 1,300 Ukrainian soldiers have died as the war enters its third week. The deputy prime minister stated that only 9 out of 13 agreed-upon humanitarian corridors are open. Russian shelling killed seven people, including a child, who were trying to evacuate a northeast Kyiv suburb.

Russian ground forces are now within 15 miles of the capital, and British military officials stated the troops are thinning out in preparation to begin encirclement. Kyivs mayor Vitali Klitschko stated that half the population of three million has fled, but that every house is being fortified for the coming attack.

Meanwhile, the mayor of Melitopol, located in the oblast of Zaporizhzhia near Ukraines largest nuclear reactor, has been detained and replaced with a Russian sympathizer. The local population has protested for his release.

Sympathizing proactively is Zaporizhzhias Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), affiliated with the Moscow patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC). Metropolitan Luka mobilized a caravan to attempt to deliver 90 tons of food and medicine to Mariupol.

At least six UOC parishes have ceased offering official prayers of recognition to Russian Patriarch Kirill: in Lviv, Cherkasy, Rovno, Sumhy, Ivano-Frankovsk, and Mukachevo.

And for the first time, Metropolitan Onufry, senior cleric in the UOC, acknowledged the conflict as a Russian attack. Like Vlasenkothough within the safety of Ukraines bordershe used the forbidden word.

Our country is experiencing a time of difficult trials evoked by the attack upon our country by the troops of the Russian Federation, he stated on Thursday. There is no justification for those who start wars.

In 2019, the Istanbul-based ecumenical patriarch of the Orthodox Church, Bartholomew I, recognized the national independence of the breakaway Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), while many parishes in Ukraine rejected this and chose to remain under the Russian-affiliated UOC. (Exact figures for OCU- and UOC-affiliated churches in Ukraine are difficult to determine.)

Russia has characterized events differently.

Where Zelensky emphasized that there was no military target near the UOC-affiliated Lavra monastery, the Russian military said it liberated the complex from a Ukrainian militia that was holding monks hostage. Similarly, the head of Russias National Defense Control Center said Lukas caravan was also designed to evacuate citizens, until it was fired upon by Ukrainian nationalists.

Kirill blamed Bartholomewand the West.

They spared no effort, no funds to flood Ukraine with weapons and warfare instructors, he stated in a March 10 letter. Yet, the most terrible thing is not the weapons, but the attempt to re-educate, to mentally remake Ukrainians and Russians living in Ukraine into enemies of Russia.

Kirill was responding to a March 2 letter from the World Council of Churches (WCC), asking him to mediate to stop the war. The ROC joined the ecumenical body in 1961.

In polite church language, Kirill told them to butt out.

I express my hope that even in these trying times  the [WCC] will be able to remain a platform for unbiased dialogue, he wrote, free from political preferences and one-sided approach.

Dozens of worldwide Orthodox scholars and clerics have rejected Russian and ROC propaganda in an open letter replete with scriptural affirmations.

The support of many of the hierarchy of the Moscow Patriarchate for President Vladimir Putins war against Ukraine is rooted in a form of Orthodox ethno-phyletist [conflation between church and nation] religious fundamentalism, totalitarian in character, called Russkii mir, or the Russian world, stated the 65 signatories, including one in Russia.

We reject [this] heresy and the shameful actions of the Government of Russia  as profoundly un-Orthodox, un-Christian, and against humanity.

Also pulling no punches is the Evangelical Association of Theological Education in Latin America (AETAL), coming to the defense of their co-seminarians in Ukraine.

We demonstrate full support and solidarity to the Ukrainian people and the Church of Christ present in this country, stated the associations board of directors, condemning Russian President Vladimir Putins despotic leadership.

AETAL comes public to attest an unconditional and unrestricted refusal to [his] belligerent actions in eastern Europe.

In Kherson, the first city to fall to the Russians, Tavriski Christian Institute (TCI) reported that troops are taking over the seminary to use as barracks.

Meanwhile, a Baptist World Alliance (BWA) statementsigned by Peter Mitskevich, president of the Russian Union of Evangelical Christians-Baptists, and addressed to Putin, Zelensky, and the presidents of the US and Franceavoided assignment of blame. Assuring Russia of its historic support, dating back to 1933, the BWA also recalled its resolution of 1968 that war as a means of permanent solution is untenable.

However, it did not use the term in reference to Ukraine. Instead, it lamented a violent conflict, called for the end of hostilities, negotiation for mutual security, and the limiting of widespread harm.

Of the 2014 crisis in Ukraines eastern Donbas region, it recalled sadness over the severe tension as well as support for initiatives of reconciliation.

The whole Christian world prays for you in hope that the vision of the prophet Isaiah will be embodied as swords are transformed into plowshares, read the statement, signed additionally by BWA general secretary Elijah Brown and Alan Donaldson, general secretary of the European Baptist Federation.

And that the prayer of the Apostle Paul will be fulfilled as the conditions are created for a peaceful and prosperous life for all people.

Such statements have consistently failed to satisfy most Ukrainian evangelicals. Will Vlasenkos be any different?

The bravery and honesty is something that has historically been in deficit among Christians in Russia, said Jaroslaw Lukasik, director of Eastern Europe Reformation, who called it a fresh breath of air.

However, before amendments can be made and talk of peace and solidarity, we need to work together in stopping the evil that Putins regime has unleashed on Ukraine, he told CT. So our question is will our brothers and sisters in Russia take an active stand with us in the fight against the Russian regime?

Multiple Ukrainian evangelical leaders declined comment to CT.

In his open letter, the Russian evangelical leader wrote that he has done what he could.

My prayer is that you will find strength from the Lord to extend your hand of solidarity and forgiveness, so we can live as the people of God to our world, Vlasenko stated. May our heavenly Father help us all.

Full text of Vitaly Vlasenko letter:



March 12, 2022



To my dear brothers and sisters around the world:



As the General Secretary of the Russian Evangelical Alliance, I mourn what my country has done in its recent military invasion of another sovereign country, Ukraine.



For me, as for many other Christians, the military invasion was a shock. In the worst-case scenario, I could not imagine what is now being observed in Ukraine. Two peoples closely related to each other, many of whom are deeply devoted to the Christian (primarily Orthodox) faith, are now in a fierce battleone side pursuing the goal of demilitarizing Ukraine, the other seeking to save their country from occupation.



Many Russians and Ukrainians have close family relations in the opposite country. A Russian may have daughters and grandchildren living in Kyiv; a Ukrainian may have children living and working in Moscow. Today, pain, fear, and deep sorrow for their loved ones and for the future of their own lives and countries pierce the hearts of many people like lightning, because since the Second World War no one knows what the limits of war and its consequences may be.



Today, soldiers from one side and the other are dying. Peaceful feelings are being destroyed amidst the bombing and shelling, and a stream of increased attention has rushed across Europe in the form of refugees: women, the elderly, and children.



All these events cause me deep sorrow, bitterness, and regret for decisions taken by the leadership of my country, and a great compassion for those suffering as a result of this decision.



Everything I could do to prevent war, I did in an attempt to stop this military invasion:



 In my capacity as General Secretary of the Russian Evangelical Alliance, I wrote an open letter to President Vladimir Putin the day before the invasion, in which I supported the request of the religious leaders of Ukraine for a peaceful solution to all conflict.



 We initiated fasting and prayer for peace and harmony between Russia and Ukraine.



 Our Alliance took part in public prayer alongside Russian, Ukrainian, and European leaders for the reconciliation of all parties.



 The Russian Evangelical Alliance provided humanitarian assistance to more than 500 refugees from Ukraine stationed in southern Russia.



 We initiated a roundtable and subsequent international conference on the topic of military and political conflicts.



Today, as a citizen and as General Secretary of the Russian Evangelical Alliance, I apologize to all those who have suffered, lost loved ones and relatives, or lost their place of residence as a result of this military conflict. My prayer is that you will find strength from the Lord to extend your hand of solidarity and forgiveness, so we can live as the people of God to our world.



May our heavenly Father help us all.



With deep respect, your brother in the Lord,



Vitaly Vlasenko March 12, 2022To my dear brothers and sisters around the world:As the General Secretary of the Russian Evangelical Alliance, I mourn what my country has done in its recent military invasion of another sovereign country, Ukraine.For me, as for many other Christians, the military invasion was a shock. In the worst-case scenario, I could not imagine what is now being observed in Ukraine. Two peoples closely related to each other, many of whom are deeply devoted to the Christian (primarily Orthodox) faith, are now in a fierce battleone side pursuing the goal of demilitarizing Ukraine, the other seeking to save their country from occupation.Many Russians and Ukrainians have close family relations in the opposite country. A Russian may have daughters and grandchildren living in Kyiv; a Ukrainian may have children living and working in Moscow. Today, pain, fear, and deep sorrow for their loved ones and for the future of their own lives and countries pierce the hearts of many people like lightning, because since the Second World War no one knows what the limits of war and its consequences may be.Today, soldiers from one side and the other are dying. Peaceful feelings are being destroyed amidst the bombing and shelling, and a stream of increased attention has rushed across Europe in the form of refugees: women, the elderly, and children.All these events cause me deep sorrow, bitterness, and regret for decisions taken by the leadership of my country, and a great compassion for those suffering as a result of this decision.Everything I could do to prevent war, I did in an attempt to stop this military invasion: In my capacity as General Secretary of the Russian Evangelical Alliance, I wrote an open letter to President Vladimir Putin the day before the invasion, in which I supported the request of the religious leaders of Ukraine for a peaceful solution to all conflict. We initiated fasting and prayer for peace and harmony between Russia and Ukraine. Our Alliance took part in public prayer alongside Russian, Ukrainian, and European leaders for the reconciliation of all parties. The Russian Evangelical Alliance provided humanitarian assistance to more than 500 refugees from Ukraine stationed in southern Russia. We initiated a roundtable and subsequent international conference on the topic of military and political conflicts.Today, as a citizen and as General Secretary of the Russian Evangelical Alliance, I apologize to all those who have suffered, lost loved ones and relatives, or lost their place of residence as a result of this military conflict. My prayer is that you will find strength from the Lord to extend your hand of solidarity and forgiveness, so we can live as the people of God to our world.May our heavenly Father help us all.With deep respect, your brother in the Lord,Vitaly Vlasenko

[ This article is also available in espanol, , and . ]
According to the Pew Research Center, only 63 percent of people in the United States self-identify as Christiandown from 75 percent ten years ago. As followers of Christ, we need to take time to identify and analyze why a growing number of people are no longer drawn to the church and its message. Is the church still relevant? Is God still speaking? Is anyone still listening?

Last year, the He Gets Us campaign sought answers about persistent trends in the current faith landscape in America. Expert research was conducted over a four-month period in three phases: an extensive quantitative study via online interviews of 5,000 US adults, a qualitative study, and finally, an additional qualitative study through online interviews with people from all walks of life. This research provided crucial insights that built the foundation for He Gets Us.

This research highlighted the need for people to rethink who Jesus was during his time on earth and why hes relevant to our lives. The goal is simple: to connect people to the real Jesus and his message of radical love and acceptance. He Gets Us wants people to understand that Jesus experienced real human challenges during his time on earth.

Secondly, it wants to provide resources for pastors, church leaders, and lay leaders, encouraging them to create space for the hesitant skeptics in their own communities to ask questions. They believe that providing safe environments to wrestle, question, and learn about Jesus will offer many skeptics an opportunity to truly know him.

Who Are the Skeptics?

In Western philosophy, skepticism emerged in Ancient Greece in the fifth century. The tradition has persisted among great thinkers and taken many forms, each of which has one thing at the corean individuals questions about certainty concerning knowledge. In its modern meaning, skeptics are defined as people who doubt what is presented to them without evidence. Unfortunately, the church has not always been a safe place for people with doubts to ask questions.

After researching current faith trends, He Gets Us discovered that roughly one-fourth of the US population views Christianity skeptically to varying degrees. The overwhelming majority believe in God, and two-thirds believe Jesus existed. The struggle begins with believing in Jesus divinity. Even if people dont outright reject the idea that Jesus was God on earth, they often cannot understand the need to have a personal relationship with him. Among the people surveyed, some of the respondents were relatively open to learning more. Another segment was made up of a number of people who are ideologically neutral, suggesting they would potentially be less open to learning more about Jesus.

Asking Questions, Breaking Down Barriers

Research revealed three major barriers keeping skeptics from a holistic belief in Jesus.

First and foremost, skeptics have difficulty reconciling faith and science. They require proof before they can believe. Secondly, many skeptics believe in the historical Jesus and respect and even revere the spirituality and values he lived and preached; however, they cannot accept Jesus claims of divinity and the other supernatural elements of his existencethe Virgin Birth and descendence from God, his bodily resurrection, and his ascendance into heaven. Lastly, most skeptics have no experiential relationship to prayer. When Christians talk about the power of prayer, skeptics have no real connection to anyone or anything on the other end, believing that their words, no matter how earnest, remain unheard.

In addition, skeptics have deep-seated instincts when it comes to responding to Christians or the church, either because of their lack of exposure to the church or their own negative experiences with Christians. Often, they believe the best Christians are those who keep their opinions and practices to themselves.

Finding a Better Way

In the mid-1920s, Bara Dada, Indian philosopher and brother to Rabindranath Tagore, said, Jesus is ideal and wonderful, but you Christians, you are not like him. One hundred years later, we are still hearing the same sentiment from those who are reticent to receive Christ.

Unfortunately, some skeptics have no desire to be in conversation with Christians because they see Christianity as a religion of judgment and hypocrisy. In their minds, Christians are not living out the values of the Savior they purport to follow. And while skeptics agree that Jesus teachings are positive for society as a whole and that the world would be better if we all lived out the principles of the gospel message, they dont see Christians practicing what they preach. What benefit is there to a faith that doesnt actually change the lives of the people who claim that faith?

Additionally, in the minds of some skeptics, Christians have left an impression that Jesus belongs only to the people who step inside church buildings on Sunday morningswhich is simply not true. Jesus is for everyone. Jesus embraced diversity, included people that other religious leaders rejected, and he didnt wait for people to be perfect before welcoming them. Jesus, in his humanity, wants people to come as they are. He understands the struggles people face because he struggled with the same things.

Thankfully, we know that lives can be completely transformed when Christians embrace Jesus, going into the world as representatives of the healthy body of Christ. We know that following Jesus is the answer to a lot of questions.

Many skeptics are interested in finding those answers, with over half of our survey participants reporting that they are familiar with Christianity, the Bible, and Jesus, and open to learning more, especially those who have children in their homes. People are looking for guidance for themselves, but they also want to make a better life and a kinder world for their kids.

For both skeptics and Christians, the pandemic provided an opportunity to reevaluate beliefs and behaviors alike. Countless people experienced solitary times that illuminated which areas of their lives may need changes. Many people changed jobs and reprioritized relationships and are now collectively addressing stress, anxiety, and depression as a result of these seismic paradigm shifts.

After witnessing and experiencing suffering on a global scale, people are looking to heal broken relationships, deal with physical and mental health challenges, and seek ways to find purpose. Healing and growing from a whole-person perspective includes meeting spiritual needs.

The church has a unique opportunity to address these spiritual needs while people are open to enriching their lives through the gospel message. What a privilege it is to serve a shepherd who cares deeply about his sheepso much so that hes willing to go after the one who has wandered and needs help finding its way back. Christians who care deeply about their communities can lead people to the saving grace of a Jesus who understands every struggle theyve experienced because hes been there too.

He gets us, and its time to share that powerful truth with the world in a better way.
Russian Orthodox congregation in Amsterdam splits from Moscow Patriarch Kirill over Ukraine

A congregation in the Netherlands is seeking to leave the Russian Orthodox Church in opposition to Patriarch Kirill of Moscows support for the invasion of Ukraine, filing a request for canonical dismissal

The Russian Orthodox Parish of Saint Nicholas of Myra in Amsterdam posted an announcement on its Facebook page last Saturday stating that the clergy unanimously announced that it is no longer possible for them to function within the Moscow Patriarchate and provide a spiritually safe environment for our faithful.

The announcement was extremely painful and difficult for all concerned and came in response to what the parish called a threat to the parish and the clergy.

There will be no services in the church in the period leading up to the General Parish Meeting, stated the parish council. This is due not only to concerns of safety, but also to pastoral considerations: in this extremely tense situation, it would be virtually impossible to achieve the prayerful atmosphere we strive for during services.

The parish says it filed a request for canonical dismissal and also sent a request to Metropolitan Athenagoras of Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg (Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople) to be received into his diocese.

Per Crux, the Dutch news site Nederlands Dagblad reported that priests and a deacon affiliated with the congregation wrote to Archbishop Elisey, who oversees the diocese of The Hague and the Netherlands of the Russian Orthodox Church, to state that they would not mention Patriarch Kirills name during their Divine Liturgy celebrations because of his comments in support of the invasion.

Crux notes that at least 15 Russian Orthodox dioceses have allowed priests to stop commemorating Kirill in their Divine Liturgy celebrations.

Kirill had described Russias opponents as evil forces in a Feb. 27 sermon, adding that they were fighting against the unity of Russia.

Additionally, the churchs leaders had signed a petition calling on Kirill to condemn the invasion.

After speaking out against Kirill, AFP reports that the church received a visit from Archbishop Elisey, who told the church leaders that Moscow was watching their actions closely.

In 2018, the Russian Orthodox Church split from the central Orthodox Church community after the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, viewed as a leading authority for the worlds Orthodox churches, recognized the Ukrainian Orthodox Church as independent from Russian control.

In the months after the Orthodox Church of Ukraine left the Russian Orthodox Church, hundreds of churches joined the new body.

Despite the tensions in the Orthodox Church amid the invasion of Ukraine, the parish shared some positive news. On Friday, the church received the relics of St. Nicholas of Myra from Egmond Abbey.

We see this as a sign of hope in these difficult times, the statement concluded.

Nearly 300 Orthodox clergy worldwide signed on to an open letter calling for an end to Russias invasion of Ukraine.

Hundreds of civilians have died since the conflict began late last month and over 2.5 million people have fled Ukraine and over 1.85 million are internally displaced. According to the United Nations, the war has impacted 12.65 million people in the areas hardest hit by the conflict.

We mourn the ordeal to which our brothers and sisters in Ukraine were undeservedly subjected, the open letter states.

The Orthodox Public Affairs Committee, which advocates on behalf of the global Orthodox Church, issued a statement last week calling for the immediate cessation of ground and aerial bombardment of Ukrainian civilians and communities  including houses, schools, hospitals, and churches by Putins military.

The apparent use of such lethal weapons (vacuum and cluster bombs) highlights the barbarity and savagery of the onslaught on the free people of Ukraine, the OPAC statement reads.

We also call on Patriarch Kirill of Moscow to immediately condemn the bombardment of Ukraine with the same intensity that he and the Russian Church decried the bombing of Serbia by NATO forces during Great Lent and Holy Week in 1999.
President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol dines with representatives of Namdaemun Market in Seoul after having a meeting with them, March 14. It was his first outdoor event after being elected the country's new president. Joint Press Corp





By Ko Dong-hwan







In the wake of Yoon Suk-yeol's razor-thin victory in the presidential election last week, with a heavily divided electorate, the former prosecutor general has begun moving toward rebuilding the nation in a more constructive way.







One of the signs showing his willingness to follow through on his campaign promises came on Monday, when he visited Namdaemun Market for a meeting with its merchant association. In his previous visit last November, he pledged that, if elected, he would provide 100 trillion won ($80.5 billion) in emergency rescue funds to help merchants who were hit hard by the economic fallout of the pandemic.







"I remember what I said here last year and will let my presidential transition team, once it is launched, discuss ways to create and implement the funds as soon as they can," he told the merchants on Monday. He said his government will provide financial assistance to help merchants live decent lives if they work hard.







Earlier in the day, he vowed to go without a senior presidential secretary for civil affairs.







While having tea with Ahn Cheol-soo  who has been tapped to lead the presidential transition committee  and other senior officials, Yoon was critical of the position, as he stated that it had in the past played the role of removing political opponents by conducting investigations in the name of examining their credentials and reputations. He said he would end such outdated practices, vowing to focus only on discovering and coordinating policies to serve the public.







Abolishing the senior presidential secretary for civil affairs position was one of his campaign pledges aimed at reshuffling the presidential office, which he said has too much power and is vulnerable to abuse of power.







Whenever the People Power Party (PPP) candidate spoke to his supporters on the campaign trail, he had performed his signature uppercut move and told them they should no longer be victimized by the government. Instead of proposing future policies, his campaign was characterized more by emotional outbursts that he would change the status quo. But such headstrong determination from a political rookie without a clear blueprint for his future administration worried many and provided ammunition for lawmakers from the rival Democratic Party of Korea (DPK).






Urgent appeal from Ukrainian Christians: 'Please keep praying'

Around 7 AM on March 2, a handful of people gathered in Freedom Square in the heart of Kharkiv, Ukraines second-largest city. They knelt on the cold ground to pray for peace  just as they have done every day since the war in Ukraine began.

Less than an hour later, a deadly rocket hit that same square.

Im humbled by the faith of these Ukrainian Christians who risked their lives to pray together. I try to imagine what it would be like for my own city of Philadelphia to be under siege: tanks rolling down Broad Street; apartment complexes in Old City gutted by missiles; children falling asleep in our subway stations to the wail of air raid sirens.

Would I dare to pray out in the open?

One local pastor reports he has been coming to the square in Kharkiv since the prayer group began. I believe that common prayer is the most powerful weapon, he told one of our colleagues from the Ukrainian Bible Society.

Prayer is our weapon. But it is not a weapon that kills and destroys. Instead, it is a weapon against fear, despair, and darkness. It is a weapon that the Ukrainian church has wielded with great faith as they serve their people. And it is a weapon that Christians around the world can take up as we support our brothers and sisters.

Over the past week, our staff at American Bible Society have received daily updates from our colleagues at Ukrainian Bible Society. Most are brief, containing only a few sentences. Situations change dramatically by the day, but one message is repeated: Thank you for praying for us yesterday; please pray for us today! Each day, I look for that update  and I thank God that our dear friends and their families survived another night and are continuing their powerful ministry.

The stories are harrowing. In southern Ukraine, where the fighting is fierce, local Bible Society staff risk their lives to visit bomb shelters with Scriptures and sustenance, seeking to encourage people trapped in the conflict. And in Kharkiv, one staff member solemnly reported that the school he and his children had attended was destroyed by shelling. Although lives will always be more valuable than buildings, its hard to measure the impact of seeing a place filled with memories laid to waste.

For many Americans, these horrific images are new. But our Ukrainian brothers and sisters have lived with this conflict for nearly a decade, losing loved ones and facing grieving without end.

Now the war is escalating  destroying peoples homes, forcing them to flee, and stealing their hope. Our Bible Society colleagues have found themselves responding to more than just the overwhelming plea for Scripture. The need for food, shelter, and medicine is dire, especially in besieged cities. Staff and volunteers travel around cities like Kyiv, bringing food, water, and Bibles to Ukrainian soldiers and civilians. Churches in western Ukraine shelter refugees fleeing from the war. And the Bible Society has launched a plan to print and distribute more than 50,000 Bibles plus other Scripture resources to Ukrainians and are asking American Christians to support them as able.

Amid all these needs and efforts, our brothers and sisters ask for one thing above all else: prayer.

In our culture, prayer has become little more than a hashtag  an expression of sympathy during a crisis. But the Christians praying in the square in Kharkiv show us that prayer is more than that. Prayer is not an afterthought. And prayer is not always safe. Sometimes prayer is getting on your knees in a public square in the middle of war, knowing that at any moment, another rocket could hit. Prayer is the churchs weapon of peace and hope against the present darkness we see in our world (Ephesians 6:12).

As our attention is focused on an endless flood of devastating news from Ukraine, I am asking God to help me pray constantly, specifically, and boldly for the requests our Bible Society colleagues have shared. I invite you to pray with me:

Pray for the Ukrainian and Russian soldiers caught in deadly conflict. Pray that these men and women would experience Gods saving grace through the Bible. Pray for the families of soldiers and civilians killed in this war as they grieve on both sides of the border. Pray for an end to this war.

Pray for the hundreds of thousands of people walking long distances to reach safety. Pray that God would preserve them through hypothermia, illness, and hunger. Pray that God would protect all refugees fleeing Ukraine from discrimination at the borders. Pray that churches in Poland, Romania, Moldova, Slovakia, Hungary, and other countries would lead their nations in welcoming the stranger and serving the oppressed.

Pray for vulnerable people left behind: orphans, widows, people with disabilities, the elderly. Just a few days ago, our Bible Society colleagues delivered food, medicine, and childrens Bibles to an orphanage in Kyiv. There were a few women who stayed with the children, prepared to sacrifice their lives for these little ones. At the sight of the desperately needed supplies, these brave women broke down in tears. Pray for these women and children, that God would be their protector, and that no harm would come to them.

Pray for the Ukrainian church as it seeks to reach people with Gods Word, even across borders. Ukrainian Bible Society is working with other Bible Societies in Europe to make Bibles available to Ukrainian refugees sheltering in their countries. Pray for Ukrainian Christians who are ministering to their fellow refugees. Leaders are providing spiritual first aid through Bible-based trauma healing resources  helping others begin to heal even as they grapple with their own grief and loss. Pray for hearts burdened with pain and despair to find hope in Gods Word.

Pray for the Russian church as those who call for peace face harsh punishments. Pray for ongoing unity and cooperation between churches in Russia, Ukraine, and neighboring nations as they respond to this crisis together.

Whether we pray in public squares or in homes and churches far from the war in Ukraine, God promises to hear and answer us. He is a fortress beyond bomb shelters or anti-aircraft weapons. So, in basements, metro stations, and refugee camps, Ukrainian Christians keep praying, claiming God as their refuge with the words of Psalm 31: I come to you, LORD, for protection; never let me be defeated. You are a righteous God; save me, I pray! Hear me! Save me now! Be my refuge to protect me; my defense to save me. (12, GNT).

Will you get on your knees with me and join them today?
Hailey Bieber recovering after blood clot in brain: One of the scariest moments Ive ever been through

Supermodel Hailey Bieber, the wife of pop star Justin Bieber, is recovering after suffering a blood clot in her brain, which she described as one of the scariest moments Ive ever been through. She has since been released from the hospital.

On Thursday morning, I was sitting at breakfast with my husband when I started having stroke-like symptoms and I was taken to the hospital, she told her 41.7 million followers on Instagram.

The 25-year-old model and YouTube host was hospitalized in Palm Springs, California, according to People magazine.

They found I had suffered a very small blood clot to my brain, which caused a small lack of oxygen  but my body had passed it on its own and I recovered completely within a few hours, the daughter of actor Stephen Baldwin continued.

Although this was definitely one of the scariest moments Ive ever been through, Im home now and doing well. Im so grateful and thankful to all the amazing doctors and nurses who took care of me! she added.

She also thanked all who reached out with well wishes and concern, and for all the support and love.

About a week earlier, Hailey celebrated her husbands 28th birthday. She has been married to Justin Bieber since 2018.

Her husband, Justin Bieber, recently recovered from COVID-19.

The couple, who identify as Christians, were seen regularly attending Hillsong church together around 2016.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, published last month, Hailey criticized the social club experience at church, saying it made her feel isolated when she and her husband had broken up after dating briefly in 2016.

There were a lot of people in the church world that made me feel very outcast, she said. When did church become a social club? That was such a bad feeling.

The couple first met as children after Baldwin introduced the two. They dated and broke up when she was 19. She told Elle magazine their lives were going in very different directions.

The couple reconnected at a 2018 church conference in Miami, Florida, and she said her friends  Pastors Judah Smith and Chelsea Smith of Churchome  were some of the few church people that stood by her side through it all.

Last November, Bieber and her husband sat down with the Smiths on their In Good Faith podcast. They spoke candidly about their marriage, the highs and lows and some of the struggles, including Justin Bieber's journey with mental health struggles.

In an interview for Hillsong TV, Bieber shared more about the pressure shes put on herself because of her Christian upbringing. Along with once feeling rejected by the church, Bieber revealed that a few months into her marriage, she struggled with a lot of guilt from her past.
Gift boxes help Western Christians keep small businesses, charities afloat in the Holy Land

NASHVILLE  When COVID-19 shut down much of the tourism that had supported local shopkeepers in cities across Israel, Itai Schimmel was concerned.

So many businesses were closing down, businesses that relied heavily on tourism, especially American tourism, he told The Christian Post. The borders were closed, and people could no longer travel to Israel and have that connection to the land and bring the stories of the Bible to life in a meaningful way.

To help meet this need, Schimmel launched Artza Box, a curated box of goods designed to bring the Holy Land to Christians in North America. Artza delivers a quarterly subscription box that features products and gifts from artisans throughout Israel, helping keep small businesses afloat and connecting subscribers to the Holy Land.

Every three months, you receive a box from a different region or different city in Israel. And then well source all the products in that box from small artisans, businesses and charities within that city and within that region, Schimmel said. When you open the box, it kind of really brings that specific city in that specific region to life in an immersive, educational, fun way where you can share with your family and your friends.

Previous boxes have featured Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth, Galilee and others. The latest box highlights the Golan Heights and includes chocolate, candle, herbal tea, an ancient olive oil lamp and jug replicas from the time of Jesus and more  all made by local residents.

Every box also helps support an Israeli charity, from a shelter for abused women to a nonprofit working with children with special needs.

Theres a lot of Scripture inside each box, related to biblical history, and we tell you about the people that created the products as well, Schimmel said. Its just this fully immersive experience.

The response from both subscribers and shopowners has been nothing short of incredible, according to Schimmel. Since Artza launched in July 2020, the organization has sold over 50,000 boxes and raised over $1.6 million for small Israeli businesses and charities.

Schimmel shared how Susans House, a Jerusalem-based charity that works with underprivileged children, was on the verge of closing its doors when Artza placed an order for ceramic vases.

We placed an order of 5,000, and the woman on the other line began crying, he shared. She said that just an hour earlier, the bank had called and said that if they couldnt pay the months rent, they would be shut down. With that order that we placed, we gave them a lifeline for the next few months.

To bring the flavors of the Holy Land to life, each box also includes a spice and recipe card  something Schimmel said has been wildly popular with subscribers.

We love watching people cook real, typical Israeli foods that they wouldnt necessarily normally cook at home, he said. We get so many requests for more spices and more recipes.

In response, Artza recently launched a Kickstarter campaign for a cookbook titled Tasting Israel: A cookbook of food, family & faith. The book features an exclusive collection of recipes, history and stories told by 30 of Israels leading chefs.

This isnt just going to be like any other cookbook, Schimmel said. This is a cookbook with a soul. Israel is a melting pot of many faiths and heritages and cultures and religions, and Israeli cuisine reflects that. Israeli cuisine isnt just one type of thing; its a bit of Arabic, European, Moroccan and Ethiopian.

The idea is to have 30 chefs from 30 completely different backgrounds bring their version of what Israel is to them, and kind of how they represent in food, and then share it with each other, he added. The book will be made up of 60 recipes. And itll be full of stories of the chefs and how they ended up in Israel, the land history, the biblical relevance of food, and where it is mentioned in the Bible.

By funding this project, supporters will have exclusive access to live masterclasses, behind-the-scenes content, giveaways, new recipes, locally sourced artisan products and more. As of Monday afternoon, the Kickstarter campaign had raised more than half of its $50,000 goal.

Soon, Artza is hoping to bring its supporters to Israel for in-depth tours now that the country has re-opened its doors.

We want to be the company that allows you to connect with Israel, connect with the modern-day people, connect with the modern-day country, but also connect to its history and to the stories of the Bible, and to see to the beauty of what Israel is, Schimmel said.

He applauded Western Christians for their support of Israel, adding that Artza allows believers to support a country struggling to recover from the pandemic tangibly.

I always knew Israel had strong support from Christians in America, but I was never fully aware of how strong that support was. Its mind-blowing, he said.

Artza provides such a practical way for people to support people that are really hurting right now, Schimmel added. When you get to learn about nine small businesses that youve actually supported, and then every three months you get to get to know another nine from Jerusalem, then Nazareth and from the Judean Desert, you feel connected to the land and connected to the people. Its a beautiful thing and helps strengthen our country.
Parents lack of biblical worldview puts children at 'spiritual disadvantage': Barna warns 6 out of 10 US parents don't view the Bible as a 'reliable and accurate source of Gods truth'

A prominent Evangelical researcher has warned that the lack of a biblical worldview among parents of preteens puts youth at a spiritual disadvantage.

The George Barna-led Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University released the first report of its American Worldview Inventory 2022 Tuesday, which analyzed the worldview dilemma of American parents.

The report was based on a survey of 600 American parents with children younger than 13 conducted in January. The respondents were asked several dozen worldview-related questions that measure both beliefs and behavior within eight categories of worldview application.

While 67% of parents with children younger than 13 identified as Christians, just 2% of those surveyed subscribed to a biblical worldview as defined by the researchers. According to the report, a biblical worldview emerges from accepting the Bible as a relevant and authoritative guide for life.

Among the two-thirds of parents who identify as Christian, just 4% of them possessed a biblical worldview.

A parents primary responsibility is to prepare a child for the life God intends for that child, Barna, the director of research at the Cultural Research Center, said in a statement.

A crucial element in nurturing is helping the child develop a biblical worldview  the filter that causes a person to make their choices in harmony with biblical teachings and principles.

According to Barna, who founded the prominent Evangelical research firm Barna Group, the research confirms that very few parents even have the worldview development of their children on their radar.

The typical American parent is either fully unaware that there is a worldview development process, or they are aware that their child is developing a worldview, but they do not take responsibility for a role in the process, he said.

Every parent teaches what they know and models what they believe. They can only give what they have, and what they have to give reflects their driving beliefs about life and spirituality.

Barna warned that parents are both a primary influence and a gatekeeper to other influences on their children.

Although some parents are aware the childs worldview is being developed, Barna said they may choose or allow outsiders to accomplish that duty on the parents behalf.

Shockingly few parents intentionally speak to their children about beliefs and behavior based upon a biblical worldview, Barna said. Perhaps the most powerful worldview lesson parents provide is through their own behavior, yet our studies consistently indicate that parental choices generally do not reflect biblical principles or an intentionally Christian approach to life.

The research concluded that American parents views about the Bible play a role in the groups widespread absence of a biblical worldview.

Specifically, nearly six out of 10 parents surveyed do not see the Bible as a reliable and accurate source of Gods truth, while just 40% view the Bible as Gods accurate words for humanity.

The subgroup of parents most likely to possess a biblical worldview attended independent or nondenominational Protestant churches (16%). The share of parents with a biblical worldview was measured at 10% among those who read the Bible daily, those who see themselves as very conservative on theological matters, and those who consider themselves very conservative on social issues, such as abortion and same-sex marriage.

Those with a biblical worldview comprised less than 10% of all other subgroups of preteen parents, characterized based on their religious and political views. The groups with the highest number of parents possessing a biblical worldview identified as politically conservative (9%), and theologically defined born-again Christians (8%). Overall, 22% of respondents identified as born-again Christians, while 19% described themselves as politically conservative.

The groups least likely to possess a biblical worldview were those attending Catholic churches, respondents who characterized themselves as politically liberal or progressive and parents between the ages of 18 and 24.

Just 1% of Catholics and liberals had a biblical worldview, while less than 1% of parents younger than 24 have a biblical worldview.

Catholics comprised 24% of respondents, while political liberals and progressives accounted for 17% of those surveyed. Thirteen percent of the sample included parents between 18 and 24.

Older parents were slightly more likely than their younger counterparts to embrace a biblical worldview. Four percent of parents aged 45 or older, who constituted 31% of respondents, subscribe to such a worldview, followed by 2% of parents between the ages of 25 and 44, who constituted a majority (56%) of those surveyed.

While mainline Protestants and Evangelical Protestants each comprised 11% of the sample, Evangelicals had a higher share of adherents with a biblical worldview (6%) than mainline Protestants (2%).

While Barna expressed concern about the astronomically low share of preteen parents with a biblical worldview, he remained optimistic about the possibility of a spiritual revival in the U.S.

The reality is that culture-changing movements can transform a nation with as little as 2% of the population on-board, he said. Turning around the paucity of commitment to the biblical worldview cannot happen overnight, in the United States, but it can happen.
Presbyterian pastor accused of covering up child sex abuse defrocked after investigation

A former pastor in Indiana accused of mishandling allegations that an underaged family member sexually abused several children at his congregation has been defrocked following an investigation and trial by the Reformed Presbyterian Church in North America.

Jared Olivetti, who once pastored Immanuel Reformed Presbyterian Church of West Lafayette but resigned amid allegations of mishandling abuse in January, had his ordination officially revoked last week.

Olivetti, who resigned along with three church elders, has also been removed from the "privileges of Church membership," according to a report from The Indianapolis Star.

As a result, Olivetti cannot serve as an elder or participate in the sacrament communion.

A notification sent to the Presbyteries of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America stated that Olivetti didn't attend the trial or the verdict reading as officials delivered the unanimous decision from the denomination's national governing body.

In December, The Indianapolis Star published a report alleging Olivetti had been protecting a teenage relative from an investigation into claims of sexually abusing up to 15 children on and off church property between 2019 and 2020.

At least eight victims from multiple families belonged to the congregation. The eight victims reported being touched over and under their clothes, oral-genital contact and penetration committed by the boy in the church. A Tippecanoe County juvenile court order states that the boy was found to be delinquent on multiple felony charges of child molestation. He was sent to a residential juvenile detention facility.

Revelations of Olivetti reportedly interfering with the church's response to the allegations led both the synod and regional body to investigate the claims of sexual abuse at Immanuel Church. A Synod judicial commission found the pastor guilty on charges of failing to conduct himself "in a way that was above reproach ... resulting in distrust and disunity within the church," according to The Indianapolis Star.

He was also found guilty of "threatening dishonor in the name of Jesus Christ, the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America, Immanuel Reformed Presbyterian Church, and himself."

Olivetti, along with Immanuel elders Keith Magill, Ben Larson and David Carr, resigned their leadership positions at the congregation in January in response to the allegations.

Olivetti was also suspended by the RPCNA's synod judicial commission, which noted in a public letter that the suspension did not technically indicate Olivetti's guilt, but rather "acknowledges the gravity of the accusations against Mr. Olivetti."

Ken de Jong, Immanuel's provisional moderator, told the congregation in January that the resignations came "very reluctantly," adding that they were done "specifically to encourage the growth and development of this congregation."

Earlier this month, the Great Lakes-Gulf Presbytery held a meeting to handle multiple business matters, among them the situation at Immanuel church amid the church trial.

"The current moderator of the Immanuel congregation also reported on the life and ministry of the church, purporting spiritual unity in the congregation as well as a season of growth despite pains," posted Pastor Nathan Eshelman on Facebook.

"The tensions were obvious between the congregation and some in the presbytery, but the presbytery did express love to Immanuel Church and their new ruling elders committed to working with the presbytery towards healing the divisions. We all look forward to these divisions being healed."
Russian Evangelical Alliance head expresses sorrow over Putins invasion: I tried to prevent war

As U.S. intelligence officials say Russian President Vladimir Putin will likely cause more deaths and destruction in Ukraine over his anger and frustration at his militarys failures, the General Secretary of the Russian Evangelical Alliance released a statement saying he mourns the invasion and did everything I could do to prevent war.

I mourn what my country has done in its recent military invasion of another sovereign country, Ukraine, REA General Secretary Vitaly Vlasenko said in a statement addressed to his dear brothers and sisters around the world.

Peaceful feelings are being destroyed amidst the bombing and shelling, and a stream of increased attention has rushed across Europe in the form of refugees: women, the elderly, and children, he added.

The Associated Press said Monday it learned about the death of a pregnant woman and her baby after Russia bombed a maternity hospital in the city of Mariupol where she was meant to give birth. Images of the woman being rushed to an ambulance on a stretcher had circled the world, epitomizing the horror of an attack on humanitys most innocent, it said.

As doctors were doing all they could to keep her alive as her pelvis crushed and hip detached, she realized she was losing her baby and cried out to the medics, Kill me now! The medics delivered the baby via cesarean section but there were no signs of life, the surgeon was quoted as saying.

The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said Saturday it had recorded 1,663 civilian casualties, including 596 killed and 1,067 injured, since Russias invasion of Ukraine began on Feb. 24.

Those dead include 124 men, 85 women, six girls and 10 boys, as well as 27 children and 344 adults whose sex is yet unknown  although the actual figure could be much higher, the OHCHR said.

More than 2.8 million people have fled Ukraine because of the Russian invasion, the U.N. has said, according to the BBC.

The head of REA added: Two peoples closely related to each other, many of whom are deeply devoted to the Christian (primarily Orthodox) faith, are now in a fierce battle  one side pursuing the goal of demilitarizing Ukraine, the other seeking to save their country from occupation.

Russians and Ukrainians have close family relations, he said. A Russian may have daughters and grandchildren living in Kyiv; a Ukrainian may have children living and working in Moscow.

Vlasenko continued: Today, pain, fear, and deep sorrow for their loved ones and for the future of their own lives and countries, pierce the hearts of many people like lightning, because since the Second World War, no one knows what the limits of war and its consequences may be.

All these events cause me deep sorrow, bitterness and regret for decisions taken by the leadership of my country, and a great compassion for those suffering as a result of this decision, he concluded, listing his efforts, including writing an open letter to Putin the day before the invasion, while also fasting and praying for peace and harmony between Russia and Ukraine, among other things.

On Monday, the AP quoted CIA Director William Burn as saying that Putin might escalate the conflict to try to break Ukraines resistance. I think Putin is angry and frustrated right now, he said. Hes likely to double down and try to grind down the Ukrainian military with no regard for civilian casualties.

On Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he was ready to hold peace talks with Russia mediated by Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett in Jerusalem.

Hours later, the Holy Dormition Svyatogorsk Lavra, an Orthodox Christian monastery in the Donetsk region that has sheltered more than 500 evacuees, including 200 children, was rocked when a bomb exploded 54 yards away from the entrance, the Center for Strategic Communications and Information Security reported in posts on Facebook and Telegram.

Zelenskys announcement came after Putin showed no willingness to accept a ceasefire when French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz spoke to him.

About 100 Christian leaders in the United States, more than 280 priests and deacons of the Russian Orthodox Church and over 400 ministers of Evangelical churches in Russia have called for reconciliation and an immediate end to Russias ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

We mourn the ordeal to which our brothers and sisters in Ukraine were undeservedly subjected, the Russian Orthodox clerics wrote in their open letter. The Last Judgment awaits every person.

The clerics added, No earthly authority, no doctors, no guards will protect from this judgment. Concerned about the salvation of every person who considers himself a child of the Russian Orthodox Church, we do not want him to appear at this judgment, bearing the heavy burden of mothers curses.
Texas Children's Hospital halts puberty blockers for gender transition after AG 'child abuse' label

The largest pediatric hospital in Texas has announced that it will no longer provide puberty blockers to children after the states Attorney General Ken Paxton wrote an opinion labeling the practice child abuse.

In a statement Friday, the Houston-based Texas Childrens Hospital, the largest pediatric hospital in both the United States and Texas, announced that it will pause hormone-related prescription therapies for gender-affirming services.

The hospital cited the Attorney Generals and Governors Actions as factors in its decision, referring to Paxtons assertion in last months non-binding Opinion No. KP-0401 that the prescription of puberty-blocking drugs can legally constitute child abuse under several provisions of chapter 261 of the Texas Family Code.

The mission of Texas Childrens Hospital is to create a healthier future for all children, including transgender children, within the bounds of the law, the hospital added. This step was taken to safeguard our health care professionals and impacted families from potential criminal legal ramifications.

Paxton reacted to the hospitals decision in a tweet Friday, remarking that he was glad to hear that today Texas Childrens Hospital halted their child-abuse procedures.

In his non-binding legal opinion, the attorney general maintained that sterilization of minors by removing their genitalia and the prescription of puberty-blocking drugs can cause mental or emotional injury to a child that results in an observable and material impairment in the childs growth, development, or psychological funding.

Glad to hear that today Texas Childrens Hospital halted their child-abuse procedures. https://t.co/HC9NJLrc3u  Attorney General Ken Paxton (@KenPaxtonTX) March 4, 2022

These procedures and treatments can caus[e] or permit[] the child to be in a situation in which the child sustains a mental or emotional injury that results in an observable and material impairment in the childs growth, development, or psychological funding, he added.

Paxton also warned that the procedures can cause a physical injury that results in substantial harm to the child.

As Texas Childrens Hospital indicated, Paxton is not the only public official in the state to view puberty-blocking drugs and gender reassignment surgery for minors as a form of child abuse.

Last summer, the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services commissioner wrote a letter classifying genital mutilation of a child through reassignment surgery as child abuse in response to a request from Republican Gov. Greg Abbott.

Last week, President Joe Biden released a statement slamming elected leaders in Texas for launching a cynical and dangerous campaign targeting transgender children and their parents.

Like so many anti-transgender attacks proliferating in states across the country, the Governors actions callously threaten to harm children and their families just to score political points, the statement reads. These actions are terrifying many families in Texas and beyond. And they must stop.

The president insisted that contrary to what Texas officials are proclaiming, Respected medical organizations have said that access to gender-affirming care for transgender children can benefit mental health, lower suicide rates, and improve other health outcomes.

The American Medical Association wrote an open letter to the National Governors Association expressing opposition to efforts to interfere in the health care of transgender children.

However, the conservative American College of Pediatricians has long voiced its opposition to using puberty-blocking drugs on children with gender dysphoria, calling such treatments "experimental."

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, led by Xavier Becerra, also condemned what he described as the Texas governments attacks against transgender youth and those who love and care for them.

HHS issued guidance making clear that denials of health care based on gender identity are illegal, as is restricting doctors and health care providers from providing care because of a patients gender identity.

The push to declare gender reassignment surgeries for minors child abuse follows the airing of a 60 Minutes segment featuring testimony from detransitioners who underwent medical procedures to change their gender when they were younger only to regret doing so when they got older. They reverted back to identifying with their biological gender.

Many of those the newsmagazine program spoke with contend they were rushed into gender-affirming care and continue to suffer adverse health consequences due to their previous embrace of gender affirmation.

The Food and Drug Administration hasnt approved the use of puberty-blocking drugs for the sake of gender transition but has approved such medication for children who start puberty at a very young age.
The Nigerian schoolgirls 8 years later

In his letter to the church at Philippi, St. Paul exhorted believers there to live lives worthy of the Gospel of Christ. How Paul goes on to describe that kind of life lived is a bit unnerving, especially in a letter supposedly about finding a life of joy.

Such a life, wrote Paul, involves, striving side by side for the faith of the Gospel, not frightened in anything by your opponentsFor it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in Him but also suffer for His sake.

Most of us cannot imagine living out those words, but the Nigerian schoolgirls, kidnapped almost eight years ago by Nigerian terrorist group Boko Haram, can. Now in their early 20s, their stories are documented in a new book, Bring Back Our Girls: The Untold Story of the Global Search for Nigerias Missing Schoolgirls by Joe Parkinson and Drew Hinshaw

The nightmare began the night of April 14, 2014, when armed members of the terrorist group descended on the majority Christian town of Chibok, firing their weapons and looking for food supplies and a new brickmaker. After forcing the 276 teenage girls out of their beds, they eventually decided to keep them as captives. They burned the school to the ground before disappearing into Nigerias rugged northern scrubland.

What followed was a multinational search and a viral social media campaign known as #BringBackOurGirls. Unfortunately, it had limited immediate effect. The girls, most of whom were Christian, were at the mercy of their captors.

While the Muslim classmates were forced to marry Boko Haram fighters, the Christian schoolgirls faced a brutal choice. They could convert to Islam and likewise be forced into marriage, or they could refuse and endure every imaginable form of forced labor, assault, and deprivation. For the girls, the answer was clear. They would not submit. Anything that happens, happens, they told each other.

Kept at near-starvation levels and forced into back-breaking labor over the next 3 years, the girls remained strong in their faith. Here is how Parkinson and Hinshaw describe their courage:

At the risk of beatings and torture, they whispered prayers together at night, or into cups of water, and memorized the Book of Job from a smuggled Bible. Into secret diaries, they copied Luke 2, because they saw themselves in Marys ordeal of giving birth to Jesus. They transcribed paraphrases of psalms in loopy, teenage handwriting: Oh my God I keep calling by day and You do not answer. And by night. and there is no silence on my part (22:2).

As we interviewed some 20 of the young women, Parkinson and Hinshaw continue, We discovered [something] that much of the foreign coverage had missed. We saw clearly how the teenagers will to survive was inseparable from their religious convictions.

Similar convictions are being tested in other parts of Nigeria, as well. To this day, the regular murder, abduction, and violence meted out towards Christians by Boko Haram and militant Fulani herdsmen is made worse by the complicity of the government and silence of much of the world. The result is what some have called Nigerias silent slaughter. The Red Cross estimates that more than 24,000 Nigerians are registered as missing, the most of any country.

In the case of the Chibok girls, 163 either escaped or were eventually released. At least 13 died in captivity. Nearly 100 girls remain unaccounted for.

According to Joe Parkinson and Drew Hinshaw, their story holds a surprising but important lesson for Africas most populous nation:

At times it could be easy [to] adopt the facile hope that Nigerias problems might be resolved by gradually secularizing its more than 210 million people. Yet we found a different perspective in a group of young women who had faced unimaginable hardship and survived. Their faith provided twin anchors of identity and hope during a period when their captors were trying to erase both. [it] became the language of their resistance.

In the tradition of so many who went before them, who were granted not only to believe in Christ but to suffer for His sake, the Chibok schoolgirls held on to faith, and in so doing, found life and hope where there was seemingly none.

Pray for Nigeria, and the thousands of Christians suffering for Christ there.

Originally published at BreakPoint.
When seeking a domain name that is memorable, easily searchable and available, many companies are looking toward descriptive domains as a more authentic and memorable choice.

But what exactly is a descriptive domain, and how can it benefit your business?

How can descriptive domains benefit your business?

Descriptive domains often act as short and easy-to-remember calling cards for what a company is and what it offers. Descriptive domains feature keywords on both the left and right sides of the dot, as is the case with amazon.jobs or malaysia.travel. When businesses utilize every letter of their domain name, they make it easier for customers to remember their website and find their business again in the future.

Descriptive domains can also fuel search engine optimization. The more clarity there is in a domain name, the more likely it is for that website to be a top result from a quick internet search. If someone searches for modern energy, they will very quickly find modern.energy, an intuitive next click for the searcher of that keyword set. Having a searchable domain is important for entrepreneurs because it can boost online traffic and lead to increased leads and conversions. Domain names that are easy to remember, descriptive and connected to brand identity are set up for success and SEO impact.

Related: Should Your Business Spend Thousands of Dollars on a Strong Domain Name?

What is the difference between a descriptive domain and a brandable domain?

Brandable domains typically refer to the word before the dot in a descriptive domain, featuring a word that is not necessarily a dictionary keyword with a definable meaning. A brandable domain can also be a powerful market differentiator, making brands websites easy to find and memorable. Entrepreneurs and brand builders are increasingly using both sides of the dot for their brand, such as with the examples of pretti.cool, knowable.fyi, staud.clothing, cool.haus and starface.world.

Related: Why is Buying Domain From Web Developers Not a Great Idea

How entrepreneurs can choose between a descriptive and brandable domain

The good news is that when it comes to descriptive vs. brandable domains, entrepreneurs can have it all. While both brandable and descriptive domains have their benefits, no one really has to choose between the two, as many websites are effectively utilizing descriptive domains as their brand. Companies like compound.finance and armoire.style, for instance, use their domain names as a branding opportunity. Anyone visiting these websites will already know the names of the companies and what they specialize in.

Whereas one-word brandable domains using a generic domain extension like .com or .net or .co can be vague, brandable domain names combined with descriptive extensions allow for more clarity that brands need to tell a memorable story, and contribute to top of mind memorability for prospective business.

Using a descriptive domain extension, like what Amazon did for their telehealth portal Amazon.Care, utilizes the brand name while also representing the service provided clearly and memorably. The combination of a brand name with a descriptive TLD can simplify a search for a product or feature that a website offers, while also helping companies provide a clear sense of their brands. Right now, descriptive domains are widely available and are becoming increasingly popular in their adoption by up-and-coming brands.

Related: 4 Tips for Launching a Successful Rebrand

Copyright 2022 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
As everyone knows, a Calendar is the ultimate tool for identifying days. Calendar helps keep track of meetings and appointments or register those that have occurred already. Whats more, calendars can be used to remind us of special days, like a holiday or social event. And some people even use calendars to budget, plant seeds in our garden, or maintain a daily routine.

But, did you also know that you can also set yourself free with your Calendar as well? Youll be happier, healthier, and more productive from having this Freedom. Why? Because this encourages self-care, stops time from shrinking, and promotes breaks. Even though you have a million things to do, we all need to take a time out occasionally.

But, more importantly, breaking from constraints allows you to live the life you want without any limitations. While everyone has their definition of Freedom, Natalie Sisson, best-selling author of the Suitcase Entrepreneur, explains, Freedom is the possibility to have choice and purpose helps you choose. Freedom is the space around you, where your purpose is your compass showing you where to move in that space.

How can you actually achieve this Freedom? Sission suggests;

Define what Freedom means to you. Ask yourself the question, What makes me feel free? she says. Your next step is to write down your answers, discuss them with friends, and initiate conversations with people who matter to you.

Ask yourself the question, What makes me feel free? she says. Your next step is to write down your answers, discuss them with friends, and initiate conversations with people who matter to you. Understand why Freedom is essential to you . The more understanding you have of your needs and reasons why you desire those freeing things in life, the easier it will be to achieve them.

. The more understanding you have of your needs and reasons why you desire those freeing things in life, the easier it will be to achieve them. Map out an action plan. First, you need to clearly define your ideal lifestyle and how you want to live it.

Wed also add that you need a calendar as well.

1. Take a time out.

Freeing up your time starts with taking a step back to take a good look at your life, writes Leo Babauta of Zen Habits. Set aside at least an hour. Better yet, several hours or half a day. Of course, one full day would be superb. A weekend would be even more ideal, though not necessarily practical for many folks, he adds.

This block of time allows you to gain a sense of perspective on your life. To achieve this, ask questions, such as;

Is it what youve always wanted?

How would you get to where youve always wanted to be?

What do you enjoy doing but dont have enough time to do?

What things actually fill up your day?

Are there things you could drop or minimize to make more time?

In short, to get started breaking yourself for, you need to schedule a time to reflect and plan. When can so this whenever you please, like first thing in the morning or at the end of the day. The key is to actually follow through and have a dedicated block of time to reflect. Once blocked out, try to reduce interruptions, like putting your phone on silent.

2. Align your most important work with your chronotype.

Your chronotype is just a fancy way of saying your body clock, explains Amantha Imber, founder of behavioral science consultancy Inventium and the host of How I Work. This is the natural sleep-wake cycle that we all follow. Everyone has a unique chronotype, and it influences the peaks and troughs of energy we feel throughout our days.

Around 10% of people are stereotypical larks, who feel most energetic in the mornings, adds Imber. At the other end of the spectrum are the 20% of the population who are owls, or people who do their best work at night. Many of us fall somewhere in between, peaking before noon, experiencing an energy dip after lunch, and getting a second wind in the afternoon.

According to Dan Pink, author of When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing, you can get more done by paying attention to your chronotype and planning your tasks around your energy peaks.

On days I plan to write, I do it in the mornings, when Im most alert, he told Imber. I set myself a word count, and I wont do anything until I hit it. He also wont bring his phone into the office or open his email. Once Ive hit my goal, Im free to do other things. Pink makes full use of his energy upon waking by avoiding distractions in the mornings and devoting his time to focused work.

When his energy drops in the middle of the afternoon, he tends to stick to manageable tasks. For example, answering emails or filing.

What does this have to do with Freedom? First, lock in your priorities when youre most productive. Then, you can complete these tasks faster, leaving you with more availability.

3. Schedule time blocks.

Ive mentioned time blocking several times above. But, what exactly is it?

Time blocking is simply a time management technique where you set aside a specific amount of time for a particular task, explains Calendars Howie Jones. For example, instead of checking your phone every time you receive an email or social notification, you would do this at clearly defined times. You can block out all or part of your day however you wish.

Some people, like Elon Musk, block out their entire day. Personally, I find this too restrictive  still, establishing time blocks for your priorities wouldnt hurt. When you do stick some blocks of time on your Calendar  it prevents other less essential tasks from getting in the way.

Whats more, time blocks break us from the shackles of extensive to-do lists. Plus, since theres a time limit attached to your daily responsibilities, you dont get caught up in perfectionism or procrastination.

Furthermore, you will be able to reject requests for your time more easily. You can also use it to reflect on your priorities as it provides a record of the things you accomplished and did not accomplish in a specific period.

Keep your Calendar lean and more.

However, overstuffing your Calendar can be detrimental. When you have blocks of free time, you can attend to emergencies or adjust your schedule if you are procrastinating. Also, having buffers between meetings prevents you from running late. Plus, you need these free blocks of time to rest, recharge, and do whatever you feel like doing.

Additionally, schedule a time block to occasionally declutter your Calendar. As an example, you can declutter your Calendar by questioning all of your recurring commitments. Maybe that monthly mastermind session is no longer helpful. Has that commitment, in fact, become an obligation that you dread? If it isnt helping you  its a timesuck, and you can remove it from your Calendar and replace it with something more fulfilling.

4. Refuse, delegate, or outsource.

Theres a good chance that youre taking too much on if youre a high-achiever. However, Greg McKeown writes in his book Essentialism that we cannot do everything given the complexity of trade-offs.

The real question is not how we can we do it all; it is who will get to choose what we do and dont do. Remember, someone else will choose for us and forfeit our right to choose. So we can either deliberately choose what not to do or allow ourselves to be pulled in directions we dont want to go.

It is not always your job to volunteer for unassigned tasks, even when asked directly if you can do something. You can mention your other work and deadlines  but you dont need to excuse yourself, either. You can just say, no, I cant help you with this. You shouldnt be afraid of asking for help or delegating to someone else on your team who is more capable if you cant refuse the task.

Outsource tasks in your professional and personal lives.

Outsourcing tasks can pertain to your private life more than anything else. Generally, people dont outsource tasks or hire help because they save money by doing it themselves. However, your time is more valuable than saving money.

With that in mind, if you have the funds, you can outsource tedious and time-consuming tasks like laundry, cleaning, or grocery shopping. You could also hire someone else to file your taxes or manage your social accounts.

5. Automate what you can.

Anything you can do to put recurring obligations on auto-pilot will help free up time, former CEO and speaker Janice Holly Booth told Bustle. Prescription refill programs, automatic 401(k) deductions, software that tracks spending, apps that remind you its time to get up and move  Removing the need to think about these things will help you focus on more you-time.'

Overall, when you dont have to think about things, you will have more time on your hands to accomplish what really matters to you.

Automation doesnt just mean putting recurring obligations on autopilot. Many experts will tell you to automate as many reoccurring tasks as you can. Automating your finances (payments, deposits, transfers) or setting up your alarms in advance are just a few examples where automating will save you time and usually money.

6. Consider the flowtime technique.

You can measure productivity habits and focus using a timed system with this method. The result is a discouragement of multitasking in favor of focused work, where you remain focused on a single task until its completed.

The method is used as an alternative to the Pomodoro Method, consisting of set amounts of work followed by a break. Despite the fact that many people have found the Pomodoro Technique quite effective, the time interval can feel constricting.

The Flowtime Technique does not oblige you to adhere to these deadlines. Thus, you will be able to remain focused without being pulled away by a timer.

7. Sometimes, you have to go with the flow.

Again, its not advisable to schedule every minute of your time. But, at the same time, constantly winging it can be stressful. Its like trying to reach a new location without using a GPS.

Moreover, studies show that those who dont schedule their free time are indeed happier. When scheduled, leisure tasks feel less free-flowing and more forced  which is what robs them of their utility, Selin A. Malkocan, an associate professor of marketing at Ohio State University and an author of the study Activity Versus Outcome Maximization in Time Management, told the Washington Post.

Additionally, going with the flow can make us more resilient. For instance, you wont lose your cool when your plans go awry. Instead, you adapt and move on. And, taking this approach encourages us to enjoy the present.

With that being said  youll want to strive for the right balance in your life. That means adding your priorities to your Calendar before anything else. But, lets say you have no plans this weekend  its okay to just roll with it and be spontaneous.

Image Credit: Pixabay; Pexels; Thanks!

The post How to Set Yourself Free With Calendar This Year appeared first on Calendar.

Copyright 2022 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
President Moon Jae-in speaks during a meeting with his senior secretaries at Cheong Wa Dae in Seoul, March 14. Yonhap





President Moon Jae-in called for national unity Monday to address the challenges facing South Korea after a polarizing presidential vote, saying the most urgent task for now was to heal national divisions.







Moon made the remarks at a meeting with his senior aides, as President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol of the conservative People Power Party is stepping up efforts to form a transition committee.







Moon said the March 9 election exposed "many conflicts amid unprecedented fierce competition."







"Above all, this is a time for unity. The most urgent task is to deal with, heal and integrate the divided public sentiment clearly revealed in the election process and result," Moon said.







The election of Yoon, who won a tight election last week by a razor-thin margin of 0.73 percent with 48.56 percent of the vote, was partly viewed as a referendum on the liberal Moon Jae-in administration.







Moon said his government will cooperate with Yoon to help the next administration start work without a vacuum in state affairs.







The President said his administration will continue to make utmost efforts for the stable management of the situation on the Korean Peninsula until his term ends in May, as concerns have risen that North Korea could test a newly developed intercontinental ballistic missile at any time.







South Korea and the United States have recently announced their assessment that Pyongyang's purported satellite tests, Feb. 27 and March 5, were part of efforts to develop a new ICBM system ahead of a possible full-range missile launch.







North Korea has claimed the launches were for "reconnaissance satellite" development.







Moon urged the North to "stop actions that heighten crises and take the path of dialogue and diplomacy."







He also instructed aides to make sure to stabilize medical responses to the pandemic, saying the Omicron wave in South Korea has either passed its peak or will reach it soon.







Driven by the highly transmissible variant, South Korea is grappling with its worst wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. On Sunday, the country reported more than 300,000 new COVID-19 cases for the third consecutive day. (Yonhap)


Major airline carrier United Airlines (NYSE: UAL) stock has been plunging with the market sell-off despite improvement in its underlying business. The epicenter stock of the pandemic cant seem to catch a break. Even as the reopening was accelerated by spread of COVID vaccinations, Omicron surged to negatively impact bookings. Just as spring bookings started to recover in January, Putin decides to invade Ukraine. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has hurt the airline industry directly and indirectly. While flights into and out of Russia are no longer available, its the rising fuel prices that are cutting in on already thin margins. As crude oil rises, airline stocks tend to fall. The rise in oil and gas prices are considered transitory in nature escalated by Russian energy sanctions. The U.S. is trying to offset the Russian oil ban with potential deals with other nations. United Airlines believes its will hit profitability in the second quarter in 2022. This was stated by its CEO in January before the Russian invasion on Feb. 24, 2022. Uncertainty is causing shares to sag. Prudent investors looking to take a calculated risk on a major airline operator can watch for opportunistic pullbacks in shares of United Airlines.



Q4 Fiscal 2021 Earnings Release

On Jan. 19, 2022, United Airlines released its fiscal fourth-quarter 2021 results for the quarter ending December 2021. The Company reported an earnings-per-share (EPS) loss of (-$1.60) excluding non-recurring items versus consensus analyst estimates for a loss of (-$2.09), a $0.49 beat. Revenues grew 140.1% year-over-year (YoY) to $8.19 billion beating analyst estimates for $7.96 billion. Q4 capacity fell 21% compared to 2019. Bookings for spring remain strong despite Omicron impacting near-term demand.

Forward Guidance

United Airlines expects fiscal Q1 2022 capacity to be down 16-18% compared to Q1 2019. Operating revenues are expected to be down 20-25% compared to Q1 2019. Q1 2022 CASM-ex is expected to be up 14-15% from Q1 2019. For the fiscal full-year 2022, United Airlines expects capacity to be lower than 2019 and CASM-ex to rise 14-15% compared to 2019. However, it expects to remain on track to achieve long-term financial goals from the United Next plan. On Jan. 20, 2022, United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby commented that bookings are starting to come back and believes the Company will be profitable in Q2 2022.

Recent News and Events

On Feb. 24, 2022, Russian forces invaded Ukraine and prompted many events impacting United Airlines and the airline industry. On Feb. 28, 2022, the European Union (EU) announced that airspace will be closed to every Russian plane including private planes. Crude oil prices surged to 13-year highs above $130 per barrel in March impacting fuel prices. On March 1, 2022, The U.S. government banned Russian flights from American airspace following up on actions from the EU and Canada. On March 2, 2022, United Airlines will temporarily avoid Russian airspace impacting flights to and from India. Russian flights to the U.S. have been banned. Russia supplies most of the worlds fertilizer, therefore the ban can further impact fuel and food prices. The ripple effects continue as headlines hit on a daily basis.

UAL Opportunistic Pullback Levels

Using the rifle charts on the weekly and daily time frames provides a precision view of the playing field for UAL stock. The weekly rifle chart peaked at the $54.89 Fibonacci (fib) level. The weekly rifle chart breakdown has a falling 5-period moving average (MA) resistance at $42.37 overlapping the 15-period MA at $43.02. The weekly lower Bollinger Bands (BBs) sit at $33.33. The weekly stochastic bounce stalled at the 40-band with potential to cross down. The weekly market structure low (MSL) buy triggered on the breakout above $26.58 and daily MSL triggers on a breakout through $36.46. The daily rifle chart has a downtrend with a slowing 5-period MA at $33.68 and 15-period MA at $40.11 as stochastic attempts to cross up towards the 20-band. The daily lower BBs sit at $26.80. The daily 50-period MA sits at $43.71 and 200-period MA resistance at $47.13. Prudent investors can watch for opportunistic pullback levels at the $33.33 fib, $31.90 fib, $29.66 fib, $27.55, $24.44 fib, $21.34 fib, and the $17.80 fib level. Upside trajectories range from the $42.41 fib level up towards the $63.31 fib level.

Copyright 2022 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Since December, a Montgomery County judge has sentenced three men connected to the 2019 killing of a Kingwood teen.

The remains of 18-year-old Tristan Maddux were found the morning of March 3, 2019 in a ditch in Porter. Maddux was a shooting victim in a robbery, the Montgomery County Sheriffs Office disclosed around that time.

Maddux had been reported missing to the Houston Police Department the day before, which court records show was the date he was fatally shot by Kingwood resident Isaiah Deshaun Parker, now 21.

Parker pleaded guilty to murder and tampering with evidence, a human corpse, Dec. 01 in the 9th District Court. He was sentenced to 50 years in prison by Presiding Judge Phil Grant for the murder charge and 10 years for the evidence tampering charge, with two years and 267 days served, according to court records.

Parker will serve out his sentences concurrently, according to Mike Holley, first assistant attorney at the Montgomery County District Attorneys Office.

This came ahead of the convictions in February of two others  Lamar Deon Laster, 19, and Jorge Alberto-Medrano Ramirez, 20, both of Porter  for committing armed robbery against Maddux the weekend he went missing, charging documents reveal.

Most recently, according to court records, Laster pleaded guilty to the first-degree felony offense of aggravated robbery Feb. 24, with Grant sentencing him to 25 years with 279 days served.

On Feb. 4, court records show, Ramirez pleaded guilty to aggravated robbery. Grant sentenced Ramirez to 40 years with two years and 336 days served.

The three assailants were taken into custody within four days of Madduxs slaying. Parker was arrested March 4, 2019 in the Denton County town of The Colony. Ramirez was taken to the Montgomery County Jail two days later, according to the sheriffs office.

A minor at the time of his crime, Laster not initially identified by the agency when his arrest was announced.

Laster and Ramirez were originally also charged with tampering with evidence, a human corpse, for allegedly trying to conceal Madduxs lifeless body, according to an indictment. The charges were dismissed the date of their convictions, court records show.

At one point, Holley explained, Parkers murder charge was raised to capital murder. Upon his guilty plea it was reinstated to murder, Holley said.

jose.gonzalez@chron.com

twitter.com/jrgzztx
WASHINGTON - A growing number of U.S. lawmakers ratcheted up pressure on President Joe Biden on Sunday to increase military aid to Ukraine, including sending fighter jets and air defense systems that the administration rejected last week.

The public calls from Republicans and Democrats to answer Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's urgent pleas for air assistance come as the Biden administration declined an offer from Poland to deliver MiG-29 airplanes to Ukraine for fear such a move could be interpreted by the Russians as an escalation of the United States' role in the war.

The bipartisan push underscores the growing hawkishness among many leaders on Capitol Hill, who have been urging Biden to do more to help Ukraine defend itself against Russian attacks as the war rages into its third week.

"[Russian President] Vladimir Putin and the Russians seem to be saying everything is escalatory. And yet they're escalating every single day by coming into Ukraine with these weapons," Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, said Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union."

"This is an illegal - this is a brutal - totally unprovoked attack," he added, emphasizing the horrors of civilian targets hit. "So, as they escalate, what the Ukrainian people are asking for is just the ability to defend themselves."

Portman was part of a four-person bipartisan delegation of senators who traveled to Poland on Sunday who called on the White House to send air assistance to Ukraine, arguing that the country increasingly needs help to push back Russian forces. The others on the trip were Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., a staunch supporter of former president Donald Trump; moderate Democrat Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.; and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., one of the more liberal members of the Democratic caucus.

Portman argued that because Putin has already declared other forms of U.S. military aid escalatory, sending planes to Ukraine would not risk intensifying the conflict.

Separately, 58 members of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus on Sunday again urged the Biden administration to try to facilitate the fighter jet deal with Poland, as well as to provide Ukraine with other air defense systems, including drones and surface-to-air missiles.

"Russia's advantage in this domain could soon develop into air dominance if the Ukrainians do not receive necessary military aid," the caucus members, who are evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, said in a new statement. "We commend the Polish government for taking proactive steps to deliver MiG-29 jets to the Ukrainian Air Force. We urge assistance to help facilitate this deal, commit to replenishing our allies' fleets with American-made aircraft and help advance the transfer of [other] aircraft to Ukraine as well."

The entreaties by Democrats and Republicans on the White House come as Russia has continued to escalate its attacks in Ukraine. In addition, Russia has turned to China for military equipment and aid in the weeks since it began its invasion of Ukraine, U.S. officials familiar with the matter told The Washington Post, a move that could draw in a major world power into the conflict.

Russian forces are closing in on Kyiv and, early Sunday, unleashing missile attacks on a military facility a mere 15 miles from the border with Poland, a NATO member country. The strikes killed at least 35 and injured 134, and intensified fears that NATO could be drawn into a direct conflict with Russia.

Speaking from near the Poland-Ukraine border on Sunday, Portman said the bombing of the military facility in western Ukraine was close enough to be heard on the Polish side.

Ukrainians, he added, badly needed air defense systems to have better control over the skies for a "fighting chance" at winning the war. Portman also noted the United States has already provided shoulder-fired Stinger missiles and military helicopters to Ukraine, as recently as January.

"And those are directly from the United States. In this case, this would be Poland providing these airplanes, which are Soviet-style planes, old planes, MiG-29s," Portman, a co-chair of the Senate Ukraine Caucus, said on CNN.

The White House has defended its decision to decline Poland's offer, saying there were "a range of logistical operational challenges" that would come with delivering the warplanes.

Poland had said it was ready to deploy all of its MiG-29 jets to the Ramstein Air Base, an American military facility in Germany, but the Pentagon struck down the proposal, saying fighter jets departing from a U.S. or NATO base could be seen as an escalation of tensions with Russia. The Kremlin also warned on Saturday that convoys carrying U.S. or NATO weapons into Ukraine would be "legitimate targets" for attack.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan said Sunday that Biden had consulted with NATO allies and military advisers and "ultimately determined that the risk/benefit analysis of flying planes from NATO bases into contested airspace over Ukraine did not make sense." Biden has, however, been in contact with Zelensky about providing other anti-air systems, he said.

Klobuchar did not explicitly criticize the Biden administration on Sunday. But, breaking with most other Democrats, she said she would still like to see the United States send fighter planes to Ukraine, even if they weren't the specific MIG-29 jets discussed.

"At some point, there's been so much focus on these planes, especially these particular planes, that they themselves could become a target," Klobuchar said on CNN's "State of the Union."

She suggested that other effective weapons like drones and Javelins would also help Ukrainians in their fight. "One of the things we have to remember is, this is all about air defense," she said.

Klobuchar said she had spoken with Biden 10 days ago to make her position clear, but understood that "things shift" in wartime. She stressed that there were negotiations about military aid that could and likely were happening outside of the public view for security reasons.

"I still don't rule out having planes at some point," Klobuchar said. "But, again, you take one day at a time and make the best defense system decisions. And that can't always be discussed on the air, or you would be giving Vladimir Putin the road map to what NATO wants to do here to help protect Ukraine."

Ukrainian Foreign Affairs Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on CBS's "Face the Nation" on Sunday that the debate over the Polish fighter jets last week reminded him of a ping-pong game, with the two sides hitting a ball back and forth in what, to him, was a "diplomatic mystery."

"We have no time for this kind of ping-pong diplomacy. We need planes to save lives of our people," Kuleba said.

Ukrainian officials have continued their pleas for the United States and its NATO allies to help enact a "no-fly zone" over Ukrainian airspace, a move the allies have thus far rejected, also out of fear it would be seen by Russia as an escalation into a wider war.

But those who have urged more military support for Ukraine argue that the war and humanitarian crisis in Ukraine are already rapidly intensifying. An American journalist, Brent Renaud, was fatally shot while reporting outside of Kyiv, and Russian forces reportedly kidnapped a second mayor.

Republicans have for weeks pushed for more sanctions, earlier, and have accused Biden of responding to Putin from a position of weakness.

Though some GOP support for NATO eroded during the Trump administration - led by the former president's public disdain for the NATO alliance - many Republican lawmakers have been quick to criticize Biden for doing too little, too late, to lead his European allies.

"The world needs the Biden administration to be flying this plane," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Thursday, arguing that supporting Ukraine is not a provocation. "Too often it feels like the plane is flying them."

Democrats so far have defended Biden's approach to the crisis, saying that Biden has succeeded in uniting the world to oppose Putin and rally support for Ukraine.

"I don't know that it's constructive for us to continue to try to manage this crisis day to day," Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said last week. "I think there is a bit of a blind momentum around this question of, more and more and more. That is not always connected to what Ukraine actually needs to defend themselves."

Sullivan acknowledged Sunday that Russia's bombing of the military base in western Ukraine suggested Putin would likely ramp up his invasion.

"What it shows is that Vladimir Putin is frustrated by the fact that his forces are not making the kind of progress that he thought that they would make against major cities, including Kyiv," Sullivan said. "That he is expanding the number of targets that he is lashing out [at] and that he is trying to cause damage in every part of the country."

Sullivan reiterated on "Face the Nation" Biden's insistence that U.S. military forces would not be drawn into fighting Russian troops on Ukrainian soil, but if Russian attacks spread to Poland or another NATO ally, that would "bring the full force of the NATO alliance to bear in responding."

When it came to reports that Russia may be preparing to use chemical weapons to attack Ukraine, Sullivan declined to specify if that would be a new "red line" for increased U.S. intervention.

"Sitting here before you today, I'm not going to go further than what President Biden said on Friday, which is that the Russians would pay a severe price if they were to move forward with chemical weapons," Sullivan said.

- - -

The Washington Post's Mike DeBonis, Ellen Nakashima and Christopher Rowland contributed to this report.
Gunfire and explosions were reported in the early hours of Monday morning across the border in Nuevo Laredo.

Initial reports indicate that suspected cartel members set commercial vehicles on fire to block two main avenues, according to the Department of Public Safety in Tamaulipas.




President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol is likely to ask President Moon Jae-in to grant a special pardon to jailed former President Lee Myung-bak when they hold a meeting expected to take place this week, a senior official close to Yoon said Monday.





Lee, who was president from 2008-13, has been serving a 17-year sentence for embezzlement and bribery. He was excluded from the recent presidential pardons for the new year, under which jailed ex-President Park Geun-hye was set free.





Yoon has voiced support for pardoning Lee, citing his old age and deteriorating health.





"We cannot rule out the possibility of asking President Moon to pardon former President Lee," the senior official said.





Yoon's conservative People Power Party (PPP) also publicly asked Moon to grant a pardon to Lee.





In a Facebook posting, PPP floor leader Rep. Kim Gi-hyeon urged Moon to grant a pardon to the former President Lee and Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong, who was convicted for bribery but is currently out on parole.





Kim claimed the two should be pardoned for national unity.





In January, the former President Lee was admitted to a hospital for an unspecified chronic illness.





It marked Lee's first hospitalization this year. He visited a hospital three times last year for chronic diseases, including diabetes. (Yonhap)


Senate Bill 871, Delay state toll road study deadline: Passed 35 to 3 in the Senate

To push-back the deadline for one year, to Jan. 31, 2023, in a 2020 law requiring the Department of Transportation to contract for a study on the feasibility of charging tolls on some interstate freeways in Michigan, including revenue projections, optimal tolling rates, vehicle counts, traffic diversion and more.

Y Rick Outman (R) Six Lakes, Sen. Dist. 33

Y Curt VanderWall (R) Ludington, Sen. Dist. 35

House Bill 5188, Prohibit bans on gun sales during state of emergency: Passed 62 to 39

To amend provisions in the state health code that delegate to the state health department the authority to assume extraordinary powers during an emergency, including the statewide lockdowns ordered under the 2020 coronavirus epidemic. The bill would prohibit officials from using this law to ban the sale or use of lawfully possessed firearms, ammunition, or other weapons during a declared emergency or disaster.

Y Jason Wentworth (R) Clare, Rep. Dist. 97

Y Scott VanSingel (R) Grant, Rep. Dist. 100

Y Michele Hoitenga (R) Manton, Rep. Dist. 102

House Bill 5268, Ban officials sending out unsolicited absentee voter ballot applications: Passed 56 to 45 in the House

To prohibit the Secretary of State or local election officials from delivering unsolicited absentee voter ballot applications to registered voters.

Y Jason Wentworth (R) Clare, Rep. Dist. 97

Y Scott VanSingel (R) Grant, Rep. Dist. 100

Y Michele Hoitenga (R) Manton, Rep. Dist. 102

House Bill 5253, Ban election officials taking money or gifts for election equipment: Passed 57 to 44 in the House

To prohibit state or local election officials and bureaus from accepting gifts from individuals or nongovernmental entities for election-related activities, equipment, or staff.

Y Jason Wentworth (R) Clare, Rep. Dist. 97

Y Scott VanSingel (R) Grant, Rep. Dist. 100

Y Michele Hoitenga (R) Manton, Rep. Dist. 102

House Bill 5703, Require public schools prominently post key parents rights laws: Passed 85 to 16 in the House

To require public schools to prominently post two state law provisions in specified rooms, including the one where the school board meets. The first provision is the text from section 1 of the Michigan Constitutions Article 8, which reads, Religion, morality and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.

The bill would also require schools to post the section of the state School Code that reads: It is the natural, fundamental right of parents and legal guardians to determine and direct the care, teaching, and education of their children. The public schools of this state serve the needs of the pupils by cooperating with the pupil's parents and legal guardians to develop the pupil's intellectual capabilities and vocational skills in a safe and positive environment.

Y Jason Wentworth (R) Clare, Rep. Dist. 97

Y Scott VanSingel (R) Grant, Rep. Dist. 100

Y Michele Hoitenga (R) Manton, Rep. Dist. 102

House Bill 5570, Authorize state gas tax holiday until October 2022: Passed 63 to 39 in the House

To suspend collecting the state gasoline and diesel tax between April 1 and September 30, 2022. The current tax rate is 27.2 cents per gallon on both fuels, and revenue from it pays for state and local road repairs. The House Fiscal Agency projects this would save motorists around $725 million in 2022, with the foregone revenue to "backfilled" from a $4 billion state budget surplus.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

RIDGEFIELD  A Contemporary Theatre of Connecticuts highly-anticipated production of Jesus Christ Superstar is not the same old Superstar audiences know and love, according to Artistic Director Daniel C. Levine.

The timeless rock opera follows the last week of Jesus Christs life as seen through the eyes of Judas Iscariot. It is one of the most widely-produced musicals, having been revived, re-imagined and re-conceived hundreds of times since premiering on Broadway in 1971.

Levine was cast in the 2000 Tony Award-nominated revival and has appeared in many productions as both an actor and director over the years. This most recent iteration digs deeper in both subject and size, featuring the most actors ever cast in a main stage production at ACT.

Set centuries after biblical times  devoid of the typical tunics and sand dunes  ACTs Superstar introduces the audience to a group of freedom fighters who defy an oppressive government in a not-so-distant dystopian future, Levine said.

It draws parallels to The Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood, now a popular Hulu series. Levine was in the middle of watching season four when he started pre-production on Superstar.

Its unbelievable how these stories are so similar, he said, noting the eerie similarities between the Republic of Gilead and the biblical Galilee.

During the overture, ACTs Mary Magdalene  played by Tony-nominated Caitlin Kinnunen  is rescued by the resistance from a life of constant child-bearing. The show comes full circle following Jesus death on the cross, in which Mary saves a captive child from the same fate.

These children make several appearances throughout Superstar to remind audiences that the next generation is always listening and observing, and are thus influenced by the adults around them, Levine said.

The war in Ukraine has had an inadvertent effect on the production as well; rehearsals started only a few days before Russia invaded.

As we were talking about resistance groups and staying the course and prepping, it dawned on me  everything were staging is happening (in reality), Levine said. In our Superstar the apostles plan their next moves in a bombed-out apartment building.  Thats happening in the Ukraine right now.

Levine hopes ACTs Superstar will encourage audiences to keep their eyes open to the world around them, and to listen to the voices that need help.

It remains the greatest story ever told however you choose to tell it, he added, and this is how I want to tell the story.

Jesus Christ Superstar opens Thursday, March 24 at ACT. For a full list of performances or to purchase tickets, visit www.actofct.org.

alyssa.seidman@hearstmediact.com
Moon should have offered condolences in private



President Moon Jae-in is under fire for sending condolence flowers to the funeral of the father of An Hee-jung, the former South Chungcheong Province governor who is in jail for sexual assault. The criticism came from the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) as well as opposition parties.



"In conclusion, we were insensitive to the victim's situation," Rep. Lee Tan-hee of the DPK wrote on Facebook, Saturday. "Even though four years have passed since the incident, the victim is still distressed and isolated. Against this backdrop, sending a wreath in the name of the President has the effect of besieging the victim more tightly."



Earlier, Kang Min-jin, chairman of the Youth Justice Party, blasted Moon. "A condolence wreath bearing the name of Moon Jae-in was placed at the funeral of the former governor's father along with bouquets from senior ruling party and Cheong Wa Dae officials," she said. "It is an act of treating a perpetrator who is in prison for a sex crime as a former governor and a member of the same party. The incumbent government and the ruling party have yet to repent."



It is rare for President Moon to face such criticism from his own party. This is surely a public outcry over his insensitivity to the victim's position, although Lee Jae-myung, the presidential candidate of the DPK, apologized for sex crimes by abuse of authority ahead of the presidential election and promised such offenses would stop.



An, once a rising political star until he was convicted of repeatedly raping his former aide in 2019, lost his father last Tuesday. Given that he even failed to be at his father's side because of his imprisonment, he probably suffered a tremendous amount of torment. So Moon could be condoned for sending condolence flowers to the funeral. However, the President should have been more careful, considering that sending a wreath could cause "secondary damage" to the victim who is still said to be in fear. Moon should have offered his condolences in private.






Texas Hill Country

Central Texas wiener dogs will soon have their day in the sun. This spring, the 25th annual Buda Lions Club Wiener Dog Races are back, according to the the organization's social media promotions.

After a two-year COVID-19 pandemic-related hiatus, the hot-dog-resembling canines are making a triumphant return. This year's theme is inspired by Disney's The Lion King. The promotional poster references a scene from the 1994 movie where Rafiki holds up Simba, declaring him prince of the animal kingdom.
The tears still flow.

I met Chip Gass for lunch at a Springfield diner. I hadnt seen him for decades, but we have something in common that places us in a unique community: those with dyslexia.

I first met Chip 30 years ago when I was a young reporter in the Quad-Cities and he was a political operative helping people get elected to city councils and the Rock Island County Board.

When we met at the diner, he left his Mercedes sedan in the restaurants parking lot. He has a salary north of $100,000 and a title of executive within a state agency. But he is still haunted by his childhood struggles in school.

The Springfield man said as he munched on his horseshoe that teachers didnt appreciate his struggle. Tears raced down his face as he recalled being held back in the second grade and the toll it took on his self-esteem.

But no one in Rock Island schools diagnosed or sought to address his dyslexia. The story was much the same for me. When I was in the third grade, I encountered a cruel teacher who would pick me up like a rag doll and shake me when I struggled to recognize a word. Never once did she offer any individual attention or help  only threats and punishment.

If I made a mistake, Id expect to be shaken. It was a pretty rough way to deal with a 7 year old. Her mantra was continuous: Youre just not trying.

My mother didnt buy into this nonsense. She could see how much I tried. So she spent two hours a day reading with me all through the third grade. I would read one page of the library book and shed read the next.

Then the teacher decided I would only be allowed to check out picture books from the school library. What a pedagogical gem she was.

My mother then hauled me weekly to the public library and within a year and a half, I was not only a proficient reader but in love with it. Today, I read three or four newspapers a day and a book a week.

Other teachers had to know what was going on in that classroom. But they did nothing. The principal was aware, but he did little to alleviate the situation.

My parents took me for an evaluation at the University of Iowa Hospitals and came back with a diagnosis: dyslexia. Still, the school district did nothing. Their reasoning? My IQ was too high to receive special help.

Although I was diagnosed in the third grade, the first time one of my teachers discussed with me whether I was dyslexic was my junior year of college. And the professor had a degree in journalism  not education.

Its tempting to throw the same words back at teachers that they once threw at me: Youre just not trying.

But that would be unfair. Many do care but they operate within systems that fail to equip them to recognize dyslexia or act upon it when they see it.

Anne Brewster is the director of the Childrens Dyslexia Center in Springfield, a charitable endeavor of the Scottish Rite Masons. Historically, the center has offered its services at no cost to children.

Specially trained tutors at the center help words come alive for youngsters. Reading proficiency often follows.

You don't see the word dyslexia used that often in the school settings, Brewster said. And I think that that might have to do with misconceptions and confusion around exactly what it is. And maybe its because there is not a really clear diagnostic tool that says you're dyslexic or you're not dyslexic. ... I think sometimes people actually think it's just fake or made up or not real. Or they just think only rich people have dyslexia because a lot of people in schools dont get support for it. So, they seek private tutoring because it's not always acknowledged or addressed in schools as dyslexia.

Im left thinking of a family friend, Larry Chadwick. He was a brilliant optometrist in my hometown of Galesburg and a friend of my fathers. He died last month at the age of 90.

In his obituary, I read these words: His education began in a one room elementary school where he excelled in math and did not learn to read. His unconventional mother took matters into her own hands and began to search for a school that could teach her brilliant son how to read. She found a reading expert at Roosevelt Military Academy who taught dyslexic students how to read before dyslexia was even understood or diagnosed. At age 13, Larry boarded a train from Detroit to Aledo, Illinois, where he began the next stage of his life.

"Larry learned to read, then excelled in school.

Id never realized that Dr. Chadwick and I had the same condition. It makes me admire him all the more.

But I cant help but wonder, If they were successfully treating kids with dyslexia in the 1930s, why do so many youngsters fail to get the help they need today?
Severe fatigue was among the reasons thousands of Harris County ballots went uncounted in March 1's Texas primary elections, according to new remarks made by county Elections Administrator Isabel Longoria. Over 10,000 mail-in ballots, approximately 4,000 Republican and 6,000 Democratic, were overlooked in the primaries unofficial election night count.

The "fiasco" ultimately led to Longoria announcing her decision to resign office on July 1. The elections administrator told county commissioners that as workers recorded results on Election Day, she worried about her staff's capacity to work continuously throughout the night. Longoria's office was understaffed due to budget restrictions, she said. After expressing her concerns, Longoria said the county's Republican party told her that neither she nor her staff could take breaks and would need to work through the night to count all the votes.

"As you can see that led to the issue at 1 a.m. with those 10,000 mail ballots that, by the way, were not lost," Longoria said. "They were tabulated. They were always in the room. It was a situation of exhaustion and my staff just trying to compensate and cope with the Texas election code in complying with this 24-hour continuous count rule, which does not take into account the human capacity to stay up that long."

Longoria added that some of her workers fell sick from exhaustion, leading at least one worker having a "near heart attack." Longoria also blamed the oversight issues on new voting machines, which required printing and scanning paper ballots.

It's not uncommon for counties to need more time to tally votes, Longoria said, noting Harris was not the only county to find ballots after the 24-hour time limit. Longoria said the requirement is outdated and "does not meet the need of increased numbers of votes and increased technological and accountability standards in the state."

"In Harris County over the past several administrations, you can see that there was a very large difference in the number of votes counted on election night versus what was finally canvassed. It's not good but I am proud that for, what I think is the first time ever, me and my administration were transparent about it and we notified the public immediately."

Longoria faced strong criticism from the Harris County GOP, which filed a lawsuit to impound election records due to delays and called for her firing. Democrats, including County Judge Lina Hidalgo, have focused on linking the issues to confusion surrounding new voting requirements under Senate Bill 1, which went into effect on Dec. 1.
While much of the national Republican discourse pushing book bans in school libraries has centered on Critical Race Theory and race education, Texas GOP politicians have recently honed in on a single, slippery word to describe the literature in classrooms they deem offensivepornography.

The word featured prominently in a March 2 letter penned by Republican state Rep. Jared Patterson that was sent to school districts across Texas. Signed by 26 fellow Republican state legislators, Patterson's missive suggested a pledge to not buy books from vendors that supply "pornography" and specifically pointed to the graphic novel "Gender Queer: A Memoir" by author Maia Kobabe as an offending example.

"Both local districts and the Legislature will be working diligently on policies to prevent such books from being allowed on campus in the future," Patterson wrote. "However, we also acknowledge school districts have a lot [of] power in the market when purchasing books and that if we stand together against explicit materials for children, book vendors will be forced to adjust."

The book in question has recently become one of the most challenged works by conservatives in the U.S. Its narrative depicts Kobabe's journey with gender identity and sexual orientation and at points features graphic illustrations of LGBTQ sexual experiences. In November, Gov. Greg Abbott cited "Gender Queer" during a call for investigations into whether students should have access to what he described as "pornographic books" in Texas schools.

So why are some books that address LGBTQ issues being called pornographic? We asked Abbott, Patterson and several other GOP members who signed his letter to offer their definition of the term. Of the 28 lawmakers we attempted to contact, only four responded, including Patterson, the author of the letter. Of those that responded, none offered a clear definition of pornography, with some pointing to existing Texas laws on "obscenity." Here's what they said:

Rep. Jared Patterson: "The work I have been doing in the past several months, which includes the letter recently sent to Texas superintendents, is in regards to prohibiting explicit and obscene materials from being made available to school children through public school libraries. The book 'Gender Queer' is a good example of explicit and obscene material, as it graphically illustrates two young boys engaging in oral sex. This book, or anything similar, is absolutely inappropriate and should be removed from public school library shelves immediately."

Rep. Dustin Burrows: "The standard is set forth by the Supreme Court and the book 'Gender Queer' clearly meets that definition."

Rep. Matt Shaheen: "Texas Penal Code Sec. 43.21. defines obscene materials as 'patently offensive representations or descriptions of ultimate sexual acts, normal or perverted, actual or simulated, including sexual intercourse, sodomy, and sexual bestiality.' Specific examples found in public schools that align with the above definition include graphic images of women being raped by demons and little boys performing sexual acts on each other. Anyone who believes this is acceptable is mentally ill. We will be going after the vendors that sold this trash to Texas children."

Rep. Jeff Leach: You know it when you see it. And if you see it and you know it, those images must be swiftly removed from any and all public school classrooms in Texas.

Leach's response is a reference to a quote by Justice Potter Stewart in the 1964 Supreme Court case Jacobellis v. Ohio, in which he could not describe obscenity, but explained "I know it when I see it." Shaheen says the example he cited was from the dark fantasy series "Goblin Slayer" by Kumo Kagyu, but he did not say which Texas schools had the title in their book collection.

Abbott's office responded by directing us to his November letter in which he referenced the Texas Penal Code. However, the section he points to never actually mentions the word pornography. The term has been difficult to define, even for the country's highest court.

Dr. Bryant Paul, a professor at the Media School at Indiana University who focuses on speech regarding sex and sexuality, says the legal definition of pornography has been difficult to pin down for courts for the last several centuries. While pornography gets First Amendment protection, obscenity does not, he explains.

"Since the invention of the printing press, [pornography] used to be basically anything that the church didn't like and that was considered obscene, so people needed to be protected from it," Paul says. "They really weren't worried about sexual content as much as they were worried about any kind of content that made the church look bad."

The world's first law criminalizing pornography was the Obscene Publications Act of 1857, which was passed in the United Kingdom on similar grounds and rhetoric argued by Texas GOP members. "The legislature basically said anything that could hurt children, or that children shouldn't be exposed to, should be banned," Paul explains.

This idea was expanded in Regina v. Hicklin (1868), a British legal case during which a judge offered a broad definition of obscenity by questioning "whether the tendency of the matter charged as obscenity is to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences." This legal test for obscenity became known as the Hicklin test.

The standard was eventually replaced in Miller v. California (1973), which outlined three tests for obscenity still used today. The first is "whether the average person applying contemporary community standards would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest."

"So it wasn't whether you or I find it offensive," Paul explains. "It's whether the people in the community think it's offensive. There's no national standard. It's a local issue."

The second part of the test asks "whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law." The last questions "whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value."

"That is still the standard of what counts as obscenity, but not necessarily pornography," Paul explains. In Ginsberg v. New York (1968), the courts came up with the concept of "variable obscenity" material that could be considered obscene when viewed by children, though not when viewed by adults. This is the issue that Texas Republicans are dealing with, Paul explains, not pornography.

Additionally, this movement on behalf of conservatives indicates a shift back to the Hicklin standard. "They're saying that any kind of content that has the potential to harm a child is something that should be taken out of libraries in schools," Paul says. "What makes this even sadder is they're overtly saying anything that is non-heteronormative is going to be harmful to children."

Paul argues that such attacks violate the First Amendment and likely wouldn't stand up to scrutiny in front of federal courts. "The courts have ruled that pretty much everything get protection unless it is seen as without having serious literary, social, political or scientific value," Paul says.

Banning content on the periphery of what is acceptable sets a frightening precedent, Paul says. "When people that support banning start to chip away at people's right to consume certain types of information, you are but seconds in terms of history away from hitting something that those same people support," he says. "This is what should scare these people to death."
Greater Houston could see some severe weather Monday night as scattered showers organize ahead of a cold front.

Showers and strong isolated thunderstorms will start cropping up far north of Houston around 6 p.m., with the threat of those storms extending south toward the metro as the night goes on. Some of the storms could have heavy rainfall, but they'll be moving fast enough to not cause much of a flooding concern, meteorologists with the National Weather Service in League City said in an online discussion Monday morning.

The main threat, however, is potentially large hail and isolated tornadoes this evening. Meteorologists also say there's a smaller threat of damaging winds. The system will organize into a line of storms around 9 p.m. as a cold front pushes through the region later in the evening.

As the storms line up with the front, the threat for isolated tornadoes diminishes while the likelihood of gusty winds increases. The storms should be moved off the coast by 4 a.m. Tuesday.

Behind the cold front, the weather won't be as chilly as it was this weekend. Temperatures overnight Monday will bottom out near 55 degrees. Tuesday will start off cloudy, but clouds will eventually dissipate and temperatures will rise to the low 70s. From there, overnight lows will stay in the 50s or 60s while the afternoon high will rise to the 70s through the end of the week.

Our next chance for storms is Thursday, which has a 20 percent chance of showers and a 30 percent chance of thunderstorms overnight into Friday morning.


By Deauwand Myers





"The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride," said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy, rejecting the international community's offer of helping him flee Ukraine at the onset of the Russian invasion.



Democracies don't have a very good track record of dealing with dictatorships. Democratic governments install and/or support dictatorships; a brief history of the Middle East and Central and South America illustrates this point. Even during the rise of Adolf Hitler, Prime Minister Winston Churchill and American President Franklin D. Roosevelt praised the way Hitler was running Germany's government, before it became clear he was a thug and mass murderer.



As China, Russia and North Korea increase their nuclear arsenals, and Ukraine is being overrun by Russia's immoral and illegal assault, the international community has to ask the fundamental question I have asked before about North Korea: what do we do with nations who are bad actors and commit illegal acts?



Unlike North Korea, which has starved its citizens for generations due to its pro-military policy and the crippling world sanctions therein, Russians are used to a much higher standard of living. Biting sanctions against Russia will not just have negative effects on wealthy oligarchs, but average citizens.



As with most dictators, President Putin is afraid of his own citizens, and if sanctions bite hard enough for a wide enough swath of Russians, he may eventually relent and find some off-ramp for this uncalled-for and unnecessary bloodshed.



Even more so, Russian television and the propaganda it spews only works for some people. The family and friends of all the dead and wounded Russian soldiers coming back from the frontlines cannot be explained away by state television.



What frightens me, and should frighten the rest of us, is what exactly does President Putin think the international community would do? Just sit around? Further, what is his next move? Putin's cornered and knows it; such a man is dangerous. Russians seem to have underestimated Ukrainians' resolve to protect their homeland, and the fight they are putting up against Russia is nothing to sneeze at.



But again, what does Putin think? The Ukrainians are never going to exist peacefully under a Russian flag. He is going to have his military fight urban, guerilla warfare, something any military expert will tell you is the most difficult and dangerous kind of military engagement. Does Russia try to stay in Ukraine indefinitely, occupying it? The sanctions are already biting, and the last and biggest sanction is denying Russia's energy sector access to world markets, something that would make already high crude go even higher, but such a move would easily plunge Russia into a very deep, very painful recession.



Nonetheless, short of having a hot war with a nuclear-armed Russia, the West has few other options besides biting sanctions. This could happen to Taiwan, and the question is, what would the U.S. and other countries do about it if such a move transpired? Would we come to the military aid of Taiwan like Japan's leaders said they would? Scenarios in war game simulations with America and allies on one side and China on the other have not turned out so well. America lost the simulation every time.



The argument President Putin uses about this war of choice he is waging is specious and outlandishly anti-Semitic. According to him and Russian state TV, the Ukrainian government is full of neo-Nazis. Ridiculous, considering that Ukraine's courageous president is himself of Jewish heritage.



In truth, President Putin and his inner circle want to rebuild as much of the old USSR as they can. In fact, Putin has gone as far as to say that the fall of the Soviet Union was the worst event of the 20th century, if you can believe it. This is the same century in which two world wars took place, one of which killed tens of millions of Soviet soldiers and civilians alike, more than any other country and the systemic extermination of 6 million Jews. But in Putin's mind, all that horror doesn't compare to the fall of the USSR.



On its face, this assertion which Putin makes is patently absurd, but he certainly has not taken the statement back, and attacking a sovereign country is an expensive, messy and bloody business, so he must still hold this belief as valid. We are where we are.



President Biden never had any love for Putin, even when he was vice president under President Obama, and the swiftness by which Biden garnered international support on such strong sanctions signals some good news when it comes to how the West and all advanced democracies deal with dictators, if heaven forbid another maniacal authoritarian decides to illegally invade another sovereign country. Sanctions and international isolation are key tools in that diplomacy kit.





Deauwand Myers (deauwand@hotmail.com) holds a master's degree in English literature and literary theory, and is an English professor outside of Seoul.




We're always interested in hearing about news in our community. Let us know what's going on!

Go to form
Local

Inverness City Council to review future development

Williams

The Inverness City Council will see Tuesday a road map of the citys future round of building projects and studies for the next several years.

During the councils regularly scheduled public meeting, the council will review the 2021 Inverness Community Redevelopment Agency five-year work plan. The council will meet 5:30 p.m. at city hall, 212 W. Main St., Inverness.

The plan includes several projects city planners will begin considering or studying, especially in the downtown area, that are meant to attract development, investment, and eventually more tax revenue.

One project on the plans list is a city pedestrian walkway between North Pine Avenue and North Apopka Avenue. The $2 million project would be a downtown corridor to include greenspace and would encourage pedestrian traffic and outdoor dining.

City Manager Eric Williams said the project could be years down the road, but you have to start planning. If you dont get a conversation out there it will never start happening.

Williams said the city has already started laying the groundwork by meeting with property owners along the potential pedestrian corridor.

Another project in the plan is for the city to create a medical arts district between South Apopka Avenue and South Line Avenue and West Highland Boulevard and State Road 44.

The area already includes HCA Florida Citrus Hospital, formerly Citrus Memorial Hospital, its medical campus, and several physicians offices.

Williams said now that a hotel in the area is under construction and the Citrus County Hospital Board is selling property nearby for development, the citys role in how it can help needs to be evaluated.

Williams said that city planners can review zoning and access points into the area, as well as some roads inside the area that could be eliminated to create larger lot sizes or combine two separates parcels.

How do you best maximize the investment thats already there, he said.

Also part of the plan is to review more than a dozen parking spaces by city hall that are not utilized during the day, Monday through Friday. Thats because city dumpsters are at the end of the parking lot and garbage trucks have to enter and exit and parked vehicles would make that impossible.

The city will review that parking lot design and the placement of the dumpsters.

Williams said that could add many additional parking spaces for the downtown area that the city is now doing without.
Florida, US (34429)

Today

Sun and clouds mixed. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High around 90F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

Partly cloudy. Low 67F. Winds light and variable.
Outgoing President of the Florida Senate, Wilton Simpson, speaks above his official portrait during a legislative session at the Florida State Capitol, Monday, March 7, 2022, in Tallahassee, Fla. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)
Kakao founder Kim Beom-su speaks during a National Assembly audit in Seoul in this October 2021 file photo. Korea Times photo by Oh Dae-keun



By Park Jae-hyuk



Kakao founder Kim Beom-su has offered to resign as board chairman to better focus on leading his company's overseas expansion, just as his chief rival, Naver founder Lee Hae-jin, had done five years ago.



"'Beyond Korea' is Kakao's own mission and Korean society's request to pioneer the new lands of foreign markets," Kim said in a message to all of Kakao's employees, Monday. "I hope you will join the new voyage to our dream of becoming a great company surpassing global IT firms."



According to Kakao, the founder will maintain his positions as head of the Kakao Future Initiative Center and an inside director of Kakao Piccoma, a Japanese subsidiary providing a webtoon subscription service, so that he can focus on the company's business in the Japanese market, where Naver has dominated.



"Our affiliates have separately expanded their overseas presences, but they will start maximizing the synergy effect under the leadership of Japan's Kakao Piccoma," Kakao said in a press release. "Kim previously pioneered in the Japanese market, when he set up Hangame Japan in 2000."



Kakao CEO nominee Namkoon Whon also expressed the company's intention to expand its presence overseas, saying that Korean language-based smartphone users account for only 1 percent of the world's entire population using smartphones.



Kakao said that the board member reshuffle will take place after its general meeting of shareholders on March 29. While the founder decided to step down as board chairman, Kakao Alignment Center CEO Hong Eun-taek was nominated as a new inside director.





Naver founder Lee Hae-jin speaks during a National Assembly audit in Seoul in this October 2021 file photo. Korea Times photo by Oh Dae-keun
International students are getting more PGWPs and median earnings are increasing Statistics Canada examines how international student graduates engage in the Canadian labour market through the PGWP.

International students are getting more PGWPs and median earnings are increasing Statistics Canada examines how international student graduates engage in the Canadian labour market through the PGWP.

International students are getting more PGWPs and median earnings are increasing Statistics Canada examines how international student graduates engage in the Canadian labour market through the PGWP. Shelby Thevenot Aa Accessibility Font Style Serif

Sans Font Size A

A

The number of international student graduates getting a Post-Graduation Work Permit (PGWP) has increased dramatically, a new Statistics Canada study says. The PGWP allows eligible international graduates to work anywhere in Canada for up to three years, depending on the length of their study program.

With a Canadian education and work experience, PGWP holders can get access to many of Canadas economic-class immigration programs. It is not extendable, nor renewable, and you can only get it once in a lifetime.

Statistics Canada studied the labour market participation of PGWP holders from 2008 to 2018. The number of PGWP holders who reported income in this time grew more than 13 times in size from 10,300 in 2008 to 135,100 in 2018. Meanwhile, the participation rate has remained relatively steady with three-quarters of PGWP holders reporting earnings every year.

Schedule a Free Work Permit Consultation with the Cohen Immigration Law Firm

The median annual earnings received by PGWP holders in this period has increased from $14,500 in 2008 to $26,800 in 2018, adjusted to reflect the difference in dollar value over the decade. These earnings suggest an increase in the average amount of labour input.

Nearly three-quarters of all PGWP holders became permanent residents within five years of receiving their PGWP. These high rates of transition to permanent residence could be because Canadian work experience improves PGWP holders chances of being selected as immigrants, the study suggests. Also, PGWP holders may have stronger motivation to seek permanent residency than those who did not apply for a PGWP.

Where are PGWP holders from? Where do they go?

Most PGWP holders came from two source countries: India and China. These two source countries made up 66% of all PGWPs issued in 2018, up from 51% in 2008. The share of Indian international students who became PGWP holders grew more than four times in size from 10% in 2008 to 46% in 2018. It was the opposite for the share of international students from China who got PGWPs, falling from 41% to 20%. Over the study period, international students from India intending to study at the postsecondary level increased much faster than those from China.

The large majority of PGWP holders intended to work in Ontario, British Columbia, and Quebec respectively. For PGWPs issued in 2018, 56% were for international graduates intending to work in Ontario, up from 44% in 2008. PGWP holders intending to work in British Columbia decreased from 19% in 2008 to 16% in 2018. Quebec also experienced a decrease in interest from 13% in 2008 to 11% in 2018.

Earnings differ by country of origin, destination, and sector

PGWP holders from Iran had the highest median earnings in 2018, followed by those from Nigeria and Pakistan. Earnings were lowest for those from China, followed by those from the United States and Vietnam. Over the studys reference period, earnings increased most among those from the United States, France, and South Korea.

In 2018, PGWP holders working in the territories reported the highest median earnings, followed by those in Alberta and Saskatchewan. The lowest earnings were reported by those working in Quebec, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. From 2008 to 2018, growth in earnings was highest among PGWP holders employed in Newfoundland and Labrador, followed by Quebec, and New Brunswick. Earnings growth was lowest among those working in Alberta, Prince Edward Island, and Manitoba.

Median earnings for PGWP holders were consistent with the general pattern among all Canadian workers in 2018. Earnings were highest for PGWP holders employed in mining and oil and gas extraction, utilities, and public administration. The lowest earnings were reported by those who worked in educational services; administrative and support, waste management and remediation services; accommodation and food services; and retail trade. Earnings growth over the 10-year reference period was highest for PGWP holders working in accommodation and food services, retail trade, real estate and rental and leasing, as well as educational services.

Brief history of PGWP

The PGWP started in 2003 as a pilot program in select provinces before expanding nationwide in 2005. Starting in 2008, the PGWP allowed recent grads to work for any employer in the country for up to three years. Then in 2014, study permit holders were allowed to work after the completion of their studies while waiting on the approval of their PGWP.

These changes were introduced to make Canada a more attractive destination to international students, and provide them pathways to permanent residency.

PGWP eligibility

To be eligible for the PGWP you need to have graduated from a full-time program of at least eight months in length at a Canadian Designated Learning Institution (DLI). With the exceptions of students who were enrolled during the pandemic, studies must have been completed in-person in order to count toward PGWP eligibility. International students may count the time they spent studying online between March 2020 and August 31, 2022 toward their eligibility, even if their entire program was online during this time.

The PGWP validity period matches that of the study period between eight months and under two years. Programs that are at least two years in duration may be eligible for a three-year PGWP.

Schedule a Free Work Permit Consultation with the Cohen Immigration Law Firm

 CIC News All Rights Reserved. Visit CanadaVisa.com to discover your Canadian immigration options.
By Cori Land, Corporate Strategist, DataStax

In How to Measure Anything, Douglas Hubbard offers an alternative definition of measurement to the Oxford English Dictionarys the size, length, or amount of something. Hubbard defines measurement as:

A quantitatively expressed reduction of uncertainty based on one or more observations.

This acknowledges that the purpose of measurement is to reduce uncertainty. And the purpose of reducing uncertainty is to make better decisions. Decisions are often made under some degree of uncertainty; 100% certainty is generally impossible, not necessary, and can be prohibitively expensive in terms of cost or time. So, it follows that theres an optimal level of data where collecting further information wont be worth the added cost. That optimal point is when additional data will not meaningfully change your decision.

I call this point data saturation. In academic research, data saturation indicates the point where new information wont change the results of a study. We can borrow the term for business by applying it to corporate and operational decision-making. Data saturation helps us to remember that ultimately, its not about the dataits about the decision. Which customer should we lend to? What offer should we surface? Should we replace the motor?

Data creates the context for decision-making. As you approach data saturation, your decisions become more likely to win. If you have anything less than data saturation, your decisions are made with more uncertainty than need be. That could be acceptable if the risk of getting it wrong is acceptable. But if precision matters, youll need more context. There are two dimensions to data saturation: breadth and depth of coverage.

Breadth of coverage: everything that can be measured is measured. Depth of coverage: measurements are taken in real-time.

Perhaps you run a distribution service. You install sensors that emit location data on your entire trucking fleet. You now have full breadth of coverage of your fleet (you could also measure oil levels, tire pressure, etc.), but how deep is that coverage? Trucks emitting location data in real-time provide you with deeper coverage than batch location reads because you have continuous intelligence about where your trucks are. This depth could provide benefits such as increased accuracy of your delivery predictions, optimized routes responsive to real-time events, or increased efficiency via reduced phone calls about where a driver is.

Recalling Hubbards point that the purpose of measurement is to make better decisions, your breadth and depth choices should be made based on the decisions you need to make. Full-breadth, real-time data saturation matters if you want to make well-calibrated, real-time decisionsand this is becoming an increasingly important capability.

Making fast, high-quality decisions is critical as companies race to increase the speed of their operations for value differentiation, like Popcorn delivery (whose tagline is Faster than 911) or MyBanks one-second loan approval process. In addition to speed, its important that companies send the right products, or make the right credit decision, lickety-split. Getting there requires real-time data feeding from the sources that contextually matter.

Streaming decision automation

Feeling this need for speed, companies are investing in real-time data infrastructure, like data streaming and databases built for fast reads and writes. Yet a lot of data still ends up on a dashboard. Even with full data saturation, if a human is still sense-making before making a decision, youre deciding much slower than the speed of your operations. This puts you at risk of falling behind competitors who can act on data as it comes in. How can you change your decision architecture to become more proactive rather than reactive? Streaming decision automation.

Streaming decision automation adds value to real-time data by combining it with other data streams, applying algorithms to the data stream, and feeding a decision engine capable of making decisions in real-time without a human in the loop. It is ML live in production activating real-time data into a customer or business outcome. IDC projects streaming decision automation to grow into a $2.1 billion market by 2025 at a CAGR of 39.5%. Thats fast.

Walmarts Customer Choice feature is a great example of streaming decision automation and its benefits. The feature uses historical and real-time data to surface good substitutes for items that a customer is actively shopping for online yet are predicted to be out of stock. This real-time feature helped Walmart double its online sales in the second quarter of 2020and is likely helping the retailer even more amid todays supply chain problems.

Working toward decision saturation

Of course, you wont infuse all of your decisions with AI-driven automation right awaytime and resources are too scarce for that, and in some cases it might not be called for. Instead, youve got a portfolio of decisions to manage: processes that dont need to be monitored or decided in real-time; processes that should be monitored in real-time but arent yet; processes monitored in real-time but with human decision makers; and processes monitored in real-time, feeding automated decisions.

Theres a spectrum of decision automation, too. The most basic automation uses if-then business logic. For example, a credit card company might have an automated decision rule like if the customers credit is over 750 and salary over $100K, then approve their credit limit increase request. More advanced decision automation relies on predictive analytics that can take many more factors into account, like age, payment history, and amount of savings in our credit card example.

As the model becomes more sophisticated, it might become more accurate but it will become slower to produce a decision. In some cases, thats okay (maybe the credit card company sends credit limit increase offer emails on a rolling daily basis). But slow response times leave value on the table.

Consumers increasingly expect immediately responsive, seamless experiences that are personalized to their unique needs. That requires real-time decision automation. Extending our credit increase example, imagine a consumer is browsing flights to Portugal in their credit cards travel booking portal. Any of the flights would put the shopper over their credit limit, so they dont complete the transaction. The customer is frustrated, and the business loses revenue. Now imagine streaming decision automation in play: the company immediately sends a pop-up notice that the customers credit limit has been increased, enabling the customer to joyfully book their flights then and there.

This was possible because the streaming decision automation paired historical data (payment history, salary, for example) with real-time data (browsing behavior, calculated fare price, and account balance) to detect that the customer is credit-hungry and deem them credit-worthy. Streaming decision automation created a win-win for the customer and the business.

And thats the frontier!

As you begin your journey into developing real-time data capabilities, you might work backwards by intentionally evaluating where you can create more value with real-time decisionsand then determine how to build the data feeds to get there. Youll know youre done when you have reached decision saturationthat optimal point where activating more decisions with real-time data wont improve your corporate outcomes. By then, Im sure well have a new frontier to face.

Learn more about DataStax here.

About Cori Land:

Cori is a corporate strategist at DataStax. They combine their background in economic analysis, corporate innovation, and organizational design to help companies find a new way forward out of ambiguity and inertia. Cori specializes in surfacing empirical data and empathetic listening to help leaders find new confidence in their strategic decisions. Cori holds an MBA from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, and lives in San Francisco, California.
You must be logged in to react.

Click any reaction to login.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
Sorry, no valid subscriptions were found for this Publication. Please select from an option below to start a subscription.

SUBSCRIBE TODAY!

24 Hour Access
Enchanted winter scenery of Barkol, NW China's Xinjiang in early spring

People's Daily Online) 17:10, March 14, 2022

Though the breeze of spring has arrived in many places across China, the Kazak Autonomous County of Barkol, northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, is yet to be awakened from its deep winter slumber. Snow-clad natural landscapes, be it primitive pine forests or tranquil wetlands, have taken on the appearance of an ethereal winter wonderland crowned with sparkling crystals. (Photo/ts.cn)

(Web editor: Xian Jiangnan, Liang Jun)
By Baek Byung-yeul





Seen is a poster for Samsung Electronics' Galaxy A Event, which will take place online on March 17. Samsung said Monday it will unveil the new lineup of mid-range smartphones during the event. Courtesy of Samsung Electronics
You will receive 5-day a week delivery of the Citizen Tribune newspaper to your home or business, plus full, ad-free access to CitizenTribune.com as well as full access to the Electronic Edition of the newspaper.



ONLY $13.99 per month for the first 3 months!

Only $16.00 per month after promotional period.

Or

ONLY $169.99 for a full year

Only $192.00 per year after promotional period.
Oklahoma City, OK (73106)

Today

Scattered thunderstorms during the morning becoming more widespread and possibly severe this afternoon. Damaging winds, large hail and possibly a tornado with some storms. High 67F. Winds ESE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 80%..

Tonight

Thunderstorms. A few storms may be severe. Low near 60F. Winds SE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%. 1 to 2 inches of rain expected.
The Archdiocese of Southwark cancelled a talk by LGBTQ+ fiction writer Simon James Green, after claiming the content of his talk was outside the scope of what is permissible in a Catholic school.

The book talk was due to take place at John Fisher School in Croydon, as organised by its staff. The Archdiocese of Southwark oversees the school and published a statement advising it not to go ahead four days before the event.

Regardless, school staff decided to go ahead with the event, which was due to take place 7 March as part of World Book Day celebrations.

However, the Archdiocese of Southwark overruled its decision and cancelled the talk last minute. According to the i , governors who supported the event were fired.

The i reported that the Archbishop of Southwark backed the decision.

Government investigating the issue

On Wednesday, the Department for Education said that it is looking into the dioceses actions.

In its letter, a spokesperson from the Catholic church charity wrote: From time to time materials or events emerge for consideration that fall outside the scope of what is permissible in a Catholic school, because they do not comply with all aspects of the tests.

For example the protected characteristic religion (Part 2 of the Equalities Act 2010) and all that that encompasses in our context. In such circumstances, we have no alternative but to affirm our unequivocal and well-known theological and moral precepts and to act in accordance with them.

A spokesperson from the Charity Commission said: We are aware of this matter and are assessing the information to inform what, if any, role there is for the Commission.

Authors outrage

On Twitter, the author said: Ive had a really upsetting few days. This week, Ive been BANNED from talking about my YA books at a Catholic school.

Greens books feature gay characters. The author has been nominated for a Carnegie medal. He continued: I need your help, and more importantly, some LGBT kids do too

Publishing companies and literacy charities have voiced their support for Green following the decision.

The BookTrust tweeted: All children should be able to see themselves and others in books. That's why we're so sad to hear @simonjamesgreen's school visit was cancelled - it's a missed opportunity to inspire young people to get excited about books, feel accepted, understand difference & develop empathy.

All children should be able to see themselves and others in books.

That's why we're so sad to hear @simonjamesgreen's school visit was cancelled - it's a missed opportunity to inspire young people to get excited about books, feel accepted, understand difference & develop empathy.  BookTrust (@Booktrust) March 11, 2022

sign up to receive the Civil Society News daily bulletin here . For more news, interviews, opinion and analysis about charities and the voluntary sector,
Appraisal and arbitration are similar  and different. Are they so similar that appraisal can be called a form of arbitration, or are they so different that appraisal is a thing unto itself? And most important, the next time you contemplate demanding appraisal  will it really make any difference?

Whats In A Name?

Although courts disagree on whether to refer to appraisal as arbitration, they are virtually unanimous regarding the practical differences between the two.

For example, in Liberty Mutual Group, Inc. v. Wright,[1] a Maryland court considered whether appraisal constituted an enforceable arbitration triggering the Federal Arbitration Act. In answering the question, the Court observed it was irrelevant that the contract languagedoes not employ the word arbitration as such. Rather, what is important is [whether] the parties clearly intended to submit some disputes to binding review by a third party. After balancing the similarities and differences, the Court concluded that when viewed as a whole, the appraisal process constitutes arbitration':

Because the umpire might not render the decision that settles the dispute, the one feature that must necessarily appertain to a[n arbitration] process could be lackingWhen viewed on the whole, however, the entire appraisal process does constitute arbitration. The parties agreed to select competent appraisers if they could not agree on the amount of loss, and their agreement provides a fixed procedure for those appraisers to follow in setting the amount of loss. Submission of the dispute to the appraisers will ultimately settle that issue, as the appraisersperhaps through involvement of the umpirewill reach a binding decision through that process. The fact that the appraisal process does not settle the parties entire controversy or require an official adversary proceeding, complete with witnesses and cross-examination, is of no moment[2]

In Merrimack Mutual Fire Insurance Co. v. Batts,[3] the Tennessee Court of Appeals saw it differently, concluding that arbitration and appraisal proceedings are not the same thing:

Arbitration is a consensual proceeding in which the parties select decision-makers of their own choice and then voluntarily submit their disagreement to those decision-makers for resolution in lieu of adjudicating the dispute in court. Appraisal is something narrower. Appraisal is the act of estimating or evaluating something; it usually means the placing of a value on property by some authorized person. Specifically, the object of appraisal in cases of casualty insurance is to quantify the monetary value of a property loss, not to decide questions of liability.

The Court found it unnecessary and even inappropriate to abandon the workable distinction between arbitration and appraisal.[4] The Supreme Court of Florida reached the same conclusion, finding it difficult to imagine that parties agreeing to the appraisal clause in the insurance policy, which called for an informal appraisal proceeding, actually contemplated a formal arbitration hearing.[5]

This is not a new conundrum. Over fifty years ago, the Supreme Court of Mississippi expressed disappointment that all of the lawyers and the court completely overlooked the fact that the report of the appraisers is not an arbitration award.[6] The court concluded that, unlike arbitration, appraisal is simply an incident feature of a contract in which the parties pre-agreed to a method of ascertaining value, price, or amount of loss or damage  but not liability.[7]

Cause For Concern

For those accustomed to the relative simplicity of a typical appraisal, the idea of recasting it as a form of arbitration raises understandable concerns that could tip the scales against demanding appraisal at all. The typical differences between appraisal and arbitration are illustrated by the chart below:

Appraisal Arbitration Decisionmakers The parties select appraisers who, in turn, select an umpire who participates only if the appraisers cannot reach an agreement. Arbitrators are appointed as provided in the arbitration agreement. Otherwise, they are named by a court as the case may require upon request by a party. Procedure Generally, an informal process; the appraisers and umpire have some discretion and flexibility regarding what, if any, procedure is followed to determine the amount of loss.[8] Formal, court-like process, with an evidentiary hearing that includes witness examination. Scope Appraisal only determines the amount of loss and cannot be used and to resolve coverage disputes. Questions of contract interpretation are reserved for the Court. Arbitration resolves the entire controversy between the parties. Finality Appraisal provisions typically reserve an insurers right to deny the claim after an appraisal award. The grounds for challenging an award are otherwise limited. Arbitration awards are final and binding as to the entire controversy. The grounds for challenging an award are limited.

Superimposing the more formal procedural requirements of an arbitration could change who is best qualified to serve as an appraiser or umpire, expand the scope of the issues addressed and resolved, and substantially increase the time and expense of the process. This is not what the language of traditional appraisal clause envisions  and that is the key to answering our question.

Why It Should Not (And Generally Does Not) Matter

The good news is that calling an appraisal an arbitration should not change the process. Even if an appraisal is governed by a federal or state arbitration act, the fundamental character of an appraisal should not change; the language of the appraisal provision determines the nature of the process regardless. For example, while the United States Supreme Court has acknowledged that the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) generally preempts state laws that would otherwise determine the appropriate forum,

it does not follow that the FAA prevents the enforcement of agreements to arbitrate under different rules than those set forth in the Act itself. Indeed, such a result would be quite inimical to the FAAs primary purpose of ensuring that private agreements to arbitrate are enforced according to their terms. Arbitration under the Act is a matter of consent, not coercion, and parties are generally free to structure their arbitration agreements as they see fit. Just as they may limit by contract the issues which they will arbitrateso too may they specify by contract the rules under which that arbitration will be conducted.[9]

Thus, whatever scope, procedure, or finality an arbitration might otherwise have under a given statute, the language of the appraisal provision takes precedence. The goal is to effectuate the intent of the parties  not override it. This is why the court in Liberty Mutual Group could fairly conclude that appraisal is a form of arbitration, but still say the fact that the appraisal process does not settle the parties entire controversy or require an official adversary proceeding, complete with witnesses and cross-examination, is of no moment.[10]

Take, for example, the scope of an appraisal. In Wailua Associates v. Aetna Casualty & Surety Co., the court characterized appraisal as a form of arbitration, but rejected an attempt to use the appraisal process to resolve a coverage dispute.[11] Although the appraisal was allowed to proceed before a liability determination was made, the court explicitly instructed the appraisal panel not to consider issues pertaining to coverage and liability under the insurance policy as these issues are beyond the scope of the parties agreement to arbitrate.[12] When the insured subsequently sought to preclude any challenge to the resulting award, the court had not forgotten its earlier admonition:

Wailua further contends that Aetna, in disputing the extent of its liabilityis improperly seeking to collaterally attack the merits of the Award. This contention is belied by the facts of the case. At no point through this litigation has the court expressed any opinion whatsoever regarding the issues of coverage, mitigation, causation or liability. In fact, the Court expressly forbid the panel from considering issues of coverage and/or liability as those issues were beyond the scope of the parties agreement to arbitrate. The Court finds the issues of mitigation, coverage and causation to be unresolved, thus Aetna cannot be precluded from arguing the extent of liability (if any)[13]

One caveat is in order with respect to enforcement. Specifically, in jurisdictions where appraisal is deemed a form of arbitration, any legal action to compel appraisal, appoint an umpire, or enforce an award may be governed by the procedural requirements in the relevant arbitration act. But even here, any differences in the mechanisms of enforcement will likely be more form than substance.

The Pros And Cons Remain Largely The Same

Appraisal has always been, in varying degrees, a roll of the dice. Then again, so is litigation. That said, regardless of whether appraisal is characterized as an arbitration, the calculus involved in deciding whether to appraise or litigate remains the same.

Appraisal may be called arbitration  but the procedural baggage should not come with the name. The language of the appraisal provision alone controls the process. Roll the dice accordingly.

[1] 2012 WL 718857 (D. Md. 2012)(emphasis added).

[2] Id., *6. See also, Milligan v. CCC Info. Servs. Inc., 920 F.3d 146, 152 (2d Cir. 2019) (although the appraisal process  constitutes arbitration, the appraisal provision controls the scope of the appraisal).

[3] 59 S.W.3d 142, 152 (Tenn. Ct. App. 2001) (internal citations and quotations omitted).

[4] Id.

[5] State Ins. Co. v. Suarez, 833 So. 2d 762 (Fla. 2002).

[6] Hartford Fire Ins. Co. v. Jones, 108 So. 2d 571, 572 (Miss. 1959).

[7] Id.

[8] More formal procedures may be warranted for more complex claims, and parties often agree to a protocol governing the appraisal process. The point here is to highlight the typical differences between appraisal and arbitration.

[9] Volt Info. Scis., Inc. v. Bd. of Trustees of Leland Stanford Junior Univ., 489 U.S. 468, 479, 109 S. Ct. 1248, 125556 (1989)(emphasis added).

[10] 2012 WL 718857, at *6.

[11] 904 F. Supp. 1142, 1149 (D. Haw. 1995).

[12] Id.

[13] Wailua Assocs. v. Aetna Cas. & Sur. Co., 27 F. Supp. 2d 1211, 1218 (D. Haw. 1998). See also, MMI Realty Servs., Inc. v. Westchester Surplus Lines Ins. Co., No. CV 07-00466 HG-KSC, 2008 WL 11344896, at *3 (D. Haw. Jan. 2, 2008)(refusing to permit appraisal of an issue that unquestionably implicates causation, coverage and liability, not merely amount of loss).
Hyundai Steel's steel mill in Dangjin, South Chungcheong Province, is seen in this file photo. Courtesy of Hyundai Steel



By Park Jae-hyuk



Hyundai Steel is facing backlash from employees for enforcing draconian measures in the name of safety after a series of fatal industrial accidents earlier this month, according to industry officials, Monday.



"Having convened a teleconference of around 300 team leaders on March 8, the CEO banned them from getting any days off and ordered them to work on weekends over the next 100 days," a person claiming to be a Hyundai Steel employee wrote on Blind, an anonymous chat app for verified employees. "After the teleconference, executives forced team leaders to order their team members to take turns to work on holidays."



The whistleblower also disclosed a message from management, which reads that those who violate safety rules more than three times by gross negligence could be dismissed.



"The company is harassing innocent team leaders, forcing them to work without any days off," another Hyundai Steel employee wrote. "What if they collapse due to overwork?"



Some employees asked their company's minority shareholders to vote against CEO An Tong-il's reappointment as an inside director, during the general meeting of shareholders on March 23.



Hyundai Steel, however, said that it had tightened its safety measures to prevent the recurrence of fatal industrial accidents.



"The emergency measures will be enforced in compliance with the Labor Standards Act, so we will pay our employees for their work on holidays," a Hyundai Steel spokesman said. "Repeated violation of safety measures can also be a reason for disciplinary action under law."



Industry officials regarded the recent conflict as a reaction to the Serious Accidents Punishment Act (SAPA), which attributes criminal liability to the head of a company if a fatal industrial accident occurs at a workplace run by that business.



The Hyundai Steel CEO is under investigation after a regular employee died at a steel mill in Dangjin, South Chungcheong Province, March 2, and an irregular worker died at a factory in Yesan, South Chungcheong Province, March 5. The Ministry of Employment of Labor also raided six workplaces related to Hyundai Steel, Monday, following its previous raid on four workplaces on March 7.



A survey of the Federation of Korean Industries (FKI) showed that 37.8 percent of domestic companies asked for a revision of the SAPA from the incoming administration, while 32.4 percent demanded a reform in the Minimum Wage Act.



"The result reflects concerns among businesses about immoderate punishments and uncertainties caused by the SAPA, as well as difficulties from the indiscriminate application of the minimum wage to all jobs," an FKI official said in a press release.


NEW YORK (AP)  Kara Trainor composed herself, looked into a camera and began to speak to the drugmakers she holds responsible for two decades of suffering that has extended from her to a son born dependent on opioids.

Three members of the family that owns OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma watched silently or listened to the virtual court hearing as Trainor described giving birth to a baby who rapidly plunged into withdrawal  the screaming will haunt you for the rest of your life  and what its been like to raise him. At 11, he still uses a sippy cup and diapers.

Trainor and others who have suffered from or lost relatives to opioid addiction had waited years for this moment: a direct, if virtual, confrontation with members of the Sackler family in court over the consequences of the painkiller that made them a fortune while helping fuel a deadly drug epidemic. The opportunity finally came for about two dozen victims or their relatives at an extraordinary bankruptcy court hearing Thursday.

Some emerged exhausted, others angry, others relieved, and all unsure whether the Sacklers, who werent allowed to respond during the session, had been moved. Still, several people who gave statements said they valued being able to speak for their lost loved ones and show solidarity, and that they had gotten a grain of resolution.

I can feel, as a mother, that my son was seen and heard by the family, said Trainor, of Kalamazoo, Michigan, who got an OxyContin prescription at 21 and soon became addicted. Shes now 40, in recovery and working with others who struggle with drug abuse.

Its going to be part of my healing and part of a closure of 20 years, she said, finally being able to be heard.

The hearing, highly unusual for U.S. Bankruptcy Court, was suggested by a mediator who helped broker a potential settlement of thousands of lawsuits against Purdue. If it wins final approval, the deal will generate $10 billion or more to fight addiction and overdoses, with the Sacklers chipping in as much as $6 billion in exchange for protection from civil lawsuits. Up to 149,000 people who have struggled with addiction or who lost loved ones to it are due to split $750 million under the settlement.

One after another, victims logged in from Hawaii to New Hampshire on Thursday with accounts of surgeries and illnesses that led to OxyContin prescriptions, followed by dependency, despair, rounds of drug-abuse treatment, personal and financial ruin and, all too often, death by overdose or suicide.

Vitaly Pinkusov described waking up to find his 32-year-old wifes body cold in their bed. Kristy Nelson played a recording of her frantic 911 call reporting that her son was unresponsive. Stephanie Lubinski recounted how her husband went into their basement and shot himself in the chest.

Former Purdue president and board chairman Richard Sackler listened by phone, a sore point for some victims who found it disrespectful that he didnt face them. His son, David Sackler, and another family member, Theresa Sackler, appeared on camera, appearing attentive but showing little reaction.

They just sat there, alone but stone-faced, and never changed their expression, never, a frustrated Lubinski of Blaine, Minnesota, said afterward.

The Sacklers have never unequivocally apologized. They released a statement last week saying they had acted lawfully but regret that OxyContin unexpectedly became part of an opioid crisis that has brought grief and loss to far too many families and communities.

OxyContin, a pioneering extended-release prescription painkiller, hit the market in 1996, while Purdue and other drug companies funded efforts to suggest that prescribers consider opioids for a wider range of pain conditions than previously thought appropriate. Purdue asserted that far fewer than 1% of people prescribed opioids developed addictions, though there werent rigorous studies to support the claim.

Waves of fatal opioid overdoses followed, from prescription drugs, heroin, and most recently fentanyl and similar drugs. Purdue documents made public in lawsuits appear to show family members at times downplaying the crisis.

Tiffinee Scott asked the Sacklers whether they had ever revived one of their children from an overdose, as she did for her daughter before finally losing her to an overdose at age 28. Tiarra Renee Brown-Lewis had been prescribed OxyContin for sickle cell disease pain, the mother said.

Shame on you, she told the Sacklers, though she said later that she hadnt expected a reaction from people she sees as heartless. To her, the point of the session was the impact of the families unity and their joint message.

For once, we felt to have a sense of power over privilege, as it pertains to the Sacklers, she said.

After her 21-year-old son, Chris Yoder, died from an overdose, Dede Yoder used to swear at the Sacklers as she drove by Purdues headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut, near her Norwalk home. Shes felt vindicated by the bankruptcy case and public scrutiny of the Sacklers.

Being part of this court record is very important, and my sons story being part of the record, she said after making her statement during the hearing.

Ryan Hampton of Las Vegas found a level of catharsis in testifying Thursday about the years of addiction, overdoses and periods of homelessness he endured after a knee injury. But it bothered him that victims and their relatives were delivering a message that, in his view, should come from authorities.

Like several of those who testified, he wants the Sacklers to be criminally charged. Theres no sign that will happen, although seven U.S. senators last month asked the Department of Justice to consider it. Purdue Pharma, meanwhile, has twice pleaded guilty to criminal charges.

Cheryl Juaire, meanwhile, is looking ahead to the potential for money to flow to addiction treatment programs and start to heal this country. Juaire, of Marlborough, Massachusetts, lost two adult sons, Corey Merrill and Sean Merrill, who died just last June.

Jill Cichowicz, who lost her twin brother, Scott Zebrowski, hopes that Thursdays uncommonly personal hearing sets the tone for future companies, and they understand the ramifications of their actions.

For a long time, she had thought about what she might say to the Sacklers if she ever got the chance.

And then, when youre actually in the room facing them, eye-to-eye, youre not as angry. Youre hurt, said Cichowicz, of Richmond, Virginia. It was a sense of closure, but in the same sense, Im still suffering, being hurt by their actions.

Mulvihill reported from Cherry Hill, New Jersey.

About the photo: Tiffinee Scott shows some pictures to reporters, including one of the many pill bottles her daughter had accumulated before her death, after making a statement during a hearing in New York, Thursday, March 10, 2022. Scott said After Tiarras passing, I collected countless pill bottles-filling a king size bed in a bag. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Legal malpractice claims usually arent filed until after somebody loses a lawsuit. But what happens when the underlying dispute hasnt been resolved, but a litigant has to hire new counsel to clean up mistakes that were made during discovery?

A panel of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday that under Arkansas law, Gerber Products Co. may pursue a malpractice suit to recover what it paid for corrective attorney fees. One justice said damages in the case may exceed $500,000.

The panel, in a 2-1 decision, reversed a decision by the US District Court to grant summary judgment in favor of the Mitchell Williams Selig Gates & Woodyard law firm in Little Rock.

The majority said most of the Arkansas court decisions it reviewed involved disputes that emerged after a lawsuit was resolved, creating a case within the malpractice case. But that doesnt mean a party can never file a malpractice suit until the first lawsuit is resolved.

It makes sense that proving a case-within-a-case is not a hard-and-fast requirement because an attorneys negligence can result in injuries other than a loss in court, the opinion says.

Gerber hired the Mitchell Williams firm in 2012 after it was sued by a contractor that had participated in a construction project at its plant in Fort Smith, Arkansas. During discovery, the plaintiff requested copies of emails related to the project and other documents, including the personnel files of two employees. Gerber produced 2,700 pages of documents on diskettes and did not object to releasing records that were protected by attorney-client privilege.

Not long after, Mitchell Williams received notice from the plaintiffs counsel that documents subject to attorney-client privilege had been included in the batch of documents. The law firm was able to get those documents back and promised to create a privilege log, which is a list containing short descriptions of documents that are not being released and the reason they were withheld.

The mistakes compounded from there. The plaintiff filed more motions to compel and Gerber released 96,000 pages of records, but no privilege log. The plaintiff persisted and Gerber produced thousands of pages more, but this time with a privilege log.

Gerber hired new counsel, who filed a lawsuit seeking to recover privileged documents that had been inadvertently released. The Sebastian County Circuit Court Court ruled against that request, finding that Gerber had waived attorney-client privilege by releasing the documents. The Arkansas Court of Appeals affirmed the decision in 2017.

Gerber filed a malpractice suit in federal court against Mitchell Williams and attorney Byron Freeland, of counsel for the firm.

The US District Court for Eastern Arkansas ruled that Gerber could not proceed with a malpractice claim because the state court case had not yet gone to trial.

The Circuit Court majority found that the decision to dismiss the suit was an error. In order to win the malpractice suit, Gerber must show that the law firms actions were the proximate cause of its loss. The majority opinion says Gerber can prove proximate cause by showing that it would not have incurred the legal fees in the absence of Mitchell Williams negligence. The underlying case does not have to be decided.

If the injury has nothing to do with an underlying judgment, in other words, the plaintiff can establish proximate cause without proving the results of a trial, the majority opinion says.

Justice Ericksen dissented, in part, to the ruling. He said in a separate opinion that federal courts can only predict how the Arkansas Supreme Court would ultimately rule on the question if the lawsuit were in state court.

Before I would expose a law firm to this previously uncharted type of malpractice claim with potential damages exceeding $500,000, I would take the rare step of certifying the question to the Arkansas Supreme Court, even though neither party made such a request, Ericksen said.

Mitchell Williams general counsel, Megan D. Hargraves, declined to comment on the case.
PHOENIX (AP)  Its a specific crime trend sweeping the nation and starts right underneath your car, and the surge is evident in the Phoenix area over the last two years.

Thieves are targeting catalytic converters, your exhaust emission control device, and police agencies are just trying to keep up with increased reports of theft, FOX 10 Phoenix reported.

You may never think to look under your car until youre a victim of this type of crime. Once your converter is gone, crooks are already trying to exchange it for cash or drugs.

Looking into how many cases Arizona law enforcement agencies are facing during an officer shortage, reporting showed between metro Phoenix police departments, each of them saw spikes in 2021.

Swiping a catalytic converter doesnt take much work. With a power tool like a Sawzall, the theft from start to finish can be done in less than five minutes.

It happened to Leland Gebhardt outside his Phoenix home at 4 a.m. Just shocked to see this car nonchalantly pull up and these two guys fumbling getting out of the car, he said.

Even within a few minutes, the suspects have time to get back in their car before approaching Gebhardts Honda Element again, finally cutting the converter clean off. The damages cost about $4,700.

Fortunately, Gebhardts insurance paid for the new converter, costing $3,000. He says he also needed a new muffler because the thieves cut the old one, and the dealership he bought his car from paid $1,200 for the replacement.

For five weeks, Gebhardt couldnt drive his car and invested $500 bucks to get a cable cage installed to protect the converter.

Its really aggravating that this has become some sort of trend and it caused so much damage to all of the victims and I was lucky that my insurance was covering it, but theres a lot of people who have their vehicles totaled because of this, he said.

The roar of Nick Hyatts Toyota Tundra can be heard throughout his quiet Goodyear neighborhood. Hes yet to replace his catalytic converter which was stolen in February 2022.

I started it up and of course, it terrified me and my heart skipped a beat because Im thinking that the truck is exploding, he said.

The catalytic converter contains three precious metals. Platinum, which is currently valued at $1,100 an ounce. Palladium, worth nearly $3,000 per ounce. Rhodium, which has recently been valued as high as $22,000 per ounce.

These are all opportunities for these people to go and just basically completely violate you and cut these things out and make your life very hard for the foreseeable future, Hyatt said.

This, of course, drives demand, as there are victims like Hyatt left scrambling for a new converter.

I can tell you what, the quote was it was just shy of $5,000, Hyatt said.

Someone had snapped my catalytic converter from underneath there, stole it right out from the parking lot, Rick van Neck said.

He didnt expect his converter to be stolen overnight after he took his truck to a shop in Mesa for a routine oil change.

The way that it sounded and the speed it was going at it would have been impossible for me to go to work, so I had to borrow some cars from friends, from family, take this to a mechanic, find the part, pay the money, all sorts of hassle and hopefully get it done in time, so it wouldnt cost me my job or more money, van Neck said.

Whats worse than the sound your car makes without the converter, is the fact that your car cant take emissions produced by your engine and convert the toxic gasses into safe gasses without the converter.

Simply put, its bad for the environment. But, crooks just dont seem to care.

These criminals are going out stealing catalytic converters in peoples front yards, parking garages, secured lots, any time of the day, night or broad daylight, said Phoenix police Detective. Adam Popelier.

The stolen goods hit the black market before ending up at the scrapyard. One of the other things is that we have noticed a lot of sales on the streets and changing hands either for money or for other tangible items that somebody may want, Popelier explained.

Weve seen a wide range in the last couple years. It did go up to $800 to $1,000 dollars for one catalytic converter and thats directly to the thief that stole it. Currently, it looks like the market is anywhere from $150 to $300 per catalytic converter, Popelier said.

He handles nearly all the stolen converter cases in Phoenix. His lieutenant, Wayne Dillon, says the Property Crimes Bureau at the Phoenix Police Department is doing its best.

Weve seen such an uptick in the last two and a half to three years that its been staggering for all of my staff and all of the departments around the Valley. Dillon said.

In 2020, Phoenix police took 72 cases of reported catalytic converter thefts, up from 19 in 2019. In 2021, a boom of over 4,700 cases. Through February 2022, Phoenix Police have taken 690 reports  with some cases possibly including multiple stolen converters.

Meanwhile, the department is about 400 officers short and some detectives are being moved to patrol in June.

While wed like to say thats not going to affect services, realistically, we have to understand that when you remove detectives from bureaus and add them to patrol, that adds cases to other detectives. So, logically it may take more time to get through cases for detectives, explained Sgt. Ann Justus, a Police Department spokesperson.

In Glendale, Sgt. Randy Stewart says the police department tracks and groups all metal thefts together, not differentiating the types. In 2020, it saw 44 thefts, 2021 saw 479 thefts and so far in 2022, the departments seen 112 thefts  Glendale PD believes converter thefts make up about 90%-95% of those numbers.

In Mesa, police saw a climb of 814%, in stolen converter cases in 2021 with 631 reports. Chandler Police reported a little more than 400 cases, compared to only 22 in 2020, and already 117 cases this year through February.

Gilbert Police saw a 975% spike over the last two years. Tempe, Peoria, Goodyear, Surprise and Buckeye have also witnessed significant increases when it comes to catalytic converter thefts.

Despite the approaching reassignment of some Phoenix detectives to patrol duty, Dillon says his team will stay aggressive in holding thieves accountable.

The biggest part of that is having our caseload and having our investigators continue to send these cases up for prosecution and working with our partners at the Maricopa County Attorneys Office to ensure that all of these cases are charged appropriately because these cases are a felony, they are not a misdemeanor, Dillion said.

How these cases are ultimately charged falls on the Maricopa County Attorneys Office.

Deputy County Attorney Courtney Sullivan says prosecutors must prove what police accuse a suspect of doing actually happened.

I need to be able to have a reasonable likelihood of conviction that this person committed this offense, she explained. That means, linking the suspect or suspects to the alleged felony burglary or theft, being able to clearly identify them with security video or images, gathering statements from victims and witnesses to make a legitimate case.

We need to be able to tie the person to the actual act removing that catalytic converter, whether its through the surveillance video, whether its through forensics, whether its through statements, whether its through other means to get to that person taking that catalytic converter off of that car, she said.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Every day were bombarded by images of war, images that wont leave us.

The bodies of the mother and her two children who were killed as they tried to flee Ukraine. They fell on the street, next to their suitcases, still wearing their backpacks.

We saw the wounded pregnant woman carried out on a stretcher from the bombed maternity hospital.

We saw the weeping children saying goodbye to their fathers at train stations.

What can we do from so far away?

You do what you can to bring hope and help.

Airbnb waived its fees in Ukraine. More than 61,000 nights were booked for refugees from people who wanted to do something to help.

Parents in Poland are parking strollers on the train platforms for the families who fled with babies and toddlers.

A little girl sang her heart out to give hope to those around her in a bomb shelter in Kyiv. Her missing front teeth tell you shes probably 6 or so. Amelia stood in the crowded, noisy bomb shelter and sang Let it Go in Russian. As she sang the words from Disneys movie Frozen, the shelter fell silent.

She had wanted to sing on stage one day. More than 15 million have watched the video. When you watch it, look at the scared parents and children around her, the clutter, the chaos, the supplies in disarray. Then dont take your eyes off that child, those big brown eyes, those nervous little fingers.

The star from the movie, Idina Menzel, the voice of Elsa, shared the video on Twitter with these words: We see you. We really, really see you.

Kristen Anderson-Lopez, who co-wrote the song with her husband Robert Lopez wrote: Dear Little Girl with the beautiful voice. My husband and I wrote this song as part of a story about healing a family in pain. The way you sing it is like a magic trick that spreads the light in your heart and heals everyone who hears it. Keep singing! We are listening!

Outside a train station in Lviv where people hurried by with backpacks, boxes and suitcases, a woman in a heavy winter coat and long flowing black hair sat down to an outdoor piano and played, What a Wonderful World.

Near the border of Medyka, Poland, Italian pianist Davide Mortarelli played the piano for Ukrainian refugees.

The greatest cellist in the world, Yo-Yo Ma, played his cello outside the Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C. He said, I felt I just had to do something to express my sorrow about the plight of Ukraine. He stood next to a green street sign outside the Russian Embassy that protesters had installed to declare the street Zelenskyy Way.

The cellist opened his performance at Washingtons Kennedy Center with Ukraines national anthem.

You can buy the work of Ukrainian artists on Etsy. Search Ukraine sellers digital downloads and buy a childs drawings or art in the colors of the Ukrainian flag. The money can go into a PayPal account that they can access anywhere.

One mother is selling digital downloads of her childrens rainbows, smiling faces and colorful houses still standing. She wrote: These drawings were drawn by my children. We are from Chernihiv. My family experienced a real horror, we spent the night in a basement underground shelter. I have three small children, Vera, 7 years old, Katya, 1 year 11 months old, Vladimir 6 months old. We left our home forever. Thanks everyone. I am grateful to everyone, I really appreciate.

Its hard to watch children flee their homes forever.

Its harder for them if we turn away.

The soaring voice of that little girl in the shelter hasnt left me. The little girl in pink with her tiny hand pressed to the train window to touch her daddys hand on the other side of the glass left an imprint on my heart. The boy with the big eyes pressing his teddy bear against the train window for one last glimpse of home made me cry.

After I made a donation to UNICEF, my heart felt a bit lighter. I sent them helpers.

Mr. Rogers used to tell his audience of children: When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.

If you cant be one of the helpers, please send them helpers.

Just do the one thing that you can do.

Connect with Regina Brett on Facebook at ReginaBrettFans and sign up for her weekly newsletter at reginabrett.com.
Gail Marsha Malitz, age 83, of Beachwood, was born June 11, 1938, in Cleveland, and passed away on May 2, 2022.

Arrangements under the direction of Berkowitz-Kumin-Bookatz Memorial Chapel.
By Lee Kyung-min







Global robot scientist Dennis Hong has joined LG Electronics to help advance the group-wide future growth drive in the high-tech industry, according to the firm, Monday.







The electronics affiliate of LG Group said Hong will play an integral part in the firm's long-term plan to develop integrated robot logistics solutions encompassing storage and home delivery for retail consumers.







"The addition of the world-renowned robot scientist to our group of robot experts will propel the corporate presence on the global stage," the firm said.







LG Electronics opened LG Boston Robotics Lab in the U.S. in 2020, and has since developed next-generation robot technologies in collaboration with a global robot scientist, Kim Sang-bae, a professor of mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).







Hong is currently a professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He doubles as the founding director of the Robotics & Mechanisms Laboratory (RoMeLa).







He made the 2009 "Brilliant 10" list, compiled by an American digital magazine, Popular Science, to honor top scientists younger than 40 from across the U.S. every year.







Hong worked as an affiliate professor of engineering at Virginia Tech and in the Jet Propulsion Research Institute of The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).







His research focuses on robot locomotion, autonomous vehicles and humanoid robots. He received a B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Purdue University.







He was honored as one of Purdue University's "Top 40 under 40" alums. Other awards include the National Science Foundation's CAREER award, the GM Young Investigator Award.







He led student teams for a variety of international robotics and design competitions and won numerous top prizes including the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Urban Challenge.














Former HDC Hyundai Development Company CEO Chung Mong-gyu Korea Times file

By Lee Kyung-min



HDC Hyundai Development Company could lose its construction license, as the government vows the "maximum penalty" for the scandal-tainted construction unit of HDC Group over the collapse of an apartment building under construction in Gwangju in January, according to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, Monday.



License cancellation would force the firm permanently out of the construction industry, whereas operation suspension, a less severe administrative action, would prohibit it from engaging in bidding on advance orders for a certain period.



The strongest penalty is inevitable, since January's accident came only about six months after another accident that caused 17 casualties at a redevelopment site it supervised in the metropolitan city last June.



Man-made disaster



"The accident occurred due to a combination of risk factors under poor overall management," a land ministry official said during a press briefing.



The ministry said the fatal collapse resulted from the firm's poor supervision of safety standards, raw material quality, on-site construction procedures and unauthorized changes mid-construction.



"The level of punishment will be determined by end of this month, after a close review of the cause of the collapse. The strongest penalty will be in store, given the severity of the incident and public concerns."



The ministry will determine whether the June incident should be treated as an aggravating factor, upon the conclusion of the Seoul Metropolitan Government which is reviewing the June case following a hearing process.



"The Seoul Metropolitan Government has yet to finalize an administrative action, a decision we will factor in before making legal recommendations with municipal governments," the official added.



When asked if the firm should be punished for gross negligence, the ministry said it would have to rely on the findings of the ongoing police investigation.



"It is too early to make any concrete remarks at this point. We will be able to provide more clear answers by end of this month, backed by further investigations over the next two weeks."



The ministry's announcement followed a two-month investigation by an independent, 12-member committee comprised of construction, architecture and legal experts.



The committee concluded that the collapse was largely due to unauthorized changes in construction and support methods on the 39th floor of the apartment building. This is why it says HDC will be held liable for failing to have the changes reviewed and approved by an auditor.



Also critical to the collapse was the unauthorized removal of a support structure connecting the 36th floor through the 38th.



A subcontractor of HDC said the removal was ordered by the Hyundai affiliate, but the firm has since equivocated the claim, saying it is only responsible for "not being aware of the removal."


Alice Stuedemann, 89 of Camanche, formerly of Clinton, passed away April 30th at Mercy One Hospital. Visitation and services are being planned for Monday, May 9th at St. John Lutheran Church. Pape Funeral Home is assisting the family.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 14)  The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) on Monday summoned Chinese ambassador Huang Xilian over the "illegal incursion and lingering presence of a Chinese navy vessel in the Sulu Sea.

In a statement, the DFA announced that acting Undersecretary Ma.Theresa Lazaro summoned Huang after an unauthorized Peoples Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) electronic reconnaissance ship, with bow number 792, entered the Philippine waters from Jan. 29 to Feb. 1.

The Philippine Navy challenged the PLAN vessel, which claimed it was merely exercising innocent passage, according to the DFA.

However, the actions of PLAN 792 did not constitute innocent passage and violated Philippine sovereignty, the department said.

It noted that the movements of the Chinese navy ship did not follow a track that can be considered as continuous and expeditious as it lingered in the Sulu Sea for three days. The ship also reportedly continued its activities in Philippine waters despite being repeatedly directed by the Philippine Navy to leave immediately.

In response to the incident, Acting Undersecretary Lazaro demanded that China respect Philippine territory and maritime jurisdiction, and to comply with its obligations under international law, particularly UNCLOS (United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea), and direct its vessels to desist from entering Philippine waters uninvited and without permission, the statement read.

The Chinese foreign ministry, meanwhile, maintained on Tuesday that the PLAN vessel's passage was "safe and standard," and consistent with international law.

"China's naval vessels' sailing through the Philippine waters was an exercise of the right of innocent passage pursuant to UNCLOS," said Zhao Lijian, spokesperson of the Chinese foreign ministry. "We hope relevant parties can view it in an objective and rational manner."
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 14)  Presidential hopeful Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos and his running mate Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte remain the top choices for president and vice president in the May 9 elections, according to the latest survey of Pulse Asia released Monday.

The late dictators son and namesake kept his 60% rating in the survey held on Feb. 18-23. Vice President Leni Robredo, who saw her numbers slide from 16% to 15%, remained in the second spot.

The survey asked 2,400 respondents who they would vote for if the elections were held on the day they were polled.

Save for Visayas where his rating steadied at 53%, Marcos saw his ratings among major island groups go up. He scored highest in Mindanao at 68%.

The former senator logged higher scores among socioeconomic classes C and E, but his rating with class D stayed at 61%.

The Marcos camp welcomed the results, noting his opponents are still having a hard time relaying their messages in a way that would resonate with Filipino voters.

Marcos, on the other hand, despite all the vitriol and disparaging remarks thrown against him have refused to engage in gutter politics and opted to stick with his message of healing and unifying leadership, it added.

Meanwhile, Robredos spokesman Barry Gutierrez stressed the snowballing of support for the vice president with her massive, record-breaking rallies from areas such as Butuan, Bacolod, Cavite, Isabela, Sampaloc and even Malolos.

The latest Pulse Asia survey was done prior to these game changing developments, and does not yet capture the more recent surge in VP Leni's support. With this clear momentum from the people's campaign  reflected both in the massive rallies as well as in online metrics  we are confident that the next 56 days will culminate in an election day victory for Leni Robredo, said Gutierrez.

Manila Mayor Isko Moreno landed on the third spot with 10%, followed by senators Manny Pacquiao at 8% and Ping Lacson at 2%.

Trailing them were fellow presidential hopefuls Faisal Mangondato (0.4%), Leody De Guzman (0.1%), and Jose Montemayor (0.01%). Ernesto Abella and Norberto Gonzales did not get any scores.

Some 3% of repondents said theyre still undecided, 0.4% refused to reveal their pick, while 1% said they arent inclined to vote anyone for president.

Duterte, meanwhile, saw her ratings rise from 50% in January to 53% in February. While Senate President Tito Sotto remained in the second highest spot, his rating fell from 29% to 24%.

President Rodrigo Duterte's daughter logged higher ratings across all major island groups except for Mindanao, where her score eased from 84% to 82%.

Except for class E where her rating declined, the Davao mayor registered better scores in classes C and D.

Senator Francis Pangilinan followed Duterte and Sotto at 11%. Trailing him were Dr. Willie Ong (6%) and Lito Atienza (1%).

Manny Lopez followed them at 0.1%, Walden Bello at 0.1%, and Carlos Serapio at 0.01%. Rizalito David did not get a score.

Of the participants for the vice presidential survey, 3% said they dont know who to vote for yet. Some 0.1% declined to say their choice, while 1% said they wont be voting for any candidate.

For senatorial picks, broadcaster Raffy Tulfo stayed at the top spot as he garnered a 66.9% rating.

Completing the rest of the top six were reelectionist Loren Legarda (58.9%), former Public Works chief Mark Villar (56.2%), former House Speaker Alan Cayetano (55.0%), Senate Majority Leader Migz Zubiri (50.5%), and ex-senator Chiz Escudero (49.8%).

Actor Robin Padilla took the seventh spot at 47.3%. Rounding up the Magic 12 were ex-Vice President Jejomar Binay (45.6%), reelectionists Win Gatchalian (44.6%) and Joel Villanueva (42%), former Senator Jinggoy Estrada (38.6%) and past Quezon City Mayor Herbert Bautista (32.8%).

The survey used a sample of 2,400 adults aged 18 and above who are registered voters likely to cast their ballots this May 9.

It has a  2% error margin at the 95% confidence level. For major island groups covered, the error margin was  4%.
If you have not already registered (created a username and password) then click on the link below to register.

If you have already registered (you already have a username and password), please click on the Get Started below.

Your account number is located in the upper left hand corner on your address label on the Enterprise you receive in the mail or on the renewal form you received.

The last name must read exactly as it is printed on your label. Enter the account number WITHOUT the leading zeros on the label.
Signs and pictures of those killed, including journalist Brent Renaud, are displayed on a fence during a protest against Russia's invasion of Ukraine in Lafayette Park near the White House, in Washington, March 13. AP-Yonhap



A U.S. journalist was shot dead and another wounded Sunday in Irpin, a frontline suburb of Kyiv that has witnessed some of the fiercest fighting since Russia invaded Ukraine.



Video documentary maker Brent Renaud, 50, was working for Time Studios on a project about global refugee issues, the media outlet said.



"We are devastated by the loss of Brent Renaud," Time editor in chief Edward Felsenthal said in a statement.



"Our hearts are with all of Brent's loved ones. It is essential that journalists are able to safely cover this ongoing invasion and humanitarian crisis in Ukraine."



A New York Times identity card was among Renaud's papers, leading to earlier reports he worked for the paper.



The International Federation of Journalists identified the wounded reporter as American photographer Juan Arredondo.



A third victim, a Ukrainian who had been in the same car as the Americans, was also wounded, according to a medic at the scene.



AFP reporters in Irpin saw Ukrainian volunteer soldiers rush the body on a stretcher to a more secure location before laying it out on the ground for further identification.



Danylo Shapovalov, a surgeon volunteering for the Ukrainian territorial defense, said Renaud died instantly from a gunshot wound to his neck.



Ukrainian officials were quick to blame Russian forces for the shooting, with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy calling it "a deliberate attack by the Russian military."



"They knew what they were doing," Zelenskyy said.



AFP reporters heard small arms and artillery fire in the area, which runs along the front splitting Ukrainian positions from advancing Russian forces.






Columbia, SC (29201)

Today

Mostly sunny. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High near 90F. Winds WSW at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

Some clouds. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 64F. Winds WNW at 5 to 10 mph.
For better or worse, I find myself easily impressed by new environments.

I suppose as a child of the suburbs, its unsurprising that 10 years of navigating the same curvy streets of middle-class America would leave me welcome to any change in scenery.

For example, I find myself completely awed every time I walk out of my dorm and see the Appalachian Mountains resting hugely in the distance.

Each time I leave State College, Im enraptured watching the mountains pass by and fade in the distance.

This spring break, I traded the massive mountain range for the sweeping skyline of New York City as part of a school trip.

Having never been to NYC since a small visit in October 2019, I decided to blog about my return after several years. What does this city mean to me now after so long?

As I stepped off the bus and into the street, I took a deep breath and mentally opened myself up to whatever was to come.

Midtown Manhattan is a commanding place. It demands your attention first and foremost, a quality it then quickly replaces with awe.

As somebody who has visited Philadelphia on numerous occasions, I thought I was used to the sight of skyscrapers rising over busy crowds.

On the contrary, stepping off the bus, I was quickly struck by the way the concrete jungle loomed above me. I repeatedly found myself craning my neck upward as my eyes attempted to take the entire view in.

Every building seems to reach into the sky, intent on proving its place in the Big Apple, fighting to be acknowledged.

This especially goes for Times Square, a place that fills me with an awe that apparently has not diminished in the last two and a half years.

There was a charm to being surrounded by neon advertisements taller than most of the buildings in University Park.

Of course, for all its delights, the city did feel less friendly than Happy Valley in plenty of ways.

Hustlers heckled me from corners, using their fakest smiles to get me to spend my money on comedy shows or fake luxury clothing.

By the end of my time in Manhattan, I was using my best Peruvian accent to say no hablo ingles every time a peddler approached me.

In addition, the smell of the city isnt for everybody. As somebody who has visited Lima a number of times, the dirty and exhaust-heavy smell carries a nostalgic quality, but I realize that it is likely not for everyone.

What New York does provide in spades, unsurprisingly, is a wide array of incredible food.

I had the privilege of sampling fried eggplant from Little Italy, pork buns from Chinatown and pizza from a humble joint.

In addition, New York delivers on being a diverse melting pot of many cultures (at least from an outside perspective).

The streets are filled with citizens of every race and gender. Every store had shoppers and owners from every part of the world.

In addition, the amount of culture leaking out onto the streets is astounding.

The legacies of the citys past immigrants can be seen in the restaurants, graffiti, modern art, architecture and museums.

Such sights left me to wonder about the many legacies that State College has yet imprinted on its streets.

What kind of story will the architecture of campus and downtown tell in a hundred years? Will its buildings stretch out into the countryside or grow into the sky?

What generations will continue to grow in State College, and what communities have yet to bloom?

Perhaps with time, State College will find a new way to dazzle all of us.

Now, returning to the snow-covered fields and lecture buildings of campus, I already find myself missing the wide and busy sidewalks where I could look down a street and see a mile of road in either direction, flanked on both sides by colossal towers.
Penn State's Students Against Sexist Violence will host a "Walk Out and March" in support of Oliver Baker, an assistant professor of English and African American studies, on March 24 at 1:20 p.m., according to a flyer.

After a physical altercation with a counter-protester at a vaccine mandate rally in August 2021, Baker was charged with harassment, disorderly conduct and simple assault.

On Nov. 8, 2021, Baker was found not guilty on one charge of harassment by Centre County District Judge Steven Lachman, while the other two charges were withdrawn.

In January 2022, Baker said via email Penn State has "activated the AC70 process," which is the dismissal procedure for tenure and tenure-eligible faculty members.

On Jan. 13, Penn State's chapter of the American Association of University Professors released a statement in support of Baker.

The group will meet at Penn State's Pattee-Paterno Library steps for the protest, which was originally scheduled for a different day.

The walkout and march urges those interested in participating to miss their classes in protest of Penn State administration's "support of racists, rapists, and the repression of an innocent professor," according to SASV's Instagram post.

MORE CAMPUS COVERAGE
As classes resume during the 10th week of the spring semester, Penn State students have the opportunity to attend various in-person and virtual events  including the 3/20 Coalitions seven days of action, "3 Cops, 3 Years & 3 Shots," in remembrance of Osaze Osagie.

Monday, March 14

6 p.m.  State Colleges 3/20 Coalition will hold an event titled Reflect & Respect in the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Plaza in honor of its seven days of action. The coalition will revamp the current Black Lives Matter memorial.

Osagie was a 29-year-old Black man who was killed by a State College police officer on March 20, 2019, when three officers arrived at his apartment to serve a mental health warrant.

Osagie, who had autism and a history of schizophrenia, allegedly ran at the officers with a knife. After an unsuccessful attempt to deploy a Taser on him, he was allegedly shot by Officer M. Jordan Pieniazek.

The officers involved in the shooting have not been charged.

Tuesday, March 15

5 p.m.  Tricia Miller, executive director and senior research wildlife biologist for Conservation Science Global, Inc., will join The Arboretum at Penn States Avian Education Program for Unraveling the Mysteries of the Eastern Golden Eagle.

Miller will discuss what is known about golden eagles  such as behavior, timing of migration, routes traveled, conservation issues and best times and places to see them  in 112 Forest Resources Building on campus or via Zoom.

6 p.m.  The 3/20 Coalition will hold Draw for Justice at 3 Dots Downtown in remembrance of Osagie.

Wednesday, March 16

9 a.m.  Penn States Small Business Development Center will host an information session and reception about how to make a business start, grow and prosper at 123 S Burrowes St.

SBDC will be joined by partners including The Happy Valley LaunchBox, the Penn State Entrepreneur Assistance Legal Clinic, the Penn State Intellectual Property Legal Clinic and Invent Penn State.

Registration is required by contacting the organizers by phone at 814-863-4293 or via email.

7 p.m.  The 3/20 Coalition will host a discussion titled Youth and Mental Health: From the Lens of Blackness" via Zoom.

MORE BOROUGH COVERAGE

Thursday, March 17

5 p.m.  The 3/20 Coalition will hold the Osaze Art Exhibition" at the Schlow Centre Region Library.

5 p.m.  Penn States Hope Here Hope Now, the Gender Equity Center, UNICEF and Penn States Student Programming Association will host a talk called Human Trafficking Awareness with Dr. Sterner in the HUB-Robeson Centers Freeman Auditorium.

Registration can be found here, and the event will discuss digitally exploitive trafficking practices.

6 p.m.  In celebration of Womens History Month, Penn State University Libraries will host a Zine Workshop for Self-Acceptance in Pattee Library W315.

This workshop, which requires registration, is free, and all of the supplies needed will be provided by University Libraries.

7:30 p.m.  Award-winning essayist and poet Paisley Rekdal will give a free public reading in Paterno Librarys Foster Auditorium.

Rekdal is the 2022 Fisher Family Writer-in-Residence, which is sponsored by Steven Fisher, a 1970 alumnus in English, and receives support from the Joseph L. Grucci Poetry Endowment, University Libraries, the Department of English and the College of the Liberal Arts.

This event will also be available via livestream with registration required.

Friday, March 18

12 p.m.  Nicole McLaughlin will virtually present Sustainable Fashion doesnt have to be Boring as part of the Penn State Sustainability Institutes Sustainability Showcase Series.

The event is free, and registration is required.

6:30 p.m.  The 3/20 Coalition will host a community movie night at Websters Bookstore Cafe. The event will feature a screening of a special episode of Black Tea, a show created and hosted by Tierra Williams.

7:00 p.m.  State College party band Velveeta will play 80s music at Axemann Brewery in Bellefonte as part of Velveeta Night for Centre Volunteers in Medicine.

Tickets are $20, and all proceeds will be donated to the Richard M. Madore Dental Clinic.

Saturday, March 19

10 a.m.  Centre Knitters Guild will host For the LOVE of Fiber, which will include knitting, weaving, spinning and embroidery demonstrations along with mini-classes, a fiber merchant mart, and the knit doctor to help with projects.

The free event will last until 5 p.m. at the Ramada Conference Center in State College.

1 p.m.  The 3/20 Coalition will hold a Complacency Kills protest at State College's Allen Street Gates. The group is calling the community to action to join us as we march to the home where Osaze was slain and show solidarity, unity and a will to never give up and never forget it happened here, according to its Instagram.
After removing catalytic converters from State College and Penn State vehicles, two Kentucky individuals were indicted on March 10 by a grand federal jury, according to court documents.

From Nov. 29 to Dec. 2, 2021, Jose William Perez Felipe and Wilber Sori San Miguel of Kentucky allegedly stole 30 catalytic converters totaling $90,000, court documents said.

Felipe and Miguel traveled to Pennsylvania from Kentucky in a Ford van, allegedly carrying "power cutting tools, cutting blades, hand tools" and other equipment to remove the converters, court documents said.

The individuals allegedly planned to sell the stolen converters in New York after removing them from Kentucky, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

The court alleged Felipe and Miguel used Facebook "to identify and communicate" with others who bought and sold the stolen converters.

While in the State College area, the individuals allegedly removed a converter from a Ford Super Duty diesel box truck, an Isuzu box truck and three Penn State Office of Physical Plant vans, court documents said.

On Monday, the court filed a writ of habeas corpus against both Felipe and Miguel, court documents said.

The initial arraignment hearing is scheduled for Wednesday at 1 p.m. in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania.

RELATED
The Colorado legislature unanimously approved legislation that seeks to modify the states sexual assault law by adding the word consent.

The state Senate passed House Bill 1169 in a final 34-0 vote on Monday, following the state House of Representatives unanimous vote last month. The bill will now be sent to Gov. Jared Polis for final consideration.

The bipartisan bill  sponsored by two Democrat women and two Republican men  aims to clarify the law to help jurors make decisions in sexual assault cases and to help victims understand whether what happened to them legally qualifies as sexual assault.

We want to make it clear and, right now, our language is confusing, said bill sponsor Sen. Faith Winter, D-Westminster. These are very difficult cases and having clarity around consent is imperative for moving forward in our state.

If enacted, the bill would change Colorados legal definition of sexual assault from sexual intrusion when the actor causes submission of the victim by means sufficient to cause submission against the victims will to when the actor causes sexual intrusion knowing the victim does not consent.

The current law was written in the 1970s and Colorado is one of only two states in the country that still uses the language. The bill sponsors said 34 other states currently use the language proposed under the bill in their sexual assault laws. Colorado also includes the term consent in its law for misdemeanor sexual contact, but not for sexual assault.

The bill would maintain Colorados existing legal definition of consent for sexual activity, which is cooperating in a sexual act using free will and with knowledge of the nature of the act. The definition also specifies that a current or previous relationship does not constitute consent and consent cannot be given under the influence of fear.

This bill come as, last year, the Colorado Coalition Against Sexual Assault reported that Colorados sexual violence rate is higher than the national average. The organization said 23.8% of women in Colorado had experienced sexual violence, compared to 18.3% nationally.

Nationally, less than one in three sexual assaults are reported to law enforcement, and, of those reported, only around 16% result in arrests and 9% result in felony convictions, according to the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network.
Two bills are on the legislative agenda this year that hope to end daylight saving time in Colorado.

Introduced Friday, House Bill 1297 seeks to make daylight saving time year-round if federal law is changed to allow states to do so. Senate Bill 135, which is also up for consideration, aims to create a statewide ballot measure to exempt Colorado from recognizing daylight saving time, leaving the state in Mountain Standard Time year-round.

I just want to stop the madness, said Sen. Jeff Bridges, who is sponsoring both of the bills. We could pass both, one or the other, or neither. I believe the most likely outcome is just one of them will pass. Were still working on both.

During daylight saving time  the second Sunday in March to the first Sunday in November  time is advanced one hour. Colorado lawmakers have tried for more than 30 years to end the flipping back and forth between Mountain Standard Time and daylight saving time. Then-Sen. Bill Schroeder, R-Morrison, led that first effort in 1988.

The pleas have continued in recent years, with Colorado bills and ballot proposals to make standard time year-round introduced in 2019, 2017 and 2015. Other efforts have aimed to make daylight saving time year-round in 2020, 2019, 2017 and 2015. All of the bills were immediately rejected by committees, failing to make it to the full state House or Senate for consideration.

Bridges, a Greenwood Village Democrat, said the time change disrupts sleep schedules, causes traffic accidents and is a general bi-yearly annoyance for Coloradans.

I think the role of government is to make life easier for folks, not harder, Bridges said. In the days after we spring forward, theres a measurable decrease in productivity, increase in traffic accidents, and a general loathing of having to change the clock. We can prevent that by locking the clock.

However, not everyone wants to stop resetting the clock twice a year. In past years, efforts to end daylight saving time have been met with fierce push back from the ski industry and broadcasters who said it would disrupt their scheduling and operations.

United Airlines, Frontier Airlines, Colorado Ski Country USA, the Colorado Competitive Council, the Colorado Hotel and Lodging Association, Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce and the Tourism Industry Association of Colorado already registered in opposition to SB-135. No organizations are registered in support.

CHLA is opposed to SB-135 to support our ski industry and airline partners, said Amie Mayhew, president and CEO of the Colorado Hotel and Lodging Association. There really isn't much direct impact on hotel operations, but we need our ski areas and airlines to thrive."

The Senate State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee discussed SB-135 on March 1 but skipped voting on the bill. Lawmakers have yet to scheduled either HB 1297 or SB 135 for a vote.

It is against federal law for states to implement year-round daylight saving time, though they can use year-round standard time, as Hawaii and Arizona do. In the last four years, 18 states have passed legislation to make daylight saving time year-round if Congress decides to allow the change, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

If HB-1297 passed, it would only go into effect if Congress changes the law. However, since 2018, Congress has tried and failed each year to pass legislation that would make daylight saving time permanent.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan speaks during a press briefing at the White House, in Washington, Feb. 11. President Joe Biden is sending his national security adviser for talks with a senior Chinese official in Rome, March 14. AP-Yonhap





U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, who is due to meet with China's top diplomat Yang Jiechi in Rome, Monday, warned Beijing that it would "absolutely" face consequences if it helped Moscow evade sweeping sanctions over the war in Ukraine.







Russia asked China for military equipment after its Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, sparking concern in the White House that Beijing may undermine Western efforts to help Ukrainian forces defend their country, several U.S. officials said.







Sullivan plans in his meeting with Yang to make Washington's concerns clear while mapping out the consequences and growing isolation China would face globally if it increases its support of Russia, one U.S. official said, without providing details.







Asked about Russia's request for military aid, first reported by the Financial Times, Liu Pengyu, spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said: "I've never heard of that."







He said China found the current situation in Ukraine "disconcerting" and added: "We support and encourage all efforts that are conducive to a peaceful settlement of the crisis."







Liu said "utmost efforts should be made to support Russia and Ukraine in carrying forward negotiations despite the difficult situation to produce a peaceful outcome."







Sullivan told CNN, Sunday, that Washington believed China was aware that Russia was planning some action in Ukraine before the invasion took place, although Beijing may not have understood the full extent of what was planned.







After the invasion began, Russia sought both military equipment and support from China, the U.S. officials said.







Sullivan told CNN that Washington was watching closely to see to what extent Beijing provided economic or material support to Russia, and would impose consequences if that occurred.







"We are communicating directly, privately to Beijing, that there will absolutely be consequences for large-scale sanctions evasion efforts or support to Russia to backfill them," Sullivan said. "We will not allow that to go forward and allow there to be a lifeline to Russia from these economic sanctions from any country, anywhere in the world."







The meeting, which had been in planning for some time, is part of a broader effort by Washington and Beijing to maintain open channels of communication and manage competition between the world's two largest economies, a senior Biden administration official said.







No specific outcomes were expected, the source added, speaking on condition of anonymity.






The Missourians Opinion section is a public forum for the discussion of ideas. The views presented in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Missourian or the University of Missouri. If you would like to contribute to the Opinion page with a response or an original topic of your own, visit our submission form
As the Cubs were beating the Braves 6-3 Wednesday night Steve left to see the game with his mom and dad, Reva and Harold, brother Ron and baby niece Elizabeth Henney. He left behind to run the store his wife Kathleen (Knight), Amelia (27), Nathan (24) and his beloved cat Lewis Black. His sis
What's Included

With a Digital Only subscription, you'll receive unlimited access to our website and e-edition. Our digital products are available 24/7 and are accessible anywhere, anytime.

If you have any questions or need further assistance, please call our customer service team at 319-283-2144 or email circ@oelweindailyregister.com.
What's Included

With a Digital Only subscription, you'll receive unlimited access to our website and e-edition. Our digital products are available 24/7 and are accessible anywhere, anytime.

If you have any questions or need further assistance, please call our customer service team at 319-352-3334 or email legals@waverlynewspapers.com.
Where does your software come from?

Thats one of the questions online users at AskWoody.com have asked in recent weeks. Obviously, this comes up as the world sees whats going on in Ukraine. For many years, one security software vendor in particular was tagged as possibly having Russian ties  and as far back as 2017, the US government banned the use of Kaspersky antivirus over fears the security software could spy on defense contractors for Russia.

The concern over foreign software isnt new. In 2018, the Pentagon put together a do not buy list of software companies anyone working with defense contractors should avoid. Specifically, defense officials wanted to ensure that no software with Chinese or Russian provenance would be purchased. Often, to sell software in a particular country, vendors have to provide source code or additional information. But its often hard to know exactly where software is coded, given the world-wide nature of technology. Case in point: I once used software in my office network that was sold by Microsoft but partially coded in Shanghai. Its enough to make you think of the potential code written in places that your country might not have the greatest relationship with.

The most obvious one that comes to mind is the Russian firm Kaspersky, which has gotten a lot of complaints about its lack of response to the Ukrainian crisis. For many years, the companys ties to the Russian government have been a concern. Ive even wondered about other pieces of software Ive purchased over the years.

For example, there are password-cracking programs built by developers (or even entire firms) located in Russia. For many years, Ive used software from Elcomsoft for various tools to break into various software for legitimate reasons. In my firm, we examine various types of files without access to the passwords needed to open them. Rather than play games with attorneys, weve found it easier to just use various tools to break the passwords. While some, such as Word documents, may take a long time to crack  and you might need specialized equipment to make the process faster  basic, everyday business software like QuickBooks is relatively easy to break into. Let this be a lesson: never consider your QuickBooks files protected if you lose them because theyre password-protected. Online tools can remove the password and prompt for a new one to be set up; that still gives me full access to a file you thought was protected. For me, these password-cracking tools are for business, not hacking. But the fact that many of these tools come from firms connected to Russia does give me pause. Even though the firm appears to have relocated to the Czecho Republic, it still leaves me wondering.

Other companies are asking whether they should provide services to Russian firms. Avast antivirus, for example, has openly stated it will no longer offer products to Russian customers. Microsoft has said it will not sell new services to customers in Russia, stopping short of stating it will cut off services to anyone with existing contracts. Microsoft hasnt yet taken the drastic step of cutting off Windows updates or discontinuing support and maintenance for existing operating systems.

Microsoft has often opened up its crown jewel source code to government agencies to get sign-off from various governments. Over the years, there have been a number of times hackers have been able to access to the Microsoft source code to study how Windows works at a deeper level. So, even our core Windows operating system has been closely examined by Russian software engineers over the years, even if the underlying software hasnt been written there.

What should you do if youre concerned about a software vendor? First, do your due diligence and research where your vendors, and their employees, are located. Clearly, its a personal decision to support or sanction a vendor based on their actions or government connections. Use your dollars to find tech vendors that act ethically and responsibly.

Secondly, uninstall potentially problematic software from your system and ensure there are no traces left. Often, vendors are a bit messy when they install software and dont clean up after themselves. Ive often had to rely on Revo Uninstaller to clean up after a messy vendor. Its a good idea to keep this tool in mind when uninstalling software. Many times, registry keys and files are left behind, as are vulnerabilities that wont be patched. While you dont need to take the drastic step of reinstalling your operating system, its relatively easy to rebuild a computer from scratch with Windows 10. If your computer comes from a major vendor, you can easily download any drivers needed once you rebuild the system.

Even hardware needs to be examined; you may find that a specific laptop or device is built in a country you arent comfortable doing business with. (I use a Lenovo laptop even though there have been concerns from some that it could be a source of cyber risk; Lenovo purchased the PC and server businesses from IBM in 2005 and 2014, respectively.)

Bottom line: research where your software is coded and where your hardware is built. This isnt always easy. Vendors can hide where their offices are located and may use a workforce thats disbursed around the world. You may have to ask on support forums where a vendor is really located. These days, software can, and usually is, coded anywhere. You might be surprised that your favorite tool isnt developed where you thought it was.
There has been a rapid spike in demand for VPN services in Russia and Ukraine since the invasion began almost three weeks ago. People in both nations seek online freedoms as offline misery intensifies, and want to see through the fog of conflict.

VPN services see rapid growth in Russia

A VPN (virtual private network) service creates an encrypted tunnel between users and the servers they interact with. This helps secure the traffic to protect people from being identified, tracked, and surveilled.

Simon Migliano, Head of Research at Top10VPN, explained that Russians began seeking out VPN services before the conflict began. But demand has accelerated as it continues and authorities become more repressive there.

Demand climbed 55% on Feb. 24 but has hovered around 1,000% higher throughout Match. In part, this reflects a desire among many Russian people to continue using social networks and to maintain contact with friends and family in Ukraine.

It may also be historically relevant to note that demand for VPN services climbed 3,405% in Kazakhstan in January as anti-government protests took place there.

Demand for VPN services also increased in Ukraine, increasing 609% at its peak, and as Russia massed troops on the border, people there had already begun to install VPNs on their devices.

Controlling the narrative

Russia has throttled access to many news and social media platforms. The country has blocked access to more than 300 sites that relate to coverage of events in Ukraine since the Russian invasion. It has also added 6,000 sites to its internet deny list.

Russia censors internet access within its borders through a series of laws and mechanisms. One of the most significant is its centralized single register of banned URLs, domains, and IP addresses; the country also uses deep packet inspection, which may undermine some VPN services.

As has been widely reported, blocked sites include BBC News, Deutsche Welle, and Voice of America. Many such sites (including the BBC) now offer up mirrors via Tor, while the BBC has published a recommendation to use VPN services.

Its clear that the Kremlin wishes to control the narrative of its invasion and prevent the Russian people from accessing news reports from Ukrainian sources, Migliano said. For Russians, the problem is that some VPN services are officially banned.

Finding a reliable VPN service

Top10VPN has published a useful list of safe VPN services for Russia. At present, that list includes Windscribe (free version available limited to 10GB/month) along with Astrill VPN, Private VPN, Surfshark and VPNArea.

All five of these services were apparently able to bypass Russian web filters during tests, and offer high encryption and private logging policies, the company said. However, not all of them work well on iOS devices and some popular services, including ExpressVPN, are banned in Russia.

Psiphon is often recommended, but Is not optimized for privacy, which is an issue when it's illegal to use a VPN to access blocked content in Russia, Migliano said.

The services may in the future change or be constrained by government action. Migliano warns that Russia is likely to be working to block VPN services, possibly at the network level. As it does so, some VPN services will simply cease to operate.

Thats bad, but this is a cat-and-mouse game, and even in highly repressive nations some VPN services still operate. (Top10VPN will be monitoring VPN access in Russia in the future.)

VPN experts advise against installing or relying on unknown services as security may not be so tight in some. In 2019, Top10VPN warned that some VPN services might actually be owned by companies that cant be trusted, lack data protection, or have serious privacy flaws.

This is of consequence, given that VPN services route your traffic via their servers, which may give them insight into what you do.

The VPN-choosing check list

When selecting a VPN, users should:

Always check for information about a company  is it bona fide? Does it have real addresses, phone numbers and people?

Does it have a privacy policy that explains its logging and data retention policies?

What data abuse protection is in place? Does the company delete server logs in real time?

Does it have customer support and rely on ad-supported services?.

Migliano had some other insights for people attempting to access free information in conflict zones. Tor is certainly useful in that you can use it to access the new .onion versions of blocked sites like the BBC and Twitter. It's also a crucial tool for activists, he said.

However, Tor isnt always the best choice as it is very slow when compared to standard web browsers  though it may sometimes be the only one.

Activists are becoming creative as they attempt to broadcast their viewpoints online, deliver coded messages, and share seemingly innocuous images containing significant information, such as dates. At the same time, heavy use of Tor, VPN services and encrypted communication apps can help maintain some communication as people in danger zones seek to shed a some light on what's going on

Please follow me on Twitter, or join me in the AppleHolics bar & grill and Apple Discussions groups on MeWe.
Even before President Joe Biden's White House Executive Order (EO) last week, the US had been exploring the creation of a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). But its efforts have fallen far short of other countries.

In the Executive Order, Biden called on several US agencies and regulatory bodies to intensify their exploration of a digital form of a dollar, similar in some ways to cryptocurrencies, such as bitcoin, but vastly more stable. Biden called on the Federal Reserve System (The Fed) and other oversight bodies to develop recommendations on how to close regulatory gaps, mitigate economic risks, and address cybersecurity concerns around cryptocurrency.

Currently, however, the US is playing a game of catchup with other countries that are already using or piloting CBDCs or digital tokens. The consquences of the US falling further beyind could be serious.

"I think the United States has realized its very far behind other countries, especially China, which is racing ahead technologically and also policy wise," said Ananya Kumar, assistant director of Digital Currencies at the Atlantic Councils GeoEconomics Center, in Washington DC.

"If we don't create our own, standards will get set by other countries already aware of the advantages of this innovation and the US will be left behind," Kumar said. "The EO came out very strongly for American leadership on these issues. The US to date has not been focusing coordinated efforts on this."

Members of the Atlantic Council, a think tank, testified before Congress last summer on the merits and challenges of CBDCs, which are faster, cheaper to administer, and safer than cryptocurrencies  or even traditional cash.

It still is a wild west show and we need regulatory clarity to tame it, said Avivah Litan, a distinguished analyst and vice president at research firm Gartner. Regulatory agencies have different views on cryptocurrencies.

For example, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) are not unified in their definitions and regulatory treatment for crypto, and regulatory responsibilities and jurisdictions are not clear among them (e.g. across/between the CFTC and the SEC), Litan explained.

"There are also multiple competing efforts in Congress for crypto-related legislation, most of which have not passed," Litan said. "Hopefully, the Executive Order will clarify the roles and how cryptocurrencies are treated going forward."

Of the countries or regions with the four largest central banks  the US, the European Union, Japan, and the UK  the United States is furthest behind, according to the Atlantic Council. And China has been expanding the pilot program of its retail CBDC  the e-CNY  while concurrently banning the use of cryptocurrency. Nigeria launched its CBDC, the e-Naira, in October 2021 for retail use.

"China, Thailand, the UAE, and many other countries are also exploring cross-border projects, a testament to their interest in setting technology and policy standards internationally," Kumar said in a blog post last week.

One problem with the lack of international standards and regulatory oversight is that cryptocurrencies can be used by criminal groups for nefarious activities and rogue nations to bypass traditional financial messaging networks. For example, faced with a growing number of sanctions following its invasion of Ukraine, Russia is likely using cryptocurrencies to continue cross-border commerce anonymously.

"To begin with, privacy and consumer protection standards are needed," Kumar said. "Europe currently leads the world with that and anyone who wants to do commerce with them has to comply with those standards. It's a very fragmented system currently, and that's where you need international bodies to create standards that will work to your advantage."

Digital currency, including cryptocurrencies, have seen explosive growth in recent years, passing a $3 trillion market capitalization last November (up from $14 billion just five years earlier). Surveys suggest that around 16% of adult Americans  approximately 40 million people  have invested in, traded, or used cryptocurrencies. More than 100 countries are exploring or piloting CBDCs, a digital form of a countrys sovereign currency.

Generally speaking, there are three kinds of digital currency:

Cryptocurrencies , such as bitcoin and Ethereum, created and traded on blockchain distributed ledger technology (DLT);

, such as bitcoin and Ethereum, created and traded on blockchain distributed ledger technology (DLT); Stablecoin , such as Tether and USD Coin, backed by fiat currencies like the US dollar;

, such as Tether and USD Coin, backed by fiat currencies like the US dollar; Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), or fiat currencies issued by central banks in digital form and are not categorized as cryptocurrency.

People who buy and sell digital currencies use digital wallets that contain public and private encryption keys. The public keys are used to send or receive digital coins; the private keys help ensure no one can steal it from the holder, as only they hold the code. The digital currency transactions are recorded through an online electronic ledger that in the case of CBDCs is typically managed by a central bank. In contrast, cryptocurrencies, such as bicoin, are transferred and tracked on a public electronic ledger called a blockchain, which is maintained by digital currency miners or the people who use computers to generate cryptocurrency.

Cryptocurrencies offer sellers and buyers anomymity through encryption, but that same encryption ensures transactions are unchangeable or immutable.

There are, however, some CBDC projects that use blockchain distributed ledger technology (DLT)  the same technology used by bitcoin and other public cryptocurrencies.

Sweden, for example, is testing a blockchain DLT for its digital currency, and those currencies can interact with other CBDCs. For example Chinas Digital Yuan can be transferred using a bridge, gateway, or other interoperability protocol to a DLT/Blockchain as they have done, Litan said.

Gartner Three types of cryptocurrency.

Banks have already been piloting stablecoin as a method of cross-border payments to augment or replace traditional financial rails, such as SWIFT  the world's largest financial messaging network.

JP Morgan and Wells Fargo have piloted their own stablecoin to handle internal settlements with their business partners. Unlike cross-border transactions through traditional settlement messaging networks, which can take three days or more to clear, cryptocurrency transactions are nearly instantaneous and there are no fees.

Even before Bidens executive order, the US had been looking at the creation of a federally-backed digital dollar through Project Hamilton, a collaboration between The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Digital Currency Initiative (MIT DCI).

Project Hamiltons purpose is to create a CBDC design and gain a hands-on understanding technical challenges and opportunities. Our primary goal was to design a core transaction processor that meets the robust speed, throughput, and fault tolerance requirements of a large retail payment system, the Project Hamilton's executive summary states.

The Federal Reserve also recently published a CBDC policy paper; it is currently in the public comment stage until May 22.

Gartner

Today, eighty-seven countries (representing more than 90% of global GDP) are exploring a CBDC along with 45 central banks; in May 2020, just 35 countries were considering a CBDC, according to the Atlantic Council.

Nine countries have already launched a digital currency. Nigeria is the latest with the e-Naira, the first CBDC outside the Caribbean.

At the same time, 15 countries have launched CBDC pilot projects to test the waters, including China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and South Africa, Singapore, South Korea and Thailand. China is much further along than the US, and about a year ago tested a multi-national distributed ledger for cross-border payments with Thailand, the UAE, and Hong Kong, Litan said.

In 2019, two of the largest economies in the Middle East, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, launched a bilateral CBDC pilot project called Project Aber. The project concluded that DLT can successfully facilitate cross-border transactions.

The project was successful in achieving its key objectives, which include using a new DLT-based solution for real-time, cross-border interbank payments between commercial banks without the need to maintain and reconcile Nostro accounts with each other, a multinational study concluded. This promises to address the inefficiency and costs that are inherent in existing cross-border payment mechanisms.

In February 2021, the United Arab Emirates joined China, Hong Kong, and Thailand in a joint CBDC cross-border test. This Multiple Central Bank Digital Currency (m-CBDC) Bridge will test the use of DLT for foreign currency payments, the Atlantic Council said.

Without global standards and international coordination, however, any CBDC-based cross border payment systems could face significant interoperability problems down the road, according to the Atlantic Council.

Kumar said the US needs to move quickly if it wants to catch up to what other nations have been doing.

"The United States has not been focusing coordinated efforts on this, and this is the time that we start thinking about it more seriously than we have," he said. "Otherwise, we're going to miss out on the applications of this innovation. We're going to miss out on how this technology is useful and how regulated innovations can provide financial benefits for our society. And, we're going to miss out on cheaper, faster, safer payments."
03/14/2022

Photo (c) Andriy Onufriyenko - Getty Images COVID-19 tally as compiled by Johns Hopkins University. (Previous numbers in parentheses.)

Total U.S. confirmed cases: 79,517,492 (79,517,042)

Total U.S. deaths: 967,552 (967,032)

Total global cases: 456,908,767 (453,897,953)

Total global deaths: 6,041,077 (6,040,835)

Pfizer CEO recommends a fourth shot

Albert Bourla, CEO of vaccine-maker Pfizer, warns that the pandemic is not over yet. On CBS Face The Nation Sunday, he said people who have had a two-shot vaccination and a booster will probably need a fourth jab.

"Many variants are coming, and Omicron was the first one that was able to evade -- in a skillful way -- the immune protection that we're giving," Bourla told CBS.

China is grappling with a new outbreak of the coronavirus, but cases have dropped dramatically in the U.S., at least for now. According to Johns Hopkins University, there were only 6,382 new cases reported in the U.S. Sunday. That compares to 49,557 reported cases on March 13, 2021.

Pandemic significantly reduced cancer screenings, study finds

Once COVID-19 began its surge two years ago, significantly fewer people went to the doctor for cancer screenings. Canadian researchers estimate that screenings for cancer declined by 34% at the start of the pandemic.

The pandemic has caused dramatic changes in the health care system, including a worrisome decline in cancer screening, said Dr. Harold Burstein of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, who was not involved with the study.

The studys authors conclude that many cancers have gone undetected due to the disruptions in the healthcare system in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This is concerning because a delay in diagnosis for cancer is associated with a lower chance of cure, said Dr. Antoine Eskander, one of the researchers.

Obama tests positive

Former President Barack Obama reported over the weekend that he tested positive for COVID-19. However, he appears to be weathering it well.

Ive had a scratchy throat for a couple days, but am feeling fine otherwise, Obama posted on Twitter. Michelle and I are grateful to be vaccinated and boosted, and she has tested negative.

The former president said its a reminder for everyone to be vaccinated if you havent already, even as cases go down.

Around the nation
Former U.S. President Barack Obama speaks during a memorial service for former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid at the Smith Center in Las Vegas, Jan. 8. Obama said Sunday that he had tested positive for COVID-19, though he's feeling relatively healthy. AP-Yonhap





Former President Barack Obama said Sunday that he had tested positive for COVID-19, though he's feeling relatively healthy and his wife, Michelle, tested negative.







''I've had a scratchy throat for a couple days, but am feeling fine otherwise,'' Obama said on Twitter. ''Michelle and I are grateful to be vaccinated and boosted.''







Obama encouraged more Americans to get vaccinated against the coronavirus, despite the declining infection rate in the U.S. There were roughly 35,000 infections on average over the past week, down sharply from mid-January when that average was closer to 800,000.







The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that 75.2 percent of U.S. adults are fully vaccinated and 47.7 percent of the fully vaccinated have received a booster shot. The CDC relaxed its guidelines for indoor masking in late February, taking a more holistic approach that meant the vast majority of Americans live in areas without the recommendation for indoor masking in public. (AP)


Congratulations, broadwayla.org got a very good Social Media Impact Score! Show it by adding this HTML code on your site:

Broadwayla.org scored 74 Social Media Impact. Social Media Impact score is a measure of how much a site is popular on social networks. 3.5/5.0 Stars by Social Team

This CoolSocial report was updated on 19 Jan 2013, you can refresh this analysis whenever you want.

broadwayla.org is very popular in Facebook, Stumble Upon, Google Plus and Delicious. It is liked by 1065 people on Facebook and it has 19 google+ shares.

The total number of people who shared the broadwayla homepage on Delicious. The total number of people who shared the broadwayla homepage on Google Plus by a google +1 button. The total number of people who shared the broadwayla homepage on StumbleUpon. This is the sum of two values: the total number of people who shared the broadwayla homepage on Twitter + the total number of broadwayla followers (if broadwayla has a Twitter account). This is the sum of two values: the total number of people who shared, liked or recommended the broadwayla homepage on Facebook + the total number of page likes (if broadwayla has a Facebook fan page).

Basic Information

PAGE TITLE Official Pantages Theatre Website - Broadway/L.A. - HomePage DESCRIPTION KEYWORDS OTHER KEYWORDS award, theatre, peter pan, peter, musical, story, broadway



The description meta-tag found in the head section of the homepage. CoolSocial advanced keyword analysis tool is able to detect and analyze every keyword on each page of a site. The title found in the head section of the homepage. The keywords meta-tag found in the head section of the homepage. The URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is the address of the site.

Domain and Server

DOCTYPE XHTML 1.0 Transitional CHARSET AND LANGUAGE ISO-8859-1 DETECTED LANGUAGE English English SERVER Microsoft-IIS/6.0 (ASP.NET) OPERATIVE SYSTEM Windows Server 2003 Windows Server 2003

Type of server and offered services. The language of broadwayla.org as detected by CoolSocial algorithms. Character set and language of the site. Operative System running on the server. Represents HTML declared type (e.g.: XHTML 1.1, HTML 4.0, the new HTML 5.0)

Site Traffic trend during the last year. Only available for sites ranked <= 100000 in the world.

Referring domains for broadwayla.org by MajesticSeo. High values are a sign of site importance over the web and on web engines.

Facebook link

FACEBOOK PAGE LINK NOT FOUND

The total number of people who like website Facebook page. 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 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.

Twitter account link

TWITTER PAGE LINK NOT FOUND
Corsicana, TX (75110)

Today

A few isolated thunderstorms developing this afternoon. High 88F. Winds SSE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 30%..

Tonight

Cloudy skies this evening followed by scattered showers and thunderstorms overnight. Low 73F. Winds SSE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 40%.
Released by a local court in September 2007, as there was lack of evidence against him. In February 2010, the Dutch Public Prosecution Service terminated its investigation of Sison and dropped the criminal charges against him as no evidence was found.

The European Union's second highest court ruled in September 2009 to delist him as a "person supporting terrorism" and reversed a decision by member governments to freeze his assets. He is in the protection of the Refugee Convention and Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

I met Sison in Utrecht, where he currently lives as a political refugee, during the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of Philippines. He appeared supportive of the armed struggle of the CPI (Maoist) in India, though without understanding the nuances.

His works analyse fascism, neo-colonialism, imperialism and crisis of monopoly capitalism. He analyses the history of the Communist movement from the embryonic stage. He justifies the Chinese path of revolution for the third world countries. He believes, China has turned into a capitalist and imperialist country but defends Cultural Revolution under Mao. At the same time, placing a balanced perspective, he projects both positive and negative aspects of Gandhi.

Critical of parliamentary democracy, Sison asserts how boycott of elections is not a strategy for a Communist party, and insists on adopting extra-parliamentary tactics alongside legal means of struggle. He believes, the Church can be an ally of the revolution.

Sisons supporters praise him for his peoples war tactic in Philippines, which is in a stage of strategic defence or self-defence. They insist, the tactic has helped consolidate base areas and formation of democratic alternatives for the oppressed masses, with the New Peoples Army integrating into the very heart of the lives of the broad masses and building up of a broad united front against the neo-fascist regime.

Depending on the circumstances, the party has carried out minimum and maximum land reform programmes. The minimum programme involves rent reduction, elimination of usury, setting up fair farm-gate prices and promotion of agricultural production and sideline occupation through independent households and rudimentary cooperation. The maximum programme involves the confiscation of land from the landlords and land grabbers and free land distribution and agricultural cooperation in stages. It has been able to build local organs of political power nationwide, from the barangay level upwards. It has sporadically launched armed actions challenging Rodrigo Dutertes regime through building liberated base.

The Philippines regime continues to squander billions of pesos in its drive to terrorize the party cadres and supporters, launching vicious attacks in Mindanao, Bicol, Eastern Visayas and Negros, as well as in other regions across the country. Civilian communities, farms and mountains are being bombed from the air, shelled and strafed without let up.

Villages are turned into hamlets and placed under military control. Mass organizations are relentlessly attacked to disunite people. Masses are subjected to incessant harassment and forced to parade as surrenderees. They are turned into milking cows for the corrupt military officials and their so-called development projects which have nothing to do with peoples lives and livelihood.

Big profit-hungry landlords, plantation owners, big capitalists and multinational companies are grabbing productive land to turn the peasant masses and Lumad people into beggars. The big banana plantations owned by Dutertes cronies are expanding.

The big mining companies are marching just behind the regime's troops marauding and driving the Mindanao Lumads, Mangyans, Tumandoks, Igorots and other ethnic minority people out of their communities. They are made to relocate to housing projects away from their land and resources. Broad masses of workers continue to suffer from low wages and oppressive working conditions. Unions are being attacked, their powers are being taken away.

Dutertes war is aggravating the peoples socioeconomic conditions that give rise to armed resistance. It is exhausting limited public funds that should instead be going to public health and education, especially when the country faces the pandemic. Daily there are reports of counter offensives launched by the New Peoples Army in Philippines against the security forces.

---

*Freelance journalist


Continue Reading Below Advertisement

Lets not forget Petes star turn in The King of Staten Island, the semi-autobiographical story of a 24-year-old high school dropout who lives with his mother and younger sister after his firefighter dad dies during 9/11. Semi-autobiographical?

I have never really been able to get over my dad passing, Pete said about King, a film he co-wrote. Telling that story  filming it and digging deep and being in uncomfortable areas that I have avoided for so long, I think that not only helped the movie, but it helped me as a person.

Director Judd Apatow spent a long time making sure the Pete we see on film was authentically Pete. We spent a lot of time talking about all the history and the emotions, says Apatow. When Pete wasnt around, I would sit with our co-writer, Dave Sirus, whos one of Petes best friends, and go, what was that moment like? In a situation like that, how might Pete react?

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

But maybe not exactly exactly Pete? We joke that this movies like if I was 5 percent more of an a__hole, Davidson says. But I thought it was like 70 to 80 percent more. You have to just make certain decisions that work best for the movie and not for you as a person.

Lets be clear: Its not a criticism of Pete Davidson to say his best comedic role is Pete Davidson. Look no further than comedy legend Lucille Ball, who over the course of four decades played:

Lucy, a dizzy redhead married to a Cuban bandleader in I Love Lucy;

Lucy, a daffy widow raising two teen-age children in The Lucy Show;

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

Lucy, another dotty widow raising two teenage children (this time played by her actual children) in Heres Lucy;

And of course, Lucy, the doting widowed grandmother in Life with Lucy.

Desilu Studios

So go on, Pete -- there are worse things to be called than the Lucille Ball of Stoners.

For more ComedyNerd, be sure to check out:

John Mulaney: What We Learned from His 'Saturday Night Live' Comeback

'Saturday Night Live': When Is It Time to Leave?

'The Simpsons': 13 Jokes That Sailed Over Our Heads

Top image: Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon
The Instagram app icon is seen on the screen of a mobile device in this Aug. 23, 2019, photo. Russian regulators said that internet users in the country will be blocked from accessing Instagram because it's being used to call for violence against Russian soldiers, in Moscow's latest move to tighten up access to foreign social platforms. AP-Yonhap





Instagram users in Russia have been notified that the service will cease from midnight Sunday after its owner Meta Platforms said last week it would allow social media users in Ukraine to post messages such as "Death to the Russian invaders."







An email message from the state communications regulator told people to move their photos and videos from Instagram before it was shut down, and encouraged them to switch to Russia's own "competitive internet platforms."







Meta, which also owns Facebook, said Friday that the temporary change in its hate speech policy applied only to Ukraine, in the wake of Russia's Feb. 24 invasion.







The company said it would be wrong to prevent Ukrainians from "expressing their resistance and fury at the invading military forces."







The decision was greeted with outrage in Russia, where authorities have opened a criminal investigation against Meta and prosecutors asked a court Friday to designate the U.S. tech giant as an "extremist organization."







The head of Instagram has said the block will affect 80 million users. Russia has already banned Facebook in the country in response to what it said were restrictions of access to Russian media on the platform.







The message to Instagram users from the regulator Roskomnadzor described the decision to allow calls for violence against Russians as a breach of international law.







"We need to ensure the psychological health of citizens, especially children and adolescents, to protect them from harassment and insults online," it said, explaining the decision to close down the platform. (Reuters)


Sue B. Donnelly, 87, of Crossville, passed away at her home on April 26, 2022. She was born on May 18, 1934, in Crossville, Tennessee, daughter of the late James T. Brandon and Clara (Hamby) Brandon. Sue was the owner of Boats and Harbors and of the Baptist Faith. She is survived by her chil
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

View Results
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

FAIRFIELD  Irelands Great Hunger Museum will have some familiarity when it moves to its new home in downtown Fairfield.

The museums former executive director, Ryan Mahoney, will join Irelands Great Hunger Museum of Fairfield Inc., an association of the Gaelic-American Club in Fairfield, the group announced this weekend. He will serve as an adviser, helping plan exhibits of the collection from Quinnipiac University to the new space, which has yet to be announced.

To say I am excited to have the opportunity to continue to work with this collection and help in the development of its new home would be an understatement, said Mahoney.

Mahoney was the executive director for the museum at Quinnipiac from 2017 to 2021. In that role he oversaw the museums administrative operations and managed the collections care and maintenance.

The museum contains the worlds largest collection of Great Hunger-related art, according to its website.

This collection is powerful, Mahoney said. Not only does it tell the story of Ireland in the 19th century, but it also draws parallels to many contemporary issues that we see worldwide. The artwork here inspires conversations and provokes questions. It makes a topic like the Great Hunger more accessible to visitors of all ages.

Quinnipiac opened the museum in 2012 under then-president John Lahey. It closed to visitors in 2020 due to the COVID pandemic. Last year, the university announced the museum would not reopen and was looking for another home.

The news came two years after the university announced the museum would have a June-2020 deadline to find its own funding to become self sustaining.

The move to Fairfield has drawn some backlash, largely by the Committee to Save the Great Irish Hunger Museum, which argues the museum should remain open at Quinnipiac. The schools Irelands Great Hunger Institute will continue to offer the academic and research programs.

When Quinnipiac University opened IGHM, it deliberately worked with the best professionals in the field: Irish art dealers, Kennys of Galway; famine historian, Christine Kinealy; art historian and curator, Niamh OSullivan; designer, Clodagh and many others, said Turlough McConnell, chair of Save Irelands Great Hunger Museum, Inc.

Unfortunately, Ryan Mahoney, as director, oversaw the disastrous closure of the museum in Hamden, he said. Closing the museum was a tough legacy to shoulder. We wish him well.

McConnell and the committee also questioned the cost and time needed to get a space ready in Fairfield and said the move shouldnt happen before the results of an inquiry by the attorney generals inquiry are released.

We leave it to Attorney General William Tong to investigate the suitability of any group anywhere to take on Irelands Great Hunger collection so that Quinnipiac meets its fiduciary and moral responsibility to the public trust on behalf of the artists and donors, McConnell said.

Tongs office opened an inquiry last year into the museums closing and the collection. Attorney Michael McCabe, representing the Committee to Save the Great Irish Hunger Museum, had sent a letter to Tong in August calling for him to investigate the closure of the museum as it involves selling or disbursing the collection, which is the property of a nonprofit and was bolstered through the gifts of past donors.

University officials have said the university isnt selling any of the collection.

Keeping the collection together and in Connecticut has been one of the advantages of the move touted by university officials and the Gaelic-American Club in Fairfield.

University officials also said moving it to a high traffic area, like downtown Fairfield, will increase awareness of it.

We anticipate laying out the full details of the new location soon, said Amy OShea, vice president of Irelands Great Hunger Museum of Fairfield Inc. Plans are also underway to design a space that will be commensurate with the importance of this collection.

Mahoney also applauded the groups efforts.

The Gaelic-American Club should be commended for the work that they have done to keep this collection together and home here in Connecticut, he said. Irelands Great Hunger Museum of Fairfield, Inc. is assembling an impressive team of professionals to make sure this project is done correctly. This joint effort will secure the future of Irelands Great Hunger Museum collection and ensure that it will thrive for generations to come.

Mahoney has spent more than 15 years working in museums. He currently works at Springfield Museums in Springfield, Mass., where he helps develop gallery and exhibition themes and supervises exhibit installations.

Prior to working at Quinnipiacs museum, he spent several years serving as the executive director of the Irish American Heritage Museum in Albany, N.Y.

Mahoney has a dual bachelors degree in history and political science from St. John Fisher College and a masters degree in public history from the University at Albany. He also has served as a national board member of the Irish American Cultural Institute, as well as a board member of the United Irish Societies of the Capital District Inc. In 2016, Mahoney was named an Irish Top 40 Under 40 by the Irish Echo.

We are delighted to have Ryan join our team, said John Foley, president of Irelands Great Hunger Museum of Fairfield, Inc. He is an experienced museum professional who has had a personal connection to the collection and will provide valuable insight as we embark on this exciting journey.
The Danbury area is experiencing the ebb of yet another COVID wave as it reaches the official two-year mark of work from home, wearing mask, the coronavirus and Zoom calls.

Infection numbers continued to drop throughout February and into March, and the once all-red state data map showing the highest infection rates has reverted to the less ominous grays and yellows, showing the lowest rates.

As numbers appear more promising, local leaders discussed where their communities stand two years into a global pandemic.

Its a blessing that we can move forward today without that deep-down fear that we had back then, Danbury Mayor Dean Esposito said. Its just a relief  a real relief.

Danbury, New Fairfield, and Brookfield are reporting fewer than five cases each week for the past two weeks, with Bridgewater reporting zero, according to the latest state data. These numbers have dropped significantly from two months ago, when Danbury was reporting a case rate of 241.8 cases per 100,000 residents.

New Milford reported 20 total cases during the latest two-week period, and a case rate of 5.3.

Newtown, Bethel, Redding and Ridgefield are in the yellow zone, reporting fewer than 10 cases per 100,000 residents.

Sherman reported eight cases over two weeks which, as a small town, put its infection rate at 15.7  the red zone.

While the downward trend is familiar, things look a little different this time.

School districts have lifted mask mandates without seeing a responsive spike in cases. Offices are settling into hybrid work settings  with some in-office days and work from home days. Many people carry around photos of their vaccination card, detailing which dose they received and when.

I sincerely hope that this is an indication that we have finally entered the endemic stage of this, said Bethel First Selectman Matt Knickerbocker. Something that we have all learned to live with.

Ridgefield First Selectman Rudy Marconi frequently sees ups and downs in the data, but overall thinks the area is on the tail end of the pandemic.

Well look really, really good for a couple days, and then well see days with eight cases, he said. Throughout these ups and downs  and were going to continually see the ups and downs but at a much lower rate  its never going to go away.

Two years riding COVID waves

As COVID waves crested and crashed, leaders noticed in times of trouble, the community pulls together.

Neighbor helped neighbor, albeit from a distance. People sent checks to help with rent relief. They delivered food and prayed for those with loved ones who were sick or dying. They staffed ambulances, monitored oxygen levels and worked the checkout line at the grocery store. Families ordered in from their favorite restaurant and even paid their taxes on time.

While politics and differences over vaccinations and wearing masks would arise later on, the start was marked by cohesiveness.

Knickerbocker remembers those first few weeks and months as a frightening time. But the memory he has is how well Bethel residents came together.

New Milford Mayor Pete Bass said he was impressed by how quickly and easily the community rallied together, from first responders, to frontline workers, to ordinary citizens.

It was truly amazing to see that, to work with everyone involved in that, Bass said. Its reinforced my belief that working together as a community and partnership really pays a lot.

In Ridgefield, the community raised between $550,000 and $570,000 in rental assistance for struggling residents.

The people of Ridgefield are such generous people in terms of supporting during times of hardship, Marconi said.

Marconi contacted the bond council, concerned that residents would be late filing taxes. They looked into mitigation strategies.

They prepared for the worst, and hoped for the best.

The exact opposite happened. Everyone paid their taxes. The collection rate was better than wed ever seen before, he said. Our hope came through.

The week everything changed

Its an oft repeated phrase: This week two years ago, we had no idea how much our lives would change.

The News-Times headline from March 11, 2020 read: Governor declares state of emergency, followed by States first virus patient in a coma. Another story discussed Danburys canceled St. Patricks Day parade.

A year later, officials were gearing up to vaccinate homebound residents, while cases were doubling at Western Connecticut State University.

I remember it like yesterday, to tell you the truth, Esposito, who was former Mayor Mark Boughtons chief of staff at the time. We got word that the first COVID case was here in Danbury.

Gov. Ned Lamont made an appearance, holding a news conference in Boughtons office.

It was a very nerve-wracking time for all of us, Esposito said.

Bass remembers hearing murmurs about an outbreak in Westchester. That was when he started to prepare for what would likely hit New Milford.

Redding First Selectman Julia Pemberton recalls the exact moment she walked in to Town Hall and told the other employees to pack up and head home.

It was that simple: Everybody go home, now. Get your stuff together, make whatever arrangements you need. And that was that, she said. It was a frightening time those initial days were full of stigma and fear.

Some mark the passage of time through personal experience with the virus.

Knickerbocker recalled how sick he was coming home from a February trip to Seattle with his wife. To this day, he doesnt know if it was COVID or the flu. But he remembered thinking if this thing is worse than what I just went through, ... this is a really serious thing. This is going to affect everybody.

Personally, April 1 is two years for me  when I got sick, Marconi said.

Ridgefields first selectman would eventually be put on oxygen during his bout with COVID before recovering. Town Hall was shut down for a deep cleaning and he was unable to return to the office until May.

Redding didnt return until early July.

The towns were struggling to know what to do, Knickerbocker said. With so much unknown, he did his best to communicate with other leaders, calling them to ask if they were closing playgrounds and schools, and what sanitation protocols should look like.

Looking back, looking forward

Leading during a time of immense stress and uncertainty is never easy, and in reflecting back, several Danbury-area leaders said the COVID waves and all they entailed taught them to govern with compassion and empathy. Others said it highlighted the importance of communication and technology.

Knickerbocker took things less personally. In being more sensitive to his peoples needs and concerns, and in listening to their stories, he found strength.

It really spurred me to try to dig deep, he said. Some people react to this terrible stress and these challenges with anger and it helped me come to a place where I never felt like anything was directed at me personally.

For New Milfords mayor, the pandemic was a reminder of the need to be self-sufficient.

He pointed to the bungled test-kit roll out in January, where the state promised  but did not initially deliver  on its promise to get COVID tests into residents hands before school re-opened. New Milford was ready, with its own order of test kits incoming.

Weve got to make sure we are prepared as a town, Bass said.

While the town will happily accept federal and state resources, he said he has learned there will be times that we will have to do it ourselves.

Pemberton said she learned the value and limitations of technology.

We looked at technology, really as a way to become more efficient, more customer friendly, more user friendly, she said. We were able to keep government functioning without missing a beat.

But through its use, she also realized how important it was for a leader to be physically present.

Even while we may feel connected and were functioning as a leader, there is a need to be visible and to be among the people who elected you, she said.

In Redding, the mood is cautiously optimistic. Masks are no longer required at the town hall. Plans for road races and springtime events are in the works.

Spring is here and were blooming  its really that kind of feeling but at the same time understanding that if something else comes along, we may have to retreat a little bit, but we know how to do this. We can handle anything, Pemberton said.

For now were focused on the positive. We are planning for the future, were focused on connecting with one another again.
Ukrainian emergency employees and volunteers carry an injured pregnant woman from a maternity hospital that was damaged by bombing in Mariupol, Ukraine, March 9. AP-Yonhap





A pregnant woman and her baby have died following the bombing of the maternity hospital where she was meant to give birth by Russia, The Associated Press has learned. Images of the woman being rushed to an ambulance on a stretcher had circled the world, epitomizing the horror of an attack on humanity's most innocent.







In video and photos shot Wednesday by AP journalists after the attack on the hospital, the woman was seen stroking her bloodied lower abdomen as rescuers rushed her through the rubble in the besieged city of Mariupol, her blanched face mirroring her shock at what had just happened. It was among the most brutal moments so far in Russia's now 19-day-old war on Ukraine.







The woman was rushed to another hospital, yet closer to the frontline, where doctors labored to keep her alive. Realizing she was losing her baby, medics said, she cried out to them, ''Kill me now!''







Surgeon Timur Marin found the woman's pelvis crushed and hip detached. Medics delivered the baby via cesarean section, but it showed ''no signs of life,'' the surgeon said.







Then, they focused on the mother.







''More than 30 minutes of resuscitation of the mother didn't produce results,'' Marin said Saturday.







''Both died.''







In the chaos after Wednesday's airstrike, medics didn't have time to get the woman's name before her husband and father came to take away her body. At least someone came to retrieve her, they said  so she didn't end up in the mass graves being dug for many of Mariupol's growing number of dead.







Accused of war crimes, Russian officials claimed the maternity hospital had been taken over by Ukrainian extremists to use as a base, and that no patients or medics were left inside. Russia's ambassador to the U.N. and the Russian Embassy in London called the images ''fake news.''







Associated Press journalists, who have been reporting from inside blockaded Mariupol since early in the war, documented the attack and saw the victims and damage firsthand. They shot video and photos of several bloodstained, pregnant mothers fleeing the blown-out maternity ward, medics shouting, children crying.






NEWTOWN  Four months after eight families who lost loved ones in the Sandy Hook shooting won their defamation case against conspiracy extremist Alex Jones in Connecticut, the fight to determine damages is just beginning.

Motions are flying from both sides in state Superior Court as the families prepare to question Jones under oath for a final time before a jury decides damages in the fall.

The fighting made headlines in January when Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis granted families permission to subpoena Facebook for records of Jones 11 deactivated accounts, and in February when the families requested records of Jones talks with Spotify podcaster Joe Rogan.

Much of the fighting in Bellis court room centers on the families requests for information about the business accounts and practices of Jones and his affiliates, including a limited liability corporation called Free Speech Systems.

[I]t is clear that cash coming into Free Speech Systems, LLCs accounts was routed to third-party entities and then drawn down by Alex Jones. As such, the financial and organizational relationships between those entities is directly related to the various ways in which Alex Jones was able to obtain financial benefits from his mistreatment of the plaintiffs, the families attorneys argued in February.

Jones high-profile attorney in Connecticut objected.

The (families) contend that Mr. Jones profited from his mistreatment of the plaintiffs. Presumably, they intend to anchor punitive damages either in a theory of Mr. Jones net worth or his income and/or draw, attorney Norm Pattis wrote to Judge Barbara Bellis last week. This may be the (families) position; the defendants disagree with it. In either case, the issue is neither material nor relevant at this stage of the proceedings.

Pattis likened the families efforts to a fishing expedition and a collection action.

Obviously, the plaintiffs hope for a large judgment. If they obtain it, the time for post-judgment collections will have arrived. Pattis wrote. The time will then have come to advance, and to attempt to prove, that the third parties are what they suggest: alter egos of Mr. Jones.

The latest round of fighting comes two weeks before the families attorneys are scheduled to interview Jones under oath in preparation for a damages trial that is scheduled for the fall.

A similar process is underway in Texas, where parents who lost children in the Sandy Hook shooting won three other defamation cases against Jones.

In both states, judges first warned Jones then sanctioned Jones and then defaulted Jones for abuses of pretrial procedure. Jones called the shooting of 26 first-graders and educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 staged, synthetic, manufactured, a giant hoax, and completely fake with actors.

Jones made national headlines in 2019 when he was questioned under oath in one of the Texas cases and video of his deposition was made public. In part of that deposition, Jones made a connection about his opinions of conspiracies and a form of psychosis.

I basically thought everything was staged ... even though Im learning a lot of things arent staged, Jones said.

rryser@newstimes.com 203-731-3342
99 cent introductory offer

Includes everything we offer online for 24-7 news. This option allows you to read unlimited stories at ctnewsonline.com, and access our e-Edition (digital replicate of the daily newspaper). $7.99 per month after the introductory offer.

This service comes with a complimentary CT Select Card allowing for local discounts.

Rates are subject to change.
STAMFORD  A 29-year-old Bridgeport man was arrested early Sunday morning after police said he assaulted a city woman and threatened her with a gun.

Kelvin Soto, 29, was charged with criminal possession of a firearm, third-degree assault, second-degree strangulation and two counts each of possession of a high-capacity magazine, risk of injury to a minor and disorderly conduct.

Capt. Richard Conklin said Soto was at local clubs with a large group of people when a dispute  allegedly over who was dancing with whom  broke out between he and another individual.

Conklin said the dispute boiled over the about 6:40 the following morning when the group left the bars for a home on Woodland Avenue. During the incident, Soto allegedly punched a woman in the face and strangled her before pointing a handgun in her face, Conklin said.

After the confrontation, witnesses reported the incident to police.

First-arriving officers asked to speak to Soto, who was inside the home. Before stepping outside to speak to officers, Soto removed his jacket and dropped it on the floor, at which point police reported hearing a loud thud, according to Conklin

Soto was taken into custody by police. A search of his jacket revealed a loaded .45-caliber semiautomatic handgun and two illegal high-capacity magazines, Conklin said.

Conklin said there were two children at the Woodland Avenue home at the time of the incident.

Soto, a felon who has twice been convicted of felony gun charges, was taken to a local hospital by police after he apparently lost consciousness while speaking with officers.

After being released from the hospital, Soto was arrested and held on $100,000 bond.

He is scheduled to be arraigned March 28.

Editors note: This story has been updated to correct Kelvin Sotos age. His photo has also been updated after police said they released the wrong man's photo.
Funeral Service for Garry Dwight Knopp, age 66, of Cullman, will be at 3 p.m. on Saturday, May 7, 2022, at Cullman Heritage Funeral Home. Visitation will be from 1-3 p.m. prior to the service. Cullman Heritage Funeral Home is in charge of arrangements. Mr. Knopp passed away on Sunday, May 1,
Iran's foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh speaks during a press conference in Tehran, Monday. AFP-Yonhap



Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian will head to Moscow on Tuesday, the ministry said, days after negotiations on an Iran nuclear deal stalled amid new Russian demands.



"Russia has made its official demands loud and clear, and this needs to be discussed among all parties to the 2015 agreement, like all the demands that have been presented by other parties," foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh told reporters on Monday.



"The foreign ministers of the parties (to the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal) are in constant contact," and Amir-Abdollahian "will go to Moscow on Tuesday to continue the discussions", Khatibzadeh added.



More than 10 months of talks in Vienna have brought major powers close to renewing the landmark 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on regulating Iran's nuclear program.



But the negotiations were halted after Russia on March 5 demanded guarantees that Western sanctions imposed following its invasion of Ukraine would not damage its trade with Iran.



On March 11, the European Union's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell tweeted that the pause was "due to external factors," despite the fact that "a final text is essentially ready and on the table."



Iran waiting on Washington



The United States then put the ball in Iran and Russia's courts after the EU announcement.



"We are confident that we can achieve mutual return to compliance... (if) those decisions are made in places like Tehran and Moscow," State Department spokesman Ned Price said.



U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has dismissed as "irrelevant" the Russian demands for guarantees, saying that they "just are not in any way linked together."



But on Monday, Iran's foreign ministry spokesman repeated Tehran's position that the move had to come from the U.S.



"The remaining issues and points between us and the United States need political decisions in Washington", Khatibzadeh said.



"If they (the U.S.) announce that they have made a decision, then all the delegations can return to Vienna" to finalise an agreement, he said.



"We are not at the point of announcing the agreement," he added.



Russia and Iran have seen relations improve in recent years, and Moscow plays a central role in enforcing the 2015 pact, in particular by receiving excess enriched uranium from Tehran.



The JCPOA aimed to ensure Iran would not be able to develop a nuclear weapon, which it has always denied seeking.



On Saturday, Britain, France and Germany warned against moves to "exploit" the JCPOA, seen as a tacit warning to Russia.



"Nobody should seek to exploit JCPOA negotiations to obtain assurances that are separate to the JCPOA," the British, French and German foreign ministries  the three European parties to the negotiations  said in a statement.



"This risks the collapse of the deal, depriving the Iranian people of sanctions lifting and the international community of the assurance needed on Iran's nuclear program," they added.



The current round of negotiations started in late November in the Austrian capital between Iran and Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia, with the U.S. taking part indirectly.



The 2105 deal gave Iran sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program.



But the U.S. unilaterally withdrew from the accord in 2018 under then-president Donald Trump and imposed tough economic sanctions on different sectors, including oil exports. (AFP)


Premier Li announces new package containing tax refunds and cuts As the Chinese central government vowed to put in place more measures to ensure economic stability, enterprises from the services and manufacturing sectors expect a further rebound this year. In the Government Work Report delivered at the opening of the fifth session of the 13th National People's Congress on March 5, Premier Li Keqiang announced a new package of tax refunds and cuts totaling 2.5 trillion yuan ($395.37 billion) this year. Li said such sectors as catering, accommodation, retail, tourism and passenger transport provide a large number of job opportunities but are highly vulnerable to the effects of COVID-19. The report said such sectors should be given more priority in terms of policies to help enterprises survive and thrive. Huang Baosuo, chairman of Hefei, Anhui province-based Enjoy Sun International Holding Group, said the promise for support is an injection of confidence into his business. Holding multiple catering and accommodation brands, the company experienced critical moments at the beginning of the pandemic, Huang said. "With more than 4,000 employees, the company's over 100 outlets and shops together saw a loss of 150 million yuan in the first two months of the COVID-19 outbreak," he said. With support of the local government, all of the outlets were exempted from part of the rent for at least two months and all the value-added tax for the whole of 2020. Property owners offering rent reductions to tenants enjoyed tax cuts and will keep receiving government support if they continue to do so. The National Development and Reform Commission, together with a number of other government departments, issued a policy document on Feb 18 to promote the recovery and development of services industries in difficulty. The document ruled that those property owners who reduce or exempt rents for tenants from the services sector will enjoy reductions in property and urban land use taxes. The value-added tax rate of Enjoy Sun was lowered from 3 percent on normal days to 1 percent in 2021 during COVID-19. In addition, the company also benefited from other tax-and-fee reduction policies and easier access to bank loans. "Now we have more cash reserves to not only maintain our business but also expand, as we opened more than 10 new outlets last year," said Huang. As the business expands, he said the shortage of workers will continue to be a problem facing the traditional services sector. Yan Qi, a member of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and chairwoman of Chongqing Taoranju Catering Culture (Group) Co Ltd, said her company has been increasingly applying robots to replace human workers. Taoranju founded a technology subsidiary in 2021 to focus on developing more catering robots, and now it owns more than 50 patents. The investment in research and development helped the company save 760,000 yuan in taxes. The policy document issued on Feb 18 encouraged services enterprises to purchase more equipment. This year, micro, small and medium-sized enterprises, or MSMEs, which purchase new equipment worth more than 5 million yuan with a three-year depreciation period, are entitled to a one-off deduction of total purchase costs from taxable income. For those with equipment depreciation periods of four, five or 10 years, they are eligible for a 50 percent deduction. In addition to tax cuts, some local governments also decided to subsidize the purchase of catering robots. Lu'an, a prefecture-level city in Anhui province, has a specific policy that 10 percent of the selling price for each cooking robot used by catering enterprises would be covered by the local government before the end of 2023.The policy is believed to support both local manufacturing and services industries.


Residents line up for COVID-19 screening during a lockdown in Changchun in northeastern China's Jilin Province, March 12. AP-Yonhap



China is scrambling to address its most severe Covid-19 outbreak in two years, reporting soaring cases in a fresh wave that has seen the country tweak its zero-COVID policy by allowing rapid antigen tests (RATs) for public use.

China is scrambling to address its most severe Covid-19 outbreak in two years, reporting soaring cases in a fresh wave that has seen the country tweak its zero-COVID policy by allowing rapid antigen tests (RATs) for public use.

After topping 1,000 for two days in a row, new locally transmitted cases surged to more than 3,100, this time driven by a spike in symptomatic infections, the National Health Commission reported Sunday.



It came as 16 provinces reported new coronavirus infections, as did the four megacities of Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai and Chongqing.



Local symptomatic cases more than tripled to 1,807, from 476 a day earlier, the NHC said. Asymptomatic infections edged up to 1,315, from 1,048 the previous day, after dominating the national caseload for the past few days.



China does not classify asymptomatic infections as confirmed cases.



Some local health authorities have attributed the surge to the Omicron variant, which is more transmissible but causes less severe symptoms than the original COVID-19 virus.



The southern tech hub of Shenzhen, which has been battling an Omicron surge since late February, will carry out three rounds of citywide COVID-19 tests next week.



In a statement Sunday, the city authorities said bus and subway services would be suspended from Monday. Residents were urged to work from home and to go out only to buy daily necessities. And all outbound travelers must submit negative nucleic acid test results taken within the previous 24 hours. Essential services and supplies to neighboring Hong Kong remain unaffected.



Most of the new local cases nationwide came from the northeastern province of Jilin, which logged 2,156 infections, of which 1,412 were symptomatic.



Zhang Yan, a public health official in charge of provincial pandemic control, said the cities of Jilin and Changchun at the center of the outbreak had launched their latest round of mass testing to screen transmission clusters.



Total cases in Jilin Province have climbed to more than 3,500 since the start of the month.



Jing Junhai, the provincial Communist Party head, has urged all-out efforts to reduce transmissions and ensure market supply of daily necessities, while vowing to crack down on any cover-up of the pandemic.



The NHC approved Covid-19 rapid antigen tests for public use Friday, after Premier Li Keqiang said the country's zero-COVID responses would be fine-tuned to avoid disruptions to the economy.



Zhang said Jilin Province would promote RATs and raise the capacity for nucleic acid testing in efforts to cut transmission chains.



A makeshift 1,500-bed hospital is also expected to be put into operation in the provincial capital of Changchun, where a citywide lockdown took effect Saturday.



More than 5,000 additional beds would become available in the coming days, local authorities said. The city of 9 million reported 873 new coronavirus infections, more than five times the 160 logged a day earlier.





Residents line up along a street in front of a noodle shop for a COVID-19 test at a hospital in Shanghai, March 11. AP-Yonhap



On the east coast, the financial hub of Shanghai and port city of Qingdao in Shandong Province are also battling serious outbreaks.



Residents in both cities have been urged to cancel all unnecessary travel, and all inbound and outbound travelers are required to present negative nucleic acid test results taken within the previous 48 hours.









Shanghai has shut down 157 parks, with another 45 likely to be closed as well. Inter-city bus transport has been suspended, and university campus activities restricted in an effort to curb infections, with disinfection of inbound parcels to be stepped up.



Earlier this month, national postal authorities said all overseas mail would be tested for Covid-19 to block transmissions through surface contamination.



In the capital Beijing, incoming travelers must not take part in group meals or other gatherings for the first seven days after entering the city.





Volunteers wearing face masks to help protect them from COVID-19 tidy hand sanitizer dispensers at a quiet Main Media Center during the closing ceremony for the 2022 Winter Paralympics, March 13, in Beijing. AP-Yonhap
Opinion: Potholes arent the problem; your attitude is

Braydon Iverson

Feb. 14, 2020

Its time I break my silence. I actually think there arent enough potholes in Eugene. I like potholes. I think theyre nice.

Quite honestly, those complaining about potholes need to examine the real holes in their life: the ones in their family relationships. You havent called home in weeks, and youre worried about these whimsical little gaps in the ground? Thats interesting; maybe examine the gaps in your familys quality time. They miss you. They talk about you to me all the time.

Complaints about potholes damaging vehicles are so played out. If you dont have the money to replace tires or fix your alignment invariably and repeatedly, consider getting your money up. Its the holes in your pockets you need to worry about.

They sent out flyers in the neighborhood last spring saying they would pave over roads  like 15th to 17th  but when I came back in September nothing had changed, third-year Patrick Evans said. Frankly, Im glad you were lied to. The city is not responsible for claims the city made.

In this piece, Braydon really found his voice as a writer, connecting his own experience with Eugene and engaging with the community in a hilarious and productive form to call attention to an unnoticed topic.  Parsa Aghel

Opinion: Dont call me exotic

Petra Molina

Jan.19, 2022

You are so exotic, a guy at the University of Oregon told me just moments after we met. Dressed up as a compliment, this comment is afflicted with stereotypes and misconceptions.

One thing Ive noticed since I moved to Oregon is that many people at UO lack cultural awareness. People simply havent been exposed to other cultures enough to have developed the experiential skills necessary to appreciate and understand different cultures.

Consequently, some UO students think its okay to call others exotic. Unfortunately, I do not feel associated with tropical birds or foreign fruits. I am most definitely not an imported good meant for your consumption. Calling me exotic downgrades my existence to an object. It is a compliment that sexualizes and objectifies non-eurocentric beauty.

It is easy to believe these stereotypes when you have never been exposed to the diversity of Latin culture. Get to know and understand a person rather than relying on those distorted ideas. Let beauty exist on its own terms, unrelated to ethnicity, color or race.

Dont call me exotic.

Petra voiced her experiences really well in this piece and backed it up with stats and fair logic. Her call to action for real interaction with different cultures rather than fantasizing about them and their people is an important note for our campus.  Braydon Iverson

Opinion: No union-busting

Porter Wheeler

Feb. 22, 2022

Eugene is a labor town, a fact that is coming to campus as the EMU Starbucks unionizes. This is a win for the employees and sets a precedent for all student workers to leverage their workplaces. Union-busting is not welcome at our university.

Trinity Smith, a worker at the EMU Starbucks spoke about unionization. We look at the work we put in, and the pay doesn't reflect that.

Campus workers are divided arbitrarily keeping them isolated. Take the EMU, which employs catering, information services and janitorial workers; theyre kept separated despite being paid by the same employer and working in the same space.

UO is adamant workers should see themselves as students first, which I initially thought was a positive message promising security in their academic career. Now I see it as an obfuscation of their essential labor. If students are not conscious of themselves as workers, they are less likely to bargain for their rights.

Show solidarity to the workers who make our campus function, an injury to one is an injury to all.

Porter puts a lot of research into his stories, and you can tell. He's involved in campus activism and advocates directly on behalf of students.  Shelton Bowman

Opinion: Who hookup culture leaves behind

Sophia Cossette

Jan. 10. 2022

Popular culture sells college to us as a free-for-all cultural experience where we are finally at liberty to indulge in all things deemed previously taboo from partying to no-strings-attached sex. And, while this newfound sexual liberation appears positive on the surface, the realities of college hookup culture prove less ideal for many students.

At predominately White institutions, such as the University of Oregon, minority groups often face their own set of complicated issues regarding hookup culture.

Some groups, such as Black men and Asian women, are eroticized by popular culture and deemed more sexually desirable. Others, such as Black women and Asian men, are less embraced sexually by White culture and thus participate less in hookup culture.

This isnt to say hookup culture doesnt have its upsides; we are lucky to live in a day and age where sexual promiscuity is welcomed and accepted for all genders, and we are free to use our bodies for expression. However, we must examine the exclusive nature when discussing the topic as inclusivity and representation are becoming increasingly important in all aspects of life

There has been a mountain of pieces written about the good and bad of hookup culture, but Sophia addressed an aspect I hadnt considered before.  C. Francis OLeary
Memphis, TN (38152)

Today

Mainly cloudy. A few peeks of sunshine possible. High 78F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Cloudy. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 67F. Winds ENE at 5 to 10 mph.
HARRISBURG  A third and final hearing Monday in the Pennsylvania Senate concerning adult-use cannabis focused on the states existing medical program and potential improvements to ensure its viability should the substance be legalized for recreational use.

Medical cannabis advocates and representatives of industry operators testified before members of the Law & Justice Committee. Legalization has caused some medical markets to erode, presenters said, potentially jeopardizing research programs and medical guidance for persons using the substance as medicine for serious conditions.

The committees chair, Republican Sen. Mike Regan, plans to introduce formal legislation to legalize adult-use cannabis, previously saying he hoped to decimate the illicit market.

Meredith Buettner, executive director of the Pennsylvania Cannabis Coalition, suggested three best practices: consolidating regulation of medical and adult-use cannabis under one agency, ensuring agency staff is educated and informed on the substance, and prioritizing input and feedback from the industry when creating and adjusting policy.

Legal marijuana could cut into billions in illegal sales in PA: experts HARRISBURG  Two marijuana industry experts valued Pennsylvanias annual illegal trade at between $3 billion and $4 billion, a figure that staggered the chairperson of the state Senate committee exploring legalizing marijuana for adult use.

Pa. senators discuss legalizing marijuana with current, former law enforcement HARRISBURG  The first in an expected series of public hearings concerning legalizing marijuana for adult recreational use saw Pennsylvania lawmakers on Monday discuss potential impacts with prosecutors, an investigator and former law enforcement officers now coordinating security in the medical marijuana industry.

The Pennsylvania Cannabis Coalition is a nonprofit agency comprised of medical cannabis permit holders in the state.

As we look towards the future and inevitable federal legalization, if the commonwealth has not developed and implemented its own adult-use program by the time cannabis is federally legal, we run the risk of having the federal government intervene and set up the program for us, Buettner said.

Cost control was frequently raised, with concerns expressed about potentially pricing people out of the regulated market for medical or recreational use.

Easing testing measures viewed as redundant during processing and eliminating the cost to enroll in the medical cannabis program were suggested as potential ways to control the cost of medical cannabis and keep customers from shifting to the illicit market.

Michael Bronstein, president, American Trade Association for Cannabis, suggested increasing production, which drove the price down substantially from the programs earliest days.

An amendment to the states medical cannabis law enacted last year established a hardship fund generated by grower-processor fees and taxes. A portion of the funds is meant to assist patients who demonstrate financial hardship. Program enrollment fees can be waived under certain conditions.

Joy A. Strand, executive vice president, Green Leaf Medical, said a medical program operating alongside an adult-use program could have specific differences. Some products could have higher dosages for certain medical conditions where those dosages wouldnt be permitted for recreational use. Transdermal patches for absorption of cannabis would continue to have a medical purpose where there is likely none for adult use.

There are patients out there who still need the medical program, Strand said.

There are 23 qualifying conditions for medical cannabis in Pennsylvania. Deborah Miran, the former commissioner of the Maryland Medical Cannabis Commission, suggested eliminating them to allow more leeway for legitimate enrollment in the medical program. And, she said the state should do away with the $50 fee to get an ID card.

Dr. Jarret Patton, a Pennsylvania doctor, said some patients wont join the medical program because it restricts against also having a concealed carry permit. He said cannabis users are no more violent than people on any other type of medication. Addressing 2nd Amendment issues could help expand enrollment.

Bryan A. Murray, executive vice president of government relations, Acreage Holdings, cautioned against over-taxing cannabis. He said an increase of 10% to 15% in prices could keep people in the illegal market where the unregulated product will be cheaper.

You dont want to see cannabis as a cash cow. Its not, Murray said.

He also suggested expanding the count of medical dispensaries in the state, potentially enticing medical users to remain in the program if adult use is legalized.

Presenters praised the establishment of an advisory board. They called for better communication with the program, specifically with the agency that oversees the Office of Medical Marijuana: the Department of Health.

Miran said the board needs members who are subject matter experts, not political appointees.

As an example, the recent, massive product recall that was ordered by the Office (of Medical Marijuana) for certain products for inhalation, could likely have been averted if the Office had access to subject matter experts to guide their decision-making process, Miran said.

Hundreds of vaporized products were recalled by the state in February when certain additives were discovered that were not permitted.

Mark Nye, an executive with retailer Parallel and former compliance director with Ohios medical program, suggested licensing for individual employees prior to being hired. He said standardized regulations with clear interpretations are necessary.

Its easy to comply when you know what the expectation is, Nye said.




Hundreds of Taiwanese military reservists carried out training exercises on Monday after the island's president called for "unity" as the Ukraine war rattles nerves over the threat of invasion from China.





Taiwan last year stepped up its training regime for reservists as tensions rise with Beijing, which sees the self-ruled island as part of its territory to be seized one day, by force if necessary.





About 400 personnel took part in target practice Monday in a program designed to boost their combat readiness. Their training kicked off earlier this month and simulates defending a beach near the capital Taipei.





It comes as Taipei keeps a close watch on Russia's invasion of Ukraine, with President Tsai Ing-wen appearing in front of the reservists on Saturday stressing the need for unity in defending the island.





"The recent situation in Ukraine once again proves that the protection of the country, in addition to international solidarity and assistance, depends on the unity of the people," she said in a speech dressed in military fatigues and body armor.





Major General Chen Chung-chi, director of Taiwan's 6th Army Command, stressed the importance of reservists in addition to full-time troops.





"The security of the whole country does not just depend on the soldiers," he told AFP on Monday.





"In Ukraine, we see soldiers in the battlefield, and some men... who go to battle after sending their wives and children to safety."





"Military power is limited but the power of the people is unlimited."





Reservist Shi Hui-bin said the immersion training kept him prepared and up to date with current military tactics.





"When the time comes, I will know what to do," he told reporters after a round of shooting practice.





China's saber-rattling against Taiwan has ramped up since Tsai took office in 2016 as she rejects Beijing's view that Taiwan is part of "one China."





Chinese warplanes have increasingly breached Taiwan's air defense zone and Moscow sides with Beijing that Taiwan is "an inalienable part" of China. (AFP)


Leading the Civil Service inquiry into 'Partygate'  remember that?  is the formidable Sue Gray.

Alas, her much-anticipated report into alleged lockdown-busting wine-and-cheese bashes at Downing Street has been delayed by months as the Met conducts its own drawn-out and expensive investigation into the affair.

Famously, Gray stepped in after Simon Case  Cabinet Secretary and the head of the Civil Service  was forced to recuse himself when it emerged he had attended one of these bacchanals himself.

Which makes the following rather embarrassing.

Leading the Civil Service inquiry into 'Partygate'  remember that?  is the formidable Sue Gray. The Whitehall street sign is pictured above

Last week, the Cabinet Office posted on its website its regular update on the taxpayer-funded salaries enjoyed by Case, Gray and several other top mandarins.

Case, we were told, was earning about 155,000 per year, while Gray was scraping by on 105,000.

The pair might have had something to say about these figures: in January, they were said to be trousering up to 205,000 and 155,000 respectively  meaning their pay has been been slashed by about 25 per cent.

A new age of austerity? Or has the PM exacted his revenge over the Partygate report early?

No: just the usual incompetence from Case's own department. A blushing Whitehall source tells me: 'The figures were wrong and we had to take them down. We'd hoped no one had noticed.'

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news!

Does the Shadow Education Secretary need to go back to school herself? This week, Bridget Phillipson admitted on LBC radio she had no idea how many children are in full-time education in England. Let me help you out, Bridget: there are 8.9 million across 24,000 schools  and many of them are in dire need of help after two years of on-off lockdowns. But if you can't master the basics after three months in the job, what hope can you offer these youngsters?

Sorry farce over Nicola's apology

As Nicola Sturgeon's virtue-signalling reaches ridiculous new heights  with the Scottish First Minister apologising to women accused of witchcraft centuries ago  she finds herself being widely mocked online. One of the most popular memes being shared is a photo of Sturgeon alongside the words: 'Were you killed as a result of allegations of witchcraft between 1400 and 1790? If so, you might be entitled to compensation.'

GB News presenter Colin Brazier adds to the mockery: 'While we are at it, isn't it time French President Emmanuel Macron apologised for the Norman Conquest and the Italians said sorry for the Roman invasion of Britain?'

The U.S. once had no hesitation in deploying a terrible weapon against the Russians  Ronald Reagan's jokes. He told how there was a ten-year waiting list for new cars in the Soviet Union, but one man decided to put down a deposit.

'OK,' said the salesman. 'Come back in ten years and get your car.'

'Morning or afternoon?' asked the buyer. 'It's ten years away,' said the astonished salesman. 'What difference does it make?' 'Well,' said the buyer. 'The plumber's coming in the morning.'

Tony Blair recalls being on Radio 4's Any Questions with the late Roy Jenkins. 'Just before we were about to go on, he was staring into the distance. I asked what he was thinking about. He said: 'I'm contemplating the vast expanses of my own ignorance.'

If only more politicians showed such humility.

NHS needs a dose of honesty

Talk to ministers in private and theyll often say the bloated NHS, a bottomless pit for our taxes, needs wholesale reform. But they wont say so in public for fear of alienating those voters who misguidedly think this vast organisation is still the envy of the world.

No such reticence from Lord Ashcroft, the Tory grandee, at the glitzy launch party for Life Support, his book on the health service. Ask people to describe the NHS and they talk of gallant staff doing their best in grim conditions, political blunders, inadequate resources, and the drawbacks that follow: long waiting times, disparities in the quality of service from one place to the next, he said.

Ashcroft, as former health secretary Matt Hancock looked on, was cheered when he added: Nobody who cares about the NHS and those who rely on it could doubt change is needed! Quite.
Advertisement

This tricky seek-and-find puzzle challenges you to find four caterpillars crawling in a field of snowdrops.

The charming brainteaser is the work of Hungarian cartoonist Gergely Dudas, better known as Dudolf, who is known for his playful, vibrant creations.

In this one, he has hidden four wriggly caterpillars somewhere in the springtime scene. To make things even more difficult, the caterpillars are the same shade of green as the plants and the grass.

Scroll down for the reveal and more puzzles!

Can you find four caterpillars? There are creepy-crawlies hidden somewhere in this springtime snowdrop scene

The cartoonist has also added a number of adorable bears eating apples to try and throw you off the scent.

If you need a hint, try and avoid looking at the top right of the image - there is nothing for you there.

The caterpillars are also not as distinctive as you might think. Try looking for collections of squiggles and curves that make up the loose shape of a creepy-crawly.

Still struggling? Scroll down for the reveal.

There they are! The cartoonist made the caterpillars the same shade of green as the rest of the image so they're trickier to find

It comes after Dudolf released another mind-boggling seek-and-find puzzle - this time taking inspiration from birds in their birdhouses.

Players are challenged to find three red apples somewhere among the bird boxes.

Do you have what it takes to spot them?

Somewhere in this pretty scene of chirruping birds are three red apples. Do you have what it takes to spot them?

To make things even more difficult, the cartoonist has made all of the birds the same shade of red.

Then there's the added distraction of the birdhouses, which are bright and colourful and enough to throw you off the task.

If you're trying to find the apples, take a look towards the bottom centre of the image to find the first one.

The other two are in opposite corners, towards the top left and top right.

Still struggling? Scroll down for the solution.

The apples are scattered throughout the image (seen above). Did you find them all?

It's the second puzzle in recent weeks from the viral cartoonist.

He shared one of his classic brainteasers to Facebook, challenging players to find the snake among the tortoises.

The adorable animals are all standing in a forest glade full of trees and ferns.

Hungarian cartoonist Gergely Dudas, better known as Dudolf , shared one of his classic brainteasers to Facebook, challenging players to find the snake among the tortoises

But somewhere in the idyllic scene there is also a single smiling snake.

To make things even trickier, Dudolf has drawn the tortoises so their long necks look snakelike, making it difficult to tell the animals apart.

Still struggling to see it? Look on the left side of the image and pay close attention.

If you give up or need the answer then keep scrolling for the reveal.

The snake is slithering alongside the tortoises on the left side of the image

It comes after Dudolf created a loved-up seek-and-find puzzle in honour of Valentine's Day.

The illustration shows loved-up animals embracing in a field of pink flowers.

But somewhere in this vibrant image there is a single pink love heart. Do you have what it takes to find it?

All loved up! Can you find the single pink heart in this Valentine's Day themed puzzle?

In his typical fashion, Dudolf has made things trickier by adding plenty of little details that are designed to distract the eye.

The canoodling owls, for example, have a single pink flower between them. Elsewhere a grey cat falls in love with his own reflection.

If you're struggling to find the heart then try looking on the left-hand side of the image, near the owls and kissing bears.

Still not having any luck? Then scroll down to check your answer.

There it is! The tiny pink heart is tucked between some flowers, just above the canoodling owls

It comes after players were challenged to find the only love-heart shaped balloon in a busy Valentine's Day scene.

The baffling seek-and-find puzzle was created by British retailers 247 Blinds to celebrate the romantic holiday ahead of February 14.

So, do you think you'll be able to find the hidden balloon ? Give it a try and put your observational skills to the test.

Scroll down for the answer

A tricky brainteaser is challenging players to find the only love-heart shaped balloon in a busy Valentine's Day scene (pictured)

There are many hearts, Cupid's arrows and roses throughout the print, but hidden within the drawings is a love-heart-shaped balloon.

If you're struggling to find the balloon, turn your attention to the middle section of the right hand side of the Valentine's Day scene.

If you still haven't spotted the pesky object, scroll down to find the answer.

There are many hearts, Cupid's arrows and roses throughout the print, but hidden within the drawings is a love-heart-shaped balloon (circled above)

If you want some more, try your hand at these tricky brainteasers below.

Designers have hidden a single open umbrella in this crowded street scene which is sure to leave you baffled.

The extremely tough seek-and-find puzzle was created by hotel chain Premier Inn following a recent poll revealed that brollies are one of the nation's most lost items.

There are many people featured in the crowded design, but only one of them is keeping dry under an umbrella.

So, do you think you'll be able to find it or will you be left scratching your head? Give it a try and put your observational skills to the test.

Hidden in the crowded street scene is a person holding an umbrella - but it's incredibly difficult to spot

The hotel chain commissioned the brain teaser after research found umbrellas are one of the nation's most lost items: 10 per cent of Brits will lose or break 10 or more umbrellas in their lifetime.

Almost a fifth of those polled (18 per cent) said they had broken or lost an umbrella after just one outing.

The survey of 2,000 UK adults also showed 28 per cent have turned up to an important work meeting soaking wet as they didn't have a brolly. And despite almost a fifth of Brits owning three umbrellas, one in 10 have spent up to 50 on replacements.

So, have you been able to spot the hidden brolly? If you're still struggling scroll down for the answer.

So, have you been able to spot the hidden brolly? If you're still struggling take a look at the top left-hand corner of the scene

Premier Inn commissioned the brain teaser to mark its new rental umbrellas trial in 30 of its hotels launched in partnership with DripDrop with a minimum of 15 percent of each borrowing fee going to the hotel chain's charity partner Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity (GOSH Charity).

Elsewhere, an infuriating brainteaser challenges players to find a snowflake in an unlikely tropical scene.

The seek-and-find puzzle, created by The French Bedroom Company in collaboration with wallpaper designer Elizabeth Ockford, features beautiful tropical birds and flittering butterflies, as well as palm fronds and ornate bird cages.

But hidden among the tropical picture is a single snowflake, which is almost impossible to spot.

The seek-and-find puzzle features beautiful tropical birds and flittering butterflies. Hidden among the tropical picture is a single snowflake, which is almost impossible to spot

The creators claim it's so difficult that it takes players an average of 7 minutes and 23 seconds to find.

The picture shows colourful budgies, butterflies, parrots and golden cages - but where is the snowflake?

Nestled within elegant illustrations of botanical birds, leaves and butterflies, the snowflake has proved tricky for Brits to find.

Focus your eye on the top corners of the painting - can you see it yet? The answer is below.

Answer: The delicate snowflake can be seen in the top left hand coner of the picture beneath one of the palm leaves

Can your brain handle more strain? Next up, this autumnal seek-and-find quiz challenges you to find the hidden hedgehog, but will you be up to the challenge?

British blinds retailer 247 Blinds have created this challenging brainteaser with a seasonal theme to test your attention to detail.

If you're looking for a clue, try focusing your attention on the bottom of the image and you might have more luck. Still struggling? Simply scroll down for the answer.

Scroll down for reveal

Can you find the tiny hedgehog hiding in this leafy scene for a brainteaser created by British blinds retailer 247 Blinds?

To make it harder, the hedgehog is shaped to look like the items that surround him, so that you'll need to have a proper look at the picture to locate him.

Struggling to find the little critter? Focus your attention on the bottom part of the picture.

Giving up or want to check you got it right? You can scroll down to see the answer.

The small hedgehog was hiding at the very bottom of the picture. It was hard to locate, because it was shaped like a pine cone

Want to try your hand at other fiendishly difficult seek-and-finds? Look below for Femail's selection of some of the trickiest.

To make things even trickier, Dudolf has made only the slightest changes between the mushrooms' markings so you'll really have to be eagle-eyed to spot the difference.

The slight changes in colours patterns and shapes distracts the eye from the task.

Struggling to find the one mushroom without a match? Try looking towards the lower half of the image.

Still having difficulty? Then scroll down for the reveal.

The odd mushroom out has a blue cap with red spots and is situated in the lower half of the image

It comes after another puzzle challenged players to pick out the two safety pins hidden among vibrant sewing equipment.

The brainteaser has been created by Dutch lingerie brand Hunkemoller, with puzzlers asked to spot the two tiny items in the sea of tools.

But thanks to the brightly coloured products cluttering the graphic, it is almost impossible to notice the missing safety pins.

According to the creators the puzzle takes an average of one minute and 23 seconds to solve, but with the mesmerizing colours, how quick can you spot the hidden items?

This new seek-and-find puzzle challenges you to pick out the two safety pins hidden among vibrant sewing equipment (pictured)

There's plenty of little details designed to distract the eye, so it's no wonder that some puzzlers struggle to stay on task and find the pins.

If you're looking for a clue, try focusing your attention towards the centre of the image and you might have more luck.

Still struggling? Don't worry, the answer is coming next so just scroll down to put yourself out of your misery.
When you're firing off a text in the heat of the moment, or ill-advisedly sending a message after a few too many drinks, your comments can end up sounding rather brutal.

People have shared the hilarious messages they've received from their friends, family and neighbours on the US website Daily Choices - with some very mean responses to reasonable requests.

One parent called their child a 'loser' after they said they had no evening plans.

Another person shared a picture of a text from a classmate saying she wouldn't be able to make it to class - sharing a picture of a thermometer with a 100 degree temperature - only for him to think it means she's pregnant.

Here, Femail shares some of the most awkward - but funny - exchanges..

Thanks Mom! One user from the US was hilarious savaged by their own mother who told them 'you don't have a bunch of friends'

A little confused! One person shared the texts of their 'cement head' friend who confused the french term 'a la' meaning 'according to' for the Arabic word for god 'allah'

Called out by their own mother! One person was branded a 'loser' after telling their mom they had no plans

Pretty please! One landlord issued a sassy reply after being sent a picture of an adorable cat

Getting catty! One neighbour offered a kind response after rescuing a neighbourhood cat - only to be told 'don't bother me'

Getting nosy! Another person admitted they dared their friend to bite their nose off after a night of drinking

Ooops! One person admitted changing 'kewl' to 'farts' in their dad's phone with hilarious results

Food is the way to a girl's heart! Another person revealed they're mum thought they were texting a boy when they were watching videos about food

Drunken confessions! One user from the UK told their mother to stop buying them curry noodles, but at least they didn't embarassingly text an ex

Go to sleep! Another user shared a message from a neighbour who was vacuuming at 1am and didn't seem to understand why that would bother anyone else

That's one way to break the news! One person told their neighbour their car was getting towed in the most savage way

Awkward! Another neighbour asked to not be acknowledged when passing in the hallway

Mistaken identity! One mother of five got mixed up thinking she was being asked out - but it was her daughter

Sierra's not sorry! One woman showed she was clearly a heartbreaker saying she didn't miss her ex - just Oreo cereal

One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor! One person was relieved they only spent $32 before realising it was $1 for tequila

Should have paid attention in health class! Another person shared a picture of a text from a classmate saying she wouldn't go to class due to a high temperature - but he thought the thermometer was a pregnancy test

This is not a hotel! One woman shared a snap of a text from her Dad asking if she'd be gracing the family dinner table

The worst break up text! Not only did this person get dumped by text, but their ex took the chance the have a dig at their personality

Missy out! One mother was very brutal in her response when another parents asked why her daughter didn't get an invitation

It makes sense! One person shared snaps of their boyfriend's texts saying the cats nee to learn how to protect them

It's an Independent party! One person asked if they could avoid a communal pool for July 4th celebration and was met with a hilarious response
A finance expert has spoken about the potential side effects of injectable under eye fillers after she was left with a black eye.

Victoria Devine, from Melbourne, said this was the first time she had tried tear trough filler, which is used to enhance the volume beneath the eyelids.

The host of the She's On The Money podcast shared a video on Instagram and was left with a dark purple bruise under her right eye because the injectable 'hit a capillary'.

'I'm not in any pain, I just look bada** for a few days!' she wrote.

Scroll down for video

Podcast host and finance expert Victoria Devine, from Melbourne, (pictured) was left with a black right eye after having under eye filler

Victoria said this was the first time she had tried tear trough filler - which is used to enhance the volume beneath the eyelids

'This is in no way the injector's fault, she's been doing it for years and years, and I trust her endlessly - just something that can happen to that one in a million, and it was me!' Victoria wrote.

The podcast host believes it's important to talk about the possible side effects of potential injectable treatments and be 'honest about this side of beauty'.

Injectables such as filler and botox often make you look 'permanently photoshopped', but Victoria joked that her experience differs somewhat because of the bruise.

Bruising caused by filler injectables often lasts between five to seven days, according to Dr Face.

While some often deter from admitting to having injectable filler, Victoria seemed comfortable about openly speaking about her experience and admitting she gets the treatments done.

Other social media users admired her honesty and some related to the incident.

'It can happen to the best of us,' one woman wrote, another added: 'I love how transparent you are you lovely human.'

'Yes I can totally relate. I had two Black eyes for 3 weeks. I heal very slow!' a third wrote.

It's always best to speak to a health professional before getting injectables.
Princess Charlene has returned to Monaco to be with her husband Prince Albert and her children as her health improves, the royal palace has announced.

Charlene, 44, has been absent from the principality for months due to health problems, including what the palace has previously referred to as a 'state of profound general fatigue'.

The mother-of-two was reportedly admitted to a private Swiss clinic in late November, within days of her return to Monaco following a 10-month absence in her native South Africa.

'The next few weeks should allow for Princess Charlene to further strengthen her health, before gradually resuming her official duties and commitments,' the palace said in a statement issued on Saturday.

The Monaco palace has consistently denied media reports of a rift between Charlene and the principality's ruler Prince Albert, who were wed in 2011, following the princess' long absence.

Princess Charlene returned to Monaco in November, following a 10-month absence in her native South Africa, before being admitted to a treatment centre abroad. This photo was released to mark the reunion

The mother-of-two (pictured), who turned 44 in January, was admitted to an undisclosed treatment facility outside of Monaco in November, within days of her return to the principality following a 10-month absence in her native South Africa

'In accordance with her doctors and while her recovery is going well, their royal highnesses have agreed together that Princess Charlene can now continue her convalescence in the principality with her husband and their children,' the palace statement said.

It added that 'the coming weeks should enable her to recover completely in order to be able to resume her official duties progressively'.

The former Olympic swimmer was admitted to a private Swiss clinic for treatment for 'extreme fatigue' in late November, sources told AFP at the time.

She is also thought to have undergone dental treatment.

'She was clearly exhausted, physically and emotionally. She was overwhelmed and couldn't face official duties, life in general or even family life,' Albert told People magazine in November.

Prince Albert, Princess Caroline of Hanover, Prince Jacques and Princess Gabriella of Monaco appear on the palace's balcony during the Sainte Devote Celebrations in Monaco on January 27, 2022, without Princess Charlene

Zimbabwean-born Princess Charlene was hospitalised after collapsing in September in South Africa, where she had been living for several months.

The statement on Saturday said that she still needed 'calm and serenity'.

The couple has been dogged by rumours about their rocky relationship almost since their marriage, which was briefly hailed as a fairy-tale match for a prince long described as the world's most eligible bachelor.

Charlene's prolonged absence in South Africa last year sparked speculation in European celebrity magazines that they were headed for divorce.

She underwent surgery in October for an ear, nose and throat infection after checking in under a pseudonym in a Durban hospital, a palace source said at the time.

Charlene's prolonged absence in South Africa last year sparked speculation in European celebrity magazines that the couple (pictured) were headed for divorce

Friends previously told Page Six that the mother-of-two 'almost died' while she was in her home country, while her husband spoke out to say she is suffering from 'exhaustion, both emotional and physical'.

Timeline: Prince Albert and Princess Charlene's year apart January 27 - Charlene is pictured with Albert for the Sainte Devote Ceremony in Monaco. March 18 - Charlene is pictured at the memorial for the late Zulu monarch, King Goodwill Zwelithini at the KwaKhethomthandayo Royal Palace in Nongoma, South Africa April 2 - Charlene posts an Instagram picture of herself, Albert and their twins Jacques and Gabriella for Easter. It is unknown where the image was taken. May 8 - Albert, Jacques and Gabriella attend a Grand Prix event in Monaco without Charlene May 10 - Albert attends Monaco Gala Awards in Monaco without Charlene May 18 - Charlene shares her first picture from her conservation trip in South Africa June 1 - Prince Albert II, Jacques and Gabriella attend event at Oceanic Museum in Monaco June 3 - New photos emerge of Charlene on her conservation trip June 5- Charlene puts on a united front as she shares a photo with her family to mark her niece's fifth birthday with her brother's family and Albert and the twins in South Africa June 7 - Albert and the twins attend the World Rugby Sevens without Charlene June 17 - Prince Albert attends Red Cross Summer concert in Monte Carlo with his sister Princess Caroline of Hanover June 18 - Prince Albert appears alone Monte Carlo TV Festival June 24 - Charlene's foundation releases a statement saying the royal is unable to travel and is undergoing procedures for an ear, nose and throat infection July 2 - Charlene and Albert mark their 10th anniversary separately. 'This year will be the first time that I'm not with my husband on our anniversary in July, which is difficult, and it saddens me,' Her Serene Highness Princess Charlene said in a statement. July 3 - Albert appears with glamorous niece Charlotte Casiraghi at the 15th international Monte-Carlo Jumping event, which is part of the Longines Global Champions Tour of Monaco, July 27 - Prince Albert attends Olympics alone in Tokyo August 13 - Charlene undergoes a four-hour operation. The reason is not announced August 25 - Charlene shares photos of Prince Albert, Gabriella and Jacques visiting her in South Africa September 1 - Charlene is admitted under an alias to the Netcare Alberlito Hospital after suddenly 'collapsing' September 2 - She is discharged, with a statement from the Palais Princier reading: 'Her Highness is closely monitored by Her medical team who said that Her condition was not worrying' September 23 - Prince Albert attends the 2021 Monte Carlo Gala for Planetary Health September 29 - Prince Albert is joined on the red carpet by actress Sharon Stone for a first look at the eagerly anticipated James Bond release September 30 - Charlene releases a stylish video promoting her anti-poaching campaign from her South African bolthole October 3 - Princess Charlene shares a photograph of herself smiling in front of a bible in her first snap since being discharged from hospital following her health scare October 5 - Prince Albert attends Sportel Awards Ceremony in Monte Carlo with nephew Louis Ducruet October 6 - Albert tells RMC radio Charlene is 'ready to come home' October 8 - Princess undergoes surgery in South Africa November 8 - Charlene arrives back in Monaco. Prince Albert said within hours it became clear she was 'unwell' November 13 - Prince Albert attends Expo 2020 in Dubai without Princess Charlene Following his return from the trip, Prince Albert holds an intervention with Charlene's brothers and a sister-in-law in which Charlene 'confirmed' she would seek 'real medically framed treatment' outside of Monaco November 16 - Royal household confirms Princess Charlene will not attend National Day celebrations on November 19 - Prince Albert attends a Monaco Red Cross event without Princess Charlene November 17 - Prince Albert reveals Princess Charlene has left Monaco and is recovering in a secret location November 19 - Prince Albert reveals Charlene is in a treatment facility 'elsewhere in Europe' after a family intervention January 25 - Charlene celebrates her birthday alone outside of Monaco January 26 - Prince Albert is joined by his children and sister without Charlene at St Devote's Day February 27 - Prince Albert and his two children attend AS Monaco football match without Princess Charlene Advertisement

A palace statement released on December 23 revealed Albert and the couple's children were planning to visit Charlene during the Christmas holidays, as well as asking for the family's privacy to be respected.

It added that the princess 'is recuperating in a satisfactory and reassuring manner, although it may take a few more months before her health has reached a full recovery.'

Princess Charlene met Prince Albert in 2000 during a swimming competition in Monaco and the pair married in 2011, before welcoming twins Gabriella and Jacques in 2014.

Charlene returned to her husband and twins Jacques and Gabriella in November following almost a year in South Africa.

While on a solo charity trip to the country, she contracted a severe sinus infection which prevented her from travelling. She subsequently needed surgery to treat the medical condition, which again delayed her return to Monaco.

In the weeks after her arrival, Charlene remained absent from public duties.

Albert later revealed the family reunion had gone 'pretty well' in the first few hours, but it then became 'pretty evident' that Charlene was 'unwell.'

He said the former Olympian 'realised she needed help', adding: 'She was overwhelmed and couldn't face official duties, life in general or even family life.'

Albert explained: 'I'm probably going to say this several times, but this has nothing to do with our relationship. I want to make that very clear. These are not problems within our relationship; not with the relationship between a husband and wife. It's of a different nature.'

He went on to tell a magazine her current state was a result of 'several factors which are private'.

Albert continued: 'She hadn't slept well in a number of days and she wasn't eating at all well. She has lost a lot of weight, which made her vulnerable to other potential ailments. A cold or the flu or God help us, COVID.'

He said it is 'not cancer-related or personal relationship issue' and later said she is suffering from 'exhaustion, both emotional and physical'.

He later confirmed Charlene has been admitted to a treatment facility for undisclosed medical issues, as she works through a period of ill health. The location of the facility was not confirmed, though several sources claim it is in Switzerland.

However friends of the princess spoke out to suggest the issues were more physical than Albert appeared to suggest.

Speaking to Page Six, a source described as the royal's friend said: 'It is unfair that she is being portrayed as having some kind of mental or emotional issue.

'We don't know why the palace is downplaying that she almost died in South Africa.'

The source explained the royal had a severe ear, nose and throat infection, which resulted in 'severe sinus and swallowing issues stemming from an earlier surgery'.

Elsewhere friends of Princess Charlene gave Tatler a rare insight into what the royal is really like, insisting that the former swimmer is a force to be reckoned with.

One source rubbished any public perception that Charlene is 'naive' and trapped in an unhappy marriage with Albert, saying: 'I don't for one second think she did not know what she was doing when she married him.'

But one warned the mother of Prince Jacques and Princess Gabriella, seven, is not the type to be blindly controlled by the Monaco royal household.

'Charlene is no Princess Di.' one said. 'She may come across as being extremely naive, but nothing could be further from the truth. She is very good at keeping her smarts under wraps.'

Doubts about the central relationship of Monaco's royal family are not new.

Several residents living in the narrow medieval alleys of Monaco Ville confirmed to MailOnline that before she left for South Africa Charlene was spending most of her time outside the Palace, living in a modest two-bedroom apartment above an old chocolate factory about 300m away, rather than in the 12th Century Palace itself.

'We often saw her outside the Palace and she would usually be alone or with a bodyguard,' said one source, 'but she was never with Albert - it was obvious she chose to spend most of her time in the apartment rather than the palace.'

Princess Charlene met Prince Albert in 2000 during a swimming competition in Monaco and the pair married in 2011, before welcoming twins Gabriella and Jacques in 2014.

Born in Rhodesia- a previously unrecongised state in Southern Africa colonised by the British, she relocated to South Africa aged 11.

She had a successful swimming career and went on to win three gold medals and a silver medal at the 1999 All Africa Games in Johannesburg, as well as representing South Africa at the 1998 and 2002 Commonwealth Games and winning a silver medal in the 4  100 m medley relay in the latter competition.

However the pair's marriage has made numerous headlines over the years, with a third paternity suit emerging in December 2020.

Soon afterwards Charlene famously shaved half her head in the style of a punk rocker. Months later she left for South Africa.

The allegations in December 2020 claimed that Albert had fathered a love-child (which would be his third, if proven) with an unnamed Brazilian woman during the time when he and Charlene were already in a relationship.

He has also fathered two other children outside of wedlock. Jazmin Grace Grimaldi, who is now 29 and the result of Albert's affair with an American estate agent, and Alexandre Coste, 18, whose mother is a former Togolese air hostess.

Both children were struck off Monaco's line of succession in return for vast financial settlements.
Presenter, 58, drove 26 hours from UK to Poland/Ukraine border with supplies

Travelled from Bournemouth through France, Netherlands, Belgium to Krakow

TV star arrived in Poland this morning and will travel to the Medyka border today

Comes after host broke down after kind strangers helped him buy Calpol in bulk

Homes Under The Hammer presenter Martin Roberts has arrived in Krakow after his two-day 'mercy dash' to drive supplies to the Ukraine.

The 58-year-old presenter revealed last week that he was going to drive a car packed full of supplies across Europe to help those affected by Putin's attacks on the Ukraine.

ADVERTISEMENT

In a mammoth 26 hour journey, Martin travelled from Bournemouth through France, Netherlands, Belgium and Germany to arrive in Poland this morning.

Appearing on ITV's Lorraine, he said the next step is travelling to the Medyka border, 20km from where a shelling took place yesterday, filling the host with both 'purpose and trepidation'.

The 58-year-old presenter revealed last week that he was going to drive a car packed full of supplies across Europe to help those affected by Putin's attacks on the Ukraine

He explained: 'I set off from Bournemouth where the organisation I'm helping have their base and I went cross to the ferry travelled through France, Netherlands, Belgium, down thought Germany then all the way through Poland and I'm now in Krakow.

'I'm heading today to Medyka, the border with Ukraine which is 20km from where the shelling happened yesterday, so I'm filled with a great sense of purpose but also trepidation.'

Last week, the TV host broke down in tears outside Costco after trying to buy Calpol for Ukrainian children.

Roberts went to the big-box retail store to purchase supplies for kids in the war-torn country but was allegedly only allowed to buy two bottles - prompting kind strangers to step in and buy the medicine he needed.

Homes Under The Hammer presenter Martin Roberts has arrived in Krakow after his two-day 'mercy dash' to drive supplies to the Ukraine and appeared on ITV's Lorraine this morning

The 58-year-old daytime television star is driving from the UK to the Poland/Ukraine border with supplies

'I woke up on that Saturday morning, like a lot of people, and thought, "What can I do?" Donating just didn't seem to be enough,' said Roberts today.

'I just went to Costco and tried to buy stuff. I was so touched, I was in the line and people saw me trying to buy this stuff and [when he was refused] they said "We'll buy it for you".

ADVERTISEMENT

'I understand why you can't buy lots of Calpol, but I was touched that if you give people the opportunity to help they will do it.'

Alongside a social media clip explaining his encounter, Martin wrote: 'I wonder if @costco_uk had some collection bins that people could just put donations in it would avoid this situation. Help me try to make it happen.'

In the video filmed in a Costco car park, Martin became emotional after explaining how other shoppers came to his aid.

He said: 'So listen, like you, Im properly just really at a loss in terms of what I can do to help with whats going on in Ukraine.

'So Ive come to Costco and Ive just been buying lots of things like Pampers, kids stuff, Tampax and other bits and pieces.

'You know, things for kids because its the kids, you know, [theyre] everything,' as he showed his followers a view of his shopping trolley and the things he had bought.

Holding up the Calpol bottles, Martin continued: 'So Ive been trying to buy some Calpol and Im only allowed to buy two, right?

'And I know theres some sort of sicko limit or some limit that theyve put on that stops under normal circumstances people buying lots of Calpol.'

The TV star was allegedly only allowed to buy two bottles of Calpol and took to Instagram to share a video expressing his frustration

He then explained: 'So some people in the queue behind me and some people in the queue at the side of me both bought four bottles for me so I managed to get more.

'And I offered them the money, it was about ten quid for four, and they wouldnt take it.

ADVERTISEMENT

'So there are such good people out there and everybodys trying to do their bit and if you just give them a route to do it. Because weve got to do what we can, right?' he added as he started to cry.

He said: 'So whatever small step you can take to do your bit, just do it. Because even a couple of bottles of these might help.

'So do that for me alright. Not for me obviously. Do it for them. Because this is actually, if you think about it, going hopefully into the mouth of a child that needs it.

'A homeless child whos now wondering what the hells going on in some refugee camp somewhere. Anyway, you get the idea. Sorry,' apologised Martin before signing off.
For information about our privacy practices, please visit our website at ladowntownnews.com/site/privacy.html



By clicking to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy practices here.
Homes Under The Hammer presenter Martin Roberts has arrived in Krakow after his two-day 'mercy dash' to drive supplies to the Ukraine.

The 58-year-old presenter revealed last week that he was going to drive a car packed full of supplies across Europe to help those affected by Putin's attacks on the Ukraine.

In a mammoth 26 hour journey, Martin travelled from Bournemouth through France, Netherlands, Belgium and Germany to arrive in Poland this morning.

Appearing on ITV's Lorraine, he said the next step is travelling to the Medyka border, 20km from where a shelling took place yesterday, filling the host with both 'purpose and trepidation'.

The 58-year-old presenter revealed last week that he was going to drive a car packed full of supplies across Europe to help those affected by Putin's attacks on the Ukraine

He explained: 'I set off from Bournemouth where the organisation I'm helping have their base and I went cross to the ferry travelled through France, Netherlands, Belgium, down thought Germany then all the way through Poland and I'm now in Krakow.

'I'm heading today to Medyka, the border with Ukraine which is 20km from where the shelling happened yesterday, so I'm filled with a great sense of purpose but also trepidation.'

Last week, the TV host broke down in tears outside Costco after trying to buy Calpol for Ukrainian children.

Roberts went to the big-box retail store to purchase supplies for kids in the war-torn country but was allegedly only allowed to buy two bottles - prompting kind strangers to step in and buy the medicine he needed.

Homes Under The Hammer presenter Martin Roberts has arrived in Krakow after his two-day 'mercy dash' to drive supplies to the Ukraine and appeared on ITV's Lorraine this morning

The 58-year-old daytime television star is driving from the UK to the Poland/Ukraine border with supplies - he is pictured half way through a 26-hour journey

'I woke up on that Saturday morning, like a lot of people, and thought, "What can I do?" Donating just didn't seem to be enough,' said Roberts today.

'I just went to Costco and tried to buy stuff. I was so touched, I was in the line and people saw me trying to buy this stuff and [when he was refused] they said "We'll buy it for you".

'I understand why you can't buy lots of Calpol, but I was touched that if you give people the opportunity to help they will do it.'

Alongside a social media clip explaining his encounter, Martin wrote: 'I wonder if @costco_uk had some collection bins that people could just put donations in it would avoid this situation. Help me try to make it happen.'

In the video filmed in a Costco car park, Martin became emotional after explaining how other shoppers came to his aid.

He said: 'So listen, like you, Im properly just really at a loss in terms of what I can do to help with whats going on in Ukraine.

'So Ive come to Costco and Ive just been buying lots of things like Pampers, kids stuff, Tampax and other bits and pieces.

'You know, things for kids because its the kids, you know, [theyre] everything,' as he showed his followers a view of his shopping trolley and the things he had bought.

Holding up the Calpol bottles, Martin continued: 'So Ive been trying to buy some Calpol and Im only allowed to buy two, right?

'And I know theres some sort of sicko limit or some limit that theyve put on that stops under normal circumstances people buying lots of Calpol.'

The TV star was allegedly only allowed to buy two bottles of Calpol and took to Instagram to share a video expressing his frustration

He then explained: 'So some people in the queue behind me and some people in the queue at the side of me both bought four bottles for me so I managed to get more.

'And I offered them the money, it was about ten quid for four, and they wouldnt take it.

'So there are such good people out there and everybodys trying to do their bit and if you just give them a route to do it. Because weve got to do what we can, right?' he added as he started to cry.

He said: 'So whatever small step you can take to do your bit, just do it. Because even a couple of bottles of these might help.

'So do that for me alright. Not for me obviously. Do it for them. Because this is actually, if you think about it, going hopefully into the mouth of a child that needs it.

'A homeless child whos now wondering what the hells going on in some refugee camp somewhere. Anyway, you get the idea. Sorry,' apologised Martin before signing off.
BBC podcast host Deborah James, who has incurable bowel cancer, has revealed she is back in hospital as an inpatient after developing a 'scary' sepsis infection.

The former deputy head teacher turned cancer campaigner, 40, from London, has been living with stage four bowel cancer since she was diagnosed in December 2016, and was told early on that she might not live beyond five years - a milestone that passed in the autumn.

At the start of the year, the mother-of-two announced she had 'nearly died' in hospital, calling it the 'hardest' part of her 5-year cancer battle.

In a new post updating fans shared over the weekend, the cancer campaigner shared an Instagram snap from a hospital bed, writing: 'So I'm back in hospital as an in-patient. Not my idea of a fun weekend, but needs must!'

BBC podcast host Deborah James, who has incurable bowel cancer, has revealed she is back in hospital as an inpatient after developing sepsis

She continued: 'Basically, to cut a long story short! The infection we've been trying to keep at bay with IV antibiotics - well it didn't work!

'And on Tuesday I became septic with 40 degree fevers and really unwell. But the team at the @royalmarsden have been incredible and I was admitted on Tuesday.'

In a second photo, the mother-of-two shared a photo of the port attached to her chest, writing: 'Since then we have found out I have a few sources of infection. So yesterday I had my port out. Gutted!

'Five years this baby has served me well - but right now I need it out to stop an infection - I was actually so sad! Can have another one soon .

In a new post updating fans shared over the weekend, the cancer campaigner shared a series of Instagram snaps from a hospital bed

'We also found out that my main source of infection in my liver which we've known about - due to the iV antibiotics created an abscess - so it's been drained for a few days to help it heal faster!

'But almost immediately improved my infection.'

She explained: 'So now I'm on a hardcore set of IV antibiotics - and can now almost text!

'Where I was so delirious with infection I couldn't keep my eyes open!'

She added: 'The good news is this is fixable and my cancer is stable with the new regime. So just need to get this sorted! Sepsis infections are so scary until under control!

'I'm now finally not spiking and bloods show everything improving.'

Fans rushed to share their support on Deborah's latest post, with many calling her an 'inspiration' for sharing her story online

Fans rushed to share their support on Deborah's latest post, with one writing: 'Beautiful, inspiring, strong. Amazing, stunning lady.'

Meanwhile another added: 'Sending you big cuddles babes as always. Be very proud of yourself and your gorgeous family.'

A third commented: 'I've never seen courage like it Deb, you are an absolute inspiration to anyone fighting this awful disease.'

It's been a difficult year so far for the mother-of-two, who has spent months recovering after she almost died in January due to a medical emergency.

In January, she said the 'trauma' of nearly dying was still 'very raw and real' as she returned home after three weeks in hospital.

She told how she had been discharged as an in-patient, and said it had been 'the scariest period' her life, adding: 'Two and a half weeks ago it was touch and go if I made it through the night.

Earlier this year, Deborah said there had been 'a lot of tears' for days while she was in hospital (pictured)

'Today after 18 days across two hospitals I walked down the steps of the @royalmarsden discharged from life as an in-patient.

'I'm not out of the woods yet, and I'll be back in soon, but I've reach a point that seemed insurmountable weeks ago. I cried on my last IV treatment today.

'The trauma of it all is very raw and real. I'm realising I've been through a lot.

'A lot of everything - seeing my life slip away, being brought back to life, hairy moments, operations, general anaesthesia, antibiotics, pain relief, nervously awaiting blood tests, failured canulars, curve balls, tears.

'It's been the scariest time of my life - of my whole families lives.'

Last month Deborah said the 'trauma' of nearly dying in an acute medical emergency is still 'very raw and real' as she returned home after three weeks in hospital

She continued: 'I don't even know where to begin to thank every single medical person who saved me, who got me through the days, the nights, who did all they can to give me more time. Thank you doesn't even touch the sides.

'I'm unsure right now of my next steps, but I have options. And I have to recover first. Get some normality, see the outside world! Eat!

'But right now, I'm back home, a place I left not thinking I'd see it again. For that, I feel beyond greatful.'

She went on to share a series of images and clips as she was discharged from hospital, including as she was wheeled along a hospital corridor and having an IV canular removed.

The mother-of-two also posted a snapshot of her dog as she relaxed on her sofa at home, saying: 'I have to say I'm shattered. Think I have weeks of sleep to catch up on.

Deborah, who has incurable bowel cancer, revealed how she 'nearly died' in January in an 'acute medical emergency'. She shared this photo from hospital

'And I'm still taking lots of meds. Already had three naps today. And that's after waking up at 10am!'

While in hospital, Deborah filmed herself walking down a hallway. She said she is 'making progress' and tasking her recovery step by step after enduring the 'hardest, most heartbreaking and scariest' period of her cancer battle in the last week, which has involved three operations and 'a lot more procedures' to come.

Posting on Instagram earlier this year, the mother-of-two spoke of enduring the 'hardest, most heartbreaking and scariest' period of her cancer battle in the last week, which has involved three operations and 'a lot more procedures' to come.

She told how her husband watched as doctors fought to save her life after she 'crashed' in resuscitation.

The mother-of-two was told early on that she might not live beyond five years - a milestone that passed in the autumn (pictured)

'A week ago at this time in the evening I nearly died in what was an acute medical emergency,' she wrote. 'I'm not ready to discuss what happened yet as the trauma of it all has been incredibly intense - but it's thanks to an unbelievable team of NHS specialists who worked all through the night and the next day to save me.

'I cannot be more grateful. I'm still not out of danger and I have a lot more procedures to deal with. But I'm now out of intensive care. And for the first time felt able to briefly update you.'

Sharing a photo of her giving a thumbs up from a hospital bed, she continued: 'This is me yesterday having just come round from my 3rd operation this week. I have another operation tomorrow.

'In 5 years of having stage 4 Cancer - this has been the hardest, most heartbreaking and scariest of them all. I'd always prepared for my death, but I wasn't prepared for something so blindsiding and traumatic to happen.

'I can't quite believe I'm here to write this. A week ago my whole family was praying I'd pull through the night. I'm getting a lot of help and support to come to terms with the trauma I've been through.

'My family have been incredible. I don't know how my husband held it together seeing me crash as an army of doctors stabilised me in resus.'

In new series of cancer podcast, You, Me and the Big C, Deborah revealed she had to learn how to walk again after being bed-bound with colitis in December

Posting on Instagram overnight, the mother-of-two spoke of enduring the 'hardest, most heartbreaking and scariest' period of her cancer battle in the last week, which has involved three operations and 'a lot more procedures' to come

After thanking followers for their support, she added: 'Do me a favour and go tell your loved ones how much you love them. To realise in a sudden split moment that you are unlikely to see the next day is utterly heartbreaking. Have no regrets.'

It comes days after Deborah returned to her popular podcast You, me and the Big C and revealed how she'd been 'absolutely floored' by 'big gun chemo' during the summer and then a serious infection at the year's end - which saw her carried into a London hospital at 1am by her husband for treatment.

She told co-hosts Lauren Mahon and Steve Bland on a recent episode of the BBC podcast that she'd had to learn to walk again after being forced to remain in bed for almost a month.

She said: 'After colitis, I had to relearn to walk again because I had so much fluid.

'I'd been bed-bound for three weeks and just learning how to walk to the end of the drive or whatever, is just impossible essentially.'

Discussing how difficult the last six months have been, James said while she was really happy that the 'big gun chemo' she endured has slowed her cancer's growth, which had been 'on the march', it had been an exhausting time.

James marked five years since her 2016 diagnosis - a milestone she thought she wouldn't make - in December but was in hospital with infectious colitis

She explained: 'I have to be honest with you, going from targeted therapy back onto chemo, it was hardcore, big gun chemo, and it absolutely utterly floored me.

BOWEL CANCER: THE SYMPTOMS YOU SHOULDN'T IGNORE Bowel, or colorectal, cancer affects the large bowel, which is made up of the colon and rectum. Such tumours usually develop from pre-cancerous growths, called polyps. Symptoms include: Bleeding from the bottom

Blood in stools

A change in bowel habits lasting at least three weeks

Unexplained weight loss

Extreme, unexplained tiredness

Abdominal pain Most cases have no clear cause, however, people are more at risk if they: Are over 50

Have a family history of the condition

Have a personal history of polyps in their bowel

Suffer from inflammatory bowel disease, such as Crohn's disease

Lead an unhealthy lifestyle Treatment usually involves surgery, and chemo- and radiotherapy. More than nine out of 10 people with stage one bowel cancer survive five years or more after their diagnosis. This drops significantly if it is diagnosed in later stages. According to Bowel Cancer UK figures, more than 41,200 people are diagnosed with bowel cancer every year in the UK. It affects around 40 per 100,000 adults per year in the US, according to the National Cancer Institute. Advertisement

'I would say my quality of life was just hideous.'

Updating listeners on the current state of her health, she said: 'Some days I feel fine, my quality of life is OK right now, but I'm not the person people have known for the past four years where I'm running around exercising everyday.'

'It's just stable in a really b****y awkward place.'

The campaigner revealed that because of her reduced liver function and the colitis, she's not likely to qualify for a clinical trial.

She admitted she'd been 'procrastinating' over potential treatment options during the Christmas break.

In the summer, James was told she had an aggressive new tumour that had wrapped itself around her bile duct - requiring a life-saving stay in hospital - and a stent fitted to stop her liver from failing.

The stent fitted to stop her liver failing 'stopped working' in December.

She explained to her followers at the time how hopes at having a 'quick replacement operation' had turned into a 'nightmare'.

She said: 'I'm now at the mercy of hopefully some super 'magic medicine miracle' - but then I always have been, and any chance is a chance right?

'All I ever say Is all I want is hope and options.'

In April, James shared that her cancer, which has been kept at bay by pioneering treatment, was back again and she was forced to endure a 12th operation.

The West London mother-of-two, a deputy head, was diagnosed 'late' with incurable bowel cancer in 2016.

She has frequently said that as a vegetarian runner, she was the last person doctors expected to get the disease.

After sharing her experiences on living with the disease on social media, Deborah became known as the 'Bowel Babe' and began writing a column for the Sun.

In 2018, Deborah joined Lauren Mahon and Rachael Bland to present the award-winning podcast You, Me and the Big C on Radio 5 Live.

Bland tragically died of breast cancer on September 5th that year; her husband Steve Bland now co-presents the show.
A toddler born with spina bifida who underwent spinal surgery while still inside her mother's womb has defied the odds and is now learning to walk.

Lacey Grace Bower's parents, Michelle and Michael Bower, were urged to terminate her pregnancy when they received her diagnosis after her 20-week scan.

But they ignored the advice and the youngster is already defying her prognosis at just 19-months-old - even learning to manoeuvre a custom tiny wheelchair.

Michelle, 37, from West Lafayette, Indiana, said: 'We met with the doctor right after the scan and heard the words 'neural tube defect', 'lemon-shaped head' and 'spina bifida' to describe our daughter for the first time.

Lacey Grace Bower, from West Lafayette, Indiana, was born with Spina Bifida. Despite doctors informing her parents she wouldn't be able to walk, the toddler has learning to use her legs. Pictured trying a gait trainer for the first time

Lacey started to move her ankles and big toe early on, but it took her a long time to be able to feed on her own meaning she stayed in the NICU for 18 days

Lacey's parents were devastated to discover their baby had Spina Bifida and a neural tube defect at at her 20-week ultrasound scan

'We were at a complete and total loss. The tears didn't stop flowing for a couple of days.'

After trying for about two years to start a family, Michelle found out she was pregnant with Lacey on December 5, 2019 just before she left for a birthday party.

'I took a test to determine whether or not I could have a few cocktails at the party,' she said.

'Michael lifted me up in a hug and spun me around. We were beyond thrilled!'

Michelle was given a Caesarean section on July 20, 2020 at 12:42pm, Lacey was born weighing 6lbs 9oz, and was immediately taken to the NICU

Lacey is partially paralysed from the waist down and this means she still needs help with going to the toilet

But almost four months later, at her 20-week ultrasound scan, the happy couple received some devastating news.

Dad Michael, 42, said: 'They noticed Lacey had a lemon-shaped head which means that her spine lesion was pulling on her brainstem and making her head mis-shaped.'

There was also a large bubble on a part of her spine.

The spinal canal of a baby with spina bifida does not close completely when developing, leaving the spinal cord exposed from an early stage in pregnancy.

The tot learned to sit, roll and pull herself along the ground ahead of schedule, and loves nothing more than climbing on things and cuddling her parents

Lacey started to move her ankles and big toe early on, but it took her a long time to be able to feed on her own meaning she stayed in the NICU for 18 days

This results in changes to the brain, as well as severe trauma-related injuries to the nerves on the lower half of the body.

Michelle said: 'We had just found out that we were having a girl the day before. We wanted a girl. We went from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows in under 24 hours.

'It was a complete and utter nightmare, but we still had hope.

'We hoped it was the less severe form of the condition until we got more testing done.'

The couple had just discovered they were having a baby girl when a foetal doctor informed them Lacey's Spina Bifida was severe

They were referred to a fetal medicine doctor who told them their daughter had a neural tube defect and a lemon-shaped head, indicating her condition was severe.

They were strongly advised to terminate the pregnancy.

Michelle said: 'I cried my eyes out at the mention of it. Through my tears I said, "That is not an option, I already love her".'

She was also offered postnatal and prenatal closure of the opening of her spine, the latter being far riskier and only offered at a select few hospitals.

Michelle found it hard to enjoy being pregnant with Lacey, because thoughts of the future left her 'riddled with fear'

Lacey was monitored three times a week for the first three months, but now at 19 months she is speaking at the level of a three-year-old and is learning to get around ina custom-made wheelchair

They also only had less than six weeks to arrange it before Michelle would be too far along with the pregnancy to qualify.

After refusing to lose their daughter, Lacey's parents opted for a risky three-and-a-half hour surgery to fix the hole in her spine while she was still in the womb.

'It sounded completely insane and unfathomable for our financial circumstances and obligations at home,' said Michelle. 'I thought it was crazy.'

The mother-of-one said: 'The rest of the pregnancy was riddled with fear and uncertainty. It was beyond difficult to just enjoy being pregnant.

'However, from the copious amount of research we did, we knew that the foetal surgery would be her greatest chance at walking one day and her only chance of reversing her Arnold Chiari II malformation.'

She underwent the foetal surgery on April 27, 2020 at St. Louis Children's Hospital, Missouri, with more than 35 medical professionals in the operating room.

She said: 'It was quite literally the single most horrifying experience of my life.

Despite being advised to terminate the pregnancy, Lacey's parents opted for a risky three-and-a-half hour surgery to fix the hole in her spine while she was still in the womb. Pictured following her birth

'It was my first time in the hospital and my first surgery. Knowing my unborn baby was having surgery with me made it utterly terrifying.'

The procedure was three-and-a-half hours long and both Lacey, who weighed 1.8 pounds that day, and Michelle had their own team of doctors looking after them.

They made a ten-inch-long incision across her abdomen, and despite having to spend five days in recovery and waiting a week before she could walk, the procedure was deemed a success.

To ensure Lacey's safety, Michelle had strict orders of bed rest for the next three months until she was due to give birth.

Lacey's scar from fetal surgery that saw doctors make a ten-inch-long incision across her abdomen

She said: 'I stressed counting baby movements and strictly monitored my aches and pains.

'We got a calendar and counted down each day.'

She was given a Cesarean section on July 20, 2020 at 12:42pm, Lacey was born weighing 6lbs 9oz, and was immediately taken to the NICU.

Special education teacher Michelle said: 'The first time I saw her was on a screen in the delivery room while they were giving her oxygen and getting her breathing started.

When she was born, Lacey's legs were hyper extended and stuck pointing upwards towards her face

'I saw that something was seriously wrong with her legs. Her knees were hyperextended to where her feet were up by her face.

'She was stiffened in a fixed position from her positioning in the womb.

'I was so sad for her and afraid.'

Lacey started to move her ankles and big toe early on, but it took her a long time to be able to feed on her own meaning she stayed in the NICU for 18 days.

She was monitored three times a week for the first three months, but now at 19 months she is speaking at the level of a three-year-old and is learning to walk.

Michelle was advised that her daughter would never have a normal life, but said she's done more than doctors every could have imagined

Lacey is partially paralysed from the waist down and this means she still needs help with going to the toilet.

However the tot learned to sit, roll and pull herself along the ground ahead of schedule, and loves nothing more than climbing on things and cuddling her parents.

Michelle said: 'Prior to birth, we were told she would have a "poor quality of life".

'The doctor said there was a good chance she would never be able to eat, breathe unaided, talk, stand or walk.

'She does more than that doctor ever imagined.

'She is pulling to stand, and supported standing on her own now.

'She can climb up onto the couch and go to town on her rocking horse.

'The little things that others might somewhat take for granted are the things that dreams are made of for us - that is one of the many blessings that come with SB life

'Life with a disabled person is a life worth living.'
Countess Alexandra Tolstoy whose former partner was a member of Putin's inner circle says her ex operated in a 'bandits world' where powerful men act 'without strategy' and 'lash out when backed into a corner'.

The aristocrat, who descends from a long line of Russian nobility, shares three children with billionaire financier Sergei Pugachev, who was known as 'Putin's banker' before he fell foul of the Kremlin and fled the country. He is now considered a 'traitor' by Putin.

While Alexandra never knew Putin closely, her husband - who she called a 'microcosm' of the Russian president - worked in close proximity with him and described his 'spontaneous' behaviour to her.

Appearing on ITV's Lorraine today, the 48-year-old called both Putin and her ex 'massive narcissists' who can do 'do incredibly self-destructive things' when they feel threatened.

Countess Alexandra Tolstoy whose ex-partner, billionaire financier Sergei Pugachev, was a member of Putin's inner circle says he operated in a 'bandit's world'

Appearing on ITV's Lorraine today, the 48-year-old called both Putin and her ex 'massive narcissists' who can do 'do incredibly self-destructive things' when they feel threatened

'I haven't met or spoken to him, but I have been in the room with him, I would say my insight is that Sergei is a kind of microcosm of Putin', she said.

'The way he operates, it's a bandit's world. The way these bandits operate - they are inevitably massive narcissists. Sergei himself told me alot about Putin and I would say he doesn't act with a strategy, I think that is a misconception.

'I think he's very spontaneous and his ego plays a huge part, there's a lot of speculation about whether he's ill and his face seems to imply that with his huge bloating.

'I know from the way Sergei behaved. When they are on the back foot they will lash out and do incredibly self-destructive things, because what Putin is doing is so destructive for Russia'.

The couple met in 2008 after Sergei hired Alexandra to help improve his English while they were both living in Russia, where Sergei was once-close friends with Putin

Sergei has previously said he enjoyed a 'very close' friendship with Russian president Vladimir Putin before falling out of favour with the Kremlin

Alexandra, who lives in the UK with her three children Aliosha, Ivan and Maria, says that she and her nine-year-old daughter are 'crying all day long' because of the conflict.

'Nothing that I have gone through compares to what is happening in Ukraine and it's devastating, even my nine-year-old daughter, we're just crying all day long', she said.

'What I think people in the West don't understand is, every Russian has a relative in Ukraine.

'I think the worst thing i've heard is Russian parents are phoning their children in Ukraine and they're saying "This is just horrific, we're being bombed, what are we going to do?". And the parents say say "No you're not, don't listen to propaganda, we've come to liberate you". '

Alexandras title descends from her great-great grandfather, her father's great-grandfather, Pavel Tolstoy-Miloslavsky, who was titled a Count for his services as the chamberlain to the last emperor, Nicolas II of Russia just after the First World War.

She met Pugachev - once dubbed 'the Kremlins banker' - while teaching English in Moscow, but says he was already falling out of Putin's favour when they met.

Alexandras title descends from her great-great grandfather, her father's great-grandfather, Pavel Tolstoy-Miloslavsky, who was titled a Count for his services as the chamberlain to the last emperor, Nicolas II of Russia

'It was really crazy and gave me actually a rather horrible insight into what is going on now', she said.

'He was meant to be one of the people who put Putin in power, when I met him he was already falling out with him I realise in retrospect, but was very powerful within that circle and was still operating in that world.'

After travelling to the UK in 2011, Pugachev was accused of siphoning a fortune out of his finance house Mezhprombank. State creditors in Moscow pursued him in the British courts, claiming he embezzled hundreds of millions.

The oligarch fled to France, where he remains, and was sentenced to two years in his absence by a High Court judge in 2016 for breaching court orders relating to hundreds of millions in allegedly stolen cash.

Pugachev has cut off Alexandra and their children financially, she claims, and the family were evicted from Pugachev's 12million south London family mansion during the height of the pandemic after reportedly being given just 12 days notice by the Russian government, who had repossessed the property.

From billionaire to broke: Who is Alexandra Tolstoy? Before she met Sergei, Alexandra was married to a penniless Cossack named Shamil Galimzyanov. The pair met whilst travelling along the Silk Road on horse in 1999. Tolstoy first met Sergei, then a Russian senator and trusted friend of Putin who had separated from his wife, when asked to give him English lessons while she was living in Moscow with Galimzyanov. A year later, they met again at an awards ceremony attended by the Russian president. Within months, Tolstoy and was pregnant with Sergei's child. They had three children together - Alexei, known as Aliosha, Ivan and Maria. Alexandra is the eldest of Anglo-Russian historian and writer Nikolai Tolstoy's four children. She grew up in Oxfordshire before going to Edinburgh University to study philosophy. She spent her gap year in Russia. Advertisement

It is understood Alexandra has since moved into another home in London, but she also has an idyllic country home, which she bought in 2004.

Pugachev once owned two major shipyards, the world's biggest mine and large chunks of real estate in Moscow and St Petersburg, as well as the Mezhprombank, which he co-founded in the 1990s.

The couple met in 2008 after Sergei hired Alexandra to help improve his English while they were both living in Russia, where Sergei was once-close friends with Putin.

Speaking of their relationship in a documentary, Alexandra said: 'When I met Sergei it was electric. It was amazing. I fell so in love with him. I've never felt such a connection to someone ever.'

Within a year of meeting, they had a baby and another on the way, and were living a life of luxury in London, Moscow and Paris.

Alexandra said: 'It was incredible, he would give me his credit card and I would go shopping, I had a private jet. I just had to pack my suitcase and I could go.'

The family moved between an array of properties including a 12million family home in Battersea, a 200-acre country estate in Hertfordshire, and a 40million beachfront villa in St Barts.

But in 2008, Sergei's bank hit problems and the Russian bank bailed it out with $1 billion loan.

Sergei, who left Russia in 2011, claims that after relations between him and Putin cooled, the Kremlin tried to seize or destroy his business empire.

The Russians then accused him of profiting from vast sums of taxpayers' money given to Mezhprombank by the Russian central bank at the height of the 2008 economic crisis.

The Russian authorities froze his assets, put him on Interpol's wanted list and obtained a court order in Britain forcing him to hand over his passports.

By 2015, he was dividing his time between France and the family home in London and claimed to be number 3 on Kremlin's hitlist.

State creditors in Moscow pursued him in the British courts, claiming he embezzled hundreds of millions.

Pugachev fled to France before the 2016 High Court ruling in a case brought by Russias Deposit Insurance Agency, in which he was sentenced for 12 breaches of court orders connected to a freezing order imposed on him over attempts to recover the cash.

In the February 2016 High Court judgment, no ruling was made on the allegations of embezzled cash and Pugachev told the court he had not stolen any money. In her judgment jailing him, Mrs Justice Rose noted he does have a genuine fear that his life is in danger from agents of the Russian state.

Anne-Jessica Faure, a lawyer for Mr Pugachev, said there has been no court decision establishing financial wrongdoing by him.

On the order of the High Court, the family home was put on the market and Alexandra made a deal with the Russian government to drop her claim to his fortune.
A women claimed her 'unusually affectionate' dog saved her life after he pawed at a cancerous lump in her breast.

Tanya Hibberd, 50, from Southampton, revealed she thought her usually independent husky, Sapphire, just wanted more cuddles after she had returned from a two-week holiday to Cyprus with her husband Gary Hibberd, 64, in 2018.

However, the persistent pooch, now six, continued to paw at the same spot on Tanya's breast for four weeks until she decided to check and discovered a 'massive gobstopper-sized' lump.

Although, the mum-of-one regularly gets checked for lumps, she credits her dog Sapphire for saving her life.

As soon as she found the lump she visiting her GP and was diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer.

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is a less common type of breast cancer that is sometimes described as a faster-growing type of breast cancer.

Paw-fect! Tanya Hibberd, 50, from Southampton, with her husky Sapphire, now six

Best boy! Sapphire pawed at a cancerous lump in Tanya's breast and saved her life

The customer service team leader underwent gruelling chemotherapy, surgery and radiotherapy.

The then 46-year-old revealed that Sapphire was born on the day that her father passed away from non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Tanya is now cancer free and wants to highlight that if your pet is acting out of character and starts to take more of an interest in you, then they may be trying to alert you to something.

Tanya said: 'Sapphire is quite a lonely dog. She likes her own company, but she kept sitting on me and putting her head on my right breast every night, which was really unusual.

Sweet: Although, the mum-of-one regularly gets checked for lumps, she credits her dog Sapphire for saving her life

'For four weeks she kept doing that, I just thought she was being cuddly.

'I initially thought it was because we had been away for a two-week holiday but then it became more frequent and she spent longer snuggling into me.

'I didn't think anything of it and then one day she kept nudging there so I touched myself and discovered a lump. Sapphire saved my life.'

'I'd been on holiday to Cyprus and had done the normal checks that I do every month and not noticed anything. When I came back I started feeling more tired than usual.

Congratulations! Tanya is now cancer free and wants to highlight that if your pet is acting out of character and starts to take more of an interest in you, then they may be trying to alert you to something

'It felt massive and a bit like a gobstopper. I actually thought it was a cyst at first.

'I got my husband to feel it and he said I needed to go to the doctor.'

The lucky dog owner went on to reveal her tumour was 3cm when she found it but grew to 5cm before she started chemotherapy at Southampton General Hospital in November 2018.

Tanya said she went through '12 rounds of aggressive chemo' and after the fifth week it had shrunk considerably.

Tanya said: 'She'd still lay with me and if I was really poorly during chemo she'd lay with me under the covers, which is unusual for a husky as they're quite warm animals.

Miracle: The then 46-year-old revealed that Sapphire was born on the day that her father passed away from non-Hodgkin lymphoma

Faith: She believes her dog 'smelt her cancer' and that she 'chose her' when the family went looking at puppies

Great news! Tanya said she went through '12 rounds of aggressive chemo' and after the fifth week it had shrunk considerably

WHAT IS TRIPLE NEGATIVE BREAST CANCER? Triple negative breast cancer is a form of the disease that does not have receptors for the hormones oestrogen or progesterone, or the protein HER2. This makes it trickier to treat due to the tumour not responding to these hormonal or protein therapies. Triple negative breast cancer makes up around 10-to-20 per cent of all forms of the disease. It tends to be more aggressive than other breast tumours, with patients having a worse prognosis. The condition is more common in those under 40 and black women. It is diagnosed via a sample of the cancerous cells. Symptoms are similar to other forms of breast cancer. These can include: Lump or thickening in the breast

Change in the size, shape or feel of the breast

Dimpling of the skin

Change in the shape of the nipple

Rash or blood-stained discharge coming from the nipple

Swelling in the armpit Treatment usually involves surgery, chemo and radiotherapy. Chemo may be given first to shrink the tumour before a patient goes under the knife. It may also be given after the operation to prevent the disease returning. Advertisement

'She's now very protective of me. If I take her out for a walk she growls at people if they get too close to me.'

She believes her dog 'smelt her cancer' and that she 'chose her' when the family went looking at puppies.

'We tell everybody that she smelt my cancer. When I found the lump I just thought 'what a clever little dog she is' and they say that they can smell things.

'I may have found it but I don't know. I checked myself three or four weeks before that and probably would have again in another couple of weeks.

'But by then because of the type of cancer I had, it may have been too late to have the treatment or might not have been cured.'

After 20 sessions of radiotherapy which finished in July 2019, Tanya was declared cancer free.

Sapphire's birthday is also on December 13th - the date Tanya's dad Norman (Nobby) King passed away aged 67.

Tanya said: 'She's a very special dog. It's really strange because I woke up one Saturday morning and decided I wanted a dog - I'd never had a dog before in my life.

'We found Sapphire on a pet site, drove to Wolverhampton and she chose me - out of the three dogs that were available she wouldn't leave me alone.

She was also told by a medium that Sapphire had come into her life 'for a reason'.

'A medium told me that she was sent there for a reason when she was a puppy.

'Her birthday, the 13th December, is the date that my dad died so I think she was sent for a reason.

'She's very special and will always be very special in my heart. I think she saved my life.

'I would just say that if you have a dog or pet that generally only wants cuddles on their terms and then they start taking an actual interest in you then maybe they are trying to tell you something.'
The Ipcress File has divided opinion online with some viewers having branded it a waste of 'six hours' and criticised Joe Cole's 'stupid Michael Caine impression' - while others have praised it as a 'the best work ITV has done for ages'.

ITV's six-part Cold War spy thriller is set in the 1960s and follows Harry Palmer (played by Cole), a working-class British sergeant, who becomes a spy to avoid military jail after a series of dodgy dealings.

The second episode aired on Sunday, but some viewers have already watched the entire series after it was made available on ITV Hub.

Taking to Twitter to share their views on the remake - adapted from the 1962 Len Deighton novel, later made into a 1965 film - some audiences at home warned the drama wasn't worth watching, while others criticised the 'wooden acting'.

The original film saw Palmer played by Sir Michael Caine, which catapulted his career to new heights - and viewers also couldn't help but compare Cole with Caine.

The Ipcress File has divided opinion online with some viewers having branded it a waste of 'six hours' and criticised Joe Cole's (pictured) 'stupid Michael Caine impression' - while others have praised it as a 'the best work ITV has done in ages'

The original film saw lead character Harry Palmer played by Sir Michael Caine (pictured), which catapulted his career to new heights

Reaction: Some social media users (pictured above) couldn't help but compare Cole with Caine

One person wrote: 'Having watched all six episodes of ITV's The Ipcress File, I can promise you don't need to. That's six hours of my life gone forever watching a pile of wooden acting c***.

'If it had been parody, it would have failed. As a homage to bad 60s plots, it succeed in the worst possible way.'

Another said: 'What's the point of this remake of The Ipcress File? The original movie was as good as it gets, plus Joe Cole looks like he's playing Michael Caine in a school play.'

A third added: 'The original is a classic. This remake however is hard to watch. Joe Cole reminds me more of a young Eric Morecambe than Michael Caine I'm afraid.'

However, it wasn't all bad reviews for the series, with some fans taking to the social media platform to praise the remake following its second episode.

Taking to Twitter to share their views on the remake - adapted from the 1962 Len Deighton novel, later made into a 1965 film - some audiences at home warned the drama wasn't worth watching, while others criticised the 'wooden acting'

ITV's six-part Cold War spy thriller is set in the 1960s and follows Harry Palmer (played by Cole, above), a working-class British sergeant, who becomes a spy to avoid military jail after a series of dodgy dealings

One Twitter user said: 'I'm absolutely LOVING The Ipcress File on ITV! The acting, the cinematography, the sets, the costumes... and of course Joe Cole. It's all just *chef's kiss*.'

Another wrote: 'One of my all time favourite films is The Ipcress File and I was intrigued to see the TV adaption. Am glad to say it was brilliant and well worth the watch.'

A third person penned: 'That went so quickly. Just brilliant, best thing ITV has done for ages'.

The original novel was adapted into a hugely successful 1965 film, starring Sir Michael, and produced two immediate sequels, Funeral in Berlin and Billion Dollar Brain.

But it wasn't all bad reviews for the series, with some fans taking to the social media platform to praise the remake following its second episode

For the six-part ITV series, Liverpool was transformed into 1960s London as Palmer investigates the kidnapping of British nuclear scientists.

Joe's character is slated as being 'sharp and savvy' with a series of side-hustles that could potentially land him in hot water with the law.

The British actor, 32, who shot to fame as John Selby in Peaky Blinders, is a Londoner like Caine.

The original novel was adapted into a hugely successful 1965 film, starring Sir Michael, and produced two immediate sequels, Funeral in Berlin and Billion Dollar Brain. Pictured, Joe Cole (right) as Palmer

Lucy Boynton (pictured right) plays the glamorous Jean Courtney, originally played by Sue Lloyd

However, he was born in affluent Kingston-upon-Thames as opposed to industrial Rotherhithe, where Sir Michael entered the world as Maurice Micklewhite 88 years ago.

The original espionage film and its following sequels were a deliberately downbeat alternative to the hugely successful James Bond films.

Palmer is a contrast to Bond's privileged private school upbringing and lives and works in a 'gloomy' London, where he resides in a Notting Hill bedsit.

Deighton went on to write several Harry Palmer thrillers  although the spy was never named in the books  giving producers scope for further series.
The BAFTA red carpet usually counts two royal VIPs among its guests: the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.

But last night the royal couple skipped the ceremony, with BAFTA president Prince William choosing to send a pre-recorded video message instead.

The royal's absence was reportedly down to 'diary constraints [that] precluded him from attending in person'. The decision is said to have left organisers 'very disappointed' because the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are a 'huge draw'.

But the explanation has raised eyebrows because William is set to attend the Commonwealth Day service at Westminster Abbey today, less than 24 hours after the awards show.

It has prompted speculation that William, 39, potentially chose to give the BAFTAs a miss because he was uneasy about attending the event amid the war in Ukraine.

The BAFTA red carpet usually counts two royal VIPs among its guests: the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. But last night the royal couple skipped the ceremony, with BAFTA president Prince William choosing to send a pre-recorded video message instead. Pictured, in 2020

The royal's absence was reportedly down to 'diary constraints [that] precluded him from attending in person'. The decision is said to have left organisers 'very disappointed' because the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are a 'huge draw'. Above, William's video message

Other commentators have questioned whether the Duke of Cambridge is taking a stand against BAFTA broadcaster the BBC over its The Princes And The Press series, which accused the Cambridges of briefing against the Sussexes.

The Mail On Sunday's Amanda Platell wrote: 'Im puzzled that Prince William, President of BAFTA, has pulled out of tomorrow nights glittering awards ceremony to be broadcast on the BBC, due to diary constraints which precluded him from attending in person.

'Surely, every royals diary is decided many months in advance.

'My guess is that after the Beebs appallingly biased The Princes And The Press series, presented by their bejewelled star Amol Rajan and accusing the Cambridges of briefing against the Sussexes, William decided on a no-show, except by video.

'Is this a sign of the royals ghosting the republican Beeb? If so, its not a moment too soon.'

Taking to Twitter, one royal follower noted: 'William is President of BAFTA, so he would be expected to attend. He may consider it inappropriate because of what's happening in Ukraine.'

Another posted online: 'William might not explain, but he doesn't forget. I'm sure he isn't going to BAFTA b/c of the optics w/Ukraine, but bet he isn't heartbroken that his cancellation will hurt the BBC.'

Prince William has been a regular fixture on the BAFTA red carpet since being named president 10 years ago.

The Duchess of Cambridge has also joined him on a number of occasions.

The absence has prompted speculation that William, 39, potentially chose to give the BAFTAs a miss because he was uneasy about attending the event amid the war in Ukraine. Pictured, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge on a visit to the Ukrainian Cultural Centre in London

A source told The Mirror yesterday: 'Prince William is always a huge draw, not least as it's the first year back in person after the pandemic.

'But BAFTA were told that diary constraints precluded him from attending in person this year. It's such a shame and everyone is very disappointed.'

The 'diary constraints' are thought to be linked to preparation for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's upcoming Caribbean tour, which kicks off on Saturday.

However Royal expert Robert Jobson noted Prince William is not obliged to attend every event. He told Femail: 'I dont think as patron you commit to every ceremony, even if the organisers were under the assumption that he would.

'I believe previous royal patrons havent attended every event.'

William was still able to share his comments via a pre-recorded video message, in which he said he is 'extremely proud' of the Academy's Breakthrough mentoring programme, which has has 'provided opportunities and support for talented people'.

In the 90 second speech, William said: 'Hello everyone. As president of BAFTA, I'm extremely proud to see the work that BAFTA undertakes year round to provide opportunities and support for talented people to develop successful careers in films, games and television.

'One of these programmes is Breakthrough, a yearlong mentoring and guidance initiative which helps people achieve their true potential.

'It's wonderful that there are more than 30 participants from Breakthrough UK in the audience this evening.

'Two of them, Aleem Khan and Jessie Buckley, are nominated for awards tonight.

'They join an impressive list of young talent including Bukky Bakray and Florence Pugh, as well as Paapa Essiedu, and Ray Panthaki, who are closely involved with BAFTA nominated films.

'BAFTA hopes to inspire and support future generations from all walks of life to become the filmmakers of the future.

'And I hope that for some of you watching these awards, that journey starts today. Congratulations to all the nominees and winners and I wish you all a wonderful evening.'

MailOnline has contacted Kensington Palace for comment.
The showbiz world united last night to make a statement against Russia's invasion of Ukraine when attending the British Academy Film Awards 2022 at the Royal Albert Hall.

Sporting demure gowns and black ensembles, guests at the prestigious event were reportedly advised to 'dress respectably' amid fears attention-grabbing dresses and suits would appear distasteful in light of the conflict.

But following the red carpet occasion, celebrities such as Florence Pugh, Simone Ashley and model Adwoa Aboah appeared to ditch their more reserved outfits in favour of vibrant, plunging and risque attire.

Black Widow's Florence Pugh (above), 26, put on an edgy display when walking the red carpet, flaunting her toned pins in a black mini dress, which boasted an eye-catching baby pink tulle train

However she ditched the black ensemble for a colourful pink number (above) when attending the British Vogue and Tiffany & Co fashion and film party on Sunday night

Bridgerton star Simone Ashley commanded attention in a pink dress, featuring a sheer top and cape when arriving at the awards

However, while that appeared rather risque, her after party outfit was arguably even more daring. The actress, 26, showed off her incredible figure in a plunging purple mini dress, which she paired with a matching satin jacket

Black Widow's Florence, 26, put on an edgy display when walking the red carpet, flaunting her toned pins in a black mini dress, which boasted an eye-catching baby pink tulle train.

Debuting a raven pixie cut, Florence opted for a mini dress with a modest neckline and buttons up the centre.

The Little Women star's dress had a cut-out back and voluminous pink train, which trailed along the red carpet. Florence boosted her height with a peep toe pair of skyscraper stilettos.

However she ditched the black ensemble for a colourful pink number when attending the British Vogue and Tiffany & Co fashion and film party on Sunday night.

She cut a glamorous figure in a flamingo pink satin dress as she arrived at Annabel's in London's Mayfair, after donning the same gown to attend Netflix's after party at the coveted Chiltern Firehouse.

Adwoa Aboah cut a glamorous figure as she graced the red carpet for this year's BAFTA Film Awards in a floor-length Yves Saint Laurent black gown, left. After leaving the awards, Adwoa changed out of her elegant black gown and into a daring all-white sheer ensemble, right

But she wasn't the only star switching up their look when attending the after party following their red carpet appearance at the BAFTAs.

Bridgerton star Simone Ashley commanded attention in a pink dress, featuring a sheer top and cape when arriving at the awards.

However, while that appeared rather risque, her after party outfit was arguably even more daring.

The actress, 26, showed off her incredible figure in a plunging purple mini dress, which she paired with a matching satin jacket.

She let her tresses cascade across her shoulders in a tight wave, while she accentuated her good looks with a smokey-eye make-up palette.

Laura Whitmore was another celeb who opted to change ensembles between the BAFTAs and the after party

She put on a leggy display as she arrived to Vogue's and Tiffany & Co. Fashion and Film Party 2022 (pictured)

Elsewhere, Adwoa Aboah cut a glamorous figure as she graced the red carpet for this year's BAFTA Film Awards in a floor-length Yves Saint Laurent black gown.

The model, 29, accessorised her understated look with a chunky pair of black and gold earrings, while she added a few extra inches to her frame with a pair of statement black heels.

After leaving the BAFTA film awards, Adwoa changed out of her elegant black gown and into a daring all-white sheer ensemble.

She turned heads in the daring high-neck top which she paired with white trousers, while she slung a black hang bag across one shoulder.

Laura Whitmore was another celeb who opted to change ensembles between the BAFTAs and the after party.

Meanwhile AJ Odudu, 34, was dressed in a striking black gown comprising a mesh top half and stunning sequin bottom, left. The British presenter then opted for a shimmering mini dress while attending the after party, right

The British presenter, 36, wowed in a plunging yellow Stella McCartney gown as she mingled with the great and good of film and television.

Laura oozed confidence as she posed for snaps in her sweeping, low-cut dress which she teamed with statement silver earrings and a simple silver pendant.

She then put on a leggy display as she arrived to Vogue's and Tiffany & Co. Fashion and Film Party 2022.

The Love Island host slipped into a black floor-length dress with a thigh high slit and diamante detailing.

Meanwhile AJ Odudu, 34, was dressed in a striking black gown comprising a mesh top half and stunning sequin bottom.

Earlier in the evening, Emma Watson cut a glamorous figure in a plunging black and white gown with a dramatic tulle skirt (pictured)

Following the ceremony, Emma looked sensational in her second look of the night as she donned a black lace sheer top with a plunging neckline. The film star paired it with a black blazer and matching trousers while she added height to her frame with a pair of platform boots

The British presenter then opted for a shimmering mini dress while attending the after party.

BAFTA bosses reportedly advised attendees to 'dress respectably' amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The move was said to have come amid fears attention-grabbing dresses and suits would appear distasteful in light of the Ukraine conflict.

'Several senior showbiz agents have advised stars to dress respectably, amid fears attention-grabbing dresses and suits would appear distasteful in light of the Ukraine conflict,' a source told the Sun on Sunday.

'The last thing they want is something like Lady Gaga's infamous meat dress or anything too controversial.'
His younger sister Georgia, nine, has also caught the acting bug and is the star of a new Northern Irish film, Torn - and younger brother Jonah is already attending the same drama class as his newly famous brother

LA talent agencies have been scrambling to sign the talented youngster; his mother Shauneen, now his manager, says she first noticed his acting skills when he read out a poem at school when he was just four

Advertisement

He was nine when he beat 300 hopefuls to play a fictionalised version of a young Sir Kenneth Branagh in the directors semi-autobiographical film, Belfast.

And now the talented Jude Hill, 11, has been tipped for superstardom after taking home the gong for Best Young Actor/Actress at the Critics' Choice Awards last night.

The blonde-haired boy from the village of Gilford, about 25 miles south-east of Belfast in County Down, appeared gobsmacked on stage as he collected the award, telling audiences: 'I'm gonna be completely honest, I have nothing prepared.'

He thanked his cast-mates, his mother and father, and singled out director Kenneth, adding: 'I love you so much, thank you for choosing me.'

The 11-year-old has won praise from critics across the world, as well as scooping the Best Newcomer Award at 5th Annual HCA Film Awards, for the role of Buddy in the black-and-white film, which documents life growing up in a working class family during the Troubles in the late 1960s.

But despite taking Hollywood by storm, the youngster has been hailed a 'normal boy' by his mother Shauneen, who has previously spoken of his down-to-earth attitude and love for Spiderman.

Scroll down for video

Hollywood calling: Jude Hill, 11, won the gong for Best Young Actor/Actress at the Critics' Choice Awards for the role of Buddy in Sir Kenneth Branagh's Belfast; it was Hill's first major film role after he beat 300 hopefuls to win the part

Hill, who grew up in a village 25 miles from Belfast, has been hailed as a natural by actor Sir Kenneth Branagh, with Dame Judi Dench saying the star was like an actor who had had 25 years experience

Potential: Hill in a photo posted on his Instagram account showing him during his final year at primary school

Family affair: Hill's parents, Darryl and Shauneen, are currently chaperoning their young son during his trip to California; the actor has a sister, Georgia, who also acts, and a younger brother, Jonah who is signed to the same drama school

Pictured earlier this year with This Morning presenters Alison Hammond (far left) and Holly Willoughby (far right) after an appearance on the ITV daytime show with his mum Shauneen

High praise: The Year 7 student is currently doing the rounds with his co-stars during Hollywood awards season - pictured left to right: Jamie Dornan, Caitriona Balfe, Jude Hill, Kenneth Branagh and Ciaran Hinds

Critics have garlanded the film with praise  in his five-star review, the Daily Mails critic Brian Viner called it a small masterpiece - and the awards season looks set to back that up.

Mingling with his co-stars on the red carpet this week - including Sir Kenneth Branagh, the youngster has had the chance to meet his heroes; he told reporters that he was lost for words after chatting to Spider-Man: No Way Home star Andrew Garfield.

His stratospheric rise to fame, after beating 300 hopefuls to play the part, has seen him win wide praise for his own stellar performance - and several awards, although he missed out on a predicted Oscar nomination.

Hill has now been signed by Hollywood acting agencies UTA and Berwick & Kovacik and further roles are surely just a matter of time - but his parents maintain that he's just 'a normal boy', who they're keen to protect from the glaring spotlight of Hollywood.

'Normal boy' A young Jude holding aloft a trophy for his drama skills, and right in Ninja outfits with his younger brother

Mum Shauneen has now given up her job to be a full-time manager to her son - and rising star daughter, Georgia. Pictured from left: Darryl, Georgia, Jude, Shauneen and Jonah

During award season, the blonde-haired youngster has been sharing photos of his rise to fame on his Instagram account, and has his own TikTok account too

Now 11, the young actor has been hailed as a natural by Sir Kenneth, while co-star Dame Judi Dench said he was completely like an actor who had had 25 years worth of experience.

For the Hill family, the bright lights of Hollywood are a far cry from the sleepy County Down village where they live.

Dad Darryl is an Operations Manager at Concentrix, while mum Shauneen has given up work to focus on the acting aspirations of both Jude and daughter Georgia.

Adorable photos on his official Instagram page - significantly glitzier in recent weeks - show the family in their everyday life, enjoying family holidays in Mallorca and gathered around a Christmas tree at their home.

The schoolboy trained at the Shelley Lowry School for speech and drama in his spare time while attending St John's Primary School. He secured the Hollywood role after sending in a tape of his work and having a series of virtual interviews and auditions.

Jude Hills stellar performance in Belfast has seen him already win awards for his portrayal of Buddy, although he missed out on a predicted Oscar nomination

His mother, Shauneen, now his full-time manager, said she spotted her sons talent when he was only four, after he recited the poem Roger Was A Razor Fish at school.

She told Belfast Live in October: 'It all started off with Jude whenever he was four. I used to bring him to all these Speech and Drama festivals and he cleaned up in every festival every year.

'I could see when he was in nursery, and even when he was in primary school, that when he'd be asked to read a poem in public or something - I could see how talented he was.'

After being encouraged to go for roles by local talent manager Lowry, the actor began sending out tapes, saying: 'The first audition I ever did was a self-tape. I go to speech and drama lessons and I do poems and extracts from books and my teacher sent through this self-tape and I filmed it and I got called back like five or six times.'

Jude Hill and his mother Shauneen Hill arrive the 24th British Independent Film Awards at Old Billingsgate on December 5, 2021 in London. It seems that his newfound fame is not going to his head. His mother said: Hes very humble and hes such a good boy about it'

Jude Hill (centre)with actors Judi Dench and Ciaran Hinds, his co stars in the film 'Belfast'. Mum Shauneen says he's taken to fame like a duck to water, saying: 'Hes very humble and hes such a good boy about it.'

On set: Director Kenneth Branagh (left) and Jude Hill (right) during the filming of Belfast; much of the film was shot in Berkshire

The self-tape was a scene from a film chosen by his mother. He used a scene from Belfast for future auditions before the final hurdle: A call with Sir Kenneth.

When the email came through I ran around my house screaming for about five minutes, Jude said of winning the role.

I didnt even get half way through and I read it all and I found out who would be in it and I was amazed... It was just crazy.

His younger sister, Georgia, is the star of a new short film written, Torn, by Lowry, in which Jude also stars, proving that the acting genes run in the family. She also recently finished filming Mimis World, a Channel 5 childrens drama, and appeared in the CBBC show Silverpoint.

Talent Manager Lowry told the Belfast Telegraph that all eyes are currently on Northern Ireland for young talent thanks to Belfast, saying: 'The eyes of the world are on Northern Ireland because of this brilliant film that Kenneth Branagh has made.

'When I was in LA with Jude, everyone I spoke to knew about the talent here. Theyre waiting to see whos going to be the next Dornan, Branagh or Neeson.'

Friends: The schoolboy's principal organised a trip to the cinema so that Hill's pals could see him in action

It seems Jude's not going to let his newfound fame is not going to his head. His mother said: Hes very humble and hes such a good boy about it.

'Even when he went back to school after [filming], his teachers were asking him lots of questions and he didnt really talk about it, saying: 'Hes just a normal boy and thats how we and him want to stay.

The 27th annual awards show was co-hosted by Taye Diggs and Nicole Byer and took place at the Fairmont Century Plaza Hotel in Century City, California.

Nominations for the event were announced back in December.

The Critics Choice Awards were originally scheduled to occur January 9 but were postponed due to the surge in COVID-19 cases due to the omicron variant.

The blonde-haired boy from the village of Gilford, about 25 miles south-east of Belfast in County Down, ap peared gobsmacked on stage as he collected the award, telling audiences: 'I'm gonna be completely honest, I have nothing prepared.'

The 11-year-old was brushing shoulders with A-listers during the award show last night, including Will Smith (left) and Jamie Dornan (right)

The Critics Choice Association said in a statement on January 13 they would be moving forward with an in-person event and working with the Los Angeles County Public Health Department 'to ensure that the proper COVID-19 protocols to keep all attendees safe and comfortable will be in place' by March 13.

'Following the science and tracking the course of the Omicron variant, we believe that March 13th will be the right day to properly honor the finest achievements in film and television during the past year,' CCA CEO Joey Berlin said in the statement.

'We could have proceeded with our original January 9th date with limited attendance or switched to a virtual awards show like we did last year, but we decided to wait until we could safely gather in person and truly celebrate with the creative community, industry leaders and our CCA members all together in one beautiful setting for all the world to see.'

The new date conflicted with another major awards show, the BAFTAS, which also took place March 13.

According to Variety sources, the CCAs and BAFTAs were in communication over the issue and had a mutual understanding amongst one another.
Peaky Blinders fans were devastated after last night's episode ended in the death of Tommy Shelby's daughter, Ruby.

Viewers were left in 'floods of tears' as they watched a tortured Tommy (Cillian Murphy) learn his seven-year-old girl had succumbed to tuberculosis days after she was admitted to hospital.

The news was delivered by his distraught wife Lizzie (Natasha O'Keefe), who collapsed on the hospital steps in the pouring rain after telling her husband: 'She's gone'.

The emotional scene struck a chord with fans of the show, with one tweeting: 'One of the most heartbreaking scenes in peaky blinders ever, my heart is hurting so much #PeakyBlinders.'

Peaky Blinders fans were devastated after last night's episode ended in the death of Tommy Shelby's daughter, Ruby. Pictured, Tommy (Cillian Murphy) and Lizzie (Natasha O'Keefe)

The emotional scene struck a chord with fans of the show who said they were heartbroken

Another wrote: 'Heartbreaking. Cant believe he didnt have a change to say goodbye #PeakyBlinders.'

A third added: 'The emotional damage this scene has caused me is indescribable.'

The third episode of series six focused on Tommy's quest to uncover a cure for Ruby's illness.

The little girl had been suffering from hallucinations that the gangster MP believed were tied to a Gypsy curse that had been put on him, despite doctors diagnosing the girl with tuburculosis.

Tommy went out in search of his widowed sister-in-law Esme Shelby Lee (Aimee-Ffion Edwards), who was living in the wilderness somewhere in the UK.

The third episode of series six focused on Tommy's quest to uncover a cure for Ruby's illness. Pictured, at his daughter's bedside in hospital

The little girl had been suffering from hallucinations that the gangster MP believed were tied to a Gypsy curse that had been put on him

Doctors had diagnosed Ruby (pictured) with tuberculosis and she was treated in hospital

Tommy went out in search of his widowed sister-in-law Esme Shelby Lee (Aimee-Ffion Edwards), who was living in the wilderness somewhere in the UK. He learned there was a curse put on him by the sister of a Gypsy he had met 10 years previously

While he was away, his sister Ada (Sophie Rundle) was tasked with keeping Shelby Company Ltd. running in London, including introducing Oswald Mosley (Sam Claflin) and his mistress Lady Diana Mitford (Amber Anderson) to Uncle Jack Nelson (James Frecheville) and his niece Gina Grey (Anya Taylor-Joy).

The tense meeting, hosted by Mosley, was designed to introduce the fascist leader to the American sympathiser. It also hinted at sexual tension between Jack and Ada.

Ada sent Arthur (Paul Anderson) and Isiah (Jordan Bolger) on a mission to Liverpool to speak to employees suspected of siphoning off heroin from the Peaky Blinders' warehouses.

It was there that fans were finally introduced to guest star Stephen Graham, who played the leader of the group responsible for skimming drugs.

Tommy vowed to 'buy off' the Gypsy responsible for laying the curse, believing he could still break it in time to save his daughter. But when he arrived back at the hospital, he learned he was too late. Lizzie was waiting for him to return (pictured)

Tommy was greeted by a tearful Lizzie, who burst outside and shouted: 'Where the f*** were you? Where were you? Where the f*** were you?'

As Tommy approached her in the rain, dumbfounded, she continued: 'She's gone, Tommy. She's gone. Just now. 5.17pm. You weren't f*****g here, were you'

Tommy was too shocked and heartbroken to speak as he learned of his daughter's final moments

Meanwhile Lizzie was forced to cope with her daughter's slow demise without the source of her husband and complained to Ada that she wished she was married to a 'normal man'.

Tommy believed he had found the answer he was looking for. It was not Esme who had cursed his family but the sister of another Gypsy, Bethany Boswell (Frances Tomelty).

Bethany, known as Madame Barwell, was last seen in series three, when Tommy went to see her to seek 'absolution'.

During the meeting, he presented her with a sapphire that his wife Grace had been wearing when she was shot dead. He had learned moment before that the jewel had been 'cursed by a Gypsy'.

Lizzie continued: 'She was asking just now for you but went. 5.17pm. I told her that you loved her... I gave her your kiss goodbye'

Fans of the show have speculated that losing his daughter will be enough to set Tommy on his final path to destruction

Madame Barwell told Tommy that the jewel was indeed cursed. Tommy left it with her.

In last night's episode, Esme told Tommy that Bethany brought the stone back to her camp.

'She gave the sapphire to her sister, Ivadni Barwell, Ivadni put the stone around the neck of her daughter, a little girl,' Esme continued. 'Straight away the little girl began to cough. She died that night. Seven years old.

'I'm guessing it will be the girl's mother who lay the curse... Perhaps she waited until your little girl was seven, so you'd know how it feels.'

Tommy vowed to 'buy off' the Gypsy responsible for laying the curse, believing he could still break it in time to save his daughter.

But when he arrived back at the hospital, he learned he was too late.

Lizzie collapsed on the stairs to the hospital in the rain after telling Tommy about Ruby

He was greeted by a tearful Lizzie, who burst outside and shouted: 'Where the f*** were you? Where were you? Where the f*** were you?'

As Tommy approached her in the rain, dumbfounded, she continued: 'She's gone, Tommy. She's gone. Just now. 5.17pm. You weren't f*****g here, were you.

'She was here and then she was gone and now she's gone to where they put the dead... They've put her with the dead people...

'She was asking just now for you but went. 5.17pm. I told her that you loved her... I gave her your kiss goodbye.'

Fans of the show have speculated that losing his daughter will be enough to set Tommy on his final path to destruction.

One tweeted: 'Tommys gonna go f*****g feral and on an absolute rampage now aint he. Its the beginning of the end I know it #PeakyBlinders.'

Another posted: 'Hes about to lose his s**t next week #PeakyBlinders.'

A third added: 'Me going to sleeps knowing Tommy will be even more sad and unstable. #PeakyBlinders.'
Advertisement

The Duchess of Cambridge appeared to show her support for Ukraine by wearing the royal blue of the country's flag to the Commonwealth Day service at Westminster Abbey.

Kate, 40, looked regal in the bespoke Catherine Walker coat dress, matching Lock & Co hat and blue Rupert Sanderson shoes as she joined Prince William at the high-profile event on Monday afternoon.

The Duchess completed the monochrome look with a sapphire jewellery set that once belonged to Princess Diana. She wore the same necklace and earrings when she and William welcomed Ukraine's President Zelensky and his wife Olena to Buckingham Palace in October 2020.

It comes days after Kate sported a vibrant blue jumper and a Ukrainian flag pin for a visit to the Ukrainian Cultural Centre in London.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge today joined Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and hundreds of dignitaries and schoolchildren for the annual event, which is an important date in the royal calendar.

The Queen, who has recently recovered from coronavirus and has been experiencing mobility issues, had hoped to attend in person but asked her son Charles to represent her at the service after discussing arrangements with members of the Royal Household.

Ensuring the comfort of the monarch, who now regularly uses a stick, is thought to have been an overriding consideration in her decision not to take part.

Spring blooms! The Duchess of Cambridge was presented with a pretty posy as she left the Commonwealth Day service

The Duchess of Cambridge looked radiant as she arrived with Prince William for the annual service in London today

Kate, 40, donned a stunning coat dress and matching hat as she arrived alongside her husband for the service

Kate looked radiant in a blue dress as she stepped out into rainy London with William holding an umbrella for her

The Duchess completed the monochrome look with a sapphire jewellery set (left) that once belonged to Princess Diana. She wore the same necklace and earrings when she and William welcomed Ukraine's President Zelensky and his wife Olena to Buckingham Palace in October 2020 (right)

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge with President Zelensky and his wife Olena at Buckingham Palace in 2020

The jewels (pictured left on Kate) are adapted from a set previously owned by Princess Diana (as seen right in 1988)

The Duchess of Cambridge beamed as she received the flowers from a group of schoolchildren on her way out

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge shared a light-hearted moment as they left Westminster Abbey under an umbrella

Kate looked chic in the royal blue ensemble, which she wore with Princess Diana's sapphire jewellery set

The Duchess' brunette curls tumbled down her back beneath her hat, which was positioned elegantly on top of her head

Prince William Camilla, Prince Charles and Kate speak upon their arrival at Westminster Abbey in London this afternoon

The first member of the Royal Family to arrive at today's engagement was the Queen's cousin, Princess Alexandra.

She was followed by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, who smiled as they made their way inside.

Prince William, 39, looked dapper in a suit and blue tie that complimented his wife's ensemble.

The Duchess of Cambridge opted for a coat dress by trusted designer Catherine Walker that was created especially for the occasion.

The design features incredibly neat tailoring, a longer length and a luxe velvet collar. It also boasts sharp shoulders and angular pockets that accentuate the crisp silhouette.

The Cambridges were followed by Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall. Camilla, 74, looked elegant in a vibrant purple coat dress and eye-catching matching hat.

They were greeted with a kiss on the cheek by William and Kate who chatted happily before taking their seats.

The Duchess of Cambridge put her best foot forward in a pair of navy suede shoes as she joined royals at the event

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge looked sombre as they attended the service at Westminster Abbey today

The Queen, who has recently recovered from coronavirus and has been experiencing mobility issues, had hoped to attend the important event in the royal calendar.

But last Friday, palace officials revealed that the monarch had asked her son Charles to represent her at the service after discussing arrangements with members of the Royal Household.

Today she said she hoped the Commonwealth 'remains an influential force for good in our world for many generations to come' and renewed her promise made in 1947 to 'always be devoted in service' in a written Commonwealth Day Message.

The head of state's comments were made in her annual message to the 'family of nations' released on Commonwealth Day, as many countries continued to battle Covid-19 and Russia's invasion of Ukraine threatened world peace and economic stability.

Now in the 70th year of her reign, the 95-year-old monarch said it had made her happy, during her Platinum Jubilee year, to reaffirm the pledge she made in 1947 as a 21-year-old to devote her life in service to the nation and Commonwealth.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were among the senior royals representing the Queen at today's service

The Duchess of Cambridge's coat features incredibly neat tailoring, a longer length and a luxe velvet collar. It also boasts sharp shoulders and angular pockets that accentuate the crisp silhouette

Prince William and Kate chatted to Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall as they arrived at Westminster Abbey today

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge wore coordinating blue outfits for the engagement at Westminster Abbey on Monday

The Prince of Wales speaks with the Duchess of Cambridge upon arrival at Westminster Abbey in London this afternoon

Prince William shook hands with Prime Minister Boris Johnson on his arrival at Westminster Abbey on Monday afternoon

Showcasing her flair for monochrome dressing, Kate wore the blue coat with blue gloves, shoes, hat and jewellery

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge looked elegant as they arrived at the service ahead of Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall

William walked slightly behind his wife as they arrived at Westminster Abbey for the Commonwealth Day service

The Duchess of Cambridge smiles as she attends the Commonwealth Service at Westminster Abbey this afternoon

The Queen sounded a positive note, extolling the virtues of the Commonwealth which 'continues to be a point of connection, co-operation and friendship'.

Her message to the family of nation's 2.5 billion citizens was released just ahead of a Westminster Abbey service marking Commonwealth Day, with guests to include the Prince of Wales, Duchess of Cornwall, Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, Prime Minister Boris Johnson and hundreds of dignitaries and young people.

Missing was the Queen who recently recovered from a bout of Covid and asked Charles to represent her after she decided not to attend following discussions with her household about arrangements for the event.

With the monarch now regularly using a stick and recently telling two senior military officers during a Windsor Castle reception 'well, as you can see, I can't move' when asked how she was, the decision is being interpreted as a mobility issue rather than a new health problem.

The Queen is due to celebrate her 96th birthday in under six weeks and maintaining her comfort is a consideration and it is understood she has been pacing herself, although the head of state was keen to do what work she could during her bout of Covid.

The Duchess of Cambridge's bespoke coat looked elegant as she arrived for the Commonwealth Day service in London

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were seated next to each other for the hour-long service at Westminster Abbey

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were seated between Princess Alexandra and the Duchess of Cornwall

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge chatted with Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall ahead of the service

The royals led the members of the congregation at the annual Commonwealth Day service in London today

Kate Middleton and Prince William greeted Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall on their arrival at the Abbey

The Duchess of Cornwall opted for a bold purple coat and matching hat with flower applique as she joined Charles

The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall arrive at the Commonwealth Service at Westminster Abbey today

The Prince of Wales (left) and the Duchess of Cornwall arrive at the Commonwealth Service at Westminster Abbey today

Prince Charles and Camilla listen to the Commonwealth Service at Westminster Abbey in London this afternoon

In her written message, the Queen said: 'In this year of my Platinum Jubilee, it has given me pleasure to renew the promise I made in 1947, that my life will always be devoted in service.

'Today, it is rewarding to observe a modern, vibrant and connected Commonwealth that combines a wealth of history and tradition with the great social, cultural and technological advances of our time. That the Commonwealth stands ever taller is a credit to all who have been involved.'

The head of state went on to say: 'Our family of nations continues to be a point of connection, co-operation and friendship.

'It is a place to come together to pursue common goals and the common good, providing everyone with the opportunity to serve and benefit.

'In these testing times, it is my hope that you can draw strength and inspiration from what we share, as we work together towards a healthy, sustainable and prosperous future for all.'

The Queen's cousin Princess Alexandra was the first member of the Royal Family to arrive at the service today

Prime Minister Boris Johnson shakes hands with The Right Reverend and the Right Honourable Lord Sentamu (right) today

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer (left) and Home Secretary Priti Patel (right) arrive at the Commonwealth Service this afternoon
Kidnapping survivor Elizabeth Smart has marked the 19th anniversary of her rescue from her captors, saying it was a 'miracle' she was found nine months after being abducted from her family's home.

The 34-year-old was famously taken from her bed at knifepoint when she was 14 years old and held captive by Brian David Mitchell and his wife, Wanda Barzee, before being rescued and returned to her parents on March 12, 2003.

Smart took to Instagram on Saturday to share a photo of herself with her husband, Matthew Gilmour, and their three children that was taken during a recent shoot with Sierra Campbell Photography, while reflecting on the day she was saved.

'I have always believed in Miracles but today marks the 19 year anniversary of the biggest miracle I ever experienced. I just wanted to briefly say thank you to everyone who helped rescue me,' she wrote.

Kidnapping survivor Elizabeth Smart, 34, reflected on her 'miracle' rescue in an Instagram post on Saturday, marking the 19th anniversary of her being found in Utah

Smart was famously abducted from her bed at knifepoint when she was 14 years old and held captive by Brian David Mitchell and his wife, Wanda Barzee

'Thank you to those of you who prayed for me, searched for me, and supported me all those years ago through today. I will forever be grateful.'

Smart went on to say that she is also thankful for her husband and children, explaining there were times when she didn't think she'd have a family of her own.

'I am happy today, and feel so lucky to have found my husband and best friend, and to be the mother to my three babies. For a while this dream felt far out of reach in fact completely unreachable,' she shared.

Smart ended her post with a message for other kidnapping victims who have yet to be found and their families who are still searching for them.

She spent nine months, from June 2002 to March 2003, in captivity, with Mitchell performing a 'marriage' ceremony with her and raping her repeatedly

Smart was eventually found on March 12, 2003, at age 15 after witnesses in Sandy, Utah, called police. She is pictured with her parents in April 2003, a month after she was rescued

'So today I want to say to those still searching you will always remain in my prayers and I refuse to lose hope that your loved ones will be found, and to those still missing dont give up miracles happen, you deserve to be found, rescued, and to have happiness, and finally to those who are struggling along the way; no matter what point you find yourself, dont give up,' she concluded.

'You never deserved to be hurt. You deserve to be believed, supported, loved, and happy. Everyone has a story and challenges, you are not alone. God bless all of you.'

Smart recently opened up about her concern for her family after she was kidnapped during an interview with Jada Pinkett Smith and her mother Adrienne Banfield-Norris on Red Table Talk in October.

She recalled how she begged Mitchell to rape and kill her close to her house so that her parents would be able to find her body  and know for sure that she didn't choose to run away from home.

'My parents always said the worst part of having me gone was not knowing if I was alive and out there or if I was dead,' she told the women.

In her latest post, she shared that she is thankful for her husband, Matthew Gilmour, and their children, explaining there were times when she didn't think she'd have a family of her own

Smart has already started speaking to her seven-year-old daughter, Chloe, about what happened to her

'And actually, when I was being taken up into the mountains, that first night that I was kidnapped, I asked him if he was gonna rape and kill me, and if he was gonna do that, could he please do it fairly close to my house, because it was important to me that my parents find my body and know that I hadn't run away.'

Mitchell and Barzee didn't kill her when they took her away from her home in Salt Lake City, Utah, but she was held in captivity for nine months, from June 2002 to March 2003.

The self-proclaimed prophet performed a mock wedding ceremony upon taking her into the woods and tied her up with steel cables in a dugout filled with mice and spiders.

She was forced to take drugs and drink alcohol, she testified in 2009, and was raped daily  as often as four times a day. They later moved her to Lakeside, California, for the winter and tried to kidnap other girls.

'Their plan was to kidnap seven young girls. I was just the first. And they actually made several attempts while I was with them,' she recalled.

Mitchell (pictured being escorted to court in 2005) subjected Smart to horrific abuse and was convicted in 2010

Mitchell (left) is serving life in prison, but his wife, Wanda Barzee (right), was sentenced to just 15 years and was released in September 2018

Smart explained that while she spent those nine months wishing someone would find her, there were times she lost hope she'd ever make it home.

'I always wanted to be rescued. I don't know that I always had hope. There were some pretty dark times for sure,' she said.

After Mitchell and Barzee's last failed attempt to kidnap another girl, she convinced them to return to Utah. She was eventually found at age 15 after witnesses in Sandy called police.

One said she recognized Smart, while another said she recognized the abductor.

'I don't think I'll ever lose my faith in humanity, because everyone kept their eyes open and just simple phone calls to the police ultimately led to my rescue, my homecoming,' she explained.

Smart shared harrowing details of her experience in a candid new interview with Jada Pinkett Smith and her mother Adrienne Banfield-Norris on Red Table Talk in October

She recalled how she begged her abductor to rape and kill her close to her house so that her parents would be able to find her body

'My parents always said the worst part of having me gone was not knowing if I was alive and out there or if I was dead,' she told the women

Smart has since gone on to become a public speaker, an author, and an advocate, and she openly speaks about her ordeal.

She and her husband now have three children of their own: seven-year-old Chloe, four-year-old James, and three-year-old Olivia. She has already started speaking to her eldest daughter about what happened to her.

'They are young,' she said on Red Table Talk, 'but someone told me that as soon as your child starts asking questions, that's the right time to start talking to them.

'One of my captors was coming up for parole, and I was supposed to go down to the prison that day to go give a victim impact statement. My daughter, my oldest, didn't really want me to go and kept asking [questions].

'I started talking to her, but it's not in graphic detail. "When mommy was younger, there was a man who broke into my home and hurt me. And now he and his wife are in jail and I'm going down there to make sure that they stay in jail,"' she said.

Smart admitted that she is 'overprotective' as a mother, but that's where her husband comes in to 'pull her back down to earth'

Smart has spoken openly about her ordeal as a public speaker, an author, and an advocate

Smart admitted that she is 'overprotective' as a mother, but that's where her husband comes in to 'pull her back down to earth.'

Though Mitchell is serving life in prison, Barzee was sentenced to just 15 years. In a plea deal, she was given credit for the seven years she had already served.

She was released from prison in September 2018 and now lives in the same town as Smart, despite Smart's pleas to the parole board not to set her free.

Smart admitted she was 'disappointed' in the outcome, but said it gives her a greater appreciation for those victims who never even have a 'smidgen of justice.'

'At least I got something. How many more haven't?' she said.
Naomi Campbell stepped out in style as she attended the Commonwealth Service at Westminster Abbey in London today.

The mother-of-one attended in her role as the Global Ambassador for the Queen's Commonwealth Trust.

Since receiving the role back in September 2021, Naomi has been responsible for raising the profile of the QCT and supporting innovators across the Commonwealth aged between 18 and 35.

The supermodel, 51, donned a custom Alaia Prince of Wales wool double-breast jacket, teamed with a chic grey peplum skirt and beret.

Naomi Campbell, 51, (pictured) looked stylish as she attended the Commonwealth Service at Westminster Abbey today

Naomi looked ageless as she opted for subtle make-up to enhance her natural features including a pink lipstick, while wearing oversize sunglasses to protect her eyes.

She completed the striking look by wearing her dark hair swept behind her shoulders.

The supermodel has consistently participated in charity work that aims to improve the lives of young people throughout her career in addition to using her voice to raise awareness of injustices.

Naomi gushed about the 'privilege' of accepting a role for The Queen's Commonwealth Trust at an event held at the Cafe Royal Hotel in Central London after she was announced as the first person to become Global Ambassador.

Naomi said: 'It is my privilege to accept this role as Global Ambassador for The Queen's Commonwealth Trust. Regardless of where you are from or where you are now, there are young leaders within your community doing amazing work.

'Sometimes they are not seen and some of them may not even see themselves as 'leaders' yet, but they all deserve our support, and access to education and resources. I have been doing work with empowering young people for over 25 years.

Naomi (pictured) has previously gushed about her role as Global Ambassador for The Queen's Commonwealth Trust

'This is something very close to my heart and I will continue to do everything I can to uplift the next generation, so they can create a better future for their communities.'

Christopher Kelly who is CEO of the Queen's Commonwealth Trust, added: 'We are delighted that Naomi has agreed to support QCT as our first Global Ambassador at what is a pivotal moment for QCT and the young leaders we support, like Bukky.

'Naomi brings a shared passion for improving the lives of people all over the world, a cause we aim to accelerate through the QCT Platinum Jubilee Fund for Young Leaders.

'Through the Platinum Jubilee year and celebratory events around the Commonwealth in 2022, we aim to bring to life the rich narrative of Her Majesty The Queen's own commitment to young leaders and the Commonwealth. Naomi will help us to shine a spotlight on their service, innovation and achievements.'

Naomi's attendance at today's Commonwealth Service came just hours after she attended a boozy BAFTA after party alongside other A-list celebrities.

Naomi (pictured) stepped out in a striking grey outfit including a custom Alaia Prince of Wales wool double-breast jacket, skirt and beret

The Duchess of Cambridge appeared to show her support for Ukraine by wearing the royal blue of the country's flag to the Commonwealth Day service at Westminster Abbey.

Kate, 40, looked regal in the bespoke Catherine Walker coat dress, matching Lock & Co hat and blue Rupert Sanderson shoes as she joined Prince William at the high-profile event on Monday afternoon.

The Duchess completed the monochrome look with a sapphire jewellery set that once belonged to Princess Diana. She wore the same necklace and earrings when she and William welcomed Ukraine's President Zelensky and his wife Olena to Buckingham Palace in October 2020.

It comes days after Kate sported a vibrant blue jumper and a Ukrainian flag pin for a visit to the Ukrainian Cultural Centre in London.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge today joined Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and hundreds of dignitaries and schoolchildren for the annual event, which is an important date in the royal calendar.

The Queen, who has recently recovered from coronavirus and has been experiencing mobility issues, had hoped to attend in person but asked her son Charles to represent her at the service after discussing arrangements with members of the Royal Household.

Ensuring the comfort of the monarch, who now regularly uses a stick, is thought to have been an overriding consideration in her decision not to take part.

Kate, 40, donned a stunning coat dress and matching hat as she arrived alongside her husband for the service at Westminster Abbey, in London

The Duchess of Cambridge looked radiant as she arrived with Prince William for the annual service in London today

The Duchess completed the monochrome look with a sapphire jewellery set that once belonged to Princess Diana. She wore the same necklace and earrings when she and William welcomed Ukraine's President Zelensky and his wife Olena to Buckingham Palace in October 2020, pictured

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge with President Zelensky and his wife Olena at Buckingham Palace in 2020

Kate looked chic in the royal blue ensemble, which she wore with Princess Diana's sapphire jewellery set

The Duchess' brunette curls tumbled down her back beneath her hat, which was positioned elegantly on top of her head

The first member of the Royal Family to arrive at today's engagement was the Queen's cousin, Princess Alexandra.

She was followed by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, who smiled as they made their way inside.

Prince William, 39, looked dapper in a suit and blue tie that complimented his wife's ensemble.

The Duchess of Cambridge opted for a coat dress by trusted designer Catherine Walker that was created especially for the occasion.

The design features incredibly neat tailoring, a longer length and a luxe velvet collar. It also boasts sharp shoulders and angular pockets that accentuate the crisp silhouette.

The Cambridges were followed by Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall. Camilla, 74, looked elegant in a vibrant purple coat dress and eye-catching matching hat.

They were greeted with a kiss on the cheek by William and Kate who chatted happily before taking their seats.

The Duchess of Cambridge put her best foot forward in a pair of navy suede shoes as she joined royals at the event

Prince William shook hands with Prime Minister Boris Johnson on his arrival at Westminster Abbey on Monday afternoon

The Queen, who has recently recovered from coronavirus and has been experiencing mobility issues, had hoped to attend the important event in the royal calendar.

But last Friday, palace officials revealed that the monarch had asked her son Charles to represent her at the service after discussing arrangements with members of the Royal Household.

Today she said she hoped the Commonwealth 'remains an influential force for good in our world for many generations to come' and renewed her promise made in 1947 to 'always be devoted in service' in a written Commonwealth Day Message.

The head of state's comments were made in her annual message to the 'family of nations' released on Commonwealth Day, as many countries continued to battle Covid-19 and Russia's invasion of Ukraine threatened world peace and economic stability.

Now in the 70th year of her reign, the 95-year-old monarch said it had made her happy, during her Platinum Jubilee year, to reaffirm the pledge she made in 1947 as a 21-year-old to devote her life in service to the nation and Commonwealth.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge looked elegant as they arrived at the service ahead of Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall

Showcasing her flair for monochrome dressing, Kate wore the blue coat with blue gloves, shoes, hat and jewellery

The Duchess of Cambridge's bespoke coat looked elegant as she arrived for the Commonwealth Day service in London

The Duchess of Cornwall opted for a bold purple coat and matching hat with flower applique as she joined Charles

The Queen sounded a positive note, extolling the virtues of the Commonwealth which 'continues to be a point of connection, co-operation and friendship'.

Her message to the family of nation's 2.5 billion citizens was released just ahead of a Westminster Abbey service marking Commonwealth Day, with guests to include the Prince of Wales, Duchess of Cornwall, Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, Prime Minister Boris Johnson and hundreds of dignitaries and young people.

Missing was the Queen who recently recovered from a bout of Covid and asked Charles to represent her after she decided not to attend following discussions with her household about arrangements for the event.

With the monarch now regularly using a stick and recently telling two senior military officers during a Windsor Castle reception 'well, as you can see, I can't move' when asked how she was, the decision is being interpreted as a mobility issue rather than a new health problem.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge chatted with Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall ahead of the service

The royals led the members of the congregation at the annual Commonwealth Day service in London today

Kate Middleton and Prince William greeted Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall on their arrival at the Abbey

The Queen is due to celebrate her 96th birthday in under six weeks and maintaining her comfort is a consideration and it is understood she has been pacing herself, although the head of state was keen to do what work she could during her bout of Covid.

In her written message, the Queen said: 'In this year of my Platinum Jubilee, it has given me pleasure to renew the promise I made in 1947, that my life will always be devoted in service.

'Today, it is rewarding to observe a modern, vibrant and connected Commonwealth that combines a wealth of history and tradition with the great social, cultural and technological advances of our time. That the Commonwealth stands ever taller is a credit to all who have been involved.'

The Queen's cousin Princess Alexandra was the first member of the Royal Family to arrive at the service today

The head of state went on to say: 'Our family of nations continues to be a point of connection, co-operation and friendship.

'It is a place to come together to pursue common goals and the common good, providing everyone with the opportunity to serve and benefit.

'In these testing times, it is my hope that you can draw strength and inspiration from what we share, as we work together towards a healthy, sustainable and prosperous future for all.'
While some famous figures used the BAFTA red carpet to speak out in support of Ukraine, others are taking more practical measures to hope those in need.

Burberry model Otis Ferry, who is dating Lady Alice Manners of The Crown's Belvoir Castle, is on the Ukraine-Poland border where he is busy transporting essentials like medicine and sanitary products.

The 39-year-old, son of late socialite Lucy Birley and Roxy Music frontman Bryan Ferry, was lent the van by Belvoir, the Leicestershire family seat of Alice's father, the Duke of Rutland.

Taking action: Burberry model Otis Ferry, who is dating Lady Alice Manners of The Crown's Belvoir Castle, is on the Ukraine-Poland border where he is busy transporting essentials like medicine and sanitary products. Pictured, Otis and Lady Alice at a 2019 event

Stopped on the border: Otis revealed he was searched by Polish officials after spending the night in his van

Flying the flag: Belvoir Castle, in Leicestershire, is showing its support for Ukraine

Lady Isabella Naylor-Leyland, wife of the wealthy landowner Sir Philip Naylor-Leyland, 4th Baronet, is in Przemysl, Poland, where she is volunteering for the World Food Kitchen

The Duchess of Rutland organised a collection for clothes, blankets and other much-needed items before they were driven across Europe by her daughter's boyfriend.

Otis is documenting his experience on Instagram. Arriving at the border last Thursday, Otis wrote: '1,315 miles 4 vans loaded with supplies generously donated by people across England. We have unloaded all of our supplies and they have been transferred to vans driving into the red zone.

'We couldnt cross the border even if we had wanted to as we didnt have our van logbooks! It seems absolutely insane to me that aid is being slowed up because of this! Luckily there was a good team to receive all the supplies.

'We plan to run some shuttle services tomorrow to get fleeing women and children to shelter.

'Its -3 and tonight we are sleeping in the vans and I seriously regretting handing over all that warm bedding!!!! Just need to be grateful I'm not fleeing from home in fear of my life.

Giving back: The Duchess of Rutland organised a collection for clothes, blankets and other much-needed items before they were driven across Europe by her daughter's boyfriend

Setting off: Emma, Duchess of Rutland, shared a snap of Otis ahead of his journey

Tracking his progress: Otis has been sharing updates on Instagram, including this map showing his route

Made it to the border: Otis shared this photo after successfully handing off the supplies

Freezing: The 39-year-old shared a photo of his frozen water bottle after a night in the van

Message of hope: A heart carved into a field near the border between Ukraine and Poland

The following day he shared the update: 'After dropping our aid at the border around Midnight we were too tired to try and source accommodation.

'We found a beautiful woodland track which we thought was suitably out of the way to get a good nights sleep. We hadnt factored in the -9 temperature or we would have held back some more bedding.

'Without doubt the coldest night Ive experienced, and wasnt expecting a wake up call from the polish military... their eyebrows were raised when they spotted the Russian Visa in my passport... However they were quite sympathetic when they saw the frozen bottle I had been sleeping next to!!!'

Yesterday he revealed he had crossed the border and driven to Lviv, where he joined volunteers organising and distributing donations.

Volunteering: Lady Isabella (right) and her childhood friend Anna are cooking in Poland

His efforts were publicly praised by proud girlfriend Alice, who wrote: 'So proud of him driving out with donationsits unbearable watching the situation unfold. How can anyone want to create such terror.'

He's not the only well-heeled volunteer who's made the journey.

Lady Isabella Naylor-Leyland, wife of the wealthy landowner Sir Philip Naylor-Leyland, 4th Baronet, is in Przemysl, Poland, where she is volunteering for the World Food Kitchen.

Proud daughter-in-law Alice Naylor-Leyland, contributor at US Vogue and runs her own tableware company, Mrs Alice, praised the 'brave' feat.

Alice is married to Tom Naylor-Leyland, who is heir to the family's 176million fortune and vast estates, including the 17th century Nantclwyd Hall in Denbighshire, Wales.
The Duchess of Cornwall engaged in a sweet chat with Prince William today in her first major event since being named as future Queen.

Camilla, 74, embraced her stepson as the pair were joined by Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cambridge for the Commonwealth Day Event at Westminster Abbey.

Dressed in a purple ensemble, Camilla looked delighted to chat to William, 39, as the pair giggled while Charles, 73, and Kate Middleton, 40, also appeared to share a joke.

According to expert lip reader Jacqui Press, the group of four expressed sweet words to one another with Camilla telling William 'thank you' lovely' and 'oh wow'.

She added that Charles told Kate: 'We could come and see you that Saturday, we are not around that evening'.

The group were meeting to celebrate the 54 member states of the Commonwealth at an annual service which was missed by the Queen.

Her Majesty had earlier said she hoped the Commonwealth 'remains an influential force for good in our world for many generations to come' as she renewed her promise made in 1947 to 'always be devoted in service'. The head of state's Commonwealth Day Message was issued by Buckingham Palace today ahead of the annual service.

The Duchess of Cornwall engaged in a sweet chat with Prince William today in her first major event since being named as future Queen.

Camilla, 74, embraced her stepson as the pair were joined by Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cambridge for the Commonwealth Day Event at Westminster Abbey.

The Queen, who has recently recovered from coronavirus and has been experiencing mobility issues, had hoped to attend the important event in the royal calendar alongside Charles, Camilla, William and Kate.

The event is Camilla's first major outing since The Queen issued her royal seal of approval for the duchess to use the title of Queen when her husband, Prince Charles, becomes King.

Enjoying a close relationship with her step-children, and Duke of Cambridge is said to be 'supportive' of the Queen's move to make his stepmother Queen consort.

Prince William was not part of the decision-making process but is 'respectful' of the logic of his grandmother's decision, sources previously told the Daily Mail.

Prince William, Camilla, Prince Charles and Kate speak upon their arrival at Westminster Abbey in London this afternoon

The Duchess of Cornwall holds onto her hat as she arrives at Westminster Abbey for the Commonwealth Service today

Sources say that while William and Camilla's was not an easy relationship at first  or indeed for a number of years after her marriage to his father  the second in line to the throne is pragmatic about her role in his father's life and, now, the future of the monarchy.

'The duke is supportive,' a well-placed palace source confirmed to the Daily Mail last monyh.

Another emphasised that while he was not part of the final decision-making process, the prince would have discussed the issue with his father and, effectively, given his blessing.

'None of this can have been easy for him,' one insider said.

'There were huge family rows in the early stages of Charles and Camilla's marriage as everyone found their feet. William didn't have the best relationship with his father back then.

The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall arrive at the Commonwealth Service at Westminster Abbey today

The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall arrive at the Commonwealth Service at Westminster Abbey today

'But he sees that Camilla had made his father happy and it is something he has come to terms with.

'His relationship with the Prince of Wales is better than it ever has been. He is not particularly close to his stepmother but they get on perfectly well and are quite the blended family now. He also respects his grandmother and her judgment more than anything in the world. If it is right for her, then it will be right for him.'

Friends say that William still believes he has a role to champion his late mother's legacy and will never shy away from speaking about Princess Diana, her achievements or the way she was treated, not just by the Royal Family but by the media and establishment.

Prince Charles changed his coronation vows several years ago to include 'Queen Camilla'  with his mother's blessing.

The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall arrive at the Commonwealth Service at Westminster Abbey today

The insertion of his wife's title was included as part of a general reworking of plans for the Westminster Abbey ceremony up to five years ago, a senior palace source said.

Last month, the Queen announced that the Duchess of Cornwall will become Queen Consort when her husband accedes to the throne.

It can also be revealed that Camilla will have the Queen Mother's priceless platinum and diamond crown placed on her head when Charles is made king. It was created for King George VI's coronation in 1937.

The Prince of Wales made clear his gratitude to the Queen for her support, saying that he and Camilla  who he described as his 'darling wife'  were 'deeply conscious of the honour represented' by his mother's wish.

Today, the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall were greeted as they arrived - while inside the place of worship, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were waiting and the two royal couples kissed each other on the cheeks.

And the Very Reverend Dr David Hoyle, the Dean of Westminster, told the congregation today: 'In this Jubilee year, in which we rejoice in the 70 years that Her Majesty the Queen has presided over this Commonwealth, we also thank God for her faithfulness and commit ourselves to learn from an example of duty and service. In words and music in the Abbey, we will now retrace the steps of her great Commonwealth tour begun 70 years ago.'

Among the arrivals before the royals were Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, Home Secretary Priti Patel and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss along with David Walliams who brought his mother Kathleen.

Also attending this afternoon were Sarah Clarke, Lady Usher of the Black Rod; Mark Spencer, Leader of the House of Commons; and US ambassador Philip Reeker - as well as Baroness Patricia Scotland and MP Jacob Rees-Mogg.

The Queen said today that it was 'rewarding to observe a modern, vibrant and connected Commonwealth that combines a wealth of history and tradition with the great social, cultural and technological advances of our time'.
While it may not cure Covid, the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine could help treat cancer, a new study suggests.

Hydroxychloroquine was thrust into the limelight as a potential Covid treatment in 2020 by then US President Donald Trump, who called it a 'gift from God'.

While medical trials eventually poured cold water on the drug as a tool in the fight against Covid, experts believe it may have cancer-fighting applications.

University of Pittsburgh researchers found hydroxychloroquine made drug-resistant tumours more vulnerable to chemotherapy.

Hydroxychloroquine 'disrupted' a protein linked to resistance against cisplatin  a common chemotherapy drug.

Overexpression of TMEM16A, as the protein is named, occurs in about 30 per cent of head and neck cancers and is linked to lower survival odds.

Promising test results on chicken eggs and mice have now led to plans for a trial of the cheap pill on human cancer patients.

Hydroxychloroquine has been an established anti-malaria drug for years and recently demonstrated potential to help treat some types of cancer

The drug was infamously promoted as a potential Covid treatment by then US president Donald Trump who took the medication himself as a prophylactic

Mr Trump was strong advocate of using hydroxychloroquine often in defiance of his own health authorities and criticising them on social media, as he did in this Tweet published on August 22 2020

Hydroxychloroquine: Why did Donald Trump call it 'a gift from God' What is hydroxychloroquine? A medication originally developed to treat malaria in the 1940s, hydroxychloroquine was also later approved to be used for patients with rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. How does it work? Hydroxychloroquine is an immune system modulator  a type of drug that can turn the immune system on, ramp it up, or act like a reset and make it behave normally. This is why it works for autoimmune conditions like rheumatoid arthritis and lupus, where the body's own immune system mistakenly attacks healthy tissues. Why was it touted as a Covid treatment? After Covid started sweeping across the globe in 2020, some early studies pointed to hydroxychloroquine as a potential Covid treatment. The logic was that the drug could be used to help reduce the severe inflammation that results from the body's immune system attempting to fight off the virus, in the same way it helps regulate the immune system with lupus and arthritis. Often it is the inflammation resulting from a serious Covid infection that can prove fatal. Who supported the idea of it as a Covid treatment? Then US President Donald Trump was a big advocate of hydroxychloroquine at one point, describing it as 'a gift from God'. It came at a time when scientists were looking for potential Covid treatments and no vaccines had yet been developed. However, a number of the studies touting hydroxychloroquine as a potential Covid treatment were found to have significant issues in their data quality. Experts and health authorities cautioned against people taking the drug in an attempt to stave off Covid. Why did some people urge caution? Essentially because hydroxychloroquine, like many medications, has potentially dangerous side effects. One of these is heart arrhythmia, an irregular heart beat. If were people were to take hydroxychloroquine for potentially no benefit against Covid they could be putting themselves at significant health risk, especially if doing so unsupervised outside a medical trial where dosage is carefully monitored. What did later studies show? Larger more robust studies eventually concluded that hydroxychloroquine offered no benefit to Covid patients compared to other medications or supportive care. Advertisement

Study author Umamaheswar Duvvuri, a surgeon specialising in head and neck cancers, said people with the disease often had poorer outcomes due to drug resistance.

'When caring for patients with head and neck cancers, I often see chemotherapy fail,' he said.

'Cisplatin is a very important chemotherapy drug, but tumour resistance to cisplatin is a huge problem.'

TMEM16A works to boost production of lysosomes, a cell component which acts like an internal waste disposal system.

In tumours, this process can act against chemo drugs because the lysosomes expel cisplatin, rendering the drug less effective.

Hydroxychloroquine is already known to inhibit lysosomes, so the experts wanted to examine if the medication could help overrule the resistance.

Firstly, they implanted human cancer cells into the membrane surrounding chicken embryos.

Eggs treated with a combination of hydroxychloroquine and cisplatin had a greater rate of 'tumour cell death' than those treated with cisplatin alone.

The findings were replicated in a study on mice with tumours derived from cisplatin-resistant cancer cells.

Dr Duvvuri said the findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggested hydroxychloroquine could have work in humans.

'These experiments suggest that hydroxychloroquine has a synergistic effect with cisplatin,' he said.

The team are now designing a phase II trial to treat head and neck cancer patients with a combination of hydroxychloroquine and cisplatin.

About 12,400 people are diagnosed with a head and neck cancer each year in the UK, with about 4,000 Britons dying from the disease per annum.

In the US over 46,000 people were diagnosed with head and neck cancers in 2018, and just over 10,000 deaths were recorded.

Ten-year survival rates for the disease vary between 20 and 60 per cent depending on where exactly a patient develops cancer.

Hydroxychloroquine has been approved since the 1940s as a treatment for malaria.

It has also been used to treat rheumatoid arthritis and lupus, and help patients who have an overactive immune system.

However, like many drugs, it does have some potentially serious side effects which can include heart rhythm problems, severely low blood pressure and muscle or nerve damage.

Some promising early studies published in 2020 shortly after Covid began sowing chaos across the globe pointed to hydroxychloroquine as a potential treatment for the virus.

The studies were limited and based on small patient samples which often lacked a control group, prompting caution from many scientists who said it was too early to offer hydroxychloroquine as a Covid treatment.

But this didn't stop some global leaders, such as Mr Trump and Brazilin President Jair Bolsonaro, promoting its use.

Mr Trump in particular was a passionate fan of the drug, and at one point revealed he was taking the medication as a prophylactic.

Subsequent larger and more rigorous trials into hydroxychloroquine published later in 2020 eventually showed it did nothing to help Covid patients. There's also no proof it acts as a prophylactic.

However, the drug still has its fans as a Covid treatment and some vaccine skeptic commenters have said they are taking as recently as January this year.
Ban on leaded petrol and paint may be behind drop, their study suggests

Male birth rate has dropped in Japan over the last 50 years, researchers say

Lower levels of lead in expectant mothers' blood raises likelihood of having a girl

A ban on lead petrol beginning in the 1980s may explain a slight drop in the number of boys being born in Japan, a study suggests.

Researchers claim pregnant women with lower levels of the metal in their blood have a higher chance of having a baby girl.

The study of 85,000 expectant mothers in Japan found 48 per cent of babies born to women with the lowest concentrations of lead in their bloodstream were boys.

But as lead levels increased in expectant mothers, so did the rate of boys born, with the figure standing at 53 per cent for those with the highest concentration.

More boys have been born every year than girls for as far as records go back, at a rate of around 105 boys for every 100 girls born. But a number of developed nations have seen that gap narrow since the 1970s, including Japan, Germany and the US.

Exposure to toxic substances including dioxins and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) have previously been touted as possible reasons for the variation.

The latest study, by experts from Tohoku University in Sendai, is the first to link a decrease in blood lead levels to a smaller likelihood of having a son.

The finding goes against previous research which found male foetuses are more vulnerable to higher levels of lead in their mother.

Lead petrol first started to be banned in the 1980s because dozens of studies linked leaded petrol to premature deaths and poor health. It was finally eradicated last year after Algeria became the final country to end use of the fuel.

A study of 85,000 expectant mothers in Japan found that those who had higher levels of lead in their blood during their pregnancy were less likely to have a girl. The graph shows that pregnant women - who were split into five groups depending on their blood lead concentration - shows the more lead in their blood, they more likely they were to have a boy

Researchers at Tohoku University in Sendai said banning leaded petrol and paint which are 'reproductive toxins'  in Japan in 1980 may explain the declining rate of boys being born. The US and Germany, which banned leaded fuel in 1996, have also seen a similar drop in the proportion of boys born in relation to girls

However, data from the UK, which began phasing out leaded petrol in the 1980s before implementing a ban in 2000, shows little variation in the male birth rate since then

Dozens of studies over the last 100 years have linked leaded petrol to premature deaths, poor health and air pollution.

Other sources of lead exposure can include old paints and food containers, or drinking tap water from a property that has leaded pipes. There is no safe level of exposure to lead.

For every 100 girls born in Japan, around 105 boys are born, the researchers said.

But this rate has dropped from 107:100 over the last 50 years - since around 1970.

The researchers said lead, which is a 'reproductive toxin' known to harm fertility and male sperm quality, as well as increase the risk of miscarriage, perterm birth and lower birth weight, may also 'play an important role in affecting sex ratio at birth'.

But they noted it is unclear how higher levels of lead in pregnant women's blood triggers more male births.

For example, earlier studies of pregnant women and their children in the UK and Mexio found no link between the lead levels and the sex of their child.

The UK began phasing out leaded petrol in the 1980s before implementing a ban in 2000.

However, there has been little variation in the male birth rate since then.

HEALTH EFFECTS OF LEAD EXPOSURE Lead exposure happens when lead enters the body, in most cases in small amounts over a period of time. Most people's risk of lead poisoning is low, as it is not generally used in paints, petrol or food containers. Pregnant women and children are most at risk from lead exposure. Pregnant women: - Cause the baby to be born too early or too small - Hurt the babys brain, kidneys and nervous system - Increase the likelihood of learning or behavioral problems - Put the mother at risk of miscarriage Children: - Behavior and learning problems - Lower IQ and Hyperactivity - Slowed growth - Hearing Problems - Anemia Adults: - Cardiovascular effects, increased blood pressure and incidence of hypertension - Decreased kidney function - Reproductive problems (in both men and women) Advertisement

To determine whether lead exposure impacted the rate of male births in Japan, they examined blood samples of 85,171 pregnant women, gathered by Japan's Ministry of Environment between 2011 and 2014.

They were split into five groups according to their blood lead levels, which ranged from 1.2 nanogram per gram of blood to 110 ng/g.

They measured the rate of males born per 100 females born, known as the secondary sex ratio (SSR).

The study, published in Science of Total Environment, found the proportion of boys born was higher among women with more lead in their blood.

Some 48.3 per cent of babies were boys among pregnant women with the lowest lead blood concentration  between 1.2 and 4.5 ng/g.

The rate increased for those with higher levels of the toxin in their blood to 49.9 per cent in the group with the second-lowest levels of lead (4.5 to 5.4 ng/g) and 50.4 per cent for the third group (5.4 to 6.4 ng/g).

The proportion of boys born increased to 52.5 per cent among women with the second-highest level of lead in their blood (6.4 ng/g to 7.8 ng/g) and jumped to 53.4 per cent among those with the highest lead concentration.

The team said the rate of boys being born first increased in the first half of the twentieth century, before decreasing during the second half.

This suggests reduced lead exposure  which has declined since the 1970s in Japan  'may be involved' in the recent drop in male births, they said.

The team said the study is the first to confirm a link between lead exposure among pregnant women and higher rates of boys being born.

Guidelines for pregnant women set out their blood lead levels should not exceed 50 nanograms per gram of blood.

But the study suggests that less than one nanograme per gram of blood 'could affect the sex ratio of offspring', the team said.

But they noted it is unclear how higher levels of lead in pregnant women's blood triggers more male births.

The team acknowledged 'many factors other than lead exposure' can affect the rate of girls and boys born, including toxic substances dioxins and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).
America is moving into what might be the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, but the virus - and potentially regular shots for it - may be around for long into the future.

How long can not yet be determined, though, and even some of the world's top health experts can not give solid answers as to how many shots people will need, and for how long.

Dr Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, told CNBC in an interview published Monday that he was unsure what was next for Covid vaccines, but he is confident that more will be needed down the line.

On Sunday, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla told CBS' Face the Nation that a fourth Covid shot would be necessary for Americans to control the virus going forward, a prospect that would be of great financial benefit to his firm.

Albert Bourla (left), CEO of Pfizer, said it is necessary for Americans to receive a fourth dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. Dr Anthony Fauci (right) said that he believes more shots will be needed at some point, but he can not confidently say when or how many

'The answer is: we don't know. I mean, that's it...it is likely that we're not done with this when it comes to vaccines,' Fauci said when asked about how many more shots will be needed.

The world just marked two years since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a global pandemic on March 11, 2020.

While basically every nation has been struck by virus, the 79,517,492 total cases and 967,552 cases suffered in the U.S. are the most of any nation in the world.

Cases have been rapidly declining in America since the winter Omicron surge reached its mid-January peak.

Many states have closed or limited daily Covid case reporting all together, making it hard for existing virus trackers to continue.

Last week, BNO Newsroom announced it would close its tracker on Saturday. Johns Hopkins University did not update figures Monday morning either - a reflection of the eroding level of attention being paid to daily case figures.

Mandates are being lifted across the country as well, with none of the 50 states having mask orders in place beyond next week.

In California, Gov Gavin Newsom even declared last month that his state will soon start treating Covid like an endemic, rather than a pandemic.

While Fauci, who serves as director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Disease, has often been more cautious in his approach to the virus over the past two years, even he has started to look towards a post-pandemic America.

'Everybody wants to return to normal, everybody wants to put the virus behind us in the rearview mirror, which is, I think, what we should aspire to,' Fauci said.

A move back to 'normal' may still require Americans to regularly receive Covid shots to keep the virus under control - similar to the annual flu shot recommended to all.

Currently, a vast majority of American adults are recommended by officials to receive a two-dose COVID-19 vaccine sequence, then a booster dose five months later.

For the immunocompromised, a fourth dose is recommended to shore up protection against the virus.

Fauci is among those that has said in the past that a fourth dose will likely be needed soon, joining the CEO's of Moderna and Pfizer - the two leading vaccine manufacturers who have a lot to gain from an expanded vaccine rollout.

Albert Bourla, CEO of Pfizer, appeared on CBS this week and said a fourth dose may be needed for Americans as early as 'right now'.

'Right now, the way that we have seen, it is necessary, a fourth booster right now,' Bourla said.

'The protection that you are getting from the third, it is good enough, actually quite good for hospitalizations and deaths...it's not that good against infections but doesn't last very long.'

Bourla also told CNBC's Squawk Box last week that his company had notified the Food and Drug Administration of an upcoming application for a fourth dose.

Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel has hinted at the need for a fourth dose in the future as well.

He told Squawk Box last month that after a relatively calm spring and summer seasons, Americans will likely need a fourth dose ahead of the typical flu season that starts this fall.

'We believe there's a high probability that we're moving into an endemic setting,' Bancel said 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.'

The prospect of repeated Covid shots is also a financial boon for the two firms, though.

The companies project a combined $51 billion in revenue from vaccine sales in 2022, and this figure would rise even higher if governments around the world begin purchase orders for yet another shot.

Both companies have been criticized for business practices that value profit over saving lives during the pandemic, and for keeping a stranglehold on their control of the jabs.
A vaccine that could protect against the deadly Nipah virus in just three days has been developed by scientists.

All six monkeys given the experimental jab seven days before being exposed to a lethal dose of the disease survived. Two-thirds of primates given the shot three days in advance lived.

Like Covid, Nipah can spread through respiratory droplets. But it is far more deadly, killing up to three-quarters of people it infects.

It has been listed as one of the viruses most likely to cause the next pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO).

There is currently no vaccine approved for humans  but at least eight are currently being tested on animals, including one made by Oxford University.

However, most studies suggest immunity takes about a month to five weeks to kick in.

A rapid vaccine that may protect people from the deadly Nipah virus in just three days has been developed by scientists (pictured, an illustration of the individual viruses)

The new jab works like the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine, using a weakened virus to deliver a chunk of Nipah's protein to the cells, where it cannot replicate.

It gives the body the chance to get a read of the virus so it can recognise and fight the real thing.

WHAT IS THE NIPAH VIRUS? The Nipah virus (NiV) is a type of henipavirus, which are naturally held in fruit bats. The virus can cause illness in pigs and humans, and can be spread to humans from animals, infected food and other people with the virus. Symptoms may appear between five and 14 days after becoming infected, and can last up to two weeks. They include: fever, headache, drowsiness, disorientation and mental confusion. Symptoms may progress to a coma, and some patients have breathing problems. The virus is thought to be fatal in up to 75 per cent of cases. There is no vaccine or cure, but patients may receive supportive treatment to relieve symptoms. Nipah virus infection can be prevented by avoiding exposure to sick pigs and bats in endemic areas and not drinking raw date palm sap. Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Advertisement

The vaccine uses a virus from the same family as rabies that has been modified so it cannot cause symptoms.

It acts as a vehicle deliver the harmless protein to the cells.

Once inside, the cells display the protein on their surface, and the immune system recognises that it doesnt belong there.

This triggers an immune response in which antibodies and T-cells are released, simulating what would happen in the event of a real infection.

The body then keeps a memory of this process so it knows how to deal with the real Nipah virus in the future.

University of Texas researchers trialled the jab on 12 monkeys and used six as a control group.

Half were given the vaccine a week before a deadly dose of Nipah and the other half were given it three days prior.

In the seven-day group, all vaccinated monkeys survived and showed no signs of illness, compared to a 100 per cent fatality rate in the control group.

Among those given the shot three days before, 67 per cent survived but most were symptomatic.

Writing in the paper, the researchers said: 'There are currently no NiV [Nipah virus] vaccines licensed for human use.

'While several preventive vaccines have shown promise in protecting animals against lethal NiV disease, most studies have assessed protection 1 month after vaccination.

'However, in order to contain and control outbreaks, vaccines that can rapidly confer protection in days rather than months are needed.'

Outbreaks of the Nipah virus are rare, with only around 700 cases reported since the virus was first discovered in Malaysia in 1999.

A 12-year-old boy died during an outbreak in India last year, where outbreaks are most common, along with Bangladesh.

It is also present in bats in Cambodia, Ghana, Indonesia, Madagascar, the Philippines and Thailand, suggesting there is potential for it to spread among people there.

The WHO says the virus is a public health concern because 'it infects a wide range of animals and causes severe disease and death in people'.

It lists Nipah alongside other deadly, threatening diseases such as Ebola, Lassa fever, Zika, Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever and Rift Valley fever.
Last month Becky Render watched as her frail, 86-year-old father was loaded into the back of an ambulance and tried to calm his obvious distress with a promise to visit him later in hospital.

Peter Stead was wincing in pain and barely conscious as he was rushed away for treatment of septic arthritis, a potentially fatal infection in the joints, affecting his right shoulder.

But when Becky called York Hospital that morning, she was told she couldn't visit him that day or the next. Five weeks on and Becky still hasn't been allowed to see him.

York and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals Foundation Trust has barred virtually all visiting because of concerns about Covid, a move Becky calls 'inhumane and unbelievably cruel'.

Peter, a former factory worker, has spent his entire stay in a room on his own with a TV he can't operate.

Peter Stead was wincing in pain and barely conscious as he was rushed away for treatment of septic arthritis, a potentially fatal infection in the joints, affecting his right shoulder. But when Becky called York Hospital that morning, she was told she couldn't visit him that day or the next. Five weeks on and Becky still hasn't been allowed to see him. Peter Stead is pictured with wife Patricia and daughter Becky

In that time he has been granted only two hour-long visits with his wife of 59 years, Patricia, 79, a retired postwoman, who had to wear full personal protective equipment (PPE), including gloves and a face mask.

But even those visits are now not allowed. Due to 'rolling' Covid cases at the hospital, virtually all visits have been stopped over the last three weeks. During emotional phone calls, Peter has told Becky he feels so isolated he is losing the will to live.

'My mum and I are distraught and my dad is close to giving up completely,' says Becky, 57, a florist, who lives next door to her parents with her husband Keith, 64, a mechanic, in East Heslerton, North Yorkshire. 'We thought that life was going back to normal after Covid, but not in hospitals it seems,' she says.

'The last time we spoke to dad he said he wanted to close his eyes and give up. He's on intravenous antibiotics but they aren't clearing the infection  we think this is because of the stress of being torn apart from his family. Why is it that the rest of the world is now carrying on as normal but people in hospital are being denied basic rights like seeing their families?'

Last week NHS guidance was altered to encourage hospitals to allow patients to permit visitors 'for at least one hour a day and ideally for longer'.

The guidance acknowledged: 'It is important to recognise the contribution that visiting makes to the wellbeing and person-centred care of patients.' This followed previous visitor guidance published by the Government in March 2021, which allowed only one family member or friend to visit someone in hospital during the pandemic and even then only in exceptional circumstances such as imminent death.

Yet despite the apparent loosening of the rules, hospitals are continuing to limit visiting or banning it outright.

For example, St Helens and Knowsley Teaching Hospitals Trust on Merseyside suspended all visits from February 27 with limited exceptions. According to its website, Barnsley Hospital Foundation Trust has decided to suspend 'non-essential visiting', citing 'extreme circumstances and a rise in Covid-19 cases'.

Others are allowing only one visitor at a time for one hour a day or every other day.

At York Hospital, the rules were relaxed on February 14 to allow one visitor who could book a slot of up to an hour. However, since then access has been restricted due to Covid cases  a decision the hospital says it is 'constantly reviewing and revising'.

Becky recognises that cases of Covid are rising and has nothing but praise for her father's medical care, but adds: 'There must be a way to let us see him when he needs us. Covid is now supposed to be less deadly than the flu and we have effective vaccines. Why are hospitals still in lockdown?' In a cruel twist, despite being deprived of visitors, Peter tested positive for Covid at the start of this month which the family believes he can only have contracted in the hospital.

'Luckily, Covid hasn't made him any more poorly,' says Becky.

Campaigners are now calling for legislation to guarantee relatives' rights to visit loved ones in hospital. Last week, organisations including John's Campaign which is calling for extended visiting rights for patients with dementia, met a cross-party group of MPs to secure backing for a law to ensure people in hospital have unrestricted visits from at least one relative or friend. Currently visiting rights are at a hospital's discretion. Julia Jones, co-founder of John's Campaign, told Good Health: 'We say carers are not visitors. They are essential.'

Due to 'rolling' Covid cases at the hospital, virtually all visits have been stopped over the last three weeks. During emotional phone calls, Peter has told Becky he feels so isolated he is losing the will to live

Campaigners point to studies showing patients who don't have visitors do less well. A survey of hospital nurses carried out by the Royal Voluntary Service charity in 2019 found that two-fifths of patients without visitors required additional support from the nursing team. Some 43 per cent of nurses questioned said patients who didn't have visitors were less likely to be mobile. Significantly, 37 per cent said patients without visitors were more likely to have a longer stay in hospital.

A lack of visitors can be especially damaging for dementia patients. A study published in the journal eClinicalMedicine in 2021 found that 'isolation measures quickly damaged people with dementia, cognitive and mental health issues, and probably accelerated overall decline'.

Dr Aida Suarez Gonzalez, a clinical neuropsychologist at the Institute of Neurology in London, told Good Health: 'It is urgent that infection control measures applied to people with dementia are balanced against the basic principle of medical practice 'First, do not cause harm'. Confinement is the opposite of what a person living with dementia requires.'

Wendy Mitchell, 66, an author from East Yorkshire, has early-stage dementia and says that a ban on hospital visitors meant she insisted on being treated as a day patient when she broke her wrist last Christmas.

'It was a complex break and I needed an operation but there was no way I was going to stay in hospital,' she says.

Wendy relies on support from her daughter Sarah, a nurse.

Wendy adds: 'She wouldn't have been able to stay with me and that could have been very dangerous. I'm allergic to a drug but I can't remember what it is. I don't feel hunger and forget to eat. I need social interaction because of my dementia, not being left alone all day.' Wendy feels angry that hospitals prioritise Covid safety over isolation. 'The risks of not allowing us to have visitors far outweigh the risks of getting Covid,' she says.

NHS England sent a letter to healthcare leaders on February 23 saying hospital visiting guidance 'is being reviewed in light of the living with Covid plans'.

Some, like Peter, find using a mobile troublesome. He makes the odd call on the phone that his family gave him, but remains alone in his room with no idea when he will go home

It promised these plans would be published shortly so that visitors could attend hospitals 'in a manner that continues to protect patients and staff'.

If visits are restricted, Louise Jackson, policy manager at Age UK, suggests finding different ways to stay in touch.

'Some hospitals may allow you to deliver a phone if the person you want to visit does not have one,' she says. 'Even if your loved one is unable to communicate with you, they may find hearing your voice comforting.'

Some, like Peter, find using a mobile troublesome. He makes the odd call on the phone that his family gave him, but remains alone in his room with no idea when he will go home.

A spokesman for the York and Scarborough trust said visiting is allowed 'for end-of-life situations, patients who are vulnerable such as those with a learning disability, dementia or cognitive impairment, or other extreme circumstances where the nurse in charge deems this as suitable'.

They added: 'The extreme situation of Covid means we have, from time to time, been required to restrict visiting to our hospitals or wards where visiting may pose a risk to highly vulnerable patients. This is not a decision we take lightly.'

But the lack of visits isn't just taking its toll on Peter.

Becky explains: 'Mum was so upset at one point that she had an attack of angina and had to be hospitalised herself two weeks ago. She was kept in hospital for two days.'

The family is pushing the hospital to let them visit.

Becky says: 'We call every day and we've offered to do whatever it takes  lateral flow tests, PPE but it's still a flat 'No'.'
Moderna has begun Phase I clinical trials of an HIV vaccine that uses the same mRNA technology made famous by the COVID-19 vaccines.

The company is hoping to parlay the massive success of its COVID-19 vaccine into more products, including what could potentially be a breakthrough vaccine.

There currently is no available vaccine for HIV, and while there are effective treatments that can keep the virus under control and prevent an infected person from developing AIDS, there are no cures for infection either.

Messenger RNA, often referred to as mRNA, was an underutilized technology for decades before its rise to prominence with German based BioNTech and Moderna both used it to develop the breakthrough COVID-19 vaccines in 2020.

Now, Moderna is hoping to expand use of mRNA into a variety of vaccine products.

Moderna is starting trials for an mRNA based HIV vaccine that builds upon the discoveries made in the development of the company's COVID-19 jab

Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel (pictured) has said that he expects Americans to need a fourth shot of a COVID-19 vaccine soon, which would be another financial windfall for his firm

'Developing a vaccine regimen that induces sustained protective levels of HIV neutralizing antibodies in humans has been difficult to achieve,' Dr Stephen Hodge, president of the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company, said in a statement.

'At Moderna, we believe that mRNA offers an opportunity to take a fresh approach to this challenge.'

Moderna plans to enroll 100 HIV negative people aged 18 to 55 for the study. The first phase will determine dosages for the jab and whether a person will respond well to it.

It will also determine whether the shot is able to deliver the body antigens that are believed to be effective at fighting HIV.

The company announced that the first of the participants has received a dose of the shot.

If successful, an HIV vaccine would be a major shift in modern medicine, and the overall fight against the devastating virus.

Scientists worldwide have been searching for an HIV vaccine candidate for decades since the virus's discovery to help fight the disease that is responsible for around one million deaths every year.

Moderna approved a $926 MILLION golden parachute for its CEO at the end of 2021 Stephane Bancel's 'change-in-control' package was approved at the end of last year by the Massachusetts-based company's board of directors, CNBC reported. Most of the golden parachute - $922.5 million, to be exact - is in the form of stock, which has yo-yoed during the COVID-19 pandemic. The rest includes a cash payment of $1.5 million and a bonus of $2.5 million. Bancel, 49, who is already worth a reported $4.3 billion, would only get the money if the company is sold or merged and he loses his job in the process. Last year, he earned a combined $18.2 million, a 41 percent increase from 2020. The French-born executive's last known address is a three-bedroom, 1,537-square-foot apartment in Boston worth an estimated $1.2 million, according to Zillow. Things have changed a lot for Moderna since the start of the pandemic in early 2020. It went from losing $747 million that year to making $12.2 billion in 2021, largely from sales of its two-dose vaccine, its only commercially available product. Advertisement

This may be the most ambitious of Moderna's potential mRNA vaccine product line it plans to make available in the coming years.

Moderna is also planning an RSV vaccine, flu shot and even potential cancer treatments using the breakthrough technology.

There is also, of course, the COVID-19 vaccine that has made the company a household name in much of the world, and been a financial boon as well.

It posted $17.7 billion in revenue from vaccine sales alone in 2021, the first full year of the jab's availability. The company projects that figure will be upwards of $19 billion this year.

Stephane Bancel, CEO of the firm, also predicts that a fourth dose of his company's vaccine will be needed be Americans ahead of a fall Covid surge, which would increase revenue projections even more.

The development of this technology has not gone without hitch for the company, though.

Moderna is facing two lawsuits over improper accreditation and licensing during the development and rollout process of the shots.

First, the company was sued by the National Institutes of Health for some of the agency's scientists to be listed as co-inventors of the shot.

If the NIH wins, then the federal government could collect royalties of vaccine sales and even license it to other manufacturers.

Two smaller Vancouver, Canada-based, firms are suing Moderna as well, claiming the technology used to deliver the vaccine into the body belonged to them and was used without permission.

Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine has been administered 209 million times to fully vaccinate 75 million people and boost 41 million others since it first became available in late 2020.
Ford has today announced it will launch seven new electric vehicles in Europe in the next two years as it provided new details of its plans to go green.

Three will be electric cars - one of them based on the Volkswagen ID.4 SUV - and four will be electric vans, with Ford also announcing on Monday that it will rid emissions from its European commercial vehicles from 2035.

Bosses have earmarked sales of more than 600,000 electric vehicles per year in Europe by 2026, as Ford aims to become a carbon neutral business nine years later.

The news comes just weeks after the US auto company confirmed that it will split its operations in two: 'Ford Blue' will concentrate on the development of its conventional combustion-engine models up until 2030 while 'Ford Model e' will solely focus on EVs.

Ford's electric push: The US brand has confirmed it will launch seven new EVs in Europe in the next two years, taking its zero-emission line-up to nine cars by 2024. The Mustang Mach-E and E-Transit are already on sale

Three of the new EVs launched in the next two years will be cars, which will join Ford's Mustang Mach-E SUV (pictured) as part of its expanding electric line-up

Ford's latest update on its electrification plans were announced on Monday during a spring statement issued by Stuart Rowley, chair at Ford of Europe, promising customers three new electric cars to join its ranks alongside the Mustang Mach-E.

The first will be a 'medium-sized crossover' taking advantage of Ford's recent partnership with German powerhouse VW to work on joint projects for electric cars and vans, first revealed in 2020.

It will be built on the same 'MEB' platform that underpins Volkswagen's 'ID' range of EVs and be based on the ID.4.

This means it should sit below its electric Mustang SUV when it does arrive.

It will be produced at Ford's new electric-only state-of-the-art manufacturing centre in Cologne, Germany, and should be in production and on sale from next year.

Ford promises it will have a full-charge battery range of 500km (311 miles) and its name will be revealed later in 2022. VW's ID.4, with the 77kWh Pro Performance battery, has a claimed range of 320 miles.

The first car will be a 'medium-sized crossover' and will be built on the same 'MEB' platform that underpins Volkswagen's 'ID' range of EVs and be based on the ID.4 SUV (pictured)

Both new crossovers will be produced at Ford's new electric-only state-of-the-art manufacturing centre in Cologne (pictured) and will be on sale from next year

The second EV model - also produced in Cologne - will follow in 2024, which is being described as a 'sports crossover' - likely a coupe version of the SUV arriving a year before.

The third is the Ford Puma EV - a fully-electric version of the existing compact SUV that will be sold as a standalone model from 2024.

This will be built at the brand's manufacturing plant in Craiova, Romania.

The third new Ford electric car is A Puma EV - a fully-electric version of the existing compact SUV (pictured) that will be sold as a standalone model from 2024

The Puma EV will be built at the brand's manufacturing plant in Craiova, Romania (pictured)

Ford's latest update on its electrification plans were announced on Monday during a spring statement issued by Stuart Rowley, chair at Ford of Europe

Ford to sell only electric vans in Europe from 2035

Ford's update on its electric ambitions included a pledge to achieve carbon neutrality across its European business by 2035.

This will see it switch to entirely electric commercial vehicles from that year, phasing out petrol and diesel engines from vans entirely just five years after it plans to do the same with passenger cars.

Ford's eagerly anticipated 42,695 E-Transit is due to be on sale in a matter of weeks, becoming the brand's first all-electric commercial vehicle offering a single-charge battery range of up to 196 miles.

Electric versions of the Transit Custom one-tonne van and Torneo Custom will follow next year and in 2024 Ford will add smaller Transit Courier and Torneo Courier electric MPVs to its line-up.

This will mean Ford will offer nine EV models before 2025.

'These new Ford electric vehicles signal what is nothing less than the total transformation of our brand in Europe  a new generation of zero-emission vehicles, optimized for a connected world, offering our customers truly outstanding user experiences,' said Rowley.

Ford has also said that it will stop selling new petrol and diesel vans in Europe from 2035

With the greater availability of EVs in its ranges, Ford says it expects to produce 1.2 million zero-emission models built at its Cologne facility over a six-year period and aims to sell 600,000 electric units annually by 2026.

To facilitate this, bosses announced it will invest an additional 1.5billion ($2billion) in the German factory - as well as partner with other firms to establish a battery gigafactory in Turkey.

When asked about Fords plans in the UK, Mr Rowley said the company has been 'an important partner in the UK automotive industry for over 100 years now and that remains absolutely the case'.

He added: 'In Dagenham weve got diesel engines, and although by 2035 well be all all-electric, the diesel segment in light commercial vans in the medium term will remain very important so Dagenham is a key contributor to that business.'

Four new electric commercial vehicles will join Ford's ranks by 2024 to sit alongside the new E-Transit van

Ford's 42,695 E-Transit is due to be on sale in a matter of weeks and will be the brand's first all-electric commercial vehicle offering a single-charge battery range of up to 196 miles

Ford to split combustion and EV operations

Ford announced earlier this month that it is creating separate businesses for its conventional and electric-auto operations, as it accelerates its build-out of emission-free vehicles.

Internal combustion operations will sit under the 'Ford Blue' banner while EVs will be run through 'Ford Model e'.

The two ventures will each have distinct executive leadership and report their own financial results. Both companies will continue to be headquartered in Michigan.

'Ford Model e and Ford Blue will be run as distinct businesses, but also support each other,' Ford said in a press release.

Executives said the EV company would benefit from access to industrial know-how, while the conventional business would prosper from newer technologies.

'No, we are not spinning off Model e,' said Ford Chief Executive Jim Farley. 'That's because the structures we set up actually make it stronger than a spin-off.'

Ford said the intention of the structure is to give the EV venture 'the focus and speed of a start-up,' while the conventional business will try to excel at the challenges of a mature business, 'relentlessly attacking costs, simplifying operations and improving quality.'

A third division, Ford Pro, will serve commercial customers.

'I am delighted to see the pace of change in Europe  challenging our entire industry to build better, cleaner and more digital vehicles. Ford is all-in and moving fast to meet the demand in Europe and around the globe,' Farley added on Monday.

'This is why we have created Ford Model e  allowing us to move at the speed of a start-up to build electric vehicles that delight and offer connected services unique to Ford and that are built with Ford-grade engineering and safety.'
Aston Martin Lagonda saw losses shrink in 2021 as sales rebounded, with the carmaker expecting 2022 to be a 'year of growth' amid strong demand for its hypercars and SUVs.

The maker of James Bond's favourite automobile reported a 77million operating loss in 2021, compared to a loss of 323million in 2020, with revenues rising 79 per cent to 1.1billion.

Sales to car dealers jumped 82 per cent to more than 6,170 vehicles despite supply chain disruption, as it was able to return to 'normal' operations following Covid restrictions the previous year.

Aston Martin said it was seeing strong demand for its 2.5m supercar Valkyrie Spider

Along its annual results, the company also announced that outgoing finance boss Kenneth Gregor will be replaced by Vivo Energy's chief financial officer, Doug Lafferty, in May.

Aston Martin, which began deliveries of its 2.5milion Valkyrie Spider in December, said it was seeing strong demand for the hypercar as well as its debut plug-in hybrid model Valhalla, which it expects to start delivering to customers in 2024.

Sales to dealers are expected to increase by around 8 per cent this year, with adjusted profit set to rise by half.

Chief executive Tobia Moers said: 'With a full calendar year of Aston Martin Valkyrie deliveries to come, along with the impact from our successful marketing of DBX Straight-Six and DBX707, 2022 promises to be a year of growth.

'While there will be challenges, our business has never been better prepared to meet them.'

The group hopes to sell around 10,000 cars a year by 2024-25, with revenues expected to hit 2billion by then.

Aston Martin shares rose 2.6 per cent to 880.60p in morning trading on Monday.

However, they still remain down by over 35 per cent since the start of the year and 90 per cent lower since its disastrous stock market float in 2018.

Aston Martin said its strategic shift to a 'demand-led, ultra-luxury' operating model means retail sales were 'well ahead' of sales to car dealers, also thanks to stronger pricing.

The average selling price of its cars rose to 150,000 in 2021, from 136,000 in 2020 and is expected to rise further this year as a result of new vehicles including its DBX707 SUV and V12 Vantage car.

The car maker also said its return to Formula One had helped increase its 'brand exposure, perception and desirability'.
European stock markets clawed back some losses as hopes of a diplomatic breakthrough in Ukraine offset worries of a Covid-19 resurgence in China.

In London, the FTSE 100 rose 0.5 per cent, or 37.83 points, to 7193.47 while the FTSE 250 gained 1.3 per cent, or 264.64 points, to 20471.25 as peace talks between Russia and Ukraine resumed.

Both sides flagged progress, although the details of any potential agreement are still unclear.

Lockdown threat: Outbreaks of Covid in China sent Hong Kongs Hang Seng index down nearly 5%, while the Shanghai Composite slumped 2.6%

Optimism over a possible ceasefire also helped to push German, French and Italian markets higher with Frankfurt up 2.2 per cent, Paris 1.8 per cent and Milan 1.7 per cent.

But Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC Markets UK, said optimism in the markets over Ukraine may be misplaced.

There is certainly an element of hoping for the best, which seems to fly in the face of the reality on the ground and that for a sustained end to hostilities to take place, one side or the other will have to back down quite significantly, he said.

Asian markets fell sharply as the Chinese city of Shenzhen headed back into lockdown following a rise in Covid cases. The shutdown sent Hong Kongs Hang Seng index down nearly 5 per cent, while the Shanghai Composite slumped 2.6 per cent.

Shenzhen going into lockdown could have negative effects beyond Chinas economy. It is known as the worlds factory thanks to its concentration of electronics manufacturing.

Any prolonged disruption to operations could cause yet another global supply chain crunch, said AJ Bell investment director Russ Mould.

Chinese-focused investment trusts in London were hit, with JP Morgan China Growth & Income, which holds large stakes in Shenzhen-based tech giant Tencent and Chinese shopping platform Meituan, sinking 3.9 per cent, or 13.5p, to 333.5p while Fidelity China Special Situations dropped 7.1 per cent, or 17.5p to 228p.

Stock Watch - Tracsis Tracsis moved higher after snapping up a US rival. The firm, which provides data analysis software to the railway industry, bought New York-based RailComm in a deal worth up to 10.9million in cash. RailComm provides control systems for rail operators and railway-served ports and other industrial areas. Tracsis expected the purchase to provide it with direct access to a significant number of clients in North America. Shares jumped 2.8 per cent, or 25p, to 925p.

Miners were also in the red as commodity prices eased following recent surges. Anglo American lost 5.2 per cent, or 201.5p, to 3968.5p while Glencore dropped 5.8 per cent, or 29.75p, to 481.55p and Rio Tinto shed 1.8 per cent, or 104p, to 5783p.

Housebuilders were among the top risers following reports that negotiations between the industry and the Government over cladding costs were expected to yield an agreement as soon as next week, with the total bill to remove cladding from medium-rise tower blocks predicted to be less than 1billion, much lower than previous estimates of 4billion.

The news sent shares in Persimmon up 5.5 per cent, or 120p, to 2292p. Berkeley jumped 3.4 per cent, or 129p, to 3940p, Barratt added 2.9 per cent, or 16p, to 561.2p and Taylor Wimpey gained 3.9 per cent, or 5.3p, to 139.7p.

Pharma giant AstraZeneca was up 1.3 per cent, or 121p, at 9396p after its Lynparza drug secured approval from US regulators to treat breast cancer.

The firm also announced that the US Food and Drug Administration had requested more clinical data for its Fasenra treatment for chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyps, a condition that can cause sinus pain and loss of smell.

Heat treatment specialist Bodycote rose 2.3 per cent, or 15p, to 675p after swinging back into profit.

It reported a pre-tax profit for 2021 of 77.5million compared to a 1.5million loss the previous year as demand from its industrial markets bounced back from the pandemic. Revenues were up 3 per cent at 615.8million.

Egg-free cake maker Cake Box announced that its co-founder and chief financial officer Pardip Dass would be stepping down at the end of March after more than ten years at the firm.

His exit came after the firm admitted in January that there had been inconsistencies in its accounts, sending its share price tumbling. The stock surged 15.9 per cent, or 31.5p, to 230p.
Arm is planning to cut hundreds of jobs after a takeover deal with US tech giant Nvidia collapsed.

Boss Rene Haas told staff at the Cambridge-based computer chip maker yesterday that the cuts would affect 12 per cent to 15 per cent of its 4,400 strong global workforce  meaning over 600 jobs could be at risk.

Arm employs around 1,800 people in the UK.

Arm boss Rene Haas told staff of the Cambridge-based computer chip maker that 12% to 15% of its 4,400 strong global workforce- some 600 people- could lose their jobs

Haas said most of the redundancies would be in the UK and the US and that the process would be a tough time for everyone but the company needed to be more disciplined about its costs, the Daily Telegraph reported.

An Arm spokesman said the company was continually reviewing its business plan and that unfortunately, this process includes proposed redundancies.

Arms plan to swing the axe came after its planned 31billion takeover by Nvidia fell through last month amid opposition from British regulators.

The firm, which makes chips for electronic devices such as smartphones and is owned by Japanese conglomerate SoftBank, is considering a blockbuster listing on either the New York or London stock market.
The cost of filling a 55-litre family car with petrol has exceeded 90 for the first time, but wholesale oil prices are now falling, according to RAC Fuel Watch.

The average price of a litre of petrol rose to 163.71p on Monday, marking another new record, Simon Williams, a spokesman for RAC Fuel Watch, said.

Diesel also recorded another all-time high at 173.68p yesterday after increasing by the tiniest of margins.

However, with a barrel of Brent crude oil now back below the $100 mark, in theory, lower prices at the pumps should be seen in the not too distant future if retailers do the right thing and reduce their prices.

Costly: The cost of filling a 55-litre family car with petrol has exceeded 90 for the first time this week, RAC Fuel Watch said

Williams said: 'Drivers should be encouraged by oil and wholesale prices dropping again yesterday.

'Its now vital that the biggest retailers who buy fuel most often start to reflect these reductions at the pumps to give drivers a much-needed break from the pain of constantly rising prices.'

Brent crude has now reversed all of its March gains and is back below $100 a barrel, after climbing to as high as $139 in the last few days. The price was around $80 at the start of the year.

Victoria Scholar, head of investment at Interactive Investor, said: 'Oil prices are down by more than 5 per cent reaching two-week lows.

'The prospect of a diplomatic solution towards Russias military aggression against Ukraine would help ease the worlds energy supply shock that has sent commodities soaring.

'Although no progress was announced, the two sides engaged in their fourth round of talks on Monday.

'Meanwhile on the demand side for oil, fears about an aggressive policy response from Beijing to Chinas Covid outbreak has raised the prospect of a much weaker demand for oil from the worlds second largest economy.'

Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC Markets, said today: 'Todays sharp fall in oil prices looks set to offer a temporary respite to beleaguered consumers here in Europe, as well as the US, as they worry about the recent surge in energy prices on their disposable incomes.'

While falling oil prices may offer a glimmer of hope for motorists, it remains unclear how prices will pan out in the coming days and weeks, particularly in light of fragile negotiations between Russia and Ukraine.

Drivers are being warned that pump prices could in fact rise even further, with experts warning the sudden crude oil price drop could just be a 'lull before the storm'.

Speaking to Parliament's Treasury Committee yesterday, Dr Amrita Sen, director of research at Energy Aspects, warned petrol prices could rise to around 2.40 a litre.

She also warned MPs that diesel prices of '2.50 - even closer to 3' were 'definitely in the realms of possibility'.

On Monday, Brent crude fell from above $113 a barrel to as low as $103.49 in London. In the US, the West Texas Intermediate oil price fell back below $100.

Fuel hikes in the last few days Date Petrol Diesel 11 March 161.96

171.63 12 March 162.94 173.67 13 March 163.46 173.44 14 March 163.71 173.68

The slide in the oil price came as the International Monetary Fund said Ukraines economy could shrink by more than a third this year if the war with Russian continues.

Predicting a slump of 25 per cent to 35 per cent, the watchdog said the estimates should be seen as a bare minimum.

The financial institution added: A deep recession and large reconstruction costs are to be expected, on the backdrop of a humanitarian crisis.

Figures from data firm Experian Catalist show the average cost of a litre of petrol at UK forecourts on Sunday was 163.5p, while diesel was 173.4p.

A month ago, pump prices were 148.0p per litre for petrol and 151.6p per litre for diesel.

AA fuel price spokesman Luke Bosdet said this week: Unless the price of oil takes off again this week, the AA expects these wild pump prices to stabilise this week and even fall back at fuel stations that were supplied at peak prices but will eventually get cheaper deliveries.

The war in Ukraine and Western sanctions on Russia have driven oil prices higher in recent weeks amid fears over supplies.

But hopes that talks could lead to a ceasefire and resolution of the conflict have sent oil into reverse in recent days.

Chinas decision to lockdown a number of cities including Shenzhen  one of the worlds largest ports and a major technology hub  also dented the oil price as concerns over the state of the global economy mounted.
Four Russia-linked companies including a steel group backed by Roman Abramovich have been ejected from FTSE indices.

Evraz, Petropavlovsk, Polymetal International and property group Raven  set up by British entrepreneur Anton Bilton  will be barred from holding positions on the FTSE 100, FTSE 250, FTSE 350 and FTSE All-Share Index from the end of this week.

The move is a blow for the four businesses as many investment funds track these indices and membership affords an air of respectability.

Banned: Steel maker Evraz - where Roman Abramovich (pictured) holds the biggest stake - is among four Russian firms set to be barred from the FTSE from the end of the week

But critics said the move did not go far enough as the shares are still listed on the stock market in London despite their exclusion from the indices.

While shares in Evraz  where Chelsea owner Abramovich holds the biggest stake  are suspended, trading continues in the other companies.

And one of the companies, FTSE 100-listed Polymetal, said the expulsion will have no effect whatsoever.

A spokesman for the gold miner said: 'The recent exclusion of Polymetal shares from the series of FTSE equity indices does not impact the company's listing on the London Stock Exchange. Trading of Polymetal shares on LSE continues.'

FTSE Russell, the company behind the indices, said the decision was taken after brokers refused to trade the shares of Russian-linked companies.

But the announcement was met with calls for the authorities to go even further and expel firms linked to Russia or close to the Kremlin from the LSE altogether.

Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith and financier-turned-campaigner Bill Browder want to see Russian companies booted off the UK stock market for good.

Tom Keatinge, director of the Centre for Financial Crime and Security Studies at think-tank Rusi, said: 'In terms of practicalities, we need to make sure we are following the rule of law.

'But if the aim is to put massive economic sanctions on the Russian economy, then we need to do the very maximum  which means we'll do things we've never done before.'

Neil Wilson, analyst at Markets, added: 'This is all just posturing. Let's kick them out and show we are serious.'

Shares have been suspended in more than 30 Russia or oligarch-linked firms. But regulators and the Foreign Office have been slammed for still allowing them to stay listed on the LSE.

Critics said the lack of intervention showed the UK's sanctions regime is a 'shambles'. Although the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is in charge of the 'Official List' of companies on the LSE, the regulator says it will only take guidance on delisting from the Foreign Office, which is overseeing sanctions.

The UK has slapped sanctions on oligarchs such as Oleg Deripaska and Abramovich. But no plans have been announced around listings.

This leaves firms potentially propping up President Putin on one of the world's most prestigious stock markets.

The lack of action comes even after Chancellor Rishi Sunak urged on Sunday for British businesses to 'think very carefully' about any investments that would support Putin's barbaric regime.

MP Liam Byrne, who is a member of Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee, said it was 'absolutely crucial' to remove Russian firms from the LSE, adding that UK officials are 'miles behind' other countries when it comes to preparing sanctions.

He said: 'The fact we haven't done it is further evidence of the shambles at the heart of Britain's sanctioning strategy. The Foreign Office is in disarray.'
Britain's shoppers will face more identification checks when purchasing online, as new rules to clamp down on fraud come into force today.

Customers may now need to verify their identity when buying items worth more than 25 online, in a bid to combat online fraud which sees shoppers scammed out of 380m every year.

The new Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) requirements are expected to lead to more card payments being declined.

New rules will require two-factor authentication on most online purchases from March 14, as experts warn it will cause significant disruption to online retailers and shoppers

The Financial Conduct Authority told retailers they must have '3DSecure' cyber security software in place by March 14. This software enables banks and card companies to carry out the ID checks.

In the biggest change to payment security since chip and pin, shoppers will now be asked to prove their identity by confirming two of three 'factors' at the online checkout.

This could mean using fingerprint or facial ID, entering a passcode sent to them via text message or logging in to their mobile banking app, for example.

Some retailers already ask for these checks, but it will now become widespread.

Mastercard said that around 25 per cent of online transactions will require extra verification, compared with only 1 per cent of online purchases previously.

Not all transactions will prompt the dual authentication, as those with low risk of fraudulent activity such as low-cost items or repeated purchases, are exempt from the new requirements.

How can you help make sure payments go through?

A spokesperson for UK Finance, the banking and finance industry body, said: 'Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) is an important tool in the fight against fraud, adding an additional layer of protection when people pay online using a card.

'When a customer makes a payment online, their bank or payment provider will need to verify who they are before the transaction will go through.

'This can be done in a number of ways, including a one-time password sent via text, receiving a phone call, or signing into a bank app.

'Customers should make sure their bank has their correct contact details.

'If a customer has any specific needs, they should contact their bank to discuss what help is available.'

There are concerns that some businesses are not set up to deal with the substantial changes, meaning customers could be blocked from making payments unnecessarily.

Shoppers have been warned of slower online checkouts, with high-value or unusual purchases most likely to prompt the extra security checks.

What if you don't have a smartphone?

Experts have also warned that a substantial number of people, including the elderly, those without mobile phones, or in areas with poor mobile signal, will be hit hardest by the changes.

Ofcom's latest report on smartphone use suggested that only 55 per cent over-65s used one, for example.

Major high street banks have come under fire in the past for telling customers they needed a mobile phone to verify their identity to make purchases online, without offering alternatives.

Most banks now offer a number of alternative ways to confirm a customers identity, such as a phone call.

If you don't have a smartphone, suffer poor mobile signal at home or have any other reason that you think payments may not work, speak to your bank or credit card provider to see what they can do?

Will more people abandon purchases?

According to Barclaycard data, one in three online shoppers at stores who had the new checks in place ahead of the deadline had abandoned a transaction because of the extra verification processes.

And separate research has suggested that nearly two thirds of consumers would avoid retailers with a poor online payment experience, meaning some businesses could potentially see a drop in sales.

According to the latest findings from online payment platform Plaid, a third of customers would abandon an online purchase due to overly complex identity checks or verification.

Keith Grose, head of Plaid UK said: 'Many merchants will know well that consumers want their payment experience to be as smooth as the rest of the online shopping experience.

'How people pay is no longer an afterthought, but a crucial part of the customer experience.

'As businesses look to bounce back from the turmoil of the past two years, and support the economic recovery by doing so, they cannot afford to lose customers.'
Covid testing did not cost No10 2billion a month, health chiefs have admitted in a document sneaked out earlier this month.

Unveiling his blueprint for living with the virus, Boris Johnson told MPs in February that the Test and Trace programme cost that amount 'in January alone' at the height of the Omicron wave.

UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) bosses now say the figure quoted by the Prime Minister was just a 'volatile' estimate and 'may not reflect the true expenditure'.

Senior officials then wrongly portrayed the 2bn as the monthly cost, with Business Minister Paul Scully saying on LBC the day after the PM's statement that the country could not bear the ongoing testing bill.

'The PM was right when he said yesterday that we clearly can't go on forever paying 2billion a month for the testing regime,' he said.

'You could only imagine what other things that money may be spent on.'

There were calls from business leaders, Tory MPs and experts for the Government to scale back its testing programme in the run-up to Mr Johnson's 'Freedom Day' announcement.

Yet many scientists questioned the decision to scrap free mass testing from April 1, saying the move was premature and that swabbing was essential to keep tabs on any future flare-ups and help curb the spread of Covid.

MPs said the UKHSA document, published on March 3 during Russia's invasion of Ukraine, raises questions about the Government's decision to axe free swabs.

Free lateral flow tests for all Britons are set to be scrapped in just a few weeks and will only be restricted to a few groups of key workers and vulnerable people but doubts have now been raised about the financial figures used to justify the change

Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran, who chairs the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Coronavirus, told MailOnline: 'If the financial justification ministers have used for dropping free testing is inaccurate, it exposes this was an ideological decision driven by a PM desperate to change headlines.'

Scrapping free testing will 'deepen the divide' between those who can afford to self-isolate and pay for tests and those who couldn't, she added.

PCR AND LATERAL FLOW TESTS: THE KEY DIFFERENCES A PCR test can cost upwards of 180 per person, with the swab needing to be processed in a lab. The UK, on the other hand, favours faster tests which are not lab based and give a result within 15 minutes. These rapid coronavirus tests, known as lateral flow tests, are ones that can be done on the spot using portable equipment. They are faster and cheaper than lab-based PCR tests, which the government uses to diagnose people, but are less accurate. Advertisement

Mr Johnson's announcement on testing and dropping restrictions came as he faced intense pressure following a series of revelations about lockdown-busting parties in No10.

It was widely seen as a political move to appease libertarian backbench Tory MPs who opposed Covid restrictions in an attempt to avoid a flurry of no confidence votes.

Critics said scrapping free testing and scaling down other Covid surveillance programmes was like 'turning off the headlights at the first sign of dawn'.

Professor Stephen Reicher, a psychologist at St Andrews University and Government adviser, told the Guardian: 'You can't see what's coming and you don't know when it makes sense to turn them on again.'

The UKHSA document emphasises the January cost figure was 'an interim, unaudited forecast made in December 2021, based on internal Omicron assessments'.

'The main drivers of this estimation were an increased demand for rapid lateral flow and PCR tests, with the associated logistics costs,' it said.

It also highlights that since the estimate was made, the Government announced a number of changes that would impact financial forecasts.

These include the scrapping of confirmatory PCR tests for asymptomatic cases and reducing the period people need to self-isolate for, both of which would reduce test demand.

UKHSA bosses said the actual cost of Test and Trace operations for January will only be published at the start of 2023.

The forecast also said the estimate for the full 2021/22 yearly spend was 15.7billion, which would amount to the equivalent of around 1.3billion per month.

In France, people can pick up tests at a third of the UK price (around 3), for as little as 1, while in Germany they can cost just 1.80 and Spain's Government has capped them at roughly 2.45. However, the tests - which experts say can cost just pennies to make - are not as cheap everywhere, with Americans paying $10 (7.35)

Rise in Covid cases was EXPECTED after No10 dropped final restrictions in England, Sajid Javid says A surge in Covid cases was always to be 'expected' following the easing of England's final Covid restrictions, the Health Secretary insisted today as he urged caution over the rising statistics. Sajid Javid said the UK remains in a 'very good position'  despite hospital admissions also starting to creep up in the last week  but he urged adults eligible for a booster vaccine to come forward and get the jab. Mr Javid told Sky News: 'Whilst the rate [of cases] has gone up modestly in the last few days, that's to be expected as we are now open as a country and there's more social mixing, but there's nothing in the data at this point in time that gives us any cause for concern.' He insisted that officials were continuing to monitor case numbers, hospital admissions and NHS capacity, telling Times Radio: 'Taking all of that together, we remain in an overall very good position.' Government dashboard data shows cases have been rising since March 2  just days after England's 'Freedom Day' on February 24 saw the legal requirement to self-isolate after testing positive scrapped. But the Office for National Statistics (ONS) Covid Infection Survey estimates infections were starting to climb days before, suggesting the transition towards 'living with Covid' is not solely to blame for the latest surge. The most up-to-date NHS data shows there were 1,459 virus admissions across the UK on March 7, the eighth day in a row they rose week-on-week. In a concerning sign, admissions in over-85s have jumped by a quarter in a week. Advertisement

However, the Adam Smith think-tank told MailOnline that even the lower figure was not justifiable.

'Free Covid testing is not free, but a significant burden on the taxpayer,' said James Lawson, from the ASI.

'Having protected our society with vaccines and better treatments, we need to return to normality, including reprioritising other health issues like cancer screenings.

'Regardless of the precise testing bill, it needs to be put in perspective. We're spending more on Covid tests than running the entire Ministry of Justice or Foreign Office.'

Last month a report by the research charity Collateral Global and academics at Oxford University concluded the UK's testing programme was 'chaotic and wasteful'.

This is not the first time questions have been raised about the 2billion per month figure, with SAGE scientists telling MPs earlier this month that scrapping free lateral flow tests for Britons was wrong.

They said the more accurate but expensive PCR tests, which need to be processed by a lab, are believed to account for a large portion of the testing bill.

Professor John Edmunds, who is also an infectious disease modelling expert from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said PCR testing at the height of the Omicron wave cost 20million per day.

PCR tests cost about 33 a head, and this before being potentially sequenced as part of Covid variant monitoring which can add an additional 60-100.

In comparison quick and easy lateral flow tests, which can be done at home, cost about 3 per test.

Scientists have argued the Government should keep free lateral flow testing to help avoid Covid infectious people coming into the contact with the clinically vulnerable.

Cost has been cited as the main reason for scrapping free testing as Mr Johnson told MPs in the House of Commons in February.

'The Testing, Tracing and Isolation budget in 2020-21 exceeded the entire budget of the Home Office,' he said.

'It cost a further 15.7billion in this financial year, and 2billion in January alone at the height of the Omicron wave. We must now scale this back.'

From April 1, most Brits will have to buy lateral flow tests from high street pharmacies where they will cost in the region of 2 per test.

The tests, which can cost pennies to produce, were a crucial component of how the UK battled through the Omicron wave, with experts and minsters urging people to take them before going out to meet other people.

Scrapping free testing next month is the final part of the Government's 'living with Covid' transition that saw all legally binding virus restrictions dropped last month.

On February 24 even the most fundamental rules such as having to self-isolate after testing positive were abandoned.

But there are signs the outbreak across the country is starting to grow on the back of the move  with daily cases up 50 per cent on average since Freedom Day.

Hospital admissions have also started to creep up in the past week, with the rates in over-65s increasing by a quarter in that time.

But Health Secretary Sajid Javid today insisted that a surge in Covid cases was always to be 'expected' following the easing of restrictions.

Mr Javid told Sky News: 'Whilst the rate [of cases] has gone up modestly in the last few days, that's to be expected as we are now open as a country and there's more social mixing, but there's nothing in the data at this point in time that gives us any cause for concern.'

He insisted that officials were continuing to monitor case numbers, hospital admissions and NHS capacity, telling Times Radio: 'Taking all of that together, we remain in an overall very good position.'
Minnesota officials won't take down a clenched fist memorial to black police shooting victim Daunte Wright that is blocking a sidewalk after complaints from his family.

Wright's mother, Katie Wright, said she and her husband, Aubrey, along with the family's attorney, Jeff Storms, will meet with Brooklyn Center city manager Reggie Edwards and the city attorney Troy Gilchrist on Tuesday after Edwards informed the family of plans to take down the memorial, the Star Tribune reported.

'Leave the memorial because it's honestly not hurting anybody but it will hurt a lot of people taking it down,' Katie Wright, also sometimes uses the last name Bryant, said in an interview Sunday.

Brooklyn Center officials say they wanted to take down the monument - a clenched fist that was originally part of the memorial to murdered black man George Floyd - because it blocks a sidewalk.

They said that while people can walk around the memorial onto a nearby patch of scrub during fine weather, this becomes hazardous during the winter, when that scrub becomes muddy, or covered with snow.

Wrights' relatives have suggested preserving the memorial, moving it to another site at a nearby date, and erecting a bench in his honor outside a nearby police precinct.

This memorial to Daunte Wright will be left intact on the sidewalk it is blocking after complaints from the black police shooting victim's family

Daunte Wright, pictured, is seen here in an undated file photo. Wright was fatally shot by a white police officer - Kim Potter - during a traffic stop in April 2021

Former Brooklyn Center Police officer Kim Potter, pictured, who was convicted of two manslaughter charges for killing Daunte Wright, a black motorist she shot during a traffic stop

He was killed on April 11 2021 after Brooklyn Center officers pulled over the 20-year-old black man for having expired license tags and an air freshener hanging from his rearview mirror - violations that civil rights activists say are used as a pretext to stop black motorists.

Kim Potter, the white former police officer who said she confused her handgun for her Taser when she fatally shot Wright, was sentenced last month to two years in prison.

Edwards wrote in an email Friday - one month before the anniversary of Wright's death - that they 'anticipate reopening the sidewalk/trail at 63rd and Kathrene early next week.'

He mentioned a few options about preserving the material at the memorial, saying the city could store them or asked whether memorial volunteers would want to gather and archive the material.

The city is interested in partnering with the family and memorial volunteers for a celebration on the anniversary, Katie Wright said, adding that Elliott has been supportive and 'leading with his heart and doing what is right.'

Critics of the memorial have cited Wright's extensive criminal history prior to his death.

Before Wright was shot and killed by former Minnesota police officer Kim Potter, he reportedly terrorized his local neighborhood for several years, leaving victims and their families with a lifetime's worth of trauma and suffering.

Through court records and interviews with the victims, DailyMail.com exclusively reported in December that Wright had led a life of crime and violence before his death, having been involved in the shooting of two of his school friends, a home burglary, and had previously assaulted and robbed a young woman at gunpoint.

This still image taken from from police body cam video shows Daunte Wright during a traffic stop on April 11, 2021

Police body cam footage shows three officers approaching Wright's car in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, on April 11 after he had been pulled over for the traffic stop

Wright was fatally shot by Brooklyn Center Police Officer Kimberly Potter (pictured) on April 11 after he was pulled over for what police said were expired license plate tags

Prior to his death, Wright recorded a video of himself playing with a gun in a woman's bathroom just before he is alleged to have robbed her in December 2019.

In a short 13-second clip, Wright is seen playing with the gun in a bathroom as water is running in the background.

The footage was shot in the home of a woman who alleges that Wright later choked her, held her at gunpoint, and stole $820 from her. The video was first obtained by Fox News.

And for some, Wright's death is a reminder that he will now never be brought to justice for the pain and suffering he caused his victims.

'He's an evil human being. Worse than a monster, a waste of space on earth,' Jennifer LeMay told DailyMail.com in an exclusive interview late last year.

She said her son Caleb, now 18, was left permanently disabled after Wright, his one-time friend, allegedly shot him in the head at a gas station and left him to die two years ago.

Wright (pictured) was pulled over by Potter and her trainee Andrew Luckey for expired license tags and for having an air freshener hanging from his rearview mirror in April. He had an outstanding warrant for his arrest, according to court documents

Wright (pictured in his booking photo) 20, had been arrested on attempted aggravated robbery charges after allegedly holding a woman at gunpoint for $820 in December 2019

Daunte Wright, the 20-year-old who was shot and killed by a Minnesota police officer in April, recorded a video of himself playing with a gun in a woman's bathroom just before he is alleged to have robbed her in December 2019. The video was obtained by Fox News Channel

A lawsuit filed on behalf of her son in May this year describes the fateful events that took place outside a Full Stop convenience store and gas station on May 14, 2019.

The documents state Wright 'discharged a firearm toward Caleb striking him with a single shot bulled in the heard causing serious disabling, and permanent injuries.

'Doctors told his mom he had a slim chance of surviving the next 24-36 hours, but the teen miraculously survived after spending almost seven months in the hospital.

According to LeMay, Wright shot Caleb in the frontal part of his head, with a bullet ripping through to the other side of his skull, where it is still lodged.

'Daunte shot my son and left him to die,' she said. 'During his hospital stay Caleb almost died six times because of his injuries.'

'Caleb requires 24/7/365 care, he can't eat, dress, or basically do anything on his own. He requires constant attention,' LeMay added.

'He needs to be lifted in and out of his bed into his wheelchair. He has a service dog, a 12-year-old pit bull terrier named Ciroc that stays by his side most of the time.

Wright was never arrested or charged with shooting Caleb.

Meanwhile, the venue of the celebration that weekend is to be determined, but a candlelight vigil will be held April 11 at the memorial.
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.

Vote

View Results
The US said China will face 'consequences' if it helps Russia in its war against Ukraine, US media reported on Monday.

The exchange comes as US and Chinese officials prepare to meet in Rome to discuss the war - the highest-level face-to-face meeting the two countries have shared since Moscow's invasion.

US national security adviser Jake Sullivan, who is travelling to meet his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi in Italy, told CNN there will 'absolutely be consequences for large-scale sanctions evasion efforts or support to Russia to backfill them'.

Top-level Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi (left) and US national security adviser Jake Sullivan are set to meet in Rome ahead of reports that China intends to supply Russia with military equipment

US officials have claimed Russia asked China for military equipment after running out of weapons during its sluggish invasion of Ukraine, an assertion which China denied.

Details on what types of weaponry were requested, and whether China has moved to supply Vladimir Putin's government have yet to emerge - but the request has sparked extreme concern among western governments.

On Sunday night, the US was said to be preparing to warn its allies, amid some indications that China may be preparing to help Russia out, the Financial Times reported.

Other US officials have said there were signs that Russia was running out of some kinds of weaponry as the war in Ukraine extends into its third week.

Russia, which calls its action in Ukraine a 'special operation,' rather than an invasion or war, has tightened cooperation with Xi Jinping's communist government after both nations came under strong Western pressure over human rights and a raft of other issues.

Pictured, Chinese President Xi Jinping, right, and Russian President Vladimir Putin talk to each other during a meeting in Beijing last month

Azov Regiment destroyed Russian armored vehicles. They also received enemy documentation with a list of units and Russian addresses

Beijing has not condemned Russia's attack and does not call it an invasion, but has urged a negotiated solution.

'China is deeply concerned and grieved on the Ukraine situation,' Liu Pengyu, the Chinese embassy spokesperson in Washington, said, adding that he was not aware of any suggestions China might be willing to help Russia.

'We sincerely hope that the situation will ease and peace will return at an early date.'

The White House's National Security Council declined to comment.

The Washington Post said the unidentified US officials did not state the kind of weaponry that had been requested or how China had responded.

Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting with members of the government via teleconference in Moscow, pictured last Thursday

Debris of a military plane is seen after it was shot by Ukrainian forces on the 10th day of Russian attacks on Ukraine in Chernihiv, Ukraine last week

The White House said the talks will focus on the direct impact of Russias war against Ukraine on regional and global security.

US officials are also accusing China of spreading Russian disinformation that could be a pretext for chemical or biological weapons attacks launched by Vladimir Putin's forces in Ukraine.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has put China in a delicate spot with two of its biggest trading partners: the US and European Union.

China needs access to those markets, yet it also has made gestures supportive of Moscow, joining with Russia in declaring a friendship with 'no limits.'

China's President Xi Jinping. pictured last week, has not condemned Russia's attack and does not call it an invasion, but has urged a negotiated solution

In his talks with Yang, Sullivan will indeed be looking for limits in what Beijing will do for Moscow.

'We will not allow that to go forward and allow there to be a lifeline to Russia from these economic sanctions from any country anywhere in the world,' he said.

China has been one of few countries to avoid criticizing the Russians for its invasion of Ukraine.

China's Xi Jinping hosted Putin for the opening of the Winter Olympics in Beijing, just weeks before Russia launched the February 24 invasion, where the two world leaders affirmed cooperation in several sectors, including oil and gas.

This general view shows destroyed Russian armored vehicles in the city of Bucha, west of Kyiv, on March 4, 2022

A Russian tank is pictured having been destroyed by Ukrainian soldiers

Civilians build iron barricades and traps to block armored vehicles to help defend the city amid Russian attacks in Lviv, Ukraine on March 3, 2022

The Chinese abstained on UN votes censuring Russia and has criticized economic sanctions against Moscow.

China has also expressed its support for peace talks and offered its services as a mediator, despite questions about its neutrality and scant experience mediating international conflict.

But questions remain over how far Beijing will go to alienate the alliance and put its own economy at risk.

Sullivan said China and all countries are on notice that they cannot 'basically bail Russia out ... give Russia a workaround to the sanctions,' with impunity.

Chinese officials have said Washington shouldnt be able to complain about Russias actions because the US invaded Iraq under false pretenses.

The US claimed to have evidence Saddam Hussein was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction, though none were ever found.

On CNN, Sullivan said the administration believes China knew that Putin 'was planning something' before the invasion of Ukraine.

But he said the Chinese government 'may not have understood the full extent of it', because 'it's very possible that Putin lied to them the same way that he lied to Europeans and others.'

Sullivan and Yang last met for face-to-face talks in Switzerland, where Sullivan raised the Biden administration's concerns about China's military provocations against Taiwan, human rights abuses against ethnic minorities and efforts to squelch pro-democracy advocates in Hong Kong.

President Biden is sending his national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, for talks with a senior Chinese official in Rome on Monday. The meeting comes as concerns grow that China is amplifying Russian disinformation in the Ukraine war

Destroyed Russian armored vehicles in the city of Bucha, west of Kyiv

A Russian army tank moves on the outskirts of Mariupol, Ukraine, last Friday

Biden administration officials say Beijing is spreading false Russian claims that Ukraine was running chemical and biological weapons labs with US support.

They say China is effectively providing cover if Russia moves ahead with a biological or chemical weapons attack on Ukrainians.

When Russia starts accusing other countries of preparing to launch biological or chemical attacks, Sullivan told NBC's 'Meet the Press': 'It's a good tell that they may be on the cusp of doing it themselves.'

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby, on ABC's 'This Week,' said 'we havent seen anything that indicates some sort of imminent chemical or biological attack right now, but were watching this very, very closely.'

The striking US accusations about Russian disinformation and Chinese complicity came after Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova alleged with no evidence that the US was financing Ukrainian chemical and biological weapons labs.

The Russian claim was echoed by Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, who claimed there were 26 bio-labs and related facilities in 'which the US Department of Defense has absolute control.'

The United Nations has said it has received no information backing up such accusations.

An explosion seen in an apartment building after Russian's army tank fires in Mariupol, Friday

Pro-Russian separatists patrol with armored vehicles in the pro-Russian separatists-controlled Donetsk, Ukraine on Friday. Troops patrolled the areas in the Donetsk region controlled by pro-Russian separatists

White House press secretary Jen Psaki called the claims 'preposterous.'

'Now that Russia has made these false claims, and China has seemingly endorsed this propaganda, we should all be on the lookout for Russia to possibly use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine, or to create a false flag operation using them,' Psaki tweeted last week. 'Its a clear pattern.'

There is growing concern inside the White House that China is aligning itself with Russia on the Ukraine war in hopes it will advance Beijing's 'vision of the world order' in the long term, according to a person familiar with administration thinking.

The person was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Sullivan told 'Face the Nation' on CBS that the Russian rhetoric on chemical and biological warfare is 'an indicator that, in fact, the Russians are getting ready to do it and try and pin the blame elsewhere and nobody should fall for that.'

A Russian armored personnel carrier burns amid damaged and abandoned light utility vehicles after fighting in Kharkiv, Ukraine, at the start of the invasion on February 27

The international community for years has assessed that Russia has used chemical weapons in carrying out assassination attempts against Putin detractors such as Alexei Navalny and former spy Sergei Skripal.

Russia also supports the Assad government in Syria, which has used chemical weapons against its people in a decade-long civil war.

Testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday, CIA Director William Burns also noted grave concern that Russia might be laying the groundwork for a chemical or biological attack of its own, which it would then blame on the US or Ukraine in a false flag operation.

'This is something, as all of you know very well, is very much a part of Russias playbook,' he said.

'They've used these weapons against their own citizens, they've at least encouraged the use in Syria and elsewhere, so it's something we take very seriously.'
George Tompkins, 19, was found dead and hanging from a tree at Riverside Park in Indianapolis on March 16, 1922. The young man's death was ruled as a 'suicide' even though the Marion County coroner at the time said that Tompkins 'could not have hanged himself'

A black lynching victim's death certificate has finally had its cause of death changed from suicide to homicide 100 years after he was found hanging from a tree with his hands tied behind his back.

George Tompkins, 19, was found hanging in Riverside Park with his hands tied his back on March 16, 1922, and last week The Indiana Remembrance Coalition announced it had successfully lobbied Indianapolis's coroner to update Tompkins' death certificate after a year-long campaign.

In a news release, it also said that the motive for Tompkins' death had never been revealed, although members of the coalition think Tompkins' killing most-likely had a racist motive.

Ranjita Brar, an Indiana Remembrance Coalition member told Fox 59 that Tompkins was from Kentucky and that he was looking to start his life in Indianapolis after living with his great aunt and uncle.

And after his death, the Marion County coroner at the time said Tompkins 'could not have hanged himself,' although his death certificate was still signed off as a suicide.

'Some 100 years ago, someone in the coroner's office made a decision that put history behind us in such a negative way,' Marion County Chief Deputy Coroner Alfie McGinty said.

'We will remember, we will bring justice to something that was unconscionable to me that 100 years ago something like this could have happened,' she added.

*SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO*

The Indiana Remembrance Coalition, who fought to share the truth of Tompkins' death since last year, unveiled Tompkins' new death certificate on Saturday after his cause of death was officially changed from 'suicide' to 'homicide' nearly 100 years after the young man's death

A gravestone in memory of the 19-year-old racial lynching victim was also revealed (pictured), 100 years after the wrongful filling was made

A new death certificate was unveiled at Floral Park Cemetery on Saturday, where a ceremony was held by members of the remembrance coalition. Tompkins' death has now been officially ruled as a homicide, although no one has ever been named as a suspect or arrested for the killing.

A gravestone in his memory has also been uncovered at the ceremony.

Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett, who attended the event, spoke of his anger that justice had come 100 years too late for both the local community and for Tompkins.

'It should not have come to pass that Indianapolis officials labeled this clear murder as instead an unlikely and physically impossible act of suicide,' Hogsett said.

'I invoke the City of Indianapolis to remind us that though we may answer to God's holy authority in the next world, it is a human authority that determines who gets justice in the here and in the now. It is up to public officials like myself and others to preserve and promote equal justice for all residents of our city... Indianapolis can and must acknowledge a more complete story of its own history.'

The Equal Justice Initiative has uncovered 18 reported lynchings in Indiana between 1877 and 1950

Tompkins' death, which appeared on the front pages of Indianapolis newspapers in 1922, was just one of 18 lynchings reported to have taken place in Indiana between 1877 and 1950.

At the time, racial terror lynchings were common throughout the US, with most happening across southern states. More than 4,000 are believed to have taken place in southern states, according to the Equal Justice Initiative.

As of today, lynching is still not recognized as a federal crime across the country after powerful opposition from southern senators.

However, that may soon change after the Senate approved an anti-lynching bill last week. President Joe Biden is expected to sign the bill into law soon although a date has not yet be revealed.
Melbourne is reeling after five separate stabbing attacks over the weekend left two people dead - including a teenage boy - and two others seriously injured.

The two killings each took place in the early hours of Sunday morning after the city was packed for the Moomba Festival over the Labour Day long weekend.

In the first incident, a 16-year-old boy was attacked on Elizabeth Street in Coburg North just before 2.30am.

Neighbours say they heard yelling coming from the street, before rushing to try to help Declan Cutler.

Police (pictured) are investigating the killing of Declan Cutler, who was stabbed to death in the Melbourne inner-north suburb of Coburg North

Police said he was stabbed with an 'edged weapon'. He was treated by emergency services, but died at the scene.

'No teenager deserves this, let alone my godson,' a relative told 9News.

'It's just shocking, it's horrible for us as a family.'

Just over an hour later, at around 3.20am, two men in their 20s from Western Australia were stabbed in a fight on Bourke Street, in Docklands in the city.

A witness said he heard men shouting and then women screaming.

'It started to escalate. There had to be 20 odd people,' he said.

Both men were taken to a hospital but one died a short time later.

The other man is in a stable condition.

Declan Cutler (pictured), 16, was stabbed to death in Melbourne in the early hours of Saturday morning in a weekend of shocking violence in the city

Earlier that night, a 15-year-old boy suffered life-threatening injuries in a fight at Flinders Street Station, in Melbourne's CBD, at about 1.10am.

Three teenagers from Werribee were later charged with intentionally causing reckless injury.

A 14-year-old has been remanded in custody.

A day earlier, in the early hours of Saturday morning, a ride-share driver was stabbed in Fitzroy just before 3.40am.

Three teenagers have been arrested following a brawl (pictured) at Flinders Street Station in Melbourne's CBD

Victoria Police believe the man, who is from Pakistan, was stabbed by two passengers, who stole his car before soon abandoning it.

The driver is in hospital with serious injuries, but the Pakistan consulate general in Melbourne told ABC his condition was stable.

On Friday night, an 18-year-old man was stabbed in Federation Square in the city.

He remains in a critical condition.

There were multiple stabbings over the Labour Day long weekend in Melbourne

'This is unacceptable violent behaviour, whenever it happens and wherever it happens,' Melbourne lord mayor Sally Capp said.

Victoria Police acting Superintendent Troy Papworth warned people not to head to the city if they wanted to 'cause trouble'.

'Don't bother. You will be caught and held accountable,' he said.

Anyone with any information should contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
Dr Nick Coatsworth has slammed calls for face masks to be reintroduced as fears continue to grow around a new Covid variant spreading across the country.

The former deputy chief medical officer said there was no need for concern over the more contagious BA.2 strain while speaking on 2GB on Monday.

'It's no more lethal, which is good news,' he said. 'We don't expect that there's going to be any increase in severity of disease or the likelihood of going to hospital or dying from the condition.'

NSW Health recommended a raft of restrictions, including face masks, to be brought back but the proposal was dismissed by the NSW government last week.

Dr Coatsworth has joined the criticism and took aim at private schools after it was reported several of them had reintroduced face mask mandates.

The top doctor is not alone in his sentiment with Stanford University professor of medicine Jay Bhattacharya labelling the restrictions as 'anti-vaccine'.

Dr Nick Coatsworth has slammed calls for face masks to be reintroduced as fears continue to grow around a new Covid variant spreading across the country

The former deputy chief medical officer said there was no need for concern over the more contagious BA.2 strain while speaking on 2GB on Monday

'Private schools, with all the resources they have, they're not actually public health departments,' Dr Coatsworth said.

'And they're getting separate, independent advice, they shouldn't do that. They're not public health units and they should be following whatever restrictions are going on.

'I understand there might be increases in local number of cases at the schools, but at the end of the day, that's not going to have any affects on the kids there, a lot of them are vaccinated.'

Dr Bhattacharya said the push for restrictions sent the wrong message to a highly-vaccinated country.

'This is a fundamentally anti-vaccine message,' he told Sky News Australia's Outsiders.

'Basically, a very large fraction of the Australian population is vaccinated. The vaccine works well against severe disease and death, that's why Australia has had so few disease deaths from Covid relative to much of Europe and the Americas  the vaccine has worked.'

'Why would you need to return to masks, which don't work? Lockdowns which caused so much harm and actually don't work very well?'

Dr Bhattacharya has been critical of lockdowns and Covid restrictions and regularly takes to Twitter to question their effectiveness.

In one post, he attacked home learning saying 'covid monomania' had driven the decision to withdraw students from classrooms.

NSW Health recommended a raft of restrictions, including face masks, to be brought back but the proposal was dismissed by the NSW government last week

'School children worldwide have been robbed of 2 trillion hours of in-person instruction because of covid monomania,' he wrote.

'Poor kids especially may never recover, accelerating global inequality. Trickle down epidemiology on a mammoth scale.'

Health minister Brad Hazzard said he was 'not keen to go back down the lockdowns and the no singing and dancing and other aspects'.

'Everybody is over it, putting it bluntly,' he told ABC TV on Monday.

However, he is urging people to maintain COVID-safe behaviour.

'If you can wear a mask, do it and wash your hands, be careful.

'Don't go to work if you have got symptoms at all. Get tested,' he said.
A branch of Prime Minister Scott Morrison's personnel department that champions gender equality in the government is being ridiculed due to its logo's phallic-like appearance.

The Women's Network, a wing of the department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C), has been widely mocked due to its similarities with the male anatomy, with some Reddit users even suggesting its design was intentional.

'No logical mind in existence would entertain this as a coincidence/accident,' one Reddit user wrote. 'That is a penis and balls, sir.'

Viewers of the logo have been quick to draw similarities between the design and male anatomy

Several observers were adamant that the logo being used on the PM&C website resembled a male appendage - while others saw a pair of breasts or even a tampon.

Other comments felt the purple colour choice is identical to the eggplant emoji - an emoji that has been widely repurposed to symbolise someone's manhood.

'I'm honestly at a point where I don't know if they are just so incredibly stupid or if they are doing it intentionally because they are just so misogynistic,' one user commented.

Another said: 'Might also add that the creation of this comes after a sexual assault scandals amongst several party members and staffers of the main parties.'

The logo is being proudly displayed on the PM&C Women's Network website

Last month, Scott Morrison apologised for his government's failings towards women in Parliament, following backlash over its treatment of sexism and sexual assault scandals.

'I am sorry. We are sorry,' Mr Morrison said.

'Exploitation, abuse and harassment has played itself out through terrible traumatic and harrowing experiences.

'The harassment of staff, particularly female staff, as well as the harassment of female members and senators. This has to change, it is changing, and I believe it will change.'

The Women's Network was set up to advocate for equal opportunity and gender equality in the Australian public service by facilitating opportunities for learning, networking, career mobility, and flexible approaches to work.

PM&C's website states that 'the network priorities are founded on driving cultural change and encouraging men to drive this cultural change, particularly in areas where men can make a significant contribution.'

As of March 2021, Australia ranked 50th on the Global Gender Gap report released by The World Economic Forum, dropping six places.

Daily Mail Australia has approached the Federal Government for comment.
The director of the Oscar-nominated cowboy film Power of the Dog has slammed actor Sam Elliott as 'a little bit sexist' and 'a bitch' for criticizing the movie's theme of repressed homosexual desire.

'Im sorry, he was being a little bit of a B-I-T-C-H. Hes not a cowboy; hes an actor,' Jane Campion told Variety at the Directors Guild of America awards in Los Angeles on Saturday. 'The West is a mythic space and theres a lot of room on the range. I think its a little bit sexist.'

'I consider myself a creator. I think he thinks of me as a woman or something lesser first,' she added, noting that she takes a 'more expansive' view of the western genre.

Campion's remarks were in response to Elliott, 77, comparing the movie's ranch workers to Chippendales dancers who 'wear bowties and not much else.'

In a foul mouthed tirade on Marc Maron's WTF Podcast last week he said: 'That's what all these f***ing cowboys in that movie looked like. They're all running around in chaps and no shirts. There's all these allusions to homosexuality throughout the f***ing movie.'

The veteran actor, who also blasted Campion for shooting the Montana-set movie in her native New Zealand, has faced heavy criticisms in wake of his comments.

Jane Campion (left) director of the Oscar-nominated cowboy film Power of the Dog has slammed actor Sam Elliott (right) as 'a little bit sexist' and 'a bitch' for criticizing the movie's theme of repressed homosexual desire

Elliott said his main gripe stemmed from the implications that the character Phil Burbank was a closeted gay man and that the movie over-critiqued the masculine image of the west

In the interview at the center of the controversy, Elliott said his main gripe stemmed from the implications that the character Phil Burbank was a closeted gay man and that the movie over-critiqued the masculine image of the west.

'The myth is that they were these macho men out there with the cattle,' Elliott said. 'I just came from Texas where I was hanging out with families  not men  but families. Big, long, extended, multiple-generation families that made their livings... and their lives were all about being about cowboys.

'And boy, when I f**king saw that [movie], I thought, 'What the f**k,'' he said.

'Where's the western in this western?'

He added that he was also angry that lead actor Benedict Cumberbatch's character never seemed to remove his chaps.

'Every f**cking time he would walk in from somewhere  he never was on a horse  he'd walk in to the f**cking house, storm up the f**cking stairs, go lay in his bed, in his chaps and play the banjo.'

The actor also went on to question the suitability of Campion, asking how a 'woman from down there [New Zealand] can 'know about the American West.'

Ellliott, however, did call Campion, 67, a 'brilliant' filmmaker and said he just did not agree with her direction in The Power of the Dog.

Earlier this month, Campion was questioned over her directing choices and whether or not she ever worried about 'overdoing all the leather and ropes and chaps'.

The director said she 'encouraged' the homosexual fetishes and 'gear' seen in the movie.

'Too much leather and ropes and chaps? I encouraged it,' she told the Guardian in an interview published on March 4. She also said she knew parts were 'quite eroticized,' including a scene where Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee) is hiding a rope Phil (Cumberbatch) had given him under his bed.

Campion (pictured at the Directors Guild of America awards in Los Angeles on Saturday) said: 'Im sorry, he was being a little bit of a B-I-T-C-H. Hes not a cowboy; hes an actor. The West is a mythic space and theres a lot of room on the range. I think its a little bit sexist'

Earlier this month, Campion said she 'encouraged' the homosexual fetishes and 'gear' seen in the film, acknowledging she knew parts were 'quite eroticized'

When approached by DailyMail.com on Wednesday, Elliott - who was running errands - sarcastically claimed to have no knowledge of the movie.

'What are you talking about?' he said when asked about his thoughts on the film. 'I don't know anything about it.'

However, his comments on WTF Podcast have caused outrage in Hollywood.

The Power of the Dog star Cumberbatch, 45, hit back at Elliott, describing his comments a 'very odd reaction' to the movie. He also noted there is still 'a massive intolerance in the world at large towards homosexuality.'

'I'm trying very hard not to say anything about a very odd reaction that happened the other day on a radio podcast over here,' Cumberbatch, who stars as a repressed gay cowboy in the film, said during BAFTA's Film Sessions on Friday.

'Without meaning to stir over the ashes of that [] someone really took offense to  I haven't heard it so it's unfair for me to comment in detail on it  to the West being portrayed in this way,' Cumberbatch continued.

The Power of the Dog follows Cumberbatch's character Phil Burbank, a menacing rancher whose brother (Jesse Plemons) surprisingly gets married to a woman (Kirsten Dunst) who moves onto their ranch with her son (Smit-McPhee).

The film centers around Burbank's anger over his repressed feelings as he torments his new sister-in-law and her son at their Montana ranch until he learns to love his family. It was filmed in New Zealand because Campion wanted to direct it close to her native country.

The film leads all contenders with 12 Oscar nominations including Best Picture, Best Director for Campion and Best Actor for Cumberbatch.
Private helicopter operators have expressed outrage of not being called upon by emergency agencies to adequately assist with the NSW flood crisis, despite being willing and capable to help wherever required.

The fallout from the ongoing flood crisis in northern NSW continues despite community calls for help, amid claims offers of military help were also rejected.

Two helicopter operators told Daily Mail Australia they've since written to the NSW government demanding answers as to why they weren't better deployed during the flood emergency in northern NSW, despite being paid to be on standby.

Sydney Helicopters crews expected to be deployed to Lismore and Ballina earlier this month, where thousands of residents were evacuated and winched to safety from rising floodwaters.

Instead, the NSW State Air Desk sent them to the other end of the state in Cooma, where possible flooding forcasted.

But crisis never eventuated and crews spent a day-and-a-half 'sitting around and watching TV' at an emergency response centre before being told their services were no longer required and returned home to Sydney.

Sydney Helicopters took to Facebook on March 2 to say crews were deployed and assisting the SES in parts of the state.

As floods ravaged the the city of Lismore (pictured) in northern NSW, Sydney Helicopters crews were sent to the other end of the state

The 'ridiculous' situation left owner and chief pilot Mark Harrold upset over the waste of resources.

'I was bewildered when we could have been better utilised up north, where people were dying,' he told Daily Mail Australia.

'Our helicopter was already paid by the government to be available.'

'We have crews and aircraft equipped and capable of winching people to safety, dropping off supplies and lifting equipment.

'Instead we're being used less and less by the agencies enlisted to serve the state.'

Last week, Sydney Helicopters shared photos on Facebook of crews dropping off supplies to residents stranded by floodwaters in the Hawkesbury region in Sydney's north-west.

Mr Harrold has since revealed the drop-offs were paid by the residents themselves after being told by emergency agencies their services weren't needed.

'We were fielding calls from people in desperate need of assistance when we would be otherwise doing nothing,' he said.

Mr Harrold added another resident who was airlifted to Hornsby Hospital complaining of chest pains later paid Sydney Helicopters to fly him home when he was discharged because there was no other alternative.

He will write to Premier Dominic Perrottet on Monday requesting an in-depth investigation as to why resources contacted by the government weren't used in areas where they were needed the most.

Sydney Helicopters owner and chief pilot Mark Harrold has slammed the waste of resources by emergency agencies during the flood crisis

Sydney Helicopters spent last week dropping off supplies (pictured) to stranded residents in the Hawkesbury region after being told by emergency agencies they weren't needed

'I'm frustrated and upset flood-affected communities in NSW were let down by the agencies who serve them,' Mr Harrold said.

'There needs to be a spotlight on emergency services as to why they're not choosing experienced operators already being paid by the government.'

The State Air Desk is operated by NSW Rural Fire Service which says the SES was the lead agency during the flood disaster.

Another Sydney-based operator has also written to multiple state MPs, the Premier and deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce demanding answers.

Helitreck owner Trevor Breed told Daily Mail Australia he received a call from an emergency service worker based in Lismore on February 27 alerting him to a critical shortage of helicopters and experienced rescue crews.

He contacted the NSW State Air Desk the next day to offer assistance as the flood crisis in the region worsened.

'I was told they did not require any help at this stage but there may be some requirement in a few days for fodder drops to livestock,' he recalled.

Mr Breed decided to send two helicopters to the Northern Rivers at his company's expense.

Bankstown-based operator Helitreck (pictured) sent two helicopters to northern NSW during the NSW flood crisis. One was deployed for 21 hours of work over a week while the other sat grounded in Coffs Harbour

One was allocated 21 hours of work in one week by the State Air Desk doing passenger transfers of RFS staff to and from Lismore and other locations. It was also tasked to deliver a generator to a transmission tower.

The second aircraft was grounded in Coffs Harbour six days 'without turning a blade'.

'After the first helicopter was detasked, we could see we were not going to be allocated any work and both aircraft returned to Bankstown,' Mr Breed said.

'It was very disappointing. It cost of lot of money to money to send those aircraft up, which left us out of pocket.'

He also shared the letter send to Mr Joyce, the NSW Premier and state MP.

'The question needs to be asked, what does it cost per hour for a RFS helicopter to operate compared to commercial operators? And does RFS invoice this cost to the SES budget?' he wrote.

'The question also needs to be asked, why are internationally owned aircraft being tasked, when local Australian helicopter companies are left sitting on the ground? Money going overseas!'

Ross Meadows spearheaded a crowdfunding campaign to source helicopters privately to drop supplies to flood victims across northern NSW.

His team's helicopters arrived to find the town of Coraki 'decimated'.

'We were the first ones there and the only ones there. I'd say nearly every single person we went to had received no food and had pretty much no food left,' he told the Sydney Morning Herald.

'There could have been another five aircraft in the air, without a shadow of a doubt.'

Another helicopter operator said residents in nearby town of Coraki (pictured) also needed help

The SES insists private operators were and continue to be utilised across the state as part of the ongoing flood crisis, alongside government aircraft from NSW RFS, NSW Police Force, NSW Ambulance and Australian Defence Force.

'NSW SES works closely with our partner agency NSW RFS to ensure air assets are prepositioned and deployed to respond to requests for assistance,' a spokesman told Daily Mail Australia.

'Multiple air assets were deployed as part of the operation, however their initial efforts were hampered by poor weather conditions and a lack of communications in the area.

Daily Mail Australia also has contacted NSW RFS for comment.

The claims come after Scott Morrison hit back at claims he took too long to deploy the army to help with floods across two states - even though two offers of military help were rejected.

The prime minister has been widely criticised for taking 10 days to declare a national emergency for catastrophic flooding that killed 22 people, and had residents in Lismore and Mullumbimby, in northern NSW, battling rising tides on their own.

Some residents were forced to sit on their roofs until they were rescued, while others had to rely on friends, family and neighbours to help them get to dry land.

In Queensland, Ipswich residents have also been left to clean up their third major flood in 11 years.

Mr Morrison said it could take a long time to deploy military to different parts of the country.

The interview was just hours after it was revealed the NSW SES twice knocked back support offered by the Australian Defence Force on February 25, before waters started to rise.

Mr Morrison told Weekend Today the idea his cabinet was too slow to respond to emergencies was nothing more than a 'Labor narrative'.

'There is a chorus of commentary that seeks to support that. That is often the same chorus that didn't like how the last election went,' he said.

'I understand the frustration because in a disaster like I have seen up in Lismore, no response is ever going to be able to meet the overwhelming need.'

He explained Good Samaritans were essential in natural disasters because 'the community is always going to be the first ones there'.

'We need people to go and rescue their neighbours. We need the community response,' he said.

'To deploy nationally positioned forces around the country and mobilise them with the equipment and the heavy equipment and the supplying and the provisioning - that, you can't just turn that off and on.

'You're never going to have an ADF base sitting around the corner in every single town.'

Prime Minister Scott Morrison (pictured) defended the government's response to the deadly floods in NSW and Queensland

The PM was asked whether the government had a lack of foresight around natural disasters, in reference to the thousands of homes that were lost in the catastrophic 2019-20 bushfires.

Mr Morrison then pointed out that Australia was quick to move on JobKeeper when thousands of citizens lost their jobs at the beginning of the pandemic, and closed borders with China in an attempt to keep the virus out.

He made the emergency declaration in response to the floods last Saturday - which means relief funds and other government support could reach flood-affected areas more directly.

Despite Mr Morrison's defence, the Daily Telegraph reported on Sunday that the ADF contacted NSW SES headquarters at 2pm on February 25 to ask if assistance was required.

But the Defence representative was told help would not be necessary.

NSW SES commissioner Carlene York defended the decision to twice reject offers of help just three days before the flood crisis took hold of the state.
Grace Tame has mocked Scott Morrison on Twitter about a weekend Facebook post of himself and his cat with a tweet joking she 'shape shifted' herself into the Prime Minister's cat Charlie.

The tweet, in which Tame comments, 'Pardon my Twitter absence, I've just been shape shifting', alludes to the now famous image of herself with the PM before Australia Day in which she is giving him a 'side eye' look.

Tame's Twitter comment about Mr Morrison comes after her revelation on Sunday she was hospitalised just days ago for mental health issues after 'losing control' and having 'stepped too deep into the shame spiral'.

The 2021 Australian of the Year made the admission at the 'Protecting the Outspoken' event at the Sydney Opera House, detailing her heartbreaking call to doctors saying, 'I'm thinking about killing myself'.

Grace Tasme's mocking tweet about Scott Morrison's weekend post on Facebook in which she jokes that she has shape shifted' into being the PM's cat

The Prime Minister posted the image of him and cat Charlie, writing that the pet had been part of the Morrison family for almost a decade and was 'definitely in charge'

Tame's joking tweet alluded to the now famous image of herself with the PM (above) before Australia Day in which she is giving him a 'side eye' look.

Scott Morrison's wrote alongside his Facebook photo with his cat, 'You've met Buddy before, but this is Charlie. He's been part of our family for almost ten years. And he's definitely in charge.'

Tame's tweet with the PM's Facebook post drew some criticism but most responses were supportive of her and contained further criticism of Mr Morrison.

One person tweeted, 'Photo of the year and it isn't even April yet. This confirms that Scott Morrison is a walking, talking meme of himself. #auspol #ScottyTheCompletePsycho'

Another commented, 'Richard Nixon saved his political career with a famous speech about his dog "Checkers". I have news for you Scott. You could reference an entire menagerie of pets, including the gold fish, and it still will not save you. The Women of Australia will see to that.'

Two different people commented , 'The cat has a pretty decent side eye' and 'I actually laughed out loud. I cant remember the last time I did that. You are brilliant'.

Pardon my Twitter absence, Ive been shapeshifting pic.twitter.com/wrZnx3O5wb  Grace Tame (@TamePunk) March 13, 2022

Late to the party pic.twitter.com/fRgQMlbv8v  Meredith R (@Meredith_LR) March 13, 2022

However, one person commented in response to Tame, 'Mmmm.....am I the only one that thinks maybe your energies should be focused on making a difference rather than belittling others ..... just saying'.

And another said, 'That was more important than any comment on the recent bullying accusations in the Victorian and federal ALP was it?'

A woman tweeted, 'Have you considered whether this is a form of bullying? If you want to see a change in the world, you need to be that change.'

Ms Tame, an advocate for survivors of sexual assault following her own abuse as a schoolgirl at the hands of a male teacher, has endured a stream of public scrutiny since being appointed Australian of the Year in 2021.

Either of you would be better in charge than Scott.  pic.twitter.com/PdEcYGVE2m  Rach Raker (@rachaelraker) March 13, 2022

Grace Tame (above) revealed at the weekend that she had been hospitalised just days ago after 'I actually lost control and I was really scared' and had stepped in 'too deep into the shame spiral'

Controversy erupted on the last day of her holding the title when she met Mr Morrison and his wife Jenny at a morning tea at The Lodge.

Tame's displeasure with the PM was obvious when she openly scowled at him, failed to make eye contact and gave a cursory handshake followed by an icy sideways glance.

Following the event, Tame attacked on Twitter what she described as 'the consequences of civility for the sake of civility'.

She tweeted, 'The survival of abuse culture is dependent on submissive smiles and self-defeating surrenders. It is dependent on hypocrisy.

'Its true that many women are sick of being told to smile, often by men, for the benefit of men. But its not just women who are conditioned to smile and conform to the visibly rotting status-quo. Its all of us.'

On Sunday, Tame told a crowd at the Sydney Opera House event which is part of the as part of the All About Women festival, that she had been 'in the ER the other day because I actually lost control and I was really scared'.

'I called up the clinic and I said, "I can't, I can't, I've stepped too deep into the shame spiral and I'm thinking about killing myself". That's real and that's the toll it takes.

'That's the price of shame,' she said.

If you or someone you know is affected by sexual assault or violence, call 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732, Bravehearts on 1800 272 831 or Lifeline on 131 114.
Melbourne residents woke to plumes of smoke choking their city on Monday with health warnings in place across the Victorian capital.

Residents posted images of the CBD shrouded in ash clouds, with areas in the city's east reporting heavy smelling smoke.

Concerned calls prompted Victoria's Country Fire Authority to post a series of messages on social media assuring locals the smoke was a result of planned burns in the Yarra Ranges at the weekend.

Melburnians woke on Monday to plumes of smoke covering the city, with its iconic Chapel Street barely visible (pictured)

Residents of Melbourne's northern suburbs all the way down to Ferntree Gully and Mount Evelyn saw huge blankets of smoke sweep over the area.

Images show Bourke Street in the city centre down to the iconic Chapel Street in the south barely visible as people started their Monday morning commute.

A Lilyfield resident took to Facebook saying the smoke had caused a severe health reaction and said more needed to be done to alert people of the burns.

'This is not ok. This smoke entered my home triggering my asthma.

'The risk assessment for planned burning activities needs to include the detrimental health impacts on the whole of population.'

Further concerned calls forced the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning to issue a message on the VicEmergencyApp at 9:30pm on Sunday night, with health warnings put in place for asthmatics and people hard of breathing.

'Smoke may be visible from nearby communities and roads, as there is a planned burn in Eastern Melbourne sending smoke across the city,' the message read.

'There is no immediate threat to the community and no action is required.'

A Lilyfield resident took to Facebook saying the smoke had caused a severe health reaction and said more needed to be done to alert people of the burns

The SES crew from Lilydale in Melbourne's north-east posted a warning to Facebook that residents should be prepared

The Lilydale SES said the smoke had come from planned burns in the Montrose/Mt Evelyn area.

'Please take care of yourself, consider closing windows and having your reliever medications handy if you need them,' the unit posted on Facebook.

'Planned burns are important to keep fuel loads low, and it would seem the lower temperatures and change of wind direction has started moving the smoke Lilydale and Mooroolbark bound.'

People in Melbourne's northern suburbs all the way down to Ferntree Gully and Mount Evelyn saw huge blankets of smoke sweep over the area

Forest Fire Management Victoria's deputy chief Tamara Beckett said burns were now being carried out based on conditions rather than the time of year, which may see smoke plumes occur randomly.

She said wind speed, temperature and humidity were all things considered before planning the burns.

'As long as the conditions allow and it is safe to do so, we will carry out as many of our high priority burns in bushfire prone areas as we can,' Ms Beckett said.

'We will undertake planned burns to reduce fire risk near communities, essential infrastructure and assets like water catchments, and ecological burns  particularly in the western grasslands  to help support rare and protected flora and fauna.'

The city will see max temperatures of 27 degrees on Monday with cloudy periods pushing towards a chance of a late shower.

Winds have been increasing across 24 hours, with gusts of up to 27km/h expected, which has helped push the ash plumes across the city.
A prominent GP has called for the return of face masks as Australians brace themselves for a 'significant' flu season.

Dr Tony Bartone said the spread of flu, Omicron and other Covid variants could be reduced if masks and density limits were reintroduced indoors.

'There are simple things that we could all do, restrictions or not, that will minimise the risk of us contracting another episode of Covid,' he told the Today Extra on Monday.

'Mask-wearing in crowded places is something simple that we can do, it doesn't have to be in the form of a restriction.'

Dr Bartone also advocated the return of density limits in 'crowded venues' because of a 'significant' forecast influenza season this year.

He said the return of Covid rules would reduce the level of Omicron, its new, more contagious sub-variant BA2 and flu circulating in the community.

On Friday, more than 14,000 new cases were recorded with more than 16,000 local infections detected on Thursday. On March 4, cases were less than 9,500 (pictured, a woman in Sydney)

At the weekend NSW Health recommended the return of similar restrictions amid officials' concerns that Covid cases could once again spike to 25,000-per-day.

The state has witnessed a spike in cases in recent days with more than 14,000 new cases recorded on Friday plus 16,000 local infections on Thursday.

Top doctor calls new mask push 'anti-vaccine' Stanford University professor of medicine Jay Bhattacharya slams new push for masks 'anti-vaccine' He said the Covid rules sent the wrong message to highly-vaccinated country 'This is a fundamentally anti-vaccine message,' he told Sky News Australia's Outsiders 'Why would you need to return to masks, which don't work? Lockdowns which caused so much harm and actually don't work very well? Dr Bhattacharya has been critical of lockdowns and Covid restrictions and regularly takes to Twitter to question their effectiveness Advertisement

Daily cases had been relatively steady about the 9,000 mark.

In an internal presentation to Mr Hazzard, revealed at the weekend, NSW Health recommended the return of indoor masks, bans on singing and dancing, density limits and working from home.

Mr Hazzard dismissed reintroducing the restrictions before claiming they would only be taken as a 'last resort', The Sydney Morning Herald reported.

'As health minister I am not at all keen to be heading back the path that has exhausted everybody with all the restrictions,' he said. 'All that would be a last resort from my perspective.'

Mr Hazzard said rising cases were 'a major issue that the whole health team is watching very closely' and said his biggest concern was 'the failure of about 45 per cent of eligible people not having had a booster'.

The top doctor is not alone in his sentiment with Stanford University professor of medicine Jay Bhattacharya labelling the restrictions as 'anti-vaccine'.

'This is a fundamentally anti-vaccine message,' Dr Bhattacharya told Sky News Australia's Outsiders.

'Basically, a very large fraction of the Australian population is vaccinated. The vaccine works well against severe disease and death, that's why Australia has had so few disease deaths from Covid relative to much of Europe and the Americas  the vaccine has worked.'

'Why would you need to return to masks, which don't work? Lockdowns which caused so much harm and actually don't work very well?'

Dr Tony Bartone (pictured) said by reintroducing masks and density levels the spread of influenza, Omicron and other Covid sub-variants would be reduced

NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard (pictured) has dismissed reintroducing restrictions likes masks or density levels before claiming they would be taken as a 'last resort'

During a separate interview on Monday, Mr Hazzard ignored questions from Today hosts Karl Stefanovic and Allison Langdon on Monday about the NSW flood crisis, insisting on discussing Covid, rather than the flood crisis in Lismore.

Allison Langdon asked Mr Hazzard 'who stuffed up here?' but instead of giving a straight answer the Health Minister rubbished the question, saying it was 'the sort of commentary you'd expect sometimes from some people in the community, particularly the media actually'.

He added: 'I think when there's a major crisis you've got to expect that people are going to be working flat chat and working as well together as you can, which is effectively in a war,' but then veered far from what he was asked, but continued with the war theme ...

'So I'm going to stay out of that one and talk about Covid.'

Dr Nick Coatsworth slammed calls for face masks to be reintroduced as fears continue to grow around a new Covid variant spreading across the country (pictured, a masked Sydneysider)

The former deputy chief medical officer (pictured) said there was no need for concern over the more contagious BA.2 strain while speaking on 2GB on Monday

The face of Australia's vaccine rollout, Dr Nick Coatsworth, also dismissed calls for face masks to be reintroduced despite expected jumps in Covid cases.

The country's former deputy chief medical officer said there was no need for concern over the more contagious BA.2 strain.

'It's no more lethal, which is good news,' he said. 'We don't expect that there's going to be any increase in severity of disease or the likelihood of going to hospital or dying from the condition,' he said on 2GB radio on Monday.

Dr Coatsworth took aim at private schools after it was reported several of them reintroduced face mask mandates.

NSW Health recommended a raft of restrictions, including face masks, to be brought back but the proposal was dismissed by the NSW government last week (pictured, a masked shopper)

'Private schools, with all the resources they have, they're not actually public health departments,' Dr Coatsworth said.

'And they're getting separate, independent advice, they shouldn't do that. They're not public health units and they should be following whatever restrictions are going on.

'I understand there might be increases in local number of cases at the schools, but at the end of the day, that's not going to have any affects on the kids there, a lot of them are vaccinated.'
There were welcome reports last night that negotiations between Russia and Ukraine have been making progress in the bid to end this savage war.

But that has not stopped the slaughter on the ground.

Indeed, Vladimir Putins onslaught has only been intensifying in its barbarity.

Yesterday morning, missiles were fired at a military base at Yavoriv, just 12 miles from the Polish border. An American journalist was killed near Kyiv, while explosions rocked the western city of Lviv for the first time.

Of these, the attack on the military base is the most worrying. A stray Russian bomb could have landed in Poland  a Nato member.

In this tense climate, any attack on Poland could have been the cue for a dramatic escalation in the conflict, since Nato members are bound by their treaty obligations to support any ally under fire.

Vladimir Putins onslaught has only been intensifying in its barbarity. Yesterday morning, missiles were fired at a military base at Yavoriv, just 12 miles from the Polish border

For Russias military planners, this risk was part of the very rationale for the strike.

The aim was to send the West a clear message: Moscow will no longer stand by as lethal aid is sent in ever greater quantities to Ukraine, especially anti-tank and anti-aircraft weaponry.

Russias deputy foreign minister has even warned that Western arms shipments to Ukraine will now be regarded as legitimate targets for military action.

Does this mean that the West is at risk of being drawn into the conflict  precipitating World War Three?

Not yet. Behind the tough rhetoric, the attack on the base at Yavoriv betrays the Kremlins weakness. Our military aid is clearly having a devastating impact on Russias capacity to wage this war.

Putins generals are desperate to halt the flood of materiel precisely because it has so powerfully reinforced the Ukrainian resistance.

Understandably, the Ukrainians want us to go even further. Under non- stop assault, their leaders repeated yesterday their calls for a no-fly zone over their nation to secure the skies.

Some figures in the West, most notably Scotlands First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, have also hinted that they would support this policy.

Behind the tough rhetoric, the attack on the base at Yavoriv betrays the Kremlins weakness. Our military aid is clearly having a devastating impact on Russias capacity to wage this war. A map of the conflict is seen above

But such a step would be disastrous. It would require Nato planes to shoot down Russian aircraft.

That would practically guarantee a new world war, complete with the use of nuclear weapons, thereby heralding the extinction of life on Earth.

The same is true of the misguided attempts earlier this month for Poland and America to co-operate in the supply of MiG-29 fighters to the Ukraine air force. This too would have been tantamount to a Nato declaration of war against Russia.

Because the stakes are so high, the Western response has to be more subtle, degrading Russian forces without turning the conflict into a global cataclysm. The most effective means to that end is to step up the arms shipments, which are causing Putins forces such damage.

Starstreak anti-aircraft missiles, for instance, can provide a remarkable return. Built in Belfast, they cost 100,000 each and are deadly against 30million Russian SU-30 aircraft and 10million Hind helicopter gunships.

Similarly, for 30,000 an NLAW short-range missile launcher can take out a 4million Russian tank. Other invaluable weapons for the arsenal include Javelin anti-tank systems and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles.

What makes this equipment all the more important is that, owing to sanctions, Putins regime cannot quickly replace lost planes and tanks.

In 1940, Winston Churchill famously appealed for materiel from the USA, then neutral, in the fight against Nazi tyranny. Give us the tools and we will finish the job, he urged  and President Franklin D Roosevelt was highly co-operative and imaginative, helping to turn the tide of the war.

That same spirit should prevail against Russia today.

Prolonged attrition can leave Putins regime without any hope of victory, so that it is forced to negotiate further with Ukraine, whose independence should be the first condition of any such talks.

More negotiations could be brokered by China, which is dismayed by the blood-soaked war, having been promised by Putin that it would all be over in a few days.

With the pressures of its ravenous economy, China cannot endure a global meltdown triggered by prolonged conflict.

The only alternatives for Putin are either wholesale defeat, followed by his ousting from power and a journey to the International Criminal Court, or the apocalypse of nuclear war, bringing the whole world crashing down in flames.

A glimmer of hope came yesterday in the good news from the negotiations. But overall the situation remains so serious that we in the West will have to plan for the most horrific eventuality  while doing everything we can to avoid it.

Colonel Tim Collins OBE was Commanding Officer of the 1st Battalion, Royal Irish Regiment during the Iraq War.
Police were called to the home of former Speaker John Bercow after an alleged late night domestic bust-up with his wife Sally which officers said involved an allegation of common assault.

Mr Bercow, who was last week found by an independent panel to have bullied staff, was spoken to at their 1million townhouse in Battersea, south west London, in August last year.

A source said police were called to the property by Mr Bercow's wife Sally, but the matter has since been dropped by the Metropolitan Police without any arrests being made.

The source told the Sun: 'Mr Bercow was spoken to, then left the address with his face apparently looking like thunder.'

The former Commons speaker - who is at the centre of a bullying row - refused to discuss the incident after answering the door at his home next to the River Thames today.

Asked about the bust up last August the dishevelled looking former MP simply repeatedly replied: Have a good day', before shutting the door.

Police were called to the home of former Speaker John Bercow after an alleged late night domestic bust-up with his wife Sally

The Metropolitan Police said officers were called to the property at 11.35pm on August 26 last year.

A spokesman said: 'Police were called to an address following reports of a disturbance. Officers attended and an allegation of common assault was reported.

'No arrests were made at the time and the case has since been closed with no further action'.

The report comes after an independent inquiry found Mr Bercow guilty of 21 claims made against him relating to behaviour during his decade as Speaker from 2009 to 2019.

The former Tory MP - who has since defected to Labour - has denied the allegations and described the investigation a 'travesty of justice rooted in prejudice, spite and hearsay' and carried out by a 'kangaroo court'.

The standards watchdog branded the ex-Tory MP a 'serial liar' and ruled his treatment of three staff would warrant expulsion from the Commons had he not quit in 2019.

An independent inquiry found Mr Bercow guilty of 21 claims made against him relating to behaviour during his decade as Speaker from 2009 to 2019

In a report, Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, Kathryn Stone, found him guilty of 21 claims made against him relating to behaviour during his decade as Speaker from 2009 to 2019.

Ms Stone upheld 21 out of 35 counts brought by Lord Lisvane, the former clerk of the Commons, and former private secretaries Kate Emms and Angus Sinclair.

The investigation also found 'his behaviour fell very far below that which the public has a right to expect from any Member of Parliament'.
Keir Starmer was last night facing questions over whether he welcomed a peerage for a Russian-born tycoon he is now criticising.

It has been suggested Labour's leader had privately congratulated Evgeny Lebedev when he was elevated to the House of Lords, sources told the Daily Mail.

He is believed to have sent the message to the phone of the media tycoon, who owns The Independent and London's Evening Standard newspapers, when the political honours list was published in August 2020.

Yet yesterday Sir Keir insisted that Boris Johnson had 'serious questions' to answer over the peerage, following claims that the intelligence services considered it a national security risk, and the head of MI6 refused to meet him.

The Labour leader has written to the House of Lords appointments commission in light of the 'worrying reports' and called on it to publish its advice to Mr Johnson on the vetting process for the peerage.

Yet yesterday Sir Keir insisted that Boris Johnson had 'serious questions' to answer over the peerage, following claims that the intelligence services considered it a national security risk, and the head of MI6 refused to meet him

Sir Keir told Sky News yesterday: 'Of course, we shouldn't just demonise people from Russia, I completely agree with that, but that isn't the Lebedev case. The media today are saying there were further reservations by the security and intelligence services which were known before this appointment was made and we know that concerns were raised apparently with the Prime Minister.

'In light of the further revelations today, I think the Prime Minister has got serious questions to answer: What did he know? And did he override security advice?'

Tory backbencher Andrew Bridgen said it was another example of double standards from the Labour leader, who was pictured drinking a beer in an office during lockdown despite condemning staff gatherings in Downing Street at the same time.

'Once again Keir Starmer has been caught out for his hypocrisy,' he added. 'He is Captain Hindsight, just a political weathervane who stands for nothing.' He called on Sir Keir to fully disclose all his previous contacts with Lord Lebedev.

Michael Gove yesterday strongly defended the peerage awarded to the Moscow-born businessman (pictured), who moved to London as a child when his father was stationed at the Soviet embassy

Michael Gove yesterday strongly defended the peerage awarded to the Moscow-born businessman, who moved to London as a child when his father was stationed at the Soviet embassy. He became a British citizen in 2010.

Mr Gove insisted he had never been warned that Lord Lebedev posed a security risk and said the 41-year-old could not be held responsible for the fact that his father Alexander had been an KGB officer.

'It's important to draw a distinction between Evgeny Lebedev's father, who obviously, as you pointed out, worked for the KGB, and Lord Lebedev himself, who is someone who has made his home in this country,' the Levelling Up Secretary told the BBC's Sunday Morning programme.

The Sunday Times reported that Sir John Sawers, the ex-head of MI6, had once refused to meet Lord Lebedev.

In a statement on the website of his Evening Standard newspaper last week, Lord Lebedev insisted: 'I am not a security risk to this country, which I love.

'My father a long time ago was a foreign intelligence agent of the KGB, but I am not some agent of Russia.'
One of the most important state ministers in the country has ignored Today show hosts Karl Stefanovic and Allison Langdon and instead gone on a rant about Covid-19.

NSW Minister for Health Brad Hazzard was questioned about the flood crisis in the state, first being asked 'who stuffed up here?' by Langdon.

Instead of giving a straight answer, Mr Hazzard said the question was 'the sort of commentary you'd expect sometimes from some people in the community, particularly the media actually'.

NSW health minister Brad Hazzard (pictured) refused to answer a straight question on the Today show

He added that 'I think when there's a major crisis you've got to expect that people are going to be working flat chat and working as well together as you can, which is effectively in a war,' but then veered far from what he was asked, but continued with the war theme.

'From past experience, working certainly through the Covid war in the last two years the teams, federal and state work very well together.

'It depends on the information you have as at the day as to what decisions are made, and of course a week or two later everyone is an instant expert.

'So I'm going to stay out of that one and talk about Covid.'

Stefanovic then put it to the minister that unlike him, the commissioner of the SES was prepared to accept responsibility.

'She says the buck stops with her and its ultimately NSW who have got to react to this stuff and your government is to blame,' said the TV host.

The flooding was so heavy in Sydney that Roseville Bridge between the city and the Northern Beaches flooded, leaving cars floating

Manly Post Office, which is close to Brad Hazzard's Northern Beaches constituency, flooded during the storm

Mr Hazzard then implied that he was asked on the program under false pretences.

'I was asked to do an interview on Covid. I will talk about Covid. I have given you my views on (the flooding crisis), let's move on to Covid,' he said.

Stefanovic then asked the minister why he can't 'bounce on to something else, this is your government.

'You're a senior minister in the government and you can't answers questions about people being left in their homes about not getting the right emergency, about the level of coordination between the state and federal governments dropping the ball? You can't answer questions like that?' he said as Mr Hazzard shook his head in frustration.

A woman is pictured being helped to higher ground in Lismore, NSW on Monday, February 28, 2022

Residents evacuate as flooding occurs in the town of Lismore in north-eastern New South Wales

The minister refuted that, saying he had 'just answered it' and that the different levels of government 'worked together extremely well'.

'I think that trying to cast blame is not actually helpful. There will be a review and that will indicate whether there is further learnings that will happen in the future for any other similar situations,' he said.

Mr Hazzard then complained again about the line of questions, saying he didn't 'need to have all of that thrust at me'.

He said he was there to speak about Covid and the forecast that the number of cases could double in the next four to six weeks.

NSW Minister for Health Brad Hazzard has warned that Covid has not gone away. Pictured are people wearing masks in a pub

The minister encouraged people got get a vaccine booster shot, especially if they are immunocompromised.

Langdon then asked him if NSW could see some Covid restrictions coming back.

Mr Hazzard was visibly relieved that he had managed to steer the conversation back to what was, for him, safer territory.

He said NSW Chief Health Officer Dr Kerry Chant and he had said many times 'when you're in close proximity with others it still makes sense to wear a mask'.

The minister then decided he could mix two topics, both Covid and the floods.

NSW health minister is encouraging people to get a booster shot as it emerges that two million people eligible for a booster have not yet got it

'The pandemic has not gone away,' he said, adding that though the floods are 'terrible', we also 'need to remember that we are still in the middle of a pandemic and it's a one-in-100 year pandemic with potentially grave consequences if you get it.'

Mr Hazzard said that the BA2 variant of Covid is taking over from BA1 and that it's much more transmissible, though not necessarily more dangerous.

'So we are expecting that more people may get it ... potentially that means more people in hospital and more people potentially in ICU and possibly dying,' he said.

The minister said there were 958 people in hospital in NSW, 8,911 cases and 47 people in ICU.

In NSW on Monday, there were 958 people in hospital with Covid, 8,911 cases and 47 people in ICU. Pictured is a person getting the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine booster

Stefanovic then asked the minister why so many are hesitant to get a vaccine booster shot in NSW, where more than two million people eligible to have it have not yet done so.

Mr Hazzard said a lot of people are confused, thinking if they have had the virus they think they don't have to have a booster.

'But the reality is you do have to have a booster and it should be around four to six weeks after you've actually had the virus, or about three months after you've actually had your second dose,' he said.
Till was lynched in Mississippi in 1955, after being accused of offending a white woman in her family's grocery store

She also argues that Smollett's accusations had no harmful outcome, unlike the 1995 lynching of 14-year-old black teen Emmett Till

In her caption, she says the punishment 'does not fit the crime' and should be less severe

He and Henson grew particularly close after played her character Cookie's son Jamal in Empire, the drama TV series on Fox

In 2019, Smollett claimed he had been attacked by two men who had allegedly used racist and homophobic slurs against him

Henson is calling for Smollet's freedom, just three days after the 39-year-old was sentenced to 150 days in jail and 30 months in probation for faking a hate crime

Jussie Smollett's former on-screen mom has likened the jailed hate crime faker to 14 year-old lynching victim Emmett Till in an Instagram post calling for Smollett's release.

Taraji P Henson - who played Smollett's fictional mom Cookie in the hit Fox drama, shared a post with #FREEJUSSIE typed in white text on a black background.

She suggested the custodial sentence given to the disgraced star by a Chicago judge last week was too harsh, and that the actor should be allowed to serve it at home instead.

The accompanying caption, written three days after Smollett was jailed for 150 days, read: 'I am not here to debate you on his innocence but we can agree that the punishment does not fit the crime.

'Emmett Till was brutally beat and ultimately murdered because of a lie and none of the people involved with his demise spent one day in jail, even after Carolyn Bryant admitted that her claims were false. No one was hurt or killed during Jussies ordeal.

In her Instagram post's caption, Hanson pleaded for Smollett's case to be reviewed so that he could face a lesser punishment. She suggested that the Empire actor should face house arrest instead of jail time

'He has already lost everything, EVERYTHING! To me as an artist not able to create that in itself is punishment enough. He cant get a job.

'No one in Hollywood will hire him and again as an artist who loves to create, that is prison. My prayer is that he is freed and put on house arrest and probation because in this case that would seem fair. Please #freejussie'

In 2019, Smollett, who is black and gay, falsely claimed he had been attacked by two men who had allegedly used racist and homophobic slurs after a night out in Chicago

His story later unraveled, and he was convicted of faking the hate attack last year. Smollett made a shocking outburst after he was sentenced Thursday suggesting he could fall victim to a murder made to look like a suicide, in an apparent reference to pedophile Jeffrey Epstein's 2019 hanging in a Manhattan jail cell.

He and Henson grew particularly close after played her character Cookie's son Jamal in Empire, the drama TV series on Fox.

Emmett Till was lynched in Mississippi in August 1955, aged just 14. The youngster was killed by a group of white racists after he was accused of 'offending' a white woman in a grocery store.

His murder remains one of the most notorious race-hate killings in US history, and helped galvanize the civil rights movement's protests against racial injustice.

Taraji P. Henson came out in full defense of Jussie Smollett (left) on Sunday after the Empire actor's sentencing on Thursday, comparing his case to the one of 14-year-old racial lynching victim Emmett Till (right)

Taraji P. Henson, 51, defended her Empire co-star Jussie Smollett (right), 39, after he was given 150 days in jail at his sentencing on Thursday. Pictured: Smollett (left) and Henson (right) at The World Premiere of Screen Gems' 'Think Like a Man Too'

Actor Jussie Smollett wipes away tears after his grandmother testified at his sentencing hearing at the Leighton Criminal Court Building, in Chicago, Illinois, on March 10, 2022

Henson's post, which was liked by several celebrities including Gabrielle Union and Leslie Jordan, echoes similar sentiment shared in letters read during Smollett's sentencing on Thursday.

Alfre Woodard, Samuel L. Jackson and his wife LaTanya Richardson Jackson, as well as others echoed their support for Smollett and urged Judge James B. Linn to not sentence him any jail time.

The social media post comes after Smollett's brother, Jocqui urged supporters to flood social media with posts hash-tagged #FreeJussie. He also told them to directly tag the Cook County Jail.

'I want to make it clear to folks that he is in no way, shape or form at risk of self-harm,' Jocqui said.

Jocqui added that Jussie has been placed in a psych ward at the Cook County Jail.

'So Jussie is currently in a psych ward at the Cook County Jail. What's very concerning is that there was a note attached to his paperwork today and put in front of his jail cell saying that he's at risk of self-harm,' said Jocqui Smollett in a video posted to his brother's Instagram account Sunday morning.

In court on Thursday, Jussie insisted that he's not suicidal to ensure if something happened to him in jail, the public would know it was foul play - a reference to Jeffrey Epstein's jail cell hanging that many have speculated was a carefully-staged murder.

Judge James Linn granted him 'day for day' eligibility, which means if he behaves himself behind bars, he will likely be released within 75 days - just over two months.

But even that short sentence left Smollett furious, with the actor deploying his 92 year-old grandmother as a witness in an attempt to avoid ending up behind bars.

A law enforcement source told TMZ that the jailed Smollett is in the psych ward because it's also the area where they house high-profile inmates.

The Cook County Sheriff's Office told DailyMail.com that Smollett is not being held in solitary confinement and that he enjoys 'substantial time out of his cell,' but did not confirm or deny reports that he's in a psych ward.

Scroll Down For Video:

Jocqui Smollett, brother of former Empire actor Jussie, says his brother is in a psych ward in jail and his paperwork has been updated to reflect that he is at risk of self har

Smollett told the judge on Thursday: ''If anything happens to me when I go in there, I did not to it to myself, and you must all know that'

Smollett told his attorneys before his Thursday court appearance that he would get a harsher sentence than most people convicted of a non-violent offense because he is black

'The use of solitary confinement was abolished at the Cook County Jail in 2016, and any claims that he is being held in this manner is false,' the Cook County Sheriff's Office said.

'Mr. Smollett is being housed in his own cell, which is monitored by security cameras in the cell and by an officer wearing a body worn camera who is stationed at the entrance of the cell to ensure that Mr. Smollett is under direct observation at all times.

'As with all detained persons, Mr. Smollett is entitled to have substantial time out of his cell in the common areas on the tier where he is housed, where he is able to use the telephone, watch television, and interact with staff. During such times out of cell, other detainees will not be present in the common areas.

'These protocols are routinely used for individuals ordered into protective custody who may potentially be at risk of harm due to the nature of their charges, their profession, or their noteworthy status. The safety and security of all detained individuals, including Mr. Smollett, is the Sheriff's Office's highest priority.'

The actor's brother said he hasn't gotten clear answers from jail officials about why Jussie is allegedly in a psych ward. He urged supporters to flood social media in an attempt to figure it out.

'He wants to let folks know that he is very stable, he is very strong, he is very healthy and ready to take on the challenge that ultimately has been put up against him,' Jocqui said on Instagram.

'This is not right. This is completely lack of justice. It's angering. It's an outrage, but he ultimately knows what he needs to do.'

On Thursday Smollett - once a darling of the music and TV world for his success on the show Empire - was sentenced to 150 days in jail.

The star was convicted last year of five felony counts of disorderly conduct for lying to police repeatedly when he claimed he was the victim of a race hate attack in January and February 2019.

After he was sentenced Smollett told his legal team his prediction was correct and said the 150 day sentence was 'unfortunate' and 'sad' and blamed it on the judge's animosity towards him

But despite his light sentence, TMZ reported that Smollett told his attorneys before his Thursday court appearance that he would get a harsher sentence than most people convicted of a non-violent offense because he is black, calling it proof of systemic racism in the court system.

After he was sentenced Smollett told his legal team his prediction was correct and said the 150 day sentence was 'unfortunate' and 'sad' and blamed it on judge Linn's animosity towards him, TMZ.com reported.

In court on Thursday Smollett protested 'I am innocent! I am not suicidal' as he was led away in handcuffs. He said it was a ploy to ensure if something happened to him in jail, the public would know it was foul play - a reference to Jeffrey Epstein's jail cell hanging that many claim was an 'inside job', TMZ reported.

Nenye Uche, Smollett's lead attorney, told reporters that his client's comments were made 'for a specific reason,' according to the New York Post.

'I don't want people to think, 'Well, is he going crazy? Why is he yelling 'I'm not suicidal?'' He was doing it for a specific reason because, let's be honest, we have the Epstein situation, where he was found dead in his jail even in protective custody,' Uche said.

'What Mr. Smollett was concerned about was, what if he turns up dead in protective custody? He doesn't want people to think he killed himself.'

Smollett will serve his sentence in the Cook County Jail, a stone's throw from the court and one of the biggest jail complexes in the country under protective custody.

The Cooks County Sheriff's Office confirmed on Friday that the 39-year-old will be housed in his own cell where he will be under video monitoring at all times, per the request of Smollett and his legal team, the New York Post reported.

'Mr. Smollett is being housed in his own cell, which is monitored by security cameras in the cell and by an officer wearing a body-worn camera who is stationed at the entrance of the cell to ensure that Mr. Smollett is under direct observation at all times,' the Cooks County Sheriff said in a statement.

Inmate number 20220310140 in Chicago's Cook County Jail, Jussie Smollett

Smollett's family posted his quote to Instagram hours after he began serving his sentence

Smollett faced up to three years in prison and his attorneys made one last attempt for a non-custodial sentence, but it wasn't enough to persuade Judge James Linn against imposing jail time.

After patiently listening to Smollett's attorneys blame the jury, the media and the prosecutors for his conviction, Linn imposed a 150-day sentence and blasted Smollett's 'astounding hypocrisy'.

The actor has claimed throughout that he is the victim of a racist and homophobic campaign by the Chicago Police Department and prosecutor's office.

He blamed former Chicago Police Chief Eddie Johnson - who is black - for going after him, and his brother yesterday fumed at assistant special prosecutor Samuel Mendenhall - who is also black - that they didn't need a 'lecture in racism'.

He and his supporters say he is being unfairly punished because of his celebrity and that anyone else would have spared jail for the crimes he was convicted of.

He still maintains that he was telling the truth when he claimed to have been beaten up by two white Trump supporters in January 2019.

An aerial view of the enormous Cook County Jail complex where more than 6,000 inmates are spread across more than a dozen units, awaiting sentencing or trial dates or serving sentences

Judge James Linn is pictured sentencing Smollett to 150 days in Cook County jail

The worst of the jail: A solitary confinement cell in the Cook County Jail. Jussie is not likely to be placed in one of these cells

A jury unanimously convicted him of lying. They found that the evidence showed he had in fact paid his two black friends, brothers Abel and Ola Osundairo, to rough him up in a staged attack.

Police at the time suggested it was to raise his celebrity profile.

The two brothers testified at trial that Smollett walked them through exactly how to go about the attack. Smollett's defense attorneys claimed they were liars throughout, but couldn't explain why they would have lied to him.

The brothers were never charged because they never lied to police - the first time they were questioned about it, they told cops what had happened, according to Judge Linn.

Smollett has never relented on his defense and instead insists he was victimized by the City of Chicago.

Judge Linn has ordered him to pay $120,000 in restitution which reflects the $130,000 the city is suing him for, minus $10,000 that Smollett has already surrendered as part of a now canceled-out deal with the State's Attorney's Office.

As he was sentenced, Judge Linn blasted Smollett as a 'charlatan'

Judge Linn was damning in his verdict, noting how Smollett on the stand reprimanded someone who, quoting him, used the N-word, and yet himself sabotaged the work of activists for equality.

'The hypocrisy is just astounding. I believe that you did damage to actual hate crime victims. These are people who have a difficult time coming forward. There may be some trepidation.

'I don't know if they are going to be accused of acting like you, pulling a stunt like you. I don't know if first responders are going to be more hesitant. I hope it's not the case.'

'You're just a charlatan, pretending to be a victim of a hate crime.'

Inside the Cook County jail where Jussie Smollett will serve at least two months along with 6,000 inmates: Cramped dorms, riots in the mess hall and limited visits are what disgraced star can expect

Because of the low-level, non-violent nature of Smollett's crimes, he will not serve his time in a state prison.

He is being housed instead for the two-and-a-half months in the Cook County Jail, a stone's throw from the court and one of the biggest jail complexes in the country.

He is currently being held in Division Eight - which is predominantly reserved for inmates with injuries or illness. It remains unclear if he will serve the duration of his sentence there, or if he will be moved after undergoing health checks.

Inside the prison, there are cramped dorm rooms where hundreds of non-violent offenders sleep side by side in bunk beds. Smollett was convicted of five, non-violent felonies. It is unclear if he will have to sleep in a dorm, or if he'll be put in a cell

An exterior view of Cook County Jail, where Smollett has begun his 150-day sentence. He will likely be let out after 75 days, if he behaves, and is currently being held in Division 8 - the medical unit. The prison has 6,000 inmates who are either serving sentences of under two years, or are awaiting trial

An aerial view of the enormous Cook County Jail complex where more than 6,000 inmates are spread across more than a dozen units, awaiting sentencing or trial dates or serving sentences

Smollett will not receive visitors today. Visitation for inmates in Section 2E of Unit 8 - where records show he is now - begins tomorrow, at 2.30pm. Division 8 is what is known as a Residential Treatment Unit. It is a two-wing facility and made headlines recently for a COVID outbreak which killed three inmates.

Cook County Jail mostly houses suspects who are awaiting trial or convicts awaiting sentencing so there is a variety of violent and non-violent suspects and convicts in the population.

Those whose their sentences there have been given considerably light ones of two years or less.

Several sections of the jail have enormous dormitories where hundreds of men sleep in bunk beds lined up, row to row. There are individualized cell blocks, for more violent or at-risk offenders.

During a New York Times visit to the jail for a 2017 feature on how it had been upgraded, one inmate repeatedly stabbed two others.

A cell block in another portion of the jail. The locked cells are reserved for more violent offenders

These are the cells in Division 8- the medical unit where Smollett is currently being held

In this Sept. 29, 2011 file photo, inmates at the Cook County Jail in Chicago wait to be processed for release. Jussie will have to spend at least half of his 150 day sentence

In this Sept. 29, 2011 file photo, inmates at the Cook County Jail in Chicago, line up to be processed for release

In 2018, a violent brawl erupted in the mess hall where dozens of inmates started viciously fighting at the bottom of the stairs

A plea for help is written on a window of the maximum security unit of the Cook County Jail in Chicago, Illinois, USA, 10 April 2020. In January 2022, more than 800 inmates and staff tested positive for COVID

The COVID-19 quarantine tier with single cells at Division 11 of the Cook County Jail in Chicago on May 20, 2020
President Volodymyr Zelensky has urged Ukrainians to hold on and fight as he delivered his latest speech following a hospital visit to see wounded soldiers.

The president described Sunday as 'the 18th day of our war for life, for Ukraine, for independence' and condemned the latest attack near the Polish border.

He warned NATO Monday that its member states would soon be attacked by Russian forces after an air strike hit a Ukrainian military base less than 25 kilometers (15 miles) from the Polish border.

Zelenskyy said in his nightly address on Sunday that Russia fired 30 rockets at the Yavoriv military base. He said the attack killed 35 people and injured 134 injured others.

Meanwhile, the death toll in the strategic southern port city of Mariupol, facing acute deprivation amid a prolonged siege, has topped 2,000, officials there said.

'If you do not close our sky, it is only a matter of time before Russian missiles fall on your territory, on NATO territory, on the homes of NATO citizens,' Zelensky said in a video address released shortly after midnight, urging NATO to impose a no-fly zone over his country.

Zelenskyy said that Ukraine feels the support of other countries, naming Bulgaria, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Romania, Poland, and Britain.

Regarding efforts to arrange a meeting between him and Russian president Vladimir Putin, he said this is 'a hard path, but this path is needed'.

He said some humanitarian corridors had been successful during the day, with the notable exception of Mariupol, which was disrupted by Russian troops.

'But we will try again until we can help our people,' he said. 'Because they are ours. Our Mariupol. Heroic Mariupol. Ukrainians!'

He concluded: 'We are going through the worst ordeal in our history. In our lives.

'We protect the most precious thing we have. We must hold on. We must fight. And we will win. I know that. I believe in that.'

Washington and its EU allies have sent funds and military aid to Ukraine and imposed unprecedented economic sanctions on Russia.

Further east, the latest fighting in Kyiv's suburbs left a US journalist dead - the first foreign reporter killed since Russia's invasion of its neighbour on February 24.

Mr Zelensky called it 'deliberate attack by the Russian military'.

Meanwhile, efforts continued to get help to Mariupol, which aid agencies say is facing a humanitarian catastrophe.

A humanitarian column headed there had to turn back again on Sunday, a city official said, after the Russians 'did not stop firing'.

Pictured: President Volodymyr Zelensky has urged Ukrainians to hold on and fight as he delivered his latest speech following a hospital visit to see wounded soldiers earlier today

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky visits an injured Ukrainian serviceman in a military hospital in Kiev on Sunday

Zelensky takes a photo with the injured soldier at the military hospital in Kiev on Sunday as Russia's attack on Ukraine continues

A total of 2,187 residents have now died in days of relentless Russian bombardment, the city council said Sunday.

'The enemy is holding the city hostage by performing real acts of genocide,' said Ukraine Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov.

Zelensky has accused Moscow of both blocking and attacking humanitarian convoys, although he said Sunday that another 125,000 people had been evacuated that way across Ukraine.

'Russians are bombing the city even during official negotiations,' Defence Minister Reznikov said. 'They have no dignity, no honor, no mercy.'

Talks between the two sides have yet to yield a ceasefire, but Ukrainian and Russian representatives will meet via video-conference Monday, a Zelensky adviser and a Kremlin spokesman both said.

'And our goal is that in this struggle, in this difficult negotiating work, Ukraine will get the necessary result... for peace and for security,' Zelensky said early Monday.

'We see significant progress,' Leonid Slutsky, a senior member of Russia's negotiating team, told state-run television network RT Sunday.

It comes after the Ukrainian President visited wounded soldiers at a military hospital in Kiev on Sunday to boost their morale and award them medals for their bravery.

'Guys, get well soon. I believe that the best gift for your statement will be our common victory!' said Zelensky, according to an English translation of a tweet posted by the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine.

He awarded 106 servicemen of the armed forces in Ukraine the title of 'Heroes of Ukraine', 17 of which were awarded posthumously.



Among them was Senior Lieutenant Hutsul Volodymyr Olesksandrovych, who received the title for his actions in the Kherson region destroying 25 units of enemy equipment and 'about 300 invaders'.

Before visiting the military hospital, Zelensky warned against the formation of a 'pseudo-republic' in the south of his country

Kiev is becoming surrounded by Russian forces as analysts warn the worst days of the war in Ukraine could lie ahead

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy (left) listens to a chief of Medical Forces Command Brigadier General Tetiana Ostashchenko (centre)

In a speech on Sunday, Zelensky warned against the formation of a 'pseudo-republic' in the south of his country.

Zelensky said Russians were using blackmail and bribery in an attempt to force local officials to form a break-away region in the south, much like those in Donetsk and Luhansk - which Putin declared as 'independent' at the start of the war.

Protection for the two eastern regions where pro-Russian separatists began fighting Ukrainian forces in 2014 was used as a pretext by Russia to start the invasion.

Kherson, a vital Black Sea port of 290,000 residents, was the first major city to fall earlier this month.

'Ukraine will stand this test. We need time and strength to break the war machine that has come to our land,' Zelensky said in his address.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky address the nation on March 12 after Russian air strikes killed 35 people at a military base outside Ukraine's western city of Lviv

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy listens to a chief of the National military medical clinical centre Major General Anatolii Kazmirchu

Ukrainian officials on Sunday also accused Russia of organizing a 'fake referendum' in the south of the country now partially under control by Russian forces.

'Following 2014 playbook, Russians now desperately try to organize a sham 'referendum' for a fake 'people's republic' in Kherson,' said Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine's minister of foreign affairs.

'Given zero popular support, it will be fully staged. Severe sanctions against Russia must follow if they proceed. Kherson is & will always be Ukraine.'

Russia bombarded cities across Ukraine on Saturday, pounding Mariupol in the south, shelling the outskirts of the capital, Kyiv, and thwarting the efforts of people trying to flee the violence.

Moscow expanded its offensive on Sunday, as waves of Russian missiles pounded a military training base in western Ukraine, killing 35 people.

The International Center for Peacekeeping and Security, which lies not far from the border with NATO member Poland, served as a crucial hub for cooperation between Ukraine and the NATO countries supporting it in its defence against Moscow's grinding assault.

More than 30 Russian cruise missiles targeted the sprawling facility, which has long been used to train Ukrainian military personnel, often with instructors from the U.S. and other countries in the western alliance.

Poland is also a transit route for Western military aid to Ukraine, and the strikes followed Moscow's threats to target those shipments.

An attack so close to the border was heavy with symbolism in a conflict that has revived old Cold War rivalries that gave birth to NATO and threatened to rewrite the current global security order.

A man wounded in this morning's air strikes at a nearby military complex is assisted by medical staff outside Novoiavorivsk District Hospital on March 13, 2022 in Novoiavorivsk, Ukraine

A man wounded in this morning's air strikes at a nearby military complex is assisted by medical staff outside Novoiavorivsk District Hospital on March 13, 2022 in Novoiavorivsk, Ukraine. A series of Russian missiles struck the International Center for Peacekeeping and Security at the nearby Yavoriv military complex

Meanwhile, British Prime Minister told Zelensky that Putin's 'barbaric actions' were 'testing not just Ukraine but all of humanity'.

The Prime Minister spoke to the Ukrainian president on Sunday afternoon, according to No 10.

'He commended the president and the Ukrainian people on their fortitude. The Prime Minister said Putin's barbaric actions were testing not just Ukraine but all of humanity,' a Downing Street spokesman said.

'The leaders condemned the murders of Brent Renaud and countless innocent Ukrainians, and the abduction of the mayors of Dniprorudne and Melitopol.

'The Prime Minister outlined the support the UK continues to deliver to Ukraine. He said the UK would continue to pursue more options for bolstering Ukraine's self-defence, working with partners including at Tuesday's meeting of the Joint Expeditionary Force in London.

'The Prime Minister said the UK would continue to stand behind Ukraine in all their efforts to bring an end to this disastrous conflict.'

A view of damaged buildings and streets due to the ongoing Russian shelling and missile strikes in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on Sunday

A Ukrainian firefighter drags a hose inside a large food products storage facility which was destroyed by an airstrike in the early morning hours on the outskirts of Kyiv on Sunday

Since Russia's invasion more than two weeks ago, at least 596 civilians have been killed, according to the U.N., though it believes the true toll is much higher. Millions more have fled their homes amid the largest land conflict in Europe since World War II.

Despite its superior firepower, Russia has struggled in its advance across Ukraine, in the face of stiffer than expected resistance, bolstered by Western weapons support.

Instead, Russian forces have besieged several cities and pummeled them with strikes, hitting two dozen medical facilities and leading to a series of humanitarian crises.

Many civilians have been caught in the barrage, and Ukraine's Prosecutor General's office said Sunday that at least 85 children have been killed.

An American journalist was killed and another wounded when their car was fired upon at a Russian checkpoint Sunday, police said.

Meanwhile, U.S. President Joe Biden is sending his national security adviser to Rome to meet Monday with a Chinese official amid concerns that country is amplifying Russian disinformation, and Pope Francis called for peace.

In this handout video grab taken from a footage released by the Ukrainian Presidency, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky speaks face camera in a street of Kyiv on March 11

The attacked training base near Yavoriv is less than 15 miles from the Polish border and appears to be the westernmost target struck during Russia's 18-day invasion.

The base has hosted international NATO drills and a senior NATO official, Admiral Rob Bauer, previously hailed it as embodying 'the spirit of military cooperation' between Ukraine and international forces.

As such, the site is a potent symbol Russia's longstanding concerns that the 30-member Western military alliance is a threat to Moscow by operating so close to its territory.

NATO denies that it poses any threat, but Russia has repeatedly demanded Ukraine drop its ambitions of joining the alliance as a pre-requisite for ending the war.

Lviv governor Maksym Kozytskyi said most of the Russian missiles fired Sunday 'were shot down because the air defense system worked.' Those that got through killed at least 35 people and wounded 134, he said.

Russian fighters also fired at the airport in the western city of Ivano-Frankivsk, which is less than 94 miles north of Romania and 155 miles from Hungary, countries that also are NATO allies.

Ukraine Army troops dig in at frontline trench positions to continue repelling Russian attacks, in sub-zero temperatures, east of the strategic port city of Mykolaiv,

Footage released by Russia Ministry of Defense on Saturday March 5 shows Russian soldiers took control of a military base near the village of Radensk, Kherson region

NATO said Sunday that it currently does not have any personnel in Ukraine, though the U.S. has increased the number of American troops deployed to Poland.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the West would respond if Russia's armaments travel outside Ukraine and hit any NATO members, even accidentally.

Biden 'has been clear, repeatedly, that the United States will work with our allies to defend every inch of NATO territory and that means every inch,' Sullivan said on CBS News' 'Face the Nation.'

Lviv itself so far has been spared the scale of destruction unfolding to its east and south. The city's population of 721,000 has swelled during the war with residents escaping bombarded population centers and as a waystation for the nearly 2.6 million people who have fled the country.

Ukrainian and European leaders have pushed with limited success for Russia to grant safe passage to civilians trapped by fighting, though Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said authorities have managed to evacuate nearly 125,000 people from combat zones.

Ukrainian authorities said more than 10 humanitarian corridors would open Sunday, with agreement from Russia, including from the battered and besieged port city of Mariupol, where the city council said 2,187 people have been killed.

The suffering in the port city is 'simply immense,' the International Committee of the Red Cross said Sunday, noting that hundreds of thousands of its residents are 'facing extreme or total shortages of basic necessities like food, water and medicine.'

'Dead bodies, of civilians and combatants, remain trapped under the rubble or lying in the open where they fell,' the Geneva-based organization said in a statement. 'Life-changing injuries and chronic, debilitating conditions cannot be treated.'

Zelenskyy said in a video address that a convoy carrying 100 tons of humanitarian aid was headed to the city, whose capture could help Russia establish a land corridor to Crimea, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014.

Meanwhile, continued fighting on multiple fronts heaped further misery on the country Sunday and provoked renewed international outrage.

In the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv, near the Black Sea, authorities reported nine people killed in bombings. Meanwhile, they said Russian airstrikes on a monastery and a children's resort in the eastern Donetsk region hit spots where monks and others were sheltering, wounding 32 people.

Around the capital, Kyiv, a major political and strategic target for the invasion, fighting also intensified, with overnight shelling in the northwestern suburbs and a missile strike Sunday that destroyed a warehouse to the east.

Kyiv Region police said on its official website that Russian troops opened fire on a car carrying two American journalists. The force said Brent Renaud died and Juan Arredondo was wounded.

Chief regional administrator Oleksiy Kuleba said Russian forces appeared to be trying to blockade and paralyze the capital with day and night shelling of the suburbs.

He vowed that any all-out assault would meet stiff resistance, saying: 'We're getting ready to defend Kyiv, and we're prepared to fight for ourselves.'

Zelenskyy also alleged that Russians were using blackmail and bribery in an attempt to force local officials in the southern Kherson region to form a 'pseudo-republic' like those in the two eastern regions where Russian-backed separatists began fighting Ukrainian forces in 2014.

Zelenskyy reported Saturday that 1,300 Ukrainian soldiers had died in the war. The Russians said days ago that several hundred of their forces have died but have not given a recent updated count.

The war has repeatedly raised the specter of nuclear accidents, as fighting occurred around nuclear power plants.

On Sunday, Ukraine said it restored a broken power line to the decommissioned Chernobyl plant, scene of the world's worst nuclear disaster in 1986. The plant was knocked off the grid last week and relying on generators. That raised concerns about its ability to keep spent fuel cool, though the International Atomic Energy Agency played down those worries.

In some of his strongest denunciations yet of the war in Ukraine, Pope Francis on Sunday decried the 'barbarianism' of the killing of children and other civilians and pleaded for the attacks to end 'before cities are reduced to cemeteries.'

Francis said Mariupol, which 'bears the name' of the Virgin Mary, has 'become a city martyred by the heartbreaking war that is devastating Ukraine.'

In Mariupol, which has endured some of the worst punishment since Russia invaded, efforts to bring food, water and medicine into the port city of 430,000 and to evacuate civilians, were prevented by unceasing attacks.

More than 1,500 people have died in the city during the siege, according to the mayor's office, and the shelling has even interrupted efforts to bury the dead in mass graves.

'They are bombing [Mariupol] 24 hours a day, launching missiles. It is hatred. They kill children,' Zelensky said during a video address.

Ukraine's military said on Saturday that Russian forces captured Mariupol's eastern outskirts, tightening the armed squeeze on the strategic port.

Taking Mariupol and other ports on the Azov Sea could allow Russia to establish a land corridor to Crimea, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014.

Zelensky encouraged his people to keep up their resistance, which many analysts said has prevented the rapid offensive and military victory the Kremlin likely expected while planning to invade Russia's ex-Soviet neighbor.

'The fact that the whole Ukrainian people resist these invaders has already gone down in history, but we do not have the right to let up our defense, no matter how difficult it may be for us,' he said.

Zelensky again deplored Nato's refusal to declare a no-fly zone over Ukraine and said Ukraine has sought ways to procure air defense assets, though he did not elaborate.

The president also accused Russia of employing 'a new stage of terror' with the alleged kidnapping of the mayor of Melitopol, a city 119 miles west of Mariupol.

After residents of the occupied city demonstrated for the mayor's release on Saturday, the Ukrainian leader called on Russian forces to heed the calls.

'Please hear in Moscow!' Mr Zelensky said. 'Another protest against Russian troops, against attempts to bring the city to its knees.'

In multiple areas around the capital, artillery barrages sent residents scurrying for shelter as air raid sirens wailed.

A picture shows damages after the shelling by Russian forces of Constitution Square in Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-biggest city, on March 2

Russia claimed control of the southern port city as street battles raged

Britain's Defence Ministry said Russian ground forces that had been massed north of Kyiv for most of the war had edged to within 15 miles of the city center and spread out, likely to support an attempted encirclement.

As artillery pounded Kyiv's north-western outskirts, black and white columns of smoke rose south-west of the capital after a strike on an ammunition depot in the town of Vasylkiv caused hundreds of small explosions.

Thousands of soldiers on both sides are believed to have been killed along with many civilians.

At least 2.5 million people have fled the country, according to the United Nations refugee agency.

The Ukrainian chief prosecutor's office said on Saturday at least 79 children have been killed and nearly 100 have been wounded.

Most of the victims were in the Kyiv, Kharkiv, Donetsk, Sumy, Kherson and Zhytomyr regions, the office said, noting that the numbers are not final because active fighting continues.
Newly released footage filmed on defender drones shows the Ukrainian army wiping out multiple Russian armoured vehicles and a command centre as the war enters its 18th day.

The first video was shared online on Sunday morning and appears to show rockets being fired at three armoured vehicles in the Ukrainian south-eastern city of Mariupol.

The aerial footage, which was circulated by several unverified accounts, shows a BTR-82 APC and KamAZ-63968 'Typhoon' vehicle being targeted successfully. It is not clear when the strike took place.

Newly released footage filmed on defender drones shows the Ukrainian army wiping out multiple Russian armoured vehicles in Mariupol (pictured) and a command centre in Vasylivka

The footage was shared online by unverified accounts and showed armoured vehicles hit

Pictured: Plumes of thick grey smoke were seen billowing into the sky after the drone strike

The BTR-82A is an advanced 8x8 wheeled armoured personnel carrier (APC) being manufactured by in Russia for use by the armies of Russia and Kazakhstan.

The second video footage was also shared online on Sunday and shows a drone strike on a Russian command centre in southern Ukraine.

The footage was released by the Ukrainian Army who said it shows the Russian command and control center destroyed near Vasylivka, in the Mykolaiv region by a Bayraktar drone.

It is unknown if or how many casualties there were involved in both strikes on Russian forces.

It comes as Russia escalated attacks in western Ukraine on Sunday with a deadly airstrike on a military base where Ukrainian troops had trained with NATO forces, bringing the conflict closer to Poland and prompting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to renew his pleas for a no-fly zone.

Zelenskyy called Sunday a 'black day,' and said none of the activities at the military base would have threatened Russian territory.

Explosions have been heard on the outskirts of the western Ukrainian city of Lviv after Russian forces launched an attack on a military base just 12 miles from the Polish border, killing at least nine people and injuring dozens more.

A video shared by the Ukrainian army showed a Russian command centre being hit by missiles

Pictured: The footage captured by a defence drone shows the building burst into flames

Pictured: The footage of the drone strike took place near near Vasylivka, in the Mykolaiv region

According to Ukrainian sources, Vladimir Putin's forces had launched a missile strike on the International Center for Peacekeeping and Security, also known as Yavoriv military complex, just before 6am this morning.

Initial reports suggested the base had been targeted by eight missiles, but Maksym Kozytskyi, Governor of the region later confirmed 30 cruise missiles had been fired, killing 35 people and injuring 134.

An American journalist was also killed Sunday and another injured when their vehicle came under fire from Russian forces outside Kyiv.

Meanwhile, continued fighting in multiple regions caused more misery throughout Ukraine and has provoked international outrage.

Now in its third week, the war has forced more than 2.5 million people to flee Ukraine. Thousands of civilians and soldiers have been killed.

Meanwhile, the death toll in the strategic southern port city of Mariupol, facing acute deprivation amid a prolonged siege, has topped 2,000, officials there said.

The International Peace Keeping and Security Centre in Yavoriv burns after being hit by a Russian missile strike in the early hours of Sunday - killing 35 people and injuring 134 more

The missile strikes destroyed buildings on the military base, with footage after the attack showing parts of entire buildings demolished

This photo reportedly shows damage at the Yavoriv training area that was targeted by Russia

Efforts continued to get help to Mariupol, which aid agencies say is facing a humanitarian catastrophe.

A humanitarian column headed there had to turn back again on Sunday, a city official said, after the Russians 'did not stop firing'.

A total of 2,187 residents have now died in days of relentless Russian bombardment, the city council said Sunday.

'The enemy is holding the city hostage by performing real acts of genocide,' said Ukraine Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov.

Zelensky has accused Moscow of both blocking and attacking humanitarian convoys, although he said Sunday that another 125,000 people had been evacuated that way across Ukraine.

'Russians are bombing the city even during official negotiations,' Defence Minister Reznikov said. 'They have no dignity, no honor, no mercy.'

Talks between the two sides have yet to yield a ceasefire, but Ukrainian and Russian representatives will meet via video-conference Monday, a Zelensky adviser and a Kremlin spokesman both said.

'And our goal is that in this struggle, in this difficult negotiating work, Ukraine will get the necessary result... for peace and for security,' Zelensky said early Monday.

'We see significant progress,' Leonid Slutsky, a senior member of Russia's negotiating team, told state-run television network RT Sunday.

It comes after the Ukrainian President visited wounded soldiers at a military hospital in Kiev on Sunday to boost their morale and award them medals for their bravery.

'Guys, get well soon. I believe that the best gift for your statement will be our common victory!' said Zelensky, according to an English translation of a tweet posted by the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine.

He awarded 106 servicemen of the armed forces in Ukraine the title of 'Heroes of Ukraine', 17 of which were awarded posthumously.
He wowed the Crufts crowd by winning best gundog last night  then followed it up by winning Best in Show as well.

And crowd favourite Baxer the flat-coated retriever wasnt content just to receive the winners rosette  he wanted to eat it too.

The dogs win left owner Patrick Oware from Oslo, Norway, in tears.

Mr Oware told Birminghams National Exhibition Centre: Its amazing. Im really, really proud of him.

Baxter's win at Crufts left owner Patrick Oware from Oslo, Norway, in tears. Mr Oware told Birminghams National Exhibition Centre: Its amazing. Im really, really proud of him

The results came after a 12-year-old girl with a rare and incurable gastrointestinal disorder impressed the judges on her Crufts debut  scoring first place with Shih Tzu Pebbles in the Minor Puppy Bitch section on Saturday.

The nine-month-old puppy was one of six dogs Ellissia East-Hickman showed at Crufts  all of whom placed fourth or higher in their sections.

The schoolgirl, from Marden, Kent, wore a colostomy bag beneath her smart buttoned jacket in the ring to help her cope with chronic intestinal pseudo-obstruction, a condition which has seen her in and out of Great Ormond Street Hospital for much of her life.

Ellissia East-Hickman, who has a rare and incurable gastrointestinal disorder, impressed the judges on her Crufts debut  scoring first place with Shih Tzu Pebbles in the Minor Puppy Bitch section on Saturday

Ellissia, who is autistic, said it was a big achievement getting to Crufts less than a year after she began entering dogs in shows.

She added: I find the dogs calming to be around, and it is interesting reading different dogs and getting to know them. You cant just say a dog is a dog they all have different personalities and mindsets.

Mum Cheryl East, 44, who runs beauty businesses, said: Its still not really sinking in, we are over the moon and so proud of Ellissia, we cant believe it! In some of the categories there were best of breed group winners, but Ellissias dogs placed higher.
Some influencers have said that gender identity is more important than sex

Social media influencers are causing great harm by persuading thousands of young people they need to change their gender to be happy, MPs have been told.

Some spread the idea that gender identity should take precedence over biological sex in the NHS, prisons and sport, LGB Alliance said.

The charity, which defends the rights of lesbians, gay men and bisexuals, accused influencers of falsely telling children that puberty blockers were not permanent.

Social media influencers are causing great harm by persuading thousands of young people they need to change their gender

It also said they were promoting double mastectomies for girls who do not feel they have been born in the right body.

MPs were told: Something is badly wrong with a media system in which influencers are able to disseminate harmful disinformation to impressionable and troubled teenagers and to create an atmosphere in which even professionals working in the field fear to challenge this narrative.

The claims were made in a submission to an inquiry into influencers by the Commons culture committee.

In it, LGB Alliance stated: We have serious concerns about the role that influencers in the media, especially social media, are playing in promoting a culture based on certain beliefs.

These beliefs, which are linked to queer theory, teach that everyone has a gender identity, separate from their biological sex, and that this gender identity should take priority in all areas of life.

These beliefs are being promoted to children and young people as if they were facts. We believe this is causing great harm.

Since young people tend to be more tech-savvy, they have taken control of social media.

This has led to a troubling reversal, in which older generations are expected to defer to the young. Refusing leads to abuse, threats and boycotts.

The group told MPs that high-profile influencers use social media accounts with vast followings to promote the normalisation of gender identity treatment.

This drives the extreme and harmful medicalisation of children (many likely to grow up lesbian and gay if not medicalised) and has become immune to challenge or the need for scientific evidence.

LGB Alliance said: We often see influencers make statements that are demonstrably false, with puberty blockers wrongly referred to as fully reversible and harmless. It cited Jameela Jamil, an actress with more than one million Twitter followers, who claimed puberty blockers are not permanent. Girls at my school were on them for heavy periods.

The charity said much activism takes place on TikTok, Tumblr and Facebook, giving the example of a 17-year-old who was distressed about her female body and wished she had a flat chest. Dozens of replies urged her to get a binder, which flattens the chest often in preparation for transitioning.
Flights between Bali and Australia have officially returned after a two year hiatus as the first batch of Aussies jetted to Indonesia on Monday morning.

The first Jetstar flight to the island nation left Melbourne's Tullamarine airport with more than 300 passengers on board - the first time tourists have flown to Bali since planes were grounded in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Jetstar CEO Gareth Evans said in a statement that the airline was delighted to re-commence flights to the popular tourist hotspot.

'We are very excited to return to Bali today after two long years, and we are confident that Bali will quickly regain its position as our most popular international tourist destination now that borders are open,' he said.

Flights between Bali and Australia have officially returned after a two year hiatus as the first batch of Aussies jetted to Indonesia on Monday morning

Jetstar held a flight sale last week to Bali from seven Australian cities for flight dates beginning April 8.

Evans claims the sale was a huge success, with Jetstar experiencing a surge in online flight bookings from those seeking a holiday.

'Our recent Bali sale saw the biggest surge in bookings we've seen since 2016, and our recent surveys have consistently shown that Bali is still the top international destination people want to travel to.'

The re-commencement of flights from Australia to Bali comes as the Indonesian government relaxed quarantine rules for visitors arriving from approved countries, which includes Australia.

The first Jetstar flight to the island nation left Melbourne's Tullamarine airport with more than 300 passengers on board on Monday - the first time tourists have flown to Bali since planes were grounded in March 2020 due to the pandemic

The re-commencement of flights from Australia to Bali comes as the Indonesian government relaxed quarantine rules for visitors arriving from approved countries, which includes Australia

Indonesia announced that it would no longer force fully-vaccinated travellers to isolate on arrival as well.

Previously, even double-dosed arrivals had to self-quarantine for five days before being allowed out into the community.

The rule change means tourists from the 23 approved countries will need to pay only $47 for their visa, rather than $300.

Arrivals can now pay for their visa at the airport, but still have to undergo a Covid PCR test upon arrival.

Travellers must also take out insurance that would cover them for up to $100,000 if they caught the virus.

While Jetstar has resumed flights, Qantas have planned to restart trips from Melbourne to the Balinese capital Denpasar starting from April 14 and from Sydney a day later.

Indonesia announced that it would no longer force fully-vaccinated travellers to isolate on arrival as well

Indonesia, and especially Bali, has been severely impacted by the pandemic as the island nation's economy relies heavily on tourism dollars

Arrivals from the US, UK, Italy, Germany and ASEAN (Association of South-East Asian Nations) countries - including Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand - are also eligible for quarantine-free travel.

Aussies have been locked out of Indonesia for the past two years due to travel restrictions brought about by the Covid pandemic.

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.
A serial criminal who died in 2016 has been identified by DNA as a killer behind the murder of a 61 year-old woman found naked in a ditch 1995, thanks to a cigarette butt found at the scene.

Douglas Keith Krohne was identified last week as the killer of Patricia Barnes thanks to DNA taken during the Army vet and convicted robber's post-mortem that matched a discarded cigarettes found at the crime scene.

Krohne was 54 when he died of unspecified causes in 2016, with cops now checking to see if his DNA matches that found at any other unslved murders.

Barnes was 61-years-old when she was found naked in ditch by a passerby, who discovered her abandoned body on the side of Peacock Hill Road in South Kitsap County 26 years ago.

Detectives determined that she had been shot twice in the head. No motive for the killing was ever shared. Cops initially fearing she may have fallen victim to serial killer Robert Lee Yates, but her true killer has now been unmasked.

'The linchpin for the evidence was a cigarette butt that was found at the body dump location,' KCSO Lead Detective Mike Grant said during a Wednesday press conference, according to FOX 13 Seattle.

'The evidence on the body could mean one of two-three different things, but when you have a cigarette butt with the DNA and the DNA on her body and on items around her body, it was conclusive to me that we had the right guy.'

Douglas Keith Krohne, pictured, in August 1995. He died in prison back in 2016 and was identified this week as Barnes' killer

Patricia Barnes, pictured, was 61-years-old when she was found naked in ditch by a passerby, who discovered her abandoned body in South Kitsap County 26 years ago

The DNA taken from the cigarette butt at the scene didn't hit any matches on the FBI's system.

But genealogy firm Othram joined in the hunt, and was able to provide a genetic profile to the suspect.

That enabled cops to build a family tree, and pinpoint Krohne as their prime suspect.

was Krohne was 33 at the time of Barnes' murder, and had addresses in both Seattle and Tacoma, and also had five previous felony convictions, including first-degree robbery in 1984.

A composite sketch of the suspect was eventually released to the public as investigators worked on the case for several months. It bears a marked resemblance to Krohne's mugshot, but cops were unable to identify him at the time.

Meanwhile the case went cold until 2018, when KSCO detectives reopened an investigation into Barnes' death 'as a part of a renewed focus on working "cold cases"' according to a Facebook post the sheriff's office said in a Friday.

A composite sketch of the suspect was eventually released to the public as investigators worked on the case for several months, however they were unable to identify him at the time

Since then, investigators have interviewed officials involved in the initial investigation back in 1995 and have gone over evidence again.

They finally struck it lucky thanks to a DNA match taken while

'The ultimately successful conclusion of this cold case' investigation belongs to the initial investigative response by the [d]etectives in 1995,' Grant said in a statement published to KSCO's Facebook page.

'The success of modern investigative methods can only happen when built upon a thorough and professional foundation of good police work.'

Somewhat complicating the matter was the fact that all of the detectives who were part of the initial investigation have since retired, making it more difficult to track down those who had investigated the initial crime scene,

Grant eventually reached out to Barnes' surviving family to tell them of KSCO's findings, and characterized their reactions as 'shocked' and grateful that they have answers now after nearly 30 years on uncertainty..
Shocking video of a policeman manhandling a young Aboriginal girl before roughly arresting her on the street has got charges against her being thrown out.

The 16-year-old girl is seen leaning on a parked car on the side of the road while surrounded by seven officers, six of who are men, in November 2019.

Constable Beavan Johnston repeatedly pushes the teenager after she refused to give her name, before the interaction escalates and she is pressed up against a bin.

As his colleagues encircle the girl, she kicks one in the groin and is tackled to the ground and roughly handcuffed by Mr Johnston.

Constable Beavan Johnston (pictured) is seen repeatedly pushing the Aboriginal teenager, 16, after she was stopped by police on suspicion of street drinking in November 2019

The footage also shows the officer pushing his knee into her back as he handcuffs her, a move he admitted to during her trial in the Perth Children's Court.

The teenager, who was stopped by police on suspicion of street drinking, repeatedly tells the officers 'don't touch me'.

Mr Johnston is heard encouraging her to 'have a go' before using a 'disproportionate' amount of force during the interaction, the WA Supreme Court has ruled.

Justice Jeremy Curthoys ruled the arrest was 'unlawful' and cleared the teenager of assaulting the officer during the contentious arrest.

The teenager is seen being spoken to by seven police officers as she leans against a parked car

A judge has ruled there was no evidence the teenager was behaving in a reckless or disorderly manner before she was pushed up against a bin (pictured)

He also ruled the teen suffered a miscarriage of justice when she was convicted of the assault charge in Perth's Children Court in October 2020.

The 16-year-old was subsequently placed on a good behaviour bond for six months, a decision she appealed.

Justice Curthoys upheld the appeal and said there was no evidence she was 'behaving in a disorderly or reckless manner' on the night of her arrest.

He said Mr Johnston acted outside the function of his office.

An internal affairs investigation into the officer's conduct began before the judge handed down his decision.

The shocking footage also shows the officer pushing his knee into her back as he handcuffs her, a move he admitted to during her trial in the Perth Children's Court

However, Mr Johnston resigned before the findings were handed down.

Police Minister Paul Papalia confirmed Mr Johnston was no longer part of the force and was told Police Commissioner Chris Dawson had launched a 'loss of confidence process' following the internal investigation.

The process is primarily used to remove officers from the police force who have been accused of misconduct.

Mr Papalia insisted officers were acting with professionalism during interactions with the state's youth after he tagged along to several late-night patrols.

However, social justice advocate Gerry Georgatos said he held concerns about how officers were trained to deal with young people, especially indigenous youths.
The lives of women and older drivers are being 'gambled' with as the Government delays new safety measures for car manufacturers, the AA claims.

From July, new vehicle models in Northern Ireland and the European Union will be required to be fitted with new safety features.

They will have to have head-on collision protection  such as airbags and seatbelts  which 'does not disadvantage women and older people'.

Women are almost 50 per cent more likely to be seriously injured than men in road accidents, research has shown.

The package of safety measures was developed with the help of British experts and was finalised while Britain was still in the EU. But because they are being phased in they do not automatically apply to Britain.

Despite polls showing support for the new measures in the UK, and experts also backing the features, the UK Government currently has no plans to adopt the rule in Great Britain.

This has led to criticism from motoring groups, who say the measures could protect women and older drivers.

The lives of women and older drivers are being gambled with as the Government delays safety measures for car manufacturers, the AA claims [File photo]

Why are women more likely to be seriously injured in a car crash? The issue of sexism in road safety has been long discussed. Back in 2011, a study by the University of Virginia Centre for Applied Biomechanics revealed that female drivers involved in car crashes were 47 per cent more likely to fall victim to a serious injury or death than their male counterparts. According to the research, women's legs were most at risk, with women 80 per cent more likely to suffer serious injury to their legs than male drivers. This, experts suggest, is because women tend to sit further forward when driving in order to reach the pedals as their legs are typically shorter and they often need to sit more upright to see clearly over the dashboard. Women are also at greater risk of whiplash in rear-end collisions due to having less muscle in their necks and upper torsos than men. But testing has also been blamed too. Crash test dummies are usually tested on the body of an average man. This was because, at the time European crash test dummies were designed, 76 per cent of road deaths were men. Using a male 50th percentile dummy allowed testers to ensure that assessments would relate to the largest proportion of accident victims. But new research, such as the University of Virginia Centre for Applied Biomechanics, has helped to increase calls for female crash test dummies. In the US, female crash test dummies have been used in testing since 2011. And as part of the new EU rules, car makers will have to have head-on collision protection  such as airbags and seatbelts  which 'does not disadvantage women and older people'. Advertisement

Back in 2011, a study by the University of Virginia Centre for Applied Biomechanics revealed that female drivers involved in car crashes were 47 per cent more likely to fall victim to a serious injury or death than their male counterparts.

According to the research, women were 80 per cent more likely to suffer serious injury to their legs than male drivers.

This, experts suggest, is because women tend to sit further forward when driving in order to reach the pedals as their legs are typically shorter and they often need to sit more upright to see clearly over the dashboard.

Women are also at greater risk of whiplash in rear-end collisions due to having less muscle in their necks and upper torsos than men.

Testing has also been blamed too. Crash test dummies have, in the past, been typically tested on the body of an average man.

At the time European crash test dummies were designed, 76 per cent of road deaths were men.

So using an average male dummy allowed testers to ensure that assessments would relate to the largest proportion of accident victims.

But new research, such as the University of Virginia Centre for Applied Biomechanics, has helped to increase calls for female crash test dummies to account for the difference in female anatomy. In the US, female crash test dummies have been used in testing since 2011.

And as part of the new EU rules, car makers will have to have head-on collision protection  such as airbags and seatbelts  which 'does not disadvantage women and older people'.

Luke Bosdet, of the AA, said Britain risked falling behind the rest of Europe and would end up with a 'massive hole' in road safety if the rules were not formally introduced.

He said 'our best hope' was that British-based manufacturers such as Nissan, Toyota, BMW and Jaguar Land Rover may introduce the measures anyway due to the logistics of creating two production lines for two sets of regulations.

Six former transport ministers have urged Transport Secretary Grant Shapps to adopt the rules, saying they would prevent more than 200 deaths a year and 1,000 serious injuries.

The Department for Transport told The Sunday Times it was considering the measures and 'will implement requirements that are appropriate for Great Britain and improve road safety'.

Women are also at greater risk of whiplash in rear-end collisions due to having less muscle in their necks and upper torsos than men [File photo]

The features are part of a wider-package of EU car safety measures, including a device to prevent a drunk driver from starting an engine and intelligent speed assistance, a system which nudges motorists to observe the prevailing speed limit.

The safety measures, which also include advanced emergency braking, also aim to make cars and lorries less deadly for pedestrians.

Campaigners have urged the government to keep the new rules and said they would save lives. However critics have suggested that the government may be stalling on the implementation of the plans in the wake of Brexit.

Some of the measures, such as intelligent speed assistance, it has been suggested could be seen as 'anti-British'.

Almost two thousand people signed a 2019 petition calling for the government to reconsider the implementation of 'speed limiters' and the mandatory use of black boxes which can track location and speed, describing it as an 'affront to personal freedom and safety'.

However, Jason Wakeford, head of campaigns at Brake, a road safety charity, told The Independent: 'The EU proposals, which the UK helped to shape prior to Brexit, provide the biggest leap forward for road safety this century - perhaps even since the introduction of the seat belt.

'We urge the UK government to commit to adopting these lifesaving regulations, helping reduce needless deaths and serious injuries on British roads.'
Hundreds of station ticket offices could be closed under a post-pandemic revamp of Britain's railways.

Rail industry leaders have been in talks with the government about ways to modernise the network under a new publicly-owned national body.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps is keen to reduce taxpayer funding following the 16billion bailout during the Covid pandemic and staff costs will be a main focus of the plan.

There are already moves to reduce ticket office hours and the possibility of hundreds of ticket office closures is reported to be under discussion.

Rail industry leaders have been in talks with the government about ways to modernise the network under a new publicly-owned national body (stock image)

Transport unions would fight such a move and are threatening industrial action.

They point out the presence of ticket offices and staff at stations is important for vulnerable groups such as the disabled, elderly, pregnant women and those without access to a computer for ticket booking.

The Great British Railways will take over from Network Rail and start running the nation's railways from 2023. It will take responsibility for the track and stations as well as ticketing, timetables and network planning.

Trains will still be run by private companies under new 'Passenger Service Contracts' that will replace the franchise system that collapsed when Covid dramatically reduced train travel two years ago.

Under the Integrated Rail Plan announced in November the government said 360million would be invested in a 'radical reform' of 'fares, ticketing and retailing on the railways'.

This includes 'contactless tap-in and tap-out ticketing at more than 700 stations across the country over the next three years'.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps is keen to reduce taxpayer funding following the 16billion bailout during the Covid pandemic and staff costs will be a main focus of the plan (stock image)

This was billed as the first stage of a more 'convenient and modern digital ticketing' system that unions fear will also involve the mass closure and scaling down of manned ticket offices in train stations.

Seven years ago all station ticket offices were closed on the London Underground network despite widespread criticism of the cost-cutting move.

The Department for Transport has not commented on specific train station closure plans but is determined to make the railways more 'cost-effective'.

A spokesman said the modernisation plan 'could include changing what some staff at stations do, or how they do it, to ensure passengers get the services they deserve'.

But adding: 'Staff will always provide face-to-face services on the railways, which can be crucial for those who need additional support and cannot, or do not want to, use contactless or mobile tickets.'

Manuel Cortes (pictured), General Secretary of the Transport Salaried Staffs' Association, said yesterday: 'Grant Shapps needs to realise that this daft plan is likely to result in the threat of compulsory redundancies, and if that happens we will be issuing ballots for industrial action

Manuel Cortes, General Secretary of the Transport Salaried Staffs' Association, said yesterday: 'Grant Shapps needs to realise that this daft plan is likely to result in the threat of compulsory redundancies, and if that happens we will be issuing ballots for industrial action.

'Closing ticket offices will not only be opposed by the unions but the public at large. Shapps must stand up to the faceless accountants in the Treasury because a properly run and fully functioning railway is vital in building an economic recovery from Covid.

'The government should share their plans in detail with us and commenters now if they are so sure that closing ticket offices and taking 2billion a year out of our railways is the best way forward. I'd strongly urge them to reconsider.'
Anthony Albanese claims he was blindsided when he was dumped by his wife on New Year's Day before the Labor leader moved on with a financial worker.

The father-of-one admitted he 'didn't see it coming' when former NSW deputy premier Carmel Tebbutt decided to end their marriage on New Year's Day 2019.

The pair had been in a relationship for 30 years - 19 of which were spent married - and together raised their son Nathan.

Their split was made public in early January when a devastated Mr Albanese admitted the divorce had taken him by surprise.

Anthony Albanese was dumped by his wife on New Year's Day before the Labor leader moved on with a financial worker

Mr Albanese has since moved on with First State Super financial worker Jodie Haydon who is 16 years his junior

Mr Albanese said the couple's only child, their son Nathan, had just completed his HSC exams and turned 18 when Ms Tebbutt dumped him.

'It's made for a difficult period. I certainly will always, always remember New Year's Eve and New Year's Day for that momentous event in my life,' he said.

'It was a really tough period and that's the truth and I've acknowledged that,' he told ABC Radio in 2021.

'I think part of going through a difficult period and coming out the other end is acknowledging that you're going through it. I found it very tough. The relationship was 30 years old.'

Mr Albanese, 59, has since moved on with First State Super financial worker Jodie Haydon, 43, who is 16 years his junior.

The pair were first spotted kissing at an upmarket Sydney restaurant in June 2020.

The Labor leader will have Ms Haydon and his son in his corner during the upcoming federal election, which is expected to be called in May.

He has maintained a strong relationship with his son who was just 18 when his parents became divorced.

Mr Albanese and Ms Tebbutt met in Young Labor during the late 1980s.

Ms Tebbutt was deputy premier between 2008 and 2011 - the first woman to hold the position - under leaders Nathan Rees and Kristina Keneally.

In March 2019 Mr Albanese took three weeks off and visited London and Portugal - a trip he credits for helping him heal after the break up.

'I needed to stop trying to understand it and just accept it and accept that it was a decision that had been made and she was moving on with her life in a different direction and I needed to do the same,' he said.

Labor leader Anthony Albanese with his son Nathan (left) and partner Jodie Haydon in January of this year at the National Press Club in Canberra

Mr Albanese met his former partner in Young Labor during the late 1980s before the pair spent the next 30 years together

'You can tie yourself in knots trying to understand someone else's decisions and thought processes.'

In March 2020, he attended a dinner event in Melbourne where he met his future partner Ms Haydon.

The avid South Sydney Rabbitohs NRL supporter said he took to the stage and addressed the guests.

'I said there's always a random Souths supporter in the room and she yelled out 'yep, me. Go the rabbits',' he said.

Mr Albanese said he was making his way around the function introducing himself to other guests when he met Ms Haydon.

'It turned out she lives in the inner west of Sydney and we had a fair bit in common,' he said.

'She suggested we might like to catch up so we caught up for a beer basically and we found that we got on pretty well.

'We caught up for a beer a few weeks later and things went from there. It's nice to have someone to spend time with.'

Mr Albanese said he was making his way around the function introducing himself to other guests when he met Ms Haydon

Despite appearing in Women's Weekly together, Mr Albanese said he was 'protective' of their relationship

Despite appearing in Women's Weekly together, Mr Albanese said he was 'protective' of their relationship.

'I'm the one running for public office,' he said.

'Jodie has to put up with...if we're out having dinner, put up with people coming up and photos and all of that. But it's part of the deal, it's part of who I am.'

Ms Haydon has more than 20 years experience in the finance industry, according to her LinkedIn profile.

She on the NSW Central Coast and comes from a family of teachers - with both parents and grandparents teaching in the classroom.

Her greatest source of inspiration is her 93-year-old grandmother.

'She had nine children and was a schoolteacher,' she told Now to Love.

'She is simply remarkable. Her cheeky sense of humour and "just get on with it" attitude have been a driving force for me.'
Criminal barristers have voted to take industrial action over what they describe as 'chronic underfunding' of the justice system.

A ballot saw 94 per cent of barristers vote in favour of the move, it was announced last night.

The bitter wrangle with ministers over fees could badly damage attempts to cut the Covid backlog of Crown court cases.

More than 60,000 cases are waiting to be heard in England and Wales, leading to excruciating delays for victims and witnesses.

Criminal barristers have voted to take industrial action over what they describe as 'chronic underfunding' of the justice system (stock image)

Under the moves - voted for by 1,800 members of the Criminal Bar Association (CBA) - barristers will refuse to go to court on behalf of a colleague.

The industrial action will begin on April 11, CBA chairman Jo Sidhu QC said.

'We have already lost too many of our colleagues who can no longer afford to maintain their commitment to criminal work and who have left our ranks out of desperation and despair,' he (CORRECT) said.

'Every day we are losing more.

'Through our labour and our goodwill, we have sustained a chronically underfunded criminal justice system on behalf of the public while suffering substantial reductions in our real incomes and exhausted by the hugely increased demands placed upon us, often for little or no reward.'

Justice Secretary Dominic Raab had asked barristers to 'be patient' for reforms after an independent review, published last year, called for an extra 135million a year to be spent on legal aid.

Of the CBA's 2,400 members, 1,908 voted in the ballot with 94.34 per cent in favour of industrial action.
Tafida is still alive and 'continuing to make progress' in her recovery

Tafida Raqeeb was given no hope of life by British doctors and was taken to Italy

When brain-damaged schoolgirl Tafida Raqeeb was written off by UK doctors, her parents won a historic High Court victory to take her to Italy.

They had refused to accept the prognosis of British medics who said their little girl would not live long.

And two and a half years later, Tafida is still in hospital in Italy defying the gloomy predictions.

Now Tafidas mother and father want to save other families suffering the same plight.

In an extraordinary project, they are fundraising to build a 25million brain injury rehabilitation centre in Britain for children who are not offered the treatment on the NHS. Tafidas family said 2million has already been raised, and the project has the backing of medical experts.

Fighting on: Tafida Raqeeb was given no hope of life by British doctors her parents won a historic High Court victory to take her to Italy for care.

Tafida was a healthy and happy four-year-old schoolgirl when she was suddenly struck down in February 2019 when a blood vessel burst in her brain. She went into a coma, and doctors at three London hospitals fought to save her, before the Royal London Hospital said she was beyond hope.

In the autumn of 2019, her life hung in the balance as the NHS asked the High Court to sanction her life-support machine being switched off - saying she would die within weeks anyway.

But her devoted parents, solicitor Shelina Begum and construction consultant father Mohammed Raqeeb, refused to accept this and begged the court to save their daughter, saying she responded to their presence.

In an extraordinary landmark ruling in October 2019, a judge sided with the family. Citing the 'sanctity of life', Mr Justice MacDonald granted the sick little girl a chance by rejecting the NHSs bid.

Tafida was then transferred to the Gaslini childrens hospital in Genoa. Within three months, she was well enough to be moved out of intensive care, and delighted her family by showing she could breathe on her own without the help of a ventilator for hours at a time.

Tafida is now seven, and is still being treated at the Gaslini, where her family said she has continued to make progress defying all the pessimistic expectations of the specialists from various different UK hospitals.

The Italian doctors never promised a cure, just more time to see whether Tafida could emerge from her condition. Last night her mother told the Mail: She is doing well. Miss Begum, 41, of Newham in east London, said Tafidas recovery was continuing and there would be more details revealed soon.

Tafidas story has inspired the creation of a newly-registered charity, the Tafida Raqeeb Foundation, and next week(22 MARCH) it is launching a campaign to build a medical centre in the UK for treating brain injured children.

The project has the backing of Baroness Finlay, a crossbench peer who is a doctor, a professor of palliative medicine and a past president of the Royal Society of Medicine. She said: No one can predict the future  prognosis is a probabilistic art at best. When a child has a brain injury, improvement can happen with expert rehabilitation, but is very unlikely without it. We need to give each child the best chance, when they could be helped back towards living well.

The paediatric neurological rehabilitation centre, capable of accommodating at least 20 young patients, would treat children after a serious accident or illness.

Miss Begum said: Anything could happen anytime to any one of us. A sudden brain injury could happen to your child, as it happened to my Tafida, and it was completely out of the blue.

As Tafidas mother, I know first-hand how traumatic this situation is, and I want to give hope in this darkness. There is a severe shortage of rehabilitation and we want to ensure that every child is given an opportunity to fulfil their potential and maximise their recovery, by receiving the best therapies available in a family-centred purpose-built rehabilitation centre. Your support is central to making this vision a reality.

The Tafida Raqeeb Foundation said: Unfortunately, the sole existing specialist neurological centre in the UK has limited beds for children. There is therefore a huge shortfall and many children who could otherwise be helped are unable to access rehabilitation. The aim of the Tafida Raqeeb Foundation is to set up a paediatric neurological rehabilitation centre which will offer hope to these children.

For more information visit www.tr-foundation.org
Glitzy Nantucket-dwellers face a summer of severe inconvenience after the island's main courier forgot to reserve slots on its ferry service, which have now sold out.

Locals and visitors planning to spend part of the busy summer season on the well-heeled Massachusetts island face having to do so without delivery from UPS. That came after the delivery giant's blundering bosses ignored the usual advance offer to reserve slots for its trucks on Nantucket's Steam Authority ferries.

Upmarket shops on the WASP-filled island, which sits 30 miles off the Cape Cod coast, now face shelves devoid of the designer goods usually snapped up by vacationers.

Nantucket visitors and residents have also been warned they're far less likely to be able to get goods they order online delivered, with UPS serving as the main Amazon courier to the island.

Resident William D Cohan thinks the pushiness of well-connected residents - who include Secretary of State John Kerry, and Google boss Eric Schmidt - will ultimately solve the issue.

The writer told the Boston Globe: 'In Nantucket, if you make enough noise, they deal with it. The summer folks are going to have to get their twee outfits they ordered from Hermes online.'

But Steam Authority says its ability to lay on extra boats is limited by the number of vessels it runs, as well as staffing levels, meaning there is no obvious or easy fix to the snafu.

UPS will not be making any deliveries to Nantucket after it declined to request reservations for its shipping truck to Steam Authority - one of the island's main freight shippers via boat

According to the Globe, the blunder appears to be the result of an oversight on the part of UPS.

Last fall, Steam Authority sent out its usual advance notice to courier firms offering them first refusal on bookings on its vessels traveling to and from the island.

They did so well-ahead of the release of summer season ferry slots to the general public, which are released in January for travel between May and October.

UPS failed to respond, and also ignored a follow-up from Steam Authority, until someone finally realized what was happening, and sent a panicked response - but by then it was too late.

Nantucket (pictured) will possibly experience a shortage of goods over the summer, which is when city dwellers usually come for vacation , if the issue isn't resolved

UPS is the largest carrier of standard deliveries to the wealthy island community, and it typically files ferry requests months in advance along with other freight shippers. Many Nantucket stores rely on it to get the clothes, TVs, hardware and other goods they sell to residents and summer visitors.

'It's going to put us in a world of hurt,' Shantaw Bloise, business manager at the Nantucket Chamber of Commerce, told The Globe.

'I can't imagine how we'll be able to function just relying on DHL, FedEx, and the Postal Service,' she added.

Nantucket is located 30 miles (48 km) off the coast of Cape Coad and 121 miles away from Boston. Travelers can take a leisurely two hour and 15 minute boat trip on one of Steamship Authority's ferries from Hyannis to Nantucket.

After missing the priority booking window, UPS scrambled to get whatever spots were available for its trucks, said James Malkin, a member of the governing board of the Steamship Authority, which operates ferries to Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard.

'But they don't have what they need,' Malkin told The Globe.

'It's going to put us in a world of hurt,' Shantaw Bloise, business manager at the Nantucket Chamber of Commerce, told The Boston Globe

Many of the wealthy island's retailers will have to rely on other carriers to import their private delivery orders if UPS and Steamship Authority don't resolve the issue in May, at the latest

Stephanie Correia and her store, Stephanie's Nantucket, which is a popular gift shop that sells glassware, bags and purses

Stephanie Correia said she relies on UPS to deliver the inventory for her Main Street store, Stephanie's, which sells clothes and home goods. The service is crucial during the summer, she said, when her business makes 75 percent of its annual profits.

'It's a lifeline for business, for homeowners, for Amazon,' she said.

Some other shop owners are looking for other ways to get their goods to the island. But some businesses and residents said they have faith the problem will be resolved.

'Usually they'll put another ship on' in the case of a scheduling disruption, said Vanessa Moore, who works as a customer service representative at Nantucket Housefitters.

However, the ferry service said that there might not be a way to increase service.

'We're basically at the maximum number of routes right now in terms of the number of boats and the number of crew members,' said Sean Driscoll, a spokesman for the authority. 'There might be a couple of trips here and there we can add, but not on any kind of systemic basis.'

'There's no secret tunnel for the freight shippers,' he added.

UPS is the biggest package carrier in the US but it faces potentially loosing Nantucket to rivals couriers who also deliver to the island, such as FedEx

One problem is that there has been an increase of people living permanently on the island since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, prioritizing tourism above cargo. Price of vacation home rentals are also surging due to city dwellers wanting to work remotely from the island.

'The reservations for this year exceeded any prior year by significant percentages,' Malkin said. Nantucket is regularly one of the most expensive vacation-home counties in the U.S., according to the National Association of Realtors.

UPS said that it will not have any shipping delivery issues to Martha's Vineyard, 37 miles away or a two-hour-and-a-half ferry journey, from Nantucket even though both islands typically book cargo deliveries on the same form.

Retailers and local residents are expected to be the ones who are affected by UPS' disruption the most if the issue isn't resolved by May.

Nantucket Cottage Hospital, the island's only hospital, counts on FedEx for supplies to be delivered. While other carriers typically ship food, fuel and large shipments.
A mum has issued an urgent warning about a bizarre online craze that landed her teenage son in hospital with concussion.

The 'thumb blowing pass out' challenge has become a growing internet phenomenon with thousands of teens uploading videos of themselves performing the dangerous stunt to TikTok.

The daring challenge involves kids putting their thumbs in their mouth, squeezing their chests and repeatedly blowing through their fingers until they hyperventilate and experience a euphoric 'high'.

The risky stunt almost ended in tragedy for a Sydney teen who hit his head on a table while attempting the challenge at home.

An urgent alert has been issued about the 'thumb blowing pass out' challenge. (pictured, a schoolgirl attempting the dangerous stunt in a TikTok video)

His mum will never forget the loud thud from the 13-year-old's bedroom.

'I ran up the stairs and as I got up the top of the stairs I could hear him like groaning,' she told Seven News.

'His bedroom window is only a metre-and-a-half away from his bed.'

'If he had fallen through there... I wouldn't want to think about what would have happened.'

She is now speaking out to make other parents aware with an impassioned plea for them to speak to their children about the dangers.

'I've since discovered how dangerous this stunt is and children around the world lost lives,' the mum added.

'It's actually quite scary and quite serious.'

'I've since had a massive amount of anxiety over this video and others that are circulating on TikTok.'

A Sydney mum (pictured) is warning of parents of the dangers after her 13-year-old son suffered concussion while attempting the stunt at home

The challenge, which has been around for at least a decade, resulted in numerous teens being rushed to hospital after suffering seizures and injuries from falling.

A 12-year-old boy in the UK was placed in a medically induced coma for 36 hours after he attempted the stunt at school in 2013.

Sam Thomas, 12 of Newquay, Cornwall, blacked out and collapsed after he tried to copy an online video.

His parents rushed to the school to find their son's body was 'shutting down' - and he was taken to hospital where doctors feared he would suffer brain damage.

'I picked him up and he had no blue in his eyes, they were all black. There was nothing I could do to help him. He didn't know who I was, he couldn't talk, couldn't walk,' his father Robert recalled at the time.

Parents are urged to speak to their teens about the dangers surrounding the 'thumb blowing pass out' challenge (pictured)

Sam recovered but it was an anxious few days before doctors cleared him of permanent damage.

'We were in disbelief that this could be so dangerous. It's caused death before and many more children have suffered brain damage. Children at that age don't understand things like this,' his mum Celia said.

'There's no fear or danger. It's really important children understand the risks and we'd encourage parents to talk to their children about this. I'm not angry or cross, because children are children. But no one wants to go through the 36 hours we did.'

In 2017, a Brisbane mum recalled the horror of her 10-year-old son attempting the pass out challenge after he came across a YouTube video titled 'how to pass out safely'.

She found her son in a pool of blood after he hit his head on tallboy in his bedroom.

It resulted in five double stitches to the deep wound and a five hour stint in hospital.

The TikTok challenge is growing in popularity but has been around for at least a decade

'He said that because it said 'safely' in the title, he knew that it wasn't real and nothing bad could happen to him,' his mum told KidSpot at the time.

'That's what really scared me, because I realised that it is absolutely logical for a ten-year-old to have that kind of reasoning.'

She was told by nurses kids had died while attempting similar stunts.

A similar challenge known as the choking game resulted in the death of a 13-year-old boy died in Brisbane in December 2016.

The tragedy occurred just months a Gold Coast teen almost died from playing the same game at school.

'It is just so dangerous because it sounds so innocuous to a kid, breathing out and crouching down, it doesnt sound like it could really hurt you,' the mum warned.

'But it can, you can lose oxygen to your brain, and end up brain damaged. You could fall and hit your head, you really could end up losing everything.'
The man charged with murdering a young mother-of-three at her home has been identified as her recent partner, as family friends tell how she dreamed of studying medicine to help her sick children.

South Australian police found the body of Synamin Bell, 26, at home in Millicent, south-east of Adelaide, on Saturday night after police were called to the property just after 11pm.

Detectives arrested 25-year-old Cody Edwards at the scene. The couple are understood to have recently been in a relationship.

Daily Mail Australia can reveal Ms Bell was due to start studying a medical course as she looked to help treat her immune-compromised daughter.

The young mother (right) was found dead in her South Australian home on Saturday night after officers were called to the property just after 11pm

A friend wrote on her GoFundMe: 'Synamin had dreams of giving her kids the life and opportunities that we all hope our children have before them.

'She had goals of getting into medicine to help (her daughter) in her struggles and to help give her the best chance at a full life.

'She was trying her hardest with limited resources and support, trying to be the best mum she could be.'

An elderly neighbour of Ms Bell said she saw the woman sitting with a friend at the doorstep of her Poole Street flat at about 7pm and went to bed around 11pm.

'We didn't hear anything,' the resident told The Advertiser.

'The first we knew about it was when we opened up our shutters at half past seven this morning and saw police cars and people everywhere.'

'When the police detective came to interview me today he told me the children were at their nanna's when everything happened.'

Ms Bell (pictured) was allegedly murdered at her home in Millicent, south-east of Adelaide, SA on Saturday evening

Forensic officers attended the home through Sunday and Monday as they investigate the circumstances surrounding her death.

Mr Edwards was taken by police to Mount Gambier Police Station where he will remain in custody until he appears before Mount Gambier Magistrates Court on Tuesday.

It's believed he went across the road to tell a work colleague to call police after Ms Bell's death.

Police have been combing through the home for several days after the body of the 26-year-old was found dead on Saturday night

Superintendent Campbell Hill described the situation as 'tragic' and confirmed the children were not at the house at the time of their mother's death.

'It is devastating and it is shocking,' he said. 'It is a tragic circumstance which will reverberate and has reverberated across the community.

'If people have information, if they know how these two people knew each other, we urge them to contact us so we can fill that knowledge gap.

'They were known to each other but exactly what the dynamic of the relationship was is something we are working to establish.'

Ms Bell was remembered as a 'loving mother' who was looking to move into a career in healthcare to help support her kids

Friends and family of the 'loving' young mum remembered Ms Bell as a devoted parent and have started a crowdfunding page to help pay for her funeral costs.

'Synamin was loved by all and those lucky enough to have known her were blessed by her generosity and loyalty,' friend Luke McGaughey wrote. '

'No matter what may have been happening in her own life, she was never unavailable.'

A friend revealed the 26-year-old was studying for a career in healthcare to help care for her children.

'The loss of your mother is something from which you never fully recover, but losing her so young leaves these beautiful kids with so much life to walk through without her. Your mother is your first and forever friend, you never truly get over that loss.'

Police are expected to remain at the Poole St property for several days.
As the Russian army continues to shell the cities of Ukraine, the western press and politicians are doing their utmost to conceal the role of western imperialism in the disaster. Far from being a neutral party, the West have been provoking the conflict for their own imperialist reasons.

As bombs and rockets fall on Ukrainian cities, workers around the world are naturally appalled at the death and destruction caused by the Russian invasion. However, the role that the West has played in this conflict is never explained.

If we think about it for a minute, it is clear that the war in Ukraine is not just a war between Ukraine and Russia, but a proxy war between the western allies and Russia. There is no doubt whose side the West is on. For the past few years, the Ukrainian military has been armed and trained by NATO countries.

Today, Ukraine is seeing its war effort bankrolled by the EU and the US. They are sending both weapons and money in an unprecedented way. Germany has broken its long-standing rule of not sending arms. The House of Representatives just approved $13bn to Ukraine, and so on.

We might ask: where was this money when Ukraine was in the midst of a devastating economic crisis? Now they are at war, it is clearly considered money well spent. When the mass of Ukrainians faced poverty and destitution, that wasnt so much the case. The fact that western arms manufacturers are making huge profits out of this, is the icing on the cake.

The West is now bankrolling the Ukrainian war effort. If they succeed, it will be only serve to prolong the war and the suffering of Ukrainians. But they are willing to spend this money because this is a question of the vital interests of western imperialism / Image: Presidential Administration of Ukraine

What good will this support do? Very little. If it has its intended consequences, it will prolong the war, but at a devastating cost. Of course, it wont be politicians, journalists and CEOs in the US or Western Europe who face this devastation, but the millions of Ukrainians who are having their homes and livelihoods destroyed. The Russian army will clearly level Ukraines cities to the ground before they allow the country to join NATO.

European workers will also feel the pinch, with skyrocketing energy prices. This is not to mention the workers and poor of Egypt and Lebanon, who are massive consumers of Russian and Ukrainian wheat. Yet, as US President Biden and UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss made clear, it is a price worth paying. Of course, thats easy for them to say.

For the countries of NATO, there is an important principle at stake: keeping Ukraine firmly in their sphere of influence and not allowing Russian interference. This is tied up in flowery phraseology about sovereignty and self-determination. But behind beautiful phrases, as is so often the case, lie imperialist interests.

Promises made

The root of this conflict can be traced back to the collapse of the Soviet Union. At the time, the Warsaw Pact was in force throughout Eastern Europe. The pact had been created specifically to counter the inclusion of West Germany into NATO. Soldiers of the Soviet Union were stationed throughout Eastern Europe  on the one hand as a guarantee against a western attack, and on the other as a means of securing the control of the state bureaucracy in Moscow over the nations of Eastern Europe.

By 1989, however, the pact was falling apart. The capitalists of the West saw a massive opportunity for new profitable investments all over Eastern Europe, including in Russia itself, as a result of the return to capitalism, which was on the cards in the region. They were very keen to keep the army of the Soviet Union from intervening to reverse the process.

The state bureaucracy of the Soviet Union had used its troops to suppress the revolutionary movements in Hungary in 1956 and in Prague in 1968. At that time, political revolution, rather than the restoration of capitalism, was on the agenda, but there was nevertheless a fear among capitalist politicians that the army would once again intervene. In the military establishment, there was strong support, not for socialism of course, but for the prestige of the military of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact.

The West, therefore, promised a number of things to the leaders of the Soviet Union. In particular, it promised not to expand NATO. George Bush Sr. made a promise to Gorbachev not to take advantage of the various movements in Eastern Europe to harm Soviet security interests in 1989. At the time of German reunification in 1990, this became a particularly sensitive question.

The West German Foreign Minister Genscher gave a speech where he said that in order not to harm Soviet security interests, NATO should rule out expansion of its territory to the east, i.e. moving closer to Soviet borders. A treaty on German unification signed by the two German republics, the Soviet Union, France, United Kingdom and United States stipulated that, although the new United Germany was free to join NATO, after the withdrawal of Soviet troops from East Germany (GDR), no foreign troops would be stationed in the former GDR.

Throughout the process, the western powers were very aware that the acceptance of the Soviet Union was conditional on assurances as to the intentions of the West vis-a-vis the Eastern European countries. On 9 February 1990 US Secretary of State James A. Baker made the offer to Gorbachev that NATO would not expand one inch eastward, if the Soviet Union accepted that the new United Germany would join NATO. On the following day, West German Chancellor Kohl promised Gorbachev that NATO should not expand its scope. And the promises continued throughout 1990 and the following year.

In March 1991, just a few months before the Warsaw Pact was dissolved John Major told Gorbachev that We are not talking about the strengthening of NATO and on the question of NATO expansion that Nothing of the sort will happen. The Warsaw Pact was duly dissolved on 1 July 1991.

The National Security Archive of George Washington University compiled a number of documents that show the flurry of diplomatic activity designed to offer assurances to the Soviet leaders: NATO Expansion: What Gorbachev Heard. They really leave no room for doubt about what was promised at the time. But the promises were broken a few years later.

The plunder of Eastern Europe

The oligarchy in Russia that was being created out of the plundering of state assets was not yet strong enough to assert itself. The economy was in free fall and the resistance of the working class hadnt yet been fully overcome. Russia in the 1990s became a playground for the new oligarchs and western finance capital.

The personification of this process was President Yeltsin, who leaned heavily on the West in order to maintain his rule. If Gorbachev was trying to balance between market reforms and the old planned economy, Yeltsin became the face of open counter-revolution and market reform. At crucial points, the West stepped in to reinforce his position vis-a-vis protesting workers and a wing of the bureaucracy that still hadnt completely gone over to capitalism.

The plunder and dominance of the West over Russia was embodied in the presidency of Boris Yeltsin (right). Even when Putin became president, he initially balanced on the West who initially saw him as "their man" in Russia / Image: Presidential Press and Information Office

Even when Putin was positioning himself to take over from Yeltsin, he leaned on the West, including public meetings with Tony Blair and others. He was intended to be their new man in Moscow. The restoration of capitalism up to this point had meant the subservience of Russia to western imperialism.

The West was pushing its influence into Eastern Europe. The working class in the region had been thoroughly demoralised and atomised by the process of capitalist restoration. They were ripe for exploitation and western capital moved in to do just that.

German capital played a big role in this, becoming a key player in the economies of Eastern and Central Europe, as well as in the Balkans. In the process, it played a decisive role in the reactionary break-up of Yugoslavia. Swedish finance capital took over banking in the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania). Industries throughout Eastern Europe were gobbled up by European companies, particularly the ones that were in a good state. The German car producer Volkswagen took over Skoda etc. But these new acquisitions remained vulnerable to a Russia that was starting to find its feet.

The war in Chechnya, where Russia brutally suppressed the local independence aspirations, was a sign that Russia wasnt quite the pushover it used to be. The war also formed a crucial component in Putins presidential campaign. He styled his presidency as one of revival, including the reintroduction of the national anthem of the Soviet Union (with new, nationalist, lyrics).

Broken promises

If the Russian oligarchs were the big gangsters, the little gangsters of Eastern Europe that had become rich on the back of the firesale of state assets were now worried about their bigger neighbour to the east. Formal inclusion in the western sphere of influence was an attractive option.

In short order, between 1999 and 2004 most states of the former Warsaw Pact were incorporated into NATO. The inclusion, in particular of the Baltic States, brought NATO right up to the borders of Russia.

Numerous promises were made by the US to the Russians that there would be no NATO expansion. In the end, all these promises were broken as NATO was systematically expanded eastward / Image: wikimedia commons

Now, US troops could be readily deployed right on the borders of Russia, some two hours drive from St. Petersburg, although in order to reduce the amount of provocation, no US troops were deployed at that stage. The US was, for now, sticking to that part of the agreement that stipulated that there would be no permanently stationed troops east of Germany. But this wouldnt last, as we shall see.

Madeleine Albright, Bill Clintons Secretary of State, related the Russian opinion of this at the time (1998): [Russian president] Yeltsin and his countrymen were strongly opposed to enlargement, seeing it as a strategy for exploiting their vulnerability and moving Europes dividing line to the east, leaving them isolated.

About the same time, NATO conducted a 78-day bombing campaign against Yugoslavia (Serbia), which caused enormous economic damage. In a lecture on the 2014 crisis in Ukraine, Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago explained the significance of this: NATO not only intervened in the affairs of a non-NATO country, but took sides against the Serbs, allies of the Russians, and did so without United Nations Security Council approval.

This was followed by interventions in Kosovo, where Russian armoured units had a stand-off with NATO troops; Afghanistan, where the US spuriously triggered the mutual defence article 5; and, more recently, Libya. The implication was clear, NATO wasnt just a defensive alliance, but something that could be used by the West to further their interests against Russia.

Russia draws a line in the sand

NATO continued its programme of expansion. In 2008, a summit took place in Bucharest where a declaration was adopted. Contrary to the wishes of Ukraine and Georgia, the two countries werent immediately approved for membership. Nevertheless, the declaration clearly stated that NATO welcomes Ukraines and Georgias Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO.

In response to this declaration, Russias Deputy Foreign Minister stated: Georgias and Ukraines membership in the alliance is a huge strategic mistake which will have the most serious consequences for pan-European security. Putin called NATO membership of Georgia and Ukraine a direct threat to Russia.

In a leaked cable on February 1, 2008, the US ambassador to Moscow explained the Russian position:

5. (C) Ukraine and Georgia's NATO aspirations not only touch a raw nerve in Russia, they engender serious concerns about the consequences for stability in the region. Not only does Russia perceive encirclement, and efforts to undermine Russia's influence in the region, but it also fears unpredictable and uncontrolled consequences which would seriously affect Russian security interests. Experts tell us that Russia is particularly worried that the strong divisions in Ukraine over NATO membership, with much of the ethnic-Russian community against membership, could lead to a major split, involving violence or at worst, civil war. In that eventuality, Russia would have to decide whether to intervene; a decision Russia does not want to have to face. (Cable: 08MOSCOW265_a)

Around the same time, the US was toying with the idea of setting up a missile defence system in Poland. The Polish government was pushing for this, not so much because it would have protected Poland from missiles, but because it would have established a permanent military presence of the US in the country. The Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement in July 2008  using the same words as Putin had in January  stating that if the project goes ahead, we will be forced to react not with diplomatic, but with military-technical methods. The Polish project was supposedly defensive, and not directed against Russia, but that was just words.

The question of the positioning of missile systems has a history. The US and their allies like to pretend that posting of US soldiers or missiles in Eastern Europe is not an aggressive move at all. But the US has long held the Monroe doctrine declaring the whole of the Americas a no-go zone for other imperialist powers. We dont have to imagine what the US would have thought if one of their adversaries were to put troops and missiles in, lets say, the Caribbean. We already know what their reaction would have been. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, the US threatened nuclear war over the presence of Soviet missiles and troops on Cuba. One could imagine what they would have said if the Chinese placed troops and missiles in Cuba or in Mexico today.

The continued provocations of NATO pushed Russia and Putin to draw a line in the sand. They utilised the unresolved conflict between Georgia and South Ossetia to launch an invasion of Georgia. The war lasted 12 days and ended with Georgia being forced to accept the de facto independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Although this was never part of the formal agreement, it also effectively prevented Georgia from continuing its path to NATO membership.

This could have been the end of it, but the West had not yet given up its hopes of expanding its sphere of influence. Certain concessions were indeed made: the Polish missile base plan was dropped, for example. However, another serious flashpoint was to occur in Ukraine  a flashpoint which was really the prelude to the present war.

The Maidan movement

In 2013, Ukrainian President Yanukovich was negotiating trade agreements with Europe. Yanukovich played the role of attempting to balance between Russia and the West. He had negotiated an association agreement with the EU, but this threatened Ukraines relationship with Russia.

Putin opposed the association agreement, correctly seeing it as an attempt to pull Ukraine closer into the orbit of the EU. Oligarchs from Eastern Ukraine sided with Putin, fearing the loss of the Russian market. Putin instead offered trilateral negotiations between the EU, the IMF and Russia, but such an offer was rejected by the EU. This was clearly a take-it-or-leave-it question for the EU, which was not keen on supporting the ailing Ukrainian economy. Its promise of $1bn was paltry, and would have done little. Russia was offering $15bn. No wonder Yanukovich went with the latter.

Angela Merkel commented on the Russian opposition to the deal that The Cold War is Over. But the actions of both the Russian government and the West proved that the opposite was the case. She further remarked to Yanukovych that they had expected more from him.

In 2013, protests erupted after president Yanukovich withdrew from an association agreement with the EU. The EU leaders were happy to encourage the Maidan protests, at the heart of which were extreme right-wing elements, although they were by no means serious about allowing Ukraine to join the EU / Image: Mstyslav Chernov

For some time, the association with the European Union had been dangled by the West as a carrot. The promises of easy access to the labour market in the West, investments, etc., led a layer of the population to come out onto the streets in favour of the agreement in November 2013. This was cultivated by EU leaders.

As would be shown by subsequent events, the EU had no intention of providing Ukraine with full EU membership. They were happy to peel Ukraine away from Russia, even at the cost of civil war, but they did not want to provide any serious support. Even now, the EU leaders are opposed to Ukraine joining, however the EU Parliament votes. If Ukraine was to join the EU, they would have access to the EU budget and visa-free travel. This, the EU leaders are not the least bit interested in.

However, as the protests developed, they were happy to defend the right of Ukraine to join the EU. The German Foreign Minister, Westerwelle, said that the rallies in support of the accession agreement showed that the heart of the Ukrainian people beats in a European way. But this didnt mean that they would be allowed to join the EU.

As the protest developed, the US got involved. On 3 December White House Press Secretary Jay Carney stated:

Violence and intimidation should have no place in todays Ukraine. We continue to support the aspirations of the Ukrainian people to achieve a prosperous European democracy. European integration is the surest course to economic growth and to strengthening Ukraine's democracy.

But the more aggressive wing of the US bourgeois wanted to go still further. Senator John McCain made several bellicose statements and visited the Maidan protests, giving a speech there on 15 December. A coup was being prepared.

An audio recording of a conversation between the US Secretary of State and the US ambassador to Ukraine was posted on Youtube, most likely by Russian intelligence. It is clear evidence that the US was involved in planning the removal of Yanukovych.

The aim of the US involvement was clear: install a government friendly to the West that would sign the EU accession agreement and continue to advocate for Ukraines inclusion in NATO. Its doubtful whether the intention was ever to let them join, but they certainly aimed to continue dangling the hope of economic prosperity (in the form of EU membership) and military security (in the form of NATO membership) in front of the eyes of the Ukrainians.

The coup duly took place on 22 February 2014. The new regime wasted no time in proclaiming their anti-Russian intentions. The day after, 23 February, the Ukrainian Parliament repealed Russian minority language laws. One month after the coup, they signed the accession agreement.

In the process of mobilising against Yanukovich, the imperialists and the pro-western Ukrainian oligarchs revived the ghost of the Nazi-collaborating fascist groups of the Second World War, and neo-nazis provided the shock battalions of the Maidan protests. As we have seen, the new regime incorporated the legacy of the Nazi collaborators in its institutions, including the chant Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the Heroes!, which even became the official chant of the Ukrainian army. Disgustingly, it has also been taken up by western liberals over the past few weeks.

The regime installed in the US-backed coup made "Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the Heroes!" the official slogan of the Ukrainian army. The revival of this slogan (seen here on a Nazi publication from 1941) was part of a general revival of the legacy of fascist collaborators by the regime / Image: Theodor Seibert

The reaction of Putin and the Russian government was predictably hostile. The new government posed a threat to the Russian naval base in Sevastopol, in particular, and within a month Putin had annexed Crimea to secure Russian access to the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. He also backed  initially reluctantly, and eventually forcefully  the separatist rebels in the Donbas, particularly on the two occasions when it looked like the Ukrainian army was about to defeat them.

Ironically, the achievement of the Ukrainian nationalist movement has been the loss of three important regions of Ukraine. All this was clearly encouraged, from start to finish, by the US, and also, somewhat more reluctantly, by the EU.

NATOs continued meddling

In 2017 and 2020, NATO added two more countries that were formerly part of the Russian sphere of influence to its alliance: Montenegro and Macedonia. In and of itself, these additions were not decisive, but they demonstrated that NATO was prepared to continue its expansion, even possibly to Ukraine.

The US and the EU continued to incite Ukraine against Russia. They were encouraged to break the Minsk II agreement, which the Ukrainian nationalists had opposed from the start. New drones were provided to Ukraine by Turkey, and the US were supplying Javelin anti-tank missiles. Basically, they were preparing for another offensive in the Donbas. As late as January this year, the secretary of Ukraines National Security and Defence Council, Oleksiy Danilov, declared:

The fulfilment of the Minsk agreement means the countrys destruction. When they were signed under the Russian gun barrel  and the German and the French watched  it was already clear for all rational people that its impossible to implement those documents.

The Ukrainian government continued its hostility towards the Russian-speaking minority: in 2019 it introduced a language law mandating the use of Ukrainian language in the service industry and for tuition in schools. It was now punishable by law for a waiter to greet someone in Russian, unless the customer had specifically requested this. Similarly, schools that had been conducting their tuition in Russia were now banned from doing so. It was yet another provocation against the Russian minority  and Russia.

And the pressure was kept up. In the spring of 2021, NATO held a massive exercise called Defender Europe 2021, including manoeuvres in all the Baltic States and Poland. Ukraine was one of 26 participating countries. According to the US army, the exercise demonstrates our ability to serve as a strategic security partner in the western Balkans and Black Sea regions while sustaining our abilities in northern Europe, the Caucasus, Ukraine and Africa. Basically, all the areas that Russia and the West are disputing. NATO would, of course, claim this was not hostile to Russia. But their exercises were about as friendly as the Russian exercises in Belarus before the invasion. The exercises also included US B1 bombers skirting Russian airspace, pushing Russia to scramble fighters in response.

Right up until the outbreak of war, NATO and the West were willing to egg Ukraine on against Russia in order to call Putin's bluff, without the first concern for the consequences that would be faced by the Ukrainian people if Russia followed through on its threats / Image: Socialist Appeal

In the summer of 2021, the British government also sent a warship, HMS Defender, into Russian territorial waters, south of Crimea. They were there to make a point, which was that Britain does not recognise Crimea as Russian, referring to it as Ukrainian waters. In October, the US once again flew bombers around Russian airpsace, this time in the Black Sea. Then, in September, under the guise of Partnership for Peace, NATO held exercises in Ukraine involving US troops.

Furthermore, NATO countries undertook an effort to train the Ukrainian armed forces. Using the Yavoriv Military Training ground, between Lviv and the Polish border  also known by the Orwellian name of the International Center for Peacekeeping and Security  since 2015, NATO trainers have been shaping the Ukrainian army to NATO standards, including the neo-nazi batallions which are part of the National Guard. This is the military base which was destroyed by Russian bombardment on 12 March.

The whole intention of these exercises, flights, training, etc., is clear. NATO was not even that circumspect about it: they wished to prove their willingness to move troops in Eastern Europe, to prepare for war with Russia, and to support Ukraine in its conflict with Russia. Of course, as events have shown, NATO has no intention of actually fighting a war, but they wanted to send a signal.

Zeeshan Aleem, a columnist at MSNBC expressed it pretty well: by dangling the possibility of Ukraines NATO membership for years but never fulfilling it, NATO created a scenario that emboldened Ukraine to act tough and buck Russia  without any intention of directly defending Ukraine with its firepower if Moscow decided Ukraine had gone too far.

Professor Maerskheimer put it rather more bluntly back in 2015: The West is leading Ukraine down the Primrose Path and the end result is that Ukraine is going to get wrecked. He added:

What were doing is encouraging the Ukrainians to play tough on Russia. What were doing is encouraging the Ukrainians to think that they will ultimately become part of the West because we will ultimately defeat Putin and we will ultimately get our way.

The end result of playing hardball with Russia is that Ukraine is now being destroyed. Whether western leaders like Biden and Johnson actually imagined that Russia would invade Ukraine, we cannot know, but they were clearly prepared to risk it. They were on their high horse throughout the autumn and the winter, defending Ukraines right to join NATO, much as they had been defending Ukraines right to join the EU. Or maybe, more specifically: their right to apply to join, because so far there is no plan of actually giving them membership of either organisation.

Who is responsible?

As we now approach two million refugees, and with most of Ukraines cities under siege and bombardment, many are asking themselves who is responsible for this? The West blames Putin, speculating that he may have gone mad. But if you look beyond the headlines, this conflict is only the rising to the surface of the antagonism between Russia and the countries of NATO.

Western imperialism has been constantly attempting to push forward the boundaries of NATO and the EU. When it has done so, Russia has persistently explained that this was unacceptable. It even threatened to use force. When threats werent successful, the Russians actually used force, as in Georgia, in the conflict in Donbas, and in Syria. It was abundantly clear that Russia was prepared to use military measures to enforce its interests.

The West probably didnt know how far they could push Putin. But they were prepared to gamble with the lives of the Ukrainian people that Putin was bluffing. They persistently provoked, and now the people of Ukraine are paying the price.

This winter, the US could have offered some concessions. The truth of the matter is that the US and the EU were not ready to give Ukraine formal status in NATO or the European Union. They had no such intentions. Something could have been agreed. Putin was asking for assurances in writing, as verbal ones seem to have little value.

Instead, Biden, Johnson and Macron got on their high horse, talking about Ukrainian sovereignty, their right to join NATO, etc. They were also urging the Ukrainian government to take a hard line: go ahead, were behind you was the message. This, far from reassuring the Russians, was likely to have made them rather more concerned.

Only Macron and Scholtz seem to have had second thoughts, fearing the cost of millions of refugees, the bill for the reconstruction of Ukraine, and, of course, the threat to the European oil and gas supplies.

The Wests attitude was, and continues to be, that theyre prepared to fight to the last drop of blood for Ukraines right to join NATO  the last drop of Ukrainian blood, that is.

What we are effectively seeing in Ukraine is a conflict between two imperialist powers: the giant of US imperialism and its western allies on the one hand, and the weaker, regional power of Russian imperialism, in which the Ukrainian army is merely serving as a proxy of the former / Image: In Defence of Marxism

There is, of course, nothing progressive about the Russian invasion. The talk about fighting Nazis, although undoubtedly quite popular in Russia, is merely a smokescreen. The effect of this invasion is, at least temporarily, to strengthen reactionary forces on all sides. It also threatens to foment deep divisions between Russian and Ukrainian workers.

Nonetheless, to see this as just a Russian invasion of Ukraine is quite wrong, and serves to cover up the role that NATO played and continues to play in stoking up tensions. Far from being a defensive alliance, it is an alliance primarily directed against Russia in Eastern Europe, which continues to push its boundaries closer and closer.

NATO, as well as the EU, is a means of furthering western interests in Eastern Europe, against those of Russia, and China, if it comes to that. The war in Ukraine is precisely about the level of influence that NATO countries, primarily the US, Britain, France and Germany, are to have over Ukraine. As the alliance is unwilling to commit its own troops to the fight, it is therefore being played out as a proxy war between the Russian army and the Ukrainian army, funded and supplied by NATO countries.

From this, we can also deduce that this is not at all a war about Ukraines right to self-determination, or its sovereignty, but about which imperial power should dominate it. Is Ukraine to be under Russian domination, western domination, or can they carve up some kind of deal about the mutual exploitation of the country? They failed to resolve this question through diplomatic means and so now they are attempting to settle it through the force of arms. As Clausewitz said, war is the continuation of politics by other means.

A little over 100 years ago, Lenin pointed out that capitalism inevitably led to imperialism. In fact, he called his book Imperialism  the Highest Stage of Capitalism. The bourgeoisie and various shades of pacifists and reformists have argued that this is wrong, and that in fact, capitalism, and even imperialism, lead to peace and stability. Such is their ludicrous defence of NATO. If only the US/NATO could dominate all of Eastern Europe, we would have peace, they say. But the truth is concrete and it is precisely the opposite of what they claim.

The collapse of the Soviet Union did not lead to a peace dividend as Thatcher and Bush claimed at the time. Military spending is at an all time high, and conflicts between imperialist powers are intensifying around the world. NATO expansion is one of the ways this conflict is being pursued.

This war is the product of conflicting capitalist interests. It is about how far NATO can go in its imperialist aspirations, and how far the smaller imperialist power, Russia, can resist and win back some of its lost spheres of influence.

The task of Marxists is to explain all this patiently to the workers of all countries. We must explain that so long as capitalism survives, conflicts over markets and spheres of influence will continue. The barbarism of capitalism will continue once the war in Ukraine ends, and it will lead to new wars. Only when the workers of all countries finally put an end to capitalism will we see the end of this.
A high-flying banker banned from drinking while on bail for allegedly bashing his wife has now been charged with high-range drink driving.

Fredrik Blencke was allegedly four times over the legal limit when he was stopped in a silver Mercedes-Benz in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales.

The 49-year-old spent Christmas and New Year in jail for breaching bail after he was charged with assaulting his 30-year-old wife Annabelle Price and contravening a restraining order.

Part of the father-of-three's strict release conditions included not drinking alcohol or attending licensed premises.

Fredrik Blencke was allegedly four times over the legal limit when he was stopped in a silver Mercedes-Benz at Federal, in the Northern Rivers region of NSW, on February 26. Blencke was pictured picking up six bottles of wine from a liquor shop 15 minutes drive away on February 2

Police allege Blencke assaulted his wife Annabelle Price inside a ward of the Sydney Children's Hospital, prompting several nurses to rush to her aid and order him to leave. He is also accused of assaulting Ms Price in the couple's Vaucluse home

Police arrested Blencke about 8.50pm on February 26 after he allegedly blew 0.183 in a roadside breath test in Byron Street at Bangalow.

Blencke, who was charged with a further breach of his bail, is set to face Tweed Heads Local Court for the alleged drink driving offence on March 21.

Two weeks before his latest arrest Blencke was spotted buying six bottles of wine from a liquor store at Federal, about 15 minutes' drive from Bangalow.

Blencke put the wine in the boot of his Mercedes and drove back to a palatial home where he is staying until his next court appearances.

Just hours before buying the wine, police had issued Blencke with an official warning for allegedly breaching his bail conditions after he was seen at popular nightclub Casa Luna on January 28.

Police arrested Blencke about 8.50pm on February 26 after he allegedly blew 0.183 in a roadside breath test in Byron Street at Bangalow. He is pictured with his wife

Magistrate Jacqueline Milledge granted Blencke bail on January 12 on the proviso he did not drink alcohol, consume illicit drugs or go to any licensed premises, after describe him as 'out-of-control'.

'Not even a Chinese restaurant, Mr Blencke,' Ms Milledge said. 'You'll be dining on take away only.'

Blencke is facing two charges of assaulting his wife and an unrelated charge of assaulting police after an incident outside a Sydney pub last year.

He has been staying at Lune de Sang, an award-winning 146 hectare timber plantation in the Byron Bay hinterland owned by one of his friends.

The luxury property featured as one of two filming locations for the Hulu mini-series Nine Perfect Strangers starring Nicole Kidman, Melissa McCarthy and Luke Evans.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Blencke specialises in providing bespoke investment management solutions for high net worth clients.

Blencke was branded 'out of control' by a magistrate, who went on to grant him bail

But a former friend of Blencke's told Daily Mail Australia his contract was terminated after his release from prison.

Police allege Blencke assaulted Ms Price inside a ward of the Sydney Children's Hospital, prompting several nurses to rush to her aid and order him to leave.

The court heard that a month later, Blencke acted aggressively inside the couple's luxury Vaucluse mansion, where they paid $3,400 a week rent.

Bail was granted despite opposition by the police prosecutor, who insisted he posed an unacceptable risk to his estranged wife.

The prosecutor noted Blencke had previously breached his bail and an apprehended violence order in place for Ms Price's safety.

Court documents state Ms Price called Blencke to inform him their daughter was in hospital on November 14, and that he was slurring on the phone.

Fredrik Blencke and his wife are friends with Ellie and Charlie Aitken, and Hollie and Christopher Nasser, socialites in double marriage bust-up Pictured left to right: Blencke, Mr Nasser, Hollie Nasser, Ellie Aitken, Charlie Aitken

'When the [alleged] victim attempted to ask the accused to assist with her other child he became aggressive and uncooperative,' the documents state.

'An argument ensued, leading to the accused then grabbing the [alleged] victim on the left arm and gripping tightly causing immediate pain.'

On December 15, Blencke allegedly 'struck his fists' on the island bench in the couple's kitchen, causing the bench to shake so intensely it was felt by a 12-month-old child sitting in a nearby high chair.
War veteran Ben Roberts-Smith dropped an Afghan prisoner onto the ground before executing him in the back with a burst of machine-gun fire, a court has been told.

The former SAS corporal codenamed Person 24 told the Federal Court on Monday about an April 2009 mission to a compound dubbed Whiskey 108 in Uruzgan province.

The witness said he watched Mr Roberts-Smith walk out of the compound holding a man in his hand parallel to the ground.

The VC recipient (pictured, right) is accused of killing an Afghan man with a machine gun

'It appeared he had come off his feet,' he said, either held by his pants or the back of his shirt.

He said the VC recipient marched out of the compound and dropped the man on the ground before immediately opening fire 'with a machine gun burst into his back'.

After Mr Roberts-Smith stopped firing due to a weapon 'stoppage' he walked back into the building and Person 24 recalled turning to another soldier, he said.

'Did we just witness an execution?' he recalled saying.

Mr Roberts-Smith has strenuously denied the allegation.

The 43-year-old is suing The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Canberra Times for defamation over reports that he committed war crimes and murders in Afghanistan between 2006 and 2012.

The accusations at the heart of Mr Roberts-Smith's defamation suit claim he executed a prisoner with a prosthetic leg in Afghanistan's Uruzgan province (pictured is Ghulam Khan Border Gate on the Pakistan-Afghanistan)

The witness said on Monday the prisoner Mr Roberts-Smith was holding was alive before he was executed, making sounds 'like a grunting noise'.

Before setting out on the mission Person 24 said he was sitting with his squad members in a room when a patrol commander dubbed Person Five came into view.

'He was in a jovial manner, dancing a bit of a jig at our doorway and he said that 'we are going to blood the rookie'.'

The phrase references giving a junior soldier their first kill in action.

The newspapers who seek to rely on a defence of truth, allege Mr Roberts-Smith stood by while a young trooper codenamed Person Four was ordered to execute one of two prisoners found in a tunnel.

Person 24 said before he watched Mr Roberts-Smith execute the Afghan male he heard Person Five screaming at Person Four to be with him inside the compound.

Mr Roberts-Smith is accused of executing the other prisoner, with several SAS witnesses testifying they heard a burst of machine-gun fire.

The war hero previously told the court there were no men in the tunnel and labelled the allegations as an 'outrageous claim'.

Before the troop extracted to their base Person 24 said he watched another soldier tuck the prosthetic leg found on the body of the dead prisoner into his backpack.

Barrister Arthur Moses SC, on behalf of Mr Roberts-Smith, accused the witness of giving false evidence.

Person 24 said he had just sworn an oath and would never lie in a court of law.

He denied talking to the media, saying he didn't agree with other soldiers doing so.

'I think it's extremely unfair how this thing has panned out for (Mr Roberts-Smith,' he said.

The trial continues.

Lifeline 13 11 14

Open Arms 1800 011 046

The war veteran (pictured, with his wife in 2020) denies claims heard in the court room
The excise tax on draught beer will be halved in the upcoming federal budget, meaning beer lovers will soon enjoy a schooner for less.

The $153 million proposal would halve the price of a beer keg to $35 meaning pints would be 40c cheaper, schooners 35c, and a pot 20c.

The reduced cost would only be temporary with the price cut aimed at helping pubs and restaurants recover from the pandemic and draw in more patrons.

The excise tax on draught beer could soon be halved meaning beer lovers could be paying 30c less for a schooner

Senior government sources claimed the proposal for a tax cut was being 'seriously considered' for the March federal budget

At least 20 Coalition MP's have urged Treasurer Josh Frydenberg to consider a 50 per cent cut in excise on draught beer, Sky News reports.

Australian Hotels Association chief executive Stephen Ferguson said Covid-hit businesses would be 'very pleased' by the decision.

'One of the whole purposes of our request to lower the cost of beer excise has been to get people out socialising again, get people into the venues, get them out of home and create jobs, so it sounds like fantastic news,' he said.

Australia has the fourth-highest beer tax in the world.

The Brewers Association have claimed total draught beer sales have dropped by $2 billion over the past two years with the Australian Taxation Office adding the volume of draught beer sold in hospitality venues had also halved.

Tasmanian MP Gavin Pearce told the Daily Telegraph in February, when the cut was first mooted, that the tax break would be a major windfall for struggling licensed venues.

'I'm all about making it easier for the average man and woman on the street - pubs and clubs are doing it tough, and when I hear stories of publicans holding back price rises for up to 18 months that concerns me because eventually they're going to have to catch up and that's what's going to hurt them,' he said.

'The reason I'm willing to support the reduction in excise is because those benefits end up benefiting the publican at the coalface where it is needed most.'

Brisbane MP for the seat of Ryan Julian Simmonds praised the proposal saying it was good news for both beer lovers and publicans.

'If we're serious about rebuilding the economy and making families better off, then supporting the thousands of family-owned pubs and reducing the cost of a schooner should be a key part of the government's budget response,' he said.

The Australian Hotel Association, Clubs Australia and the Brewers Association are the three organisations leading the push.

The proposal would cost the government $153million a year and be similar to a campaign rolled out in the UK where pubs were given their biggest tax break on draught beer prices in 50 years.

The Australian Taxation Office added the volume of draught beer sold in hospitality venues had also halved

The $153million proposal would halve the price of a beer keg to $35 meaning that pints would be 40c cheaper, schooners 30c, and a pot 20c

ATO figures show that pubs and clubs sold 40 million fewer pints of beer between July and September last year than they did during the same period in 2019 and before the Covid-19 hit.

Brewers Association of Australia chief executive John Preston said after a horror year in 2020 where pubs and clubs lost over $1 billion in beer sales due to lockdowns, the ATO data suggest 2021 could be worse.

The ATO recorded 903,982 litres of alcohol as having been served in beers over the counter in July-September 2021 compared to 1,993,027 litres during the same period in 2019.

'These figures show that the damage to our pubs and clubs from the pandemic actually worsened last year,' Mr Preston said.

He said on average beer sales are around 70 per cent of alcohol sales volumes in licensed premises and a drop of this severity has hit pubs and clubs incredibly hard.

The association is calling for the Australian government to use the forthcoming federal budget to reduce Australia's 4th highest beer tax in the world to give pubs and clubs a fighting chance

He said on February 1 Australian beer drinkers will be hit with one of the biggest beer tax increases in more than a decade.

Excise rates for alcohol are indexed twice a year in line with the consumer price index.

'It's not right and it's not sustainable,' Mr Preston said.

'Other countries have been reducing their tax on draught beer to give pubs and beer drinkers a break.'

Mr Frydenberg is due to hand down the federal budget on March 29.
Horrifying surveillance video shows the moment a Los Angeles father was shot dead while walking his dog early Saturday morning as the city battles a worrying murder spike.

Video shows Marcos Sandoval, 52, walking with his dog, Little Torro, at the intersection of Genesee Avenue and Saturn Street when a dark-colored Ford Fusion approaches.

The driver exits the vehicle and interacts with Sandoval before two shots ring out.

The first shot sent Little Torro running across the street and back to the family home to alert his owners of the tragedy. The dog was not injured in the incident.

Cops say they have no motive for Sandoval's killing, and it is unclear if he knew his murderers prior to the shooting. His stricken family say he had no enemies.

After the second shot, the suspect got back into the vehicle and fled the scene, traveling northbound on Genesee Avenue.

Neighbors told CBS Los Angeles, which obtained a copy of the video footage, the neighborhood is usually a 'no-crime' zone.

The fatal shooting comes as Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon is under fire for the city's murder spike and overall increase in violent crimes.

Last week, two senior Los Angeles County prosecutors hit him with a lawsuit alleging they were demoted for making complaints about their woke bosses' new policies that call for lax sentencing for violent crimes.

Video shows Sandoval walking with Little Torro at the intersection of Genesee Avenue and Saturn Street when a dark-colored sedan approaches

Moments later, Little Torro was filmed fleeing the scene after his master was fatally-shot

Marcos Sandoval, 52, was shot and killed while walking his dog in his Los Angeles neighborhood early Saturday morning

Sandoval's dog, Little Torro, was the first to alert the 52-year-old's family of the tragedy

Police responded to Sandoval's neighborhood around 6.15am Saturday after a passerby discovered his body and called 911.

Authorities believe he was shot about 30 minutes beforehand.

Sandoval's daughter said the family knew something was wrong when Little Torro started frantically barking outside their home.

'He started barking at my sister's window, the back door, and my sister went out to look for him,' she told the TV station. 'When she couldn't find him, that's when she called me.'

She and her family told reporters they have no idea why Sandoval was targeted in the shooting, noting they were not aware of any ongoing conflict the father and husband might have had.

'He had no enemies, he was a good person,' said Sandoval's daughter. 'We don't know why someone would just target him.'

The family created a makeshift memorial at the site of the shooting Saturday afternoon with candles and flowers.

The victim's friends, loved ones and other community members have visited the site to leave behind memorabilia and offer their prayers to Sandoval, who is remembered by his children as 'hardworking' and caring.

'He would always put me and my sister first before anyone and it's just not fair that they just took him away from us like that,' his daughter said.

The driver exits the vehicle and interacts with Sandoval before two shots ring out. The first shot sent Little Torro running across the street and back to the family home to alert his owners of the tragedy. The dog was not injured in the incident

After the second shot, the suspect got back into the vehicle and fled the scene, traveling northbound on Genesee Avenue

Police responded to Sandoval's neighborhood around 6.15am Saturday after a passerby discovered his body and called 911. Authorities believe he was shot about 30 minutes earlier

A neighbor who claimed to have been awoken by the incident alleged that Sandoval and the suspect had a loud disagreement ahead of the shooting.

'I woke up maybe like 5:30 (a.m.) and heard two man talking loudly, arguing,' the unidentified neighbor said.

'Then my dog and cat woke up and a few minutes  maybe 5 minutes  went by then I heard two gunshots. I didn't know they were gunshots at the time.'

The resident said based on the tone of the conversation, Sandoval likely knew the suspect. She added: 'It was emotional.'

Los Angeles police are investigating the incident, but as of Sunday has no leads or motive in the case.

'This is a very quiet neighborhood, no significant crime patterns. So, we really have no motive for this case at all,' LAPD Lieutenant John Radtke told the news outlet.

His description of the neighborhood was echoed by longtime resident Shirley Dionzon who said: 'We've never had anything like that.'

She has lived in the area since 1965.

LAPD homicide detectives are urging anyone with information regarding the shooting to call the department at (213) 382-9470 or Crime Stoppers at (800) 222-8477.

A neighbor who claimed to have been awoken by the incident alleged that Sandoval and the suspect had a loud disagreement ahead of the shooting

The victim's friends, loved ones and other community members have visited the site to leave behind memorabilia and offer their prayers to Sandoval, who is remembered by his children as 'hardworking' and caring

The fatal shooting comes as critics are blaming DA Gascon's 'soft' policies for LA's spike in violent crime.

Los Angeles has seen a 54 percent increase in murders since 2019, a rise in the number of street shootings since 2020 and an increase in the number of armed holdups.

Gascon, a 67-year-old former assistant chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, took over as district attorney in the heavily Democrat city in December 2020 and immediately embarked on a progressive justice reform agenda - eliminating the use of sentencing enhancements for gang membership, certain uses of guns and for prior convictions.

Since taking office, Gascon has refused to meet with prosecutors to explain the logic behind his policies, the union said.

He is now said to be reversing course amid growing fury and a fear he'll face a recall like woke San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin, whose policies critics say prioritize the welfare of criminals over victims.

Union Vice President Eric Siddall likened the DA to a failed experiment.

'Over a year ago, Gascon began a massive social experiment by redirecting prosecutorial resources away from enforcing the law while simultaneously ignoring large portions of the penal code,' Siddall said.

'The result is an emboldened criminal element that knows the DA will not hold criminals accountable. This experiment needs to end.'

The shooting comes as Los Angeles has seen a 54 percent increase in murders since 2019, a rise in the number of street shootings since 2020 and an increase in the number of armed holdups

Critics are blaming District Attorney George Garcon for the spike in homicides

Meantime, an effort to recall him is underway - which recently saw a former LAPD chief who previously endorsed him rescind his support.

Amid growing frustration with the progressive prosecutor, more than 600 deputy district attorneys throughout LA County endorsed his recall almost two weeks ago during an Association of Deputy District Attorneys (ADDA) meeting.

The effort to oust Gascon from office started in December.

Last week, two senior prosecutors - Maria Ramirez and Victor Rodriguez - revealed they were suing their boss after they claim they were demoted for making complaints about his policies, according to Fox News.

An effort to recall Garcon (pictured) is currently underway and has been endorsed by more than 600 deputy district attorneys throughout LA County. Garcon was also hit with a lawsuit from two former senior prosecutors last week

Ramirez and Rodriguez allege that they were were reassigned because they opposed Gascon's bail reform directives and concerns over how crimes were being prosecuted.

The lawsuit alleges that the deputies were reassigned 'because they disclosed and/or refused to take actions that they reasonably believed were violations of law.'

Ramirez is the former director of the Bureau of Specialized Prosecutions and Rodriguez once headed the Bureau of Branch and Area Region II and part of Area Region I. Both were demoted to the position of head deputy, the lawsuit states.

The plaintiffs each have more than 30 years of service in the District Attorney's Office and aspired to be assistant district attorneys, according to their suit. Together, they supervised hundreds of employees before their demotion.

Ramirez alleges her demotion came after she complained that Gascon's directive to substantially change the way juvenile crimes are prosecuted was unlawful. Specifically, the directive mandated Ramirez use alternate prosecution theories that minimized a juvenile's criminal conduct, no matter how violent, which did not accurately reflect the true offense, according to the lawsuit.

It meant that in the case of a juvenile, only one charge could be used in prosecution against them, no matter how serious the crime or the number of victims.

Rodriguez alleges he was demoted after discussing the possible prosecution of police officers who were involved in a shooting that killed two people.

Both Ramirez and Rodriguez are seeking unspecified damages, while Gascon's office is not commenting on the lawsuit due to the pending litigation.
Vladimir Putin's number one Australian supporter has had an apprehended violence order taken out against him on behalf of his glamorous wife, less than a year after they were married.

Ekaterina Olshannikova, who also goes by the married name of Katia Boikova, married self-proclaimed 'freedom fighter' Simeon Boikov in a traditional orthodox ceremony last year.

NSW Police has now taken out an AVO for Ms Olshannikova banning her estranged husband from assaulting, threatening, stalking, harassing or intimidating her.

An extra condition was that Boikov not harm 'an animal that belongs to or is in the possession' of his wife.

The order was taken out just two weeks before he filmed a beach trip on Australia Day with his young wife where he proudly wore a t-shirt reading 'Aussie Cossack' on the front and 'Film the Police' on the back.

Wearing a scarlet red bikini, his wife told followers 'Happy Australia Day guys' as her husband discussed NSW's latest lockdown and the return of Australian 'patriotism'.

Calling her 'Mrs Cossack' and 'baby', Boikov commented on his wife's beauty and how happy they were.

The glamorous wife of the ultra pro-Russian Simeon Boikov, Ekaterina Olshannikova (above) has taken out an Apprehended Violence Order against the man known as the 'Aussie Cossack'

Ms Olshannikova took the AVO out against Simeon Boikov (above left, together) in January, less than a year after their marriage (right) in February 2021

The Putin fan, who claims the Russian leader is merely 'liberating' not invading Ukraine, has described his wife as an even more 'staunch' Putin supporter than him and claimed she was 'disgusted with the way the West' has turned against Russia.

She and Boikov, 32, a former Sydney private schoolboy who attended elite Trinity Grammar and St Andrews Cathedral School, married in a traditional ceremony in February last year, believed to have been held at St Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church in Fairfield.

Boikov describes himself as 'a freedom fighter' and the self-appointed chieftain of his Aussie Cossack movement.

Conditions of the AVO against Simeon Boikov (pictured) by his wife include not to stalk, harass, assault, or intimidate her, not destroy or damage property or harm any of her pet animals

He has also campaigned against pandemic lockdowns and against mandated Covid vaccinations.

Boikov was not present in court when the provisional order was made by NSW Police in mid-January, and the matter is listed in Burwood Local Court later this month.

In the video, filmed a fortnight after the order was taken out, Boikov told followers how great it was to be back on the beach, which he claimed was forbidden during lockdown.

Boikov said fans had been asking where they could get his 'Aussie Cossack' T-shirt, and questions if he should set up a website.

Katia Elshannikova (above) married Simeon Boikov in a traditional ceremony last year at a Russian Orthodox church in western Sydney

Simeon Boikov, the 'Aussie Cossack' says his wife Katia is an even more 'staunch' supporter of Vladimir Putin and is 'disgusted' by the way the West has turned on Russia

He asks her, 'What do you think Mrs Cossack?' to which Ms Elshannikova replies, 'Yeah we need to set up some merch'.

'That's Mrs Cossack, she's looking fine as usual.

'It's great that we can celebrate one day a year with a bit of patriotism... which has made a comeback during lockdown.

'Aussie spirit has awoken. The spirit of the Anzacs, the Eureka spirit.'

Boikov and his wife are then interrupted by a woman named Angela, who says he is a hero for fighting against lockdown.

Near the end of the more than nine minute-long video, Ms Olshannikova explains how little beach Russians can enjoy in their own country, a small strip along the Black Sea.

Simeon Boikov posted this video (above) on his Aussie Cossack Youtube channel of himself and wife Katia (in red bikini) on the beach on Australia Day in which he calls her 'Mrs Cossack'

Ekaterina Olshannikova, or 'Mrs Cossack', effusively praised Australia's beaches after walking hand-in-hand on the sand with her husband two weeks after taking out an AVO against him

She praises the extent of Australian beaches which she says are 'awesome, amazing, most beautiful in the world beaches'.

Boikov, who appears to be reading the live stream of comments on the video, then says, 'well there you go'.

'Look Mrs Cossack, there's plenty of people writing comments to you, they're saying hello ... look at the colour of the water, look at that, baby,' he said.

Last month after Russia invaded Ukraine, Boikov declared 'I am on war time' and spending most of his time monitoring the actions in Ukraine and posting pro-Putin content online.

He described Scott Morrison's pledge to send Ukraine $70million to fund missiles and armaments as dangerous to Australians and said the Australian Prime Minister was 'a complete fool' to provoke Putin who was 'not mucking around'.

Last week, Boikov urged Australians to boycott McDonald's, Coca-Cola, KFC and among nearly 70 other global brands after the corporate giants closed operations in Russia.

EXCLUSIVE: Putin's number one fan in Australia slams Scott Morrison as a 'complete fool' who is provoking Russia into a war - and why his glamorous wife is even MORE furious with the West

An pro-Russian ultra patriot has mocked Scott Morrison's plan to send Ukraine missiles, saying the Prime Minister is 'a complete fool' who has put Australia's national security at risk.

Simeon Boikov, who calls himself the 'Aussie Cossack', said Mr Morrison's pledge to fund missiles for Ukraine had made Australia a 'target' for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Mr Morrison recently pledged $70million to buy military equipment and weapons for Ukraine as part of a co-ordinated Western effort to help its armed forces resist Russia's invasion.

'This is very serious,' Mr Boikov told Daily Mail Australia in a recent interview.

'We are on the verge of nuclear war. Putin is not mucking around.'

Simeon Boikov says he has never trained in the military in either Russia or Australia but wears Cossack uniforms to honour descendants of Russian horsemen who fought with Tsarist forces during the Russian civil war

Mr Boikov, who has tens of thousands of followers on his multiple social media channels, said most Australians would be against Mr Morrison dragging Australia into a war.

During the interview - conducted before Mr Putin's invasion became bogged down by Ukrainian resistance - Mr Boikov said: 'We shouldn't be poking the bear.

'Putin will have won within a few days ... this is the end of the war (but) if other countries get involved it's World War III.

'I personally think Australia is the best country in the world ... but Putin is not bluffing, I can't stress that enough.'

Mr Boikov says his glamorous wife Katia is even more 'staunch ... and disgusted with the way the West' has turned against Russia. The pair married in a Russian Orthodox wedding last year.

The 32-year-old construction professional, aspiring politician and founder of his patriotic Russian Australian Aussie Cossack movement, is keen for Australians to see the current crisis as he does, with Putin as a 'liberator' not an invader or 'occupier'.

The one-time student at St Andrews Cathedral School and at Trinity Grammar, where he played in the second row and as a flanker in the rugby first 15, said he believed Mr Morrison was sabre rattling to appear strong going into a federal election.

'It's because he's so unpopular and seen as weak and incompetent,' Mr Boikov said. 'It's a joke. He's way out of his pay grade and should stick to the floods.

Mr Boikov said it was foolish to for Australia to get involved in 'financing death, destruction, tragedy and bloodshed (in Ukraine)'.

'Is it a PR stunt?' he said.

Boikov says that Putin 'is not bluffing' and that Australian PM Scott Morrison is foolish to provoke the Russian President by promising to fund missiles for Ukraine

Mr Boikov claims to be a student of Russian and European history who believes 'Nazi' inspired battalions have been waging war against Russian speakers in Ukraine, since a political overthrow of government in 2014.

He also claims Ukrainian nationalist battalions, descended from local swastika and 'SS' wearing divisions from the second world war, still operate in modern Ukraine.

This argument, also used by Putin to justify the invasion, has been widely debunked by world leaders and experts as Russian propaganda

Despite admitting 'a lot of crazies' follow him', Mr Boikov said 98 per cent of his serious followers believe Australia 'should not be committing missiles or financing a war against Russia'.

He described the West's campaign to get behind Ukraine and oppose Russia as 'virtue signalling" and derided 'Instagram models .... who suddenly overnight become interested in the war' and put the yellow and blue colours of the Ukraine flag on their Instagram pages like 'they're Parramatta Eels supporters".

'I am against war, but the war has replaced Covid as the latest fear mongering campaign,' he said.
Six brave police officers have been admitted to hospital after inhaling smoke while saving residents inside a raging house fire.

Officers entered the home on Arundel Street in Glebe, in Sydney's inner west, in search of a person feared to be asleep and unaware of the flames about 9am on Monday.

Thick plumes of smoke prevented the officers from accessing the top floor of the townhouse, leaving rescue efforts in the hands of firefighters.

Fire and Rescue crews confirmed there was no other occupant trapped inside and controlled the blaze before it spread to neighbouring properties.

The officers entered a home in Glebe (pictured) at about 9am on Monday in search of a person feared to be asleep on the top floor and unaware of the encroaching flames

Six 'brave' police officers have been admitted to hospital after they inhaled smoke inside a house fire in Sydney's Inner West (pictured, blackened pieces of furniture in the fire)

Photos from the scene showed blackened pieces of furniture and personal items completely destroyed by the flames.

The six officers were taken to the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital where they were treated for smoke inhalation.

All have since been cleared and released, with no other serious injuries reported.

Leichhardt Area Command Detective Chief Inspector Grant Watson told reporters the officers were courageous to enter the home.

'It was very brave of the police to go upstairs with the smoke and the fire in the situation that it was,' he said.

'The police involved today did a terrific job. It speaks volumes.'

Inspector Watson said the fire was likely sparked by an e-scooter which was found charging on the bottom level.

'Possibly it overcharged and caused a small explosion,' he said, while urging residents to keep a close eye on electric devices as they charge.

Fire and Rescue crews confirmed there was no other occupant trapped inside and control the blaze before it spread to neighbouring properties (pictured, an aerial view of the scene)

He said the bottom floor of the two-storey home sustained fire, smoke, and water damage and a mother, son, and family friend were evacuated.

However, to complicate rescue efforts, a 15-year-old boy clambered on to the roof to escape the flames and had to be rescued by a tradesman on a ladder.

'A number of NSW Police officers were first on scene and assisted three occupants out of the burning house before Fire and Rescue NSW firefighters attended and extinguished the blaze,' NSW police said.

A crime scene has been established to confirm the cause of the house fire.
The trial for four men accused of plotting to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer that was scheduled to resume Monday has been postponed until at least Thursday after a 'key participant' contracted COVID.

U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker ordered the delay Sunday, but offered no further detail on the identity of the COVID sufferer. It is unclear if it is one of the suspects, or lawyers involved in organizing the trial, and further updates on their condition have not been given.

Undercover FBI agents and informants were expected to testify in the coming weeks at the Gerald F. Ford courthouse in Grand Rapids, Michigan, as were two co-conspirators who pleaded guilty prior to trial as prosecutors build their case against four defendants accused of plotting to kidnap Whitmer.

The trial could last more than a month. The four men accused in the kidnapping plot - Barry Croft Jr, Adam Fox, Daniel Harris and Brandon Caserta - planned to snatch Governor Whitmer from her Birch Lake vacation home because they were angry about COVID restrictions she imposed.

In testimony last week, prosecutors sought to counter defense claims that the four were entrapped, tricked by the FBI into joining a kidnapping conspiracy that wouldn't have occurred to them otherwise.

Provided by the Kent County Sheriff and the Delaware Department of Justice, these photos show two out of the four men accused in a plot to abduct Michigan's Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020. Barry Jr (left) was heard wanting to 'terrorize people. The right people. The people who have been terrorizing my people,' in a audio recording played in court on Thursday

The two other men involved in the highly-profiled case are Brandon Caserta (left) and Daniel Harris (right). Governor Whitmer has blamed former President Donald Trump for the rise of right-wing hate, of which all four men were a part of

The four men accused of plotting to abduct Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer were reportedly looking to kidnap the Democrat her from her Birch Lake vacation home after telling an FBI informant

Prosecutors laid the groundwork of their case by calling FBI investigators to explain how they obtained covert recordings and social media posts. They entered some of that key evidence.

On Thursday, jurors heard for the first time a recording of one of the defendants specifically talk about kidnapping the Democratic governor. Croft Jr could be heard saying there should be 'a quick, precise grab' of Whitmer.

Jurors heard him and defendant Adam Fox in social media postings and recordings ranting about purported government abuses and saying violence was a valid response. Prosecutors say Croft and Fox were plot ringleaders.

In the recording, made by a government informant during a meeting in mid-July 2020 in Wisconsin, Croft Jr describes the possibility of using explosives to 'rain down' fire on law enforcement 'with a team standing by' to abduct Whitmer.

He adds without providing details that it should be 'a quick precise grab' of the governor.

Jurors even heard the sound of an explosives test Croft was conducting. He's later heard speaking almost giddily about the damage he could cause, saying it would be 'devastating' and that he was also planning to blow up a nearby brdige to slow the police response.

Chief Judge Robert Jonker, of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan, postponed the trial relating to Gov Gretchen Whitmer after a 'key participant' was exposed to COVID-19

The audio played in the federal courtroom in Grand Rapids, Michigan, marked the first time the jury heard a defendant talking specifically about abducting Whitmer.

In other recordings, Croft and Fox mentioned Whitmer and spoke excitedly about taking action that would terrorize people.

'I'm gonna hit soon,' Croft is heard saying during what prosecutors say was a crucial June 6, 2020, meeting of anti-government activists in Ohio. 'I'm going to terrorize people. The right people. The people who have been terrorizing my people.'

A little later, Fox also is heard on audio recorded by an FBI informant, tossing out ideas and telling the group: 'You need to take hostages. There's your value.'

FBI agent Todd Reineck testified earlier Thursday that the men were arrested in fall 2020 because there was a 'real concern they might obtain real live explosives.'

He also testified about social media posts and messages by the men, including some made months before any contact from FBI agents or informants.

'I want to bring formal charges against our governor and tyrants in our state. ... Let's do something ... bold,' Fox said in a December 2019 Facebook video.

In it, Fox is seen intermittently laughing and cursing the government while waving two AR-style assault rifles at a camera.

In a separate recording made in June 2020, Fox ranted about pandemic restrictions that had been imposed by the governor on gyms.

'This tyrant b**** constantly does this ... Theres no reason why the gyms cant open now,' he said. 'I dont get it ... Its very frustrating.'

Not long after, Fox came into contact with an FBI informant and allegedly told him what he wanted to do to Whitmer.

'I want to have the governor hog-tied, laid out on a table while we all pose around like we just made the world's biggest god-damn drug bust, bro,' Fox allegedly said during the surreptitiously recorded conversation.

Fox's attorney, Christopher Gibbons, questioned Reineck about the process of paying informants in cash, vetting them before undercover work, and the choice of electronic devices they used.

Reineck also acknowledged under questioning by Gibbons that Fox participated in some legal protests at the Michigan Capitol.

During opening statements Wednesday, defense attorneys said the FBI tricked the men into participating in a plot to kidnap Whitmer and U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker allowed them to address an entrapment defense.

Entrapment is a high-risk defense because it's a concession that crimes may have been committed.

Croft's lawyer said informants secretly recorded the men when virtually everyone was 'stoned, absolutely out-of-your-mind stoned,' leading to fantastical ideas, including using a kite to transport Whitmer.

Authorities said the text messages included images of the conspirators as they carried out surveillance on properties that Whitmer owned

'They knew it was stoned-crazy talk and not a plan,' Joshua Blanchard said of the FBI.

Harris' attorney, Julia Kelly, said the former Marine liked an FBI informant called 'Big Dan' because he presented himself as a gun training instructor.

'Big Dan was the leader,' she told jurors. 'How do I shoot out of a vehicle? Yeah, you go ask Big Dan. That's what Daniel was looking for in the summer of 2020.'

Caserta's attorney, Michael Hills, said attack training sessions in Michigan and Wisconsin were 'Fed-sponsored events.'

But Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan Roth said evidence would prove the defendants' desire to commit violence regardless of anything the informants did or suggested, telling jurors the men were 'willing and eager' and preparing for the crime 'long before' law enforcement got involved.

'If the defendant was already willing to commit the crime, that is not entrapment,' Roth said.

He described Fox and Croft as masterminds of the plot, and said the four wanted to create a 'war zone here in Michigan.'

In one recording, Croft says Whitmer needs to be 'hung.' After Croft was arrested in October 2020 on the East Coast as he made deliveries at his job as a truck driver, agents found a receipt for $353-worth of what the FBI agent described as 'mortar-style fireworks,' which he said could become a makeshift bomb if packed with pennies.

'These were not people who were all talk,' Roth said. 'These were people who wanted to separate themselves from people who were all talk.'

Kaleb Franks, 27, pictured with an assault weapon outfitted with a silencer, in February pleaded guilty to kidnapping conspiracy in the plot against Whitmer and will testify for the prosecution

Two critical insiders, Ty Garbin and Kaleb Franks, have pleaded guilty to the conspiracy and are expected to testify for the government.

In 2020, Whitmer was trading taunts with then-President Donald Trump over his administration's response to COVID-19. Her critics, meanwhile, were regularly protesting at the Michigan Capitol, clogging streets around the statehouse and legally carrying semi-automatic rifles into the building.

Whitmer, who is seeking reelection this year, rarely talks publicly about the case and isnt expected to attend the trial. She has blamed Trump for stoking mistrust and fomenting anger over coronavirus restrictions and refusing to condemn hate groups and right-wing extremists like those charged in the plot. She has said he was also complicit in the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection.
A cheeky politician has responded to 'bullies who vandalised her election poster by recreating the artistic impression of her.

Georgie Hart, the Greens candidate for the South Australian seat of Unley, found a graffitied campaign poster of hers on Sunday.

The 'artist' gave Ms Hart a moustache, goatee and monobrow. They added a cigarette out of her mouth and changed her last name to 'Fart'.

And while the childish vandalism may have upset some, Ms Hart decided to have some fun with it by emulating the look.

Scroll down for the video

South Australian Greens candidate for Unley, Adelaide, Georgie Hart dressed up as grafitti depicting her as 'Georgie Fart'

Vote 1 Georgie Fart  Another classy, professional campaign video by the Greens candidate for Unley. Vote 1 Greens for Real Action On Climate Change  Instagram: saving_mother_earth #fart #NoMoreGaslighting #VoteGreens #AusPol2022 #ClimateActionNow Georgie Hart, Greens Candidate for Unley Posted by Georgie Dee on Thursday, March 10, 2022

Georgie Hart - or Georgie 'Fart' - informed voters of the dangers of 'natural gas' and fossil fuels

She drew a moustage, monobrow and cigarette on her face before taking to Instagram to address her followers.

'Hi I'm Georgie Fart and I'm here to talk to you about natural gas,' she joked.

Ms Hart then explained how natural gas and natural coal are harming the planet and urged voters to vote for the Greens in the next election.

She added that coal seam gas 'stinks' and that further investment in the fossil fuel industry would leave 'our children's future and flush them down the dunny'.

In her video, Ms Hart added that coal seam gas 'stinks' and that further investment in the fossil fuel industry would leave 'our children's future and flush them down the dunny'

Commenters loved the funny video as well as the information in it.

'Humorous and informative- love it!,' one commenter wrote.

'This is brilliant. Thanks for having a sense of humour while also championing these important issues,' another said.

'Hilarious, perfect response,' another wrote.

Another said it was a great way to respond to bullies.

Journalist Miles Kemp said a 'white workers' sticker on Ms Hart's election poster was the work of 'conservative haters' looking for a 'new easier target'

The seat for Unley has been held by David Pisoni for the Liberal Party since 2006 and will be up for election on November 10

Another one of Ms Hart's election posters was vandalised with a 'white workers' sticker.

Journalist Miles Kemp said the sticker was the work of 'conservative haters' looking for a 'new easier target'.

The seat for Unley has been held by David Pisoni for the Liberal Party since 2006.

Council elections for Unley will be held on November 10.
Russia is continuing to suffer high-profile military losses, with a GRU military intelligence spy the latest killed in Putin's stalling invasion of Ukraine.

The Kremlin has so far seen the loss of 12 commanders including three key generals, and military experts have slammed their bizarre tactics.

Captain Alexey Glushchak, 31, from Tyumen in Siberia, is the latest major casualty after he was killed in the carnage in Mariupol, but the Russians have given no details of how he was killed.

The funeral of Captain Alexey Glushchak, a military intelligence officer with Russia's GRU spy agency, is pictured taking place

Glushchak was killed fighting near Mariupol, the Russian military said, as it acknowledges losing a GRU officer for the first time

Russia's war casualties Major General Andrei Kolesnikov: Commander of the 29th Combined Army Army Major General Vitaly Gerasimov: First deputy commander of Russia's 41st army who took part in operations in Syria and Crimea Major General Andrei Sukhovetsky: Deputy commander of the 41st Combined Arms Army of the Central Military District killed during a special operation by a sniper Major General Andrei Kolesnikov of the 29th Combined Arms Army was killed last week in another blow to the Kremlin Major General Vitaly Gerasimov (left) was killed last week and was the first deputy commander of Russia's 41st army. Major General Andrei Sukhovetsky (Right), 47, deputy commander of the 41st Combined Arms Army of the Central Military District, was also killed in Ukraine Colonel Andrei Zakharov: Killed in a Ukrainian ambush near Kyiv Lieutenant Colonel Dmitry Safronov: Leader of marine brigade killed after Ukrainian forces recaptured Chernihiv Lieutenant Colonel Denis Glebov: Leader of air assault troops killed in Chernihiv Colonel Konstantin Zizevsky: Leader of air assault troops killed in the south of Ukraine Lieutenant Colonel Denis Glebov (left) and Lieutenant Colonel Dmitry Safronov (right) died in a battle in Chuhuiv and Colonel Konstantin Zizevsky, who led air assault troops died in the south of Ukraine General Magomed Tushaev: Chechen special forces leader killed in an ambush near Hostomel Vladimir Zhonga: Leader of neo-Nazi Sparta Batallion backed by the Kremlin Georgy Dudorov: Deputy commander of the reconnaissance company for the 137th regiment of the 106th Tula Guards Airborne Division Aleksey Aleshko: Paratroop intelligence officer that was a graduate of the prestigious Ryazan Guards Higher Airborne School Advertisement

Russia said in a statement following Glushchak's death: 'Due to the strict secrecy of the military operation, the circumstances of the death of the Tyumen hero are not disclosed.'

Pictures emerged of the father-of-one's funeral in Russia, where he was buried with full military honours and a guard of honour, despite Russia hiding 'thousands' of deaths from those back at home.

On the day the military intelligence officer died he had spoken to both his wife and mother in Russia, it was revealed.

He called to congratulate them on International Women's Day but on the same day in the evening they learned he had been killed.

It is not clear exactly when Glushchak (pictured) died, though it is thought to be in early stages of the fighting

He will be posthumously decorated.

Their deaths coincide with the first expressions of anger and dismay on the toll of coffins now returning to Russia.

Accurate numbers of Russian troops killed in fighting are hard to come by. Ukraine claims 12,000 have been killed, but has not updated that figure for several days.

European and American estimates are lower - between 2,000 and 6,000 - while Russia has only acknowledged around 500 deaths.

The GRU was behind the poisoning with Novichok of its former spy Sergei Skripal - who had defected to Britain - in Salisbury.

Moscow has given no up-to-date total of those killed in the war, and named only a handful of the fallen, which include several generals.

Many funerals currently visible in the media are for soldiers slain at the end of February.

Russia is taking two weeks or more to transport their bodies back to relatives, many of whom live in the Russian Far East thousands of miles from the bloody war zone.

The pain is evident in an increasing number of hostile and anguished posts.

'When will this stop, we are seeing coffins almost daily?' said one.

'Why did we need to send our boys into this hell?' asked another.

A funeral was also held for Corporal Danil Novolodsky, 24, a senior gunner on an air assault artillery battery.

Glushchak's portrait is pictured laying on top of his coffin along with military awards he had been given, as Russia's death toll from 18 days of fighting in Ukraine mounts

Despite Moscow acknowledging taking losses in Ukraine, it is thought to be hiding 'thousands' of deaths from its own people (pictured, Glushchak's funeral)

He was awarded the Order of Courage under a decree signed by Vladimir Putin.

He was from Ulan-Ude, capital of the republic of Buryatia in Siberia, a mainly Buddhist region, which has suffered a disproportionate number of fatalities among Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine.

Ahead of the invasion, tens of thousands of troops were sent west on the Trans-Siberian Railway to fight in the coming war.

Another funeral from the same region was held for Vladimir Plekhanov, 24, an orphan raised by a living foster family.

Sagyndyk Kudaibergenov, 22, from Tyumen, like the GRU agent , was buried with military honours, say reports.

He was killed in mortar fire while deploying communications equipment across a river.

He was killed on 26 February but his funeral was only on 11 March.
Aussie travellers are flocking back to Bali after the holiday hotspot reopened to tourists after two years of Covid border closures.

The first flight from Australia to Bali left Melbourne on Monday with holidaymakers warning they're planning to hit as many bars as possible.

It was the first time Aussie tourists have flown to Bali since planes were grounded in March 2020 due to the pandemic.

Three tourists headed for a 'much needed girls trip' said they will be 'wherever the alcohol is' on their Bali trip after the Indonesian government opened international borders

Fully-vaccinated travellers will no longer be required to isolate on arrival in Bali after the Indonesian government lifted the previous five day quarantine order

Excited jetsetters packed the airport on Monday morning ready for a much-needed holiday.

A group of girls awaiting to board the flight boasted about the bars and restaurants they planned on visiting, with one admitting: 'Wherever there's alcohol, that's where we'll be'.

The much anticipated Jetstar flight left Melbourne's Tullamarine airport with more than 300 passengers on board following the company's announcement of flights leaving other Australian cities for Bali from April 8.

Jetstar CEO Gareth Evans said they were excited to get travellers back to Bali and that sales for the tourist hot-spot were through the roof.

The much anticipated Jetstar flight to Bali left Melbourne's Tullamarine airport with more than 300 passengers on board on Monday

International travellers waited for registration at Ngurah Rai airport after arriving in Bali

'We are very excited to return to Bali today after two long years, and we are confident that Bali will quickly regain its position as our most popular international tourist destination now that borders are open,' he said.

'Our recent Bali sale saw the biggest surge in bookings we've seen since 2016, and our recent surveys have consistently shown that Bali is still the top international destination people want to travel to.'

Flights from Australia to Bali returned following the Indonesian government's decision to relax quarantine rules for tourists arriving from a list of approved countries.

Flights from Australia to Bali returned following the Indonesian government's decision to relax quarantine rules for tourists arriving from a list of 23 approved countries

These countries include Australia, the US, UK, Italy, Germany, and ASEAN (Association of South-East Asian Nations) countries - including Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand.

The Indonesian government also announced fully-vaccinated travellers will no longer be required to isolate on arrival, lifting the previous five day quarantine order.

COVID RULES TO ENTER BALI International travellers must undergo a PCR test upon arrival

Tourists from approved countries will nee to pay $47 for a visa at the airport

Visitors must out insurance that would cover them for up to 20,000 Singaporean dollars (about $20,200 AUD) if they returned a positive Covid test

Double vaccinated tourists from the list of 23 approved counties will not need to quarantine upon arrival

Your last vaccination dose must have been received at least 14 days prior to arrival Source: Smart Traveller Advertisement

Now tourists arriving from approved countries will only need to pay $47 for their visa, rather than $300, which can be paid at the airport.

Qantas will resume flights from Melbourne to the Balinese capital Denpasar from April 14, followed by Sydney on April 15

However international visitors will still be required to undergo a PCR test upon arrival.

Tourists must also take out insurance that would cover them for up to 20,000 Singaporean dollars - about $20,200 AUD - if they returned a positive Covid test.

Qantas will resume flights from Melbourne to the Balinese capital Denpasar from April 14, followed by Sydney on April 15.

Several Balinese resorts closed during the lockdown and used the time to renovate and refurbish due to a lack of guests

Bali's economy was hit hard by the pandemic's lockdown as more than 70 per cent of residents work in tourism and the industry accounts for 52 per cent of the island's GDP.

At least 90 per cent of Balinese tourism-related businesses closed during the pandemic with just 45 overseas visitors reportedly holidaying at the island in 2021.

Several resorts also closed during the lockdown and used the time to renovate and refurbish.
In Defence of Marxism is committed to safeguarding your privacy. At all times we aim to respect any personal data you share with us, or that we receive from other organisations, and keep it safe. This Privacy Policy (Policy) sets out our data collection and processing practices and your options regarding the ways in which your personal information is used.

This Policy contains important information about your personal rights to privacy. Please read it carefully to understand how we use your personal data. We may update this Policy from time to time without notice to you, so please check it regularly.

The provision of your personal data to us is voluntary. However, without providing us with your personal data, you will be unable to (as appropriate): contact us; subscribe to our mailing list; subscribe to any of our publications; or receive information about In Defence of Marxism.

We collect information about you:

(1) When you give it to us DIRECTLY

You may give us your personal data in order to subscribe to a newsletter or publication, when you contact us by phone, email or post, when you sign a petition / statement, and/or when you donate money to us.

(2) When you give it to us INDIRECTLY

Your information will also be provided to us when you follow us or otherwise interact with on or via Twitter, when you like and/or join our page on Facebook or interact with us in other ways on or via Facebook.

(3) When you give permission to OTHER ORGANISATIONS to share it or it is AVAILABLE PUBLICLY

We may combine information you provide to us with information available from external publicly available sources. Depending on your privacy settings for social media services, we may also access information from those accounts or services. We use this information to gain a better understanding of you and to improve our communications and fundraising activities.

(4) When you visit our WEBSITE

We use cookies to identify you when you visit our website. Please refer to our Cookies Policy for details on the way our use of cookies affects your personal data.

What information do we collect?

We may collect, store and use the following kinds of personal data:

(1) We will typically hold your name and contact details, including telephone number, location, and e-mail address. However, we may request other information where it is appropriate and relevant, for example:

Your bank details or debit/credit card details (if making a donation).

(2) any communication preferences you give;

(3) information about your computer and about your visits to and use of this website including your IP address, geographical location, browser type, referral source, length of visit and number of page views; and/or

(4) any other information shared with us as per clause 1.

Do we process sensitive personal information?

Applicable law recognises certain categories of personal information as sensitive and therefore requiring more protection, including political opinions and trade union membership. In limited cases, we may collect sensitive personal data about you. We would only collect sensitive personal data if there is a clear reason for doing so; and will only do so with your explicit consent.

How and why will we use your personal data?

Personal data, however provided to us, will be used for the purposes specified in this Policy or in relevant parts of the website.

We may use your personal information to:

(1) Enable you to subscribe to our hard copy publications;

(2) Send you information about our work, campaigns, organisations and any other information, products or services that we provide (this will not be done without your consent);

(3) Provide you with the services, products or information you have requested;

(4) If you request, put you in touch with other supporters in your area (who have also provided such consent);

(5) Handle the administration of any donation or other payment you make via credit/debit card, cheque, standing order or BACS transfer;

(6) Collect payments from you and send statements and/or receipts to you;

(7) Conduct research into the impact of our activity / campaigns;

(8) Deal with enquiries and complaints made by you relating to the website or us in general;

(9) Make petition submissions to third parties, where you have signed a petition and the third party is a target of the campaign to which the petition relates; and/or

(10) Audit and/or administer our accounts.

Supporter Analysis

Google Analytics

We may use some of your personal information to analyse our digital performance, for example to see how our website can be improved to help us achieve the purposes set out in section 9 below, to record how you are using our website or to assess the popularity of different articles / campaigns.

For more information on how we use your personal information in relation to Google Analytics, please view our cookie policy by clicking this link cookies policy



You can opt-out of the collection of information for such purposes here: http://www.aboutads.info/choices

Communications, updates, fundraising

Where you have provided appropriate consent, we will contact you by telephone and e-mail, with targeted communications to let you know about our events and/or activities that we consider may be of particular interest; about the work of In Defence of Marxism; and to ask for donations or other support.

Donations and other payments

All financial transactions carried out on our website are handled through either:

PayPal (Europe) S.a r.l. (PayPal), a third party payment services provider. We recommend that you read PayPals privacy policy (available at https://www.paypal.com/uk/webapps/mpp/ua/privacy-full?locale.x=en_GB ) prior to effecting any transactions with us through PayPal; or

GoCardless Ltd (GoCardless), a third party payment services provider. We recommend that you read GoCardlesss privacy policy (available at https://www.gocardless.com/legal/privacy) prior to effecting any transactions with us through GoCardless.

We will provide your personal data to PayPal / GoCardless only to the extent necessary for the purposes of processing payments for transactions you enter into with us. We do not store your financial details.

Childrens data

We do not knowingly process data of any person under the age of 16. If we come to discover, or have reason to believe, that you are 15 and under and we are holding your personal information, we will delete that information within a reasonable period and withhold our services accordingly.

Security of and access to your personal data

We endeavour to ensure that there are appropriate and proportionate technical and organisational measures to prevent the loss, destruction, misuse, alteration, unauthorised disclosure or of access to your personal information.

Your information is only accessible by appropriately trained staff and volunteers.

We may also use agencies and/or suppliers to process data on our behalf. We may also merge or partner with other organisations and in so doing transfer and/or acquire personal data.

Please note that some countries outside of the EEA have a lower standard of protection for personal data, including lower security requirements and fewer rights for individuals. We may transfer and/or store personal data collected from you to and/or at a destination outside the European Economic Area (EEA). Such personal data may be processed by agencies and/or suppliers operating outside the EEA. If we transfer and/or store your personal data outside the EEA we will take reasonable steps to ensure that the recipient implements appropriate measures to protect your personal data.

Otherwise than as set out in this Privacy Policy, we will only ever share your data with your informed consent.

Your rights

Where we rely on your consent to use your personal information, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time. This includes the right to ask us to stop using your personal information for direct marketing purposes or to be unsubscribed from our email list at any time. You also have the following rights:

(1) Right to be informed  you have the right to be told how your personal information will be used. This Policy and any other policies and statements used on our website and in our communications are intended to provide you with a clear and transparent description of how your personal information may be used.

(2) Right of access  you can write to us to ask for confirmation of what information we hold on you and to request a copy of that information. Provided we are satisfied that you are entitled to see the information requested and we have successfully confirmed your identity, we have 30 days to comply.

(3) Right of erasure  as from 25 May 2018, you can ask us for your personal information to be deleted from our records.

(4) Right of rectification  if you believe our records of your personal information are inaccurate, you have the right to ask for those records to be updated.

(5) Right to restrict processing  you have the right to ask for processing of your personal data to be restricted if there is disagreement about its accuracy or legitimate usage.

(6) Right to data portability  to the extent required by the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) where we are processing your personal information (i) under your consent, (ii) because such processing is necessary for the performance of a contract to which you are party or to take steps at your request prior to entering into a contact or (iii) by automated means, you may ask us to provide it to you  or another service provider  in a machine-readable format.

To exercise these rights, please send a description of the personal information in question using the contact details in section 15 below. You can also unsubscribe from our email list by sending a blank email to news-unsubscribe@marxist.com

Where we consider that the information with which you have provided us does not enable us to identify the personal information in question, we reserve the right to ask for (i) personal identification and/or (ii) further information.

Lawful processing

We are required to have one or more lawful grounds to process your personal information. Only 4 of these are relevant to us:

Personal information is processed on the basis of a persons consent Personal information is processed on the basis of a contractual relationship Personal information is processed on the basis of legal obligations Personal information is processed on the basis of legitimate interests

(1) Consent

We will ask for your consent to use your information to send you electronic communications such as newsletters and and fundraising emails, and if you ever share sensitive personal information with us.

(2) Contractual relationships

Most of our interactions with supporters are voluntary and not contractual. However, sometimes it will be necessary to process personal information so that we can enter contractual relationships with people. For example, if you subscribe to one of our publications, or purchase merchandise online.

(3) Legal obligations

Sometimes we will be obliged to process your personal information due to legal obligations which are binding on us. We will only ever do so when strictly necessary.

(4) Legitimate interests

Applicable law allows personal information to be collected and used if it is reasonably necessary for our legitimate activities (as long as its use is fair, balanced and does not unduly impact individuals rights).

We will rely on this ground to process your personal data when it is not practical or appropriate to ask for consent.

Achieving our purposes

These include (but are not limited to) promoting socialist policies

Governance

Internal and external audit for financial or regulatory compliance purposes

Statutory reporting

Publicity and income generation

Conventional direct marketing and other forms of marketing, publicity or advertisement

Unsolicited messages, including campaigns, newsletters, and fundraising appeals

Analysis, targeting and segmentation to develop and promote or strategy and improve communication efficiency

Personalisation used to tailor and enhance your experience of our communications

Operational Management

Maintenance of suppression files

Processing for historical, scientific or statistical purpose

Purely administrative purposes

Responding to enquiries

Delivery of requested products or information

Communications designed to administer existing services including subscriptions, administration of petitions and financial transactions

Thank you communications and receipts

Maintaining a supporter database and suppression lists

Financial Management and control

Processing financial transactions and maintaining financial controls

Prevention of fraud, misuse of services, or money laundering

Enforcement of legal claims

Reporting criminal acts and compliance with law enforcement agencies

When we use your personal information, we will consider if it is fair and balanced to do so and if it is within your reasonable expectations. We will balance your rights and our legitimate interests to ensure that we use your personal information in ways that are not unduly intrusive or unfair in other ways.

Data retention

The length of time each category of data will be retained will vary depending on how long we need to process it for, the reason it was collected, and in line with any statutory requirements. After this point the data will either be deleted, or we may retain a secure anonymised record for research and analytical purposes.

In the event that you ask us to stop sending you direct marketing/fundraising/other electronic communications, we will keep your name on our internal suppression list to ensure that you are not contacted again.

Policy amendments

We keep this Privacy Policy under regular review and reserve the right to update from time-to-time by posting an updated version on our website, not least because of changes in applicable law. We recommend that you check this Privacy Policy occasionally to ensure you remain happy with it. We may also notify you of changes to our privacy policy by email.

Third party websites

We link our website directly to other sites. This Privacy Policy does not cover external websites and we are not responsible for the privacy practices or content of those sites. We encourage you to read the privacy policies of any external websites you visit via links on our website.

Updating information

You can check the personal data we hold about you, and ask us to update it where necessary, by emailing us at webmaster@marxist.com

Contact

We are not required by law to have a Data Protection Officer  however we have a Data Protection Manager.

Please let us know if you have any queries or concerns whatsoever about the way in which your data is being processed by emailing the Data Protection Manager at webmaster@marxist.com
Advertisement

China has accused the US of spreading 'disinformation' after officials warned that Russia has reached out to Beijing for help over Vladimir Putin's faltering invasion of Ukraine.

Zhao Lijian, spokesman for Beijing's foreign ministry, said today that America is 'targeting China on the Ukraine issue with malicious intentions' after US officials said Putin's apparatchiks had requested military supplies and aid to prop up his ill-thought-out war.

Jake Sullivan, US national security adviser who is due to meet his Chinese counterparts in Rome today, had warned Beijing of 'consequences' if it tries to 'bail out' Putin - including providing economic relief for punishing sanctions imposed on the Russian economy.

'We will ensure that neither China, nor anyone else, can compensate Russia for these losses,' Sullivan told NBC ahead of the meeting. 'In terms of the specific means of doing that, I'm not going to lay all of that out in public, but we will communicate that privately to China, as we have already done and will continue to do.'

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

Putin had expected to take Ukraine in a lighting offensive lasting just a few days but, in the face of dogged opposition, is still fighting almost three weeks later - leading to stockpiles of some weapons such as guided missiles running low and heavier-than-expected losses of tanks, armoured vehicles, helicopters and aircraft.

American officials, speaking anonymously, say the Kremlin has reached out to Beijing for help replenishing its military supplies - though did not say exactly what Putin had requested or when the request was made. Western nations have been supplying Ukraine with a steady stream of anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons.

The news emerged as Russian diplomats said there has been 'substantial progress' in peace talks with Ukraine, in the first sign that Moscow could be looking for an off-ramp to pause or end the conflict having failed to achieve key aims - namely the capture of Kyiv and toppling of Volodymyr Zelensky's western-friendly government. Talks are due to resume today.

Ukraine also gave an upbeat assessment of the talks, saying Russia had stopped issuing 'ultimatums' and is beginning to 'talk constructively'. Russia's previous demands had been that Ukraine give up its bid to join NATO, recognise Crimea as part of Russia, and recognise the Donetsk and Luhansk regions as independent. Neither side gave any hint of what progress had been made, or what an eventual deal may look like.

It is difficult to see how such a deal would work in practice. Russian-backed forces in the Donbass region of Ukraine had failed to observe ceasefire agreements even before the war broke out, so questions will be raised over whether Moscow's men will observe such a deal this time around.

Ukraine is also likely to seek security guarantees in return for ending the fighting, raising questions over which nations would be willing to underwrite such guarantees and what punishments would be put in place for breaching the agreements.

Given how the war in Ukraine started - with Russia building up forces on the border for months, denying any plans to attack, and then attacking anyway - there is little reason for Kyiv to take Moscow at its word. The fear will be that Russia will simply use any break in the fighting to resupply, rearm, and then launch a fresh assault.

There are few signs on the ground that fighting could be nearing an end, as Kyiv came under fresh bombardment early Monday following a Russian airstrike on the military base just a few dozen miles from the Polish border on Sunday - threatening to drag NATO into the war.

Sullivan warned after that strike - which targeted a base hosting foreign fighters and Western military equipment - that Putin would feel NATO's 'full force' if a member state, such as Poland, was attacked.

China - which has been attempting to carve out a shaky middle-ground between Russia and the West in the hopes of preserving ties with both sides - is seen as one possible mediator for the peace process.

Beijing has not condemned Russia's attack and does not call it an invasion, but has urged a negotiated solution.

'China is deeply concerned and grieved on the Ukraine situation,' Liu Pengyu, the Chinese embassy spokesperson in Washington, said, adding that he was not aware of any suggestions China might be willing to help Russia.

'We sincerely hope that the situation will ease and peace will return at an early date.'

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who has said he is willing to meet Putin in person for talks, said last week that he is will to 'discuss and find a compromise' with Russia over the future of Donbass - a region of eastern Ukraine comprised of Donetsk and Luhansk where many ethnic Russians live

Russia has reached out to China for military supplies and aid to help its faltering invasion of Ukraine, US officials have warned, while vowing 'consequences' if Beijing tries to 'bail out' Putin's regime (file image)

Putin's invasion of Ukraine - which he had anticipated would last only a few days with limited casualties - is now nearing its third week with heavy losses on both sides, as Moscow gives the first signs it could be willing to end the fighting by saying there has been 'substantial progress' in peace talks

A view of damaged buildings and streets due to the ongoing Russian shelling and missile strikes in Kharkiv on March 13

A Ukrainian firefighter drags a hose inside a large food products storage facility which was destroyed by an airstrike in the early morning hours on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, March 13

First responders are seen cleaning up a building recently destroyed by Russian rockets in Kharkiv, Ukraine on March 13

An unexploded bomb was lifted out of another building in Chernihiv in northern Ukraine on March 13 after intense fighting

Ukraine war: The latest Russian forces renewed their bombardment of Ukrainian cities early Monday, with at least two killed in a strike on a Kyiv apartment block

Talks between Russia and Ukraine are to resume Monday after both sides hailed progress

Britain's defence ministry says Russia has established a naval blockade on the Black Sea coast

Nearly 2,200 residents of Ukraine's besieged city of Mariupol have been killed in Russian shelling

Volodymyr Zelensky warns NATO it is 'only a matter of time' before a member state is attacked, as he again called for a no-fly zone over Ukraine

Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov says he is in Ukraine's Hostomel, an airfield near Kyiv

Pope Francis issues a plea for an end to the 'massacre' in Ukraine

Fighting rages in the Kyiv suburbs as Russian forces advance ever closer to the capital. Only roads to the south remain open

A US journalist is shot dead in Irpin, medics and witnesses say, becoming the first foreign reporter killed since Russia's invasion

Electricity has been restored at Ukraine's retired Chernobyl nuclear power plant that was seized by Russian forces

Russian police detain more than 800 people across 37 cities for protesting Moscow's 'military operation'

Almost 2.7 million people have fled the war in Ukraine, more than 100,000 of them in the past 24 hours, the UN says. More than half have gone to Poland Advertisement

He said his main concern is over Ukrainian citizens living in those territories and how their lives would be affected by any deal. Zelensky stressed that 'we're not ready for capitulation' to Russia.

Three rounds of talks between the two sides in Belarus, most recently last Monday, had focused mainly on humanitarian issues and led to the limited opening of some corridors for civilians to escape fighting.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday there had been some 'positive shifts' in the talks, but did not elaborate. On Saturday the Kremlin said the discussions between Russian and Ukrainian officials had been continuing 'in video format'.

Talks between the Russian and Ukrainian foreign ministers produced no apparent progress towards a ceasefire last Thursday but analysts said the fact they were even meeting left a window open for ending the war.

There has also been disagreement between the two sides as to whether talks were ongoing on Sunday.

The Kremlin said next Russia-Ukraine talks to take place Monday but are not happening right now.

However, Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said Ukraine and Russia were actively conducting talks on Sunday, with the situation around the besieged city of Mariupol a particular focus for the Ukrainian authorities.

'Talks are continuing right now,' he said in an interview on national television.

Meanwhile, Zelensky warned NATO Monday that its member states would soon be attacked by Russian forces after an air strike hit a Ukrainian military base close to the Polish border.

While western Ukraine has largely been spared so far, Russian air strikes overnight Saturday into Sunday carried the war deep into the west, killing 35 people and wounding 134 at a military base near Yavoriv, outside the city of Lviv - which is dangerously close to the frontier with EU and NATO member Poland.

'If you do not close our sky, it is only a matter of time before Russian missiles fall on your territory, on NATO territory, on the homes of NATO citizens,' Zelensky said in a video address released shortly after midnight, urging NATO to impose a no-fly zone over his country.

Military analysts have said a no-fly zone is unlikely because the U.S. and its allies believe it could escalate the war into a nuclear confrontation.

The International Center for Peacekeeping and Security served as a crucial hub for cooperation between Ukraine and the NATO countries supporting it in its defence against Moscow's grinding assault.

More than 30 Russian cruise missiles targeted the sprawling facility, which has long been used to train Ukrainian military personnel, often with instructors from the U.S. and other countries in the western alliance.

The attack, believed to have killed Western volunteers, has been seen by analysts as a move to deter any foreigners from fighting to defend Ukraine.

An attack so close to the border was heavy with symbolism in a conflict that has revived old Cold War rivalries that gave birth to NATO and threatened to rewrite the current global security order.

The U.S. issued a swift warning after the attack. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on CBS News' 'Face the Nation' that NATO will respond if any Russian attacks go beyond Ukrainian borders and hit NATO countries even accidentally.

President Joe Biden 'has been clear, repeatedly, that the United States will work with our allies to defend every inch of NATO territory and that means every inch,' Sullivan said.

It comes as American freelance journalist, Brent Renaud, 50, was shot dead by Russian troops on Sunday while filming refugees in Irpin, a suburb of the Ukrainian capital of Kiev.

Renaud was in a car with other journalists in Irpin, near Kyiv, when Russian troops opened fire. He was shot dead and one of his colleagues was injured.

An elderly woman is evacuated from a burning apartment block in the suburbs of Kyiv after it was destroyed by a Russian air strike in the early hours of Monday that killed at least two people

An elderly woman collapses into the arms of firefighters after being rescued from a burning apartment building in the suburbs of Kyiv, after it was hit by a Russian missile

A firefighter rescues a cat from an apartment building in Obolon, northern Kyiv, after it was hit by Russian forces on Monday

A wrecked car is seen suspended in a tree after Russian air strikes damaged a civilian apartment block in Obolon, Kyiv

A Ukrainian soldier helps fire crews search the ruins of a Kyiv apartment building for survivors and victims after Russia resumed its bombing campaign early Monday

A Ukrainian mayor was also abducted by invading Russian forces on Sunday, the second such kidnapping in days, bringing strong condemnation from the UK, EU and Zelensky.

Dmytro Kuleba, Minister of Foreign Affairs in Ukraine, said Yevhen Matveyev, the mayor of Dniprorudne in southern Ukraine, was taken days after Ivan Fedorov, the mayor of the nearby city of Melitopol, was also kidnapped.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told Zelensky on Sunday that Britain would continue to pursue more options for bolstering Ukraine's self-defence.

Mr Johnson said Russian president Vladimir Putin's 'barbaric actions' were 'testing not just Ukraine but all of humanity'.

'He commended the president and the Ukrainian people on their fortitude. The Prime Minister said Putin's barbaric actions were testing not just Ukraine but all of humanity,' a Downing Street spokesman said.

'The leaders condemned the murders of Brent Renaud and countless innocent Ukrainians, and the abduction of the mayors of Dniprorudne and Melitopol.

'The Prime Minister outlined the support the UK continues to deliver to Ukraine. He said the UK would continue to pursue more options for bolstering Ukraine's self-defence, working with partners including at Tuesday's meeting of the Joint Expeditionary Force in London.

'The Prime Minister said the UK would continue to stand behind Ukraine in all their efforts to bring an end to this disastrous conflict.'

In his talks with senior Chinese foreign policy adviser Yang Jiechi, Sullivan will indeed be looking for limits in what Beijing will do for Moscow.

'Im not going to sit here publicly and brandish threats,' he told CNN in a round of Sunday news show interviews. 'But what I will tell you is we are communicating directly and privately to Beijing that there absolutely will be consequences' if China helps Russia 'backfill' its losses from the sanctions.

'We will not allow that to go forward and allow there to be a lifeline to Russia from these economic sanctions from any country anywhere in the world,' he said.

China has been one of few countries to avoid criticizing the Russians for its invasion of Ukraine. China's Xi Jinping hosted Putin for the opening of the Winter Olympics in Beijing, just weeks before Russia launched the Feb. 24 invasion.

During Putin's visit to China last month, the two leaders issued a 5,000-word statement declaring limitless friendship.

The Chinese abstained on U.N. votes censuring Russia and has criticized economic sanctions against Moscow. It has expressed its support for peace talks and offered its services as a mediator, despite questions about its neutrality and scant experience mediating international conflict.

But questions remain over how far Beijing will go to alienate the alliance and put its own economy at risk. Sullivan said China and all countries are on notice that they cannot 'basically bail Russia out ... give Russia a workaround to the sanctions,' with impunity.

Chinese officials have said Washington shouldnt be able to complain about Russias actions because the U.S. invaded Iraq under false pretenses. The U.S. claimed to have evidence Saddam Hussein was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction though none was ever found.

On CNN, Sullivan said the administration believes China knew that Putin 'was planning something' before the invasion of Ukraine. But he said the Chinese government 'may not have understood the full extent of it because its very possible that Putin lied to them the same way that he lied to Europeans and others.'

Sullivan and Yang last met for face-to-face talks in Switzerland, where Sullivan raised the Biden administration's concerns about China's military provocations against Taiwan, human rights abuses against ethnic minorities and efforts to squelch pro-democracy advocates in Hong Kong.

Rescuers work next to a residential building damaged by shelling by Russian forces in the early hours of Monday

Rescuers help evacuate a civilian from a building damaged by shelling as Russia's attack on Ukraine continues, in Kyiv

A heavily damaged apartment building is seen in Obolon, a northern district of the capital Kyiv, after bombing by Russia

Firefighters help locals to evacuate from an apartment building on the outskirts of Kyiv after a strike by Russian forces

Biden administration officials say Beijing is spreading false Russian claims that Ukraine was running chemical and biological weapons labs with U.S. support. They say China is effectively providing cover if Russia moves ahead with a biological or chemical weapons attack on Ukrainians.

When Russia starts accusing other countries of preparing to launch biological or chemical attacks, Sullivan told NBC's 'Meet the Press,' 'its a good tell that they may be on the cusp of doing it themselves.'

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby, on ABC's 'This Week,' said 'we havent seen anything that indicates some sort of imminent chemical or biological attack right now, but were watching this very, very closely.'

The striking U.S. accusations about Russian disinformation and Chinese complicity came after Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova alleged with no evidence that the U.S. was financing Ukrainian chemical and biological weapons labs.

The Russian claim was echoed by Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, who claimed there were 26 bio-labs and related facilities in 'which the U.S. Department of Defense has absolute control.' The United Nations has said it has received no information backing up such accusations.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki called the claims 'preposterous.'

'Now that Russia has made these false claims, and China has seemingly endorsed this propaganda, we should all be on the lookout for Russia to possibly use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine, or to create a false flag operation using them,' Psaki tweeted last week. 'Its a clear pattern.'

There is growing concern inside the White House that China is aligning itself with Russia on the Ukraine war in hopes it will advance Beijings 'vision of the world order' in the long term, according to a person familiar with administration thinking. The person was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Sullivan told 'Face the Nation' on CBS that the Russian rhetoric on chemical and biological warfare is 'an indicator that, in fact, the Russians are getting ready to do it and try and pin the blame elsewhere and nobody should fall for that.'

The international community for years has assessed that Russia has used chemical weapons in carrying out assassination attempts against Putin detractors such as Alexei Navalny and former spy Sergei Skripal. Russia also supports the Assad government in Syria, which has used chemical weapons against its people in a decade-long civil war.

Testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday, CIA Director William Burns also noted grave concern that Russia might be laying the groundwork for a chemical or biological attack of its own, which it would then blame on the U.S. or Ukraine in a false flag operation.

'This is something, as all of you know very well, is very much a part of Russias playbook,' he said. 'Theyve used these weapons against their own citizens, theyve at least encouraged the use in Syria and elsewhere, so its something we take very seriously.'

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky visits an injured Ukrainian serviceman in a military hospital in Kiev on Sunday

Zelensky takes a photo with the injured soldier at the military hospital in Kiev on Sunday as Russia's attack on Ukraine continues

Kiev is becoming surrounded by Russian forces as analysts warn the worst days of the war in Ukraine could lie ahead

Besieged Ukrainians are hoping out hope that renewed diplomatic talks with Moscow might open the way for more civilians to evacuate, as Russian forces keep up their pressure on the capital.

Overnight, Russian forces fired artillery on suburbs northwest of Kyiv, a major political and strategic target for the invasion, as well as points east of the city, regional administration chief Oleksiy Kuleba said on Ukrainian television.

A town councillor for Brovary, east of Kyiv, was killed in fighting there and shells fell on the towns of Irpen, Bucha and Hostomel, which have seen some of the worst fighting in Russia's stalled attempt to take the capital, Mr Kuleba said.

Artillery hit a nine-storey apartment building in a northern district of the city early on Monday morning, destroying apartments on several floors and igniting a fire. The state emergency agency, which released images of the smoking building, said it had no immediate reports of casualties.

The general staff of Ukraine's armed forces said on Monday morning that Russian troops have not made major advances over the past 24 hours, despite expanding strikes to the west.

In one such attack, Russian missiles pounded a military base in western Ukraine on Sunday, killing 35 people in an attack on a facility that served as a crucial hub for co-operation between Ukraine and the Nato countries supporting its defence.

It raised the possibility the alliance could be drawn into the fight. The attack was also heavy with symbolism in a conflict that has revived old Cold War rivalries and threatened to rewrite the current global security order.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called it a 'black day' and again urged Nato leaders to establish a no-fly zone over the country, a plea the West has said could escalate the war to a nuclear confrontation.

'If you do not close our sky, it is only a matter of time before Russian missiles fall on your territory... Nato territory... On the homes of citizens of Nato countries,' Mr Zelensky said, urging Russian President Vladimir Putin to meet with him directly, a request that has gone unanswered by the Kremlin.

A fourth round of talks is expected on Monday between Ukrainian and Russian officials via video conference to discuss getting aid to cities and towns under fire, among other issues, Ukrainian presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak said.

The talks will involve the same higher-level officials who met earlier in Belarus, aimed at 'assessing preliminary results' of talks so far, Mr Podolyak said. Previous talks have not led to major breakthroughs or a solution for getting aid or evacuation convoys to the desperate, strategic city of Mariupol.

Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden is sending his national security adviser to Rome to meet with a Chinese official over worries Beijing is amplifying Russian disinformation and may help Moscow evade Western economic sanctions.

The UN has recorded at least 596 civilian deaths, though it believes the true toll is much higher, and Ukraine's prosecutor general's office said at least 85 children are among them. Millions more people have fled their homes amid the largest land conflict in Europe since the Second World War.

Drone footage shows a Russian military vehicle after being destroyed by Ukrainian forces near Mariupol, on Sunday

An explosion illuminates thick smoke next to a building in Mariupol as Ukrainian forces strike Russian vehicles

A Russian military vehicle is destroyed by a Ukrainian air strike near the besieged city of Mariupol on Sunday

A Ukrainian serviceman guards his position in the heavily bombed city of Mariupol, in southern Ukraine, on Sunday

A Ukrainian soldier digs a foxhole in Irpin, on the outskirts of Kyiv, as he prepares to defend the city against Russian attack

Since their invasion more than two weeks ago, Russian forces have struggled in their advance across Ukraine, in the face of stiffer than expected resistance, bolstered by Western weapons support. Instead, Russian forces have besieged several cities and pummelled them with strikes, hitting two dozen medical facilities and creating a series of humanitarian crises.

That fight expanded on Sunday to the sprawling facility at Yavoriv, which has long been used to train Ukrainian soldiers, often with instructors from the United States and other countries in the Western alliance. More than 30 Russian cruise missiles targeted the site. In addition to the fatalities, the Ukrainian Defence Ministry said 134 people were wounded in the attack.

The base is less than 15 miles from the Polish border and appears to be the westernmost target struck during Russia's 18-day invasion.

It has hosted Nato training drills, making it a potent symbol of Russia's longstanding fears that the expansion of the 30-member Western military alliance to include former Soviet states threatens its security - something Nato denies.

Still, the perceived threat from Nato is central to Moscow's justifications for the war, and it has demanded Ukraine drop its ambitions to join the alliance.

Ina Padi, a 40-year-old Ukrainian who crossed the border with her family, was taking shelter at a fire station in Wielkie Oczy, Poland, when she was awakened by blasts on Sunday morning that shook her windows.

'I understood in that moment, even if we are free of it, (the war) is still coming after us,' she said.

Russian fighters also fired at the airport in the western city of Ivano-Frankivsk, which is 94 miles north of Romania and 155 miles from Hungary, two other Nato allies.

Nato said on Sunday it currently does not have any personnel in Ukraine, though the United States has increased the number of US troops deployed to Poland. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the West would respond if Russia's strikes travel outside Ukraine and hit any Nato members, even accidentally.

Ukrainian and European leaders have pushed with limited success for Russia to grant safe passage to civilians trapped by fighting. Ukrainian authorities said on Sunday that more than 10 humanitarian corridors were set to open, including from the besieged port city of Mariupol.

But such promises have repeatedly crumbled, and there was no word late on Sunday on whether people were able to use the evacuation routes.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said suffering in Mariupol was 'simply immense' and that hundreds of thousands of people faced extreme shortages of food, water and medicine.

'Dead bodies, of civilians and combatants, remain trapped under the rubble or lying in the open where they fell,' the Red Cross said in a statement. 'Life-changing injuries and chronic, debilitating conditions cannot be treated.'

The fight for Mariupol is crucial because its capture could help Russia establish a land corridor to Crimea, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014.

A soldier in front of a destroyed building in Kharkiv, Ukraine, as Russian attacks continue on Sunday

Firefighters work in a bombed building in Kharkiv, Ukraine, after it was destroyed by Russian forces
Australia and the Netherlands have launched legal action against Russia over the 2014 downing of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17.

Both nations launched the proceedings in the International Civil Aviation Organisation, naming Russia as responsible for the incident under international law.

The flight was shot down on July 17, 2014, killing all 298 people onboard, including 38 Australians.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the legal action was a major step forward in truth and accountability for a 'horrific' act of violence.

'The Russian Federation's refusal to take responsibility for its role in the downing of Flight MH17 is unacceptable and the Australian government has always said that it will not exclude any legal options in our pursuit of justice,' Mr Morrison said in a joint statement.

The still flaming debris of flight MH17 after being shot down in 2014 (pictured)

Scott Morrison (pictured) said Russia must be held to account over its aggression

The legal action carried out by both countries will come on top of Dutch prosecution of four suspects over their individual involvement in the incident.

Australia and the Netherlands will rely on 'overwhelming' evidence that the flight was brought down by a Russian missile in eastern Ukraine, an area that was under the control of Russian-backed separatists.

The missile belonged to Russia's 53rd anti-aircraft military brigade, and was accompanied by a trained Russian military crew.

Both countries said the evidence showed the missile could only have been fired by the trained Russian crew, with the missile system later returned to Russia shortly after the incident.

The legal action over MH17 comes as several western nations have imposed crippling sanctions against Russia for their invasion of Ukraine.

A pro-Russian separatist stands at the crash site of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, near the village of Hrabove (Grabovo) in Donetsk region, Ukraine in 2014 (pictured)

Australian Foreign Minister Maris Payne announced the legal action on Monday (pictured)

'Russia's unprovoked and unjustified invasion of Ukraine and the escalation of its aggression underscores the need to continue our enduring effort to hold Russia to account for its blatant violation of international law and the UN Charter,' he said.

Russia withdrew from negotiations with Australia and the Netherlands in October 2020 about MH17.

The wreck of the plane reconstructed at a Dutch hanger in 2021 (pictured)

Russia did not return to the negotiating table, despite repeated requests from Australia and the Netherlands.

Mr Morrison said the legal efforts would help to provide justice to the families of the victims.

'While we cannot take away the grief of those whose loved ones died as a result of Russia's actions, the Australia government will pursue every available avenue to ensure Russia is held to account so that this horrific act never happens again,' he said.
Under-25s could be banned from buying cigarettes under stringent new plans drawn up by a new anti-smoking tsar who is leading an independent review on how to stop Britons smoking.

Javed Khan OBE, former CEO of children's charity Barnardo's, is considering a ban, similar to one already introduced in New Zealand, in the Government's bid to get the country smoke-free by 2030.

The report was commissioned by health secretary Sajid Javid, and Mr Khan will report his findings next month.

Javed Khan, pictured, former CEO of children's charity Barnardo's, is mulling over the idea of a ban

Both independent reviews, commissioned by the Government, have been praised by Sajid Javid (pictured)

Smoking rates continue to fall... even with the stress of the Covid pandemic Pictured above is the proportion of people smoking in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland since 2011. It has dropped in all four UK nations over the last decade Smoking rates in Britain continued to fall last year, according to official data released before Christmas. An Office for National Statistics (ONS) report showed usage dropped from 15.8 per cent in 2019 to 14.5 per cent last year. This is the equivalent of 7.6million over-16s, down from a high of just under 27million in the 1970s, when half of all adults engaged in the habit. Rates have consistently dropped over the past two decades, with officials declaring the end of smoking to finally be 'in sight'. England is aiming to go completely smoke-free by 2030, with No10 having already introduced a raft of policies to curb rates. Government advisers even called for smoking to be banned on pavements outside pubs and restaurants earlier this year  although the plans were ditched by No10, which sources say felt it had 'enough on its plate' at the time. Some studies had suggested Covid lockdowns and the stresses of coping with the pandemic would trigger a rise in the number of smokers in Britain. But two datasets published by the ONS today debunk the concerns, showing the opposite to be true. Advertisement

There are an estimated 6 million smokers in England and tobacco is still the single largest cause of preventable death; 64,000 smokers died from smoking in 2019, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Speaking to The Times, Mr Khan said: 'We are thinking seriously about the age of sale.'

Considering measures such as the ones in New Zealand, in which anyone born after 2008 won't be able to buy tobacco products, the anti-smoking tsar is contemplating whether there is an argument for 'for raising the age to 19, 20, 21, or even 25'.

He also looked to the government's response to the coronavirus pandemic, which saw a push from social media influencers encouraging people to get jabbed.

'Just look at the Covid experience, mass marketing has a big effect, it really works.

'The government went hell for leather, it made an enormous difference in vaccination rates,' he said.

Last month he called out for the public's opinion in a Twitter thread, writing: 'I want to hear your views and what we can do to support current smokers to quit, and to stop people taking up smoking.

'How do we stop people, especially children and young people, from starting smoking in the first place?

'Have you quit smoking for good? What worked? What do you think could work better?

'Have you ever used a Stop Smoking Service to quit smoking?

'Or spoken to your GP about it? What was your experience?'

A second review into 'potential ethnic bias in the design and use of medical devices' is also being led by the University of Liverpool's professor of public health, Dame Margaret Whitehead.

In a statement on the Government's website, Health Secretary Sajid Javid said: 'The pandemic has shown the resilience of the British public and brought communities together to look after each other in the most challenging times.

'But it has also exposed chasms in our society  particularly in health.'

Mr Khan added: 'I am very pleased to be leading this review into such an important area of public health.

'My independent findings will help highlight key interventions which can help the government achieve its ambitions to be smoke-free by 2030 and tackle health disparities.'

There are there are an estimated 6 million smokers in England and tobacco is still the single largest cause of preventable mortality (stock photo used)
Ministers today defended Britain's close ties with Saudi Arabia as Boris Johnson prepares to visit pleading pleading for action to help keep oil prices down amid the Ukraine crisis.

With the PM expected to head for the Kingdom in the coming days, Sajid Javid said the UK was always 'very candid and frank' about human rights concerns.

But he insisted that it was important to have a 'longer-term economic relationship' amid soaring pump prices and household bills.

Crown prince Mohammed bin Salman is said to have snubbed a request from Joe Biden to have a call on the issue of oil supply, as the West tries to wean itself off Russian fossil fuels.

But Mr Johnson is believed to have a better relationship with bin Salman than the US President, whose links have been strained since the killing of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Tories were among those voicing disquiet about the trip in the Commons this afternoon, especially after the Kingdom executed 81 'criminals' on Saturday.

Alongside the international push on oil production, there are claims that the government is looking at extending the lift of coal power stations in the UK.

The PM is also working on a strategy for securing Britain's future energy supplies by boosting renewables. There are reports that interest-free loans for solar panels and bigger subsidies are on the table, as well as giving the go-ahead for new nuclear plants.

With the PM expected to head for the Kingdom in the coming days, Sajid Javid said the UK was always 'very candid and frank' about human rights concerns

There is speculation that Boris Johnson (left) could head for Saudi Arabia in the coming days for a meeting with Mohammed bin Salman (right)

Rishi Sunak is facing growing demands for action to ease the pressure on families as prices at the pump and energy bills rocket. Pictured, prices in Wimborne on Friday

Ex-energy minister backs 'trying again' on fracking in the UK A former Cabinet minister has backed 'trying again' with fracking in the UK. Andrea Leadsom, who was Business Secretary when the moratorium was introduced in November 2019, said the government should do more to get communities on board with the technique. Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Westminster Hour, she said: 'We should absolutely stick to our commitment of net zero by 2050 target but it was always that case that in achieving net zero we would need to increase our use of the lowest carbon fossil fuel, and that is natural gas.' She added: 'We've got to, of course, increase our use of renewables, and particularly of batteries for storage, but at the same time, we've got to be looking at ramping up production in the North Sea, and yes, potentially even looking again at shale gas extraction.' Asked about whether it had been a mistake to place a ban on fracking, she said she understood the 'fury and frustration' of local communities, but that she thought there was an 'awful lot of fake news' about the practice. She said: 'If we were to try again with shale gas extraction, it would have to be on the basis of an agreement with local communities that they would get their gas for free. That could persuade them to want to explore the opportunities again.' Ms Leadsom suggested that Rishi Sunak should be axing VAT on energy bills in his Spring Statement next week. 'I also think the chancellor will be wanting to look at an emergency package of measures such as, for example, reducing or scrapping VAT on energy bills, but also, potentially looking at the huge profits that are being made by some of the oil and gas companies and looking at what can be done to scrape part of that back for households,' she said. Advertisement

The diplomatic mission by Mr Johnson is highly controversial, especially as the Kingdom executed 81 people over the weekend convicted of crimes ranging from killings to belonging to militant groups.

However, increase in Saudi production or releasing reserves could have a significant impact in keeping fuel prices down in the UK, which have been spiking amid the standoff with Russia.

The PM and crown prince discussed 'energy cooperation' on a call last month.

Replying to an urgent question in the Commons this afternoon, Foreign Office minister Amanda Milling said: 'We are shocked by the execution of 81 individuals on March 13.

'The United Kingdom strongly opposes the death penalty in all countries and in all circumstances as a matter of principle.

'The UK ambassador has already raised the UK's strong concerns with the Saudi national security adviser and their vice-foreign minister.'

Ms Milling said the UK will seek further clarification on the cases, adding: 'No aspect of our relationship with Saudi Arabia prevents us from speaking frankly about human rights.'

Conservative former minister Crispin Blunt said the executions was 'of profound concern'.

He said: 'This represents a new low for human rights and criminal justice in the kingdom, coming only a week after the Crown Prince had promised to modernise the Saudi justice system.'

He warned Mr Johnson will face 'exquisite difficulties' on his visit to Saudi Arabia as a result of the executions.

'What assurances will he be seeking from Saudi Arabia in respect of human rights on his next visit there?' he said.

'Will he at least seek an assurance that the execution of those arrested for alleged crimes when children will cease?

'Will he make clear to the Crown Prince how appalled friends of the kingdom are, particularly in light of the state's assassination of Jamal Khashoggi only three years ago?'

Ms Milling said the UK can speak 'frankly' on human rights with Saudi Arabia, adding: 'We raise concerns with the Saudi authorities regarding the juvenile death penalty application.

Asked this morning about the Saudi mission, Mr Javid told Sky News that 'wherever there are human rights issues we've raised them with them, and we can do that because we have this relationship'.

He said: 'But we also have an economic relationship with Saudi Arabia. We're not dependent directly as a country on their oil but energy prices and access to energy is a hugely important issue.

'So I'm pleased that we can have this relationship with Saudi Arabia where we can talk about the human rights issues as well as our longer-term economic relationship.'

Although Britain buys very small quantities from Moscow, it is still exposed to spiralling costs on the international wholesale markets.

Rishi Sunak is facing growing demands for action to ease the pressure on families as prices at the pump and energy bills rocket.

Polls have suggested 40 per cent fear they might not be able to pay gas and electric bills if they keep going up.

But the Chancellor is understood to be resisting laying out another big package of help in his Spring statement later this month - with aides stressing that energy costs could change a lot by October.

The public finances have been hammered by Covid, and so far Mr Sunak has announced council tax rebates for many properties and a 200 loan to cut energy bills this Autumn. It will, though, be repaid by being added to bills over the following five years.

In contrast, France and Ireland are among the countries that have brought in a temporary cut in fuel duty to save people money.

Tory MPs have suggested that Mr Johnson could convince the Saudis to release more oil.

Andrew Murrison, who served as Mr Johnson's Middle East minister until February 2020, told The Daily Telegraph last week: 'The energy crunch means that jurisdictions are going to have to look further afield for continuity of supply...

'The UK has always maintained a positive and constructive relationship with Saudi Arabia based on dialogue.'
Chinese media has echoed the Russian narrative on the Ukraine war, avoiding any blame of Moscow for the invasion and portraying sympathy for President Vladimir Putin's perspective.

It comes as President Xi Jinping was asked on Sunday to supply military equipment after Russian forces started 'running out' of weapons during their sluggish invasion of Ukraine, according to US intelligence.

China on Monday accused Washington of spreading 'disinformation' over Beijing's role in the Ukraine war, without directly addressing US media reports of a Russian request for help.

Beijing has struggled to maintain a facade of neutrality despite refusing to support or condemn its ally's invasion of Ukraine and has repeatedly blamed the United States and NATO's 'eastward expansion' for worsening tensions.

It is a view that reverberates across state newspapers and television - as well as social media - in China's tightly controlled news environment.

When Putin announced an assault on Ukraine on February 24, China's official Xinhua news agency maintained it was a 'military operation' and Moscow had 'no intent' of occupying Ukrainian territory.

Days later, state broadcaster CCTV echoed a false Russian claim that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had left Kyiv - a story quickly repeated by other domestic outlets.

And some Chinese reports also state that there has been a surge of 'neo-Nazi' ideology among the Ukrainian army and people, a claim supported by Putin.

Russia has reached out to China for military supplies and aid to help its faltering invasion of Ukraine, US officials have warned, while vowing 'consequences' if Beijing tries to 'bail out' Putin's regime (file image)

This general view shows destroyed Russian armored vehicles in the city of Bucha, west of Kyiv, on March 4, 2022

Debris of a military plane is seen after it was shot by Ukrainian forces on the 10th day of Russian attacks on Ukraine in Chernihiv, Ukraine last week

A Russian tank is pictured having been destroyed by Ukrainian soldiers

A directive to a state-affiliated outlet, circulating online last month, appeared to instruct that posts unfavourable to Russia or containing pro-Western content should not be published.

State media reports on Ukraine avoid terms like 'invasion', instead describing the situation as a 'conflict' or 'fighting'.

'This is not a struggle to find the right message,' Justyna Szczudlik, China analyst at the Polish Institute of International Affairs, told AFP.

'China purposely uses very vague language,' she added, noting that this was to reduce diplomatic risks in its relations with Western countries.

Officials, too, have rebuffed the term 'invasion' when questioned by foreign journalists - accusing them of biased reporting - while giving the contradictory statements that China respects every country's sovereignty but won't take sides.

A fierce condemnation of war at the opening of the Winter Paralympic Games in Beijing was not translated on Chinese TV.

And rights holders of the English Premier League did not air matches a weekend earlier in March, knowing players were expected to show solidarity with Ukraine.

Under the barrage of China's support, netizens have been showing sympathy for Russia.

Pro-Putin hashtags have been allowed to proliferate on China's Twitter-like Weibo, along with admiring comments about how daring he is and calls for Ukrainians to surrender.

In contrast, articles about state media embracing Russian propaganda were removed as 'false information'.

'As with every country, China... considers its own security interests above all else,' said Richard Ghiasy, an expert at the Hague Centre for Strategic Studies.

'In that security calculation, stable and predictable ties with Russia are absolutely pivotal,' he added.

A fierce condemnation of war at the opening of the Winter Paralympic Games in Beijing was not translated on Chinese TV

Media outlets have also started explicitly pushing Russian conspiracy theories. 'There is no smoke without fire,' state-run tabloid Global Times wrote while repeating Russian claims that US-funded biological labs in Ukraine were experimenting with bat coronaviruses

Media outlets have also started explicitly pushing Russian conspiracy theories.

'There is no smoke without fire,' state-run tabloid Global Times wrote while repeating Russian claims that US-funded biological labs in Ukraine were experimenting with bat coronaviruses.

It did not report comments from Washington that the allegations were 'outright lies' that have been debunked.

It comes after US intelligence agencies were late on Sunday preparing to warn their allies over reports China may be preparing to help Russia with military equipment and aid after Putin's army took a hammering in his ill-thought-out invasion.

Putin had expected to take the country in a lighting offensive lasting just a few days but, in the face of dogged opposition, is still fighting almost three weeks later.

It has led to to stockpiles of some weapons such as guided missiles running low and heavier-than-expected losses of tanks, armoured vehicles, helicopters and aircraft.

American officials, speaking anonymously, say the Kremlin has now reached out to Beijing for help replenishing its military supplies.

Officials did not say exactly what Putin's apparatchiks requested or when the request was made. Western nations have been supplying Ukraine with a steady stream of anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons.

Moscow may also be asking Beijing for help skirting punishing Western sanctions imposed over the invasion, prompting US national security adviser Jake Sullivan - who is due to meet his Chinese counterpart in Rome today - to warn Beijing against providing relief to Russia, saying there would be 'consequences' to such a move.

'We will ensure that neither China, nor anyone else, can compensate Russia for these losses,' Sullivan told NBC ahead of the meeting.

'In terms of the specific means of doing that, I'm not going to lay all of that out in public, but we will communicate that privately to China, as we have already done and will continue to do.'

Putin's invasion of Ukraine - which he had anticipated would last only a few days with limited casualties - is now nearing its third week with heavy losses on both sides, as Moscow gives the first signs it could be willing to end the fighting by saying there has been 'substantial progress' in peace talks

Destroyed Russian armored vehicles in the city of Bucha, west of Kyiv

Drone footage released by Ukraine Armed Forces on Saturday shows a column of tanks and infantry fighting vehicles are ambushed as they advance in Kyiv region. Russian troops are moving towards closer to Ukrainian capital city of Kyiv, according to British officials

A Russian armored personnel carrier burns amid damaged and abandoned light utility vehicles after fighting in Kharkiv, Ukraine, at the start of the invasion on February 27

President Biden is sending his national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, for talks with a senior Chinese official in Rome on Monday. The meeting comes as concerns grow that China is amplifying Russian disinformation in the Ukraine war

Russia has tightened cooperation with Xi Jinping's communist government after both nations came under strong Western pressure over human rights and a raft of other issues.

But China has accused the US of spreading 'disinformation' over the reports. Without directly addressing the alleged request, foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said: 'The US has been spreading disinformation targeting China on the Ukraine issue, with malicious intentions.'

US officials are also accusing China of spreading Russian disinformation that could be a pretext for chemical or biological weapons attacks launched by Vladimir Putin's forces in Ukraine.

US National Security advisor Jake Sullivan will be in Rome on Monday to meet with China's top diplomat Yang Jiechi, the White House said earlier.

The White House said the talks will focus on the direct impact of Russia's war against Ukraine on regional and global security.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has put China in a delicate spot with two of its biggest trading partners: the US and European Union. China needs access to those markets, yet it also has made gestures supportive of Moscow, joining with Russia in declaring a friendship with 'no limits.'

The Chinese abstained on UN votes censuring Russia and has criticized economic sanctions against Moscow.

It has expressed its support for peace talks and offered its services as a mediator, despite questions about its neutrality and scant experience mediating international conflict.

But questions remain over how far Beijing will go to alienate the alliance and put its own economy at risk.
Advertisement

Ukraine's capital 'resembles a disaster movie' today after Russian forces brutally blitzed an apartment block and debris rained down from an intercepted missile on to the city in Putin's latest barbaric attack.

One person was killed and a dozen were injured after the residential building in the north of the capital was hit this morning, narrowly avoiding a passing pedestrian.

Later, a missile was intercepted by Ukrainian air defence systems, but debris fell on a bus and a car, killing another person and injuring six.

Ukraine's defence minister Oleksii Reznikov said: 'Kyiv. One of the most beautiful cities in the EU today looks like a frame of an apocalypse movie.'

Russian troops are edging closer to the capital and fighting is still raging in the suburbs, with two killed and seven injured at a nearby aircraft factory.

Speaking after this morning's attack, Volodymyr Zelensky vowed to rebuild every destroyed Ukrainian street and building.

Despite the blows, one of Putin's closest allies said Russia's invasion is not going as quickly as the Kremlin had wanted.

In the strongest public acknowledgement yet from Moscow that things were not going to plan, National Guard chief Viktor Zolotov blamed the slower than expected progress on what he said were far-right Ukrainian forces hiding behind civilians, an accusation repeatedly made by officials in Russia.

His comments appeared at odds with an assessment on Friday by Russia's Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu who told Putin that 'everything is going according to plan'.

Zolotov, who was once in charge of Putin's personal security, said: 'I would like to say that yes, not everything is going as fast as we would like.

'But we are going towards our goal step by step and victory will be for us, and this icon will protect the Russian army and accelerate our victory.'

Ukraine's capital 'resembles a disaster movie' today after Russian forces brutally blitzed an apartment block and debris rained down from an intercepted missile on to the city in Putin's latest barbaric attack

A views shows a building and vehicles destroyed by shelling as Russia's attack on Ukraine continues in Kyiv

A view of destruction after an apartment building was hit by Russian attack in Kyiv this morning, killing one civilian

A crane removes a ruined car from in front of a destroyed apartment building after it was shelled in Kyiv

People and medics help a wounded resident of a house destroyed by shelling as Russia's attack on Ukraine continues in Kyiv

A pedestrian walks past as a missile lands just yards away from him during Russia's latest assault on Kyiv today

A man holds his dead cat after heading back into his shelled apartment building which was struck by a Russian missile this morning

The building, pictured before today's attack, was home to dozens of Ukrainians but it has now been reduced to rubble

Rescuers put out a fire by a destroyed building in Kharkiv today as Russia's offensive continues across Ukraine

A resident climbs down a ladder to safety after a nine-storey residential apartment was shelled in Kyiv, killing one person, Ukrainian officials said

Firefighters use a ladder to evacuate a man from a residential building that was struck, as Russia's attack on Ukraine continues in Kyiv

A woman is in tears as she stands outside the destroyed apartment blocks following shelling in Kyiv

Russia has intensified its attacks on Kyiv with air strikes raining down on the city, while fighting and artillery fire rage around the suburbs

The attack, which injured at least a dozen people, came as Russian troops edged closer to the city and kept up their siege of the southern port city of Mariupol, where officials said nearly 2,200 people have been killed

Firefighters help a man evacuate from an apartment building hit by shelling in the Obolon district of Kyiv this morning

A firefighter walks over the debris of an apartment building after it was shelled in Kyiv

A missile was intercepted in the air above Kyiv but debris fell on to the city, hitting a bus and a car

An elderly woman is evacuated from a burning apartment block in the suburbs of Kyiv after it was destroyed by a Russian air strike in the early hours of Monday

A firefighter rescues a cat from an apartment building in Obolon, northern Kyiv, after it was hit by Russian forces on Monday

A wrecked car is seen suspended in a tree after Russian air strikes damaged a civilian apartment block in Obolon, Kyiv

A woman cries during evacuations from Bucha near Kyiv as Russian attacks continue throughout the country

A view of an apartment building heavily damaged after a Russian rocket exploded just outside it in Ukraine's second city Kharkiv

Firemen help a man evacuate from an apartment building hit by shelling in the Obolon district of Kyiv

Firefighters work through the rubble after further attacks during Russia's invasion of Ukraine in Kharkiv

Mayor of Kyiv Vitali Klitschko surveys the damage after a strike this morning on a housing estate saw one person killed

Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Grigorenko at the Kremlin in Moscow today

Meanwhile two people were killed and seven were injured after Russian forces struck a plane factory near Kyiv, sparking a large fire.

The Antonov factory is Ukraine's largest aircraft manufacturing plant and is best known for producing many of the world's biggest cargo planes.

But Ukrainian forces have fought back, shooting down four planes, three helicopters and numerous 'unmanned aerial vehicles' in a single day, inflicting 'devastating blows' on Putin's military.

Overnight, Russian forces fired artillery on the capital's northwestern and eastern suburbs, killing a town councillor in Brovary as shells rained down on Irpen, Bucha and Hostomel.

But the general staff of Ukraine's armed forces said this morning that Russian troops have not made major advances over the past 24 hours, despite expanding strikes to the west.

Lyudmila Evseskaya, 62, who lived in the flat with her husband Victor, 63, and son Sergey, 31, was asleep in her first floor apartment on Bohoatyrska Street when the missile stuck Kyiv after 5am this morning.

As she sat on a patch of grass waiting for her relatives to take her to safety she described the horror of being caught up in the worsening battle for the city.

She told MailOnline: 'I woke up in a shower of glass. All of the windows were broken and the doors were flying through the air.

'There was no warning. There was just a massive boom. It lasted one second and then everything was destroyed. We have lost everything.

'We only managed to grab our emergency bag with our documents [passports] and a little food. I managed to get the dog, Marta, but I couldn't find the cats, Misha and Msha.

'We have nothing. Our TV, our laptops, everything has been destroyed. It was a really good flat. We had three rooms. We liked living there. We had been there since 2004. Now we have to stay with relatives

Tanya, 45, was asleep with her husband in the corner flat on the seventh floor of the apartment block when the missile hit.

National Guard chief Viktor Zolotov blamed the slower than expected progress on what he said were far-right Ukrainian forces hiding behind civilians

A police officer guards an area around a bus destroyed by shelling as Russia's attack on Ukraine continues, in Kyiv,

A man places a small Ukrainian flag on a burnt balcony of an apartment in a block which was destroyed by an artillery strike

A woman holding a small dog walks in front of an apartment in a block which was destroyed by an artillery strike in Kyiv

Debris burns on the street after further attacks during Russia's invasion of Ukraine, in Kharkiv

Wiping back tears she said: 'I am still shaking. My head is all over the place. It's very difficult to talk about what happened.

'I know it is important to tell the world what happened here this morning.

'Before this happened we had got used to being so close to the war. From my flat I can see the fires and the fighting in Irpin, which is not so far away. But what here was a total shock.

'My daughter lives in another flat in the block. They live there with my granddaughter. She is one and a half years old. All of their windows were smashed.

'My friend has given us the keys to her flat. But I don't know how long we can stay in Kyiv.'

Homeowners Natalya Melnyk and Sergyi Tulyncev returned to view their destroyed apartment which they had rented out.

Natalya, 62, said: 'That could have been our apartment. We were not there last night. We don't live there anyone more.

'We rent out our flat to a young. Now he has run away. He is so frightened. Our flat is on the first floor. Everything has been destroyed.'

Kyiv mayor and former heavyweight boxer Vitali Klitschko this morning condemned the Russian attack on civilians.

During a visit to the scene of destruction he said: 'Kyiv feels the pain of an attack by the enemy today.

'Early in the morning one shell was fired at the ninth floor of a building in the Obolon area of Kyiv.

A woman walks past building damaged by shelling in Mariupol, Ukraine

People look at a burning apartment building in a yard after shelling in the besieged port city of Mariupol

Russian airstrikes caused heavy damage to a Ukrainian military base in Yavoriv, just 12 miles from the Polish border, on Sunday - killing at least 35 people and leaving 134 more wounded

Russia says the base (pictured) was targeted because it was hosting foreign 'mercenaries' and weapons shipments, adding that such raids would continue

A Ukrainian civilian looks out from the destroyed balcony of an apartment building in the north of Kyiv

People retrieve belongings from an apartment in a block which was destroyed by an artillery strike in Kyiv, Ukraine

'At least one person was killed and ten others were injured. Seventy residents have been evacuated.'

The mayor added that the Ukrainian Army had shot down a Russian rocket which had landed in another residential area of the city, killing one civilian and injuring six others.

He said: 'About 20 minutes ago in the area of Kurenivtsi our military shot down a Russian rocket and it fell into a residential area.

'One person died and six people were injured. Two of the wounded were taken by ambulance to hospital.

'A trolley bus was destroyed but there were no passengers on board.

'Emergency services are operating in the area.

'Windows have been broken, shops on the first floor and the balconies of surrounding houses have been damaged.'

Shells also fell on the Kyiv suburbs of Irpin, Bucha and Hostomel, which have seen some of the worst fighting in Russia's stalled attempt to take the capital, regional administration chief Oleksiy Kuleba said on Ukrainian television.

The surrounded southern city of Mariupol, where the war has produced some of the greatest human suffering, remained cut off despite earlier talks on creating aid or evacuation convoys.

In another attack, missiles pounded a military base in western Ukraine, killing 35 people in an attack on a facility that served as a crucial hub for co-operation between Ukraine and the NATO countries supporting its defence.

It raised the possibility the alliance could be drawn into the fight.

The attack was also heavy with symbolism in a conflict that has revived old Cold War rivalries and threatened to rewrite the current global security order.

Volodymyr Zelensky called it a 'black day' and again urged NATO leaders to establish a no-fly zone over the country, a plea the West has said could escalate the war to a nuclear confrontation.

'If you do not close our sky, it is only a matter of time before Russian missiles fall on your territory... NATO territory... On the homes of citizens of NATO countries,' Zelensky said, urging Putin to meet with him directly, a request that has gone unanswered by the Kremlin.

Meanwhile Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine said a strike by Kyiv's forces on the rebel's defacto capital Donetsk had left at least 20 people dead.

Rebel officials said that fragments from a Ukrainian Tochka missile that was shot down had landed in the centre of the city and that, '20 people were killed and nine were injured'.

A fourth round of talks is expected on Monday between Ukrainian and Russian officials via video conference to discuss getting aid to cities and towns under fire, among other issues, Ukrainian presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak said.

The talks will involve the same higher-level officials who met earlier in Belarus, aimed at 'assessing preliminary results' of talks so far, Mr Podolyak said. Previous talks have not led to major breakthroughs or a solution for getting aid or evacuation convoys to the desperate, strategic city of Mariupol.

A Ukrainian soldier helps fire crews search the ruins of a Kyiv apartment building for survivors and victims after Russia resumed its bombing campaign early Monday

People remove their belongings from a destroyed building after it was hit by artillery shelling in Kyiv

Rescuers work next to a residential building damaged by shelling by Russian forces in the early hours of Monday

Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden is sending his national security adviser to Rome to meet with a Chinese official over worries Beijing is amplifying Russian disinformation and may help Moscow evade Western economic sanctions.

The UN has recorded at least 596 civilian deaths, though it believes the true toll is much higher, and Ukraine's prosecutor general's office said at least 85 children are among them. Millions more people have fled their homes amid the largest land conflict in Europe since the Second World War.

Since their invasion more than two weeks ago, Russian forces have struggled in their advance across Ukraine, in the face of stiffer than expected resistance, bolstered by Western weapons support.

Instead, Russian forces have besieged several cities and pummelled them with strikes, hitting two dozen medical facilities and creating a series of humanitarian crises.

That fight expanded on Sunday to the sprawling facility at Yavoriv, which has long been used to train Ukrainian soldiers, often with instructors from the United States and other countries in the Western alliance.

More than 30 Russian cruise missiles targeted the site. In addition to the fatalities, the Ukrainian Defence Ministry said 134 people were wounded in the attack.

A Ukrainian firefighter helps a man remove belongings from a destroyed building after it was hit by artillery shelling in Kyiv

Putin's invasion of Ukraine - which he had anticipated would last only a few days with limited casualties - is now nearing its third week with heavy losses on both sides, as Moscow gives the first signs it could be willing to end the fighting by saying there has been 'substantial progress' in peace talks

A view of damaged buildings and streets due to the ongoing Russian shelling and missile strikes in Kharkiv on March 13

A Ukrainian firefighter drags a hose inside a large food products storage facility which was destroyed by an airstrike in the early morning hours on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, March 13

First responders are seen cleaning up a building recently destroyed by Russian rockets in Kharkiv, Ukraine on March 13

An unexploded bomb was lifted out of another building in Chernihiv in northern Ukraine on March 13 after intense fighting

The base is less than 15 miles from the Polish border and appears to be the westernmost target struck during Russia's 18-day invasion.

It has hosted NATO training drills, making it a potent symbol of Russia's longstanding fears that the expansion of the 30-member Western military alliance to include former Soviet states threatens its security - something NATO denies.

Still, the perceived threat from NATO is central to Moscow's justifications for the war, and it has demanded Ukraine drop its ambitions to join the alliance.

Ina Padi, a 40-year-old Ukrainian who crossed the border with her family, was taking shelter at a fire station in Wielkie Oczy, Poland, when she was awakened by blasts on Sunday morning that shook her windows.

'I understood in that moment, even if we are free of it, (the war) is still coming after us,' she said.

Russian fighters also fired at the airport in the western city of Ivano-Frankivsk, which is 94 miles north of Romania and 155 miles from Hungary, two other NATO allies.

The emergency workers donned hard hats and protective gear as they made their way through the rubble and debris

A man wounded in this morning's air strikes at a nearby military complex is assisted by medical staff outside Novoiavorivsk District Hospital on March 13, 2022 in Novoiavorivsk, Ukraine. A series of Russian missiles struck the International Center for Peacekeeping and Security at the nearby Yavoriv military complex

Firefighters also helped with the clean up in the city of Kharkiv, which is in the northeast of the war-torn country

A view of damaged buildings and streets due to the ongoing Russian shelling and missile strikes in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on Sunday

NATO said on Sunday it currently does not have any personnel in Ukraine, though the United States has increased the number of US troops deployed to Poland. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the West would respond if Russia's strikes travel outside Ukraine and hit any NATO members, even accidentally.

Ukrainian and European leaders have pushed with limited success for Russia to grant safe passage to civilians trapped by fighting.

Ukrainian authorities said on Sunday that more than 10 humanitarian corridors were set to open, including from the besieged port city of Mariupol.

But such promises have repeatedly crumbled, and there was no word late on Sunday on whether people were able to use the evacuation routes.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said suffering in Mariupol was 'simply immense' and that hundreds of thousands of people faced extreme shortages of food, water and medicine.

'Dead bodies, of civilians and combatants, remain trapped under the rubble or lying in the open where they fell,' the Red Cross said in a statement. 'Life-changing injuries and chronic, debilitating conditions cannot be treated.'

The fight for Mariupol is crucial because its capture could help Russia establish a land corridor to Crimea, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014.
An experiment designed to show how quickly the authorities in Russia are clamping down on free speech amid the war in Ukraine has been caught on camera - and the results are shocking.

Footage has emerged of a horde of policemen descending upon a young woman in Manezhnaya Square in Moscow and dragging her away just three seconds after she held up a small paper sign.

The sign itself bore no message in support of Ukraine or any other issue in defiance of the Kremlin and the will of Vladimir Putin.

Instead, the sign simply read 'TWO WORDS' - but even this was enough to trigger a stampede of policemen clad in full riot gear who removed her from view in the blink of an eye.

It comes as the Kremlin introduced a blanket ban on social media over the past week, throttling Facebook, Instagram and Twitter - as well as Western media and independent news sites - as it scrambles to control the narrative around its incursion into Ukraine.

Footage has emerged of a horde of policemen descending upon a young woman in Manezhnaya Square in Moscow and dragging her away just three seconds after she held up a small paper sign

The woman declared: 'I am just going to say ''two words'', before adding with a knowing smirk: 'Will they arrest me for this now or not?' as she raised her tiny placard. The sign reads 'TWO WORDS'

Her placard had been in the air for a split second before a team of riot police steamed onto the scene, grabbed the woman by the arms and hauled her away in front of the stunned cameraman

The video begins with the lone protestor asking a cameraman filming in Manezhnaya Square: 'Do you support activists?', to which he responds, 'yes, of course.'

The woman then declares: 'I am just going to say ''two words'', before adding with a knowing smirk: 'Will they arrest me for this now or not?' as she raised her tiny placard.

Her placard had been in the air for a split second before a team of riot police steamed onto the scene and made a beeline towards the woman.

'They're arresting you already!', the cameraman exclaimed, but the police grabbed the woman by the arms and had already hauled her away before he had even finished his sentence.

The speed with which the police targeted the protestor and removed her from the scene was staggering, but the most telling moment of the video came later.

In the wake of her arrest, a second woman came to speak to the cameraman.

'Do you only film oppositionists?' she asked pointedly? 'What about those who don't go around protesting and who believe that the military opposition launched by our country... do you film those too?'

'We show all opinions,' the cameraman replied.

But just as the woman prepared to declare her support for Putin's war, three policemen returned to the square and seized her by the arms before she was able to utter more than two words.

A second woman spoke to the camera and began to voice her support for Putin's war in Ukraine, calling it a 'military operation' in line with the message of the Kremlin's propaganda

But she too was seized by the arms and dragged away before she was able to utter more than two words

Long before waging war on Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin was working to make Russia's internet a powerful tool of surveillance and social control akin to China's so-called Great Firewall.

The overwhelming majority of Russia's top news websites and broadcast channels are state-owned and serve to parrot the Kremlin's perspective of domestic and international events.

But in the wake of the conflict in Ukraine, Putin has launched an all-out media offensive, introducing widespread censorship in an attempt to ensure Russian citizens are only able to access his version of events.

The Kremlin has already placed restrictions on Facebook and Twitter so severe that the social media networks are effectively unreachable on the Russian internet, and on Friday announced it would begin to restrict access to Instagram - one of Russia's preferred social media sites and a vital source of income for thousands of individuals and businesses.

Putin has also blocked access to both Western media and independent news sites in the country, and even brought in a new law which criminalised the spreading of 'fake news' - that is, information which deviates from the Kremlin's propaganda drive.

Around 2.5 million people have already fled Ukraine since the invasion began in late February, with the civilian death toll sitting at 549 as of Monday morning according to the UN - though this figure is expected to be much higher.
Advertisement

A surge in Covid cases was always to be 'expected' following the easing of England's final Covid restrictions, the Health Secretary insisted today as he urged caution over the rising statistics.

Sajid Javid said the UK remains in a 'very good position'  despite hospital admissions also starting to creep up in the last week  but he urged adults eligible for a booster vaccine to come forward and get the jab.

Mr Javid told Sky News: 'Whilst the rate [of cases] has gone up modestly in the last few days, that's to be expected as we are now open as a country and there's more social mixing, but there's nothing in the data at this point in time that gives us any cause for concern.'

He insisted that officials were continuing to monitor case numbers, hospital admissions and NHS capacity, telling Times Radio: 'Taking all of that together, we remain in an overall very good position.'

Government dashboard data shows cases have been rising since March 2  just days after England's 'Freedom Day' on February 24 saw the legal requirement to self-isolate after testing positive scrapped.

But the Office for National Statistics (ONS) Covid Infection Survey estimates infections were starting to climb days before, suggesting the transition towards 'living with Covid' is not solely to blame for the latest surge.

The most up-to-date NHS data shows there were 1,459 virus admissions across the UK on March 7, the eighth day in a row they rose week-on-week. In a concerning sign, admissions in over-85s have jumped by a quarter in a week.

But MailOnline's analysis of NHS figures suggests the vast majority of newly occupied Covid beds are 'incidental'  when a person tests positive after being admitted for a different illness.

Meanwhile, Mr Javid said that a 'handful' of cases of the so-called Deltacron variant had been identified in the UK, but were 'not of particular concern'. Roughly 99.9 per cent of all infections in Britain are of the Omicron variant, he added. Mr Javid told Sky News: 'We keep the situation very carefully under review.

'There's no other variant of concern out there that is an issue at this point in time. We have seen some rises in infections over the last week but given the increase in social mixing this was to be expected.'

Mr Javid stressed that the UK had high levels of immunity thanks to high uptake of boosters and repeated waves of the epidemic.

He told Times Radio: 'We're the most open country in Europe and that's happened because of the country's approach and the British people's approach to vaccination.

'But also the support that we have from all the different treatments that the NHS is now able to offer and on our testing offer where we focus very much on the most vulnerable.'

He added: 'The most important thing that we can all be doing personally is to make sure we are vaccinated, and whilst it's great that when it comes to boosters that we have eight out of 10 adults that are eligible boosted  which is fantastic to see, one of the highest rates in the world  there are still there two out of 10 that are not, and it'd be great for those people to come forward not just only to protect themselves, but their communities too.'

Modelling by the agency estimates that infections started to rebound on February 19, three days before the key milestone. There were 178,300 new infections that day, according to the ONS, compared to the 28,344 officially reported by the Government's Covid dashboard

Overall in England the ONS estimates that 2.07million (one in 25) people were infected on March 5, but in the East, London and South East, the rate is closer to one in 20

Did England's outbreak start to rebound BEFORE Freedom Day? Overall in England the ONS estimates that 2.07million (one in 25) people were infected on March 5, but in the East, London and South East, the rate is closer to one in 20. The surveillance report also found infections were rising in England before all Covid laws were lifted on Freedom Day, suggesting the transition towards 'living with Covid' is not solely to blame for the latest surge. Modelling by the agency estimates that infections started to rebound on February 19, three days before the key milestone. There were 178,300 new infections that day, according to the ONS, compared to the 28,344 officially reported by the Government's Covid dashboard. Just 15 per cent of actual infections are being picked up by the central testing scheme, the ONS report suggests, compared to around 40 per cent earlier in the pandemic. There has always been a disparity between the two metrics because the ONS swabs a random sample of people whereas mass testing requires people to come forward. But the gap is expected to widen as mass community testing is scaled down before being dropped altogether on April 1. The dashboard did not begin reporting a rise in daily Covid cases until the start of March, but hospital admissions had already started to rise before then. Experts claim the scaling back of swabbing may have masked a surge in infections. Whitehall sources have said they are not 'overly concerned' about rising infection numbers, even though hospital admissions have also started to rise in the past week. As many as half of Covid hospital 'patients' are not primarily ill with the virus. Advertisement

There were 72,898 cases of Covid reported in the UK on Friday, the latest date with data.

The Government has stopped releasing Covid stats on weekends as part of a move to wind down their publication.

Cases for Saturday, Sunday and Monday will be released later today.

According to the ONS survey, in the week ending March 5, one in every 25 people in England had Covid in the UK, the survey suggests.

The outbreak grew in all of the home nations for the first time since the Omicron wave peaked, with one in every 13 people in Northern Ireland and one in every 18 people in Scotland estimated to have Covid. The rate was one in 30 in Wales.

There is not yet a consensus on why Covid cases have started to rise across the UK again but, as well as behavioural changes, the rise of the BA.2 subvariant is thought to be playing a role.

The mutant virus, which is around 30 per cent more infectious than the original Omicron, is dominant across the UK after outstripping its parent strain in a matter of weeks, after first appearing in England in January.

BA.2 made up 88.3 per cent of cases in England by March 6, according to a report by the UK Health Security Agency, up from 52.1 per cent on February 20.

Experts insist BA.2 is just as mild as Omicron and is not more likely to lead to hospitalisation. But the UKHSA has noted a small number of people who have been reinfected with BA.2 after recovering from Omicron.

Other studies have pointed to the subvariant being significantly more immune-resistant than the original Omicron, which would make it easier to infect vaccinated or previously infected people.

England and Northern Ireland have already removed all remaining laws, replacing the requirement to self-isolate with guidance instead, but Scotland and Wales have taken a more cautious approach.

Nicola Sturgeon plans to remove most of the remaining curbs in Scotland on March 21, but until then Scots are still required to wear face masks on public transport, indoor venues and secondary schools.

Businesses also have to keep customer contact details and cooperate with Test and Trace for another two weeks.

Even after March 21, Scots who test positive legally have to self-isolate for five days but the Scottish Government says it is keeping the length of quarantine under review. Free testing will also continue in some form beyond April.

Meanwhile, Scotland's chief medical officer said today that ministers will be advised to take a 'cautious approach' to lifting the remaining coronavirus restrictions.

Professor Sir Gregor Smith said he is 'keeping a close eye on' rising infection levels and hospital cases. However, he said there is some early evidence the hospital admission rate is beginning to 'top out'.

Speaking to the BBC's Good Morning Scotland programme, Sir Gregor revealed ministers will make a decision on whether to go ahead with lifting the face mask requirement shortly.

He said data shows some older people are beginning to adapt their behaviour by reducing their contacts slightly, while the use of face masks is also up.

Asked what advice he would give to ministers, he said: 'I think that a cautious approach at this point in time is probably the right approach, and we're already seeing the public adopting those additional protections.'

In the first week of March, an estimated one in every 18 Scots had Covid-19, data from the Office for National Statistics showed.

Sir Gregor said: 'We've been keeping a close eye on these for the last three weeks, and clearly when you see cases begin to increase like this it does give you a little bit of concern.'

Hospital occupancy began to rise around February 14, he said.

He added: 'We're seeing more older population becoming impacted on this occasion, and that's leading to some longer lengths of stay, which is driving occupancy up as well.'

Sir Gregor said there are 'some hopeful signs' the hospital admission rate 'has begun to kind of top out just a little bit over the course of the latter end of last week'.

Wales still has two more phases of its unlocking to go before all restrictions are lifted. From March 28, PCRs won't be available for the general public and lateral flows will only be free to people with Covid symptoms.

People will still need to self-isolate if they test positive until the end of June when it will change to advice. Contact tracing will also be scrapped in summer and lateral flows will only be available to the most vulnerable.
Dominic Raab today predicted Vladimir Putin's 'stuttering and stumbling' invasion of Ukraine will become 'evermore barbaric' as he pledged the UK's help in a war crimes probe.

The Justice Secretary visited the International Criminal Court in The Hague this morning and said Britain will provide the ICC with a 'full package' of financial and technical support.

The ICC has already launched a war crimes investigation in Ukraine and Mr Raab said there is now a 'big emphasis on preservation of evidence'.

The Deputy Prime Minister said since the invasion there has been a focus on sanctions, humanitarian support and help for the Ukrainian regime but there also must be a focus on 'accountability'.

He said Russian commanders and senior Kremlin figures 'need to know' that they will be 'held to account' if they carry out illegal orders.

His comments came after ministers directly accused Mr Putin of 'criminal' attacks on 31 hospitals in Ukraine and warned Nato will go to war if 'one Russian toecap' steps into its territory.

Health Secretary Sajid Javid said the strikes logged against health facilities are 'war crimes'.

He also delivered a stark message to Moscow in the wake of a missile assault on a Ukrainian military training camp just a few miles from the Polish border.

Mr Javid told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'We've made it very clear to the Russians even before the start of this conflict.

'Even if a single Russian toecap steps into Nato territory, then it will be considered an act of war.'

Dominic Raab today predicted Vladimir Putin's 'stuttering and stumbling' invasion of Ukraine will become 'evermore barbaric' as he pledged the UK's help in a war crimes probe

Sajid Javid delivered a stark message to Moscow in the wake of a missile assault on a Ukrainian military training camp just a few miles from the Polish border (pictured)

Mariana Vishegirskaya stands outside a maternity hospital that was damaged by shelling in Mariupol last week. She survived and later gave birth to a girl

Mr Raab, a former lawyer who has prosecuted war crimes, has previously said that the UK has acquired intelligence during past investigations which would prove 'absolutely critical' to the ICC.

The court has already started an investigation that could target senior officials believed to be responsible for war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide following Russian's invasion of Ukraine on February 24.

Speaking following his visit to the ICC in The Hague, Mr Raab said: The international communitys response to Ukraine has been looking at sanctioning the war machine that Putin has assembled, dealing with the humanitarian situation and supporting the government of Ukraine in resisting.

There also needs to be a fourth strand on accountability, making sure that anyone who commits war crimes in Ukraine is held to account and the commanders on the ground, those that may be receiving illegal orders as well as those in the Kremlin, need to know that right now.

And I have made clear that we will provide a package of support, financial and technical support for the ICC to be able to deliver on its mandate.

Asked what practical assistance the UK will provide the ICC, he said: Well, we are looking to see what the government of Ukraine needs, we are looking to see what the International Criminal Court needs, we will go back and look and see what we can provide, we will work with our international partners and I am looking to discuss it with justice ministers around the world to make sure we can provide a full, if you like, package of financial support, technical support, so that the ICC, independently, can deliver its mandate.

Of course, right now there is a big emphasis on preservation of evidence of war crimes that may or may not have happened, the various different reports that we have seen, but also what is going to be coming down the line as Putin responds in evermore barbaric ways to the situation, stuttering and stumbling, that he has been driving on the ground in terms of his own military campaign.

In a round of interviews this morning, Mr Javid condemned Russia in the wake of a strike on a maternity hospital last week.

Told that a mother and baby pictured in the wreckage had later died, Mr Javid said: 'The most recent information I have from the World Health Organisation is they now have documented evidence of at least 31 such attacks of health facilities, hospitals, including shelling.

'A couple of days ago of a cancer hospital, as well. So these are war crimes.'

The International Center for Peacekeeping and Security, just a few miles from the Ukraine border with Poland, was hit over the weekend.

It served as a crucial hub for cooperation between Ukraine and the Nato countries supporting it in its defence against Moscow's grinding assault.

Health Secretary Sajid Javid said the strikes logged against health facilities are 'war crimes'

Putin's invasion of Ukraine - which he had anticipated would last only a few days with limited casualties - is now nearing its third week with heavy losses on both sides, as Moscow gives the first signs it could be willing to end the fighting by saying there has been 'substantial progress' in peace talks

More than 30 Russian cruise missiles targeted the sprawling facility, which has long been used to train Ukrainian military personnel, often with instructors from the US and other countries in the western alliance.

The attack, believed to have killed Western volunteers, has been seen by analysts as a move to deter any foreigners from fighting to defend Ukraine.

An attack so close to the border was heavy with symbolism in a conflict that has revived old Cold War rivalries that gave birth to Nato.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan warned the US 'will work with our allies to defend every inch of NATO territory and that means every inch'.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky again called for Nato to impose a no-fly zone, something the alliance has so far flatly refused to do, warning that otherwise 'it is only a matter of time before Russian missiles fall on your territory'.
A mechanic working for the US Postal Service had an arm amputated after getting trapped in a machine, an official investigation has revealed.

The worker's arm got caught in a machine with the safety guard removed, and later had to be amputated in what the US Department of Labor called a 'life changing injury'.

The incident happened on 27 September 2021 in North Carolina at a Greensboro Network Distribution Center, a bulk mail processing center with heavy conveyor lines.

A United States Postal Service truck drives in Philadelphia - the postal service is being investigated after one of its workers had an arm amputated in a horrific accident

The Department of Labor said the USPS did not 'train staff on working near conveyors or proper methods for safely operating equipment using lockout/tagout safety measures.'

It added the USPS had allowed unqualified workers to perform tests on live electrical equipment without protective gear.

The US department said the USPS 'ignored long-established safety standards' and 'put workers at risk,' said OSHA Area Director Kimberley Morton in Raleigh, North Carolina.

'The USPS has an obligation to eliminate hazards to ensure safe working conditions and prevent another worker from suffering a tragic and life-altering injury.'

The Department of Labor intends to hit the USPS with a $170,918 fine for the safety failures.

The USPS will be hit with a $170,918 fine after a series of safety failures

USPS created a program to fire injured employees who complained about their trauma, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOO) found in a class-action lawsuit in April 2018.

The USPS has fired or forced out nearly 44,000 employees who were injured on the job since 2006, according to the EEOO.

In 2017, over 42,000 USPS employees had compensation claims accepted for on-the-job injuries, and 12 workers died on the job, according to the Guardian.

'Of the 5,659 complaints filed at USPS, 1,283 contained allegations of race (Black/African American) discrimination,' said the EEOO.

As well as commonly firing the injured workers, the USPS also unlawfully disclosed the private medical information of injured workers across the country.

The Postal Service is still fighting the class-action complaint, refusing to settle.
BEIJING, March 13 (Xinhua) -- Yang Jiechi, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, will meet with U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan on Monday in Rome, capital of Italy, Chinese foreign ministry announced Sunday night.

Yang, also director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the CPC Central Committee, will exchange views with Sullivan on China-U.S. relations and international and regional issues of common concern, spokesperson Zhao Lijian said.

The key issue of this meeting is to implement the important consensus reached by the Chinese and U.S. heads of state in their virtual summit in November last year, according to Zhao.

The two sides have been in contact on the matter since late last year, stayed in communication about the meeting and set a time for the meeting according to their schedules, Zhao said.
A travel agent has been ordered to pay an 85,000 court bill after making 'extraordinary' false claims that her male boss stabbed her in the hand with a pen at her desk.

Parivash Kiani, 52, sued travel marketing company Aviareps PLC, based in Brentford, claiming the employers were liable for failing to protect her in February 2015.

The mother-of-two said she had been left mentally scarred and produced two photographs showing puncture wounds to her right hand - allegedly caused by her line manager.

However, close analysis of one of the images showed a document in the background dated a significant period of time after the incident, before Ms Kiani admitted that the pictures were fake.

Her former employers took her to the High Court last week accusing her of contempt in using the faked photographs to bolster her claim during an employment tribunal with the company.

After losing the initial tribunal fight over the allegations and being found 'fundamentally dishonest' in a subsequent county court claim, Ms Kiani has now been handed an 85,000 bill and suspended sentence for contempt of court at the High Court.

Outlining the case, Mr Justice Martin Spencer told the court: 'She must have deliberately in 2017 stabbed herself twice in the hand, waited for the stab wound to scab over, and then either herself - or through another person - taken these pictures of her hand in order to pretend that they were photos taken in February 2015 two years earlier, and represented the position as a result of the alleged assault.'

Parivash Kiani (pictured outside the High Court) was 'fundamentally dishonest' when she made claims against her former employers alleging they failed to protect her from her violent boss

The judge said her case had roots back to January 2015, when Ms Kiani was disciplined at work for breaching client confidentiality and later had her position 'terminated' in December the same year.

Following her contract termination, she took Aviareps to an employment tribunal alleging unfair dismissal and that her line manager, Fawad Shaida, had stabbed her with a biro or pencil when she got up from her desk in February 2015.

Ms Kiani claimed she was left shouting in pain when her boss 'stabbed her twice with a biro, causing her hand to bleed'.

She said the incident took place when she left her desk to walk towards a fax machine.

Ms Kiani added: 'He said something to me so I stopped, he walked towards me and was standing in front of me when he grabbed my hand and then stabbed it randomly with a pen twice.'

As a result of the incident, she said she had been left with chronic pain, was forced to switch to using her left hand and alleged attack had caused lasting trauma, nightmares and flashbacks.

But Mr Shaida told the court that he had 'picked up the biro and gently tapped her hand leaving an ink mark' while the pair were 'joking around'.

After Ms Kiani's case was dismissed by an employment tribunal panel in 2017, she pressed ahead with a 3,000 compensation claim in court alleging Aviareps failed to protect her from her violent boss.

But in March 2020, Judge Heather Baucher rejected her case at the Central London County Court after finding her account of the incident 'defied logic'.

The judge also accepted Mr Shaida's account of the incident, labelling him an 'impressive witness who had faced the court with dignity and calmness'.

Mr Shaida even expressed his sorrow for the loss of his former friendship with Ms Kiani, whose family birthdays he had attended at her home.

The former travel agent made 'extraordinary' false claims about being stabbed at work, but her case was thrown out when documents in the background of photographic evidence of her injuries revealed they had been taken long after the incident

Ms Kiani was given a six-month suspended prison sentence at the High Court (pictured) and ordered to pay the legal fees for her former employers

Judge Baucher also ruled that Ms Kiani 'deliberately manufactured the photo evidence supporting her account to bolster the veracity of her claim'.

She told the court 'this was a minor office incident' before throwing out Ms Kiani's 'fundamentally dishonest' case and ordering her to pay 35,000 in court fees.

Following the outcome, lawyers for Aviareps brought their former employee to the High Court alleging a deliberate contempt of court for falsifying evidence.

Ms Kiani, of North Finchley, London, admitted attempting to 'interfere with the course of justice' and was given a six-month suspended sentence by Mr Justice Martin Spencer.

The judge decided to suspend the sentence after noting that her actions were not motivated by greed, as Ms Kiani had only sued for 3,000.

He also highlighted her 'significant psychological condition', adding: 'She has in a totally misguided way sought to achieve some vindication for her position as a result of some perceived injustice which she suffered in 2015 which she was unable to let go.'

On top of the 35,000 at Central London County Court, Ms Kiani was further ordered to pick up her former employers legal fees for the committal hearing - estimated to be around 50,000.
Advertisement

London's mayor has said he was 'surprised' that police intervened when squatters occupied a mansion owned by a sanctioned Russian oligarch, suggesting it was 'unclear' why officers had become involved.

Four squatters who broke into the 50million mansion of sanctioned Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska demanding the four-floor home is used to house Ukrainian refugees have finally been removed after a seven-hour stand-off with police.

The protesters broke into the property in Belgrave Square, west London, at around 1am on Monday and declared that it 'belongs to Ukrainian refugees'.

Police wearing riot gear used a drill to break open the front door and enter the house, with Scotland Yard declaring no protesters were inside in the afternoon.

Sadiq Khan said he was likely to bring up the way officers responded with the Metropolitan Police hierarchy after saying it was 'unclear what the police were responding to'.

The Labour politician said he did not 'condone' the actions taken by the squatters but questioned whether the police move against them had been 'proportionate'.

The squatters called themselves the London Mahknovists, after Nestor Makhno, who led an anarchist force that attempted to form a stateless society in Ukraine during the Russian Revolution of 1917-23.

They hung a Ukrainian flag and two signs which read 'this property has been liberated' and 'Putin go f*** yourself'.

Speaking to LBC's Tonight With Andrew Marr programme, Mr Khan said the police response - which included deploying a JCB crane to gain access to the mansion and cordoning off the street - 'does raise questions'.

'I'm unclear what the police were responding to because we know no one's living there,' he said.

'But I'm not sure if there were concerns about any crimes being done to any neighbouring properties, so those are the questions.'

Asked whether he would speak to outgoing Met Commissioner Dame Cressida Dick about the incident, he replied: 'Or the number two, but someone in the police service, yes.'

Pictured: Four squatters who broke into the 50million mansion of a sanctioned Russian oligarch demanding the four-floor home is used to house Ukrainian refugees have finally been removed after a seven-hour stand-off with the Met police

The mayor expressed frustration at the time taken by the UK Government to 'seize' property in the capital owned by people with links to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

'We know that there are many properties owned in London by people close to Putin,' he added.

'One of my concerns is, we've had a number of weeks now to seize those homes, to allow them to be used by refugees. They haven't.

'I don't condone the actions of the squatters but they've decided to take the law into their own hands.'

Mr Deripaska has been described as 'a prominent Russian businessman and pro-Kremlin oligarch' who is 'closely associated' with the Russian government and Mr Putin.

He was one of seven oligarchs, including Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich, who was added to the UK sanctions list last week in reaction to Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

His wealth is estimated to be 2.3 billion and he has a multimillion-pound property portfolio in the UK which includes the house at 5 Belgrave Square, according to a 2007 High Court judgment.

Records indicate it has not changed hands since and is owned by an offshore British Virgin Islands company.

Riot police smashed down the door at around midday, but were left in a stand-off with activists who refused to leave.

The demonstrators taunted police officers trying to remove them in a cherry picker by sipping whisky and ice tea and singing The Time of My Life - the theme tune to Dirty Dancing.

The home belongs to the family of Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska, 54, one of seven oligarchs with ties to Vladimir Putin who were sanctioned by the UK Government last week in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Today activists broke into 5 Belgrave Square, south west London, in the early hours of this morning before hanging Ukrainian flags and draping anti-Putin messages over the balconies.

One banner read 'The property has been liberated' while another stated 'Putin go f**k yourself'.

Just after 8pm, the Met Police announced the four remaining activists, who were holding their ground on an outside balcony, had been arrested.

Around an hour earlier a group of supporters from outside the building tried to rush inside, but were stopped by a mob of uniformed officers who tackled them to the ground. Four people were arrested as a result, police said.

The Met said the four remaining activists, who were holding their ground on an outside balcony, had been arrested

A cherry picker is used to reach squatters at a property belonging to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska in Belgrave Square

Police arrest people at their second attempt to trespass a mansion, allegedly owned by Russian Oligarch Oleg Deripaska

All eight arrested suspects are still in custody being questioned by police.

A spokesman for the force said: 'Four protestors who gained entry to the balcony of a building in Belgrave Square, SW1 have come down and been arrested.

'The four have been arrested under section 144 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012. A police presence will continue at the scene.

'Police were called shortly after 1am on Monday, March 14 to a residential property in Belgrave Square. It was reported that a number of people had gained entry to the building and hung banners from upstairs windows.

'Officers completed a search of the property and are satisfied there are no people left inside.'

Describing the arrest of four supporters outside who tried to scale the building, the spokesman added: 'During the evening of Monday, March 14 four people were arrested after they attempted to gain access to the row of buildings where the protest was ongoing in Belgrave Square.

'They have been arrested under section 9 of the Criminal Law Act 1977. All those arrested remain in custody.'

A spokesperson for Mr Deripaska said that he and his family were 'appalled at the negligence of Britain's justice system' who could not remove the protestors for hours despite a heavy police presence.

Police officers arrest people at their second attempt to trespass the mansion owned by members of Oleg Depriaska's family

Oleg Depriaska's and his family has said they are appalled by the negligence of the British justice system

The second attempt led to arrests around the Romanian Embassy in Sloane Square in London earlier today

Police have confirmed that at least four people have been arrested for the attempted liberation of the 50m property

Mr Deripaska is one of seven oligarchs who were sanctioned by the UK government last week for being 'pro-Kremlin' and 'closely associated' with Putin.

Deripaska has intimate links with the British establishment, with Peter Mandelson and George Osborne previously visiting his 80million superyacht in Corfu.

At around midday, police officers wearing helmets and safety harnesses used a ladder and a JCB cherry picker to access the mansion's balcony, with two of the protesters trying to make a barricade out of potted plants.

Officers then used a drill to break open the front door, while activists shouted, 'Go away you losers' and 'you fascist scumbags' from the balcony above.

Protestors have said they will only come down if police let them leave with no arrests, saying that there is 'no evidence' of burglary and they will leave peacefully with their friends.

The squatters call themselves the London Mahknovists - after Nestor Makhno, who led an anarchist force that attempted to form a stateless society in Ukraine during the Russian Revolution of 1917-1923.

At one point, two of the activists shared a drink from a single glass while one man sang: 'I've had the time of my life', from the Dirty Dancing soundtrack.

Another shouted to people looking out of the window of the building next door: 'We are your new neighbours. We'll come around tomorrow with some brisket.'

At least five activists broke into 5 Belgrave Square just after midnight. At around midday, large numbers of riot police massed outside before using a drill to get through the front door

The mansion belongs to the family of oil tycoon Oleg Deripaska, one of seven oligarchs who were sanctioned by the UK government last week for being 'pro-Kremlin' and 'closely associated' with Putin

Officers tried to access the property's balcony using a ladder, as one of the activists tried to push it away

The JCB cherry picker that police used to get onto the balcony, as the activists shouted 'you fascist scumbags' and 'losers'

A police officer stands guard outside a mansion in Belgrave Square that has been occupied by a group of squatters, in London

The squatters call themselves the London Mahknovists - after Nestor Makhno, who led an anarchist force that attempted to form a stateless society in Ukraine during the Russian Revolution of 1917-1923

Deripaska, who was once Russia's richest man, was one of seven people targeted by the Government on Thursday

Before the police raid, three men stood on the balcony above the street, playing music, waving and dancing.

Talking about finding housing for refugees, one said: 'Priti Patel, do not worry. We did your job. Refugees welcome.'

A second man added: 'We are planning to stay until Putin stops the war. Putin is responsible for people losing their homes and lands. Sanctions are not enough. The Government has delayed action - they are playing games.'

Another of the squatters, who appeared to be in his early 20s, said: 'There was no forceful entry whatsoever. We are using our human rights to protest.

'We are here to protest the property of a Russian oligarch and a war mongerer.

'This government are not only acting illegally, they are acting immorally. This property belongs to Ukrainian refugees.'

Deripaska's wealth is estimated to be 2.3 billion and he has a multimillion-pound property portfolio in the UK which, according to a 2007 High Court judgment, includes the house at 5 Belgrave Square.

Records indicate it has not changed hands since and is owned by an offshore British Virgin Islands company.

Answering reporters' questions, another of the men said there are five of them inside the mansion but they have a 'way bigger group coming'.

Seven oligarchs sanctioned by UK Roman Abramovich is one of seven Russian oligarchs sanctioned by the UK Government last week. The Government estimates his wealth at more than 9billion and notes his stakes in steel giant Evraz, Norilsk Nickel and ownership of Chelsea FC. 'He is one of the few oligarchs from the 1990s to maintain prominence under Putin,' a Government spokesman said. The other oligarchs sanctioned today are: Oleg Deripaska: Estimated wealth of 2billion and a multi-million-pound Uk property portfolio. Subject to US sanctions since 2018. Has stakes in En+ Group, a major extractives and energy company which owns UC Rusal, one of the world's major aluminium producers.

Estimated wealth of 2billion and a multi-million-pound Uk property portfolio. Subject to US sanctions since 2018. Has stakes in En+ Group, a major extractives and energy company which owns UC Rusal, one of the world's major aluminium producers. Igor Sechin: Chief Executive of Rosneft, the Russian state oil company. The Government said he is 'particularly close and influential ally of Putin'. Already sanctioned by the US and EU.

Chief Executive of Rosneft, the Russian state oil company. The Government said he is 'particularly close and influential ally of Putin'. Already sanctioned by the US and EU. Andrey Kostin: Chairman of VTB bank, the second largest bank in Russia. A 'close associate of Putin' who has 'long supported Kremlin objectives through VTB Bank'. Net worth of 379 million. Already sanctioned by the US and EU.

Chairman of VTB bank, the second largest bank in Russia. A 'close associate of Putin' who has 'long supported Kremlin objectives through VTB Bank'. Net worth of 379 million. Already sanctioned by the US and EU. Alexei Miller: Chief executive of of energy company Gazprom. Served under Putin when autocrat was mayor of St Petersburg. Already sanctioned by the US.

Chief executive of of energy company Gazprom. Served under Putin when autocrat was mayor of St Petersburg. Already sanctioned by the US. Nikolai Tokarev: President of the Russia state-owned pipeline company Transneft. Former KGB agent who served alongside Putin in East Germany. Already sanctioned by the US and EU.

President of the Russia state-owned pipeline company Transneft. Former KGB agent who served alongside Putin in East Germany. Already sanctioned by the US and EU. Dmitri Lebedev: Chairman of Bank Rossiya, which is 'widely considered to be the Kremlin's private bank'. Sanctioned by the US in 2016. Advertisement

He continued: 'We have opened the building to house Ukrainian refugees and refugees from all nations.'

He also said the owner of the building 'wants to destroy Ukraine homes'.

'He supported the wars. This home belongs to Ukrainian refugees. There are families dying. Their land has gone. This is the least we can do.'

They said the UK Government have 'failed' to properly respond to the invasion, adding: 'The same money that funds the Russia war machine funds the Conservative Party.'

The group also criticised the police, comparing them to those arresting protesters in Russia.

Asked how they got into the property, one joked: 'Squatters' magic.'

Another laughed: 'I swear I cannot remember a thing.'

One man said that inside the mansion 'there are a lot of rooms. There is so much stuff that a normal human being shouldn't have.'

Asked whether they have enough food and drink, one said: 'This b*****d left the basement full of alcohol but left no food.

'We have everything we need but we do not have food, so if anyone could provide us with food and we can lift it up with a rope, that would be really appreciated.'

5 Belgrave Square is considered to be London's most expensive terraced house, and previously belonged to the society diarist Sir Henry 'Chips' Channon MP.

It was also once home of Sir George Murray, the British Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, until he died there in 1846, and later housed the Institute of Directors.

In 2008, a court case revealed the mansion was permanently staffed with a large domestic and security team despite Deripaska only staying a few days a year.

The oligarch has addressed the war on his Twitter account, writing: 'I remain committed to my belief that an immediate ceasefire and peace agreement as soon as humanly possible is the best and only solution to stop this madness in Ukraine.'

Oleg Deripaska has deep ties to the British establishment, and once hosted Peter Mandelson and George Osborne on his yacht in Corfu.

The activists broke into 5 Belgrave Square just after midnight before hanging Ukrainian flags and a banner reading, 'The property has been liberated' and 'Putin go f*** yourself'

The mansion belongs to the family of Oleg Deripaska, one of seven oligarchs to be sanctioned by the UK government last week for having 'blood on their hands'

5 Belgrave Square is considered London's most expensive terraced house, and previously belonged to the society diarist Sir Henry 'Chips' Channon MP

Pro-Ukraine protesters raised their fists and chanted anti-Putin slogans during this morning's protest in Belgravia

Several police vehicles remained outside 5 Belgrave Square this morning, with officers saying they were 'maintaining a presence' at the address

Tycoon who partied with Lord Mandelson and George Osborne after Yachtgate on 80million superyacht David Wilcock, Whitehall Correspondent for MailOnline Oil tycoon Oleg Deripaska, who was once Russia's richest man, was one of seven people targeted by the Government today in a ratcheting up of action designed to put pressure on the Putin regime. He was embroiled in a row in 2008 that was dubbed Yachtgate, after his meetings with the senior Labour and Tory figures was revealed. Both men met Mr Deripaska on his yacht, with Mr Osborne accused of trying to solicit a donation for the Tory party - something he denies. Lord Mandelson, who was then an EU trade commissioner, stayed on the Queen K off the Greek island. He went on to become business secretary in Gordon Brown's government as a Labour peer. By the time they met Deripaska had already been targeted by the United States, which cancelled his visa in 2007. The Russian is believed to have a fortune of 3.2billion. Last year, Isle of Wight MP used Parliamentary Privilege to describe him as 'one of President Putin's most loyal oligarchs'. He owns a house in London's Belgrave Square and is a grandson by marriage to the late leader of the Soviet Union Boris Yeltsin. He has been sanctioned by the US since 2018 over alleged links to the Russian government, including allegations of cyber-attacks and election meddling. He called the claims 'a lie', adding: 'The idea that I am some kind of ''Kremlin operative''... is clearly idiotic nonsense.' Advertisement

As a result of the sanctions announced on Thursday, he was hit with an asset freeze and banned from any transactions with UK individuals and businesses.

The tycoon claimed there was 'not a single fact' to support the measures, and suggested he could challenge them in court.

In a blistering tweet, he wrote: 'Since there's not a single fact in support of Boris' cabinet's fantasies it will be for the courts and the police to decide the future for all in this sanctions story.'

Deripaska was embroiled in a 2008 row dubbed Yachtgate, after his meetings with Mr Mandelson and Mr Osborne were revealed.

Both men met the industrialist on his yacht, with Mr Osborne accused of trying to solicit a donation for the Tory party - something he denies.

Lord Mandelson, who was then an EU trade commissioner, stayed on the Queen K off the Greek island.

He went on to become business secretary in Gordon Brown's government as a Labour peer.

By the time they met Deripaska had already been targeted by the United States, which cancelled his visa in 2007.

The Russian is believed to have a fortune of 3.2billion. Last year, Isle of Wight MP Bob Seely used Parliamentary Privilege to describe him as 'one of President Putin's most loyal oligarchs'.

Deripaska, who is a grandson by marriage to the late leader of the Soviet Union Boris Yeltsin, has been sanctioned by the US since 2018 over alleged links to the Russian government, including allegations of cyber-attacks and election meddling.

He called the claims 'a lie', adding: 'The idea that I am some kind of ''Kremlin operative''... is clearly idiotic nonsense.'

In a bitter 650million legal battle at the High Court in 2012, he was alleged to have ties to brutal organised crime gangs which emerged after the collapse of Communism in the former Soviet Union.

He vehemently denied the allegations  revealed in legal papers filed as part of the case  and counter-claimed that he was the victim of an 'old-fashioned protection racket' run by the Mafia-style gangs.

Deripaska said he had been forced to pay more than half a billion dollars to the gangs over seven years and had feared for his safety and that of his family.

An activist raises his fist above a banner reading 'Putin go f*** yourself'. Oleg Deripaska is known to have been close with the Russian autocrat

The oligarch was embroiled in a 2008 row dubbed Yachtgate, after his meetings with Mr Mandelson and Mr Osborne were revealed

His one time business partner, Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich, has been hit with the same measures - as have Rosneft chief Igor Sechin and four more described as being in Putin's 'inner circle'.

After the Corfu meeting with Deripaska was revealed, Mr Osborne admitted meeting him on four occasions over the course of a weekend in the Mediterranean in August 2008.

He insisted they had not discussed donations, which are allowed only from UK-registered voters, but later admitted the meetings were 'a mistake'.

Mandelson also denied any wrongdoing, telling the Guardian: 'What is important is not where you meet somebody or how long you meet them for but what you do during the meeting.

'In my case, I offered no favours and I received no favours, unlike George Osborne, who was holding conversations around his visits in order to obtain a financial contribution to the Conservative party.'
Some Ukrainian families desperately trying to reach the UK have been charged 69p a minute by the Government for visa advice.

Calls to one UK Visas and Immigration number cost as much as 6.90 for a ten minute conversation.

The Home Office has a free Ukraine Family Scheme with costless phone calls available, and from tomorrow will only require an application online.

But sheer panic of Ukraine families trying to reach the UK mean some have been calling the premium line in desperation or error.

This morning a source insisted it had not been a problem that had been previously flagged up - with the 'vast majority' using the free service.

But Birmingham-based musician Robin Jax had been trying to get his Ukrainian wife, Miroslava, and his mother-in-law Hanna Tkachenko, to the Midlands.

They fled Ukraine and met in Warsaw where they made a visa application but had still not heard if it had been successful.

Mr Jax said: 'Every UK Visas and Immigration member of staff I speak to is very compassionate, but they are caught by the fact that the policy is changing faster than they can answer our questions and we're just stuck in limbo, waiting.

'I was dismayed to be asked to give my bank details when I contacted a UKVI helpline, and charged 69p a minute for the call duration.

'The system is set up against people who have had to leave their homes in the worst circumstances imaginable.

A woman walks to the reception center after arriving from Ukraine at the train station in Przemysl, near the Ukrainian-Polish border today

Refugees from Ukraine who arrived to Krakow due to ongoing Russian attacks on Ukraine are seen waiting to be taken to a humanitarian train which departures to Berlin from the main railway station in Krakow, Poland

Birmingham-based musician Robin Jax had been trying to get his Ukrainian wife, Miroslava, and his mother-in-law Hanna Tkachenko, to the Midlands

'I don't think the UK response has been particularly humanitarian,' he told The Guardian.

The premium phoneline is found on the Government's Visas and Immigration website.

The UKVI is the division of the Home Office responsible for the United Kingdom's visa system.

Those who opt to contact UK Visas and Immigration for help are greeted by a number of options.

This is the free visa service and numbers available to Ukrainian refugees trying to come to UK

But this premium rate service can be found and has been phoned by some Ukraine families

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

Someone currently in the UK applying on behalf of someone who is not and is not sure of the correct enquiry is led to the premium line.

It warns them 'Calls cost 69 pence per minute on top of your standard network charges'.

If they opt to make an online enquiry instead, it will cost them 2.74. It is not clear why either of the two costs are so high.

The Home Office operates a number of freephone lines for Ukrainian refugees, including a different - and cost-free - one to reach UKVI.

But sheer panic of Ukranian families trying to reach the UK mean some have been calling the premium line in desperation or error.

Michael Gove has suggested millions of Britons could be ready to host Ukrainian refugees with a 350-a-month government 'thank-you' - as he said the first arrivals should be next week.

The Cabinet minister pointed to surveys indicating that as many as one in 10 people are ready to put up people fleeing from the Russian invasion.

But Mr Gove - who recently divorced - admitted he was not yet sure whether he personally will be able to contribute. Keir Starmer confirmed that he is planning to be a host.

The comments came as Mr Gove revealed that 4,000 visas have now been granted for Ukrainian refugees, with the new 'sponsored' route due to launch this week.

Under the 'Homes for Ukraine' scheme, sponsors who provide accommodation rent-free for a minimum of six months will receive a monthly fee of 350 from the government, however many refugees they take.

Individuals, charities, community groups and businesses will all be eligible to bring those fleeing the Russian invasion of Ukraine to safety.

Sponsored refugees will be granted three years leave to remain in the UK and be allowed to work and access public services.

Mr Gove said the UK 'stands behind Ukraine in their darkest hour', and urged people to 'join the national effort' to help refugees.

He said he hoped 'tens of thousands' of people will be accommodated in Britain as part of the new scheme as Europe buckles under the weight of its biggest humanitarian crisis since the Second World War.

'People can register their interest on Monday,' he said. 'Matching will be taking place from Friday.

I would expect that in a week's time we'll see the first people coming here under the scheme.'

The Home Office has been approached for a comment.
Government lawyers are acting slowly in the sanctioning of Russian oligarchs because of fears of repeating mistakes which led to a 1.3billion payout to an Iranian bank, it was claimed today.

The UK sanctioned Bank Mellat back in 2009 after the Treasury alleged it was involved in financing firms involved in Iran's nuclear programme - something the bank always denied.

The Supreme Court ruled in 2013 that shutting the Tehran-based bank out of the UK financial sector was unlawful and after a lengthy legal battle the Government agreed in 2019 to pay a huge settlement.

Cabinet figures told The Telegraph that the court case has had a 'chilling effect' on the Government's lawyers. The Government's sanctions team is based in the Foreign Office.

A Whitehall source told the newspaper that the case has been repeatedly raised during recent discussions about imposing sanctions on Russian oligarchs.

Government lawyers are acting slowly in the sanctioning of Russian oligarchs because of fears of repeating mistakes which led to a 1.3billion payout to an Iranian bank, it was claimed today

Cabinet figures told The Telegraph that the court case has had a 'chilling effect' on the Government's lawyers. The Government's sanctions team is based in the Foreign Office

MPs have expressed frustration over the speed of the roll out of the UK's sanctions on wealthy individuals, with questions asked over why the US and the EU have been able to move more quickly.

Summing up the concerns of the Government's lawyers, one source said: 'If an oligarch is going to sue over sanctions, then the one place it is going to happen is here.'

The Government has insisted its focus is on ensuring the cases it makes against oligarchs are watertight to ensure they can be defended in court, should legal challenges be brought forward.

Ministers will want to avoid at all costs the situation of a case falling apart and an oligarch then being awarded a large taxpayer-funded settlement.

Bank Mellat sued HM Treasury for 1.25billion after being shut out of the UK financial sector by a 2009 financial restrictions order made under the 2008 Counter-Terrorism Act.

In 2013 the Supreme Court found the order was unlawful, with a majority ruling that the Treasury had failed to comply with procedural requirements contrary to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

The court said Mellat had received no notice of the Treasury's intention to impose sanctions and that singling the bank out 'was arbitrary and irrational, and disproportionate'.

In the wake of the ruling, the bank launched a claim against the Treasury under the 1998 Human Rights Act on grounds that it suffered massive losses as a result of the 'negligently imposed' sanctions.

The bank claimed it had a 'thriving and profitable' international finance business before the order destroyed its UK operations and caused 'serious and irreparable' damage internationally, with overall 'catastrophic' results.

The parties eventually reached a confidential settlement in 2019 for an undisclosed sum. The Telegraph reported that the final settlement was approximately 1.3billion.
Joanna Scanlan reached the pinnacle of her career with a best actress BAFTA last night - but the modest star chose to praise the GP who urged her to pursue her stage and screen dream.

The After Love star, 60, struggled to hold back her tears after winning, calling it 'the highest accolade I could ever aspire to' and admitted she was surprised to win because of her age and not being 'the normal shape and size' of other actresses.

She took the prize for her portrayal of a Muslim convert uncovering the secret life led by her late husband, having won the same award at the British Independent Film Awards.

Joanna, who lives with her accountant husband Neil in Croydon, South London, admitted to being overwhelmed by her success when she took to the stage at the Royal Albert Hall in London. She said: 'Oh come on..! Some stories have surprise endings, don't they?'

Afterwards she thanked a GP for encouraging her to pursue her passion, acting, having battled ill health in her 20s and 30s. She said that her doctor told her when she was ill: 'If you don't go back to acting you're going to be ill for the rest of your life'.

'I think he meant that if you are living a life that you weren't intending to, that can be very bad for your health', she told the BBC last night.

She said: 'It doesn't get bigger than BAFTA for a British actor. And especially someone like myself who's well on in years. I'm 60. I'm older, I'm not the normal shape and size, I'm lots of things you wouldn't expect necessarily to be honoured in this way'.

She was best known for her role as useless press officer Terri Coverley in The Thick of It, won best actress last night for her role in After Love. In the acclaimed performance in Aleem Khan's sublime film, she plays Mary, an Islamic convert who travels to Calais, in an attempt to uncover the truth about her late husband.

Winner! Joanna Scanlan has won the Leading Actress award at the BAFTAs. She thanked the GP who urged her to follow her dream to act, for the good of her health

Starring role: The 60-year-old actress received the sought-after gong for her performance in the Aleem Khan-directed drama After Love (pictured). She won the prize for her portrayal of a Muslim convert uncovering the secret life led by her late husband, which takes her to Calais

Joanna was best known as hapless government press officer Terri Coverley in The Thick of It

Joanna was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome and instead of working as an actress she could only just find the energy to walk her parents' dog.

As she battled ME, she struggled to hold down various administrator roles until her GP told her she must give acting a final go because it was important for her health to be happy. When she was 34 she got her first big role in ITV's Peak Practice and is now a star of stage and screen.

Winning her BAFTA after a three previous nominations, she thanked the GP who urged her not to give up.

Getting emotional backstage after her win, Scanlan said: 'I am disbelieving to be perfectly honest, I feel shaky, life has yet to catch up with me.

Lady gaga plants a kiss on Joanna at the Savoy hotel, after the BAFTAs ceremony last night

'To be honoured by Bafta in film as a leading actress is the highest accolade I could ever aspire to... I just never imagined that I would receive this honour, genuinely.

'I hope I get a really exciting chunky short film and also a Bond audition.

'It's doing your thing and working in a way that means something to people - that's what I want to do until the day I die.'

Scanlan added that director Aleem Khan put the film together in an 'extraordinary way' and has a 'totally uncompromising vision'.

She beat competition from Lady Gaga, Alana Haim, Emilia Jones, Tessa Thompson and Renate Reinsve for the award.

But she explained on stage that the film - which tells the story of a widow who discovers her late husband's secret family - was made with 'blood, sweat and tears'. The actress also thanked BAFTA for their support in allowing small films to get made.

Joanna Scanlan and her husband Neil Bicknell at the Royal Albert Hall last night

Daniel Kaluuya paid tribute to music entrepreneur Jamal Edwards at the Bafta awards.

Arriving on stage to present the leading actress gong, he said: 'Eternal life to Jamal Edwards,' before introducing the list of contenders.

Scanlan, who starred in No Offence, The Thick Of It, Getting On and more recently The Larkins as Ma, has been praised before for big screen performances, as when she played Charles Dickens's long-suffering wife Catherine, opposite Ralph Fiennes, in The Invisible Woman.

Speaking to the Mail last year, she described having a breakdown in her 20s having battled ill health.

She said: 'I joined Footlights [the comedy troupe whose alumni include Stephen Fry and Emma Thompson]. After college I had a lot of failed auditions, so I became a drama lecturer, then worked at the Arts Council. But I longed to act.

'I had a breakdown at 29 triggered by work stress and went back to live with my parents in Wales. Some days all I could do was walk the dog. But then the GP told me: 'If you don't go back to acting, you'll be ill for the rest of your life.'

'I had to go through the most ignominious and embarrassing thing of ringing up acquaintances and saying: "Actually I'd like to start to be a professional actress. Do you have a job for me?"

'And two of them came back saying: "Yes, funnily enough, I might have." I got two jobs out of those phone calls.

Rebel Wilson and Joanna Scanlan 75th EE British Academy Film Awards

She added: 'There is a perception that things should be offered to you if you are worthy of them. But it's perfectly OK to say: "I've got a hunch I might be good at this, please can I put it to you?"

As a woman, it's easy to err on the side of modesty. But you can be open and honest without being bigheaded. You have the right to ask for what you want. If you don't put your own agenda on the table, you're unlikely to have it met'.

Joanna lives with her husband, an accountant named Neil, and they lived in Purley, South London. But they don't have children, having

She says she doesn't have any children because she and Neil met too late.

She said: 'I'd have loved to become a mother but I suspect I wouldn't have been able to be a very good actor or an artist had I been one.

'There was a point in my own life, when I was in my mid-thirties and saying, 'Oh, I want babies', and both my parents said to me there is more to life than having children. Which you could take in two ways.

'But I think what they meant, their unfulfilled artistic expression perhaps was curtailed by having a family, and perhaps I wouldn't have been able to manage both. My deep suspicion is that I would have prioritised children above having an artistic life.'
Advertisement

Parts of Britain are set to bask in sunshine and enjoy above-average temperatures as high as 18C this week.

Friday could see highs of 17C (62.6F) - hotter than Athens, Greece, which is forecast to see rainy spells at 9C (48.2F), according to Met Office forecasters.

After a misty start to the week across the South, highs of 14C are expected across England today.

But by the weekend, temperatures could climb as 17C or 18C in the South-West, according to BBC forecaster Tomasz Schafernaker.

Temperatures in March have not gone above 75F (24C) since March 29 1968, when 78F (25.6C) was recorded in Mepal in Cambridgeshire.

The coldest Easter weekend on record was in 2013 when 10F (minus 12.5C) was recorded at Braemar in Aberdeenshire, on Easter Sunday.

Mist pictured over the fields at daybreak in Dunsden, Oxfordshire this morning. Similarly to this morning, a generally bright start will greet those in the South tomorrow morning

Today is forecast to see cloud and rain across Northern Ireland and parts of Scotland and Northern England as early-morning fog in the South begins to clear

New Forest pictured at sunrise morning. Batches of sunny spells across the UK may be clouded by showers and rain in the middle of the week as the UK settles in for a calmer, sunnier weekend

Today may also see cloud and rain across Northern Ireland along with parts of Scotland and Northern England as early-morning fog in the South begins to clear.

The Met Office also forecasts some 'scattered showers' with 'a few heavy in far south'.

Similarly to today, a generally bright start will greet those in the South tomorrow morning. However, the North West and parts of Northern Ireland can expect rain and showers which will move down later in the day.

The South East is forecast to see highs of 16C(60.8F) on Tuesday but overnight temperatures are still going to be chilly and may drop as low as -1C(30.2F) in Northern Scotland.

The middle of the week will be wet and slightly windy, with heavier showers expected in East Anglia which could see 10-15mm of rain.

More cloud-breaks are expected on Wednesday, with a Met Office spokesman saying that while highs of 16C(60.8F) are possible, they are unlikely.

A satellite image from the Met Office this morning shows clearer skies for large parts across the UK this morning as Monday may see highs of 14C(57.2F)

Sunrise at New Forest today. Friday could see highs of 17C(62.6F), hotter than Athens, Greece, which is forecast to be greeting the weekend with rainy spells at 9C(48.2F)

By Thursday however, rain and breeze in the far North West will make way for a brighter and calmer Friday across the country.

At the end of the week, a high pressure system moving in means it 'should feel very pleasant on Friday and into the weekend,' meteorologist Alex Deakin said.

Temperatures are expected to be in the teens this week and could reach 62.6F in the southeast on Friday.

'That high pressure looks likely to bring most of us a fine day on Friday and the high could continue to bring us fine weather into the weekend,' Mr Deakin said.

'With high pressure sitting right across the UK, that means generally fine and sunny conditions'.

Temperatures are expected to be in the teens this week and could reach 17C in the southeast on Friday. Pictured: Visitors to Cambridge enjoy the good spring weather today whilst out punting on the river Cam

However, it could be breezy in some areas, particularly in the north west where some showery rain is also possible. Pictured: Spring weather today in Cambridge as two friends sit under a blossoming tree

However, it could be breezy in some areas, particularly in the north west where some showery rain is also possible.

The Met Office said that next week 'high pressure is likely to dominate', meaning 'temperatures (are) expected to be mild to very mild for most' while the 'sunniest weather is expected to be in the south and east'.

While there are no weather warnings currently in place for the coming days, the Environmental Agency has issued two flood alerts, one for River Lugg south of Leominster, Herefordshire and another for Rivers Clyst and Culm in Devon and their tributaries.

On its website the agency said the River Lugg alert, in place due to 'persistent heavy rainfall over the weekend' said river levels are 'to remain high until Tuesday'.
The bodies of a mother and her two children have been found inside a burnt-out car in the southern Perth suburb of Coogee, with homicide detectives investigating the tragedy.

Police were called to John Graham Reserve around midday on Monday where the burnt out red hatchback was discovered in a beachside carpark.

It has been confirmed a boy and girl were found inside the car, along with their mother.

Shocked witnesses said they heard gunshots just before the car erupted into flames before learning about the horrific find.

Police were called to John Graham Reserve around midday on Monday where the burnt out vehicle was discovered and photographed covered in tarps

It has been confirmed a boy and girl were found inside the car, along with their mother

'I thought this car had caught on fire, I didnt know there was a body or someone was in there,' one person said.

Another bystander said: 'I saw really burning big flames and then suddenly came a big sound and flames became bigger also.'

A man who was in the area around the time of the incident said he heard gunfire.

'Four shots. Sounded like gunfire. Then there was a pause and then maybe another three shots after that... Then I started waiting [and heard] maybe another five, then the car started burning after,' he told 10 News.

Photos from the scene showed a large police presence, with the car covered in a tarp.

Arson squad and homicide detectives have been called in to investigate the incident

It is believed the victims were found in the back seat of the car and police are still in the process of identifying them and notifying family members, The West Australian reports.

The arson squad has also been called in to assist the investigation and the vehicle is expected to be towed away to undergo forensic analysis.

Detectives will explore several lines of inquiry, including whether the tragedy was a murder suicide, if a third party was involved, or if their deaths were the result of an accident.

Police have urged anyone with dashcam footage in the area between 11am and 12pm to contact Crime Stoppers.
Instagram was inaccessible in Russia on Monday after Moscow accused its parent company Meta of allowing calls for violence against Russians, including the military, on its platforms.

Instagram appeared on Monday on a list of 'restricted' online resources on a list published by Russia's media regulator Roskomnadzor and the site was not refreshing without a VPN.

The move comes after Facebook and Twitter were blocked in early March as part of sweeping efforts by Moscow to control information available to Russians about its military operation in Ukraine.

Meta Platforms said on Sunday it would further narrow its content moderation policy for Ukraine to prohibit calls for the death of Russian President Vladimir Putin or Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.

The company had last week said that a temporary change in its content policy, only applicable for Ukraine, was needed to let users voice opposition to Russia's attack. On the same day, Russia opened a criminal case against the social media firm.

But on Sunday, Meta clarified the relaxation 'is never to be interpreted as condoning violence against Russians in general'.

Facebook and Instagram are widely used in Russia, the latter being the most popular social media platform among young Russians. And for many small Russian businesses, Instagram was a key platform for advertising, processing sales and communicating with clients.

Meta Platforms said on Sunday it would further narrow its content moderation policy for Ukraine to prohibit calls for the death of Russian President Vladimir Putin or Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko (pictured holding talks on March 11)

Instagram was inaccessible in Russia on Monday after Moscow accused its parent company Meta of allowing calls for violence against Russians, including the military, on its platforms

'We are now narrowing the focus to make it explicitly clear in the guidance that it is never to be interpreted as condoning violence against Russians in general,' Meta global affairs President Nick Clegg wrote in a post on the company's internal platform on Sunday that was seen by Reuters.

'We also do not permit calls to assassinate a head of state...So, in order to remove any ambiguity about our stance, we are further narrowing our guidance to make explicit that we are not allowing calls for the death of a head of state on our platforms,' Clegg said.

'These are difficult decisions. Circumstances in Ukraine are fast moving. We try to think through all the consequences, and we keep our guidance under constant review because the context is always evolving,' Clegg said.

There would be no change to policies on hate speech as far as the Russian people are concerned, he said.

'Meta stands against Russophobia. We have no tolerance for calls for genocide, ethnic cleansing, or any kind of discrimination, harassment, or violence towards Russians on our platform,' he added.

Clegg wrote that Meta plans to refer the way in which it adapted the guidance it provides to content moderators to the independent oversight board, which was set up to help the platform answer some of the most difficult questions around freedom of expression.

Russia's communications regulator has imposed restrictions on Meta's Instagram, effective Monday. Meta had previously restricted access to Russian state media outlets RT and Sputnik on its platforms across the European Union.

Clegg wrote that Meta plans to refer the way in which it adapted the guidance it provides to content moderators to the independent oversight board, which was set up to help the platform answer some of the most difficult questions around freedom of expression

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

It comes after Facebook and was restricted in Russia on March 4 over alleged 'discrimination towards Russian media' - after the social media giant banned Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik in Europe and the UK.

Russia's media regulator Roskomnadzor announced at the time that Facebook would be banned, citing '26 instances of discrimination toward Russian media'.

Earlier the same day 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.

Elsewhere, Roskomnadzor 'restricted access' to social media network Twitter. 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.

Meanwhile YouTube had previously limited the ability for RT and other Russian channels to make money for advertisements that appear on videos and extended its sanctions to fully block such channels a week after Russia's invasion.

'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.

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.

YouTube and Facebook have banned Russian state-owned media outlets RT and Sputnik's channels across Europe (pictured on March 1)
Police have launched two kidnapping probes in the West Midlands after witnesses reported seeing women being abducted in two separate incidents an hour apart.

West Midlands received one report of a woman being dragged off the street and bundled into a BMW in West Bromwich.

Only an hour earlier, the police force had been contacted by a witness claiming to have seen a 'bare-chested man' driving a van with a screaming woman inside 20 miles away in Coventry.

The two incidents, which police believe to be unrelated, occurred on Sunday 13 March in the evening.

According to a witness, a woman was seen waiting by a bus stop in Hill Top, West Bromwich, when a man approached her.

Two separate possible kidnap incidents are being investigated by West Midlands Police, following a report of a woman being snatched off the street and bundled into a van in West Bromwich on Sunday March 13 and a woman screaming in a van driven by a 'bare-chested man' 20 miles away in Coventry the same evening

A 'distressed and shouting' woman was snatched off the street while waiting for a bus stop in Hill Top, West Bromwich, at 9.40pm on Sunday, March 13. Pictured: Google Maps image of a bus stop on Hill Top in West Bromwich

After exchanging words, he pulled her across the road and into a car believed to have been a BMW X5.

A witness reported the woman being in distress and shouting throughout the ordeal at around 9.40pm on Sunday, March 13.

Police urgently appealed for information and have serious concerns for the woman's well-being.

They are investigating the incident as a potential kidnap.

A spokesperson for West Midlands Police said: 'We've issued an urgent appeal for witnesses after a woman was dragged off the streets and into a car in West Bromwich this evening, March 13.

'It happened in Hill Top at around 9.40pm.

'It's understood a woman was waiting by a bus stop when she was approached by a man who, after exchanging words, pulled her across the road and into a vehicle being driven by another man.

'A witness has described the woman being in distress and shouting - and we have serious concerns for her well-being.

'We've launched an investigation to identify and find the woman, and trace the men and car involved.

'The man who approached the woman is described as white, bald and in his 40s.

'We believe the car was a grey BMW X5.

'We're appealing to anyone who was in the area at the time and may have witnessed what happened - or any motorists with dash-cam who may have caught the vehicle on video - to get in touch.

A woman was seen screaming inside a van driven by a 'bare-chested man' at the junction of Quinton Park and Blondvil Street in Cheylesmore at 8.40pm on Sunday night

Police do not believe there is a link between the two potential kidnaps, despite their having occurred within 20 miles of each other in the same evening. Pictured: Blondvil Street, Coventry

'Please call 999 and quote log 3602 from March 13.'

In a separate incident, police are investigating a potential kidnap in Coventry after receiving a report of a woman screaming from inside a white van as it was driven off by a bare-chested man.

It happened at the junction of Quinton Park and Blondvil Street in Cheylesmore at 8.40pm on Sunday night and officers are making local inquiries, as well as asking anybody who believes they might have seen or heard something to call 999, quoting log number 3459 from 13 March.

A Coventry Police spokesperson said: 'We're told a bare-chested man drove away in a white van and that a woman was screaming inside.

'We're making local enquiries. It's not clear what's happened and there could be an innocent explanation but our priority is making sure, if a woman was in the van, she's safe and well.'

The appeal was posted on the Coventry Police's official Twitter account @CoventryPolice at 12.37am during the early hours of this morning.

Police do not believe the two incidents are linked.
Cabinet minister Grant Shapps revealed his family plans to take in Ukrainian refugees today - as Downing Street suggested that Russian oligarchs' UK mansions could be used to shelter those fleeing Putin's troops.

The Transport Secretary said he would be among those registering on the Homes for Ukraine programme launched this morning to make it easier for displaced people to enter Britain.

But he is so far the only minister to join the programme. Downing Street today effectively ruled out the PM sheltering people in No10, while other ministers were tepid on the idea when asked.

Health Secretary Sajid Javid said he was 'starting to have a conversation' with his wife but said it 'will be hard to offer the time that I think a host would reasonably (be) expected to have available'. Levelling-Up Minister Michael Gove last night said he was 'exploring what I can do'.

Labour's London mayor Sadiq Khan also ruled it out on security as well as space grounds.

But former health secretary Matt Hancock said he would also be taking part, allowing refugees to stay in his constituency home in West Suffolk, saying: 'I urge everyone who is able to help to register and welcome a family in desperate need.'

Downing Street suggested it could look at altering the law to allow Russian-owned mansions to be used to house refugees. The Prime Minister's official spokesman said: 'Certainly that's something we are looking at.'

It came as riot police today stormed the 50million Belgravia 'crash pad' of a sanctioned Russian oligarch to seize it back from protesters who invaded the property to 'house Ukrainian refugees'.

At least five activists broke into 5 Belgrave Square just after midnight before hanging a Ukrainian flag and a banner reading, 'The property has been liberated', as they vowed to stay until Vladimir Putin ended his invasion.

This morning, Mr Shapps tweeted: 'We've spent the past few weeks as a family discussing the devastating situation in Ukraine, and so we intend to apply today to join other UK households in offering our home to provide refuge to Ukrainians until it is safe for them to return to their country.'

Mr Shapps lives in Hertfordshire with his wife Belinda. They have three children, a son Hadley and twins Tabytha and Noa.

The scheme to allow British families to take in Ukrainians fleeing the war starts today - but only allows them to take in refugees if they know their name.

The Transport Secretary said he would be among those registering on the Homes for Ukraine programme launched this morning to make it easier for displaced people to enter Britain.

Mr Shapps lives in Hertfordshire (pictured in July 2020) with his wife Belinda. They have three children, a son Hadley and twins Tabytha and Noa

Former health secretary Matt Hancock (pictured with partner Gina Coladangelo) said he would also be taking part, saying: 'I urge everyone who is able to help to register and welcome a family in desperate need.'

Riot police today stormed the 50million Belgravia 'crash pad' of a sanctioned Russian oligarch to seize it back from protesters who invaded the property to 'house Ukrainian refugees'

Health Secretary Sajid Javid said he was 'starting to have a conversation' with his wife but said it 'will be hard to offer the time that I think a host would reasonably (be) expected to have available'.

Levelling-Up Minister Michael Gove last night said he was 'exploring what I can do' in relation to helping those fleeing the warzone

Academy Award-nominated actor Benedict Cumberbatch said from the Baftas red carpet on Sunday that he hopes to take part in the scheme.

Ministers on taking in refugees: Transport Secretary Grant Shapps 'We've spent the past few weeks as a family discussing the devastating situation in Ukraine, and so we intend to apply today to join other UK households in offering our home to provide refuge to Ukrainians until it is safe for them to return to their country.' Prime Minister Boris Johnson 'There are specific challenges around security on housing people in No 10,' his spokesman said. 'Various ministers have been asked about this. Obviously it will come down to individual circumstances.' Health Secretary Sajid Javid 'I'm starting to have a conversation with my wife on that and I think many households - as you say, and I'm pleased you brought this up - are probably thinking about this across the country.' Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove 'I'm exploring what I can do. I know that there are others who have. Without going into my personal circumstances, there are a couple of things I need to sort out - but yes.' London Mayor Sadiq Khan 'Personally we won't be able to because of space and other security issues, but I admire the generosity of those Londoners, and we know our city is a very generous city.' Shadow business secretary Jonathan Reynolds 'I would love to help, without any kind of political consideration or grandstanding ... you will know we are a family of six here in Stalybridge, so we don't have a lot of room and that might not be as attractive as other places might be.' Advertisement

People keen to offer refugees shelter in the UK can register their interest in sponsoring Ukrainians through the Government's new humanitarian scheme from this morning.

But critics have attacked a 'bureaucratic hurdle' that means that families wanting to get involved with Homes for Ukraine have to know who they are taking in by name before they arrive.

Hosts will also have to undergo criminal records checks first, with Health Secretary Sajid Javid saying a 'basic level of security checks' would apply.

The Home Office has issued 4,000 visas so far under the Ukraine Family Scheme. According to data published on its website, 17,100 applications have been submitted and 10,600 appointments have been made at visa processing centres.

Downing Street this morning indicated that the Prime Minister will not be taking in any Ukrainian refugees in No10.

His spokesman said it was down to individual ministers whether they chose to give accommodation to a refugee.

'There are specific challenges around security on housing people in No 10,' the spokesman said.

'Various ministers have been asked about this. Obviously it will come down to individual circumstances. This is a significant commitment.'

Mr Javid said the Ukraine Family Scheme for refugees was 'being made easier and more straightforward' from Tuesday.

He told Times Radio hosts found face Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) checks, adding: 'I think that is right because you want to get the right balance between sort of speed and the people that we're trying to help are in a desperate situation, and you want to bring that help as quickly as possible, but also do some basic checks and I think what we have done here is the right balance.'

It came as charities warned that the new plan to house refugees with volunteer families could risk the safety of unaccompanied children if not done properly.

A spokesperson for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) said the charity did not want to see 'unnecessary barriers' built into the process, but 'it is vital child protection is built into every stage of the Government's and local authorities' response to this crisis'.

There have been also concerns about the tight timeframe the Government has provided, with the NSPCC in its statement calling it an 'ambitious turnaround'.

Riot police storm oligarch's 50m London home to evict squatters vowing to rehouse refugees Riot police today stormed the 50million Belgravia 'crash pad' of a sanctioned Russian oligarch to seize it back from protesters who invaded the property to 'house Ukrainian refugees'. At least five activists broke into 5 Belgrave Square just after midnight before hanging a Ukrainian flag and a banner reading, 'The property has been liberated', as they vowed to stay until Vladimir Putin ended his invasion. The mansion belongs to the family of oil tycoon Oleg Deripaska, one of seven oligarchs who were sanctioned by the UK government last week for being 'pro-Kremlin' and 'closely associated' with Putin. Deripaska has intimate links with the British establishment, with Peter Mandelson and George Osborne previously visiting his 80million superyacht in Corfu. At around midday, police officers wearing helmets and safety harnesses used a ladder and a JCB cherry picker to access the mansion's balcony, with two of the protesters trying to make a barricade out of potted plants. Officers then used a drill to break open the front door, while activists shouted, 'Go away you losers' and 'you fascist scumbags' from the balcony above. The squatters call themselves the London Mahknovists - after Nestor Makhno, who led an anarchist force that attempted to form a stateless society in Ukraine during the Russian Revolution of 1917-1923. At one point, two of the activists shared a drink from a single glass while one man sang: 'I've had the time of my life', from the Dirty Dancing soundtrack. Another shouted to people looking out of the window of the building next door: 'We are your new neighbours. We'll come around tomorrow with some brisket.' Advertisement

The charity said it was 'essential that the Government works closely with local authorities, the fostering community, charities and other key local partners to ensure this sponsorship scheme is ultimately safe; has appropriate levels of support for traumatised Ukrainian children who have fled bloodshed, and on-going assistance available for their sponsors'.

Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove last night said the process of matching Britons with people fleeing the conflict will take place from Friday, while he expects the first refugees to use the new route will make their way to the UK by the end of the week.

The Homes for Ukraine programme will allow individuals, charities, community groups and businesses to bring people escaping the war to safety - even if they have no ties to the UK.

Anyone with a room or home available can offer it to a Ukrainian individual or a family, though those offering will be vetted and Ukrainian applicants will undergo security checks.

Members of the public will be able to nominate a Ukrainian family to stay with them for at least six months.

Sponsored Ukrainians will be granted three years' leave to remain in the UK, with entitlement to work and access public services.

The exact detail is not known, but Mr Gove has said steps will be taken to ensure people who might be 'intent on exploitation' are prevented from 'abusing' the new scheme.

Britons offering accommodation to Ukrainian refugees will receive a 'thank you' payment of 350 per month.

Local authority areas will be entitled to more than 10,000 per Ukrainian refugee using the fresh route to the UK.

The Health Secretary said he was considering whether he was able to host Ukrainian refugees in his home.

Sajid Javid told BBC Breakfast: 'I'm starting to have a conversation with my wife on that and I think many households - as you say, and I'm pleased you brought this up - are probably thinking about this across the country.

'It's important that anyone that becomes a host that they can fulfil the obligations of a host, that they can spend time with these families and help, but there are many ways that we can all help and whatever I do at a personal level, I will most certainly be helping.'

Mr Gove has said he would personally take in a Ukrainian refugee and Academy Award-nominated actor Benedict Cumberbatch said from the Baftas red carpet on Sunday that he hopes to take part in the scheme.

But there has been criticism too, with the Refugee Council noting unlike the UK all EU countries have waived visa requirements for Ukrainians in the short term.

The Home Office has issued 4,000 visas so far under the Ukraine Family Scheme. According to data published on its website, 17,100 applications have been submitted and 10,600 appointments have been made at visa processing centres.

Council chief executive Enver Solomon told The Guardian the UK scheme was 'effectively a managed migration route, which is not suitable to use to respond to a humanitarian crisis'.

Mr Solomon also said the programme should only be one part of Britain's response to the crisis.

'But if it's going to work, it needs to be delivered with all the right resource and all the necessary entitlements for Ukrainians - so they're able to get all the healthcare they need, access housing benefit - because the reality is, the sponsor arrangement will be a short-term measure,' he said.

'This conflict doesn't look like it's going to end quickly. There needs to be a clear pathway to longer-term accommodations.'

London Mayor Sadiq Khan said the UK's response to the Ukraine refugee crisis has been 'embarrassing' compared to that of other countries.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan said the UK's response to the Ukraine refugee crisis has been 'embarrassing' compared to that of other countries.

Asked if he would be willing to host a refugee, Mr Khan told Good Morning Britain: 'Personally we won't be able to because of space and other security issues, but I admire the generosity of those Londoners, and we know our city is a very generous city.'

He said the visa system must be simplified as it is 'far too complicated for those from Ukraine to come to London, and our country'.

He added: 'Councils are ready to step up, hotels are ready to step up, businesses are ready to step up, Londoners are ready to step up.

'The issue now is the delay in the visas but also we need to make sure there's the right support, the wrap-around care.

'Many of these people will be traumatised, they need medical support. The children will need spaces in schools. We need to make sure English is available to those who can't speak English. We need to make sure they can work straight away, those with the skills.

'With the right support, with the visas being sorted out, we should be able to do at least what Germany and France and Italy and Spain and others have been doing. It's embarrassing when you compare what little we've done with most of what our neighbours have done.'
PC Andrew Harper's widow says she is determined to live life to the full and embrace happiness.

Lissie Harper, 30, said the brutal killing of her husband in Berkshire four weeks after their wedding would never leave her.

But she said was hoping one day to find happiness again after the tragedy.

Speaking on ITV's The Killing of PC Harper: A Widow's Fight for Justice tonight, she said: 'We had gone from the happiest day of our lives to the worst in such a short space of time.

'I don't think I will ever fully come to terms with Andrew's death, such an unexpected and shocking change to my life and the future we planned.

'But I plan to be grateful for every moment and live how Andrew would want me to  to be happy and listen to my heart.'

PC Harper's widow Lissie says she wants to 'listen to her heart' to embrace life again

PC Andrew Harper was killed in the line of duty just four weeks after their wedding

In November Mrs Harper met Boris Johnson at No 10 after ministers agreed to introduce Harper's Law, which will see mandatory life sentences for those who take the lives of police and other 999 workers, plus nurses and doctors.

Labour, which has opposed a series of the Government's law and order measures, confirmed it will support Harper's Law when it is voted on by Parliament.

The three killers of 28-year-old PC Harper escaped with sentences as low as 13 years  and smirked in the dock.

They were cleared of murdering the Thames Valley constable but convicted of his manslaughter, after dragging him behind their vehicle for more than a mile.

His legs became entangled in a strap attached to a Seat Toledo driven by Henry Long, then 19. After a trial, Long was sentenced to 16 years. He could be freed after serving two-thirds of the sentence  or ten years and eight months.

Passengers Jessie Cole and Albert Bowers, both then 18, will be entitled to automatic release after serving eight years and eight months of their 13-year terms.

Handout issued by Thames Valley Police of Henry Long (left), 19, and 18-year-olds Jessie Cole (centre) and Albert Bowers (right), who were jailed over the death of the police traffic officer

The Court of Appeal rejected a bid by the Attorney General to increase their sentences, and the three have received more than 700,000 in legal aid.

Broadly, the new law will introduce mandatory life sentences for cases where offenders are cleared of murdering an emergency services worker but are convicted of the lesser charge of manslaughter. Judges will be allowed to waive the minimum life term in only the most 'exceptional' cases where it would be 'unjust'.

The change will not be retrospective, meaning it will not affect PC Harper's killers.

Martin Hewitt, chairman of the National Police Chiefs' Council, said at the time of the new law: 'Police officers and staff... very often have to place themselves in harm's way and tragically, as we all saw with the loss of PC Andrew Harper, that can result in the ultimate sacrifice. Officers and staff deserve the full protection of the criminal justice system.'
Dozens of heroic Ukrainian residents brawled with Russian troops in Melitopol on Sunday, two days after their mayor was kidnapped by Moscow's forces.

Video posted online shows a Russian soldier forcefully shoving one protester back into the crowd of demonstrators chanting anti-Moscow slogans.

The soldier first pushes the protester back with his hand before using his weapon to scare off other demonstrators who step forward to attack the Russian.

Footage then appears to show the soldier shouting at the crowd, many of whom are waving the yellow and blue Ukrainian flag, to stay back while brandishing his weapon in their direction.

Melitopol residents had gathered for the third day yesterday after Mayor Ivan Fedorov was taken captive on Friday because 'he refused to cooperate with the enemy'.

Chilling CCTV footage showed the moment Fedorov had a plastic bag placed over his head as he was escorted out of a building and across Melitopol's Victory Square by 10 armed men. Russia has not commented on the fate of Mr Fedorov.

Ukrainian President Vlodymyr Zelensky has called for help from Germany and France to secure Fedorov's release. The kidnap was also condemned by EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell in a post on Twitter.

Dozens of heroic Ukrainian residents brawled with Russian troops in Melitopol on Sunday, two days after their mayor was kidnapped by Moscow's forces

Video posted online shows a Russian soldier forcefully shoving one protester back into the crowd of demonstrators chanting anti-Moscow slogans

Footage then appears to show the soldier shouting at the crowd, many of whom are waving the yellow and blue Ukrainian flag, to stay back while brandishing his weapon in their direction

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called Saturday on the leaders of France and Germany to help secure the release of the mayor of Melitopol.

'During the night and today we are talking to our partners about the situation with our mayor. Our demand is clear: he must be released immediately.

'I have already phoned [German] Chancellor Olaf Scholz. I have spoken to [French] President Emmanuel Macron... I will speak to all the necessary people to get our people released,' Zelensky said in a video released by the Ukrainian presidency.

A day later, Russian forces captured the mayor of Dniprorudne in the Zaporizhzhia Oblast region of southeast Ukraine.

Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba tweeted on Sunday that 'Russian war criminals' had 'abducted another democratically elected Ukrainian mayor, Yevhen Matveyev'.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has condemned both kidnappings in a post on Twitter.

'It is yet another attack on democratic institutions in Ukraine and an attempt to establish illegitimate alternative government structures in a sovereign country,' he added.

European Council President Charles Michel also condemned 'in the strongest terms Russia's indiscriminate bombing of civilians in Ukraine as well as Russia's kidnapping of the mayors of Melitopol and Dniprorudne and other Ukrainians.

'These kidnappings and other pressure on Ukrainian local authorities constitute another flagrant violation of international law,' he added.

Following Fedorov's capture on Friday, huge crowds ignored Vladimir Putin's demands to stay away as they gathered outside the building where the city chief was last seen being dragged away by Moscow's troops.

Other protestors were pictured enthusiastically waving placards calling for the mayor's release.

President Zelensky on Friday described Mr Fedorov's (pictured) alleged abduction as a 'crime' against 'democracy' as he said the acts of Russian invaders would be treated as 'terrorism'

Shocking video footage shows the moment Melitopol's mayor Ivan Fedorov was kidnapped by Russian troops after he 'refused to co-operate with the enemy'

Video footage, shared by officials, appeared to show crowds of defiant residents gathering near an occupied administration building to protest the alleged kidnapping of Mr Fedorov

Ukraine's premier heaped praise on the citizens of Melitopol who 'did not surrender to the invaders' and described Fedorov's alleged abduction as a 'crime' against 'democracy'.

He added that Fedorov's capture was an 'attempt to bring the city to its knees', called for the immediate release of the besieged settlement's mayor and said the acts of Russian invaders would be treated as 'terrorism'.

'The capture of the mayor of Melitopol is therefore a crime, not only against a particular person, against a particular community, and not only against Ukraine. It is a crime against democracy itself.

'The acts of the Russian invaders will be regarded like those of Islamic State terrorists,' he said.

Zelensky also called on Russian forces to heed the calls of residents in the occupied city of Melitopol who protested to demand that Ivan Fedorov be freed.

At a press conference, Zelensky said: 'The demand is simple - to release [Fedorov] from captivity immediately'.



'This is obviously a sign of weakness of the invaders... They have moved to a new stage of terror in which they are trying to physically eliminate representatives of legitimate local Ukrainian authorities,' he added.

Ukraine's ministry of foreign affairs described the alleged abduction as a war crime, adding: 'We call on the international community to respond immediately to the abduction of Ivan Fedorov and other civilians, and to increase pressure on Russia to end its barbaric war against the Ukrainian people.'

The prosecutor's office of the Luhansk People's Republic, a Moscow-backed rebel region in eastern Ukraine, said on its website there was a criminal case against Mr Fedorov.

The office accused him of 'terrorist activities' and of financing the nationalist militia Right Sector to 'commit terrorist crimes against Donbass civilians'.

Russian forces captured Melitopol, which has a population of 150,000, on February 26.
Advertisement

Russia deliberately blew up foreign fighters and arms shipments at a Ukrainian base close to the Polish border on Sunday and has vowed to carry out more strikes in a direct warning to the West.

Igor Konashenkov, a spokesman for Russia's ministry of defence, said the base at Yavoriv - 12 miles from NATO territory - was struck by 'long-range, high-precision' weapons because it was hosting 'foreign mercenaries and a large shipment of foreign weapons'.

He added: 'The destruction of foreign mercenaries who arrived on the territory of Ukraine will continue.'

Konashenkov said up to 180 people had been killed in the strike, though Ukraine says 35 people died and another 134 were wounded. Bombs fell on the base early Sunday morning, with witnesses saying many of the foreign recruits were sleeping when the strike was carried out. Foreigners are thought to be among the victims.

British military veterans at the base who survived the attack, described hearing the sound of incoming engines before several large blasts destroyed one building, damaged another, and sprayed shell fragments through the air. It is thought the base was hit by Russian cruise missiles as opposed to fighter jets.

It came just a day after Sergei Ryabkov, Russia's deputy foreign minister, warned that foreign aid shipments to Ukraine are considered to be legitimate targets. British intelligence said overnight that striking a base so close to Poland was 'deliberate and designed to illustrate willingness to escalate should the West not cease its supplies.'

Jake Sullivan, US national security adviser, warned Moscow that any strike on a NATO nation - including an accidental one - would prompt the alliance to respond with 'full force', meaning a direct confrontation between American and Russian forces that would likely spark World War Three.

Russian airstrikes caused heavy damage to a Ukrainian military base in Yavoriv, just 12 miles from the Polish border, on Sunday - killing at least 35 people and leaving 134 more wounded

Russia says the base (pictured) was targeted because it was hosting foreign 'mercenaries' and weapons shipments, adding that such raids would continue

Around 1,000 foreigners were at the base at the time it was hit, Ukraine said, and are expected to be among the victims - though no official word has been given yet (pictured, a man wounded at the base)

Yavoriv is located just 12 miles from Poland, a NATO member state, raising fears that the alliance could get sucked into the conflict which would see direct fighting between US and Russian troops

James, a former British artillery soldier identified only by his first name, told Buzzfeed of hearing the sound of incoming missiles as he was in bed, saying: 'I just lied there and thought: I'm going to die.'

'A couple of buildings got hit... One they decimated and there was one that was on fire. And then there was just frag[mentation] everywhere. And a crater... in the middle of camp.'

A Ukrainian officer said there were around 1,000 foreigners at the camp - officially known as the International Center for Peacekeeping and Security - at the time. British and US regular military personnel had previously been stationed there to train Ukrainian soldiers, but were not thought to be present yesterday.

Putin's invasion of Ukraine - intended to be a short and sharp 'military operation' to decapitate the leadership and enforce regime change - is now entering its 19th day as casualties continue to mount on both sides.

Russian airstrikes pounded the capital of Kyiv in the early hours, setting light to an apartment block in the suburb of Obolon that killed at least two people.

A new round of talks between Russian and Ukrainian officials raised hopes that progress would be made in evacuating civilians from besieged Ukrainian cities and getting emergency supplies to areas without enough food, water and medicine.

Air raid alerts sounded in cities and towns all around the country overnight, from near the Russian border in the east to the Carpathian Mountains in the west, as fighting continued on the outskirts of Kyiv which Putin's men are trying to seize - with limited success.

Ukrainian authorities said two people died and seven were injured after Russian forces struck an airplane factory in Kyiv, sparking a large fire. The Antonov factory is Ukraine's largest aircraft manufacturing plant and is best known for producing many of the world's biggest cargo planes.

Russian artillery fire also hit a nine-story apartment building in a northern district of the city, killing two more people, authorities said. Firefighters worked to rescue survivors, painstakingly carrying an injured woman on a stretcher away from the blackened and still smoking building.

A town councilor for Brovary, east of Kyiv, was killed in fighting there, officials said. Shells also fell on the Kyiv suburbs of Irpin, Bucha and Hostomel, which have seen some of the worst fighting in Russia's stalled attempt to take the capital, regional administration chief Oleksiy Kuleba said on Ukrainian television.

An apartment building in Kyiv burns in the early hours of Monday after being struck by Russian bombs as Kremlin forces continue to try and take the capital

An elderly woman is evacuated from a burning apartment building in Kyiv, after a Russian airstrike killed at least two people

An elderly man, wounded by flying debris as the result of a Russian airstrike, is evacuated from an apartment in Kyiv

Vitali Klitschko, former heavyweight boxer and mayor of Kyiv, inspects the damage to a bombed apartment building

A Ukrainian civilian looks out from the destroyed balcony of an apartment building in the north of Kyiv

A firefighter rescues a cat from a burning apartment building in Obolon, north of Kyiv, after it was shelled by Russia

The surrounded southern city of Mariupol, where the war has produced some of the greatest human suffering, remained cut off despite earlier talks on creating aid or evacuation convoys.

A pregnant woman who became a symbol of Ukraine's suffering when she was photographed being carried from a bombed maternity hospital in Mariupol has died along with her baby, the Associated Press has learned.

Images of the woman being rushed to an ambulance on a stretcher had circled the world, epitomizing the horror of an attack on humanity's most innocent.

Ukraine announced plans for new humanitarian aid and evacuation corridors on Monday, although ongoing shelling caused similar efforts to fail in the last week.

A fourth round of high-level discussions between Ukrainian and Russian officials was set for Monday, the first negotiations in a week, Ukrainian presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak said. The talks were to take place by video conference. The previous rounds were held face-to-face in Belarus.

Monday's meeting will be a 'hard discussion,' Podolyak wrote on Twitter. 'Although Russia realizes the nonsense of its aggressive actions, it still has a delusion that 19 days of violence against (Ukrainian) peaceful cities is the right strategy.'

President Volodymyr Zelensky's office reported Monday that airstrikes hit residential buildings near the important southern city of Mykolaiv, as well as in the eastern city of Kharkiv, and knocked out a television tower in the Rivne region in the northwest. Explosions rang out overnight around the Russian-occupied Black Sea port of Kherson.

Three airstrikes hit the northern city of Chernihiv overnight, and most of the town is without heat. Several areas haven't had electricity in days. Utility workers are trying to restore power but frequently come under shelling.

While Russia's military is bigger and better equipped than Ukraine's, Russian troops have faced stiffer than expected resistance, bolstered by Western weapons support that has frustrated Putin.

With their advance slowed in several areas, they have bombarded several cities with unrelenting shelling, hitting two dozen medical facilities and creating a series of humanitarian crises.

Ukraine said Moscow's troops failed to make major advances over the past 24 hours. The Russian Defense Ministry gave a different assessment, saying its forces had advanced 11 kilometers (7 miles) and reached five towns north of Mariupol.

U.S. President Joe Biden is sending his national security adviser to Rome to meet with a Chinese official over worries that Beijing is amplifying Russian disinformation and may help Mosc ow evade Western economic sanctions.

View of a crushed car amid the rubble as fire crews work after further attacks during Russia's invasion of Ukraine, in Kharkiv

People retrieve belongings from an apartment in a block which was destroyed by an artillery strike in Kyiv, Ukraine

A man places a Ukrainian flag on a burnt balcony of an apartment in a block which was destroyed by an artillery strike in Kyiv

A woman holding a small dog walks in front of an apartment in a block which was destroyed by an artillery strike in Kyiv

The U.N. has recorded at least 596 civilian deaths since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, though it believes the true toll is much higher. The Ukrainian prosecutor general's office said the death toll includes at least 85 children are among them. Millions more people have fled their homes, with more than 2.7 million crossing into Poland and other neighboring countries.

Since launching its invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, Moscow has waged a multi-pronged attack and encircled several cities. The fight for the southern city of Mariupol is crucial because its capture could help Russia establish a land corridor to Crimea, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said suffering in Mariupol, where missiles struck a maternity hospital Wednesday, was 'simply immense' and that hundreds of thousands of people faced extreme shortages of food, water and medicine.

'Dead bodies, of civilians and combatants, remain trapped under the rubble or lying in the open where they fell,' the Red Cross said in a statement. 'Life-changing injuries and chronic, debilitating conditions cannot be treated.'

Russia also expanded its assault on Sunday to western Ukraine, striking the International Center for Peacekeeping and Security near Yavoriv, a military base which has long been used to train Ukrainian soldiers, often with instructors from the United States and other NATO members. More than 30 Russian cruise missiles targeted the site. In addition to the 35 deaths, 134 people were wounded in the attack, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said.

The base is less than 25 kilometers (15 miles) from the Polish border and has hosted NATO training drills, making it a potent symbol of Russia's longstanding fears that the expansion of the 30-member Western military alliance to include former Soviet states threatens its security - something NATO denies.

NATO said Sunday that it currently does not have any personnel in Ukraine, though the United States has increased the number of U.S. troops deployed to NATO member Poland. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the West would respond if Russia's strikes travel outside Ukraine and hit any NATO members, even accidentally.

Ina Padi, a 40-year-old Ukrainian who crossed the border with her family, was taking shelter at a fire station in Wielkie Oczy, Poland, when she was awakened by blasts Sunday morning from across the border that shook her windows.

'I understood in that moment, even if we are free of it, (the war) is still coming after us,' she said.
An elderly woman was allegedly bashed and left unconscious on the street during an unprovoked attack.

The woman, aged in her 80s, was walking along Perth's Amelia Street heading to her hair appointment when she was allegedly attacked at 8.50am on Monday.

She suffered bruising and facial injuries.

On Tuesday police will allege to Perth Magistrate's Court that a 21-year-old woman bashed and left an elderly woman unconscious on Amelia Street in Balcatta on Monday

A 21-year-old woman was later arrested nearby.

Police allege the woman assaulted two police officers during her arrest.

She was charged with acts or omissions causing bodily harm and two counts of assaulting a public officer and is set to appear in Perth Magistrate's Court on Tuesday.
A terror suspect accused of murdering Conservative MP Sir David Amess will stand trial next Monday.

Ali Harbi Ali, 26, allegedly stabbed Sir David to death at a constituency surgery at Belfairs Methodist Church in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, on October 15 last year.

Sir David, who had represented the constituency of Southend West from May 1997, suffered multiple stab wounds and was pronounced dead at 1.10pm that day.

Ali, of Kentish Town, North West London, is also accused of preparing for terrorist acts between May 1, 2019 and September 28 last year.

Ali Harbi Ali, 25, is charged with murdering the Conservative MP for Southend West last year

Sir David Amess had been holding a constituency surgery in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, last year

Ali appears via videolink from HMP Belmarsh for an Old Bailey hearing on October 22 last year

Tom Little QC, prosecuting, said: 'As far as the Crown is concerned we are ready for the trial, having met the ambitious timetable on time.

'As far as we are concerned, subject to discussions with the defence, we do not understand there being any issues as to admissibility of evidence in the case.'

Tracy Ayling QC, for Ali, said: 'We respectfully agree with my lord that there is no preliminary matter which we will raise.'

Ali denies murder and engaging in conduct in preparation of terrorist acts, contrary to Section 5 of the Terrorism Act 2006. Mr Justice Sweeney set the trial for March 21.
A US fighter jet was nearly taken out by a balloon while in UK airspace, a report reveals.

The F-15 pilot had to 'aggressively' swing left to avoid the 'large balloon' which they spotted about 50ft away, while nearly four miles above ground.

The aviator reported the risk of collision had been 'high', according to the UK Airprox Board, which works to enhance air safety in Britain.

An F-15 (pictured in a stock photo) twin-engine, all-weather tactical US fighter jet was nearly taken out by a balloon while in UK airspace, a report reveals

The report on the incident, which happened off the coast of East Riding of Yorkshire on November 5 last year, states: 'The F15 pilot reports that they saw a large balloon bloom in the Head Up Display at 21,000ft.

'They aggressively banked to the left to avoid. They then made a call on the radio to avoid the location of the balloon.

'In the Board's opinion the reported altitude or description of the object were sufficient to indicate that it was probably a balloon.'

The twin-engine, all-weather tactical fighter jet has a wingspan of 42.8ft, is 63.8ft long and weighs 31,700 pounds, according to the US Air Force website.

The F-15 Eagle, which can reach speeds of 1,875 mph, is also a favourite across fiction.

A number of characters in the famous Transformer toy line can turn into the jet, and the F-15 features in the 1997 Harrison Ford flick, Air Force One.

The report added: 'The Board considered that the pilot's overall account of the incident portrayed a situation where safety had been much reduced below the norm to the extent that safety had not been assured.'

The F-15, pictured in a stock photo, which can reach speeds of 1,875 mph, is a favourite across fiction

UK Airprox Board gave the incident a risk rating of 'B'; its second most serious rating on a scale from A-E.

MailOnline has reached out to the Civil Aviation Authority for more information on the incident.

The US Airforce website says: 'The F-15 Eagle is an all-weather, extremely manoeuvrable, tactical fighter designed to permit the Air Force to gain and maintain air supremacy over the battlefield.'

Last week, it was reported that two F-15s from RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk were forced to make emergency landings at the base, the US Air Force confirmed.

Both planes were reportedly flying over Norfolk when they suffered hydraulic issues.

A US Air Force spokesman said 'hydraulic issues' caused the emergency landings and that 'both aircraft landed safely with aircrew on board unharmed'.
A high-voltage power line to Ukraine's Chernobyl nuclear power plant was damaged by Russian forces earlier today, according to grid operator Ukrenergo.

A loss of power at the plant has raised fears that radioactive material may begin to leak, as the cooling system which regulates nuclear waste is forced to run on a backup diesel generator.

The Russian attack on the power line comes just one day after electricity was restored to the nuclear plant following a previous bout of fighting which cut off the power supply.

Ukraine's Energy Minister German Gulashenko said yesterday: 'Ukrainian energy engineers, by risking their own health and lives, were able to avert the risk of a possible nuclear catastrophe that threatened the whole of Europe.'

But the plant has been plunged into jeopardy yet again, especially as exhausted staff at the power plant have reportedly stopped carrying out safety-related repairs.

Ukrenergo said it will attempt another repair, but declined to provide a timeframe for the operation.

A high-voltage power line to Ukraine's Chernobyl nuclear power plant (pictured) was damaged by Russian forces earlier today, according to grid operator Ukrenergo

Russian tanks and armoured vehicles are pictured parked just in front of the destroyed reactor in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone on the day the plant was taken over

Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24 and seized the defunct Chernobyl plant hours after crossing the border, but have refused to allow staff to leave and have forced them to work around the clock to maintain the site.

Ukrainian authorities told the UN's nuclear watchdog yesterday that Chernobyl's staff are utterly exhausted and are no longer able to make repairs.

'The Ukrainian regulator informed the IAEA that staff at (Chernobyl) were no longer carrying out repair and maintenance of safety-related equipment, in part due to their physical and psychological fatigue after working non-stop for nearly three weeks,' the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a statement.

Russian forces cut the power to the plant for the first time last week amid fighting, and the site was forced to run on emergency back-up generators that are powered by diesel, though the UN's atomic watchdog said there was 'no critical impact to safety' at the time.

The defunct Chernobyl nuclear power plant sits inside an exclusion zone that houses decommissioned reactors as well as radioactive waste facilities.

In 2016, the Chernobyl New Safe Confinement was put in place to cover the reactor. It was designed to prevent further release of radioactive contaminants for 100 years.

More than 2,000 staff still work at the plant as it requires constant management to prevent another nuclear disaster.

The IAEA has repeatedly urged Russian authorities to allow the 210 staff members who are being held captive at Chernobyl to leave, arguing that although radiation levels in the area are relatively low, it is necessary to ensure a 'safe rotation' of staff.

A sudden power surge at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant resulted in a massive reactor explosion, exposing the core and blanketing the western Soviet Union and Europe with radiation in 1986. Pictured, the Chernobyl plant three days after the explosion on April 29, 1986

More than 160,000 residents of Pripyat, a town neighbouring the power plant, were evacuated in the wake of the nuclear disaster in 1986. The site has been abandoned ever since and has since been overtaken by wildlife

IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi last week called on 'on the forces in effective control of the site to urgently facilitate the safe rotation of personnel there.'

He also repeated his offer to travel to Chernobyl or elsewhere to secure 'the commitment to the safety and security' of Ukraine's power plants from all parties, after the IAEA reported it was no longer receiving signals from safeguarding systems monitoring radiation levels at the plant.

'The Director General indicated that remote data transmission from safeguards monitoring systems installed at the Chernobyl NPP had been lost,' the IAEA said in a statement.

Russia took control of the defunct atomic plant on the first day of the invasion and later captured a second nuclear site - Zaporizhzhia - the biggest in Europe - on March 4, causing a fire that raised alarm in Europe over a possible nuclear catastrophe.

The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant was captured on March 4 after a fierce gun battle between Russian President Vladimir Putin's men and Ukrainian defenders

Staff at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant were captured on video pleading with Russian soldiers directing fire on the building before they overtook it.

The nuclear power plant, which creates around 20 percent of Ukraine's electricity, was captured after a fierce gun battle between Russian President Vladimir Putin's men and Ukrainian defenders that sparked a fire in a six-story training building.

Eventually, emergency crews were allowed to go in and douse the flames at the Zaporizhzhia plant before Russian troops moved in and occupied the site.

The United Nation's nuclear monitoring agency said that, fortunately, none of the site's six reactors had been directly damaged and radiation levels remained normal.

Russian engineers arrived at Zaporizhzhia last week to check radiation levels, which were reported as being stable.
An Iceland delivery driver who plotted to kill a Pakistani dissident in the Netherlands has been jailed for life.

Debt-ridden Muhammad Gohir Khan, 31, was offered 100,000 to murder blogger Waqass Goraya in Rotterdam.

Khan travelled to Rotterdam and bought a 19in Sebatier knife, but the target was not at home.

So instead he returned home to London on Eurostar where he was promptly held under anti-terrorism laws.

Mr Goraya believes Pakistani intelligence services were ultimately behind the plot as part of a wider crackdown on dissidents within Pakistan and abroad.

He was told he was on a kill list by the FBI in 2018 after he was publicly accused of insulting God and the Prophet.

Mr Goraya has frequently called Pakistan a terrorist state, made fun of the military and highlighted human rights abuses in online posts.

He was abducted and tortured whilst visiting Pakistan in January 2017 by suspected members of the intelligence services.

Muhammad Gohir Khan was hired to kill Ahmad Waqas Goraya for money in Netherlands

But his target Ahmad Waqas Goraya was not at home, so he turned round to travel to London

Mr Goraya said he was attacked in February 2020 and warned on Twitter that whatever the price, Pakistan was going to kill him.

Khan racked up debts of more than 200,000 whilst running a cargo company.

He was working as a 10 an hour Iceland delivery driver when he was of job in Europe by a contact in Pakistan.

Detectives later uncovered more than 2,000 WhatsApp messages between Khan and his co-conspirator, known as Mudz, discussing the contract killing

Mudz was also referred to as Ali Zed and Papa as they made plans for the murder.

They discussed the price of the killing, where the victim might be found and what he looked like.

Khan claimed he did not know what the job entailed, but used fishing analogies about sea fish and tune on WhatsApp.

But Khan discussed needing a tool or gun for the job, whilst at another point Muzzamil wrote about the target: Its not a SHARK... A little fish... Little knife / hook / worm with a string is enough.

Wannabe killer Muhammad Gohir Khan pictured here at a hotel in Rotterdam on his failed hit

Khan can be seen on CCTV footage leaving St Pancras station for Rotterdam after agreeing to the conspiracy to kill

Khan left London via Eurostar on 17 June and arrived in Paris, before catching a bus to Rotterdam.

He stayed in Rotterdam for another few days but was unable to find the victim, and travelled back to the UK.

Upon his arrival at St Pancras International on 23 June, he was greeted by police officers and stopped under anti-terror laws.

Border Officers in the Netherlands had found Khan to be nervous and passed this to colleagues at St Pancras.

Khan refused to provide officers with the PIN for his smartphone and he was arrested.

His phone was seized, an investigation launched and he was charged with plotting to kill Mr Goraya.

Khan was convicted of conspiracy to murder by a jury at Kingston Crown Court and sentenced to life with a minimum of 13 years.

Enquiries into establishing the identity and whereabouts of Mudz remain ongoing.

Detectives believe he may be a former business associate of Khan and goes by the name of Muzzamil.

Commander Richard Smith from the Mets Counter Terrorism Command, said: The dedication and diligence of counter-terrorism officers, Border Force colleagues, and our Dutch law enforcement counterparts led to justice being served in this chilling case of conspiracy to murder.

Khan fell foul of his own low cunning and artifice, and the investigation found he was willing to carry out a murder for financial gain, giving no regard for his intended victim.

We were able to stop Khan from carrying out this murderous plot through cooperation with UK Border Force and our Dutch colleagues in the Rotterdam Counter Terrorism, Extremism and Radicalization (CTER) Unit who worked tirelessly alongside their SO15 counterparts throughout the investigation.

Borders Officers at Rotterdam initially raised concerns over Khan as he was travelling back to the UK and following his arrest, and thanks to this vigilance and cooperation, our officers launched an investigation and were able to reveal his true intentions.
Advertisement

Ukraine war: The latest Russian forces renewed their bombardment of Ukrainian cities early Monday, with at least two killed in a strike on a Kyiv apartment block

Talks between Russia and Ukraine are to resume Monday after both sides hailed progress

Britain's defence ministry says Russia has established a naval blockade on the Black Sea coast

Nearly 2,200 residents of Ukraine's besieged city of Mariupol have been killed in Russian shelling

Volodymyr Zelensky warns NATO it is 'only a matter of time' before a member state is attacked, as he again called for a no-fly zone over Ukraine

Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov says he is in Ukraine's Hostomel, an airfield near Kyiv

Pope Francis issues a plea for an end to the 'massacre' in Ukraine

Fighting rages in the Kyiv suburbs as Russian forces advance ever closer to the capital. Only roads to the south remain open

A US journalist is shot dead in Irpin, medics and witnesses say, becoming the first foreign reporter killed since Russia's invasion

Electricity has been restored at Ukraine's retired Chernobyl nuclear power plant that was seized by Russian forces

Russian police detain more than 800 people across 37 cities for protesting Moscow's 'military operation'

Almost 2.7 million people have fled the war in Ukraine, more than 100,000 of them in the past 24 hours, the UN says. More than half have gone to Poland Advertisement

A growing bipartisan group of lawmakers are ramping up calls for the U.S. to work with Poland on a proposed deal to get MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine to help in their defense against Russia after the Pentagon poured cold water on the plan earlier this month.

Republican Senators Rob Portman of Ohio and Roger Wicker of Mississippi and Democratic Senators Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut traveled as a bipartisan delegation to Poland's eastern border to urge the administration to send aerial assistance to Ukraine.

Russia has warned that sending fighter jets or establishing a no-fly zone over Ukraine would mean the U.S. and other western nations are escalating and could warrant a larger response from Moscow.

'Vladimir Putin and the Russians seem to be saying everything is escalatory,' Portman told CNN's State of the Union on Sunday from Poland. 'And yet they're escalating every single day by coming into Ukraine with these weapons.'

'This is an illegal - this is a brutal - totally unprovoked attack,' he added in response to the Russian target on civilians in Ukraine. 'So, as they escalate, what the Ukrainian people are asking for is just the ability to defend themselves.'

Senator Lindsey Graham told Fox's Sunday Morning Futures that Putin is 'bluffing' that further U.S. involvement  like sending fighters jets  would lead to a third world war.

'It's not going to be WWIII. This is all a bluff. Putin knows that no one wins a nuclear exchange,' Graham told the program's host Maria Bartiromo on Sunday. 'If he ordered a preemptive strike on the United States, some general would shoot him in the head.'

Portman reiterated this assessment, claiming that since Putin already said other forms of U.S. military aid was escalatory, sending MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine would not risk intensifying the conflict.

Meanwhile, a Monday report revealed that Russia asked China for military support, including drones and economic assistance, two U.S. officials told CNN. One of the officials said that China did react to the request, but declined to detail the response.

Spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in the US Liu Pengyu said in a statement regarding the request: 'I've never heard of that.' Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Zhao Lijian on Monday accused the U.S. of 'peddling disinformation.'

He added that the U.S. is 'targeting China on the Ukraine issue with malicious intentions'.

News of Russia's request comes ahead of Biden's National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan's meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Yang Jiechi, in Rome on Monday.

The meeting is a follow-up to Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping's virtual discussion last November, according to National Security Council spokesperson Emily Horne.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are increasing calls for the U.S. to send MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine after a deal with Poland fell through last week. It comes as Russia continues its assault on their neighbors to the west. Pictured: An apartment building destroyed in a Russian attack in Kyiv, Ukraine on Monday, March 14, 2022

Putin's invasion of Ukraine - which he had anticipated would last only a few days with limited casualties - is now nearing its third week with heavy losses on both sides, as Moscow gives the first signs it could be willing to end the fighting by saying there has been 'substantial progress' in peace talks

A man walks near houses and cars reduced to rubble by Russian shelling in Kyiv, Ukraine on Monday, March 14

Pictured with Army airborne troops in Poland from L-R in center: Republican Senators Roger Wicker of Mississippi and Rob Portman of Ohio and Democratic Senators Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota. The four traveled as a bipartisan delegation to Poland's eastern border over the weekend to urge the Biden administration to send aerial assistance to Ukraine

Putin has warned any western action, like sending war planes to establishing a no-fly zone, would be considered an escalation and lead to further conflict. Senator Lindsey Graham said is just a 'bluff' and added: 'It's not going to be WWIII'

Sullivan told CNN's State of the Union on Sunday that the U.S. made clear to Beijing that there will 'absolutely be consequences' for any 'large-scale' help the Kremlin in a workaround of western sanctions.

Russia has not yet responded to reports of requesting military support.

Putin expanded the offensive to western Ukraine Sunday as forces fired missiles near the city of Lviv, hitting a large military base close to the Polish border. Local authorities say 35 people were killed and 134 injured at the military base.

Ukraine's Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov described it as a 'terrorist attack' on peace and security 'near the EU-NATO border.'

Also on Sunday Russian troops killed an American video journalist working at the Polish-Ukraine border to document the global refugee crisis for a documentary for Time Studios.

The senators witnessed refuges fleeing Ukraine to Poland. Pictured: Senator Klobuchar meets with a wheelchair-ridden grandmother by the roadside as she waited for her children and grandchildren who were further back in the line

A free clothing store is launched in the former Plaza shopping mall in Krakow, Poland. Refugees from Ukraine are seen picking out clothing for their children there on Monday, March 14, 2022

The bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus also urged the Biden administration to try to facilitate the fighter jet deal with Poland, along with sending Ukraine other air defense systems like drones and surface-to-air missiles.

The group of 58 members is split evenly with 29 Democrats and 29 Republicans.

'Russia's advantage in this domain could soon develop into air dominance if the Ukrainians do not receive necessary military aid,' the caucus members said in a Sunday statement.

'We commend the Polish government for taking proactive steps to deliver MiG-29 jets to the Ukrainian Air Force. We urge assistance to help facilitate this deal, commit to replenishing our allies' fleets with American-made aircraft and help advance the transfer of [other] aircraft to Ukraine as well.'

South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham said sending fighter jets to Ukraine would not spark World War III like the White House and some experts have warned

The four senators in Poland over the weekend met with the U.S. Ambassador to Poland Mark Brzezinski

Graham suggested Sunday that the Biden administration is dragging its feet on sending aircraft to Ukraine and taking other larger moves in Eastern Europe because it doesn't see an outcome where Putin loses.

'If we go all in to crush the Russian economy, if we help the Ukrainians with the weapons they need, we should be taking every Soviet bloc country with S-100, S-200, S-300, any aircraft missile systems and flood them into the Ukraine to regain control of Ukrainian skies,' he said.

'I think the Ukrainians can win but what breaks my heart is that it appears to me that Biden is more worried about Putin losing than Ukraine winning,' the South Carolina Republican lamented. 'And that is despicable and sad.'

'In my eyes, he's a menace to mankind. He's a war criminal. And he needs to be taken out by his own people,' Graham continued. 'If we spent more time thinking about how to help Ukraine win than worrying about how to keep Putin in power, we would be better off.'
Advertisement

The Mayors of New York City and Washington DC are advising homeless people to seek shelter in public facilities to avoid an on-the-run serial killer who they believe has shot at least five homeless men in the last month, killing two.

The serial killer most recently struck in the early hours of Saturday morning, killing one homeless man and shooting another in the arm within a period of just one hour.

On Sunday, a third New York City homeless man was found dead in Tribeca. It did not appear that he had been shot, but police are now working to determine his cause of death.

Earlier this month, three homeless men were shot and killed in separate attacks in Washington DC. Police now believe that the three DC men- and one New York City man who was shot on Saturday - were all targeted by the same person.

As NYPD officers work to catch the suspected serial killer, Mayor Eric Adams and DC Mayor Muriel Bowser are telling homeless people to seek shelter urgently.

DailyMail.com obtained an internal memo that the NYPD sent out to precincts alerting cops about the pre-dawn attacks on homeless men in Manhattan and Washington, D.C., noting that 'in all incidents, victims were sleeping in a public space during the first platoon.'

Officers were directed to immediately survey their patrol areas and engage with homeless individuals, advise them about the incidents and show them wanted flyers with pictures of the person of interest, while also checking on their well-being and offering shelter and other services.

'Members assigned to the Patrol Services Bureau precincts area to conduct frequent grid canvasses of their assigned sector or area of deployment, utilizing a systematic block by block method,' the memo adds. 'Special attention should be given to areas prone to encampment.'

In the last month, at least five homeless men have been shot - two of them fatally - and one has been found dead in what police fear may be a string of attacks by the same person

NYPD officers at the scene where another homeless person was found dead on Murray Street near Varick Street in New York on Sunday night

Detectives with the NYPD searching for a suspect who shot and killed a homeless man while he slept have now widened their investigation after a spread of eerily similar incidents in Washington D.C. The wanted suspect is pictured in the capital following the second attack

Police are looking for a man (pictured) who shot two homeless men in Manhattan within hours of one another, killing one

Washington DC Metro Police and the NYPD have issued a joint statement saying they believe the same suspect is behind multiple attacks on homeless men in both cities that have, so far, left three victims dead

In a joint statement on Sunday night, the pair said: 'Our communities in DC and New York City are heartbroken and disturbed by these heinous crimes in which an individual has been targeting some of our most vulnerable residents.

HOMELESS KILLINGS WASHINGTON DC March 3: Homeless man is shot in DC but survives March 8: Second homeless man shot in DC but survives March 9: Third homeless man found in DC. His body is found inside a tent, on fire. Autopsy confirms he was shot and stabbed NEW YORK CITY March 12, 4.30am: Homeless man shot in the arm on King Street, NYC. He woke up and confronted the shooter, asking him: 'What the hell are you doing?' March 12, 5pm: After receiving a 911 call, cops find homeless man dead inside his sleeping bag at 148 Lafayette Street. Surveillance footage shows he was shot nearly 12 hours earlier at 6am. Advertisement

'The two of us spoke about how our teams can coordinate and help one another, and we are calling on everyone in our cities to look at the images of the suspect and report any information, however small, that may be useful.

'The work to get this individual off our streets before he hurts or murders another individual is urgent.

'As our law enforcement agencies work quickly with federal partners to locate the suspect, we are also calling on unsheltered residents to seek shelter.'

Many asked where exactly they expect the homeless to go.

In New York City, there are estimated to be around 93,000 homeless people and around 1,618 in DC.

Cops in NYC have surveillance footage of a man, believed to be black and about 5-foot-4, fleeing the scene of his second shooting in the early hours of Saturday.

Meanwhile, cops in DC released images of an unmasked man in dark clothing fleeing the second of three attacks known to have been carried out in that city.

Between the two cities, there have been five shootings, including three homicides. All victims targeted were homeless, although police have yet to outline a motive to explain why the vulnerable men have been targeted.

This comes as the United States faces a huge homelessness crisis, with the pandemic causing a rise in unemployment and a surge in housing costs that left nearly 600,000 Americans with no home in 2020.

Between New York and Washington D.C., there have been a total of five shootings and two homicides.

The Washington shootings happened between March 3 and 8.

On March 3 at 4 a.m., a man was found after police say gunshots were heard on New York Avenue, Northeast. They went to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

It remains unclear how the third victim died. Police have yet to determine his cause of death

NYPD officers at the scene where another homeless person was found dead on Murray Street near Varick Street in New York, NY around 6 p.m. on March 13, 2022

At 1:21 a.m. on March 8, police responded to a shooting in H Street Northeast in DC where they found a man with non-life-threatening injuries having been shot.

The following day, on March 9, around 3 a.m., police in DC saw a fire happening in tent in which a homeless man had been sleeping. After the flames were extinguished investigators found a dead body.

Police believe the man had been murdered after an autopsy revealed gunshot and stab wounds.

The New York attacks began in the early hours of Saturday, when a homeless man was shot in the arm around 4:30 a.m. while asleep in a doorway on King Street in Manhattan.

When the suspect fired at him, he woke up and yelled: 'What the hell are you doing?' according to police.

But then the quick-thinking victim then pretended to call 911 as he put his fingers to his ear, despite not having a phone, the New York Daily News reported, fooling the gunman into thinking law enforcement were on their way.

The suspect then ran off into the night, only to find a second unsuspecting homeless man 90 minutes later. That victim, a 33 year-old man, was shot and killed in a SoHo doorway.

The NYPD is now offering a $10,000 reward to anyone who can help them catch the 'cold-blooded' killer who shot the two homeless men.

The second victim died after being shot in the head and neck at 6 a.m. on 148 Lafayette Street, opposite the luxury 11 Howard hotel. It took 12 hours for police to realize the man was was dead and recover his lifeless body - riddled with bullet holes - from the bright yellow sleeping bag he'd been in.

In the Lafayette Street killing, the suspect was filmed in chilling surveillance footage wearing a black ski mask and black clothing. He was seen prodding the helpless victim several times before looking around before firing his fatal shots. The man's age is not known but he was described by police as a Hispanic man.

In an urgent appeal yesterday, Mayor Eric Adams said: 'Homelessness turning into a homicide. We need to find this person and we need New Yorkers to help us. This is a cold blooded act of murder.'

Anyone with information in regard to this incident is asked to call the NYPD's Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782). The public can also submit their tips by logging onto the Crime Stoppers website.

Given the similarity in the perpetrator's methods, common circumstances involved in each shooting, profiles of the victims and recovered evidence, the NYPD, the MPDC and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) will jointly investigate these offenses.

Police Commissioner Keechant L. Sewell said: 'Our homeless population is one of our most vulnerable and an individual praying on them as they sleep is an exceptionally heinous crime. We will use every tool, every technique and every partner to bring the killer to justice.'

New York City is home to the largest number of homeless people in the U.S., with a surging population that is widely believed to be one contributor behind an uptick in crime over recent months.

Since 2007, overall homelessness in the U.S. has improved by 10 percent, from 647,000 to 580,000, in figures according to CNBC.

But certain subgroups such as individual homelessness have only seen a 1 percent decrease in figures, from 413,000 in 2007 to 409,000 by 2020.

In the first year of the pandemic the numbers got far worse for the unsheltered homeless, with a 30 percent increase from 173,000 in 2015 to 226,000 in 2020.

New York's spending in attempt to beat homelessness reached an all-time high in 2019 when they pledged $3.2billion, which was double their spend in 2014.

Metropolitan Police Chief Robert Contee said: 'From the first incident, the Metropolitan Police has spared no resource in our efforts to identify the suspect behind these cowardly acts. We are committed to sharing every investigative path, clue and piece of evidence with our law enforcement partners to bring this investigation to a swift conclusion and the individual behind these vicious crimes to justice.'

ATF Director Marvin Richardson added: 'Our Washington and New York City field offices have been working hand-in-hand with the DC metropolitan police and the New York Police Department from the outset. One of these shootings occurred within blocks of our Washington DC headquarters.

'We have used our advanced ATF systems to conduct real-time analysis backed up by our ATF National Lab in Maryland to expedite the evidence and assist in the investigations and Washington DC and New York City. Our three agencies are one team.'

Video shows the suspect walking up to the homeless man and kicking him several times before taking out his weapon

The suspect can be seen looking around to see if anyone was watching before carrying out the horrific act

After prodding the man with his foot several times, the suspect walked up to homeless man and shot him dead

'Homelessness turning into a homicide,' Mayor Eric Adams said at a press conference on Saturday night.

'I believe that's what makes this case so horrific, watching the video, watching the individual intentionally walk up to innocent people that are dealing with the challenges of homelessness - and it's quite possible that one of our citizens is still alive merely because he woke up,' Adams said.

'Homelessness turning into a homicide. We need to find this person and we need New Yorkers to help us,' Mayor Eric Adams said at a press conference on Saturday night.

'And I'm here today to send a very clear message, that all New Yorkers matter.'

'Two individuals were shot while sleeping on the streets, not committing a crime but sleeping on the streets,' said the mayor with an air of disbelief.

Chief Hank Saunter added: 'We're talking about two individuals that are homeless.

'The most vulnerable population in the city right now.'

The US has a system of temporary shelters that reaches homeless people in need of a place to stay, but many still sleep on sidewalks, subway trains, vehicles or parks, and other locations not designated for the purpose of housing people.

These people who are unsheltered are amongst the most vulnerable, since they are so exposed to the elements and stripped of common safety measures.

Those killed in the spree of unprovoked attacks on homeless people in New York and Washington in recent weeks were all unsheltered.

Police said that they will be out in droves trying to get men and women sleeping on the streets to head to a city shelter for their safety.

In a separate incident, two Museum of Modern Art employees were stabbed by a crazed former member yesterday.

The man had just had his membership revoked, according to the authorities. In what police believe was an attempt at retaliation, he went to the museum Sunday and stabbed two female employees.

The brutal killing comes as the city is reeling from a February crime wave that saw a nearly 60 percent spike in incidents from this same period last year.

The city's latest crime figures show 9,138 incidents in February, 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.

One of the men was shot at 54 King Street, pictured above (file photo). It is a quiet, residential street in SoHo

The second man was shot and killed at 148 Lafayette Street (file photo). The location is next door to the expensive 11 Howard hotel

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

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.

The crime wave comes during 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.

In response to the crime wave, Adams pleaded 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 February, Adams, who campaigned last year on getting people to get back to work amid the Covid pandemic and cleaning up the crime-ridden subway system, outlined his plans for city bail laws, which can allow for suspects to roam the streets 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.'

In January 2020, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, 580,466 people were reported to be experiencing homelessness in the US, with most of that figure made up of individuals, 70 percent, and the rest people living in families with children.

For Washington DC this time last year, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development issued a report which found that Washington state experienced one of the largest estimated increases in homelessness between 2019 and 2020 relative to other states.

The state reported an increase in homelessness of 6.2 percent, which equates to 1,346 people, between 2019 and 2020.

This is the third largest increase among all US States, as reported by The Seattle Times.

Around 20% of all sheltered homeless people in the US are living in New York City, which is the highest rate across the US.

Across the US, the rate of homeless people is 17 per 10,000, but in New York City, Washington DC and Boston, the homeless rate is well above 100 per 10,000 people.

Washington reported a 20 percent increase in family homelessness between 2019 and 2020 which was one of the biggest increases nationwide.

In October 2021, Seattle committed $48 million to build 165 apartments to house some of it's 12,000 homeless people in October.

Seattle's homeless population had grown form around 11,000 in 2020 to 12,000 in 2021, when the city built the new housing units.

The same was seen in San Francisco, which has spent $667 million on its Department of Homeless and Supportive Housing. The city recorded about 8,000 homeless people in 2021, a 17 per cent increase from the last count in 2017.

In Austin, Texas, the city allocated $68 million last year for homelessness assistance, Austin saw its homeless population grow from 3,024 in 2019 to nearly 3,200 in 2020.
A former Bank of England chief has heaped pressure on Rishi Sunak to act on the cost of living crisis ahead of his Spring Statement.

Charles Bean, who also served on the Treasury watchdog until recently, suggested going ahead with the national insurance hike next month is 'political' and there would be 'no problem' holding off for another year.

The comments came as a poll found Britons oppose the tax rise, and also want the Chancellor to axe VAT on soaring energy bills.

Downing Street insists that the NI increase will go ahead to fund the NHS and social care reforms after Covid.

Speaking to the BBC, Sir Charles - who was deputy governor at the Bank - said the government should be worried about 'sustained' deficits rather than short-term measures.

'There is no problem in the UK borrowing several billion pounds for one extra year. What you can't run is sustained large deficits, but the pace at which you close a deficit is basically a political judgement,' he said.

Rishi Sunak is under pressure to act on the cost of living crisis in his Spring Statement next week

A Redfield & Wilton Strategies poll found Britons oppose the tax rise, and also want the Chancellor to axe VAT on soaring energy bills

Charles Bean, who also served on the Treasury watchdog until recently, suggested going ahead with the national insurance hike next month is 'political' and there would be 'no problem' holding off for another year

NHS and care costs 'could rise 150billion in the next decade' The government's health and social care spending could soar by 150billion over the next decade, a former Bank of England chief has warned. Charles Bean raised the prospect of another massive rise in costs in an interview with the BBC. The Department of Health's budget is already around 190billion a year, with more funding coming from other parts of Whitehall. Sir Charles said: 'It's not just people living longer but also technological advances in the way the health sector and the demand is such that if those treatments are available to keep people alive longer, then people will want them. 'And it's reasonable to think that the rising trend in health and social care spending and pensions will be adding something like another 75 billion spending over the next five years, 150billion, potentially over the next decade.' Advertisement

Mr Sunak is expected to hold off on major action to ease the impact of soaring energy bills in his Spring statement next week.

But a Redfield & Wilton Strategies poll found nearly half the public believe their financial situation has deteriorated over the past year.

Some 72 per cent would support removing the 5 per cent VAT rate on energy bills - which is expected to bring in significantly more revenue for the government as the overall price increases.

The NI increase was opposed by 48 per cent - including 20 per cent strongly opposed - while 29 per cent supported it.

The Chancellor is understood to be resisting laying out another big package of help in his Spring Statement - with aides stressing that costs could change a lot by October when the price cap will change again.

Instead there is speculation he could focus on support for universal credit, while Boris Johnson could lay out a wider energy strategy as soon as this week.

The public finances have been hammered by Covid, and so far Mr Sunak has announced council tax rebates for many properties and a 200 loan to cut energy bills this Autumn.

However, the repayments are being added to bills over the following five years.

And shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves said that the planned national insurance rise next month will 'demolish any benefit' from the bailout by costing the average worker 342 next year.

In contrast to the limited response in the UK, France and Ireland are among the countries that have brought in a temporary cut in fuel duty to save people money.

Meanwhile, Mr Johnson could visit Saudi Arabia this week pleading for action to help keep oil prices down amid the Ukraine crisis.

Rumours are swirling that the PM could head for the Kingdom in the coming days for a meeting with Mohammed bin Salman.

The crown prince is said to have snubbed a request from Joe Biden to have a call on the issue of oil supply, as the West tries to wean itself off Russian fossil fuels.

There is speculation that Boris Johnson (left) could head for Saudi Arabia in the coming days for a meeting with Mohammed bin Salman (right)

But Mr Johnson is believed to have a better relationship with bin Salman than the US President, whose links have been strained since the killing of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The PM and crown prince discussed 'energy cooperation' on a call last month.

Any diplomatic mission by Mr Johnson would be highly controversial, especially as the Kingdom executed 81 people yesterday convicted of crimes ranging from killings to belonging to militant groups.

No10 stressed that no travel plans have been confirmed for the PM this week.

However, increase in Saudi production or releasing reserves could have a significant impact in keeping fuel prices down in the UK, which have been spiking amid the standoff with Russia.
A California woman who had gone missing while on a hiking trip has been discovered dead from a suspected suicide, according to her family.

The Placer County Sheriff's Office stated that the body of 26-year-old Kerina Blue was found on Sunday in the vicinity of Green Valley Trail near the small town of Alta, which is located about 60 miles northeast of Sacramento.

In the early hours of Saturday morning, the sheriff's office received a call from the Sacramento Police Department concerning Blue, who had been reported missing by her parents. She was described as being at-risk because of an unspecified medical condition.

The body of California hiker Kerina Blue, 26, was discovered by searchers on Sunday near Alta, California

After Blue's body was recovered, her family released a statement, revealing that she had been struggling with depression and likely took her own life

Dozens of searchers, K-9 units and helicopters spent more than a day scouring the rugged, steep and densely forested terrain

This map shows the timeline and geography of Kerine Blue's disappearance and death

Blue's phone last pinged on Friday afternoon near Green Valley Trail outside Alta

Blue's last known location was Green Valley Trail, a popular hiking spot where the terrain is rugged, steep and densely forested.

Blue's older sister wrote on her Instagram page that according to the authorities, the missing woman's phone last pinged at 2:30pm on Friday five miles northeast of Emigrant Gap, off of I-80.

'Kerina wasnt home to feed her cat and does not usually hike, especially not alone,' the sister wrote on social media.

Dozens of searchers, K-9 units and helicopters spent the day on Saturday looking for the missing woman before the search was suspended for the night.

The search resumed on Sunday morning, and by the afternoon Blue's body had been recovered near the Green Valley Trail. Deputies said that no foul play was suspected.

Blue's sister (pictured together, left) wrote on social media that the woman does not usually hike, especially not alone

Blue's family on Sunday released a statement on the sister's Instagram account, revealing that the 26-year-old had been struggling with mental health issues from the time she was a child, and that she likely took her own life.

'Our family is devastated to report we lost our beautiful Kerina this weekend,' the message read in part. 'Thank you for all of the outpouring of love and support. While there were indications if was self harm, we do not yet know the exact cause of death. We do know she has struggled with depression and mental illness for the past 14 years.'

For confidential support call the National Suicide Prevention Line on 1-800-273-8255


Thomas Eugene Colucci called officers on Friday, telling them he was an experienced drug user, before handing them his address and asking them to test the meth he had just bought

A Florida man called cops to come and test his meth after fearing he had been duped into buying bath salts - only for officers to charge him for possession when they found it was authentic.

The Hernando County Sheriffs Office got a call on Friday at around 7pm from Thomas Eugene Colucci in Mariner Boulevard, Spring Hill, who told deputies he had recently purchased methamphetamine from a man he met in a bar.

Colucci told officers over the phone he was an experienced drug user, saying he 'knew what it should feel like' - having tried some and thinking it was actually bath salts - before handing them his address and asking them to come over.

When the officers arrived, Colucci produced two small baggies, each containing a white crystal-like substance, and handed them over to the deputy.

The deputy tested it and found that it was, in fact, meth.

The cops then arrested him for possession of the drug along with two counts of drug paraphernalia, with a bond set at $7,000.

'If you, or someone you know, have doubts about the authenticity of any illegal narcotics you have on-hand or have obtained from another person, the Hernando County Sheriffs Office is pleased to provide this service, FREE of charge,' the Sheriffs Office said on Friday.

Before the arrest, Colucci told officers he wanted his methamphetamine tested, as he did not want other people to purchase 'fake' meth from the same drug dealer.

'Evidently, the substance Colucci had recently purchased did not provide the expected sensation, hence the call to 9-1-1,' said the Sheriffs Office.

Colucci wanted deputies to 'put the person in trouble' for selling dangerous drugs, but he was unable to provide a name or any contact info for the person who sold them to him.

After being placed under arrest, Colucci told the deputies he was having some chest pains, said officers.

Deputies then drove him to a local hospital, where he was medically cleared by a physician.

After the short detour, police turned then turned to the Hernando County Detention Center, and charged the Florida man.

A street view shows Mariner Boulevard, Spring Hill, where Colucci was arrested after asking police to test his drugs, claiming he had been sold bath salts

Users commenting under the Hernando County Sheriffs online post shared their own similar experiences.

'I worked in a hospital lab, a guy came in and asked us to test the contents he just purchased in the baggie he was carrying,' said one person.

'I referred him to the PD's forensic lab. It happens.'

Another commenter said: 'I was a 911 dispatcher for 5.5 years, and had people call in reporting their drugs were used by a friend, their drugs were fake, their drugs were stolen, their hooker didn't provide the right "services" or tried to over charge them, etc.

'People under the influence don't make the smartest choices.'
A woman claims she stabbed her husband in the neck, slit his throat and buried his body in a compost heap because she 'just snapped'.

Rena Joyce killed her partner Martin Orme Berry, 55, at his home on Main North Rd in Christchurch, New Zealand, on or around December 29, 2020.

She denied there was murderous intent and had attacked him during an argument, claiming she didn't mean to kill him.

But on Monday a High Court jury trial found her guilty of murder, The New Zealand Herald reported.

On Monday a High Court jury trial found Rena Joyce guilty of murdering her partner Martin Orme Berry, 55

It is unknown whether Mr Berry died inside the home or while buried in the compost.

Two weeks after killing Mr Berry, Joyce turned herself into police and during a two-hour long interview she confessed to police that she had 'manslaughtered' her partner.

Several of Mr Berry and Joyce's friends and family members described the couple's relationship as troubled and the court heard Joyce had previously spent time in prison for assaults against Mr Berry.

Mr Berry had a protection order against Joyce in place at the time of his death.

The jury deliberated their verdict for just under five hours before finding Joyce guilty of murder.

Police found Mr Berry's body buried in his own compost heap roughly two weeks after the murder

During the verdict Joyce reportedly showed no emotion while Mr Berry's family cried.

The family issued a statement on Tuesday evening thanking everyone involved in the case.

'We would just like to thank everyone that has been involved with the case and the many hours put in to reach the verdict today,' they said.

'No one has the right to take a son, brother, brother-in-law, uncle or friend and Martin was that and much much more to us all.

'As a family, we are pleased that Martin's voice has been heard and that the right conclusion to this sad occasion is over.'

Joyce's prior criminal history includes an incident where she attempted to set fire to her neighbour's boat.

Joyce will remain in custody until her sentencing, which is scheduled to take place in the High Court at Christchurch in April.
A driver who knocked down a schoolgirl while uninsured hoodwinked nine police officers at the scene of the crash that he was his own father  despite being 25 years younger.

Blake Woodford, 28, hit the 12-year-old while driving his fathers Peugeot 206 with only a provisional licence on July 9 last year.

He immediately called 999 and remained at the scene in Broadstairs, Kent until paramedics and police arrived.

But because he was uninsured, when questioned, he pretended to be his father, giving his name as Aaron Woodford and a date of birth in 1968.

It was only when the schoolgirls brother turned detective and scoured social media that Woodfords true identity was unmasked.

The uninsured driver was found hiding in the attic and arrested when officers visited his home three weeks later.

Blake Woodford hit the 12-year-old while driving his fathers Peugeot 206 with only a provisional licence on July 9 last year. But because he was uninsured, when questioned, the 28-year-old pretended to be his 53-year-old father

Woodford avoided jail after admitting perverting the course of justice at Canterbury Crown Court School.

The young girl, who had stepped out in front of the car and hit the windscreen, only suffered minor injuries.

Nicholas Jones, prosecuting, said Woodford spun deliberate lies to avoid any legal or financial penalties.

Judge Catherine Brown told Woodford his lies were not brought to light because he regretted his actions, but thanks to the diligence of the girls brother.

She said: You gave false details, your fathers details, and you did so intending to pervert the course of justice.

Woodford admitted perverting the course of justice at Canterbury Crown Court School

Perverting the course of justice attracts a deterrent sentence of immediate custody, unless exceptional circumstances are present.

Samantha Wright, representing Woodford, argued his case warranted a suspended sentence because he cares for unwell and vulnerable family members.

He made an extremely stupid decision to give the wrong name, but he did what he should have done, by helping that young girl, she said.

Woodford, of Margate, Kent, pleaded guilty to perverting the course of justice, driving without insurance and driving without a licence.

He was given a four-month prison sentence suspended for 10 months, 10 rehabilitation activity requirement days and 120 hours of unpaid work.

Woodford, who was supported by family in the public gallery, was also ordered to pay 425 court costs, fined 400 and banned from driving for six months.
This is the incredible moment a whole school greeted Ukrainian refugee children with cheers as they arrived for their first day after fleeing the Russian invasion.

More than 200 students and teachers gathered at the front entrance of the Don Milani institute in Naples, Italy to greet the two children, named locally as siblings Dmitri, 10, and Victoria, eight.

The crowd erupted in cheers as the pair walked through the front doors and continued to clap while waving yellow and blue Ukrainian national flags.

The children were then introduced to what appeared to be student chaperones to guide them through their first day at th school in the Naples district of Pomigliano d'Arco.

More than 2.2million Ukrainians have fled their homeland since Moscow launched an all out invasion of the country on February 24, with that figure expected to top 4million in the coming days.

This is the incredible moment a whole school greeted Ukrainian refugee students named locally as siblings Dmitri, 10, and Victoria, eight, with cheers as they arrived for their first day after fleeing the Russian invasion

The children were then introduced to what appeared to be student chaperones to guide them through their first day at the Italian school in the Naples district of Pomigliano d'Arco

Students and teachers in Italy gathered at the front entrance of the Don Milani institute in Naples to greet the two children. The crowd erupted in cheers and applause as the pair walked through the front doors and continued to clap for several moments while waving yellow and blue Ukrainian national flags

Footage, filmed last week, shows at least 200 students and teachers taking part in the warm welcome.

Last week, another Italian school threw a birthday party for two Ukrainian orphans who were forced to flee their homes.

The pair were welcomed by local Mayor Gianfranco Tedeschi at Magicabula centre in Cerchio, southern Italy.

Some 35,000 Ukrainians refugees who fled war in their homeland have entered Italy, most of them through its northeastern border with Slovenia.

Yesterday the interior ministry tweeted that '34,851 refugees have entered Italy from the beginning of the conflict to date: 17,685 women, 3,040 men and 14,126 minors'.

The ministry said last week it had earmarked more than 280 properties seized from the mafia to house Ukrainian refugees over the long term.

Meanwhile yesterday a Ukrainian woman died after a bus carrying more than 50 refugees fleeing the war overturned on the A14 highway near Forli', a town in the Emilia-Romagna region in northeastern Italy.

News site Cronache Della Campania said firefighters were extracting the young woman's body after the incident, which happened just before 7am on Sunday.

The Interior Ministry said the passengers, several of whom were injured, were taken to a nearby police barracks for initial assistance, and would later resume their journey.

Another two million people are set to flee Ukraine (pictured on the Romanian border) within days  raising pressure on Britain to welcome more refugees

The unprecedented scale of the exodus leaves Europe facing the largest crisis of its kind since the end of the Second World War, Western officials said last night (pictured, an emergency worker holds a Ukrainian child in Romania)

Many of those who have already left are suffering from frostbite after travelling through snow and ice to escape (pictured, people rush to catch a train leaving the Ukrainian city of Odessa)

Kharkiv residents rest as they shelter from Russian shelling in a metro station in the city centre on Thursday, March 10

Refugees fleeing the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine wait for hours to board a train to Poland outside the train station in Lviv on Tuesday, March 8

As the conflict continues to escalate, the UK has been criticised for its painfully slow response in the face of the biggest refugee crisis in Europe since the Second World War with around 2.2 million having fled the country.

Emmanuel Macron this week condemned the UK for not living up to 'grand statements' it made on helping Ukrainian refugees and claimed that Britain's visa policy made it harder for those fleeing war.

Speaking at the end of an EU summit in Versailles on Friday, Mr Macron reportedly criticised Britain's visa policy which required applicants to make them in person in Brussels or Paris.

On Thursday, Ms Patel announced that from Tuesday people will be able to apply online for a visa and will no longer have to go to a processing centre to give their biometrics.

However the British Red Cross said the quickest way of fixing the problem would be to remove the requirement for a visa, while the Refugee Council said Ms Patel's announcement 'does not go anywhere near far enough'.

On Friday, Britain's Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi declared Britain was ready to take 100,000 Ukrainian children and educate them in UK schools.

Mr Zahawi, who fled to Britain as an Iraqi child refugee to escape the Saddam Hussain regime, plans to increase the capacity of schools to help displaced youngsters continue their learning online and in the country's classrooms.

Women and children who have fled war-torn Ukraine bide time in a shelter set up in a primary school in Prezemysl, Poland, not far from the Ukrainian border

A man who fled the war in Ukraine takes a rest at the train station in Krakow, Poland, on Sunday, March 13

Ukrainians who fled their homeland following Russia's invasion board a train from Krakow, Poland, to Berlin, Germany on Sunday, March 13

People stand next to an evacuation bus bound for the Moldovan border put on by the Red Cross Ukraine from Odessa, in the south of the country

A mother reads a story to her daughter in a refugee centre in Korczowa, Poland, on Sunday, March 13, after fleeing Ukraine
This is the moment a Russian airline pilot announces over the loudspeaker that the war in Ukraine is 'a crime' to a plane full of passengers on a flight to Turkey.

The pilot, who has not yet been named, was flying for airline Pobeda, a subsidiary of Russian airline Aeroflot which recently suspended all its flights to the EU and the UK after the European bloc placed a blanket ban on Russian-owned aircraft entering its airspace.

After making his landing in Antalya, Turkey, the captain left the cockpit and made his way into the passenger cabin, where he assumed control of the loudspeaker and gave a very clear message.

'Dear customers, this is your captain speaking. Just speaking on behalf of myself and not as a representative of the airline - I think the war in Ukraine is a crime.

'We should not continue this war, we must stop it immediately.

'Don't support this bloodshed. Thank you for your attention.'

The clip has gone viral on social media, where it has been reposted by several journalists, war correspondents and government officials in Ukraine.

The pilot, who has not yet been named, assumed control of the loudspeaker and gave a very clear message: 'Dear customers, this is your captain speaking. Just speaking on behalf of myself and not as a representative of the airline - I think the war in Ukraine is a crime'. The clip has gone viral on social media, where it has been reposted by several journalists, war correspondents and government officials in Ukraine

The war in Ukraine has quickly turned into a humanitarian disaster, with the UN announcing early this morning that more than 2.8 million refugees have now fled the country (damage in Kyiv March 14)

The pilot was flying for airline Pobeda, a subsidiary of Russian airline Aeroflot which recently suspended all its flights to the EU and the UK after the European bloc placed a blanket ban on Russian-owned aircraft entering its airspace

The pilot first thanked passengers for flying with Pobeda airlines, and welcomed them to Antalya.

But his anti-war message, given first in Russian and then in English, was well received.

Passengers can be heard clapping in the background as the pilot appealed for an end to the war in Ukraine.

Ukrainian diplomat Olexander Scherba was among the government officials to repost the pilot's message, tweeting: 'This brave Russian pilot makes a statement.'

But many social media users expressed concern for the pilot, whose outspoken stance on the invasion of Ukraine will likely see him face harsh repercussions should he return to Russia.

The war in Ukraine has quickly turned into a humanitarian disaster, with the UN announcing early this morning that more than 2.8 million refugees have now fled the country.

EU officials have said 5 million people in total may end up fleeing the conflict in the coming weeks and months, while others have put the figure higher as a result of what has become Europe's fastest growing refugee crisis since World War Two.

Millions of people have also been displaced inside Ukraine, with many citizens having evacuated only as far as the quieter western regions, including to cities like Lviv.

The civilian death toll sits at 549 as of Monday morning according to the UN - though the true figure is thought to be much higher.

The war in Ukraine has quickly turned into a humanitarian disaster, with the UN announcing early this morning that more than 2.8 million refugees have now fled the country (Ukrainian refugees pictured in a school near the Polish-Ukrainian border)

EU officials have said 5 million people in total may end up fleeing the conflict in the coming weeks and months, while others have put the figure higher as a result of what has become Europe's fastest growing refugee crisis since World War Two (destruction in Kyiv pictured)

In Russia meanwhile, the Kremlin has cracked down on free speech and the sharing of information relating to the war.

The overwhelming majority of Russia's top news websites and broadcast channels are already state-owned and serve to parrot the Kremlin's perspective of domestic and international events.

But in the wake of invasion Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has launched an all-out propaganda offensive, placing restrictions on Facebook and Twitter so severe that the social media networks are effectively unreachable on the Russian internet.

On Friday, the Kremlin announced it would begin to restrict access to Instagram - one of Russia's preferred social media sites and a vital source of income for thousands of individuals and businesses.

Putin has also blocked access to both Western media and independent news sites in the country, and even brought in a new law which criminalised the spreading of 'fake news' - that is, information which deviates from the Kremlin's propaganda drive.
A pair of art-loving elderly women were identified by police in Washington, D.C., as the two victims who died when an elderly man lost control of his gray SUV, went off the road and plowed into an outdoor dining area on Friday.

Terese Dudnick Taffer, 73, and Jane Bloom, 76, were killed and nine others were injured when the driver, who has still not been named, slammed into the patio area of the Parthenon Restaurant and Chevy Chase Lounge on Connecticut Avenue NW in the Chevy Chase neighborhood just past noon.

Before the tragic crash, Taffer, an educator involved in her local art community, and Bloom, who worked as an advocate for refugees and migrants in America, were enjoying a sunny afternoon on the first day the restaurant opened its outdoor dining section.

Both women lived in D.C.'s Cleveland Park neighborhood and were described by family and friends as artists and community leaders who loved people and new experiences.

The day of the crash, Bloom was having lunch with a group of artists she met online during the pandemic, her son Joshua, of Berkeley, California, told the Washington Post. While Taffer was also involved in the local art scene, it is unclear if they were at the same table.

Terese Dudnick Taffer, 73, and Jane Bloom, 76, were identified by police as the two victims who died when an elderly man crashed his SUV into an outdoor dining area at a restaurant in Washington, D.C.

Nine others were injured in when the still-unidentified driver slammed into the patio area of the Parthenon Restaurant and Chevy Chase Lounge on Connecticut Avenue NW

Three of the nine other victims were listed in critical condition on Saturday, another three were hospitalized with non-life threatening injuries and three others were treated at the restaurant for minor injuries. Above, fire and EMS crews worked on the scene at the restaurant

One of the women died from her injuries about two hours after the crash and the other died roughly an hour later, DC EMS & Fire Chief John Donnelly told DailyMail.com.

'We're still in shock. This is a senseless tragedy. It's something that no one ever expects,' Joshua Bloom told NBC4 Washington.

He described his mother as 'a lover of people and new experiences,' adding, 'What happened yesterday was she was spending time with her new friends that she had met over Zoom during the pandemic as my mom started exploring new artistic avenues for herself. We're taking a lot of solace in the fact that she died among new people, but among people that really showed the kind of person that she was deep down inside.'

Pete Gouskos, who opened the Parthenon 33 years ago, was still shaken by the tragedy on Saturday morning. He told the Washington Post that a waiter saw the SUV barreling toward the restaurant and dove out of the way, narrowly missing the vehicle.

'One minute you're here; the next minute, gone,' Gouskos told the paper, before tearing up as he looked at fresh snow on the ground. He wished the weather had been like that on Friday so no one would have been outside, he added.

Three of the nine other victims were listed in critical condition on Saturday, another three were hospitalized with non-life threatening injuries and three others were treated at the restaurant for minor injuries, D.C. fire spokeswoman Jennifer Donelan told the Washington Post.

Shelton Zuckerman, a real estate developer and co-founder of Sixth & I synagogue in D.C., was one of the three victims with serious injuries. He was at George Washington University Hospital on Saturday, his wife Rory Kirstein Zuckerman told the Post.

No structural damage was caused to the restaurant despite the wreckage on the scene. A table base is seen in the wreckage of the crash

Diners and restaurant staff are seen at the scene of the deadly crash in Washington DC after an elderly driver seemingly lost control of his vehicle

A woman sits in a chair after speaking with police at the scene where a vehicle crashed through an outdoor sitting area at the Parthenon Restaurant & Chevy Chase Lounge. The elderly driver stayed at the scene after the crash

Bloom was born in New York and started her career in gerontology before working in advocacy for refugees and migrants

Witness Edward Levin was on the opposite side of the Parthenon dining area and recalled seeing the driver leave an Exxon gas station opposite the restaurant before speeding across the street and onto the sidewalk.

'The whole thing took less than two seconds. It was like he was shot out of a cannon. If he had gone completely straight he would have gone into the front door, but he swerved to the right and just mowed down all the tables,' he told the Washington Post.

Both police and fire officials said that the elderly man, who has not yet been identified, stayed on the scene to cooperate. They believe the crash to be an accident.

There was some speculation that the driver may have had a medical injury but police and fire officials told DailyMail.com he appeared to be unharmed.

Taffer, who was also known as Terry, was a native of the Philadelphia area and studied French and French Literature at the University of Michigan, according to an obituary posted on Legacy.com. On graduating, she married and raised two children in suburban New Jersey and Manhattan, where she lived until 2019.

Taffer was an educator who taught at a high school in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh and later in life at Seton Hall University. She also worked for years as a culinary and cultural events planner at the French Institute Alliance Francaise in New York City.

She moved to Washington, D.C., in 2020, where she became an active member of the Adas Israel Congregation and a member of ArtTable, which works to promote female leadership in visual arts. She was also very passionate about Cuban art and mentored young Cuban artists.

'Terry was a loving mother and grandmother and devoted to her family,' her brother, Robert Dudnick, told the Washington Post. She is survived by a son in Vienna, Virginia, a daughter in Golden, Colorado, and her three siblings.

'She will always be remembered for her joie de vivre, kindness, curiosity, and boundless love for her family,' her obituary reads. Taffer's obituary also asked that loved ones send memorial contributions in her name to the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society in lieu of flowers.

Members of the emergency services work at the site where an SUV crashed into the outdoor seating area of Parthenon Restaurant

The Parthenon Restaurant and Chevy Chase Lounge built an ample outdoor seating area, as many restaurants did during the pandemic

Bloom was born in New York and started her career in gerontology before working in advocacy for refugees and migrants. In 1997, she launched Refugee Works, the training and technical assistance branch for refugee self-sufficiency of the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement.

She earned a Master's degree in international public policy when she was 60, in 2006. She then served as head of the U.S. office of the International Catholic Migration Commission for 12 years and retired in 2018, according to an interview on its website honoring her retirement.

Asked in the interview what she learned from the people with whom she worked, she said: 'I think it is the resilience that always blows me away. It is incredible. And from some, especially if it was religious persecution that brought them here, I learned how central their family and religion were for them.'

Bloom became very concerned with the fate of Ukrainian refugees in recent days and, although retired, considered getting involved again, Joshua Bloom told the Washington Post. 'People were still asking for her help,' he added.

Outside of her work with refugees, Bloom was an avid artist who taught college courses and earned a certification in world art through the Smithsonian. In addition to her son, she is survived by her daughter, Rebecca Best, and three grandchildren.

'The fact that this happened while she was with new friends, enjoying life, was and is fairly emblematic of who she is and who she was. Even though she was 76, I still think she died in the prime of her life,' Bloom told the Washington Post.

The Parthenon Restaurant, which suffered no structural damage from the crash, describes itself as 'an authentic Greek restaurant' in the Chevy Chase neighborhood of Washington.

Established in 1989, it hosts special events and caters dinners on holidays.

The restaurant is on a busy commercial strip with shops and restaurants, many of which have outdoor seating. Fire trucks lined the street, which was closed off to traffic and pedestrians.

Washington, D.C., Fire and EMS chief John Donnelly talks to the media across the street from The Parthenon

The Chevy Chase Lounge is adjoined with the Parthenon, both of which suffered no structural damage from the crash

Tim Shorrock, a writer who lives nearby, eats at the Parthenon frequently and said his neighbor was one of the women killed. He told DailyMail.com: 'I've noticed a lot of speeding drivers on Connecticut Avenue over the last year or so.'

He said he nearly was involved in an accident himself earlier this year.

'About three months ago, three blocks south of the accident today, I watched from the sidewalk as a SUV traveling about 80 mph sped past; the driver lost control, and the car flipped and landed on its top,' Shorrock said. 'Firefighters had to cut the driver out of the car with the jaws of life. He could have easily hit me - the flipped car came to rest less than 100 feet from me.'

Shorrock adds that he's asked the police and city government to better monitor and watch for what he calls 'constantly speeding vehicles.'

'Dining outside in the spring should not be a death trap, but it was today in DC,' he added.

At least seven people have been killed in traffic incidents to date in Washington in 2022, the same number as this time last year, with about 500 others injured.

The city suffered 40 traffic fatalities in 2021, the most in Washington since 2007.

As part of the investigation, authorities are seeking video evidence from people who may have recorded the accident and are asking those who can provide additional information to contact them.
Russian influencers sobbed uncontrollably as they bid tearful goodbyes to their followers after Vladimir Putin banned Instagram in the country, cutting off 80 million users on Monday.

Russian reality TV star Olga Buzova, 36, posted a video Sunday that shows her weeping over the ban, as she tells her 23.3 million followers in a nearly seven-minute video that she feels her life is being taken away from her.

'I am not afraid of admitting that I do not want to lose you,' she said in Russian, according to the Insider.

'I do not know what the future holds. I don't know. I just shared my life, my work, and my soul. I did not do this all as a job for me, this is a part of my soul. It feels like a big part of my heart, and my life is being taken away from me.'

The inconsolable influencers have been slammed on social media for crying over the impending loss of their fans while thousands of people have been killed as a result of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

'God, in Ukraine, people are dying, children are in the subway, there is nowhere to sleep, they have lost everything, and you are crying because of Instagram,' one user commented on an influencer's post.

A video was posted on Sunday by Olga Buzova, 36, shows the reality TV star sobbing over the ban, telling her 23.3 million followers in a nearly seven-minute video that she feels her life is being taken away from her

'I am not afraid of admitting that I do not want to lose you,' she said in Russian

'I do not know what the future holds. I don't know,' she continued. 'I just shared my life, my work, and my soul. I did not do this all as a job for me, this is a part of my soul. It feels like a big part of my heart, and my life is being taken away from me'

Instagram ban will prevent Buzova from sharing one of her many bikini snaps with her followers

In a clip shared on Twitter by Nexta TV, an unnamed Russian beauty blogger broke down in tears and said she was in the 'first stage of grief' over the ban.

Speaking to fans in a video livestreamed on Telegram, she sobbed: 'Do you think that for me, as an Instagram influencer, this is [a] source of income?

'To me, it's [Instagram] just all life, it's the soul. It's the one with which I wake up, fall asleep, f***ing five years in a row.'

She faced furious criticism online and was accused of caring more about her pay packet rather than 'thousands of dead people, including her compatriots.'

Responding to her video, NEXTA jibed: 'She does not care at all about the thousands of dead people, including her compatriots. Obviously, her biggest worry right now is that she won't be able to post pictures of food from restaurants.'

Her comments came on the same day that the besieged city of Mariupol entered its 13th day without food, water and electricity.

Nearly 2,200 people have been killed in Mariupol, with looters fighting on the streets over vital supplies and corpses being buried in mass graves.

In a clip shared on Twitter by Nexta TV, an unnamed Russian beauty blogger broke down in tears and said she was in the 'first stage of grief' over the ban

The blogger, who was very upset about the Instagram blackout, said to her fans in the teary video: 'Do you think that for me, as an Instagram influencer, this [Telegram] is [a] source of income?'

In her final Instagram post before the ban goes ahead on Monday, Liza Lukasheva, who has one million followers, wrote her goodbyes: 'My dear friends, Instagram will be closed in our country in the near future... in the next few hours'

Many Russian influencers told their followers to switch over to Telegram or the VK social media platform to continue following their content.

Valeria Chekalina, a pregnant Instagram influencer with 10.5 million followers, told fans she would be posting her content on Telegram and VK.

In her Instagram bio, she wrote, 'Instagram is no more,' alongside an emoji of a crying face.

Another Russian influencer, Nastya Ivleeva, posted a tearful photo, with the caption: '6 years of my work as a blogger just were cancelled'

Russian Instagram influencer Nastya Ivleeva @_agentgirl_ posted a teraful photo, saying '6 years of my work as a blogger just were cancelled'

Russia's Instagram ban comes a week after it blocked Facebook.

Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, tweeted that Russia's ban would leave 80 million people cut off from one another and 'from the rest of the world' and added 'this is wrong.'

Other Instagram 'models' based in Russia, such as Liza Lukasheva and Anna Ivanova have already begun sharing parting messages with their fans ahead of the social media app being banned in the country.

Russian influencers have focused on how to continue their source of income by asking their fanbase to follow them elsewhere, such as Telegram and VKontakte, which is the Russian equivalent of Facebook.

Russia bans Instagram and accuses Facebook owner Meta of being an 'extremist' organization for allowing users to call for 'death to the Russian invaders' in Ukraine Russia has banned Instagram and opened a criminal case against Facebook's owner Meta as it accused it of being an 'extremist' organization. Russian prosecutors asked a court to designate Meta as an 'extremist organization' after the the US tech giant temporarily allowed posts such as 'death to the Russian invaders following Vladimir Putin's ruthless invasion of Ukraine, now entering its third week. The latest clampdown also saw access restricted to Instagram and comes after Roskomnadzor, which oversees Russian mass media, blocked Facebook and Twitter amid Moscow's war propaganda campaign. Russia's Investigative Committee, which reports directly to Russian president Vladimir Putin, confirmed that a criminal case had been started against Meta for allowing what it deemed to be illegal content. 'A criminal case has been initiated ... in connection with illegal calls for murder and violence against citizens of the Russian Federation by employees of the American company Meta, which owns the social networks Facebook and Instagram,' the committee said. It was not immediately clear what the consequences of the criminal case might be. No comment was immediately available from Meta in response to a Reuters request. The Investigative Committee said Facebook's change in hate speech rules could violate articles of the Russian criminal law against public calls for extremist activities. Advertisement

In her final Instagram post before the ban on Monday, Liza Lukasheva, who has one million followers, wrote her goodbyes: 'My dear friends, Instagram will be closed in our country in the near future... in the next few hours.

'I will be happy to stay in touch with you and continue to make content for you. Subscribe to my Telegram channel and my VKontakte community. I promise to communicate with you in English and tell you the events of my life! Thank you for everything.'

In her stories, she said: 'Guys. My beloveds, just like you I've read all the news and I'm very upset that we could be lost, not to be found again.

'I'm basically hopeless.'

Anna Ivanova, with 4.4 million following her on Instagram, said in a final post: 'Millions of stories, thousands of posts, thousands of happy moments that were shared with you, your support, love, music that I could have shared with you, all of this united us into one big insta-family.

'Almost 5 million people and 10 years... I am sure that everything will get better and there will be even more of us, but for now I wish us all only peace and strength to survive all difficulties.

'I am waiting for you in my Telegram channel and in the VK group.'

On Friday, Russia's media regulator Roskomnadzor said it would restrict access of Instagram because of 'calls to commit violent acts', after Meta confirmed a temporary easing of its rules to allow messages of violence against Russian forces and leaders like 'death to Russian invaders'.

Meta's global affairs president Nick Clegg responded to the escalation from Putin by explaining that the 'loosened rules' were only to apply to those posting from inside Ukraine.

He added: 'We will not tolerate Russophobia or any kind of discrimination, harassment or violence towards Russians on our platform.'

Telegram is a multi-platform messaging app which allows users to exchange texts, photos and videos in groups of up to 200,000 people.

Pavel Durov, a Russian-born billionaire, founded both Telegram and VKontakte (VK), but he was fired from the company and forced to leave Russia by national security agency FSB after he refused to provide private data of Ukrainian users of VK.

In a post on Telegram, which has been viewed over 1.2 million times, Durov stressed that he has family from Kyiv in Ukraine and his mother's maiden name is a Ukrainian one.

'That's why this tragic conflict is personal both to me and Telegram. Some people wondered if Telegram is somehow less secure for Ukrainians, because I once lived in Russia. Let me tell these people how my career in Russia ended.

Instagram 'models' living in Russia posted their parting pictures with fans, including Liza Lukasheva and Anna Ivanova, who said in a final post: 'Almost 5 million people and 10 years... I am sure that everything will get better and there will be even more of us, but for now I wish us all only peace and strength to survive all difficulties'

'Nine years ago I was the CEO of VK, which was the largest social network in Russia and Ukraine. In 2013, the Russian security agency, FSB, demanded that I provide them the private data of the Ukrainian users of VK who were protesting against a pro-Russian President.

'I refused to comply with these demands, because it would have meant a betrayal of our Ukrainian users. After that, I was fired from the company I founded and was forced to leave Russia. I lost my company and my home, but would do it again  without hesitation.

'I smile with pride when I read my VK post from April 2014, which shows the scanned orders from the FSB and my trademark response to them  a dog in a hoodie. When I defied their demands, the stakes were high for me personally.

'I was still living in Russia, and my team and my old company were also based in that country. Many years have passed since then. Many things changed: I no longer live in Russia, no longer have any companies or employees there. But one thing remains the same  I stand for our users no matter what. Their right to privacy is sacred. Now  more than ever.'

Russian media regulator Roskomnadzor also 'restricted access' to social media network Twitter, Russian news agencies reported last 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.

Russia has for more than a year been striving to curb the influence of US tech giants including Alphabet Inc's Google and Twitter, repeatedly fining them for allowing what it deems to be illegal content.

But Putin's ruthless invasion of Ukraine, met by a storm of international condemnation and unprecedented sanctions, has sharply raised the stakes in the information war.

Social media provides an opportunity for dissent against Putin's claims - followed by the tightly controlled state media - that Moscow was forced to launch its 'special military operation' to defend Russian-speakers in Ukraine against genocide and to demilitarize and 'denazify' the country.

Valeria Chekalina, a pregnant Instagram influencer with 10.5 million followers, told fans she would be posting her content on Telegram and VK

In her Instragm bio, she wrote, 'Instagram is no more,' in her Instagram bio, alongside an emoji of a crying face.

Instagram is a favored tool of jailed Putin opponent Alexei Navalny, who took to the social media site - via his lawyers - on Friday to call for Russians to join protests against the Ukraine war and 'mad maniac Putin' this weekend.

WhatsApp will not be affected by the legal moves, Russia's RIA news agency cited a source as saying, as the messaging app is considered a means of communication, not a way to post information.

It comes one day after a Meta spokesperson said the company had temporarily eased its rules for political speech, allowing posts such as 'death to the Russian invaders,' although it would not allow calls for violence against Russian civilians.

Meta said the temporary change aimed to allow for forms of political expression that would normally violate its rules. Its oversight board said on Friday that it was closely following the war in Ukraine, and how Meta is responding.

Internal Meta emails seen by Reuters showed the US company had also temporarily allowed posts that call for the death of Putin or Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.

It was said posts that call for Putin's or Lukashenko's death will only be removed if they target other individuals or if there are indications the threat is credible.

Debris of destroyed Mariupol buildings litters the street as Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues, in Mariupol, Ukraine, on Saturday, March 12, 2022

Pavel Durov, a Russian-born billionaire, founded both Telegram and VKontakte (VK), but he was fired from the company and forced to leave Russia by national security agency FSB after he refused to provide private data of Ukrainian users of VK

'We hope it is not true because if it is true then it will mean that there will have to be the most decisive measures to end the activities of this company,' Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

The temporary policy change applied to Ukraine, Russia, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania.

Facebook said calls for violence against prisoners of war will not be allowed.

The United Nations human rights office said the potential change in Facebook policy was worrying.

'It is a very concerning issue because it does have a certain risk to generate and encourage and allow hate speech that is directed at Russians in general,' spokesperson Elizabeth Throssell said.

Several social media companies previously announced new content restrictions after the Ukraine invasion including blocking Russia state media RT and Sputnik in Europe.

Russia blocked Facebook for 'discrimination towards Russian media' after it banned Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik in the UK at the request of the British government.

The Investigative Committee for Russia had already stated that they were launching an investigation of Meta, with prosecutors branding it as 'extremist'.
Tesla founder Elon Musk has challenged Russian President Vladimir Putin to a fight over Ukraine in an early morning Twitter dump that included memes about the invasion and references to Macbeth.

'I hereby challenge Vladimir Putin to single combat,' Musk tweeted Monday, typing Putin's name in Russian. 'Stakes are Ukraine,' he added, writing the country's name in Ukrainian.

Musk, 50, capped off his challenge with a direct reference to the Kremlin.

'Do you agree to this fight?' he wrote, tagging the Kremlin's official Twitter account.

The South African-born billionaire, who has been known for making outlandish comments on twitter in the past, may be biting off more than he can handle in challenging the former head of the KGB.

The Russian president is a judo blackbelt and even co-authored a book about the sport, titled Judo: History, Theory, Practice.

Putin, 69, was made honorary president of the International Judo Federation in 2008, but has been suspended from the role over his war on Ukraine.

Musk's bizarre challenge was part of a flurry of tweets he sent out over the course of three hours, including the oft-quoted Shakespeare line from Macbeth: 'By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.'

Elon Musk has challenged Russian President Vladimir Putin to a fight over Ukraine on Twitter

Putin, who is renowned for his love of judo, may have an advantage in hand-to-hand combat

'I hereby challenge Vladimir Putin to single combat,' Musk tweeted on Monday, typing Putin's name in Russian. 'Stakes are Ukraine,' he added, writing the country's name in Ukrainian and latter tagging the official Kremlin account

In another tweet, he posted a meme of a character from the Netflix show Narcos sitting on a porch swing that reads, 'Netflix waiting for the war to end to make a movie about a black ukraine guy falls in love with a transgender russian soldier.'

Earlier on Monday, he also posted the cryptic message, 'There is a beauty to the biological substrate.'

Musk has tried to be a thorn in Putin's side since the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, even providing internet service to the war-torn country through his Starlink satellite service at the request of Ukrainian officials.

Musk, worth a reported $218.9 billion, mocked Russian officials earlier this month after the head of its space program brushed off US sanctions on Moscow for launching all-out war on Ukraine.

'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,' Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russia's space agency, said on state Russian television on March 3.

That same day, Musk tweeted a link to a successful SpaceX launch followed by the words, 'American Broomstick,' along with American flag emojis.

The apparent challenge was part of a flurry of tweets Musk, 50, sent out over the course of three hours

Late last month, the tech titan answered a plea from the vice prime minister of Ukraine, who asked the tycoon to help the embattled nation with satellite internet access.

'@elonmusk, while you try to colonize Mars  Russia try to occupy Ukraine! While your rockets successfully land from space  Russian rockets attack Ukrainian civil people! We ask you to provide Ukraine with Starlink stations and to address sane Russians to stand,' the vice PM Mykhailo Fedorov wrote in a tweet.

Russian bomb strikes have knocked out internet connection for much of the country.

Officials there are keen that locals remain connected so their stories can be used to combat Russian propaganda - and so that they can share atrocities being carried out by Russian troops on behalf of Putin.

That same day, Musk answered the call and said that he would be sending Starlink receivers to the country.

'Starlink service is now active in Ukraine. More terminals en route,' Musk tweeted hours after the extraordinary request.

Starlink is a space-based system that SpaceX has been building for years to bring internet access to underserved areas of the world.

Ukraine's Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov tweeted at Musk last month for help

The Ukraine government official asked Musk to provide the embattled country with Starlink stations

Less than 11 hours later, Musk answered the call and revealed more terminals were on route

Musk assured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during a video call on March 5 that SpaceX will send more Starlink satellite stations.

The president of the embattled country took to Twitter to thank Musk for the support and invited the tech mogul to visit Ukraine once the war is over.

'Talked to @elonmusk. I'm grateful to him for supporting Ukraine with words and deeds. Next week we will receive another batch of Starlink systems for destroyed cities,' Zelensky wrote on the social media platform.

Musk, who said he 'looks forward to visiting Ukraine' when the war ends, sent a collection of antennas to Ukraine earlier this month after Prime minister Denys Shmyhal voiced concerns that Ukrainians could lose internet access if Russia continues to attack communications towers, as it did with the bombing of a Kyiv TV tower.

A man walks away from a destroyed apartment block after shelling in Kyiv on Monday as Ukraine continues to face bombardments from Russia.
The Kuehne+Nagel Group is dismayed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and takes responsibility as a globally active logistics company. Therefore, the Group pledges emergency aid in the amount of 10 million Swiss francs.

This will be provided in the form of free logistics services to leading aid organisations for the transport and temporary storage of relief goods to Ukraine as well as Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania until summer 2022.

This action is being coordinated by Kuehne+Nagels existing Emergency and Relief Expert Centre in Copenhagen. For this purpose, the company is using its existing international logistics networks in air and sea freight as well as land transport. Goods will be temporarily stored at the Groups contract logistics sites including those on Ukraines western border.

In addition, Kuehne+Nagel employees can make a personal commitment by contributing to the Groups Colleagues for Colleagues fundraising campaign. As with similar campaigns in the past, Kuehne+Nagel will match the amount donated and work closely with local management to ensure that funds are used to directly help Ukrainian colleagues in their time of need

Partager et informez vous aussi......

0 shares Share

Tweet

LinkedIn

Articles similaires
Advertisement

Prince Charles, Camilla, Prince William and Kate represented the Queen at the Commonwealth Service today after the 95-year-old monarch missed the event at Westminster Abbey for the first time in nearly a decade.

The Queen had earlier said she hoped the Commonwealth 'remains an influential force for good in our world for many generations to come' as she renewed her promise made in 1947 to 'always be devoted in service'. The head of state's Commonwealth Day Message was issued by Buckingham Palace today ahead of the annual service.

'My life will always be devoted in service': The Queen's Commonwealth Day Message in full In this year of my Platinum Jubilee, it has given me pleasure to renew the promise I made in 1947, that my life will always be devoted in service. Today, it is rewarding to observe a modern, vibrant and connected Commonwealth that combines a wealth of history and tradition with the great social, cultural and technological advances of our time. That the Commonwealth stands ever taller is a credit to all who have been involved. We are nourished and sustained by our relationships and, throughout my life, I have enjoyed the privilege of hearing what the relationships built across the great reach and diversity of the Commonwealth have meant to people and communities. Our family of nations continues to be a point of connection, cooperation and friendship. It is a place to come together to pursue common goals and the common good, providing everyone with the opportunity to serve and benefit. In these testing times, it is my hope that you can draw strength and inspiration from what we share, as we work together towards a healthy, sustainable and prosperous future for all. And on this special day for our family  in a year that will include the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting and the Commonwealth Games  I hope we can deepen our resolve to support and serve one another, and endeavour to ensure the Commonwealth remains an influential force for good in our world for many generations to come. ELIZABETH R. Advertisement

The Queen, who has recently recovered from coronavirus and has been experiencing mobility issues, had hoped to attend the important event in the royal calendar alongside Charles, Camilla, William and Kate.

But last Friday, palace officials revealed that the Queen - who is Head of the Commonwealth - had asked her son Charles to represent her at the service after discussing arrangements with members of the Royal Household.

Ensuring the comfort of the monarch, who now regularly uses a stick and has spoken openly about her mobility issues, is thought to have been an overriding consideration in her decision not to take part.

The monarch's announcement three days ago came after the order of service for today was printed - as she was named in the document, with the congregation required to stand when she arrived and made her way to her seat.

The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall were greeted as they arrived - while inside the place of worship, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were waiting and the two royal couples kissed each other on the cheeks.

And the Very Reverend Dr David Hoyle, the Dean of Westminster, told the congregation today: 'In this Jubilee year, in which we rejoice in the 70 years that Her Majesty the Queen has presided over this Commonwealth, we also thank God for her faithfulness and commit ourselves to learn from an example of duty and service. In words and music in the Abbey, we will now retrace the steps of her great Commonwealth tour begun 70 years ago.'

Among the arrivals before the royals were Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, Home Secretary Priti Patel and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss along with David Walliams who brought his mother Kathleen.

Also attending this afternoon were Sarah Clarke, Lady Usher of the Black Rod; Mark Spencer, Leader of the House of Commons; and US ambassador Philip Reeker - as well as Baroness Patricia Scotland and MP Jacob Rees-Mogg.

The Queen said today that it was 'rewarding to observe a modern, vibrant and connected Commonwealth that combines a wealth of history and tradition with the great social, cultural and technological advances of our time'.

Prince William, Camilla, Prince Charles and Kate speak upon their arrival at Westminster Abbey in London this afternoon

Picture of affection: The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall were greeted as they arrived - while inside the place of worship, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were waiting and the two royal couples kissed each other on the cheeks

Inside the place of worship, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were waiting and the two royal couples kissed each other

Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaks in front of Charles, Camilla, William and Kate at Westminster Abbey this afternoon

Pictured: The Prince of Wales speaks to guests at the annual Commonwealth Day Reception at Marlborough House in London

The Prince of Wales is pictured with guests at the annual Commonwealth Day Reception at Marlborough House in London

Charles shakes hands with British singer-songwriter Emeli Sande at the Commonwealth Day Reception at Marlborough House

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge arrive at Westminster Abbey for the Commonwealth Service this afternoon

The Duchess of Cambridge arrives at Westminster Abbey this afternoon ahead of the Commonwealth Service

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge arrive at the Commonwealth Service at Westminster Abbey in London this afternoon

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge receive flowers from schoolchildren outside Westminster Abbey this afternoon

The Duchess of Cambridge arrives at the Commonwealth Service at Westminster Abbey in London this afternoon

Kate smiles as Prince William holds an umbrella while they leave after attending the Commonwealth Service today

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge sit alongside each other at the Commonwealth Service at Westminster Abbey today

The Duchess of Cambridge smiles as she attends the Commonwealth Service at Westminster Abbey this afternoon

The Duchess of Cambridge arrives at Westminster Abbey in London this afternoon to attend the Commonwealth Service

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge arrive at the Commonwealth Service at Westminster Abbey in London this afternoon

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge sit alongside each other at the Commonwealth Service at Westminster Abbey today

Members of the Royal Family depart after attending the annual Commonwealth Service at Westminster Abbey this afternoon

The Prince of Wales (left) and the Duchess of Cornwall arrive at the Commonwealth Service at Westminster Abbey today

The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall arrive at the Commonwealth Service at Westminster Abbey today

Prince Charles smiles as he and Camilla leave Westminster Abbey after the Commonwealth Service this afternoon

The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall arrive at the Commonwealth Service at Westminster Abbey today

Charles departs after attending the annual Commonwealth Service at Westminster Abbey on Commonwealth Day today

The Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall leave the Commonwealth Service at Westminster Abbey in London today

Writing from Windsor Castle, the Queen also said she had 'enjoyed the privilege of hearing what the relationships built across the great reach and diversity of the Commonwealth have meant to people and communities'.

And she said: 'In these testing times, it is my hope that you can draw strength and inspiration from what we share, as we work together towards a healthy, sustainable and prosperous future for all.

'And on this special day for our family  in a year that will include the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting and the Commonwealth Games  I hope we can deepen our resolve to support and serve one another, and endeavour to ensure the Commonwealth remains an influential force for good in our world for many generations to come.'

Today, the Daily Mail reported that the Queen's diary is 'under review' and she is unlikely to ever undertake some major public engagements such as investitures again.

Sources stress that the monarch is not ill and is 'as committed to her duties of state as ever'.

But senior royal aides  as well as the Queen herself  are understood to have accepted that the 'frailties that come with living a long life' are finally catching up with her.

She will still attend public events where possible, but her appearances will be significantly curtailed.

That means standing on her feet for hour-long public investitures are out and they will be conducted by the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Cambridge and the Princess Royal instead.

A source told the Daily Mail: 'The Queen is still as alert, able and interested as ever but, physically, she isn't as strong as she once was, which is entirely understandable for a woman of her age.'

Buckingham Palace declined to comment. However, a royal source said: 'The Royal Family understands the important role investitures play in recognising service and celebrating people's contribution to society and there has been a real drive to catch up on the backlog created by Covid restrictions.

Prince Charles and Camilla arrive at the Commonwealth Service at Westminster Abbey in London this afternoon

The Duchess of Cornwall holds onto her hat as she arrives at Westminster Abbey for the Commonwealth Service today

The Prince of Wales speaks with the Duchess of Cambridge upon arrival at Westminster Abbey in London this afternoon

Prince Charles puts his hand on the Duchess of Cornwall's arm as they arrive at Westminster Abbey this afternoon

The Duchess of Cornwall and the Duchess of Cambridge arrive to attend the Commonwealth Service ceremony today

Prince Charles and Camilla listen to the Commonwealth Service at Westminster Abbey in London this afternoon

Camilla waves as Prince Charles steps out of a royal car as the couple arrive at Westminster Abbey this afternoon

The Prince of Wales arrives at Westminster Abbey this afternoon to attend the Commonwealth Service ceremony

(From left, front row): Prince Charles, Camilla, Prince William, Kate and Princess Alexandria at Westminster Abbey today

Princess Alexandria arriving at the Commonwealth Service at Westminster Abbey in London on Commonwealth Day today

The Duchess of Cornwall smiles as she accepts a bouquet of flowers from a schoolgirl after leaving the Commonwealth Service at Westminster Abbey in London on Commonwealth Day

Camilla was also pictured greeting the choir boys outside Westminster Abbey after today's service, which was held in the Queen's absence

Prince Charles also paused to speak to choir boys as he left the service on Monday. He will represent his mother in June at the the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Rwanda

Prime Minister Boris Johnson leaves the Commonwealth Service at Westminster Abbey in London on Commonwealth Day

Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge and Prince William, Duke of Cambridge departing Westminster Abbey after attending The Commonwealth Day Westminster Abbey Service on March 14, 2022

Kate looked delighted as she accepted a bouquet of flowers from a school boy after the Commonwealth Day service

NEW YORK -- Sophie, Countess of Wessex visits the Queen Elizabeth II Garden in New York City on Commonwealth Day today

'The Prince of Wales, Princess Royal and Duke of Cambridge have been leading the charge. It's easy to envisage that they will continue in that vein but I wouldn't rule out Her Majesty doing smaller or one-off investitures.'

The Prince of Wales met leading figures from the Commonwealth's young leadership and diplomatic community at a special reception at Marlborough House - but the Duchess of Cornwall missed the event.

Camilla has recently recovered from a bout of Covid, and it is understood she is pacing herself after her illness.

Last week, the duchess revealed she has been left with a slight cough in the aftermath of the virus.

When she met a group of record-breaking charity rowers at Clarence House last week, she told them: 'Well, it's taken me three weeks and I still can't get shot of it.

'Probably my voice might suddenly go coughing and spluttering.'

Charles met the High Commissioners, staff from the Commonwealth Secretariat, the Commonwealth's civil service, and young leaders from across the globe at Marlborough House in central London.

Among the group were performers from the Commonwealth Day service held earlier at Westminster Abbey including Mica Paris and Emeli Sande.

Paris said when she met Charles and Camilla after the service, the couple both said they liked the song she performed called Mama Said.

The performer said about the prince: 'I've done lots of private performances for him over the years.

'He's a big Aretha Franklin fan, so I always used to have to sing Aretha for him.'

She joked: 'Today was really good because it was the first time they liked my songs, it's not that they don't like my old songs but he didn't ask me to sing Aretha.'

The news comes after the Queen was forced to pull out of today's Commonwealth Service.

Last Friday, Buckingham Palace, which earlier in the week had still insisted she 'hoped' to be there, announced that she had asked the Prince of Wales to represent her at Westminster Abbey.

The Queen, who has suffered a string of debilitating health issues since last autumn and is increasingly using a walking stick, was extremely 'regretful' about the decision, it is understood.

The Duke of Cambridge (left) shakes hands with Prime Minister Boris Johnson (right) at the Commonwealth Service today

Prime Minister Boris Johnson arrives at Westminster Abbey for the Commonwealth Service this afternoon

Guests attend the Commonwealth Day service ceremony, at Westminster Abbey in London this afternoon

Prime Minister Boris Johnson shakes hands with The Right Reverend and the Right Honourable Lord Sentamu (right) today

Prime Minister Boris Johnson leaves after attending the Commonwealth Service at Westminster Abbey in London today

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer (left) and Home Secretary Priti Patel (right) arrive at the Commonwealth Service this afternoon

TV personality and author David Walliams arrives at Westminster Abbey with his mother Kathleen this afternoon

Guests attend the Commonwealth Day service ceremony at Westminster Abbey in London this afternoon

Foreign Secretary Liz Truss (left) and Sarah Clarke, Lady Usher of the Black Rod (right), at the Commonwealth Service today

Flag bearers carrying the flags of the Commonwealth nations at Westminster Abbey during the Commonwealth Service today

Guests attend the Commonwealth Day service ceremony, at Westminster Abbey in London this afternoon

Mark Spencer (left), Leader of the House of Commons, and US ambassador Philip Reeker (right) at Westminster Abbey today

Guests attend the Commonwealth Day service ceremony at Westminster Abbey in London this afternoon

Jacob Rees-Mogg MP (left) and Baroness Patricia Scotland (right) arrive at Westminster Abbey for the service today

Foreign Secretary Liz Truss arrives at Westminster Abbey in London for the Commonwealth Service this afternoon

Flag bearers parade through Westminster Abbey as they take part in the Commonwealth Service this afternoon

Home Secretary Priti Patel speaks with Lord-Lieutenant of London, Sir Kenneth Olisa Obe, at Westminster Abbey today

Flag bearers parade through Westminster Abbey as they take part in the Commonwealth Service this afternoon

Jacob Rees-Mogg and Priti Patel smile while Liz Truss appears stony-faced ahead of the service in Westminster Abbey today

Emeli Sande performs during the Commonwealth Day service ceremony at Westminster Abbey in London this afternoon

Flag bearers carrying the flags of the Commonwealth nations at Westminster Abbey during the service this afternoon

A steel band play outside Westminster Abbey in London today ahead of the Commonwealth Service on Commonwealth Day

Naomi Campbell in her role as the Queens Commonwealth Trust Platinum Jubilee Global Ambassador, on her way to the Commonwealth Service at Westminster Abbey today, wearing a custom Alaia Prince of Wales wool double-breast jacket, skirt and beret, accessorised with le Papa bag and Coeur shoes today

Queen Elizabeth II signs her annual Commonwealth Day Message in St George's Hall at Windsor Castle on March 5, 2021

The Queen today wrote that she 'will always be devoted in service' as she issued her Commonwealth Day Message

Commonwealth Day has not been celebrated in person since March 2020 (pictured), when the Duke and Duchess of Sussex made their last public appearance with senior members of the royal family before moving to North America

The Queen today renewed her promise made in 1947 to 'always be devoted in service', as she issued her Commonwealth Day Message. She is pictured that year on honeymoon with Prince Philip in Malta, where he was stationed with the Royal Navy

It would have been her first public appearance since last October.

Charles and Camilla will represent the Queen at Commonwealth summit in Rwanda in June The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall are to attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Rwanda on behalf of the Queen. CHOGM will take place in Kigali during the week of June 20, following its postponement in both 2020 and 2021 due to the Covid-19 crisis. Charles said it is more important than ever that Commonwealth countries come together for the summit amid the pandemic recovery, and that he and Camilla are delighted to be attending. The Queen, who has just recovered from a bout of Covid, called time on her overseas visits a number of years ago, and secured Charles as the future Head of the Commonwealth - when he becomes King - when she hosted the London CHOGM in 2018. The prince last represented the Queen at the event in Sri Lanka in 2013 - a move that was interpreted as preparation for his future role as monarch. Charles said in his message: 'As the world works to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic, and in this Jubilee year, it is more important than ever that the countries of the Commonwealth come together. 'As a family of some 2.4 billion people from 54 nations across six continents, the Commonwealth represents a rich diversity of traditions, experience and talents which can help to build a more equal, sustainable and prosperous future. With this shared sense of common purpose, and in view of recent, enforced postponements, my wife and I are delighted to be attending the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Kigali, Rwanda, in June.' The event, which is usually held in a different country every two years, brings together leaders from the 54 Commonwealth nations. It is used to discuss topical issues affecting the Commonwealth and the wider world. Advertisement

She last missed the service nine years ago, in 2013, while recovering from a nasty bout of gastroenteritis.

Before that, the Queen had not been absent from a Commonwealth Day observance service for 20 years, the last time being when she had flu in 1993.

Buckingham Palace had said she hoped to attend three significant events in March  the annual Diplomatic Reception, which was cancelled as a result of the war in Ukraine, the Commonwealth Service, and the service of thanksgiving for her late husband at Westminster Abbey on March 29.

The Mail understands that the Queen  who also contracted Covid last month  is still determined to attend the service for the Duke of Edinburgh and may even be 'pacing herself' in public so she can.

Last Monday, she met with Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau at Windsor Castle, her first in-person meeting since recovering from Covid.

Both Mr Trudeau and other sources have said she was in good health and was not using her walking stick.

Another source who saw her at Sandringham last month confirmed she appeared to be 'bright, alert and walking relatively unencumbered'.

But insiders acknowledge that, like any woman of her great age, the Queen has 'good days and less good days, as you would expect'.

The Commonwealth, affectionately known as the 'family of nations', has played an important role throughout her reign, and the Queen takes a special interest in the institution.

But last Friday, a Buckingham Palace spokesman said: 'After discussing the arrangements with the royal household, the Queen has asked the Prince of Wales to represent Her Majesty at the Commonwealth service at Westminster Abbey on Monday.

'The Queen will continue with other planned engagements, including in-person audiences, in the week ahead.'

Highlights of the service at Westminster Abbey today will include an address by former archbishop Lord Sentamu, a reflection by young Tongan leader Elizabeth Kite and special musical performances from Emeli Sande and Mica Paris.

Organised by the Royal Commonwealth Society, the service will feature the Queen's Commonwealth Day message.

The service would have been the Queen's first major public appearance since reaching her Platinum Jubilee milestone in February.

Her decision not to attend is likely to be interpreted as a precautionary measure by royal commentators, and a practical move, rather than a new health issue.

Speaker of the House of Commons Sir Lindsay Hoyle at a ceremony at the Commonwealth Memorial Gates in London today

A commemorative ceremony and laying of wreaths at the Commonwealth Memorial Gates in London this morning

The Last Post is played at a commemorative ceremony and laying of wreaths at the Commonwealth Memorial Gates today

Lord Chartres, the former Bishop of London, speaks during a ceremony at the Commonwealth Memorial Gates today

Baroness Patricia Scotland lays a wreath during a commemorative ceremony at the Commonwealth Memorial Gates today

With the Queen due to celebrate her 96th birthday in less than six weeks, maintaining her comfort is a consideration and it is understood she has been pacing herself, although she was keen to do what work she could during her bout of Covid.

Commonwealth Day has not been celebrated in person since 2020, when the Duke and Duchess of Sussex made their last public appearance with senior members of the royal family before moving to North America.

It was claimed yesterday that the Queen has not been able to walk her dogs at Windsor for the last six months, although sources stressed she has been out on the estate.

And The Mail on Sunday revealed courtiers were sufficiently concerned to be discussing whether she would be mobile enough to attend Philip's memorial.

This will inevitably call into question how much the Queen will be able to take part in June's celebrations to mark her Platinum Jubilee.
The world holds its breath as deranged Vladimir Putin prepares to unleash the full force of Russia's troops in a David and Goliath battle for Ukraine's historic capital, Kyiv.

But the despot's soldiers will pay a devastating price when they finally set foot inside the besieged city, according to 'Wali' - an elite sniper and western freedom fighter who plans to pick them off with pinpoint accuracy.

A veteran of two tours of Afghanistan with the Canadian Royal 22nd Regiment, Wali left behind a fiancee, one-year-old son and a comfortable life as an IT programmer to answer Ukraine's plea for foreign recruits.

Weeks later he's hidden high above the streets of Kyiv in a secret nook ready to greet the first Russian invader he sees with a bullet from his .338 rifle.

'I don't like the idea of shooting anyone. But when the time comes to squeeze the trigger I won't hesitate,' Wali tells DailyMail.com in an exclusive phone interview.

'If Putin really wants Kyiv he is going to have to pay a huge price. Nobody wants the Russians here and everyone will resist. The damage we can do to them will be crazy. They will lose so many lives it will become another Stalingrad.'

Canadian army veteran and sniper identified only as 'Wali' is hidden high above the streets of Kyiv ready to greet the first Russian invader he see with his .338 rifle

People and medics help a wounded resident of a house destroyed by shelling as Russia's attack on Ukraine continues in Kyiv

Russia's infantry has advanced to within 15 miles of the shuttered city of nearly three million inhabitants, according to latest reports

Wali has asked to go by the nickname he was given in Afghanistan in case former KGB strongman Putin learns his identity and tries to target his family in Quebec.

While his loved ones gathered Saturday to celebrate his son's first birthday, Wali spent the day hunkered down in an abandoned building overlooking what he will only disclose as a 'strategic location' on the outskirts of Kyiv.

Despite fierce resistance and a string of humiliating setbacks, Russia's infantry has advanced to within 15 miles of the shuttered city of nearly three million inhabitants, according to latest reports.

But Wali tells DailyMail.com that he and his band of Ukrainian brothers will have the upper hand once Putin's men pour into the streets - and stray into his crosshairs.

'This is a huge, built-up city, not some village. Looking out from where I am now I can see so many structures and buildings to shoot from, so many places to hide weapons and launch ambushes from. They won't know what has hit them,' Wali vows.

'The Russians have already failed to take Kharkiv and Mariupol, which are smaller cities. There is no way they can hold on to Kyiv. It will be better for everyone if they decide not to attack.'

It's been barely two weeks since Wali was sat in front of a TV in Canada watching Putin launch the largest military onslaught in Europe since World War II.

With a new career in IT and a young family, Wali's fighting days were well and truly behind him - or so he thought.

It was his boss, a Ukrainian-Canadian with family members trapped in besieged cities, who persuaded him it was his 'duty' to answer President Volodymyr Zelensky's call to arms.

It's been barely two weeks since Wali was sat in front of a TV in Canada watching Putin launch the largest military onslaught in Europe since World War II

Wali honed his sharpshooting skills during a 12-year career in the Canadian army

Like a 'firefighter who hears the alarm ringing' Wali says he joined his colleague on the next flight to Poland, leaving behind a fiancee as bewildered as she was scared by his decision to throw himself into brutal warfare 4,000 miles away.

'She was very afraid, she said we need you here, your son needs you. But eventually she calmed down and she said ok, do your duty but please be safe, don't take any risks,' Wali says.

'There were a lot of emotions as I left. You don't know when you're going to be back, or whether you're even going to make it back. But I know I have a duty to my family as well as to the world, I won't stay here any longer than I have to.

'The saddest thing for me was missing my son's birthday celebration. I watched a few minutes over the phone. I was here in the dark, in an abandoned building with my flashlight - it felt like I was on a different planet to them.'

Wali says he was greeted with hugs and handshakes as he crossed from Poland into Ukraine on March 3, passing columns of refugees trudging in the opposite direction to reach safety.

He would soon become infamous after giving a brief interview to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation which went viral and morphed into outlandish headlines about how the 'world's deadliest sniper' was gunning for Putin.

'If that's what they want to believe, then it's not a bad thing. People need these kinds of stories in a war, it's a boost for morale,' says Wali, modestly.

'I'm a good sniper, yes, but I don't deserve this much attention. I don't want to take away from the courage of the other soldiers here.'

Wali honed his sharpshooting skills during a 12-year career in the Canadian army.

He was first deployed to Afghanistan in 2009 when he spent six months fighting alongside US troops in Kandahar, returning a year or so later to mentor Afghan police.

After leaving the military in 2015 Wali embarked on his first stint as a freedom fighter, joining up with Kurdish forces for four months as they battled ISIS terrorists in northern Iraq.

Without the air support, training and hi-tech weaponry he was accustomed to, Wali says he and his allies learned to wage war with whatever they could get their hands on.

Russia has intensified its attacks on Kyiv with air strikes raining down on the city, while fighting and artillery fire rage around the suburbs

Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Grigorenko at the Kremlin in Moscow today

'There were no helmets, no ballistic plates, not enough ammunition. I went out on patrol sometimes with just two magazines,' he recalls.

'There was an occasion where we pushed into a village on the back of a bulldozer using the big shovel as protection. I was hanging on thinking this is insane, I cannot survive this but the Islamic State fighters were so shocked they ran away.

'Some of them hid in a house so the Kurds set it alight then shot them dead when they rushed out. I can still hear the bullets flying past me. It was absolutely brutal, a day I will never forget.'

Wali says the western portions of Ukraine he passed through en route to Kyiv have been largely unscathed and - so far - he's not encountered the level of violence and destruction he experienced in Iraq.

His reputation as a feared marksman helped him win over Ukrainian commanders who entrusted him with a $6,000 military-grade .338 sniper rifle and assigned him to the front ranks of the city's defense.

The Finnish-built gun, equipped with high-grade optics, is typical of the Western weapons he's accustomed to using and can kill at a range of 1,400 meters (1,531 yards).

'It's a high quality rifle. It will do the job but I'll be sad when I have to use it. Every time I shoot it's a failure for everyone involved,' Wali laments.

'A lot of these Russian soldiers are just boys themselves. I can't help thinking that not too long ago they were babies like my son. But I'll do what's necessary.'

With Russia and Ukraine set to meet this week for further peace talks there's a glimmer of hope that a ceasefire can be agreed without Kyiv's streets becoming a bloodbath.

Russian airstrikes caused heavy damage to a Ukrainian military base in Yavoriv, just 12 miles from the Polish border, on Sunday - killing at least 35 people and leaving 134 more wounded

People retrieve belongings from an apartment in a block which was destroyed by an artillery strike in Kyiv, Ukraine

The nightmare scenario is that Putin rejects any deal and decides instead to decimate the city with airstrikes in a warped show of force.

'We cannot underestimate the Russians as they have lots of firepower,' Wali adds, gravely.

'There are ways to protect yourself, you can move from building to building, you can change location while they adjust fire.

'So it's a mix of luck and skill, like rolling a dice. The better you are the better the odds are but the dice can always fall on the wrong number. You can get killed no matter your skill level or who you are.'

If the worst happens, Wali hopes his young son will grow up understanding that his dad died fighting for something greater than a bloody battle for frozen territory on the eastern fringe of Europe.

'I would like him to be proud of me and to grow up believing in the same values that I'm fighting for,' he tells DailyMail.com.

Our interview is likely one of the last calls Wali will make before switching off his cell phone to avoid giving his position away to the advancing Russians.

With unshakeable belief, he adds: 'I'm not just doing this for Ukraine, I'm doing this for everyone. Ukraine is the frontline for freedom.'
Scott Morrison is the least trusted Prime Minister that Australia has had for more than a decade according to a new poll.

Opposition leader Anthony Albanese is not far behind, showing that Australians have grown steadily less confident with political leaders from both parties over the last ten years.

Only 40 per cent of survey respondents agreed with the description of Mr Morrison as trustworthy, while 44 per cent said they would describe Mr Albanese in those terms.

Quizzed on a broad range of the character traits for the Liberal and Labor leaders, voters said they still considered Mr Morrison the more decisive of the two.

He was also viewed as the more experienced, along with being the more arrogant, but lost out to Mr Albanese in every other area.

Scott Morrison (pictured with wife Jenny) is the least trusted Australian Prime Minister in more than a decade according to a new poll

With a federal election due by May 21, both Mr Morrison and Mr Albanese is well into campaign mode with both desperately trying to avoid any unflattering publicity.

The Newspoll survey commissioned by The Australian found that Mr Morrison had generally dropped percentage points among favourable traits compared to last year.

And while a similar number considered him arrogant at 60 per cent, this level is actually no higher than previous Prime Ministers.

Voters also seem to be warming up to Mr Albanese ranking him more likeable and caring than his opponent.

But a large number are still yet to form an opinion on the inner-western Sydney native with 22 per cent undecided if he was trustworthy.

Mr Morrison's PR nightmare during the 2019 Australian bushfires which included his infamous trip to Hawaii has left a sour taste with voters (pictured: Mr Morrison forces a distressed young woman in a fire zone to shake his hand)

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg will deliver his fourth budget on March 29 ahead of the May election which is expected to include a slightly better than expected deficit, but debt heading towards $1 trillion.

The prime minister and Mr Frydenberg have been framing the budget around the theme of strong economic management delivering the jobs, services and national security that Australians need.

Mr Morrison says Australians are well aware the price of petrol - which is hovering around $2.20 a litre - is being driven up by the Russia-Ukraine war.

He said the government would work with other countries to release fuel reserves and ease pressure on petrol prices.

With cost of living pressures shaping up as a key election issue the latest Newspoll shows support for the two major parties is unchanged from two weeks ago.

The coalition government is sitting on 45 per cent on a two-party preferred basis, trailing Labor on 55 per cent, the poll published in The Australian on Monday found.

But Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese has ticked up on the preferred prime minister measure to now equal Mr Morrison on 42 per cent.

Labor leader Anthony Albanese (pictured with his girlfriend Jodie Haydon) is perceived as more likable but less decisive

Mr Frydenberg has flagged further investment in defence to take the total military spend to just over two per cent of gross domestic product.

The budget will also include a women's economic statement, more funding for skills and manufacturing and a strong focus on the regions to generate jobs.

It remains unclear whether the government will extend the low and middle-income tax offset, which provides up to $1080 a year to 10 million Australians on an income of less than $126,900.

Finance Minister Simon Birmingham said the government would 'double down' on lower income tax settings to help with the cost of living.

'Right now our income tax cuts are providing around $1.5 billion a month extra into the pockets of hard-working Australian households and it's that type of disposable income that is necessary and helpful to deal with these sorts of pressures,' he said.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg (pictured) is set to deliver the budget this month with rising petrol prices a concern

The budget papers will show a bringing forward of child care subsidy changes from July 1 to March 7, to cost around $224 million in 2021/22 and $670 million a year ongoing.

And there will be record spending on health and infrastructure.

'Our government is getting the job done by delivering the infrastructure needed to improve regional roads that were neglected and left to deteriorate under Labor,' Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce said.
Advertisement

A veteran British sniper who came out of retirement to join the war in Ukraine has said Kyiv will not fall as their guerrilla tactics are absolutely hammering Putins forces and they are defending their country like the Taliban on steroids.

Shane Matthews, who completed multiple tours of Afghanistan and Iraq as a Lance Corporal with the 2nd Battalion Princess of Wales Royal Regiment, flew out to Poland before thumbing lifts to the Ukrainian capital, where he has been helping to fortify the city and train civilians.

The ex-soldier said he has witnessed Russian shells raining down on bridges, churches and schools as bombs fell indiscriminately, sharing harrowing photos of the devastation  but predicted that Ukraine would ultimately triumph.

Shortly after the war in Ukraine broke out, groups of men gathered outside the Ukrainian embassy in west London to answer comic-turned-wartime leader Volodymyr Zelenskys call to arms for foreign fighters to join his countrys defence against Russia.

But lawyers have 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.

Speaking from the streets of Irpin, a district northwest of Kyiv, Matthews said: These photos I have put up are of the military targets being attacked [by the Russians] today  military targets being a church, a two-storey school, a bridge... which was attacked as civilians were evacuating from the city.

I have just spoken to a chap whose dad was killed two days ago and today in the artillery strike that we were in just now, his son was killed. And this is denazification?

They are indiscriminately shelling every target in this city and the worlds just going to sit and watch this? Its wrong  its a genocide. [theyre] war crimes.

Shane Matthews, who completed multiple tours of Afghanistan and Iraq as a Lance Corporal with the 2nd Battalion Princess of Wales Royal Regiment, flew out to Poland before thumbing lifts to the Ukrainian capital

The ex-soldier said he has witnessed Russian shells raining down on bridges, churches and schools as bombs fell indiscriminately, sharing harrowing photos of the devastation  but predicted that Ukraine would ultimately triumph

Speaking from the streets of Irpin, a district northwest of Kyiv, Matthews said: These photos I have put up are of the military targets being attacked [by the Russians] today  military targets being a church, a two-storey school, a bridge... which was attacked as civilians were evacuating from the city

A 19-year-old member of the Queen's Guard, whose identity has not been revealed for security reasons, dropped his ceremonial duties as a Coldstream Guardsman and signed up for Ukraine's International Legion of foreign volunteer fighters

Pictured, members of Ukraine's international legion. Volunteers from the US, UK, Sweden, Lithuania and Mexico have joined

Pictured, volunteers from Portugal and Brazil in Ukraine army fatigues in the days following Putin's invasion

Putin's invasion of Ukraine - which he had anticipated would last only a few days with limited casualties - is now nearing its third week with heavy losses on both sides, as Moscow gives the first signs it could be willing to end the fighting by saying there has been 'substantial progress' in peace talks

Here's how YOU can help: Donate here to the Mail Force Ukraine Appeal Readers of Mail Newspapers and MailOnline have always shown immense generosity at times of crisis. Calling upon that human spirit, we are supporting a huge push 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 the bombs and guns. As this tally of misery increases over the coming days and months, these innocent victims of this conflict will require accommodation, schools and medical support. Donations to the Mail Force Ukraine Appeal will be used to help 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

Matthews added that he had narrowly avoided being hit by artillery fire while drinking tea, writing: We were sat in this lovely summer house, just about to drink tea, and about 50m through there [a wood block], 120mm artillery just started raining down.

In recent days, the experienced sniper has been teaching Ukrainian defence forces how to treat battlefield casualties. Most of the forces heading to the front line are civilians who have never held a rifle before, the former Lance Corporal added.

However, Matthews insisted the Ukrainians fighting spirit was second to none and they had been absolutely hammering the Russians in Irpin.

The Ukrainian artillery was absolutely hammered the Russians while I was giving one of my medical lessons, he said. Apparently the Russians have got no defensive positions in Irpin so the Ukrainian boys are absolutely hammering them, which is good news.

Matthews added: On another note, all signs point towards Irpin being pushed through by the Russians  convoy killers in place, everything is fortified to hell and I can safely say that a collapse of the city will not happen.

The guerrilla-style tactics being employed by the Ukrainians is something you simply cannot defend against, its like the Taliban on steroids.

Around 20,000 volunteers from around the globe have already signed up to fight, with roughly 16,000 already on the ground in Ukraine, including a small contingent of Brits.

Many of them say their families are worried but supportive of their decision. One of them, Ben Grant, who served in Iraq, flew home from the Middle Eastern country to the UK to see his wife and kids and then went straight from there to join the fight in Ukraine.

He said: I hadnt seen them for a while and basically said Im going to Ukraine. Big shock. I feel a bit sorry to them to be fair. I know they were pretty upset but people need me here.

Panic ripped through the Ministry of Defence last week following reports that four British soldiers who have gone AWOL plan on fighting for the Ukrainians.

A 19-year-old member of the Coldstream Guards regiment reportedly dropped his ceremonial duties as one of the prestigious Queens Guards in Windsor and signed up for Ukraine's International Legion of foreign volunteer fighters.

He is feared to be among four British soldiers who have fled the country for the warzone, sparking panic in the British Army that Russia could use it as a chance to begin World War Three.

A military source said that 150 of former paratroopers were on their way to Poland. Several thousand people have volunteered to join the force, apparently including a group of SAS veterans eager to defend Ukraine.

According to The Mirror, the retired UK special forces soldiers volunteered for missions deep inside Ukraine to back up the countrys defence. The veterans, aged between 40 and 60, met 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.

Russias military forces kept up their punishing campaign to capture Ukraines capital with fighting and artillery fire in Kyivs suburbs on Monday.

After an air strike on a military base near the Polish border brought the war dangerously close to NATOs doorstep, peace talks raised hopes for progress in evacuating civilians from besieged Ukrainian cities and getting emergency supplies to areas without enough food, water and medicine.

Zelensky said in a new video address: Everyone is waiting for news. We will definitely report in the evening.

The negotiations taking place by video conference are the fourth round involving higher-level officials from the two countries and the first held in a week. The previous discussions took place in person in Belarus, and did not produce breakthroughs to end the fighting in Ukraine or lasting agreements on humanitarian routes.

Communication is being held, yet its hard, Ukrainian presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak tweeted along with a photo of the two sides meeting by video link.

Earlier, Podolyak said the negotiators would discuss peace, ceasefire, immediate withdrawal of troops & security guarantees.

People and medics help a wounded resident of a house destroyed by shelling as Russia's attack on Ukraine continues in Kyiv

A view of destruction after an apartment building was hit by Russian attack in Kyiv this morning, killing one civilian

A man holds his dead cat after heading back into his shelled apartment building which was struck by a Russian missile this morning

Firefighters use a ladder to evacuate a man from a residential building that was struck, as Russia's attack on Ukraine continues in Kyiv

Desperate Putin throws everything at Kyiv as National Guard chief ally admits the war has not gone to plan: Artillery destroys housing block and civilian cheats death as missile blast just misses him One of Vladimir Putin's closest allies has said Russia's invasion of Ukraine is not going as quickly as the Kremlin had wanted as the desperate leader continues his brutal assault on Kyiv by shelling an apartment block. In the strongest public acknowledgement yet from Moscow that things were not going to plan, National Guard chief Viktor Zolotov blamed the slower than expected progress on what he said were far-right Ukrainian forces hiding behind civilians, an accusation repeatedly made by officials in Russia. His comments appeared at odds with an assessment on Friday by Russia's Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu who told Putin that 'everything is going according to plan'. Russia has intensified its attacks on Kyiv with air strikes raining down on the city, while fighting and artillery fire rage around the suburbs. Zolotov, who was once in charge of Putin's personal security, said: 'I would like to say that yes, not everything is going as fast as we would like. 'But we are going towards our goal step by step and victory will be for us, and this icon will protect the Russian army and accelerate our victory.' This morning's assault on Kyiv saw one person killed, three hospitalised and nine treated at the scene after a bomb narrowly avoided a pedestrian. Russian troops are edging closer to the capital and are keeping up their siege of the southern port city of Mariupol, where officials said nearly 2,200 people have been killed. Another missile was intercepted above Kyiv but debris fell on the city, destroying a tram in more scenes of utter destruction. Meanwhile two people were killed and seven were injured after Russian forces struck a plane factory near Kyiv, sparking a large fire. Advertisement

Air raid alerts sounded in cities and towns all around the country overnight, from near the Russian border in the east to the Carpathian Mountains in the west, as fighting continued on the outskirts of Kyiv.

Ukrainian officials said Russian forces shelled several suburbs of the capital, a major political and strategic target for their invasion.

Authorities in Ukraine said two people died and seven were injured after Russian forces struck a plane factory in Kyiv, sparking a large fire.

The Antonov factory is Ukraines largest aircraft manufacturing plant and is best known for producing many of the world's biggest cargo planes.

Russian artillery fire also hit a nine-storey apartment building in the northern Obolonskyi district of the city, killing two more people, authorities said.

Firefighters worked to rescue survivors, painstakingly carrying an injured woman on a stretcher away from the blackened and still smoking building. A town councillor for Brovary, east of Kyiv, was killed in fighting there, officials said.

Shells also fell on the Kyiv suburbs of Irpin, Bucha and Hostomel, which have seen some of the worst fighting in Russia's stalled attempt to take the capital, local officials said.

Air strikes were reported across the country, including the southern city of Mykolaiv, and the northern city of Chernihiv, where heat was knocked out to most of the town.

Explosions also rang out overnight around the Russian-occupied Black Sea port of Kherson.

In the eastern city of Kharkiv, firefighters doused the remains of a four-storey residential building on a street of apartments and shops.

Ukrainian emergency services said a strike hit the building, leaving smouldering piles of wood and metal. It was unclear whether there were casualties.

The surrounded southern city of Mariupol, where the war has produced some of the greatest human suffering, remained cut off despite earlier talks on creating aid or evacuation convoys.

A pregnant woman who became a symbol of Ukraines suffering when she was photographed being carried from a bombed maternity hospital in Mariupol has died along with her baby, the Associated Press has learned.

Images of the woman being rushed to an ambulance on a stretcher had circled the world, epitomising the horror of an attack on humanitys most innocent.

Ukraine announced plans for new humanitarian aid and evacuation corridors on Monday, although ongoing shelling caused similar efforts to fail in the last week, including on Sunday.

The UN has recorded at least 596 civilian deaths since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, though it believes the true toll is much higher.

Millions more people have fled their homes, with more than 2.8million crossing into Poland and other neighbouring countries in what the UN refugee agency has called Europes biggest refugee crisis since the Second World War.

Since launching its invasion of Ukraine, Moscow has waged a multi-pronged attack.

Russias military is bigger and better equipped than Ukraines, but its troops have faced stiffer than expected resistance, bolstered by Western weapons support that has frustrated Putin.

With their advance slowed in several areas, they have bombarded several cities with unrelenting shelling, hitting two dozen medical facilities and a large number of apartment buildings.

The war expanded on Sunday when Russian missiles pounded a military training base in western Ukraine that previously served as a crucial hub for co-operation between Ukraine and NATO. The attack killed 35 people, Ukrainian officials said, and the bases proximity to the borders of Poland and other NATO members raised concerns that the Western military alliance could be drawn into the war.

A missile was intercepted in the air above Kyiv but debris fell on to the city, hitting a tram and a car

A wrecked car is seen suspended in a tree after Russian air strikes damaged a civilian apartment block in Obolon, Kyiv

A woman holding a small dog walks in front of an apartment in a block which was destroyed by an artillery strike in Kyiv

Speaking on Sunday night, Zelensky called it a black day and again urged NATO leaders to establish a no-fly zone over his country, a move the West has rejected for fear of starting a direct confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia.

Russias latest attack on its ex-Soviet neighbour has shaken the post-Cold War security order, with unpredictable and dangerous consequences.

The US says Russia asked China for military equipment to use in Ukraine after the West imposed severe economic sanctions to hobble the Russian economy and the invasion met stronger-than-expected Ukrainian resistance.

The request heightened tensions about the ongoing war ahead of a Monday meeting in Rome between top aides for the US and Chinese governments.

US President Joe Biden is sending his national security adviser Jake Sullivan to Rome to meet with a Chinese official over worries that Beijing is amplifying Russian disinformation and may help Moscow evade Western economic sanctions.

In his talks with senior Chinese foreign policy adviser Yang Jiechi, Mr Sullivan will be looking for limits in what Beijing will do for Moscow.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will address a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, according to a letter to members from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

Zelensky asked President Joe Biden to cut Russia off from international waters during their Friday phone call, it was reported on Monday.

Kyiv's leader asked the president to tighten the economic noose on Moscow as autocratic President Vladimir Putin's devastating and unprovoked assault on Ukraine continues into a third week.

His requests included more sanctions on Kremlin elites and further blocking Russia out of global trade, people familiar with the call told CNN.

Zelensky also reportedly floated the idea of restricting Russia's access to international waterways, which would further inhibit trade.

'As war rages on in Ukraine, it is with great respect and admiration for the Ukrainian people that we invite all Members of the House and Senate to attend a Virtual Address to the United States Congress delivered by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine on Wednesday, March 16th at 9:00 a.m,' Schumer and Pelosi wrote in a Monday morning letter.

'We look forward to the privilege of welcoming President Zelenskyys address to the House and Senate and to convey our support to the people of Ukraine as they bravely defend democracy.'

Meanwhile a top Kremlin official indicated on Monday that Putin's invasion is not going according to plan. His growing desperation is seen in his brutal treatment of civilians -- one person was killed and three hospitalized after a Russian missile hit an apartment block in Kyiv. A second person died after being hit by falling debris from a second missile being intercepted.

A child looks on a she stands in front of a destroyed apartment building following shelling in Kyiv on March 14

Two people were killed on Monday during a Russian missile attack on a Kyiv apartment block. One person died when a rocket struck the residential complex while a second was killed by debris from a second missile being intercepted

Russian troops are closing in on the Ukrainian capital, though one of Putin's closest allies admitted recently the invasion was not going according to plan. More than 2,000 civilians have died in the city of Mariupol, which has been under siege by the Kremlin's forces.

A White House readout of Biden's call with Zelensky gave no indication they discussed limiting Russia by sea.

'President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. spoke with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine to underscore his support for the Ukrainian people as they continue to defend their country against Russias unprovoked and unjustified attack. President Biden highlighted how the United States is continuing to surge security, humanitarian, and economic assistance to Ukraine,' the Friday statement read.

DailyMail.com has reached out to the White House National Security Council for comment.

It comes after the United States levied new sanctions on Moscow Thursday, targeting eight more members of Putin's inner circle and their families.

Among them is Kremlin spokesman Dimitri Peskov, who the US Treasury Department called Putin's 'lead propagandist.' His wife and two adult children were also sanctioned.

The US also took action against 10 board members of Russia's second largest bank, after sanctioning the institution itself when Putin first ordered the invasion on February 24.

On Friday Biden signed an executive order widening the ban on trade with Moscow. One of the measures is a ban on Russia imports of seafood, non-industrial diamonds and alcohol. Limits were also imposed on exporting American luxury goods to Russia.

Biden and Zelensky spoke for 49 minutes on Friday. The Ukrainian leader urged Biden to tighten the economic noose on Russia

A readout of their call made no mention of Zelensky's request about international waterways

Global leaders of the Group of 7 including Biden moved to strip Russia of membership benefits in the World Trade Organization by announcing the intention to remove its 'most favored nation' status.

Such a move on the US's behalf would require approval from Congress.

Russians of all financial stature are already feeling the strain of western sanctions.

Photos taken in Moscow and St. Petersburg since the invasion show sprawling lines at the ATM as people desperately sought to withdraw cash before the ruble plummeted further.

On Monday it was reported that Russian officials have sought military and economic support from China. Putin's apparent initial hope that Ukraine would fall within a matter of days was shattered by a historic and unprecedented local resistance effort.

If Beijing were to provide Moscow with funding and drones, it would signal a dramatic shift in Russia's capabilities and further fuel uncertainty about when Putin's attack would end.

US officials only said China responded to the call, which was reported by CNN. It was denied by both countries involved.

Biden's National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan as well as other foreign policy officials are meeting with Chinese counterparts in Rome, Italy on Monday.

A view of damaged area after fragments from a Tochka missile which was allegedly launched by Ukrainian forces has fallen in Donetsk region, killing 20 civilians, injured 9 others, on March 14

The main topics of discussion will be the situation in Ukraine and US-China relations, the White House said Sunday.

The meeting was announced shortly after Sullivan warned that China or any other country found to be evading the western blockade would face 'severe' consequences.

Sullivan told CNN's State of the Union the United States was 'watching closely' to see if China 'actually does provide any form of support, material support or economic support to Russia.'

'It is a concern of ours and we have communicated to Beijing that we will not stand by and allow any country to compensate Russia for its losses,' he said.

'We are communicating directly, privately to Beijing that there will absolutely be consequences for large scale sanctions evasion efforts or support to Russia to backfill that.'

He added, 'We will not allow that to go forward and allow there to be a lifeline to Russia from these economic sanctions from any country anywhere in the world.'

He indicated that such talks would be part of his Monday meeting with Chinese officials.

'In terms of the specific means of doing that, again, I'm not going to lay all of that out in public, but we will communicate that privately to China, as we have already done and will continue to do,' Sullivan said during a separate interview on NBC's Meet the Press Sunday.
An 18-year-old is facing life in jail for murdering a shopper for his Gucci bag - just three days after posing with a horror knife.

Police chest cam footage shows Joseph Jeremy being arrested after a car chase in Cardiff, for the murder of Ryan O'Connor, 26.

Mr O'Connor was targeted and attacked with horrific weapons for his 'manbag' on an evening trip to the shops in June last year.

The then teenager brutally murdered the father by stabbing him to death, and laughed as Mr O'Connor lay dying.

Jeremy was today convicted of his murder on a unanimous verdict by a jury after a two-month trial.

Newport Crown Court heard Jeremy was 'fascinated by knives' and had been sentenced for stabbing a teenage rival just months before the fatal attack on Ryan.

Jeremy bought a string of blades including large 'Predator', 'Rambo' and 'Zombie' knives.

Joseph Jeremy, 18, who posed with a 'zombie knife' (pictured) just days before stabbing Ryan O'Connor, 26, to steal his Gucci bag has been found guilty of murder

Ryan O'Connor (pictured), 26, was stabbed to death for his Italian-designed 'manbag' while he walked to the shops

The jury is still considering its verdicts on four other - Kyle Raisis, 18, Ethan Strickland, 19, Lewis Aquilina, 20, and Elliot Fiteni, 19.

The gang were in a stolen Ford Fiesta when two allegedly jumped from the car and attacked him with large knives.

All five were accused of murdering Ryan over his Gucci bag as he walked to the shops.

In his police interview, Fiteni said Aquilina and Jeremy carried out the killing in Newport, Gwent, on June 10 2021.

Prosecutor Michael Brady QC said: 'Fiteni said Jeremy was laughing and said "I have yinged him" while holding the knife in his hand.

'He said he pulled over and refused to drive any further so Aquilina took over. He also claimed Aquilina and Jeremy shouted "We have got his Gucci bag".'

Joseph Jeremy (pictured posing with a large Zombie knife days before stabbing Ryan O'Connor) told the court he had 'a fascination with knives'

The gang of five were in a stolen Ford Fiesta when two men allegedly jumped from the car and attacked Ryan O'Connor with large knives (Pictured here is the Ford Fiesta)

A knife was found inside the stolen Ford Fiesta (pictured)

Ryan OConnor was killed by Joseph Jeremy In Newport minutes after he left brothers house in Alway

Mr Brady said the five had travelled from Cardiff to Newport 'when on seeing Mr O'Connor wearing a Gucci manbag, decided to rob him.'

The court heard witnesses reported the car to police and the Fiesta was involved in a high speed pursuit later that day and stopped by a stinger.

Giving evidence, Jeremy claimed he bought the knife in Newport but claimed he new nothing about the attack.

He said he needed the knives for 'protection' against a rival group from his home city of Cardiff.

Jeremy told the jury: 'They pick on me because I'm small, that's why I carry a knife.'

He denied any part in the attack - but admitted that he did have 'a fascination with knives.'

The court heard Jeremy was just 15 when he began buying the blades using his father's driving licence as proof of age.

Aquilina, 20, Fiteni, 20, Raisis, 18, Strickland, 19, and Jeremy, 18, all of Cardiff, all denied murder, manslaughter and robbery.

The jury retired last Monday and have been considering their verdicts for five days.
Advertisement

Outcast Prince Andrew has today been seen breaking cover in Windsor, as his family members gather to mark Commonwealth Day in London.

The Duke of York, 62, has been spotted horse riding in the grounds of Windsor Castle and driving through the estate in his Range Rover.

His appearance, the first in public since he was spotted driving on Friday, comes as key royals are today marking Commonwealth Day with a service at Westminster Abbey.

The service is the first major public event involving key royals that Prince Andrew has missed since his US sex assault settlement with Jeffrey Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre.

Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales, are today's service, along with Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, William and Kate, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, and Princess Alexandra.

However the Queen will not be in attendance. It was announced on Friday that the 95-year-old monarch will miss the event - which is usually a highlight in her calendar.

The event would have been her first major engagement since contracting Covid in February, though Palace officials insist her absence is not health related.

Outcast Prince Andrew has today been seen breaking cover, on the day family members mark Commonwealth Day, without an appearance from the Queen

The Duke of York, 62, has been spotted horse riding in the grounds of Windsor Castle today after driving through the estate in his Range Rover

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge arrive at Westminster Abbey for the Commonwealth Service this afternoon

The Prince of Wales (left) and the Duchess of Cornwall arrive at the Commonwealth Service at Westminster Abbey today

The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall arrive at the Commonwealth Service at Westminster Abbey today

The Queen's diary is 'under review' as she 'accepts frailties of long life are catching up with her': Her Majesty, 95, will still attend public events but her appearances will be 'significantly curtailed' The Queen's diary is 'under review' and she is unlikely to ever undertake some major public engagements such as investitures again. Sources stress that the 95-year-old monarch is not ill and is 'as committed to her duties of state as ever'. But senior royal aides  as well as the Queen herself  are understood to have accepted that the 'frailties that come with living a long life' are finally catching up with her. She will still attend public events where possible, but her appearances will be significantly curtailed. That means standing on her feet for hour-long public investitures are out and they will be conducted by the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Cambridge and the Princess Royal instead. A source told the Daily Mail: 'The Queen is still as alert, able and interested as ever but, physically, she isn't as strong as she once was, which is entirely understandable for a woman of her age.' Buckingham Palace declined to comment. However, a royal source said: 'The Royal Family understands the important role investitures play in recognising service and celebrating people's contribution to society and there has been a real drive to catch up on the backlog created by Covid restrictions. 'The Prince of Wales, Princess Royal and Duke of Cambridge have been leading the charge. It's easy to envisage that they will continue in that vein but I wouldn't rule out Her Majesty doing smaller or one-off investitures.' The news comes after the elderly monarch was forced to pull out of today's Commonwealth Day service. On Friday, Buckingham Palace, which earlier in the week had still insisted she 'hoped' to be there, announced that she had asked the Prince of Wales to represent her at Westminster Abbey. The Queen, who has suffered a string of debilitating health issues since last autumn and is increasingly using a walking stick, was extremely 'regretful' about the decision, it is understood. It would have been her first public appearance since last October. Buckingham Palace had said she hoped to attend three significant events in March  the annual Diplomatic Reception, which was cancelled as a result of the war in Ukraine, the Commonwealth Day service, and the service of thanksgiving for her late husband at Westminster Abbey on March 29. The Mail understands that the Queen  who also contracted Covid last month  is still determined to attend the service for the Duke of Edinburgh and may even be 'pacing herself' in public so she can. Last Monday, she met with Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau at Windsor Castle, her first in-person meeting since recovering from Covid. Both Mr Trudeau and other sources have said she was in good health and was not using her walking stick. Another source who saw her at Sandringham last month confirmed she appeared to be 'bright, alert and walking relatively unencumbered'. But insiders acknowledge that, like any woman of her great age, the Queen has 'good days and less good days, as you would expect'. It was claimed yesterday that she has not been able to walk her dogs at Windsor for the last six months, although sources stressed she has been out on the estate. And The Mail on Sunday revealed courtiers were sufficiently concerned to be discussing whether she would be mobile enough to attend Philip's memorial. This will inevitably call into question how much the Queen will be able to take part in June's celebrations to mark her Platinum Jubilee. Advertisement

At the service, The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall were greeted as they arrived - while inside the place of worship, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were waiting and the two royal couples kissed each other on the cheeks.

But last Friday, palace officials revealed that the Queen - who is Head of the Commonwealth - had asked her son Charles to represent her at the service after discussing arrangements with members of the Royal Household.

It is thought that ensuring the comfort of the monarch, who now regularly uses a stick and has spoken openly about her mobility issues, was an overriding consideration in her decision not to take part.

The monarch's announcement came after the order of service was printed as she was named in the document, with the congregation required to stand when she arrived and made her way to her seat.

The Very Reverend Dr David Hoyle, the Dean of Westminster, told the congregation: 'In this jubilee year, in which we rejoice in the 70 years that Her Majesty the Queen has presided over this Commonwealth, we also thank God for her faithfulness and commit ourselves to learn from an example of duty and service. In words and music in the Abbey, we will now retrace the steps of her great Commonwealth tour begun 70 years ago.'

Among the arrivals before the royals were Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, Home Secretary Priti Patel and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss along with David Walliams who brought his mother Kathleen.

Also attending this afternoon were Sarah Clarke, Lady Usher of the Black Rod, Mark Spencer, Leader of the House of Commons, and US ambassador Philip Reeker - as well as Baroness Patricia Scotland and MP Jacob Rees-Mogg.

The Queen said today that it was 'rewarding to observe a modern, vibrant and connected Commonwealth that combines a wealth of history and tradition with the great social, cultural and technological advances of our time'.

It comes as it was today revealed The Queen's diary is 'under review' and she is unlikely to ever undertake some major public engagements such as investitures again. Sources stress that the 95-year-old monarch is not ill and is 'as committed to her duties of state as ever'.

But senior royal aides  as well as the Queen herself  are understood to have accepted that the 'frailties that come with living a long life' are finally catching up with her.

She will still attend public events where possible, but her appearances will be significantly curtailed.

That means standing on her feet for hour-long public investitures are out and they will be conducted by the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Cambridge and the Princess Royal instead.

A source told the Daily Mail: 'The Queen is still as alert, able and interested as ever but, physically, she isn't as strong as she once was, which is entirely understandable for a woman of her age.'

Buckingham Palace declined to comment. However, a royal source said: 'The Royal Family understands the important role investitures play in recognising service and celebrating people's contribution to society and there has been a real drive to catch up on the backlog created by Covid restrictions.

'The Prince of Wales, Princess Royal and Duke of Cambridge have been leading the charge. It's easy to envisage that they will continue in that vein but I wouldn't rule out Her Majesty doing smaller or one-off investitures.'

The news comes after the elderly monarch was forced to pull out of today's Commonwealth Day service.

On Friday, Buckingham Palace, which earlier in the week had still insisted she 'hoped' to be there, announced that she had asked the Prince of Wales to represent her at Westminster Abbey.

The Queen, who has suffered a string of debilitating health issues since last autumn and is increasingly using a walking stick, was extremely 'regretful' about the decision, it is understood.

Buckingham Palace had said she hoped to attend three significant events in March  the annual Diplomatic Reception, which was cancelled as a result of the war in Ukraine, the Commonwealth Day service, and the service of thanksgiving for her late husband at Westminster Abbey on March 29.

The Mail understands that the Queen is still determined to attend the service for the Duke of Edinburgh and may even be 'pacing herself' in public so she can.

Sources stress that the 95-year-old monarch is not ill and is 'as committed to her duties of state as ever'. Pictured: The Queen at Commonwealth Day celebrations in March 2021

The Mail understands that the Queen  who also contracted Covid last month  is still determined to attend the service for the Duke of Edinburgh and may even be 'pacing herself' in public so she can. Pictured: The Queen and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on March 7

Hour-long public investitures are out and they will be conducted by the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Cambridge and the Princess Royal instead. Pictured: Prince Charles and The Duke of Cambridge

'My life will always be devoted in service': The Queen's Commonwealth Day Message in full In this year of my Platinum Jubilee, it has given me pleasure to renew the promise I made in 1947, that my life will always be devoted in service. Today, it is rewarding to observe a modern, vibrant and connected Commonwealth that combines a wealth of history and tradition with the great social, cultural and technological advances of our time. That the Commonwealth stands ever taller is a credit to all who have been involved. We are nourished and sustained by our relationships and, throughout my life, I have enjoyed the privilege of hearing what the relationships built across the great reach and diversity of the Commonwealth have meant to people and communities. Our family of nations continues to be a point of connection, cooperation and friendship. It is a place to come together to pursue common goals and the common good, providing everyone with the opportunity to serve and benefit. In these testing times, it is my hope that you can draw strength and inspiration from what we share, as we work together towards a healthy, sustainable and prosperous future for all. And on this special day for our family  in a year that will include the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting and the Commonwealth Games  I hope we can deepen our resolve to support and serve one another, and endeavour to ensure the Commonwealth remains an influential force for good in our world for many generations to come. ELIZABETH R. Advertisement

Last Monday, she met with Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau at Windsor Castle, her first in-person meeting since recovering from Covid.

Both Mr Trudeau and other sources have said she was in good health and was not using her walking stick.

Another source who saw her at Sandringham last month confirmed she appeared to be 'bright, alert and walking relatively unencumbered'. But insiders acknowledge that, like any woman of her great age, the Queen has 'good days and less good days, as you would expect'.

It was claimed yesterday that she has not been able to walk her dogs at Windsor for the last six months, although sources stressed she has been out on the estate.

And The Mail on Sunday revealed courtiers were sufficiently concerned to be discussing whether she would be mobile enough to attend Philip's memorial.

This will inevitably call into question how much the Queen will be able to take part in June's celebrations to mark her Platinum Jubilee.

Last week the treasury insisted that not a penny of taxpayers' money was used to pay off Prince Andrew's rape accuser Virginia Roberts.

The Duke of York had last month agreed to pay a considerable sum of money, reported to be some 12 million, to settle a case brought by Ms Roberts.

She had alleged she was forced to have sex with the duke three times when she was 17 under the orders of the late paedophile billionaire Jeffrey Epstein.

In response to a Freedom of Information request asking whether public money was used for the Duke's legal costs or the out-of-court settlement, the Treasury said: 'No public money has been used to pay legal or settlement fees you refer to.'

On Friday Prince Andrew was seen for the first time since settling with Ms Roberts,

Prince Andrew has paid sexual abuse accuser Virginia Roberts and has been pictured for the first time since settling with her.

Ms Roberts had been given the go-ahead to sue Andrew, 61, for unspecified damages in a New York civil court In January and, despite vowing to fight the allegations and repeatedly protesting his innocence, the prince agreed to settle.

Andrew is now believed to have paid his financial settlement to Ms Roberts, dismissing the lawsuit.
Tulsi Gabbard attacked Mitt Romney on Monday, on Tucker Carlson's show, after the Utah Senator called her a traitor for querying US funding given to Ukrainian biolabs - now at the mercy of Russia.

Speaking to the Fox News host hours after she called on the Utah senator to resign, the former Democrat congresswoman said: 'First of all, I think it's important to point out here that this is not a matter of disagreement or holding a dissenting view.

'This is about facts and this is about the truth, so while senator Romney and all these different talking heads in the mainstream media are regurgitating Hillary Clinton's slanderous talking points, the facts remain.

'Number one is they are accusing me of saying that somehow there are bio weapons labs in Ukraine. I said no such thing at any point.'

Gabbard has raised questions about why the US funded labs in Ukraine that work with biological pathogens, some of which were once destined for Soviet-era bioweapons.

While that material can no longer be turned into weapons, it could still pose a great danger if it is allowed to defrost in the event of a Russian attack on labs where it is stored, causing the power to go off and it to defrost.

Tulsi Gabbard slammed Utah senator Mitt Romney on Tucker Carlson's show Monday after Romney blasted her for querying US funding to Ukrainian biolabs

Gabbard continued: 'I have said that there are bio labs in Ukraine that have received U.S. support that contain dangerous pathogens that if those labs are breached, then we in the world is facing a potential future of pandemics, that this is a dangerous crisis that needs to be addressed immediate, these pathogens need to be destroyed.

''The second thing they are saying is they deny, even though there is a plethora of evidence that exists, they deny that these bio labs are even there, which is shocking to me, we heard over and over, you played so many clips from people in the mainstream media saying these bio labs, these supposed bio labs, as though they are some fantasy - when over and over and over again officials from our own government, department of state, department of defense, and so on, are saying these bio labs in Ukraine have dangerous pathogens and we are very concerned that they may be breached.

'That is the concern that I've continued to raise because it is not left or right, Democrat or Republican, this is serious safety and health and life concern for the American people and people around the world, and so the media is lying.'

She earlier called on him to resign after he labelled her 'a traitor' for questioning U.S. support for biolabs in Ukraine.

'.@MittRomney and others say that I'm treasonous because I called for a ceasefire around the 25+ biolabs in Ukraine to prevent the breach of such facilities & escape of pathogens, and prevent more pandemics,' she tweeted.

'Romney should resign.'

Tulsi Gabbard, the former congresswoman, on Sunday posted a video to Twitter warning about biolabs in Ukraine

Gabbard, a former congresswoman for Hawaii and Democratic presidential candidate, initially sparked anger by asking on Sunday about the security of U.S.-backed laboratories in Ukraine.

The United States has for decades worked with scientists in Ukraine to transform their Soviet-era facilities, some of which were once used for bioweapons, into public health and research sites.

Gabbard asked what was happening in the labs, to prevent the pathogens escaping, and was described by Romney as backing Russian propaganda.

Romney attacked her despite a Department of Defense official warning last month that the labs could be vulnerable to a Russian attack. While the material stored within them could not be turned into weapons, the frozen pathogens could still prove very dangerous if the labs housing them are damaged and they're allowed to defrost.

Russia has accused the U.S. of running bioweapons plants in Ukraine - something that few outside of Russia believe, and which is widely believed to be a myth.

'Tulsi Gabbard is parroting false Russian propaganda. Her treasonous lies may well cost lives,' tweeted Romney.

Romney, a former Republican presidential nominee, has strongly criticized Gabbard for her remarks, which he saw as unpatriotic and supporting the Russian narrative

Gabbard was later asked by Tucker Carlson, Fox News host, about Romney's remarks, and calling her a traitor.

Gabbard insisted that she did not reference - as Carlson did - bio weapons.

She said she only referenced the labs, but said she was the victim of a smear campaign.

'I think it's important to recognize that facts exist, especially in this case, facts exist and the truth is the first casualty of war. And so this is exactly what we are seeing here,' she said.

'People have a very specific agenda, refusing to recognize the truth, refusing to have a conversation and instead were immediately resorting to their tactics of silence, smear, and anyone who dares to say anything they don't like.'

Gabbard is an Army Reserves Lieutenant Colonel posted to a Civil Affairs unit in California.

The labs Gabbard referred to use material which may have once been used to develop Soviet-era bioweapons, according to a report shared by a Department of Defense director, Robert Pope, in February.

He warned that the same material, which is frozen, could be released into the air with devastating consequences if the labs are damaged during fighting, and it is allowed to thaw.

He stressed, however, that they were not bioweapons facilities, but rather laboratories for medical and other research.

Pope's report, and Carlson's subsequent remarks, have been seized on by Russian propagandists to claim that the United States was actually developing biological weapons in the war-torn nation.

Carlson on Monday said: 'The director of the U.S. Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, a man who would know - a man called Robert Pope - has confirmed that scientists are keeping Soviet-era pathogens for research purposes in Ukraine.

'They told us they were destroying them. They should have destroyed them, but they haven't.

'What could go wrong in an active war zone? And they knew that those pathogens existed and were being experimented upon, researched.'

Pope's bulletin in February said that some of the biological material had previously been used for Soviet-era bioweapons programs, but that Ukraine no longer had the ability to develop such weapons.

Carlson referred to a report authored by a Department of Defense director in February, warning that US-funded research in Ukrainian biolabs could be exploited by Russian invaders looking to develop a chemical weapon

Gabbard, a former Democrat congresswoman, speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando, Florida, in February

Commenting on the significant of Pope's warning, Carlson continued: 'And they didn't secure them before the Russians invaded, though they knew the Russian invasion was coming because they told us.

'And then, Toria Nuland, the Under Secretary of State who oversees this disaster, testified under oath that, yes, Russian forces might seize those biolabs in Ukraine, and we should all be very worried about that possibility.

'Over the weekend, CBS News reported that Pentagon officials have confirmed that these biolabs in Ukraine are, in fact, conducting research on anthrax and other 'deadly pathogens.'

Carlson's broadcasts have been aired on Russian state television, furthering anger among his liberal detractors.

On March 11, however, the World Health Organization (WHO) said that they too had advised Ukraine to destroy high-threat pathogens housed in the country's public health laboratories to prevent 'any potential spills' that would spread disease among the population.

In response to questions from Reuters about its work with Ukraine ahead of and during Russia's invasion, the WHO said in an email on Thursday that it has collaborated with Ukrainian public health labs for several years to promote security practices that help prevent 'accidental or deliberate release of pathogens.'

'As part of this work, WHO has strongly recommended to the Ministry of Health in Ukraine and other responsible bodies to destroy high-threat pathogens to prevent any potential spills,' the WHO, a United Nations agency, said.

The WHO would not say when it had made the recommendation nor did it provide specifics about the kinds of pathogens or toxins housed in Ukraine's laboratories.

The agency also did not answer questions about whether its recommendations were followed.

Carlson said on Monday: 'Tulsi Gabbard addressed and only addressed the danger that innocent people could die because these weapons, apparently these pathogens, these agents, exist in Ukraine.

Gabbard attempted to correct Carlson, and insist she had not referenced bio weapons, as he did

'She didn't blame him in Russia - she didn't blame anybody. She just said this is a thing.

'Unsecured bio weapons in a war zone are a bad idea. That's not reasonable now? That's treason?

'Reason isn't part of the way people are thinking now.

'Everybody in leadership has completely lost the ability to think beyond the next week.

'Who is thinking about tomorrow or next month or 20 years from now? Not one person.

'And anyone who tries is an agent of Putin.'

Gabbard tweeted that her points were being misconstrued.

She said: 'I'm not convinced there are biological weapons labs or biological weapons in Ukrainethat's not what I'm concerned about. I'm concerned about the existence of the 25+ biological labs in that warzone.

''Biolabs', 'bioweapons labs', and 'bioweapons' are 3 very different things.

'But because these phrases are so similar, there is sometimes miscommunication and misunderstanding when discussing them. I recently experienced this myself. So let me clarify.

''Biolabs' are facilities which contain and experiment with dangerous pathogens, ostensibly for the purpose of serving the public good (i.e. vaccines, etc.).

''Biological weapons labs' are facilities which exist for the purpose of turning pathogens into weapons.

'So they can be used against an enemy (i.e. 'bioweapons').

'The danger of pathogens being released from biolabs in Ukraine is very real, and we need to take action immediately to prevent an impending catastrophe.'

Gabbard is known for courting controversy in foreign affairs.

In January 2017 she traveled to Syria to meet Bashar al-Assad, on a visit that was paid for and run by members of a Lebanese socialist-nationalist party that works closely with the Assad regime. She repaid the money later after criticism.

On the trip, she met only with the regime-approved 'opposition' who said they were against the rebellion against Assad, and she returned to the U.S. blaming Washington for the civil war in Syria.

Earlier this month, Adam Kinzinger, a Republican representing Illinois, went after Gabbard, reminding her of her support for Assad and saying she 'defends him today'.

He called her a 'defender of Russia' whose claims serve as 'Russian propaganda.'

Gabbard's questioning of biolabs on Sunday followed remarks Russia made at the United Nations on Friday.

Russia's claim, widely dismissed, that the U.S. is developing bioweapons in Ukraine raised alarm in the west, amid the suspicion that Russia could be plotting to use chemical or biological weapons as its invasion does not go as planned.

Gabbard has appeared in Russian state-controlled media

U.S. Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) accused Gabbard of telling 'treasonous lies'

A resident of Kyiv carries his cat that was rescued from his flat after it was hit by a shell as Russia's attack on Ukraine continues, in the Obolon district in Kyiv on Monday

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, accused Russia of 'lying and spreading disinformation' with its unfounded claims about biological weapons last week.

Russia has provided no evidence of the U.S. supporting Ukrainian bioweapons projects, although the U.S. embassy in Ukraine says the Defense Department's Biological Threat Reduction Program works with the Ukrainian Government 'to consolidate and secure pathogens and toxins of security concern in Ukrainian government facilities.'

The administration and Ukraine have vigorously denied Moscow's claims of funding weapons research in Ukraine.

Russia's ambassador to the UN on Friday accused the U.S. of funding into 'vectors or potential agents of biological weapon' including bats, birds, fleas, and lice.'

Russian state media has made use of Gabbard's claims, which come as Moscow is seeking to portray Ukraine as both controlled by Nazis and threatening Russia with dangerous weapons.

Russia's spokeswoman for the foreign ministry, Maria Zakharova, also accused Ukraine of launching 'attacks against their own nuclear facilities.'

Zakharova tweeted: 'The blame for this lies squarely with Kiev, the American masters of Vladimir Zelensky and US vassals in @NATO.'

The administration fears Russia's highlighting the conspiracy theory could foretell a new stage in the conflict.

'The intent behind these lies seems clear, and is deeply troubling,' said Thomas-Greenfield.

'We believe Russia could use chemical or biological agents for assassinations, as part of a staged or false-flag incident, or to support tactical military operations.'

Russia has long raised the allegations, which it brought up again last week as Russian forces pummeled Ukrainian cities.
Advertisement

The White House insisted that China will face 'significant consequences' if it sends military to aid to Russia , after National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan on Monday held an 'intense' seven-hour meeting with Beijing's top diplomat.

But Press Secretary Jen Psaki refused to lay out President Joe Biden's red lines on what would trigger action, or describe what those consequences might be, despite repeated questions during the daily briefing.

'I think what we have conveyed and what was conveyed by our national security adviser in this meeting, is that should they provide military or other assistance that of course violates sanctions or, or supports the war efforts, that there will be significant consequences,' she said.

'But in terms of what the specifics look like, we would coordinate with our partners and allies to make that determination.'

National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan met Yang Jiechi, a member of the Chinese Communist Party's politburo, at a Rome hotel on Monday morning.

It came after reports at the weekend that Russia had approached China for help in resupplying its armed forces.

But a senior administration official characterized it as a 'frank exchange' of views and said the meeting was long planned.

'What I would say in general is that we do have deep concerns about China's alignment with Russia at this time,' said the official, 'and the national security adviser was direct about those concerns and the potential implications and consequences of certain actions.'

The official said it had not been set up to discuss concerns that Russia had asked China for military help.

Either way it put Beijing at the center of the latest diplomatic push.

Last week senior U.S. intelligence officials said they believed Chinese leaders may be worried that Moscow's invasion, and President Vladimir Putin's increasingly brutal tactics, will reflect badly on them if they offer diplomatic cover.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki on Monday said China will face 'significant consequences' if it sends military to aid to Russia but declined to set red lines or describe what sort of action would be taken

President Joe Biden's National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan (l) was meeting with China's top diplomat Yang Jiechi (r) at a Rome hotel on Monday morning as part of a diplomatic push to ensure Beijing does not prop up Moscow

The Cavalieri Waldorf Astoria hotel in Rome Sullivan was meeting Jiech to discuss the war in Ukraine

A Ukrainian soldier helps fire crews search the ruins of a Kyiv apartment building for survivors and victims after Russia resumed its bombing campaign early Monday

A child looks on as she stands in front of a destroyed apartment building following shelling in Kyiv on March 14

Two people were killed on Monday during a Russian missile attack on a Kyiv apartment block. One person died when a rocket struck the residential complex while a second was killed by debris from a second missile being intercepted

Against that background, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV on Monday morning reported that Yang Jiechi had met Sullivan in Rome, but offered no further details.

American officials and allies have repeatedly said that China risks facing secondary sanctions if it sides with Russia.

And on Sunday, they claimed that Putin had asked his ally for military help for his faltering invasion.

But that triggered accusations of disinformation by Chinese officials.

Zhao Lijian, spokesman for Beijing's foreign ministry, said that America was 'targeting China on the Ukraine issue with malicious intentions.'

A day earlier, Sullivan warned Beijing of 'consequences' if it tried to bail out Putin by, for example, providing ways to skirt international economic sanctions.

'We will ensure that neither China, nor anyone else, can compensate Russia for these losses,' Sullivan told NBC ahead of the meeting.

'In terms of the specific means of doing that, I'm not going to lay all of that out in public, but we will communicate that privately to China, as we have already done and will continue to do.'

And he told CNN that Washington was watching closely to see how far China provided economic or material support.

'We are communicating directly, privately to Beijing, that there will absolutely be consequences for large-scale sanctions evasion efforts or support to Russia to backfill them,' he said.

'We will not allow that to go forward and allow there to be a lifeline to Russia from these economic sanctions from any country, anywhere in the world.'

Russia on Monday denied it needed China's help.

'No, Russia has its own potential to continue the operation, which, as we have said, is unfolding in accordance with the plan and will be completed on time and in full,' said Dmitry Peskov, President Vladimir Putin's spokesman.

It all puts China at the heart of diplomatic efforts to end the conflict in its third week.

American officials believe Putin expected to take the Ukrainian capital Kyiv in a two-day lightning offensive.

Instead, almost three weeks later, his forces are still battling Ukrainian forces who have used hit-and-run attacks - and an influx of foreign weapons, including anti-tank grenades - to lethal effect.

Rescuers work next to a residential building damaged by shelling by Russian forces in the early hours of Monday

A view of damaged area after fragments from a Tochka missile which was allegedly launched by Ukrainian forces has fallen in Donetsk region, killing 20 civilians, injured 9 others, on March 14

A view of damaged buildings and streets due to the ongoing Russian shelling and missile strikes in Kharkiv on March 13

A Ukrainian firefighter drags a hose inside a large food products storage facility which was destroyed by an airstrike in the early morning hours on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, March 13

American officials, speaking anonymously, say the Kremlin has reached out to Beijing for help replenishing its military supplies - though they did not say exactly what Putin had requested or when the request was made. Western nations have been supplying Ukraine with a steady stream of anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons.

'China is deeply concerned and grieved on the Ukraine situation,' Liu Pengyu, the Chinese embassy spokesperson in Washington, said, adding that he was not aware of any suggestions China might be willing to help Russia.

'We sincerely hope that the situation will ease and peace will return at an early date.'

Intelligence officials have hinted there may be a chance to harness Chinese influence over Moscow, perhaps by advocating for a ceasefire.

China abstained from a United Nations General Assembly vote to condemn Russia's invasion - rather than voting against it - and officials have used the term 'war' to describe what Moscow insists is a 'special military operation.

And last week C.I.A. Director Bill Burns said Chinese leader Xi Jinping may be worried about the way the war was unfolding and that its ugly nature risked guilt by association.

'President Xi is probably a little bit unsettled as he watches the way in which President Putin has driven Americans and Europeans more closely together and strengthen the Transatlantic alliance in ways that would have been a little bit hard to imagine before the invasion began,' he said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who has said he is willing to meet Putin in person for talks, said last week that he was willing to 'discuss and find a compromise' with Russia over the future of Donbas - a region of eastern Ukraine comprised of Donetsk and Luhansk where many ethnic Russians live.

Russian and Ukrainian representatives held talks by video link on Monday. Ukraine's negotiator said he wanted to secure a ceasefire, the withdrawal of Russian troops and security guarantees for Ukraine.

Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhaylo Podolyak said the talks would resume on Tuesday after what he described as a 'technical pause.'

They were the first talks to be held for a week.

Ukrainian authorities earlier said two people died and seven were injured after Russian forces struck an airplane factory in Kyiv, sparking a fire. The Antonov factory is Ukraine's largest aircraft manufacturing plant and is best known for producing many of the world's biggest cargo planes.

Russian artillery fire also hit a nine-story apartment building in the northern Obolonskyi district of the city, killing two more people, authorities said.

Firefighters worked to rescue survivors, painstakingly carrying an injured woman on a stretcher away from the blackened and still smoking building.
This is the frightening moment a deputy mayor was shot at multiple times after he attacked a merchant in southeastern Brazil.

Surveillance video captured Deputy Mayor Fabiano Batista de Lima running for his life in the Sao Paulo city of Atibaia on Sunday.

Before the shots were fired, the 52-year-old politician was seen lunging towards business owner Junior Humberto de Oliveira and clotheslining him and throwing a punch outside his home.

Batista de Lima apparently attempted to enter de Oliveiras residence before he turned around and raced down the street as de Oliveira fired multiple shots.

The incident unfolded as a result of a dispute between Batista de Lima and de Oliveira over a string of videos that the merchant had recently shared online that linked the deputy mayor and his wife, Fatima Batista, to improprieties, newspaper UOL reported.

Business owner Junior Humberto de Oliveira unloads his gun before striking Fabiano Batista de Lima, the deputy mayor of the southeastern Brazilian city of Atibaia, on Sunday

Fabiano Batista de Lima, the deputy mayor of Atibaia, Brazil, recovers after being shot in the right leg gunshot wound Sunday

Brazilian deputy mayor Fabiano Batista de Lima with his wife Fatima Batista

Following several heated discussions on social media, Batista de Lima told de Oliveira that he was going to go to his home to retrieve the video footage.

Everyone knows that we have suffered continuous attacks on social networks promoted by this person, who does not even respect the honor of our family members, Bautista de Lima wrote on social media. Emotionally shaken by the gratuitous attacks fired against my wife, I really went to take (my frustrations on) him.'

De Oliveira was standing in front of a gate outside his residence when Batista de Lima charged at him.

Batista de Lima was struck on the right leg and was rushed to a local hospital. The wound was not considered life threatening.

Deputy mayor Fabiano Batista de Lim lunges at local merchant Junior Humberto de Oliveira

Junior Humberto de Oliveira opens fire on deputy mayor Junior Humberto de Oliveira outside the merchant's home in southeastern Brazilian municipality of Atibaia on Sunday. De Oliveira was struck in the right leg but is recovering

Junior Humberto de Oliveira was arrested on an attempted murder charge Sunday after shooting Fabiano Batista de Lima, the deputy mayor of the Brazilian city of Atibaia

De Oliveira turned over footage of the incident and the handgun to the Atibaia Military Police before he was arrested on an attempted murder charge Sunday.

He told the police that he reached into his vehicle and grabbed the gun before he unloaded a full ammunition clip.

'He fired the shot with the intention of scaring the deputy mayor, stopping the attacks and for his protection and that of his family,' de Oliveiras lawyer, Danilo Gerage said, as quoted by Brazilian news outlet G1. 'There was no shot with intent to kill. He even called the police, handed over the gun and the images.'

Authorities, however, disputed de Oliveira's version of the shooting, pointing out he may have been carrying the weapon due to the amount of time that had passed between the moment he was assaulted by Batista de Lima and when he opened fire.
A handful of Lehigh Valley post offices on Monday are launching a program U.S. Postal Service officials say will speed up local deliveries.

Following recent increases in e-commerce across the country, USPS Connect Local focuses on same-day deliveries for customers shipping packages locally.

Advertisement

Paul Smith, a Philadelphia spokesperson for the service, called it a nice game-changer.

Its really, really exciting, Smith said. This is part of the Delivering for America plan to meet shippers evolving package needs. You see all these studies about how people, since the pandemic especially, just the growth in parcel volumes, and the need to [get] things fast.

Advertisement

[ Despite mail delays, USPS says free COVID-19 tests will be delivered in a timely and efficient manner to Lehigh Valley residents ]

Last year, the services shipping and package revenue increased by $3.5 billion on volume growth of 253 million pieces, according to the USPS 2021 fiscal year report. Officials attributed the uptick to surges in e-commerce during the COVID-19 pandemic and record holiday volume.

Alongside increases in shipping, mail delays have been common across the region. Early last year, an audit found managers at the Lehigh Valleys main post office facility failed to process mail according to procedures and received mail from other facilities late. Then, in October, the service implemented new standards, which caused longer delivery times for some mail.

Below, find out details about USPS Connect Local.

Which Lehigh Valley post offices are participating?

Allentown, Easton, Macungie and East Stroudsburg post offices launch the service Monday.

How does it work?

After signing up via uspsconnect.com, customers can drop off a package 5 -7 a.m. at the dock of a participating post office for same-day delivery, bypassing processing plants. Free packing materials are also available.

How much does it cost?

Advertisement

Pricing for packages starts at $3.95, with flat-rate options available. The flat rate for mail is $2.95.

What if a package isnt dropped off during the 5-7 a.m. window?

The package would be delivered the next day.

Is it only for businesses?

While its geared toward businesses, the service is available for residential customers, too.

How is this different than other options?

Advertisement

This is the first time the USPS is offering a same-day delivery service.

Why does bypassing the processing plants speed up mail delivery?

Traditionally, after a package is mailed, it goes to a processing center before landing at a post office near the delivery address.

If you want to mail something to somebody who is in the same ZIP code as you, but lets say 10 miles away, with this service, you get same-day service, or the next day, Smith said. Whereas, if you go to a post office and you want to use express mail, its much, much more costly.

Who can benefit from it?

Business Buzz Daily The daily update for the Lehigh Valley business person. >

Smith said its a terrific opportunity for local businesses, but its also helpful for residential customers trying to get packages to family or friends.

Advertisement

What do officials say?

Louis DeJoy, postmaster general and CEO, said the program is an affordable way to meet consumer demand for fast delivery.

A pivotal point in our Delivering for America plan, it positions us to more fully leverage our network capacity to increase volume and revenue so we can continue to serve the American people with affordable, reliable mail and package delivery, DeJoy said in a news release announcing the program.

Is it available in other places?

Originally piloted in Texas, the service is available there, as well as in parts of New York, New Jersey and Delaware.

Morning Call reporter Molly Bilinski can be reached at mbilinski@mcall.com.
Black Americans are leaving city centers and moving to the suburbs, drawn by affordable housing, lower crime and more amenities as part of a trend that's been accelerating for decades, according to the 2020 Census.

Twenty-three of the biggest cities in the US lost black residents in the 2020 count. Only 13 cities had lost black residents in the 2000 census.

In the 100 biggest cities, more than half - or 54 percent - of black residents lived in the suburbs in 2020, up from 43 percent in 2000.

In Chicago, a city long known for the cultural and economic influence of its black population, the percentage of black residents went from 40 percent in 1989 to less than 30 percent in 2020.

Residents and demographers there cite a number of reasons for the decline, from the downfall of the steel industry and blue-collar jobs to the dismantling of public housing in the 2000s that displaced residents.

Crime in Chicago also remains a concern as the city struggles to hire and maintain police officers. Overall crime in the Windy City is up by 35 percent compared to this time last year, according to the latest figures from the Chicago Police Department, with theft up by 65 percent and robbery up by 10 percent.

In the 100 biggest cities, more than half - or 54 percent - of black residents lived in the suburbs in 2020, up from 43 percent in 2000

From 1990 to 2000, 13 of the United States' biggest cities lost black residents. By 2020, it was 23

In Chicago, a city long known for the cultural and economic influence of its black population, the percentage of black residents went from 40 percent in 1989 to less than 30 percent in 2020

Chicago residents and demographers offer no shortage of reasons for the urban exodus, including the war on drugs and the decline of the steel industry. Crime in the city is also up 35 percent this year as some residents flock to the suburbs for safety

In the once-flourishing black Chicago neighborhood of Roseland, The Ranch Steak House, a longtime area staple with its wagon wheel decor and 'Roy Rogers ribeye,' is fighting to reopen as one of the last sit-down restaurants.

About 13 miles away near Indiana, Christopher Cain and wife Deja Cousins-Cain sought a new market for their wine bar that promises 'Good Vibes Only,' settling on the suburb of Lansing, where growth has included a steady increase in black residents.

The official 2020 count found that a section of Roseland measuring less than 1 square mile lost 1,600 black residents.

Now, the area near where former President Barack Obama was a community organizer - located about 20 minutes south of downtown - doesn't even have a grocery store. That makes Judy Ware, who bought the Ranch Steak House restaurant in 2018, more determined to hang on.

'We take pride in trying to keep this institution in the neighborhood,' she said. 'It's needed.'

For others, though, the suburbs offer a fresh choice.

Cousins-Cain and her husband surprised themselves in choosing Lansing, which wasnt always friendly to black people.

Settled by Dutch and German immigrants, the city has seen a roughly 50 percent increase in its black residents, who now represent almost half the population. Lansing recently elected its first black trustee.

'It just feels like we are finally getting an opportunity to bring something to the table and bring something to the conversation,' Cousins-Cain said.

The two enclaves of roughly 30,000 people reflect how black migration patterns in the 21st century are changing the makeup of metropolitan areas nationwide.

Black residents are continuing to flock to the suburbs from cities. Above, Judy Ware in front of her restaurant, the Ranch Steak House, in the Roseland neighborhood of Chicago. Ware says she's determined to hang on as others leave

Deja Cousins-Cain, left, and her husband Christopher Cain at their S.L. Wine Bar in Lansing, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. Lansing recently elected its first Black trustee, though residents there say discrimination still exists

For decades, black residents have been leaving some of the nation's largest cities while suburbs have seen an increase in their black populations. Those two trends have now spread to even more areas of the country, according to the 2020 US census.

The patterns echo the 'white flight' that upended urban landscapes in the 20th century.

Like those who left cities before them, black residents often move because of worries about crime and a desire for reputable schools, affordable housing and amenities.

But there are key differences: Leaving black city neighborhoods that are starved for investment is often more of a necessity than a choice, and those who do settle into new suburban lives often find racial inequities there, too.

From 1990 to 2000, 13 of the United States' biggest cities lost black residents.

By 2020, it was 23. According to the census, roughly 54 percent of black residents within the 100 biggest American metro areas were suburbanites in 2020, up from 43 percent two decades ago, according to Bill Frey of the Brookings Institution.

While New York, Los Angeles and Philadelphia all lost black residents from 2010 to 2020, the change was especially notable in Chicago, which gained population but lost 85,000 black people, the highest number after Detroit, according to the 2020 census.

Those numbers could vary slightly, as the Census Bureau reported last week that 3.3 percent of the black population was undercounted in the 2020 census, a rate higher than in 2010.

The trends are nuanced. Part of the explanation is that black residents are continuing to move to Southern cities in a reversal of the Great Migration, a movement that began in the 1910s and resulted in millions leaving the South for northern cities to escape discrimination.

But more recently, some of the starkest changes are happening within metro areas as suburbs of major cities see black population growth.

Black residents, who represented roughly 40 percent of Chicago's population in 1980, now make up less than 30 percent. Their presence increased, meanwhile, in dozens of Chicago suburbs from 2010 to 2020.

SEVEN people are shot and critically-injured during single incident in crime-ridden Windy City Seven people were shot on Chicago's South Side Sunday afternoon At least seven people have been critically injured in a shooting at an intersection in Chicago. The shooting happened on Chicago's South Side near East 79th Street and South Exchange Avenue just after 3.30pm on Sunday. All seven victims were taken to various area hospitals and are said to be in critical condition. The seven shot on Sunday afternoon brings the total number of victims shot in the Windy City to 23 in a bloody weekend of violence leading to the deaths of two people. No suspects are in custody for any of the shootings or murders. 'Several people were standing outside Little Caesars Pizzeria. They began talking to the people in a car which pulled up alongside them when the shooting started. We don't know if they were targeted or if it was just an altercation,' said Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown. Superintendent Brown 'Its always a big deal,' he added. 'One shooting is one too many. Whether it was targeted or an altercation it is unacceptable. We are going to put all our efforts towards bringing those people involved to justice.' The figures are similar to those experienced last weekend when 20 people were shot, one fatally. Advertisement

Chicago residents and demographers offer no shortage of reasons for the urban exodus: The decline of the steel industry and blue-collar jobs starting in the 1970s. The war on drugs. The dismantling of public housing in the 2000s that displaced thousands of black residents. School closures in 2014 that disproportionately affected black and Latino children.

'It's really hard to point to one specific thing,' said Dan Cooper, director of research with Chicago's Metropolitan Planning Council.

'And when you look at the confluence of factors, black folks havent been centered in policy or they are centered in wrong ways.'

Chicago, long a segregated city, continues to report disparate outcomes by race when it comes to home ownership, income, transportation access and more.

In Roseland, residents note persistent crime, delayed city services and a train line that ends at Roseland's northern edge. Worries persist about population loss diluting black political power as drafts of a political remapping show fewer majority-black wards.

Many said those issues forced them to leave.

Truck driver Chris Calhoun, 32, sought more peace in suburban South Holland in 2014.

The deciding factor for him, he said, was, 'Where can I live where my kids can go outside and ride their bikes, or we can take a walk around the block as a family without looking over my shoulder?'

Crystal Fenn left in 2015 for law school in suburban Atlanta, where she's now an attorney.

'If you could do anything better for yourself, why would you want to be there?' she said. 'The lack of economic dollars, its almost like the city doesnt care about Roseland anymore.'

Once a Dutch enclave, Roseland was annexed into Chicago in 1892. Within decades, there was an influx of black families.

Marc Pullins, 56, recalls four nearby grocery stores and has fond memories of Kohn Elementary School.

'Half the neighborhood went to that school,' said Pullins, a current resident and activist. 'Theyre all gone.'

Kohn is located within the section of Roseland that lost more than 1,600 black residents. The school sits vacant, a green 'For Sale' sign out front. It is among the roughly 55 schools targeted by former Mayor Rahm Emanuel in the nation's largest mass school closure.

Nearby homes and businesses, including a candy shop, are shuttered. The vacancies extend down a once-thriving business corridor that Preservation Chicago has deemed among Chicago's 'most endangered places.'

Kisha Pleasant, 41, bought her first home in Roseland, but violence and dwindling amenities pushed her out.

'I can't retire in this area,' she said. 'I want to come outside, and I don't want to be scared that somebody will be shooting at me.'

Last year, she moved to Lansing.

Sameerah and Jerrell Miller moved with their daughter to a leafy Lansing street six years ago after living in Chicago and neighboring Oak Park.

They bought a home near a top school for less than what they would have paid in Chicago. Lansing's median home price is about $195,000, less than half the city's median.

'Lansing, to this day, still has kids outside in the summertime playing,' said Jerrell Miller. 'You dont really get that in the city without worry.'

Sameerah Miller moved to Lansing, a Chicago suburb, with her daugher and husband six years ago, after living in Chicago and neighboring Oak Park

The growing black population prompted Micaela Smith, who moved to Lansing in 2002, to seek office. She became the suburb's first black trustee last year, after a challenging campaign in the predominantly white suburb.

'I had to do more persuasion to convince the voters,' Smith said.

Activists say Lansing has had its fair share of issues involving race. In 2017, a black teenager was held down and threatened by a white off-duty police officer, a confrontation that led the city to enter a memorandum of understanding with activists and the U.S. Department of Justice.

Pastor David Bigsby of In The Upper Room Ministries recently held a community call about disproportionate traffic stops, noting a major thoroughfare largely divides black and white residents.

'It's still segregated in town,' he said.

Rev. David Bigsby of Lansing says the suburb still has racial disparities despite its growing black population. 'It's still segregated in town,' he said

Still, the 76-year-old, who moved into the parsonage six years ago, has about 250 congregants now, an increase of about 20 percent.

Lansing is also seeing a boost in black-owned businesses. Cain and Cousins-Cain opened their chic S.L. Wine Bar last year, with R&B and jazz setting the mood. Support, particularly from black customers, has been strong.

'We want our own version of Cheers,' Cousins said.

Roseland residents who remain take pride in Obama's work there, and say they've seen signs of a turnaround.

Chicago officials recently launched a $750 million program to improve neglected neighborhoods, including Roseland, and have detailed plans for a train line extension. The Greater Roseland Chamber of Commerce hopes a community hospital will grow into a medical district.

Judy Ware is preparing to resume table service at the Ranch after struggling through the coronavirus pandemic. A fire set during unrest following George Floyds killing in Minneapolis destroyed the restaurants interior, and takeout-only couldn't sustain the business, which has been operating for more than 50 years.

After renaming it Ware Ranch Steak House and installing new flooring and orange booths, Ware is feeling optimistic as she prepares to reopen this month.

'If we can weather the storm, I think we'll come out good on the other side,' she said. 'There is a lot of stuff waiting to happen in Roseland.'
A homeless career criminal has been arrested and charged with brutally assaulting a nurse after he was caught on video repeatedly throwing the victim down the stairs at a Seattle light rail station in an unprovoked attack.

Kim Hayes, 62, was on her way to work at Harborview Medical Center around noon on March 2 when the brutal attack took place at the Chinatown-International District station near downtown.

As the longtime health worker was walking up the stairs, she was grabbed by Alexander Jay, 40, and thrown back down the cement steps, according to court documents obtained by DailyMail.com.

The nurse suffered a broken clavicle and three broken ribs. She was rushed to the hospital where she has worked for 25 years, receiving surgery from her colleagues.

The horrific attack comes as Seattle continues to be plagued by crime from homeless encampments that have sprouted in the woke Pacific Northwest bastion. Last week, Amazon announced it would relocate 1,800 workers from its downtown offices over fears for their safety.

Jay has been convicted 22 times in Washington state and California, including on charges of burglary, theft, selling stolen property, drug possession, auto theft and multiple counts of domestic violence.

He was most recently convicted in 2021 of a residential burglary.

Additionally, since 2016, Washington state courts have issued more than 15 bench warrants for the defendant for failing to attend hearings.

He was charged with second-degree assault and remained jailed on $150,000 bail as of Monday morning.

Jay is due back in court on March 24.

Shocking video from the Chinatown-International District light rail station in Seattle on March 2 shows Alexander Jay, 40 (left), brutally attacking Kim Hayes, a 62-year-old nurse (right)

Seattle nurse Kim Hayes has been identified as the victim in the brutal attack

Video shows the suspect grabbing the woman and throwing her down the stairs head first

The nurse suffered three broken ribs and a busted collar bone as she fell down stairs

Jay races down the stairs to grabs her a second time and throws her further down

A litany of convictions dating back 22 years that include burglary, assault and car theft 2000: Accessory 2006: Second-degree burglary; petty theft 2007: Taking a vehicle without consent 2008: Possession of a controlled substance 2009: Petty theft; theft (California) 2011: Theft (California) 2017: Fourth-degree assault - domestic violence 2018: No contact order violation - domestic violence (two counts); third-degree theft; first-degree criminal trespass 2019: First-degree theft; third-degree assault - domestic violence; first-degree criminal trespass 2021: Residential burglary; first-degree theft; first-degree trafficking stolen property; criminal trespass; third-degree attempted assault Advertisement

The senseless attack at the rail station was caught on surveillance video, which shows Hayes dressed in a red jacket, tumbling head-first down the stairs and coming to rest on a landing, as reported by KTTH's Jason Rantz.

Before she has a chance to get to her feet and flee, the suspect approaches her a second time, grabs hold of her again and hurls her further down the stairs.

The suspect, later identified as Jay, races down the steps and tries to throw the victim down a third time, but she desperately clings to the railing and puts up a fight.

While Jay and Hayes are scuffling, two men, who appear to be homeless, walk up the escalator parallel to the staircase and witness the assault, but they fail to intervene.

After punching and kicking the victim, the brute runs back up the stairs and exits the station before first responders arrive on the scene.

The following day, police found Jay a half-mile from the crime scene and arrested him, reported KIRO.

Police said Jay and his victim had been in the same light rail car prior to the attack but had no interaction with one another.

Hayes, however, got a good look at his face, which has a distinctive cross tattoo on his left cheek, and later recognized him as the person who attacked her.

Jay is also being investigated in connection with a stabbing that took place at a bus station at the intersection of 12th Avenue South and South Jackson Street a short time after the assault on the nurse.

'The description of the stabbing suspect was similar to the suspect in the assault, and both descriptions included the cross tattoo on his left cheek,' the Seattle Police Department stated in a press release.

The woman had been in the same rail car as Jay prior to the incident, but the two did not interact, police said

Two men (left) walking up the escalator witness the savage assault on the nurse but failed to intervene

Jay, seen above leaving the station, has criminal records in Washington and California, which include nearly two dozen convictions

Seattle Police Department released its 2021 year-end crime report, which showed a 20 percent surge in violent crime to the highest levels in 14 years. Aggravated assaults rose 24 percent in 2021 from 2020, and robberies 18 percent
India may bail out Russia by taking up an offer to buy crude oil and other commodities at a discount despite Western attempts to isolate Moscow through sanctions.

India, which imports 80 per cent of its oil needs, usually buys only about 1 per cent from Russia. But with oil prices up 40 per cent so far this year, the government is looking at increasing this if it can help reduce its rising energy bill.

'Russia is offering oil and other commodities at a heavy discount. We will be happy to take that,' an Indian government official said, declining to elaborate on how much oil was on offer and what the discount was.

The official added that such trade required preparatory work including transportation, insurance cover and getting the right blend of crude, but once that was done India would take Russia up on its offer.

Iraq was the top crude oil supplier to India in 2021, accounting for 25 per cent of the country's total crude imports.

Saudi Arabia (16 per cent), the UAE (11 per cent), Nigeria (8 per cent) and the US (7 per cent) were other key suppliers.

India is the latest country to offer a sanction-busting lifeline as the Russian-waged war enters its third week after China lifted wheat import restrictions at the end of February. Imports had been restricted amid concerns over Russia's measures to prevent plant diseases, particularly in agricultural crops.

Neither Beijing nor New Delhi have condemned the invasion in Ukraine and both abstained from a vote at the United Nations calling out Russian aggression last month.

Both governments are walking a diplomatic tightrope in order to preserve their vital trade links with Russia which is now facing serious economic woes after being targeted by sanctions.

Meanwhile the UK will send India - a country with its own space programme - 55.3million in aid in 2021/22, up from 41.5million in 2020/21.

India may bail out Russia by taking up an offer to buy crude oil and other commodities at a discount despite Western attempts to isolate Moscow through sanctions (pictured, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi meeting in December 2021)

India, which imports 80 per cent of its oil needs, usually buys only about 2-3 per cent from Russia. But with oil prices up 40 per cent so far this year, the government is looking at increasing this if it can help reduce its energy bill (pictured a Russian diesel plant in Irkutsk)

India has walked a diplomatic tightrope over Russia's invasion of Ukraine, refusing to condemn the war and abstaining from a UN vote calling out Moscow's aggression last month

US officials have said in recent weeks they would like India to distance itself from Russia as much as possible, while recognising its heavy reliance on Moscow for everything from arms and ammunitions to missiles and fighter jets.

One person within India's security apparatus said the West understood India's position, given that it needs to keep its armed forces well supplied amid simmering territorial disputes with China.

Reuters has reported that Indian officials are trying to set up a rupee-rouble mechanism with Russia to continue bilateral trade.

Russia has urged what it describes as friendly nations to maintain trade and investment ties.

Apart from oil, India is also looking for cheaper fertiliser from Russia and its ally Belarus, according to one of the officials.

Indian officials said they could not suddenly replace Russia with other suppliers, particularly in the defence sector.

India's dependence on Russia for its military hardware still runs as high as 60 per cent, despite a significant reduction over the last decade.

US officials have declined to say if India would be sanctioned should Russia send S-400 missile systems as part of a $5.5 billion deal signed in 2018 for five of them.

Neither Beijing nor New Delhi have condemned the invasion in Ukraine and both abstained from a vote at the United Nations calling out Russian aggression last month

The move to keep the wheat market open was reportedly part of a deal between Moscow and Beijing concluded earlier this month and is the latest sign of growing ties between the two states

Initial supplies of the system started late last year despite a US law aimed at deterring countries from buying Russian military hardware.

Ely Ratner, US Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs, told a US Congress hearing last week that India was diversifying its defence suppliers.

'We recognise that India has a complicated history and relationship with Russia. The majority of the weapons that they buy are from the Russians,' he said.

'The good news is that they are in a multi-year process of diversifying their arms purchases away from Russia - that's going to take some time.

'But they are clearly committed to doing that, including the indigenisation of their own defence industry and that's something we should support.'

British Foreign Minister Liz Truss also said last week that London should pursue closer economic and defence ties with India to help it reduce its reliance on Russia.

Since 2011, New Delhi has cut its defence imports from Russia by 53 per cent.

D. Bala Venkatesh Varma, a former Indian ambassador to Russia, said New Delhi should not be expected to pay a price for a standoff between global powers.

'This is not a fight we have created,' he told an online seminar on Monday.

It comes days after Ukrainian President Vlodymyr Zelensky asked US President Joe Biden to cut Russia off from international waters during their Friday phone call.

His requests included more sanctions on Kremlin elites and further blocking Russia out of global trade, people familiar with the call told CNN.

Two people were killed on Monday during a Russian missile attack on a Kyiv apartment block. One person died when a rocket struck the residential complex while a second was killed by debris from a second missile being intercepted

A view of damaged area after fragments from a Tochka missile which was allegedly launched by Ukrainian forces has fallen in Donetsk region, killing 20 civilians, injured 9 others, on March 14
A 15-year-old boy has been charged with two terrorism offences, the Metropolitan Police said.

He was arrested in St Albans, Hertfordshire, on March 7, and police were given permission to detain him for a week for questioning.

On Sunday the teenager was charged with two counts of disseminating terrorist publications.

A 15-year-old schoolboy was charged with two counts of disseminating terrorist publications on Sunday March 13 and will appear today at Westminster Magistrates' Court

Scotland Yard said the charges relate to alleged Islamist extremism.

The boy is due to appear at Westminster Magistrates' Court on Monday.
MI5 has been accused of being an 'unhealthy' organisation that has sought to avoid scrutiny, as families of the Manchester Arena bomb victims made their closing statements to the inquiry.

A senior MI5 officer, known as Witness J, answered questions for two days in open session and was joined by four further witnesses for questioning behind closed doors, but most of what was heard remains secret.

The Security Service admits it received two pieces of intelligence in the months before the bombing that they assessed to be 'non-terrorist criminality' but will not say what that intelligence was.

Police officers outside Manchester Arena in 2017. MI5 has been accused of being an 'unhealthy' organisation that has sought to avoid scrutiny

One officer admitted it could have been understood at the time to indicate 'activity of pressing national security concern' and the service says that in retrospect the intelligence was 'highly relevant to the planned attack.'

It is the first time since 9/11 that an inquest or inquiry into a terrorist attack has taken place partly in secret.

Making his closing statement to the inquiry, Pete Weatherby QC, for the victims' families, questioned whether the service had approached the inquiry in the right way.

He cited an expert report from a former senior officer, referred to as Witness Z, who told the inquiry it would be 'hugely damaging' for MI5 and police if the inquiry had 'the unintended consequence of sapping the confidence of those at the investigative and operational front line' to make decisions.

'A healthy organisation welcomes scrutiny - only unhealthy ones seek to avoid it,' Mr Weatherby said.

'MI5 is a public authority and as such it is accountable to the public. The idea that the scrutiny or criticisms of a public inquiry might in some way adversely affect national security is not just plain wrong, it is corrosive in that it undermines confidence.

'Independent scrutiny and criticism is a necessary precursor to making things better for the future.

'What is hugely damaging to any public inquiry is the belief that scrutiny and criticism is somehow harmful.

'Failure which is not fully addressed will recur, and more lives will be lost.

Pete Weatherby QC said: 'There was persistent information coming to them about Salman Abedi (pictured). He did not emerge from the shadows'

'MI5 officers, the families, and the general public have a common purpose here - or they should do - to rigorously identify shortcomings and failures and to make sure they do not happen again.

'That is how to boost the morale of those within the system, and the confidence of those outside it but who rely on it.'

Abedi was linked, directly or indirectly to at least eight subjects of interest, and was the subject of persistent reports, intelligence and information received by police and MI5 between at least December 2013 and the time of the bombing.

He was known by the security services to be an ISIS supporter long before the bombing, and he was known to have travelled to Libya twice and for significant periods in the year before the outrage.

A vigil at St Ann's Square in Manchester one week after 22 people were killed by a suicide bomber at the Arena

In February and May 2017, Abedi rented two Manchester flats for the purposes of the plot, buying a car in between to store the explosives and bomb components.

Mr Weatherby called the attack the 'most complicated terror attack in this country since at least 7/7' in 2005, 12 years earlier.

Abedi was 'no lone actor who emerged from nowhere to commit an atrocity,' Mr Weatherby said.

'This was not a low sophistication methodology which meant the conspiracy to bomb the arena was difficult to spot, or at least to disrupt.'

There were 'key moving parts of the plot that we know about, undoubtedly there will have been more,' he said.

Mr Weatherby questioned whether information relating to Abedi and two of his brothers and their allegiance to ISIS was taken seriously enough.

'Were the security services too fixated on Syria, and missed the risks from elsewhere? Were they too fixed on actual positive evidence of attack preparation, rather than seeing where the attack might come from?

'Was that approach closing the stable door after the horse had long gone,' he said.

'The families I represent, would really like to know what exactly did Salman Abedi have to do to prompt a meaningful response from the security services?

'Was there proper investigation of context and background, assessment of each piece of the jigsaw as it came in, against that context and background?'

Ismali Abedi, brother of Manchester bomber Salman Abedi, pictured posing with machine gun while sporting camouflage wear and drinking a soft drink in the back of a car

The options were 'really straightforward' and involved re-opening him for ongoing investigation, and for 'ports action' stops as he left and re-entered the country.

'The answer appears to be that Salman Abedi was able to continue this long-lasting and complicated plot unhindered because the security services did not have any real positive evidence of actual attack preparation, or failed to see it when they did have it.'

Mr Weatherby argued that there should have been 'real alarm' at the threat from ISIS in Libya, particularly a group linked to Abedi called Katiba al-Bittar al-Libi (KBL).

'There was persistent information coming to them about Salman Abedi. He did not emerge from the shadows.

'We know from other inquiries and inquests that sometimes, sadly, there is nothing that can be done to stop individual outrages and attacks. But for the reasons we have outlined, was this one of them?

'There have been few attacks in the UK that have got through that are as complicated as this one, and we doubt there have been any where there was so much known about the perpetrator.

'Although the families see the issue of preventability as central to their own interests in the Inquiry, sadly, whatever is determined will not bring their loved ones back but rigorously identifying failures and missed opportunities provides the basis for change, and will give the families the peace of mind that others may not have to find themselves in their shoes in the future.'
The White House shut down plans proposed two months before Russia invaded Ukraine to send a 'few hundred' special operation personnel to Kyiv to provide military advice and unconventional warfare training, three separate U.S. officials told Politico.

U.S. military officials told lawmakers in December 2021 that they wanted the forces to help Ukraine at a time when Russia had amassed 100,000 troops at the border with Ukraine, but had not yet invaded.

White House officials, according to two people familiar with two separate December briefings, were concerned increased troop presence would escalate tensions with Russia  and a congressional aide said Pentagon officials scrapped the plan to deploy to this area due to those concerns.

The report notes that Defense Department Secretary Lloyd Austin planned to directly press President Joe Biden to approve the mission that would send hundreds of troops east.

At the time the plan was rejected by the White House, the Biden administration was still hoping for a diplomatic solution with Russia that would stop them from invading.

A White House spokesperson denied any knowledge of a proposal for training missions in Ukraine, according to Politico.

'We have no idea what this is referring to,' the spokesperson said.

White house and Defense officials would not say, however, whether a mission was discussed but never amounted to an official plan.

President Vladimir Putin's forces invaded Ukraine on February 24 and are now nearing their third week of the assault on their western neighbors. Sanctions put in place since invasion by the west have crippled Russia's economy, but has not stopped their attack.

Despite rejecting the proposed deployment to Ukraine, Biden did send thousands of troops to Poland, Romania and other Eastern European ally nations in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Since the invasion, and beforehand, the White House assured that no U.S. troops would be sent into Ukraine to fight Russian forces and have denied requests to create a no-fly zone above the country, claiming it would lead to World War III.

Biden and the Pentagon have also shut down plans for a deal with Poland to send MiG-29 fighter jets to Kyiv, despite a growing bipartisan push to get the war planes to Ukraine as the attack continues into its 18th day.

The Pentagon poured cold water on the plan for sending jets earlier this month after Poland put out a statement on a deal to make these aircraft available for Ukraine.

A new report revealed the White House stopped a plan in December to send a 'few hundred' U.S. special forces to Ukraine to provide military advice and training after Russia had amassed 100,000 troops at the border. Pictured: A building in Kharkiv damaged by Russian rockets on Monday, March 14 as Ukraine faces its 18th day of attacks from Moscow

Thousands of U.S. troops did deploy to NATO countries neighboring Ukraine in the months leading up to the Russian attack. Pictured: U.S. soldiers get in a Stryker during a joint military drill at a base in Smardan, Romania on March 10, 2022

Pictured Saturday March 12 with Army airborne troops in Poland from L-R: Republican Sens. Roger Wicker and Rob Portman and Democratic Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Amy Klobuchar, The four traveled as a bipartisan delegation to Poland's eastern border over the weekend to urge the Biden administration to send aerial assistance to Ukraine

Ukraine war: The latest Russian forces renewed their bombardment of Ukrainian cities early Monday, with at least two killed in a strike on a Kyiv apartment block

Talks between Russia and Ukraine are to resume Monday after both sides hailed progress

Britain's defence ministry says Russia has established a naval blockade on the Black Sea coast

Nearly 2,200 residents of Ukraine's besieged city of Mariupol have been killed in Russian shelling

Volodymyr Zelensky warns NATO it is 'only a matter of time' before a member state is attacked, as he again called for a no-fly zone over Ukraine

Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov says he is in Ukraine's Hostomel, an airfield near Kyiv

Pope Francis issues a plea for an end to the 'massacre' in Ukraine

Fighting rages in the Kyiv suburbs as Russian forces advance ever closer to the capital. Only roads to the south remain open

A US journalist is shot dead in Irpin, medics and witnesses say, becoming the first foreign reporter killed since Russia's invasion

Electricity has been restored at Ukraine's retired Chernobyl nuclear power plant that was seized by Russian forces

Russian police detain more than 800 people across 37 cities for protesting Moscow's 'military operation'

Almost 2.7 million people have fled the war in Ukraine, more than 100,000 of them in the past 24 hours, the UN says. More than half have gone to Poland Advertisement

Republican Senators Rob Portman of Ohio and Roger Wicker of Mississippi and Democratic Senators Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut traveled as a bipartisan delegation to Poland's eastern border to urge the administration to send aerial assistance to Ukraine.

Russia has warned that sending fighter jets or establishing a no-fly zone over Ukraine would mean the U.S. and other western nations are escalating and could warrant a larger response from Moscow.

'Vladimir Putin and the Russians seem to be saying everything is escalatory,' Portman told CNN's State of the Union on Sunday from Poland. 'And yet they're escalating every single day by coming into Ukraine with these weapons.'

'This is an illegal - this is a brutal - totally unprovoked attack,' he added in response to the Russian target on civilians in Ukraine. 'So, as they escalate, what the Ukrainian people are asking for is just the ability to defend themselves.'

Senator Lindsey Graham told Fox's Sunday Morning Futures that Putin is 'bluffing' that further U.S. involvement  like sending fighters jets  would lead to a third world war.

'It's not going to be WWIII. This is all a bluff. Putin knows that no one wins a nuclear exchange,' Graham told the program's host Maria Bartiromo on Sunday. 'If he ordered a preemptive strike on the United States, some general would shoot him in the head.'

Portman reiterated this assessment, claiming that since Putin already said other forms of U.S. military aid was escalatory, sending MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine would not risk intensifying the conflict.

Meanwhile, a Monday report revealed that Russia asked China for military support, including drones and economic assistance, two U.S. officials told CNN. One of the officials said that China did react to the request, but declined to detail the response.

Spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in the US Liu Pengyu said in a statement regarding the request: 'I've never heard of that.' Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Zhao Lijian on Monday accused the U.S. of 'peddling disinformation.'

He added that the U.S. is 'targeting China on the Ukraine issue with malicious intentions'.

News of Russia's request comes ahead of Biden's National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan's meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Yang Jiechi, in Rome on Monday.

The meeting is a follow-up to Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping's virtual discussion last November, according to National Security Council spokesperson Emily Horne.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are increasing calls for the U.S. to send MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine after a deal with Poland fell through last week. It comes as Russia continues its assault on their neighbors to the west. Pictured: An apartment building destroyed in a Russian attack in Kyiv, Ukraine on Monday, March 14, 2022

Putin's invasion of Ukraine - which he had anticipated would last only a few days with limited casualties - is now nearing its third week with heavy losses on both sides, as Moscow gives the first signs it could be willing to end the fighting by saying there has been 'substantial progress' in peace talks

A man walks near houses and cars reduced to rubble by Russian shelling in Kyiv, Ukraine on Monday, March 14

Putin has warned any western action, like sending war planes to establishing a no-fly zone, would be considered an escalation and lead to further conflict. Senator Lindsey Graham said is just a 'bluff' and added: 'It's not going to be WWIII'

Sullivan told CNN's State of the Union on Sunday that the U.S. made clear to Beijing that there will 'absolutely be consequences' for any 'large-scale' help the Kremlin in a workaround of western sanctions.

Russia has not yet responded to reports of requesting military support.

Putin expanded the offensive to western Ukraine Sunday as forces fired missiles near the city of Lviv, hitting a large military base close to the Polish border. Local authorities say 35 people were killed and 134 injured at the military base.

Ukraine's Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov described it as a 'terrorist attack' on peace and security 'near the EU-NATO border.'

Also on Sunday Russian troops killed an American video journalist working at the Polish-Ukraine border to document the global refugee crisis for a documentary for Time Studios.

The senators witnessed refuges fleeing Ukraine to Poland. Pictured: Senator Klobuchar meets with a wheelchair-ridden grandmother by the roadside as she waited for her children and grandchildren who were further back in the line

A free clothing store is launched in the former Plaza shopping mall in Krakow, Poland. Refugees from Ukraine are seen picking out clothing for their children there on Monday, March 14, 2022

The bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus also urged the Biden administration to try to facilitate the fighter jet deal with Poland, along with sending Ukraine other air defense systems like drones and surface-to-air missiles.

The group of 58 members is split evenly with 29 Democrats and 29 Republicans.

'Russia's advantage in this domain could soon develop into air dominance if the Ukrainians do not receive necessary military aid,' the caucus members said in a Sunday statement.

'We commend the Polish government for taking proactive steps to deliver MiG-29 jets to the Ukrainian Air Force. We urge assistance to help facilitate this deal, commit to replenishing our allies' fleets with American-made aircraft and help advance the transfer of [other] aircraft to Ukraine as well.'

South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham said sending fighter jets to Ukraine would not spark World War III like the White House and some experts have warned

The four senators in Poland over the weekend met with the U.S. Ambassador to Poland Mark Brzezinski

Graham suggested Sunday that the Biden administration is dragging its feet on sending aircraft to Ukraine and taking other larger moves in Eastern Europe because it doesn't see an outcome where Putin loses.

'If we go all in to crush the Russian economy, if we help the Ukrainians with the weapons they need, we should be taking every Soviet bloc country with S-100, S-200, S-300, any aircraft missile systems and flood them into the Ukraine to regain control of Ukrainian skies,' he said.

'I think the Ukrainians can win but what breaks my heart is that it appears to me that Biden is more worried about Putin losing than Ukraine winning,' the South Carolina Republican lamented. 'And that is despicable and sad.'

'In my eyes, he's a menace to mankind. He's a war criminal. And he needs to be taken out by his own people,' Graham continued. 'If we spent more time thinking about how to help Ukraine win than worrying about how to keep Putin in power, we would be better off.'
Amazon will relocate all 1,800 workers from its downtown Seattle office as the area continues to be plagued by crime in the woke Pacific Northwest bastion, where the police budget has been cut by $36million since 2019 - and now other businesses are starting to do the same.

Citing an increase in violent crime in the downtown Seattle area, Amazon made the announcement Friday that it would temporarily relocate its workers from their office at Third Avenue and Pine Street.

'Given recent incidents near Third and Pine, we're providing employees currently at that location with alternative office space elsewhere,' an Amazon spokesman told DailyMail.com in a statement. 'We are hopeful that conditions will improve and that we will be able to bring employees back to this location when it is safe to do so.'

Amazon, which also has its headquarters in Seattle, employs a total of 1.1 million people in the U.S, and 75,000 in Seattle. The 1,800 employees at the downtown location are being given the 'choice of an alternate work location because of the safety concerns.'

The latest spike in crime comes just months after the Seattle City Council approved a 2022 budget that cut police department spending by more than $7 million - bringing the total to $35.6 million over the past three years - and drawing criticism from residents who urged the city spend more on public safety.

Most recently, there has been a rash of violent crimes, specifically in the area of Third Avenue and Pine Street, that is pushing people away from the downtown Seattle area.

Crime continues to spike months after the Seattle City Council approved a 2022 budget that cut police department spending by more than $7 million

Citing an increase in violent crime in the downtown Seattle area, Amazon made the announcement Friday that it would temporarily relocate its workers from location at Third Avenue and Pine Street in downtown Seattle

On February 27, a man was shot and killed at Third Avenue and Pine Street. A few days later, on Tuesday, police responded to Third Avenue and Union Street for a stabbing which led them to pursue a separate incident involving a carjacking at Third Avenue and Pine Street.

The same day, homeless career criminal Alexander Jay, 40, was allegedly caught on video repeatedly throwing the victim down the stairs at a Chinatown-International District light rail station in an unprovoked attack.

He was taken into custody and charged with second-degree assault, and as of Monday, remained jailed on $150,000 bail.

But the final straw for many businesses to move their employees from the area or close their doors was the fatal shooting of a 15-year-old Michael Delbianco on March 2 in the 1500 block of Third Avenue, which is near where Amazon's office building is located.

Piroshky Piroshky bakery owner Olga Sagan, 38, made the tough decision to close her shop after the shooting. But said she constantly found the entrance blocked with drug users who refused to move - and she says the Seattle Police Department did nothing to help.

Most recently, there has been a rash of violent crimes, specifically in the area of Third Avenue and Pine Street, that is pushing people away from the downtown Seattle area

Seattle Police Department released its 2021 year-end crime report, which showed a 20 percent surge in violent crime to the highest levels in 14 years. Aggravated assaults rose 24 percent in 2021 from 2020, and robberies 18 percent

The 1,800 employees at the downtown Seattle location, 300 Pine Street, which used to be a Macy's, are being given the 'choice of an alternate work location because of safety concerns'

'How many shootings do we need to have to realize this is an active emergency in downtown Seattle?' Sagan told The Seattle Times.

'The streets of downtown have been abandoned by government,' she added, 'and handed over to criminal activity.'

She added that she was trying to find jobs for her store's employees at other local businesses and that she will reopen her business when its is safe.

Piroshky Piroshky bakery has offered hand-crafted traditional Russian pastries in the area since 1992, the newspaper reported.

The shop's closures comes after Sagan announced on social media that violence is a 'major emergency and instead of approaching this as such - all politicians do is just talk'.

Seattle's popular Piroshky Piroshky Bakery (pictured) closed its Third Avenue location in downtown until further notice over safety concerns

A Facebook post shared by the shop's owner: 'We have run out of patience. Putting our employees' safety 1st. Street been taken over by criminal activity'

In another post, she said that she has run out of patience and is prioritizing the safety of her employees.

Seattle's Democratic Mayor Bruce Harrell said in a statement that he is working with local law enforcement agencies to address problems stemming from local violence, acknowledging that he needs to take safety-first measures to make residents feel secure in the city.

'While it will take time to reverse longstanding safety issues, Mayor Harrell's early efforts are critical first steps to address crime and improve safety through dedicated SPD officers, a mobile SPD precinct, and additional environmental changes,' the statement continued, according to KOMO News.

'Mayor Harrell will continue to develop a comprehensive approach to public safety in collaboration with police and safety advocates, community members, service providers, and businesses, including Amazon, to activate, revitalize, and restore downtown for all.'

To address issues plaguing the area, the Seattle Police Department set up a mobile precinct and increased its number of patrolling bike cops.

But just this month, additional businesses began shutting their doors, including, Qumulo, a cloud technology firm, and several McDonald's.

Martin Fagan, facilities director for Qumulo, based at Fourth Avenue and Pike Street, told his employees that they don't have to return to the office until the situation downtown 'stabilizes.'

'When I'm uncomfortable walking out into the street, I can't imagine what our employees feel like having to go in and out of the building,' Fagan told Newsweek.

Fagan added they're at a 'breaking point,' where things either need to change, or 'we're going to feel like we have to depart the area, and we don't want to have to do that.'

The McDonald's on Third Avenue also closed for the safety of their employees.

'My top priority is the health and safety of our employees and customers,' franchise owner and operator David Santillanes said in a statement to KOMO News. 'Out of concern for the safety of our employees and customers, we temporarily closed our restaurant located at 1530 Third Avenue following last week's shooting.'

The Seattle Police Department said in its end-of-the year report for 2021 that violent crime in the city has increased by 20 percent compared to 2020- a record-breaking high in 14 years. Pictured: An entrance to Bellevue Square Mall is seen after looting too place in 2020

People walk along East Pine Street during ongoing Black Lives Matter events in the 'Capitol Hill Organized Protest' (CHOP) area on June 14, 2020 in Seattle

In its 2021 year-end report, Seattle Police said that violent crime in the city has increased by 20 percent compared to 2020- which is for the first time in 14 years.

According to SPD, shootings and shots fired calls increased 40 percent (+175) from 2020 to 2021, violent crime increased 20 percent and homeless-related shootings increased 122 percent.

Some reasons for homelessness Seattle have been attributed to the cost of living in the city having significantly risen in the past decade due to gentrification, lack of publicly owned affordable housing, and the economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

According to the Department of Community and Human Services, 40, 800 people in King County experienced homelessness at some point in 2020. That number was 45,300 people for 2019.
Brent Renaud was filming a documentary about refugees when he was shot and killed by Russian forces at a checkpoint outside of Ukraine's capital of Kyiv on Sunday

A member of Ukraine's parliament condemned Russia's killing of a US journalist on Sunday and called on President Joe Biden to respond, as tributes poured in from the international community.

Documentary journalist Brent Renaud, 50, was shot dead by Moscow's troops on Sunday as he attempted to film refugees fleeing the town of Irpin outside of Ukraine's capital. Two others were injured.

Kyiv lawmaker Inna Sovsun pointed the US president's own words from February 15 back at him in a bid to ratchet up the pressure to act -- warning that more American deaths could follow.

'Recently, [Biden] said: "If [Russia] target Americans in [Ukraine] we will respond forcefully",' Sovsun wrote on Twitter.

'Today, [Russian} troops killed American journalist Brent Renaud. I'm sure he is not [Russian President Vladimir Putin's] first or last American's victim. So what will be the response? And most importantly when?'

As of late Monday morning, Biden is yet to break his silence on Renaud's death.

GOP Rep. Michael Waltz of Florida told DailyMail.com that the journalist's slaying was 'par for the course' for an autocrat like Putin. He also called attention to American journalist Austin Tice, who has been missing since being taken in Syria in 2012.

'Its a tragedy and unfortunately par for the course for Vladimir Putins strategy to stamp out negative press coverage of his aggression. Weve seen Putins regime repeatedly target journalists for their critical coverage of Russian conflict zones including Chechnya and Syria, and they have since ramped up censorship in domestically with legislation to further censor independent press,' Waltz said.

'Since 2012, American journalist Austin Tice has remained missing after being abducted in Damascus and the U.S. government has urged Russia to help facilitate his release.'

Ukrainian lawmaker Inna Sovsun warned Renaud would not be Putin's 'first or last American's(sp) victim'

On Sunday, Biden's national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the brutal slaying was 'shocking and horrifying' and vowed the US would 'execute appropriate consequences.'

The top foreign policy expert said he was only just made aware of the attack as he began an interview on CBS's Face the Nation.

'I will be consulting with my colleagues, we'll be consulting with the Ukrainians to determine how this happened and then to measure and execute appropriate consequences as a result of it,' he said.

US deputy ambassador to the United Nations Richard Mills criticized Russia for the attack during the body's session today.

'His death shows that Russia will go to any extent to silence narratives that challenge its propaganda,' Mills said.

Meanwhile the leaders of the United Kingdom, France and a host of other international elected officials condemned Russia and mourned Renaud's execution.

Rustem Umerov, another Ukrainian MP, said 'Even terrorists never act this way.'

US Rep. Adam Schiff, head of the House Intelligence Committee, went after Putin's 'brutality' but did not call for the US to retaliate.

'There is no democracy without a free press. Brent Renauds death at the hands of Russian forces underscores the indiscriminate brutality of Putin,' Schiff wrote on Twitter Sunday.

In mid-February Biden vowed to 'respond forcefully' if an American was targeted by Putin

'My prayers are with Renauds family - and with journalists in Ukraine & across the globe risking it all to speak truth to power.'

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and said Renaud's killing is a test on 'all of humanity.'

'Putins barbaric actions murdering Brent Renaud and other innocent civilians are testing not just Ukraine but all of humanity,' Johnson said.

'Speaking to President [Zelensky] I assured him that we will continue to do all that we can to bring an end to this disastrous conflict.'

France's President Emmanuel Macron, who has spoken to Putin by phone nine times since meeting with the autocrat at the Kremlin on February 7, mourned all journalists killed in the line of duty.

'Today, a US journalist was killed in Ukraine. Before him, others have been targeted, murdered, injured or kidnapped. Our thoughts are with all those journalists driven by courage and an ideal: the freedom to inform. This freedom is fundamental to our democracies,' Macron said.

Canadian parliament member Melanie Joly said the news was 'devastating.'

'In a war fuelled by disinformation, the role of journalists is more essential than ever before. My thoughts are with his family and loved ones,' Joly tweeted.

Indian lawmaker Vijayasai Reddy said: 'Opening fire on foreign press vehicle is highly condemnable & the war must stop.'

Nigerian politician Shehu Sani urged journalists covering Russia's brutal war on Ukraine to be careful.

'The killing of American Journalist Brent Renaud in Ukraine is tragic and unfortunate. He died in the line of duty doing what he loves most. Journalists working in Ukraine should be cautious,' he said.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he spoke with Ukrainian President Zelensky and condemned Putin's actions in Ukraine as 'barbaric'

French President Emmanuel Macron, whose office said he's spoken to Putin by phone nine times since their in-person meeting in early February, also weighed in

Another Ukrainian member of parliament said Russians' actions were worse than those of 'terrorists'

Renaud was in a car with other journalists when Putin's troops opened fire. He was fatally-shot in the neck, with one of his colleagues also injured.

A tribute piece in the New York Times revealed Renaud had survived a similar incident during a previous mission to Cambodia in the early 1990s, after driving through a military checkpoint with locals. That prompted soldiers stationed there to open fire on him, although Renaud survived that incident unscathed.

Although Renaud was carrying a New York Times press badge at the time of his death, he was in fact working as a freelancer on a global film about refugees commissioned by Time magazine's studio division.

Renaud's death was announced by Andrey Nebitov, the head of Kyiv's police department, who said he paid 'with his life for trying to highlight the aggressor's ingenuity, cruelty and ruthlessness.'

Captain Oleksandr Bogai, the deputy chief of police in Irpin, said Renaud was shot in the head when Russian forces fired at his car. The vehicle was being driven by a local civilian across a Ukrainian checkpoint.

Another US journalist who survived the attack spoke to a reporter for Italian paper Internazionale from the hospital.

The other US journalist in the truck is Juan Arreondo. He is shown in the hospital speaking to an Italian newspaper about how they were driving across a bridge when Russian troops opened fire on them after a checkpoint

Juan Arredondo said Renaud had been shot in the neck and 'had to be left behind'.

'We had crossed the first bridge in Irpin. We were going to film other refugees leaving we got into a car. Somebody offered to take us to the other bridge. We crossed a checkpoint and they started shooting at us. The driver turned around, there were two of us. My friend is Brent Renaud. He has been shot and left behind. I saw he has been shot in the neck. We got split,' he said.

Renaud was working for the television and film division of Time Magazine on a series about refugees around the world called Tipping Point.

'Brent was in the region working on a Time Studios project focused on the global refugee crisis,' the editor in chief of Time, Edward Felsenthal, and the president of Time and Time Studios, Ian Orefice, said in a statement.

'Our hearts are with all of Brent's loved ones. It is essential that journalists are able to safely cover this ongoing invasion and humanitarian crisis in Ukraine.'
A police officer who was found hanged after being served misconduct papers over an alleged Covid breach was 'fed up' of being told to take 'man-up juice' by his bosses, an inquest has heard.

Police Constable Doug Franks, 43, was found dead in the dining room of his home in Lee-on-the-Solent, Hampshire, on February 10, 2021.

The Sussex Police officer was left so upset by a misconduct charge for allegedly breaching Covid rules that he cried while driving home the previous evening and told his family 'I don't want to talk about it'.

PC Franks, a father-of-one, told a friend he was 'beside himself' and had 'not felt this low for some time' in a tragic final message.

Portsmouth Coroner's Court today heard the officer 'loved helping' people who attempted suicide through his job, but battled depression anxiety and PTSD from a bomb attack in the 1990s - and tried to take his own life on two previous occasions.

The inquest heard how he had come home early from a night shift the evening before his death and was 'subdued'.

PC Franks' lifeless body was discovered by his grandfather Tony, whom he lived with, in the dining room of their property the following morning.

The inquest heard that he joined Sussex Police in 2018 having always dreamed of being a police officer.

He was open to friends and colleagues about his struggles with mental health, having attempted to take his own life in 2008 and 2017.

PC Franks, who was on medication, was 'gym bunny' who loved weightlifting, but struggled when gyms were shut during lockdown.

He also complained of being 'treated like a kid' by supervisors at work and told to 'man up', before he was served misconduct papers for an alleged Covid breach when he was stopped by officers while outside.

Police Constable Doug Franks (pictured) was found dead in the dining room of his home in Lee-on-the-Solent, Hampshire, on February 10, 2021

PC Franks said he was 'fed up' of being told to 'man up' by bosses at Sussex Police. Pictured: Sussex Police Force HQ

His grandfather said PC Franks had returned to their home earlier than expected on February 9 last year.

Mr Franks, who himself was an ex-sergeant, told the court: 'At 9pm on February 9 I was surprised by him returning home early.

'I asked him why and he said "I dont want to talk about it". He went to the dining room and stayed on his phone.

'I tried to talk to him but didnt get much out of him, he appeared subdued.'

The grandfather then went to bed at around 11pm, leaving PC Franks downstairs.

He awoke on the morning concerned that PC Franks was not in his bedroom, before he tragically discovered his 'cold' body hanging in the dining room.

Nurse Emma Neal, who PC Franks was in a relationship with, told the court he struggled with isolating due to Covid, then returning to work.

She said: 'We both supported each other through difficult and stressful times. His main interest was his son who I know he loved and adored. He was his world.

'While he was still in his probation period he felt like he was getting the s***** jobs, he felt like he was being treated like a kid.

'He loved being a police officer and helping people who self-harmed or tried to commit suicide, thats why I cant understand what he did.

'He had gone back to work [after isolating] and was served papers, he was not in a good place.'

The court heard that, in the hours before his death, the couple had been messaging each other.

Ms Neal continued: 'I offered to come over but he didnt want to breach Covid rules so I offered to go for a dog walk with him but he didnt want to... I told him that I was here for him.'

She added that she messaged him that he was 'amazing' and went to bed.

He replied saying 'thanks' - his last message to her before his death.

Portsmouth Coroner's Court (pictured) today heard the officer 'loved helping' people who attempted suicide through his job, but battled depression anxiety and PTSD

Ms Neal said: 'We would always joke about who was wearing the hero cape today. Im struggling to comprehend what happened to him and that he is no longer in my life.'

Paramedic Kelly Eastwood, a friend of PC Franks, said he called her on his way back from work 'crying' because he had been served papers.

The pair messaged into the evening of February 9, with Ms Eastwood telling the inquest that PC Franks appeared pragmatic and was not being defeatist.

However, at 1am he messaged her saying he was beside himself and had not felt so low for some time.

PC Ellen Berry also gave evidence at the inquest today, telling the court that she had seen PC Franks in the days before his death and he had appeared unhappy with his supervisors.

She said: 'He alluded to being unhappy with his section but he didnt want to leave.

'He told me he was fed up of being told to take some man up juice. He was angry and felt like he was not being supported.'

PC Berry said PC Franks did not want to take his concerns further.

Detective Sergeant Graham Mepham, an officer of 25 years, became good friends with PC Franks when he worked as a financial investigator for police.

He told the inquest: 'He had his demons in his past but these did not impact his ability to work.'

DS Mepham said PC Franks had 'appeared to turn a corner' when he joined Sussex Police as a constable.

He said: 'I was a little worried due to his mental health background but I was supportive of the application and extremely proud.

'All Doug ever wanted to be was a police officer and I was really happy for what the future held for him.'

PC Franks did not inform DS Mepham of the misconduct allegation, but he added: 'Im confident he would have taken it quite hard.'

His 'best friend' Emily Drummond described the officer as a 'real good egg' with a 'heart of gold;.

The inquest continues.
Five days into his 75-day jail sentence, Jussie Smollett is now complaining that he is at risk of COVID in jail and is worried about his mental health so should be let out early.

Smollett, 39, is being held in the medical unit of the Cook County Jail.

His family say he is being held in the psych ward and that there's a note on the door of his cell saying he is at risk of self-harm - which they insist isn't true.

They say it speaks to Smollett's courtroom outburst where he insisted he wasn't suicidal and claimed if anything happened to him in jail, it was at someone else's hand.

Now, the family is asking for him to be released again. They submitted an emergency motion in the appellate court on Monday, claiming he should never have been convicted.

Jussie Smollett in court on Thursday after being sentenced to 150 days in jail, of which he will serve half. He is now begging to be freed, claiming he is at risk of COVID because he is immunocompromised, but also that he doesn't deserve to be there

Jussie is being held in the medical unit. His family say he is being held in the psych ward with a sign on the door claiming he is at risk of harming himself - which they say isn't true

Smollett's legal team submitted this letter from a doctor on Monday claiming Smollett is at 'heightened risk' of getting COVID because he has 'compromised immunity'. They did not say why his immunity was compromised

Even if the judge does not overturn the conviction, they think he does not deserve jail. The judge has not yet responded to it.

Smollett was sentenced to 150 days behind bars last week for lying to police about the race hate crime he staged with Nigerian brothers Ola and Abel Osundairo.

Because he was granted day for day eligibility, he could get out in half the time - just over two months.

After sentencing on Thursday, they asked Judge James Linn to suspend the sentence and then they asked him, seconds later, to apply a stay to avoid Smollett having to spend one night behind bars.

Smollett in his booking photo on Thursday

Judge Linn, growing frustrated with them, rejected both 11th hour requests and said: 'This happens here and now.'

In Monday's filing to the appellate court, the family also included a letter from a doctor which says the risk of COVID-19 is an added reason Smollett shouldn't be in jail.

'It is my opinion that the incarceration of Mr. Smollett, in jail or in prison, poses a substantially increased risk to his health.

'The COVID-19 pandemic is an ongoing pandemic...As of March 2022, the pandemic has caused more than 445million cases and approximately 6million deaths worldwide.

'Incarceration in a jail or prison setting poses a heightened danger to Mr. Smollett's health when taking his current health status, including compromised immunity, into account.'

The doctor did not say what makes him immunocompromised, and representatives for Smollett did not respond to inquiries about it.

Since then, Smollett's family say they have received threats about him.

They received one over voicemail and released it to the media on Monday.

The caller used racist and homophobic slurs, calling Smollett the N word and a 'f****t'. They said they hoped someone 'takes care' of him in jail.

Smollett's sentence is an eighth of what it could have been.

In her Instagram post's caption, Hanson pleaded for Smollett's case to be reviewed so that he could face a lesser punishment. She suggested that the Empire actor should face house arrest instead of jail time

In her Instagram post's caption, Hanson pleaded for Smollett's case to be reviewed so that he could face a lesser punishment. She suggested that the Empire actor should face house arrest instead of jail time

Olabinjo Osundairo on Thursday attending Jussie Smollett's sentencing hearing with lawyer Gloria Schmidt. His brother Abel is in Colorado training as a boxer

He was also ordered to pay $120,000 in restitution to the City of Chicago which reflects $130,000 that police say they spent investigating his false crime, minus $10,000 that he already surrendered when made a now voided deal with Cook County prosecutors last March.

Smollett has never been able to explain why the Osundairo brothers would frame him by telling police that he paid them to beat them up.

He says he cannot explain why they did it, but that he genuinely thought one was light-skinned when he claimed as much to police.

The race hate attack happened in January 2019. He was arrested the following month, but the case has been delayed by changes to prosecutors.

Smollett still enjoys a ground swell of support from his co-stars including Taraji P. Henderson.
Dr. Neal Kramer, a podiatrist, examines ReneOs feet Thursday, March 10, 2022, at the Allentown Rescue Mission in Allentown. Kramer has been volunteering his time at the mission to provide free foot examinations and treatment of foot issues ranging from corns, bone defects, frostbite etc. (April Gamiz/The Morning Call)

As he tended to a patient with battered feet, Dr. Neal Kramer cracked jokes to help the patient relax while also providing tools to fight a fungal infection.

Advertisement

Thursday night, Kramer saw Rene, a resident of the Allentown Rescue Missions emergency shelter who was battling a number of foot ailments. When Rene left the examination room, he had topical cream and petroleum jelly, clipped toenails and a better understanding of how to take care of his feet.

Advertisement

One night every month, Kramer sees three to seven patients like Rene, men whose difficult lives can be read upon their feet but who might not seek care without Kramer coming to them.

For the last four years, Kramer, 74, has provided free treatment, consultations and nail clippings to the men taken in by the Allentown Rescue Mission. Kramer, a Bethlehem resident and Lehigh Valley native, has worked as a podiatrist for about 40 years but said the time he spends at the mission as well as semi-regular paid shifts with Lehigh Valley Health Networks Street Medicine Program, are some of the most rewarding work hes done.

I can see as many patients as possible over the course of the day but if I come here and see three or four patients, the emotional satisfaction I get from these patients  a lot of times these patients will just get up and give me a hug and say Oh my God, thank you, youve made me feel so much better,  Kramer said.

During these monthly visits, he works with the missions in-house DeSales University Free Medical Clinic, which provides free medical services to the men on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Stefanie Appel, spokesperson for the Allentown Rescue Mission, said in the past, the rescue mission had a dentist and a mental health professional that provided free services. But because of the pandemic and restrictions, DeSales staff and Kramer are the only ones providing care now. She said once COVID-19 restrictions are completely lifted, the shelter will look for more ways to support the men.

Kramer said for those staying at the mission, the foot is the most abused body part. Men often arrive at the mission with foot trauma, and podiatry is the most requested medical specialty, Appel said. Many suffer from frostbite or other effects of wearing the wrong size shoes, worn-out shoes, wet shoes or no shoes.

We had a patient that walked barefoot from Reading to Allentown in 100 degrees in the summer and when he got here, he had to go in the hospital and have all of his toes amputated because it just burned right through  he had no sensation, he was diabetic and didnt know, Kramer said.

Appel said having Kramer and the DeSales Free Medical Clinic is extremely important.

Advertisement

Most have experienced the pain for so long they dont think about fixing it, Appel said.

Kramer has seen some patients more than once and theyve become familiar with each other  they talk about each others families and joke around, he said.

I like people to remember that we talked  we didnt just go in there and talk about their foot or go in there and just talk about medicine and whats going on, Kramer said. We talked about life and if I can make them smile, that may be the only time they smile that day.

Kramer got involved with the mission mostly by chance.

He said his friend Jim Byrnes, who was at that time Allentown Rescue Missions CEO, invited Kramer and his wife to a gala event at DeSales. Other doctors who volunteered with the mission were there but Kramer noticed a lack of podiatrists among their ranks. Kramer said he asked Byrnes So who takes care of these guys toenails and their feet? to which Byrnes replied, You do as of now. About four years later, Kramer is still at it.

Advertisement

Kramer said another benefit is getting to work with DeSaless medical students who participate in the clinic. He said as a podiatrist, he is a limited health care practitioner and cannot work with physician assistants in his own practice.

Knowing that the students are here and I can help them learn about feet is wonderful, Kramer said.

Thursday, Kramer got to work with Kai Taylor, a first-year physician assistant student at DeSales, as they both assisted a patient named Damien. For years, Damien had experienced a sensation in his feet where it felt like he was being stabbed with pins and needles when he stood or walked.

Kramer guided Taylor as the student tested the sensitivity of Damiens feet, while also quizzing him to figure out the cause of Damiens problems  his limbs are of unequal length and the very high arches of his feet resulted in an unbalanced stride likely causing nerve and back problems that explain the mystery sensation.

By the end of the examination, Taylor learned more about caring for a patients foot problems and Damien knew more about a health problem that has plagued him for years.

Morning Call reporter Leif Greiss can be reached at 610-679-4028 or lgreiss@mcall.com.
The nightclub dancer wife of Sunderland AFCs former boss has spoken of her nightmare ordeal after a judge awarded her 150,000 in compensation after her cut-price foreign boob job went wrong.

Laura Donald, 36, told a court she was left screaming in agony after blunders left her with potentially fatal infections when she flew to Wroclaw, Poland for a breast lift in 2015.

She had been saving for the operation for years, but ended up falling dangerously ill with sepsis and having to have life-saving surgery back in England after her treatment was botched.

Mrs Donald sued her surgeon Dr Adam Kalecinski and his company Noa Clinic Uslugi Medyczne for compensation, and has been awarded more than 150,000 by a High Court judge following a trial.

The mother-of-three, a stripper who appeared in a Netflix documentary after starting a relationship with then club boss Stewart Donald, said: The last few years have been a nightmare.

Ive undergone a lot of further operations, including skin grafting and revision surgery. The whole experience has been terribly upsetting. If Id have known then what I do now I wouldnt have booked the trip.

Laura Donald sued her surgeon Dr Adam Kalecinski and his company Noa Clinic Uslugi Medyczne for compensation, and has been awarded more than 150,000 by a judge

The mother-of-three appeared in a Netflix documentary after starting a relationship with then club boss Stewart Donald (the couple are pictured together)

She continued: The pain and discomfort I felt came on pretty soon after the surgery and continued to get worse.

By the following day, I was in agony and felt feverish.

I told the nurse who came to change my dressings how poorly I was feeling but she just said I was fine. My condition got worse, and I dont really know how I got back on the flight home.

Fortunately, when I landed my family took me straight to hospital where I was diagnosed with sepsis. I cant remember much about initially being in hospital as I was that poorly, but my family have said I was critically ill.

Everything seemed fine and I felt reassured by the fact that the doctors had worked in the UK and everything was communicated in English.

Nothing will change what happened to me or make up for nearly dying, but Im thankful that Ive got justice for what happened. I just hope that by speaking out I can help stop what happened to me happening to others.

Cheryl Palmer-Hughes, specialist international cosmetic surgery lawyer at Irwin Mitchell representing Mrs Donald, said after the hearing: What happened to Laura cannot be downplayed.

She was close to death after developing her infection as a result of the substandard care she received abroad.

The last few years and trying to come to terms with both the physical and mental ordeal shes been through has been incredibly difficult.

While Laura has overcome sepsis shes required a number of revision surgeries to try and rectify the complications shes been left with. While nothing can make up for what shes been through were pleased to have secured the answers Laura deserved.

This court finding will hopefully provide some closure and allow Laura to move on from what happened to her the best she can.

Mrs Donald, 36, told a court she was left screaming in agony after blunders left her with potentially fatal infections when she flew to Wroclaw, Poland for a breast lift in 2015

The lawyer added: Sadly were seeing increasing numbers of cases involving people travelling abroad for cosmetic surgery.

While on the face of it such trips looks appealing and websites look professional, there can often be a complex system behind such bookings and who may be responsible if something does go wrong.

There are always risks to consider in any type of surgical treatment, but there are particular risks involved in having a surgical procedure in a different country.

Wed encourage people to thoroughly research various options before committing to any procedure.

Its vital people understand what redress they have if something goes wrong and that they know the details of insurers in place.

Arguing that Dr Kalecinski and his clinics care of Mrs Donald was negligent, her barrister said: The surgery, to put it neutrally, was not successful.

Mrs Donald is married to former Sunderland AFC boss and multi-millionaire Mr Donald

Very shortly after the date on which the operation took place, she developed symptoms consistent with an infection or infections. In rapid course, they became severe and ultimately life-threatening, and caused her immense pain and discomfort.

Mrs Donald, of Southampton, went on to sue Dr Kalecinski, his clinic and their insurer, but neither the doctor nor the clinic were represented at the trial.

Ruling that they were to blame, the judge said evidence put before the court during the trial from medical experts had described the pre-operative treatment as inadequate.

The evidence also suggested systematic failing in post-operative care, with the level of care falling well below an acceptable standard and resulting in serious injury to Mrs Donald.

In particular [breast surgery expert] Fulvio Urso-Baiarda Urso-Baiarda stated that the multiple infections could not be attributed to misfortune but on the balance of probabilities represented a problem in the process, and that the surgery was not properly conducted and the facilities where it was carried out were inadequate and/or contained inadequate decontamination measures, she continued.

The failure to treat her properly is described as increasing the likelihood of her suffering grave consequences, which included death.

He describes the failure adequately to manage her potentially life-threatening complications as falling 'far below an acceptable standard'.

I have no hesitation in concluding that the case of negligence is made out against both [Dr Kalecinski and Noa].
The government's health and social care spending could soar by 150billion over the next decade, a former Bank of England chief has warned.

Charles Bean, an ex-deputy governor, raised the prospect of another massive rise in costs that could throw the public finances into turmoil.

The Department of Health's budget is already around 170billion a year.

Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak have declared they will pump more taxpayer cash into services as they reel from Covid, including through the 12billion national insurance hike due to take effect next month.

But Sir Charles warned that the government will struggle to contain the pressures due to demographic changes.

He told the BBC: 'It's not just people living longer but also technological advances in the way the health sector and the demand is such that if those treatments are available to keep people alive longer, then people will want them.

'And it's reasonable to think that the rising trend in health and social care spending and pensions will be adding something like another 75billion spending over the next five years, 150billion, potentially over the next decade.'

Charles Bean, who also served on the Treasury watchdog until recently, suggested going ahead with the national insurance hike next month is 'political' and there would be 'no problem' holding off for another year

Health spending has been rising sharply for many years and Sir Charles warned that is set to continue

A Redfield & Wilton Strategies poll found Britons oppose the tax rise, and also want the Chancellor to axe VAT on soaring energy bills

Despite the difficult longer-term pictured, Sir Charles - who also served on the OBR Treasury watchdog until recently - suggested going ahead with the NI hike next month is 'political' and there would be 'no problem' holding off for another year.

The comments came as a poll found Britons oppose the tax rise, and also want the Chancellor to axe VAT on soaring energy bills.

Downing Street insists that the NI increase will go ahead to fund the NHS and social care reforms after Covid.

Speaking to the BBC, Sir Charles - who was deputy governor at the Bank - said the government should be worried about 'sustained' deficits rather than short-term measures.

'There is no problem in the UK borrowing several billion pounds for one extra year. What you can't run is sustained large deficits, but the pace at which you close a deficit is basically a political judgement,' he said.

Mr Sunak is expected to hold off on major action to ease the impact of soaring energy bills in his Spring statement next week.

But a Redfield & Wilton Strategies poll found nearly half the public believe their financial situation has deteriorated over the past year.

Some 72 per cent would support removing the 5 per cent VAT rate on energy bills - which is expected to bring in significantly more revenue for the government as the overall price increases.

The NI increase was opposed by 48 per cent - including 20 per cent strongly opposed - while 29 per cent supported it.

The Chancellor is understood to be resisting laying out another big package of help in his Spring Statement - with aides stressing that costs could change a lot by October when the price cap will change again.

Rishi Sunak is under pressure to act on the cost of living crisis in his Spring Statement next week

Instead there is speculation he could focus on support for universal credit, while Boris Johnson could lay out a wider energy strategy as soon as this week.

The public finances have been hammered by Covid, and so far Mr Sunak has announced council tax rebates for many properties and a 200 loan to cut energy bills this Autumn.

However, the repayments are being added to bills over the following five years.

And shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves said that the planned national insurance rise next month will 'demolish any benefit' from the bailout by costing the average worker 342 next year.

In contrast to the limited response in the UK, France and Ireland are among the countries that have brought in a temporary cut in fuel duty to save people money.
A mother suffered horrific injuries when she was brutally attacked by a man who wheedled his way into her life using information he had learnt about her from a mutual friend while in prison.

Rachel Mitchell, 47, from Sheffield, was left with a permanent scar on her face and missing three teeth as a result of the assault she suffered at the hands of Craig Weldon, 35.

Weldon had pretended to have the same childhood dreams and favourite films as his victim in order to woo her, after gaining the information from her childhood friend during nine months in prison, where he was serving a sentence for attacking a different woman.

After getting out of prison, Weldon obtained Ms Mitchell's phone number and struck up a connection with her, leveraging what he had learnt about her during conversations with their mutual friend to create inroads.

However, Ms Mitchell soon realised his charm was a facade when he launched a violent attack after a mere three weeks of dating during a day out in York last May.

Rachel Mitchel, 47, was left with a scar on her face and lost three teeth after suffering a brutal attack at the hands of her boyfriend, 35-year-old Craig Weldon

Craig Weldon learnt details about Ms Mitchel's life through a mutual friend and then leveraged them to wheedle his way into her life - before savagely beating her in a jealous rage

Ms Mitchell was on the phone to her daughter in her hotel room, at the Diamond Villa Hotel, when he threw the phone against the wall in a jealous rage and beat her.

The mother of two managed to escape when Weldon stopped the attack to find his glasses after they flew off his face due to the force of his blows.

Weldon was sentenced to two years in prison at York Crown Court after pleading guilty to wounding, criminal damage, fraud and theft.

The judge imposed an indefinite restraining order on Weldon, stopping him from contacting Ms Mitchell again.

Furious Ms Mitchell added: 'Two years is disgusting. I'm scarred for life and have panic attacks since the incident.

Ms Mitchell said: 'He was the perfect man. He was charming from the moment I met him.

'He said his favourite film was Titanic and I thought 'that's my favourite film'. He told me he wanted to be a zoo keeper as a child, it was too good to be true.

'He played me for a fool.'

'He knew I'd lost my dad, he told me he understood how it felt as he lost his Mum. He said he suffered from anxiety and was aware I'd dealt with that.

'He must have studied me. He'd overheard things because he spent that much time in prison with my friend, Andrew.

'I pieced everything together after the attack.

'We had a wonderful day in York, we went back to his hotel room and my daughter rang me.

Weldon was sentenced to two years in prison at York Crown Court after pleading guilty to wounding, criminal damage, fraud and theft

Weldon wheedled his way into her life, pretending to share her quirks and dreams - and she even said he came across as 'charming' - after he had spent months conducting a crafty reconnaissance mission to learn as much as he could about her through a mutual friend

After hospitalising Ms Mitchel, Weldon took her bank card and stole 200 from her account

'He chucked my phone across the room and started hitting me.

'I never had a chance to fight back. I froze. I tried to protect myself and that's when my three nails came off.

'His glasses flew off, probably because of the force he hit me and he said, 'where's my f***ing glasses'.

'When be bent down to pick them up, I ran to the nearest shop and the store assistant called an ambulance.

'I later found out he used my card and took 200 from my bank account.'

Shocking images depict the charity shop worker's bloody face following the beating, as she was hospitalised overnight with police protection.

She added: 'I remember looking at the photo of my injuries and crying, I was so

angry at myself.

After Weldon was sentenced to two years in prison for the vicious attack, Ms Mitchell branded the judge's decision as 'disgusting', saying she had been 'scarred for life' by the terrifying ordeal

'Other people will say they can't see the scar on my face, but I can. I can't even look at myself in the mirror, it makes me sick.'

Ms Mitchel continued: 'I'm worried for when he gets out of prison, I have cameras installed in my home to make sure he stays away.

'I do have some closure after the sentencing, if I let this drag me down it's not going to be good for me, I've got to move forward for my family.'
Advertisement

Drone footage has captured the moment Russian missiles turned the besieged southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol into a hellscape as Moscow's forces continue to bombard buildings and civilians run out of food and water.

Video filmed amid a blanket of black smoke rising above the surrounded port city appears to show a missile strike on a set of high-rise buildings, razing at least one of the properties to the ground.

A second piece of footage shows a string of high-rise buildings burning next to a row of charred structures that appear to have already been hit by Russian missile strikes in Moscow's relentless bombardment of the city.

Another clip shows plumes of black smoke rising above Mariupol while flashes of artillery fire continue to light-up the small port city, which has experienced some of the worst suffering of Moscow's 19-day war.

The drone also captured a tank being obliterated in a close-quarter skirmish, leaving the vehicle engulfed in a red-hot blaze and a thick cloud of black smoke.

It is the latest in Russia's brutal assault on Mariupol which has been left without food, drinking water or medication for up nearly two weeks, MSF staffer Olexander who is inside the city reported.

Olexander said residents are forced to search for water, some walking up to three kilometres to find supplies which they then have to boil before drinking.

He said supplies of food, medicines and wood for making fires had run out and that residents have been forced to scrounge for supplies after the city was cut off by Vladimir Putin's men.

Drone footage has captured the moment Russian missiles hit buildings in the besieged southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol which has been encircled by Moscow's forces for a week and a half

A second piece of footage shows a string of high-rise buildings burning next to a row of charred structures that appear to have already been hit by Russian missile strikes in Moscow's relentless bombardment of the city

Another clip shows plumes of black smoke rising above Mariupol while flashes of artillery fire continue to light-up the small port city, which has experienced some of the worst suffering of Moscow's 19-day war

The drone also captured a tank being obliterated in a close-quarter skirmish, leaving the vehicle engulfed in a red-hot blaze and a thick cloud of black smoke

A woman walks past building obliterated by Russian shelling in the southern Ukrainian port city of Mariupol on Sunday, March 13

People walk past a crater from the explosion in Mira Avenue, or Avenue of Peace, in Mariupol, Ukraine on Sunday, March 13

People look at a burning apartment building in a yard after shelling in Mariupol, Ukraine, on Sunday, March 13

Olexander warned the population are without mobile or internet connection and that many do not know what is happening in the rest of Ukraine, or even in the neighbouring district.

He also said that people are dying because of the lack of supplies and depicted a grim reality of neighbours forced to digs holes and bury their friends as the Russian siege stretches on.

On Monday, a convoy of 160 civilian cars left the surrounded port city of Mariupol along a designated humanitarian route, the city council reported in a rare glimmer of hope for the city where the war has produced some of the greatest suffering.

It did not say how many people were in the convoy of cars headed westward for the city of Zaporizhzhia, but officials confirmed that a cease-fire along the route appeared to be holding.

Previous attempts to evacuate civilians and deliver humanitarian aid to the city of 430,000 were thwarted by continuing fighting.

Robert Mardini, director-general of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said the war has become 'nothing short of a nightmare' for those living in besieged cities, and he pleaded for safe passage for civilians to leave and humanitarian aid to be brought in through the front lines.

A view onto the yard of a maternity hospital damaged in a Russian shelling attack in Mariupol, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 9

Ukrainian servicemen and firefighters stand in the area outside of a maternity hospital damaged in a shelling attack in Mariupol on March 9

An aerial view shows smoke rising from damaged residential buildings following an explosion in Mariupol, Ukraine

It was confirmed on Monday that an injured pregnant woman and her unborn baby - whose image being stretchered from her Putin-bombed maternity ward became one of the war's most shocking images - have both died.

Pictures of the unnamed mother-to-be in agony as she was carried from the Mariupol hospital appalled the watching world. She had come under attack in the very place she had thought safe to bring new life into the world.

In video and photos shot last Wednesday after the attack, the woman was seen stroking her bloodied lower abdomen as rescuers rushed her through the rubble in the besieged city of Mariupol.

The woman was rushed to another hospital, closer to the frontline, where doctors worked to keep her alive.

On Monday morning the doctors trying to save them both spoke of the huge efforts trying to keep them both alive.

Surgeon Timur Marin found the woman's pelvis crushed and hip detached. Medics delivered the baby via caesarean section, but it showed 'no signs of life', the surgeon said. They then began work on the mother.

'More than 30 minutes of resuscitation of the mother didn't produce results,' Mr Marin said on Saturday. 'Both died.'

The UN has recorded at least 596 civilian deaths since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, though it believes the true toll is much higher.

Millions more have fled their homes, with more than 2.8 million crossing into Poland and other neighboring countries in what the UN has called Europe's biggest refugee crisis since World War II.

Ukrainian emergency employees and volunteers carry the injured pregnant woman from the maternity hospital that was damaged by shelling in Mariupol on March 9

A medical worker walks inside of the damaged by shelling maternity hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 9

Ukrainian servicemen work inside of the damaged by shelling maternity hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine on the day of the attack

The aftermath of Russia army bombardment on the children hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine, which stunned and appalled the world

Wreckage and debris litter the pavement outside the hospital after the bombing last week, which took patients and medics by surprise

People are helped out of damaged building of a children's hospital following a Russian air strike in the southeastern city of Mariupol

A fourth round of negotiations involving higher-level officials from Russia and Ukraine were held via video conference on Monday.

The talks ended without a breakthrough after several hours, with Ukrainian presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak saying the negotiators took 'a technical pause' and planned to meet again Tuesday.

The two sides had expressed some optimism in the past few days. Podolyak said over the weekend that Russia was 'listening carefully to our proposals.'

He tweeted Monday that the negotiators would discuss 'peace, ceasefire, immediate withdrawal of troops & security guarantees.'

Previous discussions, held in person in Belarus, did not produce lasting humanitarian routes or agreements to end the fighting.

Russia's military is bigger and better equipped than Ukraine's, but its troops have faced stiffer-than-expected resistance, bolstered by arms supplied by the West.

The US said Russia asked China for military equipment to use in Ukraine - a claim the Kremlin denied.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that 'Russia has its own potential to continue the operation' and that it was 'unfolding in accordance with the plan and will be completed on time and in full.'

Russia has denied intending to occupy Ukraine, but Peskov said it 'does not rule out the possibility of taking full control of large settlements that are now practically surrounded.'

The war expanded Sunday when Russian missiles pounded a military training base in western Ukraine, close to the Polish border, that previously served as a crucial hub for cooperation between Ukraine and NATO.

The attack killed 35 people, Ukrainian officials said, and raised fears that NATO could be drawn into direct conflict with Russia.

It came as Ukraine's capital of Kyiv 'resembles a disaster movie' today after Russian forces brutally blitzed an apartment block and debris rained down from an intercepted missile on to the city in Putin's latest barbaric attack.

One person was killed and a dozen were injured after the residential building in the north of the capital was hit this morning, narrowly avoiding a passing pedestrian.

Later, a missile was intercepted by Ukrainian air defence systems, but debris fell on a bus and a car, killing another person and injuring six.

Ukraine's defence minister Oleksii Reznikov said: 'Kyiv. One of the most beautiful cities in the EU today looks like a frame of an apocalypse movie.'

Russian troops are edging closer to the capital and fighting is still raging in the suburbs, with two killed and seven injured at a nearby aircraft factory.

Speaking after this morning's attack, Volodymyr Zelensky vowed to rebuild every destroyed Ukrainian street and building.

Despite the blows, one of Putin's closest allies said Russia's invasion is not going as quickly as the Kremlin had wanted.

In the strongest public acknowledgement yet from Moscow that things were not going to plan, National Guard chief Viktor Zolotov blamed the slower than expected progress on what he said were far-right Ukrainian forces hiding behind civilians, an accusation repeatedly made by officials in Russia.

His comments appeared at odds with an assessment on Friday by Russia's Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu who told Putin that 'everything is going according to plan'.

Zolotov, who was once in charge of Putin's personal security, said: 'I would like to say that yes, not everything is going as fast as we would like.

'But we are going towards our goal step by step and victory will be for us, and this icon will protect the Russian army and accelerate our victory.'

Ukraine's capital 'resembles a disaster movie' today after Russian forces brutally blitzed an apartment block and debris rained down from an intercepted missile on to the city in Putin's latest barbaric attack

A views shows a building and vehicles destroyed by shelling as Russia's attack on Ukraine continues in Kyiv

A view of destruction after an apartment building was hit by Russian attack in Kyiv this morning, killing one civilian

A crane removes a ruined car from in front of a destroyed apartment building after it was shelled in Kyiv

People and medics help a wounded resident of a house destroyed by shelling as Russia's attack on Ukraine continues in Kyiv

A pedestrian walks past as a missile lands just yards away from him during Russia's latest assault on Kyiv today

A man holds his dead cat after heading back into his shelled apartment building which was struck by a Russian missile this morning

The building, pictured before today's attack, was home to dozens of Ukrainians but it has now been reduced to rubble

Rescuers put out a fire by a destroyed building in Kharkiv today as Russia's offensive continues across Ukraine

A resident climbs down a ladder to safety after a nine-storey residential apartment was shelled in Kyiv, killing one person, Ukrainian officials said

Firefighters use a ladder to evacuate a man from a residential building that was struck, as Russia's attack on Ukraine continues in Kyiv

A woman is in tears as she stands outside the destroyed apartment blocks following shelling in Kyiv

Russia has intensified its attacks on Kyiv with air strikes raining down on the city, while fighting and artillery fire rage around the suburbs

The attack, which injured at least a dozen people, came as Russian troops edged closer to the city and kept up their siege of the southern port city of Mariupol, where officials said nearly 2,200 people have been killed

Firefighters help a man evacuate from an apartment building hit by shelling in the Obolon district of Kyiv this morning

A firefighter walks over the debris of an apartment building after it was shelled in Kyiv

A missile was intercepted in the air above Kyiv but debris fell on to the city, hitting a bus and a car

An elderly woman is evacuated from a burning apartment block in the suburbs of Kyiv after it was destroyed by a Russian air strike in the early hours of Monday

A firefighter rescues a cat from an apartment building in Obolon, northern Kyiv, after it was hit by Russian forces on Monday

A wrecked car is seen suspended in a tree after Russian air strikes damaged a civilian apartment block in Obolon, Kyiv

A woman cries during evacuations from Bucha near Kyiv as Russian attacks continue throughout the country

A view of an apartment building heavily damaged after a Russian rocket exploded just outside it in Ukraine's second city Kharkiv

Firemen help a man evacuate from an apartment building hit by shelling in the Obolon district of Kyiv

Firefighters work through the rubble after further attacks during Russia's invasion of Ukraine in Kharkiv

Mayor of Kyiv Vitali Klitschko surveys the damage after a strike this morning on a housing estate saw one person killed

Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Grigorenko at the Kremlin in Moscow today

Meanwhile two people were killed and seven were injured after Russian forces struck a plane factory near Kyiv, sparking a large fire.

The Antonov factory is Ukraine's largest aircraft manufacturing plant and is best known for producing many of the world's biggest cargo planes.

But Ukrainian forces have fought back, shooting down four planes, three helicopters and numerous 'unmanned aerial vehicles' in a single day, inflicting 'devastating blows' on Putin's military.

Overnight, Russian forces fired artillery on the capital's northwestern and eastern suburbs, killing a town councillor in Brovary as shells rained down on Irpen, Bucha and Hostomel.

But the general staff of Ukraine's armed forces said this morning that Russian troops have not made major advances over the past 24 hours, despite expanding strikes to the west.

Lyudmila Evseskaya, 62, who lived in the flat with her husband Victor, 63, and son Sergey, 31, was asleep in her first floor apartment on Bohoatyrska Street when the missile stuck Kyiv after 5am this morning.

As she sat on a patch of grass waiting for her relatives to take her to safety she described the horror of being caught up in the worsening battle for the city.

She told MailOnline: 'I woke up in a shower of glass. All of the windows were broken and the doors were flying through the air.

'There was no warning. There was just a massive boom. It lasted one second and then everything was destroyed. We have lost everything.

'We only managed to grab our emergency bag with our documents [passports] and a little food. I managed to get the dog, Marta, but I couldn't find the cats, Misha and Msha.

'We have nothing. Our TV, our laptops, everything has been destroyed. It was a really good flat. We had three rooms. We liked living there. We had been there since 2004. Now we have to stay with relatives

Tanya, 45, was asleep with her husband in the corner flat on the seventh floor of the apartment block when the missile hit.

National Guard chief Viktor Zolotov blamed the slower than expected progress on what he said were far-right Ukrainian forces hiding behind civilians

A police officer guards an area around a bus destroyed by shelling as Russia's attack on Ukraine continues, in Kyiv,

A man places a small Ukrainian flag on a burnt balcony of an apartment in a block which was destroyed by an artillery strike

A woman holding a small dog walks in front of an apartment in a block which was destroyed by an artillery strike in Kyiv

Debris burns on the street after further attacks during Russia's invasion of Ukraine, in Kharkiv

Wiping back tears she said: 'I am still shaking. My head is all over the place. It's very difficult to talk about what happened.

'I know it is important to tell the world what happened here this morning.

'Before this happened we had got used to being so close to the war. From my flat I can see the fires and the fighting in Irpin, which is not so far away. But what here was a total shock.

'My daughter lives in another flat in the block. They live there with my granddaughter. She is one and a half years old. All of their windows were smashed.

'My friend has given us the keys to her flat. But I don't know how long we can stay in Kyiv.'

Homeowners Natalya Melnyk and Sergyi Tulyncev returned to view their destroyed apartment which they had rented out.

Natalya, 62, said: 'That could have been our apartment. We were not there last night. We don't live there anyone more.

'We rent out our flat to a young. Now he has run away. He is so frightened. Our flat is on the first floor. Everything has been destroyed.'




A group of Catholic activists in Baltimore is petitioning Pope Francis to 'immediately' canonize the first African-American saint, and have proposed six candidates for the title  all but one of whom were born into slavery or worked to abolish it.

Black saints from Africa and elsewhere have been canonized - but none from the United States.

'It is embarrassing to many of us in America that in the church where we worship, there are no United States African American saints recognized by the highest church authorities,' reads a Change.org petition written by the group and addressed to Pope Francis, which has garnered almost 900 signatures.

'At 899 saints, you, as Pope, have canonized the most saints in Catholic Church history. It is time that African Americans 'go marching in' with that number,' the petition adds.

The group, led by the social justice committee at St. Ann's Church in East Baltimore, along with parishioners at local churches St. Francis Xavier and St. Wenceslaus, began their movement in November and have sent over 1,000 letters to the Vatican on December 14, 2021, the Religious News Service reported.

The candidates include two men and four women who have all already been recognized by the Vatican as either a Servant of God or Venerable, which are respectively the first and second major steps in the canonization process.

Catholic activists in Baltimore are petitioning Pope Francis to 'immediately' canonize the first African-American saint. Above are three of the candidates, from left to right: Pierre Toussaint, Henriette DeLille and Augustus Tolton

The candidates include two men and four women, all but one of whom were born into slavery or worked to abolish it. They have all already been recognized by the Vatican as either a Servant of God or Venerable, which are early steps in the canonization process. Above, from left to right: Julia Greeley, Mother Mary Lange and Thea Bowman

The Servants of God include Julia Greeley, known as Denver's 'Angel of Charity,' Mother Mary Lange, the founder and first superior of the Oblate Sisters of Providence and Thea Bowman, the only African American member of the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration.

The Venerable candidates include Pierre Toussaint, dubbed the father of Catholic Charities in New York, Henriette DeLille, a founder of the Creole nun community called the Sisters of the Holy Family order and Augustus Tolton, the first known black Catholic priest in America.

All candidates for sainthood 'were either born into enslavement or educated the enslaved at personal risks to themselves,' the petition reads.

The next step toward canonization is beatification, in which the Vatican declares someone 'blessed' by confirming that they have performed two miracles by interceding with God.

Matteo Brunik, a spokesman for the Vatican, said that investigations are under way of all six proposed saints and in some cases their 'heroic virtues' have been officially acknowledged, the Wall Street Journal reported.

There are over 10,000 people recognized as saints, including 11 Americans and 899 that have been recognized by Pope Francis. There are a number of black saints, mostly from Africa, including Peruvian Saint Martin de Porres (1579-1639), who cared for orphans, the poor and the sick.

The next step toward canonization is beatification, in which the Vatican declares someone 'blessed' by confirming that they have performed two miracles

A group led by the social justice committee at St. Ann's Church in East Baltimore (above), along with parishioners at local churches St. Francis Xavier and St. Wenceslaus, began their movement in November

Ralph Moore, one of the leaders of the movement, urged Pope Francis to redefine the 'unfair' canonization process that they say creates 'uneven results'

While the aforementioned candidates have been celebrated for their contributions, sainthood is a process that could take hundreds of years because of the qualifications that constitute a miracle.

'The simple reason why there aren't any black [American] Catholic saints today is that they've only been proposed very recently. A person becomes a saint usually over decades and sometimes even centuries,' Kathleen Sprows Cummings, a professor of history at the University of Notre Dame, told CNN.

The Baltimore advocates have also urged Pope Francis to redefine the 'unfair' canonization process that they say creates 'uneven results.' They argue that the Vatican should put less weight on miracles and more on the hardships the African American Catholics have overcome and the work they've done for the church in spite of such obstacles.

'African Americans and brown people, particularly in this country, have endured enslavement, have endured segregation even within churches, have endured mass incarceration and mass poverty, and yet we have remained faithful,' Ralph Moore, one of the leaders of the movement, told the Religious News Service.

'Martin Luther King used to say that unearned suffering is redemptive, and we think we've had unearned suffering in this country, in this church, and that should be enough,' he added.

About 50 years ago, Moore went into St. Pius Church in West Baltimore with friends one night and painted the statues of Jesus and Mary black. They also painted Jesus black in a depiction of the Station of the Cross, but left alone the white Roman soldiers abusing him as a statement on black liberation.

'We were trying to make the church relevant,' Moore told the Religious News Service, adding that he sat in church wondering, 'Why are all the images here white?'

Moore said that the effort to recognize six African Americans as saints is part of an effort 'to teach the institution who God is, because white supremacy practices don't come from God, they come from men.'

A Change.org petition urging Pope Francis to canonize the candidates has garnered almost 900 signatures

Delores Moore, who is unrelated to Ralph Moore and also sits on the committee, said many people haven't heard of the six candidates for canonization. 'We've seen this as a real justice issue. We have discovered that unless you tell the people, they won't know and they won't change,' she told the news outlet.

'We realize we have to speak out. We're going to be outcasts for a while until people catch up, and that's OK,' she added.

The advocates say that they have been garnering nationwide support from people of different races and faiths since going public with their plan last November.

'This deficit in church attention is so blatant that even white people get it. This endeavor has taken on a life of its own when people are informed,' Betty Lutz, a white member of the committee, told the Religious News Service.

'Although I was raised a Catholic, I never thought of a white saint, black saint. I didn't realize there were no (African American) saints, and once that presented to me, I saw the realization of it. I was proud to jump on this cause,' Mary Sewell, also a member of the committee, told the news source.

'You canonizing the six current candidates for sainthood would make a very strong statement of reckoning and reconciliation,' the petition adds.

It concludes: 'Please treat the six African American candidates for sainthood fairly by redefining and rectifying the process. Please canonize them immediately. If not now, when? If not you, who?'
Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine has increased public support in Finland for joining the NATO alliance to record levels, a poll published on Monday has suggested.

A total of 62 percent of respondents in Finland now support their government applying for NATO membership.

According to the survey which was commissioned by Finland's public broadcaster Yle, this is up from 53 percent in the same poll released two weeks ago.

Meanwhile, 16 percent in Monday's poll opposed joining and 21 percent were unsure, Yle said.

Finland shares the EU's largest land border with Russia and has remained militarily non-aligned, therefore not engaging in war or conflict, since the end of the cold war for fear of provoking Moscow.

A poll commissioned by Finnish broadcaster YLE this week showed that, for the first time, more than 62 per cent of Finns support joining the Western military alliance

One week into the Russian invasion, Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin said a planned debate in parliament the following day would cover the situation in Ukraine and was not intended as a 'wider conversation on Finland's policy regarding military alignment or non-alignment'

At the same time, Finnish President Sauli Niinisto said that Finland is to review its security policy to decide whether to join NATO after Russia's invasion of Ukraine sparked a historic change in appetite for joining the military alliance as a deterrent against potential Russian invasion.

But public support for joining the US-led defence alliance has soared since Russia's shock invasion of Ukraine on February 24, which left many in Finland, a country of 5.5 million, feeling vulnerable to potential aggression from its giant eastern neighbour.

For most of the past two decades, public opinion regarding NATO has remained stable in Finland, with less than a third in favour of joining and about 50 percent against.

Since the assault on Ukraine, Finnish leaders have held multiple meetings with their US and Nordic counterparts regarding Finnish defence and security.

Finnair said pilots noticed the disturbances near Kaliningrad last week, which is sandwiched between NATO members Lithuania and Poland on the Baltic Sea's east coast. Other aircraft reported unusual disturbances in GPS signals near Finland's eastern border with Russia, with planes unable to land at Savonlinna airport due to the interference

Last week, President Sauli Niinisto repeated his call for Finland to decide "without hesitation but carefully" on the question of whether or not to try to join NATO.

Niinisto said the decision was one for parliament, adding that "the time for conclusions" would be after lawmakers have reviewed a report on the risks and benefits of joining, which is expected in the coming weeks.

A total of 1,378 respondents aged over 18 were surveyed online by pollsters Taloustutkimus between March 9 and 11, with a margin of error of 2.5 percentage points, Yle said.

In neighboring Sweden, a similar poll showed those in favor of NATO membership outnumber those against.

Last week, apparently sensing a shift among its Nordic neighbors, the Russian Foreign Ministry last week voiced concern about what it described as efforts by the United States and some of its allies to 'drag' Finland and Sweden into NATO.

Moscow also warned that the Kremlin would be forced to take retaliatory measures if either Finland or Sweden joined the Western military alliance.

The interference with planes' GPS signals began soon after Finland's President Sauli Niinisto met his US counterpart Joe Biden in Washington on Saturday to discuss deepening defence ties between Finland and NATO due to Russia's attack on Ukraine (Pictured at the White House on March 4)

Until now, nothing was able to persuade Finland or Sweden to join NATO, throughout the Cold War from 1947 to 1989, and in the decades since.

But the support for joining NATO has surged to record levels since Russia began their invasion of Ukraine, changing Europe's outlook on security, including for the Finns and Swedes.

Former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt, who advocated for NATO membership, tweeted: '

'The unthinkable might start to become thinkable,' tweeted former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt, a proponent of NATO membership.

The attack also prompted both states to break with their policy of not providing arms to countries at war by sending assault rifles and anti-tank weapons to Kyiv.

For Sweden, it's the first time offering military aid since 1939, when it assisted Finland against the Soviet Union.

It comes despite Russian threats of retaliation if either country tries to join NATO - though the governments of Sweden and Finland retorted that they won't let Moscow dictate their security policy.

Last week, Finland detected interference with passenger jets' GPS signals near Russia's Kaliningrad enclave and the country's eastern border with Moscow since Sunday.

Finnish airline Finnair said its pilots have noticed the disturbances near Kaliningrad, which is sandwiched between NATO members Lithuania and Poland on the Baltic Sea's east coast.

Other aircraft reported unusual disturbances in GPS signals near Finland's eastern border with Russia, with planes unable to land at Savonlinna airport due to the interference.

Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin said she had no information about the source of the disturbances, nor about whether they originated in Russia (Pictured on Friday at the Palace of Versailles, near Paris, for the EU leaders summit discussing the fallout of Russia's invasion of Ukraine)

The interference comes just days after Russia threatened Finland with 'military and political consequences' if they join NATO.

Finnish authorities said separately on Thursday that Finland had stocked up its emergency reserves which it has kept since the wars, adding more supplies such as fuels and primary production goods to its reserves.

The interference with planes' GPS signals began soon after Finland's President Sauli Niinisto met his US counterpart Joe Biden in Washington on Saturday to discuss deepening defence ties between Finland and NATO due to Russia's attack on Ukraine.

Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin said she had no information about the source of the disturbances, nor about whether they originated in Russia, while the Foreign ministry said it was looking into the events.

'If they would be caused by outside influence, it would surely be said publicly,' Marin said.

The Kremlin did not immediately reply to a request for comment about the interference.

Some of Finnair's Asian flights and most of its European ones go past Kaliningrad, the company said.

'Our pilots have noticed interference in GPS near the Kaliningrad area in the past few days,' a spokesperson for Finland's national carrier said in an email.

Just a few days into the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russia's foreign ministry spokesperson Zakharova warned that Finland's or Sweden's accession into NATO would have serious military and political consequences.

'All states participating in the OSCE (Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe) in their national capacity, including Finland and Sweden, reaffirmed the principle that the security of some states should not be built at the expense of the security of other countries,' she said at a press briefing.

'It is obvious that the accession of Finland and Sweden to NATO, which is primarily a military organisation, would have serious military and political consequences that would require our country to take reciprocal steps.'
Grant Shapps today announced the end of all remaining coronavirus travel rules from March 18, paving the way for the return of hassle-free holidays.

It means passenger locator forms and Covid tests are being totally scrapped for both vaccinated and unvaccinated travellers in time for the Easter holidays.

The mask mandate for passengers and staff at London Heathrow Airport will also be scrapped.

The move brings to an end two years of ever-changing international travel restrictions.

Mr Shapps tweeted: 'All remaining Covid travel measures, including the Passenger Locator Form and tests for all arrivals, will be stood down for travel to the UK from 4am on 18 March.

'These changes are possible due to our vaccine rollout and mean greater freedom in time for Easter.'

Travel and tourism bosses hailed the announcement as a 'truly significant milestone' and said passengers can now 'look forward to the return to pre-Covid normality'.

The announcement by Mr Shapps comes as travel to Greece is set to be made easier for British holidaymakers.

As of tomorrow, all arrivals in Greece will no longer be required to complete a passenger locator form.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps today unveiled the latest changes to the Government's Covid travel rules

Mr Shapps said all remaining Covid travel rules will be scrapped from 4am on Friday March 18

Mr Shapps' announcement was warmly welcomed by the aviation and travel industries.

Tim Alderslade, the chief executive of Airlines UK, the industry body representing UK carriers, said the decision sends the message that 'the UK travel sector is back'.

'With travellers returning to the UK no longer burdened by unnecessary forms and testing requirements, we can now look forward to the return to pre-Covid normality throughout the travel experience,' he said.

'We're grateful for the timing of the announcement as we prepare to welcome back passengers this Easter and Summer, for which we know there is huge pent-up demand, and for the UK's leadership in being the first major aviation market to remove all remaining restrictions.'

A Virgin Atlantic spokesman said: 'The removal of all remaining UK travel restrictions, including the passenger locator form, is the final important step towards frictionless air travel, helping to further restore consumer confidence as we welcome more customers back to the skies this Spring and Summer.'

The Board of Airline Representatives in the UK said scrapping the remaining Covid travel rules represented a 'truly significant milestone'.

Dale Keller, chief executive of BAR UK, said: 'This is a truly significant milestone and passengers and airlines will be delighted that the Passenger Locator Form (PLF) is banished now that international travel into the UK will be harmonised with the domestic reopening.

'We applaud this pragmatic decision by ministers to restore freedom of international travel by removing all remaining Covid related border measures as evidence became overwhelming that border measures were largely ineffective in reducing the transmission of Covid.

'We urge the UK Government to quickly capitalise on the strategic importance of aviation to the whole of society and the UK economy by fully supporting the sector as it invests in rebuilding the country's vital global connectivity in challenging times.'

Currently, fully-vaccinated travellers must complete a passenger locator form before travelling to England.

The document must be filled out in the three days before arriving in the country.

The passenger locator form is used to confirm a passenger's vaccination status, travel history and contact details.

The fully-vaccinated currently do not have to take any Covid tests, either before or after travelling to England. They also do not have to quarantine.

As of tomorrow, all arrivals in Greece will no longer be required to complete a passenger locator form

The passenger locator form is used to confirm a passenger's vaccination status, travel history and contact details

But people who are not fully-vaccinated must take a Covid test in the two days before travelling to England.

They must also book and pay for a Covid test to be taken after arriving in the country.

They too must complete a passenger locator form in the three days before arriving.

People who are not fully-vaccinated do not currently have to quarantine upon arrival but if their post-arrival test is positive, they should stay at home.

The easing of international travel rules comes as coronavirus infections were rising in all four UK nations for the first time since the end of January.

The numbers for hospital patients with Covid were also rising, up 19 per cent week-on-week in England.

Hospital admissions with coronavirus in England remain well below the peaks reached during the Omicron and previous waves, while in Scotland the figure was close to the record peak seen in January last year.
Advertisement

Russia's weekend attack on a base in western Ukraine used cruise missiles fired from long-range bombers inside Russian airspace, a senior U.S. defense official said on Monday, adding that Moscow's advance remained largely stalled elsewhere.

Ukraine said 35 people died and another 134 were wounded when the missiles hit a base at Yavoriv - just 12 miles from the Polish border.

The official said the U.S. assessed that more than two dozen cruise missiles were used in the strike, which damaged seven structures.

Although the International Peace Keeping and Security Center base had been used by N.A.T.O. to train Ukrainian forces, the official said there were no longer any U.S. personnel in the vicinity.

Nor would the attack disrupt supply lines getting weapons to Ukrainian forces, he said.

'I would note that that in our our assessment all these air launch cruise missiles were launched from long range bombers, Russian long range bombers from Russian airspace, not from inside Ukrainian airspace,' he said.

'And again you know, for the advocates of a no fly zone, this is an example of what a no fly zone inside Ukraine would have had no effect on this particular set of strikes.'

A senior defense official said Russia fired more than two dozen missiles from aircraft inside Russian air space at the International Peace Keeping and Security Centre in Yavoriv, Ukraine, on Sunday morning

Smoke rises from damaged buildings following an attack on the Yavoriv military base, which was hit on Sunday

A senior U.S. defense official said the attack on the base in Yavoriv would not disrupt supply lines to Ukrainian defense forces

Armored vehicles of NATO's rapid reaction force brigade in Norway for the military exercise Cold Response 22 arrive at Borg Havn in Fredrikstad, Norway on March 10, 2022. While the war rages in Ukraine, NATO and its partners are sharpening their weapons in Norway their ability to come to the aid of one of their own

U.S. Marines with 3rd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, 2d Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force, hike to a training area before Exercise Cold Response 2022 gets under way

The strikes follow a pattern first described last week by defense officials, with Russia flying cautiously, keeping many of its sorties within its own air space.

Even though the Ukrainian Air Force is flying only a handful of sorties each day, they said, Ukraine's air defense systems had been successful in keep Russian planes away.

On Monday, the official said little had changed in the past 48 hours among Russian ground forces.

'Almost all of Russia's advances remain stalled,' said the official.

The Pentagon last week praised the way Ukrainian fighters had proved more agile than their adversaries, staging 'hit and run' attacks on the armoured columns bearing down on Kyiv.

The attack on Yavoriv and its proximity to Poland raised fresh fears at the weekend that Russian mid broaden its assault to neighboring countries.

Washington and its allies have repeatedly said that any attack on N.A.T.O. nations would trigger the alliance's article five 'collective defense' promise.

It underlined its strength with an exercise including about 30,000 troops from more than 25 countries in northern Norway on Monday.

NATO said that the 'Cold Response' drill was 'not linked to Russia's unprovoked and unjustified invasion of Ukraine.'

But the long-planned exercises allow N.A.T.O. to show off its strength in Europe, just a few hundred miles from the Russian border.

Russia has declined to be an observer at the exercise that aims at having Alliance members and partners practicing working together on land, in the air and at sea, said the armed forces.

The Norwegian armed forces said it provided "thorough information" to the Russians, including the Russian Ministry of Defense, saying that was "vital for preventing misunderstandings and unnecessary conflict."

The drill, which is held every other year, is due to end on April 1.

HMS Prince of Wales, the British aircraft carrier top, deploys for NATO Cold Response exercises off Norway

NATO troops are seen taking part in Exercise Cold Response 22. The Norwegian-led exercise is designed to enhance military capabilities, test U.S. Marines ability to work alongside NATO allies and partners and adapt to challenging climates while training on offensive and defensive tactical operations.

A view of destruction after an apartment building was hit by Russian attack in Kyiv this morning, killing one civilian

People and medics help a wounded resident of a house destroyed by shelling as Russia's attack on Ukraine continues in Kyiv

Rescuers work next to a residential building damaged by shelling by Russian forces in the early hours of Monday

A Ukrainian soldier helps fire crews search the ruins of a Kyiv apartment building for survivors and victims after Russia resumed its bombing campaign early Monday

Elsewhere there were diplomatic moves to end the conflict, or at least increase Moscow's diplomatic isolation.

U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan met China's top diplomat at a hotel in Rome on Monday to warn Beijing that it would face international penalties if it helped Russia and its invasion of Ukraine.

Last week senior U.S. intelligence officials said they believed Chinese leaders may be worried that Moscow's invasion, and President Vladimir Putin's increasingly brutal tactics, will reflect badly on them if they offer diplomatic cover.

Against that background, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV on Monday morning reported that Yang Jiechi had met Sullivan in Rome, but offered no further details.

American officials and allies have repeatedly said that China risks facing secondary sanctions if it sides with Russia.

And on Sunday, they claimed that Putin had asked his ally for military help for his faltering invasion.

But that triggered accusations of disinformation by Chinese officials.

Zhao Lijian, spokesman for Beijing's foreign ministry, said that America was 'targeting China on the Ukraine issue with malicious intentions.'

A day earlier, Sullivan warned Beijing of 'consequences' if it tried to bail out Putin by, for example, providing ways to skirt international economic sanctions.

'We will ensure that neither China, nor anyone else, can compensate Russia for these losses,' Sullivan told NBC ahead of the meeting.

'In terms of the specific means of doing that, I'm not going to lay all of that out in public, but we will communicate that privately to China, as we have already done and will continue to do.'
Three British former special forces soldiers are feared to have been killed in a Russian airstrike near the Polish border.

More than 30 Russian cruise missiles targeted the Yavoriv base yesterday, killing as many as 180 people.

The trio were not part of the foreign legion fighting unit being trained at the base six miles from the border, sources told The Mirror.

The barracks at the International Peace Keeping and Security Centre in Yavoriv burns after being hit by a Russian missile strike in the early hours of Sunday morning - killing 35 people and injuring 134 more

A patient is assisted by medical staff as he arrives at Novoiavorivsk District Hospital on March 13, 2022 in Novoiavorivsk, Ukraine, following the missile attack

Smoke rises amid damaged buildings following an attack on the Yavoriv military base, as Russia's invasion of Ukraine continued

It is not known which branch of the special forces they had served in.

Igor Konashenkov, a spokesman for Russia's ministry of defence, said the base was struck by 'long-range, high-precision' weapons because it was hosting 'foreign mercenaries and a large shipment of foreign weapons'.

He added: 'The destruction of foreign mercenaries who arrived on the territory of Ukraine will continue.'

Konashenkov said up to 180 people had been killed in the strike, though Ukraine initially said 35 people died and another 134 were wounded.

But a source told The Mirror today: 'There were many more killed within the site than has been claimed and bodies are still being found.

'I do not believe the three British ex-military personnel would have known anything about it, fortunately.

'This is extremely sensitive as there are believed to be no serving British military personnel inside Ukraine as politically that would be extremely controversial.'

Bombs fell on the base early Sunday morning, with witnesses saying many of the foreign recruits were sleeping when the strike was carried out.

British military veterans at the base who survived the attack, described hearing the sound of incoming engines before several large blasts destroyed one building, damaged another, and sprayed shell fragments through the air. It is thought the base was hit by Russian cruise missiles as opposed to fighter jets.

Russia says the base (pictured) was targeted because it was hosting foreign 'mercenaries' and weapons shipments, adding that such raids would continue

Around 1,000 foreigners were at the base at the time it was hit, Ukraine said, and are expected to be among the victims - though no official word has been given yet (pictured, a man wounded at the base)

The British Ministry of Defence said there were no serving personnel killed in the explosions.

James, a former British artillery soldier identified only by his first name, told Buzzfeed of hearing the sound of incoming missiles as he was in bed, saying: 'I just lied there and thought: I'm going to die.'

'A couple of buildings got hit... One they decimated and there was one that was on fire. And then there was just frag[mentation] everywhere. And a crater... in the middle of camp.'

A Ukrainian officer said there were around 1,000 foreigners at the camp - officially known as the International Center for Peacekeeping and Security - at the time. British and US regular military personnel had previously been stationed there to train Ukrainian soldiers, but were not thought to be present yesterday.

On Monday, a Russian air strike on the capital Kyiv killed at least two people and wounded others as it blew up and set light to an apartment building.

A town councilor for Brovary, east of Kyiv, was also killed in fighting there as shells fell on the towns of Irpin, Bucha and Hostomel.

Ukrainian officials said two more people died and seven were injured after Russian forces struck an airplane factory in Kyiv, sparking a large fire.

Airstrikes also hit residential buildings near the important southern city of Mykolaiv, as well as in the eastern city of Kharkiv.

A television tower in the Rivne region in the northwest was destroyed. Explosions also rang out overnight around the Russian-occupied Black Sea port of Kherson.

And Ukraine said a pregnant woman who was badly wounded in an airstrike on a maternity hospital in Mariupol last week died, along with her unborn child.

But, in a rare sign of hope, Mariupol's city council said a convoy of 160 civilian cars left the besieged port city along a designated humanitarian route, after many previous attempts at evacuations collapsed.

Ukraine and Russia also continued peace talks, after hailing 'substantial progress' made at the weekend to obtaining a ceasefire.

Those negotiations continued today, though broke up without agreement. Neither side has made it clear what any such deal would look like.

Even if a ceasefire deal can be reached by negotiators, serious doubts remain over whether it would be observed on the ground - and whether Russia would simply use it as cover to rearm, resupply, and attack anew.

Almost all Russian advances are currently stalled, with no significant progress made in the last week despite heavy bombardment of cities.

Meanwhile Putin's forces continue to suffer punishing casualties. While accurate numbers are hard to come by, the figure almost certainly stretches into the thousands and is far higher than Putin banked on when he gave the order to attack.
Fake heiress and fraudster Anna Sorokin spent her final day locked up in what she called a 'lawless' upstate New York ICE detention facility as she faced being deported Monday night.

Sorokin, 31, was scheduled to board a flight back to Frankfurt, Germany, Monday evening, the New York Post reported. From there, she is scheduled to appear on the advice and comedy podcast 'Call Her Daddy' on Wednesday.

Sorokin was previously convicted of fraud in 2019 after scamming New York socialites out of $200,000 by pretending to be a rich heiress named 'Anna Delvey,' a long-term scheme depicted in the Netflix series 'Inventing Anna' starring Julia Garner.

After serving nearly four years of her four-to-12 year sentence, Sorokin was released from jail in February 2021, and went about returning to her previous life of luxury by renting a swank apartment in Chelsea.

Weeks later, after bragging in a TV interview that 'crime pays, in a way' she was arrested by immigration agents for allegedly overstaying her visa and has been in ICE custody at the Orange County Correctional Facility in Goshen, New York ever since.

Sorokin tried to apply for asylum in the United States - but German newspaper Spiegel Panorama reports that her plea was denied.

Anna Sorokin, who scammed New York's elites out of $200,000, is due to be deported back to her home country of Germany this week. She is pictured during her trial at the New York State Supreme Court in April 2019

Sorokin has been held at the Orange County Correctional Facility in Goshen, New York since March 2021 for overstaying her visa

On Sunday, Sorokin likened her experience at Riker's Island to that villa when compared to her experience at the ICE detention facility

Sorokin grew up in a working class suburb of Moscow, the daughter of a truck driver whose mother ran a small convenience store. The family emigrated to Germany when she was 16.

She did not have a college degree or a substantial amount of wealth.

But in 2013, Sorokin traveled to New York City to attend New York Fashion Week, and ultimately stayed, pretending to be 'Anna Delvey' - an heiress with a $60m trust fund in Europe - as she scammed her way to expensive trips and hotel stays, ripping off her best friend along the way.

The scam has now been memorialized by the Netflix show 'Inventing Anna,' based on journalist Jessica Pressler's New York magazine story, which brought her scheme to light.

She was first arrested in July 2017, A&E reports, after she skipped out on thousands of dollars in unpaid bills at two New York City hotels - the Beekman and the W New York - and dined and dashed after eating lunch at Le Parker Meridien hotel.

Sorokin was scheduled to appear in court in September that year, but never showed up.

A few months later, in October, the Manhattan District Attorney set up a sting operation with the Los Angeles Police Department and arrested her again.

According to the indictment, City National Bank allowed Sorokin to overdraft her account by $100,000.

She managed to keep $55,000 in the account but 'frittered away these funds on personal expenses in about one month's time' with fancy hotel stays, high-end fashion purchases and sessions with a personal trainer.

In 2019, she was convicted of second-degree larceny, theft of services and first-degree attempted larceny.

Sorokin, however, was acquitted of the most serious charge - attempted grand larceny in the first degree, in connection with a $22 million loan she tried to obtain from City National Bank.

She was also acquitted of stealing from her friend, Rachel DeLoache Williams, who worked in the photo department of Vanity Fair magazine and was scammed out of $62,000.

The two, and a group of other friends, went on a $7,000-a-night villa trip to Morocco in 2017. Sorokin had vowed to pay for the trip, but never did.

Sorokin was convicted in 2019 of second-degree larceny, theft of services and first-degree attempted larceny after she refused to pay at some of the city's most expensive hotels

She was acquitted, however, of stealing from her friend, Rachel DeLoache Williams (pictured), who she brought to a $7,000-a-night Morocco villa, claiming she would pay

Sorokin was sentenced to four-to-12 years behind bars and ultimately served four years at Riker's Island - New York's largest prison - before being released for good behavior in February 2021.

She then settled her debts and paid her state fines with the $320,000 she received for selling her life story to Netflix.

But just one month later, she was rearrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents for overstaying her visa.

She has since been detained at the Orange County Correctional Facility, where she has complained about the conditions.

In an Instagram post on Sunday, Sorokin wrote that Rikers is like the Marrakesh hotel where she brought Williams when compared to the 'lawless' ICE facility.

'Rikers could never get away with letting someone out for 15 [minutes] a day, like ICE is doing with me yet again, "quarantine" or not,' she wrote.

'So far ICE OCJail has been giving [me] nothing but major "credit card declined" vibes.'

Sorokin sold the rights to her life story to Netflix for $320,000. Above, actress Julia Garner plays Delvey in the series 'Inventing Anna'

Sorokin, pictured earlier this month, is now receiving 'poor person's relief' after she reportedly used the Netflix money to pay off her debts

While in ICE custody, Sorokin has announced that she is suing ICE after she allegedly caught coronavirus when she was denied a booster vaccination shot.

She, along with three other detainees, filed the suit earlier this month alleging federal authorities violated their constitutional rights as 'medically vulnerable individuals' and engaged in 'unlawful discrimination' by refusing to issue the shot.

Sorokin tested positive for COVID-19 in mid-January after she made multiple requests for a booster shot and never received a response, according to the complaint obtained by DailyMail.com Thursday.

She also alleges she continues to experience lingering effects of the virus - including fatigue, coughing, brain fog and shortness of breath - and still seeks the jab 'as she is concerned about getting sick from COVID-19 if she contracts it again'.

Sorokin is also now claiming in court documents that she is finally broke, and was granted 'poor person's relief' in filing her appeal against her conviction.

Of the money she received from the lucrative Netflix deal, she repaid repaid $100,000 to City National Bank, $70,000 to Citibank, spent $75,000 on legal fees and another $24,000 on fines - leaving around $51,000 left over.

Sorokin does not appear to have paid back Blade, the air taxi service from Uber, for the $35,400 she owes to them for a charter flight from New Jersey to Omaha, Nebraska to attend the annual shareholders meeting of investment company Berkshire Hathaway.

Nor has she apparently reimbursed the $23,000 she owes to Signature Bank.

The 'poor person's relief' provides her with court-issued money to cover the cost of filing her appeal and other legal fees.
Alex Hogan, a former WFMZ-TV reporter, has been in Poland traveling from city to city near Ukraines border, reporting for Fox News Channel on the conflict. (Fox News/Alex Hogan)

Alex Hogan on Monday stood next to a warehouse in Poland, where thousands of refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine have been sleeping on makeshift beds or air mattresses, their pets by their side and their most precious possessions in backpacks.

Volunteers have come in from all over the world, Hogan said. "  Whether thats distributing food, or sorting out clothes  others are helping medical centers. And theres a lot of volunteers who are just walking around giving out toys for kids.

Advertisement

"  They dont really understand the concept of war, and then theyre sleeping in a warehouse with thousands of other people in the same room, and thats really traumatizing, she said. Thats really scary for kids.

Hogan, a former WFMZ-TV reporter, for more than a week has been in the country, traveling from city to city near Ukraines border, reporting for Fox News Channel on the conflict, focusing on refugees fleeing the country. Currently in the small border village Korczowa, shes been to Medyka, Przemysl, Rzeszow and Krakow.

Advertisement

While it was Monday morning in the Lehigh Valley, it was already evening for Hogan when she spoke with The Morning Call, and she doesnt know yet when her assignment will end.

We got a one-way ticket, Hogan said. We have no idea when were going back, and well continue to report on how things change, what things look like moving forward. But, we will likely move around to some of the surrounding countries from Ukraine, because not everyone has come through Poland.

More than 2.8 million people have fled Ukraine in the wake of Russias invasion, according to an Associated Press report, citing the U.N. refugee agency. The vast majority has sought refuge in Poland, which has taken in more than 1.7 million refugees in the last 19 days.

[ Efforts to help Ukrainians sprouting up around the Lehigh Valley; groups seeking hygiene products, baby goods, even battlefield gear ]

Hogan said its the first time shes reported on a conflict like this.

Its been really humbling to just to be here and talk with people and share their stories and relay the stories back to people in the U.S., she said. And I think its been really incredible how much people around the world want to hear these peoples stories and want to help.

First Call Daily Leading local stories delivered on weekday mornings >

Shes had many residents, including those in the Valley, reach out to her to offer their help.

Thats beautiful to see, because we dont always see those kinds of connections, especially when the people theyre watching on TV dont speak their same language, dont have their same culture and they live worlds away, she said. So, its really beautiful to see people in the U.S. connect with these peoples stories, and they really, truly want to help and feel that their called to action.

LISTEN: @AlexHoganTV shares the stories of Ukrainians who fled their homes as Russian shelling intensifies #AmericaReports pic.twitter.com/9bsSR5wbk9  America Reports (@AmericaRpts) March 8, 2022

A foreign correspondent for the network, Hogan is based in London.

Advertisement

Before joining Fox, Hogan was a morning news reporter and fill-in anchor for WFMZ from 2017 until September 2019. She was also a general assignment reporter for CBS affiliate WTAJ-TV covering the Altoona, State College and Johnstown areas. A Penn State graduate in broadcast journalism, she was born and raised in Switzerland.

Ive had a lot of messages from viewers from my time in the Lehigh Valley reaching out after seeing stories Ive done here, Hogan said. Im personally so moved and so touched that so many of them have felt inspired by some of the stories that theyve seen of people and that they wanted to help.

Its amazing to see the Lehigh Valley so supportive of the plight of these refugees, and its just incredible that theres been such a rallied level of love spread from one part of the world to the other in such a time of crisis.

Morning Call reporter Molly Bilinski can be reached at mbilinski@mcall.com.
Civilians have been killed in a rocket strike on rebel-held Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, as Ukraine blames Russia for the bombing - saying it is a false flag attack.

The Kremlin said 23 civilians, including children, had died in the attack on the separatist-held Donetsk oblast which it blamed on Ukrainian forces and said involved cluster munitions and branded a 'war crime'.

Kyiv hit back, denying the attack had come from them and claiming the missile was Russian - suggesting Moscow carried out the attack itself as a bloody 'false flag' attack intended to justify an attack in retaliation.

Denis Pushilin, self-declared rebel leader of Donetsk, gave a third account - saying a missile shot down by his forces had landed in a residential area and killed between 16 and 20 people. If true, it could mean the city was not deliberately targeted.

A man weeps as he sees the body of a loved one killed in a rocket strike on the rebel-held Ukrainian city of Donetsk, in the country's east

Russia blamed Ukraine for the attack and branded it a 'war crime', but Ukraine said the rocket was Russian - hinting it could be a 'false flag'

MailOnline has not been able to independently verify any of the claims.

Images from the scene show the tail-end of what appears to be a Tochka-U missile laying in the street after the attack. Both Russia and Ukraine operate the Soviet-era weapon system.

Russia's claim of 'war crimes' mirrors accusations the Kremlin is itself facing after Ukrainian cities were indiscriminately shelled, leaving thousands of civilians dead and many more wounded.

Kyiv, its Western allies, and the UN has said there is a mounting body of evidence that Putin's forces are committing crimes, including attacking civilians with 'missiles, heavy artillery shells, rockets, and air strikes.'

Prosecutors at The Hauge have opened a case, which could see Kremlin commanders charged as war criminals.

Poland's foreign minister today accused Russia of 'state terrorism' for targeting civilians, schools, hospitals and other civilian infrastructure 'in an attempt to break the spirit of the Ukrainian people.'

Zbigniew Rau told the U.N. Security Council that Russia's 'unprovoked, unjustified and premeditated aggression' against Ukraine was 'poorly prepared and executed (and) turned out to be a strategic and tactical failure.'

What appeared to be the booster section of a Tochka-U rocket was seen in the street after the strike. Both Russia and Ukraine operate the Soviet-era weapon system

'But instead of preventing further unnecessary deaths in its own ranks, the Kremlin changed its tactics,' he said.

'The invading force started to target the civilian population and infrastructure' in violation of the Geneva Conventions and international humanitarian law to try to break the Ukrainian resistance.

Meanwhile the EU's foreign policy chief says the 27-country bloc is finalizing its new round of sanctions against Russia for its 'barbaric' invasion of Ukraine.

Josep Borrell said Monday that the fourth package of coercive measures would target Russia's market access, membership in international financial institutions, and steel and energy sectors.

On Monday, a Russian air strike on the capital Kyiv killed at least two people and wounded others as it blew up and set light to an apartment building.

A town councilor for Brovary, east of Kyiv, was also killed in fighting there as shells fell on the towns of Irpin, Bucha and Hostomel.

Ukrainian officials said two more people died and seven were injured after Russian forces struck an airplane factory in Kyiv, sparking a large fire.

Airstrikes also hit residential buildings near the important southern city of Mykolaiv, as well as in the eastern city of Kharkiv.

A firefighter in the rebel-held city of Donetsk, eastern Ukraine, looks to the sky after extinguishing the remains of a burning car

A member of the self-proclaimed Donetsk republic's security force examines the remains of a rocket that stuck the city on Monday

A television tower in the Rivne region in the northwest was destroyed. Explosions also rang out overnight around the Russian-occupied Black Sea port of Kherson.

And Ukraine said a pregnant woman who was badly wounded in an airstrike on a maternity hospital in Mariupol last week died, along with her unborn child.

But, in a rare sign of hope, Mariupol's city council said a convoy of 160 civilian cars left the besieged port city along a designated humanitarian route, after many previous attempts at evacuations collapsed.

Ukraine and Russia also continued peace talks, after hailing 'substantial progress' made at the weekend to obtaining a ceasefire.

Those negotiations continued today, though broke up without agreement. Neither side has made it clear what any such deal would look like.

Even if a ceasefire deal can be reached by negotiators, serious doubts remain over whether it would be observed on the ground - and whether Russia would simply use it as cover to rearm, resupply, and attack anew.

Almost all Russian advances are currently stalled, with no significant progress made in the last week despite heavy bombardment of cities.

Meanwhile Putin's forces continue to suffer punishing casualties. While accurate numbers are hard to come by, the figure almost certainly stretches into the thousands and is far higher than Putin banked on when he gave the order to attack.
Virginia 'Ginni' Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, says she attended the 'Stop the Steal Rally' where former President Donald Trump called on his supporters to 'fight' on January 6th  but that she left before he spoke.

Thomas provided information about her activities the day of the Capitol riot after being the subject of deep dive investigative pieces in the New Yorker and the New York Times about her interactions with rally organizers  at a time her husband's lifetime appointment gave him a role in fraud claims mediating claims by Trump and his allies.

Thomas told the conservative Washington Free Beacon that she was in the crowd that day for what the publication called a 'short time' on Jan. 6th  'but returned home before Trump took the stage at noon.'

'I was disappointed and frustrated that there was violence that happened following a peaceful gathering of Trump supporters on the Ellipse on Jan. 6,' she said.

Virginia 'Ginni' Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, says she left the 'Stop the Steal' rally near the White House before former President Donald Trump spoke in 2020 on Jan. 6th

'There are important and legitimate substantive questions about achieving goals like electoral integrity, racial equality, and political accountability that a democratic system like ours needs to be able to discuss and debate rationally in the political square. I fear we are losing that ability.'

Even if she missed Trump's speech, which featured in his first Senate impeachment trial, Thomas would have been able to see Trump's tweet on the morning of Jan. 6, where he wrote that states wanted to 'correct' their votes, which he said were based on 'irregularities and fraud.'

'All Mike Pence has to do is send them back to the states,' Trump wrote  saying his former vice president had authority Pence says he did not have.

At the White House, press secretary Jen Psaki was asked if she had any comment on Thomas' revelation about attending the rally. 'I do not,' she responded.

Thomas is married to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Her conservative activism has drawn press scrutiny

Trump urged his supporters to 'fight' in his Jan. 6th speech, which featured in his second impeachment. Thomas says she left before he spoke

The rally near the White House preceded the Capitol riot

Ginni Thomas also posted before the rally

It is not known from the article what other speakers she may have heard. Others who spoke included Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), who said it was time for patriots to 'start taking down names and kicking ass,' lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who called for 'trial by combat,' and former Trump campaign advisor Kimberly Guilfoyle, who said: 'We will not allow the liberals and the Democrats to steal our dream or steal our elections.'

Thomas also said she had 'no role' with planning Jan. 6th, following a New York Times report that she 'flouted judicial-ethics guidance by participating in events hosted by conservative organizations with matters before the court,' including through her leadership role at the Council for National Policy.

One organizer said said Thomas played what the Times called a 'peacemaking role' between factions organizing Jan. 6th events.

'I played no role with those who were planning and leading the Jan. 6 events,' she said. 'There are stories in the press suggesting I paid or arranged for buses. I did not. There are other stories saying I mediated feuding factions of leaders for that day. I did not.'

Her comments come after a New Yorker profile catalogued her political activism, and pointed to her Facebook post the morning of Jan. 6th: 'LOVE MAGA people!!!!' she wrote.

Thomas apologized in February 2021 to a group of former Clarence Thomas law groups, who gathered in a forum called Thomas Clerks World, the Washington Post reported.

'Let's pledge to not let politics divide THIS family, and learn to speak more gently and knowingly across the divide,' she wrote. She had made pro-Trump posts in the forum of former clerks.

Among Thomas' former clerks is lawyer John Eastman, who spoke at the 'Stop the Steal Rally' and urged Pence not to accept electoral votes submitted by states when Congress met to count the electoral votes in order to allow more time for challenges.

She said she played 'no role' in crafting the Council for National Policy document that called on people to take 'action steps' including pressuring GOP lawmakers to challenge election results and appoint alternate electors, after Joe Biden carried the election with 306 electoral votes.
Jill Biden tore into Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday for the 'senseless' attacks on a maternity ward in the Ukraine that killed a pregnant woman and her baby.

'Like all of us, my heart has ached watching videos of Ukraine. Sick kids fleeing on makeshift medical trains, the unthinkable bombing of a maternity ward. Parents weeping over their children's broken bodies in the streets. The senselessness is staggering,' the first lady said.

A maternity hospital in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol was decimated in a direct hit by Russian rockets last week, leaving children buried in the rubble.

Footage showed badly wounded patients and nurses being evacuated from decimated buildings, while pregnant women were carried out on stretchers.

Leaders around the world condemned the attack and, on Monday, it was revealed one pregnant woman on stretcher, pictured being carried out of the rubble, died along with the baby.

In video and photos shot last Wednesday after the attack, the woman was seen stroking her bloodied lower abdomen as rescuers rushed her through the rubble in the besieged city of Mariupol.

It was among the most brutal moments so far in Russia's 19-day war on Ukraine.

Jill Biden tore into Vladimir Putin for the 'senseless' attacks on a maternity ward in the Ukraine that killed a pregnant woman and her unborn child

Ukrainian emergency employees and volunteers carry the injured pregnant woman from the maternity hospital that was damaged by shelling in Mariupol on March 9

The woman was rushed to another hospital, closer to the frontline, where doctors worked to keep her alive. The medical staff told the Associated Press that both the woman, who has not been named, and her baby died.

Surgeon Timur Marin found the woman's pelvis crushed and hip detached. Medics delivered the baby via caesarean section, but it showed 'no signs of life', Marin said.

In the Ukraine, there have been attacks on at least 31 health-care facilities or equipment that have been documented by the World Health Organization since the start of Russia's assault two and half weeks ago.

The United Nations puts the death toll in the Ukraine at 596, although it said it 'believes that the actual figures are considerably higher.'

Jill Biden called women's bodies 'casualties of war.'

'Women have been told that they are dangerous. And that's because they aredangerous to corruption and injustice. When we raise our voices, we have the power to shatter the shields of oppression. That's why cowardly men stop girls from learning. It's why women's bodies become casualties of war,' she said.

The first lady made her remarks at the 2022 International Women of Courage Award Ceremony at the State Department.

She discussed the importance of women telling their stories and being a voice in their country's future.

'There can be no true democracy, no true prosperity, without women's voices,' said Biden. 'Women warriors everywhere need to hear what's possible.'

Mariana Vishegirskaya stands outside a maternity hospital that was damaged by shelling in Mariupol on March 9; Vishegirskaya survived the shelling and later gave birth to a girl in another hospital in Mariupol

A medical worker walks inside of the damaged by shelling maternity hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 9

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, first lady Jill Biden, center, and U.S. Representative to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield listen during the 16th annual International Women of Courage (IWOC) Awards virtual ceremony at the State Department

The annual ceremony honors 12 women from around the world who work to improve their nations.

This year's ceremony was held virtually due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Both Jill Biden and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken paid tribute to the women of the Ukraine in their remarks.

'Millions of Ukrainian women have fled their country with their families. Millions more stayed to help their country fight against Russia's unprovoked unjustified war. I saw many of them on the border with Poland just about a week ago. And it's something that stays embedded in your mind and memory,' Blinken said.
Meghan Markle's lawyers 'will be monitoring' her father Thomas' new YouTube channel after he launched a series of videos with a blistering attack on his daughter and Finding Freedom, a royal expert said today.

Thomas Markle, 77, also said he would be 'thrilled' to come face-to-face with his estranged daughter and her husband Prince Harry in court, as he accused her of lying about her half-sister and called the controversial book 'all lies'.

Samantha Markle, 57, is suing the Duchess of Sussex for defamation, and claims that Meghan made 'false and malicious statements' about her during her TV interview with Oprah Winfrey last year.

Lawyers for Miss Markle also allege that the duchess lied to the authors of Finding Freedom, the controversial book about the Sussexes' exit from royal life.

Today, royal expert Richard Fitzwilliams suggested the Sussexes will view Mr Markle's latest move with 'disdain' but are nonetheless likely to keep tabs on his activity.

'Meghan's family have been extremely hostile to her and Remarkable Friendship, the name of this new channel, sounds extremely amateurish, but the Sussexes' lawyers will no doubt keep an eye on its contents,' he told MailOnline.

'Future episodes seem unlikely to attract any interest at all, unless they feature personal attacks on Meghan.'

A royal expert today said Meghan Markle's lawyers would be 'monitoring' her father Thomas' new YouTube channel

In his first YouTube video, Mr Markle said he believed his eldest daughter should win her case and revealed he would be willing to give evidence on her behalf.

He said: 'I would be more than happy to. I've been trying for almost four years to get to see my daughter and her ginger husband in a courtroom face-to-face. I'd be thrilled to defend my oldest daughter.'

Mr Markle also added that he believed Meghan, 40, should settle the case, saying: 'She can't defend the things she said.'

In the lawsuit filed in Tampa, Florida, Miss Markle demanded $75,000 (57,000) in damages and asked for her half-sister to cover her legal fees.

She claimed it was 'defamatory' for the duchess to imply during the Oprah interview that she was a 'virtual stranger' to her half-sister and that she grew up 'as an only child'.

She also accused Meghan of denigrating their father to portray a misleading 'rags to royalty' story of her life, and claimed she 'published and disseminated false and malicious statements' in Finding Freedom.

In November, Meghan apologised to the Court of Appeal after emails were disclosed which contradicted a claim that she did not collaborate with Finding Freedom's authors.

The messages showed she sent details about Samantha and her brother Thomas Jr for the book.

Mr Markle, 77, also said he would be 'thrilled' to come face-to-face with his estranged daughter and her husband Prince Harry in court, as he accused her of lying about her half-sister

But Meghan insisted: 'I had absolutely no wish or intention to mislead the defendant or court.'

The duchess's lawyer Michael Kump has previously described Miss Markle's defamation lawsuit as 'baseless and absurd'.

Thomas Markle made his latest comments as he hosted the debut episode of his own Youtube channel alongside friend and celebrity photographer Karl Larsen.

The channel is said to be a weekly topical review of current events, including Mr Markle's royal daughter and son-in-law.

The first episode - which aired earlier today - features Mr Markle discussing the upcoming lawsuit and whose side he's on.

Mr Markle said: 'I'm certainly pulling for my oldest daughter Samantha.'

Thomas Markle, 77, said he would give evidence against her if the lawsuit led to a deposition

Mr Markle told Karl that he was surprised Prince Harry didn't fly out to see him in person to ask for Meghan's hand in marriage.

He added: 'I thought the Royals had some kind of sense of dignity where he would have taken the time to fly down and see me.'

According to documents seen by TMZ, Samantha claimed the lawsuit harmed her book sales and she also took issue with claims she had changed her surname back to Markle when Meghan began seeing Prince Harry.

Lawyer Michael Kump, representing Meghan, said: 'This baseless and absurd lawsuit is just a continuation of a pattern of disturbing behavior.

'We will give it the minimum attention necessary, which is all it deserves.'

Thomas Markle and his friend Mr Larsen were reportedly influenced in setting up their show by successful podcasts from royal biographer Lady Colin Campbell and US podcast legend Joe Rogan.

Mr Markle added: 'We have discovered YouTube we've decided to join and share our story.'

He added that 'no one came to help [him] or protect [him]' when he discovered by the press and that the only advice he got was from the Duke of Sussex who told him not to speak to anyone.

Pictured: Samantha Markle, the estranged half-sister of Meghan, is firing back at comments the duchess made about their relationship in her TV interview with Oprah Winfrey last year

Describing himself as 'on the Queen team', he added: 'It amazes me that a man that tells me don't talk to anyone rides on the top of a bus down Hollywood Bvd doing an interview.

'It amazes me that they go on Oprah Winfrey for hours and sat there and talked and exposed things that they shouldn't be exposing to anyone and I think it's so disrespectful to the Royals.'

In November, Meghan Markle apologised to the Court of Appeal after failing to remember she told a royal aide to brief the authors of her Finding Freedom biography, Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand.

The Mail on Sunday had sought to defend itself against Meghan's claims that it unlawfully breached her privacy by publishing extracts of a letter to her father Thomas Markle, which appeared in the book.

The Duchess of Sussex, who previously insisted she and Prince Harry did not co-operate with the two writers of the book, said she had 'forgotten' providing the aide details of what to reveal 'when you sit down with them'.

The messages, revealed by the duchess's former communications secretary Jason Knauf, showed she sent information about her half-siblings Samantha and brother Thomas Jr for the book.

But she said: 'I had absolutely no wish or intention to mislead the defendant or the court.'

The paper lost its appeal the following month.
The website where you can sign up to house Ukranian refugees has crashed an hour after the scheme was launched as more than 37,000 generous Brits have registered to welcome those fleeing Russian bombs.

Michael Gove confirmed 'unlimited numbers' will be allowed to live here for three years as he appealed to people to open their homes to Ukrainian refugees today.

The Housing Secretary announced the launch of the Homes for Ukraine scheme that will pay families 350-a-month to take in those fleeing Russian brutality for at least six months.

The website to register for the scheme went down immediately after it was launched with some people unable to complete the online form for up to an hour.

But despite these issues, within an hour of it going live 1,500 users registered to support those fleeing Putin's bombs.

The department for levelling up, housing and communities told the MailOnline 43,800 people had already offered their homes to Ukrainians as of 9.30pm.

Mr Gove told the Commons that anyone who had lived in the UK for at least six months would be able to take in refugees, with those arriving eligible to stay for up to three years.

The Housing Secretary announced the launch of the Homes for Ukraine scheme that will pay families 350-a-month to take in those fleeing Russian brutality for at least six months.

The website where you can sign up to house Ukranian refugees has crashed an hour after the scheme was launched as more than 25,000 generous Brits have registered to welcome those fleeing Russian bombs

The website to register for the scheme went down immediately after it was launched with some people unable to complete the online form for up to an hour

Labour's Lisa Nandy said the new plan was a 'DIY asylum scheme' and there was criticism that sponsors would have to know the name of the refugee they wished to house before they arrived.

Previously only Ukrainians with family members already settled in the UK could come. But under the new scheme, sponsors can provide a route for Ukrainians without family ties to come to the UK. Pictured: The Homes for Ukraine website

What are the rules for accepting Ukrainian refugees? Sponsors will have to provide accommodation for a minimum of six months.

The Government will provide a monthly payment of 350 to sponsors per family they look after.

The payments are tax-free and will not affect benefit entitlement or council tax status.

Ukrainians arriving in the UK will also have access to the full range of public services, doctors and schools for up to three years

Sponsors will need to undergo criminal record vetting before accepting refugees.

Anyone who has lived in the UK legally for at least six months can apply to take in a refugee

The hosts do not have to be British citizens

Prospective sponsors should register at the Homes for Ukraine website Advertisement

Previously only Ukrainians with family members already settled in the UK could come.

But under the new scheme, sponsors can provide a route for Ukrainians without family ties to come to the UK.

It came as the Government faced continued criticism over the speed and scope of its refugee plans.

Labour's Lisa Nandy said the new plan was a 'DIY asylum scheme' and there was criticism that sponsors would have to know the name of the refugee they wished to house before they arrived.

Mr Gove told MPs: 'Because we want the scheme to be up and running as soon as possible, Homes for Ukraine will initially facilitate sponsorship between people with known connections.

'We will rapidly expand the scheme in a phased way with charities, churches and community groups to ensure many more prospective sponsors can be matched with Ukrainians who need help, and we are of course working closely with the devolved administrations to make sure that their kind offers of help are also mobilised.'

He added: 'The British people have already opened their hearts in so many ways, I'm hopeful that many will also be ready to open their homes and to help those fleeing persecution find peace, healing and the prospect of a brighter future.'

He later revealed 1,500 people had signed up within the first hour. Almost three million people have fled Ukraine since Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian invasion and civilians continue to find themselves caught up in the fighting.

Ms Nandy raised concerns over matching Ukrainian families to sponsors and claimed the Government was suggesting people should advertise on Instagram via a 'DIY asylum scheme'.

She told the Commons: 'On his tour of the TV studios, he suggested several times that people who are willing to sponsor a Ukrainian family need to come to the Government with the name of that family who will then rubber stamp it.

'He can't seriously be asking Ukrainian families who are fleeing Vladimir Putin, who have left their homes with nothing, to get on to Instagram and advertise themselves in the hope a British family might notice them. Is this genuinely the extent of this scheme?'

The programme to allow British families to take in Ukrainians fleeing the war starts today - but only allows them to take in refugees if they know their name.

Critics have attacked a 'bureaucratic hurdle' that means that families wanting to get involved with Homes for Ukraine have to know who they are taking in by name before they arrive.

Hosts will also have to undergo criminal records checks first, with Health Secretary Sajid Javid saying a 'basic level of security checks' would apply.

The Home Office has issued 4,000 visas so far under the Ukraine Family Scheme. According to data published on its website, 17,100 applications have been submitted and 10,600 appointments have been made at visa processing centres.

Downing Street this morning indicated that the Prime Minister will not be taking in any Ukrainian refugees in No10.

His spokesman said it was down to individual ministers whether they chose to give accommodation to a refugee.

The Transport Secretary said he would be among those registering on the Homes for Ukraine programme launched this morning to make it easier for displaced people to enter Britain.

Mr Shapps lives in Hertfordshire (pictured in July 2020). They have three children, a son Hadley and twins Tabytha and Noa

Former health secretary Matt Hancock (pictured with partner Gina Coladangelo) said he would also be taking part, saying: 'I urge everyone who is able to help to register and welcome a family in desperate need.'

Riot police today stormed the 50million Belgravia 'crash pad' of a sanctioned Russian oligarch to seize it back from protesters who invaded the property to 'house Ukrainian refugees'

Health Secretary Sajid Javid said he was 'starting to have a conversation' with his wife but said it 'will be hard to offer the time that I think a host would reasonably (be) expected to have available'.

Levelling-Up Minister Michael Gove last night said he was 'exploring what I can do' in relation to helping those fleeing the warzone

Academy Award-nominated actor Benedict Cumberbatch said from the Baftas red carpet on Sunday that he hopes to take part in the scheme.

Minister says he will open home to refugees Cabinet minister Grant Shapps revealed his family plans to take in Ukrainian refugees today - as Downing Street suggested that Russian oligarchs' UK mansions could be used to shelter those fleeing Putin's troops. The Transport Secretary said he would be among those registering on the Homes for Ukraine programme launched this morning to make it easier for displaced people to enter Britain. But he is so far the only minister to join the programme. Downing Street today effectively ruled out the PM sheltering people in No10, while other ministers were tepid on the idea when asked. Health Secretary Sajid Javid said he was 'starting to have a conversation' with his wife but said it 'will be hard to offer the time that I think a host would reasonably (be) expected to have available'. Levelling-Up Minister Michael Gove last night said he was 'exploring what I can do'. Labour's London mayor Sadiq Khan also ruled it out on security as well as space grounds. But former health secretary Matt Hancock said he would also be taking part, allowing refugees to stay in his constituency home in West Suffolk, saying: 'I urge everyone who is able to help to register and welcome a family in desperate need.' Downing Street suggested it could look at altering the law to allow Russian-owned mansions to be used to house refugees. The Prime Minister's official spokesman said: 'Certainly that's something we are looking at.' It came as riot police today stormed the 50million Belgravia 'crash pad' of a sanctioned Russian oligarch to seize it back from protesters who invaded the property to 'house Ukrainian refugees'. At least five activists broke into 5 Belgrave Square just after midnight before hanging a Ukrainian flag and a banner reading, 'The property has been liberated', as they vowed to stay until Vladimir Putin ended his invasion. This morning, Mr Shapps tweeted: 'We've spent the past few weeks as a family discussing the devastating situation in Ukraine, and so we intend to apply today to join other UK households in offering our home to provide refuge to Ukrainians until it is safe for them to return to their country.' Mr Shapps lives in Hertfordshire with his wife Belinda. They have three children, a son Hadley and twins Tabytha and Noa. Advertisement

'There are specific challenges around security on housing people in No 10,' the spokesman said.

'Various ministers have been asked about this. Obviously it will come down to individual circumstances. This is a significant commitment.'

Mr Javid said the Ukraine Family Scheme for refugees was 'being made easier and more straightforward' from Tuesday.

He told Times Radio hosts found face Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) checks, adding: 'I think that is right because you want to get the right balance between sort of speed and the people that we're trying to help are in a desperate situation, and you want to bring that help as quickly as possible, but also do some basic checks and I think what we have done here is the right balance.'

It came as charities warned that the new plan to house refugees with volunteer families could risk the safety of unaccompanied children if not done properly.

A spokesperson for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) said the charity did not want to see 'unnecessary barriers' built into the process, but 'it is vital child protection is built into every stage of the Government's and local authorities' response to this crisis'.

There have been also concerns about the tight timeframe the Government has provided, with the NSPCC in its statement calling it an 'ambitious turnaround'.

The charity said it was 'essential that the Government works closely with local authorities, the fostering community, charities and other key local partners to ensure this sponsorship scheme is ultimately safe; has appropriate levels of support for traumatised Ukrainian children who have fled bloodshed, and on-going assistance available for their sponsors'.

Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove last night said the process of matching Britons with people fleeing the conflict will take place from Friday, while he expects the first refugees to use the new route will make their way to the UK by the end of the week.

The Homes for Ukraine programme will allow individuals, charities, community groups and businesses to bring people escaping the war to safety - even if they have no ties to the UK.

Anyone with a room or home available can offer it to a Ukrainian individual or a family, though those offering will be vetted and Ukrainian applicants will undergo security checks.

Members of the public will be able to nominate a Ukrainian family to stay with them for at least six months.

Sponsored Ukrainians will be granted three years' leave to remain in the UK, with entitlement to work and access public services.

The exact detail is not known, but Mr Gove has said steps will be taken to ensure people who might be 'intent on exploitation' are prevented from 'abusing' the new scheme.

Britons offering accommodation to Ukrainian refugees will receive a 'thank you' payment of 350 per month.

The Home Office has issued 4,000 visas so far under the Ukraine Family Scheme. According to data published on its website, 17,100 applications have been submitted and 10,600 appointments have been made at visa processing centres.

Riot police storm oligarch's 50m London home to evict squatters vowing to rehouse refugees Riot police today stormed the 50million Belgravia 'crash pad' of a sanctioned Russian oligarch to seize it back from protesters who invaded the property to 'house Ukrainian refugees'. At least five activists broke into 5 Belgrave Square just after midnight before hanging a Ukrainian flag and a banner reading, 'The property has been liberated', as they vowed to stay until Vladimir Putin ended his invasion. The mansion belongs to the family of oil tycoon Oleg Deripaska, one of seven oligarchs who were sanctioned by the UK government last week for being 'pro-Kremlin' and 'closely associated' with Putin. Deripaska has intimate links with the British establishment, with Peter Mandelson and George Osborne previously visiting his 80million superyacht in Corfu. At around midday, police officers wearing helmets and safety harnesses used a ladder and a JCB cherry picker to access the mansion's balcony, with two of the protesters trying to make a barricade out of potted plants. Officers then used a drill to break open the front door, while activists shouted, 'Go away you losers' and 'you fascist scumbags' from the balcony above. The squatters call themselves the London Mahknovists - after Nestor Makhno, who led an anarchist force that attempted to form a stateless society in Ukraine during the Russian Revolution of 1917-1923. At one point, two of the activists shared a drink from a single glass while one man sang: 'I've had the time of my life', from the Dirty Dancing soundtrack. Another shouted to people looking out of the window of the building next door: 'We are your new neighbours. We'll come around tomorrow with some brisket.' Advertisement

Local authority areas will be entitled to more than 10,000 per Ukrainian refugee using the fresh route to the UK.

The Health Secretary said he was considering whether he was able to host Ukrainian refugees in his home.

Sajid Javid told BBC Breakfast: 'I'm starting to have a conversation with my wife on that and I think many households - as you say, and I'm pleased you brought this up - are probably thinking about this across the country.

'It's important that anyone that becomes a host that they can fulfil the obligations of a host, that they can spend time with these families and help, but there are many ways that we can all help and whatever I do at a personal level, I will most certainly be helping.'

Mr Gove has said he would personally take in a Ukrainian refugee and Academy Award-nominated actor Benedict Cumberbatch said from the Baftas red carpet on Sunday that he hopes to take part in the scheme.

But there has been criticism too, with the Refugee Council noting unlike the UK all EU countries have waived visa requirements for Ukrainians in the short term.

Council chief executive Enver Solomon told The Guardian the UK scheme was 'effectively a managed migration route, which is not suitable to use to respond to a humanitarian crisis'.

Mr Solomon also said the programme should only be one part of Britain's response to the crisis.

'But if it's going to work, it needs to be delivered with all the right resource and all the necessary entitlements for Ukrainians - so they're able to get all the healthcare they need, access housing benefit - because the reality is, the sponsor arrangement will be a short-term measure,' he said.

'This conflict doesn't look like it's going to end quickly. There needs to be a clear pathway to longer-term accommodations.'

London Mayor Sadiq Khan said the UK's response to the Ukraine refugee crisis has been 'embarrassing' compared to that of other countries.

Asked if he would be willing to host a refugee, Mr Khan told Good Morning Britain: 'Personally we won't be able to because of space and other security issues, but I admire the generosity of those Londoners, and we know our city is a very generous city.'

He said the visa system must be simplified as it is 'far too complicated for those from Ukraine to come to London, and our country'.

He added: 'Councils are ready to step up, hotels are ready to step up, businesses are ready to step up, Londoners are ready to step up.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan said the UK's response to the Ukraine refugee crisis has been 'embarrassing' compared to that of other countries.

'The issue now is the delay in the visas but also we need to make sure there's the right support, the wrap-around care.

'Many of these people will be traumatised, they need medical support. The children will need spaces in schools. We need to make sure English is available to those who can't speak English. We need to make sure they can work straight away, those with the skills.

'With the right support, with the visas being sorted out, we should be able to do at least what Germany and France and Italy and Spain and others have been doing. It's embarrassing when you compare what little we've done with most of what our neighbours have done.'
Advertisement

NATO has sent tens of thousands of troops, including Royal Marines, an aircraft carrier, a destroyer ship and a nuclear-powered attack submarine to Norway, which borders Russia.

Troops from 28 countries in Europe and North America are taking part in an exercise lasting around a month, which began in northern Norway on Monday.

NATO member Norway shares nearly 200km (124 miles) of land border with Russia.

The drill, named Cold Response, is being held just a few hundred kilometres from the Russian border, as Vladimir Putin's forces continue to wage war in Ukraine.

Around 35,000 troops, 200 aircraft and 50 vessels are involved in Cold Response, including roughly 900 Royal Marines who will spearhead the UK involvement.

They will raid along the jagged Norwegian coastline from an amphibious task group led by HMS Albion.

Aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales will also take part and will be joined by frigate HMS Richmond, Type 45 destroyer HMS Defender, a Royal Fleet Auxiliary tanker and a nuclear-powered attack submarine escorting her.

NATO has sent tens of thousands of troops, including Royal Marines, an aircraft carrier (pictured top, HMS Prince of Wales), destroyer ship and a nuclear-powered attack submarine to Norway, which borders Russia

HMS Prince of Wales left Portsmouth, Hampshire in the early hours of Monday morning, to take part in a NATO exercise, Cold Response

The ship will be joined by frigate HMS Richmond, Type 45 destroyer HMS Defender, a Royal Fleet Auxiliary tanker and a nuclear-powered attack submarine escorting her

The ship also has space for a helicopter on board and will spend a month off the rugged coastline of northern Norway

More than 25 countries from Europe and North America are taking part in the NATO exercise as Russia's war in Ukraine rages on

Armoured vehicles of NATO's rapid reaction force brigade in Norway for the military exercise Cold Response arrive at Borg Havn in Fredrikstad, Norway on March 10

US Marines with 3rd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, 2d Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force, hike to a training area prior to Exercise Cold Response 2022, Setermoen, Norway

US Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Jorge Delacruz, a native of Clearwater, Florida, low altitude air defense (LAAD) gunner with 2nd LAAD Battalion, 2d Marine Aircraft Wing, simulates engaging an aircraft with a FIM-92 Stinger during a training event in preparation for Exercise Cold Response

The drills aim to show how a unified multilateral force would defend Norway and Europe's northern flank from a modern adversary.

The UK's participation in the exercises underlines Britain's commitment to security in Europe and forges closer bonds between NATO allies and partners.

Brigadier Rich Cantrill, in charge of the UK's commando forces, said: 'The UK is making a strong contribution to one of the largest Cold Response exercises for years.

'NATO as an alliance needs to be ready for anything, ready for all environments. It's essential for us to support Norwegian partners and that's why we train in the Arctic so often.

'Cold Response is an amazing opportunity for key NATO allies and partners to come together in the most challenging environment of the High North, prepare for any eventuality and learn to work together.

'What we'll see is a strong maritime task force and then land exercises. We will see many nations come together from the UK to Norway, the USA, the Netherlands, France, Germany and Italy.

Brigadier Rich Cantrill, in charge of the UK's commando forces, said: 'The UK is making a strong contribution to one of the largest Cold Response exercises for years'

He added 'NATO as an alliance needs to be ready for anything, ready for all environments. It's essential for us to support Norwegian partners and that's why we train in the Arctic so often'

Soldiers in a variety of camouflage will spend the rest of March and part of April in and off the coast of Norway for the NATO drill

Brigadier Cantrill said: 'Cold Response is an amazing opportunity for key NATO allies and partners to come together in the most challenging environment of the High North, prepare for any eventuality and learn to work together'

He added: 'What we'll see is a strong maritime task force and then land exercises. We will see many nations come together from the UK to Norway, the USA, the Netherlands, France, Germany and Italy'

An attack just miles from NATO member Poland's border has left many people worried Russia may spark World War III with its continued aggression

Soldiers braved the cold weather in Norway as they paced through the snow in white camouflage with their backpacks and weapons

NATO said the drill, was 'not linked to Russia's unprovoked and unjustified invasion of Ukraine'

'The exercises will see allied forces, including from NATO partner nations Sweden and Finland, take control of the waters off Norway's coastline in a training scenario designed to enhance the alliance's ability to protect the host nation.

'Air operations will commence soon after that before the final phase will see amphibious landings and land operations.'

NATO said the drill, was 'not linked to Russia's unprovoked and unjustified invasion of Ukraine.'

US Marines with 3rd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, 2d Marine Division during a training event in preparation for Exercise Cold Response 2022, Setermoen, Norway, March 5

Members of the same battalion swapped America for Norway as they simulated engaging a target in preparation for the NATO excercise

Forsvaret Maj. Sverre Daehli, a NATO cold weather instructor, conducts training with Marines in preparation of Exercise Cold Response

U.S. Marine Corps Lance Cpl. David Hancock, a UH-1Y Venom crew chief, Marine Light Attack Helicopter Squadron 269 completes a safety check in with fellow crew chief, Sgt. Jacob Stump, before a fire support exercise in preparation for Exercise Cold Response 2022, near Bardufoss, Norway

United States Marines with 2d Marine Division, prepare to conduct a hike in Setermoen, Norway

Forsvaret Maj. Sverre Daehli, a NATO cold weather instructor, conducts training with Marines in preparation of the drills tha started today

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

It said the drill was planned long before alleged war criminal Vladimir Putin ordered his troops to invade Ukraine.

Russia has declined to be an observer at the exercise, which aims at having NATO members and partners practicing working together on land, in the air and at sea.

The Norwegian armed forces said it provided 'thorough information' to the Russians, including the Russian Ministry of Defence.

It said that was 'vital for preventing misunderstandings and unnecessary conflict.'

The drill, which is held every other year, is due to finish in April.

It came as Putin's invasion of Ukraine wreaked more havoc on civilians in the war-torn country.

An injured pregnant woman and her unborn baby - whose image being stretchered from her Putin-bombed maternity ward became one of the war's most shocking images - have both died.

Many were appalled by pictures of the unnamed mother-to-be in agony as she was carried from the Mariupol hospital.

She had come under attack in the very place she had thought safe to bring new life into the world.

In video and photos shot last Wednesday after the attack, the woman was seen stroking her bloodied lower abdomen as rescuers rushed her through the rubble in the besieged city of Mariupol.

It was among the most brutal moments so far in Russia's 19-day war on Ukraine.

The woman was rushed to another hospital, closer to the frontline, where doctors worked to keep her alive.

But realising she was losing her baby, medics said that she cried out to them: 'Kill me now.'

This morning the doctors trying to save them both spoke of the huge efforts trying to save them.

Surgeon Timur Marin found the woman's pelvis crushed and hip detached. Medics delivered the baby via caesarean section, but it showed 'no signs of life', the surgeon said.

They then began work on the mother.

'More than 30 minutes of resuscitation of the mother didn't produce results,' Mr Marin said on Saturday. 'Both died.'

In the chaos after Wednesday's air strike, medics did not have time to get the woman's name before her husband and father came to take away her body.

Someone came to retrieve her, they said  so she did not end up in the mass graves being dug for many of Mariupol's growing number of dead.

After being accused of war crimes, Russian officials claimed the maternity hospital had been taken over by Ukrainian extremists to use as a base, and that no patients or medics were left inside.

Russia's ambassador to the UN and the Russian Embassy in London called the images 'fake news'.

Meanwhile, three British former special forces soldiers are feared to have been killed in a Russian airstrike near the Polish border yesterday.

More than 30 Russian cruise missiles targeted the Yavoriv base, killing as many as 180 people.

The trio were not part of the foreign legion fighting unit being trained at the base six miles from the border, sources told The Mirror.

It is not known which branch of the special forces they had served in.

Ukrainian emergency employees and volunteers carry the injured pregnant woman from the maternity hospital that was damaged by shelling in Mariupol on March 9

A medical worker walks inside of the damaged by shelling maternity hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 9

Ukrainian servicemen work inside of the damaged by shelling maternity hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine on the day of the attack

The aftermath of Russia army bombardment on the children hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine, which stunned and appalled the world

Wreckage and debris litter the pavement outside the hospital after the bombing last week, which took patients and medics by surprise

People are helped out of damaged building of a children's hospital following a Russian air strike in the southeastern city of Mariupol

The barracks at the International Peace Keeping and Security Centre in Yavoriv burns after being hit by a Russian missile strike in the early hours of Sunday morning - killing 35 people and injuring 134 more

A patient is assisted by medical staff as he arrives at Novoiavorivsk District Hospital on March 13, 2022 in Novoiavorivsk, Ukraine, following the missile attack

Smoke rises amid damaged buildings following an attack on the Yavoriv military base, as Russia's invasion of Ukraine continued

Igor Konashenkov, a spokesman for Russia's ministry of defence, said the base was struck by 'long-range, high-precision' weapons because it was hosting 'foreign mercenaries and a large shipment of foreign weapons'.

He added: 'The destruction of foreign mercenaries who arrived on the territory of Ukraine will continue.'

Konashenkov said up to 180 people had been killed in the strike, though Ukraine initially said 35 people died and another 134 were wounded.

However, a source told The Mirror today: 'There were many more killed within the site than has been claimed and bodies are still being found.

Russia says the base (pictured) was targeted because it was hosting foreign 'mercenaries' and weapons shipments, adding that such raids would continue

Around 1,000 foreigners were at the base at the time it was hit, Ukraine said, and are expected to be among the victims - though no official word has been given yet (pictured, a man wounded at the base)

'I do not believe the three British ex-military personnel would have known anything about it, fortunately.

'This is extremely sensitive as there are believed to be no serving British military personnel inside Ukraine as politically that would be extremely controversial.'

Bombs fell on the base early Sunday morning, with witnesses saying many of the foreign recruits were sleeping when the strike was carried out.

British military veterans at the base who survived the attack, described hearing the sound of incoming engines before several large blasts destroyed one building, damaged another, and sprayed shell fragments through the air. It is thought the base was hit by Russian cruise missiles as opposed to fighter jets.

The British Ministry of Defence said there were no serving personnel killed in the explosions.
Huge piles of donated clothes for refugees have been left dumped in a car park on Poland's border with Ukraine as aid workers have pleaded with the public to send money or essential supplies instead.

Arriving on foot out of war torn Ukraine, refugees hoping to get to their final destination, do not need clothes, aid workers have said.

Volunteers also claim they do not have time to go through the truckloads of donations arriving in unlabelled and unsorted boxes from all over Europe.

Unlike the labelled and sorted boxes with required items - like sanitary towels and nappies - which are given to refugees, unwanted items are ending up in car parks along the border, pictures show.

At the border town of Medyka, near Przemysl in Poland, volunteer Charlie Hannerton took photos of the piles of clothing and bedding in a car park.

At the border town of Medyka, near Przemysl in Poland, volunteer Charlie Hannerton, 27, took photos of the piles of clothing and bedding in a cark park

Charlie, from Falmouth, Cornwall, said refugees are arriving on foot, and don't spend long enough at the border point to sort through clothes, and can only take what they can carry

Mr Hannerton, from Falmouth, Cornwall, said refugees are arriving on foot, and do not spend long enough at the border point to sort through clothes, and can only take what they can carry.

The 27-year-old saw the boxes abandoned on Wednesday, 9 March and Thursday, 10 March but he said other volunteers he met there reported similar mounds of dumped items at nearly every border crossing point.

He said: 'The point I think I was trying to make with the pictures is that when the volunteers on the border say no clothes donations, they really mean no clothes.

'The refugees and volunteers on the border simply don't have enough time to give them to people.

'When the refugees arrive, they're literally brought into the camp and then immediately put on a bus or ferried into Europe in a car.

'They just get slung on a bus, and there is barely any system.

'Volunteers just queue up, get a high vis vest on, and take whoever you can fit somewhere where they might have relatives or friends.'

A refugee that fled the war in Ukraine sorts through clothes donated at a refugee shelter in Przemysl as Scottish organisation Mercy Corps that is helping in Ukraine urged people to donate money

Cassandra Nelson, who works at Scottish organisation Mercy Corps that is helping in Ukraine, says money is best.

She told the i newspaper, 'Unless there is a very specific request for something like certain types of medicine, money donations are best.'

Ms Nelson said money also allows aid workers to buy what is needed cheaper and without transit costs from ferrying goods to Poland.

Dan Walden, Unicef's senior emergencies specialist, said: 'Time is of the essence in Ukraine and we can get money transferred from our bank to a local bank in Ukraine within moments.'

'It's usually much easier to buy items in the countries where they are needed. It's also usually cheaper and helps local markets and economies, helping countries to get back on their feet,' Judith Escribano, director of communications at Action Against Hunger added.

Dan Walden, Unicef's senior emergencies specialist, said: 'Time is of the essence in Ukraine and we can get money transferred from our bank to a local bank in Ukraine within moments.' Pictured: Ukrainians pick clothes inside a cinema turned aid center in Lviv, western Ukraine on March 12

Volunteers sort clothes in a temporary accommodation for people fleeing the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in Rzeszow, Poland

Mr Hannerton added: 'What they need is nappies, sanitary towels, blankets, really useful things that have a one time use - consumables I guess.'

He says more boxes containing clothes, buggies and bedding are abandoned in the car park each day.

He said heaps of donations now fill car parks along the border.

A specialist in supporting special needs and traumatised kids, Charlie says Ukrainian refugees need exhaustible, single-use items like sanitary towels, nappies and blankets.

He said the refugees currently arriving in Poland, Moldova, Slovakia and other border countries are 'the lucky ones' who can afford to escape.

Every day thousands of Ukrainian refugees fleeing the war arrive at this shopping center adapted to be a refuge in Mlyny, Poland

But even these people, who have money and cars, still have to walk across the border with only what they can carry.

He explained: 'I've been in the refugee camps this week.

'I work with children in trauma in the UK so I took my outdoor setup to the refugee camps to do some outdoor education stuff with the children there.

'I found myself giving things on the border to the refugees crossing over.

'There are kids that literally walk for days.

'They might lose their families or might be orphans, they just walk to the border with no food and in whatever they are wearing.'
The son of a Spanish-Venezuelan billionaire was killed in a horrific boating accident in Florida after he was maimed by the vessel's propeller during a fishing competition when he jumped in the water to save his fiancee - who was accidentally knocked overboard by the ship's captain.

Juan Carlos Escotet Alviarez, 31, was swept up in the wake of the 60-foot craft's motor about six miles off the shore of Key Largo, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

The banking scion was reportedly trying to save his fiancee, who was bumped from the boat by the captain when he stumbled while trying to help a boy with a fishing rod, Venezuelan journalist Angela Oraa posted on Instagram.

His fiancee, Andrea Montero, 30, was safely pulled from the water.

The couple, scheduled to wed in November, were on a boat with four other people as part in a fishing tournament hosted by the Ocean Reef Club, a gated community.

Alviarez's father, Juan Carlos Escotet, 62, is the founder of Venezuelan bank Banesco and is worth a reported $3.5 billion, according to Forbes.

The son graduated from the University of Miami and was a member of the board of directors of Banesco USA, the American division headquartered in Miami, according to the company's website.

Alviarez's family released a statement Tuesday morning confirming reports of his death.

'His family asks for privacy and respect from the press during this very difficult time as they grieve this tremendous loss,' they said.

Juan Carlos Escotet Alviarez, 31, fell from the stern of a 60-foot vessel about six miles off the shore of Key Largo on Saturday afternoon trying to save his fiancee Andrea Montero, 30 (left)

The banking heir appears to have been a fan of competitive fishing, according to an Instagram page that documented his hobby. Above, Alviarez (center in dark blue shirt) with his fiancee Andrea Montero, 30 (center)

He had jumped in to help save his fiancee after she was accidentally knocked into the water when the captain stumbled, according to a Venezuelan journalist

Banesco USA lists Alviarez as having 'vast experience in real estate development in the Miami area.'

Two of his brothers also work for the bank, according to Venezuelan newspaper El Nacional.

Alviarez's father, Juan Carlos Escotet, is the founder of Venezuelan bank Banesco and is worth a reported $3.5 billion

The banking heir appears to have been a fan of competitive fishing, according to an Instagram page that documented his hobby.

In one photo dated January 31, 2021, he appears alongside his fiancee and other friends aboard a boat named Otoro.

'Despite the slow fishing this weekend, we had a great time in the #reefcup as always. Still managed to catch two on Friday and one on Saturday. Came in 6th out of 51 boats and second place on Friday's daily,' he wrote in the post.

On Saturday, he and his fiancee were on a boat with four other people during a fishing competition when she was suddenly knocked into the water. He dove in to rescue her, but was struck by the propeller and died.

Alviarez's father, Juan Carlos Escotet, was born in Madrid in 1959 and grew up as one of eight children of Spanish immigrants in Venezuela.

He began working full time as a messenger for Banco Union in 1976 at age 17, while he was studying economics at night.

'Banking doesn't run in my family,' Escotet told the magazine Mercado de Republica Dominicana. 'What runs in my family is a lot of education and a lot of perseverance.'

Aviarez took to Instagram often to show off his catches and his passion for fishing

Aviarez was a graduate of the University of Miami who had 'vast experience in real estate development' in the city, according to his biography on Banesco USA's website

The banking scion and his fiancee Andrea, who survived falling into the water on Saturday, were set to wed in November

Alviarez and his fiancee, scheduled to wed in November, were participating in a fishing tournament hosted by the Ocean Reef Club, a gated community in Key Largo

He founded a brokerage firm in 1986, according to Bloomberg, and added banking services in 1991, expanding to Panama the next year.

In 2001, he merged his bank with Banco Union, which had employed him in college.

Banesco has branches in Venezuela, Spain, the US, Panama, Puerto Rico, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Switzerland, Germany, Portugal, the UK and France.

In 2013, Banesco bought the Spanish bank Abanca for $1.3 billion.

The self-made billionaire, who lives in Spain, has a master's degree in management from the University of Miami, according to his biography on Abanca's website.

He's also in the board of directors of the Spanish Confederation of Savings Banks, or CECA.
Patients won't get op if no carers to look after them on discharge, MP warned

Plans to tackle NHS backlog will 'fall over' unless social care problems addressed

Plans to tackle the Covid-fuelled NHS backlog will fail unless the social care crisis is fixed, former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt warned today.

Speaking to members of the House of Lords on the Adult Social Care Committee, Mr Hunt said: 'The reforms everyone wants for the NHS will just fall over unless we address the issues in social care.'

He warned doctors could be unable to operate on patients on the waiting list if beds can't be freed up by discharging into the social care sector.

The waiting list for routine operations and tests hit another record high of 6.1million in January.

Britons will start paying 1.25 per cent more national insurance from April as part of a 12-billion-a-year NHS Covid recovery plan.

But experts have long warned that thousands of medically fit patients are occupying beds because there are no carers to look after them when they are discharged.

Speaking to members of the House of Lords on the Adult Social Care Committee, Mr Hunt said: 'The reforms everyone wants for the NHS will just fall over unless we address the issues in social care.' He said there is no point having a plan to tackle NHS England's backlog if you cannot operate on people because 'they can't be discharged into the social care sector'

Data from NHS England shows one in nine people in the country were waiting for routine treatment  such as joint replacement and cataract surgery  or diagnostic tests as of the end of January

Each hospital bed blocked costs the NHS about 400 a day, with almost 1.75million days lost in the year to February 2020 in England to what is officially termed 'delayed transfers of care'.

About half of delays are caused by a lack of ongoing care for the patient, either because there is no available place in a residential or care home or because a home-help package has not been arranged.

HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE ON THE NHS WAITING LIST? NHS waiting lists for routine operations hit another record high of 6.1million in January. An additional 30,000 people were on the list for routine operations such as hip and knee replacements and cataract surgery in January compared to December. The 6.1m toll is 2m higher than when the pandemic hit, when NHS elective care was effectively frozen for months. Health Secretary Sajid Javid has come under increasing pressure to get a handle on the crisis, with charities warning that millions of Brits are living in pain while waiting for their surgeries. The number of people waiting over a year to start treatment increased to 311,528 in January, up from around only 1,400 before Covid hit. Advertisement

Experts say the social care sector, which includes 1.6million workers, needs 490,000 more staff by 2035 to keep up with demands in the sector.

And Dr Anna Dixon, chair of the Church of England's Reimagining Care Commission, today warned that a lack of parity between the NHS and care workers means the two sectors 'butt against each other'.

She called for a national care service to be established to give carers a 'voice and profile nationally' and bring their pay in line with NHS staff.

Asked how the importance of the care sector can be conveyed, Mr Hunt said: 'The reforms everyone wants for the NHS will just fall over unless we address the issues in social care.

'So I think we need to win the argument, which I dont think we have yet, that there really isnt any point in having a big Covid backlog plan if you cant get beds for people who need operations because they cant be discharged into the social care sector.'

The committee, which was set up to explore past and ongoing work on adult social care, heard that creating a 'national care service' could tackle the lack of equality between NHS staff and carers.

Dr Dixon said Scotland's move to create a national care service 'put care on a level with the national health service'.

He said it also gave carers 'a voice and profile nationally' and is looking to have pay parity between health and social care workers.

It comes as NHS waiting lists for routine operations like hip and knee replacements hit another record high of 6.1million in January.

The figure is 2million higher than when the pandemic hit, when NHS elective care was effectively frozen for months.

Health Secretary Sajid Javid has come under increasing pressure to get a handle on the crisis, with charities warning that millions of Brits are living in pain while waiting for their surgeries.

Official modelling estimates the backlog could peak at 10.7million in March 2024, with 200,000 people in England waiting more than a year by 2025.
A woman who smuggled a Mexican child across the border was arrested at a traffic stop on a Texas highway after police became suspicious about her relationship to the girl.

Agents assigned to the Laredo Sector were operating a checkpoint on Interstate 35 when they pulled over a driver for a routine inspection in North Laredo on March 8.

The woman initially told the border patrol officers that the child was her daughter before they were able to confirm that she had misled them during the questioning.

The agents were unable to determine the toddler's identity or nationality until the Laredo Sector Foreign Operations Branch contacted the Mexican consulate office and were able to obtain a photo with the names of the child and her mother.

In addition, the Laredo Sector was able to locate a relative of the minor in the United States.

The agency released a heartwarming photos of one of its agents holding on to the sleeping migrant girl moments after she was rescued.

U.S. Border Patrol did not indicate how long the child had been in the country.

An agent from U.S. Border Patrol's Laredo Sector holds an unaccompanied migrant girl moments after officers rescued her during a smuggling incident on Interstate 34 on March 8. Agents had pulled over the driver of a vehicle and were able to determine that the woman had lied about being the girl's mother

A U.S. Border Patrol officer assigned the agency's Laredo Sector tends to a migrant girl who was being smuggled in North Laredo, Texas, on March 8. The sector was able to obtain contact information for a relative in the United States

The rescue took place four days before President Joe Biden announced that unaccompanied migrant children would continue to not be expelled from the United States under Title 42, a border measure put in place by former President Donald Trump.

The decision was issued Saturday after a Texas judge ruled March 4 that the government couldn't exempt minors.

'The CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) director is terminating with respect to unaccompanied noncitizen children an Order under Title 42 suspending the right to introduce certain persons into the United States', the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said early on Saturday.

'In effect, this means that unaccompanied noncitizen children will not be expelled from the United States under CDC's order.'

The controversial Title 42 policy was issued by the CDC in March 2020 at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and gave U.S. Border Patrol the authority to immediately turn back migrant families who were unlawfully crossing the United States-Mexico border without the opportunity to apply for refuge from the U.S.

At least 47,374 interdictions of unaccompanied migrant children have been reported by U.S. Border Patrol agents along the southwestern border throughout the first four months of fiscal year 2022. Data for February has not been released yet

A federal judge's ruling in November 2020 blocked the policy's application to children who had crossed the border alone illegally, deeming it to be unwarranted.

That ruling continued to stand through the Biden Administration's first year - though Trump's Democratic successor continued to embrace the remaining aspects of Title 42.

Under Trump, at least 400,000 expulsions of migrants were recorded. The Biden administration kept the policy in place and has processed over 1.2 million removals.

U.S. Custom and Border Protection's last southwestern border report showed that U.S. Border Patrol agents intercepted 47,374 unaccompanied minors since October 2021 - the start of fiscal year 2022.

Encounters of unaccompanied children fell to 8,777 in January after 11,893 interdictions were reported in December 2021. Data for the month of February has not been made public.
HARRISBURG  Spotlight PA is an independent, nonpartisan newsroom powered by The Philadelphia Inquirer in partnership with PennLive/The Patriot-News, TribLIVE/Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and WITF Public Media. Sign up for our free newsletters.

The leader of a state agency that failed to clarify rules around addiction treatment and medical marijuana  an action that had serious consequences  continued to deny blame while speaking before state lawmakers this month.

Advertisement

Jennifer Smith, secretary for the Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs, also doubled down on an explanation that shifted responsibility to the federal government and county officials  without acknowledging that both federal and county officials dispute her claims.

I thought her response was totally inadequate, state Rep. John Lawrence, R-Chester, told Spotlight PA, after questioning Smith.

Advertisement

A series of investigative stories by Spotlight PA last year revealed that state officials failed to clarify federal rules around addiction treatment funding and medical marijuana use, sowing widespread confusion among workers on the front line of Pennsylvanias opioid epidemic. In one case, a 24-year-old Bucks County man, Tyler Cordeiro, was wrongly denied opioid addiction treatment funding and died from a drug overdose a few weeks later.

A month after Spotlight PAs first investigation, the federal government changed its policy, eliminating the language that caused the most confusion. Under the new guidance, money from the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration may not be used to purchase, prescribe, or provide marijuana or treatment using marijuana. But the language makes it clear that federal money can fund addiction treatment and other services for people who happen to use marijuana.

During a March 3 budget hearing, Lawrence read from Spotlight PAs coverage for nearly three minutes.

I want to know why DDAP sat on this federal guidance for 17 months and didnt share it with other state and county agencies, Lawrence told Smith.

Thank you for asking that question, Smith replied, and for giving me the opportunity to set the record straight based on perhaps some inaccuracies or misleading  reporting by Spotlight PA.

She did not specify what she considered inaccurate or misleading about the reporting. Before publishing its investigations, Spotlight PA shared detailed questions and findings with her agency.

Smith acknowledged that the department received clarifying information from the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration in a January 2020 email  17 months before her department shared the guidance. But she claimed her agency was not given permission to distribute that information beyond the attendees of the call, which was restricted to one individual from each state.

Emails obtained by Spotlight PA show a federal official invited the Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs deputy secretary to a Q&A session on the marijuana language and other issues in November 2019.

Advertisement

The federal agency then sent written clarification to the department Jan. 1, 2020, emails show. A spokesperson for the federal agency previously said it shared the written guidance with Smiths department and similar agencies that coordinate addiction treatment services in other states.

In neither the November 2019 nor January 2020 emails did the federal agency say state officials could not share the information with other agencies. The Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs press office did not provide or point to other emails or documents to substantiate Smiths claim that the department was not allowed to distribute the information.

And federal officials have insisted they considered the January 2020 email a formal communication that the Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs had the authority to share.

SAMHSA wanted to make sure states knew how SAMHSA funding could and could not be used, a spokesperson for the federal agency told Spotlight PA in September.

At least one other state provided additional guidance to its providers. The Oregon Health Authority released public guidance dated Nov. 18, 2019  days after the scheduled phone call with SAMHSA  that clarified the medical marijuana funding issue and noted there was flexibility.

Like all other states, [Oregon Health Authority] consulted with SAMHSA to clarify and understand the new special conditions and shared that information with Oregon providers, Aria Seligmann, an agency spokesperson, told Spotlight PA in an email.

Advertisement

Smith also told lawmakers that her department encouraged county drug and alcohol offices to reach out directly to the federal government to clarify the issue  an account that leaders of those offices have disputed. That was a recent change, they told Spotlight PA in September.

And the departments own records cast doubt on Smiths statements that her agency consistently referred medical marijuana questions to the federal government.

Email exchanges in March and April of last year, for instance, show officials with Delaware Countys drug and alcohol office asking for and receiving guidance from Smiths agency before a local nonprofit added medical marijuana restrictions to a participant agreement. An official with the Delaware County nonprofit lifted the restrictions after speaking with a Spotlight PA reporter in September.

A DDAP spokesperson, Stephany Dugan, declined to comment on the exchange between the department and Delaware County. Dugan offered two examples of when the department directed questions to the federal government. Both emails were from August 2021  19 months after SAMHSA first shared its written clarification.

By that point, Spotlight PA had already reported on the consequences of the departments failure to share the guidance, and the federal government had changed its policy.

Conflicting messages

Susan Ousterman, mother of the Bucks County man who was wrongly denied addiction treatment funding, called Smiths response to Lawrences questions somewhat infuriating.

Advertisement

Like I had said from the beginning, you cant correct something if you dont acknowledge that there was a problem, Ousterman told Spotlight PA. And they still havent acknowledged that anything was  done wrong.

Ousterman reached out to state officials with concerns about her sons case and access to addiction treatment in early 2021 and stayed in touch with them for months. She also raised concerns about the accuracy of a state advertising campaign that promises to get everyone into treatment regardless of their access to insurance.

Emails Spotlight PA obtained through Right-to-Know requests show widespread confusion and conflicting messages over what counties should do.

Jodi Skiles, a bureau director for the department, defended the advertising campaign in an email to Ousterman in late May, telling her that county drug and alcohol offices develop their policies based on the departments rules.

And, our requirement is to fund the uninsured and underinsured with the State and Federal money that we allocate to each SCA, Skiles wrote, referring to the offices. They also have a local match.

But many counties believed federal money was off limits if patients used medical marijuana for mental health or substance use issues. And workers in some counties took the restriction further, operating as though all money from county drug and alcohol offices was off limits to people with a medical marijuana card for those reasons, Spotlight PA found.

Advertisement

Skiles statements to Ousterman in May 2021 also conflict with later ones by Smith. Smith told Spotlight PA in August that it was up to the counties to decide what funding they felt comfortable using.

Last Call Daily Get top headlines from The Morning Call delivered weekday afternoons. >

Despite Smiths public challenge to Spotlight PA reporting, internal emails show the news organizations investigations prompted changes.

After Spotlights first story published in June, the departments communications director, Ali Gantz, wrote to colleagues that this piece is doing more harm than good by potentially holding people back from calling the hotline and/or seeking help if they receive MMJ.

But Gantz also suggested updating information in the department manuals to provide further clarification, which the department later did. And Jennifer Newell, another bureau director, suggested clarifying with county drug and alcohol offices when they could use state money to assist people, saying there seemed to be some confusion around that.

Emails show the federal agency emailed Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs officials on July 30, informing them that the federal government was updating its policy and removing the language that caused the most confusion.

FYI  Sounds like we need to get this out to the field or Spotlight will be all over us for not communicating the change, Smith wrote to others in her department Aug. 2, shortly after 8 a.m.

Advertisement

The department sent out a bulletin hours later, notifying drug and alcohol offices, providers, and the public about the change.

WHILE YOURE HERE... If you learned something from this story, pay it forward and become a member of Spotlight PA so someone else can in the future at spotlightpa.org/donate. Spotlight PA is funded by foundations and readers like you who are committed to accountability journalism that gets results.
Dramatic footage has emerged showing the moment a Russian armoured vehicle was obliterated by Ukrainian soldiers.

Video shows Ukrainian troops firing a series of shots at the armoured infantry fighting vehicle, which is marked with the notorious 'Z' sign, in the port city of Mariupol, leaving the Russian soldiers cowering behind it.

The footage was filmed inside an armoured personnel carrier, where Ukrainian troops from the Azov Battalion unit could be seen looking at a video screen showing their targets going up in flames.

Video shows Ukrainian troops firing a series of shots at the armoured vehicle, which is marked with the notorious 'Z' sign, in the port city of Mariupol, leaving the Russian soldiers cowering behind it

The Ukrainian troops opened fire on the Russian armoured vehicle in Mariupol

Dramatic footage has emerged showing the moment a Russian armoured vehicle was obliterated by a Ukrainian soldiers

The troops were patrolling the streets of Mariupol when they came into contact with the Russian armoured vehicle.

The Ukrainian soldiers inside the military vehicle, which is equipped with a 30mm automatic cannon, a machine gun and anti-tank missiles, opened fire at the Russian armoured vehicle in the street.

The Ukrainian troops quickly drove along another street, behind houses, before they came into contact with another Russian military vehicle, which was marked with a 'Z' sign.

The soldiers were able to obliterate the tank, which exploded as Putin's troops cowered behind it, using a remote-controlled gun turret.

The footage was posted by the Ukrainian National Guard's Azov Unit on Monday with the caption: 'Z - means destroyed'.

The footage was filmed inside an armoured personnel carrier, where Ukrainian troops from the Azov Battalion unit could be seen looking at a video screen showing their targets

The Ukrainian troops quickly drove along another street, behind houses, before they came into contact with another Russian tank, which was marked with a 'Z' sign

The soldiers were able to obliterate the tank, which exploded as Putin's troops cowered behind it, using a remote-controlled gun turret

The Russian tank can be seen erupting into a ball of fire after it was shot at by Ukrainian troops

The footage was posted by the Ukrainian National Guard's Azov Unit on Monday with the caption: 'Z - means destroyed'

The invading Russian troops have for days been bombing Mariupol and other cities across Ukraine, killing thousands.

Senior Ukrainian presidential official Kyrylo Tymoshenko on Monday accused Russia of blocking a humanitarian aid convoy sent to relieve the besieged city of Mariupol.

Civilians have been trapped in Mariupol by Russian shelling for more than two weeks and have been without heating, electricity and running water for most of this time, the Ukrainian authorities say.

However, at least 160 cars left the city on Monday in the first successful attempt to evacuate civilians in a humanitarian corridor after over a week of trying.

Around 150,000 people had been evacuated through humanitarian corridors so far, Tymoshenko said
The United States consulate building and Mexican military facilities were hit by gunfire and vehicles were set on fire on highway roads after security forces arrested a cartel leader in the northern Mexico border town of Nuevo Laredo.

Northeast Cartel leader Juan Gerardo Trevino, who was wanted by U.S. and Mexican authorities, was taken into custody Sunday before his henchmen responded with the violent assault.

The Tamaulipas state Ministry of Public Security reported that shots were fired at the US consulate and military premises during a flurry of gun battles throughout parts of the border city that lies across from Laredo, Texas.

Suspected members of the Northeast Cartel and Troops from Hell gang paralyzed traffic in Nuevo Laredo early Monday by blocking roads with spike strips and setting fire to trailer trucks, the Ministry of Public Security said.

Northeast Cartel leader Juan Gerardo Trevino was taken into custody in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, on Sunday. Trevino is facing a U.S. extradition order for drug trafficking and money laundering. He is also facing extortion and criminal association charges in Tamaulipas and murder and terrorism charges in the nearby state of Coahuila

Still image of a tractor trailer that was carjacked and set on fire by members of the Northeast Cartel and Troops from Hell after its leader Juan Gerardo Trevino was arrested Sunday night in Nuevo Laredo, a border city in the northern Mexican state of Tamaulipas

Vehicles were stolen and set on fire and roads were filled with spike strips by cartel and gang members responding to the arrest of Juan Gerardo Trevino, leader of the Northeast Cartel and Troops from Hell gang

U.S. Customs and Border Protection closed the southbound Nuevo Laredo lane at the Juarez-Lincoln and Gateway to the Americas Bridges on Sunday night and resumed Monday.

The U.S. consulate advised its employees to stay indoors and urged U.S. citizens to do the same or avoid the area.

A senior Tamaulipas official told Reuters there was at least one 'collateral' fatality due to the violence.

Trevino is facing a U.S. extradition order for drug trafficking and money laundering.

He is also facing extortion and criminal association charges in Tamaulipas and murder and terrorism charges in the nearby state of Coahuila.

Juan Gerardo Trevino will also have to answer to extortion and criminal association charges in Tamaulipas, Mexico, and murder and terrorism charges in the nearby state of Coahuila

U.S. Border Patrol agents stand guard in Laredo, Texas, after a wave of violent incidents were unleashed in the Mexico border town of Nuevo Laredo following the arrest of Juan Gerardo Trevino, leader of the Northeast Cartel and Troops from Hell gang

Juan Gerardo Trevino

A Mexican government official told Reuters that Trevino is also a citizen of the United States.

Trevino has been on a list of the U.S. Border Patrol's most wanted criminals since October 2019.

DailyMail.com reached out to U.S. Border Patrols Rio Grande Valley Sector for comment.

According to the Mexican government, Trevino was identified as as the leader of the Northeast Cartel, a branch of the Zetas gang. He also oversaw an assassin squad known as the "Tropas del Infierno" (Troops from Hell).

Trevino is the nephew of imprisoned Zetas cartel leader Miguel Angel Trevino, who is also facing extradition to the U.S.

The Northeast Cartel operates mainly out of Tamaulipas but also maintains its presence in the states of Coahuila, Veracruz, Monterrey and Zacatecas.

The arrest represents a "forceful blow" to the cartel's power in the region, Mexico's government said.

Nuevo Laredo Mayor Carmen Lilia Canturosas said early on Monday that some roads in the city were still impassable.

Monday appointments at the consulate and the visa processing center were also canceled, the U.S. consulate said.
An ISIS fanatic who had pledged his allegiance to the terror group has been jailed today for spreading extremist propaganda and faking a university degree to get a hospital job.

Ali Abdillahi, 31, put recordings of an Islamist extremist preacher who advocates armed jihad, and two ISIS propaganda videos showing executions and graphic violence online, the Old Bailey was told.

The view count of the material uploaded to instant messaging app Telegram in July 2020 ranged from 280 to 1,300, the court was also told.

A notebook also revealed his extremist mindset and a 'pledge of allegiance' to Isis was uncovered on his mobile phone.

Abdillahi admitted disseminating a terrorist publication, perverting the course of justice and fraud by false representation and has been sentenced to eight years and 10 months in jail.

Ali Abdillahi, 31, pictured, disseminated terrorist propaganda over instant messaging app Telegram in July 2020, the Old Bailey was told

In July 2020, he also put fake details on his CV saying he had a biomedical science degree from the University of Hertfordshire to get work as a cardiographer through an agency, the court was told.

If it was not for a forged certificate and false details on his CV, Abdillahi would not have got the job at South London's Croydon University Hospital.

However, there were no concerns raised about his work and he earned 2,100 before his employment ended upon his arrest in August 2020.

On Monday, Mr Justice Sweeney jailed him for eight years for disseminating terrorist publications, plus 10 months for perverting the course of justice.

Mr Sweeney said: This is one of the more serious cases of its type.

You had showed you committed these offences because of your support for Islamic extremism.

He added a further three years on extended licence but imposed no separate sentence for the fraud charge.

Justice Sweeney said Abdillahi supported the concept of Armed Jihad, and viewed IS as the inheritor of Islam.

On Monday, at the Old Bailey, pictured, Mr Justice Sweeney jailed him for eight years for disseminating terrorist publications, plus 10 months for perverting the course of justice

Detectives had discovered an invitation-only Telegram group called Sons of Abdullah set up by Abdillahi.

The videos showed a Syrian pilot being set on fire while alive, beheadings, suicide attacks and people being thrown from roofs.

Abdillahi's devices were seized and examined after he was arrested at his home in Enfield, north London, August 7 2020 and charged 11 days later.

The Dutch national, of Colgate Place, Enfield, admitted five counts of disseminating a terrorist publication on the second day of his trial last November.

He had previously admitted perverting the course of justice by pretending to have a biomedical science degree from the University of Hertfordshire as part of a bail bid.

He also claimed to be studying for a master's degree but withdrew his application after investigations showed the information was false.

Abdillahi admitted a further charge of fraud by false representation.

Wearing thick-rimmed black glasses and a black suit, Abdillahi, who was born in Somalia and has lived in the UK since the age of seven, spoke only to confirm his identity as he stood in the dock at the Old Bailey

Wearing thick-rimmed black glasses and a black suit, Abdillahi, who was born in Somalia and has lived in the UK since the age of seven, spoke only to confirm his identity as he stood in the dock at the Old Bailey.

Friends and family looked down from the public gallery as the hearing went on.

Asked by officers why he did it, he claimed he never intended to deceive anyone and had been off his medications.

I believe I created a character for myself, and looking back, I do not know what is real and what is not, he said.

I was convinced I had a degree. My intention was not to lie or anything like that.

Commander Richard Smith, who leads the Metropolitan Police's Counter Terrorism Command, said: 'Extremist propaganda online is extremely harmful and is a means by which terrorist groups seek to radicalise people all over the world.

'Abdillahi sent videos and recordings glorifying extremist violence to promote the hate-filled mindset he supported to others.

'Covid-19 restrictions were in force when the investigation was launched but this did not stop officers acting quickly and building a strong case against Abdillahi.'
Republican Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana is demanding the Biden administration investigate allegations that Russia had backed far-left environmental groups in a letter sent late last week.

GOP lawmakers have been sounding the alarm on such claims since at least 2017, though they gained fresh urgency after Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in late February.

The unprovoked and brutal attack threw the global energy supply chain into chaos, with the price of fuel reaching crippling record-highs in the US and Europe in recent days.

The invasion also revamped the Biden administration's push toward clean energy as a more permanent and long term solution to depending on unsavory international actors for oil.

Moscow's aim in allegedly funneling cash to green groups is to undcut US fossil fuel production while maintaining Russia's, whose economy depends more heavily on energy exports. The massive country is among the top oil and gas producers in the world.

Banks' Friday letter, which is also signed by Reps. Bill Johnson of Ohio and Ted Budd of North Carolina, points to a 2015 Washington Free Beacon report that alleges a Bermuda-based shell company with ties to Russian oil interests transferred $23 million to California group Sea Change Foundation in 2010 and 2011, citing IRS tax documents.

Rep. Jim Banks, chair of the Republican Study Committee, is calling on the Biden Treasury Department to investigate whether Vladimir Putin funneled money into prominent environmentalist groups

Sea Change also reportedly donated money to well-known organizations like the Sierra Club, the Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC), the League of Conservation Voters (LCV), and the Center for American Progress during those years.

'Russia spent millions promoting anti-energy policies and politicians in the U.S.,' Banks told Fox News, who first published the letter.

'Now, thanks to Bidens war on domestic energy, U.S. oil production has dropped 10%, pushing up prices and enriching and emboldening Putin before he invaded Ukraine.

'Unlike the Russia hoax, Putins malign influence on our energy sector is real and deserves further investigation.'

Banks' letter also highlights a private 2014 speech given by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in which she says: 'We were even up against phony environmental groups, and Im a big environmentalist, but these were funded by the Russians.'

A similar effort is underway by a wider group of House Republicans, who directly sent letters to the Sierra Club, NRDC and LCV demanding they disclose whether their leaders are 'are aware of concerns that Sea Change may be a conduit for Russian funding.'

'Publicly available information suggests that Russian President Vladimir Putin funds certain environmental non-governmental organizations (e-NGOs) around the world to crease fear among other nations' use of [fracking] to ensure dependence on Russian gas,' the March 10 letter reads.

Meanwhile President Biden said Russia's attack on Ukraine, which threw the global energy supply chain into disarray, should be motivation to 'accelerate' the US transition to green fuel

All three groups vehemently disputed the allegation they take Russian money when asked by Fox.

In 2017, then-House Rep. Lamar Smith and Rep. Randy Weber, both Republicans, wrote to Trump Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin asking him to investigate reports of a Russian influence campaign using cash funneled to Sea Change.

Speculation about the Kremlin's role in overseas environmental groups was sparked within the international community even earlier.

Former NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told The Guardian in 2014, 'I have met allies who can report that Russia, as part of their sophisticated information and disinformation operations, engaged actively with so-called non-governmental organizations.'

They were 'environmental organizations working against shale gas - to maintain European dependence on imported Russian gas.'

The European Union depends on Russia for nearly half of its energy needs, putting the international bloc in a precarious position of trying to punish Putin while scrambling for ways to decrease its reliance on Moscow's oil and gas.

President Joe Biden used Europe's vulnerable position with Russia as justification to 'accelerate' the transition to green fuel when he was announcing a ban on Moscow's energy imports last week.

NATO's former secretary-general said in 2014 that Putin launched a similar ploy to increase dependence on Russian gas in Europe (Pictured: Thousands of environmentalists gather to draw attention to climate change and social injustice during the presidential election campaign, in Paris, France on March 14)

His administration has been at the helm of a push to expand electric vehicle use throughout the US, including setting a goal for half of all new vehicles sold in the US to be electric by 2030.

'Ive had numerous conversations over the last three months with our European friends of how they have to wean themselves off of Russia -- Russian oil. Its just not -- its just not tenable,' Biden said on March 8.

'It should motivate us to accelerate the transition to clean energy. This is a perspective, as I said, that our European allies share and the -- a future where together we can achieve greater independence.'

He added: 'If we do what we can, it will mean that no one has to worry about the price at the gas pump in the future. Thatll mean tyrants like Putin wont be able to use fossil fuels as weapons against other nations.'

It runs counter to Republicans pushing Biden to ramp up domestic oil and gas production instead, claiming it's the only way to achieve American energy independence.
The corpse of a Russian model has been found stashed in a suitcase more than a year after she went missing.

Gretta Vedler, 23, was killed one month after she posted on social media calling Vladimir Putin a 'psychopath' and forecasting his drive to 'enhance the integrity of Russia' would end in tears.

Her 'jealous' ex-boyfriend Dmitry Korovin, 23, has confessed more than a year later to strangling her to death after a row over money in Moscow unrelated to her political views and analysis of Putin's mind and motives.

Gretta Vedler, 23, (pictured) was killed one month after she posted on social media calling Vladimir Putin a 'psychopath' and forecasting his drive to 'enhance the integrity of Russia' would end in tears

Her 'jealous' ex-boyfriend Dmitry Korovin, 23,(pictured) has confessed more than a year later to strangling her to death after a row over money in Moscow unrelated to her political views and analysis of Putin's mind and motives

He told interrogators that he slept in a hotel room for three nights with her corpse which he put in a newly-bought suitcase.

Then he drove her body 300 miles to Lipetsk region and left it in the boot of a car for more than a year.

He kept posting pictures and messages on the model's social media, to make friends believe she was still alive, he told detectives.

He told interrogators that he slept in a hotel room for three nights with her corpse which he put in a newly-bought suitcase. Pictured: Ms Vedler

A male friend called Evgeniy Foster - a blogger in Kharkiv, the Ukrainian city blitzed by Russian forces - became suspicious found a friend in Moscow to file a missing person case, triggering a search which eventually located her body.

A video from Russia's Investigative Committee shows Korovin allegedly demonstrating how he killed the model, and making a full confession.

Her prescient postings on Putin in January 2021, a month before she was murdered, are not seen as connect to her death but are chilling in the light of subsequent events.

Then he drove her body 300 miles to Lipetsk region and left it in the boot of a car for more than a year

She was concerned over his crackdown on protests and what she saw as a desire to forge a bigger Russia.

'Given the fact that Putin went through a lot of humiliation in childhood, he could not stand up for himself due to his [slight] physical form, it is not surprising that he left after law school and joined the KGB,' she wrote.

'Such people are timid and fearful from childhood, afraid of noise and darkness, strangers, so traits such as caution, restraint, and lack of communication are developed early in their character.

'I can only assume, in my opinion, a clear psychopathy or sociopathy is seen in him.'

He kept posting pictures and messages on the model's social media, to make friends believe she was still alive, he told detectives. Pictured: Korovin

She told her followers: 'For psychopaths, it is important to constantly experience a sense of fullness and sharpness of life, so they love risk, intense experiences, intense communication, intense activity - an intense and dynamic life.

'Maybe he really wants to enhance the integrity of Russia and sincerely wishes the good for the Russians.

'But can he really do anything?'

She made clear she had grave doubts.

'I think you know the answer to this question yourself,' she posted.
One person is dead, another critical and three more remain unaccounted for after a boarding house fire in inner-Sydney.

Neighbours in Newtown woke to the sound of loud explosions around 1am on Tuesday morning and found the two storey boarding home at the intersection of Probert and Albermarle streets well alight.

A body was found inside the building a short time later and is yet to be formally identified while at least three people are feared missing.

Eight residents managed to escape the burning home before firefighters arrived.

A fire ripped through a boarding house in inner-Sydney Newtown early Tuesday morning, claiming the life of a resident

Five people were rushed to hospital with various injuries, including smoke inhalation.

An elderly man aged in his 80s was taken to Royal North Shore Hospital in a critical condition after he jumped out of a window to escape.

Peter was sleeping in one of the upstairs rooms of the boarding house when he woke up to the smell of smoke.

'I had enough time to put some pants on, put some shoes on and then the power went out,' he told the Today show.

'I couldn't look for a wallet or anything like that. I was lucky enough to get out through the body of the house but there were bits falling down and there was fire through the house.

'Then I saw an 80-year-old gentleman on the ground, who had to jump out of his window.'

Peter believed the fire was caused by an electrical fault and claimed residents have been complaining about electrical problems at the property for several years.

Firefighters arrived to confronting scenes of the boarding house engulfed in intense flames

Almost 40 firefighters spent more than two hours battling to extinguish the blaze and managed to stop the blaze from spreading to neighbouring properties.

'Crews were confronted with a very intense fire upon arrival with flames on the first and second storeys,' Fire and Rescue NSW Superintendent Adam Dewberry told Daily Mail Australia.

'Crews entered the building as far as they could but were pushed back by the intensity of the blaze.'

Fire crews remain on scene due to a small number of 'hotspots' that still remain.

There are also grave concerns for the building structure after the middle storey collapsed onto the lower level.

'It is very unstable,' Superintendent Dewberry said.

'There are some people unaccounted for and that's yet to be determined as the morning unfolds. Being a boarding house we are not too sure who was home, who wasn't home. That will be part of the investigations through today.'

Firefighters (pictured) spent more than two hours trying to extinguish the intense blaze

Shocked neighbours recalled waking up in the middle of the night to the sound of a loud bang.

'I just heard a explosion and that was pretty much it,' one man said.

'It looked more than just a normal house burning. It was like gas or something like that. It kept burning like crazy.

The cause of the fire remains unknown.

A number of neighbouring properties were also evacuated with no other reports of injuries.

NSW Police have declared the site as a crime scene and are investigating the fatal blaze.

The tragedy comes hours after fire ripped a century-old townhouse in inner-city Glebe.

Six police officers who entered the burning home to rescue several residents were later taken to hospital suffering from smoke inhalation. All have since been discharged.

Eight residents managed to flee the burning property after waking to the smell of smoke
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has praised the Russian TV editor who ran onto a live state TV news with a sign protesting Moscow's invasion of Ukraine that read: 'Stop the war... They can't put us all in prison'.

'I am grateful to those Russians who do not stop trying to convey the truth. To those who fight disinformation and tell the truth, real facts to their friends and loved ones,' Zelensky said in a Telegram video uploaded Tuesday, CNN reported.

The president also spoke directly to Marina Ovsyannikova, an editor on the Russian TV channel Pervyi Kanal (Channel One) who held up a sign on the broadcaster's main evening news show, Vremya, that said: 'Stop the war! Don't believe propaganda! They're lying to you here! Russians against war.'

'And personally to the woman who entered the studio of Channel One with a poster against the war,' Zelensky said, adding: 'To those who are not afraid to protest. As long as your country has not completely closed itself off from the whole world, turning into a very large North Korea, you must fight. You must not lose your chance.'

Channel One was the first station to broadcast in the Russian Federation after the fall of the Soviet Union and has more than 250 million viewers across the world.

The news anchor carried on speaking before producers quickly cut to a news report to stop Ovsyannikova revealing the truth about Putin's war.

She recorded a video at home before her brave stunt, saying: 'The responsibility for this aggression lies with one man: Vladimir Putin.'

But she could now be jailed for up to 15 years. Her lawyer, Dmitry Zakhvatov, told the news outlet he is unable to find his client, despite reports she is being held in Moscow's Ostankino Police station.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has praised the Russian TV editor who ran onto a live state TV news with a sign protesting Moscow's invasion of Ukraine in a Telegram video (pictured) Tuesday. He personally thanked the editor for her bravery and said he was 'grateful' to all Russians who 'are not afraid to protest' and 'tell the truth' about the invasion of Ukraine

Marina Ovsyannikova, an editor on the Russian TV channel Pervyi Kanal, held up a sign that said: 'Stop the war! Don't believe propaganda! They're lying to you here!'

Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, whose editor-in-chief is Nobel laureate Dmitry Muratov, posted a screenshot of the incident but blurred Ovsyannikova's anti-war message, possibly for fear of reprisal

Channel Pervyi Kanal said it was investigating the interruption to its normal schedule at its studios at the Ostankino Technical Centre, near Moscow.

Ovsyannikova was arrested by police working for the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs.

The reason given was for her 'public actions aimed at discrediting the use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in order to protect the interests of the Russian Federation and its citizens, maintain international peace and security,' the TASS news agency reported.

Ovsyannikova was arrested by police working for the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs

Producers of the news show quickly cut to a news report but not before the protesting journalist made her point clear

Ovsyannikova has a Ukrainian father and said before her actions Monday that she was ashamed to be peddling the Kremlin's lies.

She said: 'What's happening in Ukraine is a crime and Russia is the aggressor.

'The responsibility for this aggression lies with one man: Vladimir Putin.

'My father is Ukrainian, my mother is Russian and they were never enemies.

'Unfortunately, for the last few years I've been working for Channel One.

'I've been doing Kremlin propaganda and I'm very ashamed of it  that I let people lie from TV screens and allowed the Russian people to be zombified.

'We didn't say anything in 2014 when it only just began.

'We didn't protest when the Kremlin poisoned Navalny.

'We just silently watched this inhuman regime.

'Now the whole world has turned away from us, and ten generations of our descendants won't wash off this fratricidal war.'

She reportedly also said: 'They can't put us all in prison.'

After the incident Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, whose editor-in-chief is Nobel laureate Dmitry Muratov, posted a screenshot of the moment Ovsyannikova went on air but blurred her anti-war message, possibly for fear of reprisal.

Russian human rights lawyer Pavel Chikov tweeted a photograph of Ovsyannikova (pictured). He said his legal defence foundation was helping her face the charges of 'discrediting the Russian armed forces'

Marina Ovsyannikova demonstrated on live television against the war. She reportedly has a Ukrainian father and said before her actions Monday that she was ashamed to be peddling the Kremlin's lies

On March 4 Putin signed a law that effectively criminalizes public opposition to or non-state news coverage of the conflict.

It was seen as another way for the Kremlin to curb widespread dissent over the war and cope with crippling Western sanctions.

If Ovsyannikova is prosecuted under the law she could face three to 15 years in prison. Russian human rights lawyer Pavel Chikov's legal defence foundation is helping her face the charges of 'discrediting the Russian armed forces'.

While there have been protests against the war all over the West, the Kremlin has cracked down on any Russians opposing the war.

Even so, thousands of protesters have demonstrated in Moscow and commentators have tried to quell claims the war is anything other than a large-scale Russian invasion.

Last week, guests on one of the country's most-popular state TV broadcasts risked the wrath of Vladimir Putin to denounce the invasion as 'worse' than the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan which helped bring down the Soviet Union.

Karen Shakhnazarov (pictured) sought to bust the Kremlin's narrative that the war with Ukraine was a limited exercise

Semyon Bagdasarov (pictured), called for an end to the war, citing his fear it could become a humanitarian disaster and comparing it to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which helped bring down the USSR

Semyond Bagdasarov, an academic, used an appearance on Russia 1's prime time talk show 'An Evening with Vladimir Soloviev' - a man referred to as Putin's propagandist-in-chief - to call on the Russian president to end the attack, while warning allies like China and India could soon turn their backs on Moscow.

'Do we need to get into another Afghanistan, but even worse? There are more people and they're more advanced in their weapon handling', he said, 'We don't need that. Enough already.'

He then added: 'If this picture starts to transform into an absolute humanitarian disaster, even our close allies like China and India will be forced to distance themselves from us. 'This public opinion, with which they're saturating the entire world, can play out badly for us... Ending this operation will stabilise things within the country.'

Karen Shakhnazarov, a filmmaker and state pundit, also sought to bust the Kremlin's narrative that it is conducting a limited 'special operation' in the Donbass region by referencing attacks on the capital of Kyiv - which is located hundreds of miles away.

'I have a hard time imagining taking cities such as Kyiv. I can't imagine how that would look,' he said, even as Putin's troops close in on the capital and launch attacks into the outskirts.

A previous experiment designed to show how quickly the authorities in Russia are clamping down on free speech amid the war in Ukraine was caught on camera.

Footage emerged of a horde of policemen descending upon a young woman in Manezhnaya Square in Moscow and dragging her away just three seconds after she held up a small paper sign.

The sign itself bore no message in support of Ukraine or any other issue in defiance of the Kremlin and the will of Vladimir Putin.

Instead, the sign simply read 'TWO WORDS' - but even this was enough to trigger a stampede of policemen clad in full riot gear who removed her from view in the blink of an eye.

It comes as the Kremlin introduced a blanket ban on social media over the past week, throttling Facebook, Instagram and Twitter - as well as Western media and independent news sites - as it scrambles to control the narrative around its incursion into Ukraine.

Footage has emerged of a horde of policemen descending upon a young woman in Manezhnaya Square in Moscow and dragging her away just three seconds after she held up a small paper sign

The woman declared: 'I am just going to say ''two words'', before adding with a knowing smirk: 'Will they arrest me for this now or not?' as she raised her tiny placard. The sign reads 'TWO WORDS'

Her placard had been in the air for a split second before a team of riot police steamed onto the scene, grabbed the woman by the arms and hauled her away in front of the stunned cameraman

The Kremlin has maintained the conflict is just a limited exercise to de-Nazify the country.

However, Russian troops and their tyrannical leader Vladimir Putin have been accused of war crimes as hospitals and schools have been bombed.

Just Monday it was confirmed that an injured pregnant woman and her unborn baby - whose image being stretchered from her Putin-bombed maternity ward became one of the war's most shocking images - have both died.

Ukrainian emergency employees and volunteers carry the injured pregnant woman from the maternity hospital that was damaged by shelling in Mariupol on March 9

Pictures of the unnamed mother-to-be in agony as she was carried from the Mariupol hospital appalled the world.

She had come under attack in the very place she had thought safe to bring new life into the world.

This morning the doctors trying to save them both spoke of the huge efforts trying to save them.

Surgeon Timur Marin found the woman's pelvis crushed and hip detached. Medics delivered the baby via caesarean section, but it showed 'no signs of life', the surgeon said. They then began work on the mother.

'More than 30 minutes of resuscitation of the mother didn't produce results,' Marin said on Saturday. 'Both died.'

In the chaos after Wednesday's air strike, medics did not have time to get the woman's name before her husband and father came to take away her body.

Someone came to retrieve her, they said  so she did not end up in the mass graves being dug for many of Mariupol's growing number of dead.
An 18-year-old university student died when he jumped in front of a train at a Tube station just days after England was plunged into a second lockdown, an inquest has heard.

Eliot Gower was three months into his International Relations degree at the University of Greenwich when he took his own life at Bank station on November 8, 2020, an inquest at the City of London Coroners' Court heard today.

Just days before his death, on November 5, the Government had made a U-turn by bringing in a second national lockdown.

Eliot lived in a flat in university accommodation in Cutty Sark Hall but had very few seminars on campus and was discouraged from mixing outside of his flat of eight other students, the inquest was told.

Eliot, whose family home is on a farm in Elham in Kent, was described by his mother Kim Gower as 'kind, loving and excelling at school' but 'unfailingly modest'.

Eliot Gower, 18, died in November 2020 when he was hit by a Tube train at Bank station, an inquest heard

Today's inquest heard Eliot had no previous history of mental health problems and had no contact with any mental health services.

His friends recalled him acting normally in the days leading up to his death, albeit seeming 'a little bit depressed', the court was told.

On the day of his death, the inquest heard, Eliot sent a text to a flatmate saying he had had a dream about going on holiday which made him 'really happy', a feeling he said he had not felt for a while.

Later that day, he was seen on CCTV at Bank station, presumably having taken the DLR from Cutty Sark.

British Transport Police, who investigated the incident, were represented by fatality investigator Christina Butler who told the court nobody was in Eliot's vicinity on the platform moments before his death.

The inquest heard toxicology reports found no traces of alcohol in his system.

Coroner Linda Jacobs returned a conclusion of suicide.

During the hearing, the coroner read a statement on behalf of Eliot's mother Mrs Gower, which said: 'Eliot was the most laidback and smiley baby and child, growing up on the farm.

'He grew up to be kind, loving and good, excelling at school and and on the farm as an excellent machine operator.

'He didn't like the limelight and was unfailingly modest. He had five very close friends, who have all needed counselling [following his death] and visit his grave regularly.

'He was very close to his youngest brother Rory, they did so much together, like making banana pancakes. The last time Eliot came home was 10 days before he died, where they spent time cleaning a large pond [on the farm].'

She added: 'I miss hearing his car pull up to our drive, music blaring out the windows. His casket was laid out on straw bales he had recently laid.

'His father dug a grave beneath an oak tree in the meadow. I can see the meadow from our bedroom window.

'He was always smiling...we never saw him sad or depressed which makes his death so difficult to understand. We will love him forever.'

Mrs Gower was joined in court by Eliot's grandmother Linda Chambers, older brother Freddie, uncle Matt Clacket and cousin Lewis Hacket.

British Transport Police said Eliot was spotted on CCTV on the platform at Bank station with nobody in his vicinity moments before his death

Ms Butler, on behalf of British Transport Police, said: 'In the days prior [to Eliot's death], the friends went to a picnic in Greenwich Park, and nothing caused concern until late that day.

'Eliot and a friend had a bit of a falling out but nothing that would cause concern for his welfare.

'In terms of his movements [on the day of his death], he is seen first seen on CCTV footage at Bank station, but presumption being that he had taken the DLR from the Cutty Sark up to Bank station. Nobody was in his vicinity on the platform.'

Eliot's friend, Jon, who he met at Harvey Grammar School in Kent, previously set up a fundraiser in the wake of his death.

A group of friends raised 4,740 for PAPYRUS Prevention of Young Suicide by trekking a 26.2-mile loop around where Eliot grew up in Kent.

**For confidential support call Samaritans on 116123 or visit a Samaritans branch**
Train cancellations and delays are still occurring across the NSW rail network due to last week's storm damage.

Transport for NSW says 'crews are working around the clock to assess damage and carry out repairs after wild weather caused extensive damage'.

Sydney commuters are being told to expect more delays and 'gaps in service and cancellations' this week.

Cancellations have limited the numbers of services arriving to stations, causing the limited trains that have arrived to be be completely inundated with commuters

Footage and photographs have surfaced online of crowds packed onto train stations desperately waiting for their train to arrive. Pictured: Parramatta station

Some trains that are still running have been forced to slow down and are only travelling at 40kmph.

As of 8.30am, the North Shore Line is only running between Hornsby and North Sydney and services are running at a reduced frequency between Hornsby and Central and Lidcombe and Olympic Park due to last week's storm damage.

There could be further frustration for commuters on Sydney's rail network today with new strike action starting tomorrow.

The Electrical Trades Union has notified Sydney Trains it will be slowing critical maintenance and repair work.

Certain maintenance jobs will be off-limits for workers. The Rail, Tram and Bus Union has also refused to do the work in solidarity.

While it's not expected to cause immediate disruption, there are warnings it could bring delays to the network if action is prolonged.

Sydney Trains chief executive Matt Longland said the ongoing industrial action would mean the 'network will eventually suffer'.

'There will be a point where equipment, such as substations, overhead wiring and track points cannot continue to be used if those maintenance activities have not been performed,' he told Daily Telegraph.

'If the bans continue indefinitely, this could progressively result in safety issues on the rail network and growing portions of the network unable to be operated.'

Sydney commuters are being told to expect more delays and 'gaps in service and cancellations' (pictured, large crowds formed at Erskineville on Saturday)

Transport Minister David Elliott said discussions between industry groups was ongoing (pictured, crowd of commuters waiting for a train over the weekend)

'At this time we are not expecting any service impacts for our customers next week.'

Transport Minister David Elliott said discussions between industry groups was ongoing.

'I will continue to meet with (the ETU) but I can't help being suspicious about the motives as we approach two elections,' he said.

Commuters were told last week to steer clear of train travel as flood damage impacted the rail network.

Unprecedented rainfall in the Harbour City sparked major delays while flooding on the tracks prompted some trains to travel slower than normal.

The NSW Government said flooding, landslide and trees on tracks were the main contributors to the delays.
An Arizona State University freshman plummeted 20 feet to his death while on Spring Break in Mexico when he climbed over a short wall that had a dramatic drop on the other side.

Aiden Nevarez, 18, fell to his death in the early morning hours of March 7 at the Hotel Riu Santa Fe in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.

The area where Nevarez fell is described by his friends as a short, pony wall. Palm trees resembling short bushes covered the other side of the wall, disguising the 20-foot drop.

'It almost looks like it's just a shrub or a bush and the little wall that's there is about knee height,' Aiden's friend, Jake Reithinger, 19, who was with him in Cabo, told KTVK/KPHO.

But the greenery wasn't shrubbery, instead tops of palm trees and the freshman fell 20 feet to the ground below. It is unclear how Nevarez ended up going over the wall or why he was attempting to scale it.

Aiden Nevarez, 18, fell to his death in the early morning hours of March 7 at the Hotel Riu Santa Fe in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico

The area where Nevarez fell is described by his friends as a short, pony wall. Palm trees resembling short bushes covered the other side of the wall, disguising the 20-foot drop off

But his death was ruled an accident, according to his death certificate. The certificate does not indicate if he had drugs or alcohol in his system.

His heartbroken parents told the Arizona Republic that they believe changes, like better signage or a heightened wall, need to be made in light of their son's sudden accidental death.

'This can't happen to anyone else  it's completely senseless,' said Sayra Nevarez, his mother.

Nevarez was a former Pinnacle High School wrestler who graduated in 2021 and was currently a freshman at ASU studying business.

His friends describe him as someone who lit up every room he walked into, always with a positive attitude and a wearing a smile.

His friend Jack Fitzgerald, 19, who was also with him in Cabo, told The Arizona Republic that they landed around noon on Sunday and spent the day hanging out at the beach and exploring the area.

They were at a restaurant around midnight, he told The Republic, when 'out of nowhere,' Nevarez put his arm around him and told him he loved him, which he reciprocated.

'That was such a special moment,' Fitzgerald said.

Aiden Nevarez and Jack Fitzgerald

The group of friends were dropped off by their taxi driver around 2 a.m. Only a few hours later, Fitzgerald said he got a text that his best friend was gone.

'I dropped right to my knees in my room and I just couldn't believe it,' Fitzgerald said. 'It was the worst time of my life, and it really still is.'

His parents, Sayra and Matias Nevarez, said they were notified in a phone call from the consulate a few hours after the tragedy.

'You can't breathe, you can't process anything, you don't feel like anything is real,' Sayra Nevarez said in an interview with The Arizona Republic on Saturday. 'Everything stops  your life stops right there.'

They said their son had big plans for his life and a 'very, very bright future,' adding he was majoring in financial planning and was particularly interested in helping younger people understand finance.

'We love him so much and we're going to miss him until we see him again,' she said. 'I know wherever he's at right now, he's going to conquer because that's who Aiden was.'

More than $100,000 had been raised through GoFundMe as of Monday.

His mother said it has been 'so heartwarming' to see how much her son has touched others' lives, adding that he was and remains a 'bright, bright light.'

The proceeds will help with the expenses to bring his body home from Mexico and help with his final arrangements.

Spring Break trips are already in full swing for many, and Florida and Fort Lauderdale are bracing for 'triple' the amount of visitors compared to last year as tens of thousands of students prepare to celebrate the first Spring Break in the U.S. free of COVID rules.

Inhabitants of popular vacation spots, including Cancun, Miami, Pensacola, Fort Lauderdale and South Padre Island have to deal with observing never-ending crowds of college students having a good time, often blasting loud music and drinking alcohol from the first week of March until April.

Many popular springtime vacation spots are expecting at least double-to-triple amounts of spring breakers flying in this year between March and April, as resorts, nightclubs and other businesses are looking forward to recovering from time lost during the last two years due to the coronavirus pandemic. Pictured: A packed beach in Miami on Friday. None of the people pictured were involved in the drugs incident

A suspect believed to be connected to a group of spring breakers who overdosed on cocaine laced with fentanyl, has been named as 21-year-old Axel Giovany Casseus

Last week, six West Point cadets were hospitalized after overdosing on cocaine laced with fentanyl.

Axel Giovany Casseus, 21, of Lauderhill, near Fort Lauderdale, was arrested on Friday night in Wilton Manors, Florida, for allegedly selling cocaine to an undercover officer. He's believed to be connected to the overdoses.

He was charged with one felony count of trafficking cocaine of less than 200 grams and is being held at the Broward Main Jail, with bail set at $50,000, according to The Sun-Sentinel.

Authorities allege that Casseus sold 43 grams of cocaine Friday to an undercover detective, who followed him back to a hotel, according to WPLG.

A seventh individual, only identified as a woman, was later taken to the hospital and treated, as well, the Sun-Sentinel reported.

It is unclear if she suffered an overdose or what condition she is in. It is also unknown if she attended West Point with the other patients.

DailyMail.com reached to the U.S. Army Academy at West Point and was told by a representative that the prestigious military college was 'aware' of the incident in Florida involving its students.

'The U.S. Military Academy is aware of the situation involving West Point cadets, which occurred Thursday night in Wilton Manors, FL,' a West Point spokesperson said in an email. 'The incident is currently under investigation and no other details are available at this time.'
Like everyone Ive had my share of events and experiences that changed my life; the day I got married, the birth of our firstborn, establishing the church I pastor, and the week I spent in Clinton, Tennessee.

Yeah, I know someone is thinking, Clinton, Tennessee? Let me explain.

Advertisement

It wouldnt be hyperbole if I said theres literally next to nothing in Clinton, Tennessee except a traffic light, gas station, Waffle House and, of course, Walmart.

According to the 2020 census, Clinton has a population a little over 10,000 and a per capita income of $17,730. A look at some of its other demographics would lead one to surmise that the town isnt exactly the hotbed of racial diversity, equity or cultural inclusivity.

Advertisement

However, Clinton, Tennessee does have one thing that no other place in the world has  the Alex Haley Farm. Thats exactly where I spent one week during the summer of 2014, as part of the numerous weeklong residential intensives required to complete my doctoral degree.

Haley Farm is a beautiful 157-acre farm that once belonged to Pulitzer Prize-winner Alex Haley, author of Roots.

The farm was purchased by the Childrens Defense Fund in 1994 and is now a warm, welcoming countryside retreat, consisting of guest cottages, a chapel designed by architect Maya Lin, meeting lodges and the Langston Hughes Library  a private, noncirculating 5,000 volume reference library housing the largest collection of the poets works.

The farms serene setting is an ideal environment to connect with nature, recharge ones physical and spiritual batteries and brainstorm strategies. It is frequented by community organizers, scholars, religious leaders, activists, authors and policy makers.

The farm is the primary training ground for the Childrens Defense Funds flagship initiative, Freedom Schools. My fellow graduate students and I were fortunate enough to be there while 3,500 mostly Black college students from around the country were there being trained in the implementation of the Freedom School model.

Inspired by the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project of 1964, when community leaders organized Black Americans to register to vote, the Freedom School initiative helps historically marginalized students in grades K-12 fall in love with themselves and learning.

It also nurtures skills in areas of conflict resolution, civic engagement and social action. This six weeks intense summer opportunity is designed to improve reading, language skills and interpersonal relationships, and strengthen families.

It also works to connect children to medical and other needed social services and develop in all participants the skills needed to improve conditions for children and families in their communities.

Advertisement

Gregory J. Edwards (CONTRIBUTED PHOTO)

Students write and draw positive affirmations on poster board at P.S. 5 Port Morris, an elementary school in The Bronx borough of New York. (Brittainy Newman/AP)

In addition to the Integrated Reading Curriculum, a culturally relevant and responsive curriculum, the very nomenclature, pedagogy and practices used in Freedom Schools embodies the freedom, liberation and hope every student needs to self-actualize and thrive.

For example, in Freedom Schools students are called scholars and their college-enrolled instructors are called servant leader interns. Moreover, the gathering time that starts each morning is called harambe, a Swahili word that means lets pull together.

Harambe is a time when scholars are led by servant leader interns in cheers and chants, listen to guest readers, recognize and affirm their fellow scholars, and then sing the motivational Something Inside So Strong, a song written by Libri Siffre in 1984.

So just imagine being a 42-year-old man of Black African heritage, an American citizen well on your journey to consciousness yet in many ways still held hostage by the bitter memories of being raised in a predominately white rural racially segregated town, and a product of predominately white public schools, now standing amid 3,500 Black college students from all over the country and all beautiful shades of Blackness. College students from Howard and Harvard, Morehouse and Michigan State and a host of other educational institutions and all singing Something Inside So Strong.

The higher you build your barriers

The taller I become

Advertisement

The farther you take my rights away

The faster I will run

You can deny me

You can decide to turn your face away

No matter, cos theres....

Something inside so strong.

Advertisement

I have mentally revisited this experience several times. Each time I make a rather futile attempt to put into words exactly what I felt and experienced seeing thousands of brilliant, beautiful Black college thinkers at the Alex Haley Farm seeing each other and making each other be seen, and the closest Ive come is a quote from Pauli Murray, hope is a song in a weary throat.

This experience was not only foundational to my doctoral dissertation on dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline, but also the impetus for the Resurrected Community Development Corporation. It established the James Lawson Freedom School in the Lehigh Valley, in partnership with the Childrens Defense Fund.

Imagine, at the age of 42 a Black graduate student from Pennsylvania went to Clinton, Tennessee and for the first time looked into a mirror and saw himself.

Freedom Schools do exactly that  help students whove been made invisible by forces seen and unseen see themselves and the world around them.

If you want to help put flesh on hope, I invite you to join the Lehigh Valleys Freedom School Movement. Harambe.

Rev. Dr. Gregory J. Edwards is president and CEO of the Resurrected Community Development Corp. and founder of James Lawson Freedom Schools of the Lehigh Valley.
A Russian oligarch linked to men accused of making illegal donations to a political action committee backing Donald Trump was secretly charged with conspiracy last year in a New York court, prosecutors revealed Monday.

Andrey Muraviev, 47, who made his fortune in cement after the collapse of the Soviet Union, had already been named as the source of cash used by Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, former associates of Trump's former lawyer Rudy Giuliani, as they tried to win licenses for legal cannabis and marijuana businesses.

But on Monday it emerged that he had been charged when an indictment was unsealed.

U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said he had attempted to use a million dollars to influence the 2018 elections.

'He attempted to corrupt our political system to advance his business interests,' he said.

'The Southern District of New York is committed to rooting out efforts by foreigners to interfere with our elections.'

Prosecutors told a judge that the businessman was not in custody and was believed to be in Russia.

Russian Oligarch Andrey Muraviev who has been accused of making illegal campaign contributions, allegedly working with two of Rudy Giuliani's associates

Ukrainian-American businessman Lev Parnas has coffee with Giuliani at the Trump Hotel in Washington DC. Giuliani has not been accused of wrongdoing in the case

Details emerged at a time when Russia's wealthy elite are under intense scrutiny for their ties to President Vladimir Putin.

Some have had their overseas investments frozen as part of a tightening economic noose on Moscow as the West tries to halt Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

But Muraviev's name came up as part of a long-running investigation into campaign dontaions.

Michael J. Driscoll, head of New York's FBI office, said Muraviev conspired with Parnas, Fruman and Andrey Kukushkin to make illegal contributions.

'The money Muraviev injected into our political system, as alleged, was directed to politicians with views favorable to his business interests and those of his co-conspirators,' Driscoll said.

'As today's action demonstrates, we will continue to aggressively pursue all those who seek to illegally effect our nations elections.'

Parnas and Fruman were involved in Giuliani's unsuccessful efforts to get Ukrainian officials to investigate Joe Biden's son during Biden's campaign for president.

Giuliani remains under criminal investigation as authorities decide whether his interactions with Ukraine officials required him to register as a foreign agent, but he wasn't alleged to have been involved in illegal campaign contributions and wasn't part of a recent New York trial.

Muraviev was the founder of a cement company in Russia before selling it for a vast profit and setting up an investment firm.

Prosecutors said Muraviev's money was used to reimburse and fund federal and state political donations in Florida, Nevada and Texas, and Muraviev agreed that his money could also be used for donations to politicians in New York and New Jersey.

Muraviev, 47, traveled to Nevada as part of the conspiracy and received regular updates from Kukushkin about the political progress of their pursuit of cannabis and marijuana licenses, the indictment said.

Kukushkin, a Ukrainian-born investor, was scheduled to be sentenced on Tuesday after he and the Soviet-born Parnas were convicted of campaign finance crimes at an October trial in Manhattan.

Kukushkin's lawyer, Gerald Lefcourt, asked a judge Monday to consider sentencing Kukushkin to a counseling program and community service that would allow him to volunteer to work 28 hours a week assisting with the Ukrainian refugee crisis.

After the Muraviev charges were unsealed, Lefcourt described the government's timing as a 'publicity stunt' designed to influence Kukushkin's sentencing.

Prosecutors have asked that Kukushkin be sentenced to four to five years in prison, which would be consistent with the calculations of federal sentencing guidelines. In a pre-sentence submission, they dismissed as 'self-serving' Kukushkin's claims that he never agreed to help steer Muraviev's money to U.S. political candidates and was unaware of U.S. election laws.

Fruman, who pleaded guilty in September to a single charge of solicitation of a contribution by a foreign national, was sentenced in January to a year and a day in prison.

Parnas awaits sentencing.
A black man has been charged with attempted murder as a hate crime after he was caught on video punching a 67-year-old Asian woman more than 125 times and stomping on her as she tried to get into her Yonkers apartment.

Tammel Esco, 42, was arrested at the scene and taken to Westchester County Jail on Friday at around 6.15pm.

Esco, who spent time in prison for assault and criminal sale of a controlled substance, allegedly yelled a racial slur at the woman when she walked by him on her way home.

Surveillance footage shows the victim fiddling with her keys while trying to unlock her front door when Esco creeps up behind her and knocks her down with a punch to the head. He beat her repeatedly with alternating fists and stomped on her before walking out as she writhed in pain in front of her apartment.

The woman, who is in stable condition at a local hospital, suffered cuts to her head and face, facial bone fractures and bleeding on the brain, according to Yonkers police.

Friday's attack in Yonkers, a city in Westchester County just outside of New York City, was similar to the horrific murder of an Asian-American woman by a homeless man who followed her into her building in Chinatown.

Crime in the the five boroughs is up by 45 percent compared to this time last year, with robbery up by 43.5 percent and assault up by 17.2 percent.

Tammel Esco, 42, has been charged with attempted murder after he was caught on video punching a 67-year-old Asian woman over 125 times and stomping on her on Friday

Authorities are investigating the incident as a hate crime because Esco allegedly yelled a racial slur at her when she passed him by before the beating

Esco followed the unidentified victim to the vestibule in front of her front door on Friday night. The woman is in stable condition, but suffered bleeding from the brain and cuts and facial bone fractures

Police arrived at the building to find the unidentified victim bloodied in the vestibule while Esco was still outside. He has been charged with with attempted murder in the second degree as a hate crime.

Video of Friday's attack shows the woman, dressed in a black hoodie and pants, pushing a cart into her building's vestibule.

She reaches for her keys and begins to unlock the door when Esco, who was walking behind her, watches her from behind the glass door for a couple of seconds.

The attack happened in Yonkers, a suburb right outside of New York City. During the month of February, the NYPD reported a 58.7 percent increase in total crime

He quickly barges into the vestibule and punches her in the head, alternating his fists in quick succession as he strikes her over 125 times in next minute-and-a-half.

He then switches to stomping, at one point taking a breather after over-exerting himself during the attack.

Yonkers Mayor Mike Spano condemned the attack.

'Hate crimes are beyond intolerable in our city. I applaud our Yonkers Police for swiftly apprehending this violent criminal and removing him from our streets,' Spano said in a statement Monday.

'I expect the suspect to be charged to the fullest extent of the law for his heinous actions. I continue to keep the victim and her family in our thoughts and prayers.'

Yonkers Police Commissioner John Mueller called the attack 'despicable.'

'And targeting her because of her race makes it more so,' Mueller said. '

'This defendant must be held to the maximum punishment allowed by law to send a clear message that hateful, violent behavior will not be tolerated in our communities. Our thoughts and prayers are with the victim and her family, that she may make a full recovery.'

Esco has previously been charged with criminal sale of a controlled substance in the third degree and second degree assault.

He served time in prison from May 2011 to October 2013. His post-release supervision expired in 2018, according to state records.

Yonkers Mayor Mike Spano condemned the attack in a statement on Monday, calling it a 'hate crime' and saying that Esco must be 'held to the maximum punishment allowed by law'

The FBI found that 8,263 criminal hate crime incidents were reported to them in 2020, an increase of about 504 incidents since 2019. The spike comes as more local law enforcement agencies report crime incidents in their jurisdictions to the FBI compared to previous years

Asian Americans in NYC have experienced a 343 percent increase in hate crimes in 2021, with 133 attacks

Crime in the city is up by 45 percent compared to this time last year, with robbery up by 43.5 percent and assault up by 17.2 percent

Anti-Asian hate crimes nationwide spiked by 339 percent last year compared to 2020. In New York City, just a few miles from Yonkers, hate crimes surged a shocking 96 percent throughout 2021.

Asian hate crimes in the city skyrocketed 343 percent from 2020 to 2021 as the pandemic rattled on, with 133 Asian-Americans experiencing terrifying and dangerous experiences of discrimination, according to recent data from the NYPD.

Last month, a 35-year-old Asian advertising creative was knifed to death in her Chinatown apartment by a homeless serial criminal who was free on bail.

Christina Yuna Lee was from New Jersey and had spearheaded campaigns for brands including Equinox and Google.

Christina Yuna Lee, 35, was stabbed to death in her New York City apartment by a homeless serial criminal. Assamad Nash, 25, has been arrested for her murder after she was found dead in the blood-soaked bathtub of her Chinatown apartment

Body of Christina Yuna Lee is wheeled out after she was stabbed to death in her apartment

Assamad Nash, 25, was accused of murdering Lee while on bail for a prior assault

Assamad Nash, 25, was arrested for the February 13 murder of Lee. Terrifying footage showed the man police say is him creep into the building behind Lee after she got out of a cab.

Lee's body was found in a blood-soaked bathtub in her apartment. Her landlord blamed District Attorney Alvin Bragg's soft-on-crime policies for the killing.

40-year-old consultant Michelle Go was killed after a homeless man shoved her in front of a subway car in January. Her murder started calls for safety in NYC's subway system

In one of the first notable crimes of the year, Deloitte executive Alyssa Go was pushed in front of an oncoming train at West 42nd Street and Broadway the morning on January 15.

Go, who lived on the Upper East Side, was randomly targeted, police said.

Simon Martial, 61, was charged with second-degree murder.

Martial has a history of mental illness and told reporters to 'go f*** yourself' as he was walked out of a Midtown precinct later that night, declaring himself 'God.'

'Yeah because I'm God,' he said when asked if he killed Go, the New York Post reported. 'Yes I did. I'm God, I can do it.'

He then claimed: 'She stole my f***ing jacket, that's why.'

The mayors of New York City and Washington DC are now advising homeless people to seek shelter in public facilities to avoid an on-the-run serial killer who they believe has shot at least five homeless men in the last month, killing two.

Martial has a criminal record of at least three arrests dating back to 1998. His sister told the New York Post that her brother has a history of mental illness

In the last month, at least five homeless men have been shot - two of them fatally - and one has been found dead in what police fear may be a string of attacks by the same person

NYPD officers at the scene where another homeless person was found dead on Murray Street near Varick Street in New York on Sunday night

The serial killer most recently struck in the early hours of Saturday morning, killing one homeless man and shooting another in the arm within a period of just one hour.

On Sunday, a third New York City homeless man was found dead in Tribeca. It did not appear that he had been shot, but police are now working to determine his cause of death.

Earlier this month, three homeless men were shot and killed in separate attacks in Washington DC. Police now believe that the three DC men- and one New York City man who was shot on Saturday - were all targeted by the same person.

HOMELESS KILLINGS WASHINGTON DC March 3: Homeless man is shot in DC but survives March 8: Second homeless man shot in DC but survives March 9: Third homeless man found in DC. His body is found inside a tent, on fire. Autopsy confirms he was shot and stabbed NEW YORK CITY March 12, 4.30am: Homeless man shot in the arm on King Street, NYC. He woke up and confronted the shooter, asking him: 'What the hell are you doing?' March 12, 5pm: After receiving a 911 call, cops find homeless man dead inside his sleeping bag at 148 Lafayette Street. Surveillance footage shows he was shot nearly 12 hours earlier at 6am. Advertisement

As NYPD officers work to catch the suspected serial killer, Mayor Eric Adams and DC Mayor Muriel Bowser are telling homeless people to seek shelter urgently.

DailyMail.com obtained an internal memo that the NYPD sent out to precincts alerting cops about the pre-dawn attacks on homeless men in Manhattan and Washington, D.C., noting that 'in all incidents, victims were sleeping in a public space during the first platoon.'

Officers were directed to immediately survey their patrol areas and engage with homeless individuals, advise them about the incidents and show them wanted flyers with pictures of the person of interest, while also checking on their well-being and offering shelter and other services.

'Members assigned to the Patrol Services Bureau precincts area to conduct frequent grid canvasses of their assigned sector or area of deployment, utilizing a systematic block by block method,' the memo adds. 'Special attention should be given to areas prone to encampment.'

In a joint statement on Sunday night, the pair said: 'Our communities in DC and New York City are heartbroken and disturbed by these heinous crimes in which an individual has been targeting some of our most vulnerable residents.

'The two of us spoke about how our teams can coordinate and help one another, and we are calling on everyone in our cities to look at the images of the suspect and report any information, however small, that may be useful.

'The work to get this individual off our streets before he hurts or murders another individual is urgent.

'As our law enforcement agencies work quickly with federal partners to locate the suspect, we are also calling on unsheltered residents to seek shelter.'

Many asked where exactly they expect the homeless to go.

In New York City, there are estimated to be around 93,000 homeless people and around 1,618 in DC.
Advertisement

Most victims of targeted racist abuse towards Muslims in Australia are women wearing a hijab with a majority of the perpetrators being men, new research has found.

The report, led by Dr Derya Iner from Charles Sturt University, surveyed nearly 250 incidents of religious and racial vilification online and offline from January 2018 to December 2019.

It drew on verified data from the Islamophobia Register of Australia, a community-run service founded in 2014, analysing 138 physical incidents and 109 online cases.

'Hijabi women, unaccompanied women and women with children are vulnerable; therefore, they are the easiest targets for cowardly perpetrators,' the report's authors said.

Muslim women wearing a hijab were overwhelmingly victims of Islamophobia in Australia, a new report has revealed (pictured, women wearing Burkas in Lakemba, in Sydney's southwest in 2018)

The new report, led by Dr Derya Iner from Charles Sturt University, surveyed nearly 250 incidents of religious and racial vilification online and offline from January 2018 to December 2019 (pictured, a women wearing a Burka in Lakemba)

'Of the 103 victims, 85 per cent were wearing hijab, 48 per cent were alone, 15 per cent were with children and 12 per cent were with other women'.

The authors said nearly two thirds (63 per cent) of physical incidents of abuse took place in public spaces and were committed by men (74 per cent).

'The abusive behaviours towards hijabi Muslim women also reflect intolerance to Muslims' visibility and especially women's expression of faith and difference through the hijab,' the report said.

The report released on the third anniversary of the Christchurch massacre in New Zealand analysed how the attacks inspired online abuse targeting Muslims.

A white nationalist Australian gunman killed 51 Muslim worshippers in March 2019 in a Christchurch mosque.

In the two weeks following the terrorist attack, hate speech online towards Muslims in Australia spiked by 65 per cent.

The report found two thirds (63 per cent) of physical incidents of abuse took place in public spaces and were committed by men (74 per cent) (pictured, women wear Burkas in the Sydney suburb of Lakemba)

'Hijabi women, unaccompanied women and women with children are vulnerable; therefore, they are the easiest targets for cowardly perpetrators,' the report's authors said (pictured, women wear Burkas as they cross a street in Lakemba)

Most of the 109 online cases of Islamophobic abuse examined occurred on Facebook (83 per cent) - a popular platform among right-wing and neo-Nazi groups.

The authors, who attached sample screenshots of online abuse including death threats, said far-right extremist Australian political parties and leaders had "a major role in creating online hate agendas which were reproduced by far-right group administrators and followers'.

'The nature of the Christchurch attacks and their origin and effects online prove that treating online violence as less real is illusory and unhelpful,' Dr Iner said.

She called for a holistic approach to dealing with racial discrimination and religious vilification that takes into account the severity of virtual networks of hate.

'Islamophobia is not a "Muslim"problem but a social cohesion risk,' the report recommended.

'It requires national engagement if Australia is to live up to its multicultural legacy.'
A Kansas middle school teacher who was suspended from work for refusing to use a students preferred first name and gender pronouns because it went against her Christian beliefs is suing the school district.

Fort Riley Middle School math teacher Pamela Ricard said in a federal lawsuit filed last week that the Geary County School District violated her constitutional rights and did not accommodate her 'sincere religious beliefs consistent with the traditional Christian and biblical understanding of the human person and biological sex' when it placed her on leave for three days.

Attorney Mark Edwards said the district would have no comment on the lawsuit. The school is located in Fort Riley, a US Army base that is 130 miles west of Kansas City.

Ricard, 58, who has taught at the school since 2005, was reprimanded and suspended last April for addressing a 'biologically female' student as 'miss' to avoid using the students preferred first name after Picard was told that the student used he/him pronouns.

Pamela Ricard, a math teacher at Fort Riley Middle School in Kansas (pictured), has filed a federal lawsuit, claiming that her constitutional rights have been violated because she refused to use a student's preferred pronouns

Ricard believed addressing the student as 'Miss (legal/enrolled last name)' respected the student while also upholding Ricards religious convictions, according to the lawsuit.

A school counselor had told Ricard the student preferred a first name different from his legal and enrolled name. The student had never told Ricard of the preference, but a classmate told Ricard the student preferred he/him pronouns, according to the lawsuit, filed by Kriegshauser Ney Law Group.

The suit says Ricard believes that God assigns gender at birth and any policy requiring her to use language that is different from the students biological sex 'actively violates Ms. Ricards religious beliefs.'

Neither the school nor the district had a formal policy on gender pronouns at the time. Ricard was suspended under the districts bullying and diversity and inclusion policies.

A week after her suspension, the middle school principal sent staff new training and protocol materials requiring them to use students preferred names and pronouns.

During an appeal of her discipline, Ricard asked three times to be given a religious exemption to the policy, but her beliefs were never accommodated, according to the lawsuit.

The school districts Board of Education in September approved a policy requiring that students preferred names and pronouns be used. At that meeting, the board also voted to deny Ricards request for a religious accommodation.

The district is threatening to discipline Ricard again, and even possibly fire her, if she refuses to use students preferred pronouns, or chooses to use gender-neutral language, according to the lawsuit.

'I continue to enjoy teaching my students day in and day out, but the stigma of being officially labeled a "bully" simply for using a student's enrolled last name has been disheartening,' Ricard told CNN. 'I love all my students, but I shouldn't be forced to contradict my core beliefs in order to teach math in a public school.'

Ricard is suing the school board, as well as Superintendent Reginald Eggleston and Fort Riley Middle School principal Kathleen Brennan. The lawsuit alleges the districts actions violated Ricards constitutional rights to free speech, free exercise of her religion, due process and equal protection under the law.

'Our suit contends that schools cannot force teachers to promote novel views about gender fluidity and ever-expanding pronoun categories without regard to the First Amendment or due process,' said Josh Ney, one of her attorneys. 'Throughout her career, Ms. Ricard has consistently treated every student in her classroom with respect and dignity; unfortunately, the school district has not treated Ms. Ricard with similar good faith or basic fairness.'

Ricard is asking to have her disciplinary record cleared and is seeking 'nominal damages.'
Paul said he would introduce an amendment breaking Fauci's job into three separate roles with five-year terms

Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul announced he's introducing an amendment on Monday to boot Dr. Anthony Fauci out of the job he's held since 1984, accusing the medical expert of 'abusing' his power during the COVID-19 pandemic.

It's the latest move in a war of words between the two arch-rivals that's lasted nearly the entire pandemic since it began in March 2020.

'Weve learned a lot over the past two years, but one lesson in particular is that no one person should be deemed "dictator in chief." No one person should have unilateral authority to make decisions for millions of Americans,' Paul wrote in a Fox News op-ed.

'To ensure that ineffective, unscientific lockdowns and mandates are never foisted on the American people ever again, I will introduce an amendment to eliminate Dr. Anthony Faucis position as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and divide his power into three separate new institutes.'

Paul said the amendment to the United States Code would be voted on as soon as this week.

'Each of these three institutes will be led by a director who is appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate for a five-year term. This will create accountability and oversight into a taxpayer-funded position that has largely abused its power and has been responsible for many failures and misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic,' he explained.

The COVID-19 pandemic has killed more than 960,000 Americans since it began.

Its two years have been marked by partisan battles over health mandates such as lockdowns, vaccine requirements and mask rules.

Paul, who has been among the loudest critics of broad public health orders, bashed Fauci as an 'unelected bureaucrat with far too much power.'

Fauci and Paul have frequently clashed during the COVID-19 pandemic

'No one person should have the sole authority to dictate science, especially when that one person wasnt ever following the science. Ive said that from the beginning, and Ive been proven right over, and over, and over again. On masks, lockdowns, schools, natural immunity, all of it,' the Kentucky Republican said.

He referenced a late November 2021 CBS interview that sparked GOP outrage, during which Fauci said his critics -- who are all Republicans -- were actually 'anti-science.'

'I'm just going to do my job and I'm going to be saving lives and they're going to be lying,' he said at the time.

Paul, who trained and practiced as an ophthalmologist before being elected to Congress, said on Monday: 'Ive been a physician for over 33 years. In all my years studying and practicing medicine, I had never encountered someone with the gall to proclaim himself "the science" and portray anyone opposing him as "attacking science." That is, until Dr. Fauci became the COVID dictator-in-chief.'

'If Fauci was simply one family doctor in Peoria, his mistakes would not be so catastrophic. But since Fauci is allowed to be a medical czar for the whole country, his errors are amplified throughout the land,' he added.

'When Fauci misinforms the public that cloth masks work, he risks the health of anyone who believes a cloth mask will protect them when caring for a spouse or relative with COVID.'

When the highly-contagious Omicron variant ripped through the US and other countries in late December and early this year, public health experts urged Americans to wear KN95 or N95 surgical masks rather than cloth varieties -- claiming they did little for the new strain.

'Cloth masks are little more than facial decorations. There's no place for them in light of Omicron,' CNN Medical Analyst Dr. Leana Wen said late last year.

Fauci noted to the same outlet in mid-January, 'I recommend you get the highest quality mask that you can tolerate and that's available to you.'

'Right now, there doesn't seem to be any shortage of the masks that were some time ago were not available. If you can tolerate an N95, do it. If you want to get a KN95, fine.'

For some time after the pandemic began, US health officials urged Americans to cover their faces with whatever they could fine, save for surgical masks that had been in short supply and were needed by hospital workers dealing with a deluge of COVID patients.

Since the strain on them eased the CDC amended its guidance to encourage people to find the best masks accessible.

Republicans seized on this to accuse US officials of flip-flopping based on their agendas rather than science.

In his op-ed Paul also reiterated accusations that Fauci allowed NIAID to fund controversial gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China, which he and other GOP lawmakers have blamed as the source of the pandemic.

When Fauci decides that he alone will define and fund dangerous "gain-of-function" research, his disregard for the possibility of a lab leak is felt worldwide,' Paul wrote.

'The biggest lesson we have learned over the last two years is that no one person should have this much unchecked power. And my amendment, which will get a vote this week, will finally force accountability and fire Dr. Fauci.'

COVID-19 cases nationwide are at their lowest level since last summer, when President Joe Biden's promised 'summer of freedom' was derailed by the Delta strain.

The number of new cases recorded on Sunday was 6,382, according to the New York Times' tracker.

The average rate of new cases plummeted 48 percent over the last two weeks.

Hospitalizations and ICU admissions saw similarly steep drops, 43 percent and 46 percent respectively.

Deaths dropped by nearly a third in the same window, 31 percent.
The logo for Prime Minister Scott Morrison's gender equality organisation has been removed from the government's website after it was ridiculed due to its phallic appearance.

The Women's Network - a wing of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet - has been widely mocked this week over the new purple logo, which shows a 'W' next to a purple bar.

'No logical mind in existence would entertain this as a coincidence/accident,' one Reddit user wrote. 'That is a penis and balls, sir.'

The department has since taken down the logo, which it claimed was 'consulted on widely' and based on previous designs used by the network.

Australians were quick to draw similarities between the new design for the Women's Network logo and the male anatomy

The spokesman said the 'W' had been used to 'establish a consistent look and feel' with its past logos.

'The rebrand was completed internally, using existing resources, and designs were consulted on widely. No external providers were engaged for this work.

'The rebrand was completed internally, using existing resources, and designs were consulted on widely. No external providers were engaged for this work,' the spokesman said.

'The logo has been removed from the department's website, pending consultation with staff.'

The spokesman said neither the prime minister nor his office were involved in the design of the logo.

The design quickly went viral after first being shared late on Sunday night, with many observers adamant the logo resembled male genitalia - while others saw a pair of breasts or even a tampon.

Other comments felt the purple colour choice is identical to the eggplant emoji - an emoji that has been widely repurposed to symbolise someone's manhood.

'I'm honestly at a point where I don't know if they are just so incredibly stupid or if they are doing it intentionally because they are just so misogynistic,' one user commented.

The Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet has since taken down the logo, which it claimed was 'consulted on widely'. Pictured: Prime Minister Scott Morrison

Another said: 'Might also add that the creation of this comes after sexual assault scandals amongst several party members and staffers of the main parties.'

Women's Network Australia - one of the country's largest organisations supporting women in business - had called for the logo to be removed.

'While it was encouraging to see the prime minister's department considering equal opportunity as an issue, the choice of logo and name was unfortunate and should be removed,' WNA CEO Cheryl Gray said.

Last month, Scott Morrison apologised for his government's failings towards women in Parliament, following backlash over its treatment of sexism and sexual assault scandals.

'I am sorry. We are sorry,' Mr Morrison said.

'Exploitation, abuse and harassment has played itself out through terrible traumatic and harrowing experiences.

The logo was being proudly displayed on the PM&C Women's Network website, before later being removed

'The harassment of staff, particularly female staff, as well as the harassment of female members and senators. This has to change, it is changing, and I believe it will change.'

The Women's Network was set up to advocate for equal opportunity and gender equality in the Australian public service by facilitating opportunities for learning, networking, career mobility, and flexible approaches to work.

The PM&C's website states that 'the network priorities are founded on driving cultural change and encouraging men to drive this cultural change, particularly in areas where men can make a significant contribution.'

As of March 2021, Australia ranked 50th on the Global Gender Gap report released by The World Economic Forum, dropping six places.
Russian commanders found guilty of committing war crimes in Ukraine could be jailed in Britain, Dominic Raab has warned.

The Deputy Prime Minister said commanders on the ground, as well as those in the Kremlin, who are carrying out war crimes 'must know that they cannot act with impunity'.

Mr Raab, speaking outside the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague, said Britain will provide support in bringing Russian war criminals - including Russian President Vladimir Putin - to justice.

He said that for those Russian commanders found guilty of war crimes, they would not only find themselves in court in the Hague, but also 'in a prison cell'.

Mr Raab also referenced the cases of war criminals Radovan Karadzic and former Liberian President Charles Taylor, who are serving their sentences in British prisons.

The Deputy Prime Minister said Russian commanders on the ground, as well as those in the Kremlin, who are carrying out war crimes 'must know that they cannot act with impunity'

Mr Raab, speaking outside the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague, said Britain will provide support in bringing Russian war criminals - including Russian President Vladimir Putin - to justice. Pictured: The International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, Wednesday, March 31, 2021 (file photo)

Firefighters work on a building destroyed by a Russian shell, in Kharkov, Ukraine, on Monday

'Russian commanders carrying out war crimes should know they cannot act with impunity. Like Radovan Karadzic and Charles Taylor before them, their actions risk landing them in a jail cell,' Mr Raab said.

Former Bosnian Serb leader Karadzic was convicted of genocide in Bosnia at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in 2016, whilst Taylor was convicted in 2013 of abetting war crimes including rape and mutilation in Sierra Leone.

Mr Raab said Britain backed the ICC's investigation into alleged war crimes in Ukraine 'to the hilt'.

After Russia's invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan said he had opened a formal investigation into possible atrocities on Ukrainian soil since 2014, when Moscow-based separatists seized part of the country's far east.

The ICC investigates and, where warranted, tries individuals charged with the most serious crimes of concern to the international community. Such crimes include genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of aggression.

Putin's forces have been accused of committing war crimes after Ukrainian cities were indiscriminately shelled, leaving thousands of civilians dead and many more wounded.

Kyiv, its Western allies, and the UN has said there is a mounting body of evidence that Putin's forces are committing crimes, including attacking civilians with 'missiles, heavy artillery shells, rockets, and air strikes.'

Firefighters work on a building destroyed by a Russian shell, in Kharkov, Ukraine, on Monday

Ukrainian servicemen patrol in the streets as security measures tightened due to the ongoing Russian attacks in Odessa, Ukraine, on Monday

'It is important to get the deterrent message out to commanders on the ground in Ukraine and in Moscow that if they commit war crimes they could end up not just in the dock of a court in The Hague but in a prison cell,' Raab told journalists in The Hague on Monday after meeting Khan.

'The commanders on the ground - those who may be receiving illegal orders as well as those in the Kremlin - need to know that [they will be held to account],' he said.

Mr Raab added that for this to be a credible message, Britain and other countries needed to offer the ICC 'extra support' to fulfil its mandate in Ukraine. He did not give specifics.

The Deputy PM also said Britain would provide a package of financial and technical support to the ICC to investigate the potential war crimes in Ukraine.

The government is also offering police and military analysis and specialist IT help to collect and preserve evidence for the ICC, as well as legal expertise.

Putin's forces have been accused of committing war crimes after Ukrainian cities were indiscriminately shelled, leaving thousands of civilians dead and many more wounded. Pictured: A building is destroyed by a Russian air strike in the town of Okhtyrka, in the Sumy region, Ukraine, on Monday

When he announced the investigation, Khan said his office was scrambling for resources and needed everything from investigators to forensic language experts and psycho-social support.

Mr Raab added: 'Right now there is a big emphasis on preservation of evidence of war crimes that may or may not have happened in the various different reports that we have seen but also in what is going to be coming down the line as Putin responds in ever more barbaric ways to the situation, stuttering and stumbling, that he has been driving on the ground in terms of his own military campaign.'

Poland's foreign minister today accused Russia of 'state terrorism' for targeting civilians, schools, hospitals and other civilian infrastructure 'in an attempt to break the spirit of the Ukrainian people.'

Zbigniew Rau told the U.N. Security Council that Russia's 'unprovoked, unjustified and premeditated aggression' against Ukraine was 'poorly prepared and executed (and) turned out to be a strategic and tactical failure.'

'But instead of preventing further unnecessary deaths in its own ranks, the Kremlin changed its tactics,' he said.

'The invading force started to target the civilian population and infrastructure' in violation of the Geneva Conventions and international humanitarian law to try to break the Ukrainian resistance.

The ICC launched their investigation into alleged Russian war crimes after the UK and 37 other countries have referred Russia to the International Criminal Court over its devastating and illegal invasion of Ukraine.

Britain's Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said the referral was the largest in the court's history.

The countries include all EU member states, as well as Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand, Switzerland and several Latin American countries.

Mr Raab also declined to say whether the resources to be offered by Britain would be earmarked solely for Ukraine or whether they could also be used for some of the ICC's 16 ongoing investigations and trials.

He rejected any suggestion that such financial support for a specific investigation could unbalance the court's caseload.

'There are rules and provisions in place to avoid any perception of bias. The court is totally independent,' he said.

Meanwhile the EU's foreign policy chief says the 27-country bloc is finalizing its new round of sanctions against Russia for its 'barbaric' invasion of Ukraine.

Josep Borrell said Monday that the fourth package of coercive measures would target Russia's market access, membership in international financial institutions, and steel and energy sectors.

On Monday, a Russian air strike on the capital Kyiv killed at least two people and wounded others as it blew up and set light to an apartment building.

A town councilor for Brovary, east of Kyiv, was also killed in fighting there as shells fell on the towns of Irpin, Bucha and Hostomel.

Ukrainian officials said two more people died and seven were injured after Russian forces struck an airplane factory in Kyiv, sparking a large fire.

Airstrikes also hit residential buildings near the important southern city of Mykolaiv, as well as in the eastern city of Kharkiv.
This is what the end of a civilised world looks like  terrible and beautiful at the same time. It is almost midnight and below us, the town of Irpin is being pounded by artillery.

Night has become day and orange flames leap high and hypnotically so that the white concrete of the nearest tower blocks give off noontide glares.

Each new hit blossoms silently, before the profound boom of impact reaches our vantage point many seconds later.

We are on the 23rd storey of a residential tower on the very edge of the Kyiv suburb of Sviatoshyn. Here, we are separated from Irpin by a couple of miles of birch forest.

But from this height we are afforded an extraordinary panorama that encompasses not only the battered satellite town but the whole of the critical front-line to the north and west of Kyiv. It is here that the Russian armoured and airborne forces have massed in anticipation of a war-ending assault on the capital.

We are the guests of Andrei Shirimira, a classical violinist who trained at Kyiv's conservatoire and played in one of its orchestras. Now he is the only resident left on the top floor.

This is what the end of a civilised world looks like  terrible and beautiful at the same time. It is almost midnight and below us, the town of Irpin is being pounded by artillery

Alone, save for his terrified cat Masya, Andrei's plight reminds me of that of Matt Damon's astronaut in the film The Martian: unexpectedly alone in a dystopian, hostile universe. The difference is that Andrei, 51, chose to stay.

We had met him briefly last week when he described to us how sometimes his whole horizon seemed to be on fire  and he invited us to see for ourselves. We took up his offer.

He had not exaggerated. What follows is a surreal and disturbing night, during which our host plays some of the loveliest music ever composed, even as the sounds of the battle for Kyiv rattle his windows.

We arrive as the light is fading. From the west there is a sound like rolling thunder. It's not thunder of course. Three distinct columns of smoke are rising from Irpin. Only a few hours have passed since the death there of American filmmaker Brent Renaud.

A musical soiree with a difference: One time Kyiv Philharmonic orchestra violinist, turned vegetable peeler salesman Andrei Shirimira, serenades Daily Mail writer Richard Pendlebury

To the south west, the horizon is lost in a fug behind which a warehouse has been smouldering for days. To the north, beneath an enormous pall of smoke, oil flames can be seen leaping from the airfield at Hostomel, which Russian paratroopers took early in the war and is bitterly contested still.

'I used to live in the centre of Kyiv,' says Andrei, whose mournful demeanour belies a keen sense of humour. 'Then after I was divorced I moved here. It was nice, green, calm. Close to the lakes. It has the freshest air in Kyiv.'

We both laugh at the absurdity of those attractions now.

Dusk creeps over the forest. The distant warehouse is now glowing like the dying embers of a fire. The blaze at Hostomel is a fierce, concentrated, orange 'O', like the open mouth of a furnace. Andrei draws down the blinds. He does not want to attract sniper fire following unexplained small arms exchanges in the forest the previous night. This war does not discriminate between soldiers and artistes.

Andrei has already lost one violinist friend, Alexandra, who was killed at a Ukrainian checkpoint when the car she was a passenger in failed to slow sufficiently.

To the north, a light is shooting up into the heavens  before bursting into a thousand glittering fragments. Probably an air defence missile

Now comes news of the death of a 17-year-old musician from Andrei's home city of Chernihiv, under siege by the Russians to the north of Kyiv. His parents, a retired engineer and doctor, are trapped there. A huge detonation shakes the flat. As usual Masya is hiding under Andrei's bed.

'She is clever and charming but very frightened by the noise,' he says. 'She doesn't understand what is going on in our country.'

He brings her out to meet us. Masya looks alarmed. When he puts her down she darts back under the bed. Andrei is more blase. 'I have decided not to pay attention,' he says after more thuds.

'At the beginning I would go down to the basement shelter. But after three days I became fed up with it. It takes too long. I am 23 floors away.' Tonight he is the perfect host. He has made us pea soup.

When the artillery is silent, it is almost homely  just the ticking of the kitchen clock.

Our photographer Jamie shows Andrei a video of his children  Sophie, Luca and Bridget  playing a piece by Mozart. Now it is time for Andrei to take out his own violin. It was given to him 30 years ago by a former Red Army soldier called Fedor, who had looted it in Germany in 1945.

One time violinist with the Kyiv Philharmonic orchestra, turned vegetable peeler salesman Mr Shirimira, pictured in the morning light on his balcony overlooking the forests surrounding Northern Kyiv and it's satellite town Irpin

As Andrei tunes up, the war is knocking on the windows again.

The soiree begins with a piece by Paganini, then Csardas by Monti, an excerpt from the soundtrack of a Soviet television adaptation of Sherlock Holmes, before finishing with a tango that is lovely and a little sinister. We applaud him with emotion.

But the war refuses to be cowed by such beauty. It demands our full attention. And so we go out on to the balcony.

To the north, a light is shooting up into the heavens  before bursting into a thousand glittering fragments. Probably an air defence missile. What did it hit? A glow on the western horizon grows and swells like the rising sun and is then gone. Several seconds later the boooooom arrives.

The middle horizon is bathed in flames. Then, a flash and the entire skyline lights up. After that a whole series of flashes like lightning. It is frightening and thrilling, as if out there in the darkness some primeval beast is on the rampage.

But one is safe up here. Such height gives a spurious sense of security.

At 10.30pm toward Hostomel, the low cloud is illuminated by multiple explosions in the sky. Not to be outdone, the southern sector is lit up like day. Seconds later comes the crack of doom.

The exchanges go on and on like this. Eventually we repair to bed. I am bivouacking on the floor of Andrei's kitchen.

The Antonov aircraft factory not far from Mr Shirimira's flat has also been targeted. Pictured: Mr Shirimira on the balcony of his flat

Sleep does not come easy and at 5.15am a massive thud shakes me awake. The unpleasantries resume in earnest and for the first hour after sunrise, the low cloud is indistinguishable from the battle smoke.

Some of those earlier explosions have occurred inside the city limits. News comes that an apartment block in the northern suburb of Obolon has been hit by a Russian airstrike. One person is dead, dozens require evacuation. The Antonov aircraft factory not far from Andrei's flat has also been targeted.

After breakfast, Andrei plays us a little Bach on the balcony. He is competing now against a drumbeat barrage to the north west. The Hostomel fire, so bright last night, is hidden by an enormous blur of smoke. Poor Irpin is also obscured, by the fug of fresh hits.

'Those Russians, stupid idiots,' Andrei says, indicating his horizon. 'I could not believe this is possible in the 21st century. Putin is a coward and this war will be an inevitable defeat for him. But it's awful. Those poor people, so scared, so exhausted. I see the lines of evacuation buses each day below my window.'

Why doesn't he join them?

'My friends ask me why I stay here,' he admits. 'I don't know. Except I have the feeling that I will be OK.'

We hope so too, as we take our leave of this eccentric violinist, his shell-shocked cat and their grandstand view of the end of their civilised world.
The author of a race report has accused a university of cowardice after it withdrew its offer to award him an honorary degree.

Dr Tony Sewell, who runs a charity helping black children get into higher education, wrote a major study for Boris Johnson which concluded that Britains multi-racial society was a model to the world.

Although the report said that Britain was not yet a post-racial society, it found no evidence that the UK was institutionally racist.

The review, which was published last March, sparked an extraordinary culture row  with lobby groups branding it a whitewash.

Nottingham University had decided to offer Dr Sewell an honorary degree in late 2019  before the publication of the report.

But in December they told him this had been withdrawn because he had become the subject of political controversy.

Later this week, the Government is expected to publish its longawaited response to the report and Dr Sewell is hopeful they will accept many of his recommendations.

Dr Tony Sewell, who runs a charity helping black children get into higher education, wrote a major study for Boris Johnson which concluded that Britains multi-racial society was a model to the world

Nottingham University had decided to offer Dr Sewell an honorary degree in late 2019  before the publication of the report. But in December they told him this had been withdrawn because he had become the subject of political controversy

In an interview with the Daily Mail, he said: This is going to be life-changing for ethnic minorities and I just feel positive that weve been able to change the world.

But he accused lobby groups who dismissed the report without reading it as hating black success, adding: Some groups feel they can tell black people how to be black and in effect indulging a form of racism by doing that.

Dr Sewell, founder of the Generating Genius charity, also took aim at universities  saying they were stifling free speech like the Soviet Union.

He added: I have helped thousands of black children from poor backgrounds to get into universities. Im a one-man levelling-upper.

But [Nottingham University] said it would no longer be appropriate to award me the degree because they didnt want to offend the students at an award ceremony. How can you offend students with a report which says the equalities watchdog should have more power, that stop and search should be improved and that we need to get more people from ethnic minorities into university?

Referencing disgraced entertainers R Kelly and Bill Cosby, Dr Sewell continued: These are the type of people you decide to withdraw honours from. But they [the university] have acted like cowards, subject to lobbying groups.

I thought the work of a university was to deal with complex issues? [But] universities in England are like the Soviet Union. There is no free speech.

Later this week, the Government is expected to publish its longawaited response to the report and Dr Sewell is hopeful they will accept many of his recommendations. Pictured: Boris Johnson and Dr Sewell in No 10

Nottingham University is no stranger to woke controversy.

It operates a content warning policy that orders lecturers to warn students if modules reference any of 26 traumatic subjects including classism, transphobia and photos of blood.

In 2020, a midwifery undergraduate lost a placement after a lecturer claimed her anti-abortion views made her unfit to practise.

The university later apologised and paid a settlement to the student.

Dr Sewell also accused some media outlets of reworking the narrative when covering his report, adding that some of the commissioners who worked on it had come under unfair attack.

When [critics] see what is going to come out of this, they will see they have shot themselves in the foot, he added.

A University of Nottingham spokesperson said: 'The University has strict criteria governing the award of honorary degrees, as these are conferred at our public graduation ceremonies.

'The criteria preclude us from awarding them to figures who become the subject of political controversy.

'Since making the decision to confer an honorary degree in late 2019, the Universitys Honorary Degrees Committee noted that Mr Sewell became the subject of political controversy during 2021, and as such determined it would no longer be appropriate to award the degree.

'In withdrawing the offer, the University is categorically not making any judgement on Mr Sewell personally or expressing a view on his work. It is simply about ensuring that we apply the same criteria to all of those we consider for the accolade of an honorary degree from the University of Nottingham.

'We fully appreciate that was disappointing news and last December we offered Mr Sewell a sincere apology alongside an explanation for the decision. He remains a notable alumnus of the University, and it is deeply unfortunate that we have had to withdraw the offer.'
Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) told a room full of supporters that Nancy Pelosi has a 'drinking problem'  even though the House Speaker does not drink.

'Rules for thee but not for me I guess is Nancy Pelosi's, that's Nancy Pelosi's campaign slogan,' Cawthorn said, tearing into Pelosi  a figure who has often appeared in GOP campaign ads and fundraising pitches. The line is a favorite of House minority leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy (Calif.).

But Cawthorn went further, saying: 'I'll tell you I have to work with her every single day so please do pray for me. The theories of alcoholism are very true and it's very sad,' he said, according to video posted by Patriot Takes.

His line got chuckles during the event.

Pelosi, 81, doesn't drink, and hasn't for years. Her daughter Christine attacked prior slurs about her mom's alleged alcoholism in 2019, tweeting: 'Republicans and their conservative allies have been pumping this despicable fake meme for years! Now they are caught.

'#FactCheck: Madam Speaker doesnt even drink alcohol!'

SLUR: Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) in comments to supporters floated 'theories of alcoholism' about Speaker Nancy Pelosi, although the speaker doesn't drink

She has been the subject of doctored videos in the past that have been manipulated to make it appear she slurred her speech.

A 2020 video that showed her slurring her words and drinking from a plastic cup was revealed to have been altered.

Pelosi did stumble a bit over the word 'confabulator' during the press conference in May 2020, when she was asked to comment on a Trump tweet accusing MSNBC host Joe Scarborough of murder.

Cawthorn took heat from some fellow Republicans after he called Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky a 'thug' and said his government was 'corrupt, incredibly evil' even after Zelensky is fighting for his life amid the Russian invasion of his country.

'Remember, that Zelensky is a thug,' the 26-year-old freshman Republican said in the short clip shared by WRAL while apparently talking about U.S. military aide to the besieged country.

Fact-checkers have reported for more than a decade that Pelosi doesn't drink

Pelosi sat behind President Biden during his March 1 State of the Union. After one such address by Donald Trump, she tore up his speech

Cawthorn got chuckles when he alluded to 'theories of alcoholism'

Pelosi has been the subject of doctored videos suggesting she was drunk

The comments come after Cawthorn was captured on video disparaging Ukrainian President Zelensky as a thug, even as Ukraine suffers through an invasion by Russia

According to CNN, Cawthorn made the comments to a group of supporters in Asheville, North Carolina.

About an hour after the video was first posted, the North Carolina lawmaker condemned Russia's invasion on Twitter but then stunningly accused Zelensky of pushing 'misinformation' to pull Americans into the conflict.

South Carolina Republican GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham, like Cawthorn a Trump confidant, blasted the comments after they circulated. 'Like 90 percent of the country is with the Ukrainians,' Graham said. 'So when you see a member of Congress say things like this, the one thing I want you to know, they are outliers in the largest sense possible on our side.'

Cawthorn is one of 17 lawmakers, 15 Republicans and two Democrats, who voted against banning Russian energy products in response to the invasion of Ukraine, calling the legislation 'virtue signaling.'
A Town Square column in The Morning Call (March 3) noted that in 1994 a letter titled The Budapest Memorandum was written by representatives of the United States, United Kingdom, Ukraine and Russia that was sent to the secretary general of the United Nations. In the letter, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan agreed to give up their nuclear weapons and join in the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

What that treaty meant for them was that, in return for giving up their nuclear weapons, they got assurances that their independence and sovereignty would be respected and were given promises that no use of force would be employed against their existing borders, and their economies would not be threatened.

Advertisement

Isnt what is happening in Ukraine now a breach of that treaty? Who enforces these things? Or is that treaty like so many in the past? Not worth the paper its written on.

James Vitez

Advertisement

Allentown
An 83 year-old transgender woman convicted of two previous murders said 'I need a lawyer' as she was perp-walked on suspicion of killing and dismembering a third victim.

'I need a lawyer! I need a lawyer,' Harvey Marcelin also known as Marcelina Harvey, said while walking past a crowd of reporters without her trademark blonde wig after being charged with the murder of Susan Leyden, 68, at the 75th Precinct police station.

She made the remark as reporters and photographers outside the Brooklyn cop shop shouted questions at her, but did not say anything else as she was bundled into a cruiser and driven away.

Marcelin was heading head to Brooklyn Criminal Court for her arraignment over the murder of Susan Leyden, 68.

The convicted killer is said to have been caught on camera sitting on Leyden's leg while riding her motorized wheelchair, and it is unclear if she has since been assigned a public defender for her latest case.

Harvey Marcelin is escorted out of the 75th precinct after being charged with the murder of Susan Leydan, 68, and leaving her dismembered corpse on a Brooklyn Street

'I need a lawyer! I need a lawyer,' Marcelin desperately shouted while being handled by two members of the NYPD

Marcelin inside a police vehicle, heading for the Brooklyn Criminal Court after being escorted out of the 75th precinct by police

Previously convicted of two other killings in 1963 and 1984, Marcelin was arrested late last week for Leyden's death, after she was allegedly caught on surveillance cameras dumping a body near her Cypress Hills apartment.

Leyden's headless torso was stuffed into a garbage bag and dumped in a shopping cart in Brooklyn.

On March 2, a passerby made the grisly discovery on Pennsylvania and Atlantic avenues in the borough around 1:45 a.m. when he peeked inside the garbage bag.

On Friday, NYPD held a press conference where they showed a video of Marcelin sitting on a severed human leg. In the store surveillance footage, Marcelin is seen getting out of the wheelchair, exposing the leg and then sitting back down.

'This is a gruesome and barbaric homicide, which resulted in a headless torso being disposed of on a New York City corner, and it takes a serial killer off our streets,' Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez told reporters.

'This is just the latest of a list of heinous offenses conducted over a period of lifetime by Ms. Harvey, and we can only hope that she can do no more,' he added.

Marcelin was previously seen on store surveillance video sitting on a severed human leg (circled) in a motorized wheelchair before being arrested for murder

She was arrested late last week for Leydon's murder after she was allegedly caught on surveillance cameras dumping a body near her Cypress Hills apartment

Store surveillance video captures Marcelin sitting on the leg in the motorized wheelchair

Marcelin, who killed two women in 1963 and 1984, was charged with murder, criminal tampering of evidence and concealment of a human corpse

According to the NYPD's investigation, Leyden, an LGBTQ activist who lived in a city shelter, was last seen alive on February 27 as she entered Marcelin's apartment at 50 Pennsylvania Avenue, carrying a 'multi-colored bag with a flower decal' and rolling a shopping cart.

Two days later, Marcelin and another woman were spotted leaving the building with the same bag as they headed to a Home Depot in Manhattan to purchase saws, trash bags and cleaning solutions, Gonzales said.

On March 2, surveillance footage caught Marcelin walking out of the apartment again with a shopping cart and a trash bag inside the cart, leaving it out in the streets.

Police said the female corpse was found inside the bag without a head or limbs and did not appear to be decomposed.

On March 3, police found blood and trash bags in the apartment complex, and a search warrant into Marcelin's home turned up a 'human head,' along with the saws Marcelin bought.

On March 7, a severed leg, which had been cut from the knee down and was still wearing a sock, was poking out of a discarded tire four blocks away.

Gonzales added that the woman who went to Home Depot was cooperating with police, but did not say if she faced any charges in connection with the murder.

Marcelin was charged with murder, criminal tampering of evidence and concealment of a human corpse. Marceline is being represented by Legal Aid, who did not immediately return DailyMail.com's request for comment.

Police identified the victim as Susan Leyden, 68, formerly of Teaneck, New Jersey, and an acquaintance of Marcelin. She was last seen entering Marcelin's apartment on February 27

Police said the female corpse was found inside the bag without a head or limbs and did not appear to be decomposed. They said the head was found in Marcelin's apartment

A leg was found on Monday, March 7, in Cypress Hills, just days after a torso was found a few blocks away. Police said the body parts belonged to Leyden, an LGBTQ+ activist

The murder of Leyden is the third killing Marcelin has been connected to.

On April 18, 1963, Marcelin was arrested for shooting her then-girlfriend Jacqueline Bonds three times inside their Harlem apartment, the New York Post reported.

Earlier that year she was arrested for illegal gambling and attempted rape. The rape case was dropped when the victim didn't show up in court.

For the murder of Bonds, Marcelin was sentenced to 20 years to life and was paroled in 1984, according to state prison records.

While in prison, Marcelin had allegedly filed court papers saying she was in the notorious 1971 Attica prison riot, which left 29 inmates and 10 hostages dead, the New York Daily News reported. Marcelin was not among the inmates awarded a payout settlement in the class action lawsuit following the riot.

After being released in 1984, she went on to fatally stab another girlfriend, Anna Laura Serrera Miranda, cutting her up and stuffing her body into a bag before dumping it on the streets near Central Park, the Daily News reported.

Marcelin was arrested in 1986 and convicted of manslaughter. A psychiatric review concluded that she had 'schizoid personality with sociopathic features,' but was not deemed criminally insane.

Marceline had applied for parole multiple times and during one of those hearings, she said she had 'a problem with women,' the Post reported.

She also blamed an all-female parole board for denying her release in 1997, a claim a three-judge panel in Albany rejected, according to court records.

In 2001, Marcelin also faced a disciplinary hearing for having oral sex with another inmate, but faced no punishment, according to the Daily News reported.

She was released from the Cayuga Correctional Facility in upstate New York in 2019.

Marcelin is currently in custody and being held without bail at Riker's Island.

The Brooklyn District Attorney's Office said the case is still under investigation.

The incident comes as the city continues to see a drastic spike in violent crime compared to last year.

Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez called the homicide 'gruesome and barbaric'

Violent crime in New York City continues to rise with overall crime up more than 47 percent

Although murders are nearly the same with 67 committed so far this year compared to the 66 from last year, assaults are up by more than 19 percent, increasing from 3,210 to 3,824.

The number of shooting victims have gone up from 181 cases to 215, more than 18 percent when compared to the same time last year, and rapes have shot up by more than 31 percent, with 293 cases reported so far.

Robberies saw the largest spike so far this year, going up by nearly 45 percent when compared to the same time in 2021. Overall crimes have gone up by more than 47 percent.
Escaping from Kyiv has become an ordeal in itself.

Staying put in the Ukrainian capital means risking bombs and missiles  but fleeing is increasingly perilous.

Olena Auglova, 56, decided to leave and arrived safely in Poland yesterday at 6am after an arduous 12-hour journey.

Olena Auglova, 56, (pictured) decided to leave and arrived safely in Poland yesterday at 6am after an arduous 12-hour journey

Firefighters work on a building destroyed by a Russian shell, in Kharkov, Ukraine, March 14

People cross a destroyed bridge as civilian evacuations continue in the city of Irpin on March 12

The Mail Force Appeal has brought in 7.2million to fund Red Cross and help fleeing Ukrainians

Drone footage has captured the moment Russian missiles hit buildings in the besieged southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol which has been encircled by Moscow's forces for a week and a half

A second piece of footage shows a string of high-rise buildings burning next to a row of charred structures that appear to have already been hit by Russian missile strikes in Moscow's relentless bombardment of the city

Another clip shows plumes of black smoke rising above Mariupol while flashes of artillery fire continue to light-up the small port city, which has experienced some of the worst suffering of Moscow's 19-day war

She had to stand pressed against others on a crowded train, without food or water, knowing that supply lines between Poland and Ukraine have been attacked.

Describing herself with a knowing smile as a professional grandmother, Miss Auglova began feeling unwell on arrival and decided she needed to be treated for her nerves.

Luckily Przemysl railway station has a makeshift Red Cross field clinic in a converted waiting room, where a medic was able to give her the once-over.

The drone also captured a tank being obliterated in a close-quarter skirmish, leaving the vehicle engulfed in a red-hot blaze and a thick cloud of black smoke

A woman walks past building obliterated by Russian shelling in the southern Ukrainian port city of Mariupol on Sunday, March 13

People walk past a crater from the explosion in Mira Avenue, or Avenue of Peace, in Mariupol, Ukraine on Sunday, March 13

People look at a burning apartment building in a yard after shelling in Mariupol, Ukraine, on Sunday, March 13

A view onto the yard of a maternity hospital damaged in a Russian shelling attack in Mariupol, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 9

Ukrainian servicemen and firefighters stand in the area outside of a maternity hospital damaged in a shelling attack in Mariupol on March 9

The Red Cross is being funded with help from our readers who donated generously to the Mail Force Ukraine Appeal.

Miss Auglova said: I just couldnt cope with it any more  every night around my home in Kyiv there is a bombardment.

Now that I am in this room and talking to people here, I am starting to feel a bit better.

'Back home its just horror.

She added before breaking into tears: I am still very worried for my husband.

An aerial view shows smoke rising from damaged residential buildings following an explosion in Mariupol, Ukraine

Ukrainian emergency employees and volunteers carry the injured pregnant woman from the maternity hospital that was damaged by shelling in Mariupol on March 9

A medical worker walks inside of the damaged by shelling maternity hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 9

Ukrainian servicemen work inside of the damaged by shelling maternity hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine on the day of the attack

The aftermath of Russia army bombardment on the children hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine, which stunned and appalled the world

Wreckage and debris litter the pavement outside the hospital after the bombing last week, which took patients and medics by surprise

People are helped out of damaged building of a children's hospital following a Russian air strike in the southeastern city of Mariupol

Men of fighting age are not allowed to leave Ukraine, having been ordered to stay and fight.

Red Cross advanced paramedic Michal Kitera, 35, gave Miss Auglova medicine after seeing that her blood pressure was dangerously high and that she was suffering from extreme stress.

He said: The Daily Mail readers generosity is extremely important to the Red Cross and we are especially grateful now because the need of Ukrainians is so great.

Money continues to pour in to the Mail Force appeal, which now stands at 7.2million.

At the request of Lord and Lady Rothermere, the Mails parent company DMGT has donated 500,000.

Messages of support accompany almost every donation, along with offers to welcome refugees to the UK.

Pensioner Eileen Sweet, of Taunton, Somerset, sent 25, saying: I hope it will help the Ukrainians fleeing from their country.

Sally and John Melhuish, from Kent, donated 200 with a message reflecting the feelings of so many: We cant sit and watch this horror without doing a little to help those innocent people.
Advertisement

The Mayors of New York City and Washington DC have released a closeup photograph of the suspect they believe to be responsible for the killings of two homeless men and shootings of three others, leaving one dead in NYC and one in the nation's capital.

Crystal clear images of the male suspect's face were shared on Monday evening in a joint press conference chaired by NYC Mayor Eric Adams and his DC Counterpart Eric Adams, as well as their respective police chiefs.

The snap of the suspect - which cops refused to comment on further - but which is suspected to have been taken by an ATM camera - is the clearest image yet of a man now feared to be a serial killer.

Video footage of the suspect strolling down a DC street on March 9 - the evening of the murder in that city - have also been shared. At Monday's press conference in New York, cops revealed they suspected the same weapon had been used in the shootings in both cities, thanks to forensic examination of cell casings found at the scenes.

The Mayors of New York City and Washington DC have released a closeup photograph of the suspect they believe to be responsible for the killings of five homeless men, two in New York and three in the nation's capital

A reward of $70,000 has also been made available as law enforcement agencies in both cities work flat out to catch the man with $25,000 coming from the NYPD, $25,000 from Washington's police force and a further $20,000 from the ATF, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

DC Mayor Muriel Bowser, speaking in NYC, warned the killer: 'We're coming for you.'

The D.C. attacks were on March 3, March 8 and March 9. The third was fatal; the victim was found in a burning tent, having been shot and stabbed to death. During Monday's press conference, investigators said they believe the victims were given no warning, and that the killer attacked them without speaking.

After the DC shootings, the suspect is then believed to have struck in New York City over the weekend. One homeless man was shot while he slept in Soho during the early hours of Saturday, March 12 while a second was shot and escaped with his life after waking up.

'Homelessness should not be a homicide. This was a cold blooded attack when you look at the premeditated action of this shooting. It sends a clear, loud message that we need help from the public, from the NYPD, MPCD and ATF,' Mayor Eric Adams said.

Several clear images were released of the map whom police believe is responsible

'Someone knows this person. We're asking for the public to find him. We don't want to lose another resident in this city, in New York or anywhere else. This person is carrying out a premeditative act of shooting innocent people.

'In the shooting in New York he looked around, made sure no-one was there and intentionally took the life of an innocent person. He must be brought to justice. We will bring him to justice. If he's watching we're telling him to turn himself in. This is Unacceptable,' Mayor Adams said.

'The case also highlights the over proliferation of guns in our cities. It is creating an encounter that's causing bloodshed across our nation and it is time to top this sick fixation with guns. There are too many guns on our streets. We need to stop the flow of guns to our streets,' Adams asserted.

'Washington DC is not manufacturing guns. New York is not a gun manufacturing city but the guns are ending up our streets. It is time to end this.'

Investigators say that ballistic evidence that was found at the scenes of the shootings in both cities links the incidents to a single firearm.

Law enforcement authorities are also asking agencies along the East Coast to see if they have any similar unsolved cases.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams answers a question from a reporter during a news conference about recent shootings of homeless people in both New York and Washington, at the John A. Wilson Building in Washington D.C.

New York Mayor Eric Adams listens as Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser speaks during a news conference

New York Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell speaks during a news conference about the search for a gunman that has been targeting homeless men sleeping on the streets of Washington, and New York City. From left, New York Mayor Eric Adams, Sewell, Washington Metropolitan Police Chief Robert Contee, and Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser

Images from of shell casings that were recovered and examined in both cities were then entered into ATF's National Integrated Ballistic Information Network and suggested that the same weapon had been used in the killings. It also produced leads based on comparisons of the unique markings on the recovered shell casings.

The link between the two sets of killings and shootings was made by Captain Kevin Kentish, Head of the Homicide Unit in Washington DC.

Kintish, who hails from Queens, New York 'happened to be scrolling through social media and saw the image of the NYC suspect.'

'During that review, he took that image to his team, based upon the similarities, came together with ATF and forensically connected these cases,' Chief of the Metropolitan Police Department Robert Contee said.

The killer's motive remains unknown.

New video footage has been released of the suspect strolling along a street in Washington D.C. has been released

Other images in color show the suspect eating a snack while walking along a street in the nation's capital

A total of $55,000 has been put up by the Washington DC police force at the ATF. A further $25,000 has been put up by NYPD

Chief Contee III had similarly strong words to Mayor Adams about the perpetrator.

'This is a depraved individual but I feel the knot is tightening in. We dont know this suspect's mental health. We don't know if this person is homeless. But there are certain things we know that suggest this person has already murdered more than one time.'

Mayor Eric Adams and Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser issued a joint statement:

'Our communities in DC and New York City are heartbroken and disturbed by these heinous crimes in which an individual has been targeting some of our most vulnerable residents. The two of us spoke about how our teams can coordinate and help one another, and we are calling on everyone in our cities to look at the images of the suspect and report any information, however small, that may be useful.

'The work to get this individual off our streets before he hurts or murders another individual is urgent. The rise in gun violence has shaken all of us and it is particularly horrible to know that someone is out there deliberately doing harm to an already vulnerable population. As our law enforcement agencies work quickly with federal partners to locate the suspect, we are also calling on unsheltered residents to seek shelter.

'Again, it is heartbreaking and tragic to know that in addition to all the dangers that unsheltered residents face, we now have a cold-blooded killer on the loose, but we are certain that we will get the suspect off the street and into police custody.'

On Monday, homeless men and women on the streets of New York City have said they would prefer to sleep on the streets instead of heading to a homeless shelter, despite the lingering threat of a serial killer on the loose.

The Mayors of New York City and Washington DC are advising those living on the street to seek to seek shelter in public facilities to avoid the suspect who they believe has shot at least five homeless men in the last month, killing two.

DailyMail.com spoke to several people living on the streets. Many did not seem thrilled at the idea of spending in the night in a homeless shelter rather than a doorway or even a subway station.

'There's a lot of sick people out there but I'd prefer to be on the street instead a shelter. There's more freedom. I can do what I want when I want,' said Daren, a homeless man sitting outside Penn Station.

'There's a lot of sick people out there but I'd prefer to be on the street instead a shelter. There's more freedom. I can do what I want when I want,' said Daren, a homeless man sitting outside Penn Station in Manhattan

'I spend the night on corners. I am not afraid. People are not usually aggressive,' Marie said firmly to DailyMail.com Monday

Darrius Carr a homeless man said that he stays in a shelter in Uptown Manhattan and feels perfectly safe

J'ai Muhammed who normally sleeps in a subway station overnight suggested the mayor should see for himself what it is like to be living on the streets

It was a view echoed by Marie who was also sitting on some steps outside the Post Office in Midtown.

'I spend the night on corners. I am not afraid. People are not usually aggressive,' she said firmly to DailyMail.com.

Darius Carr, another man who has been homeless for about one year said that he felt safe going to a shelter uptown each night.

J'ai Muhammed who normally sleeps in a subway station overnight said the mayor should see for himself what it is like to be living on the streets.

'Maybe the mayor should try being homeless for the night so he can see how it feels either on the street or in a shelter,' he suggested.

In the last month, at least five homeless men have been shot - two of them fatally - and one has been found dead in what police fear may be a string of attacks by the same person

Police are looking for a man (pictured) who shot two homeless men in Manhattan within hours of one another, killing one

Detectives with the NYPD searching for a suspect who shot and killed a homeless man while he slept have now widened their investigation after a spread of eerily similar incidents in Washington D.C. The wanted suspect is pictured in the capital following the second attack

The serial killer most recently struck in the early hours of Saturday morning, killing one homeless man and shooting another in the arm within a period of just one hour.

A third New York City homeless man who was found dead in Tribeca does not appear connected to the shootings.

There was no indication of criminality, and an extensive video canvass did not turn up any evidence that the 43-year-old man was the victim of a crime.

Detectives are waiting for the autopsy before making a final determination, but it is believed that the man died from an overdose.

Earlier this month, three homeless men were shot and killed in separate attacks in Washington DC. Police now believe that the three DC men- and one New York City man who was shot on Saturday - were all targeted by the same person.

As NYPD officers work to catch the suspected serial killer, Mayor Eric Adams and DC Mayor Muriel Bowser are telling homeless people to seek shelter urgently.

DailyMail.com obtained an internal memo that the NYPD sent out to precincts alerting cops about the pre-dawn attacks on homeless men in Manhattan and Washington, D.C., noting that 'in all incidents, victims were sleeping in a public space during the first platoon.'

Officers were directed to immediately survey their patrol areas and engage with homeless individuals, advise them about the incidents and show them wanted flyers with pictures of the person of interest, while also checking on their well-being and offering shelter and other services.

'Members assigned to the Patrol Services Bureau precincts area to conduct frequent grid canvasses of their assigned sector or area of deployment, utilizing a systematic block by block method,' the memo adds. 'Special attention should be given to areas prone to encampment.'

NYPD officers at the scene where another homeless person was found dead on Murray Street near Varick Street in New York on Sunday night. The death is believed to be an overdose and not connected to the other NY and DC killings

Washington DC Metro Police and the NYPD have issued a joint statement saying they believe the same suspect is behind multiple attacks on homeless men in both cities that have, so far, left three victims dead

In a joint statement on Sunday night, the pair said: 'Our communities in DC and New York City are heartbroken and disturbed by these heinous crimes in which an individual has been targeting some of our most vulnerable residents.

HOMELESS KILLINGS WASHINGTON DC March 3: Homeless man is shot in DC but survives March 8: Second homeless man shot in DC but survives March 9: Third homeless man found in DC. His body is found inside a tent, on fire. Autopsy confirms he was shot and stabbed NEW YORK CITY March 12, 4.30am: Homeless man shot in the arm on King Street, NYC. He woke up and confronted the shooter, asking him: 'What the hell are you doing?' March 12, 5pm: After receiving a 911 call, cops find homeless man dead inside his sleeping bag at 148 Lafayette Street. Surveillance footage shows he was shot nearly 12 hours earlier at 6am. Advertisement

'The two of us spoke about how our teams can coordinate and help one another, and we are calling on everyone in our cities to look at the images of the suspect and report any information, however small, that may be useful.

'The work to get this individual off our streets before he hurts or murders another individual is urgent.

'As our law enforcement agencies work quickly with federal partners to locate the suspect, we are also calling on unsheltered residents to seek shelter.'

Many asked where exactly they expect the homeless to go.

In New York City, there are estimated to be around 93,000 homeless people and around 1,618 in DC.

Cops in NYC have surveillance footage of a man, believed to be black and about 5-foot-4, fleeing the scene of his second shooting in the early hours of Saturday.

Meanwhile, cops in DC released images of an unmasked man in dark clothing fleeing the second of three attacks known to have been carried out in that city.

Between the two cities, there have been five shootings, including three homicides. All victims targeted were homeless, although police have yet to outline a motive to explain why the vulnerable men have been targeted.

This comes as the United States faces a huge homelessness crisis, with the pandemic causing a rise in unemployment and a surge in housing costs that left nearly 600,000 Americans with no home in 2020.

Between New York and Washington D.C., there have been a total of five shootings and two homicides.

The Washington shootings happened between March 3 and 8.

On March 3 at 4 a.m., a man was found after police say gunshots were heard on New York Avenue, Northeast. They went to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

It remains unclear how the third victim died. Police believe there was no criminality and that it was likely and overdose

At 1:21 a.m. on March 8, police responded to a shooting in H Street Northeast in DC where they found a man with non-life-threatening injuries having been shot.

The following day, on March 9, around 3 a.m., police in DC saw a fire happening in tent in which a homeless man had been sleeping. After the flames were extinguished investigators found a dead body.

Police believe the man had been murdered after an autopsy revealed gunshot and stab wounds.

The New York attacks began in the early hours of Saturday, when a homeless man was shot in the arm around 4:30 a.m. while asleep in a doorway on King Street in Manhattan.

When the suspect fired at him, he woke up and yelled: 'What the hell are you doing?' according to police.

But then the quick-thinking victim then pretended to call 911 as he put his fingers to his ear, despite not having a phone, the New York Daily News reported, fooling the gunman into thinking law enforcement were on their way.

The suspect then ran off into the night, only to find a second unsuspecting homeless man 90 minutes later. That victim, a 33 year-old man, was shot and killed in a SoHo doorway.

The NYPD is now offering a $10,000 reward to anyone who can help them catch the 'cold-blooded' killer who shot the two homeless men.

The second victim died after being shot in the head and neck at 6 a.m. on 148 Lafayette Street, opposite the luxury 11 Howard hotel. It took 12 hours for police to realize the man was was dead and recover his lifeless body - riddled with bullet holes - from the bright yellow sleeping bag he'd been in.

In the Lafayette Street killing, the suspect was filmed in chilling surveillance footage wearing a black ski mask and black clothing. He was seen prodding the helpless victim several times before looking around before firing his fatal shots. The man's age is not known but he was described by police as a Hispanic man.

In an urgent appeal yesterday, Mayor Eric Adams said: 'Homelessness turning into a homicide. We need to find this person and we need New Yorkers to help us. This is a cold blooded act of murder.'

Anyone with information in regard to this incident is asked to call the NYPD's Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782). The public can also submit their tips by logging onto the Crime Stoppers website.

Given the similarity in the perpetrator's methods, common circumstances involved in each shooting, profiles of the victims and recovered evidence, the NYPD, the MPDC and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) will jointly investigate these offenses.

Police Commissioner Keechant L. Sewell said: 'Our homeless population is one of our most vulnerable and an individual praying on them as they sleep is an exceptionally heinous crime. We will use every tool, every technique and every partner to bring the killer to justice.'

New York City is home to the largest number of homeless people in the U.S., with a surging population that is widely believed to be one contributor behind an uptick in crime over recent months.

Since 2007, overall homelessness in the U.S. has improved by 10 percent, from 647,000 to 580,000, in figures according to CNBC.

But certain subgroups such as individual homelessness have only seen a 1 percent decrease in figures, from 413,000 in 2007 to 409,000 by 2020.

In the first year of the pandemic the numbers got far worse for the unsheltered homeless, with a 30 percent increase from 173,000 in 2015 to 226,000 in 2020.

New York's spending in attempt to beat homelessness reached an all-time high in 2019 when they pledged $3.2billion, which was double their spend in 2014.

Metropolitan Police Chief Robert Contee said: 'From the first incident, the Metropolitan Police has spared no resource in our efforts to identify the suspect behind these cowardly acts. We are committed to sharing every investigative path, clue and piece of evidence with our law enforcement partners to bring this investigation to a swift conclusion and the individual behind these vicious crimes to justice.'

ATF Director Marvin Richardson added: 'Our Washington and New York City field offices have been working hand-in-hand with the DC metropolitan police and the New York Police Department from the outset. One of these shootings occurred within blocks of our Washington DC headquarters.

'We have used our advanced ATF systems to conduct real-time analysis backed up by our ATF National Lab in Maryland to expedite the evidence and assist in the investigations and Washington DC and New York City. Our three agencies are one team.'

Video shows the suspect walking up to the homeless man and kicking him several times before taking out his weapon

The suspect can be seen looking around to see if anyone was watching before carrying out the horrific act

After prodding the man with his foot several times, the suspect walked up to homeless man and shot him dead

'Homelessness turning into a homicide,' Mayor Eric Adams said at a press conference on Saturday night.

'I believe that's what makes this case so horrific, watching the video, watching the individual intentionally walk up to innocent people that are dealing with the challenges of homelessness - and it's quite possible that one of our citizens is still alive merely because he woke up,' Adams said.

'Homelessness turning into a homicide. We need to find this person and we need New Yorkers to help us,' Mayor Eric Adams said at a press conference on Saturday night.

'And I'm here today to send a very clear message, that all New Yorkers matter.'

'Two individuals were shot while sleeping on the streets, not committing a crime but sleeping on the streets,' said the mayor with an air of disbelief.

Chief Hank Saunter added: 'We're talking about two individuals that are homeless.

'The most vulnerable population in the city right now.'

The US has a system of temporary shelters that reaches homeless people in need of a place to stay, but many still sleep on sidewalks, subway trains, vehicles or parks, and other locations not designated for the purpose of housing people.

These people who are unsheltered are amongst the most vulnerable, since they are so exposed to the elements and stripped of common safety measures.

Those killed in the spree of unprovoked attacks on homeless people in New York and Washington in recent weeks were all unsheltered.

Police said that they will be out in droves trying to get men and women sleeping on the streets to head to a city shelter for their safety.

In a separate incident, two Museum of Modern Art employees were stabbed by a crazed former member yesterday.

The man had just had his membership revoked, according to the authorities. In what police believe was an attempt at retaliation, he went to the museum Sunday and stabbed two female employees.

The brutal killing comes as the city is reeling from a February crime wave that saw a nearly 60 percent spike in incidents from this same period last year.

The city's latest crime figures show 9,138 incidents in February, 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.

One of the men was shot at 54 King Street, pictured above (file photo). It is a quiet, residential street in SoHo

The second man was shot and killed at 148 Lafayette Street (file photo). The location is next door to the expensive 11 Howard hotel

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

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.

The crime wave comes during 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.

In response to the crime wave, Adams pleaded 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 February, Adams, who campaigned last year on getting people to get back to work amid the Covid pandemic and cleaning up the crime-ridden subway system, outlined his plans for city bail laws, which can allow for suspects to roam the streets 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.'

In January 2020, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, 580,466 people were reported to be experiencing homelessness in the US, with most of that figure made up of individuals, 70 percent, and the rest people living in families with children.

For Washington DC this time last year, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development issued a report which found that Washington state experienced one of the largest estimated increases in homelessness between 2019 and 2020 relative to other states.

The state reported an increase in homelessness of 6.2 percent, which equates to 1,346 people, between 2019 and 2020.

This is the third largest increase among all US States, as reported by The Seattle Times.

Around 20% of all sheltered homeless people in the US are living in New York City, which is the highest rate across the US.

Across the US, the rate of homeless people is 17 per 10,000, but in New York City, Washington DC and Boston, the homeless rate is well above 100 per 10,000 people.

Washington reported a 20 percent increase in family homelessness between 2019 and 2020 which was one of the biggest increases nationwide.

In October 2021, Seattle committed $48 million to build 165 apartments to house some of it's 12,000 homeless people in October.

Seattle's homeless population had grown form around 11,000 in 2020 to 12,000 in 2021, when the city built the new housing units.

The same was seen in San Francisco, which has spent $667 million on its Department of Homeless and Supportive Housing. The city recorded about 8,000 homeless people in 2021, a 17 per cent increase from the last count in 2017.

In Austin, Texas, the city allocated $68 million last year for homelessness assistance, Austin saw its homeless population grow from 3,024 in 2019 to nearly 3,200 in 2020.
Pump prices hit new records at the weekend, with petrol averaging 1.63 a litre and diesel 1.73

Boris Johnson is to ask Saudi Arabia to help bring down world oil prices despite outrage over its execution of 81 men at the weekend.

Downing Street said he would ask the desert kingdom and other countries in the Opec oil cartel to increase supplies to reduce the volatility and bring prices down.

The Prime Minister will travel to the Gulf this week amid growing concern about the impact of the Ukraine crisis on oil prices.

The RAC yesterday said pump prices hit new records at the weekend, with petrol averaging 1.63 a litre and diesel 1.73  equal to 95 to fill a typical tank.

The Prime Minister will travel to the Gulf this week amid growing concern about the impact of the Ukraine crisis on oil prices.

No 10 refused to confirm Mr Johnsons trip yesterday but acknowledged he was expected to raise the issue with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The talks look set to be overshadowed by Saudi Arabias decision at the weekend to execute 81 men for a range of offences, some of which are said to have been committed when they were children.

Foreign Office minister Amanda Milling said the Government was shocked by the executions and would not shy away from raising human rights with the Saudis.

Opposition MPs called on the PM to cancel his planned trip.

The RAC yesterday said pump prices hit new records at the weekend, with petrol averaging 1.63 a litre and diesel 1.73

SNP foreign affairs spokesman Alyn Smith said the Government should also suspend all judicial co-operation with Saudi Arabia.

Tory MP Julian Lewis, chairman of Parliaments intelligence and security committee, warned that in trying to reduce dependency on Russian oil Britain could end up creating a source dependency on another unreliable and sometimes hostile regime.
Russian spies are believed to have infiltrated a group of foreign fighters and provided information from a Ukrainian military base that was targeted by Vladimir Putin in an airstrike.

Intelligence chiefs are investigating whether a Russian spy claiming to be an international volunteer for Ukraine was feeding information to the Kremlin before the attack.

Three British former paratroopers are understood to have been killed in the attack on the Yavoriv base, located just 11 miles from the Polish border.

The ex-soldiers, who were members of the Parachute Regiment, joined Ukraines foreign legion after Vladimir Putins troops invaded last month.

The volunteers, who are thought to be the first British victims of the war, were among 35 people killed in the strike. Dozens of other British volunteer fighters narrowly avoided being killed in the attack.

Intelligence chiefs believe that Russian spy agencies had 'turned' foreign fighters on the base and one recruit is suspected of sending coordinates and information to Russia before the attack, reported the Daily Mirror.

British volunteers who travelled to Ukraine to fight were just yards from barracks destroyed in a Russian missile strike. Pictured: A man wounded in air strikes at the nearby Yavoriv military complex, killing at least 35 and wounding scores, according to Ukrainian officials

A source told the newspaper that a Ukrainian Army guard at the miliary base saw a man - believed to be carrying a laptop - running from the base before the strikes hit.

The former British Army soldiers believed to be killed in the strikes travelled to Ukraine after having served in the Parachute Regiments first and second battalions  known as 1 Para and 2 Para.

They are believed to have been living in an accommodation block at the Yavoriv garrison when the Russian rockets struck.

Hundreds of western volunteers were stationed in a building close to the barracks which were destroyed during the airstrike.

The camp was being used to train foreign fighters and to store weapons given to Ukraine by the UK and other allies. Last night, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) refused to comment on reports of British deaths.

Sources said they were urgently investigating the incident at Yavoriv and working with the Ukrainian authorities to establish further information.

Dozens of British volunteer fighters narrowly escaped death after Russia launched the air strike.

A source told the Sun: 'A hundred yards difference you would be looking at hundreds of western casualties.

'There were so many passports in there  British, Brazilian, Canadian, American, you name it.

'It was like the Star Wars canteen. There were gun nuts, biker gangs, tough guys, American religious people there to do God's work, war addicts.

'One British guy was boasting that he'd killed someone in a bar fight.

'Another Brit said he was a Royal Marine who wasn't at liberty to disclose his rank or his unit  that's a red flag right there.

'There's no vetting, there's no command and control, no chain of command. It's a complete sh*t show.'

The attack on the Yavoriv base, which has previously been used by Nato to train Ukrainian soldiers, was one of the western-most targets struck by Russia during the invasion.

The trio who are feared dead were not part of the foreign legion fighting unit being trained at the base six miles from the border, sources told The Mirror.

It is not known which branch of the special forces they had served in.

Igor Konashenkov, a spokesman for Russia's ministry of defence, said the base was struck by 'long-range, high-precision' weapons because it was hosting 'foreign mercenaries and a large shipment of foreign weapons'.

He added: 'The destruction of foreign mercenaries who arrived on the territory of Ukraine will continue.'

The barracks at the International Peace Keeping and Security Centre in Yavoriv burns after being hit by a Russian missile strike in the early hours of Sunday morning - killing 35 people

Pictured: Smoke rises amid damaged buildings following an attack on the Yavoriv military base

Konashenkov said up to 180 people had been killed in the strike, though Ukraine initially said 35 people died and another 134 were wounded.

But a source told The Mirror today: 'There were many more killed within the site than has been claimed and bodies are still being found.

'I do not believe the three British ex-military personnel would have known anything about it, fortunately.

'This is extremely sensitive as there are believed to be no serving British military personnel inside Ukraine as politically that would be extremely controversial.'

Meanwhile, a source told the Sun the attack had been damaging for the international legion because some volunteers then fled the base.

The source added: 'I think they had a shock when they realised what this is really about. It's one thing talking tough.'

Bombs fell on the base early Sunday morning, with witnesses saying many of the foreign recruits were sleeping when the strike was carried out.

British military veterans at the base who survived the attack, described hearing the sound of incoming engines before several large blasts destroyed one building, damaged another, and sprayed shell fragments through the air. It is thought the base was hit by Russian cruise missiles as opposed to fighter jets.

Russia says the base (pictured) was targeted because it was hosting foreign 'mercenaries'

Around 1,000 foreigners were at the base when it was hit, Ukraine said, although no official word has been given yet (pictured: a man who was wounded at the base during the attack)

The British Ministry of Defence said there were no serving personnel killed in the explosions.

James, a former British artillery soldier identified only by his first name, told Buzzfeed of hearing the sound of incoming missiles as he was in bed, saying: 'I just lied there and thought: I'm going to die.'

'A couple of buildings got hit... One they decimated and there was one that was on fire. And then there was just frag[mentation] everywhere. And a crater... in the middle of camp.'

A Ukrainian officer said there were around 1,000 foreigners at the camp - officially known as the International Center for Peacekeeping and Security - at the time. British and US regular military personnel had previously been stationed there to train Ukrainian soldiers, but were not thought to be present yesterday.

Foreign Secretary Liz Truss initially offered her support for UK nationals seeking to join Ukraines foreign legion. But fellow Cabinet ministers disagreed, leaving the Government open to claims it was providing contradictory advice.

On Monday, a Russian air strike on the capital Kyiv killed at least two people and wounded others as it blew up and set light to an apartment building.

A town councilor for Brovary, east of Kyiv, was also killed in fighting there as shells fell on the towns of Irpin, Bucha and Hostomel.

Ukrainian officials said two more people died and seven were injured after Russian forces struck an airplane factory in Kyiv, sparking a large fire.

Airstrikes also hit residential buildings near the important southern city of Mykolaiv, as well as in the eastern city of Kharkiv.

A television tower in the Rivne region in the northwest was destroyed. Explosions also rang out overnight around the Russian-occupied Black Sea port of Kherson.

And Ukraine said a pregnant woman who was badly wounded in an airstrike on a maternity hospital in Mariupol last week died, along with her unborn child.

But, in a rare sign of hope, Mariupol's city council said a convoy of 160 civilian cars left the besieged port city along a designated humanitarian route, after many previous attempts at evacuations collapsed.

Ukraine and Russia also continued peace talks, after hailing 'substantial progress' made at the weekend to obtaining a ceasefire.

Those negotiations continued today, though broke up without agreement. Neither side has made it clear what any such deal would look like.

Even if a ceasefire deal can be reached by negotiators, serious doubts remain over whether it would be observed on the ground - and whether Russia would simply use it as cover to rearm, resupply, and attack anew.

Almost all Russian advances are currently stalled, with no significant progress made in the last week despite heavy bombardment of cities.

Meanwhile Putin's forces continue to suffer punishing casualties. While accurate numbers are hard to come by, the figure almost certainly stretches into the thousands and is far higher than Putin banked on when he gave the order to attack.

Fox News meanwhile announced that British journalist Benjamin Hall, 39, was in hospital after being wounded near Kyiv. It comes just a day after American film maker Brent Renaud was fatally shot by Russian forces as he and his crew tried to cover refugee movements.

A statement read: We have a minimal level of details right now, but Ben is hospitalised and our teams on the ground are working to gather additional information as the situation quickly unfolds.

Ukrainian prosecutor general Irina Venediktova posted on Facebook that Mr Hall had been hit by shrapnel and was in intensive care. She said he was not near a military facility when he was injured.

The married father-of-three from London is an experienced foreign correspondent and, according to his social media accounts, has reported from Iraq, Syria, Libya and Somalia. He attended Ampleforth College in North Yorkshire and Richmond University.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky yesterday wrote to Mr Renauds family to express his sorrow for their loss. In a letter posted to social media, he wrote: I extend my heartfelt condolences to the family of Brent Renaud who lost his life while documenting the ruthlessness and evil inflicted upon Ukrainian people by Russia.
Chinese tech manufacturer Foxconn has halted production of Apple products at its factory in Shenzhen, after 17 million people were put in a new covid lockdown.

Restrictions on movement were spread across Shanghai and other major cities to combat an outbreak challenging the nation's zero-tolerance Covid strategy.

Shenzhen, a major technology hub, imposed its measures on Sunday, to counter an Omicron outbreak in factories and neighbourhoods linked to nearby Hong Kong, which is recording scores of daily deaths due to the virus running rampant.

Foxconn, based in the tech hub, suspended all operations as the restrictions mean all non-essential businesses are no longer allowed to operate.

This will have an impact on global electronic production, potentially leading to shortages, as 90 percent of the world's electronics are produced in the city.

Daniel Ives, Senior Equity Analyst at Wedbush Securities, told DailyMail.com: 'This factory is a main source of Apple iPhone assembly and will cause Foxconn to scramble over the next week across its China supply chain to meet growing demand.

'If this lasts more than a week it will take off 1% of iPhone production every week at a time the supply chain is already under hurricane like headwinds.'

Foxconn says it has other backup plants it can move production to, reducing the impact on Apple's supply chain. Apple has not commented on the shutdown.

Chinese tech manufacturer Foxconn has halted production of Apple products at its factory in Shenzhen, after 17 million people were put in a new covid lockdown

Foxconn says it has other backup plants it can move production to, reducing the impact on Apple's supply chain. Apple has not commented on the shutdown

Shenzhen is one of ten cities throughout China to have locked down all residents, and health officials have warned tighter restrictions could be on their way.

This is due to mounting concerns over the resilience of China's 'zero-Covid' approach to tackling the pandemic against the highly-transmissible Omicron variant.

Authorities reported 2,300 new virus cases nationwide on Monday and almost 3,400 a day earlier, the highest daily figure in two years.

'There have been many small-scale clusters in urban villages and factories,' Shenzhen city official Huang Qiang said, adding 'this suggests a high risk of community spread, and further precautions are still needed.'

Reports suggest housing compound entrances are being blocked by large plastic barriers, as residents swapped jokes on social media about their rush to grab laptops from offices before the lockdown.

The restrictions still allow staff to work from home where possible, although that won't be much comfort to Apple and other tech giants who rely on production of components and devices in the region - that are then shipped worldwide.

Ben Wood, Chief Analyst, CCS Insight said the turbulence in the manufacture and supply of mobile phones is currently relentless.

Restrictions on movement were spread across Shanghai and other major cities to combat an outbreak challenging the nation's zero-tolerance Covid strategy

'Just as we started to see some light at the end of the tunnel on chipset supply shortages the consumer electronics industry now faces a double whammy of the Ukraine conflict and the covid-related shutdown in the Jilin province and Shenzhen.

The decision by the Chinese government to lock down Jilin province and Shenzhen will undoubtedly disrupt the supply of consumer electronics.

'Apple supplier Foxconn has already said it is halting operations at its Shenzhen sites and has not provided a clear timeline for when factories will open again.

China records its biggest number of Covid cases for TWO YEARS - with clusters emerging in more than a dozen cities By Luke Andrews China's daily Covid cases today rose to their highest level since the Wuhan outbreak began two years ago. Beijing officials logged 526 infections over the last 24 hours, including 312 that were asymptomatic  did not display any symptoms. Outbreaks are emerging in dozens of cities including the financial centre Shanghai, the northern port city of Qingdao and the southern city of Dongguan among others. No data on Covid deaths and hospitalisations was published. China is the last major country sticking to the brutal 'zero Covid' strategy, which sees lockdowns and mass testing imposed when the virus is detected. It is struggling to keep a lid on the more transmissible Omicron variant, after a study suggested the nation's home-made vaccine offers virtually no protection against the strain. Suzhou, a city of 6.7million next to Shanghai, is currently under lockdown, alongside Baise, a city of 3.6million near the border with Vietnam. Beijing has repeatedly been accused of fudging its Covid data during the pandemic to make outbreaks appear less severe. In neighbouring Hong Kong, escalating Covid cases are now seeing hospitals and quarantine centres being overwhelmed. Its deaths from the virus are also spiralling, with 233 recorded yesterday compared to 82 just a week ago. Advertisement

'However it is not just Apple that will be affected  there are a slew of consumer electronics makers that either have factories in that region or rely on component suppliers who are based there. Its the last thing they need given the challenges weve had over the last 18 months with pandemic-related chip shortages.'

Foxconn said while its plants were closed in Shenzhen, it would deploy backup plants elsewhere in the country to reduce disruption.

It isn't clear how long the main plant will be closed, but sources suggest it should only be for the first half of this week, although it depends on cases.

One of the people said the government was allowing companies to operate if they could create a 'closed management' system where employees would live and work in a bubble. Such a system was in place during the Beijing Winter Olympics.

Other companies which said they had suspended Shenzhen operations included chip substrate and printed circuit board maker Unimicron Technology Corp, which also supplies Apple and Intel, and flexible printed circuit board maker Sunflex.

Paul Weedman, who runs manufacturing consultancy Victure in Shenzhen, warned that the restrictions was having a ripple effect beyond Shenzhen to the wider Guangdong province.

Production for some of his customers' orders have been suspended, and many factory visits cancelled, he said.

'Imagine you have a factory of 100 people and all of a sudden you can't do anything - you can't fulfil your existing orders, you can't accept new orders. The impact is not 2 or 3 weeks, but 3-6 months.'

Tech stocks plummeted on the Hong Kong exchange on Monday, as concerns over the impact of the virus spread in Shenzhen spooked investors.

In Shanghai, residential areas and offices in some neighbourhoods remained sealed Monday as city authorities try to avoid a full lockdown.

Police tape, metal gates and rows of community workers in hazmat suits surrounded shuttered shops and homes in closed-off parts of the city.

The streets of the megacity were quieter this morning, with the lockdown sparked in part due to just 170 new cases.

A restaurateur with four outlets in different parts of Shanghai said he has to wade through a morass of hyper-local restrictions, giving an indication of how ordinary life in China is still spun on its head by a pandemic that the rest of the world has learned to cope with.

'Different districts adopt different policies,' the unnamed businessman said, adding 'I want to close one and keep the rest open, and see how it goes later. What else can I do except tough it out?'

China's daily Covid tally over the last year is shown above. Daily cases have now spiked to their highest level since the initial Wuhan outbreak

Jilin province in the country's northeast recorded over 1,000 new cases for the second day in a row, and authorities banned residents leaving their cities without police permission.

At least five cities in the province have been locked down since the beginning of March, including the major industrial base of Changchun, whose nine million residents were confined at home Friday.

Health official Lei Zhenglong told state broadcaster CCTV that more than 10,000 domestic infections had been recorded in March so far across dozens of provinces, and warned the situation in many areas was 'still developing'.

In comparison, since the start of March there have been over 400,000 new cases of Covid in the US, although numbers are on a downward trend.

While China's caseload is low in global terms, it is deeply alarming for the country, where authorities have been unrelenting in squashing clusters since early 2020.

At least 26 officials in three provinces have been dismissed due to their handling of local outbreaks, state media reported.

China has so far managed to control sporadic domestic outbreaks through a combination of snap lockdowns, mass testing and travel restrictions, but the latest outbreak is testing the limits of its playbook.

Top medical expert Zhang Wenhong said Monday that China cannot relax its zero-Covid policy just yet despite the low fatality rate of Omicron.

'It is very important for China to continue to adopt the strategy of community Covid-zero in the near future,' Zhang wrote on social media.

'But this does not mean that we will permanently adopt the strategy of lockdown and full testing.'
Children and babies could be responsible for up to a quarter of prehistoric rock art, a new study has found.

Researchers think it was often a family-oriented group activity rather than the work of individuals, with hand analysis suggesting that youngsters aged 12 and under were involved in a lot of the 20,000-year-old paintings in caves across Spain.

Most of the children's painting was done by those aged between three and 10, they said.

The experts from Cambridge University and Spain's University of Cantabria studied 180 examples of art involving outlines of hands that were made by blowing pigment through a hollow reed or bone.

This revealed that between 20 per cent and 25 per cent of the hands were made by children aged between 2 and 12 years old.

Discovery: Children and babies could be responsible for up to a quarter of prehistoric rock paintings, a new study suggests

Hand analysis (pictured) led researchers to believe that children aged 12 and under were responsible for a lot of the 20,000-year-old art in caves across Spain

WHAT EXAMPLES OF EARLY HUMAN ART HAVE BEEN FOUND WORLDWIDE? It seems that humanity and its ancestors have been driven to create patterns, abstract images and representations of the world around them for thousands of years. The earliest known engraving, a zig-zag pattern, incised on a fresh water shell from Trinil, Java, was found in layers of sediment dated to 540,000 years ago. Another research article proposed that painted representations in three caves of the Iberian Peninsula were 64,000 years old and therefore produced by Neanderthals. Lifelike images found at sites such as the Lascaux Cave in south-west France, which date to around 30,000 years ago, are said to demonstrate an ability to depict animal movement superior to that seen today. In 2018, experts uncovered evidence of art made by humans dating back 73,000 years in an African cave. That makes the drawing, found in the Blombos Caves site in South Africa, the oldest drawing by Homo sapiens ever found, experts say. Advertisement

Lead author of the study, Veronica Fernandez-Navarro, told the Telegraph: 'From the real hand to the one on the wall there are always a few centimetres of error, because the silhouette comes out larger.

'We calculated that error and many more children's hands came out than we expected.'

She added: 'It would appear that artistic activity was not a closed activity closely linked to male individuals and the survival of the group, as had been thought until now.'

She said there were outlines of hands of toddlers and babies, neither of whom would have been able to blow the pigment hard enough themselves to make the art.

This means they must have been helped by parents or other carers as part of an activity that 'served as an element of group cohesion'.

Researchers studied hand art in five caves across Spain, in the regions of Cantabria, Aragon and Extremadura.

Ms Fernandez-Navarro said she was now working with researchers in France to analyse cave art there and examine whether the hands could constitute some form of non-verbal language.

She said: 'In some caves patterns have been found, some of the hands have missing or bent fingers, and the positions repeat in a specific way.

'We want to find out if it is a code that they knew how to interpret, in the same way that we today interpret a "stop" sign.'

In total there were 545 examples of hands in the paintings.

Of these, six belonged to babies aged between 2 and 36 months, 76 to children between 3 and 7 years old, 117 to youngsters aged 7 to 12, 199 to adolescents between 11 and 19 years, 119 to adults between 20 and 50 years old and 28 to those over 50.

In their study, the authors wrote: 'Until recent decades archaeology of childhood has not been in the main focus of the archaeological research, much less the participation of those children in the artistic activity.

'The present study approaches the palaeodemography of artists in the decorated caves through the paleolithic rock art itself.'

In total there were 545 examples of hands in the paintings. Of these, six belonged to babies aged between 2 and 36 months, 76 to children between 3 and 7 years old, 117 to youngsters aged 7 to 12, 199 to adolescents between 11 and 19 years, 119 to adults between 20 and 50 years old and 28 to those over 50

Researchers studied hand art in five caves across Spain, in the regions of Cantabria, Aragon and Extremadura

The approximate age of those responsible for the art was calculated through the biometric analysis of hand stencils

They added: 'The approximate age of these individuals has been calculated through the biometric analysis of hand stencils in the caves of Fuente del Salin, Castillo, La Garma, Maltravieso and Fuente del Trucho, using 3D photogrammetric models as reference.

'The results have been compared with a modern reference population in order to assign the Palaeolithic hands to certain age groups.

'It has been demonstrated the presence of hand stencil motifs belongs to infants, children and juveniles, revealing this stratum's importance in the artistic activity.'

One of the study's authors, Diego Garate, of the Cantabria International Institute of Prehistoric Research, said: 'Our main aim is to gain a much deeper knowledge, not of the art itself that these societies produced, but of the protagonists, the men and women who created these artworks during the Palaeolithic period.'

The study has been published in the Journal of Archaeological Science.
A small asteroid struck the Earth above Iceland last Friday  just two hours after it was spotted by an astronomer.

The space rock, named 2022 EB5, is believed to have mostly burnt up in our planet's atmosphere, but even if it had impacted the surface it would have done little to no damage because it was just 10ft (3 metres) wide, about half the size of a giraffe.

Some people in Iceland reported hearing a boom or seeing a flash of light around the time 2022 EB5 scooted across the sky at 11 miles per second (18.5 km/s) between Greenland and Norway.

No evidence of any meteorites has yet been found but the International Meteor Organization is looking for witnesses who may have seen anything.

Prior to impact, which took place in the atmosphere north of Iceland at 21:22 GMT (16:22 ET) on Friday, March 11, the space rock became the fifth asteroid to be discovered before hitting Earth.

Discovery: A small asteroid struck the Earth above Iceland last Friday  just two hours after it was spotted (pictured) by Hungarian astronomer Krisztian Sarneczky

Krisztian Sarneczky is based at a station that is part of the Konkoly Observatory near Budapest

Explained: The difference between an asteroid, meteorite and other space rocks An asteroid is a large chunk of rock left over from collisions or the early solar system. Most are located between Mars and Jupiter in the Main Belt A comet is a rock covered in ice, methane and other compounds. Their orbits take them much further out of the solar system. A meteor is what astronomers call a flash of light in the atmosphere when debris burns up. This debris itself is known as a meteoroid. Most are so small they are vapourised in the atmosphere. If any of this meteoroid makes it to Earth, it is called a meteorite. Meteors, meteoroids and meteorites normally originate from asteroids and comets. For example, if Earth passes through the tail of a comet, much of the debris burns up in the atmosphere, forming a meteor shower. Advertisement

The first, 2008 TC3, was an 80-tonne, 13ft (4.1 metre) wide object that exploded above the Nubian Desert in Sudan in October 2008. Some 600 meteorites were later recovered from the asteroid.

In 2014, a near-Earth asteroid called 2014 AA hit the Earth's atmosphere above Venezuela, while 2018 LA struck four years later and left fragments of debris near the border of Botswana and South Africa.

Two years ago 2019 MO also struck, the fourth asteroid to have been observed prior to impact with Earth, and generated a harmless 5-kiloton-equivalent explosion off the south coast of Puerto Rico.

The latest asteroid was only discovered just two hours prior to hitting the Earth's atmosphere, when it was spotted by Hungarian astronomer Krisztian Sarneczky, who is based at a station that is part of the Konkoly Observatory near Budapest.

According to Weizmann Institute of Science astronomer Dr David Polishook  who is also part of NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission to try and deflect a massive space rock  it wasn't noticed earlier because of its size.

'It was a tiny rock. It reflects just a little light from the sun  it is hard to identify it,' he said.

'The impact made no damage, falling into the sea between Norway to Iceland. However, just imagine it would have crashed a few hours earlier over Russia.

'With the ongoing crisis, would Russia have identified it as an asteroid or as a rocket, and returned fire with its own missiles?'

On Friday, orbit simulation expert Tony Dunn tweeted: 'A few hours ago, newly-discovered #asteroid 2022 EB5 collided with Earth near Iceland at a speed of 18.5 km/s. This asteroid was too small to cause damage.'

The last major asteroid impact was in 2013 when a small object around 60ft (19 metres) wide exploded over Chelyabinsk in Russia.

It hit the Earth's atmosphere with energy estimated to be equivalent to 500,000 tonnes of TNT, sending a shockwave twice around the globe that caused widespread damage and injured more than 1,600 people.

The fireball smashed into the Earth at 41,600 mph and much of it landed in a lake called Chebarkul.

Asteroids are seen as one of the most dangerous natural disasters the planet could experience, especially as there is currently no way to stop them.

An asteroid over 460ft (140 metres) wide would release an amount of energy at least 1,000 times greater than that released by the first atomic bomb if it impacted Earth, according to research from the Davidson Institute of Science, the educational arm of Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science.

One that is 3,280ft (1km) wide  similar to 138971 (2001 CB21), which flew past the Earth in early March  could trigger a worldwide annihilation, but even smaller asteroids have the potential to cause damage.

That is why NASA is undertaking a mission to explore the feasibility of diverting the course of an asteroid by crashing a space probe into it.

The DART 'Double Asteroid Redirection Test' mission launched from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California last November, and is expected to reach its target  the minor-planet moon Dimorphos  around late September this year.

Most asteroids can usually be identified with the many powerful telescopes at the disposal of astronomers.

Impact! When 2022 EB5 struck the Earth north of Iceland this morning, it became the 5th asteroid to be discovered prior to impacting Earth. pic.twitter.com/kYsQ40uuFq  Tony Dunn (@tony873004) March 12, 2022

The asteroid, named 2022 EB5, is believed to have mostly burnt up in our planet's atmosphere. This is what it looked like to the Meteosat satellite belonging to the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites

Some people in Iceland reported hearing a boom or seeing a flash of light around the time 2022 EB5 scooted across the sky at 11 miles per second (18.5 km/s) between Greenland and Norway

On Friday, orbit simulation expert Tony Dunn tweeted: 'A few hours ago, newly-discovered #asteroid 2022 EB5 collided with Earth near Iceland at a speed of 18.5 km/s. This asteroid was too small to cause damage'

However, some asteroids can 'sneak up' on us thanks to a quirk of the Earth's rotation that makes them seem like they are barely moving  making them hard to detect.

That was the warning of NASA-funded experts who investigated how telescopes nearly missed a 328-feet-wide asteroid that came within 43,500 miles of Earth back in 2019.

The space rock, dubbed '2019 OK', was the first object of its size to get that close to our planet since 1908  but it was only spotted 24 hours before its closest approach.

The reason, the team determined, is because it was moving towards us in such a way that its motion across the night sky was counteracted by the Earth's spin.

Thus  to early warning systems like Pan-STARRS1 at Hawaii's Haleakala Observatory  2019 OK looked stationary, so did not set off the automated detection software.

In fact, the experts said, up to half of asteroids approaching Earth from a danger zone east of 'opposition' likely undergo periods of such apparent slow motion.

No images of the 2022 EB5 asteroid have been released but it would have looked similar to this fireball image from a meteor that hit Earth on January 21, 1999

Some asteroids can 'sneak up' on us thanks to a quirk of the Earth's rotation that makes them seem like they are barely moving  making them hard to detect

An asteroid is said to be at opposition when its position in the night sky places it along a line that intersects both the Earth and the sun.

This means that half of these asteroids could presently also be difficult to detect  and computerised telescopes will need to be updated to take account of the effect.

But while 2022 EB5 failed to leave much if any mark on the planet, more asteroids are heading in Earth's direction.

Several more are set to pass by today, including 2022 DX2, 2022 DR3, 2018 GY, 2022 ES3 and 2022 EO4.

They are all very small, ranging between around 31ft (9.6 metres) and 232ft (71 metres) wide, and according to NASA's asteroid tracker are not forecast to hit Earth.

One of them however, 2022 ES3, will be coming closer to the rest and is projected to race by at a distance of around 207,000 miles (334,000 km).

That is still a long way away but closer to the Earth than the moon.

A livestream of its flyby tonight will be available online thanks to the Virtual Telescope Project, starting at 18:30 GMT (13:30 ET).

The space rock is estimated to be between 31ft (9.6 metres) and 72ft (22 metres) wide, similar in size to the Chelyabinsk asteroid at its maximum impact.
Advertisement

The Northern Lights dazzled stargazers in Scotland at the weekend following a huge solar flare  and the natural display may be visible again this evening.

New photos from Kinross to the Outer Hebrides show flashes of brilliant fluorescent green and pink lighting up the night's skies on Sunday.

According to the Met Office, a coronal mass ejection (CME)  a massive expulsion of plasma from the Sun's outermost layer  was responsible for the evening's display.

The Met Office says the aurora is expected to be 'slightly enhanced' today (March 14) as a result of the CME arriving at Earth yesterday.

The Northern Lights  or the aurora borealis  is mostly seen in high-latitude regions (around the Arctic and Antarctic), so a glimpse in the UK is a treat for stargazers.

As well as views from Scotland, new photos also show the view from Vaasa in western Finland last night.

Scroll down for video

The aurora taken from Ardoil on the Isle of Lewis looking northwards across the beach of Traigh Uige, Outer Hebrides, Scotland, March 13, 2022

An amazing aurora taken from Ardoil on the Isle of Lewis looking northwards across the beach of Traigh Uige, Outer Hebrides

The incredible pictures taken on Sunday (March 13) show bands of breathtaking coloured lights slicing across the night sky in Kinross, northwest of Edinburgh

AURORA: A STUNNING NATURAL DISPLAY The Northern and Southern Lights are natural light spectacles triggered in our atmosphere that are also known as the 'auroras'. There are two types of aurora: aurora Borealis, which means 'dawn of the north', and aurora australis, 'dawn of the south.' The displays light up when electrically charged particles from the sun enter the Earth's atmosphere. Usually the particles, sometimes referred to as a solar storm, are deflected by Earth's magnetic field. But during stronger storms they enter the atmosphere and collide with gas particles, including hydrogen and helium. These collisions emit light. Auroral displays appear in many colours although pale green and pink are common. Advertisement

'Effects are expected to start waning through today, with aurora sightings still likely at high latitudes,' Met Office says.

'Chances of aurora in the UK tonight are declining, and expected to be confined to mostly northern parts of Scotland under clear skies.'

Just like last night, cloud cover is expected to be relatively minimal this evening, meaning skywatchers have every chance of a sighting.

In the Earth's north, the Northern Lights is officially known as the aurora borealis and in the south it is called the aurora australis.

In the Southern Hemisphere, the auroral oval is also expected to be slightly enhanced on Monday as a result of the CME.

'Chances of aurora south of 60 degrees South tonight are declining,' the Met Office says.

The light display is created by disturbances in Earth's magnetosphere caused by solar events, usually concentrated around the Earth's magnetic poles.

As well as CMEs, such solar events include solar flares  explosions on the Sun that happens when energy stored in 'twisted' magnetic fields is released.

NASA explains: 'There are many kinds of eruptions on the sun. Solar flares and coronal mass ejections both involve gigantic explosions of energy, but are otherwise quite different.

'The two phenomena do sometimes occur at the same time  indeed the strongest flares are almost always correlated with coronal mass ejections  but they emit different things, they look and travel differently, and they have different effects near planets.'

A photo shows northern lights in Vaasa, western Finland, on March 13, 2022. The polar aurora (aurora polaris, Northern Lights) is a natural phenomenon found in both the northern and southern hemispheres

Met Office graphic depicts the auroral activity over the poles. Met Office says: 'The auroral oval is expected to be slightly enhanced at times during 14th March as a result of a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) arriving at Earth yesterday'

Stunning colours from the Northern Lights - or the aurora borealis - were seen last night (March 13) from Kinross, Scotland

The incredible light show is caused by collisions between electrically charged particles released from the sun that enter the earth's atmosphere and collide with gases such as oxygen and nitrogen, Pictured, the view from from Kinross, Scotland on March 13

SOLAR FLARES AND CMEs A solar flare is a tremendous explosion on the Sun that happens when energy stored in 'twisted' magnetic fields (usually above sunspots) is suddenly released. In a matter of just a few minutes they heat material to many millions of degrees and produce a burst of radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum, including from radio waves to x-rays and gamma rays. Solar flares are different to 'coronal mass ejections' (CMEs), which were once thought to be initiated by solar flares. CMEs are huge bubbles of gas threaded with magnetic field lines that are ejected from the Sun over the course of several hours. Advertisement

Particles from the solar events can travel millions of miles, and some may eventually collide with the Earth.

According to Royal Museums Greenwich, most of the particles are deflected, but some become captured in the Earth's magnetic field.

They're accelerated down towards the north and south poles into the atmosphere  which is why an aurora best seen when nearer the magnetic poles.

'These particles then slam into atoms and molecules in the Earth's atmosphere and essentially heat them up,' said Royal Observatory astronomer Tom Kerss.

'We call this physical process "excitation", but it's very much like heating a gas and making it glow.'

The aurora has fascinated Earthlings for centuries, but the science behind it has not always been understood.

Earth has an invisible forcefield, the magnetosphere, that protects us from dangerous charged particles from the Sun.

The magnetosphere is the area around Earth controlled by the planet's magnetic field.

Science expert Marty Jopson explains: 'Whilst it shelters us, it also creates one of the most impressive phenomena on Earth  the Northern Lights.'

'When the deadly solar winds meet Earth's magnetosphere, some of the charged particles get trapped, and are propelled down the Earth's magnetic field lines straight towards the poles.

An aurora appears when atoms in Earth's high-altitude atmosphere collide with energetic charged particles from the sun, creating breathtaking colours. Pictured, the view from Vaasa, Finland

Its effects will likely continue into Monday night, making the aurora visible along the northern horizon if skies are clear, experts said. Pictured, view from Vaasa, Finland

'And when they reach Earth, they strike atoms and molecules in our atmosphere, releasing energy in the form of light.'

The problem is disruption to our magnetic field creates solar storms that can affect satellites in orbit, navigation systems, terrestrial power grids and data and communication networks.

'Harmful space weather has affected Earth before, but as we become increasingly reliant on systems and technologies vulnerable to the Sun's outbursts, future solar impacts could be even more disruptive,' says the European Space Agency (ESA).
Whether it's a friendly smiley face or a cheeky wink, many of us regularly include emoji in our work emails.

But if you want to be taken seriously in the office, a new study suggests that you should rein in the emoji.

Researchers from Tel Aviv University have revealed that people who included pictures and emoji in their emails are seen as less powerful than those who use words.

'Today we are all accustomed to communicating with pictures, and the social networks make it both easy and fun,' the researchers said.

'Our findings, however, raise a red flag: in some situations, especially in a work or business environment, this practice may be costly, because it signals low power.

'Our advice: think twice before sending a picture or emoji to people in your organisation, or in any other context in which you wish to be perceived as powerful.'

Researchers from Tel Aviv University have revealed that people who included pictures and emoji in their emails are seen as less powerful than those who use words (stock image)

Power poses help women feel more powerful at work Previous research has suggested that power poses may change the hormones released by women to help them feel more dominant in the workplace. By standing on spread legs, holding their hands on their hips, and raising their chin for two full minutes, women have reportedly experienced as much as a 20 per cent rise in testosterone, and about a 25 per cent decrease in cortisol. Some social psychologists feel that managing these hormones - responsible for confidence and anxiety, respectively  could be the key to closing the gender gap in executive offices around the country. Advertisement

In the study, the researchers set out to understand whether the use of images in emails affects the perception of people at work.

The team conducted a series of experiments in which various everyday scenarios were presented to hundreds of participants.

In one experiment, participants were asked to imagine shopping at a supermarket and seeing another shopper wearing a Red Sox t-shirt.

Half of the participants were shown a t-shirt with the verbal RED SOX logo, while the other half saw a pictorial logo.

The results revealed that participants who saw the t-shirt with writing rated the wearer as more powerful than those who saw the pictorial logo.

Meanwhile, in another experiment, participants were asked to imagine attending a retreat of a fictional company called Lotus.

Half were told that a female employee had chosen a t-shirt with the verbal logo LOTUS, while the other half were told that she opted for a t-shirt with the company's logo  a minimalistic picture of a lotus flower.

As with the first experiment, participants said the woman had more power when they'd been told she had chosen the t-shirt with the verbal logo.

Finally, in a third experiment, participants joined a Zoom meeting with two other participants  one who represented themselves with a pictorial profile, and the other who represented themselves with a verbal profile.

In one experiment, participants were asked to imagine shopping at a supermarket, and seeing another shopper wearing a Red Sox t-shirt. Half of the participants were shown a t-shirt with the verbal RED SOX logo (left), while the other half saw a pictorial logo (right)

Participants were then asked to choose one of the co-participants to represent them in a competitive game that suited people with high social power.

The results revealed that 62 per cent of participants chose the participant who had represented themselves with a verbal profile.

Dr Elinor Amit, co-author of the study, said: 'Why do pictures signal that a sender is low power? Research shows that visual messages are often interpreted as a signal for desire for social proximity.

'A separate body of research shows that less powerful people desire social proximity more than powerful people do.

In another experiment, participants were asked to imagine attending a reatreat of a fictional company called Lotus. Half were told that a female employee had chosen a t-shirt with the verbal logo LOTUS (left), while the other half were told that she opted for a t-shirt with the company's logo  a minimalistic picture of a lotus flower (right)

'Consequently, signaling that you'd like social proximity by using pictures is essentially signaling you're less powerful.

'It must be noted that such signaling is usually irrelevant in close relationships, as in communications between family members.

'However, in many arenas of our lives, especially at work or in business, power relations prevail, and we should be aware of the impression our messages make on their recipients.

'Our findings raise a red flag: when you want to signal power think twice before sending an emoji or a picture.'
A J-10CE fighter jet. CHINA DAILY

The deployment of the China-built J-10CE fighter jet will give a significant boost to the Pakistan Air Force's combat capability and diversify its operational portfolio, according to Chinese observers.

The Pakistan Air Force officially inducted its first batch of six J-10CE fighter jets at a ceremony on Friday at its Minhas Airbase in Kamra, Punjab, which was attended by Prime Minister Imran Khan and senior government officials and military commanders.

In his speech at the ceremony, Khan congratulated his nation on the historic occasion of the induction of the J-10CEs, saying that a country cannot remain free and independent unless it is able to defend itself.

The Chinese-built planes, dubbed "dragon from the East" by the PAF, will play an important role in rectifying a "security imbalance "in the region, he said.

The acquisition contract for the fighter jets was signed in June. Delivery of the first planes was completed in just eight months at unprecedented speed, a PAF announcer said at the ceremony.

He said the J-10CE program is a symbol of the brotherhood, unity and trust of the two countries and the prompt delivery was a testament to the special relationship between the two countries.

"It is indeed a historic and proud moment for the entire Pakistani nation," the announcer said. "The aircraft are fully loaded (with weapons), which gives a clear and loud message about the operational preparedness of the Pakistan Air Force."

Wang Yanan, editor-in-chief of Aerospace Knowledge magazine, said: "The J-10CE is an export variant of the J-10C, one of the best light-duty, multirole combat planes in the world and also one of the People's Liberation Army Air Force's most powerful pieces of hardware. With its service, the Pakistan Air Force will be able to effectively counter new threats and challenges in future aerial combat and will have a much stronger defense capability.

"The plane is able to fire missiles from beyond visual range. Together with its long flight range, the jet will substantially extend the PAF's operational radius and give it more time to handle suspected intrusions. Moreover, the J-10CE can carry out precision strikes against land targets, offering its user more options when planning military operations."

A defense industry observer who wished to be identified as Cui said the J-10CE is equipped with China's domestically developed WS-10B engine, which has proved to be an advanced, reliable motor. It has cutting-edge avionics and control systems as well as an active electronically scanned array radar, the best aircraft radar ever used by the PAF, he said.

Another attraction is that the aircraft is armed with the PL-10E short-range missile and the PL-15E long-range missile, the most powerful Chinese air-to-air weapons available on the international market, Cui said.

"They have almost the same technologies and capabilities as missiles used by the PLA Air Force for its own fighter jets," Cui said. "The PL-15E is an export version of the PL-15, which is likely to be used on China's J-20 stealth fighter jet. It can hit its targets from beyond visual range and is suitable for eliminating the enemy's high-value assets such as aerial-refueling or early-warning planes."

Designed and manufactured by Aviation Industry Corp of China, the J-10CE is an all-weather, multirole, fourth-plus-generation fighter jet. It can attack multiple targets from beyond visual range under complex electromagnetic environments, and can deliver precision strikes on ground targets with multiple guided munitions, according to AVIC.

The delivery of the J-10CEs marked a new chapter in cooperation on military aircraft between China and Pakistan and is expected to help to deepen their all-weather strategic cooperative partnership, AVIC said, adding the deal was a milestone in China's efforts to sell its high-end military aircraft.
The University of Montanas removal of the mask mandate in February was seen by many as a symbolic end to the COVID-19 pandemic thats ravaged campus for the last two years. But the struggle  and the resilience  weve seen at UM over these years wasnt for nothing. Weve learned what it me
It's the largest hornet in the world and one of the most invasive species threatening American crops today.

Now, scientists in California claim they know how the Asian giant hornet, also known as the 'murder hornet', can be stopped dead in its tracks.

The researchers say the deadly species (Vespa mandarinia) leaves secreted chemicals called 'pheromones' on surfaces during its attempts to attract a mate.

These pheromones can be tracked as part of efforts to bait and trap the insect, known for its painful and toxic sting that can kill humans through kidney failure.

The Asian giant hornet is most common in Japan, although it's also found in China, Thailand, South Korea, Vietnam and other Asian countries.

It also has an expanding footprint in North America, where it's considered 'invasive'  although experts can't say for sure how it arrived there.

The species threatens North American bee populations and millions of dollars worth of crops. Thankfully, it's not present in Europe  yet.

Scroll down for video

Described as the 'murder hornet', the Asian giant hornet (Vespa mandarinia) is the world's largest hornet. Queens are known to reach lengths of more than 2 inches (5cm)

A Washington State Department of Agriculture workers holds two of the dozens of Asian giant hornets vacuumed from a tree in Blaine, Washington

The Asian giant hornet has an expanding footprint in North America  although experts can't say for sure how it arrived there. Here, multiple Asian giant hornets attack a honey bee colony

The fearsome species is known for its size  queens are known to reach lengths of more than 2 inches (5cm), while males and the female workers are smaller (1.3 inch to 1.5 inch/3.5 to 3.9 cm)

MURDER HORNET: FACTS AND STATISTICS Scientific name: Vespa mandarinia Adult length: 1 3/4 inches Wingspan: Three inches Sting length: Quarter of an inch Description: Yellow face and large black and yellow striped abdomen. Large jaws and a noisy flier. Natural habitat: Across Asia Venom: It administers seven times more venom than a honeybee when it stings. This acts as a neurotoxin and can lead to seizures and cardiac arrests. The sting is described as incredibly painful. Behaviour: Insect emerges in April and nests in the ground. It predates on many insects, but particularly targets honeybees. Risks Has a habit of sacking bee hives, decapitating the workers and stealing the young. The European honeybee has no defense against the invader. Its stings could also prove fatal to Americans. Advertisement

The new study has been led by Professor James Nieh, a bee researcher at the University of California San Diego, and published today in the journal Current Biology.

'They [the Asian giant hornet] dont belong in North America and harm our critical bee populations, so we should remove them,' he said.

The fearsome Asian giant hornet is known for its size  queens can reach lengths of more than 2 inches (5cm), while males and the female workers are smaller (1.3 inch to 1.5 inch).

Scientists are not clear how the species first came to North America, although it's thought they were unintentionally shipped over somehow.

In recent years it's has been seen in British Columbia and Washington state, while modeling simulations indicate the insects could rapidly spread throughout the eastern US.

To learn more about the Asian giant hornet's chemical signature, Professor Nieh and his colleagues placed traps near the species' nests in the Western US. They captured only male hornets, but no females.

During their experiments the scientists tested the hornet's neural activity and found that male antennae were highly sensitive to pheromones released by females.

'The males are drawn to the odours of the females since they typically mate with them near their nests,' said study author Professor Nieh.

'In two field seasons we were able to rapidly collect thousands of males that were attracted to these odours.'

Using gas chromatography and mass spectrometry, they identified the three major components of the Asian giant hornet queen's sex pheromone  hexanoic acid, octanoic acid and decanoic acid.

These compounds can be readily purchased and deployed immediately in the field, meaning they could be used as bait to trap and track the insects from distances of a mile or more.

A sample specimen of a dead Asian Giant Hornet from Japan, also known as a murder hornet, is shown by a pest biologist from the Washington State Department of Agriculture on July 29, 2020 in Bellingham, Washington

A view inside a Asian giant hornet nest that was destroyed by Washington State entomologists in 2020

A dead Asian giant hornet (bottom), a sample sent from Japan and brought in for research, next to a native bald-faced hornet (top)

Video: Asian giant hornet virgin queen (centre) mating with a male in a cage, with another male on her back

ASIAN GIANT HORNET: SIGHTINGS IN THE US Sightings of this species in North America, thousands of kilometres from its native range, have been causing concern. In late 2019, two sightings of Asian giant hornets (Vespa mandarinia) were reported in North America - in British Columbia in September, and Washington State in December. Researchers don't yet know how far the species might have spread since its arrival on the continent. Source: Natural History Museum Advertisement

'Because these pheromone-based traps are fairly inexpensive I think they could be readily deployed for sampling across a large geographic range,' said Professor Nieh.

'We know where they have been found, so the big question is whether they are expanding. Where is that invasion front?'

Instead of patenting the identification of the sex pheromone, the team decided to publish their findings as quickly as possible in hopes of providing a possible solution to help slow the hornet's spread.

As more pheromone bait traps are deployed, a map could emerge along with predictive models to assess where and how rapidly they are spreading in North America.

'We hope that others, especially in invaded areas, will take the protocol we have established and test this method,' said Professor Nieh.

'We've described the chemical blends needed for these traps, which could reduce the number of males available to mate with females to help depress the population but primarily would help us figure out where they are.'

The Asian giant hornet feeds primarily on larger insects, colonies of other eusocial insects, tree sap and honey bees.

The Natural History Museum explains: 'When these wasps attack the bees, they will chew off the head, abdomen and legs, then transport the protein-rich thorax back to their nest.

In photo provided by the Washington State Dept. of Agriculture, an Asian Giant Hornet wearing a tracking device is shown Thursday, Oct. 22, 2020 near Blaine, Washington

Honey bees offer minimal protection against attacks, leading to quick destruction of entire bee colonies. This image shows the considerable size difference between the Asian giant hornet (left) and they honey bee (right)

'But the giant hornets have an additional trait  they specialise in eating honeybee broods.

'When they invade a honeybee colony, the hornets can enter a 'slaughter phase', where they will serially kill bee after bee.

'Within a few hours, a small group of hornets can decimate an entire honeybee colony.

'Once the bee workforce has been depleted, giant hornets will then spend days or weeks predating the honeybee pupae and larvae.'

Because they co-evolved in the same country, the Japanese honey bee (Apis cerana japonica), has an effective strategy, called heatballing, against the Asian giant hornet.

This is when several hundreds of honey bees mob the much bigger hornet by forming a ball around it.

The heat created by this ball of honey bees cooks the unlucky predator to death.

The problem is that this technique is specific to the Japanese honey bee, and not other honey bees like the western honey bee (Apis mellifera), found in Europe, North America and many other parts of the world.

Therefore, the Asian giant hornet can decimate entire hives of these honey bees, which are already under siege from mites, diseases, pesticides and loss of food.
Permafrost peatlands in Europe and Western Siberia are fast approaching a 'tipping point' that could lead to the release of up to 39 billion tons of carbon, a study warns.

The frozen peatlands store twice the amount of carbon as all of the European forests put together, but global warming is causing them to melt and free greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

New research suggests the areas are much closer to a climatic tipping point than previously believed.

Experts led by the University of Leeds say that even with the strongest efforts to reduce global carbon emissions, by 2040 the climates of northern Europe will no longer be cold and dry enough to sustain peat permafrost.

However, their projections suggest that taking significant action to tackle global warming could help preserve suitable climates for permafrost peatlands in northern parts of Western Siberia, a landscape containing 13.9 billion tons of peat carbon.

Permafrost peatlands in Europe and Western Siberia are fast approaching a 'tipping point' that could lead to the release of up to 39 billion tons of carbon, a study warns

Where is Earth's Carbon stored? Amazon rainforest: 200 billion tonnes Siberian permafrost: 950 billion tonnes Arctic: 1,600 billion tonnes Oceans: As much as 38,000 gigatonnes, according to World Ocean Review These figures are estimates, but true values may be higher. By contrast, humans produce an estimated 36 billion tonnes of carbon annually. Advertisement

The study emphasises the importance of socio-economic policies aimed at reducing emissions and mitigating climate change and their role in determining the rate and extent of permafrost peatland thaw.

Lead author, Richard Fewster, from the University of Leeds, said: 'We examined a range of future emission trajectories. This included strong climate-change mitigation scenario, which would see large-scale efforts to curb emissions across sectors, to no-mitigations scenarios and worse-case scenarios.

'Our modelling shows that these fragile ecosystems are on a precipice and even moderate mitigation leads to the widespread loss of suitable climates for peat permafrost by the end of the century.

'But that doesn't mean we should throw in the towel.

'The rate and extent to which suitable climate are lost could be limited, and even partially reversed, by strong climate-change mitigation policies.'

Permafrost is a permanently frozen layer below the Earth's surface found in Arctic regions such as Alaska, Siberia and Canada.

It typically consists of soil, gravel and sand bound together by ice, and is classified as ground that has remained below 32F (0C) for at least two years.

It is estimated 1,500 billion tons of carbon is stored in the world's permafrost  more than twice the amount found in the atmosphere.

The carbon comes in the form of ancient vegetation and soil that has remained frozen for millennia.

Study co-author Dr Paul Morris, associate Professor of Biogeoscience at Leeds, said: 'Huge stocks of peat carbon have been protected for millennia by frozen conditions but once those conditions become unsuitable all that stored carbon can be lost very quickly.

The researchers' projections suggest that taking significant action to tackle global warming could help preserve suitable climates for permafrost peatlands in northern parts of Western Siberia (pictured), a landscape containing 13.9 billion tons of peat carbon

He added: 'The large quantities of carbon stored in peatland permafrost soils are particularly threatened by rapid 21st century climate change.

'When permafrost thaws the organic matter starts to decompose, releasing greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane, which increase global temperatures and potentially accelerate global climate change.'

Dr Ruza Ivanovic, also from the University of Leeds, said: 'Peatland permafrost responds differently to changing climates than mineral-soil permafrost due to the insulating properties of organic soils, but peatlands remain poorly represented in Earth system models.

'It is vitally important these ecosystems are understood and accounted for when considering the impact of climate change on the planet.'

Fellow study co-author Dr Chris Smith, said more work was needed to further understand the 'fragile ecosystems'.

'Remote sensing and field campaigns can help improve maps of modern peat permafrost distribution in regions where observation data is lacking,' he added.

'This would enable future modelling studies to make hemispheric-scale projections.'

The study has been published in the journal Nature Climate Change.
A probe sent to study Mars by the United Arab Emirates has captured stunning images of a dust storm developing and fading away on the Red Planet.

Known as the Hope probe, it provides details of the structure and variability of the Martian atmosphere using a number of onboard cameras and scientific instruments.

While Mars has a much thinner atmosphere than the Earth, it is still enough to create winds, and dry patches of fine dust particles are caught up in the winds, creating dust storm fierce enough to cover the entire planet in a haze for weeks at a time.

Hope has provided unprecedented data on how these storms develop and evolve over time, using its camera and infrared spectrometer to characterize the thermal state of the surface of the Red Planet, and its lower atmosphere.

They were able to watch one storm develop, spread out 2,500 miles across, obscure features including mountains and craters, and then thin out to nothing in two weeks.

Having access to this type of data could one day help humans living on the Red Planet know whether it is safe to venture outside, or to cover solar panels.

Astronomers used the Hope probe to look at an emerging dust cloud (left, bottom right of planet), and then watch it disappear (right)

Illustration provided by Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre depicts the United Arab Emirates' Hope Mars probe during its approach

Hope allowed planetary scientists from the Arab nation to provide details of the geographic distribution of dust, water vapor, water and carbon-dioxide ice clouds.

The EXI camera system on Hope collects images at three visible and two ultraviolet wavelengths  providing a multispectral weather satellite view of Mars.

The Hope probe entered orbit around the Red Planet in February 2021, and began preparing for scientific observations, and taking photographs of the planet surface.

The UAE Space Agency confirmed the probe, through the EXI and EMIRS instruments, started monitoring regional dust storms in December last year.

Over the course of the past few months, these small regional storms have evolved, expanding to cover several thousand miles.

EMIRS is an interferometric thermal infrared spectrometer, designed for characterizing the lower atmosphere of Mars.

The team took multiple observations between December 29 (left ) and January 14 (right) as the thickness of the dust changed over the two weeks

MARS: THE BASICS Mars is the fourth planet from the sun, with a 'near-dead' dusty, cold, desert world with a very thin atmosphere. Mars is also a dynamic planet with seasons, polar ice caps, canyons, extinct volcanoes, and evidence that it was even more active in the past. It is one of the most explored planets in the solar system and the only planet humans have sent rovers to explore. One day on Mars takes a little over 24 hours and a year is 687 Earth days. Facts and Figures Orbital period: 687 days Surface area: 144.8 million km Distance from Sun: 227.9 million km Gravity: 3.721 m/s Radius: 3,389.5 km Moons: Phobos, Deimos Advertisement

Its measurements are used by the team to determine the distribution of dust, water ice and water vapor, as well as surface and atmospheric temperatures.

As the Martian season approaches southern spring, dust storm activity increases.

The Hope observatory is a valuable orbiting asset in documenting the location and evolution of dust storms on the planet, giving unprecedented observations and insight into the nature of these storms and their characterisation.

It observed the storms over a two week period, probing the growth, and eventual dissipation of the storm - revealed within a prominent dark feature of the Martian surface known as the Syrtis Major - that resembles a shark fin.

It has a gently sloping dead volcano, covered in dark basaltic sand deposits in very thin layers, and to the south is a circular feature called the Hellas impact basin.

This is often hidden by water-ice clouds and dust, so was a surprise to see in images.

The first observations of the storm, on December 29, found that the Hellas crater was filled with thick dust clouds, while clouds were thinner surrounding the basin.

By January 5, astronomers observed a massive dust storm 1,500 miles across, coming in from the east, obscuring the Syrtis Major.

Capturing images of the Red Planet at different points and on different days reveals details about weather patterns and how systems evolve

Named Hope, the probe started the complex process of entering Martian orbit at just before 16:00 GMT - following a 500 million km race from Earth

They also saw unsusual grey-colored water-ice clouds around Syrtis Major, while the Hellas crater had been completely hidden under a blanket of dust.

A few days after this they found the greyish water-ice clouds and dust haze was extending towards the north of Hellas and the thickness was increasing.

By this point it had lifted from the surface and spread out across 2,500 miles from Syrtis Major out towards the east, crawling further westward by January 9.

They made the final observations of this dust cloud on January 14, and found the dust had thinned to a haze. It grew from haze, to blanket, to haze, in two weeks
Many of us are aware of the climate crisis facing Earth and its inhabitants  now a new study warns of an upcoming 'biodiversity crisis' from human population growth.

Researchers at Yale University have calculated the effect of a projected urban expansion of 590,000 square miles (1.53 million square km) over the next 30 years.

Globally, such an expansion directly threatens a total of 855 animal species with the real risk of extinction, they found, especially in 'biodiversity hotspots'.

Particularly threatened species include Javan slow loris, a primate native to Java in Indonesia that's threatened by poaching, and pink-headed warbler, a bird found in Mexico and Guatemala.

Species under the most pressure from expansion are concentrated in areas from central Mexico through Central America, the Caribbean, Haiti, Nigeria, Cameroon, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Brazil, and Ecuador.

Populations of the Javan slow loris (pictured) are already in sharp decline because of poaching for the exotic pet trade. It is also used in research associated with traditional medicine

SPECIES THREATENED BY BIODIVERSITY CRISIS - Javan slow loris (Nycticebus javanicus) - Pink-headed warbler (Cardellina versicolor) - Bamenda reed frog (Hyperolius ademetzi) - Lionhead agama (Calotes liocephalus) Advertisement

The new assessment has been led by Rohan Simkin, a researcher at Yale School of the Environment in New Haven, Connecticut.

'One of the aims of the study was to identify those species, not that just are threatened, but that are specifically threatened by urban land development,' said Simkin.

'I think that the average person on the street is very aware of the climate crisis now, but I'm not sure they are aware of the biodiversity crisis.'

Within the next 30 years, the global urban population is projected to increase by 2.5 billion people, which will greatly increase urban spread.

Much of this urban expansion is predicted to occur in biodiversity hotspots  areas rich with species that are at a high risk for destruction due to human activity.

But researchers say a focus on urban planning that protects habitats, such as cities with more green areas, can limit the harmful of impact of new concrete.

Despite the potential for loss of species from land expansion, the study highlights how cities can proactively protect biodiversity, according to author Karen Seto at Yale.

'The majority of these places have yet to be built,' she said. 'Science-driven policies that guide how the cities of tomorrow get built will have a tremendous effect.'

Pictured is the pink-headed warbler, a bird found in the southwestern highlands of Guatemala and the central and southeastern highlands of the Mexican state of Chiapas

For the study, the team used Yale's Map of Life  a collection of species distribution data used to monitor, research and create policies that protect global species.

It also used recently developed land-use projections to assess future habitat loss from urban land expansion for more than 30,000 terrestrial species globally.

Urban land expansion is a significant driver of habitat loss for about one-third of these species, although a much smaller fraction is threatened by the threat of extinction.

The study found that the largest impacts on species are not from the world's largest cities, but from urban areas that have 'a myriad of endemic species' and where expansion can destroy habitats.

Researchers say a focus on urban planning that protects habitats, such as cities with more green areas, can limit the harmful of impact of new concrete. Pictured is a 'green' building with climber plants (file photo)

Unfortunately, these areas are rapidly becoming more urbanized, according to the experts.

Many of these cities are in equatorial regions where urban growth can rip through precious and 'biodiverse' habitats.

The cities that pose the greatest threat to species due to expansion are predominately located in the developing tropical regions of sub-Saharan Africa, South America, Mesoamerica, and Southeast Asia.

Overall, the study shows how there's a need for global conservation efforts to include policies to preserve species in urban land.

'Cities are actually part of the solution,' said Seto. 'We can build cities differently than we have in the past.

'They can be good for the planet; they can save species; they can be biodiversity hubs and save land for nature.'

Full findings have been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The results of the study and projected patterns of urban expansion and biodiversity impact can also be found here.
Nicole Byer looked more than ready to host the Critics Choice Awards as she arrived on the event's red carpet.

The Nailed It star, 35, donned a gorgeous pink gown with a large skirt and long train which dragged behind her.

Byer's hair was done up into a large beehive and she wore diamond earrings.

Getting down to business: Nicole Byer looked more than ready to host the Critics Choice Awards as she arrived on the event's red carpet

The 30 Rock actress smiled wide, and her bright teeth shined brilliantly.

Byer is hosting the show alongside Rent actor Taye Diggs. It is the 27th installment of the Critics Choice Awards.

The Brooklyn Nine-Nine isn't a newbie to show hosting by any means. She hosts the reality bake-off show Nailed It! on Netflix.

Flowing: The actress, 35, donned a gorgeous pink gown with a large skirt and long train which dragged behind her

Hair with some volume: Byer's hair was done up into a large beehive and she wore diamond earrings that dangled

She has garnered two Emmy nominations for her work hosting the program which debuted in 2018.

Byer has been busy with a number of character acting parts recently. She was a series regular on the show Grand Crew which just ended its first season. The sitcom has not yet been renewed for a second season.

It was recently announced that Byer will appear in the television miniseries 4D printer though not much has been revealed about the series itself.

Change: The star then stunned audiences with this tight-fitting pink ensemble

Color blocking: In a third outfit change, Nicole wowed with this red dress and purple cape

The All About Nina star has two movies coming out soon. The first is titled Unplugging, a film about a couple addicted to technology who take a vacation where to a rustic part of the country, without so much as cell phone service.

She will also star in the comedy Mack & Rita about a 30-something woman who gets struck by lightning and wakes up as a 65-year-old.

The Critics Choice Awards kicked off at 4 p.m. at Fairmont Century Plaza in Los Angeles.

Not new to hosting: She has garnered two Emmy nominations for her work hosting on the program which debuted in 2018

Television star: She was also a series regular on the show Grand Crew which just ended its first season
Advertisement

The BAFTAs red carpet is synonymous with glitz, glamour and outlandish outfits.

However the 2022 ceremony saw celebrity arrivals cause onlookers to sigh in disappointment with their surprisingly subdued and boring ensembles as they arrived at London's Royal Albert Hall on Sunday.

It follows claims that celebrity attendees were advised to 'dress respectably' due to the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine.

And the award for worst dressed goes to? Naomi Campbell (left) and Lashana Lynch (centre) toned down the glam at the bland BAFTAs on Sunday after reportedly being advised to 'dress respectably' (but Emma Watson, right, missed the memo!)

The event saw the likes of Benedict Cumberbatch, Daisy Ridley and Jessie Buckley hit the star-studded photocall. But according to reports, celebrities were unanimously planning to dress in black in advance.

'Several senior showbiz agents have advised stars to dress respectably, amid fears attention-grabbing dresses and suits would appear distasteful in light of the Ukraine conflict,' a source told the Sun on Sunday.

'The last thing they want is something like Lady Gaga's infamous meat dress or anything too controversial.'

Lady Gaga infamously wore a meat dress to the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards.

Predictable: Many celebrities stuck to the suggested black dress code, with Lady Gaga (left) and Jessie Buckley (right) opting to go with the flow

Uninspired: A source said: 'Several senior showbiz agents have advised stars to dress respectably, amid fears attention-grabbing dresses and suits would appear distasteful in light of the Ukraine conflict' (L-R: Ellie Bamber, Daisy Ridley and Jessica Plummer)

Age-defying: Joanna Scanlan also opted for a black dress, while accessorising her look with a gold purse

Suits you? The Crown star Emerald Fennell opted for an over-sized velvet tuxedo for her big night

And Janet Street Porter took aim at the events organisers writing: 'It's business as usual. The organisers clearly believe 'we've got through Covid, let's carry on enjoying ourselves'.

'Wouldn't we respect them more, if someone back at mission control had the guts to stand up and say - 'let's call the whole thing off until peace is restored in Ukraine. This backslapping and awarding is grotesque'.'

The nominations for the BAFTA awards were announced last month with Dune, The Power Of The Dog and Belfast leading with 11, eight and six respectively.

Denis Villeneuve's star-studded sci-fi epic landed a slew of technical nods, along with a nod for the top prize for Best Film, while Jane Campion's dark Western and Kenneth Branagh's Irish biopic follows close behind with eight and six respectively.

Statement: Stephen Graham (left) wore a Ukraine ribbon to show his support for war-torn country Ukraine - however Simon Pegg (right) decided to go without

Dapper: At least Sebastian Stan accessorised the collar of his white shirt with edgy metal silver hoops

It comes after explosions were heard on the outskirts of the western Ukrainian city of Lviv after Russian forces launched an attack on a military base just 12 miles from the Polish border, killing at least nine people and injuring dozens more.

Vladimir Putin's forces launched a missile strike on the International Center for Peacekeeping and Security, also known as Yavoriv military complex, just before 6am this morning.

Initial reports suggested the base had been targeted by eight missiles, but Maksym Kozytskyi, Governor of the region later confirmed 30 cruise missiles had been fired, killing nine people and injuring 57.

The base has previously been used to host Nato drills and up until recently has housed foreign military instructors, although its unclear if any have been caught up in the strike.
Advertisement

Lily James, Billie Piper and Kate Moss were the epitome of glamour as they led a star-studded guest list at the British Vogue and Tiffany & Co fashion and film party on Sunday night.

British Vogue Editor-in-Chief Edward Enninful OBE hosted the fifth annual bash which was dedicated to helping those enduring global conflict and to raise funds for those affected. All guests were encouraged to join British Vogue and Tiffany & Co. in support of the Disasters Emergency Committees Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal by donating.

Pam & Tommy star Lily, 32, looked nothing short of spectacular in a strapless black mini dress embellished with mint green and blush roses as she arrived at Annabel's in London's Mayfair.

She paired her slinky ensemble with a pair of green knee-high boots adorned with an array of flowers, while she accentuated her natural beauty with a smokey-eye make-up palette by Charlotte Tilbury Beauty.

Star-studded: Lily James, Billie Piper and Kate Moss were the epitome of glamour as they arrived at the British Vogue and Tiffany & Co fashion and film party on Sunday night

The actress styled her brunette tresses in a sleek up-do, while she let wavy strands of her hair effortlessly frame her striking features.

She was joined at the event by Doctor Who star Billie Piper, who showed off her sensational sense of style in a chic all-black ensemble.

The I Hate Suzie actress, 39, flaunted her sensational physique in a cropped sleeveless top, which she paired with a belted layered mini skirt.

She gave herself a few extra inches with a pair of knee-high boots embellished with silver charms, while she accessorised her ensemble with a chunky pair of hoop earrings.

Watch I Hate Suzie only on Stan in Australia.

Stylish: Pam & Tommy star Lily, 32, looked nothing short of spectacular in a strapless black mini dress embellished with mint green and blush roses as she arrived at Annabel's in London's Mayfair

Stunning: Lily styled her brunette tresses in a sleek up-do, while she let wavy strands of her hair effortlessly frame her striking features as she posed with Billie

Bold ensemble: Lily was joined at the event by Doctor Who star Billie Piper, who showed off her sensational sense of style in a striking all-black outfit

Wow! The I Hate Suzie actress, 39, flaunted her sensational physique in a cropped sleeveless top, which she paired with a belted layered mini skirt

Heading home: Lily and Billie were still looking glam as they made their exit from the chic bash in the early hours

Billie styled her signature short golden tresses in a natural wave, while she sported a smokey-eye make-up palette for the evening outing.

Meanwhile, supermodel Kate Moss showed off her chic sense of style as she arrived at the much-anticipated event in a patterned orange-toned maxi dress with flared sleeves.

Kate, 48, paired her colourful outfit with a pair of black boots while she kept her essentials in a black handbag with a gold chain strap.

The catwalk Queen let her golden locks cascade across her shoulders in a natural fashion, while she accentuated her features with a light dusting of make-up.

Leggy! Lily looked incredible in her micro mini as she headed down the steps with the help of a male pal

Beauty: Catwalk Queen Kate let her golden locks cascade across her shoulders in a natural fashion, while she accentuated her features with a light dusting of make-up

Supermodel: Kate Moss, 48, paired her colourful outfit with a pair of black boots while she kept her essentials in a black handbag with a gold chain strap as she arrived at the event

Elegant exit: Kate flashed a look at her unusual choice of footwear as she exited her car for the party at the famed club

Calling it a night: Kate was looking flawless as she made her way out of the private member's club and to her car after an evening of partying

Helping hand: The runway star kept a tight hold onto her friend's arm as she navigated the pavement in her platforms

BAFTA host Rebel Wilson also looked spectacular as she arrived at the event in a figure-hugging floor-length red gown, while she styled her golden tresses in glamorous waves across her shoulders.

Earlier in the night, the Australian actress wore the same show-stopping ensemble as she hosted the Academy's 75th ceremony at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

Her hosting gig saw her hand Lady Gaga's boyfriend Michael Polansky a golden bra for a joke Best Plus One award during the film awards.

Also coming from the BAFTA red carpet was Emma Watson, who cut a smart figure in a black suit and a lace top, which she paired with chunky black boots.

Strike a pose! Naomi Campbell couldn't resist posing for snappers as she made her elegant exit from the BAFTA bash

Busy night: BAFTA host Rebel Wilson also looked spectacular as she arrived at the event in a figure-hugging floor-length red gown, while she styled her golden tresses in glamorous waves across her shoulders

Vision: Earlier in the night, the Australian actress wore the same show-stopping ensemble as she hosted the Academy's 75th ceremony at the Royal Albert Hall in London

What a night! Rebel couldn't wipe the smile from her face as she exited the Vogue party. Her comfy boots peeked out from underneath her dress after she ditched her glam heels

Helping hand: Rebel was guided to her car by an aide after her busy night of hosting and party hopping

After winning the Rising Star gong, Lashana Lynch proudly flaunted her BAFTA award, after she revealed she was going to give the trophy to her mother because 'I don't know what to do with it'.

The No Time To Die star, 34, looked sensational in a satin black gown which she paired with black pointed heels as she celebrated after her victory.

And Daisy Edgar-Jones looked sublime in the sea-green fringed number custom made by Gucci, which glittered under the lights.

Winner! After winning the Rising Star gong, Lashana Lynch proudly flaunted her BAFTA award, after she revealed she was going to give the trophy to her mother because 'I don't know what to do with it'

Congratulations! The No Time To Die star, 34, looked sensational in a satin black gown which she paired with black pointed heels as she celebrated after her victory

Dapper: Also coming from the BAFTA red carpet was Emma Watson, who cut a smart figure in a black suit, which she wore over a lace top

Check out the shoes! Emma showed off her chunky platform boots as she strutted into the celeb-packed party

Film awards: Also coming from the BAFTA red carpet was Daisy Edgar-Jones, who looked sublime in the sea-green fringed number custom made by Gucci, which glittered under the lights

Glittering: Daisy's ample assets were on full display in the plunging gown, which clung to her lithe frame. She is pictured with Ella Hunt

Party girl: Daisy hitched up her glam dress as she navigated the cobbled street outside to head to her car

Home driver! Daisy and Emma put on animated displays as they headed home in their chauffeur-driven cars

Daisy's ample assets were on full display in the plunging gown, which clung to her lithe frame.

The Normal People star accessorised with a pair of glitzy diamond earrings, chunky rings and a matching diamond bangle for a touch of added glamour.

Her chocolate locks were pinned back from her face, and neatly curled, and she completed her look with lashings of mascara. The beauty worked with her stylist Nicky Yates to make the creation.

After presenting a gong at the BAFTA film awards alongside Millie Bobby Brown, Florence Pugh continued to show-off her raven pixie cut.

The 26-year-old actress flaunted her toned pegs in a strapless pink mini dress embellished with a draping skirt, while she accessorised her look with a silver choker.

Dramatic: After presenting a gong at the BAFTA film awards alongside Millie Bobby Brown, Florence Pugh continued to show-off her raven pixie cut

Figure: The 26-year-old actress flaunted her toned pegs in a strapless pink mini dress embellished with a draping skirt, while she accessorised her look with a silver choker

Chilly? Florence ignored the dismal London weather on Sunday as she rocked her strapless dress for the night of partying

In the mood to party: Florence was in great spirits as she pulled a friend along to her waiting car

Friends: Elsewhere, Paloma Faith was seen laughing with Billie Piper as she turned heads in a latex-look black gown, which she wore with a bright green sheer shirt underneath

Signature style: The singer, 40, sported a pair of rouge slip-on heels and accessorised her look with a glistening silver necklace

Elsewhere, Paloma Faith was seen laughing with Billie Piper as she turned heads in a latex-look black gown, which she wore with a bright green sheer shirt underneath.

Showcasing her signature sense of style, the Only Love Can Hurt Like This hitmaker, 40, sported a pair of rouge slip-on heels and accessorised her look with a glistening silver necklace.

Jenna Coleman cut an elegant figure in a stunning cream satin gown with a sheer collar and puff sleeves, while it was adorned with an array of red drop jewels.

The Serpent actress, 35, paired her show-stopping ensemble with a pair of strapped rouge heels as she attended the fashion and film party at Annabel's in London's Mayfair.

Amazing: Jenna Coleman cut an elegant figure in a stunning cream satin gown with a sheer collar and puff sleeves, while it was adorned with an array of red drop jewels

Style: The Serpent actress, 35, paired her show-stopping ensemble with a pair of strapped rouge heels as she attended the fashion and film party at Annabel's in London's Mayfair

Sensational: Jenna accentuated her striking beauty with a light dusting of make-up and a slick of pink lipstick, while she clutched an opal-style round bag with a pearl chain in one hand

Unique look: The Doctor Who star swept her brunette tresses back into an up-do, while she let a few strands of her wavy locks fall and frame her face

Always chic: Jenna showed off her red velvet heels as she strutted out of the club to her car

Jenna accentuated her striking beauty with a light dusting of make-up and a slick of pink lipstick, while she clutched an opal-style round bag with a pearl chain in one hand.

The Doctor Who star swept her brunette tresses back into an up-do, while she let a few strands of her wavy locks fall and frame her face.

Radio DJ Carla Amfo looked spectacular in a glittering rose gold strapless mini dress, which she paired with open toe heels and a beaded clutch bag.

The Strictly Come Dancing star wore a dramatic flick of eyeliner as she highlighted her good looks, while she styled her brunette tresses in a braided look.

Model Poppy Delevingne looked stunning in a black maxi dress with a lace skirt and sheer sleeves, while Bob Geldof's daughter Pixie showed off her sense of style in a frilled cream dress, which she paired with green heels.

Sienna Miller glistened in a stunning silver paisley patterned mini dress as she joined the star-studded guest list at the fashion and film party.

DJ: Strictly Come Dancing's Carla Amfo glittered in a rose gold strapless gown, which she paired with coordinated open-toe heels and a beaded clutch bag

Star-studded: Sienna Miller glistened in a stunning silver paisley patterned mini dress as she joined the star-studded guest list at the fashion and film party

Incredible: Television presenter Laura Whitmore also made an appearance at the glitzy event, stunning in a statement black dress with a daring side split embellished with silver stitching

Sensational: Model Poppy Delevingne looked spectacular in a black maxi dress with a lace skirt and sheer sleeves, while Bob Geldof's daughter Pixie showed off her sense of style in a frilled cream dress, which she paired with green heels

Wow factor! Poppy looked incredible in her very racy choice of dress as she posed on the steps of Annabel's

Superstar: The Winter Soldier actor Sebastian Stan cut a dapper figure in a black suit, which he paired with a white shirt adorned with silver rings around the collar

Baring all: After leaving the BAFTA film awards, Adwoa Aboah changed out of her elegant black gown and into a daring all-white sheer ensemble

Sheer: The model, 29, turned heads in a daring high-neck top which she paired with white trousers, while she slung a black hangbag across one shoulder

The actress, 40, styled her golden tresses in a loose ponytail while she flaunted her natural good looks with a bronzed palette of make-up.

Television presenter Laura Whitmore also made an appearance at the glitzy event, stunning in a statement black dress with a daring side split embellished with silver stitching.

The Love Island host, 36, added a splash of colour to her stylish ensemble with a slick of rouge lipstick, while she styled her blonde locks in glamorous waves across her shoulders.

Meanwhile, Derry Girls actress Nicola Coughlan, 35, flaunted her ample assets in a plunging lace white dress with a glittering sequin skirt, which she paired with a pair of strapped heels.

Sexy: Bridgerton star Simone Ashley also showed off her incredible figure in a plunging purple mini dress, which she paired with a matching satin jacket

Eye-catching: Derry Girls actress Nicola Coughlan, 35, flaunted her ample assets in a plunging lace white dress with a glittering sequin skirt, which she paired with a pair of strapped heels

Couple: Alesha Dixon showcased her sensational physique in a petite black dress with silver sequin cutouts as she was joined by her husband Azuka Ononye

Eye-catching: Model Jourdan Dunn did not shy away from putting on a show-stopping display as she donned a blue leopard print mini dress with a sequin choker collar

Extravagant: The 31-year-old paired her eye-catching ensemble with matching knee-high lace-up boots and a floor-length jacket, which she wore off her shoulders

Her Bridgerton co-star Simone Ashley also showed off her incredible figure in a plunging purple mini dress, which she paired with a matching satin jacket.

The actress, 26, let her chocolate tresses cascade across her shoulders in a tight wave, while she accentuated her good looks with a smokey-eye make-up palette.

And model Jourdan Dunn did not shy away from putting on a show-stopping display as she donned a blue leopard print mini dress with a sequin choker collar.

The 31-year-old paired her eye-catching ensemble with matching knee-high lace-up boots and a floor-length jacket, which she wore off her shoulders.

Smart: Actor Douglas Booth cut a smart figure in a black suit, which he wore over a casual white T-shirt as he joined the star-studded guest list

Bold colour: Rapper Ghetts caught attention in a bright blue patterned jacket, which he paired with black trousers and chunky boots

Purple: Model Charli Howard turned heads in a gorgeous lavender plunging gown with floor-length waterfall sleeves

Satin look: Singer Jessie Ware looked sensational in an oversized silver satin shirt and wide-leg trousers, lined with huge feathered cuffs

Incredible: Singer Joy Crookes flaunted her slender pegs in a grey strapped mini dress, which she paired with simple pointed black heels. She accessorised her look with an array of chunky gold necklaces

Celebrities: Also in attendance at the glitzy event were actor Douglas Booth, singer Joy Crookes and singer Little Simz (pictured), who cut a smart figure in a grey suit

After leaving the BAFTA film awards, Adwoa Aboah changed out of her elegant black gown and into an all-white sheer ensemble.

The model, 29, turned heads in a daring high-neck sheer top which she paired with white trousers, while she slung a black hangbag across one shoulder.

Also in attendance at the glitzy event were actor Douglas Booth, singer Alesha Dixon and her husband Azuka Ononye, singer Joy Crookes, activist Malala Yousafzai and singer Jessie Ware.

Meanwhile, Noel Gallagher's wife Sara MacDonald looked nothing short of sensational as she arrived at the event in a plunging leather-look scarlet wrap-around midi dress.

Leather-look: Noel Gallagher's wife Sara MacDonald looked nothing short of sensational as she arrived at the event in a plunging scarlet wrap-around midi dress

Friendly: Sara posed with British model Mary Charteris, who showcased her sensational physique in a black mini dress with a single glittering silver strap and a pair of heeled boots

Daring: Model Leomie Anderson put on an eye-popping display as she flaunted her figure in a rainbow sequinned cut-out dress with a feathered hem

Stylish: Keith Richards' granddaughter Ella put on an elegant display in a mint green and white mini dress with a dramatic train

Solidarity: Actress Jessica Plummer showed her support for war-torn Ukraine amid Russia's invasion of the country by wearing a blue and yellow ribbon on her plunging black gown

Fashionable: Last Night In Soho star Synnove Karlsen glittered in a metallic gold gown with waterfall sleeves, while Emma Appleton looked sensational in a sequin dress with feathered edging

Chic: Activist Malala Yousafzai put on an elegant display in a satin beige ensemble as she arrived at the British Vogue and Tiffany & Co party

Wow: Emma Weymouth was on fine form once again on Sunday night as she attended the British Vogue and Tiffany & Co. Fashion and Film Party at Annabel's private members' club

Stunning: The Marchioness of Bath, 35, turned heads in a sequin silver and black off-the-shoulder gown as she mingled with other stars at the glitzy event

She paired her bold ensemble with a pair of knee high black heeled boots, while she wore a black sheer top underneath her dress.

The mother-of-two, 50, styled her brunette locks in a straight fashion while she sported a nude palette of make-up and painted her nails with bright coral.

She posed with British model Mary Charteris, who showcased her sensational physique in a black mini dress with a single glittering silver strap and a pair of heeled boots.

Edward Enninful, who recently got married at Emma's Longleat estate, hosted the bash, posing alongside model Cindy Bruna.

Pals: Edward Enninful, who recently got married at Emma's Longleat estate, was also in attendance alongside model Cindy Bruna

Ooh I say! Neelam Gill dared to bare in a very revealing silver netted crop top and matching skirt

Cheeky! Neelam made sure to show off every angle of her very daring ensemble as she left the star-studded bash

Emma Weymouth turned heads in a sequin silver and black off-the-shoulder gown as she mingled with other stars at the glitzy event.

She oozed confidence as she modelled the show-stopping semi-sheer number which flashed a glimpse of her black underwear beneath.

The socialite teamed her form-fitting dress with metallic heels and opted to forgo a plethora of accessories.

Instead she upped the glam by styling her brown locks into bouncy waves and added a sleek palette of make-up to her face.

Work it: Sabrina Elba stunned in a black dress which featured a leather top and a zip detail down the side

Fun: Film director Charlotte Colbert and model Lily Cole both flaunted their unique senses of style as they donned striking black ensembles

Star couple: Idris Elba mixed smart and casual with his t-shirt and loafer combo while his stunning wife Sabrina dazzled in a racy black corset

Leggy: Ellie Bamber showed off her legs under her sheer black skirt as she left the party hand in hand with a pal

Chic: Clara Paget and Mabel both opted for super chic black dresses, flashing their legs as they left the party

Date night: Dermot O'Leary and his TV producer wife Dee Koppang both looked great in their party looks

Brit talent: Boxer and Strictly star Nicola Adams was busy on the phone as she left the party while singer Ella Eyre wowed in her cropped black tuxedo

Long night! AJ Odudu was looking gorgeous in her shimmering strapless dress after a day which saw her host the BAFTA red carpet
The Sparrows have landed with the long-awaited first teaser trailer for Netflix's The Umbrella Academy Season 3.

It's been nearly two years since the second season debuted on Netflix, with the new trailer revealing Season 3 will debut on June 22.

The video also reveals the first footage of the Hargreeves family getting ready for battle, including Elliot Page's Vanya Hargreeves and Tom Hooper's Luther Hargreeves.

Sparrows: The Sparrows have landed with the long-awaited first teaser trailer for Netflix's The Umbrella Academy Season 3

Premiere: It's been nearly two years since the second season debuted on Netflix, with the new trailer revealing Season 3 will debut on June 22

First footage: The video also reveals the first footage of the Hargreeves family getting ready for battle, including Elliot Page's Vanya Hargreeves and Tom Hooper's Luther Hargreeves

The brief video offers a glimpse of Vanya and Luther along with Raymond Chestnut (Yusuf Gatewood), Klaus Hargreeves (Robert Sheehan), Diego Hargreeves (David Castaneda), Ben Hargreeves (Justin H. Min), Grace (Jordan Claire Robbins) and Allison Hargreeves (Emmy Raver-Lampmann).

The trailer ends with a Sparrows logo, revealing, 'The Sparrows Have Landed,' and revealing that Season 3 will debut on June 22.

Before the trailer dropped on The Umbrella Academy socials, showrunner Steve Blackman revealed the premiere date at the SXSW Festival in Austin.

Characters: The brief video offers a glimpse of Vanya and Luther (above) along with Raymond Chestnut (Yusuf Gatewood), Klaus Hargreeves (Robert Sheehan), Diego Hargreeves (David Castaneda), Ben Hargreeves (Justin H. Min), Grace (Jordan Claire Robbins) and Allison Hargreeves (Emmy Raver-Lampmann)

The second season of the show ended with the Hargreeves having stopped the apocalypse, only to return in 2019 to reveal that they have significantly altered their timeline.

This new timeline reveals that Sir Reginald Hargreeves (Colm Feore) had not actually founded The Umbrella Academy, but instead The Sparrow Academy.

Season 3 will follow the Sparrows as they, 'immediately clash with the Umbrellas in a violent face-off that turns out to be the least of everyones concerns.'

Apocalypse: The second season of the show ended with the Hargreeves having stopped the apocalypse, only to return in 2019 to reveal that they have significantly altered their timeline

Timeline: This new timeline reveals that Sir Reginald Hargreeves (Colm Feore) had not actually founded The Umbrella Academy, but instead The Sparrow Academy

'Navigating challenges, losses and surprises of their own  and dealing with an unidentified destructive entity wreaking havoc in the Universe (something they may have caused)  now all they need to do is convince Dads new and possibly better family to help them put right what their arrival made wrong,' the description adds.

'Will they find a way back to their pre-apocalyptic lives? Or is this new world about to reveal more than just a hiccup in the timeline?' the description cryptically concludes.

The Sparrows are played by Justin H. Min (as a Machiavellian version of Ben), Justin Cornwell, Britne Oldford, Jake Epstein, Genesis Rodriguez, Cazzie David and TV newcomer Dread-Inducing Psykronium Cube.

Challenges: 'Navigating challenges, losses and surprises of their own  and dealing with an unidentified destructive entity wreaking havoc in the Universe (something they may have caused)  now all they need to do is convince Dads new and possibly better family to help them put right what their arrival made wrong,' the description adds

It was also revealed earlier this month that Javon 'Wanna' Walton - who played the beloved Euphoria character Ashtray - will be starring in Season 3, though no details about his character were revealed.

The Umbrella Academy was renewed for a third season back in November 2020, though production was delayed due to COVID-19.

The third season will comprise of 10 episodes.

Renewed: The Umbrella Academy was renewed for a third season back in November 2020, though production was delayed due to COVID-19

Cast: The cast of The Umbrella Academy

New cast: It was also revealed earlier this month that Javon 'Wanna' Walton - who played the beloved Euphoria character Ashtray - will be starring in Season 3, though no details about his character were revealed
Jade Tuncdoruk has been dumped by Cadbury following a string of scandals.

The 27-year-old influencer is no longer an ambassador for the confectionary company, reports The Daily Telegraph.

'We have no plans to engage this influencer in the foreseeable future,' a Cadbury spokesperson said, adding that Jade's opinions 'don't reflect our values'.

On the outs: Jade Tuncdoruk has been dumped by Cadbury after a string of recent scandals

In January, Jade was forced to apologise for a racially insensitive Facebook post about Uber Eats drivers.

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.

Bittersweet ending: The 27-year-old influencer is no longer an ambassador for the confectionary company, reports The Daily Telegraph

Dropped: 'We have no plans to engage this influencer in the foreseeable future,' a Cadbury spokesperson said, adding that Jade's opinions 'don't reflect our values'

'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.'

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.

Controversy: In January, Jade was forced to apologise for a racially insensitive Facebook post about Uber Eats drivers

'I'm sorry to anyone I've hurt with my comments. I hold myself accountable for my actions,' she wrote.

The rant came after she faced backlash for demanding that a small business refund her $2,000 honeymoon deposit.

The company, Weekenda, accused Jade of trying to 'bypass' their policies after ignoring the terms and conditions.

Getting away: Jade travelled to Paris with her mother, Handan, 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,' she later said.

Jade travelled to Paris with her mother, Handan, 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 month.
She's a proud mother to two-year-old daughter Arna.

And Kayla Itsines cut a casual figure on Monday as she stepped out for breakfast in Adelaide with her little girl and mum Anna.

The fitness guru, 30, showed off her trim pins in black shorts and a white T-shirt as she left the restaurant after a meal with her family.

Out and about! Kayla Itsines (left) cut a casual figure on Monday as she stepped out for breakfast in Adelaide with her two-year-old daughter Arna (right) and mother Anna

She completed her laid-back look with a pair of white sneakers, and carried her belongings in a black tote bag.

Kayla styled her long brunette hair loosely and opted for a neutral palette of makeup.

Her outing comes after she recently returned to Australia after spending a few weeks in America with her boyfriend Jae Woodroffe.

Family fun: The fitness guru, 30, showed off her trim pins in black shorts and a white T-shirt as she left the restaurant after a meal with her family

Prior to their trip, they proved just how strong their relationship was by creating a joint Instagram account.

Under the username 'itsjaylahere_' the pair have been posting loved-up snaps right across Adelaide, where the founder of the Sweat app lives with her daughter Arna.

Some of their images are taken in the gym - where Kayla spends most of her time for work - while others are kissing snaps on holiday in Sydney and Los Angeles.

Dressing for comfort: She completed her laid-back look with a pair of white sneakers, and carried her belongings in a black tote bag

The account has over 14,000 followers and was given a shout-out on the couple's friend Kelsey Wells' page earlier this week while the pair toured America.

Little is known about Jae, who is one of the 732 people that Kayla follows on her 13.4 million-follower strong Instagram page.

He appears to love travelling and motorbikes if his Facebook page is anything to go by, yet has kept his Instagram account completely private.

Their relationship went public after Kayla confirmed her split from ex-fiance Tobi Pearce, who is Arna's father, in August 2020.
Kanye West arrived alone for his weekly Sunday Service production in Los Angeles.

The sighting comes after it was alleged that the 44-year-old rapper had invited Kim Kardashian's boyfriend Pete Davidson to meet there face-to-face, as their toxic feud erupted over the weekend.

In leaked text messages that were shared on Sunday, Pete allegedly asked Kanye to meet in person in a bid to stop the endless online attacks against himself and Kim.

Pending performance: Kanye West arrived alone for his weekly Sunday Service production in Los Angeles

Kanye is said to have replied to Pete: 'You wanna see me... Come to Sunday Service.'

It comes after Kanye posted a slew of videos verbally attacking his ex-wife Kim Kardashian, his children's private school, and actor DL Hughley.

In one particular video, he specifically targeted Kim, and told her to 'stop antagonizing me' over North's interest in creating TikTok videos, an issue he's long been against.

Outfit: The 44-year-old rapper wore an unzipped black hoodie over a charcoal grey crewneck sweatshirt

On Wednesday their eight-year-old daughter shared a lip-synching clip to the account she shares with her mother.

'Hey everybody I just got off the phone with Kim. I told her to stop antagonizing me with this TikTok thing,' he said in a minute-long clip posted with the caption 'No Tik Tok video.'

'I said it's never again. I am her father,' he said. 'I know ya'll don't respect fathers and the idea of family and the media tries to promote something. I said I am not allowing my daughter to be used by TikTok to be used by Disney.

Go-to fashion: The Chicago-bred star wore dark jeans, and his signature knee-high black rubber work boots

'I have a say so and then when people say they're going to use this for you in court ... I don't even, I didn't have a say so on whether or not they went to Sierra Canyon. Most men do not. There's no such thing as 50/50 custody in society today - It always leans toward the mom, and I'm happy that you guys got to see such a small piece of what I dealt with. You understand what I'm saying?'

West's first attack started earlier in the morning when he took a grab of Kim's face from the short clip and shared it to his own Instagram account with a lengthy caption.

'I told yall before about this tik tok stuff Now my 8 year old on here singing she fell in love with an emo girl Leftist dont want fathers to have no say in our childrens lives,' he wrote.

'I dont want my kids at godless Sierra Canyon school I got a voice and Im not having this And Perez Hilton you still aint answer my question And never put my name next to the word abuse Dont play with my name like that Im a real person who wants the best for my children And DL Hughley is a pawn.

'Yeah I know a king not supposed to address a pawn but I address everything and find addresses DL So dont speak on me or my children I can afford to hurt u.'

Low-key: He wore his hoodie over his low-cut crop of hair and sported a goatee as he stepped out of a luxury vehicle

New video: Earlier on Sunday the College Dropout artist took to social media to air out his latest rant of opinions and gripes

He then shared a screenshot of a Google image where he had looked up the comedian's name and wrote: 'Wuuuuuut??? DL lives in Calabasas???????? Yoooooo God is good.'

Just last week, Hughley said what was on everyone's mind during a conversation with VladTV as he admitted Kanye's outbursts online have crossed too many lines.

'He is stalking her. You can think its cute. If it was my daughter, Id do something about it,' Hughley said. 'I dont think its funny. I think that you cant write a beat so good that you get to do these things. And society laughs it off because they say, "Well, shes showing her ass all the time and hes this and hes that."'

Kanye continued on with posting screenshots from his phone and shared one gender-biased text which read: 'They're trying to use North against you. They know that's your only trigger. They aren't using the other kids because they aren't old enough & are pretty much babies.'

'Saint on Tik Tok wouldn't trigger you as much because he's your son & our boys have US in them. North & Chi pull on your heart strings the most because they are the delicate children. They're girls & we our protectors due to our knowledge of women being abused in this world.'

He's upset: Kanye shared a minute-long clip posted with the caption 'No Tik Tok video'

Menacing: Ye shared a screenshot of a Google image where he had looked up DL Hughley's name and wrote, 'Wuuuuuut??? DL lives in Calabasas???????? Yoooooo God is good'

In one screenshot of a text to 'Kim Other Phone,' it appeared as though Kanye wrote in blue: 'When I say bring my kids somewhere, I'm not going through this no more. Why the f*** is it up to you where my kids are if we so called have joint custody.'

Kim and North starred in a new TikTok video shared on Wednesday night where they rocked out on social media in black makeup.

The eight-year-old seemed to play creative director as she picked up the phone to sing along to a Machine Gun Kelly and Willow Smith song called 'emo girl' with her cousin, Penelope Disick.

The girls knew all the lyrics to the punk rock beat where Kim made an appearance with jet black makeup streaming down her face despite multiple efforts by West to keep North off the online platform.

A protector to the girls, but not the boys: Kanye continued on with posting screenshots from his phone and shared one gender-biased text

It seemed to be all fun and games for the girls as North danced around wearing smudged black makeup around her eyes and on her lips.

She showed off braces and braided hair while wearing a white T-shirt to match her cousin's threads as they sang: 'I fell in love with an emo girl.'

Kim played along with her long brunette hair tied back except for a few strands framing her face, and dark makeup dripping down her cheeks for the quick clip that had already amassed two millions likes overnight.

Cool mom: Kim played along with her long brunette hair tied back except for a few strands framing her face, and dark makeup dripping down her cheeks for the quick clip that had already amassed two millions likes overnight

Adding to the drama of the Yeezy designer's life, Pete Davidson finally addressed his never-ending social media attacks in a text exchange shared to Dave Sirus' account on Sunday morning.

The 28-year-old comedian, who has used Dave's account in the past  recently to share a few kind words following the death of comedian Bob Saget  demanded Kanye take his public battle somewhere else and meet him 'face to face' instead of airing dirty laundry online.

Pete began the text exchange referring to himself as 'Skete,' - Ye's taunting nickname for him - before sharing that he was actually in bed with Kim as he shared a thumbs up selfie showing off his arsenal of tattoos while casually lying down.

Saga: Adding to the drama of the Yeezy designer's life, Pete Davidson finally addressed his never-ending social media attacks in a text exchange shared to Dave Sirus' account on Sunday morning

Talk about it: The 28-year-old comedian, who has used Dave's account in the past  recently to share a few kind words following the death of comedian Bob Saget  demanded Kanye take his public battle somewhere else and meet him 'face to face' instead of airing dirty laundry online

The Saturday Night Live comedian fought fire with fire as he responded: 'Same here. It's wonders what those places do when you go get help. You should try it.

He added: 'I'm in La for the day if you wanna stop being a little internet b**** boy and talk.'

'You don't scare me bro. Your actions are so p**** and embarrassing. It's so sad to watch you ruin your legacy on the daily.'

Kanye wrote back: 'You're more than welcome to come to Sunday Service.'

'Why don't we meet after Sunday service and saints game ... I'll be at the BHH we can have food and talk it out in my room. Privately one on one. Man to man,' Davidson wrote.

'What you are doing to your family is dangerous and going to scar them for life. Please handle these matters privately bro I beg you.'

West's mind was one-tracked back to his gospel series and he wrote: 'You wanna see me, Come to Sunday Service.'

'This isn't public dude. I'm not here for pictures and press. Which is obviously all you care about,' Pete continued. 'My offer stands. I wish you'd man up for once in your life.'

'What you are doing to your family is dangerous and going to scar them for life,' Pete told Kanye. 'Please handle these matters privately bro I beg you'

And then, despite all of Kanye's verbal attacks against Kardashian and her boyfriend, Pete offered West a helping hand on a possible new journey toward mental wellness.

'Let me help you man. I struggle with mental stuff too. It's not an easy journey,' he wrote. 'You don't have to feel this way anymore. There's no shame in having a little help. You'll be so happy and at peace.'

Davidson wrote that Kanye had no idea what was going on behind scenes as Pete pleaded with his fellow comedians and even his employer to not make jabs at the rapper even though West continued to belittle Pete online.

'You have no idea how nice I've been to you despite your actions towards me,' he wrote. 'I've stopped SNL from talking about or making fun of you which they've wanted to do for months. 'I've stopped stand up comedians from doings bits about you cause I don't want the father of my girls kids to look bad out there.'

'I have your back even though you treat me like s*** because I want everything to be smooth.'

'But if you continue to press me like you have for the past 6 months, I'm gonna stop being nice.'

Later on Sunday, Kanye posted another video where appeared teary-eyed saying he would not be 'gaslit,'

He captioned the video: 'Im controlling my narrative Im raising my kids Kris Laura Kim and Tracy Parental Alienation is a crime.'
Emma Watson appeared to slam Harry Potter author JK Rowling as she took to the stage at this year's BAFTA Film Awards on Sunday.

The actress, 31 - best known for her role as Hermione Grainger in the film adaptations of Rowling's books - took to the stage to present the award of Best Outstanding British Film, when she was introduced by host Rebel Wilson.

Rebel said: 'Here to present the next award is Emma Watson. She calls herself a feminist, but we all know she's a witch.'

Throwing shade: Emma Watson appeared to make a subtle dig against author JK Rowling during this year's BAFTA Film Awards on Sunday

Emma then emphasised: 'I'm here for ALL the witches!'

Viewers at home saw the comment as a jibe at the Harry Potter creator, and took to Twitter to praise the actress.

One wrote: ''I'm here for all the women'. Sly 'lil dig at JK Rowling there, Emma Watson?'

Star: The actress, 31, took to the stage to present the award of Best Outstanding British Film, when she was introduced by host Rebel Wilson

Cheeky: After Rebel said Emma 'calls herself a feminist, but we all know she's a witch,' the actress (pictured with JK in 2011), added: 'I'm here for all the witches'

Another echoed: 'Live for Emma Watson throwing subtle shade at JK Rowling at the #BAFTAs #LGBWithTheT #JKDoesntSpeakForMe'.

A third chimed in to add: 'was that a jibe by emma watson at jk rowling? what a QUEEEEENNN'.

Rebel took aim at JK earlier in the night, as she joked about her recent weight loss.

Referring to a picture of her at the 2020 ceremony that appeared on screen, she quipped: 'That was me two years ago and since then I've done quite a transformation  I hope JK Rowling still approves.'

Dig: Viewers at home saw the comment as a jibe at the Harry Potter creator, and took to Twitter to praise the actress (pictured on the red carpet)

Other viewers though criticised Emma and BAFTA host Rebel, for bowing to the 'woke mob' by using the prime time show on BBC1 to lay into Rowling.

Watson is best known for her role as Hermione Grainger in the film adaptations of Rowling's books that has made reputedly her 65million ($85m).

One viewer tweeted: 'She should count her lucky stars JK Rowling stuck with her. She owes her a heck of a lot, she needs to stop biting the hand that feeds'. Another wrote: 'Emma Watson, a woman, the feminist that can't define what a woman is? The one that is famous because of JK?'

The jabs come after JK's statements on transgender issues were branded transphobic by some fans.

The controversy surrounding her began after she tweeted about biological sex leading to backlash and a subsequent 'cancellation' from the trans community.

Star power: Watson is best known for her role as Hermione Grainger in the film adaptations of Rowling's books that has made reputedly her 65million ($85m)

Ouch: One wrote: ''I'm here for all the women'. Sly 'lil dig at JK Rowling there, Emma Watson?'

In June 2020, she took to Twitter to criticise an opinion piece that used the term 'people who menstruate' instead of women. She then continued with a thread discussing biological sex.

She later clarified that she respects 'every trans person's rights to live any way that feels authentic and comfortable to them,' and went on to say she would march 'if you were discriminated against on the basis of being trans.

'At the same time, my life has been shaped by being female,' she said, the Associated Press reported at the time. 'I do not believe it's hateful to say so.'

Then, in September 2020, she faced renewed calls of transphobia after it was revealed the the villain in her latest book, Troubled Blood - written under Rowling's pseudonym Robert Galbraith - is a male serial killer who dresses as a woman to slay his victims.

Not holding back: Emma was seen laughing during the show which took pops at Rowling

Critics: Other viewers though criticised Emma and BAFTA host Rebel, for bowing to the 'woke mob' by using the prime time show on BBC1 to lay into Rowling

Controversy: The jabs come after JK's statements on transgender issues were branded transphobic by some fans (pictured at the BAFTAs in 2017)

In the wake of these remarks, Harry Potter actors Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma and Eddie Redmayne, who stars in her Fantastic Beasts films, criticised the author.

In December, Rowling was once again forced to deny that she is transphobic as she argued for sex, not gender identity, to be the 'basis of decisions on safeguarding'.

Last week, Rowling also accused Labour of cancelling women on International Women's Day after their Shadow Equalities Minister refused to give the Party's definition for 'female'.

Anneliese Dodds said it 'depends on what the context is' when asked for the definition by BBC presenter Emma Barnett on Woman's Hour.

Viewers have slammed this year's Bafta awards ceremony as one of the wokest ceremonies yet

Reacting to the comments, Rowling, 56, posted: 'Someone please send the Shadow Minister for Equalities a dictionary and a backbone. #HappyInternationalWomensDay'

She continued in a series of tweets: 'Apparently, under a Labour government, today will become We Who Must Not Be Named Day.'

Alongside criticising Dodds' comment, Rowling also tweeted a picture of SNP MP Joanna Cherry alongside the caption: 'This is what a woman who owns a dictionary and a backbone looks like.'

Viewers have slammed this year's Bafta awards show as one of the wokest ceremonies yet.

The politically charged show returned after a two-year delay with Wilson giving Vladmir Putin the middle finger, while many of the stars wore black and Ukraine ribbons in a mark of solidarity.

Prior to the event, BAFTA bosses reportedly advised attendees to 'dress respectably' amid fears attention-grabbing dresses and suits would appear distasteful in light of the Ukraine conflict,' a source said (Benedict pictured wearing a Ukraine pin with his wife Sophie)

The show returned after a two-year delay with host Rebel Wilson giving Putin the middle finger, while many of the stars wore black and Ukraine ribbons in a mark of solidarity

Rebel made reference to Russia's invasion during the ceremony and was applauded by the star-studded audience when she made a rude hand gesture to Putin to the camera as she introduced a performance with sign language interpreters.

The actress said: 'In this performance there are two different interpreters one is signing America Sign Language and one is signing British Sign Language.

'Luckily though, in all sign languages this is the gesture for Putin,' before putting her middle finger up for the camera.'

During the ceremony, there were also jokes about the gender pay gap, a female James Bond and gender fluidity.

Back! Dune dominated the British Academy Film Awards held at the Royal Albert Hall on Sunday night, while The Power Of The Dog took home Best Film (pictured Rebel with the winners)

Rebel joked that after much speculation on who would get the job, she could exclusively reveal that she was the new 007.

She then said: 'Bond goes to Australia and it can be called Die Another G'Day,' adding that 'because of the gender pay gap,' she'd be 004.5 rather than 007.

The host also made a shocking jibe at Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey, remarking that the special, which aired on CBS in the United States and on ITV in the UK in March last year, had everything from 'drama to fantasy' but was 'unfortunately' not nominated in the Outstanding British Film category.

Introducing the nominations, Rebel said: 'From drama to fantasy, Harry and Meghan's Oprah interview had it all.

Jibe: The host also made a shocking jibe at Prince Harry and Meghan Markle 's 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey

'Unfortunately, that's not nominated in this category, but some incredible films are.

'Let's take a look at some of the most outstanding British films this year.'

Harry, 37, and Meghan's interview - which was nominated for a 2021 Television Critics Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, and a People's Choice Award - was broadcast a year after they announced they were stepping down as working members of the royal family in January 2020.

Dune dominated the British Academy Film Awards held at the Royal Albert Hall on Sunday night, while The Power Of The Dog took home Best Film.

The science fiction movie swept the board as it scooped five out of its eleven nominations for the 75th ceremony which saw diversity triumph, with Lashana Lynch taking home Rising Star, deaf actor Troy Kotsur awarded Supporting Actor and West Side Story's Ariana Debose accepting the Supporting Actress gong.

Joanna Scanlan, 60, won the Leading Actress award for her performance in the Aleem Khan-directed drama After Love and Will Smith, 53, won the Leading Actor gong for his role in King Richard.
Byron Baes star Elias Black has slammed Netflix for its 'dodgy' Photoshop fail in a promotional image for the reality show.

The 31-year-old influencer, who previously appeared on Love Island Australia, took to Instagram to criticise the clumsily edited picture.

The photo in question was so badly airbrushed it made Elias appear blotchy and his jawline look somewhat uneven.

How embarrassing! Byron Baes star Elias Black (left) has slammed Netflix for its 'dodgy' Photoshop fail in a promotional image (right) for the reality show

'But seriously Netflix, who is doing your Photoshop?' he wrote.

It comes after Elias said Byron Bay was a bit of a 'clique'.

'There's definitely like a sense of localism and a bit of a clique there,' he told Nova FM's Smallzy's Surgery on Friday.

Too funny: The photo in question was so badly airbrushed it made Elias appear blotchy and his jawline look somewhat uneven

'I feel like a lot of the [backlash to Byron Baes] was media sensation,' he said, adding that 'people I know from there [have] all been super friendly and super welcoming'.

He co-star Nathan Favro agreed, saying that most locals were accepting of the show, after some initial hesitation.

'I don't think the actual animosity was actually directed towards any one cast member,' the 26-year-old said.

Having his say: It comes after Elias said Byron Bay was a bit of a 'clique'

'[Some feared we were] coming to exploit the beauty of Byron, and I don't think it was that at all. We didn't really experience any shouting across the street.'

Their comments came after the Netflix series was criticised for failing to consult local Indigenous groups or the Byron Council before commencing filming.

The Byron Council even passed an urgency motion that would require producers to get permission before any further filming.

Controversial: Byron Baes was criticised for failing to consult local Indigenous groups or the Byron Council before commencing filming

Independent Councillor Cate Coorey said: 'We need to stand up for our community.'

The show premiered on Netflix last week, and is believed to be performing well for the streaming giant, which does not publicly release its viewer numbers.

Byron Baes is currently streaming on Netflix
She recently announced her partnership with Best & Less and has been promoting their denim range on social media.

And Tammin Sursok took her ambassadorship to the streets last week, stepping out on Sydney's Northern Beaches in a pair of denim overalls from the store's range.

The actress, 38, was joined by her parents Daryl and Julie for the outing on Thursday.

Spokesperson: Tammin Sursok took her ambassadorship for Best & Less to the streets last week, stepping out on Sydney's Northern Beaches in a pair of overalls from the store's range

The Home and Away alum wore the denim garment over a white T-shirt, and paired it with white sneakers.

She accessorised with pink-framed spectacles and carried a large black handbag over her right shoulder.

Tammin styled her wavy brunette tresses loosely for the family excursion.

White on the mark: The Home and Away alum, 38, wore the denim garment over a white T-shirt, and paired it with white sneakers

Family affair: The actress was joined by her parents Daryl and Julie for the outing on Thursday

The outing comes just over a week after Sursok revealed her traumatic Saturday night in a series of Instagram posts.

She shared a confronting photo of her daughter Lennon, three, lying in bed with blood on the sheets, after the child hit her head on a side table at their Airbnb.

Tammin, who shares Lennon and daughter Phoenix, eight, with husband Sean McEwen, checked on her little girl 'every two hours for a concussion', and expressed her gratitude for Australia's medical system.

'We checked her every two hours': Tammin recently documented her traumatic Saturday night on Instagram after her daughter Lennon, three, hit her head on a side table at their Airbnb

Alongside the image of Lennon in bed with blood on the sheets, Tammin told her followers she was 'posting [it] to raise awareness about kids falling out of beds'.

'Lennon is okay, but it was a night. My heart was not okay. Will be monitoring her throughout the night,' the Pretty Little Liars star revealed.

The next day, Tammin posted a video of Lennon eating and said she was happy to report her daughter was doing okay.

'My heart was not okay': She shared this confronting photo of Lennon lying in bed with blood on the sheets, and said she was posting it 'to raise awareness about kids falling out of beds'

'We checked her every two hours for a concussion. I'm so grateful for the medical system in Australia. I was able to talk to an emergency nurse at the hospital to go through all the checks,' she said.

After receiving messages of concern and support from fans, Tammin took to her Instagram Stories to explain how the accident occurred.

'We're in an Airbnb, she was on her bed... like a big girl bed and there was a little side table that I had moved all around to the other end of the bed,' she began.

Tammin thought Lennon would in 'no way' manage to get anywhere near that side of the bed, and revealed her worry after hearing a 'massive thump'.

On the mend: The next day, Tammin posted a video of Lennon eating and said she was happy to report her daughter was doing okay

Ordeal: Tammin took to her Instagram Stories to explain how the accident occurred

Husband and wife: Tammin shares Lennon with her film producer husband Sean McEwen (left)

'She had knocked her head on this corner of it [the side table] and she had a little gash in the side of her head and she was bleeding. The blood was actually going down into her mouth,' Tammin revealed.

Understandably, the former Home and Away star said she 'tried not to freak out', but that seeing 'blood in general on your child is quite traumatic'.

Tammin has been busy filming scenes for Neighbours before it officially ends in January, after 37 years on the air.

She revealed last month she would be flying back to Queensland on the weekends to be with her family.
Sunrise host David 'Kochie' Koch tested positive to Covid-19 just one day after mingling with other top TV personalities at the Australia Unites: Red Cross Flood Appeal telethon - leading to fears the celebrity-packed fundraiser could become a super-spreader event.

The 66-year-old spent Saturday night in Sydney manning the phones with stars from Seven, Nine and Ten, potentially exposing them to the highly infectious virus.

While Koch had tested negative that afternoon before the telethon kicked off, he woke up feeling 'shaggy' the next morning and returned a positive result.

Bad timing: Sunrise host David 'Kochie' Koch (pictured) tested positive to Covid-19 just one day after mingling with other top TV personalities at the Australia Unites: Red Cross Flood Appeal telethon - leading to fears the fundraiser could become a super-spreader event

He said in a statement: 'I tested negative on Saturday lunchtime ahead of the Australia Unites broadcast but then woke up feeling a bit shaggy on Sunday morning, which I initially put down to the late finish and sharing the bottle of red wine that Sylvia [Jeffreys] and Dr Chris [Brown] insisted we share (that's my version and I'm sticking with it).'

'But then I tested again and it came in positive. Symptoms are mild and I'm following the health orders,' he added.

Koch was leading Seven's contingent at the telethon, alongside fellow Sunrise anchor Natalie Barr and Dancing with the Stars host Sonia Kruger.

Joining them on desk duties were Channel Nine stalwarts Scott Cam, Sylvia Jeffreys, Ben Fordham and Peter Overton.

Oh, dear: While Koch (left) had tested negative on Saturday afternoon before the telethon kicked off, he woke up feeling 'shaggy' the next morning and returned a positive result. He is seen at the event with Nine's Sylvia Jeffreys (centre) and Ten star Dr Chris Brown (right)

Helping hands: Ben Fordham (left), Amanda Keller (centre) and Natalie Barr (right) all pitched in to help raise much-needed funds for flood victims at the televised charity event

Carrie Bickmore, Dr Chris Brown, Amanda Keller and Osher Gunsberg also stepped up from Channel 10 to join the hosting ensemble.

Koch did not return to Sunrise on Monday and will be off work for another week.

Nine confirmed on Monday that Jeffreys, who co-hosts morning show Today Extra, had tested negative for Covid following the telethon.

Too close for comfort? Nine and 2GB presenter Ben Fordham (left) posted this picture of himself getting friendly with TV personality Grant Denyer (right) at Saturday's telethon

Australia Unites: Red Cross Flood Appeal aired on Channel Nine, Channel Seven and Network Ten on Saturday night.

The event saw the country's three major commercial networks forget about their traditional rivalries for a night of philanthropy.

The appeal was a smash hit with $25,249,796 raised by just after midnight.

Star power: While most of the event was hosted live from Sydney, several Aussie A-listers appeared on the broadcast via video link, including Hugh Jackman (pictured)

There for them: Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban also appeared via video link

While most of the event was hosted live from Sydney, several Aussie A-listers appeared on the broadcast via video link, including Hugh Jackman, Cate Blanchett, Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban.

Delta Goodrem also called in from her Bridge Over Troubled Dreams tour in Brisbane, alongside her support act Sheppard.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Seven, Nine and Ten for further comment.

Money raised will assist volunteer efforts, support those impacted by the floods and help communities recover in Queensland and NSW.
Ryan Moloney is reportedly eyeing off a role on Home and Away following the cancellation of Neighbours.

The 42-year-old, who has played Jarrod 'Toadfish' Rebecchi on Neighbours since 1995, is considering moving across to the rival soap once production ends in June.

'He's made more than enough during his time playing Toadie, but he loves working, and if a role came up on Home and Away, he'd absolutely consider it,' a source told Woman's Day.

Moving on: Ryan Moloney is reportedly eyeing off a role on Home and Away following the cancellation of Neighbours. (Pictured with wife Alison in Melbourne on February 22, 2020)

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Channel 10 for comment.

Ryan joined the cast of Neighbours 27 years ago, and Toadfish is one of the show's most popular and long-running characters.

While he started out as a troubled teenager, Toadie eventually became a lawyer and a beloved member of the Ramsay Street community.

Future endeavours: The 42-year-old, who has played Jarrod 'Toadfish' Rebecchi on Neighbours since 1995, is considering moving across to the rival soap once production ends in June

It was announced earlier this month that production would be ceasing on the long-running soap following its epic 37-year run.

'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,' the show announced on Twitter.

'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.

New opportunity: 'He's made more than enough during his time playing Toadie, but he loves working, and if a role came up on Home and Away, he'd absolutely consider it,' a source told Woman's Day. (Pictured: the cast of Home and Away)

'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.'

Meanwhile, Network 10 addressed the end of the series in a statement to Australian media, 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.

Fan favourite: Ryan joined the cast of Neighbours 27 years ago, and Toadfish is one of the show's most popular and long-running characters

'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.

Throwback: While he started out as a troubled teenager, Toadie eventually became a lawyer and a beloved member of the Ramsay Street community. Pictured with former castmates

'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 added: '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.'
The ABC has pushed back against pleas to halt the rollout of a new 'log in to watch' feature on its iview platform.

The login, mandatory in order to access much of the national broadcaster's streaming content, is due to be rolled out this week.

When contacted for comment, the ABC directed Daily Mail Australia to a February 22 press release stating 'ABC iview users will need an ABC account to watch programs from 15 March 2022'.

Full stream ahead: The ABC has pushed back against pleas to halt the rollout of a new 'log in to watch' feature on its streaming platform iview. Pictured: ABC Chair Ita Buttrose

In an open letter to ABC Chair Ita Buttrose last week, non-government privacy advocacy body the Australian Privacy Foundation (APF) urged her to retain an option for viewers to watch all ABC content without handing over personal information.

'We believe there is still no justification for not permitting those Australians unwilling to register to simply continue to enjoy access to their ABC via iview without registration,' the letter stated.

However, Buttrose said logging in with an email and password was necessary to keep up to date with rival streaming platforms by providing basic features 'such as "continue watching" across devices, recommendations, and profiles'.

Backlash: In a letter to ABC Chair Ita Buttrose, non-government privacy advocacy body the Australian Privacy Foundation urged her to retain an option for viewers to watch ABC shows without handing over personal information. Pictured: APF Vice Chair Dr Juanita Fernando

She added: 'The minimal level of invasiveness associated with an individual creating an account and providing a small amount of information about themselves, being a name or nickname, year of birth, location and gender (with prefer not to say as an option) is outweighed by the public benefit of better serving audiences.'

Buttrose also warned the APF against making the Australian public 'unduly cautious about logging in'.

'Any unfounded concerns could have negative public interest outcomes, such as lower login rate, and consequently people choosing to go to other, less reliable, sources of information with lower levels of privacy protection,' she said.

Fears: Buttrose warned the APF against making the public 'unduly cautious about logging in'

As of Monday, the iview website warns visitors that 'from mid-March, you'll need a free ABC Account to watch programs on ABC iview'.

The new requirements will not affect all content from the broadcaster.

Viewers will still be able to watch the ABC's live broadcast streams, including ABC TV, ABC Kids, ABC News, and ABC Me, without logging in.
Halle Berry turned heads as she graced the Critics Choice Awards red carpet on Sunday.

The Monster's Ball actress, 55, was the recipient of the ceremony's #SeeHer Award, an honor given to a woman who advocates for gender equality, portrays characters with authenticity, defies stereotypes and pushes boundaries.

She wowed in an edgy two-toned haircut that closely resembled her X-Men character Storm's icy blonde look.

Beautiful: Halle Berry turned heads as she graced the Critics' Choice Awards red carpet on Sunday

Her hairstyle was shorter and darker on one side and she wore a white-grey color on the lengthier, straight and choppy pieces.

As she accepted her award, the iconic performer discussed the importance of women telling stories. She said, '[Storytelling] can raise our consciousness and help us think outside of ourselves and our individual circumstances. I realized that we truly need to see each other's reality  no matter how uncomfortable it makes us  so that we can stop judging and stop pointing fingers, but rather find compassion and empathy for the others.'

Reflecting on her long career, she added, 'I've been in the business for 30 years, and I used to think that if I could play the part of a white man, then I was winning. But you know what, wanna know why that didn't work? Because, if you didn't know, I'm not a white man.

'So, for those roles to work, they would have to be substantially changed. It would have to be written with the reality of my journey, in all of its beauty and all of its pain.'

Recognition: The Monster's Ball actress, 55, was the recipient of the ceremony's #SeeHer Award, an honor given to a woman who advocates for gender equality, portrays characters with authenticity, defies stereotypes and pushes boundaries

The superstar continued her heartfelt and thoughtful speech as she stated, 'This is why I am so grateful to be standing and living in this moment where women are standing up and we are telling our own stories.

'We will use our emotional intelligence and we will tell stories that don't fit preconceived notions. No, we will tell stories that see us fully in all our multitudes and contradictions.

Because we are confident and we are scared. We are vulnerable and we are strong. ... We are everything and all of that and all at the same time!'

Presenter: Issa Rae, the creator of the hit HBO series Insecure presented Halle with the award

Ready for the spotlight: She was photo-ready in a velvet black pantsuit that she wore with a sexy white corset underneath

Halle was photo-ready in a velvet black pantsuit that she wore with a sexy white corset underneath.

The mother-of-two showed off her sensational figured in the strapless top, which was sheer with visible thick boning.

Her pants were long, grazing the floor in a wide-leg silhouette and Halle's suit jacket was structured with strong shoulder pads.

Bold style: The Monster's Ball actress, 55, wowed in an edgy two-toned haircut that was short and slick on one side, and longer on the other

The Academy Award winner struck a power pose, putting her hands on her hips as she smiled for photos.

The former Catwoman looked typically gorgeous and youthful in a face of immaculately applied makeup.

She commanded attention with a smoky eye, blushed cheeks, and a glossy lip stain.

Lovebirds: The longtime entertainer showed off a clean and simple manicure as she held her beau, musician Van Hunt's hand on the step-and-repeat

The longtime entertainer showed off a clean and simple manicure as she held her beau, musician Van Hunt's hand on the step-and-repeat.

They made a handsome couple as Van complemented his lady in a white suit jacket and black slacks.

Van looked happy to accompany his girlfriend as he smiled and flaunted his salt-and-pepper beard.

His jacket had black accents - the buttons, collar, and outline of the pockets were all dark and he picked up on them with a black button-up shirt.

He finished the look with a pair of black leather dress shoes.

Coordinating: They made a handsome couple as Van complemented his lady in a white suit jacket and black slacks

Up-close: The filmmaker took to Instagram Stories on Sunday to share personal photos from her evening with her 7.6 million followers

Berry was the first Black woman to ever win the Oscar for Best Actress for her role in Monster's Ball back in 2001 and no Black woman has won it since.

She also won a Primetime Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award for her role in 1999 television film Introducing Dorothy Dandridge.

Her resume includes several other honors including six NAACP Image Awards.

Hot: The mother-of-two showed off her sensational figured in a strapless corset top, which was sheer with visible thick boning

The filmmaker took to Instagram Stories on Sunday to share personal photos from her evening with her 7.6 million followers.

Halle posted crisp, unfiltered images showing off details of her and her man's sharp looks for the star-studded event.

One snapshot highlighted her dangling earrings, which were circular with aqua blue stones and diamonds.

Another photo offered a magnified view of her corset, and a third showed details of Van's getup.

She tagged the Critics' Choice's Instagram account in all three photos.
Mel Schilling has revealed her heartbreak after her first love left her for her best friend in high school.

In an editorial for The Sun on Sunday, the 50-year-old Married at First Sight relationship expert reflected on her first romance.

She said she was 15 years old at the time, and had spent weeks passing notes back and forth with a boy named Stuart before 'he finally asked me to be his girlfriend'.

Love and betrayal: Married At First Sight relationship expert Mel Schilling has revealed her heartbreak after her first love left her for her best friend in high school

'I was giddy with excitement. With his permed mullet, he looked just like Jon Bon Jovi, and I was infatuated,' she recounted.

Mel said she was 'so shy' that most of their correspondence ended up being through their friends.

But she said he dumped her just six months into their fledgling relationship, and admitted: 'I was heartbroken.'

Young love: In an editorial for The Sun on Sunday, the 50-year-old Married At First Sight relationship expert reflected on her first romance

'I was desperate to stay friends with him and even pretended I didn't care when he moved on with my best pal,' she continued.

'Though it was incredibly painful at the time, that experience set me up for how brutal the modern dating world can be.'

Mel eventually met her now-husband Gareth Brisbane through a dating website. They married in Bali in July 2018 after a six-year engagement.

Desperation: 'I was desperate to stay friends with him and even pretended I didn't care when he moved on with my best pal,' she admitted

The couple also share a seven-year-old daughter Maddie, whom they conceived through IVF.

In a November 2017 interview with the Honey Mums podcast, Mel revealed she 'was single for my whole thirties'.

She confessed she had almost given up on finding love and starting a family when she met Gareth online.

Moving on: Mel met her now-husband Gareth Brisbane (centre) through a dating website. They married in Bali in July 2018 and are parents to a seven-year-old daughter, Maddie (left)

'I wanted a relationship, but every time a man came near me, you should have seen my body language,' she said.

'It said, "Don't touch me, or I don't need you, or don't come any closer or you're going to get your head bitten off."

'We've all got history and I think I was carrying it around pretty heavily.'
Billy Crystal praised his wife Janice Crystal and the 'amazing' life they had built together as he accepted the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Critics Choice Awards on Sunday.

The showbiz icon, who has starred in the classic film When Harry Met Sally, hosted the Oscars nine times, and has a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame, accepted the award a day before his 74th birthday and three months shy of celebrating his 52nd anniversary with Janice.

In his lengthy speech, Crystal reflected on the 'amazing life' he and his wife shared, and their 'cast' of characters - their daughters, sons-in-laws, and grandchildren.

'We've produced an amazing life together': Billy Crystal praised his wife Janice as he accepted the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Critics Choice Awards in Los Angeles on Sunday

'This is a lifetime achievement award, which is a little scary when they say they want to give it to you,' Crystal said in his speech. 'So I called my doctor and I said, "Do they know something that I don't?" But to me, everybody, it's a creative achievement award.

'My lifetime achievement award is my family - the life I share with the beautiful and unselfish - Let me just finish, I appreciate it,' he said as the audience started to applause. 'They give me 2 minutes to thank you for a lifetime. My Janice and I will be married 52 years in June and we've produced an amazing life together.

'Here's our cast in order of appearance: Our beautiful daughters Jennifer and Lindsay, their husbands, Mike and Howie, and our four wonderful grandchildren who are upstairs: Ella, Dylan, Hudson, and Griffin. Listen, I have loved what I have been able to do and I can't wait for what I am about to do.'

Billy was already cracking audience members up as he reflected on his remarkable life following a video montage of his career highlights.

'Our cast': Crystal gave a shout-out to his 'cast', his daughters, sons-in-laws, and grandchildren

Remarkable: 'I have been so blessed to work with amazing people my entire career, which is now in its 50th year,' he said

Family first: The Hollywood icon dedicated his award to the relatives he cracked up as a five-year-old

'Watching those clips just now made me think of one word, and that is residuals,' he joked early in his speech. 'I had so many great moments and I want to thank all of the people I have the moments with in every capacity, writers, producers, directors, agents, managers, I have been so blessed to work with amazing people my entire career, which is now in its 50th year.

'But wait, what's exciting about it is so much more to come. That is what's exciting at this point in my life. Tomorrow is my birthday and I'm going to be 74 years old and as Jimmy mentioned, I am about to open in a Broadway musical April 27th on Broadway called Mr. Saturday Night and I can't remember when I worked harder and had more fun on a project. And I'm serious, I'll be 74 tomorrow and I actually just can't remember.

'Funny people, entertainers, we start by making our parents laugh first. Our parents, our family, our friends. I grew up in a time that was extraordinary. My older brothers and I, in the early 1950s, when television was this new frontier, it was the comics that settled it.

'Residuals': Billy was already cracking audience members up as he reflected on his remarkable career following a video montage of his films

Looking sharp! The When Harry Met Sally actor wore a crisp black tuxedo on stage

Crowd pleaser: Crystal cracked up audience members with various jokes in his speech

'The greatest comics of the day. Sid Caesar, Carl Reiner, Phil Silvers, Ernie Kovacs, Steve Allen, Jonathan Winters. And watching them get laughs made me want to get laughs. So before I knew it, I am standing on a coffee table and imitating my relatives who were these joyful souls many of them from Rostov-on-Don in Russia, my grandmothers were from Odessa and Kyiv. They escaped the programs to come to America where they could live free from tyranny.'

Crystal dedicated his award to the relatives he made laugh in his youth.

'And their laughter, the first laughs I ever got in my life, is the fuel that my engine is still burning today. So I thank you for this, but I dedicate this award to those amazing people in our living room back in Long Beach, Long Island whose laughter and joy started this five-year-old boy on his way to this moment.

'And as we all have thought about and spoken about tonight, I pray that somehow, someway, there can be laughter and joy in that part of the world once again.'

Billy closed out his speech with a quote from Muhammed Ali, whom he called 'the most amazing person I have ever met in my life.'

'"If my mind can conceive it and my heart can believe it, then I can achieve it." So let's keep believing, let's keep achieving, because the world needs us. Thank you so much!'

Strike a pose: Crystal with his trophy inside the Critics Choice Awards press room

Matters of the heart: In his lengthy speech, Crystal reflected on the 'amazing life' he and his wife shared, and their 'cast' of characters - their daughters, sons-in-laws, and grandchildren; Crystal pictured with his wife Janice in 2019
Since the start of the semester, the Student Advocacy Resource Center has received five times as many reports of roofies, or drug-facilitated assaults, than usual. The druggings happened at four different bars, and beg an important question: what should I do if a friend or I get roofied while were out for the night?

While experts say there are clear actions to take after being drugged, the nature of drug-facilitated assaults can make them tricky to investigate.

Jen Euell is the director of the resource center, or SARC for short, and said one way to tell if you've been drugged  beyond a strange taste or smell  is to note your level of intoxication throughout the night. If youre too drunk for what youve had, she said to trust your gut and find help.

According to Euell, there are a few common symptoms that can tip off friends that someone has been roofied.

Loss of memory is pretty much universal, Euell said. In the people that we have talked with, I think some of the other effects can look like just looking really, really drunk, kind of out of it, stumbling, maybe struggling with your speech, that kind of thing.

Euell said if you or your friends believe youve been drugged, its best to seek medical help as soon as possible.

UMs medical amnesty policy protects students from repercussions for getting help after consuming drugs or alcohol  even if those substances were consumed underage. According to the policy, students will not receive any academic penalties through the University. However, this does not stop students from facing legal consequences for breaking any laws while under the influence.

UM police chief Brad Giffin encourages students to seek medical help if they believe they are too intoxicated.

If you find yourself in a position where medical attention is required, we would want you to feel more comfortable asking for that help than worrying about a criminal charge, Giffin said.

Euell added there are some ways to keep yourself and your friends safe, though none are 100% effective.

Going out with friends and watching each other is one of the best strategies, Euell said. So, paying attention to how much your friends are drinking, making sure you do watch each other's drinks. And just try to just be vigilant and supportive of each other.

Euell said theres no way to know how someone will react to a drug put in their drink, especially with around four different drugs circulating, which is why its important to take a few key steps immediately after youve been drugged.

First, make sure you are safe. If youre out with friends, go find them and tell them whats going on. If youre out by yourself, go tell the bartender and ask for help.

Then, ask the bar to keep your drink, or find a way to take the drink with you. Euell said many of the drugs used to facilitate assault leave the body after around 24 hours, so by the time you feel better, you wont be able to prove that youve been drugged. Keeping the drink solves that problem.

After that, seek medical assistance. According to Euell, its hard to tell what someones reaction to any given drug will be. Some can have very low heart rates or convulsions. Euell and the team at SARC advise seeking medical treatment just in case you have a poor reaction to the drug.

Finally, you can report your assault to the police once you are safe. You can report the assault at the ER or call the police over the non-emergency line. If the idea of reporting the assault is overwhelming or uncomfortable, Euell said that SARC is always there to help students get through the process. SARC workers will sit with students and provide support while they report their assaults, offer 12 sessions of free counseling or advocate for students who had to miss class or assignments due to their assault.

And, students can always call the 24/7 crisis line at (406) 243-6559 to talk to a trained advocate to get support through any situation, day or night.

Its just nice to have an official record of what's going on, Euell said. And my hope is that, the more we raise awareness about this, the more likely we are to actually catch somebody in the act. Because what Id really love to do, of course, is stop this from happening in the first place.
Advertisement

Not everyone gets it right on the red carpet, and this year's Critics Choice Awards certainly had its fair share of fashion casualties.

Missing the style mark this year included the likes of actress Margaret Qualley and Jeopardy! star Mayim Bialik as well as a demure Kirsten Dunst and a very racy Kristen Wiig.

Kicking things off was 27-year-old Qualley, who appeared to be wearing three different ensembles in one, as she walked the carpet at Fairmont Century Plaza Hotel in Century City in a multipatterned gown that featured a black sash.

Frock horror! Margaret Qualley Mayim Bialik, Kirsten Dunst and Kristen Wiig lead the worst dressed stars at the Critics Choice Awards in LA on Sunday

The top half of Qualley's ensemble featured floral embroidery that was in stark contrast to a satin black middle section, that sat atop a frilly white skirt.

The daughter of Andie MacDowell finished off her ensemble with a pair of black and white heels.

Next up was Jeopardy! and The Big Bang Theory star Mayim Bialik in a gold and blue satin suit.

While a suit can normally be seen as a safe option, the slightly ill-fitting ensemble looked as though it could have done with a few more fittings to really help the star stand out.

Devil in the detail: The top floral design of Margaret's frock looked as though it belonged to an entirely different outfit

Interesting ensemble: Kicking things off was 27-year-old Qualley, who appeared to be wearing three different ensembles in one, as she walked the carpet in a multipatterned gown that featured a black sash

Missing the mark: The differing styles of the ambitious ensemble didn't quite gel together on the night

Mayim, 46, wore her hair slicked back and had minimal makeup for her red carpet arrival.

Meanwhile, there's no doubt that Squid Game newcomer HoYeon Jung has made a name for herself in the fashion world.

However, the 27-year-old rivaled Bjork's infamous Oscars Swan dress as she arrived at the Critics Choice Awards.

Jeopardy! and The Big Bang Theory star Mayim Bialik missed the mark in a gold and blue satin suit.

Gamble: While a suit can normally be seen as a safe option, the slightly ill-fitting ensemble looked as though it could have done with a few more fittings to really help the star stand out

The wacky outfit resembled more of a lampshade than a glam gown, which made of course been intentional.

Kristen Wiig showed off a bold new look, with newly dyed jet black worn in a short crop with a side part.

She also showed off her trim physique in a very daring gown, which was sheer with a floral pattern throughout.

It boasted ruffles along the bodice, midsection, and hemline. Under the top layer a pair of high-waisted shorts were visible.

Head turning: Kristen Wiig showed off a bold new look, with newly dyed jet black worn in a short crop with a side part. She also showed off her trim physique in a very daring gown while Kirsten Dunst was in stark contrast in her covered-up look

Kirsten Dunst covered up in a plain blue short-sleeved dress from the Julie de Libran Paris spring/summer 2022 couture collection.

The Best Supporting Actress nominee's loose-fitting number was stark contrast to the more flesh-flashing looks on the red carpet.

Hannah Waddingham put on a very busty display, turning heads in a bold lime green skirted dress.

Eye-catching: Hannah Waddingham put on a very busty display on Sunday as she walked the red carpet at the Critics Choice Awards 2022 in London

Unusual: Jean Smart was another winner on the night, scooping Best Actress In A Comedy Series for Hacks, but her dress failed to hit the mark

Hannah who scooped the Supporting Actress gong, showed off the plunging neckline that barely contained her ample assets.

Jean Smart was another winner on the night, scooping Best Actress In A Comedy Series for Hacks, but her dress failed to hit the mark.

The glittering number featured an unusual shaped skirt, giving the ensemble a bizarre silhouette as the veteran star collected her gong.

Comedian Amber Ruffin was another stand-out on the carpet, and not in a good way.

The gorgeous stand-up was let down by her dress that went far too heavy on the feather detail, resembling something of a Vegas showgirl.

Canadian actress Sophie Nelisse went for a fairytale-style gown complete with a cape, that felt a little out of place

Hiya! Squid Game newcomer HoYeon Jung has made a name for herself in the fashion world, though her Critics Choice ensemble took too much of a risk

Wacky: The 27-year-old rivaled Bjork's infamous Oscars Swan dress as she arrived at the Critics Choice Awards

Shape: The bottom half of the ensemble created a bulkiness that was difficult to ignore

The Power Of The Dog was the big winner at the 2022 Critics' Choice Awards just days after being criticized by veteran actor Sam Elliott for the movie's theme of repressed homosexual desire.

The Jane Campion directed film earned the top honor of Best Picture at the end of the star-studded gala which took place between two locations - the Fairmont Century Plaza Hotel in Century City, California and Royal Albert Hall in London - for the 27th annual gala.

Campion was also recognized in the Best Director category as she was the only woman in the field: Paul Thomas Anderson  Licorice Pizza, Kenneth Branagh  Belfast, Guillermo del Toro  Nightmare Alley, Steven Spielberg  West Side Story, and Denis Villeneuve  Dune.

A lot of feathers: Comedian Amber Ruffin was another stand-out on the carpet, and not in a good way

Misstep: The gorgeous stand-up was let down by her dress that went far too heavy on the feather detail, resembling something of a Vegas showgirl

Fantasy: Canadian actress Sophie Nelisse went for a fairytale-style gown complete with a cape, that felt a little out of place

She also won Best Adapted Screenplay over Maggie Gyllenhaal  The Lost Daughter, Sian Heder  CODA

Will Smith accepted his second honor of the night in the Best Actor category just hours after winning the same prize at the BAFTA Awards earlier in the night.

He beat out top stars including: Nicolas Cage  Pig, Benedict Cumberbatch  The Power of the Dog, Peter Dinklage  Cyrano, Andrew Garfield  tick, tickBoom!, and Denzel Washington  The Tragedy of Macbeth.

The 53-year-old actor was recognized for his work in King Richard as he gave a heartfelt thank you to ttennis superstar sisters Venus and Serena Williams.

Jessica Chastain was not in attendance but she did win Best Actress for her role in The Eyes Of Tammy Faye.

The 44-year-old actress was up against a talented field including: Olivia Colman  The Lost Daughter, Lady Gaga  House of Gucci, Alana Haim  Licorice Pizza, Nicole Kidman  Being the Ricardos, and Kristen Stewart  Spencer.

Grungy: American actress Sarah Jones appeared to take some risks on the red carpet with her look

Dramatic: The striking looked appeared as though it could do with some tidying up

Grungy: The nude slip-style dress was reminiscent of something Courtney Love would have devoured in the 90s
Laura Whitmore put on a leggy display as she arrived to Vogue's and Tiffany & Co. Fashion and Film Party 2022 at Annabel's after the BAFTAs on Sunday evening.

The Love Island host, 36, slipped into a black floor-length dress with a thigh high slit for the party, after hitting the red carpet in a yellow gown.

Featuring diamante detailing, Laura looked effortlessly glamorous as she posed for photos in front of an elaborate fireplace with huge bouquets of white roses.

Legs for days: Laura Whitmore put on a leggy display as she arrived to Vogue's and Tiffany & Co. Fashion and Film Party 2022 at Annabel's after the BAFTAs on Sunday evening

Laura complemented the look with black high heels and a red lip. Styling her blonde hair in soft waves, the reality star put on a confident display as she partied into the early hours with her pals.

The event was dedicated to helping those enduring global conflict and to raise funds for those affected.

All guests were encouraged to join British Vogue and Tiffany & Co. in support of the Disasters Emergency Committees Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal by donating.

Gorgeous: The Love Island host, 36, slipped into a black floor-length dress with a thigh high slit for the party, after hitting the red carpet in a yellow gown

Working it: Featuring diamante detailing, Laura looked effortlessly glamorous as she posed for photos in front of an elaborate fireplace with huge bouquets of white roses

Night out: Laura complemented the look with black high heels and a red lip. Styling her blonde hair in soft waves, the reality star put on a confident display as she partied with Azim Majid

Earlier in the evening, Laura wowed in a plunging yellow Stella McCartney gown as she mingled with the great and good of film and television fo the BAFTA 2022 Film Awards held at London's Royal Albert Hall.

Laura oozed confidence as she posed for snaps in her sweeping, low-cut dress which she teamed with statement silver earrings and a simple silver pendant.

The presenter styled her blonde locks in to soft waves swept to the side, while she added a further pop of colour with a bold red lip.

Hello yellow! Earlier in the evening, Laura wowed in a plunging yellow Stella McCartney gown at the BAFTA 2022 Film Awards held at London 's Royal Albert Hall

Gorgeous: The presenter wowed in a plunging yellow Stella McCartney gown as she mingled with the great and good of film and television

Laura was in great spirits at the event as she posed up a storm for the camera, before even stopping for a snap with Florence Pugh and Max Harwood.

Dune dominated the British Academy Film Awards held at the Royal Albert Hall on Sunday night, while The Power Of The Dog took home Best Film.

The science fiction movie swept the board as it scooped five out of its eleven nominations for the 75th ceremony which saw diversity triumph, with Lashana Lynch taking home Rising Star, deaf actor Troy Kotsur awarded Supporting Actor and West Side Story's Ariana Debose accepting the Supporting Actress gong.

Fashionista: Laura oozed confidence as she posed for snaps in her sweeping, low-cut dress which she teamed with statement silver earrings and a simple silver pendant

Joanna Scanlan, 60, won the Leading Actress award for her performance in the Aleem Khan-directed drama After Love and Will Smith, 53, won the Leading Actor gong for his role in King Richard.

The politically charged show returned after a two-year delay with host Rebel Wilson giving Vladmir Putin the middle finger, while many of the stars wore black and Ukraine ribbons in a mark of solidarity.

Dune was awarded Special Visual Effects, Sound, Production Design, Cinematography and Original Score.

The first of a two-part adaptation of the 1965 science fiction novel by Frank Herbert, directed by Denis Villeneuve, was presented the Best Cinematography Award by Naomi Campbell and Ru-Paul.
He once enjoyed international fame after landing his own U.S. reality program The Healer in 2017.

But despite his show being cancelled after just six episodes, Charlie Goldsmith hopes his energy-healing work one day gains mainstream acceptance.

The 40-year-old nephew of Olivia Newton-John shared a photo on Instagram on Monday of himself 'healing' a woman who appeared to have been involved in a minor car accident.

One day: Olivia Newton-John's nephew Charlie Goldsmith (pictured 'healing' a woman after a car crash) has said he hopes his energy-healing work one day gains mainstream acceptance

His post was in response to a follower's question asking how long it would be 'before "energy healing" becomes mainstream?'

'Hopefully not too long now!' replied Goldsmith.

The accompanying photo, taken by the side of the road, showed Goldsmith placing his hands on a woman's leg.

Wild: The 40-year-old shared a photo on Instagram on Monday of himself 'healing' a woman who appeared to have been involved in a minor car accident

Goldsmith has claimed he can cure the sick with his touch in just 60 seconds.

He claims he was 18 when he discovered he could heal people, including those with chronic injuries, autoimmune conditions, viruses, infections, severe body pain, inflammation and allergies.

The Australian showcased his alleged abilities on his own U.S.-produced television series The Healer, which was broadcast locally on TLC.

Famous aunt: Charlie's superstar aunt Olivia Newton-John is pictured here in 2020

In a 2018 episode of Channel Seven's Interview, host Andrew Denton suggested that Goldsmith was lacking scientific credentials.

In particular, he criticised Goldsmith's decision to participate in a University of Arizona study with Professor Gary Schwartz - a man described as 'an art professor in New York with no medical background'.

'What you're claiming to do is mysterious and unknowable and almost impossible to measure,' Denton said.

'And what he's [Schwartz] interested in are things that are mysterious, unknown and almost impossible to measure - so he's a non-objective observer of what you do.'

Goldsmith replied: 'The fact that he has spent a large part of his career interested in this area gives him insight into how to test things - now that doesn't make it wrong.'

But Denton insisted: 'I would argue it makes him predisposed to show that you're right as opposed to having a scientific, neutral credible method.'
Jessica Chastain continued her streak of big wins on Sunday as she picked up yet another award for her role in The Eyes of Tammy Faye.

Her portrayal of the late Tammy Faye Bakker earned her the Best Actress honor at the 2022 Critics Choice Awards held at Fairmont Century Plaza in Los Angeles.

Though the 44-year-old actress was unable to attend the ceremony, she took to Instagram to share her joy in a video, saying: 'I am out of my mind with happiness!'

Excited! Jessica Chastain, 44, took to Instagram on Sunday night to express her excitement after winning the Best Actress honor at the 2022 Critics Choice Awards held in Los Angeles

The actress sported a casual look in the clip, wearing black-rimmed glasses and a brown jacket. Her lovely red tresses were pulled into a bun.

She captioned the video writing, 'Critics Choice Association, OMG! THANK YOU!! I wish I could have split myself in half tonight so that I could be there to accept this award in person with all of you. I am so so excited, celebrating with you from NC!'

Ever gracious, the Sacramento-born star also went on to thank everyone on her team individually.

In the video the star went on to say, 'I was just having dinner in Wilmington, North Carolina, and I just found out that I won the Critics Choice Award for Tammy Faye, and I am out of my mind with happiness!'

Remote: Though she was unable to attend the ceremony, she shared her joy in a video, saying: 'I just found out that I won the Critics Choice Award for Tammy Faye, and I am out of my mind with happiness!'

Touched: 'I am so moved and honored and touched, and I'm so f*****g excited!' she exclaimed in the jubilant video

'Thank you so much you guys. This is just... I really, I cannot even imagine.'

The star went on to explain her absence, saying, 'I was on a six day week yesterday, I was working yesterday, with a camera test, makeup test, I'm working first thing tomorrow morning. I couldn't be there.'

'I am so moved and honored and touched, and I'm so f*****g excited!' she exclaimed.

'I was eating dinner and drinking wine and now I'm going to drink a lot more wine and celebrate,' she joked. 'I just... I wish I could have been there. I'm so happy!'

Stunned: Last month the talented star also won the Best Actress honor at the SAG Awards, where she said she was 'completely stunned' in her acceptance speech

The other nominees in the category were Olivia Colman for The Lost Daughter; Lady Gaga for House of Gucci; Alana Haim for Licorice Pizza; Nicole Kidman for Being the Ricardos; and Kristen Stewart for Spencer.

Her fellow actors were quick to congratulate her on the win, with actress Diane Kruger commenting five red hearts, legendary Diane Keaton sending clapping emojis, and director Xavier Dolan writing, 'Yessssss Jess love you so proud and happy for you!!'

Last month the talented star also won the Best Actress honor at the SAG Awards, where she said she was 'completely stunned' in her acceptance speech.

She is also nominated for an Oscar for the role at the upcoming 94th Academy Awards.

The film follows the life of the infamous Tammy Faye Bakker, from her humble beginnings to her rise as a televangelical star and her marriage to Jim Bakker.
Actress Marlee Matlin paid tribute to late actor and ex-partner William Hurt as a 'great actor' and 'one-of-a-kind' man during an uncomfortable red carpet interview on Sunday night - 13 years after she accused him of brutally raping and beating her during their two-year relationship in the mid-80s.

The 56-year-old CODA star, who is deaf, visibly struggled to respond after being asked about Hurt's passing at the Critics Choice Awards, shrugging her shoulders and raising up her hands, before signing: 'You're the first person to ask me about him.'

After a pause, she then continued: 'We've lost a really great actor and working with him on set in Children of a Lesser God will always be something I remember very fondly,' Matlin said of Hurt, who she dated for two years. 'He taught me a great deal as an actor and he was one-of-a-kind.'

Her positive words about the actor starkly contrast the recollections about their relationship that she included in her 2009 book, I'll Scream Later, in which she accused the actor of persistently abusing her throughout their two-year romance.

Matlin and Hurt, who met on the set of the movie Children of a Lesser God - for which she won an Oscar - began dating in the mid-80s, when she was 19 and he was 35.

However, decades after they split, Matlin claimed in her memoir that she faced repeated physical, emotional, and sexual abuse at the hands of Hurt, alleging in one particularly disturbing passage that he brutally raped her after he 'came home around 4:30AM drunk'.

Actress Marlee Matlin was lost for words on Sunday night after being asked about the death of her ex-partner William Hurt - 13 years after she accused him of raping and abusing her

Matlin, now 56, began dating Hurt (seen together in 1986) in the mid-80s, when she was 19 and he was 35; she claimed in her 2009 book, I'll Scream Later, that he persistently abused her during the relationship

The actress struggled to respond after being asked about Hurt's death from cancer on Sunday, before composing herself and praising him as a 'great actor' and a 'one-of-a-kind' man

'We've lost a really great actor and working with him on set in Children of a Lesser God will always be something I remember very fondly,' she said

'The next thing I knew hed pulled me out of the bed, screaming at me, shaking me,' Matlin wrote, according to The Daily Beast

'I was scared, I was sobbing. Then he threw me on the bed, started ripping off his clothes and mine. I was crying. "No, no, no. Please Bill, no." The next thing I remember is Bill ramming himself inside me as I sobbed.'

In a statement issued by Hurt in 2009, the actor did not deny the allegations made by his former girlfriend, but insisted that both he and Matlin had 'apologized' to one another and 'done a great deal to heal their lives'.

'My own recollection is that we both apologized and both did a great deal to heal our lives,' he said.

'Of course, I did and do apologize for any pain I caused. And I know we both have grown. I wish Marlee and her family nothing but good.'

After Matlin's accusations against Hurt were made public, she opened up in further detail about their relationship in an interview with Access Hollywood, claiming that she was 'always afraid' of the actor during their romance.

'But I loved him. I did. Or maybe I thought I did. But look, I was 19, he was 35,' she said, adding that they 'were together for two years.'

When asked about physical abuse, Matlin said she 'always had fresh bruises everyday... and if I had a split lip, or if I mean, there were a lot of things that happened that were not pleasant.'

However, the actress said she did not considering filing charges against the actor at the time because she was dealing with addictions to marijuana and cocaine, which 'took over her brain'.

'I was so wrapped up in his world and my drugs,' she said. 'The drugs took over my life, took over my brain. I was 19 and I was alone in New York City. I had no friends there except my drug dealer.

'I could say that I understand how women are afraid to leave an abusive relationship. They should, but at the same time, I understand how they dont know how.'

The Morton Grove, Illinois native also detailed an incident with Hurt that occurred after she won the Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her performance in Children of a Lesser God.

Matlin's words starkly contrast the allegations of abuse against Hurt, which were featured in her book; in one particularly disturbing passage, she accused the actor of brutally raping her

The actress, who met Hurt while filming Children of a Lesser God (pictured), alleged that he 'came home around 4:30AM drunk', 'pulled her out of bed... ripped off her clothes... and rammed himself inside her' as she sobbed

She said in the book that he told her, 'What makes you think you deserve it? There are hundreds of actors who have worked for years for the recognition you just got handed to you. Think about that.'

Matlin said Hurt also suggested she take acting classes following her Academy Award win.

The actress once again spoke out about the allegations in her book in a 2021 interview with The Guardian, telling the publication that she didn't hesitate when it came to her decision to include such graphic details about the alleged abuse.

'I could not wait to tell my story, to talk about what I went through,' she said, adding that she was not afraid of any backlash, either professionally or personally, 'because it was the truth'.

'I didnt even give it a second thought, because it was the truth. It was my truth - and up to me to tell it my way,' she insisted.

Matlin, whose allegations about Hurt did not initially receive a huge amount of media coverage following the book's publication, said that she 'felt a vindication', when in 2017, the #MeToo movement threw sexual abuse and harassment into the spotlight.

'I could understand the anger. I could understand the cry for help. I applauded each person who came out and talked about their experiences and understood that it isnt easy,' she said.

''People got blacklisted - it happened to some of those actresses. If it happened to you, have a right to talk about it.'

Hurt's son Will confirmed the actor's passing at 71 in a statement issued on Sunday, shortly before the Critics Choice Awards.

'It is with great sadness that the Hurt family mourns the passing of William Hurt, beloved father and Oscar winning actor, on March 13, 2022, one week before his 72nd birthday,' he said.

'He died peacefully, among family, of natural causes. The family requests privacy at this time.'

Hurt announced in 2018 that he was diagnosed with with terminal prostate cancer that had spread to his bones.

The former couple dated for two years in the mid-1980s after meeting on Children of a Lesser God

Hurt's son Will confirmed the actor's passing at 71 in a statement Sunday. The actor was snapped in 2016 in LA

Matlin was not the only star to speak out about the actor's death at the Critics Choice Awards, which took place just hours after the news was made public.

Hurt's former The Doctor co-star, Christine Lahti, 71, told AP: 'I was star-struck by him,' adding 'his mind would never stop'.

In the wake of Hurt's passing, a number of his colleagues also took to Twitter to pay memorial to the late actor.

Albert Brooks wrote, 'R.I.P. William Hurt. So sad to hear this news. Working with him on Broadcast News was amazing. He will be greatly missed.'

Mark Ruffalo said, 'Wow, another Major loss to the acting community. Great actor. Great mind. RIP.'

Topher Grace, who worked with Hurt in 2011's Too Big to Fail, wrote: 'Grateful that I had the opportunity to work with William Hurt. I admired his acting so much and watching his commitment in person was remarkable. My thoughts are with his family.'

Author Brian Koppelman called Hurt 'a magnificent actor' and one of his all-time favorites.

'Never met him or worked w him but always admired the hell out of his work,' Koppelman said. 'Check Cronenbergs History Of Violence for a great, late era performance.'

The Washington, D.C.-born actor had won an Academy Award for his role in the 1985 motion picture Kiss of the Spider Woman, and had been nominated for his performances in movies including 2005's A History of Violence, 1987's Broadcast News and 1986's Children of a Lesser God.

More recently, Hurt had appeared in several Marvel Universe films playing the role of General Thaddeus Ross in motion pictures including 2008's The Incredible Hulk, 2016's Captain America: Civil War, 2018's Avengers: Infinity War, 2019's Avengers: Endgame and 2021's Black Widow.

The actor studied his craft at Juilliard and appeared in multiple stage productions for the Circle Repertory Company prior to being cast in the 1980 film Altered States as Eddie Jessup.

He went on to appear in a number of notable films including 1981's Body Heat and The Big Chill and Gorky Park in 1983 prior to his Oscar-winning turn for Best Actor in a Leading Role as Luis Molina in the 1985 movie Kiss of the Spider Woman.

Before his relationship with Matlin, Hurt was married to actress Mary Beth Hurt, whom he wed in 1971. However the pair divorced in 1982 after what was described as a 'long separation'.

Prior to his divorce, Hurt became romantically involved with dancer Sandra Jennings, with whom he had a son, Alexander, in 1983.

He married his second wife, Heidi Henderson, in 1989. The pair had two children together - sons Samuel and William - before divorcing in 1993.

Hurt also had a daughter, Jeanne Bonnaire-Hurt, in 1994 from his relationship with French actress Sandrine Bonnaire.
It's currently homestay week for the grooms on Married at First Sight.

And on Monday night, Brent Vitiello and Cody Bromley gave their 'wives' a guided tour of their very different homes.

While Brent's North Bondi beach apartment left Tamara feeling claustrophobic, Cody's messy bachelor pad and Batman bed sheets caused plenty of confusion.

It's getting serious! On Monday's episode of MAFS, the grooms welcomed their 'wives' into their homes for homestay week. Pictured: Brent Vitiello and Tamara Djordjevic

Brent's studio bachelor pad didnt impress his new wife Tamara Djordjevic when she visited his home as part of the experiment.

'The apartment is tiny. It's very compact,' she said.

'There's not much to this place  I live in a four bedroom house. This place is very different to my place on the Gold Coast.'

Cosy: Brent's studio bachelor pad didnt impress his new wife Tamara Djordjevic when she visited his home as part of the experiment

Not impressed: 'The apartment is tiny. It's very compact,' she said

Different: 'There's not much to this place  I live in a four bedroom house. This place is very different to my place on the Gold Coast'

Tamara also revealed that she was confused why Brent only owned two pillows.

Meanwhile, over on the Northern Beaches, Selina was lost for words when she saw her husband's living conditions.

'My first impressions coming in the Bach Pad. I don't have any words,' she told producers when asked about her experience.

Messy: Meanwhile over on the Northern Beaches, Selina was lost for words when she saw her husband's living conditions

Hmm: She was also puzzled when she saw that Cody slept in a bed with Batman sheets

The Adelaide-based hairdresser was mortified when she opened up Cody's fridge to find expired food, and an old burger.

'I don't have any words. I feel like I need sanitiser,' Selina laughed.

'I am a bit of a minimalist. Less is more but this is a lot less, very minimal,' she continued.

Married At First Sight continues Tuesday at 7.30pm on Channel Nine

Gross! The Adelaide-based hairdresser was mortified when she opened up Cody's fridge to find expired food, and an old burger

'I don't have any words. I feel like I need sanitiser,' Selina laughed
Fifi Box was crowned queen at this year's Moomba Festival in Melbourne on Sunday.

The 45-year-old radio host was announced as one of the annual festival's reigning monarchs alongside TV presenter Peter Hitchener.

Previous monarchs have included Julia Morris and Nazeem Hussain, Jimmy Giggle (aka Jimmy Rees) and Chrissie Swan, and Harry Kewell and Natalie Bassingthwaighte.

Royalty: Fifi Box was crowned queen at this year's Moomba Festival in Melbourne on Sunday. Pictured with daughter Trixie

Fifi was beaming as she stepped out in an elaborate pink tulle gown with the one of the festival's ornate crowns fixed on her head.

Her dress featured a red camisole top underneath a strapless fuchsia pink overlay, while an aqua blue ribbon was worn as a belt at her waist.

Fifi's shoulder-length blonde hair was tied back in a low ponytail, with tendrils of soft waves left loose, framing her face.

King and queen: The 45-year-old radio host was announced as one of the annual festival's reigning monarchs alongside TV presenter Peter Hitchener (right)

All dressed up: Fifi was beaming as she stepped out in an elaborate pink tulle gown with the one of the festival's ornate crowns fixed on her head. Pictured with daughter Daisy

She accessorised with crystal drop earrings and her crown, which was coloured gold, pink and blue.

'Just an understated Queen! Moomba here we come. It's all my Disney dreams come true. Thank you Sonia @cappellazzocouture you are my fairy Godmother!!' Fifi wrote on Instagram on Monday, showing off her gown.

Fifi attended the festival alongside her two young daughters, Trixie, eight, and Daisy, two, who were each given their own crowns.

Little princesses: Fifi attended the festival alongside her two young daughters, Trixie, eight, and Daisy, two, who were each given their own crowns

'What a fabulous day I absolutely loved it! Getting to be a Moomba Monarch with the most wonderful @phitchener9 and have my two little princesses was such a thrill and will be a gorgeous memory for us,' she wrote on Instagram

Stepping out: She was spotted emerging from a nearby trailer with help from an assistant as she navigated the steps in her voluminous gown

Both girls looked adorable as they posed alongside their mother in their respective ensembles.

Single mother Fifi carried Daisy for much of the festivities, balancing parenting duties with her media obligations.

'What a fabulous day I absolutely loved it! Getting to be a Moomba Monarch with the most wonderful @phitchener9 and have my two little princesses was such a thrill and will be a gorgeous memory for us,' she wrote on Instagram on Monday.

Annual event: Moomba is held annually in Melbourne, and is Australia's largest free community festival

Crowning glory: She accessorised with crystal drop earrings and her crown, which was coloured gold, pink and blue

Doing it all: Single mother Fifi carried Daisy for much of the festivities, balancing parenting duties with her media obligations

Fifi was crowned alongside Peter, 76, with the two smiling broadly after receiving their titles.

Initially dressed in a black scoop neck T-shirt and black and white floral kimono, Fifi changed into her pink gown shortly afterwards.

She was spotted emerging from a nearby trailer with help from an assistant as she navigated the steps in her voluminous gown.

Pretty in pink: Her dress featured a red camisole top underneath a strapless fuchsia pink overlay, while an aqua blue ribbon was worn as a belt at her waist

Making waves: Fifi's shoulder-length blonde hair was tied back in a low ponytail, with tendrils of soft waves left loose, framing her face

Coronation: Fifi was crowned alongside Peter, 76, with the two smiling broadly after receiving their titles

Meanwhile, Peter added a patterned cyan blue tie and matching blue kerchief to his dark blue suit.

Moomba is held annually in Melbourne, and is Australia's largest free community festival.

It's held over four days, with this year's family-friendly festival commencing on March 11 and finishing on March 14.
Tammin Sursok recently wrapped up filming a short stint on Neighbours.

And appearing on The Kyle and Jackie O Show on Monday, the actress revealed what the vibe was like on set, with her contract having coincided with the announcement that the long-running soap has been axed after 37 years on air.

The 38-year-old praised the cast for their professionalism and not 'chucking a hissy fit' during such a difficult 'transition'.

End of an era: Tammin Sursok (pictured), 38, revealed on Monday's The Kyle and Jackie O Show what it was like to film a short stint on Neighbours at the time of its shock axing after 37 years on air

'I love the work ethic of Australians... they came with such professionalism and they did their job and they didn't moan about it and they didn't chuck a hissy fit,' Tammin told co-hosts Kyle Sandilands and Jackie 'O' Henderson.

'They were just so professional and it was just really nice to be on that show when it was going through such a transition,' she continued.

Network 10 and Fremantle, the show's producer, confirmed the news that Neighbours was cancelled earlier this month, with the final episode filmed in June.

In a statement issued to MailOnline, they confirmed at the time: '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.

Class act: 'They (the cast) came with such professionalism and they did their job and they didn't moan about it and they didn't chuck a hissy fit,' Tammin told the radio co-hosts. The actress recently returned to Australia after a long stint in Hollywood

'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.'

The show will be taken off-air indefinitely after an 'extensive search for alternative funding' ended in failure.

Over: Network 10 and Fremantle, the show's producer, confirmed the news that the show was cancelled earlier this month, and said the final episode of the iconic soap will be filmed in June. Pictured: The 2021 cast

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 addressed the end of the series in a statement to Australian media this month, 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.

Heartache: In a statement issued to MailOnline, they confirmed at the time: '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'

'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.

Coming to an end: Meanwhile, British broadcaster Channel 5 confirmed the end of its 14-year deal with Neighbours in February, with a spokesperson telling MailOnline that the decision to axe the soap comes as the channel's 'current focus is on increasing our investment in original UK drama'. Pictured: The iconic Ramsay Street sign

'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, British broadcaster Channel 5 confirmed the end of its 14-year deal with Neighbours in February, with a spokesperson telling MailOnline that the decision to axe the soap comes as the channel's 'current focus is on increasing our investment in original UK drama'.

'We recognise that there will be disappointment about this decision, however our current focus is on increasing our investment in original UK drama, which has strong appeal for our viewers,' they said.
She's one of the most famous supermodels in the world, who is known for her bohemian sense of style.

And on Sunday night Kate Moss, 48, displayed her passion for retro fashion in a metallic orange gown and platform boots at the British Vogue and Tiffany & Co party.

The mother-of-one put on an eye-catching display in the gold and orange-toned maxi dress with flared sleeves as she arrived at Annabel's in London's Mayfair for the much-anticipated event.

Stylish: On Sunday night Kate Moss, 48, displayed her passion for retro fashion in a metallic orange gown as she arrived at the British Vogue and Tiffany & Co party

Kate paired her colourful outfit with a pair of black boots while she kept her essentials in a black handbag featuring a gold chain strap.

The catwalk Queen let her golden locks cascade across her shoulders in a natural fashion, while she accentuated her features with a light dusting of make-up.

The fashionista chose to accessorise with simple gold earrings and a few statement rings, but let her heavily sequinned dress do all the talking.

Elegant: Kate wore a subtle long chain necklace over her fancy frock

Fashionista: The blonde beauty boosted her height with chunky black platform boots

Here she is: Kate arrived at the star-studded bash in a chauffeur-driven car

It comes after it was reported that Lottie Moss, 24, had a secret feud with her sister Kate who is 'mortified' by her behaviour, which has seen her continue to post scantily-clad photos and joke about drugs after being admitted to rehab in the US.

Last month, the OnlyFans star revealed she was in rehab for substance abuse issues last month and was thought to be receiving treatment at a facility in Arizona.

Her superstar sibling has reportedly 'fallen in and out of sympathy' for her and has been left with her 'head in her hands' due to Lottie's questionable career choices.

Detailing: The floor-length frock was heavily sequinned

Supermodel: Kate paired her colourful outfit with a pair of black boots while she kept her essentials in a black handbag with a gold chain strap as she arrived at the event

Beauty: Catwalk Queen Kate let her golden locks cascade across her shoulders in a natural fashion, while she accentuated her features with a light dusting of make-up

Page Six claimed a family source told how even Kate's daughter Lila, 19, 'won't have anything to do with Lottie' due to her antics with the wrong crowd.

The insider said: 'During lockdown, Kate invited Lottie to come and live with her in the Cotswolds at her country house. Lila point-blank refused to have anything to do with Lottie on social media.'

The catwalk veteran, who was pictured alongside lines of a mysterious white powder in 2005, also allegedly finds it difficult to be around people who abuse cocaine and alcohol.
She wowed in a revealing black mini dress at the BAFTA 2022 Film Awards.

And Florence Pugh switched up her look to attend the British Vogue and Tiffany & Co fashion and film party on Sunday night.

The 26-year-old actress cut a glamorous figure in a flamingo pink satin number as she arrived at Annabel's in London's Mayfair, after donning the same stunning gown to attend Netflix's after party at the coveted Chiltern Firehouse.

Wow! Florence Pugh cut a glamorous figure in a flamingo pink dress with a dramatic train as she attended both the BAFTAs Netflix after party, and the British Vogue and Tiffany & Co bash

Florence showcased her incredible legs in the thigh skimming dress that featured a dramatic train down one side.

She added height to her frame with a pair of metallic silver heels that snaked up to her ankle.

The Marvel star sported a brunette pixie cut after chopping off her blonde long locks in October.

Wow! The actress cut a busty figure in the plunging pink gown as she made her way from the awards show to the swanky after party

Stunning: Florence showcased her incredible legs in the thigh skimming dress that featured a dramatic train down one side

New look: The Marvel star sported a brunette pixie cut after chopping off her blonde long locks in October

Show-stopping: To complete her look she injected an element of edge with a chunky choker necklace, matching rings and a single hoop nose ring

To complete her look she injected an element of edge with a chunky choker necklace, matching rings and a single hoop nose ring.

The event was dedicated to helping those enduring global conflict and to raise funds for those affected.

All guests were encouraged to join British Vogue and Tiffany & Co. in support of the Disasters Emergency Committees Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal by donating.

Gorgeous: At the Netflix bash, which took place in London's Chiltern Firehouse Florence posted up a storm with fellow awards darling Naomi Ackie

Beautiful: The event was dedicated to helping those enduring global conflict and to raise funds for those affected

Earlier in the day, Florence put on an alternative display in a black mini dress with a baby pink tulle train.

The tiny frock featured long sleeves and a modest neckline with buttons up the centre, but skimmed her thighs.

The Little Women star's dress had a cut-out back and voluminous pink train, which trailed along the red carpet.

Gorgeous: Florence added a sweep of smoky eyeshadow and a hopped nose ring

Changing it up: The actress has swapped out her usual long blonde locks in favour on a short brunette look (Florence is pictured in July 2021)

Good cause: All guests were encouraged to join British Vogue and Tiffany & Co. in support of the Disasters Emergency Committees Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal by donating

The nominations for the Academy's 75th awards ceremony were announced last month with Dune, The Power Of The Dog and Belfast leading with 11, eight and six respectively.

Denis Villeneuve's star-studded sci-fi epic landed a slew of technical nods, along with a nod for the top prize for Best Film, while Jane Campion's dark Western and Kenneth Branagh's Irish biopic follows close behind with eight and six respectively.

While the Academy once again recognised three women in the Director's shortlist, this year's nominations fell short on BAFTA's vow to improve diversity, with only seven people of colour nominated in contrast to last year's 12.

Switching it up: Earlier in the day, Florence once again donned a leggy ensemble for the BAFTAs red carpet, sporting a black mini dress with a baby pink tulle train
She had a fun-filled night celebrating the 2022 BAFTA Film Awards.

And Billie Piper, 39, made a bleary-eyed exit as she headed home from the Netflix BAFTA afterparty held at The Chiltern Firehouse in London on Sunday.

Rolling into her taxi at 4am, Billie finally called it a night on the celebrations after party hopping from the earlier festivities at private members club Annabel's.

Calling it a night: Billie Piper, 39, put on a leggy display in a thigh-skimming mini skirt as she made a bleary-eyed exit from the boozy Netflix BAFTA after party on Sunday

Boozy night: She looked like she had enjoyed an evening of drinks as she headed home

The Doctor Who star showed off her sensational sense of style in an edgy all-black ensemble.

She donned a cropped sleeveless top, which she paired with a belted layered mini skirt as she flaunted her incredible physique.

Billie added an element of edge with a pair of knee-high boots embellished with gold charms and pointed metal heels.

Letting her hair down! She shook her dyed-blonde tresses around as the party continued into the taxi

Careful! Rolling into her taxi at 4am, Billie finally called it a night on the celebrations after party hopping from the earlier festivities at private members club Annabel's

Edgy: The Doctor Who star showed off her sensational sense of style in a chic all-black ensemble

End of the night: She headed home in her waiting car

Her signature short golden tresses were styled in a natural wave, while she sported a smokey eye shadow and nude lip.

To complete her look she added a pair of chunky gold hoop earrings and carried a snake print bag with a chain strap.

Earlier in the evening, Billie made an appearance at the star-studded British Vogue x Tiffany & Co bash.

Fun-filled: Her signature short golden tresses were styled in a natural wave, while she sported a smokey eye shadow and nude lip

Bold: To complete her look she added a pair of chunky gold hoop earrings and carried a snake print bag with a chain strap

British Vogue Editor-in-Chief Edward Enninful OBE hosted the fifth annual bash which was dedicated to helping those enduring global conflict and to raise funds for those affected.

All guests were encouraged to join British Vogue and Tiffany & Co. in support of the Disasters Emergency Committees Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal by donating.

Ahead of the celebratory parties, Dune dominated the British Academy Film Awards held at the Royal Albert Hall on Sunday night, while The Power Of The Dog took home Best Film.

Party hopping: Earlier in the evening, Billie made an appearance at the star-studded British Vogue x Tiffany & Co bash
She recently stepped out with her handsome new man.

And, Sienna Miller, 40, cosied up to Oli Green, 25, in the backseat of a car as she went from the BAFTAs to the British Vogue and Tiffany & Co party on Sunday night.

The couple were spotted engrossed in conversation with each other as they hopped through London between the star-studded events.

Cosy: Sienna Miller, 40, cosied up to Oli Green, 25, in the backseat of a car as she went from the BAFTAs to the British Vogue and Tiffany & Co party on Sunday night

Sienna Miller lived up to her fashion icon status as she showcased two show-stopping looks on Sunday night, while her beau kept things simple in a classic suit.

She first wowed in a plunging pale yellow silk gown on the BAFTAs red carpet at the Royal Albert Hall.

Sienna ensured she caught the eye as she made a fashionably late red carpet appearance outside the iconic Kensington venue.

With a plunging neckline, the ivory coloured gown drew attention to her exposed cleavage, while sheer black gloves in intricately patterned lace rounded things off.

One-on-one time: The couple were spotted engrossed in conversation with each other as they hopped through London between the star-studded events

Wow: Sienna lived up to her fashion icon status as she showcased two show-stopping looks on Sunday, changing out of her BAFTAs dress into this mini for the Tiffany & Co bash

New beau! Sienna first stepped out with Oli at New York Knicks game last month (Pictured together in February)

Sienna then switched things up in a sparkly gold minidress to attend the British Vogue and Tiffany & Co bash at Annabel's.

The Stardust star put on a leggy display in the thigh-grazing dress which sheathed over her slender frame and featured a fun pattern.

She added a boost to her height with black heels and decided to keep accessories to a minimum so as to let her gold dress do all the talking.

Sienna wore her blonde locks back in a ponytail and accentuated her bronzed complexion with a polished make-up look.

Gorgeous: After wowing in a plunging pale yellow silk gown on the red carpet, Sienna switched things up in a sparkly gold minidress

Looking lovely: The Stardust star put on a leggy display in the thigh-grazing dress which sheathed over her slender frame and featured a fun patter

It comes after Sienna appeared to confirm her new romance with Oli, who has previously dated Adowa Aboah and has had a series of acting roles.

Oli has recently entered the acting world with roles in U.S soap opera The Bold And The Beautiful as well as featuring in a Justin Theroux film, The Mosquito Coast.

The rising star has been modelling for much longer and was the face of a Burberry 2018 campaign and has also modelled for highstreet retailer GAP.

Oli has had formal training at the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute in New York.

Model behaviour: Oli has been modelling for much longer and was the face of a Burberry 2018 campaign (pictured walking for Burberry in Fall/Winter 2014)

Hard to miss: The actress looked stunning in an elegant silk evening gown as she made a fashionably late red carpet appearance outside the iconic Kensington venue

While sources claimed Oli has previously been linked to Adowa, Oli most recently shared snaps with model Paige Reifler on his Instagram page.

Sienna split from her ex-fiance, Lucas Zwirner, in September 2020 before being spotted looking cosy with her longtime pal Archie Keswick last summer.

Sienna split from her third fiance, Lucas, in September 2020.

Sienna and Lucas, 31, the son of art dealer David Zwirner, got engaged back in January 2020 after a year of dating.

It was reported at the time that it was the actress who broke it off with Zwirner, though no reason for the break-up was given.

Sienna was previously engaged to actors Jude Law, 49, in 2004 and Tom Sturridge, 36, in 2012.

Revealing: With a plunging neckline, the ivory coloured gown drew attention to Sienna's exposed cleavage, while sheer black gloves in intricately patterned lace rounded things off

Sienna previously got engaged to her Alfie co-star Jude on Christmas day in 2004 - and they were in an on and off relationship until they split for good in 2011.

The pair had struggled with the revelation that Law had an affair with his children's nanny, Daisy Wright, in July 2005, with Sienna calling off their engagement.

They later reconciled, but then in October 2005, Law learned that Miller had had a fling with his close friend, Daniel Craig, aka James Bond.

He reportedly threw her out of their north London home over the discovery.
Laura Whitmore put on a leggy display as she attended the Netflix BAFTA after-party at Chiltern Firehouse on Sunday evening.

The Love Island host, 36, slipped into a black floor-length dress with a thigh high slit for the party, after hitting the red carpet in a yellow gown.

Featuring diamante detailing, Laura looked effortlessly glamorous as she strutted her way to the venue in London.

Couple goals: Laura Whitmore put on a leggy display as she attended the Netflix BAFTA after-party at Chiltern Firehouse on Sunday evening

Laura complemented the look with black high heels and a red lip. Styling her blonde hair in soft waves, the reality star put on a confident display as she partied into the early hours with her pals.

Meanwhile, the Scottish comedian, 34, cut a casual figure in a grey suede jacket, white T-shirt and jeans.

Husband Iain could be seen toting a Tiffany & Co. bag from the previous after-party Laura had attended.

Stunning: The Love Island host, 36, slipped into a black floor-length dress with a thigh high slit for the party, after hitting the red carpet in a yellow gown

Wow! Featuring diamante detailing, Laura looked effortlessly glamorous as she strutted her way to the venue in London

Hubby: Husband Iain could be seen toting a Tiffany & Co. bag from the previous after-party Laura had attended

Earlier in the evening, Laura wowed in a plunging yellow Stella McCartney gown as she mingled with the great and good of film and television for the BAFTA 2022 Film Awards held at London's Royal Albert Hall.

Laura oozed confidence as she posed for snaps in her sweeping, low-cut dress which she teamed with statement silver earrings and a simple silver pendant.

The presenter styled her blonde locks in to soft waves swept to the side, while she added a further pop of colour with a bold red lip.

All smiles: Laura complemented the look with black high heels and a red lip

Beautiful: Styling her blonde hair in soft waves, the reality star put on a confident display as she partied into the early hours with her pals

Exit: Meanwhile, the Scottish comedian, 34, cut a casual figure in a grey suede jacket, white T-shirt and jeans

Laura was in great spirits at the event as she posed up a storm for the camera, before even stopping for a snap with Florence Pugh and Max Harwood.

Dune dominated the British Academy Film Awards held at the Royal Albert Hall on Sunday night, while The Power Of The Dog took home Best Film.

The science fiction movie swept the board as it scooped five out of its eleven nominations for the 75th ceremony which saw diversity triumph, with Lashana Lynch taking home Rising Star, deaf actor Troy Kotsur awarded Supporting Actor and West Side Story's Ariana Debose accepting the Supporting Actress gong.

Hello yellow! Earlier in the evening, Laura wowed in a plunging yellow Stella McCartney gown at the BAFTA 2022 Film Awards held at London 's Royal Albert Hall

Gorgeous: The presenter wowed in a plunging yellow Stella McCartney gown as she mingled with the great and good of film and television
Adwoa Aboah went braless under a very sheer sequin cream top as she attended a BAFTA afterparty.

The model had a fun-filled night celebrating the Film Awards, before heading to the British Vogue and Tiffany & Co afterparty, which was held at private members' club Annabel's in London's Mayfair.

The 29-year-old, whose outfit was head-to-toe 16Arlington in honour of her late friend Federica Cavenati, didn't end her night there, as she also made an appearance at The Chiltern Firehouse's Netflix afterparty.

Braless: Adwoa Aboah was seen attending the British Vogue and Tiffany & Co BAFTA afterparty in a sheer sleeveless top, which was held at Annabel's in London's Mayfair

The brunette beauty made a statement as she went braless in a very sheer, sleeveless top - pairing it with a pair of cream, shimmering trousers.

Adwoa pulled her hair back in a sleek bun for the outing, donning a bold red lip and a subtle base on her radiant skin.

She added a black mini shoulder bag with diamante detailing, accessorising with silver bracelets and rings.

Stylish: The model donned a very sheer, sleeveless top - pairing it with a pair of cream, shimmering trousers

Model looks: Adwoa pulled her hair back in a sleek bun for the outing, donning a bold red lip and a subtle base on her radiant skin

Glamorous: She added a black mini shoulder bag with diamante detailing, accessorising with silver bracelets and rings

Adwoa's outfit was a tribute to her close friend, the late designer Federica Cavenati, who sadly passed away in October 2021 at the age of just 28 following a short illness.

British Vogue Editor-in-Chief Edward Enninful OBE hosted the fifth annual fashion and film bash at exclusive club Annabel's, which was dedicated to helping those enduring global conflict and to raise funds for those affected.

All guests were encouraged to join British Vogue and Tiffany & Co. in support of the Disasters Emergency Committees Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal by donating.

Adwoa made an appearance at the star-studded bash before heading over to the boozy Netflix afterparty at The Chiltern Firehouse.

Exclusive: British Vogue Editor-in-Chief Edward Enninful OBE hosted the fifth annual fashion and film bash at exclusive club Annabel's (L to R) Gala Gordon, Adwoa Aboah and Tish Weinstock

Party hopping: She also attended the Netflix afterparty at The Chiltern Firehouse, posing with actress Saffron Hocking

Gorgeous! Adwoa showed off her iconic model looks and her slim figure at the BAFTA event

(L to R) Sara Macdonald, Kesewa Aboah, Poppy Delevingne, Dynamo, Saffron Hocking, Adwoa Aboah, Tish Weinstock and Jazzy De Lisser

The model was spotted beaming with stars such as Poppy Delevingne, Gala Gordon, Tish Weinstock and Saffron Hocking - she also posed with her artist sister Kesewa Aboah, 27.

Earlier in the night, Adwoa made a more understated appearance on the BAFTA Film Awards red carpet, donning a black strapless gown YSL gown.

She wasn't alone in her black colour choice, after BAFTA bosses reportedly advised attendees to 'dress respectably' amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine in a move which came amid fears attention-grabbing dresses and suits would appear distasteful in light of the Ukraine conflict.

Ahead of the celebratory parties, Dune dominated the British Academy Film Awards held at the Royal Albert Hall on Sunday night, while The Power Of The Dog took home Best Film.

(L to R) Gala Gordon, Adwoa Aboah, Kesewa Aboah and Saffron Hocking

Details: She donned black nail polish to contract the all-white look, matching her earlier outfit

Chic: Adwoa cut an understated figure as she arrived on the red carpet for the earlier BAFTA Film Awards

Respectable: BAFTA bosses reportedly advised attendees to 'dress respectably' amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine
Kurt Coleman has lashed out at a fellow influencer.

On Monday, the Gold Coast personality shared his opinion on Jade Kevin Foster, star of Netflix's controversial reality series Byron Baes.

Posting to Instagram Stories, Kurt, 24, shared an article on Jade, and wrote: 'When people buy followers on social media. Just such wannabes these days'.

Spoken out: Kurt Coleman (pictured) has lashed out at a fellow influencer. On Monday, the Gold Coast personality shared his opinion on Jade Kevin Foster, star of Netflix 's controversial reality series Byron Baes

With 1.2million Instagram followers, Jade, 29, has billed himself as 'Australia's biggest male influencer', but the authenticity of his massive following has come into question.

Social media talent agent Alex Reid quickly became suspicious of Jade's following right after they met on the show, which led him to do a deeper dive on Jade's account.

'When it comes to social media, I know what I'm talking about,' Alex told producers. 'And Jade's content doesn't really align with someone who'd have a huge following.'

Posting to Instagram Stories, Kurt, 24, shared an article on Jade, and wrote: 'When people buy followers on social media. Just such wannabes these days'

Questions: With 1.2million Instagram followers, Jade (pictured) has billed himself as 'Australia's biggest male influencer', but the authenticity of his massive following has come into question

While investigating, Alex discovered that Jade had a whopping 451,000 followers from Turkey alone.

Furthermore, Jade also had more followers from India and Iran than he did from his own country, Australia.

'His top followers, where he has the most audience is in Turkey,' Alex said.

Global? Despite being from the Gold Coast, the majority of Jade's followers are from Turkey, India, and Iran

'The other suspicious one is Iran. When you buy audience, it's from places like Turkey and Iran and India. They're where you get fake audience from.'

When confronted by Alex about the authenticity of his followers, Jade boldly claimed that his world travels had earned him thousands of fans in Turkey.

'If you'd done your research into me properly, you'd realise that I've travelled the whole world and I've worked my f***ing a** off to get to where I am,' Jade snapped.

'You don't understand anyone of my size because you've never managed anyone of my size,' he added.
Anna Heinrich was elated to announce she had welcomed a little baby niece into the world on Sunday evening.

The SAS Australia star, who is married to The Bachelor hunk Tim Robards, revealed on Instagram that her sister Charlotte Heinrich gave birth to her first child with her husband Tom Freeman on Friday.

The 35-year-old - who shares Elle, one, with Tim - shared a photo of the newborn baby girl's feet in bunny slippers to confirm the joyous news to her followers.

Welcome to the world! SAS Australia's Anna Heinrich (left) was elated to announce her sister Charlotte Heinrich (right) had welcomed a baby girl into the world on Sunday

Anna captioned the photo: 'In love', before sharing a sweet image of Charlotte, Tom and the little tot alongside the words: 'We can't wait to meet you!'

Charlotte also announced the news on her own Instagram page, confirming she and Tom had named their daughter Mimi Gisella.

'Forever a Mum and Dad. Our beautiful daughter Mimi Gisella Freeman came into this crazy world on the 11th of March 2022,' she captioned a photo of the family.

New arrival: The 35-year-old - who shares daughter Elle, one, with Tim - shared a photo of the newborn baby girl's feet in bunny slippers on Instagram to reveal the news

Cute: Anna also shared this photo of Charlotte, Tom and newborn baby Mimi alongside the words: 'We can't wait to meet you!'

'Third photo, Tom did such a great job pushing her out,' she added, in reference to a topless image of her husband posing in a hospital bed as if he had just given birth.

Charlotte revealed to her Instagram followers that she was expecting her first child in September.

She shared an image of her ultrasound scan and wrote: 'WILD CHILD coming 2022.'

An excited Anna commented on the photo: 'CANT WAIT!!!!'

Family: Charlotte announced the news on her own Instagram page, confirming she and Tom had named their daughter Mimi Gisella

Sweet: 'Forever a Mum and Dad. Our beautiful daughter Mimi Gisella Freeman came into this crazy world on the 11th of March 2022,' she added

Baby joy: Charlotte revealed to her Instagram followers that she was expecting her first child in September. She shared an image of her ultrasound scan and wrote: 'WILD CHILD coming 2022'

Charlotte married her longtime partner Tom in a glitzy Mexico wedding in January 2020.

Anna was her sister's bridesmaid and sauntered down the aisle ahead of the bride.

She wore a long train veil over a long-sleeve, cold-shoulder dress that was belted around her slender waist.

Here come the newlyweds! Charlotte married her longtime partner Tom in a glitzy Mexico wedding in January last year

A vision in white! Charlotte wore a long train veil over a long-sleeve, cold-shoulder dress that was belted around her slender waist

Lovers: Meanwhile, Anna married her husband, Tim Robards, in an equally lavish ceremony in 2018

The couple's friends and family had travelled to the Costa Careyes luxury estate for the destination wedding.

Meanwhile, Anna fell in love with her partner Tim on The Bachelor Australia in 2013, and the paur married in Italy in 2018.

The couple tied the knot at the Masseria Potenti hotel among the olive groves and vineyards of the Puglian countryside.

The couple got engaged in May 2017 while on holiday in Kimberley, Western Australia.

They welcomed their daughter Elle Robards in November 2020.
Jordan Barrett is set to walk the runway for Justin Cassin for a second time, at Berlin Fashion Week on Tuesday.

The Australian model, 25, reportedly earned $100,000 for just a 60-second walk for Justin's Australian Fashion Week show back in 2017.

While Justin told Daily Mail Australia on Monday that his 'lips are sealed' when it comes to figures, he revealed that Jordan is 'so much more' than his 'style muse'.

In demand: Jordan Barrett, 25, is set to take the runway at Berlin Fashion Week for Justin Cassin on Tuesday - the same designer who paid the model a reported $100k paycheck for just a minute's work back in 2017. Pictured at Justin's 2017 Australian Fashion Week show

'He's my friend, I admire him. He was scouted at 13, living in New York by 17, mixing in the highest levels of fashion and celebrity at the top of his game,' he continued.

'Yet he has remained grounded and thoughtful. His advocacy for mental health is applauded.'

The Australian designer went on to describe Jordan as the 'modern male'.

Justin's debut show: Back in May 2017, The Daily Telegraph reported that Jordan would not only receive the hefty figure of $100k for a 60-second walk at Justin's Mercedes-Benz Australian Fashion Week show, but also the VIP treatment

'His confidence and expression of personal style are what we strive for in my designs. Jordan is a free spirit. He is resilient. He also has a cheeky side and we love to add fun elements to the collections.'

Back in May 2017, The Daily Telegraph reported that Jordan would not only receive the hefty figure of $100k for Justin's Mercedes-Benz Australian Fashion Week show for just a minute's work, but also the VIP treatment.

Bringing his star power, shaggy blonde locks and chiselled jaw, Jordan modelled the label's menswear collection.

Admiration: Justin (pictured in 2017) told Daily Mail Australia on Monday that Jordan is 'so much more' than his 'style muse'. 'He's my friend, I admire him. He was scouted at 13, living in New York by 17, mixing in the highest levels of fashion and celebrity at the top of his game,' he said

Jordan was discovered at age 14 by a model scout working for international agency IMG.

The chance meeting took place when he was caught stealing matches from a convenience store.

Jordan told New York Magazine about the incident: 'I wanted to have a cigarette, but I couldn't get a lighter because apparently you have to be over 18, so I decided I was gonna take matches from the counter.'

Taking the modelling industry by storm, the genetically blessed star has also walked the runway for high-end labels including Dolce & Gabbana, Moschino and Versace.
Jean Smart reacted to the death of actor William Hurt on the Critics Choice Awards red carpet on Sunday night, revealing she felt 'crushed' at the news.

William died at the age of 71 of natural causes four years after he was diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer, and the news of his passing was announced by his friend Gerry Byrne just before the ceremony started.

Actress Jean, 71, reflected on the time she met the late actor just moments after learning of his death at the event.

Upset: Jean Smart reacted to the death of actor William Hurt on the Critics Choice Awards red carpet on Sunday night, revealing she felt 'crushed' at the news

She told People: 'I just found out about 5 minutes ago and I'm crushed.

'We met in our early 20s in the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and I admired him a lot and I'm very sad. He was very talented.'

On the night Jean accepted the award for Best Actress in a Comedy Series for Hacks.

Sad: William died at the age of 71 of natural causes four years after he was diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer, and the news of his passing was announced by his friend Gerry Byrne just before the ceremony started

It comes after also on the red carpet Marlee Matlin had a subdued reaction when asked about the death of her ex William.

The CODA star, 56, was asked about Hurt by ET as she walked the red carpet at the Fairmont Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles.

'We've lost a really great actor and working with him on set in Children of a Lesser God will always be something I remember very fondly,' Matlin said of Hurt, who she dated for two years. 'He taught me a great deal as an actor and he was one-of-a-kind.'

Success: On the night Jean accepted the award for Best Actress in a Comedy Series for Hacks

Overwhelmed: She cut a chic figure in a glitzy gold skirt and white top as she accepted the award on stage

The Oscar-winning actress, who initially met Hurt on the set of Children of a Lesser God, had accused Hurt of sexual, physical and emotional abuse in her 2009 book Ill Scream Later.

In the book, she detailed an instance of sexual assault she said occurred while Hurt was making the film Broadcast News.

She wrote in the book that Hurt 'came home around 4:30 A.M. drunk,' according to The Daily Beast.

'The next thing I knew hed pulled me out of the bed, screaming at me, shaking me,' Matlin said. 'I was scared, I was sobbing. Then he threw me on the bed, started ripping off his clothes and mine. I was crying. "No, no, no. Please Bill, no." The next thing I remember is Bill ramming himself inside me as I sobbed.'

Difficult: It comes after also on the red carpet Marlee Matlin had a subdued reaction when asked about the death of her ex William

Matlin opened up about her relationship with Hurt in a 2009 interview with Access Hollywood, saying she 'was always afraid of him.

'But I loved him. I did. Or maybe I thought I did. But look, I was 19, he was 35,' she said, adding that they 'were together for two years.'

When asked about physical abuse, Matlin said she 'always had fresh bruises everyday ... and if I had a split lip, or if I mean, there were a lot of things that happened that were not pleasant.'

Reaction: Matlin said of Hurt, 'He taught me a great deal as an actor and he was one-of-a-kind'

She said she did not considering filing charges against the actor at the time as she was dealing with addictions to marijuana and cocaine she subsequently sought treatment for.

'I was so wrapped up in his world and my drugs,' she said. 'The drugs took over my life, took over my brain. I was 19 and I was alone in New York City. I had no friends there except my drug dealer.

'I could say that I understand how women are afraid to leave an abusive relationship. They should, but at the same time, I understand how they dont know how.'

History: The Oscar-winning actress initially met Hurt on the set of 1986's Children of a Lesser God

Couple: The former couple was snapped in LA at a post-Oscar's party in 1986, after Hurt had won an Academy Award for his role in the 1985 motion picture Kiss of the Spider Woman

The Morton Grove, Illinois native also detailed an incident with Hurt that occurred after she won the Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her performance in Children of a Lesser God.

She said in the book that he told her, 'What makes you think you deserve it? There are hundreds of actors who have worked for years for the recognition you just got handed to you. Think about that.'

Matlin said Hurt also suggested she take acting classes following her Academy Award win.

Hurt subsequently responded to the claims in a statement in 2009, saying, 'My own recollection is that we both apologized and both did a great deal to heal our lives.

'Of course, I did and do apologize for any pain I caused. And I know we both have grown. I wish Marlee and her family nothing but good.'

Matlin, who has also worked on Family Guy, Quantico and Switched at Birth, opened up last summer about penning the book in an interview with The Guardian.

Love life: The former couple dated for two years in the mid-1980s after meeting on Children of a Lesser God

Asked if it was difficult for her to recall the memories for the book, Matlin said, 'I could not wait to tell my story, to talk about what I went through.

When asked if she was concerned that her career would be impacted by the claims, Matlin said, 'I didnt even give it a second thought, because it was the truth. It was my truth - and up to me to tell it my way.'

She said she 'could understand the anger' and the 'cry for help' amid the multiple allegations against dozens of high-powered men in show business during the #MeToo movement in 2017.

'I applauded each person who came out and talked about their experiences and understood that it isnt easy,' she said. 'People got blacklisted - it happened to some of those actresses. If it happened to you, have a right to talk about it.'

Hurt's son Will confirmed the actor's passing at 71 in a statement Sunday.

'It is with great sadness that the Hurt family mourns the passing of William Hurt, beloved father and Oscar winning actor, on March 13, 2022, one week before his 72nd birthday,' he said. 'He died peacefully, among family, of natural causes. The family requests privacy at this time.Hurt had announced in 2018 that he was diagnosed with with terminal prostate cancer that had spread to his bones.
Byron Baes hunk Nathan Favro has come out swinging against critics after his co-star Elle Watson received an abundance of hateful messages online.

The 26-year-old, who also appeared on The Bachelorette, took to social media on Sunday night to blast haters who had sent 'nasty messages' about his friend following her controversial actions on the series.

Alongside an image with Elle, he wrote: 'On another note, if you're thinking about messaging any mean or nasty things to Elle please read this first.

Not having it: Byron Baes hunk Nathan Favro (right) has come out swinging against critics after his co-star Elle Watson (left) received an abundance of hateful messages online

'I've known Elle for a long time now and can safely say I know her better than any of the cast, and she is one of the most amazing, caring, loving, nurturing and compassionate people you will ever meet.

'She doesn't deserve hateful or nasty DMs or comments on her posts. If you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all. Please and thank you.'

Elle's antics on the show have certainly raised a few eyebrows, after she categorically denied calling her co-star Sarah St James 'fake' to anyone who would ask.

This is in spite of the fact the moment was recorded, with her closest friends later revealing she had used the insulting word to describe the Gold Coast beauty.

Fuming: Alongside an image with Elle, he wrote: 'On another note, if you're thinking about messaging any mean or nasty things to Elle please read this first'

It was also revealed that she once 'hooked up' with Nathan in the past, with the pair keeping their previous rendezvous a secret as he sparked up a romance with Sarah.

It comes as viewers branded the controversial Netflix series 'awful yet addictive' following its debut on Wednesday night.

The reality show follows the lives of 14 influencers who help each other grow their businesses, connections and social followings in the idyllic Australian beach town of Byron Bay.

'I've known Elle for a long time now and can safely say I know her better than any of the cast and she is one of the most amazing, caring, loving, nurturing and compassionate people you will ever meet,' he wrote

The vast majority of Twitter critics described Byron Baes as 'cringeworthy' and 'brain-numbing', yet many admitted they simply couldn't switch it off.

'Byron Baes is horrific. But I will watch the entire thing,' one fan tweeted.

'Help! I started watching Byron Baes and can't stop,' another mused.

Others had more positive feedback, with one user Tweeting: 'We need season two! #ByronBaes'.

Byron Baes is currently available to stream worldwide on Netflix.
Her latest sunshine destination of choice is St Lucia.

And Demi Rose posed up a storm in her stunning surroundings on Monday for another racy Instagram shoot.

The social media star flaunted her famous curves in a tiny pink bikini, that barely covered her ample assets.

Wow: Her latest sunshine destination of choice is St Lucia. And Demi Rose posed up a storm in her stunning surroundings on Monday for another racy Instagram shot

The halter-neck number also flaunted the Influencer's toned stomach.

She added a matching pink scarf, draped around her head and shoulders for a dramatic look, offset by the lush green scenery she posed in.

Demi captioned the slew of saucy snaps: 'Abundance.'

The star hit the headlines last year after she revealed that she was the victim of bully when she was younger.

Itsy bitsy bikini: The social media star flaunted her famous curves in a tiny pink bikini, that barely covered her ample assets

Speaking to Radio 1 Newsbeat, she said: 'I always wanted to get into modelling and when I eventually got there I classed it as a blessing because I grew up being bullied and didn't have many friends at all.'

Demi, who has been modelling for eight years credits her career for being a 'blessing'.

In 2019, both of Demi's parents died, just seven months apart and the star said going into lockdown straight after their deaths was 'a time of reflection.'

What a view: She added a matching pink scarf, draped around her head and shoulders for a dramatic look, offset by the lush green scenery she posed in

Still in the limelight: Birmingham-born beauty Demi became known in the public eye after being seen with US rapper Tyga, after his high-profile split from Kylie Jenner four years ago

She added 'having to deal with my parents' house and selling their stuff - it was a really sad place for me.'

'I wanted to go and travel but I had three months in London, which was a lot of facing what I had been through and was a time of reflection.'

Birmingham-born beauty Demi became known in the public eye after being seen with US rapper Tyga, after his high-profile split from Keeping Up With The Kardashians star Kylie Jenner four years ago.
BEIJING, March 14 (Xinhua) -- Foreign experts and observers have spoken highly of Chinese President Xi Jinping's insights regarding the endeavors of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the Chinese people in the new era, saying they help decode China's success and chart the course toward high-quality development.

CPC LEADERSHIP KEY TO DEVELOPMENT

When participating in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region delegation's deliberation at the Fifth Session of the 13th National People's Congress on March 5, Xi, also general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, said "upholding the overall Party leadership is the path we must take to stick to and develop socialism with Chinese characteristics."

"Exercising full and rigorous self-governance of the Party is the path we must take to maintain the Party's vigor and vitality and ensure its success on the new journey," he added.

Nourhan al-Sheikh, a professor of political sciences with Cairo University, said that from the eradication of absolute poverty to the successful hosting of the Beijing Winter Olympics, China's unprecedented achievements cannot be separated from the strong leadership of the CPC.

Under the CPC's leadership, China has fulfilled the goals of economic and social development, embarking on "a path that suits its own national conditions, which has brought important inspiration to the world, especially developing countries," she added.

Khalid Rahman, director general of the Institute of Policy Studies, an Islamabad-based think tank, said that under the CPC's leadership, China has become the second largest economy in the world and its development has brought about broad benefits.

Notably, China's success in eliminating extreme poverty can be regarded as a miracle, the scholar said.

Kingphet Mongkhonvilay, deputy director of the general office of the Lao People's Revolutionary Party Central Committee, said that through full and strict self-governance and anti-corruption fight, the CPC wins support from the Chinese people.

The CPC has also strengthened its long-term governance capacity, and ensured that the power entrusted by the people is always used for their well-being, the official said.

Volker Tschapke, honorary president of Germany's Prussian Society, told Xinhua that for China, "there will be only one way into a successful, prosperous, and peaceful future, which is the overall CPC leadership, with the very special Chinese way of the very special Chinese socialism."

ROAD TO BETTER LIFE

"Socialism with Chinese characteristics is the path we must take to realize the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation," Xi said, adding that "working hard in unity is the path the Chinese people must take to make historic achievements."

Anna Malindog-Uy, a professor and researcher with Manila-based think tank Philippines-BRICS Strategic Studies, said "Socialism with Chinese characteristics is the solid guarantee to meet Chinese people's desire for a happy life and the goal of 'common prosperity'."

The scholar said that the country's efforts for rural vitalization and agricultural modernization will improve people's life in rural areas.

In the view of Cavince Adhere, a Kenya-based scholar of international relations, China has made various commitments during the "two sessions" with an aim to promote domestic development and contribute to the well-being of people across the world.

The unity of the nation and the Chinese people's ability to pull in the same direction are critical to fulfilling the commitments, Adhere said.

MORE OPPORTUNITIES FOR WORLD

Expounding on his vision of development, Xi said "putting into practice our new development philosophy is the path we must take to develop our country into a strong nation in the new era."

Eduardo Regalado, a senior researcher at the Cuban Center for Studies on International Politics, said that China is pursuing higher-standard opening-up and promoting the high-quality cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative, sharing development opportunities with other countries.

The new development philosophy, which is being blended into various aspects of China's economic and social development, is of great significance for the world, the researcher added.

With its development philosophy, China is expected to make new contributions to the world, for example in ecological protection, said Hamed Vafaei, director of the Center for Asian Studies at the University of Tehran.

Sheriff Ghali, a professor of political science at Nigeria's University of Abuja, said that by fostering a new pattern of development and promoting high-quality growth, the Chinese economy will become more dynamic and bring more opportunities to the world. 
Brooklyn Beckham and Nicola Peltz enjoyed a romantic trip to a petting zoo on Sunday where they played with a cute piglet and a baby goat.

Aspiring chef Brooklyn, 23, beamed with delight in pictures shared on his actress fiancee Nicola's Instagram Stories as he stroked the pink and black piglets snout.

Nicola, 27, looked equally content as she hung out with some baby goats, and could be seen stroking the little kid while its mother stood behind her.

Oink! Brooklyn Beckham, 23, and Nicola Peltz, 27, enjoyed a romantic trip to a petting zoo on Sunday where they played with a cute piglet and a baby goat

Brooklyn, who is the son of David and Victoria Beckham, donned casual attire for his outing, opting for a white T-shirt which left his plethora of arm inkings on display.

He wore a pair of dark blue denim jeans and comfortable trainers, while he swept his hair back off his face with a headband.

Nicola wore a navy blue jumper and jeans and chose to wear a black face covering.

Furry friend: Actress Nicola looked content as she stroked the little kid while its larger mother stood behind her

Sharing a picture on his Instagram page, Brooklyn wrote: '@nicolapeltz loves the baby pig!'

The couple are due to get married later this year in a glamorous wedding ceremony, predicted to be held on April 9.

Earlier this month ahead of the ceremony, Nicola gifted Brooklyn with a pair of personalised satin knickers to celebrate his 23rd birthday.

Look of love: Nicola wore a navy blue jumper and jeans and chose to wear a black face covering in a bid to keep herself and others safe from coronavirus

Taking to his Instagram stories, the budding chef shared a snap of the cheeky gift, with the underwear emblazoned with the words 'Brooklyn's Bum'.

Brooklyn was obviously pleased with the racy pink knickers with pom poms attached intended for his partner to wear, as he captioned the snap: 'The best gift haha. I love you so much @nicolaannepeltz.'

Nicola also shared images of her beau unwrapping his presents which were wrapped in personalised paper bearing their faces.

Ooh I say! Earlier this month, Nicola gifted Brooklyn with a pair of personalised satin knickers to celebrate his 23rd birthday

In love: She had earlier gushed over her fiance in an Instagram post to celebrate his 23rd birthday, while sharing a throwback snap from her own big day

The model had earlier said she felt 'so lucky to be able to go through life' by his side, adding that she 'can't wait' to marry him soon, with him thanking her for a 'special' time.

Taking to his own profile, Brooklyn blew out the candles on his eye-popping cake, which was made from five mouth-watering tiers of giant donuts.

She penned: 'Happy birthday baby [heart emoji] I'm so lucky to be able to go through life by your side. I love you more everyday [cake] I cant wait to marry you so soon!'

Proving himself to be quite the romantic, he added: 'I fall more in love with you every single second x you are my person and we can get through anything together xx

'Love you so much @nicolaannepeltz and thank you so much for making my birthday so special.'

Promo! Elsewhere, Brooklyn's mother Victoria was advertising her new range of nude lipglosses on the Instagram page for her self-titled beauty brand

She said: 'As many will remember, a brown lip was my '90s uniform. This iteration is different. This Posh Gloss collection traces back to the freedom of sunbathing in Miami Beach in the '60s. Baring skin'

Elsewhere, Brooklyn's mother Victoria was advertising her new range of nude lipglosses on the Instagram page for her self-titled beauty brand.

Victoria was dressed in a crisp white blouse as she spoke to the camera about the collection which was inspired by 'Miami Beach in the 1960s'.

She said: 'As many will remember, a brown lip was my '90s uniform. This iteration is different. This Posh Gloss collection traces back to the freedom of sunbathing in Miami Beach in the '60s. Baring skin.

'Baring it all, in fact, without inhibition. We designed the range with rosy tones that truly bring out a sun-kissed warmth to any complexion; they're incredibly versatile and allow you to wear any of the shades without fear of looking washed out.

'The high-shine finish makes them approachable and ultra-feminine. It's been a long time since I've been craving a high-shine lip with colour. But the mood feels right, right now.' xVB'
Bridgerton star Nicola Coughlan went barefoot as she ditched her heels making her way to the BAFTAs' boozy Netflix after-party at Chiltern Firehouse on Sunday night.

The Derry Girls actress, 35, stunned in a plunging white dress featuring a low neckline and flowing sleeves.

Nicola, who plays the divisive Penelope Featherington on the Netflix period drama, completed her look with a matching purse and strappy white heels.

Sore feet: Bridgerton star Nicola Coughlan went barefoot as she ditched her heels making her way to the BAFTAs' boozy Netflix after-party at Chiltern Firehouse on Sunday night

Exciting: The actress, is reprising her role as Penelope Featherington in the hit period drama, which is returning to screens next month (pictured in-character)

The Irish actress opted for a typically glamorous makeup look while showing off a freshly polished manicure.

She wore her blonde tresses in a neat middle part and allowed them to cascade down her shoulders.

Nicola looked in great spirits as she posed for photographers before partying the night away with her Bridgerton co-stars.

Wow! The Derry Girls actress, 35, stunned in a plunging white dress featuring a low neckline and flowing sleeves

Stunning: Nicola, who plays the divisive Penelope Featherington on the Netflix period drama, completed her look with a matching purse and strappy white heels

Hello: She wore her blonde tresses in a neat middle part and allowed them to cascade down her shoulders

Beautiful: Nicola looked in great spirits as she posed for photographers before partying the night away with her Bridgerton co-stars

Busty: The actress also rocked some classy diamond jewellery including earrings, rings and a bracelet

The outing comes after Nicola teased that fans will get to 'see behind the curtain' of her character in the much-anticipated second season of Bridgerton .

The TV star is reprising her role as Penelope Featherington in the hit period drama, which is returning to screens next month.

Based on a series of books of the same name by Julia Quinn, the Netflix show follows the eight siblings of the Bridgerton family as they attempt to find love in Regency-era England.

The natural beauty's character was revealed to be the show's anonymous gossip writer, Lady Whistledown, at the end of the first season.

Co-stars: Nicola poses with Bridgerton co-stars (L to R) Charithra Chandran, Luke Newton, Ruth Gemmell Adjoa Andoh

Hit show: English actor Luke, 29, cut a dapper figure in a tuxedo and freshly polished shoes

Speaking on Claudia Winkleman's BBC Radio 2 show last month, she said: '(After) that reveal at the end of series one, you very much get to see behind the curtain in series two.

'We see how she gets away with the things that she gets away with. And for me, it was so much fun because in series one she's a shy, retiring wallflower, and then series two you go, 'Oh, she's got all this new stuff going on', and it was extremely fun to film.'

Nicola added that Penelope also gets more control over her fashion choices this time as she starts to 'find her own path'.

All smiles: Nicola also posed with The End Of The F...ing World star Naomi Ackie, 29, and Alex Rider actress Ronke Adekoluejo
Pete Davidson is the latest celebrity getting his astronaut credentials as he's set to launch into space next week aboard Blue Origin's flight following a dinner with his girlfriend, Kim Kardashian, at billionaire Jeff Bezos' Los Angeles mansion just months ago.

The 28-year-old Saturday Night Live comedian will reportedly take off on Wednesday, March 23 at 8:30 a.m. from Launch Site One in West Texas.

Davidson will be one of six people to mark the fourth human flight for the New Shepard program, where he'll fly nearly 65 miles above the Earth's surface during an 11-minute voyage.

Blue Origin flights give passengers a few minutes of weightlessness above the Earths surface before the capsule parachutes and lands in the West Texas desert. The company has not disclosed the ticket price for paying customers.

Kardashian's publicist on Monday declined to comment on her boyfriend's upcoming trip to space. It is unknown at this time whether the reality TV star will accompany Davidson to the launch site.

DailyMail.com also reached out to Davidson's team seeking comment and was awaiting a reply.

Taking flight: Pete Davidson is the latest notable name getting his astronaut credentials as he's set to launch into space next week aboard Blue Origin's 20th flight following a dinner with his girlfriend, Kim Kardashian, at billionaire Jeff Bezos' Los Angeles mansion just months ago

Blue Origin on Monday released photos of the six crew members who will fly on board the New Shephard rocker on March 23

His flight crew includes: Marty Allen, the CEO of Party America; Sharon Hagle, founder of the SpaceKids Global nonprofit, which empowers young girls through STEAM+ education; Marc Hagle, president and CEO of Tricor International; Jim Kitchen, a teacher at University of North Carolina, entrepreneur and explorer who has visited all 193 U.N. recognized countries; and Dr. George Nield, the president of Commercial Space Technologies, LLC, who has previously worked with the FAA, U.S. Air Force Academy, and NASA.

Davidson and other passengers will each carry a postcard onboard as part of the Blue Origin's foundation Club for the Future, and their Postcards to Space Program, which gives students access to space on Blue Origin's rockets, according to PEOPLE.

The program was created to inspire future generations to pursue STEM education to benefit the Earth.

Space explorer: Bezos (pictured in his Blue Origin suit) founded the company in 2000 and has already flown into space on one of his company's rockets

Jeff Bezos 'flew his TAILOR out to Texas to fix his flight suit because it "fit poorly around the crotch" before first Blue Origin launch An ill-fitting crotch on a Blue Origin flight suit reportedly sent billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos into a meltdown last year, prompting him to bring his tailor out to Texas to fix the unseemly garment before his first foray into space. The 58-year-old businessman and his first crew, which included his brother, Mark, pioneering female aviator Wally Funk, and an 18-year-old Dutch student Oliver Daemen, blasted off into space aboard Blue Origin's New Shephard rocker on July 20, 2021. Prior to liftoff, however, Bloomberg reported that Bezos' blue-and-black flight suit caused a bit of sartorial drama. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, 58 (second left), reportedly had his tailor flown out to Texas last July to fix an ill-fitting crotch on his Blue Origin flight suit before launch Bezos is pictured in his repaired suit after landing in Van horn, Texas, on July 20 According to an unnamed witness, the world's second wealthiest man became 'volubly upset' before a preflight photoshoot because his jumpsuit 'fit poorly around the crotch.' Bezos, who has an estimated net worth of more than $163billion, rushed to fix the sartorial snafu by flying his personal tailor out to Texas to tackle the ill-fitting crotch on his flight suit. Photos that were later posted on Blue Origin's Instagram page showed a beaming Bezos posing up in his spiffy outfit, paired with a pair of brown cowboy boots. In a video that was released before the first human Blue Origin flight was launched into space, the Amazon founder gushed about his getup. 'It feels so good to be in he flight suit,' he said. Advertisement

Lucky in love: The Keeping Up with the Kardashians star finally made her relationship Instagram official on Friday with snaps shared from her Valentine's Day weekend retreat in New York with Pete

The King of Staten Island star will be the third famous personality on a Blue Origin flight. William Shatner, 90, was on a flight in October.

Former NFL great and Good Morning America co-host Michael Strahan flew on Blue Origins second passenger flight in December, joining astronaut Alan Shepards daughter on the journey.

'Pete is excited,' a source close to the comedian told Page Six earlier this month.

Davidson previously had a chance to get close to the Amazon founder in late January, when he and Kim joined the space tourism leader at his $175million mansion, where the source added that the comic 'got on really well' with Bezos during their dinner party.

Bezos first flew into space back in July 2021 on Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket.

Joining him on that inaugural flight were the pioneering female aviator Wally Funk who became the oldest person at that time to fly into space at age 82.

The billionaire also brought along his brother Mark, as well as the 18-year-old Dutch student Oliver Daemen, who was selected at the last minute after another guest had a scheduling conflict that required them to take a later space flight.

First crew: Bezos was joined by his brother Mark, female aviation pioneer Wally Funk (who became the oldest person in space at 82) and 18-year-old Dutch student Oliver Daemen; Bezos seen on a test flight

Davidson has been the subject of several social media attacks from Kardashian's ex Kanye West, 44, but she finally took a stance and made their relationship public on her Instagram.

The Keeping Up with the Kardashians star made her relationship Instagram official on Friday with snaps shared from her Valentine's Day weekend retreat in New York with Pete.

'Whose car are we gonna take?!,' she captioned a series with her beau as they cuddled up on the floor in the first appearance he's made on her grid since their romance began flourishing only six months ago.

Pete and Kim met in October when she was hosting Saturday Night Live and even shared their first kiss in front of millions of viewers during an Aladdin and Jasmin-themed sketch.

Kim was declared legally single by a judge just last week after filing documents to change her marital status in December as the year-long divorce proceedings loomed with Kanye. They share four children together: North, Saint, Chicago and Psalm.

'Whose car are we gonna take?!,' she captioned a series with her beau as they cuddled up on the floor in the first appearance he's made on her grid since their romance began flourishing only six months ago

Talk about it: The 28-year-old comedian, who has used Dave's account in the past  recently to share a few kind words following the death of comedian Bob Saget  demanded Kanye take his public battle somewhere else and meet him 'face to face' instead of airing dirty laundry

Davidson didn't miss a beat as he texted West: 'In bed with your wife'

'What you are doing to your family is dangerous and going to scar them for life,' Pete told Kanye. 'Please handle these matters privately bro I beg you'

'This isn't public dude. I'm not here for pictures and press. Which is obviously all you care about,' Pete continued. 'My offer stands. I wish you'd man up for once in your life'

She filed for divorce from Kanye in February 2021 after six years of marriage.

And despite months of public attacks from Kanye, Pete had stayed silent up until Sunday morning when he shared a series of texts to West through his friend Dave Sirus' account where he admitted he was 'in bed with your wife' after Kanye posted a string of aggressive videos aimed at Kim and her family.

'Yo it's Skete, Can you please take a second and calm down. It's 8am and it don't gotta be like this,' Davidson wrote.

'Kim is literally the best mother I've ever met. What she does for those kids is amazing and you are so f***ing lucky that she's your kids mom.'

He added: 'I've decided I'm not gonna let you treat us this way anymore and I'm done being quiet. Grow the f*** up.'

'What you are doing to your family is dangerous and going to scar them for life. Please handle these matters privately bro I beg you.'
Lily Cole and Riz Ahmed appeared in good spirits as they departed the British Vogue and Tiffany & Co BAFTA afterparty on Sunday.

The pair put on an animated display as actor Riz, 39, put an arm around model Lily, 34, while they made their way towards a taxi.

Riz attended the event alongside his wife Fatima Farheed, who he tied the knot with in January 2021.

Event: Lily Cole and Riz Ahmed appeared in good spirits as they departed the British Vogue and Tiffany & Co BAFTA afterparty on Sunday

Riz and Lily have known each other since at least 2009 when they co-starred in the mystery film Rage opposite Jude Law and Judi Dench.

Lily wrapped up for the evening in a black coat which she wore over a white shirt and a black pleated skirt.

The actress also sported a pair of black trainers while she let her flame-haired locks fall loose down her shoulders, adding to her look with a white headband.

Riz cut a dapper figure for the event in a grey blazer and brown trousers which he wore with a peach shirt.

Pals: The pair put on an animated display as actor Riz, 39, put an arm around model Lily, 34, while made their way towards a taxi

Outfit: Lily wrapped up for the evening in a black coat which she wore over a white shirt and a black pleated skirt

Couple: Riz attended the British Vogue and Tiffany & Co afterparty alongside his wife Fatima Farheed, who he tied the knot with in January 2021

The former co-stars could also be seen chatting inside the venue where they were joined by a group of pals.

Lily has focused much of her recent work on environmental activism while Riz's most recent film role was in the 2021 film Encounter.

Riz has previously opened up about how he was once so broke he almost quit acting as he thought he had 'reached the end of the road'.

The actor, who received an Oscar nod for his role in the film Sound of Metal last year, said he nearly gave up on showbiz when he couldn't afford a plane ticket to an audition in Los Angeles.

Afterparty: The actress also sported a pair of black trainers while she let her flame-haired locks fall loose down her shoulders

Smart: Riz cut a dapper figure for the event in a grey blazer and brown trousers which he wore with a peach shirt

Careers: Lily has focused much of her recent work on environmental activism while Riz's most recent film role was in the 2021 film Encounter

Party: The former co-stars could also be seen chatting inside the venue where they were joined by a group of pals

Riz revealed that when he was asked to audition for his breakthrough role as Rick in the 2014 movie Nightcrawler, he was so hard up for cash he almost pulled out.

Speaking to The Mirror, he said: 'They asked me to fly to fly to L.A. I was like, "I cant fly to L.A. Im broke".

'But I had to fly to L.A.  and just bet on myself. I spent that whole flight just running lines. I remember landing and seeing Jake Gyllenhaal in the room and going, "Whoa".

The Londoner landed the part in Nightcrawler, starring opposite Jake Gyllenhaal, and said it 'opened doors' for him but came at a time when he was ready to quit.

He said: 'It came when I thought Id reached the end of the road. I wasnt really making any money, being offered that next tier of roles.'

Project: Riz and Lily have known each other since at least 2009 when they co-starred in the mystery film Rage opposite Jude Law and Judi Dench

In February 2021, Riz told Louis Theroux's Grounded podcast that he recently tied the knot with his wife Fatima in a 'super intimate' ceremony with only a few guests present.

He previously revealed how he met his future wife in a cafe in New York while he was preparing for his role in Sound Of Metal.

He said he and Fatima, who is a novelist, exchanged vows in a simple ceremony with only a few guests present due to COVID-19 restrictions.

He said: 'Obviously, kept it super intimate, and socially distanced. There was just like, hardly anyone there really.

'We did it in a backyard, which is nice in lots of ways. I think the nicest thing about it was you didn't have 500 aunties hanging around you, pinching your cheeks.'

Work: Riz has previously opened up about how he was once so broke he almost quit acting as he thought he had 'reached the end of the road'

Candid: The actor, who received an Oscar nod for his role in the film Sound of Metal last year, said he nearly gave up on showbiz when he couldn't afford a plane ticket to an audition in LA

Role: Riz revealed that when he was asked to audition for his breakthrough role as Rick in the 2014 movie Nightcrawler, he was so hard up for cash he almost pulled out

He said: 'They asked me to fly to fly to L.A. I was like, "I cant fly to L.A. Im broke". 'But I had to fly to L.A.  and just bet on myself'

He added: I spent that whole flight just running lines. I remember landing and seeing Jake Gyllenhaal in the room and going, "Whoa"'

The Four Lions star joked: 'No disrespect to the aunties, but Asian weddings are big.

'You always got these people crawling out the woodworks, who I think are kind of probably impostors. They just smell the kebabs on the street and just wander in.'

Riz went onto reveal more about his wife while appearing on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, explaining they met in 2019 while he was preparing to play a deaf drummer in Sound Of Metal.

He said: 'She's an amazing novelist. We met so randomly while I was preparing for this role, for Sound Of Metal when I was in New York.

'We both sat down at the same table in the cafe where we both turned up to write. We were both jostling over the same laptop plug points, like a very modern way of meeting.

'And we struck up a friendship and reconnected down the line. But it's weirdly like one of the many things about preparing for this role that was so special, it just brought a lot of goodness into my life.'
She is known for her stylish wardrobe.

And Amanda Holden put on another typically chic display in a mint green ensemble as she strutted home from work at Heart FM, on Monday.

The 51-year-old presenter, looked as elegant as ever in the co-ord, after a fun-filled morning being crowned 'Top Dog' in an agility competition with her pet pooch.

Stylish: Amanda Holden, 51, looked typically chic in a mint green ensemble as she left Heart FM after being crowned Top Dog in an agility course with her pet pooch on Monday

Looking simply sensational, the Britain's Got Talent judge slipped into a ribbed knitted top with cut-out detailing at the bust.

She teamed it with a matching midi skirt with a front knee split and added a pair of patent stiletto heels to elongate her legs.

Amanda layered over a double breasted wool coat and carried an emerald green croc printed handbag.

Elegant: Looking simply sensational, the Britain's Got Talent judge slipped into a rib knit top with cut-out detailing at the bust

Chic: She teamed it with a matching midi skirt with a front knee split and added a pair of patent stiletto heels to elongate her legs

She wore her blonde locks loose with a side parting and shielded her eyes with a pair of oversized square framed sunglasses.

Elsewhere, Amanda enlisted the help of her pet Jack Russell Rudi as she went head-to-head with Ashley Roberts for Heart Breakfasts ultimate dog agility course.

Battling it out on the studios rooftop was Amanda and Rudi versus Ashley and her fluffy Pomeranian Diva as they took on some hurdles and a tunnel.

VIP guest: Elsewhere, Amanda enlisted the help of her pet Jack Russell Rudi as she went head-to-head with Ashley Roberts for Heart Breakfasts ultimate dog agility course

Game on! Battling it out on the studios rooftop was Amanda and Rudi versus Ashley and her fluffy Pomeranian Diva as they took on some hurdles and a tunnel

Bribery! Up first was Amanda who proclaimed: 'I think, much like his mother he'll do anything for a sausage!'

Up first was Amanda who proclaimed: 'I think, much like his mother he'll do anything for a sausage!' as she bribed Rudi with some of her breakfast.

But the stars tactics failed as Rudi failed to complete any of the course, with Amanda hilariously taking on the tunnel instead.

In a twist of events, Ashley's dog lived up to her name as the spoiled pooch ignored her owner.

Oh dear! But the stars tactics failed as Rudi failed to complete any of the course, with Amanda hilariously taking on the tunnel instead

The Pussycat Doll took to the hurdles as she stormed through the jumps but unfortunately got trapped in the tunnel.

She failed to beat her co-stars time of 42 seconds and Amanda was crowned Heart Breakfast's 'Top Dog.'

Addressing her audience Amanda exclaimed: 'I am just elated, I would like to that my mum, my dad, Rudi's dad, Chris, the children. It's overwhelming thank you so much.'

Tune in to Heart Breakfast with Jamie Theakston and Amanda Holden weekdays from 06:30AM until 10:00AM
She looked every inch the punk rock chic on Monday.

Helena Bonham Carter was spotted in an eye catching and embellished outfit as she took a trip to a healthy juice bar in London, where she picked up a green beverage.

The eccentric star, 55, fashioned an oversized cardigan with the word "punk" adorning her back in red and silver sequins.

Punk: Helena Bonham Carter, 55, was spotted in an eye catching and embellished outfit as she took a trip to a healthy juice bar in London, on Monday

Open, Helena wore the cardigan over a tiered black floral dress which fell down past her knees.

With mesh black tights, the actress accessorised the unique look with a crimson faux fur scarf complete long ribbon detail.

Her long tresses tied high in a dark bow, the star wore a long purple stone earrings as well a pair of reading glasses on top her head.

Eccentric Helena: Open, the star wore the cardigan over a tiered black floral dress which fell down past her knees

Helena also teamed a pair of large brown suede walking boots with delicately feminine dress.

The actress juggled a large set of keys as well as her mobile phone as she made her way along the busy London street.

Stopping at a juice bar, the talented star was then spotted enjoying a large healthy green shake.

Happy couple: Helena with boyfriend Rye Dag Holmboe, who is 22-years her junior

The actress was without her long-term boyfriend, the Norwegian writer and art historian Rye Dag Holmboe, during her latest appearance in the English capital.

The couple met at a wedding in 2018, following Helena's split from her Movie director husband Tim Burton in 2014.

Explaining how they met, she told The Guardian: 'A totally random thing, which both of us nearly didn't go to, so it was one of those moments that was so chance and ended up determining so much. A really happy accident, and it's an amazing thing.'

Out on her own: The actress was without her long-term boyfriend, the Norwegian writer and art historian Rye Dag Holmboe, during her latest appearance in the English capital

Addressing the couple's 22-year age gap, the actress previously said in an interview with The Times: 'Everybody ages at a different rate. My boyfriend is unbelievably mature. He's an old soul in a young body, what more could I want?

'People are slightly frightened of older women, but he isn't. Women can be very powerful when they're older.'

Helena continues to co-parent son Billy, 18, and daughter Nell, 14, with former partner Burton.
Advertisement

Kourtney Kardashian and her neighbor-turned-fiance - Grammy-winning drummer Travis Barker - visited a fertility doctor's office in the official trailer for her Hulu reality spin-off The Kardashians, which dropped Monday.

The Poosh founder - turning 43 next month - officially announced: 'Travis and I want to have a baby.'

When the doctor or nurse instructed the couple to 'put the sample in this cup,' Kourtney laughed: 'We'll take our mics off so you don't get the audio.'

Baby journey: Kourtney Kardashian and her neighbor-turned-fiance - Grammy-winning drummer Travis Barker - visited a fertility doctor's office in the official trailer for her Hulu reality spin-off The Kardashians, which dropped Monday

A year earlier, Kardashian confessed on Ellen DeGeneres' YouTube show Lady Parts that she was peer pressured into the freezing eggs procedure.

'I froze mine too. Hopefully they're sitting there okay. Just for... you never know. I really got talked into it. I was like, "Okay whatever, I'll do it one time since everyone else is doing it I might as well,"' the half-Armenian beauty - who gave birth on E! in 2009 - explained.

'Everyone's doing it. I believe I was 39. Top notch, top tier. I think it gave me a feeling of, like, taking a deep breath. You know I was 39 and I was about to turn 40 and everyone was like, "If you're going to do it, you've gotta do it now."

'So I was like, "Okay everyone, stop rushing me. I don't even know if I want to have another kid or if that's like in the future or whatever." And having control over my body, it just gave me, like, peace of mind.'

The Poosh founder - turning 43 next month - announced: 'Travis and I want to have a baby'

When the doctor or nurse (L) instructed the couple to 'put the sample in this cup,' Kourtney laughed: 'We'll take our mics off so you don't get the audio'

'I really got talked into it': A year earlier, Kardashian confessed on Ellen DeGeneres' YouTube show Lady Parts that she was peer pressured into the freezing eggs procedure

The half-Armenian beauty - who gave birth on E! in 2009 - explained: 'I froze mine too. Hopefully they're sitting there okay. Just for... you never know'

Kourtney continued: 'I was 39 and I was about to turn 40 and everyone was like, "If you're going to do it, you've gotta do it now." So I was like, "Okay everyone, stop rushing me. I don't even know if I want to have another kid or if that's like in the future or whatever." And having control over my body, it just gave me, like, peace of mind'

Kourtney has three children - son Mason, 12; daughter Penelope, 9; and son Reign, 7 - from her on/off nine-year romance with Talentless CEO Scott Disick, which ended in 2015.

The 46-year-old musician has three children - daughter Alabama, 16; and son Landon, 18; and stepdaughter Atiana De La Hoya, 22 - from his on/off three-year marriage to Shanna Moakler, which ended in 2008.

And while fans speculate about Kardashian already being pregnant, there was no sign of a bump when she and Travis canoodled on the shore outside the Montage Resort in Laguna Beach last Thursday.

Fans tuning into The Kardashians can also expect the Calabasas socialite and Barker to plan their wedding after a year-long romance.

2020 family portrait: Kardashian has three children - son Mason, 12; daughter Penelope, 9; and son Reign, 7 - from her on/off nine-year romance with Talentless CEO Scott Disick (L), which ended in 2015

'They're going to like [Kim] for who [she is] not what [she] wears. I'm just kidding, obviously': Her 38-year-old babydaddy made two appearances in The Kardashians trailer

2020 family portrait: The 46-year-old musician has three children - daughter Alabama, 16; and son Landon, 18; and stepdaughter Atiana De La Hoya, 22 - from his on/off three-year marriage to Shanna Moakler (not pictured), which ended in 2008

Footage of the Blink-182 drummer popping the question to Kourtney on a Montecito beach surrounded by red roses and candles on October 17 was included in the new trailer.

The Kardashians premieres April 14 on Hulu, Disney+ internationally, and Star+ in Latin America.

'I see myself living in another city. And I see myself still working because I love to work. I don't think I see myself filming on a show in five years,' Kardashian told Variety last Friday.

'I think after this journey with Hulu  and who knows because we'll see where it takes us  but I think I see myself living my best life somewhere else. I still want to work and raise my kids, and I don't know, maybe there is a filming element to that, but I don't know, I guess probably not.'

Bun in oven? And while fans speculate about the Calabasas socialite already being pregnant, there was no sign of a bump when she and Travis canoodled on the shore outside the Montage Resort in Laguna Beach last Thursday

'Laguna with you forever': Fans tuning into The Kardashians can also expect Kourtney and Barker to plan their wedding after a year-long romance

After the 14-year 20-season run of Keeping Up with the Kardashians concluded on June 20 on the E! Network, the famous family took a year off.

Fans might not be aware that the He's All That actress was the first member of her family to star in a reality show - the Simple Life-inspired eight-episode series Filthy Rich: Cattle Drive, which aired in 2005 on E!

And unlike her four younger sisters, Kourtney earned an actual college degree in costume design from the University of Arizona.

'Yes!' Footage of the Blink-182 drummer popping the question to Kardashian on a Montecito beach surrounded by red roses and candles on October 17 was included in the new trailer
The Strictly professionals are reportedly divided on whether the show's Russian stars should continue to appear following Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

Katya Jones looked stylish in a white mini dress and belted blazer to go shopping in London on Thursday, as reports emerged that there is drama over the inclusion of Russian dancers in the next series of Strictly after Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

The Russian beauty, 32, looked ready for a day at the stables in her eye-catching brown and white ensemble as she stepped out with British Olympic snowboarder Aimee Fuller, 30.

Fashionista: Strictly dancer Katya Jones, 32, looked stylish in a white mini dress and belted blazer with mock croc knee high boots to go shopping in London on Thursday

Katya wore her white shirt dress beneath a brown blazer boasted elbow patches, and wrapped a Burberry belt around her waist to hold the layers in place.

The raven-haired dancer strolled along in a mock croc pair of knee high boots with cream ribbed socks pulled up high.

Katya carried her belongings in a YSL logo tote bag and completed her bold look with a tan coloured floppy hat.

Her pal Aimee kept things simple in a black blouse and skinny jeans with an off-white coat and Wellington boots.

Standing out: Katya wore her white shirt dress beneath a brown blazer boasted elbow patches, and wrapped a Burberry belt around her waist to hold the layers in place

Fun with friends: Katya stepped out with British Olympic snowboarder Aimee Fuller, 30

Division: The Strictly pros are allegedly divided on whether Russian stars Katya Jones, 32 (left), and Luba Mushtuk, 32 (right), should appear following Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine

Russian natives Katya and Luba Mushtuk, 32, were both born in the country's city of Saint Petersburg.

According to The Sun, the programme's dancers are divided on whether the pair should stay for the next series, with claims the pros are calling on producers to make a decision.

Two of the professionals - Nikita Kuzmin, 24, and Nadiya Bychkova, 32 - are both of Ukrainian descent.

A Strictly Come Dancing source told the publication: 'Tensions are high and theres a lot of strong feeling about this, some of the dancers would want producers to make a decision and say, "You cant come back for the next series."'

Homeland: Two of the professionals - Nikita Kuzmin, 24 (pictured with 2021 celebrity partner Tilly Ramsay), and Nadiya Bychkova, 32 - are both of Ukrainian descent

Difficult times: Nadiya is also a Ukrainian national who dances as a professional on Strictly (pictured in January)

Message: Russian dancer Katya, who was paired with Adam Peaty in last year's series, recently took to her Instagram story with the message: 'Praying for peace and love in the world'

'Some of the professionals feel its in bad taste to have them on the show, its been discussed among a group of them and they are concerned about it affecting the programme and causing a backlash.

'Given theyre on the biggest show on television they are already open to criticism and they worry that this would only invite controversy.'

However, it is said some dancers feel it is unfair for them to be excluded based on their nationality as they cannot help where they were born, with the insider adding Katya and Luba have done 'nothing wrong' and are 'gutted' at the situation in Ukraine.

MailOnline has contacted representatives for Katya, Luba and Strictly Come Dancing for comment.

Irked: James pictured with wife and fellow former Strictly pro Ola Jordan in 2012

Opinion-raising: Former Strictly pro James Jordan, 43, said he was 'very disappointed' many Russian dancers had remained tight-lipped about the ongoing situation

It comes after former Strictly professional James Jordan, 43, called on the show's Russian dancers to comment on the unrest in Ukraine.

He tweeted: 'I dont see many of the Russian dancers I know, and have even shared the Strictly dance floor with, openly speaking out about the war against Ukraine.

'But they are still promoting themselves on social media? Very disappointed.'

However, Katya, who was paired with Adam Peaty in last year's series, took to her Instagram story recently with the message: 'Praying for peace and love in the world [prayer emoji, heart emoji]'.

Heartbroken: Motsi Mabuse has revealed her husband's parents are stranded in Ukraine amid the Russian invasion (Pictured with Ukrainian husband Evgenij Voznyuk in 2018)

Tough: The South African-German dancer shared a harrowing image of her mother-in-law in a bunker when the war broke out

Other stars of the BBC dance show have used their platforms to raise awareness, including those with direct ties to Ukraine.

Nikita shared a photo of his native Ukraine's flag on Instagram, alongside the word 'Heartbreaking'. The post was immediately met with supportive messages from colleagues and fans.

And judge Motsi Mabuse updated her concerned followers with news of her in-laws, who were stranded in the country.

Sharing a photo with her Ukrainian husband Evgenij Voznyuk last month, the dancer wrote on social media: 'We stand with the people of Ukraine and we are against racism at the border against our brothers and sisters!!!!! If the people are not safe, we also not safe #standwithukraine'.
Kim Kardashian is finally hitting back at ex-husband Kanye West on social media.

On Monday, after months of staying silent, the 41-year-old responded to Kanye's latest accusation that she is holding him back from having full access to their four children: North, eight, Saint, six, Chicago , four, and Psalm, two.

Kanye, 44, who accused his ex of 'parental alienation', shared a snap of pins on North's school bag that showed an alien pinned between himself and Kim. He wrote: 'This is what was on my daughter's back pack when I was "allowed" to see her last week.'

But Kim took umbrage at the suggestion she was holding back from letting Kanye see North, responding in his comments: 'Please stop with this narrative, you were just here this morning picking up the kids for school.'

Battle over the kids: Kanye West complained about his access to his kids in an Instagram post on Monday morning, but Kim Kardashian quickly shot back at his 'narrative'

Kanye vs Kim: The pair have been locked in an ugly war of words on social media for months

It is a bold and rare move for the Hulu reality star, as she finally responded to Kanye for the world to see, and his 15.5million followers on Instagram.

In Kanye's original post, he wrote: 'This was on my daughters back pack when I was "allowed" to see her last week This is why I go so hard for my family.'

He added: 'I am wired to protect my family at all cost. As the priest of my home Dont worry Northy God is still alive.'

A TMZ report stated Monday that is not seeking a protective order against Kanye.

Per the report, they do not have a structured custody agreement - Kanye is allowed to see his children when he wants within reason - and Kim does not want to limit Kanye's time with his children.

But as Kanye continues to claim that there is custody issues between them, it now seems neither Kim nor Pete are willing to stay silent.

It's been a long and winded weekend online for Kanye after he shared and deleted a slew of new attacks aimed against a myriad of people and places, including social media, his children's private school and actor DL Hughley following North's lip-synching TikTok clip on Wednesday posted on the TikTok account she shares with her mother Kim.

In one particular video, the rapper specifically targeted his estranged wife, Kim and told her to 'stop antagonizing me' over North's interest in creating videos for the site, an issue he's long been against.

'Hey everybody I just got off the phone with Kim. I told her to stop antagonizing me with this TikTok thing,' he said in a minute-long clip posted with the caption 'No Tik Tok video.'

'I said it's never again. I am her father,' he said. 'I know ya'll don't respect fathers and the idea of family and the media tries to promote something. I said I am not allowing my daughter to be used by TikTok to be used by Disney.

'I have a say so and then when people say they're going to use this for you in court ... I don't even, I didn't have a say so on whether or not they went to Sierra Canyon. Most men do not. There's no such thing as 50/50 custody in society today - It always leans toward the mom, and I'm happy that you guys got to see such a small piece of what I dealt with. You understand what I'm saying?'

West's first attack started earlier in the morning when he took a grab of Kim's face from the short clip and shared it to his own Instagram account with a lengthy caption.

'I told yall before about this tik tok stuff Now my 8 year old on here singing she fell in love with an emo girl Leftist dont want fathers to have no say in our childrens lives,' he wrote.

'I dont want my kids at godless Sierra Canyon school I got a voice and Im not having this And Perez Hilton you still aint answer my question And never put my name next to the word abuse Dont play with my name like that Im a real person who wants the best for my children And DL Hughley is a pawn.

Sunday rant: The rapper fired off a series of posts complaining about feeling alienated from his children, saying: 'There's no such thing as 50/50 custody in society today - It always leans toward the mom, and I'm happy that you guys got to see such a small piece of what I dealt with. You understand what I'm saying?'

'Yeah I know a king not supposed to address a pawn but I address everything and find addresses DL So dont speak on me or my children I can afford to hurt u.'

He then shared a screenshot of a Google image where he had looked up the comedian's name and wrote: 'Wuuuuuut??? DL lives in Calabasas???????? Yoooooo God is good.'

Just last week, Hughley said what was on everyone's mind during a conversation with VladTV as he admitted Kanye's outbursts online have crossed too many lines.

'He is stalking her. You can think its cute. If it was my daughter, Id do something about it,' Hughley said. 'I dont think its funny. I think that you cant write a beat so good that you get to do these things. And society laughs it off because they say, "Well, shes showing her ass all the time and hes this and hes that."'

Kanye continued on with posting screenshots from his phone and shared one gender-biased text which read: 'They're trying to use North against you. They know that's your only trigger. They aren't using the other kids because they aren't old enough & are pretty much babies. Saint on Tik Tok wouldn't trigger you as much because he's your son & our boys have US in them. North & Chi pull on your heart strings the most because they are the delicate children. They're girls & we our protectors due to our knowledge of women being abused in this world.'

A protector to the girls, but not the boys: Kanye continued on with posting screenshots from his phone and shared one gender-biased text

Yikes: In one screenshot of a text to 'Kim Other Phone,' it appeared as though Kanye wrote in blue: 'When I say bring my kids somewhere, I'm not going through this no more. Why the f*** is it up to you where my kids are if we so called have joint custody'

In one screenshot of a text to 'Kim Other Phone,' it appeared as though Kanye wrote in blue: 'When I say bring my kids somewhere, I'm not going through this no more. Why the f*** is it up to you where my kids are if we so called have joint custody.'

Kim and North starred in a new TikTok video shared on Wednesday night where they rocked out on social media in black makeup.

The eight-year-old seemed to play creative director as she picked up the phone to sing along to a Machine Gun Kelly and Willow Smith song called 'emo girl' with her cousin, Penelope Disick.

The girls knew all the lyrics to the punk rock beat where Kim made an appearance with jet black makeup streaming down her face despite multiple efforts by her estranged husband Kanye to keep North off the online platforms.

Rock out: Kim Kardashian and her eldest daughter, North, starred in a new TikTok video shared on Wednesday night where they rocked out on social media in black makeup

It seemed to be all fun and games for the girls as North danced around wearing smudged black makeup around her eyes and on her lips.

She showed off braces and braided hair while wearing a white T-shirt to match her cousin's threads as they sang: 'I fell in love with an emo girl.'

Kim played along with her long brunette hair tied back except for a few strands framing her face, and dark makeup dripping down her cheeks for the quick clip that had already amassed two millions likes overnight.

Impressive: The eight-year-old seemed to play creative director as she picked up the phone to sing along to a Machine Gun Kelly and Willow Smith song called 'emo girl' with her cousin, Penelope Disick

Good times: It seemed to be all fun and games for the girls as North danced around wearing smudged black makeup around her eyes and on her lips

Star power: Penelope, Kourtney's daughter with ex Scott Disick, was having a blast with her aunt and cousin as she stepped in for a cameo on the clip

In a since-deleted post from earlier this year, Ye shared a picture of North, eight, on Instagram last month asking in the caption, 'Since this is my first divorce I need to know what should I do about my daughter being put on TikTok against my will?'

Hours later, Kim hit back on her Instagram slamming Kanye's 'constant attacks' on her, accusing him of causing their family 'pain' in a lengthy statement, where she referred to herself as the 'main caregiver.'

Kanye then responded again, screenshotting Kim's statement and posting another response saying: 'What do you mean by main provider ? America saw you try to kidnap my daughter on her birthday by not providing the address.'

Having fun: Kim played along with her long brunette hair tied back except for a few strands framing her face, and dark makeup dripping down her cheeks for the quick clip that had already amassed two millions likes overnight

Expert: She showed off braces and braided hair while wearing a white T-shirt to match her cousin's threads as they sang: 'I fell in love with an emo girl'

Custody drama: The former couple came to blows before arguing about Kim putting their daughter on TikTok 'against his will'

'You put security on me inside of the house to play with my son then accused me of stealing I had to take a drug test after Chicago's party cause you accused me of being on drugs. Tracy Romulus stop manipulating Kim to be this way.'

Tracy Romulus is the Chief Financial Officer of Kim Kardashian West Brands and a close friend of the Hulu reality star.

In Kim's lengthy rebuttal of Kanye's initial post, she wrote: 'Kanye's constant attacks on me in interviews and social media is actually more hurtful than any TikTok North might create.'

'As the parent who is the main provider and caregiver for our children, I am doing my best to protect our daughter while also allowing her to express her creativity in the medium that she wishes with adult supervision - because it brings her happiness.

'Divorce is difficult enough on our children and Kanye's obsession with trying to control and manipulate our situation so negatively and publicly is only causing further pain for all.'

Hitting back: Kim Kardashian has issued a fiery response to her estranged husband Kanye West after he claimed their daughter North is being put on TikTok 'against his will'

He's not done: Kanye then responded to Kim's initial rebuttal, claiming that he was made to take a drug test before entering Chicago's birthday party

Back for more: The rapper later posted the guidelines surrounding minors joining TikTok in another pointed dig at his ex Kim

Lucky in love: The Keeping Up with the Kardashians star finally made her relationship Instagram official on Friday with snaps shared from her Valentine's Day weekend retreat in New York with Pete

'From the beginning I have wanted nothing but a healthy and supportive co-parenting relationship because it is what is best for our children and it saddens me that Kanye continues to make it impossible every step of the way.'

She finished her post by stating: 'I wish to handle all matters regarding our children privately and hopefully he can finally respond to the third attorney he has had in the last year to resolve any issues amicably.'

It comes just a month after Kanye stated in a podcast that he did not want North to appear on the social media platform, saying: 'I'm not there to approve that.'

Kim and North's joint TikTok account currently has 6.1million followers and says in the bio: 'Me and my bestie, Managed by an adult.'

Kim was declared legally single by a judge two weeks ago after filing documents to change her marital status in December as the year-long divorce proceedings loomed with Kanye. They share four children together: North, Saint, Chicago and Psalm.

The Keeping Up with the Kardashians star made her relationship Instagram official on Friday with snaps shared from her Valentine's Day weekend retreat in New York with Pete.

'Whose car are we gonna take?!,' she captioned a series with her beau as they cuddled up on the floor in the first appearance he's made on her grid since their romance began flourishing only six months ago.

Pete and Kim met in October when she was hosting Saturday Night Live and even shared their first kiss in front of millions of viewers during an Aladdin and Jasmin-themed sketch.

Talk about it: The 28-year-old comedian, who has used Dave's account in the past  recently to share a few kind words following the death of comedian Bob Saget  demanded Kanye take his public battle somewhere else and meet him 'face to face' instead of airing dirty laundry
Kerry Katona has hilariously admitted that she is regularly forced to Google who she's been married to since she struggles to keep track of her former spouses.

The thrice-divorced TV personality, 41, who has lived through her fair share of highly-publicised marriages, added that she even asks her five children who their dads are.

Despite making the jaw-dropping confession on The Jay Hutton Show, she is now engaged to fitness trainer Ryan Mahoney, 33, after the pair met on a dating app.

Farcical: Kerry Katona has hilariously admitted that she is regularly forced to Google who she's been married to since she struggles to keep track of her former spouses

She began: 'I have to Google it half the time because I can't remember who I've been married to. I look at my kids and I go, "Who do you belong to?' It's dead funny, the kids love it.'

The star - who has declared herself bankrupt at least twice - was married to Brian McFadden from 2002 to 2006, Mark Croft from 2007 to 2011 and the late George Kay from 2014 to 2017.

Kerry continued: 'I had this big, massive jukebox off Brian, my first husband...

'So I had this jukebox that Brian McFadden bought me as a wedding present and it's gone everywhere with me. It's got all my old music in there, my Rod Stewart...

Wow! The thrice-divorced TV personality, 41, who has lived through her fair share of highly-publicised marriages, added that she even asks her five children who their dads are (pictured with Brian McFadden in 2001, who she was married to between 2002 and 2006.

Shocking: She began: 'I have to Google it half the time because I can't remember who I've been married to. I look at my kids and I go, "Who do you belong to?' It's dead funny, the kids love it' (pictured with Mark Croft in 2008, who she was married to between 2007 and 2011)

Oh no! Back in June, Kerry reflected on her relationship with late ex-husband George Kay, saying he would 'spit in her face' - they were married between 2014 and 2017 (pictured in 2015)

'I couldn't afford to pay the rent. And it's about 16k that jukebox... I had to sell it for 1900.'

The Tide Is High hitmaker has five children  Molly Marie, 20, Lilly-Sue, 19, with Brian, Heidi Elizabeth, 15, Maxwell Mark, 13, with Mark, and Dylan-Jorge Rose Kay, seven, who she shared with George.

Back in June, Kerry candidly reflected on her relationship with late ex-husband George, saying he would 'spit in her face'.

The EMA nominee revealed that she even hid in a cupboard with one of her daughters because she was so terrified of him in an interview with Ulrika Jonsson in The Sun.

Running an orphanage: The Tide Is High hitmaker has five children  Molly Marie, 20, Lilly-Sue, 19, with Brian, Heidi Elizabeth, 15, Maxwell Mark, 13, with Mark, and Dylan-Jorge Rose Kay, seven, who she shared with George (pictured in 2020)

Speaking with Ulrika, Kerry recalled locking herself and her child in a cupboard and added that George once threatened to rape her and her mother.

Speaking about abuse, Kerry said: 'The worst thing he did was spit in my face I got to the point where I would rather take a good beating than have him spit in my face.'

The mother-of-five also detailed how she would hide bruises before appearing on TV, however said the worst thing was her older daughter seeing what was happening.

George was found dead at the age of 39 following a drug overdose and during their marriage he had battled mental health issues.

He and Kerry tied the knot in 2014 and shared daughter Dylan-Jorge, seven. Kerry is also mum to Molly, Lily, Max and Heidi.

The former Atomic Kitten band member also emphasised to her friend how 'hard' it feels to leave a violent relationship.

And although battling tough relationships, with Kerry also saying her first husband Brian was unfaithful, the star detailed how she's now happy.

For confidential support call The Freephone National Domestic Abuse Helpline, run by Refuge on 0808 2000 247.
BEIJING, March 14 (Xinhua) -- Yang Fulin, former deputy commander of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, has been indicted for taking bribes, the Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP) said Monday.

Following an investigation into Yang's case by the National Supervisory Commission and upon the designation of the SPP, the People's Procuratorate of Jinan, east China's Shandong Province, has filed the case to the city's intermediate people's court, according to an SPP statement.

Prosecutors accused Yang of taking advantage of his former posts in the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps to seek benefits for others and illegally accepting massive sums of money and gifts in return.

The prosecutors had informed the defendant of his litigation rights, interrogated him, and listened to the defense counsel's opinions, the SPP said. 
Emmy nominee Jamie Lee Curtis wished her adopted transgender daughter Ruby 'Greymane' Guest a happy 26th birthday on Sunday with a tribute blasting 'discriminatory, unjust' anti-trans legislature.

'As a proud parent of my trans daughter I vow to use my freedom of speech and my right to vote to support my child and all children trying to live freely as who they are,' the 63-year-old daughter of Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis - who boasts 7.2M social media followers - wrote.

'[I] am sending support to all of the trans families across the US who are being targeted in this moment by conservative legislatures. This country was founded on freedom. A profoundly simple idea that everyone living here should be free to dream and achieve what they want freely.

'Proud': Emmy nominee Jamie Lee Curtis (R, pictured October 12) wished her adopted transgender daughter Ruby 'Greymane' Guest (2-L) a happy 26th birthday on Sunday with a tribute blasting 'discriminatory, unjust' anti-trans legislature

'Our declaration of independence promises that we are endowed with certain unalienable rights including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to defy it to ensure safety and happiness.

'A profound idea. Safety and happiness! Now politicians are proposing that parents providing gender-affirming care for their own children are felons and deserve prison time. These laws are discriminatory, unjust, and anti-American. Freedom of expression includes gender expression!'

In response, the video editor tweeted: 'My mom has supported me all the way ever since I came out as trans [in 2020]. I love her so much. There are allies everywhere for the trans community. You just need to look for them. And we will stand by your side for the long run.'

Ruby (born Thomas) is scheduled to appear on the manga and anime podcast The One Piece next week to discuss being a self-described 'nerd, gamer, and furry.'

The 63-year-old daughter of Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis (pictured last Thursday) wrote: 'As a proud parent of my trans daughter I vow to use my freedom of speech and my right to vote to support my child and all children trying to live freely as who they are'

Jamie's continued: '[I] am sending support to all of the trans families across the US who are being targeted in this moment by conservative legislatures...Now politicians are proposing that parents providing gender-affirming care for their own children are felons and deserve prison time. These laws are discriminatory, unjust, and anti-American. Freedom of expression includes gender expression!'

In response, the video editor tweeted: 'My mom has supported me all the way ever since I came out as trans [in 2020]. I love her so much. There are allies everywhere for the trans community. You just need to look for them. And we will stand by your side for the long run'

LGBT activist: Ruby (L, pictured in 2017) is scheduled to appear on the manga and anime podcast The One Piece next week to discuss being a self-described 'nerd, gamer, and furry'

And when Guest recently spoke out about the attack on the trans community by state officials in Florida, Texas, and Idaho, Jamie retweeted her post with the caption: 'Proud mama bear.'

Last year, Curtis admitted that she and her husband of 37 years - Emmy winner Christopher Guest - 'still slip occasionally' by misgendering Ruby and calling her by her birth name.

'It's speaking a new language. It's learning new terminology and words. I am new at it. I am not someone who is pretending to know much about it. And I'm going to blow it, I'm going to make mistakes. I would like to try to avoid making big mistakes,' the Halloween Kills producer-star told People.

'You slow your speech down a little. You become a little more mindful about what you're saying. How you're saying it. You still mess up, I've messed up today twice. We're human.'

And when Guest recently spoke out about the attack on the trans community by state officials in Florida, Texas, and Idaho, Curtis retweeted her post with the caption: 'Proud mama bear'

'It's speaking a new language': Last year, the Halloween Kills producer-star admitted that she and her husband of 37 years - Emmy winner Christopher Guest (L, pictured in 2019) - 'still slip occasionally' by misgendering Ruby and calling her by her birth name

Mother-of-two: Jamie and the 75-year-old British baron are also parents of 35-year-old adopted daughter Annie (L), who tied the knot with Jason Wolf in 2019

Jamie and the 75-year-old British baron are also parents of 35-year-old adopted daughter Annie, who tied the knot with Jason Wolf in 2019.

Last Friday, Curtis reunited with castmates - Harry Shum Jr., Jenny Slate, Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, director Daniel Kwan, Michelle Yeoh, and director Daniel Scheinert - at the world premiere of Everything Everywhere All at Once at South by Southwest in Austin, TX

In the critically-acclaimed multi-verse action flick - hitting US theaters March 25 - the second-generation Scream Queen let it all hang out as IRS auditor Deirdre Beaubeirdra.

Meanwhile, Christopher's last project was helming the Netflix documentary Surviving Twin on Grammy winner Loudon Wainwright III in 2018.

'This movie is going to mess with your brains!' Last Friday, Curtis reunited with castmates - (from L-R) Harry Shum Jr., Jenny Slate, Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, director Daniel Kwan, Michelle Yeoh, and director Daniel Scheinert - at the world premiere of Everything Everywhere All at Once at South by Southwest in Austin, TX
Billie Lourd has tied the knot with her fiance Austen Rydell.

People reports the actress, 29, who is the daughter of Carrie Fisher, married Rydell, 29, Saturday in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico following a nearly two year long engagement.

Billie's father, talent agent Bryan Lourd, purchased a block of rooms at the hotel venue for wedding guests, an insider told the site.

Just married! Billie Lourd has tied the knot with her fiance Austen Rydell

Guests enjoyed a private pool party at the hotel the day before the wedding on Friday afternoon.

Leslie Grossman, who stars opposite Billie on American Horror Story, reminisced about the wedding on her Instagram Stories on Sunday.

'Billie and Austen's wedding weekend is over, which is so sad, cause it was the most fun.

'But I won Best Dressed,' she said. showing off her gold trophy. 'I won Best Dressed, and I may have bribed the judges, I may have done whatever I needed to do to get this trophy, but I got it.'

I do! People reports the actress, 29, married Rydell, 29, Saturday in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico following a nearly two year long engagement

'It was the most fun': Leslie Grossman, who stars opposite Billie on American Horror Story, reminisced about the wedding on her Instagram Stories on Sunday

Billie appeared to be celebrating her bachelorette party last month when she posted a slew of snaps of her wearing a veil and all white.

'#BBE #bigbridalenergy #featherweather #iheartheartsunglasses #blaseontheoutsideblessedontheinside,' she captioned one of the posts, along with various emojis, including one of a bride.

Billie and Austen became engaged in June 2020 after four years together.

The couple had one break-up during their relationship, but reunited soon after.

Family first: Three months after the engagement, Billie and Austen welcomed a son, Kingston Fisher

Three months after the engagement, Billie and Austen welcomed a son, Kingston Fisher.

'He's not technically a quarantine baby, and I want to make that known because a lot of people are having trendy quarantine babies,' Billie said on Bruce Bozzi's SiriusXM show Quarantined with Bruce last year.

'Kingston was conceived before quarantine. He's technically just a Caribbean baby.'

'He was so caring and incredible': Lourd gushed about Austen and the way he cared for her during her pregnancy during an interview on the Quarantined with Bruce show last year

Billie also gushed about Austen caring for her throughout her pregnancy.

'Now we know each other better than anybody could ever know each other,' she said. 'And he was so caring and incredible and cooked for me and gave me foot massages. And did these classes with me, like he did the lactation class, he did the positive birthing class, so he was with me every step of the way.'

'We just became even closer friends, even better partners. And I think it prepared us to be the best parents and he's sitting out there with the baby right now,' she added. 'And he is as you know, the best dad in the world. And I think that's partially because we got to have this experience together.'

'She said "Duhhh"': The couple revealed their engagement in June 2020

It was revealed in June 2020 that Billie and Austen were engaged when he posted a snap of the couple, with the caption: 'She said YES!! (Actually she said "Duhhh") But I guess that's better than yes?!?'

In July 2020, Austen shared a gushing post about Billie for her birthday, writing: 'Happy Birthday to my FIANCE @praisethelourd !! Your birthday feels like my birthday! I  YOU!! Here we go!!!'

In December 2017, the Star Wars: The Last Jedi actress tagged the actor in a tribute when she marked one year since the passing of her mom, Carrie Fisher, and grandmother, Debbie Reynolds.

When Lourd visited the Northern Lights in honor of her mom, she took Austen along for the journey, also tagging him in the touching post.

Love lives: Billie and Austen became engaged in June 2020 after four years together

Lourd pictured with her late grandmother Debbie Reynolds and mother Fisher in 2015

Lourd was previously linked to Twilight star Taylor Lautner, who began dating at the start of 2017, just shortly after her mom and grandma's unexpected deaths. But they parted ways a few months later.

Her mom Fisher died on December 27, 2016, a few days after suffering a heart attack. A day after her death, Lourd's grandmother Reynolds passed following a stroke.

In 2018, Lourd revealed that her fiance Rydell had whisked her away on a surprise birthday trip.

'This king just surprised me with a 24 hour trip to Vegas and its safe to say Im obsessed [with] him,' she wrote on Instagram.

For the engagement news, Rydell posted no less that 10 happy couple shots to his Instagram page, including one of them kissing at Coachella music festival.

Star Wars actor Mark Hamill's daughter Chelsea was one of the first to congratulate the happy couple on their news.
He's been tipped for superstardom after taking home the gong for Best Young Actor/Actress at the Critics' Choice Awards on Sunday night.

But when Jude Hill spoke to MailOnline in December, he revealed how his 'role model' Sir Kenneth Branagh had to put the young star's nerves 'at ease' while directing him in Belfast, which is inspired by his own childhood during The Troubles.

The actor, 11, admitted he had thought it would be 'pretty scary acting as the person in front of him', but soon felt better when he got to know the BAFTA winner, 61.

Rising star: Jude Hill has revealed how his 'role model' Sir Kenneth Branagh had to put the young star's nerves 'at ease' while directing him in Belfast , which is inspired by his own childhood during The Troubles (pictured on Sunday)

He confessed on the red carpet at the British Independent Film Awards: 'Having a person I was acting as in front of me, I thought it was going to be pretty scary but he made me feel at ease.

'He really helped out and told me about stories from his childhood and that really helped me understand him a little bit better.'

When asked what kind of tales the Death On The Nile star would share, Jude replied: 'Just the normal stories, at school and being in trouble and what he would do in situation. Yeah he was a role model, I love him so much.'

Before losing out to Nell Barlow for the Breakthrough Performance trophy at the 2021 BIFAs, the future superstar told how getting nominated alone was 'honestly so mind breaking'.

Close bond: The actor, 11, admitted he had thought it would be 'pretty scary acting as the person in front of him', but soon felt better when he got to know the BAFTA winner, 61, (right, pictured in February 2022)

He said: 'Its honestly so crazy to be here tonight.

'Well good luck to all the other nominees, and getting nominated for this is honestly so mind breaking and still in the back of my mind I think is crazy.

'If I win, I'm just gonna thank a bunch of people because I wouldnt be here without the rest of the cast, my mum and dad and Ken and everyone else who helped out.'

Jude was just nine when he beat 300 hopefuls to play a fictionalised version of a young Kenneth in the directors semi-autobiographical film.

On set: 'He really helped out and told me about stories from his childhood and that really helped me understand him a little bit better'

The blonde-haired boy from the village of Gilford, about 25 miles south-east of Belfast in County Down, appeared gobsmacked on stage as he collected the award, telling audiences: 'I'm gonna be completely honest, I have nothing prepared.'

He thanked his cast-mates, his mother and father, and singled out director Kenneth, adding: 'I love you so much, thank you for choosing me.'

The child star has won praise from critics across the world, as well as scooping the Best Newcomer Award at 5th Annual HCA Film Awards, for the role of Buddy in the black-and-white film, which documents life growing up in a working class family during the Troubles in the late 1960s.

High praise: The Year 7 student is currently doing the rounds during Hollywood awards season - pictured left to right: Jamie Dornan, Caitriona Balfe, Jude, Kenneth and Ciaran Hinds

But despite taking Hollywood by storm, the youngster has been hailed a 'normal boy' by his mother Shauneen, who has previously spoken of his down-to-earth attitude and love for Spiderman.

Critics have garlanded the film with praise  in his five-star review, the Daily Mails critic Brian Viner called it a small masterpiece - and the awards season looks set to back that up.

Mingling with his co-stars on the red carpet this week - including Sir Kenneth, the youngster has had the chance to meet his heroes; he told reporters that he was lost for words after chatting to Spider-Man: No Way Home star Andrew Garfield.

Jude has now been signed by Hollywood acting agencies UTA and Berwick & Kovacik and further roles are surely just a matter of time.

But his parents maintain that he's just 'a normal boy', who they're keen to protect from the glaring spotlight of Hollywood.

The young actor has been hailed as a natural by Sir Kenneth, while co-star Dame Judi Dench said he was completely like an actor who had had 25 years worth of experience.
Lisa Armstrong and her boyfriend James Green looked every inch the smitten pair on Monday as they cosied up for a getaway selfie.

The makeup expert, 45, and James, who recently celebrated his 38th birthday, were all smiles as they made memories during a city break.

While Lisa didn't disclose their location, the couple looked as though they were lapping up the March sunshine as they both shielded their eyes with sunglasses.

Memory-making: Lisa Armstrong and boyfriend James Green smiled for a smitten selfie during a city break on Monday - after the MUA marked his 48th birthday with sweet snaps

Lisa wrote alongside the snap: 'City Break.. @james_green83 [hearts] #HappyPlace [sic]'.

It comes after Lisa marked James' birthday with a series of throwbacks last week.

Lisa received a peck on the cheek from her 'gorgeous boy' before donning matching eye masks in one sweet shot.

Getaway: The makeup expert, 45, and James, who recently celebrated his 38th birthday, were all smiles as they made memories during a city break

Smooch: It comes after Lisa marked James' birthday with a series of throwbacks last week

Matching! Lisa and James wore coordinating eye-masks in another heartwarming photo

Couple: Follow-up snaps saw the couple beam from ear-to-ear while enjoying each other's company over swanky dinners

Professing her love for him in an adorable caption, she wrote: 'Happy Birthday to my gorgeous boy @james_green83.

'Have the best day, you deserve it!!! Love you so much [heart and kissing emojis].'

Follow-up photos saw the coupe beam from ear-to-ear while enjoying each other's company over swanky dinners and during sun-soaked getaways.

Not washing off: They recently got matching tattoos together, with the word 'Amore' printed on their hands

The pair recently got tattoos together.

Appearing to symbolise their feelings for one another, the couple opted to have the single word 'Amore' - translated from Italian as love - tattooed onto their hands.

Lisa is believed to have started dating James in 2020 and went public with their relationship last August, shortly after he separated from his wife Kirsty.

She and ex-husband Ant McPartlin confirmed their split in 2018, following his stint in rehab the previous year where he sought help for alcohol and painkiller addiction.

Following rehab, Ant took a year out from TV and he and Lisa parted ways, with their divorce being finalised in April 2020.

The Saturday Night Takeaway presenter was reported to have handed over 31 million to Lisa, including their 5million home in West London, after an 'eight-hour negotiation'.
Alec and Hilaria Baldwin have been keeping a low profile amid the on going lawsuit against him over the fatal shooting on the set of Rust.

The 63-year-old was seen outside of his Manhattan apartment on Monday, with his wife nearby, loading up the car for what appeared to be a trip out of town.

The sighting comes after an attorney for the armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, released a statement accusing the actor of ignoring safety rules, according to ABC News.

Low key: Alec and Hilaria Baldwin were seen loading up their car for what appeared to be a trip out of town in NYC on Monday after an attorney for Rust armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed accused him of ignoring on-set safety protocols

Alec appeared downtrodden while wheeling a valet card to his car in a black puffer coat, black pants and a black facemask under his chin.

Wife Hilaria, who is currently on a social media hiatus, was seen nearby in a long camel toned chunky sweater with a black top and pants and Ugg slippers.

The couple has been dealing with an ongoing wrongful death lawsuit over the on-set shooting death of Halyna Hutchins, the cinematographer on his film Rust, who was killed during a rehearsal.

Director Joel Souza was also injured from Baldwin's prop gun, though he survived his injuries.

Under the radar: Alec appeared downtrodden while wheeling a valet card to his car in a black puffer coat, black pants and a black facemask under his chin

Casual: Wife Hilaria, who is currently on a social media hiatus, was seen nearby in a long camel toned chunky sweater with a black top and pants and Ugg slippers

On Sunday, lawyers for the film's armorer released a statement condemning the actor for pointing his firearm at crew members despite that being a violation of safety protocol.

'Mr. Baldwin knew that he could never point a firearm at crew members under any circumstances and had a duty of safety to his fellow crew members,' attorney Jason Bowles said. 'Yet he did point the gun at Halyna before the fatal incident against all rules and common sense.'

Bowles added that the monitor on set was broken on the day of the fatal shooting which 'further prevented Hannah from knowing what was going on inside the Church,' ABC reported.

This statement was in response to new documents in the wrongful death lawsuit against Baldwin and the production filed by Hutchins family.

Tragedy: The couple has been dealing with an ongoing wrongful death lawsuit over the on-set shooting death of Halyna Hutchins, the cinematographer on his film Rust, who was killed during a rehearsal; director Joel Souza was also injured from Baldwin's prop gun, though he survived his injuries

Baldwin appeared to pass the blame onto the victim in an arbitration demand filed on Friday and claimed that his contract shielded him from any financial responsibility related to Hutchins' death.

Despite the tragedy, Baldwin had attempted to convince cast and crew to finish filming Rust in Hutchins' honor in the weeks after the shooting and have the proceeds from the movie go toward a settlement with the woman's husband, Matthew Hutchins, and nine-year-old son, according to the filing.

The filing also revealed that Baldwin and Matthew had been exchanging text messages.

The Hutchins lawyer, Brian Panish, hit back at the actor: Alec Baldwin once again is trying to avoid liability and accountability for his reckless actions before and on October 21st that resulted in the death of Halyna Hutchins,' Panish told Deadline.

'Mr. Baldwin knew that he could never point a firearm at crew members under any circumstances and had a duty of safety to his fellow crew members,' attorney Jason Bowles told ABC News Sunday. 'Yet he did point the gun at Halyna before the fatal incident against all rules and common sense.'

'Baldwin's disclosure of personal texts with Matt Hutchins is irrelevant to his demand for arbitration and fails to demonstrate anything other than Hutchins' dignity in his engagement with Baldwin.

'It is shameful that Baldwin claims Hutchins' actions in filing a wrongful death lawsuit derailed the completion of Rust,' Panish added. 'The only action that ended the film's production was Baldwin's killing of Halyna Hutchins.'

The Emmy-winning actor also claimed that he was following Halyna Hutchins' directions when he pointed what turned out to be a gun loaded with live rounds at her on the set of the movie Rust and pulled the trigger, killing the cinematographer.

Baldwin has been named as a defendant in multiple lawsuits that have been filed in connection with the fatal shooting.

In an interview with George Stephanopoulos for ABC, the actor claimed the gun went off while he was practicing his blocking for the scene, with Hutchins instructing him to point the gun to the side of the camera in her direction.

'And I cock the gun, I go, 'Can you see that? Can you see that? Can you see that?' And she says ... and then I let go of the hammer of the gun, and the gun goes off. I let go of the hammer of the gun, the gun goes off,' he said.

Who is to blame? Baldwin appeared to pass the blame onto the victim in an arbitration demand filed on Friday and claimed that his contract shielded him from any financial responsibility related to Hutchins' death

The shooting is currently under investigation, and a search warrant was issued in late December for Baldwin's cellphone, which he was seen talking on shortly after the shooting.

The warrant give police permission to go through all text messages and photos he might have, along with stored location data.

His latest court filings doubled down on his assertion that, while the death was tragic, he is not responsible.

'This is a rare instance when the system broke down, and someone should be held legally culpable for the tragic consequences. That person is not Alec Baldwin,' according to the filing. 'October 21 was also the worst day in Alec Baldwin's life. That day has and will continue to haunt Baldwin.'

Friday's filing repeatedly argued that the actor was not responsible for the cinematographer's death because he had been assured that the gun he was using in the scene did not contain live bullets, and also because he was not responsible for checking the ammunition, as New York Times first reported.

His side: The Emmy-winning actor also claimed that he was following Halyna Hutchins' directions when he pointed what turned out to be a gun loaded with live rounds at her on the set of the movie Rust and pulled the trigger, killing the cinematographer

'An actor cannot rule that a gun is safe,' the filing said. 'That is the responsibility of other people on the set.'

According to the document, Hutchins instructed Baldwin how to hold the gun.

'She directed Baldwin to hold the gun higher, to a point where it was directed toward her,' the filing stated. 'She was looking carefully at the monitor and then at Baldwin, and then back again, as she gave these instructions. In giving and following these instructions, Hutchins and Baldwin shared a core, vital belief: that the gun was 'cold' and contained no live rounds.'

Baldwin then asked Hutchins if she wanted him to pull back the hammer on the Colt, and she allegedly said yes.

The actor pulled back the hammer 'but not far enough to actually cock the gun,' the filing said. When Baldwin let go of the hammer, the gun discharged.
Stacey Dooley cut a chic figure in an all white ensemble at the Remarkable Women Awards in London on Monday.

The presenter, 34, looked incredible as she donned a white blazer and matching trousers on the red carpet at The Londoner hotel.

The former Strictly star beamed as she elevated her height with a pair of black strappy heels at the star-studded event.

Stunning: Stacey Dooley cut a chic figure in an all white ensemble at the Remarkable Women Awards in London on Monday

Stacey kept her look minimal and only accessorised with a few silver rings and a pair of earrings.

The natural beauty had her signature red tresses down in a blown out style while she opted for a bronzed makeup palette to accentuate her features.

The TV personality looked in high spirits as she met up with Jessica Plummer and Alex Scott along with other remarkable women who attended the event.

After winning Strictly Come Dancing in 2018, Stacey has been kept busy with multiple TV and radio gigs.

Wow: The TV personality looked incredible as she donned a white blazer and matching trousers on the red carpet

Work it: She had her signature red tresses down in a blown out style while she opted for a bronzed makeup palette to accentuate her features

Stacey looked in high spirits as she met up with Jessica Plummer (left) and Alex Scott (right) along with other remarkable women who attended the event

Looking good: Stacey and Munroe Bergdorf (left) posed and done a peace sign while getting their picture taken

Fun times: Stacey and Vick Hope were pictured laughing during the event while both holding a glass of wine

Stacey recently explored life as a nun, as she filmed her new documentary: Stacey Dooley  Inside the Convent which aired on March 9.

Shewill join the Sisters at The Order of the Holy Paraclete Anglican Religious Community, at St Hildas Priory in Whitby.

The BBC one-hour special will see the presenter live and abide by the same rules as the nuns in the convent, to get an inside look into their life.

Through conversations and quiet reflection, she comes across challenges and benefits of living within the strict confines of a convent, while learning about the women who have taken vows of poverty, obedience and celibacy.

To get the full religious experience, Dooley must follow the nuns strict schedule of eating meals in silence, learning how to pray and singing in their choir.
The Bachelor and SAS Australia star Anna Heinrich has officially given up her job as a criminal lawyer to pursue a career as a full-time influencer and entrepreneur.

The 35-year-old told The Daily Telegraph on Tuesday she had chosen not to renew her legal practising certificate this year so she could focus on other opportunities.

'I am way more happy now that I am not [working as a lawyer] and it was more to prove to people that I could do it myself,' she said.

'I am way more happy now': The Bachelor star Anna Heinrich has officially given up her job as a criminal lawyer to pursue a career as a full-time influencer and entrepreneur

Anna said she'd been working just one day a week since the birth of her daughter Elle in November 2020, and had recently lost her 'passion' for the legal profession.

'I was doing it more to feel like I still had that career,' she explained.

She admitted to feeling anxious about losing the 'credibility' that comes with being a practising lawyer.

End of an era: The 35-year-old (pictured with husband Tim Robards) said she had chosen not to renew her legal practising certificate this year so she could focus on other opportunities

'I think people look at you differently when you say you are a lawyer. As soon as I say I've stopped practising law, I feel like I should be ashamed of that because I always put that as the pinnacle when it is actually not,' she said.

Anna is now working as a social media influencer and building her new supplements brand, Intu Wellness.

According to its website, Intu Wellness is 'a collection of premium, wellness and beauty supplements for women like you, who are a tad too busy and need an extra push to get their power back in the morning'.

'I was doing it more to feel like I still had that career': Anna said she'd been working just one day a week since the birth of her daughter Elle in November 2020, and had recently lost her 'passion' for the legal profession. (Pictured at Downing Centre Local Court in May 2019)

The brand currently only sells one product: a powder that purports to help with sleep and skin renewal, worth $89 a bottle.

Anna was working as a full-time criminal lawyer in 2013 when she won the first season of The Bachelor, starring her now-husband Tim Robards.

After finding fame, she began working as a model and brand ambassador, partnering with companies such as Pandora, Oral B, Brosa, Nature One Dairy, Pantene and Olay.

'I think people look at you differently when you say you are a lawyer': She admitted to feeling anxious about losing the 'credibility' that comes with being a practising lawyer. Pictured: Anna playing the role of TV lawyer on Channel 10's Trial by Kyle

Australia's new supplement queen: Anna is now working as a social media influencer and building her new supplements brand, Intu Wellness

'Before I went on [The Bachelor], I didn't think I had much to gain career wise. I already had a good career. If anything, going on it would lessen my career in criminal law,' she told Daily Mail Australia in 2016.

'The only real reason to go on was to find love. I had everything else to lose. But I love Tim. He's the guy I'm meant to be with Things just aligned.'

As a result of her media duties, Anna was forced to cut back on her legal career, which had paid a daily rate of $2,200, according to Watsons Lawyers.

'It got quite difficult when I was working full-time and so I became part-time,' she added.

'I love both sides of what I do, the law and media-related things, equally, and like to prioritise both of them in different ways.'

Career: Anna was working as a full-time criminal lawyer in 2013 when she won the first season of The Bachelor, starring her now-husband Tim Robards. (Pictured together in April 2018)
Georgia Toffolo commanded attention as she arrived at the launch of Sheeva Moshiri's debut novel The Cupid Index in London on Tuesday.

The former Made In Chelsea star, 27, flashed her legs in an unmissable pink minidress featuring puff sleeves and a plaid design.

She elevated her height with a pair of knee-high black leather boots and accessorised her look with a classic silver watch.

Emerging: Georgia Toffolo commanded attention as she arrived at the launch of Sheeva Moshiri's debut novel The Cupid Index in London on Tuesday

The reality star wore her glossy blonde locks in a sleek middle-parting and wore a minimal amount of make-up to highlight her flawless complexion.

She soon cosied up to Nancy Sorrell on the red carpet, who put on an eye-popping display in a fiery red zip-up minidress and black boots.

Eyal Booker also put on a dapper display in a black T-shirt which he layered beneath a matching blazer and coordinating trousers as he hit the lavish venue

Georgia recently returned from a holiday in the Kenyan capital city of Nairobi.

Trendy: The former Made In Chelsea star, 27, flashed her legs in an unmissable pink minidress featuring puff sleeves and a plaid design

Looking good: She elevated her height with a pair of knee-high black leather boots and accessorised her look with a classic silver watch

She took to Instagram during her trip to share a look at the getaway and her chic fashion choices as she enjoyed her holiday in the sun.

In one photo, the blonde beauty wore a long red macrame cover up over a matching swimsuit with cut out detail, which hugged her petite frame.

The star looked relaxed as she stood bare foot, with gorgeous views, a chic straw hat in her hand and circular sunglasses on her head.

Captioning the glamorous photo, she wrote: 'I'm always overdressed but who cares, I felt a million dollars (new motto)'.

Pals: She soon cosied up to Nancy Sorrell on the red carpet, who put on an eye-popping display in a fiery red zip-up minidress and black boots

Centre of attention: Nancy sent pulses racing as she strutted her way through the streets of the capital

In another post, Georgia shared a shot of herself on a boat in a stunning retro inspired swimsuit.

In another post, Georgia shared a shot of herself on a boat in a glamorous retro inspired swimsuit.

The cream suit with black button detail extenuated the stars taut physique as she leaned out to enjoy the breeze.

Her hair blowing in the wind, she completed the look with a pair of large chic sunglasses.

The former I'm a Celebrity contestant, started her trip leaving Heathrow Airport in first class - where she sipped a glass of champagne.
She is at the centre of a nude photo controversy on Married At First Sight.

But Domenica Calarco looked like she didn't have a care in the world on Saturday as she attended a rugby league game in Marrickville, in Sydney's inner-west.

The makeup artist, 28, arrived with her dog Millie to watch the Canberra Raiders take on the Newtown Jets at the Jets' home ground of Henson Park.

What nude photo? Scandalous MAFS bride Domenica Calarco looked like she didn't have a care in the world on Saturday as she attended a rugby league game in Marrickville, Sydney

She looked stylish in a white T-shirt and baggy jeans, which she teamed with sandals, a designer handbag and sunglasses.

Her various tattoos were on display, including a jar of Vegemite and an outline of a heart on her left arm.

The sighting comes as Domenica finds herself embroiled in a nude photo scandal on Married At First Sight this week.

Footy game: The makeup artist, 28, arrived with her dog Millie to watch the Canberra Raiders take on the Newtown Jets at the Jets' home ground of Henson Park

Casual cool: She looked stylish in a white T-shirt and baggy jeans, which she teamed with sandals, a designer handbag and sunglasses

The queen of drama! The sighting comes as Domenica finds herself embroiled in a nude photo scandal on Married At First Sight this week

As previously reported by Daily Mail Australia, she was forced to shut down her OnlyFans account after one of her racy snaps was discovered by another bride.

She was apparently 'seeing red' after MAFS producers ordered her to close her profile on the adults-only subscription website.

It was reportedly Domenica's arch rival Olivia Frazer who first discovered the raunchy page and alerted her co-stars.

Naughty girl: As previously reported by Daily Mail Australia, she was forced to shut down her OnlyFans account after one of her racy snaps was discovered by another bride

'Domenica was seeing red,' a production insider revealed.

'She was embarrassed and let down that none of the other brides told her they'd seen the photo.

'But at the same time, Domenica made no effort to try and hide her account.'

Furious: She was apparently 'seeing red' after MAFS producers ordered her to close her profile on the adults-only subscription website

According to the on-set source, Olivia was trying to dig up dirt on Domenica when she discovered her OnlyFans account, and saw it as a way to embarrass her rival.

'Olivia hit the jackpot when she found out Dom had actively promoted her OnlyFans profile on YouTube, and even had a Twitter page dedicated to it,' they said.

'But Domenica was spewing because she was earning a few hundred dollars per week through OnlyFans, which was helping her pay the rent.

'She was not happy to lose that bit of extra income.'

Domenica was so outraged to learn her co-stars had seen her 'naked' photo that she considered filing a police report, but backed down when producers convinced her the controversy would be good for her.

'She hit the jackpot': According to the on-set source, Olivia Frazer (left) saw the discovery of Domenica's OnlyFans account as an opportunity to embarrass her rival

Betrayed: 'She was embarrassed and let down that none of the other brides told her they'd seen the photo,' an insider told Daily Mail Australia

No secret: 'Olivia hit the jackpot when she found out Dom had promoted her OnlyFans profile on YouTube (pictured), and even had a Twitter page dedicated to it,' the source said

A MAFS trailer released on Monday confirms the OnlyFans account will become a topic of conversation at the next dinner party.

The raunchy photo at the centre of the scandal was reportedly shared among the cast, sparking a hunt for the 'mole' who first leaked it.

'F**k, are people bringing that up?' an embarrassed Samantha Moitzi laughs when asked about the photo by producers.

Get ready! A MAFS trailer released on Monday confirms the OnlyFans account will become a topic of conversation at the next dinner party

'Are people bringing that up?' The photo at the centre of the scandal was reportedly shared among the cast, sparking a hunt for the 'mole' who first leaked it. Pictured: Samantha Moitzi

'The photo was a particular bride in her birthday suit with her bum up,' Selina Chhaur explains.

The trailer ends with Domenica's on-screen 'husband' Jack Millar yelling: 'Everyone has seen a photo of you naked!'

Married At First Sight continues Tuesday at 7.30pm on Channel Nine and 9Now

She's seen in! 'The photo was a particular bride in her birthday suit with her bum up,' Selina Chhaur (pictured) explains
Jeff Lewis made two big revelations via his radio show on Monday; that his latest surrogacy attempt at having a second child had failed, and that he has found a new romantic partner with the Irish chef Stuart O'Keeffe.

The Flipping Out star made the revelations on his Sirius XM show Jeff Lewis Live, telling listeners he had some 'sad news' regarding his surrogacy journey to expand his family.

Meanwhile, confirming his new romance with his co-host O'Keeffe, 40, Lewis later said: 'Just so you guys know, we are now dating. We don't need to bulls*** anymore, we are dating.'

The 51-year-old has a five-year-old daughter, Monroe Christine Lewis, born via a surrogate in 2016, who he shares with his ex-partner Gage Edward.

Talking about his surrogacy blow, Lewis said: 'Embryo No. 9, Jeff Jr., did not make it. It was very, very disappointing.'

Sad news: Jeff Lewis reveals 'disappointment' at failed attempt of having second child after embryo transfer for surrogate 'did not make it' (Pictured above with daughter Monroe)

'And I'm telling you, I was 100 percent convinced it was going to happen. One hundred percent convinced. So when they said to me it didn't take, I was like, stunned. I was stunned because I was so convinced this was happening.'

The reality star explained that he was expecting to get the latest results in the afternoon, but was then caught off guard when he was called at noon.

Lewis explained: 'I was on camera, I was mic'd, I had no idea. And I was five minutes from a client meeting, an on-camera client meeting, and it just was like - I was shocked. I was shocked when they said it.'

A doctor called him with the sad news, and suggested that they try again in May - but Lewis seems unsure about going through the process again.

'There's only one [embryo] left, and [the doctor] said that there's only a 45 percent chance of taking. So I had to come to the realization this weekend that Monroe just might be it. But it was hard,' Lewis said.

New romance: On a brighter note, Jeff Lewis revealed he is now dating 40-year-old Irish chef Stuart O'Keeffe

He added: 'I will say, I've had a lot, in the last three to four weeks, I've had a lot of disappointment, sadness and hurt and all that.'

When his co-presenter said that maybe the star wasn't meant to have a boy, Lewis replied: 'You know who I think manifested that? Monroe. She did not want a brother, she wanted a sister.'

Meanwhile, on a positive note, Lewis spoke about his new romance with Irish chef O'Keeffe.

'What's nice about Chef Stu is he's always texting, he's always sending pictures, he's always calling," Lewis said.

'I don't worry about him, he's always including me in whatever he's doing, which, I appreciate that. I'm not anxious, I'm not stressed, I don't worry, I'm not insecure - none of that.'

It comes after Lewis split with his boyfriend Scott Anderson in January this year.

Family: The 51-year-old has a five-year-old daughter, Monroe Christine Lewis, born via a surrogate in 2016, who he now shares with his ex-partner Gage Edward (Pictured above)

In October last year, Lewis had announced that his future surrogate was undergoing 'medical clearances' prior to the planned birth of his second child.

'It's been confirmed: My future surrogate flew from Phoenix last night to Orange County and she's at the fertility clinic today. She's getting all of her medical clearances,' he said on his show at the time.

Lewis went on to give a timeframe for the surrogate's pregnancy schedule and stated that he expected the process to begin later in the year.

'I think they would do the actual implantation, which would be, I think in December or January if everything goes well,' he said.

The reality television personality went on to express that if a potential 'mix-up' occurred during the process, he was uninterested in entering into a legal battle regarding the surrogate's child.

Telling listeners: The Flipping Out star made the revelation on his Sirius XM show Jeff Lewis Live on Monday

'I don't think I should be raising someone else's baby for four months to then get sued...that's all I need, another custody fight,' he stated.

Lewis previously announced that he had been put in contact with a new surrogate last month and that they had been negotiating each other's role in the future pregnancy.

Meanwhile, the Bravo star and his former partner split up in 2019, and they went on to enter into a protracted custody battle over their daughter, although they eventually agreed to co-parent their child.

He went on to begin a relationship with Scott Anderson that eventually came to an end last year.

Lewis and Edward subsequently attempted to rekindle their romance, although they went their separate ways earlier this year.
RAMALLAH, March 14 (Xinhua) -- A senior European Union (EU) official on Sunday said the Israeli policy of settlement in Palestinian territories is rejected and undermines the world-backed two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

The settlement policy is "fundamentally contrary to international law" and "undermines the chances of the two-state solution on the 1967 borders," Shadi Othman, an EU communication official in Jerusalem, told reporters.

On Friday, the Israeli District Planning and Building Committee approved a plan to build 730 new housing units in Pisgat Ze'ev, a Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem.

Othman called on Israel, the international community, and all relevant parties "to work towards preserving the two-state solution and the possibility of implementing it in the future."

The last direct peace talks between Palestine and Israel, which were sponsored by the United States and lasted for nine months, stopped in 2014 due to deep differences over issues related to Jewish settlements, borders and security.

The Palestinians want to declare East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state, while Israel insists on having a unified Jerusalem as its eternal capital. 
Inamorata CEO Emily Ratajkowski brought her one-year-old son Sylvester Apollo Bear to the Cayman Islands where she was doing a shoot for her four-year-old bikini brand.

The 30-year-old DNA Model shared Instagram snaps of her cherubic child wearing a bathrobe and sitting in the sand at her feet.

Photographer Lauren Leekley captured a beautiful sunset shot of Emily modeling a long-sleeved patterned top with a matching mini-skirt from her next collection.

Business trip! Inamorata CEO Emily Ratajkowski brought her one-year-old son Sylvester Apollo Bear to the Cayman Islands where she was doing a shoot for her four-year-old bikini brand

Cute: The 30-year-old DNA Model shared snaps of her cherubic child wearing a bathrobe and sitting in the sand at her feet

Ratajkowski also showcased an underwire bikini version of the same pink pattern for a mirror selfie inside the swanky boutique hotel Palm Heights in Grand Cayman.

The London-born SoCal native and her BFF/co-founder Kat Mendenhall have also branched Inamorata out to lingerie, loungewear, and basics.

Emily - who boasts 39M social media followers - captioned her Caribbean slideshow 'lucky star bonita' as a word play on Madonna's eighties hits Lucky Star and La Isla Bonita.

Ratajkowski was also joined on her business trip by pal Brian 'Bambi' Grimotes.

Picturesque: Photographer Lauren Leekley captured a beautiful sunset shot of Emily modeling a long-sleeved patterned top with a matching mini-skirt from her next collection

Sneak peek! Ratajkowski also showcased an underwire bikini version of the same pink pattern for a mirror selfie inside the swanky boutique hotel Palm Heights in Grand Cayman

Twinning! The London-born SoCal native and her BFF/co-founder Kat Mendenhall (L) have also branched Inamorata out to lingerie, loungewear, and basics

Fan of the Queen of Pop: Emily - who boasts 39M social media followers - captioned her Caribbean slideshow 'lucky star bonita' as a word play on Madonna's eighties hits Lucky Star and La Isla Bonita

Squad: Ratajkowski was also joined on her business trip by pal Brian 'Bambi' Grimotes (L)

Indulge: The Versace SS/22 catwalker certainly ate well at Palm Heights where she photographed platters filled with pina coladas and fresh shellfish

The Versace SS/22 catwalker certainly ate well at Palm Heights where she photographed platters filled with pina coladas and fresh shellfish.

On March 27, Emily will celebrate the 35th birthday of her husband of three years, Chillin Island executive producer Sebastian Bear-McClard.

Sebastian might be in Texas where Halina Reijn's horror comedy Bodies Bodies Bodies that he produced is having its world premiere Monday night at the Paramount Theatre during South by Southwest festivities in Austin.

Ratajkowski originally met Bear-McClard through mutual friends a few years before they began their romance in 2018.

'I love you': On March 27, Emily will celebrate the 35th birthday of her husband of three years, Chillin Island executive producer Sebastian Bear-McClard (R, pictured March 3)
Sabrina Elba sent temperatures soaring while attending Stylist's Remarkable Women Awards on Monday evening.

Idris' model wife, 32, exhibited her hourglass figure in a revealing black cutout gown that fully exposed her cleavage as she posed for photos.

With a form-fitting lower-half the distinctive dress drew further attention to her curves, while strappy heels rounded things off.

Hot stuff: Sabrina Elba sent temperatures soaring while attending Stylist's Remarkable Women Awards on Monday evening

The event honoured women who excel in their field and was hosted by comedian and creator of BBC series Starstruck, Rose Matafeo.

Sabrina and Idris exchanged vows at the Ksar Char Bagh hotel in Marrakesh surrounded by 150 of their nearest and dearest in April 2019.

Last summer, the married pair detailed how their marriage is 'forever growing and changing and evolving'.

Wow! Idris' model wife, 32, exhibited her hourglass figure in a revealing black cutout gown that fully exposed her cleavage as she posed for photos

Jaw-dropping: With a form-fitting lower-half the distinctive dress drew further attention to her curves, while strappy heels rounded things off

Incredible: The actress sizzled up a storm while flaunting her peachy bottom

They explained that they are 'learning every day' and wanted to share their experience with others by openly delving into their relationship with their podcast Coupledom.

Speaking to People, Idris explained that, how after two previous marriages: 'I had famously said I'd never get married again and here I was about to marry Sabrina, and we really got into questioning why.'

After meeting Sabrina in 2017 at a Vancouver jazz bar, the actor gushed: 'We started dating and I fell head over heels. 'Everyone was like, 'Hey man, you seem so much happier.'

Centre of attention: Sabrina spoke at the event which honoured women who excel in their field

'I didn't realize I was, but the truth is that it really sparked a lot of conversations around how a partnership can bring out the best in you.'

Speaking of why they decided to delve into their relationship on a podcast, he insisted: 'We're learning every day that sharing is a good thing.'

Sabrina described their marriage as 'forever growing and changing and evolving,' explaining that they're not just newly weds but also new business partners.

She gushed: 'Idris is my best friend. I want to be around this guy every day of my life, so it's really great to be able to see what that morphs into.'
Actress Heather Graham flaunted her youthful looks in a makeup-free selfie while rocking a white crop top with red hearts on Monday afternoon.

While showing plenty of skin in her tiny t-shirt, the 52-year-old Drugstore Cowboy star rocked her sexy, tousled hair swept over her right shoulder.

'Feeling T-shirt vibes and listening to @khruangbin,' she captioned her sexy post, in which she tagged New York City as her location.

Effortlessly cool: Heather Graham flaunted her youthful looks in a makeup-free selfie while rocking a white crop top with red hearts on Monday afternoon

In the photo, she is looking up at the camera while posing in her bathroom at home.

Just two days earlier, she shared another flawless snap from the same location with a cheeky caption.

'Has anyone else ever done a late night selfie shoot in their bathroom?' she wrote under the picture, which earned a comment from pal Kate Walsh.

Favorite selfie spot: Just two days earlier, she shared another flawless snap from the same location with a cheeky caption

It comes after her latest film The Last Son where she co-starred alongside Machine Gun Kelly and Sam Worthington was released in January.

The Avatar star plays an outlaw who hunts down his children in an attempt to stop his own murder and defy a curse that had previously been placed on him.

Heather stars as 19th century prostitute Anna, who's the mother of 'psycho' gunslinging cowboy Cal (Kelly).

Stars: It comes after her latest film The Last Son where she co-starred alongside Machine Gun Kelly and Sam Worthington was released in January; pictured at the premiere in December 2021

In December, the actress was asked about playing Kelly's mother during a recent appearance on LIVE with Kelly and Ryan.

Co-host Kelly Ripa said: 'Is that real that he plays your son 'Is Hollywood punking us? Or was it just the time way back in the day when they had children when they were nine years old?'

Heather replied: 'Oh you're sweet! I could be his mom. He's this groovy rock star. To be honest, I didn't know who he was.

Role: Heather stars as 19th century prostitute Anna, who's the mother of 'psycho' gunslinging cowboy Cal (Kelly)

'My friend's kids knew who he was, but now of course I know who he is. He's awesome. He's a really good actor and he's really good in the movie.'

Heather did a funny impersonation of the musician (born Colson Baker), who told her on the Montana set: 'Yeah I know what I'm doing.'

'But he's sweet. We just had a premiere and they're like, "Say a few words,"' Heather recalled laughing.

'And I was like, "This is great to be here." And he's like, "Bang bang." That's what he said!'
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) executed 81 individuals over terrorism-related charges on March 13, 2022, sparking criticism from human rights activists. Out of 81 men, 73 were Saudi nationals, 7 were Yemenis and 1 was a Syrian national.

37 convicts out of 81 included men found guilty in a single case for attemps to assasinate security officers and target police stations and convoys, Al Jazeera reported.

Flag of Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Photo: AFP

Saudi Press Agency in an official statement said that all the convicts had links to the Islamic State group, Al-Qaeda, Yemens Houthi rebels and other terrorist organisations. The Saudi Press Agency in its statement also said that the accused were provided with the right to attorney and were also guaranteed their full rights under Saudi law during the judicial process.

The country comes in the category of nations with high executions rates like China, Iran, Egypt, Iraq and US.

HOW SAUDI ARABIA'S CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM OPERATES

Saudi Arabias criminal justice system operates on Islamic Shariah Law, reflecting the state sanctioned interpretation of Islam. The Saudi judiciary can impose death penalty as per three categories of criminal offence as per the Sharia law. The three are:

Hudud: it is the fixed punishment for specific crimes. For example, for crimes like murder, apostasy, sodomy, terrorism, a convict can be sentenced to capital punishment but the sentence is based on evidence. The evidence has to be based purely on confession.

it is the fixed punishment for specific crimes. For example, for crimes like murder, apostasy, sodomy, terrorism, a convict can be sentenced to capital punishment but the sentence is based on evidence. The evidence has to be based purely on confession. Qisas : it is the eye-for-an-eye retaliatory punishments. The Qisas crimes include murders. The family of the dead can either claim death penalty for the accused or can ask for blood money from the perpetrator.

: it is the eye-for-an-eye retaliatory punishments. The Qisas crimes include murders. The family of the dead can either claim death penalty for the accused or can ask for blood money from the perpetrator. Tazir: is the general category for crimes. It includes crimes defined as per the national regulations which can lead to death penalty for accused. For example, drug trafficking.

EXECUTIONS IN THE LAST DECADE

Photo: Getty Images

Saudi Arabia in 2021 executed 67 people.

In 2020, the country executed 27 people. The number is less because of the Covid-induced lockdowns.

In 2019, the Kingdom executed 184 people. Out of these, 37 were from the minority Shia community. All the people were executed for terrorism-related crimes.

In 2018, 149 convicts were executed.

In 2017 too, 149 people were executed.

In 2016, Saudi Arabia executed 154 people. Out of these, 47 were executed in early January, which also included the execution of renowned Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr Al-Nimr.

In 2015, 158 people were executed. Amnesty International criticised this high rate of killing by the Saudi authorities. The average of executions was 1 person every two days.

In 2014, 90 convicts were executed.

In 2013, 79 people were executed.

In 2012 too, 79 convicts were executed.

IRAN DISTANCES ITSELF FROM SAUDI ARABIA AFTER 81 EXECUTIONS THIS YEAR

Iran has temporarily suspended direct talks with Saudi Arabia, which was slated to be held on Wednesday, March 16, and was to be hosted by Baghdad. On Sunday, Nour News, affiliated with Irans Supreme National Security Council said that Iran has decided to stall Wednesday's talks without giving any reason.

The talks would have been the fifth round of talks in Turkeys Antalya hosted by Baghdad.

Tehran condemned the mass execution of 81 people, which also included 41 Shia Muslims.
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
BEIJING, March 15 (Xinhua) -- Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Monday held a phone conversation with Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi.

China and Indonesia are both major developing countries and emerging economies, Wang said, adding that the two sides should deepen strategic mutual trust and practical cooperation under the guidance of the two heads of state, and play an active role in maintaining international and regional peace and stability.

Retno said that Indonesia attaches great importance to developing relations with China and is willing to work with China to push the bilateral relations to a new level.

The two sides exchanged views on the Ukraine issue.

Retno said that Indonesia insists on respecting other countries' sovereignty and territorial integrity, calls for an early end to the military conflict and encourages relevant parties to hold dialogue to de-escalate the situation and prevent a humanitarian crisis.

Wang said China will continue to play a constructive role in easing tensions, promoting peace talks and preventing humanitarian crises in accordance with the "four musts" put forth by Chinese President Xi Jinping.

While talking about the current Ukraine crisis at a virtual summit with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on March 8, Xi said the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries must be respected, the purposes and principles of the UN Charter must be fully observed, the legitimate security concerns of all countries must be taken seriously, and all efforts that are conducive to the peaceful settlement of the crisis must be supported.

To achieve long-term stability in Europe, the European Union, NATO and Russia need to engage in dialogue on an equal footing, and establish a balanced, effective and sustainable security framework, Wang stressed. 
Thank you for reading!

Please purchase a subscription to read our premium content. If you have a subscription and are still unable to access our content, please link your digital account to your print subscription If you have a subscription, please log in or sign up for an account on our website to continue.
There are ganja cultivations in Agency areas of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana borders, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand where not only police but even strangers are not allowed, Vallabh Trivedi, a former ganja cultivator and supplier, said.  PTI

HYDERABAD: Despite the crackdown by law enforcement agencies on ganja, the demand for the contraband is said to be on the rise. Ganja sachets which were sold for Rs 100 earlier are now sold for Rs 500 due the police offensive against drug peddlers.

After the state government took up the drug issue seriously, the city police formed Hyderabad Narcotics Enforcement Wing (H-NEW). It was stated that 80 per cent of the ganja sale from different areas of Mangalhat was almost stopped.

Strangely, the regular customers are still able to get their stocks easily. The reason: suppliers operate in the early hours and cater to regular customers on getting full advance payment.

My sister was addicted to ganja. My family members were shocked when they came to know this. A couple of weeks ago, I could not see her suffering, as she was literally losing her mental balance after my father had locked her in a room, K. Siddharth, a businessman said.

I got her a sachet from a known person only on a promise that this would be her last one and she kept her promise. She is now in rehab in Pune. She is a sportswoman and mentally strong. She has changed and will be back by May second week. It is all about ones will power, he said.

The police are only focusing on smuggling of ganja via road transport though the main transportation is through goods trains. The smugglers dump the contraband into trains. They know at which points the goods trains stop and the suppliers collect the contraband from identified points in the jungles, a former ganja cultivator said.

The first quality drugs, popularly known as sheelavati, has a greenish tinge and its smell is very powerful.

There are ganja cultivations in Agency areas of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana borders, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand where not only police but even strangers are not allowed, Vallabh Trivedi, a former ganja cultivator and supplier, said. After the police tightened the noose, I decided to stop and find another business.

As far as Hyderabad is concerned, our teams are doing their best and have sealed local ganja selling points in the entire city. We have our own informers and our officers are keeping an eye on the identified hotspots, a senior police officer of H-NEW said.
The deleted tweet of the Kerala unit of the Congress posted from its official Twitter handle attempted to project a statistical perspective to the issue of the killings and exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits, arguing that 15000 Muslims were killed during 1990-2007 against 399 Pandits. (Representational Image via ANI)

New Delhi: Amid the buzz surrounding the film, Kashmir Files, the Kerala unit of Congress claimed in a tweet, now deleted, that more Muslims were killed in Jammu and Kashmir during 1990-2007 than Pandits, inviting the wrath of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which called the statements "insane".

'Kashmir Files' has brought the spotlight on the killings and forced exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits from the valley after the Pakistan sponsored terrorists ran amok there in the late 1980s and afterwards.

The deleted tweet of the Kerala unit of the Congress posted from its official Twitter handle attempted to project a statistical perspective to the issue of the killings and exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits, arguing that 15000 Muslims were killed during 1990-2007 against 399 Pandits.

The Kerala Congress in another tweet, part of a series, claimed that over one lakh Muslims were killed in the erstwhile state in the wake of the communal riots (1948) after the partition of the country while no Pandits were killed in retaliation.

The tweets were posted with '#KashmiriPandit issue'.

The BJP, reacting sharply, said that "Congress doesn't understand history". "...this is the most insane statement that Congress can make. Congress doesn't understand history... and they've hugely distorted the version of history. Under the watch of Congress dispensations, over a lakh Pandits left the valley," said former Union Minister and senior BJP leader K J Alphons.

The Kerala Congress also sought to shift the onus for the exodus to the BJP, saying "the migration suited the agenda of the BJP for the Hindu-Muslim division while carrying out the Ram Mandir issue in Ayodhya". Another tweet claimed that the then Jammu and Kashmir Governor Jagmohan was an RSS man, and he in place of providing security to the Pandits asked them to leave the valley en masse.

"Pandits left the valley en masse under the direction of Governor Jagmohan who was an RSS man. The migration started under the BJP-supported VP Singh government," claimed the Kerala unit of Congress in another tweet, arguing further that the BJP supported VP Singh's government came to power in J&K in December 1989 and exodus began the very next month and BJP continued to support VP Singh till November 1990.
As per GO No. 31, the proposal to implement the IHFMS was submitted on January 29 by the director of medical education (DME) and the Telangana Vaidya Vidhana Parishad (TVVP) commissioner. GO 31 approved the same and apart from hospitals, it also extends to institutions, nursing colleges and nursing schools in the state.  Representational image/PTI

HYDERABAD: The health department issued a government order (GO) on Sunday approving the Integrated Hospital Facility Management Services (IFHMS) for improving patient care services in government hospitals. A second GO provides 16 per cent reservation to agencies owned by persons from SC communities in contracts related to provision of IFHMS in government hospitals.

As per GO No. 31, the proposal to implement the IHFMS was submitted on January 29 by the director of medical education (DME) and the Telangana Vaidya Vidhana Parishad (TVVP) commissioner. GO 31 approved the same and apart from hospitals, it also extends to institutions, nursing colleges and nursing schools in the state.

The GO states that the policy of providing manpower of one person for 7,000 sq. ft. of built-up area and one person per 27,000 sq. ft. for open area, which was currently applicable to medical colleges, is also extended to nursing colleges and nursing schools.

The 16 per cent reservation for agencies owned by persons from SC communities, as per GO No. 32, shall apply in all hospitals having sanctioned bed strength of up to 500 beds. Of the 122 hospitals with a bed strength of less than 100, which are classified as Category A hospitals, contracts for 20 of them are reserved for agencies owned by SCs while eight of the 52 Category B hospitals, with a bed strength between 100 and 500, are reserved for SCs.

The specific hospitals to be reserved in each category shall be selected by transparent drawing of lots. The minimum turnover requirement for reserved hospitals shall be relaxed by 50 per cent for agencies belonging to persons from SC community, states the GO.

The implementation and monitoring of the reservation policy and identification of reserved hospitals shall be overseen by a committee consisting of the DME, the TVVP commissioner and the TSMSIDC MD.
It is slated to e-auction 324 developed plots, comprising 223 plots, at Thorrur Layout in Hayathnagar (The Hub of Life at East City), and 101 plots at Bahadurpally layout in Medchal (The Hub of Life at North City). The plots are set to go under the hammer between March 14 and 17.  DC Image

Hyderabad: With a Budget allocation of Rs 10 lakh, Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority (HMDA) is now depending on the town planning department to generate revenues for it. With several auctions of land in the pipeline, it is hopeful of netting Rs 2,000 crore in the next financial year, effectively surpassing the income of Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC).

The municipal authority has decided to take over Rajiv Swagruha Corporation Limited from the TS Housing Board and sell flats for additional revenue. As a pilot project, it will auction 28 of 47 blocks in Rajiv Swagruha complex at Bandlaguda to raise around Rs 1,000 crore.

It is slated to e-auction 324 developed plots, comprising 223 plots, at Thorrur Layout in Hayathnagar (The Hub of Life at East City), and 101 plots at Bahadurpally layout in Medchal (The Hub of Life at North City). The plots are set to go under the hammer between March 14 and 17.

The planning body will take up the e-auctioning of plots through MSTC Limited. HMDA is hopeful of raising anything between Rs 400 crore and Rs 500 crore from the e-auction.

The HMDA will direct the highest bidder to pay the initial deposit of 25 per cent of the sale value of the plot within seven days. The bidder has to pay the balance amount within 90 days without interest. However, the highest bidder can opt for an instalment facility with 10 per cent annual simple interest up to 180 days excluding the period of the due date.

Apart from the land auctions, the municipal authority has set a target of Rs 800 crore by way of building and layout permissions.

A senior HMDA official, requesting anonymity, told Deccan Chronicle that the planning authority has set a target to surpass the GHMC annual income in the next financial year. He said that ever since the introduction of transferable development rights (TDR), which enables the transfer of development potential partly or fully from one plot to another, the income of the planning wing has come down to Rs 600 crore from Rs 1,000 crore.

On the contrary, the official said that the planning wings income has risen from Rs 400 crore to Rs 600 crore via building and layout permission. He said that the organisation will be sustainable at least for a few years.
Archaeologist Dr Sivanagi Reddy (right) and D.R. Shyamsundar Rao, designs in-charge, Buddhavanam project, who was accompanying the former, stand beside the menhir found in Mahbubabad district.  DC Image

Hyderabad: An archaeologist has claimed to have found a menhir (tall, upright stone erected in prehistoric times) dating to the iron age about 3,500 years ago (1500 BCE) in Maripeda mandal of Mahbubabad district.

Dr E. Sivanagi Reddy, CEO of Pleach India Foundation, found the structure by the roadside at Ellarigudem, a hamlet of Beechrajupalli, on Sunday. He said it was a chance find during a survey of archaeological and heritage remains in Maripeda mandal that was conducted on Sunday under the Preserve Heritage for Posterity programme.

Dr Reddy said the menhir was erected in memory of a deceased person. It is about seven feet tall with a diameter of three feet. Sriramoju Haragopal, convener, Kotha Telangana History Group, confirmed that the menhir belongs to the Megalithic period.

Retired director of Geological Survey of India (GSI) Dr K. Mahendar Reddy said the menhir was made of leucogranite, which is a light-coloured, weathered igneous rock, dates back to 2,500 million years ago, and is of geological importance.

Dr Sivanagi Reddy sensitised the local community on the archaeological significance of the menhir and urged them to preserve it by arranging for a barricade around it along with a plaque embossed with its details.
New Delhi: Congress president Sonia Gandhi, who chaired a five-hour-long meeting of the Congress Working Committee here on Sunday to ascertain the reasons for the partys widespread losses in the recent Assembly polls, indicated -- as widely expected -- that the Gandhi family was ready to step down if the CWC so demanded. The CWC, again as expected, said it resolved to fight the BJP under Sonia Gandhis leadership. However, the internal election process is now going on and the date to elect a new Congress president has been set for August 20 this year. The meeting saw a freewheeling discussion on the reasons for the debacle faced by the party in all the five states.

The party has decided to hold another CWC meeting soon. This will pave way for a Chintan Shivir, or brainstorming session, after the remaining part of the Budget Session, which will begin on Monday This Chintan Shivir sometime in April will decide on the future course of the party and will focus on the remaining Assembly elections before the crucial Lok Sabha elections in 2024.

The high command had prepared well for the CWC meeting. The Delhi Congress leaders had been instructed to bring in large crowds outside the AICC headquarters where the CWC meeting was held. They shouted slogans in favour of the Gandhis, and were also holding placards and Congress flags. Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot held fort for the Gandhis and reached out to members of the G-23 group who are in the CWC seeking their help in rebuilding the party. This ensured that the status quo remains in the party.

Speaking to reporters, the partys communications chief, Mr Randeep Singh Surjewala, read out the statement of the CWC. He further added: Though internal elections are going on, the majority of the rank and file want Rahul Ji to the party president.

The general secretaries in charge of the poll-bound states presented their reports to the CWC for the reasons for the partys defeat. Mr Ghulam Nabi Azad said at the meeting that perhaps the then Punjab chief minister, Capt. Amarinder Singh, was not removed in proper fashion and hence the disastrous results in Punjab. Insiders claim that after Mr Azads assertion, Mrs Gandhi replied that it was her fault and she should have acted earlier on the issue. Some leaders in the CWC also said that accountability should be fixed about who was at fault in this debacle.

Interestingly, none of the state unit chiefs or the general secretaries in charge of the poll-bound states tendered their resignations because then Ms Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, who was in charge of UP, would also have had to resign. Several leaders also suggested that if instead of remaining in charge of Punjab, had Mr Harish Rawat been sent to Uttarakhand, the results in the hill state might have been different. Insiders claimed that some organisational changes will also happen soon.
The Centre may have to relook at the valuation of Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) for its initial public offering (IPO) if the listing is pushed beyond May, according to a report by the Business Standard quoting an official.

The news comes amid speculation that the government might rethink the timing of the LIC share sale due to the market volatility amid the ongoing Ukraine-Russia war.

LIC's embedded value, which is a measure of the consolidated shareholder's value in an insurance company, was pegged at about Rs 5.4 lakh crore as of September 30, 2021, by international actuarial firm Milliman Advisors. Although the draft red herring prospectus (DRHP), filed on February 13, does not disclose the market valuation of LIC, as per industry standards it would be about three times the embedded value.

Also Read  LIC IPO: Govt to take call in best interest of investors, says official

If the valuation changes, the government would be required to seek fresh approval from SEBI for the life insurers IPO.

The Centre had earlier planned the mega IPO of LIC in the second week of March but the market volatility due to the Russia-Ukraine war has delayed proceedings. If the listing gets pushed beyond May 12, fresh papers would have to be filed, with an updated valuation of the insurer. LIC had filed the draft red herring prospectus (DRHP) with Sebi on February 13, and the regulator had approved the same last week, the official told the publication.

The government has plans to sell 5 per cent of LIC's stake this month before the fiscal year ends on March 31. At a 5 per cent stake dilution, the LIC IPO would be the biggest ever in the history of the Indian stock market and once listed LIC's market valuation would be comparable to top companies like RIL and TCS.

The offering is seen as critical to the government's plan to raise funds for budgeted spending. The government was expecting to garner over Rs 60,000 crore by selling about 31.6 crore shares in the life insurance firm to meet the curtailed disinvestment target of Rs 78,000 crore in the current fiscal year.

In case the share sale does not happen by March, the government will miss the revised disinvestment target by a wide margin.

(With inputs from agencies)

Watch the latest DH Videos here:
WASHINGTON, March 13 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen said on Sunday night that she had tested positive for COVID-19 and was "abiding by all public health protocols to quarantine."

"Grateful for 3 shots that made this a mild case, and a reminder to all who have not been vaccinated to do so ASAP," tweeted the 75-year-old Democrat from New Hampshire.

More than 150 U.S. lawmakers or more than one-quarter of all members of the U.S. Congress reported having COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic in early 2020, according to data analyzed by The Hill.

Shaheen's announcement came only hours after former U.S. President Barack Obama revealed he had received a positive result on the novel coronavirus.

Obama, 60, tweeted he had "a scratchy throat for a couple days" but was "feeling fine otherwise."

He added that he and his wife, Michelle, "are grateful to be vaccinated and boosted, and she has tested negative," while urging those unvaccinated to get their shots.

The United States reported more than 79 million COVID-19 infections and about 967,000 deaths as of Sunday afternoon, according to Johns Hopkins University data, as states and cities are lifting restrictions. 
By Anup Roy and Saritha Rai,

Paytm Payments Bank, which processes transactions for Indias digital payments giant Paytm, was barred from taking on new customers because it violated rules by allowing data to flow to servers abroad and didnt properly verify its customers, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Annual inspections by the Reserve Bank of India found that the companys servers were sharing information with China-based entities that indirectly own a stake in Paytm Payments Bank, the person said, asking not to be identified as the details are private. Paytm Payments Bank, being a regulated financial institution, was required to maintain a so-called service level agreement with its technology vendor that would ringfence the entity from its owners, the person said.

Also Read | Taking immediate steps to comply with RBI directions: Paytm Payments Bank

The location of the servers wasnt immediately known and theres no implication that Paytm Payments Bank was storing information abroad. Paytm Payments Bank had also onboarded thousands of clients without adequate know-your-customer documentation and the concern was that some of these could have been mules for money laundering, the person added.

Paytm didnt respond to a Bloomberg News email seeking comment on whether its servers were sharing information offshore or its compliance with KYC rules. An email to the RBI wasnt immediately answered.

In a subsequent interview to CNBC-TV18, founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma said Paytm Payments Bank is fully compliant with Indias data-storage rules and the RBI hasnt mentioned data-access concerns. Without detailing the RBIs concerns, Sharma said no fine had been levied for KYC compliance and no issues were raised with the bank ownership structure, according to a report on CNBC-TV18s website. Concerns are IT related. They want systems to be audited by a third party and confirmed to them, Sharma told the TV channel.

Paytm Payments Bank is a joint venture between Paytm and Sharma. Chinas Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and its affiliate, Jack Mas Ant Group Co., own shares of Paytm, according to exchange filings.

Also Read | Paytm tumbles after RBI imposes restrictions on payments bank

In a statement late Friday, the RBI had cited material supervisory concerns for its action, without elaborating. Shares of Paytm, formally known as One 97 Communications Ltd., tumbled as much as 14.7% Monday.

While the RBI had similarly punished companies including American Express Banking Corp. and Mastercard Inc. for flouting data-storage rules, the concerns around Paytm Payments Bank are particularly sensitive given Indias hostile political relationship with China. India has banned hundreds of apps linked to or originating from China over the past two years following a bloody clash at the nations disputed border.

In 2018, Indias banking regulator mandated that all payments providers shall ensure that the entire data relating to payment systems operated by them are stored in a system only in India. The bank gave entities, ranging from Alphabet Incs Google Pay to Walmart Inc.s PhonePe until the year end to comply and appoint auditors. The regulator now wants Paytm Payments Bank to appoint a technology auditor in consultation with the RBI, the person said. The company is taking steps to comply with the RBIs directive, including the appointment of an external auditor, the company said in a statement on Saturday. Existing customers will be unaffected.

The punishment will make it tough for Paytm Payments Bank to be upgraded to a small finance bank, limiting its ability to attract large deposits, according to Macquarie Capital analyst Suresh Ganapathy. ICICI Securities Ltd. cut its price target on Paytm to to Rs 1,285 from Rs 1,352. The stock closed at Rs 674.8 in Mumbai Monday.

Paytm Payments Bank has over 300 million wallets and 60 million bank accounts, according to its website. The bank said it has over 100 million KYC-compliant customers and has been adding 0.4 million users every month.

Check out DH's latest videos:
The Ukraine crisis has intensified the ongoing debate on the neutrality of technology companies. From Alphabet (parent company of Google) to Adobe; Apple to Meta, and Intel to YouTube, many big technology firms have announced plans of leaving Russia in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine.

Without dwelling on the merits or demerits of such a move and the moral aspect attached to this whole issue, experts are predicting that a multipolar technology world will emerge post this crisis.

Most nations will reduce their dependency on global technology giants or at least create a hedging mechanism that will enable them to function without much disruption during such exigencies.

Therefore, the digital divide in terms of geographies is likely to emerge without the dominance of a single player, which is the case now. As a country, India will also see such development of domestic technology stacks. As a result, IT spending will be higher, favouring Indian technology companies including startups.

Earlier, critical assets for any nation used to be power projects, airports, dams, banks, airlines, and government installations among others. In the 21st century, nations have realised that digital assets are also part of these critical assets which need to be protected at any cost. This crisis has shown how technology can be denied at a time of conflict. So, the technology world will be multipolar with many players operating in consumer technology space after this crisis, said Pareekh Jain, an engineering services expert and Founder of Pareekh Consulting.

Its not that nations like India have not developed their own technology stacks. But the intent was to tap new opportunities. After the Ukraine crisis, nations will have to develop indigenous technology stacks for managing risks, he added.

Since the beginning of Russia-Ukraine conflict, more than 330 companies have either announced a plan to leave Russia or suspended operations. Global giants like Google, Apple, Meta, Adobe, Dell, DXC Technology, HP, IBM, Intel, SAP, Twitter, YouTube, and a host of other companies have decided to leave Russia.

When such a massive exodus of technology companies happens, it has the potential of crippling the whole system.

According to brand experts, who advise companies in various crises situation, neutrality is desirable. If technology firms take sides, then countries will develop their own technology stacks.

Technology, like the air we breathe and the water we drink, belongs to all. Technology, therefore, must be neutral. It belongs to all and must bless all equally. It must not, therefore, take sides. If it does, it will tend to alienate one side or the other, said Harish Bijoor, Brand Guru & Founder, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.

In a war-like situation, technology must offer itself to all. No taking sides! Taking sides would make technology partisan and a pariah! No point in doing that, he added.

The neutrality of technology has been debated for quite some time now. Many countries including India have raised concerns and have come up with regulations to protect their national interests. But unlike China, which has developed its own companies in each aspect of consumer and enterprise technology, India lags far behind.

India has already embarked on a path of Atmanirbhar Bharat initiative under which the country aims to create indigenous technology stacks in all fields of life. UPI (Universal Payment Interface), and RuPay are the classic examples of Indian efforts to be independent in the digital payment system. Similarly, ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) is considered a pioneer in space technology space.

India has many reputed technology firms in the services space. What we are lacking is that we need good technology product companies. The Indian government is investing big in indigenous technology stacks. So, it will definitely give impetus to companies to innovate and develop new products, said Ashis Dash, research analyst at brokerage firm Sharekhan by BNP Paribas.

Also, we have a vibrant startup ecosystem. This puts the country in good stead to come up with technology solutions in critical areas like drone technology, mobile operating system, and many more, he added.

The country has already created many alternatives to global technology giants, especially in the consumer technology space. However, India is still lacking in developing its own mobile operating system, internet, or niche defence technology applications to be self-reliant in the true sense.

Ukraine crisis has shown that exigency can happen in a nations life without giving notice. Therefore, those countries will prevail which are better prepared for managing such crises.

India with its huge engineering talent base, startup ecosystem, and government support is well-placed to write its own destiny in the world. And the path to achieving that status stems from technology leadership in this century.

Watch latest videos by DH here:
Former BharatPe Co-founder and Managing Director Ashneer Grover has hit back at the company's Board, saying he never bought a dining table worth Rs 10 crore as being reported.

In a tweet, Grover said he would rather put Rs 10 crore in business and create employment for 1,000 of people.

Reports surfaced last week, claiming that Ashneer "purchased a Porsche" when he was at BharatPe and "told multiple people at the company that he spent millions on a dining table".

"Is it a space rocket? Is it a time machine? No it's a Rs 10 cr dining table!! I don't hold the Guinness World Record for the most expensive table ever. Nor do I intend to. Press - don't fall for BharatPe Board (undisclosed sources) lies - you'll lose your credibility like them," Ashneer tweeted.

Its not even worth 0.5% of that. Id rather put 10cr in business and create employment for 1,000 of folks so that they can earn & put dignified meal on their tables for their families. Score; Self Goal (Loss of Credibility) by BharatPe Board / Investors - 1 : Lavishness - 0.  Ashneer Grover (@Ashneer_Grover) March 13, 2022

According to reports, "office frugality clashed with the couple's apparently glitzy lifestyle, rubbing some employees the wrong way."

"Grover and his wife upgraded their modest home for a rented penthouse and renovated another luxury property," the reports claimed.

Also read: India startup king Ashneer Grover loses luster after theft accusations

Ashneer said that the dining table he has at home is not even worth 0.5 per cent of the amount being reported.

"I'd rather put Rs 10 crore in business and create employment for 1,000 of folks so that they can earn & put dignified meals on their tables for their families. Score; Self Goal (Loss of Credibility) by BharatPe Board/Investors - 1 : Lavishness 0," he further tweeted.

The fintech platform recently sacked Ashneer's wife Madhuri Jain Grover over alleged financial irregularities during her tenure as Head of Controls to the tune of crores of rupees.

Post this, Ashneer had resigned, saying that he is being forced to quit a company of which "I am a founder".

In a statement, BharatPe said it "reserves all rights to take further legal action against him (Ashneer Grover) and his family".

Check out latest videos from DH:
Sri Lanka's finance minister will visit New Delhi on Tuesday to sign a $1 billion credit line to pay for essential imports of food and medicine, an official said on Monday, as the island nation struggles with its worst financial crisis in years.

The island's foreign reserves have dropped 70% in the last two years to $2.31 billion in February, stalling critical imports including of fuel.

Finance Minister Basil Rajapaksa, who first announced the Indian credit line in February, will sign an agreement for it on Wednesday to pay for essentials including medicine, wheat flour, sugar and rice.

"Sri Lanka imports about $2 billion worth of essential items from India annually, and this credit line will focus on the same items," Milinda Rajapaksha, an additional director general in the media ministry, told Reuters.

Rajapaksa will also meet India's finance and energy ministers.

Also read: Struggling Sri Lanka hit by sharp fuel price hikes

Sri Lanka's government last year reached out to India, among other countries, to negotiate credit lines and currency swaps. In January, India announced a $400 million currency swap programme and a $500 million credit line for fuel.

The finance minister will also push to fast-track fuel imports from India, a senior energy ministry official said, asking not to be named.

Soaring global crude prices have hit Sri Lanka hard, with the country struggling to pay for fuel from its meagre reserves after costs increased rapidly in February, and experiencing rolling power cuts and long lines at petrol pumps.

The country is also talking to the International Monetary Fund for possible help.

Check out latest videos from DH:
After launching Galaxy S21 FE and S22 series in the first two months, Samsung is ready with another Galaxy event later this week, making it third for the year 2022.

Samsung is hosting the special Galaxy A programme on March 17 at 10:00 am EDT (7:30 pm IST).

Word on the street is that the South Korean technology major may announce not one but two-- A73 and A53-- successors to the popular Galaxy A72 and A52 of 2021.

The flashy teaser suggests the upcoming phones will offer long battery life, probably with fast charging support. Also, it may come with a water splash-resistant rating and feature-rich photography hardware.

Latest rumours indicate both the 6.7-inch A73 and 6.5-inch A53 may come with 5G support. The former will be powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 750G silicon and the latter may come with Samsung's in-house Exynos 1200 chipset.

For other details, we just have to wait for a few days to see what Samsung has in store for the fans.

Get the latest news on new launches, gadget reviews, apps, cybersecurity, and more on personal technology only on DH Tech.
US benchmark oil West Texas Intermediate slid Monday on Ukraine peace hopes and after major consumer China imposed a Covid lockdown on the tech hub of Shenzhen.

WTI slid almost 5.1 percent to $103.80 per barrel, while European benchmark Brent North Sea crude shed 4.0 percent to $108.13.

"Prices are falling... due to positive signs from the talks conducted at the weekend by Russian and Ukrainian representatives, which are giving rise to hopes of rapprochement," noted Commerzbank analyst Carsten Fritsch.

Russia on Sunday said negotiators were making headway at talks to end fighting in Ukraine, more than two weeks after President Vladimir Putin ordered his army over the borders of its pro-Western neighbour.

At the same time, traders are fretting that China's spreading coronavirus lockdowns could slam demand for crude oil.

"The rapid spread of Covid across China is now unsettling investors, with expectations that mass lockdowns will once again blight the economy," said Hargreaves Lansdown analyst Susannah Streeter.

She added that "demand (is) expected to take a hit if Chinese economic output falls" due to the latest lockdowns.

Check out latest videos from DH:
The Bengaluru police have tightened security measures across the city over the hijab judgement on Tuesday. The High Court of Karnataka is going to pronounce the judgement over the controversy on March 15.

The pronouncement will commence at 10.30 am. The commissioner of police Kamal Pant also issued prohibitory orders across the city from March 15, 6 am (Tuesday) till March 21, around 12 am. Earlier the prohibitory order was in place surrounding the educational institutions till March 22.

Soon after learning about the pronouncement, Kamal Pant held a meeting with his subordinates including additional commissioner of police, joint commissioner of police and deputy commissioner of police on Monday evening.

Apart from deploying extra force near educational institutions and sensitive areas, Pant has instructed the DCPs to keep an eye on the social media. He has also instructed DCP (Central) M N Anucheth to deploy policemen surrounding Vidhana Soudha and High Court from tonight itself.

Senior officials including Pant appealed to the public to respect the court's order and maintain peace in the city. DG and IGP, Praveen Sood has also instructed his subordinates to take necessary measures to maintain peace across the state.

Prohibitory orders:

With regard to the government's order to the strict enforcement of schools and colleges uniform rules in certain parts of the state, protests and agitations were held. At some places, these protests had disturbed public peace and order.

Various types of reactions after pronouncement of the judgment, including gathering, celebrations, protests cannot be ruled out. Hence, in order to maintain public peace and order in Bengaluru city, the authorities have issued prohibitory orders for one week banning gathering, agitations, protests, celebrations of any type in any public place in the city. If anyone violates the order, necessary action will be taken against the respective persons, the authorities said.

Check out DH's latest videos:
Residents came out to protest on Sunday urging the BBMP not to concretise Sankey Tank and the Malleswaram 18th Cross ground.

As part of the protest, several residents walked from Gokak Park towards Sankey Tank and later gathered at the open ground.

We do not want concrete walkways. We dont want waterfalls. We want a natural lake. We want to sit on the grass and enjoy the greenery. We want open access to Sankey Tank all day long. Stay off Sankey Tank. Stop killing it, Suchitra Deep of Malleswaram Social, a citizens group, said.

Residents also opposed the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palikes (BBMP) plans to concretise the famous 18th Cross ground.

Instead of providing basic facilities such as toilets and drinking water, the BBMP is spending Rs 2 crore to install 41 floodlights, and build a drain along the walls and a pathway paved with cement blocks. There is also a plan to build a small platform. Most of these works are unnecessary, a protestor said.

Earlier this week, the residents led by Malleswaram Social had staged a protest against the BBMPs non-stop digging up of roads for various works. They also registered their opposition towards dumping of debris on footpaths.

Ministers response

Higher Education Minister Dr C N Ashwath Narayan, who represents Malleswaram constituency, defended the works at Sankey Tank. The works are being taken up by taking into confidence the Sankey Tank Walkers Association and it will be completed within a month, he said, accusing protestors of acting with an ulterior motive with political intentions.

Every resident knows what the situation of the constituency was 15 years ago and how it is now. There was scarcity of drinking water, the underground drainage system was in a dilapidated condition, and playgrounds were inaccessible for children. But at present, the scenario has completely changed. When such is the reality, a demonstration like this is anti-people.

Some of the protestors, however, felt that the office bearers of the association were aligned with people in power and demanded a wider consultation.

Watch latest videos by DH here:
Superstar Aamir Khan on Monday said the pandemic has made him realise the fragility of life, which is why he wants to focus his energies on his relationships.

Khan, who turned 57 on Monday, said he got to introspect a lot about his life and relationships during the coronavirus pandemic.

"During Covid, all of us were at home so I got a lot of time to introspect. I realised how fragile life is and the importance of time. All of us have to go someday, we don't know when, but the finality is certain.

Also Read | Aamir Khan to star in 'Campeones' Hindi remake? Here's what the actor has to say

"When you know this, it's crucial to utilise time. We live our lives mindlessly, recklessly. 'Main bhi aise jeete raha (so did I). From now on, I don't want to do it," Khan told reporters.

The actor said he feels happy that he is not the kind to "shy away" from introspection, which is why he could look within and correct his flaws.

"I don't fear introspection. If I think there is a flaw, I would want to spot that, understand it and correct it... All those who I love and who love me, including you, the audience, everyone has their space. My aim is to give time to everyone, nurture every relationship, make it better," he added.

The actor celebrated his birthday with the media, a ritual he has been following for years. While his birthday celebrations would usually take place at his Bandra residence, Khan said he decided to shift the venue to a hotel due to COVID.

"It gets too crowded in a society so one has to be careful. It isn't that pandemic has completely gone," he added.

Khan will be next seen on the big screen on August 11 with Laal Singh Chaddha. The film marks his return to the screen after Thugs of Hindostan
Aamir Khan is inarguably one of the most celebrated names in Bollywood today. 'Mr Perfectionist' has over the years emerged as the face of quality cinema due to his impeccable script selection and remarkable acting abilities. While everyone is aware of his contribution to Hindi cinema, not many may know that he shares a unique connection with director Shankar.

The Raja Hindustani hero was to headline his maiden Hindi movie Nayak but that did not happen due to creative differences between the two. The role eventually went to Anil Kapoor, who received rave reviews for his work in the political-thriller. Nayak, a remake of Shankar's Tamil movie Mudhalvan, revolved around what happens when a journalist from a simple background becomes the Chief Minister of Maharastra following a surprising turn of events. It attained cult status despite being a commercial failure. Nayak featured Rani Mukerji as the leading lady and proved to be a memorable release for her. The cast included Amrish Puri, Johnny Lever, Paresh Rawal and Shivaji Satam.

Interestingly, many years later, Aamir was offered the lead role in Shankar's magnum opus 2.0 but did not take it up. The biggie, headlined by Rajinikanth and Akshay Kumar, hit the screens in 2018 and emerged as a blockbuster in Hindi.

Coming to the present, the Ghajini star is working on Laal Singh Chaddha. The film is an adaptation of Forrest Gump and revolves around the life of a dim-witted person. It has an impressive cast that includes Kareena Kapoor Khan and Telugu star Naga Chaitanya.

Shankar, on the other hand, is working on RC 15, which marks his first collaboration with 'Mega Power Star' Ram Charan. He is also likely to resume work on Kamal Haasan's Indian 2. The vigilante saga is a sequel to the 1996 Tamil classic Indian, which was shot in Hindi as Hindustani, and revolves around an aged freedom fighter's war against corruption.
Former Masvingo urban Member of Parliament Tongai Matutu who defected to Zanu PF after a fall out with then MDC Alliance party after he was disqualified from contesting the provincial chairmanship post has promised to lure opposition vote for Zanu PF saying he was the best brains during his time in opposition. Zanu PF is now using defectors from then MDC Alliance to campaign ahead of the by-elections slated for March 26 with former legislator Matutu being the face of the campaigns in Masvingo.

At the launch of the campaigns last month at Ngundu business centre graced by ZANU PF National Chairperson and Minister of Defence Oppah Muchinguri, Matutu and former Chivi South legislator Killer Zivhu were given a platform to address ahead of a number of politburo and central committee members.

Recently Matutu was asked to address poorly attended Zanu PF mini rallies in Masvingo urban where they are campaigning for by-elections.

At Pangolin shopping centre, Matutu was asked to address supporters by the provincial chairperson Robson Mavhenyengwa who had only done introductions.

Matutu went on to tell people that he is the former MP whom they voted for and is now with Zanu PF which he said had direction.

He went on to say he was one of the few people who had the brains in his former party and leaving it meant that it suffered a deficit and urged all level headed to follow him and vote for Zanu PF.

There is nothing there, I have been there you know it and I am one of the few who had brains and now that we are no longer there, who else is there?

There are two types of votes, spoiled and counted votes, spoiled are those where you fail put an X where it is required or voting for two or more candidates and also voting for the opposition is now spoiling a vote. So I want to urge you to vote for Zanu PF to avoid spoiling your votes, said Matutu.

Zanu PF Secretary for Security and Senator for Gutu District Lovemore Matuke said they are confident of winning wards previously held by the opposition saying Matutu knew the right valves to open.

We are going to win the by-election here in Masvingo urban. We have Comrade Matutu here whom we are travelling with. He knows the valves to open so that things work in our favour, said Matuke.

He also promised more boreholes in town saying they will connect solar power and make sure that people will alternatively use these boreholes to avoid the ever increasing council water bills.

Your councillor here appealed for solar powered boreholes and that has been granted by the minister and so soon, if council bills are too high, you just close the tap and go to the borehole, said Matuke.

However, some analysts said the use of former opposition leaders will not bring any favourable results for Zanu PF as they do not have a following.

Political commentator Dr Davidson Mugodzwa said Zanu PF was using old tricks that will never work wonders since they are a spent force.

Zanu PF is using old tricks, members relegated from formerly MDC now resurfacing at campaign trails will not work any wonders for Zanu PF. These recycled politicians like Tracy Mutinhiri, Tongai Matutu have already been rejected in their own political backyards, suddenly they cannot be expected to achieve miracles in Zanu PF. These same politicians are really a spent force now masquerading as revolutionaries. No one will be hoodwinked to vote for them whatever colour they now cling to, said Dr Mugodzwa.

Another political analyst Dr Wellington Gadzikwa concurred with Mugodzwa and said the defectors were only relevant within the brand of the opposition.

I doubt if it works because these defectors have no traction. They are mainly speaking to the already converted unless there are some ZANU PF supporters who may be feared that they will join the opposition. These defectors were only relevant within the brand of the opposition as Zimbabwean politics is party based rather than issue based, said Gadzikwa. TellZimNews
An air strike on a residential building in Ukraine's capital killed at least two people Monday, the country's emergency service said, as Moscow maintained its devastating assault ahead of a fresh round of talks.

The strike, which injured at least a dozen people, came as Russian troops edged closer to the city and kept up their siege of the southern port city of Mariupol, where officials said nearly 2,200 people have been killed.

"As of 07:40 am, the bodies of two people were found in a nine-storey apartment building, three people were hospitalised and nine people were treated on the spot," the country's emergency service said on Facebook, adding that the building was in Kyiv's Obolon district.

Ukrainian and Russian representatives were set to meet via video conference Monday, a Ukrainian presidential adviser and a Kremlin spokesman both said before the latest strike.

Also Read  Russia, Ukraine to hold talks as troops edge closer to Kyiv

According to Ukrainian negotiator David Arakhamia, the talks were to begin at 0820 GMT.

"And our goal is that in this struggle, in this difficult negotiating work, Ukraine will get the necessary result... for peace and for security," President Volodymyr Zelensky said Monday, adding that both sides speak every day.

He said the aim was "to do everything to ensure a meeting of presidents. A meeting that I am sure people are waiting for."

"We see significant progress," Leonid Slutsky, a senior member of Russia's negotiating team, told state-run television network RT Sunday.

Talks between Kyiv and Moscow have yet to yield a ceasefire and Russian forces have shown no sign of easing their onslaught.

Track live updates of Russia-Ukraine crisis here

In an attack dangerously close to NATO member Poland, Russian air strikes Sunday on a Ukrainian military training ground near the border killed at least 35 people and wounded more than 130.

Zelenskyy on Monday renewed his call for NATO to impose a no-fly zone following the attack near the western city of Lviv. "If you do not close our sky, it is only a matter of time before Russian missiles fall on your territory, on NATO territory, on the homes of NATO citizens," Zelenskyy said in a video address.

Washington and its EU allies have sent funds and military aid to Ukraine and imposed unprecedented economic sanctions on Russia. But the United States has ruled out any direct intervention, with President Joe Biden warning that NATO fighting Russia "is World War III".

Biden spoke with French President Emmanuel Macron Sunday and the two leaders "underscored their commitment to hold Russia accountable for its actions and support the government and people of Ukraine," the White House said.

In its intelligence update Sunday, Britain's defence ministry said Russia had established a naval blockade on the Black Sea coast, "effectively isolating Ukraine from international maritime trade". "Russian naval forces are also continuing to conduct missile strikes against targets throughout Ukraine," it said.

Also Read  Zelenskyy warns NATO as Russia strikes near Poland

But in a sign Moscow may have underestimated the challenge it would face, US officials told media Russia had asked China for military and economic aid for the war.

Moscow also asked Beijing for economic assistance against the crippling sanctions imposed against it, the New York Times said, citing anonymous officials.

A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington told multiple outlets "I've never heard of that" when asked about the alleged requests.

Russia's finance ministry in a statement Monday accused foreign countries of wanting to force Russia into an "artificial default" through sanctions.

That came hours after the White House said National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan would meet top Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi in Rome on Monday.

US diplomat Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly asking for military help could be a "defining moment" for China's Xi Jinping.

Beijing has declined to directly condemn Moscow's invasion, and has repeatedly blamed NATO's "eastward expansion" for worsening tensions between Russia and Ukraine, echoing the Kremlin's prime security grievance.

Also Read  Diplomacy efforts step up after Russian strike on Ukraine base

The latest fighting in Kyiv's suburbs left a US journalist dead -- the first foreign reporter killed since Russia's invasion on February 24. Meanwhile, efforts continued to get help to the devastated southern city of Mariupol, which aid agencies say is facing a humanitarian catastrophe.

A humanitarian column headed there had to turn back again on Sunday, a city official told AFP, after the Russians "did not stop firing." It is expected to try again on Monday.

A total of 2,187 residents have now died in days of relentless Russian bombardment, the city council said Sunday.

"The enemy is holding the city hostage by performing real acts of genocide," said Ukraine Defence Minister Oleksiy Reznikov.

Zelenskyy has accused Moscow of both blocking and attacking humanitarian convoys, although he said Sunday that another 125,000 people had been evacuated that way across Ukraine.

"Russians are bombing the city even during official negotiations," Reznikov said. "They have no dignity, no honour, no mercy."

Russia's forces had earlier focused on eastern and southern areas of Ukraine -- home to more ethnic Russians -- but in recent days have moved to the country's centre.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told ABC that Russia was "clearly, at least from an air strike perspective... broadening their target sets".

Meanwhile in Kyiv, only the roads to the south remain open, according to the Ukrainian presidency. City authorities have set up checkpoints, and people are stockpiling food and medicine.

The northwestern suburb of Bucha is entirely held by Russian forces, along with parts of Irpin, Ukrainian soldiers told AFP. Some blocks in the once well-to-do suburb have been reduced to rubble.

Britain's defence ministry said Saturday that Russian forces were about 25 kilometres (15 miles) from Kyiv. However, the Russians are encountering resistance from the Ukrainian army to both the east and west of the capital, according to AFP journalists on the scene.

"Russia is paying a high price for each advance as the Ukrainian Armed Forces continues to offer staunch resistance across the country," Britain's defence ministry said in its intelligence update.

The UN estimates almost 2.7 million people have fled Ukraine since the invasion, most of them to Poland, which is struggling to provide for the arrivals.

Pope Francis on Sunday issued an impassioned plea to the Russians, saying, "In the name of God, I ask you, stop this massacre!"

Zelenskyy says the Russians have suffered "heavy losses" of about 12,000 troops -- although Moscow put the number at 498, in its only toll released March 2.

About 1,300 Ukrainian troops have been killed, according to Kyiv.

In the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, Russian troops fired warning shots after thousands of locals gathered to protest against the invasion, local media said.

And in Russia, Instagram was no longer accessible Monday after Moscow accused its parent company Meta of allowing calls for violence against Russians on its platforms.

The Ukrainian president -- who has maintained an extraordinarily high profile through the conflict -- visited wounded soldiers at a hospital outside Kyiv, which was shown in a video released Sunday.

"Feel better, stay strong," a visibly moved Zelenskyy told them. "You are doing a great job."

Watch the latest DH Videos here:
Diplomatic efforts to end the war in Ukraine stepped up on Monday, with Ukrainian and Russian negotiators set to talk again after both sides cited progress, even after Russia attacked a base near the Polish border and fighting raged elsewhere.

A barrage of Russian missiles hit Ukraine's Yavoriv International Centre for Peacekeeping and Security, a base just 15 miles (25 km) from the Polish border that has previously hosted NATO military instructors, killing 35 people and wounding 134, a Ukrainian official said on Sunday.

Russia's defence ministry said up to 180 "foreign mercenaries" and a large number of foreign weapons were destroyed. Reuters could not independently verify the casualties reported by either side.

Track live updates of Russia-Ukraine crisis here

Thousands of people have died since on Feb 24, when Russian President Vladimir Putin launched what he called a special military operation to rid Ukraine of dangerous nationalists and Nazis.

The United States, which had watched Russia's build-up on Ukraine's borders with mounting alarm for weeks, says it was a premeditated, unjustified and unlawful "war of choice".

In a telephone call late on Sunday, US President Joe Biden and France's Emmanuel Macron underscored their commitment to holding Russia accountable for the invasion, the White House said.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba, also discussed diplomatic efforts to stop Russia's invasion, the State Department said.

Russia and Ukraine gave their most upbeat assessments after weekend negotiations.

Also Read  Zelenskyy warns NATO as Russia strikes near Poland

"Russia is already beginning to talk constructively," Ukrainian negotiator Mykhailo Podolyak said in a video online. "I think that we will achieve some results literally in a matter of days."

A Russian delegate to the talks, Leonid Slutsky, was quoted by the RIA news agency as saying they had made significant progress and it was possible the delegations could soon reach draft agreements.

Neither side said what these would cover. Three rounds of talks between the two sides in Belarus, most recently last Monday, had focused mainly on humanitarian issues.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the countries' delegations have been speaking daily by video link and a clear aim of his negotiators was to "do everything" to arrange for him to meet Putin.

"We must hold on. We must fight. And we will win," Zelenskyy said in a late night video speech.

Harsh Sanctions

While Western nations have sought to isolate Putin by imposing harsh economic sanctions and supplying Ukraine with weapons, the United States and its allies are concerned to avoid NATO being drawn into the conflict.

Also Read  Russian airstrike hits base in western Ukraine, kills 35

Russia asked China for military equipment after its invasion, sparking concern in the White House that Beijing may undermine Western efforts to help Ukrainian forces defend their country, several US officials said.

US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, who is due to meet China's top diplomat Yang Jiechi in Rome on Monday, warned Beijing it would "absolutely" face consequences if it helped Moscow evade sweeping sanctions over the war in Ukraine.

Asked about Russia's request for military aid, Liu Pengyu, spokesperson for China's embassy in Washington, said, "I've never heard of that." He said China found the current situation in Ukraine "disconcerting" and added, "We support and encourage all efforts that are conducive to a peaceful settlement of the crisis."

Still, violence and bloodshed continued.

Air raid sirens sounded before dawn in many cities and regions of Ukraine, including Kyiv, Lviv, Odessa, Ivano-Frankivsk and Cherkasy.

In the capital, authorities said they were stockpiling two weeks' worth of food for the 2 million people who have not yet fled from Russian forces attempting to encircle the city.

An American journalist was shot and killed by Russian forces in the town of Irpin, northwest of Kyiv, and another journalist was wounded, the regional police chief said.

Britain's defence ministry said Russian naval forces had established a distant blockade of Ukraine's Black Sea coast, isolating the country from international maritime trade.

In eastern Ukraine, Russian troops were trying to surround Ukrainian forces as they advance from the port of Mariupol in the south and the second city Kharkiv in the north, it added. Russia's invasion has sent more than 2.5 million people fleeing across Ukraine's borders and trapped hundreds of thousands in besieged cities.

"It is terrifying how violent and inhuman it is," Olga, a refugee from Kyiv, told Reuters after crossing into Romania.

The United Nations says at least 596 civilians have died since the invasion began and the toll is probably considerably higher as it is difficult to confirm deaths in places such as Mariupol.

The city council in Mariupol said 2,187 residents had been killed since the start of the invasion. Reuters was not able to verify that toll.

Moscow denies targeting civilians. It blames Ukraine for failed attempts to evacuate civilians from encircled cities, an accusation Ukraine and its Western allies strongly reject.

Kharkiv, in northeastern Ukraine, has suffered some of the heaviest bombardment and dozens of civilians have been killed.

"We will stitch up the wounds and the pain of our country and our city," said Aliev, a 23-year-old musician. "We're not going anywhere."

Watch the latest DH Videos here:
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Monday said he had tested positive for Covid-19 after returning from a trip to Turkey.

"The daily rapid test at the office gave a positive result to Covid-19," Mitsotakis said in an Instagram post. "I will isolate at home and work from there... I am certain all will be well and that I'll be back at the office very soon," the 54-year-old said.

Mitsotakis, who is double vaccinated and has had a booster against Covid, on Sunday visited Turkey and was invited to lunch by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at his mansion on the banks of the Bosphorus.

Also Read  China tightens controls as more Covid cases reported

The two leaders were pictured standing maskless side by side to admire the Bosphorus view.

Mitsotakis had earlier attended a religious service at the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul, and later met 82-year-old Patriarch Bartholomew, the spiritual head of Orthodox Christianity. Both were also pictured without masks.

Bartholomew had contracted the virus in December.

Watch the latest DH Videos here:
Russia and Ukraine were set for a third round of talks Monday as Moscow's invading forces maintain their devastating assaults across the former Soviet state.

The discussions come as Russian troops edge closer to Kyiv and keep up their relentless bombardment of the besieged southern port city of Mariupol, where nearly 2,200 people have been killed in the onslaught, according to local officials.

Ukrainian and Russian representatives will meet via video conference Monday, a Ukrainian presidential adviser and a Kremlin spokesman both said.

Track live updates of Russia-Ukraine crisis here

According to Ukrainian negotiator David Arakhamia, the talks will begin at 0820 GMT (1:50 pm IST).

"And our goal is that in this struggle, in this difficult negotiating work, Ukraine will get the necessary result... for peace and for security," President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said early Monday, adding that both sides speak every day.

He said the aim was "to do everything to ensure a meeting of presidents. A meeting that I am sure people are waiting for."

"We see significant progress," Leonid Slutsky, a senior member of Russia's negotiating team, told state-run television network RT Sunday.

Also Read  Zelenskyy warns NATO as Russia strikes near Poland

Talks between Kyiv and Moscow have yet to yield a ceasefire and Russian forces have shown no sign of easing their onslaught.

In an attack dangerously close to NATO member Poland, Russian air strikes Sunday on a Ukrainian military training ground near the border killed at least 35 people and wounded more than 130.

Zelenskyy on Monday renewed his call for NATO to impose a no-fly zone following the attack near the western city of Lviv.

"If you do not close our sky, it is only a matter of time before Russian missiles fall on your territory, on NATO territory, on the homes of NATO citizens," Zelenskyy said in a video address.

Washington and its EU allies have sent funds and military aid to Ukraine and imposed unprecedented economic sanctions on Russia. But the United States has ruled out any direct intervention, with President Joe Biden warning that NATO fighting Russia "is World War III".

Also Read  Diplomacy efforts step up after Russian strike on Ukraine base

Biden spoke with French President Emmanuel Macron Sunday and the two leaders "underscored their commitment to hold Russia accountable for its actions and support the government and people of Ukraine," the White House said.

In its latest intelligence update Sunday, Britain's defence ministry said Russia had established a naval blockade on the Black Sea coast, "effectively isolating Ukraine from international maritime trade".

"Russian naval forces are also continuing to conduct missile strikes against targets throughout Ukraine," it said. But in a sign Moscow may have underestimated the challenge it would face, US officials told media Russia had asked China for military and economic aid for the war.

Moscow also asked Beijing for economic assistance against the crippling sanctions imposed against it, the New York Times said, citing anonymous officials.

A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington told multiple outlets "I've never heard of that" when asked about the alleged requests.

The reports came hours after the White House said National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan would meet top Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi in Rome on Monday.

US diplomat Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly asking for for military help could be a "defining moment" for China's Xi Jinping. "To do so means China would open itself to substantial sanctions and make itself a pariah; to refuse would keep open the possibility of at least selective cooperation with US and West," he tweeted.

Beijing has declined to directly condemn Moscow's invasion, and has repeatedly blamed NATO's "eastward expansion" for worsening tensions between Russia and Ukraine, echoing the Kremlin's prime security grievance.

The latest fighting in Kyiv's suburbs left a US journalist dead -- the first foreign reporter killed since Russia's invasion on February 24.

Also Read  Ukraine war censorship exposes Vladimir Putin's leaky internet controls

Award-winning video documentary maker Brent Renaud, was shot dead, and an American photojournalist with him, Juan Arredondo, was wounded Sunday in Irpin, medics and witnesses said.

Meanwhile, efforts continued to get help to the devastated southern city of Mariupol, which aid agencies say is facing a humanitarian catastrophe.

A humanitarian column headed there had to turn back again on Sunday, a city official told AFP, after the Russians "did not stop firing." It is expected to try again on Monday.

A total of 2,187 residents have now died in days of relentless Russian bombardment, the city council said Sunday.

"The enemy is holding the city hostage by performing real acts of genocide," said Ukraine Defence Minister Oleksiy Reznikov.

Zelenskyy has accused Moscow of both blocking and attacking humanitarian convoys, although he said Sunday that another 125,000 people had been evacuated that way across Ukraine.

"Russians are bombing the city even during official negotiations," Reznikov said. "They have no dignity, no honour, no mercy."

Russia's forces had earlier focused on eastern and southern areas of Ukraine -- home to more ethnic Russians -- but in recent days have moved to the country's centre, striking the city of Dnipro, and now to the west with the attack at military base near Poland, which had been a training centre for Ukrainian forces with foreign instructors.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told ABC that Russia was "clearly, at least from an air strike perspective... broadening their target sets".

Meanwhile in Kyiv, only the roads to the south remain open, according to the Ukrainian presidency. City authorities have set up checkpoints, and people are stockpiling food and medicine, fearing coming under siege.

The northwestern suburb of Bucha is entirely held by Russian forces, along with parts of Irpin, Ukrainian soldiers told AFP. Some blocks in the once well-to-do suburb have been reduced to rubble.

Britain's defence ministry said Saturday that Russian forces were about 25 kilometres (15 miles) from Kyiv and that a column north of the city had dispersed as part of an apparent attempt to encircle it. However, the Russians are encountering resistance from the Ukrainian army to both the east and west of the capital, according to AFP journalists on the scene.

"Russia is paying a high price for each advance as the Ukrainian Armed Forces continues to offer staunch resistance across the country," Britain's defence ministry said in its intelligence update.

The UN estimates almost 2.7 million people have fled Ukraine since the invasion, most of them to Poland, which is struggling to provide for the arrivals.

Pope Francis on Sunday issued an impassioned plea to the Russians, saying, "In the name of God, I ask you, stop this massacre!"

Zelensky says the Russians have suffered "heavy losses" of about 12,000 troops -- although Moscow put the number at 498, in its only toll released March 2.

About 1,300 Ukrainian troops have been killed, according to Kyiv.

In the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, Russian troops fired warning shots after thousands of locals gathered to protest against the invasion, local media said.

The Ukrainian president -- who has maintained an extraordinarily high profile through the conflict -- visited wounded soldiers at a hospital outside Kyiv, which was shown in a video released Sunday.

"Feel better, stay strong," a visibly moved Zelensky told them. "You are doing a great job."

Watch the latest DH Videos here:
Brent Renaud, an acclaimed filmmaker who travelled to some of the darkest and most dangerous corners of the world for documentaries that transported audiences to little-known places of suffering, died Sunday after Russian forces opened fire on his vehicle in Ukraine.

The 50-year-old Little Rock, Arkansas, native was gathering material for a report about refugees when his vehicle was hit at a checkpoint in Irpin, just outside the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv. Ukraine's Interior Ministry said the area has sustained intense shelling by Russian forces in recent days.

Renaud was one of the most respected independent producers of his era, said Christof Putzel, a filmmaker and close friend who had received a text from Renaud just three days before his death. Renaud and Putzel won a 2013 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University journalism award for "Arming the Mexican Cartels," a documentary on how guns trafficked from the United States fueled rampant drug gang violence.

This guy was the absolute best, Putzel told The Associated Press via phone from New York City. He was just the absolute best war journalist that I know. This is a guy who literally went to every conflict zone.

The details of Renaud's death were not made immediately clear by Ukrainian authorities, but American journalist Juan Arredondo said the two were traveling in a vehicle toward the Irpin checkpoint when they were both shot. Arredondo, speaking from a hospital in Kyiv, told Italian journalist Annalisa Camilli that Renaud was hit in the neck. Camilli told the AP that Arredondo himself had been hit in the lower back.

We crossed the first bridge in Irpin, we were going to film other refugees leaving, and we got into a car, somebody offered to take us to the other bridge, we crossed the checkpoint, and they started shooting at us," Arredondo told Camilli in a video interview shared with the AP.

A statement from Kyiv regional police said that Russian troops opened fire on the car. Hours after the shooting of Renaud, Irpin mayor Oleksandr Markushyn said journalists would be denied entry to the city.

In this way, we want to save the lives of both them and our defenders, Markushyn said.

Responding to news of Renaud's death, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists called for an immediate halt to violence against journalists and other civilians.

This kind of attack is totally unacceptable, and is a violation of international law, the committee said on Twitter.

Along with his brother Craig, Renaud won a Peabody Award for Last Chance High, an HBO series about a school for at-risk youth on Chicago's West Side. The brothers' litany of achievements include two duPont-Columbia journalism awards and acclaimed productions for HBO, NBC, Discovery, PBS, the New York Times, and Vice News.

Renaud was also a 2019 Nieman fellow at Harvard and served as visiting distinguished professor for the Center for Ethics in Journalism at University of Arkansas. He and his brother founded the Little Rock Film Festival.

Among other assignments, Renaud covered wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the devastating 2011 earthquake in Haiti, political turmoil in Egypt and Libya and extremism in Africa.

Putzel, who worked with Renaud for 12 years, paid tribute to his courage and passion.

Nowhere was too dangerous," Putzel said. It was his bravery but also because he deeply, deeply cared.

He is survived by his brother Craig, Craig's wife, Mami, and a nephew, 11-year-old Taiyo.

Watch the latest DH Videos here:
A London tribunal on Monday ruled that a 2018 Bermuda law that bans same-sex marriage in the British overseas territory is constitutional, a departure from the broad trend towards legalisation of gay marriage in the West.

Bermuda's top court in 2018 ruled that the 2018 Domestic Partnership Act, which allows same-sex couples to form partnerships but prohibits them from marrying, violates constitutional freedom of conscience.

London's Privy Council, the highest court of appeal for British territories, ruled on Monday that the constitution does not in fact require the state to recognise same-sex marriages, in response to an appeal by Bermuda's government.

"Our supporters often say 'love wins.' This time it didn't," said Roderick Ferguson, lead co-plaintiff in the legal case against the law, in a statement by LGBTQ advocacy group OUTBermuda. "Our work as a society is not done until everyone's humanity is recognized both in law and in life."

OUTBermuda called on the government to clarify how it will treat same-sex marriages that had been lawfully performed since 2017. The Bermuda court's 2018 ruling had suspended the prohibition.

The government of Bermuda, a wealthy, socially conservative island in the Atlantic of 60,000 people, argues that domestic partnerships provide the same rights as marriage. Thousands of people support the gay marriage ban.

Bermuda's Attorney General did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Privy Council found that the Domestic Partnership Act does not interfere with freedom of conscience as laid out in section 8 of Bermuda's constitution.

"The respondents' belief falls within the scope of section 8, but that belief is not interfered with by the state failing to legally recognise same-sex marriage," the Privy Council ruled.

Check out latest videos from DH:
China on Monday said India and Pakistan should hold a dialogue as soon as possible and launch a thorough investigation into the recent accidental firing of a missile from India which landed in Pakistan's Punjab province.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, during a media briefing here, said that Pakistan and India both of them are important countries in South Asia and they share the responsibility to uphold regional security and stability.

Asked by a Pakistani journalist about Chinas response on the accidental firing of the Indian missile, he said: We have noted the relevant information.

We called on relevant countries to have dialogue and communication as soon as possible and launch a thorough investigation into this incident, strengthen information sharing and establish a notification mechanism in time to ensure the recurrence of such incidents and prevent miscalculation, Zhao added.

Also read: 'Could have responded...': Pakistan PM on India's 'accidental' missile fire

On Friday, the Indian government said it accidentally fired a missile two days back that landed in Pakistan and that the "deeply regrettable" incident was caused by a technical malfunction in the course of its routine maintenance.

Indias defence ministry said that the government has taken a serious view of the incident and ordered a 'Court of Enquiry' into it, a day after Pakistan said a high-speed projectile launched from India entered its airspace and fell near Mian Channu in Khanewal district of the Punjab province.

"On March 9, in the course of a routine maintenance, a technical malfunction led to the accidental firing of a missile. The government of India has taken a serious view and ordered a high-level Court of Enquiry.

"It is learnt that the missile landed in an area of Pakistan. While the incident is deeply regrettable, it is also a matter of relief that there has been no loss of life due to the accident," the defence ministry said in a statement.

On Saturday, Pakistan's Foreign Office (FO) said it was not satisfied with India's "simplistic explanation" on the "accidental firing" of the missile and demanded a joint probe to accurately establish the facts surrounding the incident.

The FO summoned the Indian Charge d'Affaires and registered its protest over the "unprovoked" violation of its airspace and said that such "irresponsible incidents" reflected India's "disregard" for air safety.

Also read: Didn't join politics to check prices of 'aloo & tamatar': Pakistan PM Imran Khan

Pakistan also called upon the international community to take serious notice of this incident of grave nature in a nuclearised environment and play its due role in promoting strategic stability in the region, the FO said.

Though the statement by Indias defence ministry did not specify the name of the missile, the description given by the Pakistan military indicated that it could be a Brahmos missile.

Ties between India and Pakistan nose-dived after a terror attack on the Pathankot Air Force base in 2016 by terror groups based in the neighbouring country. Subsequent attacks, including one on an Indian Army camp in Uri, further deteriorated the relationship.

The relationship deteriorated after India announced withdrawing the special powers of Jammu and Kashmir and bifurcation of the state into two union territories in August, 2019.

India's move to revoke the special status of Jammu and Kashmir in 2019 outraged Pakistan, which downgraded diplomatic ties and expelled the Indian High Commissioner in Islamabad.

It also snapped all air and land links with India and suspended trade and railway services.

India has said that it desires normal neighbourly relations with Pakistan in an environment free of terror, hostility, and violence. India has said the onus is on Pakistan to create an environment free of terror and hostility.
Heart-rending videos of artillery strikes are being served up alongside funny snippets such as bomb-shelter cooking tips and invasion misinformation as the war in Ukraine plays out on TikTok.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine, millions of people have tuned into the hugely popular social networking service for news and views of what is happening on the battleground.

That was not lost on US officials who hosted a video call to brief popular TikTok "influencers" on details about the war, according to posts at the social network.

"Lots of people have been turning to digital creators to learn about the invasion of Ukraine," read a tweet Friday by Gen-Z for Change, a nonprofit focused on using social media to promote civil discourse.

Get Russia-Ukraine crisis live updates here

"Yesterday, we joined the @WhiteHouse and @WHNSC for a briefing on the United States' strategic goals in Ukraine so we're better able to debunk misinformation," it added, referring to the White House National Security Council.

After Russia invaded Ukraine, music-themed video clips at Marta Vasyuta's account gave way to images of soldiers and the ravages of war.

Stuck in London, the 20-year-old Ukrainian exchange student uses TikTok to share glimpses of the tragedy inflicted on people still in her home country.

"My mission is to spread information; to not stop talking about that, because it really matters," said the economics student from Lviv whose videos have logged millions of views.

Valeria Shashenok stayed in the city of Cherniguiv northeast of Kyiv and switched to English to broaden the reach of her sometimes surreal wartime TikTok posts.

In one, she shows how to cook borscht in a bomb shelter. In another, she walks through rubble to a Rihanna music remix.

Also Read | Russia, Ukraine to hold talks as troops edge closer to Kyiv

The 20-year-old photographer is among those who have not given up on the playful nature of videos considered a trademark of TikTok, which boasts more than a billion users.

"I try to keep the humour, because it is my nature," said 23-year-old TikTok creator Rimma, who asked for her second name to be withheld.

"I'm living through this trauma; my life is ruined, and there is nothing left for me but irony."

Her TikToks include a clip of her in a basement in Odessa, quipping that Ukrainians' idea of going for a walk is now a jaunt to the nearest shelter.

She said the line between what is funny and what is hurtful is no longer clear, given the suffering and fear afflicting so many.

But the appetite for wartime content at TikTok appears strong, with Vasyuta and Shashenok seeing subscriber ranks multiply at their accounts.

While breaking news events such as conflicts have been featured on social media for years, TikTok tends to feature spontaneity and a bit of sass that has proven particularly popular with younger audiences.

Also Read | Diplomacy efforts step up after Russian strike on Ukraine base

In the United States -- where members of "Gen Z," born in the late 1990s, shun traditional television -- online platforms like TikTok are prime sources of news.

"I hope that the kids who watch this war unfold on TikTok become opposed to war (and) realize the horrors and dangers of it," said US high school history teacher Chris Dier, who is also a TikTok creator.

"What I don't want is for it to desensitize them and normalize war."

Young TikTok users are also "bombarded" with propaganda that they likely need help navigating, said Dier.

TikTok told AFP that it has ramped up resources to detect and counter "emerging threats" and "harmful disinformation" on the platform.

On March 6, the subsidiary of China-based ByteDance suspended the uploading of videos in Russia in reaction to a new law making it a crime to "discredit" the Russian military.

The flow of pro-Russian messages has noticeably declined at TikTok, with the most popular account being state-backed news agency RIA Novosti, which is known for false or discredited claims, such as the alleged existence of secret bioweapons labs in Ukraine.

Check out the latest videos from DH:
Former US President Barack Obama has said that he tested positive for Covid-19 and urged fellow Americans to get vaccinated though the deadly disease is on the wane in the country.

"I just tested positive for Covid," Obama, 60, tweeted on Sunday.

"I've had a scratchy throat for a couple of days, but am feeling fine otherwise," he said on his official Twitter account.

Obama also said that his wife, former first lady Michelle Obama, has tested negative.

"Michelle and I are grateful to be vaccinated and boosted," the former President said in a Facebook post.

"It's a good reminder that, even as cases go down, you should get vaccinated and boosted if you haven't already to help prevent more serious symptoms and giving Covid to others."

Certain demographics in the US, such as African Americans and Republicans, are more hesitant about the Covid vaccine than others.

Obama had recently returned to Washington, DC, after spending much of the winter in Hawaii. He tested positive in DC, a person close to him said, CNN reported.

The diagnosis makes Obama the second US President known to contract the virus after then-President Donald Trump announced he tested positive in October 2020, which was before vaccines were widely available in the US.

Obama has been a champion of public health measures throughout the pandemic. Last August, he dramatically scaled back his 60th birthday party on Martha's Vineyard due to concerns at the time over the Delta variant.

Currently, only two per cent of the US population live in a county with a "high" Covid-19 community level, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The rest are at "low" or "medium" community levels, areas where there's no recommendation for masking or where immunocompromised people and those at high risk for severe disease are advised to take extra precautions against Covid-19, respectively.

Total 79,517,492 coronavirus cases have been reported in the US and 967,552 people have died, according to statistics provided by Johns Hopkins University.

Watch latest videos by DH here:
Dozens of Russian nationals joined Ukrainians in the coastal resort town of Limassol, home to a sizeable Russian expatriate community, to protest the war in Ukraine.

About 50 Russians converged on Limassol's promenade prior to joining with other protesters Sunday to chant slogans including Stop the war, stop Putin and Russia without Putin."

They waved blue and white flags that they said were the Russian national flag without the red stripe that represented blood and violence.

Protester Evgeniya Shlikava, who has been living and working in Cyprus for five years, told The Associated Press that despite Russian propaganda, Ukraine didn't deserve this action from our government and that protesters are demanding an immediate end to the war that we don't support.

I do believe that the person who did the most to make Russia weak and not united is Putin himself, said Shlikava, who faulted the Russian president and his supporters for bringing the world's wrath on Russia that is proud of its humanistic values and culture.

But now Russia is the aggressor for the whole world, and we protest it, Shlikava said.

Watch latest videos by DH here:
Editor's note: Decision Makers is a global platform for influential leaders to share their insights on events shaping today's world. Zheng Zeguang is the Chinese ambassador to the UK. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily those of CGTN.

50 years ago, as international relations and the world order were about to undergo major changes, China and the UK signed, on the March 13, 1972, the Communique of the Governments of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of the People's Republic of China on an exchange of Ambassadors, opening a new chapter in their bilateral relations.

Today, as the world experiences profound changes unseen in a century, Sino-British relations have come to a new historical juncture. The two sides should draw on past experience while also going with the tide of the times, and make sensible choices when mapping out the future of bilateral ties.

First, the relations between China and the UK should be developing in a way that meets the fundamental interests of the Chinese and British people, and people in the rest of the world. Over the past 50 years, the two countries have made significant progress in bilateral exchanges and cooperation in different sectors, bringing substantial benefits to people on both sides.

50 years ago, yearly trade in goods between China and the UK stood at only $300 million; bilateral investments were few and far between; and exchanges of tourists and students were scarce. In 2021, trade in goods between the two topped $100 billion for the first time, and two-way direct investment stock hit $47.4 billion. There were 2 million people involved in people-to-people exchanges between the two countries before the pandemic, including over 220,000 Chinese students currently studying in the UK.

China and Britain have stepped up coordination on the development of the world economy, kept the lines of communication open in response to global challenges, and played a positive role in maintaining world peace and promoting common development.

Sino-British cooperation has proven to be in the interest of both countries and in line with the tide of our times. Those who beat the drum for decoupling and stir up ideological confrontation are on the wrong side of history, and will not hinder history's progress.

Looking ahead, the two countries should attach the greatest importance to the fundamental interests of our two peoples as well as people throughout the rest of the world. To do this, it is necessary to continue to maintain dialogue and cooperation, seize opportunities for development, jointly tackle challenges, and build a healthier and more stable bilateral relationship.

Chinatown in central London is decorated with lanterns in preparation of the new Year, London, UK, January 29, 2022. /CFP

Second, the two countries should steadfastly uphold the principles of win-win cooperation, mutual learning and tolerance to nourish bilateral relations. In today's world, the national interests of all countries are inextricably connected, and every human being's destiny is in some way tied to that of many others.

Against this backdrop, China and the UK should tap into the enormous potential for cooperation created by our complimentary economic features, and join hands to seek common prosperity. The two sides should utilize their respective strengths, deepen cooperation in sectors such as trade, investment, finance, infrastructure and health care, and actively explore opportunities for cooperation in third-party markets.

China and the UK should also strengthen their partnership in green development. The two countries respectively held the COP15 and COP26 last year, contributing significantly to the global cause of biodiversity protection, the tackling of climate change, and green development. Moving forward, China and the UK should work on expanding cooperation in areas such as low-carbon development, clean energy and green finance to better protect our planet. Moreover, the two countries should work together to shoulder international responsibilities.

As members of the UN Security Council and as major economies, both China and the UK must adamantly uphold an international system with the UN at its center, a world order built upon international law, and norms of international relations dictated by the principles of the UN Charter. Joint efforts should also be made to facilitate the reform and improvement of global governance, building a community and shared future for mankind and promoting world peace and development.

Third, the two countries should respect each other's core interests and major concerns to consolidate the foundation of bilateral relations. Half a century ago, through the signing of the joint Communique, China and the UK affirmed their shared position to honor the principles of mutual respect for each other's territorial integrity and sovereignty, non-interference in each other's internal affairs, and equality and co-operation for mutual benefit.

Britain recognized the Chinese government's position that Taiwan is a Chinese province, and that the government of the People Republic of China is the sole legal government of China. This laid the foundation for Sino-British relations. History has clearly shown that when these principles are well followed, the relationship between the two countries will be in good shape. Otherwise, there will be troubles or even setbacks.

Sino-British cooperation in the past has proven to be in line with the tide of times and in the interests of the two peoples. In the future, let us continue to attend to people's needs, shoulder responsibilities and jointly advance Sino-British relations amid major changes unseen in a century.
DEAD ZIMBA'S KELVIN Zinyoni was shot and killed by hijackers before they drove off in his silver Nissan Micra.

But his family keeps seeing the car in the area where their brother was killed.

And they believe the killers will one day bring the car back.

We dont know if they are haunted by the car or by what they did to my brother, said Nelly Nyakarubve (31).

She said the 34-year-old from Buhle Park in Ekurhuleni was killed on 18 February while delivering detergents to his customers.

We heard the hijackers had been following him on the day.

Nelly Nyakarubve wants justice for her brother Kelvin Zinyoni, who was killed by hijackers. Photo by Ntebatse Masipa

When he stopped to deliver for a customer, the hijackers, who pretended to want to buy from him, produced a gun and shot him, said Nelly. She said witnesses told her the suspects pulled Kelvin out of the car, shot him and drove off in his car.

We are devastated by his sudden passing. Those thugs must know they are going to reap what they sowed. Why didnt they take the car and leave my brother alone?

That car is going to haunt them and whoever they sell it to. They must just bring it back.

Nelly said days before her brothers body was repatriated to be buried in Zimbabwe, the car was seen around ekasi.

Some relatives followed it and said it was the same car with several marks, which we knew it had. The car then left kasi and resurfaced this past weekend.

We informed the police about the matter and they are following up on the information, she said.

Sergeant Daphne Phooko of Elsburg Police Station confirmed that hijacking and murder cases are being investigated. Daily Sun
South Korea's presidential office believes North Korea could test an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) as soon as Monday, local media reported, citing an unnamed source.

Tensions on the Korean peninsula have been rising amid growing signs that Pyongyang could soon follow through on its threats to restart testing ICBMs, breaking a self-imposed 2017 moratorium.

Outgoing President Moon Jae-in's office has told President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol that a test launch was imminent and that it would not be a surprise if it took place on Monday, the Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported.

The comment was made as Moon's national security advisor, Suh Hoon, briefed Yoon on Saturday about various foreign policy and security issues, the report said, citing an unnamed official at the president-elect's office.

"It is so imminent that it would be no surprise if they fire it on Monday," the report quoted Suh as saying. "We are taking the situation seriously."

Read | US sanctions Russians over support for N Korea weapons

A spokesperson for Moon's office said Suh had briefed Yoon on North Korea's recent movements, including recent missile launches, and the Ukraine crisis, among other issues, but declined to comment on the Chosun Ilbo report.

Yoon spokesperson Kim Eun-hye told Reuters there could be various closed-door briefings for the president-elect but did not confirm details on security issues.

In a rare joint announcement, the United States and South Korea said on Friday that the North used its largest ever ICBM in two recent launches, under the guise of satellite launch preparations.

The missile system, known as the Hwasong-17, was unveiled at a military parade in Pyongyang in 2020 and reappeared at a defence exhibition in October 2021.

Yoon, who was elected president last week, had signalled a tougher line against Pyongyang. While staying open to restarting stalled denuclearisation talks, he has said pre-emptive strikes might be needed to counter an imminent North Korean missile attack, and vowed to buy additional US THAAD missile interceptors.

Before the election, Yoon also warned of "even stronger pressure from the international community if North Korea fires an ICBM under colour of a satellite launch."

He declined to make additional comment on Sunday.

Watch latest videos by DH here:
A powerful earthquake struck off the west coast of Indonesia's Sumatra island early on Monday and was felt strongly in some areas, including the city of Padang, though there were no immediate reports of casualties or damage, officials said.

The magnitude 6.7 quake, which struck at 04:09 local time (21:09 GMT on Sunday), did not have the potential to cause a tsunami, the head of Indonesia's geophysics agency (BMKG) Dwikorita Karnawati said.

The European Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC) had put the strength of the earthquake near Kepulauan Batu at 6.8 magnitude, at a depth of 40 km (24.85 miles).

The Indonesian BMKG agency described the quake as feeling like a "truck passing through" in some areas, and said there had been four aftershocks with the biggest of magnitude 6. Padang is about 1,000 kilometres north west of capital Jakarta.

So far officials had not received any information on damage, but were still assessing the impact in some remote areas including north Sumatra's Nias Selatan, where communications were difficult, an official said.

Indonesia suffers frequent earthquakes, straddling the so-called "Pacific Ring of Fire", a seismically active zone where different plates of the earth's crust meet.

The fault along Sumatra island can be particularly active and dangerous. In 2004, a massive 9.1 magnitude quake and a tsunami off the northern tip of Sumatra killed 226,000 people in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and nine other countries.

Last month, a magnitude 6.1 earthquake in the area killed at least 10 people, the local disaster mitigation agency in West Sumatra said.

Watch latest videos by DH here:
One of President Vladimir Putin's closest allies said Russia's military operation in Ukraine had not all gone as quickly as the Kremlin had wanted, the strongest public acknowledgement yet from Moscow that things were not going to plan.

National Guard chief Viktor Zolotov, speaking at a church service led by Orthodox Patriarch Kirill on Sunday, blamed the slower than expected progress on what he said were far-right Ukrainian forces hiding behind civilians, an accusation repeatedly made by officials in Russia.

His comments appeared at odds with an assessment on Friday by Russia's Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu who told Putin that "everything is going according to plan".

"I would like to say that yes, not everything is going as fast as we would like," Zolotov, once in charge of Putin's personal security, said in comments posted on the National Guard's website.

Also Read: The cost of war: How Russias economy will struggle to pay the price of invading Ukraine

"...But we are going towards our goal step by step and victory will be for us, and this icon will protect the Russian army and accelerate our victory."

The United States and its European allies have cast Putin's invasion as an imperial-style land grab that has so far been poorly executed because Moscow underestimated Ukrainian resistance and Western resolve to punish Russia.

Zolotov is a powerful security official who was once Putin's security chief.

He now heads the National Guard, a kind of internal military force that includes the riot police and other forces. It is subordinated directly to Putin and has forces deployed in Ukraine.

Watch the latest DH Videos here:
The ongoing Russian war on Ukraine has become nothing short of a nightmare for those living in besieged cities, a top Red Cross official said on Monday, calling for safe passage out for civilians and humanitarian aid to be allowed through the front lines.

Robert Mardini, the director-general of the International Committee of the Red Cross, also called the war catastrophic for civilians affected by the fighting as people run out of drinking water, food, medical supplies and fuel for heating  particularly in the surrounded Ukrainian city of Mariupol. Medical facilities also continue to be targeted in attacks.

And while the Red Cross continues to speak with Russian and Ukrainian leaders, Mardini said there's so far been no established routes for people to safely leave Mariupol and some other areas facing intense warfare.

People are in desperate need to to take shelter, and this is why the situation cannot, cannot continue like this," he told The Associated Press while on a visit to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.

Also Read: Russia has not asked China for military help for use in Ukraine: Kremlin

"History is watching what is happening in Mariupol and other cities and civilians must be protected. So whether (it's) a cease-fire, or a combination of a cease-fire and safe evacuation of civilians, is an absolute must.

Russia began its war on Ukraine on February 24 after amassing troops on its borders as part of what Moscow initially described as a series of training exercises. In the time since, Russian forces have attacked cities, military bases and even the biggest nuclear power plant in Europe while apparently trying to dislodge Kyiv's democratic government, which has seen an outpouring of military aid and support  though not direct military intervention  from the West.

The Geneva-based Red Cross, which aids those affected by war and tries to educate combatants of the rules of armed conflict, has 600 staffers in Ukraine and plans to send in around 100 more. Some Red Cross vehicles have been damaged by shrapnel or hit by fire, though its staffers don't believe it has been directly targeted, Mardini said.

However, he acknowledged the dire situation faced by medical facilities in the country.

There have been at least 31 attacks on medical facilities and ambulances in the war, killing at least 12 people and wounding 34 others, according to the World Health Organization.

This is a tragedy of armed conflict happening in densely populated areas and where use of explosive weapons with high with large radius are are used, Mardini said.

"And we've seen neighbourhoods that have been damaged, flattened, and some hospitals have received shells, which of course, is unacceptable because hospitals are protected by international humanitarian law.

Also Read: Russia could take full control of major Ukrainian cities: Kremlin

Associated Press journalists have seen a Russian strike on a maternity hospital in Mariupol, a port city home to some 430,000 on the Azov Sea. Fighting has been particularly intense in Mariupol as Russian forces seek to create a land bridge from Russia to Russian-annexed Crimea.

Red Cross officials are also living in Mariupol, so they are feeling exactly what ordinary Ukrainians are feeling today in Mariupol," Mardini said.

They told us recently that they were running short of drinking water. Food supplies are starting to lack. Medical supplies are extremely rare. And there is also a huge pressure on shelters. There are not enough shelters.

He added: In Mariupol, the city is encircled and civilians today cannot make it out of the city."

Prisoners of war also remain a concern. Asked about social media videos that circulated of alleged Russian conscripts surrendering to Ukrainian forces, Mardini said: Detainees should not be exposed to public curiosity.

Mardini, however, repeatedly declined to discuss the types of weaponry used or describe in detail the discussions he's had with Russian and Ukrainian officials. He cited the Red Cross' neutrality in conflict and the needed to be able to access war-torn areas. However, he acknowledged the breadth of the destruction.

When we look at the devastation, when we look at how some neighbourhoods are looking like today, it is really frightening," he said.

"And it it tells a lot about a situation that is nothing short of a nightmare for people living there.

Mardini said discussions remained ongoing about how to let civilians safely flee Mariupol, but it cannot happen in a couple of hours."

It takes days and it needs to be planned in a very professional way in order to offer civilians the safety they need and they require, he said.

Asked if they'd had success speaking to both diplomats and those on the battlefield, Mardini added: "We will be able to report on success based on the results on the ground, and today we are still waiting for concrete action on the ground in the best interests of civilians.

Watch the latest DH Videos here:
The UN human rights office says at least 596 civilians have been killed in Ukraine since the start of the war, and at least 1,067 have been injured.

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said Sunday that 43 of those killed were children, while 57 were injured.

The Geneva-based office had documented 579 civilian deaths and 1,002 injured a day earlier.

It said most recorded civilian casualties were caused by the use of explosive weapons with a wide impact area, such as shelling from heavy artillery and missile strikes.

UN officials said they believe the actual number of casualties is considerably higher than so far recorded because the receipt of information has been delayed and many reports still need to be corroborated.

Watch latest videos by DH here:
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will deliver a virtual address to the US Congress as the Russian war on his country intensifies. Zelenskyy will speak Wednesday to members of the House and Senate, the Democratic leaders announced.

The Congress, our country and the world are in awe of the people of Ukraine, said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in a statement Monday.

They said all lawmakers are invited to the talk that will be delivered via video at the US Capitol.

Also Read  'Hard' Ukraine peace talks go ahead as Kyiv apartment block shelled

It comes as Congress recently approved $13.6 billion in emergency military and humanitarian aid for Ukraine.

We look forward to the privilege of welcoming President Zelenskyy's address to the House and Senate and to convey our support to the people of Ukraine as they bravely defend democracy, the leaders said.

Zelenskyy spoke by video with House and Senate lawmakers earlier this month, delivering a desperate plea for more military aid.

Watch the latest DH Videos here:
As many as 156 Armymen and three IAF personnel were killed in terrorist attacks as well as counter-terror operations in the last five years, according to details provided by the Defence ministry in Rajya Sabha on Monday.

Responding to a question, Minister of State for Defence Ajay Bhatt said the Army's fatal casualties in terrorist attacks/counter-terrorist operations in 2017 was 40 that increased to 47 in 2018.

The number was 27 in 2019, 23 in 2020 and it was 19 in 2021, according to the data provided by him. There was no fatal or non-fatal casualty so far in 2022.

Bhatt said the three Indian Air Force personnel were killed in 2017 while two of its personnel were injured in 2022.

The number of Army personnel who suffered injuries during terrorist attacks/counter-terrorist operations in the last five years was 323, according to Bhatt's written reply.

"No naval personnel suffered any casualties during this period," he said.

Bhatt also said an amount of Rs 7.14 crore was provided to the families of the deceased Army personnel as part of financial support while a total of Rs 3.49 crore was given to personnel who sustained injuries.

The minister also provided details of compensation and support extended to the next of kin of the three deceased IAF personnel.

To a separate question on supporting the domestic defence industry, he said the government has accorded Acceptance of Necessity (in principle approval) to 150 proposals worth Rs 2,47,515 crore approximately in the last three years in line with its priority to boost domestic manufacturing.

"In addition, during the last three years that is from 2018-19 to 2020-21 and current year till January 2022, out of total 191 capital acquisition contracts signed, 121 have been signed with Indian vendors," Bhatt said.

Watch the latest DH Videos here:
Meghalaya-based insurgent group, Hynniewtrep National Liberation Council (HNLC) has said it appointed a "representative" to meet the government interlocutors to carry forward the peace talks.

"Keeping in mind the various factors that would pave way for a peaceful solution, the HNLC leadership has authorised a representative to meet the interlocutors and simultaneously initiate and form a Hynniewtrep Peace Committee, whereby stakeholders, Church elders, citizens and NGOs shall be a part of the committee so as to ensure a smooth functioning of the peace process," Sainkupar Nongtraw, general secretary and publicity secretary of HNLC said in a statement to DH.

HNLC, which was involved in a bomb blast in Meghalaya capital, Shillong and several violent activities in the state, recently offered to join the peace process within the ambit of the Constitution.

The statement said they got information that the Centre and Meghalaya government appointed retired IAS officer, S. Dkhar and A.K. Mishra, adviser to Ministry of Home Affairs as interlocutors to initiate talks with the group.

The HNLC has been fighting for a sovereign homeland for the tribal Khasi population of Meghalaya. It was declared a banned organisation by the Centre after it carried out several bomb blasts and extortion.

The outfit had in the past expressed its desire to join peace talks but put forth some demands, which were rejected by the government. It also demanded a seperate flag and Constitution for Meghalaya, which kept the peace process stalled.

The statement further said NHLC was taking steps to stop all kind of violent activities and appealed the government to halt measures against it in the interest of peace process.

"We believe that it is high time for us to lay aside our prejudices and biases, to be able to find a common ground for peace to flourish," it said.

Watch the latest DH Videos here:
A piquant situation arose in the Bihar assembly on Monday when Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and Speaker Vijay Kumar Sinha had a heated exchange over whether a matter being probed by the government which has also been referred to the privilege committee could be raised on the floor of the House again and again.

The chief minister rose to express his outrage when the speaker asked cabinet minister Bijendra Yadav to appraise the House, after a couple of days, of action taken on an incident in Lakhisarai, which also happens to be Sinha's assembly constituency.

The minister has been authorised to reply on behalf of the government. When he has submitted that inquiry is underway, you ask him to come up with a fresh reply the day after tomorrow. This is against the rules. Please look at the Constitution, Kumar said.

The privilege committee of the House has directed the DGP to conduct an inquiry into the alleged misbehaviour, with the speaker, of a Deputy SP in Lakhisarai and the SHO of the police station concerned a few days back.

The conflict between the speaker and the chief minister over the enquiry is also being viewed by some as a reflection of the strained relations between the JD(U) which Kumar leads and its ally BJP to which the speaker belongs.

It is for the government and the police to take action in such matters. The report of the investigation has to be submitted before the court, he said.

Is the House empowered to intervene in the matter? I am serving my fourth term as the chief minister. I was also a member of the assembly once. Never have I seen such a procedural anomaly. Please don't run the House in this manner, Kumar said.

Sinha began on a pacifying note, expressing the immense respect he had for the chief minister's knowledge and experience, besides acknowledging the latter's support which helped my elevation to this Chair.

But please understand my predicament. Initially, I had tried not to indulge any discussion in the matter after it was referred to the privilege committee. But members from the treasury benches and the opposition have created a ruckus again and again. After all, I am supposed to be the custodian of the House, pleaded the speaker.

Notably, outbursts of Sinha over alleged wrongful arrest of a number of people in Lakhisarai for violation of prohibition law were in news last month.

The chief minister again rose upon the speaker's statement and said, I will inquire today itself into the progress in the investigation. The government will look into whatever recommendations the committee has made. But this matter must not be discussed on the floor of the House again and again.

Watch the latest DH Videos here:
The Centre's move to privatise HLL Lifecare Ltd and its decision not to allow the Kerala government to bid for it was raised in Rajya Sabha on Monday with CPI(M) MP John Brittas demanding that the state should be allowed to take over the Public Sector Unit on mutually agreeable terms.

In a Special Mention in Rajya Sabha, he said HLL Lifecare Ltd is the only PSU under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, which played a pivotal role in fighting the Covid-19 pandemic as a nodal agency of the Government.

"It shows the necessity to continue keeping it in the public sector as the government needs such an arm in cases of health exigencies. It is equally pertinent to note that HLL Lifecare has been making profits for the last three years. It is equally pertinent to note that the Government of Kerala had played a significant role by handing over about 19 acres of land at prime locations free of cost, which would fetch several hundreds of crores now, for establishing the units of HLL Lifecare Ltd. in the State," he said.

However, Brittas said, the Centre has decided to disinvest the same and has now denied permission to the state government in participating in the strategic disinvestment of HLL Lifecare Limited.

"There are several instances of taking over of Central PSUs by the State Governments during the past years. Hence, it is highly necessary to permit the Kerala Government to purchase HLL Lifecare directly upon mutually agreeable terms," he added.

Check out DH's latest videos:
A MT Darwin man (40), who executed a prison break at Harare Central Prison last year with the help of a prison officer has been re-arrested and arraigned before the court facing a charge of escaping from lawful custody.

Richard Sasumba pleaded guilty to the charge when he appeared before Harare magistrate Yeukai Dzuda yesterday.

The State opposed bail, saying there was overwhelming evidence against the accused. He was remanded in custody to March 28 for trial date.

Allegations are that Sasumba was convicted for armed robbery at the Bindura Magistrate Court and was committed to Harare Central Prison to serve his sentence.

However, while serving his sentence, Sasumba escaped with the assistance of a prison guard on October 7, 2021.

Court papers state that a manhunt was conducted, but Sasumba could not be found.

On March 9, prison officials got wind that Sasumba was in Epworth.

Zimbabwe Prison and Correctional Services officials managed to locate him at a house in Epworth and re-arrested him.

Zvikomborero Mupasa represented the State. Newsday
External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar will make a statement on the Ukraine-Russia war in the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday.

Chairman M. Venkaiah Naidu told the Upper House that Minister Jaishankar will give a statement on the conflict.

Naidu also lauded the efforts of the union and state governments for rising to the occasion to evacuate the Indian students. Later during zero hour, the members raised concern about the future of students from Ukraine.

TDP MP K. Ravindra Kumar said that as safety and security of the students are ensured, now the government should take necessary steps to secure their future by consulting all the stakeholders.

Follow live updates on Russia-Ukraine Crisis here

Congress MP K.C. Venugopal said: "Students who returned from Ukraine due to war are in a very difficult situation. Their family is most concerned about their future. "The government must spell out the measures it is taking to accommodate medical students who were forced to return from Ukraine leaving their degree midway," he said.

BJD MP Dr Amar Patnaik suggested reserving two to five per cent seats in all private and government colleges for the students who returned from Ukraine. TMC's Dr Santanu Sen batted for special steps to accommodate these students in the country.

The second part of the Budget session resumed on Monday and will conclude on April 8. The Rajya Sabha is likely to get over 64 hours to transact the legislative business besides taking up the issues of public importance.

Chairman Naidu paid tributes to all the former Rajya Sabha members who passed away recently. He also read out obituary references to the passing away of Nabin Chandra Buragohain, Rahul Bajaj, D.P. Chattopadhyaya, and Yadlapati Venkat Rao.

Check out DH's latest videos:
State governments owe Rs 63,156 crore to central paramilitary forces till October last year for deploying personnel for various reasons, prompting a Parliamentary panel to ask Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) to work out a payment plan within a timeframe with states, as "merely sending reminders will not serve any purpose".

This is beyond the dues of Rs 6,537.15 crore pending to CISF for its deployment in airports, Central Public Sector Units and other installations as on December 2021.

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs headed by senior Congress MP Anand Sharma was told that total dues run into Rs 63,156 crore and are pending against various states and Union Territories.

"The committee recommends that the Ministry should take up with the concerned states/UTs and other organisations to work out a payment plan within a fixed timeline for clearance of these dues by them. Merely reminding the states/UTs and other organisations to pay the pending dies may not serve the purpose," the panel said.

Delhi alone has dues of Rs 1,533.36 crore -- Rs 36.21 crore to CISF, Rs 1,297.03 crore to CRPF and Rapid Action Force, Rs 135.72 crore to Rs ITBP, Rs 17.90 crore to BSF and Rs 46.50 crore to SSB, according to the report on Demands of Grants for the MHA tabled in the Parliament on Monday.

Earlier, the rate of deployment charges for a battalion of a paramilitary force was fixed at Rs 52.40 crore per year uniformly applicable across India for 2018-19.

However, the MHA revised it for 2019-20 and fixed Rs 13.70 crore for normal areas, Rs 25.18 crore for high risk and moderate hardship areas and Rs 34.26 crore for high risk and high hardship areas with a provision for annual increase. For 2021-22, the rates were fixed at Rs 17.36, Rs 28.85 crore and Rs 37.93 crore respectively.

When the panel asked about the steps taken to recover the dues, the MHA said it was following up with states and some had earlier cleared the dues.

Check out DH's latest videos:
Union home minister Amit Shah and defence minister Rajnath Singh are among the eight election observers the parliamentary board of the Bharatiya Janata Party appointed for the four states of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur on Monday.

The observers, a senior leader said, will be dispatched to help elect a chief minister in each of these states. As DH had reported before, the party is unlikely to form governments in any of these states before Holi as the time of Holi Dahan is considered inauspicious.

The party has also called a meeting of the Parliamentary party on Tuesday and has asked all its Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha MPs to be present at the meeting.

The party appointed Shah and former Jharkhand CM Raghuvar Das as observers to UP where the party won 255 seats. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has been in Delhi in the past two days meeting PM Modi, Shah as well as party president JP Nadda to deliberate on the UP cabinet.

Also Read: BJP took a headstart from first phase of UP polls

In Uttarakhand, Rajnath Singh will be assisted by union minister Meenakshi Lekhi. In the hill state, the party is facing an uphill task selecting a Chief Minister.

With sitting Chief Minister Pushkar Dhami losing from the Khatima seat, the party is now deliberating on the post. While there is speculation that Dhami might continue, a senior party leader had told DH last week that MLAs will be asked for names, and over five leaders are in the billing.

Financial minister Nirmala Sitharaman and law minister Kiren Rijiju will be dispatched to Manipur as observers, while in Goa the party appointed union minister Narendra Singh Tomar and L Murugan as observers. Pramod Sawant and Vishwajeet Rane are touted to be the faces in Goa. In Manipur, the party is likely to repeat Biren Singh.

Watch the latest DH Videos here:
The inauguration of Dravida Munnetra Kazhagams (DMK) national office in New Delhi likely on April 2 is likely to serve as yet another platform for anti-BJP parties to come together, for the first time after the BJPs massive victory in the elections held to five state assemblies.

DMK President and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin will open the Anna ArivalayamNew Delhi in the national capital in the presence of leaders from Opposition political parties. The new building will serve as DMKs national office as the party sets out on a journey to take its social justice agenda by launching an All India Social Justice Forum, chaired by Stalin.

The swanky office is coming up at the Deen Dayal Upadhyay (DDU) Marg in central Delhi where the headquarters of BJP is also located. The office complex has come up on land allotted by the Union Government. The event will take place on April 2 most likely. Though it is not a gala event, we have decided to invite leaders of Opposition parties for the inauguration. The participant list is yet to be prepared. But we expect some leaders to participate, a senior DMK leader told DH.

Also Read  Stalin thanks Rahul for 'voicing long-standing arguments of Tamils'

He also said Stalin will not have many meetings in New Delhi during the visit as he is likely to return immediately owing to the Budget Session of the Tamil Nadu Assembly, which will commence on March 18.

Sources said invitations are likely to be sent to leaders of all Opposition parties. This is the second event in as many months that the DMK is organising with national leaders as participants. In February, Congress MP Rahul Gandhi released the first part of the autobiography of Stalin which saw the participation of Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, NCs Omar Abdullah, and Tejashwi Yadav of RJD.

The meeting assumes significance as it comes close on the heels of the Congress loss in the Assembly elections and BJP and AAP winning Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Manipur, Goa, and Punjab respectively.

Watch the latest DH Videos here:
Sonia Gandhi's assertion in October last year that she is a "hands-on" president who does not like to be talked to through the media and Sunday's 'if you think it right, we Gandhis will make any sacrifice' -- statements made in a span of five months -- mark a change in Congress High Command's fluctuating fortunes.

Both the remarks were made in the Congress Working Committee (CWC) -- the first on October 16 last year after the Gandhi siblings Rahul and Priyanka midwifed an extensive reshuffle in Punjab and the other on Sunday after a disastrous electoral performance that saw the party not able win any of the five states.

Also Read  Sonia Gandhi ready to 'sacrifice' top post but CWC 'reaffirms' faith in her

If the first was made on a point of strength with the leadership appearing to act from a point of strength, the second one came as the party looked at a desperate salvation but on both occasions, the CWC witnessed similar scenes of demand for the continuation of Sonia till Rahul accedes to the demand for his return as party chief.

Rahul's supporters outside the CWC do not find merit in his detractors criticism, saying most of them kept quiet and enjoyed the perks of power but as they realised that they were losing power and position inside and outside the party, they were targeting the leadership.

While a section argues that Gandhis stranglehold is suffocating the party, the others argue that it is the glue that keeps the Congress alive to the challenges. At the latest CWC, the detractors too did not raise the decibel levels though there were some free and frank exchanges of views.

Also Read  The Gandhis, a liability for Congress

Ghulam Nabi Azad and Anand Sharma told the CWC meeting that they were being targeted as BJP agents for raising the demand for reforms in the party. Azad reminded the meeting that there were heated discussions and even walk-outs from such meetings.

The partys predicament at this stage was also aptly discussed and described at two fora on Sunday itself -- at a meeting of Congress Parliamentary Strategy Group in the morning as well as at the CWC in the evening, there were concerns about how other parties would now react to the partys pole position at the Opposition high table.

At the first meeting, it was decided that the Congress be cautious in its efforts on the coordination on floor strategy and should first informally reach out to other parties to know their mind on holding strategy meetings. With a resurgent AAP in Punjab, Congress may find it difficult as other parties will also flex their muscles.

The concerns were raised at the CWC meeting too with leaders like Azad and Sharma referring to it. Sources said Azad spoke about the need to have wider consultations and engaging coalition partners while Sharma spoke about the rise of the AAP.

Azad appeared to have aimed at Rahul at the meeting. He said he would like the next party president to be accessible, available and accountable.

Questions over the timing of the changes in Punjab too came up. Rahul and Priyankas decision to remove Amarinder Singh following a rebellion by Navjot Singh Siddhu was late, according to Azad. Rahul countered the questions on Punjab saying internal surveys showed the popularity of Singh was at its nadir and an overwhelming majority of MLAs sought his ouster and the options they had.

Watch the latest DH Videos here:
"We never visualised that our morality can go so low," an exasperated Supreme Court said Monday, reiterating its concerns over fake certificates being issued to claim Rs 50,000 ex gratia meant for the families of Covid-19 victims. A bench of justices M R Shah and B V Nagarathna said it may direct a probe by the Comptroller and Auditor General into the fake claims.

The court also pulled up the Union government over failing to file a formal application highlighting the problem, despite its indication on the previous date of hearing. The court gave Solicitor General Tushar Mehta time till Tuesday for the same.

On Monday, Mehta pointed towards the problem of fake certificates being issued by doctors to unscrupulous people to claim the ex gratia. "We never visualised that this kind of fake claims could come. It's a pious world. We never thought this scheme could be misused," the bench said.

The bench also said that if some officers are also involved in it, then it is a serious issue.

Also Read  No ex gratia for Covid deaths during third wave: Minister

Advocate Gaurav Kumar Bansal pointed at Section 52 in the Disaster Management Act, which addressed such concerns. To this, the bench said, "we need somebody to file a complaint".

Senior advocate R Basant suggested a random examination of the compensation claims by the state legal services authorities.

On an application filed by advocate Diksha Rai on behalf of Assam on the aspect of compensation to children, the top court clarified that ex gratia payment of Rs 50,000, ordered by it, is to be paid for each death due to Covid-19 and not to each child of the affected family.

Earlier on March 7 too, while examining compliance of its judgement, the top court expressed concern at doctors issuing fake medical certificates to people for claiming ex-gratia compensation for Covid deaths.

Watch the latest DH Videos here:
Senior BJP leader and former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Uma Bharti, who has been demanding liquor prohibition in the state, vandalised a liquor shop in Bhopal on Sunday.

After pelting stones at the liquor store located in the Barkhera Pathani area, she barged into it and began destroying the stock. She was accompanied by several men and women who hailed her actions.

After her act, Bharti said she has warned the local administration to shut the shop within a week. "Today, I have warned the administration to shut the liquor shop within a week, otherwise more action will be taken."

The incident came two days after Bharti met Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and demanded to make Madhya Pradesh a liquor-free state.

Her action against liquor came on the ground at the time when the state government has announced a new liquor policy, which also allows liquor sale at the Indore and Bhopal airports while announcing a price-cut for both country-made and foreign liquors by 20 per cent.

The state government is set to implement the new excise policy, as the state cabinet approved it recently and tendering process is underway.

This incident also gave the opportunity to the opposition Congress to take a dig at the ruling BJP in the state. Calling Bharti CM in waiting, a senior state Congress leader said: "It showed how the CM in waiting (Bharti) wants to get back on the CM's chair. But, she should have pelted stone on the office where excise policies are been made, instead of vandalising liquor shops."

Drama over this liquor issue and new liquor schemes are likely to continue in the state for the next few days. Congress has also planned to corner the Chouhan government on the liquor issue during the ongoing Budget session of the Assembly.
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh will make a statement in the Parliament on Tuesday over inadvertently firing a missile that landed in Pakistan.

The Defence Ministry had stated that an unarmed supersonic missile "accidentally" took off from Sirsa and landed at a place 124 km within the Pakistani territory last Wednesday.

Last Friday, the Defence Ministry "regretfully" explained it as "a technical malfunction".

The ministry in a statement had said: "On March 9, 2022, in the course of a routine maintenance, a technical malfunction led to the accidental firing of a missile."

The Indian government has taken a serious view of the matter and "ordered a high-level court of enquiry".

"It is learnt that the missile landed in an area in Pakistan. While the incident is deeply regrettable, it is also a matter of relief that there has been no loss of life due to the accident," said the ministry.

Also read: China says India and Pakistan should hold talks, conduct 'thorough probe' into accidental missile firing

On the same day, Pakistan foreign office had summoned India's charge d'affaires and lodged a protest over what it termed as an unprovoked violation of its airspace.

In a statement, it warned New Delhi of "unpleasant consequences" over what it claimed was an Indian originated but unidentified high-altitude supersonic object that crashed in its territory.

In its statement, the foreign office urged India to take effective measures to avoid such violations in the future.

The missile was cruising at an altitude of 40,000 feet and endangered passenger flights in both Indian and Pakistani airspace, and also civilians and property on the ground, the Pakistan foreign office said.

Major General Babar Iftikhar, Director General of Pakistani armed forces' Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), had said that at 18:43 hours on March 9, "a high-speed flying object was picked up inside Indian flying territory by Air Defence Operations Centre of the Pakistani Air Force. From its initial course, the object suddenly manoeuvred towards Pakistani territory and violated Pakistan's airspace, ultimately falling near Mia Channu."

Addressing a press conference on the incident, Iftikhar said that there were no human casualties.

"When it fell, it damaged some civilian property. Thankfully no loss or injury to human life was caused," he said.

Check out latest videos from DH:
The Congress in Kerala has been caught up in a row over a tweet in connection with the film 'The Kashmir Files'.

Even as the controversial tweet from the official Twitter account of Congress in Kerala (Congress Kerala) on Sunday was withdrawn, the party posted on Monday that it stands by the facts mentioned in the earlier post and the post was withdrawn as the 'BJP hate factory' was misusing it for communal propaganda.

In the tweet that was withdrawn, it was allegedly stated that after the terrorist attacks instead of providing security to the Kashmiri Pandits then Governor and BJP-RSS supporter Jagmohan directed that the Pandits should leave the country. The tweet was with the hashtag 'Facts about Kashmiri Pandits'.

Also read: 'The Kashmir Files' to be screened for legislators of Karnataka Assembly

Veteran actor Anupam Kher, who is starring in the film based on a story on exodus of Pandits from Kashmir, said that it was shameful that the Congress in Kerala was stating this even after the release of the film. He also added that it could be an attempt of the Congress to make itself feel important as the party collapsed.

The 'Congress Kerala' later came out with a series of tweets: "We stand by every single fact in yesterday's tweet thread about the #KashmiriPandits issue. However, we've removed a part of the thread, seeing BJP hate factory taking it out of context and using it for their communal propaganda. For BJP, #Kashmir is a Hindu-Muslim problem. For Congress, it's a long battle between separatists & those who stand with India. Let's respect ALL Kashmiris who've made sacrifices in this battle. Congress brought peace & rehabilitated victims. BJP ruined it for politics."

We stand by every single fact in yesterday's tweet thread about the #KashmiriPandits issue. However, we've removed a part of the thread, seeing BJP hate factory taking it out of context and using it for their communal propaganda. We'll continue to speak out the truth. (1/3)  Congress Kerala (@INCKerala) March 14, 2022

Opposition leader V D Satheesan of the Congress told the media that he was unaware of the tweet. The party had no discussions over the film, he said.

Check out latest videos from DH:
In recent days, scientists have reported that a hybrid of the omicron and delta coronavirus variants has been popping up in several countries in Europe. Heres what is known about the hybrid, which has picked up the Frankensteinian nicknames of deltamicron or deltacron.

How was it found?

In February, Scott Nguyen, a scientist with the Washington, D.C., Public Health Laboratory, was inspecting GISAID, an international database of coronavirus genomes, when he noticed something odd.

He found samples collected in France in January that researchers had identified as a mix of delta and omicron variants. In rare cases, people can be infected by two coronavirus variants at once. But when Nguyen looked closely at the data, he found hints that this conclusion was wrong.

Also Read | Millions locked down as China wrestles worst virus outbreak in two years

Instead, it looked to Nguyen as though each virus in the sample actually carried a combination of genes from the two variants. Scientists call such viruses recombinants. When Nguyen looked for the same pattern of mutations, he found more possible recombinants in the Netherlands and Denmark. That led me to suspect that these might be real, he said.

Nguyen shared his findings in an online forum called cov-lineages, where scientists help one another track new variants. These collaborations are essential to double-check possible new variants: A supposed delta-omicron recombinant found in January in Cyprus turned out to be a mirage resulting from faulty laboratory work.

Theres a lot of proof thats needed to show that it is real, Nguyen said.

It turned out that Nguyen had been right.

That day, we rushed to double-check what he suspected, said Etienne Simon-Loriere, a virus expert at the Institut Pasteur in Paris. And, yeah, we quickly confirmed that it was the case.

Since then, Simon-Loriere and his colleagues have found more samples of the recombinant virus. They eventually obtained a frozen sample from which they successfully grew new recombinants in the laboratory, which they are now studying. On March 8, the researchers posted the first genome of the recombinant on GISAID.

Where has the new hybrid been found?

In a March 10 update, an international database of viral sequences reported 33 samples of the new variant in France, eight in Denmark, one in Germany and one in the Netherlands.

As first reported by Reuters, the genetic sequencing company Helix found two cases in the United States. Nguyen said he and his colleagues were taking a fresh look at some database sequences from the United States in an effort to find more cases.

Is it dangerous?

The thought of a hybrid between delta and omicron might sound worrisome. But there are a number of reasons not to panic.

This is not a novel concern, Simon-Loriere said.

Also Read | Former US President Barack Obama tests positive for Covid-19

For one thing, recombinant is extremely rare. Although it has existed since at least January, it has not yet shown the ability to grow exponentially.

Simon-Loriere said that the genome of the recombinant variant also suggested that it wouldnt represent a new phase of the pandemic. The gene that encodes the viruss surface protein  known as a spike  comes almost entirely from omicron. The rest of the genome is delta.

The spike protein is the most important part of the virus when it comes to invading cells. It is also the main target of antibodies produced through infections and vaccines. So the defenses that people have acquired against omicron  through infections, vaccines or both  should work just as well against the new recombinant.

The surface of the viruses is super-similar to omicron, so the body will recognize it as well as it recognizes omicron, Simon-Loriere said.

Also Read | Should public health measures like masking continue beyond the pandemic? Data shows their benefits

Scientists suspect that omicrons distinctive spike is also partly responsible for its lower odds of causing severe disease. The variant uses it to successfully invade cells in the nose and the upper airway, but it doesnt do so well deep in the lungs. The new recombinant may display the same penchant.

Simon-Loriere and other researchers are conducting experiments to see how the new recombinant performs in dishes of cells. Experiments on hamsters and mice will provide more clues. But those experiments wont yield insights for several weeks.

Its so fresh that we dont have any results, Simon-Loriere said.

Where do recombinant viruses come from?

People are sometimes infected with two versions of the coronavirus at once. For example, if you go to a crowded bar where several people are infected, you might breathe in viruses from more than one of them.

Its possible for two viruses to invade the same cell at the same time. When that cell starts producing new viruses, the new genetic material may be mixed up, potentially producing a new, hybrid virus.

Its probably not uncommon for coronaviruses to recombine. But most of these genetic shuffles will be evolutionary dead ends. Viruses with mixtures of genes may not fare as well as their ancestors did.

Are we really calling it deltacron?

For now, some scientists are referring to the new hybrid as the AY.4/BA.1 recombinant. That will probably change in the weeks to come.

A coalition of scientists has come up with a system for formally naming new lineages of coronaviruses. They give recombinant viruses a two-letter abbreviation starting with X. XA, for example, is a hybrid that arose in December 2020 from a mixture of the alpha variant and another lineage of coronaviruses called B.1.177.

Its likely that Nguyens new recombinant will be designated XD.

But on March 8, this process became muddled when a second team of French researchers posted a study online with their own analysis of the same recombinant. Like Simon-Loriere and his colleagues, they isolated the virus. But in the title of their study, which has not been published yet in a scientific journal, they called it deltamicron.

Nguyen criticized the team for not crediting Simon-Lorieres team for originally sharing the first recombinant virus genomes. He also criticized the scientists for unleashing lurid nicknames for the recombinant that were immediately picked up in news articles and social media posts claiming that it was a hoax or had been produced in a lab.

These unconventional names are stirring a hornets nest of conspiracy theories, Nguyen said.

It remains to be seen how well the name XD sticks.

Check out DH's latest videos:
A TRUCK driver was hauled to court over the weekend for allegedly trafficking two minor girls.

He promised to pay their school fees when, in fact, he wanted to sexually exploit them.

James Mahachi, 52, was not asked to plead when he appeared before Harare magistrate Yeukai Dzuda.

Mahachi is an international truck driver, whose job takes him to South Africa, Zambia and the DRC.

Allegations are that between September 2021 and March 2022, Mahachi used an agent, Brighton Nyamandi, who is currently on the run, to recruit the two minor girls, aged 13 and 17, from Hurungwe.

It is the States case that Mahachi transported the two girls in his haulage truck and trafficked them for labour, and sexual exploitation.

He lied to the victims that he was going to send them to school and pay their fees.

The two girls parents released them into the custody of Mahachi, who never took them to school, as promised.

Instead, he abused his power over the victims and subjected them to domestic duties and sexual exploitation.

Mahachi allegedly took them on a ride to South Africa while on his work assignment.

He would sleep with them in his truck, and would threaten to dump them in South Africa, if they refused to sleep with him.

It is alleged that, when he returned from South Africa, he took them to his house, where he slept with them in his bedroom.

The court heard that one night, one of the girls escaped.

She sought refuge at a nearby home where she met Charity Munemo.

Munemo assisted her to make a police report and the minor is in a safe house under the care of the Department of Social Welfare.

The other girl is yet to be accounted for.

Tapiwa Zvidzai appeared for the State. H Metro
In India's culinary tradition, pickles, and preserves are used to prevent vegetables and fruit from going to waste. Every family has heirloom pickle recipes passed down through the generations.

Pickles remind Indians of home and has given many women entrepreneurs their dream start in business, especially during the pandemic when home cooking businesses saw an upward curve.

Last year, Yachika Chopra from Goa lost her job with an airline due to the pandemic. It was a double blow when her mother also succumbed to the novel coronavirus. However, after her mother's death, a chance discovery of her diary full of pickle recipes opened up new options for Chopra.

"It almost felt like my mother had deliberately left me something precious and wanted me to take up her pickle-making hobby," she said.

In June 2021, Chopra started making sauces and pickles for her family, inspired by her mother's recipe books, some dating back to 1954. Soon, she found more recipes passed down by her grandmother and started Circa, which now sells pickles and sauces made using these heirloom recipes. Circa sells over 100 jars a month through Amazon and their website.

However, Pickle Me, a Mumbai-based home business, was started to fulfil a more personal, immediate need. Founder Debbie D'Cruz used to have a corporate career before the pandemic locked her down at home. She craved homemade pickles with her meals, and the sheer desperation of not getting them during the lockdown made her start making her own in August 2020.

"As non-vegetarians, we are often starved of good non-veg pickles in the market, and that's what made me want to fill that gap," said D'Cruz. Today, Pickle Me sells prawns, chicken, squid, bombil and pork pickles, alongside vegetarian options. The company sends out nearly 400 jars a month through food groups and word of mouth marketing.

Anita Gupta's foray into the pickle business started a few months before the start of the pandemic. When Gupta visited Pune in August 2019 from Kashipur, Uttarakhand, she found her pregnant daughter craving her homemade pickles. She promptly ground the spices she had brought and made a whole batch of onion and green chilli pickle.

Gupta sold the excess to other families in the housing complex. The response was so enthusiastic that she =made two variants of kala chana (black chickpea) pickle and a sweet and sour version of eggplant pickle.

Both flavours sold out as fast as she could make them.

That is when Mihika, her daughter, encouraged her to think of a serious business model. Excited with the possibilities, Anita went back to Kashipur and set up a medium scale production at home. She launched Maa's Pickles in February 2020.

Covid-19 forced many small businesses to shut shop as the country reeled from the pandemic. But e-commerce became a saviour for home-based businesses like Circa and Maa's by giving them a national reach with ease.

D'Cruz relied on social media groups to sell her products, and she dreams of expanding her business to the shelves soon. While Circa aims to bring flavours in their authentic form from every state, Maa's is working on highlighting the produce of Uttarakhand.

(Chandreyi Bandyopadhyay is a freelance writer and communications professional with a keen interest in food and travel.)

Check out the latest videos from DH:
Deputy Congress leader UT Khaders suggestion that the government should organise harmony meetings in every district as a precursor to the Invest Karnataka summit led to some pandemonium in the Assembly on Monday.

The government wants to conduct a global investors meet in November. Before that, harmony meetings should be held in every district, Khader said during a discussion on the Budget. He was referring to recent incidents of communal tension - the Hijab row and Shivamogga murder - and how they may deter investors.

Worked up, Law Minister JC Madhuswamy asked Khader to explain. Youre saying Karnataka is burning and investments wont come. This is the Assembly. You cant be vague. You must explain. Who is responsible for anarchy, he asked, leading to a din.

Also read: Karnataka HC to pronounce verdict on hijab row on March 15

Leader of the Opposition Siddaramaiah accused the BJP of spoiling communal harmony. Your own minister violated prohibitory orders and took out a procession, he said, referring to riots in Shivamogga following the death of Bajrang Dal worker Harsha.

Madhuswamy retorted that even Congress violated prohibitory orders with the Mekedatu foot march. You are spoiling (harmony) for your political reasons, the minister said.

Congress Chittapur MLA Priyank Kharge explained how political stability and communal harmony are important to attract investments. As IT/BT minister, I once gave a virtual presentation to Apple in Cupertino. They asked just two questions: what is the political stability in your state? And, is there social or communal harmony?

Earlier, Khader accused the government of being quiet when the hijab controversy brewed earlier this year. Why was the government quiet? You left it to the court to settle the matter. The government should take steps to provide a conducive academic atmosphere in educational institutions, he said.

To this, Madhuswamy said the government had to follow court orders once the matter became sub-judice. How can we ask someone not to go to court? Did we ask [the petitioners] to move court, the minister asked rhetorically.

Check out latest videos from DH:
Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai on Monday told the Assembly that he was under pressure by "vested interests" to go back on introducing a law banning online betting and gambling.

Bommai was referring to the Karnataka Police (Amendment) Act that was passed in the Assembly in September last year. The law banned online games that involved wagering or betting. Last month, the High Court struck it down.

Work on the law started when Bommai was the home minister.

"Since it was also the time of Covid, some people even promised me vaccination for people in my constituency. I told them that the government was in a position to take care of vaccination for all," he said, adding that he was under pressure.

Bommai said the government was helpless as they were unable to implement the law.

Also read: Online gambling amendment: Karnataka defends legislation

Pointing out how vested interests are using loopholes in legal provisions to serve their motives, Bommai said: "Betting on online games is an international-level issue. We brought in legislation against such betting. However, the court has now allowed it again. This shows how pervasive the online portals are."

Stringent legislation against gambling and betting is "the need of the hour for the state", Bommai said, adding that gambling clubs are rampant. "If we raid them, the next day the accused walks out on bail," he lamented.

Bommai said this in response to former speaker KR Ramesh Kumar, who said the IPL has turned into a "horse race".

Check out latest videos from DH:
The 'first sod' has been cut on a new 34 million special needs school in Derry.

Ardnashee School and College's new build single storey school on the site of the former Foyle College on Northland Road will provide modern accommodation for a total of 275 nursery, primary, post primary and post 16 pupils.

Speaking on the site of the new school, Education Minister Michelle McIlveen praised the work of the school, the Education Authority and contractors for getting the project to the construction stage.

She said: I am so pleased that construction of this long awaited new school is now on the ground.

This is a momentous day for parents, pupils, teachers and school staff as well as the wider local community.

Once completed, the new school will provide state-of-the-art facilities for some of our most vulnerable children and for that reason is even more important and very much deserved.

I am confident that the fabulous facilities at Ardnashee will be of real benefit to the whole community for many years to come.

I wish all the pupils, staff and school management every success as you embark on this new chapter.

Abigail McConville, locality programme manager with Major Capital Delivery Service at the Education Authority said: The Education Authority is delighted to be part of this project which has seen the very best in collaboration across a range of stakeholders, with the school community always central to the process.

Ms McConville added: Ardnashee School and College will be a model for effective teaching and learning, providing a dynamic and exciting educational environment where pupils develop a love of learning and the skills they need for the future.

Woodvale Construction Company has been appointed to carry out the main building works, which are due to complete in autumn 2024.
A leading campaigner has rejected an apology offered to the survivors of institutional abuse.

Derry man Jon McCourt, from Survivors North West, said the apology offered by Stormont's politicians was 'touching,' but the remose offered by Church representatives was 'without emotion.'

The public apology was recommended in the final report of the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry (HIAI), which was published more than five years ago.

Speaking in the Stormont Assembly, Sister Cornelia Walsh, on behalf of the Sisters of Nazareth, who ran two homes in Derry where children were abused both physically and sexually, said: We offer this sincere apology to you if you were in the care of Nazareth Houses in Belfast and Derry and for those were sent to Australasia as young children, for those whose experiences under our care between 1922 to 1995 had a detrimental impact on you.

We recognise your pain and the long-awaited journey you have travelled to reach this day.

Sister Walsh added there were no acceptable excuses for what happened to abuse victims.

She said the Order accepted that there was systemic physical abuse and that bullying was prevalent, adding there was a regime of excessive chores and this amounted to a form of abuse.

She added: We accept that when you sought our help to prevent physical or sexual abuse we did not believe you.

However, Mr McCourt said if what happened was the best that the Church could offer by way of an apology they 'failed miserably.'

He added he did not believe the Church 'atoned' for its actions and called for religious organisations to make a 'significant con- tribution' to the survivors' redress scheme.

The lack of a First and Deputy First Minister in place to deliver a statement meant the apology was "stolen", according to Gerry McCann, from the Rosetta Trust.

"Today was very tough in many ways for survivors, but to come to parliament and expect an apology from the first and deputy first minister and that didn't happen - that in itself is an indictment of our politics," he said.

"I can't help but feel the opportunity was there for the political parties to reinstate the first minister, even for two hours."
A Derry girl is among the winners the highly prestigious Credit Union Imagine Art competition.

Isabelle Scott was the choice of the judges in the girls 11-13 years category when the winners were announced via a special virtual ceremony broadcast. Over 30,000 entries were received in total.

The competition, now in its 38th year, is regarded as one of the most prominent and longest-running competitions of its type.

A special virtual ceremony, hosted by RTE broadcaster, Marty Whelan, was streamed on the ILCU social media channels for finalists and their families, friends and credit unions to tune into.

Marty ran through all of the finalists works of art and also spoke to the three art competition judges Una Sealy, Ursula Retzlaff O'Connell and Stephen Doyle, and got their insights and impressions of this years winning entries.

The theme for this years competition was Imagine which encouraged entrants to explore their thoughts, hopes and dreams, and portray them on paper or canvas.

Speaking about the competition and the awards ceremony, ILCU head of communications, Paul Bailey, said: Once again, we were absolutely blown away by the standard and amount of entries to this years competition.

We received over 30,000 entries across all age categories and I want to congratulate every entrant who took part and shared their artwork with us.

"The theme this year of Imagine really brought out the creativity, vision and dreams of the entrants and we saw some amazing pieces of art, demonstrating the massive amount of artistic talent that is out there.

Isabelle Scott was the choice of the judges in the girls 11-13 years category

"I want to encourage all our budding artists to keep painting and to watch out for the launch of this years competition through their local credit union in the Autumn.

Eleven entries were crowned overall winners in their respective categories. In addition to the ten individual winners and one group winner, there were 23 runner-up and merit awards.

Age categories encompassed seven-years-and under to 18-years-and-over.

The competition is facilitated by credit unions in both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.
The security alert in the Fahan Street area of the city is continuing this evening.

Fahan Street remains closed and residents from 13 properties remain out of their homes as work continues to make the area safe.

The cordon has now been widened to include part of the City Walls, while a rest centre has been opened at Brooke Park Leisure Centre to accommodate residents whose homes were evacuated.

The alert follows the discovery of a number of suspicious items in Fahan Street reported to police shortly after 11am today.

Derry City and Strabane Area Commander, Chief Superintendent Ryan Henderson, said, "First of all, I want to thank the local community for their patience and understanding during the course of this protracted security operation, in particular every resident who has been affected.

"Our primary aim throughout the course of this operation is to keep our community safe. However, I understand the security operation has caused, and continues to cause significant disruption, but it is required in order to keep people safe.

"We will endeavour to work through this situation as quickly as we can and get people back into their homes, but everyone's safety is our top priority and we will not take any risks with that."
Boris Johnson has told the Taoiseach that significant changes are still needed with the controversial Northern Ireland Protocol  after the Taoiseach said there is an increasing view that it is working.

The UK Prime Minister met Taoiseach Micheal Martin in London where the pair discussed Ukraine and the protocol before watching Ireland beat England in the Six Nations at Twickenham.

Johnson told Micheal Martin that he hopes the same spirit of co-operation the UK and EU have shared during the Ukraine crisis can be applied to Brexit discussions.

A Downing Street spokesperson said: The Prime Minister reiterated the need to make significant changes to the Northern Ireland Protocol in order to protect peace and stability in Northern Ireland and safeguard the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement in all its dimensions.

He said that while greater ambition and flexibility was needed from the EU in the negotiations, it was his hope that the same spirit of co-operation that had characterised the UK/EU relationship in respect of Ukraine could also be applied to resolving the issues with the protocol.

The protocol has created new economic barriers on trade between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.

Agreed by the UK and EU to ensure no hardening of the Irish land border post-Brexit, it has instead moved regulatory and customs checks to the Irish Sea, with Northern Ireland remaining in the EU single market for goods.

The region also applies the EU customs code at its ports.

Unionists and loyalists claim the arrangements have undermined the sovereignty of the UK and have demanded the UK triggers the protocols Article 16 mechanism to suspend its trading provisions.

Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson said on Friday he will not go back into the Stormont Executive until the matter of the protocol is dealt with.

Earlier on Saturday, the Taoiseach said everyone he has met in Northern Ireland wants continued access to the EU single market.

He was asked what the Irish governments communication channels were like with the DUP and how likely it is that the issue of the Northern Ireland Protocol will be resolved by the time of upcoming elections.

Speaking to reporters at the Embassy of Ireland in London, The Fianna Fail leader said the Irish government has good channels of communication with all parties in Northern Ireland.

He said: Whats very interesting from our perspective though is that whats increasing and growing is a view within Northern Ireland, particularly in Northern Ireland business and industry, that the protocol is working in terms of inward investment into Northern Ireland, and in terms of access to the EU single market.

So anybody Ive met in Northern Ireland all want to continue access to the EU single market. Its a good basic principle to start off on. And my view, given the improved relationship between the UK and the EU as a result of the partnership on Ukraine, I would like to think that in the fullness of time we will be able to resolve this issue.

But well take it step by step. And theres a channel there between the European Union and the United Kingdom thats ongoing and were going to take this step by step.

Sir Jeffrey was applauded at Crossgar Orange Hall on Friday night as he said his party would not re-enter the Stormont Executive until the Government acts to protect Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom.

Paul Givan resigned as first minister earlier this year as part of the DUPs action against the protocol in a move which also removed deputy first minister Michelle ONeill from the joint office.
Samsung Galaxy A73 5G, Galaxy A53 5G, Galaxy A33 5G, and Galaxy A23 5G are expected to be launched at the Awesome Galaxy A event on March 17, 2022.

Samsung has sent out press invites for the Awesome Galaxy A event thats going to be held on March 17, 2022, at 7:30 PM IST. This will be an online event streamed via the Samsung YouTube channel and Samsung Newsroom and we are expecting the Samsung Galaxy A73 5G, Galaxy A53 5G, Galaxy A33 5G, and Galaxy A23 5G phones to see the daylight. All these A-series Samsung phones are likely 5G capable too.

Now, although Samsung hasnt disclosed the itinerary for the day, these 4 Samsung phones are what the rumor mill suggests, and heres what you can expect at Samsung's event:

Samsung Galaxy A73 5G, Galaxy A53 5G, Galaxy A33 5G, and Galaxy A23 5G Specs and Features (Expected)

Samsung Galaxy A73 renders

Samsung Galaxy A73 5G is rumored to sport a 6.7-inch AMOLED screen with FHD+ resolution and 120Hz refresh rate. The back of the handset may house a 108MP+2MP+12MP+8MP quartet. Under the hood, the device is likely to bear a Qualcomm Snapdragon 750G with up to 8GB RAM, a 5000mAH battery (with 25W fast charging) and Android 12-based One UI software on top.

Samsung Galaxy A53 5G, meanwhile, is said to be shipping with a yet-to-be-released Exynos 1200 SoC, 5000mAh battery with 25W charging support, a 6.52-inch 120Hz FHD+ AMOLED display, and a 64MP+12MP+5MP+5MP quad-camera arrangement.

Then there is the Samsung Galaxy A33 5G which could come with a 6.4-inch 60Hz FHD+ AMOLED panel, MediaTek Dimensity 720 chipset, a 5000mAh battery with 15W charging, a 48MP+ 8MP +5MP+2MP sensor stack, and Android 11.

Finally, the Samsung Galaxy A23 5G may bring Android 11, a 6.6-inch FHD+ 90Hz IPS display, a Dimensity 700 chip, a 5000mAh battery with 15W charging support, and a 50MP+ 8MP+ 2MP+ 2MP camera setup.

We will have the official details in a matter of a few days. So, block your calendars for the Samsung Galaxy Awesome unpacked event. You may also checkout our coverage of other Samsung Galaxy A series phones launched earlier this month.

As for other such news, reviews, buying guides, feature stories, and everything else tech-related, keep reading Digit.in.
Subscriber content preview

Photo by Vigor Industrial [enlarge] Washington State Ferries is a longtime client of Vigors.





The Vigor Industrial shipyard, which faces Elliott Bay and the Duwamish Waterway from 1719 13th Ave. S.W. on Harbor Island, sold on Friday for almost $180.7 million, according to King County records. The seller was Puget Sound Commerce Center, associated with MHI Holdings of Portland. Until a 2019 merger, Vigor had owned the property for decades.





. . .
Alan Dershowitz is following in the footsteps of his former client President Donald Trump and fighting in court to keep his tax returns confidential.

The ongoing battle over the prominent Harvard Law School professors financial records comes in a suit brought by Virginia Giuffre, who says she was trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein when she was underage. Giuffre says Epstein lent her for sex to Dershowitz, who represented Epstein when the financier was being investigated by the feds in 2007.

Advertisement

Alan Dershowitz at Federal Courthouse in Manhattan on December 2, 2019. (Theodore Parisienne/for New York Daily News)

The returns, Giuffre argues, are relevant to claims that Dershowitz suffered reputational harm due to her allegations. In an ironic twist, Giuffres legal team says that Dershowitzs tax returns could show he lost money  through his representation of Trump.

[Dershowitzs] tax returns may contain evidence of general reputational harm linked to Defendants representation and public defense of President Donald Trump, rather than any comments from Giuffre, her attorney Nicole Moss wrote.

Advertisement

In filings, Dershowitz writes he files jointly with his wife and that she objects to disclosing the documents. He offered to waive any legal claims related to loss of income.

I just dont want them to be rummaging through my charitable contributions, my health, my medical records, and things of that kind, Dershowitz told the Daily News.

That didnt satisfy Giuffre, who disclosed her own tax returns to Dershowitzs legal team years ago. Moss called Dershowitzs tactics unacceptable behavior.

Virginia Roberts Giuffre, right, speaks at a press conference outside of Manhattan Federal Court on August 27, 2019. (Barry Williams/for New York Daily News)

Giuffre sued the 83-year-old Dershowitz for defamation in April 2019 for repeatedly smearing her in public as a liar for claiming Epstein forced her to sleep with him as a teen.

Breaking News As it happens Get updates on the coronavirus pandemic and other news as it happens with our free breaking news email alerts. >

Dershowitz, who represented Epstein in the late 2000s, is countersuing in Manhattan Federal Court, claiming Giuffre fabricated the accusations as part of an extortion plot targeting former Victorias Secret CEO Leslie Wexner.

I have nothing to hide because I never met her. Never touched her. Never had any contact with her, so I have absolutely nothing to hide, and Im looking forward to trial, at which her whole history comes out, Dershowitz said. Shes not going to get a penny from me. I did nothing wrong.
Subscriber content preview

SEATTLE  The Duke's Seafood building, at 2516 Alki Ave. S.W., sold last week for over $4.8 million, according to King County records. The seller was CC-Watonna MN LLC, which acquired the property in 2015 for about $3.4 million.

The buyer was TOCK Alki LLC, associated with the Costacos family.





. . .
BJP wins 4 out of 5 states in assembly polls

The Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) has won assembly elections in four of the five states, including the politically significant Uttar Pradesh, while the eight-year-old Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) swept aside ruling Congress party in Punjab, giving itself a second state after Delhi.

Yogi Adityanath led the BJP to a landslide victory securing 273 out of the 403 seats with a vote share of 43 per cent, also becoming the first chief minister in Uttar Pradesh to return to power after serving a full five-year term in 36 years, as voters set aside the misleading campaign run by the opposition over the past 2-3 days and reposing faith in the good governance of the BJP.

BJP secured clear majority in Uttarakhand (47 out of 70) and Manipur (32 out of 60) as well while it secured 20 of the 40 seats in Goa, where it would need to form alliance.

Addressing party workers at the state headquarters after the poll results, the Yogi said that people have buried the politics of caste and religion by ensuring victory of BJP in Uttar Pradesh.

With around 92 of the state's 117 seats, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) made a clean sweep in Punjab. The party got a three-fourths majority in the assembly polls in Punjab, bagging 42 per cent of the votes cast - an increase of 18 percentage points over the 2017 elections. AAP completely outclassed traditional players like the Congress, BJP, SAD and BSP.

Both BJP and SAD had a dismal show at the hustings with the parties winning two and three seats, respectively. SAD's vote share fell from 25.2 per cent in 2017 to 18.38 per cent in 2022.

"The people Punjab have done something spectacular. This has been a huge revolution. So many huge leaders have lost... Amarinder Singh has lost, Sukhbir Badal lost, Parkash Singh Badal lost, Charanjit Channi lost, Navjot Sidhu lost, Bikram Singh Majithia lost... this is nothing short of a massive, massive revolution," Arvind Kejriwal said.

BJP has won 20 seats in Goa while the Congress has won nine seats and is leading on 2 seats. Maharashtrawadi Gomantak and AAP won 2 each, Goa Forward Party and Revolutionary Goans Party won 1 each and Independent 3

BJP also emerged as the largest party in Manipur winning 32 of the 60 seats. BJP's chief minister N Biren Singh has won from the Heingang seat by around 18,000 votes.

Following Congress' dismal performance in Uttar Pradesh, senior leader Priyanka Gandhi said the party was not able to convert its hard work into votes. She added that the Congress party will move ahead with a positive agenda and work as a responsible opposition for the betterment of UP and its people.

While the Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav did not live up to his claims, the 48-year-old, who took over the mantle from his father and party patron Mulayam Singh Yadav, proved the only challenge to the BJP, drawing crowds, shutting out in-house family squabbling contenders, and trying to distance himself from the goondaism baggage of his last government.

The biggest loss has been for the Bahujan Samaj Party, from winning 206 seats in 2007 and 30 per cent vote share to 80 seats in 2012 and 19 per cent vote share in 2012 to a mere lead on 1 seat with just 12.8 per cent vote share in Uttar Pradesh.

From 7 seats and about 6 per cent vote share, the Congress has been reduced further to 1 seat and 2.4 per cent vote share in UP this time despite contesting on all the 403 seats. Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi had single-handedly led the campaign holding over 160 rallies and over 40 roadshows.

Union Home Minister and BJP leader Amit Shah Thursday congratulated the CM of Uttar Pradesh and also thanked the voters for reposing their faith in the BJP.

"Everyone had their eyes on UP, given the vastness of the state. I am thankful to the people for making us win with majority. Under PM Modi's leadership, we will be forming governments in UP, Goa, Manipur, and Uttarakhand," Yogi said in his victory speech.

Thanking the public, PM Modi and other minister, Yogi termed the mandate as one for nationalism, development and good governance. Addressing party workers, he said the double-engine government gave UP a secure environment, worked on schemes for the poor under PM Modi's guidance.
RBI launches UPI for feature phones and 24x7 helpline for digital payments

Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Thursday launched two key initiatives  UPI123Pay (an option to make Unified Payments Interface (UPI) payments for feature phone users), and DigiSaathi (a 24x7 helpline to address the queries of digital payment users across products).

While launching the two initiatives, RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das highlighted the importance of these initiatives in enhancing the diversity, utility and transformational power of digital innovations in the country. These initiatives will further deepen the digital ecosystem and financial inclusion. The governor also stated that the RBI stands committed to providing an enabling environment for this.

At present, efficient access to UPI is available on smart phones. UPI can be accessed through NUUP (National Unified USSD Platform) using the short code of *99#. But this option is cumbersome and not popular. Considering that there are more than 400 million feature phone mobile subscribers in the country, UPI123pay will materially improve the options for such users to access UPI.

UPI123Pay includes four distinct options as below:

App-based Functionality: An app would be installed on the feature phone through which several UPI functions, available on smartphones, will also be available on feature phones.

Missed Call: This will allow feature phone users to access their bank account and perform routine transactions such as receiving, transferring funds, regular purchases, bill payments, etc, by giving a missed call on the number displayed at the merchant outlet. The customer will receive an incoming call to authenticate the transaction by entering UPI PIN.

Interactive Voice Response (IVR): UPI payment through pre-defined IVR numbers would require users to initiate a secured call from their feature phones to a predetermined number and complete UPI on-boarding formalities to be able to start making financial transactions without internet connection.

Proximity Sound-based Payments: This uses sound waves to enable contactless, offline, and proximity data communication on any device.

The 24x7 Helpline  DigiSaathi  provides a channel to obtain help on the entire gamut of digital payments. Automated responses on information related to digital payment products and services are available in Hindi and English through multiple options like  (a) toll-free number (1800-891-3333), (b) a short code (14431), (c) website  www.digisaathi.info, and chatbots. DigiSaathi will assist users with their queries on digital payments via website and chatbot facility and through toll-free calls where user can dial or call out the options / products for which the information is required. More interactive options and language choices shall be enabled going forward.

RBI expects these initiatives to accelerate the process of digital adoption in India, by creating a richer and inclusive ecosystem that can accommodate larger sections of population.
Thousands of Donegal households will receive a once-off 125 Fuel Allowance payment from today.

The payment, on top of the regular weekly Fuel Allowance, was agreed as part of the Governments 505 million package aimed at mitigating the effects of rising energy costs.

The households will receive the payment in their bank account this week, depending on their particular social welfare scheme.

The Fuel Allowance, which is a means-tested payment, is paid to 372,000 pensioners, widows, widowers, jobseekers, lone-parents and people with disabilities.

Announcing the payment today, Minister for Social Protection, Heather Humphreys TD, said:

Im acutely conscious that the rising cost of living is causing considerable concern for families.

We have all felt it in recent months - through our bills, at the petrol station and in the supermarket.

And unfortunately, the situation is not being helped by the horrific war unfolding in Ukraine.

This once-off payment is part of a wider package of measures, totalling 505 million, agreed by Government last month in order to make things a little easier for families.

The package also included a 200 reduction in peoples energy bills, which is coming into effect this month, as well as changes I secured that will benefit people in receipt of the Working Family Payment.

Government also responded last week by cutting excise duty on petrol and diesel, which has become the source of considerable concern for motorists in recent months.

The Minister added:

The Fuel Allowance plays a vital role in assisting tens of thousands of households with their heating costs over the winter months.

It acts as a financial aid for people living in low income households to help towards the cost of the likes of electricity and heating oil.

This 125 lump sum fuel allowance payment is aimed at the most vulnerable people in our society, to ensure that they are protected against rising fuel costs.

This payment, in addition to the Budget increase to the Fuel Allowance I secured in October, will mean low-income households see an increase of 41% this Fuel Allowance season compared to the last season.

The Fuel Allowance scheme is a means tested payment to assist pensioners and other long-term social welfare dependent householders with their winter heating costs.

The payment is made at the weekly rate of 33.00; or if preferred, by way of two lump sum payments; and is paid over the winter season. Only one Fuel Allowance is payable per household. Those who qualify for the payment do not need to reapply annually.

In Budget 2022, Minister Humphreys announced a number of reforms to the Fuel Allowance scheme including an increase in the weekly rate by 5 to 33, and a 20 increase in the weekly income means threshold from 100 to 120, with both measures implemented with effect from Budget day in October 2021.

The Minister also announced a reduction in the qualifying period for Jobseekers and Supplementary Welfare Allowance recipients from 15 to 12 months to take effect from September 2022. Through these additional measures it is estimated that some 400,000 households will benefit from the Fuel Allowance in 2022.
Women who tried to leave the Islamic State in Syria faced imprisonment, torture and death an expert on Middle Eastern conflicts has told the trial of Lisa Smith, a former Irish soldier who denies membership of Isis.

Dr Florence Gaub told the Special Criminal Court that anyone caught trying to get out would be considered a traitor, a spy or a coward and she described one case in which an Austrian woman was beaten to death with a hammer when she said she wanted to go home.

The witness also agreed with Ms Smith's defence counsel Michael O'Higgins SC that women in Isis-controlled territory could not travel without the permission of their husbands.

Ms Smith (40), from Dundalk, Co Louth, an Islamic convert and former Irish soldier, travelled to Syria after terrorist leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi called on all Muslims to travel to the Islamic State.

She has pleaded not guilty to membership of an unlawful terrorist group, Islamic State, between October 28th, 2015 and December 1st, 2019.

She has also pleaded not (NOT) guilty to financing terrorism by sending 800 in assistance, via a Western Union money transfer, to a named man on May 6th, 2015.

After her arrest in 2019, Ms Smith told gardai that she travelled to Syria because she believed she was under a religious obligation to join the Caliphate announced by Baghdadi.

Dr Gaub, a social scientist and director of the European Union Institute for Security Studies, has previously told the trial that anyone who travelled in support of the Islamic State would have received preferential treatment and was a member of the terrorist group Isis.

Mr Justice Tony Hunt, presiding at the three-judge, non-jury court, has said that the court will decide whether Ms Smith joined a terrorist organisation and is not bound by Dr Gaub's opinion.

During cross-examination today, Dr Gaub told Mr O'Higgins that Sharia Law is open to multiple interpretations across the Muslim world.

The religion, she said, is not centralised in the way Catholicism is so there is no definitive interpretation of scripture.

Under Isis, which adheres to a "salafist" doctrine, the role of women was to get married and once married a woman was bound to obey her husband.

Dr Gaub agreed that this was based on Islamic scripture which states that the husband is guided by the wisdom of Allah and is therefore giving God's instruction to his wife.

She further agreed that women were restricted in the Islamic State and could not leave their homes without their husband's permission.

Husbands can also "lightly chastise" their wives, Dr Gaub said, to "bring them into line".

It is also easier for men to divorce their wives than it is for women.

This, she said, often makes women vulnerable as they rely on their husbands.

There were, she said, "extreme consequences" for people who tried to leave the Islamic State.

She said: "Isis considered that people in its territory were subjects so leaving required permission.

Without it, you would be considered a spy, a traitor or a coward or a person failing to do your duties.

The consequences could be imprisonment, torture and killing."

Such punishments, she said, were routine in the Islamic State and she recounted the case of two Austrian women who said they wanted to leave to go home.

One of them was killed with a hammer.

Dr Gaub has confirmed that there were morality police in the Islamic State who were particularly concerned with implementing morality laws relating to women.

She further agreed that female Isis propagandists put forward a false view of life inside the Islamic State.

During a lengthy cross examination Dr Gaub said she "strongly challenges" an assertion by Mr O'Higgins that her claim about westerners receiving preferential treatment is based on a single article in the New Yorker magazine.

She said that since 2017 there has been an "avalanche" of papers from Isis and other academics to back up her statements.

She described Mr O'Higgins's suggestion as "really problematic" and said that Mr O'Higgins was relying on assertions made by an academic who had not provided any references.

She added: "You have the nerve to tell me I'm not adhering to academic standards."

Mr O'Higgins said he is just "stress-testing" Dr Gaub's claims.
The judge overseeing the police shooting case against drill rapper C Blu has slammed the Bronx District Attorneys office for citing the teens rap videos as evidence he had access to guns.

The order issued Friday by Judge Naita Semaj comes less than a week after she said an NYPD officer involved in the arrest of C Blu  born Camrin Williams  gave incredible and unreliable testimony, prompting pushback from Mayor Adams and Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell.

Advertisement

Camrin Williams, who is also known by the rapper name C Blu, is pictured in the hospital after being shot by his own gun.

This Court must note that the pictures depicting [Williams] with what appears to be a weapon were pulled from social media accounts associated with his music career including a YouTube page and an Instagram account. [Williams] is a rap artist ... and the screenshots from YouTube are clearly from music videos, Semaj wrote. This Court will draw no real-life conclusions about items posted from a music video  especially when there is nothing to support the conclusion that the gun held in the video was real.

Police said that Williams, 16, was part of a disorderly crowd on Jan. 18 in Belmont and refused orders to take his hands out of his pockets, leading to the scuffle during which a stolen gun in his pocket went off. Both Williams and an officer were wounded by the gunshot.

Advertisement

C Blu in the music video "BLU BOP." (You Tube)

But Semaj ruled last week that clear body cam footage showed Williams had been cooperative with cops orders and that police had no legitimate reason to approach him in the first place. She said the gun was fired as cops grabbed at Williams sides.

Adams, whod previously used the case to slam the states bail laws, last week voiced support for the cops involved in the arrest, despite the judges criticism. Sewell echoed Adams comments on Friday.

That individual was known to carry a firearm in the past and we ask (officers) to engage with gang and crew members in that area, she said at a press conference.

Bronx Supreme Court Justice Naita Semaj (Carolyn Bongiorno/Carolyn Bongiorno)

Semaj, however, wrote that shed been presented with no evidence showing that Williams was in a gang.

A prosecution exhibit purporting to prove Williams gang ties was merely screenshots from his social media, the judge wrote. There was nothing in the record before this Court to support the position that [Williams] is in fact a member of a gang, Semaj wrote.

The judge wrote that prosecutors had fallen woefully short of legal standards for keeping the case in Bronx Supreme Court, where Williams was charged as an adult with weapons charges and second-degree assault. The case will proceed in Family Court.

Police have alleged that Williams was a member of the ReyWay Gang. The Bronx DA did not respond to an inquiry.

Breaking News As it happens Get updates on the coronavirus pandemic and other news as it happens with our free breaking news email alerts. >
Ireland has sent 200 units of body armour and 5,000 ready-to-eat meals to Ukraine, as the war against Russia continues.

The country, while military neutral, has committed itself to providing non-lethal aid to Ukrainian forces battling the Russian invasion.

Taoiseach Micheal Martin, alongside a host of senior Irish ministers, have repeatedly stressed that Ireland is not politically neutral in the conflict.

The move was confirmed on Monday by Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney, who said that the 10 tonnes of ready-to-eat meals and the body armour was coming from Irish Defence Forces stocks.

Appearing at an Oireachtas committee last week, Mr Coveney had indicated that the Government was preparing to send spare equipment to the war-torn country.

The Department of Defence confirmed that the equipment and food had already been shipped and will shortly arrive at a Polish logistics hub.

In a statement, Mr Coveney said: This contribution is a specific element of the Governments approximately 11 million euros contribution through the European Peace Facility and the further 20 million euros in humanitarian assistance.



Minister for Foreign Affairs and Defence Simon Coveney

This practical assistance is a further tangible demonstration of Irelands support for and solidarity with the people of Ukraine.

The war in Ukraine has reignited debate in political circles about the longstanding policy of Irish neutrality.

My view right now is our focus is, and the people united on this, is to make sure that there is a speedy response from the European Union on all of the issues that require a such speedy response, Mr Martin told the BBC on Sunday.

We will have to reflect on this military neutrality position more generally .

Were not a military power in that sense, what Ireland does best is on the humanitarian side, and on the peacekeeping side. Those are our strengths.

The bottom line now is that we need to keep a unified focus within Ireland on the Ukrainian situation and what we do best.

One cannot, in the middle of a crisis, change a long-held policy overnight.

Earlier, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said understanding what it means to be a country in the relationship between the UK and the Republic of Ireland tells us something about the war in Ukraine.

In a speech at the London Irish Centre ahead of St Patricks Day, Sir Keir said it was key to focus on the UK and Irelands rich and long history.

The Labour leader said it was easy to see the relationship between the two countries in narrow issues, the (Northern Ireland) Protocol at the moment.

But he said the long partnership with the Republic, through Irelands ambassador to the UK Adrian ONeill, was important.

Sir Keir said: This relationship requires respect  equal respect  and understanding what it means to be a country.

He added: I think it tells us something about whats going on in the world, particularly Ukraine, because at the heart of the conflict in Ukraine is a simple thing, the wish of a country to decide for itself its own future.



Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer attends the Labour Party Irish Society Annual St Patricks Day reception at the London Irish Centre

Sir Keir said: I didnt think in my lifetime I would see Russian tanks rolling into a European country, soldiers kissing their children goodbye as they then stay to fight for their city and for the country, the awful bombing of hospitals. None of us thought we would see that.

The Labour leader said behind those images was that sense of democracy, of sovereignty, the right of a country to decide for itself on what it does.

He added: But when it comes to what does the UK stand for, what does Ireland stand for, when it comes to issues of sovereignty and self-determination, we stand together in the face of Russian aggression because theyre our deep, deep values.

Sir Keir also said: It is about the relationship between UK and Ireland, but its also about the way in which we view the world which is being challenged at the moment in a really profound way.
North Andover, MA (01845)

Today

A steady rain this morning. Showers continuing this afternoon. Expect mist and reduced visibilities at times. High 53F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 100%..

Tonight

Rain showers this evening with clearing overnight. Expect mist and reduced visibilities at times. Low 47F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
The diapers were the final straw.

A victim of accused Sarah Lawrence sex cult leader Lawrence Ray testified Monday that he finally escaped the group shortly after Ray forced him and his sister to wear diapers because they were acting like children.

Advertisement

Santos Rosario, on the stand for his third day of testimony in Manhattan Federal Court, said he ditched the creepy cult in 2015 after growing more and more terrified of the leader of The Ray Family.

Rosario said he realized he needed to leave the cult after Ray ordered him and his sister Felicia, who was also a member of the bizarre cult, to sit around Rays Upper East Side apartment wearing just diapers. Rays right-hand woman Isabella Pollok, who is also charged in the case, put the diapers on the siblings, Rosario said.

Advertisement

I dont remember the context or what we were being blamed for this time but Larry said that me and my sister were supposedly acting like children and he had Isabella put diapers on us, Rosario remember. We just waited there until Larry said we could take them off.

Lawrence Ray is charge with abusing a small group of Sarah Lawrence College students. (HONS/AP)

Rosario, now 30, said he moved into a homeless shelter after five years in the cult rather than endure Rays interrogations and physical abuse.

I couldnt take it anymore. ... These interrogations with Larry started getting scarier and longer. And I couldnt articulate at the time but I was terrified to be there. So I just looked for an opportunity to run away. I had been in the shelter before so they sent me to the same one I had been in the year before, Rosario said.

Santos Rosario and Talia Ray. (Courtesy of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York)

Ray has pleaded not guilty to a 17-count racketeering indictment that charges him with mentally, physically and sexually abusing college students and other young adults between 2010 and 2020. Pollok has pleaded not guilty and will face a separate trial.

Ray is accused of extorting his victims  including Rosario  for millions of dollars using threats, physical violence and compromising information and videos that he used as collateral. Ray is accused of even making one young follower work for him as a prostitute.

During cross examination, Rays defense team sought to portray Rosario as an untrustworthy witness by digging into his past mental health issues.

Advertisement

Rosario detailed last week how Ray cracked his legs with a hammer and encouraged him to kill himself. In one video shown in court, Ray made Rosario smack himself in the face  a disturbing demonstration of his power over his followers.

A photo introduced at trial of Santos Rosario after slapping himself repeatedly in the face, allegedly at Lawrence Ray's behest. (courtesy of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York)

Rosario met Ray in 2010 when he was a sophomore at Sarah Lawrence through Rays daughter, Talia Ray, whom Rosario was dating at the time. At first, Rosario found Ray charismatic and trustworthy. But the friendship soon took a dark, manipulative turn.

By 2011, Ray was constantly accusing Rosario of wasting his time, poisoning him and breaking his things, always demanding money in return for his alleged betrayal, Rosario said.

Rosario said he was completely under Rays spell. Rosario was convinced he was part of a plot to destroy Ray that involved Rays former best friend, ex-NYPD Commissioner Bernie Kerik, according to testimony. Ray was best man at Keriks 1998 wedding, but later testified against the former top cop at a corruption trial.

Rosario said he actually believed he was poisoning Ray and other members of The Ray Family with Ricin.

Lawrence Ray outside his stepfather's home in Pinehurst, N.C. He is accused of making his followers work on the property. (courtesy of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York)

Rosario wrote in journal entries  at Rays direction  that Kerik had visited Rosarios familys home in the Bronx along with other NYPD officers as part of the poisoning plot. Ray had Rosario send him photos of the journal entries, which were false, Rosario testified.

Advertisement

In another example of Rays complete command of the cult, Rosario testified that Ray made another acolyte perform a sex act on Rosario at a hotel in 2015. Ray allegedly stood beside the duo as it happened. The follower was working at the hotel as a prostitute and giving much of the proceeds to Ray, he testified.

In yet another example, Ray allegedly directed Rosario to have sex with Rays lieutenant, Pollok, on three occasions.

After Rosario escaped Rays clutches in 2015, he spent four years away from his tormentor, he testified.

But in 2019, he was contacted by reporters for New York Magazine who were working on a story about Ray. After calling Ray to discuss the article, Rosario fell back into the cult.

Breaking News As it happens Get updates on the coronavirus pandemic and other news as it happens with our free breaking news email alerts. >

Soon, Rosario had emptied his savings account, at Rays direction, he said.

Advertisement

It was not until federal prosecutors spoke to Rosario that he realized he had been duped for years. During his first meeting with the feds, prosecutors played a recording of Ray berating Rosario for 20 straight minutes.

I remember thinking as I heard the recording that I wouldnt ever treat anyone the way he was treating me, Rosario said. And that kind of led to the thought that maybe, just maybe, I was wrong about Larry. And that it was okay to think that.
Unused or out of date medicine can be disposed of properly at almost all pharmacies in Cork from March 14 to April 22 thanks to a new campaign run by the Cork Kerry Community Healthcare.

The Dispose of Unused Medicines Properly (DUMP) campaign allows the public to bring unused or out of date medicines to participating pharmacies to ensure that they are disposed of properly.

The DUMP campaign has run successfully in Cork and Kerry since 2007. In 2018, more than 280 bins, containing more than four tonnes of medicines, were safely disposed of as part of this important campaign.

Unused or out-of-date medicines can build up in the home for a variety of reasons. Storing these medications long-term is not safe and can result in accidental poisonings, intentional overdose, inappropriate sharing of medicines and environmental damage.

Louise Creed, HSE Pharmacist explains why people should take this opportunity to safely dispose of unwanted medicines and said:

We strongly urge people to take this opportunity to get rid of out of date or unused medicines. Medication can pose a real hazard in the home, particularly to children or other vulnerable people. Clearing out your medicine cabinet is something that should be done on a regular basis. Check all the dates and remove anything that is out of date or no longer required. Medicines have an expiry date for the same reason food does and out of date medicines could do more harm than good. Martin Ryan, Resource Officer for Suicide Prevention in Cork, highlighted:

It is extremely important that we review all medicines that we have at home on an ongoing basis. The reduction of medication as means of self harm and suicide are actions under the Connecting for Life strategy Cork and Kerry and we are delighted to support any programme that would reduce access to unused and unwanted medications in the home. David Lane, Drug and Alcohol Services Co-ordinator explained: The pharmacies involved have all embraced the campaign and are actively encouraging people to return unwanted or out of date medicines to them. I cannot emphasis strongly enough how important it is to ensure these medicines are disposed of properly and safely. Please take some time to check out whats in your cabinets and avail of this free service over the coming weeks. The campaign is supported by Cork City Council, Cork County Council, and Kerry County Council.
ITS more than 20 years since I first went to Belarus and western Russia. It was in the aftermath of the accident at the nuclear power plant in Chernobyl, and over the following ten years, I became very familiar with Gomel, where the recent talks between Russian and Ukrainian delegations took place.

I have also been to Kiev and Lviv, two beautiful, civilised cities currently featuring regularly in the news.

Its difficult to watch whats happening there now.

The loss of life and the destruction of property is obscene and the attack on the largest nuclear power plant in Ukraine brought back some horrific memories.

The sight of a fire at that facility sent a shiver up my spine. Weve seen the devastation that can be caused when these places are damaged, and we dont want a repeat of that.

Everyone over a certain age will remember the nuclear accident at the reactor in Chernobyl in Ukraine in 1986. National Geographic give a good account of it for anyone who needs reminding about the worst nuclear accident in history and how it unfolded.

More than 36 years on, scientists estimate the zone around the former plant will be uninhabitable for up to 20,000 years.

On April 25, 1986, routine maintenance was scheduled at the plant, and workers planned to use the downtime to test whether the reactor could still be cooled if the plant lost power.

During the test, however, workers violated safety protocols and power surged inside the plant. Despite attempts to shut down the reactor entirely, another power surge caused a chain reaction of explosions inside.

Finally, the nuclear core itself was exposed, spewing radioactive material into the atmosphere.

Firefighters attempted to put out a series of fires at the plant, and helicopters dumped sand and other materials in an attempt to quench the fires and contain the contamination. Radiation spread as far as Sweden, where officials at another nuclear plant began to ask about what was happening.

After first denying any accident, the authorities finally made a brief announcement, and the world slowly began to learn of the horrific consequences of that incident.

The world rallied round. Hundreds of charitable organisations sprung up to offer help to those affected as a result of the fallout.

Humanitarian aid in the form of food, clothing and medical supplies was collected and delivered to Belarus, Ukraine and western Russia by convoys of all shapes and sizes. We rose to the challenge too in this country.

The nuclear plant was in Ukraine, close to the border with Belarus, but following the explosion, the wind took most of the radiation into Belarus, so they suffered more than most, which is why much of the relief effort was focused there.

They had other problems too though. There was blatant institutional neglect, lack of funding and complete mismanagement of childcare facilities. Thousands of children were housed in institutions and orphanages in terrible conditions.

The Belarus regime cared little about the welfare of those children, so it was left up to other countries to do what they could, and many Irish people did.

Humanitarian aid worth millions of euro was delivered to Belarus and Western Russia over those years and was gratefully received by the ordinary people, but all the volunteers got from the Belarus President, Alexander Lukashenko, who came to power in 1994 and is now the longest serving European president, was obstruction.

Customs officials in particular were a complete nightmare to deal with. They made life very difficult with mountains of red tape and volumes of paperwork. Endless checks were required before the aid could finally be delivered to where it was needed most.

Customs officers in Gomel were particularly difficult. On one occasion, a group of us with truckloads of aid, were locked in a compound for more than 24 hours until they found time to deal with us. Delays like that were normal.

Lukashenkos officials certainly didnt lay out the red carpet, so it struck me as ironic that Gomel was chosen as the location for peace talks.

Lukashenko is by no means the peoples president. He rules by fear and intimidation, and you can feel that oppressive atmosphere once you cross the border from Poland into Belarus.

Allowing the Russian President to use Belarus to access Ukraine for his invasion will not be supported by the ordinary citizens of Belarus who, like Ukrainians people, are decent, hospitable, and generous.

I have many friends in Belarus and Ukraine. People I met during my Chernobyl days and during my time working with the United Nations.

I shared an office with a guy in Cyprus who is a Colonel in the Ukrainian Army. I received an email from him the other day from his base in Kiev and hes worried about his family.

Hes also disturbed about the number of civilian casualties and the destruction of his country. He is wondering what the future holds.

He has every reason to be worried about the future. Any ceasefire from the Russians is being met with distrust after it was reported that families were killed as they tried to leave. Theyre running out of food and water.

But even if the Russians do honour the ceasefire and allow people to leave, the humanitarian corridors dont offer much in the way of refuge.

The Russian defence ministry said in a statement that under Moscows ceasefire proposals, civilians in Kyiv will be offered safe passage to Gomel in Belarus, while those in Kharkiv, the second biggest city, will have a corridor leading only to Russia itself.

Sounds like out of the frying pan and into the fire to me.
Anne Lucey

The controversial Skellig Star Hotel and apartments in Cahersiveen, also known as the Skellig Accommodation Centre, are to host Ukrainian refugees, local representatives have been informed today.

The hotel, 60km from Killarney, was at the centre of controversy in March 2020 when it suddenly opened as a Direct Provision Centre and more than 100 people seeking asylum were transferred from other Direct Provision Centres in Dublin at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.

There was an outbreak of the virus shortly after their arrival. After several protests when residents and locals joined together it was closed as a Direct Provision Centre in September and the residents transferred out.

Subsequent rumours it was reopening as a centre were denied by the Departrment of Justice, which was then the main accommodation agency for asylum seekers.

Local councillor Norma Moriarty (Fianna Fail) received confirmation from Education Minister Norma Foley after enquiring about increased activity around the hotel this weekend.

If lessons are learned, then the 56-bed hotel and its 30 apartments which have now been completed will be suitable, Cllr Moriarty said.

Overcrowding

However, Covid-19 was still of concern and the community in Cahersiveen would like to be reassured there would be no overcrowding, she stressed. .

The community had no real details yet, except the first people were arriving on Tuesday.

There would be plenty of room in primary and secondary schools in Cahersiveen and the children would be warmly welcomed as schools need extra pupils.

The one area under strain will be health, Ms Moriarty said.

GPs

Cahersiveen and the wider area has just three GPs, and they are exhausted after the demands of Covid-19.

We will need extra resources in health, the councillor said.

Richie OConnell, chairman of the Cahersiveen Chamber Alliance, representing businesses in the Iveragh town, said Cahersiveen will welcome anyone who needs help and support. However, because of the history of the premises, local people will be watchful that there are no issues as previously.

There is great support for Ukraine in this town and people want to help Mr OConnell said.

The Killarney Valley Hotel in Fossa outside Killarney, as well as the 3 Lakes Hostel in Killarney town, a sister premises are also to become centres for Ukrainian refugees, closing to guests after St Patricks weekend, it has emerged.

A third hotel, elsewhere in the county, is also understood to be finalising a contract, which in the case of the Killarney premises is for six months with option to extend. Three meals a day are being provided.
Vivienne Clarke

Infectious diseases expert Professor Jack Lambert is calling on the public to continue to wear masks on public transport and in shops.

This is still a serious virus he told Newstalk Breakfast.

Vaccines had made it less of a killer, but some people were still getting very sick and needed to be hospitalised, he explained.

There should be a clear message from the Government that people should continue to do the right thing he urged.

In recent days there was an increase in the number of Covid cases, the elderly and vulnerable were still ending up in hospital, but they were detained for days not months as previously, added Professor Lambert.

The numbers requiring treatment in intensive care were also reducing.

Covid mitigation measures should still be practised, he said  wearing masks, hand washing, vaccinating children.
By Cate McCurry, PA

Taoiseach Micheal Martin is travelling to Washington DC on Monday for a series of engagements to mark St Patricks Day.

He will meet US president Joe Biden as part of his four-day trip.

It will be the first time the Fianna Fail leader has met Mr Biden at the White House after last years celebrations were scaled back because of the coronavirus pandemic.

On Tuesday, Mr Martin will take part in a cultural programme, which includes lunch for Congressman Richie Neal, a ceremony in honour of former SDLP leader and civil rights campaigner John Hume, a Tourism Ireland reception, and a special performance of Riverdance.

Taoiseach Micheal Martin speaks with US President Joe Biden via video-link on St Patricks Day 2021 (Julien Behal Photography/PA)

On Wednesday he will carry out a series of economic engagements, including a Women in Business Executive roundtable, a US Chamber of Commerce and Science Foundation Ireland event, and the Ireland Funds 30th National Gala.

On Thursday, there will be a programme of events at the White House and Capitol Hill, including a breakfast hosted by US vice president Kamala Harris, the Speakers Lunch on Capitol Hill, a bilateral between the Taoiseach and president Biden, as well as the traditional Shamrock Ceremony and Ambassadors St Patricks Day Reception.

In meetings, the leaders are expected to discuss the strong cultural and economic ties between Ireland and the US, as well as the situation in Ukraine and ongoing support for the Good Friday Agreement.

In a statement, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the two men will reaffirm the close and historic partnership between the United States and Ireland and the extraordinary bonds between our people.

They will discuss their countries contributions to the international effort to support the people of Ukraine and to impose costs on Russia for its unprovoked and unjustified war, Ms Psaki added.

They will also talk about a range of global issues and shared priorities, including combating the Covid-19 pandemic worldwide, strengthening global health security, tackling the climate crisis, and working together on the United Nations Security Council.

In addition, they will discuss their continued support for the Good Friday Agreement (also known as the Belfast Agreement).

Vice president Kamala Harris will host the Taoiseach for a breakfast at the Naval Observatory on March 17th.
Apparently, climate denial is a major turn-off.

New data from dating app OKCupid shared with The Hill on Thursday revealed that a potential matchs opinion on the climate crisis was the biggest deal breaker issue for love seekers.

We have just seen over time, climate change being more and more this huge topic for our millennial[] daters especially, OKCupid director of product marketing Jane Reynolds told The Hill. People feel that with climate change, it says so much more about you  if thats something that you believe in and are concerned about.

Over the past three years, the app has surveyed six million users about their top dealbreaker issue when looking for a date. A total of 81 percent said that they were concerned about climate change. This is more than the 76 percent of 650,000 users who were concerned about gender equality last year and the 66 percent of two-million U.S. users who said they were worried about gun control.

The app also surveyed 250,000 global users last year and found that 90 percent of them said it was important that their date care about climate change.

This isnt the first time that OKCupid has noticed the importance of climate for its users. In April 2021, the app announced on its blog that nine of 10 users said it was important to match with someone who cared about the environment. This prompted the app to add a Climate Change Advocate profile badge to profiles last April in honor of Earth Month. Users received the badge by answering Yes to the question Do you want to support the environment by adding a Climate Change Advocate badge to your profile? They were also added to a Climate Change Stack so that other Earth-conscious users could find them.

Reynolds told Yale Climate Connections in August of last year that the badge actually led to some dates. She said users had told her that they began talking to people because of their shared climate commitments and went on first dates volunteering to help the planet.

So we love to hear those stories and we feel really confident that it helped people match on the things that are important to them, she told Yale Climate Connections.

OKCupid data echoes national and global polls showing that people are increasingly concerned about the climate crisis. In April 2021, the app said there had been a more-than 450 percent increase in people mentioning climate change and the environment on their profiles over the preceding four years. People who expressed concern about climate also got 37 percent more likes and 11 percent more matches.

The most recent data shared with The Hill revealed that women are 7 percent more likely to care about climate than men. It was pretty much equally a dealbreaker issue across the U.S., with 94 percent of respondents in San Francisco, 90 percent in New York, 90 percent in San Diego, 89 percent in Los Angeles, 88 percent in Washington, D.C. and 85 percent in Miami saying it was important for their date to care about the issue.

However, Reynolds said that the OKCupid dating pool might not reflect the country overall, since it is a progressive app that tends to have users who are more open-minded and concerned about issues like climate.

Were everywhere around the world and in the U.S., but we certainly lean to more metro areas, she told The Hill.

OKCupid was the fifth-most popular dating app in the U.S. in 2019 and had 1.79 million subscribers.
Theres something comforting and wise about species that have been around for millions of years, like the ancient redwoods and horseshoe crabs, which have existed relatively unchanged since their evolutionary processes were perfected for their niches in the ecosystem.

Many people are aware of the importance as well as the plight of bees. You may have noticed that not as many of the flowers in your neighborhood are buzzing and that there are fewer fuzzy yellow and black bodies flitting from flower to flower. Thats because, according to Greenpeace, in the past 60 years the number of working bee colonies per hectare  a hectare equals about 2.5 acres  has decreased by 90 percent. Habitat loss and increased winter die-off rates are two of the main reasons for the steep decline.

But have you ever wondered where the bees that are responsible for much of the food you eat originated?

Honeybees are not native to North America, but were brought over from Europe for honey production in the early 17th century, according to Texas A&M University. The first subspecies came from Italy in 1859, followed later by subspecies from Spain, Portugal and other locations.

According to an entomologist with the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station Dr. Spencer Johnston, a study of honeybees collected from Africa and Europe showed four distinct genetic groups, but the U.S. bee genome was a complete mix of the three different introduced European subspecies, reported Texas A&M.

Until not long ago, it was thought unlikely that wild honeybees still existed in Europe, reported Julius-Maximilians-Universitat Wurzburg (JMU). But two biologists from Bavaria have disproved that assumption in a new study.

The study, Semi-natural habitats promote winter survival of wild-living honeybees in an agricultural landscape by Benjamin Rutschmann and Patrick Kohl, two doctoral students at the JMU Chair of Animal Ecology and Tropical Biology, was published last month in the journal Biological Conservation. Their research shows that there are wild honeybees living and thriving in the Galicia region in the northwest of Spain.

We started our project in 2019, but there have probably always been wild-living honey bees in Galicia, Rutschmann told EcoWatch in an email.

In October of 2019, Rutschmann and Kohl began researching honeybees in Galicia. Their colleague Alejandro Machado had previously found swarms of the bees living inside hollowed out electric poles and suggested that they study them.

The researchers combed an area of about 52.5 square miles in search of other colonies of wild honeybees living in hollowed out poles.

We discovered 214 poles, Rutschmann said, as JMU reported. In the first year of our investigation, we found 29 colonies.

They next visited the region in March of 2020 and discovered that 17 of them had made it through the winter, even though they had neither been fed nor treated against parasites, said Rutschmann, as reported by JMU.

According to Rutschmann, unlike in Germany the wild honeybees of Galicia are not descended from imported honeybee subspecies raised by beekeepers, JMU reported.

The wing pattern of the Galician honeybees studied by the researchers showed that the members of the power pole colonies were those of the Iberian honeybee (Apis mellifera iberiensis) of Spain.

Wild-living and managed honeybees form the same population: They mate with each other, and swarms immigrate from beekeepers. So, they form one population but even the different way of living could have an influence on their survival, Rutschmann told EcoWatch.

The Galician honeybees survival is greatly dependent upon the natural state of their surroundings, reported JMU. Electric poles in the midst of heathland, shrubland or forests saw a greater number of colonies making it through the winter than those surrounded by fields that had been extensively cultivated.

Natural habitats provide more food for the honeybees, and, in surroundings that were more than half semi-natural, at least every other wild honeybee colony made it through the winter, JMU reported. However, in habitats that were less than a quarter semi-natural, wild honeybees had little chance of survival.

While colonies dont survive in intensive agricultural areas, semi-natural areas are important for the bees, Rutschmann said to EcoWatch. We think that important food sources are: sweet chestnut, bramble, raspberry, heather, Erica and genista spp. species. Generally, Galicia is a region with a long tradition of beekeeping and honey production, most likely because forage is historically abundant there.

As the study makes clear, the preservation and restoration of near-natural landscapes is of utmost importance to the survival of the wild honeybees of Galicia.

Without sufficient nesting and feeding habitats, even the banning of pesticides or the halt of climate change will not help insects, Kohl said, as reported by JMU.

Machado, who lives in Galicia, said that after studying 52 honeybee colonies over a period of two years, the researchers observed that about 40 percent of them made it through the winter.

The survival data for the wild honeybees of Galicia is the first ever compiled for any colonies of wild honeybees in Europe, but Rutschmann believes they exist all across the continent.

We think that there are wild-living honey bees all over Europe. Its unclear how long they can survive in different regions. This depends not only on parasites and pathogens but due to our research also mainly on food resources and the availability of suitable nesting sites, Rutschmann told EcoWatch.

According to Rutschmann, there are various things people can do to help to increase the survival rate of the wild Galician honeybees.

Preserving nesting sites for wild-living bee colonies (in the case of the power poles this is depending on the electric company). Preserve also old trees with cavities! We show that semi-natural areas can mitigate honey bee colonies losses; these should be protected. The use of pesticide should be banned or limited to the minimum needed, said Rutschmann.

Thankfully, the wild honeybee population in Spain is currently stable, but it remains to be seen if their numbers can continue to be sustained with the onslaught of intensive cultivation and its use of dangerous fertilizers and pesticides.

Rutschmanns recommendations for what people can do to help preserve the habitat of the wild honeybees of Galicia are things that are universally good for the planet.

Eat local organic food, dont support intensive agriculture, avoid meat as much as possible, Rutschmann said.




Slow Chinese demand, feed costs attributed to expected drop in EU pork production

The European Union's pork production is forecast to fall based on slowing Chinese demand combined with rising feed costs, according to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Even then, the bloc is anticipated to be able to maintain or even increase its pork export levels in 2022.

The surge of Chinese demand for pork in 2020 brought optimism to the EU pork sector, which initiated an increase in the supply of piglets in the same year.

However, with slow Chinese demand and the rising costs of feed, energy and labor last year, the outlook for the sector deteriorated, and the sow herd was cut by 3.6% to a new record low.

Major cuts are forecast for Germany and Poland. Even in Spain, which has shown steady growth in slaughter since 2013, a leveling-off of slaughter is anticipated in 2022. The lower supply of piglets will eventually lead to a reduction in the slaughter of hogs and reduced pork production.

While slaughter is not expected to decline in nearly half of the EU's member states, a decline is expected among the bloc's leading producers: Spain, Germany, France, Denmark, the Netherlands and Belgium. But, France's slaughter is forecast to increase slightly this year as ending stocks are expected to have increased in 2021. Still, the country is expected to see lower pig numbers in 2022.

Taken as a whole, EU slaughter is projected to decrease to 247 million head and pork production to 23.3 million tonnes CWE. Ending inventories in 2022 are forecast at 140 million head.

However, based on high commercial stocks developed in 2021, the EU swine sector has the volume available to sustain or even increase pork exports this year.

Through its export diversification efforts, the EU will not be as reliant on Chinese demand. But, ff export demand falls short, it is anticipated EU pork stocks will further build, pressuring prices and profit margins.



- USDA




Ghana to provide US$2.3 million in compensation to poultry farmers affected by bird flu

The Ghanaian government has allocated GHS 17 million (~US$2.3 million; GHS 1 = US$0.14) in compensation to poultry farmers affected by bird flu in the country, the Ghana News Agency reported.

Dr Owusu Afriyie Akoto, Ghana's Minister of Food and Agriculture, said the amount is part of a GHS 20 million (US$2.7 million) allocation to be channeled towards compensation to farmers, purchase of decontamination materials, and communication materials to be disseminated to farmers on how to eliminate the disease.

Compensation will be provided to 167 poultry farms affected by bird flu from July to December 2021, as well as another 37 farms affected by the disease from 2015 to 2018.

Farmers will be given GHS 30 (~US$4.19) per bird, GHS 20 (~US$2.79) per pullet, GHS 10 (~US$1.40) per chick, GHS 80 (~US$11.17) per bag of livestock feed, and GHS 10 (~US$1.40) per crate of eggs.

Compensation for farmers affected by bird flu this year will be provided in a second tranche after the disbursement to the farmers from 2015 to 2021.

The minister also said the government will employ 550 new veterinary professionals and purchase vehicles, motorbikes and laboratory equipment to contain future outbreaks.

He called on poultry farmers to increase biosecurity and improve management practices on farms, as well as avoid restocking until certification from the ministry.

The biometric registration of poultry farmers has been rolled out by the Ghanaian government to modernise poultry farming in the country and enhancing the accuracy of data for planning, targeting for support, and payment of compensations in future.

The minister urged Victor Oppong Adjei, chairman of the Ghana National Poultry Farmers Association, to encourage members to join in the biometric registration.

Ghana has reported a total of 554,638 birds have been affected by bird flu in the country, with 1,701.5 bags of feed destroyed and 2,548 crates of egg were affected. No new outbreaks have been confirmed since February 2, 2022.

- Ghana News Agency
The 83-year-old serial killer accused of dismembering a Brooklyn woman and dumping her body parts on the street stated the obvious as she was led out of an NYPD stationhouse in handcuffs Monday afternoon.

I need a lawyer! I need a lawyer, Harvey Marcelin, a transgender woman also known as Marcelina Harvey, said as she walked past a phalanx of media, her signature wig gone, after being processed at the 75th Precinct stationhouse on murder charges.

Advertisement

Serial killer Harvey Marcelin is escorted out of the 75th Precinct stationhouse Monday. (Theodore Parisienne/for New York Daily News)

Marcelin is accused of killing Susan Leyden, 68, in the Pennsylvania Ave. apartment where the suspect had been living since February.

Harvey Marcelin

Police believe Leyden, who met the suspect on social media more than two years ago, met her gruesome fate shortly after showing up at Marcelins apartment on Feb. 27.

Advertisement

Two days later, on March 1, police said, Marcelin bought a buzz saw at a Manhattan Home Depot and returned home.

Susan Leyden is pictured in an undated photo.

The next night, she allegedly left Leydens headless, limbless torso at Atlantic and Pennsylvania Aves. stuffed in a shopping cart. Leydens leg was found nearby four days later.

In a macabre video from a 99 cents store after the slaying, Marcelin is seen getting up out of a wheelchair, a human leg visible on the seat, police said.

Marcelin, who did more than 50 years in prison for killing two girlfriends when he identified as a man, said nothing to police when first arrested for Leydens death. She was initially charged with concealment of a human corpse and tampering with physical evidence. She was charged with Leydens murder on Friday.

'I need a lawyer,' suspect in gruesome dismembering of Brooklyn woman says as she leaves precinct stationhouse. (Brittany Kriegstein/New York Daily News)

Chief of Detectives James Essig said blood splatter and several trash bags were found inside Marcelins apartment. A woman who went with the suspect to Home Deport to buy the bags, saw and cleaning materials is cooperating with police and was not charged.

The Daily News Flash Weekdays Catch up on the days top five stories every weekday afternoon. >

Marcelins criminal record dates to 1957, when she was arrested for assault. She was later busted for gambling and, in 1963, for attempted rape. But that case was dropped when the victim didnt show up in court in March of that year.

The following month, Marcelin shot her girlfriend dead in the hallway of their Harlem building. Marcelin, diagnosed as having a schizoid personality with sociopathic features was found not criminally insane and was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison, according to court records and documents

Released on lifetime parole in 1984, the convicted killer was busted less than a year later for fatally stabbing another girlfriend, then cutting up her body and dumping her remains in plastic bags near Central Park, according to court documents and police.

Advertisement

Marcelin plead guilty to manslaughter and was paroled in 2019.

At a funeral on Sunday, Leyden was remembered as a devoted single mom and talented jewelry saleswoman whose final years were derailed by untreated mental illness.

The last 12 years were a struggle for her. She had untreated mental illness that presented strongly in her 50s and it contributed to so much pain and suffering, Leydens daughter, Nicole Haymo, said at her New Jersey funeral.

I want to be open about it because maybe if there was less shame around it people would get the help they need. And if there was more education around it we could be better equipped to help those who need it.
Emporia, VA (23847)

Today

Partly cloudy with afternoon showers or thunderstorms. Gusty winds and small hail are possible. High 89F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%..

Tonight

Partly to mostly cloudy skies with scattered thunderstorms during the evening. Low 59F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 50%.
UCM awarded Wella Centre of Excellence

University College Isle of Mans (UCM), hair and beauty department and salon, Synnova, have been made a Wella Centre of Excellence, highlighting the organisations high level of facilities, qualifications and student talent.

The prestigious hallmark is awarded to an elite group of educational establishments in the UK and Ireland each year. The award aims to highlight the links between industry and education and is at the discretion of Wella to select number of colleges who are achieving standards worthy of this award.

Hair and beauty students at UCM enjoy working in the Synnova salon which is open to the public and provides them with first-hand experience.

As well as demonstrating excellence, UCM had to meet set criteria which aim to keep students and staff up-to-date with the latest styles and colours.

As part of the award, students at UCM will benefit from four Wella-led education sessions a year, bespoke training videos and one guest artists visit each year, as well as many other benefits.

Head of Faculty, Melanie Clague, said: This achievement is a testament to the fantastic facilities we have in Synnova, the hard work and skills of our fantastic hair and beauty staff and of course our brilliant students. We join a select group of colleges whove proven their excellence and were delighted to be included.

Synnova is one of three realistic working environments open to the public at UCM which provide students with hands-on experience, preparing them for entering the workplace.
Covid-19 swabbing centre to move from Grandstand

The Covid-19 swabbing centre will be relocating later this month.

Manx Care has confirmed the testing/swabbing centre (currently at the Grandstand) will shortly move to The Crookall Centre, Kensington Road, Douglas (the old Finch Hill GP surgery). Testing/swabbing will commence in this location from Monday 21 March 2022.

From this date, all appointments will be at The Crookall Centre, not at the Grandstand.

Lateral flow testing continues to be the principal method of detecting Covid, with PCR testing continuing to play an integral role in the Isle of Man Governments Living with Covid-19  Moving to an endemic approach. Please be reminded that continued wearing of face masks within Nobles Hospital, Manannan Court and Ramsey and District Cottage Hospital is paramount.
New London flights announced

Loganair is introducing new routes to London City and London Heathrow this spring.

The increased connectivity will ensure essential business links with London are maintained as well as giving improved access to international travel through the Heathrow link.

Dr Alex Allinson, Minister for Enterprise, commented: I am delighted to be able to announce the introduction of additional capacity to London commencing mid-April, with a further increase to the schedule from the beginning of May. This will see the return of double daily services to London City, permitting day return business travel in both directions, together with a daily service to London Heathrow, enabling much needed international connectivity.

We have been working closely with Treasury and the Department of Infrastructure on plans to improve connectivity to the Isle of Man, including a full air services review. The announcement today is the first part of this work and gives us a much welcomed return to central London connectivity for our business travellers and visitors alike.

Rebecca George, Chief Executive Officer Chamber of Commerce, said: We are very pleased to see the return of the central London flights. The Islands business community relies on the accessibility of day return business travel to carry out essential work in the UK as well as bring over key contacts to the Isle of Man. This announcement will put the Island back on the map for our London connections and enable stronger business links for the future.

New services will commence from the Isle of Man to London City from 19 April, initially offering a daily flight (except Saturdays) before gearing up to two flights each weekday from Tuesday 3 May. From that date, the new schedule of morning and evening flights will offer a day-return capability in each direction, plus a flight in each direction on Sunday evenings.

Services linking the Isle of Man with London Heathrow will commence from Tuesday 3 May, with a daily service designed to offer connections with Loganairs major partner airlines including British Airways to a wide range of destinations worldwide, including key points in Europe, North America and South Africa.

Both the London City and Heathrow routes will be flown under Loganairs codeshare agreement with British Airways, and tickets for the new flights will go on sale next week.
Isle of Man reaffirms commitment to sanctions

The Isle of Man has reaffirmed its commitment to implementing all UK and UN sanctions deployed in response to Russia's actions, and to further economic crime prevention measures.

On Wednesday afternoon, Treasury Minister David Ashford MBE MHK joined ministers from the other Crown Dependencies in a virtual meeting with the UKs Minister of State for Security and Borders, Rt Hon Damian Hinds MP, and the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Corporate Responsibility, Rt Hon Lord Callanan, to discuss the Economic Crime Bill, which forms part of the UKs package of economic measures against targeted Russian individuals and organisations.

The meeting provided an update on elements of the legislation including:

The Register of Overseas Entities (ROE), which will ensure owners of UK property cannot hide behind opaque corporate structures registered overseas

Unexplained Wealth Order (UWO) powers, which will enable UK law enforcement agencies to take more effective action against kleptocrats and criminals, compelling them to prove the origins of their funds in the UK

Changes to sanctions enforcement powers to ensure financial sanctions introduced by the Government are as effective as possible.

Minister Ashford said: It was extremely helpful to share this open and positive discussion with UK ministers on the Economic Crime Bill. It provided the opportunity to ensure that the Isle of Mans position was clearly communicated and understood.

I explained that we will play our part in ensuring that the Island applies all sanctions measures in line with the UK. Also, that we remain fully committed to ensuring that a public register of beneficial ownership is established in line with our existing commitment, which will compliment and support the UKs efforts in establishing a register of overseas entities.

The UKs Security Minister Damian Hinds said: I welcome the action the Isle of Man has already taken and continues to take to sanction Putin and his cronies. We will continue to work with them to clamp down on corruption and the flow of dirty money.

Our new Economic Crime Bill will further enable the UK to take action against corrupt elites, simplifying the process of imposing sanctions and strengthening law enforcements ability to investigate the origins of property and recover the proceeds of crime.
Government exploring further humanitarian support for those fleeing Ukraine

The Ukraine Relief Committee met this morning to assess the Ukraine refugee situation and explore the next steps the Isle of Man will take in supporting those fleeing the conflict.

The Isle of Man Government is in ongoing discussions with the UK Government and other international stakeholders on visas for Ukrainian nationals and the anticipated sponsorship scheme which would allow Ukrainians without family ties to UK residents to enter the country.

The Committee is working to ensure that the Island is ready to offer this humanitarian pathway for those escaping the conflict as soon as possible, which would enable islanders to sponsor Ukrainians to come the Isle of Man and into peoples homes.

Minister for the Cabinet Office, Kate Lord-Brennan MHK said: I know there is a sense of at frustration at the time the UK is taking to open up a pathway to allow Ukrainian refugees without family connection to Britain to come to the UK and potentially onwards to the Isle of Man. Mirroring the UK pathway should be the preferred way to proceed, but we do not want process to get in the way of the generous offers of support from our community. We are actively considering alternatives.

We are asking the public to start considering whether they are ready to open up their homes or provide suitable accommodation they might have for Ukrainian refugees. This is an initial step while we await further information from the UK and determine how best we can support the community to offer a safe haven to those fleeing the conflict.

More information will be published in the coming days and those interested in becoming a host or who wish to offer any other support can email ukrainesupport@gov.im.

Wendy Shimmin, spokesperson for One World Centre Isle of Man, added: Were all aware of the distressing scenes coming from Ukraine as a result of the conflict and it is clear that more humanitarian help is needed. The potential opportunity to provide a sponsorship scheme to the Island and welcome families into the Manx community is good news and a great step forward by government.

We know that many people are keen to help. Those interested need to carefully consider what it means to welcome someone into their home for an indefinite period. It is important to provide stability for these families so its likely that the commitment will need to be for at least six months in the first instance.

Currently, Ukrainian nationals with a family member living in the Isle of Man can apply for a free visa to come to the Island. The Isle of Man Government has now received seven potential applications for this pathway and reminds those who need any immigration help to email ukraineguidance@gov.im.

In the meantime, residents are encouraged to donate to the Disasters Emergency Committees Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal. Donating money, rather than physical items, allows charities to source relief items locally, ensuring quality and quick delivery to those in need.
Athens, AL (35611)

Today

Mostly cloudy skies. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High near 80F. Winds NW at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

A few clouds. Low around 60F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph.
Meta may be walking back a temporary exemption that let Facebook users in Ukraine call for Russian President Putin's death. Reuters claims to have seen an internal post from Meta global affairs President Nick Clegg indicating the company was "narrowing" its moderation to make clear that it wouldn't allow calls for the death of any head of state. While Meta didn't appear to have changed its mind on Russian soldiers, the firm also wanted to make it "explicitly clear" that hate speech and threats against the general Russian population were also forbidden.

When asked for comment, Meta confirmed the new policy to Engadget but didn't add details. Clegg said Meta would share the change in policy with the Oversight Board that helps shape the social media giant's moderation practices.

The rethink comes just as Russia has banned Instagram in response to Meta's earlier stance on calls for violence. The country had already blocked Facebook, but Interfax and Reuters reported that state prosecutors had called on a court to label Meta as an "extremist organization" with that previous company policy in mind.

We wouldn't count on Russia lifting any bans following Meta's revised approach. The state has blocked or limited multiple foreign internet services to stifle political dissent, including Twitter and Zello, and CNBC said prosecutors had opened a criminal investigation of the company in answer to the previous Ukraine policy. Meta doesn't have much support in the Kremlin, and that opinion is unlikely to change any time soon.
All products recommended by Engadget are selected by our editorial team, independent of our parent company. Some of our stories include affiliate links. If you buy something through one of these links, we may earn an affiliate commission.

It didnt take long for wireless earbuds to become ubiquitous. Apples AirPods launched back in September 2016, joining notable true wireless headphones from Jabra, Sony, Samsung, and others. A few years later, theyre the go-to choice for many of us when listening to music, podcasts and streaming services on our phones and tablets.

However, because we use them so often, wireless earbuds can quickly get dirty. They will come into contact with ear wax, oils and skin cells. Hygiene aside, you should clean your earbuds (and their charging case) because it may result in better-sounding, longer-lasting headphones. Always use the gentlest cleaning equipment before going ham with rubbing alcohol or a metallic tool. Doing so will reduce the chances of damaging your headphones' often glossy plastic casing and lessen the chances of damaging the delicate membranes that many buds (and some eartips) have. I speak from experience, having perforated two AirPod membranes due to over-enthusiastic cleaning. Even when removing the tips, take care: With Sonys WF-1000XM4, you need to twist and pull them off. Just follow the manufacturers guidance (we list several guides below), along with our best tips below.

How to clean your wireless earbuds

Mat Smith/Engadget

The cleaning process differs depending on what kind of buds you have. First, there are wireless earbuds with removable silicone (or plastic) buds, like the Galaxy Buds, Sonys WF-1000XM4 buds or most Beats buds, and several models with a single solid body, like Apples original AirPods.

The main difference is that the detachable tips are easier to deep clean. They are also replaceable and spare tips often come in-box. You can also use soapy water or other mild cleaning products on particularly messy tips without fear of damaging the electrical parts of your headphones.

Wipe down the earbuds and removable tips with a microfiber cloth. As most wireless buds are stored in a case, you may find that dirt from the tips has shifted to the headphones too. Apple says you can use 70-percent isopropyl alcohol wipe, 75-percent ethyl alcohol wipe or disinfectant wipes to clean the exterior of its wireless headphones, but advises that you shouldnt use wet wipes on the speaker mesh parts of the AirPods. Samsungs guidance sticks to soft dry clothes and cotton swabs.

Remove the tips, and gently trace the inside of each bud with cotton swab, or a toothpick if you need something thinner. If any detritus sticks around, upgrade to a metal loop on the end of an earphone cleaning tool, but just go carefully. Metallic objects are more likely to scratch and pierce things. The cleaning tool also has a brush at the other end to pull out any loose dirt. Once clear, wipe the sides of the tips with a slightly damp cloth.

The AirPods Pro tips each have a delicate mesh membrane, making it easier to clean than membranes on the headphones themselves, but theyre also fragile. Apple itself advises that you can rinse the tips with water, adding you shouldnt use soap or other cleaning products on them. If you do use a damp cloth or rinse them, make sure to set them on a dry cloth and let them dry completely before reattaching them.

Apple advises using cotton swabs or a dry cloth for the microphone and speaker mesh parts of the AirPods. You can also use a bulb air blower, which should provide a mild amount of force to dislodge dirt without harming electrics. However, while it might be stronger, dont use canned air. Sony says this can force dust further into the microphone or sound outlet holes.

How to clean your wireless earbuds' charging case

Mat Smith/Engadget

You might find that your charging case is in a worse state than your buds. With deep crevices to pick up dirt from your buds when theyre charging, the case can also pick up pocket-lint from being in, well, pockets and your bag. These cases typically use metal contacts to connect to and charge the buds, so any build-up of dirt or earwax can actually affect recharging your headphones. It pays to keep those charging contacts clean. A soft cloth, or a cotton swab for more difficult-to-reach locations, should be able to capture anything blocking your buds from charging. You could also use a bit of air from a bulb air blower  I find the ones with a brush attached are perfect for this.

For both the earbuds and the case, you can use a thin toothpick to pull away any grime or wax trapped in the seams of the device. Most earbuds are molded plastic, but some have edges and lines that collect dirt together.

How to keep your wireless earbuds clean

Now your buds are looking pristine, try to keep them looking that way. If youre using your AirPods or Galaxy Buds during your workouts, wipe them down with a cloth afterward to reduce the chances of moisture getting inside. The more frequently you check on the state of your wireless earbuds, the easier they are to clean.

Well finish this guide with a little bit of digital hygiene: make sure any companion TWE apps are up-to-date. These updates can sometimes add notable new features or improve performance. Your smartphone will usually transmit firmware updates to your earbuds automatically after OS and app updates, so make sure you keep them nearby to your phone. This is especially true with iPhones and AirPods, which will not notify you when firmware updates are available. Check that youve got the latest version of the firmware in iOS settings (you probably do), and if its not up-to-date, make sure both your iPhone and AirPods are plugged into power and (crucially) near each other. The update should be beamed to the AirPods pretty quickly, but you can also leave the devices next to each other overnight to ensure the update happens.
Cops and federal agents stepped up their search for a murderer who has shot five homeless men  two fatally  in New York City and the nations capital, identifying him as a lone gunman who is preying on both cities most vulnerable.

Mayor Adams and Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser teamed up with the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to release new photos of the suspected gunman.

Advertisement

A surveillance image released by authorities of the man suspected of shooting five homeless men in New York City and Washington. (DC Police Department)

The killers last known attack was early Saturday morning, when he shot a man sleeping in a doorway in SoHo in the head, killing him, police said. The man was the shooters second suspected victim that morning. Only 90 minutes prior, the suspect shot a homeless man, who was struck in the arm and survived, police said.

The gunman, captured on surveillance video wearing all black, shot three men in Washington between March 3 and March 9. One of those victims died after being shot and stabbed multiple times. His tent was also set on fire.

Advertisement

A sixth possible victim found dead in Tribeca does not appear to have been shot, as first believed, police said Monday.

Police investigate after a homeless man was found dead on Murray St. and Greenwich St. in Manhattan on Sunday. (Gardiner Anderson/for New York Daily News)

Someone knows this person, Adams said at a joint news conference in Washington, D.C. with Bowser. Were asking for the public to find him. We dont want to lose another resident in this city, in New York City or anywhere else.

Investigators said they were able to link the shootings in both cities thanks to an attentive D.C. detective originally from Queens, D.C. Police Chief Robert Contee said. That investigator noticed images of the suspect in New York on social media and alerted the feds, realizing the gunman had likely struck in two major cities.

Authorities said they are still investigating how the gunman is traveling or where he lives.

Police released images of a suspect in the shooting of homeless men in New York City and Washington, D.C. (NYPD)

Advertisement

In the earliest incident, cops responding to the sound of gunshots at 4 a.m. on March 3 found a homeless man shot on New York Ave.. He was taken to a local hospital and survived.

Five days later, cops responding to a 1:20 a.m. report of gunfire found a homeless man shot on H St.. He also was taken to a local hospital and survived.

The next day, about 2:50 a.m. on March 9 cops spotted a tent fire on New York Ave. When the blaze was extinguished, first responders found a homeless man dead inside. An autopsy found he had been both stabbed and shot multiple times.

Just three days later the first victim was shot in Manhattan.

Advertisement

On Saturday, a 38-year-old man sleeping on King St. between Varick St. and Sixth Ave. in Hudson Square was shot in the arm about 4:30 a.m., cops said. The victim was taken to Bellevue Hospital in stable condition.

That wounded victim may have saved his own life by holding his hand to his ear and pretending to make a 911 call to scare off the shooter, who still had the gun pointed at him, police sources said. The victim had no cellphone.

About an hour and a half later, a second homeless man was shot while asleep in a sleeping bag on the corner of Lafayette and Howard Sts. in Chinatown, police said. But police didnt discover him until almost 12 hours later when a 911 caller alerted them of a shooting victim. He was dead at the scene.

Police investigate after a homeless man was found shot to death on Murray St. and Greenwich St. in Manhattan on Sunday. (Gardiner Anderson/for New York Daily News)

Our homeless population is one of our most vulnerable and an individual praying on them as they sleep is an exceptionally heinous crime, NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell said. We will use every tool, every technique and every partner to bring the killer to justice.

Authorities have released surveillance images of the suspect in both Manhattan and Washington.

Our Washington and New York City field offices have been working hand-in-hand with the D.C. metropolitan police and the New York Police Department, ATF Director Marvin Richardson said. One of these shootings occurred within blocks of our Washington D.C. headquarters.

Advertisement

The NYPD is offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to an arrest while the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington is offering $25,000. The ATF is offering an additional $20,000.

Adams dispatched homeless outreach teams to encourage people on the streets to move to shelters. But several homeless people told the Daily News they were torn between the dangers of the street and the dangers of the shelters.

The Daily News Flash Weekdays Catch up on the days top five stories every weekday afternoon. >

This guy is crazy, I dont understand what he has against homeless people, said Jason Andersen, 45, who was sitting with a blanket on 14th St. near Sixth Ave. in Manhattan. Theres a lot of discrimination against homeless people.

Andersen said he was the victim of an attack on the street last year when a man took a metal pole and smashed him in the face while he was sleeping on Lafayette St. and Houston St. The attack did permanent damage to his right eye.

Advertisement

One man sitting at the corner of Sixth Ave. and W. 4th St. was asking passersby for change to get a room for the night.

He said he hadnt heard about the shooter targeting homeless people in the neighborhood and was shocked.

I think its cruel, he said. The Bible says that sin has to be dealt with. Thats really sad, killing somebody, taking somebodys life. Someone innocent and they didnt do nothing. They have the audacity to do that, they should be behind bars.

Anyone with information can call Crime Stoppers at (800) 577-TIPS. All calls will be kept confidential.
Israel appears to be recovering from a large-scale cyberattack. According to Haaretz and Kan's Amichai Stein, attackers took down several Israeli government websites on Monday evening, including those for the ministries of health, interior, justice and welfare. The Prime Minister's Office website was also affected. All of the websites are back online, the country's National Cyber Directorate said in a statement.

The government hasn't officially identified a likely perpetrator, but it did say the sites were victims of a denial of service attack that flooded them with traffic. Haaretz sources claimed the cyberattack targeted sites with a gov.il domain, and suspected that either a state actor or a "large organization" was responsible. DW notes an Iran-linked hacker group supposedly took credit, and that this may have been retaliation for an alleged Israeli operation against an Iranian nuclear facility. Neither has been confirmed, however.

It's unclear whether or not this is the largest cyberattack against Israel to date, as a defense source told Haaretz. However, the NCF and defense officials were reportedly concerned enough to declare a state of emergency and review the possible damage, including anything that might compromise other key websites and critical infrastructure.

In contrast to the assaults that hobbled Ukrainian government websites ahead of Russia's invasion, the denial of service attacks here are unlikely to have done much damage. They made it difficult to reach the websites, but there's no evidence the culprits defaced sites or compromised data. Still, the cyberattack may exacerbate an already tense situation  it comes just a day after Iran fired missiles at the Iraqi city of Erbil in an apparent warning to the US and its allies. Israel was already on guard, and the country is known to respond to cyberattacks with physical force.
Ukraine is now using Clearview AI's facial recognition technology for purposes such as identifying Russian soldiers, its CEO claimed. Hoan Ton-That told Reuters the company offered Ukraine's defense ministry free access to its system following the invasion by Russia.

According to the report, Clearview suggested Ukraine could use the tech to reunite refugees with family members, fight misinformation, assess at checkpoints whether someone is a person of interest and to identify dead bodies. The company hasn't offered its technology to Russia.

Engadget has contacted the defense ministry for comment. Ukraine officials previously suggested they were considering using the tech.

It's not clear exactly what Ukraine is using the system for, Ton-That said, while noting it shouldn't be used as the sole means of identification. He and Clearview advisor Lee Wolosky claimed other Ukraine government agencies plan to start using the tech over the coming days.

Ton-That said Clearview has access to more than 2 billion photos from VKontakte , the Russian social media service, and more than 10 billion images overall in its database.

Clearview's controversial tech has come under fire from many quarters over the last few years. This month, Italy fined the company 20 million ($27.9 million) and ordered it to delete images of Italian nationals. The UK provisionally fined Clearview 17 million ($22.6 million) in November for breaking data protection laws.
Weather Alert

...FLOOD WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 6 AM CDT THIS MORNING THROUGH THURSDAY MORNING... * 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...From 6 AM CDT this morning through Thursday morning. * 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. * ADDITIONAL DETAILS... - Showers and thunderstorms will develop Wednesday morning over a broad swath of the watch area. Another round of rain and thunderstorms is expected later in the afternoon and will last much of Wednesday night before ending Thursday morning. Storm total amounts of 2 to 5 inches are expected. Given recent rainfall, these additional amounts may cause flooding. - 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. &&
Katt Williams nearly faced a war-like situation during his World War III comedy tour show due to a bomb threat.

What should have been a wonderful night between Williams and his fans turned into a nightmare after a bomb threat occurred and ended the comedy show abruptly.

On Saturday, the 50-year-old comedian started his World War III comedy tour show in Nashville, Tennessee. But he was forced to halt it immediately to safeguard everyone's security.

The show's venue, the Nashville Municipal Auditorium, has since released a statement to address the incident.

As quoted by CNN, Williams reportedly had to abruptly end the show 10 minutes before the end of his set. The comedian also asked not to inform the attendees about it to avoid panic and potential injury.

The Metropolitan Nashville Police Department responded to the scene and managed to clear the building without any incident. In addition, Nashville police spokesperson Don Aaron confirmed that the bomb threat was received via telephone at 10:36 p.m., but the call was believed to have been made out of the state.

They also searched the venue for the aforesaid bomb but found nothing.

Fans React to Katt Williams' Postponement of the Show

Before the police department revealed the truth behind the cancelation of the show, fans who attended the event expressed their dismay as they did not know why Williams halted his performance.

One said, "Katt Williams literally just dropped his mic walked off stage , the lights came on and they told us to go home #nashville."

One user replied that the police indeed ordered a mandatory emergency evacuation.

"Before security came and snatched #kattwilliams off stage. Not sure what happened but when Katt exited, so did we.#worldwar3tour #nashville #crazynight," another penned, sharing an exclusive video from the event.

READ ALSO: Scott Hall Health Issue: Former WWE Star Suffers Complication Following THIS Procedure

Williams still has a lot of cities lined up for his World War III Tour. Staring August, the comedian will perform again in different states including Tampa, Orlando, Jacksonville, Baltimore, Charlotte, Louiseville, Kansas City, and St. Louis.

It was not the first time he ended his shows abruptly, though.

In 2011, he ended his performance at the Celebrity Theatre in Phoenix, Arizona after responding to a Mexican descent heckler. He stated in an interview after the incident that he did not need to apologize for being a pro-American. The following year, two similar incidents happened again.

READ MORE: Johnny Depp Inspired THIS Actor to Become a Hollywood Director
Vladislav was an alternative conscript from Russia, such regiments are not even in military service. Their task is to do some community work, not to serve in the army. But this does not stop the Russian government from sending these regiments to war with Ukraine. As the captive describes this process  their task was to act like cannon fodder, so other regiments could pass on with the aggression against Ukraine.
Anyone who was a child in the late 60s  or, more specifically, anyone who was a child in the late 60s in Houston, Texas  is going to fall head-over-Astrodome in love with director/writer Richard Linklaters newest film, Apollo 10 1/2: A Childhood Odyssey, that had its global premiere Saturday night at the Paramount Theatre as part of South by Southwest. It premieres nationally April 1 on Netflix.

A mix of kid-inspired, fever-dream fantasy (a fourth-grader named Stan from El Lago is chosen by NASA to be the first child in space) and half-century-old humdrum reality (the Sunday night dread that accompanied watching Disneys Wonderful World of Color because that meant the weekend was over), the animated, PG-13-rated Apollo 10 1/2 is a love letter to Space City, space travel and childhood. Its Boyhood with neither the growing up nor the near-three-hour running time.

And the packed crowd at the Paramount Saturday seemed to embrace it, even if many were non-Texans who wouldnt even know the word Astroworld without the name of Travis Scott attached to it. Its that Houston specificity that makes Apollo 10 1/2 unique while the film is also general enough to appeal to those too young or too geographically distant to have any recollection of, for example, the second-run and run-down Majestic Theatre which is the setting a scene in the movie. Every city had one.

This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 2 1 of 2 Astrid Stawiarz, Stringer / Getty Images for Variety Show More Show Less 2 of 2 Rich Fury, Staff / Getty Images for SXSW Show More Show Less



Viewers can thank Linklater for the movies deep reservoir of Houston knowledge. The director with a special knack for shaping the contours of adolescence for the big screen (Dazed and Confused, Suburbia, the aforementioned Boyhood) lives in Austin but hails from Houston. While Stan may not be Richards exact doppelganger  in the film, Stans dad worked at NASA while Richards father did not  Stan couldnt exist without Richard. Its embarrassingly personal, Linklater said of the film on stage after the screen.

The one downside for Houstonians is that, while the movies soul may be made in Houston, its body was fashioned in Austin at Richard Rodriguezs Troublemaker Studios because Linklater needed the technology there for his animation-live action fusion.

Beyond that, Linklater said he wanted to create a cinematic shout-out to NASA, by far my favorite government agency, he joked at the Paramount. And NASA apparently loves him back.

They showed (the film) on the Space Station a few days ago, he said. It was a dream come true. It was just amazing to talk to these guys. Theyre not normal people. Theyre amazing.

This is Linklaters third animated film  following Waking Life (2001) and A Scanner Darkly (2006)  but it ranks with his best live-action work. In fact, the movie was shot with actors and then handed off for the animators to do their thing. Its also often truly funny, and not just because much of it derives its humor from the shock of recognition or distant echoes from the viewers own childhood.

Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood When: Begins streaming April 1 Where: Netflix See More Collapse

Yet as much as Linklater likes to roll around in the nostalgia of his youth, he said the point isnt to remain stuck in the past, no matter how fondly remembered. It was a different culture, he said. So many things are better now. I wouldnt want to go back culturally.

Apollo 10 1/2 touches on that with its depictions of racial unrest, anti-war protests, routine corporal punishment, Stans brother asking their father if its true that there are few Black employees at NASA and a Black man being interviewed on the news saying the space program is a waste of money.

Mostly though, Linklater wants to remember the good times. And the Chick-O-Sticks.

cary.darling@chron.com
Getty Images file photo

Concert: Bob Dylans unparalleled career is so extensive that it almost has to be broken down into parts to be understood: folk wunderkind, rock star, recluse, born again, the 80s, folk revival, old master, Sinatra fan. As the name suggests, Dylans Rough and Rowdy Ways tour focuses on his most recent album, 2020s Rough and Rowdy Ways  it accounts for more than half the set list  which, in a way, looks back on the whole shebang. 8 p.m. Monday, Majestic Theatre, 224 E. Houston St. $59.50-$89.50, majesticempire.com.

Art: Artpace is opening an exhibition of works by its spring 2022 International Artists in Residence. Marcela Guerrero curated the show, which showcases works by Austin artist Ariel Rene Jackson; Glendalys Medina, a conceptual artist from New York; and Peruvian multimedia artist Claudia Martinez Garay. Opens 6 p.m. Thursday. Through May 8, Artpace, 445 N. Main St. Free, artpace.org.
A homeless man was found fatally shot on a Manhattan street Sunday, and police are investigating if the death is linked to a killer targeting people sleeping on city streets, police sources said.

The slain man, 43, was found unconscious in his sleeping bag on Murray St. near Greenwich St. in TriBeCa about 6:30 p.m. with an injury to his right leg, police said. EMS responded and pronounced the man dead; the Medical Examiner will determine the cause of death.

Advertisement

The man was discovered shot to death in a sleeping bag on Murray St. near Greenwich St. in TriBeCa about 6:30 p.m., sources said. (Gardiner Anderson/for New York Daily News)

A homeless outreach team had checked on the man earlier Sunday and he was alive, sources said.

It was not yet clear when he was shot.

Advertisement

Mayor Adams has been alerted to the most recent killing, the mayors press secretary said in a tweet.

Devastated neighbors recalled the victims kind-hearted nature.

Everybody saw him there, said Mia Francis, 44, as she wiped tears off her face. People talked to him, people bought him food, gave him money. He didnt ask for anything.

Another neighbor was disturbed by the ghastly weekend violence against one the citys most vulnerable populations.

Very nice guy, Carlotta Cecile, 42, said of the victim. I was just reading in the paper this morning about the guy shooting homeless people and I thought about the people here in this area. Its terrible.

The man was discovered shot to death in a sleeping bag on Murray St. near Greenwich St. in TriBeCa about 6:30 p.m., sources said. (Gardiner Anderson/for New York Daily News)

The Daily News Flash Weekdays Catch up on the days top five stories every weekday afternoon. >

On Saturday, a 38-year-old man sleeping on King St. between Varick St. and Sixth Ave. in Hudson Square was shot in the arm about 4:30 a.m., cops said. The victim was taken to Bellevue Hospital in stable condition.

On Saturday, a 38-year-old man sleeping on King St. between Varick St. and Sixth Ave. in Hudson Square was shot in the arm about 4:30 a.m., cops said. (Theodore Parisienne/for New York Daily News)

About an hour and a half later, a second homeless man was shot while sleeping in a sleeping bag on the corner of Lafayette and Howard Sts. in Chinatown, police said.

But police didnt discover him until almost 12 hours later after a 911 caller alerted them of a shooting victim. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Advertisement

Police released this image of a suspect after the first two shootings. It's unclear if the person is a suspect in Sunday's fatal shooting. (NYPD/DCPI)

By Saturday night, police and a homeless outreach team were working in the city subway system and streets where homeless people tend to sleep urging them to seek refuge in city homeless shelters, Adams said in a press conference.

Police believe the shooter is the same person who shot three homeless people, one fatally, in Washington D.C. earlier this month, the NYPD said in a statement.

The NYPD, Washington DCs Metropolitan Police Department and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives have launched a joint task force and are investigating if the shooter is a serial killer crossing state lines.

Police have offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to his arrest.
On the west side of Camp Bullis, at the edge of the Dominion neighborhood, Rustin Tabor pulls his truck to the side of a winding road and walks a few feet into the wooded area that lines it.

Farther in, stretched across the dirt, is an entrance to a cave  a karst that leads deep under the forest to the Edwards Aquifer. A grate has been installed on the opening to prevent anyone from climbing down into it.

The cave, called Sharon Springs, is one of 112 on Camp Bullis, a military training reservation on the Northwest Side. There are 1,474 karst features throughout Camp Bullis, ranging from small cracks and crevices to slits in the earth, that deposit water into the recharge zone of the Edwards Aquifer.

This one doesnt seem springy right now, said Tabor, natural resources manager for Joint Base San Antonio. But if you come here during wet conditions, the water is actually pushing out of the ground.

Safeguarding such caves is among many conservation efforts at Camp Bullis and its neighboring lands  nearly 1 million acres  that stand to get a huge boost from the areas recent inclusion in a federal initiative aimed at protecting defense facilities from land uses that are incompatible with their military missions.

Under the initiative, called the Sentinel Landscape Partnership, such areas can seek to be designated as sentinel landscapes, which can provide priority standing to tap certain sources of public and private funding. Camp Bullis received the designation this month, putting it in line for financing opportunities to strengthen military readiness, promote natural resource conservation and increase agricultural productivity.

The Sentinel Landscape Partnership was established in 2013 by the Agriculture, Defense and Interior departments. The partnership seeks to connect landowners with government assistance programs to fund land protection and restoration and to implement sustainable land management practices. The aim is that such practices can yield economic and ecological benefits while also protecting defense facilities from development that can hamper military activities, such as training and testing.

The Camp Bullis Sentinel Landscape is the first to receive this recognition in Texas and one of just a few in the United States. Nearly 40 local organizations have joined as partners, including the Hill Country Alliance, the Trinity Glenrose Groundwater Conservation District, the Edwards Aquifer Authority, the Texas A&M Natural Resources Institute and the Alamo Area Council of Governments. The sentinel landscape will encompass most of Kendall and Comal counties; parts of Bexar, Medina and Bandera counties; and small sections of Kerr and Blanco counties.

The Defense Departments Readiness and Environmental Protection Integration Program, known as REPI, is also a major partner for the sentinel landscape by limiting development and land use conversion that could restrict military training and testing. Three segments in the entire area are designated opportunity spots for REPI.

Agricultural productivity, conservation and military readiness are all tied together in terms of our relationship to the land, said Daniel Oppenheimer, land program manager for the Hill Country Alliance. Thats really what this partnership is about, bringing partners together and starting to understand where and how we can work together to bring new technical and financial resources that align with all the ground needs.

Stemming lights and floods

Thousands of military personnel train each year on the nearly 28,000 acres at Camp Bullis, part of Joint Base San Antonio. The base has 266 mission partners, and about 2,000 people train there every day.

Robin Jerstad /Contributor

Most of those are training as military medics. Every enlisted medical person in the the U.S. military trains at JBSA-Fort Sam Houston, said Michael Waldrop, the installation support director at Camp Bullis. And they all undergo field components of their training in the natural areas on Camp Bullis.

In a war zone, youre usually out in areas like this nature, Waldrop said. We want it to be as realistic as possible, so we cant have any urban elements. They do their urban training elsewhere.

Development near Camp Bullis can lead to light pollution, loss of agricultural lands and flooding. Outdoor lighting around the northwestern area of San Antonio, from new subdivisions or traffic, can disrupt the natural atmosphere for training. The area south of Camp Bullis is already too heavily illuminated, but the central portion of the camp to the north is still suitable for night training.

But there is concern that lighting is increasing to the north, which is one of the fastest-growing areas in Texas, and not just among the military. Light pollution can also disrupt natural patterns for wildlife, such as bird migration; increase carbon dioxide in the atmosphere; and obscure the stars.

With this new designation, partners can work with developers to preserve dark night skies for military training, birds, natural resources and public health, Oppenheimer said. One solution is to provide funding for landowners and developers to focus their floodlights downward in their yards instead of reaching areas that dont need to be illuminated.

Another issue the Sentinel Landscape Partnership can tackle is flooding in Camp Bullis, 30 percent of which lies in a flood plain, and the surrounding areas.

The Texas Hill Country is known as flash flood alley because of its shallow soils and the steady moisture and humidity that comes off the Gulf of Mexico, making the area vulnerable to massive dry spells and drought followed by catastrophic floods.

At Camp Bullis, flash flooding has washed trucks away, covered roads and fields, and even killed a handful of people who got stuck in the floodwaters.

One solution involves speaking with landowners and developers about their own goals and values, Oppenheimer said.

Were not coming in and telling people what to do, he said. We talk about different tools and strategies to get them aligned with their goals and their interests. They dont want to lose all their soil. They dont want to be susceptible to drought and flood. Then based on that, we discuss ways they can retain more soil moisture, reduce erosion and enhance grass production on their property.

One flood prevention technique is building berms to slow water and enable it to be absorbed into the soil, a practice that is especially helpful during heavy rain. A berm is a raised barrier separating areas and can be made from brush and tree limbs or a grassy strip. With funding through the sentinel partnership, landowners could receive resources to build such structures or hire contractors to help them prepare the land for flooding.

Around Camp Bullis, berms are around the entire area for flooding, some made with brush and others with dirt and grass. In some cases, the berms serve multiple purposes  as bullet catchers for military range practice along with flood prevention.

Its not just us, Waldrop said. Its everyone.

Water as a joint mission

Tabors work at Camp Bullis includes protecting the Edwards Aquifer recharge zones caves and karsts, along with closely monitoring wildlife on the property, especially creatures that depend on the property for survival.

Camp Bullis provides habitat for the endangered golden-cheeked warbler and aquifer-dependent species, such as the blind salamander, San Marcos salamander and Comal Springs riffle beetle. Three river systems  the Medina, the San Antonio and the Cibolo  run through the Camp Bullis Sentinel Landscapes massive area.

Robin Jerstad /Contributor

Of the 28,000 acres at Camp Bullis, 4,000 are within the recharge zone. It is also at the convergence of the Trinity Aquifer and karst features along Cibolo Creek. Two aquifers  the Trinity and Edwards  meet under Camp Bullis and influence each other through the flow of groundwater.

All military personnel and others at Camp Bullis depend on water from the Trinity Aquifer and its relationship with the Edwards Aquifer. Compared to the Edwards, the Trinity recharges slowly and needs more time to refresh.

At the Trinity Glen Rose Groundwater Conservation District, Assistant General Manager Amanda Maloukis said a large part of the Sentinel Landscape Partnerships mission is protecting, preserving and conserving groundwater resources.

We can bring in educational pieces to the community, to those ranches and landowners, that really helps enhance their own personal conservation efforts, she said. We have rain barrel workshops, which can help people put less stress on the aquifer. We have these high-precipitation events, flooding events, and were catching that extra runoff in barrels, which can be used.

Some of the funding could also be used for further research on groundwater dynamics. By better understanding how the aquifers work together and contribute to the greater ecosystem, organizations and agencies can better protect the water for future generations.

Development around Camp Bullis can bring more pressure to the area in terms of pollution, spills and runoff into both aquifers. Groundwater, Maloukis said, is not just for communities around Camp Bullis, but also for the military within the conservation district. Its important for everyone involved to keep it clean, and with the new sentinel landscape designation, the hope is theyre heading in the right direction.

All of this water is tied together in terms of our relationship to the land, Oppenheimer said. Thats what this is all about, bringing everyone together to see how all these pieces fit into a really complex puzzle.

Elena Bruess writes for the Express-News through Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms. ReportforAmerica.org. elena.bruess@express-news.net
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

A couple of months ago, Tiffany Teixidor shared her first TikTok video with moms just like her. The title of her clip? Pep talk to my past pregnant self.

In the message, Teixidor speaks to her 30-year-old alter ego. Its 2007, and shes pregnant with her daughter, Reily, who was diagnosed with a rare, genetic chromosomal abnormality.

I would say, Girl, you got this! she said, close to the camera. This child is the best thing thats ever happened to you in the whole world. Its going to be hard, there will be challenges and ups and downs, but you can handle it!

Teixidor has shared 48 videos about the joy and challenge of raising Reily, 14. Her goal  to help others know theyre not alone. Shes one of an estimated one billion online creators with followers around the world.

Her page, www.tiktok.com/@tiffanyteixidor, has 953 followers. Her tagline is Reilys mom. Marketing Gal. NOLA native living my best Texas life with the Hubs.

Josie Norris /Staff photographer

I think because theres no pressure, I can be myself and not be scripted, Teixidor, 44, said. Its just me sharing my kiddo, who I love and is the light of my life. The support has been incredible.

On ExpressNews.com: San Antonio head custodians heart shines as he serves Southside ISD students for three decades

Teixidor works a full-time marketing job, filming clips when inspiration hits her. She uses a ring light and a selfie-stick camera attachment she received from her godmother.

Teixidor tells stories as if talking to a friend at a coffee shop. On Feb 24, 2021, she posted the first clip so Reily could see herself eating blueberries from a red bowl. In a recent video, Teixidor talks about maintaining a poker face during a crisis, only to erupt in tears once everything has settled down.

Josie Norris /Staff photographer

Scrolling through the clips, Teixidor covers a range of experiences. She recalled as a toddler, Reilys casts for club feet never slowed her down. Theres the post about watching Disneys Encanto with her daughter for the Ive lost count time.

Teixidor shares ways that have helped calm Reily  such as car rides, baths, snacks and singing.

And there are times when her frustration builds when nothing seems to help.

She vents about the sometimes draining disagreements with doctors, insurance agents and speech therapists. Teixidor said shes grateful Reily was the catalyst for learning not to fear conflict, but to take it head-on, no matter the difficulty.

If you approach it with respect and empathy, she said, and a genuine goal of getting to a positive outcome, its not that scary.

Josie Norris /Staff photographer

On ExpressNews.com: Swapping cotton for a camera, photographer captures San Antonio history

Teixidor has followers from around the globe. A mother in New Zealand invited her to reach out if she needs to talk. Shes a Facebook friend with a mom in Washington state who also is raising a child with special needs. Her number one follower is her cousin, who lives in Colorado.

Not everyone has been enamored with her honesty. Teixidor said shes had one naysayer.

Why would you share this on a site like tik tok, the person wrote. this isnt the place to get support you should seek attention from support groups.

If my goofy stories about my amazing kid, who has challenges, can give one mom out there a moment of joy and not feel alone, well, I am so here for that, Teixidor said. Sorry, not sorry. Lets agree to disagree. Everyone have a great day, including you, because thats what support looks like.

Josie Norris /Staff photographer

And she shared stories about her mothers experiences at the end of her life. With tear-filled eyes, Teixidor spoke of lessons learned from having a mother in hospice. The video storyteller found solace knowing her mom enjoyed watching the clips with nurses in her final days.

On ExpressNews.com: San Antonio youth counselor offers kids love, attention and motherly discipline

About the author A 22-year veteran of the Air Force, Vincent T. Davis embarked on a second career as a journalist and found his calling. Observing and listening across San Antonio, he finds intriguing tales to tell about everyday people. He shares his stories with Express-News subscribers every Monday morning. See More Collapse

Her friend Melissa Vela-Williamson said Teixidors videos about life with her daughter offer hope.

If Tiffany was a color, shed be yellow, Vela-Williamson said. Her personality is so sunny and optimistic. Shes full of humor and shares joy in everything she says or does. You wouldnt know she was dealing with any adversity in her life because of how graceful and cheery she is. Her honesty, generosity and humanity are a gift to everyone who watches these videos. She inspires me to be a better mother.

Yet, there are times when its hard for Teixidor to speak through a rush of emotions. But she pushes on, whether exasperated or buoyant. This is her open letter to the masses and that one person who may need to feel they are seen, and someone is thinking of them.

I just hope I can keep having fun reaching people who value this and find others like-minded on the platform, Teixidor said.

vtdavis@express-news.net
Bexar County Sheriff Facebook

A 15-year-old was fatally shot late Sunday night in a possible drug deal gone wrong, the Bexar County Sheriffs Office said.

Deputies were called just before midnight to a residence in the 7800 block of Fossil Banks on the Northwest Side for a shooting in progress. They found a 15-year-old male with a gunshot wound.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

A former Judson Independent School District law enforcement officer was convicted Monday on a charge that he sent an interstate text threatening members of the Joe Biden campaign, two days before the then-presidential candidate visited San Antonio in late 2019.

According to testimony in the one-day trial, William Oliver Towery, 55, of New Braunfels responded Dec. 11, 2019, to a mass text that mistakenly included him  it was meant to include his father, a Democratic donor  seeking campaign donations in advance of Bidens campaign stop in San Antonio two days later.

Towery, an investigator with the Texas Attorney Generals Office and later a school district police officer, replied with a text that said: Ill be there and have been practicing my sniping skills all month just for this occasion. If you will be near him you may want to wear something dark to hide the blood splatter.

U.S. District Judge Xavier Rodriguez found Towery guilty after hearing testimony that included Biden campaign staffers, the FBI and Towery himself. The judge ordered Towery, who was free on bond, into custody and set his sentencing for July 13. He faces up to five years in prison.

FBI special agent Chris Snow testified that the texts had been deleted from Towerys phone by the time agents visited Towerys home on Dec. 13, 2019  about the time Biden was in town.

The agents and New Braunfels police focused on keeping watch over Towery until Bidens security detail felt he was safely en route to the airport, Snow said. The pandemic delayed Towerys indictment until summer of 2020, Snow said.

Towery testified that he did not mean the text as a threat, and that he thought a friend was playing a joke on him. He acknowledged a dislike for Democrats, but he said he and his father, who has the same first and last names but a different middle initial, do not talk politics.

Towerys lawyer, Doug Daniel, argued that his client was watering his lawn at home, nowhere near the Biden campaign, when agents went to Towerys house. Daniel also told the judge that Towery was cooperative, answered their questions and let the agents and police look in his home.

While agents did find a pair of rifles and single-shot pistols in the home, Daniel stressed that no scopes or sniper-like guns were found.

During the encounter at his home, Towery was asked about the text and he testified that he assumed one of his friends gave the Democrats his number. He was asked what he didnt like.

The fact that theyre pushing impeachment based on nothing, he replied, according to an officers bodycam video played in court.

At the time, then-President Donald Trump, a Republican, was accused in impeachment proceedings of breaking the law by withholding aid from Ukraines leader to pressure him to dig up damaging information on Biden.

Democrats argued that it is illegal to ask foreign entities for help in winning a U.S. election, and though Trump was impeached, a majority of the Republican-controlled Senate cleared him in a trial that could have led to his removal.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Roomberg painted Towery as a man who makes threats. The prosecutor pointed to Towerys admission that he called some telmarketers nasty names. Roomberg also said Towery saved some telemarketers numbers in his cellphone under names that included He who needs to be killed and a derogatory term for gay people.

Towery testified that he worked for the Texas Attorney Generals Office as a legal assistant and then an investigator from 1991 to 1995, and he went on to be a uniformed police officer with the Judson ISD, leaving in 1997.

Leukemia caused him to lose parts of his legs, and he now has prosthetics. He has been unemployed since December 2013, after a pneumococcal disease sidelined him from teaching in Victoria, he testified.

guillermo.contreras

@express-news.net
Nonprofit groups that aid migrants cant always predict when a rush of them will appear in San Antonio.

Sometimes, though, they get a hint that somethings up.

About three weeks ago, they got one.

The Interfaith Welcome Coalition, one of the citys most important volunteer-led migrant assistance groups, got a call from an immigration official.

You might recall that the group ministers to migrants at the downtown bus station and the airport, and that its ministry gives migrants and migrant families traveling through San Antonio a backpack with a few items in them, including basic over-the-counter medications.

The call to Interfaith was about its capacity.

They called us to ask what our total capacity is, how many migrants we can assist per day, Victoria Salas, coordinating director of the Interfaith Welcome Coalition, said Monday.

The coalition had already seen an uptick.

This weekend we saw an increase in migrants (from Venezuela, Nicaragua and El Salvador), and its not even April, Salas said.

April is usually when more migrants come through San Antonio.

So, Interfaith needs volunteers. More than it already has.

As a group, theyre such good people. Most volunteers are retired. Ive seen them in action at the bus station, helping migrants make sense of their tickets, their scheduled stops, and to better understand the countrys geography.

They dont know, for example, how long it will take to get from here to Chicago, or Portland, Maine, or Haddonfield, N.J. Their relatives and sponsors are everywhere.

Migrants who speak Spanish are the easiest to assist, because so many people here speak the language. But the coalition tries to prepare for migrants who speak other languages. Ive heard French being spoken among them.

Russian and Ukrainian migrants are on the way. The coalition believes many of them likely flew to Mexico City, have made their way via bus to land ports and will be processed quickly and allowed in the country.

Thats a new population, Salas said.

Interfaith may be a little reluctant to talk about capacity, because serving a lot of people at once isnt ideal.

At its peak, Salas says Interfaith has served about 300 migrants at the Greyhound station in a single day. If youve ever been in the bus station, you know that isnt optimal for such a small space.

At the airport, the highest numbers Interfaith has served ranges between 500 to 600. She said the Episcopal Dioceses will reopen a respite center near the airport, which will help.

Salas says migrant numbers also will go up because Title 42 is going to be lifted. Thats the controversial public health order that the Trump administration instituted  and the Biden administration continued  to keep migrants in Mexico during the coronavirus pandemic.

In the last two years, its allowed as few as 10 migrants per day to be processed at each land port.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine, the Biden administration has been under mounting pressure to end the restriction, especially as COVID-19 rates have continued to decline.

But lets be real here. Title 42 was mostly a convenient, cruel excuse to deter migrants by keeping them in Mexican camps where they have been threatened with trafficking, kidnapping, rape and murder.

Salas says the worst part of Title 42 is that it has kept unaccompanied minors in those dangerous border camps, too.

On Friday, nonprofit groups that assist migrants received good news from the Federal Emergency Management Administration. FEMA will restart reimbursements to them.

For some nonprofits, that was more evidence that more migrants are to be expected.

The interfaith group receives about $50,000 every quarter in reimbursements. Its still waiting for last years third-quarter check, Salas said.

The money pays for its backpack ministry (which is now relying on cheaper vinyl tote bags), Lyft rides to the airport and to hotels.

Once Title 42 is lifted, Interfaith will need more volunteers to serve at the bus station and airport, at the respite center, to prepare food and help with logistics.

New volunteers will shadow more experienced ones for a couple of days. Interfaith estimates 50 more volunteers are needed at the bus station and 100 more at the airport, where the city of San Antonio posts helpers, too.

Interfaith doesnt provide volunteers on weekends.

It will need an additional 15 food-delivery volunteers and 10 logistical volunteers.

On average, volunteers serve two- to four-hour shifts and most take one shift a week.

To volunteer, go to Interfaiths website at interfaithwelcomecoalition.org or email sanantoniowelcome@gmail.com

eayala@express-news.net
When students miss school, schools lose funding.

Its a system that disproportionately affects schools in low-income communities where students miss school more often. And even when students miss school, expenses  teacher salaries, utilities and other costs  must be paid.

The COVID-19 pandemic, which so far has led to more than 552,000 positive student cases and 138,000 positive staff cases in Texas, both exacerbated and shined a light on the unfair, attendance-dependent school funding system.

State Rep. Gina Hinojosa, D-Austin, tweeted a Feb. 24 letter to Gov. Greg Abbott and Texas Commissioner of Education Mike Morath from 50 bipartisan House members, urging them to enact a hold-harmless provision for schools to receive funding through the duration of the states COVID-19 disaster declaration or authorize a significant expansion of low attendance waivers.

We support this effort, and more. The punishing way attendance drives school funding in Texas must be changed.

Hinojosa filed HB 1246 this past legislative session to change the way Texas schools are funded from a system based on the average daily attendance to one based on average enrollment. Unfortunately, the bill didnt make it out of committee.

Before the pandemic, the statewide attendance rate was 95.7 percent for the states 5.4 million students, leaving 260,000 students unfunded, according to the Dallas Morning News.

San Antonio ISD projected at least 93 percent attendance for the school year, but in November, reported actual attendance was 85 to 88 percent, which could result in a $23.4 million drop in funding.

On ExpressNews.com: Substantial hit  San Antonios missing students force high-growth ISDs into unprecedented retreat

There are complex reasons why students dont show up to school, but many can be blamed on not having their basic needs met outside of school. Districts shouldnt be penalized for serving students living in poverty.

In a pandemic or not, Texas schools have enough to grapple with without having to worry about how they are going to pay the bills. Texas should fund schools based on enrollment  permanently.
Martha Newsome was sitting in a service at Friends Congregational Church in College Station when her pastor mentioned a rally going on later that day in support of transgender youth whose parents have been targeted by a new state policy criminalizing gender-affirming care.

Newsome and her husband, whose 19-year-old grandson is transgender, didnt waste a minute. They drove directly to a Walmart to pick up a sweatshirt and sneakers in the symbolic pink color that is featured in the transgender pride flag, then to Austin.

On the two-hour car ride, Newsome, 62, colored in pink and blue on a sign: Im here 4 my trans grandson.

Newsome was one of hundreds to gather in the capital city Sunday to show their support for the youth, just days after a state district judge temporarily blocked Republican Gov. Greg Abbotts directive that designated parents who allow access to treatments such as puberty blockers and hormones as potential child abusers.

When your children get sick, I just cannot imagine the governor coming out and saying, Were not going to give the remedy or the cure or medical treatment to your child to be able to walk and hold their head up proud and be who they need to be and be healthy, Newsome said. Thats so hard for me to understand. I dont think he would get involved in any other types of medical treatment.

On Friday, Judge Amy Meachum Clark in Travis County ruled that the directive was unconstitutional, Abbott overstepped his bounds and enforcement of the order should remain on hold for the duration of a lawsuit challenging the policy.

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit are a psychologist who says complying with the order would violate her professional code of ethics and a family under investigation by Child Protective Services for giving care to their transgender 16-year-old daughter  one of at least nine new investigations of gender-affirming care since Abbotts directive.

Josie Norris / San Antonio Express-News

However, the legal effect of Fridays ruling is unclear after Attorney General Ken Paxton said his immediate appeal of the decision renders the temporary injunction frozen. Lawyers with national civil rights groups Lambda Legal and the ACLU have disputed that and encouraged any family contacted by DFPS in the meantime to contact Lambda Legals help desk.

A nonbinding legal opinion from Paxton last month prompted Abbott to write a letter to the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services ordering the agency to enforce the opinion as law. Paxton argued that the care violates a childs right to procreate  though many medications are reversible and surgery is uncommon among minors  and claimed the care is not medically necessary, in contrast with broad consensus among the countrys largest medical groups.

Paxtons opinion followed multiple failed attempts by Republican state lawmakers in the GOP-led Legislature to pass measures that would punish parents and health care providers who support gender-affirming care.

Josie Norris / San Antonio Express-News

On Sunday, congregated in a parking lot across the street from the Governors Mansion in Austin, rally goers heard from transgender and LGBTQ activists who encouraged them to keep up their fight.

The tone of the event, Trans Kids Cry for HELP! as it was titled on social media, was hopeful and bright but also fiery with the passion of a group gearing up for yet another battle against top Republicans. Speeches focused on raising spirits and validating trans and nonbinary peoples identities. They also encouraged them and allies to take their anger and frustration to the ballot boxes in the November general election.

Those speeches were interspersed with recordings of anonymous Texas transgender youth talking about their experiences living in the state and dealing with policies targeting them on a regular basis, including some from Capitol testimony in recent years.

Rally goers waved the pink, white and blue transgender pride flag, which also abounded on T-shirts, banners and posters. Some of their signs read: My mom is not a criminal for keeping me alive, The real abuse is denying trans kids identities, and No. 1 threat to Texas citizens: Greg Abbott.

Ace Odem, a 22-year-old transgender man who has a developmental disability, wore a black shirt with an opossum cartoon and the words: Gender is garbage, along with a transgender pride flag tied around his neck as a cape as he waved a nonbinary pride flag.

Josie Norris / San Antonio Express-News

His message to Abbott on Sunday? That trans kids are loved. Odem added that he hopes Abbott will be voted out of office in November when he faces off against Democrat Beto ORourke.

Some counterprotesters and members of InfoWars, a far-right conspiracy theory-peddling website created by Alex Jones, tried to interrupt the rally and intimidate the crowd. Host Owen Shroyer, who was charged in connection with the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, was among them. State troopers surrounded the group and intervened to stop some of the pushing and shoving.

Rally goers also encircled the group, waved flags and signs in their faces and shouted chants to drown out their voices.

Desiree Skidmore, 23, drove in with her husband, Montana Skidmore, also 23, who recently came out as transgender to loved ones, from Fort Worth to show their support. Montana Skidmore, a special education paraprofessional, intends to come out publicly  and to his students  this week.

Josie Norris / San Antonio Express-News

Its scary because I am 23, but if I were to have known there were other options at a younger age, then I probably would have gone another route, Montana Skidmore said about Abbotts directive. I want them (my students) to know that its OK to be who you are in your own state.  Theres child abuse, and then theres accepting your children.
A prominent Chinese dissident turned immigration lawyer was fatally stabbed in his Queens office Monday by a woman enraged that he wouldnt take her case, police and the victims close friends said.

Jinjin (Jim) Li, 66, took part in the 1989 student democracy movement at Tiananmen Square as a graduate law student, and was jailed by the Chinese government for nearly two years.

Advertisement

I cant believe it. She not only destroyed his life, but the hope of our community, said his best friend, lawyer Wei (Wayne) Zhu. He wanted to realize democracy in China. He will never realize that dream.

On Monday, a 25-year-old woman who had made a disruptive scene at Lis law office last week, returned with a knife, his friends told the Daily News.

Advertisement

Lawyer Jinjin Jim Li who was stabbed to death by a spurned client on March 14, 2022. (Grace Wong)

She stabbed him in the body and neck in his office on 39th Ave. near 138th St. in Flushing about 11:40 a.m., and though medics rushed him to Elmhurst Hospital, he could not be saved.

The alleged assailant, Xiao Ning Zhang, 25, was taken into custody and charged with murder and weapon possession.

Police officers guarded her apartment building late Monday as detectives waited for a warrant to search her belongings.

He was one of the best men I have ever known, Zhu said of Li, who was studying law at Peking University when he joined the Tiananmen protests. If he hadnt left China he could have been a famous lawyer, he could have been a judge.

He even told the police not to arrest her. She is young. Let her have a future. He was a great man, he added. He was a free union counsel at Tiananmen. He was arrested and detained for over a year and a half.

Lis friends speculated the woman may have been mentally unstable if he wouldnt take her case  and that he rarely turns down a client in need.

NYPD investigate the scene where Lawyer Jinjin (Jim) Li, 66 was stabbed to death in his office on 39th Ave. near 138th St. in Flushing on Monday. (Kerry Burke )

He didnt want to take her case. There was no reason to kill him. She came here last Friday and made a scene. The office called police but she ran away, Zhu said.

That probably triggered her anger. Today she came with a knife, with the intent to kill him, he alleged.

Advertisement

Su Xu, 45, who works as a receptionist for an insurance broker that shares an office with Li, described the deadly attacks aftermath, and the cries of two office workers, Call 911! Call 911!

I went to help them. The lawyers white shirt was covered in blood. He was unconscious. There was so much blood. Too much blood, Xu said. When she came in, the woman was so quiet, and then she attacked the lawyer. Last week she was here and she struck him, she attacked him. We warned them not to let this woman into the office.

The alleged attacker came to the U.S. in August on an F-1 student visa to go to school in Los Angeles, said Chuang Chuang Chen, the CEO of the China Democracy Party. Li was the organizations chief legal counsel, he said.

But she didnt attend. She came straight here. She came directly and applied for asylum. She claimed she was raped by police in Beijing who sent her to a mental facility, he said.

Chen said he didnt know why Li wouldnt take her on as a client.

The Daily News Flash Weekdays Catch up on the days top five stories every weekday afternoon. >

Longtime friend, Ai Wang, 65, said she didnt understand why the buildings front desk staff let the woman inside.

Advertisement

Why didnt the receptionist stop her? There was a big fight on Friday, and she ran away. They let her into his private office, she recounted. She stabbed him in the neck and the heart. In 1989 he was a leader in Tiananmen Square. We dont know how to deal with his loss.

His last message on Instagram was a support of a free Ukraine, she added.

Li took to the streets in Beijing during the six-week protest movement, and worked as legal counsel for the Workers Autonomous Federation union.

Li was arrested just days after the June 4, 1989, massacre, when hundreds of people were killed in the square and surrounding areas by the Chinese army.

He was jailed for 22 months and sought asylum in the U.S. in 1993.

We didnt know what our future was. That was the biggest stress for me as a leader because my job was to control the people, Li said in a 2018 interview with artist and writer Grace Wong for Medium.com. We did not prepare for any of the consequences. I didnt know this movement would be a struggle to the death.
Northern Irish pig producers have welcomed a new 2 million support package as the war in Ukraine has pushed many in the sector to 'breaking point'.

The funding package has been announced for pig farmers who have been impacted by increased feed costs and weakened markets.

Northern Ireland's Department for Agriculture (DAERA) said the scheme was targeted at 'financially impacted' producers.

It comes against the backdrop of low pig prices, increasing feed costs, volatile markets and ongoing issues with getting pigs moved off the farm for slaughter.

After months of enduring these issues, the Ulster Farmers' Union (UFU) said the impact of Russias invasion in Ukraine had now "pushed them to breaking point".

The union said the new support package was 'needed greatly' and would help to alleviate some of the financial pressures.

UFU president Victor Chestnutt said: Weve been engaging with DAERA officials about the deteriorating state of the sector and are pleased that the Minister has recognised the vital need for this support.

The new support scheme will help to deal with some of the losses already incurred on farm, but its important to stress that it will not cover the losses which our farmers continue to endure."

Since the war in Ukraine, the market price of feed has soared to levels not seen before. Because of this, the UFU warned pig industry was "hanging on a knife edge".

The union said a price increase was still needed from retailers to "ensure the security of the industry during this extremely difficult period".

Mr Chesnutt added: "If the sector collapses, our consumers will see a premium, local product disappearing from shop shelves, local food security will take a massive hit having a knock-on effect on rural communities and the NI economy.

We are in dire need of retailers delivering an immediate increase in prices paid and consumers being understanding and supportive of that so that we can sustain our local pig sector.

"Were all aware of how vulnerable global supplies have become, we need to be supporting local food production and helping to protect our food producers during these difficult times.

It follows the National Pig Association's (NPA) call for retailers to boost the price they pay for pork to "save the British pig industry from total collapse" amid feed cost increases.

The trade body, which made its plea last week, urged UK supermarket chains to ensure they "pay enough to at least cover pig farmers costs of production".

It said this was "essential", not only to help ensure the survival of the British pig sector but, with EU pig numbers falling and prices rapidly rising, to maintain their supply of pork, bacon, sausages, ham and other pigmeat products to consumers.
UK pig processors have increased their contribution prices by 12-16p, with the National Pig Association (NPA) welcoming it as a 'much-needed boost to desperate pig producers'.

Meat processor Cranswick has confirmed a 16p hike in its weekly price, while two more of the big players are understood to have upped prices by 12p and 16p.

The increases come as pig prices soar across Europe, notably in Germany, where the finished price is up more than 23p on the week, with the sow price 22p higher.

Prices are up across the board, with a similar-sized leap in Belgium and big upward shifts in Spain, the Netherlands, France, Denmark and more.

A Cranswick spokesman said the price increase reflected the escalating cost situation on pig farms.

We are working with the retailers and all of our customers on a daily basis on this," the spokesman added.

"There is a recognition of the increased cost pressures the industry is facing and the impact this is having on pig farms, and we are doing what we can to support the industry."

Responding, the NPA said the price increases were an "important step in the right direction, albeit not yet enough to bring producers close to break-even point".

The increases follows the NPA's letter to UK retailers urging them increase the amount they pay for pork up to beyond 2 per kg to enable farmers to just break even.

Pig producers, who have already endured a year of negative margins, compounded by the backlog, have now been hit by the massive spike in the wheat price.

At times, this has topped 300 per tonne, caused by Russias invasion of Ukraine.
Two 'dairy sheep' producers have won the prestigious Brynle Williams Memorial Award, which recognises the achievements of young farmers who have found their way into the industry.

Bryn and his partner Becca Morris, both in their early 30s, keep a flock of around 120 East Friesian ewes, a breed renowned for the quality of their milk.

They farm on a council-owned smallholding, Fferm Wernllwyd, near Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire, where they moved in early 2021.

Inspired by consumer demand, Bryn and Becca doubled the size of their original flock they bought from a farm dispersal sale.

They have also recently started looking for finance for a new food processing unit which will enable them to turn the ewes milk into a range of Welsh cheeses and dairy products from the farm.

The UK sheep milking industry is still relatively new, but this entrepreneurial couple are capitalising on this rapidly growing market, in more ways than one.

Having set up collaborations with other ambitious farmers, Bryn and Becca, with the support of the Welsh government's Farming Connect scheme, are already processing milk into a range of speciality cheeses.

Their Welsh ewes milk cheeses are in the style of Feta, Halloumi, Blue and Manchego, and they recently launched Ewenique Spirits, their own brand of ewe whey vodka.

The couple have been awarded the Brynle Williams Memorial Award, which was established in 2011 to recognise the contribution of the late Brynle Williams to Welsh agriculture, both as an Assembly Member and a farmer.

The award celebrates the achievements of young farmers who have received a package of support from the Welsh government designed to help bring new blood into the industry.

Bryn said: Critically, we received a huge amount of support from Farming Connect... [it] also enabled us to set up our first joint venture with well-known sheeps milk producers Nick and Wendy Holtman, who own Defaid Dolwerdd in Crymych."

Now the couple have many more working partnerships under their belt, including two additional Ceredigion farmers who now supply them with sheep milk.

The couple say they are confident that they have a future as both dairy sheep farmers and independent food and drink processors.

My ultimate goal is to set up a co-operative of Welsh farmers who have similar aspirations and to help each of us grow our respective businesses," Bryn said.

The couple also credit the support of Food Centre Wales which has provided training, technical know-how and the processing facilities to turn the sheep milk into cheeses, ice-cream and lactose-free frozen milk.
Category Select Category Apparel/Garments Textiles Fashion Technical Textiles Information Technology E-commerce Retail Corporate Association Press Release

SubCategory Select Sub-Category
By Fang Xiaozhi

Information came from the Indian Defense Research and Development Organization that Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar planned to visit France in the near future to discuss with French Minister of the Armed Forces Florence Parly about the joint development of engines for India's "advanced mid-size fighters", a 5th-generation single-seat, double-engine stealth fighter that New Delhi is mulling. News has it that the two sides are likely to reach an official agreement within the next one month or two.

India and France have seen their defense relation warming up. After signing the Defense Cooperation Agreement in 2006, the two countries have intensified collaboration in military and diplomacy, defense industry, technology R&D, personnel training, and many other areas. The series of cooperation agreements they signed on March 10, 2018, also covered multiple domains such as defense and aerospace.

The strengthening defense cooperation is a result of the two countries' respective needs. With its growing overall national strength, India has a greater demand for modern weapons and equipment in recent years, represented by the upgrade of its fighters. However, limited in technological and industrial capabilities, it has to seek external support to achieve its goal. The US used to be a major weapon exporter for India, but it set rigorous rules on technology transfer, and especially after India insisted on buying Russias S-400 air defense missiles regardless of its warning, Washington declared not to provide India with core technology of new-type engines.

That leaves France one of the few countries willing to transfer weapon technologies to New Delhi. In February 2013, France's DCNS and India's Mazagon Dock Limited (MDL) signed a technology transfer agreement. On December 14, 2017, India's first Scorpene-class submarine INS Kalvari , made with Frances help, was commissioned. Now Indias quest for joint development of engines for its advanced mid-size fighters is again to gain advanced experience and technical support from Paris to pave the way for its independent R&D in the end.

On France's part, strengthening the strategic relationship with India and gaining access to its arms market has been a consensus shared by all its administrations. In recent years, French military industry complexes have made a fortune in India's arms market thanks to the frequent interactions between their political and military leaders. In January 2016, they signed an inter-governmental agreement on 36 Rafale fighter jets at a cost of USD 8.8 billion, the biggest order for French aviation and military industry ever. Still better, French company Dassault and Thales also landed a USD 2.4 billion project from Indian Air Force to upgrade their Mirage 2000 fighters.

Going forward, however, the military cooperation between India and France still faces many restrictions despite the upward and pragmatic trend. For instance, although New Delhi has a strong wish for external defense cooperation in order to localize its weapons and equipment, its weak defense industry doesn't give Paris enough confidence in the joint R&D.

Besides, France's defense cooperation with India is partly to expand its share in the Indian arms market and partly to augment its influence in the Indian Ocean and South Asian region, which may put New Delhi on alert because the latter always views those regions as its "backyard". Therefore, a substantial breakthrough in the bilateral defense relationship will be unlikely.

(The author is an associate professor at the College of International Studies, National University of Defense Technology)
The accused madman caught on camera stabbing two Museum of Modern Art workers after being denied entry to the iconic Midtown Manhattan culture hub taunted authorities as he remained on the lam Monday.

I am yesterdays news, no longer trending, suspect Gary Cabana, 60, groused Monday morning on Instagram as the manhunt for him intensified. Glad U care but U might want to care about the NEW Covid #outbreak in China.

Advertisement

His two victims survived. But at the time of the attack, Cabana was already wanted for two earlier incidents involving him going ballistic after losing his job as a Broadway usher, sources told the Daily News on Monday.

Surveillance video shows stabbing inside Museum of Modern Art on Saturday.

As he evaded authorities Monday he urged the public and his pursuers to focus on COVID safety measures instead of his fugitive status.

Advertisement

They just went back to 2020 w/ a billion person lockdown (2late), he wrote of China. Kids r being sent back to online classes while billionaire Chinese head to America for R&R (like who wants to play the Lockdown game EVER again). Look to yourselves, MASK UP FOR ONCE IN 2 yrs.

A 911 caller claimed to have spotted Cabana on Monday at Manhattans Church of St. Francis of Assisi on W. 31st near Sixth Ave. Cops evacuated the house of worship before going inside and conducting a search, according to witnesses. But Cabana was not there.

Cops showed parishioners pictures of the suspect, and one of the churchgoers believed she had seen him earlier in the day, a witness said.

Cabana is being sought for a misdemeanor assault incident and a harassment incident in addition to the stabbings, a source said.

The assault happened at Broadways Nederlander Theatre, where Cabana showed up with a ticket on Jan. 2, some time after losing his job there. When a manager escorted him out, Cabana punched him, cops said.

In November, a harassment complaint was filed against Cabana when he sent a series of threatening emails to his union representative after losing his usher gig.

Police released the picture of the suspect Gary Cabana (NYPD/DCPI)

Payback is coming, he told the rep, according to cops. F--k you c--t.

Twice, Cabana allegedly went to a Hells Kitchen union office looking for the rep, officials said. She was worried because he had already assaulted a co-worker, she told police.

Advertisement

Cabanas anger exploded Saturday at MoMA when he allegedly stabbed a man and woman, both 24, working behind the desk as they scrambled for cover, shocking surveillance video released the the NYPD the next day shows.

The male worker was stabbed in the collarbone behind the neck while the woman was knifed in the lower back and neck, police said. Both victims managed to escape, and medics took them to Bellevue Hospital, where they are expected to recover.

After running off, Cabana posted online that he is bipolar and the victim of a frame job.

The Daily News Flash Weekdays Catch up on the days top five stories every weekday afternoon. >

Police said Cabana had his museum membership revoked Friday because of two past disruptions and he flew into a rage Saturday when he discovered he wouldnt be allowed in to see a movie.

Police investigate a double stabbing inside the lobby of MoMA on Saturday. (Barry Williams/for New York Daily News)

Cabana denied the prior disruptions in a Facebook rant.

THERE WERE NO DISRUPTIONS, Cabana wrote in the post. Security NEVER escorted me from MoMA on the 2 supposed days I acted up 2/24 + 3/9. Total blind side ...

Advertisement

He insisted his membership was revoked as a result of him laughing in a movie.

NOTE to catty beeyotches of the world, words are sharper than knives, he wrote. Bipolar is a tough road to hoe. Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde. THEN U get framed and evicted from MoMA (not just the movies, ALL THE ART too) by a bitter old woman who shushes U when U LAUGH during a comedy.

Police investigate a double stabbing inside the lobby of MoMA on Saturday. (Barry Williams/for New York Daily News)

Friends told Gothamist that Cabanas online screeds shifted from film critiques to angry posts about people who died after not following COVID protocols. A favorite Cabana target was former President Donald Trump, whom Cabana blamed for allowing the pandemic to get worse.

Friends of Cabana said his mental issues became more severe under the strain of pandemic isolation.
On the eve of his 57th birthday, Aamir Khan confessed that he recently received the best birthday gift ever. On this special day, Aamir's fans from all around the world are sending him their best wishes. And, while Aamir is delighted by the affection, he recently talked out about a particular birthday gift he received this year in a recent interview. This gift was from his ex-wife Kiran Rao.

Aamir revealed that the former couple sat down for a discussion earlier this week after Kiran returned from a month-long film schedule in Bhopal. Aamir then requested her to make a list of his flaws and weaknesses so that he could work on them. She gave me a list of 10 to 12 points, that I sat and wrote as well. So that was my lifes best birthday gift, the actor stated. Aamir also said that the points given by Kiran on the list were correct, leaving him intrigued. Thats why I feel its the best birthday gift of my life. She pointed out my weakness with honesty and love, no one tells you what she told me, he continued.

When Aamir and Kiran announced their split last year after 15 years of marriage, everyone was taken aback. They issued a statement that stated, We began a planned separation some time ago, and now feel comfortable to formalise this arrangement, of living separately yet sharing our lives the way an extended family does.

Meanwhile, Aamir Khan's next film is Advait Chandan's Laal Singh Chaddha. The film, which also stars Kareena Kapoor Khan and Naga Chaitanya, will be released on August 11 this year.
Aamir Khan has another year around ahead of him, and he has a lot to look forward to. Laal Singh Chaddha will be released in August, according to the actor. The film has been significantly delayed due to the pandemic, but Aamir is confident that he will deliver a good film this year. As is customary for Aamir's birthday, the actor took time out of his schedule to sit and speak with the media gathered outside his home.

When asked how his family wished him on his special day, Aamir said, "My kids were the first to wish me on the birthday. Am waiting to see what Azad gifts me. He is in school right now, so once I am back home, I shall get it." The actor also discussed how the last two years have shifted his perspective.





He stated, "During Covid-19, I got a lot of time to think. It showed us how fragile life is. And then, I realised that time is the most important thing in life. We all have to die, so we need to make optimum utilisation of time. Now, my intent is to respect time and be with people I love, people who love me. I want to pay attention to the audience, media, fans and family."

Aamir continued, "I never shy away from accepting my flaws and rectifying them. Life is a journey and every day is a safar. You may or may not reach the destination, but it's about living through the journey."

After nearly two years, the actor finally met with the media. Recognizing this, he stated, "I couldn't meet the media due to Covid-19. Things are not 100 percent fine, but it's a lot better now,"





Aamir provided an update on the release of Laal Singh Chaddha, saying, "I hope we release on 11 August. We have got enough time to complete the film. We are trying to make a good film. I have done my best for Laal Singh Chaddha." Kareena Kapoor Khan and Naga Chaitanya also play important roles in the film.
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.
SINGAPORE, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Crypto.com, the world's fastest growing cryptocurrency platform, has confirmed the appointment of a number of senior hires in London as it continues to build capability and presence for UK operations.

As the company seeks to establish a hub in the UK capital, Crypto.com has filled six senior operational, compliance, engineering and communications positions with a view to bolstering its core functions. The new hires include:

Nick Charteris - UK General Manager

- UK General Manager Matthew Ward - Head of Finance, UK

- Head of Finance, UK George Tucker - Head of Communications and Government Relations, EMEA

- Head of Communications and Government Relations, EMEA Rosie Donachie - Global Head of Sustainability and ESG

- Global Head of Sustainability and ESG Joanna Jenkins - SVP of Compliance, EMEA

- SVP of Compliance, EMEA Mike Warriner - SVP of Engineering, Europe

Founded in 2016, Crypto.com today serves more than 10 million customers and has over 3,000 employees across its offices in the Americas, Europe and Asia. Crypto.com is built on a foundation of security, privacy and compliance, and is designed to accelerate the global adoption of cryptocurrencies through its service offerings.

"The UK represents a strategically important market to Crypto.com," said Kris Marszalek, CEO of Crypto.com. "We are delighted to welcome these senior leaders to the Company and they will all play a vital role in strengthening our capabilities and attracting more talent in this market. This team will also work closely with the regulator as we continue to grow our UK business."

Crypto.com is planning significant investment in the engineering teams in the UK, with more than 400 new hires expected in 2022 to grow the platform and further enable billions of daily cryptocurrency and NFT transactions across our Mobile Apps and market leading low latency trading Exchange.

About Crypto.com

Crypto.com has focused on building a regulated business in every market where the company operates. Crypto.com is built on a solid foundation of security, privacy and compliance and is the first cryptocurrency company in the world to have SOC 2 Type 1 compliance, ISO/IEC 27701:2019, CCSS Level 3, ISO27001:2013 and PCI:DSS 3.2.1, Level 1 compliance, and independently assessed at Tier 4, the highest level for both NIST Cybersecurity and Privacy Frameworks. Crypto.com also holds the industry's largest insurance policy of $750M.

Crypto.com is accelerating the world's transition to cryptocurrency. Find out more at crypto.com/us .

For further inquiries please contact press@crypto.com

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1672914/crypto_com_Logo.jpg
In Collaboration with Qinghua Fenjiu, the Chef Along with the Production Team Were Welcomed by the Swedish Ambassador

Beijing, China--(Newsfile Corp. - March 14, 2022) - The Swedish Embassy in China has recently welcomed Sohu Food Channel's popular program 'Ambassador's Gourmet Parour' inside the embassy. The team of 'Ambassador's Gourmet Parour' went to the embassy on Wednesday March 9, 2022, and it was accompanied and sponsored by the team of a renowned Chinese wine, Qinghua Fenjiu. This collaboration was intended to allow Chinese netizens to experience the collision between food and wine and use their taste buds to crack the Swedish food code.





Ambassador's Gourmet Parour

To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/8457/116628_de429715741218ae_001full.jpg

"It has been a refreshing experience to host these great people at our embassy and this program was a true food fusion and finding common culinary grounds between Swedish and Chinese cuisine," said Helena Sangeland, the Swedish Ambassador to China, while talking about Ambassador's Gourmet Parour. "Just like China, Sweden is also fond of dumplings and our different regions also have different recipes and practices for making dumplings," she added. The ambassador along with the staff of the Swedish embassy extended a very warm welcome with great hospitality to the guests.





Chef Mattias Lundahl

To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/8457/116628_de429715741218ae_002full.jpg





Swedish potato dumplings with caramel onions, white asparagus, roasted almonds and sea buckthorn

To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/8457/116628_de429715741218ae_003full.jpg

The dish that was cooked in this show was the traditional Swedish potato dumpling, which is actually a vegetarian dumpling with white bamboo shoots and a typical Swedish lingonberry sauce. It was prepared by the renowned Chef Mattias Lundahl, who hosted this show and cooked for the ambassador and staff. In this dish, the dough is made of fresh potatoes, combined with fresh vegetables, the fragrant but not greasy Swedish dumplings can be said to be very different from Chinese dumplings.





The editor-in-chief and guests tasting the food

To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/8457/116628_de429715741218ae_004full.jpg





Beetroot mousse with chocolate, raspberry and sourdough

To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/8457/116628_de429715741218ae_005full.jpg

Just like the people of China, Swedes also have a unique love for desserts. Chef Mattias Lundahl therefore made a great dessert using beetroot, which is abundant in Sweden. According to the chef, because beetroot itself has a sweet taste, it is healthier to use it to make desserts without adding a lot of sugar. 'Ambassador's Gourmet Parour' is a program founded by Sohu Food Channel that advocates the concept of "when the footsteps can't reach, the taste buds can reach first". This collaboration alongside Fenjiu was aimed at breaking the dimensional wall between diplomacy and the people.





Qinghua Fenjiu

To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/8457/116628_de429715741218ae_006full.jpg





Photo of Zhang Weidong, General Manager of Fenjiu International Trade Co., Ltd. and Helena Sangeland, Swedish Ambassador to China

To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/8457/116628_de429715741218ae_007full.jpg

Renowned famous Chinese wine Qinghua Fenjiu enjoys a cordial relationship with Sweden since 1921. Swedish archaeologist Anderson and Chinese scholars discovered the Yangshao Culture and discovered the Xinghua Village site, where the wine vessels were discovered. Zhang Weidong, the General Manager of Fenjiu International Trade Co., Ltd. present Fenjiu to the Swedish ambassador as a classic symbol of Chinese culture. Moreover, this event also signifies the strategic direction of Fenjiu to expand overseas markets by building a multi-level international marketing system for Fenjiu and taking it to the European markets and beyond.

To watch this entire program, please click the link below:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAoQA37fmRM

For more information, please visit the website at:

www.fenjiu.com.cn

Contact: Zheng Xingsheng

Tel: +86351 270 9799

Website: https://www.fenjiu.com.cn/



To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/116628


On the evening of March 10, Groupe Gorge entered into exclusive negotiations with the shareholders of iXblue to acquire 100% of the company's capital. This major strategic project marks a turning point in the history of Groupe Gorge and will create a world-class player in cutting-edge technologies for critical applications, notably in the Defense, Space and Maritime sectors. This merger values the new ECA Group-iXblue entity at approximately 800 million.





The key points of the transaction:

The creation of a French group with critical size and technological leadership ;

A strong complementarity of customers, technologies and solutions offered;

A rapprochement facilitated by similar corporate cultures and strong geographical proximity;

A combined backlog ECA Group-iXblue of over 620 million.





Combination of ECA Group and iXblue: emergence of a French technology champion providing very high performance solutions for critical missions

iXblue is a high-tech company recognized worldwide for its advanced solutions in navigation, maritime autonomy and photonics for the civilian, space and defense markets. iXblue's technologies enable its customers to meet their challenges in harsh environments, from the bottom of the ocean to the edge of space. The company is based in France and has been very successful since its creation in 2000, especially internationally. It now has nearly 750 employees and sales in over 60 countries.

ECA Group is a subsidiary of Groupe Gorge since 1992, owned at 100%. The company is one of the world leaders in the field of autonomous robotics and integrated systems, particularly in the Naval sector. The company provides its customers with the most efficient and technologically advanced solutions in the field of naval, land and air drones. ECA Group also offers innovative technological solutions for the Aeronautics and Space sectors.

The combination of ECA Group and iXblue will create a major player in the French DTIB1, which will rank among the world's top players in the following fields:

Maritime autonomous systems, in particular for underwater mine countermeasures ;

Very high performance inertial Navigation solutions;

Photonic, Quantum and Space Solutions.

It will also be a major player in land robotics, underwater acoustics, simulation, naval equipment and aeronautical equipment.

Together, ECA Group and iXblue will offer even more competitive, innovative and integrated autonomous systems for the maritime sector, thus meeting the expectations of customers in various fields: Underwater mine clearance, Deep sea exploration, Hydrography, Port protection, Offshore and MRE (Marine Renewable Energies).





A combination that will generate significant synergies

1. A broader customer base and geographical coverage

The commercial networks of the two companies are highly complementary (80 countries as ECA's customers, 60 countries as iXblue's customers). Their alliance will enable the new group to offer its entire products and solutions portfolio to a larger number of customers and to significantly increase export orders.

For example, in the Maritime sector:

iXblue has a strong presence in the civilian fields of hydrography, oceanography and marine energy: to these customers, the new group will be able to offer ECA's autonomous or remotely operated underwater or surface drone systems.

ECA's customers are mainly military navies, particularly in the fields of underwater mine countermeasures, piloting or energy conversion for submarines. The new group will be able to offer iXblue's inertial navigation solutions to navies that do not yet have them.





2. A coherent portfolio of complementary products and solutions

ECA Group already integrates iXblue's inertial and underwater positioning solutions into its mine countermeasures systems. More broadly, there is no competition in the product lines of the two companies: this is a guarantee of continuity for the teams and therefore of confidence in the ability of the companies to honor their commitments. In particular, iXblue's photonics and inertial navigation activities, which are essential to the creation of a complete offer, will naturally find their place in the new group in its current form and size, as ECA has no activities in these fields. The new group will have very strong positions across the entire value chain, with iXblue as an equipment manufacturer and ECA as a robotics and systems provider.

iXblue's range of surface drones and deep sea robots will complement, but not compete with, the extensive range already provided by ECA Group.

Robots and autonomous land vehicles, quantum technology and on-board equipment for the aeronautics industry will remain strategic in the development of the new group and will see their resources and commercial impact amplified by belonging to a group twice as large.

Finally, the new group will have greater investment capacity to accelerate its R&D roadmaps and strengthen its technological leadership. The two companies combined will thus consolidate French sovereign capabilities and will be able to make a significant contribution to the French ambition for the Deep Sea program, announced by the President of the Republic as part of France 2030 and carried by the Ministry of the Armed Forces and the Ministry of the Sea.





3. Two corporate cultures focused on innovation and entrepreneurship, and strong geographic proximity

The teams of both companies know each other well and have participated in many projects together: both companies are already working on major programs for the Belgian and Dutch navies and for IFREMER (Ulyx drone capable of diving to a depth of 6,000 m). They share a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship. The merger will reinforce this culture, which is a guarantee of technological advances and durability, supported by a stable family shareholding and a long-term vision in the same spirit that has built the history and success of each company.

The integration of the two companies will be facilitated by the close geographical proximity of the French sites, which are essentially located in the same employment areas. This is the case in Ile-de-France, in the south of France at Toulon / La Ciotat and in Brittany at Brest and Lannion.





4. An operation that creates immediate value and has strong medium-term prospects

The following information on the structure of the operation is provided for information purposes only and is subject to change according to the needs and constraints of the structure.

iXblue has generated approximately 138 million in revenues2 and more than 27 million in EBITDA3 in 2021. The acquisition of iXblue, for an enterprise value of 410 million, would be carried out by a holding company (NEWCO) to which 100% of the ECA Group shares would be contributed and/or sold. On this occasion, a cash upstream of around 65 million would allow to reimburse the debt of Groupe Gorge, which would have a positive net cash position at the end of the transaction, with the exception of the debt carried by NEWCO.

This transaction values the new ECA Group-iXblue entity at approximately 800 million.

NEWCO will finance the acquisition of iXblue through:

a 185 m syndicated loan, half of which will be amortized over 6 years and half in fine over 7 years;

an in fine financing provided by the investment fund ICG (Intermediate Capital Group; www.icgam.com);

a significant investment in equity capital (tens of millions of euros) contributed by Herve Arditty, iXblue's founding shareholder, as well as managers and employees.

The repayment of this financing is thus progressive and limited in relation to the expected profitability of the new entity. This acquisition will not require any capital increase at the level of Groupe Gorge and will therefore not result in any dilution of shareholders.

This financing is completed by a confirmed revolving credit line of 50 million and an unconfirmed external growth line of 50 million.

The majority of NEWCO's capital will be held by Groupe Gorge. Together with the founder of iXblue and the management team, Groupe Gorge would control more than two thirds of the capital and more than 80% of the voting rights.

The backlog at the end of 2021 of the new entity represents more than 620 million2, ensuring excellent visibility for the coming years.

The combination of these two companies will also enable cost synergies on direct and indirect purchases and on support functions, which are expected to grow in the coming years, but at a slower pace than if each company remained independent.

Combining the expected sustained growth of both companies and the synergies, which could reach tens of millions of euros of EBITDA by 2025, the ECA Group-iXblue combination aims to achieve revenues of over 500 million and an EBITDA margin of around 25% by 2025-2026.

This very significant growth in revenues and margins is in no way a forecast. It is given as an indication of the potential of the industrial project, which is subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, both in terms of the outlook for each of the two companies and the implementation of the significant synergies expected.

The transaction is subject to obtaining the usual regulatory approvals and could be finalized within approximately 3 to 6 months.







Upcoming financial meetings

An event to present the operation to the financial community and answer questions will be held in early April. The exact date will be communicated shortly.

Groupe Gorge will publish a press release concerning its annual results for 2021 on March 21 after the close of trading. The company will not hold a conference call at the time of this publication but will answer questions from analysts and investors during the presentation to be held in early April.





About Groupe Gorge

Groupe Gorge is a high-tech industrial group driven by a strong entrepreneurial culture. The Group is present in drones, engineering and protection systems. The Group generated revenue of 202 million in 2021.

More information on www.groupe-gorge.com

Groupe Gorge is listed on Euronext Paris Compartment B (GOE).





About iXblue

iXblue is a high-tech company recognized worldwide for its advanced navigation, maritime autonomy and photonics solutions for the civilian, space and defense markets. iXblue's technologies enable its customers to meet their challenges in harsh environments, from the bottom of the ocean to the far reaches of space. The company is based in France and has been very successful since its creation in 2000, especially internationally. It now has nearly 750 employees and sales in over 60 countries..





Contacts :

Investor Relations

Hugo Soussan

Tel. +33 (0)1 44 77 94 86

h.soussan@groupe-gorge.com





Claire Riffaud

Tel. +33 (0)1 53 67 36 79

criffaud@actus.fr





Media Relations

Manon Clairet

Tel. +33 (0)1 53 67 36 73

mclairet@actus.fr

1 The Defense Technological and Industrial Base

2 The 2021 indicators of iXblue are estimated (revenue, backlog, EBITDA). The financial statements for the year have not been closed or audited.

3 EBITDA: Operating profit before "net depreciation and provisions", "other operating income" and "share of profit of associates", including all research tax credits and subsidies for the year without deferral and without applying IFRS 16.

------------------------

This publication embed "Actusnews SECURITY MASTER ".

- SECURITY MASTER Key:

ym9xZ8WZZWqWx3Kcl55lamKXaJholpbFaZWWyJKbl8rIamqVyZpmbcmVZnBkmmpn

- Check this key: https://www.security-master-key.com.

------------------------



 Copyright Actusnews Wire

Receive by email the next press releases of the company by registering on www.actusnews.com, it's free

Full and original release in PDF format:https://www.actusnews.com/documents_communiques/ACTUS-0-73551-cp_acquisition-ixblue_14_03_2022_en.pdf
NEW YORK, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- According to the latest market research study published by P&S Intelligence, the Indian prime power diesel genset market size is predicted to grow to $356.3 million by 2030 from an estimated $143.6 million in 2021, at a 10.6% CAGR. In the country, the highest number of generators are in commercial spaces, because offices, hotels, hospitals, shopping malls, metro and railway stations, and other such places need a constant power supply. Moreover, the growth in the number of telecom towers and data centers is propelling the installation of these systems in the commercial sector.

In this regard, a major driver for genset sales in the country is the vast gap between power demand and supply. With a population touching 1.4 billion, India is not always able to meet the demand for electricity. As a result, even cities witness substantial power cuts, while many people in rural areas still do not have a grid connection. Therefore, with the rapid urbanization and industrialization, the demand for prime power diesel gensets is rising in the country.

Get the sample pages of this report at: https://www.psmarketresearch.com/market-analysis/india-prime-power-dg-set-market/report-sample

Key Findings of India Prime Power Diesel Genset Market Report

Another key reason for the growth of the Indian prime power diesel genset market is the higher prices of petrol and erratic gas supply, which make diesel the preferred fuel for generators.

In the coming years, the sale of gensets that offer a power output of 5-75 kVA will rise the fastest in India as these variants are preferred for commercial spaces.

as these variants are preferred for commercial spaces. In this regard, the biggest driver for the market is infrastructure development, for which the government has allocated INR 13,750 crore in the 2021 Union Budget.

in the 2021 Union Budget. As a result, market players are launching newer variants and expanding their manufacturing capacities to meet the surging demand for prime and backup power via gensets.

However, as these systems release GHGs, the usage of gensets with two small engines instead of one large engine is picking pace. As per company claims, twin-power generators release 40% lesser CO2 than conventional gensets.

Uttar Pradesh accounts for the highest Indian prime power diesel genset market sales volume on account of being the most-populated state in the country. Additionally, commercial infrastructure, including telecom networks, is being rapidly enhanced here, which is driving genset sales.

The COVID-19 pandemic put a severe dent in generator sales in the country as the nationwide lockdowns drove down the demand for electricity from 1,90,198 million units in 2019 to 12,75,534 million units in 2020, as per the Ministry of Power. This also brought down the demand-supply gap from 6,566 million units to 4,871 million units from 2019 to 2020. This was because of the shutdown of most manufacturing plants and commercial centers and suspension of metro, air travel, and train services.

Browse detailed report on India Prime Power Diesel Generator Set Market Size and Growth Forecast to 2030

Therefore, major Indian prime power diesel genset market players, including Kirloskar Oil Engines Limited, Mahindra Powerol Ltd., Ashok Leyland Limited, VE Commercial Vehicles Limited, Escorts Limited, Cummins India Ltd., Caterpillar Inc., Cooper Corporation Pvt. Ltd., Greaves Cotton Limited, Kohler Power India Ltd., and Tractors and Farm Equipment Limited, stepped up product launch and facility expansion activities in 2021, to make up for lost revenue.

India Prime Power Diesel Genset Market Segmentation Analysis

Based on Power Rating

5 kVA-75 kVA

76 kVA-375 kVA

376 kVA-750 kVA

Above 750 kVA

Based on Application

Commercial

Industrial

Residential

State Analysis

Uttar Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Madhya Pradesh

Bihar

Karnataka

Gujarat

Tamil Nadu

Rajasthan

West Bengal

Jharkhand

Chhattisgarh

Browse More Related Reports

Global Diesel Generator Set Market

Diesel Generator Set Market in United States

Diesel Generator Set Market in India

Diesel Generator Set Market in Nigeria

Diesel Generator Set Market in Indonesia

About P&S Intelligence

P&S Intelligence is a provider of market research and consulting services catering to the market information needs of burgeoning industries across the world. Providing the plinth of market intelligence, P&S as an enterprising research and consulting company, believes in providing thorough landscape analyses on the ever-changing market scenario, to empower companies to make informed decisions and base their business strategies with astuteness.

Contact:

Prajneesh Kumar

P&S Intelligence

Phone: +1-347-960-6455

Email: enquiry@psmarketresearch.com

Web: https://www.psmarketresearch.com

Follow Us: LinkedIn Twitter

Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1224988/P_and_S_Intelligence_Logo.jpg
Transaction will accelerate Alphawave's connectivity leadership, product offerings and customer base while driving higher scale and revenue growth from an expanded total addressable market

LONDON, TORONTO and SAN MATEO, Calif., March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Alphawave IP Group plc ("Alphawave" or "Company") (LN: AWE), a global leader in high-speed connectivity for the world's technology infrastructure is pleased to announce the acquisition of the entire OpenFive business unit from SiFive Inc. ("SiFive"). SiFive is the founder and leader of RISC-V computing based in San Mateo, California. All definitive agreements have been completed and the transaction is expected to close in H2 2022 pending customary regulatory approvals.

Key highlights

Alphawave has agreed to acquire OpenFive, a SiFive business unit, bringing OpenFive's high-speed connectivity system-on-chip (SoC) IP portfolio and a proven team based in India and Silicon Valley that has been delivering custom silicon solutions for over 15 years. The acquisition significantly increases Alphawave's customer base globally from 20 currently to over 75, especially in North America, and adds an additional hyperscaler customer based in North America.

This acquisition will nearly double the number of connectivity-focused IPs available to Alphawave customers from 80 to over 155 and will provide customers with a one-stop-shop for their bundled connectivity needs in the most advanced technologies at 5nm, 4nm, 3nm and beyond. This will include an expanded die-to-die connectivity portfolio that will accelerate chiplet delivery capabilities to customers. Alphawave has also licensed RISC-V processor IPs from SiFive as part of the transaction.

OpenFive's proven silicon development team enables Alphawave to offer leading edge data centre and networking custom silicon solutions as well as enhancing its chiplet design capabilities. This accelerates Alphawave's strategic goal to scale revenues by monetising its leading connectivity IP not only through IP licensing but advanced custom silicon design.

The combination of Alphawave's leading high-speed connectivity with OpenFive's IP portfolio is expected to generate material revenue synergies through bundling of IP and integrated IP sub-systems as well as leveraging the two companies' respective strengths to win complex custom silicon design wins at leading edge process nodes.

The transaction will be immediately EPS accretive to Alphawave. Forecast FY 2023 revenue for the combined group is anticipated to reach between US$325m to US$360m with a path to a yearly revenue run rate of over US$500m in 2024. 2023 adjusted EBITDA margins for the group are expected to be between 32-36% with 2025 adjusted EBITDA margins between 40-45% as revenues exceed US$500m .

Background to the transaction

The Alphawave and OpenFive teams have worked together for over a decade. Over the last two decades, OpenFive has developed a broad and deep capability for the delivery of high-end SoC IP technologies to both RISC-V and ARM-based customers. Historically, the OpenFive team has successfully delivered to over 280 customers globally in some of the most advanced process technologies. Over 70 of these customers are pure IP customers. Their extensive custom silicon know-how has established OpenFive as a leading provider of custom silicon solutions globally and with a strong focus on the North American market. As part of the acquisition, Alphawave will be acquiring a 300+ person team, primarily in India, which will significantly expand Alphawave's delivery capabilities.

This transaction has been signed at an inflection point in the semiconductor industry, as the importance and adoption of RISC-V technology has grown significantly in recent years. Against this backdrop, SiFive will continue to focus on its highly successful RISC-V business. As part of the transaction, Alphawave will also become a licensee of RISC-V processor technology and will continue to work with SiFive on opportunities for RISC-V collaboration, particularly in North America.

Strategic rationale

The acquisition of OpenFive will accelerate Alphawave's existing high-growth and successful connectivity business in three ways.

Nearly doubles the total number of IPs available and accelerates the Alphawave roadmap

The acquisition will significantly expand Alphawave's total number of connectivity and SoC IPs, providing a comprehensive portfolio for customers' entire high-end connectivity needs. The acquisition will also accelerate Alphawave's existing industry-leading roadmap for advanced connectivity solutions in 4nm, 3nm and beyond. Alphawave is already the global connectivity leader with over 80 IPs offered in the most advanced process technologies. With the acquisition of OpenFive, this portfolio of IPs will nearly double to over 155 IPs. These IPs can then be bundled to expand the design penetration and stickiness of Alphawave IPs into key new and existing customers globally, primarily in the North American market.

Accelerates Alphawave's capability to deliver custom silicon solutions for connectivity, including chiplets

The adoption of chiplets by the semiconductor industry is rapidly expanding the total addressable market for Alphawave's technology and driving design wins faster than expected. This trend was first reported in the Company's Q4 2021 trading update, where the Company announced chiplet design wins ahead of expectations. This was also reinforced by the recent announcement from the UCIe consortium. By adding capabilities to deliver custom silicon, including chiplets, Alphawave will be a leading provider of connectivity solutions globally, as the only pure-play provider of connectivity solutions in both IP and silicon form-factors to the most sophisticated customers globally including hyperscalers and major semiconductor companies. Alphawave already has deep and broad experience with many of these customers today.

Expands the customer base and total addressable market - especially with North American customers - and adds a new North American hyperscaler to Alphawave's customer base

The acquisition of OpenFive will significantly increase the total Alphawave global customer base from 20 to over 75. This will provide a broader platform from which Alphawave can continue to execute its successful "land and expand" sales strategy. More importantly, the acquisition will add significant key customers in North America including a new hyperscaler customer in North America. The acquisition also positions Alphawave to become a leading provider of high-performance connectivity-focused custom silicon, a market that is estimated to exceed $20 billion by 20261.

Transaction Details, Financing & Financial Effects

The total consideration payable by Alphawave is US$210m in cash, funded from existing cash resources, and the transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals. Post-acquisition, Alphawave will continue to have significant capacity to invest in further growth opportunities across the enlarged group. Post-closing the OpenFive team will receive customary retention incentives. The transaction is expected to close in H2 2022 and will contribute significant revenues and profit immediately after closing.

Key transaction details are as follows:

Acquisition is expected to be immediately accretive to EPS

Total IPs available to customers will increase from 80 to over 155

Total number of customers globally will increase from 20 2 to over 75

to over 75 Alphawave revenues in 2023 are expected to increase to between US$325m and US$360m with a run rate to over US$500m in 2024. This growth is expected to continue in the mid-term

and with a run rate to over in 2024. This growth is expected to continue in the mid-term 2023 adjusted EBITDA margins for the group are expected to be between 32-36% with 2025 adjusted EBITDA margins between 40-45% as revenues exceed US$500m .

. High levels of profitability will continue with significant growth expected beyond 2024

John Lofton Holt, Executive Chairman of Alphawave stated: "When we completed our IPO in 2021, we committed to continuing to grow and accelerate our business by deploying the capital we raised. This began with the acquisition of Precise-ITC in 2021, and the addition of the OpenFive team will further accelerate Alphawave's business. Alphawave can now deliver bundled connectivity-focused IP solutions and custom silicon solutions like chiplets to global customers. This will enable a scale and top-line growth that we envisioned, but much faster than we expected, while continuing to deliver high growth and profit margins for years to come."

Tony Pialis, President and Chief Executive Officer of Alphawave stated: "We have known and worked with the OpenFive team for many years as they have established their credibility in delivering leading-edge SoC IP and custom silicon solutions in the world's most advanced technology, and to the world's most advanced customers. This acquisition is important for Alphawave, but also for our industry, as we will now be the leading pure-play provider of connectivity solutions in the world in whatever form-factor our customers need it - as silicon IP or in custom silicon solutions like chiplets. As we look to the future, we expect to develop and acquire additional capabilities to further expand and accelerate our leadership in connectivity. In our core business, the first quarter of 2022 is very strong and the outlook for 2022 is also strong. We expect this transaction to meaningfully impact revenues in H2 2022, pending regulatory approval of the transaction."

Patrick Little, Chairman and CEO of SiFive stated: "It has been a pleasure working with the Alphawave team on this transaction, and I am sure that we will continue to work together as SiFive focuses on its core RISC-V business. We were also pleased that Alphawave licensed SiFive's RISC-V processor IP as part of the transaction, which further demonstrates the importance of SiFive RISC-V technology to high-end customers globally in a variety of end markets."

Webcast and Conference Call Information for Investors and Media

The Company will host a webcast, conference call and Q&A session on March 14, 2022 at 1600GMT. Details of this call will be posted on the Company website.

Related Party Disclosures

SiFive and OpenFive are not related parties of Alphawave.

Trademarks

All registered trademarks and other trademarks belong to their respective owners.

About Alphawave IP Group plc (LSE:AWE)

Faced with the exponential growth of data, Alphawave IP's technology services a critical need: enabling data to travel faster, more reliably and with higher performance at lower power. Alphawave IP is a global leader in high-speed connectivity for the world's technology infrastructure. Our IP solutions therefore meet the needs of global tier-one customers in data centers, compute, networking, AI, 5G, autonomous vehicles, and storage. Founded in Toronto, Canada in 2017, by an expert technical team with a proven track record in licensing semiconductor IP, our mission is to focus on the hardest-to-solve connectivity challenges. To find out more about Alphawave IP, visit: awaveip.com

Glossary

IP / Silicon

IP Intellectual property core, IP core or IP block is a reusable building block of a semiconductor chip that can be licensed or purchased from a third-party provider. Some examples of third-party providers are Alphawave IP, ARM and Imagination Technologies. Bookings Is the total value of licence fees, non-recurring engineering fees (NRE) and support and maintenance contractually committed by customers together with an estimate of expected royalties from those contracts (unless stated otherwise). Bookings are stated since Alphawave IP's founding (referred to as cumulative or lifetime bookings) or in a given period. Hyperscaler Hyperscalers are technology companies that provide cloud, networking and internet services at scale. Some examples of hyperscalers include Google, Facebook, Baidu, Alibaba, Microsoft, and Amazon. Foundry Also commonly known as a 'fab' or wafer fabrication facility, a semiconductor foundry is a manufacturer of semiconductors for other companies. The two largest foundries in the world are TSMC and Samsung. End

customer Alphawave IP's end customers include semiconductor OEMs, ASIC providers, and hyperscalers. These are companies that provide and build technology infrastructure, from data centres, networking, and storage to AI, autonomous vehicles and 5G wireless. OEM Original equipment manufacturer that produces systems, parts or equipment utilised in the production of another device or product.

___________________________ 1 https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2021/06/15/2247389/0/en/High-End-FinFet-ASIC-Market-To-Approach-20-Billion.html 2 As of end of FY 2021, not including VeriSilicon, which is a reseller

Alphawave IP Group plc: John Lofton Holt, Executive Chairman, Daniel Aharoni, CFO, ir@awaveip.com, +44 (0) 20 7717 5877; Brunswick Group: Simone Selzer, Sarah West, alphawave@brunswickgroup.com, +44 (0) 20 7404 5959; Gravitate PR: Anna Bolender, Wynton Yu, alphawave@gravitatepr.com, +1 415 528 0468

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1765340/Alphawave_IP_Alphawave_IP_Announces_Definitive_Agreement_to_Acqu.jpg
Calgary, Alberta--(Newsfile Corp. - March 14, 2022) - Saturn Oil & Gas Inc. (TSXV: SOIL) (FSE: SMKA) ("Saturn" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that the Company's Board of Directors has approved a 2022 capital expenditures budget totalling $50 million.

"As a result of the strategic acquisition and recently closed, upsized and oversubscribed equity issues, Saturn has increased its 2022 capital expenditure program," stated John Jeffrey, CEO of Saturn. "Equally important, because of the debt consolidation, the Company is now permitted to give guidance to the expected financial impact of our upcoming growth-oriented capital budget which remains underpinned by substantial free funds flow that will also materially reduce outstanding indebtedness."

2022 Capital Expenditure Program and Annual Guidance

Saturn's assets provide for a foundation of sustainability: base decline is low at less than 13%; production efficiencies are attractive at less than $15,000 per flowing barrel of oil; and high operating netbacks are more than $60/boe, at current oil prices. Furthermore, as Saturn owns extensive infrastructure and undeveloped land within its operational areas, the Company can direct over 85% of its capital expenditures towards growth projects, with the balance directed to facilities and undeveloped land. Company average production for Q4 2021 was 7,245 boe/d with 96% oil and NGL.

Saturn remains dedicated to reducing its debt levels and expects to make $38.1 million in principal payments this year and to exit 2022 with a debt to 2022 EBITDA ratio of 0.5x. As a testament to Saturn's ESG commitment, it has allocated $13.3 million to abandonment and reclamation spending and other emission reduction capital projects, which are government funded under the Accelerated Site Closure Program.

Saturn's 2022 Capital Expenditure Program is currently underway having contracted one drilling rig to be active throughout the year at the Oxbow Asset, excluding, breakup and maintenance periods. Over 85% of the 2022 drilling budget will be directed to the Oxbow Asset, with select drilling targets at the Viking Asset.

A summary of budgeted field development activities:



Activity

Capital ($millions) Oxbow Drilling 29.2 net wells

25.8 Viking Drilling 5.0 net wells

5.8 Strategic Acquisition 240 bbls/d (field estimate)

7.4 Workovers & Optimization 50-100 existing wells

3.9 Facilities & Lands



7.1 Total Expenditures



50.0

Incorporating the additional financial flexibility provided by the previously announced strategic acquisition, debt consolidation and bought public offering, the Company is now positioned to pursue an expanded 2022 capital expenditure plan which we expect will deliver substantial organic Free funds flow at a conservative WTI oil price assumption of US$75.00/bbl for significant growth and accelerated debt repayment. Highlights of the 2022 Capital Expenditure Program include forecasts of:

average annual production in the range of 7,800 to 8,200 boe/d, generating hedged EBITDA in the range of $73 to $77 million;

Q4 2022 average production in the range of 8,100 to 8,500 boe/d, representing year-over-year production growth between 12% - 17%;

Saturn's implied debt adjusted free funds flow yield for 2022 is 24 - 27%, based on the Company's enterprise value of $126.5 million; and

At the mid-point of guidance, year-end 2022 net debt is expected to be reduced to $39.4 million (down 45% from an estimated $71.0 million at year-end 2021.

2022 Forecast Low High Average production1 7,800 boe/d 8,200 boe/d ($millions, except per share)



EBITDA prior to hedging 107.6 b 111.6 EBITDA2 73.0 77.0 Cash Interest (12.0) (12.0) Adjusted Funds Flow (AFF) 61.0 65.0 AFF per Basic Share3 1.91 2.03 Capital Expenditures (Excluding Acquisition) (42.6) (42.6) Free Funds Flow 18.4 22.4 2022 Year End Net Debt 41.4 37.4 Net Debt to EBITDA 0.6x 0.5x 2022e EV / EBITDA4 1.9x 1.7x

Notes:

(1) Based on a midpoint 2022 average forecast of 8,000 boe/d, 96% crude oil and NGL production.

(2) Earnings Before Interest Taxes Depreciation and Amortization (EBITDA) netback of CAD $25.70 / boe is based on: 2022 WTI crude oil price of USD $75.00 /bbl; MSW differential of USD -$4.00 /bbl; CAD/USD exchange rate of $0.80; AECO price of $3.50/GJ; corporate differential of CAD -$6.40 /bbl; hedging expense of -$10.82 /boe; and general and administrative expenses of $2.06 /boe, see advisory Non-Gaap Measures.

(3) Based on 32.0 million basic shares.

(4) Enterprise Value (EV) based on the $3.00 share price and 59.1 million fully diluted shares plus forecast 2022 year end net debt adjusted for $90.2 million in option and warrant proceeds.

Saturn's forecasted funds flow is most sensitive to changes in crude oil prices. Saturn estimates that each additional +US$5/bbl increase in the US$ WTI oil price will provide an extra approximately $4.1 MM in Adjusted Funds Flow such that with the current 12-month WTI strip >US$100/bbl, Saturn would expect to have approximately $83.5 MM in Adjusted Funds Flow at the midpoint of its production guidance. This would effectively double the Company's annual free funds flow to $40.9 MM (from $20.4 MM), which is available for further accelerated debt repayment allowing for 2022 year end net debt forecasted at less than $19 MM.

Annualized sensitivity analysis on Adjusted Funds Flow, estimated for 2022:

Assumption Change AFF Effect ($millions) WTI oil price (USD/ bbl) $5.00 4.1 (6.7%) AECO C gas price $0.10 0.1 (0.0%) CAD/USD exchange rate $0.01 1.4 (2.3%) Oil production (bbl/d) 100 3.3 (5.2%) Gas production (Mcf/d) 1,000 0.2 (0.0%)

Marketing Contract

The Company has entered into a 4-month marketing and consulting contract with Toronto based marketing firm, North Equities Corp. (the "Contract"). North Equities Corp. specializes in various social media platforms and will be able to facilitate greater awareness and widespread dissemination of the Company's news. In connection with the Contract, the Company has paid North Equities $52,710. North Equities and affiliates directly or indirectly own 17,500 shares of the Company.

About Saturn Oil & Gas Inc.

Saturn Oil & Gas Inc. is a growing Canadian energy company focused on generating positive shareholder returns through the continued responsible development of high-quality, light oil weighted assets, supported by an acquisition strategy that targets highly accretive, complementary opportunities. Saturn has assembled an attractive portfolio of free-cash flowing, low-decline operated assets in Southeastern Saskatchewan and West Central Saskatchewan that provide a deep inventory of long-term economic drilling opportunities across multiple zones. With an unwavering commitment to building an ESG-focused culture, Saturn's goal is to increase reserves, production and cash flows at an attractive return on invested capital. Saturn's shares are listed for trading on the TSX.V under ticker 'SOIL' and on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange under symbol 'SMKA'.

Further information and a corporate presentation is available on Saturn's website at www.saturnoil.com.

Saturn Oil & Gas Investor & Media Contacts:

John Jeffrey, MBA - Chief Executive Officer

Tel: +1 (587) 392-7902

www.saturnoil.com

Kevin Smith, MBA - VP Corporate Development

Tel: +1 (587) 392-7900

info@saturnoil.com

Reader Advisory

NON-GAAP MEASURES

This news release includes non-GAAP measures as further described herein. These non-GAAP measures do not have a standardized meaning prescribed by IFRS and, therefore, may not be comparable with the calculation of similar measures by other companies. Management believes that the presentation of these non-GAAP measures provides useful information to investors and shareholders as the measures provide increased transparency and the ability to better analyze performance against prior periods on a comparable basis.

"Funds flow" represents cash flow from operating activities and adds back changes in non-cash working capital as the Company believes the timing of collection, payment or incurrence of these items is variable. Funds flow per share is calculated using the same weighted average basic and diluted shares that are used in calculating income (loss) per share.

"Adjusted funds flow" adjusts funds flow for items outside the scope of operations such as transactions costs and decommissioning expenditures. Saturn uses adjusted funds flow as a key measure to demonstrate the Company's ability to generate funds to repay debt and fund future capital investment. Adjusted funds flow per share is calculated using the same weighted average basic and diluted shares that are used in calculating income (loss) per share.

"Free funds flow" represents Adjusted Funds Flow and deducts capital expenditures excluding acquisitions and divestures.

"EBITDA netbacks" are determined by deducting realized derivative commodity contract losses or adding realized derivative commodity contract gains and deducting, royalties, operating expenses, transportation expenses from petroleum and natural gas sales and general and administrative expenses. Netbacks are per boe measures used in operational and capital allocation decisions. Presenting netbacks on a per boe basis allows management to better analyze performance against prior periods on a comparable basis.

"Enterprise Value" (EV) is the sum of the Fully Diluted Market Capitalization and Net Debt adjusted for warrant and option proceeds, as a measurement of the Company's total value.

"Net debt" represents cash, accounts receivable, deposits and prepaid expenses (current and long-term), accounts payable and accrued liabilities, Senior Term Loan, Term Notes, promissory notes and convertible notes. The Company uses net debt as an alternative to total outstanding debt as management believed it provides a more accurate measure in assessing the liquidity of the Company.

FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION AND STATEMENTS.

Certain information included in this press release constitutes forward-looking information under applicable securities legislation. Forward-looking information typically contains statements with words such as "anticipate", "believe", "expect", "plan", "intend", "estimate", "propose", "project", "scheduled", "will" or similar words suggesting future outcomes or statements regarding an outlook. Forward-looking information in this press release may include, but is not limited to, the drilling of development wells, workover program and the maintenance of bas production and the business plan, cost model and strategy of the Company.

The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are based on certain key expectations and assumptions made by Saturn, including expectations and assumptions concerning: the timing of and success of future drilling, development and completion activities, the performance of existing wells, the performance of new wells, the availability and performance of facilities and pipelines, the geological characteristics of Saturn's properties, the application of regulatory and licensing requirements, the availability of capital, labour and services, the creditworthiness of industry partners and the ability to source and complete asset acquisitions.

Although Saturn believes that the expectations and assumptions on which the forward-looking statements are based are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on the forward-looking statements because Saturn can give no assurance that they will prove to be correct. Since forward-looking statements address future events and conditions, by their very nature they involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially from those currently anticipated due to a number of factors and risks. These include, but are not limited to, risks associated with the oil and gas industry in general (e.g., operational risks in development, exploration and production; the uncertainty of reserve estimates; the uncertainty of estimates and projections relating to production, costs and expenses, and health, safety and environmental risks), constraint in the availability of services, commodity price and exchange rate fluctuations, the current COVID-19 pandemic, actions of OPEC and OPEC+ members, changes in legislation impacting the oil and gas industry, adverse weather or break-up conditions and uncertainties resulting from potential delays or changes in plans with respect to exploration or development projects or capital expenditures. These and other risks are set out in more detail in Saturn's Annual Information Form for the year ended December 31, 2020.

Forward-looking information is based on a number of factors and assumptions which have been used to develop such information but which may prove to be incorrect. Although Saturn believes that the expectations reflected in its forward-looking information are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on forward-looking information because Saturn can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. In addition to other factors and assumptions which may be identified in this press release, assumptions have been made regarding and are implicit in, among other things, the timely receipt of any required regulatory approvals and the satisfaction of all conditions to the completion of the share consolidation. Readers are cautioned that the foregoing list is not exhaustive of all factors and assumptions which have been used.

The forward-looking information contained in this press release is made as of the date hereof and Saturn undertakes no obligation to update publicly or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, unless required by applicable securities laws. The forward-looking information contained in this press release is expressly qualified by this cautionary statement.

BOE PRESENTATION

Boe means barrel of oil equivalent. All boe conversions in this news release are derived by converting gas to oil at the ratio of six thousand cubic feet ("Mcf") of natural gas to one barrel ("Bbl") of oil. Boe may be misleading, particularly if used in isolation. A Boe conversion rate of 1 Bbl: 6 Mcf is based on an energy equivalency conversion method primarily applicable at the burner tip and does not represent a value equivalency at the wellhead. Given that the value ratio of oil compared to natural gas based on currently prevailing prices is significantly different than the energy equivalency ratio of 1 Bbl: 6 Mcf, utilizing a conversion ratio of 1 Bbl: 6 Mcf may be misleading as an indication of value.

ABREVIATIONS AND FREQUENTLY REOCCURING TERMS

Saturn uses the following abbreviations and frequently recurring terms in this press release: "WTI" refers to West Texas Intermediate, a grade of light sweet crude oil used as benchmark pricing in the United States; "MSW" refers to the mixed sweet blend that is the benchmark price for conventionally produced light sweet crude oil in Western Canada; "AECO" refers to Alberta Energy Company, a grade or heating content of natural gas used as benchmark pricing in Alberta, Canada; "bbl" refers to barrel; "bbl/d" refers to barrels per day; "GJ" refers to gigajoule; "NGL" refers to Natural Gas Liquids; "Mcf" refers to thousand cubic feet.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this press release.

All dollar figures included herein are presented in Canadian dollars, unless otherwise noted.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/116631
The acting head of New Yorks state prison system is under fire from relatives of prisoners who have died in custody for botching his response to COVID and allowing a climate of violence to fester.

Relatives of 10 men who died in state prison sent a letter last week to state Senate leaders pressing to block the permanent appointment of Anthony Annucci as commissioner of the Department of Corrections and Community Services.

Advertisement

The regressive policies that he has promulgated, the scourge of racism and brutality he has sought to sweep under the rug, the many atrocities committed by so-called beat-up squads and others under his watch, and the near total lack of accountability for staff are just a few of the reasons for our position, the relatives wrote.

Anthony Annucci, acting commissioner of the New York state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, at a legislative hearing in Albany in 2016. (Mike Groll/AP)

One signer of the letter was Darlene McDay, a Long Island woman who charges her son Dante Taylor died at age 22 when he was beaten mercilessly by guards in Wende Correctional Facility and thrown down stairs in October 2017 before he took his life in solitary confinement.

Advertisement

There just has been no accountability at all for staff, said McDay, a 45-year-old nurse practitioner. I have no confidence in Annucci at all. These things keep happening on his watch.

After the Corrections Department called Taylors death a suicide, an independent investigation found evidence of the guards alleged beating was covered up. Officers also falsified official documents, but none of them have been fired, McDay said.

New York State prison guards brutally pummeled Dante Taylor, an inmate serving a life sentence for the murder of a Suffolk County mom, driving him to suicide, according to a lawsuit. (Obtained by New York Daily News)

McDay has filed a lawsuit, which she says the state opposes. They are protecting the officers and dragging me through hell to fight them, she said. We need a real reformer in that job.

Annucci, 70, is in many ways the face of the agency. He started with the Corrections Department 38 years ago as a lawyer in 1984 and rose to the No. 2 post in 2007, his official bio states. He was appointed acting commissioner since 2013, when then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo named him to the job.

Dante Taylor (Obtained by Daily News)

Four of the prisoners mentioned in the letter died of COVID, including Leonard Carter, who was granted parole in early 2020 after working as an inmate counselor in the Sing Sing Mental Health Unit for years.

But Annucci did not act on Carters release and that of many others, and Carter died in a crowded prison dorm at Queensboro Correctional Facility in April 2020 at age 60, the letter said. His sister, Cynthia Carter-Young, said she had to spend most of a federal stimulus check on his funeral.

Cynthia Carter-Young, sister of Leonard Carter. (Theodore Parisienne/for New York Daily News)

He said he was just having a little trouble breathing, and eight days away he passed away, said Carter-Young, 65, of East New York, Brooklyn. They could have let many of those inmates out. There were tools in place that Annucci could have used.

Advertisement

State prisoner Darlene Lulu Benson-Seay died of COVID in April 2020 just before her 63nd birthday, after she and her lawyers tried desperately to gain her parole because of heart and kidney ailments. Months before her death, she collapsed and was held in a cell without soap. She developed gangrene before she died.

Innocent people are dying, and hes looking the other way, said her sister Genice Benson, 61, of Buffalo. By him not granting her compassionate release, it led to her death. She was a beautiful person inside and out.

Leonard Carter before he was incarcerated. (Courtesy of Cynthia Carter-Young)

During a March 1 public hearing, Annucci was asked about a Columbia University report that showed people were dying in the state prisons about every three days.

Advertisement

He replied: [I]f the reason is natural causes, and it wasnt any failure of medical services ... were all mortal and at some point, something kills everybody.

The Daily News Flash Weekdays Catch up on the days top five stories every weekday afternoon. >

Some of Annuccis answer didnt sit well with state Sen. John Liu of Queens. Maybe change is necessary, including changing the people at the table  and in this case, it might very well be you, sir, Liu said.

After 38 years at the department and nine years as its acting chief, its time for Annucci to be replaced by someone else, Liu told The News.

Its simply time for a change, Liu said. We are in a vastly new world than we were in just a few years ago, let alone nine or 38.

A spokesman for Annucci countered that the agency spends $400 million a year on medical care and had a lower COVID infection rate than 45 other states. The overall prison population has dropped 58%, but the population is older and thus more susceptible to medical issues.

The death of anyone in [Corrections] facilities is something the department takes very seriously, the agency said in a statement. The department expresses our sincerest condolences for the lives lost to this virus, the statement said.

Advertisement

The state Senate has yet to move Annuccis nomination forward. A spokeswoman for Sen. Julia Salazar, the chair of the correction committee, did not reply to an email.

A spokeswoman for Gov. Hochul, Hazel Crampton-Hays, said in a statement: We are deeply sympathetic to the pain of families who are mourning loved ones. We continue to engage with the legislature on key reforms and new programs Commissioner Annucci is leading for our administration, including improving re-entry and expanding prison education programs and job training in facilities. We look forward to working with the legislature and our community partners to confirm the Commissioner.
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - March 14, 2022) - Provenance Gold Corp. (CSE: PAU) (OTCQB: PVGDF) (the "Company" or "Provenance") is pleased to announce that it has acquired a large volume of historic data on the Eldorado property that it is digitizing. As a result, the Company has a full historic drill hole data base which it has used to generate cross sections, long sections and horizontal plan sections using the property's historic 242 drill holes. The Company is very pleased by the information gained from these studies.

Based on the current evaluation work, Provenance has determined that the gold mineralization is locally high-grade within a large volume of lower grade values and is open in all directions and vertically. Additionally, within the larger expanse of the project, numerous undrilled areas could expand the mineralization considerably. Provenance's review of the cross sections shows that much of the historic drilling was shallow, and stopped above, and even within the mineralization. The following figure shows the distribution of the Eldorado drill holes and the location of the following cross section.

Figure 1. Eldorado Project drill holes and cross section location

Full resolution: https://www.provenancegold.com/images/gallery/PAU_News_130.jpg

To view an enhanced version of Figure 1, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/5654/116625_5c9c4d5304d1e9fc_001full.jpg

The following drill hole cross section is a northwest trending, 60-meter wideband, which shows all drill holes along this cross section. Note that gold mineralization is at least 200 meters deep along this cross section. A number of high-grade gold samples are found in many of the holes displayed.

Figure 2. Drill hole cross section showing assays and depths of holes

Full resolution: https://www.provenancegold.com/images/gallery/PAU_News_132.jpg

To view an enhanced version of Figure 2, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/5654/116625_5c9c4d5304d1e9fc_002full.jpg

The following assay summary table is a 7-hole selection of some of the holes along the cross section. Data is presented in both meters / grams and feet / ounces. The cutoff grade selected was 0.1 g/t and 0.1 ppm. Some selected highlights include R-136 with 134.1 meters of 2.09 g Au, R-001 with 71.6 meters of 0.86 g Au, R96-C1 with sequential intervals of 91.44 meters of 1.4 g Au and 151 meters of 1.2 g Au. Some of the highest grades found in the data include 40.4 g Au in R-90 and 44.19 g Au in R-136 (see table). Note the thicknesses and the longer intervals are centered by much higher grades than the average.

Hole # Meters Meters Meters GOLD Feet Feet Feet GOLD Depth From/To Thickness gm/t Depth From/To Thickness opt R-001 71.6 0-71.6 71.6 0.86 235 0-235 235 0.025 (N, -90)















R-021 103.6 0-27.4 27.4 1.32 340 0-90 90 0.038 (N, -90)

9.1--21.3 12.2 2.45 including 30-70 40 0.072



39.2-65.5 25.9 1.49

130-215 85 0.043



53.3-59.4 6.1 5.02 including 175-195 20 0.147



68.6-103.6 35 0.179

225-340 115 0.005 R-31 85.3 0-85.3 85.3 1.13 280 0-280 280 0.033 (S37W, -60)

35-85.3 50.3 1.65 including 115-275 160 0.048 R-90 67.1 0-67 67 3.23 220 0-220 220 0.094 (S37W, -60)

32-67 35 5.56 including 105-220 95 0.16



48.8-65.5 16.7 9.63 including 160-215 55 0.28



50.3-51.8 1.0 40.04 including 165-170 5 1.17 R-136 157 0-12.2 12.2 0.18 515 0-40 40 0.005 (W, -55)

22.9-157 134.1 2.09

75-515 440 0.061



62.5-91.4 28.9 1.67 including 205-300 95 0.049



100.6-157 56.4 3.8 including 330-515 185 0.111



118.9-150.9 32 5.95 including 390-495 105 0.174



120.4-129.5 9.1 13.25 including 395-425 30 0.386



128-129.5 1.5 44.19 including 420-425 5 1.29 R-153 120.4 3-111.2 108.2 1.0 395 10-365 355 0.029 (N51E, -45)

42.7-97.5 54.8 1.61 including 140-320 180 0.047 R-96-C-1 369.4 7.31-91.44 91.44 1.408 1212 24-324 300 0.041 (N45W, -60)

26.2-34.1 7.9 2.3 including 86-112 26 0.067 Core

37.8-45.1 7.3 3.06 including 124-128 24 0.089



51.8-83.5 31.7 1.68 including 170-274 104 0.049



91.4-250.5 151.8 1.206

324-822 498 0.035

100.6-118 17.4 3.09 including 330-387 57 0.09

112.5-114.3 1.8 14.61 including 369-375 6 0.426

136.2-145.4 9.2 1.702 including 447-477 30 0.05

158.2-176.5 18.3 2.08 including 519-579 60 0.061

Figure 3. Selected drill hole assays of some holes in the cross section

Full resolution: https://www.provenancegold.com/images/gallery/PAU_News_131.jpg

The Eldorado gold mineralization is on BLM land that Provenance controls, but unlike Nevada, Oregon exploration drilling must be permitted by both the BLM and DOGAMI, Oregon's department of geology. The Company expects to obtain both permits to begin confirmation drilling within the next several months.

The staged work program includes completing compilations from the various historic studies, drilling 20 confirmation holes over a wide area of the property, and planning and permitting a second larger round of drilling into obvious targets and new areas.

As Steven Craig, project manager said, "Holes like R-90 with 67 meters of plus three grams starting at surface are rare. I look forward to starting the confirmation drilling."

Steven Craig, P. Geo., a qualified person for the purposes of National Instrument 43-101, has reviewed and approved the technical contents of this News Release.

About Provenance Gold Corp.

Provenance Gold Corp. is a precious metals exploration company with a focus on gold and silver mineralization within North America. The Company currently holds interests in four properties, three in Nevada, and one in eastern Oregon, USA. For further information please visit the Company's website at https://provenancegold.com or contact Rob Clark at rclark@provenancegold.com.

On behalf of the Board,

Provenance Gold Corp.

Rauno Perttu, Chief Executive Officer

Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange, nor its regulation services provider, accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this press release. This news release may contain certain "Forward-Looking Statements" within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and applicable Canadian securities laws. When or if used in this news release, the words "anticipate", "believe", "estimate", "expect", "target, "plan", "forecast", "may", "schedule" and similar words or expressions identify forward-looking statements or information. Such statements represent the Company's current views with respect to future events and are necessarily based upon a number of assumptions and estimates that, while considered reasonable by the Company, are inherently subject to significant business, economic, competitive, political and social risks, contingencies and uncertainties. Many factors, both known and unknown, could cause results, performance or achievements to be materially different from the results, performance or achievements that are or may be expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. The Company does not intend, and does not assume any obligation, to update these forward-looking statements or information to reflect changes in assumptions or changes in circumstances or any other events affecting such statements and information other than as required by applicable laws, rules and regulations.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/116625
BRUSSELS/FRANKFURT/PARIS (dpa-AFX) - German stocks rallied on Monday after Russian President Vladimir Putin signaled a positive shift in talks with Ukraine. A new round of talks between the countries will be held today via video link as Moscow's invading forces maintain their devastating assaults across the former Soviet state. The benchmark DAX jumped 267 points, or 2 percent, to 13,895 after rallying 1.4 percent in the previous session. DEUTZ soared 6.5 percent. The internal combustion engine manufacturer increased its revenue by almost 25 percent in fiscal 2021 and improved EBIT margin before exceptional items by around 8 percentage points to 2.3 percent. Automakers surged the most, with Volkswagen rising over 6 percent after the company doubled its operating profit. 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.
BRUSSELS/FRANKFURT/PARIS (dpa-AFX) - French stocks advanced on Monday as investors pinned hopes for a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine war. The next round of peace talks is scheduled for today with officials on both sides offering cautious optimism. 'There are certain positive shifts, negotiators on our side tell me,' Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a meeting with his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko on Friday. The benchmark CAC 40 climbed 45 points, or 0.7 percent, to 6,305 after gaining 0.9 percent on Friday. Sanofi edged up slightly. The drug major said its Phase 2 AMEERA-3 clinical trial evaluating amcenestrant, an investigational optimized oral selective estrogen receptor degrader or SERD, did not meet its primary endpoint of improving progression-free survival or PFS. Power utility EDF fell nearly 2 percent. The company expects a more serious decrease in its earnings this year due to wholesale energy price caps and lower nuclear output problems. 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.
Almere, The Netherlands

March 14, 2022

ASM International N.V. (Euronext Amsterdam: ASM) today announces that it acquired Reno Sub-Systems Inc. (Reno), a supplier of RF matching sub-systems for semiconductor manufacturing equipment.

Reno designs and sells innovative RF matching sub-systems and is based in New Jersey, the US. Reno's high-performance RF matching networks and RF generators will enhance ASM's plasma products and solutions.

Due to its limited size, the acquisition is not expected to have a significant impact on 2022 earnings.

About ASM International

ASM International NV, headquartered in Almere, the Netherlands, its subsidiaries design, manufacture equipment and process solutions to produce semiconductor devices for wafer processing and has facilities in the United States, Europe, and Asia. ASM International's common stock trades on the Euronext Amsterdam Stock Exchange.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements: All matters discussed in this press release, except for any historical data, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. These include, but are not limited to, economic conditions and trends in the semiconductor industry generally and the timing of the industry cycles specifically, currency fluctuations, corporate transactions, financing and liquidity matters, the success of restructurings, the timing of significant orders, market acceptance of new products, competitive factors, litigation involving intellectual property, shareholders or other issues, commercial and economic disruption due to natural disasters, terrorist activity, armed conflict or political instability, changes in import/export regulations, epidemics and other risks indicated in the Company's reports and financial statements. The Company assumes no obligation nor intends to update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect future developments or circumstances.

CONTACT



Investor and Media contact:

Victor Bareno

T: +31 88 100 8500

E: investor.relations@asm.com

Attachment
Financing round led by Prosnav Capital, a strategic international investor based in Luxembourg and Hong Kong, and supported by investment from a group of continuing shareholders

Financing accelerates the company's development into a global leader in proteomics and provides direct access to Asian market opened through broad network of Prosnav Capital

New management team appointed to drive aggressive growth, brings extensive international industry expertise: new CEO, Dr. Albrecht Laufer is joined by Markus Fehr as designated co-CEO

COLOGNE, GERMANY / ACCESSWIRE / March 14, 2022 / AYOXXA Biosystems GmbH, active in the development of multiplex protein analysis assays for drug discovery and translational research, today announced the successful closing of a financing round which will provide runway for the coming 3 - 5 years. The round was led by Hong Kong-based strategic investor, Prosnav Capital, who will provide AYOXXA access to the Asian market with a broad regional network. Besides Prosnav, a group of existing shareholders participated in the financing.

The funds will be used to drive the global commercialization of AYOXXA's LUNARIS platform. The platform is designed to generate high-quality proteomics data using smallest-volume samples. It enables fully scalable quantitative validation of disease-relevant biomarkers and allows for translational research from laboratory to clinic, from mouse model to human, from data to treatment or vaccine.

"We are proud to have attracted Prosnav Capital as a shareholder. Prosnav provides the company with a solid perspective, not only in terms of funding, but also with their valuable relationships and experience, especially in Asia," said Dr. Albrecht Laufer, AYOXXA's Chief Executive Officer. "With our LUNARIS platform, AYOXXA is well positioned to enter the commercial growth phase."

"We are honored to lead a group of highly regarded life science investors in supporting AYOXXA at this crucial point in the company's history," said David Huang, founder of Prosnav Capital. "This is our strategically important investment into the healthcare sector; we are excited by the potential of the LUNARIS technology to support development of better treatments and vaccines. We will help to establish AYOXXA as a global leader in proteomics".

"AYOXXA is now well positioned to successfully expand into the Asian market, where nearly half of the more than 600 studies with CAR-T cell therapies are being conducted by utilizing its experience gained through use of the LUNARIS platform at 1st tier medical institutions in Europe and the US," said new designated Co-CEO and China Representative of GHA (German Health Alliance) Markus Fehr.

"Prosnav Capital has recognized the potential of AYOXXA to continue to innovate, particularly for the use of proteomic tools in clinical settings, as well as provide the financial stability to expand the commercial capability of the company. I was pleased to have the support of the leading investors in AYOXXA throughout the financing process and encouraged that several shareholders continue as investors in the company alongside the lead investment of Prosnav Capital," said Rodney Turner, outgoing CEO of AYOXXA.

Continuing investors led by Wellington Partners and NRW.Bank include b-to-v Partners S.a.r.l.; Rainer Christine Asset Management GmbH.; Equivation-Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH; Roland Oetker Family Office; Riesner Verwaltungs GmbH, the two Co-Founders of AYOXXA and several other private investors.

New management to drive accelerated commercial growth

As part of the financing transaction, it was agreed that previous Managing Directors will continue to serve the company in new capacities. Rodney Turner (CEO) will advise AYOXXA in the US market, and Dr. Markus Zumbansen (CTO) will continue to serve the company as a CSO and CTO. The new CEO, Dr. Albrecht Laufer, and designated co-CEO Markus Fehr will drive AYOXXA's accelerated commercial growth.

Dr. Laufer joins AYOXXA bringing more than 35 years of experience from international leadership positions in the biotech and pharmaceutical industries and from vaccines development to the company. Mr. Fehr is an expert on the Chinese healthcare market and will retain his position as China representative of the GHA - German Health Alliance, in addition to his role at AYOXXA.

About Prosnav Capital

Prosnav Capital manages over $1 billion in committed capital through its multi-asset class platform, which includes private equity, real estate, structured investments and finance, and asset management. Prosnav has carefully selected high quality fund investment opportunities from around the world and offered them to high-net-worth clients. At the same time, the company actively explores direct and co-investment opportunities. In addition, the company provides comprehensive value-added services throughout the investment cycle, from fundraising inception to investment, post-investment management and exit. In addition to its Luxembourg fund office, which serves as a hub for the EU, Prosnav has offices in key financial centers, including Germany, Switzerland, Canada, the UK (advisory services at the StepStone office), Singapore, Australia, Hong Kong and China. Prosnav employs over 70 people worldwide.

About AYOXXA

AYOXXA Biosystems GmbH, originally a Startup of the National University of Singapore, is an international life science company based in Cologne (Germany) with an office in the USA. AYOXXA enables its customers and partners to utilize its reliable and optimized platform technology to fuel breakthroughs in all areas of life science research and to enhance success in translational science.

With LUNARIS, its proprietary beads-on-a-chip multiplexing platform for advanced protein analysis, the Company is paving the way for translating knowledge generated in a laboratory environment through clinical studies in support of basic biology and drug development. With its advantages in terms of quality, flexibility, robustness and efficiency, LUNARIS enables fully scalable quantitative validation of biomarkers in minute amounts of biological samples. AYOXXA is commercializing a growing portfolio of standardized ready-to-use biomarker assays, with a focus on the biology of inflammation and immune response.

For more information, visit www.ayoxxa.com.

Follow AYOXXA on LinkedIn.

Press Contact:

AYOXXA Biosystems GmbH

MC Services AG

Dr. Marion Lammertz

Dr. Solveigh Mahler

Marketing Manager Communications

P: +49 (0) 221 222529 41

+49 (0) 211 529 252 19

E: marion.lammertz@ayoxxa.com

solveigh.maehler@mc-services.eu

SOURCE: AYOXXA Biosystems GmbH

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/692884/AYOXXA-Receives-Fresh-Capital-for-Commercial-Growth-in-Europe-US-and-Asia-Led-by-Prosnav-Capital
VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / March 14, 2022 / Sky Gold Corp. (TSX-V:SKYG) (OTC PINK:SRKZF) ("Sky Gold Corp." or the "Company") welcomes Mr. Aaron McBreairty (B.A, B.Sc., G.I.T) to its Board of Directors.

Aaron is a Geologist with over nine years of experience in mineral exploration and project management, including most recently as project manager for the Red Lake Cole Gold Project in Ontario and the Mustang Project in the Queensway area of Newfoundland and Labrador. Previous work included roles with GeominEx in the Northwest Territories at the Colomac Project, and with Osisko Minerals at the Hammond Reef Project in Ontario, as well as involvement with projects in other provinces across Canada and in the United States. Aaron is currently employed with Planet X Exploration, of Gander, Newfoundland, consulting for Rockland Resources Ltd., on the Cole Gold Project in Red Lake, Ontario, as well as on various projects for Twilight Capital of Montreal, Quebec.

"Aaron has excellent technical and operational experience and a hands on approach that we know will be very valuable to us moving forward." stated Mike England, CEO of Sky Gold.

The Company further announces Ms. Catherine Fitzgerald has stepped down from the Board of Directors to focus on other obligations but will remain on in an advisory capacity.

About Sky Gold Corp.

Sky Gold Corp. is a junior mineral exploration company engaged in acquiring and advancing mineral properties in Canada and the USA.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD

"Mike England"

Mike England, CEO & Director

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:

Tel. 1-604-683-3995

Toll Free. 1-888-845-4770

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: Sky Gold Corp.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/692863/Sky-Gold-Announces-Changes-to-The-Board-of-Directors
Capital Gains Report Interviews Real Brands (OTCQB:RLBD) CEO Thom Kidrin

NAPLES, FL / ACCESSWIRE / March 14, 2022 / Capital Gains Report initiated a series of interviews with Real Brands, Inc. (OTCQB:RLBD) CEO Thom Kidrin. In the first discussion, Kidrin spoke about Real Brands' sales, potential acquisitions, and the company's relationship with Turning Point Brands (TPB) among several other topics.

INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS

On revenues- "We should have revenue guidance in Q2 or Q3"

"We should have revenue guidance in Q2 or Q3" Acquisitions in CBD Beverage space- "I am speaking to two beverage companies with distribution and production, the products include a non-alcoholic beer, CBD beer, and THC beer."

"I am speaking to two beverage companies with distribution and production, the products include a non-alcoholic beer, CBD beer, and THC beer." Kidrin's Experience- "I was a cofounder of Marimed, we started with a $10 million dollar market cap and took it to $1.5 billion."

"I was a cofounder of Marimed, we started with a $10 million dollar market cap and took it to $1.5 billion." On Large Cap Shareholder- "Turning Point Brands (TPB) is 23% equity shareholder, we supply CBD to them and are exploring other strategic avenues. I am in close communication with TPB's CEO."

SALES AND DISTRIBUTION

Real Brands just announced an international distribution deal. When asked about the marketing aspect, "They will work with celebrities local to their country, creating an awareness program."

One example of a product fitting a certain region Kidrin pointed out was in Hungary. "If there is one thing Hungary is famous for, it's the country's luxurious thermal baths, there will be an opportunity for distributors to affiliate our cosmetic, or as we call them 'cosmedic' brands to popular spas."

While the distribution news will take a bit to end up on RLBD's bottom line, we asked what RLBD's current sales project to be.

"Our focus has been on building our facility, which was slowed during COVID, however, finally it is up and running producing our base product."

Due to this delay, Kidrin said the company "Should have revenue guidance in Q2 or Q3 of this year."

The biggest win so far for the company in 2022 has been its uplisting to the OTC QB. "The focus has been on receiving the uplisting, so we can speak to bankers and raise capital to meet the marketing needs to grow our brands."

M&A POTENTIAL

"I am speaking to two beverage companies with distribution and production, the products include a non-alcoholic beer, CBD beer, and THC beer." Kidrin continued to say, "We have interest in either buying the brewery and distribution or the brands and distribution."

"We're also talking to significant principles from a leading new player in the beverage market with high nine-figure revenues about heading up a Real Brands beverage division if we make an acquisition."

Another major factor in Real Brands' M&A potential is its largest shareholder, Turning Point Brands (NYSE: TPB). The company is famous for ZigZag, Stokers, and BeechNut.



Kidrin noted, "Turning Point is 23% equity holder, we supply CBD to them and are exploring other strategic avenues. I am in close communication with TPB's CEO."

WHY RLBD?

We asked Kidrin why investors should consider RLBD as an investment.

"I was a cofounder of Marimed, we started with a $10 million dollar market cap and took it to $1.5 billion. I have experience navigating regulation in this particular space, and I know what it takes to succeed. Real Brands has all the right ingredients."

"We have unique formulations and unique products. We are not a CBD company, that's just an ingredient, we can separate anything at a molecular level."

"Our focus has always been using novel ingredients to solve major health problems such as opioid addiction. To that, we are willing to work with any technology that will get us to that goal. "

"We even have a Metaverse treatment coming soon"

Stay tuned to Capital Gains Report for the next interview in our series spotlighting Thom Kidrin and Real Brands, Inc. (OTCQB: RLBD).

Disclaimers: Capital Gains Report 'CGR' is responsible for the production and distribution of this content. CGR is not operated by a licensed broker, a dealer, or a registered investment adviser. Never invest in any stock featured on our site or emails unless you can afford to lose your entire investment. CGR. strongly urges you conduct a complete and independent investigation of the respective companies and consideration of all pertinent risks. Readers are advised to review SEC periodic reports: Forms 10-Q, 10K, Form 8-K, insider reports, Forms 3, 4, 5 Schedule 13D. For some content, CGR., its authors, contributors, or its agents, may be compensated for preparing research, video graphics, and editorial content. CGR has been compensated fifteen thousand dollars via wire transfer by Washington Capital to produce and syndicate content for RLBD. As part of that content, readers, subscribers, and website viewers, are expected to read the full disclaimers and financial disclosures statement that can be found on our website.

The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 provides investors a safe harbor in regard to forward-looking statements. Any statements that express or involve discussions with respect to predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, goals, assumptions or future events or performance are not statements of historical fact may be forward looking statements. Forward looking statements are based on expectations, estimates, and projections at the time the statements are made that involve a number of risks and uncertainties which could cause actual results or events to differ materially from those presently anticipated. Forward looking statements in this action may be identified through use of words such as projects, foresee, expects, will, anticipates, estimates, believes, understands, or that by statements indicating certain actions & quote; may, could, or might occur. Understand there is no guarantee past performance will be indicative of future results. Investing in micro-cap and growth securities is highly speculative and carries an extremely high degree of risk. It is possible that an investors investment may be lost or impaired due to the speculative nature of the companies profiled.

To educate and attract more investors contact us at:

Mark McKelvie

editorcapitalgainsreport@gmail.com

(754) 233-0966

SOURCE: Capital Gains Report

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/692447/RLBDs-Kidrin-on-Revs-MA-and-TPB
VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / March 14, 2022 / Galore Resources Inc. (TSX-V:GRI) (OTC PINK:GALOF) is excited to announce that the Company has legally and safely regained possession and control of the Duraznillo Ranch mining operation.

As previously announced in January, 2018, the Company had entered into a mining exploitation agreement with Urbanizaciones y Acabados, S.A. de C.V., "URBYASA", to implement a gold mining operation on Galore's 100% owned Duraznillo Ranch, which included the mining concessions named Los Gemelos I and Duende 7 (the "Mining Properties") (the "Agreement"). Mining activities commenced in October, 2018 with the installation of a gold processing plant having an initial capacity of 90 tons per week.

(DURAZNILLO RANCH MINE SITE)

Due to a breach of the Agreement, in May, 2019 Galore formally requested that URBYASA vacate the property and terminate the Agreement. URBYASA refused to abide by the Company's request and remained using the Duraznillo Ranch and operating the Mining Properties.

The Company filed a demand with the Mexican Courts against URBYASA terminating the Agreement and demanding the return of the Duraznillo Ranch and the Mining Properties.

On December 8, 2021, the Mexican Courts officially granted Minerales Galore the judicial resolution ordering URBYASA to return the possession of the Duraznillo Ranch and Mining Properties. On March 8, 2022, in conjunction with Minerales Galore's attorneys and a representative team, using the judicial resolution and joined by the Zacatecas State's Public Force, the Duraznillo Ranch and the Mining Properties were legally repossessed. The repossession was peaceful and smooth. Mike McMillan, President and CEO of Galore, was on location and a part of the team overseeing the repossession of the Duraznillo Ranch and Mining Properties.

Management is relieved to have this stressful process come to a close with such a positive and peaceful conclusion. The Company's geological team and representatives will immediately begin assessing the mining operation to give Management strategy ideas for plans on moving forward.

Galore would like to thank all of its stockholders for their patience and understanding during this long process. We recognize that little news was provided during this sensitive situation, but this was done to protect our personnel in Mexico, to maintain a separation with URBYASA and act in the best interest of Galore stockholders. We encourage you to watch for upcoming News Releases as Galore has been in discussions with some quality mining company candidates regarding the potential to continue mining operations at the Duraznillo Ranch and Mining Properties.

On Behalf of the Board, I am respectfully yours,

Michael McMillan

President and Chief Executive Office

For Further Information about Galore Resources ,



Please visit the Company's website at www.galoreresources.com or contact the Company's Chief Financial Officer and Vice-President of Corporate Communications, Drew McMillan, by telephone (210-325-7971) or e-mail (info@galoreresources.com).

About Galore Resources

Galore Resources is a mineral exploration and development company whose focus is to make and develop significant mineral discoveries, which are supported by a sustainable business model. Our goal is to discover a world-class gold deposit in Mexico. Our flagship project is located in the heart of the Concepcion del Oro Mining District, the Dos Santos Project, which covers two known historic gold zones, is on trend with Newmont's Penasquito Mine, and based on past drilling, trenching, and an airborne geophysical survey, has the potential to host several bulk tonnage gold deposits.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

CAUTIONARY STATEMENT REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION: This news release includes "forward-looking statements" and "forward-looking information" within the meaning of Canadian securities legislation. All statements included in this news release, other than statements of historical fact, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements include predictions, projections and forecasts and are often, but not always, identified by the use of words such as "anticipate", "believe", "plan", "estimate", "expect", "potential", "target", "budget" and "intend" and statements that an event or result "may", "will", "should", "could" or "might" occur or be achieved and other similar expressions and includes the negatives thereof.

Forward-looking statements in this news release include, but are not limited to, statements with respect to the expectations of management regarding the Company's ability to conduct a drill program at its Mexican mineral properties and the timing thereof, the prospective deposits, targets and mineralization at the properties and the anticipated receipt and timing of necessary governmental or third-party approvals and permits.

Such forward-looking information reflects management's current beliefs and is based on a number of estimates and assumptions made by and information currently available to the Company that, while considered reasonable, are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors which may cause the actual results and future events to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information. Readers are cautioned that such forward-looking information is neither a promise nor guarantee, and is subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties including, but not limited to, delays in obtaining governmental or third party approvals and permits, actual results of exploration activities, unanticipated geologic formations, structures and characteristics, environmental risks, future prices of base and other metals, operating risks, accidents, labor issues, and other risks in the mining industry as well as general business, economic, competitive, political and social uncertainties, uncertain and volatile equity and capital markets and lack of available capital. There are no assurances that the Company will obtain the necessary permits for and successfully complete the proposed technical and drill program at San Jose and El Alamo as currently contemplated or at all. In addition, there is uncertainty about the spread of COVID-19 and variants of concern and the impact they will have on the Company's operations, supply chains, ability to access mineral properties, conduct due diligence or procure equipment, contractors and other personnel on a timely basis or at all and economic activity in general. All forward-looking information contained in this news release is qualified by these cautionary statements and those in our continuous disclosure filings available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law.

SOURCE: Galore Resources, Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/692919/Galore-Regains-Control-of-Los-Gemelos-Mine-and-Duranzillo-Ranch-Property
Rise in investment & product approval by regulatory authorities and surge in demand from the food & beverage industry drive the growth of the global antioxidants market

PORTLAND, Ore., March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Allied Market Research recently published a report, titled, "Antioxidants Market by Type (Natural Antioxidants and Synthetic Antioxidants), Form (Dry and Liquid), and Application (Food & Feed Additives, Pharmaceuticals & Personal Care Products, Fuel & Lubricant Additives, Plastic; Rubber;& Latex Additives, and Others): Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2022-2031". As per the report, the global antioxidants industry was accounted for $3.43 billion in 2020, and is expected to reach $7.37 billion by 2031, growing at a CAGR of 6.9% from 2022 to 2031.

Drivers, restraints, and opportunities

Rise in investment & product approval by regulatory authorities and surge in demand from the food & beverage industry drive the growth of the global antioxidants market. However, disruption of supply chain and outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic hampered the market. On the contrary, rise in population and rise in demand from the pharmaceutical industry would open new opportunities in the future.

Request Sample Report at: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/request-sample/1829

Covid-19 scenario:

The Covid-19 pandemic negatively affected the market due to sudden change in lifestyle, health and wellbeing, and decline in manufacturing because of lockdown restrictions.

The import and export restrictions on goods and quarantine disrupted the supply chain.

The synthetic antioxidants segment held the largest share

By type, the synthetic antioxidants segment held the largest share in 2020, accounting for more than three-fifths of the global antioxidants market, due to rise in demand for synthetic antioxidants because of rise in population. However, the natural antioxidants segment is expected to register the highest CAGR of 7.5% during the forecast period, owing to their fewer side effects on health.

The plastic, rubber, & latex additives segment dominated the market

By application, the plastic, rubber, & latex additives segment held the lion's share in 2020, contributing to nearly one-third of the global antioxidants market, due to increased use of antioxidants used in the plastic and rubber industry. However, the fuel & lubricant additives segment is estimated to manifest the highest CAGR of 7.4% from 2022 to 2031.

LAMEA, followed by North America, to manifest the highest CAGR by 2031

By region, the global antioxidants market across LAMEA, followed by North America, is expected to register the highest CAGR of 7.3% during the forecast period, due to several health & food problems. However, the market across Asia-Pacific dominated in 2020, holding around one-third of the market, as China is the largest producer of vitamin C.

For Purchase Enquiry at: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/purchase-enquiry/1829

Major market players

Archer-Daniels-Midland Company

BASF SE

E.I.DuPont El Nemours and Company

Barentz International BV

Kalsec Inc.

Kemin Industries, Inc.

Koninklijke DSM N.V.

Nutreco N.V.

Cargill Incorporated

Aland ( Jiangsu ) Nutraceutical Co. Ltd.

) Nutraceutical Co. Ltd. Naturex S.A.

Avenue Basic Plan | Library Access | 1 Year Subscription |

Sign up for Avenue subscription to access more than 12,000+ company profiles and 2,000+ niche industry market research reports at $699 per month, per seat. For a year, the client needs to purchase minimum 2 seat plan.

Avenue Library Subscription | Request for 14 days free trial of before buying: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/avenue/trial/starter

Get more information:https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/library-access

Similar Reports:

Breakfast Food Market: Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast 2021-2030

Canned Tomatoes Market: Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast 2021-2030

Wine Chocolate Market: Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast 2021-2030

Breakfast Cereals Market: Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast 2021-2030

About Us

Allied Market Research (AMR) is a full-service market research and business-consulting wing of Allied Analytics LLP based in Portland, Oregon. Allied Market Research provides global enterprises as well as medium and small businesses with unmatched quality of "Market Research Reports" and "Business Intelligence Solutions." AMR has a targeted view to provide business insights and consulting to assist its clients to make strategic business decisions and achieve sustainable growth in their respective market domain.

We are in professional corporate relations with various companies and this helps us in digging out market data that helps us generate accurate research data tables and confirms utmost accuracy in our market forecasting. Each and every data presented in the reports published by us is extracted through primary interviews with top officials from leading companies of domain concerned. Our secondary data procurement methodology includes deep online and offline research and discussion with knowledgeable professionals and analysts in the industry.

Contact:

David Correa

5933 NE Win Sivers Drive

#205, Portland, OR 97220

United States

USA/Canada (Toll Free): +1-800-792-5285, +1-503-894-6022, +1-503-446-1141

UK: +44-845-528-1300

Hong Kong: +852-301-84916

India (Pune): +91-20-66346060

Fax: +1(855)550-5975

help@alliedmarketresearch.com

Web: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com

Follow Us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/allied-market-research

Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/636519/Allied_Market_Research_Logo.jpg
Black Women in Asset Management (BWAM), a non-profit organisation promoting the advancement of Black women working in the asset management industry, is delighted to announce Ares Management, BlackRock, Federated Hermes, Helios Investment Partners, J.P. Morgan Asset Management, M&G plc, Maniyar Capital, Morningstar, Inc. and State Street Global Advisors as new institutional members.

Black women remain vastly underrepresented at all levels within the investment industry. A 2019 report by the Investment Association showed that less than 1% of investment managers in the UK are Black. BWAM aims to drive positive change by providing Black women with tools needed to thrive, while also encouraging firms to create more inclusive environments. Formed in 2019, the organisation has quickly become a valuable community for investment professionals, lawyers, consultants, administrators, and other advisors in the asset management field. To date, BWAM has over 700 members.

BWAM Chair and Co-Founder, Jacqueline Taiwo, stated: "Our new institutional members represent over USD 17 trillion of AUM in the global asset management industry. We are thrilled to be able to partner with a wide cohort of investment firms to advance BWAM's mission to connect and empower Black women working across the investment ecosystem. Their support will accelerate BWAM's impact in 2022, allowing the organisation to bring in new resources, and offer more career development, networking and visibility opportunities for Black women in asset management. We also look forward to expanding our existing outreach initiatives to encourage more young Black women to pursue careers in investment."

Institutional membership in BWAM provides firms with a number of benefits to enhance their diversity strategies, including access to exclusive roundtables that offer fresh insight on how to recruit, retain and advance Black women in their organisations. These roundtables are facilitated by diversity, equity and inclusion experts and explore important topics such as psychological safety, allyship and inclusive leadership.

Indhira Arrington, Managing Director and Global Chief Diversity, Equity Inclusion Officer at Ares Management stated: "Ares is committed to building meaningful relationships with partners who focus on advancing Diversity, Equity Inclusion in our industry and communities, and we are very excited to work with Black Women in Asset Management to help drive systemic change in our industry. We look forward to furthering the mission of ensuring Black women have access to the support and resources necessary to flourish in their careers."

Justine Anderson, EMEA Chief Operating Officer at BlackRock, stated: "At BlackRock, we are committed to helping build a better, fairer society and the mission of Black Women in Asset Management (BWAM) is firmly aligned with our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion strategy. We know that empowering young Black women in the early stages of their careers is essential for advancing and retaining Black women leaders, whose positive impact within our workforce drives improved outcomes for our clients, our shareholders and all our stakeholders. That is why we are excited to sponsor BWAM and work together to drive the positive impact of the talented Black women who work in asset management."

Eoin Murray, Head of Investment at Federated Hermes stated: "Federated Hermes are thrilled to partner with Black Women in Asset Management. Advancing and retaining black women across all areas of the investment industry is critical to securing the diverse and inclusive workforce that will improve outcomes for our clients."

Christina Drews, Partner, Chief Operating Officer, Member of Executive Committee at Helios stated: "Helios is pleased to join the Black Women in Asset Management organisation as an institutional member and sponsor. In addition to this new partnership, Helios recently became a signatory of ILPA's Diversity in Action initiative, reflecting our longstanding commitment to gender equality and increasing representation not only at our own firm, but also within our portfolio companies. As a pioneering investor on the African continent and certified B Corporation, over 60% of our staff come from minority ethnic backgrounds and 40% is female. Joining BWAM will further our engagement in empowering Black women working across the investment ecosystem."

Mark McLane, Director of Diversity, Inclusion and Well-being at M&G plc stated: "M&G is very proud to sponsor Black Women in Asset Management (BWAM). We're committed to creating an inclusive culture and, with our goal of 40% of senior leaders to be women and 20% to be from a Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic background by 2025, we share BWAM's ambitions. We look forward to working with BWAM to support women from Black and Ethnic Minority backgrounds to advance their careers within asset management and the wider finance industry."

Dhamesh Maniyar, CEO of Maniyar Capital stated: "We are very pleased to partner with BWAM as a part of Maniyar Capital's commitment to diversity. We believe that a diverse team, broadly defined, enables our firm to work at its highest potential, which in turn leads to the best possible outcomes for our clients. We look forward to working with BWAM as we seek diverse and talented candidates for positions at our firm."

Paul Malone, Head of Morningstar UK Executive Sponsor for EMEA Black, Caribbean African Employee Resource Group, said: "I am proud that Morningstar has become a corporate partner of Black Women in Asset Management (BWAM). We aim to provide a workplace that welcomes, celebrates, invests in, and empowers all. Through this partnership, we will work with BWAM to advance and encourage women from Black and Ethnic Minority backgrounds to pursue new and existing careers within the wider finance industry, as well as in asset management."

More information on institutional membership in BWAM can be found here: http://bwam.network.

Questions for Black Women in Asset Management may be directed to: info@bwam.network.

-END-

Notes to editors:

About Black Women in Asset Management:

Black Women in Asset Management brings together professionals in the asset management industry aligned around a common goal to advance and retain Black women leaders across all investment strategies. Launched in 2019, BWAM's mission is to champion the positive impact of the talented Black women who work in asset management and provide the tools that will enable them to thrive.

About Ares Management:

Ares Management Corporation (NYSE: ARES) is a leading global alternative investment manager offering clients complementary primary and secondary investment solutions across the credit, private equity, real estate and infrastructure asset classes. We seek to provide flexible capital to support businesses and create value for our stakeholders and within our communities. By collaborating across our investment groups, we aim to generate consistent and attractive investment returns throughout market cycles. As of December 31, 2021, Ares Management Corporation's global platform had approximately $306 billion of assets under management, with approximately 2,100 employees operating across North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and the Middle East. For more information, please visit www.aresmgmt.com

About BlackRock UK:

BlackRock is a leading provider of investment, advisory and risk management solutions, and has been active in the UK for over 20 years. Our purpose is to help more and more people experience financial well-being. As an investment manager, we connect the capital of diverse individuals and institutions to investments in companies, projects and governments. This helps fuel growth, jobs and innovation, to the benefit of society as a whole. Our clients in the UK include people from all walks of life invested in pension plans, as well as financial institutions, individual savers, UK companies, and the Government. For additional information on BlackRock, please visit www.blackrock.com/uk

About Federated Hermes:

A global leader in active, responsible investment

Federated Hermes is guided by the conviction that responsible investing is the best way to create long-term wealth. We provide specialised capabilities across equity, fixed income and private markets, in addition to multi-asset strategies and proven liquidity-management solutions. Through our world-leading stewardship services, we engage companies on strategic and sustainability concerns to promote investors' long-term performance and fiduciary interests. Our goals are to help individuals invest and retire better, to help clients achieve better risk-adjusted returns, and to contribute to positive outcomes in the wider world. Our brand launched in February 2020, when Federated Hermes, Inc. listed on the New York Stock Exchange, strengthening our position as a global leader in active, responsible investment. This was a natural step in the development of Federated Investors and Hermes Investment Management. Since Federated became the majority owner of Hermes in 2018, we have been united by a shared commitment to client-centric responsible investment and long-term business growth. All activities previously carried out by Hermes now form the international business of Federated Hermes. Our brand has evolved, but we still provide the same distinct investment propositions, deep integration of responsibility and industry-leading stewardship capabilities for which we are renowned in addition to important new offerings from the entire group.

About Helios Investment Partners:

Established in 2004, Helios Investment Partners is the largest Africa-focused private investment firm, with a record that spans creating start-ups to providing expanding companies with growth capital and expertise. The firm is led and managed by a predominantly African team based in London, Paris, Lagos and Nairobi, with the language skills and cultural affinity to engage with local entrepreneurs, managers and intermediaries on the continent. Helios leverages its local and global networks to create attractive proprietary investment opportunities, with an emphasis on building market leaders in core economic sectors and driving performance through a highly engaged approach to portfolio operations. The firm's unique combination of a deep knowledge of the African operating environment, a singular commitment to the region and a proven capability to manage complexity, is reflected in its diverse portfolio of growing, market-leading businesses and its position as a partner of choice in Africa. Helios is the largest emerging markets-focused private equity firm, and second mainstream private equity firm globally, to receive B Corp certification. B Corp status recognizes the firm's long-standing commitment to sustainability and responsible business practices.

About J.P. Morgan Asset Management

J.P. Morgan Asset Management, with assets under management of USD 2.7 trillion (as of December 31, 2021), is a global leader in investment management. J.P. Morgan Asset Management's clients include institutions, retail investors and high net worth individuals in every major market throughout the world. J.P. Morgan Asset Management offers global investment management in equities, fixed income, real estate, hedge funds, private equity and liquidity.

JPMorgan Chase Co. (NYSE: JPM) is a leading financial services firm based in the United States of America ("U.S."), with operations worldwide. JPMorgan Chase had $3.7 trillion in assets and $294.1 billion in stockholders' equity as of December 31, 2021. The Firm is a leader in investment banking, financial services for consumers and small businesses, commercial banking, financial transaction processing and asset management. Under the J.P. Morgan and Chase brands, the Firm serves millions of customers in the U.S. and many of the world's most prominent corporate, institutional and government clients globally. Information about JPMorgan Chase Co. is available at www.jpmorganchase.com

About M&G plc:

M&G plc is a leading international savings and investments business, managing money for both individual savers and institutional investors in 28 markets. As at 31 December 2021, we have 370 billion of AUMA, over 5 million retail customers and more than 800 institutional clients. With a heritage dating back more than 170 years, M&G plc has a long history of innovation in savings and investments, combining asset management and insurance expertise to offer a wide range of solutions. We serve our savings and insurance customers under the Prudential brand in the UK and Europe, and under the M&G Investments brand for asset management clients globally.

About Morningstar, Inc.

Morningstar, Inc. is a leading provider of independent investment research in North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia. The Company offers an extensive line of products and services for individual investors, financial advisors, asset managers and owners, retirement plan providers and sponsors, and institutional investors in the debt and private capital markets. Morningstar provides data and research insights on a wide range of investment offerings, including managed investment products, publicly listed companies, private capital markets, debt securities, and real-time global market data. Morningstar also offers investment management services through its investment advisory subsidiaries, with approximately $265 billion in assets under advisement and management as of Dec. 31, 2021. The Company has operations in 29 countries. For more information, visit www.morningstar.com/company. Follow Morningstar on Twitter @MorningstarInc

About Maniyar Capital:

Maniyar Capital is a London-based investment manager focused on discretionary macro trading. Maniyar Capital's investment team evaluates investment opportunities across fixed income, currency, equity, commodity, and credit markets on a global basis with an emphasis on the G10 plus 8 major emerging markets. The team utilizes advanced quantitative techniques throughout the investment management process.

About State Street Global Advisors:

For four decades, State Street Global Advisors has served the world's governments, institutions, and financial advisors. With a rigorous, risk-aware approach built on research, analysis and market-tested experience, we build from a breadth of active and index strategies to create cost-effective solutions. As stewards, we help portfolio companies see that what is fair for people and sustainable for the planet can deliver long-term performance. And, as pioneers in index, ETF, and ESG investing, we are always inventing new ways to invest. As a result, we have become the world's fourth-largest asset manager* with US $4.14 trillion under our care.

*Pensions Investments Research Center, as of 12/31/20.

This figure is presented as of December 31, 2021 and includes approximately $61.43 billion of assets with respect to SPDR pro ducts for which State Street Global Advisors Funds Distributors, LLC (SSGA FD) acts solely as the marketing agent. SSGA FD and State Street Global Advisors are affiliated.

About State Street Corporation

State Street Corporation (NYSE: STT) is one of the world's leading providers of financial services to institutional investors including investment servicing, investment management and investment research and trading. With $43.7 trillion in assets under custody and/or administration and $4.1 trillion* in assets under management as of December 31, 2021, State Street operates globally in more than 100 geographic markets and employs approximately 39,000 worldwide. For more information, visit State Street's website at www.statestreet.com.

*Assets under management as of December 30, 2021 includes approximately $61 billion of assets with respect to SPDR products for which State Street Global Advisors Funds Distributors, LLC (SSGA FD) acts solely as the marketing agent. SSGA FD and State Street Global Advisors are affiliated.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220314005504/en/

Contacts:

Jacqueline Taiwo

BWAM Chair and Co-Founder

info@bwam.network
It was a humanitarian gesture gone wrong  depending upon whom you ask.

A Florida man called 911 to ask for a quality control check on the meth he had just bought, saying he wanted to protect others from buying the fake product. Police obliged, coming to his door and testing the meth, which was legit, and then arresting him.

Advertisement

The call came in to the Hernando County Sheriffs office at about 7 p.m. on Thursday, the department said in a statement.

Upon arrival, deputies met with Thomas Eugene Colucci, police said. Colucci told deputies he had recently purchased methamphetamine from a male he met in a local bar, and after having used a bit of it, believed it was actually bath salts. Colucci went on to tell deputies he was an experienced drug user, having used methamphetamine in the past, and knew what it should feel like. "

Advertisement

Thomas Eugene Colucci (Hernando County Sheriff's Office)

He brought out the suspect products, two small baggies containing a white crystalline substance, and handed them over, explaining that the substance had not provided the sensation hed been expecting. Worried that other people might buy the fake methamphetamine from the same person, and determined to protect fellow contraband-buying humans, Colucci wanted the meth tested and its seller held accountable for any irregularities.

Colucci wanted deputies to put the person in trouble for selling dangerous drugs; however, he was unable to provide a name or any contact info for this individual, police said. As requested, a deputy performed a field test on a sample of the white crystal-like substance from each of the baggies. The substance from both baggies tested positive for methamphetamine.

FILE - Methamphetamine, also known as crystal meth. (ShutterStock)

Colucci, 41, was charged with possession of methamphetamine and two counts of possessing drug paraphernalia. As he was being settled into the back of a patrol car, Colucci complained of chest pains, so he was first brought to a local hospital and then, when cleared by a physician, taken to the Hernando County Detention Center.

Police eagerly broadcast their slate of illicit-drug services to the wider community.

If you, or someone you know, have doubts about the authenticity of any illegal narcotics you have on-hand or have obtained from another person, the Hernando County Sheriffs Office is pleased to provide this service, FREE of charge, the cops said.
LONDON and NEW YORK, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The Bank of London, the next-generation technology company and the world's first purpose-built global clearing, agency, and transaction bank, today announces the appointment of Vincent Francois as its Chief Audit Officer (CAO) and member of the bank's Executive Management Committee. As CAO, Francois will be responsible for developing and managing The Bank of London's risk-based internal audit programs, controls, and operations.

Francois has twenty plus years of experience in credit risk and audit roles across several leading EU and US banks. Francois joins The Bank of London from Societe Generale, where he was Regional Group Chief Audit Executive and led the audit function across all Societe Generale Group businesses. This covered investment banking, private banking, leasing, securities services and prime brokerage activities in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Channel Islands, Gibraltar, Middle East, and Turkey. In addition, Francois was the founder and executive sponsor of Societe Generale's UK Pride and Allies Network.

External to Societe Generale, Francois is Chairperson of the Heads of Audit Forum at the Association for Foreign Banks and in January 2019, he became a member of the Society of Leadership Fellows of the St George House, Windsor Castle. Fluent in French, German and English, Francois has lectured at Caen University on corporate finance, derivatives, and internal bank controls.

Anthony Watson, Group Chief Executive & Founder of The Bank of London, said: "Our belief in attracting the best talent is not limited to technology or front office roles - Vincent is a highly experienced audit and risk management executive, with a strong record in driving transformational initiatives and leading high-performing teams across multiple industries and complex regulatory geographies. We are honoured he has chosen The Bank of London to further the next stage of his career".

Vincent Francois, Chief Audit Officer at The Bank of Londonsaid: "The Bank of London's leadership is comprised of undisputed banking industry pioneers. It is a true honour to join this team - I'm beyond excited to help transform the last undisrupted lane of banking - namely the arcane world of global clearing, settlements and payments".Enquiries: Powerscourt

About The Bank of London

The Bank of London is a leading-edge technology company and the world's first purpose-built global clearing, agency, and transaction bank.

Launched in November 2021 as the sixth principal clearing bank of the United Kingdom, and only the second in 250 years. With a $1.1 billion valuation, it is the first bank in history to attain 'unicorn' status upon debut.

With headquarters in London and offices in New York, The Bank of London has been established to serve banks, clearing houses, digital & traditional asset firms, governments, financial services companies from local fintechs to global institutions, payment networks and non-financial brands seeking to launch fully compliant, embedded financial products and services in-country and across-borders.

For more information visit: thebankoflondon.com, or on Twitter and Instagram at: @thebankoflondon.
Eurocommercial Properties N.V. will be announcing its Full Year Results on Friday 25 March 2022 with a press release publication moving forward to 7.30 CET.

The Company will host an audio webcast and conference call for investors and analysts starting at 10:00 AM (GMT) / 11:00 AM (CET), and we would be delighted if you could join.

To access the webcast, simply click on the URL: https://channel.royalcast.com/landingpage/eurocommercialproperties/20220325_1/to register. You will also have the opportunity to type in your questions during the streaming.

To access the audio call, please dial:

Netherlands: +31 (0) 20 708 5073

UK-Wide: +44 (0) 33 0551 0200

France: +33 (0) 1 7037 7166

Italy: +39 06 83360400

US: +1 212 999 6659

Tell the operator the password Eurocommercial Properties

The call will also be audio webcast at: https://www.eurocommercialproperties.com/financial/presentations-webcasts

An accompanying presentation will be available to download from the Company's website at https://www.eurocommercialproperties.com/financial/presentations-webcastsshortly before the start of the call.
OLD BRIDGE, NJ / ACCESSWIRE / March 14, 2022 / Blonder Tongue Laboratories, Inc. (NYSE American:BDR) announced today that its Board of Directors has authorized a review of strategic alternatives for the Company aimed at enhancing stockholder value. Emerging Growth Equities, Ltd. has been engaged to serve as the exclusive financial advisor to the Board of Directors.

The Company does not intend to make any further statements regarding the process of reviewing strategic alternatives unless and until a definitive agreement has been reached or until the process has otherwise ended, unless required by applicable law. No assurance can be given as to whether, when or on what terms any possible transaction might occur.

About Blonder Tongue

Blonder Tongue Laboratories, Inc. is the oldest designer and manufacturer of telecommunications and cable television video transmission technology in the USA. The majority of our products continue to be designed and built in our state-of-the-art New Jersey facility, which has been the Company's home for more than 50 years. Blonder Tongue Labs offers U.S.-based engineering and manufacturing excellence with an industry reputation for delivering ultra-high reliability products. As a leader in cable television system design, the Company provides service operators and systems integrators with comprehensive solutions for the management and distribution of digital video, IPTV and high-speed data services, as well as RF broadband distribution over fiber, IP, and Coax networks for homes and businesses. Additional information on the Company and its products can be found at www.blondertongue.com.

"Safe Harbor" Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: The information set forth above includes "forward-looking" statements. The forward-looking statements relate to future events regarding such matters as anticipated financial performance, business prospects, technological developments, new products, research and development activities and similar matters. In order to comply with the terms of the safe harbor provisions, the Company notes that a variety of factors could cause our actual results and experience to differ materially and adversely from the anticipated results or other expectations expressed in the forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties that may affect the operation, performance, development and results of the Company's business include, but are not limited to, those matters discussed in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2020 in the sections entitled "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations" and "Risk Factors," and in the same sections of the Company's subsequently-filed Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, as may be further updated by any Current Reports on Form 8-K that we may file. The words "believe," "expect," "anticipate," "project," "target," "intend," "plan," "seek," "estimate," "endeavor," "should," "could," "may" and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. In addition, any statements that refer to projections for our future financial performance, anticipated growth trends in the Company's business and other characterizations of future events or circumstances are forward-looking statements, including statements regarding the Company's ability to continue as a going concern, the Company's ability to maintain the listing of its shares on the NYSE American. Readers also should carefully review the risk factors included in other documents the Company files from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date hereof, or, in the case of other documents referred to herein, the dates of those documents. The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly revise or update these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances that arise after the date hereof, except as may be required under applicable law. The Company's actual results may differ from the anticipated results or other expectations expressed in these forward-looking statements.

Contacts

Greg Berlacher

gberlacher@egequities.com

Jay Seid

jseid@egequities.com

Emerging Growth Equities

Phone: 610-783-4760

SOURCE: Blonder Tongue Laboratories, Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/692963/Blonder-Tongue-Announces-Review-of-Strategic-Alternatives
The "Europe Online Payment Fraud and Security 2022" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

Fraudulent digital banking transactions in many different forms are more frequent across Europe

As online payment transactions become more numerous, so do the forms of potential fraudulent activities. B2C E-Commerce losses due to online payment fraud were expected to increase by over 10% worldwide in 2021. Card fraud in E-Commerce comprises more than two-thirds of all card fraud in the UK, and many institutions are implementing increased online security precautions to address consumer concerns.

For example, payment habits in the UK and Germany have been influenced by this need for more security and its lack of security discourages many Spanish shoppers from making purchases on social networks.

Online-payment-related fraud on the rise

Losses incurred from online payment fraud are on the rise worldwide and are projected to have more than doubled in the five-year span between 2018 and 2023. In the European region, and most prominently in the UK, consumers are altering their payment habits post-COVID-19 in search of greater security.

In Germany, two out of every three E-Commerce companies have identified a noticeable rise in fraudulent activities. Over 85% of online retailers in Switzerland reported having been victims of fraud.

Countries Covered:

Austria

France

Germany

Italy

Spain

Switzerland

United Kingdom

Key Topics Covered:

1. Management Summary

2. Global Developments

Overview of Online Payment Fraud Trends, February 2022

Overview and Updates of Payment Authentication Solutions, February 2022

Breakdown of Digital Banking Fraudulent Transactions, by Channel, incl. Mobile App, in %, Q3 2019 Q2 2021

Value of B2C E-Commerce Losses to Online Payment Fraud, in USD billion, 2020 2021e

Value of Consumer Losses To Fraudulent Robocalls, in USD billion, 2021e 2022f

Top Important Factors in Consumers' Online Experience, in of Consumers, September 2021

Number of Users Making Online Payment With Facial Recognition, in billions, 2020 2025f

Number of Users Who Will Be Confirming Transactions With Voice Recognition, in millions, 2020 2025f

Attitudes Towards Interaction With Business Online, incl. Purchasing, in of Adult Consumers, January 2021

3. Regional

Reasons for Changed Payment Habits During COVID-19, in of Consumers, by Austria, Bulgaria, Germany, Italy and the UK, April 2021

Share of Online Retailers Who Experienced Fraud/Attempted Fraud in the Past 12 Months, in %, March 2021

4. UK

E-Commerce Fraud Loss on UK-Issued Cards, in GBP million, and Share of Total Card Fraud, in %, 2015 2020

Value of Fraud Losses Committed on a UK-Issued Credit, Debit or Charge Card, by UK and International Location, in GBP million, H1 2018 H1 2021

Top Reasons For Changes in Payment Method Habits Changes Amid COVID-19, in of Consumers, April 2021

Share of Adult Consumers Who Use More Security Steps While Online, in %, January 2021

5. Germany

Share of E-Commerce Companies Who Stated that Fraud Had Risen Sharply/Very Sharply, in %, March 2021

Share of E-Commerce Companies Who Stated That Fraud Had Risen Due To COVID-19, in %, March 2021

Top Reasons For Payment Method Habits Changes Amid COVID-19, in of Consumers, April 2021

6. France

Most Trusted Payment Methods, by Degree of Confidence, in of Adults, October 2021

Fraud Risks in Payment Methods, by Type, and by Importance Degree, in of Adults, October 2021

Top Situations of Being a Victim of Fraud, by Degree of Fear, in of Adults, October 2021

7. Spain

Breakdown of Reasons for Never Purchasing on a Social Network, in of Online Shoppers, 2020 2021

8. Italy

Top Reasons For Payment Method Habits Changes Amid COVID-19, in of Consumers, April 2021

9. Austria

Share of Respondents Who Have Been Victims of Internet Fraud, in %, November 2020

Top Internet Fraud Types Experienced, in of Respondents, November 2020

Top Important Factors When Shopping Online, in of Respondents, September 2021

Top Reasons For Payment Method Habits Changes Amid COVID-19 Pandemic, in of Consumers, April 2021

10. Switzerland

Share of Online Retailers Who Have Been Affected by Fraud, in %, 2021

Companies Mentioned

American Express

Discover Financial Services

JCB

Mastercard Inc

UnionPay

Visa Inc

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/dleoyu

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220314005644/en/

Contacts:

ResearchAndMarkets.com

Laura Wood, Senior Press Manager

press@researchandmarkets.com



For E.S.T Office Hours Call 1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call 1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900
Regulatory News:

SFL's (Paris:FLY) 2020 Universal registration document was filed with the French securities regulator, Autorite des Marches Financiers (AMF) on 14 March 2022, under number D.22-0094.

This document can be downloaded from the SFL website (www.fonciere-lyonnaise.com).

Paper copies can be obtained by writing to the Company at 42 rue Washington 75008 PARIS.

The Universal registration document comprises:

- The 2021 financial report,

- The 2021 management report and its appendices,

- The Board of Director's corporate governance report,

- A description of the share buyback programme,

- Details of the fees paid to the Statutory Auditors (appendices of consolidates Financial Statements)

About SFL

Leader in the prime segment of the Parisian commercial real estate market, Societe Fonciere Lyonnaise stands out for the quality of its property portfolio, which is valued at 7.6 billion and is focused on the Central Business District of Paris (cloud.paris, Edouard VII, Washington Plaza, etc.), and for the quality of its client portfolio, which is composed of prestigious companies in the consulting, media, digital, luxury, finance and insurance sectors. As France's oldest property company, SFL demonstrates year after year an unwavering commitment to its strategy focused on creating a high value in use for users and, ultimately, substantial appraisal values for its properties.

Stock market: Euronext Paris Compartment A Euronext Paris ISIN FR0000033409 Bloomberg: FLY FP

Reuters: FLYP PA

S&P rating: BBB+ stable outlook

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220314005725/en/

Contacts:

SFL Thomas Fareng T +33 (0)1 42 97 27 00 t.fareng@fonciere-lyonnaise.com

www.fonciere-lyonnaise.com
Accruent partners accomplish outstanding achievements in delivering top-notch solutions to customers

AUSTIN, Texas, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Accruent, the leading provider of solutions for managing the built environment, today recognized the expanding influence of its growing partner network by presenting annual awards to the most impactful and innovative partners.

Each year, Accruent partners gather for the annual Synergy partner conference, where they learn about industry trends and best practices, receive product updates, hear customer success stories, and more. This year's virtual event explored the theme "Focus, Partner, Grow" and was centered on helping partners build stronger and more rewarding relationships with customers.

The award ceremony at Synergy 2022 Virtual recognized the success of Accruent partners, including:

Marketing Performer 2021: SolidCAD conducted exceptional marketing campaigns around Accruent document and facility management tools within Canada .

conducted exceptional marketing campaigns around Accruent document and facility management tools within . Most Consistent Partner: Onset flourishes in a decades-long partnership and consistently delivers results to mutual customers.

flourishes in a decades-long partnership and consistently delivers results to mutual customers. Most Valuable Deal of 2021: Kinsmen Group built and supported a powerful information management environment for Fuijfilm.

built and supported a powerful information management environment for Fuijfilm. Most Promising Partner for 2022: Sutherland Global (SG) is a truly global partner that appointed Accruent as their 'go-to-market' software partner.

is a truly global partner that appointed Accruent as their 'go-to-market' software partner. Partner of the Year 2021: Pentagon achieved an extraordinary year reselling Accruent products in 2021.

achieved an extraordinary year reselling Accruent products in 2021. Partner Collaboration Award: Atutor Integracja Cyfrowa put forth exceptional efforts helping customers create business value with Accruent solutions.

put forth exceptional efforts helping customers create business value with Accruent solutions. Voice of the Customer Award: One Team demonstrated standout efforts in providing great customer experience stories and testimonials.

"Accruent's vast partner ecosystem remains a key part of our strategic vision and will continue to enhance our ability to deliver mission-critical solutions to customers around the world," said Elliott Welsch, VP of Global Channel & Alliances, Accruent. "It's important that we recognize these standout partner performances to acknowledge the amazing resilience and success of our partner base."

About Accruent

Accruent serves more than 10,000 companies, universities, and government entities worldwide, providing solutions that help its customers plan, manage and assure compliance for their facilities, assets, and the work required to support them.

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/834621/Accruent_Logo.jpg
VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / March 14, 2022 / CMC Metals Ltd. (TSX-V:CMB) (Frankfurt:ZM5P) (CMCXF:OTC PINKS) ("CMC" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that due to significant investor demand, the Company has increased the size of the Company's previously announced non-brokered private placement (the "Offering") from up to C$2,120,000 to up to C$3,100,000 subject to regulatory acceptance. Under the revised Offering, the Company will sell any combination of flow-through units of the Company (each, a "FT Unit") at a price of C$0.17 per FT Unit and non-flow-through units of the Company (each, a "Unit") at a price of C$0.15 per Unit for gross proceeds of up to C$3,100,000.

Each FT Unit will consist of one common share of the Company to be issued as a "flow-through share" within the meaning of the Income Tax Act (Canada) (each, a "FT Share") and one-half of one transferrable non-flow-through share purchase warrant (each full warrant, a "Warrant"). Each Unit will consist of one common share of the Company (each, a "Unit Share") and one-half of one Warrant. Each whole Warrant will entitle the holder thereof to acquire one non-flow-through common share of the Company (each, a "Warrant Share") at a price of C$0.20 per Warrant Share for a period of 24 months from the closing date of the Offering.

Proceeds from the sale of FT Shares to eligible investors in Canada will be used to incur "Canadian exploration expenses" and "flow through mining expenditures" as these terms are defined in the Income Tax Act (Canada). Such proceeds will be renounced to the subscribers with an effective date not later than December 31, 2022, in the aggregate amount of not less than the total amount of gross proceeds raised from the issue of FT Shares.

The net proceeds from the sale of Units will be used to fund the Company's exploration program at its silver-lead-zinc properties in the Rancheria Silver District, Yukon/British Columbia and its polymetallic copper-silver-lead properties in central Newfoundland, as well as a range of other exploration activities, as well as general corporate purposes. A major focus of the funding will be directed towards exploration drilling on the Company's flagship Silver Hart Project.

The Company may pay finders' fees comprised of cash and non-transferable warrants (the "Finder's Warrants") in connection with the Offering, subject to compliance with the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange. The terms of the Finder's Warrants will be the same as the Warrants distributed in the FT Units and the NFT Units. All securities issued and sold under the Offering will be subject to a hold period expiring four months and one day from their date of issuance. Closing of the Offering is scheduled for mid-April 2022 and is subject to customary closing conditions including, but not limited to, the negotiation and execution of subscription agreements and receipt of applicable regulatory approvals, including approval of the TSX Venture Exchange.

The securities being offered will not be registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act"), or any 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 promulgated under the U.S. Securities Act, absent registration or an 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 any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful.

Qualified Person

Qualified Person Kevin Brewer, a registered professional geoscientist, is the Company's President and CEO, and Qualified Person (as defined by National Instrument 43-101). He has given his approval of the technical information pertaining reported herein. The Company is committed to meeting the highest standards of integrity, transparency and consistency in reporting technical content, including geological reporting, geophysical investigations, environmental and baseline studies, engineering studies, metallurgical testing, assaying and all other technical data.

About CMC Metals Ltd.

CMC Metals Ltd. is a growth stage exploration company focused on opportunities for high grade polymetallic deposits in Yukon, British Columbia and Newfoundland. Our polymetallic silver-lead-zinc CRD prospects include the Silver Hart Deposit and Blue Heaven claims (the "Silver Hart Project") and Rancheria South, Amy and Silverknife claims (the "Rancheria South Project"). Our polymetallic projects with potential for copper-silver-gold and other metals include Logjam (Yukon), Bridal Veil, Terra Nova and Rodney Pond all of which are in Newfoundland.

On behalf of the Board:

"John Bossio"

John Bossio, Chairman

CMC METALS LTD.

For Further Information and Investor Inquiries:

Kevin Brewer, P. Geo., MBA, B.Sc.(Hons), Dip. Mine Eng.

President, CEO and Director

Tel: (604) 605-0166

kbrewer80@hotmail.com

Suite 615-800 Pender St.

Vancouver, BC

V6C 2V6

To be added to CMC's news distribution list, please send an email to info@cmcmetals.ca or contact Mr. Kevin Brewer at 604-605-0166.

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.

"This news release may contain certain statements that constitute "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities law, including without limitation, statements that address the timing and content of upcoming work programs, geological interpretations, receipt of property titles and exploitation activities and developments. In this release disclosure regarding the potential to undertake future exploration work comprise forward looking statements. Forward-looking statements address future events and conditions and are necessarily based upon a number of estimates and assumptions. While such estimates and assumptions are considered reasonable by the management of the Company, they are inherently subject to significant business, economic, competitive and regulatory uncertainties and risks, including the ability of the Company to raise the funds necessary to fund its projects, to carry out the work and, accordingly, may not occur as described herein or at all. Actual results may differ materially from those currently anticipated in such statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward looking statements include market prices, exploitation and exploration successes, the timing and receipt of government and regulatory approvals, the impact of the constantly evolving COVID-19 pandemic crisis and continued availability of capital and financing and general economic, market or business conditions. Readers are referred to the Company's filings with the Canadian securities regulators for information on these and other risk factors, available at www.sedar.com. Investors are cautioned that forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance or events and, accordingly are cautioned not to put undue reliance on forward-looking statements due to the inherent uncertainty of such statements. The forward-looking statements included in this news release are made as of the date hereof and the Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as expressly required by applicable securities legislation."

SOURCE: CMC Metals Ltd.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/692991/CMC-Announces-Upsizing-of-Non-Brokered-Private-Placement-for-Gross-Proceeds-of-up-to-C31-Million
Brampton, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - March 14, 2022) - Star Navigation Systems Group Ltd. (CSE: SNA) ("Star" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has signed an Integrated Sales, Marketing and Training agreement with FlightPath International ("FPI") for the purposes of enhancing global brand awareness, collaboratively leading sales initiatives as well as training future customers on leveraging maximum business insights from the Star A.D.S  products and data services.

This agreement is an extension of the original signed agreement between Star and FPI on January 19th, 2022.

Over the past few months, FPI has showcased the value of being a trusted reputable leader in the aviation industry by providing the highest standard of Original Equipment Manufacturer ("OEM") training, and customer service for over 18 years. Star looks to leverage FPI's relationships with its customers and benefit from this new integrated partnership by:

- Accessing over 160 new FPI customers, MRO and OEM relationships that will benefit from Star's Flight Sciences Services and Technologies

- Offering Star A.D.S  solutions to new potential customers and existing FPI customers in Autonomous Aircraft Tracking, Aircraft in Distress tracking along with backward and forward DFDR recordings, Flight Operations Performance, Predictive Maintenance and Safety Protocols

- Providing a market ready solution to existing FPI airline customers to implement the mandatory International Civil Aviation Organization's ("ICAO") Global Aeronautical Distress Safety System program ("GADSS") before the January 2023 deadline

"This is an important step for Star as we launch our new Star A.D.S  Sales & Marketing, Customer Support and Training Services," says Amir Bhatti, CEO at Star. "With FPI's successful track record in Airline training and its global footprint with offices in 8 countries around the world, Star now has the ability to train new and prospective customers in best practices of training standards. The FPI Partnership helps us open several new doors to showcase and sell our products as the global airline industry starts to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. Airlines need our technologies to ensure compliance with ICAO flight tracking requirements by January 2023 and to optimize aircraft performance. With these sales initiatives coming in the form of managing Star's own road shows in various regions of the world which will help develop sales for Star on an accelerated timeline as well enhancing brand awareness".

"Star and FPI have come together, and we can now provide a remarkable service that will bring operating costs down for airlines, as well as develop an even higher standard of safety to our customer's operations," says Andrew Lucas, CEO at FPI. "In addition to the Quality Training that our customers have come to know with FPI, the addition of Star's products and services adds new dimensions for Flight Following, Technical Readiness, Environmental Optimization, reduced "Unexpected" Aircraft on Ground downtime, Improved Efficiency and Standardization and Safety in Flight Operations. These attributes provide real and substantial cost savings as well as environmental benefits."

Star is compensating FPI for its strategic, integrated and accelerated alliance in sales initiatives/training and flight safety workshops in untapped markets through the issuance of two million Company Stock Options which will vest equally at $0.05 cents and $0.08 cents and CAD$99,000. These funds will be utilized in establishing a strong infrastructure with associated resources to support these initiatives. The joint efforts will lead both companies to showcase their respective products with increased credibility on upcoming trips that will bear costs associated in the same range of expenditures.

About Star Navigation:

Star Navigation Systems Group Ltd. manufactures the In-flight Safety Monitoring System, STAR-ISMS, the heart of the STAR-A.D.S. System. The STAR-A.D.S. System has real-time capability of tracking, performance trends and predicting incident-occurrences which enhances aviation safety and improves fleet management while reducing costs for the operator. Star's MMI Division designs and manufactures high performance, mission critical, flight deck flat panel displays for defence and commercial aviation industries worldwide.

About FlightPath International:

Founded in 2003, FlightPath International, a Canadian based company, is a leading provider of Training and Operational Support services for the commercial airline industry worldwide. FlightPath offers Technical, Pilot, Multi-Crew Pilot Licensing, Cabin and Dispatcher training, with aircraft types that include Airbus, Boeing, Bombardier, De Havilland, and Embraer; serving over 160 Operators in over 60 Countries.

Forward Looking Information

Certain statements in this news release may constitute "forward-looking statements". Forward-looking statements are statements that address or discuss activities, events or developments that Star expects or anticipates may occur in the future. When used in this news release, words such as "estimates", "expects", "plans", "anticipates", "projects", "will", "believes", "intends" "should", "could", "may" and other similar terminology are intended to identify such forward-looking statements.

Forward-looking statements reflect the current expectations and beliefs of Star's management. Because forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, actual results, performance or achievements of Star or the industry may be materially different from those implied by such forward-looking statements. Examples of such forward-looking information that may be contained in this news release include statements regarding: growth and future prospects of our business; our perceptions of the industry and markets in which we operate and anticipated trends in such markets; expectations regarding the operation of our app; and our future revenues.

Material factors or assumptions that were applied in drawing a conclusion or making an estimate set out in the forward-looking statements may include, but are not limited to, our ability to execute on our business plan, increase visibility amongst consumers and convert users to revenue producing subscribers and the success of the business of our partners.

Forward-looking statements involve significant uncertainties, should not be read as a guarantee of future performance or results, and will not necessarily be an accurate indication of whether or not such results will be achieved.

A number of factors could cause actual results to differ materially from the results discussed in the forward-looking statements, including, without limitation: those relating to potential disruptions to product delivery; failure to meet regulatory requirements; changes in the market; potential downturns in economic conditions; availability of financing (as necessary); and other risk factors described in our Filing Statement which is available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. These risks, as well as others, could cause actual results and events to vary significantly. Accordingly, readers should exercise caution in relying upon forward-looking statements and Star undertakes no obligation to publicly revise them to reflect subsequent events or circumstances, except as required by law.

The risks posed by the COVID-19 pandemic are real and substantial but cannot be defined or measured in any meaningful way at this time. Many other factors could cause Star's actual performance or achievements to vary from those described herein. Should one or more of these factors or uncertainties materialize, or should assumptions underlying forward-looking statements prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described herein as intended, planned, anticipated, believed, estimated or expected.

NEITHER CANADIAN SECURITIES EXCHANGE NOR ITS REGULATION SERVICES PROVIDER (AS THAT TERM IS DEFINED IN THE POLICIES OF THE CANADIAN SECURITIES EXCHANGE) ACCEPTS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE.

Please visit www.star-navigation.com or contact

Mr. Amir Bhatti, CEO at 1-416-252-2889 #230 or amir.bhatti@star-navigation.com

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/116700
Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - March 14, 2022) - High Fusion Inc. (CSE: FUZN) ("High Fusion" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has agreed to enter into a one-year, secured, loan facility in the principal amount of US$472,500 ("Loan Facility").

"We have entered into this loan as a bridge financing to an anticipated asset sale by the Company," said Robert Wilson, Chief Financial Officer of High Fusion. "This financing provides the Company with working capital to help ensure that we have sufficient time to realize a fair value on the anticipated asset sale."

The Loan Facility is expected to close today and is comprised of three tranches, with the first two tranches representing a principal amount of US$172,500. Interest on the first two tranches of the Loan Facility, during the initial four-month period of US$22,500, is deducted from the proceeds at closing. In the event that the first two tranches are not repaid within four months, an additional interest change of US$17,250 will be due at maturity in one year. The third tranche of the Loan Facility represents a principal amount of US$300,000 which will accrue interest of US$45,000 for the initial four-month period with additional interest payments of US$35,000 if the loan repaid after four-months to the date of maturity in one-year. Notwithstanding the above terms, the Loan Facility is due and payable upon an asset sale by the Company.

As part of the Loan Facility, the lenders will be granted 2,250,000 subordinate voting share purchase warrants (each a "Warrant"). Each Warrant will entitle the holder to purchase one subordinate voting share of the Company at a price of $.075 and for a period of two years.

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, OutCo, Thrive, Red Octopus and Dubbi Brothers. The Company's OutCo and Thrive brands in California are distributed through Punch Edibles.

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 timing of the Loan Facility, the proposed asset sale 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 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/116703
Sale Values Office Tower At $2.85 Billion

BROOKFIELD NEWS, March 14, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Brookfield (NYSE: BAM, TSX: BAM.A) and Blackstone (NYSE: BX) today announced that Blackstone Real Estate has acquired a 49 percent stake in One Manhattan West from Brookfield and Qatar Investment Authority (QIA). The deal values the office building at $2.85 billion. The 67-story, 2.1-million-square-foot building is part of Manhattan West, Brookfield and QIA's 8-acre, 7-million-square-foot commercial complex on Manhattan's west side.



"The partial sale of One Manhattan West and the interest we received as soon as we put it on the market are clear validations that the highest quality office properties are seeing enormous demand coming out of the pandemic," said Brookfield Managing Partner Ben Brown. "One Manhattan West is home to some of the world's leading companies, and their continued desire to work from and grow in the building is a promising sign for Manhattan West and prime, well-located office assets broadly."

Qahir Madhany, Managing Director at Blackstone Real Estate, said, "One Manhattan West is a brand-new, best-in-class building that is attractive to tenants and represents a continuation of our strategy targeting well-leased, transit-oriented, highly amenitized and newly built assets in gateway markets. We are long-term believers in New York and are confident that quality properties like One Manhattan West will continue to see strong tenant demand."

Designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, Brookfield opened One Manhattan West in 2019 as the first new office tower within the Manhattan West development. Located on the corner of Ninth Avenue and 33rd Street, One Manhattan West is leased with tenants including Accenture, EY, McKool Smith, and Skadden Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP. The building is LEED Gold certified and 2021 WELL Health-Safety rated.

About Brookfield

Brookfield is a leading global alternative asset manager with approximately US$690 billion of assets under management across real estate, infrastructure, renewable power, private equity, and credit. Brookfield owns and operates long-life assets and businesses, many of which form the backbone of the global economy. Utilizing its global reach, access to large-scale capital and operational expertise, Brookfield offers a range of alternative investment products to investors around the world - including public and private pension plans, endowments and foundations, sovereign wealth funds, financial institutions, insurance companies and private wealth investors.

Brookfield is listed on the New York and Toronto stock exchanges under the symbols BAM and BAM.A respectively.



About Blackstone Real Estate

Blackstone is a global leader in real estate investing. Blackstone's real estate business was founded in 1991 and has $279 billion of investor capital under management. Blackstone is the largest owner of commercial real estate globally, owning and operating assets across every major geography and sector, including logistics, residential, office, hospitality, and retail. Our opportunistic funds seek to acquire undermanaged, well-located assets across the world. Blackstone's Core+ strategy invests in substantially stabilized real estate assets globally and Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust, Inc. (BREIT), a non-listed REIT, invests in U.S. income-generating assets. Blackstone Real Estate also operates one of the leading global real estate debt businesses, providing comprehensive financing solutions across the capital structure and risk spectrum, including management of Blackstone Mortgage Trust (NYSE: BXMT).

About QIA

Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) is the sovereign wealth fund of the State of Qatar and a global investment organization, wi?th investments spanning all major global markets, asset classes, sectors, and geographies. QIA is established by Amiri Decision no. 22 for 2005, to develop, invest and manage the state reserve funds and other assets assigned by the Supreme Council for Economic Affairs and Investment to diversify Qatar's economy.

For more information, please visit our website at www.qia.qa

Contacts:
Seven people were wounded Sunday when a shooter inside a car opened fire outside a Little Caesars restaurant in Chicago, police said.

The victims were all men, with the youngest believed to be in his 30s and the oldest said to be in his 60s. None have been identified by name.

Advertisement

Whether it was a targeted shooting or an altercation, its unacceptable, Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown told reporters.

The scene of the shooting in Chicago on Sunday. (Armando L. Sanchez/AP)

Police said the shooting, which occurred Sunday afternoon, left two victims in critical condition. The others were believed to be in good condition.

Advertisement

Officials havent identified a suspect, but Brown said the shooter opened fire almost immediately after the car pulled up near the pizzeria on the citys South Side.

Police are investigating the shooting, which left seven people wounded, according to officials. (Armando L. Sanchez/AP)

Authorities are now investigating whether anyone else fired a weapon during the incident, or if another car was involved in the shooting.

With News Wire Services
DGAP Voting Rights Announcement: QIAGEN N.V.

QIAGEN N.V.: Release according to Article 40, Section 1 of the WpHG [the German Securities Trading Act] with the objective of Europe-wide distribution



14.03.2022 / 22:04

Dissemination of a Voting Rights Announcement transmitted by DGAP - a service of EQS Group AG.

The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.



The AFM (the Netherlands Authority For the Financial Markets has informed us on March 10, 2022 that a notification related to our institution has been released by the AFM. The following notification has been disclosed in the relevant register on the AFM website: Date of transaction: 04 mar 2022

Person obliged to notify: Goldman Sachs Group Inc., The

Issuing institution: Qiagen N.V.

Registration Chamber of Commerce: 12036979

Place of residence: VENLO Distribution in numbers Type of share Number of shares Number of voting rights Capital interest Voting rights Manner of disposal Settlement Ordinary share 957.492,00 957.492,00 Potential Potential Indirectly - Goldman Sachs International Physical Delivery Convertible bond 924.240,00 924.240,00 Potential Potential Indirectly - Goldman Sachs International Physical Delivery Ordinary share 209.259,00 209.259,00 Potential Potential Indirectly - Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC Physical Delivery Option 3.863.782,00 3.863.782,00 Potential Potential Indirectly - Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC Physical Delivery Swap 13.469,00 13.469,00 Potential Potential Indirectly - Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC In cash Ordinary share 5.616,00 5.616,00 Real Real Indirectly - United Capital Financial Advisers, LLC Physical Delivery Ordinary share 49,00 49,00 Real Real Indirectly - Folio Investments Inc. Physical Delivery Ordinary share 19.555,00 19.555,00 Real Real Indirectly - Goldman Sachs Bank Europe SE Physical Delivery Swap 1.031.544,00 1.031.544,00 Potential Potential Indirectly - Goldman Sachs International In cash Ordinary share 26.166,00 26.166,00 Potential Potential Indirectly - Goldman Sachs Bank Europe SE Physical Delivery Warrant 49.104,00 49.104,00 Potential Potential Indirectly - Goldman Sachs Bank Europe SE In cash Ordinary share 14.775,00 14.775,00 Real Real Indirectly - The Goldman Sachs Trust Company of Delaware Physical Delivery Ordinary share 416.733,00 416.733,00 Real Real Indirectly - Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC Physical Delivery Distribution in percentages Type Total holding Directly real Directly potential Indirectly real Indirectly potential Capital interest 3,26% 0,00% 0,00% 0,20% 3,07% Voting rights 3,26% 0,00% 0,00% 0,20% 3,07% QIAGEN N.V. is not responsible for the accuracy and correctness of the notification above. The content has

been taken from the relevant register of the AFM:

https://www.afm.nl/en/professionals/registers/meldingenregisters/substantiele-deelnemingen/details?id=121291

14.03.2022 The DGAP Distribution Services include Regulatory Announcements, Financial/Corporate News and Press Releases.

Archive at www.dgap.de


Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - March 14, 2022) - Dynasty Gold Corp. (TSXV: DYG) (FSE: D5G1) (OTC Pink: DGDCF) ("Dynasty" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that subject to the Exchange's approval, it closes Tranche 1 non-brokered private placement of 1,916,765 units for gross proceeds of $325,850. Each unit consists of one common share at $0.17 and one common share purchase warrant at $0.25 for a period of two years. The Company shall have the right to call the outstanding Warrants for expiry upon 30 days notice in the event that the closing price of the common shares of the Company on the TSX-V is above $0.35 for 7 consecutive trading days. The units issued under the private placement are subject to a four-month hold period from the date of closing. Finder's fees are payable to qualified finders.

Participants in this private placement includes directors and insiders for which the Company is relying on exemptions from the formal valuation and minority shareholder approval requirements provided under sections 5.5(a) and 5.7(1)(a) of Multilateral Instrument 61-101 on the basis that participation in the Offering by insiders does not exceed 25% of the fair market value of the Company's market capitalization. The proceeds from the private placement will be used to for exploration on the Thundercloud gold project and for general corporate purposes. The Company will start airborne survey at Thundercloud as soon as the ground situation permits.

About Dynasty Gold Corp.

Dynasty Gold Corp. is a Canadian exploration company currently focused on gold exploration in North America with projects located in a greenstone belt in Ontario and in the Midas gold camp in Nevada. The Company is currently advancing its Thundercloud gold deposit which contains 182,000 oz gold. The 43-101 Mineral Resource report was filed on www.sedar.com. The 100% owned Golden Repeat gold project is in the Midas gold camp in Elko County Nevada, and surrounded by a number of large scale operating mines. In addition, Dynasty owns a 70% interest in the Hatu Qi2 gold mine in the Tien Shan Gold belt, Xinjiang, China, with which it is in legal dispute with Xinjiang Non-Ferrous Industrial Metals Group and its subsidiary Western Region Gold Co. Ltd. For more information, please visit the Company's website www.dynastygoldcorp.com.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DYNASTY GOLD CORP.

"Ivy Chong"

_________________________________

Ivy Chong, President & CEO

For additional information please contact:

Ivy Chong, Dynasty Gold Corp.

Email: ichong@dynastygoldcorp.com, Phone 604.633.2100

Jemini Capital, Phone 647.725.3888

This press release contains certain "forward-looking statements" that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. The TSX Venture Exchange has not reviewed and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/116743
Affogata, a Tel Aviv, Israel-based AI-driven customer intelligence platform enabling brands to use customer voice data to improve products in real-time, announced an extension of its seed funding round, bringing the total to $9.5M.

The round was led by Mindset Ventures, and co-led by Mangrove Capital and Pico Venture Partners as well as a group of notable individual investors, including Avishai Avrahami (CEO and Founder of Wix.com) Micha Kaufman (CEO of Fiverr), Giora Yaron (Amdocs, Mercury), Ronen Shilo (CEO of Conduit), and other tech leaders.

Founded in 2019 by Sharel Omer, Ran Margaliot, and Itamar Rogel, Affogata provides an AI-Driven Customer Voice Analysis platform to allow businesses to identify unusual patterns, to streamline real-time responses and engage in preemptive action, addressing the feedback that matters to improve product decisions. The companys offering, which gathers information from an expansive array of open data sources, across a variety of niche verticals, from fintech to gaming and more, can also incorporate relevant mediums and forums that are most impactful for the specific industry.

The company intends to use the new funding to expand operations and its business reach and enable additional specialization to bolster the effectiveness of product development teams with specific tools to adjust user experience based on customer voice in real-time. Verticalized capabilities will also be bolstered, with gaming and fintech features as a primary focus.

Multiple stakeholders such as marketers, product managers, customer success teams, data analysts, and more leverage insights based on that data, enabling proactive actions to ensure a perfect customer experience. Affogata works with brands including Wix, MyHeritage, Playtika, and more.

FinSMEs

14/03/2022
Future Crops, an Israeli-Dutch fully automated indoor vertical farm provider, raised an undisclosed amount in funding.

The round was led by Tencent.



The company intends to use the funds to expand its capacities to meet demand, continue to increase its R&D capabilities and develop proprietary technology.



Led by CEO Gary Grinspan, Future Crops has established a fully automated indoor vertical farm in Westland, Netherlands. The facility is equipped with high-precision agricultural technology and creates optimal climatic conditions to suit each crop. It markets fresh herbs grown and processed in a multistory indoor vertical farming system. The crops are grown in a soil-based substrate developed by the company to be as close as possible to nature. The platform can grow a comprehensive range of herbs and leafy greens all year long, without pesticides or biological substances, and in climate-protected conditions.

Future Crops maintains a strategic partnership with Israels Agricultural Research Organization (ARO) and closely collaborates with Wageningen University.

Future Crops had already raised over $30 million in seed funding from a private equity arm run by the Lerman Family, leaders in the American steel industry to finance the construction of the facility and to build their team of experts.



FinSMEs

14/03/2022
Marlette Holdings, a Wilmington, DE-based financial technology company, raised $225M in Series E funding.

The round was led by Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan (HOOPP), with participation from investment funds advised by Davidson Kempner Capital Management.



The company intends to use the funds to accelerate growth, explore platform expansions, and evaluate additional strategic opportunities to create more value for target consumers.



Led by CEO Jeffrey Meiler, and Andrew Deringer, chief capital officer, Marlette Holdings provides Best Egg, a machine learning powered, online credit and financial wellness platform which aims to help people feel confident about their everyday finances, as well as the The Best Egg Visa Credit Card, which provides access to credit for Americans with little or no savings who wish to build or rebuild their credit. Product features include fraud protection, no annual fees, and spending controls. Since March 2014, the platform has delivered over $16 billion of consumer loans.



FinSMEs

14/03/2022
Trzmo, a Dover, MA-based provider of a travel app, raised $1.2M in funding.

The backers were not disclosed.

The company intends to use the funds to accelerate adoption of its free app.

Led by CEO Myank Jain, Trzmo provides a travel app, available for free on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. It presents flight itineraries, ground transportation recommendations and logistics, local weather, time, currency, and duty-free shopping recommendations on routes in a single dashboard. Trzmo automatically pulls flight itineraries from a users calendar, facilitating trip management without data entry like first-generation apps. It also manages loyalty cards so users can earn points, maximize value, and spend time enjoying travel instead of navigating a myriad of single-function apps.

Myank Jain is an experienced founder and entrepreneur having built and sold iQuest Analytics, Inc. to a Government Agency and then led numerous teams and organizations to high performance and growth prior to founding Trzmo. Jain attended the MIT Sloan School of Executive Management program and is deeply involved in the Cambridge, MA tech innovation community.

FinSMEs

14/03/2022
Abortion should be legal in all circumstances

Abortion should be legal in most circumstances

Abortion should be legal in a few circumstances

Abortion should never be legal in any circumstances

Vote

View Results
I know you can buy a switch to disconnect the battery, but you would have to turn it on and off . I am thinking something simple like a dash mounted toggle switch that disconnects the power to the starter.



On my 56 F100, I installed a toggle switch for the fuel pump so I could trouble shoot other electrical problems without running the fuel pump any time the key was on.

Last edited by ranger pat; 03-09-2022 at 09:46 PM . Reason: Another thought
Got milk?

New Yorks congressional delegation has a message for health-conscious Mayor Adams: Leave our chocolate milk alone.

Advertisement

A new push in Congress that has won support from both sides of the political aisle would require schools to continue offering flavored milk to children with their meals.

The Empire State lawmakers wrote to Adams last week asking him to hold off on his effort to ban chocolate milk, arguing that children wont drink the plain stuff and will miss out on essential nutrients as a result.

Advertisement

New York City Mayor Eric Adams (Shawn Inglima/for New York Daily News)

We are committed to supporting the dairy farmers, producers, and agriculture partners across New York, while also ensuring that children in NYC schools have access to critical, life-enhancing nutrients, read the Dear Mayor letter.

Upstate Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) introduced the Protecting School Milk Choices Act of 2022 last week to prevent schools from eliminating chocolate milk.

Rep. Antonio Delgado (D-N.Y.) is pushing the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act which lauded dairys central role in providing essential nutrients and asks for the feds to allow chocolate-flavored whole milk along with a low-fat version.

Democrats like Rep. Grace Meng (D-N.Y.), who represents Queens, and Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.) also back the effort, along with most of the states handful of GOP lawmakers in D.C.

Milk carton (Shutterstock)

Unfortunately, for many NYC families, the meals children receive in schools are their only source of many recommended nutrients, the lawmakers wrote in the letter.

The effort has the enthusiastic support of dairy farmers who worry that the demonization of cows milk will turn an entire generation against drinking milk and other dairy products.

Kids need access to milk, said Jim Mulhern, president, and CEO of the National Milk Producers Federation. It provides students one of the most complete nutrient packages around.

Adams, a vegan, has made improving the citys nutrition a big focus of his new administration. He has declared war on chicken nuggets and fries in school lunches and says chocolate milk is barely better than soda or sugary drinks.
This is our best offer!

You get home delivery Monday through Saturday  plus full digital access any time, on any device  with our six-day subscription delivery membership.

This membership plan includes member-only benefits like our popular ticket giveaways, all of our email newsletters and access to the daily digital replica of the printed paper. Also, you can share digital access with up to four other household members at no additional cost.

Subscriptions renew automatically every 30 days. Call 240-215-8600 to cancel auto-renewal. Most subscribers are served by News-Post carriers; households in some outlying areas receive same-day delivery through the US Postal Service. If your household falls in a postal delivery area, you will be notified by our customer service team.
Keep the conversation about local news & events going by joining us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Recent updates from The News-Post and also from News-Post staff members are compiled below.
Mayor Adams marked the second anniversary of NYCs first confirmed death from COVID-19 on Monday by vowing that the city must remember the nearly 40,000 New Yorkers who have perished in the pandemic.

This pandemic has caused incalculable suffering and pain for our families, friends, and neighbors, Adams said in a statement.

Advertisement

The city and states first fatality of the pandemic was an unidentified 82-year-old woman who suffered from severe emphysema.

She was one of the first people hospitalized in NYC with an unknown respiratory illness, and died about a week later at Wykoff Hospital in Brooklyn.

Advertisement

New York City Mayor Eric Adams (Barry Williams/for New York Daily News)

As we work to recover and rebuild New York City, we must remember those that we have lost and carry on their stories, the mayor said. We will never forget their names, their faces, or the ways they have shaped this great city.

City Hall and major municipal buildings in all five boroughs have been ordered to be aglow in amber lights on Monday evening to commemorate the anniversary.

Monday also marks the last day for Dr. David Chokshi as New York Citys health commissioner. He started in August 2020 and helped lead the citys response through several waves of infections and deaths.

Dr. Ashwin Vasan, a top public health adviser to Adams, will take over Chokshis post.

On a state level, Gov. Hochul said New York has shown its mettle by embracing tools to keep a lid on the spread of COVID, especially vaccines. According to the Centers for Disease Control, an estimated 75% of all New Yorkers are now fully vaccinated.

Its meaningful to see how effective our fight against the virus has been, Hochul said as the states daily COVID case count dipped below 1,000 for the first time since last summer.

The official global death toll from COVID-19 eclipsed 6 million earlier this month  underscoring that the pandemic, now entering its third year, is far from over.

The milestone, recorded by Johns Hopkins University, is the latest tragic reminder of the unrelenting nature of the pandemic even as people are shedding masks, travel is resuming and businesses are reopening around the globe.

Advertisement

And despite its wealth and vaccine availability, the United States is nearing 1 million reported deaths before the summer.

Due to waning effectiveness, particularly on variants like omicron, a fourth COVID vaccine shot will probably be needed to keep hospitals and morgues quiet, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said on Sundays Meet the Press.

With Kate Feldman
The citys premiere leadership awards ceremony was back after a year off with Albany Area Chamber of Commerce holding its 76th Distinguished Service Awards Saturday night at Boys & Girls Club of Albany.

As many as 250 people gathered under auspices of a chamber-backed, circus big top-themed night out the same day Oregon made masks optional. By the time dinner was served, only a couple of masks could be spotted.

Its so beautiful to see all your faces, said presenter Matt Harris. I even got my beard cut.

Harris accepted the Service Award for large businesses in 2020, awarded to Arauco and its Duraflake Particleboard mill during a socially distant version and the 75th iteration of the event.

Speakers called the awards shows resurgence a testament to the resilience of the towns business and volunteering communities that saw shops permanently close and people stay home under the onslaught of one of the deadliest viruses in U.S. history.

Emma Eaton, an Albany architecture preservationist and champion for a literal church movement was recognized as the 2022 winner of the ceremonys most prestigious Distinguished Service Award.

She reflected on her personal connections and mentorship in her decades-long career volunteering. Eaton told the crowd that her lifes trajectory at times has come down to meeting the right person at the right time.

I wouldnt be here tonight. Theres no doubt about it, Eaton said. So be that person.

Quality journalism doesn't happen without your help Support local news coverage and the people who report it by subscribing to the Albany Democrat-Herald.

Eaton has been involved in the preservation, restoration and showing of historic houses. In 2008, she took interest in the Cumberland Church as the city was set to remove it for a roadway. She formed an association by 2018 to turn the roughly 130-year-old house of worship into a community center, where personal connections would be centered in local history.

Crews lifted the would-be community building onto a truck in October and drove it to a new spot nearly a quarter-mile away.

The chambers 2022 Jim Linhart First Citizen Award winner was Rod Porsche, Albany Area Habitat for Humanity executive director and Gus the Platypus  the hot pants-wearing mascot of a charity fundraising effort started in 2021 that saw thousands of rubber platypus toys dropped in a local park to send money to area nonprofits.

Award namesake Jim Linhart was posthumously given the citizen award 20 years ago at the 57th ceremony after he died in 2001. His wife, Garyana, who accepted the award in 2002, said Linharts motto was to show up and care.

Porsche said he was struck by the motto.

If everyone lived that way, it would make Albany even better, he said. Show up and care.

Alex Powers covers business, environment and healthcare for Mid-Valley Media. Contact him at 541-812-6116 or alex.powers@lee.net.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0

Get local news delivered to your inbox! Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
College is an expensive investment. But you already know that. Just take a look at the amount of Americans who are in debt thanks to the hefty amount of student loans theyve accumulated.

Because of the pandemic, the federal government has put a temporary pause on repaying those loans. For now, that pause is in effect through May 1. But it doesnt matter when that pause ultimately expires  scammers are taking advantage of anxious, debt-ridden citizens.

For this weeks mid-valley scam alert, were talking about all things student loan repayment scams. In a March edition of the FBI Oregon Tech Tuesday segment, the agency offered up some tips to avoid becoming a victim of this particular type of fraud.

Crooks and con artists will try to contact you via text message, email or phone call/voicemail in an attempt to fool you into divulging sensitive information. Theyll probably tell you about the quick and easy ways you can consolidate or eliminate your student loans.

For example, a fraudster might say, This is (insert name) from student loan support. Our records indicate that you were eligible for a loan forgiveness program but never completed the required documents. If you want to proceed with this application, we need to speak with you today. Please give us a call.

If theres one thing I hope weve all learned from reading these scam alerts, its this: Be wary of any message from an unknown sender who is asking for personal and/or financial information.

If youre unsure if a message is legitimate or not, consider this advice from the Federal Trade Commission:

Quality journalism doesn't happen without your help Support local news coverage and the people who report it by subscribing to the Albany Democrat-Herald.

Never pay an upfront fee. It is illegal for companies to charge you before they help you. Keep in mind you never have to pay to get assistance from the Department of Education.

Never give out your Federal Student Aid ID, your Social Security number or other personal information to anyone who contacts you. Scammers can use this information to log into your account, change your contact information and/or divert your payments to them.

When in doubt, contact your student loan servicer directly.

Do not sign up for quick loan forgiveness. Bad actors might say they can get rid of your loans before they even know the details of your situation. They also might promise a loan forgiveness program  one you wont qualify for.

Scam artists often use fake seals and logos to trick people into believing the message is credible. Theyll promise special access to repayment plans, new federal loan consolidations or loan forgiveness programs.

If you have federal student loans, go directly to the Department of Education at www.StudentAid.gov.

Debt can be a heavy burden, and there are plenty of people who will simply follow orders when it comes to financial matters. After all, you certainly dont want to get into any legal trouble. But its necessary to take a step back and look at the situation from all angles before you give out your crucial information.

No one wants to be a victim of a swindlers scheme, so as always, proceed with caution when dealing with monetary affairs.

If you are the victim of a student loan scam, report it to the FTC at www.ReportFraud.ftc.gov.

Maddie Pfeifer covers public safety for Mid-Valley Media. She can be contacted at 541-812-6091 or Madison.Pfeifer@lee.net. Follow her on Twitter via @maddiepfeifer_

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0

Get local news delivered to your inbox! Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
Welcome to my genealogy blog. Genea-Musings features genealogy research tips and techniques, genealogy news items and commentary, genealogy humor, San Diego genealogy society news, family history research and some family history stories from the keyboard of Randy Seaver (of Chula Vista CA), who thinks that Genealogy Research Is really FUN! Copyright (c) Randall J. Seaver, 2006-2021.
Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is continuing his political rehabilitation tour with plans to later this week address a group of Hispanic ministers in the Bronx led by controversial ex-City Councilman Ruben Diaz Sr.

The meeting, expected to take place Thursday at Diazs Christian Community Neighborhood Church in the South Bronx, will feature dozens of ministers from the New York Hispanic Clergy Organization, and the goal is to have a conversation with Cuomo about his plans for the future, the former councilman said.

Advertisement

Were going to be very respectful, Diaz told the Daily News on Monday. We are very happy for him to come to the South Bronx.

Asked if he would like to see Cuomo run for governor or another public office, Diaz declined to give a straight answer.

Advertisement

He was very good to the Bronx when he was governor, he said, adding he didnt want to share any thoughts that might jeopardize Cuomos visit.

Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (left) and Ruben Diaz Sr. (right) (Getty Images / New York Daily News)

Cuomos decision to associate himself with Diaz drew swift outrage from LGBTQ advocates, who noted that the ex-lawmaker has a long history of anti-gay views, including claiming in 2019 that the City Council was controlled by the homosexual community.

How dare he? Is he out of his f-----g mind? longtime gay rights activist Allen Roskoff said of Cuomos planned visit to Diazs church. In one swoop he has made the LGBTQ community his enemy. Its so sad, as he was considered a good friend for past deeds. Now those are in the garbage.

Rich Azzopardi, Cuomos spokesman, pushed back against the idea that the ex-governors church visit should be interpreted as an endorsement of Diazs views.

Obviously we dont stand for intolerance of any kind, but what separates the public servants from the politicians is being able to work with people who we dont always agree with. No one can credibly question this governors commitment to the LBGTQ community, Azzopardi said, citing Cuomos role in legalizing same-sex marriage in New York, among other measures.

The Bronx trip marks Cuomos second public appearance in as many weeks amid rumors that he is considering jumping back into the political fray after spending months on the sidelines following his resignation last August over sexual misconduct accusations.

Marking his first public remarks since his resignation, the ex-governor paid a visit on March 6 to a Brooklyn church, where he claimed in a speech that cancel culture was to blame for his political downfall.

Without calling her out by name, Cuomo took aim at state Attorney General Letitia James during his church speech, claiming that her office engaged in prosecutorial misconduct by releasing a report corroborating allegations that he sexually harassed 11 women, many of them younger aides.

Advertisement

They acted in their own self-interest, Cuomo said of James investigators. They wanted me out because they wanted my job.

Despite his attacks on James, Cuomo had commissioned the AG to conduct the sexual misconduct investigation. He stepped down only after it became clear that the state Legislature would likely impeach him if he refused.

Its unclear what office Cuomo may run for if he were to attempt a political comeback.

Speculation has mounted that he may launch a primary challenge against James, but he told The News that the rumors arent true when asked about them this month in Manhattan.

Diaz, meantime, suggested Monday in his weekly newsletter to congregants that Cuomo could have a shot at running against Gov. Hochul.

In a recent poll, Gov. Cuomo, without being a candidate nor having announced his political aspirations, has polled with just 4 points behind Gov. Kathy Hochul, Diaz wrote, referencing a recent Emerson College poll. As you know, Gov. Hochul was a friend and she was handpicked by Cuomo to be his lieutenant governor. However, she was among one of the first to throw him under the bus, in the midst of the allegations launched against him.

Advertisement

Fueling speculation about his political aspirations, Cuomo released a television ad Monday in which he touts aspects of his gubernatorial record, like implementing a $15 minimum wage and paid family leave.

I havent been perfect. Ive made mistakes, Cuomo says in the 30-second ad. But I also made a difference. Ive never stopped fighting for New Yorkers, and I never will.
Gillette, WY (82718)

Today

Cloudy with showers. High around 50F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%..

Tonight

Some clouds this evening will give way to mainly clear skies overnight. Low 38F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the U.S. must do more to support refugees fleeing Russias vicious assault on Ukraine, citing the enormous scope of the crisis, as she embarked upon a two-stop tour of New York City on Monday.

We have to do more in terms of meeting the needs of some of the 2.7 million refugees  2.7  its a number thats almost incomprehensible, and not finished yet, Pelosi, a California Democrat, said in a news conference in Brooklyn Bridge Park.

Advertisement

At the event, Pelosi, who was joined by some of New Yorks congressional delegation members, touted the November passage of the $1 trillion infrastructure package and the approval last week of a $1.5 trillion spending measure.

Both Democratic priorities passed with bipartisan support.

Advertisement

Pelosi said the infrastructure law will send a lot of money to create a lot of jobs in New York, rattling off some of the local cash commitments: $11.6 billion for highway repairs, $9.8 billion for public transportation and $1.9 billion for bridges.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (center) is joined by Chairman of the House Democratic Caucus Hakeem Jeffries, Representative Nydia Velazquez and Representative Yvette D. Clarke in an Infrastructure press conference in Brooklyn, New York on Monday, March 14, 2022. (Theodore Parisienne/for New York Daily News)

As the midterm elections approach in the fall, she and other Democratic Party leaders are working to sell their legislative track record, which was dented last year by an unsuccessful push to pass a massive social spending bill.

Pelosi said Democrats have more to do, but described the infrastructure law as a very important piece of legislation.

This is a great moment, and Im so happy were here in Brooklyn to celebrate, Pelosi said under a clear late-winter New York sky. Its about justice. Its about safety. Its about quality of life.

After the stop in Brooklyn, Pelosi headed to the Bronx to further plug the work of Democrats to deliver for Americans.

But Democrats are balancing their domestic policy aspirations with the humanitarian crisis in Eastern Europe unleashed by President Vladimir Putins bloody invasion of Ukraine.

The spending package passed by lawmakers in Washington last week set aside more than $13 billion in humanitarian and military aid for Ukraine, including more than $1 billion in assistance for refugees, as the 30-year-old democratic country faces down the Russian Army.

According to the UNs refugee agency, the count of Ukrainians who have fled their homeland has now eclipsed 2.8 million.

Advertisement

Ukraine is on fire, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters on Monday. The country is being decimated before the eyes of the world. The impact on civilians is reaching terrifying proportions.

Pelosi said Congress can go further for beleaguered Ukraine, a nation with a peacetime population of some 44 million, facing relentless bombing since the invasion started Feb. 24.

Theyre fighting for democracy writ large, Pelosi told reporters, decrying the assault that the beast Putin has been foisting on those people, the acts of bombing maternity wards, outside the circle of civilized human behavior.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraines president, is scheduled to address Congress by video on Wednesday, and Pelosi indicated he will outline the needs of his embattled nation. It will be a privilege for us to hear from this champion of democracy, Pelosi said.

Zelenskyy, who has become a face of Ukrainian resistance, delivered a virtual address to the British Parliament last week, drawing a standing ovation at the end of a speech in which he quoted William Shakespeare and summoned the words of Winston Churchill.

Support for Ukraine figures to remain a focus in Congress as Europe reels from the largest military conflict on the continent since World War II.

Advertisement

Representative Yvette D. Clarke (D-N.Y.) in an Infrastructure press conference in Brooklyn, New York on Monday, March 14, 2022. (Theodore Parisienne/for New York Daily News)

Rep. Yvette Clarke, a Brooklyn Democrat, said she expects a lot of talk this week about how we can expedite reuniting families.

My district has a huge Ukrainian population  were all ready and willing to accept folks, Clarke told the Daily News. But there are some obstacles in terms of regulatory schemes that we are going to be working on this week.
UNESCO RILA statement on Ukraine

UNESCOs own mission says that if wars are made in the minds of people, then it is in the minds of people that the defences of peace must be constructed.

The UNESCO Chair for Refugee Integration through Languages and the Arts team deplores the Russian governments decision to wage war on Ukraine under the guise of a special military operation and condemns the use of deadly force on Ukrainian civilians.

We call on all national governments to recognise Russias actions as a breach of Ukrainian Sovereignty and to unite in efforts to work for peace, through the designated international instruments of the United Nations and to ensure the delivery of humanitarian aid to the people of Ukraine and all fleeing the conflict.

We welcome the United Nations vote condemning Russias invasion of Ukraine and the call for Russias full withdrawal. We support the UNESCO National Commissions work to ratify a statement of condemnation of the invasion and the importance of keeping doors open for the work of peace, education and cultural rights to be sustained.

We are also heartened to see the European Unions (EU) decision to remove visa restrictions on Ukrainian refugees fleeing the conflict and the many initiatives being developed to support integration. We call on others - including the UK government - to act in accordance with the spirit and letter of the Refugee Convention and to remove visa restrictions for those fleeing conflict zones. The UK Governments securitising rhetoric is concerning and we note the UK Home Secretarys failure to use the term refugee while outlining the UKs new schemes to support Ukrainian refugees, alone. For the sake of clarity and legal protection, it is imperative that the terms recognised by the convention are used in the public sphere.

The war in Ukraine, as well as the current crises and ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan, Yemen, Palestine, Tigray, Myanmar, amongst others, demonstrate the pressing need for national governments to have clear, attainable routes for those seeking asylum and humanitarian protection to access safety swiftly. Delays in setting up resettlement and integration routes in reaction to crises will result in the loss of human lives and increase the vulnerability of those already in perilous situations. Those fleeing war and persecution need the opportunity to claim asylum outside their country of origin and without fear of further persecution from the country in which they are claiming asylum. We are therefore pleased to note that the UKs House of Lords has already voted against various clauses in the Nationality and Borders Bill and proposed serious amendments.

Despite the almost-global condemnation of Russias invasion of Ukraine and the overwhelming support for those fleeing Ukraine (including non-Ukrainian nationals), we are saddened to note the Eurocentricity of this crisis and the lack of similar reaction to other recent and ongoing world events. It is vital that the situation facing protesters against the war, and their potential need for asylum in Russia and Belarus is also recognised. We recognise that regional crises require regional solutions, first, but the reports reaching us of discrimination according to race, ethnicity and nationality on the borders are deeply concerning. We note the lack of similar outcry concerning the Yemeni civil war, the Tigray crisis which bears the hallmarks of a modern genocide and crimes against humanity, and the recent Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, for example, along with other parts of the world where illegal occupations continue.

We condemn the Russian use of force against people in Ukraine and reports of civilian targets. The crisis should not be more emotional because it is people with blue eyes and blonde hair being killed. It is important to remember that, while the world watches the events unfold in Ukraine, the world is also watching Europes media coverage and response to the crisis.

Following the words of our John Smith Centre Emerging Leadership Fellow: "we are very happy to see the West opened their borders, but on the other hand so very saddened to see the border gates seemingly only valuing some people based on their nationality instead of humanitarian need.

Let us seek peace and pursue it for all; let us be generous and clear about our work of hospitality and protection. Let us use the instruments of peace that have served us over many decades, and let us work to expand drawing on the knowledges which have too often been excluded.
TORONTO, March 13, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Media Central Corporation, Inc. (CSE: FLYY, FSE:3AT) or (the Company) today announced that on March 9, 2022 under section 244(1) of the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act (Canada), Wei Lin in his capacity as Nominee Holder (the Nominee Holder) in respect to the Secured Convertible Debentures (the Debentures) issued on behalf of each of the holders (the Debenture Holders) of the Debentures outstanding in the aggregate principal amount of more than $1,097,000 intends to enforce its security against the property of the Company. The Debenture Holders have a general security interest in the assets of the Company pursuant to the terms of the Debentures. The Nominee Holder was appointed by the Debenture Holders holding more than 51% of the principal amount of the outstanding Debentures.

The Company will provide further updates as more information becomes available.



About Media Central Corporation Inc.

Media Central Corporation Inc. is an alternative media company situated to acquire and develop high-quality publishing assets starting with the recent acquisition of Vancouver Free Press Corp., the purchase of NOW Communications Inc. and the launch of digital cannabis platform CannCentral.com and ESports outlet ECentralSports.com.

The CSE has not reviewed and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

CAUTIONARY NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

Certain information in this news release constitutes forward-looking statements under applicable securities laws. Any statements that are contained in this news release that are not statements of historical fact may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. Forward looking statements are often identified by terms such as may, should, anticipate, expect, potential, believe, intend or the negative of these terms and similar expressions. Forward-looking statements in this news release may include but are not limited to the determination of the actions of the Debenture Holders. Forward-looking statements necessarily involve known and unknown risks, including, without limitation, risks associated with general economic conditions and other risks.

Readers are cautioned that the foregoing list is not exhaustive and should carefully review the various risks and uncertainties identified in the Companys filings on SEDAR. Readers are further cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements as there can be no assurance that the plans, intentions, or expectations upon which they are placed will occur. Such information, although considered reasonable by management at the time of preparation, may prove to be incorrect and actual results may differ materially from those anticipated.



The forward-looking statements included in this news release are made as of the date of this news release and the Company does not undertake an obligation to publicly update such forward-looking statements to reflect new information, subsequent events or otherwise unless required by applicable securities laws.

Forward-looking statements contained in this news release are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement.

SOURCE: Media Central Corporation Inc.

Contact:

Maria Micieli

Corporate Secretary

mariam@mediacentralcorp.com

416-434-6311

www.mediacentralcorp.com
TORONTO, March 13, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Media Central Corporation (CSE: FLYY, FSE:3AT) or (the Company) announced today that it continues to defend itself against a civil claim brought by a former employee dating back to July 2020.



The company filed a Form 2 response to Moore, Laura versus Vancouver Free Press Publishing DBA Georgia Straight on September 2, 2020.

The company has declined on two occasions to settle the $250,000 claim.

The next hearing is scheduled on May 3 and 4, 2022.



About Media Central Corporation Inc.



Media Central Corporation Inc. is an alternative media company situated to acquire and develop high-quality publishing assets starting with the recent acquisition of Vancouver Free Press Corp., the purchase of NOW Communications Inc. and the launch of digital cannabis platform CannCentral.com and ESports outlet ECentralSports.com.

The CSE has not reviewed and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

CAUTIONARY NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

Certain information in this news release constitutes forward-looking statements under applicable securities laws. Any statements that are contained in this news release that are not statements of historical fact may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. Forward looking statements are often identified by terms such as may, should, anticipate, expect, potential, believe, intend or the negative of these terms and similar expressions. Forward-looking statements in this news release may include but are not limited to the companys ability to successfully defend the lawsuit. Such statements are subject to numerous risks including risks relating to the failure of the company to adequately defend the suit and availability of capital to fund applicable legal fees. Investors should not place undue reliance on forward looking statements and the company disclaims any obligation to update forward-looking statements other than as required by law. Forward-looking statements necessarily involve known and unknown risks, including, without limitation, risks associated with general economic conditions; adverse industry events; loss of markets; future legislative and regulatory developments involving; inability to access sufficient capital from internal and external sources, the media industry generally, and regulatory matters and other risks.

Readers are cautioned that the foregoing list is not exhaustive and should carefully review the various risks and uncertainties identified in the Companys filings on SEDAR. Readers are further cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements as there can be no assurance that the plans, intentions, or expectations upon which they are placed will occur. Such information, although considered reasonable by management at the time of preparation, may prove to be incorrect and actual results may differ materially from those anticipated.

The forward-looking statements included in this news release are made as of the date of this news release and the Company does not undertake an obligation to publicly update such forward-looking statements to reflect new information, subsequent events or otherwise unless required by applicable securities laws.

Forward-looking statements contained in this news release are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement.

SOURCE: Media Central Corporation Inc.

Contact:

Maria Micieli

Corporate Secretary

mariam@mediacentralcorp.com

416-434-6311

www.mediacentralcorp.com
York, Maine, March 14, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Stonewall Kitchen announced today that TA Associates (TA), a leading global growth private equity firm, has invested in the company alongside the management team. Working together, TA and Stonewall Kitchen intend to continue the companys accelerated growth through additional acquisitions and innovative new product launches, further solidifying the company as the leading specialty food and home goods platform in North America. Day-to-day operations of the company will be unchanged, and the company will continue to be run by the existing management team in the York, Maine headquarters, led by Chief Executive Officer John Stiker.

In 2019, Stonewall Kitchen partnered with Audax Private Equity to significantly expand its Family of Brands. Since that time, the company has added five more brands to its portfolio, including the Vermont Village brand of organic apple sauce and apple cider vinegars; the Village Candle brand of fragranced candles, gifts and accessories; the Urban Accents brand of globally-inspired spice mixes, seasonings, and sauces; the Vermont Coffee Company brand of high quality, non-GMO, certified organic coffee; and most recently the Michel Design Works brand of elegantly designed and crafted personal and home care products.

This has been an exciting few years at Stonewall Kitchen, as we have evolved from a standalone brand to a true Family of Brands in specialty food and home goods, said CEO John Stiker. Partnering with TA provides us with even greater support to continue this evolution as a leader in the industry, and were thrilled that they combine a network of global resources with a New England heritage.

Added Bill Christ, a Managing Director at TA, As longtime fans of the Stonewall Kitchen brand and its delicious products, were excited to invest in the companys journey and partner with John and the entire management team. The culture and business practices at Stonewall Kitchen align closely with TAs own philosophy and values, and we believe that we can transform the company together into an even more substantial enterprise.

Concluded Stiker, Alongside TA, we aim to continue our dynamic acquisition efforts while also growing our existing Family of Brands. Our focus will be on identifying products and brands that match our high-quality standards, and which preserve and enhance our core values and company culture. Were excited to see what the future brings!

About Stonewall Kitchen:

Stonewall Kitchen is a leading specialty food, home goods and personal care producer headquartered in York, Maine. Founded in 1991 by partners Jonathan King and Jim Stott, the two established the Stonewall Kitchen brand by selling jams and jellies at local farmers markets with a flavorful line of distinctive and high-quality products. Over time, they expanded the brand to include sauces, condiments, crackers and baking mixes, always focusing on innovative product development, beautiful packaging, and exceptional guest service. Today, Stonewall Kitchen is the premier specialty food and home goods platform in North America, home to a family of premium quality brands including the flagship Stonewall Kitchen brand; the Michel Design Works brand of elegantly designed and crafted personal and home care products; the Vermont Coffee Company brand of high quality, non-GMO, certified organic coffee; the Urban Accents brand of globally-inspired spice mixes, seasonings, and sauces; the Village Candle brand of fragranced candles, gifts and accessories; the Tillen Farms brand of pickled vegetables and cocktail cherries; the Napa Valley Naturals brand of olive oils, culinary oils, balsamic vinegars and wine vinegars; the Montebello brand of artisan organic pasta imported from Italy; the Vermont Village brand of organic apple sauce and apple cider vinegars; and the Legal Sea Foods brand of restaurant-quality seafood sauces and condiments. The company can be found in more than 19,000 stores nationwide and internationally, boasts a thriving catalog and online division, and operates ten retail Company Stores throughout New England. As winners of 34 prestigious awards from the Specialty Food Association and the recipient of the coveted Outstanding Product Line Honors three times, Stonewall Kitchen is proud to be one of the most awarded specialty food companies in the country.

For more information about Stonewall Kitchen, please visit: www.stonewallkitchen.com

About TA Associates:

TA is a leading global growth private equity firm. Focused on targeted sectors within five industries  technology, healthcare, financial services, consumer and business services  the firm invests in profitable, growing companies with opportunities for sustained growth, and has invested in more than 550 companies around the world. Investing as either a majority or minority investor, TA employs a long-term approach, utilizing its strategic resources to help management teams build lasting value in high quality growth companies. TA has raised $47.5 billion in capital since its founding in 1968. The firms more than 100 investment professionals are based in Boston, Menlo Park, London, Mumbai and Hong Kong.

More information about TA can be found at www.ta.com.

Attachment
LONDON, March 14, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Federation of St Kitts and Nevis is continuing to strengthen its ties with the African continent.



The Permanent Representative of Saint Kitts and Nevis to the United Nations recently met with his Sudanese counterpart, Mr. Ammar M.M. Mohammed, to formalise diplomatic relations, agreeing on a mutual visa waiver to facilitate easier travel.

The Caribbean nation also established diplomatic relations and signed visa waiver agreements with Egypt late last year and with Ghana as recently as last week.

The signing with Egypt occurred on the sidelines of the 76th period of sessions of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, with St Kitts and Nevis Foreign Minister Mark Brantley.

Minister Brantley has been instrumental to St Kitts and Nevis expanding its bilateral relations across the world, propelling and creating visibility of the islands globally and enabling the nation to have one of the strongest travel prospects in the region. The last few years have seen a deepening of ties with the African continent with relations established with countries like Mozambique, Djibouti, Rwanda, Burkina Faso, and Gabon.

Caribbean and African ties run deep  the territories have shared history and culture and a lot is being done to strengthen and foster Caribbean-African relations and increase their bargaining power with the world. Last September, for example, leaders from the African Union and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) convened the first Africa CARICOM Summit.

"We have talked about a closer connection with Africa. We are of Africa, and many, I believe, have agreed that there ought to be a closer nexus between the Caribbean and Africa and that we ought in every sense to be a part of the so-called sixth region of Africa," Brantley previously noted on the matter.

At the signing event with Sudan, the economic and cultural links between the two nations were promoted, as well as the visa-free access of up to 90 days both ways, for holders of diplomatic, official, and ordinary passports. In addition to the signings, the two diplomats discussed areas of cooperation, natural resources, Citizenship by Investment, transport, and a stronger Africa-CARICOM partnership.

St Kitts and Nevis has for a number of years welcomed a growing number of African investors and businesspeople to settle on the islands through its popular Citizenship by Investment (CBI) Programme. An increasing number of African entrepreneurs are beginning to acknowledge the value of having a second citizenship especially when looking to keep business competitive, access greater global mobility and higher quality education and healthcare services or simply keeping loved ones safe.

The country scored a respectable score of 48 points in the overall rankings in the World Citizenship Report, the highest of all the Caribbean CBI nations. It reached top marks in the Safety and Security, Quality of Life, and Global Mobility motivators.

The report was developed by CS Global Partners, the worlds leading government advisory and marketing firm, and measures 187 countries against five motivators that are relevant amongst High Net-Worth Individuals (HNWIs). These motivators include Safety and Security, Economic Opportunity, Quality of Life, Global Mobility and Quality of Life.

As pioneers of the CBI industry, St Kitts and Nevis remains a top destination for those seeking second citizenship from a trusted and reputable country. The islands launched the Programme in 1984 and have since been recognised as the market's 'Platinum Standard' brand and have been consistently ranked as the world's best programme by the CBI Index, published annually by the Professional Wealth Management magazine.

Those who choose St Kitts and Nevis gain a wide range of benefits including:

The right to live, work and study in St Kitts and Nevis

Alternative business prospects

The ability to pass down citizenship

A fair tax regime, with no worldwide income, inheritance, and gift tax for tax residents

Investors can call St Kitts and Nevis home by simply investing in the countrys Sustainable Growth Fund, which utilises revenue generated to support different sectors of society, including tourism, health, education and construction.

The Sustainable Growth Fund is the most direct investment path to St Kitts and Nevis citizenship and requires an investment of just US$150 000.00.

The Sustainable Growth Fund allows future citizens of St Kitts and Nevis to be part of the success story as this investment channel enables both applicants and the nation to thrive.

Monies from the Fund have offered a much-needed injection of foreign direct investment for St Kitts and Nevis, often in a way that can make a significant developmental difference and a sizable impact on economic activity.

St Kitts and Nevis CBI Programme contributed more than 30 per cent of GDP in the country in 2020.

According to the CBI Unit Head Les Khan, the Programme's revenue was a "main driver" during lockdown when tourism was at an all-time low.

In December 2021, Minister Brantley stated that St Kitts and Nevis' bilateral agreements totalled an all-time high. The historic announcement revealed that citizens of the small eastern Caribbean nation could access over 161 jurisdictions worldwide, including major business hubs in Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Americas.

During his Budget 2022 presentation in December, Minister Brantley said that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Aviation "shall continue to seek means of convergence with all of our partners, that we advance our discussions and actions around our mutual interests."

He also added that the government would continue to build on key affiliations with strategic partners to further strengthen bilateral relations and forecasted that face-to-face engagements at ministerial and ambassadorial levels would increase as quarantine and travel restrictions ease.

St Kitts and Nevis' increasing international diplomacy and travel partnerships are a major pull factor for time-poor high net worth investors looking to obtain a second citizenship.

Contact:

pr@csglobalpartners.com

www.csglobalpartners.com

+447824029952

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/ab2b792e-13ff-485b-b1e1-2e4ab86a53ce
Dublin, March 14, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "IoT Microcontroller Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report 2022-2030" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.



The global IoT microcontroller market size is projected to reach USD 12.94 billion by 2030, registering a CAGR of 12.7% from 2022 to 2030

Increase in adoption of smart home devices integrated with mobile applications and advancements in low power Microcontroller (MCU) are expected to drive the market growth. The surge in the number of enterprise IoT connections across industries such as manufacturing, healthcare, and energy and power is also expected to drive the growth of the market over the forecast period.



Advancements in short-range wireless connectivity such as Zigbee, Bluetooth, and KNX technologies, notably in Europe and North America also expected to drive IoT adoption over the next few years. Advancements in disruptive technologies such as big data analytics, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and industrial IoT are further expected to propel the adoption of IoT-connected devices.

Increasing investments through funding in start-ups such as Hypervolt, HIXAA, SmartRent, and other SMEs that help to gain new IoT-based projects in industries likely to create the need for a high-performance, low-power IoT MCUs market over the forecast period.



Key IoT MCU manufacturers such as RENESAS Electric Corporation, NXP Semiconductors, and STMicroelectronics are innovating high-performance MCUs to meet the demand.

For instance, in 2022, Renesas Electric Corporation launched the 32-bit RA Family of microcontrollers (MCUs). The launched product is based on the Arm Cortex-M23 core, which offers shallow power consumer MCUs developed explicitly for IoT endpoint applications, including industrial automation, medical devices, intelligent home appliances, and wearables.



The COVID-19 outbreak positively impacted the IoT MCU market in 2020. Government-imposed restrictions and stay-at-home mandates increased the demand for smart wearables, including fitness trackers, health-based wearables, and other consumer IoT devices.

Due to a sudden increase in demand for consumer IoT devices and a temporary halt of production units, the market experienced a shortage of MCUs in 2021, creating an imbalance in supply and demand. In light of these factors, device manufacturers are expected to hike the connected product prices in 2022, which is likely to continue until 2023.



IoT Microcontroller Market Report Highlights

32-bit captured more than 40% market share of the overall IoT MCU market in 2021, with the market size expected to register a CAGR exceeding 13% over the forecast period. An increase in the adoption of smart utilities and industrial robotics is expected to drive market growth over the forecast period.

By 2030, the wearables segment is expected to surpass USD 700 million with a CAGR exceeding 13%. It is ascribed to increasing awareness for health and fitness among individuals, significantly contributing to the adoption of wearable technology, supporting market growth.

Asia Pacific led the market in 2021, a trend expected to continue over the mid-term. The regional CAGR is expected to exceed 13.6% from 2022 to 2030. Adding to this, increasing government initiatives to develop innovative and connected infrastructure signifies market growth.

Key Topics Covered:



Chapter 1. Methodology and Scope



Chapter 2. Executive Summary



Chapter 3. IoT Microcontroller Market-Industry Outlook



Chapter 4. IoT Microcontroller Market Product Outlook



Chapter 5. IoT Microcontroller Market Application Outlook



Chapter 6. IoT Microcontroller Market: Regional Outlook



Chapter 7. Competitive Landscape

Broadcom

Espressif Systems (Shanghai) Co. Ltd

Holtek Semiconductor Inc.

Infineon Technologies

Microchip Technology Inc.

Nuvoton Technology Corporation

Nxp Semiconductors

Silicon Laboratories

Stmicroelectronics

Texas Instruments Incorporated

Renesas Electronics Corporation

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/8bdyq

Attachment
NEW YORK, NY, March 14, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via NewMediaWire  Today marks the arrival of PhillComm Global, an elite group of PR and marcom specialists working in todays most fascinating and explosive industries. The integrated firm is the ultimate manifestation of CEO and founder Jon Lindsay Phillips decades-long pursuit of a best-in-class, dedicated team working almost exclusively in the most nascentand often complex, largely B2Bspaces, including web3, fintech, AI/voice, new media, sustainability/green energy, trust/privacy, SaaS, cannabis/hemp, adtech, edtech, medtech and more.

At inception, PhillComms client roster boasts BioCorRx, a leading addiction treatment firm; BioCorRx Pharmaceuticals, developing medications to combat the opioid epidemic; Exidio, one of the worlds most exciting blockchain tech startups building consumer hardware like wireless dVPN routers; the Sentinel Network, a DAO establishing a global decentralized internet ecosystem; Arcanum Capital, a hot seed-stage fund targeting India-based blockchain projects; Rain Agency, makers of voice and AI solutions and services for the deskless workforce; ALTRD and Ronin Content Services, two groups working on integrating the CTV experience into the blockchain; among others.

Phillips has spent the past year as Chief Growth Officer at CMW Media where he stood up and scaled a B2B emerging industries practice. During that time, he expanded his proven expertise within focus industries, like web3, as a premier, results-forward services provider, partnering with global clients on green datacenter projects at the edge, smart cities, circular economic ecosystems, and bridging the gap between decentralized finance and Wall Street.

Earlier this year, CMW Media announced that during Phillips tenure, it achieved historic revenue growth- 52% compared to the previous year. Prior to CMW, Phillips was Chief Operating Officer at Manhattans RLM Public Relations.

This is a big day and a long time coming, Phillips said. Im filled with gratitude for the people, experiences and luck that have brought me here. Ever since I got my start in this business, I wanted to do things differently where possible. Weve done that here with PhillComm, and I couldnt be prouder of these clients and my exceptionally talented team. Many of our day-one clients have been with me for years throughout my journey with different firms, and I thank them tremendously for the support, and for being true visionaries that I love working within the trenches every day.

We are ecstatic to be working again with Jon and the PhillComm Global team, Robert Bell, CEO and President of 2B3D, said. Jon has an extremely unique ability to crystalize messages for effective delivery to multiple audiences at once, in industries like ours where the plane is being flown at the same time its being built. Because of Jons decades of experience with serial entrepreneurs and legacy businesses, PhillComm also crosses over into traditional markets we support, such as medtech. Its rare if not unheard of to find a firm that speaks Wall Street and Main Street every bit as fluently as decentralized finance.

Josh Otten, CEO of ALTRD and Ronin Content Services, said, Jon and his team developed and executed an extremely successful PR program that went above and beyond our expectations. He achieved in the first 6 weeks what most PR firms take 6 years to accomplish.

Exidios Dan Edlebeck said, Jons understanding of both the consumer and enterprise use cases for privacy and peer-to-peer networks makes him an incredible asset. We have loved working with Jon and his highly impactful team; where many have failed, they are able to perfectly articulate our tech and value propositions.

PhillComm.Global is hiring at the senior account executive level.

About PhillComm Global

Founded by Jon Lindsay Phillips in 2021, PhillComm Global is an elite group of emerging industries PR and marcom masters working with a mix of dynamic startups and larger firms. Expert, award-winning practice areas are largely B2B and include Web3, new media, adtech, edtech, medtech, cyber, life sciences, cannabis/hemp, sustainability, and more. The company offers highly bespoke services from a team of senior professionals located in New York City and Savannah, Georgia.

Media Contact:

Lauren@PhillComm.Global

704.942.1557

Attachment
Mayor Adams will endorse East Harlem Assemblyman Eddie Gibbs reelection campaign Tuesday, marking Hizzoners first public foray into this years state legislative elections, the Daily News has learned.

Gibbs, who made history when he was inaugurated as the first formerly incarcerated member of the state Legislature last month, is the voice East Harlem needs in Albany, Adams said in a statement provided exclusively to The News ahead of Tuesdays announcement.

Advertisement

I am thrilled to endorse Eddie for reelection, the mayor said in the statement. His powerful story of overcoming adversity is significant. Every time I am around him, it brings me so much joy. In Eddie, we see that a bend in the road is not the end of the road as long as you make the turn. He made the turn, and now he is in Albany helping people do the same.

Adams endorsement  his first in this state legislative election cycle  gives Gibbs a significant boost as he looks ahead to June, when he will face off against three other candidates in the Democratic primary for his 68th Assembly District, which covers East Harlem and Randalls Island.

Advertisement

Gibbs won a special election for the district last year after ex-Assemblyman Robert Rodriguez resigned to take a job in Gov. Hochuls administration.

His inauguration  administered by Adams at a gymnasium in East Harlem on Feb. 10  made him the first ex-con to ever take a seat in the state Legislature, having pleaded guilty to manslaughter charges in 1988.

Only 17 at the time, Gibbs admitted to killing a man in self-defense. He was sentenced to four years in state prison, and spent his time behind bars earning an associates degree in business before getting engaged with local politics upon his release.

Gibbs has been a reliable supporter of Adams since last years mayoral primary, sharing his view that criminal justice reforms must be balanced with public safety concerns.

Referencing Adams endorsement, Gibbs said hes proud to have the mayors support.

From fixing our public housing system to properly funding our public schools to tackling gun violence, we share a commitment to fixing the inequalities present throughout my district, our city and our state, Gibbs said. I look forward to continuing our work together in 2023 and beyond.
New York, March 14, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reportlinker.com announces the release of the report "PTC Thermistor market Forecast to 2028 - COVID-19 Impact and Global Analysis by Type ; by Mode ; by Application, and Geography" - https://www.reportlinker.com/p06244590/?utm_source=GNW

In 2020, APAC held the largest share of the global PTC thermistor market.



Many East Asian economies, notably China, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and rely heavily on the electronics manufacturing industry as a source of manufactured exports.As the Asian economy has established its position as one of a leading regions for electronic & semiconductor manufacturing across the world, the demand for different type of electronics such as resistors, motors, and drivers endures to rise.



This factor helps in contributing toward the market growth.



In North America, with formulation of manufacturing initiative like Materials Genome Initiative aims to develop, manufacture, and execute advanced materials with greater speed is expected to create demand for more industrial electronics & components used in the machineries which is projected to generate more demand for resistors. With factors mentioned above related to presence of manufacturers, sensing applications in automotive, and demand for industrial electronics in the US are expected to fuel the market in the region.



Various Asian economies witnessed a sharp decline in their GDP in 2020 due to the sudden closedown of the majority of economic activities across numerous countries.India is the worst-hit country by the pandemic in the Asia Pacific region.



The limitations imposed by governments to control the spread of COVID-19 during the initial time frame of the outbreak in the mentioned countries affect the production process due to the restriction of a limited workforce.Automotive and consumer electronics are the key sectors that contribute to the growth of the PTC thermistor market in the region.



This impacted the sales of HVAC systems and electronic appliances.According to Automobile Industry Associations, the Indian automotive industry suffered a daily loss of US$ 31,164 million approximately during 2020.



A PTC thermistor is used as a heater in the automotive industry for offering additional heat inside a cabin along with a diesel engine or for heating diesel in cold climatic conditions. Since the manufacturing of automobiles fell drastically, the demand for respective PTC thermistors was affected drastically. However, as the economies re-opened and industries began their operations, the demand for PTC thermistors from various end-user industries started to grow gradually.



The PTC thermistor market is segmented based on type, mode, and application.Based on type, the PTC thermistor market is segmented into ceramic PTC and polymer PTC.



In terms of mode, the PTC thermistor market is segmented into self heating mode and sensor mode. Based on application, the PTC thermistor market is segmented into telecommunications and networking, automotive system, industrial electronics, consumer electronics and home appliances, medical instruments, and others.



The overall PTC thermistor market size has been derived using both primary and secondary sources.To begin the research process, exhaustive secondary research has been conducted using internal and external sources to obtain qualitative and quantitative information related to the market.



The process also serves the purpose of obtaining an overview and forecast for the PTC thermistor market with respect to all the segments pertaining to the region.Also, multiple primary interviews have been conducted with industry participants and commentators to validate the data, as well as to gain more analytical insights into the topic.



The participants of this process include industry experts, such as VPs, business development managers, market intelligence managers, and national sales managers, along with external consultants, such as valuation experts, research analysts, and key opinion leaders, specializing in the PTC thermistor market. G Bourns, Inc; Littelfuse, Inc.; Murata Manufacturing Co., Ltd; Polytronics Technology Corporation; and TE Connectivity are among the key players operating in the global PTC thermistor market.

Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p06244590/?utm_source=GNW



About Reportlinker

ReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place.



__________________________
Dublin, March 14, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Down Syndrome Drugs in Development by Stages, Target, MoA, RoA, Molecule Type and Key Players, 2022 Update" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.



This pipeline guide provides an overview of the Down Syndrome (Genetic Disorders) pipeline landscape.

The pipeline guide provides comprehensive information on the therapeutics under development for Down Syndrome (Genetic Disorders), complete with analysis by stage of development, drug target, mechanism of action (MoA), route of administration (RoA) and molecule type. The guide covers the descriptive pharmacological action of the therapeutics, its complete research and development history and latest news and press releases.



The Down Syndrome (Genetic Disorders) pipeline guide also reviews of key players involved in therapeutic development for Down Syndrome and features dormant and discontinued projects. The guide covers therapeutics under Development by Companies /Universities /Institutes, the molecules developed by Companies in Phase III, Phase I, Preclinical, Discovery and Unknown stages are 1, 5, 10, 3 and 1 respectively. Similarly, the Universities portfolio in Preclinical and Discovery stages comprises 3 and 2 molecules, respectively.



Down Syndrome (Genetic Disorders) pipeline guide helps in identifying and tracking emerging players in the market and their portfolios, enhances decision making capabilities and helps to create effective counter strategies to gain competitive advantage. The guide is built using data and information sourced from proprietary databases, company/university websites, clinical trial registries, conferences, SEC filings, investor presentations and featured press releases from company/university sites and industry-specific third party sources. Additionally, various dynamic tracking processes ensure that the most recent developments are captured on a real time basis.



Scope

The pipeline guide provides a snapshot of the global therapeutic landscape of Down Syndrome (Genetic Disorders).

The pipeline guide reviews pipeline therapeutics for Down Syndrome (Genetic Disorders) by companies and universities/research institutes based on information derived from company and industry-specific sources.

The pipeline guide covers pipeline products based on several stages of development ranging from pre-registration till discovery and undisclosed stages.

The pipeline guide features descriptive drug profiles for the pipeline products which comprise, product description, descriptive licensing and collaboration details, R&D brief, MoA & other developmental activities.

The pipeline guide reviews key companies involved in Down Syndrome (Genetic Disorders) therapeutics and enlists all their major and minor projects.

The pipeline guide evaluates Down Syndrome (Genetic Disorders) therapeutics based on mechanism of action (MoA), drug target, route of administration (RoA) and molecule type.

The pipeline guide encapsulates all the dormant and discontinued pipeline projects.

The pipeline guide reviews latest news related to pipeline therapeutics for Down Syndrome (Genetic Disorders)

Reasons to Buy

Procure strategically important competitor information, analysis, and insights to formulate effective R&D strategies.

Recognize emerging players with potentially strong product portfolio and create effective counter-strategies to gain competitive advantage.

Find and recognize significant and varied types of therapeutics under development for Down Syndrome (Genetic Disorders).

Classify potential new clients or partners in the target demographic.

Develop tactical initiatives by understanding the focus areas of leading companies.

Plan mergers and acquisitions meritoriously by identifying key players and it's most promising pipeline therapeutics.

Formulate corrective measures for pipeline projects by understanding Down Syndrome (Genetic Disorders) pipeline depth and focus of Indication therapeutics.

Develop and design in-licensing and out-licensing strategies by identifying prospective partners with the most attractive projects to enhance and expand business potential and scope.

Adjust the therapeutic portfolio by recognizing discontinued projects and understand from the know-how what drove them from pipeline.

Key Topics Covered



Introduction



Report Coverage



Overview



Therapeutics Development

Pipeline Overview

Pipeline by Companies

Pipeline by Universities/Institutes

Products under Development by Companies

Products under Development by Universities/Institutes

Therapeutics Assessment

Assessment by Target

Assessment by Mechanism of Action

Assessment by Route of Administration

Assessment by Molecule Type

Companies Involved in Therapeutics Development

AC Immune SA

Aelis Farma SAS

Alzheon Inc

Annovis Bio Inc

Avanti Biosciences Inc

Balance Therapeutics Inc

Eisai Co Ltd

Elixirgen Therapeutics Inc

F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd

Felicitex Therapeutics Inc

KinoPharma Inc

Laminar Pharmaceuticals SA

Les Laboratoires Servier SAS

ManRos Therapeutics

NeuroCircuit Therapeutics Inc

NeuroNascent Inc

Perha Pharmaceuticals SAS

Prothena Corp Plc

SanBio Co Ltd

Drug Profiles

ABI-02

ACI-24

AEF-0217

ANVS-405

ARN-23746

Buntanetap

D-217

DYR-219

FX-8546

Gene Therapy to Activate ZSCAN4 for Chromosomal Disorders

KPO-1143

LAM-226

LCTB-21

Lecanemab

Minocycline hydrochloride

NNI-351

Pegaspargase

Pentylenetetrazol

RO-4938581

Small Molecule for Alzheimer's Disease and Down Syndrome

Small Molecule to Inhibit DYRK1A for Alzheimer's Disease and Down Syndrome

Small Molecule to Inhibit DYRK1A for Down Syndrome

Small Molecules for Down Syndrome

Small Molecules to Inhibit OLIG2 for Down Syndrome

Valiltramiprosate

Dormant Projects



Discontinued Products



Product Development Milestones



Featured News & Press Releases

Jan 05, 2022: Annovis Bio announces official unique name buntanetap for lead candidate ANVS401

May 13, 2021: Annovis Bio files for FDA Orphan Drug Designation for ANVS401 for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease in persons with Down syndrome

Apr 29, 2021: Annovis Bio to study potential of ANVS401 to normalize brain development in Down syndrome

Mar 16, 2021: AC Immune announces new clinical results in Down syndrome and plans for future development of anti-Amyloid-Beta vaccine

Mar 15, 2021: BioArctic and Eisai presented latest data regarding lecanemab at AD/PD 2021

Mar 11, 2021: Annovis Bio signs GMP manufacturing agreement to support planned late-stage studies

Mar 05, 2021: Latest lecanemab data to be presented at the AD/PD congress

Feb 02, 2021: Annovis bio's lead candidate ANVS401 improves cognitive and functional outcomes in stroke mice study

Dec 15, 2020: Annovis Bio showcases its unique approach to Alzheimer's at the New York Academy of Sciences

Sep 29, 2020: Annovis Bio demonstrates improved axonal transport in nerve cells and brain of down syndrome mice, an animal model of Alzheimer's disease

Jul 23, 2020: AC Immune to present advances in two of the company's world leading programs at the upcoming Alzheimer's Association International Conference

Jul 10, 2020: Discovery of a novel drug candidate to develop effective treatments for brain disorders

Jul 11, 2019: AC Immune hosts KOL event and reports initial interim clinical data for ACI-24 vaccine to treat Alzheimer's Disease-like symptoms in subjects with Down Syndrome

Aug 20, 2018: AC Immune announces important clinical milestones for ACI-24 vaccine in alzheimers disease and down syndrome

Sep 12, 2017: AC Immune Completes Recruitment For Low-Dose Cohort In World's First Clinical Trial For Anti-Abeta Vaccine Targeting Alzheimer's Disease-Like Characteristics In Individuals With Down Syndrome

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/lvrh7r
Fort Lauderdale, Florida, March 14, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Splash Beverage Group, Inc. (NYSE American: SBEV) ("Splash" or the "Company"), a portfolio company of leading beverage brands, today announced the expansion of its existing agreement with AB ONE to include AB ONE SoCal. Southern California is AB ONEs largest single market in the US and covers an area with a population of more than 20 million through national chains that include Walmart, Kroger, Albertsons and Winco Foods.

Robert Nistico, CEO of Splash Beverage Groups commented: As we add a new dimension to our existing relationship with InBev/AB ONE with the launch of TapouiT in Walmart Southern California, its important the market understands the significance of these announcements, which is, product availability and revenue."

Their job is to deliver to retail and put it on the shelf. Of course, we help by providing retail key chain authorizations such as Walmart for example. The incredible string of distribution agreements we have secured since mid-January launches a revenue stream for Splash in this vital distribution network.

Nistico continued, AB ONE SoCal services more than 15,000 accounts and covers one of the most populous regions of the country. These regions include Central LA, Pomona, Beach Cities, Sylmar and San Diego, and customers will see our three top brands, TapouT Performance, Copa Di Vino and Pulpoloco Sangria featured prominently throughout. Included as well within this distribution network are more than 45 Walmart locations where TapouT will now be sold. We couldnt be more exited at this next stage of our rapidly evolving business.

AB ONE is the wholly owned distribution network of Anheuser-Busch. AB ONE sells and delivers a robust portfolio of beer, spirits, wine and nonalcoholic beverages serving approximately 50,000 accounts in 10 Divisions across the states including California, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon and Washington.

Follow Splash Beverage Group on Twitter: www.twitter.com/SplashBev

About Splash Beverage Group, Inc.

Splash Beverage Group, an innovator in the beverage industry, owns a growing portfolio of alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverage brands including Copa di Vino wine by the glass, SALT flavored tequilas, Pulpoloco sangria, and TapouT performance hydration and recovery drink. Splashs strategy is to rapidly develop early stage brands already in its portfolio, as well as acquire and then accelerate brands that have high visibility or are innovators in their categories. Led by a management team that has built and managed some of the top brands in the beverage industry and led sales from product launch into the billions, Splash is rapidly expanding its brand portfolio and global distribution.

For more information visit:

www.SplashBeverageGroup.com

www.copadivino.com

www.drinksalttequila.com

www.pulpo-loco.com

www.tapoutdrinks.com

Forward-Looking Statement

This press release includes forward-looking statements within the meaning of U.S. federal securities laws. Words such as expect, estimate, project, budget, forecast, anticipate, intend, plan, may, will, could, should, believes, predicts, potential, continue and similar expressions are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements involve significant risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results to differ materially from the expected results and, consequently, you should not rely on these forward-looking statements as predictions of future events. These forward-looking statements and factors that may cause such differences include, without limitation, the risks disclosed in the Companys Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC on March 8, 2021, and in the Companys other filings with the SEC. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance upon any forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date made. Except as required by law, the Company disclaims any obligation to update or publicly announce any revisions to any of the forward-looking statements contained in this press release.

Contact Information:

Splash Beverage Group

Info@SplashBeverageGroup.com

954-745-5815





Attachments
GLASGOW, Scotland, March 14, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via CryptoCurrencyWire - The FEG Token Project is extremely excited to announce that its team will be attending the upcoming Crypto Expo Dubai, held March 16-17, 2022, at the Festival Arena in Dubai Festival City, United Arab Emirates. Proven to be one of the greatest opportunities for crypto projects to stand apart from the crowd, the Crypto Expo Dubai is the premier event for cryptocurrency investors, project developers and industry leaders to network, share innovation and create business relationships in the worlds fastest-growing financial sector. This year, the Feed Every Gorilla (FEG) Token Project will be taking center stage.

As the foremost decentralized finance cryptocurrency exchange, the FEG project will be meeting with industry leaders from nearly three dozen countries, who represent more than 100 crypto projects and companies. More than 10,000 visitors are expected to attend the two-day event, enabling the FEG project team to demonstrate to a massive audience how revolutionary the FEG ecosystem truly is.

As we continue to push towards the forefront of innovation in the DeFi space, its important that we promote and educate the world as we go. The Crypto Expo Dubai event gives us an outstanding opportunity to do just that by showcasing our highly advanced, yet user-friendly technology to thousands of investors and influential leaders from across the globe. Our innovative solutions are designed to make DeFi and the crypto space inherently safe and secure. We're going to show the world exactly how we're accomplishing that goal. - Frankie B., FEG Marketing

The FEG Global Project Manager, RTR Crypto, will attend as a key speaker during the event and will be sharing the brand-new FEGex user interface, as well as the revolutionary SmartDeFi launchpad platform to investors, businesses, and industry leaders alike. Furthermore, RTR Crypto will be revealing a ground-breaking new technology that will shake up the blockchain world for years to come.FEG has secured Diamond Booth 21one of the most prominent booth locations at the venue. The FEG team will be sharing the innovative solutions developed over the past 12 months, as well as those coming to fruition in 2022 and beyond. The professionally designed FEG booth will stand out amongst the crowd, illustrating the wide variety of features that FEGex and the FEG ecosystem brings to the table. The booth will be an open place for the FEG community, prospective investors and potential business partners to discuss how the FEG ecosystem can change the world.

The Crypto Expo Dubai is a premier event that will be not only an opportunity to foster relationships and attract new investors, but will help to raise awareness for FEGex, SmartDeFi and all the revolutionary technology that the FEG ecosystem is bringing to the crypto space. Learn more about the Crypto Expo Dubai by visiting https://cryptoexpodubai.com/ . You can also learn more about the FEG Token project and its attendance at this fantastic venue by visiting https://FEGtoken.com , or following them on Twitter at https://twitter.com/FEGtoken .

More Information About FEG

FEGex is the multi-chain AMM-based DEX of the FEGtoken (FEG) decentralized finance (DeFi) project. It currently runs on Ethereum Mainnet and Binance Smart Chain. The innovative DeFi platform is striving to make the opportunities that the cryptocurrency space provides more accessible to ordinary users. Among the features it offers, in addition to FEGex, are fWrapping of assets, SmartDeFi functionality for issuing new assets backed by fWrapped assets, and the FEGtrack portfolio tracking tool. The projects ecosystem is powered by the FEG protocol and governance token.

FEGex DEX  FEGex.com

SmartDeFi SmartDefi.com

FEGtoken  FEGtoken.com

FEGecosystem Whitepaper  Whitepaper

FEGtoken Official Telegram  https://t.me/FEGchat

FEGtoken Official Twitter - @FEGtoken

Wire Service Contact

InvestorWire (IW)

Los Angeles, California

www.InvestorWire.com

212.418.1217 Office

Editor@InvestorWire.com

Attachment
MIAMI, March 14, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Paribus is taking DeFi to the next level with the help of Cardano. Cardano's interoperability removes the restrictions imposed by the isolated ecosystem, allows value to flow freely, and increases the potential of the protocol and its users. Being powered by Cardano, users can now borrow against their digital assets with a DeFi perspective. Be it NFT or any synthetic asset, Paribus offers users the platform for safe and fast borrowing against their digital assets.

The Paribus Protocol

Paribus offers DeFi holders and investors a platform to extend the reach of their digital assets and positions around the globe. For the first time one platform is bringing together the functionality of borrowing and lending against a huge variety of assets, in a decentralized and permissionless way.

Paribus' features and protocol is designed to evolve with new crypto asset classes, capturing the value stored in the emerging universe of interconnected blockchains. The Paribus protocol sets out to channel this monetary energy in previously impossible ways, creating even more opportunity for investors.

Combining NFTs and DeFi

With Paribus, users can even borrow against their NFT investment. This will free up capital while the underlying NFT will hold its value intact. Paribus also allows users to stake NFTs with pool value with other like-NFTs, allowing users to generate yield on their NFT assets.

In addition to NFTs, users can also borrow against their AMM liquidity positions through the Paribus protocol. This will allow users to leverage up while staking or earning through LP'ing.

Staking in Liquidity Pools

With Paribus, users get access to the market specific staking pools for LP tokens from multiple blockchain based liquidity pool which allows for the following benefits:

Cheap transactions

Incredibly high throughput

Security and reliability

Paribus is now offering native staking for the PBX token on their platform, offering a dynamic APY and high rewards. There are two pools that remain open, Argenti and Aurum. These pools are only open for a limited time.

The PBX Token

PBX is Paribus' native governance token. PBX allows its owners to create and vote on the future of the network. The ultimate goal of PBX tokens is to coordinate incentives across the Paribus Revenue Protocol to create a systematic harmony between the security of stakeholders, the protocol itself, and internal assets. Owners of the PBX tokens are also entitled to receive a percentage of the fees earned through the protocol in proportion to their stakes. The more users stake, the higher their tier and the higher percentage they earn.

For more information on how Paribus is pioneering borrowing in the DeFi space, visit their website here.

Follow Paribus on Twitter

Join the Paribus community in Telegram

Connect with Paribus on LinkedIn

Media Contact Details

Contact Email: hello@paribus.io

PARIBUS is the source of this content. This Press Release is for informational purposes only. The information does not constitute investment advice or an offer to invest.

Related Images











Image 1









This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com.

Attachment
LISBON, March 14, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Web3 and metaverse project, Gamium, is launching a decentralized gaming platform that is set to be the first to combine the principles of Web3, metaverse, premium gaming, and gamification in the crypto space.

The launch follows a staged roadmap that begins with the sale of metaverse land this quarter (Q1 2022), with the full metaverse game expected to be launched at the end of the year (2022). Between these dates, the Gamium team is planning to reveal a series of features and platform add-ons, including NFTs and an application for the metaverse's avatars, the release of the MST ecosystem, and the first airdrop for $GMM, the ecosystems native token.

These developments are fuelled by two successful fundraising rounds, which saw IDOs on Vent Finance (Feb 25th) and DAO Maker (Mar 4th) raise $200,000 each.

Speaking about the platform launch, Gamium co-founder, Alberto Rosas, said:

"We started this project because we saw a need to innovate current social platforms. We don't like how these big platforms work, and the value they provide to society. We knew that integrating web3 and digital identities into a 3D environment could dramatically improve how we interact digitally. So we started Gamium with that vision."

Bridging the Gap Between Web3 and the Metaverse

In order to materialize their objective of combining Web3 and the metaverse, the Gamium team has developed a number of new approaches which differ from traditional metaverse design. This can be seen in the ecosystem's two principle features: the Avatars and the Metaverse.

Each user can create an Avatar, which represents a unique digital identity that can be used across all Web3 and Metaverse applications, meaning users can transfer identities to other metaverses if required. Moreover, to simplify in-world user creation, Gamium has developed an SDK that is equally interoperable meaning content is transferable as well as the tools to create content are transferable.

Finally, Gamium is pioneering a new earning model called 'Socialize to Earn (S2E)'. This innovative socializing system allows Avatars to monetize the social interactions in-world. In other words, users are rewarded for creating social interactions between Avatars.

Find out more about Gamium's innovative metaverse features here.

About Gamium

Gamium is a Web3 and metaverse technology company whose mission is to create the first metaverse that interconnects both areas, with the view to making avatars and assets multi-metaverse compatible. Gamium wants to take metaverse gaming to the next level, creating the optimal mix of premium gaming and gamification; hence, Gamium.

The Gamium team builds on a wealth of gaming and DeFi expertise. Both Co-CEOs, Alberto and Alejandro Rosas hail from a background in mathematics, data science and software engineering with interests in the crypto space going back as far as 2016. Its CTO, Segio Cespedes has over 30 years experience developing similar projects and will use this experience to develop and refine the infrastructure that will combine Web3 and the metaverse.

The combination of this team and Gamium's forward thinking objectives has attracted several early supporters and investors, including RR2 Capital, a Lisbon-based venture capital firm which specializes in disruptive technology spaces such as decentralized ledger technology, artificial intelligence, machine learning and digital assets.

To date, Gamium has started developing the ecosystem's smart contracts (which have been successfully audited by Certik) and begun work on the platforms avatars and metaverse. The metaverse is expected to be launched to the public in Q4 2022, following land sales in Q1, the MST launch in Q2 and the metaverse's beta in Q3.

For more information on how Gamium is combining Web3 and the metaverse and to keep up-to-date with their roadmap, visit their website here.

Follow Gamium on Twitter

Join the Gamium community in Telegram

Read the Gamium whitepaper here

Media Contact Details

Contact Email: info@gamium.world

GAMIUM is the source of this content. This Press Release is for informational purposes only. The information does not constitute investment advice or an offer to invest.

Related Images











Image 1









This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com.

Attachment
LOS ANGELES, March 14, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Lendistry, the largest minority-led deployer of capital in the nation, announced today that it is a statewide lender for the Colorado Loans to Increase Mainstreet Business Economic Recovery (CLIMBER) Loan Fund. This program was launched to help qualified Colorado small businesses access low-cost financing for working capital. As a nationwide fintech CDFI that has spent the past two years supporting underserved small businesses through the pandemic, Lendistry is an experienced partner for Colorado small business owners who need affordable capital to recover and continue to serve their communities.

To qualify for the CLIMBER program, businesses must be for-profit, non-profit or sole proprietors based in Colorado, and must show two years of positive income that could support their operations before the pandemic began. Qualified applicants must have 5-99 employees, 51% of whom live in Colorado.

CLIMBER loans are meant to provide small businesses with an infusion of $30-$500K in working capital at below-market rates. For an established business going through a disruption, working capital can cover the costs of inventory, payroll, marketing, utilities, rent, interest payments, upcoming debt payments, and more while the business returns to sustainable revenue. Payments on CLIMBER loans can be deferred for up to a year, giving hard-hit businesses the foothold they need to get back on their feet.

"These loans will make a high-quality impact on small businesses that are working hard to get back to normal," says Lendistry CEO Everett K. Sands. "We're proud to support Colorado's small business community through this program and beyond."

Lendistry excels at delivering capital where it is needed most, earning a #8 ranking nationwide in Paycheck Protection Program loan deployment in 2021. In Colorado, Lendistry helped over 1,200 small businesses receive $21 million in forgivable PPP loans to help them keep employees on board. The fintech lender is ready and eager to continue providing affordable capital to Colorado businesses.

While many CLIMBER lenders are based in specific counties, Lendistry is a statewide lender for this program. Qualified business owners across Colorado can reach the Lendistry team at businesslending@lendistry.com.

About Lendistry

B.S.D. Capital, Inc. dba Lendistry (lendistry.com) is a minority-led and technology-enabled small business and commercial real estate lender with Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) and Community Development Entity (CDE) certification. Lendistry is a member of the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco, headquartered in a Los Angeles Opportunity Zone. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Lendistry provided Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans to small businesses in all 50 states, becoming the #8 PPP lender in the country in 2021. Lendistry was selected by the states of California, Pennsylvania and New York to administer their small business relief programs, which distributed grants to businesses that lost significant revenues during the pandemic. As an SBA Community Advantage lender in California, Lendistry has historically been one of the top-ranked lenders in that program in the nation, providing responsible financing to small business owners who need responsible capital to grow. Lendistry and its nonprofit partner organization, The Center by Lendistry, are dedicated to providing economic opportunities and progressive growth for underserved urban and rural small business borrowers and their communities.

Press contact:

Kate Kearns, Communications Manager

communications@lendistry.com

Related Images











Image 1









This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com.

Attachment
WASHINGTON, March 14, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- On March 17, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) hosts a joint summit on Developing a Bold Decadal Vision for Commercial Fusion Energy. This summit is an important opportunity for the US Government to reflect Kronos Fusion Energy's existing approach to accelerating the delivery of this critical technology.

Continual, rapid developments in technology put commercial fusion energy on a glide path to inevitability. As a result, fusion energy gains widespread acceptance, representing the unavoidable source of the upcoming energy revolution that will transform the world. Brigadier General (Ret) Paul E. Owen, Founding Partner and CEO of Kronos Fusion Energy Defense Systems, stated that "Here at Kronos Fusion Energy, we recognize the criticality of this technology and are already grabbing the bull by the horns, building a team that incorporates leadership from across the three pillars of Academia, Government and Industry, in a unified effort to deliver clean, limitless fusion energy to the American people."

Recent global events in Ukraine highlight the importance of our work, ensuring America becomes permanently energy independent, removing reliance on fossil fuels, their environmental impact on the world and the geopolitical consequences of this reliance. By developing the first commercially viable fusion energy power plants, capable of providing clean, unlimited energy to the US grid, we can achieve total energy sovereignty, supplying the power needs of our cities and industrial base for the long-term future.

Simultaneously, we are developing applications of this technology, having a direct and transformative impact on our national defense capabilities. Miniaturized fusion generators provide US Military installations with independent power supply, enabling their full autonomy from the national grid, and augmenting the security of critical infrastructure. Mobile fusion generators provide the capability of meeting the energy requirements of deployed units, at any scale, anywhere in the world, and enhancing America's global force project capabilities. Applied at the micro scale, fusion technology represents the ability for a quantum leap forward in military tactical capabilities, providing war-winning advances in range, reliability and lethality of assets across all military domains.

Kronos Fusion Energy welcomes the White House's summit and urges our government to recognize now is the time for action. The hugely successful Operation Warp Speed demonstrated the government can, with sufficient motivation, enable and accelerate private sector investment through direct subsidies or grants, and the expedition of the regulatory process. Adopting a similar approach to the opportunity of achieving global leadership in the field of fusion energy is the fastest, surest way to attaining America's energy independence and maintaining our defense supremacy for the long-term future.

More information:

Kronos Fusion Energy

1122 Colorado St

Houston, TX 78701

PR Contact: Erin Pendleton - e.pendleton@kronosfusionenergy.com

Related Images











Image 1: Brigadier General Paul E. Owen - Founding Partner and CEO of Kronos Fusion Energy Defense Systems





Brigadier General Paul E. Owen - Founding Partner and CEO of Kronos Fusion Energy Defense Systems









This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com.

Attachment
NEW ORLEANS, March 14, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Adams and Reese LLP is pleased to announce the expansion of its nationally-ranked construction practice with the combination of Tampa, Fla.-based Cotney Construction Law LLP, a full-service legal and consulting firm serving the construction and infrastructure industries with 16 attorneys and professionals located across the United States. These additions join Adams and Reese's current roster of 58 construction attorneys and takes the group to 75, now one of the largest construction practices in the country. The combination strengthens Adams and Reese's capabilities in high-stakes commercial disputes and transactions. The combined practice now boasts eight Florida Bar board-certified construction lawyers, as well as two Florida-certified general contractors.

The complete list of attorneys joining Adams and Reese today includes:

"Our construction practice is a driver for the firm, and client needs are fueling its growth. Our strategic plan calls for doubling down on existing areas of strength," said Gif Thornton, Managing Partner of Adams and Reese. "Trent and the Cotney team are national leaders in the construction law space, and their capabilities complement ours. This combination moves us toward dominance nationally and in the Southeast in particular, coinciding with the economic growth in the region."

The team joining Adams and Reese brings a wealth of knowledge and experience in serving publicly traded companies, private businesses and individuals in transactions and disputes nationally and internationally. Their singular focus is meeting an array of legal, business and consulting needs in the construction space, as evidenced by national rankings by Chambers USA, Construction Executive, Construction Tech Review, Finance Monthly, Forbes and U.S. News & World Report, among others.

"We are excited about this opportunity to add our already deep bench to a national firm like Adams and Reese, whose resources and platform will take us to the next level," said Trent Cotney, who served as Chief Executive Officer of his firm and now becomes a partner at Adams and Reese. "As advocates for construction clients in the U.S. and around the world, our combined team has a deep understanding of what we must bring to bear when providing the most comprehensive counsel to our clients, and we can better meet their needs through our collective strengths. Our team shares Adams and Reese's forward-thinking vision and commitment to diversity, which will exponentially grow our combined capabilities."

The new team of attorneys relocates to Adams and Reese's downtown Tampa office, located at 100 N. Tampa Street, Suite 4000.

"Every major city nationwide is seeing dramatic changes to its skyline, and the country is ripe with new construction and infrastructure projects that require the experience of trained construction lawyers," said David Toney, leader of Adams and Reese's Construction Team and a member of the firm's Executive Committee. "This combination gives us the horsepower to respond to that need both now and into the future."

"As the complexity of business challenges increases in response to a more interconnected global economy, our clients are seeking sophisticated advice at national and international levels," said Jeffrey Brooks, Chair of the Executive Committee at Adams and Reese. "The successful combination with Cotney will serve as a platform for our continued growth, as well as an exemplar of the partnership we seek in that mission."

About Adams and Reese LLP

Adams and Reese, founded in 1951, is a multidisciplinary law firm with over 270 attorneys and advisors strategically located throughout the United States and Washington, D.C. The American Lawyer includes Adams and Reese on its distinguished list of the nation's top law firms, the Am Law 200. The National Law Journal also includes the firm among the top 200 on the NLJ 500 list of the nation's largest law firms. Learn more at www.adamsandreese.com.
RALEIGH, N.C., March 14, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- SECU Foundation has announced a significant grant of $1.5 million to AMOREM, the recent integration of Caldwell Hospice and Palliative Care and Burke Hospice and Palliative Care. The Foundations commitment will go toward the construction of a new residential hospice facility  the AMOREM SECU Patient Care Unit of the High Country. The new site will help expand AMOREMs services and increase access to respite, palliative, and end-of-life care for patients and families from Watauga County and the High Country region.



As strong advocates for hospice care in our state, SECU Foundation is proud to support AMOREMs goal to bring residential hospice services for patients living in this area, said SECU Foundation Executive Director Jama Campbell. We hope others will join our efforts to help AMOREM and the medical community provide this option of specialized care locally, offering a welcome reprieve for families who often face financial and emotional hardships when trying to coordinate care and spend quality time with their loved ones.

The coming together of two hospice care providers to create AMOREM is helping both entities maintain a legacy of community-based hospice care, while building upon their collective forty-year foundation for an even greater impact on serious illness and end-of-life care in the communities served. AMOREM projects that the future Boone unit will serve 1,500 patients from the High Country region in the first three years of operation.

We are excited to see this project moving forward, said AMOREM CEO Cathy Swanson. The High Country deserves a patient care unit and the need is evident. AMOREM is extremely grateful to the SECU Foundation for helping make this possible. This patient care unit will have a lasting impact on the community and make a difference in the lives of the patients and families that we serve in the High Country.

About SECU and the SECU Foundation

A not-for-profit financial cooperative owned by its members, SECU has been providing employees of the state of North Carolina and their families with consumer financial services for over 84 years. SECU is the second largest credit union in the U.S. with over $51 billion in assets and serves over 2.6 million members through 274 branch offices, over 1,100 ATMs, 24/7 Member Services via phone, www.ncsecu.org and a Mobile App. The SECU Foundation, a 501(c)(3) charitable organization funded by the contributions of SECU members, promotes local community development in North Carolina primarily through high impact projects in the areas of housing, education, healthcare, and human services. Since 2004, SECU Foundation has made a collective financial commitment of over $216 million for initiatives to benefit North Carolinians statewide.

Contact: Jama Campbell, Executive Director

Office: 919-839-5562 | secufoundation@ncsecu.org

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/818a416c-64d6-4347-9804-1a8f6b2820dc
Russian forces bombed a Ukrainian base Sunday that served as an important hub for Western aid  and where U.S. National Guard members were stationed as recently as last month.

The missile attack on the Yavoriv Combat Training Center showed that the Russians are frustrated by their lack of ability to take some of the major cities, U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said on NBCs Meet the Press.

Advertisement

The missile strike killed 35 people and injured more than 100 others, according to the local governor.

Sullivan said the U.S. will continue to send supplies to Ukrainian fighters struggling to stave off the invasion thats been ravaging their country since Feb. 24.

Advertisement

We are determined, and Ukrainians are determined, to ensure that anti-tank, anti-armor, anti-air capabilities, ammunition and other forms of assistance actually do make it to the front to blunt the Russian advance, Sullivan said.

A Ukrainian firefighter walks inside a large food products storage facility which was destroyed by an airstrike in the early morning hours on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, March 13, 2022. (VADIM GHIRDA/AP)

Last month, the U.S. pulled 160 members of the Florida National Guard from the Yavoriv base. They had been training Ukrainian forces on how to use U.S.-made Javelin missiles to destroy Russian tanks, according to Sullivan.

The attack came a day after Russian officials had warned they consider weapons shipments to Ukrainians legitimate targets.

Russias defense ministry claimed that the strike destroyed a large number of weapons and promised to attack foreign fighters joining the Ukrainian side, according to the BBC.

The attack, which took place just 10 miles away from NATO member Poland, prompted tough words from the U.S. national security adviser.

Man wounded in air strikes at a nearby military complex is assisted by medical staff outside Novoiavorivsk District Hospital on March 13, 2022 in Novoiavorivsk, Ukraine. (Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

The United States will work with our allies to defend every inch of NATO territory, and that means every inch, Sullivan said on CBS Face the Nation.

And if there is a military attack on NATO territory, it would cause the invocation of Article 5, and we would bring the full force of the NATO alliance to bear in responding to it.

Under Article 5 of NATOs founding treaty, members are required to come to the defense of another member if it is attacked.

Advertisement

Ukrainians who live near the attacked base described the terror of the ongoing Russian strikes.

In Ukraine, theres no place to hide, Nadin Berezovska, a 39-year-old photographer, told the BBC. Now we realize that it doesnt matter where you live.

Sullivan also voiced concern that Russian forces could use chemical weapons.

A doctor speaks to a woman whose leg had to be amputated after she suffered gunshot wounds in a village currently under the control of the Russian military, at a hospital in Brovary, north of Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, March 13, 2022. (VADIM GHIRDA/AP)

There is an escalating level of rhetoric on the Russian side trying to accuse the Ukrainians and the United States of potentially using chemical or biological weapons, he said. And thats a tell.

Thats an indicator that in fact, the Russians are getting ready to do it and try and pin the blame elsewhere, and nobody should fall for that.

At least 596 civilians have been killed in Ukraine since the start of the war, with at least 1,067 others injured, according to the United Nations human rights office.

Advertisement

Heavy Russian shelling and the use of explosive weapons with a wide impact area are responsible for the death toll, said the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights.

The humanitarian disaster in the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol, where residents are running out of food and water, is approaching a worst-case scenario level, the Red Cross warned.

Mariupol urgently needs safety measures and access to humanitarian supplies, the international aid agency said.

People in Mariupol have endured a weeks-long life-and-death nightmare, Peter Maurer, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said in a statement.

This needs to stop now. Their safety and their access to food, water and shelter must be guaranteed.

Residents of the southeastern coastal city have reportedly been reduced to consuming snow and foraging for food as Russian forces have brutally bombarded the city.

Advertisement

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been unsuccessfully calling for a ceasefire for days.

A worst-case scenario awaits the hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped by heavy combat, the Red Cross said on its website.

A view of destroyed apartments damaged by shelling, in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Sunday, March 13, 2022. (Andrew Marienko/AP)

One of Mariupols last links with the outside world, its primary emergency services building, was destroyed by a Russian bomb over the weekend, according to The New York Times.

Civilians are suffering in freezing temperatures without any power, the BBC reported.

People have been in a difficult situation for 12 days. There is no electricity, water or heating in the city. There is almost no mobile communication. The last reserves of food and water are running out, Mariupol officials said in a statement.

With News Wire Services
NEW ORLEANS, March 14, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- HS BEVERAGE INC./NOLA Distillery announces the launching of a new vodka brand, Made in the USA Vodka. This Ultra-Premium Handcrafted Vodka brand was developed to assist the Ukrainian Refugees with Humanitarian Relief.

With numerous Liquor Outlets across the U.S. either dumping out or sending back Russian Vodka due to the Invasion of Ukraine by Russia, HS Beverage Inc./NOLA Distillery with other businesses: WaterGraphics Design of Florida, Wizard Labels headquartered in Connecticut, and PF Importers headquartered in Louisiana, are all contributing to this effort for the Ukrainian Refugees.

NOLA Distillery located at 3715 Tchoupitoulas St. New Orleans, LA will have bottles available March 15 and product for distribution will be available March 19.

Contact: info@nola-distillery.com www.nola-distillery.com Phone: 504-598-5610

www.pfimporters.com

Related Images











Image 1: Made In the USA Vodka





Bottle









This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com.

Attachment
Gloucester, MA (01930)

Today

Rain early...then remaining cloudy with showers in the afternoon. Expect mist and reduced visibilities at times. High near 50F. Winds ESE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 100%..

Tonight

Rain showers this evening with clearing overnight. Expect mist and reduced visibilities at times. Low 46F. Winds NNW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 80%.
Sam Johnson inspects a piece of biochar on his property north of Anderson. The charcoal-like substance, made from burning agricultural and forestry waste, is used as a soil builder, adding aeration and allowing bacterian and fungi to colonize the soil, which Johnson said promotes more efficient plant growth.
MANSFIELD [mdash] Patricia Ann Thursby-Daniels, 77, of Mansfield, Texas, formerly of Elkhart, Indiana, died Sunday April 10, at Mansfield Hospital in Mansfield, Texas. She was born May 30, 1944, in Elkhart, Indiana, to Robert James and Opal Mae (Allison) Thursby. On Feb. 14, 1965, she marrie
Governor Glenn Youngkin Announces Thermo Fisher Scientific to Expand Clinical Research Laboratories in Henrico County and the City of Richmond, Creating 500+ New Jobs

~ Thermo Fisher to invest $97 million to establish and expand three bioanalytical labs ~

RICHMOND, VA - Governor Glenn Youngkin today announced that Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., the world leader in serving science, will invest $97 million to expand its bioanalytical laboratory operations into three new locations in the Greater Richmond region and expects to create more than 500 new jobs in the Commonwealth. In total, Thermo Fisher will be adding nearly 150,000 square feet to its Richmond area operations. Thermo Fisher acquired the laboratories with the purchase of PPD, Inc. in December 2021.

In response to increased demand for its services, Thermo Fishers clinical research business will expand with the establishment of two new bioanalytical labs in Henrico County. The company is renovating the former Toys R Us store at 8700 Quioccasin Road and will occupy 2250 Dabney Road next to its existing Henrico County facility. The business also will establish a third bioanalytical lab at the VA Bio+Tech Park in the City of Richmond.

Thermo Fishers expanding footprint and creation of more than 500 new jobs is a major win for the Greater Richmond region and Virginias life sciences industry, said Governor Youngkin. This sector has gained significant momentum in the Commonwealth due to our research institutions, skilled talent and advanced innovation ecosystem, and we are proud of the companys developments happening right here in Virginia.

When top life sciences companies like Thermo Fisher choose to locate and reinvest in Virginia, it strengthens our commitment to ensure a business climate and industry workforce that catalyzes growth and innovation, said Secretary of Commerce and Trade Caren Merrick. We thank the company for its major investment and creating over 500 new jobs for hardworking Virginians, and look forward to what Thermo Fishers expanding bioanalytical laboratory operations will accomplish.

We have a rich history in the Richmond and Henrico County region, a talent hub with respected universities, and an attractive place for our employees to live and work, said David M. Johnston, Ph.D., senior vice president and president, clinical research, Thermo Fisher Scientific. We value our strong collaborative relationship with the Commonwealth of Virginia, Henrico County and the City of Richmond. These vital relationships are an important reason our laboratories employ more than 1,200 professionals and that we have expanded our bioanalytical, biomarker and vaccine sciences operations to include more than 300,000 square feet of scientific work space. Investing in clinical research is essential to delivering on our promise of helping develop life-changing medicines for patients in need.

Thermo Fisher Scientifics decision to expand in Henricos Westwood/Dabney and Regency/Parham areas further strengthens our existing partnership and demonstrates its ongoing commitment to growth here in Henrico County, said Henrico County Board of Supervisors Member Daniel J. Schmitt. It also highlights the unwavering support the County has for our business community in providing access to a highly skilled pool of talent from nationally recognized colleges and universities to support Thermo Fisher and the regions growing life sciences sector. Im excited to see the companys success here in Henrico as the company works to improve health across the globe.

The City of Richmond is delighted that Thermo Fisher Scientific is expanding its position within our growing life sciences sector, said Richmond Mayor Levar M. Stoney. The companys investment in Richmond will have a positive impact on our economy, and the new jobs to be located in our Bio+Tech Park mean Richmonds workforce will play an important role in helping Thermo Fisher provide the research and data analytics critical to developing life-changing therapies that improve health.

More than 30 leading pharmaceutical companies and manufacturers have chosen the region as their home, said Chandra Briggman, President and CEO of Activation Capital and the Virginia Bio+Tech Park. Having a well-established life sciences services firm like Thermo Fisher Scientifics clinical research business move to the Virginia Bio+Tech Park will further strengthen the region as a biopharma research and innovation hub. We welcome the Thermo Fisher team to this section of our growing life sciences community.

Thermo Fisher Scientifics investment is a welcomed addition to our local economy and a testimony to the value of an effective workforce pipeline that gives businesses like Thermo Fisher the ability to expand high-tech jobs and provide economic opportunity for Henrico and Virginia, said Senator Siobhan Dunnavant.

I am thrilled that Thermo Fisher Scientific is expanding its operations in Henrico County by establishing two additional labs and creating new jobs, said Delegate Rodney Willett. Our workforce has the skills and expertise needed to continue the companys work to advance lifesaving treatments. I cannot wait to see how our community contributes to the future of bioanalytics and health care.

Thermo Fisher Scientifics creation of more than 500 jobs and $97 million investment will be an incredible addition to Henrico County and the greater Richmond area's growing life sciences industry, said Senator Jennifer McClellan. This is a key step to create jobs and help our economy recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.

We are grateful and excited to have Thermo Fisher Scientific expand in our city, said Delegate Jeff Bourne. Once again, Richmond has shown that it is not only a great location for business, but it is also a leading candidate for the life sciences with our wonderful VA Bio+Tech Park. The creation of new jobs and the investments made in our city will keep us at the forefront of a health sector that has shown to be critically important in these times.

Thermo Fishers clinical research business enables customers to accelerate innovation and increase drug development productivity. Recognized as a global industry leader in accelerating promising medicines from early development through regulatory approval and market access, the business serves pharma, biotech, medical device, and government organizations with custom-tailored solutions to help customers deliver life-changing therapies. The business offers comprehensive lab services spanning bioanalytical, biomarkers, central lab, GMP, and vaccine sciences, accelerating pharmaceutical development for small molecules, biologics, and vaccines.

The Virginia Economic Development Partnership worked with the Henrico Economic Development Authority, the City of Richmond, and the VA Bio+Tech Park to secure the projects for the Commonwealth. Former Governor Northam approved a $1 million performance-based grant from the Virginia Investment Performance program, an incentive that encourages capital investment by existing Virginia companies, for the Henrico County expansion. The former Governor also approved $2 million from the Commonwealths Opportunity Fund to assist Henrico County, and $151,952 for the City of Richmond project. Thermo Fisher is eligible to receive state benefits from the Virginia Enterprise Zone Program, administered by the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development, as well as benefits from the Major Business Facility Job Tax Credit for new, full-time jobs created.

Support for Thermo Fishers job creation will be provided through the Virginia Talent Accelerator Program, a workforce initiative created by VEDP in collaboration with the Virginia Community College System and other higher education partners, with funding support from the Governors Administration and the Virginia General Assembly. Launched in 2019, the program accelerates new facility start-ups through the direct delivery of recruitment and training services that are fully customized to a companys unique products, processes, equipment, standards and culture. All program services are provided at no cost to qualified new and expanding companies as an incentive for job creation.

# # #
Max Verstappen appeared not to like the new Mercedes W13 in Bahrain. The sidepods that have completely disappeared from the new creation of Mercedes are not universally liked. Former Dutch F1 driver Jan Lammers also has to get used to it.

"Ugly huh?" said Verstappen jokingly about the W13 that appeared in different guise in Bahrain than in Barcelona. Mercedes has taken such a different philosophy with the new regulations that the sidepods have almost completely disappeared from the W13. Not everyone likes it, but after all, Formula 1 is not about aesthetics but about the speed of the car. On The Formula 1 Podcast of the Dutch news medium NOS, the appearance of the W13 is discussed.

Read more Lammers does not rule out that Masi left on his own initiative

If W13 is fast, it will become beautiful by itself

Dutch GP sporting director Lammers was asked if he agrees with Verstappen's opinion of the new Mercedes. Lammers: "My first impression was; boy, what a huge dent is in it. I like the Ferrari one for example and the Red Bull one. Here I still have to get used to it, but if it's fast, it's beautiful." On the NOS television broadcast yesterday, Lammers said, "If it is very fast, it will automatically become very beautiful." Analyst Louis Dekker says that in the press room in Bahrain, everyone actually became very enthusiastic about the new look of the W13 when it appeared on the circuit.

Dekker further agrees with Lammers' statement: "The thing is, everyone is upside down with the Mercedes. But when that Mercedes is ninth and eleventh later on, we all think it's ugly, and then it's just a misfire." The conclusion of the conversation is that this is the way it works in Formula 1. Beautiful F1 cars from history that turned out not to work turned into monstrosities in a short time in the public perception.
Ukrainian and Russian flags are pictured ahead of the Russian-Ukrainian talks at the Belovezhskaya Pushcha National Park, on Feb 28, 2022. [Photo/IC]

It's good to learn that after their latest round of talks both Russia and Ukraine seem to be a little more upbeat that some common ground can be found.

"Russia is already beginning to talk constructively," said Ukrainian negotiator and presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak in an online video message on Sunday. "I think that we will achieve some results literally in a matter of days".

A Russian negotiator was quoted as saying the same day that the talks had made "substantial" progress, and "  may grow in the coming days into a joint position of both delegations, into documents for signing".

US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman also reported having seen on Russia's part "some signs of a willingness to have real, serious negotiations".

It would certainly be welcome if the two sides are able to produce "positive results within days," as some officials on both sides anticipate.

The conflict has already claimed hundreds of lives, wounded thousands more, and forced more than 2.5 million Ukrainians to flee their homeland, resulting in the most devastating humanitarian crisis in Europe since World War II. It is imperative that it is brought to an end as soon as possible.

But considering their first three rounds of talks in Belarus failed to make any substantive progress, the diplomatic engagement ended up fruitless, and the rhetoric about humanitarian concerns, especially that about "humanitarian corridors", fell largely flat, it may still be wise to keep optimism in check.

Despite this, it is clearly in both sides' interests to reach a negotiated end to the conflict. The war's devastation on Ukraine and its people is obvious. While the longer the war stretches on, the more casualties and losses the Russian forces will suffer. Not to mention that with each passing day, Russia is subject to mounting international pressure, militarily, economically, politically and morally.

Yet while the two warring parties may be trying to find a way to end the violence, and various parties are making diplomatic overtures aimed at facilitating this, there are also parties clearly acting to the contrary.

The rhetoric of Washington and London and the weapons the United States and the United Kingdom are providing Ukraine are aimed at fanning the flames of the conflict. For all their hand-wringing, most of those in these two Western capitals decrying what is happening in Ukraine are shedding crocodile tears. While lamenting the plight of the Ukrainian people, they are basically happy with things as they are, and hope to prolong the fighting as long as they can to debilitate Russia as much as possible and undermine the unity of the European Union.

Not only have these two countries hyped up and fueled the tensions for months and allowed them to spiral out of control, they have also tried to use the crisis to smear China.

Yet China always tries to play a constructive part in facilitating dialogue to resolve differences and disputes. It is China's consistent position that sanctions are always part of the problem rather than part of the solution. It will continue to talk to various parties to try and de-escalate the situation and keep the window for talks open.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been invited to address the U.S. Congress via video on Wednesday as the charismatic leader cements his role as the inspirational face of resistance to the Russian invasion. The event will be live-streamed for the public.

Its such a privilege to have this leader of this country, where these people are fighting for their democracy and our democracy, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Monday during an event at the Brooklyn Bridge with New York lawmakers.

Advertisement

Pelosi said that Zelenskyy asked for the meeting when they spoke at the end of last week, and lawmakers are thrilled to have him address Congress.

The talk comes as the Ukrainians are fighting for their countrys survival in the escalating war as Russian President Vladimir Putin intensifies his assault, including air strikes on the capital Kyiv. Civilians in Ukraine are taking up arms to hold back Putins regime, but the war has launched a mass exodus of more than 2 million people from Ukraine.

Advertisement

In this image from video provided by the Ukrainian Presidential Press Office and posted on Facebook, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Friday, March 11, 2022. (AP)

The Congress, our country, and the world are in awe of the people of Ukraine, said Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in a statement Monday announcing the address.

The former actor-turned-politician has emerged as the unexpected global hero, defying Russias brutal invasion of the sovereign nation.

He brought members of the European Parliament to tears with a plea for help and wowed Britains House of Commons in similar video addresses.

A giant screen displays an image of Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky speaking through a video link, addressing people taking part in a peace rally for Ukraine on March 12, 2022 in Florence, Italy which takes place simultaneously in the main European cities to demand a ceasefire in Ukraine and an end to the war. (CARLO BRESSAN/AFP via Getty Images)

Zelenskyy is expected to thank lawmakers for their support and plead with them to stay the course as outnumbered Ukrainian troops seek to repel the Russian invaders.

Biden is expected to sign a big spending bill containing $13.6 billion in Ukraine-related aid into law on Tuesday. During Pelosis call last week, Zelenskyy said his country would need help rebuilding from the war.

We have to do more in terms of meeting the needs of some of the 2.7 million refugees, she said.

She said of the Ukrainians: Theyre fighting for democracy writ large.

With News Wire Services
Formula One has been taken to task by human rights organisation the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (BIRD). The organisation accuses F1 of ignoring suffering and abuse in Bahrain.

Formula One's message is that the sport wants to be a good partner to all countries they visit around the world. With the 15-year contract extension between the Bahrain circuit in Sakhir and F1, the sport's statement on human rights violations has been criticised. The accusations against F1 come from Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei, reports BBC.com. Alwadaei is the president of BIRD and wrote a letter to Stefano Domenicali.

'F1 contradicts itself'

The letter stated, among other things, that F1's contract extension has turned its back on individuals who have been mistreated and imprisoned. The letter directly challenged F1 on its own values: "The contract directly contradicts your statement last year that you take violence, abuse of human rights and repression very seriously." The problem, according to BIRD, is that the Bahrain Grand Prix has contributed to abuse and suffering of individuals. According to BIRD, F1 has failed to use their platform in a good sense and do something about this.

Alwadaei calls on F1 to tighten their policies on this issue and to investigate the Bahrain GP. They also already asked several drivers to stand up against human rights violations. A short part of F1's response reads, "We take our responsibility in the field of human rights very seriously and set a high ethical standard for our partners."

Update | Bahrain response

However, the Embassy of the Kingdom of Bahrain to the United Kingdom told GPblog: Bahrain has led human rights reform in the region and to suggest otherwise does not reflect current-day reality," a government spokesperson said in a statement.

"Bahrain has the regions most robust human rights protections in place. Independent bodies, such as the independent human rights Ombudsman  the first of its kind in the Middle East  protect against and will investigate any issue related to human rights; police code of conduct reforms and comprehensive training supports a zero-tolerance policy towards the mistreatment of any kind; and criminal justice reform, whether related to judicial reform or alternative sentencing, ensures better protections and outcomes.

"To attempt to single out Bahrain in the Formula One calendar is absurd, lacks context, and entirely undermines the enormous strides and leadership Bahrain has shown in this area. Bahrain welcomes and actively supports the role Formula One can play in shedding light on human rights issues in all countries it operates in, now and in the future," the statement concluded.
An anti-war protestor holding a sign appeared on camera behind an anchor during a Russian TV news broadcast.

Anton Troianovski, the Moscow bureau chief for the New York Times, posted an image of the protester, who flashed an anti-war message during Channel 1s 9 p.m. broadcast on Monday.

Advertisement

The 9 pm news on Channel 1 in Russia tonight: "Stop the war. Don't believe the propaganda. They're lying to you here." via @meduza pic.twitter.com/K2yJ87JP7S  Anton Troianovski (@antontroian) March 14, 2022

The 9 pm news on Channel 1 in Russia tonight: Stop the war. Dont believe the propaganda. Theyre lying to you here,  Troianovski wrote on Twitter, translating the message, which also featured drawings on the Russian and Ukrainian flags.

Video of the incident showed the protester bursting onto the stage.

Advertisement

Apparently, a woman just ran onto the stage during a Russian state television news broadcast with a sign that said, Stop the war! Dont believe propaganda! Theyre lying to you here! pic.twitter.com/nn5XWsh4Wn  Kevin Rothrock (@KevinRothrock) March 14, 2022

TASS, the state-owned news agency, said in a statement it was investigating an incident with an outsider in the frame during a live broadcast.

According to English newspaper Express, the woman was identified as Marina Ovsyannikova, an employee of Channel 1 upset at the stations coverage of the war.

Ovsyannikova also posted a video in which she said Unfortunately, for the last several years I worked at Channel One, promoting Kremlin propaganda and for that I am very ashamed right now...

I am ashamed that I allowed lies to be told from TV screens, that I allowed Russian people to be zombified. We stayed quiet when all of this was just getting started in 2014.

Here's the video she pre-recorded. Translation:



What's happening in Ukraine right now is a crime and Russia is an aggressor country. The responsibility for this aggression is on the conscience of one man, and that man is Vladimir Putin. 1/https://t.co/P7SHfBEJQU  Jane Lytvynenko (@JaneLytv) March 14, 2022

The incident is the latest embarrassment to the Russian government to occur on its own airwaves following the invasion of Ukraine. Last week, a number of broadcasts, including Channel 1, were hacked to air independent news coverage of the war. The group Anonymous claimed credit for the hack.
David Coleman and Trevor Packer are busy guys. Coleman is the CEO of the College Board, the national nonprofit which runs standardized tests like the PSAT, SAT and Advanced Placement exams. Packer is the College Boards senior vice president in charge of AP. But these busy guys still found the time last week to leave their downtown offices and make two trips to Amsterdam Ave. and 65th St. to visit LaGuardia High School. Good for them.

The duo were at LaGuardia on Monday and back again on Thursday because last year, the famed performing arts high schools leadership had the warped notion that the rigorous, college-level AP classes werent a good thing and tried to reduce Advanced Placement offerings. This year, theres been bad-mouthing the courses and the corresponding exams, which can earn kids college credits. Also, a calculus class was set to lose its AP status.

Advertisement

Test time. (Barry Williams/for New York Daily News)

By Friday, after some noise in these quarters and elsewhere, all was fixed, apparently, as the school informed parents and students that the very tough Calculus BC class had had its full AP status renewed. Furthermore, announced in a school-wide email from the principal, the tour of the school by Coleman and Packer had resulted in a new degree of acceptance of AP at LaGuardia: AP teachers have thereby committed to ensure students receive all course topics and skills. Lets see if its for real.

Principal Yeou-Jey Vasconcelos and Manhattan high schools Superintendent Vivian Orlen, the pair with the anti-AP bent, used the visit to express their concern to the AP men that the tests have a racial bias. The main bias here is against excellence and the highest standards for our students. We havent solved differential equations in a while, but its hard to see anything racial on a calculus exam.

Advertisement

Coleman (who is a successful Stuyvesant High School graduate) and Packer can hopefully get back to work this week for the other 25,000 high schools in America now that LaGuardia has seemingly been straightened out.
The European Raw Materials Alliance (ERMA) will support Canadian mineral exploration and development company Mkango Resources Ltd.with securing financing for the development of a rare earth separation plant to be located in Puawy, Poland.

This plant will be supplied with rare earth carbonate originating from Mkangos Songwe Hill primary deposit of rare earth elements in Malawi, Africa. The plant will also be able to process other materials supplied by third-party providers thus acting as a future European Hub for rare earth elements separation.

The main goal of ERMA, which is co-funded by the European Union, is securing critical raw materials for the European market.

The Puawy project will aid the creation of a secure supply chain option for neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium, and terbium for the European Union. All these rare earth elements are critical in the production of electric vehicles, wind turbines and other clean energy applications that are key to Europes Green Agenda.





This is a multi-national project where we have a Canadian partner, Mkango Resources, accessing critical raw materials in Malawi, Africa, processing them in a plant in Poland, all for the benefit of the European economy. The Puawy project is one of the first ERMA projects to get the greenlight to provide critical raw materials needed to fulfill European goals in the green transition while diversifying the supply chain in the long term. Dr Massimo Gasparon, ERMA Director

Mkango has announced that the final stage of hydrometallurgical piloting at ANSTO for Mkangos Songwe Hill Rare Earths Project in Malawi has successfully produced rare earth carbonate grading 55% total rare earth oxides (TREO) equivalent, enriched in neodymium and praseodymium (Nd / Pr) oxides, which together make up 31% of the TREO within the rare earth carbonate product (i.e., Nd / Pr oxides / TREO = 31%).

Neodymium and praseodymium are key components of permanent magnets used in electric vehicles, wind turbines and many electronic devices and prices for Nd / Pr oxides have risen by 85% and 135% respectively over the last 12 months.

The Puawy plant is expected initially to produce approximately 2,000 tonnes per year of neodymium, praseodymium and / or didymium (NdPr) oxides as well as a heavy rare earth enriched carbonate, containing approximately 50 tonnes per year dysprosium and terbium oxides. It is also expected to produce lanthanum cerium carbonate. Mkango is evaluating marketing and processing options for the heavy rare earth enriched carbonate and lanthanum cerium carbonate.

This cooperation and support with securing financing is one of the first projects resulting from ERMAs strategic initiatives securing rare earth elements for European industry. A first action plan entitled Rare Earth Magnets and Motors: A European Call for Action was issued in September 2021. This report outlines current and projected European demand for Rare Earth Elements and steps which should be taken to secure their supply. The Puawy project is addressing several critical issues highlighted in the report.
LETTER: Senator Blackburn Should Tell Big Oil To Turn On The Taps
Support local journalism

We are making critical coverage of the coronavirus available for free.

Please consider subscribing so we can continue to bring you the latest news and information on this developing story.


In perhaps his most daring challenge to date, outspoken inventor Elon Musk is challenging war-mongering Russian President Vladimir Putin to a fight.

He did so using the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets on Twitter Monday. The winner, he said, would control the fate of Ukraine.

Advertisement

I hereby challenge   to single combat, Musk wrote early Monday morning. Stakes are .

I hereby challenge

 

to single combat



Stakes are   Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 14, 2022

Its unlikely Putin, cut off from the free world while waging an unprovoked attack against neighboring Ukraine, would accept the challenge with the inventor, whose $23 billion worth reportedly makes him the worlds richest man on record. However, Putins actual worth is not known and some estimates put the longtime Russian leaders value at $200 billion in assets, according to Fortune.

Advertisement

Elon Musk speaks at the SATELLITE Conference and Exhibition in Washington, March 9, 2020. (Susan Walsh/AP)

While neither billionaire owns Ukraine, Putins armed forces are making strides in occupying the sovereign Eastern European nation they began invading on Feb. 24. At least one person asked Musk on Twitter if he thought his challenge was a good idea.

Though Musk, 50, is 19 years Putins junior and stands roughly six inches taller than the former KGB agent, Putin is a trained martial artist with a black belt in judo. Its also a fact that Putins rivals tend to turn up dead.

[ Take that! Vladimir Putin loses honorary judo president title due to Ukraine invasion ]

Black Belt magazine reports that Musk told podcast host Joe Rogan that he trained in several martial arts disciplines as a child, including judo.

Musks Space X technologies company struck a blow against Putin at the start of the attack on Ukraine by making the operations Starlink internet terminals available to the war-town nation as it struggles to maintain communications amid ground and air strikes. Ukrainian officials thanked Musk on Twitter for supporting Ukraine and peace in the entire world!
The Guam Waterworks Authority is desperately trying to slow a Superior Court of Guam case related to its land dispute with Core Tech International, according to Core Tech, which claims it now owns the Dededo ancestral land that has been used to operate GWAs Northern District Wastewater Treatment Plant since 1980.

Core Tech is seeking at least $130 million in damages from GWA for alleged inverse condemnation, which is when the government takes private land without paying for it.

GWA wants the Supreme Court of Guam to decide whether Superior Court of Guam Judge Elyze Iriarte made a mistake when she ruled last November that Core Tech has an ownership interest in the wastewater site.

According to GWA and the Department of Land Management, Core Techs ownership claim is based on flawed certificates of title issued in 2010, and Guam law prohibits the wastewater site, which used to be owned by the military, from being transferred to private ownership.

Judge Iriarte has not agreed to pause the case to allow GWA to appeal. She has been receiving additional information from GWA and Core Tech before deciding.

According to GWA, if Core Tech ultimately wins the land case it could result in an estimated $220 million judgment against GWA and spark a large increase in water rates in order to pay Core Tech.

GWA should not be allowed to appeal at this time and the case should move forward in Superior Court, according to Core Tech, which stated it is in the public interest for the court to protect the rights of landowners.

If GWA loses the case and there is a monetary judgment against it, it can appeal then, according to Core Tech.

There is a significant constitutional right that is implicated when the government takes private property without just compensation, Core Tech stated in a motion filed March 4, objecting to a pause in the case. Payments from inverse condemnation claims are a constitutional mandate, not windfalls. They are just compensation paid to property owners, original and subsequent, for the government seizure of property.

Ancestral land

The wastewater site is on ancestral land  part of a former Air Force communications annex which the federal government later declared excess and returned to the government of Guam. The military, when it owned the property, leased it to GovGuam for use as a wastewater plant.

The Guam Ancestral Lands Commission deeded 257 acres of excess federal land to the estate of Jose Martinez Torres, including part of the communications annex.

The Torres estate in September 2007 sold 252 acres of its ancestral land to Kil Yoo Yoon for $21.4 million. Yoon in January 2010 deeded the land to his company, Younex Enterprises Corporation.

Core Tech acquired the property in May 2015, for $178.1 million, after Younex defaulted on its mortgage with Core Tech, documents state.

The legal dispute started when Land Management sued Core Tech in 2018, asking the court for permission to change and revoke the certificates of title for the Dededo property.

Core Tech attorney Vanessa Williams in January told the court GWA failed to reserve an interest in the returned excess federal land before ownership reverted to GovGuam for eventual return to its original owners.

It is GWA that seeks to undo the decades-long and meticulous legislation of Guam that is dedicated to the return or compensation of seized ancestral land, she stated in Core Techs March 4 motion. None of the records show how permitting Core Tech to seek just compensation prevents the (Northern District Wastewater Treatment Plant) from remaining and being developed by the government of Guam.
The Guam Police Department has arrested seven men in connection to the Dededo skate park riot almost two weeks ago, but more individuals are suspected to be involved.

For almost two weeks, GPDs Community Crimes Task Force has had an open investigation into a riot at Dededo skate park that sent two victims to the hospital. A man was left permanently blind in one eye.

Officers working to close the case are still conducting interviews, as more people are suspected of being involved in the fight, according GPD spokeswoman Officer Berlyn Savella.

Savella encouraged anyone with information about the riot to call GPDs dispatch at 671-475-8615 or make a tip anonymously at guamcrimestoppers.com.

Arrests

Police made their first arrest after finding a video of the attack that was recorded by 19-year-old Mali Ios and circulated on social media.

Ios was arrested. Then six more men, Kayson Nick, 19, Darwin Fortes, 22, John Jashua, 18, Jame Repwak, 23, Vince Phillip Phillip, 22, and Chesrick Tom, 19, also known as Jesrick Honest Tom, according to his booking photo, were then arrested and charged with assault and aggravated assault in connection to the riot.

According to charging documents, witnesses said the men were drinking beer and rum at the skate park before they began punching, tackling and throwing a glass bottle at the victims while also damaging a car with a skateboard.
The Independent Investigative Team is asking for the publics help investigating an officer-involved shooting that left a man dead at Shell gas station in Dededo last week.

Since the team was activated on March 9, members have interviewed about 10 witnesses, reviewed surveillance footage and gathered evidence from the scene, according to a release sent by the Office of the Attorney General.

As the investigative team waits for a pending autopsy and analysis of the evidence, they are asking the public to provide any video footage or information about the shooting. The team can be contacted at iit@oagguam.org or 671-475-2585. The dead mans identity is expected to be released in the next update from the team, attorney generals office spokeswoman Carlina Charfauros said.

On Wednesday night Guam Police Department officers responded to reports of a man firing a slingshot near the gas station.

Officers soon arrived and tried to detain the man, but in the ensuing moments, the details of which are under investigation, an officer discharged his firearm, striking the individual, Charfauros said in a release the night of the shooting.

Following the shooting, the man was taken to Guam Regional Medical Center and pronounced dead. The Independent Investigative Team was activated.

The statement issued immediately after the shooting said police and the attorney generals office are committed to a thorough investigation, while recognizing that transparency is critical to public confidence in the process. As the investigation into the circumstances of this shooting proceeds, additional information will be shared with the public as quickly as possible while protecting the integrity of the investigation.

GPD placed the officer on administrative leave and the department is conducting an internal investigation, according to spokeswoman Officer Berlyn Savella.

The Independent Investigative Teams investigation into the officer-involved shooting will be the second time it has been activated.

The team was activated for the first time in June 2021 when an off-duty police officer shot and killed a man in Tamuning by Hemlanis Commercial Building. Throughout the course of that investigation, details were periodically released to the public, including surveillance videos and a description of evidence found at the scene.
With up to 100 people being allowed at indoor events, the American Red Cross Guam Chapter is moving its signature fundraising event, the Red Ball, to the lobby of the Hyatt Regency Guam.

Previously, organizers were planning to hold the event outdoors.

Along with the move, the chapter has implemented a formal attire requirement of ball gowns and coats and ties.

We dont have to worry about whether its hot and humid. I worry about all of those things because I want (guests) to be really in a very comfortable setting, the chapters Executive Director Chita Blaise said. Thats the hallmark of the Red Ball.

The Red Ball is being held during Red Cross Month in March to recognize the groups service and contributions to the island. This year marks 20th anniversary of the Red Ball on Guam.

The three-night event will feature regional cuisines from Asia, Europe and the Mediterranean.

Two of the nights, March 25 and 26, have already sold out. A few tables are still available for the first night, March 24.

I am just so grateful that people are just coming all out. I think everybodys just excited to party for a good cause, Blaise said.

The first night will feature an Asian-inspired menu. The second night will be a European-inspired menu, and the final night will have Mediterranean-inspired cuisine. The raffle drawing for a new car will be held on the final night.

Take-home meals

The Red Ball at Home Meals option is still available for those who cant attend but want to support the Red Cross.

For $250 a person, patrons can have a take-home version of the same menu as one of the three themed nights. The meals will be available for pre-order and pick up on the corresponding nights.
Two political action committees are set to begin fundraising for the upcoming election.

Action PAC, Inc., an organization formed by several local business groups in 2020, was the first to register with the Guam Election Commission this year. Responsible Guam Political Action Committee was formed by attorney Peter John Santos and registered with the Election Commission last week.

Five goals

The Action PAC previously announced that Phil Leddy II, director of sales marketing and business development for Guam Copier, will be leading the organization as executive director.

Ive been a member of the PAC from the start, and I am confident I can build momentum and support for the PACs important platform this election season, Leddy stated in a release. Theres a lot of uncertainty about Guams future, which makes this election one of the most significant events of our time.

Action PAC has five core initiatives:

Reducing the business privilege tax from 5% to 4% or less.

Rightsizing the government of Guam for greater efficiency.

Improving transparency in government and promoting communication and collaboration between the public and private sectors.

Strengthening relations with the U.S. military to improve security in the region and maximize economic opportunities for Guam.

Support for a part-time legislature.

According to a release, the Action PAC is a nonprofit made up of Guam residents and the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, Guam Chamber of Commerce, Guam Contractors Association, Guam Hotel and Restaurant Association, Guam Realtors Association, Guam Womens Chamber of Commerce and Korean Chamber of Commerce.

Political myth busters

The Responsible Guam PAC is aimed at providing a honest alternative to false narratives and exaggerated campaign promises, according to Santos.

Its to educate the public, the voting public, essentially, about verifiable facts, data and information about candidates for elected office, thats the official position of the PAC, he said.

Santos had considered running for the office of Guam delegate as a Republican, but began the nonpartisan PAC as an alternative.

Candidates

As of Monday, there have been 35 candidate packets picked up for senatorial seats, according to Election Commission records.

The Committee to Elect Leon Guerrero/Tenorio has registered with the Election Commission and can begin fundraising for Democratic incumbents Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero and Lt. Gov. Joshua Tenorio. Camacho Ada 2022 has registered to begin fundraising for the Republican gubernatorial team of former Gov. Felix Camacho and Sen. Tony Ada.

Other candidate packets have been picked up for:

Attorney General:

Leevin Camacho

Douglas Moylan

Consolidated Commission on Utilities:

Kenneth Perez

Nonito Blas

Guam Education Board:

Ellaine Ulloa

Kevin A. Nace

Ron McNinch

Governor and lieutenant governor:
Former Gov. Carl T.C. Gutierrez is the president and CEO of Guam Visitors Bureau, permit czar, and chairman of the Governors Economic Strategy Council. Send comments or questions to GVB at communityrelations@visitguam.org.
Full House could one day open its doors again.

Longtime stars Candace Cameron Bure, Andrea Barber and Dave Coulier agreed theyd be open to doing another reboot of the beloved sitcom, according to NBCs Today show.

Advertisement

Barber, who played Kimmy Gibler, said reuniting for more episodes is something that wouldve delighted their late co-star Bob Saget.

It would be hard, but I think Bob would want that, Barber told Today as they reunited for the 90s Con event in Hartford, Conn., over the weekend.

Advertisement

Bob Saget and Candace Cameron Bure on an episode of "Fuller House." (Michael Yarish / Netflix)

Saget starred as the family patriarch Danny Tanner on Full House, which ran from 1987 to 1995. He and his co-stars then stepped back into their roles for the Fuller House spinoff, which had a five-season run on Netflix from 2016 to 2020.

The actor and stand-up comedian was found dead at age 65 inside an Orlando hotel room in January. Medical examiner Joshua Stephany said Saget likely suffered injuries in an unwitnessed fall, with his family saying officials determined he died of head trauma.

Its still hard to talk about it because he was such a huge part of our family, and he was the central figure that always brought us together, Coulier told Today at the convention over the weekend.

Barber and Bure were both reportedly on board, too, after Coulier said to Today of a potential reboot, I think we would in a heartbeat.




Haiti - Politic : Claude Joseph deplores the stoppage of the construction of the irrigation canal of the Massacre River





On Saturday, former Prime Minister ai Claude Joseph deplored the halt in the construction of the irrigation canal which was to capture water from the Massacre River, in the northern area of the Haitian border, to irrigate agricultural land in the towns of Meac, Ferie and Derac, adjacent to the municipality of Ounaminthe.



On his Tweeter account he writes "It is regrettable to note that the works for the construction of an irrigation intake on the Massacre River have been abandoned. This deplorable situation is tangible proof that the project led by the oligarchs to erase the legacy of Pdt Jovenel is continuing its course."



Remember that the construction of this politically sensitive irrigation canal is the source of great tension with the Dominican Republic, which accuses each other because of differences in the interpretation of the historic treaties signed between the two Nations.



Faced with the rise of tensions around the construction of this canal, ordered by Jovenel Moise, the Dominican and Haitian authorities have left it to a technical commission to determine whether the water that would be taken by this canal would affect the flow of the river Massacre, a natural resource that the two countries share https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-33953-haiti-flash-dominican-geologist-osiris-de-leon-denies-haiti-s-assertions.html .



Let's recall that in June 2021, President Luis Abinader asked the Haitian government to stop the construction of this canal https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-33945-haiti-flash-canal-on-the-massacre-river-in-haiti-dominican-president-abinader-raises-the-tone.html affirming that the Dominican Republic had "many options" from the diplomatic point of view to demand that Haiti stop this work, but that he preferred an agreement international-business.html



On September 29, 2021 at his official residence, Prime Minister ai Ariel Henry confirmed that the Government intended to continue work on the irrigation canal capturing water from the Massacre River, stopped in early August 2021, the cost of which is estimated at around 50 million gourdes been followed by no concrete effect.







Read also about the Haiti Irrigation Canal case :

https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-34875-icihaiti-rd-resumption-of-works-of-the-massacre-river-irrigation-canal.html

https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-34389-icihaiti-dr-stop-in-haiti-of-the-construction-of-the-canal-to-collect-water-from-the-massacre-river.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-33974-haiti-dr-the-construction-of-the-haitian-canal-on-the-massacre-river-on-the-way-to-becoming-an-international-affair.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-33953-haiti-flash-dominican-geologist-osiris-de-leon-denies-haiti-s-assertions.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-33945-haiti-flash-canal-on-the-massacre-river-in-haiti-dominican-president-abinader-raises-the-tone.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-33854-haiti-flash-president-abinader-announces-the-construction-of-a-dam-on-the-artibonite-river-in-dominican-soil.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-33823-haiti-agriculture-diversion-of-the-massacre-river-in-search-of-a-solution-with-the-dr.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-33596-haiti-flash-conflict-with-the-dr-over-a-canal-diverting-the-massacre-river-to-haiti.html



SL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - Diaspora Covid-19 : Daily Bulletin #724





GLOBAL SITUATION 2019-2022:

Epidemiological situation:



Monday March 14, 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 cases 458,629,932 (+1,358,655 in 24 hours ), the day before (+1,617,827)



Number of infected countries: 224



*Healings: 392,045,169 people have been cured of Covid-19 worldwide (+1,448,937 in 24 hours), the day before (+1,146,383)

*Deaths: 6,066,814 people died of Covid-19 worldwide (+3,865 in 24 hours), the day before (+4,137)

*Active cases (minus deaths and recoveries) in the world is currently 60,517,949 cases (+94,147 in 24 hours), the day before (+467,307)



Average cure rate in the world: 85.48% (+)



Average mortality rate in the world: 1.32% (=)



World: Number of daily confirmed cases:





(Day-1)



Vaccination: 11.05 billion doses of vaccine injected (+20 million doses injected in 24 hours. Updated March 13, 2022 (latest data available).



HAITI:

Epidemiological situation:

According to the Ministry of Public Health, +15 new cases of Covid-19 and its variants have been confirmed in Haiti as of March 10, 2022 (latest partial data available ) for a total of 30,461 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 (+8 cases as of March 9, 2022).



Healings: 26,538 (+236)



Cure rate: 87.12% (+)



Deaths: 827 deaths (+0) ()



Death rate: 2.71% (=)



5th Wave (Omicron Dominant):

Total of the 5th wave (starting December 27, 2021) 4,466 confirmed cases and 61 deaths



Haiti: Active Cases Trend: (less recoveries and deaths)





(Day-1)



Screening since the start of the pandemic: 182,367 tests (+253 in 24 hours) 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: 736 (+2); Petion-ville 613 (+0); Port-au-Prince 405 (+0); Tabarre 286 (+1); 233 (+0)



Confirmed cases by department (2022 / 2021 / 2020):

West: 2022: 2,527 cases; (2021: 9.890); (2020: 6,945 cases)

North: 2022: 263 cases; (2021: 664); (2020: 677 cases)

Center: 2022: 221 cases; (2021: 1.001); (2020: 508 cases)

Artibonite: 2022: 170 cases; (2021: 855); (2020: 593 cases)

Northeast: 2022: 147 cases; (2021: 404); (2020: 314 cases)

Southeast: 2022: 238 cases; (2021: 768); (2020: 274 cases)

South: 2022: 213 cases; (2021: 891); (2020: 262 cases)

North West: 2022: 249 cases; (2021: 383); (2020: 229 cases)

Grand'Anse: 2022: 158 cases; (2021: 861); (2020: 176 cases)

Nippes: 2022: 35 cases; (2021: 249) (2020: 149 cases)



Cumulative deaths by department (2022-2021):

West: 293 deaths (2020: 104 deaths)

North: 54 deaths (2020: 34 deaths)

Center: 78 deaths (2020: 13 deaths)

Artibonite: 40 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: 31 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: 137 deaths



Vaccination:

159,320 Haitians (1.37% of the population) +2,318 in 4 days have received a 1st dose of vaccine since July 16, 2021, date of the first injection through 149 open vaccination centers and 108,450 Haitians are fully vaccinated (2 doses, 0.93% of the population) +2.336 in 4 days. Update March 10, 2022 latest information available (source MSPP).



List of the 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): 81,174,677 cases (+5,143 in 24 hours), the day before (+14,574 )

*Healings: 56,071,103 healings (+155,975 in 24 hours), the day before (+157,765)

National Cure Rate: 69.07% (+)

*Deaths: 993,811 deaths (+118 in 24 hours), the day before (+649)

National death rate: 1.22% (=)

*Active cases (minus deaths and recoveries): 24,109,763 (-150,940 in 24 hours), the day before (-143,840)

Tests: 964,386,655 last data available.



USA: Number of daily confirmed cases





(Day-1)



Vaccination: 557.10 million doses of vaccine injected since December 14, 2020, date of the first injection in the United States (+360,000 doses in 24 hours). Updated March 12, 2022 (latest data available).



DOMINICAN REPUBLIC:

Confirmed cases since March 1, 2020: 576,641 cases (+147 in 24 hours) the day before (+127 in 24 hours). First case (March 1, 2020)

Healings: 571,897 healings (+146 in 24 hours), the day before (+95)

National Cure Rate: 99.17% (=)

Deaths: 4,374 deaths (+0), previous (+0)

Death rate: 0.75% (=)

Positive rate over 4 epidemiological weeks: 1.59% (-)

Active cases: (excluding deaths and recoveries) 370 cases (+1 in 24 hours) the day before (+32)



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:

Santiago: +53 new cases in 24 hours (+)

La Altagracia: 44 new cases in 24 hours (+)

Santo Domingo: +17 new cases in 24 hours (+)

District Nacional: +8 new cases in 24 hours ()

Puerto Plata: +5 new cases in 24 hours (-)



Tests (since the 1st case): 3,167,036 tests (+4,923 in 24 hours), the day before (+5,078)



Vaccination: 15.36 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). Updated March 13, 2022 (latest data available).



QUEBEC:

Warning: Quebec health authorities no longer update data on the Covid situation on weekends. The figures below are therefore the latest available.



Confirmed cases since the first case (February 27, 2020): 934,622 (+1.179 in 24 hours), previous (+1.267)

Healings: 907,358 people (+1,396 in 24 hours), previous (+980)

Cure rate: 97.08% (-)

Deaths: 14,154 deaths (+13 in 24 hours), previous (+15)

Death rate: 1.51% (=)

Active cases: (excluding death and recovery) 13,110 cases (-230 in 24 hours), previous (+272)

Quebec: Trend of daily confirmed cases:





(average weekly trend)



Test: 16,850,668 people tested since the first case (+13,992 in 24 hours)



Vaccination: 18,505,552 doses of vaccine injected since December 14, 2020, date of the first injection (+7,894 doses in 24 hours), latest data available - MSSS as of March 12, 2022)



FRANCE:

*Confirmed cases since the first case (January 24, 2020): 23,514,144 cases (+60,422 cases in 24 hours), previous (+72,443)

*Healings: 22,261,297 healings (+114,548 in 24h), previous (+58,952)

National Cure Rate: 94.18% (-)

Deaths: 140,109 deaths (+29 in 24 hours), previous (+51)

Death rate: 0.59% (=)

Active Cases: 1,112,738 (-54,155 in 24h), previous (+13,440)

Test: 246,629,975 (last data available February 27, 2022)



France: Number of daily confirmed cases:





(day 1)



Vaccination: 141.29 million doses of vaccine injected since December 27, 2020, date of the first injection in France (+30,000 doses injected in 24 hours. Update March 13, 2022 (latest data available)



Previous bulletin : https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-36168-haiti-diaspora-covid-19-daily-bulletin-723.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






















Haiti - News : Zapping...





Jacmel : the town hall robbed

On the night of Thursday to Friday March 11, 2022, the town hall of Jacmel was the victim of burglars who took away batteries and electric cables.



Ukraine : USA proud of Haitis vote

"Met with Haiti PM Ariel Henry to discuss security, economic stability, and Haitis strong support for Ukraine. I emphasized the need for Haitians to forge a strong consensus on a political way forward. The U.S. is proud to stand with Haiti against Russian aggression," said Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs Brian Nichols.



Another Prize for the film "Freda"

The film "Freda" by Haitian director Gessica Geneus has just won at the International Forum on Human Rights (FIFDH) in Geneva (Switzerland). The Grand Prize for Fiction at the 20th Film Festival tied with Kaltrina Krasniqi from Kosovo for her film "Vera Dreams of the sea".



Deworming and Vitamin A

A training session led by Dr Jutile Loiseau, Dr Marie Kensia Thebaud and Mrs Aela Sauvie Jean Paul, was held last week for nurses as part of the deworming and vitamin A supplement campaign that plans to do the National School Feeding Program in the coming days. This training was also an opportunity to invite them to get more involved in the monitoring and evaluation of the canteen.



Belgium : The writer Dalembert wins the Goncourt Choice

The Haitian writer Louis-Philippe Dalembert wins the 6th edition of the Choice Goncourt of Belgium for his novel "Milwaukee Blues". Voted by more than 200 French and Dutch speaking students from 16 universities and colleges.



Education : Launch of ONAPE

On Friday, March 11, Minister Nesmy Manigat launched the process of setting up the Board of Directors of the National Office for Partnership in Education (ONAPE).



HL/ HaitiLibre


















Published on 2020/01/20 | Source

Actor Kim Min-kyu is rapidly becoming a heartthrob thanks to his role as a king in TV Chosun's series "Queen: Love and War".

Advertisement

Set in the Chosun Dynasty, the period drama depicts the conspiracies and palace intrigues that take place amid the selection of a new queen.

Kim has been capturing viewers' hearts with his portrait of a young king reminiscent of the charismatic one played by Kim Soo-hyun in the megahit series "The Moon Embracing the Sun" in 2012, as well as the gentle monarch played by Park Bo-gum in another successful series, "Moonlight Drawn by Clouds" in 2016. Kim Soo-hyun and Park cemented their status as rising stars through those period dramas.

"Queen: Love and War" is the first period drama for Kim, who made his acting debut in 2013. It is a demanding role, requiring him to control his tone and breathing as he delivers his lines.

"During the first meeting, the director told me that I was better at things he'd not expected, but he was disappointed in things he'd anticipated [I would do well], such as evoking romantic feelings", Kim said.

However, as if to prove the director wrong, with the series now half over, Kim has increasingly made viewers' hearts flutter.

"My previous characters have been mostly teenagers or somewhat childish or immature. I hope to get more chances to bring out and show other sides of me", Kim said.

___________

"Queen: Love and War" is directed by Kim Jung-min-XII, written by Choi Soo-mi, and features Jin Se-yeon, Kim Min-kyu, Do Sang-woo, Lee Yeol-eum, Lee Si-eon, Uhm Hyo-sup. Broadcasting information in Korea: 2019/12/15~Now airing, Sun 21:50 on TV Chosun.
CROWN POINT  Add Lake County Prosecutor Bernard Carter to the long list of professional law enforcement officials opposing a plan to allow handgun owners age 18 and older to carry their weapon in public without needing to obtain a state permit.

Carter called on Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb Friday to veto House Enrolled Act 1296 that won final approval Tuesday at the Republican-controlled General Assembly.

"This bill impedes public safety," said Carter, a Democrat. "It puts our law enforcement in danger and threatens the entire fabric of our community by putting other persons' lives in danger, as well. It is crucial Governor Holcomb veto this bill."

The governor has not yet indicated whether he will sign permitless carry into law or veto it when it reaches his desk, likely sometime next week.

Regardless, it takes in Indiana only a simple majority  the same 50% plus one required to send legislation to the governor in the first place  for the General Assembly to override a gubernatorial veto and enact a measure into law notwithstanding his objections.

Indiana State Police Superintendent Doug Carter, who is not related to the prosecutor, and representatives of the Fraternal Order of Police, among others, have said that eliminating handgun carry permits will endanger police officers because there no longer will be an easy way to confirm a person with handgun is legally entitled to be carrying it.

Supporters of the measure say law-abiding Hoosiers shouldn't have to ask the government's permission to exercise their constitutional right to keep and bear arms.
Taraji P. Henson shared her support for her former Empire co-star Jussie Smollett following last weeks sentencing, calling for the actor to be released from jail.

Smollett was sentenced to five months behind bars last Thursday after being found guilty of lying to Chicago police about being the victim of a racist and homophobic attack.

Advertisement

I am not here to debate you on his innocence but we can agree that the punishment does not fit the crime, Henson wrote Sunday on Instagram. Emmett Till was brutally beat and ultimately murdered because of a lie and none of the people involved with his demise spent one day in jail, even after Carolyn Bryant admitted that her claims were false.

Smollett has maintained his innocence since claiming two men hurled racist and homophobic slurs at him, put a rope around his neck and poured a chemical on him in January 2019.

Advertisement

Taraji P. Henson and Jussie Smollett in 2017. (Jeff Schear)

He stood trial last fall and was found guilty on five counts of disorderly conduct in December.

No one was hurt or killed during Jussies ordeal, Henson wrote in her Instagram post. He has already lost everything, EVERYTHING! To me as an artist not able to create that in itself is punishment enough. He cant get a job. No one in Hollywood will hire him and again as an artist who loves to create, that is prison.

After learning his sentence from Judge James Linn last week, Smollett, 39, claimed at the Leighton Criminal Courthouse, I am not suicidal. I am not suicidal, and I am innocent! I couldve said that I was guilty a long time ago.

Smollett began his 150-day sentence at Cook County Jail on Thursday.

My prayer is that he is freed and put on house arrest and probation because in this case that would seem fair, Henson said.

Over the weekend, Smolletts brother Jocqui Smollett said the actor had been put in a psychiatric ward after officials allegedly determined he was a self-harm risk.

I want to just make it clear to folks that he is in no way, shape or form at risk of self-harm, Jocqui said in an Instagram video. He wants to let folks know ... that he is very stable, he is very strong, he is very healthy and ready to take on the challenge that ultimately has been put up against him.
Hastings, NE (68901)

Today

Cloudy early, then off and on rain showers for the afternoon. High 54F. Winds E at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 50%..

Tonight

Showers this evening becoming a steady light rain overnight. Low 46F. Winds NE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
The development of vaccines and other medical treatments, and the ability of peopl
(The Center Square)  Kentuckys two largest cities will receive nearly $39 million in state funding to help renters avoid evictions.

The money for Louisville and Lexington comes from a state program for rental assistance. A COVID-19 relief bill passed by Congress in December 2020 established rental aid programs for states. Cities, though, could apply for their own funds, which is what the two communities did.

In a statement Tuesday, Gov. Andy Beshear said the formula for determining local aid did not give the cities as much funding as they anticipated. Last June, Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer and Lexington Mayor Linda Gorton asked the state for assistance.

On Tuesday, the state directed $27 million to Louisville and $11.7 million to Lexington.

The funding will help renters facing issues paying rent or utilities due to the pandemic. It offers households up to 18 months of rental assistance, including back rent dated to March 13, 2020. Help with future rent payments may be available as well.

Whether it is the loss of income due to a family members death or continued medical bill hardships brought on by COVID, we owe it to those harmed by the pandemic to help them in this unprecedented time of need, Beshear said in a statement.

In Louisville, the program covers rent assistance. More than 42,000 residents have received support through January, according to the city and more than $96 million has been distributed in funding.

The city is still processing about 2,700 applications, which the states contribution will help cover. As of now, Louisville officials expect the window for applications to close at the end of the month.

The rental assistance programs have been a lifeline for many of our residents, and we recognize the tremendous demand that remains, said Fischer, who added Louisville will keep looking to find long-term answers to address affordable housing needs.

Lexingtons program also includes help with utility payments and other housing costs.

These funds have been essential, allowing us to keep people in their homes, Gorton said. These funds have gone to people who are truly low income  88% of those who have received rent assistance have had incomes lower than 50 percent of our areas median income.

Including Tuesdays allocations, Louisville has received $54 million from the state program. The state has given Lexington $23.4 million.

Kentucky received $264 million from the federal government for its emergency rental assistance program. The state has allocated nearly $120 million to more than 25,000 families across the state. Of that funding, $108 million has been issued for rental assistance and $12.8 to cover utility expenses.

The state has $55.9 million left in its program. That money and the cities funding must be allocated by Sept. 30.
TUV Rheinland issues first UKCA certificate to Schmersal

As a testing body with official recognition by the UK Governments Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS), TUV Rheinland has issued the first certificate for the testing of AZ300, AZM300 and AZM300-AS solenoid interlocks made by Schmersal in accordance with UKCA requirements.

UKCA stands for United Kingdom Conformity Assessment. Since the UKs departure from the European Union (Brexit), this new marking is required for products sold in England, Wales and Scotland. The UKCA marking replaces the CE marking used in the EU single market, although the latter is still accepted for registration on the British market until the end of 2022. We were consciously aware of the significance of the British market for many of our customers and of the need to be able to offer rapid and reliable support with the new regulatory requirements as an official testing body, explains Thomas Steffens, head of the testing and certification body Funktionale Sicherheit & Cybersecurity at TUV Rheinland Industrie Service GmbH.



Testing for Schmersal for more than 20 years



TUV Rheinland has been testing safety switchgear devices and systems made by the international Schmersal Group, based in Wuppertal, for more than 20 years. The new UKCA certification involves not inconsiderable outlay for product manufacturers. With the team at Schmersal, TUV Rheinland was able to undertake the recognition process and conformity assessment for UKCA certification of the AZ300, AZM300 and AZM300-AS solenoid interlocks promptly and successfully.



Following a successful pilot project with the AZM300 solenoid interlock, Schmersal will now have additional products systematically certified to UKCA standards, starting with interlocks in other series, followed by electronic safety switches, safety relay modules and safety light barriers. Our aim is to have the most common and most frequently requested Schmersal products certified with the UKCA certificate by 1 January 2023 so that our customers can continue to market their machines in the UK in compliance with the rules, explains Jorg Eisold, head of standards, committees and association works in the Schmersal Group. Considering the size of our product range, its an ambitious timetable. But we hope that we can achieve the goal with support from all third parties involved in the certification process. We had a positive experience with TUV Rheinland on the AZM300 pilot project, so were very optimistic.



TUV Rheinland certifying since September 2021



Thomas Steffens of TUV Rheinland adds, As a testing body, we know how manufacturers often struggle to develop custom-fit market access solutions that take all conformity requirements into account. Since September 2021, TUV Rheinland has been an Approved Body, including for the Supply of Machinery (Safety) Regulations 2008 Directive, and can thus undertake UKCA certification for manufacturers of safety products in accordance with Annex IV of the Machinery Directive, and thus support access to the British market.

Contact Details and Archive...
Henderson, NC (27536)

Today

Partly cloudy. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 84F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Widely scattered showers or a thunderstorm this evening. Then partly cloudy. Low 58F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 30%.
Report identifies highest priorities for health care

The 2021 Henderson County Community Health Assessment for Henderson County, which identifies the highest priorities in the county for health care, is now available to the public.

The document highlights the collaborative process the county undertook to determine health priorities for the next three years.

A CHA is an important part of improving and promoting health of county residents. The process results in a public report, which describes health indicators, status of the communitys health, recent changes and health outcomes.

Since January 2021, the Henderson County Department of Public Health has worked with community stakeholders and partners to collect and analyze community data and decide what is most important to act on.

The health priorities identified by the community for 2022-24 are:

Mental health

Substance misuse

Physical activity and nutrition

Safe and affordable housing

Interpersonal violence

Additionally, health disparities were recognized as a common concern among all priorities. An equity-based approach to improve health outcomes will be an inherent part the strategy for forthcoming action plans.

Sharing the CHA findings with stakeholders and community members is only the first step in understanding and addressing priority health needs in the community. Local hospitals and community partners will collaborate to create action teams and develop action plans.

These plans will identify effective strategies, and performance measures for addressing the five health priorities over the next three years. Community input is sought in the next phase as action teams are formed to address the priorities.

Later this year, action plans will be incorporated into the Community Health Improvement Plan (CHIP) and developed into an electronic scorecard accessible online, so anyone can monitor the communitys progress.

Henderson County is part of a larger community health assessment and improvement effort taking place in the region called WNC Healthy Impact. A partnership and coordinated process between public health agencies, hospitals and key regional partners in Western North Carolina, WNC Healthy Impact is a regional effort supported financially by all the hospitals in the region and coordinated by WNC Health Network.

We are grateful that support for this community health assessment work is provided by Pardee UNC Health Care and AdventHealth Hendersonville, said Henderson County Public Health Director Steve Smith. We also appreciate the direction by the Henderson County Board of Health and support of the Henderson County Partnership for Health in completing this assessment.

The full CHA report is available online at www.hendersoncountync.gov/health/page/community-data. Residents may also view the report at the main library and all branches.

For questions about the report, or if you would like more information about serving on a Community Health Assessment Action Team, please contact Camden Stewart, Community Health Assessment Lead at the Henderson County Department of Public Health, at 828-694-6065 or cstewart@hendersoncountync.gov.
The plastic barriers at cash registers have come down at Publix nearly two years after they were installed in another sign that life, or at least the grocery store, is returning to a pre-coronavirus normal.

As a result of the decrease in COVID-19 cases and wide availability of vaccines, Publix is removing the clear plastic shields from registers, customer service desks and pharmacies, spokeswoman Maria Brous said.

Advertisement

Brous said the change took place last week. The barriers went up in late March 2020.

Lakeland-based Publix has nearly 1,300 stores in seven states.

Advertisement

Employees are allowed to decide if they wear a mask or not, regardless of if theyve been vaccinated, unless their job or a local government requires a face covering, Publixs website states. Customers are also not required to wear a mask.

Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared the coronavirus impact in Orlando to be low, which means it no longer recommends that everyone wear masks. People at high risk for severe disease should talk to their doctors about masks.

Since the pandemic began two years ago, more than 5.8 million Floridians have been infected and nearly 72,000 have died, the Florida Department of Health reported Friday.

afuller@orlandosentinel.com
THE best and most direct way of supporting the people of Ukraine is via the Disasters Emergency Committee.

It works with 15 charities, including Oxfam, Christian Aid and Save the Children and the Government has said it will match fund up to 20 million.

To make a donation, visit www.dec.org.uk/appeal/

ukraine-humanitarian-appeal

There are also several international charities you can support as follows:

To support the work of the Ukrainian Red Cross to fund food, water, first aid, medicines, warm clothes and shelter, visit https://bit.ly/3HWNEBV

The UNHCR refugee agency is accepting monetary donations for humanitarian assistance, emergency shelter and relief items like blankets. It will also fund psychological support for refugees.

To make a donation, visit www.unhcr.org/uk

The UNs childrens charity, UNICEF, is accepting donations to help ensure child health and protection services are sustained and families have clean water and food. To make a donation, visit www.unhcr.org/uk

If youre looking to donate to causes working in Ukraine and neighbouring countries, you should follow a few simple rules beforehand, including:

Check the charitys name and registration number at www.gov.uk/checkcharity

 Make sure the charity is genuine before giving any financial information.

 Be careful when responding to emails or clicking on links within them.

 Contact or find out more online about the charity that youre seeking to donate to or work with to understand how they are spending their funds.

 Look out for the fundraising badge on charity fundraising materials. This is the logo which shows that a charity has committed to fundraise in line with the code of fundraising practice.

For information about the Homes for Ukraine scheme and how to become a host, visit www.mothersister

daughter.org.uk

For more useful information about how to help, visit www.ukforukraine.org

If you are raising money, call the Standard news team on (01491) 419444 or email news@henleystandard.co.uk
TWO people from Crazies Hill collected donations to take to the Poland border with Ukraine.

Mark Williams and Rebecca Robinson have friends and work colleagues in Ukraine and felt compelled to help. They set up Crazies Hill Ukraine Aid and raised at least 17,000.

Mr Williams, who is a director of David Lloyd, employs 58 coders and developers from an IT firm called Eleks, which has four offices in Ukraine. Most of the employees are in Kyiv and Lviv and only a few have managed to safely escape with their families while the rest have joined the Ukrainian army or are taking shelter in bunkers.

The Crazies Hill couple filled a van with essentials and equipment and drove to Krakow, Poland to meet other Eleks employees to hand over the donations for transport to Lviv.

Miss Robinson said: Mark is in regular contact with some of his colleagues in Ukraine. Some have fled but others are still working from bomb shelters underground. We were able to ask them what they needed. The couple requested donations of drones, military grade medical kits, tourniquets, long-range radios and special satellites for wi-fi as well as sleeping bags, painkillers, head torches, walking boots, diesel generators, tape and power banks for mobile phones.

Miss Robinson said: We aimed to procure things that most people dont have at home but are desperately needed. All items are validated by the Ukrainian Aid centre in Lviv where they have people on the ground helping. There are bigger organisations which are collecting donations for clothes and food.

Crazies Hill village hall agreed to store all our donations and then we loaded up the van for the journey. We are fundraising too  the goal was originally 10,000, which we exceeded within the first couple of days. The pair travelled with a friend Kate Stevens and took it in turns to drive.

Meanwhile, Val Wyatt Marine in Wargrave raised 6,216 for Ukrainian and British charities. The Cwtch cafe closed in December so marina owner Lisa Anacora organised a sale of the contents.

More than 3,000 has been distributed to Ukrainian aid charities, including the National Bank of Ukraine, the Disasters Emergency Committee and Dobra Fabryka, which is a Polish aid charity planning to evacuate 200 orphans currently living in the war-torn city of Lviv.

The rest was split between mental health charity Mind, and Refuge, which helps victims of domestic violence.

Ms Anacora said: While were carrying on with business as usual, it is impossible to not consider what is happening elsewhere in our world.

We reached out to friends in Poland for advice, who recommended the charities we chose.
MORE than 30,000 could be spent on repairing pavements in Henley town centre.

The town council had previously set a budget of up to 10,000 for repairs to the York stone pavements but a report by the company that cleans them said the cost would be 30,643.

The Washforce report to the councils town and community committee said it had given up counting the number of pieces of gum stuck to the pavements but estimated there were thousands in total.

It recommended running a campaign to highlight the cost of cleaning them off.

The council has previously considered installing special bright pink gum bins to encourage people to use them.

Nicci Taylor, the councils events and markets manager, told a committee meeting that she had seen some green and gold bins which were slightly more Henley.

Councillor David Eggleton said: The chewing gum seems to be right round all the bins. If its all round the bins why dont people just put it in the bin? Its not hard to just put a piece of chewing gum in the bin rather than dropping it on the pavement.

Councillor Kellie Hinton suggested putting photographs of Russian president Vladimir Putin around the town to encourage people to stick their gum to them.

She said: Ive seen in other towns they have pictures in key places of people that arent very favourable so you can stick your chewing gum on their face.

I dont know if theres anyone that we collectively dislike that much at the moment.

Im pretty sure we dont want to shower the town with pictures of Putin but at the same time I wouldnt mind sticking my gum to a photo of him.

Councillor John Hooper suggested residents might enjoy photos of the 16 town councillors.

Councillor Ian Reissmann said: Henleys not alone in this problem and in Ireland theres a chewing gum tax. The Government imposes the tax and they use that money to help clean the pavements. Its a shame that our Government passes legislation that reduces our income and ability to look after Market Place instead of increasing our income so we can keep it clean and tidy as wed like to do. Maybe we should write to our MP.

Councillor Ian Clark said that Glasgow had wardens who fine people 80 for dropping cigarette butts and that Henley could have something similar for chewing gum.

Councillor Donna Crook suggested parking wardens could do this and also fine people who dont pick up after their dog.

She said chewing gum was a filthy habit but she didnt know if people could be discouraged.

The Washforce report said the pavements looked fantastic immediately after being cleaned.

But it added: The results fade very quickly as a result of footfall and the age of the stone.

The extensive use of the market place with vehicles regularly accessing the area during markets does have an additional negative impact.

We have looked at the issue and believe that the stone has become very porous over time. This means that the stone absorbs and attracts dirt very quickly.

Cllr Eggleton said this has been caused by repeated jetwashing.

Washforce recommend using sealant to fill the pores and repel water, which would cost 30,643 and take between four and six weeks.

Sections would need to be closed for three to five days and it would need to be done in warm and dry conditions.

The report said: We appreciate that this is a considerable sum of money. We should also point out that the sealant would wear over time. We estimate that the area may need to be resealed in three to four years time depending on wear, cleaning regime etc.

Town clerk Sheridan Jacklin-Edward said the council had received mixed reviews about the effect of sealing.

The council is also considering repointing between the stones, which would cost about 9,000.

 What do you think? Write to: Letters, Henley Standard, Caxton House, 1 Station Road, Henley or email letters

@henleystandard.co.uk
UCF political science/criminal justice student Ashley Cardona looks at the stats that show lack of representation of Latinos in law fields and wants to make a difference.

Nearly 20% of the U.S. population is Hispanic, according to 2020 U.S. Census data. But as of 2021, only about 6.9% of lawyers in America are Hispanic, data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows.

Advertisement

Cardona hopes to be part of an uptick in those numbers and be the change in that representation by becoming a criminal defense attorney.

I think poor people and people who cannot afford to have good lawyers deserve to have good representation, she said.

Advertisement

Ashley Cardona met with fellow members of The United LatinX Law Association, ULLA, during the Logic Games Workshop Webinar that was hosted by Blueprint LSAT Prep in February. Members learned skills to help prepare them for the logical reasoning section of the LSAT. (Grace Bartlett / Special to the Sentinel)

To help make that dream a reality, Cardona has joined UCF United LatinX Law Association, also known as ULLA.

A first-generation senior, Cardona, said that unlike some of her peers, nobody in her family is in the legal field, leading her to feel overwhelmed and uninformed about the profession she decided to pursue.

When Cardona joined ULLA she met students who had gone through similar life experiences like hers and have helped her gain more knowledge on the legal field. She says that being part of this organization has helped her understand her career path.

I get to speak to students about things like the LSAT, Cardona said. Before ULLA I had no information about it.

According to ULLAs website, the Association strives to establish connections between a diverse group of individuals and aid them in utilizing legal knowledge to promote LatinX/Hispanic culture within the UCF community.

As secretary of ULLA, Cardona said that she performs administrative tasks such as taking attendance at meetings, sending out reminders, updating the roster, and answering emails.

Izabella Tirano, president of ULLA, said that her goal is to aid members with their professional development.

My goal as President is to create a warm community for Hispanic and Latin people and help aid everyone with their professional development in the legal field, Tirano said.

Advertisement

President of The United LatinX Law Association, ULLA, Izabella Tirano displayed a Logic Games Workshop Webinar taught by Blueprint LSAT prep. Members of ULLA were able to attend the workshop either via Zoom or in the Business Administration building. (Grace Bartlett / Special to the Sentinel)

Vice President of ULLA, Miranda Fermine, said that she hopes to expand ULLA through her efforts as the organizations liaison.

I try to network and get the club out to as many people as possible, Fermine said.

Founded in 2020, ULLA says that they encourage their members in any and all fields of legal pursuits.

Fermine is concerned about being a Hispanic woman entering the legal field.

I understand that everything I do I have to do better than my male colleagues, or my caucasian male colleagues, Fermine said.

Tirano said that ULLA, which has 29 current members, also helps its members make friendships within the legal field.

Advertisement

Moving forward we will always have someone we know and that we know in the future too, Tirano said.

ULLA provides its members with LSAT prep seminars, resume-building workshops, help with law school applications and fun activities to help them bond. The club stays active with events and allows members to meet virtually or in person.

Back in February, ULLA held a logic games workshop webinar with Blueprint LSAT preparation that helped prepare members for the logical reasoning section of the LSAT. The event had a high rate of attendance with three members attending the webinar in person and 17 choosing to attend virtually.

ULLA aims to make LSAT preparation affordable with dues being $25 for a single semester and $45 for two semesters.

Tirano said that they keep dues low to keep the club accessible and still be able to provide resources for members such as discounts with LSAT preparation companies like Blueprint.

We do work with people who are not able to afford those dues, Tirano said.

Advertisement

After only joining ULLA in the Fall semester of 2021 and already becoming vice president, Fermine said that ULLA has given her a family at UCF.

My time in ULLA has been wonderful, said Fermine. It has given me a sense of family and a sense of familiarity.

This story is part of a partnership between the Orlando Sentinel and UCFs Nicholson School of Communication and Media
Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, we've all known individuals who have done more than their share to help their neighbors and communities with food, comfort, care, companionship and dozens of other needs. If you know of such a person, you can nominate them to be featured in our upcoming H
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)

LVIV, Ukraine  Russian forces destroyed a theater in Mariupol where hundreds of people were sheltering Wednesday and rained fire on other cities, Ukrainian authorities said, even as the two sides projected optimism over efforts to negotiate an end to the fighting.

The airstrike ripped apart the center of the once-elegant building, where hundreds of civilians had been living since their homes had been destroyed in the fighting, Ukraines foreign ministry said in a statement.

Advertisement

Many people were buried in the rubble, officials said, though there was no immediate word on how many had been killed or injured. Satellite imagery from Monday showed the word children written in large white letters in Russian in front of and behind the building, the Maxar space technology company said.

Another horrendous war crime in Mariupol, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Twitter, calling the bombing a massive Russian attack.

Advertisement

The Russian defense ministry denied bombing the theater or anywhere else in Mariupol on Wednesday.

In Kyiv, residents huddled in homes and shelters amid a citywide curfew that runs until Thursday morning, as Russian troops shelled areas in and around the city, including a residential neighborhood 2.5 kilometers (1.5 miles) from the presidential palace. A 12-story apartment building in central Kyiv erupted in flames after being hit by shrapnel.

And 10 people were killed while standing in line for bread in the northern city of Chernihiv, the Ukrainian General Prosecutors Office said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, meanwhile, went before the U.S. Congress via video and, invoking Pearl Harbor and 9/11, pleaded with America for more weapons and tougher sanctions against Russia, saying: " We need you right now.

U.S. President Joe Biden announced the U.S. is sending an additional $800 million in military aid to Ukraine, including more anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons and drones. He also called Vladimir Putin a war criminal in his sharpest condemnation of the Russian leader since the invasion began.

Ukrainian soldiers and firefighters search in a destroyed building after a bombing attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, March 14, 2022. (Vadim Ghirda/AP)

International pressure against the Kremlin mounted and its isolation deepened as the International Court of Justice, also known as the World Court, ordered Russia to stop attacking Ukraine, though there was little hope it would comply. Also, the 47-nation Council of Europe, the continents foremost human rights body, expelled Russia.

While Moscows ground advance on the Ukrainian capital appeared largely stalled, Putin said the operation was unfolding successfully, in strict accordance with pre-approved plans. He also decried Western sanctions against Moscow, accusing the West of trying to squeeze us, to put pressure on us, to turn us into a weak, dependent country.

Another round of talks between the two sides was scheduled for Wednesday. After Tuesdays negotiations, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said a neutral military status for Ukraine was being seriously discussed by the two sides, while Zelenskyy said Russias demands for ending the war were becoming more realistic.

Advertisement

Hopes for diplomatic progress to end the war rose after Zelenskyy acknowledged Tuesday in the most explicit terms yet that Ukraine is unlikely to realize its goal of joining NATO. Putin has long depicted Ukraines NATO aspirations as a threat to Russia.

Lavrov welcomed Zelenskyys comment and said the businesslike spirit starting to surface in the talks gives hope that we can agree on this issue.

A neutral status is being seriously discussed in connection with security guarantees, Lavrov said on Russian TV. There are concrete formulations that in my view are close to being agreed.

Russias chief negotiator, Vladimir Medinsky, said the sides were discussing a possible compromise for a Ukraine with a smaller, non-aligned military.

Prospects for a diplomatic breakthrough were highly uncertain, however, given the gulf between Ukraines demand that the invading forces withdraw completely and Russias suspected aim of replacing Kyivs Westward-looking government with a pro-Moscow regime.

Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak denied Russian claims that Ukraine was open to adopting a model of neutrality comparable to Sweden or Austria. Podolyak said Ukraine needs powerful allies and clearly defined security guarantees to keep it safe.

Advertisement

Another source of dispute is the status of Crimea, which was seized and annexed by Russia in 2014, and the separatist-held Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, which Russia recognizes as independent. Ukraine considers both part of its territory.

The fighting has sent more than 3 million people fleeing Ukraine, by the United Nations estimate. The U.N. reported that over 700 civilians have been confirmed killed but that the real number is higher.

In going before Congress, Zelenskyy said that Russia has turned the Ukrainian sky into a source of death for thousands of people. But Biden has rejected Zelenskyys requests to send warplanes to Ukraine or establish a no-fly zone over the country because of the risk of triggering war between the U.S. and Russia.

The head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Peter Maurer, arrived in Ukraine to try to obtain greater access for aid groups and increased protection for civilians.

Amid the vast humanitarian crisis caused by the war, the Red Cross has helped evacuate civilians from besieged areas and has delivered 200 tons of aid, including medical supplies, blankets, water and over 5,200 body bags to help ensure the dead are treated in a dignified manner.

Nowhere has suffered more than the encircled city of Mariupol, where local officials say missile strikes and shelling have killed more than 2,300 people. The southern seaport of 430,000 has been under attack for almost all of the three-week war in a siege that has left people struggling for food, water, heat and medicine.

Advertisement

Local authorities said Russian forces took hundreds of people hostage at a Mariupol hospital and were using them as human shields.

Bodies have been buried in trenches in Mariupol, and more corpses lay in the streets and in a hospital basement.

Using the flashlight on his cellphone to illuminate the basement, Dr. Valeriy Drengar pulled back a blanket to show the body of an infant 22 days old. Other wrapped bodies also appeared to be children, given their size.

Breaking News As it happens Be the first to know with email alerts on important breaking stories from the Orlando Sentinel newsroom. >

These are the people we could not save, Drengar said.

Nearly 30,000 people managed to escape the city on Tuesday in thousands of vehicles by way of a humanitarian corridor, city officials said.

But with humanitarian aid unable to get in amid the constant bombardment, people burn scraps of furniture to warm their hands and cook the little food still available.

Advertisement

Kyiv regional leader Oleksiy Kuleba said Russian forces had intensified fighting in the Kyiv suburbs and a highway leading west, and across the capital region, kindergartens, museums, churches, residential blocks and engineering infrastructure are suffering from the endless firing.

In other developments, the mayor of the city of Melitopol, who was seized by Russian forces five days ago, has been freed, said Zelenskyy chief of staff Andriy Yermak. No details were given about how he became free.

Ukraine also appeared to have successes, with satellite photos from Planet Labs PBC analyzed by The Associated Press showing helicopters and vehicles ablaze at the Russian-held Kherson airport and air base after a suspected Ukrainian strike on Tuesday.

Associated Press journalists around the world contributed to this report.
We're always interested in hearing about news in our community. Let us know what's going on!

Submit
Today, Secretary Xavier Becerra and leaders across the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released the following statements celebrating the one-year anniversary of President Joe Bidens enactment of the American Rescue Plan on March 11, 2021:

Secretary Xavier Becerra: President Bidens American Rescue Plan has been a game-changer, fueling our work to build our nation back healthier. The funding has helped advance our top priorities: tackling the COVID-19 pandemic, expanding health care access, reducing health care costs, closing health disparities, and strengthening behavioral health. This law, and the investments made by HHS, make one thing clear: the Biden-Harris Administration is delivering on its promise to build a healthier America. Today, we celebrate all the American Rescue Plan has made possible over the past year, and restate our unwavering commitment to promoting the health and well-being of all Americans.

Administration for Children and Families Acting Assistant Secretary Jennifer Cannistra: The American Rescue Plan is a once in a generation opportunity to lift children, youth, families, and individuals from poverty and create supportive environments where they can collectively thrive. Our goal at ACF is to help communities use their ARP funds in bold and innovative ways to meet their unique needs.

Administration for Community Living Principal Deputy Administrator Alison Barkoff: The American Rescue Plan provided more than $1.4 billion to help older adults, particularly those in underserved communities, recover from the pandemic. With this funding, the aging services network in every state is providing home-delivered meals and in-home supportive services, assisting family caregivers, and much more. It also provided funding to expand the public health workforce within the aging and disability networks to continue to fight COVID-19 and to provide critical services like helping people move from high-risk congregate settings to homes in the community. This represents a crucial investment in supporting the health and well-being of older adults and people with disabilities, who continue to face significantly increased risks from COVID-19.

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure: The American Rescue Plan expanded access to affordable coverage, bringing peace of mind to millions of individuals and families. The historic bill also expanded home- and community-based care for seniors and people with disabilities, and beginning in April, states will have the option to expand postpartum Medicaid coverage for a full year, up from just 60 days. These important steps will expand access to care at critical times in many peoples lives, while giving them the flexibility to live safely and independently in their homes and communities.

Health Resources and Services Administration Administrator Carole Johnson: Thanks to the American Rescue Plan, HRSA has led the way in providing access to essential health care and services to underserved and rural populations across the country. From supporting health centers on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic to bolstering rural hospitals and clinics COVID response to building trusted messengers to increase vaccination and growing the health workforce, HRSA has been able to use the American Rescue Plan to support critical needs across this country this year.

Indian Health Service Acting Deputy Director Elizabeth Fowler: The American Rescue Plan Act appropriated a historic $6 billion to the IHS for expanded health care services, lost third party revenue, and pandemic related activities such as delivering vaccines and tests to prevent the spread of COVID-19. This investment also strengthened the public health workforce in Indian Country, supported mental health and substance abuse prevention and treatment and helped us meet facility and equipment needs related to the pandemic. These resources have made a powerful impact in American Indian and Alaska Native communities. We are grateful for these critical resources and will continue to support IHS, tribal, and urban Indian organizations in implementing these funds.

Some highlights of major HHS investments made possible by the American Rescue Plan over the past year are:

Tackling the COVID-19 pandemic

Invested $7.6 billion in health centers to prevent, mitigate, and respond to COVID-19, as well as retain essential health care providers, maintain and expand services, and improve health care facilities and equipment. Administered nearly 20 million COVID-19 vaccines in underserved communities across the country. Supported the ongoing distribution of 50 million free, at-home self-tests through community health centers and rural health clinics to patients and community members. Distributed N95 masks to individuals and families in some of the hardest hit communities in America through HRSA-supported community health centers and rural health clinics.

Invested $1 billion in major construction and renovation projects in health centers nationwide to help serve more patients and increase health care access.

Invested $32 million in training and technical assistance partners for health center staff training and support regarding equitable access to COVID-19 vaccination, testing, and treatment.

Provided $20 million to Native Hawaiian health systems to support life-saving resources and care for Native Hawaiian communities experiencing barriers to accessing health care services, including geographic isolation.

Provided reimbursement for COVID-19 vaccine administration, testing, and treatment for the uninsured.

Funded nearly 160 organizations conducting vaccine education and outreach to support trusted messengers building vaccine confidence in underserved communities in all 50 states.

Provided $100 million to strengthen the Medical Reserve Corps (MRC), a network of medical and public health volunteers organized locally to improve the health of their communities. The MRC has added more than 100,000 volunteers since the beginning of the pandemic.

Provided easier access to testing for the uninsured, including investing nearly $5 billion to cover testing costs for providers serving the uninsured.

Provided $121 million to expand voluntary home visiting to support pregnancy education, parenting skill-building, and supplies for pregnant women and families living in communities at-risk for poor maternal and child health outcomes.

Released $1 billion Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) pandemic emergency assistance funds so that states, territories, and tribes can provide immediate economic relief to families with the lowest incomes who are unable to meet their added expenses or debt due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Awarded $350 million to support state and community efforts to prevent and respond to child abuse and neglect during a time when children and families are experiencing increased hardship as a result of the pandemic.

Released $39 billion in child care relief funds to provide relief for child care providers and provide support for families that need help affording child care in the wake of the COVID-19 health emergency.

Expanding Access to Care and Reducing Health Care Costs

Launched the 2021 Special Enrollment Period on HealthCare.gov from February 15, 2021 through August 15, 2021, that resulted in a total of 2.8 million people newly gaining coverage through federal and state-based Marketplaces.

Launched 2022 Open Enrollment Period with an extended period in most Marketplaces from November 1, 2021 through January 15, 2022, with a record 14.5 million people signing up for coverage through federal and state-based Marketplaces.

Lowered costs and increased enrollment to record levels resulting in nearly six million people who have newly gained coverage under the Administration.

Provided affordable health insurance plans with record-low premiums on HealthCare.gov, where four out of five people could find a plan for $10 or less per month with the newly expanded financial assistance from the American Rescue Plan.

Investing in rural health

Invested $8.5 billion in rural payments to providers and suppliers who serve rural Medicaid, Children's Health Insurance Program, and Medicare beneficiaries to help them keep their doors open, address workforce challenges, and make up for the lost revenues and increased expenses caused by the pandemic.

Provided nearly $460 million to over 4,500 Medicare-certified Rural Health Clinics in 45 states for COVID-19 testing and mitigation to expand access to testing for rural residents.

Provided $398 million to 1,540 hospitals to help small rural hospitals and Critical Access Hospitals maintain and increase testing and expand mitigation activities tailored to local community needs.

Awarded $97 million to nearly 2,000 Medicare-certified Rural Health Clinics in 44 states to increase COVID-19 vaccine confidence in rural communities.

Investing in tribal health

Distributed more than $9 billion to support COVID-19 mitigation in Indian Country through the Indian Health Service, in consultation with tribal governmentsnearly $6 billion from the American Rescue Plan Act. These resources have supported critical response activities, such as drive-thru testing sites, community vaccine distribution efforts, and the continued provision of high-quality health care in Indian Country.

Investing in the health care workforce

Investing in behavioral health
Orlando residents would benefit from adding a penny to the sales tax by seeing the regions bus fleet double; its commuter rail system add night and weekend service and a route to the airport; and better technology and wider roads to prevent traffic congestion, Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings told the City Council.

Demings briefed city commissioners for about an hour Monday morning as he crisscrosses the county with his pitch to place a sales tax increase on Novembers ballot, in hopes of beginning collections next year. If approved, the sales tax would increase to 7.5% and rake in an estimated $600 million annually, with cities getting a cut for their own uses.

Advertisement

If we want to truly transform our community in terms of having multimodal transportation options with a dedicated funding source, I believe the sales tax is the best option we have, Demings said.

After the presentation, Mayor Buddy Dyer, who has repeatedly vowed to back the effort, said the city would bring forward a resolution supporting the measure.

Advertisement

Sales tax increases are seen as a regressive tax, meaning that people at lower income levels face a higher financial burden.

Demings said county officials are looking into ways to lower the cost of transportation for working-class residents, including the potential for free or reduced fares for low-income earners, or rolling back the local-option gas tax, but such ideas are still under review.

Under the proposal, 45% of the new tax dollars would go toward the transit system in the county, including expanding the Lynx bus fleet; running and growing the SunRail commuter rail, and rapid bus service on popular corridors like Semoran Boulevard and the tourist district.

Breaking News As it happens Be the first to know with email alerts on important breaking stories from the Orlando Sentinel newsroom. >

Another 45% would go toward the county to cover widening of roads, operating costs and other costs associated with arteries that cut across municipalities, including Colonial Drive, Orange Blossom Trail and Semoran Boulevard, Demings said.

The remaining 10% of dollars would be divvied up among 11 cities and towns within the county.

An added benefit for Orlando is its costs associated with funding the bus service would be absorbed by the tax, as well as projects along some of its busiest roadways.

I think the biggest piece of it is the transit piece, Dyer said after the presentation. If we did nothing more than the 45% thats going to go toward the robust transit system, thatd be a game-changing situation.

Demings has public hearings scheduled up until a Board of County Commissioners hearing on April 26, when officials will vote whether to put the issue in front of voters in November. If commissioners agree, a majority of voters would have to approve the tax increase at the ballot box.

Advertisement

We do have to get in front of something in order to prevent utter calamities from occurring from further traffic congestion that is really not in the best interests of the quality of life for our residents of Central Florida, Demings said.

rygillespie@orlandosentinel.com
By Zhang Yiwei and Li Guanghui

WAU, South Sudan, March 14  Major General Marco Machado, chief of general staff of the UN Mission in the Republic of South Sudan (UNMISS), recently inspected the 12th Chinese peacekeeping engineering contingent to South Sudan.

Maj. Gen. Marco Machado listened to the Chinese peacekeeping contingents work report and inspected their peacekeeping equipment including communications devices, weapons, medical apparatus, and engineering and surveying devices. He stated that the UNMISS will provide assistance to the Chinese peacekeepers in their challenges and difficulties. At the same time, he also expressed the gratitude for their outstanding contributions to the peacekeeping cause and the construction and development of South Sudan.

It is learned that the engineering contingent is mainly comprised of a brigade of the 82nd Group Army under the PLA Central Theater Command, which includes sappers, guards, repair, logistics, and medical units. Since assigned to the mission area last December, the contingent has completed a series of tasks from repairing roads outside the UN compound in Wau, surveying for road construction on the key supply line, to culvert pipe laying at the UN Camp in Kuajok.

To date, all the three engineering support teams have been deployed to the provisional barracks 100km away for the construction of the main supply line.

Work briefing

Equipment inspection

Equipment inspection
When Florida legislators claim they are safeguarding the publics right to know, be afraid. Be very afraid.

Republican senators on Thursday rushed through a last-minute bill (HB 7049) that allows legal notices to shift from printed newspapers to websites run by county governments  an idea fraught with potential problems and rejected in previous sessions.

Advertisement

These fine print notices notify the public about foreclosures, divorce petitions, new construction projects, government meetings and bid proposals. If your neighbors home is being converted to a law office, your first and perhaps only official notification of it will be through a public notice in your local newspaper.

A legal notice in the Sun Sentinel. (Sun Sentinel )

Lawmakers have decided that the public would be better served if these important notices disappear from newspapers permanently and migrate to county-run websites. If the goal is to hide information from the public, its hard to think of a more effective way to do it than this.

Advertisement

The first of many reasons to be suspicious is that there has been no public clamor for this bill.

In fact, lawmakers struck a compromise last year with the Florida Press Association, a statewide lobby group for the newspaper industry. That compromise (which advanced as HB 35 in the 2021 session), required quarterly reports and included a revamped statewide legal notices website, floridapublicnotices.com. It became law Jan. 1. Barely two months later, the same lawmakers unraveled last years work and replaced it with more change that will only confuse consumers.

The obvious question is why. The obvious answer is that Tallahassee politicians want to retaliate in the only way they can against newspapers  including this one  that cover them, investigate them and editorially hold them accountable for their decisions. Theyre targeting our precarious bottom line.

The perennial legislative meddling in how legal notices are published goes back at least a decade. It borders on an obsession, especially in the House, with its greater number of thin-skinned politicians nursing grudges over critical stories in their hometown papers.

But this session, not a single senator agreed to sponsor a version of the bill. It was no ones priority. So Senate President Wilton Simpson had to use sneaky, procedural tricks to move the 40-page bill in position for a vote.

The House bill passed March 2 on a 78-39 vote. It went to the Senate, where Simpson steered it to one committee, where it was debated in the last week of session and passed on a 9-6 vote, with nine Republicans voting yes and Republican Sen. Jeff Brandes and five Democrats voting no.

Typically, a Senate bill is sent to two or three committees, but this bill got as little scrutiny as possible with one perfunctory Senate hearing in the sessions frantic final week. Some senators didnt even grasp the irony that they were minimizing public input on a bill while claiming they were protecting the public right to know.

Political Pulse Weekly Get latest updates political news from Central Florida and across the state. >

More people will be able to see more notices for less money than weve ever had in history, said the bills sponsor, Sen. Jason Brodeur, R-Sanford, who criticized the Orlando Sentinel, during a Rules Committee hearing for burying public notices on its website below games and puzzles.

Advertisement

Brodeur called his bill a step forward because it will allow people to peruse legal ads for free on a laptop in a library, rather than having to buy a newspaper.

But even Florida TaxWatch warns against more reliance on the internet for public notices, especially in rural and low-income areas where service is spotty and residents dont own computers or cant afford high-speed Internet. At the Senate hearing, a publisher from rural Madison, east of Tallahassee, described turtle slow internet that blocks many citizens from seeing the notices.

In a Senate emotionally spent after debates about race, homophobia and book censorship in schools, the bill drew little attention Thursday and passed 26 to 13 with the support of Democrats Janet Cruz of Tampa and Darryl Rouson of St. Petersburg. Cruz cited a provision exempting free papers from the bills changes, such as La Gaceta, which is widely read in her diverse district.

Last-minute legislative deals are almost always not in the public interest. By habitually expanding the number of public records exemptions and by conducting so much business in secret, the Legislature has forfeited any claims of expertise in the publics right to know.

That includes deciding how legal notices reach the general public.

The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson, Opinion Editor Krys Fluker, Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick and El Sentinel Editor Jennifer Marcial Ocasio. The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, and Anderson. To contact us, email at insight@sun-sentinel.com.
IHG Hotels & Resorts, one of the world's leading hospitality companies, has announced the opening of the first holiday Inn in Bangladesh. Holiday Inn, one of the world's most iconic and trusted brands, has welcomed a new property in the heart of Dhaka. Holiday Inn Dhaka City Cent re has opened its doors and is welcoming guests to experience the 'Brighter Side of Travel'.

Holiday Inn Dhaka City Centre located in the heart of the city, only meters away from all major public transport and the diplomatic and commercial districts, making it a great choice for those looking for a warm welcome and a place to rest while visiting the capital.

The hotel's 187 modern guest rooms and suites have uninterrupted views of the Lake Hatirjheel or Dhaka City and have been designed around the concept of 'Central Living', allowing for a more central space for relaxing and casual working. Some rooms are fitted out with a sofa bed providing guests with a flexible space for watching TV, lounging, or working, whilst also providing families the flexibility to have another sleeping space for children. For those travelling for business, Holiday Inn Dhaka City Centre also has a dedicated Business Centre, meeting spaces with daylight that can accommodate up to 100 people, and a secured parking.

Holiday Inn Dhaka City Centre has five restaurant and bars that offers indoor, alfresco and poolside dining venues. Guests can start the day with a filling breakfast at Attitude restaurant, indulge in tasty Bangladeshi, Indian & Sri Lankan flavours at "THE ILISH" or simply unwind after a day at the Lobby Bar. The Rooftop Poolside provides a serene and scenic view to calm your senses after a tiring day.

For those looking to keep up their fitness regimes, there is a fully equipped gym on the top floor, including a sauna with great views of the City lights & skyline.

As part of IHG Hotels & Resorts, guests at Holiday Inn Dhaka City Centre can stay with confidence thanks to the IHG Clean Promise and enhanced IHG Way of Clean procedures using science-led protocols and service measures in partnership with industry leading experts Cleveland Clinic, Ecolab and Diversey. Find out more at http://www.ihg.com/clean.

Hotel website
Fairmont Jaipur today announced the appointment of Ms. Prisha Lamba as the luxury property's new Director of Marketing and Communications. With a rich experience spanning over 14 years, Prisha is sure to be an asset to the marquee hotel in this role. She joins Fairmont Jaipur with a wealth of knowledge and an extensive background in the hospitality and trade industry.

Prisha will be responsible for spearheading the conception and execution of innovative marketing and communication strategies that help drive overall brand development and growth at Fairmont Jaipur. Prisha's role will help Fairmont Jaipur to effectively convey the business issues they resolve, nurture relationships with prospective clients and communicate their success stories as well as the value they deliver. She will also be responsible for planning and implementing strategies to support the hotel's unrivalled positioning.

Prisha's last assignment was with Hyatt Regency Gurgaon where she served as a Marketing Communications Manager. Prior to that, she has worked with the Four Seasons Hotel in Mumbai, Radisson Gurugram and 32nd Avenue serving various marketing roles. Throughout her career, Prisha has focused on the development, implementation and management of comprehensive marketing campaigns integrated content creation, public relations, social media, and strategic planning.
Flemings Hotels has appointed Dutchman Rob Hornman as its new CEO. In his new position, the former Managing Director is now responsible for the day-to-day operations, strategic reorientation and growth direction of Flemings Hotels. The experienced hotel specialist has been associated with the family business for a long time and has played an important role in its success. He reports to Filip Blodinger, Chairman of the Flemings Group. Rob Hornman has worked in the hotel industry for over 30 years and has extensive international experience.

Further growth for Flemings Hotels

Before becoming Managing Director of Flemings Hotels, Rob Hornman had already worked with the family business. In his role as CEO of WorldHotels, he was already a partner in the hotel chain from 2008 to 2014. Later, between 2015 and 2018, he supported Flemings Hotels as a consultant. With his excellent knowledge of the company and the sector, he is the perfect leader for strategic reorientation and the growth direction. The focus is on the further expansion of Flemings. Flemings Hotels recently announced the Metropolitan Hotel by Flemings as the first hotel in the new Collection portfolio. Internally, focus points such as sustainability and digitization are on the agenda of the 54-year-old hospitality expert. The Flemings Hotels under CEO Rob Hornman also attach great importance to the theme of gastronomy. "I am proud of the fact that despite the fact that the hospitality sector has not yet recovered from the pandemic, Flemings can continue to invest. In the spring, the new skyline restaurant Occhio d'Oro will open in the flagship Flemings Selection Frankfurt-City. The renovation of the Italian top-class restaurant involves a multi-million investment. In addition, our focus is really on growth. We recently appointed Wilma Kellermann-Baans, an experienced business development expert. We are looking for new hotels together with her. We are thinking here mainly of takeovers of existing hotels. With Flemings, Flemings Express, and the Flemings Collection Hotels, brands have a portfolio with which we can almost always offer a suitable solution. There are also great opportunities for Flemings Hotels in the Netherlands. It is one of my personal goals to open a hotel in one of the major cities in the Netherlands in the near future. "says Rob Hornman.

International experience

Rob Hornman was CCO and Senior Vice President Global Supplier Relations for HRS before joining Flemings Hotels. After studying hotel management in the Netherlands, and his first job at the then Amsterdam Sonesta Hotel (now Renaissance Amsterdam), his way quickly led to Accor. After several phases in Asia, he rose to the position of Vice President Global Field Sales & Business Development at the Accor headquarters in Paris. In 2005 he became Managing Director of Accor Dorint SMARD GmbH and was appointed Vice President Germany, Central Europe, and Eastern Countries at Sofitel. From 2008 to 2014, Rob Hornman was CEO at WorldHotels. In 2014 he founded Ignition Hospitality, a boutique consultancy for the hotel industry. In 2019 he then switched to the leading hotel platform HRS. As a former member of the International Advisory Board and guest lecturer, Rob Hornman maintains close ties with the Ecole Hoteliere de Lausanne.
What is servitization? Its origins go back to 1988, Sandra Vandermerwe and Juan Rada presented what they termed the servitization of business, explaining how more and more corporations were adding value to their core corporate offerings through services.  For some well-intended temporal perspective here, this was the year before Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web while working at CERN and a full eleven years before Kevin Ashton coined the term Internet of Things during his time at Procter & Gamble.  Vandermerwe and Rada observed that companies were offering bundles of customer-focused combinations of goods, services, support, self-service, and knowledge, with services beginning to dominate.

The dominance of services, then, and the transformation of business models to accommodate this, is not a new phenomenon. However, servitization has since received extensive attention from both academia and industry, occasioning many a special-issue journal and conference. Where once service contracts were as literal as having an agreement for a technician to come and perform maintenance on your boiler when it broke down, both the object of servitization and the means by which it is realized have evolved significantly.

As increased digitalization disrupts the manufacturing industry, servitization could now be considered the customer-facing component of Industry 4.0. Its implementation, in turn, may rely on shifts from purchase to subscription models, to name just one possible manifestation of the transformation it entails.

A definition of servitization for today

What is servitization? Far from being a cosmetic touch-up to lure in customers in an attempt to cling onto market relevance, it becomes apparent that servitization today warrants far-reaching, deep transformation. If companies are to appeal to digital natives while being mindful of possible reluctance in the face of change, their efforts must be people-centric, striking the balance between leveraging technology and catering to tangible customer needs. Tapping into the financial resilience and opportunities for growth servitization promises in todays market environment therefore requires service design thinking. And so we see that best practice in servitization, defined in Industrial Marketing Management as

the transformational processes whereby a company shifts from a product-centric to a service-centric business model and logic, is now integrally linked to the holistic concepts of people-centric business transformation and service design.

An era of servitization acceleration

As you can imagine, over the past twenty to thirty years, technological innovation has opened up entirely new avenues via which to pursue people-centric transformation, providing new tools to be instrumentalized in service design. Big data, not least gathered from opportunely positioned sensors, delivers a unique opportunity to address upcoming issues before they have even materialized. This sees providers transition from a trouble-shooting, after-the-fact remedy approach to the proactive provision of uninterrupted services. Take printers ordering their own refill cartridges, for instance. On a larger scale, while real-time alerts to system failure and the automatic dispatch of qualified technicians can help mitigate the often exorbitant costs and downstream ramifications of outages on production lines, say, identifying the need for replacement parts or maintenance ahead of time could eliminate this friction altogether. In this way, the Internet of Things enables providers to add service guarantees to their products, employing a predictive approach to alleviate pain points for customers.

Business model innovation

From product-only to product-service bundles

Incorporating services in product-driven enterprises requires companies to rethink their business models. By carefully considering how they create, capture and deliver value, companies can augment their existing offerings. Bearing in mind the constant, natural cycle of product maturity, companies may find that product-service bundles offer a contemporary alternative to product-only offerings.

Offering customers a one-stop shop where they can both purchase a car and seek the relevant financing, for example, side-steps any loss of sales associated with a lack of funding. Ensuring the relevant services are provided in a timely, convenient manner adds value for the customer by eliminating unnecessary delays and the parallel admin of explaining their financing requirements to a service provider focused solely on issuing loans or leases. This comes with the elegant side-effect for garages of profiting on the financing services as well as the sale of the vehicle. This sees companies reassess where their profit pools lie and tailor their business models to tap into a greater share of potential revenues.

Business model innovation challenges

As with any far-reaching change, business model adaptations are not without their challenges. While smaller companies may be able to implement changes with relative ease by virtue of having a small team thinking along the same lines, larger companies may find this much more complicated.

Challenge number one may come as early as agreeing on what the desired outcome is. What should the new business model look like? Even once consensus is reached among management, this vision then needs to be clearly communicated to the rest of the company. At which point it may be well or less well received.

This opens the can of worms that is employee satisfaction and retention, before youve even considered the time- and resource-intensive pursuit of upskilling or reskilling your workforce. Will your existing staff slot into the newly emerging framework? How will you value legacy skills while also onboarding for new ones? Job cuts? Lets hope not, but changes to daily working life are likely to ensue. Will you encounter resistance? If so, will this lead to transformation stagnation? Will those leading the way have the right set of hard and soft skills to lead in this era?

At the implementation level, the interdependencies at play within companies provide an intricately interwoven environment in which cutting one string could lead to another weaving point unravelling entirely. These issues either have to be pre-empted and mitigated or identified and managed. Seeking to realize several budding ideas for optimization, however excellent these may be in isolation, can reveal conflicting intersections or result in parallel business models potentially competing with one another within a company. Not to mention the implications of differing project horizons, with business model tweaks in the short, medium and long term vying for harmony.

There are no step-by-step instructions for company-specific servitization. Some experimentation may be required along the way. Experimentation, clearly, is the antithesis of reliability. Will your brand suffer a setback if an interim stage of your transition is not cohesive with the rest of your offerings or does not please your core customers?

From product to service centricity

Another factor to consider as regards servitization is the diverging nature of product versus service design. Product design affords somewhat greater scope for the gradual emergence of the ideal product. Product design stages need not be continuous perfection  the end result is what counts. Should it become necessary, there may be sufficient room for maneuver to delay a product launch in the interests of it hitting the market at a time when it will resonate with consumers. Coupled with the fact that a product can be bought now and consumed or used later, this means that manufacturers efforts on the production side are somewhat split from the use of the product by customers.

In contrast, service providers, forming part of the service themselves, are integral to the services success of implementation at the time of consumption. This must alter the nature of the design approach.

Where quality controls for products can ascertain 100% replication and standardization, the human factor in service provision makes this less attainable. In addition, where products can be customized to a certain degree provided the prerequisite infrastructure and/or manpower is available, the potential for personalization in services is seemingly endless. This poses unique challenges for scalability, with service providers needing to weigh personalization up against profitability.

Digitalization as part of a people-centric transformation

The temptation is real to see the plethora of technological opportunities out there and feed a selection into existing offerings as a way to servitize. However, if servitization is to be a true success, it must start with the customer. A people-centric transformation requires companies to engage with users and consider the value chain as a whole, asking:

What do our customers need and how can we provide that?

What touchpoints can we identify and how can we improve the customer experience?

What problems are our customers encountering and how can we solve these?

What do our customers like about us specifically and how can we give them more?

And lastly:

Can any of this be done better through digitalization?

This is a clear no to digitalization for digitalizations sake. No to tech push and yes to market pull. Yes to inverting the process, to taking care not to rely on data alone, and to seeing the bigger picture.

This means being lean and addressing trade-offs. Adopting a no-waste approach to corporate transformation and adamantly refusing to create services nobody actually wants. Maintaining a firm grip on value creation and acknowledging the certainty that your service cant do everything for everyone. Decide what you want your company to be. Stick with what you know and stand out from the crowd by elevating your USP. Concentrate on meeting your customers needs, adding in features as required. No bloatware.

So, what is servitization? In this era it is synonymous with digital transformation. Offering customers end-to-end solutions thanks to servitization relieves them of at least some of the stress the digital world has in store. When servitization is done well, it leaves customers feeling cocooned in service provision. Comfortable with a product they can trust and happy to rely on services when they need them, sometimes even before they know they do.

About EHL Group

EHL Group encompasses a portfolio of specialized business units that deliver hospitality management education and innovation worldwide. Headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland, the Group includes:

EHL Ecole hoteliere de Lausanne is an ambassador for traditional Swiss hospitality and has been a pioneer in hospitality education since 1893 with over 25,000 alumni worldwide and over 120 nationalities. EHL is the world's first hospitality management school that provides undergraduate and graduate programs at its campuses in Lausanne, Singapore and Chur-Passugg, as well as online learning solutions. The university of applied sciences is ranked n1 by QS World University Rankings by subject and CEOWorld Magazine, and its gastronomic restaurant is the world's only educational establishment to hold a Michelin Star for a third consecutive year.

EHL Swiss School of Tourism and Hospitality has been one of the leading hospitality management colleges for hotel specialists for over 50 years. The College delivers Swiss-accredited federal diplomas of vocational education and training and of higher education in its 19th century spa-hotel in Chur-Passugg, Graubunden, to Swiss and international students from 30 countries.

EHL Advisory Services is the largest Swiss hospitality advisory company specializing in service culture implementation, business consulting, as well as the development and quality assurance of learning centers. EHL Advisory Services has offices in Lausanne, Beijing, Shanghai and New Delhi and has delivered mandates in more than 60 countries over the past 40 years.

www.ehlgroup.com

Ecole hoteliere de Lausanne

Communications Department

+41 21 785 1354

EHL

View source
Federal infrastructure czar Mitch Landrieu is right  the way to fund and build major projects under the Infrastructure Investment and Job Act (IIJA) is to insist on a rational process and tight coordination between the federal government and the states.

To understand why, look no further than Florida  where arbitrary federal funding decisions and an outbreak of local politics driven by special interests are threatening to send a major bipartisan infrastructure project off the rails.

Advertisement

The situation is a textbook example of what can go wrong when the planning process is not laser-focused on maximum long-term impact, and when state and local actors pull in different directions.

Sadek Wahba, who lives in Miami, is a member of the Wilson Centers Global Advisory Council, the U.S. key nonpartisan policy forum for tackling global issues, and a senior fellow at the Development Research Institute, NYU. - Original Credit: Courtesy photo (Courtesy photo)

The project in question is the Everglades Restoration Initiatives and its centerpiece, the proposed Everglades Agricultural Area (EAA) Reservoir. The restoration is due to receive $1.1 billion in federal funding under the IIJA. The reservoir, a 50-50 state/federal program budgeted at $3.4-3.5 billion, has strong bipartisan support  noteworthy in a state as divided as Florida.

Advertisement

The broad-based coalition behind it brings together major expert advocacy groups such as the Everglades Foundation as well as the states leading Republicans  Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sens. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott. It is a microcosm of the bipartisanship that created the IIJA in the first place.

The restoration and the reservoir project are an attempt to avert a major catastrophe that is developing in the Everglades, where climate impacts and decades of development threaten the ecosystem and the economy.

That means that the Everglades projects are not only important in themselves. They point the way to global water infrastructure solutions that the U.S. can export, enhancing our global prestige ... if we can successfully fund and build the projects. At the moment, the outlook is not good.

Problems began at the federal level, where politically motivated decisions channeled funds not toward the reservoir but rather toward other projects.

While the Biden administration has stated numerous times that it wants to avoid roads to nowhere  and while Landrieu and his Cabinet-level White House Infrastructure Task Force are trying their best  it is inevitable that some projects will slip through the net.

Political Pulse Weekly Get latest updates political news from Central Florida and across the state. >

Disruption has also set in on the local level. The Florida Senate passed a bill, SB 2508, that in its original form required the South Florida Water Management District to deprioritize the reservoir and divert more water to agriculture. Backed by agricultural interests, the measure has since been amended after opposition by groups such as The Everglades Foundation and the intervention of Gov. DeSantis  but it still prioritizes agriculture in times of drought and makes hundreds of millions of dollars in Everglades funding contingent on its passage.

And that is where we stand  with misdirected federal funds, disruptive and destructive local interests, and an urgently needed project paralyzed and at risk.

What must happen? In the short term, funds need to be appropriated to the reservoir project. And local decision-makers need to support Landrieus continued efforts to place local infrastructure coordinators in every state, follow the federal guidebook for infrastructure planning and face down state interests trying to operate outside of federal oversight.

Advertisement

In the longer term, we must act decisively to decouple infrastructure investment and development from short-term political cycles and interests  perhaps via an Infrastructure Bank modeled on the World Bank, as I have suggested.

What is most painfully evident is that we are at a fork in the road. If we can make the Everglades project a success, we can showcase it to the rest of the world.

The Everglades reservoir should not only go forward  it should be in the spotlight at COP27, the next United Nations climate conference. There, it can serve as an example for nations that are struggling with their own grave water crises  and expand our global influence. This can happen  if we take a serious approach to serious infrastructure, climate and economic challenges, and show the way.

Sadek Wahba, who lives in Miami, is a member of the Wilson Centers Global Advisory Council, the U.S. key nonpartisan policy forum for tackling global issues, and a senior fellow at the Development Research Institute, NYU.
Caravan or travel trailer tourism has long been a popular niche segment within experiential tourism around the world, but its appeal has surged in the post-pandemic era. Vacations at motorable destinations and caravan tourism have grown in popularity since restrictions were eased and people began to travel again as it offers people affordability, flexibility, and freedom, as well as safety, privacy, and the possibility to completely isolate oneself, all of which have become important considerations for travelers in the COVID-world.

Caravan tourism is already well-established in countries like the US, Australia, New Zealand, and parts of North America and Europe and has been one of the quickest to recover after the pandemic. Caravan holidays, for instance, contribute GBP 9.3 billion to the British economy every year, employing over 130,000 people. Meanwhile, a recent study shows that the leisure vehicle tourism market contributed around EUR 14 billion to the German economy over the last two years, with overnight stays increasing by 50% to over 10 million in 2020. Similarly, Australias camping and caravan industry which employed 53,000 people and generated 12 million trips pre-COVID, has been bouncing back faster compared to other travel segments, with one in three Australians undertaking a caravan or camping trip in the first quarter of 2021.

The concept of caravan trips is relatively new in India and is still at a nascent stage. Although initially pitched as an inbound traveler-friendly activity, the concept of camping and backpacking to explore offbeat destinations is catching on with Indian travelers as well, thanks to the countrys improving road infrastructure. As the culture of road trips, slow travel, and experiential travel gain traction, demand for caravan tourism is also expected to pick up pace in India. Caravan tourism can become a viable option at remote tourism destinations that lack quality accommodation, or in places where hotel construction is not feasible.

Lack of camping sites, infrastructure, and basic amenities, absence of standard rules and compliances across states, non-uniform designs, and lack of homogenous price points are some of the challenges that have hampered the acceptance of this segment previously. The Ministry of Tourism has introduced a Caravan Tourism policy to help address some of these concerns. Moreover, in the last two years, tourism boards of some states such as Karnataka, Maharashtra, and Kerala have also introduced policies and initiatives to promote sustainable caravan tourism in their respective states, having realized the potential of this niche segment, especially in making unexplored locations into attractive tourist destinations. Some of the incentives on offer include the construction of caravan parks to park tourism campers and motor homes under public-private partnerships, the waiver of electricity charges and stamp duties, and GST refund for tour operators, etc. While these policies and initiatives are a step in the right direction, government agencies and industry stakeholders should collaborate to evaluate some of the global best practices while executing the next steps to make caravan tourism successful in the country.

Additional Contributor to this article: Kavya Jain, Intern at HVS ANAROCK
With Russian tanks rolling into the outskirts Kyiv and economies everywhere facing the threat of rising energy costs, the hard realities of the power wielded by dominant fuel producers put our allies security in play.

But an energy revolution in natural gas and wind and solar production here in the US has the medium-term potential to undercut Russias ability to weaponize its energy exports. And if the United States invests in the infrastructure necessary to sustain and accelerate this phenomenon, we will further erode the ability of tyrants the world over to play games with global energy supplies.

Texas, which now leads the nation in both fossil fuel and renewable energy production, sits at the epicenter of this fundamental power shift. Over the last two decades, a revolution in cheap shale gas and renewable energy production, has led the US to become the largest exporter of natural gas in the world, with exports of 11.5 billion cubic feet per day expected in 2022, according to the U.S Department of Energy. American LNG exports now rank ahead of Qatar, Australia, and fourth-ranked Russia.

Critical to the success of U.S. gas exports will be the ability of renewables to provide an ever-increasing share of U.S. electricity generation at low cost. In 2021, the United States produced just shy of 600 terawatt hours of non-hydro renewable power (wind and solar), or about 14 percent of the total from utility-scale generation facilities, according to the Energy Department. Gas, after gaining market share at coals expense for years, is expected to drop as a percentage of U.S. electricity production in 2022. Renewable power is filling the gap.

Coincidentally, if all the gas the US exports this year was instead required to produce domestic power, it could be used to produce 600 terawatt hours (assuming the most efficient gas turbines), or roughly the same amount of power that wind turbines and solar panels are now providing to the U.S. grid.

Thus, increased renewable generation has not only helped the United States to reduce emissions across the power sector, but also to become a reliable supplier of energy to our allies in times of crisis. Only an LNG exporter to Western Europe since 2017, the US became its largest supplier in 2021, now ahead of Qatar and Russia.

Going forward, the key will be to continue the winning streak in renewable energy deployment. If the United States stays on track with 30 gigawatts of new wind and solar every year, we could double gas exports within the decade. A gigawatt of renewable power capacity is roughly enough to power 200,000 Texas homes on a hot summer afternoon.

Fortunately, industry is already preparing to move into high gear. LNG exports are forecast to hit about 15 billion cubic feet per day in 2026, according to S&P Global Platts Analytics. The six major LNG terminals operating in the United States will rise to eight during that time, based on projects already in construction. Four or more new terminals could be approved by the end of the year, based on project announcements of commercial support. U.S. wind and solar deployments continue to break records.

The question of course arises as to how to simultaneously meet energy security and climate goals. No effort should be spared to clean up U.S. gas production, reducing flaring and fugitive emissions. Second, we must come up with mechanisms that support the build-out of flexible gas export capacity to ensure we can help our allies during the next crisis. Tomorrows Strategic Petroleum Reserve should be gas filled salt domes, LNG terminals and ships at the ready for emergency situations -- as renewables increase on both sides of the Atlantic, this capacity will be used less and less frequently, but it will be there when we need it.

Europe for decades has successfully pushed hard to reduce emissions, but with the unfortunate consequence of overreliance on Russian gas. Faced with the urgency of the situation in Ukraine, Europe must accelerate its aggressive renewable build-out while also developing additional LNG import capacity to allow gas from friendly nations to fill the gap.

With the right policies in place, the US and Europe can move toward an energy future with higher and higher renewable energy penetration while cementing our alliances in the process.

Michael Skelly is a renewable energy entrepreneur.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

WASHINGTON - Its a truism of the energy business that when oil and gas prices rise, a commensurate shift toward fuel-efficient cars and alternative energy technologies begins.

In the oil crisis of the 1970s, power companies turned to nuclear power plants and began to invest in wind and solar. In 2008, when oil prices were approaching $150 a barrel, sales of Fords F series pickup trucks, the most popular vehicle in America, dropped 25 percent.

With oil prices nearing $120 per barrel early last week - the highest level since 2008 - energy experts are predicting a similar but potentially much longer-term shift, accelerated by recent technological advances in electric vehicles, along with wind turbines, solar panels and advanced battery systems.

We hit the same story every decade, but we have so many more options today, said Michael Webber, an energy professor at the University of Texas. Renewables are faster to deploy than ramping up oil and gas expansion, which takes six to 18 months, maybe. And you can imagine prices having an accelerating effect on EV adoptions, and the same for wind and solar in response to high priced gas.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Biden bans oil imports from Russia over Ukraine invasion

Already, signs are emerging that the recent surge in energy prices is having an impact on consumers. The electric car manufacturing giant Tesla is seeing a surge in orders since oil prices went over $100 per barrel, with orders doubling last week compared the previous week, the news site Electrek reported, citing unnamed sources.

In Houston, John Berger, CEO of the rooftop solar firm Sunnova Energy, said his company was already seeing strong growth in the Northeast this winter, driven by high natural gas and power bills.

Just when you thought it couldnt get any busier, Berger said when he picked up the phone last week. Fuel prices are going up, so our prices are going to move up, too. I tell people sign up now. Were the only place you can lock in your energy price for 25 years.

With the conflict in Ukraine showing no signs of abating, and oil producers struggling to keep up with the surge in energy demand accompanying the winding down of COVID-19 restrictions, crude prices are projected to stay over $100 for the rest of the year, according to the financial services firm Raymond James.

In past oil spikes, consumers returned to their normal patterns once prices came down. But this time around, experts arent so sure.

World leaders were already pushing industry to shift from oil and other fossil fuels to try to prevent the worst effects of climate change. When President Joe Biden announced he was banning Russian oil imports last week, he argued it was time for American to become energy independent by breaking its reliance on petroleum.

It should motive us to accelerate the transition to clean energy, he said. Transforming our economy to run on electric vehicles powered by clean energy, with tax credits to help American families winterize their homes and use less energy, that will help. If we can do that, it means no one will have to worry about prices at the pump in the future.

At the same time, investors are beginning to question the long-term future of fossil fuel industries  part of a trend known as ESG, or environmental, social and governance, investing. And the dramatic decrease in wind and solar energy costs, along with improving battery technology, offers consumers an alternative to oil and natural gas that didnt exist in the past, said Graham Price, an energy analyst at Raymond James.

More: Read the latest oil and gas news from HoustonChronicle.com

In the 70s, or even the 90s with the Gulf War, you saw a spike in crude, which caused demand destruction. Then the oil and gas price comes down, and theres no viable alternative so consumers go back to their old habits, he said. Now its different. Even at moderate oil and gas prices, there are economically viable alternatives.

Its unclear, though, how quickly the energy industry could shift from oil.

Supply chain problems are slowing the production of electric vehicles, with Tesla estimated to have a nine-to-12-month backlog. And wind and solar farm developers are having trouble getting power lines built to bring their clean electricity from rural areas such as West and Central Texas to cities, amid state and local opposition to transmission projects.

Congress recently gave the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission authority to overrule state officials on power lines construction, but its unclear whether they intend to use that authority.

We spend a lot of time talking about tax incentives, but what we really need is the ability to move our resources, said Jeff Clark, president of the Austin-based clean energy trade group Advanced Power Alliance. The reality is we need solutions immediately.

However long it takes, some in the clean energy sector believe this oil crisis could well change how consumers, particularly young consumers who have not experienced an oil spike before, think about energy.

For the past 15 years, energy was cheap, allowing near unlimited driving. Energy consumption got little thought as households planned budget. Now, suddenly, motorists are half-filling their tanks or rethinking their summer road trips.

Lets be honest, energy is not a cool or sexy thing for most people, Berger said. Now its in their face every time they turn around, every time they stop to fill up. In a way, this (price spike) is advertising you need to do something about energy.

james.osborne@chron.com
The war in Ukraine will drive the price of crude oil for the foreseeable future as the market waits for suppliers not named Russia that could be waiting in the wings, analysts said.

West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark for the price of oil, closed trading Tuesday at $123.70 per barrel, the highest settle since summer 2008. But prices retreated later in the week, posting a weekly loss and settling Friday at $109.33 a barrel.

Tuesdays price surge was triggered by an announcement from U.S. President Joe Biden that the U.S. would no longer import fossil fuels from Russia as punishment for its military invasion of Ukraine.

That means Russian oil will no longer be acceptable at U.S. ports, and the American people will deal another powerful blow to (Russian President Vladimir) Putins war machine, he said.

Mounting sanctions pressure should push the economy into severe recession, according to the International Monetary Fund. But the pressure cuts both ways.

On HoustonChronicle.com: U.S. Energy Secretary to oil and gas execs: Increase production now

Only a handful of countries can fill the Russian void and the market is already way undersupplied -- recent Energy Department data show U.S. commercial crude oil inventories are about 13 percent below average for this time of year.

With the Kremlins isolation growing, Claudio Galimberti, a senior vice president of analysis at Norwegian consultancy Rystad Energy, said hes seeing zero bids for Russian barrels. He said it adds to his concerns about supply shortages.

Iran in theory could add another 1 million barrels per day to the market, should there be a breakthrough in multilateral nuclear negotiations, though Russia, a participant in treaty, has blocked a deal. Washington is also warming to Venezuela, but its unclear how much oil the delipidated infrastructure there could churn out in short order.

All in all, we are in the third oil crisis, Galimberti said. The last one was Irans revolution in 1979.

Before that, the Arab oil embargo in the early 1970s effectively starved the U.S. economy of crude oil and refined petroleum products such as gasoline. While gasoline wont run out this time around, the national average price is the highest its ever been, at $4.33 per gallon.

Vandana Hari, the founder and CEO at the Singapore-based research firm Vanda Insights, tempered the pessimism, however. If its only the United States physically shunning Russian barrels, that does little to the global market as Russia is a very minor supplier to the U.S. economy.

The Kremlin is indeed facing international isolation, but Hari said she didnt feel there would be any long-term issue with supplies because barrels from other sources will eventually find their way to market.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Questions of old vs. new energy and how they can meet the worlds urgent demand are in the spotlight

Apart from the theoretical return of Iranian and Venezuelan barrels, market players are curious to see the response from the U.S. shale patch. U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm last week said it was shale oils obligation to drill more because of the consequences of war.

Ed Longanecker, the president of the Texas Independent Producers & Royalty Owners Association, said producers here in Texas are ready to respond as much as possible.

There is an urgent need for more crude oil, and we could see some of the more conservative domestic operators lift their production goals in the second half of the year if market conditions warrant it, he said.

It usually takes at least four months for new U.S. barrels to show up on the market once new wells are tapped.

The war in Ukraine has precipitated a historic crisis, not only for the economy but for the geopolitical landscape. This may be a prolonged period of high commodity prices.

In the current climate, I dont see much downside here, said Tamas Varga, an analyst at London oil broker PVM.
If youre looking for a local beer with a chile kick, No Label Brewing Co. has a new limited release for you.

The Katy brewery is collaborating with Blood Bros. BBQ in Bellaire to created Don Jalapeno, an ale made with peppers smoked at the Bellaire barbecue joint by pitmaster Quy Hoang. The spiced beer is currently available at the No Label taproom, 5351 1st St., Katy, and will be released at retail on March 21 (including H-E-B, Kroger, Specs, Total Wine & More).
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Need a frosty cocktail or a caffeine jolt while shopping for your favorite CBD products? Wild, a new lounge at 2121 N. Shepherd in the Heights bills itself as the first Texas outpost to combine hemp-infused products with a specialty cocktail and coffee program.

A project by Houston cousins Adyson and Andrew Alvis, who operate Grinders Coffee Bar and Wild Dispensary at 5410 Kirby, recently opened Wild, their second concept, a Bali-inspired cocktail/coffee bar and dispensary for hemp products including gummies, rolls and tinctures. The coffee program, featuring locally roasted beans in partnership with Tenfold Coffee Co. in the Heights, offers specialty coffee drinks including a menu of CBD lattes as well as pastries from Koffeteria.

But the cocktail menu, created by Laurie Harvey and Kris Sowell of Ladies of Libation, might be Wilds biggest draw. The cocktails include Flower Power (gin, butterfly pea flower, bergamot liqueur and lemon), Pineapple Express (mandarin vodka, hibiscus, pineapple, ginger and lime), and coffee libations such as Lucky Charms (coffee, Irish whiskey, Drambuie, honey and marshmallows). There are also drinks made with Wilds hemp-infused elixirs as well as two frozen drinks both of which can be upgraded with booze or a hemp-based shot.

HELP UKRAINE: Houston restaurants create funding programs for Ukraine and Poland relief

Wilds design was inspired by the owners travels throughout Southeast Asia, Indonesia, and Mexico.

We wanted to create a place that immediately transforms your emotions into a laid back and relaxing vibe. An experience that you cannot find anywhere else in Houston. co-founder Andrew Alvis said.

We were looking to create a unique experience for our customers, while also being able to educate Houstonians on the healing properties of CBD, co-founder Adyson Alvis said. Wild brings a one-of-a-kind experience, whether youre looking to grab a coffee or cocktails with friends or looking for a product to help with muscle pain or relaxation, we wanted to create a space where everyone has a unique and enjoyable experience unlike anywhere in Houston.

Wild is open Sunday through Thursday 8 a.m. to midnight, Friday and Saturday 8 a.m. to 2 a.m.; wildconcepts.com.

Greg Morago writes about food for the Houston Chronicle. Follow him on Facebook or Twitter. Send him news tips at greg.morago@chron.com. Hear him on our BBQ State of Mind podcast to learn about Houston and Texas barbecue culture.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Ashley Turner, daughter of Mayor Sylvester Turner, married Jimmie Captain Saturday night at Citadel Houston with 424 guests in attendance.

The bride wore a custom wedding gown designed by Julie Ihe of NMA Couture. The groom dressed in an Allen Johnson tuxedo.

Captain, 43, and Turner, 35, met three years ago at Captains mothers retirement party.

She was HPD, and we met on the campaign trail. I didnt even know she had a son, Ashley said. Two months later, he slid in my DMs to thank me for coming to the retirement party. Its been a journey.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Mayor Sylvester Turner announces daughter Ashley Turners engagement

The bride joined Lone Star College as executive director of community relations in May 2018. She previously worked at Busy Bee Wellness Center and Legacy Community Health Services. She also runs a body-positive blog, the Curvy Paige.

On Sunday, Mayor Turner shared the happy news on Facebook: Please join me in congratulating my daughter, Ashley P. Turner, following her beautiful wedding to Jimmie Captain. I pray they experience a lifetime of love and happiness. As Houstons First Daughter, Ashley will continue to volunteer her time on community issues and working with the Millennial Task Force to help move Houston forward.

amber.elliott@chron.com
PHOENIX  Sit down. Be quiet. Follow instructions.

Brandon Brown followed these rules when he started teaching, seeking order in a classroom setting he was all too familiar with growing up. But he quickly realized that was not working for his students and that they were just regurgitating what he told them. So, he decided to get creative.

Brown, a former history teacher and assistant elementary school principal, is now a Billboard-charting educational rapper who performs around the U.S. He founded School Yard Rap, a California-based company that produces music about historical Black, Latino and Indigenous people often not found in traditional textbooks.

By state standards, my students had to learn about old white slave owners, but they were young Black kids, and it wasnt connecting, said Brown, who released his latest album under his stage name, Griot B. This education system is whitewashed completely. But doing what I do, Im able to introduce and refocus on people of color so students are getting the full range of American history.

Teachers have long sought ways to deliver a complete version of U.S. history that engages their students and includes contributions by people of color. They have been reenergized after the 2020 police killing of George Floyd to take different approaches in the classroom that would challenge an education system many believe doesnt allow for critical thinking and forces a narrow worldview.

GEORGE FLOYD'S IMPACT: It's been one year since George Floyd's murder. How did it change you?

NEWSLETTERS Join the conversation with HouWeAre We want to foster conversation and highlight the intersection of race, identity and culture in one of America's most diverse cities. Sign up for the HouWeAre newsletter here.

They also are facing increased pressure from politicians and other critics who take issue with how schools address diversity and representation, including a recent push to ban critical race theory, an academic framework centered on the idea that racism is systemic in the nations institutions. While there is little evidence that critical race theory itself is being taught to K-12 public school students, some ideas central to it, such as lingering consequences of slavery, have been.

Teaching students how to think

Teaching has evolved significantly in the past decade to focus more on critical thinking as opposed to rote memorization, said Anton Schulzki, a history teacher in Colorado Springs and the president of the National Council for the Social Studies. Some of the shift started with the implementation of Common Core, which placed an emphasis on teaching students how to find and analyze sources. Instead of just learning dates and names, students learn how to form arguments, to find factual evidence to support their claims and to challenge and defend different viewpoints.

Were trying to get students into this notion of asking questions and being able to take what they are able to do and put into practice that whole inquiry method, Schulzki said. We want them to be good citizens and the way you become a good citizen is you ask questions, and then you try to do something about it.

Students also need to learn more about the resilience and accomplishments of marginalized communities, said John Deville, who has been an educator in Macon County in North Carolina for nearly three decades.

Teachers need to show people of all backgrounds as more than victims and as individuals with agency and power, he said.

In his classroom, Deville, who is white, avoids framing individuals as either villains or plaster heroes, and he incorporates more than just European and white perspectives on historical events. In a unit on Christopher Columbus, Deville said he spends time creating a vision of the Western Hemisphere prior to European contact and does not diminish the violent ways Native Americans were treated.

There is no standardized curriculum across the U.S.; those decisions are made at the local level. As a result, parents, teachers, politicians, and other critics can voice concerns over what some consider a free-for-all of perspectives allowed in the classroom.

Morgan Dick, a spokesperson for the Arizona Department of Education, said civics education, which prepares students to become well-informed, participating members of society, is important because it allows students to engage in rigorous debate and civil discourse in order to develop their own opinions and learn to respect the perspectives of others.

She also said some topics could at-times force people out of their comfort zone.

Presenting students with different perspectives

Last month, Republicans in the Arizona House approved a measure that would ask voters to amend the state constitution to ban the teaching of critical race theory in schools and bar any preferential treatment based on race. The state Supreme Court struck that law down because it was unconstitutionally included in the budget. In the end, the House passed a resolution, which is not enforceable.

For many teachers, presenting students with different perspectives is the most important part of the job.

Every kid in America knows 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue and they know the three ships, and thats great, said Katie Eddings, a middle school social studies teacher in North Carolinas Lee County. But do you know what his motivation was during that time period?

Eddings, whose mother is Lumbee, shows her students excerpts from Columbus diary and pushes them to discuss what forces might have shaped the voyages, the achievements that resulted, and the harm caused.

I want you to ask questions, she said. I want you to be curious about why this happened and why that happened. What was the cause and effect, and is there lasting impact now? What happened then? Is there an impact to us now? Are we better off? I just want them to be thinkers.

Some students may not know the benefit this type of shift in education will have on them until later in life.

It is easy to ask someone to read a book, but you cant force that person to connect with it, said Kendall Antoine, one of Browns former students who challenged Brown to create his first educational rap in 2012.

Antoine, who graduated last year from Morehouse College, a historically Black college, said he still learned what was assigned, but Brown presented it in a more engaging way. He added that he still remembers some of the raps from nearly a decade ago.

It is amazing what Mr. Brown is doing. Something that started off as a passion for music and history, turned into how he could relate to kids to better their education, Antoine said.

The Associated Press reporting around issues of race and ethnicity is supported in part by the Howard Hughes Medical Institutes Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Four Houston police officers fired for shooting and killing Nicolas Chavez two years ago were wrongly terminated and will get their jobs back, an arbitrator ruled Monday morning.

In a directed verdict, Arbitrator Lori LaConta found that the city had not proven its case and reinstated Sgt. Benjamin LeBlanc, officers Patrick Rubio, Omar Tapia and Luis Alvarado.

Aaron Suder, the Houston Police Officers Union lead attorney on the case, said he was relieved and elated with the verdict.

The city was unable to meet its burden of proof, he said.

Police Chief Troy Finner later addressed the arbitration, agreeing that there was evidence that the officers violated department policy and asking that Houstonians stand together in difficult times.

He declined to say if he agreed with Acevedos decision to fire the officers; if he thought the firings were justified or what the reinstatements said about the departments ability to discipline officers it believes behaved wrongly.

Theres evidence of policy violations, he said. And that's what I'm going to stick with right now.

Chavez relatives and friends criticized the arbitrators ruling and described the shooting as a murder.

I can't believe these officers are going to be back out on the street, said Leantha Chavez, the mans mother. They murdered my son.

UNION REBUTTAL: Houston officers fired for Nicolas Chavez death call city's case 'flat out lies' in fight to get jobs back

Chavez, 27, was killed April 21, 2020, while suffering an apparent mental health episode in which he stabbed himself with a piece of rebar, in the Denver Harbor area. The encounter with police lasted 15 minutes, ending when the four officers fired more than 20 times at a kneeling Chavez, who had picked up a used Taser.

Chavez was rushed to a hospital but did not survive. A toxicology report later found traces of meth and alcohol in Chavezs body at the time of his death.

A bystander recorded video of the final shots and posted it online, where it quickly attracted widespread attention. The incident prompted widespread criticism of the Houston Police Department.

In response, former Chief Art Acevedo released body camera video of the encounter  something he routinely resisted doing while chief here  and fired the officers, saying that when they fired the lethal bullets, Mr. Chavez was at his greatest level of incapacitation. The bodycam video, which was played during the hearing, captured officers repeatedly pleading with Chavez to drop the rebar, as officers used less than lethal weapons such as bean bag rounds and tasers, and trying to find a long pole to try to disarm Chavez.

He accused the officers of not following policy and determined the fatal shots were not objectively reasonable.

You dont get to shoot somebody 21 times, Acevedo said, back in September 2020, when he released the video. At the time, Mayor Sylvester Turner held an emotional news conference in which he said the city was holding officers accountable for killing a man when there was no imminent threat.

Godofredo A. Vasquez, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer Melissa Phillip, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer LEFT: Jessica Chavez cries during a press conference at which family, LULAC members and other community leaders expressed outrage at learning that the Houston Police Department officers charged in the killing of Nicolas Chavez, her husband, were no-billed by a grand jury, on Tuesday, Sept. 28, 2021, in Houston. (Godofredo A. Vasquez, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer) RIGHT: Leantha Chavez, right, who is the mother of Nicolas Chavez, protests with others at the Harris County Criminal Courthouse Friday, June 19, 2020, in Houston. (Melissa Phillip, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer) LEFT: Jessica Chavez cries during a press conference at which family, LULAC members and other community leaders expressed outrage at learning that the Houston Police Department officers charged in the killing of Nicolas Chavez, her husband, were no-billed by a grand jury, on Tuesday, Sept. 28, 2021, in Houston. (Godofredo A. Vasquez, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer) RIGHT: Leantha Chavez, right, who is the mother of Nicolas Chavez, protests with others at the Harris County Criminal Courthouse Friday, June 19, 2020, in Houston. (Melissa Phillip, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer)

Turner said in a statement: I reviewed the video shortly after the shooting of Mr. Chavez and was disturbed by what I saw. The city dismissed the officers, but the independent hearing examiner has reinstated them. It is important that before any consideration is given to placing these officers back on the street, they be retrained and fully understand the policies of this city. Mr. Chavezs family lost a loved one, and even though the hearing examiner has reinstated these officers, no one should be rejoicing under the circumstances.

The police union had objected to Acevedos firing of the officers, saying it was at odds with how members of HPDs Administrative Discipline Committee  six out of 10 members suggested no discipline  and an Independent Police Oversight Board panel viewed the shooting. Both the ADC and the IPOB had concluded that the officers did not deserve to be disciplined.

The Harris County District Attorneys Office reviewed the case and presented it to a grand jury, which declined to indict the officers.

Chavez family sued the city of Houston, arguing the officers used excessive force, and were negligent, but a federal judge dismissed most of their claims in July. The lawsuit is pending while a portion of the case works through probate court.

Relatives and friends reacted angrily Monday after hearing of the latest developments.

Leantha Chavez, who suffers from major depression, said the incident showed the city needs more mental health resources and raised serious questions about how police deal with the mentally ill.

And she said the ruling sent a chilling message to Houstonians struggling with mental health issues.

Are they going to kill us too, when we're having an episode? she asked. Thats how we feel.  make sure youre not in public, or you're going to die.

That was overkill, said Venuz Rodriguez, a family friend of the Chavezs. To react the way they did was unnecessary and murder. Anyone else did that to this young man would have been (prosecuted).

VIDEO: 'I cannot defend that': 4 officers fired as HPD releases footage of fatal shooting of Nicolas Chavez

The proceeding that culminated Monday started March 7, when city and union attorneys first squared off.

In their lengthy opening statement, union attorneys laid out a detailed case arguing that the terminated officers had acted as they were trained. Suder, the lead union attorney, accused Acevedo of misrepresenting the distance at which stun guns are dangerous or potentially deadly, and suggested that Chavez was suffering from excited delirium a controversial term police use to describe some people in highly agitated and combative state and, frequently, under the influence of certain drugs.

Union attorneys also said the departments top brass had not turned over a lengthy missive from the IPOB that supported the officers actions and failed to disclose policy changes made months after the shooting. And they questioned why, after the officers terminations, Acevedo had told a reporter that he didnt believe policy changes needed to be made  even though the department had made such changes two months after the shooting. They also criticized comments the former chief made that seemed to impugn officers for telling each other to hold the line, saying officers were referring to a tactic used to avoid friendly fire.

Ultimately, the city only produced one witness  Asst. Chief Chandra Hatcher  and attorneys rested their case until earlier Monday morning.

Then LaConta ruled the city had not met its burden of proof and ordered the officers be reinstated, with back pay.

Union president Douglas Griffith said he was extremely happy with the arbitrators decision.

We were easily able to prove the officers had acted in the manner they were trained, he said.

Former chief Acevedo did not respond to a request for comment.

st.john.smith@chron.com
TAMPA  When the Florida Department of Health released new guidelines last week suggesting healthy children should not get the coronavirus vaccine, it cited several studies to back up the position.

But at least four of the experts whose research was cited say their work was taken out of context. They said they disagreed with Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapos conclusion that the vaccine was more dangerous than the virus for healthy children.

Advertisement

I think there is cherry-picking of sentences to support what [the state] wanted, said Kathryn Edwards, a pediatrics professor at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, who co-authored one of the papers cited in the guidance.

Each of the three studies cited by the state concluded vaccines are safe and effective. Florida health officials did not mention that in their two-page guidance.

Advertisement

All four experts contacted by the Tampa Bay Times disagreed with the recommendation and emphasized that the COVID-19 vaccine is the best way to prevent severe illness in children.

You dont just pick one sentence from one paper that agrees with what you think you want to say, Edwards said. Thats not what a health department is supposed to do.

FILE - Florida Surgeon Gen. Dr. Joseph A. Ladapo looks on before a bill signing by Gov. Ron DeSantis Thursday, Nov. 18, 2021. (Chris O'Meara/AP)

Since the start of the pandemic, nearly 13,000 children ages 17 and under have been hospitalized with COVID-19 in Florida. More than 40 have died. Only 22% of Florida children ages 5 to 11 have been vaccinated, the lowest share of any eligible age group in the state.

When asked about the researchers concerns, a Department of Health spokesperson said the agency stands by its recommendation.

The researchers conclusions are their assessment of the data, Jeremy Redfern wrote in an email. The surgeon general disagrees.

Redfern said Ladapo is a research scientist as well as a physician, and disagreements are a normal part of the scientific process.

That may be true, said Kawsar Talaat, a professor of international health at the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who co-authored a paper cited by the Department of Health, but it doesnt justify Ladapos conclusions.

There might be a scientist out there that says the world is flat, she said. It doesnt mean that theyre right.

Advertisement

Mark Sawyer, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine, said: Im distressed that my quote was used to support what I think is a bad policy decision.

Sawyer had expressed concerns over potential side effects of the vaccine in an October meeting of the Food and Drug Administrations Vaccine Advisory Committee, of which he is a member.

The states guidance quotes two sentences in which Sawyer raised concerns about the risk of myocarditis, a swelling of the heart muscle, in some patients. He also questioned whether the number of hospitalizations prevented by the vaccine was overestimated.

But Sawyer said Floridas guidance took his words out of context.

You raise all possible concerns in these meetings, he said, but we concluded, and I still agree, that the risk-benefit still favors vaccination.

Neither the Department of Health nor the governors office contacted any of the researchers whose work was cited in the report or whose quotes were used as supporting evidence in favor of the recommendation, Redfern said.

Advertisement

Had the state contacted him, Sawyer said he would have told officials the quotes were both lacking context and out-of-date.

The risk of contracting myocarditis is a key part of Floridas new guidance, according to the Department of Health.

To substantiate its advice, the state points to a single study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association earlier this year, which found the highest rate of post-vaccination myocarditis was in boys ages 12 to 17.

But its incorrect to claim a rare side effect should dissuade parents from vaccinating their children, said Buddy Creech, a professor of pediatric infectious diseases at the Vanderbilt Institute for Infection, Immunology and Inflammation, who co-authored the study.

The most important thing to know about myocarditis after vaccination, he said, is that its uncommon, tends to go away without treatment and does not appear to cause long-term damage.

Political Pulse Weekly Get latest updates political news from Central Florida and across the state. >

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that for every million vaccinations of children ages 12 to 17, about 70 will develop myocarditis. Reported rates for children ages 5 to 11 are substantially lower.

Advertisement

One study released in July 2021 estimated 633 children aged 12 to 17 would develop myocarditis because of COVID-19 for every million infections  a rate 9 times greater than because of vaccination.

The states guidance concluded there is limited risk of severe illness due to COVID-19, citing one paper published in January 2022 in the New England Journal of Medicine. The paper studied the efficacy of the Pfizer vaccine in nearly 2,300 children, none of whom suffered severe complications from a COVID-19 infection.

But the research was not designed as an epidemiological study to look at the severity of COVID infection in children, said Talaat, the John Hopkins epidemiologist who coauthored the paper.

Only a small number of people followed by the study were even infected with COVID-19, she said. Theyre twisting the results to fit with what they want as opposed to using the results to determine facts.

A recent study from the CDC indicates vaccinations are more than 90% effective at preventing hospitalization in children ages 12 to 17 in the first five months, and more than 73% effective thereafter. The study also found that booster doses offered more protection in eligible children.

This Tampa Bay Times story was distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Houston and Texas are seeing a record number of deaths from the opioid epidemic, with fentanyl as the principal driver. All it takes is a dose of fentanyl the size of a pencil tip to kill a person.

In Harris County alone, fentanyl kills more than one person every day. Fatal drug overdoses increased 52 percent from 2019 to 2021, according to Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences data. Deaths involving fentanyl skyrocketed by 341 percent in the same period, from 104 to 459.

INVESTIGATION: Fentanyl deaths are soaring in Texas, and officials aren't taking key steps to stop them

The nation in fiscal year 2021 reached a record 100,000 overdose deaths for the first time, mostly from opioids and fentanyl, the Centers for Decease Control and Prevention announced recently. The records nationally are kept by fiscal year, which ends on Sept. 30.

Many of the victims didnt even know they were taking fentanyl, an extremely powerful drug wreaking havoc in the United States black markets, said Daniel Comeaux, special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administrations Houston division.

The synthetic opioid that has properties similar to morphine but is more than 50 times more potent can be unknowingly consumed in counterfeit prescription drugs, such as valium, and recreational drugs. Last year, DEA agents seized enough fentanyl to kill every American, Comeaux said.

In previous years, prescription painkillers containing opioids, such as oxycodone and hydrocodone, fueled the so-called first wave of the opioid crisis. Now, fentanyl is the main culprit.

The Harris County Institute identified a total of 1,102 deaths caused by overdoses of any substance last year, which may not include all such fatalities as certain cases occurring in hospitals are not tracked by this institution.

However, the county data reflect how fentanyl is rapidly becoming the main killer. Its presence in lethal overdoses jumped dramatically from 14 percent of all drug-related deaths in 2019 to 42 percent last year.

On HoustonChronicle.com: When the opioid crisis hits home, a Houston program knocks on the door

I know plenty of people firsthand who have passed away in Houston recently, said Casey Malish, vice president of the Houston Harm Reduction Alliance. The organization of mostly volunteers runs programs to distribute sterile syringes, fentanyl test strips, and Naloxone, a medication that rapidly reverses an opioid overdose.

Texas

While northeastern states in recent years were the hardest hit by fentanyl , Texas is now one of eight states that experienced more overdoses during the first half of 2021 than in either six-month period in 2020, according to an analysis published by the Commonwealth Fund, a foundation dedicated to health topics.

The latest public data from the CDC indicate that reported overdose deaths in Texas involving fentanyl increased 399 percent in the last two fiscal years. That is, from 333 people dying in 2019 to 1,662 in the 2021 fiscal year.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Former Rice footballer sentenced for role in ex-teammate overdose involving fentanyl analog

The numbers are likely to be higher in Texas, since the state data can be unreliable, according to the Texas Medical Association and other sources. Only 15 of the states 254 counties have a medical examiners office. Most deaths occurring outside physicians' care are certified by justices of the peace, who commonly faces financial constraints to absorb the cost of paying for autopsies and transportation to forensic specialists in other counties.

Experts say that most of the fentanyl entering the country comes across the southwest border from Mexico.

While China continues to be one of the main players in the international illegal trade of fentanyl, Mexican cartels have monopolized the business by buying the chemical ingredients from the Asian giant and India and producing the synthetic opioid in small, improvised labs south of the U.S. border.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection continues to seize more fentanyl each year, said Yolanda Choates, a spokesperson with the agency.

Choates said that in the fiscal year 2021, CBP seized 11,201 pounds of the drug. This is more than twice as much compared to the fiscal year 2020 and about four times as much as in 2019, she said. Around 95 percent of those seizures were found along the southern border. The rest was confiscated at the border with Canada and coastal areas.

The CBP field office of El Paso typically accounts for more than half of the fentanyl seized in Texas.

Hot spots

Houston is classified by the federal government as a High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, due in part to its proximity to the southwest border and developed transportation infrastructure. The Office of National Drug Control Policy said in its 2021 report to Congress that this region is one of the most significant distribution and transshipment areas for illegal drugs trafficked from Mexico and a primary consolidation point for bulk cash smuggled back across the border.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Houston among top U.S. cities where heroin availability increasing

Fentanyl is smuggled from Mexico into the U.S., where local dealers mix it with other drugs and cutting agents to sell as a powder or produce counterfeit pills, or even lollipops, as authorities have found in some cases.

Opioids like fentanyl, also called narcotics, are a class of legal and illegal substances derived from opium extracted from the poppy plant or synthesized in laboratories.

Unfortunately, it's extremely easy to get fentanyl, Comeaux said. So you're seeing a lot of these violent street gangs that, with the profit margin being so large, they will purchase a pill press (and) make counterfeit pills which look like Oxycontin pills, or look like a hydrocodone pill, and sell them.

Dealers also make tablets imitating other prescription medications in precarious places, such as garages.

It's not like a million-dollar machine putting the right chemical mix in a pill, said Comeaux. It's someone guessing how much needs to go into the pill.

So-called hot spots are believed to be the culprit of many fentanyl overdoses. They are invisible clumps that remain in parts of a mixture containing the synthetic opioid. Experts say that they are unavoidable in street drugs because of the sticky nature of its molecules. When used in the pharma industry as a component in legitimate medications, fentanyl has to go through further processes of liquid dilution and evaporation in advanced labs to eliminate hot spots.

On HoustonChronicle.com: While Border Patrol seizes record amounts of fentanyl, Gov. Abbott attacks Biden for doing nothing

The federal government has ramped up efforts to fight drug trafficking, including executive orders signed by President Joe Biden in December that extended the scope of sanctions to foreign companies connected to fentanyl trafficking or benefiting from trafficking proceeds, even if they dont have direct links with drug lords or cartels.

Just this month, DEA Houston lead one of the largest major law enforcement operations in south Texas in recent years, apprehending 50 people indicted with 105 counts of narcotics trafficking. Charges also included illegally transferring or transporting money to Mexico. Agents confiscated 39 firearms during the operation.

Still, what authorities seize is only fraction of the extremely profitable business of fentanyl, a potent substance that can be smuggled in small quantities and still produce enormous profits.

With the state of the drug in the market now, we're going to see higher numbers of overdoses, said Malish.

They struggle with fentanyl

Last month, Melissa was having a party at her house near downtown Houston when she noticed her husband, slumped in a dark armchair in the living room, had not spoken or moved for longer than usual, his head down on his chest.

I knew he was ODing as soon as I saw his ears; they were very blue, said Melissa, who asked her last name to be omitted for privacy concerns. Everyone went into a state of panic, except for one of the guests. And that's when we realized we had two ODs going on.

INVESTIGATION: People didn't think the fentanyl crisis was Houston's problem. But it's here.

Many of those at the house, including Melissa, have been struggling with opioid addiction for years, particularly heroin. And of course, fentanyl. Everything I test with test strips nowadays has fentanyl in it. Always. You cannot avoid it, she said.

It was very, very scary. We were going crazy trying to revive them, said Melissa. Bit Melissa keeps Narcan and Naxolone at her home, medications that can reverse an opioid overdose if administered quickly.

She said she is scared, mostly for her husband. He has ODd three times this year, she said. Thank goodness I had Narcan and Naxolone at home.

olivia.tallet@chron.com

Twitter.com/oliviaptallet
Debra Ibarra Mayfield, who proudly served as the first Latina judge in the Harris County civil courts and whose father helped build the courthouse where she later presided, died Friday in Houston after a two-year battle with cancer. She was 47.

The Houston Lawyers Chapter of the Federalist Society announced the death on Facebook.

The family has been overwhelmed by the love from the community at the news of Debras passing, Eric Mayfield, her husband of more than 18 years, told the Chronicle on Monday. We are grateful for the support of so many and for the recognition of Debras work and servants heart.

Mayfield, a Republican, came up through the ranks of the judiciary, serving as the first Latina judge in the Harris County civil courts, to which she was unanimously appointed in 2011 and re-elected in 2012 and 2014. The following year, she was appointed to the 165th District Court by Gov. Greg Abbott, who also named her to the 190th Judicial District Court two years later.

Mayfield was among the first in her family to attend college and often cited her working-class background. The Chronicles Editorial Board, in a 2016 endorsement, said the South Texas College of Law graduate brought a refreshing openness to the bench.

Her father was a sheet metal fabricator who helped crafted the star on top of the civil courthouse where she later presided, a connection that featured prominently in a campaign.

Seth Kretzer, a Houston lawyer who appeared before Mayfield on multiple occasions, said she was sedulously prepared and eminently fair.

NEWSLETTERS Join the conversation with HouWeAre We want to foster conversation and highlight the intersection of race, identity and culture in one of America's most diverse cities. Sign up for the HouWeAre newsletter here.

Debra loved being a judge, Kretzer said Sunday evening. The political winds in Harris County shifted on her, but she kept being appointed and running again.

She was appointed by Abbott in 2017, but lost her bid for re-election the following year.

Roland Garcia, a lawyer who met Mayfield when she was a law student, called her a person of deep faith who gave back to her community in meaningful ways as a judge and as a president of the Mexican American Bar Association of Houston.

She took such pride in her work, and earned the respect and admiration from lawyers on both sides of the aisle, and in both political parties  quite an accomplishment, Garcia said.

Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, recalled Mayfields tenacity and optimism, which he said infused her work as a public servant and as a marathon runner.

If she started a task she was going to finish it, Bettencourt said Monday. There was never a time when she didnt try her best.

nora.mishanec@chron.com
Andi Rice / Bloomberg

Houston organizations working to address homelessness received $45 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Tuesday morning.

The money was part of $2.6 billion awarded nationwide  up from $2.5 billion in the last fiscal year  in what are known as Continuum of Care grants, meant to promote communitywide coordination toward the goal of ending homelessness. Under the program, organizations such as the Coalition for the Homeless of Houston and Harris County must coordinate among local groups to submit a single application detailing how money should be distributed among them.
Rice University on Sunday lifted its mask mandate for vaccinated people as COVID-19 cases continue to decline in Harris County.

The higher education institution was one of the last in the area still requiring face coverings indoors, even though many people across Houston have continued to wear masks in restaurants, grocery stores, hotels and retail outlets.

Students, faculty, staff and visitors always have the option to wear masks anywhere on campus at their discretion, Vice President for Administration Kevin E. Kirby said in an email to the university. We do recommend that you carry a mask with you, and err on the side of caution anytime youre in a situation where youre wondering whether you should wear it.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Houstons private colleges consider lifting mask mandates

Rices updated policy is not an outright cancellation: Unvaccinated people are required to wear masks indoors, and instructors can also choose to require masks in their classrooms, Kirby said. The university has enforced mask-wearing at various points during the pandemic, the most recent being since December as the omicron variant surged in Houston. The universitys COVID testing positivity rates have leveled out since peaking in late January, according to school data.

In recent weeks, many states across the country have begun lifting any remaining mask requirements. Texas dropped its mandate in March 2021 and later banned governmental entities, including public schools, from instituting new policies. Houston Independent School District bucked the state order until it pulled its mandate late last month.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in late February also changed its COVID-19 guidance, allowing most Harris County residents to take off their masks indoors. Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo on Thursday lowered the county's COVID threat level to yellow, signaling a controlled level of cases following the decline of the omicron wave.

samantha.ketterer@chron.com
Regarding US VP Harris embraces call for war crimes probe of Russia, (March 10): The images of the death and destruction in Ukraine seem to have cut more deeply into the American peoples hearts than similar atrocities elsewhere. Bashar al-Assad, Syrias authoritarian leader and commander-in chief of its armed forces, like Vladimir Putin, is guilty of crimes against humanity, yet American outrage is muted. The same holds true for decades of carnage at the direction of tyrants in Africa  the brutality barely registering on the American empathy scale. Why is there such a seismic shift in compassion for the victims in Eastern Europe? Is the slaughter of women and children there any different than comparable acts in other settings?

Perhaps the answer lies in our ethnicity. Nearly 200 million Americans can trace their bloodline to Europe. Many of us see ourselves in the faces of the Ukrainian people. So, when Kyiv falls  and it will fall  all Americans, regardless of their ancestry, must join together and vow never to rest until despots like Vladimir Putin are no longer a threat to the world order.

Jim Paladino, Tampa

Regarding From Haiti to Texas: Inside migrants perilous 10,000-mile journey, (March 9): The reporting on Haitian immigration is a harrowing and accurate depiction of the lengths people will go to seek a decent life for themselves and their families. At the end of the lengthy and dangerous trek should be a welcoming society rather than one which more often seeks means of blocking admission (and thus of a better life). The recent and understandable outpouring of support in Congress for the welcoming of Ukrainian refugees should, of course, be extended to Haitians, Syrians, Hondurans and all others seeking to escape from war and intolerable living conditions. At that point the U.S. will truly be seen as a beacon of hope.

Shaun Smith, Houston

Iran nuclear deal

Regarding Iran nuclear talks on 'pause' in Vienna after Russian demand, (March 11): Ukraines peril and pain of war reminds us yet again how fragile peace is. With the threat of nuclear conflict looming, it behooves us to commit to a new Iran nuclear deal. Let us demonstrate that the U.S. is serious about restoring our credibility on the global stage and committed to solving foreign policy challenges through diplomacy, not militarism.

President Trump abandoned the Iran nuclear deal in favor of a maximum pressure campaign that failed to deliver on its promises, unleashed Iran's nuclear program and nearly led the United States into another disastrous war. President Bidens new Iran deal will improve both U.S. and global security by putting Iran's nuclear program back under our microscope. Indeed, it is the best option to stop Irans nuclear advancements.

With diplomacy we can build true security. The time is right to seal the deal.

Brenda Hardt, Brenham

I urge our senators and representatives to support a nuclear deal with Iran. Today, people in Iran continue to suffer under incredible sanctions during a global pandemic for the actions of a government they have little say in. A new deal will improve U.S. and global security by putting Irans nuclear program back in a box. Indeed, it is our best means to stop Irans nuclear advancements. Diplomacy is how we avoid war, and build true security. Without a deal in place, the United States could face another military conflict in the Middle East. Right now, crises including COVID, war in Ukraine and global inflation are raging and the last thing the world needs is another bloody, costly war.

George Matz, Houston
Martha Newsome was sitting in a service at Friends Congregational Church in College Station when her pastor mentioned a rally going on later that day in support of transgender youth whose parents have been targeted by a new state policy criminalizing gender-affirming care.

Newsome and her husband, whose 19-year-old grandson is transgender, didnt waste a minute. They drove directly to a Walmart to pick up a sweatshirt and sneakers in the symbolic pink color that is featured in the transgender pride flag, then to Austin.

On the two-hour car ride, Newsome, 62, colored in pink and blue on a sign: Im here 4 my trans grandson.

Newsome was one of hundreds to gather in the capital city Sunday to show their support for the youth, just days after a state district judge temporarily blocked Republican Gov. Greg Abbotts directive that designated parents who allow access to treatments such as puberty blockers and hormones as potential child abusers.

When your children get sick, I just cannot imagine the governor coming out and saying, Were not going to give the remedy or the cure or medical treatment to your child to be able to walk and hold their head up proud and be who they need to be and be healthy, Newsome said. Thats so hard for me to understand. I dont think he would get involved in any other types of medical treatment.

On Friday, Judge Amy Meachum Clark in Travis County ruled that the directive was unconstitutional, Abbott overstepped his bounds and enforcement of the order should remain on hold for the duration of a lawsuit challenging the policy.

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit are a psychologist who says complying with the order would violate her professional code of ethics and a family under investigation by Child Protective Services for giving care to their transgender 16-year-old daughter  one of at least nine new investigations of gender-affirming care since Abbotts directive.

However, the legal effect of Fridays ruling is unclear after Attorney General Ken Paxton said his immediate appeal of the decision renders the temporary injunction frozen. Lawyers with national civil rights groups Lambda Legal and the ACLU have disputed that and encouraged any family contacted by DFPS in the meantime to contact Lambda Legals help desk.

A nonbinding legal opinion from Paxton last month prompted Abbott to write a letter to the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services ordering the agency to enforce the opinion as law. Paxton argued that the care violates a childs right to procreate  though many medications are reversible and surgery is uncommon among minors  and claimed the care is not medically necessary, in contrast with broad consensus among the countrys largest medical groups.

Paxtons opinion followed multiple failed attempts by Republican state lawmakers in the GOP-led Legislature to pass measures that would punish parents and health care providers who support gender-affirming care.

On Sunday, congregated in a parking lot across the street from the Governors Mansion in Austin, rally goers heard from transgender and LGBTQ activists who encouraged them to keep up their fight.

The tone of the event, Trans Kids Cry for HELP! as it was titled on social media, was hopeful and bright but also fiery with the passion of a group gearing up for yet another battle against top Republicans. Speeches focused on raising spirits and validating trans and nonbinary peoples identities. They also encouraged them and allies to take their anger and frustration to the ballot boxes in the November general election.

Those speeches were interspersed with recordings of anonymous Texas transgender youth talking about their experiences living in the state and dealing with policies targeting them on a regular basis, including some from Capitol testimony in recent years.

Rally goers waved the pink, white and blue transgender pride flag, which also abounded on T-shirts, banners and posters. Some of their signs read: My mom is not a criminal for keeping me alive, The real abuse is denying trans kids identities, and No. 1 threat to Texas citizens: Greg Abbott.

Ace Odem, a 22-year-old transgender man who has a developmental disability, wore a black shirt with an opossum cartoon and the words: Gender is garbage, along with a transgender pride flag tied around his neck as a cape as he waved a nonbinary pride flag.

His message to Abbott on Sunday? That trans kids are loved. Odem added that he hopes Abbott will be voted out of office in November when he faces off against Democrat Beto ORourke.

Some counterprotesters and members of InfoWars, a far-right conspiracy theory-peddling website created by Alex Jones, tried to interrupt the rally and intimidate the crowd. Host Owen Shroyer, who was charged in connection with the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, was among them. State troopers surrounded the group and intervened to stop some of the pushing and shoving.

Rally goers also encircled the group, waved flags and signs in their faces and shouted chants to drown out their voices.

Desiree Skidmore, 23, drove in with her husband, Montana Skidmore, also 23, who recently came out as transgender to loved ones, from Fort Worth to show their support. Montana Skidmore, a special education paraprofessional, intends to come out publicly  and to his students  this week.

Its scary because I am 23, but if I were to have known there were other options at a younger age, then I probably would have gone another route, Montana Skidmore said about Abbotts directive. I want them (my students) to know that its OK to be who you are in your own state.  Theres child abuse, and then theres accepting your children.
The claim: The U.S. has made strides in reducing carbon emissions that other parts of the world have not. Meanwhile, [President Joe Biden] is trying to send taxpayer dollars to manufacturers overseas that do not abide by the same standards we do at home.  U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman.

Grothman, R-Wisconsin, made the claim in a tweet expanding on his comments from a February floor speech in the House about the Build Back Better plan proposed by the White House.

PolitiFact rating: True. When compared to the worlds other top greenhouse gas emitters, the United States has made progress  its emissions falling 8.2 percent from 2010 to 2019. While the U.S. is not tops in terms of decreases, Grothmans claim was a relative one. And China and India are among countries that have seen increases, not decreases.

EXCLUSIVE: In downtown Houston, a prominent developer's new office tower is breaking ground in carbon emissions

Discussion

Grothman expanded on the comment when fact-checkers asked about it.

I feel that many young people are being misled into thinking our country is polluting more than it ever has, Grothman said. In reality, air and water pollution have decreased significantly in the last 40 years. I also feel that given the growth of the Chinese and Indian economies, people in the U.S. have to be conscious that changes in our laws can inadvertently push jobs to these other countries who do not have the same environmental standards we do.

Grothmans claim about overseas manufacturing is based on Chinas dominance of the market for rare minerals necessary for making solar panels, wind turbines, motors for electric vehicles and other high-tech items. China would derive a secondary benefit from increased spending on those products and other things bolstered by the presidents Build Back Better plan.

When asked to back up Grothmans claim about U.S. progress on carbon emissions, his staff pointed to a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report titled Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks: 1990  2020.

The report said carbon monoxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion fell by 8.4 percent in that 30-year period. Looking at just the 15-year period of 2005 to 2020, they fell 24.7 percent. (In the final year covered, from 2019 to 2020, the figure was 10.7 percent)

Researchers with the Rhodium Group, an independent research firm focused on global trends, have tracked that data back decades. Their data puts China as the worlds top emitter, followed by the United States. The data groups the European Union as one, in addition to listing its individual nations such as Germany.

According to the data provided, here are the worlds largest greenhouse gas emitters for the years 2010 and 2019, with total net emissions in million metric tons of CO2e (bundles of greenhouse gases):

About PolitiFact PolitiFact is a fact-checking project to help you sort out fact from fiction in politics. Truth-O-Meter ratings are determined by a panel of three editors. The burden of proof is on the speaker, and PolitiFact rates statements based on the information known at the time the statement is made. See More Collapse

China: 14,093, up 25.4 percent.

U.S.: 5,724, down 8.2 percent

India: 3,422, up 36.6 percent

European Union: 3,334, down 13.8 percent

Brazil: 1,458, down 31.3 percent

Indonesia: 1,765, up 58.5 percent

Russia 1,619, up 21.2 percent

Japan 1,142, down 7.3 percent

So when compared to the worlds top greenhouse gas emitters, the United States has made progress, decreasing emissions 8.2 percent from 2010 to 2019. China and India saw the biggest increases among those countries, 25.4 percent and 36.6 percent.

Brazil made the most progress for that time period among the top 5 emitters, with a decrease of 31.3 percent. However, by 2020-2021, as The New York Times reported Nov. 2, 2021, Brazils progress has stalled and the country is now seeing increasing emission levels, largely driven by a surge in deforestation.
As an existing print subscriber it is easy to get FREE access to all our online content.

When you click get started below it will walk you through creating an online account to attach your print subscription number to.

After your account is created it will ask you to either add a subscription for online access or click on the print subscriber button. Click the print subscriber button header and it will open a dropdown, now click on get started. The page will reload and you will be prompted to enter an account number and a zip code.

IT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO USE THE NUMBER OFF OF THE MOST RECENT ISSUE OR ANYTHING AFTER JANUARY 28, 2019 TO GAIN ACCESS!

OLD ACCOUNT NUMBERS WILL NOT WORK

The account number and zip code are easily available on your most recent issue of the High Plains Journal or Midwest Ag Journal in the address fields as is shown here. Sometimes the account number has extra zero's in front of it, just ignore those.
An early rider for Reef Plunge exits the water slide at Aquatica water park. The new slide replaces Dolphin Plunge, and one of the changes is the landing, which now has dual 'run-outs' instead of a 4-foot deep pool. (Dewayne Bevil / Orlando Sentinel)

For this weeks Theme Park Rangers Radar, we slide right past Dolphin Plunge for Reef Plunge at Aquatica, figure out parade times at Universal Mardi Gras and look forward to Super Nintendo World (but not as excitedly as others are).

Radar is a compilation of attractions, tidbits and trivia. Its published at OrlandoSentinel.com on Wednesdays.

Advertisement

Plunging again

The new slide at Aquatica, SeaWorld Orlandos water park, has a familiar feel. Reef Plunge replaces Dolphin Plunge, and well just call them fraternal twins.

The attraction still starts high, glides past Commersons dolphins and splashes down in a side-by-side fashion. Brad Gilmour, vice president for Aquatica, explains some of the differences.

Advertisement

Up near the tower weve added translucent fiberglass pieces, which showcases animals as youre sliding through, as well as a ring experience. It enhanced the upper section of the slide, he said. See-through portions of tubing are a water-park trend, and the original Dolphin Plunge was an opening-day attraction at Aquatica in 2008.

The splashdown is different too. Instead of both tubes leading to a 4-foot-deep pool, the parallel slides are extended into a flatter space thats easier for riders to get up and out of quickly.

interactive_content

The run-outs allow us to lower the height requirement and allows us to dispatch quicker, Gilmour said. Riders now must be 42 inches tall as opposed to the former 48 inches.

Its a better experience on a body slide when you come into a run-out, as opposed to a splashdown, he said. Theyre still disoriented coming out of the tubes but not frantically trying to touch the bottom of the pool now.

Its very straightforward, much easier for all our guests to exit this slide, he said. No more upside-down turtles.

There have also been changes within the animal habitat connected to the slide. Once purely the domain of Commersons dolphins, the distinctive black and white, upside-down swimming creatures, it now has more. There are leopard sharks, a large swirling ball of sardines and other fish. Adjustments had to be made.

Commersons dolphins are generally found off the southern tip of South America, Gilmour said, so theyre accustomed to cold water. So we chill the water. ... All the different chemistries and temperatures have to align just right for them to coexist.

Aquatica has spent a year getting the animals accustomed to togetherness.

Advertisement

Theyre all cohabitating just fine, Gilmour said. Its really more of a natural experience for all the animals.

Start times are a moving target for the parade at Universal's Mardi Gras. And there are three upcoming dates when the parade isn't held. (Dewayne Bevil / Orlando Sentinel)

Hey, mister, its Grad Bash

Its not as bad as getting hit in the face by a string of beads but I really dont like being unsure when Universals Mardi Gras parade starts. I am grateful theres a fairly easy way this year. Go to universalorlando.com/mardigras, then scroll past concerts to all the parade excitement and theres a link to dates, times and details.

Click that and scroll down to where and when to see it, where youll see multiple mysterious times. Some of this can be explained by concert schedules and the spring-forward time change, but its not something I can or want to memorize.

But wait, theres more. There are no parades on April 1, 2 and 8. Why?

In five words: The return of Grad Bash.

Both theme parks close at 6 p.m. on those dates, allowing the after-hours event for upcoming high-school graduates. There are also Grad Bash dates on April 29-30 as well as Gradventure, the middle-school version, on May 6, 13 and 20, but those are after the end of Universals Mardi Gras, which wraps up April 24.

Advertisement

There were no grad events at the parks in 2020 or 2021, another bit of pandemic fallout.

I couldnt find info on the regular Universal Orlando website, but there are details at universalorlandoyouth.com.

Super Nintendo World opened at Universal Studios Japan last year. Next up: An opening at Universal Studios Hollywood next year. (Courtesy Universal Studios Japan / Courtesy photo)

On your mark

Theme Park Rangers Weekly The latest happenings at Disney, Universal Orlando, SeaWorld and other Central Florida attractions. >

Perhaps the most common question asked by theme park fans is When, when, when, when can we do that?

Universal Studios Hollywood has kinda-sorta answered that about Super Nintendo World.

Mark your calendars, the news release teased.

The answer: 2023. Sometime in 2023.

Advertisement

OK, fine, broad dates are commonly given, then narrowed down. But we should mark all of next year?

Yes, Im being a persnickety word person/theme park writer. Im not alone.

Whats on your radar? Email me at dbevil@orlandosentinel.com
Subscribing to our services is a three step process. First you have to create an account and then you have to pick if you want to subscribe to digital and or print.

Some people only want to be a digital subscriber to get access online and others want to also receive the print edition.

If you are already a print subscriber and want online access, it is free, you simply have to create an online account and then attach your print subscription account number to the online account you create.
Thank you for reading!

Please purchase a subscription to read our premium content. If you have a subscription, please log in or sign up for an account on our website to continue.
Downtown Music to invest $200M independent artists and music businesses

Downtown Music has recently launched a fund of $200 million dollars to support independent artists and businesses in the music industry.

from Celebrity Access.

Music services provider Downtown Music Holdings announced the launch of a new investment fund aimed at supporting independent artists and businesses.

The fund, which has been capitalized with an initial investment of $200 million, is supported by a new credit facility with Bank of America. The fund will be leveraged across Downtowns distribution, publishing administration and artist and label services operations.

Empowering artists has been Downtowns core mission from the very inception of the company, said Andrew Bergman, CEO of Downtown Music Holdings. This financing from Bank of America enables us to expand our music services business by giving creators and business owners the ability to finance projects in an environment where the options are often unpalatable. Bank of America recognizes this need in our industry, and we applaud their commitment and belief in our mission.

We are immensely gratified that Bank of America shares our vision of building financial solutions for creators in our industry. This credit facility enables us to empower the thousands of artists who use our services, added Downtown Music Holdings Chief Investment Officer Alan Goodstadt.

Share on:
Dalton Planners Consider Drive-Thru Bylaw

DALTON, Mass.  The town is mulling the idea of allowing businesses other than banks and car washes to have drive-throughs.

On Thursday, the Planning Board continued the vote on a proposed drive-through bylaw amendment that would allow such a facility at any primary business use. The panel will take up the proposal again at its next meeting on Wednesday.

Town Planner Grant McGregor presented the bylaw amendment to the board.

In Chapter 350 of the town's code, the Table of Use Regulations states that drive-through facilities are permitted for banks, financial institutions, and car washes only with all other uses specifically excluded.

The amendment states that drive-through facilities are currently permitted for banks, financial institutions, and all other primary business uses for the purpose of growing economic development.

The board voted to add a section to the proposal stating that drive-through facilities for primary uses (other than banks and car washes) are not permitted in the town's four residential zones.

In business and industrial districts, primary use drive-throughs would be permitted through a special permit with the Board of Appeals.

The current bylaw states that banks with drive-throughs and carwashes are permitted in all residential zones and require a special permit from the Board of Appeals for business and industrial zones. Part of why the board continued the vote was to make sure that it does not interfere with existing businesses.

Other town panels have weighed in on the bylaw proposal with varying views.

After some clarification, the Traffic Commission took a vote of no objection that same day.

Last Monday, the town's Historical Commission held a special meeting to discuss the proposal and voted not to approve it as written. The commission would like to have it spelled out that no drive-throughs excluding banks and car washes are allowed in the town's historic districts.

"It is a vital importance that the historic integrity of the downtown corridor be protected," the commission's vice chair wrote to the Planning Board. "Many towns in Berkshire County do not allow drive-thrus in the historic downtown corridors and we feel Dalton should follow their example in keeping our appeal as a small historic New England town."

The Dalton Review Board, which is strictly an advisory board with no power to approve or disprove any issue, submitted correspondence saying it does not see any issues with the existing historic district and that there doesn't appear to be any business or industrial properties in the historic district.

During a 2014, town meeting, a drive-through bylaw amendment was not passed.

Selectman John Boyle spoke to the opposition.

"The opposition feels as though like a McDonald's is going to move to Dalton and open up on Main street next to St. Agnes' church, that's literally been said by the past chairman of the Planning Board," he said.

"Well, that's really fear-mongering 101. First of all, you have to be in the business zone to even apply for a drive-through window permit from the zoning board of appeals so that rules out 99 percent of Main Street because a lot of the businesses even on Main Street are on residential property."
MCLA Green Living Seminar on March 23

NORTH ADAMS, Mass.  Madeleine L. Scammell, Boston University School of Public Health, Associate Professor of Environmental Health, will give a talk titled "Public Health and Community Based Participatory Research in Urban Environmental Justice Communities" at 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, March 23 at the MCLA Feigenbaum Center for Science and Innovation, Room 121.

Part of MCLA's Green Living Seminar series, this event is free and open to the public. Masks are required in all buildings on MCLA's campus.

About Dr. Madeleine L. Scammell

Scammell is an Associate Professor of Environmental Health at Boston University School of Public Health and a JPB Environmental Health Fellow at Harvard School of Public Health. Her expertise is in the area of community-driven and community-based participatory research and includes the use of qualitative methods in the area of environmental health and epidemiologic studies. Dr. Scammell is Principal Investigator of a recently funded longitudinal study of agricultural workers in El Salvador, focused on identifying and preventing exposures that may contribute to the epidemic of chronic kidney disease in Central America known as Mesoamerican Nephropathy (MeN). She also leads a study examining health care claims and electronic medical records examining incidence, prevalence and risk factors of chronic kidney disease in the US. Scammell is also a member of the Consortium for the Epidemic of Nephropathy in Central America and Mexico.

Additionally, Scammell leads the Community Engagement Cores of two research centers: The Boston University Superfund Research Center (funded by NIEHS/NIH), and the Center for Research on Social and Environmental Stressors in Housing across the Lifecourse (joint center between Boston University and Harvard-Chan School of Public Health funded by NIMHD/NIH and EPA). In this capacity her work includes developing mechanisms to support long-and short-term research relationships between community groups and scientists, and responding to community requests for scientific assistance. Scammell has also partnered with the Boston Housing Authority, the Boston Public Health Commission and investigators at the Boston University School of Social Work on several studies to address systemic, social and structural environmental health stressors in the home environment. Scammell serves of the Board of Health in the City of Chelsea, and as Chair of the board of directors of the Science & Environmental Health Network.

MCLA's annual Green Living Seminar Series continues through April, presenting a series of lectures on the theme of "Greening the City." Every semester, the Green Living Seminar Series centers around a different topic, timely and relevant in current sustainability issues. Seminars take place on Wednesdays at 5:30 p.m. until April 20.

The series is a presentation of the MCLA Environmental Studies Department and MCLA's Berkshire Environmental Resource Center.

Presentations will also be broadcast on Northern Berkshire Community Television Channel (NBCTC) 1302 at the following times:

Wednesdays at 7:30 p.m.

Fridays at 4 p.m.

Saturdays at 3:30 p.m.

Sundays at 11:30 a.m.

Mondays at 5:30 p.m.

Recordings will also be available on the College's YouTube channel.

For more information, visit www.mcla.edu/greenliving or contact Professor of Environmental Studies Elena Traister at (413) 662-5303.
Northern Berkshire United Way Community Needs and Special Grants

NORTH ADAMS, Mass.  Northern Berkshire United Way's Community Needs and Special Grants (CNSG) grant applications are now available.

Community Needs and Special Grants are intended to support one-time, short-term projects that address current community issues with the goal to positively impact the community. Collaborations are valued.

Applications must be received at Northern Berkshire United Way by April 21, 2022. Funding decisions will be announced in June.

Applicants do not need to be member agencies of Northern Berkshire United Way but must be designated by the IRS as a charitable organization. Grants are for residents residing in towns served by Northern Berkshire United Way: Adams Cheshire, Clarksburg, Florida, North Adams, Savoy, Williamstown and Stamford, Vt.

Projects that support safety net services, low to moderate-income populations, and support a diverse, inclusive population that has not been previously funded are given priority.

The Community Needs and Special Grants Committee of Northern Berkshire United Way reviews community priorities each year. The committee takes into account the unique assets and needs in Northern Berkshire and evaluates all applications with the available funding.
State Fire Marshall: Be Mindful of Outdoor Smoking Hazards

STOW, Mass.  With a week of warmer weather in the forecast, State Fire Marshal Peter J. Ostroskey asks residents to be mindful of the fire hazards when smoking outdoors.

"We've got some nice weather in the forecast this week, and after a long winter everyone wants to spend a little more time outdoors," said State Fire Marshal Ostroskey. "If you still smoke, please be mindful of the fire hazards when you step out to smoke on a stairway, porch, or balcony."

Fires often start when smokers drop butts in planters or near the side of buildings, where dried vegetation, mulch, or debris can catch fire. They can also start when cigarettes are ground out on railings, steps, or floors, allowing embers to drift and ignite flammable materials. In a densely built neighborhood, that fire can quickly spread to other buildings and put many people at risk.

"There are no smoke alarms on the outside of the house, so an exterior fire can grow to a dangerous size before anyone is aware of it," Ostroskey said. "There's no safe way to smoke, but if you must smoke then do it responsibly. Use a sturdy ashtray with water or sand and put it out, all the way, every time."

The Department of Fire Services created a series of video and audio clips to promote the proper disposal of smoking materials on porches and balconies. They are available in English and Spanish for fire departments, fire educators, social service providers, and state or municipal agencies to use free of charge. Visit the DFS YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/DFSOSFM and view the Smoking Fire Safety playlist.

"Of all the smoking safety steps you can take, the most effective one is to quit," said Ostroskey. "You'll enjoy many more years of fresh air."




iciHaiti - Colombia : STOP Accidents at the Children's Road Safety Forum





From March 9 to 11, 2022, Garnel Michel, Acting Executive Director of the Haitian organization "Technical and Operational Services to Stop Accidents" (STOP-Accidents) participated in the Forum on Children's Road Safety in Colombia.



Several countries participated in this forum in order to facilitate the exchange of knowledge, experiences and good practices for the development of road safety management in different fields of action.



"We welcomed the invitation to participate in this forum with interest. This was an opportunity for us to exchange with different actors in the field of road safety in order to make the work of STOP Accidents in Haiti more effective, and also to share our work experiences with them."



Moreover, Garnel Michel deplores Haiti's delay in this area at a time when all the other countries are making it a priority.



IH/ iciHaiti


















Washington, DC, US (PANA) - The United States (US) and African Union Commission (AUC) have reaffirmed their strong commitment to collaboration at the end of their eighth annual US-AUC High Level Dialogue held in Washington on Friday
Washington, DC, US (PANA) - The US Acting Assistant Secretary for Democracy, Human Rights and Labour, Lisa Peterson, begins a four-day visit to Burundi and Uganda on Monday to underscore the US commitment to the protection and advancement of human rights and democracy in Africas Great Lakes region
"We don't sell resources. We sell very complex projects that require the customer to make some severe decisions," says Andre Rogaczewski, chief executive and founder of Netcompany. In 2021 the firm reported revenue growth of 27.9%. Like the heathers and grasses that line the weather-beaten Danish coastline, Netcompany's results demonstrate a technology business that grows strongly in the face of challenging conditions. Those challenges are not so much the market condition, we live in an age of demand for digital change, but the scope of project Netcompany takes on.

Rogaczewski explains to IDG Connect that a deep belief in technology, technologists, sharing risk, and facing big challenges enable the Copenhagen headquartered firm to invest and grow.

Netcompany gained notice during the pandemic for its successful deployment of Covid-19 passport apps in Denmark and Scotland, whilst other vendors and nations struggled.

The rate of pandemic led digitisation, and now the major investment programmes in Europe will require vendors, enterprises and governments to tackle big structural problems with technology and to share the risk. "We are telling organisations and government departments that the animal in the basement has to be killed and that you need to put in new systems, which will cost 30million," he says. Rogaczewski doesn't skirt from the scale of the challenge, but he firmly believes that the technologies and processes that have dominated organisations for the last two to three decades cannot be adapted to deal with issues such as ageing demographics, climate change and the possibility of another pandemic.

Rogaczewski says the vendor and the customer must share the risk to deliver large-scale change. "You don't change anything unless you take a chance," he says. "Organisations must own their own technology resources and destiny. Technology is the internal organs of an organisation," he says. To enable risk-sharing, Netcompany has developed IP sharing and customer ownership models.
'Power of the Dog' and 'Ted Lasso' dominate at the 27th annual Critics Choice Awards
An award-winning US journalist working in Ukraine, Brent Renaud, has been shot dead in Irpin, outside Kyiv, on Sunday 13 March. Ukrainian police said he had been targeted by Russian soldiers. Two other journalists were injured and taken to hospital. It is the first reported death of a foreign journalist covering the war in Ukraine. The International and European Federations of Journalists (IFJ-EFJ) condemn the killing and call for the killers to be brought to justice.

Brent Renaud, 50, was a journalist and documentary filmmaker who lived and worked in New York City and Little Rock, Arkansas. He had previously worked for the New York Times. His film and television projects have covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the earthquake in Haiti, political turmoil in Egypt and Libya, the fight for Mosul, extremism in Africa, cartel violence in Mexico, and the youth refugee crisis in Central America.

One of the injured journalists, Juan Arredondo, was with Brent Renaud when they came under fire: We were across one of the first bridges in Irpin, going to film other refugees leaving, and we got into a car, he said in a video published on Twitter. Somebody offered to take us to the other bridge and we crossed a checkpoint, and they started shooting at us. So the driver turned around, and they kept shooting; theres two of us. My friend is Brent Renaud, and hes been shot and left behind I saw him being shot in the neck.

A third victim, a Ukrainian who had been in the same car as Brent Renaud and Juan Arredondo was also wounded, according to a medic at the scene.

The news comes less than two weeks after Ukrainian journalist Yevheniy Sakun, a camera operator for the Ukrainian television channel LIVE, was killed when a building near the TV transmission tower in Kyiv was hit by shelling.

On 26 February, two Danish journalists had also sustained gunshot wounds after unknown gunmen targeted their car in Ukraine.

On 28 February, a British television crew for Sky News was ambushed while covering the war in Ukraine. Despite their shouting that they were journalists, they were shot at various times: a bullet hit Chief correspondent Stuart Ramsay in his lower back while camera operator Richie Mockler was shot twice in his flak jacket.

A few days later, on 6 March, a Swiss journalist covering the war in Ukraine, Guillaume Briquet, was shot and wounded after coming under fire in the Mykolayiv region, in southern Ukraine.

We are shocked by the increasing number of attacks on journalists trying to cover the war in Ukraine, said IFJ General Secretary Anthony Bellanger. The deaths of journalists Brent Renaud and Yevheniy Sakun cannot go unpunished. The authorities must do everything possible to identify the perpetrators of these war crimes.

These systematic attacks on journalists and other war crimes require a strong response from the international community, added EFJ General Secretary Ricardo Gutierrez. The EFJ calls once again for the establishment of a special international tribunal on these war crimes committed in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This murderous spiral must be stopped!.
Tripoli, Libya (PANA) - It has become almost official that the two rival prime ministers in Libya, Abdelhamid Al-Dbaiba and Fathi Bachagha, will meet soon after the US ambassador announced on Saturday evening direct talks under the auspices of the United Nations
Let's be honest. You might feel a little weary of all these "pandemic lessons" business leaders seem to love talking about. Did we really need a global health crisis to teach us to be better and do better? Maybe we did.

In any case, there's no denying that the past couple years have brought into stark relief some of the challenges of leading a fully remote team--and plenty of the joys as well. If anything, leading a company through a pandemic has granted many of us invaluable insight into what really matters--and it's not always what we expected.

As we continue to adapt to whatever our next normal will be, many of you have been taking some time to reflect on priorities and how the pandemic has shaped them--as a business owner, a leader, and as a human. Most of us already understand the importance of the three C's--communication, culture, and collaboration--but the past two years have proved that if these aren't the foundation of your business, the cracks will soon start to show.

Here are some of the lessons we can learn about the three C's from the pandemic (some things you might already know):

1. Thinking of ditching corporate America? There's no time like the present.

Is there anything as ick-inducing as the phrase "corporate culture"? Sure, there are companies that get it right, but for the most part, the whole concept of culture in corporate America is built around climbing that ladder. The more rungs you climb, the more "in" you are. But for those left lingering around the bottom, it's a pretty lonely place. Maybe the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns amplified that feeling of emptiness. And maybe you realized it wasn't because you weren't climbing fast enough; it was because you were seeking fulfillment and meaning from something that was never designed to offer that.

A job, no matter how high-level or how "important," is not enough to build your life around. And corporate culture cannot serve as a substitute for community. Finding meaning begins with the people around you: family and friends. Yes, that can certainly include colleagues, but it always comes back to the person, not the system.

Speaking from my own personal experience, leaving the corporate world and starting my business from Belize might have seemed like a crazy move at the time, but it allowed me to stay focused on what really matters. And here's a little truth: it wasn't promotions or annual reviews or endless meetings. It was taking care of my needs, so I could do the same for my employees, and build a culture of positive relationships and low stress, not corporate ranks.

2. Leading with empathy gets you further.

It's always been a great mantra for business leaders and entrepreneurs, but the pandemic reinforced the necessity of treating employees with compassion and understanding. This is even more critical on remote teams, where communications must be clear and intentional. We don't yet understand the fallout of the past couple years' trauma, but we do know that the social and emotional isolation took a significant toll on many.

Loneliness was the top challenge for remote workers throughout the pandemic, and many became far more susceptible to burnout, depression, and anxiety. That's not a weakness; that's a valid trauma response. As a leader, ignoring it or pushing through it in an attempt to get "back to business" would have been a serious misstep.

Instead, it makes more sense to alter the way you initiate communication. Not as a business owner, and not as a boss, but as a human being. Ask employees to share (at their level of comfort) how they're feeling, and reciprocate by sharing your own experiences and emotions. Before getting into "shop talk," start with a personal check-in. This helps identify those who might be struggling outside of work -- because we are all so much more than our work -- and identify ways you can support them and show them grace during what may be a difficult time. In turn, by making yourself vulnerable, you might find many of them do the same for you.

3. A strong team is a force to be reckoned with.

Collaboration is the cornerstone of an effective remote team. Without it, there is no team, just a group of loosely affiliated individuals working toward their own goals. The "every man/woman for themselves" approach is rarely successful--and a lot less fun.

I was fortunate that most of my team were already experienced remote workers when we entered 2020. They had the skills, drive, and self-discipline to stay productive, but not one of them did it alone. Across multiple countries and time zones, the team pulled together and collaborated to get the job done as a cohesive unit. And the results were powerful. Ultimately, we led our largest client to their highest-revenue year at a time when many brands were struggling.
Since 1963, The Independent has helped create a great community!

Since our founding in September of 1963, The Independent has been dedicated to giving Livermore, Pleasanton, Dublin, and Sunol readers the news they need to be in-the-know about what's going on in the Tri-Valley region.
Send to Email Address

Your Name

Your Email Address

Post was not sent - check your email addresses!

Email check failed, please try again

Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.
Shares of HDFC Bank closed higher after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) lifted the restrictions on sourcing of new credit cards.The bank said in the stock exchange filing that, we would like to inform one and all that the Reserve Bank of India has lifted the restriction on the business generating activities planned under the Banks Digital 2.0 programme, vide its letter dated March 11, 2022. The same has been notified to the Stock Exchanges on March 12, 2022.We would like to extend our gratitude to the regulator for this action. We are fully committed to ensuring continued adherence to the highest standards of compliance with RBI recommendations, HDFC Bank said.Further, the bank added we also take this opportunity to convey our heartfelt thanks to our customers for the trust and faith they have reposed in us. We have utilised this time to draw up short, medium, and long-term plans to meet the evolving digital requirements of our customers and we will roll out these initiatives in the days to come.HDFC Bank Ltd ended at Rs1,442.40 up by Rs45.4 or 3.25% from its previous closing of Rs1,397 on the BSE. The scrip opened at Rs1,411 and touched a high and low of Rs1,449.90 and Rs1,411 respectively.
Prevent Unauthorized Transactions in your demat / trading account Update your Mobile Number/ email Id with your stock broker / Depository Participant. Receive information of your transactions directly from Exchanges on your mobile / email at the end of day and alerts on your registered mobile for all debits and other important transactions in your demat account directly from NSDL/ CDSL on the same day." - Issued in the interest of investors.

KYC is one time exercise while dealing in securities markets - once KYC is done through a SEBI registered intermediary (broker, DP, Mutual Fund etc.), you need not undergo the same process again when you approach another intermediary.

No need to issue cheques by investors while subscribing to IPO. Just write the bank account number and sign in the application form to authorise your bank to make payment in case of allotment. No worries for refund as the money remains in investor's account."

www.indiainfoline.com is part of the IIFL Group, a leading financial services player and a diversified NBFC. The site provides comprehensive and real time information on Indian corporates, sectors, financial markets and economy. On the site we feature industry and political leaders, entrepreneurs, and trend setters. The research, personal finance and market tutorial sections are widely followed by students, academia, corporates and investors among others.
News and commentary on organized crime, street crime, white collar crime, cyber crime, sex crime, crime fiction, crime prevention, espionage and terrorism.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine has cast doubt on international efforts to resurrect the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, just as global mediators were about to announce a breakthrough. Negotiators appeared to be on the verge of completing a revived nuclear deal with Iran, as well as lifting sanctions.



Over nearly a year of meetings in Austria, negotiators from the United States, Europe, Russia, China, and Iran had largely succeeded in isolating themselves from external crises across the world. However, international censure of Russia and a globally coordinated sanctions regime  which is increasingly targeting Russia's oil exports, its primary financial artery  are resonating in Vienna's conference rooms.

What Is the Iran Nuclear Deal?

In July 2015, Iran and numerous international powers, including the United States, the United Kingdom, China, Russia, France, and Germany (together known as P5+1), struck a historic deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). In exchange for billions of dollars in sanctions relief, Iran pledged to destroy much of its nuclear programme and open its sites to more thorough international inspections.

Unsplash/Representational image

Proponents of the agreement claimed that it would help avoid a revival of Iran's nuclear weapons programme, reducing the likelihood of conflict between Iran and its regional enemies, such as Israel and Saudi Arabia. However, since President Donald Trump removed the US from the agreement in 2018, the accord has been in risk.



Iran allegedly resumed some nuclear activity in retribution for the US exit and for lethal attacks on prominent Iranians in 2020, including one by the US. President Joe Biden stated in 2021 that if Iran returns to compliance, the US will rejoin the agreement.

What were the goals and what did Iran agree to?

According to reports, the P5+1 planned to slow down Iran's nuclear development to the point where pursuing a nuclear weapon would take at least a year, giving international powers time to respond. In the run-up to the JCPOA talks, US intelligence agencies predicted that if no agreement was reached, Iran could create enough nuclear material for a weapon in a relatively short time. Iran's efforts to become a nuclear-weapons state alarmed negotiating nations, who feared a new crisis in the region.

Iran stopped working on nuclear weapons in 2003, according to US intelligence analysts, but continued to collect nuclear technology and experience. Following President Hassan Rouhani's victory in 2013, who was viewed as a reformer, the parties reached a preliminary agreement to guide negotiations towards a comprehensive settlement.

AP

As a part of the deal, Iran pledged not to manufacture highly enriched uranium or plutonium that may be used in nuclear weapons. It also made measures to ensure that its facilities in Fordow, Natanz, and Arak were only used for civilian purposes, including as medical and industrial research. The agreement restricts the number and types of centrifuges Iran can use, as well as the amount of enrichment and the size of its enriched uranium stockpile.



Iran promised to eventually implement a protocol allowing the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN's nuclear watchdog, unrestricted access to its nuclear facilities and possibly undeclared sites. The inspections are meant to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons in secret, as it has purportedly attempted in the past. The IAEA has produced quarterly reports to its board of governors and the UN Security Council on Iran's nuclear commitments.

The Joint Commission, which comprises representatives from all of the negotiating parties, oversees the agreement's implementation and resolves any issues that may emerge.

What did the other signatories agree to?

The EU, the United Nations (UN), and the US have all agreed to suspend their nuclear-related sanctions against Iran. However, many other US sanctions against Iran remained in place, some dating back to the 1979 hostage crisis. They address issues like Iran's ballistic missile development, support for terrorist organisations, and human rights violations.

After five years, the parties agreed to lift a UN ban on Iran transferring conventional weapons and ballistic missiles if the IAEA certifies that Iran is only involved in civilian nuclear activity.

Russia connects the Iran deal to Ukraine sanctions

Now, after eleven months of talks, negotiators appear to be close to reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which removed sanctions in exchange for Iran's nuclear programme being curtailed. However, the talks have been delayed by Russia's last-minute demand for "formal guarantees" from the US that broad Western sanctions targeting Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine would not harm its economic and military cooperation with Iran.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told the media, "We seek assurances that these sanctions would have no influence on the JCPOA's commercial, economic, and investment relations regime."

AP

Russia's demand was swiftly rejected by the US, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken declaring that such requests are "irrelevant" and that sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine "have nothing to do with the Iran nuclear deal."



Iran stated that it was seeking clarity from Russia on the nature of their requests. "We're still waiting for additional details from Moscow," Saeed Khatibzadeh, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, told the press on Monday.

Meanwhile, Western nations advised Moscow on Tuesday not to jeopardise the nearly finished deal to bring the US and Iran back into compliance with the agreement.

Britain, France, and Germany said in a joint declaration to the 35-nation board of governors of the UN nuclear watchdog, "The time is running out to seize this opportunity. We urge all parties to take the steps necessary to complete the agreement as soon as possible, and we urge Russia not to add any additional conditions to the agreement's conclusion"

Complicated situation for Tehran?

For months, diplomats from Iran and other world countries have been meeting in Vienna to try to restore the 2015 nuclear deal. Along with the United Kingdom, China, France, and Germany, Moscow is a direct participant in the ongoing discussions in Vienna. Former President Donald Trump withdrew from the pact in 2018, therefore Washington is only indirectly involved.

Iran and the UN nuclear watchdog said on Saturday that they had reached an agreement on a strategy for resolving concerns critical to the agreement's revival. If fully implemented, the accord will bring the US and Iran back into line with the original agreement, the JCPOA.

Reuters

According to the watchdog, Iran would undoubtedly reap enormous economic benefits as a result of the agreement, which will allow the country to freely sell oil and gas and access the global banking system. In exchange, Tehran will limit uranium enrichment and accept international inspections and other nuclear-related restrictions.



However, a last-minute Russian demand could make reaching an agreement more difficult. "Tehran, in my opinion, is currently in a very complicated situation. The Islamic Republic has spent decades attempting to portray Russia as a friend or at the very least a strategic partner, and admitting openly that they have been played by the Russians would result in a massive public response "Azizi, an SWP specialist, stated.
The science of astronomy never fails to amaze humans as new developments and discoveries baffle the curious mind of humans. As we are reaching new heights of technology, we often tend to forget the negative outcomes of it and today we will talk about one such problem.

The problem of Space Debris or Junk, which recently slammed into the moon and created a wide crater. This heated the debate of space debris among the international communities. What is space debris and how is it causing a serious issue.

AFP/Representational image





Space Debris Collided with Moon

Recently, Chinese rocket debris allegedly collided with the moon and created a 65 feet wide crater on the lunar surface. According to several media reports, the rocket debris weighed 3 tonnes was considered the first known unintentional lunar collision (space hardware) excluding crashes while trying to land on the moon. However, China has rejected this claim.

Initially, the collision was thought to be SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that launched the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite in February 2015. Though, astronomer Bill Gray suggested that the object was part of the Long March 3C rocket that launched China's Chang'e 5-T1 mission in 2014.

What is Space Debris?

Space debris also called space junk, is discarded launch vehicles or parts of a spacecraft that floats in space carrying a risk of collision with satellites or a space station.

AFP/Representational image

According to the NASA website, debris can be both natural meteoroid and artificial (human-made) orbital debris. It is caused by the countrys missile testing to shoot down their satellites or explosions in space. In simple words, satellites going in space have the full potential of becoming space junk.



The speed of space debris orbiting around the earth is over 15,700 miles per hour (25,265 kph) in low Earth orbit.

What is Kessler Syndrome or Kessler Effect?

The Kessler Syndrome is a phenomenon in which the density of objects in the Low Earth Orbit grows so high that collisions between two objects could cause a massive cascade. The collisions could increase the scope of further collisions generating more space junk. This causes more and more debris problems and negatively impacts satellites, astronauts and mission planners.

Donald J Kessler, a NASA scientist gave the term and discussed it in his paper titled Collision Frequency of Artificial Satellites: The Creation of a Debris Belt. It was published in 1978. He talked about the problems caused by space junk and described a self-sustaining cascading collision of space debris in the Low Earth orbit.

This phenomenon is known as Kessler Syndrome or Kessler Effect or collisional cascading or an ablation cascade.

Earths Ring, made of Junk

Last year, University of Utah professor Jake Abbott said that debris that now orbits Earth will soon take on the visual character of rings, which will be made of junk.

Space.com/Representational image

The European Space Agency estimated 170 million pieces of space debris in orbit. These pieces are are larger than one millimetre and about 670,000 of these are larger than half an inch.



Is there any solution?

As professor Jake Abbott explained in his published article attaching magnets to a robotic arm could help in the situation. He said that a robotic arm with magnets can scoop out junk as electrical currents called eddies could help control and slow down space junk. He called it the "world's first tractor beam."

Furthermore, Japan's Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) initiated the world's first debris removal mission. JAXA launched a demonstration project with Astroscale.

Countries need to consider sending missions up to remove some of the larger pieces and ensure future missions have technology on-board to remove themselves.

Moreover, its a global problem and every country should come up with solutions to tackle the ever-growing risk of space and debris and ensure a sustainable future for coming generations.

For more on news and current affairs from around the world please visit Indiatimes News.
N Chandrasekaran, the chairman of Tata Sons has been officially appointed as the chairman of Air India, the beleaguered airline entity acquired by Tata group from the government.



Salt-to-software conglomerate Tata Group had won the bid to take over debt-laden state-run Air India by offering 18,000 crore for it.



The appointment of a new CEO of the formerly state-owned airline is also expected to be finalised soon, according to reports.



Recent controversy

BCCL

Air India had announced earlier this month that former Turkish Airlines boss Ilker Ayci will not take its helm, despite being named the airline's CEO last month.



Ayci  who oversaw extensive cost-cutting at Turkish Airlines  was chosen as the debt-ridden carrier's first foreign CEO in mid-February after Tata group bought it back from the government following 69 years in state ownership.

He is considered to be close to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, an ally of Pakistan, which led to controversy once his appointment was announced.



About Chandrasekaran

Chandrasekaran was reappointed as Tata Sons' executive chairman for another five years in February.



BCCL

Chandrasekaran is the Chairman of Tata Sons, the holding company and promoter of more than 100 Tata operating companies. He joined the Board of Tata Sons in October 2016 and was appointed Chairman in January 2017.



He also chairs the Boards of several group operating companies, including Tata Steel, Tata Motors, Tata Power, and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS)  of which he was Chief Executive Officer from 2009-17.



BCCL

His appointment as Chairman followed a 30-year business career at TCS, which he joined from university. He rose through the ranks at TCS to become CEO and Managing Director of the leading global IT solution and consulting firm.



Chandrasekaran became the first non-Parsi and professional executive to head the Tata Group.
A Norwegian computer expert has created a website that would allow anyone to send an email about the Russian-Ukraine conflict to up to 150 Russian email addresses at a time, to highlight the truth the Russian government has been hiding from its citizens.

Unsplash

Also Read: Russia Wants To Cut Itself Off From The Global Internet: Here's How

Reported first by BBC, Russians are receiving mysterious emails with the subject Ya vam ne vrag -- I am not your enemy. The email talk about requesting the Russian people to reject the war in Ukraine and seek the truth about the invasion from non-state news services.



In a matter of days, over 22 million of such emails have been received in Russian inboxes, sent by volunteers across the world who are putting their time end effort into the cause.

Fabian, who came up with the idea says that this is not very different from when during the second world war, people flew over Germany with leaflets and dropped them out. Its just a modern take on that.

The website makes use of clever computing and the power of the people online, to send his template message to dozens of Russian email addresses at once. The site was made with the help of five other colleagues over a weekend.

They first browsed all over the internet and compiled a list of 90 million active accounts. According to Fabian, the system is the strongest when volunteers use their own email accounts instead of bulk-messaging email addresses via spam software.

Also read: Russia-Ukraine Conflict: What Apple, Twitter, And FB Are Doing During The Crisis



Reuters

Using personal accounts helps in not just getting through spam filters but also allowing individuals the ability to interact about the war with people who wish to learn more, according to Fabian.



Fabian, in his words, doesnt call his work propaganda and feels this intrusion is justified since the stakes too are pretty high. He calls his spam as involuntarily receiving a leaflet on our doors. He says one has to stand what they believe in and he believes in this.

Keep visiting Indiatimes.com for the latest science and technology news.
Chinas lunar rover has sent back a new image from the dark side of the moon, showcasing its three-year-long journey on our planets satellite.

Outerspace CNSA

Also Read: First Physical Evidence Of Water On Moon Collected By Chang'e 5 Lunar Lander

The images were released by Ourspace -- a Chinese language science outreach channel affiliated with the China National Space Administration in late February (highlighted by Space.com). One of the images includes a wide panoramic view of the moon with Yutu-2s tyre marks.



This image also shows Change 4s lander in the far distance which touched down on January 2019, which also claimed the spot of the first spacecraft to land and operate on the moons hidden hemisphere.

Since its landing, Yutu-2 has travelled over a kilometre across the Von Karman crater as per the new data from Chinas Lunar Exploration Ground Application System.

Last month, the rover had spotted two intact spheres of translucent glass which was around an inch thick on the far side of the moon. To the unaware, these are common phenomena on the moon.

Wikipedia

Also Read: Chinas Change-5 Lunar Probe Successfully Brings Moon Samples Back To Earth

Essentially glass forms when the silicate material on the lunar surface is subjected to high temperatures. This normally occurs due to heat generated from impacts by meteorites on the lunar surface. They're normally less than 0.03 of an inch in diameter.



Yutu 2 also recently visited the crater rim to look at the mysterious hut-like structure which actually turned out to be a rabbit-shaped rock.

Keep visiting Indiatimes.com for the latest science and technology news.
The future of Whites Ferry is once again in jeopardy, as the new owners say they can no longer see a way to work with the owners of the Virgi
Real-time social media posts from local businesses and organizations across Northern Virginia, powered by Friends2Follow. To add your business to the stream, email cfields@insidenova.com or click on the green button below.
If you were looking for the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee website and ended up here, try this





Got news tips, gossip, suggestions, complaints?E-mail us: progressivecharlestown@gmail.com We strive to avoid errors in our articles. Our correction policy can be found here
At their March Board Meeting, downtown development district Rio Nuevo announced plans to fund and advance multiple real estate projects. The announcements come as Rio Nuevo reports it is back to pre-pandemic sales tax revenue and is seeing strong requests for new construction downtown.
A federal judge has again ruled against a northern Virginia school system that he found guilty of discriminating against Asian American students when it overhauled its admissions policies at a highly selective high school.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton rejected a request from Fairfax County Public Schools to delay the implementation of his ruling against the new admissions policies at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology.

The school system argued that its selection process for the incoming freshman class is well underway, and implementing his ruling now would throw the process into chaos.

But Hilton said Friday that the school system has been aware for months that its process could be in jeopardy, and said it should be prepared now to revise it to eliminate aspects he found unconstitutional.

He said there is a risk of irreparable harm to the students who have been found to have been discriminated against if the school system were allowed to use those same procedures for a second straight year.

The case has been closely watched as courts continue to evaluate the role that racial considerations can play when deciding who should be admitted to a particular school. Similar debates have popped up at elite public schools in New York, California and elsewhere. Earlier this year the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a similar case alleging that Harvard University discriminates against Asian Americans in its admissions process.

Hilton ruled last month that impermissible racial balancing was at the core of what motivated the county school board to overhaul admissions at TJ, a highly sought-after school near the nations capital that is often ranked as the best public high schools in the country.

For decades, Black and Hispanic students have been woefully underrepresented in the student body. In the wake of criticism over a lack of diversity, the school board scrapped a standardized test that had been at the heart of the admissions process. It opted instead for a process that sets aside slots at each of the countys middle schools. It also includes experience factors like socioeconomic background.

A parents group sued in federal court, arguing that Asian Americans, who constituted more than 70% of the student body at TJ, were unfairly targeted in the new policy.

The schools current freshman class, which was admitted under the new policy, saw a significantly different racial makeup. Black students increased from 1% to 7%; Hispanic representation increased from 3% to 11%. Asian American representation, meanwhile, decreased from 73% to 54%.

Its unclear what Fairfax County Public Schools must do to bring its admissions policies into compliance with Hiltons order. In a statement issued after Fridays hearing, the school system said its considering an appeal of Hiltons ruling.

This ruling is so inconsistent with current law on diversity efforts that we cannot stand by and allow it to go unchallenged, said School Board Chair Stella Pekarsky. We cannot walk away now after making so much progress toward a fair and equitable system.

The school system has insisted that its new policies are race neutral, and the panel evaluating applicants is not even aware of applicants race as it conducts its reviews.

Hilton, though, said in his ruling that the changes, implemented against a backdrop of heated debate over the student bodys racial makeup, were infected with talk of racial balancing from its inception.

School officials say they cannot reinstate the standardized test used in years past because one of its components has been discontinued by the vendor.

Asra Nomani, a former TJ parent and cofounder of the parents group Coalition for TJ, which filed the lawsuit, said another standardized test could easily and quickly be lined up as a replacement if the school system were willing. She called it unconscionable that the school system is still defending its policies after a judge found them to be discriminatory.

Thats nothing but systemic racism against Asian Americans, she said.

Erin Wilcox, a lawyer for Pacific Legal Foundation, which represented the Coalition for TJ, said after Fridays hearing that its up to the school board to craft an alternative admissions policy but whatever they do, they cant discriminate against a group of students based on race.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Legislation K-12 Virginia
Maine is looking to enact tougher regulations about corporate collection of biometric data.

The proposal before the Maine Legislature would require companies to get consent before they collect biometric information such as facial features, voices and fingerprints. It would also ban companies from selling biometric data and set rules about how long they are able to keep it.

The proposal has won support in the Maine Legislatures Judiciary Committee and is expected to go before the full Legislature.

The bills sponsor, Rep. Maggie ONeil of Saco, said the new rules are important in an era when companies are collecting more and more data from private citizens.

It is no secret that our personal information is collected, used and monetized at an alarming rate, ONeil said. In Maine, there are essentially no restrictions on the ways that Big Tech and other corporations can collect our biometric data, and what they can do with our data.

Democrats, Republicans and independents have all supported the bill.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Legislation Maine
Its every investors dream: Make money when markets go up, and when markets go down, and even when markets go practically nowhere.

But inside Allianz SE, where a handful of hedge fund managers claimed they could do just that, few grasped how wrong that dream could go. Four billion dollars wrong so far, with outside estimates that it could grow much larger.

Allianz Fires 2 Asset Managers Who Ran Group of Collapsed Investment Funds Allianz Sets Aside $4.2B to Handle Probes, Lawsuits After Collapse of Investment Funds

Two years after the spectacular collapse of the insurance giants Structured Alpha hedge funds, a low-profile business registered in Florida, 5,000 miles from the Munich headquarters, the shock waves continue to reverberate.

Careers have been upended. Investor lawsuits and settlements have piled up. The U.S. Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission have opened investigations. Allianz in February set aside $4.1 billion for the disaster, but the final reckoning is still due  and could cost plenty more.

All these months later, the big question remains: How could a few obscure money managers  people on no ones list of hedge-fund luminaries  blow such a huge hole in Allianz, which traces its history to the days of Bismarck? The answer that emerges from court filings, Allianz marketing materials and people with first-hand knowledge of Structured Alphas investment strategy is a classic story of Wall Street salesmanship and greed, and a tale for these volatile times.

No Wrongdoing

Allianz, which has denied wrongdoing, said earlier this month that independent advisers its hired to dig into what happened have thus far found no breaches of duty by the insurers management board. A spokesman declined to comment.

At the center of the debacle is Greg Tournant, 55, an equity-options whiz and one-time McKinsey & Co. consultant. A dual U.S.-French citizen, he arrived at Allianz Global Investors in the early 2000s by way of Oppenheimer Capital.

It turns out that Tournant and other fund managers behind Structured Alpha  including longtime colleague Trevor Taylor  previously ran into trouble during the 2008 financial crisis, with strategies that also involved options. Long before the pandemic, their small investment firm on Miamis Brickell Avenue, aka, Wall Street South, collapsed when its trades went bad, according to two former employees there  foreshadowing what was to come. Tournant and Taylor declined to comment.

At Allianz Global Investors U.S., Tournant and his Structured Alpha team were incentivized to pursue outsized returns. Instead of employing the usual formula for hedge-fund fees  the 2 and 20 mix of management charges and a cut of profits  they were compensated for one thing alone: performance. The bigger the investment gains, the bigger the payday. While Allianz made no secret of this arrangement, angry clients would later claim it was a recipe for bigger risks.

Tournant himself was heavily invested in the funds he managed and lost money along with clients, according to a person familiar with the matter. In early March of 2020, as he was grappling with the pandemics effect on his funds, Tournant went on medical leave for undisclosed reasons, the person said. Structured Alphas troubles continued after his departure.

In the finger-pointing that followed, some big investors accused the professional consultants they had hired to vet Structured Alpha of ignoring red flags and failing to understand what the funds were doing, according to lawsuits.

Crashing Down

It all came crashing down in the early, panicked days of COVID-19, when wild market swings upended an options strategy that was marketed as aiming to generate alpha regardless of market waves. During the first quarter of 2020, five Structured Alpha funds lost between 49% and 97% of their value, performance that investors contend in legal filings was far worse than similar strategies.

Allianz, which also owns bond powerhouse Pacific Investment Management Co., has resolved some of its legal woes, including a February settlement with a majority of investors for undisclosed terms. At the same time, the firm has argued that its clients were sophisticated investors who knew what they were getting into.

The insurer continues to pick up the pieces. It fired Tournant and another fund manager, Stephen Bond-Nelson, in December, accusing them of violating compliance policies, according to public records filed with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. Bond-Nelson declined to comment.

Roman Frenkel was a first-hand witness to the Structured Alpha teams earlier failure when he worked at Innovative Options Management, the small Miami firm that Taylor founded and Tournant helped run briefly while continuing to manage money for Allianz. Disaster struck in 2008 when the collapse of Lehman Brothers rocked global finance, freezing up markets  and with them, Innovative Options trades.

The over-the-counter spreads were so great, they couldnt close positions, said Frenkel, who was chief compliance officer for Innovative Options. Instead of being part of the companys planned expansion to waterfront offices, Frenkel ended up helping liquidate the business.

Solid Performance

Tournant and Taylor prospered at Allianz during the long bull market that followed the Great Recession. Deep-pocketed investors piled in. They included dozens of public and private pension plans for the likes of Blue Cross & Blue Shield and New Yorks Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Structured Alphas performance was solid. Its Alpha U.S. Equity 250 fund posted average annual returns of 10.9% between early 2005 and June 2018, compared with the S&P 500s 8.7% average annualized return over the same period, according to a 2018 marketing document.

Allianz was confident enough in Tournants team that it let them charge a performance fee alone of 25% to 30% of net capital appreciation above a benchmark.

Notably, as markets got more volatile, the funds could get more profitable, Allianz told clients, while warning that all investments entail risks. Allianz also assured investors that it was backstopping Structured Alphas risk-management processes. By December 2019, Structured Alpha had grown to more than $10 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Every single time we greatly benefited from the higher levels of volatility and were able to generate much higher returns in the following two or three months after the draw-down, Tournant said in a 2016 marketing video.

Abandoning Controls

But when the pandemic hit, everything went haywire. Investors allege Allianz and Structured Alpha abandoned risk controls and turned a challenging situation into a disaster by doubling down on a bad strategy.

Thats according to the Arkansas Teacher Retirement System, which in February settled a suit over its Structured Alpha losses for $643 million.

Another investor, the board of a pension fund run by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, filed a lawsuit in 2020 that purported to identify what went wrong. The board alleged that when the pandemic started fueling wild volatility in February, Structured Alpha made a fateful bet against further market declines. It did so by selling options that would pay out for the purchasers, and hurt Structured Alpha, if the S&P 500 plunged, the pension said.

The trade proved disastrous for the Allianz fund managers when the index tanked in late February, and global markets experienced their largest single-week declines since the height of the 2008 financial crisis, the board claimed. By the end of March, Allianz announced it was liquidating two Structured Alpha funds.

Allianz is still grappling with the fallout. The insurer warned last month that ongoing probes by the Justice Department and SEC are at a sensitive stage and it couldnt yet predict the final price tag from regulatory settlements and private litigation. Bloomberg Intelligence analysts predicted Feb. 18 that the insurers 3.7 billion euro provision wont likely be sufficient and that its legal costs might approach $6 billion.

Compensation Hit

Chief Executive Officer Oliver Baete expressed regret in February for Structured Alphas losses and said they will have a significant impact on the compensation of its directors.

The funds writedown will put a costly end to what Allianz once described as a third way for investors to harvest sustainable alpha.

With assistance from Stephan Kahl.

Copyright 2022 Bloomberg.

Topics Allianz
A south St. Louis County man who sued Ford Motor Co. over his exposure to asbestos has been awarded $20 million.

In his lawsuit, William Trokey, 76, alleged that his exposure to asbestos while working on Ford brakes as a gas station mechanic in the 1960s led to him being diagnosed with mesothelioma, a form of cancer.

After a two-week trial, a St. Louis jury last week ordered Ford to pay $10 million to Trokey and $10 million in punitive damages to his wife, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

Under Missouri law, $5 million of the punitive damages goes to the state Tort Victims Compensation Fund.

A Ford spokesperson said Our sympathy goes out to the Trokey family and while we respect the jurys decision, we plan to appeal.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Lawsuits Missouri
IMA Financial Unveils the Metaverses First Insurance Research & Development Facility

Financial services firm IMA Financial Group said it has launched the metaverses first insurance and risk management research and development facility. Called IMA Web3Labs, it will be located in Decentraland, a virtual world based on blockchain technology.

Funded by IMAs investment arm, IMA Investments Inc., Web3Labs allows for exploring, testing and bringing to market risk and insurance strategies specific to the metaverse.

Web3Labs allows us to explore the risks associated with digital and meta assets from within the metaverse, so we can better prepare our clients to manage such risks. Our investment in IMA Web3Labs will also enable IMA to explore the infinite applications of blockchain technology to best understand how it might fundamentally shift the landscape of the $1 trillion commercial insurance industry, said Paul Washington, executive Vice President of IMA Financial Group and head of IMA Investments.

IMA Web3Labs will initially research risk mitigation specific to non-fungible tokens (NFTs). IMA sees a gap between the growth in NFTs and fundamental risk transfer and management strategies to secure them  a gap that leaves business operations in the decentralized finance market at risk, according to Washington.

In 2021, $20 billion of NFTs were traded, and the market value of the asset class today exceeds $40 billion. IMA plans to mint its own NFTs and use other tools to advance its expertise in the growing digital and meta opportunities ecosystem.

We arent content to take the wait and see approach that our industry often favors, said Justin Jacobs, Senior Vice President of Marketing at IMA Financial Group and architect of IMA Web3Labs. Society is at an inflection point, proven out by the popularity of meta-platforms. We need the ability to swiftly test, learn and adjust in a meta-native environment so we can build strategies and products that manage risks beyond the confines of the metaverse.

Slice Supports AERO Workers Compensation for Small Business

Appalachian Underwriters, Inc. has teamed with cloud-based insurance platform Slice Labs Inc. to offer workers compensation Insurance for small businesses online.

Called AERO Workers Compensation, the product is available initially in Georgia and Illinois, but the company said it will soon be available nationwide to Appalachians 100,000 independent agents.

The platform promises that agents can quote and bind a policy in less than 10 minutes.

The AERO Insurance workers compensation product is available to primary industries including automobile service, construction, hospitality, manufacturing, retail/wholesale and others across 55+ class codes.

Appalachian Underwriters, Inc. (AUI) is a nationwide managing general agent and a subsidiary of Acrisure.

Blockdaemon Rolls Out Blockchain Staking Slashing Insurance Coverage

Blockchain management firm Blockdaemon announced an insurance policy to protect its customersincluding Fortune 500 enterprises, banks, custodians and trustsfrom the downside of blockchain staking slashing events.

Blockdaemon said it worked with insurance broker Marsh on the policy.

This new insurance policy is first of its kind and is designed to give Blockdaemon customers comfort that there is financial backing for a system failure or security failure that impacts them, said Konstantin Richter, CEO and Founder, Blockdaemon, said the insurance adds another assurance to its customers as to the safety of the networks it runs on.

Slashing is a mechanism built into proof-of-stake blockchain protocols to combat validator misbehavior and promote node security, availability, and network participation. If a validator shows harmful behavior, a percentage of their bonded/staked tokens will get slashed, or lost.

The new insurance policy protects Blockdaemon customers if Blockdaemon experiences a system failure or security failure that causes either a slashing event (where contractual penalties are imposed or seized by a blockchain network because of a protocol violation based on the availability of Blockdaemons services) or a double-signing event (where the validation of two or more different blocks at the same section of a particular blockchain network results in liability).

As part of the offering, Blockdaemon said it has designed a claims process where it will work with the insurance carrier to determine the cause and amount of loss in a quick, streamlined fashion.

Blockdaemon supports more than 50 blockchain networks in the cloud and on bare metal servers globally, Blockdaemon is used by exchanges, custodians, crypto platforms, financial institutions and developers to connect commercial stakeholders to blockchains.

Topics Workers' Compensation
Companies critical to U.S. national interests will now have to report when theyre hacked or they pay ransomware, according to new rules approved by Congress.

The rules are part of a broader effort by the Biden administration and Congress to shore up the nations cyberdefenses after a series of high-profile digital espionage campaigns and disruptive ransomware attacks. The reporting will give the federal government much greater visibility into hacking efforts that target private companies, which often have skipped going to the FBI or other agencies for help.

Its clear we must take bold action to improve our online defenses, said Sen. Gary Peters, a Michigan Democrat who leads the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee and wrote the legislation.

The reporting requirement legislation was approved by the House and the Senate on Thursday and is expected to be signed into law by President Joe Biden soon. It requires any entity thats considered part of the nations critical infrastructure, which includes the finance, transportation and energy sectors, to report any substantial cyber incident to the government within three days and any ransomware payment made within 24 hours.

Ransomware attacks, in which criminals hack targets and hold their data hostage through encryption until ransoms have been paid, have flourished in recent years. Attacks last year on the worlds largest meat-packing company and the biggest U.S. fuel pipeline  which led to days of gas station shortages on the East Coast  have underscored how gangs of extortionist hackers can disrupt the economy and put lives and livelihoods at risk.

State hackers from Russia and China have had continued success hacking into and spying on U.S. targets, including critical infrastructure targets. The most notable was Russias SolarWinds cyberespionage campaign, which was discovered at the end of 2020.

Experts and government officials worry that Russias war in Ukraine has increased the threat of cyberattacks against U.S. targets, by either state or proxy actors. Many ransomware operators live and work in Russia.

As our nation rightly supports Ukraine during Russias illegal unjustifiable assault, I am concerned the threat of Russian cyber and ransomware attacks against U.S. critical infrastructure will increase, said Sen. Rob Portman, a Republican from Ohio.

The legislation designates the Department of Homeland Securitys Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency as the lead agency to receive notices of hacks and ransomware payments. That caused concern at the FBI, which had openly campaigned for tweaks to the bill in an unusually public disagreement over legislation endorsed overall by the White House.

We want one call to be a call to us all, FBI Director Christopher Wray said last week at a cyber event at the University of Kansas. Whats needed is not a whole bunch of different reporting but real-time access by all the people who need to have it to the same report. So thats what were talking about _ not multiple reporting chains but multiple access, multiple contemporaneous action, to the information.

The FBI also has expressed concern that liability protections that would cover companies that report a breach to CISA would not extend to reporting a breach to the FBI, an issue the bureau believes could unnecessarily complicate law enforcement efforts to respond to hacks and to aid victims.

Lawmakers who helped write the bill have pushed back against the FBI, saying the bureaus concerns about being notified of hacks and liability concerns were adequately addressed in the final version of it.

The new rules also empower CISA to subpoena companies that fail to report hacks or ransomware payments, and those that fail to comply with a subpoena could be referred to the Justice Department for investigation.

Suderman reported from Richmond, Va.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Cyber USA
The Biden Administration has issued a final rule intended to ensure safety of occupants in automated vehicles. This rule updates the current Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards to account for vehicles that may be equipped with automated driving systems (ADS) and do not have the traditional manual controls associated with a human driver.

Prior to this 155-page rule, occupant safety standards were written for common, traditional vehicle features including steering wheels, drivers seat and various manual controls. The rule, issued by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, clarifies what is required of manufacturers if and when they build vehicles without steering wheels or other traditional features.

The final rule seeks to assure that, despite their innovative designs, vehicles with ADS technology must continue to provide the same levels of occupant protection as current passenger vehicles.

As the driver changes from a person to a machine in ADS-equipped vehicles, the need to keep the humans safe remains the same and must be integrated from the beginning, said Dr. Steven Cliff, NHTSAs deputy administrator, in announcing the rule. With this rule, we ensure that manufacturers put safety first.

A number of companies from Argo to General Motors to Waymo are testing driverless vehicles  some have traditional features and some do not. Other firms like Nuro are testing vehicles for transporting cargo, not passengers, that lack traditional driver features The new rule affects only passenger vehicles.

NHTSA said it knows of dozens of testing activities taking place in more than 40 states and the District of Columbia, many of which involve ADS-equipped vehicles that lack manually operated driving controls.

The agency said the rule should provide some certainty for manufacturers of vehicles with ADS that lack some traditional features and potentially reduce costs slightly by eliminating the need to install redundant traditional features like driver seats and steering wheels. At the same time, cost savings are likely to be partially offset, for example, by the equipment needed to make the left front seating position as safe as the right front seating position.

U.S. Permits Startup Nuro to Deploy Up to 5,000 Driverless Delivery Vehicles

GM, Alphabet Win Californias First Autonomous Permits for Passenger Rides

How Autonomous Car Companies Are Outrunning U.S. Regulators and Lawmakers

In response to some criticisms around how cars without these traditional features are not yet being made, the agency acknowledged that uncertainty continues to exist around the development and potential deployment of ADS-equipped vehicles. However, NHTSA said it believes it is appropriate to finalize this action at this time in anticipation of emerging ADS vehicle designs that NHTSA has seen in prototype form. These current designs considered by NHTSA generally involve forward-facing row seating and vehicles without manual driving controls.

NHTSA said it hopes the final rule provides regulatory certainty that, despite their innovative designs, vehicles with ADS technology must continue to provide the same high levels of occupant protection that current passenger vehicles provide.

NHTSA said it received 45 comments on the rule from vehicle and equipment manufacturers, ADS developers, industry associations, consumer advocates, advocates for persons with disabilities, states, insurance organizations, a university, an oil independence advocacy group, and members of the general public. Many commenters supported the proposal while others argued that the agencys focus on this issue was premature.

The Center for Auto Safety (CAS) argued that NHTSA should not permit traditional manual controls to be removed from vehicles until at least equivalent safety [of ADS-equipped vehicles] is proven. The National Safety Council (NSC) called the rulemaking premature and hasty since most ADS vehicle designs that might benefit from the revised standards are still on the drawing boards and unforeseen issues are certain to arise.

Consumer Reports also question[ed] the present focus of the agency on removal of regulatory barriers rather than on developing and implementing standards for proven safety technologies. However, Consumer Reports also stated that the narrow scope of the rule is appropriate.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) expressed concern that the current process creates a path for introducing into the market ADS-controlled vehicles without regulations that establish the ground rules for the safe behavior of ADS, although the IIHS also stated that the modifications proposed by NHTSA likely will be helpful to the entities developing automated driving systems (ADS) and the vehicles that will be controlled by ADS and that the changes answer some questions about how the occupants of ADS-controlled vehicles should be protected in the event of a crash.

The rule goes into effect 180 days after it is published in the Federal Register.

Topics USA
Global insurance broker Willis Towers Watson (WTW) announced on Sunday that it will withdraw from all of its businesses in Russia in response to Russias war against Ukraine.

The announcement comes after competitor Marsh McLennan said last Thursday it would exit all of its businesses in Russia, and rival Aon said it is suspending operations in the country

We continue to be dismayed by the crisis in Ukraine. WTW remains steadfast in our support for all our colleagues and their families in the region who have been affected, stated Carl Hess, WTW CEO.  We wholeheartedly wish for a peaceful solution.

Hess said WTW intends to transfer ownership of its Russian businesses to local management who will operate independently in the Russian market.

While we strongly believe this is the right decision, it was not made in haste nor without consideration for our dedicated Russian colleagues, Hess added.

Marsh McLennan also said it would transfer ownership of its Russian businesses to local management.

Aon said it would put its staff in Russia on paid leave while continuing to monitor the situation.

Global insurer Swiss Re said on Monday it is not taking on new business with Russian and Belarusian clients and is not renewing existing business with Russian clients, Reuters reported.

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.

Italian insurer Generali has said that it is closing its Moscow office and winding down its Europ Assistance business in Russia.

Last week, the insurance rating firm AM Best moved its country risk tier for Russia to a CRT-5 from a CRT-4 to reflect the significantly heightened geopolitical, economic and financial system risk in the country.

Sanctions against Russia have targeted the financial system, resulting in a deeply challenging and unpredictable operating environment for insurers, according to AM Best. Volatility in capital and currency markets has increased liquidity risks. Additionally, capital controls and the impact from sanctions will negatively affect cross-border payments.

Topics Agencies Russia Willis Towers Watson
Arkansas Insurance Commissioner Alan McClain announced on March 10 that Arkansas businesses could see another rate decrease in workers compensation insurance in 2022.

The Arkansas Insurance Department (AID) approved an average overall average workers compensation voluntary market loss cost level decrease of 10.8% and a drop of 11% for the assigned risk market.

The new ratesfor policies renewing on or after July 1, 2022represent a significant change from last year, which saw a 1.1% decline in the voluntary market and a 1.6% cut in the assigned risk market.

Employers purchase workers compensation through one of two markets, the voluntary market and the assigned risk market. In the voluntary market  the open competitive market  loss costs will decrease by an average of 10.8%, which is the primary component of workers compensation rates. Approximately 91% of Arkansas employers receive voluntary market coverage. In the assigned risk market  the market for employers unable to obtain coverage in the voluntary market  rates could decrease by an average of 11%. The continued rate relief in the assigned risk market is particularly good news for new businesses which are often required to obtain coverage through this market due to their lack of a claims history.

The department accepted recommendations from the National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI), which analyzes and recommends rate adjustments in more than forty states.

NCCI based their recommendations on premium and loss experience for policy years 2017 through 2019.

The rate reduction will be effective on July 1, 2022.

Source: Arkansas Insurance Department

Topics Trends Workers' Compensation Pricing Trends Arkansas
The death knell sounded for the 2022 Florida Legislative session Friday with no major property insurance reform bills passed. But the ghosts of rising premiums and failing insurers will continue to haunt the state, and some lawmakers already are looking ahead.

I think this gives the governor a perfect reason to call a special session, state Sen. Jeff Brandes, R-St. Petersburg, said, according to a Miami TV news report.

Senate President Wilton Simpson, R-Trilby, also said a special session this year, focused on insurance issues, is possible.

So there is a possibility in the coming months, especially as we get into hurricane season, it will be a heightened opportunity, Simpson told CBS Miami. And I think the Senate had a formation of a pretty good bill this year, and we just didnt get finished.

Floridas regular, annual legislative session, limited by law to 60 days, has often been criticized as too short to accomplish more than a few actions. This year, lawmakers focused on some hot-button political and cultural issues, such as the Dont Say Gay bill that will limit what public school teachers can discuss in class; and the Anti-Woke bill that seeks to curtail critical race theory in education and corporate training.

But measures designed to limit losses for property insurers and stem premium increases for consumers failed to pass in the final days in Tallahassee. Senate Bill 1728, shepherded by Sen. Jim Boyd, R-Bradenton, would have made a number of changes to Florida insurance rules and was considered by the insurance industry to be the most far-reaching rescue plan.

Among other changes, the bill would have ended the requirement that most homeowner policies provide full replacement on some wind-damaged roofs, and would have allowed a 2% deductible on roofs. The measure passed the Senate in early March but stalled in the House.

With two days left in the session last week, some reform provisions were added to SB 468, an omnibus insurance bill that covered an assortment of relatively minor changes. The amendment would have forced more policyholders to switch from the state-backed Citizens Property Insurance Corp. to other carriers, part of an effort to stem the rapid growth of Citizens and avoid costs to the state if multiple catastrophes strike Florida.

The original bill passed the Senate in February and the amended version passed the House last Thursday. But with no time left for the Senate to review the changes to the bill, it was indefinitely postponed and withdrawn from consideration as the session came to a close.

Florida lawmakers also failed to approve SB 1702, which would have required more frequent inspections of high-rise condominium buildings across the state. The bill, a result of the collapse of the Champlain Towers South condo near Miami Beach that killed 98 people last summer, also would have required condo associations to maintain their properties, make needed repairs and to regularly assess reserve funding available for upgrades.

The bill passed Senate committees but did not make it to the Senate floor. Similar bills in the House also failed.

Some relatively minor pieces of legislation affecting insurance matters did pass both chambers and are headed to the governors desk. These include:

SB 1058 would allow private insurers, not just the state-run Citizens Property Insurance Corp., to be eligible for reimbursement from a hurricane catastrophe fund for policies they assume from insolvent carriers. The measure also would require that the Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund provide reimbursement for losses under collateral protection insurance, also known as lender-placed or force-placed insurance, when the coverage amount differs from the coverage amount under a lapsed policy.

SB 156 would reduce from five years to three the claims history that must be included within a loss-run statement. It also would require admitted and non-admitted personal lines insurers to provide loss-run statements within 15 days of an insureds request, after giving instruction on how to obtain a the information from a consumer reporting agency.

The information to be provided in the loss-run statements includes the policy number, period of coverage, number of claims, the paid losses on all claims, and the date of each loss, according to a legislative analysis of the bill. Life insurers are exempted from having to provide loss-run statements.

SB 1054, known as the financial literacy act, would require schools to teach financial information to high school students, including the basics of insurance, money management, credit scores, loan applications and related matters.

House Bill 749, if signed by the governor, would increase penalties on unlicensed public adjusters who violate the law and would make things more convenient for Florida policyholders by ensuring digital insurance applications will communicate with the digital drivers license.

HB 959 would, among other changes requested by the Florida Department of Financial Services, require insurance agencies to notify policyholders when an agency is about to close its doors. It also would force public adjusters to notify consumers if they want to capture additional living expenses; and would provide employers with credits to reduce penalties for workers compensation compliance violations.

SB 838 would make fire investigators in the state eligible for a presumption that provides limited benefits for firefighters who are stricken with any of 21 types of cancers. The program is considered an alternative to workers compensation benefits.

Topics Legislation Florida Condominium
Georgia shoppers who are unable to load bulky purchases onto their vehicles by themselves might find store employees less willing to help  or at least being more vigilant if they do lend a hand.

The Georgia Supreme Court ruled that anyone who assists in loading something onto a vehicle has a duty to ensure the load is securely fastened. The high court rejected an argument by retailer Sams Club that only the operator of a vehicle should be held liable for damage caused by unsecured loads.

The U.S. District Court in Albany asked for the Supreme Courts guidance as it considers a lawsuit filed against Sams East Inc. by a woman who was seriously injured when her vehicle struck a mattress that had become dislodged from a pickup. Amanda K. McEntyre argues that two Sams Club employees failed to properly tie the mattress down.

Sams and a business group, Georgians for Lawsuit Reform, had argued that the statute that requires loads to be securely fastened  OGCA Section 40-6-248.1 (b) (1)  should apply only to motor vehicle operators. Otherwise, helpful neighbors or store employees who assist in loading vehicles as a courtesy would be considered criminals if something happened along the way, the reform group warned in an amicus brief.

But the Supreme Courts ruling wasnt a total loss for Sams. The high court also found that the statute does not create strict liability  that is, a person who violates the law doesnt automatically become liable for any damages caused by an unsecured load. Plaintiffs must show that the violators negligence was a proximate cause of the harm.

McEntyre sued McCall after the February 2016 accident and accepted a settlement. She also sued Sams East, alleging the store was negligent because two of its employees tied the mattresses and box springs down to McCalls truck.

The civil complaint says McEntyre had to undergo surgeries after her shoulder and neck were injured in the collision with the loose mattress. She lost $5,542.49 in wages and had medical bills totaling $119,151.15.

After Sams filed a motion to dismiss the complaint, District Court Judge Leslie Abrams Gardner sent certified questions asking the Georgia Supreme Court to resolve these unsettled questions of law:

Does Section 40-6-248.1 require a person assisting a motor vehicle operator to load merchandise on a vehicle to securely fasten the load? Under the statute, can a person who assisted in loading but did not operate the vehicle be held liable to a third party who was injured as a result of the manner in which the load was secured? Does the statute impose strict liability on a person who did not securely fasten a load that caused damage to another?

Yes, yes and no was the Supreme Courts response.

The high courts unanimous opinion says the plain language of the statute imposes a duty on anyone who loads items on a vehicle a duty to other users of the public road. Nothing in the statute limits that duty to motor vehicle operators.

Furthermore, any person who violates the statute can be held liable for any damages that result, the court said.

However, that doesnt mean strict liability applies to violations of 40-6-248.1. The Supreme Court said strict liability typically is imposed only when the circumstances involve abnormally dangerous activities, such as using explosives. Nothing in the statute required loads to be secured on motor vehicles provides for strict liability in the context of a civil tort action, the court said.

When a person is allegedly injured by such a load or covering falling on a public road, ordinary principles of negligence apply, meaning that the plaintiff must establish a breach of this statutory duty, proximate causation, and damages in order to establish liability, the opinion says.

The court said its finding that there is no strict liability may mitigate the tort reform groups concerns about the practical consequences of its ruling.

A trial court cannot presume that in every instance where a load has become loose, detached, or in any manner a hazard to other users of the public road that the load was not securely fastened and that any person who assisted in loading or securing the load is liable, the opinion says.

The case now returns to the District Court in Albany to decide the merits of McEntyres lawsuit. Sams has also filed a lawsuit against McCall seeking reimbursement for any damages that it may be required to pay as a result of McEntyres action.

Topics Georgia
Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. acquired Bellevue, Washington-based Hawley & Associates LLC.

Hawley & Associates was founded to provide specialized insurance services for adoption, foster care and child welfare agencies and over the years its offerings have expanded into all aspects of social services for both nonprofit and for-profit organizations with US and/or international exposures.

Phil Hawley and his associates will continue to operate in their current location under the direction of Jim Buckley, head of Gallaghers Northwest region retail property/casualty brokerage operations.

Arthur J. Gallagher is an insurance brokerage, risk management and consulting services firm headquartered in Rolling Meadows, Illinois.

Topics Mergers & Acquisitions Washington A.J. Gallagher
A federal workplace safety investigation found that a 34-year-old workers fatal fall might have been prevented had the operator of a Pauma Valley, California, zip-line attraction implemented required safety measures.

A U.S. Department of Labor Occupational Safety and Health Administration investigation of the Oct. 30, 2021, incident determined that after grabbing a zip-line harness on a customer to as they landed on the tower platform, the worker and the customer were both pulled off the zip-line tower.

The worker let go of the harness and fell about 50 feet to the valley floor.

Inspectors found La Jolla Zip Zoom Ziplines failed to install a guardrail, safety net or personal fall arrest system. The company also did not train employees on fall hazards and how to recognize them, as required, the investigation showed.

Additionally, OSHA determined that the company failed to assess the workplace to determine the presence of hazards and did not report a work-related hospitalization within 24 hours.

OSHA cited the company for four serious safety violations and proposed $24,861 in penalties.

The company has 15 business days from receipt of its citations and penalties to comply, request an informal conference with OSHAs area director, or contest the findings before the independent Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission.

Topics California
King County has agreed to pay $750,000 to the family of a man who killed himself in a Seattle, Washington, jail after they filed a lawsuit alleging jail officials knew or should have known the man was in crisis but failed to protect him.

Michael Clinard, a Seattle magazine photographer and father of three, had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and bipolar disorder after he suffered a traumatic brain injury in a 2013 assault in New York, according to a lawsuit filed last year in U.S. District Court in Seattle.

In 2017, according to the lawsuit, he assaulted his wife.

While in jail, he was never seen by a mental health expert, even though jail doctors were told about his medications, which the lawsuit said should have alerted them to his mental health issues.

Jail policies prohibited him from receiving some of his medications including lorazepam because they can be abused.

Over the following weeks, Clinard sought help for his deteriorating mental state, and others in custody said there was something wrong with him, the lawsuit said.

On July 3, Clinard was found dead in his cell.

Noah Haglund, a spokesperson for the King County Jail, said the jail was prohibited by privacy laws from discussing the circumstances around Clinards case but said we can share that anyone booked into King County jails undergoes an extensive health screening by an intake nurse to check for risk factors.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Lawsuits Washington
California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara on Monday issued a notice to all insurance companies doing business in the state to review their financial holdings and take immediate steps to identify and divest from any direct investments in Russian assets or property that could support Russia in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine.

California stands with the world community in rejecting Russias invasion of Ukraine and its assault on freedom and equality, Lara said in a statement. As the nations largest insurance market and the fourth largest insurance market in the world, we must not tolerate California consumers insurance premiums funding an authoritarian regime that invades a sovereign government, terrorizes its population, and is an enemy of free expression, speech, assembly, press, and equality for LGBTQ+ people, women, and ethnic and religious minorities. Insurance companies must send a loud and clear message of solidarity with the people of Ukraine and the global community by withdrawing any financial support for the Russian regime.

The legislative leaders of the California Senate and Assembly Insurance Committees joined Lara in calling on insurance companies to take immediate action.

The people of California are united in our resolve to support the people of Ukraine, and insurance companies have a duty to use their market power for good, not to support a corrupt regime that is an enemy of freedom, state Sen. Susan Rubio (D-Baldwin Park), chair of the California Senate Insurance Committee, said in a statement. I am ready to support the goals that Commissioner Lara has laid out for insurance companies to divest all investments that benefit the Russian governments campaign of tyranny.

A statement from Assemblyman Tom Daly (D-Anaheim), chair of the Assembly Insurance Committee, reads:

Californians join the world in denouncing Russias brutal invasion of Ukraine and its continued heinous violations of human rights. Because of the size and strength of Californias insurance market, actions by insurance companies doing business here to reevaluate their investments and hold Russia accountable will be felt around the world.

Direct investments of U.S.-based insurers exposed to Ukraine and Russia reportedly include nearly $2 billion in bonds while indirect investments in businesses that derive a share of earnings from Russia may be more substantial.

In the Notice, Commissioner Lara alerted insurance companies that he will use all remedies available under California insurance law to push the industry to demonstrate that they are aligning with the global community to hold Russia accountable.

If insurance companies do not voluntarily act now to dispose of direct investments in Russia, I will explore all options to compel them to follow through, he said.

Topics Carriers California Russia
South Africa: Virtual Classroom agile, innovative and modern: Motshekga

Basic Education Minister, Angie Motshekga, says the Vodacom Virtual Classroom innovation allows the country to have all learning resources in one fit-for-purpose portal designed by experts with the interest of learners and teachers in mind.

Motshekga was speaking at the handover ceremony of Vodacom's Virtual Classroom Solution held in Midrand.

This forms part of the COVID-19 Disaster Regulations imposed by the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) to support online learning and ease congestion on the countrys telecommunication network.

The Minister said that government and ICASA agreed that all mobile network operators must establish a Virtual Classroom solution to support virtual learning and teaching during COVID-19 induced intermittent school closures.

She said that it was pleasing to note that Vodacom has complied with the ICASA regulations without external pressure.

Motshekga has lauded the Virtual Classroom solution as agile, innovative and modern.

This clearly indicates that Vodacom takes corporate citizenship more than seriously beyond compliance issues. The investment made by Vodacom in public schooling today has the ripple effect of benefiting the next generation of learners and teachers, she said.

The Minister said the country must learn not to spend its childrens inheritance; but invest to benefit the next generation.

In the main, the Virtual Classroom will make a difference to teachers and learners in selected schools by improving connectivity and making gadgets accessible, thus enhancing computing skills and appreciation of the power of ICTs, she said.

Motshekga said that this solution in secondary schools will allow teachers to transform their pedagogical practices by providing improved educational content and more effective teaching and learning methods.

The Minister emphasized that the ICT professional development for teachers is pivotal for the success of this project.

She added that this solution will improve the learning process by providing more interactive educational materials that increase learner motivation and facilitate the easy acquisition of basic skills in various subjects.

We are slowly beginning to narrow the great digital divide in the public schooling sector, which warms my heart, she said.

The Minister said that the Vodacom Virtual Classroom complements the departments first-of-its-kind online programme dubbed: The Comprehension Across the Curriculum, which was recently launched to turbocharge reading for meaning.

Minister Motshekga reported that the department has finalised a plan to deploy digital Learning and Teaching Support Materials (LTSM) through ICTs at all levels of the basic education sector since 2019.

The plan provides the Basic Education Department with a strategy to make the vision of the White Paper on e-Education a reality.

At the heart of basic education, reforms are imperative to eliminate the digital divide by ensuring that all schools and education offices access the internet and data within six years, she said.

The Minister said that education, skills development, and jobs are vital national imperatives to unlock economic growth and sustain livelihoods.

We are proud that Vodacom has responded positively to the NDPs clarion call for partnerships to improve education for all.

Thanks to a meaningful partnership with Vodacom, we can reach needier schools in the shortest possible time, the Minister said.

The Minister praised Vodacom for becoming an ally for the growth of public schooling.

With the innovation and commitment to societal change by Vodacom and its stakeholders, todays launch of the Virtual Classroom Solution is a giant leap into the digital future, the Minister said.  SAnews.gov.za

This story has been published on: 2022-03-14. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
The Russian Defense Ministry released documents it acquired from the personnel of a bio lab in Ukraine on March 10, local time. The documents expose the US and its NATO allies' research on biological weapons in Ukraine, including research on spreading the highly infectious bird flu virus through migratory birds and on pathogens such as bacteria and viruses that can be transmitted from bats to humans.

Russia said the documents show that a large number of serum samples belonging to the Slavs have been transferred and that the experiments in Ukraine are similar to what Japan's Unit 731 did in WWII. The documents were uploaded online by Russia for free download.

The US reaction has somewhat missed the point. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki made eight consecutive tweets to condemn Russia for spreading disinformation but avoided mentioning the US' bio lab in Ukraine. She claimed that "we should all be on the lookout for Russia to possibly use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine." But she didn't offer any evidence. Such condemnation didn't help clear the doubts of people around the world. Instead, such a response is pale and illogical.

Nevertheless, US Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland confirmed during a hearing that Ukraine has "biological research facilities" when asked if Ukraine has bioweapons. She also said the US is working with Ukraine to prevent Russia from getting "those research materials."

The contradictive remarks further deepened the world's doubts about the US. Does the US have a bio lab in Ukraine? Why did the labs rush to destroy the materials right after Russia-Ukraine conflict started on February 24? Are those labs engaged in scientific research or weaponizing the research results? What is the relation between the Pentagon and the US' 336 bio labs around the world? How does the US guarantee the safety of those labs? Why has the US been exclusively blocking the establishment of the verification mechanism of the Biological Weapons Convention for more than 20 years? What exactly is the connection between the Fort Detrick lab and the COVID-19 pandemic?

Biological military activities are not trivial. It is reasonable and legitimate for the international community to question the US for that. Right after WWII, the US spent 250,000 yen on acquiring the infamous Japanese Unit 731's data, but never published what the data was used for.

In nearly 30 years, the number of P4 labs on US soil increased by 750 percent - accompanied by an increased risk of virus leakage. Because of protests from within, the US chose to establish labs overseas. Over the years, however, there have been deadly leaks linked to US military biological labs in Ukraine, South Korea, Kazakhstan and Georgia. But angry protests in those countries were simply crushed by the US manipulating public opinion.

Biological weapons are seen as weapons of mass destruction together with nuclear and chemical weapons. Any suspicion of private development of biological weapons must be promptly investigated. Russia's information release was very specific and should draw the attention of the international community. The veracity of those materials must be determined by a multi-party inspection team led by an authoritative international organization, rather than by the US alone.

The US should know that smearing others cannot whitewash itself. If it is really innocent as it claims, it should take the opportunity to publish what is the truth and receive multi-party investigations to prove its innocence. The US owes the world an answer on this matter.

Editors note: This article is originally published on huanqiu.com, and is translated from Chinese into English and edited by the China Military Online. The information, ideas or opinions appearing in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of eng.chinamil.com.cn.
Irish society has settled into the delusion we can sail through life with cheap housing, great pensions, free healthcare, cheap fuel, and that someone else will pay for it all.

Spring this year promised the ending of the great pandemic but unfortunately it also brought the return of inflation, and a tragic and imperialist war in Eastern Europe.

Before the invasion of Ukraine, the consensus social view was of the rude good health of the economy and improving economic output figures, albeit with a huge deficit in housing supply.

Political debate on housing creates much heat and anger but involves little engagement with problem solving.

Politicians suffer no ill-fortune for planning objections.

Meanwhile, performance in the domestic rather than the foreign-owned multinational economy is underwhelming.

We are assailed by calls to expand State expenditure in every sector, including in health, housing, energy, social protection, arts, justice, and education.

The demand for increased public expenditure is insatiable, yet politicians lack the bottle to tell constituents that any such spending must be paid for.

Rising GDP figures mask a pedestrian domestic economy. Another key indicator of domestic performance is the number of listed companies here.

The Irish Stock Exchange has been delisting companies for two decades. That contrasts poorly with our peers.

The popular social media narrative suggests we live in a low-tax, low-regulation, low-wage, Stakhanovite-driven neo-liberal economy, with high levels of social deprivation and inequality, and public services starved of funding.

The opposition still uses the word austerity to suggest public sector under-funding.

While pre-tax and pre-transfer income inequality in Ireland is high, inequality in disposable income stood at its lowest recorded level on the eve of the pandemic.

The relatively high incomes enjoyed by employees in the public service and in our very large multinational sector contrast with the earnings in indigenous enterprise, and skew our average earnings figures.

A good example of perceived rather than actual parsimony in Ireland is the health service.

We are told we must spend at least another 2.8bn on Slaintecare even as healthcare spend has risen from 14.4bn in 2011 to an estimated 22.2bn.

Fixing the issues within the HSE and the wider public service is easy but taking the political decision to do so is hard.

Confronting the bureaucratic inertia, internal opposition from trade unions, external opposition from opportunistic politicians and public opprobrium is hard.

Bureaucracies tend to look after themselves, not their clients.

A few years ago, on the BBC2 show 'Can Gerry Robinson Fix the NHS?, the late Donegal man dissected management and service performance at an English hospital.

What emerged was a sad picture of long waiting times, and no clear leadership, with consultants, doctors, and nurses working in silos.

One manager reckoned she could reduce an eight-week waiting list in a childrens clinic to two weeks, with a small increase in efficiency by consultants.

The series ultimately ended on a positive note, with waiting lists massively improved. However, the series also criticised the performance of managers and consultants.

It is likely that the same issues would be exposed if a similar programme was done here.

We can have the bigger state that our commentariat so desires, but must acknowledge that pouring more money into unreformed public services will not improve them.

It will just impoverish those other less powerful sectors of the economy crying out for resources.

And if we want to splash more cash on the public service, we need to encourage our indigenous enterprise sector to prosper.

Neil McDonnell is chief executive of business group Isme
The Prison Officers' Association has hit out at the Taoiseach for publicly condemning a situation whereby a female solicitor was forced to remove her bra to gain entry to Cloverhill Prison.

New documents, obtained via a Freedom of Information request, show the Prison Officers' Association wrote to Micheal Martins office 10 days after the Taoiseach addressed the solicitor's ordeal in the Dail chamber.

The Taoiseach was reacting to a story in the Irish Examiner which detailed a complaint from a female solicitor who said she was forced to remove her bra in order to attend an urgent meeting with her client in Cloverhill Prison, Dublin.

The woman said she was humiliated and traumatised by the incident which took place in front of four male guards and a male senior counsel.

There was widespread criticism of the prison's handling of the situation at the time, and Mr Martin described it as "quite shocking" and "unacceptable".

In an email to the Taoiseach, the association representing prison officers was highly critical of Mr Martin's comments. Picture: Leah Farrell / RollingNews.ie

"It is simply not good enough in any shape or form, and needs to be addressed, he said.

In an email to the Taoiseach, the association representing prison officers was highly critical of Mr Martin's comments, saying "no wrongdoing was established, no disciplinary action against prison staff was recommended, and the staff in question were vindicated".

It would have been more in keeping with the principles of fairness and natural justice had you established the full facts of this alleged incident prior to taking such a high-profile view," the email said.

I trust that either you or the Minister or Justice will correct the Dail record, should facts emerge consequent to your enquires.

In his reply to the association, Mr Martin said that once a review of the incident was received, an assessment will be conducted on further actions required.

Despite repeated requests, a review of the incident has not been made public.

Documents also reveal that just two TDs wrote to the Minister of Justice and the Prison Service regarding the incident  Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald and Fianna Fail senator Lisa Chambers.

Ms McDonald wrote to the Prison Service outlining her concerns, adding that had the incident not been publicised in the Irish Examiner, no review of prison practices would have been established.

The Irish Prison Service has said it does not comment on internal investigations.

The circumstances around an alleged incident were thoroughly investigated, a spokesman said.

"In order to improve and learn from the issues that were raised in 2021, and to ensure clarity for prison staff on security screening procedures, a review of all standard operating procedures was carried out.

"In addition, customer service training was provided to all staff involved in searching of visitors."
An Oireachtas committee heard last week that new measures would be required to tackle the soaring cost of living, including rising energy costs related to the Russian attack on Ukraine.

Around the same time, Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe reassured us economic growth would continue across Europe despite the conflict.

In the background, the talk is of how low-wage workers are the next target for tax increases.

In other words, its just business as usual for neoliberal Ireland.

Wages will continue to stagnate, with little support from Government, while corporate profits multiply.

Low-wage workers will be asked to pay more than their fair share while corporations conceal profits through accountancy tricks. The cost of living will continue to soar, likely exacerbated by conflict and climate crises, and the Government will maintain its ongoing neoliberal project to minimise the State and assist multinationals to extract profit.

Its a bleakly depressing prospect.

The energy crisis is a revealing x-ray into our perverse economic model. We can now see starkly how little sense it all makes.

Fuel prices soar, which the Government frames as an external problem beyond their control and beyond energy companies control. Despite this, energy companies profits skyrocket.

The Government refuses to implement price controls, but instead spends more taxpayer money on subsidising energy costs, thereby funnelling State funds directly into these companies coffers.

Drivers queue to fill up at the Maxol station on Boreenmanna Rd, Cork City. Picture: Larry Cummins

Meanwhile, the average persons purchasing power declines further, pushing more and more people into poverty, and rendering them reliant on more Government subsidies, such as housing assistance payments and the fuel allowance.

For the now-multiple generations caught in the rent trap, there is no hope that Irelands economic model will save us.

We have heard people repeating the annoying refrain that we are facing unprecedented times  a rent crisis, a pandemic, and now the breakdown of the rules-based international order.

But lets be very clear  this present is our future.

Every expert in climate science, epidemiology, and conflict studies is telling us that as the climate crisis intensifies, we are set to face more war, more pandemics, and an increasingly hostile global economic environment.

In order to weather any of this, we will need a strong state, one which is committed to wealth redistribution, to equality of outcome, and to its own citizens over international capital owners.

In case we ever needed a reminder that international capital owners come first to the Government parties, just look at their stonewalling on Russian oligarchs funnelling money through the IFSC.

Just look at the fact the Government is planning to pay 1.2m per month to just one Travelodge hotel to house incoming Ukrainian refugees.

They have been implored to invest in State-owned, own-door accommodation for asylum seekers for years, and their failure to do so means that these Ukrainians will now be housed in inappropriate temporary hotel accommodation, while taxpayer money is converted directly into the profits of the private equity fund which ultimately owns the hotel group.

Its not just a young generation facing into the future which should be angry. Even my parents, who are now in their 60s, are being affected.

We are often told that our generation is facing a unique crisis, but the working class of all age groups are facing the consequences of these economic policies.

Just look at pensions. My father has spent his entire life working as a manual labourer in warehouses and should have retired on his 65th birthday last May.

The Governments decision to raise the pension age has unnaturally prolonged his working life.

It makes me emotional to think of him still dragging his tired body out to work on early winter mornings when he should be enjoying a minimal level of comfort and peace after a lifetime of often debilitating labour.

In recent weeks, weve seen a back-and-forth about pensions, between the Government, officialdom, and other sectors of society.

Officials said the State pension age should increase once again, to 67, but an Oireachtas committee and trade unions have responded that it absolutely shouldnt.

Of course it shouldnt. Ireland has the youngest population in the EU, and were relatively wealthy, even accounting for our distorted GDP.

Were already one of the more regressive states in Europe following our increase of the State pension age from 65 to 66; if we contemplated an increase to 67, we would be the most regressive state in Europe, considering our wealth and population.

What will the State pension threshold be by the time we hit 65? Will it be 70? Or 75?

The Governments officials justify their threats of pension retrenchment with the argument that the Social Insurance Fund cant sustain our gradually ageing population, and are now suggesting that low-wage workers should be the ones to supplement a tax shortfall.

This is not only sinister but deeply dishonest about how Irelands economic model works.

Our reliance on foreign direct investment has meant that wages in FDI sectors in Ireland (eg pharma, tech, finance) have soared, while they have stagnated or even declined in real terms for almost everyone else.

A recent Department of Finance report acknowledged that the only reason we survived the pandemic so well was because the tax burden was largely on high-salaried professionals, who had better job security, high wages, could work from home and could afford to pay.

These high-salary professionals will never be affected by the delay of their State pension  but people like my father, and all other working-class people, will be.

Despite this, the Government is now seeking to shift the tax burden, not to the companies making billions, but to the workers who are barely getting by.

Rather than a utopian world where the working class are paid properly for their contribution to a shared society and granted the dignity they deserve, we see a dystopian reality where, in the midst of crises, the working class are being pushed further and further to the margins.

Is this the sort of battle we want to face going forward, as the world becomes a hotter, more unstable, and more hostile place to live?

We need a fundamental shift in politics and economics if we ever want to secure a stable future  something the status quo simply cannot offer us.
Ukraine's state Centre for Strategic Communications said it could not rule that Belarus would launch an invasion of Ukraine on Friday after a meeting in Moscow between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko.

"According to preliminary data, Belarusian troops may be drawn into an invasion on March 11 at 21:00 (1900 GMT)," the centre, which was established under the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy, said in a statement.

Ukraine's armed forces said Russian aircraft fired at a Belarusian settlement near the border with Ukraine from Ukrainian air space on Friday to try to drag Belarus into Moscow's war on Ukraine.

The Ukrainian air force said at 2.30pm local time (12.30pm in Ireland) the state border service received information that Russian aircraft had taken off from an airfield in Belarus, crossed into Ukrainian air space and then fired at the village of Kopani.

"This is a PROVOCATION! The goal is to involve the Armed Forces of the Republic of Belarus in the war with Ukraine!," Ukraine's Air Force Command said in an online statement.

The Ukrainian military said two other Belarusian settlements were also targeted in the same operation.

"We officially declare: the Ukrainian military has not planned and does not plan to take any aggressive action against the Republic of Belarus," the security service said in a statement.

Main points: The UN Security Council will meet on Friday at Russias request to discuss what Moscow claims are the military biological activities of the US on the territory of Ukraine. READ MORE

New satellite photos appeared to show that a massive convoy outside the Ukrainian capital has split up and fanned out into towns and forests near Kyiv, with artillery pieces raised into firing position in a potentially ominous movement of the Russian military. READ MORE

The UK has sanctioned 386 members of the Russian Duma for their support for the Ukrainian breakaway regions of Luhansk and Donetsk. READ MORE

Britain has warned Vladimir Putin of a dramatic increased response from the West if he uses chemical weapons in Ukraine, amid warnings over a possible attack on Chernobyl. READ MORE .

. Hanna Hordynska spent ten days escaping war-torn Ukraine, travelling by car and walking for several hours before she eventually boarded a plane to Dublin. READ MORE .

Zelenskyy says Ukraine has reached 'strategic turning point'

Ukraines president says his countrys military forces have reached a strategic turning point, while Russias president says there are certain positive developments in talks between the warring countries.

Neither leader explained clearly what they meant, however. It comes as airstrikes hit three Ukrainian cities far to the west from the main Russian offensive.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Friday: Its impossible to say how many days we will still need to free our land, but it is possible to say that we will do it because ... we have reached a strategic turning point. He didnt elaborate.

Family members accompany disabled Ukrainian children, evacuated by doctors of the Central Clinical Hospital (MSWIA) from Warsaw in a special train heading for Gdansk. Picture: AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu

He said authorities are working on 12 humanitarian corridors and trying to ensure needy people receive food, medicine and basic goods.

He spoke on a video showing him outside the presidential administration in Kyiv, speaking in both Ukrainian and Russian about the 16th day of war.

Meanwhile, in Moscow Russian President Vladimir Putin said there have been positive developments in talks between the warring countries, but he didnt offer any details about what those developments were.

Putin hosted Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko for talks on Friday and told him that negotiations with Ukraine are now being held almost on a daily basis.

Russian airstrikes on cities continue as UN documents 549 civilian deaths

Local authorities say Russian strikes hit near airports in the western Ukrainian cities of Ivano-Frankiivsk and Lutsk, far from Russias main attack targets elsewhere in Ukraine.

It comes as the UN human rights office said it has documented 549 civilian deaths and 957 injuries so far following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, saying the toll and general human suffering are rising.

The mayor of Ivano-Frankiivsk, Ruslan Martsinkiv, ordered residents in the neighbouring areas to head to shelters after an air raid alert. The mayor of Lutsk also announced an airstrike near the airport.

The strikes were far to the west from the main Russian offensive and could indicate a new direction of the war.

Three Russian airstrikes also hit the eastern industrial city of Dnipro on Friday, killing at least one person, according to Interior Ministry adviser Anton Heraschenko.

It comes as Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov said on Friday that Russian forces invading Ukraine have killed more Ukrainian civilians than soldiers.

"I want this to be heard not only in Kyiv but all over the world," Reznikov said.

Meanwhile, the World Health Organization said Friday it has verified 29 attacks on health care facilities, workers and ambulances in the hostilities, including a high-profile one on a maternity hospital in southeastern Mariupol on Wednesday. In those, 12 people have been killed and 34 injured, WHO spokesperson Dr. Margaret Harris said in an email.

The figures from the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, which run through the February 24 start of the fighting to midnight Wednesday, focus on civilians in general. It uses a strict methodology and counts only confirmed casualties. It acknowledges that its tally is likely to underestimate the real toll.

Civilians are being killed and maimed in what appear to be indiscriminate attacks, with Russian forces using explosive weapons with wide area effects in or near populated areas, spokeswoman Liz Throssell told a UN briefing.

New satellite photos appeared to show a massive convoy outside the Ukrainian capital has fanned out into towns and forests near Kyiv, with artillery pieces raised into firing position in a potentially ominous movement of the Russian military.

The photos emerged amid more international efforts to isolate and sanction Russia, particularly after a deadly airstrike on a maternity hospital in the port city of Mariupol that Western and Ukrainian officials decried as a war crime.

A Ukrainian serviceman takes a photograph of a damaged church after shelling in a residential district in Mariupol, Ukraine, Thursday, March 10, 2022. Picture: AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka

The International Organisation for Migration says 2.5 million people have fled Ukraine since Russia invaded more than two weeks ago.

IOM spokesman Paul Dillon said in a text message that the figures, taken from national governments, were up to date through Friday morning.

He said that more than 1.5 million refugees have gone to neighbouring Poland and that some 116,000 of the refugees are third-country nationals, not Ukrainians.

The UN high commissioner for refugees, Filippo Grandi, also gave the 2.5 million total for refugees and said his agency estimates that about two million people are displaced inside Ukraine as well.

The US and other nations were poised Friday to announce the revocation of Russias most favored nation trade status, which would allow higher tariffs to be imposed on some Russian imports.

Unbowed by the sanctions, Russia kept up its bombardment of the besieged southern seaport of Mariupol while Kyiv braced for an onslaught, its mayor boasting that the capital had become practically a fortress protected by armed civilians.

Meanwhile, Russian forces were pushing toward Kyiv from the northwest and east but were repulsed from Chernihiv as Ukrainian fighters regained control of Baklanova Muraviika, the general staff of Ukraines armed forces said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian authorities announced plans for several evacuation and humanitarian aid delivery routes Friday, with the support of the Red Cross.

The top priority remained freeing people from the besieged city of Mariupol and getting aid to its hungry, thirsty, freezing and terrified population.

Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said in a video message that Ukrainian authorities are trying yet again Friday to send aid into Mariupol and bring evacuees out to the city of Zaporizhzhia. Repeated previous attempts have failed, as aid and rescue convoys were targeted by Russian shelling.

Vereshchuk said buses would be sent Friday to multiple Kyiv suburbs to bring people to the capital, and to bring aid to those staying behind.

She also announced efforts to create new humanitarian corridors to bring aid to people in areas occupied or under Russian attack around the cities of Kherson in the south, Chernihiv in the north and Kharkiv in the east.
Protesters in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian city of Kherson have taken to the streets in support of president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Artem Ivanov, 42, said Russian soldiers shot bullets into the air as people congregated in the city centre at midday on Sunday.

There were a lot of people, around 5,000, although I cant say exactly because it was too difficult to calculate, the teacher said.

The people held Ukrainian flags and posters with the words Russian soldiers go back home and we support President Zelenskyy.

The Russian soldiers were shooting at the air but the Kherson people did not stop and just continued protesting.

Russian forces took control of Kherson, in the south of Ukraine close to the Black Sea coast, more than a week ago.

Artem Ivanov (left) and his wife Olena Ivanova (middle) and their three children (Artem Ivanov/PA)

According to Mr Ivanov, no-one was hurt during Sundays protest, but Russian soldiers began shooting into the air in a bid to disperse them.

People were so angry and a lot of the Russian soldiers were blocking the street and trying to stop the meeting, he said.

The people living in Kherson are not supporting the Russian Federation and the soldiers, we want to be part of Ukraine.

Mr Ivanov said he gave his wife Olena Ivanova and their three children the option to leave the city as the conflict in Ukraine worsened, but the family chose to stay together.

At the beginning (of the occupation) when there was shooting by Russian soldiers it was very scary here inside the city, he said.

Even around 300 metres outside of our building it was destroyed by the shooting, all in front of my own eyes.

Artem Ivanov said that the Russian soldiers occupying the city have little support from the local people (Artem Ivanov/PA)

Every day my wife goes out and photographs what is happening to the city.

It has been very scary and demotivating thinking about how I am going to be able to protect my family.

Mr Ivanov said that the Russian soldiers occupying the city have had little support from the local people and appear to be confused.

I saw in their eyes that theyre confused and you can tell they dont really know anything about whats going on, he said.

They seem like they are demotivated and are very confused, but I just dont know.

The Russian government is lying to its soldiers and saying they will make friends here, but nobody supports them.

They have been told to attack the civilians and some of them dont like to do it. Im not defending them but I can see what is happening.
A woman and her baby have died after Russian forces bombed the maternity hospital in Ukraine where she was meant to give birth, medics have revealed.

Images of the woman, who was pregnant at the time of the attack, being rushed to an ambulance on a stretcher had circled the world, epitomising the horror of the attack.

In video and photos shot last Wednesday by Associated Press journalists after the attack on the hospital, the woman was seen stroking her bloodied lower abdomen as rescuers rushed her through the rubble in the besieged city of Mariupol.

It was among the most brutal moments so far in Russias 19-day-old war on Ukraine.

Russian forces have escalated their attacks on crowded cities in what Ukraines leader called a blatant campaign of terror (AP)

The woman was rushed to another hospital, closer to the frontline, where doctors worked to keep her alive.

Realising she was losing her baby, medics said that she cried out to them: Kill me now.

Surgeon Timur Marin found the womans pelvis crushed and hip detached. Medics delivered the baby via caesarean section, but it showed no signs of life, the surgeon said. They then began work on the mother.

More than 30 minutes of resuscitation of the mother didnt produce results, Mr Marin said on Saturday. Both died.

In the chaos after Wednesdays air strike, medics did not have time to get the womans name before her husband and father came to take away her body.

Someone came to retrieve her, they said  so she did not end up in the mass graves being dug for many of Mariupols growing number of dead.

A pregnant woman in the basement of a maternity hospital converted into a medical ward and used as a bomb shelter during air raid alerts in Kyiv (AP)

After being accused of war crimes, Russian officials claimed the maternity hospital had been taken over by Ukrainian extremists to use as a base, and that no patients or medics were left inside.

Russias ambassador to the UN and the Russian Embassy in London called the images fake news.

Associated Press journalists, who have been reporting from inside blockaded Mariupol since early in the war, documented the attack and saw the victims and damage first-hand.

They shot video and photos of several bloodstained, pregnant mothers fleeing the blown-out maternity ward, with medics shouting and children crying.

The AP team then tracked down the victims on Friday and Saturday in the hospital where they had been transferred, on the outskirts of Mariupol.

In a city without food supplies, water, power or heat for more than a week, electricity from emergency generators is reserved for operating rooms.

Russian officials had claimed the images of injured pregnant women were fake news (AP)

As survivors described their ordeal, explosions outside shook the walls. The shelling and shooting in the area is sporadic but relentless. Emotions are running high, even as doctors and nurses concentrate on their work.

Blogger Mariana Vishegirskaya gave birth to a girl the day after the air strike, and wrapped her arm around newborn Veronika as she recounted Wednesdays bombing.

After photos and video showed her navigating down debris-strewn stairs and clutching a blanket around her frame, Russian officials claimed she was an actor in a staged attack.

It happened on March 9 in Hospital number three in Mariupol. We were laying in wards when glasses, frames, windows and walls flew apart, Vishegirskaya, still wearing the same polka dot pyjamas as when she fled, told The AP.

A pregnant woman was injured following last weeks shelling in Mariupol (AP)

We dont know how it happened. We were in our wards and some had time to cover themselves, some didnt.

Her ordeal was one among many in Mariupol, which has become a symbol of resistance to Russian President Vladimir Putins drive to crush democratic Ukraine and redraw the world map in his favour.

The failure to subordinate Mariupol has pushed Russian forces to broaden their offensive elsewhere in Ukraine.

Meanwhile, the Azov Sea port city of 430,000, key to creating a land bridge from Russia to Russian-annexed Crimea, is slowly starving.

In the makeshift new maternity ward, each approaching childbirth brings new tension.

All birthing mothers have lived through so much, said nurse Olga Vereshagina.
Burma Crime Wave in Myanmars Major Cities Sparked by Juntas Coup

Commuters seen in Yangon during the 2020 COVID-19 outbreak.

Residents of major cities such as Yangon and Mandalay are facing a crime wave after being hit by a recent spate of armed robberies, muggings and other crimes triggered by the post-coup economic downturn and soaring food prices.

On March 7, at least three men robbed a clothing shop in broad daylight on one of the two main roads in Yangons North Okkalapa Township. The saleswoman was bound, gagged and robbed at knifepoint. The robbers reportedly took cash and purses, as well as the saleswomans phone.

I feel like we are in a horrible age, wrote the clothing shop owner on Facebook.

Thefts of bicycles and motorbikes are rampant in many parts of Yangon, while muggings are on the increase. A rising number of break-ins and robberies have also been reported.

But some crimes are unprecedented in the commercial capital. Yangon residents were really shocked after they learned about an armed robbery on a bus, when a group of men robbed the bus driver and passengers of their phones and money.

In what might be the worst case so far, a foreign garment factory owner was killed and robbed of 300 million kyats (US$167,110). The money was to pay the salaries of his workers. The crime is believed to have been committed by the factory owners driver.

The Irrawaddy spoke to dozens of Yangon residents about recent reported robberies.

Ma Honey from Yangons Shwepyithar Township told The Irrawaddy: There have been increased reports of muggings by bikers in my township. And many people have had their motorbikes and bicycles stolen.

With a nighttime curfew still in place in Yangon, Ma Honey feels scared when she returns home late from work, as there are few people or cars on the streets after 7pm. Before the coup, the streets were busy until midnight.

I feel like there are many problems in Yangon and that I can be killed by either COVID-19 or hunger or fighting. So I feel increasingly insecure, said Ma Honey.

Ma Nyein Aye, who lives in Yangons Tamwe Township, said that she doesnt dare use her phone on the bus as she fears she might be robbed.

Mandalay has also been hit by dozens of recent muggings, with groups of men armed with batons and knives attacking people and stealing their motorbikes. In some cases, the victims were seriously injured. The muggings are most prevalent in Chanayethazan, Pyigyitagon and Chanmyathazi townships.

Legal experts said the significant increase in crime is being triggered by a number of factors such as a shortage of jobs resulting from the post-coup economic downturn, surging food prices and political turmoil.

Compounding the problem is the fact that junta leader Senior General Min Aung Hlaing pardoned a combined total of more than 40,000 prisoners in February and April last year. Most of the prisoners released had been serving time for robberies and drug-related offenses.

It is normal that more crimes happen when community peace and tranquility has been disturbed and the rule of law is deteriorating. Under such circumstances, criminals take advantage, one lawyer told The Irrawaddy.

The Myanmar Police Force is primarily tasked with promoting rule of law and regional peace and stability. But now they are being kept busy assisting the Myanmar military to contain the resistance. So they cant perform their duties as well, added the lawyer.

Despite the rise in crime, people no longer bother to report non-fatal thefts and muggings as the police barely do anything in response.

Even if we report crimes to the police, we dont get our possessions back. So people feel like it is useless to file complaints with the police, and so they dont report thefts of their motorbikes or bicycles, one charity worker from North Okkalapa Township told The Irrawaddy.

Police inactivity has further encouraged criminals, with some even threatening lives, he added.

Even in the past when Myanmar enjoyed periods of political stability, rule of law was weak as the police were understaffed.

Myanmars police force is thought to have close on 100,000 personnel before the coup. The ratio of police to citizens was thus one officer for every 1,300 citizens.

Before last years coup, there were only 7,700 police in Yangon, which has a population of over seven million people according to the 2014 census. It is thought that at least 6,000 police are on strike in protest at military rule, while hundreds more are believed to have been killed or wounded in attacks by resistance groups.

One Mandalay police lieutenant colonel who asked for anonymity said that police have not been able to carry out crime prevention measures and night patrols as usual because of a lack of officers and increased threats to their security.

We cant conduct regular patrols now. Police on patrol have occasionally been attacked, so we dare not conduct patrols with just one or two officers like we did before. So these things [crimes] have happened as a result of that, he said.

At least 12 policemen at every police station were involved in patrols previously, but police are too understaffed to do that now, he added. Even if a dozen policemen from every police station were able to patrol, it will be impossible to go back to pre-coup levels of crime, he said.

These crimes are driven by financial hardship. The overall political situation has paved the way for opportunist criminals. And financial hardship forces them to forget their morals, said the police lieutenant colonel.

You may also like these stories:



Funding Revolution Important for the Victory: Prominent Myanmar Activist

Regime Artillery Strikes Kill Children and Senior Citizens in Upper Myanmar

Yangon Suffers Water Shortages Amid Rolling Blackouts in Myanmar
Burma Myanmars Civilian Defense Minister Confident of Victory

Residents of Mandalay march on April 18, 2021, in support of the National Unity Government.

Myanmars parallel defense minister in the National Unity Government (NUG) U Yee Mon has praised the damage inflicted by the peoples deforces forces (PDFs) on the junta in the six months since the civilian administration declared war on the regime.

The NUG  formed by elected lawmakers ousted by the coup and their ethnic allies  on Sept. 9 last year declared a peoples war on the regime, urging all citizens to revolt.

U Yee Mon said in a report that the war had been started to defend civilians from junta violence using any available weapons. He praised the PDFs for their growing morale, bravery and intelligence.

Some of our military goals have been achieved in this initial phase as the PDFs have taken control of many rural areas  and have been carrying out guerrilla operations efficiently in Naypyitaw, Yangon, Mandalay and other cities, the civilian minister said.

He said the supplies of arms and ammunition were the main weaknesses holding back operations. U Yee Mon said he is aware of the criticism of the NUGs efforts to arm the PDFs adequately.

He said there were many difficulties in the whole process, from finding funds and suppliers and the distribution and production of weapons.

So far we have established the armed wing from funds donated by our people, at home and abroad, U Yee Mon said.

Unlike Ukraine, which has received international military aid, the civilian minister said no other country has been provided any material yet.

However, the minimum requirement for weapons and ammunition will soon be met, he said, adding that it would take longer to fully equip all the PDFs.

The civilian Ministry of Defense reported that since September it has received over US$30 million (53 billion kyats) from public donations, 85 percent of which is being used to purchase and produce arms. Seven percent of funds have been handed to allies working with the NUG in the war, it stated.

I am confident we can work strategically to be victorious, U Yee Mon said.

The NUG minister said the junta has shifted its strategy to targeting civilians to terrorize the population to deter people from supporting the PDFs.

The junta continues to commit atrocities, including using hostages, arbitrary killings, burning alive, mass killings, using civilian detainees as human shields, shelling residential areas, looting and burning houses and sexual violence, especially in Sagaing and Magwe regions and Chin, Shan, Kayah and Karen states.

When the junta uses terrorist tactics, the PDFs must try to minimize the damage to civilians and its forces, U Yee Mon reported.

In the last month, around 2,100 junta troops were killed and over 600 wounded, according to the NUG.

The Irrawaddy could not independently verify any of the reports.

You may also like these stories:

Junta Watch: Ministers Told to Save Fuel, Coup Leaders Mentor Makes Rare Appearance, and More

Funding Revolution Important for the Victory: Prominent Myanmar Activist

Regime Artillery Strikes Kill Children and Senior Citizens in Upper Myanmar
Burma Police Colonel Jailed for Condemning Myanmar Juntas Attack on Protesters

Police in an anti-coup protest in Amarapura Township on Feb. 19 last year after the coup.

A police lieutenant colonel from the Criminal Investigation Department detained for criticizing Myanmar juntas vehicle-ramming attack on anti-regime protesters in Yangon has purportedly been sentenced to three years in prison.

Lt Col Zaw Win Ko was detained on Feb. 8 after he posted criticism on social media of the regimes fatal vehicle-ramming attack on protesters in Kyimyindaing Township on December 5.

They are devoid of humanity and are worse than animals, he wrote on Facebook. He has been detained in Naypyitaw since February and charged for incitement and violation of the Myanmar Police Force Maintenance of Discipline Law.

He was sentenced to three years and sent to Yamethin Prison on March 11, according to his friends.

According to Peoples Embrace, a group helping security forces personnel refusing to work for the regime, nearly 6,000 police officers have joined the civil disobedience movement since the coup.

Myanmars military regime is reportedly planning to scrap six police units and transfer the officers to fill holes in departments regarded as more important.

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, according to police sources.



You may also like these stories:



Regime Reinforcements in Southeastern Myanmar Prompt Clashes With Karen Fighters

Junta Watch: Ministers Told to Save Fuel, Coup Leaders Mentor Makes Rare Appearance, and More

Funding Revolution Important for the Victory: Prominent Myanmar Activist
Burma Regime Reinforcements in Southeastern Myanmar Prompt Clashes With Karen Fighters

Junta troops in KNLA territory. / The Irrawaddy

Myanmar junta troops and the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) clashed last week in Karen States Dupalaya District, according to the Karen National Union (KNU), the political wing of the KNLA.

Fresh clashes erupted on Tuesday and Wednesday in the surrounding area of Lay Kay Kaw. The regime sent large numbers of reinforcements to the area on Friday, Padoh Saw Taw Nee, the KNUs head of foreign affairs, told The Irrawaddy.

The arrival of military regime reinforcements followed the Dupalaya District KNU asking the junta to withdraw its troops from the area, where the KNLAs Brigade 6 is active, he added.

Far from withdrawing their troops, they have even brought in reinforcements. So fighting is inevitable. It is their routine to fire artillery when fighting. They fire [artillery] at random once clashes break out. They dont even spare monasteries, said Padoh Saw Taw Nee.

On March 7, the Dupalaya District KNU sent a letter to the commander of the Myanmar militarys South Eastern Command, demanding that junta troops withdraw from Lay Kay Kaw and southern Kawkareik by March 9.

Residents of Lay Kay Kaw, the surrounding area and southern Kawkareik in Dupalaya District have been unable to return to their homes since being displaced by junta attacks last December, because regime soldiers are deployed in their villages looting and vandalizing their properties, said the KNU.

But on March 9, regime forces attacked Lay Kay Kaw and other areas of the KNLA Brigade 6s territory with two planes and also fired artillery, resulting in further clashes between the two sides.

Last Saturday, two cargo trucks were shot at and set on fire on the Myawaddy-Kawkareik Road killing the drivers. Travelers alleged on social media that junta troops were responsible for the attacks. Some 100 junta soldiers were seen marching along the Myawaddy-Kawkareik Road on Saturday morning, according to social media reports.

Four vehicles, two cargo trucks, a passenger bus and a pick-up truck, were set on fire. My cargo went up in flames. In this chaotic age, taking risks is inevitable. There are many people who face a worse fate than me, said a trader who lost his goods in the fighting.

The Myawaddy-Kawkareik Road was briefly closed following the attacks. Travelers have been urged to be cautious while using the road.



You may also like these stories:



Junta Watch: Ministers Told to Save Fuel, Coup Leaders Mentor Makes Rare Appearance, and More

Funding Revolution Important for the Victory: Prominent Myanmar Activist

Regime Artillery Strikes Kill Children and Senior Citizens in Upper Myanmar
Commentary Myanmars Dictator Shows Unparalleled Arrogance and Self-Regard

Myanmar coup leader Snr-Gen Min Aung Hlaing

No dictator calls himself a dictator. Myanmars coup maker and military chief Min Aung Hlaing is no exception. However, taken together, his actions, public behavior and what we have learned of his private life paint a portrait not just of an absolute dictator but of a truly nasty piece of work whose overconfidence, arrogance and narcissism may surpass even those of his predecessors, the dictators General Ne Win and Senior General Than Shwe.

A couple of months ago, one of my sources in Naypyitawthe capital of Myanmar and the headquarters of the juntatold me that Snr-Gen Min Aung Hlaing has stopped going to see his former boss, previous military regime leader Than Shwe, who handpicked him as his successor as commander-in-chief, the most powerful position in the country, when he officially relinquished power in 2011.

It is customary for incumbent and former senior generals to visit Than Shwe occasionally and pay their respects to him as their supremo. Among those who have routinely made the trek to his door are former general and president Thein Sein, other former generals and some current leading members of the military-formed Union Solidarity and Development Party. Until recently, Min Aung Hlaing, as commander-in-chief, was among them, adding to his duties the occasional unofficial briefing for the former junta boss on the countrys overall situation following his coup in February 2021.

Since the middle of last year, however, he has stopped meeting the former paramount leader, who oppressed Myanmar with his iron-fisted rule for 19 years.

Its not inaccurate to say that Than Shwe, 89, is Min Aung Hlaings godfather or benefactor; after all he handed him the most powerful position in the countrys most powerful institution, the military. In other words, he made it possible for him to stage the coup, take control of the country and appoint himself as prime minister of his own military regime.

So why has Min Aung Hlaing stopped visiting Than Shwe?

My sources see it as a sign of overconfidence on Min Aung Hlaings part. Until recently, his regular visits to his reclusive former boss were largely out of courtesy, two sources confirmed. His decision to discontinue the visits seems another sign that he is convinced he can run the country alone.

It is definitely one characteristic of a dictatorseeing oneself as the ultimate ruler who calls all the shots.

My sources and some others with whom I shared this information see Min Aung Hlaings act as a kind of defiance of his former boss, who has himself already secured a place in history as one of the worlds most notorious dictators.

Perhaps, Min Aung Hlaing, 67, now sees his former boss as a person of fading relevance, living out his last days. Meanwhile, with his coup in February last year, he sees himself as a savior, doing for the military what previous generations of generalsincluding Than Shwe himself as well as Thein Sein, his former presidentfailed to do over the past decade: keep a firm grip on power and not let the National League for Democracy (NLD) led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi take it away from them through elections.

Dont get me wrong, though: There has been no political disagreement or anything like that between the former boss and the current coup leader.

Ex-generals backed coup

Before his coup on Feb. 1, 2021, Min Aung Hlaing reportedly visited Than Shwe and informed him that he was going to stage a coup against the elected Daw Aung San Suu Kyi-led NLD government.

Than Shwe didnt stop him, but merely cautioned that, if he had made up his mind, he should take all possibilities into consideration before acting. This means Min Aung Hlaing had his former bosss blessings for the takeover, which has so far seen more than 1,500 people killed and several thousand more arrested.

Two other top generals of Than Shwes regime, which staged a coup in 1988, also supported Min Aung Hlaings coup. Maung Aye, now 84, who was Than Shwes deputy and the vice senior-general in the previous military regime, even said it was a bit late and should have been done earlier, according to sources who have access to private information about the former generals.

The other one who supported the latest coup was the previous regimes spy chief, General Khin Nyunt. Known as the Prince of Evil, the former Military Intelligence chief was responsible for cracking down on all regime opponents after the 1988 coup. In early December last year, the coup leader visited Khin Nyunts house in Yangon and photos of their meeting showed they had a cordial conversation.

Other former generals, including former president Thein Sein, who was seen as a reformist by the international community, tacitly supported the takeover.

Soe Thane, a former admiral and senior minister in U Thein Seins government, openly supported the coup in his book.

They all supported Min Aung Hlaings decision to remove the elected government of the NLD, which defeated their party, the USDP, every time the two sides competed in an election.

Mr. Know-It-All

Anyone who watches state-run television regularly will be aware that Min Aung Hlaing behaves like a paramount leader convinced of his own omniscience. His more notable performances at meetings with ruling council members and government officials include lectures to university rectors on the importance of education. He said walking was the best and cheapest form of exercise when he met officials from the Ministry of Health. His long, rambling speeches at meetings remind many Myanmar people of the countrys former dictator Ne Win, who staged a coup in 1962. He didnt hesitate to lecture lexicographers on the importance of correct Burmese spelling or medicine men on Myanmar traditional medicine.

Like other dictators, Min Aung Hlaing rarely takes advice, not even from his seniors like U Thein Sein or the current acting president, former general U Myint Swe. He also disregards the leadership of the USDP, which is backed by the generals. Everyone who has personally met him will tell you that he is not a listener.

All that the members of his military junta, which comprises 20 generals and politicians, do is listen to whatever Min Aung Hlaing says. The same goes for his entire cabinet. Its pathetic to see them on state TV jotting down what he says at meetings like schoolboys and girls. No one dares to open their mouths to complain, no matter what nonsense their boss utters.

The sources said Min Aung Hlaing has a tendency to issue orders randomly, as they occur to him, without thinking about them or educating himself about the topic. To fuel his unrealistic ideas, there is a small circle of his admirers comprised of aging Buddhist monks and pro-military laymen and women. Thats why he comes up with unrealistic ideas like running electric buses and cars in Myanmar, which has long suffered from chronic blackouts.

Nastier than Thou

Of all the dictators Myanmar has endured so far, Min Aung Hlaing is unparalleled in terms of brutality and cruelty, exceeding even Ne Win and Than Shwe. That doesnt mean his predecessors dont have bloody hands. But when it comes to crushing the opposition, every Myanmar person living today can tell you that Min Aung Hlaing is more ruthless.

If his regime cant find someone it suspects of opposing it, it will grab any member of that persons familyeven a child. Journalists who refuse to parrot the states falsehoods are on its target list. If you are an ousted NLD lawmaker or member who hasnt signed a pledge not to oppose the junta, or who openly supports the shadow National Unity Government and resistance movementnot to mention gets involved with ityour properties are at risk of being confiscated even if you are lucky enough to avoid arrest.

According to data compiled by the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), an advocacy group, at least 267 houses and other properties owned by individuals had been seized by the junta as of Jan. 20, with nearly half of those belonging to NLD lawmakers and members.

That is just the tip of the iceberg of his ruthlessness. There are plenty of peasants in the anti-regime stronghold of Sagaing Region in upper Myanmar who could tell you about how their lives have been shattered after their family homes were destroyed in the regimes indiscriminate airstrikes.

Despite his callousness, however, Min Aung Hlaing still hasnt established full control of the country despite more than a year having elapsed since the coup. His supposedly formidable army has proved inept against a more lightly armed but highly motivated opponent. Having failed to win a quick victory, he is trying to sow panic among the people by any means.

Dictators come and finally go. But the question now is how long Min Aung Hlaing will be able to cling to power and to what extent the people of Myanmar will have to keep suffering at the hands of the most brutal dictator they have ever seen. The fall of a dictator like Min Aung Hlaing can only mean salvation for the country and its entire population.
Trinity, TX (77320)

Today

A mix of clouds and sun. High 88F. Winds SSE at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

Partly cloudy early followed by cloudy skies overnight. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 74F. Winds SSE at 10 to 15 mph.
Ithaca, NY (14850)

Today

A steady, heavy rain this morning. Showers continuing this afternoon. High 62F. SSW winds shifting to WNW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall around a half an inch..

Tonight

Cloudy skies early, then partly cloudy after midnight. Low 43F. Winds NNW at 10 to 15 mph.
Julian Assange: setback in bid for avoiding extradition to the US.

The UK Supreme Court has turned down an appeal from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to hear arguments against his extradition to the US.

A court spokesman said on Monday his application did not raise "an arguable point of law".

One remaining avenue for Assange to avoid what could be a 175-year sentence in the US is for UK Home Secretary Priti Patel to deny the extradition request made by the US. Prior to that, the case will go back to the judge who made the decision to deny the US request for extradition; however the only thing this court can do is to refer the decision to Patel.

In January, the High Court had turned down a request from Assange's lawyers to appeal directly to the Supreme Court, leaving it to the higher court to decide on whether it would hear a challenge.

BREAKING: UK Supreme Court refuses permission to appeal in Assange extradition. The case now moves to @UKHomeSecretary Priti Patel to authorize the extradition https://t.co/Falow48IyP pic.twitter.com/nLdUMkbh5m  WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) March 14, 2022

On 10 December 2021, a two-bench High Court panela 4 January lower court verdict the same year to deny the US the right to extradite Assange to try him on criminal charges in Washington.

British District Judge Vanessa Baraister had ruled in January that Assange should not be extradited, saying the risk he would commit suicide in a US jail was too high.

Assange faces criminal charges in the US for publishing classified information that was leaked to WikiLeaks by an American soldier, then known as Bradley Manning, but now, after gender reassignment surgery, known as Chelsea Manning.

This is not the end of the road for #Assanges appeal against extradition



Instead it is just the latest twist in this torturous travesty of justice



What does todays Supreme Court decision mean for #JulianAssange@amnestys legal expert explains #Assange #FreeAssange pic.twitter.com/w6lKCM9r2S  Stefan Simanowitz (@StefSimanowitz) March 14, 2022

The Australian was arrested on 11 April 2019 and removed from the Ecuador embassy where he had taken refuge for seven years. His asylum was withdrawn shortly before he was arrested and he appeared in court shortly thereafter. The US made a formal request for his extradition on 6 June 2019.

Assange, 50, one of the better-known hackers Australia has produced, is being held at Belmarsh Prison in the UK.

The UK Government has not always been receptive to US requests for extradition. In 2018, the US gave up appealing a decision by a court in the UK to oppose the extradition of British security researcher Lauri Love to face charges of allegedly breaching the computer networks of a number of American Government agencies.

And another British hacker, Gary McKinnon, was not extradited for accessing US Government computers in 2012, after a 10-year legal battle, because he was considered to be seriously ill.

Former British prime minister Theresa May, who was home secretary at the time, made the decision not to extradite McKinnon.
The Israelis have long worked on technologies to make the desert fertile, with the latest example being SupPlant, the AgTech company recently chosen as one of TIMEs Best Inventions, with the $27M raised to accelerate its intention to digitally inform every irrigation recommendation on earth.

SupPlant. The company says its is to equip farmers and agro-businesses around the world with the most relevant and powerful actionable agronomic insights, and doing so by changing the basic concept of irrigation methods, and based on plants current necessities, demonstrating its unique technology is proven to save water on global scales while improving productivity and yields.

The round is led by Red Dot Capital Partnersl participation from Menomadin Foundation, Smart-Agro Fund, Mivtah Shamir, Deshpande Foundation, PBFS and Maor Investments. The round brings SupPlantss total funding to more than US $46M. As part of this round, Atad Peled of Red Dot will join SupPlants Board of Directors.

The round comes amidst global warming impacting Australian farmers who are dealing daily with the unpredicted climate that is changing rapidly and the constant lack of irrigation water. SupPlant is generating climate smart irrigation recommendations to help farmers in Australia and around the world be more resilient to volatile weather events.

SupPlant is making their technology available to Australian farmers by changing the basic concept of irrigation methods.

Of course, it's obvious this technology would be of great benefit to farmers worldwide, but with Australia being as famous for its multi-year droughts as well as its comparatively shorter weeks of floods, it could certainly be a big beneficiary, and it's a shame more Australians aren't as industrious as the Israelis in development water saving technologies and smarter farming methods, but it sure it good there are companies out there doing this and inspiring others to work on similar goals.

So, how does SupPlant's technology work?

SupPlant says its database is the largest plant database in the world, accumulated by data collected from 32 crops in 14 countries, covering growing conditions from dry arid regions of the Middle East to tropical conditions in central America.

The sensors are placed on the plants and their surroundings which radiate the plants data to the cloud: how much water the plant actually needs to maximise growth. This data is translated through the use of artificial intelligence and big data to irrigation models, recommendations and actionable insights.

SupPlant, an Israeli-based company as mentioned above, has taken advantage of the Abraham Accords and geopolitical changes in the region to open two new markets in the last year: UAE and Morocco.

Ori Ben Ner, CEO of SupPlant said: "The funds raised in this round will allow us to invest more in the Australian market and open other markets as well. We also plan to continue to develop our product in order to help farmers in Australia fight climate change. It is far superior from any common practice available.

Atad Peled, Principal at Red Dot said: "We were impressed by SupPlants abilities and recent expansion into strategic markets. We were also inspired by their goal: working with smallholder farms, who usually do not have access to AgTech. Food security will be a major issue in coming years, and we feel certain SupPlants solution will have a stand-out role in it.

SupPlant reminds us it is "a world-leading company in the field of precision agriculture. Using SupPlant's technology, farmers are able to improve yields, productivity and water use efficiency on a large scale. The technology combines data collected from soil, plant, and weather sensors to understand and identify the main parameters affecting the optimal performance of plants.

"Combining and analysing all the data, in real time, using intelligent algorithms, SupPlant provides a precise irrigation plan and recommendations on daily and weekly bases to maximise crops and budget, putting away the uncertainties of climate change, varieties and growing conditions.

"This advanced technology sets the plants in the center of the picture, identifying the smallest changes in the plants behaviour and well being."
Mavenir has won the tender to aid FSG, the fourth mobile operator in Australia, in building a future-proof network for both regional Australia and enterprise private networks. Regional vice president sales ANZ and Japan Dereck Quinlan spoke with iTWireTV about why FSG selected Mavenir to build the core technology for them, and how Mavenir is disrupting mobile operator technology.

Mavenir has been operating for 13 years, built with the goal of disrupting how mobile phone networks are built. The Mavenir model releases operators from bespoke hardware by providing a purely software-based model that runs on any cloud and allows operators to deploy networks in a completely different way.

FSG - Field Solutions Holding - selected Mavenir, along with Nokia, as its primary technology partner to build Australia's fourth mobile network. It's going to be an exciting 12 months as we see this come to life, and the offerings it will bring to market. FSG will focus on the rural market and also on private enterprise networks. It set out from the start to build a future-proof network and recognised Mavenir offered the strong partnership it needed, selecting the business to build out the core FSG technology.

Mavenir regional VP of sales for Australia, New Zealand, and Japan Dereck Quinlan spoke with iTWireTV about Mavenir's work in the region, both with FSG and in other ways.

See it on iTWireTV here:
Ita Buttrose: "The ABC has aimed to strike the right balance between privacy considerations and serving our digital media audience."

The ABC appears to be hell-bent on introducing compulsory logins for its iview service, rebutting points raised by the Australian Privacy Foundation with somewhat tired objections that do not appear to really hold up under scrutiny.

And the taxpayer-funded corporation has hinted that such logins may also become mandatory for other digital services, with its chair Ita Buttrose not ruling it out, by saying in a response to the APF: "There are no current plans to make a login requirement necessary for other ABC digital products."

Buttrose's statement was part of a short response sent to the APF on 8 March. It was made public only on Monday, along with the APF's reply. For the most part, the APF made the same arguments as it did in the original letter which iTWire reported on 3 March.

The ABC announced the compulsory logins in a statement on 17 February, claiming that it would collect user data, but would not sell the same. However, the data will be shared with both Google and Facebook.

Buttrose tried to justify the mandatory logins by saying that 80% of the European Broadcasting Union members, including the BBC, had similar requirements.

She offered this spin to justify the logins: "The login requirement has been introduced for the VOD [video-on-demand] component of ABC iview so that the ABC can provide a modern service with the features Australians expect, and also to improve the ABCs capacity to provide and make discoverable, quality content that reflects all Australians."

Dear @ABCTV the fact that you are going to make us sign in to use iview soon is incredibly frustrating. I don't need you suggesting content for me, I know how to find what I want to watch. it's an invasion of privacy and I really wish you would re think it.  AlexSprings (@WadeyeAlex) March 12, 2022

But she avoided responding to the APF's charge that forcing iview users to register may well be suspected to be the first step in the broadcaster being prepared for privatisation and commercial exploitation. She also avoided the APF's contention that the mandating of logins was a violation of the Commonwealth Privacy Act of 1988.

The ABC carries no advertising and hence does not require to sneakily gather its users' data in order to monetise the same. Thus, the arguments mounted by Buttrose appear to be thin and devoid of reason.

The APF had pointed out that the ABC's privacy impact assessment of the new measure had been conducted in-house, rather than by an independent expert in an open and consultative manner. But Buttrose avoided responding to this point as well in her reply.

The ABC conducted a survey of just 1500 users and based its decision on the data that was gathered. Referring to this data, Buttrose said: "A vast majority of Australians surveyed by the ABC desire VOD features that can only be made available by logging into an account, such as continue watching across devices, recommendations, and profiles.

Will someone please explain why I have to set up a log-in procedure to access ABC iview that my taxes pay for. I do not want to be tracked or pinged with what I might want to listen to or view.  Liz Dax (@lizdax1) March 10, 2022

"Our research indicates that if we do not require people to log in to access those features, then they will not take the time to do so, and those features will not be available to them. In the long term, this would be likely to lead to a loss of viewers, and it would also mean that the value to Australians from the investments the ABC makes in quality content would be diminished."

The APF countered this, with a trace of sarcasm, saying: "Thanks for the reference to audience research releases. We are however still none the wiser

about how the 95% positive result was obtained here from the sample of over 1500  we would be happy to supply some questions for a future survey to see whether making proportionality factors (the adequate functionality without registration and the potential implications of registration, tracking and profiling) more explicit would give a different result!

"In addition, ABC giving significant weight here to the implications of a sample of a mere 1500 people (in the order of less than ~0.01% of the adult population) suggests that useful conclusions may be inferred for a sample of somewhat less than 100% of an audience, which seems to be the assumption behind of the mandatory registration scheme and its arguments about the intolerable impact of having only 80-90% or so registered.

What's the rational behind @ABCaustralia forcing everyone onto #iview accounts? They tried it last year and backed off



'Spose the data helps them out in some way. Be nice to see an official statement regarding the reasons for the move  FixatedPersonsUnit (@FixatedUnits) March 10, 2022

"This reliance on sampling is unremarkable, but it is also inconsistent with the argument for the necessity of every user needing to be registered in order to understand audience preferences. It supports our contention that the common market research rule of thumb holds true: a sample of less than 100% can still give quite usable results."

In the absence of any government concern over the fact that user data is going to be siphoned up by the ABC based on flimsy reasoning, the logins seem likely to start operating on Tuesday.

When iTWire sought comment from the ABC on 3 March, the corporation had this as part of its response: "Viewers will still be able to watch all the ABCs live broadcast streams on ABC iview web including ABC TV, ABC News, ABC Kids and ABC ME without needing to log in.

"All other ABC television and radio services, and the broader suite of ABC apps, are available without creating an account and logging in."

One has to hope that that bit, at least, is true.
The Australian National Press Club has shown that it is no longer part of the Fourth Estate, by imposing a blanket of censorship on the Russian Ambassador to Australia, Alexey Pavlovsky.

On 11 March, the NPC withdrew its invitation for Pavlovsky to address the club in Canberra. The acting Ukrainian envoy, Volodymyr Shalkivskyi, had spoken at the club on 10 March.

In order to justify the cancellation, the NPC claimed the invitations to both diplomats were issued "at a different stage in the conflict in Ukraine before allegations of war crimes and bombing of civilian targets".

In saying this, the NPC made it clear that it had already passed judgment on these allegations and decided that they are true, which is a remarkable decision to take.

In any civilised society, such allegations are tested in a court of law before they are pronounced on, one way or the other.

The NPC statement continued: "...the Board now considers it inappropriate to continue with the invitation to the Russian Ambassador".

We have decided at the National Press Club to withdraw an invitation to speak for the Russian ambassador.



The invasion and its atrocities change everything.



He can call a press conference at any time. But a national platform for a 30-minute speech? No.https://t.co/7oCvDmhdMn  David Crowe (@CroweDM) March 11, 2022

The club sought cover under the mantle of freedom, declaiming: "The club stands by its principles of encouraging free speech and promoting a balanced national discussion of the big issues of the day and reserves the right to revisit this decision at a later date."

And it continued, once again acting as judge, jury and executioner, "In addition, the National Press Club is a vigorous champion of media freedom and strongly condemns the media censorship in Russia. Under new laws in Russia both local and international journalists face charges of high treason and 15-20 year jail terms for reporting the facts. This situation should not be tolerated and has no place in a democratic society."

There is no time in its existence during which Russia has not practised media censorship. To raise that now is a furphy.

NPC director David Crowe, the chief political correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, issued a tweet in which he said: "We have decided at the National Press Club to withdraw an invitation to speak for the Russian ambassador.

"The invasion and its atrocities change everything. He can call a press conference at any time. But a national platform for a 30-minute speech? No."

For a body that is supposed to be made up of journalists to act in this manner is shameful. The correct approach for journalists would be to let Pavlovsky speak and then rain questions on him and hold his feet to the fire.

But blocking someone from speaking reflects an attitude that journalists in Australia often condemn as being characteristic of totalitarian countries like North Korea.

At the NPC talks, there is plenty of time for questions and practically all guests agree to stay on beyond the time for the session, if they need to do so in order to field all the questions.

The NPCs decision to act like an arm of government and muzzle one point of view is a low point for journalism in Australia, and one that no educated individual should condone.

Journalists appear to have forgotten their role in society. They have become part of the machinery that serves the interests of those in power, not the people.

Is it any wonder then that journalism is among the least trusted professions in Australia?
Welcome Guest! You Are Here:
This Week in Review

A weekly review of the best and most popular stories published in the Imperial Valley Press. Also, featured upcoming events, new movies at local theaters, the week in photos and much more.
George Lucas is one of history's most financially successful filmmakers responsible for the Star Wars franchise and Indiana Jones, he has been nominated for four Academy Awards for his work. The multi billionaire, visionary, film director, producer, screenwriter, and entrepreneur turns  Click for more.
Jacksonville, TX (75766)

Today

Considerable cloudiness. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 88F. Winds SSE at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

Mostly cloudy skies. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 71F. Winds SSE at 5 to 10 mph.
Johnson City, TN (37604)

Today

Cloudy skies this morning will become partly cloudy this afternoon. High 77F. Winds W at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

A few passing clouds, otherwise generally clear. Low around 50F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph.
Joplin, MO (64801)

Today

Thunderstorms during the morning will give way to steady rain this afternoon. High 61F. Winds ESE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%..

Tonight

Cloudy with periods of rain. Low 59F. Winds ESE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 90%. 1 to 2 inches of rain expected.
Welcome Guest! You Are Here:

Home Regional News East
Today

Mainly sunny to start, then a few afternoon clouds. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 84F. Winds WNW at 10 to 15 mph.

Tonight

Clear to partly cloudy. Low 53F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph.

Tomorrow

Intervals of clouds and sunshine. High 81F. Winds light and variable.
In mid February, Colombias Special Jurisdiction for Peace announced it will soon open three new macro-cases: its future dossiers will focus on the brunt of crimes committed by former Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) members and by state agents, as well as on how ethnic minorities were targeted during the countrys armed conflict.

With this decision, the special tribunal stemming from the 2016 peace agreement  locally known as the JEP  significantly changed its approach to how it selects its cases, moving from investigating specific crimes and geographic regions to focusing more broadly on an array of behaviours by specific actors.

However, this announcement, explained in part by the slow pace at which its first seven cases have moved, has seen an unprecedented flurry of critiques from victims and human rights groups  especially since these could be the last probes it opens. Although the choosing of cases inevitably fails to satisfy the expectations of all victims  many of whom are advocating for the crime that affected them to be selected  this is perhaps the first time when victims of very diverse likes are questioning the JEPs methodology and how seriously its justices are taking their observations into account.

The JEPs change of heart

Over the past four years, the JEP has been working on seven macro-cases. Four of them focus on highly symbolic crimes committed by two different actors: kidnappings and forced recruitment of child soldiers carried out by the FARC, as well as extrajudicial executions and the mass killing of members of the left-wing Patriotic Union party by state agents. Three additional cases are probing multiple crimes committed by different groups in three specific regions of the country.

On February 18, the JEP announced its unwavering decision to open three new cases. A first one will focus on other crimes committed by FARC, including sexual violence, forced displacement, forced disappearance, use of landmines and town sieges. A second one will investigate crimes carried out by Army officials, policemen and other state agents, with an emphasis on sexual violence, torture, land dispossession and massacres, including those in collusion with right-wing paramilitary groups. One last case will examine the suffering of indigenous persons and Afro-Colombians, who jointly account for 10% of Colombias population and 18% of its registered victims.

In making this call, the tribunal explained that it already possesses a wealth of information on the armed conflict, after its contextual analysis group studied 458 reports submitted by victims groups and state agencies, and identified 258.000 criminal offences. Its justices argue that focusing on these other criminal patterns by FARC and state agents makes sense, now that they have built an in-depth understanding on the behaviours of each actor over time and geography.

They also announced a series of public hearings in six cities to gather observations from victims and human rights groups. The last of these ended last Friday in Bogota.

A ticking clock

The JEP has so far taken much care to avoid indicating that choosing these crimes amounts to deciding that it shall not prosecute others later on, but victims and justices alike are aware that this is the likeliest scenario in a country that endured a 52-year-long armed conflict that left 9,2 million victims. Especially since the clock is ticking for the tribunal, which has a 15-year lifespan that admits an additional extension to fulfil residual tasks. In theory, the JEP has until 2028 to present charges against those most responsible for serious crimes and until 2033 to complete the trials.

Right after it unveiled its new dossiers, the JEP also announced dates for the public hearings in which its first batch of 17 indictees will accept the charges brought against them. Between March 28 and April 1st, seven former FARC commanders will officially face their victims and own up to their responsibility over thousands of kidnappings. Three weeks later, on April 21 and 22, ten former Army officials will formally admit to their role in murdering 247 civilians and then unlawfully passing them off as rebels killed in combat, a tragedy known as false positives.

Their admission paves the way for the JEP to hand down its first convictions since opening its doors in early 2018. They are expected to receive 5-to-8-year sentences in a non-prison setting, provided justices also deem that theyre answering to victims demands for truth and redress.

This schedule, however, underscores how long each case is taking. Those first two accusations were unveiled after three and a half years of investigations, with an additional year having been needed to process observations from victims and receiving a formal response from those standing accused. And still a few months more will pass before the JEPs ruling justices hand down these penalties. This means that at least five years are needed for a ruling, a time span that doesnt take into account that these first two cases still have other pending indictments against regional FARC commanders and military officers from other prioritised units.

A cause of even greater concern is that the other five cases opened are still in the investigative stages. In theory, the regional case focusing on Narino on the Pacific coast and the one examining the elimination of the Patriotic Union are nearing the accusation stage, but no official announcements have been made.

Victims (and politicians) push back

The tribunals decision to open the new so-called umbrella cases has sparked frustration among victims and human rights organisations. Many feel that the six hearings convened by the JEP to discuss case prioritisation were rendered innocuous given that justices had already made their mind up on the upcoming cases. And theyre particularly concerned about what this might leave out.

We know a prioritisation is needed, but it has to be done in such a way that victims feel included, even if they know that their case will not be prosecuted, says Adriana Arboleda, a lawyer at the Corporation for Judicial Freedom in Medellin. Her NGO has been calling on the JEP to open a geographical case on the Comuna 13 neighbourhood of Colombias second largest city, where  they contend  state agents led by Colombian Army General Mario Montoya disappeared and displaced thousands of persons in cahoots with paramilitaries. Her concern, she says, is that under time constraints, the JEP might end up sacrificing outreach and participation.

In February, 85 victims and human rights groups penned a public letter asking the JEP to postpone the hearings until the tribunal could address their concerns that the decision process is hurting the principle of victims being at the centre of proceedings. Some even went as far as filing legal protection actions against the tribunal in a bid to have their cases considered. As a result of one such suit by an unnamed victim of FARCs 2003 car bomb inside Bogotas El Nogal social club, the JEP established a mid-April deadline for its definitive case announcement.

Even politicians are also lobbying the JEP to open other new cases. President Ivan Duque, an outspoken critic of the transitional justice system who only visited the JEPs headquarters in Bogota for the first time last November when the UN secretary general Antonio Guterres came for the peace deals fifth anniversary, asked the tribunal whose importance he has constantly downplayed to investigate crimes committed against soldiers and policemen.

Women demand a sexual violence case

Victims of sexual violence have been perhaps the most vocal group in demanding a full case as opposed to being included as part of a broader probe. The country needs an acknowledgement that this happened. Without such a case, it will be much more difficult to understand how women were seen as spoils of war, how entire territories were occupied through womens bodies, says Marina Gallego, leader of the grassroots organization Womens Route to Peace. Her nationwide victims organization submitted a report detailing cases of sexual violence in Uraba to the JEP and is finishing another one in Putumayo.

As JusticeInfo has told, hers and other groups have insisted since three years ago on the need of a case detailing different forms of gender-based violence such as rape, reproductive violence  which includes forced contraception, sterilisations and abortions  and violence against LGBT persons.

What historically was an underreported crime has come to the forefront in the wake of the global reckoning sparked by the #MeToo movement and it has even become a punching bag in the Colombian transition. In total, 34.592 persons have been victims of sexual violence, 90% of whom are women. Although this might seem like a small number amid a universe of 9,2 million victims, the number of persons reporting such cases has grown far quicker than for other crimes over the past seven years.

Indeed, this demand was voiced in every single one of the public hearings convened by the JEP to discuss case prioritisation, according to two persons with direct knowledge. Likewise, it features prominently in the 421 reports submitted to the JEP describing crimes: more than a third  130  address sexual and gender-based violence. This only ranks behind homicides, forced displacement, forced disappearance and physical attacks, way more than historically visible crimes like kidnappings or child recruitment, according to an analysis carried out by the tribunal.

Seeking justice for women

Womens rights groups agree with victims concerns. Our peace agreement was a pioneer in including sexual violence and a gender-based approach. That created a huge expectation among victims, who believe in the transitional justice system and in the possibility of an access to justice they never had, says Linda Cabrera of Sisma Mujer, one of the oldest feminist organisations in the country. Her organisation, alongside four others, has publicly called on the JEP to open a case covering all forms of gender-related violence and unsuccessfully lobbied International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan to persuade the JEP into doing so.

One of their arguments is that the ordinary criminal justice system is long indebted to survivors of sexual violence. Out of 634 cases prioritised by two Constitutional Court edicts, only 14  or 2,2%  had seen a conviction, according to a 2016 report by 12 legal and womens rights NGOs. Impunity levels in prioritised sexual assault cases ranges between 92% and 97%, they concluded.

Were not seeing a gender-based approach in the JEPs methodology. Our experience is that when serious human rights violations are investigated simultaneously, there is a risk that sexual violence is rendered invisible or left aside. Its part of what has happened in Colombian judicial history, says Cabrera.

Landmine victims also feel left out

Victims of other highly symbolic crimes are also raising their voice in a country that has one the highest tallies of displaced persons and landmine victims in the world.

The JEP has the tools to make those responsible admit to their use of landmines and tell us truths like who buried them, how they chose where to do so and how they made them, says Reinel Barbosa, a 36-year-old farmer and IT technician who lost his left leg after stepping on a landmine in 2007. Since then, he has become one of the most vocal leaders of one of the least visible group of victims in the country, founding the first nationwide network of landmine victim associations and long advocating for humanitarian demining efforts.

JEP justices speak at a public hearing with former Army officials who have survived landmine explosions.  JEP

A case on landmines makes sense in a country with 12,036 direct victims, without counting relatives. Much of this responsibility lies with FARC, which the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) described as probably the most prolific user of antipersonnel mines among rebel groups anywhere in the world, although the ELN guerrilla and right-wing paramilitaries resorted to them too. Its also a crime in which the ordinary criminal justice system hasnt made much headway, with the first such conviction ever  of a FARC rebel  only occurring in 2015. The Colombian Campaign to Ban Landmines, the ICBLs national branch and the NGO which promoted its inclusion in the criminal code, doesnt have records of any other conviction.

The problem, Barbosa says, is that most landmine victims do not know for sure who installed them, given that these contraptions often explode years  or even decades  after being buried.

In my case, its been 14 years without an identification of who was responsible, he says. But, with the information the JEP has already gathered on which FARC units operated in different areas and time periods, he believes it would be possible to pinpoint responsible commanders.

The tribunal is considering including landmine use within the FARC macro-case, as part of an investigation line on means and methods of war, alongside town sieges and car bombs. Barbosa says hes not fixated on landmine use as a case on its own, but warns that the priority for victims is to see perpetrators held accountable for a war tactic that targeted civilians and that was often connected to other crimes like forced displacement and confinement.

Bringing back victims at the centre

Although they understand the JEPs time constraints, in demanding that the crimes they suffered are investigated, victims are also advocating for the narrative focus to return to the victims, rather than the perpetrators.

The language of war tends to shift the blame to victims. People speak about landmine accidents, as if these were self-inflicted, when in reality they were minutely planned attacks. We need to call things by their name and seeing those who planted them own up to it achieves that, says Reinel Barbosa. Theyre also pressuring the JEP to open broader spaces of dialogue with victims to discuss case prioritisation. As Linda Cabrera says, they owe the womens movement a clear explanation for the postponement and eventual decision of not opening a case, if that is their position
Russia said Monday that an attack by Kyivs forces on the separatist stronghold of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine had left 20 people dead, accusing Kyiv of committing a war crime.

Moscow accused Ukraines army of firing a Tochka-U missile at a residential area in Donetsk, in one of the most serious attacks on the city since Russia sent troops into Ukraine over two weeks ago.

Rebels, who have controlled the city since 2014, had earlier said fragments from a rocket they shot down had left 16 civilians dead.

Twenty peaceful residents have died, Russian defence ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in a statement.

Another 28 people including children were seriously injured and hospitalised.

The use of such weapons in a city where there are no firing positions of the armed forces, Konashenkov added, is a war crime.

Earlier Monday separatist officials said more than a dozen people had been killed after they shot down a projectile and remnants landed in Donetsks centre.

Separatist health officials later released updated figures matching those announced by the Russian defence ministry.

Official separatist Telegram channels distributed photos and video of the aftermath, showing burnt out cars, bodies strewn in the street, and damage to the exterior of shops.

In an interview with Russian state-run television, the head of the so-called Donetsk Peoples Republic, Denis Pushilin, said the shot-down rocket had inflicted damage to residential areas.

People were waiting in line near an ATM and were standing at a bus stop, he said in remarks broadcast on Russian television.

There are children among the dead, Pushilin added, adding that the casualty count would have been higher had the rocket not been downed.

Reports of the attack came as Ukrainian and Russian negotiators met for a new round of talks to resolve more than two weeks of fierce fighting.
German Holocaust survivor Leon Schwarzbaum, a key witness in recent trials of alleged Nazi war criminals, has died aged 101, the International Auschwitz Committee (IAC) told AFP on Monday.

Schwarzbaum died on Sunday night, according to Christoph Heubner, executive vice president of the IAC.

His death represents a great loss to the collective memory. We will all miss his anger and humanity, Heubner said.

Schwarzbaum testified in 2016 against former Auschwitz camp guard Reinhold Hanning, who was sentenced to five years in prison but died a few months after the verdict before he could go to jail.

In late 2021, Schwarzbaum also appeared as a witness in the trial of Josef Schuetz, a 101-year-old former guard at the Sachsenhausen camp.

He had been due to participate in a further hearing of that trial this week, Thomas Walther, a lawyer specialising in Nazi war crimes, told AFP.

In a written statement due to be read by Walther, Schwarzbaum had planned to ask the accused to tell us the historical truth.

Speak here in this place about what you experienced  as I have done for my part, he wrote.

Schwarzbaum had often expressed anger and regret that so few Nazi war criminals had been brought to justice, especially in Germany.

He did not want hatred, he wanted justice, the IAC said in a statement.

Schwarzbaum was born in 1921 into a Polish Jewish family in Hamburg but grew up in Bedzin, Upper Silesia, in present-day Poland before his family was deported to Auschwitz in 1943.

He was the only member of his family to survive the camps of Auschwitz, Buchenwald and a sub-camp of the Sachsenhausen complex north of Berlin.

He later worked in Berlin as an art and antiques dealer, while also campaigning tirelessly to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive through lectures and talks around the world.

It is with great sadness, respect and gratitude that Holocaust survivors all over the world bid farewell to their friend, fellow sufferer and companion Leon Schwarzbaum, who in the last decades of his life became one of the most important contemporary witnesses of the Shoah, Heubner said in a statement.
Malian soldiers and jihadists have carried out a wave of summary executions since December in the conflict-torn Sahel state, says Human Rights Watch, which is urging the government to investigate.

A report due to be published Wednesday said at least 107 civilians  including traders, village chiefs and children  had been killed recently in the centre and southwest of the country since December.

Most of the victims were summarily executed, according to the report seen by AFP, which is based on the testimony of 49 people.

Members of the security forces were linked to at least 71 civilian deaths over the period, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said, while jihadists were linked to 36.

The numbers constituted a dramatic spike, said HRW Sahel director Corinne Dufka.

This complete disregard for human life, which includes apparent war crimes, should be investigated and those found to be implicated appropriately punished, she added.

Mali, an impoverished nation of 21 million people, has over the past decade been wracked by Islamist violence. Vast swathes of the country are in thrall to myriad rebel groups and militias.

Thousands of soldiers and civilians have been killed and hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to flee their homes.

Malis under-equipped army has also often been accused of committing abuses during the brutal conflict.

But the army-dominated interim government, installed after a 2020 military coup, regularly rejects such accusations.

Among other incidents, the HRW report cited an one in central Mali in January in which soldiers allegedly killed five civilians.

A witness told the rights group that white soldiers as well as Malian troops had been involved.

The report did not mention the identity of the white soldiers. However, France, the United States and others say that Russian private security firm Wagner has deployed hundreds of fighters to Mali.

Malis government has repeatedly denied the claims.

HRW said the government had told the rights group that the gendarmes had opened investigations into two alleged incidents of military abuses mentioned in the report.
Russia and Ukraine conducted fresh talks on Monday in an effort to end Moscows devastating war, despite deadly strikes on a Ukrainian television tower, the capital and a pro-Moscow separatist region.

On the 19th day of the invasion, the fourth round of talks made no breakthrough other than a planned resumption Tuesday, as Russian-backed separatists said fragments from a shot-down Ukrainian Tochka-U missile ripped the centre of Donetsk, killing 23 people.

Moscow called it a war crime and rebels published photos of bloody corpses strewn in the street, even as the Ukrainian army denied having fired a missile at Donetsk.

The United Nations estimates almost 2.8 million people have fled Ukraine since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the full-scale land and air assault on February 24, most of them to Poland, struggling to provide for the arrivals.

Outside the western Ukrainian city of Rivne, nine people died and another nine were injured on Monday when Russian forces hit a television tower, local authorities said.

Rescuers were working to free survivors trapped under the rubble in the village of Antopil, the head of the regional administration, Vitaliy Koval, said on messaging app Telegram.

As Moscows military advanced steadily towards several major urban hubs, Russian air strikes killed at least two in Kyiv, now hemmed in on two sides and drained of more than half of its three million residents.

They say that he is too severely burned, that I wont recognise him, sobbed Lidiya Tikhovska, 83, staring at the spot where a paramedic said the remains of her son Vitaliy lay.

I wish Russia the same grief I feel now, she said, tears rolling down her cheeks as she clung to her grandsons elbow for support.

During its meeting with Russian representatives, Ukraine said it was demanding peace, an immediate ceasefire and the withdrawal of Russian troops. The videoconference talks paused without a breakthrough ahead of a planned resumption on Tuesday.

 World War III 

Only after this can we talk about regional relations and about political differences, Kyivs lead negotiator Mikhailo Podolyak said in a video statement posted to Twitter.

Russian troops not only edged closer to Kyiv but kept up their siege of the southern port city of Mariupol, where officials said nearly 2,200 people have been killed.

At Ukraines Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the site of the worlds worst nuclear disaster in 1986, energy operator Ukrenergo said occupying forces had once again damaged its electricity supply.

Russias forces had earlier focused on eastern and southern areas of Ukraine  home to more ethnic Russians  but in recent days have moved to the countrys centre.

In Kyiv, only the roads to the south remain open, according to the Ukrainian presidency. City authorities have set up checkpoints, and people are stockpiling food and medicine.

The north-western suburb of Bucha is held by Russian forces, along with parts of Irpin, Ukrainian soldiers told AFP. Some blocks in the once well-to-do suburb have been reduced to rubble.

The Russians are encountering resistance from the Ukrainian army to both the east and west of the capital, according to AFP journalists on the scene.

Talks between Kyiv and Moscow have yet to yield a ceasefire and Russian forces have shown no sign of easing their onslaught.

The aim was to do everything to ensure a meeting of presidents. A meeting that I am sure people are waiting for, said President Volodymyr Zelensky.

We see significant progress, Leonid Slutsky, a senior member of Russias negotiating team, told state-run television network RT Sunday.

 World War III 

In an attack dangerously close to NATO member Poland, Russian air strikes on a Ukrainian military training ground near the border killed at least 35 people and wounded more than 130 on Sunday.

Zelensky has urged NATO to impose a no-fly zone, but the United States has ruled out any direct intervention, with President Joe Biden warning that NATO fighting Russia is World War III.

If you do not close our sky, it is only a matter of time before Russian missiles fall on your territory, on NATO territory, on the homes of NATO citizens, repeated Zelensky, who is to deliver a virtual address to the US Congress on Wednesday.

Washington and its EU allies have sent funds and military aid to Ukraine and imposed unprecedented economic sanctions on Russia.

Russias finance ministry accused foreign countries of wanting to force Russia into an artificial default and said it would meet its debt obligations.

In a sign Moscow may have underestimated the challenge it would face, US officials told media that Russia had asked China for military and economic aid for the war.

US diplomat Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said Putin reportedly asking for military help could be a defining moment for Chinas Xi Jinping.

Beijing accused Washington of spreading lies over Chinas role in the Ukraine war, without directly addressing the US media reports.

The latest fighting in Kyivs suburbs left a US journalist dead  the first foreign reporter killed in Ukraine since the invasion began.

In an intelligence update on Sunday, Britains defence ministry said Russia had established a naval blockade on the Black Sea coast, effectively isolating Ukraine from international maritime trade.

 Evacuation route 

Russian naval forces are conducting missile strikes against targets throughout Ukraine, it said.

Meanwhile, efforts continued to get help to the devastated southern city of Mariupol, which aid agencies say is facing a humanitarian catastrophe.

In a glimmer of hope for residents of the besieged city, more than 160 civilian cars were able to drive out along a humanitarian evacuation route on Monday.

The successful evacuation followed several failed attempts since Russian forces surrounded the port city on the Azov Sea early this month.

Heavy bombardment has left some 400,000 inhabitants in the city with no running water or heating and food running short.

Zelensky has accused Moscow of both blocking and attacking humanitarian convoys, although he said Sunday that another 125,000 people had been evacuated that way across Ukraine.

Zelensky says the Russians have lost about 12,000 troops  although Moscow put the number at 498, in its only toll released March 2.

About 1,300 Ukrainian troops have been killed, according to Kyiv.

And in Russia, Instagram was no longer accessible Monday after Moscow accused its parent company Meta of allowing calls for violence against Russians on its platforms.

burs-dlc/dk/jm

THE NEW YORK TIMES COMPANY
On the 19th day of Russias invasion of Ukraine Monday, Russian forces were encircling at least four major cities and sought to increase pressure on the capital Kyiv.

The capital remains under Ukrainian control but is increasingly at risk of being surrounded, with many observers believing Russia is still aiming to capture the city despite slow progress and intense resistance.

Here is a summary of the situation on the ground, based on statements from both sides, Western defence and intelligence sources and international organisations.

 The east 

Kharkiv remains in Ukrainian hands despite increasingly intense Russian bombardment, according to Western sources, and the city is now surrounded.

Prosecutors there said two people were killed and another injured in a Monday bombardment of a residential street, calling it a possible war crime, while a 15-year-old boy was killed in shelling of a kindergarten 40 kilometres (25 miles) away.

Russian forces were also pressing an offensive through the separatist Donetsk and Lugansk regions that are backed by Russia and seeking to join up with Russian troops who entered from the north.

Russian-backed separatists said fragments from a shot-down Ukrainian missile ripped the centre of Donetsk, killing 23 people  quickly dubbed a war crime by Moscow, although Ukraine denied firing a missile at the city.

The city of Sumy in northeast Ukraine is now encircled by Russian troops but thousands of civilians have been able to leave through a humanitarian corridor.

 Kyiv and the north 

Kyiv remains under Ukrainian control despite heavy bombardments, but observers say Russian forces are still slowly advancing ever closer towards the capital.

AFP journalists reported that the Ukrainian army was still offering resistance to both the east and west of the city, while at least two people were confirmed killed in Russian air strikes.

The northwest suburbs, including Irpin and Bucha, have already endured days of heavy bombardment but Russian armoured vehicles are also advancing on the northeastern edge.

Ukrainian forces also retain control of the northern town of Chernigiv, which has seen heavy civilian casualties in recent days and appears to be encircled.

Meanwhile electricity was once again cut to the former nuclear power plant at Chernobyl, energy operator Ukrenergo said, leaving cooling systems for spent fuel again relying on back-up generators.

 The south 

Russia has besieged the strategic city of Mariupol, and attempts to evacuate an estimated 200,000 civilians from the city have struggled  although more than 160 civilian cars were able to leave Monday via a humanitarian corridor.

Local officials said nearly 2,200 people have been killed in the fighting so far and 400,000 are without running water or heat.

The major port city of Odessa remains under Ukrainian control and has so far been spared fighting. But the US Department of Defense said Russian ground forces appeared primed to attack the city, possibly in coordination with an amphibious assault.

Russian forces earlier this month took the southern city of Kherson, just north of Crimea, and there is now heavy fighting for control of the city of Mykolaiv to the northwest.

Ukrainian nuclear energy authority Energoatom accused the Russian military of detonating ammunition near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station  Europes largest.

 The west and centre 

Nine people died and another nine suffered injuries on Monday when Russian forces hit a television tower outside the western Ukrainian city of Rivne, about 200 kilometres northeast of Lviv, local authorities said.

The main city of Lviv has become a hub for foreign diplomatic missions and journalists as well as Ukrainians seeking safety or wanting to leave the country.

Meanwhile a US defence official said that a Ukrainian military base a few miles from the Polish border that was bombed overnight was hit by a couple dozen cruise missiles launched from planes within Russian airspace.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official added that the Sunday strike, which killed at least 35 people and wounded 130 more, did not hinder the shipment of Western weaponry and munitions to Ukraine forces.

 Casualties 

The United Nations said Thursday that it had recorded 636 civilian deaths in Ukraine, including 46 children, though the actual toll could be far higher.

Ukraine and Western sources claim that the Russian death toll is far higher than Moscow has so far admitted.

Ukraine says more than 12,000 Russian soldiers have been killed. President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday around 1,300 Ukrainian troops had been killed.

 Refugees 

Over 2.8 million refugees have fled Ukraine since the invasion began, more than half going to Poland, according to the UN refugee agency.
In "Forecasting Love and Weather" episode 10, Jin Ha Kyung (Park Min Young) and Lee Si Woo (Song Kang) discovered new things about each other through their exes.

Read on to know what went down in the latest episode.

'Forecasting Love and Weather' Episode 10: Jin Ha Kyung's Mom Shocked to See Lee Si Woo and Um Dong Han in Her Apartment

Mrs. Bae (Kim Mi Kyung) went to Jin Ha Kyung's place unannounced, but she was shocked to see Lee Si Woo and Um Dong Han (Lee Sung Wook) there.

The two then introduced themselves as Jin Ha Kyung's colleagues and explained their situation why they ended up living together with their director.

Um Dong Han Tries to Reconnect With His Daughter

Since work keeps him busy, Um Dong Han has no time to visit home, which creates a gap in his relationship with his daughter. This is why even though he is already assigned at the headquarters, he still refuses to go home because he thinks he does not belong in the family anymore.

Then, Um Dong Han was surprised to see Um Bo Mi (Lee Seung Joo) touring around the company's premises. He rushed to her and had a short but genuine conversation with his daughter.

Jin Ha Kyung Decides Not To Marry

Jin Ha Kyung's team faced another problem. It was after Oh Myung Soo (Yoon Sa Bong) made a mistake in posting on the company's website, which resulted in the Korean Meteorological Association (KMA) receiving public criticism.

Knowing how Myung Soo finds it hard to balance work and married life, Jin Ha Kyung covered for her.

On the other hand, the director received advice from her colleague about having a family, which made her change her thoughts about settling down. This is also due to knowing Lee Si Woo is not interested in marriage.

Jin Ha Kyung told her mom she is fully decided not to get married, shocking Mrs. Bae and Lee Si Woo.

Chae Yu Jin Asks For Space

Due to their never-ending fights at home and work, Chae Yu Jin feels like her relationship with Han Ki Jun suffocates her. She decided to take her belongings and told her husband she needs some time alone to evaluate their marriage.

Han Ki Jun, on the other hand, was surprised by his wife's decision.

Will they be able to repair their marriage? And Will Jin Ha Kyung and Lee Si Woo be able to preserve their relationship after knowing their opposite thoughts about marriage?

Let us all find out in the upcoming "Forecasting Love and Weather" episodes, which airs every Saturday and Sunday at 10:30 p.m. (KST) on JTBC.

Visit KDramastars for more Korean drama, movie and celebrity updates.

Shai Collins wrote this. KDramastars owns this article.
Netflix officially introduced the powerful lead cast SNSD's Seohyun, Kim Nam Gil, and more of the forthcoming action period drama "Song of the Bandits."

Netflix New Action Series 'Song of Bandits' Confirms Leads SNSD's Seohyun, Kim Nam Gil, Yoo Jae Myung, More

SNSD's Seohyun is back with new Netflix series "Song of the Bandits" where she will work with Kim Nam Gil, Yoo Jae Myung, Lee Hyun Wook, and Lee Ho Jung.

On March 14, Netflix Korea confirmed the stars' participation through an Instagram post.

"Song of the Bandits" is an action series that depicts the story of people who headed to Gando, the land of lawlessness during the turbulent Japanese colonial period. They will unite as one to protect the home of Koreans.

What to Know About the Cast and Synopsis of 'Song of the Bandits'

Kim Nam Gil is expected to play Lee Yoon's character. He left the Japanese military, abandoned everything, and decided to go to Gando Island. He then became a person who protects the land and its people.

SNSD member Seohyun who just finished her Netflix movie "Love and Leashes" returns with a new exciting series. She will exhibit a new persona by living as Nam Hee Shin's character. She is the head of the railway bureau of the Japanese Government General of Korea, who hides her identity.

Meanwhile, Yoo Jae Myung is Choi Chung Soo, a former righteous army commander, and a landlord of a Korean village in Gando.

On the other hand, Lee Hyun Wook will take Lee Kwang Il's role, an opportunistic Japanese military executive who is entangled with Lee Yoon through a bad relationship.

"Nevertheless" star Lee Ho Jung will complete the lead cast and is about to portray the role of a gunman heading to Gando to kill Lee Yoon.

The series will occur during the lawlessness of the land in the 1920s. The newest Netflix show is already expected to have Japanese troops, independent forces, magicians, contractors, and Korean immigrants.

Studio Dragon to Collaborate with Baram Pictures

Han Jung Hoon, who penned "Bad Guys" and "Squad 38," will collaborate with director Hwang Jun Hyuk in producing the drama. They are the creative minds who have shown spectacular and exhilarating action scenes in their previous works.

In addition, Studio Dragon which produced "Vincenzo," "Twenty Five, Twenty One," "Military Prosecutor Doberman," and more will be in charge of planning while Baram Pictures is expected to produce "Song of the Bandits."

What are your thoughts about Netflix's "Song of the Bandits" lead cast? Share your comments with us!

Visit KDramastars for more Korean drama, movie and celebrity updates!

KDramastars owns this article.

Shai Collins reported this.
CNN's Maija Ehlinger and Mallory Gafas contributed reporting. Mohammed Tawfeeq, Andrew Carey and Mick Krever reported from Lviv. Tim Lister and Clarissa Ward reported from Kyiv. Tara John wrote from London. Simone McCarthy wrote from Hong Kong. Paul P. Murphy reported from New York. Gianluca Mezzofiore reported from London.
The rare species of crayfish in the Big Sandy River is being threatened. (U.S. Wildlife photo)
196 Shares Share

You were doing it wrong.

The patient in my pulmonary clinic for follow-up after her discharge from a hospitalization in January of this year for COVID-19 pneumonia was explaining why she would not reconsider getting vaccinated despite her recent illness.

I told her I had been seeing people die from this disease for the last two years; I wanted to prevent others from suffering from severe illness and deathlike her.

People were dying from this disease because you didnt know how to take care of them. You werent doing it right. The doctors were wrong.

In early 2020, when health care providers began to prepare for the coronavirus surge in Chicago and cities across the country, many sought information from other centers around the world who had already seen the devastation caused by this disease.

Many didnt know what to expect and all were learning while taking care of the highest number of critically ill patients at once. Physicians and scientists studied various proposed treatments such as hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin which were proven to be ineffective and potentially harmful.

Fewer therapies such as dexamethasone and tocilizumab were found to decrease risk of death from COVID when requiring high oxygen support in the intensive care unit. Using the evidence from the trials that studied these medications was crucial to providing the best care for COVID patients while avoiding harm.

The U.S. has had 79 million cases and close to 953,000 deaths from the disease. With over 550 million vaccines administered, close to 30,000 new doses of vaccines were given within one recent day. It is encouraging that those who may have been hesitant in the past are moving forward with vaccination which is necessary to prevent future surges of illness.

In his recent State of the Union Address, President Joe Biden discussed steps on how we will safely move forward while combating the virus. His first and most critical step is to have Americans stay protected with vaccines as vaccines are incredibly effective. Biden acknowledged that vaccination and receiving a booster gives the highest degree of protection.

A question that colleagues and health care providers across the U.S. ask themselves daily is, Am I doing the right thing for my patient?

Even though the practice of medicine is bound by a moral and ethical responsibility to be adept at the latest medical and scientific information and applications, over the last two years of the pandemic, health care workers have needed to battle mistrust and misinformation from patients.

Through the work by the Stanford Internet Observatory and the Virality Project, Stanford researchers have developed a report that offers specific recommendations for how to counter and stop the spread of false information that is negatively impacting public health. Since the beginning of the pandemic in the U.S. in 2020, the Virality Project has investigated 900 incidents across major social medial platforms of disinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine in real-time.

Social medial platforms have countered false claims on their outlets with false tag labels. However, viewers do not have quick access to the details of the fact check. Research from Cornell has shown that journalistic fact checks with accurate information are a more effective method to counter COVID-19 misinformation than false news tags used by social media platforms.

National societies develop guidelines and providers follow the data from current trials that rigorously test proposed treatments. Given the sheer number of COVID-19 patients and rapidly changing therapeutic options, hospitals developed and updated protocols frequently to keep providers informed of the latest treatment and newly developed therapies.

Physicians use evidence-based medicine to guide decision-making. Studying treatments more extensively or as researchers and scientists develop newer therapies, the evidence may change, and guidelines will adapt to newer recommendations.

For example, the practice of prone positioning (laying a patient on their abdomen) to treat patients with severe Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome is based on the PROSEVA trial in 2013. This therapy was used during the COVID pandemic based on the extensive research conducted previously which showed an increase chance of survival with ARDS using prone positioning.

Throughout the pandemic, health care professionals have used latest available evidence while constantly changing treatment plans after collecting more data with the goal of doing the right thing for patients.

Yet, with every change in recommendation, patients questioned intentions; many choosing not to follow guidelines. This was true of masking, seeking unapproved treatments and vaccination. This is in spite of several studies showing the decreased risk of COVID transmission with mask-wearing and significant reduction of severe illness and death with vaccination.

Despite the data and evidence to support these measures, only 65 percent of the U.S. population that is eligible is vaccinated.

While some may feel the nation is nearing the end of this pandemic with the updated Centers for Disease Control mask recommendation, I will continue to practice caution. I have seen too many people die from this disease; so many deaths could have been prevented after the approval of vaccination.

My mask has protected me from getting the virus despite my high-risk exposures and numerous close contacts. I am not yet willing to let go of the layer of protection for myself, and I believe I am not wrong.

Abhaya P. Trivedi is a pulmonary and critical care physician.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
Purdue Pharma founders to pay extra $1 billion in settlement with Oregon, Washington and other states
Kilgore, TX (75662)

Today

Mostly cloudy skies. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 87F. Winds SSE at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

Considerable cloudiness. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low around 70F. Winds SSE at 10 to 15 mph.
The number of patients waiting for a bed at Saint Luke's Hospital in Kilkenny is currently the third-highest in the country, according to the latest data from the INMO (Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation).

There were 42 patients recorded on trolleys in the local hospital this morning, with 23 in the Emergency Department and 19 in other wards.

University Hospital Limerick topped the list for trolley patients, with 91 people still waiting for a bed.

On a national level, 544 patients were recorded on trolleys today and 1,042 patients are currently in hospital with Covid-19.

In response to today's figures, the INMO has again warned that high numbers of patients in our hospitals without a bed is having a significantly negative impact on the ability to provide timely and safe care.

INMO General Secretary, Phil Ni Sheaghdha has issued the following statement on the matter:

"The fact that we have 544 patients on trolleys today and over 1,042 patients in hospitals with COVID-19 almost two years to the day that the virus first reached our shores is a recipe for disaster. If our past experience of COVID and high numbers of patients on trolleys has taught us anything, we will be seeing the impacts of this on our health system for many weeks to come.

"INMO members have been sounding the alarm on the rise of trolley numbers since mid-summer, and we also urged caution on the removal of mandatory mask wearing in public spaces. We are heading into what is traditionally an extremely busy week in our Emergency Departments and last week we set out in detail what is needed now from Government at the Oireachtas committee. Furthermore, we met with the Minister for Health last Thursday evening and ED nurses from units around the country set out in detail the dangers presented for patients in overcrowded hospitals right now. There should be no doubt at this stage as to the negative effects of overcrowding.

"The HSE and political system have a responsibility to the exhausted workforce to ensure their workplaces are safe. There must be no tolerance for hospital overcrowding while a highly transmissible airborne virus is making its way around our hospitals. Improvements to air quality in our hospitals must be a priority.

"If non-emergency services need to be curtailed in order to allow the HSE and hospital groups to get a handle on out-of-control trolley figures and COVID cases within the hospital system then that must be done."
A public lecture on the legendary scientist and mountaineer, John Tyndall, will take place in Rothe House in Kilkenny later this month.

The Kilkenny Archaeological Society are hosting the lecture by Kevin Higgins on March 23 at 8pm.

John Tyndall, who grew up and worked locally, was one of Ireland's finest scientists and the country's first great mountaineer. Forgotten for many years, especially here in Ireland, he now has a number of scientific institutions named in his honour - in China, in Great Britain and in UCC - as well as having numerous mountain features named after him. He is best remembered, if at all, for explaining why the sky is blue, for his process of 'Tyndallisation' and the 'Tyndall Effect'.

This is an attempt to gain an insight to the man himself: aspects of his life not easily found on the internet  the women in his life, from his favourite in Bagenalstown to the one that poisoned him; his religious beliefs or lack thereof and the controversy attached. The lecture will also look at how he influenced the world of mountaineering during its Golden Age and afterwards, and how his conquest of the vertical, his Alpine exploits, impacted on his science, . . . and replicating a couple of his groundbreaking scientific demonstrations.

Kevin Higgins is a member of KAS and a retired teacher, originally from Mullingar. He has a research interest in the history of Irish explorers and mountaineers such as John Tyndall and has followed in the footsteps of some of them in various parts of the world.
A Place for All Conservatives to Speak Their Mind.
Two Easy Ways To Subscribe!

The Kodiak Daily Mirror offers full-service, five-day a week subscriptions with home delivery in addition to unlimited access to our online services (including our e-Edition). Online-access-only subscriptions include unlimited access to the Mirror's online services without delivery of the printed newspaper.

(Note: New users: You must register and login before purchasing a subscription.
Support local journalism

Local news, sports and entertainment when you want it.

Please consider subscribing so we can continue to bring you the best local news, sports and entertainment coverage.


Global scholars discuss misinformation, with new English journal debut at SISU

From:english.eastday.com | 2022-03-14 10:38

More than 200 scholars and media practitioners from more than ten countries attended on March 12 an online symposium hosted by Shanghai International Studies University (SISU) to explore the roles of misinformation in global communication in the digital media environment.

On the sideline of the event, SISU also released the inaugural issue of its open access academic journal Online Media and Global Communication(OMGC) in cooperation with the German publisher De Gruyter.

The English-language journal, sponsored by the Center for Global Public Opinion Research of China and School of Journalism and Communication of SISU, aims to provide a highly accessible and open platform to English readers across the world, particularly from the Global South, through its structured abstracts for all research articles and uniform keyword system in the United Nations official six languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish).

Jiang Feng, Chair of the SISU University Council, said in his opening address that academic exchange of journalism and communication plays a positive role in building a community with a shared future for humanity and hopes the symposium can help address the increasing challenge of misinformation.

The symposium consists of two keynote speeches and six parallel panels in two online conference rooms, with 23 presenters from all the five continents in the world.

Keynote speaker Matthew Baum, a noted professor with Harvard University and the co-founder of HKS Misinformation Review, proposes building a science of misinformation and shared his five-step process to curb misinformation, such as convening researchers, practitioners and platforms and publishing a call to action.

The other keynote speaker, Professor Verica Rupar with Auckland University of Technology, argues that locating journalism in relation to a civil society provides a suitable catalyst for rethinking journalism in the age of misinformation.

Misinformation production and spreading of the ongoing globalCOVID-19 pandemic and Russia-Ukraine crisis have become heated topics of discussion among participants, along with topics such as causes and effects of fake news, theorizing Misinformation, solving misinformation problems in the midst of a war and COVID-19 and under the context of the increasingly competitive global politics.

The one-day discussions show diversified challenges posed by the rampant misinformation in different countries and regions.

At the closing remarks, Guo Ke, dean and professor of School of Journalism and Communication of SISU, expressed hope of building an academic community of misinformation study to produce more quality researches.
ox News correspondent Benjamin Hall, who had been deployed in recent weeks to cover the war in Ukraine, has been hospitalized after being injured while reporting near Kyiv, the network said on Monday.
DGB Financial Group Chairman Kim Tae-oh attends a meeting of financial group chiefs and the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) governor held in Seoul, Nov. 3, 2021. Newsis



By Anna J. Park



The ongoing legal procedures surrounding DGB Financial Group Chairman Kim Tae-oh  who is facing charges of bribery and embezzlement  are overshadowing investors' confidence in the regional financial giant's future.



At the first trial held late last week, Kim denied the allegation that he had paid a broker $3.5 million in 2020 as a bribe for Cambodian financial officials to obtain a commercial banking license for the financial group's banking subsidiary, Daegu Bank, in the Southeast Asian country.



Prosecutors indicted Kim, along with three other key officials of the financial group, without detention last December on charges of bribery and corruption. The four defendants are alleged to have given the money to the Cambodian broker between April and October 2020, with plans to bribe Cambodian government officials in exchange for the bank's commercial license.



The four defendants also face embezzlement charges. They allegedly forged the bank's financial documents in May 2020, inflating the necessary cost of a real estate purchase in Cambodia so that they could secure the money for the bribe.



This case was the first time prosecutors indicted Korean nationals on charges of violating the Act on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials, which is a locally implemented law from the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention, to which the Korean government signed onto in December 1997.



Upon prosecutors' indictment of Kim late last year, civic organizations have been urging him to step down from his post.



"The irregularities by Chairman Kim as well as other former and incumbent key officials of the group not only constitute serious violations against the financial group's ethics code, but also entirely destroyed the group's anti-corruption management system that all subsidiaries of the financial group have been striving to establish," a statement by the Daegu Citizens' Coalition for Economic Justice read, stressing that Chairman Kim should resign from the post immediately.



However, DGB Financial urged caution before making what it called hasty judgments on the matter.



"The trial is currently ongoing, and all the charges still remain as allegations, which are open to legal dispute in the court. Thus, we hope people refrain from judging the situation hastily with exaggerated perspectives," an official from the financial group told The Korea Times, adding that the group is closely monitoring the situation.



Meanwhile, the Korea Corporate Governance Service (KCGS) is closely monitoring the circumstances surrounding the DGB Group chairman. The KCGS gave the financial group the highest grade of A+ for its ESG efforts in 2020 and 2021.



"If the allegations brought up in the trial turn out to be true, then it could be a significant factor to lower the ESG grade. However, the court ruling hasn't come out, and we're currently watching the situation," a KCGS official said.



As any corrections to the grade are made every January, April, July and October, it is expected that DBG will maintain its highest grade until April. The group could face a downgrade afterwards, depending on the court proceedings.


North Korean leader Kim Jong-un visits the Sohae Satellite Launching Ground in Tongchang-ri, North Korea in this undated photo provided by the North Korean government, March 11. AP-Yonhap





South Korea and the United States have detected signs that North Korea is preparing to conduct another intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) system test as early as this week, informed sources here said Monday.







Such indications emerged after Seoul and Washington accused Pyongyang, Friday, of having tested a new ICBM system Feb. 27 and March 5 ahead of a full-range ICBM test.







The North has characterized the two launches as "reconnaissance satellite" development tests. South Korean and U.S. officials believe they involved the Hwasong-17 ICBM unveiled during a military parade in October 2020.







"Though we can't say definitively when a missile will be launched, we have been keeping close tabs on the possibility," a government source told Yonhap News Agency on condition of anonymity.







Weather conditions and other variables are expected to affect the timing of the North's possible launch.







Should the North press ahead with a new launch, the North could fire a missile from a transporter erector launcher (TEL) at the Sunan Airport, the site of the two previous tests, observers said.







In the earlier tests, the North fired the missile at a high angle from the airfield and programmed it to travel on the trajectory of a medium-range ballistic missile.







The missile fired Feb. 27 flew about 300 kilometers with a maximum altitude of 620 km, while the one launched March 5 traveled around 270 km at a top altitude of 560 km.







Concerns have persisted that the North could engage in more provocative acts as it made a veiled threat in January to lift its years-long self-imposed moratorium on nuclear weapons and ICBM tests. (Yonhap)






Ambassador of the Dominican Republic to Korea Federico Alberto Cuello Camilo, right, and Choi Jong-uk, Director General for the Latin American and Caribbean Affairs Bureau at Korea's Ministry of Foreign Affairs pose for a photo during a ceremony commemorating the 178th anniversary of the declaration of independence of the Dominican Republic at a hotel in Seoul, Feb. 23. Courtesy of Embassy of the Dominican Republic to Korea



By Kwon Mee-yoo



The Embassy of Dominican Republic in Korea held a ceremony commemorating the 178th anniversary of its independence, Feb. 23.



At the event, the Caribbean nation vowed to boost cooperation with Korea in the near future, as the two countries celebrate the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties this year.



Ambassador of the Dominican Republic to Korea Federico Alberto Cuello Camilo announced that the embassy will host the first Dominican Week in Korea in June with a visit by Dominican Minister of Industry and Trade and director of the Dominican-Korean Chamber of Commerce.



"Suffice to say that the cycle that will then come through has proven to be extremely fruitful, with generous cooperation, finance and investment in areas of relevance for our sustained economic growth and diversification consistent with Korea's visionary development policies," the ambassador said.



Cuello also pointed out how fast the economy of the Dominican Republic is recovering from the COVID-19 crisis.



"Today, I can say with confidence that the Dominican Republic has turned the page exporting medical devices and electronics as never before... The economy is 4.7 percent bigger than it was in 2019, before the crisis. This was the fastest pace of recovery by any country in the Americas," he said.



"Following on the leadership of several members of the Latin American Caribbean region, I am aiming for a new strategic relationship between the Dominican Republic and the Republic of Korea to be sealed at the highest level here in Seoul hopefully this year. This will be the way for us to launch our joint efforts in decarbonization, digitalization and decentralization of national development and intelligent cities."



The ambassador also unveiled that Dominican musician Michel Camilo will hold a concert in Seoul later this year, funded by the Korea Foundation.



Choi Jong-uk, Director General of the Latin American and Caribbean Affairs Bureau at Korea's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, delivered congratulatory remarks on the Dominican Republic's independence as well as the 60th anniversary of ties.



Choi recalled his visit to the Dominican capital Santo Domingo in 2013 as a member of the delegation for digital government cooperation.



"In the beautiful and historical city, I went to the Altar de la Patria. Entering the gracious altar, looking at the statues of Juan Pablo Duarte, the founding father of the Dominican Republic, I could feel the strong aspiration for the independence and pride at achieving it," Choi said.



"I believe the glorious history of the Dominican Republic to overcome the long and winding challenge, has been a great legacy of today's Dominican Republic, a Caribbean country thriving in all fields, including politics, economy and culture."



The director general showed hopes to further widen bilateral partnership in the fields of energy and infrastructure.



"I hope 2022 will be marked as a 'buen ano' (good year) for both countries, as the two countries, tied with strong solidarity could successfully enter a post-COVID era with resilience," Choi said.


People wait for a COVID-19 test at a makeshift testing site in Seoul, Feb. 14. AP-Yonhap





Korea, Germany and Vietnam accounted for 41.1 percent of new COVID-19 cases as infections rose by 6 percent worldwide in the past week.







The three nations helped drive an increase in COVID-19 infections despite accounting for only 3.9 percent of the population with global cases increasing 10,965,687 in the past seven days for a total of 458,153,536 by late Sunday, according to tracking by Worldometers.info.







The climb comes after infections dropped by 19 percent last week.







Deaths, which often lag behind infections, increased by 42,384 to a total of 6,065,788, a 16 percent decline in new fatalities from the previous week.







Korea, with a population of 51.3 million people, gained a world-high 1,993,625 infections, a 44 percent spike in the past week, for a total of 6,556,453. The country set a daily record with 383,651 Saturday with a weekly high of only a few hundred in 2020 and under 7,000 in 2021 to 630,836 at the end of last year. Sunday's increase was 350,176 and deaths reached 269 Saturday and 251 Sunday.







Germany, with 83.2 million residents, added 1,303,308 cases at a 20 percent rise for total 17,240,479. The nation set a daily record with 300,270 cases Thursday then 213,264 Sunday. The nation first experienced a spike from Omicron in mid-January and the death total was 1,249, Dec. 29, 2020, but saw an average of 200 each day last week.







Vietnam, which has 98.8 million people, reported 1,108,498 new cases at a 35 percent increase for 5,903,147. Vietnam set a daily record with 177,976, Friday and 168,719 Saturday. On Sunday, the nation saw 166,968 cases and 95 deaths.







Also setting daily records in the past week were Austria at 49,323 Friday and New Zealand at 23,936 Tuesday.







In Korea, those under treatment at home hit a high of 1.57 million last week.







But starting Monday, people who test positive for COVID-19 in a rapid antigen test at local hospitals won't require an additional polymerase chain reaction test. Those who receive rapid antigen tests elsewhere will still have to receive PCR tests for official results.







Patients wearing face masks rest at a makeshift treatment area outside a hospital, following a COVID-19 outbreak in Hong Kong, March 2. Reuters-Yonhap





Hong Kong's cases decreased 22 percent but posted 231,818 in the week and 1,955 deaths one week after a daily cases record of 56,827. Until this year, Hong Kong, an island of 7.6 million people that has separate governing and economic systems from Communist China, had reported only 163 deaths and 243,612 cases. In 2020, it was 148 deaths and 8,847 cases.







Saturday's totals were 27,747 cases and 285 deaths with the latter's record 294 Friday, which were followed by 32,430 cases and 264 deaths Sunday.







In mainland China, a nation of 1.5 billion people  the largest population in the world  the bulk of China's fatalities were announced only a few months after the first confirmed one in the world Jan. 9, 2020. The last reported fatality was Jan. 28, 2021, and the figure now is 4,636 behind Sudan with 4,865.







China reported 1,938 cases Sunday, the most since mid-February at the start of the outbreak.







On Sunday, China closed the southern business center of Shenzhen, which has a population of 17.5 million people and Hong Kong drivers would no longer be allowed to cross into the city.







Shanghai will suspend all cross-province bus services starting Monday.







On Friday, the northeastern city of Changchun, with a population 9 million residents, ordered a lockdown. Only a few cases were reported in Changchun that day, but the nation has a zero tolerance coronavirus policy.







In Hong Kong, about 300,000 COVID-19 patients and their close contacts are under home quarantine, according to Chief Executive Carrie Lam.







"It has been so hard for our colleagues to hold up this past month," Ho Hiu-fai, the accident and emergency chief at Hong Kong's Queen Elizabeth hospital, said Wednesday in a video, shortly after the hospital was converted into a COVID treatment facility and 400 non-COVID patients were transferred elsewhere.







Hong Kong reported more deaths per million people than any country or territory in the past week at 257.







The nation is emphasizing vaccines with 84.9 percent of the population getting one dose and 72.6 percent two shots compared with Mainland China with 90.3 percent for one and 87.3 percent for both.







In all, more than 10.9 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered worldwide, an increase of 100 million in one week with the world's population of 7.9 billion, according to Bloomberg tracking.







Broken down by world regions, the United States and Canada have administered at least one dose to 78 percent of the population, followed by Latin America at 78 percent, Asia-Pacific 76 percent, Europe at 68 percent, Middle East 54 percent and Africa at 19 percent, according to The New York Times tracking.







The following is the rank order of some nations' vaccination rates elsewhere in Asia: Singapore 87.8 percent, India 70.3 percent, Malaysia 82.9 percent, Vietnam 81.8 percent, Japan 81 percent, Israel 76.5 percent, Iran 75.5 percent, Indonesia 71.5 percent, Turkey 69 percent and Philippines 63.1 percent.







In Asia over the past week, there were 4,884,798 cases, the most of the continents with an increase of 10 percent, for a total of 126,290,600, while deaths were down 6 percent at 12,564 for a cumulative 1,372,764.







A health worker takes a swab sample from a man to test for COVID-19 as others wait to get tested in Ahmedabad, India, Jan. 17, 2022. AP-Yonhap





India's daily case and death levels are the lowest since the start of the pandemic.







India holds the world daily record for deaths, not including major reconciliations: 6,148 last June. The Delta variant emerged in India.







India's cases declined 40 percent with 3,116, Sunday, the fewest since 2,680 May 5, 2020, for a total of 42,990,991 in second place behind the United States. During the Omicron surge, the most cases has been 347,254 in January. The record during the Delta surge was 412,618, May 5, 2021.







Fatalities dropped 40 percent, with 47 Sunday, tied for the lowest since April 25, 2020. The total is 515,850 behind the United States and Brazil.







Indonesia's weekly deaths declined 2 percent for a total of 152,166, including 215 Sunday, but 401 Tuesday, the most since early September. The record is 2,069 in late July 2021.







Indonesia's cases dropped 29 percent for a total of 5,890,495, including 11,585 Sunday. The record is 64,718 Feb. 16.







Japan reported 50,948 cases, 28 days after a record 100,959 with a 15 percent weekly drop. The total is 5,403,393. Until the surge, the record was 26,184 less than two weeks after the Olympics ended.







Japan also added 90 deaths Sunday for a total of 26,174, dropping 21 percent. The record was 322 on Feb. 22.







Japan has a relatively low 45,464 infections per million and deaths at 197 per million.







Iran is 12th in deaths at 138,949 including 118 Sunday.







Turkey is eighth in cases, adding 96,487 Sunday for a total of 14,551,665, and 19th in deaths at 96,487 including 138 new ones.







Israel has a death toll of 10,379 with 12 reported Sunday and 6,557 cases for a total of 3,719,444.







On Tuesday, all tourists were allowed entry into the country, regardless of vaccination status, and the Green Pass system, requiring present proof of vaccination for most venues, also ended.







Guam, a territory of the United States with only 169,000 people, reported 480.7 cases per 100,000 in the past week, only second behind the Northern Mariana Islands at 588.1, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Idaho is the top state at 304.9. Guam has 46,299 cases and 337 deaths.







Guam has vaccinated 95 percent of its adults with at least one vaccine dose. The CDC caps its percentage at that level.







Most nations in Europe are heavily vaccinated. In the European Union, it's 75.8 percent, including 87.2 percent in Spain, 84 percent in France, 85 percent in Italy, 83.2 percent in Denmark, 77.3 percent in Netherlands, 76.4 percent in Germany, 76.5 percent in Austria. Britain, which has left the EU, has a 78.5 percent rate.







Russia is lagging the world in vaccination with 54 percent of its population with at least one dose of a domestic-produced vaccine, including Sputnik 5.







Two other Eastern European nations have low vaccination rates: Ukraine at 37.9 percent and Romania at 42.1 percent. Poland's rate is 59.5 percent and the Czech Republic's is 65 percent.







In Europe, cases increased 6 percent with a world-high 4,324,170, slightly behind Asia, for 165,073,421 in first place among continents. Deaths dropped 6 percent to a total of 1,739,008, but also leaving it in first place.







A demonstrator holds a sign that reads "Info instead of fear" during a protest against government measures to curb the spread of COVID-19 in Berlin, Jan. 24. Reuters-Yonhap





Germany reported 32 deaths Sunday and is in 14th place overall at 126,109.










Asiana Airlines said Monday it will resume flights on the Incheon-Nagoya route next month, one year after its suspension due to the COVID-19 pandemic.







Starting April 1, Asiana plans to provide one flight a week on the Nagoya route, while expanding flights on the routes to Tokyo, Osaka and Fukuoka from March 27, the company said in a statement.







The move is aimed at preemptively preparing for an increase in travel demand in the post-pandemic era, it said.







The quarantine period recently fell to three days from seven days in Japan for passengers who received a booster shot and travel to Japan from Korea. (Yonhap)










By Kim Jae-heun







Booyoung Group will contribute 500 million won ($402,868) to the Hope Bridge Korea Disaster Relief Association to help restore areas damaged by wildfire in the east coast region, the construction firm said on Monday.







It also plans to provide 300 apartments in Gangwon Province  70 in Gangneung and 230 in Donghae  for victims to stay in until they can return to their homes.







"We will work with the local government to determine the number of victims and help them move into our shelters as soon as possible. We hope to aid them until things return to the normal," a Booyoung Group official said.







Booyoung Group has been engaging in relief activities around the country and abroad for the past few decades. It provided 52 shelters for victims of the 2017 earthquake in Pohang, North Gyeongsang Province. It also offered 224 lodgings in Gangwon Province when wildfires broke out in 2019.







Booyoung Group raised funds for the bereaved families of soldiers killed on the Cheonan warship that was attacked by North Korea in 2010 and the victims of the 2014 Sewol ferry sinking.







Overseas, the construction firm donated relief funds to Sierra Leone, Peru and Colombia when they suffered flooding and to Laos when a dam collapsed there in July 2018.


Hyundai Motor Company's plant in Deltamas, Indonesia / Courtesy of Hyundai Motor Group



By Kim Hyun-bin



Hyundai Motor Group is seeking to expand its presence in Indonesia and other Southeast Asian countries to offset declining sales in China, according to industry analysts Monday.



The combined sales of Hyundai Motor Company and Kia Corp. in China peaked with 1.79 million cars in 2016, but the number has since been declining, dropping below 500,000 last year. Sales started to drop after the deployment of a U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) in Korea in 2016, triggering a strong boycott of Korean products in China.



The country's leading carmaker is now setting its eyes on ASEAN countries centered on Indonesia to become its main markets in the region.



"The Indonesian plant is smaller than Chinese plants but is targeting domestic demand in Indonesia as well as Southeast Asian countries," said Song Sun-jae, senior analyst at Hana Financial Investment. "Although the Indonesian market is dominated by Japanese car brands and difficult to penetrate, I think there is an opportunity for Hyundai to target a niche market."



Hyundai Motor Group Chairman Chung Euisun is planning to meet with Indonesian President Joko Widodo at the completion ceremony of a plant in Indonesia on Wednesday, which is set to be the second meeting between the two since last October.





Hyundai Motor Group Chairman Chung Euisun
Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia on Monday said in the Rajya Sabha that passenger traffic in the aviation sector has almost returned to the pre-pandemic level in the country.

The maximum number of passengers in India per day in pre Covid times were close to about 4 lakh. We reached a level of 3.83 lakh per day in the month of December. So we are very well on our way back to recovery, roughly about 5 to 6 per cent off from pre pandemic level," Scindia said.

Referring to the hardships faced by this sector in the last two years due to Covid-19, he further said that this sector was badly affected on the economic front and in the third Covid wave, the passenger traffic went down to almost about 1.60 lakh passengers per day.

"I am pleased to inform the House that yesterday we again reached a level of 3.8 lakh passengers per day. We are seeing a resuscitation in the sector and with that, we hope to see a rebound in terms of employment opportunities," the Minister said.

Scindia was responding to Shiv Sena MP Anil Desai who asked about the government's steps to restore the loss of jobs caused due to the pandemic in the aviation sector.

NCP lawmaker Praful Patel asked about the impact of current high price of the crude oil in the aviation sector. The Civil Aviation Minister said that in the Indian aviation sector, the fuel component is almost 35 per cent of the total pricing and the government is taking steps so that this sector which has almost regained its prior position should not face further problem.

He also said that the average states' surcharge varies from 10 per cent to 30 per cent in the country where the states collect tax on Aviation Turbine Fuel (ATF). "I will personally speak to the states and request them to reduce the surcharge on ATF so that this sector does not face much problem.
After extensive research over the last few months, Idaho Falls School District 91 is planning to offer all day kindergarten in all of its elementary schools beginning in the fall of this year.
Tata Sons Chairman N. Chandrasekaran has been appointed as Air India Chairman, a group spokesperson said. The development comes as the Tata Group scouts for a new Air India CEO-MD.

Earlier this month, ex-Turkish Airlines head Mehmet Ilker Ayci, who was named as the new Air India CEO-MD, declined the position. No reason was given for Ayci's decision.

Last month, the Tata Group-led Air India announced the appointment of Ayci as the new Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of the airline. At that time, Ayci while accepting the position said he is "delighted and honoured to accept the privilege of leading an iconic airline and to join the Tata Group".

He was expected to take the charge on or before April 1.

Ayci, 51, until recently was the Chairman of Turkish Airlines and was also on its Board of Directors prior to that.

Recently, the Tata Group bought the debt ridden state-owned Air India from the Central government by placing a bid of over Rs 18,000 crore at an auction and on January 27, it took over the full control of the airlines.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday wished former US President Barack Obama a quick recovery from Covid-19.

In a tweet on Sunday night, Obama said: "I just tested positive for Covid. I've had a scratchy throat for a couple days, but am feeling fine otherwise. Michelle and I are grateful to be vaccinated and boosted, and she has tested negative.

"It's a reminder to get vaccinated if you haven't already, even as cases go down."
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky pressed US President Joe Biden during their latest call for more sanctions to further squeeze Russia, CNN has learned.
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?
The old milking shed, a favorite cow and rare trips into town with the family horse are some of columnist Carol Hardbarger's favorite memories of growing up on her family's farm.
CBSE Term 1 Result is out: [Key Takeaways after declaration of result] Prepare in last 30 days to score 90 percent

New Delhi [India], March 14 (ANI/Oswaal Books): For CBSE Term 1 Class 10th of academic session 2021-22 which was held in Nov-Dec, 2021 CBSE has declared the result on their official website cbseresults.nic.in today after a long delay.

CBSE tweeted their official Twitter handle to specify the status of the result announcement after the announcement of the CBSETerm 2 date sheet.

Also Read | Mumbai | A Local Court Has Sent Aid of Gangster Chhota Rajan, Arafat Arif Lokhandwala to   Latest Tweet by ANI.

Key Takeaways

* To download mark sheets, students can log in with their roll numbers and school numbers. In addition to the CBSE website, these results will also be available on results.gov.in and digilocker.gov.in.

Also Read | Mumbai: Cheating Case Accused Dies in Ghatkopar Hospital; Family Alleges Negligence by Police and Doctors.

* Students should note that CBSE has only released the scorecards of Term 1 not the final result as pass, fail or essential repeat.

* While the performance of the CBSE Term 1 has been communicated to the schools by CBSE. Scores of Internal Assessment are already available with the schools.

* Students who are unsatisfied with the marks provided by the examiner can apply for the revaluation process of the CBSE board Term 1 by paying a certain fee. Last year, CBSE charged Rs. 500 per subject for the re-evaluation applications.

* A compartment exam facility is provided to those students who are usually unable to get the minimum passing marks in the board exam. You will be able to submit the application form for the CBSE improvement/ compartment examination to online submission only.

* Over 36 lakh students appeared in the Term 1 10th, 12th exams which were held in November-December.

If you are worried about CBSE Term 2 exams? and you are running late finishing the entire syllabus. Well, don't worry anymore as educators first advise to students is to relax well and keep their minds stress-free after results. Regardless of the talks going around, this is the most crucial challenge that you will face in your life. Because on the brighter side you can easily score 90% even with just 30 days of preparation even if you are lacking now. Here are some useful tips and changes you can adopt to prepare for the exam in a faster and better way.

Know

Before preparing your study plan. Know thoroughly about the syllabus and marking scheme and identify your strengths and weaknesses. Make a list of topics or chapters where you lack followed by a list of chapters carrying high weightage join them. Make sure you allocate more time to your weak subject/chapters and less time to the subject and chapters you are strong at.

Plan

First of all, each is as unique as every other student. They have different approaches, requirements, strengths, weaknesses, and lifestyles. So, you should create a well-defined study plan suiting your needs and sleep cycle. As time management ensures your conscious effort to cover and practice the syllabus. One smart way to plan your study is to start preparing for exams in the reverse order, that is, prepare first for the last exam so that you prepare for the first exam about 1 week before the exam.

Pro tip: Be it learning new concepts, practising questions, or for revision, allocate separate time for each of them.

Study

There is no trick or tip to studying. You have to put in the hard yards by going through each word, paragraph, page and book. Generally, very little chance of a question beyond so stick to NCERT and ensure that you are well versed with each concept. Do not ignore diagrams, tables or graphs as questions can be asked from them. Students can start preparing with Oswaal CBSE Term 2 Sample Paper Class 10 & 12 For Board Exams 2022. Students will get different ways of learning:

* Self-Assessment Papers for Term 2 Board Exams March-April 2022

* Oswaal CBSE Term 2 Sample Paper Class 10 & 12 For Board Exams 2022 include all latest typologies of Questions as specified in the latest CBSE Sample Papers Released On 14th Jan 2022

* On-Tips Notes & Revision Notes for Quick Revision

* The CBSE Term 2 Sample Paper Class 10 & 12 For Board Exams 2022 include Mind Maps for Better Learning

* The Book provides Free Oswaal 360 E-Assessments based on the latest Typologies of Questions as per CBSE Term 2 Board Exams 2022

CBSE Term 2 Sample Paper Class 10 for Board Exams 2022, Click Here

CBSE Term 2 Sample Paper Class 12 for Board Exams 2022, Click Here

Practice

For theory-based questions, extract questions from at least 7 past years' question papers for each chapter that are frequently asked. Solving previous years will boost your confidence. You will also be able to understand the kind of questions to be expected in the exam and re-align your preparation accordingly. Be time-bound and check your speed as required in CBSE Term 2.

Every Night

Every night before the exam is very much crucial for performance on exam day. Too much stress at night and cramming minutes before can send your brain into a downward spiral. Sleep every day on time and take proper meals to get the most out of your body.

Board exams are considered to be the most important stage in the academic life of a student as it affects career prospects in the future but they should not be stressed about a lot. With calm and composed preparation, you will be able to score 90% with just 30 days of preparation.

Good Luck!

This story is provided by Oswaal Books. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/Oswaal Books)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
New Delhi [India], March 14 (ANI/PNN): Bharatiya Railways Mall Godam Shramik Union (BRMGSU) hosted a function for giving honour to the Ministry of Labour, Government of India at the Constitution Club of India in New Delhi on Saturday 12 March 2022.

The ceremony started at 12 noon.

Also Read | Supreme Court Issues Notice To Woman on Husbands Divorce Plea Alleging Wife is Not Female.

The event was organized by BRMGSU President Parimal Kanti Mandal and General Secretary Vidyadhar Mallick, Chief Labour Commissioner (Centre) (CLC (C)) Ajay Kumar Samantray was present as the chief guest, as well as additional- Chief Labour Commissioner (Central), Deputy Chief Labour Commissioner (Central), Assistant Labour Commissioner (Central), Labour Enforcement Officer, Deputy Chief Labour Commissioner (Central) from New Delhi, Regional Labour Commissioner (Central) from Uttar Pradesh and Abhishek Dixit from Rail Board, Ministry of Railways had a dignified presence.

The Ministry of Labor of the Government of India has taken a very big step towards giving dignity to the Railway Mall Godam workers, by recognizing the inclusion of Railway Mall Godam workers in the e-shram portal under the Ministry of Labour, it is a big step. This recognition by the Ministry of Labor will be considered as a milestone in the advancement of Railway Mall Godam Workers. This ceremony is in honor of this great work of the Ministry of Labour. On this occasion, the President of BRMGSU, Parimal Kanti Mondal has presented Shawl and BRMGSU's Momento as gift on honor to the Chief Labour Commissioner (Central), Hon'ble Ajay Kumar Samantaray,

Also Read | Bengaluru: Man Sues Hotel for Overcharging 40 Paise, Fined Rs 4000 For Wasting Court's Time.

During the felicitation ceremony Ajay Kumar Samantray, R.G. Meena, Rimis Tiru, Niranjan Kumar along with all the officers present while addressing appreciated the work and efforts being done by Indian Railway Mall Godown Shramik Union and President Parimal Kanti Mandal Ji and conveyed their best wishes for the bright future of BRMGSU, And agreed on full cooperation for the upliftment of railway goods warehouse workers.

At end of the part of the event, all the guests present from the Ministry of Railways & Ministry of Labour & Employment at the event unveiled the Railway Mall Godam Workers Survey Form. Ministry of Labour & Employment considered the request of BRMGSU to survey the details of Railway Mall Godam Workers across India.

Hon'ble Minister of State for Labor Rameshwar Teli and Hon'ble Minister of State for Railways and Minister of State for Textiles also sent greetings.

This story is provided by PNN. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/PNN)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
New Delhi [India], March 14 (ANI): Taking a potshot at Congress, Union Minister Anurag Thakur on Monday said how to lose elections should be learnt from the main Opposition party.

"How to lose elections should be learnt from Congress," said Thakur.

Also Read | RCFL Recruitment 2022: Apply for 137 Trainee, Jr Fireman Vacancies at rcfltd.com, Check Details Here.

Bharatiya Janata Party leader made the comments while reacting to Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot's statement that Rahul Gandhi should become the party president.

"Rahul Gandhi should become the party president. For the last three decades, nobody from the Gandhi family became the Prime Minister or a minister. It is significant to understand that the Gandhi family is important for Congress' unity," said Gehlot.

Also Read | NSE Scam: Chitra Ramkrishna, Ex-CEO of National Stock Exchange, Sent to 14 Days Judicial Custody.

As per sources, Congress interim president Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra proposed to resign during the Congress Working Committee meeting on Sunday but the CWC unanimously rejected the offer.

The CWC meeting was called after the party's humiliating defeat in five states which went to polls recently.

In Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur, Congress failed to snatch power from Bharatiya Janata Party.

In Punjab, Congress facing factionalism handed over the power to the Aam Aadmi Party with both Congress CM face Charanjit Singh Channi and state party chief Navjot Singh Sidhu losing elections from their respective seats. (ANI)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
New Delhi [India]. March 14 (ANI): Punjab Chief Minister-designate Bhagwant Mann on Monday visited Aam Aadmi Party Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh's residence in Delhi before tendering his resignation from his Lok Sabha seat on Monday.

Mann is an Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Lok Sabha MP from Sangrur.

Also Read | Maven Capital: Leading the Crypto Projects to Massive Success Levels.

"He is going to tender the resignation from his Lok Sabha membership today," Singh told ANI after his meet with Mann.

AAP bagged a landslide victory in Punjab Assembly elections. Mann, who was the party's chief ministerial candidate, will take the oath on March 16 at the freedom fighter Bhagat Singh's native village Khatkar Kalan.

Also Read | Ford To Sell Explorer SUVs Without Chips Due to Global Chip Shortage: Report.

Notably, Mann has invited Delhi Chief Minister and AAP national convenor Arvind Kejriwal to the oath-taking ceremony.

Mann, who was contesting from Dhuri assembly constituency in Sangrur district, won by a margin of 58,206 votes over Congress' Dalvir Singh Goldy.

AAP registered a landslide victory in the Punjab polls with 92 seats, pushing most of its rivals to the margins. Congress won 18 seats in the 117-member Assembly. (ANI)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Jaipur (Rajasthan) [India], March 14 (ANI): Former Rajasthan Chief Minister and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Vasundhra Raje Scindia on Monday urged the state government to make the film 'The Kashmir Files' tax free in the state.

Taking to Twitter, she said, "The film The Kashmir Files based on the past situations and true events of Jammu and Kashmir, has been made tax free in many states including Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat. I request the state government to make this film tax free in Rajasthan as well."

Also Read | RCFL Recruitment 2022: Apply for 137 Trainee, Jr Fireman Vacancies at rcfltd.com, Check Details Here.

Earlier on Sunday, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan declared the film 'The Kashmir Files' tax-free in the state, stating that the film needs to be watched by maximum people.Earlier, Haryana and Gujarat governments had declared that "The Kashmir Files" movie will be tax-free.

The Haryana government also directed cinemas and multiplexes not to charge state GST on the screening of the movie.

Also Read | NSE Scam: Chitra Ramkrishna, Ex-CEO of National Stock Exchange, Sent to 14 Days Judicial Custody.

The film revolves around the genocide of Kashmiri Pandits in 1990. (ANI)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Senior BJP leader and former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Uma Bharti, who has been demanding liquor prohibition in the state, vandalised a liquor shop in Bhopal on Sunday.

After pelting stones at the liquor store located in Barkhera Pathani area, she barged into it and began destroying the stock. She was accompanied by several men and women who hailed her actions.

After her act, Bharti said she has warned the local administration to shut the shop within a week. "Today, I have warned the administration to shut the liquor shop within a week, otherwise more action will be taken."

The incident came two days after Bharti met Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and demanded to make Madhya Pradesh a liquor free state.

Her action against liquor came on ground at the time when the state government has announced a new liquor policy, which also allows liquor sale at the Indore and Bhopal airports, while announcing a cut prices for both country-made and foreign liquors by 20 per cent.

The state government is set to implement the new excise policy, as the state cabinet approved it recently and tendering process is underway.

This incident also gave opportunity to the opposition Congress to take a dig at the ruling BJP in the state. Calling Bharti CM in waiting, a senior state Congress leader said: "It showed that how the CM in waiting (Bharti) wants to get back on the CM's chair. But, she should have pelted stone on office where excise policies are been made, instead of vandalising liquor shops."

Drama over this liquor issue and new liquor schemes likely to continue in the state for the next few days. The Congress has also planed to corner the Chouhan government on the liquor issue during the ongoing Budget session of the Assembly.
New Delhi [India], March 14 (ANI): The Delhi High court on Monday asked the Waqf Board and others to file an application before the Station House Officer (SHO) at Hazrat Nizamuddin police station for the opening of Masjid Bangle Wale at the Markaz premises.

The matter has been listed for hearing on March 16.

Also Read | Amritsar: Woman Lawyer Escapes Unharmed in Acid Attack; Search On To Nab Accused.

Justice Manoj Kumari Ohri has asked the applicants to move an application for the opening of three other floors of Masjid Bangle Wali as he will proceed with the matter according to the law.

Justice Ohri was assured by the Central government's counsel that an application will be considered as per law.

Also Read | RPSC RAS Mains 2021 Admit Card Released at rpsc.rajasthan.gov.in, Here's How to Download.

The parties will apprise the court on the next date of hearing about the outcome of the application, according to which the court will pass an order.

Advocate Rajat Nair, the counsel for the Central government, submitted that he has no objection to what was allowed in the previous order of April 2021.

"It was allowed to offer namaz on the first floor with 50 per cent capacity. This time the number can be increased," he said.

The counsel for the Centre referred to the affidavit filed in the Supreme Court where he submitted that foreigners were involved in this case, as their visas were cancelled and restrictions were imposed.

Earlier, he had submitted that the offering of namaz by five people were allowed and can be continued for this year also during religious festivals.

The court had asked Nair why was the permission limited to only religious days and not for all days, "if there is a clear demarcation of the masjid and there is no restriction on the number of people by Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA)."

"Why only the first floor if there are 4 floors in the Majid? Come with clear instructions," Justice Ohri asked.

The counsel for the applicant/petitioner Delhi Waqf Board placed on the record the order of February 26, 2022, issued by DDMA withdrawing all the COVID-19 restrictions.

Advocate Wajeeh Shafiq, counsel for the applicant, argued that the Markaz premises should be reopened according to the recent order issued by DDMA. "What DDMA has said about other religious places will govern this place also. It has been lying closed since 2020," he said.

He had submitted that there was a joint inspection pursuant to this court order in which the entire premises was demarcated as a residential complex, Masjid Bangle Wali and Hostel.

Shafiq also submitted that there are seven floors in the masjid and it is difficult for him to understand why the Central government wants to put all the devotees only on the first floor. Why these restrictions are imposed on the religious place in the national capital.

Senior Advocate Rebecca John, appearing for Management Committee, argued that there is no reason why there should be a restriction on the opening of the premises.

Advocate Nair submitted that the Markaz was closed pursuant to FIR and it is a case property. "There are 1,500 FIRs. Besides, it is not clear who is the rightful owner of the premises. The locus of the claimant is to be decided," he said.

Delhi Waqf Board to place on record the recent order of DDMA on the application seeking reopening of Markaz premises at Nizamuddin. Board has approached the High Court seeking to reopen Markaz in view of Shab e Barat and the coming month of Ramzan.

The counsel for the applicant submitted that the people in limited number were allowed during the first phase of the pandemic. At the time they were preventing the large gathering and other activities. Now the DDMA has withdrawn all the restrictions through its order of 26 February 2022.

Petitioner Delhi Waqf Board, through advocate Wajeeh Shafiq, has sought to reassess the necessity of keeping the waqf premises, situated at Basti Hazrat Nizamuddin between Dargah Hazrat Nizamuddin and police Station Hazrat Nizamuddin, under their locks.

The petition said that the respondents have put the waqf premises Masjid Bangley Wali, Madarsa Kashif-Ul-Uloom and the attached hostel situated as Basti Hazrat Nizamuddin, Delhi under their locks since March 31, 2020. (ANI)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
New Delhi, March 14: Prime Minister Narendra Modi greeted people on the occasion of Sikh New Year, expressing hopes that "Waheguru blesses everyone with good health and prosperity".

"Greetings at the start of the Sikh New Year. May Waheguru bless everyone with good health and prosperity. May the teachings of the Guru Sahibs keep illuminating the world with their brightness," tweeted PM Modi today. January 2022 Holidays Calendar With Festivals & Events: Makar Sankranti, Republic Day, Guru Gobind Singh Jayanti; Know All Important Dates and List of Fasts for the Month.

PM Narendra Modi's Tweet

Greetings at the start of the Sikh New Year. May Waheguru bless everyone with good health and prosperity. May the teachings of the Guru Sahibs keep illuminating the world with their brightness.  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) March 14, 2022

The first month of the Sikh Calendar is Chet. Today marks the first day of Chet, which is the first day of the calendar.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
New Delhi [India], March 14 (ANI): The Supreme Court on Monday again expressed concerns over misuse of claims being made for Rs 50,000 ex-gratia for COVID-19 deaths on the basis of the fake medical certificates.

A bench headed by Justice MR Shah indicated that it may order a probe by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) into the reports of fake claims for compensations.

Also Read | Supreme Court Issues Notice To Woman on Husbands Divorce Plea Alleging Wife is Not Female.

"We never visualised that this kind of fake claims could come up. It's a pious work. We never thought this scheme could be misused. And if officials are involved, it makes it even worse," the bench observed.

The bench wondered if our morality has gone down so much that fake claims are being made in this (compensation for COVID-19 deaths) too.

Also Read | Bengaluru: Man Sues Hotel for Overcharging 40 Paise, Fined Rs 4000 For Wasting Court's Time.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre, also informed the apex court that the applications regarding the alleged fake applications for COVID-19 compensation will be filed by tomorrow.

On March 7, Solicitor General had mentioned the issue of fake COVID-19 certificates or fake claims and how it can be curbed.

On the application of Assam seeking clarification of the order dated January 19, 2022, to the extent that if a deceased has more than one child, then will each child be entitled to get compensation separately, the bench clarified that the earlier order was very clear and that the ex-gratia compensation to be paid is on a "per death" basis.

It clarified that ex-gratia payment of Rs 50,000, ordered by the apex court, is to be paid for each death due to COVID-19 and not to each child of the affected family.

The bench said if there is more than one child, then only one child or family member shall be entitled to get compensation and if both parents have succumbed to the pandemic, then the compensation would be Rs. 50,000 for each death.

On prescribing a limitation period for the purpose of applying for COVID-19 compensation by the next of kin of those persons who have succumbed to the pandemic and curbing the practice of fake claims relating to the same, Solicitor General submitted that a fixed period such as four weeks from the date of death due to the pandemic be prescribed or fixed.

Asking the Centre to file an affidavit within two days on prescribing the limitation for filing claims for compensation, the bench posted the matter for hearing on March 21.

On the last date of hearing, the Supreme Court had warned against the misuse of its order to get compensation for COVID-19 deaths on the basis of fake medical certificates and observed that it would order an independent probe to catch those who indulged in such practices.

It had expressed serious concerns at fake certificates being issued by doctors to enable undeserving people to claim compensation for COVID-19 deaths.

Solicitor General had suggested that there has to be a definite time limit for filing the application and availing the compensation by next of kin of those who succumbed to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mehta had submitted that a limitation period should now be prescribed as the process cannot go on indefinitely.

The apex court was hearing a petition filed by lawyer-cum-petitioner, Gaurav Kumar Bansal, seeking compensation for those family members, who died due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Earlier, the top court had approved the Centre's disaster management guidelines on payment of Rs 50,000 compensation to the next kin of those who died of Covid-19 deaths and said the money to be disbursed within 30 days of applying. (ANI)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
New Delhi, March 14: Samyukta Kisan Morcha, an umbrella body of the farmers union, has announced the next phase of the nationwide campaign for 'MSP Legal Guarantee Week' which will be observed between April 11 to 17.

The farmers' body has also decided to oragnize a nationwide protest on March 21 over the role of the government in the Lakhimpur Kheri incident.

The SKM, in a statement, said that a meeting of all the organizations associated with the SKM was held on Monday at Gandhi Peace Foundation in Delhi, during which it a unanimously decision was taken about the same.

"During this week, all the constituent organizations associated with the SKM will organize dharnas, demonstrations, seminars, demanding legal guarantee of Minimum Support Price (C2+50 per cent) as recommended by the Swaminathan Commission, to all farmers on all their agricultural produce," it said.

In the meeting, after reviewing the legal process going on in the Lakhimpur Kheri case, it was alleged that the police administration and the prosecutors together are trying to protect the criminals and implicate the farmers. Farmers Protest: Samyukt Kisan Morcha Announces Next Phase of Movement To Demand MSP Guarantee.

"It is a matter of surprise that in such a serious case, the son of the Union Minister got bail so soon while the farmers implicated in the same case are still in jail," SKM said assuring full legal help by the Morcha to the families of the farmers.

During the meeting, SKM reviewed the written assurances given by the Government of India to the Samyukta Kisan Morcha on December 9 and alleged that even after three months, the government had not acted upon its key assurances.

"There is no trace of the assurance of forming a committee on MSP. Except Haryana, the police cases registered against the farmers during the agitation in other states have not been withdrawn. Delhi Police has spoken of partial withdrawal of some cases but there is no concrete information about that as well. Nothing has happened about the cases registered during Rail Rokos across the country," SKM said.

"Samyukta Kisan Morcha has decided to organize a nationwide protest on March 21, regarding the role of the government in the Lakhimpur Kheri incident, and the betrayal of the assurances given to the farmers' movement," it added.

The Morcha reiterated that the Samyukta Kisan Morcha supports the call for Bharat Bandh by trade unions on March 28 and 29, and that farmers across the country will actively participate in it, said SKM. Farmers Will Observe MSP Guarantee Week from April 11 to 17.

Representatives of farmers' organizations from Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Bihar, Jharkhand, Assam, Tripura, Odisha, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh participated in this national meeting convened by the coordination committee of Samyukta Kisan Morcha.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Agartala (Tripura) [India], March 14 (ANI): Uttarakhand government on Monday decided to make the film 'The Kashmir Files' tax-free in the state.

"I have directed Chief Secretary to take necessary action to make 'The Kashmir Files' movie tax-free in the state," said Uttarakhand acting Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami.

Also Read | Jammu and Kashmir: 4 Killed, 15 Injured After Massive Fire Breaks Out in Building in Residency Road, Rescue Operation Underway.

Similarly, the Tripura government has also decided to make the film 'The Kashmir Files' tax-free in the state, said Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb.

Earlier today, Goa acting Chief Minister Pramod Sawant said the state will make the movie tax-free in the state.

Also Read | Russia-Ukraine War: Kremlin Does Not Rule Out Taking 'Full Control' of Major Ukrainian Cities.

Starring Anupam Kher, Mithun Chakraborty, Darshan Kumar and Pallavi Joshi, the film revolves around the genocide of Kashmiri Pandits in 1990.

Notably, states like Haryana, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka had already declared the movie tax-free. Goa will also declare the film tax-free. (ANI)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Chicago [Illinois], March 14 (ANI/Xinhua): Chicago Public Schools (CPS), the third-largest school district in the United States, lifted mask mandate and introduced a mask-optional policy beginning Monday.

But there are "certain situations" when students and staff members will still be required to wear a mask, including when visiting with the school nurse or other medical professionals in the school building, when exhibiting COVID-19 symptoms, and following exposure to the virus. An entire class may also be required to wear masks, "at the direction of Chicago Department of Public Health," Chicago Tribune reported on Monday.

Also Read | Russia-Ukraine War Latest Updates: Peace Talks Hit 'Technical Pause' To Clarify Terms; Ukraine Economy Could Contract As Much as 35% if War Drags On, Says IMF.

In a letter to parents Friday, CPS CEO, Pedro Martinez, reminded student families that beginning Monday "all CPS schools will move to a mask-optional model."

"Far fewer people are getting sick, ending up in the hospital, and losing their lives to COVID-19," the local newspaper quoted Martinez as saying. "However we feel about masks, I think we can all agree that this is positive progress."

Also Read | Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Address US Lawmakers Virtually on March 16.

Martinez said CPS was one of the first major districts to require universal masking, and one of the last school districts to relax the mandate. We will continue to follow the science, and CPS may require masks again if community transmission reaches a moderate or high level."

The vast majority of schools in the U.S. Midwest state of Illinois ended masking requirements late February following Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker's halting of the school mask mandate, as well as prompted by new federal guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But CPS had continued its mask mandate due to an agreement they'd reached with the Chicago Teachers Union following five days of cancelled classes in January after union members declined to teach in person due to safety concerns.

CPS families are divided on the newly introduced optional mask requirement. Some disagreed with the decision out of safety concerns, while others have applauded the easing of restrictions in light of the new federal guidance. (ANI/Xinhua)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Caretaker Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh Yogi Adityanath on Monday called on President Ram Nath Kovind.

This is the first meeting of Adityanath with President Kovind after the party's historic victory in Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls and sources said that it was a courtesy meeting.

Earlier today, Adityanath also met Union Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari. After the meeting, Gadkari tweeted: "Met Yogi Adityanath ji today at Delhi residence. This year's Uttar Pradesh election was historic, people have put their stamp on the development in Uttar Pradesh under the guidance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and under the leadership of Yogi ji.

"I am sure that the double engine government of Uttar Pradesh will stand the test of the people. Congratulations and best wishes to the people of Uttar Pradesh and all the workers of the Bharatiya Janata Party on the victory in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, Gadkari said.

After the meeting, Adityanath tweeted: "Your (Gadkari) special support is being received in realising the concept of 'New Uttar Pradesh'."

On Sunday, the chief minister paid a courtesy visit to Vice- President M. Venkaiah Naidu. He had also met Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and BJP chief J.P. Nadda to discuss the formation of a new cabinet in Uttar Pradesh.

As per the sources, Yogi Adityanath has extended an invitation to the Prime Minister for the swearing-in ceremony of the new BJP government in Uttar Pradesh.

He had also met BJP national general secretary (organisation) B.L. Santhosh and discussed cabinet formation.
New Delhi, March 14: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday wished former US President Barack Obama a quick recovery after he tested positive for COVID-19.

"My best wishes @BarackObama for your quick recovery from COVID-19, and for your family's good health and wellbeing," PM Modi tweeted.

Here Is The Tweet:

My best wishes @BarackObama for your quick recovery from COVID-19, and for your family's good health and wellbeing. https://t.co/mCrUvXlsAp  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) March 14, 2022

Obama on Sunday announced that he has tested positive for COVID-19. Taking to Twitter, the former US President informed that his wife, former first lady Michelle Obama, has tested negative. COVID-19 Outbreak in China: Chinese High-Tech Shenzhen on Brink of Biggest Coronavirus Crisis Since Wuhan as Cases Triple.

"I just tested positive for COVID. I've had a scratchy throat for a couple of days, but am feeling fine otherwise. Michelle and I are grateful to be vaccinated and boosted, and she has tested negative. It's a reminder to get vaccinated if you haven't already, even as cases go down," he tweeted.

Barack Obama served as the 44th President of the United States.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Warsaw, March 14: Polish State Secretary Maciej Wasik said on Monday that over 1.8 million refugees from Ukraine had crossed the border with Poland since the start of the Russian military operation.

"Eighty-two thousand people have crossed the Polish-Ukrainian border yesterday. The situation is stable today. The influx is almost half of what it was at its peak a week ago. Nevertheless, the influx of refugees is very large, and we already have 1.8 million people who have fled from Ukraine to Poland since the beginning of the conflict," Wasik told a briefing.

Earlier in the day, the Polish Permanent Representation to the European Union said on Twitter that over 2.5 million refugees have left Ukraine. On March 8, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said that the European Union expects up to 5 million refugees from Ukraine in total. Russia-Ukraine War Latest Updates: Peace Talks Hit 'Technical Pause' To Clarify Terms; Ukraine Economy Could Contract As Much as 35% if War Drags On, Says IMF.

On February 24, Russia began a military operation in Ukraine, responding to calls for help from the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk in countering the aggression of Ukrainian troops. The Russian Defense Ministry said the special operation is targeting Ukrainian military infrastructure only.

According to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, almost 600 civilians have been killed and more than 1,000 injured in Ukraine since the start of the conflict.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Kabul [Afghanistan], March 14 (ANI): An Afghanistan rights group recently organised a public rally in Kabul to demand women's basic rights in Afghanistan.

The group Movement of Change for Afghanistan demanded access to work, education, and political participation of the women in Afghanistan.

Also Read | Afghanistans Cash-Strapped Washington Embassy to Shut Down in Coming Week.

The United Nations high commissioner for human rights, Michelle Bachelet recently visited Kabul, during which she held meetings with representatives of the de facto authorities and civil society representatives.

In a statement on Thursday, Bachelet had stressed that Afghan women must be given the space to lead if the country is to find peace and progress.

Also Read | Russia-Ukraine War Latest Updates: Russian Shelling Sets Kyiv Apartment Block on Fire; Zelenskyy Urges NATO for No-Fly Zone After 35 Deaths Near Polish Border.

The High Commissioner for Human Rights has stressed that girls should be able to go to schools and universities and be empowered to contribute robustly to the future of their country.

"With schools due to reopen on 22 March, I look forward to seeing that the commitments made for all girls and boys to have access to education be fulfilled. Girls and women need to have access to primary, secondary and tertiary education. Such significant steps will go a long way in securing the future of the country," the UN chief said.

Since the Taliban took over Afghanistan in August last year, there have been more drastic changes in the country, with the decline in hostilities afterwards the conflict-related causalities have reduced dramatically.

Notably, the Taliban regime which took over Kabul in last August has curtailed women's rights and freedoms with women largely excluded from the workplace due to the economic crisis and restriction. (ANI)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Kyiv [Ukraine], March 14 (ANI): As Russian troops intensified their advance in various major cities in Ukraine, the fourth round of peace talks between Kyiv and Moscow has been paused until Tuesday.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will address the US lawmakers virtually on March 16 at 9 am (13.00 GMT). "The Congress remains unwavering in our commitment to supporting Ukraine as they face [Russian President Vladimir] Putin's cruel and diabolical aggression, and to passing legislation to cripple and isolate the Russian economy as well as deliver humanitarian, security and economic assistance to Ukraine," read the statement.

Also Read | Ukrainian Troops Control City of Irpin Where US Journalist Was Killed, Says Russian Envoy Vassily Nebenzia.

Zelenskyy will not be able to address the extraordinary plenary session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), and instead, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal will give a speech on Zelenskyy's behalf, PACE Chairman Tiny Kox said on Monday.

The two-day extraordinary plenary session of PACE is being held from Monday to Tuesday in the French city of Strasbourg due to Moscow's special military operation in Ukraine. The consequences of the operation were put on the agenda of the session.

Also Read | Poland Received Over 1.8 Million Refugees from Ukraine Since February 24, Says Secretary of State Maciej Wasik.

Zelenskyy held talks with the Prime Minister of Greece Kyriakos Mitsotakis where he discussed the integration of the war-torn country within the European Union bloc.

Squatters in London broke into a mansion reportedly owned by Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. After breaking into the mansion, squatters unfurled a Ukrainian flag and declared the property "liberated" and prepared for refugees from the war-torn country.

Over 2,500 Mariupol residents have been killed since Russia invaded Ukraine, said Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Zelenskyy.

Russian troops have damaged the power line of Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (Local Time), a day after the electricity supply was restored at the facility.

Ukraine's National grid operator Ukrenergo said that a high-voltage power line was damaged a day after electricity supplies were restored to the nuclear power plant. The critical cooling system at the plant needs the power to operate normally.

Pfizer will donate all profits of its Russian subsidiary to provide humanitarian support to the people of Ukraine, said the company in its statement.

"Today we are announcing that effective immediately, Pfizer will donate all profits of our Russian subsidiary to causes that provide direct humanitarian support to the people of Ukraine. This will be in addition to all other recently announced donations from Pfizer to Ukraine," the statement by the company read.

United Nations chief Antonio Guterres announced USD 40 million from the UN emergency fund for providing humanitarian aid to Ukraine.

The UN chief, in his address to the media on Ukraine, said, "As millions of people in Ukraine face hunger and dwindling supplies of water and medicine, I am announcing today that the United Nations will allocate a further 40 million USD from the UNCERF to ramp up vital assistance to reach the most vulnerable."

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said that more than 2.8 million people fled Ukraine to neighbouring countries as of Monday to seek support.

As the war between Moscow and Kyiv rages on, India's Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations, R Ravindra said that New Delhi has been consistent in calling for an immediate end to all hostilities in Ukraine.

While addressing a UNSC briefing, Ravindra said our Prime Minister Narendra Modi has repeatedly called for an urgent ceasefire and that there is no other path left but of dialogue and diplomacy. (ANI)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Beijing [China], March 14 (ANI): A member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee Yang Jiechi will meet US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan on Monday in Rome, according to the Chinese foreign ministry.

Yang who is also director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the CPC Central Committee will exchange views with Sullivan on China-US relations and international and regional issues of common concern, spokesperson Zhao Lijian said in a statement cited by Xinhua News Agency.

Also Read | Ukraine Says Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Line Restored.

Key issues of the meeting include the implementation of the important consensus reached by the Chinese and US heads of state in their virtual summit in November last year.

The two sides have been in contact on the matter since late last year, stayed in communication about the meeting, and set a time for the meeting according to their schedules, Zhao added. (ANI)

Also Read | Pakistan PM Imran Khan Says Didnt Join Politics to Check Prices of Aloo, Tamatar.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
New York, March 14: Ukrainian forces control the city of Irpin where an American journalist was shot and killed at a checkpoint, Russian Ambassador to the United Nations Vassily Nebenzia said Monday.

"We regret all people who die in the conflict but I would like to make two clarifying points," Nebenzia said. "Firstly, he is not a journalist, that was something that The New York Times itself stated ... Secondly, Irpin is fully controlled by the Ukrainian armed forces and Ukrainian units. Given what his colleague, who survived the incident, is saying, it was them who opened fire on their vehicle."

US journalist Brent Renaud, who died near the Ukrainian capital of Kiev, had been working on a video project for Time, the American magazine's television and film production division said. Poland Received Over 1.8 Million Refugees from Ukraine Since February 24, Says Secretary of State Maciej Wasik.

The New York Times said on Sunday that it was very saddened to learn about the death of US journalist Brent Renaud, 50, in Irpin, a suburb of Kiev, but added that he was not on any assignment for the newspaper there. US photographer Juan Arredondo was traveling with Renaud and was injured in the same attack near a Ukrainian security checkpoint. According to the newspaper, Renaud was wearing a journalist press badge, which had been issued to him by The New York Times "many years ago." Russia-Ukraine War Latest Updates: Peace Talks Hit 'Technical Pause' To Clarify Terms; Ukraine Economy Could Contract As Much as 35% if War Drags On, Says IMF.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Sunday that the US was going to work with the Ukrainians to investigate Renaud's death "to determine how this happened and then to measure and execute appropriate consequences as a result of it."

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Kabul [Afghanistan], March 14 (ANI): A delegation led by Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) arrived in Kabul on Monday to assess Afghanistan's humanitarian situation and said that despite the Ukraine crisis, Afghanistan remains a priority for the UN's refugee agency.

"But I came here also to say that there is not just Ukraine, there are other crises in the world, other situations that need attention and Afghanistan is a priority for us," he said.

Also Read | Russia-Ukraine War: Kremlin Does Not Rule Out Taking 'Full Control' of Major Ukrainian Cities.

The UN's refugee agency chief said that he will meet with Islamic Emirate officials to discuss the humanitarian situation in the country, reported TOLO News.

"They agree very much that we must look at what are the solutions for the people who are refugees or displaced," he added.

Also Read | Russia-Ukraine War: Europe Faces Deficit in Sunflower Oil As Exports From Ukraine Stops.

Grandi's visit to the country comes as a report by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimated the number of internally displaced Afghans is nearly six million. "Over one-fifth of those individuals (1,327,474 or 23%) were displaced in 2021 as a result of conflict and natural disaster," the report said.

According to IOM's report, 8,495,365 former internally displaced persons have returned to their homes. From 2012 to 2021, 4,519,522 fled abroad and 5,149,245 migrants returned from abroad, the IOM said, reported TOLO News.

The Taliban's swift ascension to power in Afghanistan has triggered economic disarray and a dire humanitarian crisis in the country. Since the group came into power, they have cracked down on foreigners and women, at times forcing them to quit their jobs and depriving them of education.

The crimes against the protesters or whoever raises their voice against the Taliban-led government has also increased significantly in Afghanistan. (ANI)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Kyiv [Ukraine], March 14 (ANI): Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Monday urged North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to impose a no-fly zone over his country or see its member states attacked by Russia.

In his virtual address on Monday, Zelenskyy said: "I reiterate that if you do not close our sky, it is only a matter of time before Russian missiles fall on your territory, on NATO territory, on the homes of NATO citizens."

Also Read | Ukraine Says Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Line Restored.

He spoke a day after thirty-five people were killed and more than 130 injured when Russian troops launched airstrikes on a military training ground, near the border with NATO member Poland.

The Ukrainian President also said that he had warned NATO that without preventive sanctions, Russia would begin a war and that Moscow would use Nord Stream 2 as a weapon.

Also Read | Pakistan PM Imran Khan Says Didnt Join Politics to Check Prices of Aloo, Tamatar.

"I had warned NATO that without preventive sanctions, Russia would begin a war & that Moscow would use Nord Stream 2 as a weapon," he said.

Earlier Russia claimed that it killed 180 "foreign mercenaries" in a missile strike on Yavoriv military training ground in western Ukraine, according to a media report. Kyiv, however, denied the report terming it "pure Russian propaganda".

Meanwhile, Zelenskyy said that in a discussion with European Council President Charles Michel, special attention was given to the further negotiation process on Ukraine's EU membership.

"Regular international talks. With President of the Council @eucopresident, we discussed the issue of increasing financial support for and sanctions pressure on the aggressor. Special attention was paid to the further negotiation process on Ukraine's EU membership," Zelenskyy tweeted.

He spoke with UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Petr Fiala Prime Minister of the Czech Republic and spoke about Ukraine's struggle against Russian aggression. (ANI)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Pakistan has been left with only five days of diesel stocks following oil prices in the international market hitting around $112 per barrel that stood at $94 per barrel before the start of Russia-Ukraine war, Express Tribune reported.

The war has caused the falling of global diesel stocks and other middle distillates to the lowest seasonal level since 2008.

The Oil Companies Advisory Council (OCAC), a body of oil industry, had already warned the Pakistani government about the diesel shortage crisis due to depletion of stocks globally. Other reason was that Pakistani banks had also put the oil companies in high-risk category and refused to grant loans.

The OCAC had also written a letter to Pakistani central bank governor to intervene in this regard.

The Pakistan State Oil (PSO) -- the state-run oil marketing company -- has informed the energy ministry (petroleum division) about the situation in a letter sent to the director general oil.

The company pointed out that oil marketing companies (OMCs) had defaulted in oil imports, especially high-speed diesel (HSD), from December to March because of the Russia-Ukraine war, Express Tribune reported.

The PSO said it had resulted in a shortfall of 205,000 metric tons of diesel imports from January to March 2022.

According to the US Energy Information Administration, distillate fuel oil inventories in the US fell by 21 per cent to 30 million barrels that were below the pre-pandemic five-year seasonal average and at the lowest level since 2005. The stock in Europe also fell by 8 per cent to 35 million barrels -- below the pre-pandemic five-year average at the lowest level since 2008.
An unattended bag found inside a local train en route to Hazrat Nizamuddin Railway Station from #Haryana triggered panic on Monday morning.



Subsequently, the train was stopped at Adarsh Nagar railway station and a Bomb Disposal Squad was informed. pic.twitter.com/cMGwwH4UGz IANS (@ians_india) March 14, 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.)
#Russia has called for the possibility of moving the #UN (@UN) Headquarters from the US to a neutral country. pic.twitter.com/7NdLfFB4MQ IANS (@ians_india) March 14, 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.)
Chris Wade reached into the darkness to silence his blaring alarm clock. It was 4:30 on a frigid winter morning in Warren, Ohio, and outside a fresh layer of snow blanketed the yard.

Thank God, Wade thought to himself. He would be able to get out his plow and make some quick cash.

Money never used to be a problem for Wade, 47, who owned a house with a pool back when he worked at Delphi Automotive, a parts manufacturer that for years was one of the biggest employers in this wooded stretch of northeastern Ohio. But 10 years after taking a buyout as part of Delphis ongoing shift of production out of the United States and into Mexico and China, the house and the pool were gone.

Berta Alicia Lopez, 54, is the new face of Delphi. On a recent chilly morning, she woke before sunrise on the outskirts of Juarez, Mexico, and caught an unheated bus that dropped her an hour away at the Delphi plant.

Lopez earns $1 an hour assembling cables and electronics that will eventually be installed into vehicles  the same work that Wade once did for $30 an hour. A farmers daughter who grew up in an impoverished stretch of rural Mexico, Lopez is proud to own a used Toyota sedan and a concrete block house.

She frequently thanks God for the work, even if it is in a town troubled by drug violence, even if she doesnt see many possibilities for earning more or advancing.

The two workers live 1,800 miles and a border apart and have never met. But their stories embody the massive economic shift that has accompanied the rise of free trade.

In the United States, that shift has contributed to the loss of jobs that once helped workers buy homes, pay for health insurance and send children to college. In Mexico, it brought jobs  though they didnt create the kind of broad, middle-class prosperity they once had in America.

President Trump has pledged to bring factory work back. But it may be too late to turn back the clock on the powerful forces shaping the lives of Wade and Lopez and two cities, one American and one Mexican, that remain inextricably linked by the geography of global economics.

An empty Delphi plant known as Plant 8 in Warren, Ohio. After a day of work plowing snow, Chris Wade talks on the phone about the rest of the week's work. A binder full of Wade's business papers and receipts. Wade worked at Delphi Automotive Systems for 13.5 years. Photographs by Katie Falkenberg / Los Angeles Times Top: An empty Delphi Automotive plant known as Plant 8 in Warren, Ohio. Bottom left: After a day of work plowing snow, Chris Wade talks on the phone about the rest of the week's work. Wade worked at Delphi Automotive Systems for 13 and a half years. Bottom right: A binder full of Wade's business papers and receipts. (Katie Falkenberg / Los Angeles Times)

To hear Trump tell it, free trade deals and globalization have produced clear winners and clear losers.

Delphi had been reducing its U.S. workforce for years before it moved most of its operations overseas in 2006.

Every time I see a Delphi and I see companies leaving, that wall gets a little bit higher, and keeps going up, Trump promised at a campaign rally in Ohio a few days before the election. We are going to fight Delphi and other companies and say, Don't leave us, because there are going to be consequences.

He has pledged to tax imports from Mexico and renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, which eliminated most tariffs on the continent and, in Trumps view, enriched Mexico at the expense of middle America.

But the real legacy of NAFTA, which took effect in 1994, is more complicated.

Nobody disputes that the loss of manufacturing has left a bruising mark in parts of the U.S., especially in places like the Rust Belt, where lower paying service industry jobs are increasingly replacing middle class factory positions. But many economists say changes in technology, along with competition with China, are more to blame than NAFTA.

The period of steepest decline in manufacturing jobs, which fell from 17 million to 11 million between 2000 and 2010, is substantially attributable to the free import of goods manufactured more cheaply in China and increasing reliance on machines to do the jobs humans once did, according to Gordon Hanson, an economist and trade expert at UC San Diego.

South of the border, free trade has indeed helped modernize Mexico by creating millions of jobs since the passage of NAFTA, boosting investment flow and helping to diversify the countrys manufacturing sector. Mexican workers now help build everything from Whirlpool washing machines to Bombardier jets.

But wages have remained low, so that Mexico remains attractive to manufacturers who might otherwise be tempted to locate in China or elsewhere in Asia. Since NAFTA went into effect, there has been no change in the number of Mexicans living below the poverty line  more than half.

Now, as Trump pushes companies to cancel plans for new factories in Mexico and vows to renegotiate trade deals, it appears more dramatic change is on the horizon.

His administration has proposed a 20% tax on imports from Mexico and other countries with which the U.S. has a trade deficit. Economists say the plan poses a serious threat to Mexico, which sends roughly 80% of its exports to the U.S., and whose peso has plummeted amid fears of what the Trump administration may do.

Its a new era, Mexicos president, Enrique Pena Nieto, said in a recent speech, warning that if trade deals are opened up, everything  including Mexicos cooperation with the U.S. on matters of immigration and security  will be up for negotiation.

Lopez is only vaguely aware of Trump  shes too busy for politics.

Wade said he just wants things to go back to the way they were.

But even he sometimes wonders: Is it too late?

After shoveling a client's driveway, Chris Wade shovels the walkway. Wade worked at Delphi Automotive Systems for 13 1/2 years before taking a buyout in 2006 as part of the company's ongoing shift of production out of the U.S. Katie Falkenberg / Los Angeles Times

The snow kept falling, so Wade called up some buddies he works with and fired up his plow.

He sipped coffee from a thermos as he wove along a country lane through a landscape that looked like a Thomas Kinkade painting, with cornfields and churches and quaint clapboard houses all cloaked in white.

His first job was to clear the driveway of an industrial park that once belonged to Delphi.

Thats when times was good, Wade said in his raspy drawl. Thats when I liked this place.

Delphi began as Packard Electric, which started out in Warren in 1890 making light bulbs, but later branched out to auto parts. It became a division of General Motors in 1932, eventually expanding to include factories across the U.S.

The companys factories in Warren paid middle class wages and helped build a prosperous city, with bustling streets lined with handsome brick buildings.

Both of Wades parents worked for Packard, earning enough to take the family on summer vacations and build a swimming pool in the backyard. Growing up, Wade heard stories at the dinner table each night about what had happened that day on the factory floor.

By then, Packard had started reducing its U.S. workforce by moving some of its operations to Mexico to take advantage of lower labor costs in cities such as Juarez, which was inviting foreign companies to build factories there while paying minimal taxes. The threat that more jobs could be shifted overseas forced union representatives in Ohio to make concessions in salaries and benefits.

Still, Wades brother and sister-in-law went to work at the Warren factory after high school and Wade figured hed land there too.

By the time he did  in 1993, after a stint in the Navy that ended with a knee injury  the union workforce in Warren had dropped to less than 9,000, compared with 13,000 a decade earlier.

Still, Wade was happy with his life. He worked nights on the assembly line and cashed his paychecks every Thursday at the bar across the street. On days off, he went duck shooting with his chocolate Labrador, Hunter.

By the early 2000s, after Packard had been renamed Delphi Automotive Systems and spun off as a company independent of GM, Wade had the house and pool. His wife drove a brand new Trailblazer, and he drove a new Chevrolet pickup.

He had no idea what was coming.

Berta Lopez, top left, talks with a fellow worker on the bus to Delphi factory. Workers leave the Delphi factory after a shift is over in Juarez, Mexico. A poor neighborhood in Juarez where many factory workers live. Berta Lopez earns $1 per hour working at the Delphi factory in the city. Photographs by Katie Falkenberg / Los Angeles Times Top left: Berta Lopez, left, talks with a fellow worker on the bus that takes them to and from their jobs at a Delphi factory. Top right: Workers leave the Delphi factory after a shift is over in Juarez, Mexico. Bottom left: A poor neighborhood in Juarez where many factory workers live. Bottom right: Lopez at home. She earns $1 per hour working at the Delphi factory in the city, and says she frequently thanks God for the work, even if it is in a dangerous city. (Katie Falkenberg / Los Angeles Times)

Lopez grew up in Bermejillo, a dusty town in the state of Durango, where her stepfather spent his days in the sun, irrigating cotton and melon fields. Her mom had pulled her out of school when she was in fifth grade.

Why study if youre just going to work and have babies? her mother told her.

Sure enough, by the time she was 17 she had a son, the first of her five children.

For centuries, people in Bermejillo made their living in the fields, and Lopez had little reason to think she would be any different.

But NAFTA made things hard on small Mexican farmers, who found themselves competing with imports from giant U.S. agribusinesses, many of which received healthy subsidies from the U.S. government. In places like Bermejillo, a generation of young people were suddenly out of work, and many headed north to the U.S.

Others went to frontier towns such as Juarez.

As NAFTA took effect, Juarez was transformed overnight from a desert oasis best known for its nightclubs and casinos into a sprawling grid of concrete industrial buildings intersected by dirt roads. The population grew faster than officials could build highways, schools and other infrastructure.

Migration to cities like Juarez also marked a cultural shift. Parents worked all day, and without extended family to look after them, children often found themselves alone. Drug cartels, whose power was growing, found easy recruits. As the city erupted into gang warfare, murders spiked, along with suicides and violence against women.

Lopez had been working in a cafe for $5 a week when a truck driver passing through town told her about new factory jobs up north. She arrived in Juarez in 1996 with her husband and five children. Her eldest son, then 16, who had not been able to find work in Durango, immediately found a job at a maquiladora, as they call the U.S. factories that had begun to proliferate along the Mexican side of the border.

So did Lopez, at Delphi, where on her first day she was so nervous she offered to clean the bathrooms instead of working on the floor.

God helped me, she recalled. However good or bad, at least we had work.

She took to factory life  gossiping with the other workers on breaks, earning the equivalent of a GED in classes offered after her shifts, making peace with living in a big city far from home. Then in 2001, her second eldest son committed suicide.

She was so despondent after his death that for the first time she stayed home from work. One of her managers at Delphi traveled to her neighborhood and gently persuaded her to return to the factory floor.

Lopez thought about returning to Durango, but she knew there would be no good jobs there. She resigned herself to the fact that the Delphi factory was probably the best place shed ever work, and that Juarez was now her home.

If I didn't have the job, I wouldn't eat, she said.

The sun sets over Juarez, Mexico, where many maquiladoras are located. Katie Falkenberg / Los Angeles Times

Delphi had its own listing on the New York Stock Exchange, but its fortunes still rode on General Motors, its biggest customer. When the car company slumped in 2004, the transnational auto parts maker went into a tailspin.

The next year  amid an accounting fraud scandal in which the SEC fined several top executives  Delphi filed for bankruptcy.

Its board hired a new chief executive, Robert Miller, who complained that the companys U.S. workers were overpaid, with labor costs triple that of other unionized auto suppliers.

In March 2006, Delphi announced it was closing or selling 21 of its 29 American plants, a move that eliminated more than 20,000 jobs, or about two-thirds of its total workforce. Operations were shipped to factories in China or Mexico, where Delphi now has about 70,000 employees working at factories in 20 cities.

Most of the plants in Warren remained open, but with a much smaller workforce. While Miller got a sendoff package that by one account was worth $35 million, workers were urged to take a buyout and warned that if they stayed, their wages would drop from an average of $29 an hour to $16.50.

On the day he walked away from Delphi with a buyout package worth $140,000, Wade was, as he put it, fired up. The CEOs and the guys at the top make millions while everybody else can barely survive, he said. Its not right.

In Trumbull County, the former manufacturing and steel stronghold where Warren is located, the Delphi cuts felt like kicking a guy who was already down.

Wades post-Delphi years were not easy. Shortly after leaving the factory, he went through a divorce and narrowly avoided prison after being pulled over while drunk and with unlicensed guns in his car.

He had received his truck driver's license, but the DUI eliminated that career plan. He earned a certification to sell insurance, but that didnt pan out either.

He works in roofing now during the summer and plows snow in the winter. After a decade, hes making about what he was when he worked at Delphi. But he doesnt have the security of a pension, paid vacation or health insurance. If he had kept his job at Delphi, he would be just seven years from retirement.

Wade doesnt want to hear about the Mexican workers who replaced him. He boils when he hears what low wages they get paid, and is equally angry about immigrants who work illegally in the U.S.

He liked that Trump called out Mexico on the issue. It was the kind of talk that helped persuade Wade, a lifelong Democrat and union member, to give Trump his vote. He was joined by many others in Trumbull County, which voted Republican for president for the first time since 1972.

Brian Lutz, shop steward with the union that once represented Wade, said he understands the anti-establishment anger.

I hear all the time people who say why would I continue to vote for a Democrat when all the people I worked with are gone and the Democrats havent done what we sent them to do? he said.

His union recently negotiated a contract that starts workers at $13 an hour. Thats about 10 times as much as Lopez takes home from the Delphi plant in Juarez today, two decades into her career there.

Lopez's home is in a neighborhood on the outskirts of Juarez. Lopez cleans her home on her day off. For the last couple of years, every spare peso has gone to pay the college tuition for her youngest son. Photographs by Katie Falkenberg / Los Angeles Times Left: Lopez's home sits in a neighborhood on the outskirts of Juarez. Right: Lopez cleans her home on her day off. For the last couple of years, every spare peso has gone to pay the college tuition for her youngest son. (Katie Falkenberg / Los Angeles Times)

At the end of the shift in Juarez one recent afternoon, hundreds of workers streamed out of the Delphi factory toward the long line of white buses that take them home. Lopez climbed onto No. 6621, which headed east along the U.S. border, past dozens of other factories and a slew of big box stores.

It dropped Lopez in New Lands, a grid-like housing development that rises from the sand on the outskirts of the city. Overweight and suffering from diabetes, she shuffled past the Toyota in her driveway.

Trumps warnings to companies to keep their business in America are already having an effect on the Mexican economy. Last month, after being criticized by Trump on Twitter, Ford announced it is canceling plans to build a new $1.6-billion factory in Mexico, opting instead to hire workers in Michigan.

Trump claimed credit, though the company said market demand was a bigger factor. The Mexico factory was designed to build small cars, but as gas prices have fallen, demand has shifted toward bigger models made in Michigan.

But some companies that produce goods in Mexico say theres no going back to the U.S. That includes Delphi.

The company just announced a plan for more layoffs in Warren, where only 1,500 employees remain.

Speaking at Barclay's Global Automotive Conference in New York in December, Delphis chief financial officer Joe Massaro explained what he thought would happen to Delphi under several Trump trade scenarios.

If Trump were to close the border with Mexico outright, in less than a week, all the people who voted for him in Michigan and Ohio would be out of work, Massaro argued, underscoring the fact that many factories in the U.S., including car makers in Detroit, depend on parts made in Mexico.

If the United States were to withdraw from NAFTA and start taxing imports from Mexico again, Delphi would continue doing business in Mexico, he said. The company would pass on the extra cost to its suppliers or to consumers, or would find a way to reduce its production costs  which could mean layoffs or salary cuts in Mexico.

What it all means for Lopez and her family, she is not sure.

Of her four children, three work in factories.

For the last couple of years, every spare peso has gone to pay the college tuition for her youngest son, Sergio, who is studying computer engineering. He dreams of starting a software company that can compete with U.S. firms.

He has watched his moms life, and wants to earn more than factory wages.

It's a lot of work for little money, he said.

Lead art: After shoveling his client's driveway, Chris Wade shovels their walkway. Wade worked at Delphi Automotive Systems for 13.5 years before taking a buyout in 2006 as part of the company's ongoing shift of production out of the U.S. He works in roofing now during the summer and plows snow in the winter. (Katie Falkenberg / Los Angeles Times)

This story was reported in part with a grant from the International Womens Media Foundation.

kate.linthicum@latimes.com

Twitter: @katelinthicum
Oscar-winning actor William Hurt, known for his roles in the "Kiss of the Spider Woman" and "Body Heat," died Sunday at the age of 71.

According to NBC News, Hurt's son, Will, confirmed his father's death to Associated Press and said that the Oscar-winning actor died of natural causes.

"It is with great sadness that the Hurt family mourns the passing of William Hurt, beloved father and Oscar-winning actor, on March 13, 2022, one week before his 72nd birthday. He died peacefully, among family, of natural causes," Hurt's son said in a statement as reported by Variety.

But Hurt's son did not provide details on what exactly caused his father's death. Hurt's family did not also disclose where the Oscar-winning actor died.

READ NEXT: Tom Brady Retirement Ends: Buccaneers Star Announces Return to Tampa for 'Unfinished Business'

William Hurt Death: Personalities React on the Passing of the Oscar-Winning Actor

Several colleagues and friends commented on the sudden passing of William Hurt. Writer and director Rochelle Riley said Hurt's passing was "heartbreaking and just seems too soon."

For decades, when someone died after age 60, natural causes was a natural cause of death.



This is heartbreaking and just seems too soon.#WilliamHurt, Star of Body Heat and Broadcast News, Dead at 71 https://t.co/oALrswqchU via @RollingStone  Rochelle Riley (@rochelleriley) March 13, 2022

Actor Mark Ruffalo described Hurt's death as a "great loss to the acting community," adding that the actor had a "great mind."

Wow, another Major loss to the acting community. Great actor. Great mind. RIP https://t.co/aKu8NWLgaz  Mark Ruffalo (@MarkRuffalo) March 13, 2022

Renowned writer Stephen King also gave his thoughts on Hurt's passing.

"Very sorry to hear about the passing of William Hurt. He was a fine actor, an Academy Award winner. He also did a classic reading of my story 'Low Men in Yellow Coats,' from HEARTS IN ATLANTIS. I loved hitchhiking on his immense talent," King tweeted.

Very sorry to hear about the passing of William Hurt. He was a fine actor, an Academy Award winner. He also did a classic reading of my story "Low Men in Yellow Coats," from HEARTS IN ATLANTIS. I loved hitchhiking on his immense talent.  Stephen King (@StephenKing) March 13, 2022

Actor Topher Grace said that he was "grateful" to have the opportunity of working with Hurt. Grace noted that he admired Hurt's acting "so much and watching his commitment in person was remarkable."

Grateful that I had the opportunity to work with William Hurt. I admired his acting so much and watching his commitment in person was remarkable. My thoughts are with his family. pic.twitter.com/faDLANuq2E  Topher Grace (@TopherGrace) March 13, 2022

Oscar-Winning Actor William Hurt

According to Variety, William Hurt first studied theology at Tufts University before moving to Juilliard to study acting.

The Hollywood Reporter noted that Hurt's debut on the big screen was in the 1980 film "Altered States," where he played an obsessed psychopathologist that experiments with sensory deprivation and floatation tanks.

Hurt's career spanned more than four decades, and his skills made him recognized by prestigious award-giving bodies.

In 1985, Hurt was hailed as Oscars' best actor for his role as Luis Molina in the "Kiss of the Spiderwoman." He played a transvestite window dresser locked in a South American prison with a militant warrior in this film.

His performance also earned him the equivalent prizes from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) and the National Board of Review, NBC News reported.

A year later, Hurt was nominated for another Oscar for his leading role in the romantic drama "Children of a Lesser God." However, he was not able to bag the award as he lost it to Paul Newman.

Hurt also scored another actor nomination for his role as anchorman Tom Grunick in the romantic comedy "Broadcast News."

In the 2000s, Hurt appeared in "A.I. Artificial Intelligence" (2001), "The Village" (2004), "A History of Violence" (2005), and "Into the Wild" (2007).

In recent years, William Hurt also showcased his talents and enticed the modern-day audience with his role as "Thaddeus Ross" in five Marvel movies, including "Black Widow" in 2021.

READ MORE: On Latina History Day, Oscar-Nominated 'Encanto' Producer Yvett Merino Empowers Young Latinas to Dream Big

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Joshua Summers

WATCH: Actor William Hurt Dies at 71 - From CBS Evening News
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla noted during a CBS' "Face the Nation" interview on Sunday that it will be necessary to receive the fourth dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.

Bourla said that the protection that people are getting from the third is good enough for hospitalizations and deaths, but it is not that "good against infections," adding that it does not last very long, according to a Business Insider report.

The Pfizer CEO has earlier said that he believes a fourth dose would be needed amid the spread of COVID-19.

Bourla earlier said that there is a need in "an environment of Omicron variant to boost the immune response."

He also opened up about the pharmaceutical company's plan to submit a significant process of data about the necessity for the fourth dose of COVID-19 vaccine to the Food and Drug Administration.

READ NEXT: Omicron BA.2 Variant: 2 New Symptoms Could Indicate COVID-19 Infection

Pfizer Fourth Dose of COVID-19 Vaccine

Bourla said that Pfizer is making a vaccine that covers Omicron and all the other variants, adding that there are so much trials that are going right now. He then said that he thinks the biggest question for all of the people right now is how to stay ahead of the virus.

The Pfizer official said that they are working on developing a vaccine that prevents infection while preventing hospitalizations and severe cases of the virus, adding that making long-lasting vaccines is their top priority, according to a CNBC News report. Bourla said that people cannot have vaccines every five or six months, noting that they need to be able to move as soon as possible.

Countries such as Israel, Chile, and Germany have already started recommending fourth COVID-19 doses for high-risk groups, according to The Hill report.

Bourla said that if they can make a vaccine that protects against all variants, it would be very easy to follow and remember, and go back to the way that people "used to live."

COVID-19 Vaccine Fourth Dose

A study posted on the medRxiv preprint server on February 15 without peer review suggested that the current mRNA vaccines had reached a "ceiling of immunity" after the third dose, according to Miles Davenport, a computational immunologist at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.

Davenport said that further doses will probably only recover the immunity lost over time owing to waning, according to a Nature Briefing report.

Gili Regev-Yochay, a physician and infectious-diseases researcher at Sheba Medical Center in Ramat Gan, said that the third dose is really important.

She added that people who are young and healthy without having any risk factors will probably not benefit much from a fourth dose.

However, Regev-Yochay and others said that it could be beneficial for people at higher risk of severe illness.

The study cited that regardless of the vaccine brand, the fourth dose raised participants' levels of neutralizing antibodies, which can block viral infection of cells.

Davenport, however, argued that one cannot keep on "boosting antibody responses forever."

READ MORE: CDC Recommends Shorter COVID Isolation Period for Health Care Workers Amid Omicron Variant

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Mary Webber

WATCH: Pfizer CEO on need for fourth Covid vaccine dose, 'panvaccine' and more - from CNBC Television






U.S. officials are bracing for the possible chemical attack Russia can engage in amid its war with Ukraine, as confirmed by Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday, per The Hill.

According to Kirby, the U.S. officials have not yet detected any "imminent chemical-biological attack," as of the moment. However, the Pentagon press secretary pointed out that they are on the lookout for the attack.

"We continue to watch this very very closely," Kirby underscored in the interview.

Despite announcing that the U.S. officials are prepared for the possible chemical attack from Russia, the Pentagon press secretary did not disclose any specific measure they are undertaking.

READ NEXT: Kamala Harris Criticized by Volodymyr Zelensky's Ex-Press Secretary but Deleted Tweet Saying It Would Be 'Tragedy' if Harris Was President

Pres. Joe Biden Says Russia to Pay "Severe Price" if Chemical Attack Were Deployed

On Friday, President Joe Biden said that Russia "would pay a severe price" if Vladimir Putin's country would use chemical weapons against Ukraine, per ABC News.

"I'm not going to speak about intelligence... but Russia would pay a severe price if they used chemical weapons," Biden said.

The president did not further on what the U.S. will do once Putin's forces made the move.

Numerous international figures, including North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, warned about Russia's possible chemical attack, according to The Hill.

Stoltenberg highlighted that Russia's accusation of Ukraine about creating biological weapons may be a pretext for launching chemical weapons itself under a false operation.

Aside from Ukraine, the U.S. was also accused by Moscow last week of housing biological weapons in the Ukrainian territory, The Hill noted.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, claims that their country discovered evidence of a program backed by Pentagon to develop anthrax and other biological weapons. However, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki called Moscow's claims "false and preposterous."

Psaki underscored that the information was the "kind of disinformation operation" they have seen from Russia over the years.

The White House Press Secretary furthered that Russia's accusations against the U.S. were done to "justify its further premeditated, unprovoked, and unjustified attack on Ukraine."

Ukraine Russia War

The news about the possible chemical attack from Russia came in the light of its war with Ukraine as the death toll continues to climb.

Since March 9, at least 549 civilians in Ukraine have been killed while over 2.6 million refugees have fled the country, pr The Hill.

On Sunday, another 35 people reportedly died following a Russian missile hit the International Peacekeeping and Security Center located in Yavoriv. It was not clear if the recent deaths were already added to the over 500 civilians that died since March 9.

This week, Russia also expanded its offense, after their forces abducted two Ukrainian Mayors Yevhen Matveyev and Ivan Federov.

READ NEXT: Tom Brady Retirement Ends: Buccaneers Star Announces Return to Tampa for 'Unfinished Business'

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written By: Joshua Summers

WATCH: Zelensky Says Russia is Capable of Chemical Attacks in Ukraine - From Guardian News
Brent Renaud has been reportedly killed by Russian forces in the town of Irpin, outside Kyiv, amid the Russia-Ukraine crisis.

Renaud is an award-winning U.S.-filmmaker and journalist. His works have appeared in the New York Times and other outlets, according to The Guardian report.

Renaud was reported to come under Russian fire and was hit in the neck, according to local police. However, the report could not be independently verified.

Earlier reports noted that Renaud was on assignment for The New York Times report. However, Clifford Levy, a deputy managing editor for the Times, issued a statement noting the opposite.

Levy said in a statement that the media outlet is deeply saddened to learn about the death of the American journalist in Ukraine. However, he said that Renaud was not on assignment for the New York Times in Ukraine.



Levy added that early reports noting that he worked for Time circulated as Renaud was wearing a Times press badge that was issued to him for an assignment many years ago.

The Kyiv region police chief, Andrei Nebitov, said in a statement that "the occupiers" are slaying even journalists of international media who are trying to show the truth about the actions of Russian troops in Ukraine.

READ NEXT: Pres. Joe Biden's Administration Handed China Intelligence on Russia's Invasion; China Told Russia the U.S. Intel: Report

Brent Renaud Killed in Ukraine

One U.S. journalist who also survived the attack spoke to an Italian paper Internazionale reporter from the hospital.

The U.S. journalist, Juan Arredondo, said that Renaud had been shot in the neck and "had to be left behind."

Arredondo said that they crossed a checkpoint and it was then that somebody started shooting at them, according to a Daily Mail report.

The White House has not yet issued a statement on Renaud's death. However, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan described his killing as "shocking and horrifying."

Sullivan added that the U.S. would consult with Ukrainian officials about what to do following the killing of the U.S. journalist.

It remains unclear whether U.S. President Joe Biden will retaliate against the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin.

Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said that Putin is finally starting to show signs of "willingness" to negotiate to end the war. However, up until now he seemed "intent on destroying Ukraine."

Russia-Ukraine Crisis

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that it is a "black day" after Russia shelled a military base in the western part of Ukraine, less than 25 kilometers from the Polish border, according to an Aljazeera report.

Zelenskyy said in his nightly address that Russia has fired 30 rockets at the Yavoriv military base, adding that it killed 35 people with 134 injured others.

The Ukrainian general staff added that "the enemy" is forming and moving strategic reserves to Ukraine's borders.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba, have talked about diplomatic efforts to stop Russia's invasion during a call, according to a State Department statement.

Spokesperson Ned Price said that Blinken and Kuleba discussed diplomatic attempts to stop "Putin's war of choice."

READ MORE: Russia-Ukraine Crisis: WHO Advises Ukraine to Destroy Health Lab Pathogens to Curb Spread of Disease

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Mary Webber

WATCH: American Journalist Brent Renaud Shot and Killed By Russian Soldiers In Ukraine - from CBS Los Angeles






The Secretariat of National Defense has deployed 500 military personnel to reinforce the Metropolitan Area of Guadalajara due to the rising rates of violence in the state.

The Mexican army troops arrived on March 13. They joined the ZMG through the 15/a Command Military area, to reinforce security tasks through "various operations," according to a Puerto Vallarta Daily News report.

It has not yet been specified which municipalities the 500 elements that came to reinforce the state's security will act. However, they are expected to be enforced in conflictive zones such as Teocaltiche, Encarnacion de Dias, Tamazula, and Manzanilla de la Paz, among others.

The military force is part of the so-called Joint Task Force Mexico, which has "great mobility and power," and the ability to be quickly deployed to one or several parts of the national territory by land or air.

Sedena Head Luis Cresencio Sandoval Gonzales said that there were 11,822 soldiers and elements of the National Guard in Jalisco.

Sandoval detailed that it was specifically 5,571 from the Secretary of National Defense, 411 from the Secretary of the Navy, and 5,840 from the National Guard.

Last week, the borders of Michoacan and Jalisco reported various acts of violence that alarmed residents.

Users on social media alleged that it was members of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.

READ NEXT: Mexico: Jalisco Cartel Chief 'El Fantasma' Believed to Have Hung 10 Bodies From Overpass Arrested by Military

Michoacan Violence

In February, Mexico announced that soldiers had rolled into a township dominated by Jalisco Cartel for the first time in months.

The troops broke up a civilian blockade of a small army base in Aguililla that had blocked its entrances since last summer.

The defense department that the government was starting a "dialogue for the pacification of Aguililla" and free the areas from the presence of organized crime, according to an Associated Press News report.

The army alleged the townspeople of Aguililla of acting as the "social base" of the Jalisco cartel as they blockaded the base and confronted the soldiers during protests.

People said their anger stems from what they see as a government policy favoring the Michoacan-based Viagras Cartel.

It was reported that the Jalisco Cartel has encouraged, some say forced, people to join the protests, according to an Aljazeera report.

Jalisco Cartel

The Jalisco Cartel grew after former Sinaloa Cartel capo Ignacio Coronel was killed by Mexican security forces in July 2010.

The group was then split into two factions, with the two groups fighting for control of drug trafficking in Jalisco, according to an InsightCrime report.

One of the factions became Jalisco Cartel, emerging as the successors to the Sinaloa capo's network in the region.

The Jalisco Cartel has been involved in a series of violent attacks, including the 2015 ambush that killed 15 Mexican police officers in Jalisco state.

In May 2018, the drug trafficking cartel also tried to assassinate Luis Carlos Najera, who was the former security secretary of Jalisco.

In June 2020, Jalisco Cartel then made a try to kill Omar Garci Harfuch, who is Mexico City's public security secretary.

READ MORE: Jalisco Cartel in Mexico Is Creating Homemade Bombs Similar to Those Use by Islamic Militants Amid Drug War

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Mary Webber

WATCH: Mexican Army: War Against Powerful Drug Cartels | The Insider: Reggie Yates - from Free Documentary






Brian Laundrie lawyer, Steven Bertolino, has denied claims that he did have direct contact with Laundrie before he left Wyoming, where Gabby Petito's body was found after being reported missing.

Bertolino made the comments after Petito's family filed a civil lawsuit against Laundrie's parents, Christopher and Roberta, according to a Crime Online report.

Petito family's attorney, Rick Stafford, alleged that the Laundries and Bertolino had several conversations with their sons after Petito's death on August 27 last year and his departure from Wyoming on August 30.

The lawsuit claims that Laundrie told his parents that he had killed Petito and immediately placed Betolino on retainer.

Laundrie then returned to his parents' home in Florida with the van he and Petito had been traveling but without his girlfriend.

In addition, the lawsuit claims that Laundrie told his parents that he killed Petito on August 28, and the Laundries immediately sent Bertolino a retainer on September 2.

READ NEXT: Gabby Petito Update: Parents Suing Brian Laundrie's Dad, Mom for Helping Son Get Away

Gabby Petito's Family's Lawsuit

The Petito family filed a lawsuit against the parents of Laundrie this week, accusing the Laundrie family of having knowledge about Petito's murder.

They also alleged that the Laundries were trying to help their son leave the country, according to a WFLA News report.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation said last month that Laundrie claimed responsibility for Petito's death in a written journal entry that was found with his remains in Sarasota County last year.

Nicole Schmidt, Petito's mother, said that she had last communication with her daughter on August 27.

The lawsuit said that Christopher and Roberta knew of the mental suffering and anguish the Petito family were experiencing.

The suit added that the Laundrie family refused to disclose what they knew about the well-being and location of the remains of their daughter.

The lawsuit continued to state that Christopher and Roberta acted with malice or great indifference to the rights of Petito's parents.

Gabby Petito and Brian Laundrie Case

On September 1, Laundrie returned to his parents' home, and on September 11, Petito was reported missing by her family.

Schmidt filed a missing person's report with the Suffolk County, New York, Police Department after not hearing from her daughter since late August.

On September 13, Laundrie's parents told police that their son left the family home for a hike in the Carlton Reserve in Sarasota, Florida.

Laundrie then became a person of interest in the case two days after he left his parents' home. In addition, North Port Police noted that Laundrie was refusing to cooperate.

The search for Laundrie started on September 18, with his parents saying that that was where he was headed the last time they saw their son.

The remains of Petito were then found on September 19 near Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming.

The coroner in Teton County said that Petito died by manual strangulation, with the manner of death still considered as a homicide.

On October 21, Laundrie's remains were identified. The following month, Bertolino announced that Laundrie died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, with the manner of death being suicide.

READ MORE: Brian Laundrie Case: Probe Into Utah Cops Who Responded to Gabby Petito and Fiance's Domestic Dispute 'Close' to Wrapping Up

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Mary Webber

WATCH: Gabby Petito's parents allege Brian Laundrie told parents of Gabby's murder | #HeyJB on WFLA Now - from WFLA News Channel 8






NZX Limited ("NZX") announces that it has completed the retail entitlement offer component ("Retail Entitlement Offer) of its underwritten 1 for 9 accelerated pro-rata renounceable entitlement offer ("Entitlement Offer") of new fully paid ordinary shares in NZX.

The Retail Entitlement Offer closed on Friday, 11 March 2022 and raised gross proceeds of approximately NZ$10 million. Eligible Retail Shareholders elected to take up approximately 34% of their Entitlements.

The Institutional Entitlement Offer was accelerated, closing on Friday, 25 February 2022 and raised c. NZ$16 million. Approximately 68% of Eligible Institutional Shareholders elected to take up their Entitlements.

Retail Bookbuild

NZX will offer approximately 13.2 million entitlements for sale under the retail shortfall bookbuild (Retail Bookbuild). These entitlements are those attributable to Eligible Retail Shareholders that did not take up their entitlements in full and Retail Shareholders who were ineligible to participate in the Retail Entitlement Offer.

Any proceeds achieved above the Application Price from the sale of Retail Entitlements will be paid (less applicable taxes) on a pro-rata basis to those Eligible Retail Shareholders who did not take up their entitlements in full or Retail Shareholders who were ineligible to participate in the Retail Entitlement Offer. There is no guarantee that any amount will be realised for the sale of Retail Entitlements through the Retail Bookbuild.

The Retail Bookbuild will be conducted today and is open to institutional investors and brokers acting on behalf of retail clients in New Zealand. NZX's ordinary shares are being placed in a trading halt today while the Retail Bookbuild is conducted. Trading is expected to recommence on market open tomorrow, Wednesday 16 March 2022, with the announcement of the outcome of the Retail Bookbuild.

Settlement and allotment of all shares for the Retail Entitlement Offer is expected to occur on Friday, 18 March 2022. Trading of those shares is expected to commence on the NZX on Friday, 18 March 2022. The new shares to be issued under the Retail Entitlement Offer will rank equally in all respects with NZXs existing ordinary shares. Holding statements for the new shares issued under the Retail Entitlement Offer will be dispatched on Monday, 21 March 2022.

Completion of Retail Entitlement Offer

Comments from our readers

No comments yet

Add your comment:

Your name: Your email: Not displayed to the public Comment: Comments to Sharechat go through an approval process. Comments which are defamatory, abusive or in some way deemed inappropriate will not be approved. It is allowable to use some form of non-de-plume for your name, however we recommend real email addresses are used. Comments from free email addresses such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc may not be approved. Anti-spam verification: Type the text you see in the image into the field below. You are asked to do this in order to verify that this enquiry is not being performed by an automated process.

Related News:

GAS MARKET UPDATE MAY 4TH

ANZ 2022 Half Year Results Documents

PGW Raises Guidance

Air NZ Rights Offer Period Closes and Bookbuild Commences

4th May 2022 Morning Report

BIF acquires shares in ZeroJet Limited

Morrison & Co completes acquisition of Infratil shares

IKE Q4 and FY22 performance update

Chorus amends syndicated bank facility

Vector Limited Capital Bonds - Election Notice


An Indigenous rights leader who campaigned against illegal logging was murdered in northern Mexico, five years after his activist brother was also slain.

Jose Trinidad Baldenegro was attacked when he left his home in the Colorada de la Virgen settlement to go to work on Monday, according to prosecutors in the border state of Chihuahua.

Witnesses reported hearing gunshots and saw multiple shooters. After a few hours, the house was set on fire.

Prosecutors claim he never asked for protection and that they were unaware of any threats made against him, according to the Sacramento Bee.

96 Human Rights Activists Killed Under AMLO's Government

The 47-year-old Baldenegro was part of the Tarahumara tribe, who has long battled illegal logging and mining in their territory, where drug cartels often cut down trees to plant narcotics.

His brother, Isidro Baldenegro, was murdered in 2017, after his campaign against illegal logging that earned him the Goldman Prize for environmental activism in 2005.

Another Tarahumara leader, Julian Carrillo, was killed a year later. Four of Carrillo's relatives had all been murdered.

Baldenegro has been less active in the Indigenous movement since his brother's murder, according to Isela Gonzalez of the Sierra Madre Alliance rights group.

Since 2009, Gonzalez said, ongoing violence in the Tarahumara mountains has forced more than 200 members from the Colorada de la Virgen community to flee.

In the first three years of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's government, 96 human rights activists were killed, said Human rights undersecretary Alejandro Encinas, in December.

Encinas claims that more than 90% of the crimes have gone unpunished.

ALSO READ: Kevin Durant, Joel Embiid Exchange Heated Words in Nets vs. 76ers Game; LeBron James Reacts to Squabble

More Rights Defenders Murdered in Latin American Countries

Latin American countries recorded the highest number of killings of human rights defenders, according to Front Line Defenders (FLD), with most of it taking place in Colombia, with 138 deaths recorded, per The Guardian.

Colombia remains the most dangerous country to be a human rights defender, where activists are routinely targeted by armed groups despite the 2016 peace accord.

With 42 deaths recorded, Mexico is the second deadliest country.

Brazil places third, following India, Afghanistan - where the Taliban's takeover in August has exacerbated the country's human rights crisis - and the Philippines.

The majority of those killed, 59%, worked on the land, environmental and indigenous rights, where their activities impacted the economic interests of corporations and individuals in mining, logging, and other extractive industries.

Andrew Anderson, director of FLD, said: "A lot of the killings in Colombia and Mexico are entirely preventable." However, they do it with impunity.

Colombia has a national protection mechanism that protects human rights defenders, but that primarily covers urban areas. Meanwhile, in Mexico, there is an increasing violence in the context of the cartels, according to Anderson.

The Human Rights Defenders Memorial, a global project of national and international human rights organizations, has documented and verified the identities of the 358 defenders killed last year.

Indigenous peoples comprise only about 6% of the global population yet made up almost a third of all human rights defenders killed.

READ MORE: Jayson Tatum Spoils Kevin Durant's 25K Club Party, Shares Perfect Reaction to 54-Point Outburst for Celtics vs. Nets

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Jess Smith

WATCH: Indigenous Peoples, Colonialism, and Climate Justice - ZI e-Chronicles
Laurel, MS (39440)

Today

Sunshine and clouds mixed. High around 90F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Partly to mostly cloudy. Low 68F. Winds light and variable.
Two men who raped a blind drunk student after offering to give her a lift home from a nightclub have lost their appeals against convictions.

Boakye Osei (32), formerly of Tooban, Burnfoot, Co Donegal, but now a prisoner at Midlands Prison, and Kelvin Opoku (35), formerly of Glendale Manor, Letterkenny, Co Donegal, but also a prisoner at Midlands, had pleaded not guilty at the Central Criminal Court to the rape of the woman in February 2015.

The jury found them guilty, however, and both men, who are originally from Ghana, were each sentenced to nine years imprisonment by Mr Justice Alex Owens in March 2020.

The complainant and her friend had returned to Opokus flat after they began talking to both men outside a nightclub in the north-west of the country.

Neither woman had ever met the men before agreeing to get into their car that night.

The men had appealed their convictions, arguing that the jury should have been discharged after the judge questioned witnesses about the complainants alcohol consumption on the evening in question.

It was also claimed that the complainant should not have been allowed to give her evidence to the jury via a video link and that all relevant material from her mobile had not been disclosed to the defence.

But both men have had their appeals rejected by the Court of Appeal.

In a written judgement delivered today, Court President Mr Justice George Birmingham said the trial judges rulings on disclosure had been considered and proper, while the issue regarding the video-link was similarly rejected.

It was also found that Mr Justice Owens questioning of witnesses regarding the quantity of alcohol consumed and the state of intoxication of the complainant had not been inappropriate.

Mr Justice Birmingham, who had heard the joint appeal along with Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy and Ms Justice Isobel Kennedy, added that the appellate court had not been persuaded that the trial was unfair or that the verdicts were unsafe.

The Court of Appeal was told last November that one witness, in response to a question from the judge, had told the jury that in her opinion as a mother both women appeared drunk.

Michael Bowman SC, for Opoku, told the three-judge it was not the position of the judge to ask such a question in a finely balanced case where alcohol had been a core issue.

Once the question is asked, that answer is out of the box, counsel continued.

It was also claimed that only a small portion of material from the complainants mobile phone had been disclosed to the defence prior to the trial commencing.

Alex White SC, for Osei, told the court that Mr Justice Owens had been wrong in the view and attitude he took towards the phone material.

Mr White also said the judge erred in allowing the complainant to remain abroad during the trial and give her evidence via a video-link.

The jury are entitled to see the demeanour of the witness as they leave the witness box and that is something not available to them when there is a video-link, counsel said.

Seamus Clarke SC, for the Director of Public Prosecutions, said the question the witness was asked by the judge had been quite tame.

Mr Clarke also said it was well within the judges discretion to allow video evidence; while, in relation to the disclosure of data from the complainants mobile phone, he noted that you dont need to be a rocket scientist to ascertain exactly what type of material the defence required in a case like this.

During the trial, the jury were told that the complainant and her friend had been walking home from a nightclub when they met Opoku and Osei. The victim got into a car believing the men had offered to take her to her home

The complainant told the trial that on a scale of one to 10 in terms of drunkenness, she was a 10 and about to pass out.

A video clip shown during the trial showed the woman staggering around the apartment and later falling on the bathroom floor, exposing her underwear, before the two men hold her up.

They took her into the bedroom where Opoku and then Osei raped her.

The woman testified that she was blind drunk and could not and did not consent to any sexual activity.

In interview with gardai, Opoku claimed that the woman had not been too drunk to consent and said she had been an enthusiastic participant. Osei denied having any sexual activity with the woman.

Sentencing, Mr Justice Owens said he accepted that neither man set out to rape the woman but they were fully aware of her incapacitation due to her intoxication and were prepared to take advantage of it.

The complainant, who is in her 20s, said in her victim impact statement, which she read out before the court, that the experience of being stripped of her clothes in the sexual assault treatment unit to be examined internally and externally was challenging and humiliating.
A man who tried to attack a prison officer with an improvised weapon while serving a sentence for the attempted murder of a teenager has been jailed for a further 30 months.

Michael Corbett (32) had pleaded guilty at the Central Criminal Court to the attempted murder of the 17-year-old on June 27th, 2016 at the Hellfire Club on Montpelier Hill. He attacked a number of campers with a knife and used a piece of timber to strike one teenager about the head.

He was jailed for three years in July 2018 after Mr Justice Michael White suspended six years of a nine-year term; however, those six years were re-activated in July 2020 after Corbett assaulted other inmates in prison.

Corbett had previously attacked a psychiatric nurse, by using a sock to try and strangle him, while on remand in the Central Mental Hospital in October 2016 awaiting sentence for the attempted murder.

In June 2019 Judge Melanie Greally imposed a five-year sentence and suspended the final two and a half years for 15 years on strict conditions after Corbett pleaded guilty to assaulting causing harm to the nurse.

At a sentence hearing last month Judge Greally heard that Corbett tried to attack a prison officer with a handmade improvised weapon, known as a shiv, on October 19, 2020. The shiv had been made using a toothbrush and a blade.

Corbett, previously from Raheny, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to assaulting the officer causing him harm and production of a weapon at Mountjoy prison. He has seven previous convictions in total.

Judge Greally said the aggravating factors included the fact the offence was perpetrated against the victim in the course of his work and there was an element of premeditation in that he had fabricated a shiv a number of days in advance.

Passing sentence on March 14 She noted the prion officer had been capable of fending him off to some extent and the injuries were not particularly serious, but that there had been adverse effects to the victim's emotional and mental well being. He said the injured party had revaluated his role as a prison officer after the offence.

She said Corbett had a number of highly relevant previous convictions and was at very high risk of reoffending.

She took into account a psychiatric report setting out his history and diagnosis. She noted he was co-operative, made admissions and there appeared to be some remorse.

Judge Greally imposed a 30 month jail term to be consecutive to the six years he is currently serving for the attempted murder. She suspended the final 12 months for five years.

The conditions of the suspension include 15 years post release supervision, weekly signing on at a garda station for five years, taking all prescribed medication, refraining from illicit substances and engaging in supports for his mental health.

At the previous sentence hearing last month Mark Lynam BL, defending, said his client suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and was quite unwell.

He said his client had been assessed the day after assaulting the prison officer and admitted that he had not been taking his medication for a week. He was suffering with auditory hallucinations, which counsel submitted was consistent with symptoms during previous relapses.

Mr Lynam accepted that it is a serious situation because if Corbett is not taking his medication, he is a risk to the public. He said that his client had previously been diagnosed with anti-social personality disorder and that when he is mentally unwell, he poses a risk to people.

Counsel reminded Judge Greally that in the previous sentence hearing in relation to the assault on the psychiatric nurse, medical reports concluded that it was not safe for Corbett to live at home with his mother.

However, Mr Lynam told the judge that Corbetts mental health begins to improve again when he takes his medication.

Garda Aoife Scully told Elva Duffy BL, prosecuting, that a prison officer had accompanied Corbett to the library in the prison on October 19, 2020. He had noticed that Corbett was agitated in the moments beforehand but he agreed to bring him to the library after Corbett asked to be brought there.

The officer opened the door and let Corbett in, while standing back himself to allow the prisoner browse the books.

Corbett asked the officer to pick a book out for him but when the man came forward, he grabbed him by the chest while holding the shiv in his other hand. Corbett made a striking motion with the shiv but the officer managed to restrain him to prevent himself being injured.

Garda Scully said the officer hit his head off the door frame during the course of the struggle but he shouted for assistance and colleagues arrived to assist him.

The victim said Corbett was attempting to break free from him and stab him. He said he felt lucky that he had spotted the shiv in the early moments of the attack.

He felt it had been pre-meditated as Corbett had asked for a toothbrush earlier in the day and there were no CCTV cameras in the library.

Garda Scully said the prison officer took a week off work and attended his GP for pain to his head and shoulder. He was not in court for the sentence hearing.

In June 2019 when Judge Greally sentenced Corbett for attacking the psychiatric nurse she had imposed a number of conditions that Corbett had to abide by upon his ultimate release from custody.

These conditions include remaining under supervision of the Probation Service for the entire 15-year period and living at an address agreed with the gardai and Probation Service.

He was also ordered to partake in pre-release planning, engage with appropriate services in the community, take prescribed medication, attend all appointments and refrain from the use of illicit substances.
A Laois medical student and four classmates have raised almost 4000 for Domestic Abuse Support, by doing Freezebury for the month of February.

Christopher Carew, 22, from Portlaoise is studying Medicine in University College Dublin.

The chilly challenge involved swimming in the Dublin sea every day in the month of February, building from one minute on February 1st to 28 minutes on February 28th.

It was all to aid Aoibhneas Domestic Abuse Support and with his friends Conor Gleeson, Jack Quinlan, Emmett Browne and Padraic Cagney, Chris has so far reached 3,905.

Experienced competitive swimmer Christopher told the Leinster Express how it went.

"At the start it was mentally tough to bring ourselves to get into the water in the cold weather, as the swims started getting longer it physically got a lot more difficult, the five of us really needed to dig deep and support each other to get through the 20+ minute long swims.

"It genuinely felt like my mind and body were starting to shut down with the cold after some of the swims," he said.

"Aoibhneas is a charity that does a lot of great work with women and children whove been the victims of domestic abuse, and as a reasonably small charity they dont get a huge amount of recognition or exposure. I noticed this during the month as a lot of people we spoke to hadnt heard of the charity.

"Through the media we were aware that there was a 43% increase in reports of domestic violence during the pandemic. We had also raised money for them late last year as part of UCD Med Week.

"A massive thanks to everyone who donated, we were blown away by the response and have raised much more than wed initially hoped. And donations are still open and appreciated," Christopher added.

See the link below story.

Meanwhile the high achieving Laois student has also received a prestigious university award for academic excellence.

Christopher was presented with his award by UCD President Andrew Deeks, at OReilly hall this March.

Pictured below with parents Tim and Martina.

The University Scholarship Award was for the highest GPA attained in Stage 3 Medicine. Benefits include bursary, recognition certificate and achievement recorded on academic transcript.

Presenting the award, in his last official role at the University, Professor Deeks said As winners you are the standard bearers of excellence, the highflyers of our student community. You have distinguished yourselves by your performance and outstanding achievements.

A past pupil of Mountrath Community School, Chris is a previous recipient of this award as well as the Catholic University Award Medal and the Molloy Chemistry Medal. He is already an Adastra scholar at the university.

Earlier this year he was selected to represent UCD at the prestigious Dr HH Stewart Medical Awards in three categories- Anatomy, Physiology and Biochemistry.

Christopher is also a competitive swimmer and swims for UCD.

Donate to Freezebury here.
Page Content

Ministry of Finance reiterates the importance of paying vehicle tax as well as the convenience of online payments.





The 2022 license plates were delivered to the staff of the Receivers Office, who have been working since Tuesday, March 8, to organize the plates for public distribution. There have been 33,762 sets of plates and 900 motorbike plates ordered for this year.





As of Monday, March 14, the public can pick up license plates at the old Receivers Building across from the new Government Administration Building. Although the February 28, deadline has passed, the Ministry of Finance urges the public who have not made payments for the 2022 vehicle (road) tax to please do so as soon as possible. Unpaid existing plate numbers will also be reassigned on Monday, March 14.





The public can make use of the in-person payments at the Receivers Office located at the Government Administration Building. Since January 2022, it has been possible to utilize online payments with a credit and/or debit card; this does not include Maestro cards. Bank transfers are also available, when using bank transfer be sure to mention your plate number in the reference box.





So far, over 1000 persons have made use of the online payment portal. Visit services.sintmaartengov.org for online payments. For banking information on rates regarding bank transfers and tariffs, please visit the governments website Services Page and the official Facebook Page.





Individuals are only allowed to pay for a total of 3 road tax packages at a time, unless part of a fleet of cars owned by a business. The following are necessary to present when updating your vehicle (road) tax:





 Valid insurance card

 Valid inspection card

 A bill of sale, if the vehicle was purchased recently





The business community and other organizations are requested to submit a copy of the above documents, complete with proof of payment, which can be dropped off in the Receivers Drop Box located at the Government Administration Building. Please ensure your documents are in a sealed envelope with your company/organization name and contact number.
The Irish national anthem played in the Chilean capital of Santiago this weekend to honour the Irish roots of one of the founding fathers of the country.

Tanaiste Leo Varadkar laid a wreath at the base of a monument dedicated to revolutionary Bernardo O'Higgins on Saturday (March 12) as Amhran na bhFiann played in the Capital.

The son of Viceroy Ambrosio O'Higgins, Bernardo became the first Chilean Head of State after commanding military forces that won independence from Spain.

The Tanaiste attended as part of the government's St Patricks Day programme of ministerial overseas missions.

Amhran na bhFiannn played this morning in the centre of Santiago, where An Tanaiste @LeoVaradkar had the honour of laying a wreath at the monument to Chiles founding father Bernardo OHiggins. pic.twitter.com/FIk8qoNV3U  Embassy of Ireland (@IrlEmbChile) March 12, 2022

During the trip, Varadkar attended the inauguration of Chile's new president, Gabriel Boric, which he said he was "honoured" to do.

Chile is considered an important market for Irish companies, particularly in areas such as fintech and renewable energy, with 136 million worth of goods and 550 million in services exchanged between the country and Ireland every year.

In a statement, Varadkar said, "This trip is about deepening the relationship between our two countries, which is something weve committed to as Government. There are huge opportunities for both sides in strengthening links between Ireland and Chile, and indeed with the wider Latin American region."

As part of his duties, Mr Varadkar opened the new Irish embassy in Santiago. He also visited a number of Irish businesses operating in Chile including the new Irish-Chilean Chamber of Commerce.
Newbridge Silverware has released an update regarding a fire that broke out on its premises last Friday.

Three fire brigade units, and a garda car were on site on March 11 at around 9pm, along with a Kildare Fire Service van.

A member of the Fire Service at the scene told the Leinster Leader at the time that the situation is believed to have arisen from an electrical fault, and that no major damage or injuries were reported.

Commenting on the incident, Newbridge Silverware said on its official Facebook page: "Due to a small fire, our restaurant is temporarily closed.

"Our Showrooms and Museum of Style Icons remain open and we look forward to welcoming you!"



The business added that its restaurant will reopen on Wednesday.

A large volume of comments showing support have been left on the social media post: among them was Kildare Fianna Fail Senator Fiona O' Loughlin, who said: "So sorry to hear - but great that no one was hurt, and that the restaurant will reopen on Wednesday."

The Newbridge Silverware facility at Military Road is home to the long-established silverware works, along with a sales showroom, cafe and the renowned Museum of Style Icons, which houses a collection of Hollywood memorabilia.

It is one of County Kildare's top tourist attractions, as well as a large employer in the area.
Award-winning Irish actor Barry Keoghan is launching the new Aladina Studios at Barretstown, the childrens charity that offers free, specially designed camps and programmes for children and their families living with serious illness.

The new facility consists of two fully equipped studios with lighting, sound, green screens, props room and a control room and will serve two distinct purposes - a base from which Barretstown will broadcast its virtual camp programme, Barretstown Live, into the homes of children who cannot come to camp due to the complexity of their medical needs or diagnosis, as well as providing an exciting new activity space for the children and families who will attend Barretstowns therapeutic programmes at their site in Co. Kildare.

Funded by the Aladina Foundation, the new studios will help Barretstown reach more immuno-compromised children. The studios were officially launched by new Barretstown Ambassador, Irish actor, Barry Keoghan.

Speaking about the studio launch, Barry said: Acting has always been an outlet for me, and I love it - which is why Im so proud to come on board as an ambassador for Barretstown and to be a part of this incredible new studio launch. The studio will allow Barretstown children the same opportunity to express themselves creatively and have some really great fun doing it. And I hope to be back to give a few acting lessons, so we continue to bring Irish talent to the global stage.

To mark the launch, the latest Marvel adventure Eternals, starring Barry Keoghan, will be screened at the new studios to Barretstown campers.

Speaking about the launch, Dee Ahearn, Chief Executive at Barretstown, said: Due to the Covid-19 crisis, Barretstown had to shut its gates and begin delivering a virtual camp experience to our families from two temporary studios we put in place in March 2020. This allowed Barretstown to continue to serve our children and their families, during a time when they were more isolated than ever before. One benefit from the experience was that our virtual programmes are now reaching children who would otherwise not be able to come to camp because of their diagnosis or complex medical needs. This led us to recognise the value of continuing to deliver programmes virtually to this new audience in a new purpose build space, as well as providing an exciting new activity space for the thousands of children and family members due to come to Barretstown this year.

The Aladina Foundation, who have partnered with Barretstown since 2006 to fund Spanish children to attend Barretstowns unique therapeutic programmes have funded the majority of the project. Barretstown has also received a grant from the RTE Comic Relief fund which has funding the purchase of the technical equipment.

Speaking about the new studio complex Paco Arango, Founder of The Aladina Foundation, said: "Aladina has worked closely and supported Barretstown for many years. As a Director and Producer of films, it is with great pride that we now provide the camp with the Aladina Studios. A place where kids can learn and fully indulge in the field of the visual arts. Some more terrific serious fun!

For more information, visit www.barretstown.org
Nomad Theatre Network and Livin Dred Theatre present a re-imagined production of the well-loved Irish play, Tarry Flynn, comes to the Riverbank Arts Centre, Newbridge. The shows will be on March 15 and 16 at 8pm with further details on www.riverbank.ie

Set in 1930s Cavan, Tarry Flynn tells the hilarious story of the farmer, poet and lover-from-afar, and his quest for big fields, young women and the meaning of life. Tarrys adventures uncover the beauty in every aspect of nature and farm life, while he seeks to keep up his desperate campaign to woo the local girls. Or at least have a roll in the hay!

One of Irelands most-loved poets, Patrick Kavanaghs novel Tarry Flynn is hugely popular with Irish audiences, with its themes of sexual politics, isolation, poetry, farming, and our relationship with the land.

With a large-scale cast, Kavanagh's seminal work, adapted for stage by Conall Morrison, is given dynamic new life under the direction of award-winning Aaron Monaghan, in an ambitious, imaginative and highly-physicalised staging, with actors playing a multitude of characters  and animals - throughout.

The hilarious and energetic new production of Tarry Flynn promises to be one of the theatrical highlights of the year.

Cast:

Colin Campbell  Tarry

Niamh McGrath  Mother

Alexandra Conlon  Bridie

Sarah Madigan  Mary

Megan McDonnell  May

Bryan Burroughs  Petey

Manus Halligan  Eusebius

Matthew Malone  Fr Daly

Seamus ORourke  Joe Finnegan

This production continues the close-knit relationship which NOMAD and Livin Dred have cultivated over the years, capitalising on a highly successful and fruitful partnership. NOMAD Theatre Network was set up in January 2006 to further the development of the performing arts in the North Midlands region and extend the parameters of regional, national and international performances available to venues and their audiences.

The network has produced a host of high quality theatre productions including The Dead School by Pat McCabe directed by Padraic McIntyre/Livin Dred and The Far Off Hills by Lennox Robinson directed by Mikel Murfi. It collaborated with Teac Damsa in 2018 to bring their seminal work Swan Lake: Lock na hEala on tour nationally also.

Over the past seventeen years Livin Dred Theatre has established itself as one of the most important and well-known independent theatre companies in Ireland. Tarry Flynn follows up on the companies recent smash-hit successes, which include a highly-acclaimed run of Danti-Dan by Gina Moxley, and a sell-out tour of Trad by Mark Doherty which was seen by over 3600 people nationally.

Aaron Monaghans work to date as both an actor and director has garnered him huge respect with audiences throughout the country. Aaron says that Tarry Flynn is the book that he picks up and reads a few chapters of most often. Maybe it's because I'm from Cavan and it's set there, but I feel deeply connected to the book. Kavanagh makes you laugh your face off in one paragraph and punches you in the stomach with the tragedy of the next one. The great un-heroic Irish hero.

At once heart-breaking & hilarious, dont miss this joyful, earthy, imaginative, energetic & beautiful production which has been described as a love-letter to life in rural Ireland.

Tarry Flynn will tour to Nomad Theatre Network venues: Townhall, Cavan; An Grianan, Letterkenny; Mullingar Arts Centre, Droichead Arts Centre, Drogheda; Hawks Well Theatre, Sligo; Roscommon Arts Centre; Riverbank Arts Centre, Newbridge, Backstage Theatre in Longford and also to Pavilion Theatre, Dun Laoghaire throughout March/April 2022.
Last Sunday, 100 Cannonball super cars were on display at Kildare Village before the gleaming convoy set off on a road-trip to Lismore Castle in Waterford taking in the famous V Drive and a pitstop at CircleK Cashel.

The spectacular line-up of rare cars included a rare Ford GT Carbon Series, the only one in Ireland, as well as firm favourites SLR McLaren, Lamborghini Aventador, Ferrari, Aston Martin, Porsche GT3 RS, Maserati, Bentley, a BMW M8 Competition, an interesting selection of EV cars and much more.

The cars were on display in the new Kildare Village car park from 9am to 11.30am and spectators, families and children could get up close, meet the drivers and take pictures.

Cannonball Ireland is the most unique supercar fraternity in the world and the largest organised road-trip in Europe with 190 of the finest supercars on the planet. Think luxury, unforgettable experiences, breath-taking drives, incredible cars and, of course, those random funny and candid moments that make Cannonball so unique. To date the event has raised over 1,266,000 for Irish charities.

Cannonball was founded by Kildare businessman Alan Bannon in 2008 and now the event is the largest organised road trip in Europe. Cannonball is already on a roll this year with the best ever itinerary of road-trips planned for 2022.

From the majestic castles on the Grand Highlands Tour to the all-new Retro Cannonball and 4x4 event in Ireland to the widely anticipated main event next September, this supercar story, that originated in Ireland, shows no signs of slowing down.
A Donegal priest said he got a thrill out of seeing a lorry drive into the gates of the Russian embassy this week.

Buncrana-based priest Fr John Walsh told parishioners that he wouldnt have minded being in the truck.

Desmond Wisley, a 49-year-old whose business provides ecclesiastical products, appeared in court on Tuesday charged with dangerous driving and criminal damage.

His actions, which he said were an attempt to force out the Russian Ambassador, were supported by Fr Walsh.

We live in absolutely wretched times, but I got a bit of a thrill when I saw Wiselys lorry being backed through the gates of the Russian embassy, Fr Walsh said.

Wiselys lorry is here in Buncrana once a month. It delivers ecclesiastical goods to us, for example the hosts used in Mass.

Fr Walsh told how, in February 1972, he was in Dublin on the day the British embassy was burned, three days after the Bloody Sunday massacre.

Fr Walsh said: I have no regrets about that. I was talking to my brother-in-law, who was unknown to me because I didnt know him at that time, and he was also present and he had no regrets. I wouldnt have minded to have been in the cab of Wiselys lorry when it went through those gates.

After a brief appearance in court, Wisley issued a statement in which he spoke about the Russian Ambassador to Ireland, Yury Filatov.

Wisley said: If he is going to continue spreading lies about the war and not tell Putin that enough is enough and to stop the war for the sake of the children, then I ask the Irish Government to expel the ambassador and his staff back to Russia."
Sinn Fein MEP, Chris MacManus, has called for every effort to be made to assist the undocumented Irish in the United States through effective immigration reform. The Midlands Northwest representative reasons that the undocumented Irish have contributed positively to American society and should be allowed to travel between Ireland and the US.

MacManus recently met with Cllr Michael McMahon, a campaigner for the undocumented Irish in America who has first-hand family experience regarding the issue.

MEP MacManus said: "Since its inception the United States has offered hope and succour to generations of Irish people fleeing from poverty, famine and repression. Many of them have made considerable contributions to their adopted country.

The undocumented Irish contribute positively to American society and all they want to do is live a full life paying their taxes, and be able to travel between Ireland and the US without fear of losing their jobs. Their undocumented status means that when faced with a family crisis, like a bereavement, or a more joyous family occasion like a christening or a wedding, they are not able to travel home without fear of being unable to return.

As a result the undocumented Irish feel isolated, forgotten and left behind. Most of them have not been able to come home for over 20 years.

The Sinn Fein MEP said: As one who is deeply proud of his Irish roots, and who himself is a descendant of Irish emigrants to America, there is hope that President Biden would look favourably on the plight of the undocumented Irish in the United States.

I believe that we can look forward with more optimism than we have felt for quite some time. It is essential that every effort is made as time is ticking on for many of the undocumented and we need urgency to address this issue.
THE UL Hospitals Group has announced the partial reintroduction of inpatient visiting at University Hospital Limerick with immediate effect.

Scheduled visiting slots (one visitor per patient), in line with national guidance on infection prevention, are now available on all wards apart from 1B, 1D and Trauma, and must be booked through the online booking system.

Restrictions remain in place on Wards 1B, 1D and Trauma for now but updates will be available on the booking system.

"We regret that visiting restrictions remain in place on those wards. The decision has been taken to help keep all patients and staff safe, and to ensure that the hospitals essential services can remain open at this time. The decision is being reviewed daily, and the affected wards will be opened as soon as it is safe to do so," said a spokesperson for UL Hospitals.

For those who are visiting patients in other areas of the hospital, visiting hours are between 2pm and 4pm each afternoon and from 6pm to 9pm every evening.

Visiting update



VISITING on inpatient wards in University Hospital Limerick is being gradually restored from today, Monday, March 14th, with the exception of 1B, 1D, and the Trauma Ward, which remain under outbreak management for now.



1/4

Full details in media release  pic.twitter.com/BMUP2hsebO  UL Hospitals (@ULHospitals) March 14, 2022

Visitors are being advised they will have to wear a face mask, which are available at the hospital entrance, and observe hand hygiene and complete a Covid-19 questionnaire. Anyone who is feeling unwell is asked not to visit the hospital.

Members of the public attending UHL are being advised that visiting restrictions remain in place for the Emergency Department, Acute Surgical Assessment Unit and the Acute Medical Assessment Unit.

The only exceptions are:

 parents visiting children in hospital

 people assisting confused patients (for example, dementia)

 visiting on compassionate grounds

In cases where exemptions apply, it is strongly recommend that visitors are fully vaccinated against Covid-19 before coming to the hospital. UL Hospitals is also advising that people should not visit relatives or loved ones outdoors in the grounds of the hospital, as this can also present a Covid-19 transmission risk.
22 LIMERICK schools are set to benefit from the major expansion of DEIS  Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools programme.

Schools in the DEIS programme avail of a range of targeted supports aimed at tackling educational disadvantage, including additional classroom teaching posts, home school community liaison coordinator posts, DEIS grant funding and access to the School Completion Programme.

The Limerick primary schools to be included are: Scoil Naisiunta Loch Guir, Croom N.S., Church Street N.S., Fedamore N.S., Kilmeedy N.S., Scoil na Naoinean, Scoil Tobar Padraig, Scoil Cnoc Loinge B, Scoil Naomh Mhuire National School, Askeaton Senior N.S., Scoil Chaitriona, St. Josephs Convent, Abbeyfeale Boys National School.

Also inclided are: Convent of Mercy N.S., Scoil O Curain B, Scoil Mocheallog, Scoil Padraig Naofa B, Scoil Padraig Naofa C, Scoil Chriost Ri B, Scoil Naisiunta Muire na hEireann and St. Brigids N.S.

St Clements College is also included as part of the expansion announcement.

The Department of Education will work with the schools that will benefit from the programme to support them to make the transition.

Information sessions will be held for schools in the coming weeks on the DEIS programme, what supports will be available to schools and to support them in planning for improvement.

Fianna Fail TD for Limerick County, Minister Niall Collins welcomed the news saying: "I am delighted to see 22 Limerick schools being included in this announcement. It is the largest-ever single investment in the DEIS programme.

"The DEIS programme is an internationally recognised, proven programme that provides targeted resources to schools with the highest levels of concentrated educational disadvantage to support their students to have an equal opportunity to achieve their potential in education.

"The expansion of the DEIS programme demonstrates our commitment to inclusive education and supporting students facing disadvantage. I am pleased that we can provide additional supports to those schools and communities that need it most."
A SPECIAL presentation to acknowledge a scholarship programme established in honour of Analog Devices late chief technology officer Peter Real has taken place.

Since 2020, staff at the Raheen-based semi-conductor manufacturer have teamed up with the University of Limerick (UL) to offer six American students scholarships to pursue undergraduate degrees at the college.

This year's awards were attended by Peter's wife Marian and his daughter Una, with Analog's president and chief executive Vincent Roche joined Kerstin Mey in presenting sculptures to the students.

Peter Real enjoyed a successful engineering career working for Analog in both Ireland and the USA.

He was, in 2019, recognised following his passing at UL's annual alumni awards for his outstanding contributions to science and technology.

Speaking at the presentation, Mr Roche said: "Peter was an engineering industry giant who made an incredible contribution to our company, to industry and to so many engineering and business leaders in Ireland and the US. Meeting Peters family and the students who have benefited from the Scholarship program today is especially rewarding as we witness how his legacy lives on."

UL President Professor Kerstin Mey said Analog Devices and the University of Limerick have a long established history of collaboration that dates back to the 1970s. We are touched and delighted that the company has chosen to remember Peter, who was a graduate and friend of UL, with this very special initiative.

Una Real, daughter of Peter added: "My Dad was one of the smartest people but he was always eager to learn more. He was passionate about education and learning, no matter what the subject. Im envious of you starting on your college journey and I know he would be too."

The recipients of this year's scholarships hail from the American states of Michigan, California, Ohio and Boston and are pursuing a variety of degrees including bachelor of science in biological and chemical sciences and bachelor of science in environmental science.
JAKARTA, March 14 (Xinhua) -- A 6.9-magnitude earthquake jolted Indonesia's western province of North Sumatra early Monday, but no immediate report of damage or casualty was issued, an agency and officials said.

The quake triggered no tsunami, the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency said.

The quake struck at 4:09 a.m. Jakarta time on Monday, with the epicenter at 161 km southeast of Nias Selatan district and the depth at 25 km under the seabed, the agency said.

A 6.0 magnitude aftershock followed the main quake at 4:38 a.m. Jakarta time Monday, it said.

The jolts were also felt in nearby provinces of West Sumatra and Jambi, according to the agency.

In North Sumatra province, the intensity of the quake was felt at IV MMI (Modified Mercalli Intensity) in Nias Selatan district and Gunungsitoli town, it added.

In West Sumatra province, the intensity was felt at IV MMI in the provincial capital of Padang, Siberut island, and III MMI in Padang Panjang town, Bukit Tinggi town, Pasaman Barat district, Pasaman district and Tua Pejat village in Mentawai Island district, the agency further said.

The jolts were only felt at II MMI in Jambi province's Kerinci district, it added.

Two senior officials of the local disaster agency and local search and rescue office confirmed that there were no immediate report of damage or casualty triggered by the tremors.

"The jolts were felt, but so far, there are no reports of buildings or houses destroyed or those injured. However, we still monitor the risks of the quake," Agus Wibisono, head of the Search and Rescue Office for Nias Island, where Nias Selatan and Gunungsitoli are situated, told Xinhua by phone.

Similarly, the Head of the Operation Unit of the Disaster Management and Mitigation Agency of West Sumatra province, Jumaidi, told Xinhua by phone that there was no immediate report of casualty or damage in the province triggered by the tremors.

"In Padang city, Siberut and others, there are no damages. However, we are still monitoring the situation," the official said. 
Page Content

The Trust Fund Steering Committee (SC) meeting commenced on Monday, March 7, 2022, with the Prime Minister of St. Maarten, Honorable Silveria E. Jacobs present with the team of the National Recovery Program Bureau (NRPB) team for the first physical meeting at the World Bank main office in Washington D.C., since the start of the pandemic in March 2020.





Present at the SC meeting was the St. Maarten Steering Committee member Mr. Marcel Gumbs, World Bank Country Director for Latin America and the Caribbean Ms. Lilia Burunciuc, Director of the NRPB Mr. Claret Connor, and the NRPB technical team. Dutch Steering Committee member Frans Weekers attended the meetings virtually due to unavoidable circumstances. The St. Maarten delegation also included management and key technical staff working diligently to ensure the to-be discussed projects were properly prepared, in conjunction with the technical staff of the bank.





Although quite busy, Mr. Koen Davidse, the World Bank Executive Director whose portfolio includes several countries amongst others, the Netherlands and Ukraine, also took time for a one on one meeting with Prime Minister Jacobs before attending the opening of the meeting on Monday.





The various topics up for discussion were the allocation of the additional financing Emergency Recovery Project 1 (for sport facilities, school gyms and new MET Office) and the additional financing for the Emergency Debris Management Project, the formalization of the potential housing project, and the potential waste water project.





The second day of meetings on Tuesday was intense with deliberations on the possibilities by the technical teams with the St. Maarten and Dutch Steering committee members aimed at coming to a consensus on the way forward with the projects, taking into account feasibility, availability of needed funds and realistic timelines and the current situation and challenges with deliveries around the world.





Prime Minister Jacobs also joined the technical team on a tour of a DC housing project which utilized public land, and multi-layered investment constructs which ensured a mixed housing inventory catering to all income levels. Within the project, the possibilities exist for townhomes and apartment buildings for purchase, rent at market value or subsidized rental. The inclusion of key amenities such as parking, community centers, schools, churches, small businesses and supermarkets were all part of the planning and execution of this project.





On Wednesday, the SC meetings culminated with decision making in the Steering committee, which saw the confirmation and support of the proposals brought forth by St. Maarten and supported by the World Bank, resulting in a consensus for the continued implementation of the current projects, as well as preparation of the projects above for which needed funding had been set aside in 2021.





Prime Minister Jacobs would like to thank all stakeholders in the Steering Committee, especially the dedicated technical teams of St. Maarten and the World Bank for all the preparation that went into making this weeks series of meetings of the SC a successful one which would have a positive impact on the island for years to come.
CHARLIE Bird has revealed the first candle he lights when he reaches the Croagh Patrick summit as part of his upcoming challenge will be for Vicky Phelan.

It comes after the cervical check campaigner revealed she has made the difficult decision to pull out of attending the Climb with Charlie event next month, following complications related to her radiotherapy.

In a video posted on Twitter, Charlie  whose event will raise money for the Irish Motor Neurone Disease Association and Pieta  said: Vicky, I am thinking of you and I know I am speaking for so many people around the country as well. We are all extending the hand of love and friendship to you.

He outlined how he will light four more candles at the top of the Mayo peak  one for everyone with a terminal illness, a third for those who climb their own mountain daily, another offering the extended hand of friendship, and a final one to act as a beacon of hope for the people of Ukraine, under siege from Russian forces.

Vicky I am thinking of you and I know I am speaking for so many people around the country as well. We are all extending the hand of love and friendship to you. pic.twitter.com/2QapiQpLov  Charlie Bird (@charliebird49) March 8, 2022

Charlie and Vicky became great friends after appearing on the Late Late Show together, and the Annacotty-based mum-of-two pledged to attend the Climb for Charlie event following an episode of the show in January.

However, she revealed last week shes taken a decision to pull back to spend time with her family.

In a post to her more than 130,000 Instagram followers, Vicky admitted that following her latest round of treatment, she has never felt so sick or in as much pain as she has been over the last fortnight.

Vicky received the Freedom of Limerick last month, the top civic honour across the city and county.
HOUSING and homeless charity the Peter McVerry Trust has held a business breakfast where it announced it plans to increase its housing stock locally.

The trust, which works with the local authority to build social housing, has been active in Limerick since 2016. It held its first local business breakfast in two years this Monday, with senior Limerick hurling manager John Kiely the guest speaker.

Continue reading below or click 'Next' for more photos

The charity's chief executive Pat Doyle said: "We are investing more in Limerick and have recently agreed to increase the office space on OConnell Street to facilitate the increased staff numbers. We are also progressing a number of important social housing projects, all of which are regenerating vacant buildings or infill sites."

Mr Doyle added that the Limerick projects are not just in the city but also in areas such as Askeaton and Newcastle West.

"This points to a significant investment by Peter McVerry Trust to Limerick and to helping tackle homelessness in the county as we work alongside Pat Daly (CEO of Limerick City and County Council) and his team in the Council," added Mr Doyle.

A release from the charity did not reveal specific numbers relating to the above commentary. More than 200 people attended the business breakfast which was hosted by the Castletroy Park Hotel.

A very successful Business Breakfast in Limerick today. Thank you to our attendees, John Kiely, @CastletroyPark and Pat McDonagh of @SupermacsIRE & @SoHotelsIreland for sponsoring the event - ensuring all the funds raised go directly into helping people impacted by homelessness. pic.twitter.com/dfCStHduGy  Peter McVerry Trust (@PMVTrust) March 14, 2022

Businessman Pat McDonagh, who owns the hotel said: "Both myself, [my wife] Una and the team at the Castletroy Park Hotel are delighted to be able to support the Peter McVerry Trust Business Breakfast again this year. We have been supporting the work of the Trust since they began in Limerick in 2016 and this is our 4th year hosting the fundraiser. It is hugely important, now more than ever, to support the great work that Fr Peter and his team are doing. We are particularly pleased to hear that the trust will be extending its facilities in Limerick city and county."
Please allow ads as they help fund our trusted local news content.

Kindly add us to your ad blocker whitelist.

If you want further access to Ireland's best local journalism, consider contributing and/or subscribing to our free daily Newsletter .

Support our mission and join our community now.
Thank you!

As our thanks for being a loyal subscriber, you have been upgraded to our premium service AT NO ADDITIONAL CHARGE! You'll enjoy AD-FREE access to our site as long as you are a paid subscriber. ENJOY!
La femme enceinte transportee sur une civiere apres que les forces russes ont frappe le 9 mars dernier une maternite de Marioupol est decedee. Lenfant na egalement pas survecu, selon lagence Associated Press.

Les images de patients fuyant lhopital pour enfants de Marioupol ou transportes sur des civieres apres les frappes aeriennes russes ont ete diffusees dans le monde entier le 9 mars dernier.

AP images of a pregnant woman being rushed to an ambulance after Russia bombed a maternity hospital in Mariupol where she was meant to give birth shocked the world. @AP has learned that the woman and her baby have died.https://t.co/yZPZwgbLz8  The Associated Press (@AP) March 14, 2022

Sur un cliche pris par un photographe de l'agence americaine Associated Press, une femme enceinte, apparemment blessee, est transportee sur une civiere par plusieurs hommes apres le bombardement d'une maternite de Marioupol.

La Russie avait crie a la fake news dans un tweet publie par son ambassade au Royaume-Uni.

Toujours est-il que selon l'agence AP, La femme enceinte representee sur une civiere apres que les forces russes ont frappe le 9 mars dernier une maternite de Marioupol est decedee. Lenfant na egalement pas survecu, selon la photographe de lagence Associated Press qui a pris le cliche.
The Indian Army's Military Engineering Services (MES) has constructed two houses using the 3D printing technology. That's right! 3D houses have come out of viral videos on social media and now are a reality.

The houses were created using 3D Rapid Construction Technology, an official release confirmed. These digitally constructed houses are a first of its kind structure in India created by the South-Western Air Command in Gandhinagar.

These houses were created in a time period of four weeks.

See the process of construction here

#WATCH how the Indian Armys Military Engineering Services constructed two houses within four weeks using the 3D Printing Technology in construction.



(Source: Indian Army) pic.twitter.com/bMf3G3aO01  ANI (@ANI) March 14, 2022

The defence forces confirmed that these 3D printed houses are parabolic to the modern-day rapid construction efforts to cater faster to the growing accommodation requirements of the Indian Armed Forces.

These structures also stand testament for the solidarity of the Indian Armed Forces in fostering home-grown technologies that are focused on indigenization of Defense technologies, as a part of Atmanirbhar Bharat," the statement read.

View Full Image 3D printed house built by Indian Army's MES in Gandhinagar.

These houses have been constructed in collaboration with Chennai based startup Tvasta. Each house built area of around 700 square feet. The disaster-resilient structures are in compliance with Zone-3 earthquake specifications.

Earlier the MES had constructed Indias first 3D Printed sanitary blocks with a total built area of about 600 sq ft at Jaisalmer, marking a new beginning for the possibilities of Construction 3D printing in Defense applications.

The chief engineer involved in the construction had visited a number of stations during his tenure and observed that the long gestation period for ensuring housing for soldiers needed immediate attention. He surmised that adaptation of rapid construction technologies was the need of the hour and saw an effective solution in 3-D concrete printing, which can be effectively adapted within available spaces to meet the minimal urgent requirements of such housing.
A barrage of Russian missiles hit a large Ukrainian base near the border with NATO member Poland on Sunday, killing 35 people and wounding 134, a local official said, in an escalation of the war to the west of the country as fighting raged elsewhere.

Russia's defence ministry said the air strike had destroyed a large amount of weapons supplied by foreign nations that were being stored at the sprawling training facility, and that it had killed "up to 180 foreign mercenaries".

Reuters could not independently verify the casualties reported by either side.

The attack on the Yavoriv International Centre for Peacekeeping and Security, a base just 15 miles (25 km) from the Polish border that has previously hosted NATO military instructors, brought the conflict to the doorstep of the Western defence alliance.

Russia had warned on Saturday that convoys of Western arms shipments to Ukraine could be considered legitimate targets.

Britain called the attack as a "significant escalation," and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken responded with a post on Twitter saying "the brutality must stop."

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan, speaking on CBS's "Face the Nation", warned that any attack on NATO territory would trigger a full response by the alliance.

Regional governor Maksym Kozytskyy said Russian planes fired around 30 rockets at the Yavoriv facility and that some were intercepted. At least 35 people were killed and 134 wounded, he said.

Russian defence ministry spokesperson Igor Konashenkov said Russia had used high-precision, long-range weapons to strike Yavoriv and a separate facility in the village of Starichi.

"As a result of the strike, up to 180 foreign mercenaries and a large amount of foreign weapons were destroyed," he said.

The 360-square km (140-square mile) facility is one of Ukraine's biggest and is the largest in the western part of the country, which has so far been spared the worst of the fighting.

Ukraine, whose aspirations to join NATO are a major irritant to Russian President Vladimir Putin, held most of its drills with Western countries at the base before the invasion. The last major exercises were in September.

In the weeks before Russia's Feb. 24 invasion, the Ukrainian military trained there, but according to Ukrainian media all foreign instructors left in mid-February, leaving behind equipment.

"The dining room and dormitory were destroyed. So were the barracks," said Colonel Leonid Benzalo, an officer in the Ukrainian medical reserve who was thrown across the room by one of the blasts. "The most important thing is we're still alive," he told Reuters after treating the wounded there.

While Western nations have sought to isolate Putin by imposing harsh economic sanctions and have been supplying Ukraine with weapons, the United States and its allies are concerned to avoid NATO being drawn into the conflict.

"There are no NATO personnel in Ukraine," the NATO official said, when asked if anyone from the alliance was at the base.

STOCKPILING FOOD

Heavy fighting was reported on multiple fronts.

Air raid sirens wailed across the capital Kyiv and authorities said they were stockpiling two weeks worth of food items for the 2 million people who have not yet fled from Russian forces attempting to encircle the city.

Ukraine reported renewed air strikes on an airport in the west and heavy shelling on Chernihiv northeast of the capital.

Interior Ministry official Vadym Denyenko said Ukrainian forces were counterattacking in the eastern Kharkiv region and around the southern town of Mykolayiv. Reuters was not able to verify those statements.

An American journalist was shot and killed by Russian forces in the town of Irpin, northwest of Kyiv, and another journalist was wounded, the regional police chief said.

Britain's defence ministry said Russian naval forces had established a distant blockade of Ukraine's Black Sea coast, isolating the country from international maritime trade.

Despite the violence, both sides gave their most upbeat assessment yet of prospects for progress at talks held periodically.

"Russia is already beginning to talk constructively," Ukrainian negotiator Mykhailo Podolyak said in a video online. "I think that we will achieve some results literally in a matter of days."

A Russian delegate to talks, Leonid Slutsky, was quoted by RIA news agency as saying they had made significant progress and it was possible the delegations could soon reach draft agreements.

Neither side said what these would cover. Three rounds of talks between the two sides in Belarus, most recently last Monday, had focused mainly on humanitarian issues.

But there were contradictory statements on the timing of new discussions. Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych told national television "talks are continuing right now." Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov denied this, saying talks were planned for Monday via video link.

'VIOLENT AND INHUMAN'

In the weeks since the invasion began, Russia has asked China - which has not condemned the assault on Ukraine - for military equipment, the Financial Times and Washington Post cited unnamed U.S. officials as saying.

A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington said he had not heard of such a request and that the priority was to prevent the situation "from escalating or even getting out of control."

Russia's invasion has sent more than 2.5 million people fleeing across Ukraine's borders and trapped hundreds of thousands in besieged cities.

"It is terrifying how violent and inhuman it is," Olga, a refugee from Kyiv, told Reuters after crossing into Romania.

Ukraine's human rights monitor said Russia used phosphorous bombs in an overnight attack on the town of Popasna in the eastern Luhansk region, calling it a "war crime". She shared a photograph purporting to show the alleged attack. Reuters could not immediately verify any of the reports.

Phosphorus munitions can be used legally in war to provide light, create smokescreens or burn buildings. But its use in populated areas has been a persistent source of controversy.

In eastern Ukraine, Russian troops were trying to surround Ukrainian forces as they advance from the port of Mariupol in the south and the second city Kharkiv in the north, the British Defence Ministry said.

The city council in Mariupol said in a statement that 2,187 residents had been killed since the start of the invasion. Reuters was not able to verify that toll.

Kharkiv, Ukraine's second largest city, has suffered some of the heaviest bombardment. Videos from one resident, Teimur Aliev, showed bombed buildings lining streets, burned-out cars riddled with shrapnel holes and debris strewn around.

"We will stitch up the wounds and the pain of our country and our city," said Aliev, a 23-year-old musician. "We're not going anywhere."

In Chernihiv, northeast of Kyiv, firefighters rescued residents from a burning building after heavy shelling, video from emergency service - and verified by Reuters - showed.

Moscow denies targeting civilians. It blames Ukraine for failed attempts to evacuate civilians from encircled cities, an accusation Ukraine and its Western allies strongly reject.

Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said on national television that more than 140,000 people had been evacuated from conflict zones, but that a humanitarian convoy had been unable to reach Mariupol due to shelling.

The Kremlin describes its actions as a "special operation" to demilitarise and "deNazify" Ukraine. Ukraine and Western allies call this a baseless pretext for a war of choice.
LONDON : One of President Vladimir Putin 's closest allies said Russia's military operation in Ukraine had not all gone as quickly as the Kremlin had wanted, the strongest public acknowledgement yet from Moscow that things were not going to plan.

National Guard chief Viktor Zolotov, speaking at a church service led by Orthodox Patriarch Kirill on Sunday, blamed the slower than expected progress on what he said were far-right Ukrainian forces hiding behind civilians, an accusation repeatedly made by officials in Russia.

His comments appeared at odds with an assessment on Friday by Russia's Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu who told Putin that "everything is going according to plan".

"I would like to say that yes, not everything is going as fast as we would like," Zolotov, once in charge of Putin's personal security, said in comments posted on the National Guard's website.

"...But we are going towards our goal step by step and victory will be for us, and this icon will protect the Russian army and accelerate our victory."

The United States and its European allies have cast Putin's invasion as an imperial-style land grab that has so far been poorly executed because Moscow underestimated Ukrainian resistance and Western resolve to punish Russia.

Zolotov is a powerful security official who was once Putin's security chief.

He now heads the National Guard, a kind of internal military force that includes the riot police and other forces. It is subordinated directly to Putin and has forces deployed in Ukraine.
Here at Live Science, we love numbers. And on Pi Day  March 14, or 3/14  we love to celebrate the world's most famous irrational number , pi , whose first 10 digits are 3.141592653.

As the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, pi is not just irrational, meaning it can't be written as a simple fraction. It is also transcendental, meaning it's not the root, or solution, to any polynomial equation, such as x+2X^2+3 = 0.

Pi may be one of the best-known numbers, but for people who are paid to think about numbers all day long, the circle constant can be a bit of a bore. We asked several mathematicians to tell us their favorite non-pi numbers. Here are some of their answers.

Tau

(Image credit: Shutterstock)

You know what's cooler than one pie?  Two pies. In other words, two times pi, or the number "tau," which is roughly 6.28.

"Using tau makes every formula clearer and more logical than using pi," said John Baez, a mathematician at the University of California, Riverside. "Our focus on pi rather than 2pi is a historical accident."

Tau is what shows up in the most important formulas, he said.

While pi relates a circle's circumference to its diameter, tau relates a circle's circumference to its radius  and many mathematicians argue that this relationship is much more important. Tau also makes seemingly unrelated equations nicely symmetrical, such as the one for a circle's area and an equation describing kinetic and elastic energy.

But tau will not be forgotten on Pi Day! As per tradition, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will send out decisions at 6:28 p.m. today. A few months from now, on June 28, it will be Tau Day .

Natural log base

(Image credit: Shutterstock)

The base of natural logarithms  written as "e" for its namesake, the 18th-century Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler  may not be as famous as pi, but it also has its own holiday. So, while 3.14 is celebrated on March 14, natural log base  the irrational number beginning with 2.718  is lionized on Feb. 7.

The base of natural logarithms is most often used in equations involving logarithms, exponential growth and complex numbers.

"[It] has the wonderful definition as being the one number for which the exponential function y = e^x has a slope equal to its value at every point," Keith Devlin, director of the Stanford University Mathematics Outreach Project in the Graduate School of Education, told Live Science. In other words, if the value of a function is, say, 7.5 at a certain point, then its slope, or derivative, at that point is also 7.5. And, "like pi, it comes up all the time in mathematics , physics and engineering ," Devlin said.

Imaginary number i

(Image credit: Shutterstock)

Take the "p" out of "pi," and what do you get? That's right, the number i. No, that's not really how it works, but i is a pretty cool number. It's the square root of -1, which means it's a rule breaker, as you're not supposed to take the square root of a negative number.

"Yet, if we break that rule, we get to invent the imaginary numbers, and so the complex numbers, which are both beautiful and useful," Eugenia Cheng, a mathematician at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, told Live Science in an email. (Complex numbers can be expressed as the sum of both real and imaginary parts.)

The imaginary number i is an exceptionally weird number because -1 has two square roots: i and -i, Cheng said. "But we can't tell which one is which!" Mathematicians have to just pick one square root and call it i and the other -i.

"It's weird and wonderful," Cheng said.

i to the power of i

(Image credit: Shutterstock)

Believe it or not, there are ways to make i even weirder. For example, you can raise i to the power of i  in other words, take the square root of -1 raised to the square root of -1 power.

"At a glance, this looks like the most imaginary number possible  an imaginary number raised to an imaginary power," David Richeson, a professor of mathematics at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania and author of the book " Tales of Impossibility: The 2,000-Year Quest to Solve the Mathematical Problems of Antiquity " (Princeton University Press, 2019), told Live Science. "But, in fact, as Leonhard Euler wrote in a 1746 letter, it is a real number!"

Finding the value of i to the i power involves rearranging Euler's identity , a formula relating the irrational number e, the imaginary number i, and the sine and cosine of a given angle. When you solve the formula for a 90-degree angle (which can be expressed as pi over 2), you can simplify the equation to show that i to the power of i equals e raised to the power of negative pi over 2.

It sounds confusing (here's the full calculation, if you dare to read it), but the result equals roughly 0.207  a very real number . At least, in the case of a 90-degree angle.

"As Euler pointed out, i to the i power does not have a single value," Richeson said, but rather takes on "infinitely many" values depending on the angle you're solving for. (Because of this, it's unlikely we'll ever celebrate an "i to the power of i day.")

Belphegor's prime number

(Image credit: Louis Le Breton/Dictionnaire Infernal)

Belphegor's prime number is a palindromic prime number with a 666 hiding between 13 zeros and a 1 on each side. The ominous number can be abbreviated as 1 0(13) 666 0(13) 1, where the (13) denotes the number of zeros between the 1 and 666.

Although he didn't "discover" the number, scientist and author Cliff Pickover made the sinister-looking number famous when he named it after Belphegor (or Beelphegor), one of the seven demon princes of hell in the Bible.

The number apparently even has its own devilish symbol, which looks like an upside-down symbol for pi. According to Pickover's website, the symbol is derived from a glyph in the mysterious Voynich manuscript, an early-15th-century compilation of illustrations and text that no one seems to understand.

2^{aleph_0}

Harvard mathematician W. Hugh Woodin has devoted many years of research to infinite numbers. It's no surprise, then, that his favorite number is an infinite one: 2^{aleph_0}, or 2 raised to the power of aleph-naught, also called aleph-null. Aleph numbers are used to describe the sizes of infinite sets, where a set is any collection of distinct objects in mathematics. (So, for example, the numbers 2, 4 and 6 can form a set of size 3.)

As for why Woodin chose the number, he said, "Realizing that 2^{aleph_0} is not \aleph_0 (i.e., Cantor's theorem ) is the realization that there are different sizes of infinite. So that makes the conception of 2^{\aleph_0} rather special."

In other words, there's always something bigger: Infinite cardinal numbers are infinite, so there is no such thing as the "largest cardinal number."

Apery's constant

(Image credit: Ian Cuming/Getty Images)

Harvard mathematician Oliver Knill told Live Science his favorite number is the Apery's constant (zeta(3)), "because there is still some mystery associated with it." In 1979, French mathematician Roger Apery proved that a value that would come to be known as Apery's constant is an irrational number. (It begins with 1.2020569 and continues infinitely.) The constant is also written as zeta(3), where zeta(3) is the Riemann zeta function when you plug in the number 3.

One of the biggest outstanding problems in math, the Riemann hypothesis, makes a prediction about when the Riemann zeta function equals zero and, if proven, would allow mathematicians to better predict how the prime numbers are distributed.

Riemann's Zeta function. (Image credit: Furfur)

Of the Riemann hypothesis, renowned 20th-century mathematician David Hilbert once said, "If I were to awaken after having slept for a thousand years, my first question would be, ' Has the Riemann hypothesis been proven ?'"

So what's so cool about this constant? It turns out that Apery's constant shows up in fascinating places in physics, including in equations governing the electron's magnetism and orientation to its angular momentum.

The number 1

(Image credit: Shutterstock)

Ed Letzter, a mathematician at Temple University in Philadelphia (and father of former Live Science staff writer Rafi Letzter), had a practical answer:

"I suppose this is a boring answer, but I'd have to choose 1 as my favorite, both as a number and in its different roles in so many different more abstract contexts," he told Live Science.

One is the only number by which all other numbers divide into integers. It's the only number divisible by exactly one positive integer (itself, 1). It's the only positive integer that's neither prime nor composite.

In both math and engineering, values are often represented as between 0 and 1. "One hundred percent" is just a fancy way of saying 1. It's whole and complete.

And, of course, throughout the sciences, 1 is used to represent basic units. A single proton is said to have a charge of +1. In binary logic, 1 means yes. It's the atomic number of the lightest element, and it's the dimension of a straight line.

Euler's identity

(Image credit: Jakob Emanuel Handmann/Wikimedia Commons)

Euler's identity , which is actually an equation, is a real mathematical jewel, at least as described by the late physicist Richard Feynman. It has also been compared to a Shakespearean sonnet.

In a nutshell, Euler's identity ties together a number of mathematical constants: pi, natural log e and the imaginary unit i.

"[It] connects these three constants with the additive identity 0 and the multiplicative identity of elementary arithmetic: e^{i*Pi} + 1 = 0," Devlin said.

The number 0

If we're already talking about how awesome 1 is, then why not throw in the even weirder and cooler number 0? For most of written human history, the concept of zero wasn't all that important. Clay tablets from ancient Babylonian times didn't always distinguish between numbers like 216 and 2106, according to the University of St. Andrews in Scotland .

The ancient Greeks began to develop the idea of using zero as an empty place indicator to distinguish numbers of different magnitudes, but it wasn't until roughly the seventh century that Indian mathematicians, like Brahmagupta, began describing the modern idea of zero, Live Science previously reported . Brahmagupta wrote that any number multiplied by zero is zero, but he struggled with division, saying that a number, n, divided by zero just comes out as n/0, rather than the modern answer, which is that the result is undefined. ( The Maya had also independently derived the concept of zero by A.D. 665.)

Zero is extremely useful, but it is a very tricky concept for many people to wrap their heads around. We have examples such as 1 horse or 3 chickens in our day-to-day lives, but using a number to represent nothing is a larger conceptual leap. "Zero is in the mind but not in the sensory world," Robert Kaplan, a Harvard math professor, told Vox . Still, without 0o (and 1), we wouldn't be able to represent all of the digital binary code that makes our contemporary world run. (Data on computers is represented by strings of 0s and 1s.)

The square root of 2

Perhaps the most dangerous number ever conceived, the square root of 2 supposedly led to the first mathematical murder in history. The Greek mathematician Hippasus of Metapontum is credited with discovering it in the fifth century B.C., according to the University of Cambridge . While working on a separate problem, Hippasus is said to have stumbled on the fact that an isosceles right triangle whose two base sides are 1 unit in length will have a hypotenuse that is 2, which is an irrational number.

According to legend, Hippasus' contemporaries, members of the quasi-religious order known as the Pythagoreans, threw him into the sea after hearing about his great discovery. That's because the Pythagoreans believed that "all is number" and the universe only contained whole numbers and their ratios. Irrational numbers like 2 (and pi), which can't be expressed as a ratio of whole numbers and go on forever after the decimal place, were seen as an abomination.

These days, we're a little calmer about 2, often calling it Pythagoras' constant. It starts off as 1.4142135623  (and, of course, goes on forever). ) Pythagoras' constant has all sorts of uses. Besides proving the existence of irrational numbers, it is used by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) to define the A paper size. The 216 definition of the A paper states that the sheet's length divided by its width should be 1.4142. This means that a piece of A1 paper divided in half by width will yield two A2 pieces of paper. Divide an A2 in half again, and it will produce two A3 pieces of paper, and so on.

This article was updated on March 4, 2022, by Live Science contributor Adam Mann.
SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, may be the most famous coronavirus, but it certainly isn't the only one. The novel coronavirus is just one member of a large family of viruses that can infect mammals, such as humans , cows, pigs and dogs; as well as birds, such as chickens, according to a 2020 review in the journal Frontiers in Veterinary Science .

In addition to the COVID-19 pandemic, several other major disease outbreaks have been driven by coronaviruses, including the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic of 2002-2003 and the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) outbreak in South Korea in 2015.

While the coronaviruses behind SARS, MERS and COVID-19 can trigger severe disease in humans, the other coronaviruses that infect people typically cause mild to moderate respiratory infections, like the common cold.

How coronaviruses infect cells

The novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 binds to human cells using its "spike" protein. (Image credit: Shutterstock)

All coronaviruses sport spiky projections, called spike proteins, on their outer surfaces; these spikes resemble the points of a crown, or "corona" in Latin, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Seven known coronaviruses can infect humans, including the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which was first identified in late 2019. (For this reason, the disease the virus causes was named "coronavirus disease 2019," or COVID-19, for short.)

Beneath a coronavirus's pronged exterior lies a round core shrouded in proteins and a "greasy" membrane, Jan Carette, an associate professor of microbiology and immunology at Stanford University School of Medicine, told Live Science in an email. The core contains genetic material called RNA that the virus can inject into vulnerable cells to infect them.

Related: 14 coronavirus myths busted by science

Spike proteins extend from within the core to the viral surface and allow the virus to "recognize and latch onto" specific cells in the body, Carette said. For example, the spike proteins on SARS-CoV-2 plug into a receptor on human cells called ACE2 to jump-start infection in those cells.

"When the spike engages its receptor [on a host cell], a cascade is triggered, resulting in the merger of the virus with the cell," Carette said. This merger allows the virus to release its genetic material and hijack the cell's internal machinery. "Once this happens, the virus sheds its coat and turns the cell into a factory that starts churning out new viruses," Carette said.

Common-cold coronaviruses

(Image credit: Shutterstock)

The four human coronaviruses that can cause the common cold  named 229E, NL63, OC43 and HKU1  did not jump from animals to humans but rather utilize humans as their natural hosts, according to the CDC . By comparison, the highly pathogenic viruses SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 all initially passed from animals to humans.

The cold-causing coronaviruses "have presumably evolved to maximize spread amongst the population rather than pathogenicity," meaning the viruses may opt to maximize their spread rather than harm their human host, Carette said. This may partially explain why coronaviruses that are transmitted from animals seem to cause more-severe diseases in humans, but the idea remains speculative, he added.

The four common-cold coronaviruses can cause symptoms such as a runny nose, headache, cough, sore throat and fever, according to the CDC. That said, in some people, including those with cardiopulmonary disease or a weakened immune system , the viral infection can progress to a more severe lower-respiratory infection, such as pneumonia or bronchitis.

Related: Going viral: 6 new findings about viruses

SARS-CoV

The earliest known human infection with SARS-CoV, the virus that causes SARS, happened in November 2002 in the Guangdong province in southern China, according to the CDC . The virus then began to spread within and beyond China, and in March 2003, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued an alert about a severe form of pneumonia that was affecting hundreds of people in China, Vietnam and Hong Kong.

Within months, SARS-CoV had spread to 26 countries on five continents, infected more than 8,000 people and caused 774 deaths, according to a 2003 review in The New England Journal of Medicine .

The virus killed roughly 10% of the people it infected, and people over age 65 were at the highest risk of dying from the infection, according to the U.K.'s National Health Service . The SARS pandemic ended in July 2003, though a few cases cropped up in 2004, most connected to a medical lab in China where people were studying the virus, but no new cases have been reported since then.

SARS-CoV spread primarily through respiratory droplets that infected people expelled when they breathed, coughed or sneezed. The viral particles in these droplets could cause infection when they made contact with mucous membranes of the mouth, nose or eyes of healthy individuals, according to the CDC . Symptoms of a SARS infection included fever higher than 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit (38.0 degrees Celsius), headache, body aches, dry cough, pneumonia and sometimes diarrhea .

Related: 11 (sometimes) deadly diseases that hopped across species

Evidence suggests that the precursors to SARS-CoV jumped from Chinese horseshoe bats (Rhinolophus) to small, nocturnal mammals called masked palm civets (Paguma larvata) before infecting humans, according to a 2010 report in the journal Infectious Disease Clinics of North America .

(Image credit: Shutterstock)

MERS-CoV

The earliest known human infections with MERS-CoV, the virus that causes MERS, occurred in Jordan in April 2012, according to the CDC ; that's based on retrospective investigations that took place after the virus had been identified. The very first reports of the disease actually came from health officials in Saudi Arabia, when cases of the infection cropped up in the country in September 2012.

Since 2012, MERS cases have been reported in 27 countries, according to the WHO . In total, about 80% of those cases were reported by Saudi Arabia. Cases identified beyond the Middle East have occurred mostly in people who contracted MERS while visiting the region and then traveled elsewhere, although on some occasions, sizable MERS outbreaks have occurred outside the Middle East.

For example, the largest known MERS outbreak that took place outside the Arabian Peninsula happened in South Korea in 2015, in which 186 people caught the disease and, of those, 38 died, according to a 2018 report in The Korean Journal of Internal Medicine . Patient zero was a 68-year-old Korean man returning home after a trip to the Middle East. The infection then spread within the hospital where the patient was treated, and on to more than a dozen other clinics and hospitals as infected patients were moved between facilities. The outbreak lasted about two months and ended in July 2015.

MERS can be asymptomatic, meaning it causes no symptoms of illness, but when people develop symptoms, they range from mild respiratory symptoms to severe acute respiratory disease and death, according to the WHO. Symptoms of the infection often include fever, cough, shortness of breath and pneumonia, and more rarely, gastrointestinal symptoms, such as diarrhea, have been reported.

Related: The 9 deadliest viruses on Earth

"The virus appears to cause more severe disease in older people, people with weakened immune systems, and those with chronic diseases such as renal disease, cancer , chronic lung disease and diabetes ," according to the WHO.

An estimated 3 to 4 of every 10 people infected die from MERS, according to the CDC. That said, this may be an overestimate of the case fatality rate, as mild cases of the disease may not be reported as reliably as severe cases, according to the WHO.

Studies suggest that people catch the virus that causes MERS through contact with infected dromedary camels (Camelus dromedarius); evidence suggests that the virus originally jumped from bats to camels before infecting humans, according to the WHO.

The virus does not pass easily from person to person, although human-to-human transmission has occasionally been reported among family members, patients and health care workers, according to the WHO. "No sustained human-to-human transmission has been documented anywhere in the world," the WHO says.

SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus

(Image credit: Radoslav Zilinsky via Getty)

SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, was first identified as a coronavirus in January 2020, after clusters of unexplained pneumonia cases had been reported in China the month prior. It's unclear exactly when the virus first started infecting people, although some studies hint that the pathogen may have emerged in humans as early as October 2019, Live Science previously reported .

Evidence suggests that, like SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV, precursors to SARS-CoV-2 evolved in horseshoe bats, and in fact, the virus's closest known relatives were discovered in horseshoe bats, Live Science reported in 2021 . Based on clues in the virus's genetic code, it's suspected that the virus passed through an intermediate animal on its way to people, but the identity of that middleman creature remains unknown, Live Science reported .

Related: Hundreds of animal species could harbor novel coronaviruses

Since the original strain of the virus first emerged, SARS-CoV-2 has continually mutated, generating many new variants that bear different genetic traits. The WHO designates specific versions of the virus as "variants of concern" if the variant shows an increased ability to spread and/or cause severe disease and causes significant community transmission. Examples of these variants include omicron, alpha and delta.

"Variants of interest," on the other hand, carry genetic mutations that are predicted or known to affect virus characteristics such as transmissibility, disease severity, the ability to evade the immune system and resistance to existing treatments, according to the WHO. These variants, such as lambda and mu, are essentially monitored to see if they'll eventually emerge as new variants of concern.

Like SARS-CoV, SARS-CoV-2 can be spread through respiratory droplets that infected people breathe, cough or sneeze into the air  although SARS-CoV-2 spreads more easily than SARS-CoV, Live Science previously reported .

Evidence suggests that the virus can also be suspended in very small droplets, known as aerosols, which can hang in the air for longer periods of time than larger droplets; these infectious aerosols can then be inhaled, according to the CDC . In addition, people can inadvertently touch contaminated droplets that land on surfaces, and if they deposit the droplets on their face, for instance, that could theoretically cause infection. In general, studies suggest that this last mode of transmission is much less common than the others.

Methods to prevent SARS-CoV-2 transmission "include physical distancing, community use of well-fitting masks (e.g., barrier face coverings, procedure/surgical masks), adequate ventilation, and avoidance of crowded indoor spaces," the CDC states. "Transmission through soiled hands and surfaces can be prevented by practicing good hand hygiene and by environmental cleaning."

In addition to these behavioral measures, there are now COVID-19 vaccines available to help reduce the risk of infection and, in particular, greatly reduce the risk of severe disease and death from the disease, according to the CDC .

COVID-19 infections range from asymptomatic to severe. Common symptoms of the infection include the following:

Fever or chills

Cough

Shortness of breath or difficulty breathing

Fatigue

Muscle or body aches

Headache

New loss of taste or smell

Sore throat

Congestion or runny nose

Nausea or vomiting

Diarrhea

COVID-19 has also been associated with skin rashes, such as so-called COVID toes , and neurological symptoms, including muscle weakness, tingling or numbness in the hands and feet, dizziness, confusion, delirium, seizures and stroke. Dangerous brain inflammation and shrinkage in specific brain areas have also been linked to COVID-19, Live Science previously reported .

In children, COVID-19 infection can rarely trigger a severe inflammatory condition called "multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children" (MIS-C), which involves inflammation of multiple organs, including the heart, lungs, kidneys, brain, skin, eyes and gastrointestinal tract, according to Live Science . This condition can develop days or weeks after a child first catches the virus. Adults can sometimes develop a similar condition, called MIS-A, after contracting COVID-19, although "the way the syndrome appears in adults may be more complicated than in children," according to the CDC .

If you experience trouble breathing, persistent pain or pressure in the chest, new confusion, an inability to wake or stay awake, bluish lips or face, or other severe symptoms that concern you, you should seek immediate medical care, the CDC states. Like SARS and MERS, COVID-19 can progress to pneumonia in severe cases, and the risk of severe disease is highest for eldery people. Other risk factors for severe disease include diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure , smoking and obesity .

Those who survive a COVID-19 infection can sometimes experience symptoms for weeks or months afterward; this syndrome is known as "long COVID," although it's now also known by the formal medical term "post-acute sequelae of COVID-19" (PASC).

Researchers are still pinpointing which people face the greatest risk of developing long COVID, and there's an ongoing effort to understand the mechanisms behind the syndrome and to develop effective treatments, Live Science previously reported . For example, the Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery (RECOVER) Initiative is a multicenter study of long COVID sponsored by the National Institutes of Health.

Additional resources and readings

You can learn why the COVID-19 vaccines actually took 50 years to make with SciShow on YouTube. You can also read more about how SARS-CoV-2 might mutate in the future at STAT and check out striking images of SARS-CoV-2 in The New York Times .

Bibliography

Alluwaimi, A. M., Alshubaith, I. H., Al-Ali, A. M., & Abohelaika, S. (2020). The Coronaviruses of Animals and Birds: Their Zoonosis, Vaccines, and Models for SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV2. Frontiers in Veterinary Science, 7. https://doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2020.582287

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2013, April 26). CDC SARS Response Timeline. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Retrieved March 14, 2022, from https://www.cdc.gov/about/history/sars/timeline.htm

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2017, December 6). SARS Basics Fact Sheet. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Retrieved March 14, 2022, from https://www.cdc.gov/sars/about/fs-sars.html

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2019, August 2). Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS). Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Retrieved March 14, 2022, from https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/mers/about/index.html

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2020, February 15). Human Coronavirus Types. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Retrieved March 14, 2022, from https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/types.html

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2020, November 13). Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Adults (MIS-A). Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Retrieved March 14, 2022, from https://www.cdc.gov/mis/mis-a.html

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2021, February 22). Symptoms of COVID-19. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Retrieved March 14, 2022, from https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/symptoms-testing/symptoms.html

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2021, May 7). Scientific Brief: SARS-CoV-2 Transmission. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Retrieved March 14, 2022, from https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-briefs/sars-cov-2-transmission.html

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2022, February 25). Benefits of Getting a COVID-19 Vaccine. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Retrieved March 14, 2022, from https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/vaccine-benefits.html

Cleri, D. J., Ricketti, A. J., & Vernaleo, J. R. (2010). Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). Infectious Disease Clinics of North America, 24(1), 175202. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.idc.2009.10.005

NHS. (2019, October 24). SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome). NHS. Retrieved March 14, 2022, from https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/sars/

Oh, M.-don, Park, W. B., Park, S.-W., Choe, P. G., Bang, J. H., Song, K.-H., Kim, E. S., Kim, H. B., & Kim, N. J. (2018). Middle East respiratory syndrome: What we learned from the 2015 outbreak in the Republic of Korea. The Korean Journal of Internal Medicine, 33(2), 233246. https://doi.org/10.3904/kjim.2018.031

Peiris, J. S. M., Yuen, K. Y., Osterhaus, A. D. M. E., & Stohr, K. (2003). The Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. New England Journal of Medicine, 349(25), 24312441. https://doi.org/10.1056/nejmra032498

World Health Organization. (2019, March 11). Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV). World Health Organization. Retrieved March 14, 2022, from https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/middle-east-respiratory-syndrome-coronavirus-(mers-cov)

World Health Organization. (2022, March 7). Tracking SARS-CoV-2 variants. World Health Organization. Retrieved March 14, 2022, from https://www.who.int/en/activities/tracking-SARS-CoV-2-variants/g

Editor's note: This article was originally published on Feb. 7, 2020, and was last updated on March 14, 2022 by Live Science staff writer Nicoletta Lanese.

This article is for informational purposes only and is not meant to provide medical advice.

Originally published on Live Science.
Page Content

Prime Minister of St. Maarten, Honorable Silveria E. Jacobs paid a courtesy visit to the Ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands Andre Haspels today, March 10, during her work visit in Washington D.C. Prime Minister Jacobs had a fruitful meeting with His Excellency Haspels where they were able to discuss the operations and efforts of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in the United States.





Prime Minister Jacobs stated, The Government of St. Maarten continues to seek ways of enhancing opportunities for St. Maartens engagement with the US and the United Nations on various areas of interest. It was imperative for me to meet with Ambassador Haspels in the US as his office also represents St. Maarten.





Earlier in the week, Prime Minister Jacobs also met with Minister Plenipotentiary of Aruba Joselin Croes who is the Arubian representative at the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.





On behalf of the government and people of St. Maarten, Id like to thank His Excellency Haspels and Minister Plenipotentiary Croes for their warm welcome in Washington. St. Maarten can now look forward to future strategic discussions and collaboration with and through the Dutch Kingdom embassy aimed at forwarding our agenda, concluded Prime Minister Jacobs.
Click here to read the full article.

Former President Barack Obama has revealed that he tested positive for COVID-19.

I just tested positive for COVID, he wrote in a March 13 tweet. Ive had a scratchy throat for a couple days, but am feeling fine otherwise. Michelle and I are grateful to be vaccinated and boosted, and she has tested negative. Its a reminder to get vaccinated if you havent already, even as cases go down.

I just tested positive for COVID. Ive had a scratchy throat for a couple days, but am feeling fine otherwise. Michelle and I are grateful to be vaccinated and boosted, and she has tested negative. Its a reminder to get vaccinated if you havent already, even as cases go down.  Barack Obama (@BarackObama) March 13, 2022

The news comes as the COVID-19 pandemic enters its second year. Obama is the second president to get a positive COVID diagnosis, after Donald Trumps very public battle with the virus in October 2020.

In the years since he left office, Obama has discussed COVID management via social media and at speaking engagements, including a notable Jun. 7, 2020 virtual graduation ceremony on YouTube called Dear Class of 2020. During the speech, he talked about being aware of COVID-19 misinformation.

Usually the people who are peddling falsehoods on the internet or social media are doing so for their own purposes: Either to sell you something or to distract you from the real issues that matter, he said. You can change that. If a friend tells you COVID-19 is a hoax, politely correct them. If an older relative cites some video to promote a racist stereotype, show him or her why that video is a sham. As a generation that understands social media and technology a lot better than anyone, its going to be up to you to create online cultures and communities that respect differences of opinion and freedom of speech, and also restore the kind of honest, informed, fact-based debate that is the stating point for tackling the challenges we face.

Sign up for Varietys Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Click here to read the full article.

Spains TV industry will make history at Series Mania Forum 2022, with its biggest panel and sneak peek series presentation presence ever at a major TV market.

The Spanish conference attendance  alongside Finlands panel spread  also weighs in as the biggest from any single country at the upcoming edition of the most important co-production event for scripted TV series in Europe.

Series Mania Forum runs on-site over March 22-24 in Lille, northern France, under the larger Series Mania Festival umbrella.

Organized by ICEX Spain Trade & Investment, the countrys export and inward investment board, the Spanish pavilion at the Lille Grand Palais will host a record-breaking delegation for Spain of around 20 companies and more than 50 executives.

Thats a sign of just how much Series Mania has grown as an industry forum in the last few years, and of Spains ambition to ramp up exports of Spanish movies and TV content via a Spain AVS Hub plan whose total investment through 2025 is tabbed at $1.8 billion in state incentives and government-engineered financing.

Presented under its newly-designed Audiovisual from Spain brand, ICEX activities range from the introduction of projects in search of financing to the promotion of soon-to-release or just bowed series.

Previously announced, TV series project Detective Toure, a co-production between Tornasol Media and DeAPlaneta, will be the only Spanish title presented at the Forums Co-Pro Pitching Sessions this year, being pitched on Tuesday March 22.

Adapting Jon Arretxes novel saga, the series is written by David Perez Sanudo, director, co-writer and producer of the multi-award-winning Spanish film Ane is Missing, and Carlos Vila (Los misterios de Laura). Tornasols Mariela Besuievsky and DeAPlanetas Elena Bort will produce and present in Lille.

The Coming Next From Spain sidebar will offer, on the same day, a sneak peek of four of the most awaited Spanish dramas, in a session moderated by Maria Rua Aguete, senior research director at Omdia.

Atresmedia Television sales director Miguel Garcia will present The Route, an eight-episode series co-produced with Caballo Films, the production outfit partnered by filmmaker Rodrigo Sorogoyen, co-creator of Movistar Plus high-end series hit Riot Police.

The Age of Anger, a high-school mini-series exploring the values of Spains youngest generations produced by The Mediapro Studios Big Bang Fiction and MasFiccion for Atresmedia, will be presented by TMS Marta Ezpeleta, head of distribution, co-productions & acquisitions, and Javier Esteban, head of distribution strategy & sales of North America, Latin America & MENA. Atresmedia shas international sales rights.

Maria Valenzuela, who leads Movistar Plus Internacional, the recently launched arm for content distribution of top Spanish paybox Movistar Plus, will lead the presentation of Rapa, a Galicia-set thriller produced by Portocabo, the company behind Movistar hit series Hierro.

Pubcaster RTVE and Mediterraneo Mediaset Espana Groups Alea Media are bringing to the Coming Next from Spain section primetime series Peace Force, pitched by TVEs head of cinema and fiction Jose Pastor and Alea showrunner Aurora Guerra.

On Wednesday, March 23, a Case Study & Screening session will focus on Amazon exclusive mini-series Operation Black Tide (Operacion Marea Negra), an ambitious high seas adventure co-production, set up at Galicias Ficcion Producciones with sales handled by eOne.

A panel moderated by Ficcion Producciones Mamen Casal will drill down on the innovative financing model of the series, whose flexibility is becoming a mantra for much international dealmaking.

This saw the sale of a true-fact local story about narco trading to a network of regional broadcasters  Spains Forta  the incorporation of a foreign pubcaster  Portugals RTP  and partnership with Prime Video, which allowed producers to keep the majority of the IP.

Participants in the session include series executive producer Mamen Quintas, Amazons Ricardo Cabornero, Fernando Ojea of Galicias TVG, Jose Fragoso of Portugals RTP, eOnes Noel Hedges and the series star, Alex Gonzalez.

During another session, Spain Pitching Breakfast: Coffee and Hot Projects, which takes place on Thursday March 24, five Spanish projects will be presented to an audience especially selected according to the needs indicated by their producers and creators.

The project selection takes in The Residence Hall, set up at Fedent Spain, which will be pitched by Managing Director Toni Sevilla and Laura Oliva, head of content. Series details the true-life first years friendship of Salvador Dali, Luis Bunuel and Federico Lorca who shared rooms in a student residence in Madrid in the early 20s.

Lucios Treasure, an action crime series project based on the true story of an apparently modest bricklayer living in Paris, responsible for the largest network of travellers cheque counterfeiters, is executive produced by Ana Manresa and Hugo Menduina at Barcelona-based Friki Films.

Mediacrest, one of Spains fastest-rising indie TV companies, will unveil new TV fiction Fake, a six-episode series project presented by executive director of Fiction Gustavo Ferrada and Emma Garcia, VP international sales and coordination.

The eight-seg series project Halfbreeds, set up at Madrid-based production-distribution house Onza, will be defended by Valentina Pozzoli, VP development & international co-productions, and series creator Raul Barranco; Albert Rull, executive VP production & content at Vertice 360, will present series project Play of Mirrors.

Finally, in From Limited to Returning, also on Thursday, March 24, former Keshet executive and Homeland producer Ran Tellem, now director of international content development at The Mediapro Studio, will explain the imagining of the sequel to TMS hit series The Head.

Further Spanish companies represented at the Series Mania Forum 2022 under the Audiovisual from Spain umbrella take in Inside Content, Kottbusser, Sete Media and The Film Agency, as well as the Canary Islands public organisations Instituto Canario de Desarrollo Cultural and Tenerife and Gran Canarias respective Sociedad de Promocion Economica trading entities.

John Hopewell contributed to this article.

Sign up for Varietys Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Click here to read the full article.

Transatlantic production powerhouse Sister has hired Amazon Studios scripted executive Lydia Hampson as executive producer. The company has also struck a first-look deal with Hampson and Amazon Studios U.K.

Hampson most recently served as the head of U.K. scripted for Amazon Studios. Shes best known for having produced the hit BBC Three comedy Fleabag  which turned creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge into a household name  when she was an executive producer at All3Media-backed production company Two Brothers Pictures.

At Sister  the indie studio set up by Jane Featherstone, Stacey Snider and Elisabeth Murdoch  Hampsons first project will be The Following Events are Based on a Pack of Lies, which shell join as an executive producer, working alongside Sisters joint head of scripted and executive producer Naomi de Pear (This Is Going to Hurt) and director of development Alice Tyler.

The con-man thriller written by Penny and Ginny Skinner for the BBC is currently in pre-production and will begin shooting in 2022.

Hampson will also collaborate with the Sister teams in London, Manchester and Los Angeles across a range of scripted titles, developing and producing high-end scripted projects, while nurturing new creators from diverse backgrounds both on and off-screen.

As part of the executives move, Sister, Hampson and Amazon Studios U.K. have also struck a first-look deal that enables Hampson to build on her long-standing relationship with Amazon Studios, according to press materials. She will work closely with Amazon Studios U.K. head of originals Dan Grabiner to develop scripted series for the streamer. The deal only pertains to projects developed by Hampson.

Any projects developed and produced through the deal will launch on Amazon globally. The streamer has steadily been building out its U.K. originals slate, which now includes Good Omens, as well as the forthcoming Jungle, The Devils Hour and The Rig.

I am so thrilled to be joining the team here at Sister, and building on their incredible flare, talent and creativity, to bring new and exciting projects to global audiences, said Hampson.

De Pear added: We couldnt feel prouder to be bringing the brilliant Lydia into the Sister family. Weve been admirers for some time and her taste, track record and talent are second-to-none.

Sisters other projects include Amazon Original series The Power, the thriller based on the international bestselling novel of the same name by author Naomi Alderman.

Sign up for Varietys Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
It was a showdown of beauties on the border Saturday as the Miss Southwest Texas USA five-category pageant was held as Southwest Texas finest competitors vied for the coveted crown.

The event held at the La Posada Saint Augustine Ballroom was organized by the Laredo Pageant Production. The five categories decided were Miss Southwest Texas USA, Miss Southwest Texas Teen USA, Miss Pre-Teen Southwest Texas, Miss Little Southwest Texas and Miss Jr. Southwest Texas.

Miss Southwest Texas USA competed in interview, swimwear and evening gown competitions, while Miss Southwest Texas Teen USA competed in interview, activewear and evening gown events. For the little ones, Miss Little Southwest Texas, Miss Jr. Southwest Texas and Miss Pre-Teen Southwest Texas all competed in fashion wear and evening gown competitions.

The prestigious title of Miss Southwest Texas USA 2022 went to Ariana Solorio, and Miss Southwest Texas Teen USA 2022 was Katherine Queen. Solorio is from the city of Del Rio while Queen is a native of the Gateway City.

The winners of the other three categories include: Ayleen Cardenas for Miss Little Southwest Texas USA 2022, Karina Gutierrez for Miss Junior Southwest Texas USA 2022 and Amanda Alvarez for Miss Pre Teen Southwest Texas USA 2022.

These girls will go on and compete at the Texas USA and Miss Teen Texas USA competitions, said Roel Gonzalez, the executive director of the Laredo Pageant Productions. I am overwhelmed about this years event, as it has been really good. It has just been an overwhelming ride as we have been blessed to bring home seven crowns, and we are hoping that we can bring some more crowns home this coming year.

Gonzalez states that this years competition was tough, as all of the competitors demonstrated the capacity in their individual categories to do well amid their talents, knowledge and beauty. He states that he sees even more tough competition in the future as the younger girls show themselves wanting to reach higher goals.

Solorio and Queen expressed that they were delighted with their victories, and this was something they did not expect to happen but they know their hard work will continue as they carry the crown for the next year. Both also got their entry fees for the Miss Texas USA and Miss Texas Teen USA pageants paid already  $1,195.

I am extremely excited as this is my second pageant ever, so just being able to be here on stage and just giving my all is an honor, Solorio said. Honestly, you never know the outcome, but I did put all my faith in God, and he knew what was going to happen. I am just eternally grateful for that.

Previously, Solorios pageant career had resulted in her being named Miss Val Verde 2021.

Solorio states that during her reign, she does not only want the region to compete well in the statewide competition but also to bring more awareness to youth development and empowerment. The youth development campaign she is working with is called Monarch, and she states that she is proud of representing the organization as well as Del Rio.

My main focus is to spread the focus about Monarch, because there are a lot of kids, young children and adolescents who are dealing with mental health issues, Solorio said. So if I am able to give them advice and a support system, then that is what I want to do. This pandemic has been very tough for everyone, so just being able to get them a support system would be amazing.

Solorio is currently a junior at the University of Texas at Austin where she is studying speech, language and hearing sciences in hopes of one day becoming a speech pathologist. During her free time, she likes working out, spending time with family and going on hikes.

As for Miss Southwest Texas Teen USA, Queen wants to use her time to make memories, volunteer and inspire others to achieve great things. The Laredoan believes that every single woman is a winner for simply being able to have the courage to climb the stage and present themselves to others.

I am so excited as this is such an honor, and I am going to represent Southwest Texas to be the best of my ability, Queen said. The goal was to make the top, and if I made the top, I was going to be proud of myself no matter what, because it takes a lot for young women to stand up on stage and walk around in front of thousands of people. Winning is just an incredible moment, and I am so excited to be the new queen.

One of the things she states she liked the most about the pageant was making new friends and knowing what opportunities the new title would bring to her. She said that during the year, she wants to spread the message of giving back in efforts to make sure more people go out and help their communities.

Queen states that she sees herself among the younger girls and knows that all of them will do well when they continue to try and win pageants.

Everything is possible, Queen said. I woke up a regular citizen of Laredo, and now I am the Southwest Texas Teen USA. So anything is possible, and if you put your mind into something, you can achieve it.

Gonzalez states that Solorio and Queen do have a very good shot of winning crowns at the state competitions.

We have girls that are educated and going to some of the best universities in Texas or out of Texas, so we are all very blessed, Gonzalez said.

Saturdays event marked the first time since the pandemic began that events of these type were done in full capacity in Laredo. Gonzalez states that the whole ballroom reached its capacity, but people were still told that it would be OK if they wanted to use their face masks during the event to ensure their personal safety.

Prior to the pageant beginning, a minute of silence was offered for the victims of military conflicts around the world. Gonzalez acknowledged the victims of the War in Afghanistan  including local Lance Cpl. David Lee Espinoza  and also the minute of silence was offered in recognition of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.
The upcoming May runoff elections will once again see high-profile candidate and incumbent Texas District 28 Congressman Henry Cuellar and returning candidate Jessica Cisneros square off.

Regardless, the winner of the May runoffs will then see themselves face the Republican candidate runoff winner, which would be either Cassy Garcia or Sandra Whitten. It is important to note that the Democratic and Republican races saw a 64.4% difference between voter turnout, in which the Republican primary had 48.7% fewer voters.

However, voter turnout for the Democratic race saw a decrease in comparison to the previous 2020 election during which 74,978 votes were cast in District 28. This saw Cisneros lose the race with 48.2% of the vote, giving Cuellar a rare challenge for the spot hes held since 2004.

In 2022, only a total of 48,626 votes were cast with 2,289 of those going to first-time candidate Tannya Benavides. This rounds to an approximate 35% decrease in votes between the 2022 election and the 2020 election.

According to Cuellar, he believes the lower voter turnout was due to the 2020 election being a presidential year. However, historically Webb County has had trouble with voter turnout for local and federal elections.

Despite the turnout, Cuellar said multiple factors may have affected his tally including additional candidates, both Democratic and Republican. When asked about the impact this years FBI raid on his home would have on his image, Cuellar said at the end of the day, the investigation will show there has been no wrongdoing.

Regardless, he said he knew early on it would be a tough race due to the financial backing of Cisneros, which he said comes from outside the district, specifically New York. Of note, Huffpost reported a liberal pro-Israel group donated $100,000 boosting Cisneros for the recent election.

Regarding this, Cisneros referenced the 2020 elections saying the race was funded by individual contributions and everyday people. But both 2020 and 2022 races did include some form of interest group payments for her campaign, including donations from Justice Democrats, ActBlue, NARAL Pro-Choice America and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen.

While he is being funded by big oil and the Koch Brothers and the private prison industry, Im being funded by everyday people, Cisneros said. Thats a source of pride for me, because that allows me to be independent and not be beholden to one or few individuals or corporate PACs that expect something in return for their money."

According to Open Secrets, Cuellars top industry donors were from the Oil and Gas sector in which he received a total of $151,500 from individuals and PACs combined. They also noted Cuellar outpaced the funds raised in the 2020 race by over $1 million, landing on over $2.4 million, but that lowered for this race down to just slightly over $1.8 million.

In 2020, Cuellar edged out a victory against Cisneros to be the Democratic nominee. In 2022, however, the three-candidate election resulted in a runoff between both candidates. Meanwhile, residents may be only thinking about who can do whats best for them and the district, regardless of experience or seniority.

Seniority versus change

Being a nine-term incumbent, Cuellar highlighted the ramifications of what would happen if he lost the upcoming elections. A factor within government and its committees is seniority. Cuellar has often referenced his position as the only Texas Democrat within the House Appropriation Committee and the money it brings to the area.

Aside from the formula funds allocated to every city and district, he said the appropriation committee allows for extra funding for a variety of projects and ideas within the district. He cited that as a member, he would bring in $2 million for a Gateway Community Clinic in west Laredo.

When you have 435 members and everyone gets reelected or elected every two years, and you are No. 435 and want to move up, its going to take you years and years, Cuellar said. The best committee in Congress is the House Appropriation, because thats the one that provides money.

Over the span of those 17 years, Cuellar has touted multiple projects and agencies that have seen funding through the committee, such as the Laredo Air and Marine Hanger facility that saw over $27 million in federal funding allocated. In Zapata, he added that $1 million would be provide by this upcoming week to help fund an emergency center.

Cuellar provided a list stating additional funding grants and earmarks include the Gateway Community Health Center, the Substance Abuse Treatment Center, funds for PILLAR and SCAN, and the Laredo College South Clinic, to name a few.

This led to Cuellar saying that if elected, Cisneros would have to put in approximately 10 years within Congress to eventually be able to be selected for the committee. In this event, another district would be the one getting extra funding from the committee moving forward.

Hes had 10 years to fight for investment, and we still dont have clean water here," Cisneros said. "I mean I think that if he was actually in such a great position, like he tends to say that he is, our poverty rate still wouldnt be at 30%. We still wouldnt have such a high rate of people who are uninsured. We still wouldnt be having time after time of boil water notice and infrastructure issues in the area.

What people are (wanting) is better paying jobs. We want investments in our infrastructure so we can have clean water and have paved roads  you know, progress on all of these issues that he is talking about  but the reality is that hes had over 17 years to address them and he hasnt.

Laredo is facing a multitude of issues including an aging water system with an estimated $500 million needed to fix and its designation of being medically underserved. As of this report, the City of Laredo is in the progress of addressing the water line break issues, having scheduled multiple workshops to enlighten the council and residents about the water system, and applied for federal funding from the American Rescue Plan infrastructure bill.

When asked if his position within the appropriation committee could provide additional funds to help, Cuellar stated that it was the citys responsibility.

The water ... thats a local issue, Cuellar said. City Council should have done the replacement for many years, they just never did. The old commercial, either you pay now or you pay much later, and now they are going to pay much later.

In this respect, Cisneros said the Laredo water issue is spread throughout multiple levels of government and believes a representative needs to build relationships with officials and ask for oversight.

Making sure that people know where the funding is once its been allotted, what is actually happening with the funding, is it actually being used in a way that its supposed to be used? she asked. Meeting people's basic needs, like having water, has to be a priority. We have to be asking the tough questions. We have to be sitting down with people to ensure we identify what those issues are and then take action.

Cuellar said there are things he would like to do for the water issue, like targeting specific earmarks for water projects, but it would ultimately be up to the city to address current and future issues.

The value of a representative

As the district returns to a familiar sight in May, the choice between Cuellar and Cisneros will surely have voters asking themselves who they believe will bring real improvements for the next two years.

All I can do is go up to a voter and say, Judge me by who I am, judge me by what I have done. And if you do a comparison on what I have done and what the other candidate said shes going to do, its day and night, Cuellar said.

Cuellar said he was one of the representatives who pushed for the Affordable Care Act and helped start the Children Health Insurance program at Farias Elementary, both which have helped countless families. By bringing in funding for the Gateway Health Center, he believes it has provided an affordable health care solution as an alternative to healthcare in Nuevo Laredo.

But the "Medicare-for-All" notion is still a no-go for Cuellar, as he indicated it would raise taxes for the average resident and it is not a Democratic goal but only a Bernie Sanders goal. He added even when former president Barack Obama was in office and the party controlled both the House and the Senate, there was no Medicare for All, and the Democratic party would rather strengthen the Affordable Care Act.

As the nine-term incumbent, Cuellar has had time to cement his mark on District 28, saying he understands the values of its residents. He said Cisneros has promoted the New York values of defunding the police, opening borders, getting rid of Border Patrol or getting rid of the 40,000 jobs in oil and gas.

Cisneros disagrees with his assessment of her.

Hes been misrepresenting what my actual policy stances have been because he is trying to distract from the fact that he was subjected to an FBI raid at both his headquarters and his mansion, so I know hes resorting to these desperate attacks to try to misrepresent what I actually believe in, Cisneros said. "And for me, Im fighting for peoples livelihood. Im fighting to make sure they will be able to provide for their families, and we need to figure out what those policy choices are. I am never going to support a piece of legislation that is going to take away peoples ability to be able provide for their families.

Hes trying to paint me as an extremist, but the extremist is him for allowing all of these conditions to continue to happen here in this district without doing anything to address the root causes of all of these issues. Hes had 17 years in power. He hasnt done much to help in terms of the poverty rate, people being uninsured, all of these infrastructure issues. I think going into the primary on May 24 is going to show that people are ready for new leadership.

Both campaigns are working on spreading the word of their campaign promises and the importance of the upcoming elections. Ultimately, the goal is to bring out as many voters to the polls as possible to choose the nominee for both Democrats and Republicans in their respective races.
Founded on Sept. 28, 1947, as our citys pioneering higher education institution, Laredo College has been part of many momentous events in Laredos history. In celebration of these 75 years of history and legacy, the college will be hosting a 75th Anniversary Photography Contest to honor the colleges long-lasting impact on our community.

The contest consists of an open call for photography entries that anyone can submit. These can be events, portraits, nature, landscape, wildlife, architecture, sports, fashion and other types of photography that have been captured and are related to Laredo Colleges history and legacy in the community.

Laredo College Alumni & Friends Association President and LC Board Secretary Jackie Leven-Ramos noted the importance of this initiative in chronicling the evolution of the college.

As we celebrate our 75th anniversary, it is quite befitting to honor and recognize our alumni and friends who have supported our beloved Laredo College throughout the years, she said. It is because of individuals who chose to reach new heights in their educational career that Laredo College has reached this anniversary and we thank everyone.

This project provides an opportunity for community members to show off their creativity and passion through their photographs. Whether taken by amateur or professional photographers, every snapshot is unique and tells a story, conveys an idea or sparks a feeling. This collection of photographs will span over seven decades and showcase memories that thousands of people in our community have created.

A special committee will review all the submissions and select the 75 photographs most representative of the different decades of the colleges history. The photographs will be printed and displayed in both of our college libraries during National Library Week, observed this year from April 3 to April 9.

For 75 years, the college has played an important part in the communitys educational and personal lives, Vice President for Resource Development and External Affairs Dr. Nora Garza said. Some of those memorable times are captured in photographs. The college and our libraries invite you to connect with our history and legacy by sharing them.

Participants must submit contest photos by sending an email to LC75Photos@laredo.edu. There is a limit of three images per person for consideration in the contest. However, if participants have an extensive collection, they can share it with our college libraries staff to add them to our archives. The deadline to submit entries is Saturday, March 19.

For those with analog photographs, our libraries staff can assist by scanning them, providing a digitized copy and returning the photos to them. All digitized photographs will become part of a digital archive available for viewing at both LC libraries.

Laredo College Libraries Director Cynthia Rodriguez said the project highlights the impact our college has had on the lives of people in our region through its wide range of programs and services.

We are excited that this initiative commemorates a milestone anniversary for our college, Rodriguez said. It is also quite fitting with this years National Library Week theme of Connect with Your Library, which aims to bring communities together and reinforces the idea that libraries are places to connect with books, electronic resources, programs and ideas. Our Laredo College Libraries serve not only our students but also the people in our community, enriching their lives by providing valuable resources and fostering a love for knowledge while encouraging personal and professional growth.

All submissions should include a date, a brief description of the photograph and the names of the persons pictured or the event it portrays, if applicable. By submitting a photo for the contest, participants agree to its use by Laredo College. Participants should also provide their full name, phone number and preferred email address.

Laredo College invites everyone in the community to become a part of the history and legacy of our institution by participating in this contest. Entries for this contest are free, but we kindly encourage anyone willing and able to donate $20 or any amount they can contribute to the History & Legacy Scholarship Fund. This fund was established by the Laredo College Alumni & Friends Association to assist students with educational expenses.

Monetary donations can be dropped off at the Harold R. Yeary Library, West End Washington Street, Laredo, Texas 78040; and the Senator Judith Zaffirini Library, 5500 South Zapata Highway, Laredo, Texas 78046. Check donations can also be delivered in person or mailed to either library and made payable to the Laredo College Alumni & Friends Association. Both libraries are also equipped to accept credit or debit card donations. You can also visit www.laredo.edu/LC75Photos to make your donation online.

For additional information, please send an email to LC75Photos@laredo.edu.
System error

error: Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.

context: ... 21: </%method> 22: 23: % foreach my $c (@categories) { 24: <%perl> 25: my $category_id = $c->get_id(); 26: my @stories = Bric::Biz::Asset::Business::Story->list ( { element_type_id=>1148, category_id=>$category_id , Order=> 'cover_date', publish_status => 't' , OrderDirection=> 'DESC' , Limit=>10 } ); 27: </%perl> 28: <table width="90%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> 29: <tr> ... code stack: /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html:25

/usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm:948

/var/cache/mason/obj/2011159162/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj:17

/usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html:149



Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25. Trace begun at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Exceptions.pm line 125 HTML::Mason::Exceptions::rethrow_exception('Can\'t call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.^J') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 157 HTML::Mason::Component::run_dynamic_sub('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x55e83842e3e0)', 'main') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 948 HTML::Mason::Request::call_dynamic('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x55e82e315440)', 'main') called at /var/cache/mason/obj/2011159162/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj line 17 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 135 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x55e83842e3e0)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1302 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1292 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 955 HTML::Mason::Request::call_next('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x55e82e315440)') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html line 149 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 135 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x55e83842ed88)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1300 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1292 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 481 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 481 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 433 HTML::Mason::Request::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x55e82e315440)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 165 HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x55e82e315440)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 831 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x55e82e3143b0)', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x55e83842e0c8)') called at (eval 592) line 8 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x55e83842e0c8)') called at -e line 0 eval {...} at -e line 0
The time of identifying a position as a mans job is a thing of the past, but continued stereotypes still in society. However, women are further gaining ground in many companies that previously were associated with men, with two Laredo women even showing that they can be at the forefront of these businesses.

Ruby Luna and Yvette Bazan are a pair of locals who have shown that they are able to be mothers and continue a normal life along with excelling in the industries they work. And they have plenty of advice to share to others who continue to work hard in male-dominated areas of society.

After working for years in radio and TV, my dad and brother encouraged me to become licensed in pest control and join them running the family business, said Ruby Luna, who is the operations manager for JD's Pest Control and Lawn. The pest control industry is indeed considered a man's job. Most of the clients usually expect a male to show up and do the service. One time a client told me, Ay mijita, ahora las mujeres tienen que hacer el trabajo de los hombres (Oh mijita, now women have to do the work of men), but I feel that nowadays women are becoming more accepted in doing any type of jobs.

Luna is not the only one leading in a predominantly male industry, as Bazan  a Mexican Custom Broker and CEO of YBM Logistics  is also paving the way in another industry previously considered to be run heavily by men.

I have a bachelors degree in international business, a Mexican Custom Broker license and a transportation company, Bazan said. Ever since I was a child, I dreamed of becoming an entrepreneur and businesswoman. My family has been in the custom broker industry for more than 73 years, and it was my first year working in the family business that made me realize the opportunities and demand in the transportation industry. Never had I imagined that I would one day purchase my first three trucks at age 23.

Bazan states that at the beginning, she was not just the only woman paving the way for her business idea. She also saw her sister support her greatly when it came to the efforts of getting the company rolling.

At the time, I had all the support from my older sister Sonia Bazan who believed in the project and invested in what was SYBA transfer, a local drayage company, Bazan said. I knew very little about the business at the time, yet my ambition, determination and positive attitude helped me set my goals and thrive. In 2010, my husband Eduardo Garcia and I founded YBM Logistics and have been in business ever since.

According to Luna, she considers the pest control industry very interesting as she states that it amazes her how they can change lives by protecting public health.

I love to help businesses, as well as homeowners, save a lot of money by controlling certain pests that damage their properties, Luna said.

Bazan states that her gender was not something that ever scared her when it was time to develop her company. But she understood that she had to do more to impress the men and women that would work for her just because she was a woman.

Even though I thrive on taking a challenge, my gender was not my biggest fear, Bazan said. I believed at the time that failing would affect womens credibility in taking control of such a business, as there are few female Mexican transportation owners. Setting goals and most importantly being determined is essential for those entering a field dominated mostly by men.

Bazan states that as a woman, she felt that she always had to give 200% of the hard work in efforts to get things done.

I was aware that operating the business in a mans world would have its difficulties and that success never comes alone, Bazan said. I am a firm believer in teamwork, and knew I had to surround myself with skilled and talented people who believed in the project. Most importantly, I had the support of my family.

Even though both women state that they believe some stereotypes continue to persist in society, she does state that many of these have changed and now more is being done to make clear that both men and women can work in any type of industry that they wish to do.

Trucks, cars, mechanics, planes, heavy machinery are typically associated with men, Bazan said. Even as children, little boys are given these types of toys to play with versus grocery items and dolls that are given to girls. As the transportation and logistics sector evolves to meet the strong demand, women have become more involved. Even though the transportation industry is associated with men, you would be surprised as to how many women are involved in the business.

Bazan states that in her company, she is proud to have women working in different fields such as general manager, truck drivers, administrative positions and operations. She believes women are making progress in the industry as the demand rises.

We live in a country where opportunities are given to us all, Bazan said. The opportunities are endless, but it is up to us women to take the next step and to demonstrate that we are eager and capable.

Luna believes that things are changing for the better, and that with due time these stereotypes will be let go in an effort to reinforce the idea that people of any gender can do the work they wish in any industry that they want to.

Society at one point was classifying the potential of a female and a male, but I strongly believe that is slowly changing with time, Luna said. I think keeping an open mind about the capability of a woman is a great start for change.

Luna states that through her career in the pest industry, she has learned about other women working in the industry from certified entomologists to business owners and technicians from all over the U.S. that have helped shaped her views about the work she does.

My advice to other women is to go after their dreams and goals, Luna said. Don't let anyone or anything stop you from what you like to do. The only person that can limit our potential is ourselves.

Bazan states that there is nothing that can stop a woman from accomplishing her dreams if she works hard, finds the right team and also knows how to balance their professional and personal life.

The sky is the limit, Bazan said. Never underestimate your abilities because of your gender. We all have different talents and abilities, but its up to you to find what motivates you. When you recognize your motivation, qualities and strengths, you gain the confidence to make your decisions. Just be you and be ready to work hard.

The transportation and logistics industry works 24/7, so it requires passion and commitment. Joining industry associations and participating in industry conferences will keep you engaged and informed while adding to your list of contacts and networks. Always keep an open mind and surround yourself with people that are smarter than you. Having the right balance is essential to having success.
White House officials are having early discussions about having President Joe Biden travel to Europe soon amid the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine. Alex Wong/Getty Images
Pat McGuinness and his wife, Lois, stand at the new tailgate adorning his green Jeep. McGuinness will be leading the St. Patrick's Day parade in Buffalo as the first grand marshal living in Niagara County. (Photograph by Benjamin Joe)
Longford / Westmeath Fianna Fail TD and Minister of State for Trade Promotion, Digital and Company Regulation, Robert Troy will travel to New Delhi and Mumbai, India as part of this years St Patricks Day Ministerial missions, the first official visit to the country since 2019.

Speaking ahead of his trip, Minister Troy said, St Patricks Day this year comes at an important juncture in global affairs. As we emerge from the pandemic and look hopefully to the future, we must also recognise the events of the past weeks and what it means for us and the global community.

While the pandemic impacted people in many different ways, there was a renewed sense of community in how we responded to the challenges it posed, and it is this sense of community and collaboration which I want to carry forward in my visit to India together with our continued solidarity with the people of Ukraine."

Longford well positioned to benefit from new enterprise plan Longford is well positioned to benefit from the implementation of the Midlands Regional Enterprise Plan (REP) which was launched by Minister of State for Trade Promotion, Digital and Company Regulation, Robert Troy TD, at an event in Irish Manufacturing Research (IMR), Mullingar.

He continued, This year marks 75 years of independence for India. A period in which India has assumed the status of a regional and global leader in many fields. I am pleased to be afforded the opportunity to congratulate the Indian people in person as part of my visit on this important milestone and to engage with them on deepening our already good relationship.

As part of the St Patricks Day programme of events, Minister Troy will meet his counterparts in the Indian Government, including the Minister of State for Commerce and Industry, Anupriya Patel, with a particular focus on strengthening trade relations.

He will meet with key business leaders and education institutions to support the growing economic and educational links between Ireland and India, and explore opportunities for further collaboration. He will also launch the Indian branch of the Ireland-India Business Association and open Ireland House in Mumbai, both marking a significant new chapter in Irelands economic relationship with India.

Noting the significance these positive developments represent to Irish-Indian relations, Minister Troy said, India is a very important partner for Ireland. Trade has almost tripled over the last ten years with over 5.5bn in trade between our two countries. There are real opportunities to further strengthen our relations between our countries and supporting the partnerships and links that connect us will enable us to fully embrace the opportunities this vibrant market presents.

A free trade agreement between the EU and India would promote the diversification of our exports  a key priority for us not least because of the challenges that Brexit has brought. It is therefore very welcome that the EU and India agreed last May to relaunch trade and investment negotiations and I hope these will resume shortly.
A man jailed for an odious and gut wrenching assault on his former girlfriend in her Longford home almost two years ago has brought High Court proceedings against prison authorities over a 14 day period of detention that left him in almost solitary confinement following an outbreak of Covid-19.

Lee Goodchild, 2 Auburn Village, Mullingar, Co Westmeath, was sentenced to two and a half years in prison last June as a result of an incident at 87 Ardnacassa Avenue, Longford on May 14, 2020.

Goodchild tabled ex parte judicial review proceedings on Monday against the governor of Castlerea Prison, Justice Minister Helen McEntee and the Attorney General.

Michael O'Higgins SC, Baxter Mimnagh Solicitors, said the basis for the application centred on claims Goodchild's detention was a breach of the 30-year-old's constitutional and human rights.

The applicant was during a 14 day period in February subjected to a regime of almost solitary confinement but was in fact close confinement because there was another man in the cell and this was because he was a close contact of a person who had Covid-19, he said.

During that period he was deprived of social contact other than the man in his cell.

He said there was not just an inconsistency but a patchiness to Goodchild's detention at a time when prisoners on a landing below his client were permitted to exercise and afforded showering facilities.

Mr Justice Charles Meenan said it was well established the court could not involve itself in the management of prison regimes, a claim Mr O'Higgins said fell outside of that practice.

This is different as this is systemic, he said.

This appears to be a situation where a particular regime is being applied admittedly and properly to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic but in circumstances where the restrictions cut across constitutional rights.

Mr O'Higgins argued prison authorities had imposed a remarkably extreme regime on his client at a time when he had tested negative for Covid-19 twice.

In a sworn affidavit to the court solicitor for Goodchild, Fiona Baxter said her client was subjected to physical and sensory deprivation, illustrated by how he had been left to wash his clothes for the two week period in a bucket inside his cell.

Mr Justice Meenan adjourned the application for leave until May 17 to allow the Irish Prison Service to be put on notice .

Details of Goodchild's judicial review application comes barely nine months after he was sentenced to three and a half years in prison.

Longford Circuit Court Judge Keenan Johnson suspended the final year of that sentence for what he termed as a vicious and brutal assault on his ex partner.

This was an odious and gut-wrenching attack, he said.

The female victim told of how Goodchild confronted her while the pair consumed alcohol in the sitting room of her Longford home.

He grabbed me by the throat and pushed me down on the couch

He had his two knees pinning me to the bed and I started screaming and crying.

Thats when he choked me. He was mocking me because I was crying.

He grabbed me by the hair on the two sides of my head and leaned down and grabbed my lip with his teeth. It was like being attacked by a dog.

"I thought that was it. I thought I wasnt going to get out of this. He put his hand around my neck and he choked me until I passed out.
The Regional Hospital Mullingar remains in escalation this afternoon, according to an Ireland East Hospital Group spokesperson.

The news comes as the as INMO has warned that 'chronic overcrowding mixed with Covid is a recipe for disaster'.

The hospital spokesperson stated, "Like all Hospitals across the country, Regional Hospital Mullingars Adult Emergency Department is busy. The hospital is in escalation and the teams are working to manage the current Adult In-Patient and Covid-19 Bed Capacity together with Scheduled Care.

"We would ask patients to consider their options before attending the Emergency Departments. If you do come to ED and are not triaged as seriously ill, you may need to wait for a long period to be seen. Adult Patients who require urgent care will be prioritised.

"Hospital Management would like to thank the public for their support and understanding during this period."

Meanwhile, the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation has again warned that high numbers of patients in our hospitals without a bed and cases of Covid in our hospitals reaching 1,042 is having a significantly negative impact on the ability to provide timely and safe care.



This comes as 544 patients are on trolleys today (Monday, March 14) and 1,042 patients are in hospital with Covid-19.

INMO General Secretary, Phil Ni Sheaghdha said: The fact that we have 544 patients on trolleys today and over 1,042 patients in hospitals with COVID-19 almost two years to the day that the virus first reached our shores is a recipe for disaster. If our past experience of COVID and high numbers of patients on trolleys has taught us anything, we will be seeing the impacts of this on our health system for many weeks to come.

INMO members have been sounding the alarm on the rise of trolley numbers since mid-summer, and we also urged caution on the removal of mandatory mask wearing in public spaces. We are heading into what is traditionally an extremely busy week in our Emergency Departments and last week we set out in detail what is needed now from Government at the Oireachtas committee. Furthermore, we met with the Minister for Health last Thursday evening and ED nurses from units around the country set out in detail the dangers presented for patients in overcrowded hospitals right now. There should be no doubt at this stage as to the negative effects of overcrowding.

The HSE and political system have a responsibility to the exhausted workforce to ensure their workplaces are safe. There must be no tolerance for hospital overcrowding while a highly transmissible airborne virus is making its way around our hospitals. Improvements to air quality in our hospitals must be a priority.

If non-emergency services need to be curtailed in order to allow the HSE and hospital groups to get a handle on out-of-control trolley figures and COVID cases within the hospital system then that must be done.

The HSE has a duty as an employer and as a service provider to take the necessary steps to scale up capacity. The current state of our health system is extremely concerning. It is now time for the Minister to attend the ED taskforce and to ask the HSE to put in place realistic short term pressure reliving measures."
System error

error: Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.

context: ... 21: </%method> 22: 23: % foreach my $c (@categories) { 24: <%perl> 25: my $category_id = $c->get_id(); 26: my @stories = Bric::Biz::Asset::Business::Story->list ( { element_type_id=>1148, category_id=>$category_id , Order=> 'cover_date', publish_status => 't' , OrderDirection=> 'DESC' , Limit=>10 } ); 27: </%perl> 28: <table width="90%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> 29: <tr> ... code stack: /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html:25

/usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm:948

/var/cache/mason/obj/2011159162/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj:17

/usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html:149



Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25. Trace begun at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Exceptions.pm line 125 HTML::Mason::Exceptions::rethrow_exception('Can\'t call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.^J') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 157 HTML::Mason::Component::run_dynamic_sub('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x55e838aa5b38)', 'main') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 948 HTML::Mason::Request::call_dynamic('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x55e83899fa58)', 'main') called at /var/cache/mason/obj/2011159162/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj line 17 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 135 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x55e838aa5b38)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1302 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1292 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 955 HTML::Mason::Request::call_next('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x55e83899fa58)') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html line 149 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 135 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x55e838a8b9e0)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1300 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1292 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 481 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 481 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 433 HTML::Mason::Request::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x55e83899fa58)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 165 HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x55e83899fa58)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 831 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x55e82e3143c8)', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x55e83899c2a8)') called at (eval 592) line 8 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x55e83899c2a8)') called at -e line 0 eval {...} at -e line 0
The Taoiseach will travel to the United States today to begin a week long celebration for St Patrick's Day.

Due to Covid-19, the annual tradition of this visit had to be held virtually the last two years but US President Joe Biden still received the traditional bowl of shamrock.

This will be Micheal Martin's last opportunity to visit the White House on St Patrick's Day as Taoiseach as he is due to rotate roles with Tanaiste Leo Varadkar this coming December.

Talks this year are expected to centre around the escalating situation in Ukraine but will also include meetings that will focus on economic links and the promotion of trade and investment between the US and Ireland.

During the week's visit, Martin will also attend a Tourism Ireland gala event, an Enterprise Ireland business roundtable event where the discussion will focus on Irish companies investing in the US, and the traditional Ireland Funds Gala dinner event in Washington where Irish-American business people, as well as US politicians, will be in attendance.

On St Patrick's Day, the Taoiseach is set to have breakfast with Vice President Kamala Harris in her home before attending the luncheon at Capitol Hill.

Martin will also attend the White House where he will meet with President Biden in the Oval Office, before attending the annual shamrock ceremony where it's expected the Taoiseach will renew his invitation to the president to visit Ireland later this year.

Talks will also include the emphasis on the strength of Irish-US relations, echoing the importance of the US supporting peace, Ireland's position on Brexit and the Good Friday Agreement.
Simon Harris has said Ukrainian's fleeing their country can continue their studies at Irish Universities.

The Minister for Higher and Further Education also confirmed that Irish students who fled from Ukraine will be able to continue their studies in Ireland, after places were made available by universities.

The majority of those students were studying medicine or dentistry.

Mr Harris met with the Irish Universities Association (IUA) on Monday to discuss the crisis in Ukraine and the response of the Irish third-level sector.

It comes as Ireland prepares to accept potentially tens of thousands of refugees from the war-torn country.

Mr Harris said that the most pressing issue facing colleges and universities will be the issue of English language support.

This is crucial to ensuring people have the ability to understand the information being presented to them, and to help them embed in Irish society, he said.



Minister for Higher Education Simon Harris said that the Government was working to ensure Ukrainian refugees can access Irish colleges

We will also need to provide employment opportunities for people and offer people the chance to engage in further education.

He said that fitting Irish students back into courses in Ireland was an immediate priority.

My department has contacted them all and they are deeply traumatised by what has unfolded. We will work to extend supports and care to them.

The IUA universities have confirmed they will provide the places necessary and we look forward to working with them on that.

We will also work collectively to ensure Ukrainian people can access higher education here too.

On Sunday, the Taoiseach said that Irelands humanitarian response trumps security checks on arriving Ukrainians.

Micheal Martin said the state has so far accepted 5,500 people fleeing the Russian invasion and may take in more than 100,000.

He said Irelands priority is the humanitarian response to what he termed the worst displacement of people since World War Two.

Our primary impulse is to assist those fleeing war, he said.
Local News, Community, Charity & Cause

By Chris Boyle Published: March 14 2022

20 ft. moving trucks deliver body armor, thousands of donated medical supplies & essentials to war-stricken Ukraine.

Recently, Suffolk County Sheriff Errol D. Toulon, Jr. joined with Helene Buchin, wife of Dr. David Buchin, Coordinator of the Long Island-Ukraine Emergency Response Drive, to announce the donation of nearly 450 pieces of bulletproof body armor from the Suffolk County Sheriffs Office to the people of Ukraine fighting the Russian invasion.

The four pallets of armor were loaded into two, 20 foot moving trucks provided by College Hunks Hauling Junk & Moving, alongside medical supplies, first-aid kits, blankets, sleeping bags, and other essentials collected in the drive by Dr. Buchin. The donations will be transported to Ukrainians fighting for their freedom.

Over 350 Ukrainians have been killed and over a million displaced since Russia invaded Ukraine. Representatives from the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America and family members of Ukrainian citizens will discuss the need for specifically-requested tactile equipment as well as recent first-hands accounts of the conflict, including this weekends failed ceasefires.

Sheriff Toulon offered his wishes for the safety and good health of the Ukrainian people. It is the hope of the Suffolk County Sheriffs Office that this body armor can provide some measure of protection to the Ukrainians fighting on the front lines of this bloody war. We pray for a quick and peaceful end to this conflict.
(Alliance News) - ECR Minerals PLC shares rose on Monday after the company said it identified visible gold at the BH3DD012 hole at its Bailieston project.

Shares were trading 5.6% higher at 1.32 pence each on Monday midday in London.

The gold explorer with assets in Australia said that it drilled a series of four holes at its Bailieston project in Victoria, Australia.

The Bailieston project is wholly owned by the company and contains the gold prospects known as HR3, Cherry Tree, Blue Moon and Black Cat.

ECR Minerals continued that it received gold results for the hole BH3DD012 at the HR3 gold prospect and was able to identify five zones of mineralisation in it.

The company noted that it is seeing the benefits of utilising its own diamond drill rig operated by an in house drill team now. Its team has been drilling an average of roughly 35 meters of good quality core per day, reducing the drill meterage rate compared to contracting out the work, it said.

Looking ahead, ECR Minerals plans to move the drill rig up on the low ridgeline to begin initial drilling into the Scoulers Reef and under the other soil anomalies identified along this ridge.

A significant amount of work has gone into the drilling programme at HR3, and I am delighted to note that following on from the results at hole BH3DD019, we continue to see encouraging and consistent gold grades in BH3DD012 and visible gold in BH3DD034. Importantly we continue to build on our understanding of the Maori Anticline and the regional gold trend ahead of an infill drilling programme, Chair David Tang commented.

By Abby Amoakuh; abbyamoakuh@alliancenews.com

Copyright 2022 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
LONDON, March 14 (Reuters) - HSBC announced on Monday it has agreed to sell its branch operations in Greece to local bank Pancreta Bank, as the lender further sharpens its focus on its biggest market Asia.

The deal is part of a multi-year restructuring by HSBC, which included axing its loss-making U.S. retail bank last year.

HSBC said the in-principle agreement to sell its Greek retail business by its HSBC Continental Europe unit was expected to complete in the first half of 2023.

HSBC, which has operated in Greece since 1981, has assets of around 2 billion euros ($2.19 billion) in the country.

The bank said it served 90,000 retail customers and around 500 business customers through 15 branches in Greece.

All 320 employees of the retail business will transfer to Pancreta as part of the sale once completed.

The deal is subject to consultation with unions and regulatory approval, HSBC added.
MC Mining Ltd - South Africa-focused coal miner - Reports pretax loss of USD1.3 million in the six months to December 31, narrowed from USD2.9 million a year prior. Revenue rises to USD13.0 million from USD8.8 million. MC Mining does not pay dividends.

Operationally, Uitkomst Colliery produced all of the company's revenue for the half. Its flagship Makhado coking coal project has received all regulatory approvals and has attained all surface rights over the mining and processing areas. Phase 1 of development is expected to take 9 months. When operational, Makhado is expected to hold a significant advantage as it will be "the only significant hard coking coal producer in South Africa", according to the company. Vele Colliery is set to have its processing plant modified as part of the Phase 1 development of the Makhado project.

Current stock price in Johannesburg: ZAR1.39

12-month change: down 9.7%

Current stock price in London: 4.52 pence

12-month change: down 40%

By Greg Roxburgh; gregroxburgh@alliancenews.com

Copyright 2022 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
Vivo Energy PLC - UK-based seller of fuels and lubricants under Shell PLC and Engen brands in 23 African countries - Doug Lafferty will step down from the board on April 30 following his resignation as chief financial officer on January 14. The search for a new CFO is underway. As part of an orderly succession process, Jan-Timo Rebisch, group controller, and Issam Sadiq, group treasurer, will lead the finance function on an interim basis until a new finance chief is appointed. Rebisch and Sadiq will not be appointed executive directors of the company. Lafferty will take up the position of chief financial officer at Aston Martin Lagonda Group Holdings PLC.

Current Johannesburg stock price: ZAR27.17, unchanged

12-month change: up 42%

Current London stock price: 137.06 pence

12-month change: up 48%

By Artwell Dlamini; artwelldlamini@alliancenews.com

Copyright 2022 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
(Sharecast News) - London stocks were just a touch higher by midday on Monday as investors eyed further talks between Russia and Ukraine, underperforming their European counterparts amid weakness in the heavily-weighted mining sector.

The FTSE 100 was up just 0.1% at 7,160.70, while oil prices eased back.

Victoria Scholar, head of investment at Interactive Investor, said: "European markets kicked off the week on a positive note with the DAX in Germany outperforming, rebounding from last week's volatility as video-link talks set to restart today between Russia and Ukraine with hopes of a ceasefire supporting markets. While Ukraine continues to be the main driver for markets, investors also turn to central bank action this week with rate decisions due from the Fed, the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan from Wednesday onwards.

"The FTSE 100 is staging more mutest gains this morning, having enjoyed its best weekly performance in three months last week driven by financial, mining and energy stocks. Strong GDP figures for January support the case for another rate hike from the Bank of England on Thursday. Meanwhile, over the weekend, Chancellor Rishi Sunak called on British businesses to unwind their investment ties to Russia."

In equity markets, miners were a drag as base metals prices fell, with Anglo American, Glencore, Rio Tinto and Antofagasta all weaker.

Rio was also in focus after the Anglo-Australian miner made a $2.7bn bid to buy the 49% of Canada's Turquoise Hill it doesn't own as it looks to settle its relationship with the Mongolian government over the massive Oyu Tolgoi copper project. Rio is offering 34 Canadian dollars in cash a share, a 32% premium to Turquoise Hill's last closing share price on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

British American Tobacco was also down after cutting its full-year guidance late on Friday as it announced its exit from Russia.

On the upside, however, housebuilders gained, with Persimmon surging to the top of the FTSE 100 index following a Sunday Telegraph report suggesting that the cost for cladding remediation work could be much less than the 4bn initially estimated. According to the Telegraph, a review commissioned by the House Builders Federation has put the potential cost at lower than 1bn.

Bodycote gained after the thermal processing services provider hailed "good progress" in 2021, with both revenues and profits higher.

Phoenix Group was also up as the life insurer boosted its dividend after annual cash generation exceeded expectations.

Market Movers

FTSE 100 (UKX) 7,160.70 0.07%

FTSE 250 (MCX) 20,370.56 0.81%

techMARK (TASX) 4,237.98 0.77%

FTSE 100 - Risers

Persimmon (PSN) 2,307.00p 6.22%

Melrose Industries (MRO) 127.55p 4.55%

Mondi (MNDI) 1,466.00p 4.16%

Admiral Group (ADM) 2,672.00p 4.05%

Smith (DS) (SMDS) 319.20p 3.97%

Ferguson (FERG) 11,440.00p 3.76%

Barclays (BARC) 167.00p 3.66%

Associated British Foods (ABF) 1,760.50p 3.62%

Taylor Wimpey (TW.) 139.15p 3.53%

Smurfit Kappa Group (CDI) (SKG) 3,253.00p 3.53%

FTSE 100 - Fallers

Anglo American (AAL) 3,719.00p -4.64%

Glencore (GLEN) 489.45p -4.27%

Rio Tinto (RIO) 5,351.00p -3.83%

Ocado Group (OCDO) 1,165.00p -2.92%

BP (BP.) 354.25p -1.71%

Antofagasta (ANTO) 1,551.00p -1.59%

Scottish Mortgage Inv Trust (SMT) 882.60p -1.50%

British American Tobacco (BATS) 3,023.00p -1.47%

Auto Trader Group (AUTO) 634.60p -1.43%

Shell (SHEL) 1,937.40p -1.33%

FTSE 250 - Risers

Petropavlovsk (POG) 3.50p 27.27%

Baltic Classifieds Group (BCG) 130.00p 5.69%

Synthomer (SYNT) 288.80p 4.71%

Chemring Group (CHG) 336.50p 4.67%

Jupiter Fund Management (JUP) 198.40p 4.64%

Balfour Beatty (BBY) 259.60p 4.59%

Network International Holdings (NETW) 211.10p 4.40%

Reach (RCH) 186.80p 4.36%

Coats Group (COA) 71.70p 4.06%

easyJet (EZJ) 503.60p 3.99%

FTSE 250 - Fallers

National Express Group (NEX) 237.60p -5.26%

Fidelity China Special Situations (FCSS) 234.50p -4.48%

Domino's Pizza Group (DOM) 353.40p -3.18%

Bellevue Healthcare Trust (Red) (BBH) 172.80p -3.03%

Volution Group (FAN) 414.50p -2.81%

TBC Bank Group (TBCG) 999.00p -2.44%

Drax Group (DRX) 688.00p -2.34%

Chrysalis Investments Limited NPV (CHRY) 167.00p -2.34%

HGCapital Trust (HGT) 405.00p -2.17%

Centamin (DI) (CEY) 101.25p -2.03%
(Sharecast News) - London stocks were little changed in early trade on Monday as investors eyed further talks between Russia and Ukraine.

At 0900 GMT, the FTSE 100 was flat at 7,153.02, while oil prices eased back.

Danske Bank said: "Both Russia and Ukraine have expressed optimism that peace talks have made progress and that results could materialise in the coming days. The fourth round of talks begin today."

Not everyone was so optimistic, however. CMC Markets analyst Michael Hewson said: "The sad reality is that any ceasefire remains some way off, with Russia's behaviour over the weekend pointing to increasingly desperate measures to crush Ukrainian morale by a campaign of indiscriminate bombing, as they widened their target area to parts of western Ukraine.

"There is also a concern that any new Russian measures might include the use of biological and, or chemical weapons."

In equity markets, miners were on the back foot as base metals prices fell, with Rio Tinto, Anglo American and Glencore all weaker.

Rio was also in focus after the Anglo-Australian miner made a $2.7bn bid to buy the 49% of Canada's Turquoise Hill it doesn't own as it looks to settle its relationship with the Mongolian government over the massive Oyu Tolgoi copper project. Rio is offering 34 Canadian dollars in cash a share, a 32% premium to Turquoise Hill's last closing share price on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

British American Tobacco retreated after cutting its full-year guidance late on Friday as it announced its exit from Russia.

Elsewhere, Bodycote gained after the thermal processing services provider hailed "good progress" in 2021, with both revenues and profits higher.

Phoenix Group was also up as the life insurer boosted its dividend after annual cash generation exceeded expectations.

Anglo-Russian precious metals miners Polymetal was the top performer on the FTSE 100, while gold miner Petropavlovsk - which has operations in Russia - was the biggest loser on the FTSE 250.

Market Movers

FTSE 100 (UKX) 7,153.02 -0.04%

FTSE 250 (MCX) 20,395.17 0.93%

techMARK (TASX) 4,223.20 0.42%

FTSE 100 - Risers

Polymetal International (POLY) 187.00p 10.32%

Persimmon (PSN) 2,287.00p 5.29%

Melrose Industries (MRO) 128.00p 4.92%

International Consolidated Airlines Group SA (CDI) (IAG) 139.30p 4.77%

Admiral Group (ADM) 2,671.00p 4.01%

CRH (CDI) (CRH) 3,253.00p 3.53%

Smurfit Kappa Group (CDI) (SKG) 3,237.00p 3.02%

Ferguson (FERG) 11,355.00p 2.99%

Mondi (MNDI) 1,449.50p 2.98%

Rolls-Royce Holdings (RR.) 96.27p 2.95%

FTSE 100 - Fallers

Rio Tinto (RIO) 5,361.00p -3.65%

Glencore (GLEN) 493.95p -3.39%

Anglo American (AAL) 3,771.00p -3.31%

Ocado Group (OCDO) 1,167.50p -2.71%

British American Tobacco (BATS) 2,991.50p -2.49%

Scottish Mortgage Inv Trust (SMT) 875.00p -2.34%

Fresnillo (FRES) 716.40p -1.89%

Shell (SHEL) 1,936.10p -1.40%

Experian (EXPN) 2,814.00p -1.30%

Dechra Pharmaceuticals (DPH) 3,964.00p -1.25%

FTSE 250 - Risers

Chemring Group (CHG) 342.00p 6.38%

Babcock International Group (BAB) 347.70p 5.36%

easyJet (EZJ) 510.20p 5.35%

Jupiter Fund Management (JUP) 199.60p 5.27%

Cineworld Group (CINE) 36.72p 5.03%

Synthomer (SYNT) 288.60p 4.64%

Mitie Group (MTO) 52.70p 3.54%

Hays (HAS) 124.90p 3.31%

Bellway (BWY) 2,859.00p 3.29%

TUI AG Reg Shs (DI) (TUI) 237.70p 3.26%

FTSE 250 - Fallers

Petropavlovsk (POG) 2.55p -7.20%

Fidelity China Special Situations (FCSS) 230.50p -6.11%

Domino's Pizza Group (DOM) 353.40p -3.18%

Hochschild Mining (HOC) 126.20p -2.92%

National Express Group (NEX) 244.40p -2.55%

Polar Capital Technology Trust (PCT) 2,088.00p -1.97%

Allianz Technology Trust (ATT) 250.00p -1.96%

Schroder Oriental Income Fund Ltd. (SOI) 257.00p -1.91%

Templeton Emerging Markets Inv Trust (TEM) 143.40p -1.38%

Centamin (DI) (CEY) 101.95p -1.35%
System error

error: Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.

context: ... 21: </%method> 22: 23: % foreach my $c (@categories) { 24: <%perl> 25: my $category_id = $c->get_id(); 26: my @stories = Bric::Biz::Asset::Business::Story->list ( { element_type_id=>1148, category_id=>$category_id , Order=> 'cover_date', publish_status => 't' , OrderDirection=> 'DESC' , Limit=>10 } ); 27: </%perl> 28: <table width="90%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> 29: <tr> ... code stack: /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html:25

/usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm:948

/var/cache/mason/obj/2011159162/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj:17

/usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html:149



Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25. Trace begun at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Exceptions.pm line 125 HTML::Mason::Exceptions::rethrow_exception('Can\'t call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.^J') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 157 HTML::Mason::Component::run_dynamic_sub('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x55e8387ebb28)', 'main') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 948 HTML::Mason::Request::call_dynamic('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x55e8391fac50)', 'main') called at /var/cache/mason/obj/2011159162/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj line 17 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 135 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x55e8387ebb28)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1302 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1292 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 955 HTML::Mason::Request::call_next('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x55e8391fac50)') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html line 149 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 135 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x55e8387f3c38)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1300 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1292 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 481 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 481 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 433 HTML::Mason::Request::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x55e8391fac50)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 165 HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x55e8391fac50)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 831 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x55e82e3160b0)', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x55e839237c58)') called at (eval 592) line 8 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x55e839237c58)') called at -e line 0 eval {...} at -e line 0
(Sharecast News) - London stocks were set to rise at the open on Monday ahead of further talks between Russia and Ukraine.

The FTSE 100 was called to open 15 points higher at 7,170.

Danske Bank said: "Both Russia and Ukraine have expressed optimism that peace talks have made progress and that results could materialise in the coming days. The fourth round of talks begin today."

Despite the positive call, CMC Markets analyst Michael Hewson wasn't so hopeful.

"The sad reality is that any ceasefire remains some way off, with Russia's behaviour over the weekend pointing to increasingly desperate measures to crush Ukrainian morale by a campaign of indiscriminate bombing, as they widened their target area to parts of western Ukraine," he said.

"There is also a concern that any new Russian measures might include the use of biological and, or chemical weapons."

In corporate news, thermal processing services provider Bodycote said it had made "good progress" in 2021, with both revenues and profits growing throughout the year.

Bodycote posted a 3% uptick in revenues to 615.8m, which, when coupled with a 2.8 percentage point increase to 15.4% in its headline operating margin, helped the group deliver a 26% increase to 94.8m in headline operating profits.

Basic headline earnings per share were up 29% at 35.8p and the group paid a final ordinary dividend of 13.8p per share, taking its full-year dividend from 19.4p in 2020 to 20.0p in 2021.

Anglo-Australian miner Rio Tinto has made a $2.7bn bid to buy the 49% of Canada's Turquoise Hill it doesn't own as it looks to settle its relationship with the Mongolian government over the massive Oyu Tolgoi copper project.

Rio is offering 34 Canadian dollars in cash a share, a 32% premium to Turquoise Hill's last closing share price on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
(Alliance News) - Belfast's Appeal Court ruled on Monday that a Brexit protocol between Brussels and London is lawful, blocking a bid to scrap the controversial arrangement which governs trade in Northern Ireland.

The protocol  part of the UK's divorce deal with the EU  has proved deeply unpopular with Northern Ireland's pro-UK unionist politicians, who launched the legal challenge.

Lawyers for the unionist politicians, including former Democratic Unionist Party and Ulster Unionist Party leaders, are expected to launch an appeal to Britain's Supreme Court after the case was also rejected by the High Court in Belfast in June.

They have argued the Brexit legislation is incompatible with the 1998 Good Friday Belfast Agreement, which ended three decades of violence over British rule in the province.

Their legal teams also sought to scrap the protocol on the grounds it was incompatible with the 1800 Act of Union which merged the kingdoms of Britain and Ireland.

However, Lady Chief Justice Keegan dismissed both cases.

Ahead of elections to Northern Ireland's devolved assembly in May, the province's politics have been plunged into crisis by issues surrounding the protocol.

Last month, Paul Givan, the unionist leader of Northern Ireland's power-sharing executive, resigned from his position in protest against the post-Brexit trade mechanism, prompting the collapse of the devolved government.

The move has further complicated post-Brexit negotiations between Brussels and London  which has said it is also opposed to the protocol.

Issues surrounding the protocol overshadowed a recent visit by Irish prime minister Micheal Martin to London, where the Taoiseach looked to show a united front with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson over Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Martin said the impasse was "unlikely to be resolved" ahead of Northern Ireland's elections.

Johnson said Brussels still needed to make "significant changes" to the protocol.

Ahead of the meetings, DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson said his party would not re-enter the power-sharing executive until the UK acts to "protect Northern Ireland within the UK".

Northern Ireland's unionist communities have railed against the protocol, saying that by keeping the province in the European single market, it threatens the province's constitutional place in the UK.

Simmering anger about goods shortages and uncertainty for businesses blamed on the protocol boiled over into clashes between police and demonstrators last year that revived memories of the worst days of sectarian violence.

source: AFP

Copyright 2022 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
(Alliance News) - Companies and trade organisations in the air travel industry have welcomed the end of remaining UK Covid travel restrictions.

Heathrow Airport said it would be dropping the requirement for passengers to wear masks in its premises following the UK government's announcement that all measures, including passenger locator forms, will end on Friday.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said on Monday the changes will allow "greater freedom in time for Easter" and will mean "you can travel just like in the good old days".

The move has been welcomed with open arms by some, including Heathrow Airport, which said it would be dropping mask requirements on Wednesday.

Its chief operating officer, Emma Gilthorpe, said she was "pleased" by the announcement.

"We have worked hard to keep our passengers and colleagues safe during the pandemic," she said.

"We acted quickly to institute face coverings as one of our first lines of defence and we're pleased that we're now able to move away from a mandatory requirement as society learns to live with Covid longer term.

"While we still recommend wearing them, we can be confident the investments we've made in Covid-secure measures  some of which aren't always visible  combined with the fantastic protection provided by the vaccine will continue to keep people safe while travelling."

Virgin Atlantic and International Consolidated Airlines Group SA's British Airways also announced they are ditching mask requirements on some routes.

From Wednesday, British Airways customers will only need to wear face covering on board flights if their destination requires it while Virgin Atlantic said it would be "gradually" removing compulsory mask rules, starting with Caribbean flights from London and Manchester.

Corneel Koster, chief customer and operating officer at Virgin Atlantic, said: "As we learn to live with Covid and with the legal requirement to wear a face mask now removed in England, we believe our customers should have the personal choice whether to wear a mask onboard on routes where international regulations around mask-wearing do not apply."

He added masks will be required on most services, including those to or from the US until April 18 "at the earliest".

Jason Mahoney, British Airways' chief operating officer, said the move was "welcome" and "a positive step forward".

He said: "As an international airline, we fly to a large number of countries around the world, all of which have their own local restrictions and legal requirements.

"For destinations where the wearing of a face covering is not mandated, our customers are able to make a personal choice, and we kindly request everyone respects each other's preferences."

Julia Simpson, president and CEO of the World Travel & Tourism Council, said: "Other countries ditched passenger locator forms weeks ago but it is good news the UK Government has now scrapped all travel restrictions for coming to the UK.

"If we are to compete on a world stage we need to be 'open for business' and not ask people to fill in lengthy forms."

Airlines Jet2 PLC and Tui AG recently announced they were easing their rules on masks.

The Airport Operators Association, the trade association for UK airports, said "restriction-free travel is good news for passengers".

AOA chief executive Karen Dee said: "People should feel encouraged to book their long-awaited holidays, trips to see relatives and friends abroad that they haven't seen for a long time and travel to rekindle business ties with other countries.

"Recovery is not a given, however, and with the rising cost of living, the rise in fuel prices and the uncertainty following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there remain potentially significant headwinds for UK airports as they seek to attract travellers back."

The British Airline Pilots Association, a trade union for UK pilots, also said it welcomed the move.

Balpa General Secretary Martin Chalk said: "The aviation industry has been through the worst crisis it has ever faced yet it will underpin the much-needed economic recovery that global Britain needs.

"Balpa pilots look forward to taking Grant Shapps on his next trip and, in the meantime, call for the government to publish its recovery plan for the sector urgently.

"We must ensure that we can effectively compete and regain the competitive ground lost to European competitors as a result of the UK Government's stringent and harmful approach."

source: PA

Copyright 2022 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
(Alliance News) - Phoenix Group Holdings PLC on Monday unveiled a new payout policy, following the lifting of its dividend for an "outstanding" 2021.

Shares in Phoenix were up 1.6% at 635.80 pence on Monday in London.

For the year, the London-based insurance services provider posted record cash generation of GBP1.72 billion, edging upwards from the GBP1.71 billion generated the year before, and ahead of its target range of GBP1.5 billion to GBP16 billion.

Phoenix's pretax loss for 2021 was GBP688 million, swinging from a profit of GBP944 million, reflecting GBP1.13 billion in adverse investment return variances, and GBP639 million in charges for amortisation and impairments.

However, operating profit increased 2.5% to GBP1.23 billion from GBP1.20 billion, due to a full contribution from the group's ReAssure business and increased bulk purchase annuity new business in the period.

Revenue grow 36% year-on-year to GBP6.38 billion from GBP4.70 billion, while as at December 31, total assets under administration edged up 1% to GBP310 billion from GBP307 billion, restated to reflect the sale of GBP29 billion of assets from the Wrap SIPP, TIP and Onshore Bond businesses sold.

Phoenix said that 2021 had seen the company "prove the wedge", meaning that organic growth from its Open business had more than offset the run-off from its Heritage business for the first time.

Phoenix declared a final dividend of 24.8 pence per share, bringing the total payout to 48.9p, up 2.9% from 47.5p the prior year.

In addition, the group has introduced a new dividend policy to reflect that it has two potential drivers of future dividend increases: organic and inorganic growth.

"It has been an outstanding year for Phoenix, with a record set of financial results and significant strategic progress made as we fully embraced our purpose. 2021 marked a pivotal moment for Phoenix, with GBP1.2 billion of new business from our Open business more than offsetting the run-off of our Heritage business for the first time. This demonstrates that Phoenix is a growing, sustainable business, and enabled the board to recommend our first ever organic dividend increase of 3%. Phoenix has also today announced a new dividend policy which sets out our intention to pay a dividend that is sustainable and grows over time," said Chief Executive Officer Andy Briggs.

By Dayo Laniyan; dayolaniyan@alliancenews.com

Copyright 2022 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
(Alliance News) - Rio Tinto PLC said on Monday it was proposing to acquire the entire remaining share capital of Turquoise Hill Resources Ltd, the partial owner of a massive copper mine in Mongolia.

The Anglo-Australian miner has made a USD2.7 billion non-binding all-cash proposal for the remaining 49% of Toronto- and New York-listed Turquoise Hill, who owns 66% of the Oyu Tolgoi copper mine in Mongolia. Rio Tinto currently holds a majority stake in the company, with 50.8% of its issued capital, and manages operations at the mine. The remainder of the copper mine is owned by the Mongolian government.

Under the proposal, minority shareholders of Turquoise Hill would receive CAD34 cash per share, which is a premium of 32% to its last closing price on the Toronto Stock Exchange, said Rio.

Shares in Rio Tinto were down 3.6% to 5,365.00 pence each in London on Monday morning.

"The proposed transaction would enable Rio Tinto to work directly with the government of Mongolia to move the Oyu Tolgoi project forward with a simpler and more efficient ownership and governance structure," said Rio Chief Executive Jakob Stausholm.

Rio said the deal would also strengthen its copper portfolio, and reinforce its long-term commitment to Mongolia.

Rio said no agreement has been reached between the parties, and there is no guarantee a transaction will occur following the discussions. "Should Turquoise Hill investors not accept the proposed transaction, Rio Tinto welcomes their continued investment and equal share of future risks and funding obligations," the company said.

This follows a "relationship reset" in late January, where Rio, Turquoise Hill and the Mongolian government agreed to the start of underground mining operations at Oyu Tolgoi. At that time, Rio had said it would "consider" buying all the shares of Turquoise Hill, if market conditions, tax rules and "other factors" were aligned.

The Oyu Tolgoi mine is expected to produce around 500,000 tonnes of copper annually on average from 2028 to 2036, and is likely to become the fourth largest copper mine in the world by 2030. It produced 163,000 tonnes of copper in 2021 from its open pit.

By Elizabeth Winter; elizabethwinter@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 Monday and not separately reported by Alliance News:

----------

Finablr PLC - Abu Dhabi-based payments and foreign exchange provider - Says Stephen Goderski and Peter Hart of PKF GM have been appointed as joint administrators of company, with immediate effect. Company was placed into administration on March 11 and notes shares will continue to be suspended until further notice.

----------

VPC Specialty Lending Investments PLC - invests in asset-backed loans to businesses originated by non-bank lenders - Investee VPC Impact Acquisition Holdings II, a special purpose acquisition company sponsored by VPC Impact Acquisition Holdings Sponsor II, backs out of deal to merge with FinAccel, the parent company of Kredivo, an AI-enabled digital consumer credit platform in Southeast Asia. Through VPC Sponsor, the company currently owns 1.0 million class B shares and 833,529 private placement warrants in VPCB. "VPCB is considering future options, including seeking an alternative business combination. The parties have agreed that, in the event that VPCB is liquidated, Kredivo shall issue a warrant with a nominal exercise price to VPCB providing VPCB with the ability to acquire a stake equal to 3.5% of the fully diluted equity securities of Kredivo," company adds.

----------

Infrastructure India PLC - Investor in infrastructure assets in India's energy and transport sectors - Extends long stop date for conditional sale of Indian Energy (Mauritius) Ltd to April 4. The asset sale is expected to net INR550 million, about GBP5.5 million, to AVSR Constructions. "The company's creditors continue to be supportive, however, should the sale of the SPVs not proceed, the company will not have adequate funding to meet its liabilities when they fall due and will need to identify other sources of financing," it says.

----------

Blue Prism Group PLC - Warrington, England-based robotic process automation firm - Courts in England approve takeover by SS&C Technologies Holdings Inc. Last month, shareholders backed the GBP1.24 billion deal. The takeover is expected to become effective during first or second quarter of 2022, with company's last trading day to be tomorrow, with cancellation on Wednesday.

----------

Windward Ltd - Liverpool-based predictive intelligence company focused on the maritime industry - Launches Russia sanctions compliance product. "The solution will allow Windward users to minimise risk exposure in maritime trade as it relates to ongoing sanctions against Russia," company explains. New product will sit in its Maritime AI platform.

----------

Cake Box Holdings PLC - Wembley, London-based egg-free cream cake seller - Sets out a series of executive changes, and believes second half trading has been strong - which will lead to its full-year performance to be in line with expectations. Company says co-founder Pardip Das will step down as chief financial officer in order to pursue other interests. Das, who has spent over 10 years at Cake Box, will leave the board on March 31. David Forth has been appointed as interim CFO from Monday. Forth has held finance roles as Associated British Foods, Wincanton and Eddie Stobart Logistics. In addition, Richard Zivkov joins as chief operating officer from June 13. Zivkov joins from grab and go food franchise Island Poke. Chief Operations Officer Jaswir Singh moves to the role of commercial director, but will continue to sit on Cake Box's board. It also named Chay Watkins as marketing director. Watkins joins from a brand strategy consultancy, where he was charged with developing branding strategies for retailers and fast-moving consumer goods firms. In January, Cake Box said it made some "transcription errors" in its annual accounts and has called on experts to assist with its internal audit work. It has called on accounting company BDO to help with "implementing improved internal audit practices". Cake Box on Monday says it is working through a "plan of improvements" outlined by external auditors, with an initial focus on "inventory management".

----------

Abcam PLC - Cambridge, England-based life science research tools - In 2021, swings to pretax profit of GBP4.7 million from GBP2.2 million loss in 2020. Revenue improves to GBP315.4 million from GBP269.3 million. Changes accounting reference date to December 31 from June 30 during the year. Notes operating profit in 18 months to end of December 31 GBP24.4 million and revenue at GBP462.9 million. Says calendar 2022 performance in line with expectations. Calendar 2024 revenue targeted to be between GBP450 million and GBP525 million. Chief Executive Alan Hirzel says: "We have had another successful year operationally and financially despite the ongoing challenges. As we look ahead to 2022, we expect to create more innovation and success out of the past two years of investment as we installed elements of Abcam's long term growth strategy. The scientific community remains our guide and with their support we are becoming a more influential and trusted brand globally."

----------

Sound Energy PLC - Moroccan-focused upstream gas company - Enters pipeline tie-in agreement to the Gas Maghreb-Europe pipeline with the Office National des Hydrocarbures et des Mines, for the Phase 2 development of the Tendrara production concession. The GME Pipeline, which was transferred to Moroccan state-owned entity ONHYM by the previous operator on November 1, 2021, is owned and operated by ONHYM. Company says agreement marks "further progress" required to reach final investment decision on the Phase 2 development at Tendrara.

----------

By Paul McGowan; paulmcgowan@alliancenews.com

Copyright 2022 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
Homestead, FL (33030)

Today

Rain showers early becoming a steady light rain for the afternoon. Thunder possible. High 86F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 100%..

Tonight

Showers early, then clearing overnight. Thunder possible. Low around 70F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%.
Xavi's Barcelona put their goalscoring nightmares of Thursday evening against Galatasaray well and truly behind them with a 4-0 rout over Osasuna at Camp Nou on Sunday night.

Ferran Torres notched a brace while Ousmane Dembele claimed a brace of assists in a game of ruthless cutting edge from the Catalans, having failed to convert any of their chances against the Turkish side only 72 hours before.

In defence, it was also a special occasion for Gerard Pique, as the Barcelona icon made his 600th appearance for the club.

It didn't take long for the home side to open the scoring and help Pique to celebrate, with Ferran converting from the spot inside a quarter of an hour after Gavi was bundled over inside the box.

He added a second only seven minutes later as Dembele set him through with a finely-weighted pass for Ferran to slot underneath Sergio Herrera in the Osasuna goal.

Dembele would add another assist, making him the team's joint-most prolific assist provider this season, as he set up Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang before the half-hour mark.

The Frenchman cut back on himself on the right flank and played a cross into the path of the former-Arsenal man as he prodded the ball into the back of the net.

Rounding off the win was substitute Riqui Puig, who followed up on his own shot from distance to add a fourth for Barcelona.

Eyes on second?

The convincing win means that Barcelona move to only five points behind second-placed Sevilla, with an extra game to play, against Rayo Vallecano at Camp Nou.

Sevilla will be the next team to visit Camp Nou in early April, after a Clasico at the Estadio Santiago Bernabeu next weekend.

Osasuna, meanwhile, could not guarantee safety just yet, but remain in midtable on 35 points from 28 games.
Weather Alert

...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...Excessive runoff will likely result in flooding of rivers, creeks, streams, and other low-lying and flood-prone locations, especially in areas that have already received heavy rainfall over the past few days. Several main-stem rivers could go into flood. A few locations could see significant flash flooding. * ADDITIONAL DETAILS... - Multiple rounds of thunderstorms are expected today through Thursday afternoon with the potential for very heavy rainfall. Widespread 2 to 3 inches of rain is expected with locally higher amounts of 5 to 6 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. &&
ICQPodcast - Amateur Radio Resources

In this episode, Martin Butler (M1MRB) is joined by joined by Chris Howard (M0TCH), Martin Rothwell (M0SGL), Frank Howell (K4FMH) and Leslie Butterfield G0CIB to discuss the latest Amateur / Ham Radio news. Colin (M6BOY) rounds up the news in brief and in the episode's feature Amateur Radio Resources.

We would like to thank Walter Washburn (KT0D), Patrick Ainge (WM2A) and our monthly and annual subscription donors for keeping the podcast advert free. To donate, please visit - http://www.icqpodcast.com/donate

News stories include: -

Ukraine Maintains Ham Radio Silence in a State of Emergency

Online Training for Ham Radio Exam in Spain

Amateur Radio, ISS and STEM

Successful QO-100 Ham Radio Emergency Communications Exercise

FCC to Consider Radio Receiver NOI in April

Workshop for Amateur Radio Operators Working to Advance Science

St Patrick's Day Award 2020

World's Oldest Radio Amateur

The ICQPodcast can be downloaded from http://www.icqpodcast.com
Russian threat to astronaut

Astronaut Mark Vande Hei, KG5GNP, who holds the ongoing record for longest space flight, is set to end his 355 days in space in just three weeks. The plan is for him to land in Kazakhstan with two Russian cosmonauts on a Russian spacecraft.

But on Feb. 26, Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russia's Space Agency and a close ally to Russian President Vladimir Putin, posted a video in Russian that threatened to leave Vande Hei behind in space and detach Russia's segment of the space station altogether.

NASA has remained silent on Rogozin's threats.

ANS thanks abcnews.go.com for the above information

AMSAT News Service

See also this item from the StarTribune

https://www.startribune.com/russia-threatens-to-leave-st-johns-grad-stranded-in-space/600155192/
What were those flies doing around the beer taps at Riverside Market Plantation? Answer: Having a good buzz.

Nonetheless, the presence of flies at the bar forced state inspectors to temporarily shut down the craft-beer hangout last week. The state also briefly closed Pollos y Parrillas by Sr. Ceviche in Cooper City and Le Bon Gout in Lake Worth.

Advertisement

The South Florida Sun Sentinel highlights restaurant inspections in Broward and Palm Beach counties from the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation. We cull through hundreds of restaurant and bar inspections that happen weekly and spotlight places ordered shut for high-priority violations, like improper food temperatures or dead cockroaches.

[ FULL DATABASE: See Florida restaurant inspection reports from the last 30 days ]

Sun Sentinel readers can browse full Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade county reports on our state inspection map, updated weekly (usually Monday) with fresh data pulled from the Florida DBPR website.

Advertisement

Any restaurant that fails inspections must stay closed until it passes a follow-up state inspection. If you spotted a possible violation and wish to file a complaint, contact Florida DBPR here. (But dont contact us: The Sun Sentinel doesnt inspect restaurants.)

Pollos y Parrillas by Sr. Ceviche, Cooper City

9419 Sheridan St.

Ordered shut: March 9, reopened March 10

Why: 25 violations (eight high priority), led by two flies landing on unwashed limes, flying around the prep stations and landing on to-go containers on the kitchen cook line. Inspectors also spotted a single live roach crawling on the floor by the walk-in cooler door, as well as seven dead roaches near the dishwasher in the back of the kitchen. The state also spotted one employees cup of tea  no lid or straw  sitting on a kitchen prep counter, old food stuck to clean dishware and utensils and a workers cellphone stored on a serving plate in the kitchen. The state didnt observe a single violation during their follow-up inspection on March 10 and cleared the restaurant to reopen.

Le Bon Gout, Lake Worth

1230 S. Dixie Highway

Ordered shut: March 10, reopened March 11

Why: 16 violations (seven high priority), led by a single live fly flying around the kitchen, as well as two cockroaches found crawling on floor by hot water heater and next to a box of orange syrup in the storage room. Inspectors also found rodent rub marks and gnawing marks along the storage rooms wall and ceilings, two rodent droppings on Muellers elbow noodle box and more droppings on the floor beneath the cashiers counter. There were likewise nine dead cockroaches stuck to a glue board behind electrical pipe by hot water heater, as well as two other glue traps at the cook line and in the storage room. The restaurant was also ordered to stop selling and trash its cooked turkey, cooked pork and black beans due to temperature abuse. Finally, an inspector spotted an employees backpack stored on top of rice bag in the storage room along with personal beverage bottles inside a cooler next to food meant to be served to the public. Two more issues were discovered during the inspectors second visit on March 11, but the restaurant was allowed to reopen.

Riverside Market Plantation, Plantation

6900 Cypress Road

Advertisement

Ordered shut: March 8, reopened the same day

Why: The state spotted five violations (one high priority), such as 28 live flies at bar tap counter, near the kitchen sink and on top of tables on the kitchens cook line. Inspectors also spotted the floor areas covered with standing water in the kitchen. The craft-beer bar reopened the same day with a single minor incident.

[ RELATED: South Florida restaurants: Now open, coming soon and closed | PHOTOS ]
Advertisement

Hybrid variation arose through a process called recombination  when two types of a virus simultaneously attack a patient, exchanging genetic material to produce new offspring. Scientists claim that the "backbone" of the deltacron variant comes from the delta variant, while the medRxiv paper states that its spike protein  which causes the virus to enter the host cells - is derived from the omicron." Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, the chief scientist at the World Health Organization (WHO) tweeted on Tuesday (March 8). She highlighted the "need to wait for experiments to determine the properties of this virus."In a press conference, the COVID-19 Technical Lead, for the WHO,. According to GISAID, the new variant has been circulating since January." Von Kerkhove added. "" she said. "Additionally, COVID-19 is currently infecting animals, with the possibility of infecting humans again, creating additional chances for mutations." she said. "A Harvard-trained Microbiology Professor at Colorado College Dr. Phoebe Lostroh has sid that the development of recombinants in viruses is very common." she said.The resarchers have also shared that the genetics of the recombinant variant also suggested that it did not represent a new phase of the pandemic.As deltacron cases are relatively rare, there is not yet enough data about the severity of the variant, or how effectively vaccines will protect against it.So we have to be extra careful to be sure that no COVID-19 or its strains attack us.Source: Medindia
It isnt easy to make it in Bollywood and theres no rulebook to tell you what would and would not work for you. Sometimes, its the most random thing that actors have confessed to being rejected for.

Actor-turned-model Dino Morea who has been in the industry for over two decades can vouch for it because according to him, it was his good looks that worked against him.

 Instagram/Dino Morea

He said that the casting people used his looks as an excuse for not casting him in a film.



It takes guts to see me differently. Some casting directors come up with the excuse and they dont see me differently. I just get the feedback from some that you are good looking, he said in a recent interview with Hindustan Times.

 Instagram/Dino Morea

He thinks he has been underutilised as an actor because people couldnt see beyond his looks.



I find it very bizarre, whats my look got to do with casting me in a certain character. Just cast me. I can change my look. People just never saw me beyond my looks. Being good looking sometimes works against you in Bollywood, he added.

 Instagram/Dino Morea

He started his career as a model and TV actor before getting a break in 1999. After working in films for over 10 years and realising his career was going downhill, he took a sabbatical only to return as a web series actor in 2020. His latest one The Empire shows him as an antagonist and his work is being lauded by fans and critics alike.



 Instagram/Dino Morea

With this show, I proved that I can do stuff, so watch me. Now people are taking note and thanks to the people who are taking risks with casting. At this point, I dont think I need to prove to anyone that I can act. There are many people who have called from the fraternity and said how good I was. I got good feedback. The directors are seeing me in a different light, not just the good looking, guy next door, who can only pull off certain kinds of roles, said Morea.



 Instagram/Dino Morea

Its strange that the industry, where the basic requirement is glamour and good looks, rejects actors on the basis of the same thing.


Ukraines call for help has been answered by the worlds deadliest sniper who has reportedly joined the Ukrainian army to fend off the Russian invaders.



Russias invasion of Ukraine has become a matter of global concern, with the citizens of Kyiv putting up a resistance against the invading forces to the best of their capabilities. These civilian fighters are bracing for an impending attack from the Russian troops and artillery camped just kilometres away.

According to Al Jazeera, officials in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol have claimed 1582 civilian deaths in the city at the hands of the Russian invasion.

 Reuters

The United Nations human rights office has stated 564 Ukrainian civilians including 41 children have lost their lives since Russia began their attacks.



Furthermore, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy shared that their military forces have lost close to 1300 soldiers in combat.

The United States estimates Russian casualties to be around the 2,000 to 4,000 mark, but official Russian figures claim that 498 Russian soldiers have been killed.

Here are 10 things to know about the super sniper who is currently helping Ukraine combat the Russian invasion:

 CBC

1. With Russia continuing to overwhelm the Ukrainians despite the latters brave front, the worlds deadliest marksman, 'Wali' arrived in Ukraine on 4 March. He was joined by three other ex-Canadian soldiers.



Speaking to CBC, Wali exclaimed, They were so happy to have us. It's like we were friends right away.

 CBC

2. Wali has previously served in Iraq and Afghanistan (in Kandahar).



 CBC

3. Wali is his nom de guerre. His official name is not known. Much like many soldiers, this moniker was given to him by the Afghans during his tour there.



 CBC

4. We know that Wali is a 40-year-old Canadian soldier, married, with a one-year-old child.



 CBC

5. An able computer scientist, Wali told the CBC, "A week ago I was still programming stuff. Now I'm grabbing anti-tank missiles in a warehouse to kill real people That's my reality right now.



 CBC

6. Having joined the Ukrainian army just a few days, Wali has already gone ahead and recorded six kills. He said, "I don't think the Ukrainians deserve what's going on."



 CBC

7. His status as the worlds deadliest sniper was earned after he shot down an ISIS rebel in Mosul, Iraq, getting the longest confirmed kill of 3.5 kilometres.



 iStock

8. A decent sniper is believed to be capable of getting five to six kills in a day, whereas a good marksman would be able to get seven to ten kills in the same span. According to reports, Wali is more than capable of delivering 40 kills on a productive day.



Source: CBC
Before the first bell even rang Monday, Boulevard Heights Elementary School in Hollywood was placed on lockdown. School buses meant to bring children to the school were redirected to a high school as police searched for a suspected killer or killers near the school.

A shooting in the 700 block of North 73rd Avenue was reported about 6:45 a.m. The shooting victim was taken to Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood where he died.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Because of the proximity to the school, Boulevard Heights was placed on Code Red, affectively locking the school and not allowing those inside to leave nor allowing schoolchildren who just arrived to come in, said police officer Christian Lata.

Footage of two men in hoodies  one orange and one grey  was captured on a Ring doorbell camera. Lata said police are looking for information on the men who are considered subjects of interest at this time, not suspects.

After several hours of lockdown, classes were officially canceled, WTVJ Ch. 4 reported Monday. Parents were directed to McArthur High School to pick up their children.

Two other nearby schools  Hollywood Park Elementary and Apollo Middle School  also were impacted by the search.

Anyone with information about the shooting is asked to call Broward Crime Stoppers at 954-493-8477

Eileen Kelley can be reached at 772-925-9193 or ekelley@sunsential.com. Follow on Twitter @reporterkell.
Owensboro City Commissioners have $13.3 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds to allocate, and city staff members have put several potential projects on the commissions radar.

Commissioners said they agree with some or all of the projects on the list. But some said they would like to see ARPA funds allocated to other areas as well, such as to local nonprofits.

Some of the funds have already been allocated.

Commissioners approved $2.5 million for sewer projects for Regional Water Resource Agency. Other projects on the city staffs recommended list include $2.5 million for Owensboro Municipal Utilities, and the York area drainage project, which has an estimated cost of $5 million.

Another project, the renovations of Cravens Pool, could potentially be paid for with ARPA dollars. A sizable amount of those funds, up to $8.3 million, can also be used to reimburse the city for COVID-19 pandemic-related expenses, such as emergency responder overtime.

Previously, Mayor Tom Watson said he supports using ARPA funds for one-time expenses, rather than for projects that would create a recurring expense. In an interview last week, Commissioner Jeff Sanford said funding the RWRA, OMU and York projects would use the bulk of the citys funds.

By the time you do those things, we are about out, Sanford said. The York project came in much higher than we thought at first.

Id like to see (the funds) stretch as far as we can.

Sanford said some of the funds could possibly be used to help local nonprofits.

There are a lot of nonprofits I have been asked about for some funding, he said.

Sanford said he thinks the funds should also be used for projects, things people need that dont have a recurring cost, he said.

Commissioner Mark Castlen said of the funds, I would like to seem them sprinkled around, than spread into one or two major projects.

Addressing the York area flooding is a priority, Castlen said.

Thats one of the reasons I ran, Castlen said. I feel, if I dont bring some relief to that, my term has been a failure.

Castlen said he agreed with helping RWRA fund projects, and he would like to use some of the funds to assist local nonprofits.

They do so much work in the community, he said. Its only fair they get some of it.

Theres no need to rush a decision. We have plenty of time to make a good, informed decision.

Commissioner Bob Glenn said ARPA funds give the city the ability to do projects that dont have to be paid off over time. Glenn said there are projects that he would support receiving some ARPA funds, such as for a senior center and Cravens Pool.

If we get to the point where our Parks and Recreation (officials) are ready to ask to upgrade Cravens Pool, I would like to see that (funded), if the money is needed, he said. When youre given a windfall from the federal government, you have two responsibilities: Spend it on projects that have an impact, and use them to free up your (city) funds and stockpile funds for other projects.

The city should also reimburse itself for lost revenue and expenses during the pandemic, Glenn said.

The fire department had quite a bit of overtime responding to medical emergencies during the pandemic, he said.

Mayor Pro Tem Larry Maglinger said the OMU water projects should be funded.

I think its a project that needs to be done, he said.

Maglinger said he also supports using funds to renovate Cravens Pool, which could not reopen last year due to health department violations.

I think we need to use ARPA money for that, he said. That was one of the original things ARPA was for.

We have had a lot of requests, and a lot of good requests for APRA dollars. I dont have any one particular (project) at this point.

There is a long list, and a lot of them are good, worthy projects, and I think would be money well-spent.

James Mayse, 270-691-7303, jmayse@messenger-inquirer.com, Twitter: @JamesMayse
Chris Walker is on a mission to help put young, Black men on the right path.

Walker, co-owner of Culture Cuts Barber Shop, hopes that his involvement with the new Owensboro Public Schools Books in Barbershops program will help him in that journey. Culture Cuts will be one of six barbershops that will be participating in the program that encourages kids to read a book while they are waiting for, or receiving their cut.

A lot of stuff has been going on on the west end, with kids getting in trouble and everything, Walker said. When they come in here to get their haircut, we all try to talk to them. I have been down that path of destruction, and I want to help guide them toward something better.

If kids can come in and accelerate their reading skills while receiving some positive life lessons, thats even better, Walker said.

OPS has placed crates of books in each participating barbershop. There are books for students of all ages, and most of them are geared toward powerful and prominent African-Americans. There are also some Spanish books available.

Other barbershops participating include Headquarters Barbershop, CMOs Barbershop, East End Barbershop, Parlor 9 Barbers and Emory Centre Barber Shop.

David Phillips, OPS director of diversity, equity and inclusion, said every few months the school system will swap the crates of books among the barbershops so that students can always have something fresh to read. In all, the district purchased 400 books for the program.

Phillips said some of the shops will be offering discounts or prizes for students who participate.

This is just one program, of many, that OPS is promoting in its long-running literacy improvement initiative. It is especially timely because a lot of students are behind on their literacy skills due to the pandemic, Phillips said.

We thought this would be a good idea so kids can work on their literacy skills outside of school, he said, adding that the community engagement component of this program is also beneficial.

A lot of barbershops are community-centered and oriented, he said, and this program helps to build those connections with students and their neighborhood.

Walker said hopefully this program can help him and other barbers make a difference in these kids lives, and thus, the community.

Along with coming in here and getting cleaned up and looking fresh, they can educate themselves, and we can give them some inspiration, he said.

Bobbie Hayse, bhayse@messenger-inquirer.com, 270-691-7315
BC Childress, director of outpatient pharmacy for Owensboro Health Regional Hospital, said his and his teams work during COVID-19 has validated how much difference healthcare workers make in peoples lives every day.

Childress has been at the helm of coordinating COVID-19 vaccine efforts at OHRH since the hospital received its first shipment of vaccines on Dec. 23, 2020.

Since then, he said, the pharmacy has grown its reach much further than the small hallway closet it resides in.

Childress is originally from Muhlenberg County, where he resided until his sophomore year of high school, which is when his father took a job in Ohio and the family relocated.

Even so, he said part of him remained in western Kentucky, along with many of the connections he had.

Eventually, Childress came back to receive his bachelors in chemistry at Kentucky Wesleyan College before moving to Atlanta to get a doctorate in pharmacy.

Some time later, he found himself in western Kentucky again when he took a position in the hospitals inpatient pharmacy in 2014.

While coming back to the region felt somewhat unfamiliar to him at first, he said his family, and especially his mother, encouraged him to continue.

She said to me, This place is going to need you, so you need to stick with it, and I did, and I grew to love it here, he said.

In 2018, Childress took on his current role with the outpatient pharmacy, and while the pharmacy may not have seemed like it had much room to grow in its small space, he had a vision to build it into something more.

My goal coming into this role with the outpatient pharmacy was to really take us from being just this internal piece of Owensboro Health, to being a community resource and connecting our community with the types of services we could offer, he said.

Childress said he was working on growing the outpatient pharmacy little by little during his tenure, but then COVID-19 hit, and it changed things more than anyone could have anticipated.

Initially, we were kind of put in this little closet in the hallway, he said. Our outpatient pharmacy is very small, and I dont think they saw the vision for what we could become.

I think the vaccine clinic has been one of the things that has helped out senior leadership see that we have the ability and the expertise to do these sorts of things.

COVID-19, he said, provided the steroid injection the pharmacy needed to see its real potential to become a vital community resource.

It also created a lot of community collaboration with local healthcare providers, the health departments and many other community entities.

One of the first challenges the outpatient pharmacy had to address during COVID-19, according to Childress, was a shortage of hand sanitizer.

The OHRH outpatient pharmacy worked to partner with local distilleries to have pure grain alcohol donated and was able to compound it and bottle it right there in the pharmacy to donate to community providers.

Once vaccinations became available, however, it was a big change for the pharmacy, he said.

We didnt really have a big footprint with immunizations, he said. This definitely changed that for us.

Initially, he said the pharmacy was equipped to handle less than 100 vaccines a day, with a 10-minute window per patient.

With a line of 200 patients outside the door on Christmas Eve 2020, the first day vaccines were available, he said there came a realization that things had to work on a larger scale.

On the first day, he said the pharmacy was able to quadruple the number of patients it was originally equipped to handle, administering vaccines to around 450 people in a four-hour period.

So far, OH has administered 112,000 COVID-19 vaccine doses.

The efforts took a lot of work from a significant team of people who had to make many personal sacrifices to make sure the community had access to vaccines.

Childress said he and others were in the clinic 70 hours a week for two months, working 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. some days and loosing time with their families.

He said prior to COVID-19, he took his children to school every day, something that he had to give up to ensure the pharmacy was operating at full capacity.

And he is not the only one who made personal sacrifices, he said.

It was physically exhausting, but it had to be done, he said. Im extremely proud about how our department and this organization as a whole has responded to this crisis.

Childress said those sacrifices were worth it in the end, however, because of how many people the team were able to help through the vaccine clinic.

Theres just no way to describe the satisfaction and sense of pride that comes from knowing you were able to help the people that you love, he said. Sometimes in healthcare, I know you dont feel like you make a difference all the time.

This was different, he said.

He was able to see his family and loved ones come in and get vaccinated, and he knew they would be protected and would benefit from what he and his team were doing.

During these times, he said he would regularly remember his mothers words to him, that the community was going to need him.

Over this last year, seeing what took place, I really felt those words, he said. There were times when I remembered her telling me that, and I just left this vaccine clinic at night, sometimes around 6 or 7, and I was like, You know what, I feel like what I did here made a difference,  he said.

COVID-19 vaccine clinics have not only created a difference in many lives throughout the community, according to Childress, but it has also created a massive transitional phase for the pharmacy.

Now, it is looking to continue building on that by creating even more outpatient services and collaborating across the system to ensure other OH pharmacies have the same capabilities and community involvement.

This has been an opportunity for us to show that, as an outpatient pharmacy, this is what we can be, he said.

Christie Netherton, cnetherton@messenger-inquirer.com, 270-691-7360
Without calling a single witness, attorneys representing courthouse escapee Dayonte Resiles in the 2014 murder of Jill Halliburton Su rested their case Monday, setting the stage for closing arguments likely to focus on what the evidence doesnt show, as well as what it does.

Resiles, 27, faces the death penalty if convicted, though he has always maintained his innocence. In 2016, after he escaped from a crowded courtoom and was recaptured, Resiles wrote to a Broward judge to say he was wrongly accused and determined to prove his innocence.

Advertisement

If he found anything while he was on the run, it was not disclosed the first time he went on trial late last year, and it was not revealed to the jury thats been listening to evidence the last two weeks.

[ RELATED: How the jury in the first Resiles trial deadlocked ]

The first jury to hear the case deadlocked, convinced at the very least that Resiles participated in the burglary interrupted by the victim, which led to her stabbing death, but unsure of whether Resiles committed the grisly crime. The jury found Resiles guilty of manslaughter, but the verdict was retracted when the forewoman refused to sign off on it  she later said she believed Resiles should be convicted of first-degree murder.

Advertisement

During the retrial that started March 2, prosecutors again walked witnesses through the crime scene at Sus home in the gated Westridge community, in the 10300 block of Southwest 22nd Place, just west of Nob Hill Road.

The evidence, according to Assistant State Attorney Maria Schneider, exonerated the victims husband, Nan Yao Su, a renowned professor of entomology at the University of Floridas Food and Agricultural Sciences Research and Education Center in Fort Lauderdale. Also exonerated, according to the prosecution, was the couples son, Justin Su, who was 20 at the time.

According to trial testimony, the younger Su had left home before the murder and was pretending to be at work, not far from where his father was at the time. The evidence shows there was a burglary at the Su home, where the victim was sleeping at first. Looking at a live feed from a security camera, Nan Yao Su said he saw what appeared to be a figure covering the lens. He called his son, who returned to the house.

There, Justin Su found his mothers body in a bloody bathtub.

[ RELATED: New jury tackles an old question: Who killed Jill Halliburton Su? ]

Investigators found evidence of a burglary and of a life-and-death struggle. They found the murder weapon in the bathtub. And they found another bloody knife, not the murder weapon, that had DNA on it. There was also DNA on a bathrobe sash that had been used in an attempt to bind the victim.

Some of the DNA on both pieces of evidence was traced to Resiles, who until then had a criminal record mostly consisting of burglaries.

Resiles escape and subsequent attempt to enlist the aid of more than a dozen cohorts to concoct an alibi show consciousness of guilt, prosecutors said.

But defense lawyers challenged the integrity of the DNA evidence and the prosecutions assertion that the evidence cleared the victims father and son.

Advertisement

And jurors interviewed after the first trial were convinced that Resiles could not have acted alone, a possibility that was not explored in depth during the retrial.

Closing arguments are scheduled to begin Tuesday morning.

Rafael Olmeda may be reached at rolmeda@sunsentinel.com or 954-356-4457. Follow him on Twitter @rolmeda.
With the Ohio River serving as a significant waterway for interstate commerce in the United States, it is critical navigational aids are maintained to help guide the vessels navigating it. Owensboros own U.S. Coast Guard cutter Obion, hull No. WLR-65503, accomplishes that task.

Kyle Norman, chief officer in charge of the cutter, said Owensboro sits at a strategic point along the Ohio River.

While thousands of motorists drive past the U.S. Coast Guard Station off Highway 60 in Owensboro, many are still unaware that the station, which serves as the dock for the Obion, exists. While the Obion entered service in 1962, making its 60th anniversary this year, Norman said the U.S. Coast Guard has a history in Owensboro that predates it.

There has always been a boat here, since the 1940s that we can see, so the Coast Guard has had a presence for nearly a century, and we dont plan on going anywhere anytime soon, Norman said.

Norman said the main mission of the Obion and its crew is to maintain federal aids to navigation  buoys and lights  along the Ohio River from Smithland to Greenup, which encompasses most of the waterway that borders Kentucky, as well as 100 miles of the Green River.

About 15 people serve on the Obion at any one time, although that number is down a little right now.

We have our transfer season in the June and July period, Norman said. That is when a few will leave and a few more will come in.

Most petty officers will serve a three-year tour, but as the officer in charge, Norman began a four-year tour last June. A native of Dyersburg, Tennessee, this is not the first time he has been assigned to the Obion.

I started here (in 2003), Norman said. This was my first assignment after basic training, and then here I am back.

The Obion is made up of a 65-foot buoy tender and a 100-foot-long barge that is designed for picking up and putting down navigational buoys that can weigh up to 470 pounds each.

We are responsible for all of the federal aids to navigation in our (Areas of Responsibility), Norman said. We take care of the floating aids to navigation, the federal buoys, roughly 650 that we maintain in our area, and then we have approximately 350 lights that we maintain as well.

There are both red and green buoys, each with a different meaning to the commercial vessels navigating the Ohio River.

For the rivers, if you are going into the current, the red buoy would be on your right-hand side, Norman said.

Zane Mays, machinery technician first class, serves as the engineering officer aboard the Obion. He has served in that role for three years.

We have a whole bunch of different systems on board, whether it is firefighting or hydraulics, we have the crane that we have to keep maintained, the propulsion systems, Mays said. It is just coming in and making sure everything is still good from the day before, and if we have any scheduled maintenance we try to knock it out as fast as we can.

Norman said the busy season for the Obion will begin shortly, when the spring rains recede and the water level of the Ohio River returns to its normal summer pool level. While the crew does not remove the buoys from the river during the winter, sometimes Mother Nature decides to do so. With the rising and falling of the river, as well as any possible damage from passing vessels, buoys can become damaged, or simply sink because they are not watertight.

Once aboard the Obion, the bridge provides a birds-eye view of the buoy deck.

Norman said that the crew working the buoy deck, preparing the navigational aids to be thrown off the ship into their proper place, will receive instruction from the bridge.

They are outside, and we are running along, and we know we have buoys coming up, so we physically let them know, and when we get to the point where we want to set the buoy, we will give the command to set the buoy, Norman said. It is a very dangerous job. There are a lot of moving parts.

Taylor Barnes, boatswains mate first class, is responsible for ensuring the Obions electronic charting information stays current through the Electronic Charts Information Display System (ECDIS), which shows exactly where the navigational buoys should to be placed.

ECDIS is the Coast Guards own, licensed electronic charting information, so we own it, Norman said. This was a way for us to standardize our navigation, where when we go to a different class ship, you are still using the same type of computer and charts.

Barnes will be transferring to Chesapeake, Virginia, this summer to serve as the ECDIS instructor.

The officer in charge of the bridge has everything from the throttle and steering to spotlights and radio communication at his fingertips. It is a one-man job.

Norman said with the long history of the U.S. Coast Guard in Owensboro, he would like to see more people in Owensboro aware of the services they provide.

This job really is no joke, he said. It is not a glamorous Coast Guard job.

Most folks that start their career, the junior folks that get sent to one of these, it is not by choice, it is just where you are assigned out of basic training like me, and you find your way back later.
The administrator of the Choate Developmental Center in Anna has been accused of obstructing a state police investigation. Court documents were filed March 7 in Union County. The court filing also mentions other unidentified senior staff members at Choate, who allegedly participated in the cover-up.
Miami, FL (33127)

Today

Partly cloudy skies this morning will give way to occasional showers during the afternoon. Thunder possible. High around 85F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 40%..

Tonight

Rain showers this evening with mostly clear conditions overnight. Thunder possible. Low 73F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

March 3, 2022

Contact: Press@michigan.gov

Gov. Whitmer Announces $8M Investment to Support Construction Careers for More Than 640 Unemployed and Other Historically Underserved Michiganders

LEO will partner with Michigan State AFL-CIO Workforce Development Institute in new statewide pre-apprenticeship effort

LANSING, Mich. - Today, Governor Gretchen Whitmer and the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity (LEO) awarded an $8 million grant to the Michigan State AFL-CIO Workforce Development Institute to support the Michigan Statewide Pre-Apprenticeship "Ready for Construction" (MiSPARC) program that will connect more than 640 unemployed and underemployed Michiganders.

"The 'Ready for Construction' program puts Michiganders first by providing a path to high-paying jobs in construction, an industry critical to our state's infrastructure," said Governor Gretchen Whitmer. "It helps expand and diversify our state's talent pool and opens the door to meaningful opportunities that will have a real impact on Michigan workers, families, businesses and communities."

The program will provide participants with training to help them achieve employment in the expanding building trades and transportation sectors of the construction industry, with priority given to unemployed, underemployed, low-income, minorities and women who have historically been underserved through Registered Apprenticeship and Pre-Apprenticeship Programs.

MiSPARC will increase the number of Michiganders who are well-prepared to enter and successfully complete Registered Apprenticeship Programs, growing the state's construction industry talent pool.

Since 2019, LEO has received more than $27 million in U.S. Department of Labor funding to support Michigan's State Apprenticeship Expansion efforts.

"Registered Apprenticeship has been an important tool in helping prepare Michiganders to enter in-demand, high-wage careers," said LEO's Office of Employment and Training Director Stephanie Beckhorn. "We've identified Apprenticeship Readiness programming and pre-apprenticeship training as critical success factors, and MiSPARC will help us meet the training needs that will lead to success for our state's residents and businesses."

Training provided through the program will increase the number of skilled workers in the construction industry, helping close current skills gaps and enabling the state to make the infrastructure progress needed to continue and accelerate Michigan's economic growth.

"The MiSPARC grant is a historic investment in working people and in the future of Michigan. While the building and construction trades are preparing for the many infrastructure projects scheduled for this year, the Michigan Workforce Development Institute is training the next generation of Apprentices and Journeyworkers," said Cheryl Sanford, CEO of Michigan Workforce Development Institute. "This funding will allow us to greatly expand our pre-apprenticeship training programs, preparing more Michiganders to enter high-demand careers in the building and construction trades."

To learn more about MiSPARC, contact the LEO Statewide Apprenticeship Expansion Team at LEO-apprenticeship@michigan.gov. More information about Michigan's apprenticeship expansion efforts is available at Michigan.gov/Apprenticeship.

###
We're sorry, but we're unable to locate the page you requested. The page may have been removed, renamed, or deleted. You can try searching for the topic using the search button in the right hand corner above.
There is the 78-year-old man whose apartment was bombed and missing a doorway. Using a makeshift put-together ladder, he tried to escape from a blasted-out window but plummeted two stories, hurting his head and fracturing his wrist.

Theres the eight-months pregnant woman who drove 36 hours to safety, arriving at the border crossing to Moldova dehydrated and exhausted.

Advertisement

There are the frostbite victims, and those injured from shrapnel. And there are those who have typically run-of-the-mill medical issues like diabetes and heart disease that have mushroomed into life-threatening problems because those people have run for their lives with only their clothes and ran out of medication long ago.

As Russias war on Ukraine intensifies, Dr. Zevi Neuwirth, an internist who lives in Bay Harbor Islands in Miami-Dade, is seeing it unfold.

Advertisement

As Russias war on Ukraine intensifies, Dr. Zevi Neuwirth, an internist who lives in Bay Harbor Islands in Miami-Dade, is seeing it unfold. (United Hatzalah/Courtesy)

A U.S. Navy reservist, hes also a volunteer with Israeli-based United Hatzalah, a nonprofit medical service organization most famous for its rapid-fire response within Israel to terror attacks. Hatzalah is the same organization that responded to the Surfside condo collapse last summer as dozens of workers triaged people from neighboring buildings who had been evacuated, and tended to families who were in distress and in shock.

Here in Moldova, I barely know my name, Neuwirth confided Thursday, as dates and people start to become a blur in the days that dont have a beginning and an end.

We dont have days, we have a constant, he said.

He catches a few hours of sleep when he can, often in the back of an ambulance. Hes eating OK, sometimes meals made fresh from volunteers who have created a kitchen to serve thousands of people a day, or out of a boxed military-style Meals Ready to Eat. He can hear the bombing in the distance. To be safe, he is dressed not in scrubs like his peers, but with a bulletproof vest, helmet and eye protection.

As Russias war on Ukraine intensifies, Dr. Zevi Neuwirth, an internist who lives in Bay Harbor Islands in Miami-Dade, is seeing it unfold. (United Hatzalah/Courtesy)

Its emotional, Neuwirth admits of what he sees and what he hears and what he feels. It will hit me when I get back home.

But he has no idea when that will be.

Russias unprovoked war on free Ukraine is now in its second week and thousands of soldiers and civilians have been killed. More than 2.3 million Ukrainians have left their homeland, scattering across Europe, including Moldova where Neuwirth works out of a field station.

The war has drawn international outrage as civilians are targeted; Russian bombs fell on two Ukrainian hospitals in a city west of Kyiv on Wednesday, and the World Health Organization said it has confirmed 18 attacks on medical facilities since the invasion began.

Advertisement

[ RELATED: We had a good life: Family flees war in Ukraine and finds refuge in South Florida ]

Neuwirth isnt the only person from South Florida to run to eastern Europe.

Shell shocked is how Mark Hattabaugh, of Cooper City, describes the Ukrainians at the border.

A pastor with The Pentacostals of Cooper City church and the senior chaplain of the Miramar Police Department, Hattabaugh is also a volunteer with Missouri-based Compassion Services International.

So when they called him for help, he flew to Europe last Sunday, returning home to South Florida on Wednesday.

The agency was desperate to get cash to the Ukrainians who were both fleeing and those who were staying in place.

And the agency also needed to get supplies from their office in Poland to restock their volunteers who were inside Ukraine.

Advertisement

Hattabaugh and four other volunteers each helped transport $10,000 per person, as well as Meals Ready to Eat, flashlights and headlamps.

He was far enough away on the Romanian border to not hear gunfire during the few days he was there, but he was struck at how cold he was and at how the refugees were able to stand up for days at a time to make the crossing in that weather.

For both levity and kindness, he made animal balloons for children as they made it across the border.

Mark Hattabaugh, a local pastor and chaplain for the Miramar Police Department, makes a balloon for a Ukrainian child who has fled the war. The pastor volunteered for a nonprofit to get supplies for its staff who are still in the Ukraine including cash, food, and flashlights. (Mark Hattabaugh/Courtesy)

But he has bigger things to worry about: His agency has a shelter in Poland, and he frets out loud about young Ukrainian girls seeking refuge with strangers and then unwittingly get caught up in the sex trade.

He said the people who fled first have money and connections. Future waves of refugees will have neither.

Im holding back the tears, he said Friday, his voice breaking. Ive never in my life seen anything like this.

Advertisement

What has happened, its pure evil, he said. Families have been separated forever.

[ RELATED: Jewish response to the mounting refugee crisis in Poland ]

And its those types of families that Neuwirth wants to help. While most people crossing the border are healthy, some have crippling issues that have been aggravated or caused by the war. Medical supplies are plentiful as it gets flown in Israel, paid with donations to the nonprofit. And theres an endless stream of need: concussions and broken wrists and traumatic injuries caused by missile attacks.

The day after the war started, United Hatzalah set up shop in Moldova at two border crossings at the bequest of the chief rabbi of the Agudath Israel synagogue in Kishinev. While so much international attention and aid was being directed to Ukraines neighbor of Poland as it dealt with a flood of refugees, people were also crossing to Moldova with not as many resources.

We need help, theres no one here, the rabbi told United Hatzalah, according to Raphael Poch, an agency EMT. Were being inundated with refugees, the rabbi told them.

Its famous synagogue, built in 1886 and purchased in 1991 after Moldova gained its independence, has been closed for religious services as it helps with the crisis. Now it is a refugee center with Ukrainians in the halls and every place you could put a bed, Poch said.

So many of the refugees fleeing with no place to go are like deer in the headlights. You can see the fear, the tears, the gratitude, Neuwirth said. Some are waiting days to get in since the border crossing has a 6-mile line.

Advertisement

Neuwirth said he has the stamina to keep going as long as I can make a difference, he said.

But as the war rages theres still hope it will end: I hope Im not needed soon.

Lisa J. Huriash can be reached at lhuriash@sunsentinel.com or 954-572-2008 or Twitter @LisaHuriash
Former U.S. representative and current Army Reserve officer Tulsi Gabbard, known for controversial positions that have often been supportive of Russian interests, was accused Sunday of pushing a "treasonous lie" by Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, after her latest social media video promoted a debunked theory about biolabs in Ukraine.

In the video, which was posted to Gabbard's TikTok and other social media accounts, the former congresswoman mischaracterized U.S. support for several dozen former Soviet biolabs in Ukraine, falsely implying that the labs work with diseases like COVID-19 and that the Biden administration had been "trying to cover this up."

The claim is a variation on a Russian disinformation allegation about U.S. support for the labs that dates back to at least 2014, according to EUvsDisinfo, a watchdog group that advises the European Union and its members on disinformation.

Read Next: Russia's False Ukraine Biolab Claims Challenge Pentagon and Spark Biden Warning

The unproven allegations that the U.S. is assisting Ukraine in the creation of new bioweapons were denied by various members of the federal government from the White House and the Pentagon last week. Two key points that the Pentagon noted in a fact sheet released Friday were that "after Russia launched its unlawful invasion of Ukraine, the Ukrainian Ministry of Health responsibly ordered the safe and secure disposal of samples."

Defense officials have observed that the claim may be a pretext for Russian leader Vladimir Putin to increase attacks on civilian populations in Ukraine, even potentially unleashing his own biological or chemical weapons.

In the Pentagon fact sheet, the agency said that Ukraine's efforts to destroy samples at the Soviet-era facilities help "limit the danger of an accidental release of pathogens should Russia's military attack laboratories."

The fact sheet also made it clear that "unlike Russia, the United States and Ukraine are not developing biological weapons and are in full compliance with the Biological Weapons Convention." This denial was echoed by White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki on March 9.

Romney, in a tweet Sunday afternoon, said the video was "parroting Russian propaganda" and that Gabbard's "treasonous lies may well cost lives."

Two of Gabbard's recent social media posts with political themes have been shot with her wearing her Army uniform. In one, made in December 2021, she noted she was "wrapping up my reserve duty here at Fort Bragg in North Carolina."

Gabbard is a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, serving as a civil affairs officer currently assigned to 1st Special Forces Command. That unit oversees all of the Army's Special Forces -- commonly known as the Green Berets, as well as units that conduct psychological operations, civil affairs and supporting roles.

Maj. Dan Lessard, a unit spokesman, said that "Tulsi Gabbard's comments made in her civilian capacity represent her views and not those of 1st Special Forces Command" in an email to Military.com on Monday -- the same statement he issued last week. He noted that the statement has not been changed by the release of Sunday's video.

"Our command has previously addressed the video Lt. Col. Gabbard made in uniform on Dec. 8, 2021," he added.

The Army's position on these remarks -- at least those Gabbard made in uniform -- is surprisingly soft given examples of other officers using video of themselves in uniform for political ends.

Amid the withdrawal from Afghanistan, Marine Lt. Col. Stu Scheller made a series of videos in which he berated senior military leaders for the results of the war and called out a culture that, he felt, was incapable of holding itself to account.

Scheller was stripped of command after his first video, sent to the brig, and court-martialed before being discharged.

Former Army officer Harold Earls, who served for just under six years, was investigated for possibly abusing his position after his political ads in a race for Georgia's 6th Congressional District featured video he made on active duty. Task and Purpose reported on another serving Army Reserve officer, who was investigated after making an appearance on the far-right TV network OANN amid a campaign.

Other politicians in the military have gotten warnings for appearing in political messages in uniform.

Sunday's video is not the first time Gabbard, a former congressional representative for Hawaii and a onetime presidential candidate, has been accused of trafficking in Russian talking points.

Gabbard famously met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in 2017 amid a brutal and bloody civil war and shortly after the Battle of Aleppo -- a fight that had many allegations of war crimes, including the use of chemical weapons by Syrian and Russian forces.

At the time, she told CNN that "whatever you think about President Assad, the fact is that he is the president of Syria" and that he was vital to securing peace in the country. She also said she was skeptical of claims he had used chemical weapons, despite findings from a U.N. group commissioned by the Security Council. Gabbard would go on to stand by that meeting and her comments for years, at one point arguing that "Assad is not the enemy of the United States because Syria does not pose a direct threat to the United States" on MSNBC in 2019.

Assad recently announced he is supporting President Putin and Russia in their invasion of Ukraine.

Although she later walked back some of her support for Assad amid a bid for president in the 2020 campaign on the Democratic ticket, her use of Russian talking points led to a major attack against her by fellow candidate Hillary Clinton. Several American media outlets also noted that Gabbard's campaign and debate performance were being elevated by Russian-aligned media and social media users.

More recently, Gabbard has made frequent appearances on Tucker Carlson's show -- itself accused of being cozy with Kremlin talking points, according to Mother Jones -- to say that Putin's buildup of troops near Ukraine was justified because of the country's pursuit of NATO membership. "It is a legitimate security concern for Russia," Gabbard said in one appearance posted to her TikTok account before accusing the Biden administration of "smearing" those who disagree with the U.S. government position as "traitors."

Gabbard also posted a video in which she claimed that "Ukraine isn't actually a democracy" and accused Ukrainian President Vladmir Zelenskyy of silencing political opponents.

Gabbard's repeating of talking points favorable to Russia is easy to spot, but many, including experts in the field of disinformation, are quick to note that proving a relationship is much harder.

Raphael Cohen, a senior political scientist with the Rand think tank, noted when he spoke with Military.com last week that "you can't always point to a direct quid pro quo."

"It gets very murky very quickly," he added.

Cohen did note that politicians on both sides of the aisle -- especially those looking to paint themselves as outsiders -- are often drawn to different aspects of the Russian talking points out of "a misplaced idea that you can be a maverick politician."

"There's a thin line between being a maverick, and just being a tool of an evil regime," Cohen cautioned.

-- Konstantin Toropin can be reached at konstantin.toropin@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @ktoropin.

Related: Despite Russian Threats About Treatment of POWs, American Veterans Look to Help Ukraine
The Department of Veterans Affairs has unveiled a plan that calls for closing 17 aging or underused medical centers, while shifting services to more than 30 new or rebuilt hospitals. In some cases, it would rely on private care.

Under the nearly $2 trillion proposal released Monday, the department would lose a net of three medical centers and 174 outpatient health clinics but would gain 255 health care facilities, including new clinics, stand-alone rehabilitation centers and nursing homes.

Medical centers in areas with diminishing veteran populations are among those slated to close, while others would be built in growing urban centers, the West and the South -- areas where veteran populations are growing.

Read Next: Scuttled Plan to Give Polish Jets to Ukraine Stirs Frustration on Capitol Hill

The recommendations, which represent the VA's vision for future health care delivery to more than 12 million veterans in the next 25 to 50 years, are the first step in an asset and infrastructure review required by Congress in 2018.

The infrastructure modernization proposals will be reviewed next by an independent commission, which will provide its own input. The final plan must be approved by Congress before being enacted.

Already, lawmakers are weighing in on the recommendations. Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., who chairs the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, issued a statement Monday noting that a nursing home and two clinics would be closed in his state.

He called any "efforts to kneecap veterans health care ... a non-starter."

"I will fight tooth and nail against any proposals that blindly look to reduce access to VA care or put our veterans at a disadvantage," Tester said.

Illinois Rep. Mike Bost, the ranking Republican on the House Veterans Affairs Committee, said he looks forward to seeing the commission complete its work, adding that "retaining the status quo is not an option."

"For far too long, VA's infrastructure has been slowly crumbling. Veterans in every corner of the country deserve better," Bost said.

VA Secretary Denis McDonough described the current VA medical infrastructure as unable to meet the health needs of today's veterans. Many of its facilities were built in the early to mid-20th century and cannot accommodate modern technology or are inappropriately structured for the population they serve, he said.

"If we implement these recommendations, nearly 150,000 more veterans will have primary care nearby; 200,000 more would have mental health care nearby; nearly 375,000 more vets will have outpatient specialty care nearby; and all the care will be delivered in modern state-of-the-art facilities," McDonough said during an event last week with the Rand Epstein Family Veterans Policy Research Institute.

Under the plan, 17 medical centers in 12 states would close, 18 in 16 states would be completely replaced, and 13 new centers would be built in 11 states.

Of the 17 slated for closure, three are in New York City or its suburbs, including Castle Point, Manhattan and Brooklyn. Two each are in Pennsylvania (Philadelphia and Coatesville), Virginia (Salem and Hampton), and South Dakota (Fort Meade and Hot Springs).

Other medical centers on the proposed closure list include those in:

Livermore, California

Dublin, Georgia

Fort Wayne, Indiana

Alexandria, Louisiana

VA Central Western Massachusetts

Battle Creek, Michigan

Chillicothe, Ohio

Muskogee, Oklahoma

Some of these facilities would shift services to nearby civilian hospital networks or become multi-specialty community outpatient clinics, while others would shift their patients to newly built VA medical centers or bolstered existing hospitals nearby.

For example, in South Dakota, the plan calls to build a new, centrally located VA medical center in Rapid City. In Philadelphia, patients would have access to care at new state-of-the-art facilities in King of Prussia or just across the state line in Camden, New Jersey.

New medical centers also would be built at:

Newport News and Norfolk, Virginia

Macon and Gwinnett County, Georgia

Huntsville, Alabama

Summerville, South Carolina

Grand Rapids, Michigan

Everett, Washington

Colorado Springs, Colorado

Anthem, Arizona

Another 18 medical centers would be completely rebuilt, either on existing land nearby, as is planned for the VA medical center in Washington, D.C. -- or closer to other major health providers and hospitals in their areas, such as the VA medical center in Buffalo, New York, according to the recommendations.

Those include medical centers in Bedford, Massachusetts; Durham, North Carolina; Tuskegee, Alabama; Hines, Illinois; Shreveport, Louisiana; Reno, Nevada; Beckley, West Virginia; Wilkes- Barre, Pennsylvania; Miami, Florida; Atlanta; Phoenix; Indianapolis; Albany and St. Albans, New York; and Roanoke, Virginia.

According to the recommendations, however, the newly rebuilt facilities may offer different services and care than they currently provide. In Albany, for example, the facility will focus on inpatient mental health, nursing home care and residential rehabilitation treatment programs, and shift inpatient medical and surgical care elsewhere if the department can institute a strategic collaboration with existing civilian facilities.

As part of their deliberations, members of the Asset and Infrastructure Review Commission plan to hold public hearings and meet with those who have a vested interest in the future of VA health care, including veterans service organizations, health care experts and institutions, and those who would be affected by the changes.

While most veterans service organizations had not weighed in on the recommendations as of late Monday, the American Legion released a statement saying it generally doesn't support closing facilities but recognizes that changes must sometimes happen based on population shifts.

"The American Legion will always advocate for every U.S. veteran, but we realize that for VA to properly serve America's veterans, it must from time-to-time optimize, reallocate, and re-invest in some of its decades-old infrastructures," American Legion National Commander Paul E. Dillard said in a statement.

The conservative Concerned Veterans for America, a group that supports broader access for veterans to private health care, issued a statement immediately after the recommendations were released saying it welcomed the proposals

"Today's veteran population is vastly different from what it was even five years ago, let alone decades ago. A rigid system that cannot adapt to the changing and unique needs of the veterans it serves leads to waste, complications and, ultimately, an absence of care," CVA Deputy Director Russ Duerstine said.

Editor's note: This story has been updated to correct when most VA buildings were constructed. -- Patricia Kime can be reached at Patricia.Kime@Military.com. Follow her on Twitter @patriciakime

Related: Bypassing Pentagon Pleas, Lawmakers Say Military Health System Reforms Will 'Stay the Course'
The opinions expressed in this op-ed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Military.com. If you would like to submit your own commentary, please send your article to opinions@military.com for consideration.

Sarah Streyder is the founder of the Secure Families Initiative and a proud Space Force spouse. She is an advocate for principled foreign policy, and passionate about elevating military spouse voices. Sarah encourages everyone she meets to get involved, organize and vote.

Military voters are not voting as often as they should.

Every day, the 2.5 million Americans who have volunteered to serve in our armed forces put on their uniforms in the face of uncertainty. While current events from half a world away dominate our news feeds and hearts right now, it can be hard to focus on the seemingly little stuff -- like registering to vote.

But the 2022 elections are already here, and military voters need to show up.

The Military Vote Coalition represents 23 military family and veteran-serving nonprofits in a nonpartisan collaboration to defend and advance our community's access to the ballot box. We're joining our efforts to remind military service members, veterans and their families that voting is important, while simultaneously helping anyone who needs assistance to navigate the registration process.

Let's start with some bad news: According to a survey conducted by the Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP) in 2020, active-duty military members were 14% less likely to be registered to vote and 27% less likely to have actually voted than their civilian counterparts. The survey controlled for demographics such as age, gender and race, so the data compares similar communities.

To those of us in the military community, these statistics are deeply saddening. Families like ours directly experience the outcome of elections at all levels -- from how military kids get welcomed into their local schools, to how our family's health care gets funded and delivered. Our community is full of voices that deserve to be heard, but oftentimes red tape gets in the way.

The No. 1 barrier military voters faced in 2020 was international mail delays, primarily due to the COVID-19 pandemic. These delays often prevented overseas voters from returning their mail-in ballots by their states' deadlines. Given the continued global supply chain struggles we see, this is important for voters to keep in mind this year, too.

If your state requires you to cast your absentee ballot through the mail, make sure you return it as early as possible. Also, if you have access to a printer, you can use the Federal Post Card Application (FPCA) to request that your blank ballot arrive by email so you can send it back without delay.

Military life comes with a lot of complicated residency questions, and that's where our coalition comes in. We're available year-round to answer questions and point military-connected voters to the right place. Our organizations each post about election deadlines so our members can stay on top of their registrations. Additionally, on March 15, we're hosting a virtual Q&A for military-connected voters in which we will touch on frequent pain points and answer community questions live. You can register to attend here.

Here's some good news to leave you with: Resources can make a difference! When military voters accessed voting resources in 2020, the FVAP survey found they were "significantly more likely" to successfully cast their ballot. This could mean they either visited the FVAP website or worked with their local installation's Voting Assistance Officer (VAO). Resources -- like those our organizations are committed to sharing -- can make a difference.

That's why we're shouting from the rooftops: Let's get our voices heard! Make sure you're ready to vote this year. Together, we can boost our community's voice in government.
In this Friday, Nov. 1, 2019 photo, an endangered Everglades snail kite flies with an apple snail at Lake Kissimmee in Kenansville, Fla. Water level control and the resulting loss of wetlands caused the bird's population to fall to about 750 in 2008. Its nearly triple that today.. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty) (Robert F. Bukaty/AP)

We know whether the Everglade snail kite becomes more or less endangered every few hours. At least we do at Lake Tohopekaliga, an 18,810-acre lake located southeast of Kissimmee.

A University of Florida research team is always counting. They use GPS trackers, nest cameras and airboats, not to mention old-fashioned binoculars, to verify the data that comes in through the gadgetry.

Advertisement

The constant updates inform decisions on whether to let water in or out of whats called Lake Toho for short. It also guides decisions to restrict access around nests or rip out weeds to make way for bass and tour boats without starving the bird.

J. Scott Angle is the University of Floridas Senior Vice President for Agriculture and Natural Resources and leader of the UF Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS).

Even if you dont care about birds, this work might protect something you do care about  bass, if youre a fisher; ducks, if youre a hunter; airboat tours, if youre a visitor, business owner or employee; and tax dollars if youre a Floridian who benefits from the economic activity a healthy home for the snail kite generates.

Advertisement

UF Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences ecologist Rob Fletcher leads the statewide snail kite monitoring program. Fletcher is largely responsible for providing scientific information to answer questions of when to turn the lakes plumbing on and off and other human controls on a wild space surrounded by busy boulevards, condos and commerce.

The Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC), the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) and the South Florida Water Management District depend on the data in deciding what to do at the lake and elsewhere throughout the kites range.

That range includes Everglades National Park, Lake Okeechobee, Lake Kissimmee and Lake Istokpoga in Highlands County. Its even been spotted on Paynes Prairie outside Gainesville and in the Panhandle.

The kite takes its name from where it was first spotted more than a century ago.

Fletcher just wants what the agency officials want  the data and insights they need to make the best possible decisions. They all want you  and your grandchildren  to have the chance to see such a rare bird.

If you do see it, you can help Fletcher and his team by recording your sighting at the eBird app, where you can see where others have spotted it.

Fletcher wanted me to see it, too. So he and the FWCs snail kite expert Tyler Beck took me out on Lake Toho. And they brought along their colleague Vicki Garcia of USFWS, which enforces the Endangered Species Act.

That it only took about 15 minutes from the moment I stepped out of my car until I had a kite in my sights testified to how well theyre doing their job.

Advertisement

The snail kite is one of conservations success stories. Though it remains on the federal endangered species list, management efforts like that of the government-university team has helped the bird come back from the brink of extinction. In 2008, the population was down to about 750. Its nearly triple that today.

Thats why we need public support for environmental science. That can come in the form of funding, public participation in public policy forums, or citizen science initiatives like eBird.

New questions arise as conditions change. For example, when an invasive snail populated Toho, officials needed to decide whether to better control the weeds upon which those snails feed. Was it a case of invasive species vs. endangered species? Fletcher, Beck and others discovered that the snail kite actually did just fine feeding on the exotic snail, and lake managers have adjusted their weed control strategy accordingly.

Beck and other agency officials make Fletchers work relevant. What they are doing is making it possible for us to live right up to the edge of where a bird struggles against extinction.

One of the strengths of a great public research university is the way it combines teaching with research. Graduate students in Fletchers lab count birds, document nest locations and track movement.

The field experience, education and collaboration with government agency professionals are preparing them to become the next generation of another small and select species  the wildlife scientist.

Advertisement

J. Scott Angle is the University of Floridas Senior Vice President for Agriculture and Natural Resources and leader of the UF Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS). He can be reached at jangle@ufl.edu or on Twitter @IFAS_VP. This op-ed is syndicated by The Invading Sea, the opinion arm of the Florida Climate Reporting Network.
How to use the mindat.org media viewer

Click/touch this help panel to close it.

Welcome to the mindat.org media viewer. Here is a quick guide to some of the options available to you. Different controls are available depending on the type of media being shown (photo, video, animation, 3d image)

Controls - all media types

Zoom in and out of media using your mousewheel or with a two-finger 'resize' action on a touch device.

Use the mouse or your finger to drag the image or the view area of the image around the screen.

< and > at the left and right hand side of the screen move forwards and backwards for the other images associated with the media you selected. Usually this is used for previous/next photo in a gallery, in an article or in search results. Keyboard shortcuts: use shift + the left and right arrow keys.

< and > in the bottom center are used for switching between the photos of the same specimen. Keyboard shortcuts: use the left and right arrow keys.

> in the bottom center, raises the information box giving details and further options for the media, < at the top of this box then hides it. Keyboard shortcuts: use the up and down arrow keys.

? opens this help window. Keyboard shortcuts: use the H key or the ? key.

Other keyboard shortcuts:

1 Fit image to screen 2 Fill screen with image 5 Display at full resolution < Make background darker > Make background lighter space Hide/dim titles and buttons

Scalebar

If the field of view (FOV) is specified for the photo, the scalebar appears in the left bottom corner of the viewer. The scalebar is draggable and resizeable. Drag the right edge to resize it. Double click will reset the scalebar to it's default size and position. If the scalebar is in default position, double click will make it circular.

Controls - Video

Video files have a standard set of video controls: - Reset to start, - Skip back, - Play, - Pause, - Skip forwards. Keyboard shortcuts: You can stop/start video play with the P key.

Controls - Animation (Spin Rotation)

Animation (usually 360 degree spin rotations) have their own controls: - enable spin mode. Note that while images are loading this option will not be available but will be automatically activated when the animation has loaded. Once active you can spin the image/change the animation by moving your mouse or finger on the image left/right or by pressing the [ or ] keys.

The button switches to move mode so that you can use your mouse/fingers to move the image around the screen as with other media types.

The button, or the P key will start playing the animation directly, you can interrupt this by using the mouse or finger on the image to regain manual movement control.

Controls - 3D Stereoscopic images

If a stereoscopic 3D image is opened in the viewer, the 3D button appears in the bottom right corner giving access to "3D settings" menu. The 3D images can be viewed in several ways:

- without any special equipment using cross-eyed or parallel-eyed method

- with stereoscope

- with anaglyph glasses.

- on a suitable 3D TV or monitor (passive 3D system)

For details about 3D refer to: Mindat manuals: Mindat Media Viewer: 3D

To enable/disable 3D stereo display of a compatible stereo pair image press the 3 key. If the left/right images are reversed on your display (this often happens in full-screen mode) press the 4 key to reverse them.

Controls - photo comparison mode

If a photo with activated comparison mode is opened in the viewer, the button appears in the bottom right corner giving access to "Comparison mode settings" menu.

Several layouts are supported: slider and side by-side comparison with up to 6 photos shown synchronously on the screen. On each of the compared photos a view selector is placed, e.g.: Longwave UV . It shows the name of currently selected view and allows to select a view for each placeholder.

Summary of all keyboard shortcuts
Fort Madison, IA (52627)

Today

Partly cloudy skies this morning will become overcast during the afternoon. High 61F. Winds E at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Cloudy with rain developing after midnight. Low around 50F. Winds E at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%.
As a current print subscriber, you receive 24/7 access to our website and online e-edition at no additional charge. All you have to do is activate your access. To activate digital access, you will need your account number. You can find your account number on any recent subscription notice or bill.
The Marlins have signed Willians Astudillo to a minor league contract, according to reporter Arnold Santiago (Twitter link). The deal includes an invitation for La Tortuga to take part in the Marlins big league Spring Training camp.

Between his impressive ability to put the ball in play, his fan-friendly persona, and his ability to play almost anywhere on the diamond, Astudillo was a popular figure over his four seasons with the Twins. Astudillos high-contact approach hasnt translated to much production at the plate, however, as he has batted .270/.295/.406 over 533 plate appearances at the Major League level.

The Marlins addressed their catching needs by trading for Jacob Stallings prior to the lockout, though since none of Alex Jackson, Payton Henry, or Nick Fortes has much MLB experience, Astudillo will provide some competition for the backup catching role. Given Astudillos versatility, Miami could deploy three catchers on the active roster, allowing Astudillo to provide depth at multiple other positions. The 30-year-old has played mostly as a catcher and corner infielder in the majors, but Astudillo has also made a handful of appearances as a second baseman, outfielder, and as a mop-up relief pitcher.

Astudillo was projected to earn $1.2MM in arbitration this season, but the Twins opted to release him in November, essentially giving him a brief jump on the non-tender market. The lockout delayed Astudillo from finding his next contract, but he has now found an interesting opportunity in Miami.
After suffering a torn right ACL in July, Ronald Acuna Jr. hopes that hell be able to return to the Braves lineup by May, ESPNs Marly Rivera reports (Twitter link). Acuna has been rehabbing in his native Venezuela, and for a glimpse at his progress, Rivera includes a video of Acuna taking one-handed swings during a light indoor batting practice session.

A 10-month recovery timeframe isnt uncommon for such a severe ACL injury, though it seems as though Acunas timeline is still fluid. Naturally, both Acuna and the Braves arent going to take any unnecessary risks in trying to rush the superstar back to the field before hes absolutely ready, even if that May projection stretches into June or beyond. More could be known once Acuna arrives at Atlantas spring camp, and manager Brian Snitker told reporters (including Justin Toscano of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution) today that I know the reports are really good.I guess hes worked his rear off.

Acuna was on his way to perhaps his finest season yet at the time of his injury, as he hit .283/.394/.596 with 24 home runs over 360 plate appearances. The Braves response to Acunas injury has already become the stuff of legend, as rather than throw in the towel after losing their superstar, the Braves instead stocked up on outfielders (Adam Duvall, Eddie Rosario, Jorge Soler, and Joc Pederson) who all hit well down the stretch, carrying Atlanta to its first World Series title since 1995.

While last seasons run was magical, there is no doubt that the Braves will be better off with Acuna back in the fold. Duvall, Marcell Ozuna, Cristian Pache, Drew Waters, Guillermo Heredia, and Travis Demeritte comprise Atlantas top outfield options at the moment, so the team could try to make do with this group until Acuna is back, or perhaps look for more outfield help prior to Opening Day.
Ghanaian blogger and Journalist Attractive Mustapha known in real life as Mustapha Nii Okai Inusah has advised dancehall artiste Shatta Wale to forgive his mother and buy her a house.

Speaking on his own show Unedited he said even though he sees the whole saga between the artiste and his mother as private especially because it is a family issue, he believes there is the need to advise the artiste since he has a huge following.

He noted that the confusion between the artiste and his mother is not a gimmick because he has been following the issues and he knows much about what is going on long before it became a public discussion.

The blogger quoted verses in the Holy Bible affirming the relevance of honouring ones parents in order to be blessed with long life.

Attractive Mustapha said he has noticed with shock that Shatta Wale insults the media for according his mother the platform to voice out her grievances.

He disagreed with Shatta Wale stressing that the same media broadcasted the good news four years ago when he rented a house for his mother.

Attractive Mustapha also suggested to Shatta Wale to build a house in Kasoa for his mother because it is not compulsory to buy a house for her at East Legon if he cannot afford it.
Mr Kwesi Boamah

14.03.2022 LISTEN

The "Zone 8" Vice Chairman of the Ashanti Regional branch of the Ghana Private Road And Transport Union (GPRTU) Mr Kwesi Boamah has stressed the need for commuters to bear with the transport associations over the new lorry fares in the country.

He said the transport sector for a long time has not increased lorry fares despite the constant hikes in fuel prices.

Mr Boamah who also doubles as the chairman of the Kumasi Sofoline Lorry Terminal made the submission in reaction to confusion and misunderstanding between drivers and passengers in some parts of Kumasi over the new fares.

Boamah who also ranked as a Working Committee Member of the Ashanti Regional branch of the Ghana Private Road And Transport Union indicated that the transport unions have been operating at loss due to constant hikes in fuel prices.

Also, as a chairman of the Sofoline-Ahensan Drivers Union of GPRTU Boamah blamed the flouting drivers who are not registered members of any of the Unions for the current misunderstanding.

To make sure that peace prevails between drivers and passengers with regard to the new fares, chairman Boamah advised passengers to cooperate by way of boarding station cars to their various destinations.
Former Special Prosecutor Martin Amidu in a twelve paged statement has explained how the controversial E-levy and disappointing E-Levy cake set in motion a tirade of felony and coup discussions in recent times.

According to him, the controversial E-levy and the celebratory E-levy cake displayed during Majority Leader Osei-Kyei Mensah Bonsus birthday celebration led to the public reaction of Oliver Barker Vormawor who was subsequently arrested on treason felony charges.

He indicated in context that, Mr. Vormawor's anger expressions follow the display of an edible E-Levy cake presented to the Majority Leader, Osei Kyei Mensah Bonsu amid sufferings of Ghanaians and after a nationwide rejection of the proposed levy.

Oliver Vormawors first statement, if this E-levy passes after this cake bullshit, I will do the coup myself useless army! And a second statement okay lets try again. If this E-levy still passes after this cake bullshit, then may God help us resist oppressors rule with all our might forevermore. Useless Army. Anaa the value is still the same?

Martin Amidu says the comment was ambiguous and further given different interpretations by the public hence the outcry for the police to arrest him.

He was arrested and then after being cautioned for a misdemeanor offence offensive conduct conducive to the breaches of peace contrary to section 207 of the Criminal Offences Act 1960(Act29) as the basis of his arrest.

Arraigned before the court on February 14, he was charged with treason felony.

On the same day, Martin Amidu admits that the Bono Regional Chairman of the NPP Mr. Kwame Baffoe popularly known as Abronye DC sat on radio and alleged that the former president John Mahama was planning a coup and Oliver Vormawor was an accomplice. Abronye Dc was invited by the police and also arrested and detained overnight for the publication of false news, but that decision by the police was met with great disapproval by the NPP, but by February 15 he had been granted bail.

In juxtaposing both situations, Martin Amidu asserts that the arrest and detention of Oliver Barker Vormawor , the convener of the #fixthecountry and Mr. Kwame Baffoe, the powerful Bono Regional Chairman of the governing political party , demonstrates the partiality with which the fundamental human rights and freedoms guaranteed to citizens might through the exercise of the investigatory and prosecutorial discretion in the systems of criminal justice administration at the level of the extensive branch of government has been wittingly or unwittingly abused in the matter of the Kyei Mensah-Bonuss E-Levy cake for his 65th birthday contrary to article 3(2) of the 1992 constitution.

In the same vain, Martin Amidu stated that, Professor Raymond Atuguba was attacked and lifted for an arrest after a lecture he delivered on the dire economic situation in the nation was cited and interpreted to have been the good professors advocacy for a coup.

According to Mr Amidu, although he does not agree with some aspects of the professor's lecture, he did not find any criminal incitement on the part of the professor in his intense critique of the lecture.

He stated that constitutionalism and democracy was undermined when the NPP called for Prof Atugubas's arrest without painstakingly like he did, reading through all twenty-one pages of Prof Atugubas's lecture.

Consequently, Martin Amidu insists that the conflict over the E-levy and the disappointing and insulting display of an E- Levy cake during the celebration of Majority Leader Osei Kyei Mensah-Bonsus birthday has shown how investigatory and prosecutorial power invested in the executive can be abused for purely partisan ends.

He said government in all of this was using the police as its 'Thought Police' in the E-levy national disagreements to have its way despite the proscription of such methods in the constitution.
MBABANE  While there is uproar over the proposed PAYE increase for high income earners, comparisons made by this publication show that South Africans are paying even higher.

In his budget speech in the past month, Minister of Finance Neal Rijkenberg announced a proposal to lift the upper tax bracket from 33 per cent to 36 per cent, a move Members of Parliament (MPs) and other commentators have frowned upon.

Pockets

The minister said this would mean that 80 per cent of the taxpayers would be better off with more money in their pockets. Individuals to be most affected will be those who will have their pay-as-you-earn (PAYE) increased by more than E8 500 annually. These are individuals earning between E45 833.33 and E50 000 (E550 000 and E600 000) or more. They shall have their remuneration taxed at the 36 per cent, which shall amount to E179 800 and above per year. This will make the high income earners PAYE tax rate for Eswatini among the highest in the SACU region behind South Africa, where those in the tax bracket E488 701 E641 400 currently pay 36 per cent of taxable income above E488 700.

In the neighbouring country, it is even worse for those earning over E1.73 million, as they pay as high as 45 per cent of taxable income above E1 731 600. Eswatini is a member of the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) alongside Botswana, Lesotho, South Africa and Namibia. In Namibia and Lesotho, high income earners pay 30 per cent while recent data for Botswana was not immediately available. Meanwhile, this publication recently reported that others to be affected by Eswatinis adjustment in PAYE for high income earners would be those earning between E41 666.66 and E45 833.33 (E500 000 and E550 000). They shall pay E7 000 more for their PAYE. These taxpayers are in the 36 per cent tax bracket and shall pay E161 800 annually.

Income

Income earners remunerated between E37 500 and E41 666.66 (E450 000 and E500 000) shall pay E143 800 annually. This shall be a four per cent hike which is equivalent to E5 500 from the E138 300. A three per cent increment shall also be effected on income earners remunerated between E33 333.33 and E37 500 (E400 000 and E450 000). This will hike their PAYE by E4 000 from E121 800 to E125 800. Also, individuals earning between E 29 166.66 and E33 333.33 (E350 000 and 400 000) shall pay E2 500 extra. This will be a two per cent increment given that they are currently paying E105 300 and it is set to increase to E107 800. On the other hand, income earners ranging between E25 000 and E29 166.66 (E300 000 to E350 000) will soon pay E89 800 instead of the current E88 800. This is a one per cent increment which is equivalent to E1 000.
CEO of Skin Gourmet Limited, Violet Awo Amoabeng

12.03.2022 LISTEN

The Founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Skin Gourmet Limited, Violet Awo Amoabeng has advised African entrepreneurs, especially Ghanaians to take advantage of Africas Business Heroes (ABH) programme organised by the Jack Ma Foundation.

Jack Ma Foundations Africas Business Heroes (ABH) team on Thursday, March 10, 2022, organized the local ABH Show Viewing Dinner Party for media and key stakeholders in Ghana, to showcase key highlights from last years ABH initiative where Ghana was well represented.

The ABH Show Viewing dinner party featured last years outstanding top 10 African entrepreneurs  including Ghanas Violet Amoabeng, Founder and CEO, Skin Gourmet, documenting their journey in the ABH initiative where each won a share from a grant of US$1.5 million.

After benefiting from Africas Business Heroes programme last year as one of the top 10 entrepreneurs on the continent, Ghanaian entrepreneur Violet Awo Amoabeng says she cannot overemphasize the impact it has made on her company.

Speaking to journalists on the sidelines of the ABH Show Viewing dinner party held at Skin Gourmet HQ on Thursday, she encouraged all African entrepreneurs to push and tap into the many opportunities of ABH.

I think as any African entrepreneur if you are serious, this is a very serious Programme so make sure that you are part of. It is only for your own good and even if you dont make it there is so much that you can learn and then prepare for the next one and make sure that you can make it because they are really trying to help us, the Skin Gourmet CEO said.

She said she is grateful to ABH for doing so much for her company and setting it up to growth.

This viewing is not to say yeah we are top 10 but also to say thank you to ABH for giving us the opportunity.

There have been challenges but I will say there have been more opportunities. Thats what ABH does. It changes your mindset, Violet Awo Amoabeng shared.

Explaining the rationale behind organising the ABH Show Viewing dinner party, Zahra Baitie-Boateng who is the Head of Partnership and Programs at Africa's Business Heroes said, the show aims to capture their entrepreneurial journey but most importantly to capture entrepreneurship as a vehicle for change. So its meant to be educational but also inspiring.

Zahra Baitie-Boateng

She described having a Ghanaian selected as one of the top 10 entrepreneurs on the continent as exciting while stressing that the Jack Ma Foundation is committed to supporting African entrepreneurs through ABH.

About Africas Business Heroes (ABH):

Africa's Business Heroes (ABH) is the Jack Ma Foundation's flagship philanthropic program in Africa to support entrepreneurs. Our mission is to showcase and grow local talent who are creating positive impact in their communities and beyond, and inspire a movement of African entrepreneurship. Over a ten-year period, the program will recognize 100 African entrepreneurs and provide grant funding, training programs, and broader support for the broad African entrepreneurial ecosystem.
12.03.2022 LISTEN

A gender activist of the ruling New Patriotic Party in the Savannah Region, Hajia Nurudeen Ubeda has said she is inspired with courage by the unflinching grassroot support she was receiving from the women wing of the party in the region to join the race for the Savannah Regional Women Organizer position.

According to the gender activist, her many years of dedicated, selfless and diligent service to the NPP exposes her to all the practical grassroot experience and know-how to better advocate for the growth of the women in the party, especially in the Savannah Region.

In an exclusive interview with this reporter, Hajia Ubeda indicated that, in the spirit of patriotism, she was ready to serve the party with compassion, diligence, insight and focused attention, adding that, "breaking the eight through the women wing is possible with the right touch of leadership".

She continued, "The primary focus of leadership at all levels is solving problems. With this in mind, I, Hajia Ubeda, remain your best bet for the position of the Savannah Regional Womens Organizer, because I can be trusted with your mandate.

"I am the people's Hajia, as I am known by all patriots. The analytical and theoretical thinkers of the great man theory of leadership affirmed that the traits of leadership are in intrinsic, in simple terms great leaders are born with the potentials of leadership.

"I always get enveloped when I remember of Deepack, when he speaks of spirituality in leadership. As he puts itsEnlightened leadership is spiritual if we understand spirituality not as some kind of religious dogma or ideology but as the domain of awareness, when we experience values like truth, goodness, beauty, love and compassion also intuition, creativity, insight and focused attention.

"I was born a patriot and in the spirit patriotism I shall serve you," she stressed.

She recounted her many years of dedication and voluntary leadership to the NPP; serving as the Director of Operation and Events Organizer of the youth wing, member of the Savannah Regional NPP strategic Health Committee, a Coordinator of NAADA Ladies Foundation in Damongo constituency, a Savannah Regional Coordinator for Women's Maiden's inter alia.

When given the mandate, the gender activist promises to support the party by instituting practical and principled leadership inspired by courage, vision and integrity. A vision that will lead to the introduction of policies that will empower and transform the women in the party both economically and financially.

Some influential women of the party this writer interacted with attested to the hardwork and leadership qualities of Hajia Ubeda and are ready to support her in the bid to become the Women's Organizer of the party.
Russian forces bombed a Ukrainian military facility less than 25km from the Polish border on Sunday, said officials. On the other side of the country, in Kyiv, air raid sirens woke residents in the capital.

The occupiers launched an air strike on the International Center for Peacekeeping and Security in Yavoriv, according to a statement by the Lviv regional military administration, adding that preliminary data shows that they fired eight missiles.

While initial reports by the Ukrainian Armed Forces indicate there are no deaths as a result of the attack, they are clarifying information about the injured and wounded, in a report cited by Interfax Ukraine news agency.

The 360sqkm facility is one of Ukraine's largest, and where the country holds most of its drills with NATO countries.

The mayor of Ivano-Frankivsk, another city in western Ukraine, said that the Russians continued to hit the airport, but there were no initial reports of casualties.

Fight to the death in Kyiv

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly warned Russian forces encircling Kyiv that they will face a fight to the death as Ukrainian military and armed civilians continue to protect the capital.

If they decide to carpet bomb and simply erase the history of this region  and destroy all of us, then they will enter Kyiv. If that's their goal, let them come in, but they will have to live on this land by themselves, Zelensky said late Saturday in his second video address of the day.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Kyiv would not surrender or accept any ultimatums.

Ukraine accused Russia of killing seven people, including a child, trying to flee fighting in Peremoha village near Kyiv. The report has not been verified.

While Moscow claims it has not targeted civilians since it began invading Ukraine on 24 February, Ukraine and Western allies reject their statements. Russia says it blames Ukraine for not evacuating civilians from encircled cities, but news reports and eyewitnesses have refuted that claim.

We still need to hold on. We still have to fight, Zelensky said late Saturday, adding that about 1,300 Ukrainian troops had been killed.

According to Britain's defence ministry, Russian ground forces massed 25 km from the centre of Kyiv, while Russia continued to shell Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Sumy and Mariupol, which were each encircled by Russian troops.

International military aid

The Ukrainian president urged the West to get more involved in peace negotiations. He discussed the war with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

Macron urged Putin to order an immediate ceasefire.

We did not detect a willingness on Putin's part to end the war, a French presidency official said.

The Kremlin justifies its invasion, calling it a special operation to unseat neo-Nazi Ukrainian leaders and disarm the country.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Western arms shipments to Ukraine had complicated matters, accusing the US of escalating tensions.

The Ukraine armed forces said Russia had slowed its offensive or had been stopped, but did not give any details on this.

Mariupol under siege

Some 13,000 people were evacuated from Ukrainian cities on Saturday, according to Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk.

Bringing aid into besieged Mariupol was complicated by the constant shelling, according to the Donetsk region governor's office.

Satellite footage from US company Maxar showed that fires were burning in the western areas of Mariupol and dozens of apartment buildings were heavily damaged.

There are reports of looting and violent confrontations among civilians over what little basic supplies remain in the city, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.

In Mariupol, people were boiling ground water for drinking, using wood to cook food and burying their dead near where they lay, according to Medecins Sans Frontieres staff.
Chad's military government and dozens of opposition groups started peace talks on Sunday in Qatar as a first step towards ending a rebellion and holding elections.

The landlocked African nation was thrown into turmoil by the killing of longtime leader Idriss Deby Itno in battle with rebels in the country's north last April.

His son, Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno, took over the country after his death, fronting a 15-member military junta and vowing to hold free elections.

Chad's Prime Minister Albert Pahimi Padacke and African Union Commission head Moussa Faki Mahamat told the opening of the conference that both sides would have to make "concessions" for the talks to succeed.

But the process risks being protracted and complicated.

Some 44 armed rebel and opposition groups were invited to the Doha meeting -- though some were missing at the opening, which had already been delayed from February 27.

Diplomats said these "precursor" talks could take weeks and that a planned "national dialogue" due to start on May 10 may have to be delayed.

Under the younger Deby's plan, the dialogue would be a prelude to agreeing on a new constitution and then holding elections.

Chad has a long history of volatility since gaining independence from France in 1960 and tens of thousands have died in various conflicts.

It has a large and shifting constellation of armed opposition groups.

"The situation in Chad is very serious, we have to deliver this," the African Union's Faki said in his address to the government and armed groups.

Padacke said that "peace requires more courage and maturity than war".

"Real courage does not mean brandishing your weapon but to have the courage to lay it down", added the prime minister.

He also said success in the talks would help stabilise the whole Sahel region where radical Islamist groups have staged regular attacks.

Libya's Foreign Minister Najla al-Mangoush also said that the peace process would be crucial to improving stability and help "fight terrorism" in the Sahel.

As a condition for the Doha talks, Chadian rebels called for a general amnesty and the release of "prisoners of war" and the return of confiscated assets.

The military government says it has released hundreds of prisoners and amnestied several prominent leaders.

However, it has so far excluded the Front for Change and Concord in Chad (FACT) -- the Libya-based group that launched the offensive in which Idriss Deby Itno was killed.

FACT leader Mahamat Mahdi Ali was not at the talks.

Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno, a 38-year-old four-star general, took the helm last April.

The elder Deby himself came to power at the head of a rebel force in 1990. In 2008 and again in 2019, columns of fighters came close to forcing him out, but each time were thwarted by French military power.
The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) said on Sunday that government forces were responsible for burning a Tigrayan man to death, a barbaric act circulated in a widely-shared video that sparked outrage on social media.

Ethiopia's government on Saturday vowed to investigate and take action against anyone involved in "the extremely savage act" depicted in the video, which shows an unarmed man being set on fire as a group of people, including some wearing army uniforms, taunt him.

On Sunday, the EHRC said the victim was a Tigrayan man who was "burnt alive... with the participation of government security forces and other people".

The atrocity occurred on March 3 in the northwestern region of Benishangul Gumuz, which borders Sudan and South Sudan. It followed an attack a day earlier that left at least 20 people dead, the state-affiliated independent rights body said.

Security officials later captured and shot dead eight Tigrayans suspected of involvement in that assault, it added.

"The bodies of the deceased were taken by security forces to a nearby forest and burned," the EHRC said in a statement, citing eyewitness testimony.

"In between this, an ethnic Tigrayan who was suspected of having contact with the deceased, was arrested... and thrown (on the pyre) with the deceased, with him dying of fire burns," the EHRC quoted eyewitnesses as saying.

"Those who were in the area were Ethiopian army soldiers, Amhara region special police forces and Southern region police forces," the rights body said, calling for a criminal investigation.

The video could not be independently verified by AFP and it was not immediately clear if the atrocity was connected to the ongoing 16-month war in northern Ethiopia.

'Stone Age savagery'

The conflict between government forces and Tigrayan rebels in Africa's second most populous country has killed thousands of people. There are widespread reports of atrocities, including mass killings and sexual violence.

The Oromo Liberation Army (OLA), which has allied with the Tigrayan rebels, accused Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and his Prosperity Party of encouraging the "Stone Age savagery" on display in the video.

"The atrocious act we are subjected to stems directly from the wicked rhetoric" deployed by Abiy's party and its allies, the OLA said in a statement released Saturday.

According to the UN, the fighting has displaced more than two million people, driven hundreds of thousands to the brink of starvation and left more than nine million in need of assistance.

Earlier this month, the UN Human Rights Council announced that Fatou Bensouda, a former chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC), would head a UN investigation into a wide range of alleged violations committed by all sides in the war.
14.03.2022 LISTEN

Mr Godson Bill Ocloo, a security analyst has said the recent involvement of some police officers in the bullion van robbery attacks in the country is a serious threat to national security.

According to him, police who are supposed to protect properties and lives are themselves engaging in robberies and killings is a danger for the security of this nation.

He also commended the Inspector General of Police (IGP) Dr. George Akuffo Dampare for the bold steps in fishing out rogues within the Ghana Police Service.

Mr Bill was reacting to the statement by Ghana Police issued on Monday, March 7, 2022 in which some of their members were arrested for their alleged involvement in the robbery of bullion vans.

Speaking to Evans Worlanyo Ameamu of ModernGhana News in an exclusive interview on Saturday, March 12, 2022 disclosed that, an independent probe must be conducted to delve deeper since he does not believe police can do clean work in investigating their own.

"How did this crop of alleged criminals get their ways into the police work. Could it be of political influence or they applied, qualified and passed the training well and got the job?" he questions.

He continued, "if a policeman can kill a fellow policeman he or she attain same training with, then the rest of we normal civilians lives are not safe."

Mr Bill further advised that, before and after the recruitment of personnel into the various security agencies in the country, there must be a proper background check regardless of their position and years spent in the service.

Mr Bill further called on politicians to desist from pushing party footsoldiers and vigilantes into the Ghana Police Service.
Anglo-Irish explorer Ernest Shackleton set out on an epic journey in 1914 to attempt the first land crossing of Antarctica. But his ship Endurance got stuck in the ice and sank in the Weddell sea, forcing the crew to abandon the mission. An expedition this week found the wreck and has released remarkable footage of it 3000m below the surface of the Weddell Sea.

"We are overwhelmed by our good fortune in having located and captured images of Endurance," said Mensun Bound, the expedition's director of exploration, on Wednesday.

The expedition, organised by the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust, left Cape Town on 5 February with a South African icebreaker, the S.A Agulhas II. A similar mission, organised in 2019 failed to find the wreck.

"This is by far the finest wooden shipwreck I have ever seen. It is upright, well proud of the seabed, intact, and in a brilliant state of preservation. You can even see 'Endurance' arced across the stern," he said in a statement.

Endurance was discovered at a depth of 3,008 metres in the Weddell Sea, about six kilometres from where it sank on the Antarctic peninsula in 1915.

Using underwater drones, known as Sabertooths, built by Saab, the team were able to retrieve extremely clear images of the 44-metre-long ship.

The helm remains intact after more than a century underwater as does the timber. The wreck is now home to sea anemones, sponges and other small ocean life forms.

Under international law, the wreck is protected as a historic site. Explorers were allowed to film and scan the ship, but not to touch it meaning no artefacts could be brought to the surface.

'Worst sea in the world'

The Endurance crew was meant to make the first land crossing of Antarctica as part of Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition between 1914 and 1917.

But their three-masted vessel became caught in pack ice in January 1915.

The crew waited nine months for a thaw, a period captured on film by Australian photographer Frank Hurley.

But the ship was slowly being crushed, so Shackleton ordered an evacuation. The ship sank a month later.

Shackleton himself described the site of the sinking as "the worst portion of the worst sea in the world".

At first the crew first camped on the sea ice, drifting northwards until the ice cracked open, and then took to lifeboats.They set up a camp on nearby Elephant Island, an icy outcrop.

"There they found drinking water, food, especially penguins," Jerome Chappellaz, director of the French Polar Institute described in an interview with the Journal du Dimanche.

"But their problem was unchanged. How to escape from there?"

Using just a sextant for navigation, Shackleton took five of his crew in 6.9 metre open boat on a 1,300-kilometre voyage to South Georgia, a British colony where there was a whaling station.

Optimism, rescue

After a 17-day crossing, they found themselves on the wrong side of the island and they had to trek across mountainous terrain for 150 kilometres before finding help.

Shackleton convinced some Chileans working on the island to lend him a boat to rescue the others, which he did. It took four months.

"They had nothing left except their faith in Shackleton to come back and fetch them," Jean-Louis Etienne, a French explorer who visited Antarctica in 1991 told the Journal du Dimanche.

The others could hardly believe their eyes when they were later picked up and brought to dry land. All 28 expedition members survived.

"Optimism is moral courage in its most pure form," Shackleton was fond of saying.

However, the mission, while it brought him a degree of fame, heavily indebted him.

He returned to South Georgia where he died from a heart attack only a few years later, in 1922.

The current expedition is now on its way back to Cape Town, where scientists will begin analysing ice and snow samples as part of research on climate change, documenting ice drifts and weather patterns.

The Maritime Museum in London has opened a special exhibition marking the 100 years since Shackleton's death, with numerous items from his expeditions on display.
#FixTheCountry convener Oliver Barker-Vormawor, is the cockroach, who, according to former Special Prosecutor Martin Alamisi Amidu, made the mistake of making himself available in the den of the fowls administering the system of criminal justice administration and received the justice cockroaches deserve before the executive branch of government run by fowls.

Mr Barker-Vormawor has been held in detention for more than a month after he threatened a coup on social media in disgust to a widely-circulated customised cake a la e-levy for Majority Leader Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsus 65th birthday party.

He has been charged with treason felony and held in prison custody since February 11, 2022.

Attorney General Godfred Dame recently filed an affidavit in which he urged the court to keep the Cambridge PhD student in detention because, according to the Minister of Justice, the youth activist has refused to cooperate with the investigative agencies.

Mr Barker-Vormawor has rebutted the AGs claim and insists he has been cooperative with the security services.

Condemning Mr Barker-Vormawors detention in an article, Mr Amidu, who has been an Attorney General before, said: The government had knowingly and intentionally turned the administration of justice into an inquisitorial and prosecutorial system to intimidate and suppress the lawful political activity, personal liberty and right to equality before the law and non-discrimination of a citizen, Mr Barker-Vormawor, under articles 3, 14, 17, and 291 of the 1992 Constitution.

There is no constitutional rational justification for the conduct of the government in the manner it executed the persecution of the suspect as the executive branch has consistently sought to justify to the public, Mr Amidu said.

He said: The answer by the government to the public outcry and objection to the unlawful detention of Mr Barker-Vormawor for more than forty-eight hours was the lame justification that the Republic was unable to reach the Chief Justice to assign a judge or court during the weekend. The excuse is lame and frivolous because if Mr Barker-Vormawor was in lawful custody for the offence of offensive conduct conducive to breaches of the peace with which he was charged upon his arrest and a statement taken from him in custody exercising his right to a lawyer of his choice, then the police did not need the Chief Justice or a court to exercise the discretion to grant him police enquiry bail to appear before them or a named court on a named date and time. On the other hand, if the government and the police had received further information and facts with which they had reasonable changed grounds for the continued arrest, restriction or detention of Mr Barker-Vormawor, without informing him of the changed reasons and his right to a lawyer of his choice, the contention that he was not brought before a court within forty-eight hours of his original arrest or detention because of lack of a court during the weekend is vacuous.

I have painstakingly read Osagyefo Oliver Barker-Vormawors two posts on his Facebook [page] on 9 February 2022 while he was in the United Kingdom within the context of other posts and reactions to the ostentatious, opulent, and profane Kyei-Mensah-Bonsus E-Levy cake for his 65th birthday celebration. It is my considered view that the two contradictory and ambiguous Facebook comments taken separately or together do not measure up to the basic ingredients of the provisional charge of the indictable offence of treason felony for which he was cynically and surprisingly brought before an inferior court without powers of bail on 14 February 2022, and for which he is still in police custody on remand. The perception that the unconstitutional and unlawful arrest and detention of Barker-Vormawor was politically motivated and intended to suppress his lawful political activity has further polarised this country along ideological and partisan lines which is inimical to the unity and stability the Constitution enjoins each citizen to strive to preserve in our democracy, Mr Amidu argued.

Read Mr Amidus full article below:

Martin Amidu: Akufo-Addos E-levy Bill and E-levy birthday cakes  treason felony, treason, misprision of treason and coup mongering

The Governments 2022 Budget Statement and Economic Policy, particularly its determination to impose its draconian Electronic Transfer Levy (E-Levy) on an already financially exhausted and challenged poor citizenry contrary to its own electoral promises and undertakings has seriously polarized this nation and created needless acrimony amongst the body politic in a manner I have never witnessed since my first involvement in public service and observation of the governance processes of Ghana since February 1982.

The adversarial conflict over the Governments E-Levy policy eventually deepened with the uncomplimentary public reaction to what some citizens perceived to be an opulent, arrogant, and insulting 65th birthday celebration by the Majority Leader and Minister for Parliamentary Affairs, Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, (which fell on Thursday 3 February 2022) amid their sufferings and the governments intention to further tax their scarce incomes.

The Mr. Kyei Mensah Bonsus E-Levy cake for his 65th birthday celebration provides the immediate context for understanding the public comments and reactions that led to the arrest and detention of a known political adversary of the Governments policies, Mr. Oliver Mawuse Barker-Vormawor, the convenor of #FixTheCountry, who was later charged unconstitutionally for the offence of treason felony.

Mr. Kyei Mensah-Bonsus E-Levy cake for his 65th birthday celebration has also led to other citizens being gagged and intimidated from exercising their constitutional rights and freedoms to free speech and thought on pain of being arrested and detained without bail at the behest of hawks and operatives of the Government under the smokescreen of coup mongering or first-degree felony offences against the safety of the state.

The police also later arrested and detained Mr. Kwame Baffoe, the Bono Regional Chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), on 15 February 2022 and subsequently charged him with lesser offences and bailed before a court the next day for accusing former President John Mahama of high treason and/ or treason in a radio interview on 14 February 2022.

Subsequently, operatives of the government made threats to arrest and detain the Dean of the University of Ghana School of Law, Prof. Raymond Atuguba, for coup mongering and treason arising out of a public lecture he delivered at the Erata Hotel in Accra on 28 February 2022. These developments make it imperative for every patriotic Ghanaian and lover of constitutionalism and representative democracy committed to the sustenance, preservation and defence of the 1992 Constitution to speak out boldly against the use or the threatened use of the investigatory and prosecutorial discretionary powers of the Republic entrusted to the executive branch of government in abusing the rights and freedoms of citizens to speech and thought by means of the deployment of the system of criminal justice administration for purely partisan political ends. Any appearance of the use of the system of the criminal justice administration to intimidate, suppress or seek to suppress the lawful political activity of political adversaries in the marketplace of democratic political discourse needs to be unreservedly condemned in defence of the 1992 Constitution.

The 1992 Constitution was intended to ensure a free marketplace of ideas in a representative constitutional democratic society where the rights and freedoms of political adversaries are not suppressed or sought to be suppressed by government over-reach. This was because the nations political history teaches that the contrary led to the several previous instabilities that the Ghanaian constitutional democratic processes

witnessed since the darkest day of 24 February 1966 until 7 January 1993.

For almost three decades, and for the first time in Ghanaian political history, the Fourth Republican Constitution, born out of a revolution led by a retired military officer, the late President, Flt Lt. Jerry John Rawlings (Rt.), who brought it into operation under his signature and nurtured it democratically for eight years against all odds and handed over political power peacefully to an opposing political party has enabled this nation to witness the transfers of political power from one political party to another through the ballot box. This singular achievement of the 31 December 1981 Revolution in ensuring a lasting 1992 Constitution for Ghana is what all patriots are to defend.

It is in pursuance of the foregoing objectives that this article examines and discusses the heightened polarization of the nation arising from Mr. Kyei Mensah-Bonsu, the Majority Leader and Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Kyei Mensah Bonsus E-Levy cake for his 65th birthday celebration and the resulting public reactions and comments thereto leading to the deployment of the discretionary investigatory and prosecutorial powers of the executive branch of the Government of which he is a Minister of State against vocal adversaries of the governments E-Levy policy.

MEDIA HYPE OF MR. KYEI MENSAH-BONSUS OPULENT 65TH BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION WITH AN EDIBLE DECORATED GREEN E-LEVY CAKE

The media hype of the Minister for Parliamentary Affairs opulent 65th birthday celebration is captured on several of the electronic media and is available online, but it will suffice for purposes of this discourse to use a publication by Citi Newsroom which cannot be accused of being biased against the government to underscore the reactions and comments of the public to the Governments E-Levy policy. #CitiNewsroom has a 0:50 minutes video publication on https#m.youtube.com watch with the title: Watch: Kyei Mensah Bonsus E-Levy cake for his 65th birthday accompanied by the following narration  9 Feb 2022  The Majority Leader and Minister for Parliamentary Affairs, Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, has celebrated his 65th birthday.

Joy News also carried a 0:31 minutes similar video on YouTube on the same day showing the same celebration. One needs to watch the video of the celebration of the Ministers 65th birthday with the decorated green edible E-Levy cake to understand how it could generate sentimental dissent amongst bi-partisan opponents of the Governments E- Levy policy and pending Bill in Parliament. The public reactions and comments were swift and electric both by individuals and the media.

Citi Newsroom captured the public perception of the Kyei-Mensah-Bonsus E-Levy cake for his 65th birthday on its online reportage of the event as follows: . It is also not clear what the motive is considering that many Ghanaians are against the proposed Electronic Transaction Levy, and may find this decision insensitive.

Among the guests at the party were Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia; Samira Bawumia; Ashanti Regional Chairman of the NPP, Chairman Wontumi, known in real life as Bernard Antwi Boasiako; and Senyo Hosi, the Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Chamber of Bulk Oil Distributors.

Many Ghanaians have started reacting to the photos since they started circulating online on Tuesday. Already, they are criticizing the controversial 1.75% E-levy which most people are kicking against.

Most of the social media comments have condemned the use of the image by the experienced politician, as they consider it a mockery of their opposition to the levy.

Mr. Sammy Gyamfi of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) in reaction to the plush birthday party made the following post to his Facebook.

Sammy Gyamfi

Checkout E-Levy cake at the plush birthday party of the Majority Leader, Hon. Osei Kyei Mensah Bonsu. Guess what? Our Jocular Vice President and Head of the Economic Management Team at large, who has been mute on the obnoxious E-Levy policy, was the special guest of honour. The continuous display of opulence and ostentation by the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia government at this time of excruciating hardships is nauseating and insulting to the sensibilities of suffering Ghanaians.

The Pulse.com.ghs Kojo Emmanuel reported that: The Economic Fighters League on its part described the majority leaders conduct as a symbolic indication that proceeds from the E-levy will be chopped by government officials. Taking to its Facebook page, the group described the act as a perfect illustration of growing old without sense.

Leader of the group, Ernesto Yeboah added that An MP entering retirement age has just told us that he is going to take a cut of the national cake made from our own modest earnings.

If we as a nation allow this E-Levy bill and its accompanying insult to pass then we are sick..

Reacting and commenting on the 65th birthday celebration by the Minister of Parliamentary Affairs of the Government, on Wednesday 9 February 2022, Osagyefo Oliver Barker-Vormawor who was in the United Kingdom but was apparently following the news in Ghana published on YouTube media concerning the opulent, flamboyant, and arrogant Kyei Mensah-Bonsus E-Levy cake for his 65 birthday celebration amidst the national economic hardship and suffering of poor citizens posted the following statement on his Facebook wall: If this E-Levy passes after this Cake bullshit, I will do the coup Myself. Useless Army!

In another and second post he stated that: Okay, lets try again. If this E-Levy still passes after this cake bullshit, then may God. Help us to resist oppressors rule, With all our will and might forevermore. (2x) Useless Army. Anaa, the value is the same?

As a result of Mr. Barker-Vormawors Facebook posts some social media users who put varying interpretations on his two contradictory and ambiguous posts, called on the security agencies to arrest him over his comments (See Ghana Web of 11 February 2022 with source as dailymailgh.com).

ARREST, RESTRICTION OR DETENTION OF MR. BARKER-VORMAWOR ON ARRIVAL FROM THE UNITED KINGDOM AT THE AIRPORT AND A CYNICAL CHARGE OF TREASON FELONY

Mr. Barker-Vormawor was picked up by the police on the evening of 11 February 2022 at the Kotoka International Airport upon his arrival from the United Kingdom. He was cautioned for the misdemeanour offence of offensive conduct conducive to the breaches of the peace contrary to section 207 of the Criminal Offences Act, 1960 (Act 29) as the basis of his arrest as required under Article 14 of the 1992 Constitution. The police kept him in custody from 11 February 2022 until on 14 February 2022 when he was brought before a District Court at Ashaiman in flagrant breach of the Constitutional injunction for any citizen who is arrested, restricted, or detained to be brought before a court within forty-eight hours or be set at liberty.

While Mr. Barker-Vormawor was in police custody, the police took a written caution statement from him for the misdemeanour offence for which he was arrested at the airport and detained at the police station. The suspect had a right to a lawyer before interrogation and the taking of any written statement by the police from him and it is axiomatic from the subsequent facts that he exercised his right to a lawyer when he gave a written statement to the police. However, on 14 February 2022, when Mr. Barker-Vormawor was surprisingly brought before a District Court for the misdemeanour and summary offence of offensive conduct conducive to breaches of the peace, the reasons for his arrest and detention changed in the court room. His lawyers and him learnt for the first time in the court that he had been brought before the Court on a charge of treason felony under section 182(b) of the Criminal Offences Act, 1960 (Act 29) for which the court had no bailable powers.

The nature of the unconstitutional, unethical ambush, and abuse of the investigatory and prosecutorial discretion of the executive branch of government in informing the suspect and his lawyers for the first time in the court room of the treason felony charge shocked Mr.

Akoto Ampaw, the lawyer leading the suspects defence team, to the extent that he is quoted by the Daily Graphic Online of 14 February 2022 to have said that: Until this morning [Monday], it was a misdemeanour, only to appear in court and be told he is being charged with treason felony which has no factual basis.

The Daily Graphic Online reported its interaction with Mr. Akoto Ampaw as follows: Counsel for Oliver Mawuse Barker-Vormawor who has been charged with treason felony has described the charge by the police as cynical.

Mr Akoto Ampaw who is leading the team defending Barker-Vormawor told Graphic Onlines Della Russel Ocloo that the charge is cynical and amount to bad faith on the part of the prosecution.

Mr Akoto Ampaw wondered why the prosecution, which initially charged Barker- Vormawor for offensive conduct conducive to the breach of the peace, which is a misdemeanour and went ahead to take a statement from him would show up in court with the charge of treason felony. He also questioned the basis for the adjournment of the case to February 28, 2022, when the court does not have jurisdiction over the charge for which the accused was brought before it.

THE INFRINGEMENT OF THE RIGHTS AND FREEDOM OF MR. BARKER- VORMAWOR AND ABUSE OF THE SYSTEM OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE ADMINISTRATION UNDER THE 1992 CONSTITUTION

Mr. Ampaws quoted words and the paraphrased description of his interaction with the media which is contemporaneous with the arraignment and remand of the suspect shows a clear and calculated intention on the part of the executive branch of government to infringe the fundamental human rights and freedoms of Mr. Barker-Vormawor to personal liberty and respect for his human dignity (under articles 14(2) and (3) and 15(1) and (2) of the 1992 Constitution respectively) from the time of his arrest to the time of his arraignment on a provisional indictable treason felony charge before a District Court which could not exercise bailable powers in felony cases.

The Government had knowingly and intentionally turned the administration of justice into an inquisitorial and prosecutorial system to intimidate and suppress the lawful political activity, personal liberty and right to equality before the law and non-discrimination of a citizen, Mr. Barker-Vormawor under articles 3, 14, 17, and 291 of the 1992 Constitution. There is no constitutional rational justification for the conduct of the Government in the manner it executed the persecution of the suspect as the executive branch has consistently sought to justify to the public.

The answer by the Government to the public outcry and objection to the unlawful detention of Mr. Barker-Vormawor for more than forty-eight hours was the lame justification that the Republic was unable to reach the Chief Justice to assign a judge or court during the weekend. The excuse is lame and frivolous because if Mr. Barker-Vormawor was in lawful custody for the offence of offensive conduct conducive to breaches of the peace with which he was charged upon his arrest and a statement taken from him in custody exercising his right to a lawyer of his choice, then the police did not need the Chief Justice or a court to exercise the discretion to grant him police enquiry bail to appear before them or a named court on a named date and time. On the other hand, if the Government and the police had received further information and facts with which they had reasonable changed grounds for the continued arrest, restriction or detention of Mr. Barker-Vormawor, without informing him of the changed reasons and his right to a lawyer of his choice, the contention that he was not brought before a court within forty-eight hours of his original arrest or detention because of lack of a court during the weekend is vacuous.

I have painstakingly read Osagyefo Oliver Barker-Vormawors two posts on his Facebook on 9 February 2022 while he was in the United Kingdom within the context of other posts and reaction to the ostentatious, opulent, and profane Kyei Mensah-Bonsus E-Levy cake for his 65th birthday celebration. It is my considered view that the two contradictory and ambiguous Facebook comments taken separately or together do not measure up to the basic ingredients of the provisional charge of the indictable offence of treason felony for which he was cynically and surprisingly brought before an inferior court without powers of bail on 14 February 2022, and for which he is still in police custody on remand. The perception that the unconstitutional and unlawful arrest and detention of Barker-Vormawor was politically motivated and intended to suppress his lawful political activity has further polarized this country along ideological and partisan lines which is inimical to the unity and stability the Constitution enjoins each citizen to strive to preserve in our democracy.

I had served the Republic of Ghana as the only Deputy Attorney-General in the Ministry of Justice continuously for upwards of twelve and half years with unfettered power for all subject matters of the Attorney-Generals Office and especially dealing with the system criminal justice administration. I have also served as the Minister for the Interior of the Republic of Ghana before serving as the Attorney-General of the Republic of Ghana. I have had the privilege of working with eminent and distinguished Directors of Public Prosecutions such as Mrs. Joyce Bamford Addo until she was appointed to the Supreme Court, the late Mr.

A. A. Forster, until he was appointed to the Court of Appeal, the late Mr S. G. Baddoo, until he was also appointed to the Court of Appeal (and later to the Supreme Court), and the venerable Mr J. C Amoono-Monney until his appointment to the Court of Appeal, and I will bet my last farthing that none of these distinguished and seasoned Directors of Public Prosecutions would have agreed to the police bringing Mr Barker-Vormawor to any court on an indictable charge of treason felony upon the ambiguous statements he posted on his Facebook.

And if indeed, the police did any such thing on our blind-side we would have immediately called for the police docket, reversed their action, and ensured respect for the rights and freedoms of the suspect based on the reasons for his initial arrest. This is how it happened that on three different and separate occasions we declined to charge citizens some of whom are now eminent journalists and outspoken social commentators and activists with the offence of sedition.

The foregoing exposition demonstrates that the manner the system of criminal justice administration has been deployed punitively by the executive branch of government against the suspect gives ample grounds for the conclusion that the government untowardly abused its executive powers of the Republic to suppress or seek to suppress the lawful political activity of known political adversaries in a McCarthy-like hysteria of hunting for supposed coup mongers who are merely exercising their constitutional right to free speech and in defending the constitution by forewarning the government so that it may be forearmed against those who may wish to abrogate the Constitution in violation of article 3 thereof.

ARREST AND DETENTION OF MR KWAME BAFFOE, THE BONO REGIONAL CHAIRMAN OF THE N. P. P AND THE EQUAL APPLICATION OF THE LAW IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE ADMINISTRATION

Mr. Barker-Vormawor has suffered unconstitutional arrest, restriction or detention and an inferior court misled into remanding him into police custody for 14 days in the first instance and another 14 days on his second appearance on a spurious provisional treason felony charge which came to his notice for the first time on 14 February 2022 in the courtroom. His relatives, friends and he were put to the expense of seeking his release at the High Court, Tema, on a Habeas Corpus application without success. They went to the Supreme Court upon an application for certiorari which turned out to be faulty only to be assured by the office of the principal legal advisor to the Government under the Constitution that should he make a proper application for bail to a bailable court the Republic will not object it.

What a cynical assurance this was! The Government knew before or from the moment of Mr. Barker-Vormawors arrest and detention that the government was going to keep him in undignified and unconstitutional custody to compel him to go to the needless expense of applying for bail before the supposed generosity of the Attorney-Generals Office and the Government will be showered upon him for political point-scoring in the eyes of the public. His unconstitutional arrest and detention were orchestrated so that the Government will tell him, as the Office of the Attorney-General is now telling him in words to the effect that: You think you are somebody. We now have you. Go and apply for bail and we will show you mercy. This is not a constitutional and democratic attitude enjoined by the letter and spirit of the 1992 Constitution, and it is patently inconsistent with article 3 (2) thereof.

But what makes the Governments attitude more cynical, to borrow Mr. Akoto Ampaws words, is the fact that the Bono Regional Chairman of the New Patriotic Party, Mr. Kwame Baffoe, popularly known as Abronye DC granted an interview to 93.9 Hot FM on 14 February 2022 when Mr. Barker-Vormawor was in detention alleging that His Excellency former President John Mahama had met with Al-Qaeda militants to assist him to topple the Government of the New Patriotic Party by force of arms. The Bono Regional Chairman of the NPP claimed that John Mahama approached the group in a bid to help him become president again according to the rendition by Citi Newsroom.

I have listened several times to the video publication of the interview which is online on different media platforms in which Mr. Kwame Baffoe, the Bono Regional Chairman of the NPP, says clearly and without equivocations that former President John Mahama was working with Al Qaeda (an internationally proscribed terrorist organization) to assist him to overthrow the Government of the NPP by force of arms and links Mr. Barker-Vormawors Facebook posts and his subsequent arrest and detention for treason felony to his being one of the co-conspirators of John Mahamas unlawful machinations to overthrow the NPP Government by force of arms. The serious allegations of high treason and/or treason made by Mr. Kwame Baffoe against former President Mahama and the public reaction to it in the media compelled the Government through its policing powers to attempt an exercise in damage control.

When Mr. Kwame Baffoe was challenged several times by his interviewer as to the veracity of his assertions, he insisted that they were true and sought to justify the allegations on the interview which is now trending online. By failing or refusing to report former John Mahamas recruitment of Al Qaeda and Mr. Barker-Vormawor to over-throw the government of Ghana by force of arms Mr. Kwame Baffoe was committing the suspected offence of misprision treason under section 181 of the Criminal Offences Act, 1960 (Act 29) which states that:

181. Misprision of treason

A person who knows the commission of high treason, or treason within the meaning of clause (17) of Article 19 of the Constitution, and does not forthwith reveal it to the President, or to a police officer not below the rank of Inspector, commits a misprision of treason and is punishable as a first-degree felony.

Consequently, on February 15, 2022, the Ghana Police issued a public statement inviting Mr Kwame Baffoe to report to the police to assist in investigations into his allegations. He was arrested and detained overnight on the lesser charges of publication of false news, and offensive conduct conducive to breaches of the peace. The detention overnight by the police of the Bono Regional Chairman of the governing party was so offensive to operatives of the governing party who openly expressed their disquiet leading to bail being facilitated for the suspect when he was brought before a court to be with his family while poor Barker-Vormawor, the cockroach, who made the mistake of making himself available in the den of the fowls administering the system of criminal justice administration received the justice cockroaches deserve before the executive branch of government run by fowls.

Mr. Kwame Baffoe upon gaining his liberty took to the media to vent his spleen against the Inspector-General of Police and the Ghana Police Service for daring to humiliate him by his arrest and detention overnight. The Inspector-General of Police and the Ghana Police Service have not dared to bring further charges against him for obstructing the police in the execution of its law enforcement duties or for any other offence simply because he is a powerful regional chairman of the political party of the government in power.

The arrest and detention of Oliver Barker-Vormawor, the Convenor of #FixTheCountry and Mr Kwame Baffoe, the powerful Bono Regional Chairman of the governing political party, demonstrates the partiality with which the fundamental human rights and freedoms guaranteed to citizens might through the exercise of the investigatory and prosecutorial discretion in the system of criminal justice administration at the level of the executive branch of government has been wittingly or unwittingly abused in the matter of the Kyei-Mensah-Bonsus E-Levy cake for his 65th birthday contrary to Article 3(2) of the 1992 Constitution.

PROF. RAYMOND ATUGUBAS PUBLIC LECTURE AND THE RESULTANT HYSTERIA ABOUT COUP MONGERING AND CALLING FOR HIS ARREST

On 28 February 2022, Prof. Raymond Atuguba, the Dean of the University of Ghana School of Law delivered a public lecture at the Erata Hotel under the auspices of Solidaire Ghana on the topic: A Reviewed 1992 Constitution And Its Impact On The Economy of Ghana: Looking Forward.

To prove the hypothesis of his public lecture he made references to the state of the national economy and how to prevent a coup in Ghana. One Saka Salia, reported in the media to be a Communication Team Member of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), called for the immediate arrest and investigation of Prof. Atuguba for advocating for a coup by his public lecture. Mr Saka Salia charged the government to treat Prof. Atuguba the same way as the FixTheCountry convener, Mawuse Oliver Barker-Vormawor, who was arrested for similar comments. Mr Saka Salia is quoted to have stated, inter alia, that: The NDC are coup mongers and I will employ that Prof. Raymond Atuguba is arrested and investigated. If he is not, it will be considered discrimination. The Ghanaian community will start thinking some people are above the law which is wrong.

The Minister of Information, Mr Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, devoted time to speak to journalists to criticise Prof. Atugubas public lecture. He is reported to have said, inter alia, that: Even if they were worse, the constitution provides legitimate means for advocating for and executing a change. For respected persons to be purporting that such conditions legitimise coups is a terrible attack on our democracy itself and should not be condoned.

Mr K. T. Hammond, an NPP Member of Parliament, joined the government hawks in calling for Prof. Atugubas arrest by the police for the exercise of his constitutional right to freedom of speech and of thought. Mr Hammond is reported online to have said in an interview to the media, inter alia, that: I will be surprised if they (police) have not already invited him, clear foolishness. I believe that the theory that has been brought up will be best explained to an assembly of national security apparatus. They will understand it better than where he took the opportunity to say these things. Coup does not resolve difficulties in any country, we should be careful.

The electronic media also reported the interpretations and reactions of some leading members of the NDC to Prof. Atugubas lecture. Dr Obed Asamaoh, a respected former Attorney General, without whose experience and practical abilities in a political organisation the NDC would never have become a vibrant party capable of winning elections is reported to have allegedly described Prof. Atugubas statements on the ripeness of an environment for coups as childish and coming from someone who is not aware of the consequences of military takeovers. The Speaker of Parliament, Mr. Alban S.K. Bagbin was also reported by the media to have disagreed with the perspectives expressed by Prof. Atuguba in the public lecture without calling for his arrest.

But Dr. Obed Asamoah an eminent and experienced former Attorney General, and former Minister of Foreign Affairs underscored the principles and conventions underlying the proper use of the investigatory and prosecutorial discretion of the executive branch of government when he politely concluded that: There is a difference between speech and action. [If I were the Attorney General] I will take action only when there is evidence of preparation to carry out a coup. If somebody is only talking, I will just take it to be over-excitement. I wont go arresting people for that,

In accordance with my usual work habit, I have critically read several times over the 21 pages published public lecture Prof. Atuguba delivered in which he analyzed the political and economic circumstances of Ghana and what must be done to avoid a coup in Ghana. I do not agree with some of the facts, analysis and conclusions Prof. Atuguba arrived at in his public lecture. But from my considered critique and analysis of his lecture, I cannot find any ingredient of criminal incitement on the part of Prof. Atuguba of anybody to commit high treason, treason or treason felony or any criminal intention and act on his part to overthrow the elected Government of Ghana by force of arms or any unlawful means to warrant his arrest and detention.

Constitutionalism and democracy were undermined when the hawks in the governing party called for Prof. Atugubas arrest without first carefully and critically reading his full public lecture but merely relying on or listening to comments by social commentators who themselves might not have read or heard the full lecture delivered by the learned Professor. My conclusions are based on what Prof. Atuguba said within the context of his whole public lecture and not on hearsay, sentiments, and emotions.

At page 7 of the public lecture of Prof. Atuguba, he states that: We do not want a coup in this country. Yet I fear that if we do not act quickly, we may have one in our hands very soon. I urge my good friend the Minister for National Security, Hon. Kan Dapaah, to have a conversation with my friend at the War College. A big part of why certain coups succeed and others fail is the Economy. What is the state of our economy today?

Prof. Atuguba also stated at page 10, inter alia, that: Marching on the Office of the President, a National Security Zone, is not a crime. Saying that you will do the coup, using the definite article, a reference to the coup that the market women in Kumasi already say they will do, is a heinous crime.

Then at page 15 he states further that: . There is only one thing to do now, prevent a Coup in Ghana, since the climate and the environment, national and immediate international, are conducive for one.

On his concluding page on page 21 he makes, inter alia, the following statements: Canada of all places is clamping down on citizen demonstrations, and the United States experienced their first attempted coup detat in centuries in January last year. As for Africa, literally, every government is being toppled or sitting on tenterhooks. The world cannot continue like this and Ghana, always the pacesetter, must show the way.

The foregoing sample of extracts from Prof. Atugubas public lecture taken within the context of the lecture does not disclose any intention on his part to commit any criminal offence let alone any act in fulfilment of his criminal intention. I would not have referred to any relationship with Oliver Barker-Vormawor and the undignified conditions under which he is detained in such a lecture if I had researched, written and delivered the public lecture. I would also have avoided the frontal comparison made between John Mahamas government and the present government because of its potential to be misinterpreted as doing politics in such an important public lecture. But God did not create Prof. Atuguba to reason with my brains and socialization which explains why everyone is a unique social being resulting in Shakespeare saying that there are as many opinions as there are men. I am entitled to criticize Prof.

Atuguba as I have just done, just as Mr Bagbin and Dr Asamoah are reported to have done but none of us is entitled to gag Prof. Atuguba in the exercise of his fundamental right and freedom of speech and expression, and freedom of thought, conscience, and belief, which includes his academic freedom guaranteed to him under the 1992 Constitution as both a citizen of Ghana and a professor of laws.

CONCLUSIONS

This examination and analysis of the adversarial conflict over the Governments E-Levy policy eventually deepening with the uncomplimentary public reaction to what some citizens perceived to be an opulent, arrogant, and insulting 65th birthday celebration by the Majority Leader and Minister for Parliamentary Affairs, Mr. Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu in February 2022 amid their sufferings and the government intention to further tax their scarce incomes has shown how discretionary investigatory and prosecutorial power vested in the executive branch of government can be abused in a manner in consistent with the letter and spirit of the 1992 Constitution for purely unconstitutional partisan ends.

In George Orwells dystopia novel Nineteen Eight-Four, (1984) the Thought Police (Thinkpol) is the secret police of Oceania, which discovers and punishes thoughtcrime, personal and political thought unapproved by Ingsocs regime. Thinkpol uses criminal psychology and omnipresent surveillance via informants, telescreens, cameras, microphones to monitor and arrest all those who have committed thoughtcrime in challenge to the status quo authority of the party and the regime of Big Brother. The Government is using the Ghana Police now as its Thought Police in the E-Levy national disagreements to have its way despite the proscription of such unconstitutional methods under the 1992 Constitution as the foregoing article has demonstrated. The unconstitutionality being inflicted upon citizens and political adversaries for alleged thought crimes for deciding not to be mere spectators but active citizens exercising their constitutional rights and freedoms can become pervasive and undermine the Constitution. Therefore, real patriots must come together on a non-partisan basis and advocate against turning our democracy into a Big Brother regime and defend the 1992 Constitution by putting Ghana First!

Postscript

I just read on www.myjoyonline.com that the Government is now objecting to the grant of bail to Oliver Barker-Vormawor, the #FixTheCountry lead convener who is not well because he will not be likely to appear to stand his trial as he has no fixed place of abode for a search warrant to be executed by the police by visiting and searching his residence and his refusal to obey a court order to grant the police access to his mobile phone. The application for bail has been adjourned to 14 March 2022 for a hearing.

Joy News reports that the provisional charge of treason felony for which he was unconstitutionally detained before being brought before a court is over allegations that he has instigated members of his group to overthrow the government. Is the Government now fishing for the evidence to support the initial unconstitutional treason felony charge? Whatever it may be, this looks cynical at face value, but let us hold our horses and abide how this case pans out and whether #Fixthe Country and its convener will eventually be cancelled out as political adversaries of our Big Brother.

Readers who can find some time should re-visit my article on SIM card re-registration and integrate that material and conclusions with the use by Orwellian Thought Police (Thinkpol) of criminal psychology and omnipresent surveillance via informants, telescreens, cameras, microphones to monitor and arrest all those who have committed thoughtcrime in challenge to the status quo authority of the party and the regime of Big Brother. The use of the Pegasus spyware I wrote about in that article makes ones smartphone, iPad or computer and the SIM card used with them, surveillance devices modern Thinkpols employ for omnipresent surveillance as in the dystopian Big Brother Oceania. Can the constitutional right against self-incrimination protect anybody any longer? Think about it and re-register your SIM card.

Source: Classfmonline.com
13.03.2022 LISTEN

Former President John Dramani Mahama has said the recent ruling by the Supreme Court that presiding Deputy Speakers can vote on a matter on the floor of Parliament has absurd implications among which is the scenario of a presiding Deputy Speaker voice-voting on a matter on the floor of the house and still being the referee that determines which side of the House got the loudest ayes or nays.

In a unanimous decision on Wednesday, 9 March 2022, the apex court of seven Justices presided over by Jones Dotse held that upon a true and proper interpretation of Article 103 and 104 of the 1992 Constitution, a Deputy Speaker, who is a Member of Parliament, does not lose his right to take part in decision-making in parliament.

The decision comes after a lawyer, who is also a law lecturer, Justice Abdulai, petitioned the court to declare as unconstitutional, First Deputy Speaker Joseph Osei-Owusus action of counting himself as one of the MPs on the floor even while presiding over the proceedings of the house in relation to the formation of a quorum for the passage of the 2022 budget which had earlier been rejected and thrown out by the minority side.

Justice Abdulai was of the view that once a deputy speaker, who is an MP presides in the stead of the Speaker, he loses his right to vote.

The Supreme Courts ruling effectively means either of the two deputy Speakers can vote while presiding over the house.

In what is his third reaction to the Supreme Court ruling, Mr Mahama posted on Facebook on Sunday, 13 March 2022: The first vote in most cases taken on a motion in Parliament is a voice vote. The Presiding officer, whether the Speaker or any of his/her deputy speakers is supposed to listen to which is the loudest, the ayes or the nays and make a determination.

If the deputy speakers are allowed to vote, then they must take part, first, in the voice vote. If you are presiding and can shout aye or nay with your party in the voice vote, how do you impartially determine which was the loudest? he asked.

What is the determination of the SC? That Deputy speakers can shout aye or nay with the side they agree or disagree with in the voice vote? he wondered.

In his view, the Supreme Court is leading us into the realm of absurdity!

This judgment is regrettable, and I look forward to the applicant applying for a review of this ruling.

Classfmonline.com
Is utterly disheartening and insane to be a Ghanaian of late considering the lack of candor in our leaders, the house of law makers, the interpretators of the law, corruption and mismanagement of state institutions and drastic Economic fiasco.

It is shocking how things are cruelly and illegally unfolding in the government of Nana Akuffo Addo and Bawumia. These were folks once in opposition who crassly criticised the John Mills and John Mahama administration of incompetence, corruption etc. Today, the NPP in government has done directly opposite, contrary and worse than what the regime of JDM allegedly did. NPP today are in the business of uncouth manners.

Recently, when I hear the likes of Dr. Bawumia, Osei Kyei Mensah Bonsu, Stephen Amoah, Joe Osei Owusu and the likes losing candor and sensitiveness to political power then you would know our politics is grossly perfidious. These political spiders and partisan motivated chicanery charlatan are the worst enemies of nation development. They are trying to manipulate the laws in their favour to contend their self-interest and the interest of their party.

The NPP touted themselves and made glaring commentary that they have "the men" little did we know that the men they had were intellectually weak and demented brains to ruin the affairs of the country.

The issue of mobile electronic taxation has become the order of the day and has still not seen the light of the day. It is unacceptable to believe that the current government that preached against taxation and claiming they were going to move from taxation to production in a way of criticizing the past administration, received enormous taxes and funds than all regimes of the 1st to 4th republic of Ghana yet nothing different has happened to Ghana and Ghanaians. We are witnessing monumental corruption and misappropriation of funds in this government. The auditor general confirmed the disappearance of 12billion cedis in 2017 and the same amount in 2020 amounting to 24billion cedis floated to the pockets of individuals in government.

If this outrageous amount got lost and can't be accounted for how the same government account can and manage just 6 or 7 million cedis from E-levy. The means of taxation is wrong because it is distortion and evil to tax capital from end-to-end transaction.

Aside devising criminal strategies to implement the e- levy, the president is also causing financial lost to the state by hiring a private jet for oblivious and frivolous travels costing the country billions of cedis. This sum could have been protected so the country wouldn't tax the poor by using a depleting system called e - levy to waste on a fruitless government and we can still have good roads, electricity and a revamp economy if the president stop using a private jet. This shows how reckless, incompetent and insensitive president Akuffo Addo and his government are for not heeding to the hard and sorrowful plight of Ghanaians.

The Akufo Addo government is corrupt itself and their corruption life is inimitable in the record of the country's polity, the least you talked about the better. Talking about their incompetence and despotic governance, press censorship and the increasing hardships is like opening the Pandora box to ransack.

This government after receiving over 2 billion dollars free from IMF and the world bank and other international and local donors simply usurped the money to themselves as a means of expanding their Capitalist taste of exploiting the masses. Ghanaians didn't benefit from the covid funds and till today since 2019 no hospital is built and no free test, mask or quarantine is render.

We are under a siege of misleadership, a dictator, oppressor and Capitalist and imperialist puppet.

The life of every Ghanaian and the unborn is in precipice and under extreme jeopardy because our leaders have consumed and depleted what is for the generation.

The prognosis of the spurious Economy of Nana Addo is petulant causing browbeats on Ghanaians. The cost of general goods and commodities are randomly hiking daily. The cost of fuel and exchange rate is fickle therefore imposing uncalled loses to retailers and buyers. The lives of Ghanaians are regressive and can only regurgitated if we repudiate the NPP and revolt our political system.

Let's arise for total change for our future and the unborn generation.

Article by Fighter Anthony AKudago

Economic Freedom Fighters of Ghana (EFFGH)

Email: [email protected]
MBABANE - With every new day of the Russia attacks against Ukraine, the implications for the global food and agricultural sector become more profound.

The war in Ukraine reportedly has many ramifications across the food chain. Its consequences include the disruption of business operations and trade flows, higher commodity and energy prices and a deteriorating economic outlook. The impact is trickling down to many food and several agro-based economies including Sub-Saharan Africa and Eswatini in particular.

Eswatinis two agro-sectors that would be hardest-hit are the maize and sugar industries as farmers will most likely be confronted with high and unaffordable input costs. These will be caused by the production and trade disruptions resulting from the ongoing war.

Arrowfeeds has already announced an increase in feed products with effect from today. Input costs for arable farmers are also increasing as sanctions against Belarus and Russia have a big impact on the fertiliser supply chains. Russia is the global powerhouse in fertiliser production and exportation.

Developments

With these developments, it is obvious that the local sugar industry will be bruised to a certain degree, more especially the cane growing sub-sector. Eswatini Cane Growers Associations Chief Executive Officer Dr Sipho Nkambule, has conceded that the Russias invasion of Ukraine will indeed have some abysmal negative effects on cane producers and the sugar industry as a whole. Dr Nkambule has observed that Eswatini cane growers entered 2022 on the back of a wave of higher commodity prices due to trade disruptions brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic and this trend has not yet abated. According to the CEO, latest estimates show that fertiliser constitutes about 11 per cent of sugarcane production per hectare, adding that this price contribution is definitely going up given the current developments.

Russia is the largest fertiliser exporter and third largest exporter of petroleum. The invasion and accompanying sanctions will definitely disrupt supplies, resulting in further price escalations, said Dr Nkambule. Adding salt to the wound is the fact that prices for nitrogen fertilisers (LAN and Urea) have increased by about 32 per cent since the invasion. Regarding this, Dr Nkambule highlighted that due to the extensive usage of fertiliser in cane growing, the acute price escalation would eat into the growers margins and threatens sustainability.

Another risk is that some farmers may start skimping on the application of fertiliser, thus unwittingly sabotaging their yields, he stated.

Costs

According to Dr Nkambule, other input costs that will batter the cane growers yields emanating from the war in Ukraine include the spike in petroleum products. Russia is considered as the third largest producer of crude oil after the USA and Saudi Arabia and the disruptions in production have resulted in a price surge. About two weeks ago, the price notched E1 500 (US$100) per barrel. Since the invasion, the prices have tested the E2 100 (US$140) per barrel mark. In Eswatini the price of diesel was, last week, escalated from E17 to 18.60/litre, representing about 9.0 per cent increase and more increases are likely on the way.

For sugarcane growing, the cost of petroleum is reflected in harvesting and haulage costs, which historically constitute about 36 per cent of the total cost per hectare, Dr Nkambule highlighted.

Questioned if the cane growers were allowed to adjust the sucrose price as influenced by the increase in production costs, Dr Nkambule explained that they were always on the receiving end as they did not determine the price. Farmers are price-takers as far as sucrose or sugar is concerned.

Markets

They receive an average of the prices achieved by Eswatini Sugar Association (ESA) in the different markets. In short, farmers and the local sugar industry at large have limited control over the price of their product. Their main intervention is to maximise production per area and input unit costs, he said. Diagnostically, this Russia-Ukraine war will directly affect the 483 sugar cane growers, and of this, 93 per cent (450) are smallholder growers.

According to Dr Nkambule, smallholder growers would be the hardest-hit because their margins are already marginal, and their operating systems are inflexible. In simple terms, the effects of the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine will destabilise the sugar cane growing sector that is the main livelihood of the majority of the agricultural community within Eswatini. Approximately 16 per cent of the total workforce is directly or indirectly employed in the sugar cane industry, which illustrates its crucial social and economic presence in the well-being of Eswatini.

Meanwhile, Eswatini Sugar Association Chief Executive (CEO), Dr Phil Mnisi said the overall industrys revenue would also be affected by Russias invasion of Ukraine because of the volatility of the Rand/Lilangeni against the global currencies (US Dollar, British Pound, Euro and Japanese Yen). Dr Mnisi conceded Eswatini sugar sales are always suffering when the local currency is unstable, mainly because the kingdom is the net importer.
The 42-year-old man captured on tape assaulting a woman at Cape Coast in the Central Region has been arrested.

This has been confirmed in a statement issued by the Ghana Police Service on its official Facebook page.

The Central Regional Police Command has arrested a 42-year-old driver, Godwin Bayor alias Yaw for allegedly assaulting a woman on March 6, 2022, at Cape Coast, a statement from the Police has said.

Godwin Bayors arrest follows a Police investigation into a viral audio-visual tape intercepted in which a man was captured assaulting a lady in the night.

The victim on Sunday, March 13, 2022, subsequently lodged a complaint of assault at the Domestic Violence and Victim Support Unit (DOVVSU), Cape Coast.

The suspect is currently in Police custody assisting with the investigation.

In the statement from the Ghana Police Service, it says it expressed gratitude to the public for the partnership with the Police in getting the suspect arrested to face justice.
Members of the Concerned Drivers Association of Ghana are calling on Akufo-Addo government to reduce the price of petrol in the country.

The drivers said the GHS8.44-mark per litre of petrol is highly abnormal and causing unbearable hardship.

According to the drivers, the frequent increase should never be justified by the government with the Russia-Ukraine war and the continuous fall of the potency of the Ghana cedi as against the US dollar.

In their view, the tax component on the price of a litre of petrol is a major contributor to the abnormal rate.

We strongly believe that the taxes, when removed, will aid the reduction of the price of petrol. It must be noted that one major promise of this government was to remove the taxes on petrol, the concerned drivers noted in a statement.

They reminded President Nana Akufo-Addo that Ghana is an oil-producing country and, so, we possess every right to call on the government to have petrol subsidised for us in circumstances where the world market price rises.

President Akufo-Addo should remember that in opposition, he promised, during a campaign tour at Kwame Nkrumah Circle that he was going to reduce petrol prices for us should we vote for him. Today, he is in his second term as President but has deliberately chosen to forget about that key promise. Its about time he woke up from his slumber to act quickly, the statement said.

The drivers have given the President and his government a one-week ultimatum to have the price of petrol reduced or together with their allies such as GPRTU, Co-Operative, PROTOA and Cargo Drivers, they will mass up and block the entrance to his Nima residence.

Yes, that action is just one out of many radical demonstrations well embark upon to press on the president to have the prices reduced as we are considering also the blocking of all major roads with our vehicles.

Amidst the continuous precarious petrol prices, the drivers are also calling on all Ghanaians to stand with them devoid of partisanship as we fight for a more relaxed arrangement to be made by the government.

Source: Classfmonline.com
A Private Legal Practitioner, Sam Atukwei-Quaye says the Supreme Court got its ruling on the voting rights of a Deputy Speaker wrong.

Last Wednesday, March 9, 2022, a seven-member panel of the Supreme Court unanimously held that upon a true and proper interpretation of Article 103 and 104 of the 1992 Constitution, a Deputy Speaker who happens to be a Member of Parliament does not lose his right to take part in decision making in Parliament when sitting in for the Speaker of the House.

Sharing his thoughts on the ruling in an interview on GTVs Breakfast show today, Sam Atukwei-Quaye stressed, I disagree with the Supreme Court ruling."

According to the private legal practitioner, the Supreme Court got its latest ruling totally wrong.

The Judiciary is not supposed to instruct Cabinet on how to undertake proceedings in the House.

I expected Parliament to speak on the issue before the Supreme Court came in.

It appears to me that the Supreme Court got this wrong, Sam Atukwei-Quaye shared.

He said the Supreme Court must look at the present situations when interpreting the Constitution.

Just like Sam Atukwei-Quaye, many Ghanaians including the Minority in Parliament have expressed dissatisfaction with the Supreme Court ruling.

For former President John Dramani Mahama, the ruling is an absurdity and will serve as a dangerous precedent going forward.
Digital art is nothing new to vonMash, who describes his blend of painting, video and sound as "afro-delic" -- a psychedelic twist on Afrofuturism.

But when the South African started thinking about selling his work as crypto-art on a blockchain, he hesitated.

"I'm not fully for it because of the energy consumption that it takes," he explained.

Selling art as non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, uses the same technology as crypto-currencies like Bitcoin. The buyer receives a verified digital token, which proves the artwork is an original.

The boon for artists is that if their work goes up in value and is resold, they receive a portion of every future sale.

"If another person buys my NFT, I automatically get a share of that," vonMash said. With traditional art, if a buyer pays 100 dollars, and then "sells it for 100,000, I would not get a cent of that."

Warehouse of computers

What worries vonMash and other artists is how those digital tokens get verified.

Bitcoin mine: At a warehouse in Rockdale, Texas computers crack blockchain puzzles to create more of the virtual currency. By Mark Felix AFP

Ownership of the artwork is authenticated through complex mathematical puzzles -- so complex that the calculations require warehouses of computers.

Companies who solve the puzzles get rewarded with new tokens, and their solutions add a "block" to the chain of the authentification.

The number-crunching requires vast amounts of energy, often produced by coal-power electricity plants.

Most NFTs are currently traded on a platform on a called Ethereum. Tech watchdog Digiconomist estimates that Ethereum uses as much electricity as all of the Netherlands, with a carbon footprint comparable to Singapore's.

"The energy it takes for the proof of authentication for the artwork, it's so much," vonMash said.

He has reason to worry.

Climate concerns have sparked a backlash against NFTs.

K-pop fans in South Korea last year staged a brutal campaign against plans for popular groups include BTS and A.C.E. to sell crypto-art.

Blockchain calculations require huge amounts of electricity, which comes mostly from burning coal, oil or gas, accelerating the planet's climate crisis. By GREG BAKER AFP

"Essentially NFTs are a giant environment-destroying pyramid scheme," read a widely retweeted comment from @ChoicewithACE typical of comments that prompted the group to cancel their offering.

BTS's music label Hybe decided to postpone their launch, looking for greener alternatives.

In South Africa, environmentalism is an unquestioned article of faith among many artists.

One collective called The Tree created a platform for artists to sell NFTs, and then collaborate with a Cape Town charity called Greenpop to plant trees to offset the carbon emited from the crypto-art sales.

Evolving world

Fhatuwani Mukheli said that system made him feel confident about the two NFT sales he's already made.

"The world is constantly evolving," he said. "If I just hold on to what I know, then the bus is going to miss me."

vonMash says he has turned to a more environmentally-friendly authentication system called Cardano to sell his NFTs. By LUCA SOLA AFP

For vonMash, the solution was not to sell on Ethereum, but to place his art on a platform called Cardano, which uses a different authentication system.

Rather than have companies solve ever-harder puzzles, Cardano uses a mechanism called "proof of stake".

Instead of earning new tokens by solving puzzles -- and gobbling up electricity -- users can simply pony up tokens they already have.

The world's first NFT vending machine, which opened in New York last month. The customer chooses an NFT and buys it with a credit or debit card. The machine then dispenses a box with a unique code inside for the NFT. By Michael M. Santiago GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICAAFP

Essentially, they're using their money in the form of crypto-currency to vouch for the authenticity of a digital artwork.

If someone tries to game the system, or simply makes a mistake, they could lose their financial stake in the network.

The underlying technology can be confusing, but social impact consultant Candida Haynes said "the short story is that there are less environmentally hazardous options for NFTs."

"Ultimately, blockchain developers have to also engage with sustainability and help keep less technical folks, including artists, informed about the state of environmental sustainability in blockchains," she said.
As patriotic citizens that care about the growth of Ghana and the welfare of the people, we have the right to ask questions and also reject something the majority is not interested in.

So its time to ask Nana Akufo Addo if the World Bank has clarified that they gave the government $430 million to tackle the coronavirus in Ghana, we want to know where the remaining $330 is because the NPP government told Ghanaians they were given only $100M.

A lot of damage has been done to Ghana because of greed, human errors, corruption, and nepotism, surprisingly; I see many are not interested in tackling these issues that continue to affect the countrys infrastructures and the economy.

Rather, what Akufo Addo and his government are interested in is forcing the Supreme Court to come out with a law that will favor them to pass the E-Levy.

The Ghanaian government is making millions of dollars from COVID tests, especially, those with foreign passports, at the Kotoka International Airport, yet nobody knows where the money goes. Photo credit: AFP

Ghana as a tropical country is among other African countries with less impact of the coronavirus, yet the World Bank was able to assist Ghana with $430 million. Apart from that the European Union also assisted with 86.5 million to fight COVID-19 in Ghana.

As already revealed, before the coronavirus, Ghanas economy has already crumpled, therefore, its a complete lie to blame the COVID for Ghanas current economic crisis.

The controversies surrounding the E-Levy are issues we need to bring to the discussion table. For example, according to some NPP politicians, the NDC doesnt like to see the success of the NPP government, the reason the party is opposing the passing of the E-Levy by the Parliament and more importantly, it shouldnt be a worry to the NDC if the E-Levy will keep the NPP in opposition.

Thats a real childish talk from a group of incompetent, unthinkable NPP politicians because its not the NPP government going to the opposition that matters but the difficulties the next government coming to power will encounter should be the main problem they have to address but have refused to deal with that issue because of greed and selfishness.

Lets begin with this simple mathematics, for example, if Ghanas external debt is $300 billion and after the approval of the E-Levy, they use it for a loan of $150 billion, the country's total external debt will be $450 billion.

If the NPP goes to the opposition in 2024, they dont care anymore, therefore, this debt will become the burden of the next government. We have been told many times that politics is a dirty game but Ghanas is the dirtiest, trust me.

Even though the NPP government knew the debt they incurred before going to the opposition will be a burden to the next government in power and also takes several years to pay such debts, the same NPP party will start their dirty political agenda and propaganda against the party that they are incompetent and can't solve the people's problems.

I am very sure this is what intelligent Ghanaians and the NDC party want to avoid since paying off long-term debts affects a countrys development and economy.

However, what I dont understand is why Akufo Addo wouldnt like to answer questions about the COVID missing funds and the reason Ghana is in debt without accountability but rather interested in the passing E-Levy?

Ghana has heads of churches, Christian Council, Muslim communities, etc; yet, nobody is interested to ask our president, Nana Akufo Addo where are the missing COVID funds or why Ghana is in huge debt without accountability?

Rather, they went to the official residence of the former Ghanaian president, John Mahama to convince him to accept the passing of the E-Levy. Arent they ashamed of yourselves?

I live in Belgium for over two decades, despite all the good things the government has done for me, they know me very well as the only African writer that continues to criticize the Belgian government over many things affecting black people, so why wouldnt I criticize Ghana, a country that has never done anything for me, while the common people are suffering?

I read about attacks from here and there that Ghanaians in the Diaspora should stop criticizing the government and come to Ghana to help build the country, yet when I decided to do so, I lost 10,000 Euros investment because my plot was resold to another person by the chief.

This has never happened to me in Belgium, therefore, if Ghanaian leaders or politicians wouldnt like to be criticized, they should create an effective judiciary system that will put anyone who commits a crime, despite the person's status, behind bars and also stop stealing the governments money because their greed and selfishness are affecting the common people, especially, those unemployed.

My advice to Akufo Addo is not to force this fraudulent E-Levy on the common people who they have denied jobs for over five years. If he is a serious president, he should make efforts to trace the missing COVID funds, more importantly, the NPP politicians are receiving fat salaries and several benefits, so they should cut their pay to salvage the economy. This is what is a responsibility and good leadership mean.
Prince Savor, a CCTV Camera Technician, who published naked videos of a businesswoman on a website, has been sentenced to 10 years imprisonment by an Accra Circuit Court.

Sevor has been ordered to pay GHC10,000 as compensation to the woman for the trauma caused her.

This was after the court, presided over by Mrs Christina Cann, has found him guilty on charges of non-consensual sharing of intimate videos and four counts of sexual extortion.

Prosecuting, Chief Inspector Agartha Asantewaa narrated that the complainant (name withheld), is a businesswoman at Abor in the Volta Region.

Accused, now a convict, also resided at Akatsi in the same region.

Prosecution said in May 2021, Sevor found the MTN number of the complainant on her Facebook page and used a UK number; 447514044792 to contact her on her WhatsApp.

Prosecution said Sevor posed as a female by name Richael Hughes of Mozambique but a resident in the UK.

He and the complainant became good friends and the two started chatting via WhatsApp.

In the course of their friendship, Sevor lured the complainant to send her nude videos and the complainant obliged thinking that Sevor was a female.

Prosecution said Sevor secretly also screen recorded the complainant during one of their WhatsApp video calls while she was naked.

It said when he got hold of the nude videos, he used a different WhatsApp account to chat with the complainant and he introduced himself as one John Mawuenyaga.

Sevor told the complainant that he hacked her WhatsApp account to get her nude videos.

Prosecution said Sevor then sent the nude videos to the complainant and threatened her to pay him GHC5,000 else he would publish same on social media.

The complainant pleaded with the convict and she gave him GHC2,000 and she made the payment in two tranches, GHC750 and GHC1,250 on May 17 and 18, 2021, respectively.

The complainant, after paying the GHC2,000, blocked the number of the accused so he could not reach her to collect his GHC3,000 balance.

Sevor then went ahead and published the complainant's video on www.empressleaks.biz website.

Prosecution said he sent the videos to two witnesses in the case and asked them to inform the complainant to bring the GHC3,000.

On June 10, 2021, Prosecution said the Director General of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Ghana Police Service was petitioned.

On August 10, 2021, Sevor was arrested at Akatsi when he collected another GHC500 from the victim.

GNA
In recent weeks, the world has witnessed the most tense situations in international relations since the end of the Cold War with Russia's invasion of Ukraine. These tensions were noticeable during the deliberations and during the vote of the members of the United Nations on the resolutions calling on Russia to end its invasion and withdraw its forces from Ukraine. These events also served to test the resilience of military and political alliances.

The 54 African countries, (or 27.97% of the total vote) considerably influenced the vote.

First, a meeting with the 12 members of the Security Council was held on February 25, 2021. The three countries representing Africa, namely: Gabon, Ghana and Kenya, along with eight other countries have voted for the resolution. However, Russia used its veto power to block it. This veto prompted the United States and 94 countries to call an emergency meeting of the United Nations General Assembly on February 27, 2022, at which a similar, but non-binding, motion was introduced. This is the first emergency meeting of this Assembly in 40 years.

The resolution providing, among other things, for the condemnation of the Russian decision to raise the level of alert of its nuclear forces was adopted by the two-thirds majority required by all the Member States.

The African votes were less unanimous in the General Assembly than in the Security Council where the allocation of non-permanent seats, even if they obey a certain geographical distribution, does not oblige the representative countries to be the bearers. words from their region.

The majority of African countries clearly sided with Ukraine  28 out of 54 (or 51.85%). Only Eritrea voted against this resolution. But almost a third of them abstained from taking sides (or 17 out of 54)  assuming that abstention is halfway between yes and no. Eight countries were absent.

My research focused on the similarities and differences in how countries respond to crises. As an example, I looked at the 2015 refugee crisis in Europe and the contradictory reactions of Western and Eastern European countries, which I explained by their different identities, i.e. by "Who are we? ".

I also reviewed the Valletta Joint Action Plan, an immigration pact signed by the European Union and the African Union in response to the refugee crisis. I demonstrated that the plan, which helped to relaunch relations between the AU and the EU, was based on the interdependence which allows the parties to preserve their interests (territorial integrity for Europeans and economic development for Africans), while acknowledging (especially the more powerful Europeans) that they need each other to advance these interests.

Research by authors such as the Dutch political scientist Erik Voeten further proves that voting in the General Assembly is  in general  driven by interests. But, as American political scientist Alexander Wendt has revealed, what constitutes an interest depends on the perception of each government, so much so that two rival countries can sometimes vote for the same resolution.

As Voeten pointed out, historically speaking, electoral trends have been influenced by the big issues of the moment. In the 1950s, colonialism pitted European countries against Asian and African countries; from the 1960s to the 1980s, it was the Cold War and the division between the Eastern and Western blocs. More recently, these electoral tendencies have been structured by the desire of developing countries to obtain or retain aid from developed countries and, increasingly, between the liberal, illiberal divide of democratic and authoritarian regimes.

This divide trumps other possible explanations for the electoral trends of the General Assembly's emergency meeting on the invasion of Ukraine. A country's degree of proximity to the West or Russia can also serve as an additional explanation.

The line of demarcation

The group of 28 African countries in favor of the resolution was mainly made up of Western-aligned democracies such as: Benin, Botswana, Cape Verde, Comoros, Democratic Republic of Congo, Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Malawi, Mauritius, Niger, Nigeria, Sao Tome and Principe, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Tunisia and Zambia.

But a few undemocratic or hybrid regimes made the list, such as Cote d'Ivoire, Gabon, Libya, Chad, Egypt, Mauritania, Rwanda and Somalia. They had, however, one thing in common: being allies of the West, with close military ties (military bases and joint military operations against the jihadists).

Conversely, most of the 17 African countries which abstained or which, like Eritrea, voted against the resolution, are authoritarian or hybrid regimes; these include, among others, Algeria, Angola, Burundi, Central African Republic, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Madagascar, Mali, Mozambique, South Sudan, Sudan , Tanzania and Zimbabwe.

Some of these countries have close military and ideological ties with Russia, sometimes dating back to the Cold War, such as Algeria, Angola, Congo, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Mali and the Central African Republic.

A few exceptions to the rule were also noteworthy.

A number of functioning democracies  Namibia, South Africa and Senegal  also abstained. All have strong affinities with the West. However, in the case of Namibia and South Africa, their ruling parties (the People's Organization of South West Africa respectively) received support from the Soviet Union during their struggles for independence.

The case of Senegal is more puzzling, this country being the darling of the West due to its long democratic tradition. The Senegalese government said its abstention was in line with "principles of non-alignment and peaceful settlement of disputes". However, the official statement of its President, as current President of the African Union, like that of the President of the AU Commission, could be interpreted as support for the territorial integrity of Ukraine.

This liberal and illiberal divide conveys points of view of three kinds.

First, the world is being turned upside down by the kind of clash of civilizations predicted by American political scientist Samuel P. Huntington, who claimed that cultural identity would be the fault line in global conflict. This would prepare the ground for world civilizations: Western, Chinese, Islamic, Latin, Slavic and perhaps African. If the idea that he had of a confrontation  and of identity as a driving force  seems to materialize, this identity is based on ideology and not on culture, illiberalism having replaced communism.

Simply, we had not yet reached the stage of the triumph of democracy proclaimed by the American political scientist Francis Fukuyama, in his book entitled The End of History, published in 1992 after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Second, authoritarian regimes find comfort and support for their survival in proximity to similar regimes, and it serves as their insurance policy. Since Russia has shown its determination to rescue authoritarian regimes, such as Syria, these countries do not want to rule out the possibility of resorting to its assistance, in the event of a threat to their survival.

Third, if the war in Ukraine escalates globally and a China-encompassing Cold War 2.0 takes hold, African countries would split into several blocs instead of presenting a common front.

Placed in the context of the renewed partnership between the EU and the AU, this divide makes even more sense now than at their summit in Brussels, a week before the outbreak of the conflict, during which they proclaimed a common vision for 2030 and sought to form a strategic alliance.

In terms of democracy and alignment, the EU could probably make more demands and will naturally seek to deepen its relations with like-minded African countries.

Mahama Tawat does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

By Mahama Tawat, Research fellow, Universite de Montpellier
There is no doubt that the New Patriotic Party Administration is serious in its manifesto pledge to free Ghana of corruption having established the office of the Special Prosecutor.

However, the fight against corruption should be taken to its chapters and branches in the diaspora.

There are a number of people in the New Patriotic Party in the diaspora who are as corrupt as a Jewish shylock who are vying for positions in the pending elections in their local branch/chapter. If such persons are elected in to position of power and responsibility in their local branch/chapter, they will certainly find their way in to a position of power/responsibility in the national party in Ghana. Hence this is why the New Patriotic Party must take the fight against corruption to the diaspora.

In a case study of one Andrews Osei Owusu in the Uk, who brags that his grand son of the late Victor Owusu without an iota of evidence should be investigated and barred by the party from standing as party chairman in the uk.

This thoroughly dishonest person, Andrews Osei Owusu, along with others is undeserving to hold any incorporated title or company directorship or party office in Ghana or Uk and should be barred from standing in position of power/responsibility by the New Patriotic Party before he fleeces the London branch and ultimately a Ministery in Ghana.

Information available to us as a result of our investigation in Ghana and Uk suggest that this social worker has tendency to approach people in Uk and convinced them that he is setting up foster care homes and thus would pay high interest to those investing in his so called venture.

As part of his sophisticated scheme, he rented a virtual office and support staff whereby he would invite his victims to view his set up in order to convince them to part with their hard earned money. After collecting sufficient amount of money from his victims, after several months he would then tell them the company has gone bankrupt without providing any evidence whatsoever. Thus dishonestly appropriating his victims money.

Our investigation has revealed that he has been employing such a scheme to fund political campaign and to enrich himself in uk and Ghana.

In 2016 he used the scheme to defraud the late Marlon Anipa of 2,500. Unfortunately, Marlon Anipa did not receive his money back before his unfortunate demise in Ghana within 24 hours after taking office. We have also discovered that prior to that he had used the scheme to defraud one Godwin Adjei-Gyamfi 10,000.00. When he was threatened with legal action he agreed to pay back the money but only paid back 5,000.00 so the lawyer sued him and was awarded judgment and legal cost in his favour.

In 2020 he claimed that the New Patriotic Party had awarded him with school feeding programme and went to the US to source for investors. He hired an office in Dzorwulu to attract US investors. When he did so, he closed the shop and took off to Uk. Now his paying his way through to be the next chairman.
Those pleading for no coup in the country are singing a swan song if they believe that those with the propensity and capacity to plot a coup will desist only on account of their feeble pleas. Those with the intent to plot a coup will go forward with their evil plans if there is any opportunity that they can succeed in subverting the constitutional order of the country. The country and government should therefore make all efforts to secure the country with this fact in mind.

And when I assert the premonition above, I make a direct insinuation against the military which has hitherto reneged on its duties and functions. The history of the military in Ghana, when viewed from the standpoint of achievements, is in the sense of their peace-keeping missions abroad. In this, they are deserving of all possible accolades. But beyond this achievement, they have failed to provide the necessary security and protection for the country as their basic duty and solemn oath require and demand.

There has never been any breakdown in social order in this country, nor any war with any country, nor any threat from the air and the sea for which they have ever defended the country. And so the least expectation will therefore be that they will defend the sovereignty of our country and the safety of the citizenry. But in this narrow sense, they have failed the republic: They have posed an existential threat to this country not once or twice but five times. I would say that depending on where one stands at the aisle of the national politics, Nkrumahs overthrow made sense because he was an arrant dictator with no other way to get rid of him. But what about the other coups? Acheampongs overthrow of Busia? His overthrow by his own henchmen led by General Akuffo? Rawlings overthrow of the F.W.K. Akuffo regime when the nation was preparing a transfer to civilian regime? And Rawlings second putsch against the Limann regime? What was the sense in all that? And how did any of the coups help secure the benefits of freedom and liberty and the firming of our democracy in any way?

So Ghanas military epitomizes an institution with basic disciplinary problems which has never been permanently addressed. It is an institution which poses the most threat to national security, and will cannibalize itself and the nation on the least incentive and opportunity. So that if we consider the possibility of a coup detat in the country, the only institution capable of bringing this catastrophe about is the military. And when, or if the military succeeds in bringing about a usurpation of our constitutional order, it is almost a certainty that nobody can do anything about it.

If a coup starts, the Presidents body-guards will be the first to elope or arrest him; all the senior officers will desert their posts and run into the bush. The junior officers will rise and shoot some or jail some and co-opt some into certain positions in a junta. Some will surrender to the plotters and be shot nevertheless. All through the streets, soldiers will go after the citizens for vengeance, seize their cars and torture and beat them up in the streets. They will destroy the factories and businesses of the rich, rape or beat our women and confiscate properties at will, while a section of the population cheers them on and urge them to let the blood flow. Certain of our frustrated elite will join them and help them to form a government with hollow ideologies

All these happened on June 4, 1979 and beyond, and continued on to December 31, 1981 and beyond. So the scenario above is not some sort of phantasmagoric account plugged from a morbid mental vacuum and purported to scare little children. Everything has happened before and can still happen again. So the nation is on borrowed time according to the whims and caprices of a military which we have ourselves set up and armed to the teeth to haunt and harm us.

This dangerous development cannot continue: We cannot maintain an institution that makes this evil possible. Because the truth is that as long as the military has the capability to stage a coup, it will stage a coup; and no amount of homily, threats or admonitions will prevent it from doing so. It follows therefore that we have created an institution that has the capacity to destroy our democracy while we are engaged in apologetics to dissuade it from doing so. Those apologetics are the hortatory of the naive.

If the military is capable of staging a coup, it will not need any good cause to stage one, and it can easily make up retroactive reasons to stage one. There are many in the forces who joined the forces to stage a coup in order to become leaders of the country by by-passing the ballot which makes it legitimately possible to do so under the present democratic order.

And these people are not stupid enough to come out with an open warning like Vormawor or even Atuguba. Those empty pots making noise are not preparing to stage a coup. Neither do they have the resources and capabilities to stage one. But our military does, and may well proceed as Prof. Atuguba has described and warned. And if our remedy is to arrest all these people threatening coup, then our solution to coups in the country is very naive indeed and almost stupid.

Rather, we should tackle the threat from the army by making it impossible for them to threaten or usurp the constitutional order. We should turn the whole institution into a kind of engineer/civil corps to build our infrastructure. We should send them to the field to keep them busy building bridges, roads, drainage systems, houses, and planting trees and farming for food. If need be, we should send them out for clean-up exercises and incorporate them into factory work and labor and education.In short, we should make them self-sufficient nation builders, and disarm any trace of threats of coup.

In the final analysis, if we find any section or the whole lot of them to be undisciplined and coup-oriented, we should not be afraid to disband them and outsource whatever security needs to outsiders who have no locus or interest to stage any coup in the country.

Dr. Samuel Adjei Sarfo, Esq.

[email protected]
Some women groups in the Kassena-Nankan Municipal of the Upper East Region calling itself, Our Lady of Mercy Kaana Manga have called on government to as a matter of urgency make it mandatory for the appointment of fifty percent of women into positions from the Assembly level to the national level to help bridge the gender gap.

The group which is a wing of an NGO, Our Lady of Mercy Community Services (OLAMCS) made the call in Navrongo on Saturday as part of this years activities marking the International Women's Day on the theme Gender equality today for a sustainable tomorrow.

The event which is celebrated annually on March aimed at celebrating the achievement of women and drawing the attention of duty bearers to break the gender gap in society.

It was organized by OLAMCS with support from the Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA-Senegal) attracting a lot of women from the Municipality and its environs.

Mrs Anastacia A Musah, one of the Spokesperson of the group who is also a former Assembly woman for the Atosale--A Z aasi electoral area said as it stood now, out of the 15 Municipal and District Assemblies in the region there were only four elected Assembly women with a minute a number of them appointed by government.

She stated that this negative trend was not only observed in the Upper East Region but across the entire sixteen regions of Ghana. She attributed the problem to successive governments failure to give more opportunities to women.

Mrs Musah indicated that although Ghana was signatory to a lot of international protocols that demand that women be given opportunities in governance. According to her, governments have failed in that direction and called on government to emulate the shining example of Rwanda.

She noted that the absence of Assembly women in most of the Assembly level make women unrepresented and difficult for men to take decision regarding the welfare of women and children.

She underscored the need for Government to reflect on this years theme by taking giant steps to address the challenge.

Mrs Musah equally reminded the various political parties to bear in mind that when it comes campaigning for votes during elections women are used the most in wooing more voters but are denied the chance to occupy such positions in politics.

Mr Florence Bobe, also leading Member of the Association commended Vastenactie-Belgium, Plan International Ghana , Global Affairs Canada, STAR-Ghana and the Germany Embassy in Ghana for supporting the NGO in initiating a number of interventions to empower the vulnerable in the area.

He stated that when it comes to political campaigns women are victimized as result of culture. He entreated women aspiring for political positions to be very assertive and courageous in championing their activities.

Recounting some of the activities the group has initiated over the past nine years, the President of the Our Lady of Mercy Kaana Manga Women Group, Mrs Victoria Asuliwono said with the support from the mother organization, OLAMCS they have established a radio programme in partnership with Nabiina Community Radio in the Municipality.

According to her, they use the community radio as a platform to educate the community on Gender Equality and Social Inclusion, Women and Child Rights, Child Marriage, Teenage Pregnancy, Women and Health Issues Entrepreneurship, Climate Change, Women in Agriculture, COVID-19 pandemic among others.

She added that they also prompt duty bearers to act on their responsibilities in handling the challenges.

She stressed that the radio programme which has been targeting a population of over 70,000 people every Thursday in the Municipality and its environs had made a greater impact.

She mentioned how the awareness creation helped the group in collaboration with duty bearers rescued some school girls who were given out for marriage by their parents. She emphasised that the girls were readmitted to their schools including those who dropped out as a result of teenage pregnancies.

Ms Matilda Yelbaya, a Public Health Nurse at the Navrongo Health Directorate attributed the high antenatal and post-natal attendance of women to lack of health facilities in the area.

She added that breast and cervical cancer screening is another challenge.
Even on a grave matter that has attracted the focus of the world, Russias invasion of Ukraine, the Kingdom of Eswatinis insignificance on the global geopolitical stage ensured its insulation from criticism for withholding its signature from a United Nations General Assembly resolution condemning Russias actions, while other countries with much clout who did likewise were at the receiving end of scathing condemnation and criticism.

Perhaps owing to Eswatinis small physical and corresponding population size, the kingdom routinely escapes the radar of international focus  to the leaderships advantage and the populaces disadvantage - ostensibly because it lacks the muscle to influence international geopolitical alliances and dalliances. Consequently, the kingdom is often forgotten akin to the last outpost, owing to a lack of global importance and influence often helping the leadership escape international censor for its denial of fundamental human rights and basic freedoms to emaSwati. Forget the politically correct narrative of nations being equal because that is hogwash. Nations are adjudged by their spheres of influence, military and economic might, period.

Abstained

So when Eswatini abstained from affixing her signature on the UN resolution in the aftermath of Ukraines invasion by Russia, she was not missed and no one broke a sweat trying to find out the underlying rationale. But that does not necessarily mean that we, the citizens, do not deserve to be taken into the governments confidence on why it opted for the route it took and how this was beneficial to Eswatinis international relations and geopolitical intercourse. Yes, government did issue a statement to explain the kingdoms position, but it was evasive as it was incoherent and pregnant with innuendos, suppositions and presuppositions akin to someone desperately looking and searching for a place of refuge for the purpose of hiding.

Otherwise how do you explain the kingdoms expectation for peaceful coexistence among nations of the world but still choose to lend indirect support to an aggressive country violating the sovereignty of another. We know for a fact that the kingdoms position was not informed by its ideological leanings or perhaps even principles for that matter. As I see it, Eswatinis stance on the UN resolution is reminiscent of her look East policy that signaled a paradigm shift in her international relations that saw the kingdom turning her back on her traditional allies of the United Kingdom and United States of America more to spite them than to gain any political mileage.

Pressures

It is common cause that causal to this paradigm shift were the constant pressures exerted by the US and Britain for the country to democratise by opening the political space to multiparty democracy. Since that shift, Eswatini has found much comfort in the company of dictatorial regimes such as the oil-rich kingdoms of the Middle and Far Eastern nations, and the likes of Equatorial Guinea in Africa with no scruples about governance issues. And Russian President Vladimir Putin happens to belong to this club of authoritarian leaders to which the Eswatini leadership has been endeared. Left with a choice to choose between Russia and Ukraine, it was predictable that the Eswatini leadership would go with Putins Russia than with President Volodymyr Zelenskyys Ukraine. As can be expected, Eswatinis foreign policy is not chiseled to serve the interests of the nation, but rather those of individuals in leadership.

Nowadays, enhancing friendship with Russia has taken a whole new meaning in the face of domestic political turmoil, during which the voices for a multi-party political dispensation has gained traction.

This immediately triggers flashes of princes of the realm enthusiastically brandishing high calibre weapons at a side fair during the inaugural Russia-Africa Summit attended by African heads of State and government. It would appear that that Eswatini leadership have selected to align with Russia because it is not overbearing by demanding multi-party democracy coupled to the fact that Russia is also willing to sell much sought after weaponry that is central to maintaining the political status quo given the brutality of the states military machinery that has led to the killing of tens of opponents of the Tinkhundla system.

Coincidentally, Russia also needed to harness friendly countries before its military foray into Ukraine. It is no surprise that Russia had strategically invited Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Minister Thuli Dladla for a working visit to the Kremlin ahead of its planned invasion of Ukraine. And this pending invitation, coming at a time of great opportunities for either government, cannot be discounted to have played an important role in influencing the hand of eSwatini when the UN General Assembly condemned Russias invasion of Ukraine via the requisite resolution. The question is whether Eswatini fully comprehends the political Russian roulette she has wittingly become a part of.

Traumatised

So, the police officers doing duty for Royal Leopards Football Club were traumatised by protestors ahead of their CAF game against Orlando Pirates in Mbombela to the point of requiring psychological therapy. That is ironic in comparison to the tens of emaSwati that government has ultimately acknowledged were gunned down by the police while others were permanently maimed and disabled, while protesting against the Tinkhundla Political System. But none of the families who either lost or had their relatives maimed by the police had received any kind of counselling whatsoever.

They have been left to deal with the resultant shock and trauma on their own. This has been further exacerbated by governments refusal to order an investigation into the killings as if it were animals that were culled. That is how callous government has been to swathes of bereaved emaSwati families, yet there is now talk of compensating police officers whose motor vehicles were burnt in nocturnal arson attacks. The case of crimes against humanity continue to be buttressed.
Tanzania has reiterated its commitment to the African Court on Human and Peoples Rights ideals and core values of human rights, good governance, democracy, and rule of law and our conviction and support for African institutions.

Prime Minister of Tanzania, Kassim Majaliwa Majaliwa, reaffirmed that Tanzania will not renege on its commitment to support and continue its obligations as the host country in strengthening the existing cooperation with the African Union.

Prime Minister Majaliwa stated during the opening of the Judicial Year of the African Court, monitored by the Communication for Development and Advocacy Consult (CDA Consult) in Tema as he explained that the jurisprudence of the Court over the past 15 years has demonstrated a clear path in the realization of Africa we want.

African Court Legal Year is a judicial ritual to mark the official commencement of the year. It is a significant manifestation and an opportunity to take stock of what has been achieved and address the challenges of the Court.

The African Court judicial year was on the theme: The African Court and the Africa we Want. It was attended by Professor Yemi Osinbajo, Vice President of Nigeria; Lady Justice Iman Daud Aboud, President of the African Court; Judges of the African Court and cross-section of Judges and Lawyers across Africa.

The Tanzanian Prime Minister acknowledged that the African Court has delivered landmark judgments on a wide range of issues covering civil and political rights, economic social, and cultural rights as well as group rights.

As a result, it has resolved many disputes at national, sub-regional and continental level, thus encouraging regional integration, and harmonized African Union law.

These achievements have been orchestrated by accountable and trusted people who have dedicated themselves to stand for and champion for achievements of human rights in the Continent.

I know the performance of the African Court is not free from scepticism and criticism of some stakeholders, especially the Member States of the African Union.

This has even led some of the States to withdraw their Declarations under Article 34 (6) of the Protocol establishing the Court. This is a clear signal to the Court that in the discharge of its mandate, it must exercise it in good faith, not abusing the trust bestowed upon it and also be mindful of the internal legal processes of member states, he said.

Prime Minister Majaliwa said, we have an obligation to aspire and strengthen an Africa of good governance, democracy, respect for human rights, justice and the rule of law.

He said, the main goals of this aspiration are to entrench democratic values, practices, universal principles for human rights, justice, and rule of law; and put in place capable institutions and transformed leadership in place at all levels.

He said the judiciary as the paramount, and cornerstone in the field of Economic and Social Development must be seen to be at the forefront, stressing the African Court has a very important role to play in the realization of Agenda 2063 and the Africa we want.

Lady Justice Aboud reiterated the mission of the African Court which is to enhance through judicial decisions, the protective mandate of the African Commission by strengthening the human rights protection system in Africa.

She said the long-term vision is an Africa with a viable human rights culture This vision is very informative because it states that it is only by establishing and upholding a feasible human rights culture, that we can comprehend and attain the Africa we Want.

Source: CDA Consult
14.03.2022 LISTEN

The Ghana Optometric Association (GOA) in collaboration with the Ghana News Agency Tema Regional Team has embarked on a door-to-door glaucoma awareness campaign in Tema to expose the public to the need for effective eye health systems.

The GNA-GOA Glaucoma awareness door-to-door campaign was part of activities to mark World Glaucoma Week which is a unique initiative that puts a spotlight on glaucoma as the leading cause of preventable irreversible blindness worldwide.

The campaign also seeks to focus on the message that prompt diagnosis and treatment of glaucoma can prevent needless vision impairment, however, so many are unaware they have the disease or may not have access to much-needed care.

According to CDA Consult report, the GNA Team visited offices, the market, lorry stations, and shops to interact and share souvenirs with them to remind them of the need for regular eye check-ups it also forms part of the GNA-GOA My Eyes! My Vision initiative.

Ms Esther Asamoah a Police Officer said: I visited the eye clinic two years ago so through this campaign I have realized how dangerous Glaucoma could be and I will go back to the hospital to check my eyes.

Mr Osabutey Acheampong a driver also said the eyes are very important, I have learned about Glaucoma through this initiative and I will be an ambassador to encourage family members and friends to check their eyes.

A street vendor Agnes Agbovi revealed I refused to check my eyes because I dont want to put on glasses, I am not an old woman but through this campaign, I will go back to the hospital and check my eyes even if am given glasses am ready to wear it.

Madam Benedicta Torgbor, a seamstress said, she had been experiencing pains in the eye but she preferred to go for eye drops because treating eye problems at the clinic is too expensive, the team however encouraged her to visit the eye clinic.

Madam, Belinda Asamoah narrated how the aunty who had glaucoma nearly gave up with treatment because of the cost and pleaded with the authorities for the reduction in eye treatment.

Mr. Isaac Boahen, a driver said, I have never checked my eyes because I dont see the need to do so, afar as I am not experiencing any pain, it means my eyes are good.

Meanwhile, Dr. Alfred Gardemor, GOA Public Relations Officer explained that glaucoma is a big problem in globally and in Ghana as some people can have optic nerves that are sensitive to normal eye pressure which means that, their risk of getting glaucoma is higher than normal.

He said, "the World Glaucoma Weeks main objective is to eliminate glaucoma blindness through public awareness."

The PRO said Ghana's prevalence of glaucoma is number two in the world and number one in Africa therefore early testing would determine whether one can have the sight back or not.

He stated that glaucoma was real and does not give any symptoms. "You don't feel pain so you won't know that you're losing vision, in fact before you realized that you're losing vision, it might be too late to save it so the best thing is to go to an eye clinic and get it examined and screened."
Ms Sima Bahous, the Executive Director of United Nations Women has called for the celebration of the power and potential of women and girls as the global community marks the 2022 International Womens Day.

We recognize their courage, resilience, and leadership. We mark the ways in which we are making progress towards a more gender-equal world. At the same time, we see how that progress is being undermined by multiple, interlocking, and compounding generational crises.

Currently, we are witnessing the horrifying situation in Ukraine where the impacts on women and girls, including the hundreds of thousands displaced, remind us: all conflicts, from Ukraine to Myanmar to Afghanistan, from the Sahel to Yemen, exact their highest price from women and girls, she said.

In a statement to mark the International Womens Day copied to the Communication for Development and Advocacy Consult (CDA Consult) in Tema, the UN Women said recently, we have seen the impact of COVID-19 in increasing inequalities, driving poverty, and violence against women and girls; and rolling back their progress in employment, health and education.

Ms. Bahous noted that the accelerating crises of climate change and environmental degradation are disproportionately undermining the rights and wellbeing of women and girls.

They are multiplying insecurity at all levels, from individual and household to national. Rising temperatures, extended droughts, violent storms, and floods are resulting in loss of livelihoods, they are depleting resources and fuelling migration and displacement.

Our UN Secretary-General has warned that nearly half of humanity is living in the danger zone  now and that many ecosystems are at the point of no return.

Climate change is a threat multiplier. But women, and especially young women, are solution multipliers.

The UN Women Executive Director noted: We have today the opportunity to put women and girls at the centre of our planning and action and to integrate gender perspectives into global and national laws and policies.

We have the opportunity to re-think, re-frame and re-allocate resources. We have the opportunity to benefit from the leadership of women and girls environmental defenders and climate activists to guide our planets conservation.

We need Indigenous womens inter-generational knowledge, practices and skills.

She noted that it will take unprecedented levels of global cooperation and solidarity to succeed, but there is no alternative to success. We must protect our hard-won gains on human rights and womens rights and lead decisively to leave no woman or girl behind.

We have a blueprint to follow. It involves womens full and equal participation and leadership in decision-making; their access to green jobs and the blue economy; and their equal access to finance and resources.

Ms Bahous stressed: We need to ensure universal social protection and a care economy that protects us all. We have to scale up financing for gender-responsive climate, environmental, and disaster risk initiatives; including for COVID-19 recovery and to increase resilience to future shocks. The solution is there. We resolve to pursue it.

The UN Women Executive Director said: Let us make this International Womens Day a moment to recall that we have the answers not just for SDG 5 but, through the advancement of gender equality, for all 17 Sustainable Development Goals and Agenda 2030.

CDA Consult
The Upper East Regional Minister, Stephen Yakubu, says, the region intends to train medical doctors under a bond to bridge the doctor-patient ratio in the region.

According to him, the long-term initiative is to address the refusal of newly posted doctors to report to work and stay at post in the region.

Five and ten doctors posted to the region in 2020 and 2021, respectively, refused postings to work in the region and thus negatively impacted health care delivery.

Speaking to Citi News, Stephen Yakubu, expressed worry at the unfortunate trend and reiterated the commitment of assemblies to train and retain medical doctors in the region.

I also realized that, the regional health directorate was helping doctors in the region will accommodation and allowances, but the retention of doctors seems to be a problem. So, I have to think through another innovation and try to make sure that we get doctors here.

So, the C.K Tedem University of Applied Sciences is going to be training doctors and my intention which I made to them and my MDCEs is that, we should be planning to sponsor some of these doctors in the districts and municipalities so that when they come out, we will tie or bond them so that when they come back they will stay and work in the region.

More so because government is building the district hospital and if they finish the agenda 111, that will mean that every district or municipality will have a hospital, and we will need doctors to man these facilities. So, we are working around to make sure that doctors posted here are retained.

Mr. Yakubu, also indicated that, inadequate specialists and consultants in the region deter some doctors from accepting to work in the region.

The other factor is that we wont have consultants and many hospitals in the region where they can do Locum to make extra money. And this is a big concern to us (RCC) in the region, and we are working to attract and retain these doctors here. I think that if we are able to equip the new hospital block, it could be an attractive factor to attract newly posted doctors to come and stay to save our poor fathers and mothers.

Mr. Yakubu further disclosed that, the three-phase ultra-modern regional hospital will soon be equipped for use.

He said, acquisition of equipment for the hospital was at an evaluation stage and assured that, the hospital will soon be equipped.

The Saudis were here to see the building of the hospital and talk about equipping the hospital. They were very happy about the structure and I think that they are working to make sure we get the hospital equipped. I am also putting a lot of pressure on the Health Minister about equipping our hospital. So, very soon we are doing to get our hospital equipped. I understand that the contract is at the evaluation stage and so hopefully things will be done.

---citinewsroom
The Agbogbomefia of Asogli Traditional Area in the Volta regional capital, Ho, Togbe Afede XIV, has cautioned leaders of the Municipal Zongo community against engaging in activities that can spark more tension in the town.

The Asogli chief was speaking at a meeting on Saturday, 12 March 2022 with the two feuding parties behind the locking up of the Central Mosque in Ho.

The Ho Municipal Security Council locked up the Central Mosque in 2021 following a clash between the supporters of some two individuals over the succession of the late Imam.

The feud has been over who succeeds the late Volta Regional Chief Imam, Umoro Danjimah Hamzah.

Alhaji Muniru Ali, a nephew of the deceased Imam; and Alhaji Alfa Anas Hamidu, a deputy of the deceased, clashed during Jummah prayers.

The Central Mosque has since remained closed.

Both individuals were installed as Imam at separate ceremonies.

Togbe Afede told the feuding parties that Asogli does not want to witness conflict on its land.

What are you fighting for? Why? Do you have any royalties on the Zongo land? Why can't you understand each other and accept the person who deserves to be your leader? No! No! I want peace here, Togbe Afede stated.

He also entreated leaders of the Muslim Community to uphold its image for the benefit of the younger generation.

One of the feuding individuals, Alhaji Hamidu pledged to prioritise the peace of the Zongo community.

The two individuals have also been summoned before the National Chief Imam and the Regional and National Peace Council of the Municipal and Regional Security.

Source: classfmonline.com
The General Secretary of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) Johnson Aseidu Nketia has described President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo as a classical dictator ruling by law instead of rule of law as espoused in the constitution.

Mr. Nketia explained that Nana Akufo-Addo as president is finding ways to use the application of the law to achieve what he wants as president.

It is the reason as president, he jumps to the defense of state institutions whenever they falter, Mr Nketia said.

He said the president has weaponized these democratic institutions of the country and has further used them to his advantage.

Nana Addo wants to create a situation in the country where when he says it is white, everybody must admit it and this is a mark of a dictator, Mr Nketia said.

According to him, every dictator starts by controlling Parliament because it is the very tool for enhancing democracy in Parliament.

The NDCs scribe made these comments in an interview on the Dwabre Mu morning show on Accra-based CTV hosted by Nana Otu Darko, Monday, March 14, 2022 in reaction to President Akufo-Addos support for the Supreme Court ruling on the voting rights of deputy speakers of parliament.

He explained that the ruling by the Supreme Court for a Deputy Speaker to have a casting vote and be counted as part of quorum on the floor of parliament is inappropriate and does not auger well for the development of Parliamentary democracy.

According to Mr Nketia, the apex courts ruling that representation outweighs conflict of interest is worrying.

Is the apex court telling us the representation of the people of Bekwai in the Ashanti Region is more important than the representation of the people of Santrokofi, Akpafo, Lolobi, and Likpe (SALL) in the newly created Oti Region? he quizzed.

The whole area is not represented in Parliament and the court finds nothing wrong with it but finds something wrong with an elected Member of Parliament who does not have a casting vote when presiding...this why I disagree with the ruling of the Supreme Court, he said.

Source: Classfmonline.com
Law lecturer Justice Abdulai who went to the Supreme Court to seek interpretation and clarity on the voting rights of a presiding Deputy Speaker, has indicated his decision to go for a review following the apex courts 7-0 determination in favour of Deputy Speakers retaining their voting rights while presiding over the House.

Justice Abdulai petitioned the court to declare as unconstitutional, First Deputy Speaker Joseph Osei-Owusus action of counting himself as one of the MPs on the floor while presiding over the proceedings of the House in relation to the formation of a quorum for the passage of the 2022 budget, which had earlier been rejected by the minority side.

Justice Abdulai was of the view that once a Deputy Speaker, who is an MP, presides in the stead of the Speaker, he loses his right to vote.

In a unanimous decision on Wednesday, 9 March 2022, however, the seven-member Bench, presided over by Justice Jones Dotse, held that upon a true and proper interpretation of Article 103 and 104 of the 1992 Constitution, a Deputy Speaker, who is a Member of Parliament, does not lose his right to take part in decision-making in parliament.

Speaking to the media on the ruling on Saturday, 12 March 2022, Mr Abdulai, who is also a lawyer, said: This issue about the Deputy Speaker and the substantive Speaker being one and the same is something that I thought the Supreme Court should have made a firm pronouncement on.

The Constitution says that whoever occupies a position  whether acting or deputy  has the same powers and authorities as the substantive one. The Standing Orders reaffirm this same position that the Deputy Speaker is the same or occupies the same position or function as the Speaker, he argued.

Because of this difficulty, I expected a firm pronouncement on those matters by the Supreme Court to put a finality to that part of it. A firm pronouncement would have put some level of clarity and finality to the disagreements that are presently ongoing, he noted.

He said: In their own judgment, [Justices] felt, probably it wasnt borne out of the reliefs that I was seeking, so, they refused to grant it. Thats fair and part of the legal processes.

Meanwhile, the Executive Director of the Ghana Center for Democratic Development, Prof. H. Kwasi Prempeh, has said Deputy Speakers of Parliament, who are themselves MPs, cannot be denied their right to vote even as if they preside over the business of the house.

In an article on Facebook about the ruling of the Supreme Court, Prof Prempeh argued: Presiding does not, in and of itself, present much of a conflict of interest to cause a Deputy Speaker to forfeit their vote, especially if he or she were to be required by House rules to vote last or cast a vote only when there's a tie.

Read Prof H Kwasi Prempehs full article below:

I am a huge advocate of a strong Parliament as a counterweight to our imperial Executive. That is why I find practices like Government appointing MPs to boards of state enterprises and regulatory bodies repugnant. This case involving the voting rights of a presiding Deputy Speaker is, however, not about Executive-Parliament relations. It is about how the business of the House must be conducted, having regard to the Constitution. In that regard, it is also implicitly about the appropriate balance of power between the Court (as ultimate arbiter of constitutionality) and Parliament (as master of its own rules).

I have read the published judgement of the Supreme Court in Abdulai v Attorney-General. As the matter involved or implicated directly certain rules of the House and ruling of the Speaker, I was expecting to see more than just a private plaintiff and the Attorney-General as the parties represented in this case. Specifically, I had expected to see separate representation of the Speaker in this case. Anyway, we shall save that discussion for another day.

Having read the Court's judgement, it is, in my "not-so-humble opinion", to borrow the words of my good pal Amos, a simple, straightforward, clear, and correct decision as a matter of constitutional interpretation and analysis. The Court's judgement is faithful to the text and structure of the Constitution, as it is to the discernible intent behind the relevant provisions, as well as in harmony with sound reason and comparative practice in parliamentary democracies.

Moreover, it is devoid of any trace of judicial activism and avoids needless detour into a brand of "purposive interpretation" that is unwarranted. This is not a case of judges displacing what the constitution says and substituting that with their own preferences; it is a case of the court sticking to the text and meaning of the constitution and giving due primacy to the fundamental principle of equal representation (voting rights) in a democratic legislature.

And no, the Court's judgment or interpretive approach, in this case, cannot be called literal. The Court's interpretation is appropriately textual; it is not literal. Textualism is not the same as literalism. Textual interpretation includes, where the text doesn't resolve the matter plainly or literally, employing legitimate tools and canons of interpretation to tease out the purposes and meaning behind the text. That's what the Court did in this case. And that is all it needed to do to resolve the matter. In short, this is a constitutionally correct decision, no matter what one might feel about the outcome politically.

First, it is important to state that, the longevity of a practice does not cloak that practice with constitutionality. No matter how longstanding a practice, its constitutionality cannot be established or presumed until and unless it is challenged in an appropriate constitutional case. Thus, the fact that this is how Parliament has done its business all this while is not a good enough argument, constitutionally speaking. Constitutions are not self-reinforcing. Until the Court's jurisdiction to interpret, apply and enforce specific provisions of the constitution has been properly invoked in a particular dispute, the constitution will continue to lie dormant in the face of an unconstitutional act or practice.

Second, I think that in this particular case, we exaggerate the powers of a presiding Deputy Speaker when it comes to voting in Parliament. Like the Speaker, a presiding Deputy Speaker cannot disenfranchise any MP. If you believe, for example, that a presiding Deputy Speaker has not called a voice vote correctly, you can call for a proper count. Presiding does not, in and of itself, present much of a conflict of interest to cause a Deputy Speaker to forfeit their vote, especially if he or she were to be required by House rules to vote last or cast a vote only when there's a tie.

Third, if we do not want presiding Deputy Speakers to vote, the solution is simple: Don't let them be MPs. Make them like the Speaker; not an MP and, therefore, not entitled to vote. The Speaker does not vote, not because he presides over proceedings of the House; he does not vote because he is not a Member of Parliament. So long as presiding Deputy Speakers are, first and foremost, MPs elected to represent communities of voters in Parliament, Parliament cannot reasonably deprive them (and, for that matter, their constituents) of their right to vote merely by virtue of the fact of presiding over a sitting of Parliament.

Indeed, the inherent right of an MP to vote is too deeply fundamental that to cause any MP, including a presiding member, to forfeit it would require an express constitutional provision of the kind found in article 104(5). An MP's fundamental right to vote, which is the very essence of representation in a democratic legislative assembly, cannot be defeated or overridden by mere implication or argumentation.

In any case, there's nothing really wrong with both Deputy Speakers being MPs and retaining their vote when they preside. This is why we must take the Constitution seriously when it says that the 1st and 2nd Deputy Speakers must come from different parties. That way, the rival parties in Parliament will each have one Deputy Speaker and both of them get to vote when one presides.

Regrettably, this sensible "bipartisan" arrangement has not been followed in good faith in the 8th Parliament. We currently have two Deputy Speakers, both of whom are, de facto, from the same side of the partisan divide in Parliament. That is part of the politics surrounding this case. Na who cause am?

Just because the candidate of the Minority prevailed over the candidate of Government in the contest for Speaker of this 8th Parliament did not require the Minority to cede the 2nd Deputy Speakership to an MP who was going to caucus with the Majority. If Majority and Minority had one Deputy Speaker each, as the Constitution, properly read, contemplates in a two-party Parliament, we might be spared some of the heat in this debate.

Lastly, what is also fuelling the disputation over this case is the fact that the Speaker and the 1st Deputy Speaker had different interpretations or positions on the quorum and voting rules, and now the Court has weighed in on the side of the 1st Deputy Speaker. Surely not an outcome that makes for good rapport between Speaker and 1st Deputy. With that in mind, I would have given Parliament, and for that matter the Speaker, the opportunity to apply the House's own internal procedures (Standing Orders) to cause the Speaker to reconsider and correct its earlier ruling or position on this question in accordance with the Court's decision on the merits. Seems trivial or just a matter of form and appearance over substance, yes, but in these matters, form and appearances matter. The authority and dignity of the Speaker's office in the conduct of the business of the House is worth preserving.

All in all, a correct constitutional decision, albeit politically messy and unpleasant within the context of the circumstances of the 8th Parliament. Still, not such a big deal. Let's move on.

Source: Classfmonline.com
Amb Alhaji Said Sinare, National Vice Chairman of the National Democratic Congress has urged President Nana Akufo-Addo's government to address the country's socio-economic crisis immediately before it gets out of hand.

He warned that the country's current social and economic conditions might spark a serious rebellion that may be more dangerous than the #Kumi Preko protest.

H.E Alhaji Said further expressed concern over the country's insecurity, high level of unemployment, economic hardship promising that the NDC's next government would rebuild the country's security infrastructure to better respond to threats.

Alhaji Said Sinare told journalists in Kumasi on Saturday that the next NDC government would empower the youths and encourage them to deploy their creative energies for national development and growth.

According to him, it is a pity that foreign countries are unwilling to lend Ghana money again as a result of Nana Addo's government's reckless borrowing which has ballooned the public debt stock.

He stated, Our dear Ghana under President Nana Addo and his Bawumia-led NPP government is now confronted with a slew of problems and setbacks in the social, political, and economic spheres, resulting from a weakening economy, high unemployment, excessive borrowing, rising insecurity, the media brutality in most parts of the country, and corruption, all of which are threatening the progress made in our democratic development."

READ HIS FULL STATEMENT BELOW:

Today, I had the opportunity to speak with a group of Ghanaian youths, and I wish to persuade President Nana Addo and his clueless NPP government to take action to address the country's shameful economic situation, which, if not fixed asap, could spark rifts across the country that would be far more dangerous than the #Kumi #preko protests.

Our dear Ghana under President Nana Addo and his Bawumia-led NPP government is now confronted with a slew of problems and setbacks in the social, political, and economic spheres, resulting from a weakening economy, high unemployment, excessive borrowing, rising insecurity, the media brutality in most parts of the country, and corruption, all of which are threatening the progress made in our democratic development.

Rise up, Ghanaian youths! Join the NDC at your nearest branch to help us save Ghana in the General Election of 2024.
The Enhanced Integrated Framework (EIF), the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and the International Islamic Trade Finance Corporation (ITFC) are partnering on a new project aimed at helping eight African countries operationalize the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).

The project was launched at a virtual event on 10 March that brought together the Ministers of Trade of Senegal, Niger and Togo, and government representatives of Guinea, Burkina Faso, and Mauritania.

The project will support the implementation of more than 30 activities in the AfCFTA strategies of Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire, Guinea, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, Togo, and Tunisia.

By assisting the implementation of priority actions formulated by ECA, the project will help to create an environment where trade can be more efficient and inclusive in the eight beneficiary countries. By the end of the project, their capacity will have been enhanced towards tangible outcomes, such as jobs and other economic opportunities.

Mikael Anzen, Permanent Representative of Sweden to the WTO and Chair of the EIF Steering Committee said This project represents the EIF's importance to continue fostering regional programming as well as deepening relationships with partners for their economic recovery."

"It leverages ECA's extensive expertise and experience on the continent, building on the individual country strategies and the ITFC's valuable trade skills."

"ECA values the substantive work and productive collaboration undertaken since August 2021 with ITCF and EIF to support the operationalization of the AfCFTA," said Vera Songwe, UN Under-Secretary General and Executive Secretary of the ECA.

"This joint project can potentially push regional trade levels up from 18% to 25% within a decade. With proper implementation, this could also lead to a US$10 billion decrease in imports from outside the continent, while boosting agriculture and industrial exports by up to US$45 billion (7%) and US$ 21 billion (5%) per year.

"We recognize the importance of facilitating trade with trade finance and trade development interventions," said Eng Hani Salem Sonbol, Chief Executive Officer of ITFC.

"ITFC has, since 2008, provided about US$61 billion with US$30 billion extended to Africa. In addition, we support the AfCFTA national strategies implementation in our Member Countries by harmonizing customs codes with new tariff provisions, applying rules of origin, and training AfCFTA national stakeholders. Finally, we must also be quick with our partners, we aim to encourage Africa's involvement in regional value chains through programs such as the Arab Africa Trade Bridges (AATB) Programme."

The AfCFTA seeks to bring about the establishment of a common framework and sets of standards across the African continent to ensure trade cooperation, harmonization, and efficiency. It entered into force on 30 May 2019 for the 24 countries that deposited their instruments of ratification by this date. The operational phase was launched on 7 July 2019.

The AfCFTA is expected to spur intra-African trade and to have positive spillover effects on trade among African least-developed countries. It is also expected that the AfCFTA will pave the way for increased inter-African trade due to better access to the intercontinental market.
14.03.2022 LISTEN

The Executive Director of Solidaire Ghana (a policy think-tank) Mr. Benjamin Essuman has called on the Speaker of Parliament, Rt Honorable Alban Kingsford Bagbin to rally parliamentarians to amend the rules of the Courts.

Responding to the Supreme Court ruling on Parliament's Standing Orders on his Facebook wall, the head of the policy-tank called on Parliament to pass a law to regulate how judges are appointed to sit on high profile cases in the country.

According to him, the amendment must be made such that judges appointed or promoted by a President shall not be made to sit over cases brought against the same President and his government.

He found fault in the method used in empanelling the seven Supreme Court justices who ruled last week to amend the Standing Orders of Parliament to enable presiding Deputy Speakers to vote.

"This 7:0 where we had one Kufuor appointed Supreme Court judge and six Akufo-Addo appointed Supreme Court judges, is repugnant and nauseating to say the least," he stated.

He stated that if the Judges are not ashamed to meddle in the Standing Orders of Parliament, the Speaker of Parliament must not also be ashamed to meddle in the rules of the Court.

Background.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday, 9 January 2022 declared, that a Deputy Speaker or any other member presiding as the Speaker of Parliament, shall not lose his original vote.

The Supreme court's Panel; which was made up of seven Justices presided over by Justice Jones Dotse, dismissed an application to pronounce as unconstitutional; the action of the First Deputy Speaker Of Parliament, Joseph Osei Owusu for counting himself for the purposes of forming a quorum in parliament whiles presiding over proceedings.
MANZINI - In light of the strained economic situation, the Eswatini Housing Board (EHB) has not effected rental increase for the year 2022/23.

Through a circular, issued by the EHB Head of Property Management Sanele Bhembe, dated March 11, 2022 circulated to all tenants, he thanked them for being wonderful and considerate neighbours to other residents in the estate. The head of property mentioned that the EHB had a mandate to maintain the rental rates at affordable levels for emaSwati, as tariffs were controlled by the government of Eswatini through the Public Enterprises Unit (PEU). Worth noting is that EHB usually effects a rental rate increase, to provide for escalation in property management expenses like maintenance and security provision, among others.

The rationale behind this decision was that, in light of the current strained economic situation within the kingdom, caused by the COVID-19 pandemic among other factors, EHB would not be effecting any rental increase for the year 2022/2023.

Feedback

Bhembe further encouraged the tenants to continue living harmoniously and provide feedback on how the EHB could make their home a better place, for them and their families.

On lease renewal, they were reminded that their lease agreement was valid for three years, from last renewal period. This means that there will be no lease renewal for the year 2022/2023. However, all terms and conditions remain the same and are legally binding, Bhembe said. The circular was confirmed by EHB Communications Officer Zamancele Mavuso, who said they considered the current fiscal state of the country, and this was one way they could assist tenants to secure residence. Mavuso said ideally, the rent was supposed to be increased, considering the increase in the cost of living. She said rent had not been increased for two consecutive years now, since the emergence of the coronavirus pandemic.
The Ministry of Communications and Digitalization is rolling-out a comprehensive programme meant to introduce over one thousand basic school female pupils in the Bono East region to basic Information Communication and Technology (ICT) skills, including coding.

The training in coding will give the girls the opportunity to explore the world of technology through the creation of websites, computer games, interactive arts, mobile apps and animation stories, using various programming languages.

Dubbed 'Girls-in-ICT, the programme has so far benefitted over 500,000 girls around the world since its inception in 2012 by the International Telecommunications Union to create a global environment that empowers and encourages girls and young women to consider studies and careers in the growing field of ICT.

SDG 5

The programme, which forms part of strategies to ensure that Ghana achieves the Sustainable Development Goal five and Ghanas ICT for Accelerated Development policy on bridging the gender digital divide, is being implemented through the Ghana Investment Fund for Electronic Communications and the National Communications Authority.

Since its inception, the programme has been funded entirely by the Ministry of Communications and Digitalization, the National Communications Authority and the Ghana Investment Fund for Electronic Communications, with some support from network operators and the American Tower Corporation.

This years Girls-In-ICT programme is slated for 11th to 22 April, 2022 on the theme Access and Safety.

At a meeting in Techiman to shed more light on the programme, the Deputy Minister of Communications and Digitalization, Ama Pomaa Boateng, who joined the occasion via zoom, noted that the sustainable development goals cannot be achieved if girls and women are left out of the IT industry.

She said the drive to achieve that inclusiveness is what necessitated the training of these young girls.

Great move

The Bono East Regional Minister, Mr. Kwasi Adu-Gyan, described the move by the Ministry of Communications and Digitalization and its partners as timely.

He said many young girls are faced with numerous challenges in the digital environment and hoped that the training programme will also introduce the girls to scratch and basic structures of programming applications, after which they participate in a competition.

This competition, he explained, is expected to test the depth of knowledge and ICT skills acquired during the training period, including website design, development of games, coding and simple ICT applications.
14.03.2022 LISTEN

The Bono Regional Minister, Justina Owusu-Banahene, has consoled families of the two students of the University of Education, Winneba, who perished in a road accident at Asuboi on their way from Sunyani to Winneba over the weekend.

The two students of UEW died at Asuboi near Suhum on the Accra-Kumasi highway while several others sustained various degrees of injury, when a Hyundai Universe commercial bus they were travelling on from Sunyani to Accra crashed into a stationery articulated truck last Sunday.

The driver of the bus with registration number AK 324-22 is reported to have failed to observe traffic regulations because he was allegedly sleeping.

A 40-footer truck loaded with wood fell onto the road due to the impact of the accident, killing eight persons instantly.

Horrifying news

The Bono Regional Minister, in a press release issued yesterday in Sunyani, described the accident as horrifying and tragic.

The Minister extended her deepest condolences and that of the Regional Co-ordinating Council to the bereaved families saying, we stand with you in this difficult period of grief.

Investigations are still on-going and it is my cherished hope that we show circumspection in our commentary on this tragic event, in order not to hurt the sensibilities of the affected families and friends, the minister further said in her Statement.

While commiserating with the affected families, she urged all road users, especially drivers, to drive safely at all times and observe the various road safety protocols to bring the carnage on our roads under control.
Senegal's army has launched a military operation against rebels in the southern region of Casamance, the chief of staff said in a statement late on Sunday.

"In the framework of their mission to secure people and goods, the army on Sunday March 13, 2022, launched an operation with the main objective of dismantling the bases of Salif Sadio's MFDC faction," the statement said.

"This operation also aims to destroy all armed bands participating in criminal activities in the region," it said.

"The army remains determined ... to preserve the integrity of national territory at all costs."

The Movement of Democratic Forces of Casamance (MFDC) has led a low-intensity separatist conflict in southern Senegal since 1982, a conflict that over the decades has claimed several thousand lives.

The MFCD is split into several factions, with one headed by Salif Sadio.

In the latest clash on January 24, four Senegalese soldiers were killed and seven captured alive and taken across the border to The Gambia.

The seven were released on February 14.

Casamance was a Portuguese possession for several hundred years until it was ceded to colonial France in 1888. It became part of Senegal after the country gained independence in 1960.

The region, which has a distinct culture and language, is separated geographically from the rest of Senegal by the Gambia River, around which lies the tiny state of The Gambia.

On Monday, Gambian government spokesman Ebrima Sankareh said that several of the country's border villages have been registering internally displaced people since Sunday night.

Gambian President Adama Barrow has ordered increased patrols, Sankareh said in a statement, vowing to protect the nation "against any potential foreign threat".

"The Gambia will neither be used as a launching pad nor allow anyone to enter the country with arms and ammunition," the statement added.

Casamance rebels, who are accused of trafficking timber and cannabis, have traditionally sought refuge in The Gambia or Guinea-Bissau, which also borders Senegal.

The conflict had been mostly dormant until Senegal's army launched a major new offensive last year, designed to drive out the rebels.

Senegalese President Macky Sall has made achieving "definitive peace" in Casamance a priority of his second term.
Persons who are dissatisfied with the performance of government should wait and go through elections to win political power and take over the administration of the country rather than entertaining the idea of resorting to coup detat, a Ghanaian soldier who fought in the World War II, Ex-Lance Corporal Wisdom Edmund Kudowor, has said.

In his view, military takeover of the governance of the country is not needed because it will only ruin the nation.

Ex-Lance Corporal Kudowor indicated that all persons who lived under military regimes in the past will not want to go through that experience again in the country.

Those of us who have experienced it, living under military regimes, I dont think we want to experience such sort of thing. We are sending the country back, years, and if we are not careful that will cause the ruin of the country all together. We can do better than that, we can do better than just getting the army to take over, I dont think we need that now.

We have ways of dealing with that, if you think the government is not doing well go and fight in elections, if you win you take over and do what you think was missing with the existing government, he told Accra-based Asaase Radio on Sunday March 13.

Meanwhile, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has served notice to protect the peace and stability of the country at all times.

Speaking at the 65th Independence day celebration in Cape Coast on Sunday March 6, he said Let us guard jealously the peace and stability we are enjoying. There are some restless spirits amongst us who, seeking to exploit the current difficulties confronting the nation, claim to have lost confidence in our democratic system.

Either the absence of faith in the prospect of democratic alternative to the current government or their impatience to wield executive authority are the factors driving their appetite for the short cut for military intervention.

Whatever be the case, they seem ready to jeopardise the hard won reputation of our country as beacon of democracy and stability in Africa and indeed, in the world, in order to gratify their personal ambition, ambitions which show little or no respect for the capacity of the Ghanaian people to change when necessary their government peacefully through the ballot box, something we have done on three separate occasions in the 29 year life of the fourth republic.

The great majority of us who are committed to democratic values and institutions will continue to resist the claims of these adventurers and deploy all legitimate means in our democracy to maintain our free open system of governance which has respect for human rights, the rule of law and the principles of democratic accountability.

His comments came after the Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Ghana , Professor Raymond Atuguba who was Executive Secretary to Former President John Dramani Mahama , said that Ghana is currently a fertile place for coup due to the bad economic situation.

Prof Atuguba asked the government to acknowledge the economic mess and try to deal with it.

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.

---3news.com
The Tema High Court today, Monday, March 14 adjourned the ruling of the bail application of #FixTheCountry convener Oliver Barker-Vormawor to Wednesday, 16 March 2022.

The lead counsel for Mr Barker-Vormawor, Mr Akoto Ampaw, argued that the Facebook post by his client was a conditional phrase with respect to coups in the sub-region.

He noted that the post did not constitute a crime by Ghanas laws.

He further argued that his client is not a flight risk.

For her part, Senior State Attorney Hilda Craig told the court that the accused person's social media post showed a statement of intent, which he followed through by coming to Ghana.

She noted that Mr Barker-Vormawor does not have a fixed abode in the country and also indicated that the attitude displayed by the PhD students in detention is evidence enough that he would not assist with investigations if granted bail.

Judge Daniel Mensah, after hearing both arguments, adjourned the ruling to Wednesday, 16 March.

Source: Classfmonline.com
14.03.2022 LISTEN

Ghana has the highest glaucoma cases in Africa, and it is the country with the second highest cases in the world, the Ghana Optometric Association (GOA) has reported.

Ghana has an estimated 232,500 who are blind out of which 45,000 are through glaucoma, Dr Alfred Gardemor, the GOA Public Relations Officer quoted the data from a document from the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness.

In an interview with the Ghana News Agency, Dr Gardemor reported: Glaucoma is the leading cause of irreversible blindness worldwide and most prevalent in people of African descent. About six million have glaucoma and up to half a million of them are already blind in Africa.

In most of Africa, only about one in 20 of those with the disease are aware, with over 50 per cent being unilaterally blind on presentation.

Low awareness of the disease, late presentation/diagnosis and poor adherence to follow-up visits are major challenges to glaucoma management.

Speaking at the Ghana News Agency -GOA My Eye! My Vision campaign platform, Dr Gardemor said glaucoma was one of the leading causes of blindness in the world, especially in older people.

The fortnight initiative is a collaborative public education advocacy campaign to promote the need for people to access eye care and also to draw attention to vision health.

Speaking on the topic: Glaucoma the silent thief of sight, Dr Gardemor who is also an optometrist at the Nsawam Government Hospital explained that most glaucoma patients had a genetic basis.

He said in most patients, there was an elevation of intraocular pressure that caused damage to the optic nerve and provoked an early death of the nerve cells that compose it.

He stressed that there was no cure for glaucoma, but early treatment could stop the damage and protect the vision.

People with glaucoma who manage it well can live a normal and independent life. The big problem with glaucoma is that, in the early stages, people with glaucoma live their lives largely unaffected by the condition while it deteriorates silently, he added.

The GOA PRO indicated that glaucoma is the silent thief of eyesight and as part of the 2022 World Glaucoma Week celebration in Ghana, GOA will be raising awareness on Glaucoma and sight preservation adding that, there will be a series of engagement between the public and optometrist across the country.

The aim is to alert citizenry to have regular eye and optic nerve checks in other to detect glaucoma as early as possible .

GNA
14.03.2022 LISTEN

The Director of Faculty of Academic Affairs & Research at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre, Prof. Emmanuel Kwesi Aning, said the United States of America Embassy in Ghana owes Ghanaians an apology for a security alert the Embassy issued to its citizens in Ghana over what it described as unsubstantiated claims.

The security alert issued on March 9, 2020 warned American nationals in Ghana against travelling to the Northern parts of the country.

The U.S. Embassy in Accra, Ghana, has received unsubstantiated information that U.S. citizens may be targeted for kidnapping for ransom in northern Ghana, to include the Upper East Region and the Upper West Region. U.S. citizens traveling in Ghana should exercise caution while visiting border areas, in particular the northern border, and be sure to stay abreast of any Security Alerts affecting those areas. Due to concerns over criminal activity in remote areas, travel of U.S. government personnel to the northern and northwestern border is currently limited, the alert reads.

But Prof. Aning is opposed to the approach adopted by the Embassy saying it unduly damages the reputational image of Ghana. He wants the Government of Ghana to take on the matter.

I think it is unfair and the Foreign Ministry must protest. This information is unfair, it's unwarranted and it needs a much more solid basis, he said in an interview withTV3's Crosby Annan.

If they themselves have used the word unsubstantiated, then I think they owe the government of Ghana an apology and I'll be terribly disappointed if the ambassador or the deputy ambassador has not called on the Foreign Ministry, he added.

According to Prof. Anning, the security advisory alert should be treated with contempt.

In my line of work, unsubstantiated facts are rubbish and I think we should treat it as the rubbish that it is, he said.

---3news.com
The Ofaakor District Court has remanded into Police custody, some eight persons arrested for their alleged involvement in the killing of a 37-year-old man, Isaac Mensah at Awutu Papaase Number One near Kasoa in the Awutu- Senya-East District of the Central Region.

James Nii Armah, the main suspect and seven others, were remanded upon the request of the prosecuting officer, Chief Inspector Peter Amponsah, to allow for further investigations into the case.

The court presided over by District Magistrate, Mr Eric Oheneba Antwi-Boasiako, granted his request.

The suspects whose pleas were not taken are expected to reappear before the court on Friday, March 25, 2022.

Mensah was allegedly shot dead in the waist on Friday over a land dispute involving indigenes of Ngleshie Amanfrom in the Greater Accra Region and those of Bawjiase and Ofaakor both in the Central Region.

The deceased was also stabbed in the stomach by his assailants who absconded immediately after the nefarious act.

The Awutu Ofaakor District Police Command, however, managed to arrest four suspects on Friday after the incident, leading to the arrest of the other four.

GNA
An Accra High Court (Commercial Division) will on March 24 hear a motion for the stay of execution of its earlier ruling dated June 25, 2021, against ENI Ghana Limited and its partner Vitol Upstream Ghana Limited.

ENI Ghana and its partner have filed a motion at the High Court pending an appeal at the Court of Appeal.

The Court presided over by Justice Mariama Sammo asked the parties to file their written submissions by March 24, 2022.

The Court in its earlier ruling ordered the Operator of Ghana's Sankofa oil field, ENI Ghana Limited and its partner Vitol Upstream Ghana Limited to pay 30 percent of revenue from the sale of crude oil to the Court Registrar.

The payment, which is estimated to be about US$40million monthly, commences from June 25, 2021, the date of the original ruling and continues every month afterwards until the substantive matter is determined.

Upon receipt of the payment, the Registrar will then pay the same into an escrow account and furnish the Court and the parties with records of payment.

The Court made the order Monday, January 24, 2022, following an application by Springfield Exploration and Production Limited, Operators of the West Cape Three Points (WCTP) Block 2 for the Court's clear interpretation of its earlier ruling.

Springfield's application was precipitated by ENI and Vitol's failure to comply with the Court's ruling of June 25, 2021.

On June 25, 2021, the Court ruled in favour of Springfield Exploration and Production Limited's

application to freeze revenues received by Eni and Vitol from the sale of crude oil from the Sankofa field pending determination of their substantive case filed in July 2020.

The companies have been in dispute since an April 2020 directive was issued by the Ministry of Energy to unitize the Afina and Sankofa fields to ensure optimal recovery of the resources in the common reservoir in the interest of all the parties involved, including the State.

GNA
14.03.2022 LISTEN

Management of the Sunyani Technical University (STU) has assured all newly admitted students that measures have been put in place to protect life and property on campus.

The Vice-Chancellor, Ing. Prof. Kwadwo Adinkrah-Appiah, speaking at the 26th matriculation ceremony of the university, said the lighting system on campus has been massively improved whilst security patrols and visibility have been enhanced.

However, we urge you not to be careless about your personal security. Do not walk alone on campus under the cover of darkness as that might not help your personal security.

As students of STU, you will be expected to exhibit high sense of purpose and diligence in pursuing your academic career so that you can achieve the required skills and competence that will make you successful in the world of work.

Enrolment declines

According to the Vice-Chancellor, a total of 2,104 applicants, representing 58.4% of 3,601 prospective students who were issued admission letters, responded positively and were admitted into the University for the 2021/2022 academic year.

This total enrolment of 2,104 fresh students for this academic year shows a decrease of 21.9% from the previous academic years figure of 2,695.

The Vice-Chancellor noted that the drastic fall in the student enrolment at the University this year despite the introduction of additional academic programmes gives a course for concern.

This calls for an urgent strategy by the University to intensify its efforts in advertising the newly introduced Science, Engineering and TVET programmes to improve patronage, he added.

Admissions statistics

He said when patronage of such industry-driven programmes is improved, it would help produce skilled graduates who can readily find employment or set up their own businesses to help accelerate the socio-economic development of Ghana, and further obviate other institutions having the opportunity to produce too many graduates in already chocked sectors of the national economy which only exacerbates the existing high spate of unemployment in the country.

Out of the total enrolment, 1,409, representing 67%, are Males, whilst 695, representing 33%, are Females. The University also admitted two Foreign Students.

In terms of disciplines, 1,609, representing 76.5%, enrolled into three Science, Technology, Engineering and TVET programmes as against 495, which constitutes 23.5%, for humanities. This is in line with our mandate as a Technical University.

New programmes

The Vice-Chancellor announced that the introduction of Master of Technology (M-Tech) programme in Electrical and Electronics Engineering by the STU was at an advanced stage to receive accreditation.

According to him, STU is currently running a total of 16 four-year Bachelor of Technology (B-Tech) degree programmes while 12 other four-Year B-Tech programmes are also at different stages of Accreditation.

Ing. Prof. Adinkrah-Appiah further said the university was also running ten Top-Up B-Tech and 19 Higher National Diploma programmes and urged all prospective students, both within and outside Ghana, to take advantage to enroll on these industry-driven programmes at STU to acquire the requisite knowledge, technical and professional skills that will make them readily employable to avoid the temptation of joining the so-called Unemployed Graduates Association in future.

Be disciplined

Prof. Adinkrah-Appiah reminded them that they are the future leaders of this country, as some of them could become lecturers, Engineers, Businessmen, Parliamentarians and even President of the country.

You should, therefore, be serious with your studies here at the STU so that you can climb the academic ladder successfully in order to achieve your future goals.

Notwithstanding, the university requires you, as students, to be disciplined and Law-abiding. You are here to be trained not only in academic work but to help you form a decent character that will make you responsible citizens in future to contribute positively to Ghanas development.

The Vice-Chancellor was emphatic that negative conducts such as violation of laid down rules and regulations including examination malpractice, alcoholism, betting and promiscuity would not be entertained in the University as culprits of such acts would be made to face the full rigors of the University's disciplinary procedures.
MBABANE  Former Senator Ngomyayona Gamedze has denied pressuring Nurane Calu into selling him his filling station.

Calu is the Director of Nur and Sam (Pty) Limited, trading as Big Tree Filling Station located in Matsapha. Calu alleged that Gamedze, in the company of the late Senator Mike Temple and Supreme Court Judge Phesheya Dlamini, at Malandelas Restaurant in Malkerns in 2015, said he (Calu) was just wasting his time because they would get the business whether he liked it or not. Calu said the Supreme Court had issued an order that he should vacate the filling station premises by not later than August 2015. This is contained in the application filed by Big Tree for the recusal of Judge Phesheya Dlamini, Judge Majahenkhaba Dlamini, Acting Judge Mbutfo Mamba, Acting Judge Sabelo Masuku and Acting Judge Andreas Lukhele.

Recuse

Big Tree wants the judges to recuse themselves from hearing its review application concerning the correctness of an October 2020 High Court decision granting a spoliation order in favour of the filling station, which found that Galp Eswatini was obliged to restore the supply of fuel and related products to the applicant (Big Tree). In his affidavit, which is attached to Galp Eswatinis answering papers, Gamedze said he was surprised last Monday to read from the Times of Eswatini and the Eswatini Observer that he had pressured Calu to sell his filling station business to him. He informed the court that after reading the newspaper articles, he called Galp Eswatinis attorney, Kenneth Motsa of Robinson Bertram, to get clarity on how he featured in the matter. He stated that Motsa showed him the relevant paragraphs in Calus affidavit last Wednesday.

Gamedze denied being friends with Judge Phesheya. He said in the few occasions that he met with him, it was in the company of Temple, who was a mutual friend. He said he knew Calu in his capacity as the chairman of the Petrol Association. He alleged that Calu used to call him a number of times to lobby him and the late Temple on issues involving the industry where there were Bills or regulations or other issues which involved the industry in Parliament and they would assist where they could. I further wish to state that at no stage did I ever call Calu to ask him to sell me his filling station. In any event, if I wanted him to sell the filling station to me, I would have written him a formal letter proposing such a sale, as I have done in previous transactions where I bought a filling station under the Puma franchise. This was crucial as any agreement I would have with Calu would have to be agreed by the franchisor, Gamedze said.

The veracity of these allegations is still to be tested in court. He also denied ever meeting Calu at Malandelas Restaurant and making utterances in front Judge Phesheya to the effect that he would acquire the filling station. Galp Eswatini Marketing Director, Fannie Mthethwa, in the answering papers to Big Trees recusal application, disputed that Gamedze had approached Calu at any stage, whether telephonically or otherwise, to ask him to sell the filling station to him, nor did he make any utterances that the applicant (Big Tree) was wasting time.

It hardly bears mentioning that the respondent (Galp Eswatini) does not simply allow anyone to become a franchisee. It has a comprehensive set of procedures and processes to be followed when advertising, short-listing and appointing a franchisee. Senator Gamedze would not in any event have been able to simply secure a franchise over a cup of coffee since the decision of who is to assume the role of franchisee lies with the respondents managing director, Mthethwa submitted. He informed the court that not only was Gamedze not friends with Judge Phesheya, there was allegedly no evidence to prove that the judge himself had any interest in acquiring the franchise from Galp Eswatini either individually, through a corporate vehicle or through a consortium or that he expressed an interest to do so.

Uncomfortable

To say that he feels uncomfortable with the learned judge adjudicating the matter, which does not concern any of the facts referred to in these paragraphs is with respect not sufficient to give rise to a reasonable apprehension of bias. The marketing director informed the court that Calu knew that Big Tree could not simply sell or cede its franchise, but required the consent to do so for a new operator appointed by Galp Eswatini to take charge of the operations of the business. In 2015, according to Mthethwa, when the interactions are alleged to have taken place, the dispute between Big Tree and Galp Eswatini was limited to the renewal or non-renewal of the franchise agreement.

Galp Eswatini, submitted Mthethwa, never reached the point of seeking a new franchisee as the next logical step of a failure to renew the franchise agreement would have first meant that the respondent would have one to the open market, which never happened in this case after the court ruled in favour of Big Tree. The marketing director further submitted that for Calu to say he felt uncomfortable with Judge Phesheya adjudicating the matter, which allegedly did not concern any of the facts referred to, was with respect not sufficient to give rise to a reasonable apprehension of bias.

On another note, Mthethwa informed the court that in its scope, for the judges to recuse themselves, which by implication carries the consequence that Big Tree does not seek relief based on any genuine legality concern, since relief premised on a challenge of this nature would be differently formulated and would not call for their recusal. He said Big Tree, as a matter of substance, having regard to its claims, allegedly accepted that the current composition of the five panel bench, did not imply any legality issue.

Requirements

Mthethwa alleged that Big Tree failed to meet the requirements of a recusal of the judges. He accused Big Tree of not being a reasonable litigant. It has litigated the issues arising from this application in the press as appears in the two articles that appeared on Monday March 7, 2022 in the Eswatini Observer and the Times of Eswatini respectively. The applicant does not meet the threshold for a recusal challenge as it simply does not possess the attributes of a litigant. The nature of the ill-mannered and intemperate statements attributed to Calu in the articles leaves little doubt that the applicant does not have a reasonable apprehension of bias as it is not the reasonable person and does not rely on reasonable grounds to say the least when applied to the facts to say the least when, Mthethwa told the court.

According to Mthethwa, Big Tree allegedly resorted to speculation on a host of factual issues which did not support a reasonable apprehension of bias. He said in other words, the application was allegedly not brought on reasonable grounds applied to the facts before the court. The matter is pending before court.
The Member of Parliament (MP) for Juaboso, Hon. Kwabena Mintah Akandoh has said, the Supreme Court ruling affirming the Deputy Speakers right to vote when presiding is demoralising.

It can be recalled that last week on Wednesday, March 9, 2022, a seven-member panel of the Supreme Court unanimously held that upon a true and proper interpretation of Article 103 and 104 of the 1992 Constitution, a Deputy Speaker who happens to be a Member of Parliament does not lose his right to take part in decision making in Parliament when sitting in for the Speaker of the House.

In the midst of divided opinion on the ruling, Kwabena Mintah Akandoh who belongs to the Minority side of Parliament has shared his thoughts.

Speaking on the Ekosii sen programme on Asempa FM on Monday, March 14, 2022, the Juaboso MP stressed that The ruling of the Supreme Court on voting rights of deputy speakers very demoralising.

He warned the Majority in Parliament to put it at the back of their minds that numbers cannot be conjured to favour them.

This, he said, at all times consensus-building should be the way forward.

According to Kwabena Mintah Akandoh, the Minority is staying focused in Parliament despite the latest Supreme Court ruling and will use every means available to protect the laws of this country.

The minority in parliament would do whatever it takes to protect the laws of Ghana, the Juaboso Member of Parliament shared.
14.03.2022 LISTEN

Ghanas Finance Minister Ken Ofori Attas Town Hall Meeting with the people of Tamale (JoyNews ) explaining the e-Levy, is the first attempt I have seen in the post-Rawlings or even post-Nkrumah era at real grass roots democracy! Finally an elected or appointed politician finds time to dialogue, in humility, with the voters and taxpayers of Ghana!

Finally in 40 or 50 or more years somebody thinks of the people of Ghana as human beings. He even got a few applauses. Bravo Ken!

It is very sad how we Africans have abused democracy.

Democracy is really not that complicated. It works along the Akan principle of Do wo yonko or Dwen wo yonko ho- meaning to love thy neighbor or think of your neighbor.

Be humble and talk to the people! Explain things out why we need the money for the school building, and Seek the consent of the people and represent them!

From my standpoint as a senior to Ken, I can say that finally the NPP boys are realizing what real democracy is all about!

GO TO THE PEOPLE and explain things to them!

Never sit in your office and do the Math and think its enough to make policies and shove it down the throat of people! No!

And let me add one advice:

Be humble and lead by example and cut down those ostentatious and wasteful executive spending habits!

Having listened to Ken Ofori Atta and his humble appeal, I now would support this e-LEVY.

Yes, it is the easiest way to collect taxes since the same leadership before Ken have refused or failed miserably to organize and manage Ghana. Ghanaian politicians have all failed to organize logical planning by naming streets (until 2006 by Mahamas administration), and logical house numbering in our towns and cities. They have failed to create databases for towns and districts, and they have failed to re-install ELECTED TOWN COUNCILS and MAYORS and DCEs.

I will advise Ken and Nana and all the NPP folks to please think of the people first! Lets make democracy work!

1. Stop considering yourselves like Royalty of Ghana! No!

2. Cut out the insensitive ostentatious lifestyles of Private Charter Jets, traveling in large entourages of expensive vehicles, and

3. Cut out some of the ostentatious expenditures for elected officials and abuse of the public purse such as

400,000 ex-gratia every 4 years,

33,000 salary for Presidential wives

Only the most expensive V8s or SUVs costing $100,000 for elected and appointed me with Free petrol.

Once people see that you consider yourselves as fellow human beings also, they will respond in kind and pay taxes willingly!

Dr. K. Danso (Mar.12, 2022)
Sudanese security forces opened fire Monday as protesters in several cities across the northeast African nation marched against military rule and a worsening economic situation, witnesses told AFP.

The cost of bread and transport has soared in recent days.

Regular protests calling for civilian rule have taken place since a military coup led by army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan on October 25, with heavy-handed crackdowns leaving 87 dead, according to medics.

"Down with military rule", protesters chanted in Damazin, a city some 450 kilometres (280 miles) southeast of the capital Khartoum, where witnesses said security forces opened fire to disperse protesters.

In Khartoum, security forces fired tear gas at demonstrators attempting to reach the presidential palace, according to an AFP correspondent.

Hundreds of protesters in the Red Sea city of Port Sudan were also met with tear gas, according to eyewitnesses.

These latest protests come amid steep hikes in the cost of living.

On Sunday, the price of a small loaf of bread shot up over 40 percent, from 35 to 50 Sudanese pounds, or from five to eight US cents.

Sudan has been especially vulnerable to fears of global supply shortages in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

As fuel costs spike globally, the cost of transport has also jumped 50 percent across Sudan.

In Nyala, state capital of South Darfur in the west, security forces fired a barrage of tear gas canisters to stop crowds.

"No to rising costs," people shouted, according to resident Abdel Moneim Mohamed. "No to military rule."

Protesters in Nyala also included residents of the vast camps set up when people were forced from their homes during the conflict that broke out in Darfur in 2003.

'Intolerable'

"The situation has become intolerable," said Hamad Bashir from Atbara, a city 280 kilometres (175 miles) northeast of Khartoum, a traditional centre of the country's railway industry.

Bashir said that railway workers have not been paid for two months.

Rail workers began a strike on Sunday, said Hashem Khedr, the head of the Railway Workers' Union.

One in every three people are dependent on aid in Sudan, according to the United Nations.

The economic crisis deepened when October's military coup triggered broad international condemnation and punitive measures that included a suspension of $700 million in US aid.

Authorities have rounded up hundreds of pro-democracy protesters since the coup, many of whom have been released in recent weeks.

On Monday, three protesters were detained in Nyala, activists said.

Three detainees in Khartoum's Kober prison announced a hunger strike Monday to protest "inhumane treatment, police brutality," and a lack of due process, their lawyers said in a statement.

They had been accused of fatally stabbing a police general in January, the only fatality announced among security forces since anti-coup protests began.

The October coup derailed a fragile power-sharing agreement between the army and civilians that had been painstakingly negotiated after the 2019 ouster of longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir.
Archbishop Nicholas Duncan-Williams has said: Im still a work in progress and told Christians to stop seeing me as an angel.

Those of you who see gifted people, anointed people as angels, theres something wrong with you, he told his congregation on Sunday, 13 March 2022 during the second service at Action Chapel International.

Archbishop Duncan-Williams said people who see men of God in that light dont understand the Christian walk; you dont understand grace and mercy; you dont understand the humanity and divinity of man.

And one of the things we should be careful of that I said in the first service: We have this notion, perception and belief that the Church is for angels, its for holy people, and, so, when you come to church, you expect everybody to act like an angel and when people act out of character as fallen man that we are, even though we are redeemed by the blood of the land, were still in the flesh, were still in the body as long as we live in this body and this flesh, every now and then, well act like the fallen man and you must make room for that. We must make room for mistakes. And we must stop expecting people to act like an angel, he said.

There is no angel in the Church, the preacher stressed.

He said: We are all sick people. Weve all come to Jesus hospital and Hes the doctor and weve all come to Jesus for healing. We are all sick, so, stop asking me, What is your sickness? You, too, what is your sickness? And, stop asking me, What are you doing here? You, too, what are you doing here? Weve all come to be healed. And stop expecting angels.

There are no angels in the Church, he reiterated, explaining: The same people you find in the marketplace are the same people in the Church. So, when you come to church and people mistreat and mishandle you, stop being shocked.

All this shock, shock, shock; Im shocked, Im surprised, I cant believe it; you better believe it that everywhere human beings like you are, therell be problems. That is who we are. And the Church is not exempted.

Irrespective of that, Archbishop Duncan-Williams said: As messy as the Church can be sometimes, ladies and gentlemen, it is the safest place to be.

Dont leave the Church, dont come out of the ark. If you come out of the ark, the flood will drown you; itll carry you away, he admonished.

And, the enemy is looking for you out there; he cant get you, so, what he has to do is to come among us and trigger you, provoke you by some fallen natures of man, which we all have, including me; so, dont look at me like Im an angel; I aint an angel. I got feelings like you.

Source: Classfmonline.com
As environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) funds gain traction among investors, the accounting profession is rapidly embracing sustainability to avert climate catastrophe and transition to net -zero carbon emissions by 2050.

For that reason, the University of Birmingham, UK has become the first higher educational institution to introduce climate change into its BSc Accountancy and Finance degree course; in response to the call for a greener global financial system.

Academics from Birmingham Business School at the University of Birmingham believe the introduction of climate change into the BSC Accountancy and Finance course is a world first.

In a media note from University of Birmingham on February 24, Professor Ian Thomson, Director of the Lloyds Banking Group Centre for Responsible Business from Birmingham Business School said: Greta Thunberg was correct in what she said in Glasgow. It is an undisputable fact that business cannot carry on as normal if we are to effectively fight climate change and reach the governments target of net zero carbon emissions by 2050. This means that every student studying accountancy and finance should know how to account for climate change.

For their part, Dr Mayya Konovalova and Dr Madlen Sobkowiak who were responsible for creating the new syllabus for the course added that : Students embarking on their journey to becoming accountants can help future proof their own careers and the organisations they go on to work for thanks to the changes we have brought into the accountancy course. Mainstreaming climate change into the syllabus just makes sense. Climate change is a real threat to business resilience, as well as the world at large, and nothing will change if we dont give our students the tools they need.

University of Birmingham aims to share its accounting and climate practice with other universities across the globe. Already they have presented their work to universities in Canada, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Australia and Italy through international webinars. Moreover, University of Birmingham has called on other universities to mainstream climate change into the study of accountancy in the bid to equip the next generation of accountants with the requisite sustainability/ climate smarts before starting their careers.

Sustainability Reporting a Powerful Tool for the Next Generation of Accountants

Current ethical concepts in business emphasize the significance of environmental, social and corporate governance ( ESG) reporting, also known as sustainability reporting. It's therefore necessary for the next generation of accountants to understand the concept of sustainability reporting: how it's evolving and how it helps to strengthen governance in business.

Sustainability reporting is a latter-day corporate reporting trend rooted in environmental reporting which started in the late 1980s. It's an evolution of 'corporate reporting' which encompasses: sustainability reporting, financial reporting, corporate governance, executive remuneration, corporate responsibility and narrative reporting.

In days of yore, the interest of companies was only oriented towards profit making without any concern for their negative impact on the economy, environment and society or the triple bottom line. The only form of corporate reporting for companies in the past was book-keeping. This involved keeping a record of a company's accounts accurately. Book-keeping evolved into financial reporting. Followed by Financial Accounting, which uses internationally accepted standards to help compare one company to the other. Later, financial accounting evolved into the rather newfangled non-financial reporting concept known as 'corporate sustainability reporting' or simply 'sustainability reporting.' It encourage companies to inculcate sustainability measures in their operations, but that is not the case for book-keeping, financial reporting and financial accounting.

The sustainability report highlights a company's economic, environmental and social performance in addition to their financial performance.

The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) defines a sustainability report as a report published by a company/ organization about the economic, environmental and social impacts caused by its everyday activities. It presents a company's values and governance model and demonstrates the link between a company's strategy and its commitment to a sustainable global economy. Obviously, the sustainability report becomes a powerful tool in strategic decision making which helps to communicate an organization's corporate policy and strategy.

If well implemented over time, a company's sustainability report is capable of increasing productivity, efficiency and transparency which leads to better economic returns, cost saving, improvement in environmental and social performance and increased long term value. Again it improves investor confidence, management quality, builds trust, motivates staff, ensures better access to capital and ultimately impacts organizational reputation positively. Resultantly, business entities (private and public) are keen on sustainability reporting for varied reasons, this includes the efficient use of scarce resources.

And the main essence of reporting is the role it plays in improving transparency and accountability, which are key determinants of good corporate governance in the body corporate.
Accra, Ghana; 14th March 2022 - The Kofi Annan Road Safety Award is being launched by the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), the Secretariat of the United-Nations Secretary-General's Special Envoy for Road Safety, and the Ministry of Transport of the Republic of Ghana, with the support of the Kofi Annan Foundation.

The Award is to motivate key stakeholders  governments, private sector, and civil society organisations  to develop and implement innovative and outstanding initiatives to save lives on Africa's roads.

In a joint press release issued today, the organisers say the Award aims to be a game-changer for the continent most affected by road traffic crashes.

Ghana is among the countries that report a high prevalence of road traffic deaths, with 24.9 per 100,000 inhabitants (WHO 2016). Nearly 2,000 lives are lost in the country each year due to crashes - and pedestrians are particularly at risk.

The Kofi Annan Road Safety Award is named after the late Secretary-General and founder of the Kofi Annan Foundation, Kofi Annan in recognition of his contribution to the area of road safety. Mr Annan brought the issue of Road Safety and Road Traffic Victims to the United Nations agenda at the beginning of the 2000s.

The Award ceremony will be preceded by a webinar on Safer and Cleaner Vehicles in Africa: Challenges and Opportunities in the Second UN Decade of Action for Road Safety (2021-2030) at 11a.m.

Register here: https://bit.ly/3J6VgCX
14.03.2022 LISTEN

The Ghana Police Service has issued a public notice warning motorists using the Accra-Kumasi Highway to drive with caution.

This is because a loaded fuel tanker caught fire on the Accra-Kumasi Highway (N6) at Nsutam near Paradise Rest Stop.

As part of a response, Kyebi MTTD Accident Prevention Squad (APS) traffic Officers have blocked the Highway from the Osino direction and at Nsutam Custom Barrier.

All motorists using the highway are charged to exercise patience and approach with caution while strictly adhering to all traffic directions from traffic Police Officers at the scene.

A loaded fuel tanker has caught fire on the Accra-Kumasi Highway (N6) at Nsutam near Paradise Rest Stop. As a result, Kyebi MTTD Accident Prevention Squad (APS) traffic Officers have blocked the Highway from the Osino direction and at Nsutam Custom Barrier. Ghana National Fire Service team are at the scene to manage and douse the fire.

All approaching motorists from Accra and Kumasi are to exercise patience, and adhere to traffic directions from traffic Police Officers at the scene of the incident, parts of a Police alert issued via the official Ghana Police Service Facebook page reads.

The Police further added that additional updates will be communicated in due course.
14.03.2022 LISTEN

The Ghana Police Service has charged owners of vehicles that transport hazardous goods to constantly service and maintain vehicles to ensure the safety of all.

This is contained in a statement on the Facebook page of the security agency providing an update on the loaded fuel tanker that caught fire on Monday afternoon.

Parts of the Police statement said, we urge all vehicle owners, particularly those who carry hazardous goods, to continuously service and maintain their vehicles, equip their vehicles with approved fire extinguishers which are in good working order, and avail their drivers to vehicular fire management training periodically.

Meanwhile, the Police have confirmed that through swift collaborative work with the Kyebi MTTD and the Ghana National Fire Service, it has managed to douse the fire and brought the situation under control.

As a result, that part of the Accra-Kumasi Highway (N6) at Nsutam near Paradise Rest Stop has been fully opened to traffic.

In reference to the loaded fuel tanker that caught fire on the Accra-Kumasi Highway (N6) at Nsutam near Paradise Rest Stop, the Ghana National Fire Service crew has efficiently managed to douse the fire, cleared the debris, and washed that section of the road for safe use by all motorists.

As a result, the Kyebi MTTD Accident Prevention Squad (APS) has opened the road for all motorists, the Police statement reads.

It adds, We, therefore, take this opportunity to thank the Ghana National Fire Service crew for their quick response, as well as all motorists for their patience.
Mr. Charles Okyere, President, of the Rotary Club of Accra Ring-Road Central, has called on charities and corporate bodies to help introduce reusable sanitary pads in deprived areas.

He said this would reduce the financial burden on the young girls and encourage them to continue to attend school while menstruating.

He made the appeal when the Rotary club of Accra Ring -Road Central distributed reusable sanitary pads to young girls in some selected basic schools in the Shai Osodoku District of the Greater Accra Region. The distribution was part of Clubs Girl Child Menstrual Hygiene Project.

In all, 500 young girls from seven schools namely, Lubuse DA Basic, Kasunya DA and Kasunya RC Basic, Nyapienya D/A Basic, Volivo D/A Basic, Kewum D/A Basic, Duffor D/A Basic schools received a reusable pad each.

The donation was done in collaboration with ATeNaB Foundation and other stakeholders.

Mr Okyere said: What we have observed is that, during your menstruation, your pads are expensive and sometimes becomes difficult for some of you to afford. This is what we want to avoid and prevent because we want you to have the opportunity to study hard and become better and responsible people in future.

Every month, 1.8 billion women across the world menstruate.

The onset of menstruation means a new phase  and new vulnerabilities  in the lives of adolescents. Yet, many adolescent girls face stigma, harassment, and social exclusion during menstruation. As part of the donation, the students were educated on menstrual hygiene management by professionals from the Ghana Health Service.

Mr Okyere noted that in some rural areas, teenagers experienced some challenges during their menstruation which affected their health and academic status.

In the deprived areas, when the young ladies are in their time of menstruation, it affects them academically because they are unable to go to school. When we asked which of them are menstruating, they couldnt even respond because they were shy, he said.

Mr David Etsey, a member of the ATeNaB Foundation, urged teachers and parents to educate their wards on the importance of using reusable pads to encourage more girls to ensure good menstrual hygiene.

Mr Jonas Sackitey, the Headmaster of Lubuse DA Basic School, expressed appreciation to the Club and its partners for the love shown to them and encouraged them to continue with their good works.

He also appealed to other philanthropists to emulate the gesture and assist children in these vulnerable schools to have a better life.
With a string of attacks that have claimed dozens of lives, jihadists in Burkina Faso have sounded a loud alarm call for the country's new rulers.

The military junta, which on January 24 ousted elected president Roch Marc Christian Kabore over his failure to quell the insurgents, now finds itself in an uncomfortable position.

In a four-day killing spree in Dori, in the troubled northeast, 23 civilians and 13 gendarmes died in ambushes, road mines or hit-and-run raids by jihadists on motorbikes.

The deaths have put security worries at the top of the agenda after seven weeks in which new strongman Lieutenant Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba focused on cementing his position as interim president.

Burkina has been battling a jihadist insurgency since 2015 that swept in from neighbouring Mali.

Belem Boureima and his family are among hundreds of thousands of people in northern and eastern Burkina forced to flee their homes. By ISSOUF SANOGO AFP

Violence led by groups affiliated to Al-Qaeda and the so-called Islamic State group has killed more than 2,000 people and displaced at least 1.7 million, according to an AFP tally.

Defying international pressure for a swift return to civilian rule, Damiba has set down a three-year timetable for restoring elected governance and declared the country's security crisis his priority.

He has restructured Burkina's anti-jihadist campaign, appointed a new armed forces chief of staff and reshuffled the government, although he kept Kabore's defence minister, Barthelemy Simpore.

Last Thursday, he issued a decree requiring soldiers who had gone into retirement in the past three years to get back into uniform.

'Clock is ticking'

But there are mounting questions as to how these big announcements translate into action on the ground at a time when urgency is essential.

"The Burkinabe public is still waiting for the road map from the new authorities. The general view that is emerging ... is that everything has slowed down," the newspaper l'Economiste du Faso said in an editorial.

It noted there had been "upheaval" in the military hierarchy with the change of armed forces chief.

Mahamoudou Sawadogo, a researcher on security in the Sahel, said that time was of the essence for Dori, the epicentre of the latest attacks.

Burkina Faso. By AFP

"The terrorists' strategy entails isolating major towns by cutting off roads and communications," he said.

"Dori, for instance, is cut off, and people are under pressure to join armed groups just to be able to survive.

"If we continue to drag our feet, air power will be useless because the terrorists will be embedded in the population. You have to train men, get into contact (with the jihadists), go head to head."

Political analyst Drissa Traore said, "the junta has declared it will be able to considerably reduce terrorist attacks over the next two years.

"But we find it hard to discern the big actions that can raise hopes our defence forces will master the enemy. We are still waiting for major operations" to unfold.

"There's no grace period" for the new authorities, he said.

"The clock is already ticking. These latest attacks have killed several dozen people in just a few days and are a reminder of the need to work fast."

Foreign support?

Another as-yet undefined area in Damiba's anti-jihadist strategy is the place of military support from other African countries, such as the G5 Sahel alliance, or France, Burkina's traditional ally.

France is withdrawing its Barkhane anti-jihadist force from Mali after falling out with its junta, which seized power in August 2020.

However, Barkhane has carried out operations in Burkina Faso since Damiba took over.

And last Friday, at a press conference in the Burkinabe capital Ouagadougou, Barkhane commander General Laurent Michon said the future of the mission "will be built alongside those African countries that wish it.

"We will carry on the fight with countries that want our support," he said.
HLANE  A 17-year-old Dlalisile National High School Form V pupils future hangs in the balance after he was shot four times last Saturday.

The shooting, it has been alleged, emanated from a long feud between two factions of a sugarcane scheme under Takhamuti Farmers Association, situated at Mathangeni area near the Hlane Royal Residence. Nsika Malambe is supposed to sit for his Mathematic Paper I examination this morning but that might not be possible as he has been admitted to Good Shepherd Catholic Hospital. It was gathered that the pupil was shot with a rifle by a known man, working for the sugar cane scheme company.

This, it was alleged, was after the pupil and his friends had gone to the companys premises to ask for water to quench their thirst as it was hot on the day. Interviewed on his hospital bed, Nsika said doctors told him that there were four bullets that were still lodged in his leg.

Rifle

When we entered the yard, one of the guards with a rifle came out of an office and we ran for cover. I only remember my leg becoming heavy and being told that I had been shot, he said. The Form V pupil said he was not sure if he would be afforded the chance to write todays exam paper as he was currently admitted to the hospital. According to a senior resident of the area and a relative, Bongani Mdluli, they were trying to ascertain what led to the shooting of the pupil.

Our worry is that now the guards at the company carry a gun which is perplexing to everyone as we were not aware, he said. Mdluli claimed the shooting emanated from the long standing feud after a breakaway group of farmers formed their own committee from the legitimate known elected committee by the farmers when they were relocated from their land.

The senior resident confided that the matter had been in and out of the courts for a long time. He said they were relocated from their land at Ndzaleni area to the new compound, at Mathangeni area around 2012.

Relocated

Mdluli said about 72 households were relocated from the Ndzaleni area and three-bedroom houses were built for the families. He also claimed that after the relocation, they called a meeting, whereby they encouraged all the households to join and contribute the mandatory E500 joining fee, to the sugar cane scheme but about 20 were against the project. The farmers were made to contribute E500 for the formation of the scheme and the European Union (EU) assisted to financially kick-start the sugar cane project in 2013. We joined the scheme but about 20 people if not less didnt and we continued to seek financial help from the EU. Our first harvesting took place in 2013 and our members received dividends of E13 000 each, he said.

Mdluli claimed that some of the members registered their children on their behalf in the scheme. He said it was unfortunate that after seeing the success and benefits of the scheme, those who shunned joining it turned against them and sought legal recourse yet they did that on their own accord. He further claimed that the 72 members had not been receiving dividends for the past eight years. We had called a meeting for the members on Saturday but it could not go on due to that some members were held up in other commitments. We wanted to find collective contributions from the members and come up with a way forward, he said.

Gawula Nkentjane, who said he was the legitimate chairman of the sugar cane scheme, said they were still consulting on the matter. Nkentjane alleged that the other faction used people who claimed to be close to royalty to ensure that they were intimidated. We are still pursuing the matter and it is unfortunate that it has reached a stage whereby our children have to be shot, he said.

Implicated

Gadla Thwala, who has also been implicated in the matter as someone who facilitated the ushering of the new committee, confirmed knowledge of the matter but clarified that the former chairman fell sick hence he was told a new chairman was elected. Chief Police Information and Communications Officer Superintendent Phindile Vilakati confirmed the matter.

Vilakati said police had arrested a suspect in connection with the offence. She said the police also confiscated the gun used in the commission of the crime. The suspect is expected to appear at the Siteki Magistrate Court this morning.
While Russian troops advance on major cities in Ukraine, causing unspeakable collateral damage, ordinary people in Russia itself are feeling the weight of the most stringent sanctions the West has ever imposed. However, President Vladimir Putin's war effort is not universally supported by the Russian people. RFI met one of them: an exiled Russian national behind the 'True Russia' collective initiative.

A group of Russian exiles is trying to mobilise their compatriots to bring hostilities to an end and help Ukrainian refugees.

One of those exiles is Sergey Guriev, a Russian economist who lives in France. Guriev left Russia in 2013 after he got into trouble with authorities because of a critical assessment of the verdict handed down to Mikhail Khodorkovsky, one of Putin's arch enemies.

Putin saw then billionaire Khodorkovsky, CEO of oil company Yukos, as a threat and had him jailed for nine years.

Guriev, then a likely candidate to become a board member of Russia's largest bank, the Sberbank, was subjected to what he called "alarming" questioning and decided to flee the country.

After working four years as Chief Economist for the London-headquartered European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), between 2015 and 2019, he is now with the Center for Economic Policy Research, which is affiliated to the prestigious Sciences Po university in Paris.

Last Thursday, together with two fellow Russians, writer Boris Akunin and choreographer Mikhael Baryshnikov, Guriev launched the True Russia platform.

Putin's invasion of Ukraine is "a blow to all of us, people who belong to Russian culture and speak Russian," according to the platform's website.

"The very word 'Russian' has become toxic."

With the platform, Guriev hopes to collect money to help alleviate the plight of Ukrainians suffering from Putin's war. RFI's Jan van der Made talked to Guriev.

RFI: What are your objectives in launching True Russia?

Sergey Guriev:

This is not our war. This is Putin's war. And we think about various initiatives where we would try to help Russians to get rid of Putin and where we will try to help Russians to run away from Putin to be settled in new countries. And to help Ukrainians. We started fundraising for Ukrainian refugees, and we are now calling on all Russians to stand up and say, 'this is not my war.'

RFI: How do you actually get through to people in Russia?

Sergey Guriev:

We hope that some people use VPNs and read Western media, follow us on social networks. But it is hard. Some are not yet closed, for instance Telegram channels, YouTube, Instagram. The main problem is not to tell Russians to protest. They are beaten up, detained and sometimes tortured in police departments.

RFI: How does this whole situation affect you as a Russian living abroad?

Sergey Guriev:

I'm not a representative Russian in the sense that I'm reasonably visible and everybody knows I don't like Mr Putin, and that this is mutual. In that sense, I'm not affected by the debate to what extent Russians are responsible for what's happening in Ukraine.

But I feel we do have a responsibility. I think the problem should not be a problem for the Ukrainians. The problem is that we didn't manage to stop Putin within Russia. And for that, I feel my responsibility too. Even though I tried, but apparently I didn't try hard enough.

RFI: Western sanctions result in Russians not being able to use credit cards anymore, MacDonalds and Ikea have pulled out, no more Netflix, fewer foreign brands. How big is the chance this will backfire, given that Putin uses censorship of the free press and has a huge propaganda machine which he can use to blame the West?

Sergey Guriev:

It's a war, and some choices unfortunately involve collateral damage. When we talk collateral damage, there are different ways to define that. One is, if you are in Russia, you cannot watch Netflix.

The other one is you're in Ukraine and your apartment is being bombed. The degree of suffering is not comparable.

For Russians, it could backfire, that is likely in the short run. But in the long run, it will work in the other direction.

Also, it is poorer Russians who will suffer much more because they will not be able to afford basic necessities. But medical companies continue to supply Russia. It's a bit like the ethics of a doctor who treats a patient, even if the patient is a killer.

RFI: Russian billionaires living in the West are also being targeted. But that seems to be handled in a rather indiscriminate way. We have a rule-based society here; if you start a witch-hunt against a certain group, no matter how unsympathetic they are, it sets a precedent which we're not really used to anymore. Wouldn't it be better to investigate these people person by person to check out if they are actually breaking the law?

Sergey Guriev:

I think it's a big issue because the West prevails exactly because it always tries to live according to the values it declares. I think that's a huge difference between the West and Putin. Putin declares one thing and does another thing.

There is, of course, a call for all European banks to look at all the Russians who have more than $100,000 on their accounts. But my understanding is that it goes in the direction of normal compliance checks.

So it's not about indiscriminately closing the accounts. I don't see much Russophobia in this, and the West should take the high ground, and should stick to the rule of law.

RFI: The US, the UK and, to a lesser extend, Europe intend to cut down heavily on Russian oil and gas imports. What effect is that going to have?

Sergey Guriev:

Russia already has disruptions in terms of getting more dollars. So Russia is not in a good situation. If Europe introduces an embargo, then Russia will have to reorientate. And then the next stop is China.

But China not joining the embargo is not a given because if American sanctions are in place, Chinese banks will be scared.

But even if China doesn't join the embargo, it will be very hard (for Russia) to redirect oil exports to China because (most of the) pipelines are going to Europe. The boats are in scarce supply and because of private sector restrictions, it will be very hard to find tankers. So it's not going to be easy.

RFI: How far do you think China will go to support Russia?

Sergey Guriev:

If (Chinese President) Xi Jinping wants to save Russia, he can. He can completely stabilise the Russian economy. And even if the oil will start flowing, he can prepay that and therefore stabilise Russian macro economics.

We don't see that happening. Moreover, we see that some of the biggest Chinese banks actually complied with the American sanctions. We see that China-based multilateral development banks, the new development bank, so-called BRICS Bank and the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank actually stopped operations in Russia.

RFI: Ukraine and Russia are among the world's largest grain exporters. What effect is the war likely to have on grain supply?

Sergey Guriev:

The situation in the grain market will be catastrophic and the most important destination which is going to be hit is north Africa, Egypt in particular.

In 2010, Putin tried to stabilise the situation in domestic grain markets after a series of forest fires, banning exports of Russian grain that resulted in price hikes in countries like Egypt, where protests erupted, and that eventually contributed to the Arab Spring. So this is going to be yet another important dimension of this crisis.

RFI: Critics say that even if Putin wins this war, it may spell the end to his regime. Do you have a plan for a post-Putin era?

Sergey Guriev:

This war was a mistake, a very major miscalculation by Putin and and it has actually shortened the lifetime of his regime for sure. We cannot predict when the regime ends and how it ends and what comes after. It may well be that people who come after Putin are even worse.

But I should say that they probably will not be able to run the country for a long time. And if you want an optimistic scenario: somebody comes after Putin, releases political prisoners, immediately stops the war and organises free elections. In the long run, it is not impossible that Russia will become a normal, European, democratic, peaceful country.

But today we should think about much more urgent issues: stop the war, help Ukrainian refugees, and rebuild Ukraine.
The Sekondi Magistrate Court in the Western Region on Monday, March 14 discharged Adolf Eshun, the 1st accused in the case involving three Senior High School students facing trial for setting a Bolt driver ablaze.

The Bompeh Senior High School student was discharged following a recommendation by the Attorney Generals (AG) office.

The first accused who has been on remand since December 2021, together with the two other students, was discharged based on the AGs advice.

According to the AG, although the 1st accused ordered the Bolt for the two others, he did not take part in the planning and execution of the crime.

Counsel for the 1st accused, Joseph Evans Abeka told journalists that: so the Attorney General rightly advised that he shouldnt be prosecuted. He should be discharged, so he has been discharged. If in future the police need him to come and testify, he will come, but for now he is a free person and can even start school tomorrow.

The 2nd and 3rd accused are still on remand.

The case has since been adjourned to Monday, 11 April 2022.

Three senior high school students were arrested by the Western Regional Police Command for allegedly setting a Bolt driver ablaze at Bakano in Sekondi on Wednesday, 22 December 2021.

Patrick Baidoo, 18; Joseph Lord Nii Adjei Odiku, 17; and Adolf Eshun, 17, lit Naval officer AB1 Boateng Okyere Boateng on fire so they could rob him, the police said.

The three teenagers, according to the police, confessed to the crime.

They said they were forced to set him alight because he struggled with them over the ignition key of the car as they attempted carjacking him.

The Public Relations Officer of the regional police command, Olivia Ewurabena Adiku, told journalists: At about 5 pm on December 24, our team from the Regional Intelligence and Operation Unit, based on some intelligence, conducted an operation and arrested three suspects namely Patrick Baidoo, aged 18; Joseph Lord Nii Adjei Odiku, 17; and Adolf Eshun, aged 17 years.

All these three sustained burnt wounds from the December 22, 2021 incident , she noted.

DSP Adiku added: Unfortunately, the Bolt driver has passed on.

He died at the 37 Military Hospital where he was transferred from the Effia Nkwanta Regional Hospital, for treatment.

The suspects, she said, confessed that they needed money and wanted to rob him of the car but when they got to Baka-Ano, and they asked him to hand over the keys, he refused; hence they poured the petrol on him and burnt him.

The three were later arraigned.

Source: classfmonline.com
The Speaker of Parliament has debunked a publication in the 'Daily Guide' newspaper dated March 11, 2022, that he has appointed a National Democratic Congress (NDC) man as acting Speaker.

A statement issued on Monday by the Office of the Speaker and copied to the Ghana News Agency, said: The 'NDC man' in question, Mr Kofi Attor, is a former Member of Parliament, and currently works in the Speaker's Secretariat as a Senior advisor."

It said the" Speaker assigns to him and the team duties as and when necessary."

We wish to state that Hon. Kofi Attor is a former member of Parliament who currently works in the Speaker's Secretariat as a Senior advisor. The Speaker assigns responsibilities to him and the Staff from time to time In all these, he has never been assigned responsibility as deputy speaker and those who caused the publication know this," the statement said.

The statement, therefore advised the public to ignore the mischievous message.

"The said publication is just one of the mischievous attempts to court public disaffection and ridicule of the Speaker and bring him into disrepute. The public is advised to ignore the mischief that was intended.

GNA
In a hall at Abidjan university, around 20 people are getting dance therapy, part of an innovative event designed to educate people about sexual politics.

"The start of consent is the power to say 'no'," says Franco-Congolese dancer Bolewa Sabourin as the workshop draws to a close.

"You see that feeling of pleasure, of pride that you get when you're dancing in front of people you don't even know? That's what we're looking for."

Sexual violence is when the attackers take control of women's bodies to dominate their spirit, he says. "They've been beaten, raped."

Dancing is exactly the reverse, he argues. "There, we are passing through the body to liberate the spirit."

Sabourin's workshop was part of the first "Festival of Consent", organised to try to fight back against gender-based violence.

The event tackled a number of related issues, including men's relationship with feminism, and the links between feminism and religion.

In last September's programme, a former rapist was encouraged to use a dummy to demonstrate how he abused his victims. By Sia KAMBOU AFPFile

"Our aim with this festival is to make people understand that consent concerns everyone, men and women," Benedicte Joan told AFP.

Joan, who organised the event, heads Stop au Chat Noir, an organisation set up to help young victims of sexual abuse.

"Consent concerns all types of gender-based violence" from forced marriage to genital mutilation, Joan added.

Obstacles to justice

There is clearly work to be done.

Last September, television presenter Yves De M'Bella was suspended after he hosted a programme in which he laughingly encouraged a man presented as a former rapist to use a dummy to demonstrate how he abused his victims.

The programme sparked a massive outcry, a protest outside the television station NCI's studios and a petition signed by 46,500 people.

A report issued earlier this month by the Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) said victims of sexual violence in Ivory Coast faced a string of obstacles in the path to justice.

Although the latest official figures -- for the year 2020 -- recorded 822 cases of rape, 152 sexual assaults, 96 cases of forced marriage and 13 cases of female genital mutilation, these numbers probably underestimated the extent of the problem, it said.

"Few survivors manage to denounce the sexual violence suffered," said the report. And even when they did, it added: "Medical, psychological and social care, as well as access to justice, are not ensured."

'We have to wake up'

The festival at Abidjan's Felix Houphouet-Boigny University was the culmination of months of contact between students and activists with the associations behind the event.

Over the weekend, hundreds of students debated the issues with the campaigners.

"When you travel around the country, you realise that there is still a lot of work to be done," said civil engineering student Diomande Ben Mohamed.

"There are things that still happen to our sisters," he added. "When you see that, it pushes you to join the associations.

"We have to wake up now. It's a fight for the whole family, it's not just about women," he insisted.

"Young people need to be aware of this."

Sociology student Syntiche Zadi saw some progress, however.

"Our generation is aware of the importance of these questions, of not being violent towards women," she said.

"When you wear tee-shirts of our associations with messages on them, you are often stopped and asked about them," she added.

At another festival event, Bintou Mariam of Equipop, an international group campaigning for the rights and health of women and girls, debated the issues with a group of students.

They discussed what room there was for old-fashioned gallantry; and how far feminism could be reconciled with the country's traditions and culture -- how, for example, a woman could resist her husband's desire for a polygamous household.

"Tradition is often held up as a pretext," said Bintou Mariam. "There is a lot of hypocrisy about women's rights."

But she added: "A woman exists as a woman, not as an extension of her husband."

Television presenter De M'Bella got a fine and a 12-month suspended sentence for condoning rape and for indecency.

He no longer works for NCI but has a show on a popular radio station, Nostalgie.
Ugandan author and activist Norman Tumuhimbise is among nine journalists arrested for offensive communication, police said Monday, the second writer to be detained by the authorities in recent months.

Tumuhimbise, who heads a local pressure group The Alternative Movement and an online media platform Alternative Digitalk, was due to launch a book critical of President Yoweri Museveni on March 30.

Tumuhimbise and his colleagues were reportedly bundled into a van by armed security personnel on Thursday.

"Police got a complaint the group was involved in offensive communication and promoting hate speech," Uganda police spokesman, Fred Enanga, told AFP.

"They are with the police at the Special Investigations Unit in Kireka (a suburb of the capital Kampala) as investigations are continuing," he added, without elaborating.

The suspects' lawyer Eron Kiiza petitioned a Kampala court for their release Monday, alleging that police had also confiscated phones, laptops, recorders and cameras from the media outlet.

The detainees include three female journalists, according to Kiiza's petition.

News of the arrests comes just over a month after award-winning Ugandan author Kakwenza Rukirabashaija fled into exile following his detention on charges of insulting President Museveni and his son.

Rukirabashaija arrived in Germany last month to seek medical treatment after allegedly having been tortured in jail in a case that had raised international concern. Both the European Union and the United States had intervened, calling for his release.

The charges against Rukirabashaija related to unflattering comments on Twitter about Museveni, who has ruled Uganda since 1986, and his powerful son Muhoozi Kainerugaba.

In one post he described Kainerugaba, a general who many Ugandans believe is positioning himself to take over from his 77-year-old father, as "obese" and a "curmudgeon".

Uganda has witnessed a series of crackdowns aimed at stamping out dissent, with journalists attacked, lawyers jailed, election monitors prosecuted and opposition leaders violently muzzled.
Traders and transport operators within the Upper Denkyira East Municipality (UDEM) have cried out to Government to initiate pragmatic policies and strategies to stabilise the economy to help improve livelihoods.

That they said would help improve the standard of living of the people for them to actively contribute their quota to the socio-economic development of the country.

The current increase in transport fares, fuel, goods and services was having negative impact on the lives of people increasing crimes, social vices among others in the country, they said.

In an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) at Dunkwa Offin, traders, passengers and drivers poured out how the economic hardship of the country was stressing them out.

They described the situation as worrying and disturbing calling on the Government to do something on the current frustration of the people in the country.

Some noted that though COVID-19 has had its own effects on the economy of which Ghana was no exemption, there must be stringent efforts to mitigate current situation in the country.

Traders recounted the countless times they had to take their goods home and how they were incurring losses due to the hikes in prices.

Mr Kwame Amoah, driver appealed to the Government through the GNA to as a matter of urgency, go to the aid of the people, engage stakeholders, and ensure something was done to improve the economy.

Maame Adwoa Asabea, an apple seller also pointed out that though the efforts by the Government to improve the economy could not be overemphasised, more must be done to minimise the hardship in the country.

Mr Ebenezer Appiah Forson, the Municipal Chief Executive (MCE) of the area responding to their appeal, promised the people that the Assembly was working around the clock to implement some Government interventions such as MASLOG loans to enable traders expand their businesses.

He said that the impact of COVID-19 has affected economies and Ghana was no exception but the Government was still in the process of stabilizing the economy.

He urged the people to support the proposed E-levy to help the Government increase it revenue to improve the economy and put strategic measures in place to help the country grow.

GNA
The Ghana Immigration Service (GIS) on Monday assured the public that it has secured borders in the northern frontiers to ward off any form of security threats.

Assistant Inspector of Immigration, Mr Christian Kobla Kekeli Zilevu, the Northern Regional Public Relations Officer, GIS, who gave the assurance, said the Service had no concrete evidence of any incident that could mar the safety at the northern frontiers as suggested by some publications.

Speaking to the Ghana News Agency in Tamale following the United States (US) Embassy's caution to its citizens against visiting the northern borders for fear of being kidnapped, Mr Zilevu said the communique should be treated as a normal security alert from the US to its citizens.

The Embassy, in Accra, on March 9, sent a security alert to US citizens on the grounds of 'unsubstantiated' information that they might be targeted for kidnapping for ransom in northern Ghana.

The Embassy further alerted them to exercise caution when visiting the Northern, Upper West and Upper East border areas.

Mr Zilevu, however, said there was no cause for alarm at the borders as the Immigration personnel had been on guard with surveillance on the ground to detect fishy moves against any citizen or foreigner.

This is not the first time the US Embassy is cautioning US citizens. They do that as a signal of protection to alert them to be security conscious, but there is no such thing going on currently, he said.

He appealed to members of the public to appropriately report suspicious individuals and groups that could endanger the country's security, especially at the border towns, to the security services for prompt action.

GNA
The Private Investors Protection Agency (PIPA) has commended the Government of Ghana for swift action following the explosion at Appiatse in the Western Region in January.

The explosion happened when a vehicle belonging to Maxam Ghana Limited was carting dynamite to Chirano Gold Mines.

Maxam was subsequently fined $6 million for breaching safety protocols.

Although PIPA empathizes with the victims, it believes government was harsh with the fine it slapped on the explosives company.

as an agency that is seeking the welfare of investors, we believe the government should have been a little decorum or lenient on the Spanish company, Maxam Ghana Limited, which is in charge of a truck that exploded and killed the 13 people at Appiatse, a statement signed by Kweku Otoo said.

Below is the statement;

PIPA on $6m fine for Maxam Ghana Limited against Appiatse disaster

Private Investors Protection Agency (PIPA), a Ghanaian agency aimed at protecting the interest of investors, both local and international, has been monitoring the sad happenings at Appiatse in the Prestea Huni-Valley Municipality of the Western Region.

The situation is unfortunate and we are by this expressing our heartfelt condolence to the families who lost their 13 relatives and the victims whose properties have been destroyed.

We hope the government, through the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources, which is headed by Hon. Samuel Abu Jinapor, would live to its assurance to the people of Appiatse that the modern, green and sustainable community Government intends to build would be based on equity, fairness, and justice.

PIPA also acknowledge the government and its agencies for the prompt actions they took during the after the sad incident and we are optimistic this would continue until the inhabitants are back to their normal life.

Kudos government. But, as an agency that is seeking the welfare of investors, we believe the government should have been a little decorum or lenient on the Spanish company, Maxam Ghana Limited, which is in charge of a truck that exploded and killed the 13 people at Appiatse.

Maxam Ghana Limited has been fined $6 million for regulatory breaches regarding the manufacture, storage, and transportation of explosives for mining and other civil works and like we stated above, PIPA applauds the government and its agencies.

Maxam Ghana Limited has also agreed to pay because they believe their truck brought the disaster and we also applaud them on that for not being litigants and settling the issue amicably.

But, we are of the view that the amount was on the higher side. This could scare other investors who have the plans to come and invest in Ghana because such accidents could also happen.

The government should have been concerned about at the number of employment opportunities being created by Maxam Ghana Limited and be lenient on them.

PIPA hope the government would take steps to address the issues raised above in order to rake in more investors to create more employment for the teaming unemployed youth across the country.

Thank you

signed

Kweku Otoo
Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCL)s plan to amalgamate its wholly-owned subsidiaries, Bharat Oman Refineries Ltd (BORL) and Bharat Gas Resources Ltd (BGRL), into the company will result in more significant synergies, Fitch Ratings says. However, it will have no rating impact.

The rating agency says, "We believe that after the amalgamation, BPCL will be able to optimise its business plan for retailing compressed natural gas at its city-gas distribution (CGD) networks further in light of its 24% share of the number of Indian fuel retail outlets and the potential to transform them into holistic energy stations catering to multiple types of fuel needs."

BORL owns and operates the Bina Refinery with an annual capacity of 7.8MMT (million metric tonnes) in India's Madhya Pradesh state. All three of BPCL's refineries will be under one entity after the amalgamation, which Fitch expects will improve efficiency in terms of crude procurement, inventory management and hedging mechanisms.

BGRL, formed in June 2018, holds BPCL's interests in the areas where it intends to build CGD networks. BGRL has interests in 13 areas at various stages of development, some of which would start contributing to earnings over the next four-to-five years.

Fitch says its assessment of BPCL's stand-alone credit profile fully consolidates BORL and BGRL, with credit metrics that have adequate headroom under the negative sensitivities.

"BPCL's rating is equalised with that of its largest shareholder, the Indian sovereign rated at BBB- with negative outlook, based on Fitch's government-related entities rating criteria, due to the strong likelihood of government support. The negative outlook reflects that on the Indian sovereign," it added.
The provision for the Final Report has been given in Section 173 of the Criminal Procedure Code [CrPC]. However, before dealing with the Final Report, it is imperative to understand the powers of the Police Officers to conduct an inquiry and investigation under the special circumstance of when a suicide is reported.

Inquest into suicide

Whenever an officer in charge of a police station or any other police officer specially empowered in this behalf receives an information about a person having committed suicide or having been killed under suspicious circumstances like, for example, by an animal, machinery or some other person, the information regarding the same shall be forwarded to a Magistrate who is empowered to hold inquests.

The Magistrates who are empowered to hold inquest as per Section 174(4) of CrPC are

 Any District Magistrate

 Sub-Divisional Magistrate

 Executive Magistrate specifically empowered in this behalf by the state government or the District Magistrate.

The officer under section 174 of the CrPC is also required to proceed to the place where body of such person is found, and in the presence of two respectable inhabitants of the society prepare a report on the apparent cause of death which in brief describes the wounds found on the body of the person, injury marks, and the weapon by which any such injury is caused may be caused.

Such a report shall be signed by the police officer making the same by the persons who were present during the making of such report, and thereafter the report must be forwarded to the District Magistrate or Sub-Divisional Magistrate. The report, in common parlance, is called a Panchnama, and in this particular case when it relates to the death of a person, it is called an Inquest Panchnama.

It must be noted that generally, the term panchnama is used as a synonym or a substitute for a report made by police officer for recovery or seizure of any article or, in cases of death of a person, the details enlisting apparent cause of death as stated above. In case of a crime scene, the panchnama contains details of the place where the crime is alleged to have been committed. The said seizure of articles or the report of death or report of the crime scene is made in the presence of witnesses who are referred to as panch witnesses. The said report is nothing but a report of the events that transpired as witnessed by the panch witnesses. The panchnama forms a very crucial piece of evidence during the criminal trial.

When the case relates to death of a woman within seven years of her marriage:

 due to suicide, and

 when there is a reasonable suspicion of murder or abetment of suicide, and

 when such death is reported and request is made by a relative, and

 there is doubt regarding cause of death,

or when the police officer considers it expedient to do so, they shall send the body of such woman for examination to the nearest Civil Surgeon or a government authorized medical practitioner. The police officer must take care to send the body for examination without unnecessary delay that may put the body at a risk of putrefaction, that is, decay, therefore rendering the examination useless.

After conducting such investigation and forwarding the report, the Police Officer is empowered to summon any person who has witnessed the proceedings as mentioned above (that is, the panch witnesses) and also any other person who according to the police officer is acquainted with the facts of the case. Such summons shall be served upon the concerned person by way of an order in writing.

Every person so summoned shall be liable to answer all the questions truthfully except for those question, the answers to which may expose such a person to a criminal charge, penalty or forfeiture. This provision under Section 175 of the CrPC is analogous with the statement recorded by the police under Section 161 of the CrPC, which has been dealt with in detail in the previous article of this series.

Chargesheet

Now let us understand the final stage of investigation of the police, that is, submission of the final report before the concerned Court of Law, also known as submission of the chargesheet.

The police, after completion of investigation, has to submit its report under section 173 before the Court of Magistrate, or when the offence is triable exclusively by Sessions Court, before the Sessions Court.

Section 173 mandates that the investigation of the offence has to be completed without unnecessary delay.

Specific provision for expeditious investigation (apart from as provided under Section 167 of the CrPC) has been made under section 173 in respect of matters pertaining to offences of sexual violence against a woman enumerated in the Indian Penal Code. It is mandatory for the police to complete its investigation within two months in cases of such offences.

After completion of investigation, a police report consisting of the following details must be filed before the concerned Magistrate or the Court of Sessions, as the case may be.

 the names of the parties;

 the nature of the information;

 the names of the persons who appear to be acquainted with the circumstances of the case;

 whether any offence appears to have been committed and, if so, by whom;

 whether the accused has been arrested;

 whether he has been released on his bond and, if so, weather with or without sureties;

 whether he has been forwarded in custody under Section 170

 whether the report of medical examination of the woman has been attached, where investigation relates to  [an offence of sexual violence under]  the Indian Penal Code.

In the event, as seen in the earlier articles of this series, that a superior officer has been appointed by a general or a special order by the state government under Section 158 of the CrPC, then the report shall be forwarded to the concerned magistrate or the court of sessions, as the case may be, by such superior officer only. However, until the order of the Magistrate is received, such superior officer is empowered to direct the officer in charge of the police station to conduct further investigation.

Further, if during pendency of the investigation, an accused person is released on his bond, the Magistrate shall then, on submission of such report, pass an order to discharge the said bond. In exceptional circumstances and on recording of reasons, the magistrate may pass a different order (that is, other than discharging the bond) as he thinks fit.

Whenever a case falls under the category of Section 170 , that is, where there is sufficient evidence to forward the case to the Magistrate, it is imperative upon the Investigating Officer to forward all the relevant documents or the relevant extracts/portions of such documents which the prosecution seeks to rely upon in support of its case against the accused person, as well as statement of all such witnesses recorded under section 161 whom the prosecution seeks to examine during the trial to establish the guilt of an accused person.

In ordinary course of business, it is mandatory for the Investigating Agency to serve the entire set of the report, including statements of witnesses, panchnamas, and relevant portions of station diary, among other things, as is submitted before the concerned Magistrate or the Sessions Court, as the case may be, to the accused person. However, an exception for this has been carved out under section 173(6) , wherein if the Police officer making the investigation and submitting the report is of the opinion that some part of the statement of a witness as annexed along with the chargesheet is not relevant, or that disclosure of the same to the accused is not in the interest of justice and public at large, then they can make a request to the concerned magistrate or the Sessions Court, as the case may be, marking the portion of such statement and appending a note stating out reasons for excluding the same from the copies to be served upon the accused person.

Such an exception is usually applicable in cases of terrorism, organized crime or offences against national security, in which the report contains statements of complainant(s) and witness(es) against the accused persons. Therefore, for the safety of such complainant(s) and witnesses(es), a truncated copy of the chargesheet is served upon the accused, wherein the names and details of complainant(s) and witness(es) are generally erased or hidden by the use of a whitener, and a xerox copy of the same is then served upon the accused person.

Otherwise, it is mandatory to serve the entire set of the chargesheet, free of cost, to the accused person and an accused can claim it as a matter of right since he has a right to defend himself, and to exercise the said right, it is necessary for him to understand the exact nature of allegation and accusation against him.

Submitting the final report marks the competition of police investigation. However, that does not end the right of the police to conduct a further investigation, and provision for the same has been made under section 173(8) . There is no legal impediment or bar on the powers of the police to conduct further investigation after submitting its initial report to the Magistrate or the Court of sessions, as the case may be, as contemplated under section 173(2) . In the event that during the further investigation, the officer in-charge of the police station obtains further evidence, a report of such evidence shall be forwarded to the concerned Magistrate or the Sessions Court, as the case may be, in the same prescribed form in which the initial report was submitted.

Such a report of further investigation, in common parlance, is referred to as a supplementary chargesheet.

If there is more than one person accused of the offence under investigation and not all the accused persons are arrested until the submission of the final report, the police, bound by the time limit discussed earlier in the article on Default Bail , will generally submit its report with all the relevant details as available at the relevant time within the time limit, saving its right to conduct further investigation, by naming the accused persons not arrested as wanted, accused or absconding accused. Thereafter, in the event that during further investigation, all or any of the absconding accused persons in the concerned crime are apprehended and arrested, a report containing details of their arrest, evidence against them (which was not earlier submitted before the Magistrate or the Sessions Court, as the case may be) and any other evidence which was obtained during such further investigation, shall be forwarded before the concerned magistrate or sessions court, as the case may be, in the form of a supplementary chargesheet.

Right to default bail accrues in case of incomplete chargesheet

Sections 167 and 173 of the CrPC are closely connected, since section 167 sets up a time limit to file the police report/chargesheet, and section 173 enlists all the required documents to be included in the report. The indefeasible right to default bail under section 167 can also be availed if an incomplete police report/chargesheet is filed.

A police report/chargesheet would be incomplete if any of the details as mentioned under section 173(2) are not included in the police report. Basically, when the police report/chargesheet submitted falls short of making out a case against the accused for want of necessary details to be included in the report, the same shall be termed as an incomplete chargesheet.

A controversy has arisen recently in view of a series of contradictory judgments of various High Courts across the country as to what constitutes an incomplete chargesheet in respect of offences under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985 [NDPS Act]. The disputed point is whether non-obtaining or non-filing of the report of chemical analysis along with the final report/chargesheet would amount to an incomplete chargesheet, thereby enabling an accused person to avail the right under section 167(2) of the CrPC read with Section 36A of the NDPS Act.

The crux of the issue is that the chemical analysis report forms an essential part of the case under the NDPS Act since it gives evidence for presence or absence of drugs; without the same, the court is in no position to ascertain whether the substance allegedly recovered is covered within the ambit of the statute. There have been instances where the chemical analysis report has been negative (that is, no drugs were found in the samples). In such cases, the custody of the accused is rendered illegal. Consideration of the said issue is now pending before the Supreme Court. Hopefully, the Supreme Court will give a ruling on the same at the earliest to settle the legal position.

This brings us to an end to the powers and duties of the police in conducting investigations. The succeeding articles shall deal with the procedure and powers of courts to conduct a criminal trial.

(Advait Tamhankar is an advocate practising criminal law across courts and legal fora in Mumbai, Thane and Panvel.)
MBABANE - Revive the economy first before constructing Parliament village!

Some Members of Parliament (MPs) are of the view that it is bad timing for government to build them houses and offices under the current state of the economy. In their view, government should halt the plans at least until the economy of the country is back on its feet. The building of houses is included in the proposed plan to construct a new Parliament building which saw government seeking a E1.6 billion loan from India. The legislators said the design for the proposed houses for legislators could be put aside while government focused on other priority areas such as provision of medication in healthcare facilities and rehabilitation of roads. The legislators said it would not be a good idea for government to build houses for legislators while some places were inaccessible due to the bad state of the countrys roads, especially after the heavy rains. It should be noted, however, that even if the proposed plan comes to fruition, it will not benefit the legislators in the current term of office.

Construction

This is because the 120 houses are expected to be built as part of the second phase of the construction of the new Parliament building, which has not even commenced yet, and there is no guarantee that the MPs would be re-elected and be in office once the project is completed. The legislators pointed out that there were serious concerns about the shortage of medication in the countrys hospitals. Lomahasha MP Ndumiso Masimula said the housing project could sell the legislators to the voters who elected them if allowed during these critical times.

He stated that allowing the housing project could appear to the voters as if MPs were not defending their interests in Parliament.

I am not against development but there are things that I do not agree with 100 per cent. When the idea came about, we were told that the proposed new Parliament building would cover 80 hectares. We were disturbed to learn that the portion of land had been reduced but still at the same amount. Another issue was the building material which will be imported from India.

We are living at critical times, where many people lost their jobs due to COVID-19. I think government should consider creating jobs to mitigate the situation before we can talk about the houses, Masimula said.

Ntfonjeni MP Sifiso Magagula said when the MPs passed the E1.6 billion loan for the proposed Parliament building, they were never told that government would contribute about E800 million towards the same project. He said it was bad timing for government to part with E800 million for the project while emaSwati were concerned about lack of medication in hospitals.

He stated that emaSwati were also concerned about the bad state of the roads across the country. Magagula was asked if as MPs they had a chance to advise government on areas of priority before it was too late.

In response, the MP stated that they had tried but that at times, they became committed in different portfolios, making it difficult for them to join other committees to make an input.

Somntongo MP Dumisani Mbhamali shared the same sentiments as Masimula, stating that allowing the housing project could sell the MPs out to the voters who elected them into Parliament. He said emaSwati were concerned about the roads and lack of medication in hospitals. Mbhamali said building the houses for legislators could add salt to the wound, judging from the current situation in the country.

Yes, I fully agree that we are at times exposed to risks as we have to drive long distances after working long hours, but having said that, we should not waste money over something that can wait for the economic recovery. Let us have proper roads and sufficient medication before we can build the houses, he said. Kwaluseni MP Sibusiso Mabhanisi Dlamini said in as much as the proposed new Parliament building, which went along with the houses for legislators, was a necessity and relevant with the times, the houses could wait.

Attention

Dlamini said in his view, there was a lot that needed attention than the houses. He said the design for the houses could be put aside until the countrys economy stabilised. Lets do justice to our economy before we can build houses for legislators. It is true some MPs come from as far as Lavumisa and Lomahasha but Lobamba is central for almost all of us. It is not like one drives from Piggs Peak to Lavumisa, he said. Dlamini added that it was unfortunate that every loan had conditions attached to the proposed project. This, he said, meant that a loan could not be diverted to another project once approved. He said he would have advised that the E800 million be diverted to other priority areas.

The legislator stated that having made his honest opinion, the fact remained that Eswatini was still far behind when compared to other Parliament buildings in the world. Our Parliament still lacks working equipment. MPs in other countries use software while we are still using hard copies, he said. Meanwhile, Mkhiweni MP Ndlelayekuphila Masuku said MPs were not to blame for the proposed housing project. He said the housing project was proposed some time ago given that the current structure was not relevant with the present times. He said the current structure was designed for almost 25 MPs back when the country started having its elected MPs. It is unfortunate that the current structure cannot even accommodate dignitaries whose countries put in money to improve infrastructure. The current structure does not even have enough space at the public gallery which deprives people of their right to follow Parliament proceedings, he said.

Masuku also mentioned that the proposed housing project would not be waste of money as people might perceive. He said there was a lot of money that was being wasted in unplanned projects. The politician said a lot of money was wasted in the government tendering process and procurement system. A lot of money is wasted through corruption. I think the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) can play a vital role in ensuring that those who are engaged in corrupt practices are brought to book, he said. Manzini North MP Macford Sibandze requested not to comment on the issue. Aseyingengce lena, hamba kulabanye, he said briefly.

Meanwhile, Mbabane West MP Musa Zwane also requested to comment after having seen the story. The MPs were interviewed after our sister publication, the Times SUNDAY, reported that government was planning to build a residential village which comprised of 120 houses for parliamentarians and other Parliament staff along with the proposed new Parliament building.

A rough estimation by Kukhanyeni MP Malavi Sihlongonyane pointed out that taxpayers might part with about E800 million towards the project. Sihlongonyane was quoted by our sister publication having said his calculation had pointed out that a third of the amount would come from government.

Politicians

It should be noted that even though this project is meant to benefit politicians, it is a fact that government currently has a challenge maintaining houses it built for civil servants. In fact, in 2009, the Ministry of Public Works and Transport assigned consultants to engage in a study that reviewed the costs related to the provision and maintenance of the housing benefit to civil servants, approximated to be E30 million per year, calculated by adding the cost of maintenance, leased houses and municipality rates. The study, at the time, relayed that government was experiencing a shortfall of close to E79 million per year in maintaining housing benefits for civil servants. The study reflected that this amount excluded the cost of rehabilitation and capital projects. Recently, government announced a plan to sell some of the houses and to no longer offer accommodation to civil servants.
The Supreme Court on Monday reiterated its concern regarding fake claims for COVID death compensation, and added it may direct a probe by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) in this matter.

The top court suggested that inquiry into alleged fake death claims could be entrusted to the auditor general's office.

A bench comprising Justices MR Shah and BV Nagarathna said: "We never visualized that this kind of fake claims could come. It's a pious world. We never thought this scheme could be misused."

The bench added that if some officers are also involved in it, then it is 'very serious'. Advocate Gaurav Kumar Bansal pointed out at the Section 52 in the Disaster Management Act, which addresses such concerns. Justice Shah said: "we need somebody to file a complaint".

A counsel suggested to do random examination of the compensation claims by the state legal services authorities. On the aspect of compensation to children, the top court clarified that ex gratia payment of Rs50,000, ordered by it, is to be paid for each death due to COVID-19 and not to each child of the affected family.

On 7th March, the Supreme Court expressed concern at doctors issuing fake medical certificates to people for claiming ex-gratia compensation for COVID deaths, and added that it might order a probe into the matter.

The Centre had submitted that an outer-limit may be fixed for submitting COVID death related claims, otherwise the process will become endless, and added that some state governments have come across fake medical certificates issued by doctors. Mehta also pointed out that the apex court's order on ex-gratia compensation, through a doctor's certificate, has been misused in certain cases.

Expressing concern on fake medical certificates, the bench said: "What is worrying is the fake certificate given by doctors..." The bench added, "it is a very serious thing."

The top court also agreed with Mehta's submissions that there should be a time limit for registering COVID death claims. The bench said: "There must be some time-limit, otherwise the process will go endlessly...."

The top court is hearing a plea filed by advocate Gaurav Bansal in connection with the disbursal of ex-gratia compensation by state governments to the families of COVID victims. The top court is monitoring the disbursal of Rs50,000 ex-gratia for COVID-19 deaths by various state governments.

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.
The usage and propagation of Right to Information (RTI) are moving at a fast pace because of citizen enthusiasm and desire for accountable governance. The biggest gain has been empowering individual citizens to translate the promise of democracy of the people, by the people, for the people into a living reality. The law, as framed by the Parliament, has outstandingly codified this fundamental right of citizens. When framing the law, cognisance had been taken of various landmark decisions of the Supreme Court on this subject. One of the objectives of this law, mentioned in its preamble, is to contain corruption. It is a simple, easy-to-understand statute that common people can understand. However, there are some decisions of information commissions and courts which are constricting this fundamental right of citizens which is neither sanctioned by the Constitution or the law.

This paper is an effort to highlight one such instancethe Girish Ramchandra Deshpande judgmentwhich is resulting in an effective amendment of the law without Parliamentary sanction. The denial of information has been justified on the basis of Section 8 (1) (j), which allows denial of information for:

(j) information which relates to personal information the disclosure of which has no relationship to any public activity or interest, or which would cause unwarranted invasion of the privacy of the individual unless the Central Public Information Officer or the State Public Information Officer or the appellate authority, as the case may be, is satisfied that the larger public interest justifies the disclosure of such information:

Provided that the information, which cannot be denied to the Parliament or a State Legislature shall not be denied to any person.

The RTI Act mandates that all citizens have the right to information, subject to the provisions of the Act.

Section 7 (1) clearly states that information can only be refused for the reasons specified in Sections 8 and 9. Section 22 of the Act ensures that no prior laws or rules can be used to deny information.

I would also draw attention to the fact that the reasonable restrictions which may be placed on the freedom of expression under Article 19 (1) (a) have been mentioned in Article 19 (2) in the constitution as affecting the interests of the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States, public order, decency or morality or in relation to contempt of court, defamation or incitement to an offence.

It is worth remembering two judgements of the Supreme Court. A five-judge bench has ruled in P Ramachandra Rao vs State of Karnataka case no(appeal (crl.) 535): Courts can declare the law, they can interpret the law, they can remove obvious lacunae and fill the gaps but they cannot entrench upon in the field of legislation properly meant for the legislature.

In Rajiv Singh Dalal (Dr) vs Chaudhari Devilal University, Sirsa and another (2008), the Supreme Court, after referring to its earlier decisions, has observed as follows. The decision of a Court is a precedent if it lays down some principle of law supported by reasons. Mere casual observations or directions without laying down any principle of law and without giving reasons does not amount to a precedent.

The Supreme Courts judgement in the Girish Ramchandra Deshpande (Special Leave Petition (Civil) No. 27734 of 2012) judgement is being treated as the law throughout the country and I will argue that this has the effect of amending Section 8 (1) (j) without legitimacy.

This paper will seek to show that the impugned judgement does not lay down the law and is being wrongly used to constrict the citizens fundamental right to information.

Girish Ramchandra Deshpande had sought copies of memos, show-cause notices and censure and punishment awarded to a public servant. He had also demanded details of assets and gifts received by him. Since the central information commission (CIC) gave an adverse ruling, he finally went to the Supreme Court.

The main part of the judgement states:

12. The petitioner herein sought for copies of all memos, show cause notices and censure/punishment awarded to the third respondent from his employer and also details viz. movable and immovable properties and also the details of his investments, lending and borrowing from Banks and other financial institutions. Further, he has also sought for the details of gifts stated to have accepted by the third respondent, his family members and friends and relatives at the marriage of his son. The information mostly sought for finds a place in the income tax returns of the third respondent. The question that has come up for consideration is whether the above-mentioned information sought for qualifies to be personal information as defined in clause (j) of Section 8(1) of the RTI Act.

13. We are in agreement with the CIC and the courts below that the details called for by the petitioner i.e. copies of all memos issued to the third respondent, show cause notices and orders of censure/punishment etc. are qualified to be personal information as defined in clause (j) of Section 8(1) of the RTI Act. The performance of an employee/officer in an organisation is primarily a matter between the employee and the employer and normally those aspects are governed by the service rules which fall under the expression personal information, the disclosure of which has no relationship to any public activity or public interest. On the other hand, the disclosure of which would cause unwarranted invasion of privacy of that individual. Of course, in a given case, if the Central Public Information Officer or the State Public Information Officer of the Appellate Authority is satisfied that the larger public interest justifies the disclosure of such information, appropriate orders could be passed but the petitioner cannot claim those details as a matter of right.

14. The details disclosed by a person in his income tax returns are personal information which stand exempted from disclosure under clause (j) of Section 8(1) of the RTI Act, unless involves a larger public interest and the Central Public Information Officer or the State Public Information Officer or the Appellate Authority is satisfied that the larger public interest justifies the disclosure of such information.

A careful reading of the RTI Act shows that personal information held by a public authority may be denied under section 8(1)(j), under the following two circumstances:

a) Where the information requested is personal information and the nature of the information requested is such that it has apparently no relationship to any public activity or interest; or

b) Where the information requested is personal information, and the disclosure of the said information would cause unwarranted invasion of the privacy of the individual.

If the information is personal information, it must be seen whether the information came to the public authority as a consequence of a public activity. Generally, most of the information in public records arises from a public activity.

Applying for a job, or ration card are examples of public activity.

However, some personal information may be with public authorities that is not a consequence of public activity, e.g., medical records when taking treatment from a government hospital or transactions with a public sector bank.

Similarly, a public authority may come into possession of some information during a raid or seizure or as a consequence of phone tapping, which may have no relationship to any public activity.

Even if the information has not arisen by a public activity, it could still be exempt if disclosing it would be an unwarranted invasion of an individuals privacy.

Privacy is to do with matters within a home, a persons body, or sexual preferences as mentioned in the apex courts earlier decisions in Kharak Singh and R Rajagopal cases.

This is in line with Article 19 (2), which permits placing reasonable restrictions on Article 19 (1) (a) in the interest of decency or morality. Suppose, however, it is felt that the information is not the result of any public activity, or disclosing it would be an unwarranted invasion on the privacy of an individual.

In that case, it must be subjected to the acid test of the proviso: Provided that the information, which cannot be denied to the Parliament or a State Legislature shall not be denied to any person.

The proviso is meant as a test that must be applied before denying information claiming exemption under Section 8 (1) (j). Public servants have been used to answering questions raised in Parliament and the Legislature. It is difficult for them to develop the attitude of answering demands for information from citizens.

Hence, before denying personal information, the law has given an acid test: If they come to the subjective assessment, that they would not provide the information to members of Parliament (MPs) and members of legislative assembly (MLAs) they can deny it to the citizen.

If disclosure of personal information is likely to violate decency or morality, it should not be provided to Parliament and, hence, can be denied to citizens as well.

Another perspective is that personal information is to be denied to citizens based on the presumption that disclosure would cause serious harm to some interest of an individual. If however, the information can be given to the legislature, it means the likely harm is not very serious since what is given to the legislature will be in the public domain.

The first draft of the Bill which had been presented to the Parliament in December 2004 had the proviso as Section 8 (2) and stated: (2) Information which cannot be denied to Parliament or iegislature of a state, as the case may be, shall not be denied to any person.

In the final draft passed by Parliament in May 2005, this Section was put as a proviso only for Section 8 (1) (j).

Thus, it was a conscious choice of Parliament to have this as a proviso only for Section 8 (1) (j). It is necessary that when information is denied based on the provision of Section 8 (1) (j), the public information officer (PIO), first appellate authority (FAA) or information commissioner or a judge denying the information must give his subjective assessment that he would deny the information to Parliament or state legislature if sought.

It is worth noting that in the Privacy Bill 2014, it was proposed that sensitive personal data should be defined as personal data relating to: (a) physical and mental health including medical history, (b) biometric, bodily or genetic information, (c) criminal convictions (d) password, (e) banking credit and financial data (f) narco analysis or polygraph test data, (g) sexual orientation. Provided that any information that is freely available or accessible in public domain or to be furnished under the Right to Information Act 2005 or any other law for time being in force shall not be regarded as sensitive personal data for the purposes of this Act.

Only if a reasoned conclusion is reached that the information has no relationship to any public activity or that disclosure would be an unwarranted invasion on an individuals privacy, a subjective assessment has to be made whether it would be given to Parliament or state legislature. If it is felt that it would not be given, then an assessment has to be made as Section 8 (2) whether there is a larger public interest in disclosure than the harm to the protected interest. If no exemption applies, there is no requirement of showing a larger public interest.

The Court has ruled without giving any legal arguments merely by saying that this is personal information as defined in clause (j) of Section 8(1) of the RTI Act and, hence, exempted.

The only reason ascribed in this decision is that the Court agrees with the CICs decision. Such a decision does not form a precedent which must be followed. It cannot be justified by Article 19 (2) of the constitution or by the complete provision of Section 8 (1) (j). As per the RTI act, denial of information can only be on the basis of the exemptions in the law. The court has denied information by reading Section 8 (1) (j) as exempting:

information which relates to personal information the disclosure of which has no relationship to any public activity or interest, or which would cause unwarranted invasion of the privacy of the individual unless the Central Public Information Officer or the State Public Information Officer or the appellate authority, as the case may be, is satisfied that the larger public interest justifies the disclosure of such information:

Provided that the information, which cannot be denied to the Parliament or a State Legislature shall not be denied to any person .

This is not consonant with the RTI Act, or Ratio decidendi of earlier Supreme Court judgement in the R Rajagopal case, or Article 19 (2) of the Constitution. There are no words in the judgment,- or the CIC decision which it has accepteddiscussing whether the disclosure has any relationship to a public activity, or if disclosure would be an unwarranted invasion on the privacy.

The words which have been struck above have not been considered at all and information was denied merely on the basis that it was personal information.

Worse still, the proviso Provided that the information.. (underlined above) has not even been mentioned and while quoting Section 8 (1) (j) the proviso has been missed . Effectively only 40 of the 87 words in this Section were considered.

The Supreme Court judgement in the ADR/PUCL Civil Appeal 7178 of 2001 has laid down that citizens have a right to know about the assets of those who want to be public servants (stand for elections). It should be obvious that if citizens have a right to know about the assets of those who want to become public servants, their right to get information about those who are public servants cannot be lesser. This would be tantamount to arguing that a prospective groom must declare certain matters to his wife-to-be, but after marriage the same information need not be disclosed!

The Girish Ramchandra Deshpande judgement should not be treated as a precedent which must be followed for the following reasons:

It is devoid of any detailed reasoning and does not lay down a ratio.

It does not analyse whether a record of the public servants work and assets is information which is a public activity or not. RTI only deals with the public records with government. The judgement, when stating that certain matters are between the employee and the employer, misses the fact that the employer is the people of India.

It has completely forgotten the proviso to Section 8 (1) (j) which requires subjecting a proposed denial to this acid test.

It has not considered the clear ratio of the Rajagopal judgement or the ADR/PUCL judgement and, hence, is per incuriam. It also violates Article 19 (2) of the Constitution. The Rajagopal judgment clearly lays down that except for what violates decency or morality the claim for privacy cannot be sustained for public records.

This has become the most commonly used exemption. In RK Jain vs Union of India JT 2013 (10) SC 430, this was reiterated when denying information about the comments on the integrity of an official by the chairman of CESTAT. This referred to the Girish Deshpande judgement enthusiastically and held it as a precedent.

Subsequently in Canara Bank vs CS Shyam, Civil appeal no. 22 of 2009 the Supreme Court refused names and details of officials transferred holding this as personal information and quoting the Girish Deshpande judgment. In CPIO, Supreme Court vs Subhash Chandra Agrawal civil appeal no. 10004, again the Girish Deshpande judgement has been mentioned approvingly.

Effectively the law has been amended and most information that can be called personal is being denied. This conceals corruption protects people who have submitted false bills or certificates. It also ensures that fictitious beneficiaries of various schemes cannot be caught. The laws objective of curbing corruption is being defeated.

Across the country, information about MLA funds expenditure, officers leave, caste certificates, file notings, educational degrees, beneficiaries of subsidies and much more are being denied. Many PIOs deny information that may have a persons name, claiming it is personal information. This has become a convenient tool to deny information.

In most cases, some person is involved and, hence, it can be claimed as personal information. Consequently, PIOs find this a very useful tool to deny information when they do not wish to provide information.

A major provision of the RTI Act has been amended by a judicial pronouncement that appears to be flawed. It is also violating Article 19 (2) of the Constitution. A primary tool of citizens to bring the shenanigans, arbitrary and corrupt acts of public servants has been affected adversely without proper reasoning.

Commissioners must discuss this and it must be recognised that Girish Ramchandra Deshpande ruling does not lay down the law on Section 8 (1) (j) of the RTI Act, and is contrary to the ratio of the RRajagopaI and ADR judgements.

However, the Girish Ramchandra Deshpande judgement has been treated as a precedent in three subsequent Supreme Court judgements and is being used to deny information that the PIO does not wish to part with.

Effectively, the law has been amended and most information that can be called personal is being denied. This conceals corruption, protects people who have submitted false bills or certificates and makes it impossible to get accountability and arbitrariness in governance. The laws objective of curbing corruption is being defeated. This is also contrary to Section 4 (1)(b)(xii).

PIOs, information commissioners and judges are using this widely to deny all information that relates to any person, and the Right to Information Act is being subverted and illegally converted into a Right to Denial of Information.

Section 8 (1) (j) is being converted into an omnibus exemption which can be used to deny most information. This will be a very unfortunate regression for citizens fundamental rights and would significantly curb its power to get accountability and corruption.

There is a great need for lawyers, judges and RTI practitioners to discuss this denial of fundamental rights which appears to be a constriction of citizens fundamental rights under Article 19 (1)(a).
A special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court on Monday sent Chitra Ramkrishna, former managing director and chief executive officer (MD & CEO) of National Stock Exchange (NSE), to 14 days of judicial custody. She will be lodged at Tihar Jail. The CBI is probing the alleged abuse of the Exchanges server architecture for granting preferential access of market data to a stockbroker ahead of others.

A CBI court also refused to give VIP treatment to Ms Ramkrishna. "Every Person is the same. She cannot be a VIP prisoner because of what she had been. Rules cannot be changed," observed the judge.



However, the court permitted her to carry four books, including a copy of Hanuman Chalisa and Bhagwad Gita, for prayers.



Ms Ramkrishna was produced before the special court after the expiry of her custodial remand. The court remanded her to 14-day judicial custody.

Ms Ramkrishna was arrested on 7th March, a day after the special court in Delhi dismissed her petition for a pre-arrest bail plea and pulled up the CBI for inaction and being lackadaisical in the probe against her over the past four years.

While rejecting her counsels request for home-cooked food in jail, special judge Sanjeev Aggarwal also asked Ms Ramkrishna to be physically produced before the court on 28th March, Ive also had it... Its good, the judge remarked.

The court also turned down the lawyers plea to allow her to carry masks.

The CBI in its submission told the special court that Anand Subramanian was well connected with Ms Ramkrishna prior to his engagement as her chief strategic adviser at NSE. His wife Sunitha Subramanian also served as the regional head of NSE at Chennai from April 2011, the agency says.

As reported by Moneylife, the enforcement directorate (ED) has stepped in to examine a possible money laundering angle in the NSE co-location (Colo) scam.

Over the past few days, CBI has taken statements from all the senior NSE officials who had been named in the show-cause notices issued by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) over the past seven years.

Many senior officials from NSE, having recorded their statements, have been made to confront Ms Ramkrishna, the former MD and CEO who quit the Exchange in 2016. However, Ms Ramkrishna, say sources, has steadfastly denied all responsibility for the Colo scam and claimed that only the technology team would have answers to issues like preferential access.

We learn that the CBI team has done extensive work on the scam and seems up-to-date with all developments. However, it is not clear if they are correctly focused on who are the beneficiaries of the crooked system, which was facilitated by a porous and easy-to-manipulate access system.

It is also unclear if the focus is on Ms Ramkrishna or Ravi Narain, former MD and CEO of NSE. After all, Colo and high-frequency trading (HFT), including scandals, had happened long before NSE began trading (Michael Lewiss book Flash Boys is all about it). Hence, it is hard to believe that the Exchange forgot to put in place a process that ensured a level playing field for very large investors, who put through millions of trades in seconds. ( Read: Moneylife Exclusive: Enforcement Directorate Steps in to Probe Money Laundering Angle in NSE Colo Scam

The Colo case dates to 2015 when Moneylife published a letter by a whistle-blower going by the name Ken Fong in June 2015 . The whistle-blower alleged that NSE officials were selectively allowing a few brokers to reap massive profits through preferential access to its Colo servers in the form of early log-in or access to servers with low trading loads.

In February last year, SEBIs adjudication officer imposed a penalty of Rs1 crore on NSE for its failure to ensure a level playing field for trading members subscribing to its tick-by-tick (TBT) data feed. NSEs former MD and CEO Mr Narain and Ms Ramkrishna were penalised with a fine of Rs25 lakh each.

Before that in April 2019, SEBI had ordered disgorgement of profits from NSE and salaries of former MDs, Ravi Narain and Chitra Ramkrishna. The regulator has also asked the Exchange to disgorge an amount of Rs624.89 crore along with interest calculated at the rate of 12% per annum to the Investor Education and Protection Fund (IEPF).

You may also want to read:
Shortage of sunflower oil amid the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war has sent crude palm oil prices through the roof.

The geo-political worries in the Black Sea region has a significant bearing on sunflower seed and its oil supply from the region, as both countries involved in the war are major sources for the oilseed.

India is a major importer of crude palm oil, as the country meets more than two-thirds of its edible oil needs through imports, of which palm oil accounts for more than 60%.

India imports more than 2.5mn (million) tonnes of sunflower oil, including from Russia and Ukraine.

In reaction to possible supply disruption of sunflower oil, palm oil prices rallied sharply as all the edible oils track each other's prices as they compete in the market for price realisation and any potential supply disruption for one variant buoys the prices of others.

"The war between Ukraine and Russia shook the major supply of sunflower oil, thereby disrupting the demand and supply of the entire global edible oil (market). India is one of the largest importers of sunflower oil, importing more than 2.5 million tonnes. Dependence on sunflower oil from other large producers like Europe and Argentina seems to be very low as both these countries are largest domestic consumers," said Vinod TP, Research Analyst at Geojit Financial Services.

"With regard to Argentina, due to higher prices, lower output and higher shipment cost, the move for importing sunflower oil fromm there is likely to be on the lower side. As India is diverse in culture and eating habits, people will mostly switch over to other edible oils which are available at a cheaper rate."

Vinod expects the dependence on soybean oil and palm oil to rise.

"Expectation of higher mustard production is likely to cushion some prices (of edible oils) in the near term," he said.

Rabi mustard is currently being harvested, and it will make its way into the markets in the next few days. Freshly harvested mustard pouring into the mandis will, to an extent, check the rising edible oil prices.

Taking cues from sunflower shortage and rally in crude palm oil prices, the global benchmark soybean oil prices have risen more than 10% since the start of the war.

Constantly falling soybean crop estimates from South American countries and Indonesia raising domestic allocation of palm oil consumption are likely to support crude palm oil prices, said brokerage house Kotak Securities.

Reportedly, the Indonesian government recently mandated a minimum proportion of production to be sold locally in a bid to curtail a dramatic rise in domestic cooking oil prices. Indonesia is the largest producer of oil palm, followed by Malaysia.

Despite several attempts made by the Centre to cool off edible oil prices, nothing much has happened.

In mid-2021, the Centre removed import restrictions on refined bleached deodorised palm oil, refined bleached deodorised palmolein, and another variant (palm oil and its fractions, whether or not refined, but not chemically modified) till 31 December 2021, which have now now been extended till the end of 2022.

Besides, in late-2021, the Centre reduced the basic Customs duty on refined palm oil from 17.5% to 12.5% till March 2022.

Dorab E. Mistry, Director of Godrej International, said recently at an event that the high energy prices may prolong because of which 2022 may be a year of stagflation.

World economic slowdown is expected to weigh on commodity prices, including palm oil, Mr Mistry said.

Further, stagflation may lead to recession. As a result, in the second half of 2022, a dramatic fall in commodity prices, including those of energy, are likely as demand may fall sharply, he said.

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.
The following is a press release from Big Sky Public Relations:

STEVENSVILLE, Mont. - Stevensville residents and commuters are getting closer to traveling a safer Eastside Highway. With the Stevensville Safety Improvements project now underway, the next phase requires the Montana Department of Transportation (MDT) and Schellinger Construction to close the Eastside Highway to all thru traffic between Bell Crossing and Victor Crossing between March 16 and 21.

In collaboration with local agencies, including the school districts and public services, we will make sure this closure is as smooth as possible for all, Jake North, Schellinger Construction Project Manager, said. We appreciate the publics patience and will do what we can to wrap this up quickly and safely.

This area, in which traffic had previously been regulated by pilot car, will now be closed to all thru vehicular traffic on the Eastside Highway between Bell Crossing and Victor Crossing. Thru traffic should follow the detour signs, which will lead them to a detour route along US 93 between Bell Crossing and Victor Crossing. The Eastside Highway will remain open to the residents living within the confines of the closure, but those residents will need to access the closed stretch via Victor Crossing. We ask all residents living within the closure to please proceed with caution within it.

This closure will allow crews to safely and efficiently remove the existing bridge install a culvert over Willoughby Creek at Gib Strange Lane. Crews will work around the clock inside the closure beginning Wednesday, March 16 at 6:00 p.m. until Monday, March 21 at 6:00 p.m. No construction activities will be conducted outside of the closure area while the closure is in place.

The completion of the Stevensville Safety Improvements project will result in four-foot shoulders on both sides and stabilized roadside slopes. Willoughby Lane will be realigned, and a new flashing light will be placed at Bell Crossing. Additionally, a new guardrail will be installed, and bridge replacements will occur. Upon completing these activities, crews will pave over the roads surface, seal the pavement, paint road lines, and install new signage. This project is slated to be completed this summer, just in time for recreational travel.

Throughout construction, Big Sky Public Relations will be sending weekly updates and is available to answer questions. Those interested in staying up to date are encouraged to email Amy Aiello at amy@bigskypublicrelations.com or call the project hotline at (406) 207-4484, Monday through Friday, from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. More information on the project can be found at https://www.mdt.mt.gov/pubinvolve/southstevi/.
March 14, 2022 Ukraine - Officials Announce False Flag Attack - Sanctions Hit Back There is significant danger that the Ukraine, the UK or the U.S. will launch a false flag attack in Ukraine. People have started to take note of the directional fear mongering that is coming from various 'western' officials. The Sirius Report @thesiriusreport - 23:36 UTC  Mar 12, 2022 Setting the scene for a false flag? Polish President:

If Putin uses weapons of mass destruction in Ukraine, NATO will have to think seriously about what to do. You would have to be sub 100 IQ not to see what is going on. To which I responded: Moon of Alabama @MoonofA - 17:56 UTC  Mar 13, 2022 They are indeed doing this on all channels.

IMHO an upcoming false flag attempt to get NATO into the fight. Historian and Russia expert Gilbert Doctorow points into the same direction: Warning: it is highly likely the United States is now about to carry out a false flag operation in Ukraine in which it will accuse the Russians of using chemical weapons.

...

The caption which yahoo.com is now carrying reads as follows: USA Today: Russia could be preparing for chemical weapons attack; 35 killed in strike on base near Lviv: Live updates Now why would Russia stage a chemical weapons attack in Ukraine? The idea defies all reason. Russia has vast possibilities of destroying Ukraine that it has not deployed to date precisely to avoid civilian casualties. These include cyber attack, electromagnetic pulse (EMP) and more intense use of its airpower which has been restrained due to shortage of smart bombs and reluctance to use munitions that might cause greater collateral damage. Given these manifest signs of Russian caution in staging the war, even at the cost of greater casualties among its own troops and slower progress in a campaign that is very time sensitive, one would have to be utterly mad to consider using universally banned chemical weapons. I rest my case: any so-called chemical attack which may be staged in Ukraine in coming days can only be the dirty work of the United States and its agents. Having seen how easy it was to deceive the 'western' media by staging a fake hospital attack one can easily understand how a fake 'chemical attack by Russia' would lead to a public stampede that would push NATO into the Ukraine war. Meanwhile Patrick Lancaster reports from Donetsk: Patrick Lancaster @PLnewstoday - 10:47 UTC  Mar 14, 2022 #BREAKING Dozens Killed By Ukrainian Cluster Bomb Attack On Center Donetsk. Full report coming soon

video The U.S. is trying to pressure China to join their anti-Russian campaign. Yesterday 'anonymous officials' claimed, without evidence, that Russia had asked China for military and economic aid. Moon of Alabama @MoonofA - 20:21 UTC  Mar 13, 2022 "U.S. officials said .." equals "Guaranteed to be a lie .." Quoted Tweet: Michael Birnbaum @michaelbirnbaum  17h

NEW, and BIG -> Russia has turned to China for military equipment and aid in the weeks since it began its invasion of Ukraine, U.S. officials said. @nakashimae scoop. https://washingtonpost.com/world/2022/03/.. "Scoop" now means picking up the phone when some official calls you to plant a lie. Russia is exporting weapons to China, not importing weapons from it. China has now confirmed that there were no such Russian requests: Beijing blasted Washingtons recent allegations as disinformation that Russia sought military assistance from China to conduct its special operation in Ukraine, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian said at a briefing on Monday. "The allegations on the matter disseminated by the US are false information," the diplomat specified. The first story on this also includes this lie: In recent days, Chinese diplomats, state media organizations and government agencies have used a range of platforms and official social media accounts to amplify a conspiracy theory that says the Pentagon has been financing biological and chemical weapons labs in Ukraine. That is not a conspiracy theory but, as Tulsi Gabbard points out, a hard fact which even the U.S. government now admits. The British press took note of it: Vladimir Putin could unleash biological weapon from seized Ukraine lab, experts fear The U.S. is delusional in its attempts to deter China from working with Russia: Jake Sullivan, the White House national security adviser, is scheduled to meet on Monday in Rome with Yang Jiechi, a member of the Chinese Communist Partys elite Politburo and director of the partys Central Foreign Affairs Commission. Mr. Sullivan intends to warn Mr. Yang about any future Chinese efforts to bolster Russia in its war or undercut Ukraine, the United States and their partners. We are communicating directly, privately to Beijing that there will absolutely be consequences for large-scale sanctions evasion efforts or support to Russia to backfill them, Mr. Sullivan said on CNN on Sunday. We will not allow that to go forward and allow there to be a lifeline to Russia from these economic sanctions from any country, anywhere in the world, he said. China will of course continue to have good relations with Russia. It is not for the U.S. 'to allow' or disallow China to trade with Russia. The Biden administration has nothing it could do about it. It should stop its campaign and think about how it can dig itself out of the huge hole it has jumped into. Reviewing the trade shock 'western' societies will now experience because of their extensive sanctions campaign against Russia Yves Smith concludes: Although the complexity of this situation makes it impossible to make any forecasts, consider: a worst case scenario is much much worse than stagflation. Just wrap your mind around the consequences the merely the two outcomes described above: a fair bit of famine and supply shortfalls, even potentially problems with maintaining some critical infrastructure due to chip scarcity. Some of that productive capacity loss could become permanent due to business failures. And let us remind you  so far we are discussing only what the West has done to itself. What happens if Russia goes full Smoot-Hawley and retaliates, or engages in the passive aggressive version, as in no formal pronunciations, just supplies go to friendlies and the West gets chocked down, not 100% but enough to feel like that. The Democratic Party is in the process of executing a controlled flight into terrain. Too bad that we are along for the ride. Yesterday and today there seemed to be only minor Russian movement on the battlefield. Presumably Russia is regrouping its forces for the next steps. What those are going to be is for anyone to guess. They will come as soon as the current negotiations between Kiev and Moscow fail. The U.S. will see for that to happen. Posted by b on March 14, 2022 at 14:27 UTC | Permalink Comments next page  next page 
Speaking on-stage at the Royal Albert Hall in London, Rebel quipped: "I look a bit different from when you last saw me. It's been two years since you saw me and I've done quite a transformation. I've lost quite a lot of weight ... I did it to get the attention of Robert Pattinson! You know what they say, once you go Bat, you don't go back!"



The 'Pitch Perfect' actress joked that her weight-loss efforts will help her to get more work in Hollywood.



Rebel added: "I'm joking. I didn't lose it for a guy - I lost it to get more acting work."



The movie star suggested that by losing weight, she'd also improved her chances of starring in an Adam Sandler film.

I'm so excited I can finally play the non-funny love interest in an Adam Sandler movie.

The opening of the awards ceremony featured a stunning rendition of 'Diamonds Are Forever' by Dame Shirley Bassey.
Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, one of the worlds leading luxury hospitality companies, and Diriyah Gate Development Authority (DGDA), the developer of the Diriyah master plan, have announced plans for Four Seasons Hotel Diriyah, Saudi Arabia.

A 300-year-old site located just outside of Riyadh, Diriyah is considered to be the birthplace of the kingdom and the capital of the first Saudi state. The area is home to the Unesco World Heritage Site, At-Turaif, the valley and lush palm groves of Wadi Hanifah, and will soon include the Diriyah development  an acclaimed project that pays homage to the history of Saudi Arabia.

Located 15 minutes from the centre of Riyadh, Diriyah will comprise 13 unique districts inclusive of residences, hospitality offerings, office space, retail, museums, cultural institutions, outdoor attractions and more. The development is a key driver of the Kingdoms Saudi Vision 2030.

Jerry Inzerillo, Group CEO of Diriyah Gate Development Authority, commented: It is a delight to be partnering with Four Seasons. Renowned for their unforgettable guest experiences, Four Seasons is working alongside DGDA to elevate what travellers can experience within Diriyah, showcasing their timeless approach to hospitality whilst staying true to Diriyahs rich cultural past. We are excited to share further developments on this project in the coming months.

Four Seasons Hotel Diriyah, Saudi Arabia will include approximately 150 luxuriously appointed rooms and suites, expansive meeting and event spaces, a wellness spa with seven treatment rooms and a fitness centre, as well as two outdoor pools with private cabanas. The Hotel will also offer four culinary outlets, including a poolside restaurant and Sunset lounge.

The Diriyah development will become one of the Middle Easts most walkable, pedestrianised cities, and upon completion will be the worlds largest cultural and heritage site. It has been designed to honour the heritage of the area with traditional Najdi architectural design principles, including low-rise, compact and organic architecture, rooftop terraces, decorated doors, and large courtyards. Each district within the development will be highly walkable with easy connections to the sights and attractions within the area.

Diriyah is an exceptional project that speaks to the tremendous growth and economic development in the region, while remaining deeply rooted in the destinations historic and cultural past, says Bart Carnahan, President, Global Business Development and Portfolio Management, Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts. Saudi Arabia is an important growth market for Four Seasons, and we are proud to be part of Diriyahs exciting future. We look forward to partnering with DGDA to bring the Four Seasons luxury experience to life within this iconic, landmark development.

The hotel will be located adjacent to Diriyahs culturally rooted district along the Wadi Hanifah escarpment, with incredible views towards the west and the Unesco World Heritage Site, At-Turaif. Inspired by local tradition, the hotel design will have a unique aesthetic that is being developed by leading design architects, Aedas and Elastik interior designers.

Four Seasons Hotel Diriyah, Saudi Arabia will join Four Seasons' growing portfolio of properties in the Middle East and will be a short drive from the existing Four Seasons Hotel Riyadh at Kingdom Centre. - TradeArabia News Service
MOULTRIE, Ga.  Its been delayed for two years, but later this month a Colquitt County native and a local pioneer will be recognized at the C
Midland ISD school board member John Trischitti III will run for reelection.

Trischitti is the board member for District 5. Currently, that district includes areas around Santa Rita Elementary, Emerson Elementary, San Jacinto Junior High, Goddard Junior High, Early College High School at Midland College and the growing State Highway 349 corridor in northeast Midland.

Trischitti is seeking his second term on the board, and in an announcement about his intention to run, the executive director of the Literacy Coalition of the Permian Basin said he will not seek another term on MISD school board in 2026.

I am looking forward to continuing serving the community and in an area I am passionate, literacy and education, Trischitti wrote, The cultivation of new leaders is also a priority, if re-elected I will mentor and encourage future candidates.

Trischitti wrote that the last three years have been some of the most trying in the history of Midland ISD. He pointed to the COVID challenges and changes in leadership that have made improving the quality of education for the students of our community ever more demanding.

I am a lifelong advocate for quality public education, as a product of public school myself and now sending my children to public school, Trischitti wrote. I have had children in MISD for the last 10 years and will continue to have a child in MISD until my youngest graduates in 2032. I want the best for all the students of Midland ISD.

Trischitti brings his experience as a literacy advocate to the board. Not only is he in a leadership position with the Literacy Coalition of the Permian Basin, but he is the former director of libraries for Midland County. Under his watch, the county went about transforming the Centennial and downtown branches. He also was named the 2014 Texas Library Association Librarian of the Year.

It is important that the district continues to work in close partnership with the MISD Education Foundation, local philanthropy, non-profit and faith-based organizations, businesses, local governmental entities, and community members to help ensure that our transformation is successful for the benefit of students, parents, and community, he wrote.

Trischitti wrote that he is a West Texas native, a graduate of Lubbock Coronado High School and Wayland Baptist University. He then received Masters of Library Science from the University of North Texas in Denton. His West Texas roots also include a short teaching stint in Brownfield ISD.

In the Midland community, Trischitti has served on Basin PBS and Midland Airport boards. He also is a past recipient of the Rosalind Redfern Library Benefactor Award and Nonprofit Management Center Beacon Award for Outstanding Organizational Leadership.

District 5 is one of three seats on the November ballot. The others are District 3 and District 6.
Cavendish Maxwell, an independent firm of chartered surveyors and property consultants in the Middle East, has appointed Jed Wolfe as Regional Director.

From its recently opened office in Manama (Bahrain), Wolfe will lead business growth across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

Chris Taylor, Group CEO, said: "We are delighted to have Jed on board to grow our existing business in Oman along with new jurisdictions like Bahrain. With his extensive knowledge and experience in the industry, he is well equipped to successfully expand our presence across the GCC. Jed will be instrumental in exploring new market opportunities and identifying demand for new service lines to support clients on the ground. His appointment supports our strategic objective to continue our expansion and to provide exceptional property services across the region.

Wolfe has 25 years of experience within the real estate industry and has held senior management positions for global property companies in the UK, KSA and Qatar. His expertise spans investment acquisitions and disposals, property and asset management, valuation and development consultancy for all property types and asset classes. He has worked closely with diverse businesses, including financial institutions, government and private entities, sovereign wealth funds and real estate funds. He is a certified valuer with the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) and the Bahrain Real Estate Regulatory Authority (RERA).

Wolfe said: I am thrilled to be part of the team at Cavendish Maxwell and excited about setting up operations in a dynamic market like Bahrain. With the recent implementation of RERAs Bahrain Valuation Standard (BVS) and other supportive government initiatives to regulate the real estate market, we see lots of opportunities here. As a leading regional service provider, we are ready to extend our tailored services from Manama where we recently opened an office to service clients in Bahrain.

The new office has a diversified team of local and international talent, and with support from the regional network and head office in Dubai, will offer clients a wide range of property services including specialist valuation, property management and owners association advisory, the company said. - TradeArabia News Service
Muskogee, OK (74401)

Today

Scattered thunderstorms during the morning becoming more widespread this afternoon. A few storms may be severe. High 67F. Winds ESE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 80%..

Tonight

Thunderstorms likely. Rainfall will be locally heavy at times. A few storms may be severe. Low 62F. Winds SE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%. 2 to 3 inches of rain expected.
The Middle East Poultry Expo is set to open today (March 14) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia with the participation of 150 companies from 30 countries in various sectors of the poultry industry.



Held under the theme Contribution to Enhancing Food Security the expo will run until March 16 at Riyadh International Convention and Exhibition Center, reported Saudi Press Agency (SPA).



The exhibition, first to be specialized in poultry at the level of the Middle East for commercial and scientific exchange between international importers and local investors, is being held under the patronage of Minister of Environment, Water and Agriculture Abdulrahman bin Abdulmohsen Al-Fadley.



In conjunction with the exhibition and under the organization of the World's Poultry Science Association, the Middle East and North Africa Poultry Conference will be held under the theme Poultry Production under High Environmental Conditions, which will attract more than 60 international speakers and experts from more than 11 countries, who will present 66 scientific research pieces and workshops.



The exhibition aims at forming an ideal work platform for participants of exhibitors, visitors and investors, which guarantees the maximum benefit from investment opportunities, scientific and commercial exchange and showcasing the latest research, innovations and products that enhance the sustainability and growth of the poultry sector that, for its part, contributes to enhancing food security and securing supply chains for this industry.



Saudi Arabia produces more than 995,000 tons of chicken and 406,000 tons of table egg annually, where the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is considered the biggest Gulf country in terms of area and population and the growing players in raising poultry in the Middle East thanks to its intensified investment in finding innovative solutions for regional challenges in producing poultry and meeting the increasing demand on poultry and its productions.



In a bid to stimulate investment, the ministry and the Agricultural Development Fund provide unprecedented funds and support to develop the poultry sector and expand local production with offering funds reaching up to 70% of capitals in projects with modern technologies that cover the poultry sector, where self-sufficiency in 2020 for eggs reached 116% and 65% for poultry in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
A 43-year-old man died after a standoff that lasted more than 12 hours in Carolina Forest on Saturday, according to Horry County Chief Deputy Coroner Tamara Willard.

Anthony Lee Rayfield was found in the burned second floor of his residence on Redleaf Rose Drive, Willard said in an email Monday. He died around 11:45 p.m.

The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division said it is investigating the incident at the request of Horry County police.

Shortly before 1 p.m. Saturday, Horry County police said the department was conducting an investigation on Redleaf Rose Drive in the Clear Pond neighborhood of Carolina Forest.

Police said they were responding to a barricaded wanted person in the house. Around 11:35 p.m., police said the house had caught on fire and it was heavily damaged. Two other nearby structures were also damaged.

"During several hours of negotiations the subject fired multiple rounds, including shooting at and destroying SLED equipment," said SLED Executive Affairs Director Ryan Alphin in an email. "SLED has no information that any law enforcement officer fired any rounds during the incident."

By 1:45 a.m. Sunday, police had cleared the scene.

Alphin added that SLED arson agents are conducting an origin and cause investigation into the fire at the residence.
UW in the News

State, national and international media frequently feature the University of Wyoming and members of its community in stories. Here is a summary of some of the recent coverage:

Science interviewed UW President Ed Seidel for an article titled Western nations cut ties with Russian science, even as some projects try to remain neutral. Seidel previously worked for the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech) in Moscow, Russia, in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Seidel has shelved an idea for a partnership he was exploring with a Skoltech colleague.

Anastasiia Pereverten, a Ukrainian exchange student at UW, and others organized a rally last week to show support for the people of Ukraine. The Laramie Boomerang reported on the event that took place on the UW campus. K2 Radio and Wyoming Public Radio carried related articles.

The Sheridan Press published a Casper Star-Tribune (CS-T) article that focused on how sanctions on Russia could impact Wyoming energy. UW economist Rob Godby was interviewed for the article.

Godby was quoted in a related CS-T article titled Gasoline prices topple records as sanctions mount. He also was interviewed for another CS-T article titled Gas prices are rising. Whose fault is it?

WyoFile interviewed Godby for a piece on how the response to Russias attack on Ukraine could drive Wyomings fossil fuel-reliant economy toward even more volatile territory.

Cowboy State Daily spoke with Jerry Fowler, a UW College of Law assistant professor, for an article that focused on the fact that Wyoming is still the only state without a refugee resettlement program.

WyoFile reported that the Legislature signed off on $362 million in spending on construction, renovation and maintenance of state-owned buildings. Senate File 67 includes $50 million for UW to move forward with the renovation and expansion of War Memorial Stadiums west stands, the College of Law and Corbett Pool.

The Laramie Boomerang reported that, for the first time since summer 2020, UW registered a day last week with no positive COVID-19 test results. Chad Baldwin, UWs associate vice president for communications and marketing, was quoted in the article.

The Jackson Hole News & Guide interviewed Dan McCoy, interim director of the Wyoming Outdoor Recreation, Tourism and Hospitality Initiative at UW, for an article on tourism in Teton County.

Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News featured UW Professor Don Jarvis research that has focused on developing an insect virus/insect cell system for recombinant protein production. His work led to the spinout of GlycoBac, a biotechnology company.

Wyoming News Now reported that Dr. Joseph McGinley, of Caspers McGinley Clinic, was the first in Wyoming and the third in the world to perform a minimally invasive trigger finger release procedure. McGinley worked with UW researchers to develop a virtual reality headset that he can wear while performing procedures.

Jason McConnell, an assistant professor in the UW School of Politics, Public Affairs and International Studies, provided comments for a Laramie Boomerang article that focused on how the pandemic has impacted public access to government meetings.

WorkCompCentral republished a blog entry by UW College of Law Professor Michael Duff. Employee Status: Not a New Problem first appeared on the Workers Compensation Law Prof blog.

The CS-T interviewed UW psychology Professor Narina Nunez for an article on how lawmakers restored funding for juvenile diversion programs. Nunez is a member of the State Advisory Council on Juvenile Justice.

Six finalists have been selected for the sixth annual Casper Start-Up Challenge and will work with IMPACT 307 staff on their final pitches, Oil City News reported. IMPACT 307 is a business development program of UW.

KGAB Radio published UWs release noting that community scientists helped track moose populations in the Snowy Range and Pole Mountain areas for Winter Moose Day. The Feb. 12 event was coordinated by UWs Biodiversity Institute.

Wyoming News Now and Oil City News published UWs release announcing that the university will unveil the new Science Initiative Building later this month.

The Pinedale Roundup and SweetwaterNOW published UWs release noting that Kate Welsh, an associate professor in UWs School of Teacher Education, was awarded a grant to explore the establishment of a rural teacher corps in Wyoming.

Laramie Live published UWs release announcing that UW Extension and Wyoming 4-H will host a virtual career night for young people to learn about a variety of career opportunities March 22.
President Joe Biden View Photo

President Biden announced new economic actions against Russia.

Biden was Mondays KVML Newsmaker of the Day. Here are his words:

As Putin continues his merciless assault, the United States and our Allies and partners continue to work in lockstep to ramp up the economic pressure on Putin and to further isolate Russia on the global stage.

Later today, together with other NATO Allies and the G7  Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom  as well as the European Union  were going to jointly announce several new steps to squeeze Putin and hold him more  even more accountable for his aggression against Ukraine.

And I want to speak to a few of those points today.

First, each of our nations is going to take steps to deny most-favored-nation status to Russia. A most-favored-nation status designation means two countries have agreed to trade with each other under the best possible terms  low tariffs, few barriers to trade, and the highest possible imports allowed.

In the United States, we call this permanent normal trade relations  PNTR  but its the same thing. Revoking PNTR for Russia is going to make it harder for Russia to do business with the United States. And doing it in unison with other nations that make up half of the global economy will be another crushing blow to the Russian economy thats already suffering very badly from our sanctions.

And I want to thank Speaker Pelosi, Leader McCarthy, Leader Schumer and McConnell, and Senators Wyden and Crapo, Representatives Neal and Brady for their bipartisan leadership on this in the Congress.

I would like to offer a special thanks to Speaker Pelosi

who has been a strong advocate for revoking PNTR and who agreed to hold off on that in the House until I could line up all of our key allies to keep us in complete unison. Unity among our allies is critically important, as you all know, from my perspective, at least.

Many issues divide us in Washington, but standing for democracy in Ukraine, pushing [punishing] Russias aggression should not be one of those issues.

The free world is coming together to confront Putin. Our two parties here at home are leading the way. And with that bipartisan cooperation, Im looking forward to signing into law the bill revoking PNTR  which is, again, most people think of it as most-favored-nations status.

Were also taking a further step of banning imports of goods from several signature sectors of the Russian economy, including seafoods, vodka, and diamonds.

And were going to continue to squeeze Putin. The G7 will seek to deny Russia the ability to borrow from leading multinational institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Putin is an aggressor  is the aggressor. And Putin must pay the price.

He cannot pursue a war that threatens the very foundations  which hes doing  the very foundations of international peace and stability and then ask for financial help from the international community.

The G7 is also stepping up pressure on corrupt Russian billionaires. Were adding new names to the list of oligarchs and their families that were targeting. And were increasing coordination among the G7 countries to target and capture their ill-begotten gains.

They support Putin. They steal from the Russian people. And they seek to hide their money in our countries. Theyre part of a  that kleptocracy that exists in Moscow. And they must share in the pain of these sanctions.

And while were going after these  their superyachts and their vacation homes worth hundreds of milli-  millions of dollars, were also going to make it harder for them to buy high-end products manufactured in our country. Were banning the export of luxu-  luxury goods to Russia. Theyre also the latest steps were taking, but theyre not the last steps were going to take.

And as I said at the beginning of all of these steps, were going to hit Putin harder because the United States and our closest Allies and partners are acting in unison.

The totality of our sanctions and export controls is crushing the Russian economy.

The ruble has lost more than half its value. They tell me it takes about 200 rubles to equal 1 dollar these days. The Moscow stock exchange has been closed for fully  for two weeks because they know the moment it opens, it will probably collapse.

Credit rating agencies has downgraded Russias government to junk status  its economy to junk status.

The list of businesses and international corporations leaving Russia is growing by the day.

Were also continuing the close corporations [cooperation] with Allies and partners to make sure that the close cooperation we continue to have, the Ukrainian people are  are able to defend their own nation.

The United States has sent more than $1 billion in security assistance to Ukraine over the last year, including anti-armor and anti-air capabilities  taking out tanks and planes and helicopters  with new shipments arriving every day.

We, the United States, are also facilitating significant shipments of security assistance from our Allies and partners to Ukraine.

On the humanitarian front, were working closely with the U.N. and humanitarian organizations to support the people of Ukraine who have been displaced by the violence in Ukraine.

Were providing  were providing tens of thousands of tons of human supplies  excuse me, humanitarian supplies  food, water, medicines  coming via truck and train every single day.

Yesterday in Poland, Vice President Harrins  Harris announced an additional $53 million in additional humanitarian support to Ukraine. That brings the total humanitarian assistance to $107 million in just two weeks.

Weve joined in this effort by more  with more than 30 other countries who are providing hundreds of millions more.

And last night, to their great credit, the Congress passed a bipartisan spending bill that included an additional $13.6 billion in new assistance to the Ukrainian people. And I look forward to signing that immediately.

And I also want to be clear though: We will make sure Ukraine has weapons to defend against an invading Russian force. We will  we will send money and food and aid to save the Ukrainian people. And I will welcome the Ukrainian refugees. We should welcome them here with open arms if they need access.

And were going to provide more support for Ukraine. Were going to continue to stand together with our Allies in Europe and send an unmistakable message: We will defend every single inch of NATO territory with the full might of a united and galvanized NATO.

We will not fight a war against Russia in Ukraine. Direct confrontation between NATO and Russia is World War Three, something we must strive to prevent.

But we already know Putins war against Ukraine will never be a victory.

He hoped to dominate Ukraine without a fight. He failed.

He hoped to fracture European resolve. He failed.

He hoped to weaken the transatlantic alliance. He failed.

He hoped to split apart American democracies, in terms of our positions. He failed.

The American people are united. The world is united. And we stand with the people of Ukraine. We will not let autocrats and would-be emperors dictate the direction of the world.

Democracies are rising to meet this moment, rallying the world to the side of peace and the side of security.

Were showing our strength, and we will not falter.

May God bless all of you. God bless Ukraine. And God bless our troops.

The Newsmaker of the Day is heard every weekday morning at 6:45, 7:45 and 8:45 on AM 1450 and FM 102.7 KVML.
A man accused in the 1975 slaying of a Pasadena teacher faces a Monday court hearing on a capital murder charge.

James Richard Ludlam, 47, was arrested Dec. 6 in Little Rock, Ark., for failing to appear in court on a charge of driving with a suspended license.

Ludlam confessed to police about his alleged role in the rape and strangling of Deborah Elizabeth Hester, 22, in her apartment, the Houston Chronicle reported Thursday.

Police do not believe Ludlam knew the San Jacinto Intermediate School music and choir teacher.

Ludlam is in the Harris County Jail without bond.
Before he quit bartending at Geraldines, the restaurant inside Austins swanky Hotel Van Zandt, Bob Mann started getting annoyed at the conversations hed overhear. Located on Rainey Street, once a quiet residential street and now a bustling party zone, Mann would catch snippets of investment talk as he shook up espresso martinis.

Thered be real estate conventions going on, and Id hear them talking about how much money they're gonna make, Mann says. And I'm just like  everyone's cashing in on my city.

Mann sits in his kitchen in Elgin, Texas, as two of his three children nap on a recent weekday afternoon. The musician, born and raised in Austin, has made his peace with being priced out of the city more than two years ago. But that doesnt mean hes happy with the changes going on, especially now that he spends time in traffic on his way to picking up shifts at a dive bar on 290 or picking his children up from daycare in Austin.

As far as Austin itself, I just kind of  Mann trails off. Yeah, I'm not talking to it right now.

Chris O'Connell/MySA

Elgin City Limits

Mann joins a recent trend of young artists and musicians defecting from Austin to nearby towns like Elgin, Bastrop, and Lockhart in the wake of rapidly increasing city living costs. A December 2021 report showed that Austin home prices increased 28% year-over-year, compared with a 10% bump nationwide. For a city that bills itself as a place for creatives  the Live Music Capital of the World no less  its impossible for those artists to compete with transplants making all-cash offers or invoking bidding wars.

"It's completely unattainable," says Caleb Dawson, who moved to Elgin in 2016 while still drumming in Roky Ericksons band. "I dont think for young artists, or even old artists, that its possible to own a home in Austin at this point."

In 2015, UNESCO named Austin the first  and still only  city in America as a City of Media Arts for its fostering of "a rich and diverse cultural ecosystem." While the urge to "save" the arts through city-funded programs and philanthropic efforts still exists, the artists that comprised that ecosystem have begun, in recent years, to break free from Austin. Put simply, many feel like being able to live and thrive as an artist inside city limits is a bygone dream.

Elgin has become a refuge for musicians like Mann and Dawson. Twenty years ago they would have happily lived the sleepy Austin dream, now they welcome Elgin's rural landscape and comparatively cheap home prices. Call it Elgin City Limits. The young artists and musicians who live here praise the open space, the slower lifestyle, and the small, close-knit community that for decades made Austin so special.

As for the cultural fabric of America's 11th largest city by population, Dawson says that it hasn't so much changed completely as evolved, leaving behind an echo of what it once was.

"It still has the illusion of old Austin," he says. "Some of that vibe is still there, but it's becoming less of a place that people flock to from your big hubs like L.A., San Francisco, New York ... and its just becoming one of those cities."

Chris O'Connell/MySA

Building a Future

Its ironic that Dawson, and fellow bandmate/Elgin resident Ryan Lee, did time in Ericksons band shortly before his death in May 2019. The leader of The 13th Floor Elevators pioneered  along with the genre of psychedelic rock  the notion of maintaining a music career in Austin, away from big city life.

Thats because, when Easter Everywhere was released in 1967, Erickson and his LSD-dropping cohorts lived in an Austin wholly alien to the one of today. Before Austin City Limits and South by Southwest, Austin was a place where musicians not only could live, but actively flocked to because of the ability to live cheaply while chasing a dream.

After Lee graduated from Texas State a few years ago, he didnt even consider moving to Austin, despite playing guitar in multiple bands that gigged around town.

I was detecting a little bit of the old Austin energy in here among a lot of people who are younger, who might have lived in Austin 15 or 20 years ago, he says.

Lee lives in a trailer behind a house belonging to his bandmates, married couple Rockyanne Bullwinkel and Jimmy Wildcat. Bullwinkel leads a band called Blue Jean Queen, which counts Dawson and Mann among its members. Together, Wildcat and Lee are building a recording studio on the land and moving all the gear from their East Austin location, Sweetheart Studios.

Lee and Wildcat both say they imagine their Elgin studio as a Big Pink-type of spot, referring to the house outside of New York City where the Band and Bob Dylan recorded seminal albums.

It's just far enough away, Lee says, but just close enough to Austin for it to be a destination.

Thats already happening, even before the studio is finished. Wildcat says that they have an intermediary setup in their garage in Elgin, one that is more sparse than Sweetheart. Regardless, most bands are actually requesting to come out to the country to record.

I could be using the Austin location more, he says, but all my clients who have worked out here prefer this even though it's a more minimal studio and less space. They just love getting out of town and feeling a bit more relaxed.

Wildcat and Bullwinkel lived in Austin for more than a decade before leaving for Elgin. They looked at homes in Bastrop and Coupland before settling on Elgin, where they already had musician friends. Bullwinkel didnt realize how much she needed wide open space until they moved.

I realized I wasnt sleeping very well, she says. In Austin, there was an apartment complex across from us constantly shining a light in our bedroom. It was like daylight. Its dark out here.

Lee, their backyard tenant and studio partner is a bit more mobile  trailer and all  but hes grown tired of his cramped living space and is looking for land in Elgin or nearby Bastrop. Regardless of which town he lands in, hes planting roots outside of Austin.

I plan on making something for myself here, Lee says.

Chris O'Connell/MySA

Elgin Forever

For their part, Dawson and Mann are trying to open a dive bar in the center of town. The two found a historic building for sale recently, but the city sold it to another group. Both say they hope that their window isnt closing, as more and more people move to Elgin after being priced out of Austin. Dawson is encouraging his Elgin friends to open businesses while they still have the chance.

In just a few years, downtown Elgin is going to be overrun by venture capitalists from San Francisco buying downtown spaces and opening coffee shops, he says. Thats all fine and good. And more than that, its inevitable. But for now its still a tangible goal for people like us to be opening businesses. Its a good investment for us and itll also let us preserve what we love about this town, and eventually, for however long it may last, make it kind of what Austin used to be.

The anecdotes bear that out, at least on the residential side. Dawson says he wouldnt be able to afford his Elgin home today, despite only buying three years ago. Mann estimates his house has increased $60,000 in value since the pandemic began.

Flickr/JMWalling

The statistics show sharp migration into the town. Between 1990 and 2000, the population of Elgin grew by fewer than 1,000 residents, according to the Elgin Economic Development Corporation. Since then, Elgins population has more than doubled to more than 10,000. Conservative estimates by the EEDC put Elgins population at 19,000-plus by 2025. Its exponential growth forecast, the most aggressive trend, suggests that more than 40,000 people could call the town home in just three years.

Even more stark is the upward trend in home prices. Zillow estimates that the average Elgin home costs $314,410 to purchase. In the last year, thats an increase of 40.1%. Thats just short of the Austin increase, which Zillow puts at 41.2%.

Thats why Dawson started a bid to join the Elgin City Parks Planning Committee. Hes been going to meetings where talk has centered on incoming development, both residential and commercial. Between numerous new subdivisions and talks of a semiconductor factory and Elon Musk spreading Tesla eastward from Austin, residents new and old fear rising property taxes and an influx of tech money. Sound familiar?

Dawson says part of his five-to-10-year goal is to be mayor of Elgin so that he can prevent the town from losing the character that attracted him there.

Ill start with the parks planning committee, move on to city council, and so forth, he says. Id like to be in a position to really foster something cool here and prevent it from becoming some cookie-cutter hellhole.

Bullwinkel puts it another way: I would hate houses to get torn down and replaced with tall-and-skinnies, she says, a plague on Austins Eastside. She and Wildcat have no plans to leave Elgin.

We love it here. I love our house, Bullwinkel says. I love our friends here. I want to stay.

Lee and Dawson might pursue larger areas of land to build on outside of Elgin, especially as prices continue to rise, but their business efforts are focused right where they currently live. None foresee waking up in Austin ever again, save for crashing on a friends couch after a late gig.

Mann, whose parents have lived in Austin for decades, cant even picture it.

I'd have to hit the lottery. But then Id probably sooner buy a house in New York before I bought a house in Austin, he says. Yeah, I'd rather just stay here.
Southern Methodist University is mourning the loss of esteemed alumnus Brent Renaud, the acclaimed U.S. filmmaker and journalist who was shot to death in Ukraine on Sunday, March 13. Renaud worked as part of a Peabody Award-winning documentary film that was capturing footage of the Russian invasion. The team included his brother Craig, who confirmed to the New York Times that the 50-year-old Renaud was dead.

The New York Times also reported it was Russian forces that fired at the car Renaud was driving. On Monday, March 14, the Dallas university said the college community was mourning the loss of Renaud, a 1994 graduate.

"We join in mourning the loss of alumnus Brent Renaud, an award-winning journalist and filmmaker, killed while covering the war in Ukraine on Sunday," the social media post says. "He'll be remembered for many things, and his friends specifically call out his empathy and compassion."

According to the Associated Press, Renaud was gathering content for a report on refugees when he was hit at a checkpoint in Irpin, about an hour outside of Kyiv. American journalist Juan Arredondo, who was injured in the same shooting, told Italian journalist Annalisa Camilli they were traveling through the checkpoint, after being offered a ride, when they were both shot.

"He's been shot and left behind," Arredondo tells Camilli in a video posted to Twitter, adding that Renaud was shot in the neck and he was unsure of his condition.

Ned Price, the spokesperson for the United States Department of State, issued a statement via Twitter on Sunday.

"We are horrified that journalists and filmmakersnoncombatantshave been killed and injured in Ukraine by Kremlin forces," the statement reads. "We extend condolences to all those affected by this horrific violence. This is yet another gruesome example of the Kremlins indiscriminate actions."

The Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based organization, also responded to Renaud's death via Twitter.

"We are shocked and saddened to learn of the death of U.S. journalist Brent Renaud in Ukraine. This kind of attack is totally unacceptable, and is a violation of international law," the statement reads. "Russian forces in Ukraine must stop all violence against journalists and other civilians at once."

Renaud was originally from Little Rock, Arkansas. As news of his death circulated through media circles, some tied Renaud to the New York Times after a photo of his badge, which listed the publication, was posted. On Sunday, NYT posted a statement saying Renaud contributed in the past but was not on assignment from any desk in the outlet.
Selena fans will soon hear new music from the Tejano icon, 27 years after the beloved star was killed. Her family is working with Warner Music to release the unnamed posthumous album. The Quintanilla family has produced multiple compilation albums featuring Selena's music since her 1995 murder, but this is the first that will include fresh sounds produced by A.B. Quintanilla, her brother.

Abraham Quintanilla, the patriarch of the family, announced the upcoming release in a Thursday, March 10 video interview with Latin Groove News, a San Antonio-based media company. Her father, who continues to oversee Selena's estate, told Latin Groove News the album is expected to be released in April and will have a 13-song track list.

Abraham Quintanilla says the album is comprised of 10 songs that are part of the Q Productions catalog. He says an additional three songs have music arrangements that have been reworked. For example, songs that were once released as cumbias, may now be ballads. Selena's father says some of the songs were recorded by Selena when she was 13, long before she became a Latina legend. He says A.B. Quintanilla digitally altered the music to make her voice sound more like the singing that made her a Grammy-winning icon.

"She sounds on these recordings like she did right before she passed away," the 83-year-old Abraham Quintanilla says in the Latin Groove News interview. "But if you listen to it now, the same song with different arrangements and the voice work to where she sounds like (she did) right before she passed away, it's kind of amazing."

He says the music sounds "incredible" and "beautiful," but recognizes that the public often fires back at the Quintanilla family on social media for creating posthumous content on the star. Abraham Quintanilla explains that Selena's contracts were not solely hers, but that it was a four-person agreement including himself, A.B., and Suzette. The Quintanilla patriarch says he made a promise to keep his youngest daughter's music alive and believes this is his way of upholding the nearly 30-year mission.

Abraham Quintanilla also recently released a book called "A Father's Dream." Jose Rosario with Latin Groove News says during the interview that the book is a "tear-jerker" with anecdotes Selena's father shares about her from her mother Marcella's pregnancy, when doctors thought the would-be star was a tumor, to her trailblazing music career.

Selena's album is completed, but Warner Music is working on artwork, Abraham Quintanilla says. Suzette Quintanilla is working with the studio on creating the art for her sister's new release. If the album is released in April, it will coincide with Selena's 51st birthday. She was killed by Yolanda Saldivar, her fan club president, on March 31, 1995, two days before her wedding anniversary with Chris Perez and two weeks shy of her 24th birthday.

On Sunday, March 13, Perez noted Selena's other music. He dedicated a Facebook post to celebrating the 28th anniversary of her 1998 album Amor Prohibido. The musician called it her "crowning achievement."

"In my humble opinion, one of the greatest of all time thanks to her fans and their continued support," he writes online. Amor Prohibido became the first Tejano record to peak at number one on the Billboard Top Latin Albums chart, remaining in the top five for 98 consecutive weeks. The album holds the record for most weeks at number one on Billboard's Regional Mexican Albums chart at 97 nonconsecutive weeks, as well as crowning the chart in four different calendar years."

Abraham Quintanilla thinks fans will be excited to hear the new music.

"What amazes me and my family is that 27 years later, the public still remembers Selena," Abraham Quintanilla says. "They haven't let go of her, so they're waiting for a project like this to come out and I know it will be well received by the public."
Lambert: Im not so sure about that fossil fuel fascists formulation, which seems a little glib. It should at least includes Dick Dark Side Cheney, the man who may have enabled us to replace Europes Russian gas with American gas. And then Ukraine gladly took a cut from gas passing through pipelines on its territory on its way to Germany an elsewhere.

By Oliver Milman, Oliver Milman is an environment reporter for Guardian U.S. Originally published at Undark.

For Svitlana Krakovska, Ukraines leading climate scientist, it was meant to be the week where eight years of work culminated in a landmark U.N. report exposing the havoc the climate crisis is causing the world.

But then the bombs started to crunch into Kyiv.

Krakovska, the head of a delegation of 11 Ukrainian scientists, struggled to help finalize the vast Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report ahead of its release on Feb. 28 even as Russian forces launched their invasion. I told colleagues that as long as we have the internet and no bombs over our heads we will continue, she said.

But her team, scattered across the country, started to peel away  one had to rush to an air raid shelter in Kharkiv, others decided to flee completely, internet connections spluttered, one close friend of a delegate was killed in the fighting. International colleagues had to express their sympathies and press on with the report.

Krakovskas four children sheltered with her in their Kyiv home as a missile struck a nearby building, emitting an ear-splitting roar. A fire from a separate strike sent up a plume of smoke that blotted the sky. This blitzkrieg by [Vladimir] Putin is unbelievable, it is terrorism against the Ukrainian people, she said.

Both the invasion and IPCC report crystallized for Krakovska the human, economic, and geopolitical catastrophe of fossil fuels. About half of the worlds population is now acutely vulnerable to disasters stemming from the burning of fossil fuels, the IPCC report found, while Russias military might is underpinned by wealth garnered from the countrys vast oil and gas reserves.

I started to think about the parallels between climate change and this war and its clear that the roots of both these threats to humanity are found in fossil fuels, said Krakovska.

Burning oil, gas and coal is causing warming and impacts we need to adapt to. And Russia sells these resources and uses the money to buy weapons. Other countries are dependent upon these fossil fuels, they dont make themselves free of them. This is a fossil fuel war. Its clear we cannot continue to live this way, it will destroy our civilization.

The IPCC report, described by Antonio Guterres, the U.N. secretary general, as an atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership, is the most comprehensive catalog yet of the consequences of global heating. Extreme heat and the spread of disease is killing people around the world, about 12 million people are being displaced by floods and droughts each year and the viability of food-producing land is shrinking.

But it is the conflict in Ukraine that has caused Western governments to hastily attempt to untangle themselves from a reliance upon Russian oil and gas. The European Union, which gets about 40 percent of its gas supply from Russia, is working on a plan to rapidly upscale renewable energy, bolster energy efficiency measures, and build liquified natural gas terminals to receive gas from other countries.

Joe Biden, meanwhile, has relented to pressure from U.S. lawmakers to ban imports of Russian oil. The ban, the U.S. president said last week, will deliver a powerful blow to Putins war machine. We will not be part of subsidizing Putins war. Biden said the U.S. will work with Europe on a long-term plan to phase out Russian oil and gas.

The halting of imports was urged in an emotional appeal to members of Congress by Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the Ukrainian president, and is backed by a bipartisan majority of lawmakers. Its basically foolish for us to keep buying products and giving money to Putin to be able to use against the Ukrainian people, said Joe Manchin, the centrist Democratic senator.

Others see the ban as a moment to decisively break from fossil fuels altogether. This moment is a clarion call for the urgent need to transition to domestic clean energy so that we are never again complicit in fossil-fueled conflict, said Ed Markey, a progressive Democratic senator who was a driving force behind the Green New Deal agenda.

But in a stark demonstration of how deeply embedded fossil fuels remain in decision making, Bidens administration has awkwardly attempted to extol its efforts to confront the climate crisis while also boasting that the U.S. is now drilling more oil than even under Donald Trump to show it is cognizant of public anguish over rising gasoline prices, a perennial political headache for presidents.

We dont have a strategic interest in reducing the global supply of energy, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said two weeks ago. That would raise prices at the gas pump for the American people, around the world, because it would reduce the supply available.

While the U.S. takes a relatively small amount of oil from Russia  only about 3 percent of all oil imports  experts say it is telling that an administration vocal about the need to reduce fossil fuels has found it difficult to cut itself from its dependency on oil and gas.

Its a crude oversimplification to call this a fossil fuel war, thats a little too glib, said Jonathan Elkind, an expert in energy policy at Columbia University and a former energy adviser to Barack Obamas administration. But its an undeniable reality that Russia gets a significant share of its revenues from oil and gas and that Americas gasoline habit contributes towards the global demand for 100 million barrels of oil each day.

Do we want to find ourselves 10 years from now where weve bent the curve on oil consumption and emissions towards decarbonization, or do we want to sit there and think where did the last 10 years go? If the U.S. isnt a part of the solution we will put in peril our influence on the world stage and the fate of everyone, both here and around the globe.

While Europe belatedly attempts to wean itself off Russian gas, efforts to phase down fossil fuels in the U.S. have faltered. Bidens legislative plan to drastically ramp up renewable energy is moribund in Congress, largely thanks to Manchin, while the conservative-leaning supreme court is mulling whether to weaken the administrations ability to regulate coal-fired power plants.

The invasion of Ukraine has also triggered a push by the U.S. oil and gas industry and its allies in Congress to loosen regulations to allow more domestic drilling. Manchin, chair of the Senate energy committee, has said that delaying new gas pipelines when Putin is actively and effectively using energy as an economic and political weapon against our allies is just beyond the pale. Even Elon Musk, founder of the electric vehicle company Telsa, has said that we need to increase oil and gas output immediately. Extraordinary times demand extraordinary measures.

The White House has pointed out that the industry is already sitting on a huge number of idle drilling leases  a total of 9,000 unused permits covering 26 million acres of American public land  while environmentalists argue the crisis highlights the dangers of being at the mercy of a volatile global oil price, now near an all-time high, rather than shifting towards solar, wind, and other sources of clean energy.

The fossil fuel industrys so-called solution to this crisis is nothing more than a recipe to enable fossil-fueled fascists like Vladimir Putin for years to come, said Jamal Raad, executive director of Evergreen Action. As long as our economy is dependent on fossil fuels, we will be at the mercy of petro-dictators who wield their influence on global energy prices like a weapon.

American-made clean energy is affordable, reliable, and free from the volatility of oil and gas markets. The best way to weaken Putins grip on the global energy market is to get America off of fossil fuels.

In Kyiv, Krakovska has said that she will stay in her home city as the Russian army advances, having declined offers to relocate to foreign research institutions. I know thats what Putin wants, for us to flee Ukraine so they can have our beautiful country, she said.

I have told scientists in other countries I will collaborate with them, but from an independent and free Ukraine. I couldnt be in another place knowing that Kyiv was in the hands of those barbarians.
Yves here. While you have been busy obsessing over Ukraine, or going on a media holiday to get away from it, the Supreme Court may issue a ruling that weakens oversight of Congressional redistricting.

By Henry L. Chambers Jr., Professor of Law, University of Richmond. Originally published at The Conversation

To what extent can state or federal courts limit how state legislatures draw congressional districts?

It is a substantial question with huge implications for future elections and voting rights in America. But the Supreme Court has decided not to answer it  for now, at least. But on March 7, 2022, justices suggested that the question will be answered sooner rather than later, perhaps even before the 2024 presidential election.

In two orders, the justices refused requests from Republicans in Pennsylvania and North Carolina to block court-approved congressional maps to replace ones designed by Republican-led legislatures in both states.

The decisions are consistent with the courts February order that halted a court injunction seeking to bar Alabama from using a congressional map that critics say disadvantages Black voters.

That order benefited Alabama Republicans. The ones that came down on March 7 will likely help Democrats in North Carolina and Pennsylvania. But all the orders were based on the same principle: America is too close to the 2022 elections for federal courts to demand legislatures redraw congressional maps to be used in those elections.

Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh said as much in his written concurrence in the North Carolina case: It is too late for the federal courts to order that the district lines be changed for the 2022 primary and general elections, just as it was too late for the federal courts to do so in the Alabama redistricting case last month.

But perhaps of more significance, he, along with the three dissenting justices  Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch  suggested that the question of how closely courts can regulate how state legislatures draw congressional maps was one that would return.

The issue is almost certain to keep arising until the court definitively resolves it, wrote Kavanaugh. We will have to resolve this question sooner or later, and the sooner we do so, the better, added the trio of dissenting justices in the separate opinion.

Independent State Legislature Doctrine

The court is clearly inching toward a showdown over what is known as the independent state legislature doctrine.

This is a legal theory in vogue largely among conservative circlesthat holds that state legislatures have an independent right to draw congressional districts free of much court oversight. The theory is based on the Constitutions grant of authority to state legislatures to determine the times, places and manner of holding elections.

The independent state legislature doctrine is controversial, and may be inconsistent with Chief Justice John Robertss 2019 opinion in Rucho v Common Cause. In that case, which also centered on a congressional map in North Carolina, Roberts argued that partisan gerrymandering presented political questions that go beyond the reach of federal courts. He suggested states could address the issue through legislation that could then be enforced by courts.

However, a particularly legislature friendly version of the independent state legislature doctrine could limit how courts could curb partisan gerrymandering in congressional elections  and that will be of great concern to voters rights advocates.

It now seems only a matter of time before the Supreme Court addresses the theory. Four of the nine justices must agree to hear a case for one to be taken up. The opinions on March 7, 2022, suggest the court has the numbers.
By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

How does an old man like you stay alive, George?

I dont eat.

You dont eat?

Yes, but it hasnt affected my appetite!

Dont Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers, Firesign Theatre

When I saw that President Bidens Chief of Staff, Ron Klain, had given a speech at the Economic Club of Washington DC, I actually looked forward to reading the transcript (here), because Ive heard other public figures give presentations to regional Economic Clubs in places like Cleveland or San Francisco, and the talks have often been interesting, the questions trenchant. Boy, was I naive. Of course, the Economic Club of Washington is on K Street:

And the sycophancy was so gummy and blobby that you couldnt cut it with a shovel. (Thomas Frank, if youre reading this, this event is worthy of your attention.) Fortunately for us all, or at least many of us, Klains speech, as a matter of public record, is about to sink beneath the waves; I searched for a line from interviewer David Rubensteins introduction, and it doesnt show up in Google at all, and only yields one hit in DuckDuckGo:

But wait, you say. David Rubenstein? Rubenstein is a squillionaire, and co-founder and co-chairman of the ginormous private equity firm The Carlyle Group, the CIA of the business world. So what we have here isnt really a speech to a club; its a subordinate (Klain) reporting to a superior (Rubenstein), on matters of interest to that superior. (Bourdieu would love this.)

Mostly, Rubenstein is interested in Ukraine. Im not, because I think we have no way of knowing whats happening on the ground. Im interested in details of how Washington works, and especially interested in Covid. (Im also a little bit interested in Klain, a spectacular mediocrity who should not hold high office.) So Im going to cut out snippets from the speech, and comment on them. Im sorry I cant give this speech the full treatment; it would be like putting on my yellow waders to dive into a bowl of oatmeal at a rolling, gummy, blobby boil. Not advisable.

Again, the first salient feature of the talk is the sycophancy. Heres Rubenstein introducing Klain:

Rubenstein: I am but a humble squillionaire, hardly as qualified as you!

The second salient feature is West Wing Brain:

Yes, just how Toby and Josh would explain it!

The fourth feature  I dont know how salient it is, but it sure is interesting  is the secret entrance:

A sekrit entrace rings a bell with me, because as an old-timer who actually blogged about the first Bush Administration, I remember the Jeff Gannon/James Guckert scandal. Guckert, whose professional name was Bulldog, spent several nights in the Bush White House without being logged in, and later, under the name Gannon, became a White House correspondent for Talon News (which no longer exists). In any case, Im not sure exactly what message Rubenstein is sending Klain, except possibly we both know I can get a clandestine meeting with The Big Guy whenever I want.

Returning to less salty matters, we have more West Wing Brain:

I think what this translates to is that the White House staff conforms to the liberal Democrat norm of conflict avoidance. The passage also  unsurprisingly  screams groupthink, as well as authoritarian followership (since the ideology of the team is that were all contributors, and power relation are not to be discussed).

That said, it would be churlish of me to dismiss the White House successes: They are running the two largest and most pervasive propaganda compaigns Ive ever experienced: Covid is over! and Ukraine! Ukraine! Ukraine! And theyre doing this quite successfully (though with more success for the latter than the former, having had 2022  2016 = 6 years of RussiaGate and Trump/Putin to build on). So Klains White House staff is indeed very good; its just a question of at what.

And now we come to Covid. Rubenstien presents two topics for discussion: Masks and vax. From this, we deduce that those are the only two topics Rubenstien cares about  and hence, I would speculate, his class. No mention of non-pharmaceutical interventions, no mention of ventilation, no mention of layered protection, no mention of variants, no mention of the CDC, not even a theory of tranmission (i.e, aerosols). He doesnt even ask Klain if another wave is coming, and whether the Administration is prepared for it; this is, I assume, a matter of indifference to him. On masks:

[Pounding my head on my desk at the banality of it all.] So, we see that Walensky comes by her hatred (Scarlet Letter) of masks honestly; her class superiors hate them, and so she does too. We also see  something else Bourdieu would love  that socializing is very important to the squillionaires; I would imagine thats how they decide on and propogate high policy; or rule, as we might say. (It all sounds very nice, as one may socialize in the neighborhood bar, but trust me, a neighborhood bar is nothing like a Georgetown cocktail party.) I am not certain why Rubenstien believes that masks make it harder to socialize; plenty of cultures that mask socialize perfectly well. I again put forward my speculation that masks hide smiles, smiling is essential to lying, and lying is essential to our ruling class.

So, Klain reports to Rubenstein that masks are going away. Klain also reports by omission that vax-only remains the policy:

Klain doesnt seem to think that its within a Presidents purview to change history. or even try. And the vaccines may be accessible, available [why the distinction], and free, but Klain has nothing to say about safety, the immuno-compromised, children, Long Covid, unlocking IP so poor countries can manufacture their own, or the fact that the vaccines arent sterilizing, despite what we were initially told. Presumably, again, these are matters of indifference to Rubenstein and his class.

* * *

Since Klain has reported to his superiors that no masks and vax-only are the twin pillars of Bidens Covid policy, expect nothing except that dictated by events, dear boy, events until 2024. (The unknown variable is that the dogs arent eating the dogfood on masking, but the answer there will be to double down on the propaganda, as usual. And of course, some nasty whistleblower might make the Pharma executives wish theyd dumped all their stock.) Of course, such events could be emerging right now in China, or at the international airport near you. So [here Rubenstein smiles gently] Let er rip and  and unless you got a ticket to HappyVille, and not Pain City  Youre on your own, kid!
(Natural News) Long-time transparency advocate Adam Andrzejewski had his 8-year-long Forbes column cancelled after pressure exerted by the U.S. government, specifically Tony Faucis National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Pulse can reveal.

(Article by republished from TheNationalPulse.com)

Andrzejewski  the CEO and Founder of OpenTheBooks.com  relayed the story in his new Substack column following the termination from Forbes.

After taking umbrage with a number of his Fauci-focused columns, including bombshell revelations about the Fauci household finances, Andrzejewski recalls:

Two directors, two bureau chiefs, and two top PR officers didnt send an email to the Forbes chief on a Sunday morning because they wanted to correct the record about Faucis travel reimbursements. They sent that email to subliminally send a message: We dont like Andrzejewskis oversight work, and we want you to do something about it. Unfortunately, Forbes folded quickly.

An e-mail from Forbes Executive Editor Caroline Howard to Andrzejewski dated January 15th 2022 began: I see this is your third article on Fauci in 3 weeks. Huh. Howard then went on to accuse Andrzejewski of advocacy, rather than journalism.

Just one day later, two NIH directors, two bureau chiefs, and two top PR officers  all government employees  heaped pressure on Forbes. Their claim was that Fauci never collected monetary gifts but rather took the face value of tickets for the same amount Andrzejewski had reported. In other words: a distinction without a difference.

But Forbes, as Andrzejewski says, caved quickly:

Within 24 hours of the NIH email to Randall Lane, my regular Forbes editor called and announced new rules. Forbes barred me from writing about Fauci and mandated pre-approval for all future topics.

Then, Forbes went silent and terminated my column roughly 10 days later on January 28.

On the day Forbes cancelled me, the editors bent the knee. A new piece on Fauci published: Faucis Portrait Will Soon Hang In The Smithsonian.

Of course, the article was designated an Editors Pick.

Forbes was taken over by a Chinese firm in 2014. Even the Washington Post wrote of the situation:

In 2014, a Hong Kong-based investment group called Integrated Whale Media purchased a majority stake in Forbes Media, one of the United States best-known media companies. Its hard to demonstrate causality in such cases. But since that purchase, there have been several instances of editorial meddling on stories involving China that raise questions about Forbes magazines commitment to editorial independence.

On Oct. 9, longtime China commentator and Communist Party critic Gordon Chang received an email from Avik S.A. Roy, the opinion editor at Forbes. Due to a wide-ranging reorganization of Forbes content, Roy wrote, we are going to be concluding our official relationship with you. Roy added, As a result of the organization, the articles youve written for us will no longer be stored on the Forbes server nor appear at Forbes.com, according to the email Chang forwarded to me at my request.

The Post went on to list a number of other conflicts, before concluding with the words of Ray Kwong, a senior adviser at the University of Southern Californias China Institute who was a Forbes blogger until 2013. Kwong simply stated: Coverage of China in Forbes these days, he said, is disheartening and lame.

Between the National Institutes of Health and the Chinese Communist Party, it appears Forbes is now purely interested in elite merger propaganda.

Read more at: TheNationalPulse.com
(Natural News) Kremlin-backed media outlets have been banned throughout the European Union, both on television and on apps and online platforms. RT has lost its Sky TV slot in the UK, where the outlet is also blocked on YouTube. Australian TV providers SBS and Foxtel have dropped RT, and the federal government is putting pressure on social media platforms to block Russian media in Australia.

(Article by Caitlin Johnstone republished from CaityJohnstone.Medium.com)

In the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Latvia, speaking in support of the Russian invasion of Ukraine will get you years in prison.

Twitter, historically the last of the major online platforms to jump on any new internet censorship escalation, is now actively minimizing the number of people who see Russian media content, saying that it is reducing the contents visibility and taking steps to significantly reduce the circulation of this content on Twitter. This censorship-by-algorithm tactic is exactly what I speculated might emerge after former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey resigned back in November, due to previous comments supportive of that practice by his successor Parag Agrawal.

Twitter is also placing warnings labels on all Russia-backed media and delivering a pop-up message informing you that you are committing wrongthink if you try to share or even like a post linking to such outlets on the platform. It has also placed the label Russia state-affiliated media on every tweet made by the personal accounts of employees of those platforms, baselessly giving the impression that the dissident opinions tweeted by those accounts are paid Kremlin content and not simply their own legitimate perspectives. Some are complaining that this new label has led to online harassment amid the post-9/11-like anti-Russia hysteria thats currently turning western brains into clam chowder.

In the last 24 hours, I have been bombarded with a constant influx of hateful messages and death threats by people who have taken it upon themselves to become offended by a network Ive worked for, for over 3 years. That hate has spread to every profile I have on every platform  Rachel Blevins (@RachBlevins) March 1, 2022

My personal twitter account is NOT state-affiliated media. Nobody at RT or in Russia tells me what to tweet on this account. This is an attempt to discredit me & prevent people from hearing an anti imperialist message. Shame on you Twitter! pic.twitter.com/lqM8A33AAV  Caleb T. Maupin (@calebmaupin) February 28, 2022

Jesus Christ. Cant even like a tweet about peace talks without being warned that Im doing a wrongthink. This is getting so crazy, and is likely to grow more so. pic.twitter.com/59eqm5kf4W  Caitlin Johnstone ? (@caitoz) March 1, 2022

This is all on top of all the other drastic escalations in censorship which came roaring in at the beginning of the Ukraine war, and I personally find it a bit scary how fast its all happening, how fine people are with it, and how much worse it seems likely to get.

Others agree.

The purge of RT and other Russian media outlets in the US and Europe is 100% censorship, tweets journalist Michael Tracey. Go ahead and argue its justified, but at least dont be a coward and admit you are advocating censorship.

The western world believes that it has a monopoly on what constitutes political truth and that their ideological worldview is the only correct, valid and authoritative one, writer and analyst Tom Fowdy observed. They preach freedom of speech and the press to other countries, but exempt themselves from it.

And I cant help but find it odd that the fight for freedom and democracy should require such copious amounts of censorship. Youd think a free society would have no objection to people trying to learn the other side of the debate about a war which NATO powers very plainly had a hand in starting, rather than being forced to consume only western mass media narratives which tell us this is happening exclusively because Vladimir Putin is evil and Hitlery and hates freedom.

The western world believes that it has a monopoly on what constitutes political truth and that their ideological worldview is the only correct, valid and authoritative one. They preach freedom of speech and the press to other countries, but exempt themselves from it.  Tom Fowdy (@Tom_Fowdy) February 28, 2022

Youd think a society devoted to truth and freedom, the kind of society western powers purport to be trying to defend in Ukraine, would not require a Ministry of Truth to protect us from disinformation about a government long targeted by the US-centralized empire, or from trying to seek out alternative perspectives beyond the homogeneous blanket of authorized mainstream narratives.

Youd think the truth would be more robust than that. Youd think freedom would extend farther than that. Youd think democracy would be more tolerant of dissent than that.

Almost like this has nothing to do with freedom, or truth, or democracy.

Almost like it never has.

Kind of makes you wonder if perhaps rallying behind the idea that its fine to censor people to preserve the establishment narrative about things, like Covid-19 and vaccines for example, was every bit the slippery slope that everyone warned it would be. If perhaps we have foolishly consented to a reality where the most powerful people in the world get to control the information people consume in order to shut down dissent against a murderous and oppressive globe-spanning oligarchic empire.

And it kind of makes you wonder, as we watch the same empire that just destroyed Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen being entrusted to carefully navigate extremely delicate nuclear brinkmanship escalations without ending the world, if we might perhaps be better off with a lot more dissent, rather than a lot less.

Read more at: CaityJohnstone.Medium.com
(Natural News) Even though the media is now consumed with covering the Russia-Ukraine conflict, we cannot let it get memory-holed that Tony Fauci, Rochelle Walensky, Donald Trump, Francis Collins and many others lied about the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccines.

For more than a year, all of these people told the world that Fauci Flu shots are safe and effective even though tens of millions of people who got them are now injured or dead.

The fact that people like Rochelle Walensky, Dr. Fauci, Dr. Collins said safe and effective  this [should result in] criminal charges, said Dr. Naomi Wolf during a recent appearance with Steve Bannon on his War Room: Pandemic program.

Wolf does not want the world to forget that career criminals like Walensky conspired to commit crimes against humanity with the mass injection program, which still continues to this day.

The primary targets now are young children, though many are starting to rise up against this. The world is realizing that these shots are deadly and not even needed in the first place, but that does not mean that we should let those who pushed them on us all get away with it.

Everyone who pushed COVID vaccines deserves to be prosecuted for their crimes against humanity

In a recent statement, Walensky tried to pretend as though waning immunity from the jabs was never properly communicated to people like herself, which she says is why she pushed the shots so hard.

So many of us wanted to be helpful, she said.

So many of us wanted to say, Okay, this is our ticket out, right? Now were done. So, I think we have perhaps too little caution and too much optimism for some good things that came our way. I really do. I think all of us wanted this to be done.

Walensky was reportedly tapped to head the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Dec. 8, 2020. She was quickly installed upon Joe Bidens inauguration, and she, Fauci, Collins, and many others got to work in executing the next phases of Trumps Operation Warp Speed program.

Vaccination is a critical tool in bringing this unprecedented pandemic to an end, stated Robert Redfield, Walenskys predecessor, just before leaving office. Redfield, of course, served under Trump.

We know for sure that the vaccine is highly efficacious in preventing the clinical disease, added Fauci in a similar statement to CNBC around the very same time.

Even long after leaving office, Trump himself has continued to promote the jabs. We also now know that he was directly involved in the global racketeering and collusion scheme to spread the jabs all around the world at warp speed.

To this very day, all of these people are recommending COVID injections, including for young children.

Walensky, in another recent statement, said that she might even recommend a second booster shot for both children and adults depending on what her overlords instruct her to do.

I have frequently said, Were going to lead with the science; the science is going to be the foundation of everything we do. That is entirely true, Walensky lied.

I think the public heard that science is foolproof, science is black and white, science is immediate, and we get the answer and then we make the decision based on the answer. And the truth is science is gray, and science is not always immediate, and sometimes it takes months and years to actually find out the answer. But you have to make decisions in a pandemic before you have that answer.

More of the latest news about the plandemic can be found at Pandemic.news.

Sources include:

CitizenFreePress.com

TheEpochTimes.com

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) Just as there are term limits for presidents, there should also be term limits for the countrys top bureaucrats, as evidenced by a leaked audio recording of former National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Frances Collins, who is now Joe Bidens chief science adviser.

According to The Daily Wire, which exclusively obtained the audio, Collins previous claims that he and his one-time dupe, Dr. Anthony Fauci  who has run the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since early in Ronald Reagans first term  are political neutrals was revealed as absurd.

In addition to his belief that the government has the authority to mandate vaccines, which was based on a 1905 Supreme Court case, he also made it clear that people should be tossed out on the street and lose their sources of income if they refuse to get one.

And, of course, since hes a left-wing bureaucrat, he had a disdain for President Donald Trump.

The audio originated from an Institute of Politics event on October 26 of last year, which was hosted by Christianity Today theologian Russell Moore at the University of Chicago. Institute of Politics was founded by David Axelrod, an adviser to former President Barack Obama, Breitbart News noted, citing the report.

After Collins was introduced as a personal friend by Moore as well as a member of his book club, the conversation pivoted to a discussion of vaccine mandates, in which the former NIH director said that there was no question in his mind that the mandates Biden issued about a month earlier are legal, adding that people who refuse to take them should be threatened with unemployment.

The US government does have the authority to mandate vaccinations if there is an outbreak that is threatening people, because its not just about you, its about the people youre going to infect, Collins claimed, despite the fact that an overwhelming amount of evidence at the time showed that even vaccinated persons could be infected with COVID and spread it to others.

Do [mandates] convince people who otherwise wouldnt get them? Collins reportedly asked himself rhetorically before answering, Oh yeah, especially if it means losing your job.

The Daily Wire noted further:

As evidence, he described how successful the threat of unemployment was at persuading vaccine-hesitant NIH employees and contractors to get vaccinated. When Collins made it clear to the 2,000 out of 46,000 workers who had still declined to take the jabs that they were in serious danger of being fired in the next month if they [didnt] do something about it, Collins said he got a big response.

Reality [was] sinking in, Collins explained, so that even the pretty darn resistant chose to get the vaccine.

He then chuckled, You get the feeling that their resistance was not maybe quite that deeply seated, while going on to speculate that deep down, many unvaccinated people may actually want to get the vaccine but resisted doing so out of peer pressure.

Theyre sort of thinking to themselves, you know, maybe I really should do it, but if I do, I lose my credibility with my peeps, Collins said.

According to the Biden science adviser, the mandates provided such people with an excuse to take the jab.

Well, my employer made me do it. I didnt really want to get them. They get, you know, bonus points, because theyre now a victim. But theyve also gotten the mandated vaccine that they kind of wanted anyway, he said.

After going on to rap evangelical Christians for pushing personal liberty allegedly at the expense of personal responsibility, Collins then showed his abject partisanship by blaming then-President Donald Trump for coronavirus deaths while ignoring the fact that under Biden there have been more.

Great harm was done to the people in this nation by a very, very self-involved and misguided president in the previous administration, he claimed, throwing gasoline on an already raging partisan fire in our country.

Hundreds of thousands of people have died who should not have had to do so, Collins said. And so there was an effort to try to distract from that dreadful circumstance by finding somebody else to blame.

What a pathetic little man.

Sources include:

Breitbart.com

CharlieKirk.com
(Natural News) For the past few years, as search and tech behemoth Google began leaning heavily to the left and became a full-fledged propagandist for the deep state, more and more Internet users switched to DuckDuckGo as an alternative.

The latter posited itself as a much more free platform and far more committed to protecting users privacy, while Google literally vacuums every crumb of user activity so it can target Internet surfers with ads and other select content.

But it appears as though the deep state has now infiltrated DuckDuckGo as well, as noted by an announcement from the search engine company this past week which said the platform will become downgrading  i.e., censoring  sites deemed to be pushing disinformation. As you know, disinformation is just code for shutting down sites publishing facts and views that have not been approved by the powers that be.

Breitbart News has more:

In a recent Twitter post, the CEO of privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo announced that the company would be downranking sites associated with disinformation, which has been a popular tactic by Google for years to reduce user access to content it considers objectionable.

DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg tweeted about the decision, stating that it was an effort to reduce Russian disinformation online.

Like so many others I am sickened by Russias invasion of Ukraine and the gigantic humanitarian crisis it continues to create. #StandWithUkraine?, Weinberg stated, adding: At DuckDuckGo, weve been rolling out search updates that down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation.

Like so many others I am sickened by Russias invasion of Ukraine and the gigantic humanitarian crisis it continues to create. #StandWithUkraine? At DuckDuckGo, weve been rolling out search updates that down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation.  Gabriel Weinberg (@yegg) March 10, 2022

In addition to down-ranking sites associated with disinformation, we also often place news modules and information boxes at the top of DuckDuckGo search results (where they are seen and clicked the most) to highlight quality information for rapidly unfolding topics, he continued.

In addition to down-ranking sites associated with disinformation, we also often place news modules and information boxes at the top of DuckDuckGo search results (where they are seen and clicked the most) to highlight quality information for rapidly unfolding topics.  Gabriel Weinberg (@yegg) March 10, 2022

DuckDuckGos mission is to make simple privacy protection accessible to all. Privacy is a human right and transcends politics, which is why about 100 million people around the world use DuckDuckGo. (We dont have an exact count since we dont track people.) Weinberg noted further.

DuckDuckGos mission is to make simple privacy protection accessible to all. Privacy is a human right and transcends politics, which is why about 100 million people around the world use DuckDuckGo. (We dont have an exact count since we dont track people.)  Gabriel Weinberg (@yegg) March 10, 2022

Needless to say, the announcement was met with mocking and derision online.

Dumped DDG today. So what are the alternatives people? Back to chrome??  Dan (@DBDAN61) March 10, 2022

Now youre just Google with less brand recognition.  Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) March 10, 2022

Please dont play this game. People understand if its a Russian source or a Ukrainian source or an American source. We dont need babysitting, we need transparency on what is actually being argued. We will figure out if its BS, we dont need Corporate America to do it for us.  Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) March 11, 2022

Disinformation like the Russian bounty story? Or that drone strike that killed kids? Or Jussie Smollette? Or the Covington kids hoax?  Cernovich (@Cernovich) March 10, 2022

So youre actively shaping search results for political reasons? Isnt that exactly your differentiation from Google? What else are you hiding from the results?  Frank Jonen (@frankjonen) March 10, 2022

Will you commit to transparency and tell your customers what sites are considered Russian disinformation?  Jordan Schachtel @ dossier.substack.com (@JordanSchachtel) March 10, 2022

If Weinberg did not see this massive backlash coming, then he has no business running DuckDuckGo.

Sources include:

Breitbart.com

Disinfo.news
(Natural News) In an interview with Canadian Freedom Convoy leader Tom Marazzo on RFK Jr. The Defender Podcast, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Marazzo reviewed the challenges and outcome of the truckers protest against COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

(Article by David Marks republished from ChildrensHealthDefense.org)

Kennedy said:

I think one of the outstanding features of the event was this very, very troubling reaction by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Canadian government  and parliament  to the convoy. It was clearly a peaceful demonstration  this was the principal theme of it. It was an organizing feature of the convoy from the beginning that it was about peace and love and justice and democracy.

Marazzo confirmed the convoys intent was to peacefully protest government mandates, although the protesters were prepared for a subversive response.

Marazzo told Kennedy:

We were always on the lookout for what we believed to be provocateurs because we suspected there would be many groups out there that would try to pull this kind of a stunt.

When you have thousands and thousands of people, all attending a major event like that  but one person misbehaves  the entire story becomes about that one person and thats exactly what the mainstream media attacked.

Despite the medias skewed descriptions, Kennedy asked Marazzo if the Canadian public, including those who accepted COVID mandates, was influenced by the government response.

Marazzo said:

The critical mistake that the government of Canada made is they used the banks  they deputized the banks against the people without any form of due process. And even the most hardened supporters of the COVID 19 mandates  when the banks started to attack peoples accounts and credit scores and close their credit cards off, when they attacked peoples means to provide for their families, that really struck a nerve with a lot of Canadians.

Marazzo and Kennedy discussed how the government attacked the convoy, politically and economically, in an attempt to stop its progress, including trying to financially cripple individual leaders of the protest.

Marazzo told Kennedy:

My credit card was turned off. My spouses credit rating was attacked and it dropped 109 points.

The credit card that I used to pay for my childs medication didnt work. And because its on file with the pharmacy, I couldnt even get heart medication for my child. And so this was all done without any warrants for my arrest, any charges  I wasnt prosecuted  this was because I had the wrong thoughts.

Kennedy responded:

Without any due process, without going to a court, without charging you for a crime  its really something out of the middle ages. Its exactly the kind of thing that King George was doing, that prompted us to have a revolution in this country.

Watch the podcast here:

Read more at: ChildrensHealthDefense.org
(Natural News) A veteran reporter for The New York Times has made several stunning admissions and statements that were captured on undercover video by Project Veritas, including verification that the FBI had scores of informants in the crowd during the Jan. 6 false flag incident at the U.S. Capitol Building.

In a two-part series, the investigative journalism organization recorded statements by Times reporter Matthew Rosenberg, who at one point was talking about his sources including one for that ridiculous, like pee tape  a false claim made in a fake dossier assembled ahead of the 2016 election by former British spy Christopher Steele on behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign that also accused then-GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump of being a dupe for Vladimir Putin.

Specifically, the claim was that Trump hired hookers to pee on a bed in a Moscow hotel where President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama reportedly stayed.

Rosenberg also talked about what happens in the newsroom at The New York Times, explaining that there is a real internal tug of war between, like, the reasonable people and some of the crazier leftist sh*t thats worked its way in there.

Theyre not the majority, but theyre very vocal, loud minority that dominate social media and, therefore, has just hugely outsized influence, he continued, adding that he believes it is alienating Times subscribers whom he describes as prosperous.

The 11-year veteran reporter also said that many of his colleagues at the paper are bullies and not the clearest thinkers, some of them, before going on to describe those who end up at the Times as very neurotic people.

In addition, Rosenberg disparaged a colleague, Adam Goldman, whom he described as a lousy writer needing constant assistance from editors.

Hes a terrible writerHes just not good at conceptualizing things. Hes not good with words. Its a skill. Its a hard one. Rosenberg added that editors do all his writing for him.

After delving further into the internal workings and schisms at the Times, he then commented on the ongoing litigation between the paper and Project Veritas.

James OKeefe, that was a f**k up. We may well lose that one, he observed.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning Rosenberg, whose beat at the Times is national security, also talked about the Jan. 6 false flag in ways that differed from his own reporting of the incident.

For instance, at one point he says that there were a ton of FBI informants among the people who attacked the Capitol, though the paper mostly has pushed back on those claims in other reporting, including his own.

On the one-year anniversary of the false flag, Rosenberg wrote that the claim about masses of Feds in the crowd was a reimagining of Jan. 6.

He and two other Times writers wrote:

The reimagining of Jan. 6 has not so much evolved as it has splintered into rival, but often complementary, false narratives with a common goal  to shift blame away from Mr. Trump, his supporters and a Republican Party maneuvering to win back control of government. The riot was a false flag operation by antifa, the loose left-wing collective; the F.B.I. planted agents to stir up the crowd; the protesters were mere tourists wrongfully accused by a Democratic-led Justice Department and vilified by a biased mainstream media; police officers recounting their injuries and trauma were crisis actors.

Rosenberg himself would tell the Project Veritas journalist that Jan. 6, in fact, was no big deal.

Its not a big deal as they [media] are making it, because they were making too big a deal. They were making this an organized thing that it wasnt, he explained on video. He also said that Jan. 6 was fun, a contradiction to his reporting that January 6 was a violent interruption to the transition of power in American history.

It was like, me and two other colleagues who were there outside and we were just having fun, he admitted.

He also disparaged his Times co-workers who claimed to have been deeply affected by the incident.

I know Im supposed to be traumatized, but like, all these colleagues who were in the [Capitol] building, and are like, Oh my God it was so scary! Im like, f*ck off! He adds, Im like come on, its not the kind place I can tell someone to man up, but I kind of want to be like, dude come on, you were not in any danger.

Rosenberg concludes, These f*cking little dweebs who keep going on about their trauma. Shut the f*ck up. Theyre f*cking b*tches.

No wonder fewer and fewer Americans trust these mainstream media outlets.

Sources include:

ProjectVeritas.com

NYTimes.com
(Natural News) As the current Biden regime offers its love and support to Ukraine following an invasion by more than 100,000 Russian forces, a newly resurfaced leaked audio indicates that a pair of Obama administration officials were plotting to overthrow the elected president of that country during the Maidan Revolution in 2014.

One of the key players in the coup planning was Victoria Nuland, who served in Barack Obamas State Department and is a vehement anti-President Trumper, as well as an avid and sycophantic supporter of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In fact, she was heavily involved in spreading the Steele dossier, the hoax document that claimed to have evidence Trump was a stooge of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Nuland is currently serving in Joe Bidens regime, which has been dubbed Obamas third term because of his behind-the-scenes influence and the presence of so many people who worked for him. Nuland is currently serving as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. She recently testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and yet no one  not even Republicans  deigned to ask her about her past actions in Ukraine.

As the revolution gained steam, Nuland visited the front lines of the protests in Kyiv, handing out food to demonstrators. A few weeks later, those protests turned violent and several Ukrainians were killed.

Around that same time, she held a discussion with another American diplomatic figure, Jeffrey Pyatt, to talk about events in Ukraine. Pyatt is currently the U.S. Ambassador to Greece.

The European Union Times reported: However between 2013-2016, he was serving as U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine. During that phone call, Nuland and Pyatt brought up two individualsthen national security adviser to the vice president, Jake Sullivan, and the vice president himself, Joe Biden.

The discussion between the two revolved around the State Departments pick for prime minister of a so-called unity government in Ukraine.

One might ask, why was the United States involved in deciding who should be the pick for prime minister of a foreign country? Thats a great question. During the review of the three candidates for the post, State picked a man named Arseniy Yatsenyuk.

Reports noted that Biden, then vice president and in much better control of his mental faculties, was intimately involved in the coup plot after Obama made him point man for Ukraine. For good measure, it was around the same time that Bidens boy, Hunter Biden, landed his multimillion-dollar gig on the board of Burisma Energy Holdings, one of the largest firms in Ukraine, though he had zero experience as an energy executive.

Heres the nub of what happened: Under Bidens direction, the official leader of Ukraine at the time, Viktor Yanukovych, was undermined by elements of the U.S. government because he was essentially pro-Vladimir Putin. Then, they helped pick someone the Obama regime approved of over the duly-elected president.

In the leaked phone conversation between Nuland and Pyatt, the former voiced exasperation with the European Unions response to the situation then unfolding in Ukraine. Following is what Nuland said.

So, that would be great, I think, to help glue this thing and have the U.N. [United Nations] help glue it. And, you know, F**k the EU [European Union].

Pyatt responded: So let me work on Klitschko [former mayor of Kyiv] and if you can just keep we want to try to get somebody with an international personality to come out here and help to midwife this thing. The other issue is some kind of outreach to Yanukovych [deposed Ukrainian president] but we probably regroup on that tomorrow as we see how things start to fall into place.

Nuland then said: So on that piece Geoff, when I wrote the note [US vice-presidents national security adviser Jake] Sullivans come back to me VFR [direct to me], saying you need Biden and I said probably tomorrow for an atta-boy and to get the deets [details] to stick. So Bidens willing.

Later:

Nuland: Good. I dont think Klitsch should go into the government. I dont think its necessary, I dont think its a good idea.

Pyatt: Yeah. I guessin terms of him not going into the government, just let him sort of stay out and do his political homework and stuff. Im just thinking in terms of the process moving ahead and we want to keep the moderate Democrats together. The problem is going to be Tyahnybok and his guys

Nuland: I think Yats is the guy whos got the economic experience, the governing experience. Hes the what he needs is Klitsch and Tyahnybok on the outside. He needs to be talking to them four times a week, you know. I think Klitsch going in hes going to be at that level working for Yatseniuk, its just not gonna work.

Klitsch is the current mayor of Kyiv, former pro heavyweight boxer Vitali Klitschko, who had come back to his native land from Germany to help lead it. They decided they didnt want him.

Listen to the leaked audio recording of the Nuland and Pyatt conversation:

Sources include:

RedVoiceMedia.com

EUTimes.com
(Natural News) Stand for Health Freedom has put together a petition calling on the people of the world to speak out against the World Health Organizations (WHO) proposed Pandemic Treaty and the one world government that will birth out of it.

Though the United States has its own constitution and set of rules for national sovereignty, the WHO wants to override that in the name of public health. It is proposing a Good Health Pass system, for instance, which Tony Blair has described as an internationally-recognized system of health passes for world travelers.

If you believe in bodily sovereignty, parental rights, and informed consent, you must stand up now and let your voice be heard, says Stand for Health Freedom. Our membership in the WHO doesnt give this globalist organization the right to violate our civil liberties, human rights, and medical freedom.

The petition is aimed at fake president Joe Biden and various high-ranking members of Congress. It also names Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, as well as the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Member states of the WHO have already begun negotiations for crafting the global Pandemic Treaty, which is on track to be legally binding after its adoption at the 77th World Health Assembly in May 2024.

In November 2021, the Assembly convened for a special session  this is only the second time this has ever happened since the WHO was formed in 1948  and voted to create an Intergovernmental Negotiating Body to give even more power to the WHO in times of global health emergencies.

If you thought the WHOs power was egregious during the Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) plandemic, it will be so much worse during the next one soon to come if the Pandemic Treaty gets passed as planned. (Related: The WHO is also changing the definitions of things like herd immunity to exclude natural immunity.)

The undersigned citizens of the U.S. strongly oppose any involvement in a treaty, agreement, or other legally binding global document that would hinder US sovereignty in any area, but especially public health, the petition reads.

We oppose policies that require U.S. citizens to take actions directed by a global body in the context of health that also impacts the freedom of travel and trade. We also oppose the inevitable sharing of private health data that underlies the functionality of increased global responses.

Its time to decide, America: freedom or tyranny?

What the United States needs is to move away from tyranny, not more towards it. If ratified, the WHOs Pandemic Treaty would wipe away all remaining traces of freedom and sovereignty from American life and plunge the country into abject tyranny in the event that another bioweapon gets released.

Its dangerous to allow a global agreement to rule the American people in a time of crisis, the petition further reads.

Additionally, its imperative that each nation and territory retain their individual sovereignty especially during times of emergency so that the entire global community can be protected.

If there are still Americans out there who value the right to choose when it comes to medicines and drugs, or the right to freely move about regardless of what scary new boogeyman disease might be circulating at any given time, then take the time to sign this petition.

Congress and other elected leaders need to know that Americans are still paying attention to their machinations and are not going to sit idly by and watch as the final remnants of liberty get sacrificed on the altar of saving lives.

More related news can be found at Tyranny.news.

Sources for this article include:

StandforHealthFreedom.com

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) Despite vehement denials from the Biden administration, Russian diplomats presented compelling new evidence of the existence of U.S.-backed and funded bioweapons labs in Ukraine and around the world during a special session of the UN Security Council on Friday.

As The Associated Press reported, the session was scheduled at the request of Russia, which is one of the five permanent Security Council members to include the U.S., Britain, France and China, due to claims of the military biological activities of the U.S. on the territory of Ukraine.

Expectedly, U.S. officials have strenuously pushed back on the claims using an excuse they never used regarding the Trump-Russia collusion hoax  Moscow disinformation.

This is exactly the kind of false flag effort we have warned Russia might initiate to justify a biological or chemical weapons attack, Olivia Dalton, spokesperson for the U.S. Mission to the United Nations said late Thursday. Were not going to let Russia gaslight the world or use the U.N. Security Council as a venue for promoting their disinformation.

The AP added:

The Russian request, announced in a tweet Thursday afternoon from its first deputy U.N. ambassador, Dmitry Polyansky, follows the U.S. rejection of Russian accusations that Ukraine is running chemical and biological labs with U.S. support.

Pentagon press secretary John Kirby on Wednesday called the Russian claim a bunch of malarkey.

Dmitry Chumakov, another Russian deputy U.N. ambassador, repeated the accusation Wednesday, urging Western media to cover the news about secret biological laboratories in Ukraine.

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric reiterated on Thursday what he said the previous day: That the World Health Organization, which has been operating in tandem with the Ukrainian government, said they are unaware of any activity on the part of the Ukrainian government which is inconsistent with its international treaty obligations, including on chemical weapons or biological weapons.

And Izumi Nakamitsu, the UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, told the 15-member council that the global organization is not aware of any biological weapons programs in Ukraine, according to a report from Al Jazeera.

She added that both Ukraine and Russia are parties to the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), an international treaty that prohibits such weapons development.

Biological weapons have been outlawed since the BWC entered into force in 1975, she said.

Nebenzias American counterpart, UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, accused Russia of attempting to use the Security Council to legitimize disinformation and deceive people to justify President [Vladimir] Putins war of choice against the Ukrainian people.

I will say this once: Ukraine does not have a biological weapons program. There are no Ukrainian biological weapons laboratories supported by the United States, not near Russias border or anywhere, Thomas-Greenfield told the council.

But a Defense Threat Reduction Agency document that surfaced last week demonstrates clearly that the U.S. partnered with several former Soviet satellite countries including Ukraine on labs to research biological threats and to develop countermeasures to them.

From Page 9 of the document:

CBEP is interested in collaborative research engagements with foreign partners in any one of the following regions: Countries of the Former Soviet Union (FSU) (specifically, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine), Africa (including, but not limited to, Kenya, Tanzania Uganda, South Africa), Southeast Asia (including, but not limited to, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand), and Middle Eastern /South Asian countries (including, but not limited to, Afghanistan, Iraq, India and Pakistan). CBEP encourages proposers to develop projects in conjunction with foreign institutions in CBEP-engaged countries.

Fundamental research efforts enable capabilities such as development of improved detection devices for traditional and nontraditional chemical agents; development of diagnostics for existing and emerging infectious disease threats; increasing knowledge and improved capabilities for development of new or improved medical and material countermeasures to CB threats for both pre- and post-exposure scenarios; enhanced personal protection against, modeling of, prevention of, or decontamination of CB threats; and providing effective elimination strategies via non-kinetic approaches for threat agent destruction, neutralization and/or sequestration, the document adds.

You cant develop improved detection devices for emerging infectious disease threats as well as countermeasures without developing a biological to be able to detect.

The document speaks volumes, and once again, our government appears to be lying to us.

Sources include:

MRSDConsortium.org

AlJazeera.com

CitizenFreePress.com
(Natural News) The United States has fallen behind Russia and China in the hypersonic weapons race.

According to a Bloomberg report, the Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW) intended for use by the U.S. Air Force has experienced three successive failed tests. ARRW was developed by defense manufacturer Lockheed Martin. (Related: U.S. set to lose next war against China, Russia hypersonic missiles; Pentagon said to be several years behind both countries)

The three failed tests happened during restricted exercises centered on demonstrating the operation of the missiles booster motor.

Meanwhile, China and Russia have conducted test launches and fielded their versions of the new weapons, which can travel five times the speed of sound and maneuver in flight like a cruise missile, making them harder to detect and shoot down.

More booster motor tests on ARRWs schedule

ARRWs next obstacles will be two upcoming ground-based tests of its booster motor by June 30. If successful, a fully operational hypersonic missile could be authorized for initial production by Sept. 30. Before production, the service must finish a review of Lockheed Martins ability to build and provide the new weapons.

The U.S. Air Force has yet to issue expenses related to the ARRW program, but data indicates the development phase could be about $1.4 billion. The deployment of these weapons that travel multiple times faster than the sound of speed and have unpredictable flight paths are being rushed as chaos in Ukraine erupts.

ARRW will be air-launched from a Boeing B-52 Stratofortress bombers wing and hurled by a booster motor before the solid glide body, or warhead, travels at hypersonic speed to its target.

A spokesperson for Heidi Shyu, the Defense Departments undersecretary for research and engineering, said that she is supportive of the Air Forces aggressive efforts to accelerate development, although the September 30 operational capability date is a very aggressive schedule.

According to Kelley Sayler, an analyst in advanced technology, the combat-ready date of September 30 leaves little to no room for test delays or additional flight failures, and so it will likely be challenging.

While there are still technical and engineering problems surrounding ARRWs development ahead of being combat-ready, the U.S. is falling behind its international competitors in the acquisition of hypersonic weapons.

Russia recently test-fired a hypersonic missile, delivering a message to the U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies in advance of its invasion of Ukraine. Hypersonic weapons will form the core of Russias non-nuclear deterrence capability in the future, according to Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.

The U.S. said Russia has deployed its Avangard Hypersonic Glide Vehicle and its Tsirkon hypersonic anti-ship and land-attack missile. A top U.S. nuclear commander said China is also spending heavily in hypersonic weapons, and it has put one in orbit last July that traveled 25,000 miles in more than 100 minutes of flight.

Russia and China are able to push ahead on new weapons without the supervision by lawmakers and the public that can delay testing and deployment under the Department of Defenses acquisition system.

The U.S. Air Force is also evading its bets on the declaration date. A program office statement said that it continues to aggressively pursue an early operational capability while maintaining high standards of technical rigor. It added that the flight test program has successfully demonstrated a number of first-time events.

US has a lot of catching up to do with China

Meanwhile, the chairman of a House subcommittee that monitors the program is doubtful of U.S. efforts to date, and particularly whether the U.S. Air Force can achieve its goal this year.

The U.S. has a lot of catching up to do with China. It will take much more than a September 30 press release to regain the lead weve squandered since the 1970s, said Tennessee Rep. Jim Cooper, who added that the Pentagons hypersonic weapons effort need funding, engineering excellence, and rapid testing to begin to reach parity.

Even then, I worry that the U.S. does not even know how to catch up, particularly given the repeated failures with the missile program that weve had to date on components that should not be technically challenging, Cooper remarked in a statement.

A production decision on the first 12 missiles that was earlier planned for January is on hold until the results of the December failure review, the two additional booster motor tests and the full-missile flight.

The program office said it will not award a production contract without a Production Readiness Review and a successful All Up Round Test Flight.

To date, the team has not found any systemic quality issues at Lockheed or its subcontractors that caused the test failures, the program office added. Lockheed Martin was initially awarded a $480 million development contract in April 2018 that was expanded to US$986 million in December 2019.

Watch the video below about Russia successfully launching a hypersonic missile from a Russian nuclear submarine.

This video is from the Russia Truth channel on Brighteon.com.

More related articles:

Powering hypersonic weapons: US armed forces eyeing dangerous 5G tech.

New Russian hypersonic missile can achieve speeds of Mach 27 and will become operational in 2020.

U.S. missile defenses rendered totally obsolete by Mach 10 hypersonic missile developed by China.

Cuban Missile Crisis 2.0? Putin may put hypersonic missiles, troops in Cuba, Venezuela, as NATO deploys forces closer to Russia.

Follow MilitaryTechnology.news to know more about the latest hypersonic weapons.

Sources include:

ZeroHedge.com

Bloomberg.com

SCMP.com
(Natural News) NATOs relentless push for anti-Russian hatred across the global economy could force China to retaliate if its own businesses end up getting punished in all the fray.

CNBCs Eunice Yoon joined the Squawk Box the other day to talk about how China is being backed into a corner amid escalating sanctions against Russia, which are also impacting other nations that do business with Russia.

The United States military-industrial complex, which includes media, religion, the technology sector, and of course the government, are all now engaging in open xenophobia against Russia in response to the Ukraine invasion  almost like they are all reading from the same script.

Despite the presence of Pentagon-run bioweapons laboratories throughout Ukraine, and the constant encroachment of NATO towards the Russian border over the past several decades, we are all somehow supposed to believe that Vladimir Putin is the bad guy in all this for basically protecting his own borders.

The U.S. could learn a thing or two from Putin about the importance of protecting ones own borders, it turns out, but I digress.

The Chinese foreign ministry said that if the U.S. sanctions Chinese companies that China would respond firmly and forcefully,' Yoo explained during the CNBC segment.

China also warned that the U.S. is operating dangerous biolabs in Ukraine, calling the corporate-controlled media machine in the U.S. an Empire of Lies.

Does anyone take CNBC or any other Western media outlet seriously anymore?

The CNBC perspective is of course anti-Russia as well, seeing as how it is just another corporate-controlled propaganda outlet run by the military-industrial complex.

It is no surprise that Yoo repeated many of the same western lies that Putin is an aggressor, and that NATO and its proxy government in Ukraine are innocent victims in this whole crisis.

Unfortunately for CNBC and its puppet masters, the emperor has no clothes. It is becoming painfully obviously that the anti-Putin, anti-Russia agenda has nothing to do with human rights for the people of Ukraine, and everything to do with disrupting the deep states military and biological weapons presence in Eastern Europe.

This is not to say that China is any better when it comes to spreading propaganda. The conflict we are now seeing appears to be a fight of evil against evil, perhaps, and not good versus evil.

Either way, the military-industrial complex that controls the U.S. and other NATO countries is anything but trustworthy. Whatever it is saying about Putin is more than likely true about itself, because this is what these deranged psychopaths do: blame others for the things they are doing themselves.

Our politicians and businesses do not understand human history at all, wrote someone in response to the clip. This is how wars are started!

Just another daily distraction, said someone else. Meanwhile, in less than 200 days, the Dominion-dominated, ballot-harvesting, no-ID-required, vote-early-and-often, nobody-arrested, corrupt election system will still be in place to steal the midterm elections.

Another pointed out that those who rely on pharmaceutical drugs as part of their routine might be in for a shocker should China retaliate against this Western aggression.

They make 90% of antibiotics and other things like blood thinners, this person explained. China is Americas drug store.

I think we should sanction D.C. with a boycott on exports and an embargo, someone else wrote.

That would be nice, but D.C. doesnt produce anything except bulls**t, joked another in response.

Someone else also pointed out that if the U.S. did not sanction China for the Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19), why would it suddenly do it for Ukraine?

More of the latest news about the degrading global situation can be found at Collapse.news.

Sources for this article include:

YouTu.be

NaturalNews.com
Climate research in the Russian province of Siberia is at stake amid the Russia-Ukraine war.

The UK-based scientists are conducting the said research on the province's large carbon sink that contains greenhouse gases. Its stabilization is crucial in limiting global warming and meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement.

Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the scientists are facing a challenge on getting back to Siberia to continue their study and eventually compile data on how to stabilize the Earth's largest carbon sink in the Russian province.

Russia contains large amount of atmosphere-damaging greenhouse gases underneath its frozen grounds. The research was supposed to curb these gases' potential release due to thawing.

However, their work is halted, especially after the United States and its allies imposed sanctions on Russia.

Climate Research

The UK research team from the Northumbria University are accompanied by their Russian colleagues to conduct their decades of research of collecting rock formations from the caves of Siberia.

The rocks are said to contain data on global climate.

As the Russian invasion on Ukraine commenced on Feb. 24, it has impeded the ongoing climate research that can help stabilize the carbon sink and eventually meet the United Nations' global target of limiting global warming by up to 1.5 degrees Celsius, as per the Evening Standard.

Approximately 11 million square kilometers of permafrost covers the Russian territory, as per the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

Beneath the ice sheet contains significant amount of greenhouse gases equivalent to twice as much in the Earth's atmosphere,

According to UNESCO, the release of these greenhouse gases will be catastrophic to the ongoing climate change and global warming facing the planet.

It is for this reason the ongoing climate research by the UK is essential when it comes to fighting global warming.

Also Read: A Massive New Source of Greenhouse Gases is Rapidly Warming Up the Planet

Thawing and Permafrost

Stabilization of Russia's Siberia carbon sink and its permafrost is crucial limiting the greenhouse gas effect and global warming, which is under the objectives of the UN-led Paris Agreement, also known as the Paris Climate Agreement or the Paris Accords.

However, the thawing or melting of ice worldwide is countering the efforts and progress against increased greenhouse gas emissions.

Due to the vast land area under Russian territory, its large permafrost as pointed out by UNESCO can make us deviate away from reaching the goals on climate change.

Science and War

The UK researchers will find it hard even further to go back to Siberia and continue their research due to several factors related to the Russian-Ukraine war.

Aside from the imposed sanctions on Russia and the security threats surrounding travel in the region, Moscow recently issued its list of unfriendly countries.

According to the Russian news agency TASS, the UK is among the list of unfriendly countries issued by the Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The list pertains to the countries that showed hostility or unfriendly conduct against Russia, including its companies, citizens, and government.

The UK being on the list may affect the resumed travel of the scientists back to Siberia.

Regardless, it is still not clear if Putin's list will also ban the UK scientists from engaging travel in and out of Russia.

The situation highlights that the political ramifications of war also affect research in the name of science.

Related Article: Siberia's Thawing Permafrost Could be a Ticking 'Methane Bomb' of Greenhouse Gases
UPDATE (3-16-2022 at 5:00 PM): The Pasco Police Department (PPD) shares these photos of a of a man they believe was involved in the PPD investigation from Sunday, March 13, 2022 on Lewis St.

Pasco Police share photos of a man involved in Sunday's officer-involved shooting UPDATE (3/17/2022 at 10:40 AM): Pasco Police share camera footage of the man they are searching for in connection to Sunday's shooting in Pasco.

UPDATE: 3-15-22 5:11 p.m.

Pasco Police Department has confirmed the identities of both civilians involved in this incident. The Special Investigations Unit has not been able to contact the family of the victim who died on scene. His information is being withheld while the family can be notified.

The suspect who received deadly force and died at the hospital was identified as Gabriel Artz, from Pasco.

Officer Jasen McClintock arrived on scene first, an officer since 2008, followed soon by Officer Jeremy Jones, an officer since 2006. They attempted to de-escalate Artz, who tried attacking the officers, according to police record. Officers McClintock and Jones then used deadly force.

UPDATE: 3-14-22 11:15 a.m.

Pasco Police Department's special investigations unit updated that the male shot by responders has died after police's deadly force response.

The civilian identities have not yet been confirmed.

PPD is planning to release the names of the officers involved tomorrow, March 15.

PASCO, WA - Pasco Police Officers were dispatched on Sunday at about 11:40 am to an altercation between two men in the street on W Lewis and 6th Ave. It was reported one of the men was armed with a knife.

When officers arrived one male was lying on the ground with what seemed like stab wounds.

One officers rendered aid to the injured male. Unfortunately, he died of his injuries at the scene.

Two additional officers approached the armed man. The man charged at the officers several times. Officers attempted to de-escalate the situation and failed. This lead officers to use force, shooting the suspect, striking and stopping him.

Officers immediately rendered aid to the suspect who was then transported to a nearby hospital to be treated. His condition is unknown at this time.

Special Investigations Unit is now investigating the officer involved shooting.. They are investigating the use of force incident by the Pasco Police Department.

This is a developing story, which means information could change. We are working to report timely and accurate information as we get it.
Republicans on Monday criticized Gov. Ned Lamonts firearms initiatives, charging that the proposed measures would violate the constitutional rights of gun owners.

The GOP lawmakers also questioned whether the governors budget proposals would fall short of the juvenile justice reforms needed to address the states uptick in crime and car thefts during the last two years.

But James Rovella, commissioner of the state Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection, said that adding rifles to the states list of banned weaponry, prohibiting guns on public transportation and on municipal property, and allowing police to review the permits of people openly carrying guns are needed to increase public safety.

The GOP lawmakers, during an anticipated daylong, virtual public hearing of the legislative Judiciary Committee, for which 227 people registered to speak, also opposed having tighter restrictions on so-called ghost guns, homemade weapons made from a variety of purchased parts, without engraved registration numbers that provide a record of ownership.

And while Lamont has proposed $72.5 million in state surplus and federal American Rescue Plan Act funding to pursue the legislation, including a new task force to work with neighboring states to investigate and fight the proliferation of illegal firearms from out-of-state, Republicans noted that in recent years they have proposed adding more money to an existing unit, which majority Democrats failed to properly fund.

Rovella said the trafficking unit was a victim of a staffing shortage that has reduced the State Police personnel from 1,100 in 2017, to 888 today.

In recent years, Democrats in the General Assembly have failed to pass a law allowing police to ask people openly carrying firearms to show their permits, the result of a high-profile case from Bridgeport in 2016. Members of the legislative Black and Puerto Rican Caucus helped derail the proposal, out of concerns that police could use the law to profile minority residents.

It gives an officer a little more security in the ability to ask for a permit and to relief the stress of having someone harmed close to you, Rovella said. My question was how is that constitutional? replied state Rep. Doug Dubitsky, R-Chaplin.

Im interested in the safety of police officers, Rovella said, stressing that free speech can be hindered by people openly carrying firearms. Illegal firearms are out there.

How is this possibly constitutional? Dubitsky continued.

State Rep. Bob Godfrey, D-Danbury, one of the longest serving members of the legislature and the committee, criticized Republican claims on the proposals in general, commending Rovella and Lamont for helping keep Connecticut a national leader in gun-safety laws.

When I see fascist-leaning, gun-toting people wanting to overturn democracy and replace it with government by dictatorship, I get really, really angry and I get really frightened and will continue to fight that, Godfrey said. So when I see a proposal that says no guns in polling places? Therere entire groups of people who would like to overturn elections. When we see that people are afraid when they see someone carrying a gun openly in public places, theyre frightened.

By mid-afternoon, with still more than 200 people left to testify, Walt Kupson, outreach coordinator for the pro-gun Connecticut Citizens Defense League, slammed the governors proposals. Eighty five percent of it is pure, biased gun control, Kupson told the committee. It wont do a thing for crime.

Most of the first hours of testimony focused on firearms. On juvenile justice issues, state Child Advocate Sarah Eagan and Marisa Halm, director of the Youth Justice Project in the Center for Childrens Advovacy, warned that the main juvenile jail, the Manson Youth Institution in Cheshire, has been found in violation of childrens rights.

State Rep. Craig Fishbein of Wallingford, a top Republican on the committee who is leading GOP efforts to make it easier for police to hold and arraign repeat juvenile suspects, said he was worried that under the governors current proposal, responding police would only be able to access the records of youths going back 90 days.

At some point someones got to say youre doing something wrong, Fishbein said, supporting a Republican proposal to expand the crimes for juveniles to be taken to adult court..

Lets just say that a juvenile has been convicted of stealing three cars, Fishbein said. Those convictions happened two years ago or thereabouts. An officer in the field would not know that and they would not be able to get access to that information. They would only know about recent cases within 90 days.

Rovella admitted that he did not know the reasoning behind the 90-day lookback, but officials agreed it to be an appropriate period.

The hearing included several Republican-proposed bills, including expedited arraignment and detention of juvenile criminal suspects, as well as a so-called stand your ground law for gun owners, to create a legal presumption to support deadly force.

Kupson, the CCDL spokesman, said he usually carries a firearm. Parking lots, gas stations, liquor stores, convenience store, those are places and they always have been places where it is a very easy target for criminals, and no more so now than ever. So I can absolutely imagine a situation where Im in my car and Im pumping gas and as I get into my car someone is going to come in  it could even be a juvenile  comes in from the other end to carjack me or to point a weapon at me.

A free and law-abiding citizen should be able to take whatever measures necessary up to and including the use of lethal force (a firearm) to protect themselves, others, or protect and preserve their personal property or known property of others, said Jonathan Aniuk of Shelton, in written testimony. Not only does this give us law-abiding citizens a good and legal defense for protecting ourselves/others/our property, but laws like this will also have a meaningful effect on criminals because it will give them pause before they decide to commit any criminal acts, knowing that the stakes are now much higher.

That proposal, however, has little chance to win support in the committee, which is dominated by Democrats who have 97-54 and 23-13 control of the House and Senate, respectively.

State Rep. Steve Stafstrom, D-Bridgeport, co-chairman of the committee, said the proposal is problematic. As drafted, this proposal will make our streets less safe, Stafstrom said. It could literally allow someone to justifiably shoot someone else who mistakenly enters the wrong car. Imagine mistakenly opening the drivers side door of a car that looks like yours and someone being permitted to put a a bullet in your head? I dont expect this proposal to get much Democratic support in the committee.

The panels deadline is April 4, at 5 p.m.

kdixon@ctpost.com Twitter: @KenDixonCT
Newburyport, MA (01950)

Today

Rain likely. Expect mist and reduced visibilities at times. High 51F. Winds E at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 100%..

Tonight

Showers early, then partly cloudy overnight. Expect mist and reduced visibilities at times. Low 47F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%.
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.
Longview, TX (75601)

Today

Mostly cloudy skies. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 88F. Winds SSE at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

Considerable cloudiness. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 69F. Winds SSE at 10 to 15 mph.
One of the most effective non-pharmaceutical measures to manage the current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, caused by the rapid transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has been the use of facemasks.

Several studies have reported that the use of facemasks has restricted the spread of SARS-CoV-2 infection. To date, the impact of facemask requirements in school settings has not been widely evaluated.

Study: SARS-CoV-2 Incidence in K12 School Districts with Mask-Required Versus Mask-Optional Policies  Arkansas, AugustOctober 2021. Image Credit: Tom Wang / Shutterstock.com

About the study

In a recent Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report published by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), researchers evaluate the impact of wearing facemasks by students in schools and the incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection.

The authors revealed that during fall 2021, some school districts in Arkansas implemented the use of facemasks for students in kindergarten through grade 12 (K12). To determine the association between facemask policies and COVID-19 incidence, a number of SARS-CoV-2 infections in schools following the implementation of full or partial facemask requirements were compared with the number of COVID-19 cases in school districts that did not implement the requirement of wearing facemasks. This data was collected on a weekly basis between August 23, 2021, and October 16, 2021.

In this study, the researchers calculated the incidence rate ratios (IRRs) by comparing districts with full or partial facemask requirements with those that did not implement this type of policy. They further calculated ratios of observed-to-expected numbers of cases by district and COVID-19 incidence in districts that changed their policy from no mask requirement to any mask requirement.

Relevant data was acquired from various databases, such as the Arkansas Department of Healths (ADHs) COVID-19 surveillance database and immunization registry, Arkansas Center for Health Improvements mask policy database, and Arkansas Department of Educations 202122 enrolment and 2019 free or reduced-cost school lunch databases.

Study findings

Districts with a full mask policy exhibited 23% lower COVID-19 occurrence among students and staff members as compared to school districts with no mask requirements. Additionally, the observed-to-expected ratios for full and partial mask policies were less than ratios for districts with no mask policy; however, the ratio was marginally higher for districts with partial mask policies as compared to those with full mask policies.

Interestingly, districts that switched to full or partial mask requirements from no mask requirement revealed a significant reduction in the number of COVID-19 cases. These findings revealed that facemasks provide effective protection against SARS-CoV-2 infection in K12 settings.

Implications

The current study showed that public school districts in Arkansas with full or partial mask requirements exhibited a decreased number of CIVID-19 cases among students and staff members as compared to schools that did not implement a mandatory mask policy. One of the main strengths of this study is the use of multiple analyses and sensitivity studies to determine the effect of facemasks in school settings.

Based on their findings, the authors strongly recommended universal mask use in combination with other preventive measures, such as vaccination of the eligible candidates, which would protect K12 schools from SARS-CoV-2 transmission. As compared to surrounding communities, school districts, on average, were associated with a higher incidence of COVID-19 among students and staff members, which could be mitigated by the usage of facemasks.

Limitations

In this ecologic study, various important data were omitted, such as data on ventilation and other school-based prevention efforts. However, the researchers considered all surrounding communities' COVID-19 incidence.

An additional limitation of the current study was that compliance with an existing mask policy was not directly observed or evaluated. However, non-compliance with mask policies would generate biased results.

Additionally, quarantine rules varied from one school to another, with or without mask requirements. Notably, students in schools with mask requirements were less likely to be quarantined than those studying in schools without mask requirements, which could lead to a potential bias in IRRs toward the null.

The researchers failed to separately investigate the impact of full and partial mask policies because of small sample sizes. In the future, additional studies are required to better understand the effect of facemasks in school settings amidst the prevalence of new SARS-CoV-2 variants.
In a recent study posted to the medRxiv* pre-print server, researchers assessed the impact of demographic variability on the Pfizer/BioNTech BNT162b2 vaccine-induced serological immunity against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) variants of concern (VOC) and variants of interest (VOI).

The duration and magnitude of vaccine-induced humoral antibody responses against SARS-CoV-2 variants are important serological markers for the prediction of immune protection against coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).

About the study

In the present study, the team evaluated the influence of demographic factors on vaccine-induced neutralizing antibody titers against SARS-CoV-2 strains in Asians. The demographics assessed were sex, age, body mass index (BMI), smoking habits, and co-morbidities such as hyperlipidemia and hypertension. The viral strains tested were the SARS-CoV-2 Wuhan-Hu-1 strain, VOCs (Beta, Alpha, Delta, Gamma), and VOIs (Kappa and Epsilon). The titers were determined against viral proteins such as nucleocapsid and the spike (S)- full spike and the receptor-binding domain (RBD), individually.

A total of 168 Asians, comprising Malay, Indian, and Chinese individuals were recruited from the COVID-19 PROTECT study. All of them were doubly vaccinated with the BNT162b2 vaccine with a time interval of 21 days between the two doses. Moreover, 16% of the participants received a homologous booster dose. None of these individuals had prior COVID-19 history. Additionally, 27 polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-diagnosed, convalescent COVID-19 patients aged above 60 years, were included in the study.

Blood samples of the vaccinated group were collected before vaccination and three weeks, three months, and six months post-primary vaccination. Additionally, serum was obtained one month and three months after booster dose administration. While the three-month titers indicated the peak antibody response, the six-month titers denoted the long-term cross-protective immunity. The convalescent samples were obtained pre-vaccination, at peak response post-second dose, and one to two months post booster dose.

The viral neutralization potency was measured by the pseudovirus neutralization test (PVNT) using SARS-CoV-2 spike pseudovirus wherein PVNT titers above 50% indicated neutralizers. Additionally, an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) based on the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2)-S RBD binding inhibition was used to augment the PVNT results. Moreover, the ELISA titers were converted to half-maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50) values, and IC50 values under 50 IU/mL denoted less than 40% RBD-ACE2 blockade. Additionally, real-time RBD-ACE2 interactions were observed using the quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) technology.

Results and discussion

The average age of the study cohort was 48 years and 45% of the volunteers were women. The study results showed that anti-nucleocapsid IgG was not found in the serum of most participants throughout the study. Additionally, volunteers with elevated pre-vaccination anti-nucleocapsid IgG titers did not significantly express anti-S and anti-RBD IgG antibodies. This indicated a high probability of cross-infectivity from other coronaviruses.

The anti-RBD IgG and anti-S IgG titers increased significantly with average concentrations of 7.4 g/mL and 19.7 g/mL, respectively, within two months of double vaccination However, the titers substantially decreased six months after vaccination.

PVNT assays indicated significant antibody responses (average 32 % neutralization) post the first dose that escalated to an average of 61% post-second dose. However, the titers declined to 23% after six months of vaccination.

Lower titers were observed in individuals aged above 60 years against the Delta strain. Although the titers improved post-second dose, a remarkable decrease was observed in six months of vaccination across all ages. Additionally, females and non-smokers were better cross-neutralizers. However, comorbidities, BMI, and ethnicity did not significantly affect viral neutralization.

Compared to the Wuhan-Hu-1 strain, consistently lower titers were observed against the Gamma and Beta VOCs up to six months post-primary vaccination. Contrastingly, this pattern was not detected in the spike-RBD titers. Additionally, ACE2-RBD inhibition exceeding 40% was observed for all strains three months post the second dose. However, the inhibition percentile declined six months post-primary vaccination.

The anti-Omicron spike-RBD titers were 85% and 80% in vaccinated and convalescents, respectively. However, they were lower compared to other strains, except the Beta VOC among convalescents. Additionally, QCM results demonstrated the inability of the ACE2 molecule to bind to coated RBD ligands of anti-S neutralizing antibodies.

Conclusion

Overall, the cross-protection was lower among convalescents compared to the vaccinated volunteers, probably due to mild COVID-19 in convalescents. Additionally, the titers declined for all variants across all Asians six months post-vaccination, independent of demographic variability. However, the booster dose enhanced cross-protection.

To summarize, antibody cross-protection was lowest against the Omicron variant among males aged above 60 years. However, the antibody titers improved for all the strains post administration of a COVID-19 vaccine booster dose.

*Important notice

medRxiv publishes preliminary scientific reports that are not peer-reviewed and, therefore, should not be regarded as conclusive, guide clinical practice/health-related behavior, or treated as established information.
A study of patients initiating dialysis during 2012-2016 at nine transplant centers in the Southeastern US found that dialysis facilities referred more incident patients and transplant centers evaluated more incident patients following implementation of the 2014 kidney allocation system (KAS) but fewer evaluated patients were placed onto the waitlist. Changes in dialysis facility and transplant center behaviors following implementation of the 2014 KAS may have influenced access to transplantation.

Nationally, waitlisting has declined following implementation of the 2014 change in the kidney allocation system (KAS). This study led by Dr Rachel Patzer (Emory University) sought to examine whether this decrease in waitlisting was driven by lower rates of referral, evaluation, or waitlisting in the Southeastern US, the only region with systematic data collection on early transplant steps that would facilitate this analysis. Results from this region encompassing Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina suggest that among the incident population that started the evaluation process, KAS led to a decline in overall waitlisting.

Dialysis facilities referred more incident patients and transplant centers evaluated more incident patients following implementation of KAS but fewer evaluated patients were placed onto the waitlist. Overall, the effect of KAS differed by transplant step and by incident vs. prevalent dialysis patients, and overall, declines in waitlisting observed in the post-KAS era are largely due to decreased transplant center waitlisting of referred patients.

These findings suggest that the change in KAS policy likely influenced provider behavior both at dialysis facilities (with respect to transplant referrals) as well as transplant programs (e.g., evaluation and waitlisting practices). This study, published in the American Journal of Kidney Diseases (AJKD), offers context for why overall waitlisting rates have declined nationally since the implementation of the 2014 KAS change and underscores the need to collect surveillance data on these important pre-waitlisting process measures nationally, particularly as new changes in kidney allocation and new quality measures in dialysis facilities and transplant programs are under development.
Care Agency staff become Dementia Friends

Care Agency staff have been taking part in Dementia Friends sessions hosted by the Gibraltar Alzheimers and Dementia Society.

These training sessions have been attended by social workers within the Adult and Disability Social Work teams as well as social care workers within Waterport Terraces Elderly Day Centre, St Bernadettes Resource Centre and Dr Giraldi Home. They are also attended by senior care workers, registered nurses, administration officers and Senior Management. A total of 59 staff members have attended these sessions.

The CEO of The Care Agency, Mr Carlos Banderas, said: The Care Agency is making a big effort to ensure that awareness is raised across all departments so that there is a better understanding of Alzheimers and Dementia and how we can improve the support we provide our service users, many of who are living with Dementia.

The Minister for Health and Care, the Hon Samantha Sacramento MP, said: I am very grateful to the Gibraltar Alzheimers and Dementia Society for taking their time to deliver these Dementia Friends sessions to Care Agency staff. This is in line with the Governments policy of creating a dementia friendly community as set out in our National Dementia Strategy. As the Minister with responsibility for Health and Care, I am fully committed to ensuring this is rolled out further to the wider Public Service.
Scientists have mapped out the key molecular changes that orchestrate how embryonic mouse cells differentiate into the diverse cell types that will ultimately form all the different tissues and organs of the adult animal.

This "roadmap" of mouse embryogenesis will help researchers understand the molecular programs that control how different specialized cell types emerge from less differentiated cells as an embryo grows and develops not only for mice, but also for humans, said Jay Shendure, professor of genome sciences at the University of Washington School of Medicine, scientific director of the Brotman Baty Institute for Precision Medicine and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator.

"We begin life as a one-cell zygote and that cell, in just a few weeks or months, divides and differentiates into hundreds of cell types," Shendure noted. "So, the question is: How does that happen? What paths do cells take? What are the genes that shape those decisions?"

The researchers reported their findings today in the journal Nature Genetics. Chengxiang Qiu, a computational biologist and doctoral student in the Shendure lab, was lead author of the paper,

To map out this process, Shendure and his colleagues drew on publicly available data collected from mouse studies that used a technique called single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq).

This technique allows scientists to identify and quantify the levels of different messenger RNA molecules within individual cells. Because these mRNA are copied from activated genes, their presence in a cell indicates which genes are active at a given point in time.

To supplement these data, the researchers also used scRNA-seq data they had generated from about 150,000 embryonic mouse cell nuclei sampled every two hours over a critical 24-hour period beginning on the eighth day of mouse embryonic development.

Qiu combined these data, and after adjusting them to account for differences in the techniques used by different researchers, identified the states of the embryonic cells at 19 stages spanning from day 3.5 in the mouse embryonic development to day 13.5, when most of the key embryonic structures have appeared. In mice, gestation, from a single-cell zygote to a live-born pup, takes only 21 days.

The resulting map traces out the changes in gene activity as the cells develop and differentiate into different cell types. Of particular interest is the activity of genes for key regulatory proteins, called transcription factors, that orchestrate cell growth, development and function, said Qiu.

As embryogenesis proceeds, the cells branch off into different cell types like branches of a tree. Transcription factors that are active at these branch points tend to be specific for a new cell type." Chengxiang Qiu, computational biologist

On the other hand, some transcription factors appear active in many different cell types, Qiu noted, suggesting they play a more general role in regulating cell growth and function.

Going forward the researchers hope to obtain scRNA-seq data from more and more points in embryonic development to capture changes in gene expression in more detail. The team hopes the new map, called TOME (Trajectories Of Mammalian Embryogenesis), will serve as a resource for researchers working on many aspects of embryonic development.

In addition to researchers from the University of Washington, contributors to the project included scientists from the Rockefeller University in New York; the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine; the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin, Germany; University of Lubeck, Lubeck, Germany; and Allen Discovery Center for Cell Lineage Tracing in Seattle.
The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has funded a $38 million, five-year project led by the Center on Gender Equity and Health (GEH) at University of California San Diego School of Medicine and Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science. The project is an international, multi-institutional effort to better understand and promote agency for individuals, communities and local organizations in low- and middle-income countries.

The award is the largest ever given to UC San Diego by USAID, a 61-year-old federal program created by President John F. Kennedy to advance humanitarian efforts, reduce poverty and encourage sustained economic and social development throughout the world.

This is a spectacular moment. With this award, UC San Diego can lead in using research to address important social and health issues that result in beneficial change and new policies that make the world a better place." Pradeep Khosla, UC San Diego Chancellor

"Agency for All" is intended to develop and foster social and behavioral research resulting in a better understanding of how to promote the voices of local people within their own communities and within health and development programming.

It addresses multiple dimensions of health and well-being, including maternal and child health, infectious disease, HIV/AIDS, family planning and reproductive health. The program will work with diverse populations across the globe, with a focus on Africa and South Asia.

GEH will coordinate the consortium of global, regional and local leaders to conduct research and implement solutions, informed by local priorities and agendas, said Rebecka Lundgren, PhD, an applied anthropologist and associate professor of infectious diseases and global public health, who will serve as project director. Lundgren is supported by deputy director and technical lead for research Holly Shakya, PhD, associate professor at the Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health, and technical lead for measurement Lotus McDougal, PhD, an associate project scientist at GEH.

"'Agency for All' will look at the complex questions of 'agency,' and what that means for different people, organizations and systems around the world, as well as for our own consortium partners," said Lundgren. "We are honored to bring together a global consortium of world class researchers and implementers to discover what works to convert intention into action within social and behavior change programs and make it work for real people."

The initiative will concentrate on three geographical areas or hubs in East Africa, West Africa and South Asia, collaborating with specific organizations and networks in those regions. These partners include the Centre for Catalyzing Change (India), Evidence for Sustainable Human Development Systems in Africa (Cameroon), Makerere University (Uganda), Matchboxology (South Africa), Sambodhi (India), Shujaaz, Inc. (Kenya), University of Witwatersrand (South Africa), CORE Group, International Planned Parenthood Federation, Promundo-US, Save the Children and Viamo.

"These locally-led partnerships are critical," said Paul Bukuluki, PhD, director of research for Agency for All and an associate professor at Makerere University. "We hope to develop context-specific mechanisms for measuring agency, and more effectively evaluate the approaches that help us improve the quality of life of women and men at the margins of society."

About the Center on Gender Equity and Health

The GEH conducts multidisciplinary research to understand and eliminate gender inequities, specifically in the areas of child marriage, unpaid labor, gender-based violence and gender social norms. It is directed by Anita Raj, PhD, professor of infectious diseases and global public health in the UC San Diego School of Medicine.
The Government announced today that from March 16, it will accept COVID-19 jab records from Suriname as recognised vaccination records for Hong Kong residents returning from Group A specified places.

Suriname is currently a Group A specified place.

According to the Governments stringent inbound prevention and control measures for travellers from overseas places, those who have stayed in Group A specified places can only board a flight for Hong Kong if they are Hong Kong residents who are fully vaccinated and hold recognised vaccination records.
The poll workers volunteered to help with the local primary elections on Tuesday.
What's Included

With a Digital Only subscription, you'll receive unlimited access to our website and e-edition. Our digital products are available 24/7 and are accessible anywhere, anytime.

If you have any questions or need further assistance, please call our customer service team at 574-583-5121 or email cgrace@thehj.com.
(Newser)  William Hurt, the Oscar-winning actor of Broadcast News, Body Heat, and The Big Chill, has died at age 71, per the AP. Hurt's son, Will, said in a statement that Hurt died Sunday of natural causes. He added that his father died peacefully, among family. In a long-running career, Hurt was three times nominated for an Academy Award, winning for 1985's Kiss of the Spider Woman. He also was nominated for Children of a Lesser God (1986) and Broadcast News (1987). After his screen debut in 1980s Altered States as a psychopathologist studying schizophrenia and experimenting with sensory deprivation, Hurt quickly emerged as one of the 1980s foremost leading men. (Deadline has a comprehensive photo gallery of his film work.)

In Lawrence Kasdans 1981 steamy neo noir Body Heat, Hurt starred alongside Kathleen Turner. In 1983s The Big Chill, again with Kasdan, Hurt played the Vietnam War veteran Nick Carlton, one of a group of college pals who gather for their friends funeral. Having started in New York theater, Hurt then returned to the stage to star on Broadway in David Rabes Hurlyburly, for which he was nominated for a Tony. Shortly after came Kiss of the Spider Woman, which won Hurt the best actor Oscar for his performance as a gay prisoner in a repressive South American dictatorship.

"Acting is a very intimate and private thing, Hurt told the New York Times in 1983. The art of acting requires as much solitude as the art of writing. Yeah, you bump up against other people, but you have to learn a craft, technique. Its work. Theres this odd thing that my acting is assumed to be this clamor for attention to my person, as if I needed so much love or so much attention that I would give up my right to be a private person. Albert Brooks, his director and co-star in Broadcast News, was among those responding to Hurts passing. So sad to hear this news, wrote Brooks. Working with him on Broadcast News was amazing. He will be greatly missed.

(Read more William Hurt stories.)
(Newser)  Update: Pfizer, along with its partner BioNTech, on Tuesday asked US regulators to authorize an additional COVID vaccine booster for seniors. The pharmaceutical company says data from Israel as well as an ongoing study of healthcare workers suggest those 65 and older would benefit from a fourth dose, the AP reports. Currently, only the severely immunocompromised are authorized to receive a second booster after their original two-dose vaccine. It's not clear when the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control might weigh in on Pfizer's request. Our original story from Monday follows:

If you got the Pfizer vaccine, you can plan on a fourth dose. While the two-dose vaccine plus a booster shot still provides "quite good" protection against hospitalizations and deaths, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said on CBS' Face the Nation on Sunday, omicron was the first variant "that was able to evadein a skillful waythe immune protection that we're giving." That means even the three-dose regimen is "not that good" at fending off a COVID-19 infection from a variant like omicron. With more variants coming, he said, a fourth dose of the vaccine "is necessary."

US health officials have not yet weighed in on whether a fourth shot will be approved for healthy adults or teens. "We are just submitting those data to the FDA, and then we'll see what the experts also would say outside Pfizer," Bourla said. The good news: Both Pfizer and Moderna are working on shots that would specifically protect recipients against omicron, and Pfizer is also working on a shot that could protect against all variants, with immunity lasting at least a full year, CNN reports. He predicts that in the future, a COVID shot will be recommended every fall, just like the flu shot. As for kids under age 5, who are not yet eligible for any COVID vaccine, Bourla said information from the trials will likely be ready next month, and if it looks good, distribution could start in May. (Read more Pfizer stories.)
(Newser)  A US Postal Service worker lost an arm after an accident involving a machine at a North Carolina mail processing center, and now the agency could face fines of more than $170,000, reports WGHP. Per a release from the US Department of Labor, the mechanic at the USPS' Greensboro distribution hub was working on Sept. 27 when they suffered the "life-changing injury"one involving a machine that didn't have the safety guard it was supposed to. The accident led to the worker's arm being amputated, as well as to an inspection by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which uncovered "repeat and serious safety violations."

The USPS "exposed employees to amputation hazards" in both the September incident and again in November, per a citation. Among the violations listed: a failure to have said safety guards in place; a lack of training for staff working near conveyor belts or handling equipment using "lockout/tagout safety measures"; and permitting employees who weren't properly trained and protected to work on live electrical equipment, per the release. The USPS "ignored long-established safety standards and put workers at risk," says OSHA Area Director Kimberley Morton, adding that the agency "has an obligation to eliminate hazards to ensure safe working conditions."

After receipt of the March 4 citation and list of accompanying penalties, which total a possible $170,918, the USPS has 15 days to make any necessary changes, meet informally with Morton, or contest OSHA's findings. In December, the Labor Department reported that upward of 4,700 workers in the US were fatally injured while at work in 2020, which was an 11% drop from the previous year and the lowest death toll in seven years, per CBS News. (Read more amputation stories.)
(Newser)  It has become one of the enduring images of the Ukraine war: A photo by AP photographer Evgeniy Maloletka shows a pregnant woman being carried on a stretcher after Russia shelled a maternity hospital in Mariupol. Now, the AP reports that the woman and her unborn child have died. They were rushed to another hospital after the attack, but a medical team that included surgeon Timur Marin could not save them. The woman suffered severe injuries to her pelvis and hip in the shelling, per the AP. The baby was delivered first but was stillborn, and "more than 30 minutes of resuscitation of the mother didnt produce results, Marin tells the AP. She has not been identified.

Russia has justified the shelling by saying that extremists had taken over the hospital, asserting that all its patients had been evacuated before the assault. Russian authorities even suggested that images of a second pregnant woman shown after the shelling were phony, notes USA Today. However, the AP reports that the woman in those images, blogger Mariana Vishegirskaya, gave birth to a girl one day after the airstrike. The developments illustrate the plight of pregnant women in Ukraine: The UN says more than 80,000 are due to give birth in the next three months, at a time when oxygen and medical supplies are running low, per the Washington Post. (Read more Russia-Ukraine conflict stories.)
(Newser)  Western companies operating in Russia have been shifting executives out of the country after warnings that they could be arrested, sources tell the Wall Street Journal. Companies that have paused operations in Russia, including McDonald's, Coca-Cola, and KFC owner Yum Brands, have received letters, calls, and visits from prosecutors who have warned that their assets could be seized and corporate leaders deemed to have criticized the government could be arrested, the Journal's sources say. Russia's embassy in Washington, DC, labeled the Journal's report "fake news" and denounced "russophobic hysteria," though the same embassy long denied that Russia was planning to invade Ukraine.

Hundreds of foreign firms have responded to the invasion by pulling out of Russia or suspending operations, and many that have only partially ceased operation are coming under pressure to make a clean break, the New York Times reports. Vladimir Putin signaled last week that he might support a law allowing Russia to nationalize the assets of companies pulling out of Russia, but White House press secretary Jen Psaki warned that any such move "will ultimately result in even more economic pain for Russia," reports the Hill.

"It will compound the clear message to the global business community that Russia is not a safe place to invest and do business," Psaki tweeted. According to the Journal's sources, Western companies in numerous sectors, including banking, food, and apparel, have received warnings from prosecutors, and at least one company has limited communications between its Russian business and the rest of the firm out of worries that messages could be intercepted. (Read more Russia-Ukraine conflict stories.)
Fort Polk, LA (71446)

Today

Cloudy skies early, then partly cloudy this afternoon. High 88F. Winds SSE at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Partly cloudy this evening, then becoming cloudy after midnight. Low 71F. Winds SSE at 5 to 10 mph.
(Newser)  Forensic sleuthing has solved one 29-year-old mysterythe identity of a woman whose head was found in an Illinois park in 1993. But the development has raised a new question: Who killed the woman newly identified as Susan Lund of Tennessee? As Clarksville Now reports, Lund was a 25-year-old mother of three who disappeared on Christmas Eve of 1992 after leaving her house to walk to a grocery store. Police investigated but closed the case after a few weeks, concluding that Lund likely left of her own accord. Her husband and three children never heard from her again. About a month after she disappeared, two girls discovered a decapitated head at a park near Ina, Ill., about a three-hour drive from Lund's home in Clarksville, per the Washington Post.

Illinois investigators were unable to identify the remains, however, and both mysteries remained unsolved for three decades. That has now changed: A lab worked up a new DNA profile for the remains found in the park, and genealogical databases then zeroed in on Lund. DNA samples provided by her relatives confirmed it, according to Redgrave Research Forensic Services. As a result, the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office in Illinois has launched a homicide investigation. "Our mission is still to find the truth about what happened to Susan, says Sheriff Jeff Bullard. He also gave credit to Amy Michael, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of New Hampshire, for work in reassessing the remains.

Lund's children were 6, 4, and 2 when she disappeared, and the new revelation provides some closure for the family, says sister Pamela Reyes. I'm just speaking on behalf of her three children, she tells the Southern Illinoisan. They just really want people to know that they're grateful to find out that they weren't abandoned by their mother. She didn't leave her kids, not willingly. For her 6-year-old, her only son, it was really important for him to come to grips that his mom didn't abandon him. (Read more cold cases stories.)
(Newser)  Poland is receiving praise the world over for embracing refugees fleeing Ukraine as Russian forces continue their assault. Now, Poles are supplementing this "tidal wave of support" for their desperate neighbors by rebuilding a long-abandoned railroad line, placed more than a century ago, to help expedite rescue efforts at the border between the two nations, per the Washington Post. The tracks laid down by the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which run from Lviv in Ukraine through Poland's countryside and on to Vienna, haven't been used in a dozen years and have since fallen into disrepair.

Polish volunteers have been working for days to remedy that situation, toiling from dawn till dusk to push dirt off the tracks, fix broken steel ties, and otherwise prep the line to transport train cars. NPR details the arduous humanitarian task that's underway, with unpaid volunteers sometimes driving hours to get to work sites, where they carry out their repairs in frigid temps using pickaxes and rakes. A spokesperson for Poland's national railway tells the Post that once the line is once more up and running, at least six trains a day will be able to transport refugees from the crowded border to towns further inland.

The volunteers don't seem to mind the sacrifice they're making to help the Ukrainians. "I would go kill [Vladimir] Putin myself, but we'll each do our own part to help Ukraine," one says. Andrzej Bittel, Poland's infrastructure chief, adds, "Poland cannot be indifferent to the tragedy of the Ukrainian people. Railwaymen will help wherever possible." Check out NPR for pictures of the volunteers hard at work. (Read more Poland stories.)
(Newser)  A number of stories have surfaced of late about Liz Cheney, whose bid for reelection to her House seat in Wyoming will be one of the most closely watched races in this year's midterm elections. But in discussing the primary, the stories have something else in common: All explore the possibility that Cheney will run for president in 2024 as the anti-Trump candidate among Republicans.

Anti-Trump lane: The AP sees a "shadow primary" already underway and puts Cheney in a camp with Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan and Rep. Adam Kinzinger as possible 2024 GOP contenders who stand in opposition to former President Trump. Cheney appears to have the strongest national profile, however. And she "has encouraged 2024 speculation by delivering prominent speeches about the future of the Republican Party in recent months, including a November address in New Hampshire, which typically hosts the first presidential primary election." She also raised $7.1 million last year, more than any other member of the House.

GOP support: A report at CNN, meanwhile, points out that Cheney is pulling in donations from a decent number of anti-Trump Republican donors and adds that her "own activity suggests she is laying the groundwork" for a role beyond Wyoming (including the trip to New Hampshire mentioned by the AP). "Would it surprise me? Not even in the slightest," said Landon Brown, a GOP state representative in Wyoming who's backing Cheney in the upcoming primary.

A report at CNN, meanwhile, points out that Cheney is pulling in donations from a decent number of anti-Trump Republican donors and adds that her "own activity suggests she is laying the groundwork" for a role beyond Wyoming (including the trip to New Hampshire mentioned by the AP). "Would it surprise me? Not even in the slightest," said Landon Brown, a GOP state representative in Wyoming who's backing Cheney in the upcoming primary. That primary: First, though, Cheney actually has to win her GOP primary, and Trump is making it a top priority to get her defeated. Her primary foe at the moment is Trump-backed candidate Harriet Hageman. An assessment at Politico suggests Cheney will need Democrats and independents to switch party affiliations to vote for her in the GOP primary, though Cheney herself is not advocating that. The story also collects this quote from a disgruntled Mary Martin, chair of the GOP in Teton County: "She's been MIA since Jan. 6. And what we all truly believe is that the Wyoming seat is a stepping stone to running for president in 2024 and she needs to get Trump out of the way. And to raise money, she's using the anti-Trump commentary."

(Read more Liz Cheney stories.)
(Newser)  A 3-year-old boy accidentally shot his mother to death as the family was sitting in their car in a suburban Chicago supermarket parking lot, police said. The woman was shot Saturday in Dolton and pronounced dead at a hospital, police said. The family was sitting in their car outside a Food 4 Less store when the boy, who had been playing in the back seat, somehow found the gun and fired it, striking his mother, police said. Authorities said the boys father was taken into custody after indicating that he owned the gun, the AP reports.

No charges have been filed but the investigation is ongoing. The mother has been identified as 22-year-old Dejah Bennet. "This could have been prevented," Dolton trustee and crisis responder Andrew Holmes said Sunday as he visited the supermarket to hand out gun locks and speak to shoppers about the importance of gun safety. "All it takes is a second: unlock it, thread it through the barrel, bring it back around, put it in and lock it back," Holmes told WLS-TV. "If you leave it, secure it." (Last year, a Florida man was arrested after a 2-year-old boy fatally shot his mother during a Zoom call.)
(Newser)  "You occupy Ukraine, we occupy you," an anarchist group said Monday after taking over a London mansion believed to belong to a Russian oligarch. Police later entered the Belgrave Square mansion and said no squatters remained inside, though they continued to negotiate with several people on the property's balcony who held up a Ukrainian flag and a sign saying, "This property has been liberated," reports Reuters. Records show the mansion is owned by aluminum and energy tycoon Oleg Deripaska, a Vladimir Putin ally who was placed on Britain's list of sanctioned Russian individuals last week, along with several other oligarchs.

"By occupying this mansion, we want to show solidarity with the people of Ukraine, but also the people of Russia who never agreed to this madness," the group said in a statement. One of the protesters told the BBC that there were around 200 rooms in the "ridiculous" mansion and said that they wanted the building to be used to house Ukrainian refugees. Another noted that government officials had proposed placing refugees in seized properties, and quipped: "We're doing the government's work for them and we're doing it for free, so I expect a significant rebate on my tax bill later on in April."

A spokesman for British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said new laws would be required to put refugees in seized buildings. "Squatting in residential buildings is illegal, but we are working to identify the appropriate use for seized properties while owners are subject to sanctions," he said. In France, two activists were arrested after breaking into a house believed to be linked to Putin's daughter Katerina Tikhonova, Newsweek reports. Police said the two men changed the locks on the eight-bedroom Biarritz residence and had planned to offer it to Ukrainian refugees. (Read more Russia-Ukraine conflict stories.)
(Newser)  As much of the rest of the world is lifting COVID restrictions, China is battling to contain its worst wave of the virus since Wuhan in 2020. Shenzhen, a tech business hub in southern China that's home to 17.5 million people, was locked down on Sunday, and Jilin, a province of 24 million people, was locked down Monday after almost 900 new cases were reported, the Guardian reports. Anybody seeking to leave the northeastern province, where the city of Changchun was locked down last week, will have to seek permission from police. Residents are also barred from moving from city to city without permission. Thousands of military reservists have been called up to perform tasks including disinfecting streets.

A total of 1,437 new cases in dozens of cities were reported in mainland China on Monday, along with almost 27,000 in Hong Kong, where an outbreak of the omicron variant has been raging out of control for weeks. Restrictions including school closures and travel bans have been stepped up in Shanghai and other major cities. Despite the surge in cases and the strain on resources, authorities say they plan to stick to a "zero COVID" strategy of quashing outbreaks through lockdowns and mandatory mass testing, the South China Morning Post reports.

Zhang Wenhong, a prominent infectious disease expert in Shanghai, warned in an essay Monday that China is about to see an "exponential rise" in cases caused by the BA2 "stealth omicron" subvariant, the AP reports. "If our country opens up quickly now, it will cause a large number of infections in people in a short period of time," Zhang wrote. "No matter how low the death rate is, it will still cause a run on medical resources and a short term shock to social life, causing irreparable harm to families and society." (Read more China stories.)
Note: After the closing of the saloon, it was sold a couple of times and Fred Martin moved to Anchorage. The old California Saloon came to a sad end on December 21, 1915, when it burned to the ground because of a faulty gasoline light in the bar. Fairbanks has never been the same since. This History Nugget has been proudly brought to you by Fairbanks Mens Igloo No. 4 and Womens Igloo No. 8 of the Pioneers of Alaska. We would also like to remind everyone that history nuggets are posted every Monday on our website at pioneersofalaskafairbanks.org
TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

Staff Reporter

A number of House of Representatives members yesterday submitted a proposal before the speaker highlighting the urgent need to control rising food prices.

They said it should be treated as a matter of urgency amid the Holy Month of Ramadan fast approaching. The proposal was submitted by lawmakers Ibrahim Al Nafii, Zainab Abdel Amir, Khalid Buanq, Muhammad Buhamoud and Youssef Al Thawadi.

Ibrahim Al Nafii said he is submitting the proposal after receiving complaints from many citizens over the price rise of basic food commodities.

This noticeable rise is a major cause of worry for many citizens as Ramadan is fast approaching, the lawmaker said.

He urged the government to take immediate action as an unjustified price rise could harm the citizens, who are already hit by the pandemic for the past two years.

The competent authorities must step in to arrest this price rise or else it could do harm to the citizens. During the beginning of the New Year, the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Tourism issued a warning to shops against raising the prices of basic food commodities without justification.

In a statement, the ministry also warned against taking undue advantage of the Value Added Tax rate adjustment, which came into force this year, and excludes 94 basic food products.

The ministry has said that it would take immediate measures against violators.

The prices of Saudi dairy and juice products went up between 15 and 40 per cent in the Kingdom during the beginning of the New Year due to a reported increase in production costs.

Last September Saudi companies had raised milk, laban, and yoghurt prices following a decision by the Cabinet of Saudi Arabia to scrap 50pc subsidies for dairy companies.

The government has been pledging zero tolerance towards those who illegally and unethically take advantage of the current exceptional circumstances to compromise Bahrains food security or to manipulate the markets to hike prices.

It also warned that those who seek to influence the prices of products in any way would be referred to criminal courts where they would face prison terms of up to five years and fines of at least BD5,000 in addition to the confiscation of the products.

The Public Prosecution earlier launched an investigation after Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Tourism inspectors reported they discovered three warehouses where large quantities of vegetables and fruits had been stocked to manipulate the market and inflate prices
TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

Winning the Arab Government Excellence Award (the institutional award category) by five government institutions from the Kingdom of Bahrain reflects the unified government work according to the vision of His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa.

Cabinet Affairs Minister Mohammed bin Ibrahim Al-Mutawa affirmed that the achievement was also the result of the governments proactive view of His Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, Crown Prince and Prime Minister, which aims to continue working according to a government outlook based on innovation and excellence.

The achievement clinched for Bahrain the largest number of excellence awards in this Arab competition, Al-Mutawa attended the ceremony to honour the winners of the Award, which was organised by the Arab Organisation for Administrative Developmentthe Arab League, in cooperation with Bahrain Institute of Public Administration (BIPA), Al-Mutawa explained that the Award reflects the institutional mobility and the Arab government vision that was able to charts a clear path to improve administrative work in the Arab countries and boost its global competitiveness by encouraging innovation and creativity.

Dr Nasser Al Hatlan Al Qahtani, the Director-General of the Arab Administrative Development Organisation, praised Bahrains winning of the largest number of awards, which confirms the pioneering royal vision and the distinguished government outlook aimed at continuing progress, improving the government performance and enhancing positive competitiveness locally, regionally and internationally. He added that the winning Bahraini institutions presented initiatives and projects characterised by innovation and keeping pace with future Arab aspirations.

Dr Al Qahtani noted that the Award, with its Arab perspective aimed at excellence and creativity, came to contribute to the development of work frameworks in the governmental agencies to keep pace with future trends
TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

Deputy Prime Minister, His Highness Shaikh Ali bin Khalifa Al Khalifa, has lauded the great contributions of the private sector institutions to enhancing the national action march and promoting the charitable and humanitarian work in the kingdom.

HH Shaikh Ali bin Khalifa made the statements while receiving yesterday Farouk Yousuf Al Moayyed, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the National Bank of Bahrain (NBB).

They reviewed NBBs initiatives and contributions, based on the remarkable role it is playing within the framework of community partnership.

Support

Al Moayyed expressed thanks to HH the Deputy Premier, affirming NBBs continuous support for all charitable projects aimed at achieving the interests of the nation and the citizens, based on its belief in the importance of its role in adopting social responsibility initiatives.
TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

Bahrain will host a meeting of the World Motor Sport Council on 18-19 March 2022.



The meeting coincides with the hosting of the Formula 1 Gulf Air Bahrain Gran Prix 2022 at the Bahrain International Circuit, the home of motorsport in the Middle East.



The Council meeting, one of the most important on the global motorsport calendar, is being held in Bahrain for the second time, following a 2010 Council meeting in the Kingdom.



Bahrain has a longstanding enthusiasm for motorsport and Formula 1, and its role as Council host is recognition of the Kingdoms standing within and significant contribution to international motorsport.
China's banks lack the creditworthiness and international connections that Japan's financial institutions enjoy.

With the financing of much of Asia's trade and the flows in and out of its various financial centers still heavily dependent on Japan, Japan's bankers, squeezed between an overheating U.S. and an increasingly troubled China, have a difficult balancing act to perform.

Since the 1990s, Japan's big banks have had a very large and growing deposit base but limited domestic demand for credit, forcing them to look overseas for profits in international capital markets, which are dominated by dollars.

To grow overseas, Japanese banks needed vast amounts of dollars. Fortunately, there was a solution in the Eurodollar market, and this is where things get more complicated.

Simply put, Eurodollars refer to the market for dollars outside of the U.S., which operate quite differently to America's onshore dollar market. Almost a synthetic version of the real thing, Eurodollars can and often do behave differently at times of stress.

The reason is, as Russia is learning to its cost, that most national currencies like dollars and related assets, such as U.S. Treasury bonds, never actually leave the U.S. Even China's vast holdings of more than $1 trillion of U.S. Treasurys ultimately exist as electronic ledger entries in the U.S. financial system and can be frozen at the press of a button.

Using dollars outside America requires a complicated system of interbank loans, where what is used and traded are claims on dollars that remain in the U.S. system rather than actual, let alone physical, dollars themselves.

The first step of this chain often starts in London. Bankers in Tokyo will pledge yen as security for loans and receive Eurodollars in return, enabling them to make loans or buy assets in dollars. In turn, Japanese banks will usually demand some sort of security or collateral for these loans. This can vary from U.S. securities to real estate to the commodities that underlie trade finance.

Because borrowing in Eurodollars is more expensive than borrowing onshore in America, Japanese banks must find higher-yielding returns to offset this cost. This naturally forces them toward higher-risk lending.
Japan has backed its condemnation of war in Ukraine with sanctions on Russian officials and oligarchs, but experts say they're not the only audience for Tokyo's outrage -- China is meant to get the message, too.

Since Moscow attacked Ukraine, commentators have drawn comparisons between Russia's actions and China's stated ambition to seek the "reunification" of Taiwan with the mainland. The "what if" scenario has not been lost on Japanese leaders.

In the first days of the invasion, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was quick to frame the Ukraine crisis as a global issue. "This is a very serious situation which doesn't just affect Europe, but also Asia and the whole world order," he told reporters.

And the Japanese public seem to be in lockstep with his views. In a country typically more focused on domestic issues, the war is dominating news coverage. Thousands of anti-war protesters have taken to the streets of cities nationwide, and a recent poll shows that over 80% of the 1,063 people surveyed support Japan's economic sanctions against Russia.

For Japan, support for Ukraine serves a dual purpose, according to Yoko Iwama, an international relations and security expert at the National Graduate Institute of Policy Studies.

"The purpose of Japan's response is to send a message that we will be ready and we will resist if there's an invasion (of Japanese territory), that we will not allow the borders to be changed by force," said Iwama.

"We don't want a real war, the objective is political -- that China is persuaded from an aggressive act like the one that Putin has taken in the last several days and weeks."

It's against that backdrop that Japan's former prime minister, Shinzo Abe, raised a previously unthinkable suggestion during an interview three days after the Russian invasion.

Abe, still an influential figure in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, floated the idea of Japan entering a NATO-like nuclear weapons sharing program -- hosting US nuclear weapons on Japanese soil. It was a shocking proposal for country that suffered the devastating impact of the two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II -- but one Abe says should no longer be taboo. ...continue reading
TOKYO, March 13 (Xinhua) -- Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Sunday urged ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) lawmakers to unite as one to win the upcoming House of Councilors election and ensure a stable coalition government.

Kishida, president of the LDP, made the remarks at a party convention, emphasizing the importance of its coalition with its smaller partner Komeito.

He dismissed an emerging view that the relationship between the LDP and Komeito has become awkward over cooperation in the election, which will possibly be held in July.

"Is there any other option than LDP-Komeito that can be entrusted with governing the country when we face history-making challenges? I don't think so," Kishida said at the convention.

"At times, upper house elections have triggered a big political change. Let us unite as one and secure a victory," said Kishida, who was elected LDP president last September.

The House of Councilors election this summer is a key test for Kishida as head of the LDP and also as prime minister, who will be judged by voters on his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and the economy.

"The stage is set for cooperation in the House of Councilors election. We will look at the situation in each constituency and seek substantive cooperation that will produce results," said Natsuo Yamaguchi, chief of Komeito. 
Map data:  2022, Google

This automated story was produced for Hearst Connecticut by United Robots using artificial intelligence and data science. Property information is compiled from municipal assessors in Connecticut.

The property located on 20 Brooklane Road in Plantsville was sold on January 19, 2022 for $196,000, or $202 per square foot. The house built in 1953 has an interior space of 971 square feet. The property features two bedrooms and one bath. The unit sits on a 13,939 square-foot lot.
The inaugural report from CPP Investments Insights Institute entitled " Investing in the potential of carbon credits , " explores how carbon credit markets are strengthening, and the data and convictions that are leading to further investment in these nascent markets. Over time, robust carbon markets will offer investors unique ways to earn attractive risk-adjusted returns while funding nature-based mitigants to climate change. The report showcases one example of the innovative tools being sought by investors to realize these opportunities.

CPP Investments has established a unique partnership called "Accelerate Nature" with Conservation International, a non-profit, non-governmental organization and globally recognized leader in nature-based climate solutions. This partnership is expected to provide strong returns and further enable Conservation International to deliver benefits to its stakeholders, including:

creating long-term value by establishing partnerships with Indigenous communities to keep carbon-rich tropical forests healthy;

supporting the development of high-quality projects that reduce and remove global carbon emissions and preserve biodiversity; and

enabling the private sector to purchase certified carbon credits generated by each project that support the economic development of Indigenous communities.

"The partnership between CPP investments and Conservation International is a prototype for investors seeking opportunities presented by the whole economy transition to net zero," said Deborah Orida, Global Head of Real Assets & Chief Sustainability Officer. "Through initiatives pioneered by Accelerate Nature, we will help protect ecosystems and their communities, while we earn attractive risk-adjusted returns in the best interests of our contributors and beneficiaries."

The CPP Investments Insights Institute will develop and unearth perspectives on today's global challenges and apply them both to investment activities and towards global efforts to manage disruption. Three main areas of focus for the Institute are: climate change, technology disruption and stakeholder capitalism. More information on the Institute and the new report can be found on cppinvestments.com/insights-institute.

About the CPP Investments Insights Institute

The CPP Investments Insights Institute's mission is to create enduring value by using global investing expertise, partnerships and convening power to advance how the global investment community addresses climate change, technology disruption and evolving stakeholder expectations. Our vision is to have a prosperous investment ecosystem that delivers financially sustainable returns while addressing the biggest challenges of our time.

About CPP Investments

Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments) is a professional investment management organization that manages the Fund in the best interest of the more than 20 million contributors and beneficiaries of the Canada Pension Plan. In order to build diversified portfolios of assets, investments are made around the world in public equities, private equities, real estate, infrastructure and fixed income. Headquartered in Toronto, with offices in Hong Kong, London, Luxembourg, Mumbai, New York City, San Francisco, Sao Paulo and Sydney, CPP Investments is governed and managed independently of the Canada Pension Plan and at arm's length from governments. At December 31, 2021, the Fund totalled C$550.4 billion. For more information, please visit www.cppinvestments.com or follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter.

SOURCE Canada Pension Plan Investment Board

For further information: Steve McCool, T: +44 20 3947 3002, [email protected]
"This MIP-IMPACT agreement is crucial for early and scale-up stage ventures. As a Life Science focused research park, one of our main priorities is to ensure that the ventures within our ecosystem have access to the resources they need to develop and commercialize their discoveries, and we can only achieve this through nationwide collaboration," comments Ty Shattuck, CEO of MIP.

John Wilson, CEO and President of Innovate Calgary, the innovation company of the University of Calgary, adds that "Innovate Calgary is always looking for ways to strengthen the innovation ecosystem in Alberta and Canada. This cross-provincial Agreement will enable Calgary-based small and mid-size health tech enterprises to access more resources and opportunities to manufacture their discoveries. We look forward to helping MIP ventures with their clinical trials in order to bring more Canadian bio-med discoveries to market and strengthen our national biotech and pharma industries."

IMPACT assists ventures with the timely initiation and completion of clinical trials vital to the licensing and commercialization of health-inventions in the domestic and international markets.

"Formalization of the partnership between MIP and IMPACT is an important step forward. Together we can better support the growth and commercial success of ventures. IMPACT will aid ventures to obtain market approval faster and with less capital, while MIP will support ventures with a broad array of services," adds Derek Exner, Executive Director of IMPACT.

Dr. Karen Mossman, McMaster University's Vice-President, Research and Chair of MIP's Board of Directors says "collaborations are critical to maximizing our innovation potential. This partnership will provide significant opportunities for our researchers and innovators and advance our capacity to commercialize our life sciences discoveries."

About McMaster Innovation Park (MIP):

McMaster Innovation Park (MIP) is Canada's premier research park based in the heart of Hamilton Ontario. It is home to over one hundred companies in the Life Science, Engineering & Advanced Manufacturing and high-tech sectors. MIP's proven ability to support and grow mid-market / SME enterprises results in faster, more economically impactful, and lower-risk investments for government and private investors alike.

About the Integrated Management Platform to Accelerate Clinical Trials (IMPACT) at UCalgary:

IMPACT, located in the Life Sciences Innovation Hub at the University of Calgary, is a leading-edge program for new ventures in the life sciences or biomedical industries who are seeking guidance in conducting clinical trials to secure regulatory approval for their new health-related inventions. The IMPACT Venture Navigators work with the venture to design, support, execute, and report on their pre-market clinical trials for less capital.

SOURCE McMaster Innovation Park

For further information: McMaster Innovation Park: Shauna-Kay Williams, Marketing & Communications Manager, [email protected] , 289-244-7363; Innovate Calgary: Chantal Palmer, Community Engagement Coordinator, Life Sciences Innovation Hub, [email protected], 403.270.2434
Workers assemble a new energy vehicle at the Khaingkhaing Sangda Motorcar Development Center in Yangon, Myanmar, March 9, 2022. With the concept of reducing carbon emissions and environmental protection, Southeast Asian country Myanmar has begun manufacturing and selling of new-energy vehicles.(Xinhua/U Aung)

YANGON, March 13 (Xinhua) -- With the concept of reducing carbon emissions and environmental protection, Southeast Asian country Myanmar has begun manufacturing and selling of new-energy vehicles.

As one of the earliest electric car makers in Myanmar, Khaingkhaing Sangda launched a sale of its second model hybrid electric vehicles KSDV1-NE2 on March 1 and sold more than 10 vehicles within a week.

Khaingkhaing Sangda in Myanmar produced and sold its first model of pure electric vehicles in 2020.

"We imported all new-energy vehicle parts from China. The main objective of producing the vehicles is to support Myanmar's proposals for environmental protection by reducing greenhouse gas emissions," Yu Jianchen, managing director of Khaingkhaing Sangda Motorcar Factory, told Xinhua.

Khaingkhaing Sangda manufactured its first gasoline car in 2006. The company began assembling and producing new-energy vehicles in 2019.

Yu believes that Myanmar's new-energy vehicle industry has the potential for growth in the future. 

A man tries a hybrid electric car KSDV1-NE2 at the Khaingkhaing Sangda Motorcar Development Center in Yangon, Myanmar, March 9, 2022. With the concept of reducing carbon emissions and environmental protection, Southeast Asian country Myanmar has begun manufacturing and selling of new-energy vehicles.(Xinhua/U Aung)

A customer examines a hybrid electric car KSDV1-NE2 at the Khaingkhaing Sangda Motorcar Development Center in Yangon, Myanmar, March 9, 2022. With the concept of reducing carbon emissions and environmental protection, Southeast Asian country Myanmar has begun manufacturing and selling of new-energy vehicles.(Xinhua/U Aung)

New energy vehicles are seen at the Khaingkhaing Sangda Motorcar Development Center in Yangon, Myanmar, March 9, 2022. With the concept of reducing carbon emissions and environmental protection, Southeast Asian country Myanmar has begun manufacturing and selling of new-energy vehicles.(Xinhua/U Aung)
"Each year, A&W Canada serves millions of takeout drinks, so finding a more sustainable single-use cup solution is one way we can make a big difference," says Susan Senecal, President & CEO of A&W Canada. "Our new Zero Cup is an exciting step in our journey to reach zero waste. Part of achieving that mission is pioneering the innovations that people need to live more sustainable lives. This new cup is one small way Canadians can take small, simple actions, one day at a time."

Roughly 14 billion cups of coffee are enjoyed in Canada every year, according to non-profit Zero Waste Canada, of which an estimated 5 billion are consumed in single-use cups that end up in landfills. Mass adoption of a compostable coffee cup would help to substantially reduce this number by avoiding the use of plastic liners that can't be recycled in most Canadian municipalities. (Note: A&W has been a member of the Zero Waste Council since 2016, but the organization has no connection to the Zero Cup). As part of this pilot initiative, which rolls out in restaurants across the GTA on March 14, A&W guests are invited to share their experience trying the Zero Cup for the first time at aw.ca/zerocup.

Tomorrow Cafe

For all those interested in sustainable innovation, A&W is previewing the Zero Cup at a public event on March 25 and 26 at Evergreen Brickworks. Tomorrow Cafe is a temporary installation where guests are invited to try the Zero Cup for themselves, along with a free cup of A&W's organic, Fairtrade coffee. The installation, open to the public on Friday, March 25 12:30-3:30pm and Saturday, March 26 at 8:00am-4pm, will also explore A&W's sustainability innovations past, present, and future  and invite visitors to share innovations they would like to see in the food retail space.

A&W Canada's Sustainable Past and Future

The Zero Cup is the latest initiative in the company's long-time commitment to innovation in sustainability:

A&W restaurants have been serving A&W Root Beer in their iconic glass mugs since 1956.

Most A&W restaurants offer metal baskets, compostable burger packaging, ceramic plates and metal cutlery for breakfasts.

In 2016, A&W became the first restaurant chain to join Canada's Zero Waste Council

Zero Waste Council In 2018, A&W was the first to introduce the Beyond Meat burger.

In 2019, A&W Canada became the first QSR in North America to eliminate sing-use plastic straws.

to eliminate sing-use plastic straws. In 2020, A&W introduced grass-fed and finished beef as part of its commitment to championing the growing regenerative agriculture movement.

Last year, a circular mug pilot program called the A&W Cup Crew, was launched in Vancouver . A&W Canada is also joining a pilot program with Return-It to explore ways to recycle the existing single-use coffee cups  all in the search of a better coffee cup for Canadians.

About A&W Canada

A&W is proud to be a 100% Canadian-owned-and-operated company, and one of the most trusted brands in the country. A sustainable leader in the QSR industry, we believe in helping our customers take small, simple actions for the good of people and the planet. From using compostable packaging and 100% grass-fed beef to fundraising in support of Canadians living with Multiple Sclerosis, we strive to make a positive impact in our communities. We're all about serving up great taste with simple, natural ingredients and minimal waste in over 1,000 restaurants across the country. For more information, please visit aw.ca.

SOURCE A&W Food Services of Canada Inc.

For further information: For Media Inquiries: Aliz Tennant, Rethink, [email protected]; Julia Cutt, A&W Canada, [email protected]
"Congress interim president Sonia will lead us and will take future steps. We all have faith in her leadership," Mallikarjun Kharge said after the party's working committee meeting.

Congress Working Committee on Sunday termed the partys abysmal performance in the recently held Assembly polls in five states a cause of serious concern and unanimously reaffirmed that the party will contest the forthcoming elections including the 2024 Lok Sabha elections under the leadership of Sonia Gandhi and requested her to lead from the front.

The highest decision-making body of Congress met this evening and the meeting lasted for around five hours. Congress interim president Sonia will lead us and will take future steps. We all have faith in her leadership, Mallikarjun Kharge said after the partys working committee meeting. After the conclusion of the CWC meeting, Indian National Congress General Secretary KC Venugopal also informed that Sonia Gandhi will continue being the President of the party.

Addressing the media here, Venugopal said, The party accepts that due to shortcomings in our strategy, we could not effectively expose the misrule of BJP State Governments in four States and overcome the anti-incumbency in the state of Punjab in a short time after effecting a change of leadership.

The CWC unanimously reaffirms its faith in the leadership of Sonia Gandhi and requests the Congress President to lead from the front, address the organisational weaknesses, effect necessary and comprehensive organizational changes in order to take on the political challenges, he added.

Venugopal further added that the Congress party represents the hopes of millions of Indians against political authoritarianism prevailing in the country today and the party is fully conscious of its immense responsibility.

Accepting the electoral verdict of the latest round of Assembly elections, the Congress party assured its workers and the people of India that it will continue to remain a vigilant and vibrant opposition.

The Congress Party will be fully prepared to face the electoral challenges in the election going states in 2022 and 2023 as well as in the Lok Sabha elections 2024, he said.

The results of five assembly polls came as a shock to the Congress, which was hoping to do well to revive its prospects for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls and to fend off the emerging challenge from the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Trinamool Congress to replace it as the fulcrum of anti-BJP politics in the country. Congress leader Dinesh Gundu Rao said that a detailed discussion was held over the partys defeat in the state polls and the party leaders discussed how to take things forward.

Sonia Gandhi continues to be the president of the party. A detailed discussion was held about the five state elections. We discussed how to take things forward and how we prepare for the forthcoming elections, Rao, who is Congress Goa in-charge said after the crucial meeting.

(With ANI Inputs)
As the politics over the Kashmiri Pandit exodus rages on after the release of The Kashmir Files, the real issue at hand, i.e the rehabilitation of Kashmiri Pandits is being brushed under the carpet. The government has taken several steps to help the Kashmiri Pandits but a lot more needs to be done. Be it in terms of jobs, accommodation or political representation, the young Kashmiri Hindus demand change.

To ensure the return of Kashmiri Pandits in the valley, a specific law must be created for their safety and security. The exiled Kashmiri Pandits must be allowed to elect their representations to Lok Sabha and J&K assembly. It must be ensured that there are atleast 5 nominated seats for Kashmiri Pandits in new J&K assembly.

Confidence building activities must also take place between different religious groups. There should be appeals by religious leaders to ensure peace in the valley. A Kashmiri pandits genocide bill must also be passed in the parliament to punish the perpetrators of 1990s exodus. There must also be a crackdown on Pakistan-backed terrorism, which is deep-seated in the valley since 1947. Lastly, perpetrators like Yasin Malik must be punished who perpetrated hate crimes against the Kashmiri Pandit community.

There are a total of 39,782 registered Hindu migrant families. Of which, 3,841 Kashmiri Pandit youth have moved back to the valley, 26,684 Kashmiri migrant youth have applied for jobs in J&K in 2021, 1997 Kashmiri migrant youth who have got selected for government jobs in April 2021 and approximate 900 Kashmiri Pandit and Dogra Hindu families in Kashmir.
Adityanath's meeting with the Prime Minister lasted for about two and a half hours where he had a long discussion about the next government to be formed in the state.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister-elect Yogi Adityanath called on President Ram Nath Kovind at Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi on Monday. Earlier in the day, Adityanath met Union Minister Nitin Gadkari at the latters residence in New Delhi.

In a tweet in Hindi thanking Gadkari, Adityanath said, Your special support is being received in realizing the concept of New Uttar Pradesh. Hearty thanks to Honble Union Minister for giving his invaluable time. In the recently-concluded election in UP, BJP won 255 seats whereas SP in 111 constituencies.

Yogi Adityanath will be the first Chief Minister in the last 37 years to return to power after completing a full term in the state. As per sources, the BJP government is likely to take oath after Holi, which is falling on March 18 this year.

After the Bharatiya Janata Partys massive victory in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, the states Chief Minister-designate Yogi Adityanath met Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other senior leaders on Sunday ahead of the formation of a new government in the state.

Adityanaths meeting with the Prime Minister lasted for about two and a half hours where he had a long discussion about the next government to be formed in the state. The Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister-designate also met Union Home Minister Amit Shah, and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) national president JP Nadda and discussed the political strategy ahead.

Adityanath also called upon Defence Minister Rajnath Singh.

He also met the BJP National General Secretary (Organisation) BL Santhosh at the latters residence and later met Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu.

A new government is to be formed in Uttar Pradesh, for which the new team of the Council of Ministers has to be chosen and the departments have to be allotted accordingly. Adityanath had a discussion regarding this with all the BJP leaders.



(With ANI inputs)
US NSA said the meet was part of their ongoing efforts to keep open lines of communication between the two sides.

USs National Security Adviser (NSA) and one of the close aides of Joe Biden Jake Sullivan will hold a meeting with Chinas Yang Jiechi, politburo member of the Chinese Communist Party and director of the office of foreign affairs commission, in Rome on Monday.

Touted as the first high-level in-person engagement between US and China, the meeting comes amid Russias invasion of Ukraine. Concerns are soaring that China is amplifying Russian disinformation in the Ukraine war and may help them to elude from economic sanctions.

Ahead of the meeting, US NSA said the meet was part of their ongoing efforts to keep open lines of communication between the two sides. The two sides will discuss ongoing efforts to manage competition between the two countries and the impact of Russias war against Ukraine on regional and global security.

US Security of State Antony Blinken and his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, have been in touch with each other following the Ukraine crisis. Blinken said that he had told Wang that China, as a country that often speaks about the sanctity of the principle of sovereignty, should stand up and have its voice heard. His talks with his counterpart lasted for over an hour last week.

Meanwhile, reports suggest that Russia has sought military equipment from China. Responding to which, China has said the assertion were disinformation from the United States.
The talks amidst Russian forces's attempt to encircle and cut off the Ukrainian capital, with troops now moving towards the city from multiple positions.

The fourth round of peace talks between Russia and Ukraine have resumed. Mykhailo Podoliak, an adviser to the head of the administration under President Volodymyr Zelensky, had earlier said that the talks are likely to be held on March 14 or 15. Delegations from the two countries have met thrice but without significant results.

The talks amidst Russian forcess attempt to encircle and cut off the Ukrainian capital, with troops now moving towards the city from multiple positions. A 40-mile long Russianarmoured column has now dispersed into the area west of Kyiv, moving more artillery and rocket launchers to within range of the capital.

As Russias war in Ukraine entered its 18th day, a video journalist from the US, best known for producing humanitarian stories from conflict zones, has been killed in Irpin outside the city of Kyiv in Ukraine. The Kyiv police official shared images of the journalists body, as well as his press ID and US passport. The press ID showed the reporter as an employee of the New York Times, but the prestigious US daily said that the man was not working for them at the moment of his death. Russian troops inch closer to Kyiv.

The bulk of Russian ground forces is about 15.5 miles (25 kilometres) from the centre of the Ukrainian capital. Over 2,100 residents of Ukraines besieged port city of Mariupol have been killed since the Russian started its invasion. Officials in the besieged city said, it has suffered 22 bombing attacks in the last 24 hours (to 10 a.m. ET), according to CNN.

Russia has abducted Yevhen Matveyev, Mayor of Dniprorudne in Vasylivka district, Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba called on the international community to come for support and stop the Russian terror. Russian invaders are not getting the support of locals in Ukraine and thus they are resorting to instilling terror, said the Ukrainian FM.

Kuleba held talks with Qatars Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani and expressed his gratitude to the leadership for providing humanitarian assistance to Ukraine in this dire time of need.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy held talks with the Polish President Andrzej Duda and the Prime Minister of Bulgaria Kiril Petkov where he discussed the current situation in Ukraine calling Russia an aggressor committing crimes against the country.

Taking to Twitter, Zelesnkyy wrote, Held talks with President @AndrzejDuda and Prime Minister @KirilPetkov. Informed on the course of Ukraines defence, the crimes of the Russian aggressor. We appreciate the assistance provided and the support of for Ukraines integration.

As Russia tries to gain a stronghold in Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy meets with the wounded military personnel in a hospital. The President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi visited the wounded defenders of Ukraine in the hospital, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense wrote in a tweet. Moreover, Russian forces strike at a school in Mykolaiv Oblast.

Pope Francis condemned the massacre in Ukraine and said the unacceptable armed aggression must stop. Speaking to thousands of people in St. Peters Square for his Sunday blessing, Francis also said the bombing of hospitals and other civilian targets was barbaric and with no valid strategic reason.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, responding to allegations that the United States sponsored biological laboratories in Ukraine, has said that Russia may be the one planning chemical attacks.

Stoltenberg told German newspaper Welt that the accusations are false and stressed that the alliance must be vigilant, since Russia itself may be planning operations with chemical weapons. He added that this would be a war crime.

US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and several officials from State Department will meet Chinese Communist Party Political Bureau Member and Director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission Yang Jiechi in Rome to discuss the impact of Russias war against Ukraine on regional and global security.

Considering the deteriorating security situation in Ukraine, including attacks in the western parts of the country, the Indian Embassy in Kyiv, will be temporarily relocated to Poland. The Ministry of External Affairs said that it is keeping an eye on the developments in Ukraine and the situation will be reassessed as per that.

On February 24, Russia began a special military operation in Ukraine after the Donetsk and Luhansk peoples republics requested help in defending themselves. The Russian Defense Ministry said the special operation is targeting Ukrainian military infrastructure only and the civilian population is not in danger. The West however denies these claims by the Russians and in response, Western nations have imposed comprehensive sanctions on Moscow. In addition, they introduced sanctions on Belarus for supporting Russias operation in Ukraine.

(WITH ANI INPUTS)
STAMFORD  OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma, which reached a $6 billion settlement earlier this month with Connecticut and other states, has stopped promoting its treatment for Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

Purdues decision to end the promotion of Adhansia XR, which is unrelated to the settlement, was documented in a recent report submitted by independent monitor and former Montana Gov. Steve Bullock. The companys public communications about the drug, which went on the market in 2019, have been closely watched in light of the thousands of lawsuits filed in the past few years that allege Purdue fueled the opioid crisis with deceptive OxyContin marketing.

The company has reported to the monitor that in December 2021 it discontinued the use of an outside sales force for Adhansia, Bullock said in the report. Accordingly, the company no longer has employees or entities promoting any of its opioid or ADHD products directly to health care providers or patients.

In response to an inquiry from Hearst Connecticut Media about why it decided to stop promoting the drug, Purdue said in a statement that we made the business decision last year to stop investing commercially in Adhansia XR. This decision was not based on any safety/efficacy concerns or bankruptcy/legal requirements. We have enough inventory to meet the needs of health care providers and patients, and we continue to meet all regulatory requirements.

From March 2020 to October 2020, the company used third-party contract sales teams, consisting of approximately 90 people, to promote Adhansia, according to Bullocks report. Another contract sales team for the drug, with 60 customer-service representatives, was added in November 2020.

An injunction implemented after Purdue filed for bankruptcy in September 2019 prohibits the company from employing or contracting with sales representatives or others to promote opioids to health care providers or patients, but it does not ban the use of sales representatives for non-opioids.

Amid the torrent of OxyContin-focused lawsuits, Purdue ended its opioid marketing and disbanded its sales force in 2018. Those changes resulted in several hundred layoffs.

Produced by Purdue subsidiary Adlon Therapeutics, Adhansia consists of an extended-release capsule that is intended for patients age 6 and older. It comprises a methylphenidate medication  one of the main stimulant groups for treating ADHD. Stimulants increase the brain chemicals dopamine and norepinephrine, which are crucial to thinking and attention.

Adhansias sales totaled nearly $24 million in 2021, up more than 70 percent from 2020, according to health care data provider IQVIA. There were about 64,000 dispensed prescriptions for the drug last year, compared with around 36,000 in 2020. It is only available in the U.S.

But the treatments account for a small percentage of the ADHD pharmaceuticals market. Among ADHD drugs available in the U.S., amphetamine salts, the generic equivalent for Adderall, generated the most dispensed prescriptions in 2021, with a total of nearly 24 million, according to IQVIA. Takeda Pharmaceuticals Vyvanse was No. 1 in sales last year in the category, with a tally of more than $4 billion.

Dubious promoting of ADHD treatments has persisted for years. By 2013, the Food and Drug Administration had cited every major ADHD drug for false and misleading advertising in the previous 13 years, some for multiple infractions, according to a New York Times investigation that year.

The FDA has not sent any warning letters to Purdue related to the promotion of Adhansia, according to a search of records on the agencys website.

Purdues promotion of Adhansia was not part of Connecticuts lawsuit against the company and the Sackler family members who own the firm because that complaint focused on the allegedly deceptive marketing of OxyContin.

Connecticut Attorney General William Tong declined to comment on the end of the promotion of Adhansia.

pschott@stamfordadvocate.com; twitter: @paulschott
Larry Silver is a legend in the photography world, known for his 1954 acclaimed series Muscle Beach, and a collection of Photo League-inspired images taken during a seven-decade career.

Ive been doing this close to 75 years, and started because I was fascinated with the dark room aspects of photography, and watching a print develop was just a magical thing, Silver said. I knew I wanted to print my own pictures.

Born in the Bronx, Silver spent the early part of his career in New York and California. Now 87, he moved to Westport in 1973 and immediately started taking photos of the area.

Courtesy of the artist and Bruce Silverstein Gallery Courtesy of the artist Bruce Silverstein Gallery, New York Courtesy of the artist Bruce Silverstein Gallery, New York courtesy of the artist and Bruce Silverstein Gallery, New York Photos by Larry Silver: Top left, Sitting at Water's Edge, Sherwood Island State Park, Westport, CT, 2014; top right, Shelter from the Rain, Sherwood Island State Park, Westport, CT, 1980; bottom right, Sunset at Sherwood Island State Park, Westport, CT, 1978; bottom left, Anytime Farm, Fairfield, CT, 1982. (All photos copyright Larry Silver. courtesy of the artist and Bruce Silverstein Gallery)

I've become very fond of it here, and I feel like I am a real Connecticut person, he said. Ive spent a lot of time wandering around the state and shooting.

So, when the Fairfield University Art Museum was looking to spotlight a Connecticut-based photographer in a new exhibit, Silver was an easy choice. Leslie K. Brown was brought in to serve as curator.

The exhibit, entitled 13 Ways of Looking at Landscape: Larry Silvers Connecticut Photographs will be shown in the museums Walsh Gallery from March 25 to June 18, and features more than 80 landscape-based works shot in Connecticut over the last four decades.

When I was asked to guest curate, I had spent some time before I went to visit Larry with his website and was struck by how much landscape work he had, Brown said. Hes mostly known for his association with the Photo League documentary and street photography movement, and not many people have seen this landscape work. I was struck by how he portrayed a real sense of place and it emanated from all of his work in Connecticut.

Courtesy of the artist Bruce Silverstein Gallery, New York Courtesy of the artist Bruce Silverstein Gallery, New York Photos by Larry Silver: Left, Water #9, 2004; right, Man and Walker, Compo Beach, Westport, CT, 2020. (All photos copyright Larry Silver. courtesy of the artist and Bruce Silverstein Gallery)

Brown spent countless hours with Silver and his wife Gloria in their Westport home, learning about them and looking through boxes upon boxes of his archived work.

I estimate that I looked through about 6,000 prints, Brown said. I was drawn to the variety of different ways he looked at the landscapea different strategy if you will. I started to see that things fell into different categories. He does a lot of framing, seeking out aperture within nature and framing someone or something. He also photographs a lot in weather, which acts as a veil that covers the landscape and creates an astoundingly mythical environment.

Inspired by a poem from another Connecticut artist, Wallace Stevens, the curator hung the exhibit in 13 sections, as if they were stanzas in a poem.

Its not your typical linear hanging work, she said. The order in which people will see the exhibition is very determined. I want to take them on a journey and see it through Larrys eyes.

Though many in Westport are familiar with Silver's work, a number of photos in the exhibit have never been seen before, and show a side of the shutterbug that many may not have seen.

Im trying to show something different, Brown said. There are some well-known hits, but they are also mixed in with some work thats experimental, and work thats never been shown before.

Silver said he's impressed with the display. If he had chosen the images, he said, the exhibit would have included many of the same ones that hes shown in the past.

If Im making the selections, there are some I always favor," he said. "But the way she worked, theres a chance for some discoveries, as others may find they like some of the images I have rejected."

On opening night, Brown will deliver a lecture about Silver and his place in the history of American photography.

At an event scheduled at the museum on April 20, Silver and photographer Adger Cowans, whose work is on view in the museums Bellarmine Hall Galleries, will speak about their work.
Gazans have expressed their disappointment with the U.S. administration and its allies from Western countries, which adopt "double standards" in their stance on the Palestinian issue.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been going on for decades, following the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and the Western-backed creation of Israel in 1948.

Produced by Xinhua Global Service
Cathy Zuraw / Hearst Connecticut Media

DERBY  On Sunday evening, the Derby Fire Department, along with other units, battled a basement fire with heavy smoke on Chapel Street.

Around 6:30 p.m. Sunday, the Derby Fire Department was dispatched to Chapel Street for the report of a structure fire, the fire department said.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

WALLINGFORD  The state ordered the transfer of 94 residents from a Wallingford nursing facility on Monday for repeated and ongoing failure to correct serious and widespread health and safety issues, according to the state Department of Public Health.

The order from Commissioner Manisha Juthani follows a Feb. 10 investigation into conditions at the Quinnipiac Valley Center, located on Kondracki Lane and owned by Genesis HealthCare, which resulted in two findings of Immediate Jeopardy, meaning the violations are serious enough to risk imminent harm to life, officials with DPH said in a release.

A state-appointed manager identified additional issues with the facility, including, among other things, systemic problems with medication errors, officials said, and the agency has allegedly since identified five more instances of Immediate Jeopardy related to failure to administer medications appropriately and accurately to residents, issues with infection control, and a failure to report adverse incidents to DPH.

Any instance of Immediate Jeopardy is troubling, and most facilities can correct these deficiencies relatively quickly and successfully. Seven instances of Immediate Jeopardy are unprecedented in Connecticut and absolutely unacceptable, said Juthani. We have given QVC ample time to correct the issues and DPH staff have been monitoring the facility almost daily. We no longer have confidence that the facility can keep its residents safe. Moving people from their homes on short notice is a serious action that we do not take lightly. But we are convinced that this order is necessary to ensure the safety of all the residents there.

General Statute 19a-534 authorizes DPH to transfer from one nursing home facility to another nursing home facility, residential care home or hospital if the commissioner determines that there is imminent danger to the health safety or welfare of any patient in any nursing home facility, state officials said.

The state is now working with the Office of the Attorney General, the States Long-term Care Ombudsman Program, and an assigned temporary manager to facilitate safe and appropriate transfers for all the residents and has engaged an established process to help identify other skilled nursing facilities with available beds, officials said.

Attorney General William Tong said the transfer order is a rare and extreme measure, in this case reflecting severe standard of care concerns at Quinnipiac Valley Center.

The findings regarding patient neglect, staffing, infection control measures, medication administration and their lack of leadership led to a finding of imminent harm by Commissioner Juthani, leaving the state no choice but to intervene. Our Health and Education Section is continuing to provide legal support to the Commissioner, said Tong.

Lori Mayer, spokesperson for the Qunnipiac Valley Center, said in a statement Friday that they are committed to the safety and well-being of our patients and residents.

Recently, Quinnipiac Valley Center received deficiencies related to surveys conducted at the center and a temporary manager was assigned to the Center by the Connecticut Department of Health. At this time, the Center is currently cooperating with the temporary manager regarding the discharge of all patients and residents to other local facilities, said Mayer.

william.lambert@hearstmediact.com
NEW HAVEN  While refugee resettlement agencies are ready and willing to help Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion, it would be unusual for any to be flown to the United States any time soon, officials said.

Thats because, while the memory of Afghans being evacuated last summer as the Taliban took over is still fresh, the situations are different, Christopher George, executive director of Integrated Refugee & Immigrant Services, said Monday.

I dont blame Americans today for wondering why we dont swoop in and airlift Ukrainians to the United States because we did do that for about 100,000 Afghans, he said. But they were a special case, he said.

Most refugees have fled to a neighboring country. The Afghans, many of whom had worked for the U.S. government, were being rescued from their own country for fear that they would be in danger from the Taliban, George said.

The Afghans were in danger where they were. They were not allowed to flee Afghanistan by the Taliban, he said. They were being blocked. The borders were shut down.

Also, the United States felt a responsibility for the Afghans plight. It was a unique situation and really shouldnt be applied to the situation in Europe, he said. But anything can happen when theres political pressure.

George said the life of a typical refugee involves waiting many, many years in the border country that they have fled to. Syrians waiting in refugee camps and other sites in Lebanon and Jordan; Congolese waited in Burundi; and there have been Afghans who have become refugees in Pakistan, George said.

The 2.8 million people who have fled Ukraine, most crossing into Poland, are another example of typical refugees, but they will likely be resettled in their new countries, George said, and theres an outside chance the reason they fled could go away and they can return.

Only a very tiny fraction of the worlds almost 29 million refugees  have the opportunity to be resettled, George said. He said the State Department has told him their emphasis now is providing assistance to the almost 3 million refugees in the bordering states, mostly Poland.

Resettlement is not only a last resort, but its also a drastic solution, George said. Its taking people in most cases far away from their home country into a different culture. It would be better for people to integrate to the country they have fled to, but that doesnt usually happen in large numbers, because the refugees dont have residency or legal rights in that country, he said. That means they will be left in limbo for years, he said.

If the State Department were to permit refugees from Ukraine to come to the United States, it is likely that some would have relatives in Connecticut, they would choose to come to Connecticut, and IRIS and the Connecticut Institute for Refugees and Immigrants in Bridgeport would resettle them.

George said about 430 Afghans have been resettled in the state so far, about 30 percent by community groups.

The parents are getting jobs; health care issues are being addressed and theyre on their way to being self-sufficient and integrated into our communities, he said.

Housing has been a challenge because of the recent rise in costs, George said and some have had to be placed in more expensive housing than they would be able to handle. Some families might have to move at the end of their lease, he said.

edward.stannard@hearstmediact.com; 203-680-9382
Niagara Falls, NY (14301)

Today

Light rain this morning. Then remaining cloudy. High 59F. Winds N at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 70%..

Tonight

Some passing clouds. Low 39F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph.
A Makurdi Chief Magistrates Court on Monday ordered the remand of 40-year-old Idris Musa at the Correctional Services Centre, Makurdi, for ...









A Makurdi Chief Magistrates Court on Monday ordered the remand of 40-year-old Idris Musa at the Correctional Services Centre, Makurdi, for allegedly raping and impregnating a 14-year-old girl.





Musa, who lives at Abinsi village in Guma Local Government Area of Benue, was charged with gross indecency and rape.





However, the Magistrate, Mr Vincent Kor, did not take the plea of the defendant for want of jurisdiction.





Kor adjourned the matter until April 11 for further mention.





Earlier, the Prosecutor, Sgt. Jonah Uletu, told the court that the case was received at the state CID, Makurdi, from the Divisional Police Headquarters, Guma, on March 3.





Uletu said the father of the victim, Mr Ayima Dantala, had reported the case at the Abinsi Police Outpost on Feb. 27.





The prosecutor said the victims father observed that his little daughter was always looking weak and sick, and decided to take her to a clinic where she was confirmed pregnant.





He said upon inquiry, the girl told her father that one man named Idris Musa called her into his room two times and had sexual intercourse with her without her consent.





Uletu told the court that Musa was arrested and during police investigation, he confessed to committing the offence.





According to the prosecutor, the offences contravene Sections 266 and 284 of the Penal Code Laws of Benue, 2004. (NAN)
Nyesom Wike, Rivers governor, has accused Godwin Obaseki, his Edo state counterpart, of serial betrayal. Obaseki and Wike are both...

Nyesom Wike, Rivers governor, has accused Godwin Obaseki, his Edo state counterpart, of serial betrayal.

Obaseki and Wike are both governors on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

They have been at loggerheads in recent days, trading words and accusations.

While speaking at an event in Port Harcourt on Saturday, Wike tongue-lashed Philip Shaibu, Edo deputy governor, for daring to threaten the PDP.

Shaibu had appeared on a Channels Television programme where he said he and Obaseki may leave the PDP if the party continues to treat them as outcasts.

Reacting, Wike described the deputy governor as an ingrate and called on the PDP to discipline him.

In response, Obaseki defended his deputy and noted that Edo does not accept political bullies and overlords.

Speaking at an event in Rivers on Monday, Wike said he regrets backing Obaseki in the 2020 governorship election.

If you go and check the DNA of Obaseki, what you will see in that DNA is betrayal, serial betrayal, and ungratefulness, Wike said.

Let me stand today to apologise to Adams Oshiomhole who has been vindicated by telling us that we will see the true colour, we will see the insincerity, we will see the ungratefulness of Governor Obaseki.

Let me apologise to Adams Oshiomhole to say you have been vindicated. You are right, we are wrong.

I have never seen people who are so ungrateful in life. I will never betray any man. What is my DNA is sincerity, consistency and teamwork.

Assuming, though not conceding, I threatened the party, I have invested in the party. Rivers state has invested in the party.

We have voted for PDP since 1999 till now; ask Governor Obaseki  has he done anything for PDP? Has he voted for PDP? The only election he voted was his own election where we gave him an umbrella.

So who has more stake in PDP? I have more stake because I have supported PDP always. You have never supported PDP, rather it was when your godfather chased you away, that you came begging.





The Rivers state governor described Obaseki as a tenant in the PDP, while he also proceeded to address the bully label.

You came to beg a bully for you to have a ticket. A bully was your DG campaign and a bully bullied you into government house. You came back with your wife to thank the bully, he added.





People say it is politics. It is only politics that exposes human beings to know their character.

Wike had supported Obasekis re-election bid in 2020 after the Edo governor defected from the All Progressives Congress (APC) to the PDP in the wake of his fallout with Oshiomhole, his ally-turned-political opponent.
Photo taken on March 13, 2022 shows the launching event of the OPPO Reno7 series held in the Boulevard City of Riyadh Season, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Chinese smartphone manufacturer OPPO has introduced its Reno7 series 5G phones in Saudi Arabia, marking the first launch of the brand's series in the Middle East market. (OPPO/Handout via Xinhua)

RIYADH, March 14 (Xinhua) -- Chinese smartphone manufacturer OPPO has introduced its Reno7 series 5G phones in Saudi Arabia, marking the first launch of the brand's series in the Middle East market.

The Reno7 series, which were unveiled in the Boulevard City of Riyadh Season on Sunday, feature Laser Direct Imaging (LDI) technology, which is used for the first time in the mobile phone industry, according to Saleh Ma, brand director of OPPO Saudi Arabia.

Reno7 Pro, the flagship handset of the series, has a thickness of only 7.45mm and weighs around 180g. Powered by a new flagship portrait camera system and a 4500mAh battery, it delivers a "generational leap" in portrait image performance, has a longer battery life, and creates "a convenient and efficient user experience on smartphones," said Ma.

OPPO's research and development prowess in technologies such as the self-developed chipset MarSilicon and the Find N folding screen, has demonstrated that "today's Chinese technology enterprises are capable and powerful industry leaders," Ma added.

OPPO also launched the Reno 7 5G and Reno 7z smartphones at the event.

OPPO, as one of the world's leading smart device makers and innovators, has established presence in more than 50 countries and regions, with employment of more than 40,000 people. It is one of the best-selling mobile phone brands in the Egyptian market, and ranks among top five best-selling brands in the global market, according to the company's data. 

Photo taken on March 13, 2022 shows the fountain show at the launching event of the OPPO Reno7 series held in the Boulevard City of Riyadh Season, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Chinese smartphone manufacturer OPPO has introduced its Reno7 series 5G phones in Saudi Arabia, marking the first launch of the brand's series in the Middle East market. (OPPO/Handout via Xinhua)

A woman performs at the launching event of the OPPO Reno7 series held in the Boulevard City of Riyadh Season, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, March 13, 2022. Chinese smartphone manufacturer OPPO has introduced its Reno7 series 5G phones in Saudi Arabia, marking the first launch of the brand's series in the Middle East market. (OPPO/Handout via Xinhua)

Photo taken on March 13, 2022 shows the launching event of the OPPO Reno7 series held in the Boulevard City of Riyadh Season, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Chinese smartphone manufacturer OPPO has introduced its Reno7 series 5G phones in Saudi Arabia, marking the first launch of the brand's series in the Middle East market. (OPPO/Handout via Xinhua)

Photo taken on March 13, 2022 shows the new products at the launching event of the OPPO Reno7 series held in the Boulevard City of Riyadh Season, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Chinese smartphone manufacturer OPPO has introduced its Reno7 series 5G phones in Saudi Arabia, marking the first launch of the brand's series in the Middle East market. (OPPO/Handout via Xinhua)

People attend the launching event of the OPPO Reno7 series held in the Boulevard City of Riyadh Season, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, March 13, 2022. Chinese smartphone manufacturer OPPO has introduced its Reno7 series 5G phones in Saudi Arabia, marking the first launch of the brand's series in the Middle East market. (Xinhua/Wang Haizhou)

Photo taken on March 13, 2022 shows the new products at the launching event of the OPPO Reno7 series held in the Boulevard City of Riyadh Season, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Chinese smartphone manufacturer OPPO has introduced its Reno7 series 5G phones in Saudi Arabia, marking the first launch of the brand's series in the Middle East market. (Xinhua/Wang Haizhou)

Photo taken on March 13, 2022 shows the launching event of the OPPO Reno7 series held in the Boulevard City of Riyadh Season, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Chinese smartphone manufacturer OPPO has introduced its Reno7 series 5G phones in Saudi Arabia, marking the first launch of the brand's series in the Middle East market. (OPPO/Handout via Xinhua)

Photo taken on March 13, 2022 shows the launching event of the OPPO Reno7 series held in the Boulevard City of Riyadh Season, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Chinese smartphone manufacturer OPPO has introduced its Reno7 series 5G phones in Saudi Arabia, marking the first launch of the brand's series in the Middle East market. (OPPO/Handout via Xinhua)
The Chief Executive Officer of Tesla, Elon Musk, has challenged Russian President, Vladimir Putin to a duel with Ukraine at stake. ...

The Chief Executive Officer of Tesla, Elon Musk, has challenged Russian President, Vladimir Putin to a duel with Ukraine at stake.

I hereby challenge   (Vladmir Putin) to single combat, Musk wrote on Twitter. The stakes are  (Ukraine).

In response to Musk, a tweep @KasiaKomorowicz asked, Did you think this through? Or am i missing something? Musk responded by stating that he was absolutely serious.

Tagging the Presidents official page, @KremlinRussia_E, Musk wrote in Russian, Do you agree to this fight?

Musks challenge to Putin came as Russia continued its invasion of Ukraine. Russian troops entered Ukraine on February 24th, after weeks of camping along the countrys border.

The 19-day war has resulted in the deaths of thousands of civilians, and the destruction of Ukrainian cities.

Despite the fact that peace talks are scheduled for Monday, the Russian army continues to aim for Kyiv, the countrys capital.

Following a request from Ukraines Vice President, Mykhailo Fedorov, the tech mogul dispatched SpaceXs Starlink Satellite stations in support of the Ukrainian people.

On Saturday, it was reported that a second shipment of Starlink stations had been delivered to the war-torn country, as Musk had earlier promised.
Yes. Gov. Hochul chose Mr. Benjamin, and she's stuck with him through the election.

No. The state should have the option to remove someone under criminal indictment.

Vote

View Results
If you include Carnival, New Orleans may have the liveliest, and certainly the most public, art scene in the country. Think about it, all of those tireless float makers, nutty dance troupes, fabulous Black Indian maskers, and glittery Mardi Gras-morning DIY costumers are artists, right? Carnival could be the countrys biggest art festival that doesnt call itself an art festival.

In 2022 there was an especially compelling artistic confluence in the midst of the creative chaos, a conceptual coincidence that cant be ignored  even if Carnival concluded two weeks ago.

We reported on this years beyond-marvelous costumes produced by the Dames de Perlage ("Ladies of Beadwork"). The Dames are devoted to Carnival beading in all of its forms, from Rhinestoned ball costumes to Mardi Gras Indian mosaic patches. Each year the Dames choose a subject  Aint Dere No More, We Went On Up To The Audubon Zoo and such  and laboriously sew beaded costumes that illustrate the theme.

This year, the Dames were inspired by New Orleans colorful street art scene. From the graffiti of aerosol masters such as READ, Hugo Gyrl and Mr. Balloon Hands, to the muraling of Skela and BMike, to the iconic advertising signage on the popular Manchu Food Store, the Dames costumes had the city covered like a coat of Krylon.

Bravo!

But it gets better. In addition to graffiti-inspired costuming, there was anti-graffiti-inspired costuming as well.

On Mardi Gras morning, Marigny and Bywater were haunted by a dude dressed as the late graffiti eradicator known as The Gray Ghost. For a quarter-century, starting in 1986, a former Marine named Fred Radtke conducted a campaign against graffiti, which he saw as visual litter, a sign of lawlessness, and general societal erosion.

He pursued his passion with a single-mindedness and tenacity that earned him the congratulations of much of the population, but also the contempt of the graffiti crowd and their fans.

The concrete-gray paint Radtke used to blot out thousands of illicit paintings inspired his nickname. Sadly, the Gray Ghost died in August 2021. Radtkes passing was the end of an important era in pop culture, but news of his death didnt hit the newspaper until much later, in the midst of Carnival season.

The guy who costumed as The Gray Ghost on Mardi Gras doesnt want us to use his name  anonymity is part of the masking custom of course  so hell just be known as JCL. Wearing a gray-dyed bed sheet marked with graffiti tags, and a golden crown, JCL wandered through the thick crowds on Royal Street and thereabouts, using a gray paint roller to pretend to blot out any actual graffiti he encountered. He also rollered over a few costumers who crossed his path.

The costume was so simple that JCL  a Hollywood South set artist  said he was a bit chagrined. He said it was sort of a visual dad joke. But in truth, the meaning of his getup was probably only clear to the cognoscenti.

I blew my voice out yelling Boo! he said of his performance.

JCL said he was acquainted with a few graffiti writers back in the 1990s and was well aware of their animosity for Radtke. This town is built on minor beefs, he said.

JCL said that some people hated his costume because of what it represented  until they knew it was him under the sheet, then they understood the irony.

Irony and irreverence are a big part of Carnival satire, of course. But theres a paradox. On one hand JCL may have been mocking Radtke, but in a way theres no higher honor than to be satirized in Carnival. JCLs comical costume was a tribute to The Gray Ghosts significance as a cultural figure.

JCL certainly gets Radtkes role as a foil for the graffiti crowd. Sometimes having a good enemy helps you sharper your definition of who you are and what you believe in, he said.

Note: Many thanks to Amanda Zapp for the use of this photo. If you have pictures of JCL's costume that you'd like to contribute to this story, please send them with permission to publish to dmaccash@theadvocate.com.
As it might be guessed by the name, the idea behind the three-day Lysistrata Comedy Festival started out with a play.

Writer Candace Robertson was talking with Rochelle McConico, a comedian and event producer, when Robertson had the idea of staging a play festival. McConico thought it would be cool to include comedic plays, and the idea started marinating.

Around the same time, McConico wrote on Facebook that white women should stop giving racists vagina, and if they did, then we would solve racism, she says. Someone replied back with Lysistrata.

It was a spark that quickly grew into something bigger.

Originally performed in 411 BCE, the Greek comedy Lysistrata tells the story of how the women of Greece band together to withhold sex from their husbands and lovers until the men end their bloody fights between the warring city states and negotiate peace. The plays focus on women working together to enact mass change resonated with McConico and Robertson  and the ideas for a festival quickly led into the comedy world, where the majority of stand-ups and performers are male, especially white men.

The Lysistrata Comedy Festival is co-produced by McConico, Robertson, Los Angeles-based comedian Denise Jena and Jess Scott, a comedian in Austin. McConico and Jena have performed together as part of No Lye Comedy, a New Orleans collective of Black femme comedians, and McConico now lives in Austin, where she got to know Scott, and she still regularly produces shows in New Orleans.

The festival takes place Friday, March 18, through Sunday, March 20, at Hi-Ho Lounge (on Friday), the AllWays Lounge & Cabaret (on Saturday) and Cafe Istanbul (on Sunday). An improv workshop also is planned on Saturday at Crescent Park near Marigny Street.

The festival presents a range of events featuring women, femme and non-binary performers, from stand-up and improv shows to a business panel and headshot workshop. Friday starts at 7 p.m. with Scotts scantily clad improv show Skivvies ATX. A comedy showcase at 8 p.m. will feature headliner Janell Banks, McConico, Casara Clark, Ivy Le, Jane Banks and more. And at 9:30 p.m. Angela Lang, the Dirty Mouth Comedian, hosts a comedy and karaoke event featuring comics Ashleigh Branch, Nkechi Chibueze, Sarah Mack and more singing and telling jokes.

Saturday starts at 11 a.m. with improv group Big Couch hosting a workshop at Crescent Park. Then at 5:30 p.m., the Comedy Wham podcast will have a live show with host Valerie Lopez interviewing comedians Amanda Van Nostrand and Janell Banks. LGBTQ-focused storytelling group Greetings, from Queer Mountain, hosted by comedian Amanda G, will follow at 6:30 p.m. And then at 8 p.m., Nkechi Chibueze will host a combination comedy show and modeling competition headlined by Amanda Van Nostrand.

Sundays events include a career panel at 2 p.m. hosted by Tasha Riley and featuring Van Nostrand, Banks and more. A headshot workshop with Chibueze takes place at 3 p.m., and a screening of short films starts at 4 p.m. Closing the festival is a comedy and burlesque showcase hosted by Lauren Malara and featuring burlesque performer Dick Jones.

The festival wanted to take any art form that is female-powered, Scott says. Not about what kind of female comedic arts, in terms of what type they are, but definitely more about who they are made by  that was something the team was dedicated to.

We wanted a BIPOC focus, but we didnt want it to be only [that]. The breadth and diversity of it was so important, McConico adds. Were bringing something into New Orleans, and it has to represent these beautiful Black women that we have been creating stuff with. That launched this part of saying, Who in this city do we love? And how can we incorporate those shows into the festival? I would say half of the shows are ones we created, and the other half are shows that we loved that are already happening in New Orleans, like [Greetings, from] Queer Mountain and Funny But Make it Fashion and Dirty Mouth, who does Comedy and Karaoke.

While comedians like Tig Notaro, Ali Wong and Tiffany Haddish have had major successes, the numbers of women in comedy are still low. McConico cited seeing a graphic that states only 13% of comics are women; the Chicago Reader reported that 29% of acts booked in Chicago showcases were female in 2017; and BitchMedia ran a similar report in 2015 that found a club in New York City had booked only 110 women as headliners between 2011 and 2014.

A lot of times in comedy, thats what youll hear: Women are not funny, McConico says. And one of the basic tenants here is that not only are women funny, but the things they have to talk about are things you probably have not heard. Those perspectives are so broad  Women are doing so much, but we dont talk about it. This is an opportunity, when you have all of these modalities, like improv and burlesque, because were in all of these things. So anyway, women want to come and laugh and showcase their talents, were for that.

Individual event tickets are available along with one-day passes for $30 and three-day passes for $85. For tickets and more information, go to lyscomedyfest.com.
French Quarter Fest

April 21-24

Sure, it may not strictly be the very first festival of the year, but French Quarter Fest is without a doubt the start of Festival Season. Back again after the two-year Covid hiatus, the free festival returns to feed your body and soul with great music, delicious food and thirst-quenching beverages.

This years lineup is jam-packed with local talent, kicking off April 21 with Lost Bayou Ramblers, Sweet Crude, Kermit Ruffins and the Barbecue Swingers, Corey Henry and the Treme Funktet and more. Friday will see the likes of George Porter Jr. and the Runnin Pardners, Tuba Skinny, Valerie Sassyfras and the one and only Irma Thomas hittin the stage, among many others.

On Saturday, things really get going. There will be a host of both established and newer acts, including Amigos do Samba, Big Chief Monk Boudreaux and the Golden Eagles, Big Chief Bo Dollis Jr. and the Wild Magnolias, the Trombone Shorty Academy, John Papa Gros and the Daquiri Queens.

The festival closes out strong, with a full day of performances by Little Freddie King, Alfred Banks with SaxKixAve, the Zulu Gospel Choir, Washboard Chaz, Cameron Dupuy and the Cajun Troubadours and many more.

There also will be a new series of smaller evening concerts formally associated with the festival. Dubbed French Quarter Fest After Dark, these shows will be held Thursday, April 21, at the Double Dealer, Friday, April 22, at the ACE Hotels Three Keys, Saturday, April 23, at the Hotel Saint Vincent and Sunday, April 24, at the Frenchman Hotels Midnight Revival. Ticket information and wholl be performing is still TBD, so check the festivals site for information.

As usual, the festival boasts an impressive lineup of local food vendors, including Jack Dempseys, Plum Street Snoballs, 14 Parishes, Addis NOLA, Desire Oyster Bar and WWOZs Mango Freeze. And Abita Beer will be flowing as per usual to keep yall nice and lubricated.

The music is spread out on 20 stages along the riverfront and in the French Quarter, so fans can set up camp near their favorite stage or wander toward whatever sounds right. Details are on frenchquarterfest.org.

Gambit's spring festivals and events preview 2022 The gates are open for a spring calendar full of festivals and events.
New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival

April 29-May 1 & May 5-8

This is the big one, folks, the whole festival enchilada! Its been three long years since the Holy Order of Jazz Dads have gathered upon the consecrated grounds of the Fair Grounds Race Course, so its best to start your stretching now.

This year boasts one hell of a lineup, and Jazz Fest bringing the heat from Day One with Lionel Richie headlining and CeeLo Green performing a tribute to James Brown thats sure to blow the doors off every nearby porta-potty. Day Two features none other than The Who and Nelly as headliners, as well as Puerto Rican legend Jose Feliciano and local legends like Mia X, the Lost Bayou Ramblers, Irma Thomas, Walter Wolfman Washington and more Nevilles than you can shake a meter at. Week One closes out with the Foo Fighters headlining an impressive lineup that includes Randy Newman, Dumpstaphunk, Deacon John, the Original Pinettes Brass Band and more.

Week Two kicks off with the return of Locals Thursday with Luke Combs at the top of the bill and Ziggy Marley, Gal Holiday & the Honkey Tonk Revue, the Dirty Dozen Brass Band joined by Elvis Costello for a tribute to Dave Bartholomew and more. Friday, May 5, is star-studded, with the Black Crowes headlining a bill featuring Ludacris, Elvis Costello, Boz Scaggs, the Funky Meters, Chris Isaak and Big Freedia.

Then, Saturday is ladies' day with Stevie Nicks and Erykah Badu headlining an impressive day of music featuring Melissa Etheridge, Rickie Lee Jones, Samantha Fish, Meschiya Lake and the Little Big Horns and more. And Sunday is sure to please the parrot heads with Jimmy Buffett headlining a bill including Willie Nelson, Norah Jones, a tribute to Dr. John featuring Irma Thomas, Cyril Neville, Jon Cleary, Ivan Neville, Davell Crawford, John Boutte, and John Papa Gros. Jazz Fest mainstays Trombone Shorty, Maze, Kool and the Gang will also perform.

And thats not the only lineup to get excited about. Two years has been a long time to go without standing on the infield eating crawfish bread, Vaucressons sausage, cochon de lait po-boys, mango freezes and all the staples that fuel the fest, so get ready to eat your heart out.

For more information, tickets, full lists of music acts and more, visit nojazzfest.com.

Gambit's spring festivals and events preview 2022 The gates are open for a spring calendar full of festivals and events.
BUKU Music + Art Project

March 25-26

The COVID-19 pandemic swept New Orleans mere days before the BUKU Music + Art Project was set to stage its 2020 festival, which was postponed and later canceled.

Now, BUKU is set to return and celebrate its 10th anniversary on Friday, March 25, and Saturday, March 26, at the Market Street Power Plant site. BUKU leans into electronica, rock and hip-hop and also features street art, sculpture and live painting.

Psychedelic rock band Tame Impala headlines Friday night, and genre-bending rapper and provocateur Tyler, the Creator tops the bill on Saturday. The lineup also features Porter Robinson, Glass Animals, Taking Back Sunday, Rezz, Alison Wonderland, Vince Staples, Maxo Kream and 100 gecs among numerous others.

A number of New Orleans artists also are featured in this years festival, including hip-hop collective glbl wrmng, TVBOO, sfam, Neno Calvin, 504icygrl, Antwigadee and Tatyanna XL.

BUKU this year continues its work with Upbeat Academy, a New Orleans music education program, by helping raise funds for the group and offering students opportunities to perform at the festival. In 2020, BUKU and Upbeat Academy started the Take Action Project (TAP), a platform for campaigns addressing systemic racism and social and environmental justice. This year, TAP partnered with Propeller for a campaign that turned good works into rewards for BUKU merch and tickets.

After the festival on Saturday, March 26, BUKU and Lab Group will host a party with Of the Trees, Supertask, Player Dave and more at the Orpheum Theater. Tickets start at $25 and go on sale March 14.

Single-day ($120-$130) and two-day ($239-$249) general admission tickets along with some VIP tickets are on sale at thebukuproject.com.

Gambit's spring festivals and events preview 2022 The gates are open for a spring calendar full of festivals and events.
Tipitinas will host a memorial for the late drummer Kevin ODay at 5 p.m. Monday, March 14. A second line will be led by the Soul Brass Band at 6 p.m., and artists including Stanton Moore, Anders Osborne, Ivan Neville, the Klezmer Allstars and others are expected to jam together.

The prolific musician died unexpectedly on March 8 at the age of 49. Over the course of his career, he performed with a number of popular local groups and artists, including The Single Atom Theory, the Midnite Disturbers, Mustache Petting Zoo, the New Orleans Klezmer Allstars, Lynn Drury, Bonerama, Kirk Josephs Backyard Groove, Walter Wolfman Washington and Kevin ODay and the Live Animals. He was a fixture at local venues including Tipitina's and the Maple Leaf.

The Louisiana native was also one of the first musicians to organize live performances after Hurricane Katrina.

Moore, who co-owns Tipitina's and is a longtime friend of O'Day's, organized the event. There will also be a pig roast on the neutral ground next to the venue.

Many of ODays friends, family and fellow artists have taken to social media to share memories of their friend. In a tribute posted on Facebook, musician Alex McMurray, who will also be at the memorial, described him as fearless and confident and badass and pure and innocent and sweet as pie."

ODays family has also set up a 529 Plan college fund for his son, Luke, and donations are accepted through Venmo: @odayfund.
Taking her to Jazz Fest

We'll go to brunch

I gotta go to church with her

A nice card / flowers / phone call

Vote

View Results
LVIV, Ukraine Russian missiles pounded a military base in western Ukraine on Sunday, killing 35 people in an attack on a facility that served as a crucial hub for cooperation between Ukraine and the NATO countries supporting its defense. The barrage marked an escalation of Moscows offensive and moved the fighting perilously close to the Polish border.

The attack so near a NATO member-country raised the specter that the alliance could be drawn into the fight and was heavy with symbolism in a conflict that has revived old Cold War rivalries and threatened to rewrite the current global security order.

More than 30 Russian cruise missiles targeted the sprawling facility, which has long been used to train Ukrainian soldiers, often with instructors from the U.S. and other countries in the Western alliance. Poland is also a transit route for Western military aid to Ukraine, and the strikes followed Moscow's threats to target those shipments.

Ina Padi, a 40-year-old Ukrainian who crossed the border with her family, taking shelter at a fire station in Wielkie Oczy, Poland, was awakened by blasts Sunday morning that made the glass in the windows shake.

I understood in that moment even if we are free of it, (the war) is still coming after us, she said.

Since their invasion more than two weeks ago, Russian forces have struggled in their advance across Ukraine, in the face of stiffer than expected resistance, bolstered by Western weapons support. Instead, Russian forces have besieged several cities and pummeled them with strikes, hitting two dozen medical facilities and leading to a series of humanitarian crises.

The U.N. has recorded at least 596 civilian deaths, though it believes the true toll is much higher, and Ukraines Prosecutor Generals office said that at least 85 children are among them. An American filmmaker and journalist was also killed Sunday. Millions more people have fled their homes amid the largest land conflict in Europe since World War II.

Talks for a broad cease-fire have thus far failed, but the Kremlin's spokesman said another round would take place on Monday by videolink, according to Russian state news agency Tass. Meanwhile, U.S. President Joe Biden is sending his national security adviser to Rome to meet with a Chinese official amid concerns that country is amplifying Russian disinformation and may help Moscow evade punishing Western economic sanctions.

The attacked training base near Yavoriv is less than 25 kilometers (15 miles) from the Polish border and appears to be the westernmost target struck during Russias 18-day invasion.

The base has hosted NATO drills and a senior official, Admiral Rob Bauer, previously hailed it as embodying the spirit of military cooperation" between Ukraine and international forces.

As such, the site is a potent symbol of Russia's longstanding concerns that the expansion in recent years of the 30-member Western military alliance to include former Soviet states threatens its security  something NATO denies. Still, the perceived threat from NATO is central to Moscow's justifications for the war, and it has has demanded Ukraine drop its ambitions to join the alliance.

Lviv governor Maksym Kozytskyi said most Russian missiles fired Sunday were shot down because the air defense system worked. Those that got through killed at least 35 people and wounded 134, he said.

Russian fighters also fired at the airport in the western city of Ivano-Frankivsk, which is less than 150 kilometers (94 miles) north of Romania and 250 kilometers (155 miles) from Hungary, two other NATO allies.

NATO said Sunday that it currently does not have any personnel in Ukraine, though the U.S. has increased the number of American troops deployed to Poland. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the West would respond if Russia's strikes travel outside Ukraine and hit any NATO members, even accidentally.

Biden has been clear, repeatedly, that the United States will work with our allies to defend every inch of NATO territory and that means every inch, Sullivan said on CBS News Face the Nation.

NATO has said it will not send troops into Ukraine, but Sullivan said the U.S. and its allies have gotten substantial amounts of military assistance, weapons and supplies to the front  and that despite Russian threats of attack, they believed they would be able to continue to do so.

The city of Lviv, in western Ukraine itself, so far has been spared the scale of destruction unfolding to its east and south. Its population of 721,000 has swelled during the war with residents escaping bombarded population centers and as a waystation for the nearly 2.6 million people who have fled the country.

Top stories in New Orleans in your inbox Twice daily we'll send you the day's biggest headlines. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up

Ukrainian and European leaders have pushed with limited success for Russia to grant safe passage to civilians trapped by fighting, though Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said authorities have managed to evacuate nearly 125,000 people from combat zones.

Ukrainian authorities said more than 10 humanitarian corridors would open Sunday, with agreement from Russia, including from the besieged port city of Mariupol, where the city council said 2,187 people have been killed.

But such promises have repeatedly crumbled, and there was no word late Sunday on whether people were able to use the evacuation routes. Officials said did say a convoy carrying 100 tons of aid was expected to arrive in Mariupol on Monday.

The suffering in the port city is simply immense, the International Committee of the Red Cross said Sunday, noting that hundreds of thousands of its residents are facing extreme or total shortages of basic necessities like food, water and medicine.

Dead bodies, of civilians and combatants, remain trapped under the rubble or lying in the open where they fell, the Geneva-based organization said in a statement. Life-changing injuries and chronic, debilitating conditions cannot be treated.

The fight for Mariupol is crucial since its capture could help Russia establish a land corridor to Crimea, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014.

Meanwhile, continued fighting on multiple fronts heaped further misery on the country Sunday and provoked renewed international outrage.

In the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv, near the Black Sea, authorities reported nine people killed in bombings. They said Russian airstrikes on a monastery and a childrens resort in the eastern Donetsk region hit spots where monks and others were sheltering, wounding 32 people.

Around the capital, Kyiv, a major political and strategic target for the invasion, fighting also intensified, with overnight shelling in the northwestern suburbs and a missile strike Sunday that destroyed a warehouse to the east.

Kyiv Region police said on its official website that Russian troops opened fire on a car carrying two American journalists. The U.S. State Department said Brent Renaud died. Juan Arredondo was wounded.

In the Kyiv suburb of Irpin, Ukrainian soldier Alexei Lipirdi, 46, said that the Russians want to intimidate us so that we will not be calm," but he and his unit remain defiant. As he spoke, smoke billowed from distant buildings and cars stood damaged or abandoned.

The citys mayor said only about 10,000 of its 60,000 residents remain. Many who stayed behind are the old or sick and those who are caring for them.

At a suburban hospital, doctors said 80% of their patients are civilians wounded by shelling. Patient Volodymr Adamkovych, his abdomen bandaged, said he was wounded when his home was hit. He spent the night in his basement before he could reach doctors.

President Zelenskyy also alleged that Russians were using blackmail and bribery in an attempt to force local officials in the southern Kherson region to form a pseudo-republic like those in the two eastern regions where Russian-backed separatists began fighting Ukrainian forces in 2014.

Zelenskyy reported Saturday that 1,300 Ukrainian soldiers had died in the war. The Russians said days ago that several hundred of their forces have died but have not given a recent updated count.

The war has repeatedly raised the specter of nuclear accidents, as fighting occurred around nuclear power plants. On Sunday, Ukraine said it restored a broken power line to the decommissioned Chernobyl plant, scene of the world's worst nuclear disaster in 1986. The plant was knocked off the grid last week and relying on generators. That raised concerns about its ability to keep spent fuel cool, though the International Atomic Energy Agency played down those worries. The agency said the plant would be reconnected to the power grid on Monday.

Associated Press journalists from around the world contributed to this report.
New Orleans paradegoers will switch out their Mardi Gras beads and lucky four-leaf clovers for fava beans and Italys red, white and green flag this weekend.

The Italian American St. Joseph Society of New Orleans has planned a weekend of events mostly open to the public, including its annual parade and pasta party, to celebrate St. Josephs Day on March 19, according to the clubs president, Peter Gilberti.

While the organization is 52 years old, Gilberti said members will be celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, after the parade was postponed two years in a row due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Were doing a do-over, he said.

ITALIAN AMERICAN PASTA, PARADE St. Joseph's Pasta Party WHEN: Noon Friday, March 18 WHERE: Hilton Hotel Italian American St. Joseph's Day Parade Parade routes are subject to change so check nola.com for details. WHEN: 6 p.m. Saturday, March 19 WHERE: Canal and Chartres streets For more info, visit www.italianamericansociety.org

In 2020, members hosted their pasta event and a cocktail party before Gilberti said he got a phone call from the New Orleans Police Department to say the mayor was pulling special events permits. During the pandemic, Gilberti said he conducted board meetings once a month via Zoom.

To make up for lost time, Gilberti said, this year, the parade even has two queens, crowned March 13 at the Piazza dItalia on Poydras Street.

We got to make everybody happy, he said.

The organization will host its pasta party, which is open to the public, Friday, March 18, at noon at the Hilton New Orleans Riverside hotel, though Gilberti said it's best to be there by 11 a.m. Parade marshal David Greco, owner of Mikes Deli and Arthur Avenue Caterers in little Italy in New York City, will make the world's largest bowl of pasta con le sarde.

In observance of Lent, the club will serve this meat-free Sicilian classic dish that pairs pasta with anchovies and sardines. The final product uses 500 pounds of pasta.

The dish also features a topping of browned Italian breadcrumbs called modica, which represents St. Josephs sawdust. The dish is presented to the public, and those in the parade serve the meal with an apron on and serving spoon in hand.

Gilberti said that the society, which is registered as a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, also presents $1,000 scholarships to four local high school recipients at the pasta event.

The following day, a Saturday, which this year falls on St. Josephs Day itself, the organizations parade rolls downtown, featuring 12 floats and 11 marching groups.

Top stories in New Orleans in your inbox Twice daily we'll send you the day's biggest headlines. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up

Throws featured include tricolor beads nodding to the Italian flag, red, white and green flowers handed out by marching men in tuxedos and light-up rings that say kiss me, Im Italian.

The parade will begin at Canal and Chartres streets at 6 p.m. and roll back to the Hilton close to 9 p.m., when the clubs gala begins.

Louisiana Spice, a local band, will play at the gala, where members and their guests will dance, eat and drink until the early morning, Gilberti said.

Everybody agreed that we pick up where we left off and consider this a celebration of our 50th anniversary still, he said.

St. Joseph's Pasta Party

WHEN: Noon Friday, March 18

WHERE: Piazza d'Italia

Italian American St. Joseph's Day Parade

Parade routes are subject to change so check nola.com for details.

WHEN: 6 p.m. Saturday, March 18

WHERE: Canal and Chartres streets

For more info, visit www.italianamericansociety.org.
Before he made a name for himself in Hollywood, actor and producer Ken Jeong performed in comedy clubs around New Orleans while completing his medical residency at Ochsner Medical Center and did research at Tulane's School of Medicine.

Jeong will return to New Orleans in May, as Tulane University's 2022 commencement speaker, the university announced on Monday.

This years Tulane commencement will be something of a homecoming for our speaker, Tulane President Michael Fitts said in a statement.

Tulane's graduation will take place on May 21 at 9 a.m. It will be the first in-person graduation with all classes since the pandemic, the university said.

Celebrity and academic accomplishments

Fitts said that commencement speakers are often chosen either for their academic accomplishments or their celebrity.

"In choosing the keynote speaker for Commencement 2022, we decided the answer was both," Fitts said. "The fact that our choice also has a deep New Orleans connection was a definite plus."

Top stories in New Orleans in your inbox Twice daily we'll send you the day's biggest headlines. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up

After earning an undergraduate degree at Duke University and a medical degree from the University of North Carolina, Jeong moved to New Orleans to complete his Internal Medicine residency at Ochsner Medical Center and a fellowship at Tulane School of Medicine, the university said. He performed at comedy clubs around the city and in 1995 he won the Big Easy Laff Off contest.

He later moved to Los Angeles where he continued to practice medicine while pursuing a career in comedy, often performing at the Improv and Laugh Factory.

Knocked Up, The Hangover, Dr. Ken

Jeong appeared on "The Office," "Entourage" and "Curb Your Enthusiasm," but his break came in the 2007 film "Knocked Up," in which he played a doctor. His medical training made onscreen appearances when he created, wrote, executive produced and starred in ABCs "Dr. Ken."

Jeong's other roles include Mr. Chow in "The Hangover" movies, Senor Chang in "Community," and Wye Mun Goh in "Crazy Rich Asians."

Besides enjoying live jazz and all the other New Orleans flourishes and fun embedded in our unique celebration, I believe that Tulanes interdisciplinary educational approach will also appeal to Dr. Ken," Fitts said. "The experiences of our students, who often double and even triple major in far-flung subjects such as neuroscience and dance or music and math, seem kindred with his multidisciplined career path.
An independent committee that selects candidates for open seats on the east bank levee authority has nominated a Baton Rouge engineer and a Slidell retired attorney with an engineering degree to fill an open board seat.

In the running are Edward Wedge III of Baton Rouge, a principal engineer for engineering services firm Stanley Consultants, and attorney Thomas Fierke of Slidell, who retired in 2010 as general counsel to Lockheed Martin's space manufacturing operations at the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans East.

Both are vying to replace Eugene Joanen of Folsom, an environmental scientist and consultant who announced in January that he would step down from the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East board because of other responsibilities.

The nominating committee voted unanimously Friday to forward Wedge and Fierkes names to Gov. John Bel Edwards, who will make the final decision.

The levee authority, a state agency, maintains floodwalls, gates and levees on the east bank of Orleans, Jefferson and St. Bernard parishes.

Thomas Fierke Thomas Fierke, an attorney who retired in 2010 from Lockheed Martin's Michoud Assembly Facility manufacturing operations.

Before joining Stanley Consultants in June 2021, Wedge, 60, spent more than 31 years with the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development, most recently as the departments deputy chief engineer.

Meanwhile, Fierke, 73, has served since October 2014 as a member of the Non-Flood Asset Board of Commissioners, which oversees property owned by the Orleans Levee District that is not used for flood protection. He will have to resign from that board if appointed.

Fierke, who moved from New Orleans to Slidell in 2020, also served on the governing board for New Orleans City Park from 2008 until recently.

Environmental news in your inbox Stay up-to-date on the latest on Louisiana's coast and the environment. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up

Edward Wedge III Edward Wedge III, principal engineer with Stanley Consultants

The nominating committee decided to send two names to Edwards by declaring the open seat would be considered reserved for a "professional," which under state law would require two nominees, rather than for an engineer or scientist, which would require only one nominee.

In doing so, they moved present board member Herbert Weysham III from a professional slot to an engineering slot.

Both Wedge and Fierke also would meet a requirement that they not live within the borders set by law of the east bank levee authority, which includes Tangipahoa and St. Bernard parishes and the east banks of Orleans and Jefferson parishes.

Passed over by the committee were applicants Nicholas Trist III of Covington, owner of Scott-Trist Container Services; and Douglas Ferrer, also of Covington, chief creditor officer for Resource Bank.

Under state law, Edwards must choose between the two nominees submitted by the committee, which is comprised of scientists, engineers and business representatives. Formed in the aftermath of the levee failures during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the selection process was aimed at removing politics from the levee authority's operation of the three east bank levee districts it oversees.

Edwards selection may still be vetoed by the Legislature, which will consider the governor's choice during this year's legislative session.
The effort to create a buffer between Louisiana's coastline and huge menhaden ships fell flat in the 2021 legislative session, dying last week in a House-Senate conference committee.

Sponsored by Rep. Joseph Orgeron, R-Larose, House Bill 535 initially proposed a half-mile exclusion zone, with wider buffers around some barrier islands. Conservationists and recreational fishers backed the bill, arguing it would provide fragile fish nursery grounds in nearshore habitats more protection from the industry's 1,500-foot-long nets. Menhaden industry representatives said trawling a half-mile farther from the coast could cut their revenue by 20% if captains couldn't make up that catch elsewhere.

The Senate amended the buffer to an industry-supported quarter mile. Orgeron and the House rejected that June 8, throwing the bill into a conference committee to resolve differences between the two chambers, but the legislative session ended two days later without a report from the committee.

While we were unsuccessful this session, I remain committed to seeing this legislation and common-sense conservation measures through until the end that protects both our recreational and commercial fisheries," Orgeron said. "Its clear there needs to be updated regulation of menhaden fishing, and I will keep up the fight for our coastal communities.

Conservation groups and industry representatives agree that the big debate over the tiny, oily fish will likely continue. Where the industry welcomes taking a spot approach to buffers, creating exclusion zones in hotspots where stakeholders clash, groups such as the Coastal Conservation Commission of Louisiana, Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership and National Audubon Society say they will continue to push for a coastwide approach.

Environmental news in your inbox Stay up-to-date on the latest on Louisiana's coast and the environment. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up

Menhaden, also known as pogies or shad, serve a key role in the food chain for other wildlife, including treasured game fish such as speckled trout and redfish. When caught commercially, the oil-rich fish is ground up into animal feed, health supplements and fertilizers.

"There's a need for conservation here. The impact to the habitat - that doesn't just happen in the areas where the user conflict is the highest," said Chris Macaluso, the Roosevelt Partnership's marine center director. "The concerns of the people who are seeing the impact these boats are having being so close to the beach - those aren't going away."

Ben Landry, Omega Protein's director of public affairs, thinks additional regulation isn't "biologically necessary," and that it places undue burden on an industry already navigating natural burdens such as tropical storms and hurricanes.

+5 Big business of catching tiny fish won't be restricted in coastal waters, Louisiana leaders decide A growing conflict over Louisianas largest but perhaps least-known commercial fishery came to a head this week when state leaders rejected a 

"It's easy for the environmental groups to say, 'They can go fish somewhere else.' That's really not the case," Landry said. "User conflicts are inherent, and we try our best to minimize those, but a blanket coastwide ban is not something that we thought ... was scientifically supportable."

The University of Florida and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are expected to release a study later this year on the menhaden industry's effect on fish stock in the Gulf of Mexico. Macaluso hopes it will assist in shifting the management of Gulf fisheries toward an ecosystem-based approach.

The Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission might also move forward with a proposed notice of intent to create a quarter-mile exclusion zone along Louisiana's shoreline for the 2022 and 2023 fishing seasons, with one- to three-mile buffers around Elmer's Island, Grand Isle and West Grand Terre. The commission tabled the measure in May with plans to revisit after the legislative session.
A large fish processing plant in Plaquemines Parish habitually spews a dark, foul-smelling slurry of pulverized fish guts and feces into nearby canals and the Mississippi River, a company insider charged in a lawsuit.

Government officials and environmental groups have raised concerns about Daybrook Fisheries plant in Empire for decades, but now its former safety and environmental manager says the plant has willfully polluted waterways and failed to take basic precautions to avoid leaks and spills.

Karen Davis' lawsuit alleges she was fired in April after she repeatedly reported environmental hazards to the plants managers and company executives between 2019 and 2021. Davis, who worked at the company for six years, filed her lawsuit under the states environmental whistleblower statute, which protects employees from retaliation for reporting environmental violations.

The companys mishandling of large volumes of liquid fish waste and other pollutants put groundwater and adjacent waterways, including the lower Mississippi, at risk, according to the lawsuit, which was filed last week in U.S. District Court in New Orleans.

Daybrook did not respond to requests for comment.

The allegations did not surprise Wilma Subra, an environmental scientist with the Louisiana Environmental Action Network, an advocacy group that sued Daybrook over water quality violations in 2004.

That facility has always been operated very poorly, Subra said. They have such a large waste stream. Once it gets into canals or rivers, it starts to ferment and causes huge pollution problems.

Large amounts of fish waste can trigger explosions of algae and bacteria, which contain toxins that are harmful to marine life and humans. Algae blooms quickly die, and decomposing algae spurs the growth of bacteria, which consumes both the algae and much of the dissolved oxygen in the water.

Waters depleted of oxygen, so-called dead zones, turn fish and shrimp away and suffocate anything that can't escape, including oysters and crabs. The Gulf of Mexico has long struggled with these zones; the largest, which covers more than 6,300 square miles, sits along the Louisiana coast.

Daybrook processes menhaden, a small fish that plays an outsized role in the Gulfs fishing industry. By volume, the menhaden fishery is the largest in Louisiana and the Gulf, and the second in the U.S. Often boasting annual harvests of more than 550,000 tons, the menhaden fishery far outweighs the Gulfs famed commercial catches, including shrimp and crab.

Also known as pogies, menhaden dont end up in restaurants or grocery stores. Instead, the oil-rich fish are ground up at plants like Daybrooks and then used in health supplements, pet food, fertilizers and industrial lubricants.

Daybrook was founded in 1955 and purchased by South African fishing company Oceana Group in 2015. Daybrooks corporate office is in New Orleans, but almost all of its more than 300 employees are based at its Empire plant, which the company says processes about 40% of the Gulfs menhaden catch. The plant typically produces about 90,000 tons of fish meal and oil each year.

'Aging, dilapidated and problem-prone' facility

Daybrooks website says its plant is state of the art and adheres to sustainable business practices that protect the Gulf menhaden fishery, its coastal waters and ecosystems.

But Davis said the opposite is true.

It operates an aging, dilapidated and problem-prone fish processing facility that regularly unloads a noxious mix of fish scales, fins and excrement, her lawsuit said.

Environmental news in your inbox Stay up-to-date on the latest on Louisiana's coast and the environment. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up

The plant processes large quantities of wastewater pumped from the holds of large fishing vessels. This mixture of saltwater, fish parts and feces circulates through the plant and is mixed with chemicals and other pollutants generated during processing, according to Davis.

She documented at least five instances in which managers ignored her warnings about wastewater leaks, overflows and spills and faulty or inadequate equipment over the past three years.

In July 2020, Davis alerted managers to an overflow of fish oil and machine grease into a pit that pumps into the river. Though it was illegal, the company pumped the wastewater into the river anyhow, her lawsuit claimed. During other overflows, wastewater and other contaminants were diverted into public ditches or allowed to leak onto the batture.

During a Zoom call with plant managers and the companys vice president of operations, Davis repeated concerns about a leaking injection well that could contaminate groundwater. When told plugging the well would be expensive, the vice president appointed a committee to find a cheaper way to take care of it and excluded Davis from the committee.

Davis said plant managers came up with a scheme to manipulate wastewater samples that are sent to an independent laboratory to ensure environmental permit requirements are met. According to Davis, the managers planned to dilute samples of wastewater, making the samples appear cleaner than they were. Davis reported the plan to a company executive, but her lawsuit doesnt say if any action was taken to halt the tampering.

She and her lawyer could not be reached for comment.

Daybrook usually ignored Davis' concerns when she reported them internally, but when she mentioned some of them to an inspector, the company fired her, she said. Last March, Davis, a vice president and plant managers toured the plant with an outside auditor. When Davis told the group the plants new storage tanks were inadequate and that a chemical storage area posed environmental hazards, she was ordered to leave. The vice president angrily told (her) that she should have kept her mouth shut, according to the lawsuit.

That same day, Davis requested medical leave for mounting anxiety. The leave was not granted. Two weeks later, she was fired.

A history of complaints

Davis wasnt the only one noticing Daybrooks pollution problems.

In 2012, the U.S. Coast Guard documented a spill of about 50,000 dead menhaden that covered two square miles of Breton Sound. According to Coast Guard records, a Daybrook fishing vessel spilled the fish while en route to the plant. The Coast Guard was again alerted in 2018 when a Daybrook wastewater pipe broke and spread a silvery sheen across a section of the Mississippi.

The Plaquemines Parish Health Department filed three complaints about Daybrook in 2019. Fishy, pungent and sometimes frothy streams of wastewater regularly flowed into public ditches and canals, parish health officials told the state Department of Environmental Quality. After the third complaint, a DEQ inspector visited the site and discovered dark, stinky water pouring from an unauthorized drain line and outfall. The plants managers told the inspector they were not previously aware of the existence of this outfall.

The DEQ permits Daybrook to discharge certain amounts of wastewater into the Mississippi, but the company has frequently exceeded these limits, according to federal and state environmental regulators.

The 2004 lawsuit by Subras group, LEAN, took aim at Daybrook over what it said were 21 instances of the plant exceeding discharge limits between 1997 and 2002. A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit after Daybrooks attorneys cited wastewater treatment improvements made within months of the lawsuit.

Davis lawsuit asks the court to grant her lost wages and benefits and anticipated wages over a period of three years.

+2 Big debate over tiny fish goes unresolved as Louisiana pogie legislation dies The effort to create a buffer between Louisiana's coastline and huge menhaden ships fell flat in the 2021 legislative session, dying last week
A St. Tammany Parish Sheriff's deputy was struck by a car Saturday on Interstate 12 when the driver, who was being pursued, swerved to miss spike strips that the deputy had put down near the Louisiana 21 exit.

The deputy, who had just thrown down the spike strip, was standing in the median when the driver swerved out of the lane, hitting him. The deputy had heavy bruising but no major injuries or broken bones, according to spokes person Sgt. Suzanne Carboni. He is recovering at home.

The chase began when a deputy patrolling Louisiana 36 near Covington around 1 p.m. saw a car without a license plate and tried to stop it. The driver, 25-year-old Kody McElveen of Abita Springs, did not stop, according to a news release. The driver continued westbound on La. 36 before turning onto U.S. 190 near Claiborne Hill. Covington Police then joined the chase, which continued onto westbound I-12.

After hitting the deputy, the driver continued west I-12, until he exited at Louisiana 1077.

Deputies found the car at a Rouse's parking lot, and witnesses told them that the driver had gone inside the store. McElveen ran when he saw the deputies but was arrested in the parking lot, where deputies discovered he was armed.

St. Tammany top stories in your inbox A weekly guide to the biggest news in St. Tammany. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up

McElveen was booked into the St. Tammany Parish Jail on counts of attempted murder of a police officer, aggravated assault with a motor vehicle on a peace officer, illegal possession of a firearm, aggravated flight from an officer, reckless operation of a motor vehicle, possession of marijuana and six counts of failure to stop or yield.

This is an example of how dangerous our deputies jobs are, St. Tammany Parish Sheriff Randy Smith said in a prepared statement. I am thankful this deputy sustained on minor injuries. It could have been much worse.

Sara Pagones covers news and features in St. Tammany and across the north shore. For more north shore news, please sign up for our weekly newsletter.
Thank goodness we dont live in Russia.

Their equivalent of our federal government is doing everything they can to make sure that their people dont know the truth. Russian President Vladimir Putin and his cronies are determined that facts wont get in the way of their intent to take over an independent nation that theyre cracking down on journalists and news outlets.

In this nation, were observing Sunshine Week this week as Russia implements a dark and shadowy No Need for You to Know policy.

Its pretty scary to hear stories about people with relatives in Russia who believe that Putin is waging a special operation in Ukraine that most of the rest of the world sees as an invasion, a war waged against Ukraine. But those are words that might land you in prison in Russia. Youre supposed to believe that much of the rest of the world is picking on Russia, threatening the country's safety and future.

Imagine NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt, ABCs David Muir or Black Star Networks Roland Martin being told to include as much content from Tucker Carlson of Fox as possible. Imagine Joe President Biden warning journalists that they could be sentenced up to 15 years for reporting anything other than what the government determines to be facts. We might not have obvious Russia-like actions here but let what we see happening there be a warning.

When asked to put these actions in context, Kathryn Foxhall, a long time advocate against media restrictions, was quick to respond. The catastrophic control on information in Russia is a warning for the United States as we see boldfaced blockages become ever more prevalent in this country, said Foxhall, the vice chair of the Society of Professional Journalists Freedom of Information Committee. We are seeing nonanswers on requests for documents and silencing of people who work in agencies and businesses. We need to worry about our own form of cynical oligarchy.

Thankfully, the United States has had cultural differences and political parties with different philosophies without people being sent to prison. We owe at least part of that to James Madison, widely viewed as the man who ensured press freedoms were included in our nations Constitution. The birthday of the primary author of the Bill of Rights and the First Amendment is March 16. What is today the News Leaders Association started Sunshine Week in 2005 to encourage discussion about open government and freedom of information each March.

Too often too many people see these issues as important to journalists. The reality? Open meetings, access to public records, the free flow of information and transparency help the publics right to know.

Louisiana has its challenges with open government, open meetings and open records. Weve had our share of elected officials investigated for and even convicted of using government to enrich themselves and others or otherwise hiding actions because they werent benefiting the public. Sometimes public officials deliberately avoid transparency.

Scott Sternberg, a media lawyer who represents The Advocate and The Times-Picayune as well as several other news outlets, told me that Louisiana might not be among the best states when it comes to openness, but it is better than many. Were easily in the top third, he said, but we can improve. Were better than Mississippi and Texas, but not better than Florida, said Sternberg, SPJ's Louisiana Sunshine chair and Freedom of Information contact.

As bad as the COVID-19 pandemic has been for us in so many ways, it helped us with government openness. Who would have thought that open meetings needed to include video conferencing? Thanks to Sternberg and others, the Louisiana Open Meetings Law was revised to include Zoom-type meetings to let the sun shine where actions would otherwise have been done without transparency. We have a great law for emergency meetings going forward, Sternberg said.

Once this weeks observance is over, the effort must continue if we want press freedoms to see that accurate information is provided, to see that government and quasi-government officials are transparent. Citizens and residents must have real opportunity to find out whats going on with taxpayer money and public policy.

Journalists do the work of ensuring that our Republic acts with the democratic principles our founders intended. If you think something looks fishy, smells bad or should change so people can be better informed, speak up. If youre on social media, post a note and use the #pressfreedom or #opengov hashtags and people who monitor these efforts will see it.
Students struggled with learning loss amid school closures and online learning during the pandemic, according to 2020-2021 testing data released by the Pennsylvania Department of Education.

Each year, Pennsylvania student grades 3 through 8 are assessed in English Language Arts and Mathematics, while every student in grades 4 and 8 is assessed in science.

This chart notes the drop in the percentage of students statewide scoring proficient or advanced in three subjects:

2019 2021 English learning arts and literature 60.9% 55% Mathematics and algebra 42.4% 37.3% Science and biology 68% 63.7%

Participation in assessment exams in 2021 dropped from the typical 97% to only 71%. Department of Education officials say the data is somewhat skewed because more students were out of school for quarantine or other reasons. Students were not tested in 2020 due to the pandemic.

Historically, standardized assessment results have been an important part of understanding school performance and our work to close achievement and opportunity gaps, Sherri Smith, PDE deputy secretary for elementary and secondary education, said in a release last week.

But this years results are anything but standard, Smith said. 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. As Pennsylvania reports this federally required data, it urges caution in interpreting results given the unique learning conditions over the past few years.

The results of the Pennsylvania System of School Assessments, Keystone Exams, and the Pennsylvania Alternate System of Assessments were made available nearly three months after the PDE typically releases the data.

The state canceled assessment tests for the 2019-2020 school year.

Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup. Error! There was an error processing your request. Get Our Free Newsletters Never miss a headline with NorthcentralPa.com newsletters. Sign Up Today! Morning Headlines: Would you like to receive our daily morning newsletter? Afternoon Update: What's happening today? Here's your update! Daily Obits: Get a daily list straight to your email inbox.
Deputies attend the opening meeting of the fifth session of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 5, 2022. (Xinhua/Liu Weibing)

BEIJING, March 14 (Xinhua) -- Foreign experts and observers have spoken highly of Chinese President Xi Jinping's insights regarding the endeavors of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the Chinese people in the new era, saying they help decode China's success and chart the course toward high-quality development.

CPC LEADERSHIP KEY TO DEVELOPMENT

When participating in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region delegation's deliberation at the Fifth Session of the 13th National People's Congress on March 5, Xi, also general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, said "upholding the overall Party leadership is the path we must take to stick to and develop socialism with Chinese characteristics."

"Exercising full and rigorous self-governance of the Party is the path we must take to maintain the Party's vigor and vitality and ensure its success on the new journey," he added.

Nourhan al-Sheikh, a professor of political sciences with Cairo University, said that from the eradication of absolute poverty to the successful hosting of the Beijing Winter Olympics, China's unprecedented achievements cannot be separated from the strong leadership of the CPC.

Under the CPC's leadership, China has fulfilled the goals of economic and social development, embarking on "a path that suits its own national conditions, which has brought important inspiration to the world, especially developing countries," she added.

Khalid Rahman, director general of the Institute of Policy Studies, an Islamabad-based think tank, said that under the CPC's leadership, China has become the second largest economy in the world and its development has brought about broad benefits.

Farmers work in the fields in Weining, southwest China's Guizhou Province, March 8, 2022. (Xinhua/Yang Wenbin)

Notably, China's success in eliminating extreme poverty can be regarded as a miracle, the scholar said.

Kingphet Mongkhonvilay, deputy director of the general office of the Lao People's Revolutionary Party Central Committee, said that through full and strict self-governance and anti-corruption fight, the CPC wins support from the Chinese people.

The CPC has also strengthened its long-term governance capacity, and ensured that the power entrusted by the people is always used for their well-being, the official said.

Volker Tschapke, honorary president of Germany's Prussian Society, told Xinhua that for China, "there will be only one way into a successful, prosperous, and peaceful future, which is the overall CPC leadership, with the very special Chinese way of the very special Chinese socialism."

A staff member operates a drone in a field of the Datian rural cooperative in Jiangxiang Town, Nanchang County of east China's Jiangxi Province, March 8, 2022. (Xinhua/Peng Zhaozhi)

ROAD TO BETTER LIFE

"Socialism with Chinese characteristics is the path we must take to realize the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation," Xi said, adding that "working hard in unity is the path the Chinese people must take to make historic achievements."

Anna Malindog-Uy, a professor and researcher with Manila-based think tank Philippines-BRICS Strategic Studies, said "Socialism with Chinese characteristics is the solid guarantee to meet Chinese people's desire for a happy life and the goal of 'common prosperity'."

The scholar said that the country's efforts for rural vitalization and agricultural modernization will improve people's life in rural areas.

In the view of Cavince Adhere, a Kenya-based scholar of international relations, China has made various commitments during the "two sessions" with an aim to promote domestic development and contribute to the well-being of people across the world.

The unity of the nation and the Chinese people's ability to pull in the same direction are critical to fulfilling the commitments, Adhere said.

Aerial photo taken on Nov. 3, 2021 shows a wind power field in Luduo Township of Baoying County of Yangzhou, east China's Jiangsu Province. (Xinhua/Li Bo)

MORE OPPORTUNITIES FOR WORLD

Expounding on his vision of development, Xi said "putting into practice our new development philosophy is the path we must take to develop our country into a strong nation in the new era."

Eduardo Regalado, a senior researcher at the Cuban Center for Studies on International Politics, said that China is pursuing higher-standard opening-up and promoting the high-quality cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative, sharing development opportunities with other countries.

The new development philosophy, which is being blended into various aspects of China's economic and social development, is of great significance for the world, the researcher added.

With its development philosophy, China is expected to make new contributions to the world, for example in ecological protection, said Hamed Vafaei, director of the Center for Asian Studies at the University of Tehran.

Sheriff Ghali, a professor of political science at Nigeria's University of Abuja, said that by fostering a new pattern of development and promoting high-quality growth, the Chinese economy will become more dynamic and bring more opportunities to the world. 
Selinsgrove, Pa.  A Selinsgrove man was charged with 20 felony counts that ranged from statutory sexual assault to aggravated incident assault after an accuser came forward on Feb. 7, 2022.

Robert Cameron Swaggerty, 44, is accused of assaulting a juvenile at his residence between Jan. 1, 2019 and Feb. 7, 2022. According to the report, the juvenile was between the ages of 11 and 12 years old during the time of the alleged assault.

According to the affidavit, Swaggerty performed oral sex or would digitally penetrate the juvenile while she was at his residence near the 200 block of Broad Street in Selinsgrove. Authorities said Swaggerty also made the juvenile perform oral sex on him.

Investigators spoke with the juvenile on Feb. 11, 2022 at the Selinsgrove Borough Police Station. According to the report, the accuser said she would go to Swaggertys residence after school until her father would come home from work.

Swaggerty allegedly assaulted the child on a couch and in his bedroom while they were isolated from other members at the residence. The accuser said Swaggerty assaulted her between five to ten times.

Juvenile female victim stated she did not say no because she was scared of what the defendant would do, wrote Selinsgrove Borough Police Officer Francis Petrovich.

Swaggerty was charged with two first-degree felonies that included statutory sexual assault and aggravated indecent assault of a child. Court records show Swaggerty was also charged with third-degree indecent assault and corruption of minors. Each of four felonies were given five counts due to the number of alleged incidents between Swaggerty and the juvenile.

Swaggerty posted $50,000 monetary bail on March 4 after a preliminary arraignment with Judge John Reed. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for March 14.

Docket sheet

Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup. Error! There was an error processing your request. Get Our Free Newsletters Never miss a headline with NorthcentralPa.com newsletters. Sign Up Today! Morning Headlines: Would you like to receive our daily morning newsletter? Afternoon Update: What's happening today? Here's your update! Daily Obits: Get a daily list straight to your email inbox.
Cumberland County, Pa. -- A 73-vehicle crash over the weekend on PA 581 East in Cumberland Co. halted travel for approximately 4 hours, according to Pennsylvania State Police.

Pictures from the scene posted to social media showed snowy roads. One traveler wrote, "I was stuck right behind where the emergency vehicles were blocking the road. After sitting for nearly 2 hours, they had us make u-turns and drive the wrong way down the shoulder and get off at 15 in Camp Hill."

The multi-car crash on March 12 occured around 2 p.m. in the eastbound lane of 581 near mile marker 7.1.

Ten people sustained injuries ranging from minor to moderate and were transported to area hospitals for evaluation and treatment, according to PSP. Of the 73 vehicles, 41 were damaged in the crash.

Officers with Troop H out of Harrisburg were assisted by PennDOT and multiple EMS and tow agencies to clear the roadway.

Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup. Error! There was an error processing your request. Get Our Free Newsletters Never miss a headline with NorthcentralPa.com newsletters. Sign Up Today! Morning Headlines: Would you like to receive our daily morning newsletter? Afternoon Update: What's happening today? Here's your update! Daily Obits: Get a daily list straight to your email inbox.
Trigger warning Details in this story may be triggering to some readers.

Williamsport, Pa.  Nine years after a young South Williamsport girl took her own life, a man who was held responsible was sentenced to 22 years and three months in prison on child pornography charges.

Marc Punzalan, 27, formerly of Maryland, pleaded guilty in federal court to the charges alleging he sexually exploited a child. Last week, he was sentenced by Chief U.S. District Court Judge Matthew W. Brann, who called Punzalans conduct sickening.

The sentence will run concurrently with a 15-year-term imposed in 2015 in Maryland for the same charge involving four other young girls. Brann noted in court that Punzalan, who most likely will be deported to his native Philippines following his prison term, is a sexual predator. Punzalan will serve a total of 30 years in prison and must register as a sex offender.

Over the course of two days in June 2013, Punzalan used an internet messenger service to communicate with the victim, a 13-year-old girl in South Williamsport. During the course of chat sessions over several days, Punzalan asked the victim to send sexually explicit photos of herself masturbating and penetrating herself with a hairbrush, according to court documents.

The victim had sent Punzalan such photos on a prior occasion, and he used this fact to extort her by threatening to tell her parents. Punzalan sent the victim hundreds of messages over the course of June 11 and 12.

The victim repeatedly asked Punzalan to stop, but he continued to harass her. After an overnight period where the harassment stopped, Punzalan resumed sending messages the following morning and soon afterward the victim stopped responding.

Following is the message conversation, as recorded in court records. The conversation was obtained from the victim's electronic device:

The victim: Whatever. Instead of killing myself. Im just gunna face the consequences and tell my parents about me.

Punzalan: then Ill tell them something else too.

The victim: What?

Punzalan: lets do it now (referring to a previous request for the victim to get nude and perform for him on camera)

The victim: Wownow I do wanna kill myself. Thanks.

Punzalan: do you seriously wanna do this right now?

The victim: Whatever, Im done.

The victim: (sends a picture of herself with a rope around her neck)

Punzalan: Do it now A-----. Dont make me call the cops on you.

The victim: Goodbye.

Punzalan: Im seriously gonna call the cops now

The victim: Whatever. Bye

Punzalan: ok where you live A----- and when cops call your parents youll be in much trouble.

The victim: Like I care.

After this exchange, the text messaging stopped and the victim was found dead in her room later that morning, according to court documents.

In court on Thursday, several dozen family members and friends of the victim attended and spoke in support of the victim, according to a release. Punzalan, who already is incarcerated in federal prison in New Jersey, appeared by video. Judge Brann said Punzalans predatory behavior caused irreparable harm, according to the release.

Punzalan had previously pleaded guilty in Maryland to a case that involved four girls between 2012 and 2014. The girls ranged in age from 12 to 16.

Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup. Error! There was an error processing your request. Get Our Free Newsletters Never miss a headline with NorthcentralPa.com newsletters. Sign Up Today! Morning Headlines: Would you like to receive our daily morning newsletter? Afternoon Update: What's happening today? Here's your update! Daily Obits: Get a daily list straight to your email inbox.
Troy, Pa.  State Police in Towanda accused a Canton man of following two people home from a Dollar General and assaulting them outside a home near the 15000 block of Route 14 in Troy.

Scott Michael Payne, 33, allegedly followed the pair home on Christmas Eve and struck one in the face. Witnesses said Payne then struck the side of the trailer as he left the area.

State Police noted one of the victims had visible injuries and the siding on the trailer appeared damaged.

Payne was charged with second-degree misdemeanor simple assault, criminal mischief, and third-degree defiant trespassing. No bail was listed for Payne, who is scheduled to meet Judge Jonathan Wilcox on April 13 for a preliminary hearing.

Docket sheet

Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup. Error! There was an error processing your request. Get Our Free Newsletters Never miss a headline with NorthcentralPa.com newsletters. Sign Up Today! Morning Headlines: Would you like to receive our daily morning newsletter? Afternoon Update: What's happening today? Here's your update! Daily Obits: Get a daily list straight to your email inbox.
Beech Creek -- Christy Lynn Taylor, 61, of Beech Creek passed away at her home on Tuesday, March 8, 2022.

She was born in Lock Haven on December 11, 1960 to the late Robert S. and Patricia Poorman Taylor.

Christy was a 1979 graduate of the Lock Haven High School and had been employed at Lock Haven University in the Bentley Hall for 20 years. She also worked part-time in the deli department at Weis Market. Christy enjoyed kayaking, Pittsburgh Steelers, Pittsburgh Pirates and Penn State. She also loved all of her pets, including one she took under her wing at work.

Survivors include her brother Mike L. (Renee) Taylor, two nephews Michael (Kelly) Raudabaugh of Lock Haven, Joshua Taylor of Jersey Shore and great nephew Conner and great niece Makenna. Special people include uncle and aunt, Jim and Donna Moore of Beech Creek, cousins, Ashley (Tony) Hudgins of Philadelphia, Staci (Jim) Kelly of Beech Creek, and Bradley (Kasey) Moore of Beech Creek.

A graveside memorial service for Christy Lynn Taylor will be held Wednesday, March 16, 2022, at 10 a.m. in the Rest Haven Memorial Park, Lock Haven. Officiating will be Pastor Susan Champion of the Bald Eagle United Presbyterian Church, Mill Hall.

In lieu of flowers; memorials can be made in Christy's name to the Clinton County SPCA, 33 Mill Hill Road, Lock Haven, PA 17745.

Services are under the direction of the Yost-Gedon Funeral Home & Cremation Services, LLC, 121 W. Main St., Lock Haven. Online thoughts and memories can be made at www.yost-gedonfuneralhome.com or the Yost-Gedon Funeral Home Facebook page.

Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup. Error! There was an error processing your request. Get Our Free Newsletters Never miss a headline with NorthcentralPa.com newsletters. Sign Up Today! Morning Headlines: Would you like to receive our daily morning newsletter? Afternoon Update: What's happening today? Here's your update! Daily Obits: Get a daily list straight to your email inbox.
TEHRAN, March 14 (Xinhua) -- The Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Monday that Iran is waiting for a U.S. response before returning to Vienna and reaching a good and lasting agreement, official news agency IRNA reported.

The pause in the Vienna talks on the revival of a 2015 nuclear deal does not mean a dead end in the diplomatic process, Saeed Khatibzadeh told a weekly press conference, noting the concerned foreign ministers and top negotiators are in constant contact with each other.

"A few general but limited issues are still remaining, on which the decisions are required to be made in Washington," said Khatibzadeh.

He announced that Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian is set to visit Moscow on Tuesday over the Vienna talks and crisis in Ukraine.

The Vienna talks are aimed at achieving a verifiable and committed U.S. return to 2015 Iranian nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), according to the Iranian spokesman.

Accusing the Biden administration of inaction and hesitation, Khatibzadeh said the current U.S. president has chosen to retain his predecessor Donald Trump's failed legacy as his administration's approach.

"We are at a point where everybody must help to, through a collective decision and consensus, reach a good agreement," he noted.

Iran signed the JCPOA with the world powers in July 2015. However, former U.S. President Donald Trump pulled Washington out of the agreement in May 2018 and reimposed unilateral sanctions on Tehran.

Since April 2021, eight rounds of talks have been held in Vienna between Iran and the remaining parties to the JCPOA, namely Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany, with the United States indirectly involved, in a bid to revive the deal.

A pause in the Vienna talks was first announced on Friday in a tweet by Josep Borrell, the European Union's foreign policy chief, who said a pause is needed in the talks for what he called "external factors." 
Christian and Sarah Downs, of Front Royal, hold their son, Rory, who was born on New Years Eve.
Northwest Indiana residents will have the opportunity next week to tell state leaders how they believe public health services should be provided in the future.

The 15-member Governor's Public Health Commission is touring the Hoosier State seeking public input on the strengths and weaknesses of Indiana's current public health system, along with recommendations for change.

The commission's sole Northwest Indiana stop is set for 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. March 25 at Calumet College of St. Joseph, 2400 New York Ave., Whiting.

The panel, led by former State Health Commissioner Dr. Judy Monroe and former state Sen. Luke Kenley, R-Noblesville, is particularly interested in opinions relating to public health funding, workforce, emergency preparedness, governance and structure, data and information, and the integration of childhood and adolescent health services.

Region residents attending the Whiting meeting can speak about any of those topics to the commission for up to three minutes.

Public comment also may be submitted online through the survey link on the commission's website: in.gov/gphc.

Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb established the commission last summer to take a focused look at whether the public health systems Indiana has relied on for the past 140 years need updating to position the state for success over the next 100 years.

"This review, coupled with our ongoing commitment to improve key health indicators, will best position Indiana to be a great state to live, work, play and invest in and grow a healthy workforce," Holcomb said.

Dr. Kristina Box, the state health commissioner, said the COVID-19 pandemic only exacerbated the need the modernize Indianas public health system.

She said the commission is leading that effort by taking a deep look at major issues relating to public health in Indiana and making recommendations for action by the 2023 General Assembly.

"Indianas public health workforce is made up of some of the most dedicated people you will ever encounter. They truly care about their communities and have worked tirelessly to protect Hoosiers," Box said.

"They deserve our heartfelt thanks, and they deserve our help. Determining what that help should look like is the goal of this commission."

Concerned about COVID-19? Sign up now to get the most recent coronavirus headlines and other important local and national news sent to your email inbox daily. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
One can marvel at the House of Tomorrow from the 1933 Chicago World's Fair on a cliff in Beverly Shores overlooking Lake Michigan.

Designed by architect George Fred Keck, the experimental three-story home features glass walls, solar heating, a distinctive dodecagon design and an airplane hangar  an idea that never caught on more widely.

Keck's futuristic home takes center stage at the new "Houses of Tomorrow: Solar Homes from Keck to Today" at the Elmhurst Art Museum.

Indiana Landmarks and the Indiana Dunes National Park assisted with the curation of the exhibit at the museum at 150 S. Cottage Hill Ave. It showcases the first glass house in America, which also was among the first to feature central air conditioning, a push-button garage door opener and a General Electric dishwasher.

"George Fred Keck designed the first glass house in America for the 1933 Worlds Fair in Chicago with visionary modern designs, including new domestic amenities. His groundbreaking House of Tomorrow predated steel and glass structures driven into popularity by modernists such as Mies van der Rohe by more than 15 years," the Elmhust Art Museum said in a news release. "Furthering efficiency issues from the House of Tomorrow, Keck and his brother William built hundreds of innovative mid-century homes throughout the Midwest as the first 'solar architects.' Their development of passive solar energy and other modern construction methods now stand as early precursors to todays sustainable building practiceswhich are more relevant than ever before."

It was one of several innovative, forward-looking houses to be featured at the World's Fair, along with the Florida Tropical, Rostone, Armco-Ferro and Cypress houses now on display at the Indiana Dunes National Park in Beverly Shores.

Looking to transform Beverly Shores into a resort community, the developer Robert Bartlett ferried the World's Fair homes across Lake Michigan to the lakefront town in Porter County.

The landmark House of Tomorrow, which is opened to public tours once a year every fall, is just the starting off point for the exhibit in Elmhurst, which goes on to explore the history of solar homes in America, including the solar panels President Jimmy Carter installed on the White House roof. It features an accompanying exhibit by artist Jan Tichy on glass and light, as well as designs, schematics, promotional materials, photos and other archival materials from the House of Tomorrow.

There's also an architect's design for a more modern version of the landmark home.

"The all-glass House of Tomorrow showed millions of attendees at the 1933 Worlds Fair, 'A Century of Progress,' a new, technology-driven vision of what domestic life could be in the future," the Elmhurst Art Museum said in its news release. "The house featured many new ideas, from the first GE dishwasher to a personal airplane hangar; however, it was through this house that the Kecks found a new way to harness solar energy, leading them to make energy efficiency breakthroughs throughout their career."

The exhibit runs through May 29.

Tickets are $15 for adults and $12 for seniors.

For more information, visit elmhurstartmuseum.org.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0

Stay up-to-date on what's happening Receive the latest in local entertainment news in your inbox weekly! Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
VALPARAISO  A 21-year-old woman pleaded guilty to her role in one of two armed robberies that took place more than five years ago at the former Simply Mac store in Valparaiso.

Precious Walker, of Chicago, pleaded guilty before Porter Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Clymer to a reduced felony count of robbery, and prosecutors agreed to drop a second felony count of confinement, the proposed agreement says.

The proposed plea agreement calls for Walker to serve six years behind bars with credit for time already served, and she may be eligible to take part in a recovery program and later petition the court for a modification.

Clymer took the proposal under consideration until April 22.

Valparaiso police said at the time that the local Simply Mac store was robbed Dec. 10, 2016, and then again in a similar manner on Dec. 17, 2016.

During the Dec. 17 robbery, for which Walker was charged, a group of four men and a woman took a gun from a security guard and restrained all the employees in a backroom, police had said.

Police said at least one of the men was armed.

Numerous items, valued at $70,000 were taken from the store, police said.

During the Dec. 10 robbery, two masked men who were armed took several items, including a large number of iPhones. Police said about $50,000 worth of merchandise was taken during the first robbery.

No one was hurt during either robbery.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0

Sign up for our Crime & Courts newsletter Get the latest in local public safety news with this weekly email. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
CROWN POINT  A second man has been arrested in connection with the ambush and shooting death of a woman last summer after she argued with him and his co-defendant inside a gas station, police said.

Daniel L. Malone Jr., 19, of Lafayette, had been wanted since mid-June on charges linked to the homicide of 31-year-old Ivana Jenkins, of Gary, on June 14 outside a gas station in the 2700 block of West Fifth Avenue.

Malone's co-defendant, Terry L. Thomas, 23, of Gary, has been in custody since July on charges of murder and battery by means of a deadly weapon.

Both men have pleaded not guilty. A magistrate granted Malone's request Friday for a public defender to represent him, Lake Criminal Court records show.

Police identified Thomas and Malone as suspects in Jenkins' homicide after finding a round pendant with wings at the crime scene that contained a photograph of 21-year-old Phillip Phillips, who was shot to death along with Trevion Hudnell on May 18, 2020, in Gary.

Surveillance video showed Jenkins likely pulled the pendant off Thomas' neck while trying to defend herself after the men ambushed her outside the gas station, court records state.

A detective recognized Thomas and Malone in a surveillance video and confirmed they were associates of Devonte T. Phillips, 20, who is Phillip Phillips' brother, court records state.

Devonte Phillips has pleaded not guilty to murder and two counts of attempted murder in a shooting July 5, 2020, in Gary that resulted in the death of 16-year-old Christopher Watson.

Watson's older brother was initially charged in the shooting death of Phillip Phillips, but Lake County prosecutors dropped the charges due to insufficient evidence.

The day Jenkins was killed, she was talking to a gas station employee when Thomas, who was wearing a red jersey and carrying a black handgun with an extended magazine, and Malone, who was wearing a blue shirt and was carrying an AR-15-type rifle that was missing its stock, walked into the business, records state.

Malone approached the counter and tried to cut in front of Jenkins, who argued with him, records state. A witness told police Jenkins told the men she wasn't afraid of them or their guns.

As Jenkins left the store, Malone approached her and slapped her in the face with his right hand, records state.

Jenkins began fighting back, Malone slapped her a second time and she hit him with enough force to cause him to retreat backward off balance, according to court documents.

Thomas then ran at Jenkins and pistol-whipped her in the head as she turned to fight him. Jenkins began throwing punches, which is likely when she pulled the pendant off Thomas' neck, court records state.

Thomas raised his arm, and Jenkins appeared to fall sideways onto the ground. Others in the parking lot took off running, likely at the sound of gunfire, according to documents.

Thomas allegedly fled in a black Volkswagen with a driver who was not identified in court records. Malone ran east on Fifth Avenue before police arrived, records state.

Jenkins was taken by ambulance to Methodist Hospitals Northlake Campus, where she was pronounced dead.

Malone's formal appearance before Judge Gina Jones was scheduled for Thursday.

Love 2 Funny 1 Wow 2 Sad 7 Angry 13

Sign up for our Crime & Courts newsletter Get the latest in local public safety news with this weekly email. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
WINFIELD  A Hammond man permanently blinded his cousin earlier this month by kicking the cousin in the head 24 times during a fight outside the cousin's residence at Doubletree Lake Estates, court records allege.

Kevin J. Smith, 39, also is accused of stealing a Ruger 9mm semi-automatic handgun his cousin used to pistol-whip him during the fight about 3:15 a.m. March 6 in the 10000 block of Doubletree Drive North.

Smith was arrested Thursday after police executed a search warrant at his home in the 6700 block of Northcote Avenue in Hammond, Lake Criminal Court records show.

He posted at $10,000 cash bond early Sunday and was released from the Lake County Jail, Sheriff Martinez Jr. said.

Smith has not yet entered pleas to felony counts of attempted murder, aggravated battery, battery resulting in serious bodily injury and theft of a firearm.

Winfield police obtained the warrant for Smith's home to search for the victim's handgun and other evidence related to the beating March 7, according to court records.

Smith told police after his arrest Thursday he threw the gun in the lake across from his cousin's house, documents state.

A dive team from the Lake County Sheriff's Department recovered a weapon from a lake at Doubletree Lake Estates during a search Sunday morning, Martinez said.

In a email to residents, a property manager for the gated community said police were searching for evidence related to an incident at a private residence.

According to court records, Smith and his cousin were drinking alcohol together at the cousin's Winfield home March 7 when they got into an argument and the cousin began attempting to persuade Smith to leave.

Ring video footage showed the two men standing in the driveway of the cousin's home after they made their way outside, records state.

Smith began aggressively advancing toward his cousin, who put his hands out to maintain distance between them. When Smith again advanced toward the cousin, the cousin pulled his handgun from his right pants pocket and struck Smith with it, records state.

Smith advanced again and the cousin again tried to strike Smith with the gun, but the cousin missed, tripped and fell, and hit his head on the ground, records state.

Smith kicked his cousin in the head six times, took his gun and kicked him in the head 10 more times, records allege.

Smith walked east down the driveway, but returned and kicked his cousin eight more times before leaving in a silver 2016 Dodge Journey, documents state.

The cousin lay in the driveway for about eight minutes before a family member came out and found him. He was taken to a local hospital and later transferred to a Chicago hospital for further treatment, court records state.

A medical professional told Winfield police the cousin suffered catastrophic injuries that will result in permanent blindness and disfigurement in his left eye and possible blindness in his right eye. He suffered facial fractures and will have to undergo several surgeries, records state.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 1

Sign up for our Crime & Courts newsletter Get the latest in local public safety news with this weekly email. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
CROWN POINT  A woman checked into a Schererville hotel last week, bought a filet knife at a nearby Walmart and returned to the hotel to stab a housekeeping employee, court records allege.

Jill Ann Simmons, 40, of Crete, was found by police in the bathroom of a hotel room Wednesday with blood stains all over her shirt, according to Lake Criminal Court documents.

Simmons had not yet entered pleas to felony counts attempted murder, battery resulting in serious bodily injury and battery by means of a deadly weapon and a misdemeanor count of resisting law enforcement.

When a Schererville police officer found Simmons in a bathroom at the Staybridge Suites in the 1700 block of Fountain Park Drive, she said she entered the wrong room and was attacked by three people, records state.

Two housekeeping employees told police they were cleaning a second-floor room when Simmons walked into the room with a knife and attacked one of them.

The employee who was stabbed told investigators Simmons appeared in a doorway and said, "I need to tell you something."

Simmons pulled out a knife, held it over her head in a threatening manner and said, "Help me," before moving toward the employee, according to court records.

The employee grabbed the knife and told Simmons to stop, and the two tussled until the employee pushed Simmons onto a couch and wrapped her legs around Simmons. The employee told police she got control of the knife, ran out of the room and threw it in a garbage can.

The second housekeeping employee began hitting Simmons with a broom handle, and the wounded employee returned and struck Simmons with a vacuum cord until Simmons retreated into the bathroom, records state.

The employee suffered cuts to her left hand, right forearm, right ear, left thigh and head. She received a total of 24 stitches for the wounds and three staples in her head, according to documents.

Police learned Simmons had reserved a third-floor room, where they found prescription bottles containing levothyroxine, which is used to treat thyroid disorders; alprazolam, an anti-anxiety medication; escitalopram, which is prescribed to treat depression and anxiety; and phentermine, a weight-loss medication.

Detectives also obtained records showing Simmons purchased a filet knife at the Schererville Walmart about two hours before the stabbing, records state.

After Simmons was checked at a local hospital, she became irate and fought with police as they attempted to handcuff her, documents allege.

Love 0 Funny 1 Wow 0 Sad 1 Angry 0

Sign up for our Crime & Courts newsletter Get the latest in local public safety news with this weekly email. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
CHICAGO  Officials recovered a body Sunday from water near Lake Michigan and the Calumet River, just west of the Illinois-Indiana state line, officials said.

The Chicago Fire Department recovered the body from water near 90th Street, the agency tweeted.

The Cook County medical examiner's office responded to the 9100 block of South Lakeshore Drive and pronounced the person dead about 4:15 p.m., records showed.

Officials did not release the person's identity, which was pending further investigation.

However, authorities had not yet found the remains of an Indianapolis man who fell through shelf ice into Lake Michigan on Feb. 21 at West Beach at Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore.

Bryce Dunfee, 22, was visiting the dunes with four friends when he fell into the frigid waters, Indiana Department of Natural Resources conservation police said.

Emergency crews searched for Dunfee the night of Feb. 21 and morning of Feb. 22, but their efforts were hampered by deteriorating weather conditions and melting shelf ice.

Love 0 Funny 1 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0

Be the first to know Get local news delivered to your inbox! Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
PORTAGE  The City Council will meet Wednesday to gather residents advice on how to spend about $8 million in American Rescue Plan Act funding.

The meeting is at 6:30 p.m. at Woodland Park.

The difficulty facing the council isnt deciding what to spend the money on: Its paring a long list of needs.

What are our real needs, now that we can use these funds in a real broad way? asked Council President Collin Czilli, D-5th. Theres some real critical needs that we need to appropriate some money for.

Its only $8 million, and its only here until 2024, and if we dont spend it weve got to give it back, he said.

The city has already spent $364,127.33 of the $8.32 million, including for bonuses for employees. The council had appropriated $1.5 million, addressing cybersecurity and other needs, but much of that amount wasnt spent.

Mayor Sue Lynch said the city needs to look to the future. We need to stop living just day-to-day as we have been doing.

I want as many plows as you can give the street department, Streets and Sanitation Superintendent Randy Reeder said. He asked the council for just one plow, with a quote for $245,388.

The way this goes is the specifications we got on this plow is going through the assembly line and is the only one available this year, he said. If the city were to order more, they might not even arrive until 2024.

The fire department needs two engines, Lynch said.

Assistant Fire Chief Kevin DeYoung said the citys fire apparatus is aging. One engine has 112,000 miles on it, and another has 93,000. The tower truck, used for industrial fires and for when firefighters have to cut a hole in a roof, is about 25 years old.

Its not just about the odometer reading.

We run them hard; we start them at a cold start, and then we go on an emergency run. Its not ideal, but obviously its not a choice. We cant allow them to warm up and then go on that emergency, DeYoung said.

The fire department has had to borrow firetrucks from neighboring jurisdictions. Its definitely not an ideal situation, DeYoung said, because firefighters train on their own apparatus, not borrowed vehicles.

A new firetruck will cost the city about $1 million, money the city wouldnt have if not for the ARPA money.

A couple of times weve had to go out to junkyards to find parts. Weve had to have parts adapted and fabricated in order to get our engine back up and running, DeYoung said. Its a dire need.

Police Chief Michael Candiano listed three big needs for his department: body cams, training and equipment, and cars.

I believe we are the only department in the county that doesnt have (body cams) right now. We are the largest department; we are the busiest department, he said.

Continuing education money isnt flowing in the way it used to, either. It costs about $4,000 to $5,000 to outfit an officer, and the department has had to use money from the training fund to purchase equipment.

The department also needs about 15 new cars a year.

Were getting four or five years out of these squad cars, and then they become a money pit, Candiano said. In the past year the city has leased 15 new vehicles so that they will be replaced when the lease is up. But the city wasnt keeping pace in previous years. In 2020, the city bought 12 squad cars, Clerk-Treasurer Nina Rivas said. The year before, only six were purchased, Budget Committee Chair Deb Podgorski, D-at large, said.

That is just a start in listing the citys needs.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0

Be the first to know Get local news delivered to your inbox! Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
As part of a weekly series on changes in the workplace for women, were profiling those who stepped up at a moment of crisis and filled gaps in the labor market during the pandemic.

On a quiet, frigid Sunday afternoon, Sarah Bowers, a 25-year-old social worker well into the third trimester of her first pregnancy, told the three women gathered in her tidy home in south New Jersey that she was dreading having to give birth at the hospital.

The hospital where she was scheduled was triggering for her, she said. She had spent six years in and out of that same institution as the primary caretaker for her mother, who was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2012 and died in 2018.

OK, so the hospital is already not giving you good energy, said Niulquie McKinney, a doula and midwife who is fondly known in her community as Nili and whose serene and measured demeanor makes her seem far older than her age of 34. She and her team  Evana Cooper, a doula, and Asma Shakour, a doula-in-training  were helping Ms. Bowers draw up a birth plan that would help keep her calm. They demonstrated breathing exercises and discussed whether to bring candles to the delivery room.
Heard in Boston on March 4, Chins concerto is striking in the intensity of its demands on Kavakos and the novel breadth of the palette it invites the orchestra to play with, both of which are typical traits of her works. Also impressive is the sense of narrative it creates over half an hour as it builds out a motif of just five notes: a flourish of three harmonics that settles down to two more tones.

Its entirely different from Chins earlier violin concerto, but equally powerful, and another worthy addition to the growing list of contemporary contributions to its genre.

Speaking by phone from Berlin, Chin spoke about the inspiration behind the work, and particularly about its opening page. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.

Since your first violin concerto, you have written several concertos for other instruments. Has your thinking about the concerto as a genre changed at all, in these intervening two decades?
Foxconn, the Taiwanese electronics firm that assembles Apples iPhones, said Monday that its factories in Shenzhen, China, would suspend operations after the city imposed a seven-day coronavirus lockdown.

Shenzhen borders Hong Kong, which has reported nearly 3,780 Covid-19 deaths and nearly 700,000 new cases since late January. While infections in the rest of China remain low compared with the rest of the world, the number of reported cases is growing rapidly. Chinas National Health Commission reported 3,122 new cases on Sunday, about double the amount on Saturday and three times that on Friday.

Shenzhen, an electronics manufacturing hub with a population of 17 million, reported 66 new cases on Sunday. It will be shutting down most businesses and public transportation in the city and is requiring nonessential workers to stay home.

In a statement, Foxconn said that it had adjusted the production line to other plants in China to minimize any impact and would be requiring all employees to take P.C.R. tests.
Oil prices slid at the start of trading on Monday morning, a respite from the volatility of recent weeks as Russias assault on Ukraine grinds on.

Brent crude, the international benchmark, was trading at about $107 a barrel, down roughly 5 percent. In December, it cost about $65 a barrel, before Russias president, Vladimir V. Putin, began what President Biden called a vicious war of choice in Ukraine. West Texas Intermediate, the American benchmark, was trading around $103, down almost 6 percent.

Oil prices, which surged last week as the markets braced for American sanctions, are showing signs of leveling out. On Tuesday, President Biden shut off the spigot of Russian oil into the United States as punishment for the war in Ukraine. He also banned the import of Russian natural gas and coal.

Mr. Biden had initially resisted calls for such aggressive sanctions on Russian oil, concerned that they would push fuel prices higher  a potentially polarizing issue in an election year. But as Russia escalated its attacks on Ukraine, he announced sweeping sanctions, which he warned would inevitably bring more pain at the pump for Americans.
Bakalova is from Burgas, the fourth-largest city in Bulgaria, which sits less than 750 miles from Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine. Earlier on Sunday, Russia launched airstrikes against a military base in western Ukraine, bringing the war 11 miles from the border with Poland.

Billy Crystal, the recipient of a lifetime achievement award, also brought up his roots in the region, explaining that his grandmothers were from Odessa and Kyiv and fled to the United States to escape pogroms. When he was growing up in Long Island, their laughter  the first laughs I ever got in my life  is the fuel that my engine is still burning today, he said, and added, I pray that somehow, some way, there can be laughter and joy in that part of the world once again.

The Ted Lasso star Hannah Waddingham, accepting best comedy series on behalf of the cast, spoke of the babies in the Ukraine that are being utterly decimated at the moment from this putrid, putrid torrent of abuse. Please, think of them as much as you can, and give as much as you can.

Before presenting the biggest award of the night, best picture, the Los Angeles Rams head coach Sean McVay handed the mic to his fiancee, a Realtor, Veronika Khomyn, who is from Ukraine. I proudly stand with my fellow Ukrainians and I admire their strength, she told the crowd. They have faced unimaginable adversity with such profound grace and bravery. Their fight and the way they have united the world is truly inspiring. There is no place in our world for this kind of violence, and our prayers go out to all the lives that have been lost.

There were also a handful of performers  including Jeremy Strong of Succession and the White Lotus actor Murray Bartlett  bearing blue-and-yellow pins, mirroring the national colors of Ukraine.
WASHINGTON  The United States accurately predicted the start of the war in Ukraine, sounding the alarm that an invasion was imminent despite Moscows denials and Europes skepticism. Predicting how it might end is proving far more difficult.

There are three separate back-channel efforts underway to start negotiations  by the leaders of France; Israel and Turkey; and, in a recent entree, the new chancellor of Germany. But so far, all have hit the stone wall of President Vladimir V. Putins refusal to engage in any serious negotiation. At the Pentagon, there are models of a slogging conflict that brings more needless death and destruction to a nascent European democracy, and others in which Mr. Putin settles for what some believe was his original objective: seizing a broad swath of the south and east, connecting Russia by land to Crimea, which he annexed in 2014.

And there is a more terrifying endgame, in which NATO nations get sucked more directly into the conflict, by accident or design. That possibility became more vivid on Sunday, when Russian missiles landed in Ukraines western reaches, an area unscathed until now by the 18-day-old conflict, about a dozen miles from the Polish border. Russia declared over the weekend that continued efforts to funnel weapons through that region to the Ukrainian forces would make the convoys legitimate targets, a warning that just because the weapons are being massed on NATO territory does not mean they are immune from attack.

In interviews with senior American and European officials in recent days, there is a consensus on one point: Just as the last two weeks revealed that Russias vaunted military faltered in its invasion plan, the next two or three may reveal whether Ukraine can survive as a state, and negotiate an end to the war. So far even the most basic progress, such as establishing safe humanitarian corridors, has proved elusive.
LVIV, Ukraine  Russia launched a barrage of airstrikes on Sunday against a military base in western Ukraine where American troops had trained Ukrainian forces just weeks earlier, bringing the war 11 miles from the border with Poland, where NATO forces are stationed on high alert.

Western officials said the attack at NATOs doorstep was not merely a geographic expansion of the Russian invasion but a shift of tactics in a war many already worried might metastasize into a larger European conflict.

Hes expanding the number of targets, the U.S. national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said of Russias president, Vladimir V. Putin, adding that hes trying to cause damage in every part of the country.

In recent days, Russian forces have been broadening their air war right up to the border with Poland, said John F. Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman. Before Sundays attack, Russian missiles also struck airfields in Lutsk and Ivano-Frankovsk, cities in western Ukraine near the Polish border. The airport in Ivano-Frankovsk was struck again on Sunday, according to the citys mayor.
When the charismatic former New York City Ballet star Damian Woetzel was named president of the prestigious Juilliard School in 2017, the schools powerful chairman, Bruce Kovner, praised his unusual mix of intellectual and artistic qualities.

But earlier this year Kovner told Woetzel that an internal evaluation had found a lack of confidence in his leadership and asked him to resign by the end of June, a year before the end of his contract, according to a letter Woetzel sent to the schools trustees that was obtained by The New York Times.

Woetzel fought back and succeeded in rallying support behind him, getting testimonials from several eminent artists including the trumpeter and composer Wynton Marsalis, who directs Juilliards jazz program, and the pianist Emanuel Ax, a leading member of the faculty. And he wrote in his letter to trustees that the performance review was extraordinary and highly inconsistent with best practice in nonprofit governance  it was conceived, initiated and managed by our board chairman.

Things came to a head at a board meeting last month. The trustees were informed of the evaluation and Kovners recommendation that he leave, but declined to take steps to ease Woetzel out. Kovner, long the schools biggest benefactor, is planning to step down this June after 22 years as its chairman, a move that one associate said had long been planned.
In an interview with The New York Times by email from Florida, Jarvi reflected on his visit to Moscow, the scrutiny of Russian artists in wartime, and the future of cultural exchange between Russia and the West. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

As an artist who was born in the former Soviet Union, how do you view Putins invasion of Ukraine?

It is hard even to find any words for whats happening in Ukraine at the moment. It is totally barbaric, horrible, inhuman and shocking, yet ultimately unsurprising: In 1944, the Soviets did the same to Estonia, practically carpet bombing Tallinn to the ground.

How does your Estonian heritage affect how you see this war?

Deep suspicion and distrust (to put it mildly) of Soviets is virtually encoded in our DNA. My family left Estonia when I was 17 years old to escape the Communists. My parents and my grandparents never trusted the Soviets, but life here in the West makes you forget certain realities. Over the years, we of the younger immigrant generation have become more westernized, complacent and slowly accepting of the view that Russians have somehow changed and evolved, that they are no longer dangerous and can be treated as partners.

Many of the older Estonians living abroad are still afraid to go and visit, not to mention move back to Estonia, because of their deep fear and hatred of Soviets. (I deliberately avoid using the word Russians because it is really the hatred of Soviets, Communists and Soviet leaders that we are referring to.)

You were in Moscow just as the Russian invasion of Ukraine was getting underway. You have said you initially felt conflicted about your decision to stay to lead a concert. What was going through your mind?
WHATS SO FUNNY?

A Cartoonists Memoir

By David Sipress

Illustrated. 253 pages. Mariner Books. $27.99.

I almost didnt read Whats So Funny? A Cartoonists Memoir, by David Sipress, because the shadow of the cartoonist Roz Chasts pretty-much-perfect memoir Cant We Talk About Something More Pleasant? (2014) loomed so largely  you might even say cartoonishly  over it. This would have been a terrible mistake.

Like Chast, Sipress contributes regularly to The New Yorker, if a little less recognizably: While her Edvard Munch-inflected characters are fuzzy and flushed with anxiety, he works mostly in amiable, economical black-and-white lines. Each author is a native New Yorker, the type, E.B. White once wrote, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size and its turbulence as natural and inevitable, imparting back to it solidity and continuity.

To this native New Yorkers ears, something about those sentences  written, with all due respect, by a guy from Mount Vernon  has never quite rung true. None of us takes the city for granted! (Chast, now a part-timer, even wrote it a love letter of a book called Going Into Town.) And growing up buffeted by its size and its turbulence tends to produce, far from solidity, a certain tribally identifiable neurosis, a personal vibration, as if we were a set of once-nice towels that have gotten rumpled in a jumbo dryer.

Overprotective or authoritarian parents, a common species in New York well before the days of Find My iChild, make for extra wrinkles. Chasts and Sipresss books have in common evocative descriptions of less-than-happy childhoods, and the combination of discomfort and liberation as intimidating progenitors begin to lose their powers. Sipresss anecdote about his mother, Estelle, giving him a Victrola record called Safety Songs, with ditties about never chasing a ball into the street, making sure to chew before one swallows, etc., veers particularly close to the Chast playbook. The city should commission these two to redesign the ubiquitous restaurant choking poster.
As Jonusas says, those who ventured west during the 19th century faced innumerable threats to life and limb. There were myriad bizarre accidents to fall foul of, she writes. People sliced their feet open chopping wood, fell beneath the feet of angry horses and maimed one another with unreliable firearms. Some froze to death; others succumbed to snakebite, disease or starvation. And a few truly unlucky souls, like York, were lured to the Benders squalid cabin in Labette County, Kan., where they were swiftly, and gruesomely, dispatched.

Though the Bender clan is a familiar one in the annals of serial killer lore, the most lurid details we know about them may be inaccurate, thanks to the embellishments of 19th-century newspapers. Jonusas, who parsed archival records in order to craft this riveting reconstruction, is especially good at dismantling some of the most salacious rumors surrounding the Bender daughter, Kate. Was she a young woman of repulsive appearance or a buxom, good-looking country girl? (The newspapers could not make up their minds; The Times called her a red-faced, unprepossessing young woman.) Was she a passive bystander or the one who slit the mens throats?

Kates place at the forefront of interest in the family is unsurprising, Jonusas concludes. Just the possibility that she was a violent criminal made her an irresistible point of discussion.

THE FAR LAND

200 Years of Murder, Mania & Mutiny in the South Pacific

By Brandon Presser

327 pp. PublicAffairs. $30.

Image

H.M.S. Bounty, long the stuff of pop-culture legend, vanished in 1789, when Fletcher Christian and other crewmen overthrew their captain, William Bligh; commandeered the vessel; and sailed to parts unknown in the South Pacific with their Tahitian brides. Their fate wasnt discovered until 1808, when the captain of an American merchant ship anchored just off Pitcairn Island heard a local oarsman speaking crisp and proper English. In The Far Land, the travel writer Presser describes his own trip to Pitcairn, which is still populated by descendants of the mutineers.
A Russian assault on NATOs doorstep

Russia launched a barrage of attacks against a military base in Ukraine yesterday, bringing the war 11 miles from the border with Poland. About 1,000 foreigners who had come to help Ukraine were believed to have been training at the base. The entire sky was in flames, one witness said.

Western officials said the attack was not merely a geographic expansion of the Russian invasion, but also a shift of tactics in a war many already worried might metastasize into a larger European conflict. Follow the latest updates from the conflict.

Pentagon and NATO officials reiterated that they did not intend to directly confront Russian forces in Ukraine. But they are sending military supplies, and Russia has warned that it regards those convoys as legitimate targets. The military base that was hit had been a hub for Western military troops to train Ukrainian forces since 2015.

Until yesterday, the invasion of Ukraine, now in its 18th day, was most notable for Moscows indiscriminate attacks on civilian areas. Even as it bombarded the military base in the west, Russia continued to punish ordinary Ukrainians, including firing at a train in eastern Ukraine carrying more than 100 children who were trying to flee the violence. Peace talks are expected to continue today.
Photo taken on March 7, 2022 shows a view of the third round of talks between Russian and Ukrainian delegations at the Belovezhskaya Pushcha. (Belta news agency via Xinhua)

KIEV, March 14 (Xinhua) -- The Ukrainian delegation is seeking a ceasefire and a troop withdrawal during the peace talks with Russia, Ukrainian Presidential Advisor Mykhailo Podolyak, also a member of the delegation, said Monday.

"Our positions remain unchanged: peace, immediate ceasefire, withdrawal of all Russian troops," Podolyak said in a video statement on Twitter.

Ukraine will be ready to talk about any neighborly relations and political settlements with Russia only after the implementation of these positions, Podolyak said.

The fourth round of negotiations between Ukrainian and Russian delegations was scheduled for Monday via video link. 
Citigroup, the American bank with the largest presence in Russia, said it would broaden its planned withdrawal from the country because of the war in Ukraine.

Citi, which announced plans last April to sell its Russian consumer division, will expand the scope of that exit process to include other lines of business, Edward Skyler, the banks executive vice president for global public affairs, said in a statement on Monday.

The bank will reduce its operations in Russia and unwind its exposure in the country, including consumer and corporate loans and other financial products.

Due to the nature of banking and financial services operations, this decision will take time to execute, Mr. Skyler wrote.
Senator Joe Manchin III, a key centrist Democrat, announced on Monday that he would not support Sarah Bloom Raskin for a top position on the Federal Reserve, potentially dooming her chances for confirmation as Republicans show little appetite for placing a supporter of stricter bank regulation into the powerful role.

Without Republican support in the evenly divided Senate, Democrats need all 50 senators who caucus with their party to vote in favor of Ms. Raskin for her to become the Federal Reserves vice chair for supervision. Republicans have so far stonewalled her nomination in committee, raising concerns about her position on climate regulation and her work in the private sector.

Mr. Manchin, a West Virginian who has close ties to the fossil fuel industry and has rejected much of President Bidens climate agenda, cited her statements on climate and energy policy, and pointedly noted that the board is not an institution that should politicize its critical decisions.

Her previous public statements have failed to satisfactorily address my concerns about the critical importance of financing an all-of-the-above energy policy to meet our nations critical energy needs, Mr. Manchin said in a statement. I have come to the conclusion that I am unable to support her nomination to serve as a member of the Federal Reserve Board.
Thomas A. Demakos, the New York State Supreme Court justice who delivered a landmark ruling that lawyers for three white defendants could not automatically exclude Black people from the jury in a notorious, racially-motivated murder case in the Howard Beach section of Queens in 1987, died on Feb. 22 at his home in Queens. He was 98.

His death was confirmed by a nephew, Michael Demakos.

The case began on Dec. 20, 1986, when a group of white youths severely beat three Black men whose car had broken down outside a pizza parlor in Howard Beach, a predominantly white neighborhood. One of the victims, 23-year-old Michael Griffith, fled on foot onto a parkway, where he was fatally struck by a passing car.

When Justice Demakos (pronounced dah-MAH-kohs) sentenced the first three defendants to prison for up to 30 years for manslaughter and assault, he declared: What should be obvious to everyone here is that racism breeds hatred and hatred breeds racism and it is a vicious circle.

In upholding the convictions, an appeals court rejected the defenses argument that the judge had denied the defendants a fair trial because he had refused to let their lawyers reject jurors on the basis of their race.
Westlake is less than two miles away from Wildwood Elementary in Piedmont, which is on the same street where Sidney and Irene Dearing, whom I wrote about in my last newsletter, lived in 1924. The Dearings, Piedmonts first Black family, were run out of town by months of harassment and bomb threats. Since then, Piedmonts Black population hasnt increased much. Nearly 55 percent of the students at Wildwood are white. A mere 1.5 percent are Black. (The remainder are Asian, Latino and students of two or more races.) Ninety-two percent of Wildwood students have achieved proficiency in math.

So much of the history of the disparities in American education can be told through these two schools. Westlake, because it is in a diverse, largely underperforming school district, is constantly under existential threat. In addition to trying to make sure that their students are at grade level academically, the teachers at schools like Westlake must contend with the fact that many of the kids are dealing with trauma, violence in their neighborhoods and the harmful effects of poverty. This doesnt mean that the teachers at Wildwood have an easy job or dont care about their students, but the tasks, challenges and missions of the two schools could not be more different.

Wildwoods interest in diversifying its student body, by enrolling kids from nearby Oakland, is Westlakes loss since funding for both schools is tied to enrollment. If the Piedmont Unified School District wants to truly diversify its schools and share its wealth with what they called B.I.P.O.C. students, they should just join the Oakland Unified School District. But this is probably not an option that almost anyone in Piedmont, whose high house prices are tied to its exclusive school district, would really be willing to consider.

It should be said that nobody, including San-Chez and Omolade, believes that all of O.U.S.D.s issues come from Piedmonts push to diversify. Their hunger strike isnt just about the closure of some schools in a district that probably does have too many of them. They were also asking a larger question about who always wins and who always loses when a city has competing school systems.

A public school district that provides an equal opportunity for education for all its children is an unassailable goal that requires communal buy-in. Everyone wants to believe that education shouldnt be a zero-sum game, but as with so many instances of constrained resources, this is the reality. If every frustrated parent can find a charter school or even a Piedmont-type district to take his or her child, is a robust, equitable school system possible?

I believe that integrated schools are the key to an egalitarian society and should be the top priority of any progressive politics. Nearly 70 years have passed since Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, and we still have schools like Westlake sitting less than two miles away from schools like Wildwood. This is not lost on many of Piedmonts more liberal residents who support the integration plan. But if any gains in Piedmont lead to losses in Oakland, is partial integration, however admirable in its intentions, really a worthwhile goal?

Most educators, even those who go on hunger strike, are pragmatists who arent concerned with abstract questions about demographic balance and cosmetic equality. If they are given a classroom filled with Black and Latino students, they know that their job is to educate them to the best of their ability without worrying too much about where all the white students have gone.
BOGOTA, Colombia  For decades abortion rights activists in Latin America looked to our counterparts in the global north to learn the best litigation and advocacy tools. We considered the incremental gains made in the years leading up to Roe v. Wade in the United States a blueprint for victory in our fight.

But as a feminist green wave, referring to the green bandannas abortion rights supporters wear, sweeps across the region, this summer the United States Supreme Court could roll back abortion rights. Inspiration is now coming from the south rather than the north, thanks to the coordinated efforts of many Latin American activists.

Colombia had a blanket ban on abortion until 2006, when the countrys constitutional court mandated that abortion be legally accessible when a womans health and life were at risk, a fetus had serious health problems or when a pregnancy resulted from rape. But some women faced barriers to accessing these legal abortion services, including onerous medical requirements to prove they qualify. Others who had abortions  or who helped a woman obtain one  could be sentenced to up to five years in prison.

Last September, a lawsuit asking the Constitutional Court of Colombia to decriminalize abortion was filed by the Causa Justa  or Just Cause  movement, a coalition of which the Center for Reproductive Rights is a part. We argued that abortion is essential health care that should not be regulated in the penal system. The court also asked Congress to create regulations to apply the ruling. In a transformative shift for the majority-Catholic country, we are now the third country in Latin America to decriminalize abortion in the last year, behind Mexico and Argentina.
You could be forgiven for forgetting about North Korea, which went quiet for a stretch, locked in self-imposed isolation for two years during the pandemic while U.S. attention diverted to other crises (like the perilous fate of Ukraine).

Now theres been a burst of ballistic missile tests in the new year: seven in January alone  an unprecedented pace for Pyongyang  and two in the past few weeks, prompting the U.N. Security Council to huddle for emergency meetings and drawing condemnation from some members.

If it seems as if North Korea wants us to sit up and pay attention  Dont forget, were still building missiles and nuclear weapons!  thats certainly one of its objectives.

But these tests are about a lot more. This is a big year for North Korea. Mr. Kim is marking his 10th year in power. Its also the 80th anniversary of his fathers birth and, on April 15, the 110th anniversary of his grandfathers. The tests are to ensure that Kim Jong-un has fancy new hardware to show off to his people in a landmark year and, in the longer term, to gain more leverage in future nuclear negotiations.
The arrangements were not universal  they did little or nothing for the victims of interwar fascism, or for non-European refugees such as Ethiopians who suffered at the hands of Italys occupation in 1935  but they did represent a new departure. In interwar Europe, nearly two million Russian and Armenian refugees were provided with travel documents and an organization to which they could appeal for recognition and protection of their basic rights.

The aftermath of World War II prompted another institutional innovation, mainly to support the victims of Nazism who had been forcibly recruited from occupied Eastern Europe during the war. When in 1946 significant numbers  including numerous Ukrainians, Poles and Balts  refused to return to their original homes now firmly under Communist control, the United States, Britain and France created an International Refugee Organization to protect and assist individuals who claimed a well-founded fear of persecution. Five years later it was replaced by the U.N.H.C.R. Together with the 1951 U.N. Refugee Convention, which obliges signatory states not to return refugees to their country of origin against their will, this remains the cornerstone of international refugee protection.

Its far from perfect, of course. For one thing, the convention applies only to people who have crossed an international frontier, effectively barring the internally displaced or those who cant leave their homes from international legal protection. Whats more, the emphasis on persecution has led to a prohibitively narrow interpretation of who constitutes a refugee, especially when compared to the broader provisions of the convention adopted by the Organization of African Unity in 1969.

In recent years, the architecture of refugee protection has been found severely wanting. The nearly seven million Syrians fleeing the countrys civil war, together with close to three million Afghan refugees  not to mention Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, refugees in Yemen, South Sudan and elsewhere  face enormous hardship and threats to life. Not only are these people cast adrift from any substantive institutional help but they also often disappear from the worlds media, as if they are irredeemably remote.

This time the response has been different. Europe has been overwhelmingly hospitable to the Ukrainians escaping the war. European Union member states have agreed to provide them with the right to live and work within the bloc, as well as access to social welfare and education. This instant recognition is, of course, deeply welcome. But its strikingly more generous protection than is available to Syrian and other asylum seekers incarcerated in squalid camps in Greece. Likewise, the warmth extended to Ukrainian refugees contrasts starkly with the racist hostility experienced at Ukraines western borders by Africans and Asians trying to escape violence.

Yet its possible to spy in the outpouring of sympathy for Ukrainians an opportunity to push for better treatment for all refugees. Can Europes leaders, so long at odds over the question of migration, be persuaded to enlarge their responsibility to safeguard the lives of people who flee violence, no matter where they come from? Could the current crisis in Ukraine actually be a catalyst for substantially improving the rights of refugees around the world?

These might seem like utopian, even naive, questions. But the history of Europe suggests otherwise. In dire circumstances, bold and creative thinking has produced a better, more humane world. It can happen again. Will anyone rise to the challenge?
Update: Pete Davidson will no longer be going into space, Blue Origin announced.

The Saturday Night Live actor Pete Davidson will travel to the edge of space next week on the next Blue Origin spaceflight, the company said on Monday.

Blue Origin, the rocket company founded by Jeff Bezos, said on Monday that it would launch its fourth flight with human passengers on March 23. Mr. Davidson will be one of six passengers on the companys New Shepard rocket for its 20th flight.

Mr. Bezos, the founder of Amazon and one of the richest people in the world, was a passenger on the companys first flight with humans on board last July. Earlier that month, another private spaceflight company, Virgin Galactic, took its founder, Richard Branson, to the edge of space and back.

Mr. Davidson, 28, joined the cast of Saturday Night Live in 2014. He has also appeared in movies, including the 2020 semi-autobiographical film The King of Staten Island. He could not immediately be reached for comment on Monday.
The Fox News correspondent Benjamin Hall was injured on Monday in Ukraine while reporting outside Kyiv and has been hospitalized, the network said.

Executives at Fox News said they had only sparse information about the nature of the journalists injuries. Mr. Hall, 39, is a longtime war correspondent who has covered conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and other countries. He joined Fox News in 2015 and became a State Department correspondent for the network last year.

We have a minimal level of details right now, but Ben is hospitalized and our teams on the ground are working to gather additional information as the situation quickly unfolds, Suzanne Scott, the chief executive of Fox News Media, wrote in a memo to employees.

The safety of our entire team of journalists in Ukraine and the surrounding regions is our top priority and of the utmost importance. This is a stark reminder for all journalists who are putting their lives on the line every day to deliver the news from a war zone.
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends an online meeting with the country's Security Council at the Novo-Ogarevo residence outside Moscow, Russia, April 16, 2020. (Sputnik via Xinhua)

The giants of the Global South, including India, Brazil and South Africa, are hedging their bets; even NATO-member Turkey is acting coy, moving to shut off the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits to all warships, not just the Russians.

NEW YORK, March 14 (Xinhua) -- The suggestion that Russian President Vladimir Putin is isolated may still be something of a Western bias -- an assumption based on a definition of the "world" as places of privilege, largely the United States, Europe, Canada, Australia and Japan, The Washington Post reported.

"Of the 193 members of the United Nations, 141 voted to condemn Moscow's unprovoked attack on its neighbor. But that majority vote doesn't tell the more nuanced story," said the analysis article last week titled "Outside the West, Putin is less isolated than you might think."

The giants of the Global South, including India, Brazil and South Africa, are hedging their bets; even NATO-member Turkey is acting coy, moving to shut off the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits to all warships, not just the Russians, said the article.

"Some citizens in emerging economies are gazing at Ukraine and seeing themselves without a dog in this fight -- and with compelling national interests for not alienating Russia," and "in a broad swath of the developing world, the Kremlin's talking points are filtering into mainstream news and social media," it said.

Meanwhile, "the gulf between the West and the Global South may also be worsening during the pandemic and the era of climate change, as developing nations grow increasingly resentful of the self-interested responses in the United States and Europe," added the article. 
Its called death walking, she says. Energy harnessing, engaging spirits in highly active spaces to do your bidding in exchange for eternal release from their own purgatory.

Man Cave, John J. Caswell Jr.s new play at the Connelly Theater, is a political drama wrapped in the spooky pleasures of the horror genre, and it works on both levels. Its characters are Mexican American women on the economic fringes, and its concerns are theirs: work, love, heritage, survival; how to be safe, and feel at home, in their own country.

Unfolding in the congressmans man cave (designed by Adam Rigg), with its cowboy-movie posters and mounted elk head, the play is also a contemplation of what the United States was built on, whats buried underneath  and which insistent, haunted voices its determined not to hear. (Lucrecia Bricenos lighting is vital to the chilling of our spines.)

Directed by Taylor Reynolds for the theater company Page 73, the show cultivates a scary mood even before it starts, thanks to Michael Costagliolas supremely clever sound design, which thrums ominously as the audience settles in but cuts to an unnerving quiet in the opening scene. We are primed to be startled by the slightest noise, and so we are. And because the audience is expecting, even hoping, to be frightened, its attention has a tautness thats sustained throughout the play.

Thats helpful with a show that takes its time, as Man Cave does  sometimes to the point of bagginess  letting the friends bicker and snipe over the course of a fraught weekend. Why, Rosemary (Jacqueline Guillen) wants to know, is Imaculada cleaning house for an overtly racist politician? Is Imaculada (Annie Henk) right that something is trying to kill her? And where is her missing 20-something son?
Im a student in Los Angeles, so Ive endured some of the most overbearing Covid-19 measures since we went back to school in August. Cases have descended to less than 1,000 a day, and we have a high vaccination rate. If not now, then when?  Shane Masterson, Los Angeles

I am a school counselor. I feel uneasy about the mask mandates and how schools (in Santa Clara County) are making it optional, but strongly encouraged. It might create further divisions and arguments between students that want to remain masked out of caution and those that prefer to be maskless. It is one more component about which kids and parents will be divided, and such division will now be visible and obvious to everyone.  Christina Soto, Sunnyvale

Im happy that its being lifted, but I dont think everyone will stop and thats OK! I teach at a middle school, so I know students and colleagues who will continue to mask because of their health or, in students case, insecurities about their appearance. I think its appropriate for them to make that choice and feel comfortable at school. I, personally, am excited just to see all their weird little faces again (and Im sure vice versa).  Ed Chaney, Clovis

My kids are 8 and 12, healthy and fully vaccinated, so I think they will be OK with or without masks. But on the other hand, we have worked so hard over the past two years to not get Covid; it seems silly to drop our main defense now. I would feel much more comfortable if only vaccinated students could shed their masks. As parents, we have had to make so many impossible choices and changes over the last two years, I am just exhausted.  Leslie Suen, Truckee

For more:
In the area around Pembina, N.D., just two miles from the Canadian border, the Indians were not the first to make the trek this winter. The previous week, the Border Patrol intercepted an Eritrean man who had plodded through the snow from Canada. Twice in December and on Jan. 12, agents found boot prints in the snow  migrants who had passed through and slipped away.

The Patels, as best as Canadian and U.S. officials could reconstruct it later, were part of a group of 11 Indian migrants who had assembled in the tiny Canadian town of Emerson and were given instructions on how to cross the border on foot.

They expected to meet a smuggler on the American side who would deliver them to their final destination, most likely Illinois, where they had family or friends. But the family, perhaps trailing with two children, got separated from the rest as the migrants fought their way through the snowy darkness.

An autopsy determined they had died from exposure to the cold, an outcome that appeared predetermined as soon as they lost their way.

At negative 29 degrees wind chill, you can get frostbite within minutes, said Scott Good, the Border Patrols chief patrol agent in the area. There is nothing that is going to protect you for 11 hours.
Bernard W. Nussbaum, who as President Bill Clintons first White House counsel became a lightning rod in a rash of bitter controversies that plagued Mr. Clinton early in his administration, died on Sunday at his home in Manhattan. He was 84.

The cause was heart disease, his son Frank said.

Mr. Nussbaum was a corporate lawyer in New York and an old friend of the first lady, Hillary Clinton, when her husband named him to the counsel post after being elected as a Democrat to his first term in 1992.

Mr. Nussbaum served for 14 months, resigning at Mr. Clintons request amid relentless attacks on the Clintons over a series of imbroglios, starting with a failed Arkansas land venture in which they had taken part years before they reached the White House  an episode known as the Whitewater affair. Then came the suicide of the deputy counsel, Vincent W. Foster Jr., giving rise to official inquiries and fevered conspiracy theories. And finally there was the F.B.I.s agreement to a White House request for files on dozens of Republicans whom the bureau had screened for White House jobs in past administrations.

The episodes drew accusations of wrongdoing from Republican critics and right-wing enemies of the Clintons as well as expressions of concern by many people without a partisan or ideological agenda. And Mr. Nussbaums aggressive efforts to protect the president and first lady only added fuel to the attacks and doubts.
But Dr. Walid F. Gellad, a drug safety expert at the University of Pittsburgh, said it remained unclear whether Modernas higher dosing might elevate the risk of myocarditis in young children. The companys pediatric studies are most likely much too small to identify the risk of the side effect, he and other experts said.

Modernas new push also comes after several studies raised questions about the protection that two doses of Pfizer-BioNTechs vaccine provide for children 5 to 11. Researchers in New York States health department recently found that protection against infection from two doses faded significantly within weeks.

C.D.C. researchers separately found that during the Omicron wave, the effectiveness of two doses of the Pfizer shot against moderate forms of the disease in children ages 5 to 11 dropped significantly.

The studies have kindled a debate among vaccine experts about whether a stronger dose would have been better or whether those children need third doses. Booster shots are now authorized for everyone 12 and up. Pfizer expects results from its study of a three-dose regimen for the younger children next month.

Dr. Gellad said it was possible the Pfizer dose for 5- to 11-year-olds may have been too weak, but that scientists could not yet be certain. He said he expected regulators would be especially careful in considering higher doses for young children given the comparatively low risks of them catching Covid now and getting severely ill.

Amid all the questions, one thing is clear: The back and forth over which vaccine will be better for young children could discourage uptake.

Alison M. Buttenheim, a behavioral health expert at the University of Pennsylvania, said those considering vaccination found comfort in certainty. Otherwise, thats just going to pave the way to say, Im going to hold off, she said. A lot of people are uncomfortable with evolving science.
At least four House Democrats in quick succession have said that they tested positive for the coronavirus after a party retreat held last week in Philadelphia.

Representative Madeleine Dean of Pennsylvania announced her positive result on Monday; Representatives Zoe Lofgren of California and Kim Schrier of Washington announced on Sunday, and Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut on Saturday.

All four representatives said that they were vaccinated and boosted, and were experiencing only mild symptoms. All four attended the House Democratic Caucuss retreat in Philadelphia last week, according to a person in attendance. It was not clear, and difficult to know, whether they were each exposed and infected at the gathering, or elsewhere.

Two other House Democrats who were not present at the retreat tested positive, the person in attendance said. Representative Gerry Connolly of Northern Virginia said he tested positive for the virus on Friday, and Representative Peter Welch of Vermont said he received a positive result on Monday.
Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, said in an interview published on Monday that she attended the Jan. 6, 2021, rally at the Ellipse in Washington. The interview appeared in The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative publication, and followed a New York Times Magazine article last month that examined the political and personal history of both Ms. Thomas and her husband, including her role in efforts to overturn the presidential election.

Ms. Thomas did not answer detailed questions from The Times about its findings. Her comments to The Free Beacon were her first about her participation in the rally. She said she had attended the rally in the morning but left before President Donald J. Trump addressed the crowd.

I was disappointed and frustrated that there was violence that happened following a peaceful gathering of Trump supporters on the Ellipse on Jan. 6, she said. There are important and legitimate substantive questions about achieving goals like electoral integrity, racial equality, and political accountability that a democratic system like ours needs to be able to discuss and debate rationally in the political square. I fear we are losing that ability.

Ms. Thomas has previously pushed back against an ongoing congressional investigation into what took place that day. In December, she co-signed a letter calling for House Republicans to expel Representatives Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois from their conference for joining the congressional committee investigating the attacks. Ms. Thomas and her co-authors said the investigation brings disrespect to our countrys rule of law and legal harassment to private citizens who have done nothing wrong, adding that they would begin a nationwide movement to add citizens voices to this effort.
All the difficulties and all the balancing and all the embarrassment that were talking about, those are short-term, said Yun Sun, the director of the China Program at the Stimson Center in Washington, who has studied Beijings actions in the lead-up to the war. In the long run, Russia is going to be the pariah of the international community, and Russia will have no one to turn to but China.

Chinas path ahead is by no means certain. Drawing too close to Russia would risk entrenching animosity toward China in Europe and beyond, a possibility that worries Mr. Xis government, for all its bluster.

And if Germany, France and other allies build up their defenses as promised, the United States could ultimately be freed up to shift more of its military resources toward countering China. Mr. Biden has vowed to rally an alliance of democracies, while American military leaders say they will not let Ukraine distract them from China.

We also feel very, very anxious because the Russia-Ukraine war will force Europe to lean to the U.S., and then China will be dragged deeper into a dilemma, said Zhu Feng, a professor of international relations at Nanjing University. The United States allies in the Pacific, including Japan and Australia, will also adopt a stronger military posture. So it all seems unfriendly to China.

Mr. Sullivans meeting in Rome with a top Chinese foreign affairs official, Yang Jiechi, came amid reports that Russia has asked China to give it military equipment and support for its war in Ukraine, as well economic assistance to help counteract the broad sanctions imposed after the invasion. China has denied those reports.

Chinas initial stumbles after the Russian invasion have raised questions about Mr. Xis ability to navigate the wars aftershocks.
Over the next two weeks, what would happen to these two refugees crossing into the same country at the same time, both about the same age, could not stand in starker contrast. Albagir was punched in the face, called racial slurs and left in the hands of a border guard who, Albagir said, brutally beat him and seemed to enjoy doing it. Katya wakes up every day to a stocked fridge and fresh bread on the table, thanks to a man she calls a saint.

Their disparate experiences underscore the inequalities of Europes refugee crisis. They are victims of two very different geopolitical events, but are pursuing the same mission  escape from the ravages of war. As Ukraine presents Europe with its greatest surge of refugees in decades, many conflicts continue to burn in the Middle East and Africa. Depending on which war a person is fleeing, the welcome will be very different.

From the instant they cross into Poland, Ukrainian refugees like Ms. Maslova are treated to live piano music, bottomless bowls of borscht and, often, a warm bed.

And thats just the beginning. They can fly for free all across Europe on Hungarys Wizz Air. In Germany, crowds line up at train stations, waving Ukrainian flags. And all European Union countries, many of which can trace blood ties to Ukrainians, now allow them to stay for up to three years.

Watching all this on a TV in a safe house in the Polish countryside, where its too dangerous for him to even step outside, Albagir, who asked that his last name not be used because he crossed the border illegally, said he was almost in a state of shock.
TEHRAN, March 14 (Xinhua) -- The Iranian Intelligence Ministry announced Monday that its forces have smashed two terrorist rings affiliated with foreign intelligence services in the southeastern province of Sistan and Baluchestan.

It added six armed terrorists, who entered the country with the mission of assassinating a number of foreign nationals involved in the province's infrastructure projects, were identified and detained.

The terrorists' backup team was also disbanded, said the ministry. 
President Bidens national security adviser met with a top Chinese official on Monday to warn against China giving Russia military or economic assistance, as the Kremlin struggles with the aftermath of its invasion of Ukraine.

With its armed forces experiencing unexpected difficulties in Ukraine and its economy badly damaged by international sanctions, Russia has requested aid from China, U.S. officials said this weekend. Financial analysts have said that Russia could default on its debts this week.

The national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, met in Rome for seven hours with Yang Jiechi, a member of the Communist Partys Politburo and director of the partys foreign affairs commission. The White House is trying to peel away one of the few potential allies President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has as his forces step up their assault on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities.

We have been very clear both privately with Beijing and publicly with Beijing that there would be consequences for such support, Ned Price, the State Department spokesman, said at a press briefing in Washington, in response to questions about the Rome meeting.
LONDON  Britains Supreme Court on Monday said it had refused the latest appeal by Julian Assange, the embattled WikiLeaks founder, to prevent his extradition to the United States.

The announcement was a blow to Mr. Assange, coming just months after a high court said he would be able to appeal a decision by a lower court that would allow for his extradition. However, he has still not exhausted all of his legal options in the British courts, his lawyers said.

The Supreme Court in a statement Monday said that it had refused permission to appeal because the application does not raise an arguable point of law.

Barry Pollack, an American lawyer for Mr. Assange, condemned the ruling.

It is extremely disappointing that the U.K. Supreme Court is unwilling to hear an appeal of an issue that the U.K. High Court had already deemed to be of great public importance, Mr. Pollack said. Mr. Assange will continue the legal process fighting his extradition to the United States to face criminal charges for publishing truthful and newsworthy information.
KYIV, Ukraine  The Ukrainian capital feels almost empty, its wide avenues mostly deserted except for soldiers at sandbagged checkpoints on the main intersections.

But it is a sprawling city where an estimated two million people are still living  half its prewar population  in miles of residential areas and apartment blocks that span the two sides of the Dnieper River.

When an artillery shell slammed into an apartment building in the Obolon district in the citys north just after dawn Monday, many residents were jolted from sleep. After more than two weeks of bombardment in the capital, they had grown used to the sound of artillery strikes  but they had never thought their building would be a target.

We do not have a military target near us, said Yuriy Yurchik, 30. We did not think we ourselves would be a target.
A state television employee burst onto the live broadcast of Russias most-watched news show on Monday evening, yelling, Stop the war! and holding up a sign that said, Theyre lying to you here, in an extraordinary act of protest against Russias invasion of Ukraine.

The woman, Marina Ovsyannikova, worked for Channel 1, the state-run television channel whose news broadcast she stormed, according to a Russian rights group that is giving her legal support. The group also released a video in which Ms. Ovsyannikova says she is deeply ashamed to have worked to produce Kremlin propaganda.

The news show, Vremya, is among the Kremlins flagship propaganda outlets, watched by millions of Russians every evening. The off-script intervention underscored how dissent is seeping into public consciousness in Russia, even after President Vladimir V. Putin has stifled opposition to the war and has enacted a law to punish anyone spreading whatever the government deems false news about its Ukraine invasion with up to 15 years in prison.

We are Russian people, thinking and smart ones, she said in the video she recorded, calling for Russians to protest against the war. Only we have the power to stop all this craziness.
Despite extending the eligibility for those Ukrainians who could potentially come to Britain, the country is still requiring a visa, unlike nations in the European Union, which had waived all visa requirements for people escaping the conflict, allowing them to stay for up to three years.

Beginning on Monday, people and organizations who do not know anyone personally fleeing Ukraine but want to sponsor someone can register their interest on a government website. And from Friday, Ukrainians and their immediate family members who already are connected with specific people in Britain willing to sponsor them can apply for the program, the government said.

The government has said it will give hosts 350 a month, or about $455, per family hosted.

Michael Gove, Britains secretary of state for Leveling Up, Housing and Communities, said there would be no limit on the number of Ukrainian people who can enter Britain through the new program and emphasized a need to minimize bureaucracy and make the process as straightforward as possible.

Our country has a long and proud history of supporting the most vulnerable, Mr. Gove said as he announced the plan in front of Parliament, pointing to historical moments when refugees were brought to Britain. The British people have already opened their hearts in so many ways, I am hopeful that many will also be able to open their homes.

Earlier in the day, Sajid Javid, Britains health minister, announced that 21 Ukrainian children suffering from cancer who had evacuated to Poland had been flown to Britain to receive treatment.
WASHINGTON  As Russias offensive in Ukraine intensifies, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine will address Congress in a virtual speech on Wednesday, Democratic leaders said, a move that will likely increase growing momentum on Capitol Hill to pressure President Biden to send fighter jets to Kyiv.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, announced on Monday that Mr. Zelensky would deliver a closed-door speech to lawmakers, an address that comes nearly two weeks after Mr. Zelensky met virtually with members of Congress and urged them to send jets to Kyiv.

The Congress remains unwavering in our commitment to supporting Ukraine as they face Putins cruel and diabolical aggression, and to passing legislation to cripple and isolate the Russian economy as well as deliver humanitarian, security and economic assistance to Ukraine, Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Schumer said in a joint statement.

Few of Mr. Zelenskys requests have changed since the last time he spoke with members of Congress, including his plea for fighter jets to help push back Russias advancing forces. His speech on Wednesday is likely to only rally more support on Capitol Hill for such a move. His last conversation with lawmakers left even Democratic allies of Mr. Biden urging the administration to facilitate the transfer of fighter jets  namely Russian-made MIG fighters  to the Ukrainians.
Mamadi Doumbouya for The New York Times Talk Climate Change Is Killing Her Country. Who Will Decide if It Lives?

Were on the front of the front lines of vulnerability, says Tina Stege. She would know: Stege is the climate envoy for the Marshall Islands, a country of roughly 60,000 people spread mostly among coral atolls halfway between Hawaii and Australia that is facing an imminent existential threat from climate change. In the Marshalls, sea-level rise has already led to increased flooding and the degradation of water used for drinking and cooking. Ongoing coral bleaching affects local fish stocks, which Marshallese rely upon for food as well as for income from nations that apply to fish in the countrys waters. And a warmer, wetter world means a greater risk of waterborne disease  the country was hit hard by an outbreak of Dengue fever in 2019. The horizon is dark and will only get darker if the rest of the world doesnt make the changes necessary to stay below 1.5 Celsius degrees of warming above preindustrial levels (which appears highly unlikely). While her countrys situation may seem uniquely dire, Stege knows that the Marshalls, site of horrific damage caused by U.S. nuclear weapons testing in the 1940s and 1950s, offers both a window into a possible future of even more widespread uninhabitability as well as a shared opportunity. Climate change is a preventable crisis, says Stege, who is 45. There are pathways. But can we achieve what needs to be achieved?

I have two questions to start, about power and morality: Your countrys continued existence is dependent on the decisions of far more powerful, far less at-risk countries. So how has your advocacy work affected your thinking about global power? And second: Ive seen people argue that global warming is likely to wind up at something like 2.2 or 2.7 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, and therefore we shouldnt freak out because at those levels life for us in rich Western countries wont be all that different. How do you view that argument from a moral perspective? The way I was raised in my community was with this idea that when you protect those who are the most vulnerable in your community, you are protecting your entire community. This translates to the message weve had for the world on why they should care about the Marshall Islands: Climate change is going to affect everyone on this planet. I think in 2020, 30 million people were displaced by climate change. When you have millions of people who are forced to flee, theyre going to be spilling over into wealthier nations. Those nations are going to have to respond. Do they build walls or do they welcome? I have real concerns, because weve seen that youre more open to welcoming those who maybe look like you or who you understand, and youre more likely to build walls for those who seem different. Thats where, in terms of power differentials, what we do as the Marshall Islands is tell stories  show how human dignity is a common value that applies whether you are from the Marshall Islands or the United States or Europe or Sudan. When you diminish the human dignity of another individual or community or country, that diminishes your human dignity. So telling the stories, bearing witness, establishing the things that bind us together is critical to addressing climate change.

Youre talking about interconnectedness. Along those lines, how might whats happening in Ukraine affect the Marshall Islands? You cant help but feel connected when you see the terrifying images and hear how people are being killed or forced to flee their homes. We were talking about power: the idea of sovereignty, territorial integrity, the right to choose your own future. Those are core to the concerns that I have for the future of my own country with regard to climate change, and seeing it play out in real time in Ukraine, where international norms and the rule of law have been broken  all small countries everywhere are left to worry. Were on a war footing with climate change in my country. That question of How do you feel when your country may be at war with climate change but wealthier countries, theyre going to be OK? The thing is, theyre not. Maybe theres degrees of OK, but just as war in Ukraine is having effects on Europe with all the countries who are welcoming the refugees, its also the ripple effects of the energy crisis and people who go to pay their gas bill  it affects them directly. I just finished reading about taxi drivers in the Marshall Islands who met last week to talk about how they had to raise prices because unless they do they wont be able to buy a bag of rice for their family. So yes, we will be hit first and hardest by climate change, but everyones going to be hit.

Tina Stege (center) in Namdrik atoll in 2016, working on a project for the American Museum of Natural History. From Tina Stege

The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change seemed to me to suggest that climate-change mitigation and adaptation need to be the global focus, more than trying to stay under 1.5 degrees of warming. But what would adaptation look like for the Marshall Islands? In the Marshalls, were two meters above sea level. Its a small, low-lying atoll nation. I dont know if youve ever been to an atoll. Were essentially one long beach. Its all coast. Theres no interior. So adaptation for us is many things. It needs to be about responding to sea-level rise, thats first and foremost. But its also about water resources, because our aquifers are going to be inundated. Freshwater lenses will be affected. Were going to get more droughts. Its less rain. Its going to be coral bleaching. We are coral atolls, and corals are dying. How do we live on an island where all the fish that we eat live off those corals? Its water scarcity, its food scarcity, its health impacts related to those things. In the longer term, youre looking at engineering solutions. Protecting the coastlines: People often refer to sea walls, but sea walls can bring problems like erosion. So how do you do that in a way that doesnt negatively impact your environment too much? Its raising buildings. Its looking at where people might need to move within the country to consolidate populations on the higher ground that does exist. Its terribly complicated. Were looking in the tens of billions of dollars, weve been told, to safeguard the entire country, and just plain billions to safeguard parts of the country. Thats safeguarding in terms of the hard engineering solutions, but that doesnt get at all of the issues that you cant quantify, like cultural heritage: people moving away from homes that have been theirs for generations, and how that affects your resilience, your ability to sustain yourself. So the numbers are staggering, but the other issues are even harder to fathom.

Rapid worldwide decarbonization isnt likely, for a variety of reasons. But is there a quickly achievable step that more countries could be taking that theyre not? The G20 countries produce 80 percent of total emissions. Decarbonization within those countries is where the focus needs to be. The switch to renewable energies can be done at speed and scale with the proper resourcing. The technology is already there. There just needs to be a much more focused and intentional push across the G20 economies. Maybe well see some of that happen as a result of events in Europe. Youre already hearing from European leaders that theyre looking to decarbonize much more swiftly in response to the crisis in Ukraine. But we should see that same level of crisis response to decarbonization across all of the major emitters. It can be done. There needs to be that same sense that it is a true emergency.

Stege at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow in November. Yves Herman/Reuters

Whats the Marshallese sense of the future? I work with a lot of people whove spent years thinking about how to ensure that we stay in the Marshall Islands and maintain our culture, our identity, our sense of place and who we are as people. Im not going to say there arent times when you get overwhelmed, but theres never a question of whether or not youre going to keep fighting for that future. Maintaining your homeland and making sure that you have a future for your kids is the ultimate motivation. Also, it takes a lot to live on these islands. Theyre not lush. Our sandy soil doesnt support a mango tree. It supports the breadfruit tree, the pandanus tree and the banana tree. And you have fish. Its a beautiful environment, but its a pretty unforgiving one. So Marshallese have resilience built into our DNA. Weve also been through equally challenging times. The day were talking on is Nuclear Remembrance Day in the Marshall Islands. Its the day that the Bravo hydrogen bomb was detonated in Bikini. Nuclear ash fell across the Marshalls, and many people were affected. We still have people struggling with cancers and health systems that havent been able to respond adequately. But in the face of those challenges, weve had people continue advocating on the world stage for nuclear justice, just like we advocate for climate justice. So when you have those examples, you soldier on because you know so many people have done it before you. The only way is to keep fighting.

Do you see parallels between the damage inflicted on the Marshall Islands by nuclear testing and the climate-change damage happening now? Very important parallels and also very important differences. In terms of parallels: the fact of a crisis that essentially is a wave coming in from the outside, over which you did nothing to contribute and over which you have little control or sense of how it started. Nuclear testing resulted in displacement of populations; there are people who still live with health impacts. The sense of violence doesnt unfold with one event but continues to unfold. Those are some of the parallels. One very important difference: A big part of the nuclear legacy was the lack of information  the amount of secrecy and classified documents and people feeling as if they were guinea pigs. Marshallese have worked hard to have that not be our story with climate change. We are at the front of the fight. Were basing the fight on the science. Were telling our stories to the world based on our firsthand experiences. That has been a big part of whats different this time: We are empowering ourselves to be able to respond and make our own choices.

What are those choices? And which of them do you think are actually available? We want to be able to make choices about how we adapt. Whether that is protect, relocate, raise land. At the moment I dont see a path forward on accounting for the cost of those choices. We absolutely will need international financial support to be able to make those choices. Right now its in dribs and drabs. We need it to be at scale and speed.

There are beautiful folk stories from the Marshall Islands about the importance of ocean navigation and finding ones way. Reading those made me wonder if there are specific things from Marshallese culture or history that youre drawing on for support these days. Well, yes. Theres this phrase, and its personal because it was one that my cousin, Darlene Keju-Johnson, adopted in her work. That phrase is tuwaak bwe elimaajnono, and it refers to situations where you need to get to another island, but there are waves  they seem impossible. Tuwaak bwe elimaajnono means face your challenge, go into the wave to get to the other island. That is a testament to resiliency. If your island is a place that you cant survive on, you need to get in your canoe and go to the next island to find sustenance.

That idea of the wave coming and you have to face it and get to another island  are you thinking about a world in which the Marshallese ancestral home is gone? Where home has to be somewhere else? The future I want is a future where we get to choose. Maybe that means migration, but I dont want to be forced. I dont want to be a refugee. When you become a refugee, you have so much stripped from you. The main thing thats stripped from you is choice. Choice is at the heart of what it means to have that sense of dignity, of empowerment, of crafting your own way forward. Self-determination is at the heart of our adaptation plan. There are going to be tough choices. We accept that. What we dont accept is that we dont have a choice. The world should not accept that. Taking away choices doesnt just diminish us, it diminishes the world.

This interview has been edited and condensed from two conversations.

David Marchese is a staff writer for the magazine and the columnist for Talk. Recently he interviewed Brian Cox about the filthy rich, Dr. Becky about the ultimate goal of parenting and Tiffany Haddish about Gods sense of humor.
Vaguito, a dog who spends his days on a beach in Punta Negra, Peru, waiting for his fisherman owner to return from his last fishing trip has melted the hearts of millions around the world.

Vaguitos heartbreaking story was made public by Jolie Mejia, a Peruvian woman who happened to be walking on the coast of Punta Negra, one of the districts of Lima Province, when she noticed a dog staring pointedly at the ocean. The animal looked clean and well-fed, so Jolie assumed that his master would come back to get him. She spent minutes petting the dog and talking to him, but no one came. Eventually, a man walked by, who, noticing the concerned look on the womans face, proceeded to tell her the animals sad story.

Photo: Facebook

Apparently, Vaguito is well known and beloved by everyone in the area. He now lives in a house not far from the coast, with a woman who takes good care of him, but he used to belong to a fisherman who died at sea years ago. The dog, who used to accompany his master everywhere, saw him depart on his last fishing trip and is still waiting for him to return.

He told us that the dog had lived with a fisherman who passed away some time ago, and that, since then, he comes here every day and looks at the sea, waiting for him to come back, Jolie Mejia wrote in a Facebook post that has since gone viral.

The man told Jolie that everyone in the area knew Vaguitos tragic tale and that he always goes home after staring at the ocean for a few hours. But he always comes back the next day

The photo of Vaguito longingly staring out into the ocean went viral on social media, and was then picked up by several major South American newspapers, including El Confidencial and La Vanguardia. His touching story has now spread into western media as well and continues to melt peoples hearts.

Vaguito is just the latest example of canine loyalty weve featured on Oddity Central over the years. For more tear-jerking, check out the story of Capitan, the German shepherd who visited his dead owners grave every day for 10 years, Xiongxiong, aka the Chinese Hachiko, who waits for his owner at a subways station every day, or Leo, a dog who has been waiting for his owners in the same spot for 4 years.
This year, the Nikola-Lenivets art village in Russia celebrated Maslenitsa by burning a 23-meter-tall wooden Tower of Babel, a biblical symbol of discord.

Every year since 2001, Nikola-Lenivets, a popular art park about 220 kilometers from Moscow, has celebrated the Slavic holiday of Maslenitsa by burning a specially-made artwork. Maslenitsa symbolizes the passing of winter and the coming of spring, a new beginning, but this year, the artistic tradition has been more grandiose and more meaningful than ever. A 23-meter-tall wooden tower of Babel designed by young architect Ekaterina Polyakova was set ablaze in a ceremony designed to symbolize the end of discord between nations.

Photo: Nikola-Lenivets Art Park

The Tower of Babel is an origin myth meant to explain why the peoples of the world speak different languages. It tells the story of a united human race speaking the same language as it tries to build a city and a tower tall enough to reach heaven. God, seeing the people becoming prideful, disrupts their work so that they can no longer understand each other and finish the structure.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by - (-) (@nikolalenivets)

Although the Tower of Babel isnt always referred to as an example of discord among people, it was for this exact reason that the artists of Nikola-Lenivets chose it as this years effigy.

It so happened that the Tower of Babel was never completed because of the discord between people and entire nations. The current one, which we are building for Maslenitsa in Nikola-Lenivets, serves as a modern symbol of such disunity, Ekaterina Polyakova said.

The impressive structure was built out of wooden logs, brushwood, timber and hay. Last Sunday, before the tower was set ablaze, the thousands of people who arrived at Nikola-Lenivets for the event were invited to climb up and leave a piece of paper on which they had written all the things they wished to get rid of from their lives, so they could burn with the tower.



Three years ago, we covered another impressive Maslenitsa effigy at Nikola-Lenivets, a grandiose cathedral made of tree branches and burnt to a crisp in the name of art. However, in the light of recent geopolitical events, this years ceremony is a lot more meaningful
Panzhiga, a remote mountainous village in Chinas Yunan Province has been dubbed Tesla Village for the unusually high number of Tesla electric cars owned by the locals.

The popularity of electric cars around the world is growing at an unprecedented pace, but there are still many skeptics who believe the rapid adoption of electric vehicles is hampered by infrastructure and logistic problems. For example, while rapid charging stations are being built in cities and along busy roads, using an electric car in remote areas is considered inefficient. However, that theory is being challenged by a small mountainous village in China where Tesla is by far the most popular car brand.

A video on Panzhiga, Chinas Tesla Village, was recently shared on Weibo by Teslas Chinese account and went viral almost instantly. Its basically a commercial for the company, but judging by the coverage the village has received in Chinese media over the last couple of weeks, Panzhigas love affair with Tesla appears to be genuine. Despite its remote location, far away from any urban center, the village is home to over 40 Teslas, and the people here couldnt be happier with their electric cars.

Cai Run, a Panzhiga native who left the mountainous village to study at the age of 12, and has since worked in various Chinese cities, is the one who introduced the village to the Tesla brand. Despite working far away, he has always been paying attention to the development of his home village, and with the completion of a regional expressway in 2016, he realized there were a lot of opportunities to explore at home.

In May of last year, Cai Run bought his first Tesla and has been working hard ever since to educate his fellow villagers and show them all the benefits of going electric. It wasnt easy, as many either didnt know much about electric vehicles or were convinced they couldnt replace combustion engine-powered cars anytime soon, especially in a place like Panzhiga. But Cais multi-oriented approach worked beautifully.

The villages first Tesla owner took locals on drives around the steep roads around Panzhiga, showing them features like vehicle hold, and the kinetic energy recovery function, which could offer better vehicle control and save battery power, but also promoting the benefits of electric cars over dinner, and even inviting kids to check out the cars light show function, so they could talk about it to their parents.

Teslas automatic assisted driving function, its in-car air filtration system, which can completely isolate the car from outside dust and odors, the spacious and elegant interior, and the money one could save on conventional fuel were all mentioned by Cai Run in his conversations with neighbors, and soon people started buying their own Teslas.

As the number of Tesla cars in Panzhiga grew, word of a Tesla Village in the mountains of Yunan Province spread all over China, and eventually reached Teslas management, which was apparently so impressed that they granted Panzhiga the honor of being the first village in the country to have a supercharger signed by Elon Musk himself.

Ever since the Tesla craze began in Pazhiga, the villagers have reportedly been discovering new ways of taking advantage of electric vehicles to improve their lives, some of which are truly ingenious. For example, the villages newfound fame has been attracting waves of tourists, but it lacks the facilities to accommodate them. So Tesla owners have been using their cars in camping mode, placing latex mattresses inside and setting up comfortable stargazing stations. People apparently love the idea.

But tourism hasnt been the only sector improved by the Teslas. They are now considered indispensable tools for the commercialization of traditional and agricultural products because they are much cheaper than conventional cars. Others use the boots of the cars as mobile vending carts and take advantage of Teslas audio out feature to attract consumers.

In the past, I used a traditional fuel car to send ham to the urban area of Xuanwei City, and the round trip was more than 160 kilometers. The fuel cost was more than 100 yuan. Now it only costs more than 30 yuan with a Tesla, one villager said. With what I save on fuel, I expect to recover the cost of the car itself in about three years.

Today, Cai Run owns no less than six different Teslas, and Panzhiga is home to a total of 40 electric cars, with 5 Tesla Model Y units expected to be delivered in the village in the coming weeks. Now, with news of Chinas Tesla Village gaining even more attention, Panzhiga is expected to start welcoming even more tourists.

The current Panzhiga Village is just the beginning, Cai Run said. Choosing Tesla is choosing sustainable development.
Caplan Communications is working with United Sikhs to promote the New York-based non-governmental humanitarian organizations relief work on behalf of Ukrainian refugees.

Theyve set up a base camp in Medkya, Poland to feed, clothe, shelter and transport fleeing refugees, Aric Caplan told ODwyers. Were starting to position their storylines to major national and international news audiences.

Sikh volunteers from the US, Germany and the UK are providing cooked meals, water and sanitation kits to the Ukrainians. The camps heated tents can house 200 people at a time.

United Sikhs was launched in 1999 to assist in the socio-economic development of immigrant communities in Queens.

The United Nations-affiliated group has chapters in Canada, Ireland, UK, France, Belgium, India, Pakistan, Malaysia and Australia.
THE Service of Institution of the Reverend Arthur Minion as Incumbent of the Birr Group of Parishes (Birr, Lorrha, Dorrha and Lockeen) took place in Saint Brendan's Church of Ireland, Birr recently

The Institution ceremony was overseen by the Archbishop of Dublin, Bishop of Glendalough, Primate of Ireland and Metropolitan, the Most Reverend Dr Michael Jackson.

Speaking to the congregation at the beginning of the service, Archbishop Jackson said it was a great pleasure to be present this evening at a full church with no need for masks (if people didn't want to wear masks), something which most people had been looking forward to for two years.

He hoped and prayed that the congregation would care for Arthur and that he would care for them.

In his sermon the Very Reverend Tom W. Gordon, Dean of Leighlin, thanked his Grace for the invite to speak. Rev Gordon knew Arthur a long time, as student, as colleague, and above all as a friend.

He said the Churches are living through a time of vast challenge and change. Churches, he pointed out, no longer have a monopoly on meaning. Their authority has greatly diminished. Far less people look to them to see how they should lead their lives.

Rev Gordon pointed out that there's a complex culture in the Church of Ireland which revolves around many different events and organisations, around events like synods and many different types of committees. He sometimes felt if, amidst all this organising things and getting things right, a more imaginative and creative attitude was sometimes overlooked.

He suggested that more imagination and creativity might be needed in tackling the challenges facing the Church of Ireland, and the other churches in the country, in the contemporary world.

Today, he pointed out, was all about warmly welcoming Arthur and his wife Susan to their new parish, their new ministry.

He briefly discussed the reading which was from the Book of Genesis and described 90 year old Sarah giving birth to Isaac.

There's a lovely line in the passage in which Sarah describes her happiness and joy on giving birth to a child: God has brought me laughter, she says, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me. Reverend Gordon said Sarah's warm, happy laughter shows a kind and decent person, someone who is truly religious, as opposed to stern people focused on rigid religious custom.

Arthur, said Reverend Tom, is someone who likes to laugh, as much as is appropriate. He is not one of those who takes his role or his church too seriously.

He referred to the second reading, the wonderful Parable of the Prodigal Son from Luke's Gospel with its timeless message of forgiveness for sinners. The Prodigal Son has led a dissolute, reckless life of drinking, gambling and sleeping with prostitutes. Eventually he has spent every penny and is living on the wrong side of the tracks; and yet, when he returns home to his father, he is met with a lavish hospitality that is jaw dropping.

The parable is also a tale about the importance of hospitality and possessing a hospitable nature.

Jesus is so often a person of rich hospitality. An attitude of hospitality to others (familiars and strangers alike) is at the heart of Christian ministry and Christian life. It is not an afterthought, on the outer edges, but it is the essence of what it is to be a true Christian. Arthur and Susan are people of great generosity and profound hospitality. They offer ministry at its most generous. Arthur is also a person of great kindness. I mean the word kindness in its deepest meaning, an attitude of empathy and understanding towards other people's difficulties and challenges. Arthur's ministry is no sterile custom. It is a ministry of warmth and humanity, inspired by Christ's example.

Following the Institution ceremony, members of the parishes brought forward symbols of the teaching, pastoral, and sacramental ministry of an incumbent. The symbolic objects were water, a bible, a stole, prayer book, oil, towel, chalice and paten.

As they were presented the Archbishop said to Arthur: Take this water, and baptise in the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Take this Bible, and proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ. Receive this stole, and be a pastor and a priest among your flock. Accept this prayer book and be a person of prayer among your people. Use this oil, and be a healer of the sick. Receive this towel and be a servant and a support to those in need and in trouble. Take this chalice and paten, and be among us to break the bread and bless the cup.

Audrey Colton, principal of Oxmantown School, said there's a strong link between the school and the C of I church, with the staff and pupils often using the church. She hoped Arthur and Susan will be happy in Birr.

Suzanne Corcoran representing the Lorrha parish said there's a long ecclesiastical history in Lorrha, going back about 1500 years, but recently we have been sheep without a shepherd; we are vulnerable and there's a danger we might wander off, lost; we are very glad to have a shepherd once again and we are looking forward to following a guide once again.

Roy Gill of the Dorrha parish offered the Minions a very warm welcome and wished them many happy years in Birr.

Peter Whyte, representing Lockeen, said he has known Arthur and Susan for many years. We are gaining not one but two great people. We look forward to working with them and wish them every blessing.

Paul Johnson, representing Birr parish, said the people of Birr look forward to collaborating with the Minions and getting to know them better.

Fr Tom Hogan, representing the ecumenical communities, said as gaeilge that he was 'an athas' to be present and he wished the Minions 'buiochas'. Fr Tom said he loved the name of the Minions new home, place of the oak. We in the Roman Catholic Church and in the Methodist Church look forward very much to working with you both.

He wished them 'beir bua'.

Cllr Peter Ormond, representing the municipal community, said it was an honour as Cathaoirleach of Birr Municipal District to be present. He knew the Minions will be warmly welcomed into their new parish. Cllr Ormond said he has known Arthur for many years and he's a great priest. I know that the people of Wexford were very sad to see him go. He added that Arthur's regular religious services on Facebook were a great boon during Covid Lockdowns.

Lady Rosse made a presentation of flowers to Susan.

Archbishop Jackson said this was a great evening for the parish and it was wonderful to be part of it. He thanked Reverend Gordon for his insightful sermon, which reminded us that Lent need not be lugubrious even if is penitential.

He complimented everyone who spoke, and joked, The speeches were exemplary in their brevity!

Rev Minion thanked Rev. Gordon for his kind words. He joked that he was glad that Rev. Tom didn't push the prodigal son analogy too far! He reminded everybody that some years ago he had served a ministry for a number of years in Shinrone.

I have great love and affection for the people of Offaly. One of the first events he attended when he first moved to Shinrone many years ago was Cllr Ormond's wedding. He said when he's living in a place he likes to submerge himself in its life as much as he is able. He promised to gently and humbly lead the sheep.

He thanked the evening's musicmakers, including Sean Ryan (tin whistle) and Ciara Ryan (harp), organist Enda O'Connor, and the Birr Choral Society under the direction of Michael Hanna.

He welcomed his family members who were present including John, Maria, Jennifer, Aunt Frieda and Susan's parents. He warmly welcomed all relatives and friends and apologised if he had forgotten to name anybody - Those who we have forgotten do thee O Lord remember.

After the Institution everyone was invited to attend a Reception in Dooly's Hotel, Birr.
A man who drove at what a judge in the Midlands called an absolutely outrageous speed is due to reappear in September after he has completed a Driver Awareness course.

Alex Cooney, Teevmacreeva, Tibohime, French Park, Roscommon, pleaded guilty to careless driving when he appeared before Judge Marie Keane in Longford District Court last week..

Sgt Mark Mahon, for the prosecution, told the court that Gardai detected Mr Cooney driving at 169km per hour in a 100km zone on the N5 in Longford at approximately 9am on February 5, 2022.

In mitigation, the court heard that Mr Cooney had no previous convictions and no previous penalty points. It was also revealed that he had booked a driver awareness course.

It was confirmed the vehicle - a 2007 Alpha Romeo - was in good condition and that Mr Cooney had only sped up to overtake another vehicle.

What concerns me is (a) the speed and (b) the age of the vehicle, said Judge Keane.

I will accept a plea to section 52 (careless driving) and remand him on continuing bail for the driver awareness course until September 6, 2022.

But if you get as much as a parking ticket between now and then, you can come back here with a toothbrush. That type of driving is absolutely outrageous.
The weather forecast for Ireland is looking set to be mainly sunny with just the odd shower according to the latest weather forecast for Ireland from Met Eireann.

According to the latest forecast,St. Patrick's Day will bring a mix of well scattered showers with dry and sunny periods. The longest dry spells will be in the south and east.

The weather forecast for Ireland for Tuesday from Met Eireann is for the day to start off dry and mostly cloudy with perhaps a few bright spells in the east. During the morning rain will develop in west Connacht and west Ulster and spread southeastwards through the afternoon. East and south Leinster will stay dry. Highest temperatures of 7 to 10 degrees with moderate southerly winds, fresh along the west coast

A cloudy to overcast night on Tuesday night with outbreaks of rain or drizzle in light variable winds. A clearance will develop in western areas later in the night. Lowest temperatures of 2 to 5 degrees generally, but dipping near freezing shortly before dawn in the west with a touch of frost possible there.

According to Met Eireann, Wednesday will be cloudy and there will be damp conditions with rain and drizzle to start in most areas. Drier and sunnier weather in the west will extend eastwards through the morning, brightening up in eastern counties later in the afternoon. Well scattered showers will also follow. Highest temperatures of 7 to 10 degrees in light to moderate northwest winds.

A dry and clear night with light winds to start on Wednesday night. However cloud will thicken from the west overnight with some showery rain moving in off the Atlantic overnight. Light southwest winds will freshen near Atlantic coasts overnight. Lowest temperatures of 0 to 4 degrees, coldest in the east with a touch of frost there.

According to the latest Met Eireann weather forecast for Ireland, St. Patrick's Day will bring a mix of well scattered showers with dry and sunny periods. The longest dry spells will be in the south and east. Highest temperatures of 9 to 12 degrees with moderate to fresh southwest winds. Becoming dry on Thursday night with long clear spells and light southerly winds. Lows of 2 to 5 degrees.

According to Met Eireann, Friday currently looks to bring plenty of dry weather with sunny spells. Cloud will build a little during the day with some drizzle possible in the south. Highs of 9 to 12 degrees. Breezy at times with moderate to fresh southerly winds.

Met Eireann says that current indications show that the weekend will be mainly dry with light winds and sunny spells. Mainly clear and cool at night with possible frost.
The weather forecast for Ireland is looking promising according to the latest weather forecast for Ireland from Met Eireann.

According to the latest forecast,St. Patrick's Day will bring a mix of well scattered showers with dry and sunny periods. The longest dry spells will be in the south and east.

The weather forecast for Ireland for Tuesday from Met Eireann is for the day to start off dry and mostly cloudy with perhaps a few bright spells in the east. During the morning rain will develop in west Connacht and west Ulster and spread southeastwards through the afternoon. East and south Leinster will stay dry. Highest temperatures of 7 to 10 degrees with moderate southerly winds, fresh along the west coast

A cloudy to overcast night on Tuesday night with outbreaks of rain or drizzle in light variable winds. A clearance will develop in western areas later in the night. Lowest temperatures of 2 to 5 degrees generally, but dipping near freezing shortly before dawn in the west with a touch of frost possible there.

According to Met Eireann, Wednesday will be cloudy and there will be damp conditions with rain and drizzle to start in most areas. Drier and sunnier weather in the west will extend eastwards through the morning, brightening up in eastern counties later in the afternoon. Well scattered showers will also follow. Highest temperatures of 7 to 10 degrees in light to moderate northwest winds.

A dry and clear night with light winds to start on Wednesday night. However cloud will thicken from the west overnight with some showery rain moving in off the Atlantic overnight. Light southwest winds will freshen near Atlantic coasts overnight. Lowest temperatures of 0 to 4 degrees, coldest in the east with a touch of frost there.

According to the latest Met Eireann weather forecast for Ireland, St. Patrick's Day will bring a mix of well scattered showers with dry and sunny periods. The longest dry spells will be in the south and east. Highest temperatures of 9 to 12 degrees with moderate to fresh southwest winds. Becoming dry on Thursday night with long clear spells and light southerly winds. Lows of 2 to 5 degrees.

According to Met Eireann, Friday currently looks to bring plenty of dry weather with sunny spells. Cloud will build a little during the day with some drizzle possible in the south. Highs of 9 to 12 degrees. Breezy at times with moderate to fresh southerly winds.

Met Eireann says that current indications show that the weekend will be mainly dry with light winds and sunny spells. Mainly clear and cool at night with possible frost.
A Ferrari driver caught driving at 193km/h in Donegal has been banned from driving the vehicle in the Republic of Ireland again.

Businessman Niall Heaney (40), of Groarty Road, Derry appeared at Buncrana District Court charged in connection with an incident at Bohillion, Burt, on November 22, 2021.

Sergeant Jim Collins said Gardai observed a black Ferrari FF passing three cars at a speed of 193km/h.

Upon seeing the lights of the Garda patrol car, Heaney pulled in close to the Donegal-Derry border.

Did he get to the sound barrier? Judge Alan Mitchell asked.

The court heard that the location is around half-a-mile from the border.

Solicitor for Heaney, Mr Patsy Gallagher, said his client, a father-of-two who employs around 30 people, made one split second stupid mistake.

He accepts his wrongdoing, Mr Gallagher said, He has apologised profusely.

This whole situation was totally out of character. He is very much involved in valuable organisations. He didnt think the Gardai were coming after him. He pulled in once he saw the blue lights.

Mr Gallagher said the Ferrari in question, a special edition model, was with a specialised dealer in England and was up for sale with Heaney now driving a Ford Ranger.

Sergeant Collins told the court that Heaney was fully co-operative and was very close to the border when the incident occurred.

Judge Mitchell said: I am told time and time again that people are co-operative, but it seems to me as if the eleventh commandment is: Thou shalt not get caught.

Judge Mitchell said it was in Heaneys favour that he had pulled in for Gardai.

It is in his favour that he was so close to the border, Judge Mitchell said. If he wished to evade, he was very close. He could have kept going and that would have been the end of the matter.

Judge Mitchell added that he was not impressed by the event.

A charge of dangerous driving was reduced to one of careless driving.

Heaney, who made a 1,500 donation to the Donegal Hospice, was fined 400. Judge Mitchell asked if Heaney would agree not to drive the car in the Republic of Ireland again and he agreed.
What's Included

With a Digital Only subscription, you'll receive unlimited access to our website and e-edition. Our digital products are available 24/7 and are accessible anywhere, anytime.

If you have any questions or need further assistance, please call our customer service team at 716-372-3121 or email nfinnerty@oleantimesherald.com.
Patricia Janet Scotland, Baroness Scotland of Asthal, is a British diplomat, barrister and politician, serving as the sixth secretary-general of the Commonwealth of Nations. She was elected at the 2015 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting and took office on 1 April 2016. She is the first woman to hold the post. She was elevated to the House of Lords in 1997 and, as a British Labour Party politician, served in ministerial positions within the UK Government, most notably as the Attorney General for England and Wales and Advocate General for Northern Ireland. She is a dual citizen of the United Kingdom and Dominica, where she was born.
Photo taken on Dec. 9, 2021 shows a meeting of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) Joint Commission in Vienna, Austria. (EU Delegation in Vienna/Handout via Xinhua)

TEHRAN, March 14 (Xinhua) -- A top Iranian security official said on Monday that Iran will remain in the Vienna talks aimed at reviving the 2015 nuclear deal until a "strong agreement" meeting its legal and logical demands is reached.



All efforts by Iran are focused on preserving and advancing the country's national interests despite "all external and internal hype," Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council Ali Shamkhani tweeted.

"All pillars of the Iranian state -- despite all external and internal hype -- work hard to preserve and advance Iran's national interests," he said.

Iran signed the Iranian nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), with world powers in July 2015. However, former U.S. President Donald Trump pulled Washington out of the agreement in May 2018 and reimposed unilateral sanctions on Tehran.

Since April 2021, eight rounds of talks have been held in Vienna between Iran and the remaining parties to the JCPOA, namely Russia, China, France, Britain, and Germany, with the United States indirectly involved, in a bid to revive the landmark deal.

A pause in the Vienna talks was first announced on Friday in a tweet by Josep Borrell, the European Union's foreign policy chief, who said the pause is needed for what he called "external factors." 
US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan warned Beijing earlier that it would absolutely face consequences if it helped Moscow evade sweeping sanctions over the war in Ukraine.
 2008-2022 One News Page Ltd.

All rights reserved.

One News is a registered trademark

of One News Page Ltd.
The musicals Sydney season is a homecoming of sorts for the show, which rehearsed in Ultimo last year and where director Baz Luhrmann shot the film at Fox Studios 21 years ago.
Bill Browder, whose fund was once Russias biggest foreign investor, has some advice for the West on how to stop Vladimir Putin. Cut off his cash flow.
Top advisers to Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping met in Rome to discuss Chinas support for Russia in its invasion of Ukraine.
The United States has warned China not to send military aid to Russia, Scott Morrison has suggested tax relief should be prioritised over cutting the petrol and diesel excise and the NSW floods clean-up continues.
"The Challenge" star Jordan Wiseley is finding more ways to make an impact on the ground in Ukraine ... distributing much-needed supplies brought over the border from Poland. Check out these images from Ukraine, where Jordan and his actor roommate
Elon Musk is asking Vladimir Putin to put his dukes up -- and not just that, but he's posing the challenge in the dictator's native language ... with the ultimate stakes at play. The Tesla and SpaceX chief dared VP to a battle of brawn Monday
Rebel Wilson took a big shot at Harry and Meghan ... calling at least a portion of their interview with Oprah "fantasy." Rebel hosted the BAFTA Awards in London Sunday, and as she announced the winner of Outstanding British Film, she mused, "From
Ukrainian President Zelensky is showing once again why he's being hailed as an exceptional leader at an impossible time for his country ... offering condolences to the family of a U.S. journalist killed during the conflict. On Sunday, it was
DAR ES SALAAM, March 14 (Xinhua) -- Tanzania's Coast region authorities on Monday announced a 10-day massive operation aimed at arresting illegal immigrants who have sought refuge in the region.

Coast region is used by human traffickers as a getaway for illegal immigrants, mainly from the Horn of Africa.

Announcing the operation that starts on March 14 through March 23, the Coast regional commissioner, Aboubakar Kunenge, said no stone will be left unturned in the search for the aliens.

"The objective of this operation is to investigate, identify and take legal action against all individuals who will be found living in our region illegally," Kunenge told regional immigration officials and heads of security and defense forces based in Coast region.

He said the operation was intended to make the region as well as the country safe because he said some of the illegal immigrants have been engaging in criminal acts. 
Tech entrepreneur Andrey Liscovich is fighting for his birthplace of Ukraine by giving up his life in Silicon Valley and getting civilian soldiers the supplies they need ... and it's so dangerous he's just written his will. Andrey joined us Monday
According to US media reports, Russia has sought Beijing's help, including military aid. Chinese and US diplomats are due to meet on Monday to discuss the war in Ukraine.
Russia and Ukraine have both signaled progress in cease-fire talks despite the ongoing violence. Moscow said it had targeted "foreign mercenaries" in a rocket attack which hit western Ukraine.
According to US media reports, Russia has asked Beijing for military equipment to use in its invasion of Ukraine. Chinese and US diplomats are due to meet on Monday to discuss the war in Ukraine.
The Czech Republic is sending 650 soldiers to help Slovakia protect its border with Ukraine. The troops will be heading a fresh NATO contingent in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Ukraine's president says "it's only a matter of time" before Russia missiles hit the homes of people in NATO countries if a no-fly zone is not set up.
Scholz will visit Turkey for the first time as chancellor, with Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine at the top of the agenda.
Russia is believed to have asked China for military equipment and other support, US officials have said.
A US photojournalist has described from a hospital ward how the car he was in came under attack at a checkpoint in Irpin on March 13, resulting, according to Kyiv police, in the fatal wounding of filmmaker Brent Renaud.
The American investment firm tasked with selling Chelsea expects a sale could happen by the end of the month after positive conversations with the UK government.
BISHKEK, March 14 (Xinhua) -- Kyrgyzstan has recorded seven deaths from COVID-19 over the past week, bringing the total fatalities to 2,973, the Republican Headquarters for Combating COVID-19 reported Monday.

All of the victims were not vaccinated, the headquarters said.

Meanwhile, 11 new COVID-19 cases were reported over the past 24 hours, taking the countrywide caseload to 200,742, while no new deaths were reported.

Kyrgyzstan launched a nationwide vaccination campaign on March 29 last year after the arrival of China-donated vaccines. It is also inoculating its citizens with the Sputnik-V, Sputnik Light, Astra Zeneca, Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.

A total of 1,464,607 people have been vaccinated in the country so far, and 1,207,802 of them have received both shots and 137,549 have received boosters. 
All remaining COVID travel measures, including the Passenger Locator Form and tests for arrivals, will end this week, the transport secretary has said.
NowThis 01 Apr 2022

I wanted to show to the world that Russians are against the war  This former Russian state TV employee is speaking out..
Wladimir cradles his youngest son explaining there is nowhere for him and his family to stay.
US President Joe Biden's national security adviser warned a top Chinese official on Monday about China's support for Russia in the Ukrainian invasion, even as the Kremlin denied reports it had requested Chinese military equipment to use in the war.
IndiaTimes 24 Mar 2022

India abstained in UNSC on a vote on a draft resolution by Russia on the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine. Russia had called for a..
(MENAFN - Gulf Times) A US journalist was shot dead and another wounded on Sunday in Irpin, a frontline suburb of Kyiv that has witnessed some of the fiercest fighting since Russia invaded ...
United States officials have warned that China could potentially be helping Russia in the latter's continued war against Ukraine. The situation comes after Moscow is accused of spreading misinformation accusing the U.S. of having chemical or biological weapons development programs in Ukraine.
The Queen's diary is "under review" after she was forced to pull out of yet another major royal event.The 95-year-old monarch will not attend today's Commonwealth Day ceremony in London, after palace aides reportedly expressed concerns...
ODN 17 Mar 2022

These are the Ukrainian cats and dogs that have been left behind, and these are the vets in eastern Poland who are rescuing them..
SYDNEY, March 14 (Xinhua) -- As residents across the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW) welcome blue skies and flood waters began their slow retreat, the government has scrambled to accommodate thousands of displaced residents.

On Monday the NSW government announced the opening of two additional flood recovery centres to Sydney's north, bringing the total number of such centres across the state to 10.

The centres would provide a range of services to those who have been impacted by flooding, which has inundated large areas of Greater Sydney and northern NSW.

"Recovering after a flood event is an extremely emotional time and for many people, it's difficult to know where to even begin," said NSW Minister for Flood Recovery Steph Cooke.

"Establishing these two pop-up recovery centres will ensure that when residents begin to clean up and recover, services from a range of NSW Government agencies, community organisations and welfare bodies are accessible all under the one roof," she said.

Services would include replacing lost documents, temporary accommodation, mental health services, clean-up services and various forms of financial support.

On Sunday NSW State Emergency Service (SES) determined that across the state 3,396 homes had been left uninhabitable, and 6,708 inundated due to the floods.

The NSW government has thus far committed 1.5 billion Australian dollars (about 1.1 billion U.S. dollars) to the flood recovery, and posted 8,000 members of the Australian defence force to assist the on-the-ground recovery.

Part of this is a 285 million Australian dollars (about 207 million U.S. dollars) temporary housing support package. However, many who are stuck in waitlists and in the interim have been forced to sleep in cars, caravans, tents or seek refuge at friends' homes.

NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet said the government is putting "every available resource" into the recovery effort, and is currently assisting 2,000 people with accommodation placements.

"We are rolling out our standard recovery supports as quickly as possible, as well as addressing specific needs as they arise." he said. 
Hong Kong (AFP) March 14, 2022



A UK-based rights group pledged Monday not to remain silent after Hong Kong's government demanded it shutter its website and accused it of endangering China's national security. While China heavily restricts the internet on the mainland, Hong Kong does not generally censor the web, allowing residents to access sites and content that might be critical of Beijing. But Monday's announcement
A bipartisan group of senators expressed concern about the possibility of massive Russian cyberattacks in the United States as revenge for the brutal sanctions imposed by Washington on Moscow for its decision to invade Ukraine.
It is hoped tens of thousands of displaced people will benefit from the plan, the government says.
Here are the top stories for Sunday, March 13th: Russian airstrike escalates offensive in western Ukraine; U.S. journalist killed, another injured in attack near Kyiv; Iran claims missile barrage near U.S. consulate in Iraq; Two stabbed at New York's MoMA.


Ukraine introduced the design for a postage stamp that memorializes a now-famous battle cry rallying the country in its fight against the Russian invasion.
From toys to flowers, refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine are warmly greeted by strangers in Europe.
Rumble 20 Mar 2022

Top US officials say they are worried that the Chinese government could soon send military or financial aid to Russia to help..
The parish of Saint Nicholas of Myra said it was threatened for its stance on the Ukraine invasion and has asked for "canonical dismissal."
National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told CNN China was warned there would "absolutely be consequences" if they provided support to Russia.
As Russian forces continue attacking Ukraine, Ukrainian artists have been visualizing the resilience of their nation and how their lives have been turned upside down by war.
As Russia continues its war against Ukraine and ripple effects are felt in Africa, the US is seeking to cement relations with the African Union.
An employee of Russian state TV has interrupted her own channel's live news broadcast to protest against the war in Ukraine, in an extraordinary act of defiance.The incident happened during Russian station Channel One's evening...
New Zealand Herald 08 Apr 2022

Fox News correspondent Benjamin Hall, who was seriously wounded when he was shot outside Kyiv while reporting on the war in..
Wales Online 03 May 2022

Aimee Stott from Bridgend has said that more need to be done to safeguard the 'Homes for Ukraine' scheme to help out Ukrainian..
Rumble 23 Apr 2022

The government is still pressing our medical freedoms - let's talk about it. Josh also puts his sights on the Rinos and we..
In the week ending March 11th 2022, HFR revealed that macro hedge funds led industry-wide gains in February, extending the strong start to 2022 by again posting negatively-correlated gains as financial market volatility surged across equity, fixed income, commodity, and currency markets as Russia invaded Ukraine. The HFRI 500 Macro Index surged +2.9 percent in February, extending the 2022 gain to +4.75 percent, with strong contributions from Commodity, Fundamental Discretionary and Quantitative, trend-following strategies.

Meanwhile, with almost $27 billion in combined earnings, 2021 was another highly lucrative year for the hedge fund elite. Jim Simons is back on top. For the fifth time in seven years, the 83-year-old founder of quant specialist Renaissance Technologies leads Institutional Investor's Rich List, the definitive ranking of the highest-earning hedge fund managers. Simons retook the throne after earning $3.4 billion in 2021, supplanting last year's leader, Israel "Izzy" Englander.

In performance news, after record gains in January, Said Haidar's fund soared again in February. His Haidar Jupiter macro fund rose by 25.7% last month as Russia's invasion of Ukraine triggered large market swings, people familiar with the information said; Brevan Howard Asset Management enjoyed a stellar start to February. By t......................

To view our full article Click here
Nairobi, Kenya - March 14, 2022 - HAL Capital, an embedded Kenyan Fintech, has signed a landmark partnership agreement with HAVA, a leading Kenyan online ride-hailing company. The signing ceremony was attended by the Co-Founder of HAL Capital, Mr. Mohamoud Dualeh, and his counterpart, the Founder of HAVA, Mr. Abdifatah Mohamud. HAL capital will provide its embedded financing platform and associated services to HAVA's online ride-hailing drivers in this partnership. 
PHNOM PENH, March 14 (Xinhua) -- The Cambodia Internet Startup Association (CISA), which is the first Chinese association of internet startups and companies in Cambodia, has kicked off its new journey in 2022 with a fruitful forum on post-COVID development of digital economy in the Southeast Asian country, it said in a press release on Monday.

Initiated by the CISA and held at the Cambodia Academy of Digital Technology (CADT) in the capital Phnom Penh on Saturday, the forum gained support from both public and private sectors, including the Ministry of Economy and Finance, Ministry of Post and Telecommunications, Huawei Cambodia, Zhengheng Group, and Cambodia Association of Finance and Technology (CAFT), among others.

Opened by Sam Sethserey, head of the CADT's Institute of Digital Research and Innovation, the event served as a great opportunity for entrepreneurs, investors, and government officials to enhance dialogue and share insights into the development of digital economy in Cambodia, said the CISA.

Jack Lee, co-founder of the CISA and founder of Smile Shop App, said the CISA was jointly established by Chinese leading players in the internet industry in Cambodia, including Smile Shop, Gold Zone Media, 58cam.com, Compass Real Estate, CamHR, and Focus Digital, among others.

He said the CISA is committed to expanding its business networking, incubating startups, and providing services related to training, investing and financing.

"CISA seeks to initiate the close collaboration with other startup investment communities and serve as a bridge to facilitate the communication among business communities in Cambodia," Lee said.

"By leading more investment from China to the ecosystem of Cambodian internet industry, we aim to empower local startups and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and help them compete in regional and international markets," he added.

Chea Kok Hong, deputy director-general for policy at the Ministry of Economy and Finance, said, "The vision of the Royal Government of Cambodia is to build a vibrant digital economy and society by laying the foundations to promote digital adoption and transformation in all social actors including the state, citizens, and businesses, to accelerate new economic growth and to promote social welfare in the new normal."

Dong Yuanpeng, chief communication officer of Huawei Cambodia, said that as a world's leading ICT infrastructure and smart device provider, Huawei has been dedicated to building a fully connected intelligent Cambodia through the strategic focus on information transmission, distribution, storage, processing, and interaction.

"Huawei has changed the landscape of digital infrastructure in Cambodia and enhanced the digital inclusiveness for all people and facilitated the kingdom's industry digital transformation," he said.

CAFT Secretary-General Tomas Pokorny, who is co-founder of mobile payment app Pi Pay, stressed some of the key trends in Cambodia's digital economy and fintech ecosystem, such as an increased acceptance of digital payments and quick response (QR) code for digital payments.

"Cambodia is relatively a small market in terms of population size, but this market has been growing vibrantly and still has huge potential to tap. New emerging trends will surface and present opportunities for the sector within next decade," he said.

Pokorny said that the COVID-19 pandemic has slowed down external funding in Cambodia, and as a result, "internal capital venture efforts will play a key driving role for startups investments." 
Oskaloosa, IA (52577)

Today

A mix of clouds and sun during the morning will give way to cloudy skies this afternoon. High 61F. Winds E at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

Cloudy with rain developing after midnight. Low around 50F. Winds E at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 80%.
Ottumwa, IA (52501)

Today

Partly cloudy skies this morning will become overcast during the afternoon. High around 60F. Winds E at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

Cloudy skies with periods of rain late. Low near 50F. Winds E at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 80%. Rainfall around a quarter of an inch.
Photo taken on Feb. 5, 2022 shows a corroboree frog to be released into the wild in New South Wales, Australia. A project dubbed "Saving our Species" has seen 100 corroboree frogs reintroduced into the wild in the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW), in an effort to reinvigorate their dwindling population. (Alex Pike/Taronga Zoo/Handout via Xinhua)

SYDNEY, March 14 (Xinhua) -- A project dubbed "Saving our Species" has seen 100 corroboree frogs reintroduced into the wild in the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW), in an effort to reinvigorate their dwindling population.

The corroboree frog is a poisonous, ground-dwelling species endemic to small, sub-alpine areas of NSW. Their bright yellow and black markings make them highly recognizable and serve as a warning to predators.

It was announced on Monday that 100 of the frogs were reintroduced into a purpose-built enclosure late last week in an effort to allow them to re-adapt to their wild environment.

"These 100 corroboree frogs have been reintroduced to a purpose-built field enclosure at Kosciuszko National Park that protects them from the disease while allowing them to grow and thrive into the future," said NSW Minister for Environment and Heritage James Griffin.

As of 2004, the frog's status was listed as critically endangered, and they have widely been flagged as one of Australia's most at risk of extinction species.

Since the 1970s their population has steadily declined, mainly due to a fungal infection that was accidentally introduced to Australia.

This coupled with periods of drought, habitat degradation, and severe bushfires have seen their populations in the wild dwindle to an estimated low of just 30 individuals.

The "Saving our Species" project has partnered with Taronga Zoo in Sydney which breeds the frogs and holds an "insurance population" of about 400 of the frogs in captivity.

"Timing the release of these frogs is crucial for their survival, allowing them sufficient time to acclimatize and prepare for hibernation ahead of winter," added Taronga Conservation Society Australia Herpetofauna Unit Supervisor, Michael McFadden.

The "Saving our Species" project is also working to restore the population of a number of endangered Australian species native to NSW, including the koala, the brush-tailed rock-wallaby, and the ancient Wollemi pine. 

Photo taken on Feb. 5, 2022 shows corroboree frogs to be released into the wild in New South Wales, Australia. A project dubbed "Saving our Species" has seen 100 corroboree frogs reintroduced into the wild in the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW), in an effort to reinvigorate their dwindling population. (Alex Pike/Taronga Zoo/Handout via Xinhua)

File photo taken on May 29, 2018 shows corroboree frog eggs. A project dubbed "Saving our Species" has seen 100 corroboree frogs reintroduced into the wild in the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW), in an effort to reinvigorate their dwindling population. (Taronga Zoo/Handout via Xinhua)

File photo taken on Jan. 17, 2020 shows staff releasing corroboree frogs in New South Wales, Australia. A project dubbed "Saving our Species" has seen 100 corroboree frogs reintroduced into the wild in the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW), in an effort to reinvigorate their dwindling population. (Taronga Zoo/Handout via Xinhua)

Photo taken on Feb. 5, 2022 shows corroboree frogs to be released into wild in New South Wales, Australia. A project dubbed "Saving our Species" has seen 100 corroboree frogs reintroduced into the wild in the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW), in an effort to reinvigorate their dwindling population. (Alex Pike/Taronga Zoo/Handout via Xinhua)

Photo taken on Feb. 5, 2022 shows a corroboree frogs to be released into the wild in New South Wales, Australia. A project dubbed "Saving our Species" has seen 100 corroboree frogs reintroduced into the wild in the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW), in an effort to reinvigorate their dwindling population. (Alex Pike/Taronga Zoo/Handout via Xinhua)
The First Amendment of the United States Constitution, adopted in 1791 along with other nine other bills comprising the Bill of Rights three years after the ratification of the Constitution, created a lot of clauses dealing with multiple purposes.

There have been a number of legal challenges regarding the First Amendment recently, from Sarah Palin's lawsuit against the New York Times to suits accusing Project Veritas, Fox News, the Gateway Pundit, One America News and others of "intentionally promoting and profiting from false claims of voter fraud during the 2020 election," the New York Times reported.

This week also marks Sunshine Week in Michigan, a national initiative headed by the News Leaders Association to educate the public about the importance of open government and the dangers of excessive and unnecessary secrecy.

1. What is the First Amendment?

The First Amendment guarantees freedoms concerning religion, expression, assembly and the right to petition, according to Cornell Law School. It forbids Congress from both promoting one religion over others and also restricting an individual's religious practices. The amendment further guarantees freedom of expression by prohibiting Congress from restricting the press or the rights of individuals to speak freely. Finally, the amendment guarantees the right of citizens to assemble peacefully and to petition their government.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances," the amendment states.

2. Limitations of the First Amendment

The First Amendment has some limitations. Notably, the amendment doesn't prevent a private employer from setting its own rules regarding freedom of expression, but does protect citizens against government limits on expression, according to Middle Tennessee State University.

According to USCourts.gov, the freedom of speech does not include the right:

To incite imminent lawless action;

To make or distribute obscene materials;

To burn draft cards as an anti-war protest;

To permit students to print articles in a school newspaper over the objections of the school administration;

Of students to make an obscene speech at a school-sponsored event;

Of students to advocate illegal drug use at a school-sponsored event.

The First Amendment again only protects against the government, not private employers or consequences from other citizens. Limits to the freedoms in the First Amendment exist as peoples individual rights must be balanced against the rights of society, according to the Voice of America.

For example, a person cannot force the tenets of his or her religion on others while trying to practice that religion. Similarly, harmful speech, such as yelling fire in a crowded room, is not protected speech, nor is publishing a lie that causes harm to someone. Also, different types of speech have different amounts of freedom. Political speech is considered different than commercial speech, which includes advertisements.

According to the American Civil Liberties Union, freedom of speech does not prevent punishing conduct that intimidates, harasses or threatens another person, even if words are used. Threatening phone calls are not constitutionally protected, for example.

3. What the First Amendment does

Middle Tennessee State University states that the First Amendment prevents against the government requiring you to say something you don't want to, or keeping you from hearing or reading the words of others, as you have the right to receive information, even if you never speak or write yourself.

USCourts,gov also states that the freedom of speech includes the right:

Not to speak, specifically, the right not to salute the flag;

Of students to wear black armbands to school to protest a war, as students do not shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate, the Supreme Court has found;

To use certain offensive words and phrases to convey political messages;

To contribute money, under specific circumstances, to political campaigns;

To advertise commercial products and professional services with some restrictions;

To engage in symbolic speech, including the burning of the flag in protest.

The First Amendment also makes it so that the government can not, through "prior restraint," block publication of any material unless it could prove that it would "surely" result in "direct, immediate and irreparable" harm to the nation, the Supreme Court found in U.S. v. New York Times. The public has a "right to know," the court found, which is essential to fully participate in democratic decision-making.

The government's claims of "national security" must always be scrutinized to make sure they are valid, according to the ACLU.

4. What about censorship?

Censorship is the suppression or prohibition of words, images or ideas that are considered offensive, obscene, politically unacceptable or a threat to security. According to the First Amendment Encyclopedia, "censors seek to limit freedom of thought and expression by restricting spoken words, printed matter, symbolic messages, freedom of association, books, art, music, movies, television programs and internet sites."

Censorship by the government, even though it appears to be becoming more common in states like Florida and Texas, is unconstitutional, according to the Carnegie Library. The First Amendment was extended to the states in the 1940s, according to Encyclopedia Britannica. When the government, either at the federal, state or local level, engages in censorship, it goes against the First Amendment rights. The Supreme Court is often called upon to ensure that First Amendment rights are being protected and could be called upon again in the future.

However, private individuals and groups may still engage in censorship. As long as government entities are not involved, this type of censorship presents no First Amendment implications. That includes censoring popular music, movies, art and television to exclude words or images that may be considered "vulgar" or "obscene." Facebook, Twitter and other social media can regulate or restrict speech hosted on their platforms because they are private entities.

The Supreme Court has previously reaffirmed the right to receive information is a fundamental right protected under the U.S. Constitution when it stated in Board of Education v. Pico in 1982 that "the right to receive ideas is a necessary predicate to the recipient's meaningful exercise of their own rights of speech, press and political freedom," according to the American Library Association.

5. The freedom to speech does not equate a freedom from consequences

While everyone is entitled to voicing their own opinions, ideas and views without interference from the government, according to North Texas Daily, what happens after statements are voiced is up to others. When people voice opinions of discrimination, be it racism, homophobia, transphobia, etc., others can voice differing opinions and call out individuals for their negative comments. Individuals can also face backlash for their comments made on social media platforms that are derogatory, racist or otherwise discriminatory.

Individuals can be held accountable for their words and actions by entities like businesses or organizations, including their employer. Hateful speech and political views are not the same thing, per North Texas Daily, as hateful speech causes emotional and mental harm to someone while political beliefs do not. Calling someone out for saying hateful statements is also within a person's freedom of speech.

People who call out others for harmful, hateful statements are not trying to promote censorship, per North Texas Daily. Individuals are entitled not to tolerate hateful rhetoric and are able to say things against it. The First Amendment was created to encourage the flow of ideas and communication between people without government interference.

An individual who does not like being called out for their negative comments can stop voicing those comments on public platforms. Once a statement is on a public platform, others have the right to comment back and condemn those statements.
Photo: (Photo : Mike Carroccetto/Getty Images)

Prince Albert police chief Jonathan Bergen has decided to suspend two officers from active duty as the investigation regarding the police handling of a domestic dispute that tragically claimed the young life of Tanner Brass continues.

The two suspended police officers responded on February 10 to a home on the 200 block of 23rd Street West in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. According to a statement by the police, both officers left the house with the young child's mother. When the police were called back to the house later that same day, they found the 13-month-old boy dead.

The incident has sparked outrage with officers from the Prince Albert Police Service under scrutiny from the mother and the public following the death of young Tanner. Indigenous leaders from the Prince Albert Grand Council (PAGC), Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nation (FSIN), and Thunderchild First Nation released a joint statement earlier this month, calling the young boy's death preventable.

Systemic racism by police to blame for Tanner Brass' death

The groups' leaders said that Brass's mother was fleeing from domestic abuse. The police officers who responded to the scene ignored her fears and call for help, instead arresting her for intoxication. The leaders added that systemic racism played a key factor in Brass's untimely death.

Brass' father had already been charged with second-degree murder in connection with the death of his son, and he is set to appear in court on March 14. Following the young child's death, Bergen turned over the matter to the Saskatchewan Public Complaints Commission (PCC) to independently investigate the police action.

Indigenous leaders demanded that the police officers and services involved in the incident be held accountable for Brass' death immediately. On Thursday, Bergen finally issued a statement confirming that the PCC had already told him the day before their investigation scope.

Read Also: Illegal Baby Names Banned in the United States and Around the World

Bergen details the scope of investigation by PCC

Bergen said that based on the PCC's analysis of the preliminary evidence available, the scope of the group's independent investigation would include a full investigation of the nature and implications of the response made by the two officers who attended the first call to the Brass residence, according to legal standards imposed on them by police conduct regulations and legislation.

According to CBC, Bergen added that he had suspended the two police officers in question pending the outcome of the PCC's independent investigation based on this information. Bergen also told reporters that further decisions regarding the matter will be "based on facts and evidence that the PCC investigation will ultimately report on."

Bergen said the PCC's independent investigation would also look into "circumstances surrounding any responsibility attributable to three senior supervisory officers" who were on shift at relevant times during the date in question. Bergen said that the Prince Albert Police Service is listening to the people they serve, and they are committed to continuing to listen to them and live up to their expectations.

Related Article: Parents Blast Luton School for Staging Murder Scene to Teach Young Students Lesson on Fingerprints
Photo: (Photo : Getty images )

Olaplex No3. Hair Perfector, the product favored by Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Kim Kardashian, and Jennifer Lopez, clarified it removed Butylphenyl methylpropional (BMHCA), also known by its trade name lilial, from its ingredients. The company is also countering false claims that authorities banned the product in Europe.

Lilial is a fragrance ingredient used in cosmetics and non-cosmetic products for years. In March 2020, the European Commission, a governing body that oversees legislation and lawmaking members, declared that BMHCA is toxic to reproduction. However, the ban on the chemical did not take effect until March 1, 2022. The E.U. and Great Britain also classified the product as carcinogenic, mutagenic, or reprotoxic (CMR) Category 1B substance.

False Claims on Tiktok and other Social Media

One popular Tiktok video shared that "Olaplex has been banned in the U.K. because it causes infertility." A narrator further explained that Olaplex is getting banned in Europe as one of its ingredients, lilial, is linked to infertility.

The Sun reported that the TikTok videos garnered millions of views, led customers to ditch the product, and sparked concerns in pregnant women after reports that the ingredients could also be harmful to fetuses.

Faye Dickinson, 29, said hearing about the product controversy made her panic as she had used the product for six years as it made her hair hydrated and in good condition.

Hospitality worker Jade Palmer, 24, admitted that the Tiktok video left her horrified. She said she was diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) when she was 15 and endometriosis recently. She said that hearing the controversy made her uneasy as all she could think of was how the shampoo might affect her in the long term.

Since 2014, Olaplex has built a reputation among fans and influencers for repairing dry and brittle hair. Its No1 Bond Multiplier and No2 Bond Perfector gathered a lot of raves due to its patented single active ingredient, bis-aminopropyl diglycol dimaleate, which treats strands damaged by bleaching. The Olaplex No3 Hair Perfector was a popular at-home treatment for bonds.

Read Also: Family of Opioid Crisis Victim Confronts Sackler Family, Owner of Oxycontin Maker, Purdue Pharma

Olaplex asserts it is now 100% lilial free

The claim, however, that Olaplex contained lilial is not without basis. Previous Olaplex No3 Rinse out product formulation used 0.0119 percent of the ingredient as a fragrance. Cosmetic and regulatory experts said that lilial is usually present in formulations at 0.1 percent concentration, and it does not directly impact fertility.

The company clarified that as of January 1, 2022, they removed lilial in its ingredients and stopped shipping the said products that contained the banned chemical. However, Olaplex company clarified that some stores may still be selling the products from old stocks of the previous formulation on their shelves.

The banned ingredient is used in cosmetics like hand creams, deodorants, and household cleaners. The reports linking lilial to infertility were from the Scientific Committee on Consumer Safety report in 2019. The O.Z. Report said that although exposure to small amounts of the chemical is harmless, compounded exposure can lead to reproductive issues such as fertility problems and damage to fetuses.

Related Article: Nigerian Mom Invents Solar-Powered Crib A'Glow for Babies with Jaundice
Photo: (Photo : PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images)

The Democrats have filed a proposal for a new form of stimulus payments issued every quarter to help Americans manage the rising gas prices.

The legislation, introduced by Rep. Ro Khanna in the House and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse in the Senate, will impose additional taxes on big oil companies that produce about 300,000 oil barrels a day. The taxes collected from their "windfall profits" will fund the new stimulus payments.

Whitehouse said in his official statement that single filers are estimated to get a $240 rebate while joint filers may receive $360. The stimulus payments will apply to those earning less than $75,000 a year for single filers or $150,000 for joint filers.

Big Oil is raking in record profits while working families are struggling to afford gas at the pump. @SenWhitehouse & I introduced the Big Oil Windfall Profits Tax Act today to stop corporate profiteering, bring gas prices down & return money directly to working Americans.  Rep. Ro Khanna (@RepRoKhanna) March 10, 2022

Khanna said that the proposal would help Americans save money while big oil companies that don't like to pay the Windfall Profits Tax would be "willing to lower prices," per Business Insider. However, deliberations on this legislation might take some time before it's signed into law. Even then, Republicans are likely to oppose another tax hike.

Read Also: Stimulus Check Fraud: California Mom Pleads Guilty to $145K Scam With Son on Death Row

Gas Vouchers Proposal Raised

On the other hand, some economists are asking lawmakers to come up with gasoline vouchers for Americans who received stimulus payments in the pandemic relief rollout from 2020 to 2021. PNC Financial Services senior economic adviser Stuart Hoffman said that $200 or $300 monthly gas vouchers would enable a family to pump at least 100 gallons.

AGF Investments' chief of U.S. policy strategist, Greg Valliere, believes that there's a realistic chance gas vouchers will earn a look at Congress and the Senate. The experts said that the current scenario has created "a perfect storm for rebates and vouchers," with 2022 being an election year and the astounding increase in gas prices.

Valliere added that the gas voucher program could also incentivize American families to use gasoline less if unused vouchers could be redeemed for cash. They can, in turn, use the money to buy food and other basic necessities.

The proposals come as the average gas price in the U.S. now comes to $4.32 a gallon as of Thursday, March 10, 2022. California has the highest gas price increase at $5.69, while Kansas has the cheapest gas price at $3.82.

The war between Russia and Ukraine has triggered the gas price increase. Russia, one of the biggest gas exporters globally, has been sanctioned for its supply of crude oil, a valuable resource in most U.S. refineries.

New Stimulus Proposal from the Republicans

Meanwhile, the Republicans are also planning to file another stimulus proposal under Sen. Mitt Romney. He plans to bring back the 2021 enhanced child tax credit payments of up to $350 per family. Romney's stimulus payment, dubbed the Family Security Act, will include a strict work requirement eligibility with families getting $350 per child per month if they have kids five years old and below and $250 per child per month for children above six years old. Pregnant moms may also get monthly stimulus payments four months before giving birth.

The Family Security Act would provide greater financial certainty for American families by modernizing antiquated federal polices into a monthly cash benefit, without adding a dime to the deficit. Heres what conservative leaders and writers are saying: https://t.co/wLhYgw4GNI  Senator Mitt Romney (@SenatorRomney) February 8, 2021

However, the Family Security Act will also include income thresholds, and families may only maximize the payments at max until $1,250. Sources said that Romney has not formally laid out the legislation as of press time, as he is still discussing ideas with both parties.

Related Article: Monthly Child Tax Credit Payments Could Return in New Plan From Sen. Mitt Romney
Photo: (Photo : MOHAMMED ABED/AFP via Getty Images)

Diagnoses of rare cancer in kids in a California community near a nuclear accident six decades ago have surpassed the projections by health experts. The families of these kids have been demanding a proper clean-up of this site for years.

In 1959, a nuclear accident at the former Santa Susana Field Laboratory (SSFL) in the Simi Hills of the San Fernando Valley triggered the release of toxic chemicals in its surrounding areas, per WebMD. Reports cited that the site, now shut down, was experimental and didn't have any containment vessel; thus, radioactive iodine, a carcinogenic chemical, has been emitting from this location.

The emission was downplayed for at least two decades until researchers from the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) studied the nuclear policies of non-government agencies for their "Committee to Bridge the Gap" report in the late 1970s. They documented data with photographs of the cracks and other emissions from the nuclear site.

Though the area was not populated, it had residential communities within a 10-mile radius. The land near the nuclear site was also used for grazing animals to supply the agricultural industry until an aviation company took over the facility in the 1990s.

Read Also: 1Voice Academy: America's First School for Kids With Cancer Opens in Florida

Parents Against Santa Susana Field Lab

Today, nearly half a million people live in this region, and close to 150,000 people are within five miles of the SSFL. In mid-2010, many parents have noticed the number of increasing cases of rare cancer in kids in their community, but doctors have found no links to these cases and the contaminated nuclear site nearby.

Mom Melissa Bumstead, who lives less than four miles from the contaminated site, has a daughter with a rare type of leukemia, and she has been fighting for the clean-up of SSFL. Her petition to call for the Department of Toxic Substance Control's action has neared the one million mark.

"Our community has up to 60 percent higher cancer rates, 20 percent higher invasive breast cancer rates," she said. "We will not be safe until the site is 100 percent cleaned up."

Mom Lauren Hammersley, whose daughter Lauren has a rare form of brain tumor, is also part of Bumstead's movement. The mothers met at the children's hospital and realized that something wasn't right when they both knew of many families in their community with cancer.

Together with other parents, Bumstead and Hammersley plotted the cancer clusters where they lived and formed a Facebook group and the Parents Against Santa Susana Field Lab movement to discuss their plan of action. Bumstead was also convinced that their families had been victims after learning that 1,500 workers from SSFL were also diagnosed with cancer.

Broken Promises from the Government

The clamor from the parents has been met with broken promises from government leaders and agencies even before the time of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. When Gov. Gavin Newsom was elected into office, California Secretary for Environmental Protection, Jared Blumenfeld, said that the total clean-up of the SSFL was a priority.

However, reports cited that the current government has been in closed-door negotiations with the companies responsible for the pollution. No clear resolutions have been laid out as of press time.

Meanwhile, MSNBC released the documentary "In the Dark of the Valley," tackling the nuclear accident and its aftermath six decades later to raise awareness about what the families are going through.

Related Article: Heartbreak as Toddler Suffering From Constipation Diagnosed With Rare Cancer
Photo: (Photo : Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)

The parents of Gabby Petito accused the father and mother of presumed killer Brian Laundrie of hampering the search for their murdered daughter and working to help him flee the United States, according to a lawsuit the family filed on Thursday, March 10.

The civil action by Nichole Schmidt and Joseph Petito was filed in Sarasota County, Florida, where Christopher and Roberta Laundrie took residence. The lawsuit did not name a specific dollar amount for potential damages they wanted to receive from the Laundries, just that it would be more than $30,000.

Petito's body was discovered in Wyoming on September 19 of last year. A coroner said that the cause of Petito's death was later ruled as a homicide as the 22-year-old victim died by "manual strangulation" at least three weeks prior.

Petito family alleges Brian Laundrie told his parents of the murder

The parents of Gabby Petito alleged in the lawsuit that Brian Laundrie told his parents about killing her around August 28. The lawsuit stated that Petito called family members almost daily while she was on a months-long van-life trip through the western part of the United States. Schmidt's last communication with her daughter transpired on August 27.

Gabby Petito's parents believed that was the day she was killed, citing a text message sent from her phone later that day. Petito's grandfather was referred to as "Stan," in that said text message, something Gabby's parents said their daughter would have never done. The lawsuit alleged that it was Brian Laundrie who sent that text.

The plaintiff's lawyer Patrick Reilly wrote that while Nichole Schmidt and Joseph Petito were desperately searching for information concerning their missing daughter, Roberta Laundrie and Christopher Laundrie were keeping the whereabouts of their son, Brian, secret, and is believed to have been making arrangements for him to leave the United States.

Read Also: Justice for Tanner Brass: Prince Albert Police Chief Suspends 2 Officers Following Death of Young Boy

The lawsuit says Laundrie's parents acted with malice

The suit also claimed that Brian pretended to be Gabby when he sent a text message to Schmidt on August 30, saying there was no service in Yosemite Park. Gabby Petito's parents claimed Laundrie sent this message to make them believe their daughter was still alive.

Police have said that Brian Laundrie arrived at his parents' home on September 1 in North Port, Florida. According to Petito and Schmidt's lawsuit, the Laundries refused to respond to law enforcement or to them when they asked whether Gabby Petito was still alive and if she was dead, and where her remains could be found.

Reilly wrote in the civil action lawsuit that Brian Laundrie's parents acted with malice or great indifference to the rights of Nichole Schmidt and Joseph Petito with their refusal to respond to their inquiries regarding the whereabouts of their daughter, as per Boston25 News.

The lawsuit states that the Laundries knew of the mental suffering of Gabby Petito's parents and knew that they could alleviate part of that anguish by disclosing details of her disappearance, but they refused to do so.

Related Article: 8 Middle School Students in Maryland, Florida Charged for Hate Crimes
Photo: (Photo : Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

For many Ukrainians, February 24 will live long in the memory. This was the date that Russia launched their invasion of Ukraine and changed their lives forever. Olesya Ostafieva talked to CNN about her escape, from spending time in a bomb shelter to traveling to neighboring Poland and now preparing to give birth in New York City in the United States.

Ostafieva was having the time of her life on February 23 after friends and family threw her a surprise baby shower in the capital city of Kyiv. They decorated Ostafieva's 25th-floor apartment with heart-shaped white and pink balloons to celebrate the soon-to-be mother.

What Ostafieva and her guests did not know at that time was that their lives were about to change for the worse just hours later. At around 5 a.m. on February 24, Russia started its military offensive in Ukraine.

Ostafieva decides to leave after maternity hospital bombed

Ostafieva quickly knew something was not right as she heard a loud explosion from her apartment. She went to the room of her sister, who was visiting for the baby shower, and asked about the noise. Ostafieva's sister told her it was bombs, an answer that shook her to the core. Panic set in for Ostafieva, who was nearly nine months pregnant.

At first, Ostafieva thought the invasion would be over quickly and that their lives would immediately return back to normal. Ostafieva planned to stay in her Kyiv apartment and was getting ready for baby Kyra's arrival. Ostafieva said she already had a contract with the best maternity hospital in Kyiv for her impending birth.

That was all a dream, though, for Ostafieva as the shelling and the bombing continued across Ukraine. To make matters worse for her, the maternity hospital that was supposed to take care of her was bombed by Russian forces.

With the fighting showing no signs of stopping, Ostafieva decided to escape to Poland alongside her sister and her dog Casper. The sisters drove in bumper-to-bumper traffic for about 10 hours a day for four days to get to the Polish border. With Ostafieva leaving everything she had purchased for baby Kyra behind in Kyiv, she had to resort to buying used baby clothes in Western Ukraine during their four-day trip.

Read Also: Mother Tells UN of Struggles She Faced While Giving Birth in Ukraine Amid Russia Invasion

Ostafieva vows to return to Ukraine with baby Kyra

Ostafieva's journey did not end in Poland as her friend, Anna Arima, convinced her to make a visit to New York and deliver her child there. Armed with a valid visa from her previous visit to the United States, Ostafieva decided to meet up with her friend. She brought along the clothes she bought in Ukraine as a remembrance for the war and the stress that she endured in her country.

Ostafieva knows she is among the lucky ones who managed to escape Ukraine and will give birth in a safe place. There are many pregnant mothers stuck back home who have to navigate the war engulfing Ukraine. Once Ostafieva gives birth to baby Kyra, she plans to return to Poland to reunite with her dog and sister and eventually raise her child in Ukraine, the place she calls home.

Related Article: War in Ukraine Puts Spotlight on Country's Surrogate Mothers
SEOUL, March 14 (Xinhua) -- South Korea's health authorities said Monday that it will administer COVID-19 vaccines to children aged 5-11 later this month to tackle the spread of the Omicron variant.

The two-dose vaccine, developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, will be given to the minors from March 31, with a lower dose of 10 micrograms than 30 micrograms for those aged 12 or above, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA).

The agency said the spread of the highly-contagious Omicron variant recently raised the number of COVID-19 cases in the age group as well as hospitalizations and deaths.

The KDCA noted that the vaccination aimed to prevent hospitalizations and deaths in the age group of around 3.07 million, strongly recommending the inoculation for the high-risk minors with underlying diseases.

Teenagers aged 12-17, who completed the two-dose vaccination at least three months earlier, will be allowed from Monday to receive a third booster shot.

Schools here reopened earlier this month, fueling worry about cluster infections among students.

In the latest tally, the country reported 309,790 new COVID-19 cases for the past 24 hours, raising the total number of infections to 6,866,222. The daily caseload hovered above 300,000 for the third consecutive day. 
You have permission to edit this collection.

Edit Close
The UK governments development finance institution, CDC Group, as part of its five-year strategy will invest up to 2billion per annum, beginning this year, in some critical sectors of the economy.



In an interview with the B&FT, CDCs Coverage Director for Ghana, Kwabena Asante-Poku, indicated CDC will offer patient capital which will be channelled into investments that will drive significant development impact. Its three key strategic objectives focus on Productive, Sustainable and Inclusive development.



In Ghana, we want to partner with businesses in job-creating sectors, back innovative industries and those that can promote the countrys green growth and sustainable future. We will also collaborate to increase funding to businesses and entrepreneurs whose services can positively impact women, youth, and marginalised groups, the Coverage Director said.



We invest in the following sectors: infrastructure, financial services, manufacturing, agriculture, real estate, technology and other services. Our investments will also focus on three primary themes in Ghana: SME development, gender finance, and climate finance, he emphasized.



CDC is a central part of the UKs offer to help developing and emerging countries meet their significant financing needs for infrastructure and enterprise.



CDCs portfolio of investments



CDCs portfolio of investments in Ghana has grown to over US$160million, and it currently works with 43 pioneering companies across the country that employ over 11,500 people.



The development finance institutions partnership with Ghana began with investments toward building new roads through the Coast Construction Company Limited in 1959. Over the years, CDC has supported Ghanas private sector development through its investment partners such as Africa Infrastructure Investment Managers, AfricInvest, 8 Miles, and Helios Investment Partners, among others, and close collaborations with private equity fund managers with a local presence in the Ghanaian market.



In 2019, we made a US$20million commitment to Verod Capitals Growth Fund III, supporting SME development in Nigeria and Ghana. In the same year, we also committed US$15million to PEG Solar, Mr. Asante-Poku mentioned.



The company provides financing for pay-as-you-go solar power home systems and solar water irrigation to communities that do not have access to the grid in West Africa.



Climate Change



Our focus on climate change mitigation through supporting sustainable forestry is most powerfully demonstrated by CDCs initial investment in Miro Forestry in 2015. Since then, the company has expanded its plantations and operations, Mr. Asante-Poku said.



This has supported about 2,000 direct jobs in Ghana and Sierra Leone, and countless indirect jobs in places like Drabonso and Sekyere Afram Plains.



He revealed that CDC partnered with Miro due to the businesss high sustainability standards and the impact its operations can have on helping to reduce climate change and increase local employment.



As we prepare to become British International Investment (BII) on April 4, 2022, our strategy will emphasise the benefits of impact investing and share the highest levels of ethics, standards and transparency with our partners, along with British values, he said.

Source: B&FT









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
The Energy Minister, Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh, met with the United States Deputy Secretary, Department of Energy, Mr. David M. Turk on the sidelines of CERAWeek currently taking place in Houston, Texas.



Their discussions revolved around Ghana and USA Government cooperation in navigating Energy Transition and creating pathways for mutual interest in the energy sector.



Dr. Prempeh assured the Deputy Secretary of Ghanas eagerness to meet our transition goals with much emphasis on gas and used the opportunity to invite investors into Ghanas nuclear energy sector.



Even though the risk in investing in Africa is high, the gains and returns are much higher for any investor. Ghana provides a stable, peaceful and investor-friendly country to guarantee the safety of your investments Dr. Prempeh stressed.



Mr. Turk used the opportunity to welcome Dr. Prempeh and the Ghanaian delegation to the United States and expressed his countrys readiness to support the transition agenda.



In attendance from the Ministry of Energy were the Director, Legal, Ms Sarah Fafa Kpodo and Mr. Benjamin Asante, Director of Petroleum. Mr. Egbert Faibille Jnr the CEO of the Petroleum Commission was also present.

Source: King Edward Ambrose Washman Addo/peacefmonline.com/ghana









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
Nigerian student Samuel Otunla sounds exhausted in the voice note he sent the BBC after managing to leave Ukraine.



He recorded the message after getting his first decent sleep in three days, following some 60 hours of travelling as he made it from the eastern city of Sumy across the border in the west into Hungary.



He began the evacuation journey, which involved a bus, a train, and then another bus, on Tuesday with other international students.



Otunla had previously told the BBC about how traumatized he was after spending much of the previous 10 days in a basement.



In the latest voice message, he says that on the night before he left there was an explosion a kilometre away from his university campus.



"It was so loud that we actually thought it was our building that was hit. We heard the swooshing sound of the rocket as it went past and the building was just shaking.



"It is sad, it is crazy what is happening."



But the veterinary student wants to emphasize how much he enjoyed being in Ukraine.



"Ukraine has been home for us... we really loved this country and we didn't want to leave it. It was a peaceful place to live in and we had a very nice studying environment."

Source: BBC









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
CIMAF Cement Ghana, one of the leading cement manufacturers in Ghana has donated a truck load cement to Toase Senior High School in the Ashanti Region as part of their corporate social responsibility towards the state.



The Director of Sales and Marketing of CIMAF Ghana, Mr. Joseph Kobina Aboo said education has been one of their focus areas as an organization especially to help train future leaders of the country.



According to him, the workforce of any organization was once trained by these educational institutions as well as the society, hence the need to help them to deliver quality training to the next crop of leaders.



"Every organization in this country has the objective to give back to the society, so with this support, it is our expectation that it will bring some change to the school, thus, enable them to accommodate extra students," he said.



He explained that, when conducive environment is not created for students to study, many will be discouraged from pursuing their future career.



The Board Chairman of the School who is also the Director for Electoral Services at the Electoral Commission of Ghana, Dr. Serebour Quaicoe was very grateful for the gesture since the donation will facilitate the completion of some ongoing school infrastructural projects in the school.



The Atwima Nwabiagya Municipal Education Director, Mrs. Juliana Essel-Cudjoe also praised CIMAF Ghana for the kind gesture.

Source: Isaac Kwame Owusu/Peacefmonline/[email protected]









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
The Minister for Lands and Natural Resources, Hon. Samuel A. Jinapor has on Monday, 14th March 2022 received the findings and recommendations of the Prof. Amankwah led 5-member Committee to review the Health and Safety regime for the Mining industry.



Having received the report, Hon. Jinapor said the government will thoroughly study the report and pursue to the latter, the findings and recommendations provided by the team.



"Government is going to take the findings and recommendations of this report very seriously and we are going to pursue them to the latter. Of course, we will study the report and make our own conclusions and views about the content of the report"



"I have no doubt that if not all, most of the findings and recommendations which have been made by this Committee will be taken on board and implemented" he indicated.



Hon. Jinapor added that considering the expertise of the Committee chair and members, he is confident that the findings of the reports provided will indeed be an invaluable asset that will guide matters to do with the health and safety regime of the mining sector in Ghana.



He said these recommendations are going to be implemented to ensure that the Appiatse incident does not reoccur.

"What we want to ensure is a mining sector which is fit for purpose, which is serving the people, contributing to the national economy and which is safe so that we do not have a recurrent of what occurred at Appiatse and that's exactly what we want to forestall" he stressed.



The Minister reiterated the commitment of the President Akufo-Addo government, to be utterly transparent in the management of the Lands and Natural Resources of the country saying that the Ministry will continue to serve the nation in the context of the best standards of integrity and fidelity.



Hon. Samuel A. Jinapor on behalf of the Government expressed his profound gratitude to the Committee for the extensive work done.



"We couldn't have assembled a better team than we did giving the expertise the five of you bring to the table. The expertise of diverse areas with enormous experience from your various fields. We are very grateful for such extensive work done"



Presenting the report, the Chairman of the Committee, Prof. Richard Amankwah who doubles as Vice-Chancellor of the George Grant University of Mines and Technology ( UMaT) disclosed that they sent out 20 letters to various entities and professional bodies to source out information which will aid their investigative work to which some responded.



He added that to get the job done, they also engaged certain captains in the industry who gave presentations to the Committee on explosives, fire suppression, and systems to track the movement of explosives in the country.



He said he believes that the findings and recommendations made are broadly appropriate, however considering the dynamic nature of the mining industry, it will be suitable if these findings are reconsidered every now and then and tweaked to bring it up to speed to the changing trends of the industry.



Prof. Amankwah said he is of the belief that the recommendations they have made in various respects will make the regulatory framework more amenable in managing the health and safety dimensions of the mining sector.



The Lands Minister set up this committee on 7th February 2022 following the Appiatse explosion incident which claimed thirteen (13) lives and destroyed the entire Appiatse community.



The other members of the Committee are Prof. Grace Ofori-Sarpong, a professor representing the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences, Ms. Effie Oppong-Fosu, an association representing the Ghana Bar Association, Mr. Benjamin Aryee, a former Chief Executive Officer of the Minerals Commission, and Mr Kwesi Enyan, a former Inspector of Mines, and a former Managing Director of AngloGold Ashanti.

Source: Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
Kennedy Agyapongs television station, Net 2 TV, has run an expose on top police officers in the Ghana Police Service who are in the pockets of armed robbers.



According to Kwaku Annan of The Seat program, these oficers are on the payroll of armed robbers and allow them to do whatever they want without arresting them.



He claims the rot goes very high in the police service and called on the Inspector General of Police (IGP), George Akuffo Dampare, to come personally for them to help him because they cannot trust his men.



Speaking in an animated segment on the show, Kweku Annan mentioned the names of top armed robbers in the country who are allowed to roam scot free by police.



According to him, these Nigerian armed robbers have come to Ghana and taken over because they have a free reign here.



Annan alleged that some top police officers are on the armed robbers payroll and receive as much as Ghc 10,000 every month from them.



In exchange for the cash, the police allow them to go about with their robberies in peace, Annan alleged.



He revealed the relationship between the police and armed is so deep that the armed robbers are even allowed to fund the building of police stations in some areas.



The unbelievable expose comes at a time when the story of crime in the police service has captured the public interest.



Recently, some police officers were arrested for being the mastermind behind some of the bullion van robberies we hear about.



The rot goes deep, to the very top of the service, Annan alleges in the video.



Watch it below

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Gossip_Man (@akonkonsafuor)

Source: ghanacelebrities.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
An American journalist has reportedly been shot dead by Russian soldiers in Ukraine.



Brent Renaud, 51, was killed in the town of Irpin near Kyiv, while another journalist also injured in the shooting.



Andrey Nebitov, the head of the Kyiv region police, said the 51-year-old filmmaker "paid his life" for reporting on the invasion.



He said: "A 51-year-old world-renowned media correspondent was shot in Irpin today. Another journalist is injured. Now they are trying to remove the victim from the war zone.



"Of course, the profession of a journalist is a risk, but US citizen Brent Renaud paid his life for trying to highlight the aggressor's ingenuity, cruelty and ruthlessness."



In a statement, the New York Times said: "We are deeply saddened to hear of Brent Renaud's death. Brent was a talented filmmaker who had contributed to the New York Times over the years.



"Though he had contributed to the Times in the past (most recently in 2015), he was not on assignment for any desk at the Times in Ukraine.



"Early reports circulated that he worked for the Times circulated because he was wearing a Times press badge that had been issued for an assignment many years ago."



A tweet by Kyiv police appeared to show images of the award-winning journalist's documentation including what looked to be a passport, press badge and allegedly a picture of him injured.



The tweet read: "URGENT! In Irpin, the Russian occupiers have just shot the international journalists of the New York Times! One killed, one wounded. Now militiamen try to take out the victim from a combat zone."









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
Ms Beatrice Davies Guichard, a nurse at the Dialysis Unit of the Effia Nkwanta Regional Hospital has reminded Ghanaians of the critical role the kidney plays in human existence and the need to take proper care of the organ.



The kidney, which she described as a bean-like object in the human body could either be one or two and was responsible for generating blood, removal of urine and other waste, bone strength and the control of the body's PH- (acid or alkaline).



Ms Guichard in an interview with the GNA to mark World Kidney Day, said that the kidney was critical in blood production, while the heart only circulated and that it was imperative to avoid certain lifestyle practices that might endanger it.



The kidney, she explained had two main forms of failure, acute and chronic, and described the acute as, one of an unexpected happening that may arise because of excessive bleeding, while the chronic condition took time to develop.



The chronic state according to the Nurse, had five stages with stages one to three showing zero symptoms and stages four and five only detected after one was hit by disease or sickness.



She mentioned some predisposing factors such as excess salt intake, excess proteins and the use of pain killers among other things.



The Nurse in charge of the Dialysis unit Effia Nkwanta Regional Hospital also called on people with known conditions such as diabetes and high blood pressure to follow prescribed medications and embark on regular checkups.



She advised that people should drink more water, avoid alcohol and other lifestyles practices that could put a strain on the kidneys and affect its proper functioning or becoming diseased.

Source: GNA









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
A pregnant woman whose image went viral after Russian President Vladimir Putins forces attacked a Ukrainian hospital has died along with her baby, medics say.



On 9 March 2022, the Russian Air Force bombed Maternity Hospital No 3, a hospital complex functioning both as a children's hospital and maternity ward in Mariupol, Ukraine, killing at least three people and injuring at least seventeen



Pictures of the unnamed mother-to-be in agony as she was carried from the Mariupol hospital stunned the world last week after an attack on . The woman was rushed to another hospital, closer to the frontline, where doctors worked to keep her alive.



But realising she was losing her baby, medics said that she cried out to them: 'Kill me now.'



This morning the doctors trying to save them both spoke of the huge efforts trying to save them.



Surgeon Timur Marin found the woman's pelvis crushed and hip detached. Medics delivered the baby via caesarean section, but it showed 'no signs of life', the surgeon said. They then began work on the mother.



'More than 30 minutes of resuscitation of the mother didn't produce results,' Mr Marin said on Saturday. 'Both died.'



After Wednesday's airstrike, medics did not have time to get the woman's name before her husband and father came to take away her body.



Someone came to retrieve her, they said so she that she doesn't end up in the mass graves being dug for the victims of Vladimir Putins forces.









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
The Police on Sunday closed the road near Suhum on the Accra-Kumasi Highway (N6), after a fatal accident at Asuboi involving a Universe commercial bus and a stationary 40-footer-container loaded with wood.

The accident claimed the lives of nine passengers.



The Police in a public notice said the Suhum District MTTD Accident Prevention Squad (APS) had cordoned off the scene and was assisting motorists.



Emergency crew, including Road Safety Management Service Limited, are on-site assisting to remove the vehicle from the road to pave way for traffic flow.



"Meanwhile, all motorists approaching are advised to be cautious. Further update will be communicated in due course," the notice said.





Public Notice!



There is a fatal accident at Asuboi, near Suhum on the Accra-Kumasi Highway (N6), involving a Universe commercial bus and a stationary 40-footer-container loaded with wood in which 9 passengers have died and leading to the closure of the road. pic.twitter.com/ubU0ukbFZw  Ghana Police Service (@GhPoliceService) March 13, 2022











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.

Featured Video
A senior state attorney, Hilda Craig has pleaded with the Tema High Court to deny the bail application of #FixTheCountry convener, Oliver Barker-Vormawor.



Vehemently opposing the bail application by lawyers for the Cambridge University PhD student, Hilda Craig argued that the accused does not have a fixed place of abode in the country.



He lodges with friends, hes not regularly in the country, she told Justice Daniel Mensah.

The state attorney said the applicants (Oliver Vormawor) conduct while in custody left much to be desired and maintained that he cannot be trusted to assist with investigations.



But lead counsel for Mr. Vormawor, lawyer Akoto Ampaw argued that there was no evidence to back claims that his client had the capacity and was prepared to carry out his reckless statement. He noted that the accuseds comments could best be described as loose talk borne from youthful exuberance.



He said Mr Vormawors statement was a conditional phrase, adding that, with the E-levy not having been passed, the treason felony charge imposed is simply a charge by the state to prevent the granting of bail.



Citing Section 96(1) and 96(4) the Criminal and other offences (Procedure Act), Act 30 , he prayed the court not to use bail as punishment for his client.



Section 96(4) provides that, a Court shall not withhold or withdraw bail merely as a punishment.



Lawyer Akoto Ampaw further argued that Oliver Barker-Vormawor posed no flight risk since his passport was in the possession of the prosecution.



But Hilda Craig rebutted counsels submissions, noting that although his passport had been confiscated, he could leave the country using unapproved routes as has been observed by several Ghanaians.



When Justice Daniel Mensah enquired why a lawyer and PhD student would jeopardise his career and status, Hilda Craig explained that the gravity of the charge against could propel him to do so.



Justice Daniel Mensah, after hearing both parties noted that the courts mind is made up but will need time to make a detailed ruling.



The case has been adjourned to Wednesday, March 16, 2022, for the ruling.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by   (@utvghana)















Source: UTV/3news.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
The First Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Joseph Osei-Owusu, says he has been vindicated by the ruling of the Supreme Court on whether presiding Deputy Speakers have voting rights and can form a quorum.



The MP for Bekwai said the ability of presiding Deputy Speakers to form a quorum has always been a legal provision, but had never been activated in previous parliaments because of the clear difference in the past between the the two main political parties.



Engaging the press in Parliament after the ruling, Osei-Owusu said: Im glad that the decision practically affirms the position I took. Theres still some misrepresentation as to whether I participated in the vote itself on the night of 30 January; that, I must emphasise, anybody who is in doubt can go back and look at the clip.



It was a voice vote and I did not participate in the voice vote. But I insisted that I should be counted as a Member of Parliament present to constitute the quorum before the decision was taken.



Indeed, this decision [the Supreme Court ruling of 9 March affirms that position that I took. I find that very refreshing.



Matters that have never arisen are now in the fore because of the numbers we have in the chambers, so any time theres disagreement, as Ive said already, Ill interpret the rule and the law as I understand it.



I encourage people who disagree with me to boldly state their position and, if need be, refer it to the appropriate body [such as] the Supreme Court to guide us.





A seven-member Supreme Court panel presided over by Justice Jones Victor Mawulorm Dotse has declared, unanimously, that the two deputy Speakers of Parliament remain Members of Parliament when they are presiding and that they can vote and be counted as present for the purposes of decision-making in the House.



The Supreme Court ruled that Order 109 (3) of the Standing Orders of Parliament, which states that a Deputy Speaker or any other member presiding shall not retain his original vote while presiding, is unconstitutional and struck out the order as unconstitutional.



The court further ruled that the full reasons for its decision will be filed at the Registry of the Court by close of day on Friday 11 March 2022.



Plaintiffs case

Justice Abdulai, a law lecturer at the University of Professional Studies, Accra (UPSA), brought the matter for consideration at the Supreme.



He instituted the court action, seeking a declaration by the Supreme Court that it was unconstitutional for the First Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Joseph Osei-Owusu, to have counted himself for the purpose of making up the quorum of half of the Members of Parliament (MPs), required by Article 104 (1), when Parliament approved the 2022 Budget Statement and Economic Policy of Government on 30 November 2021.









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
Aspiring Central Regional Chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Ben Aryeh has thrown his weight behind the Supreme Court ruling regarding the voting right of Deputy Speaker acting in lieu of the Speaker of Parliament.



The Supreme Court, on Wednesday, March 9, 2022, settled this contentious issue as a seven member panel unanimously ruled that a Deputy Speaker can partake in the voting in Parliament.



The verdict was made to bring a finality to the dispute about whether or not the Deputy Speaker of Parliament, when sitting in for the Speaker, can also exercise his right to vote as a Member of Parliament.



This contentious matter before the House resulted in the members on both sides trading blows when the Deputy Speaker, Joseph Osei Owusu, acting as Speaker, in November last year decided to hand over to the Second Deputy Speaker in order to join a quorum and cast his vote on the 2022 budget by the Akufo-Addo government.



The verdict said "Deputy Speaker is entitled to be counted as a member of Parliament for quorum" and can also "vote and take part in the decision of parliament".



However, some critics and members of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) have registered their displeasure with the court ruling.



They have described the ruling as a travesty of justice.



Dissenting Views



Former President John Mahama described the ruling as "shocking but not surprising" and dreaded the Apex Court is setting a "dangerous precedent of judicial interference in Parliamentary procedure for the future".



Also Member of Parliament for Ningo-Prampram, Sam Nartey George calls it a sham, tweeting "the sham called Justice delivery in our Republic. Despicable!''



Seasoned journalist Kwesi Pratt also backs the critics stressing the constitution gives every Ghanaian the right to comment on their ruling.



''The Supreme Court is not a divine institution. Supreme Court is a creation of the constitution. The constitution also gives us the right to review its provisions. We can even rewrite the constitution. The people of Ghana, the sovereign people of Ghana, they are the ultimate decision makers in everything including judicial matters. In fact, the continued existence of the Supreme Court is subject to the will of the sovereign people of Ghana'', he said on Peace FM's morning show ''Kokrokoo'' on Friday, March 11.



President Akufo-Addo's Take



The President of the Republic, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo also sharing his thoughts on the ruling asserted that should the Deputy Speaker be ''denied the right to vote, [it will mean] it is tantamount to denying the right of the people you represent to have a say in the decision of the Assembly. That will not be right. So, I couldn't understand all this furore and controversy artificially generated''.



''I'm astonished about how much public energy has been wasted, I say so with the greatest of respect, been wasted in an area on an issue where there is so much clarity and I'm happy that the court...the Supreme Court, when it is declaring the meaning of the constitution and it does so unanimously. That is the most emphatic way in which the court can pronounce!'', he added.



Only Speaker Takes Oath



Contributing to the Friday edition of Kokrokoo, Ben Aryeh shared similar sentiments with the President over the brouhaha surrounding the Supreme Court verdict.



Speaking to host Kwami Sefa Kayi, Hon. Ben Aryeh explained that the oath of the Speaker of Parliament is taken by only the person elected by the House as the substantive Speaker, therefore any other person who sits in for him is never the Speaker but rather acting in his stead.



This, he expounded, is a proof that the Deputy Speakers remain Members of Parliament even when acting as Speaker, so have the right to vote in the House.



''We have a Speaker who takes an oath as the Speaker. He is the only person who takes such oath. All other members of the House swear the oath of Members of Parliament including those who, temporarily, assume the role of the Speaker. When they assume that role, they don't swear any oath as the Speaker. That is why they don't retire on their Speaker's benefit or like the Speaker who retires on his salary and what have you. The Members of Parliament who act as Deputies are treated as Members of Parliament and that is it'', he affirmed.



He also cautioned Parliamentarians speaking against the ruling to desist from it, stressing ''that House is an honorable House...So, they who have got the opportunity to serve in that House should accord that respect, dignity to that House''.





Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
The Supreme Court by a unanimous decision settled this contentious issue ruling on Wednesday that a "Deputy Speaker is entitled to be counted as a member of Parliament for quorum" and can as well "vote and take part in the decision of parliament".



The landmark ruling was given after private legal practitioner, Justice Abdulai, filed a case against the Attorney-General to contest the First Deputy Speaker Joseph Osei-Owusus decision to count himself during a vote to approve the 2022 budget.



The apex court also struck down Order 109(3) of the Standing Orders of Parliament as unconstitutional.



Reacting to this, the Minority leader of Parliament, Haruna Iddrisu described the ruling as judicial support for the controversial E-levy.



This is a judicial support of President Nana Akufo-Addos E-Levy that he is labouring to pass, he said.



This comment has been widely supported by the National Democratic Congress (NDC)



Former Member of Parliament (MP) for Ayensuano constituency, Samuel Ayeh-Paye reacting to this position on Peace FM's morning show 'Kokrokoo': "If I'm a government in power and I know I need this E-levy to help run my administration but some people are blocking the way, and there's a legal means to get the bill passed, I'll explore it...."



Listen to him in the video below





Source: Peacefmonline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
Head of Monitoring Unit of the Forestry Commission, Charles Owusu has called for a ceasefire over the Supreme Court ruling which legitimizes the Deputy Speaker's role as a Member of Parliament when presiding over proceedings in the House in lieu of the Speaker.



The Supreme Court, on Wednesday, unanimously ruled that a "Deputy Speaker is entitled to be counted as a member of Parliament for quorum" and can "vote and take part in the decision of Parliament".



However, there's been intense opposition from the Minority in Parliament and some members of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) against the verdict.



To Ex-President John Mahama, the Supreme Court, by this verdict, has set a ''dangerous precedent of judicial interference in Parliamentary procedure for the future".



Ningo-Prampram MP, Sam George also describes the ruling as despicable, tweeting "the sham called Justice delivery in our Republic. Despicable!''



Charles Owusu, speaking on Peace FM's ''Kokrokoo'', countered the objections raised against the verdict.



To him, the Supreme Court Judges have effectively done their job as Justices hearing the case, so wondered why there is too much noise about the ruling.



Questioning the critics, he asked ''are they (Judges) not there because of the law we're talking about? Their job is about the law. Apart from pronouncing the law, what does the Supreme Court Judge do again?''



Charles Owusu further asked; ''When Joe Osei Owusu acts as Speaker, does he lose his membership as MP? So what is this? If he doesn't become a Member of Parliament, how can he become a Deputy of Speaker? In the first place, until the law is changed, if you are not a Member of Parliament, how can you be a Deputy Speaker? So, how does he lose his membership as a Member of Parliament?''



To him, the opposition is treating the Supreme Court Judges as if they ''Sunday school teachers'', cautioning them to desist from it.





Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
Mr Justice Abdulai, a private legal practitioner and plaintiff in the case that sought for the Supreme Court's interpretation on the voting rights of Deputy Speakers of Parliament when presiding, says he will go for a review.



He claimed the ruling on the interpretation of Articles 102 and 104 of the 1992 Constitution of Ghana by the highest court of the country was not definite on the Deputy Speakers casting vote when the need arose on the floor of the House.



The apex court on Wednesday, March 9, ruled that Deputy Speakers presiding over proceedings in Parliament had the right to vote on matters and to be counted as part of the quorum for decision-making in Parliament.



The decision was greeted with disagreement by the Minority Members of Parliament (MPS), as well as the 2020 Presidential Candidate of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Mr John Dramani Mahama.



Mr Mahama said the decision by the court affected the independence of the legislative arm of government and may affect deliberations in the House.



Commenting on the ruling, Mr Abdulai, said: "This issue about the Deputy Speaker and the substantive Speaker being one, and the same, is something that I thought the Supreme Court should have made a firm pronouncement on it."



He said that should have been done because both the Constitution and the Standing Orders of Parliament affirmed that whoever acted in the stead of the Speaker was still a substantive Speaker, therefore, had no voting right.



He said: "The Constitution says that whoever occupies a position (whether in an acting or Deputy) has the same powers and authorities as the substantive one. The Standing Orders reaffirms this same position that the Deputy Speaker is the same or occupies the same position or function as the Speaker.



He added that: Because of this difficulty, I expected a more pronouncement on those matters by the Supreme Court to put a finality to that part of it. A firm pronouncement from the Supreme Court would have put some level of clarity and finality to the disagreements that are presently ongoing."



The Law Lecturer said he found a lot of grounds to go for the review, noting that though the issue of casting vote was not captured as part of the reliefs, he had filed additional memorandum on the issues.



He stated that: "In their own judgment, they felt probably it wasn't borne out of the reliefs that I was seeking so they refused to grant it. That's fair and part of the legal processes."



Mr Abdulai made the remarks during a media engagement on Saturday on the aftermath of the Supreme Court's ruling.



For his part, Mr Rockson-Nelson Dafeamekpor, MP for South Dayi, said the Court's ruling, allowing Speakers to vote while presiding was an attack on Parliament and its structures.



On the same issue, the MP for Akuapim South, Osei Bonsu Amoah, said; "If Parliament passes any law that contravenes the Constitution, the Supreme Court can always shoot it down."



The landmark judgment was given after private legal practitioner, Justice Abdulai, filed a case against the Attorney-General to contest the First Deputy Speaker, Joseph Osei-Owusu's decision to count himself during a vote to approve the 2022 budget.

Source: GNA









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
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.
Legal practitioner, Captain Retired Nkrabea Effah Dartey, has said that he is surprised the Dean of the University of Ghana School of Law, Prof. Raymond Atuguba has not been invited by the police over his coup comments.



He should be arrested by now, the former military capo said in an interview with NEAT FMs morning show, Ghana Montie.



Prof. Atugubas looming coup comments came at a forum organised by Solidare Ghana on Tuesday.



We do not want a coup in this country. Yet, I fear that if we do not act quickly, we may have one on our hands very soon, he said whiles expressing concern about Ghanas current socio-economic conditions.



However, Captain Retired Nkrabea Effah Dartey said Ghana is not ready for a coup regardless of the hardship.



These coup comments in recent times are not the best. We have to build a culture to let the citizens have confidence in the constitution. Coup is out of the question, completely out of the equation. Never! he lamented.

Source: King Edward Ambrose Washman Addo/peacefmonline.com/ghana









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
BEIJING, March 14 (Xinhua) -- The Russia-Ukraine conflict continues on Monday as relevant parties are working to broker a peaceful solution. Following are the latest developments of the situation:

Russian and Ukrainian delegations will resume talks on Monday via video link, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Sunday.

"Negotiations go non-stop in the format of video conferences. Working groups are constantly functioning. A large number of issues require constant attention. On Monday, March 14, a negotiating session will be held to sum up the preliminary results," Mykhailo Podoliak, advisor to the Head of the President's Office of Ukraine, tweeted on Sunday night.

- - - -

External electricity supplies have been restored at Ukraine's Chernobyl nuclear power plant, four days after its disconnection from the power grid, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Sunday.

Ukraine's regulatory authorities told the IAEA that Ukrainian specialist teams repaired one of the two damaged power lines at Chernobyl on Sunday, enabling all required off-site power to be delivered to the plant, the United Nations nuclear watchdog said in a daily statement.

The plant will be connected to the Ukrainian electricity grid on Monday morning, according to Ukraine's regulator.

"This is a positive development as the Chernobyl nuclear power plant has had to rely on emergency diesel generators for several days now," the IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi said. "However, I remain gravely concerned about safety and security at Chernobyl and Ukraine's other nuclear facilities."

- - - -

Near half of Russia's roughly 640 billion U.S. dollars of gold and foreign currency reserves has been frozen, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said Sunday.

Siluanov said on a Russian TV program that Russia will pay roubles to its debt holders.

He said that the current conflict in Ukraine has not been easy for Russian financial institutions. Still, the country's capital reserves have made it possible for banks under severe restrictions to function.

"Of course, we have enough money to ensure the production of vital goods. The Central Bank will provide the necessary liquidity to the financial system," he said.

- - - -

Explosions were heard on Sunday in Ukraine's western city of Lviv at about 6 a.m. local time (0400 GMT).

Earlier in the day, air raid alerts went off in Lviv at 3:30 a.m. local time, with residents rushing to bomb shelters for security. 
Sam Grafton Denied Second EPT Prague Title as Rodrigo Selouan Wins 25,000 Single-Day High Roller IV (318,370)

March 14, 2022 Mike Patrick

The fourth edition of the 25,000 Single Day High Roller at PokerStars EPT Prague tournament took over 14 hours to complete. The single-day event attracted 39 entries to generate a prize pool of 936,390, the largest of the series so far.

Taking home the Spadie Trophy and the 318,370 grand prize was Rodrigo Selouan of Curitiba, Brazil. Mainly online player, Selouan secured his first cash in Europe in style with a score that is almost ten times greater than his total registered career poker earnings thus far (~$34,000). The best of which was for $12,578, coming when he won a $300 buy-in Venetian Deepstack Extravaganza event in 2018.

Selouan was steady all day, being a constant presence among the top of the counts without ever being the true big stack until very late in the night. After his victory, Selouan was mobbed by his fellow Brazilian players and friends and celebrated by posting some social media messages to some Brazilian fans as he was now an EPT champion.

Final 25,000 Single-Day High Roller IV Results

Place Player Country Prize Money 1 Rodrigo Selouan Brazil 318,370 2 Sam Grafton United Kingdom 220,050 3 Sirzat Hissou Germany 140,460 4 Orpen Kisacikoglu Turkey 107,680 5 Timothy Adams Canada 84,280 6 Johan Guilbert France 65,550

How To Qualify For the $10M Gtd Sunday Million From $0.50

Event Recap

The day would begin with everyone seemingly in great spirits, as the early stages of the day was full of talkative play and joking around amongst the players. The entries would peak with 26 players playing at one time shortly after the dinner break and with several players re-buying.

The 39 entries was comprised of 27 unique entrants, including Charlie Carrel, who made a surprise appearance.

There would be a furious flurry of eliminations after dinner as the field shrank from four tables down to just one in only one segment between breaks.

The tension would soon dial-up as the speed of play dialed down. The chatter went away, and the players became far more deliberate and careful in decisions as the field reached the final table of eight. It would take over two hours to eliminate Juan Pardo and eventually Stephen Chidwick in seventh as he became the bubble boy for the second consecutive 25k Single Day High Roller.

From there the eliminations happened fairly quickly with Johan Guilbert going out in sixth place after making the long trek over from the Wynn Millions in Las Vegas. Timothy Adams followed him out the door in fifth after being a short stack for much of the day and at one point was as short as a measly couple of big blinds at 10,000.

Orpen Kisacikoglu started the day very well and was the big chip leader in the early goings, being the first player to go over a million. His river would run dry after the bubble burst as he lost some key flips and was sent out in fourth place.

Play would again slow down three-handed as the remaining players traded chips. Selouan had the big advantage to start but would be clipped by the runner-runner flush of Sirzat Hissou to put everyone at even again.

Rodrigo Selouan and his support

Selouan would get his revenge not long afterwards as he returned the favor with a runner-runner flush of his own to bust Hissou in third place, who made his second cash in a row in a 25k event.

Heads-up play was a temporary affair as Sam Grafton was going for his second EPT Title of the series after taking down the opening bounty event. He would not be able to gain much traction at all as Selouan made quick work of him in five hands to take the title.

Enjoy EPT Prague With a $600 Bonus

New depositing PokerStars customers can claim a welcome bonus worth up to $600. Download PokerStars via PokerNews, create your free online poker account, and decide how much you want to deposit. Your deposit is matched 100% up to $600 in the form of a bonus. Your first three deposits in the first 60-days after making your first deposit are matched up to a combined total of $600.

The bonus releases into your playable balance in $10 increments each time you generate 180 redemption points, which in turn are earned at a rate of five per $1 contributed to the cash game rake or spent on tournament fees (6.5 points per 1, 5.5 points per 1, and four points per CAD$).

Sharelines Stephen Chidwick bubbled a consecutive EPT high roller as Selouan claimed his fist Spadie.
Charlie Carrel: "It Doesnt Hurt To Be Lucky"

March 14, 2022 Matthew Pitt Editor

Charlie Carrel has enjoyed some fantastic tournament results while in Prague, Czech Republic over the years. The 535,250 he collected for a runner-up finish in the 2016 EPT Prague 50,000 Super High Roller ranks in his top five live cashes to this day. You do not get your hands on that sort of money without a lot of skill and a helping of luck.

Carrel got lucky on Day 1a of the delayed 2021 EPT Prague Main Event on March 10. He was involved in a hand during Level 2 that should have seen him heading to the cashiers desk to purchase a re-entry. As it happened, Lady Luck shone down on Carrel and he lived to play another hand.

The hand in question took place during Level 2 where blinds were 100/100, a hand Carrel described as "fascinating" and one that he says took in "every single element of poker."

In Carrels words, " a recreational player (Andreas Boelling) opens from under the gun to 300. Now, bear in mind he just opened to 700 with ace-king, meaning hes got way fewer hands that are very nutted, at least from my perception. The hijack called and we call in the cutoff with pocket fives."

So far, there has been nothing out of the ordinary about the preflop action. However, that all changes when the action is on the player in the big blind.

"The big blind is a very, very good online playing but not so very good at live, he misclicks when he tries to put out 300; he puts out two fives [five hundreds] and one 100, so it makes it 1,100 which opens up the action again. No the recreational player makes it 2,800, which means that he could be trying to f**k em around. He could maybe see that it was a misclick and is just trying to take down the blinds. So the hijack folds and it is on me with pocket fives, and it is a very difficult decision."

Follow all the EPT Prague action right here

"Some percentage of the time, the recreational player only ever has aces, kings, or queens. Some percentage of the time he has 100% of his range, meaning he can have queen-nine suited, ten-nine suited, king-nine suited, theres so many hands. I made my decision in the end based on the fact that this is a re-entry tournament."

Re-entry tournaments allow players to re-enter if they bust while late registration is open. Some allow the player to re-enter on the same Day 1, others allow re-entries on subsequent flights.

"Thats very significant in these kinds of tournaments. What a lot of players dont understand is that when you have a huge edge on the field, on your first bullet, you can actually take quite a few higher variance spots, try and grind up a stack, and they try to do something juicy with it. If it goes wrong, you can play a lot tighter on your second entry."

Carrel clarified with the dealer that the Main Event is re-entry, and once the dealer confirmed this was the case, Carrel began pondering his options.

Charlie Carrel Analyzes Multi-Street Bluff From 100K Super High Roller

"My options are either to fold, play it safe, play tight. Thatd be the standard play. To shove, which I thought would be a little bit off because theres some percentage chance from our perspective that this big blind player who misclicked could have actually been doing some kind of angle and could actually have aces themselves. I thought shoving was the worst option, so actually made it 8,500 or something along those lines. The UTG player only had 12,500 total, so it's a lot of blinds; its over 100 big blinds. The under the gun player takes a few second before he goes all-in, so at this point we know were f****d but we have to call because were priced in with pocket fives no matter what. We spike a five on the flop."

Carrel not only flopped a set but improved to a full house on the river to give his stack a sizeable boost and send the under the gun player to the rail.

"The moral of the story is: even if you punt, it still doesnt hurt to be lucky."

He may have gotten lucky in this hand but Carrel crashed out during Level 8 on Day 1a.
The IV edition of the 25,000 Single Day High Roller tournament took over 14 hours to complete. The single-day event attracted 39 entries to generate a prizepool of  936,390 to make it the largest one so far.

Taking home the spadie trophy and the 318,370 grand prize was Rodrigo Selouan of Curitiba, Brazil. A mainly online player, Selouan made his first cash in Europe in style with a score that is almost ten times greater than his total registered career poker earnings thus far (~$34,000). The best of which was for $12,578, coming when he won a $300 buy-in Venetian Deepstack Extravaganza event in 2018.

Selouan was steady all day, being a constant presence among the top of the counts without ever being the true big stack until very late in the night. After his victory, Selouan was mobbed by his fellow Brazilian players and friends and celebrated by posting some social media messages to some Brazilian fans as he was now an EPT champion.

Final 25,000 Single-Day High Roller IV Results

Place Player Country Prize Money 1 Rodrigo Selouan Brazil 318,370 2 Sam Grafton United Kingdom 220,050 3 Sirzat Hissou Germany 140,460 4 Orpen Kisacikoglu Turkey 107,680 5 Timothy Adams Canada 84,280 6 Johan Guilbert France 65,550

Action of the Day

The day would begin with everyone seemingly in great spirits, as the early part of the day was full of talkative play and joking around amongst the players. The entries would peak with 26 players playing at one time shortly after dinner break and with several players re-buying, the 39 entries were made up of 27 unique entrants, including Charlie Carrel, who made a surprise appearance with a rare sighting at a poker table these days as he entered in the middle part of the day.

There would be a furious flurry of eliminations after dinner as the field was quickly shrunk from four tables down to just one in the span of only one segment between breaks.

But the tension would soon dial up as the speed of play would dial down. The chatter went away and the players became far more deliberate and careful in decisions as the field reached the final table of eight, where it would take over two hours to eliminate Juan Pardo and eventually Stephen Chidwick in seventh as he became the bubble boy for the second consecutive 25k Single Day High Roller.

From there the eliminations happened fairly quickly with Johan Guilbert going out in sixth place after making the long trek over from Las Vegas from Wynn Millions. Timothy Adams followed him out the door in fifth after being a short stack for much of the day and at one point was as low down as a measly couple of big blinds at 10k.

Orpen Kisacikoglu started the day very well and was the big chip leader of the tournament early, being the first player to go over a million. His river would run dry after the bubble burst as he lost some key flips and other hands to eventually dwindle his stack and send him out in fourth place.

Play would again slow down three-handed as the remaining players traded chips around a bit. Selouan had the big advantage to start but would be clipped down by runner-runner flush of Sirzat Hissou to put everyone at even again. But Selouan would get his revenge not long afterwards as he returned the favor with runner-runner flush to bust Hissou in third place, who made his second cash in a row in a 25k event.

Heads-up play was a short affair as Sam Grafton was going for his second spadie trophy of the series after taking the opening bounty event. But he would not be able to gain much traction at all as Selouan made quick work of him in five hands to take the title.

That wraps things up for this event in EPT Prague. The PokerNews coverage continues on Monday.
Teun Mulder bagged a dominant chip lead after Day 4 of the EPT Prague Main Event. With just 16 players remaining, Mulder sits with more than double his nearest rival. The Dutchman moved to the top of the counts after making quads on the live stream to eliminate Viktor Katzenberger, and held onto his lead throughout the rest of the day.

With over eight million in chips, there is a huge gap back to Symeon Alexandridis (4,065,000) who is second in chips, and then another large gap back to Andrea Cortellazi (2,775,000) in third.

Three former EPT Main Event champions started the day, and while Adrian Mateos was eliminated, both Dimitar Danchev and Hossein Ensan remain in contention. Ensan is looking to become the first player to win the same EPT twice, but will start Day 5 as the second-shortest stack with just 11 big blinds.

EPT Prague Main Event Top 10 Chip Counts

Rank Player Country Chip Count Big Blinds 1 Teun Mulder Netherlands 8,195,000 164 2 Symeon Alexandridis Greece 4,065,000 81 3 Andrea Cortellazzi Italy 2,775,000 56 4 Valentino Konakchiev Bulgaria 2,450,000 49 5 Justin Steinbrenner Germany 2,350,000 47 6 George Chiriac Romania 2,270,000 45 7 Grzegorz Glowny Poland 2,260,000 45 8 Manuel Labous France 2,175,000 44 9 Demetrio Caminita Italy 2,125,000 43 10 Dimitar Danchev Bulgaria 1,730,000 35

Day 4 Recap

Only two players were above 2,000,000 in chips at the start of day, but Gab Yong Kim and Dawid Kuliberda were joined by Andrea Cortellazzi who doubled after his ace-king cracked the kings of Jack Sinclair, with the Day 1a chip leader eliminated shortly thereafter.

Former EPT champion Adrian Mateos was an early elimination, along with former WSOP Europe Main Event champion Alexandros Kolonias.

If you're not watching the #EPTPrague cards-up coverage, you're missing out on crazy hands like this. #  PokerStars LIVE (@PokerStarsLIVE)

The chip lead continued to changed hands before EPT Prague 25,000 Single Day High Roller champion Teun Mulder took over after rivering quads to send Viktor Katzenberger to the rail to move up to around 4,000,000 in chips.

The field continued to shrink with Mulder still in control as the tournament reached the final three tables. Demetrio Caminita was keeping tabs on Mulder, but another elimination for the Dutchman kept him out in front.

With a hard stop at 16 players, Mulder sent another player to the rail to hold a commanding chip lead ahead of the penultimate day.

Play will resume for Day 5 with 78:16 left in Level 26 (25,000/50,000/50,000). Stay tuned to PokerNews for all the action as the Main Event continues here in the Czech capital.

Main Event Day 5 Seat Draw
Boeing Co. is starting to talk to suppliers about what it will look like to ramp up production rates for the 787 Dreamliner, according to a news report from Reuters.

The widebody jet that's made exclusively in North Charleston has been plagued by quality issues, stopping deliveries for all but two months since late 2020 and significantly slowing production.

Boeing had said last fall that it was making just two of the jets per month and would eventually return to a rate of five.

Now, the planemaker is talking about possibly increasing the rate to three by May if 787 deliveries have resumed and four by November, Reuters reported, citing two unidentified industry sources.

After that, suppliers were asked to be prepared for a rate as high as seven by October 2023, according to the report.

Boeing didn't comment Monday on the Reuters report or the planemaker's production rate plans.

If Boeing reached a rate of seven, the company's South Carolina plant would be making about the same volume of Dreamliners in a month as it had been when the site was splitting a 14-per-month rate  the 787s peak production pace  with Boeings widebody factory in Everett, Wash.

The planemaker stopped making Dreamliners in the Seattle area about a year ago, when it officially consolidated the jet program in South Carolina.

Any rate changes for the Dreamliner will be dependent on when deliveries of the aircraft can resume.

Boeing hasn't delivered a 787 jet since last spring, and it handed over only 14 of the jets total last year.

During the company's last earnings call in late January, CEO Dave Calhoun spoke about the 787 production rate as it relates to getting undelivered Dreamliners into customers' hands.

"We will run our rate as low as we can while we burn our inventory as fast as we can," Calhoun said, adding that "as the order books fill up and the market gets very active  and I happen to believe it will  then we're going to sort of monitor production rates to make sure we stay ahead of that delivery cycle.

Some signs had pointed to a possible delivery restart in April. American Airlines, for example, had said it expected to receive the first of its delayed 787s that month, but the airline has since made modifications to its summer flight lineup and said its planes are unlikely to arrive in April.

Jefferies analyst Sheila Kahyaoglu said last week that resuming 787 deliveries next month "may be aggressive," Reuters noted.

Kahyaoglu also predicted that the 787 production rate would stay at two during 2022 and go up to 3.5 next year.

Boeing hasn't been giving any estimates on when 787 deliveries could resume. Instead, it's been deferring to its safety regulators at the Federal Aviation Administration, which will have to approve the restart.

Once 787 deliveries are up and running again, the FAA will also be doing the final inspections on the jets, a task that's usually left to safety workers employed by Boeing. The agency said the extra oversight will allow it to "confirm the effectiveness" of improvements the company has made to the 787 manufacturing process.
South Carolinas largest hospital system is selling off a portion of its laboratory business to North Carolina based Labcorp.

Prisma Health and Labcorp announced the pending deal last week with limited details, stating Labcorp will acquire select assets of Prisma Healths outreach laboratory business.

A Labcorp spokeswoman said the company is not purchasing any Prisma laboratories.

Hospital laboratories will remain a part of Prisma, and Labcorp will provide certain support services for Prisma hospital laboratories.

It is unclear how many laboratory locations the deal may impact. A Labcorp spokesman would not say whether Prisma is outsourcing some of its laboratory testing needs to existing Labcorp locations, whether Labcorp will serve as operator of Prismas labs, whether Labcorp was taking over lab service contracts held by Prisma or any other detail of the proposed business arrangement.

Labcorp also did not say how the deal might impact employees currently working in Prismas labs, only that the two health care companies are partnering to minimize the impact to team members and patients.

The deal increases Labcorps footprint in South Carolina. It also expands Prismas reach for lab test sites across the state as the hospital system will be able to send its patients to any Labcorp site, the announcement stated.

Labcorp has 27 patient centers and seven labs across the state, including in Aiken, Bluffton, Charleston, Columbia, Conway, Florence, Greenville, Greenwood, Hilton Head Island, Mount Pleasant, Murrells Inlet, Myrtle Beach, North Charleston, Orangeburg, Port Royal, Rock Hill, Seneca, Spartanburg, Summerville, Sumter and West Columbia.

Labcorp brings the scale and expertise of its internationally recognized laboratory services to help us achieve the next level of service and quality in this highly specialized area, Clarence Sevillian, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Prisma Health said in a statement. We pride ourselves on providing the best possible experiences for our patients and providers. This relationship is another way we are building on our strong reputation of quality care and compassionate service, helping people in communities across South Carolina live their healthiest lives.

The transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2022. A purchase price was not disclosed by the providers.
ROME, March 14 (Xinhua) -- Yang Jiechi, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, on Monday elaborated on China's position on the situation in Ukraine during his meeting with U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan in Rome.

Yang, also director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the CPC Central Committee, said that the Chinese side does not want to see that the situation in Ukraine has come to this point.

China always stands for respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries, and abiding by the purposes and principles of the UN Charter, he said, adding that China is committed to promoting peace talks.

He called on the international community to jointly support the Russia-Ukraine peace talks so that substantive results can be achieved as soon as possible, and to help de-escalate the situation as early as possible.

All parties should exercise maximum restraint, protect civilians and prevent a large-scale humanitarian crisis, Yang said, adding that China has provided emergency humanitarian assistance to Ukraine, and will carry on its efforts to this end.

Yang also said that it is important to straighten out the historical context of the Ukraine issue, get to the bottom of the problem's origin, and respond to the legitimate concerns of all parties.

He called for taking a long-term view, actively advocating a vision of common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security, and encouraging relevant parties to conduct equal-footed dialogue, and set up a balanced, effective and sustainable European security framework based on the principle of indivisible security in a bid to preserve peace in Europe and around the world.

Yang stressed that the Chinese side resolutely opposes any words and deeds that spread false information, or distort and discredit China's position. 
COLUMBIA  A woman held a knife to a Richland County Courthouse employee's neck March 10, after she was able to pass through security and a metal detector with the weapon, police reports show.

Richland County Sheriff's Office, which handles security at the courthouse in downtown Columbia, did not answer questions March 14 about how the woman passed through security with a knife or if she was arrested.

The employee who was attacked on March 10 works in the clerk's office. The employee was not seriously injured physically, Richland County Clerk of Court Jeanette McBride said in her statement thanking sheriff's deputies and staff for their "quick responses."

"The Richland County Courthouse holds a special place in our community, as it provides equal justice to all in civil and criminal matters," McBride said in a statement. "We cannot and will not allow violence or the threat of violence to jeopardize the safety of our employees in the Clerks Office, the judges and their staffs, and the public who visits the Richland County Courthouse. We also will not allow such brazen acts of violence to affect or interfere with the justice dispensed daily within the Courthouse."

A deputy of the Richland County Sheriff's Department was approached at 3:40 p.m. March 10 and told a woman had assaulted someone in the courthouse. He was asked to remove the woman from the building, according to an incident report from the Richland County Sheriff's Department.

The officer arrived on the fourth floor and was told the woman had a knife. The officer did not see a knife while talking to the woman, who asked for a public defender, according to the police report.

The officer left and returned with a member of the public defender's office, which was housed on the same floor.

Upon their return another deputy was present with his TASER drawn and also stated the woman had a knife, which was closed and held behind her back, according to the police report.

The first responding officer asked the woman to hand him the knife, which she did.

It wasn't until later that deputies learned the woman had come up behind the clerk's office employee, who had been walking down a hallway.

A witness getting off the elevator had seen the woman with the knife, which at one point was held at the neck of the clerk's office employee, according to the police report.

Attorney Joe McCulloch, a lawyer for the clerk's office employee who was attacked, said the woman threatened to stab or cut his client with the knife until a member of the attorney generals office intervened.

"My client, and many who work in the courthouse are understandably concerned about the safety of their workplace and for the safety of the public who come there to resolve disputes and do business," McCulloch said on behalf of his client.

The clerks office and the sheriffs department said equipment upgrades and changes have been recommended as result of the incident.

While the sheriff's department provides deputies, all equipment and maintenance of the building is handled by the clerk's office, the sheriff's department said.

"The Sheriff's department will continue to request security enhancements so that incidents like this may be prevented in the future," department spokeswoman Major Maria Yturria said.

Yturria did not respond to questions seeking details about the incident or the suspect.

The public can comment or provide recommendations on improving security at the courthouse by emailing mcbride.jeanette@richlandcountysc.gov.

Editor's note: This story has been updated with additional information.
Merrit Jones said students' voices are like muscles  the more they're exercised, the stronger they get.

They have fully formed opinions and ideas like anyone else  they just arent often asked to share them. Adults can be indifferent or dismissive with a we-know-best attitude. Even when students are encouraged to speak up, its usually in a limited capacity.

Jones is an adviser with Student Voice, a national coalition that seeks to elevate youth voices. She grew up in Lexington where adults would let students plan events like prom or blood drives, but there werent opportunities for students to weigh in on more fundamental questions like how a school should operate and how learning should happen.

Jones got involved in Student Voice in 2015, co-founding the South Carolina chapter as a high schooler before attending the University of North Carolina. She returned to South Carolina last year after graduating. She works with current and former South Carolina students promoting youth engagement in education policy and learned that when students voices are nurtured and amplified they can have a powerful effect on the school experience.

Once you start peeling back those layers, you get these really incredibly useful insights, Jones said. You just have to build that muscle and go on that journey with them.

For the last two years, conversations about parental rights have dominated school board meetings. Jones and other student voice advocates argue it's crucial to seek out and hear youth voices, too.

The disruptions during the pandemic have upended education and created new challenges. Students know whats working and not working and their feedback could be essential to South Carolina educators.

Right now, most students are struggling with their education, said Maya Green, a sophomore at Stanford University and the organizing director for the national Student Voice organization. Green got involved with Student Voice when she was a high school student at Charleston County School of the Arts.

As a high schooler, she didnt see a systematic way for students to advocate for themselves, and no one was explicitly asking for their thoughts. Students had to take the initiative themselves  a daunting process for those who believed adults didn't really want to hear their ideas.

Green's mother is a school board member, but Green still found the process for pushing changes within the district was opaque.

I didn't even think of myself as like a stakeholder that the school board would want to hear, she said.

Part of what Student Voice tries to do is help students learn how to navigate school district systems and advocate for their concerns. Last year, Jones and Green worked with students in Fairfield County to help them better communicate with school and district officials on issues like mental health and academics.

Throughout the 2021 spring semester, the two met over Zoom with about 20 students at Fairfield Central High. The students brainstormed ways to improve their educational experiences, researched solutions and pitched their ideas to school and district administrators and community leaders.

Sign up for our Education Lab newsletter. Email Sign Up!

The schools principal, Tracie Swilley, said she was supportive when a teacher suggested they work with Student Voice, even though getting students' critiques about the school made her nervous. Students feedback wasnt all glowing, but Swilley was impressed by the effort they put into researching their concerns and thinking of solutions. It felt like school officials and students all wanted the same thing: to make the school a better place.

She was struck by how interested students were in technical topics like the school budget. She plans to go over the budget with students this year and hear their ideas.

Jalen Adams, a senior at Fairfield Central who participated in the project last year, said that one of his classmates biggest concerns was getting information about internships and college planning. The high school did have resources available to help students with that, but after speaking with students, Swilley realized the administration wasn't doing enough to make students aware of what opportunities were out there.

The school already had an app that sent notifications home to parents about school news and events. They developed a similar app for students to keep them better informed of school issues and what offerings were available.

Mental health was the biggest concern students had. Swilley knew students were struggling with mental health even before the pandemic, but had no idea of the extent they were suffering now. Students were overwhelmed with grief, not just over the loss of family and friends who died from the coronavirus, but also over classmates who died in accidents or shootings.

Most of the changes Fairfield Central implemented have tried to connect students with mental health resources and lessen the academic pressure many felt. Over the summer, the school offered programs on stress management. Swilley was able to hire a nurse to be on-hand during all of the schools summer classes.

This year, she set aside time during homeroom for counselors and teachers to talk with students about managing their mental health and extended class time. The idea was to bake in time during the day when students who need tutoring or extra help can get it since many are busy after school working, taking care of their younger siblings or participating in extracurriculars.

We know we cannot micromanage their time outside of here, but we want to best use the time we have them in our doors," Swilley said.

Jones and Student Voice are talking with another school district in the Lowcountry about a potential partnership next year. The district did a school climate survey recently and wants to work with students to come up with solutions to concerns the survey raised. Jones, a fellow with All4SC, a University of South Carolina initiative to reimagine how education looks, also helps produce a podcast that highlights youth engagement efforts across the state.

The Fairfield project is proof of the value of listening to students, Green said.

If anyone is a youth-voice skeptic, being in partnership with students as they go on that journey could convert anyone," Green said. "Their enthusiasm is just so contagious.

Donate to our Investigative Fund to support journalism like this Our public service and investigative reporting is among the most important work we do. Its also the most expensive reporting we do. We cant do it without your support. Donate Now
Jeremy Holst started his restaurant career washing dishes at Sullys on Sullivans Island, now home to Home Team BBQ.

After attending the Culinary Institute of America at Hyde Park, the South Carolina native worked in kitchens in Charleston, Las Vegas, Atlanta and Bristol, Tenn., serving as executive chef locally at NICO, Anson, The Woodlands, and The Sanctuary at Kiawah Island.

Now, he helms the kitchen at his very own restaurant in Summerville.

Named after the Park Circle road Holst grew up on, Bexley Fish & Raw Bar is now open at 100 W. Richardson Ave.

Its a dream come true, really, said Holst, who resides in Summerville and opened Bexley Jan. 25, 2022. Its small, it's intimate, (and) weve got a great location.

Its a family affair at Bexley. Holsts wife Carolyn, whom he met at Mustard Seed in Mount Pleasant, and son Eli both work at the Summerville restaurant along with three members from his team at The Woodlands.

The 45-seat seafood restaurant serves a frequently-changing menu driven by simple ingredients thoughtfully cooked and thoughtfully presented, according to Holst.

Several fan favorites have emerged since Bexleys opening, such as the octopus that's confited in olive oil and citrus rinds then roasted on the plancha grill. Its served over butterbeans, house-made chorizo and sweet potatoes.

Patrons can also expect to find ceviche, oysters, and whole fish. Eventually, Holst plans to utilize Bexleys outdoor patio and open the restaurant for lunch.
GREENVILLE  A federal judge has revoked the bond for a South Carolina defendant in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and ordered him held in jail after he reportedly attempted to tamper with a witness  his wife.

William Robert Norwood III of Greer sent thousands of text messages to the woman, a potential government witness, who hed been ordered not to contact, prosecutors allege.

Norwood will be held pending trial after a bond hearing at the Greenville Federal Courthouse on March 14.

Magistrate Judge Kevin McDonald found Norwood violated a judges no contact order thousands of times by contacting his estranged wife whom he was expressly told not to contact in his bond order.

McDonald's detention order said that in contacting the woman, Norwood "attempted to obstruct justice with these communications."

Norwoods wife was reportedly with him in Washington outside the Capitol building that day. The two were separated by the time Norwood was arrested in late February 2021 and a judge ordered him not to have any contact with her.

Yet Norwood made numerous phone calls and sent more than 5,000 text messages to her in the months after he was released on bond, according to Justice Department lawyers.

In some of those messages, Norwood asked her to invoke spousal privilege so she wouldnt testify against him.

Norwoods messages to his estranged wife are harassing, abusive, petulant, and occasionally threatening, Justice Department lawyers wrote.

A majority of the text messages were filed under seal, but McDonald said he was concerned that in some of those contacts Mr. Norwood presents a danger to his estranged wife.

Norwood didnt deny contacting his wife and knows it was a violation of his bond conditions, his appointed attorney, Lora Blanchard, said in the hearing.

She said he and his wife are going through a difficult separation and many of the messages were sent out of frustration as they sought a divorce.

Norwood testified that he met with a divorce attorney but hadnt received the help he needed so we were trying to handle it with each other.

But a sample of messages Norwood sent show he repeatedly threatened to go to the authorities with potential criminal information about her, used abusive language and tried to talk her out of testifying against him.

Norwood faces seven federal charges. He was arrested by FBI agents after a family member shared screenshots of messages in which he bragged about assaulting police officers and storming the Capitol. Agents found a Capitol Police riot shield and helmet in Norwoods storage unit, which he said he picked up from a pile outside the Capitol.

The government also said Norwood led a group into the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and filmed rioters storming the Capitol from her office balcony.

He was initially held in jail after his arrest but released to home detention under the condition that he not contact his wife, who is a potential witness against him. He already faced one charge of witness tampering, which carries up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

In April 2021, Norwood was granted an exemption from his home detention in order to go to the gym. The government said text messages show he used that time to meet up with his wife instead. She repeatedly asked him to stop contacting her and asked his mother, who is his government authorized supervisor, to have him quit those attempts.

Please have your son stop, she wrote Oct. 1, 2021. This is 3 weeks in a row Ive been asking him to stop. Im going to have to say something to the judge. He wont stop.

A trial date hasnt been set in Norwoods case. Assistant U.S. Attorney Max Cauthen said a date may be set for this summer. Senior U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan agreed at a March 15 virtual case status hearing that Norwood should remain in jail pending trial.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, health care providers have stretched the traditional definition of a hospital in South Carolina, providing care to people at home who would have previously been admitted.

The goal of these so-called hospital-at-home programs was to reduce the number of people sent to medical centers for less-severe diseases, as a new virus raged across the country and tied up hospital beds.

But now, two years since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, two health systems are trying to provide this at-home care past the pandemic. One has been turned down by South Carolinas public health agency  while the other is still operating its program.

Prisma Health, with hospitals in the Upstate and Midlands, was the first hospital system in the state to launch such a program, at Prisma Health Greenville Memorial Hospital in May 2020. Since then, the system has treated approximately 600 patients at their homes, and recently expanded the program to its Richland campus in Columbia.

Meanwhile, in the Lowcountry, Roper St. Francis tried to launch its own hospital-at-home program in July. The goal was to begin accepting patients in the fall.

But nearly a month after Roper was approved by the feds to pay for this care with Medicaid and Medicare, South Carolina's health agency denied the hospitals request to do it, essentially calling hospital-at-home programs a violation of the hospitals license.

"The licensure and certificate of need laws make clear that hospital services are provided at the hospital, not at a patient's residence," said Ron Aiken, director of media relations for the Department of Health and Environmental Control.

Hospitals were allowed to provide hospital-level care at home before, because of a declared state of emergency at the beginning of the pandemic, Aiken said. When it was lifted in June, hospitals were told that these programs weren't covered under their licenses.

But hospital systems in South Carolina have remained persistent on the issue, either moving forward with the program for those with private insurance, like Prisma Health, or petitioning the state Legislature to allow everyone in the state to have access to care at home, like Roper.

Care at home

South Carolinas definition of a hospital strictly defines it as a facility outside of a residence.

Hospitals provide inpatient, outpatient, emergency, laboratory, radiology, and surgical services, said DHEC spokesman Ron Aiken in a statement to The Post and Courier. Also, a hospital patient is an individual who is receiving treatment or services at the (hospital) facility.

But studies have shown that at-home programs may have better overall outcomes for people with chronic diseases who arrive at emergency rooms asking for help. They can also be just as safe as hospitalizations.

A review of recent papers published in the Journal of the American Medical Association last year suggested that patients treated by hospitals at home were at a lower risk of readmission and had lower rates of anxiety and depression than those treated in a brick-and-mortar facility.

Care at home was a preferred method for these chronic patients, the authors said, though they noted that people treated using hospital-at-home interventions had lengthier treatments than those in a traditional hospital setting.

John Holmes, a 76-year-old patient of Prisma Healths Home Recovery Care program, said he definitely preferred the treatment he received at his house.

Those hospital beds are terrible," he added.

Holmes went to Greenville Memorial Hospitals emergency room in January, as cases of the omicron variant of coronavirus surged in South Carolina. He had a severe case of COVID-19, including pneumonia, which causes the lungs to fill with fluid and become inflamed. It in severe cases, it requires hospitalization or intubation due to a lack of oxygen.

Holmes had trouble breathing on his own, and was immediately admitted to the inpatient unit. Two weeks later, he was discharged into Prismas Home Recovery Care program. His oxygen needs dropped to levels he and his wife, Joan, were able manage from their home in Fountain Inn, a city nearly 25 miles from the hospital.

I was happy to get home and get in my bed even though I still needed oxygen 24 hours a day, Holmes said.

Prisma sends patients home for care if doctors decide it could work during an emergency department visit, or if their conditions are improving after an inpatient stay, as happened with Holmes. Pneumonia, congestive heart failure and asthma are all commonly treated from afar.

All equipment for the program, such as oxygen and pulse oximeters, IVs and computer tablets are provided to the patient at the beginning of their home health stay, allowing them to see and talk with their doctor and care team from home. Holmes' nurses used this technology to monitor his heart rate, and lung capacity could be seen in real time by his physicians at Greenville Memorial.

It was almost as if the doctor was here with me, Holmes said.

Patients also receive visits from an assigned nurse for up to three hours at a time. The nurse is in direct communication with the patient's physician and administers IV medications, helps manage pain and monitors vitals. Other specialists like physical or occupational therapists, may also be dispatched.

Its a very intense clinical model in the home, said Angela Orsky, senior vice president of clinical operations for Prismas Home Recovery Care program. Patients can complete (their) recovery in their homes and receive the same level of acute care services as they would if they were transitioning from the (emergency room) to their home.

Holmes has since transitioned out of Home Recovery Care, which lasts approximately 30 days from initial intake. He still requires oxygen 24 hours a day and visits a local outpatient clinic once a week.

He said he will most likely rely on oxygen until his condition improves, but the timetable for his complete recovery is unknown.

Accessible to all

A 2020 state of emergency in South Carolina paved the way for this new method of care, and the federal Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services even approved its own version of the program, Hospital without Walls, which allowed over 100 hospitals across 29 states to use Medicaid and Medicare funds to treat people with moderate illnesses in their homes.

But now that the state of emergency is over and CMS' program has ended, hospital-at-home care isn't allowed under a hospital's license, DHEC officials said. But that doesn't mean there are repercussions. An agency spokesman wrote in an email that the programs are "outside of DHECs regulatory authority," and because of that, they are "not subject to enforcement action pursuant to applicable state law."

There is one difference for Roper, however: Without formal state approval, Medicare won't pay for hospital-at-home patients, said Andy Lyons, a spokesman for the hospital system.

Roper's proposed program would care for the same kinds of patients as Prismas Home Recovery Care. But the hospital system wants Medicare patients included because most of the people who Roper wants to treat at home are covered by this federal program, Lyons said

The situation is different at Prisma. That hospital system, according to Orsky, used a private contractor called Contessa to set up the program before launching it in Greenville.

Orsky says Contessa works directly with patients' private insurance to pay for for hospital-at-home care.

While Roper's program is on pause for now, the hospital system has gained support from Charleston County's state legislative delegation, as 14 representatives signed a letter of support to Gov. Henry McMaster calling for a temporary waiver to immediately grant Roper ability to provide at-home care across the Charleston region.

Any time we can increase access to services for patients and do it in a cost-effective way, I am interested, Rep. Spencer Wetmore, D-Folly Beach, said. We have to make this work for everyone.

State Rep. Bill Herbkersman, R-Bluffton, has also proposed a budget proviso to let any hospital approved by federal authorities for a hospital-at-home program during the pandemic continue that program without being in violation of its state license.
Kingstree, SC (29556)

Today

A mix of clouds and sun with a slight chance of thunderstorms this afternoon. High 89F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 30%..

Tonight

Partly cloudy. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 63F. Winds light and variable.
Would you like to receive breaking news notifications from The Post and Courier?

Sign up to receive news and updates from this site directly to your desktop.

Breaking News Columbia Breaking News Greenville Breaking News Myrtle Beach Breaking News Aiken Breaking News N Augusta Breaking News

Click on the bell icon to manage your notifications at any time.
NORTH CHARLESTON  The land Joseph Hamilton's ancestor inherited as a freed slave in Colleton County following the Civil War was passed down through generations without a will.

Known as heirs property, it prevented Hamilton and his relatives from benefiting fully from the land's value. Hamilton and his family hired an attorney to help straighten out the legal ownership. He and his wife now use a portion of the property to run a tree farming business. Hamilton is also in law school because he wants to help other property owners.

"I want to use those skillsets to help other landowners," he said.

Hamilton's story and the experiences of several other Black landowners and farmers were shared during a March 14 meeting held in North Charleston with Deputy Agriculture Secretary Jewel Bronaugh and U.S. House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn. The goal of the discussion was for the USDA to share its ongoing efforts to root out generations of systemic racism, deeply integrate equity in decision-making and policymaking, and build equitable systems and programming inclusive of those served by the agency.

The gathering was held at the Opportunity Center, the new headquarters for the Center for Heirs Property Preservation.

Underserved farmers live throughout the nation, Bronaugh said. However, many of those who've been most impacted by issues like land loss reside in the South, she said.

"When we think about our historically underserved farmers and ranchers, many of them who have suffered the most live in the South," she said. "It is not just here in South Carolina, unfortunately, but certainly we have to acknowledge the experiences of South Carolina farmers."

During the meeting, Black land owners described experiences in which they were discriminated against by the Department of Agriculture when trying to access loans, and personal loss of land that'll never be returned to their families. They emphasized the need for "leveling the playing field" by ensuring that USDA staff do not mistreat minority farmers.

Bronaugh also said personnel issues must be addressed within the federal agency. Local offices must reflect the communities in which they serve, she said.

"There's an inherent lack of trust in USDA, and it's going to take some time to rebuild," she said. "But we've got to put the people in the office that folks in this room trust will give them good information."

President Joseph Biden's 2021 American Rescue Plan Section 1006, which provides direction and over $1 billion in funding for USDA to take action to ensure underserved communities have tools, programs and support they need to succeed, will help the USDA assist minority farmers in areas of land loss and heirs property issues, Bronaugh said.

Through the plan, the USDA has additional resources that can go out for farmers and ranchers so that they can get the money that they need for capital and land, she said.

"That's part of the the leveling of the playing field that we need to continue to do," Bronough said. "But we have more to do."

Biden's $1.9 trillion stimulus package also allocated $4 billion of debt forgiveness for Black and other disadvantaged farmers who have faced decades of discrimination from the federal government.

That effort has been placed in limbo amid lawsuits filed by White farmers who questioned whether money could be allocated by the government based on race.

The case is still in litigation, Bronaugh said. In the meantime, the USDA has placed a moratorium on foreclosures on those who have direct loans from USDA, she said.

The agency is also encouraging guaranteed loan lenders to follow suit to keep borrowers' operations from being taken away, Bronaugh said.

Clyburn, D-S.C., said he isn't discouraged by the lawsuits, filed by those he described as "people who would not like to see the resources of this country available to everybody."

"The things we need to do to make sure these people don't fall victim to the kind of history that we've had before, we're doing it," he said.
PINEVILLE  Law enforcement officials accused an S.C. Forestry Commission employee of using incendiary devices made from cigarettes and matches to start a string of wildfires earlier this year in Berkeley County.

Berkeley County sheriffs deputies arrested Brad Chance, 52, on March 10. The St. Stephen man is charged with three counts of willfully burning the lands of another, a felony punishable with up to five years in prison.

Arrest warrant affidavits reveal that the S.C. Forestry Commission, which is tasked with protecting and managing the state's public and private forest resources, has been investigating more than 100 brushfires that occurred between October 2021 and February 2022.

Deputies accused Chance of starting three fires between January and February, all within a 5-mile stretch of rural land in Pineville, a small community nestled between lakes Marion and Moultrie.

Two of the fires started Jan. 14 and Feb. 3 near Tanaya Lane and S.C. Highway 45, affidavits state. The third fire happened Feb. 15 near Pilgrim Baptist Church, 1339 Colonel Maham Drive.

Chance declined to comment when reached by telephone March 14.

On Feb. 15, investigators watched video footage from the scene of the Jan. 14 fire. On the video, Chance's blue pick-up truck was shown traveling in the area at the time the fire was reported, affidavits state.

Investigators executed a search warrant Feb. 15 at Chance's residence. Chance admitted in an interview with investigators that the vehicle seen on the video belonged to him, affidavits state.

Inside Chance's truck, investigators found rubber bands, six nails, a lighter, an empty box of menthol cigarettes and a couple of wooden matches, according to the affidavit.

Investigators say those same items were used to construct incendiary devices found at the scene of multiple fires, according to the affidavits.

Chance worked for the commission as a forestry technician in Berkeley and Charleston counties. He was hired for the position in February 2021, according to an agency news release. Upon his arrest, he was suspended without pay.

Chance has owned Brads Tree Service, a landscaping business, since 2006, according to state records. A social media post from the company March 12 said they were available for tree removal and limb-clearing services.

Chance was taken into custody following a joint investigation between the Sheriffs Office and SCFC law enforcement agents. He was released from the Berkeley County jail March 11 after a magistrate set a $45,000 personal recognizance bond.
Charleston, SC (29403)

Today

Some sunshine with a thunderstorm or two possible this afternoon. Gusty winds and small hail are possible. High 84F. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 30%..

Tonight

A few clouds. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 68F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph.
COLUMBIA  U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham is continuing to press for regime change in Russia amid the nation's ongoing invasion of Ukraine, saying he believed the risk of potentially destabilizing one of the world's five major nuclear powers to be minimal.

His calculations include the possibility that Russian President Vladimir Putin could be replaced with someone worse.

"I'm willing to take that bet," Graham said March 14.

The comments came during a roundtable discussion at the University of South Carolina School of Law discussing possible war crimes against Russia and the challenges facing the international community as it looks to hold a nation with significant nuclear weapon capabilities accountable.

Graham, who suffered bipartisan pushback after calling on Russian vigilantes to assassinate Putin, said he believes Russian military action is too great to ignore and sets a precedent that could lead to additional military actions from nuclear powers like China.

The Chinese are "licking their chops" amid a lukewarm response from the international community, said Graham, R-S.C.

Joel Samuels, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at USC and an expert on international law, said the invasion of Ukraine poses an "existential threat" to the international community's ability to keep the peace and raises serious questions about whether the community of nations can enforce laws when broken.

Too weak a response could cause other nations to follow suit, the panelists agreed.

"If you can let Putin get away with this, then the idea of Western civilization as we know it will cease to exist," said Graham.

"There is no legal problem," he added. "There is a venue we can use. It's a problem of will."

Graham's comments come days after former President Donald Trump appeared to advocate for the United States to take a more aggressive stand against Russia during his weekend campaign rally in Florence.

Trump argued during the rally that Putin did not respect President Joe Biden, citing the United States' disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan while highlighting his administration's launch of 59 Javelin missiles against Russian ally Syria in 2017 as an example of his administration's "peace through strength" foreign policy.

Sign up for updates! Get the latest political news from The Post and Courier in your inbox. Email

Sign Up!

While the Biden administration has committed more than $1 billion in aid to Ukraine, according to the Pentagon, the U.S. has shown some reluctance to provide additional military aid over fears it could provoke Russia to escalate the conflict, including tapping into its nuclear arsenal.

Graham said on March 14 he was not supportive of American boots on the ground in Ukraine or Russia. However, he said he was supportive of imposing a no-fly zone over the Eastern European nations should Russia deploy chemical weapons in the country, potentially creating a scenario where Russian planes could be shot out of the sky by forces aligned with NATO.

"Do I believe that Putin is going to preemptively attack the United States with nuclear weapons? No," Graham told reporters. "He's a murderer, but he's not suicidal. And I do believe that if he ordered such an attack, the Russian generals on staff would take care of the problem. If we let this guide our thinking, then he will reign supreme."

Both Graham and U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson, R-Lexington, proposed a multi-pronged approach to putting pressure on Russia, including increased military aid, "crushing" economic sanctions and the potential imposition of sanctions on countries like China who could be aiding the Russian government.

"It's a police state with Starbucks," Wilson said of Russia.

By impacting Russian quality of life, Graham said, the population there could potentially lose confidence in the government and rise up to replace it, citing the political revolution that occurred in the Middle East during the "Arab Spring" protests in the early 2010s.

"I think there's a Russian Spring coming," Graham said.

Graham urged caution in regime change, however. In Iraq, the toppling of Saddam Hussein led to a power vacuum that remained unfilled, allowing religious militias to maintain a hold over much of the country.

Samuels, the foreign policy expert, noted that Russia is geographically vast and technically ungovernable, relying on a litany of strongman leadership and a powerful oligarchy throughout its history to instill order.

If regime change were to occur, Graham said, the international community would need to be involved in the transition and in making the previous leadership be held accountable through the force of law.

"It is much easier to knock down a building and kill somebody than it is to build up institutions," Graham said.

"Without force of arms, there is no hope," he added. "But victory comes from the follow-up, when institutions are built to withstand the next demagogue."
Spartanburg will host its first March of Dimes Run for Babies event on May 21.

The Spartanburg Run for Babies event is a 5K around Duncan Park. There is also a shorter race for kids. Proceeds go to March of Dimes, an organization that strives to improve the health of mothers and babies through research, programming and funding.

Amber McDowell, director of donor development for March of Dimes, said that the event is modeled after the organizations Tigers for Babies 5K that takes place every November in Clemson. In addition to the race, there will be stations with information about health issues related to pregnancy and birth.

In the US, we lose 700 moms a year within the first year of childbirth, and that's just an astronomical number when you think about all of the access that we have, McDowell said.

Matt Henderson, chairman of March for Babies Spartanburg, had a cousin that was born at 25 weeks. She died five months after birth because she became immune to the medicine that she was taking for an infection. He learned about the mission of March of Dimes through a program at his job with Tietex International called Tietex Cares, which raises money for employee during a times of crisis.

When you know nothing about premature birth and you step into a NICU and you see these babies, how small they are and how hard the nurses and doctors are working to keep these babies alive, its something amazing, Henderson said.

The race begins at 8 a.m. Adults will receive a t-shirt and children will get a cape. Tietex International is the presenting sponsor. Those interested can sign up at runsignup.com/Race/SC/Spartanburg/MFBRunforBabies.
Trumpremember him?is out with a proposal to repeal the Pendleton Act and other legal foundations of the civil service in the federal government. We will pass critical reforms making every executive branch employee fireable by the president of the United States. The deep state must and will be brought to heel, Trump said over the weekend.

Cooler heads have rushed to say this is a really really bad idea. They are likely right: a completely politicized government bureaucracy could make things even worse than they are right now, given that there is a nearly inexhaustible supply of idealistic leftists to fill government jobsqualifications and experience not necessary. (Just conjure in your mind 100,000 former bartenders with honors degrees like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez filling the ranks of federal agencies.)

But it may be yet another really bad idea (like term limits) whose time has come. And I suspect it would be extremely popular with voters between the coasts.

It would have the merit of clarifying the character of our government, and attaching complete accountability to the president, who today dodges it by attributing unpopular actions to independent agencies and other permanent organs of the administrative state that run along without regard to election returns. If the permanent government today consciously considers itself as internal opposition (the Resistance!) to Republican presidents, what do we have to lose by enabling a president to fire hundreds of thousands of bureaucrats?

As usual, Trump has put his finger on something that undoubtedly bothers millions of Americans whose livelihoods have been decimated by the governments actions during COVID-19, while federal employees all got pay raises, and did their non-work from home. Worth an extended debate. . .
Russias invasion of Ukraine has caused a number of European countriesprobably all of themto reconsider their military defense postures. If Russia attacks them, will they be able to resist? And whom can they count on to come to their aid?

Responses vary. Germany is talking about abandoning its post-WWII de-militarization. France, in Gaullist tradition, wants the EU to take the lead on security. Others rely on a presumed airtight NATO guarantee of military assistance.

Sweden is an interesting case. Sweden is not a member of NATO, although it has collaborated closely with NATOs central command. Instead, Sweden has allied itself with the U.S. and, to a lesser extent, the U.K. This interview with Bjorn Fagersten, head of the Europe program at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, sheds considerable light.

The threshold question posed is, since Sweden is not a member of NATO, will the European Union come to its aid if Russia attacks?

Does the EUs mutual defence clause have a similar effect to Natos Article 5? Bjorn Fagersten: In a purely legal sense they are equivalent  in some ways the EU is a bit sharper. But on the other hand, the EUs clause has a sub-clause that makes clear that it doesnt affect member states individual choices on security policy, for instance for those countries that are neutral. A key difference between the EU and Nato is that the EU has no real apparatus. Nato has a joint military headquarters, SHAPE, but the EU doesnt have an equivalent. Within the EU there are also expectations that Nato will be at the centre of European planning  most EU countries are members. In the EUs Global Strategy from 2016 it is made clear that Nato is the cornerstone of the EUs defence.

So the EU has a mutual defense pledge, but no coordinated defense apparatus. But that could change. What follows is especially interesting in view of the weak state of Russias military that seems to have been revealed over the last couple of weeks:

Looking to the future, many in the EU, not least Macron, have long spoken about the need for strategic autonomy, where Europe will take a more independent line in defence from the US. Last week Germany announced a huge increase in defence spending. How will that change the equation for Sweden? BF: If in the long term Europe starts taking greater responsibility while the US takes the main responsibility for handling China, that would change Swedens calculation. Sweden would like there to be an American interest in its security, but if, for example, a new president was elected in the US in 2024 who had a more doubtful approach to European security, Sweden would be forced to rapidly reevaluate its defence strategy.

It is highly unlikely that we will elect a president more feckless than Joe Biden, but it it useful to see how that possibility weighs on the minds of European decision makers. But the key point here is that the Europeans might be able to defend themselves while the U.S. focuses on the Pacific.

Throughout the linked interview, but more importantly in pretty much all of the discussion of NATOs defense obligations that I have seen, the assumption is that Article 5 of the NATO treaty is an iron-clad guarantee that if any NATO member is attacked, allincluding the U.S.will respond with devastating military might. Such universal interpretation is entitled to a great deal of weight, especially since there have been countless communications among diplomats and heads of state on the matter since the 1940s.

And, of course, Joe Biden has vowed to defend militarily every inch of NATO soil. That is the conventional view. But stillis that really what the famous Article 5 of the NATO treaty says? Here is that article in its entirety. Emphasis is mine:

The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area. Any such armed attack and all measures taken as a result thereof shall immediately be reported to the Security Council. Such measures shall be terminated when the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to restore and maintain international peace and security.

Call me a cynical lawyer, but does such action as it deems necessary really obligate the U.S., or anyone else, to a full military response to Russian aggression in Europe? Might such action merely encompass economic sanctions in the event of a Russian invasion of, say, Lithuania?

I suppose it is best if Russias leaders assume that Article 5 represents an airtight mutual security pact, but it is easy to imagine a weaselly or mentally challenged presidentor, perhaps, one who is uniquely focused on American self-interestgoing back on 70 years of interpretation of Article 5 and more or less abandoning our European allies. No doubt that is something that they, too, are imagining.

Which I think is probably to the good. Donald Trump was right: it is long past time for powerful European countries, including Germany, to look to their own defense, even if in cooperation with us. And, of course, the more able they are to defend themselves against Russian aggression, the more likely they are to receive military help from their NATO allies, including us, should the time come.
Todays quote from a certain forthcoming book: Stan Evans, speaking to the Philadelphia Society in 1967, as LBJs Great Society was just getting rolling:

The most important of the reversals which confronts us, the most important of the inversions worked upon the American system by the ministrations of the Great Society and of the other representatives of the liberal orthodoxy which have preceded it, is the inversion which has taken place in the American character. The Founding Fathers assumed a certain character type to exist in the United States which would allow a regime of freedom to exist. John Adams put it very succinctly when he said, Without virtue there can be no political liberty.. . . The Great Society reverses the equation: it assumes and encourages a lack of internal self-discipline which makes people incapable of selecting purposes and incapable of organizing their behavior. . . What this amounts to is a kind of infantilization of the American culture. . .

If you are curious for more, you can listen to the whole speech here.
About 100 of the most influential women in Africa gathered in Lagos over the weekend to discuss how to intensify efforts to eliminate the strains of inequality and gender bias in the continent.

The event, which was in commemoration of the International Womens Day, was organised by the media company Red For Africa.

Themed An evening with African Power Girls, the event was an opportunity for these powerful women from across the continent to discuss empowering the next generation of African girls.

It is only with women and girls at the centre of our efforts that we have the best chance to succeed in addressing our current and pressing global challenges; from the climate emergency to gender-based violence, political divisions and a sustainable recovery from this global pandemic, said Amina Mohammed, Deputy Secretary-General, United Nations, one of the more noticeable participants of the event.

The SDGs reflect the commitment made by member states in this region over the past forty years thanks to the efforts and sacrifices of women activists and feminist movements.

On this International Womens Day, lets recommit our energies to achieving true and irreversible gender inequality because we all benefit when women have the opportunity to lead and to rise for all, she said.

She added that this years commemoration of International Womens Day aims to recognise and celebrate women and girls at the forefront of womens rights and a sustainable climate-resilient future.

Sustainable future

Lerato Molebatsi, non-executive director, Adrian Group, Kenya, said gender parity is essential to Africas sustainable future.

Achieving overall, sustained development in society requires achieving parity in every stratum of every organisation  be it in government or private. Women and men have invaluable contributions to bear the unique imprints coloured by gender characteristics and tendencies. Without these imprints, society is bound to be lopsided, she said.

Adebola Williams, CEO, RED | For Africa, wrote a three-volume book, African Power Girls, about the past and present African females and warriors who have shaped societies. He said the aim is to tell stories that fortify, inspire, and empower the world.

Last November, the book was launched with an event that attracted students from Blooming Green Schools, Yaba, Lagos, and Girls Senior Academy, Lagos Island, and top dignitaries across the country. It is the first in three books highlighting powerful women in Africa.

Other attendees at the exclusive dinner, with The Platform Capital and Unilevers Knorr as partners, included Ajoritsedere Awosika, chairman, Access Bank Plc; Nike Davies-Okundaye, founder, Nike Arts Gallery; Charlotte Osei, director, Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa; Joke Silva, co-founder, Lufodo Group; Audrey Joe-Ezigbo.

Others were the Deputy Managing Director, Falcon Corporation Limited; Soromidayo George, Director Corporate Affairs & Sustainable Business, Unilever, West Africa; Funke Feyisitan Ladimeji, executive director at Coronation Merchant Bank.
Africas global bank, United Bank for Africa (UBA) Plc, has assured its shareholders and investors of excellent performance in the 2022 financial year, as the bank continues to deepen its foothold to reap the benefits of its

investments in strong and innovative digital product offerings and expanded

scope over the past few years.

The Group Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, United Bank for Africa (UBA) Plc, Kennedy Uzoka, noted that, together with its diversified business model and keen ventures into key markets in Africa and beyond,

investors of the bank will enjoy huge financial benefits and dividends in the current financial year and beyond.

Uzoka said this during the Investors/Analysts Conference Call at the banks Head Office in Lagos, following the release of its results for the full year ended December 31, 2021. He explained that UBAs diversification model

remains one of its best growth strategies as seen from the huge contribution of its subsidiaries into the business in the last financial year.

Considering the significant investment the bank has made over the years across the globe  this is about $105 million in 20 African countries, United Kingdom, France and the United Arab Emirates, and the fact that UBA is the only Sub-Saharan bank with a deposit-taking license in the United States of America  We are indeed beginning to reap the benefits of our investments. It is expected that, as the operations continue to grow, the

bank will be able to realise the full benefits of its investments in multiples and will thereby, deliver much higher dividend returns to shareholders in the years ahead, Uzoka told the investors.

Breaking down the full year 2021 financial results to the investors, Uzoka pointed out that gross earnings rose significantly to N660.2 billion representing an increase of seven percent compared to N616.8 billion recorded at the end of the 2020 financial year, whilst total assets grew by 11 percent to an unprecedented N8.5 trillion in the year under review, up from N7.7 trillion in 2020, marking the first time the Banks assets will cross the N8 trillion mark.

UBAs Profit Before Tax was impressive with a 20.3 percent growth to N153.1 billion, compared to N127.3 billion at the end of the 2020 financial year as Profit After Tax rose by 8.7 percent to N118.7 billion in 2021, compared to N109.2 billion recorded the previous year. As a result, the Bank proposed a total dividend of N1.00, comprising an interim dividend of 20 kobo, already paid, and a final dividend of 80 kobo, to be presented to shareholders for approval at the 60th Annual General Meeting scheduled for April 7, 2022.

Continuing, the GMD explained that the quality of UBA staff, its portfolio, as well as the strength of the banks credit risk management frameworks and policies, remain the bedrock of the positive and sustained results of the

bank, adding that Our current performance highlights our customer focus leveraging on our three levers, which are: people, process and technology; and so we see that as a well-diversified financial institution, UBA remains

very strongly capitalised to take advantage of opportunities in the future.

UBAs Group Chief Finance Officer, Ugo Nwaghodoh, who also responded to questions at the conference call assured investors that the bank is committed to further strengthening its payments infrastructure to fully absorb the growing clientele in the digital space.

Our records show a very well-diversified loan book across various critical sectors across the economies in which we operate and the diversification is in both industry sectors, across geographies and customer segments. We are reinforcing our digital banking and payment offerings as we continue to see a stronger proportion of non interest income to total income in the days ahead, Nwaghodoh said.

United Bank for Africa Plc is Africas global bank with a presence in the United States of America, the United Kingdom and France and more recently the United Arab Emirates. UBA is connecting people and businesses across Africa through retail, commercial and corporate banking, innovative cross-border payments and remittances, trade finance, and ancillary banking services.
The Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), is seeking urgent intervention from the Federal Government to support the production of goods, as diesel price hits N720 per litre.

Lanre Popoola, the Chairman, Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), Oyo, Osun, Ekiti and Ondo branches, stated this in Ibadan on Sunday, while speaking on the increase of prices of petroleum products and lack of power supply.

It is a difficult thing ensuring production at this time, as diesel has gone up to N720 and N730 per litre.

It is getting extremely difficult to produce and I dont know how we are going to cope because 70 per cent of industries are running on diesel, there is no light.

There is no power supply, we are having 30 per cent of what it used to be, whereas the disposable income of people is not increasing and the cost of products are going up.

Even in my factory now, we are only running one shift instead of three shifts of eight hours each.

Other businesses are also running limited hours on diesel as they cannot afford to use generators all day, Mr Popoola added.

The chairman noted that, if the situation persisted, it could lead to bigger issues that would further affect the nations economy and increase the hardship of Nigerians.

The worst part is that diesel suppliers cannot agree for organisations to make a flexible payment plan such as instalments, while they deliver the products in trust.

They cannot again supply you with diesel and allow you to pay in two weeks. It is either you do cash and carry, or pay ahead, because they too cannot predict the cost of the product.

And I dont blame them, imagine you bought diesel last week at N630 per litre and the next day it is sold for N730 per litre, how will you replace your stock, he said.

Mr Popoola stated that the way forward was for the government to come in and assist manufacturers, by giving some rebate on diesel, adding that, that was the only lifeline.

Aside manufacturers, for transporters that are bringing food from the North or taking products to the East or Lagos, now the cost of their logistics would have doubled by 100 per cent if not 200 per cent.

May be the government can come in and do a kind of palliative for us, it is either we have light 24 hours per week, to run our factories or do a palliative on diesel.

But unfortunately, we dont produce diesel in this country, if the refineries are working, it is a different ball game, the country would have had it better now, if the refineries are working.

So the more the international prices of Petroleum products go up, the higher the prices of what we are going to get from them, Mr Popoola said. (NAN)
The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) said it extended its ongoing industrial action by another two months to afford the government more time to address all of its demands.

ASUU also accused the government of displaying an indifferent attitude toward its demands.

The National Executive Council (NEC) of ASUU held an emergency meeting on Sunday, March 13, 2022 at its National Secretariat at the University of Abuja, to review the ongoing strike.

ASUU President, Emmanuel Osodeke, in a statement to announce the extension of the rollover strike, noted that the national executive council of the union was disappointed that Government did not treat the matters involved with utmost urgency they deserved during the four-week period as expected of a reasonable, responsive, and well-meaning administration.

He said NEC concluded that the government had failed to satisfactorily address all the issues raised in the 2020 FGN/ASUU Memorandum of Action (MoA) within the four-week roll-over strike period and resolved that the strike be rolled over for another eight (8) weeks.

The statement read in part: The meeting was called to review developments since the Union declared a four weeks total and comprehensive roll-over strike action at the end of its NEC meeting at the University of Lagos, Akoka, Lagos on 12th-13th February, 2022.

NEC noted that the Unions leadership has held some interactive meetings with agents of government in the last four weeks that the strike action had lasted. However, NEC was disappointed that Government did not treat the matters involved with utmost urgency they deserved during the four-week period as expected of a reasonable, responsive, and well-meaning administration.

NEC acknowledged the intervention efforts, in various ways, by patriots and friends of genuine national development (students, parents, journalists, trade union leaders, civil society activists etc.) to expeditiously resolve the crisis which Governments disposition had allowed to fester. However, ASUU, as a union of intellectuals, has historic obligations to make governments honour agreements.

Demands

Mr Osodeke said the strike continues over the governments failure to satisfactorily implement the Memorandum of Action (MoA) it signed with the Union in December 2020 on funding for revitalisation of public universities (both Federal and States), renegotiation of the 2009 FGN/ ASUU Agreement and the deployment of the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS).

Other demands of the union as listed by ASUU include Earned Academic Allowances, State Universities, promotion arrears, withheld salaries, and non-remittance of third-party deductions.

Since the beginning of the strike on February 14, ASUU and the government delegation have met twice.

Deliberations so far

Earlier on Sunday, ASUU issued a statement on the controversy surrounding the UTAS that its technical team developed to replace the Integrated Personnel Payroll Information System (IPPIS) which is currently being used to pay its members salaries.

It was angered by the claim of the director-general of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa, who on Wednesday at the State House said UTAS failed three integrity tests of user acceptance, vulnerability and stress, that were conducted by his agency.

We did all these three tests with them and the system couldnt pass. We wrote the reports and submitted it back to the honourable minister, which he forwarded to all relevant institutions, including ASUU. As we speak now, ASUU is working, trying to fix all the issues we highlighted with the system and we will review it again. But that is just one half of the story, Mr Inuwa said.

But ASUU insisted that UTAS scored both 85 and 77 per cent, which it noted are high class grades in any known evaluation system.

ASUU also threatened that it would demand that the initial NITDA Technical Report on UTAS, where it scored 85 per cent in User Acceptance Test (UAT) be made public if it (NITDA) continues to insist that UTAS failed the integrity tests.

ASUU said that NITDA carried out the first integrity test on August 10, 2021, at the NUC headquarters, noting that relevant government agencies and all the end-users in the university system were present.

The union added that all accepted UTAS as a suitable solution for salary payment in Nigerian universities.

ASUU also said; However, in a curious twist of submission, the NITDA Technical Team, after conducting a comprehensive functionality test came out to say that out of 687 test cases, 529 cases were satisfactory, 156 cases queried, and 2 cases were cautioned.

Taking this report on its face value, the percentage score is 77%. The question that arises from this is, can 77% in any known fair evaluation system be categorised as failure?

ASUU said NITDA in their desperation to justify their false assertions, threw up issues such as Data centre and hosting of UTAS software which are clearly outside the rubrics of ASUUs responsibilities in the deployment of UTAS.

Renegotiation

PREMIUM TIMES had reported that the two most important demands for ASUU had included the renegotiation of the ASUU-FG 2009 agreement and the deployment UTAS for payment of its members salaries.

However, both have remained unresolved as the government only recently inaugurated another committee to be led by a former vice-chancellor and emeritus professor of obstetrics and gynaecology, Nimi Briggs.

Advertisements





Mr Briggs-led committee was given three months to complete the renegotiation of the agreement with all university-based unions including ASUU, Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU), National Association of Academic Technologist (NAAT) and the Non-Academic Staff Union of Allied and Educational Institutions.

But ASUU has said it has nothing more to discuss on the agreement but the implementation. It said the three months given the committee to address the issues are not meant for the union.

Backstory

ASUU had embarked on a four-week warning strike on February 14th but to press home its demands, with the prominent ones being the renegotiation of the ASUU/FG 2009 agreement and the sustainability of the university autonomy by deploying UTAS to replace the governments imposed (IPPIS).

Other demands include the release of the reports of visitation panels to federal universities, distortions in salary payment challenges, funding for revitalisation of public universities, earned academic allowance, poor funding of state universities and promotion arrears.

The Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, had days after the commencement of the strike constituted the white paper panel of the visitation panels.

But four weeks later, the government is yet to inaugurate the team to commence work.
The Federal High Court in Abuja, on Monday, slated March 28, for ruling on the bail request by Abba Kyari, a suspended deputy commissioner of police, and his co-defendants, who are jointly facing charges of illegal dealing in cocaine.

The trial judge, Emeka Nwite, adjourned for ruling after taking arguments from the defence and prosecuting teams on Monday.

The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) opposed the bail applications filed by the defendants, arguing that Mr Kyari was likely to abscond from trial if released on bail.

But the defence lawyers urged the court to grant their clients bail on liberal terms.

Mr Kyari is standing trial on cocaine-related charges alongside four members of his former police unit, the Intelligence Response Unit, and two other persons arrested at the Akanu Ibiam International Airport in Enugu, Enugu State, in January this year.

The four police officers among Mr Kyaris co-defendants are Sunday Ubua, an assistant commissioner of police; Bawa James, an assistant superintendent of police; Simon Agirgba, an inspector; John Nuhu, also an inspector.

The two others, who are non-police officers, are Chibunna Patrick Umeibe and Emeka Alphonsus Ezenwanne,

All the seven defendants were arraigned on March 7 on eight charges of conspiracy, illegal dealing in cocaine, importation of cocaine and obstruction.

Mr Kyari and the four other police officers pleaded not guilty, setting the stage for the commencement of their trial.

But the two other co-defendants, Messrs Umeibe and Ezenwanne, pleaded guilty to the charges, and the court subsequently slated March 28 for review of facts to prepare the ground for their conviction and sentencing.

Bail application hearing

NDLEA, through its lawyer, Joseph Sunday, told the court during Mondays hearing not to grant bail to Mr Kyari and the other defendants.

Mr Sunday, who heads NDLEAs legal services department, argued that Mr Kyari would excape from Nigeria if he is granted bail.

We are opposing the bail applications of the defendants, Mr Sunday contended, adding all the conditions for which bail should not be granted are all in this case (involving Mr Kyari and his co-defendants).

However, the lawyer to Messrs Kyari and Ubua Mahmud Magaji appealed to the judge to grant his clients bail on liberal terms.

Mr Magaji, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), based his argument on the presumption of innocence of Messrs Kyari and Ubua as enshrined in the Nigerian constitution.

The defendants are to be given an opportunity, time and space to prepare for their defence, the defence lawyer said.

The presumption of innocence granted to every accused person will be lost if the defendants are denied bail.

The defendants have undertaken to be present in court throughout the duration of their trial, he further argued.

The counsel for the 4th and 5th defendants, N Y Chiwar, argued that issues of defence involve sober reflection, and the defendants prolonged incarceration will deny them that right to ample time and facilities to defend themselves.

Mr Chiwar begged the court to grant his clients to bail.

Meanwhile, the lawyer to the 3rd defendant, Michael Mbanefo, did not move his clients bail application due to late service of NDLEAs counter affidavit to his bail request.

After listening to the arguments of all the lawyers in the suit, the judge adjourned the case till March 28 for ruling on the defendants bail application.

Charges

NDLEA prosecutors accused Mr Kyari and the four IRT members of illicit dealing in 21.35kg of cocaine between January 19 and 25, 2022, thereby committing an offence contrary to and punishable under section 11(c) of the NDLEA Act.

Advertisements





Messrs Umeibe and Ezenwanne allegedly imported the 21.35kg of cocaine into Nigeria via the Akanu Ibiam International Airport, Enugu, Enugu State, on January 19, 2022.

In one of the charges, the anti-narcotic agency alleged that Mr Kyari and the four IRT operatives illicitly tampered with the 21.35kg of cocaine by removing 17.55 kg of it and substituting same with some other substance. The offence is said to be contrary to and punishable under section 14(b) of the NDLEA Act.

The prosecutors also accused Mr Kyari, in a count which features only him as the sole defendant, of attempting to obstruct the NDLEA and its authorised officers by offering $61,400 to a senior anti-narcotic operative as inducement to prevent the testing of the 17.55kg of cocaine.
Airline operators in the country on Monday said they have only three more days to fly because of the rising cost as well as scarcity of aviation fuel (ATK)

CEO of Air Peace and vice president of the Airline Operators of Nigeria (AON), Allen Onyema, stated this at the public hearing of the House of Representatives committee investigating the scarcity of aviation fuel.

Mr Onyema said the AON members may start charging Nigerians N120,000 per ticket for domestic flights and can only operate for the next three days before they shut down.

If we continue this way, the least ticket you will have is about N120,000. And the marketers have refused to tell us how much is the unit cost of their acquisition, he said.

Mr Onyema said if ATK marketers did not reduce the price of the commodity from the current N670 per litre, regulators should give the airlines licence to import.

According to him What we are asking from the government is to give us the right to import aviation fuel. What others use in insuring one plane is what we use in insuring three planes in Nigeria, so the Nigeria airline is dead on arrival.

After about one hour of argument on the cost of aviation fuel at the hearing, the airline operators and marketers agreed on N500 per litre for the next three days, while they work on new price modalities.

The Group Managing Director of NNPC Limited, Mele Kyari, who announced the new agreements, said the request by the airline operators to import ATK will also be granted.

PREMIUM TIMES had reported the details of the first hearing on Thursday, where the panel, chaired by Deputy Speaker Idris Wase (APC, Plateau), asked the Nigeria Midstream and Downstream Regulatory Authority to work with all relevant committees to bring down the price of ATK.

The panel also summoned the ATK marketers to appear before the committee for hearing.

The motion

On Wednesday, the Chairman of the House Committee on Aviation, Nnoli Nnaji, had moved a motion calling for investigation into the scarcity of aviation fuel.

Following the adoption of that motion, the House had mandated the chairman, alongside those of Petroleum Downstream and Petroleum Upstream to meet with the GMD of NNPC Limited, Airline Operators, Jet A1 marketers and others.

Hike in air tickets

Last month, major airlines in Nigeria hiked their fares by over 100 per cent. Some airlines now charge N50,000 flat rate for tickets.

AON denied that the increment was coordinated.

The Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) had ordered airline operators to immediately discontinue the implementation of the new airfares pending the outcome of its investigation.
Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State has fired back at his Edo State counterpart, Godwin Obaseki, describing him as a tenant in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

Mr Obaseki, in a statement personally signed by him on Sunday, had told Mr Wike that the PDP was not a personal property of the Rivers governor.

It clearly amounts to a delusion of grandeur, for any one man to nurse the idea that he owns or has more stake in the PDP and everyone should pander to him, Mr Obaseki said.

He also told Mr Wike, In Edo, we dont accept political bullies and overlords.

Wike apologises to Oshiomhole over Obaseki

But Mr Wike, in a reaction to Mr Obasekis remarks, said the Edo governor was ungrateful to the help he gave him that enabled him to get the PDP ticket and eventually win the 2020 governorship election in Edo, after he was barred from contesting the primaries in his former party, the All Progressives Congress (APC).

If you go and check the DNA of Godwin Obaseki what you will see in that DNA is betrayal, serial betrayal, and ungratefulness, Mr Wike is captured saying in a clip posted on Facebook on Monday. https://web.facebook.com/GovernorNyesomEzenwoWikeCON/videos/682727942858538

Mr Wike apologised to the former APC national chairman, Adams Oshiomhole, whom he said has been vindicated by the face-off between him (Wike) and Mr Obaseki.

Let me stand today to apologise to Adams Oshiomhole who has been vindicated by telling us that we will see the true colour, we will see the insincerity, we will see the ungratefulness of Governor Obaseki.

So let me apologise to Adams Oshiomhole, and to say you have been vindicated and that we were wrong.

Mr Wike said Mr Obaseki had not contributed to the progress of PDP.

Has he voted for the PDP? The only election he voted was his own election when we gave him umbrella. So who has more stake in PDP? I have more stake in PDP, he said, beating his chase.

I have supported people always. You have never supported PDP, rather it was when your godfather chased you away and you came begging, kneeling down. And we allowed you. Ordinarily, you are a tenant.

You came to beg a bully for you to have the (PDP) ticket. A bully was your campaign DG and a bully bullied you into Government House. What a shame!

You came back with your wife to thank the bully that after God the bully made it possible for you to be there.

The Rivers governor said the problem of PDP in Edo was about injustice, and that he would always stand up against injustice.

He did not, however, explain what he meant by injustice in the Edo PDP.

Sounding as though he was ready for a long political battle, Mr Wike said, Let me tell you, Obaseki, I know your cohorts, I will smoke all of you out.

Mr Wike said he is qualified to run for Nigerias president.

Tell your presidential aspirants who are sending you that if I come out I will win them, he said to Mr Obaseki.

Background

Mr Wike had initially attacked the Deputy Governor of Edo State, Philip Shaibu, for threatening to leave PDP over a lingering crisis in the Edo PDP.

He said he was going to get the PDP to sanction Mr Shaibu whom he said was ungrateful to the party.

This is the same deputy governor that was kneeling down to beg for us to give them umbrella, today you have the effrontery to threaten PDP. Such a shame, Mr Wike said of Mr Shaibu.

Mr Obaseki came out in defence of Mr Shaibu, prompting Mr Wike to fire back at him.

Advertisements





The crisis in Edo PDP, according to Messrs Obaseki and Shaibu, is the lack of integration of several people who left APC for PDP during the 2020 governorship election in the state.

Governor Obaseki specifically said the PDP in Edo has registered over 500,000 new members since the September 2020 governorship election but that these new members have not been properly integrated into our party after two years.

Also, the leaders, executives and members who came with me into the party have still not been accepted, integrated or harmonised into the party.

More worrisome is the fact that old members of Edo PDP, who are open to inclusion and supportive of building a large party are being vilified and ostracised by a cabal purportedly led by Chief Dan Orbih, who is your perpetual guest in Port Harcourt and is remotely used to orchestrate the destabilisation of the party in Edo State, Mr Obaseki said to Mr Wike.
Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) on Monday said it was working with the Bayelsa State Government to resolve a dispute with some host communities over the non-execution of an electricity project.

The four communities constituting the Kolo-Creek Cluster Development Board in the Ogbia Local Government Area of Bayelsa State on March 8 threatened to ground operations at Shells oil fieldsover the companys failure to provide them with electricity.

The communities had given Shell a 14-day ultimatum after several delays by the oil firm which resulted in missed timelines to deliver electricity as pledged.

The Bayelsa government which has been mediating in the dispute following a protest in December 2021, however, urged the people to exercise restraint.

Reacting to the resolution of the four communities to disrupt operations at the Kolo Creek fields, Michael Adande, a spokesperson for Shell, assured the people that the company was working to resolve the dispute amicably.

Mr Adande said: The Bayelsa State Government and SPDC are working with the beneficiary communities to deliver the backup electricity project based on a rescheduled delivery timeline.

The ultimatum letter, which was jointly signed by the paramount rulers of Imiringi, Otuasega, Oruma and Elebele communities, demanded restoration of electricity among other due obligations that have yet to be met.

They demanded the immediate operationalisation of the 2.5 MVA generator installed by Morpol Engineering Services Limited and the award of contract for the Oruma high tension line.

They stated that the SPDC deliberately refused to honour the agreements it had with the cluster communities on several occasions since 2013.

They said the communities had unanimously resolved to shut down all the firms oil installations and platforms in Kolo-Creek at the expiration of the 14 days ultimatum.

(NAN)
The Commissioner for Economic Development in Akwa Ibom State, Akan Okon, has resigned from Governor Udom Emmanuels cabinet

Mr Okon, who was in-charge of the Ibom Deep Seaport project, said in a Facebook post that he tendered his resignation on Monday.

He said he wants to focus on his aspiration to contest the 2023 Akwa Ibom governorship election.

It was an honour and great privilege to serve our State under the leadership of Mr. Udom Emmanuel at such an important phase in our history. I am grateful to God almighty and His Excellency, for giving me the opportunity to serve.

I also thank the good people of our dear state for their support and encouragement which motivated me in the discharge of all the tasks and assignments given to me, especially with regards to the envisioned three gateways (Land, Air and Sea) for the rapid development of our dear state and creation of job opportunities for our teeming and very enterprising youths, Mr Okon said in the statement.

The former commissioner said he strived diligently to interpret Governor Emmanuels vision for the oil-rich state.

As the scripture admonishes, to everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven Eccl. 3: It is my deep conviction that this is the best time to take a leave in order to focus on my aspiration for the 2023 Governorship election, he said.

Mr Okon is joining other aspirants like Bassey Albert, a senator, and Onofiok Luke, a House of Representatives member, who had already started their consultation for the 2023 governorship election in the state.

Governor Emmanuel had picked a member of his cabinet, Umo Eno, as his preferred successor.
A consultant doctor at the Premier hospital on Monday testified in the ongoing coroners inquest into the circumstances surrounding the death of a Lagos-based chef, Peju Ugboma.

Adeniyi Akinseku is one of three doctors the Medical and Dental Practitioners Council of Nigeria (MDPCN) said it established a prima facie case of professional misconduct in the events leading to Mrs Ugbomas death.

The deceased died days after undergoing fibroid surgery at the hospital in 2021. She was the founder of a pastry company, I Luv Desserts.

Mr Akinseku told the coroner, M.K.O Fadeyi, that he started working with Premier Hospital on March 1, 2020, as a full-time staff but converted to a part-time staff in December 2020.

This, he said, was due to a permanent job he secured at the Olabisi Onabanjo University Teaching Hospital, Ogun State.

He said he works with Premier Hospital on Wednesdays, Fridays, and sometimes weekends.

When the hospital lawyer, Abimbola Akeredolu, asked him how come Mr Ugboma said he didnt see you?

The deceaseds husband, Ijoma Ugboma, had said he did not see the doctor who performed his late wifes surgery.

He (Mr Ugboma) was there at the recovery room, he spoke with me and I explained to him. He came with three of his friends, and we went to the blood bank, Mr Akinseku said to counter Mr Ugbomas claim.

Even on Sunday, he was there and I was there and he even asked me questions.

The doctor said he has evidence to show that he was present at the hospital and he didnt abandon his duty as claimed by the deceaseds husband.

Mrs Akeredolu submitted the evidence  an electronic logging system printout.

But the deceaseds family lawyer, Babatunde Ogungbamila, objected to the evidence because it is not admissible.

I will be citing Section 84 and I want it to be put on record because anybody can write anything and show it before the court, Mr Ogungbamila said.

I understand that this coroner is not bound by the rules of evidence and that this coroner can admit any document that would aid the coroner in arriving at his decision; however, it is also important that whatever document brought before the coroner cannot be in doubt and this one is a big doubt.

But, Mrs Akerdolu, said we have interested parties here whose interests are not aligned with my lords interest. To the extent that those interests are present and are protecting their interest.

The husband of the deceased said the that he (doctor) was negligent, he performed that surgery and disappeared.

The coroner, in his response, said the evidence needs to be checked.

Earlier in the proceedings, a paediatrician at the hospital, Chineze Fadipe, told the coroner that she was issued a summons to appear before the court, adding that her role in the surgery was essentially administrative.

During cross-examination with a state lawyer, O.A Akinde, she was asked, when a patient is not producing a minimum threshold of urine, that is an issue?

Yes it is, she replied.

She said that in medicine, the doctors must provide patients with the best care, but we do not have control over all the factors.

The paediatrician said that when the Lagos State government shut down the hospitals Intensive Care Unit, there was no penalty, no sanction, no fine.

Advertisements





Further hearing was fixed for March 28, April 11, and May 9.
Students of Adeseun Ogundoyin Polytechnic in Eruwa, Oyo State, have accused a yet-to-be-identified police officer of shooting their colleague in the leg.

Gboyega Olatunji, the South-west Coordinator of the National Association of Nigerian students, (NANS), said in a statement Monday that the victim was on his way to Ibadan from Eruwa last Friday when he ran into the hands of the trigger happy officer.

The victim, Samuel Akinsuyi, is a National Diploma 2 student of Business Administration in the polytechnic.

It is still unclear why the police officer shot Mr Akinsuyi.

Mr Olatunji accused the police authorities of shielding the officer who allegedly fired the shot, and concealing his identity.

Adewale Osifeso, the police spokesperson in Oyo State, did not respond to phone calls and text messages seeking comment.

Those saddled with the responsibility of safeguarding us from danger have turned themselves to the actual danger, Mr Olatunji said in his statement.

This demonic action has thrown Mr Samuel Akinsuyi into a titanic battle against paralysis. In addition, harassment of students on the Ibadan-Eruwa way by officers of the Nigeria Police Force and members of Apata Command particularly must become history immediately.

These two spots are fast becoming the hotbed of corruption, extortion, harassment, and other dehumanising actions by the Police Force in Oyo State.

The students demanded that the police bear the hospital bills and security of Mr Akinsuyi.

As we continue to piece the puzzle together, we demand a thorough and exhaustive investigation to identify the culprit and that the law be allowed to take its full course through the arrest, dismissal and prosecution of the offender as well as other disciplinary actions from the force itself and the police commission, said Mr Olatunji.
The Ekiti State Governor, Kayode Fayemi, has urged Nigerians to outgrow bigotry and all other forms of ethnic or religious biases.

He said with the coming 2023 generals elections, Nigerians need to strive to make the nation a better place.

Mr Fayemi spoke at #Hamzatat35 symposium in Abuja on Saturday.

The event was part of the activities organised to mark the 35th birthday anniversary of anti-corruption and social justice advocate, Hamzat Lawal.

Mr Fayemi, who was one of the keynote speakers, complained that the nations political space has been eaten up with bigotry, tribalism and ethno-religious biases.

I call on all of you to love this country and imagine it as a major world power in no distant time.

Nation building is an unfinished business but for every generation there is always a pressing business that must be done urgently. These challenges that ail our country today provide us with the opportunity to take a position and take a stand and work for the resolution of such challenges.

Nigeria will belong to those who are prepared to stand up, stand firm and take control of their destinies. Like Hamzat has elected to do, we can all do our beat in our little ways to cause a beautiful change that will lead us to make our country and indeed the world a better place.

The governor also stressed the need to build a consensus around major issues of concern and develop a national template for some irreducible behaviour in leadership positions.

I am personally uncomfortable with the practice of our politics and our political conversations. We should have outgrown bigotry, tribalism and ethno-religious biases. It is time to rekindle the candle of a new Nigeria and the coming transition provides another opportunity for us to take a new dive as to making a new Nigeria of our dreams.

He also extolled the celebrant describing him as a dogged and purpose-driven individual  characteristics he charged the Nigerian youth to possess today.

For one to succeed, one needs to imbibe certain virtues in life. One of the most important things which the younger generation often takes for granted but which will determine how far an individual can go in life is the set of values that define your life.

You must value knowledge without which you cannot develop the right intellect, experience and skill set that would help to prepare you for a functional future, he said.

Venturing into politics

Meanwhile, Mr Lawal disclosed that he would, henceforth, venture into partisan politics especially with the 2023 polls coming and the desire to make things better.

He informed participants that a movement  the Green Nigeria Movement  has been launched.

This movement, he said, is aimed at sensitising citizens of the 774 local governments in the country on the need to actively participate in electoral and political processes.

He also said the movement will mobilise 40 million Nigerians (or voters) for worthy candidates.

2023 is around the corner. Im not sure if were early or late. Nigeria is where is it today because the youth have allowed it. For far long, we have been complaining on twitter, Facebook. But I believe we can make it right.

We launched the Green Nigeria movement to mobilise women and youth in all 774 local governments. In the Green Nigeria movement We have commited to mobilise 40 million Nigerians. We will educate the people at the grassroots to realise the power that they hold.

I, Hamzat, from today, will play partisan politics. I have power, influence, friends from around the world and I will use it.

Nigeria cannot go down on her knees when we have people like you and I. This initiative must ensure equity and justice. And I will meet with everyone from all divide.

Whatever decision we make and whichever candidate we endorse, will be a collective decision. Hopefully, by 2027, we will have a 35 year old man or woman as a candidate. Now is the time, he said, adding that young people take action and change the political dynamic.

Mr Lawal, who is currently the Executive Director of Connected Development (CODE), recalled his journey as an IT personnel to a school teacher and his transition into the civil society space.

Advertisements





Explaining the theme of the symposium, The man, the journey and the transition, he said his transition this time, is that he is no longer a youth.

My transition is that Im no longer a youth. Dont give me an identity that is not mine. I am transitioning and investing my time to building a world of leaders.

When asked his major interest in politics, he said, it is to serve the people.
A former Senate President, Bukola Saraki, has berated Nigerian leaders, both past and present, for the continued incidence of fuel scarcity across the country.

Mr Saraki said in a one-on-one interview with Channels Television on Sunday night, amidst the biting effects of fuel scarcity on businesses and homes across the country.

With the condition almost the same for over a month, many vehicles and businesses owners have resorted to black market fuel to meet their daily fuel needs, with many joining long queues in the scramble for the scarce product at the few filling stations that open for operations.

Against the N162 per litre fixed by the government, many Nigerians, due to this scarcity, have paid as high as N500 per litre for black market fuel in different places in the country.

Nigeria currently spends over N140 billion monthly on fuel subsidy, a figure that translates to over a trillion at the end of every budget year.

The ex-Senate president and two-term Governor of Kwara State, in reaction to sad development, argued that the leaders, including his administration, have not been fair to citizens with the management of fuel subsidies.

He alleged that the 70 million litres daily consumption was false.

Definitely we must change the way resources are being managed. We must ensure that the right people, the vulnerable people get it, not us subsidising our neighbouring countries.

Drive around the petrol stations, do you see evidence of 70 million litres consumption? Dont forget that even in 2020 when there was a lockdown we were still claiming to be consuming 50 million litres per day, how is that possible?

We are not being fair to the masses. I feel bad because Ive spent time studying these things and I understand it.

He added, We must immediately stop the smuggling of products. We must be able to do research, assess the true consumption. Egypt, in 2016, was in the same position as us. But they have used technology, they have used Identification System plus smart cards to be able to look at issues around the subsidy.

He noted that over half of Nigerias alleged daily fuel consumption is just wastage, adding that these are the kind of things that we must do for us to reset this country.

We must put an end to this, Mr Saraki said.

Subsidy removal

Mr Saraki also recalled how the fuel crisis was earlier resolved in 2016 with the removal of subsidy, but only for that to be reversed later on.

Look, I remember even in 2016, when I was the senate president, we were able to find a solution to this with the then Minister of State Kachukwu. I, myself with the leadership of the House and Senate. We sat down. We got us out of this mess. With the backing of Mr President. Were able to get out of the subsidy. I dont know what happened later on when it was reversed, he said before speaking on his political ambitions.

May declare presidential ambition soon

On the possibility of running for Nigerias presidency, the former Kwara governor said he has been consulting with stakeholders and may officially declare after the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) decides the zoning of the seat.

Mr Saraki argued that he has the needed quality to lead the country above its current challenges if Nigerians can look beyond zoning and elect leaders based on quality.

On the issue of zoning, he said the focus should be on the North-central, South-east and North-east zones that are yet to produce a Nigerian president.

When you talk about zoning, yes, you must consider zoning. But when we talk about zoning, it cant just be an issue of North/South because you cannot tell me that the South-west will say they are disenfranchised in the possibility of political office; neither can you say the south-south.

But the reality is that the North-east, North-central and South-east have not had presidency or vice-presidency. But what Im saying is today, where the country is, with the challenges before the country, we must bring in other issues.

We did it when we wanted to look for the national chairman of our party. We went seeking for who we felt was the best that would help the party, he posited.
Since former president Idriss Debys death on the battlefield in April 2021, Chad has been governed by a Transitional Military Council. Led by Mr Debys son Mahamat Deby, the council is responsible for organising a dialogue on national reconciliation and elections to restore constitutional order. But with 10 months of the transition left, how inclusive will the talks be, and will the transition timetable be respected?

The dialogue should have taken place on February 15 but has been postponed until May 10 to allow for preliminary discussions in Doha, Qatar with the political-military movements. These discussions too were meant to have started on February 27 but were pushed out to March.

Some opposition parties and activists believe these delays reflect the trouble that the Inclusive National Dialogue Organising Committee is said to be facing in accomplishing its mission. They also suspect political manoeuvring to extend the transition period.

The inclusion of political-military groups has become a vital part of the discussion, as armed violence has been one of the major destabilising factors in Chad since independence in 1960. These groups must commit to renouncing force as their primary means of protest. It remains to be seen which of them will join the dialogue, at what cost, and with what guarantee of non-aggression.

The general amnesty law designed to draw political-military groups into the process seems to exclude some entities, such as Mahamat Alis Front for Change and Concord in Chad. This group was involved in the fighting that caused Debys death last year.

The leaders of some other armed groups expected to participate in the Doha talks may also not be involved because of behaviour deemed seditious by Chads authorities. This includes Timan Erdimi of the Union of Resistance Forces. In an audio recording, he reportedly indicated his intention to use the Russian paramilitary Wagner Group to overthrow the Transitional Military Council.

Some political parties and movements challenging the councils legitimacy, notably Les Transformateurs, also complain that they were not involved in the preliminary discussions. The same goes for civil society platforms such as Wakit Tama. Before the national dialogue starts, these stakeholders must be heard if the process is to be genuinely inclusive.

The Transitional Military Council can take credit for the return to Chad of opponents and activists who were hostile to the previous regime. But critics warn that this move is really driven by expediency and the councils desire to control the reconciliation process. Instead of a strategy based on clear criteria and negotiations, these returns seem to be based on case-by-case transactions aimed at winning over opponents.

But political-military groups and opponents in exile should not be the only focus of the reconciliation process. Justice, accountability and social cohesion need more attention. At least 80 people have died in roughly 10 inter-communal conflicts since May 2021, most recently in Abeche and Sandana in the Moyen-Chari province. Over 10 people were killed in each conflict. These skirmishes are most often caused by rivalries over local power and territory, community vendettas or natural resources.

As these local conflicts simmer, the reconciliation agenda becomes more urgent and requires a stronger commitment from the government. In addition to encouraging the surrender of armed groups and the return of opponents, the groundwork must be laid for reconciliation among all Chadians. This can only happen by learning from the mistakes of past political practices and charting a new course. Since the beginning of the transition, no steps have been taken in this direction.

The Transitional Military Council also seems to be having difficulty breaking with the old political class, which some Chadians accuse of being partly responsible for the countrys problems. The predominance of this old guard, including members of the former ruling party, the Mouvement Patriotique du Salut (MPS), in the National Transitional Council (the seat of legislative power) and other bodies makes this clear.

The MPS is using every trick in the book to retain its grip on the Transitional Military Council and thus on the national debate and politics. The council should distance itself from these political manoeuvres. It could then remain above the fray and maintain its role as guarantor and mediator in a debate intended to be frank, open and fair.

With two months to go before the new date for the national dialogue, these core issues must be the focus of debate in Chad. The partners supporting the countrys transition, dialogue and reconciliation processes should be firmer on the need to respect the timeframes and ensure inclusiveness so that no stakeholder is left on the sidelines. A stalemate on these issues could see Chad slide back into political instability.

Remadji Hoinathy, Senior Researcher, Institute for Security Studies (ISS) Regional Office for West Africa, the Sahel and the Lake Chad Basin

This article is published with support from the Government of the Netherlands.

(This article was first published by ISS Today, a Premium Times syndication partner. We have their permission to republish).
Ramatu, wife of Abba Kyari, a suspended deputy commissioner of police, who is being tried for offences bordering on cocaine deals, collapsed at the lobby of the Federal High Court in Abuja, on Monday.

Mr Kyari and his co-defendants arrived the court on Monday for the hearing of their bail application before the trial judge, Emeka Nwite.

However, the incident of Mr Kyaris wife collapse occurred after the judge adjourned the suit till March 28, to decide on the bail applications.

As Mr Kyari, who was produced in court from the custody of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), walked down from the fifth floor of the court in company with family members, Mrs Kyari collapsed on the lobby of the court.

Donned in a black gown, female relatives rushed to her aid and ferried her to the Federal High Court clinic located on the ground floor of the court building.

Associates and family members promptly administered first aid on her and she regained consciousness.

PREMIUM TIMES could not independently confirm the health condition of the woman or the reason for her collapse.

Thereafter, Mrs Kyari was evacuated from the court facility in a private vehicle.

Mr Kyari along with other co-defendants was led away back to NDLEA custody.

Bail

PREMIUM TIMES reported earlier that the Federal High Court in Abuja on Monday slated March 28 for ruling on the defendants bail applications.

The trial judge, Mr Nwite, adjourned for ruling after taking arguments from lawyers to the parties in the suit.

A week ago, Mr Kyari; Sunday Ubua, an assistant commissioner of police; Bawa James, an assistant superintendent of police; Simon Agirgba, an inspector; John Nuhu, also an inspector, were arraigned along with two others on eight charges.

They pleaded not guilty, setting the stage for the commencement of their trial.

But two of Mr Kyaris co-defendants, Chibuna Umeibe and Emeka Ezenwanne, who are non-police officers, pleaded guilty to the charges on March 7, during their arraignment.

The NDLEA prosecutors accused Mr Kyari and the four IRT members of illicit dealing in 21.35kg of cocaine between January 19 and 25, 2022, thereby committing an offence contrary to and punishable under section 11(c) of the NDLEA Act.
The U.S Government has congratulated Nigerias Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) for arresting a Nigerian man who had been on the wanted list of the U.S Federal Bureau of Intelligence for alleged $100 million wire fraud conspiracy, money laundering, and aggravated identity theft.

The EFCC, in a statement on Monday, announced the arrest of the man, Osondu Victor Igwilo, at a studio in the Sangotedo area of Lagos, Nigerias South-west.

Mr Igwilo, 42, was arrested on March 11, alongside Okafor Nnamdi Chris, Nwodu Uchenna Emmanuel and John Anazo Achukwu, according to the EFCC.

The anti-graft agency said Mr Igwilo has been on the FBI watch list since 2018.

Before their arrest, Igwilo and his accomplices had allegedly been involved in an advance-fee scheme that involved false promises of investment funding by individuals who impersonated some United States of America, USA, bank officials in person and via the internet, the anti-corruption agency said.

Investigation revealed that those who fell victims of the suspects criminal activities were asked to make certain payments before they could receive their funding.

It was also revealed that proceeds of the scheme were allegedly laundered through U.S. bank accounts and diverted back to the alleged perpetrators in Nigeria.

Consequently, Igwilo was placed on the FBI watch list, following a criminal complaint filed against him in the United States District Court, Houston, Texas in December 2016, the statement added.

Five houses located in choice areas of Lagos have been recovered from Mr Igwilo, EFCC said.

The suspects will soon be charged to court, it said.

U.S government congratulates EFCC

The U.S Mission in Nigeria issued a congratulatory statement to the EFCC immediately the anti-corruption agency announced the arrest of Mr Igwilo.

With Justice as our mutual priority, we congratulate @officialEFCC for partnering with the @FBI & arresting long-time wanted suspect Igwilo for fraud conspiracy, money laundering and aggravated identity theft, the U.S Mission said in a Twitter post, Monday.
As Russia and Ukraine resume talks, Ukrainian presidential adviser and negotiator, Mykhailo Podolyak, said on Twitter communication is ongoing yet hard, Al Jazeera is reporting.

Tweeting a photo of the talks, which are being conducted via video conference, Mr Podolyak said: The parties actively express their specified positions. Communication is being held yet its hard. The reason for the discord is too different political systems.

Russian and Ukrainian officials on Monday resumed a new round of talks as Moscows invading forces show no sign of withdrawal, edging closer to the capital, Kyiv, and maintaining their bombardment of the besieged southern port city of Mariupol.

The two sides representatives met via video conference on Monday, a Ukrainian presidential adviser and a Kremlin spokesman said. According to Ukrainian negotiator David Arakhamia, the talks began at 08:20 GMT.

Our goal is that in this struggle, in this difficult negotiating work, Ukraine will get the necessary result  for peace and for security, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said early on Monday, adding that both sides speak every day.

He said the aim was to do everything to ensure a meeting of presidents. A meeting that I am sure people are waiting for.

Meanwhile, Leonid Slutsky, a senior member of Russias negotiating team, told state-run television network RT on Sunday that the Russian side saw significant progress.

Russian air raids on Sunday hit a Ukrainian military training ground near the border with Poland, a NATO member. Ukrainian officials said at least 35 people were killed and more than 130 wounded in the attack, while Russias defence ministry said up to 180 foreign fighters were killed. The statements could not be independently verified.

Separately, U.S. journalist Brent Renaud was killed on Sunday as fighting escalated in Kyivs suburbs  the first foreign reporter to die since Russias invasion on February 24. The award-winning video and documentary maker was shot dead, while a U.S. photojournalist with him, Juan Arredondo, was wounded in Irpin, medics and witnesses said.

READ ALSO:

Mr Zelenskyy on Monday renewed his call for NATO to impose a no-fly zone following the attack that took place near the western city of Lviv.

If you do not close our sky, it is only a matter of time before Russian missiles fall on your territory, on NATO territory, on the homes of NATO citizens, Mr Zelenskyy warned in a video address.

The United States and its European Union allies have sent funds and military aid to Ukraine and imposed unprecedented economic sanctions on Russia. But Washington has ruled out any direct intervention, with President Joe Biden warning that NATO fighting Russia is World War III.

Mr Biden spoke with French President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday and the two leaders underscored their commitment to hold Russia accountable for its actions and support the government and people of Ukraine, the White House said.
The emergencies of the climate change coupled with the COVID-19 pandemic and the impact of the new and ongoing global conflicts affect all but not equally, the Secretary-General of the United Nations Secretary, Antonio Guterres, said as he lamented the negative impact on women and girls.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) stated that women and children are 14 times more likely than men to die during a climate disaster.

Speaking on Monday, at the opening ceremony of the 66th Commission on the Status of Women, a global intergovernmental body dedicated to the promotion of gender equality, Mr Guterres noted that there are hardly gender considerations when policies and decisions are generally taken.

Womens needs and interests are often ignored and pushed aside in all policies and decisions. Only 15 per cent of environment ministers are women. Around the world, only one-third of 192 national energy frameworks include gender consideration.

Gender considerations are rarely taken into account in climate financing. It, therefore, demonstrates once more that we live in a male-dominated world with a male-dominated culture, he said.

For him, the long-standing structure of patriarchy and exclusion affirms the demonstration of the war in Ukraine.

He explained that goals cannot be realised without contributions from all, this is why men and boys should be working for womens rights and gender equality.

Focus of CSW66

The 66th version of CSW takes place from 14 to 25 March 2022 in New York with the theme Achieving Gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls in the context of climate change, environmental and disaster risk reduction policies and programs.

Also at the opening event, the Chair, Mathu Joyini from South Africa indicated that the commission will look into the emerging issue of COVID-19 recovery for gender equality and a sustainable future.

Climate change and environmental degradation and disasters affect society as a whole but particularly women and girls covering health and livelihoods. These effects are strongest on rural and indigenous women and girls, those in vulnerable and marginalised situations and those in conflict settings, she added.

The outcome of this event will become agreed conclusions that will be negotiated by all member states.

Launch of inaugural Africa CSW66

For the first time since 1946, Africa joins the CSW in 2022 with 55 nations in attendance as women, Civil Society Groups and Feminists converge in Nairobi, Kenya to lend their voice to the prolonged marginalisation of the continent and the issues of its women and girls.

It is organised by the African Womens Development and Communication Network (FEMNET) in partnership with international organisations which runs from 14 to 17 March.

One of the keynote speakers, Melania Chiponda, a Zimbabwe-based Gender Justice and Climate Activist queried the notion that climate change is a natural phenomenon.

Climate change is caused by greenhouse gas emission that comes from industries, she said adding that the global south should take responsibility for environmental pollution.

She further tackled the discrimination and neglect in climate financing which she claimed is not accessed by poor income countries.

Climate finance should not be loans because we dont owe anyone anything. Also, the money is intended to invest in mitigation but we dont want money for mitigation but adaptation that is not imported from elsewhere. We move to renewable energy on our terms which should not be profit-driven, Ms Chiponda said.
Private sector operators in the food processing industries as well as government regulating agencies have pledged commitment towards achieving optimal levels in food fortification compliance.

This is even as the leading sugar producer in the country, Dangote Sugar Refinery Plc, has won an award, having been ranked as the leading company with significant strides in institutionalising large-scale food fortification best practices.

The pledge was made at the 4th Annual CEO Forum of Food Processing & Nutrition Leadership themed Ensuring Improved Health and Nutrition Through Cross Sectoral Leadership organised collaboratively by TechnoServe; Aliko Dangote Foundation (ADF) and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in Lagos.

The CEO Forum is the gathering of Nigerian Food Processors and Nutrition Leadership where critical and concerned players in the food processing, health and financing sectors appraise the food fortification situation in the country.

This is meant to correct the present food system that has been linked to poverty, hunger, malnutrition, disease, unemployment etc.

President of Dangote Group and Chairman of the ADF, Aliko Dangote, who chaired the meeting, said food fortification is a health issue that members of the Forum are committed to complying with in each of the foods their organisations manufacture in the interest of nutritional health of Nigerians.

He recalled how the Forum has proposed to be converging periodically to assess how far the compliance has been and expressed happiness that the report for the 2022 was an improvement on the previous report.

He also urged members of the Forum to double their efforts to shore up compliance in the area where it is still below expectation.

He assured that there was no going back in achieving full micronutrient fortification compliance especially in the pandemic era, to mitigate the effect of the virus.

In his remarks, Bill Gates commended the efforts of the Nigerian private sector involved in the food fortification process and the affected government agencies for ensuring that fortification compliance is achieved so that Nigerians could be immune against malnutrition.

He said his Foundation was happy to be involved in the task and urged all not to rest on their oars until full fortification compliance is achieved.

Giving the report of milestones and compliance trends covered by the Forum in 2021, Dominic Schofield of TechnoServe, listed 14 companies covering 31 brands as having joined the Micronutrient Fortification Index (MFI) ranking for Wheat Flour, Edible Oil, Sugar and Salt.

Dangote Sugar was named among the four companies with substantial compliance in the four food categories, with others being Flour Mills, awarded in two categories and Raffles Oil LFTZ Enterprise.

The essence of the MFI ranking, Mr Schofield explained, is that members of the public would have access to information about the fortification of the four staple foods and help encourage companies to meet their fortification targets.

He stated, The recent implementation of pandemic-related border controls has enabled industrially-processed edible oil producers, adequately fortifying, to capture an increased market share and ensure wider consumer reach.

The wheat flour sector demonstrably attempted to sustain compliance levels over the last year. Disrupted access to good quality Vitamin A, however, continues to pose a risk to good performance.

With the promise of renewed focus; with opportunities to innovate in business processes and digitalisation that better integrate food fortification and foster trust, and with the commitment and collective action on the part of all food fortification stakeholders, Nigerian processors can get back to the levels of optimal compliance achieved prior to the pandemic.

In his remark, Vice-President, Yemi Osinbajo, who joined the meeting virtually from Abuja, expressed the appreciation of the Federal Government to the Forum, especially the sponsors, for sustaining the food fortification efforts in the overall interest of Nigerians.

As the Forum celebrates overall 90 per cent compliance on fortification, he said the private sector operators deserved commendation having gone that far despite the challenges.

He assured that the Federal government and its regulatory agencies would continue to collaborate for better result ahead, noting, if we all work together, we can achieve the shared together and in good time.

Minister of Health, Osagie Ehanire; his Industry, Trade and Investment counterpart, Niyi Adebayo, as well as the Directors-General of NAFDAC and the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON), Mojisola Adeyeye and Farouk Salim, respectively, all pledged to use governmental instruments to provide a conducive environment for the food processing companies to achieve their food fortification compliance target.
I must unequivocally state that I stand with Nigerian women in their struggle for fairness and equity. I salute their resolute stand in fighting for what is right. I believe that a nation that neglects or sidesteps 50 per cent of its population and workforce simply because of a patriarchal orientation is a nation doomed to fail. Improving and harnessing the talents and gifts of our women is a no brainer, and it baffles most people that any institution will be insensitive to or undermine these

In the last three weeks, three significant events happened. First, during the constitution amendment process, the National Assembly rejected five gender bills, and as expected, our womenfolk are enraged. The world celebrated womens day, and this year the campaign theme was Breaking the Bias. Nigerian women from all backgrounds and social strata mobilised in their numbers to protest at the National Assembly in what they considered the mother of all protests, which signposts a new dawn for women. What is the significance of these events? Beyond the rhetoric of affirmation and striving for gender equality, what must Nigerian women do to confront the hydra-headed problem of the girl child and women in our society? Post gender bills, what real issues stop women from realising their full potentials in Nigeria? These questions call for introspection and reflection on the urgency of social change in gender relations in our country.

These recent events and related responses demonstrate the acute sensitivity and sheer determination Nigeria women have about issues of gender inequality. Their actions are galvanising a critical mass of voices that are clamouring for a change of the status quo, and the ring of these voices is reaching a crescendo in advocating for womens empowerment and simply asking for our Nigerian women to enjoy just a few of the privileges Nigerian men have that seem commonsensical and normal.

I must unequivocally state that I stand with Nigerian women in their struggle for fairness and equity. I salute their resolute stand in fighting for what is right. I believe that a nation that neglects or sidesteps 50 per cent of its population and workforce simply because of a patriarchal orientation is a nation doomed to fail. Improving and harnessing the talents and gifts of our women is a no brainer, and it baffles most people that any institution will be insensitive to or undermine these, much more an institution representing this 50 per cent of the population, such as the National Assembly.

The five gender bills rejected at the National Assembly will not bring about gender equality. But they are the first and foundational steps in the climb towards gender equality. These bills seek to enable women have a minor stake in areas historically dominated by men.

The five bills include: First, a bill to create additional seats for women to increase womens representation in the National Assembly, which will lead to a significant increase in the number of women in the Parliament, currently standing at 5 per cent; second, a bill to enable Nigerian women to transfer citizenship to their foreign husbands, which is a right that every Nigerian man married to a foreign spouse enjoys; third, a bill to ensure affirmative action for women of at least 35 per cent in political party administration and appointive positions across federal and state levels in the country. Fourth, a bill to ensure that a minimum of 20 per cent of ministerial or commissioner nominees are women; fifth, a bill to allow a woman to become an indigene of her husbands state after five years of marriage. The National Assembly rejected all these bills, and the womenfolk primarily saw it as a marker of insistence on the old order.

The broader significance of the rejection of these bills is that the progress of Nigerian women in the quest for a more egalitarian society seems to be momentarily truncated. All the proposed constitutional amendments were meant to end bias against women and ensure the minimisation, if not total removal, of barriers that millions of women face due to their gender. These rejections speak volumes about the mindset of most people, especially men in power and male-dominated institutions. As products of patriarchy, the National Assembly reinforced the dominant ideology prevalent in our society, which is sympathetic to the plight of women but fights hard to stop any change to the status quo. This ideology is seen in culture, religion, and politics.

Women worldwide watched to see how the Nigerian parliament would vote on those issues and give them something to celebrate this year. They were utterly disappointed. Little wonder our women took to the streets and marched to end the oppressive tendencies against them. Women, in their numbers, marched to the National Assembly to register their disgust at the parliamentarians actions in failing to pass the five gender bills.

Suffice to say that this is not a typical Nigerian problem and it seems global. Still, most societies, especially developed ones, have made progress in improving the opportunities available to women and the quality and impact of women in their societies. These societies are tackling the dominant masculine ideologies at the basic levels of family, community, and religion by creating an ecosystem that normalises gender equality.

Any struggle for gender equity that neglects the battle for the minds and hearts of people and advocacy to make people understand the importance of gender equality at the micro-levels of society, will not succeed. Little wonder that many of the representatives, although paying lip service to the issues of gender equality, refused to endorse it through the voting on constitutional amendment in the hallowed chambers. The bills succumbed to the intricate politics, intrigues, and horse-trading peculiar to the National Assembly. The high-powered advocacy given to the bills by the wives of the president, vice president and all the governors in Nigeria, was not enough to get both houses to pass some of the bills.

This rejection was more poignant because it happened as women worldwide celebrated the International Womens Day, with the theme, Gender equality today for a sustainable tomorrow. The celebration was at the core of putting women and their issues at the heart of global politics and governance, and the emerging global socio-political and socio-economic milieu.

Women worldwide watched to see how the Nigerian parliament would vote on those issues and give them something to celebrate this year. They were utterly disappointed. Little wonder our women took to the streets and marched to end the oppressive tendencies against them. Women, in their numbers, marched to the National Assembly to register their disgust at the parliamentarians actions in failing to pass the five gender bills.

The protest acknowledged that in most countries, even in advanced democracies, better women representation came out of protracted legislative and civil rights actions. A price must be paid for change, irrespective of its low or high cost. Freedom is not free, and our women have shown that they are ready to get in the mix of things to win their freedom.

These women are following in the footsteps of great women of yesteryears who marched against the colonial masters and specifically against their tax policies that resulted in the now-famous Aba Womens Riot of 1929. Just like other famous women advocates of the past  such as Chief Olufunmilayo Ransome Kuti, Hajia Gambo Sawaba, and Chief Margaret Ekpo  these doyens of democracy and gender equality crusaders are pushing hard to get the National Assembly to have a second look at the bills and reconsider their stance on them. Fortunately, The House of Representatives will be voting again on three of these gender bills  those on citizenship, indigeneship and 35 per cent affirmative action in party administration. This step is crucial because it will give the bills a second chance and might lead to the consideration for change in the status quo.

Also, in my experience of passing laws in Nigeria, I understand that lobbying for votes requires articulation, resources, and time to be successful. Our women need to mobilise and pressure the system for their rights, in relation to their demographic dominance. Rights are often secured, and not handed to anyone on a platter. It is a fact that some men will not hand over male privileges simply because of little agitations and niceties from women.

The realities of womens political participation are staggering. Although statistics show that more women vote than men in our general elections, they are dangerously less represented in governments. The Nigerian Senate has only eight female senators, out of 109 members; only 13 female House of Representatives members out of 360; and 44 out of 991 state legislators are females. There are 15 State houses of assembly, out of 36, with no woman as legislator, and there are no female governors. These disturbing statistics show a deep-rooted bias against women holding leadership positions, and if we do not take urgent steps now, these numbers will continue to slide from bad to worse.

Beyond the gender bills, we need to do more to uplift girls and women in our society. A panoply of issues bedevils womens progress in our society, with men and women generally facing many of these, but having the most devastating effects on women. These issues include the persistent and increasing burden of poverty, inequality, inadequacies and unequal access to education and training, and unequal access to health care and related services. Women also face violence against them; the adverse effects of armed and non-armed conflict, especially with the emergence of Boko haram; banditry; and its likes. There is also the prevalent inequality in economic structures and policies in all forms of productive activities and access to resources. Women are victims of inequality in power relations and decision-making at all levels; insufficient mechanisms, at all levels, to promote their advancement; a lack of respect for, and inadequate promotion and protection of their human rights; and stereotyping, amongst similar ills.

Advocating for the higher representation of women in elective and appointive offices is critical. And it may potentially be attained through some form of legislative intervention, as seen in other parts of the world. However, a change in attitude amongst and towards women and massive education of the girl-child will help advance the agitation of women to be considered equal within their homes and in the Nigerian society.

Educating our children from an early age about issues and the importance of gender equality, changing our attitude towards the girl-child, and massive education of the girl-child are viable and necessary steps towards addressing gender inequality. Representation is only one step and cannot be done in isolation of other essential steps.

The issue of uplifting women in our society is for the benefit of all. Highly productive and engaged women in will add to our countrys development and unleash great development strides. Women are our mothers, wives, daughters, and sisters, and they deserve better than the men in Nigeria allow them to get. They need to be freed from the encumbrances of gender discrimination and inequality, and the government must lead this significant change in society. It is the task of everyone in our society to change the age-long practices and dogmas that have held womens emancipation hostage for a long time.

I will recommend that more sensitisation programmes and advocacy projects be carried out on this issue to get the buy-in of most people in the country. Also, in my experience of passing laws in Nigeria, I understand that lobbying for votes requires articulation, resources, and time to be successful. Our women need to mobilise and pressure the system for their rights, in relation to their demographic dominance. Rights are often secured, and not handed to anyone on a platter. It is a fact that some men will not hand over male privileges simply because of little agitations and niceties from women. More work is required to bring about a complete change in attitude, orientation and actions that are anti-women in our society.

Dakuku Peterside is a policy and leadership expert.
government must not be afraid to embark on an activist fiscal policy to create jobs, build infrastructure and develop our industrial sector, as well as continue to improve agriculture. This means government must spend money on those things that bring the requisite economic returns for the nation (local and state governments should) shape their budgets to suit their revenues, as federal government spends more to create more jobs for the youth.

Recently, David Pilling, Financial Times of Londons Editor for Africa wrote an article titled as above. He asked, What is the Nigerian government for? Trust the British, masters of subtlety and understatement. For in that article was loaded a lot of messages, some of which the Nigerian presidency got and others it ignored or could not process. The article has however not left my mind and I believe it is worth amplifying.

We shall look at the crux of the article shortly, but let me recall that Mr Garba Shehu, the presidential spokesman, in responding to the article, called out David Pilling for criticising British Airways and also veered off to regale his readers about how the Western nations induced the war that imploded Libya. This is the same Libya on whose great leader (Gaddafi), Garbas principal had dumped the insecurity problem that has since enveloped Nigeria several times. One wouldnt have thought that our presidency also subscribed to conspiracy theories like the rest of us mortals. Nigerias Goodluck Jonathan was the first African leader to sign the fraudulent resolution 1973, with which Gaddafi was murdered and Libya sent back to the Dark Ages; just as we jumped into the ongoing Ukrainian war when we could have been strategic. But I digress.

In his article titled What is Nigerias Government for?, Pilling wrote, inter alia:

On the British Airways flight between London and Nigerias administrative capital of Abuja, one of the airlines most profitable routes, nearly all the space is taken up with flatbeds. The unfortunate few making their way to a crunched economy section at the back must trudge through row after row of business class Evidently, there is plenty of money to be made in Abujas corridors of power. Nigerias economy may be flat on its back, but the political elite flying to and from London will spend the flight flat on theirs, too Next year, many of the members of government will change, though not necessarily the bureaucracy behind it. Campaigning has already begun for presidential elections that in February 2023 will draw the curtain on eight years of the administration of Muhammadu Buhari, on whose somnolent watch Nigeria has sleepwalked closer to disaster There are some promising candidates. If Yemi Osinbajo, the technocratic vice-president, were miraculous to make it through the campaign ticket and emerge as president, the hearts of Nigerian optimists would beat a little fasterBut that may be to underestimate the depth of Nigerias quagmire. The problem is not so much who leads the government as the nature of government itself As is said of India, Nigeria grows at night while the government sleeps  hardly surprising that some libertarian tech entrepreneurs want the government to withdraw and leave the private sector in charge In reality, the government is not too big. It is too small. The federal budget  not counting money transferred to states  is about $30bn, derisory for a population of more than 200m people. Only trust in government  and a willingness to pay taxes  can redress this balanceNigeria desperately needs an administration whose energies go not into preserving its own privilege but into providing public goods  basic education and health, rule of law, security, power, roads and digital infrastructure. It must remove distortions and subsidies that direct entrepreneurial activity from production to arbitrage.

As a fact, I write this from the unfortunate but-no-longer-so-cramped economy section of British Airways. Before, the economy section was unfit for human habitation due to its tightness. I could tell you that for free as an economy class aficionado who travels on his own dime. And indeed, very bizarrely, about two-thirds of this aircraft is first class and business class. If we add premium economy, that could be four-fifth. It isnt like anything I have seen before. But you cannot blame the airline for identifying that Nigeria has much money and that most of our people prefer to flaunt it by stretching out for a mere six-hour flight  most of them civil servants and their children traveling on our taxes. David Pillings analogy about an economy flat on its back, as we spend borrowed money flying flat on our backs should be sobering. But trust Garba Shehu to try and send BA after Pilling. He certainly does not care for Nigeria to be better. Buharis government will soon hopefully end, together with its failed promises, utter let down of the people, and its hypocrisy.

Governments to come must find ways of engaging the people of Nigeria to change Nigeria. Its a factor substitution matter. But our governments are not ready to make the investment required. The investment is huge by the way, but it is viable. Rather than farm out our development entirely to foreigners (for the capital and technology), we should press in our population. Let our youths make their own mistakes but only Nigerians will develop Nigeria.

But the key lesson I think everybody should draw from the write-up is what I have always said; government is very small in Nigeria, contrary to what economic liberals will have us believe. They deliberately and willfully ignore the data. Many of them are ensconced in countries where the public sector functions well and is big enough to cover critical human functions. However, they dont want their country to move ahead and have a public sector which really provides services that the people need. Perhaps it will make them irrelevant. In 2019, prequel to the elections, I did a survey on this matter, detailing how the National Health Service and the Department of Defense were the two highest employing companies in the world, with about 1.9 million and 4 million employees for the U.K. and the U.S.A respectively. For us here, we dont have much by way of good, customer-facing government personnel on the field, and that is where we must start from. What we have are wicked souls extracting rents and bribes and making life difficult for ordinary Nigerians. We also dont need people shuffling papers and hiding files in offices and secretariats. We need them in the field where their work could be benchmarked.

Incidentally, the man who has caught my fancy and to whom Ive been drawing attention to lately with regard to the 2023 elections  Bola Tinubu  thinks like David Pilling. He advocated at his 2019 birthday symposium that:

The issue of insecurity, unemployment and extremism has many things to do with governance, over time. We must tackle our deep and widespread poverty. If we limit governments role under the erroneous assumption that government spending is intrinsically unproductive, then we tether ourselves to failure.. We would do well to more critically study how other populous nations such as the UK, U.S., Germany and China charted their course during their formative years. You will see that they did not adhere to small government or the purportedly free market. Government engaged in massive spending on infrastructure and education while also engaging in policies that protected industrial development and key aspects of the agricultural sectorOnly when they matured and held advantages over other nations, did the UK and US begin to champion free markets and small government We would do well to understand this history and learn what it means for our own pursuit of development. The development of any populous nation has always been dependent on the ability of government to allocate sufficient funds to projects and programmes that create and encourage enduring growth and employment We must reject that mode of thinking that assumes government expenditure is inherently unproductive as well as harmful to the overall economy It is not the fact that government expenditure is intrinsically wrong any more than one can say all private sector activity is economically positiveGovernment can be wasteful or it can be the key component to growth, just as a private sector business can function profitably or spend itself into bankruptcy Fiscal wisdom but not necessarily austerity is required for an economy like ours in a time like this, to ensure equitable wealth redistribution and meaningful use of resourcesThe years have shown that the private sector is much too weak to spur the growth we needIf the private sector could manage this feat, it would have already done so. Where the private sector is too weak or unable, the government must fill the void This means government must not be afraid to embark on an activist fiscal policy to create jobs, build infrastructure and develop our industrial sector, as well as continue to improve agriculture. This means government must spend money on those things that bring the requisite economic returns for the nation (local and state governments should) shape their budgets to suit their revenues, as federal government spends more to create more jobs for the youth.

I dont know for how much longer we can hope to keep deceiving ourselves over what is so obvious. Government cannot continue to delude itself with the idea that youth entrepreneurship is the way forward. Yes, it lulls government to sleep by taking a number of youths out of circulation for a while. But it is not scalable in this country, yet. We have tried and it has consistently failed. Governments to come must find ways of engaging the people of Nigeria to change Nigeria. Its a factor substitution matter. But our governments are not ready to make the investment required. The investment is huge by the way, but it is viable. Rather than farm out our development entirely to foreigners (for the capital and technology), we should press in our population. Let our youths make their own mistakes but only Nigerians will develop Nigeria. History tells us that these developed countries passed that route and there are no shortcuts. But very unfortunately, what we have here are universities and business schools teaching our youths wrongly, and from where advisers to government are chosen. We have a plethora of entrepreneurship experts who have never practiced entrepreneurship or who did, backed up by money they acquired in government. They dont know what entrepreneurship is about, and our entrepreneurship so far has not been innovative  it is all about collecting rent and spreads on imported machines or ideas. Nothing profound has come out of our entrepreneurship so far, contrary to what the developed countries have been able to achieve with their entrepreneurship  with which they have taken over the world. Our approach is rootless, baseless, and artificial.

We hope in the coming government, but contrary to David Pillings hopes, I think Yemi Osinbajo is a libertarian and does not see the benefit of a well-organised, competent government that covers what governments should adequately cover  education, security, environment, health, social services  or the tremendous financial, reputational, sociopsychological and other benefits that could accrue from such an approach. A Tinubu approaches that point

I will give three examples of what I mean. In my previous research, I found that the National Health Service (NHS) is the largest employer in the United Kingdom (with over 1.9 million employed  even more with the COVID-19 crisis). In fact, the U.K., as well as other developed nations, seize opportunities like COVID to expand employment. It is incredible how the U.K. has built elaborate employment opportunities around COVID-19, up to employing people who check you into your hotel or homes, to ensure you dont move around after traveling, when the pandemic was still an issue. In the U.S.A, the biggest employer is the Department of Defense (almost 4 million employed)  because the U.S.A had chosen to be a warrior nation to maintain her number one status in the world. In the U.K., two of my closest pals recently described their jobs. One who drives a cab told of how he was assigned to collect two autistic boys from home to ensure they went to school, and to return them home every afternoon. For that he gets paid about 3,000 monthly by the City Council. The two autistic boys are even entitled to a personal assistant (another job), who rides with them to and fro. I was like who cares in Nigeria? We can see that countries where they care about human beings will always make progress and maintain sanity. Why will silly Nigerian big men not send their children there to school, go there for healthcare and other expereinces of tourism, while they piss on their own country? My other friend runs a home for people with disabilities. The council also pays  and this is big money. The council is concerned with ensuring that these poor people dont become vagrants in society, so my friends company (the home), houses them, feeds them thrice daily, and ensures that they take their drugs. My friend employs 19 people who run shifts.

This is how governments create jobs. I think, in summary, both those who run governments here, and their libertarian friends who talk of private sector everything, may not have attained that level of humanity that sees the opportunities for reorganising society and extracting great value, simply by investing in people and organising the environment. We live worse than beasts here and complain about not having money or jobs. Something just has to start changing. We hope in the coming government, but contrary to David Pillings hopes, I think Yemi Osinbajo is a libertarian and does not see the benefit of a well-organised, competent government that covers what governments should adequately cover  education, security, environment, health, social services  or the tremendous financial, reputational, D and other benefits that could accrue from such an approach. A Tinubu approaches that point, if only Nigerians will try and understand him, study his speeches and actions and past, and give him an opportunity. That is where I stand for now.

I realise that I have spent quite a bit of time writing about this fact, including the state of our dismal budgets which have nothing in them for the real people of Nigeria at a mere $140 per head all through the year. I have written two books on this  Change is Going to Come and Revolution of Ideas, several articles, and even my PhD thesis (which I have published into a book) is on this matter of how to really solve our unemployment problem, away from the perennial self-deception with youth entrepreneurship. My 2019 presidential bid was also based on this, and I created a number of infographics to bring attention to the derisiveness of our national budget  often being mocked by those who could not see that far and wide ahead. I could say I have tried my best, but will not stop until we see a major shift. On that day, the Nigerian economy shall have begun its sure march to glory, but not until then. We may just keep going round in circles.

Tope Fasua, an economist, author, blogger, entrepreneur, and recent presidential candidate of the Abundant Nigeria Renewal Party (ANRP), can be reached through topsyfash@yahoo.com.
The recent personal attacks by His Excellency, the Governor of Rivers State, Rt. Hon. Nyesom Wike, against my Deputy Governor, Rt. Hon. Comrade Philip Shaibu is, to say the least, most unfortunate and totally uncalled for.

If Governor Wike was one who is wont to show respect and courtesy to his colleague-governors, he would have ordinarily reached out to me to express his concerns about the views made by my deputy governor, rather than embarking on this unwarranted public onslaught.

My deputy governor was a former National President of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) and his comment is representative of the essence of the nations youth population, who are inclined to openly speak up and question the status quo. If Governor Wike cannot understand and adequately respond to the style and character of the Nigerian youth, how can he aspire to lead them?

His Excellency, Governor Wike should have taken a cue from the manner in which the National Chairman of our party, Iyorchia Ayu, responded to my deputys remarks, as a conscientious leader who is able to show empathy and consideration.

The concerns expressed by my deputy governor bordered on pertinent issues affecting the PDP in Edo State which since the September 19th 2020 elections, has been able to register over 500,000 members; and till date, these new members have not been properly integrated into our party after two years.

Also, the leaders, executives and members who came with me into the party have still not been accepted, integrated or harmonized into the party.

More worrisome is the fact that old members of Edo PDP, who are open to inclusion and supportive of building a large party are being vilified and ostracized by a cabal purportedly led by Chief Dan Orbih, who is your perpetual guest in Port Harcourt and is remotely used to orchestrate the destabilization of the party in Edo State.

It is necessary to recall at this point that a political solution gave rise to the emergence of Chief Dan Orbih first as Acting and then as Substantive National Vice Chairman, South South, of our party, when Chief Emma Odidi resigned that position to allow Chief Orbih to ascend.

It is therefore curious why this type of political solution is no longer tenable to resolve the political impasse in Edo State PDP.

We can categorically state that in the comments of the deputy governor, he at no point threatened the party as Governor Wike has alleged. Rather, it is Governor Wike, who has at different times, threatened the PDP. Some of these instances include:

1. On September 16, 2018, Governor Wike threatened the party that there would be grave consequences if it moved the National Convention from Port Harcourt in the run up to the 2019 presidential election.

2. On September 12, 2019, Governor Wike also threatened to cause trouble for the party over the emergence of Hon. Ndudi Elumelu as the Minority Leader of the House of Representatives.

Undoubtedly, Governor Wike has contributed to the advancement of the party, just like others, since 1999.

No one is against his desire to run for president, however, his ambition should not be embarked on in such a way that it would cause disruption at different levels, such as the PDP Governors Forum as well as different chapters of the party across the country.

It clearly amounts to delusion of grandeur, for any one man to nurse the idea that he owns or has more stake in the PDP and everyone should pander to him.

We are all equal stakeholders in the party and an aggregate of the ideas, opinions and contributions of all leaders and members should form the position of the party and not the view of one individual or a select few.

While Governor Wike is free to use his resources as he deems fit in pursuit of his ambition, he should not attempt to cow, intimidate, cajole and threaten others into doing his bidding. Edo State cannot and will not be procured for anyones personal ambition.

What Nigeria needs now are strong democratic institutions and not strong men; that is why we will join the great leaders of our party across the country to build PDP into a strong, large and indomitable party that will win next years presidential election.

Governor Wike and his collaborators headed by Chief Dan Orbih in Edo State will not succeed in destabilizing the PDP in Edo State as they did other states like Cross River just to secure delegates to actualize his alleged personal ambition to run for presidency in 2023.

In Edo, we dont accept political bullies and overlords and historically, we have demonstrated our capacity to unshackle ourselves and dethrone bullies and highhanded leaders.

I appeal to all well-meaning leaders of our great party to call Governor Wike to order to desist from his current unguarded and disruptive tendencies. From all indications today, PDP is set to take over the leadership of Nigeria provided we can rein in the self-interest of a few leaders to put the task of rescuing Nigeria above their personal ambitions.

H.E. Godwin Obaseki

Governor, Edo State
Governor Godwin Obaseki of Edo State has told his counterpart in Rivers State, Governor Nyesom Wike that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is not his (Wikes) personal property.

Mr Obaseki said this in a statement on Sunday, in his reaction to Mr Wikes recent attack on the Deputy Governor of Edo State, Philip Shaibu, who had threatened to leave PDP over the partys lingering crisis in Edo.

The Edo State governor said his deputy did not threaten PDP, but that it is Mr Wike, who rather, threatens the party, frequently.

It clearly amounts to a delusion of grandeur, for any one man to nurse the idea that he owns or has more stake in the PDP and everyone should pander to him.

We are all equal stakeholders in the party and an aggregate of the ideas, opinions and contributions of all leaders and members should form the position of the party and not the view of one individual or a select few, Mr Obaseki said of the Rivers governor.

He accused Mr Wike and the PDP National Vice Chairman, South-south, Dan Orbih, of trying to destabilise the party in Edo.

Governor Wike and his collaborators, headed by Chief Dan Orbih, in Edo State, will not succeed in destabilising the PDP in Edo State as they did other states like Cross River just to secure delegates to actualize his alleged personal ambition to run for the presidency in 2023.

In Edo, we dont accept political bullies and overlords and historically, we have demonstrated our capacity to unshackle ourselves and dethrone bullies and highhanded leaders, he said.

On Shaibus threat to leave PDP

My deputy governor was a former National President of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) and his comment is representative of the essence of the nations youth population, who are inclined to openly speak up and question the status quo, Governor Obaseki said.

If Governor Wike cannot understand and adequately respond to the style and character of the Nigerian youth, how can he aspire to lead them? he added.

Mr Obaseki said Mr Shaibus comment about the lack of integration of new members in the Edo PDP is a genuine concern that should be addressed by the party.

He specifically said that the PDP in Edo has registered over 500,000 new members since the September 2020 governorship election but that these new members have not been properly integrated into our party after two years.

Also, the leaders, executives and members who came with me into the party have still not been accepted, integrated or harmonised into the party.

More worrisome is the fact that old members of Edo PDP, who are open to inclusion and supportive of building a large party are being vilified and ostracised by a cabal purportedly led by Chief Dan Orbih, who is your perpetual guest in Port Harcourt and is remotely used to orchestrate the destabilisation of the party in Edo State, Mr Obaseki told Governor Wike.

He said Mr Wike should have taken a cue from the National Chairman of PDP, Iyorchia Ayu, who responded to my deputys remarks, as a conscientious leader who is able to show empathy and consideration.

He also said, If Governor Wike was one who is wont to show respect and courtesy to his colleague-governors, he would have ordinarily reached out to me to express his concerns about the views made by my deputy governor, rather than embarking on this unwarranted public onslaught.

Background

Because of Mr Shaibus threat to leave PDP, Governor Wike had called on the party leadership to sanction the Edo deputy governor whom he painted as being ungrateful to the PDP which provided him and Governor Obaseki to contest for their second term in office after the All Progressives Congress barred them from their governorship primaries.

This is the same deputy governor that was kneeling down to beg for us to give them umbrella, today you have the effrontery to threaten PDP. Such a shame, Mr Wike said.

I have written to the national chairman of the party that if they dont constitute a disciplinary committee against the deputy governor, I will invoke the sanctions of the party and will make sure they must discipline that deputy governor, Mr Wike added.
Two four-year-olds, Wasiu Dauda and Alimeen Ibrahim, abducted in the Ijesha area of Lagos have been found, a relative told PREMIUM TIMES on Monday.

Iyabo Omotunde, a sister to one of the victims father, said they were found on Sunday morning in an abandoned white bus beside the warehouse in Akorede market, Ijesha, Lagos.

The children were abducted on Friday at the market at around 6:30 p.m.

Mrs Omotunde said some people saw the children in a bus and came to the parents residence to inform them.

Some people noticed that something was hitting the bus, so they peeped and saw the children. They came to call us because they could not touch them, she said.

So, when we got there, the door was shut, we broke it down. The bus is like those travelling buses.

As of Saturday, the bus was not there because we searched the area. We have told the police, they have punctured the tyres.

Mrs Omotunde said the children were taken to the hospital but have now been discharged.

Back story

They (children) came back from school, and the information reaching me is that they saw two people dressed in native and then bought the biscuits at the Aboki shop, a relative, Funmilayo Seun, had told this newspaper.

He said the children, whose mothers are petty traders, were then lured into a minibus.

Even the Aboki (security guard) said he saw how they were taken into the bus but he didnt know them.

The news comes days after the murder of a 22-year-old fashion designer, Bamise Ayanwola, who went missing after boarding a BRT in the state on February 26 and was later found dead.

The incident also occurred in the same week two siblings, aged 15 and 20, were kidnapped in Ogun State, with the kidnappers demanding N15 million as ransom.
Budding trees and blooming flowers.

The return of robins, loons and other migrating birds.

The return of bees, butterflies and frogs.

Melting snow and lake ice.

Longer days and light in the evening.

Shedding the winter garments.

The myriad scents of flowering trees and plants.

Vote

View Results
MIAMI, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- America First Political Committee Chairman KW Miller will primary RINO Carlos Gimenez in Florida's 26th Congressional District which includes a portion of southern Dade County and all of Monroe County Florida.

RINO Carlos Gimenez has openly voted with Nancy Pelosi and the radical leftists in Congress on critical 'Unconstitutional Issues' far too many times and continues to support a socialist agenda.

AMERICA FIRST HAS TARGETED RINO CARLOS GIMENEZ

RINO Gimenez openly supported and 'Voted for Hillary Clinton' in 2016. Gimenez also defended disgraced RINO Liz Cheney after she voted in favor of the 'Sham Impeachment' against Donald Trump.

RINO Gimenez also defended Cheney after the Republican Caucus censored and removed her from Republican Party Leadership. Gimenez, like RINO Liz Cheney continues to openly vote and side with the Socialist and Radical Democrats.

Some other notable examples of Gimenez Socialist votes include:

RINO Gimenez also voted for the 'January 6' Democrat 'Witch Hunt' against American Citizens and Republican voters.

RINO Gimenez voted with Nancy Pelosi on H.R. 550, to allow the federal government to create a database, track unvaccinated Americans, who could be targeted, segregated, discriminated against, and forced to comply with vaccination mandates;

RINO Gimenez voted with Nancy Pelosi on Anti-Second Amendment legislation HR-8, making it more difficult for law-abiding citizens to purchase, own, carry, and use a firearm;

RINO Gimenez voted with Nancy Pelosi on H.R. 6 for 'Open Borders and Amnesty' to over 20 million criminal illegal aliens, which would permanently avoid deportation, obtain a pathway to citizenship, and full voting rights;

RINO Gimenez also voted with Nancy Pelosi to strip Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of all Congressional Committee positions.

About America First Political Committee:

Our mission is to protect the integrity of the U.S. Constitution, promote conservative political candidates and policy that puts America First.

America First Contact:

Contact: J. Stephens

Email: [email protected]

Website: www.americafirstpc.org

Phone: 202-495-1505

SOURCE America First Political Committee
Delineation of a 600 metre long mineralized vein & breccia structure at the Paciencia and Paciencia East veins containing wide intervals, up to 28.8 metres of precious metals, including 3.5 metres @ 5.0 grams per tonne (g/t) gold equivalent (AuEq) in trench TRP22-09

Trenching results and re-logging historical drill core confirms both grade and vein thickness increasing at depth

3,000 metre drill program commenced in February. Approximately 1,500 metres are planned to test the Paciencia Vein at depth and along strike (Figure 4) with remainder of metres testing other veins in the North and Central Zone targets .

Astra Exploration's CEO, Brian Miller commented:

"The Company is making great strides with drilling commencing only one month after public listing. Preparation ahead of drilling included systematic trenching and re-logging of historic core. This demonstrates Pampa Paciencia is a large system with wide veins and high grade gold and silver intercepts."

"Most exciting is that historic drilling indicates grades are increasing at depth where the Company's initial drill holes will test. These are the perfect ingredients for a large, preserved system and the Company's maiden drill program will look to step out from open intersections to grow the Pampa Pacienca mineralization further."

Exploration Program Discussion

Pampa Paciencia is a 3,840 ha road-access low sulphidation epithermal (LSE) gold-silver project located within an active mining district less than 15 kilometres from two major mines (Sierra Gorda and Spence) and five kilometres from the Faride LSE mine.

The current exploration program has combined property wide mapping and sampling, geophysical surveys, and localized trenching with the dual aims of defining a larger district and identifying the highest priority initial drill targets.

Trenching

A 1,119 metre trenching program was completed in early 2022 at the Pampa Paciencia project to map the Paciencia and Paciencia East veins, and to confirm underlying magnetic structures coincident with float Au-Ag anomalies. Trenches were concentrated in the outcropping or subcropping areas of the North target, with some trenches targeting covered areas. A total of 311 samples were taken with rock saw and pneumatic hammer and sent to ALS lab in Santiago, Chile.

Above the primary drill target systematic trenches at the Paciencia and Paciencia East veins reported anomalous gold and silver, with best results of of 21.1 metres @ 1.28 g/t AuEq, including 3.5 metres @ 5 g/t AuEq in trench TRP22-09 (Table 1).

Trenches in covered areas (TRP22-01, TRP21-04 and TRP21-06) failed to reach the bed rock due to the combined thickness and hardness of the caliche and alluvial sediments cover. Trenches TRP21-03, TRP21-07 and TPR22-11 did not return significant mineralization.

Detailed trench mapping and interpretation of geophysical lineaments reveals that the the surface expression of the Paciencia vein system is a NW-SE striking fault-related lineament composed mainly by a late tectonic and hydrothermal breccia with limonitic matrix and clasts of the LSE quartz vein. This late breccia event is transporting vein clasts to the surface, creating the large amount of vein float blocks, and diluting the precious metal content of the quartz veins.

Relogging of DDH cores from holes PP15-005, PP15-006 and PP15-007 confirmed that the vein breccias are more abundant at surface and the quartz veins are thicker and more continuous at depth (Figure 3).

Reverse circulation drilling commenced in February at Pampa Paciencia, with 50% of the 3,000 metres program stepping out from known mineralization on the Paciencia vein (Figure 4). The rest of the program will be testing Paciencia Este vein, Paciencia Oeste vein,and geophysical anomalies in the North Zone and the Central Zone (refer to February 17 news release) target.

The Company is stepping out in 35-50 metre steps from previous drilling including hole PP15-007 which returned 3.75 metres @ 8.29 g/t AuEq and hole PP15-006 which returned 2.1 metres @ 8.49 g/t AuEq. This drilling indicates to company geologists that mineralization is getting stronger in the deepest holes, that the mineralization is likely to be fully preserved and that previous drilling was too widely spaced to accurately define the shoots of mineralization that occurs in epithermal veins like those at Pampa Pacienca.

Sampling Procedures

Trench samples were sampled, bagged, and tagged by Astras geologists and then delivered in two separate batches to the ALS sample preparation laboratory in Santiago. The first group was delivered by Company personnel directly to the lab, while the second group was sent to the lab by courier. The geologists placed a series of blind blanks, standards and sample duplicates in the sample shipments as part of the Company's QA/QC protocol. The QA/QC results were checked and verified before any sample results were accepted to the assay database. Samples were prepared with PREP 31B code, and then analyzed with fire assay for gold (Au-AA24), acid digestion for silver (Ag-AA62), and multi elements by ICP (ME-ICP61).

Qualified Person Statement

The technical data and information as disclosed in this report has been reviewed and approved by Darcy Marud. Mr. Marud is a Practicing Member of the Association of Professional Geoscientists of Ontario and is a qualified person as defined under the terms of National Instrument 43-101  Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects.

About the Company

Astra Exploration Inc. is an exploration company based out of Vancouver, BC. Astra is engaged in the acquisition, exploration and development of epithermal gold-silver properties in Chile and is building a portfolio of high-quality projects. Astra's current focus is the development of the Pampa Paciencia Project. Additional information is available on the Compnay's website at www.astra-exploration.com

Neither the TSXV nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSXV) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Mineralization hosted on adjacent and/or nearby and/or geologically similar properties is not necessarily indicative of mineralization hosted on the Company's properties.

This news release may contain certain "Forward-Looking Statements" within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and applicable Canadian securities laws. When or if used in this news release, the words "anticipate", "believe", "estimate", "expect", "target, "plan", "forecast", "may", "schedule" and similar words or expressions identify forward-looking statements or information. These forward-looking statements or information may relate to the Company's business activities; exploration on the Company's properties; and marketing initiatives. Such statements represent the Company's current views with respect to future events and are necessarily based upon a number of assumptions and estimates that, while considered reasonable by the Company, are inherently subject to significant business, economic, competitive, political and social risks, contingencies and uncertainties. Many factors, both known and unknown, could cause results, performance or achievements to be materially different from the results, performance or achievements that are or may be expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors include, without limitation: development of the industry in which the Company operates; risks associated with the conduct of the Company's business activities; risks relating to reliance on the Company's management team and outside contractors; currency fluctuations; risks regarding the failure to generate sufficient cash flow from operations; laws and regulations governing the industry in which the Company operates; the ability of the communities in which the Company operates to manage and cope with the implications of COVID-19; the economic and financial implications of COVID-19 to the Company; operating or technical difficulties; employee relations, labour unrest or unavailability; stock market volatility; conflicts of interest among certain directors and officers; lack of liquidity for shareholders of the Company; litigation risk; and other risk factors disclosed in the Company's public disclosure documents available on the Company's profile at www.sedar.com. Readers are cautioned against attributing undue certainty to forward-looking statements or forward-looking information. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially, there may be other factors that cause results not to be anticipated, estimated or intended. The Company does not intend, and does not assume any obligation, to update these forward-looking statements or information to reflect changes in assumptions or changes in circumstances or any other events affecting such statements and information other than as required by applicable laws, rules and regulations.

SOURCE Astra Exploration Limited
NEW YORK, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The global Mosquito Repellent Market has generated $6.9 billion in value in 2021 and is likely to reach 10.9 billion by the end of 2028, with a healthy CAGR of 5.6% over the forecast period. The report presents a brief analysis of the current performance of the market at the global level. It highlights growth factor restraints, opportunities, and challenges in the market. Additionally, it mentions the recent developments along with geographical and competitive market dynamics.

Zion Market Research published the latest report titled as "Mosquito Repellent Market By Type (Mat, Vaporizer, Spray, Cream & Oil, Coil, and Others), By Distribution Channel (E-commerce, Independent Stores, and Supermarket), By Afterbite Type, (Roll-On, Gel, Balm, Lotion), and By Region - Global and Regional Industry Overview, Market Intelligence, Comprehensive Analysis, Historical Data, and Forecasts 2022  2028." into their research database.

Mosquito Repellent Market: Overview

Mosquito repellent is a chemical substance used on clothing, skin, and other surfaces to prevent the landing of mosquitoes on those surfaces. Mosquito repellents are segregated into different chemical classes named plant-derived oils like oil of citronella & oil of lemon eucalyptus and synthetic chemicals like picaridin and DEET. Mosquito repellents are widely used globally to prevent mosquitoes from biting. These products are generally available in the market in different forms, including vaporizers, oils, coils, creams, and aerosols.

The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic has severely impacted most of the industries as supply chains were disturbed and manufacturing & production came to a halt. But the global mosquito repellent market showed a positive growth trajectory during the pandemic as it was recognized as an essential commodity. Thereby, it remained active during the period. Also, populations all across the globe became very much aware of their health. Therefore, the pandemic period indicated a positive growth trajectory in the global market in the forthcoming years.

Get a Free Sample Report with All Related Graphs & Charts (with COVID 19 Impact Analysis): https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/sample/mosquito-repellent-market

Our Free Sample Report Includes:

2022 Updated Report Introduction, Overview, and In-depth industry analysis

COVID-19 Pandemic Outbreak Impact Analysis Included

163 + Pages Research Report (Inclusion of Updated Research)

Provide Chapter-wise guidance on Request

2021 Updated Regional Analysis with Graphical Representation of Size, Share & Trends

Includes Updated List of tables & figures

Updated Report Includes Top Market Players with their Business Strategy, Sales Volume, and Revenue Analysis

Zion Market Research methodology

Industry Dynamics:

Mosquito Repellent Market: Growth Drivers

Growing urbanization and world population is likely to drive the growth of global market

The global mosquito repellent market is constantly growing in revenue and volume on account of various factors like growing urbanization, constantly increasing world population, and others. Additionally, the presence of different epidemics like Zika, dengue, yellow fever, etc., emphasized the importance of mosquito repellents globally. Apart from the urban areas, the growing awareness regarding these epidemics and ill effects of mosquito biting in suburb and rural areas is further penetrating the products deep into the roots of society. However, such a landscape has made mosquito repellent not a generalized product but an essential commodity in the global market today. Growing initiatives by the government are also encouraging people to take preventive measures to avoid mosquito-caused diseases in society, thereby lowering the burden on the public healthcare system.

Directly Purchase a Copy of the Report @ https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/buynow/su/mosquito-repellent-market

Mosquito Repellent Market: Restraints

Usage of pesticides in the product is likely to restrain the growth of the global market

Many mosquito repellent products are packed with DEET and cyfluthrin, which are considered common pesticides. Large doses of these pesticides can lead to skin irritation, headaches, stiffness in joints, skin blisters, memory loss, seizures, and shortness of breath. Thereby people are avoiding these products, which in turn will hamper the growth of the market.

Mosquito Repellent Market: Opportunities

Growing demand for herbal and plant-based mosquito repellent is likely to create several lucrative growth opportunities in global market.

Due to the growing ill effects of chemical-based mosquito repellents on the skin, people are switching towards herbal and organic plant-based mosquito repellents. Therefore, manufacturers are also propelling research development activities to come up with effective herbal skin-friendly mosquito repellents. However, this initiative is likely to open several new avenues in the market, thereby generating huge volume in the forthcoming years.

Get More Insight before [email protected] : https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/inquiry/mosquito-repellent-market

Mosquito Repellent Market: Challenges

Government regulation on using certain ingredients in the product is a huge challenge in the global market.

There are strict rules and regulations regarding the usage of ingredients in mosquito repellent products; therefore, it has emerged as a key challenge to the manufacturers in the global market.

List of Key Players of Mosquito Repellent Market:

Himalaya Global Holdings Ltd.

Sawyer Products Inc.

Herbal Strategi

Genesis Group

AoGrand Group

PelGar International

Jyothy Labs Limited

Dabur India Ltd.

3M Company

Company Natura & Co Holding SA

Godrej Consumer Products Limited

Spectrum Brands Holdings Inc.

Key Industry Insights & Finding of the Mosquito Repellent Market Reports:

As per the analysis shared by our research analyst, the Mosquito Repellent Market is expected to grow annually at a CAGR of around 5.6% (2022-2028).

Through the primary research, it was established that the Mosquito Repellent Market was valued approximately USD 6.9 billion in 2021 and is projected to reach to roughly USD 10.9 billion by 2028.

in 2021 and is projected to reach to roughly by 2028. Growing awareness among people regarding the requirement for insect and mosquito repellents in the region.

Key questions answered in this report:

What are the growth rate forecast and market size for Mosquito Repellent Market?

What are the key driving factors propelling the Mosquito Repellent Market forward?

What are the most important companies in the Mosquito Repellent Market Industry?

What segments does the Mosquito Repellent Market cover?

How can I receive a free copy of the Mosquito Repellent Market sample report and company profiles?

Report Scope:

Report Attribute Details Market size value in 2021 USD 6.9 Billion Revenue forecast in 2028 USD 10.9 Billion Growth Rate CAGR of almost 5.6% 2022-2028 Base Year 2020 Historic Years 2016 - 2021 Forecast Years 2022 - 2028 Segments Covered By Product Type, By Application, and By End Use Forecast Units Value (USD Billion), and Volume (Units) Quantitative Units Revenue in USD million/billion and CAGR from 2022 to 2028 Regions Covered North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa, and Rest of World Countries Covered U.S., Canada, Mexico, U.K., Germany, France, Italy, Spain, China, India, Japan, South Korea, Brazil, Argentina, GCC Countries, and South Africa, among others Companies Covered Himalaya Global Holdings Ltd., Sawyer Products, Inc., Herbal Strategi, Genesis Group, AoGrand Group, PelGar International, Jyothy Labs Limited, Dabur India Ltd., 3M Company, Natura & Co Holding SA, Godrej Consumer Products Limited, and Spectrum Brands Holdings Inc. Report Coverage Market growth drivers, restraints, opportunities, Porter's five forces analysis, PEST analysis, value chain analysis, regulatory landscape, market attractiveness analysis by segments and region, company market share analysis, and COVID-19 impact analysis. Customization Scope Avail customized purchase options to meet your exact research needs. https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/custom/890

Mosquito Repellent Market: Segmentation Analysis

The global mosquito repellent market can be segmented into the repellent spray, distribution channel, after bite type, and region.

By repellent spray, the market can be segmented into the mat, vaporizers, cream & oil, coil, and spray.

By distribution channel, the market can be segmented into e-commerce, independent stores, and supermarkets.

By afterbite type, the market can be segmented into roll-on, gel, balm, and lotion.

Free Brochure: https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/requestbrochure/mosquito-repellent-market

Recent Developments:

Henkel AG & Co. KGaA, in August 2019 , said to invest USD 130 million to increase production at its facility in Kentucky , US. The company is expected to invest in a new bottle production area at the facility.

Natura &Co said to acquire Avon Products, Inc. in January 2020 to create the fourth-largest beauty group in the world. With this strategy, the company aims to capture a larger consumer space by introducing beauty products to over 200 million consumers globally through multiple channels and touchpoints.

Regional Dominance:

Fast-growing population poses a huge need for these products in order to lower the burden on public healthcare infrastructure.

Asia Pacific accounts for the largest share in the global mosquito repellent market due to the growing awareness among people regarding the requirement for insect and mosquito repellents in the region. Also, the fast-growing population poses a huge need for these products in order to lower the burden on public healthcare infrastructure. The risk and incidence of deaths are increasing due to the different diseases caused by mosquitoes. Therefore such a landscape is likely to promote the adoption of mosquito trap lines in the region.

Global Mosquito Repellent Market is segmented as follows:

Mosquito Repellent Market: By Repellent Spray Outlook (2022-2028)

Mat

Vaporizers

Cream & oil

Coil

Spray

Mosquito Repellent Market: By Distribution Channel Outlook (2022-2028)

E-commerce

Independent stores

Supermarkets

Mosquito Repellent Market: By Afterbite Type Outlook (2022-2028)

Roll-on

Gel

Balm

Lotion

Mosquito Repellent Market: By End User Outlook (2022-2028)

Retail

BFSI

Education

Healthcare

Manufacturing

Travel and Hospitality

Other

Mosquito Repellent Market: By Region Outlook (2022-2028)

North America

The U.S.

Canada

Europe

France

The UK

Spain

Germany

Italy

Rest of Europe

Asia Pacific

China

Japan

India

South Korea

Southeast Asia

Rest of Asia Pacific

Latin America

Brazil

Mexico

Rest of Latin America

Middle East & Africa

GCC

South Africa

Rest of Middle East & Africa

Press Release For Mosquito Repellent Market: https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/news/global-mosquito-repellent-market-is-likely-to-grow

Browse Other Related Research Reports from Zion Market Research

Car Rental Market : The global car rental market was worth around USD 87.4 billion in 2021 and is estimated to grow to about USD 132.6 billion by 2028, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of approximately 6.9 percent over the forecast period.

The global car rental market was worth around in 2021 and is estimated to grow to about by 2028, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of approximately 6.9 percent over the forecast period. Alternative Protein Market : The global Alternative Protein Market accrued earnings worth approximately 53.1 (USD Billion) in 2021 and is predicted to gain revenue of about 160.3 (USD Billion) by 2028, is set to record a CAGR of nearly 17.6% over the period from 2022 to 2028.

The global Alternative Protein Market accrued earnings worth approximately 53.1 (USD Billion) in 2021 and is predicted to gain revenue of about 160.3 (USD Billion) by 2028, is set to record a CAGR of nearly 17.6% over the period from 2022 to 2028. Textile Flame Retardants Market: The global Textile Flame Retardants Market accrued earnings worth approximately 525 (USD Million) in 2020 and is predicted to gain revenue of about 721(USD Million) by 2028, is set to record a CAGR of nearly 3.8% over the period from 2021 to 2028.

Browse through Zion Market Research's coverage of the Global Consumer Goods Industry

Follow Us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/zion-market-research/

Follow Us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/zion_research

Follow Us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/zionmarketresearch/

About Us

Zion Market Research is an obligated company. We create futuristic, cutting edge, informative reports ranging from industry reports, company reports to country reports. We provide our clients not only with market statistics unveiled by avowed private publishers and public organizations but also with vogue and newest industry reports along with pre-eminent and niche company profiles. Our database of market research reports comprises a wide variety of reports from cardinal industries. Our database is been updated constantly in order to fulfill our clients with prompt and direct online access to our database. Keeping in mind the client's needs, we have included expert insights on global industries, products, and market trends in this database. Last but not the least, we make it our duty to ensure the success of clients connected to usafter allif you do well, a little of the light shines on us.

Contact Us:

Zion Market Research

244 Fifth Avenue, Suite N202

New York, 10001, United States

Tel: +49-322 210 92714

USA/Canada Toll Free No.1-855-465-4651

Email: [email protected]

Website: https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/

Blog - https://zmrblog.com/

SOURCE Zion Market Research
HOUSTON, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Flutura a pioneering Industrial AI company recently deployed its suite of Industrial AI solutions Cerebra for Delek US at their Big Spring Refinery as part of the Refinery of the Future initiative. Flutura and Delek US signed a multi-year agreement to collaborate and expand the deployment into newer functional areas across its 4 refineries and provide advanced decision-making capabilities to its operations and reliability teams.





"We looked for a partner to join us in our journey to provide our operational and management teams more actionable insights into managing our assets. We chose Flutura Cerebra because of their innovative, flexible technology and the ability to integrate with our current and future systems. The technology is being deployed initially on select critical components and will be expanded to other use cases across our Refining system," said Nithia Thaver, SVP Refining



"We are excited to be a strategic partner for Delek and enable them to achieve their vision of creating the Refinery of the Future", says Srikanth Muralidhara, Co-Founder & Chief Customer Officer, at Flutura, "Delek's talented engineers and Flutura's experts over the past year have collaborated and created a unique deployment model to realize high value outcomes leveraging Delek's data assets. We look forward to scaling this success together"



About Flutura Business Solutions LLC



Flutura is a pioneering Industrial AI company focused on unlocking high value operational outcomes for the Energy, Chemicals, Process Manufacturing & Heavy Engineering industries. Its industry leading platform Cerebra has advanced capabilities to integrate first principle based and machine learning based models to generate actionable business insights for reliability, production excellence, supply chain and quality functions to impact yield, uptime & sustainability outcomes for industrial facilities. Flutura's vision is to unlock a billion dollar in outcomes for its customers and empowering 100,000 industrial engineers on leveraging data science for solving engineering problems



To learn more about Flutura, please visit http://www.flutura.com



About Delek US Holdings



Delek US is a diversified downstream energy company with assets in petroleum refining, logistics, asphalt, renewable fuels and convenience store retailing. Delek's refining segment owns and operates four inland refineries with a combined crude throughput capacity of 302,000 barrels per day. The refineries are located in Tyler, Texas; Big Spring, Texas; Krotz Springs, Louisiana; and El Dorado, Arkansas.



Media Contacts



+1 832 804 9139

[email protected]

Flutura Decision Science & Analytics

SOURCE Flutura Business Solutions Pvt Ltd
VANCOUVER, BC, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ - GoldMining Inc. (the "Company" or "GoldMining") (TSX: GOLD) (NYSE American: GLDG) is pleased to announce that it has acquired an existing 1% net smelter return ("NSR") royalty on the Company's Yarumalito Project in Colombia from Newrange Gold Corp. ("Newrange"). Pursuant to the agreement, the Company paid Newrange CAD$100,000 in cash and delivered 10,000 common shares of the Company.

Alastair Still, CEO of GoldMining, commented, "Yarumalito was acquired by the Company in 2019 as part of a strategic consolidation of three projects in the Mid Cauca Belt of Colombia that form a district-scale property package in one of the underexplored gold-copper belts in the world. By acquiring this royalty, GoldMining provides additional optionality for future exploration, joint ventures or value-enhancing transactions as we continue our disciplined approach of unlocking value from our portfolio of gold and gold-copper projects located throughout the Americas."

About GoldMining Inc.

GoldMining Inc. is a public mineral exploration company focused on the acquisition and development of gold assets in the Americas. Through its disciplined acquisition strategy, GoldMining now controls a diversified portfolio of resource-stage gold and gold-copper projects in Canada, U.S.A., Brazil, Colombia, and Peru. The Company also owns 20 million shares of Gold Royalty Corp. (NYSE American: GROY).

Forward-looking Statements

This document contains certain forward-looking statements that reflect the current views and/or expectations, including regarding its strategic and project plans for its projects. Forward-looking statements are based on the then-current expectations, beliefs, assumptions, estimates and forecasts about the business and the markets in which GoldMining operates. Investors are cautioned that all forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, including: delays to plans caused by restrictions and other future impacts of COVID-19 or any other inability of the Company to meet expected timelines for planned project activities, including the timing of proposed project studies and programs; the inherent risks involved in the exploration and development of mineral properties, fluctuating metal prices, proposed studies may not confirm GoldMining's expectations for its projects, unanticipated costs and expenses, risks related to government and environmental regulation, social, permitting and licensing matters, and uncertainties relating to the availability and costs of financing needed in the future. These risks, as well as others, including those set forth in GoldMinings Annual Information Form for the year ended November 30, 2021, and other filings with Canadian securities regulators and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, could cause actual results and events to vary significantly. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements and information. There can be no assurance that forward-looking information, or the material factors or assumptions used to develop such forward-looking information, will prove to be accurate. The Company does not undertake any obligations to release publicly any revisions for updating any voluntary forward-looking statements, except as required by applicable securities law.

SOURCE GoldMining Inc.
Fast-growing fintech plans to add 100 local employees

CHICAGO, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Halo Investing ("Halo"), an award-winning platform for protective investments, today announced it has moved its Chicago headquarters to a newly renovated, modern office space in the city's financial district. Following a strong year of growth and the closing of its $100 million Series C funding round, Halo is expanding to continue building on its current momentum in the United States and international markets.

"We are returning to the office in style. Relocating to a new state of the art space in the heart of the MidWest's Wall Street is one of the many ways we prioritize our people," said Jason Barsema, Co- Founder and President of Halo. "Our new shared collaborative space has the best amenities in the city and will provide the right environment to fuel our growth across the world while enhancing our ability to help financial advisors improve their clients' financial futures."

Located at 200 West Jackson, Halo's new office occupies the entire 18th floor and totals approximately 18,000 square feet. The open floor plan space also has access to the building's luxury features including a wi-fi lounge with pool tables, outdoor heated terrace, event space, and full-service fitness center with panoramic views of Chicago.

Halo is ranked as one of the most innovative Chicago-based companies by Chicago Innovation, Fast Company, and recognized as one of the best fintechs to work for by Benzinga.

"We are thrilled to grow our local footprint to support our rapidly accelerating growth. We continue to add talented professionals to our team to join us in our mission to solve the retirement crisis," added Barsema.

About Halo Investing

Halo Investing is an award-winning technology platform for protective investment solutions. Headquartered in Chicago, with offices in Abu Dhabi, Zurich, Dubai, and Singapore, Halo was co-founded by Biju Kulathakal and Jason Barsema in 2015 with a mission that focuses on putting "impact before profits," providing access to impactful investment opportunities previously unavailable to most investors. Through the Halo platform, financial advisors and investors can easily access structured notes, market- linked CDs, buffered ETFs, and annuities, as well as a suite of tools to educate, analyze, customize, execute, and manage the most suitable protective investment product for their portfolios. Halo has received a growing number of honors and was recently named one of Fast Company's Ten Most Innovative Companies of 2021. For more information, please visit: http://www.haloinvesting.com

Halo Investing is not a broker/dealer. Securities offered through Halo Securities LLC, a SEC registered broker/dealer and member of FINRA/SIPC. Halo Securities LLC is affiliated with Halo Investing Insurance Services and Halo Investing. Halo Securities LLC acts solely as distributor/selling agent and is not the issuer or guarantor of any structured note products.

Media Contact:

Joe LoBello

LoBello Communications

[email protected]

516-902-2694

SOURCE Halo Investing
LONDON, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- For the second year in a row, HH Global has completed a full assessment of the carbon footprint of our business and disclosed the results to CDP.

CDP is a not-for-profit organization that runs the global disclosure system for investors, companies, cities, states, and regions to manage their environmental impacts. Their aim is to see a thriving economy that works for both people and planet in the long term. CDP uses their disclosure system to rate the environmental impact of more than 13,000 companies around the world, including many of our clients, and is emerging as the principal measure of an organization's carbon impact.

We are proud to announce that we have increased our rating from a C to a B for our climate change disclosure, with A ratings given for the strength of our governance and emissions reduction initiatives.

HH Global also submitted a complete disclosure of our impact on forests and water security, achieving a B for each of these assessments.

Kevin Dunckley, Chief Sustainability Officer, commented "I'm delighted that our efforts to tackle climate change have been recognized by CDP. Our team have worked hard to establish near-term and long-term plans to help keep global warming below 1.5C, in-line with the science of the Paris Climate Change Agreement and contributing to Goal 13 of the Sustainable Development Goals."

HH Global's Sustainability and ESG commitments and targets are governed by the global sustainability team. This team oversees activities alongside the four regional steering groups and task forces (Americas, EIMEA, APAC, LATAM), which help embed the culture of sustainable innovation around common goals across the business.

SOURCE HH Global
THE WOODLANDS, Texas, March 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Huntsman Corporation (NYSE: HUN) today announced that leading independent proxy advisory firm Glass Lewis has recommended that shareholders vote "FOR ALL" of Huntsman's director nominees on the WHITE proxy card at its 2022 Annual Meeting of Stockholders ("Annual Meeting") scheduled to be held on March 25, 2022.

With less than two weeks before the Annual Meeting, Glass Lewis concluded1: "in considering whether the Dissident's campaign represents an opportunity to further enhance the composition of the board, we would first note our belief that Starboard's four alternative nominees, as a slate, are inferior to the four directors targeted for replacement Given the implications of the two proxy-card system, as well as our determination that Starboard has not satisfied the first criterion of our framework for contested elections, we do not believe sufficient cause exists for investors to vote on the Dissident's proxy card... For shareholders who might be thinking along these lines, we would caution that voting on the Dissident's proxy card with the aim of effecting a very specific voting outcome could have unintended consequences and result in an entirely different outcome than desired. In light of these factors, we recommend shareholders vote on the Company's WHITE proxy card FOR all board nominees."

Glass Lewis also noted that successful execution of Huntsman's strategy and performance is driving the Company forward: "we believe Huntsman's recent financial and stock price performance indicate the Company is on the right track and, ultimately, we fail to see a compelling case that further changes beyond those the board has already made are either warranted at this time or likely to result in incremental improvement. Further, the Dissident's campaign appears to be backwards-looking in several respects, in our view, and we believe it lacks new ideas or a detailed plan to improve Huntsman's performance going forward... Although Starboard seeks to replace directors who it believes lack true independence or qualifications for the board, not only do we find insufficient cause to remove current directors, we also aren't convinced that Starboard's nominees have particularly relevant, timely or incremental experience to add to the board at this time."

Echoing arguments Huntsman has been making since the outset, Glass Lewis further wrote that "Starboard's campaign might have resonated better two years ago, but since the spin-off IPO and divestitures of Huntsman's commodity businesses, our analysis indicates Huntsman's stock price and financial performance have improved markedly... On the governance front, the Company has recently completed a near-complete refresh of the board, with all but one remaining legacy non-executive director transitioning off the board at this annual meeting. Starboard's added pressure may have inspired the board to follow through with the board overhaul this year, but we have a generally favorable view of the six new directors the Company has added since 2019 and we believe the current composition of the board aligns well with Huntsman's business portfolio, strategy and positive trajectory."

Commenting on the Glass Lewis recommendation, the Huntsman Board of Directors (the "Board") issued the following statement:

The recommendation from Glass Lewis to support all of Huntsman's highly qualified nominees reaffirms that our refreshed Board is best equipped to continue driving the Company's transformed product portfolio strategy, with the expertise necessary to drive enhanced value for shareholders.

As Glass Lewis recognizes, the Huntsman of today is vastly different than the Huntsman of even five years ago. The Board has taken meaningful actions to oversee the Company's 'value over volume' strategy, transform its balance sheet and enhance its governance through an extensive refreshment plan. As a result of these actions, 2021 was the best year in our history with our current portfolio and the strongest profit and margin performance we have ever achieved. Over the last five years, the Company has generated total shareholder returns of 98%, nearly 13% better than the S&P 500 during the same period.2

We believe that replacing any of the Company's director candidates with Starboard's nominees would disrupt Huntsman's value-creating strategy and risk destroying substantial and accelerating momentum. All of Huntsman's director nominees have the superior skillsets required to effectively oversee the Company's sustainable long-term growth, including necessary expertise across differentiated chemicals and industrials experience, R&D and customer-focused innovation focus, and portfolio management expertise. Each of Huntsman's directors is vastly superior to Starboard's four nominees.

We urge shareholders to protect the value of their investment and disregard Starboard's unwise and unnecessary campaign by following Glass Lewis' unqualified recommendation and voting "FOR ALL" of the Company's highly qualified directors on the WHITE proxy card today.

Huntsman reminds shareholders that every vote is important, no matter how many or few shares it represents. Shareholders are urged to discard any blue proxy materials they may have received and only vote using the WHITE proxy card.

Huntsman shareholders who need assistance in voting their shares may call toll-free Huntsman's proxy solicitor, Innisfree M&A Incorporated, at (877) 750-0926.

Additional materials regarding the Board of Directors' recommendations for the 2022 Annual Meeting can be found at voteforhuntsman.com.

Advisors:

BofA Securities and Moelis & Company LLC are serving as financial advisors to Huntsman. Kirkland & Ellis LLP is serving as legal advisor to Huntsman.

About Huntsman:

Huntsman Corporation is a publicly traded global manufacturer and marketer of differentiated and specialty chemicals with 2021 revenues of approximately $8 billion. Our chemical products number in the thousands and are sold worldwide to manufacturers serving a broad and diverse range of consumer and industrial end markets. We operate more than 70 manufacturing, R&D and operations facilities in approximately 30 countries and employ approximately 9,000 associates within our four distinct business divisions. For more information about Huntsman, please visit the company's website at www.huntsman.com.

Social Media:

Twitter: www.twitter.com/Huntsman_Corp

Facebook: www.facebook.com/huntsmancorp

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/huntsman

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release includes "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. These forward-looking statements include statements concerning our plans, objectives, goals, financial targets, strategies, future events, future revenue or performance, capital expenditures, plans or intentions relating to acquisitions, divestitures or strategic transactions, including the review of the Textile Effects Division, business trends and any other information that is not historical information. When used in this press release, the words "estimates," "expects," "anticipates," "likely," "projects," "outlook," "plans," "intends," "believes," "forecasts," "targets," or future or conditional verbs, such as "will," "should," "could" or "may," and variations of such words or similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements, including, without limitation, management's examination of historical operating trends and data, are based upon our current expectations and various assumptions and beliefs. In particular, such forward-looking statements are subject to uncertainty and changes in circumstances and involve risks and uncertainties that may affect the Company's operations, markets, products, prices and other factors as discussed in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"). In addition, there can be no assurance that the review of the Textile Effects Division will result in one or more transactions or other strategic change or outcome. Significant risks and uncertainties may relate to, but are not limited to, ongoing impact of COVID-19 on our operations and financial results, volatile global economic conditions, cyclical and volatile product markets, disruptions in production at manufacturing facilities, timing of proposed transactions, reorganization or restructuring of the Company's operations, including any delay of, or other negative developments affecting the ability to implement cost reductions and manufacturing optimization improvements in the Company's businesses and to realize anticipated cost savings, and other financial, operational, economic, competitive, environmental, political, legal, regulatory and technological factors. Any forward-looking statement should be considered in light of the risks set forth under the caption "Risk Factors" in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2021, which may be supplemented by other risks and uncertainties disclosed in any subsequent reports filed or furnished by the Company from time to time. All forward-looking statements apply only as of the date made. Except as required by law, the Company undertakes no obligation to update or revise forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances that arise after the date made or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events.

1 Glass Lewis report, March 13, 2022. Permission to use quotes neither sought nor obtained. Emphasis added.

2 Timeframe of February 25, 2017 through February 25, 2022

SOURCE Huntsman Corporation
The event has become an annual showcase for the future of life science technologies and will be held at the Monarch Beach Resort in Dana Point, CA the week of March 15. Having reached capacity the event is extending virtual badges for attendance.

Showcasing the latest in market intelligence the event has attracted close to a thousand in-person attendees with over 200 presenting medtech startups being vetted by hundreds of investors and strategics.

The panel is made up of senior executives and features the following thought-leaders:

"The innovators and investors attending the summit are excited for this panel because it brings together top industry voices to explore new models for investing that will be vital for growth this year" commented Scott Pantel , Founder and CEO of LSI. "The need to adapt to market changes will be key for companies to successfully incubate as well as for investors to find the right early stage companies to fund."

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

Media Contact: Blake Matrone, [email protected]

SOURCE Life Science Intelligence
To get the exact yearly growth variance and the Y-O-Y growth rate, Talk to our analyst .

Key Market Dynamics:

Market Driver

Market Challenges

The easing of government regulations and wider reach of online gambling are some of the key market drivers. The online gambling market in US comprises different types of games, and the rewards also differ from one game to another. The rewards are given in the form of physical goods as well as monetary benefits. However, factors such as frequent changes in gambling laws will challenge market growth. The online gambling market in US enables players to use virtual money, which has reduced the risks related to cash. Some online casinos pay the winning amount in virtual currency, which can then be used to play other games or may be redeemed for cash. This also helps vendors to keep track of the spending history of customers and create customized marketing plans.

However, the frequent changes in gambling laws will be a major challenge for the online gambling market in the US during the forecast period. Online gambling vendors in the US are wary of the sudden changes in the laws and regulations regarding online gambling since the legalization of online games in the country in 2012. With the Internet boom in the 1990s and the increased popularity of online gambling, the Department of Justice and US Congress explored and examined the existing federal laws to find how to apply them to Internet (online) gambling, which led to the introduction of new US online gambling laws as well.

To learn about additional key drivers, trends, and challenges available with Technavio. Read our FREE Sample Report!

Key Segment Highlights

By End-user

Mobile

The mobile segment held the largest online gambling market share in the US in 2021. The segment will continue to account for the largest share throughout the forecast period. The busy lifestyle of the people in the US and the rising preference for portable devices for hassle-free use are the main reasons for the increased share of this segment in the online gambling market. The US is one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world. Another reason for the increasing share of the segment is the increase in the number of games offered through gambling apps.

The mobile segment held the largest online gambling market share in the US in 2021. The segment will continue to account for the largest share throughout the forecast period. The busy lifestyle of the people in the US and the rising preference for portable devices for hassle-free use are the main reasons for the increased share of this segment in the online gambling market. The US is one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world. Another reason for the increasing share of the segment is the increase in the number of games offered through gambling apps. Desktop

By Gender

Female

In 2021, the female population contributed significantly to the online gambling market in US, accounting for a share of 57%. One of the major reasons for the growth is the convenience and anonymity that gambling privately on personal devices with no location constraints provides women. There are numerous online casinos that encourage women gamblers. For instance, Cameo Casino was the first woman-centric online casino launched in the US with the slogan, "Made by women, for Women in 2020."

In 2021, the female population contributed significantly to the online gambling market in US, accounting for a share of 57%. One of the major reasons for the growth is the convenience and anonymity that gambling privately on personal devices with no location constraints provides women. There are numerous online casinos that encourage women gamblers. For instance, Cameo Casino was the first woman-centric online casino launched in the US with the slogan, "Made by women, for Women in 2020." Male

View our sample report for additional insights into the contribution of all the segments and regional opportunities

Top Market Player Insights

The online gambling market in the US is fragmented and the vendors are deploying growth strategies such as investing in planning, designing, developing, acquiring new players, and expanding their existing facilities to compete in the market. Vendors are also investing in planning, designing, developing, acquiring new players, and expanding their existing facilities.

Some Companies Mentioned with their Offerings

888 Holdings plc : The company offers online gambling services where one gets bonus for first deposit of 200 dollars , under the brand name of 888 Group.

Ballys Corp.: The company offers online gambling services where one can play the most exciting casino games on the web, from traditional Roulette and Blackjack to the latest Video Slots featuring huge jackpots and cash prizes, under the brand name of Dover Downs.

The company offers online gambling services where one can play the most exciting casino games on the web, from traditional Roulette and Blackjack to the latest Video Slots featuring huge jackpots and cash prizes, under the brand name of Dover Downs.

Betfair: The company offers online gambling services where anyone can participate around the world and enjoy various games, under the brand name of Betfair.

The company offers online gambling services where anyone can participate around the world and enjoy various games, under the brand name of Betfair.

Bovada: The company offers online gambling services with huge variety of casino games for betting pleasure, including table games, a huge poker community with massive tournaments and guaranteed payouts, under the brand name of Bovada.

The company offers online gambling services with huge variety of casino games for betting pleasure, including table games, a huge poker community with massive tournaments and guaranteed payouts, under the brand name of Bovada.

Churchill Downs Inc.: The company offers online gambling services which provides world-class horse racing coverage and wagering on marquee events in the United States and around the world, under the brand name of Churchill.

The company offers online gambling services which provides world-class horse racing coverage and wagering on marquee events in and around the world, under the brand name of Churchill. To gain access to more vendor profiles with their key offerings available with Technavio, Click Here

Related Reports:



Casino Market by Type and Geography - Forecast and Analysis 2022-2026

Lottery Market in US by Type and Platform - Forecast and Analysis 2021-2025

Online Gambling Market In US Scope Report Coverage Details Page number 120 Base year 2021 Forecast period 2022-2026 Growth momentum & CAGR Decelerate at a CAGR of 12.47% Market growth 2022-2026 $ 2.22 billion Market structure Fragmented YoY growth (%) 16.00 Regional analysis US Performing market contribution US at 100% Key consumer countries US and Rest of Americas Competitive landscape Leading companies, competitive strategies, consumer engagement scope Companies profiled 888 Holdings plc, Ballys Corp., Betfair, Bovada, Churchill Downs Inc., Delaware Park Racetrack and Slots, DraftKings Inc., FanDuel Inc., Golden Nugget, and MGM Resorts International 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 forecast period. Customization purview If our report has not included the data that you are looking for, you can reach out to our analysts and get segments customized.

Key Topics Covered:

Executive Summary

Market Landscape

Market ecosystem

Value chain analysis

Market Sizing

Market definition

Market segment analysis

Market size 2021

Market outlook: Forecast for 2021 - 2026

Five Forces Analysis

Five forces summary

Bargaining power of buyers

Bargaining power of suppliers

Threat of new entrants

Threat of substitutes

Threat of rivalry

Market condition

Market Segmentation by End-user

Market segments

Comparison by End-user

Mobile - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

Desktop - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

Market opportunity by End-user

Market Segmentation by Gender

Market segments

Comparison by Gender

Female - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

Male - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

Market opportunity by Gender

Customer landscape

Market drivers

Market challenges

Market trends

Vendor Landscape

Overview

Landscape disruption

Vendor Analysis

Vendors covered

Market positioning of vendors

888 Holdings plc

Ballys Corp.

Betfair

Bovada

Churchill Downs Inc.

Delaware Park Racetrack and Slots

DraftKings Inc.

FanDuel Inc.

Golden Nugget

MGM Resorts International

Appendix

Scope of the report

Currency conversion rates for US$

Research methodology

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 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Weiss Law is investigating possible breaches of fiduciary duty and other violations of law by the board of directors of Volt Information Sciences, Inc. ("Volt" or the "Company") (NYSE-AMERICAN: VOLT), in connection with the proposed acquisition of the Company by Vega Consulting, Inc. ("Vega"), an affiliate of ACS Solutions, via a tender offer. Under the terms of the merger agreement, the Company's shareholders will receive $6.00 in cash for each share of Volt common stock owned.

If you own Volt shares and wish to discuss this investigation or have any questions concerning this notice or your rights or interests, visit our website:

https://www.weisslaw.co/news-and-cases/volt Or please contact:

Joshua Rubin, Esq.

Weiss Law

305 Broadway, 7th Floor

New York, NY 10007

(212) 682-3025

(888) 593-4771

[email protected]

Weiss Law is investigating whether (i) Volt's board of directors acted in the best interests of Company shareholders in agreeing to the proposed transaction, (ii) the $6.00 per-share merger consideration adequately compensates Volt's shareholders, and (iii) all information regarding the sales process and valuation of the transaction will be fully and fairly disclosed.

Weiss Law has litigated hundreds of stockholder class and derivative actions for violations of corporate and fiduciary duties. We have recovered over a billion dollars for defrauded clients and obtained important corporate governance relief in many of these cases. If you have information or would like legal advice concerning possible corporate wrongdoing (including insider trading, waste of corporate assets, accounting fraud, or materially misleading information), consumer fraud (including false advertising, defective products, or other deceptive business practices), or anti-trust violations, please email us at [email protected]

SOURCE WeissLaw LLP
Key Market Dynamics:

Market Driver

Market Challenge

The demand for sunflower oil is one of the key factors driving the growth of the sunflower market. There is a high demand for cooking oil in countries such as India. In 2020, the adverse weather conditions caused global sunflower production to fall by 9 against 2019. This led to the rapid depletion of global stocks and the subsequent rise in sunflower seeds and oil prices. However, the demand for sunflower oil is set to remain stable, supported by the growing consumption of food oil and biofuels. The EU, China, India, Iraq, and Turkey are some of the major destinations for export due to rising food demand from expanding middle class and urban population.

The fluctuation in oilseed crop prices due to lack of land will challenge the sunflower market during the forecast period. Prices of oilseed crops, such as sunflower, are volatile due to variable weather conditions and political instability. This is affecting oil crop producers' output, thus limiting oil supply to manufacturers. Other important issues leading to a decline in specialty oil production levels worldwide include restricted access to funding and a lack of information about contemporary agricultural practices and farm management skills.

To learn about additional key drivers, trends, and challenges available with Technavio. Read our FREE Sample Report right now!

Market Segmentation

The sunflower market report is segmented by type into oilseed and non-oilseed. The oilseed segment will have significant market share growth during the forecast period. The rising incidences of oil adulteration have compelled consumers to purchase approved organic edible oils. The dominance of organic edible oils over inorganic edible oils will drive the sales of organic edible oils in APAC during the forecast period.

By geography, the market has been segmented into Europe, APAC, South America, North America, and Middle East and Africa. Europe will be the leading region with 65% of the market's growth during the forecast period. Russia, Romania, and Ukraine are the key markets for sunflowers in Europe.

View our sample report for additional insights into the contribution of all the segments and regional opportunities in the report.

Some Companies Mentioned

Archer Daniels Midland Co.



Bunge Ltd.



Cargill Inc.



Colorado Mills



Conagra Brands Inc.



Corteva Inc.



Giant Snacks Inc.



GoldenSun



Groupe Limagrain Holding



kaissaoil



Kenko Trading Co. Ltd.



MACJERRY SUNFLOWER OIL COMPANY Co. Ltd.



Mahyco Pvt. Ltd.



Nufarm Ltd.



Nuziveedu Seeds Ltd.



PANNAR Ltd.



Parakh Group



REIN Oil



Syngenta AG



UPL Ltd.

To gain access to more vendor profiles with their key offerings available with Technavio, Click Here

Related Reports:

Oilseeds Market by Type and Geography - Forecast and Analysis 2022-2026

Cranberries Market by Type and Geography - Forecast and Analysis 2022-2026

Sunflower Market Scope Report Coverage Details Page number 120 Base year 2021 Forecast period 2022-2026 Growth momentum & CAGR Accelerate at a CAGR of 5.51% Market growth 2022-2026 USD 8.13 billion Market structure Fragmented YoY growth (%) 5.03 Regional analysis Europe, APAC, South America, North America, and Middle East and Africa Performing market contribution Europe at 65% Key consumer countries China, Russia, Ukraine, Romania, and Argentina Competitive landscape Leading companies, competitive strategies, consumer engagement scope Companies profiled Archer Daniels Midland Co., Bunge Ltd., Cargill Inc., Colorado Mills, Conagra Brands Inc., Corteva Inc., Giant Snacks Inc., GoldenSun, Groupe Limagrain Holding, kaissaoil, Kenko Trading Co. Ltd., MACJERRY SUNFLOWER OIL COMPANY Co. Ltd., Mahyco Pvt. Ltd., Nufarm Ltd., Nuziveedu Seeds Ltd., PANNAR Ltd., Parakh Group, REIN Oil, Syngenta AG, and UPL 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.

Key Topics Covered:

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 ($ billion)



Exhibit 14: Data Table on Global - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)



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 Oilseed - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

Exhibit 28: Chart on Oilseed - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)



Exhibit 29: Data Table on Oilseed - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)



Exhibit 30: Chart on Oilseed - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)



Exhibit 31: Data Table on Oilseed - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

5.4 Non-oilseed - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

Exhibit 32: Chart on Non-oilseed - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)



Exhibit 33: Data Table on Non-oilseed - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)



Exhibit 34: Chart on Non-oilseed - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)



Exhibit 35: Data Table on Non-oilseed - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

5.5 Market opportunity by Type

Exhibit 36: Market opportunity by Type ($ billion)

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 Europe - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 Exhibit 42: Chart on Europe - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)

Exhibit 43: Data Table on Europe - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)

Exhibit 44: Chart on Europe - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

- Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

Exhibit 45: Data Table on Europe - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

7.4 APAC - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

Exhibit 46: Chart on APAC - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)



Exhibit 47: Data Table on APAC - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)



Exhibit 48: Chart on APAC - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)



Exhibit 49: Data Table on APAC - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

7.5 South America - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 Exhibit 50: Chart on South America - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)

Exhibit 51: Data Table on South America - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)

Exhibit 52: Chart on South America - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

- Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

Exhibit 53: Data Table on South America - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

7.6 North America - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 Exhibit 54: Chart on North America - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)

Exhibit 55: Data Table on North America - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)

Exhibit 56: Chart on North America - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

- Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

Exhibit 57: Data Table on North 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 ($ billion)

and - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)

Exhibit 59: Data Table on Middle East and Africa - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)

and - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)

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 Market opportunity by geography

Exhibit 62: Market opportunity by geography ($ billion)

8 Drivers, Challenges, and Trends

8.1 Market drivers

8.2 Market challenges

8.3 Impact of drivers and challenges

Exhibit 63: Impact of drivers and challenges in 2021 and 2026

8.4 Market trends

9 Vendor Landscape

9.1 Overview

9.2 Vendor landscape

Exhibit 64: Overview on Criticality of inputs and Factors of differentiation

9.3 Landscape disruption

Exhibit 65: Overview on factors of disruption

9.4 Industry risks

Exhibit 66: Impact of key risks on business

10 Vendor Analysis

10.1 Vendors covered

Exhibit 67: Vendors covered

10.2 Market positioning of vendors

Exhibit 68: Matrix on vendor position and classification

10.3 Archer Daniels Midland Co.

Exhibit 69: Archer Daniels Midland Co. - Overview



Exhibit 70: Archer Daniels Midland Co. - Business segments



Exhibit 71: Archer Daniels Midland Co. - Key news



Exhibit 72: Archer Daniels Midland Co. - Key offerings



Exhibit 73: Archer Daniels Midland Co. - Segment focus

10.4 Bunge Ltd.

Exhibit 74: Bunge Ltd. - Overview



Exhibit 75: Bunge Ltd. - Business segments



Exhibit 76: Bunge Ltd. - Key news



Exhibit 77: Bunge Ltd. - Key offerings



Exhibit 78: Bunge Ltd. - Segment focus

10.5 Cargill Inc.

Exhibit 79: Cargill Inc. - Overview



Exhibit 80: Cargill Inc. - Product / Service



Exhibit 81: Cargill Inc. - Key news



Exhibit 82: Cargill Inc. - Key offerings

10.6 Colorado Mills

Exhibit 83: Colorado Mills - Overview



Exhibit 84: Colorado Mills - Product / Service



Exhibit 85: Colorado Mills - Key offerings

10.7 Conagra Brands Inc.

Exhibit 86: Conagra Brands Inc. - Overview



Exhibit 87: Conagra Brands Inc. - Business segments



Exhibit 88: Conagra Brands Inc. - Key news



Exhibit 89: Conagra Brands Inc. - Key offerings



Exhibit 90: Conagra Brands Inc. - Segment focus

10.8 GoldenSun

Exhibit 91: GoldenSun - Overview



Exhibit 92: GoldenSun - Product / Service



Exhibit 93: GoldenSun - Key offerings

10.9 kaissaoil

Exhibit 94: kaissaoil - Overview



Exhibit 95: kaissaoil - Product / Service



Exhibit 96: kaissaoil - Key offerings

10.10 MACJERRY SUNFLOWER OIL COMPANY Co. Ltd.

Exhibit 97: MACJERRY SUNFLOWER OIL COMPANY Co. Ltd. - Overview



Exhibit 98: MACJERRY SUNFLOWER OIL COMPANY Co. Ltd. - Product / Service



Exhibit 99: MACJERRY SUNFLOWER OIL COMPANY Co. Ltd. - Key offerings

10.11 Parakh Group

Exhibit 100: Parakh Group - Overview



Exhibit 101: Parakh Group - Product / Service



Exhibit 102: Parakh Group - Key offerings

10.12 REIN Oil

Exhibit 103: REIN Oil - Overview



Exhibit 104: REIN Oil - Product / Service



Exhibit 105: REIN Oil - Key offerings

11 Appendix

11.1 Scope of the report

11.2 Inclusions and exclusions checklist

Exhibit 106: Inclusions checklist



Exhibit 107: Exclusions checklist

11.3 Currency conversion rates for US$

Exhibit 108: Currency conversion rates for US$

11.4 Research methodology

Exhibit 109: Research methodology



Exhibit 110: Validation techniques employed for market sizing



Exhibit 111: Information sources

11.5 List of abbreviations

Exhibit 112: 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 provide actionable insights to help businesses identify market opportunities and develop effective strategies to optimize their market positions. With over 500 specialized analysts, Technavio's report library 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
DENVER, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The World Health Organization (WHO) has issued an urgent worldwide plea for medical supplies for the citizens of Ukraine, saying thousands of lives are currently at risk in the conflict with Russia. Many medical facilities and hospitals have run out of many basic supplies to treat patients and the wounded.

Urgent Care Solutions is partnering with Project C.U.R.E. to send much-needed medical supplies to Ukraine. The two Denver-based organizations are currently collecting medical supplies at each of the locations in Denver and Aurora.

In addition to civilian casualties, the WHO has confirmed 16 attacks on health services in Ukraine, including medical equipment and supplies. As casualties mount, the need for medical supplies is increasing. The urgency of this situation has inspired Darius and Shay Kerman to personally fund this project to ensure the expedited delivery of items.

"We've all seen these horrific images coming out of Ukraine," said Shay Kerman, President & COO, Urgent Care Solutions. "Homes and buildings are being destroyed, families are being displaced, people are suffering severe injuries. Our team members wanted to help."

Here is a list of the supplies requested.

Medical Donations for Ukraine

New, unused items only

Gauze Bandages

Gauze Roll

Compression Bandages

Tagaderm (Waterproof) Bandages

Non-Latex Gloves

Butterfly Bandages

Elastic Bandages (Ace Bandage) Coban Wrap

First-Aid Ointment (Neosporin)

You can drop off your medical donations for Ukraine at any of the 10 Urgent Care Solutions Center locations in Denver or Aurora.

About Urgent Care Solutions

Urgent Care Solutions has 10 locations serving more than 150,000 patients each year in Denver and Aurora, Colorado. Urgent Care Solutions provides fast and comprehensive medical care with short wait times and reasonable rates.

Urgent Care Solutions has previously partnered with Project C.U.R.E. in 2021 to deliver medical supplies to rural African villages in the wake of COVID.

SOURCE Urgent Care Solutions,
CHICAGO , March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Twelve Hightower advisors have been featured on Barron's 2022 Top Advisor Rankings by State, a list of the top 1,200 wealth advisors in the United States. The advisors who made the list this year are:

David Bahnsen , The Bahnsen Group, Newport Beach, Calif.

, The Bahnsen Group, Wes Clayton , Twickenham Advisors, Huntsville, Ala.

, Twickenham Advisors, Jeffrey Corliss , RDM Financial Group at Hightower, Westport, Conn.

, RDM Financial Group at Hightower, Matthew Dillig , The Dillig Bowen Group at Hightower, Northbrook, Ill.

, The Dillig Bowen Group at Hightower, Melissa Duffy , White Pine Wealth Management, Falmouth, Maine

, White Pine Wealth Management, Patrick Fruzzetti, Rose Advisors at Hightower, New York, N.Y.

Walter JR Gondeck, The Lerner Group at Hightower, Deerfield, Ill.

Jeffrey Grinspoon , VWG Wealth Management, LLC, Vienna, Va.

, VWG Wealth Management, LLC, Jeff Leventhal , Hightower Bethesda , Bethesda, Md.

, , Richard Saperstein , Treasury Partners, New York, N.Y.

, Treasury Partners, Greg Sarian , Sarian Strategic Partners at Hightower, Wayne, Pa.

, Sarian Strategic Partners at Hightower, Jordan Waxman , Nucleus Advisors, New York, N.Y.

"We are deeply proud of every advisor who received this year's Barron's Top 1200 by State accolade, which celebrates not only their highly successful wealth management businesses, but also their attentive client service and commitment to their wider communities, said Hightower Chairman and CEO Bob Oros. "Congratulations to all on this well-deserved honor."

Barron's 2022 Top Advisor Rankings by State are based on data provided by around 6,000 of the nation's most productive advisors. In compiling the rankings, the publication considers: assets under management, revenue produced for the firm, regulatory record, quality of practice, and philanthropic work. Investment performance isn't an explicit component because not all advisors have audited results and because performance figures often are influenced more by clients' risk tolerance than by an advisor's investment-picking abilities. The rankings are meant as a starting point for clients looking for an advisora first-pass vetting that can help investors narrow a search.

Barron's has honored Hightower advisors in a wide array of categories, including the Barron's Top 100 Financial Advisors, Top 100 Independent Advisors, Top 100 Women Financial Advisors and Top 1200. Additionally, Forbes has named Hightower advisors to several of its best-of lists, including America's Top Wealth Advisors, America's Best Women Wealth Advisors Best-in-State List, the Top Next-Gen Wealth Advisors, and Best-In-State Wealth Advisors. Hightower advisors have also been honored on Seramount's 2021 'Top Wealth Advisor Moms' List and InvestmentNews' '40 Under 40'.

About Hightower

Hightower is a wealth management firm that provides investment, financial and retirement planning services to individuals, foundations and family offices, as well as 401(k) consulting and cash management services to corporations. Hightower's capital solutions, operational support services, size and scale empower its vibrant community of independent-minded wealth advisors to grow their businesses and help their clients achieve their vision of "well-th. rebalanced." Based in Chicago with advisors across the U.S., the firm operates as a registered investment advisor (RIA). Learn more about Hightower's collaborative business model at www.hightoweradvisors.com.

Securities offered through Hightower Securities, LLC member FINRA/SIPC. Hightower Advisors, LLC is a SEC registered investment advisor.

Media Contact:

Patty Buchanan

JConnelly

(973) 567-9415

[email protected]

SOURCE Hightower
DUBLIN, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The "CBD Global Regulatory Database" database has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

This dataset offers the necessary information to understand the CBD regulatory landscape worldwide and provides the essential data needed to comply with the various compliance requirements in multiple regions around the world. This package offers three different excel files - the US is split into two separate databases, enacted law and proposed bills, while the third database offers regulatory information for multiple international countries.

Regulation areas covered in EU file:

Hemp cultivation

Processing

Flower

Extracts

Food

Cosmetics

Vaping

Pet food

Import/export

Regulation areas covered in the US enacted state law file:

Hemp cultivation

Processing

Flower

Food

Cosmetics

Vaping

Pet food

Regulation areas covered in the US proposed state law file:

Marijuana general

Extracts general

Medical marijuana

Foodstuffs

Hemp plant

Vaping

Cosmetics

Jurisdictions covered:

Europe : all 28 EU member states

: all 28 EU member states US: including state-by-state regulatory coverage of all key enacted legislation and bills affecting the CBD sector

International: including 28 countries

This product also enables you to:

Understanding how the regulatory landscape operates

Quick access tool to identify which countries have a favorable regulatory environment

Summary of the most important restrictions in the policy areas presented

Comprehensive data through colour coding to classify regulation in three stages: light, medium and strict

Compilation of the current regulation in each country and bills proposed

Links to regulations and proposals from external sources

Key Topics Covered

35+ countries including key markets in Europe , Asia and LATAM

, and LATAM 50 US states enacted laws and bills/proposed law

Enacted laws and bills proposed law

For more information about this database visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/d8n51y

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
NEW YORK, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- 5WPR has been recognized by Clutch, the leading B2B ratings and review platform, has officially announced its 2022 Top Global Advertising & Marketing Firms, ranking 5WPR among the top 15 social media marketing companies in the Influencer Marketing and LinkedIn Marketing categories.

Clutch evaluates numerous companies on a strict set of criteria including their social media presence, former clients, brand reputation, and recency of verified reviews to determine rankings. The platform serves as an honest and transparent database for businesses looking to hire firms across the creative, marketing and IT landscapes.

"We are honored to be ranked by Clutch as a leading social media marketing agency," said 5WPR Co-CEO, Matthew Caiola. "Social media is a critical venue for brands, and our digital team has done incredible work in establishing and amplifying the voices of both our B2B and B2C clients to communicate with their audiences and transform their digital presence."

In addition to this recognition, 5WPR was recently named to the 2021 Clutch 1000 list, as well as receiving numerous additional accolades including being awarded the Grand Stevie Award for Most Honored Public Relations Agency in the 19th Annual American Business Awards, and being named a top-three New York City PR agency by O'Dwyer's, a leading public relations industry publication.

About 5W Digital

5W Digital, the dedicated digital marketing division of 5W Public Relations, is a full-service digital agency based out of NYC. The agency is known for creative and strategic services including social media, influencer marketing, paid media, and search engine optimization, encompassing the entire pipeline including content creation, paid support, strategic influencer campaigns, data & analytics, and more. 5W Digital produces award-winning work, recognized by multiple MarCom Awards as well as receiving industry recognition from the PR Platinum Awards.

About 5WPR

5W Public Relations is a full-service PR agency in NYC known for cutting-edge programs that engage with businesses, issues and ideas. With more than 250 professionals serving clients in B2C (Beauty & Fashion, Consumer Brands, Entertainment, Food & Beverage, Health & Wellness, Travel & Hospitality, Technology, Nonprofit), B2B (Corporate Communications and Reputation Management), Public Affairs, Crisis Communications and Digital Marketing (Social Media, Influencer, Paid Media, SEO). 5W was awarded 2020 PR Agency of The Year and brings leading businesses a resourceful, bold and results-driven approach to communication.

SOURCE 5W Public Relations
TORONTO, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ - My Coffee Marketplace (MCM) is changing the coffee game one coffee lover at a time. Many coffee subscription companies had their start during the pandemic-era but none of them have emerged quite like MCM. They've been described as the love child between a coffee subscription program and Rakuten.

When the pandemic hit many smaller coffee roasters were forced to close or on the cusp of closing due to the immediate halt of their wholesale business (~70-80% of their revenue). Brandon Greenspoon, Founder of MCM was heartbroken to witness the pandemics devastating impact which motivated him to step up and help. It was obvious to Brandon that with more people working from home due to the pandemic, there was a massive opportunity to encourage coffee drinkers to purchase from small business coffee roasters rather than the typical big commercial brands.

With the natural increase of online shopping, Brandon interviewed hundreds of coffee roasters and coffee drinkers to understand what they'd change about existing online coffee marketplaces or third-party subscription programs. It was important to him that he developed a program that truly provided undeniable value to both the coffee roasters and drinkers. From there My Coffee Marketplace was born!

MCM's mission is to support small business coffee roasters by offering an online program that encourages and funnels coffee drinkers to their websites with the intent to purchase.

For coffee drinkers, MCM provides exclusive coffee deals from some of the top coffee roasters from around the globe. They encourage their members taste and experience some of the highest quality coffee while saving big on their purchases. The average MCM members saves $120 a year on coffee.

For coffee roasters, MCM acts as a program that helps drive additional online sales while keeping it "as business as usual". The program addresses the five key pain points coffee roasters face with other subscription companies: branding, quality assurance, fulfillment, data & insights, and profitability.

The program has grown quickly since it launched in October 2020, as it's approaching its 4000th member. MCM has partnered with over 100 coffee roasters across the United States, Canada and Europe and MCM has plans to continue its global expansion in the coming months.

Learn more about My Coffee Marketplace at www.mycoffeemarketplace.com. While there, be sure to pick up a lifetime membership for only $10. Follow My Coffee Marketplace on Instagram at @mycoffeemarketplace or www.instagram.com/mycoffeemarketplace/

SOURCE My Coffee Marketplace
Only 5% of Attorneys Receive the Distinction

SAN DIEGO, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Super Lawyers recognizes seven Moore, Schulman & Moore, APC Family Law attorneys for 2022. To be honored with the distinction the attorneys undergo a rigorous review after being nominated by their peers. From the firm's founding partners to Of Counsel attorneys in their office, they are recognized for their outstanding achievements, level of client representation, verdicts and experience. Only the top five percent of attorneys in California are honored by Super Lawyers.

"We've spent significant time and effort putting together a team of attorneys who are not only passionate about their work but also have the highest ethical standards while making client service their top priority, " says Founding Partner David Schulman.

Founding partners Erik Moore and David Schulman have received the award for the past decade and a half. Both are Certified Family Law Specialists by the California Board of Legal Specialization. Their decades of experience and commitment to making a difference in their community make them standouts in and out of the courtroom.

Moore, Schulman and Moore Partners Kevin Polis, Lauren Schmidt and Julie Westerman are also Board Certified Family Law Specialists who are recognized for their professional excellence. Partner Julie Westerman says it is an honor to be recognized, and gratifying that she is part of a team that makes a real difference in the lives of the people who entrust Moore, Schulman & Moore with their family law issues. "Our focus is on getting timely results for our clients so they can get through their legal issues and on with living their lives."

Super Lawyers routinely recognizes Of Counsel attorneys Jeff Mangum and John Tannenberg. Both have a long history of being recognized for their professional accomplishments while specializing in complicated litigation and mediation with high-profile clients. Their deep understanding of pivotal family law issues such as spousal and child support, custody and visitation, as well as paternity and prenuptial agreements make them sought after lawyers in Southern California.

John Tannenberg has been a Fellow in the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers (AAML) since 2012. There are approximately 89 Fellows in the Southern California Chapter of the AAML. Tannenberg has been practicing family law exclusively for almost four decades, but says he still enjoys the challenges that make every case different, "We work very hard every day to get the best results for our clients and clearly layout their legal options. So to be consistently recognized for our skills, professionalism and high standards is tremendous!"

About Moore, Schulman & Moore, APC.

Moore, Schulman & Moore, APC provides trusted legal guidance for people going through a divorce and other family law issues. The award-winning San Diego divorce lawyers have generations of experience and board certified attorneys ready to guide you through whatever issues you are facing. Their recognitions include Super Lawyers, AV Preeminent Peer Review Rated Law Firm, SDCBA 100 Percent Club, and San Diego Top Attorneys. They are equipped to take on any divorce while providing efficient and cost-effective family law solutions for family-related legal issues. Learn more at www.msmfamilylaw.com

Contact: Lynn Stuart

(858) 243-6988

[email protected]

SOURCE Moore Schulman and Moore APC
TBWA was recognized for its ability to create work that extends beyond traditional advertising, following an exceptionally strong business year across a wide range of global markets and its ability to drive Disruptive, transformative growth for its clients. The publication also highlighted its body of creative work for its creativity and impact, for clients including Apple, McDonald's, MTN DEW, and Nissan, among others. The Ad Age profile can be viewed HERE .

"Being named Ad Age's Network of the Year is a huge honor that speaks to the success of all of our agencies and to the quality of our creative product around the world," says Troy Ruhanen, CEO, TBWA\Worldwide. "To be recognized as Network of the Year, in a new category in the Ad Age A-List, is particularly rewarding, because it sets the standard and demonstrates the power of the collective and our 10,000+ creative minds who make all of this possible."

Ruhanen added, "We're grateful to our clients who entrust us with their brands and partner with us to disrupt again and again."

"The agencies featured in the Ad Age A-List package showed resilience, the ability to challenge conventions and worked with clients to rethink fundamentals with business transformation strategies," said Judann Pollack, executive editor of Ad Age. "Above all they proved the market-moving value of the big creative idea. TBWA embodied all of these qualities at global scale, which is why we selected them as our first Network of the Year."

Last week, the TBWA\ collective earned the #1 spot on Fast Company's list of Most Innovative Companies in the Advertising category, appearing on the list for the fourth year in a row. In December, Adweek named TBWA as its 2021 Global Agency of the Year. With the Ad Age Network of the Year title, TBWA has earned a first of its kind trio of industry honors.

Looking to Disrupt? Find us at www.tbwa.com and on LinkedIn.

About TBWA\Worldwide

TBWA is The Disruption Company. We use creativity to help businesses challenge the status quo and capture an unfair share of the future. Named one of the World's Most Innovative Companies by Fast Company in 2022, 2021, 2020 and 2019, and Adweek's 2021 Global Agency of the Year, we are a creative company that uses trademarked Disruption methodologies to help businesses address their challenges and achieve transformative growth. Our collective has 10,000+ creative minds in 41 countries, and also includes brands such as Auditoire, Digital Arts Network (DAN), eg+ worldwide, GMR, The Integer Group, TBWA\Media Arts Lab, TBWA\WorldHealth and TRO. Global clients include adidas, Apple, Gatorade, Henkel, Hilton Hotels, McDonald's, Nissan and Singapore Airlines. Follow us on LinkedIn , Twitter and Instagram . TBWA is part of Omnicom Group (NYSE: OMC).

About Omnicom Group Inc.

Omnicom Group Inc. (NYSE: OMC) (www.omnicomgroup.com) is a leading global marketing and corporate communications company. Omnicom's branded networks and numerous specialty firms provide advertising, strategic media planning and buying, digital and interactive marketing, direct and promotional marketing, public relations and other specialty communications services to over 5,000 clients in more than 70 countries.

SOURCE TBWA\Worldwide
LOS ANGELES, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Before emerging from your pandemic cocoon and rushing off for the next romantic online encounter, heed some advice from the French, who have a better track record at finding long-term relationships, according to Love Like The French author Guy Blaise.

"The French have a different perspective on romantic relationships, sex, dating, and love compared to Americans. My guide offers candid advice, and everything you need to know for more passionate flings, sexual satisfaction, and fulfilling balanced partnerships," said Blaise.

If you're having trouble finding a relationship or need some ideas to spice it up, the advice in Love Like the French is what you need. It's available at all major online book retailers, some libraries, and bookstores. "The French have a different perspective on romantic relationships, sex, dating, and love compared to Americans. My guide offers candid advice, and everything you need to know for more passionate flings, sexual satisfaction, and fulfilling balanced partnerships," said Blaise.

Some big difference that Blaise sees in American women is that they settle in a relationship that isn't satisfying and tolerate unsatisfying sex far too often.

"I hear women complain about sex all the time in the U.S. because they keep it bottled up. In France, women are more liberated, so they don't complain about it as much. Talking about sex isn't taboo," said Blaise.

French women also don't settle, they take their time and filter their suitors to find the perfect match.

"This strategy works, and you can see it in the number of successful long-term relationships in the country. The French have a saying: you need to squeeze 10 melons before finding the perfect one. It's supposed to be a long-term relationship, so don't rush it," said Blaise.

Finding someone who's genuine and is a good communicator to listen to your needs and desires is critical for any long-term relationship. You can only find that person through experience and meeting as many people as possible.

Couples should also talk more about their relationships, and women should speak up when something is wrong, which doesn't seem to happen a lot in the U.S. he notes. Women shouldn't marry someone based only on their religion or stay with someone because of their money.

Originally from France, Blaise lives in the U.S as a biopharmaceutical scientist by day and author at night. He's always been fascinated by romance and uses his scientific background to unravel why certain cultures like the French have a higher success rate at finding longer-lasting relationships.

His first book Vive La Difference inspired 500 letters from American women seeking advice on how his knowledge of the French culture could help with their romantic relationships in North America.

Blaise found the answers by interviewing women all over France and put his research into Love Like The French. It's an eye-opener to both men and women interested in forming a happy and fulfilling long-term relationship.

As the French know, finding your perfect soul mate is also more complicated than finding the perfect dating app and settling for the next person that just sounds and looks good on their profile.

"Never lie on your profile. In France, deception is considered embarrassing. If men aren't good-looking or don't have a lot of money, they should concentrate on their interests and ambitions to show they're at least trying to get ahead. Ambition is an important trait for women," said Blaise.

When it comes to dating, most American men are making some major faux pas.

"If you're at a dating event, you're supposed to be talking with women, so don't spend your time talking on your phone. Also, if you're talking with a woman, don't be a butterfly. Spend some time to get to know her. If you move on too quickly, it frustrates women," said Blaise.

Blaise wrote an article on his book in TheArtofLove.net and the book was featured by comedian Loic Suberville and DatingAdvice.com.

Blaise was also interviewed on podcasts How We Talk About Sex, Sexology, and Shameless Sex. Reading his book, you'll discover:

How French women turn their sexual fantasies into pleasurable realityand how you can too.

Secrets to sync up sex drives when you and your lover have different libidos.

Tips for challenges like prying in-laws, age differences, and communication beyond the bedroom.

How to find the men that are worth "swiping right" on online dating sites.

Signs you've found the one to marry.

If you're having trouble finding a relationship or need some ideas to spice it up, the advice in Love Like the French is what you need. It's available at all major online book retailers, some libraries, and bookstores.

"Remember, when it comes to romance in France it starts long before you slip under the covers," said Blaise.

For further information review the TheFrenchperspective.com website or to schedule an interview, contact Guy Blaise at (919) 948-9282 or [email protected].

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION:

Guy Blaise

Author

Love Like The French

The French Perspective

Los Angeles, CA

Phone: (919) 948-9282

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Guy Blaise
"Partnering with the Compton Cowboys encapsulates all that we stand for at Andis," said Angie Vlasaty Peterson, the company's Vice President of Marketing. "We are thrilled to highlight Randy Savvy and his crew in our first installment of our Andis Creator Series because they embody everything Andis believes in; family, creativity, community and, of course, a love for grooming. Through our partnership we want to demonstrate how creativity and creative expression can make the world a better place and also motivate and inspire others to create their way."

Straight out of Richland Farms, the Compton Cowboys are blazing a new trail, reestablishing horseback riding and animal husbandry as an alternative path. As they say, "Streets raised us. Horses Saved us." The Compton Cowboys get kids into nature, teach them how to take care of the horses, the land, and themselves.

"You can tell a lot about a person by how their horse is. We try to make sure the horses are matching our aesthetic as far as being fresh. We love how Andis works for us and the results we get," said Randy Savvy, Compton Cowboys Co-Founder. "You look good, you feel good, you play good. Our style has definitely positively affected our community in a very impactful way. The fact that we embrace our Compton-ness in our cowboy way, it inspires the city and inspires the youth and the community members to be like, "Man, I'm proud to be from Compton."

To view the full length video visit https://andis.com/Community/CreatorSeries

To keep up with Andis Company, follow them on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.

About Andis Company

Andis Company is a fourth-generation, family-led business and a market leader in barbering, styling and animal grooming founded in 1922. Its industry-leading clippers, trimmers and styling accessories are used by both professionals and DIYers across the globe. The #1 preferred brand for textured hair, Andis remains committed to leading the category while ensuring quality, durability and innovation. Andis believes that creativity makes the world a better place and takes pride in developing tools and educational resources that help everyone create their way. To find a local distributor or retailer, call 800-558-9441 or visit www.andis.com.

Contact:

Isabela Farinella

608.733.9438

[email protected]

SOURCE Andis Company
Mechanical Simulation has been a technology leader in the development and distribution of vehicle dynamics simulation software for over 25 years. Its productsCarSim, TruckSim, BikeSim, and SuspensionSimprovide accurate and realistic predictions of real-world vehicle behavior. Mechanical Simulation supports 200+ OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers as well as hundreds of universities and government research groups worldwide.

Mechanical Simulation's precise vehicle dynamics models complement Applied's autonomy simulation offerings. Through the acquisition, the two teams aim to provide the world's most capable and accurate simulation and validation tools for advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) and AV development. Their products make it possible to analyze vehicle performance in complex simulated environments and validate the safety of any ADAS or AV system.

"I'm proud to welcome the Mechanical Simulation team to the Applied family," said Qasar Younis, Co-Founder and CEO of Applied Intuition. "CarSim is a pillar in the dynamics community. Autonomous vehicle engineers know that accurate and realistic vehicle dynamics models are critical to creating simulations that are reflective of the real world. Mechanical Simulation has spent decades building its category-leading vehicle dynamics technology and its unparalleled expertise in the space. On top of that, many of our customers use CarSim and TruckSim in conjunction with our core simulator, Simian. This acquisition is a natural next step to strengthen the collaboration between our products and support our customers and partners more deeply."

"We're excited to join forces with Applied Intuition to deliver on the mission of providing industry-leading development tools for autonomy engineers," said Mike Sayers, Co-Founder, CEO, and CTO of Mechanical Simulation Corporation. "Our customers and partners will continue to be able to use our products in exactly the same way. But by working together, our two companies will also be able to offer a complete solution that will support full workflows for our customers and partners."

About Applied Intuition

As the foremost enabler of autonomous vehicle development, Applied Intuition equips engineering and product development teams with software that makes it faster, safer, and easier to bring autonomy to market. Applied's suite of products, focused on simulation, validation, and drive data management, delivers sophisticated infrastructure built for scale. Headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices in Los Angeles, Detroit, Washington, D.C., Munich, Seoul, and Tokyo, Applied's team consists of autonomy, software, and automotive experts from around the world. Learn more at https://applied.co .

About Mechanical Simulation Corporation

Mechanical Simulation Corporation is a technology leader in the development and distribution of advanced software used to simulate vehicle performance under a wide variety of conditions. The company was established in 1996, and from its Ann Arbor, Michigan headquarters provides car, truck, and motorcycle simulation packages, training, and ongoing support to more than 200 OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers, hundreds of universities and government research groups, and hundreds of driving simulators. For more information, please visit www.carsim.com .

SOURCE Applied Intuition

Related Links

https://applied.co


ATLANTA, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Artivion, Inc. (NYSE: AORT), a leading cardiac and vascular surgery company focused on aortic disease, today published its inaugural Corporate Responsibility Report detailing the company's Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) initiatives.

Artivion's 2022 Corporate Responsibility Report details several of the company's ESG efforts, including:

Environmental initiatives to drive sustainability and limit Artivion's carbon footprint, including a disclosure relative to the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures;

Diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives to create a welcoming and empowering workplace for every member of the global team as they strive to fulfill Artivion's mission to make leading-edge aortic technologies available to patients around the world; and

Board of Directors ("Board") level initiatives to enhance Board and workforce diversity, Board refreshment, and Board oversight of the company's ESG initiatives, including human capital management.

"Our mission is to partner with surgeons to restore the health of patients by delivering innovative technologies of unsurpassed quality. At Artivion, we believe we can best fulfill this mission by taking a responsible approach to mitigate our impact on the environment while acting as a responsible global and local citizen across the communities in which we operate and by maintaining a culture of integrity, respect, and inclusiveness for all of our employees," said Pat Mackin, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer of Artivion. "We are proud to share our accomplishments across each of these critical focus areas in our first ever Corporate Responsibility Report, and we look forward to continuing to enhance our ESG efforts in meaningful and impactful ways."

Artivion's 2022 Corporate Responsibility Report aims to address the company's diverse stakeholders. Please visit the Corporate Governance section of the company's website at www.artivion.com to view Artivion's 2022 Corporate Responsibility Report.

About Artivion, Inc.

Headquartered in suburban Atlanta, Georgia, Artivion, Inc. is a medical device company focused on developing simple, elegant solutions that address cardiac and vascular surgeons' most difficult challenges in treating patients with aortic diseases. Artivion's four major groups of products include: aortic stents and stent grafts, surgical sealants, On-X mechanical heart valves, and implantable cardiac and vascular human tissues. Artivion markets and sells products in more than 100 countries worldwide. For additional information about Artivion, visit our website, www.artivion.com.

Forward Looking Statements

Statements made in the Corporate Responsibility Report that look forward in time or that express management's beliefs, expectations, or hopes are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements reflect the views of management at the time such statements are made. These statements include our belief that we can best fulfill our mission by taking a responsible approach to our impact on the environment, being a good citizen of the communities in which we operate, and maintaining a culture of integrity, respect, and inclusiveness for all of our employees and that we look forward to continuing to enhance our ESG efforts in meaningful and impactful ways. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks, uncertainties, estimates, and assumptions that may cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations. These risks and uncertainties include the risk factors detailed in our Securities and Exchange Commission filings, including our Form 10-K for year ended December 31, 2021. Artivion does not undertake to update its forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise.

Contacts:

Artivion Gilmartin Group LLC D. Ashley Lee Brian Johnston / Lynn Lewis Executive Vice President

& Chief Financial Officer Phone: 332-895-3222 Chief Financial Officer [email protected] Phone: 770-419-3355



SOURCE Artivion, Inc.
Astellas' MOONLIGHT 1TM clinical trial evaluating investigational fezolinetant 30 mg administered once daily

TOKYO, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Astellas Pharma Inc. (TSE: 4503, President and CEO: Kenji Yasukawa, Ph.D., "Astellas") today announced topline results from the ongoing Phase 3 MOONLIGHT 1 clinical trial investigating the efficacy and safety of fezolinetant, an investigational oral, nonhormonal compound being studied for the treatment of moderate to severe vasomotor symptoms associated with menopause (VMS), in women in Asia. VMS, characterized by hot flashes (also called hot flushes) and/or night sweats, are common symptoms of menopause.1,2

Based on the 12-week data analysis in 302 participants, fezolinetant 30 mg once daily (QD) in women in China, Korea and Taiwan did not meet the pre-defined endpoints for efficacy. While numerical improvements from baseline were observed in the fezolinetant 30 mg treatment group, the results did not meet statistical significance. The 12-week safety data in this study are aligned with what was previously observed with fezolinetant. Detailed results will be submitted for publication following completion of the 24-week analyses.

"We are evaluating the results and look forward to reviewing the full data set once the study is complete," said Nancy Martin, M.D., PharmD, Vice President, Global Medical Head, Medical Specialties, Astellas.

MOONLIGHT 1 is an ongoing randomized Phase 3 clinical trial evaluating the efficacy and safety of fezolinetant in 302 women in China, Korea and Taiwan who take fezolinetant 30 mg QD for 24 weeks. The trial is double-blinded and placebo-controlled for the first 12 weeks, followed by a 12-week non-controlled extension treatment period. Specifically, the MOONLIGHT 1 study is being conducted to support registration in China, Korea and Taiwan. As previously reported, the results from two pivotal Phase 3 clinical trials, SKYLIGHT 1 and SKYLIGHT 2, along with the findings from the long-term safety study, SKYLIGHT 4, will provide the foundational data for regulatory submissions in the U.S. and Europe.

Fezolinetant is an investigational selective neurokinin-3 (NK3) receptor antagonist. The efficacy and safety of fezolinetant are under investigation and have not been established.

This result will have no impact on the financial forecasts of the current fiscal year ending March 31, 2022.

About MOONLIGHT Phase 3 Clinical Trials

The MOONLIGHT 1TM clinical trial (NCT04234204) remains ongoing and has enrolled 302 women in China, Korea and Taiwan with moderate to severe VMS associated with menopause. The trial is double-blinded and placebo-controlled for the first 12 weeks, followed by a 12-week non-controlled extension treatment period. There were nearly 60 sites across Asia. MOONLIGHT 3TM (NCT04451226) is an ongoing 52-week single-arm Phase 3 clinical trial designed to investigate the long-term safety of fezolinetant in women in China with VMS associated with menopause. 150 women were enrolled at 34 sites in China.

About BRIGHT SKY Phase 3 Program

The BRIGHT SKY pivotal trials, SKYLIGHT 1 (NCT04003155) and SKYLIGHT 2 (NCT04003142), enrolled over 1,020 women with moderate to severe VMS. The trials are double-blinded and placebo-controlled for the first 12 weeks followed by a 40-week active treatment extension period. Women were enrolled at over 280 sites within the U.S., Canada and Europe. SKYLIGHT 4 (NCT04003389) is a 52-week double-blinded and placebo-controlled study designed to investigate long-term safety of fezolinetant. For SKYLIGHT 4, over 1,800 women with VMS were enrolled at over 180 sites within the U.S., Canada and Europe.

About VMS Associated with Menopause

VMS, characterized by hot flashes (also called hot flushes) and/or night sweats are common symptoms of menopause.1,2 Worldwide, more than 50% of women 40 to 64 years of age experience VMS and, in East Asia, the prevalence of VMS has been estimated to be around 80% of women 40 to 65 years of age, with 55% having moderate to severe VMS.3,4 VMS can have a disruptive impact on women's daily activities and overall quality of life.1

About Fezolinetant

Fezolinetant is an investigational, oral nonhormonal therapy in clinical development for the treatment of moderate to severe VMS associated with menopause. Fezolinetant works by blocking neurokinin B (NKB) binding on the kisspeptin/neurokinin/dynorphin (KNDy) neuron to moderate neuronal activity in the thermoregulatory center of the brain (the hypothalamus) to reduce the frequency and severity of moderate to severe VMS associated with menopause.5,6,7 The safety and efficacy of fezolinetant are under investigation and have not been established. There is no guarantee the agent will receive regulatory approval or become commercially available for the uses being investigated.

About Astellas

Astellas Pharma Inc. is a pharmaceutical company conducting business in more than 70 countries around the world. We are promoting the Focus Area Approach that is designed to identify opportunities for the continuous creation of new drugs to address diseases with high unmet medical needs by focusing on Biology and Modality. Furthermore, we are also looking beyond our foundational Rx focus to create Rx+ healthcare solutions that combine our expertise and knowledge with cutting-edge technology in different fields of external partners. Through these efforts, Astellas stands on the forefront of healthcare change to turn innovative science into value for patients. For more information, please visit our website at https://www.astellas.com/en.

Cautionary Notes

In this press release, statements made with respect to current plans, estimates, strategies and beliefs and other statements that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements about the future performance of Astellas. These statements are based on management's current assumptions and beliefs in light of the information currently available to it and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties. A number of factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking statements. Such factors include, but are not limited to: (i) changes in general economic conditions and in laws and regulations, relating to pharmaceutical markets, (ii) currency exchange rate fluctuations, (iii) delays in new product launches, (iv) the inability of Astellas to market existing and new products effectively, (v) the inability of Astellas to continue to effectively research and develop products accepted by customers in highly competitive markets, and (vi) infringements of Astellas' intellectual property rights by third parties.

Information about pharmaceutical products (including products currently in development) which is included in this press release is not intended to constitute an advertisement or medical advice.

References

1 Utian WH. Psychosocial and socioeconomic burden of vasomotor symptoms in menopause: a comprehensive review. Health Qual Life Outcomes. 2005;3:47.

2 Jones RE, Lopez KH, eds. Human Reproductive Biology. 4th ed. Waltham, MA: Elsevier, 2014. Col 2, para 1, lines 4-6.

3 Makara-Studzinska MT, Krys-Noszczyk KM, Jakiel G. Epidemiology of the symptoms of menopause  an intercontinental review. Przeglad menopauzalny = Menopause review. 2014;13:203-11.

4 Yu, Qi MD1; Chae, Hee-Dong MD, PhD2; Hsiao, Sheng-Mou MD3; Xie, Jipan MD, PhD4; Blogg, Martin BSc (Hons), CStat5; Sumarsono, Budiwan MD, MSc5; Kim, SoyoungMPH5 Prevalence, severity, and associated factors in women in East Asia with moderate-to-severe vasomotor symptoms associated with menopause, Menopause: February 28, 2022 -Volume -Issue -doi: 10.1097/GME.0000000000001949

5 Depypere H, Timmerman D, Donders G, Sieprath P, Ramael S, Combalbert J, et al. Treatment of menopausal vasomotor symptoms with fezolinetant, a neurokinin 3 receptor antagonist: a phase 2a trial. J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2019;104:5893-905.

6 Fraser GL, Lederman S, Waldbaum A, Kroll R, Santoro N, Lee M, et al. A phase 2b, randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind, dose-ranging study of the neurokinin 3 receptor antagonist fezolinetant for vasomotor symptoms associated with menopause. Menopause. 2020;27:382-92.

7 Fraser GL, Hoveyda HR, Clarke IJ, Ramaswamy S, Plant TM, Rose C, et al. The NK3 receptor antagonist ESN364 interrupts pulsatile LH secretion and moderate levels of ovarian hormones throughout the menstrual cycle. Endocrinology. 2015;156:4214-25.

SOURCE Astellas Pharma Inc.
Broke the Bread, Spilled the Tea by author Mitchell Kesller highlights the truth about the LGBT community as mentioned in the Bible.

ORLANDO, Fla., March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Author Mitchell Kesller's new book Broke the Bread, Spilled the Tea is an LGBT non-fiction book that is set to release on March 30th, 2022. The book explores the truth of what is written in the Bible as it pertains to homosexuality from an academic, lexicological, and historical perspective. The author brings up ancient texts and historical contexts to show that the six verses in the Bible known as the gay-bashing or clobber texts do not point to loving homosexual relationships but to something else.

Author Mitchell Kesller Broke the Bread, Spilled the Tea is set to release 03.30.2022

With this book, the author exposes the truth about a message that has been twisted and misinterpreted for years as a weapon against the Queer community. He makes a bold statement that perhaps the fullness and truth of God is not what is preached on the church's Sunday pulpits.

Talking to the media, Mitchell Kesller said, "The church has been an influential institution in human history and in our society. For centuries, the institution has been a self-proclaimed representative of God on Earth; However, it's ironic to see how organized religion's weaponized faith has been the source of wars, slavery, genocide, and oppression throughout the world. In an era of blind faith and misinformation, I wanted people to take a closer look at the Bible and discover what is real and what is not."

"I want people to realize how much in the Bible has been misinterpreted to oppress the LGBT+ community. God loves the LGBT+ community, and the Bible provides enough proof of this. As a devout Christian, when I accepted myself as bisexual I had a hard time believing that God loved me. The religious trauma faced by thousands across the nation who have recently become part of the deconstructionist movement is a glaring sign that I'm not alone. Through deep academic research of the holy scriptures, I realized that God loves all his children, and has no qualms with loving homosexual relationships. Enough is enough. The church will no longer gate-keep heaven and God's love from the marginalized people it was meant to embrace. This book is a starting point as I encourage others to take a closer look at the Bible from an academic perspective," added the author.

Editor Leslie Ross while reviewing the book noted, "This book is a breath of fresh air for a community that has long been suffocated."

Mitchell Kesller's Book "Broke the Bread, Spilled The Tea.'' is available for preorder for both print and ebooks, and will be officially released on March 30th, 2022.

Readers can place their orders on Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com.

For more information, visit: www.mitchellkesller.com

For updates follow him @mitchellkesller on Twitter and Instagram.

Contact:

Mitchell Kesller

6174604065

[email protected]

SOURCE Mitchell Kesller
SINGAPORE, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Azentio Software ("Azentio"), a Singapore-headquartered technology firm owned by funds advised by Apax Partners , today announced that Bank of Abyssinia ("BoA") has successfully gone live with iMAL*IslamicFinancing and iMAL*ProfitCalculationSystem in less than four months, to support the growth of its Islamic window operations.

Azentio's Shariah-compliant profit calculation and distribution system makes profit distribution highly efficient. With the company's AAOIFI-certified Islamic banking suite, BoA will be able to compete with both, Islamic banks and conventional banking methods of interest payouts, in rates and customer satisfaction, reducing time-to-market for new products and distribution of profits. All profit rate adjustments are made within the confines of the rules of Islamic jurisprudence and handled automatically by the system.

Mohammed Kateeb, Global Head of Islamic Banking and President of Middle East & Africa at Azentio, commented, "We are proud to support BoA, one of the leading private banks in Ethiopia, to achieve the highest levels of transparency and complete automation to manage the restricted and unrestricted Islamic investments, compute and share profits as prescribed by the Shariah. iMAL*IslamicFinancing and iMAL*ProfitCalculationSystem were integrated online with the bank's existing core banking platform and are running smoothly as standalone applications. The approach we adopted during the implementation phase was an innovative deviation from the normal one, enabling BoA to save the costly process of migration iterations, frequent CIF and account updates maintenance."

Abdulkadir Redwan, Director - Interest Free Banking at BoA, said, "Islamic banking has been growing rapidly in recent years in Ethiopia. Choosing the right technology partner was critical to stay nimble and move fast. We made a great choice in partnering with Azentio, because of their in-depth experience, system understanding, vast industry expertise and the team professionalism. This partnership will create an edge for our Islamic banking operations to operate in a more Shariah-compliant manner and comply with the National Bank of Ethiopia's regulations."

About Azentio Software Private Ltd

Azentio Software provides mission-critical, core and vertical-specific software products for clients in banking, financial and insurance services primarily across the Middle East and Africa, Asia Pacific, and India.

SOURCE Azentio Software Pvt Ltd
CHICAGO, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Barchart, a leading technology partner trusted by over 500 agribusinesses representing over 4,000 grain facilities, has announced a partnership with StoneX, a diversified global brokerage and financial services firm, to improve the efficiency of grain merchandiser workflows and help drive their commodity business forward.

This partnership will enable mutual agribusiness clients of Barchart and StoneX to read grain accounting data within StoneX's web-based merchandising system, StoneHedge. Additionally, joint clients will benefit from automated hedging and contract creation into grain accounting systems for offers and contracts.

This workflow automation - from offer creation, to hedge, through to contract creation - will drive efficiencies, reduce risk, and increase choice for clients across Barchart's private and secure grain elevator network.

"Barchart is proud to partner with StoneX, a respected industry leader, through the integration of our best-in-class grain accounting APIs into their hedging and risk management services," says Barchart CEO Mark Haraburda. "Together, Barchart and StoneX will help power the workflows of grain merchandisers across the world, and we look forward to building this relationship further."

"This partnership will only multiply the value StoneHedge provides customers. Integrating StoneHedge, our best-in-class grain merchandising and hedging platform with Barchart's grain accounting APIs streamlines administrative tasks allowing them to focus on their core business," says Dave Smoldt, President of the StoneX Financial Inc's Commodities Division.

With numerous grain accounting integrations with ERP providers, branded Marketplace apps, and the leading commodity analytics platform - cmdtyView Pro - Barchart provides the most comprehensive suite of digital tools for agribusinesses to make better decisions, improve workflows and support growth. To learn more about these solutions or to join our network of agribusiness clients and service providers, please visit our website.

About Barchart

Barchart is a leading provider of market data and services to the global financial, media, and commodity industries. Our diversified client base trusts Barchart's innovative Solutions across data, software, and technology to power their operation from front to back office, while our Media brands enable financial and commodity professionals to make decisions through web content, news, and publications. For more information, please visit www.barchart.com/solutions.

About StoneX Group Inc.

StoneX Group Inc., through its subsidiaries, operates a global financial services network that connects companies, organizations, traders and investors to the global market ecosystem through a unique blend of digital platforms, end-to-end clearing and execution services, high touch service and deep expertise. The Company strives to be the one trusted partner to its clients, providing its network, product and services to allow them to pursue trading opportunities, manage their market risks, make investments and improve their business performance. A Fortune-500 company headquartered in New York City and listed on the Nasdaq Global Select Market (NASDAQ: SNEX), StoneX Group Inc. and its approximately 3,300 employees serve more than 52,000 commercial, institutional, and global payments clients, and more than 370,000 retail accounts, from more than 40 offices spread across five continents. Further information on the Company is available at www.stonex.com.

SOURCE Barchart
VANCOUVER, BC, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ - BBTV Holdings Inc. (TSX: BBTV) (OTCQX: BBTVF) (Frankfurt: 64V) ("BBTV" or the "Company"), the leading creator monetization company with a mission to help creators become more successful, announces the appointment of former Jellysmack executive Erich Lochner as Senior Vice President, Creator Partnerships, reporting to BBTV's Chairperson and CEO, Shahrzad Rafati.

"Our solutions for creators are not only comprehensive, they're platform agnostic, which makes platform expansion a key area for growth of BBTV's Base and Plus Solutions," commented Shahrzad Rafati, Chairperson and CEO, BBTV. "As we continue to build on our world class leadership team with talented and diversely experienced executives, Erich brings strong relationships and directly applicable expertise to expand BBTV's growth and revenue across strategic platforms."

A seasoned executive within the creator economy, Erich most recently served as VP Creator Partnerships at Jellysmack following 5 years at The Outloud Group where he served as VP Operations and Chief Media Officer. Prior to joining The Outloud Group, Erich co-founded Vanishing Angle, an independent production company specializing in feature films, commercials, and industrial productions.

"As the creator economy continues its hyperbolic growth, there are more and more opportunities that creators are simply unable to take advantage of," commented Erich Lochner, SVP Creator Partnerships, BBTV. "Given BBTV's huge creator network and distinctive track record of helping creators become more successful, I believe it is the perfect home for me. I am really excited to help the company stay at the forefront of growing creators' businesses so they can take advantage of these ever evolving opportunities."

"This hire marks another significant stride in further increasing the strength of BBTV's leadership team as the company enters into its next phase of growth," commented Hamed Shahbazi, Lead Independent Director for BBTV's Board of Directors. "The board is very confident in how BBTV's management is executing on its vision and on all key drivers of the Company's continued growth."

Lochner's hire comes on the heels of two additional notable hires in recent months, including seasoned marketing and media leader Martin Cass as Chief Marketing Officer and former Lionsgate executive Thomas Hughes as a strategic consultant for its Content Management division.

For more information visit www.bbtv.com .

About BBTV

BBTV is a global media and technology company headquartered in Vancouver, Canada. The Company's mission is to help content creators become more successful. With creators ranging from individuals to global media brands, BBTV provides comprehensive, end-to-end Solutions to increase viewership and drive revenue powered by its innovative technology, while allowing creators to focus on their core competency  content creation. In January 2021, BBTV had the second most unique monthly viewers among digital platforms with more than 600 million globally, who consumed more than 50 billion minutes of video content, the most among media companies [1]. ( www.bbtv.com )

[1] Calculations and classifications made by BBTV based on data from Comscore's "Top 12 Countries = January 2021 comScore Video Metrix Media Trend  Multi-Platform  Top 100 Video Properties Report"; Top 12 countries represent ~50% of world's digital population.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains "forwardlooking information" and "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable securities laws (collectively, "forward-looking information") which reflects the Company's current expectations regarding future events, including that platform expansion is a key area of growth; that the Company will stay at the forefront of growing creators' businesses so they can take advantage of evolving opportunities; and that management is executing on all key drivers for the Company's continued growth. Forward-looking information is necessarily based on a number of estimates and assumptions that we considered appropriate and reasonable as of the date such information is given, including but not limited to our assumption that Mr. Lochner will be successful in growing creators' businesses and BBTV's revenue across strategic platforms, and realizing his objectives; that the Company's solutions will be able to expand across platforms; that the Company will be able to continue to grow its creator base; and our assumptions regarding continued positive changes and trends in our industry or the global economy, and the performance of our services and technology. Forward-looking information is subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors, many of which are beyond the Company's control, that may cause actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information, including but not limited to the risk that our assumptions on which our forward-looking information is based may not be accurate, we may fail to grow our business, or otherwise realize the objectives set out in this press release above, and our reliance on our relationship with one digital media platform. See also the factors discussed under "Risk Factors" in the final prospectus of the Company dated October 22, 2020 filed on sedar at www.sedar.com and in our other filings with the Canadian securities regulatory authorities at www.sedar.com . The Company does not undertake any obligation to update such forwardlooking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as expressly required by applicable law.

For further information please contact:

Media Relations: [email protected]

Investor Relations: [email protected]

BBTV-C

SOURCE BBTV Holdings Inc.
WYNNEWOOD, Pa., March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- James C. Wright, clerk of the Board of Trustees at Friends' Central School, has announced the Board's unanimous approval of the appointment of Interim Head of School Beth D. Johnson '77  a respected leader at Friends' Central for nearly three decades and a beloved member of the School community since childhood  as the 12th Head of School in Friends' Central's history, effective immediately.

Beth D. Johnson '77, first Black educator, first woman, and first graduate to serve as Friends' Central Head of School Tweet this Beth D. Johnson '77, Friend's Central's 12th Head of School

"In a very short time [as Interim Head], Beth has engaged and energized the School community and brought a vision that aligns with specific needs of the school," Wright said in a message to the Friends' Central community. "In short, she is leading our venerable School with vision, purpose, and joy."

Johnson, who had been appointed Interim Head in January 2021, is the first Black educator, the first woman, and the first graduate of the School to serve as Head in the 177 years since Friends' Central's founding.

"I'm honored by the Board's appointment," Johnson said. "Every day I come to work, I'm humbled by the trust, support, and love of the Friends' Central community  students, alumni/ae, parents, faculty, administrators, and neighbors who share my commitment to aiming higher, digging deeper, and going further to peacefully transform the world through education."

"Friends' Central is a unique community," she continued. "We offer rigorous intellectual and educational opportunities, but we do so with an element of relationship and community that is so special and different from any other school. And it's true for generation after generation."

Johnson graduated summa cum laude from St. Joseph's University with a bachelor's degree in Elementary Education. In 2009, she earned a Master of Science in Education at the University of Pennsylvania's Education Leadership Program.

Wright said that Johnson's emotional intelligence, empathy, relentless positivity, and full embrace of the School's core values played as much of a role in the Board's unanimous approval of her appointment as the positive trends in measurable outcomes during her tenure as Interim Head.

"Beth lives and breathes Quaker values and practices," Wright said. "She is universally admired for her acute intelligence, humor, warmth, and ever-positive outlook. Despite the hindrances of the pandemic, her welcoming and caring personality has made the atmosphere at Friends' Central so joyful that everyone who comes to campus remarks on it."

Friends' Central School is a Quaker, independent, coeducational, college-preparatory day school for students in Nursery through grade 12. Located on 41 acres across two campuses in Wynnewood, Pa., Friends' Central cultivates the intellectual, spiritual, and ethical promise of students. We go further. Guided by Quaker values, since 1845, Friends' Central School has been educating for excellence, inspiring tomorrow's leaders, honoring each individual, and encouraging students to peacefully transform the world.

SOURCE Friends' Central School
MANAMA, Bahrain, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Binance, the world's leading blockchain and cryptocurrency infrastructure provider, today announces that it has been granted a crypto-asset service provider license from the Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB). This landmark achievement for Binance represents its first license as a crypto-asset provider in The Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (GCC) and demonstrates its commitment to being in regulatory compliance as the first of its group of companies in the region.

Changpeng Zhao (CZ), founder and CEO of Binance, said: "The license from Bahrain is a milestone in our journey to being fully licensed and regulated around the world. I would like to thank Team Bahrain, guided by the visionary leadership of HRH Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, Crown Prince and Prime Minister, for the great work in facilitating this achievement. Team Bahrain has shown considerable foresight in its development of crypto regulations and provides the regulatory protections that consumers should come to expect from regulators around the world.

"I'm proud of the hard work of the Binance team to meet the stringent criteria of the Central Bank of Bahrain, not just locally but globally by ensuring that we meet and exceed the requirements of regulators and protect users with strong anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing policies."

The crypto-asset license will allow Binance to provide crypto-asset trading, custodial services and portfolio management to customers under the supervision of the Bahrain regulators.

HE Rasheed Al Maraj, Governor of the Central Bank of Bahrain commented: "Developing regulations aligned with global trends is a key objective for us at the CBB. We continue to work with partners and industry leaders such as Binance to develop regulations that enable innovation and best practices."

Khalid Humaidan, CEO of the Bahrain Economic Development Board (EDB) added: "Team Bahrain has built a world-class infrastructure to support the fast-growing blockchain and crypto industry, with robust regulations and diverse talent within the financial services, fintech and technology sectors. Collaboration with industry leaders such as Binance will further enhance our mission to establish the Kingdom of Bahrain as a leading business hub."

About Binance

Binance is the world's leading blockchain ecosystem and cryptocurrency infrastructure provider with a financial product suite that includes the largest digital asset exchange by volume. Trusted by millions worldwide, the Binance platform is dedicated to increasing the freedom of money for users, and features an unmatched portfolio of crypto products and offerings, including: trading and finance, education, data and research, social good, investment and incubation, decentralization and infrastructure solutions, and more. For more information, visit: https://www.binance.com .

About the Central Bank of Bahrain

The Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB) is a public corporate entity established by the 2006 CBB and Financial Institutions Law. It was created on 6th September 2006. The CBB is responsible for maintaining monetary and financial stability in the Kingdom of Bahrain. It succeeded the Bahrain Monetary Agency, which had previously carried out central banking and regulatory functions since its establishment in 1973. The CBB inherits the BMA's 33-year track record and wide range of responsibilities. It implements the Kingdom's monetary policy, public debt issuance, issues the national currency and oversees the country's payments and settlement systems. It is also the sole regulator of Bahrain's financial sector, covering the full range of banking, insurance, investment business and capital markets activities. The CBB's wide scope of responsibilities allows a consistent policy approach to be undertaken across the whole of the Kingdom's financial sector. It also provides a straightforward and efficient regulatory framework for financial services firms operating in Bahrain.

About the Bahrain Economic Development Board

The Bahrain Economic Development Board (EDB) is an investment promotion agency with overall responsibility for attracting investment into the Kingdom and supporting initiatives that enhance the investment climate. The EDB works with the government and both current and prospective investors, in order to ensure that Bahrain's investment climate is attractive, to communicate the key strengths, and to identify where opportunities exist for further economic growth through investment. The EDB focuses on several economic sectors that capitalise on Bahrain's competitive advantages and provide significant investment opportunities. These sectors include financial services, manufacturing, ICT, tourism, logistics and transport. The financial services sector is particularly strong in Bahrain and the EDB works to support the continued growth of the banking industry and key sub-sectors, including Islamic finance. For more information on the Bahrain EDB visit www.bahrainedb.com; for information about Bahrain visit www.bahrain.com .

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1755007/Binance_Logo.jpg

SOURCE Binance
Botify Strengthens Partnership with Google Cloud to Maximize Traffic and Revenue via Organic Search Tweet this

With SpeedWorkers, Botify delivers the most bot-friendly version of a website to search engines, allowing them to crawl significantly more of it, faster and more efficiently. As a result, more pages become indexed and discoverable by users in organic search, generating significant gains in measurable traffic and revenue. This also helps bridge the gap between search marketers and web developers by allowing engineering teams, with increasingly finite resources, to spend less time on SEO tasks and instead, focus on creating an ideal user experience.

"The combined power of Botify and Google Cloud helps brands accelerate their e-commerce strategies and create optimal digital experiences for both users and search engine bots," said Adrien Menard, Co-founder and CEO of Botify. "At a time when more robust privacy measures are limiting the effectiveness and ROI of traditional paid channels, the importance of first-party data and the role of organic search as a performance channel has never been more important. We strive to help brands transform their digital presence into powerful and efficient engines for traffic, sales, and sustainable revenue growth and this all starts with discoverability. Delivering our solution on Google Cloud is part of how we do this - ensuring an easy and seamless experience for customers."

Since its founding in 2012, Botify has had a partnership with Google Cloud, leveraging BigQuery to store and analyze its customers' critical search data. This data powers the foundation of its Analytics and Intelligence suites, which provide brands the insights to prioritize revenue-driving optimizations.

Click HERE for more.

SOURCE Botify
'Worldwide COVID emergence presents opportunities for strong growth for Btab'

SYDNEY, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Set against a backdrop which is hoped to be the beginning of the end for the global pandemic, the Btab e-commerce network is looking to capitalize on the opportunity to dually support recovering small businesses, whilst significantly expanding its market presence across North America, Asia and Europe.

Btab Group Btab Ecommerce

Founded on the concept of working together to empower small businesses with the same benefits, reach, influence and market presence as the world's online giants, Btab has seen success forging collaborative partnerships globally. The organization has now announced their latest strategic direction  developing an expansion of their partnerships, to include e-commerce brands, suppliers and logistics providers.

Btab CEO, Binson Lau commented: "We're particularly keen to partner with businesses of all sizes which have experienced real difficulties due to the pandemic. Whilst many companies have sadly closed as a result of globally felt market disruption, some have managed to hold on and we'd really like to help these brands stabilize, recover and grow."

Mr Lau continued: "Our unique model demonstrates the collective power we have when we work together, allowing our partners to genuinely hold their own in markets often dominated by the e-commerce giants of today. We're confident we can expand our current network to create a global alliance, to benefit many more businesses across the continents."

Since its inception, Btab have developed a network that boasts 11 warehouses, 18 pick-up locations and partnership with over 20 logistics companies, supplying over 7000 products across a broad spectrum of niches including furniture, health & beauty, groceries and home improvements. Btab have remained profitable through the challenges of the last few years and project a doubling in revenue over the next 12 months.

For more information, please visit the Btab Group official website https://btabcorp.com

About Btab Group:

Btab was founded to help others achieve their dreams of establishing successful online businesses, using the Btab Network. The company vision is to provide all small and medium-sized businesses with an equal opportunity to improve, using the same online technology that is utilized by large multinationals. Btab ensures online technology is within the reach of growing businesses, with a strong commitment to improving society through ethical business activities and a strong contribution to environmental development and communities.

Press responses to be sent to:



Btab Group

Media Contact: John Taylor

Email: [email protected]

Tel: +61 1300 25 3339 (Australia)

Tel: +1 917 809 7758 (USA)

Tel: +44 20 8895 6970 (UK)

Web: https://btabcorp.com

SOURCE Btab Group
NEW YORK, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- This March - Women's History Month - Metalicious celebrates 17 years as a leading women-owned jewelry business! Looking for a creative challenge, Stephanie Maslow Blackman started Metalicious in 2005. A wife and mother, she is environmentally conscious with a passion for jewelry, and Metalicious reflects that. They use ethically sourced gemstones and green practices as often as possible, leaving a small footprint behind.

Our environment is extremely important and Metalicious is passionate about supporting that. It's of utmost importance for them to use recycled metals and ethically sourced gemstones, in all of their creations. They work to use green practices in any area of the business possible, trying to leave as small a footprint behind as possible. They encourage positive examples of business practices and jewelry making, making sure to have a jewelry piece their customers can feel good about wearing.

Setting an example for our children and our future, Metalicious jewelry comes from the heart. They provide stunning pieces with incredible meaning. As unique and spirited jewelry that's artistically crafted, they offer pieces that align with most customers' values and aesthetic. They strive to create meaningful family heirloom jewelry that brings joy for generations to come. Lovingly handcrafted, they offer fine jewelry to feel amazing about. This year, they are celebrating 17 years as a leading jewelry business that is proudly women-owned!

Whether a piece of jewelry to bring joy, to allow someone to feel loved, or to represent a milestone, they can help customers find the best jewelry to treasure for years to come. After 17 amazing years as a leading women-owned jewelry business, they are confident in their ability to create sentimental pieces that are wearable works of art! Enjoy all aspects of jewelry with meaningful fine jewelry at Metalicious. With custom options, beautiful collections, and fine jewelry to choose from, their pieces leave an impact.

With several aspects that differentiate them from a typical jewelry store, customers can find fine jewelry that brings significant value and meaning. They work to give back to our community and environment, while also bringing meaningful fine jewelry. They also work in collaborations with their customers to create the jewelry of their customers' dreams. Celebrate 17 years with Metalicious and shop their collections of fine jewelry.

Contact:

Stephanie Blackman

https://metalicious.com/

(862) 414-9818

[email protected]

SOURCE Metalicious
RNA, cell & gene therapies, artificial intelligence, CRISPR and oncology related deals dominate the landscape

Biotech companies in U.S. awarded largest sums of capital, followed by Mainland China and UK

LONDON, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Clarivate Plc (NYSE: CLVT), a global leader in providing trusted information and insights to accelerate the pace of innovation, today announced the release of a new report, Biopharma deals in review: Review of an extraordinary 2021 and expectations for the future Biopharma Deals, which highlights emerging market trends and features detailed analysis of the key deals of 2021 and potential implications for 2022. This year's report finds RNA, cell & gene therapies, AI, CRISPR and oncology related deals dominated the landscape in 2021. In addition, U.S. biotech companies raised the majority of capital followed by Mainland China and the UK.

While the volume of biotech investments has lessened, 2021 was yet another extraordinary year for biopharma deal-making. Trends driving licensing, collaborations and joint ventures included: a maturation of deals toward co-development and co-commercialization, the increasingly global nature of deal-making, continued energy around oncology therapeutics and pharma companies seeking footholds within the enabling technologies underpinning next-generation treatments.

As the COVID-19 pandemic evolves to become endemic, life science industries will continue to assess the changing drug development landscape. Emerging trends suggest innovators and investors will drive the next great advances in human health. This year's Biopharma Deals report findings, include:

Investments continue record-breaking trends, while M&As track downward - Continuing the record-setting pace in the first half of 2021, 1 a new record was set for global biopharma licensing, collaborations and joint venture deals in all of 2021. A record 1,968 deals were announced in 2021, and the total value of these ventures for which financial details were disclosed was $213.6 billion , up from $198.2 billion in 2020. 2 Overall, 2021 had the highest total financing and deals value over the past five years. This was driven by a number of high-value transactions; 72 deals were worth at least $1 billion for a combined value of $136.5 billion , reaching a new height. This compares with 58 such deals worth $118.0 billion in 2020, 40 such deals valued at $92.5 billion in 2019 and 31 such deals worth $63.6 billion in 2018. 3

Continuing the record-setting pace in the first half of 2021, a new record was set for global biopharma licensing, collaborations and joint venture deals in all of 2021. A record 1,968 deals were announced in 2021, and the total value of these ventures for which financial details were disclosed was , up from in 2020. Overall, 2021 had the highest total financing and deals value over the past five years. This was driven by a number of high-value transactions; 72 deals were worth at least for a combined value of , reaching a new height. This compares with 58 such deals worth in 2020, 40 such deals valued at in 2019 and 31 such deals worth in 2018. Top deals are increasing - Several of the top deals in 2021 involved co-development and/or co-commercialization of assets. Well-financed biotech companies are becoming less interested in capital investments and more interested in deals that grant them the ability to retain commercialization rights and integrate their assets across the development lifecycle.

- Several of the top deals in 2021 involved co-development and/or co-commercialization of assets. Well-financed biotech companies are becoming less interested in capital investments and more interested in deals that grant them the ability to retain commercialization rights and integrate their assets across the development lifecycle. Biotech companies in the United States awarded largest sums of capital - A deep dive into BioWorld data showed that, in 2021, biotech companies based in the United States raised the majority from private and venture sources  accounting for 67% of all monies raised worldwide. Massachusetts -based companies accounted for 30% of all VC financing. Companies from the San Francisco Bay area collected 13% of the global total, just ahead of Mainland China-based biotechs, which had a 12% share of the global take. Biotech companies based in the United Kingdom attracted a 9% share of the total, nudging just ahead of the San Diego cluster (8%). In addition, partnerships established by companies in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region indicate there is growing interest in accessing global markets, potentially with the goal of maximizing the returns on investment beyond what can be achieved in their local markets. These partnerships primarily focus on gene, RNA and oncology therapies, in keeping with the themes observed across all deal-making in 2021.

- A deep dive into BioWorld data showed that, in 2021, biotech companies based in raised the majority from private and venture sources  accounting for 67% of all monies raised worldwide. -based companies accounted for 30% of all VC financing. Companies from the San Francisco Bay area collected 13% of the global total, just ahead of Mainland China-based biotechs, which had a 12% share of the global take. Biotech companies based in the attracted a 9% share of the total, nudging just ahead of the cluster (8%). In addition, partnerships established by companies in the (APAC) region indicate there is growing interest in accessing global markets, potentially with the goal of maximizing the returns on investment beyond what can be achieved in their local markets. These partnerships primarily focus on gene, RNA and oncology therapies, in keeping with the themes observed across all deal-making in 2021. RNA technology gains traction with investors - The COVID-19 pandemic has propelled adoption of RNA-based vaccines and therapies, helping to pave the way for others to enter the market. Both established and start-up companies are investing money into determining where mRNA, self-amplifying RNA (saRNA), small interfering RNA (siRNA) and RNA interference (RNAi) will have the greatest benefit.

The COVID-19 pandemic has propelled adoption of RNA-based vaccines and therapies, helping to pave the way for others to enter the market. Both established and start-up companies are investing money into determining where mRNA, self-amplifying RNA (saRNA), small interfering RNA (siRNA) and RNA interference (RNAi) will have the greatest benefit. Investments in CRISPR are likely to benefit rare diseases - CRISPR techniques also have the potential to transform therapeutic approaches for diseases with very few treatment options. As a result, CRISPR has emerged as a hot platform in the past decade, with a number of biotech companies developing therapeutic approaches using the technology.

CRISPR techniques also have the potential to transform therapeutic approaches for diseases with very few treatment options. As a result, CRISPR has emerged as a hot platform in the past decade, with a number of biotech companies developing therapeutic approaches using the technology. Oncology-related deals and M&As dominate the landscape - Oncology-focused deals accounted for a large proportion of global biopharma licensing, collaborations and joint venture transactions (29% of all deals) in 2021. Of these, 25 were valued at more than $1 billion , and nine reached at least the $2 billion mark.4

Mike Ward, Global Head of Life Sciences and Healthcare Thought Leadership, Clarivate: "The desire to develop innovative medicines that will deliver better and more robust health outcomes for patients will continue to be a key driver for biopharma deal-making activity. While pharma companies will still look to acquire potential blockbuster treatments to replace existing products that are losing patent protection, others are urgently seeking inroads to the enabling technologies being developed by biotechs, such as gene and cell therapies, genome-editing, antibody-drug conjugates, RNA technologies and AI/ML applications, which are expected to underpin the next generation of transformative blockbusters."

Clarivate is committed to supporting customers across the entire drug, device and medical technology lifecycles to advance, create and protect innovation. By combining patient journey data, therapeutic area expertise, artificial intelligence and analytics in ways that unlock hidden insights, data-driven decisions and accelerate innovation, Clarivate's end-to-end research intelligence is designed to enable customers to make informed evidence-based decisions and better understand the changing landscape.

The full Biopharma Deals Report can be accessed here.

Join the conversation, use hashtag #BioPharmaDeals2022 and mention Clarivate for Life Sciences & Healthcare on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Methodology for the Report

Clarivate technology and experts harmonize billions of datapoints from thousands of sources and provide a unified view to drive decision-making for a variety of use cases, including deal-making, forecasting, portfolio strategy and more. Leveraging data and insights from BioWorld and Cortellis Deals Intelligence, as well as a proprietary, predictive analytics which draw on more than 20 traits from across the entire body of Cortellis data, including 110,000+ life sciences deals, 36,000+ contracts and 9,500+ unredacted contracts, Clarivate drew upon technology and expertise to harmonize datapoints from multiple sources to provide a unified view of deal-making in 2021 and potential implications.

To learn more about Clarivate data products, visit www.clarivate.com.

About Clarivate

Clarivate is a global leader in providing solutions to accelerate the lifecycle of innovation. Our bold mission is to help customers solve some of the world's most complex problems by providing actionable information and insights that reduce the time from new ideas to life-changing inventions in the areas of science and intellectual property. We help customers discover, protect and commercialize their inventions using our trusted subscription and technology-based solutions coupled with deep domain expertise. For more information, please visit clarivate.com.

Media Contact

Catherine Daniel

Director, External Communications, Life Sciences & Healthcare

[email protected]

1 Source: Biopharma deals in review: a look back at an energetic H1 and what to expect next. Clarivate, [online], Available at: https://clarivate.com/lp/biopharma-deals-in-review/. (accessed on February 21, 2022).

2 Carey, K. Deals reach a record $213.5B, as M&As in 2021 struggle (January 12, 2022). BioWorld, [online], Available at: https://www.bioworld.com/articles/515071-deals-reach-a-record-2135b-as-m-and-as-in-2021-struggle. (accessed on February 21, 2022).

3 Source: BioWorld; Cortellis Deals Intelligence

4 Source: BioWorld; Cortellis Deals Intelligence

SOURCE Clarivate Plc
THUNDER BAY, ON, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ - Clean Air Metals Inc. ("Clean Air Metals" or the "Company") (TSXV: AIR) (OTCQB: CLRMF) (FRA: CKU) is pleased to announce the appointment of Mr. Kris Tuuttila as Director of Sustainability, Permitting and Community Relations for the Company. In addition, Dr. Geoff Heggie has been promoted to VP-Exploration for the Company.

The Company has also initiated a search for a Chief Operating Officer (COO) who will lead the technical studies to advance the Thunder Bay North project towards execution. Immediate priorities will include pre-feasibility level metallurgical optimization and investigate options to achieve net zero emissions related to the onset of feasibility studies at its platinum, palladium, copper, nickel Thunder Bay North Project, Ontario, Canada. The project is described at https://cleanairmetals.ca/projects/thunder-bay-north/, pursuant to the Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA) technical report recently published to SEDAR (press release December 1, 2021; January 12, 2022).

The Company recently published its "Clean Air Metals Inc.  2021 ESG Report" (press release January 27, 2022) which is available on the Clean Air Metals' website at https://cleanairmetals.ca/esg/esg-report/. The publication of the ESG report is tied to the Company's goal of transparency and continuous improvement in Health and Safety, Environment, Community and development of Human Resources as articulated in its Sustainability Policy at https://cleanairmetals.ca/site/assets/files/5703/cam_sustainability_policy_rev01_mar01_2021_1.pdf).

The Company presently has two diamond drills operating at the Thunder Bay North Project focused on increasing drill density within the PEA mine plan in preparation for feasibility studies and large-diameter drill bulk sampling year by year within the proposed PEA mine plan in preparation for metallurgical optimization. A third drill will be mobilized to more remote greenfields exploration sites outside the mine plan area in the search for the source of high-grade massive sulphide intercepts identified in the system (press release July 6, 2021).

Biographies of Appointees

Mr. Kris Tuuttila, B.Sc., P.Geo. (Limited) brings 19 years of management experience in environmental consulting for projects across Canada. He has directed multidisciplinary environmental projects and impact assessments relating to various stages of mine development in northern Ontario, including at the Lac des Iles palladium mine 60km northwest of the Thunder Bay North Project. Kris has developed meaningful relationships with various Indigenous communities of northwestern Ontario and has been instrumental in signing several partnership agreements to provide economic and training benefits to area First Nation communities.

Dr. Geoff Heggie, P.Geo. worked on the Thunder Bay North Project previously for 7 years. He earned his BSc in Geology at the University of Saskatchewan, his MSc at Lakehead University and his PhD at the University of Western Australia. Geoff is an expert in ultramafic/mafic hosted Ni-Cu-PGE deposits and on Mid-Continent Rift geology in North America. Geoff joined Clean Air Metals team as Exploration Manager. Previously as Senior Geologist at Noront, Geoff was involved with systematic integration of geology and geophysics by the Noront team resulting in the discovery of the McFaulds No. 8 VMS lenses of the Nikka deposit.

The Company also announces the resignation of Ms. Dawn Lamswood, M.Sc., P.Geo. from the position of VP-Exploration. Ms. Lamswood will continue as Senior Geological Consultant to the Company working closely with Dr. Heggie.

Under the Company's approved Equity Incentive Plan, Officers and Directors of the Company have been granted 1,148,999 Restricted Share Units (RSU's), and 1,400,000 long term incentive (LTI) share Options for 5 years at an exercise price of C$0.30. Total outstanding securities granted under the Equity Incentive Plan for all personnel now stands at 6.49% of issued and outstanding shares.

Clean Air Metals CEO Abraham Drost, stated that: "following the Company's recent $12.5 million financing, these executive appointments signal the Company's commitment to sustainable mine development at the Thunder Bay North Project. The project features a rare combination of peer-leading platinum, palladium, copper and nickel grades, proximity to infrastructure and skilled workforce and relatively low initial capital intensity.

The Company and its First Nation partners at the Fort William First Nation, the Red Rock Indian Band and the Biinjitiwaabik Zaaging Anishinaabek have an unparalleled opportunity for regional economic development at Thunder Bay North (press release January 11 and 28, 2021).

We also extend our best wishes to Dawn Lamswood and wish her all success personally and professionally as she continues to work closely with the Company and other clients. Dawn has made a solid contribution to the startup of the Company which is very much appreciated."

About Clean Air Metals Inc.

Clean Air Metals' flagship asset is the 100% owned, high grade Thunder Bay North Project, a platinum, palladium, copper, nickel project located near the City of Thunder Bay, Ontario and the Lac des Iles Mine owned by Impala Platinum. The Thunder Bay North Project hosts twin magma conduit bodies hosting the Current and Escape deposits, forming the basis for a positive preliminary economic assessment (PEA) around a ramp access underground mine effective December 1, 2021.

Executive Chair Jim Gallagher and CEO Abraham Drost lead an experienced team of geologists and engineers who are using the Norilsk magma conduit stratigraphic and mineral deposit model to guide ongoing exploration and development studies at Thunder Bay North. As the former CEO of North American Palladium Ltd. which owned the Lac des Iles Mine prior to the sale to Impala Platinum in December 2019, Jim Gallagher and team are credited with the Lac des Iles mine turnaround story and creation of significant value for shareholders.

Social Engagement

Clean Air Metals Inc. and its wholly-owned subsidiary Panoramic PGMs (Canada) Ltd. acknowledge that the Thunder Bay North Project is on the traditional territories of the Fort William First Nation, Red Rock First Nation and Biinjitiwabik Zaaging Anishinabek. The parties together are the Cooperating Participants in a Memorandum of Agreement dated January 9, 2021.

The Company appreciates the opportunity to work in these territories and remains committed to the recognition and respect of those who have lived, traveled, and gathered on the lands since time immemorial. Clean Air Metals is committed to stewarding Indigenous heritage and remains committed to building, fostering and encouraging a respectful relationship with First Nations, Metis, and Inuit peoples based upon principles of mutual trust, respect, reciprocity and collaboration in the spirit of reconciliation.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS

"Abraham Drost"

Abraham Drost, Chief Executive Officer of Clean Air Metals Inc.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Information

The information contained herein contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable securities legislation, including statements regarding the potential of the Thunder Bay North Project and the Escape and Current deposits and timing of technical studies (include feasibility studies) and mineral resource estimates. Forward-looking statements relate to information that is based on assumptions of management, forecasts of future results, and estimates of amounts not yet determinable. Any statements that express predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions or future events or performance are not statements of historical fact and may be "forward-looking statements." Forward-looking statements are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties which could cause actual events or results to differ from those reflected in the forward-looking statements, including, without limitation: political and regulatory risks associated with mining and exploration; risks related to the maintenance of stock exchange listings; risks related to environmental regulation and liability; the potential for delays in exploration or development activities or the completion of feasibility studies; the uncertainty of profitability; risks and uncertainties relating to the interpretation of drill results, the geology, grade and continuity of mineral deposits; risks related to the inherent uncertainty of production and cost estimates and the potential for unexpected costs and expenses; results of prefeasibility and feasibility studies, and the possibility that future exploration, development or mining results will not be consistent with the Company's expectations; risks related to commodity price fluctuations; and other risks and uncertainties related to the Company's prospects, properties and business detailed elsewhere in the Company's disclosure record. Should one or more of these risks and uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described in forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned against attributing undue certainty to forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date hereof and the Company does not assume any obligation to update or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances, except in accordance with applicable securities laws. Actual events or results could differ materially from the Company's expectations or projection

SOURCE Clean Air Metals Inc.
Named after Barbara Cox, the late co-owner of Cox Enterprises and daughter of the company's founder, this honor is awarded to women who demonstrate business leadership and community advocacy, and a commitment to advancing the automotive industry. The winner was announced by Cox Automotive President Steve Rowley at the Northwood University Dealer Education Awards Breakfast at the NADA Show in Las Vegas on Saturday, March 12.

"With this award, we affirm the importance of inclusion, diversity and equity at Cox Automotive," said Rowley. "We choose one of our clients to receive this award that shares the traits and accomplishments of the late Barbara Cox of being a strong, skilled and determined woman who cares about people, her business and her community. It is my honor to recognize Chrissy Taylor as the 2022 Barbara Cox Woman of the Year."

"I am truly honored to receive the Barbara Cox Woman of the Year Award," said Taylor after receiving the award. "Like Cox Automotive, we are committed to the advancement of women in the mobility industry and giving back to our communities. I am even more thrilled that as part of this recognition, a deserving student will also be recognized for her leadership as she pursues her own career in our industry."

Taylor joined Enterprise Rent-A-Car's renowned Management Training Program in 2000. She held numerous roles throughout the business before relocating to London in 2006 to develop the Enterprise Rent-A-Car rental business in several new European markets. In 2008, she returned to St. Louis and held various leadership roles within diverse areas of the business before being promoted to Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer in 2016 and President in 2019. She succeeded Pam Nicholson as CEO in January 2020.

Taylor sits on the CEO Board for the U.S. Travel Association (USTA) and is a member of the Business Roundtable. She also serves on the Crawford Group Board of Directors and several local St. Louis boards and committees, including the Crawford Taylor Foundation.

In addition to presenting the award to Taylor, Cox Automotive will present on behalf of the honoree the 2021-2022 Barbara Cox Memorial Scholarship of $10,000 to Madison Kolich, a Northwood University senior studying automotive marketing and management. Kolich, who is originally from Escanaba, Mi., will graduate in May. While at Northwood University, she was involved in Business Professionals of America (BPA), the Northwood University International Auto Show, Northwood's Fashion Show, and "NU" Auto  a club designed to develop the future leaders of the automotive industry through transformational experiences, advanced technology, and the power of connections.

Cox Automotive is accepting applications for the 2023 Barbara Cox Woman of the Year Award. Learn more and nominate a female leader in the automotive industry: https://www.coxautoinc.com/about-us/diversity/barbara-cox-woman-year-award/

About Cox Automotive

Cox Automotive Inc. makes buying, selling, owning and using vehicles easier for everyone. The global company's more than 27,000 team members and family of brands, including Autotrader, Dealer.com, Dealertrack, Kelley Blue Book, Manheim, NextGear Capital, VinSolutions, vAuto and Xtime, are passionate about helping millions of car shoppers, 40,000 auto dealer clients across five continents and many others throughout the automotive industry thrive for generations to come. Cox Automotive is a subsidiary of Cox Enterprises Inc., a privately-owned, Atlanta-based company with annual revenues of nearly $20 billion. www.coxautoinc.com

SOURCE Cox Automotive
Dr. Suneil "Neil" Jolly, in partnership with Dr. Sebastian Koga, performed New Orleans' first ZIP  procedure, which utilizes an interspinous fixation implant for spinal fusion. The Aurora ZIP  Lumbar Fixation is a good option for patients with spinal instability . Spinal instability may cause low back pain and may lead to the "pinching" of spinal nerves, therefore causing shooting leg pains, numbness, and weakness. The Aurora ZIP  Fusion is used to treat spinal instability in those who have been diagnosed with certain conditions, including degenerative disc disease, spondylolisthesis, spinal stenosis, or lumbar radiculopathy.

Crescent View Surgery Center has become the first facility in the greater New Orleans area to utilize the Aurora ZIP lumbar fusion device.

By comparison to traditional back surgery, the Aurora ZIP Fusion is a minimally invasive procedure. Over traditional spine surgery, the Aurora ZIP fusion offers several advantages, including smaller skin incisions which lead to less pain, minimal blood loss, no general anesthesia, same-day discharge, and faster recovery. Traditionally, a fusion is performed by spine surgeons through extensive back surgery that requires general anesthesia. The surgeons drill metal screws into the backbones, and there is some trauma to the back ligaments and muscles. A hospital stay is necessary after this surgery, and the recovery takes several months.

According to the Institute of Medicine, chronic pain affects more than 100 million Americans, an incidence rate which outpaces heart disease, cancer and diabetes combined. Research suggests that, in total, the condition costs the American population an estimated 515 million workdays annually and generates upwards of 40 million visits to physicians each year.

"So many of our chronic pain patients suffering from lower back and leg pain can benefit from the ZIP minimally invasive outpatient treatment option," said Dr. Jolly. "Previously, these patients could only rely on more invasive treatment options that are commonly performed using pedicle screws and decompression techniques. Now, we can perform a simple, outpatient surgery to help our patients with lower back and leg pain in need of a fusion, all with a very small incision. This can help remove pain and improve function of our patients."

In a recent study conducted by the National Pain and Spine Centers, 32 patients aged 57-89 were treated with Aurora ZIP lumbar fusion. Patients experienced a pain reduction of 67% (pre-operative pain assessment score of 8.1 versus post-operative pain assessment score of 2.65). Adverse event rate was 0% with no incidences of reoperation or device removal. Estimated blood loss was recorded as less than 50cc for all patients.

ABOUT THE AURORA ZIP FUSION DEVICES AND PROCEDURE

The ZIP51 & ZIPLP are the Aurora Spine's minimally invasive interspinous fixation implants for spinal fusion and were developed as an alternative to pedicle screw fixation. The ZIP51 & ZIPLP implants are designed for stabilization and load sharing in T1-S1 thoracolumbar fusion procedures specifically for the treatment of degenerative disease, spondylolisthesis, trauma, and/or tumor. The proprietary device eliminates the use of a screw set. The ZIP51 & ZIPLP implants are designed in various sizes to accommodate variations in patient anatomy.

During this procedure, the physician places a small metal device, the Aurora ZIP Interspinous Spacer, between two backbones, at a place where the spine is unstable. The spacer acts as a bridge between two backbones to strengthen and straighten the spine.

ABOUT CRESCENT VIEW SURGERY CENTER AND LOUISIANA PAIN SPECIALISTS

The team of physicians at Louisiana Pain Specialists, including Dr. Suneil Jolly, Dr. Eric Sterne, Dr. Erik Davis, Dr. John Crosby, and Dr. Joshua Kaufman successfully treat all types of pain by using cutting-edge techniques and recent advances in pain management, regenerative medicine, interspinous spacers, and minimally invasive fusion therapies at 7 locations throughout the greater New Orleans and Baton Rouge areas.

SOURCE Louisiana Pain Specialists
In addition, credit unions are often looking for differentiated, cost-effective, and streamlined customer relationship management (CRM) solutions built to break down internal silos and deliver a superior member and employee experience.

This partnership between CRMNEXT and Wescom Resources Group will provide credit unions the best of both worlds - a best-in-class CRM solution designed for financial institutions, and hosted in a top-tier private cloud solution that takes into account key quality, security, compliance, and regulatory requirements.

"For over 20 years WRG has managed clients' core systems," says Dave Cerwinski, President, WRG. "As credit unions increasingly deploy CRM systems to more fully manage member data, it's a natural fit and a great value proposition for us to provide a reliable and secure cloud-based environment for a CRM system."

"Historically, credit unions have existed to be a better banking alternative for their members," says Mark Monsees, Product Manager, WRG. "What I like most about this partnership is that we are providing the technological resources and data management solutions so that credit unions can more efficiently and effectively serve their members."

"We are excited to be partnering with WRG," says James Gilbert, Head of Marketing at CRMNEXT. "The combined power of CRMNEXT's advanced CRM platform, along with WRG's private cloud solution will provide credit unions with a powerful, comprehensive, and seamless solution for simplifying work, driving growth, and delivering on experience."

To find out more about CRMNEXT's CRM platform, go to www.crmnext.com . For more information on WRG's data management and IT service solutions for credit unions, visit wescomresources.com .

About CRMNEXT

CRMNEXT , Inc., is the leading global CRM solution provider in financial services. A Gartner Magic Quadrant Challenger company, CRMNEXT picks up where traditional CRMs leave off providing work simplification, robotic automation, immediate results and greater empowerment for both team members and customers. It eliminates the artificial barriers between human and digital channels, enables innovation and world-class, omnichannel customer interactions from a single, unified platform. With more than one million bankers and one billion customers globally, CRMNEXT has become the largest CRM in financial services by effectively recalibrating the potential for both large and small organizations to grow assets, quality relationships, profitability, service and innovation. For more information, visit www.crmnext.com .

About Wescom Resources Group

Backed by Wescom Credit Union, a credit union with over $5 billion in assets and over 200,000 members, Wescom Resources Group provides credit unions with technology solutions that simplify the management of their data. With over 80 clients, WRG offers one of the most robust managed services platforms in the credit union industry. In addition, WRG's Tellergy solution provides branch automation for today's modern credit union. For more information, visit www.wescomresources.com .

CRMNEXT Press Contact:

Kristina Keene

Marketing Manager

E: [email protected]

C: 801-232-4925

SOURCE CRMNEXT
Tamarac Dispensary Expands Company's Retail Presence to 45 Locations in Florida and 128 Nationwide

WAKEFIELD, Mass., March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Curaleaf Holdings, Inc. (CSE: CURA /OTCQX: CURLF) ("Curaleaf" or the "Company"), a leading international provider of consumer products in cannabis, today announced the opening of its newest location in Tamarac, Florida. Curaleaf Tamarac is the Company's 45th location in Florida and the second in Broward County.

Located at 6899 N University Drive, Curaleaf Tamarac will expand medical cannabis access in the western half of the state's second most-populated county. Patients can choose from a wide variety of high-quality products including Select Nano Bites, Select Squeeze, Select Bites as well as the Company's proprietary gravity-fed vape pod, Cliq by Select. Last week, Select's first solventless product, Select Live Rosin vapes began rolling out across the state. Curaleaf first began serving Broward County in 2018 through its Deerfield Beach location, however this new location is Curaleaf's first location in West Broward County.

Curaleaf continues to scale its operations in the largest medical market in the U.S. Using a tailored retail approach rooted in patient education and advocacy, the Company has served nearly 300,000 patients through its 45 dispensaries across Florida. Curaleaf's recent momentum has doubled its Florida market share over the last year.

"We are excited to deepen our roots in the Sunshine State and serve even more patients in Broward County," said Matt Darin, President of Curaleaf US. "Our team is grateful for the continued support of Florida's medical cannabis community as we offer convenient and accessible patient experiences through our growing retail presence."

To celebrate the grand opening of Curaleaf Tamarac, the Company will offer half-priced products and double rewards points beginning Friday, April 1 through Sunday, April 3. Prizes and gifts with purchases will also be offered on Friday, April 1st.

For more information on store openings, along with product offerings and hours of operation, please visit https://curaleaf.com/dispensary/florida.

About Curaleaf Holdings

Curaleaf Holdings, Inc. (CSE: CURA) (OTCQX: CURLF) ("Curaleaf") is a leading international provider of consumer products in cannabis with a mission to improve lives by providing clarity around cannabis and confidence around consumption. As a high-growth cannabis company known for quality, expertise and reliability, the Company and its brands, including Curaleaf and Select, provide industry-leading service, product selection and accessibility across the medical and adult-use markets. In the United States, Curaleaf currently operates in 23 states with 128 dispensaries, 26 cultivation sites, and employs over 5,600 team members. Curaleaf International is the largest vertically integrated cannabis company in Europe with a unique supply and distribution network throughout the European market, bringing together pioneering science and research with cutting-edge cultivation, extraction and production. Curaleaf is listed on the Canadian Securities Exchange under the symbol CURA and trades on the OTCQX market under the symbol CURLF. For more information, please visit https://ir.curaleaf.com.

Forward Looking Statements

This media advisory contains forwardlooking statements and forwardlooking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws. These statements relate to future events or future performance. All statements other than statements of historical fact may be forwardlooking statements or information. Generally, forward-looking statements and information may be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "plans", "expects" or, "proposed", "is expected", "intends", "anticipates", or "believes", or variations of such words and phrases, or by the use of words or phrases which state that certain actions, events or results may, could, would, or might occur or be achieved. More particularly and without limitation, this news release contains forwardlooking statements and information concerning the opening of a new dispensary in Tamarac, Florida. Such forward-looking statements and information reflect management's current beliefs and are based on assumptions made by and information currently available to the company with respect to the matter described in this new release. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, which are based on current expectations as of the date of this release and subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such statements. Additional information about these assumptions and risks and uncertainties is contained under "Risk Factors and Uncertainties" in the Company's latest annual information form filed March 9, 2022 which is available under the Company's SEDAR profile at http://www.sedar.com, and in other filings that the Company has made and may make with applicable securities authorities in the future. Forward-looking statements contained herein are made only as to the date of this press release and we undertake no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law. We caution investors not to place considerable reliance on the forward looking statements contained in this press release. The Canadian Securities Exchange has not reviewed, approved or disapproved the content of this news release.

INVESTOR CONTACT

Curaleaf Holdings, Inc.

Investor Relations

[email protected]

MEDIA CONTACT

Curaleaf Holdings, Inc.

Tracy Brady, VP Corporate Communications

[email protected]

SOURCE Curaleaf Holdings, Inc.
50 local businesses from New York City, Chicago, and the greater Washington DC area will participate in the inaugural instructional program designed in partnership with Next Street

SAN FRANCISCO, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- DoorDash (NYSE: DASH) today announced its newest Main Street Strong initiative: the DoorDash Accelerator for Local Goods, an educational program designed to uplift local consumer packaged goods businesses owned by entrepreneurs who are women, transgender, immigrants, or people of color. Through the DoorDash Accelerator for Local Goods, DoorDash is empowering 50 entrepreneurs by giving them important resources, education, and funding to bring their local products to market for distribution via DashMart .

The DoorDash Accelerator for Local Goods consists of a live and self-guided six-week course designed in partnership with Next Street , a mission-driven small business solutions firm, which will cover six specific topics, including supply chain management, wholesale vendor relationship management, managing cash flow and business development.

Beyond the educational component, participants will receive a $5,000 grant to support their business needs, access to marketing and sales support from DoorDash, and the guarantee to sell their products via DashMart  a DoorDash-owned and operated grocery and convenience store. First introduced in 2020, DashMart is a new type of neighborhood store, brought to you by DoorDash offering customers thousands of fresh groceries, household essentials, local treats, and more  delivered right to their doorsteps. DashMart offers local businesses a new channel to reach customers, transforming how merchant partners can sell their products across the country. With DashMarts nationwide, DoorDash already supports over 400 local and regional producers from coast to coast.

"Local businesses generate a substantial amount of economic return for the communities they thrive within, while also creating notable job opportunities for residents," said Tasia Hawkins, Social Impact Program Lead at DoorDash. "By developing the DoorDash Accelerator for Local Goods, we are equipping aspiring entrepreneurs with the educational and financial capital to become wholesale-ready and create an even stronger relationship between local businesses and consumers residing in the community."

At the end of the six-week curriculum, DoorDash will commit to purchasing products from participating entrepreneurs to sell through at least one DashMart location as another way to help further bring these local businesses to market and connect them with more customers. DoorDash Chief Restaurant Advisor Chef Stephanie Izard, alongside Next Street, has been intimately involved in the curation of the curriculum as the owner of This Little Goat, a packaged goods brand.

"Before assuming the role of Chief Restaurant Advisor, I partnered with DoorDash to offer my line of This Little Goat sauces and spices in many DashMart locations across the country," said Chef Stephanie Izard, Chief Restaurant Advisor at DoorDash. "This is a full circle moment where I was able to help shape the curriculum for this inaugural cohort, especially as I've experienced the challenges of launching a packaged product firsthand  including creating a distribution plan and coordinating with manufacturers."

Ariel Barbouth, Founder and CEO of Nuchas, said "By partnering with DoorDash to sell our empanadas through DashMart, we're able to reach new customers and diversify our revenue streams in an effective way. We're happy that DoorDash is creating the DoorDash Accelerator for Local Goods to help entrepreneurs and assist them in reaching their goals."

Merchants are eligible to apply for the DoorDash Accelerator for Local Goods if they are a registered and actively operating packaged food local business in New York City, Chicago, or the greater Washington DC area, if they have twenty or fewer employees, if they have generated less than $1M in revenue in fiscal year 2021, and they must have been in business for at least two years. An active partnership with DoorDash is not required or considered to participate in this program.

Eligible businesses can apply for the DoorDash Accelerator for Local Goods beginning today through Friday, April 1 and can learn more about the program by clicking here .

About DoorDash

DoorDash is a technology company that connects consumers with their favorite local and national businesses across the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan and Germany. Founded in 2013, DoorDash enables local businesses to address consumers' expectations of ease and immediacy and thrive in today's convenience economy. By building the last-mile logistics infrastructure for local commerce, DoorDash is bringing communities closer, one doorstep at a time.

Contact:

[email protected]

SOURCE DoorDash
Equifax Cloud Based Services Now Listed in the FedRAMP Marketplace

ATLANTA, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Equifax  (NYSE: EFX) today announced that it is the first consumer reporting agency to achieve a Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) 'Ready for Agency Authorization,' a designation enabled by the $1.5 billion Equifax technology and security transformation. The newly-listed Equifax Government Data Exchange system is an Application Programming Interface (API)-based delivery channel that enables secure access to real-time income and employment verification services from The Work Number . With the 'Ready for Agency Authorization,' the Equifax Government Data Exchange is the first offering to include an income and employment verification solution that meets FedRAMP standards for inclusion on the FedRAMP Marketplace . Equifax expects this to be the first of many Equifax products that will ultimately be made available to U.S. Government customers through the FedRAMP Marketplace.

FedRAMP is a U.S. government program that provides a standardized approach to security assessment, authorization and continuous monitoring for cloud products and services. Achieving FedRAMP Ready status indicates that Equifax delivers the security and enterprise-level capabilities required for commercial cloud service offerings. The approval of the Equifax Government Data Exchange system follows a third-party audit and preparation of a Readiness Assessment Report (RAR) that was performed by a FedRAMP third-party assessment (3PAO) organization.

"Achieving the FedRAMP Ready milestone is a testament to the engineering excellence of the Equifax CloudTM, our unique implementation of a public cloud infrastructure designed to meet the needs of our highly regulated data environment," said Bryson Koehler, Chief Product, Data, Analytics & Technology Officer at Equifax. "Our global data fabric securely unifies more than 100 data silos into a single platform that delivers smarter insights at a greater velocity than ever before. That scale and integration is how the Equifax Cloud has moved us far beyond the scope of a consumer reporting agency and enabled us to respond to the needs of customers across industries in new ways. As government agencies continue to expand their use of data and analytics in the cloud, we're providing a secure, fully-managed FedRAMP-ready environment."

Federal government agencies rely on The Work Number database to deliver seamless, instant verifications of income and employment information in support of social service benefit decisions. In 2021, The Work Number service fulfilled 30 million verifications in support of government assistance programs in the United States. Those streamlined verifications help government agencies make faster benefits decisions, which can reduce the time it takes for people to receive the critical assistance they need.

"The Equifax Cloud environment has given us real-time visibility into our cloud infrastructure along with top-tier cybersecurity detection and response capabilities. Achieving FedRAMP Ready statusvalidation from one of the most stringent security standards in the worldfurther validates our commitment to being a leader in security," commented Jamil Farshchi, Chief Information Security Officer at Equifax. "Few companies have dedicated more time and resources into ensuring that information is protected. And, while our participation in FedRAMP guides our interactions with federal agencies, the rigor of the program benefits both the commercial clients of The Work Number and the consumers whose information is included within."

The Equifax Government Data Exchange system is now listed on the FedRAMP Marketplace and Equifax is currently pursuing full FedRAMP Moderate certification. For additional information on Equifax verification services for government clients, please click here .

ABOUT EQUIFAX INC.

At Equifax (NYSE: EFX), we believe knowledge drives progress. As a global data, analytics, and technology company, we play an essential role in the global economy by helping financial institutions, companies, employers, and government agencies make critical decisions with greater confidence. Our unique blend of differentiated data, analytics, and cloud technology drives insights to power decisions to move people forward. Headquartered in Atlanta and supported by more than 13,000 employees worldwide, Equifax operates or has investments in 24 countries in North America, Central and South America, Europe, and the Asia Pacific region. For more information, visit Equifax.com .

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Kate Walker for Equifax

[email protected]m

SOURCE Equifax Inc.
DUBLIN, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Europe Data Center Market - Industry Outlook & Forecast 2022-2027" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

Europe data center market by investments is expected to grow at a CAGR of 5.53 % during 2022-2027. In-depth analysis and data-driven insights on the impact of COVID-19 are included in this report.

There is a high demand for data centers in UK, Germany, and France due to the increased growth in cloud computing, IoT, and big data. The UK is among the leading data center locations in Western Europe.

Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Oracle, Amazon Web Services, and Apple are the major hyperscale companies that operate data centers and have a presence across the globe. In terms of hyperscale investments, Nordics is one of the hubs for hyperscale investments from cloud operators across globe.

The adoption of lithium-ion UPS systems grew in 2021. Most data centers operating in European regions adopt N+N redundant infrastructure, with most facilities being developed with space for installing up to 2N+2 redundant UPS systems.



COVID-19 IMPACT

The outbreak of COVID-19 has led to an increase in the demand for data centers. During the initial outbreak, data center operators faced several challenges to operate facilities. The demand for data centers grew significantly due to the pandemic, with a majority of the region's workforce shifting to remote working.

The demand for colocation services led to strong utilization of existing data center space and drove revenues of service providers by over 10% in those two quarters. The data center market in Europe has always been an attractive asset with better Return on Investment (ROI) compared to other commercial and industrial properties. This has attracted several new entrants into the market.

GEOGRAPHICAL ANALYSIS

The Western Europe data center market is a major region in the Europe and has presence of several global and local data center operators. The Global Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which came into effect in May 2018, had a positive impact on the data center market in Western Europe, leading customers to shift data to cloud-based services for data localization. This resulted in a greater number of data center projects.

MARKET GROWTH ENABLERS

COVID-19 to Boost Data Center Investments

Cloud Connectivity to Drive Demand for Data Centers

Increasing Data Center Investments

IOT & Big Data Drive Demand for Data Center

Adoption Of OCP & Hyperscale Infrastructure

Key Topics Covered:



1 Research Methodology



2 Research Objectives



3 Research Process



4 Scope & Coverage

4.1 Market Definition

4.2 Base Year

4.3 Scope of The Study

4.4 Market Segments



5 Report Assumptions & Caveats

5.1 Key Caveats

5.2 Currency Conversion

5.3 Market Derivation



6 Market at a Glance



7 Introduction

7.1 Electricity Pricing in Europe

7.2 Data Center Site Selection Criteria

7.2.1 Key



8 Market Opportunities & Trends

8.1 Growth In Sustainable Initiatives

8.2 5G Fueling Data Center Development

8.3 Increasing Adoption of District Heating Concept

8.4 Growing Artificial Intelligence Adoption

8.5 Innovative Data Center Technologies

8.5.1 Hydrogen Fuel Cells

8.5.2 DCIM Solutions

8.5.3 Innovative UPS Battery Technologies

8.6 Adoption of Advanced IT Infrastructure



9 Market Growth Enablers

9.1 COVID-19 To Boost Data Center Investments

9.2 Cloud Connectivity to Drive Demand for Data Centers

9.3 Increasing Data Center Investments

9.4 IOT & Big Data Drive Demand for Data Center

9.5 Growing Submarine & Inland Connectivity

9.6 Adoption of OCP & Hyperscale Infrastructure

9.7 Impact of Tax Incentives on Data Center Market

9.8 Impact of Data Regulations on Colocation Investment



10 Market Growth Restraints

10.1 Security Challenges in Data Centers

10.2 Location Constraints for Data Center Investments

10.3 Lack of Skilled Workforce

10.4 Rising Carbon Emissions from Data Centers



11 Market Landscape

11.1 Market Overview

11.2 Investment: Market Size & Forecast

11.3 Area: Market Size & Forecast

11.4 Power Capacity: Market Size & Forecast

11.5 Five Forces Analysis



12 Facility Type

12.1 Investment: Market Snapshot & Growth Engine

12.2 Area: Market Snapshot & Growth Engine

12.3 Power Capacity: Market Snapshot & Growth Engine

12.4 Hyperscale Data Center

12.5 Colocation Data Center

12.6 Enterprise Data Center



13 Infrastructure

13.1 Market Snapshot & Growth Engine

13.2 Market Overview

13.3 IT Infrastructure

13.4 Electrical Infrastructure

13.5 Mechanical Infrastructure

13.6 General Construction



14 IT Infrastructure

14.1 Market Snapshot & Growth Engine

14.2 Market Overview

14.3 Server Infrastructure

14.4 Storage Infrastructure

14.5 Network Infrastructure



15 Electrical Infrastructure

15.1 Market Snapshot & Growth Engine

15.2 Market Overview

15.3 UPS Systems

15.4 Generators

15.5 Transfer Switches & Switchgears

15.6 PDUS



16 Mechanical Infrastructure

16.1 Market Snapshot & Growth Engine

16.2 Market Overview

16.3 Cooling Systems

16.4 Racks



17 Cooling Systems

17.1 Market Snapshot & Growth Engine

17.2 Market Overview

17.3 CRAC & CRAH Units

17.4 Chiller Units

17.5 Cooling Towers, Condensers & Dry Coolers

17.6 Economizers & Evaporative Coolers



18 Cooling Technique

18.1 Market Snapshot & Growth Engine

18.2 Market Overview

18.3 Air-Based Cooling Technique

18.4 Liquid-Based Cooling Technique



19 General Construction

19.1 Market Snapshot & Growth Engine

19.2 Market Overview

19.3 Core & Shell Development

19.4 Installation & Commissioning Services

19.5 Engineering & Building Design

19.6 Fire Detection & Suppression

19.7 Physical Security

19.8 DCIM/BMS Solutions



20 Tier Standards

20.1 Market Snapshot & Growth Engine

20.2 Market Overview

20.3 Tier I & Tier II

20.4 Tier III

20.5 Tier IV



21 Geography

21.1 Investment: Market Snapshot & Growth Engine

21.2 Area: Market Snapshot & Growth Engine

21.3 Power Capacity: Market Snapshot & Growth Engine



Companies Mentioned

Arista Networks

Atos

Broadcom

Cisco Systems

Dell Technologies

Extreme Networks

Fujitsu

Hitachi Vantara

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)

Huawei Technologies

IBM

Inspur

Juniper Networks

Lenovo

MiTAC Holdings

NEC Corporation

NetApp

Pure Storage

Quanta Computer (Quanta Cloud Technology)

Super Micro Computer

Wistron (Wiwynn)

3M

ABB

Aermec

Airedale International Air Conditioning

Aksa Power Generation

Alfa Laval

Carrier

Caterpillar

Condair

Cummins

Daikin Applied

Delta Electronics

Eaton

ebm-papst

EMICON INNOVATION AND COMFORT

Enrogen

FlaktGroup

GESAB

HiRef

HITEC Power Protection

Johnson Controls

KOHLER-SDMO

KyotoCooling

Legrand

Mitsubishi Electric

Munters

NetNordic

Nlyte Software (Carrier Global Corporation)

Perkins Engines

Piller Power Systems

Riello Elettronica (Riello UPS)

Rittal

Rolls-Royce

Schneider Electric

Siemens

Socomec

STULZ

Trane ( Ingersoll Rand )

) Vertiv

AECOM

AEON Engineering

ARC:MC

AODC

Ariatta

ARSMAGNA

Artelia

Arup

Atkins

Aurora Group

Basler & Hofmann

BENTHEM CROUWEL ARCHITECTS

Bouygues Construction

Callaghan Engineering

Cap Ingelec

Caverion

Collen

Coromatic

COWI

DataDome

Deerns

Designer Group

Dipl.-Ing. H. C. Hollige

Dornan

DPR Construction

Etop

EYP MCF

Ferrovial

Fluor Corporation

Free Technologies Engineering

Future-tech

Gottlieb Paludan Architects

Granlund Group

GreenMDC

Haka Moscow

ICT Facilities

IDOM

IMOS

ISG

JCA Engineering

JERLAURE

Kirby Group Engineering

KKCG Group

Linesight

Mace

M+W Group (EXYTE)

Mercury

Metnor Construction

MT Hojgaard

Nicholas Webb Architects (NWA)

(NWA) NORMA Engineering

Oakmont Construction

PM Group

PORR Group

PQC (Power Quality Control)

Quark

Qumak

Ramboll Group

RED

Royal HaskoningDHV

STARCHING

STO Building Group

STRABAG

STS Group

Sweco

TECHKO

Tetra Tech

TPF

TTSP

Turner & Townsend

Warbud

Winthrop Engineering and Contracting

YIT

ZAUNERGROUP

3data

3S Group

Amazon Web Services

Artnet

Aruba

Apple

atNorth

Bahnhof

Beyond.pl

China Mobile

ClusterPower

Colt Data Centre Services (COLT DCS)

CyrusOne

DATA4

DigiPlex

Digital Realty

Echelon Data Centres

EcoDataCenter

EdgeConneX (EQT Infrastructure)

Equinix

Euclyde Data Centers

Facebook

Global Switch

Google

Green Mountain (AZRIELI GROUP)

Iron Mountain (IO)

IXcellerate

KDDI

Liberty Global

Magenta Telekom

Microsoft

Mobile Tele Systems (MTS)

Neterra

Netia

NDC-GARBE Data Centers Europe

NTT Global Data Centers

Orange Business Services

Proximity Data Centres

Rostelecom Data Centers (RTK-DC)

T5 Data Centers

Telecom Italia Sparkle

Vantage Data Centers

Virus Data Centers (ST Telemedia Global Data Centres)

VK Cloud Solutions (MAIL.RU)

Yandex

AtlasEdge

AQ Compute

Global Technical Realty

Nautilus Data Technologies

Stratus DC Management

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/9rclwr

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
NEW YORK, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- On Wednesday, March 16, 9:30 to 11:00 am, researchers from the CUNY School of Public Health, Hunter College, and Teachers College, Columbia University will release seven policy briefs titled "NY Food 2025: Policy Recommendations for a Stronger, Healthier, More Just and Sustainable Food System in NYC".

The event, moderated by Lisa Held, a Senior Staff Reporter at Civil Eats and known for her work writing about the food system, agriculture, and the environment, will be streamed online at 9:30am on March 16.

The policy briefs were crafted by a team from the CUNY Urban Food Policy Institute at the CUNY School of Public Health, the Hunter College New York City Food Policy Center, and the Laurie M. Tisch Center for Food, Education & Policy at Teachers College, Columbia University. Their collaborative work builds on two years of research examining the effects of the pandemic on New York City's food policies and programs and proposes specific policy measures the NYC Mayor and City Council should consider and implement to build a stronger, healthier, more just, and sustainable food system in New York City.

NY Food 2025 presents 28 concrete recommendations to reduce food insecurity; improve healthy food access; reduce promotion and availability of unhealthy food; support a robust, sustainable, and equitable food infrastructure; protect and empower food workers; advance food planning; and increase citizen control and ownership of the food system.

This work was supported by several funders organized by Community Food Funders, a philanthropic organizing project that supports healthier food systems in the New York metropolitan region.

Contacts:

Nevin Cohen at [email protected]

Charles Platkin at [email protected]

Sara Abiola at [email protected]

SOURCE CUNY SPH
Two-year project aims to update and automate all of the group's processes through an integrated approach and to support its growth

RUEIL-MALMAISON, France, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Infor, the industry cloud company, today announced that Foodex Group, a Japanese food importer and distributor, has selected Infor CloudSuite Distribution Enterprise, a cloud ERP platform with prebuilt capabilities for food and beverage distributors. Foodex Group has chosen a "One Infor" approach, entrusting the vendor with the entire project through a mission of consulting, support and services delivered in SaaS mode throughout the project.

Learn more about Infor solutions for the food industry:

https://www.infor.com/products/cloudsuite-distribution-enterprise

Foodex was created in Paris in 1992 by a team of gastronomy enthusiasts who wanted to share the treasures of Japanese cuisine with European consumers. Over the years, Foodex has expanded in Europe (notably between 2001 and 2019) by creating or acquiring distribution subsidiaries. At the same time, Foodex was acquired in 2010 by the Japanese group Takara Shuzo International, the leader and historical producer of sake in Japan, and opened a tasting and training space in Paris in 2015, the Atelier du Sake. Since 2018, Foodex has also expanded its export activities with deliveries throughout Europe, constantly growing and hiring new staff. The group's 350 employees now supply more than 10,000 customers with more than 2,500 references in line with market trends and needs: restaurants, grocery shops and agribusinesses specialising in Japanese, Asian and fusion food.

Adeline Colinet, Foodex's IT project director, says: "Having worked for years in a Microsoft environment, we had planned to remain consistent with our initial choices. However, meeting the Infor team and discovering a solution that is entirely dedicated to our business in terms of functionality, led us to reconsider our position."

Multi-site, multi-company, multi-currency and multi-lingual, Infor's CloudSuite, covers the main needs of large international food distributors as standard, from omnichannel sales and order management, through purchasing, inventory and supply management, financial management, and associated analytical reporting with the implementation of the Infor Birst BI module.

"The functional richness of the solution, its standard adaptation to our business specificities, its fully integrated approach within a single interface, as well as its advantages in terms of agility, scalability and speed of deployment, were particularly attractive to us," Colinet continues. "Deployed in a multi-tenant cloud environment  running on Amazon Web Services  will allow us to outsource our maintenance and upgrade processes to Infor's teams, allowing our users to focus on higher value-added tasks."

Selected Foodex key users, assisted by a team of Infor consultants, meticulously evaluated the solution in approximately 10 workshops that were organized during a 6-month evaluation period. Foodex management made a final decision for Infor CloudSuite Distribution Enterprise at the end of 2021. At the same time, Infor's management team has become the sponsor and guarantor of the success of the project, by engaging three of its executive managers at the highest level. While a project team is being set up at Foodex, the solution is expected to be rolled out in two stages beginning in April 2022.

Frederic Russo, Infor SVP for international sales, concludes: "The excellent collaboration between our teams and those of Foodex from the start of the project was a real factor in accelerating their decision to trust us. Our knowledge of the sector, our international multi-country and multi-site approach based on a single solution available on AWS in the multi-tenant cloud, as well as our ability to harmonise and implement processes for reporting results, subsidiary by subsidiary, in order to consolidate and optimise the budget development plan, all made the difference."

About Infor

Infor is a global leader in business cloud software specialized by industry. We develop complete solutions for our focus industries, including industrial manufacturing, distribution, healthcare, food & beverage, automotive, aerospace & defense, and high tech. Infor's mission-critical enterprise applications and services are designed to deliver sustainable operational advantages with security and faster time-to-value. We are obsessed with delivering successful business outcomes for customers, and we are continually innovating to quickly solve emerging business and industry challenges. Over 65,000 organizations in more than 175 countries rely on Infor's 17,000 employees and their deep industry expertise to help overcome market disruptions and achieve their business goals. As a Koch company, our financial strength, ownership structure, and long-term view empower us to foster enduring, mutually beneficial relationships with our customers, employees and partners. Visit www.infor.com.

Media contact:

Richard Moore

Infor PR Manager, EMEA

+447976111243

[email protected]

Copyright 2022 Infor. All rights reserved. The word and design marks set forth herein are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Infor and/or related affiliates and subsidiaries. All other trademarks listed herein are the property of their respective owners. www.infor.com

SOURCE Infor
CHICAGO, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- According to a research report "Fraud Detection and Prevention Market by Solution (Fraud Analytics, Authentication, and GRC), Service (Managed and Professional), Vertical (BFSI, Retail and eCommerce, and Travel and Transportation), Deployment Mode and Region - Global Forecast to 2026", published by MarketsandMarkets, the size of the FDP market is expected to grow from USD 24.8 billion in 2021 to USD 65.8 billion by 2026 at a CAGR of 21.5%. Increasing adoption of IoT and digital solutions, increasing revenue losses due to frauds, and growing adoption of analytics for fraud detection across industries are some of the key factors that are driving the market growth. However, rising cases of complex frauds instances such as digital scams that require highly professional expertise is one of the factors that is hindering the market growth.

Browse in-depth TOC on "Fraud Detection and Prevention Market"

493  Tables

46  Figures

381  Pages

Download PDF Brochure: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/pdfdownloadNew.asp?id=1312

By solution type, fraud analytics segment to hold the largest market size during the forecast period

Based on solutions, the FDP market is segmented into fraud analytics, authentication, and GRC solutions. According to the Consumer Sentinel Network maintained by FTC, 3.2 million identity thefts and fraud reports were received in 2019, out of which 1.7 million were fraud cases. The increasing cases of frauds force financial companies to advance their security infrastructure by deploying FDP solutions such as fraud analytics. Fraud analytics is the core of all FDP solutions. Several vendors offer traditional rule-based fraud analytics models, whereas some prefer AI- and ML-based techniques. Fraud analytics solutions proactively detect frauds and help meet compliance needs.

By deployment mode, cloud deployment to grow at a higher CAGR during the forecast period

The cloud deployment mode involves storing applications and software on remote servers, providing access through the internet. According to Flexera, enterprises are set to spend around 15-16% of their revenue for cloud hosting services by 2020. Another study by Cisco stated that "53% of organizations host at least 50% of their infrastructure on the cloud." Cloud-based solutions are increasing their market share continuously as both large and small banks currently have the required infrastructure and resources to deploy solutions on the cloud. Other than BFSI, retail and eCommerce, healthcare, and travel verticals are also adopting cloud-based FDP solutions to combat frauds efficiently.

Request Sample Pages: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/requestsampleNew.asp?id=1312

North America to hold the largest market size during the forecast period

North America, a technologically advanced region, tops the world in terms of the presence of cybersecurity vendors. The US is a highly regulated country with stringent laws and offers multiple opportunities for FDP providers to cater to a wide range of customers across industries. Major FDP solution vendors, such as BAE systems, FICO, LexisNexis, TransUnion, are headquartered in North America.

Americans have adopted the online trends and applications and have a high usage rate. For example, according to the American Association of Bankers' data, 7 out of 10 Americans rely on online mobile applications to make online payments. The volume of cybercrime attacks on financial institutions and the need for a unified platform to prevent risk, especially with the onset of COVID-19, are persuading enterprises in the US and Canada to adopt FDP solutions.

Major vendors in the global Fraud Detection and Prevention Market include BAE Systems (UK), Nice Actimize (US), FICO (US), LexisNexis (US), TransUnion (US), Kount (US), Software AG (Germany), RSA Security (US), Fiserv (US), FIS (US), ACI Worldwide (US), Experian (Ireland), SecuroNix (US), Accertify (US), Feedzai (US), CaseWare (Canada), FRISS (Netherland), MaxMind (US), Gurucul (US), DataVisor (US), PayPal (US), Visa (US), SAS institute (US), SAP SE (Germany), Microsoft Corporation (US), F5, Inc (US), Ingenico (France), AWS (US), PerimeterX (US), OneSpan (US), Signifyd (US), Cleafy (Italy) and Pondera Solutions (US).

Browse Adjacent Markets: Information Security Market Research Reports & Consulting

Related Reports:

Anti-money Laundering Market by Component, Solution (KYC/CDD and Watchlist, Transaction Screening and Monitoring), Deployment Mode, End User (Banking and Financials, Gaming/Gambling Organizations), and Region - Global Forecast to 2025

eGRC Market with COVID-19 by Offering (Software and Services), Software (Usage and Type), Type (Policy Management, Compliance Management, Audit Management, and Risk Management), Business Function, End User, and Region - Global Forecast to 2026

About MarketsandMarkets

MarketsandMarkets provides quantified B2B research on 30,000 high growth niche opportunities/threats which will impact 70% to 80% of worldwide companies' revenues. Currently servicing 7500 customers worldwide including 80% of global Fortune 1000 companies as clients. Almost 75,000 top officers across eight industries worldwide approach MarketsandMarkets for their painpoints around revenues decisions.

Our 850 fulltime analyst and SMEs at MarketsandMarkets are tracking global high growth markets following the "Growth Engagement Model  GEM". The GEM aims at proactive collaboration with the clients to identify new opportunities, identify most important customers, write "Attack, avoid and defend" strategies, identify sources of incremental revenues for both the company and its competitors. MarketsandMarkets now coming up with 1,500 MicroQuadrants (Positioning top players across leaders, emerging companies, innovators, strategic players) annually in high growth emerging segments. MarketsandMarkets is determined to benefit more than 10,000 companies this year for their revenue planning and help them take their innovations/disruptions early to the market by providing them research ahead of the curve.

MarketsandMarkets's flagship competitive intelligence and market research platform, "Knowledge Store" connects over 200,000 markets and entire value chains for deeper understanding of the unmet insights along with market sizing and forecasts of niche markets.

Contact:



Mr. Aashish Mehra

MarketsandMarkets INC.

630 Dundee Road

Suite 430

Northbrook, IL 60062

USA: +1-888-600-6441

Email: [email protected]

Research Insight: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/ResearchInsight/fraud-detection-prevention-market.asp

Visit Our Website: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com

Content Source: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/PressReleases/fraud-detection-prevention.asp

SOURCE MarketsandMarkets
"Darkness is the absence of light and evil is the absence of God. With the miraculous gift of these rosaries from these beacons of light with prayer, love, and hope, we will pierce the darkness and inspire the leaders of our world to reject evil and move closer to God," said Bob Unanue, President and CEO of Goya Foods.

With the help of Global Empowerment Mission (GEM), Goya Foods, through Goya Europa, its European facilities in Spain, and Goya Gives global initiative, the company will continue to distribute hundreds of thousands of pounds of food, water, and supplies as needed to Ukraine and Poland, where many refugees are fleeing. With the gift of these rosaries from faithful Americans, Goya seeks to fulfil Goya Cares' mission to nourish the soul.

To learn more about Goya, please visit: www.goya.com

About Goya Foods: Founded in 1936, Goya Foods, Inc. is America's largest Hispanic-owned food company, and has established itself as the leader in Latin American food and condiments. Goya manufactures, packages, and distributes over 2,500 high-quality food products from Spain, the Caribbean, Mexico, Central, and South America. Goya products have their roots in the culinary traditions of Hispanic communities around the world. The combination of authentic ingredients, robust seasonings, and convenient preparation makes Goya products ideal for every taste and every table. For more information on Goya Foods, please visit www.goya.com.

For more information, contact:

Natalie J. Maniscalco

845.659.6506 /[email protected]

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1765390/Goya_Foods_Bob_Unanue.jpg

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1153368/GOYA_Logo.jpg

SOURCE Goya Foods, Inc.
New Fuddruckers Locations to Open at Brookfield Properties

HOUSTON, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Fuddruckers Restaurants, serving guests the World's Greatest Hamburgers since 1980, today announced it has signed leases with Brookfield Properties to open 10 new Fuddruckers locations at malls nationwide.

Black Titan Franchise Systems, LLC, recently acquired Fuddruckers, including their 85 existing locations in the United States. These new non-traditional locations will begin buildouts in the second quarter of the year with new location openings expected in the months following.

Nicholas Perkins, Chief Executive Officer of Fuddruckers commented, "We are excited to partner with Brookfield Properties, expanding our geographic footprint across the country and making Fuddruckers accessible to an even greater number of guests. We anticipate creating approximately 150 new jobs in these areas, further expanding our Fuddruckers family of employees. These new locations will continue to grow our customer base, create new jobs and showcase our World's Greatest Hamburgers."

"Through our Partner to Empower Program, we are committed to partnering with black and minority-owned businesses, and it is incredibly exciting for us to collaborate with Fuddruckers on this expansion," said Michelle Isabel, Vice President of Business Development at Brookfield Properties "We look forward to adding 10 new Fuddruckers in our portfolio. We know our communities will enjoy the new addition."

Perkins added, "We are continually working to innovate and extend customer choice, especially for healthy options that customers crave. As such, we recently announced new plant-based offerings, which will be available at our new locations. With the addition of these restaurants, as well as several soon-to-open 'Ghost Kitchens', we are also able to innovate our customer delivery system. The Ghost Kitchens will enable customers to place an order digitally via our website web, mobile app or in-person at an ordering kiosk. Customers can then pick up their meal onsite or have it delivered."

For more information about Fuddruckers, please visit www.fuddruckers.com.

Brookfield Properties  New Fuddruckers Mall Locations Coming Soon

Alabama

The Riverchase Galleria 2000 Riverchase Galleria, Hoover, AL 35244

California

The Shoppes at Carlsbad 2525 El Camino Real, Carlsbad, CA 92008

Georgia

Cumberland Mall 2860 Cumberland Mall SE, Atlanta, GA 30339

Perimeter Mall 4400 Ashford Dunwoody Road, Atlanta, GA 30346

North Carolina

The Streets at South Point 6910 Fayetteville Road, Durham, NC 27713

Texas

Hulen Mall 4800 S Hulen Street, Fort Worth, TX 76132

Town East Mall 2063 Town East Mall, Mesquite, TX 75150

The Parks Mall 3811 S Cooper St, Arlington, TX 76015

North Star Mall 7400 San Pedro Ave., San Antonio, TX 78216

Willowbrook Mall 2000 Willowbrook Mall, Houston, TX 77070

Ghost Kitchen Locations

Kitchen United (Kroger) Houston 1035 N Shepard Drive 77008

Plano 1901 -1941 Preston Road 75093

Frisco 9506 SH -121 75035

Austin 8023 Burnett Road 78757

About Fuddruckers

Making the world happy, one great burger at a time. Fuddruckers has been serving the World's Greatest Hamburgers since 1980. The Fuddruckers mission is to inspire guests to build their own World's Greatest Hamburgers and experience by delivering uncompromising quality and in-your-face freshness. As a national restaurant company, Fuddruckers is proud to be the only 100 percent African American owned hamburger franchises in the U.S. with more than 92 restaurants across the country.

Today, Fuddruckers is still the only gourmet hamburger experience that is totally customizable, allowing you to have the power to "create your crave." To learn more, visit https://www.fuddruckers.com/

LinkedIn: Fuddruckers / Facebook: Fuddruckers / Twitter: @Fuddruckers / Instagram: @Fuddruckers / TIKTOK: @Worldsgreatesthamburgers

Fuddruckers Contact:

Dennard Lascar

Rick Black / Ken Dennard

[email protected]

SOURCE Fuddruckers
DUBLIN, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Global Brain Imaging Modalities Market - A Global and Regional Analysis: Focus on Product Type, Patient Age, End User, and Regional Analysis - Analysis and Forecast, 2022-2031" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The global brain imaging modalities market report highlights that the market was valued at $12,334.2 million in 2021 and is expected to reach $20,209.2 million by the end of 2031. The market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 5.06% during the forecast period 2022-2031.

Global Brain Imaging Modalities Market Industry Overview

The global brain imaging modalities market is projected to witness significant growth during the forecast period 2022-2031. The high prevalence and growing incidences of brain diseases and neurogenerative disorders and the technological advancements in brain imaging modalities and systems are the key propellers for the growth of the market.

Five key modalities of brain imaging modalities include computed tomography (CT) devices, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) devices, positron emission tomography (PET) devices, PET-CT devices, and PET MRI devices. The field of cognitive neuroscience has emerged and developed rapidly over the last 20 years. To address the neural underpinnings of human cognition, this new field combines two traditionally separate disciplines, cognitive psychology and neurology.

The market for brain imaging modalities devices is rapidly growing, with an increasing number of modalities used in the imaging of various brain diseases and neurogenerative disorders (NDs). The high prevalence and growing incidences of neurological disorders (NDs) are one of the major factors augmenting the growth of the global brain imaging modalities market.

Neurological diseases and mental disorders have emerged as serious public health concerns and substantial challenges to healthcare systems around the world. Genetic disorders, congenital anomalies or disorders, infections, lifestyle, or environmental health problems such as malnutrition, brain injury, spinal cord injury, or nerve injury are some of the causes of neurological problems.

Global Brain Imaging Modalities Market Drivers

Personalized and tailored treatment approaches based on monitoring and imaging findings and respecting pre-injury comorbidities and their therapies are warranted due to traumatic brain injury is a syndrome encompassing a variety of different affections to the brain, and since age-related comorbidities and treatments may also have a significant impact.

More importantly, as the prevalence and incidence of neurological illnesses continue to rise, so will technological adoption. As a result, the growth of disease diagnosis and, as a result, the global market for brain imaging modalities will accelerate.

Governments invest a significant amount of money in healthcare insurance so that the overall healthcare costs can be reduced, and the quality of life and affordability of the treatment can be enhanced.

Global Brain Imaging Modalities Market Restraints

The factors restraining the growth of the global brain imaging devices market include the risks associated with radiation exposure and delay in regulatory approvals.

Delay in regulatory approval for the products due to the stringent government regulations concerning the use of AI-enabled software in medical imaging hinders the market's growth. Moreover, another factor restraining the growth of the global brain imaging devices market is the high cost associated with medical imaging.

Global Brain Imaging Modalities Market Opportunities

High growth opportunities in emerging economies and the emergence of local companies in Asia-Pacific and the Middle East and Africa hold immense potential for the global brain imaging modalities market growth.

In an era of machine learning and artificial intelligence, extracting quantitative biomarkers from medical images to aid illness detection, characterization, monitoring, and therapy response assessment is becoming increasingly desirable.

Impact of COVID-19 on the Global Brain Imaging Modalities Market

The COVID-19 pandemic had a debilitating impact on the global healthcare ecosystem. Hospitals and clinics faced several challenges such as lack of resources, high patient influx, and risk of infection among care providers.

The market is projected to witness considerable growth during the forecast period 2021-2030. The increasing innovations and product designs in the global market and the growing use in emerging economies are the driving factors for the growth of the market.

Key Questions Answered in the Report

How has COVID-19 impacted the growth of the global brain imaging modalities market?

What are the key regulations governing the brain imaging modalities market in key regions?

What technological developments are projected to have the maximum influence on the global brain imaging modalities market?

Who are the leading players holding significant dominance in the global brain imaging modalities market?

What are some of the growth opportunities which market players can capitalize on?

What are the drivers and restraints for the global brain imaging modalities market?

Which region has the highest growth rate in the brain imaging modalities market?

Which are the fastest growing countries in terms of the global brain imaging modalities market?

What are the key strategies being adopted by market players in the global brain imaging modalities market?

Which are the emerging companies in the global brain imaging modalities market?

Market Growth Drivers

Rising Prevalence of Neurological Disorders and Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBI)

Technological Advancements in the Brain Imaging Modalities and Systems

Growing Popularity of Molecular Imaging in Brain Imaging

Market Challenges

Hospital Budget Cuts and High Upfront Cost

Declining Helium Availability

Market Opportunities

Integration of Imaging Systems and Software with Novel Biomarkers

Market Report Coverage - Brain Imaging Modalities

Market Segmentation

Product - CT Devices, MRI Devices, PET Devices, PET-CT Devices and PET-MRI Devices

Patient Type - Adults and Pediatrics and Infants

End User - Hospitals and Clinics, Diagnostic Imaging Centers, and Ambulatory Surgical Centers

Regional Segmentation

North America - U.S. and Canada

- U.S. and Europe - Germany , U.K., France , Italy , Spain , and Rest-of- Europe

- , U.K., , , , and Rest-of- Asia-Pacific - Japan , China , South Korea , India , Australia and New Zealand , and Rest-of- Asia-Pacific

- , , , , and , and Rest-of- Rest-of-the-World - Latin America , and Middle East and Africa

Company Profiles

Aspect Imaging

Canon, Inc.

Esaote SpA

Fujifilm Holdings Corporation

General Electric Company

Hyperfine Inc.

Koninklijke Philips N.V.

Mediso Medical Imaging Systems

MinFound Medical Systems Co., Ltd.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.

Shenzhen Anke High-Tech Co.,Ltd.

Shimadzu Corporation

Siemens Healthineers AG

United Imaging Healthcare Co., Ltd.

VUNO Co., Ltd.

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/3dz2bz

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

[email protected]



For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900



U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

SOURCE Research and Markets
DUBLIN, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Tourette Syndrome Drugs in Development by Stages, Target, MoA, RoA, Molecule Type and Key Players, 2022 Update" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

This pipeline guide provides an overview of the Tourette Syndrome (Central Nervous System) pipeline landscape.



The guide provides comprehensive information on the therapeutics under development for Tourette Syndrome (Central Nervous System), complete with analysis by stage of development, drug target, mechanism of action (MoA), route of administration (RoA) and molecule type. The guide covers the descriptive pharmacological action of the therapeutics, its complete research and development history and latest news and press releases.



The pipeline guide also reviews of key players involved in therapeutic development for Tourette Syndrome and features dormant and discontinued projects. The guide covers therapeutics under Development by Companies /Universities /Institutes, the molecules developed by Companies in Phase III, Phase II and Preclinical stages are 1, 4 and 1 respectively. Similarly, the Universities portfolio in Preclinical stages comprises 1 molecule, respectively.



The pipeline guide helps in identifying and tracking emerging players in the market and their portfolios, enhances decision making capabilities and helps to create effective counter strategies to gain competitive advantage.



Scope

The pipeline guide provides a snapshot of the global therapeutic landscape of Tourette Syndrome (Central Nervous System).

The pipeline guide reviews pipeline therapeutics for Tourette Syndrome (Central Nervous System) by companies and universities/research institutes based on information derived from company and industry-specific sources.

The pipeline guide covers pipeline products based on several stages of development ranging from pre-registration till discovery and undisclosed stages.

The pipeline guide features descriptive drug profiles for the pipeline products which comprise, product description, descriptive licensing and collaboration details, R&D brief, MoA & other developmental activities.

The pipeline guide reviews key companies involved in Tourette Syndrome (Central Nervous System) therapeutics and enlists all their major and minor projects.

The pipeline guide evaluates Tourette Syndrome (Central Nervous System) therapeutics based on mechanism of action (MoA), drug target, route of administration (RoA) and molecule type.

The pipeline guide encapsulates all the dormant and discontinued pipeline projects.

The pipeline guide reviews latest news related to pipeline therapeutics for Tourette Syndrome (Central Nervous System)

Reasons to Buy

Procure strategically important competitor information, analysis, and insights to formulate effective R&D strategies.

Recognize emerging players with potentially strong product portfolio and create effective counter-strategies to gain competitive advantage.

Find and recognize significant and varied types of therapeutics under development for Tourette Syndrome (Central Nervous System).

Classify potential new clients or partners in the target demographic.

Develop tactical initiatives by understanding the focus areas of leading companies.

Plan mergers and acquisitions meritoriously by identifying key players and it's most promising pipeline therapeutics.

Formulate corrective measures for pipeline projects by understanding Tourette Syndrome (Central Nervous System) pipeline depth and focus of Indication therapeutics.

Develop and design in-licensing and out-licensing strategies by identifying prospective partners with the most attractive projects to enhance and expand business potential and scope.

Adjust the therapeutic portfolio by recognizing discontinued projects and understand from the know-how what drove them from pipeline.

Key Topics Covered



Introduction



Report Coverage



Overview



Therapeutics Development

Pipeline Overview

Pipeline by Companies

Pipeline by Universities/Institutes

Products under Development by Companies

Products under Development by Universities/Institutes

Therapeutics Assessment

Assessment by Target

Assessment by Mechanism of Action

Assessment by Route of Administration

Assessment by Molecule Type

Companies Involved in Therapeutics Development

Asarina Pharma AB

Emalex Biosciences Inc

Evero Health Ltd

Noema Pharma AG

Octapharma AG

SOM Biotech SL

Drug Profiles

Bevantolol

Dronabinol + Palmidrol

Ecopipam hydrochloride

Immune globulin (human)

NOE-105

Sepranolone

Small Molecule to Antagonize DRD2 for CNS Disorders and Hormonal Disorders

Dormant Projects



Discontinued Products



Product Development Milestones



Featured News & Press Releases

Feb 16, 2022 : First patient in for landmark Tourette Syndrome study

: First patient in for landmark Tourette Syndrome study Jan 18, 2022 : SciSparc advances its phase IIb clinical trial in patients with Tourette syndrome with its proprietary drug candidate SCI-110

: SciSparc advances its phase IIb clinical trial in patients with Tourette syndrome with its proprietary drug candidate SCI-110 Dec 22, 2021 : Asarina Pharma receives final approval for landmark phase IIa Tourette study

: Asarina Pharma receives final approval for landmark phase IIa Tourette study Dec 08, 2021 : Noema Pharma hosting key opinion leader webinar on Stuttering

: Noema Pharma hosting key opinion leader webinar on Stuttering Nov 10, 2021 : Paragon's portfolio company Emalex Biosciences announces positive topline results from phase 2b clinical study evaluating ecopipam for pediatric Tourette syndrome

: Paragon's portfolio company Emalex Biosciences announces positive topline results from phase clinical study evaluating ecopipam for pediatric Tourette syndrome Sep 16, 2021 : Administrative backlog at public authority causes short-term delay in Tourette study

: Administrative backlog at public authority causes short-term delay in Tourette study Aug 05, 2021 : Noema Pharma initiates phase 2a Allevia study of PDE10A inhibitor NOE-105 in Tourette Syndrome

: Noema Pharma initiates phase 2a Allevia study of PDE10A inhibitor NOE-105 in Tourette Syndrome Jul 26, 2021 : SciSparc announces updates regarding its phase IIb study in Tourette Syndrome

: SciSparc announces updates regarding its phase IIb study in Tourette Syndrome Jun 22, 2021 : Emalex Biosciences announces completion of patient enrollment in phase 2b clinical trial evaluating Ecopipam (EBS-101) for pediatric patients with Tourette Syndrome

: Emalex Biosciences announces completion of patient enrollment in phase clinical trial evaluating Ecopipam (EBS-101) for pediatric patients with Tourette Syndrome Jun 08, 2021 : Asarina Pharma granted US patent for Sepranolone for Tourette syndrome, OCD and pathological gambling

: Asarina Pharma granted US patent for Sepranolone for Tourette syndrome, OCD and pathological gambling May 19, 2021 : Asarina Pharma receives approval of CTA for phase IIa Tourette study

: Asarina Pharma receives approval of CTA for phase IIa Tourette study Feb 11, 2021 : New preclinical study confirms that Sepranolone suppresses tics in Tourette Syndrome

: New preclinical study confirms that Sepranolone suppresses tics in Tourette Syndrome Feb 10, 2021 : SciSparc engages Procaps for development and production of CannAmide and its SCI-110 product candidate

: SciSparc engages Procaps for development and production of CannAmide and its SCI-110 product candidate Sep 01, 2020 : Emalex Biosciences Phase 2b Tourette Syndrome clinical trial reaches enrollment milestone

: Emalex Biosciences Phase Tourette Syndrome clinical trial reaches enrollment milestone Mar 24, 2020 : Asarina Pharma to release historic Phase IIb PMDD data on schedule

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/9p6tco

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
SHANGHAI, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Asieris Pharmaceuticals (688176.SH), a global innovative biopharma company specializing in discovering and developing innovative drugs for the treatment of genitourinary tumors and other major diseases, announced that the Hainan Provincial Medical Products Administration, in accordance with advice from the National Medical Products Administration Center for Drug Evaluation (CDE), has approved the inclusion of Asieris' drug Hexvix, a drug for the diagnosis of bladder cancer, in the clinical real-world evidence pilot study. Hexvix became the ninth drug to take part in the clinical real-world evidence pilot study.

According to the 2020 global cancer data released by the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), bladder cancer is one of the top 10 cancers with the highest incidents in the world. According to Frost & Sullivan, the number of new bladder cancer cases in China reached 86,000 in 2020, and is expected to rise to 101,000 in 2025, with a compound annual growth rate of 3.4% during that five-year period. As the survival period of bladder cancer patients was up to 7.5 years[1], the total number of patients with bladder cancer in China was estimated to be more than 600,000 in 2020.

According to Frost & Sullivan, patients with bladder cancer have a long survival period and a high recurrence rate. NMIBC accounts for 75% of all bladder cancer cases. The recurrence rate in NMIBC patients within five years after TURBT is about 60%, and that in high-risk NMIBC patients is up to 80%, while the risk of disease progression is 50%. Patients need to receive multiple surgical treatments and chronic medication, as well as frequent and long-term surveillance cystoscopy to manage the disease.

Studies showed that the combined use of Hexvix and BLC significantly increased the detection rate of papillary carcinoma by 24.9%, compared with white light cystoscopy. Specifically, it increased the detection rate of primary carcinoma by 20.7% and that of relapsed carcinoma by 27.7%. In addition, because the bladder carcinoma in situ (CIS) is flat and difficult to observe directly with white light cystoscopy, the use of Hexvix combined with BLC increased the detection rate of CIS by 26.7%, specifically by 28.0% in patients with primary carcinoma and by 25.0% in patients with relapsed carcinoma.[2] The results also showed that patients treated with Hexvix and BLC had a 16% reduction in recurrence compared to those treated with white cystoscopy.[3]

Hexvix has been approved in the United States and many European countries. The combined use of Hexvix and blue light cystoscopy (BLC) for the management of non-muscle invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC) has been included in the global expert consensus guidelines and Chinese Urological Association Guideline.

In January 2021, Asieris Pharmaceuticals entered into a license agreement with Photocure ASA (Photocure, OSE:PHO), a bladder cancer specialty company based in Oslo, Norway, to obtain the exclusive registration and commercialization rights of Hexvix in mainland China and Taiwan. In December 2021, Hexvix was put into pilot use in the Boao Lecheng International Medical Tourism Pilot Zone in Hainan Province and the first prescription in China was issued at Hainan General Hospital, with the first patient operated successfully.

"Real-world evidence plays an increasingly important role in clinical trials, and this project is expected to accelerate the clinical development and regulatory application of Hexvix, allowing patients to receive appropriate treatment as soon as possible", said Dr. Yong Xue, Chief Medical Officer of Asieris.

[1]. Martine Ploeg  Katja K. H. Aben Lambertus A. Kiemeney: The present and future burden of urinary bladder cancer in the world, World J Urol (2009)27:289293; No.of Pages 291 [2]. Maximilian Burger et al. Photodynamic Diagnosis of Nonmuscle-invasive Bladder Cancer with Hexaminolevulinate Cystoscopy: A Meta-analysis of Detection and RecurrenceBased on Raw Data, EURURO-5062; No. of Pages 9 [3]. Arnulf Stenz et al. Hexaminolevulinate Guided Fluorescence Cystoscopy ReducesRecurrence in Patients With Non-muscle Invasive Bladder Cancer, The Journal ofUrology Vol. 184, 1907-1914, November 2010

About Asieris

Asieris Pharmaceuticals (688176.SH), founded in March 2010, is a global innovative pharma company specializing in new drugs for the treatment of genitourinary tumors and other major diseases. We strive to improve human health and help people live a more dignified life. We aim to become a global pharma leader that integrates R&D, manufacturing and commercialization in our areas of focus, as we provide best-in-class integrated diagnosis and treatment solutions for patients in China and worldwide.

The company has been developing its proprietary R&D platform and core technologies, exploring new mechanisms of action, and efficiently screening and evaluating drug candidates. With a well-established in-house R&D system and expertise in global drug development, Asieris is committed to launching first-in-class drugs and other innovative products to address huge unmet needs in its areas of focus.

Asieris is also enhancing its pipeline for genitourinary diseases via proprietary R&D and strategic partnerships, while closely following cutting-edge technologies and therapeutics. The company strives to discover and identify unmet clinical needs, and adopts a forward-looking approach in product planning and life-cycle management. We aim to establish an outstanding portfolio that covers diagnosis and treatment in a bid to benefit more patients in China and globally.

SOURCE Asieris
Through authentic experiences on board and ashore that focus on culture, cuisine and immersive adventures, "Alaska Up Close" allows guests to discover, taste and experience the real Alaska. Guests won't just cruise Glacier Bay, they will discover its ecosystem from native tribe members and National Park Rangers. Guest won't simply eat seafood, they will taste the salmon they caught that day and have it prepared by Holland America Line chefs.

"Alaska is so abundant that it needs to be explored and presented differently, and with 'Alaska Up Close' our guests will have access to activities and experiences that they won't find anywhere else," said Beth Bodensteiner, senior vice president and chief commercial officer, Holland America Line. "We want our guests to be immersed in Alaska from the moment they step on board, and as we celebrate 75 years of exploring Alaska in 2022, we tapped into our unparalleled expertise to craft memorable and exclusive programming."

Alaska Up Close features local experts and personalities leading workshops and lectures, Explorations Central (EXC) Talks revealing the stories of real Alaskans, tours highlighting the best of each destination, Port to Table culinary immersion and local cuisine served in dining venues throughout the ship.

EXC Talks Focus on History and Culture:

Elevating the shipboard lecture, EXC Talks offer insight into local culture through the eyes of Alaskans with vivid imagery, compelling interviews and authentic stories:

"Breaking the Ice Ceiling" features stories of Alaskan women working in fields traditionally dominated by men.

"Ancestral Memories" tells the stories of native Alaskans keeping their culture and language alive.

"Pacific Giants" describes the wonders, habits and future of Alaska's largest inhabitants.

largest inhabitants. "Iditarod  The Last Great Race" shares what it's like to ride in the sled of this amazing Alaskan adventure.

Meet Alaska Locals and Experts On Board

Guests will learn the science and history of Alaska's splendors as naturalists lead workshops and host wildlife spotting on deck. Itineraries that include Glacier Bay National Park will feature a Park Ranger and a member of the Huna Tlingit Tribe who will share their insights, offer commentary and answer questions.

BBC Earth Brings Alaska to Life in an Epic Production

Guests on all Alaska cruises will be moved by BBC Earth's "Alaska in Concert" multimedia performance on the main stage. A live orchestra plays the soul-stirring soundtrack set against a backdrop of mesmerizing footage from the BBC Earth television series "Wild Alaska." Audiences experience the cycle of four seasons and see this land is as unforgiving as it is beautiful.

Eat Like a Local

Through Port to Table programming, guests delve into the culinary traditions of Alaska and learn how to eat like a local via live cooking demonstrations.

Food & Wine Tours Highlight Local Fare

Food lovers will find much to explore on an Alaska cruise, and through an array of exclusive FOOD & WINE shore excursions guests can tap into Alaska's unique gastronomic scene. Developed in partnership with the culinary authority, guests can dine on some of the world's freshest seafood, sample Anchorage's craft beer, taste fire-warmed sourdough rolls and attend an authentic crab feast or salmon bake.

Alaska Shore Excursions for Every Interest

Holland America Line offers a wide selection of award-winning shore excursions to suit every interest and activity level. Helicopter onto a glacier, spy on whales in their natural habitat, go whitewater rafting or kayaking for a scenic adventure, strike it rich panning for gold and sail on a real crabbing boat featured on "Deadliest Catch." Otters, bears and eagles await. Every tour provides an in-depth glimpse into The Great Land.

'Savor My Catch' Ocean-to-Table Dining

Guests who reel in a big one on select fishing-focused shore excursions can savor every bite of their catch on board. Holland America Line's expert chefs will prepare and serve it in a true ocean-to-table experience. Select tours also allow guests to ship their bounty home.

Raptor Encounters on Westerdam

Guests on Westerdam will have the opportunity to meet and learn about raptors during calls at Sitka. Through presentations and interactions about the birds from the Alaska Raptor Center, guests will be able to ask questions, have a meet-and-greet and photo opportunity with the charismatic Red Tail Hawk or Northern Goshawk.

Book Alaska with 'The Ultimate Upgrade Event'

Alaska cruise fares begin at $799 per person, double occupancy for a seven-day sailing. With Holland America Line's "The Ultimate Upgrade Event" promotion through March 31, 2022, guests booking the "Have it All" premium package on select summer 2022 through spring 2023 cruises also receive a free stateroom upgrade, 50% reduced deposits, $75 fares for kids on Alaska cruises, plus four popular perks: shore excursions, specialty dining, Wi-Fi and beverages.

In 2022, six Holland America Line ships will explore Alaska, either roundtrip from Seattle, Washington; roundtrip from Vancouver, Canada; or between Whittier, Alaska, and Vancouver. Every Alaska cruise includes a visit to one or more of Alaska's iconic glacier destinations. For explorers who want to travel farther, 16 different Cruisetours combine an Alaska cruise with an inland exploration of Denali National Park or to the unspoiled reaches of Canada's Yukon Territory.

Voted Number-One Cruise Line in Alaska

No other cruise line has explored Alaska longer than Holland America Line, and through the years the brand has collected awards and accolades for Alaska cruising. Holland America Line was named the top pick for Alaska in the Porthole Cruise Magazine Editor-in-Chief Awards, AFAR Travelers' Choice Awards, Cruise Critic Cruisers' Choice Destination Awards and TravelAge West Wave Awards Editor's Pick, confirming its position as the number-one cruise line in Alaska by some of the world's most discerning travelers and cruise experts.

For more information about Holland America Line, consult a travel advisor, call 1-877-SAIL HAL (877-724-5425) or visit hollandamerica.com.

Editor's note: Photos are available at https://www.cruiseimagelibrary.com/c/mcssyl5i.

Find Holland America Line on Twitter, Facebook and the Holland America Blog. Access all social media outlets via the home page at hollandamerica.com.

About Holland America Line [a division of Carnival Corporation and plc (NYSE: CCL and CUK)]

Holland America Line has been exploring the world since 1873 and was the first cruise line to offer adventures to Alaska and the Yukon nearly 75 years ago. Its fleet of premium ships visits nearly 400 ports in 114 countries around the world, offering an ideal mid-sized ship experience. A third Pinnacle-class ship, Rotterdam, joined the fleet in July 2021.

The leader in premium cruising, Holland America Line's ships feature innovative initiatives and a diverse range of enriching experiences focused on destination exploration and personalized travel. The best live music at sea fills each evening at Music Walk, and dining venues feature exclusive selections from Holland America Line's esteemed Culinary Council of world-famous chefs.

CONTACT: Bill Zucker, Erik Elvejord PHONE: 800-637-5029, 206-626-9890 EMAIL: [email protected]

SOURCE Holland America Line
Honda's proof of concept fuel cell power station will utilize fuel cell components from Honda Clarity Fuel Cell vehicles in a flexible, four-quad parallel stationary fuel cell power generation system capable of generating up to 1152kW-DC/1MW-AC from an inverter. A unique advantage of the four-quad design is the flexibility to change the layout of the four individual fuel cell units to suit the installation environment, accommodating a cuboid, L-shape, Z shape or other packaging requirements.

The station will be connected to the data center on the American Honda campus in early 2023, providing a real-world power generation application to verify performance. This will enable Honda to advance its know-how in the power supply area, as well as supply chain development, grid connection access, construction specifications, AC/DC connection requirements and other critical areas.

"We will leverage the expertise Honda has established in creating multiple generations of fuel cell systems for the development of a fuel cell power generation station," said Mitsuru Kariya, senior vice president in charge of the R&D Business Unit of American Honda. "This project is an opportunity to further utilize our strengths in fuel cell technology to more quickly create, assess and advance a clean power generation system for potential commercial customers."

While Honda remains committed to developing fuel cell systems for passenger vehicles, the market for fuel cell systems to power larger trucks and transport ships, as well as stationary generation, is expanding rapidly in the U.S. and is expected to grow to over $86.7 billion annually by 2030. Data centers in particular require high-quality and reliable power, where any disruption in power supply can lead to downtime or problems such as data corruption and damage to servers.

Typical stationary backup generators rely on diesel fuel, which result in higher carbon emissions and local air pollutants. Backup power systems utilizing hydrogen fuel cells offer a promising future for clean, yet reliable and high-quality power generation, especially when operating on so-called "green" hydrogen made from renewable sources, with water vapor as the only emission.

Preliminary System Specifications

Output 1 Quad Unit 288kW-DC 4 Quad Unit Combined 1152kW-DC Inverter 1200 KVA 240/480V with Transformer Dimensions POWER PLANT (4x QUADS + ACCESSORIES) L1100 cm x W230cm x H250 cm, footprint 25.3 m2

Approx. 3.6ft x 7.5ft x 8.2ft, footprint 83ft2 Quad unit 260 cm X 230cm x250 cm Approx 8.5ft x 7.5ft x 8.2ft Mass POWER PLANT (4x QUADS + ACCESSORIES) 10,625kg Est. 23,424lb Quad 850kg Est. 1,873lb Hydrogen Liquid/Gas ISO14687-2 5-12 bar(g) Cooling External Cooling Tower 1750kW (500ton), > 2Bar, >3785lpm, 480V, 260A Function Data Acquisition/Remote Monitoring/Over

the Air Update Wireless 4G, Onboard SSD Water Proof NEMA 3 Ventilation IEC62282-3 Safety Monitor Smoke, H2, Temp, Current, Voltage, Isolation

Monitor, Cabin Pressure E-Stop Plant, Cooling Tower, Grid Inverter Code/Standards

NFPA 853, IEC62282, NFPA 55,UL1741 (grid

inverter)

Honda Fuel Cell Technology Leadership

Honda has led the industry over the past quarter-century in the development and deployment of fuel cell technology, including extensive real-world testing and customer deployments.

In July 2002 , the Honda FCX became the first fuel cell vehicle certified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and California Air Resources Board (CARB).

, the Honda FCX became the first fuel cell vehicle certified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and California Air Resources Board (CARB). In December 2002 , Honda introduced the world's first production fuel cell vehicle, to both the U.S. and Japan markets.

, Honda introduced the world's first production fuel cell vehicle, to both the U.S. and markets. In 2003, Honda became the first automaker with a fuel cell vehicle to start and operate in sub-freezing temperatures.

In 2005, Honda became the first automaker to lease fuel cell vehicles to individual retail customers.

In 2008, Honda became the first manufacturer to build and produce a dedicated fuel cell vehicle (FCX Clarity) on a production line specifically made for fuel cell vehicles.

In 2013, Honda and GM began working together on the co-development of a next-generation fuel cell system and hydrogen storage technologies.

In 2017, Honda introduced the Honda Clarity Fuel Cell vehicle.

In 2020, Honda Motor Co., Ltd. and Isuzu Motors Ltd. signed an agreement for joint research of the use of hydrogen fuel cells to power heavy-duty trucks, looking to expand fuel cell use by applying the zero-emission technology to larger vehicles.

In 2021, Honda announced its collaboration with Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to develop a fuel cell system combined with a high differential pressure water electrolysis system that will help support a "circulative renewable energy system" to supply space and lunar stations with electricity, oxygen and water.

At FC Expo held in Japan , March 16-18, 2022 , Honda will display a prototype FC Power Unit co-developed with General Motors, and a portable FC generator concept model.

Honda Commitment to the Environment

Honda is committed to addressing global environmental and energy issues by striving to realize carbon neutrality for all products and corporate activities by 2050. Honda proudly has the highest fleet average fuel economy and lowest CO 2 emissions of any full-line automaker in America, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) latest data. To reduce CO 2 emissions even further, Honda will strive to make battery-electric and fuel cell electric vehicles represent 100% of auto sales in the U.S. and globally by 2040.

Honda also is working to reduce the environmental impact of its business operations. To slash CO 2 emissions from its North American manufacturing operations, Honda has entered into long-term virtual power purchase agreements (VPPAs) for renewable wind and solar power seeking to cover more than 60% of the electricity that Honda uses in North America. This enables the company to fully offset the remaining carbon intensive grid-supplied electricity used in its Ohio, Indiana, and Alabama automobile manufacturing operations. Honda also promotes environmentally responsible business practices with its suppliers and retail dealer partners across North America.

Learn more at https://csr.honda.com/environment/na-environmental-report/.

SOURCE Honda
Love & Genetics focuses on the relationship that develops between Mark and his sister, Rachel, as they discover each other through letters, emails, and eventual face-to-face meetings. When Rachel's radical idea takes overcould she, a sister he never knew and still barely knows, one who lives on the other side of the country, possibly carry their child?both sides learn to trust and love more than they ever thought possible. Including original correspondence between Rachel, Mark, and their biological mother, Marilyn, Love & Genetics gives insight into this astounding personal tale of adoption, surrogacy, and the true meaning of family.

Love & Genetics gives insight into this astounding personal tale of adoption, surrogacy, and the true meaning of family.

Siblings Mark & Rachel received international coverage following their feature with the BBC on March 8, 2022 , with other features to come from major media outlets. They are both available for interviews.

Co-author Mark MacDonald lives in Beaverton, Oregon. He is an Adjunct Professor at Portland State University and a Principal Engineer at Intel Corporation and has authored more than forty scientific publications, for which he has received multiple awards, including the Martin Hirschorn Best Paper Prize from the International Acoustics Congress (2010).

Co-author Rachel Elliott grew up in the prairies of Alberta, Canada, yet somehow (miraculously) finds herself living outside of Raleigh, North Carolina, and became a US citizen in 2016. She works in mortgage lending and is a voracious reader.

Love & Genetics is set to be released on March 22, 2022 with Portland, Oregon's Unsolicited Press. Join them for a virtual launch party with Portland's Annie Bloom's Books at 5 pm PST: https://www.annieblooms.com/event/livestream-reading-mark-macdonald-and-rachel-elliott .

SOURCE Mark MacDonald and Rachel Elliott
ORLANDO, Fla., March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Artificial intelligence (AI) technology in healthcare requires secure patient data to reach its true potential. Healthcare providers have that data but have struggled to protect it. In 2021, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reported data breaches affecting more than 40 million people. The trend has continued with more than 3.7 million affected people in the first two months of 2022.

Today at the HIMSS Global Health Conference & Exhibition, HUB Security (TASE: HUB) announced a partnership with Enlitic to secure health data in AI-driven applications across healthcare so clinicians can make faster and more accurate diagnoses. HUB Security leverages a new security paradigm centered on confidential computing to provide a secure, isolated environment that protects the integrity and privacy of the AI models and data, making the insights safely available to all parties.

"Advancements in healthcare are being held back by the insecurity of data and, together with Enlitic, we can secure and operationalize that data to help healthcare providers improve patients' lives across the globe," said David Hochhauser, CRO at HUB Security. "The larger we can make the data pool, the more we can reduce the bias that comes with using limited pools of information and the better insights we can provide to enhance patient care."

Enlitic standardizes data sets that have been traditionally siloed and connects them across health systems, resulting in AI applications like medical imaging analysis and predictive analytics. Radiologists read cases 21% faster when augmented with Enlitic's innovative clinical intelligence models. Enlitic's expandable AI technology connects relevant clinical data through its real-world common data model platform Curie. Enlitic's state-of-the-art De-identification and anonymization AI Models protects PHI across all relevant clinical content. Combined with a secure confidential computing environment, secure real-world clinical recommendations will finally be possible.

HUB Security's confidential computing model creates a secure enclave for the data, producing a competitive advantage for healthcare providers looking to utilize AI technology. Through this partnership, HUB Security and Enlitic will analyze data from imaging systems and archives to assist in the medical decision-making process, creating the world's first real-time real-world clinical recommendations platform. HUB Security's platform adapts to changing healthcare needs by securely leveraging innovations and data across and within organizations, all while maintaining privacy and meeting regulatory requirements.

"Enlitic has dedicated itself to creating insights that help healthcare providers across all specialties collaborate with relevant clinical content that can be linked across disparate care systems. With HUB Security in our corner, we can tackle larger data sets and protect everything from the patients' data to clinicians accessing the AI models," said James Conyers, CEO at Enlitic.

About HUB Security

HUB Security was established in 2017 by veterans of the 8200 and 81 elite intelligence units of the Israeli Defense Forces. The company specializes in unique Cyber Security solutions protecting sensitive commercial and government information. The company debuted an advanced encrypted computing solution aimed at preventing hostile intrusions at the hardware level while introducing a novel set of data theft prevention solutions. HUB operates in over 30 countries and provides innovative cybersecurity computing appliances as well as a wide range of cybersecurity professional services worldwide.

About Enlitic

Enlitic is a pioneer in developing the next generation of intelligent healthcare tools. Founded in 2014, the company takes a different approach to solving today's healthcare challenges addressing them throughout the clinical workflow  not just at one point in the process. Using Enlitic's AI-powered workflow solutions, healthcare organizations can unlock the true value of their data in real-time, providing time-saving solutions that help change patient lives, while giving clinicians and radiologists more freedom to focus on what's important on the job and in their everyday lives. For more information, visit www.enlitic.com .

SOURCE Hub Security; Enlitic
Download a Free Sample to find out more about the report coverage.

The increasing residential and commercial construction activities will be crucial in driving the growth of the market. In addition, the cost advantages associated with renting HVAC equipment and the increase in demand for centralized HVAC systems will positively influence the growth of the global HVAC equipment market during the forecast period.

HVAC Equipment Market: Segment Highlights

By product, the market is segmented by ventilation equipment, heating equipment, and air conditioning equipment.

The ventilation equipment segment currently generates the largest revenue in the market.

The increase in pollution levels has been driving the growth of the ventilation equipment segment. The market growth in the segment will be significant during the forecast period.

Similarly, by end-users, the market is segmented into Non-residential and Residential. The market will have maximum share in the non-residential segment and the segment will continue to offer several growth opportunities.

Regional Analysis

53% of the market growth will originate from the APAC region.

The growth of the public sector and the increasing number of private enterprises in countries such as China and India is driving the growth of the HVAC equipment market in APAC.

and is driving the growth of the HVAC equipment market in APAC. Also, the expansion of production plants by food and beverage manufacturers will contribute to the growth of the regional market.

China and Japan are the key markets for HVAC equipment in APAC.

and are the key markets for HVAC equipment in APAC. The market growth in APAC will be faster than the growth of the market in other regions.

The US, Germany , and the UK will emerge as major markets for HVAC equipment during the forecast period.

Get more insights into the major revenue-generating segments and other factors impacting the growth of the global HVAC equipment market.

Ask for a Free Sample Report

Notes:

The HVAC equipment market size is expected to accelerate at a CAGR of 6.15% during the forecast period.

The HVAC equipment market is segmented product (ventilation equipment, heating equipment, and air conditioning equipment), end-user (non-residential and residential), and geography (APAC, Europe , North America , MEA, and South America ).

, , MEA, and ). The market is fragmented due to the presence of a substantial number of international and regional vendors of HVAC equipment. The vendors in the market are focusing on providing energy-efficient equipment and technologically advanced systems to meet customer demands.

The research report offers information on several market vendors, including Daikin Industries Ltd., Fujitsu Ltd., Haier Smart Home Co. Ltd., Ingersoll Rand Inc, Johnson Controls International Plc, LG Electronics Inc., MIDEA GROUP, Nortek Inc., Robert Bosch GmbH, and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.

Related Reports:

Global Residential HVAC Market 2021-2025: The global residential HVAC market is segmented by product (air conditioning system, heating system, and ventilation system) and geography (APAC, Europe, North America, MEA, and South America).

Download Exclusive Free Sample Report

Global Industrial HVAC Market 2021-2025: The global industrial HVAC market is segmented by end-user (process industry and discrete industry) and geography (APAC, Europe, North America, South America, and MEA).

Download Exclusive Free Sample Report

HVAC Equipment Market Scope Report Coverage Details Page number 120 Base year 2020 Forecast period 2021-2025 Growth momentum & CAGR Accelerate at a CAGR of 6.15% Market growth 2021-2025 USD 41.82 billion Market structure Fragmented YoY growth (%) 2.89 Regional analysis APAC, Europe, North America, MEA, and South America Performing market contribution APAC at 53% Key consumer countries China, US, Japan, Germany, and UK Competitive landscape Leading companies, competitive strategies, consumer engagement scope Companies profiled Daikin Industries Ltd., Fujitsu Ltd., Haier Smart Home Co. Ltd., Ingersoll Rand Inc, Johnson Controls International Plc, LG Electronics Inc., MIDEA GROUP, Nortek Inc., Robert Bosch GmbH, and Samsung Electronics 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:

Executive Summary

Market Landscape

Market ecosystem

Market characteristics

Value chain analysis

Market Sizing

Market definition

Market segment analysis

Market size 2020

Market outlook: Forecast for 2020 - 2025

Five Forces Analysis

Bargaining power of buyers

Bargaining power of suppliers

Threat of new entrants

Threat of substitutes

Threat of rivalry

Market condition

Market Segmentation by Product

Market segments

Comparison by Product

Air conditioning equipment - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

Heating equipment - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

Ventilation equipment - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

Market opportunity by Product

Market Segmentation by End-user

Market segments

Comparison by End-user

Non-residential - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

Residential - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

Market opportunity by End-user

Customer landscape

Geographic Landscape

Geographic segmentation

Geographic comparison

APAC - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

Europe - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

- Market size and forecast 2020-2025 North America - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

- Market size and forecast 2020-2025 MEA - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

South America - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

- Market size and forecast 2020-2025 Key leading countries

Market opportunity by geography

Market drivers

Market challenges

Market trends

Vendor Landscape

Overview

Vendor landscape

Landscape disruption

Vendor Analysis

Vendors covered

Market positioning of vendors

Daikin Industries Ltd.

Fujitsu Ltd.

Haier Smart Home Co. Ltd.

Ingersoll Rand Inc

Johnson Controls International Plc

LG Electronics Inc.

MIDEA GROUP

Nortek Inc.

Robert Bosch GmbH

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.

Appendix

Scope of the report

Currency conversion rates for US$

Research methodology

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 consists of more than 17,000 reports and counting, covering 800 technologies, spanning across 50 countries. Their client base consists of enterprises of all sizes, including more than 100 Fortune 500 companies. This growing client base relies on Technavio's comprehensive coverage, extensive research, and actionable market insights to identify opportunities in existing and potential markets and assess their competitive positions within changing market scenarios.

Contact

Technavio Research

Jesse Maida

Media & Marketing Executive

US: +1 844 364 1100

UK: +44 203 893 3200

Email: [email protected]

Website: www.technavio.com/

SOURCE Technavio
RANCHO CUCAMONGA, Calif., March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Inland Empire Health Plan (IEHP) is celebrating National Social Work Month by honoring their very first social worker Dennis Kaney, who served residents of the Inland Empire for 16 years before his passing earlier this month.

In speaking with Kaney earlier this year to learn more about his experience as an IEHP Team Member, he described his role as "doing what he loved most"providing individualized, quality care and support to the region's most vulnerable Members through his work as an IEHP Case Manager.

In January, Kaney met an IEHP Member who had sustained life-threatening injuries in a car accident, leaving the Member with paralysis in their limbs (known as a quadriplegia).

Kaney, who was wheelchair-bound himself, understood the need for multi-level support and wasted no time connecting the Member to resources to aid in the massive life transition. "I believe through my work at IEHP, I am able to do exactly what I am meant to do and use my personal experiences to help someone navigate their new beginning," Kaney said.

Through this connection, Kaney helped the Member discover new ways to manage daily life, including how to travel with a chair, how to write, talk, and how to best utilize available resources and tools.

This ultimately provided the Member with hope and a reminder that their life was in no way over.

"A heartfelt connection provides more care to the human spirit than we realize," said Jarrod McNaughton, IEHP's Chief Executive Officer. "As we honor Dennis and observe Social Work Month, we celebrate the spirit of all social workers who bring courage and empathy to a world that desperately needs their light and love."

About IEHP

With a mission to heal and inspire the human spirit, Inland Empire Health Plan (IEHP) is one of the top 10 largest Medicaid health plans and the largest not-for-profit Medicare-Medicaid plan in the country. In its 25th year, IEHP is supporting more than 1.5 million residents in Riverside and San Bernardino counties who are enrolled in Medicaid or Cal MediConnect Plans and has a growing network of over 7,500 providers and nearly 2,500 Team Members. Through dynamic partnerships with Providers and Community Organizations, paired with award-winning service and a tradition of quality care, IEHP is fully committed to their vision: We will not rest until our communities enjoy optimal care and vibrant health. For more information, visit iehp.org.

SOURCE Inland Empire Health Plan (IEHP)
SHANGHAI, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- IMPACT Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company dedicated to the discovery and development of targeted anti-cancer therapeutics based on synthetic lethality, announced the successful completion of its Series D1 financing. Institutional investors that participated in this round include new investors Dingxin Capital, CCBT, C&D EMERGING CAPITAL, Bestride, Exome Asset Management led by Sam Isaly, along with existing shareholders LAV (Lilly Asia Ventures), China Summit, and Yuexiu. Proceeds will be used to accelerate the development of its synthetic lethality programs, many of which are showing best-in-class potential.

IMPACT Therapeutics is a biopharmaceutical company dedicated to the discovery and development of targeted anti-cancer therapeutics based on synthetic lethality. In 2021, IMPACT achieved breakthroughs on multiple targets including PARP, Wee1, and ATR, becoming one of the biotech companies with the widest DDR pipelines in the world and is expanding to other novel synthetic lethality targets to broaden its pipelines. Today, the company already has three synthetic lethality compounds in the clinical stage.

Dr. Jun Bao, President and CEO of IMPACT Therapeutics said: "We thank these excellent investment institutions for their support and trust in IMPACT. The successful closing gave us more confidence to implement our global development strategy and advance various clinical trials at full speed. We look forward to working with clinical investigators and other partners to bring more efficacious therapies to patients around the world."

About IMPACT Therapeutics

IMPACT Therapeutics is a biopharmaceutical company dedicated to the discovery and development of targeted anti-cancer therapeutics based on synthetic lethality. IMPACT Therapeutics has assembled one of the most comprehensive DNA damage response (DDR) global pipelines of novel drug candidates generated by in-house discovery efforts and is expanding to other novel synthetic lethality targets to broaden its pipeline. IMPACT pipeline products include PARP inhibitor (Senaparib/ IMP4297), Wee1 inhibitor (IMP7068), ATR inhibitor (IMP9064) and other novel DDR pathway inhibitors. The lead clinical program, PARP inhibitor (Senaparib/ IMP4297), is in Phase II/III studies for ovarian cancer, prostate cancer, small cell lung cancer and other indications worldwide, including China. Senaparib's preliminary clinical data demonstrated superior tolerability and wider therapeutic windows compared with other PARPi. Phase I study of Wee1 inhibitor (IMP7068) is conducted globally. ATR Inhibitor IMP9064 has received IND Clearance by the FDA to start clinical studies in the U.S. and submitted clinical application in China. Hedgehog pathway inhibitor (IMP5471) has received IND approval from NMPA to initiate clinical studies in China. For more information, please visit www.impacttherapeutics.com/en/.

Impact Therapeutics Contact Information

IR Team:

Impact Therapeutics

[email protected]

PR Team:

Impact Therapeutics

[email protected]

Goby Global LLC

Bob Ai

[email protected]

+ 1 646-389-6658

SOURCE Impact Therapeutics
NEW YORK, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- According to the latest market research study published by P&S Intelligence, the Indian prime power diesel genset market size is predicted to grow to $356.3 million by 2030 from an estimated $143.6 million in 2021, at a 10.6% CAGR. In the country, the highest number of generators are in commercial spaces, because offices, hotels, hospitals, shopping malls, metro and railway stations, and other such places need a constant power supply. Moreover, the growth in the number of telecom towers and data centers is propelling the installation of these systems in the commercial sector.

In this regard, a major driver for genset sales in the country is the vast gap between power demand and supply. With a population touching 1.4 billion, India is not always able to meet the demand for electricity. As a result, even cities witness substantial power cuts, while many people in rural areas still do not have a grid connection. Therefore, with the rapid urbanization and industrialization, the demand for prime power diesel gensets is rising in the country.

Get the sample pages of this report at: https://www.psmarketresearch.com/market-analysis/india-prime-power-dg-set-market/report-sample

Key Findings of India Prime Power Diesel Genset Market Report

Another key reason for the growth of the Indian prime power diesel genset market is the higher prices of petrol and erratic gas supply, which make diesel the preferred fuel for generators.

In the coming years, the sale of gensets that offer a power output of 575 kVA will rise the fastest in India as these variants are preferred for commercial spaces.

as these variants are preferred for commercial spaces. In this regard, the biggest driver for the market is infrastructure development, for which the government has allocated INR 13,750 crore in the 2021 Union Budget.

in the 2021 Union Budget. As a result, market players are launching newer variants and expanding their manufacturing capacities to meet the surging demand for prime and backup power via gensets.

However, as these systems release GHGs, the usage of gensets with two small engines instead of one large engine is picking pace. As per company claims, twin-power generators release 40% lesser CO 2 than conventional gensets.

than conventional gensets. Uttar Pradesh accounts for the highest Indian prime power diesel genset market sales volume on account of being the most-populated state in the country. Additionally, commercial infrastructure, including telecom networks, is being rapidly enhanced here, which is driving genset sales.

The COVID-19 pandemic put a severe dent in generator sales in the country as the nationwide lockdowns drove down the demand for electricity from 1,90,198 million units in 2019 to 12,75,534 million units in 2020, as per the Ministry of Power. This also brought down the demandsupply gap from 6,566 million units to 4,871 million units from 2019 to 2020. This was because of the shutdown of most manufacturing plants and commercial centers and suspension of metro, air travel, and train services.

Browse detailed report on India Prime Power Diesel Generator Set Market Size and Growth Forecast to 2030

Therefore, major Indian prime power diesel genset market players, including Kirloskar Oil Engines Limited, Mahindra Powerol Ltd., Ashok Leyland Limited, VE Commercial Vehicles Limited, Escorts Limited, Cummins India Ltd., Caterpillar Inc., Cooper Corporation Pvt. Ltd., Greaves Cotton Limited, Kohler Power India Ltd., and Tractors and Farm Equipment Limited, stepped up product launch and facility expansion activities in 2021, to make up for lost revenue.

India Prime Power Diesel Genset Market Segmentation Analysis

Based on Power Rating

5 kVA75 kVA

76 kVA375 kVA

376 kVA750 kVA

Above 750 kVA

Based on Application

Commercial

Industrial

Residential

State Analysis

Uttar Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Madhya Pradesh

Bihar

Karnataka

Gujarat

Tamil Nadu

Rajasthan

West Bengal

Jharkhand

Chhattisgarh

Browse More Related Reports

Global Diesel Generator Set Market

Diesel Generator Set Market in United States

Diesel Generator Set Market in India

Diesel Generator Set Market in Nigeria

Diesel Generator Set Market in Indonesia

About P&S Intelligence

P&S Intelligence is a provider of market research and consulting services catering to the market information needs of burgeoning industries across the world. Providing the plinth of market intelligence, P&S as an enterprising research and consulting company, believes in providing thorough landscape analyses on the ever-changing market scenario, to empower companies to make informed decisions and base their business strategies with astuteness.

Contact:

Prajneesh Kumar

P&S Intelligence

Phone: +1-347-960-6455

Email: [email protected]

Web: https://www.psmarketresearch.com

Follow Us: LinkedIn Twitter

SOURCE P&S Intelligence
REDDING, Calif., March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- According to a new market research report titled, "Industrial Automation Market by Component (Plant-level Controls, Enterprise-level Controls, Plant Instrumentation), Mode of Automation (Semi-automatic, Fully-automatic), and End User (Oil & Gas, Automotive, Food & Beverage, Chemicals & Materials) - Global Forecast to 2027", published by Meticulous Research, the industrial automation market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 9.3% from 2020 to 2027 to reach $306.2 billion by 2027.

Download Free Sample Report Now @ https://www.meticulousresearch.com/download-sample-report/cp_id=5172

Rising investments in the transformation of conventional manufacturing facilities by installing digitized systems are a major driving factor for the growth of the industrial automation market. Transforming conventional production facilities involves implementing automated systems for asset & workforce management and production processes. The shift towards self-reliant IoT sensors is expected to drive the growth of the industrial automation market over the forecast period as they can easily manage a network of physical objects with high efficiency. Several companies from the end-use industries are investing heavily in automation technologies to lower costs and enhance productivity. According to the International Federation of Robotics, the automotive industry had more than 100,000 robot installations in 2021, followed by the electronics industry with 88,000 new robots. These trends, coupled with the increasing awareness regarding Industry 4.0, are expected to support the growth of the industrial automation market.

Government Initiatives to Promote Industrial Development

Major robot-producing nations, including Japan, South Korea, and the U.S., have started increasing automation applications in manufacturing industries. According to the International Federation of Robotics, the Chinese government invested USD 577 million to develop intelligent systems. This intelligent system aimed to support the development of intelligent robots. In support of the new robot strategy, Japan had increased its R&D budget for 2019-2020 to USD 351 million, aiming to make the country a leading robotics innovation hub, globally. This strategy includes manufacturing and important services sector such as healthcare, agriculture, and infrastructure. According to the International Federation of Robotics, South Korea's robot-related budget for 2020 was USD 126 million. Under the Intelligent Robot Development and Supply Promotion Act, South Korea is publishing the robot industry in South Korea as a core industry. Similarly, in June 2020, Germany funded the "PAiCE" program with a budget of USD 55 million to develop digital industry platforms. This robotics-oriented program provides a platform for service robotics solutions in various fields to develop a digital industry platform and collaborate with companies using a digital industry platform.

A decade back, the National Robotics Initiative (NRI) was launched in the U.S. for robotics R&D. In Aug 2020, the U.S. announced to provide more than USD 1 billion to establish 12 new research and development hubs nationwide. Also, AI institutes, along with the University of Oklahoma, University of Texas, University of Colorado, University of Illinois, University of California, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, researched how technologies can be used in precision agriculture and weather forecasting, among others.

Speak to our Analysts to Understand the Impact of COVID-19 on Your Business: https://www.meticulousresearch.com/speak-to-analyst/cp_id=5172

Poland is a growing manufacturing power in Europe, as there is demand for new and innovative manufacturing technologies. To help the industries in Poland, the government launched its Industry 4.0 Platform in 2020 to spread knowledge related to Industry 4.0 processes and develop competence in the areas such as robotics and automation. The Polish government provides incentives for advanced manufacturing and industrial transformation. The Polish Government also provides grants to support industry research.

Industrial Automation Market Overview

Meticulous Research has segmented the overall industrial automation market on the basis of component (plant instrumentation [sensors, motors & drives, relays & switches, machine vision systems (cameras, optics and LED lighting), robots (articulated robots, cartesian robots, SCARA, collaborative robots, and other robots), and other plant instrumentation components], plant-level controls [PLC, SCADA, DCS, other plant-level controls], and enterprise-level controls [PLM, ERP, MES]), mode of automation (semi-automatic, fully-automatic), and end user (oil & gas [upstream, midstream, downstream], chemicals & materials, paper & pulp, pharmaceuticals & biotech, mining & metals, food & beverage [beverages & distilleries, dairy processing, bakery & confectionery, meat, poultry, and seafood products, fruits & vegetables, oil & fats, and other food & beverage end users], power, consumer goods, automotive, machines & tools, semiconductors & electronics, aerospace & defense, and other end users), and geography (North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East & Africa).

Based on component, the industrial automation market is segmented into enterprise-level controls, plant instrumentation, and plant-level controls. The enterprise-level controls segment commands the largest share of the overall industrial automation market. Enterprise resource planning (ERP) and product lifecycle management (PLM) are important enterprise-level control solutions that optimize support and maintenance across the entire supply chain. They also help enterprises enhance operating efficiency through data-driven decisions to achieve a competitive position in the market.

Quick Buy  Industrial Automation Market - Global Opportunity Analysis And Industry Forecast (2020-2027)

: https://www.meticulousresearch.com/Checkout/55561174

Based on automation mode, the industrial automation market is segmented into semi-automatic and fully-automatic systems. The semi-automatic segment commands the largest share of the industrial automation market. Semi-automatic systems involve both manual interventions as well as machine-aided assemblies. These systems are the broadest part of the assembly and require a human operator both at the start and the end of the process. Semi-automatic systems require help from a human operator in tasks such as manually loading and unloading the entire system. The growing demand for fully-automated facilities is attributed to the increasing adoption of robots and automation solutions in the manufacturing sector.

Based on end user, the industrial automation market is segmented into oil & gas, automotive, food & beverage, semiconductors & electronics, chemicals & materials, consumer goods, mining & metals, power, pharmaceuticals & biotech, machines & tools, paper & pulp, aerospace & defense, and other end users. The oil & gas segment commands the largest share of the overall industrial automation market. The increasing implementation of enterprise-level controls and plant-level controls has improved business models and boosted operational efficiency. Modernization of internal processes in oil exploration & production has enabled managers and employees to better access information related to operations & maintenance, streamline production & distribution, and improve productivity. Additionally, the oil & gas industry has experienced the need for low carbon-emitting business models and operations, which can be achieved by implementing automation solutions.

Geographically, Asia-Pacific commands the largest share of the global industrial automation market, followed by Europe and North America. The high share of this region is mainly attributed to high technical awareness regarding the usage of robotics in China, Japan, and Singapore. The Asian manufacturing sector has robust production capabilities, which further fuels the demand for industrial automation solutions in Asia-Pacific. APAC countries are investing heavily in developing robotics and automation products, boosting the market's growth at a high pace.

In Asia-Pacific, China is expected to account for the largest share of the industrial automation market. China is one of the largest manufacturers of various products, including automobiles and electronics, in the Asia-Pacific region. In recent years, China has been automating across industries at a staggering rate. The push for automation is part of China's goal to become an innovation hub. Due to favorable government policies in robotic manufacturing, China is on track to be a leader in industrial automation. Compared to Japan, South Korea, and Germany, with robot density in the manufacturing industry that varies between 270 and 400 robots per 10,000 employees, China's robot density is very low, with ~20 robots. This indicates the potential for domestic penetration, which is expected to increase the production of robots.

Some of the key players operating in the global industrial automation market are ABB Group (Switzerland), Rockwell Automation, Inc. (U.S.), Siemens AG (Germany), Yaskawa Electric Corporation (Japan), Schneider Electric SE (France), Yokogawa Electric Corporation (Japan), KUKA AG (Germany), Emerson Electric Co. (U.S.), Fanuc (Japan), Honeywell International Inc. (U.S.), Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (Japan), OMRON Corporation (Japan), Advantech Co., Ltd. (Taiwan), and Fuji Electric Co., Ltd. (Japan) among others.

Browse in-depth TOC on " Industrial Automation Market - Global Opportunity Analysis And Industry Forecast (2020-2027)"

173  Tables

47  Figures

214  Pages

click here: https://www.meticulousresearch.com/product/industrial-automation-market-5172

Scope of the Report

Industrial Automation Market, by Component

Enterprise-level Controls

Product Lifecycle Management (PLM)



Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)



Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES)

Plant Instrumentation

Motors & Drives



Robots



Articulated Robots





Cartesian Robots





Selective Compliance Assembly Robot Arms (SCARA)





Collaborative Robots





Other Robots



Sensors



Machine Vision Systems



Cameras





Optics and LED Lighting



Relays & Switches



Other Plant Instrumentation Components

Plant-level Controls

Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA)



Distributed Control Systems (DCS)



Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC)



Other Plant-level Controls

Industrial Automation Market, by Mode of Automation

Semi-automatic

Fully-automatic

Industrial Automation Market, by End User

Oil & Gas

Upstream



Midstream



Downstream

Chemicals & Materials

Paper & Pulp

Pharmaceuticals & Biotech

Mining & Metals

Food & Beverage

Beverages & Distilleries



Dairy Processing



Bakery & Confectionary



Meat, Poultry, and Seafood Products



Fruits & Vegetables



Oil & Fats



Other F&B End Users

Power

Consumer Goods

Automotive

Machines & Tools

Semiconductors & Electronics

Aerospace & Defense

Other End Users

Industrial Automation Market, by Geography

North America

U.S.



Canada

Europe

U.K.



Germany



France



Italy



Spain



Netherlands



Sweden



Rest of Europe

Asia-Pacific (APAC)

(APAC) China



India



Japan



South Korea



Singapore



Rest of APAC

Latin America

Brazil



Mexico



Rest of Latin America

Middle East & Africa (MEA)

& (MEA) UAE



Saudi Arabia



South Africa



Rest of the Middle East & Africa

Download Free Sample Report Now @ https://www.meticulousresearch.com/download-sample-report/cp_id=5172

Amidst this crisis, Meticulous Research is continuously assessing the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on various sub-markets and enables global organizations to strategize for the post-COVID-19 world and sustain their growth. Let us know if you would like to assess the impact of COVID-19 on any industry here- https://www.meticulousresearch.com/custom-research

Related Reports

Southeast Asia Industrial Automation and Process Control Market by Product Type (DCS, PLC, SCADA, PLM), Industry Vertical (Textile, Oil & Gas, Food & Beverage, Life Sciences, Automotive, Packaging)  Industry Forecast to 2025

https://www.meticulousresearch.com/product/southeast-asia-industrial-automation-process-control-market-5073

Food Automation Market by Component (Plant-level Controls, Enterprise-level Controls), Mode of Automation (Semi-automatic, Fully-automatic), Application (Packaging & Repacking, Butchery), and End Use (Beverages & Distilleries)  Global Forecast to 2027

https://www.meticulousresearch.com/product/food-automation-market-4956

Food Robotics Market by Type (Articulated Robots [SCARA, Six-axis Robots], Delta & Parallel Robots, Collaborative Robots, Cartesian Robots, Cylindrical Robots, Portal Robots), Payload, Application, End Use, and Geography - Global Forecast to 2028

https://www.meticulousresearch.com/product/food-robotics-market-4957

Collaborative Robots Market by Component (Hardware and Software), Payload (Less than 5Kg, 5 to 10 Kg), Application (Material Handling, Assembly Line), End user (Automotive, Electronics, Metal & Machinery), and Geography  Global Forecast to 2027

https://www.meticulousresearch.com/product/collaborative-robots-market-5014

Industrial IoT (IIoT) Market by Component, Application (Robotics, Maintenance, Monitoring, Resource Optimization, Supply Chain, Management), Industry (Aerospace, Automotive, Energy, Healthcare, Manufacturing, Retail), and Geography  Global Forecast to 2027

https://www.meticulousresearch.com/product/industrial-iot-market-5102

About Meticulous Research

Meticulous Research was founded in 2010 and incorporated as Meticulous Market Research Pvt. Ltd. in 2013 as a private limited company under the Companies Act, 1956. Since its incorporation, the company has become the leading provider of premium market intelligence in North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East & Africa.

The name of our company defines our services, strengths, and values. Since the inception, we have only thrived to research, analyze, and present the critical market data with great attention to details. With the meticulous primary and secondary research techniques, we have built strong capabilities in data collection, interpretation, and analysis of data including qualitative and quantitative research with the finest team of analysts. We design our meticulously analyzed intelligent and value-driven syndicate market research reports, custom studies, quick turnaround research, and consulting solutions to address business challenges of sustainable growth.

Contact:

Mr. Khushal Bombe

Meticulous Market Research Inc.

1267 Willis St, Ste 200 Redding,

California, 96001, U.S.

USA: +1-646-781-8004

Europe : +44-203-868-8738

APAC: +91 744-7780008

Email- [email protected]

Visit Our Website: https://www.meticulousresearch.com/

Connect with us on LinkedIn- https://www.linkedin.com/company/meticulous-research

MeticulousBolg: https://meticulousblog.org/top-10-compnies-in-industrial-automation-market/

Content Source: https://www.meticulousresearch.com/pressrelease/389/industrial-automation-market-2027

SOURCE Meticulous Market Research Pvt. Ltd
PITTSBURGH, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- "Consistency is key in improving marksmanship," said an inventor, from Westport, Ind. "I thought there could be a simple firearm accessory to help, so I invented the PERFECT TRIGGER PULL. My design would provide consistent placement of the trigger finger for each firing."

The patent-granted invention ensures that the trigger finger is in the same position on a firearm's trigger. In doing so, it increases consistency and accuracy. It also can be adapted for both right and left hand use on most handguns, rifles, shotguns, muzzle loaders, cross bow, paintball guns and laser tag guns, video game and virtual reality guns, in almost anything with a trigger guard and trigger, and it would not affect the overall weight and balance of the weapon. The invention features a simple and small design that is easy to install and use so it is ideal for the owners of firearms.

The original design was submitted to the National sales office of InventHelp. It is currently available for licensing or sale to manufacturers or marketers. For more information, write Dept. 20-SGM-112, InventHelp, 217 Ninth Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15222, or call (412) 288-1300 ext. 1368. Learn more about InventHelp's Invention Submission Services at http://www.InventHelp.com.

SOURCE InventHelp
Ms. Sklar joins the firm from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, where she served as Senior Policy Advisor and Director of International Engagement in the Financial Markets Group for the past two years. She was previously a senior regulator at the CFTC under both the Trump and Obama administrations, including as the Senior Counsel to a Chairman, a Senior Counsel to a Commissioner, Associate Director in the Office of International Affairs, Senior Counsel to LabCFTC, and Special Counsel in the Division of Market Oversight. Ms. Sklar represented the CFTC at the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC), and for international engagements and standard setting bodies, such as the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO). Before her public service, she was a complex civil litigator and government enforcement attorney at global law firms.

"We're thrilled to have Maggie join our Chicago office and our firm," said Harris Kay, Managing Partner of the Chicago office of McGonigle. "She is an extremely talented lawyer and a well-known financial markets policy expert who will bring a wealth of knowledge and extensive regulatory, legal, and policy experience to our financial services clients. She is uniquely positioned to help our current and future clients navigate financial regulatory matters, including in emerging issues and our market-leading practices in spaces like blockchain, digital assets, fintech, and commodities and derivatives."

"I am excited to join McGonigle's Chicago office, and be a part of a growing financial services firm," said Ms. Sklar. "The firm's leadership in the financial services industry and commitment to diversity and inclusion is well-recognized. And its focus on fintech, digital assets, and blockchain shows how committed they are to the future of digital financial markets."

Ms.Sklar brings the number of former CFTC alumnus at McGonigle to three. The CFTC is the primary regulator and supervisory agency over futures, swaps, derivatives exchanges and clearinghouses, swap execution facilities, and related regulated entities, including futures commission merchants, swap dealers, and introducing brokers.

"We are delighted to welcome Maggie to McGonigle," said Stephen Gannon, member of the firm's Banking & Financial Services practice and former Senior Legal Executive at Citizens Financial Bank. "Her experience from the Federal Reserve adds further depth to our practice."

Ms.Sklar received both her J.D. and B.A., cum laude, from Georgetown University. She is licensed to practice law in the District of Columbia. Her Illinois bar application is pending, and she will practice in Illinois under the supervision of an Illinois licensed attorney.

About McGonigle

McGonigle serves the regulatory counseling, enforcement defense and high-stakes litigation needs of clients across the full spectrum of the financial services industry  from investment banks and commercial banks, broker-dealers, investment advisers, and hedge funds, to national and international securities markets and exchanges as well as digital asset trading platforms and Fintech innovators. Many of the firm's partners formerly served in senior positions at the U.S. Department of Justice, SEC, FINRA, and the CFTC, and several served in senior executive positions in major financial institutions on Wall Street.

The firm was recognized as "Law Firm of the Year" for Securities Regulation in 2021 and 2022 by U.S. News  Best Lawyers. McGonigle operates in New York, Washington, DC, Virginia, Chicago and San Francisco.

Media Contact: Chris Misciagna

[email protected]

(212) 880-3987

SOURCE McGonigle, P.C.
Great Place to Work is a Global Benchmark for Identifying Outstanding Employee Experiences

BOCA RATON, Fla., March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Mediavine, the largest exclusive full-service ad management firm in the U.S., is proud to be a Great Place to Work-Certified company for the second year in a row. Great Place to Work Certification is recognized worldwide by employees and employers alike.

Mediavine

The Great Place to Work Trust Index Survey reports that 98% of employees at Mediavine say it is a great place to work compared to 57% of employees at a typical U.S.-based company. Additionally, 99% say people are treated fairly regardless of their race and 100% say people are treated fairly regardless of their sexual orientation.

"Joining Mediavine as an existing Great Place to Work provided a great foundation for continuing to build something good into something great," said Yolanda Evans, Mediavine VP of People Experiences & Diversity. "In the last year, we've pushed the envelope even further in terms of diversity, inclusion, equity and belonging, recognizing the importance of intentional work in all of those areas. We hold ourselves accountable for actioning necessary change and investing in things that benefit our employees, not just the company. The experience people have here at Mediavine reflects the unique collection of who we all are and what we all bring to work with us each day. Being a Great Place to Work starts with great people and great people deserve a great experience."

"The future of work is equally dependent on the employee and the customer," said Eric Hochberger, Mediavine Co-Founder and CEO. "We're focusing on providing the best experience for our employees because they deliver the best experience for our publishers. You can't have one without the other."

Mediavine is committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace for all, taking impactful and measurable strides to do so. Ensuring equitable pay across the organization, improving transparency around career growth opportunities, intentionally diversifying recruitment outreach and launching its first formal employee resource group (ERG), PRISM, the company is affirming its actions are louder than its words.

"Great Place to Work Certification isn't something that comes easily," says Sarah Lewis-Kulin, VP of Global Recognition at Great Place to Work. "It takes ongoing dedication to the employee experience."

About Great Place to Work Certification

Great Place to Work Certification is the most definitive "employer-of-choice" recognition that companies aspire to achieve. It is the only recognition based entirely on what employees report about their workplace experience  specifically, how consistently they experience a high-trust workplace. Great Place to Work Certification is recognized worldwide by employees and employers alike and is the global benchmark for identifying and recognizing outstanding employee experience. Every year, more than 10,000 companies across 60 countries apply to get Great Place to Work-Certified.

About Mediavine

Mediavine is the largest exclusive full-service ad management company in the United States, representing and monetizing nearly 9,000 publisher partner websites in addition to its owned and operated properties. Mediavine proudly ranks as a Comscore top two lifestyle property with 150+ million unique monthly visitors and 17 billion monthly ad impressions. Mediavine is a Google Certified Publishing Partner, Great Place to Work , Inc. 2021 Best Workplace , 2021 Diversity Team , Fortune 2021 Best Small Workplace , 2021 Inc. 5000 and Ad Age 2022 Best Place to Work .

To learn more about Mediavine, visit www.mediavine.com or follow us on Twitter , Facebook , LinkedIn and Instagram .

Contact:

Alysha Duff

Media Relations Specialist

[email protected]

(954)-800-5205 ext. 013

SOURCE Mediavine
UNMC scientists and clinicians are at the leading edge of medical discovery and breakthroughs, transforming lives across the state and around the world. Their state-of-the-art facilities enable UNMC graduate and medical students, residents, fellows, and faculty to study and work in a technologically enhanced academic research environment. The Omaha campus is home to more than 740,000 square feet of dedicated research space and offers dozens of shared technologies and services.

MEGIN's TRIUX neo is a highly sensitive technology that can accurately detect and localize neural events that are generated in the brain with exquisite resolution. The TRIUX neo offers the most precise functional information currently available on the market for functional brain imaging in children, adolescents and adults.

UNMC/Nebraska Medicine started using MEG in 2009 and was one of the first institutions to use the device in the United States. UNCM's MEG Laboratory plans to use MEGIN's non-invasive MEG technology for both clinical services and research initiatives.

"Using this new technology, we expect to provide state-of-the art MEG diagnostic services to patients with the most difficult cases of epilepsy, for years to come, in collaboration with all major epilepsy center in the region. Patients, including young children, will receive the most accurate available presurgical anatomical brain mapping of the language, motor, sensory, visual and auditory functions, which is critical for effective surgical planning," explains Dr. Valentina Gumenyuk, Assistant Professor, Department of Neurological Sciences at UNMC.

UNMC researchers lead by Dr. Olga Taraschenko, Director of the Comprehensive Epilepsy Center, will use MEG to identify patterns of functional brain connectivity in patients with severe epilepsy, including those referred for surgery, to determine how their seizures may affect brain connections and cognition.

The MEG will also be deployed in clinical and translational research studies to diagnose brain tumors, in collaboration with UNMC's Buffet Cancer Center and UNMC Department of Neurosurgery lead by Dr. Aviva Abosch, renowned functional neurosurgeon. Another innovative effort will use MEG to identify early biomarkers for specific types of dementia such as Alzheimer's Disease, Lewy Body Disease, and Frontotemporal Dementia, to increase opportunities for early treatment, and to study sleep related abnormalities in these patients.

"The new MEG device is another arrow in our marvelous quiver of technologies and tools to help advance discovery of brain mechanisms as targets for new treatments and cures for the patients, families and communities we serve," says Dr. Matthew Rizzo, Chair of the Department of Neurological Sciences at UNMC.

About MEGIN

MEGIN is a neuroscience technology company based in Helsinki, Finland. The company is focused on developing innovative solutions for functional brain mapping for the presurgical evaluation of epilepsy, brain tumors or other lesions of the brain. For over 30 years, MEGIN has been the global leader in magnetoencephalography (MEG) technology. The TRIUX neo provides a non-invasive, real-time view of patient-specific neural activity with millimeter accuracy and millisecond resolution, providing the most precise information currently available on the market.

Copyright 2022  MEGIN  TRIUX neo is available for sale in the European Union, UK, Japan, Canada, the United States, as well as certain other countries. In other geographical areas, contact your local MEGIN representative. TRIUX neo is approved for use to non-invasively localize regions of epileptic activity within the brain and, in conjunction with other diagnostic data, in neurosurgical planning. All other applications are research in nature.

Website

https://megin.fi

SOURCE MEGIN
WASHINGTON, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- NASA will hold a virtual media briefing at noon EDT Wednesday, March 16, to provide an update on the James Webb Space Telescope's mirror alignment. The briefing will air live on NASA TV, the NASA app, and the agency's website .

Participants will share progress made in aligning Webb's mirrors, resulting in a fully focused image of a single star. NASA will make imagery demonstrating the completion of this milestone available on the agency's website at 11:30 a.m., prior to the briefing.

Briefing participants include:

Thomas Zurbuchen , associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters in Washington

, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters in Lee Feinberg , Webb optical telescope element manager, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland

, Webb optical telescope element manager, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Marshall Perrin , Webb deputy telescope scientist, Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore

, Webb deputy telescope scientist, Space Telescope Science Institute in Jane Rigby , Webb operations project scientist, Goddard

, Webb operations project scientist, Goddard Erin Wolf , Webb program manager, Ball Aerospace in Broomfield, Colorado

To ask questions during the briefing, media must RSVP no later than two hours before the start of the event to Laura Betz at: [email protected]. Media and members of the public may also ask questions on social media using #UnfoldtheUniverse.

NASA's media accreditation policy is available online.

In recent weeks, the Webb team successfully captured starlight through each of Webb's 18 mirror segments. The team then refined and stacked those 18 individual dots of light on top of one another to form an initial alignment image of a single star. Since then, in stages of alignment called "coarse phasing" and "fine phasing," engineers have made smaller adjustments to the positions of Webb's 18 primary mirror segments so they act as a single mirror, producing a sharp and focused image of a single star.

Webb, an international partnership with ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency, launched Dec. 25 from Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. After unfolding into its final form in space and successfully reaching its destination 1 million miles from Earth, the observatory is now in the process of preparing for science operations. The Webb team will release the telescope's first science images and data this summer after completing telescope alignment and preparing the instruments.

Webb will explore every phase of cosmic history  from within our solar system to the most distant observable galaxies in the early universe, and everything in between. Webb will reveal new and unexpected discoveries and help humanity understand the origins of the universe and our place in it.

NASA has a digital media kit, as well as image and video galleries, available online. The public also can follow Webb's progress via a "Where is Webb?" interactive tracker.

For more information about the Webb mission, visit:

https://webb.nasa.gov

SOURCE NASA
WASHINGTON, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ --

Who: NPC Newsmaker with Ukrainian Archbishop Borys Gudziak and Ukraine Ambassador Oksana Markarova

What: Ukrainian Ambassador to the United States Oksana Markarova and Archbishop Borys Gudziak of the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia will appear at an in-person Newsmaker event on Tuesday, March 15 at 10:30 a.m. in the National Press Club's ballroom. They will discuss the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Ukraine as the Russian invasion continues. The Ambassador and the Archbishop will discuss their offices' activities and how the American public can assist the Ukrainians who are defending their land.

When: Tuesday, March 15, 2022 at 10:30am.

Where: National Press Club, Ballroom, 529 14th Street NW 13th Floor, Washington, DC, 20045

Details: This event is open to National Press Club members and credentialed press only. Those attending must RSVP through the National Press Club's website. Proof of vaccination is required upon entering the National Press Club.

The Newsmaker event will be livestreamed at www.press.org. Questions can be submitted to [email protected] with the subject line UKRAINE.

Speakers:

Ambassador Oksana Markarova was appointed Ukraine's Ambassador to the United States in April 2021. She previously served in Ukraine's Ministry of Finance from 2015-2020 as First Deputy Minister and Government commissioner on investments; and then since 2018 as a Minister of Finance.

Archbishop Borys Gudziak is Archbishop of Philadelphia for the Ukrainian Catholics in the United States of America. He has served as Head of the Department of External Church Relations of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church since 2014. He also serves as a President and Chair of the Board of Directors of the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, Ukraine, and as Metropolitan, effectively the head of the provinces of the Ukrainian Catholic Church in the United States.

About the National Press Club:

Founded in 1908, the National Press Club is the world's leading professional organization for journalists. The Club has 3,000 members representing nearly every major journalism organization and is a leading voice for press freedom in the United States and around the world.

Contact: Kaitlyn Cotter, National Press Club, [email protected], 202-662, 7500

SOURCE National Press Club
GREENACRES, Fla., March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- National Tax Group, a leading engineering tax firm, announced the hiring of Priti Patel in their business development department.

Priti brings over 30 years of hospitality experience with a background that includes ownership, development, financing, operations, sales and marketing, design and planning, and renovations.

Priti was the first elected female Director at Large with the Asian American Hotel Owners Association (AAHOA) commencing in 1997 while serving two terms.Her accolades and accomplishments continued throughout the years that showcased as Outstanding Women Hotelier of the Year Award for AAHOA 2013, Top Sales Award with Carlson and Wyndham Hotel Groups, a Trip Advisor Excellence Award. Member of Georgia Hotel & Lodging Association, North Georgia and SoCal Ambassador with AAHOA, and Cobb Executive Women to name a few.

About National Tax Group

National Tax Group offers an array of tax solutions associated with 179D, 45L, Cost Segregation, Employee Retention Credit, and Research & Development. With a combined 20 years of experience helping clients navigate complex tax incentive programs, our engineers and tax experts have helped thousands of businesses maximize the full potential of their available tax credits.

Contact Information:

Grace Dolen

Director of Operations

[email protected]

SOURCE National Tax Group
Expo West drew retailers from stores such as Albertson's, Kroger, Aldi, 7-Eleven, Sprouts, Whole Foods Market, GNC, Costco, Cambridge Naturals, PCC Markets, Earth Fare, Natural Grocers, Healthy Edge, Medly, Jimbo's Naturally, Natural Grocers, Fresh Thyme and more who sought out the hottest new products coming soon to store shelves.

"Expo West is a good place to understand what's coming up next and find emerging brands that are just starting out. 7-Eleven has been trying hard to branch out in organic and specialty, to bring in some new brands and find items that our customers wouldn't be expecting. Expo West is a great place for that, it makes me feel energized and invigorated to be here and ignite ideas," said Adam Franks, Director of Emerging Brands, 7-Eleven.

Known as the best venue to spot innovations, the exhibit halls were filled with companies that are shaping the future of food and wellness, including 625 up-and-coming brands making their event debut. According to New Hope Network's Nutrition Business Journal, the natural and organic industry grew 7.7% to $274 billion in 2021 and is forecast to surpass $300 billion in sales by 2024 and $400 billion by 2030, driven by the lasting ways the pandemic changed consumer behaviors and the new customers who entered natural and organic.

"This is our first time at Expo West, so it was a big eye-opener and really exciting to be surrounded by this group of people. As a new brand that's just launched, it makes you feel a little more welcome and supported by the natural foods community. Meeting buyers and distributors was great, and I also found some excellent suppliers and co-packers," said Cindy Convery, Founder, Pure Wild Co.

A team of New Hope Network content experts and trend forecasters tracked the top natural product trends at Expo West, including "hot now" ingredients as well as complex ideas challenging the CPG industry. The team's 2022 natural products industry trend predictions reveal a shift from merely surviving today's problems to creating solutions for a brighter future. For additional details and examples of companies at the forefront, read more online. "Consumer behaviors are changing, and with that comes the opportunity for the natural products industry not just to meet consumers where they are, but also to predict where they're heading," said Jessica Rubino, Executive Director, Content at Informa Markets' New Hope Network.

A gallery featuring winners of the prestigious NEXTY Awards, representing what tomorrow's healthy living landscape will look like, can be viewed online. The winner of the Pitch Slam was Tanka Bars, part of Native American Natural Foods. The Rising Star award went to Navy veteran Thereasa Black, founder of Bon AppeSweet. New for 2022, the New Hope Community Purpose & Impact Awards celebrated individuals and organizations that help cultivate a prosperous high-integrity CPR and retail ecosystem that creates health, joy and justice for all people while regenerating the planet. Winners can be found online.

Event attendees participated in four full days of education sessions including the keynote Raising the Standard: Clean, Healthy Nutrition for All Kids, featuring a discussion with actress and Once Upon a Farm Co-Founder Jennifer Garner; the keynote The Joy of Plant-Based Eating with influencer Tabitha Brown; and the keynote The Color of Food: Navigating Cultural Appropriation, Ownership and Heritage in the Food Industry. Additional highlights included the information-packed The State of the Natural & Organic Industry session that examined what's next in product innovation that will drive positive change within the natural and organic products industry.

"Gathering the community again for Expo West is an important milestone as we move forward to shape the future of health and wellness together. Being in the same space allows for the important conversations and meaningful connections that are catalysts for increasing inclusivity and igniting the joy and passion that has fueled this industry into what it is today," said Carlotta Mast, Senior Vice President and Market Leader at Informa Markets' New Hope Network.

New Hope Network, in partnership with (included), a membership collective for BIPOC executives in the CPG space, hosted a J.E.D.I. (Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion) Community Happy Hour to help breakdown some of the barriers in place for under-represented groups in the industry.

"The turnout we've seen this week is a strong indication that the industry prioritizes face-to-face connection and product discovery and recognizes in-person events as the most effective means of conducting business. The energy at this show was palpable and we are really excited to be back in Anaheim with our incredible clients, community and vendor partners," said Lacey Gautier, Vice President of Events, Informa Markets' New Hope Network.

Expo West, the largest B2B trade show to take place in the U.S. in over two years, was pleased to return to the vibrant city that has hosted the event since its first occurrence. This year's expo brought nearly 45,000 room nights to local hotels and supported more that 23,000 local jobs. In total, Expo West brought an estimated economic impact of $145 million and an estimated $2.3 million in tourism occupancy tax (TOT) revenue for the city.

"With the return of Natural Products Expo West, we can truly say Anaheim is back," Mayor Harry Sidhu said. "After a difficult two years for all of us, this shows the resilience of our city and the natural products community. We once again were able to gather safely and celebrate natural, organic and healthy living. The return of Natural Products means so much, helping Anaheim support more than 346,000 residents, 20,000 businesses and 25 million visitors."

In addition to best-in-class health and safety protocols, New Hope Network increased the event's sustainability commitment with enhanced efforts around waste diversion, including donations of 171,000 pounds of leftover food to Second Harvest as well as materials to Habitat for Humanity. Event organizers also stepped-up efforts to increase renewable energy sources, carbon offsetting and mindful procurement.

In response to the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine, Natural Products Expo West and their parent company Informa, have donated $100,000 to World Central Kitchen, and are welcoming event attendees to get involved by visiting their fundraiser page. These donations will provide vital nutrition, hope and support for refugees fleeing the Ukraine conflict, as well as those in food poverty in other places.

Industry members who participated virtually accessed livestreamed content throughout the week via the Natural Products Expo Virtual Community platform. These sessions will be archived for viewing following the in-person show alongside prior virtual programming, including a keynote with actress and Goodles Co-Founder Gal Gadot, as well as future sessions to be added throughout the year. Virtual Booths are open throughout March for product discovery and meeting requests.

Natural Products Expo West is produced by Informa Markets' New Hope Network and is co-located with Fresh Ideas Organic Marketplace. Natural Products Expo East 2022 will be held September 28-October 1 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia. Natural Products Expo West 2023 will take place March 7-11 at the Anaheim Convention Center.

Follow @NatProdExpo on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter! Visit @Natural Products Expo on LinkedIn to join in on ongoing conversations. Natural Products Expo is a business-to-business trade show and is not open to the public.

About New Hope Network

New Hope Network is at the forefront of the healthy lifestyle products industry. With solutions for the complete supply chain from manufacturers, retailers/distributors, service providers and ingredient suppliers, the network offers a robust portfolio of content, events, data, research and consultative services. Through all its actions, New Hope Network aims to cultivate a prosperous high-integrity CPG and retail ecosystem that creates health, joy and justice for all people and regenerates the planet. For more information visit www.newhope.com.

About Informa Markets

Informa Markets creates platforms for industries and specialist markets to trade, innovate and grow. We provide marketplace participants around the globe with opportunities to engage, experience and do business through face-to-face exhibitions, targeted digital services and actionable data solutions. We connect buyers and sellers across more than a dozen global verticals, including Pharmaceuticals, Food, Medical Technology and Infrastructure. As the world's leading market-making company, we bring a diverse range of specialist markets to life, unlocking opportunities and helping them to thrive 365 days of the year. For more information, please visit www.informamarkets.com

SOURCE New Hope Network
PLYMOUTH MEETING, Pa., March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Research in the March 2022 issue of JNCCNJournal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network examined data from the Ontario Cancer Registry from September 25, 2016 through September 26, 2020, to determine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the number of new cancer cases detected. They found 358,487 adult patients had a new cancer diagnosed during that time period. The week-to-week rate of diagnosis was steady before the pandemic, but dropped 34.3% in March of 2020. After that, there was a trend of 1% increase in new diagnoses every week for the rest of the study period.

"Our data demonstrates that many cancers have gone undetected due to the disruptions in the healthcare system in response to the COVID-19 pandemic," explained Antoine Eskander, MD, ScM, ICES, Toronto, Ontario. "This is concerning because a delay in diagnosis for cancer is associated with a lower chance of cure. Healthcare providers should encourage patients to catch up on their cancer screening if any have been missed during the pandemic, and should use a low threshold to investigate patients with any unusual symptoms that may be related to an undiagnosed cancer."

The drop in new diagnoses was found in both screening cancersthose that have formal screening programs such as cervical cancer, breast cancer and colorectal cancer (and sometimes lung cancer)and non-screening cancers. The researchers estimate approximately 12,600 cancers went undetected between March 15 and September 26, 2020. The largest decreases in diagnoses were found in melanoma, cervical, endocrine, and prostate cancers.

"The pandemic has caused dramatic changes in the health care system, including a worrisome decline in cancer screening," commented Harold Burstein, MD, PhD, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, who was not involved with this research. "This study is a well done report from Ontario, Canada, where province-wide records are available, and it shows a huge decline in screening for colorectal (colonoscopy), cervical (Pap smear), and breast cancer (mammogram) in the early months of the pandemic. Similar findings have been reported at major health centers across North America, Europe, and other countries with widespread screening programs."

Dr. Bursteina member of the NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology (NCCN Guidelines) Panel for Breast Cancercontinued: "Despite the pandemic, it is critical that people continue to get recommended cancer screenings. With the COVID precautions that clinics have put in place, it is very safe for people to see their medical team for routine mammograms, pap smears, and other important testing. Fortunately, here in Boston and many other centers, our numbers of screening mammograms are recovering rapidly after the lull in 2020, and we are doing all we can to remind people of the importance of regular screening."

NCCN has also teamed up with cancer groups across the country to share information about the importance and safety of cancer screening. Learn more about how "Cancer Won't Wait and Neither Should You" at NCCN.org/resume-screening.

To read the entire study, visit JNCCN.org. Complimentary access to "Incident Cancer Detection During the COVID-19 Pandemic" is available until June 10, 2022.

About JNCCNJournal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network

More than 25,000 oncologists and other cancer care professionals across the United States read JNCCNJournal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network. This peer-reviewed, indexed medical journal provides the latest information about innovation in translational medicine, and scientific studies related to oncology health services research, including quality care and value, bioethics, comparative and cost effectiveness, public policy, and interventional research on supportive care and survivorship. JNCCN features updates on the NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology (NCCN Guidelines), review articles elaborating on guidelines recommendations, health services research, and case reports highlighting molecular insights in patient care. JNCCN is published by Harborside. Visit JNCCN.org. To inquire if you are eligible for a FREE subscription to JNCCN, visit NCCN.org/jnccn/subscribe. Follow JNCCN on Twitter @JNCCN.

About the National Comprehensive Cancer Network

The National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) is a not-for-profit alliance of leading cancer centers devoted to patient care, research, and education. NCCN is dedicated to improving and facilitating quality, effective, equitable, and accessible cancer care so all patients can live better lives. The NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology (NCCN Guidelines) provide transparent, evidence-based, expert consensus recommendations for cancer treatment, prevention, and supportive services; they are the recognized standard for clinical direction and policy in cancer management and the most thorough and frequently-updated clinical practice guidelines available in any area of medicine. The NCCN Guidelines for Patients provide expert cancer treatment information to inform and empower patients and caregivers, through support from the NCCN Foundation. NCCN also advances continuing education, global initiatives, policy, and research collaboration and publication in oncology. Visit NCCN.org for more information and follow NCCN on Facebook @NCCNorg, Instagram @NCCNorg, and Twitter @NCCN.

Media Contact:

Rachel Darwin

267-622-6624

[email protected]

SOURCE National Comprehensive Cancer Network
WASHINGTON, March 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Following is a statement from Jen Judson, President of the National Press Club, and Gil Klein, President of the National Press Club Journalism Institute on the killing of Brent Renaud,a journalist, former New York Times contributor, and Peabody award-winning filmmaker who was working in Ukraine outside of Kyiv.

"We mourn the news of the death of journalist Brent Renaud. His fatal shooting near Irpin, reportedly by Russian forces while trying to cross a checkpoint to cover fleeing Ukrainian civilians, is a tragic reminder of the costs and stakes for journalists covering war and attacks on civilians. That so many journalists -- local and foreign, freelancer and staffer are putting their health, lives and livelihoods on the line in order to cover the human costs of Russia's invasion of Ukraine is a reminder to the world of why a free and independent press is so important and worthy of protection and support. Under international humanitarian law, journalists are noncombatants. We call for an investigation into the killing of Brent Renaud as a possible war crime."

Founded in 1908, the National Press Club is the world's leading professional organization for journalists. The Club has 3,000 members representing nearly every major news organization and is a leading voice for press freedom in the United States and around the world.

The National Press Club Journalism Institute, the Club's non-profit affiliate, promotes an engaged global citizenry through an independent and free press and equips journalists with skills and standards to inform the public in ways that inspire civic engagement.

Contact: Rachel Oswald, NPC Press Freedom Team, [email protected] , 202-486-9173.

SOURCE National Press Club
"The morning after I arrived, I went to an urgent care and they quickly identified that something wasn't quite right and sent me to the emergency room," she says.

Reese went to Edward Hospital in Naperville, Ill., part of the NorthShore  Edward-Elmhurst Health system in suburban Chicago. It's also where she was born in 1997.

Reese was told she would stay in the hospital until she delivered the baby because her water broke. Her husband, Garrett, was granted emergency leave from the military, rescheduled his training and drove to Illinois with their dog, Blakely.

The couple's son, Nolan Reese, was born at 29 weeks. Once in the NICU with her newborn, Reese's circle got closer.

After she was born 24 years ago, Reese spent eight days in the Edward Hospital NICU. Her neonatologist at the time was Bob Covert, M.D., an independent neonatologist and medical director of the Edward Hospital NICU  the same doctor who was now taking care of Nolan.

"After hearing Lizzie's story, that she grew up here and was a NICU baby herself, I realized that I took care of her," Dr. Covert says. "I hope the connection made Lizzie feel that much more at home with us."

"Aside from the unique connection, we are also just immensely grateful for Dr. Covert because of his expertise and experience in this field," Reese says. "He is an excellent doctor, so responsive to our questions and very proactive in caring for Nolan. It was easy for us to quickly trust in his knowledge and discernment."

In January 2022, Nolan was stable enough to be transported via a medical team to Corpus Christi Medical Center. Kerry Sharar, Edward Hospital case manager, worked with the insurance company, transport team and both hospitals to coordinate the trip. Reese and Nolan flew back to Texas, while Garrett and Blakely drove home towing a freezer of breastmilk.

"From working in a visit from my dog when in antepartum, to Kerry working tirelessly to coordinate a medical transport back to Texas, to all his nurses, especially Inger Malone and Laura Flynn who spent so much time answering all my questions and providing nurture and love far beyond medical care, to all the doctors who work as such a well-designed team, Edward Hospital is unmatched," Lizzie says. "The NICU provided such peace for us as new parents and allowed us to just focus on the joy of our sweet baby. We are eternally grateful."

Get more information at EEHealth.org/services/pregnancy-baby/after-delivery/nicu.

SOURCE Edward-Elmhurst Health
Says Poverty alleviation and national unity priority for him.

DUBAI, UAE, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Rochas Okorocha, the Nigerian senator and founder of the Rochas Okorocha Foundation officially announced in a January World press conference that he was running for the office of the President of Nigeria in 2023. He made a call to his party, All Progressive Congress, the ruling party of the country, to be equitable in the primaries.

Senator Rochas Okorocha

"I appeal to my party  APC, to allow a level-playing ground," he said at the press conference. In an interview with Channels Television last week, Rochas Okorocha urged Nigerians to look out for leaders who care for them and who can really make the unity of the country stronger.

He said Nigerians need a "detribalized leader who can unite the country, a leader with a compassionate heart, who will care for the poor and downtrodden, and a visionary leader who can create wealth for the teeming populace"  he's that leader he said.

"I have been able to prove that I have a compassionate heart, that I really care and I love this country  especially the needy, the poor, the widows, I have been able to listen to their cries through my foundation. More than 22,000 Nigerian youths have benefited from the Rochas Okorocha Foundation."

Mr. Okorocha, who is the former governor of Imo State in South Eastern Nigeria also further stressed that poverty is the major cause of the complaints and chaos in the country. He will address it squarely, he added, under his New Nigeria agenda if given the chance to lead the country.

Mr. Okorocha touted his "Youth Must Work" initiative to see that young people do not remain idle. According to the United Nations population projections for 2020, about 43.49 percent of Nigeria's total population were aged 0 to 14 years, 19 percent aged 15-24 years and about 62 percent are below age 25 years. Nigerians aged 60 years and above were less than 5 percent. For Nigeria's very young population, unemployment is a constant reality that they face. Mr. Okorocha said programs that specifically target the youth, often overlooked, are paramount to him and essential in poverty alleviation.

Media Contact:

Company: Solution Media Global

Contact Person: Rahma Himid

Email: [email protected]

Phone: +971551738228

Website: https://solutionmediaglobal.com

SOURCE Rochas Okorocha
Grant Will Help Establish Cardiac Clinic for Carriers of Duchenne and Becker Muscular Dystrophy With Goal of Creating New Model for Carrier Care

WASHINGTON, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Parent Project Muscular Dystrophy (PPMD) , a nonprofit organization leading the fight to end Duchenne muscular dystrophy (Duchenne) , today announced a $50,000 award to the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Inherited Cardiovascular Disease to support the development of a dedicated cardiac care clinic for female carriers of Duchenne and Becker muscular dystrophy.

Duchenne is the most common fatal genetic disorder diagnosed in childhood, affecting approximately one in 5,000 live male births. Duchenne is among a spectrum of muscle diseases known as "dystrophinopathies" that are caused by a change in the dystrophin gene. In two-thirds of cases of Duchenne, the mother is a carrier of the gene variant. Because of the disorder's X-linked inheritance, sisters, aunts, and other female relatives may also be carriers. Additionally, women may be diagnosed as carriers without any family history due to advances in prenatal genetic screening. In many of these cases, women may manifest symptoms of the disorder, most frequently as changes in cardiac function called cardiomyopathy.

The University of Pennsylvania's Center for Inherited Cardiovascular Disease specializes in helping the entire family identify, understand, and treat genetic forms of heart disease. PPMD's award will support the launch of the Duchenne and Becker carrier clinic within the center, with the goal of offering both direct care of and establishing and implementing standardized clinical care guidelines for women living with dystrophinopathy. By creating a dedicated place for women to obtain care specific to their needs, PPMD and the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) team hope to foster a shift in how women seek care for themselves and support the growth of similar clinics throughout the country.

This pilot clinic is a natural progression in establishing a framework for carrier care after learnings from the PPMD-funded Carrier Study at Nationwide Children's Hospital. PPMD and Penn have used clinical guidance from Nationwide Children's to inform the implementation of this important new clinic.

"The creation of standards of care for Duchenne has changed the way we think about clinical care for people living with Duchenne and Becker over the last 12 years, and led to the creation of the Certified Duchenne Care Center Program, which has revolutionized how we think about comprehensive care. It was a natural next step to collaboratively think about how we can extend this model for female carriers to ensure they are given the same opportunities to receive excellent care themselves," said PPMD's Rachel Schrader, MS, APRN, CPNP-PC, Vice President of Clinical Care and Education. "We are really excited to see what we learn from this pilot, and look forward to working with the Penn team and other clinicians throughout the country to find solutions and create a network of care centers for all of the moms, sisters, aunts, and other women who don't have a place designed with their unique needs in mind."

In 2021, PPMD announced a grant to Nemours Children's Health Delaware allowing Dr. Mena Scavina, director of the hospital's neuromuscular clinic, to spend dedicated time working on this project as an advisor to the PPMD team. "I am grateful to PPMD's Pat Furlong, Founding President & CEO, and to the entire PPMD team for their support of the idea and creation of this clinic, as well as to the team of experts at Penn for taking hold of this unmet need in the community. As we begin with providing comprehensive cardiac care for female carriers, we hope to learn more and expand to fulfill their needs in various aspects of their health and wellbeing. I believe this effort is an example of how PPMD cares for the entire family affected by Duchenne and Becker," said Dr. Scavina.

"PPMD's generosity will allow us to work together to provide comprehensive multidisciplinary and coordinated clinical care for these women," said Dr. Teresa Wang, a cardiologist at Penn Medicine. "We believe this clinic has the potential to improve the long-term physical and emotional health of patients, open an avenue for establishing standardized care and guidelines for female carriers, and provide the impetus for increased awareness and community engagement."

PPMD will host a community webinar about cardiac care for female carriers of Duchenne and Becker muscular dystrophy on March 22 at 3:00 PM EDT. Panelists will discuss the importance of carrier health, learnings from the carrier study at Nationwide Children's Hospital, and the launch of the new Duchenne and Becker Carrier Clinic at Penn Medicine.

To learn more about PPMD's Carrier resources, click here .

ABOUT PARENT PROJECT MUSCULAR DYSTROPHY:

Duchenne is a fatal genetic disorder that slowly robs people of their muscle strength. Parent Project Muscular Dystrophy (PPMD) fights every single battle necessary to end Duchenne.

We demand optimal care standards and ensure every family has access to expert healthcare providers, cutting edge treatments, and a community of support. We invest deeply in treatments for this generation of Duchenne patients and in research that will benefit future generations. Our advocacy efforts have secured hundreds of millions of dollars in funding and won five FDA approvals.

Everything we doand everything we have done since our founding in 1994helps those with Duchenne live longer, stronger lives. We will not rest until we end Duchenne for every single person affected by the disease. Join our fight against Duchenne at EndDuchenne.org . Follow PPMD on Facebook , Twitter , Instagram , and YouTube .

SOURCE Parent Project Muscular Dystrophy (PPMD)
Woburn, MA (01801)

Today

Showers this morning becoming a steady light rain during the afternoon hours. High 54F. Winds E at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%..

Tonight

A shower or two possible this evening with partly cloudy skies overnight. Low 48F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
This New Deal Positions Pod Digital Media to Continue to Grow Its Multicultural Podcast Network

NEW YORK, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Pod Digital Media (PDM), the first multicultural podcast agency network, announced today it has acquired exclusive rights to the Latino & Latina Podcasters Network. Pod Digital Media will now add 50 Latina, Latino, Latinx, and LGBTQ+ hosted and produced podcasts. The new partnership falls in line with PDM's mission to expand its creator network and connect diverse podcasts with targeted advertising.

"You can buy views, you can buy clicks, but you can't buy culture," says Gary Coichy, CEO and head of partnerships for Pod Digital Media. "We're thrilled to gain the exclusive rights to 50 Latina, Latino, Latinx, and LGBTQ+ podcasts to our networks such as Empodera Latina, Cuento Crimen True Crime Podcast, and Sippin Tea with Joey and Marie. Ultimately, we represent culture and the Latina Podcasters Network believes in our mission."

Latina Podcasters is the leading global podcast network for Latinas and the Latinx community with a slate of over 40+ podcasts that span the United States and Latin America. LPN connects brands to the over $1.7 trillion dollar buying power of the Latinx community and listenership through authentic voices of Latina's podcasters all over the world.

"I'm proud to announce that Latina Podcasters Network will be working with Pod Digital Media, Gary and his team to connect the podcasters on our network to monetization opportunities," says Rita Bautista, CEO, and Founder of Latina Podcasters. "PDM understands how to value the importance of an authentic connection for brands and advertisers to our culture through the voices of our podcasters. We look forward to growing our relationship throughout the years to come."

About Pod Digital Media

Pod Digital Media (PDM), based in New York City, is the first multicultural podcast agency network. PDM exclusively caters to podcasters with multicultural audiences and connects them with blue-chip advertisers for long-term, seasonal and special investments. The agency includes more than 400 podcasts, reaching primarily Black & Hispanic American audience segments, to place ads on their shows and deliver tangible results to advertisers.

Media Contact:

Dara Kaplan

Wunderlich Kaplan Communications

(646) 620-4663

[email protected]

SOURCE Pod Digital Media
BANGALORE, India, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The Polymethyl Methacrylate Market is Segmented by Type (General PMMA, Heat Resistant PMMA, Impact Resistant PMMA), and Application (Construction, Photoelectricity, Lighting, Transportation, Others) The report covers global opportunity analysis, regional outlook, growth potential, industry forecast from 2022 to 2028.

The Polymethyl Methacrylate market size was valued at USD 4752.2 million in 2022, and it is anticipated to reach USD 6589.9 million by 2028, registering a CAGR of about 5.6% during the forecast period (20222028).

Major Factors Driving The Growth Of The Polymethyl Methacrylate (PMMA) Market Are:

PMMA (Polymethyl Methacrylate) is a transparent thermoplastic that can be used as a glass substitute. It is extremely long-lasting and chemically and impact-resistant. It's light, rigid, and comes in a variety of colors. PMMA is becoming more widely used in a variety of industries, including automotive, electronics, construction, signs and displays, sanitary ware, and lighting fixtures. Is expected to propel the Polymethyl Methacrylate (PMMA) market forward.

Polymethyl Methacrylate is simple to make, has low production costs, and is more durable than comparable materials.

Get your sample today: https://reports.valuates.com/request/sample/QYRE-Othe-3C453/Polymethyl_Methacrylate_PMMA_Market

Trends Influencing The Growth Of Polymethyl Methacrylate (PMMA) Market

Door panels, window, and door profiles are all made of polymethyl methacrylate. The co-extruded surfaces, which come in a variety of colors and gloss levels, provide excellent impact, chemical, and UV resistance as well as excellent performance in all weather conditions. As a result, the growing use of PMMA in the construction industry is expected to propel the Polymethyl Methacrylate market forward.

Elegant, slim, and energy-efficient luminaires, lighting products for displays, lit shelving, surfaces, and illuminated signs can all be made with PMMA. PMMA's superior light transmission properties provide a one-of-a-kind combination of brilliant and even illuminations. Polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) is a transparent thermoplastic with glass-like properties. It is, however, a stiff material that is not as brittle as glass. As a result, it is commonly used as a glass substitute and is also known as acrylic glass. Furthermore, it outperforms glass in terms of scratch resistance, UV protection, and optometry. This in turn is expected to drive the growth of the Polymethyl Methacrylate market

Polymethyl Methacrylate is used in body parts and accessories (such as lamp covers and Interior and Exterior Trim) (including windshields and sun visors). Taillights, windshields, windscreens, side windows, instrument panels, headlamps and rear lights, exterior light lenses, meter panels, sun visors, car sculpture, tail lamp cover, speedometer cover, and signal lamp are all examples of where it is used. It's also used in buses and trains as interior glazing. PMMA is used in EVs because of its superior performance compared to traditional polymers and other materials. The Polymethyl Methacrylate market is growing due to the changing regulatory landscape and government policies supporting electric vehicles.

Browse the Table of Contents and List of figures at: https://reports.valuates.com/reports/QYRE-Othe-3C453/polymethyl-methacrylate

Polymethyl Methacrylate Market Share Analysis:

The Asia-Pacific region had the largest market share globally, according to the region. The growing demand for PMMA comes primarily from industries like automotive and transportation, construction, and electrical and electronics. Governments in countries like China, India, Indonesia, and Singapore have seen massive investments in the construction sector. The demand for PMMA is likely to increase as a result of this.

Download Regional Report: https://reports.valuates.com/request/regional/QYRE-Othe-3C453/Polymethyl_Methacrylate_Market

This report includes the following companies; we can also add the other companies as you want.

Rohm

Arkema

Mitsubishi Chemical

LG MMA

Sumitomo Chemical

Lotte MCC

Chi Mei

Double Elephant Optical Material

Asahi Kasei

Kuraray

Plaskolite

PTTGM

Shanghai Jingqi

Chapter Cost Request: https://reports.valuates.com/request/chaptercost/QYRE-Othe-3C453/Polymethyl_Methacrylate_PMMA_Market

Buy Now for Single User + Covid-19 Impact : https://reports.valuates.com/api/directpaytoken?rcode=QYRE-Othe-3C453&lic=single-user

SUBSCRIPTION

We have introduced a tailor-made subscription for our customers. Please leave a note in the Comment Section to know about our subscription plans.

SIMILAR REPORTS

- The global Polymethyl Methacrylate (PMMA) Microspheres market size is estimated to be worth US$ 166.7 million in 2022 and is forecast to be a readjusted size of US$ 220.9 million by 2028 with a CAGR of 4.8% during the review period.

- Global PMMA for Healthcare Market Insights, Forecast to 2028

- Global Synthetic and Bio-based PMMA (Polymethyl Methacrylate) Market Insights and Forecast to 2028

- General Purpose Grade Polymethyl Methacrylate Market Insights, Forecast to 2027

- Bio-based Polymethyl Methacrylate (Bio-PMMA) Market Insights, Forecast to 2027

- Global Methyl Methacrylate (MMA) Monomer Market Insights and Forecast to 2028

- Global Medical PMMA Market Insights and Forecast to 2028

- Global Thermoformed Plastic Market Insights and Forecast to 2028

- Global Flexible Transparent Plastics Market Insights and Forecast to 2028

- Global Polymer Dispersed Liquid Crystal (PDLC) Glass Market Insights, Forecast to 2028

- Extruded Plastics Market Insights and Forecast to 2030

- Global Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastics (CFRPs) Market Insights and Forecast to 2028

- Plastic Recycling Market Size, Manufacturers, Supply Chain, Sales Channel and Clients, 2021-2027

To see the full list of related reports on the Polymethyl Methacrylate

ABOUT US:

Valuates offers in-depth market insights into various industries. Our extensive report repository is constantly updated to meet your changing industry analysis needs.

Our team of market analysts can help you select the best report covering your industry. We understand your niche region-specific requirements and that's why we offer customization of reports. With our customization in place, you can request for any particular information from a report that meets your market analysis needs.

To achieve a consistent view of the market, data is gathered from various primary and secondary sources, at each step, data triangulation methodologies are applied to reduce deviance and find a consistent view of the market. Each sample we share contains detail research methodology employed to generate the report, Please also reach to our sales team to get the complete list of our data sources

CONTACT US:

Valuates Reports

[email protected]

For U.S. Toll-Free Call +1-(315)-215-3225

For IST Call +91-8040957137

WhatsApp : +91 9945648335

Website: https://reports.valuates.com

Follow on Twitter - https://twitter.com/valuatesreports

Follow on Linkedin - https://in.linkedin.com/company/valuatesreports

Follow on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/valuatesreports

SOURCE Valuates Reports
The technology underpinning the platform has been proven with more than 1.5 million miles of real-world telematics data, demonstrating SEA Electric to be a dependable business partner.

"More and more, schools are looking to the future with zero emissions school bus technology, reducing their carbon footprint while enhancing the air quality around their campuses and local areas," said Mike Menyhart, SEA Electric's President for the Americas and Chief Strategy Officer.

"In the history of SEA Electric, we have already seen an incredible movement to switch to electric school bus technology, and we are proud to service the marketplace with the most cost-effective all-electric power system in the world."

"Outside of the sustainability factors, SEA Electric's systems provide lower maintenance and ongoing operating costs, with fuel eliminated and fewer moving parts lowering service expenses and downtime."

"Also, our unique battery technology, without the need for active thermal management and with mid-mounted batteries optimizing safety and operating costs."

"Through the SEA Type C EV, schools across North America can take the step into the future, today."

At the heart of the model is the SEA-Drive(R) 120b power-system, which has found favor in a wide range of commercial vehicle applications across the globe.

With a maximum power of 335hp and peak torque of 1,845lb-ft, the package has range of up to 150 miles between charges, more than enough for even the most demanding school bus route.

"After driving this pilot vehicle myself and comparising to a diesel equivalent driven the same day, it became abundantly clear that this transition must occur in scale and soon," CEO and Founder of SEA Electric, Tony Fairweather said.

"With the ability to sell at a new Type C EV price of less than $200,000 per vehicle there is no excuse for fleets to not consider EV for any and all future purchases," Fairweather continues.

"No need for incentives to justify this premium. The TCO provides the business case itself."

The battery solution has a 138kWh capacity and a projected life cycle of more than 10 years, at which time it is envisioned that the cells would be repurposed for continued use.

Standard charging through the integrated onboard charger can be provided through Level 2, Single Phase (208/240 VAC) up to 19.2kW, while optional fast charging is achieved via standard CCS Type 1, Level 3, DC fast charging, at a rate of up to 100 kW.

Notably, the system is also Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) capable, paving the way for future power grid security and revenue opportunities.

Supporting all SEA Electric products is a five-year battery warranty, with systems also backed by a three year or 50,000 mile warranty.

Further information on SEA Electric and its wide array of electric transportation solutions is available at www.sea-electric.com.

To access and download high resolution images: https://bit.ly/3CM9S8z

About SEA Electric

Global automotive technology company SEA Electric was founded in Australia in 2012, creating its proprietary electric power-system technology (known as SEA-Drive(R)) for the world's urban delivery and distribution fleets, as well as front powered school bus applications.

Widely recognized as a market leader in the electrification of commercial vehicles on a global basis, SEA Electric commands a global presence, deploying product around the world including USA, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Indonesia, South Africa and throughout Europe, with collectively more than one million miles of independently OEM-tested and in-service international operation.

Recently, SEA Electric's European base has been founded in England, with further operations being established in Italy, Spain, France and Germany to support the region.

The company's global sales, after-sales and engineering are represented in all subsidiaries, whilst North America, home to the company's headquarters, has the largest upfitting capacity for SEA Electric at 60,000 units per year.

Image Attachments Links:

Link: http://asianetnews.net/view-attachment?attach-id=416998

Caption: EA Electric Continues Push Zero-Emissions School Buses

SOURCE SEA Electric
Sirnaomics CTO Dmitry Samarsky, PhD, to Also Present OPT Congress Opening Remarks

GAITHERSBURG, Md. and SUZHOU, China, March 14, 2022 /PRNewwire/ -- Sirnaomics Ltd. ("Sirnaomics", stock code: 2257.HK), a leading biopharmaceutical company in discovery and development of RNAi therapeutics, announced today that it will present the latest developments on its GalNAc-Liver-Targeting platforms and product pipeline at the Oligonucleotide & Precision Therapeutics (OPT) Congress. The OPT Congress is taking place on March 1516, 2022 in Boston.

Sirnaomics' proprietary GalNAc-conjugate delivery platforms rely on peptide conjugates and/or unique RNA structures that allow knockdown of single or multiple distinct mRNA targets. The Company's GalAhead delivery platform conjugates GalNAc moieties to unique RNAi trigger structures that can target one (mxRNA) or more (muRNA) genes simultaneously. Dr. Dmitry Samarsky, Sirnaomics Chief Technology Officer, will present data demonstrating mxRNA efficacy in primary hepatocytes (in vitro) and in mice (in vivo). He will also present results of a 33-week study in non-human primates conducted with the candidate molecule for Sirnaomics' frontrunner GalAhead therapeutic program STP122G, targeting coagulation Factor XI, and report on progress made with other therapeutic programs based on the GalAhead platform.

Presentation Details

Presentation Title: mxRNA: Miniaturized RNAi Triggers Composed of Single Oligonucleotides

Presentation Segment: Advances in Targeted Delivery

Presenter: Dmitry Samarsky , PhD, Sirnaomics Chief Technology Officer

Time/Date: 10:30 a.m. ET, Tuesday, March 15, 2022 . The presentation will be available on-demand via the OPT Congress website after the event.

Location: Revere Hotel Boston Common

Dr. Patrick Lu, founder, chairman of the Board, Executive Director, President and CEO of Sirnaomics, stated, "The advancement of our proprietary GalAhead technology and expansions of the GalNAc program is indicative of Sirnaomics' solid technology platforms and continuing growth of our drug pipeline. By adding GalNAc targeting delivery with our polypeptide-based delivery technology, we are seeking to address unmet clinical needs in oncology, fibrosis and liver-related diseases."

Dr. Samarsky said, "We are highly satisfied with the outstanding performance of our proprietary GalAhead technology platform, in particular the mxRNA, or miniaturized single-oligo RNAi triggers, which yield strong and durable knockdown of targeted genes. After successful validation of the technology, we have moved quickly into developing the therapeutic programs based upon it. For this we have established a reproducible process, which allows us to quickly generate the candidate molecules for the IND-enabling studies. We are planning to file our first GalAhead IND later this year, followed by several more in 2023."

On behalf of request from the Cambridge Healthtech Institute, organizer of the Symposium, Dr. Samarsky will also chair the first half-day session of the event.

For more information about Sirnaomics' presentation, visit the event website at https://www.optcongress.com/oligonucleotide.

About Sirnaomics

Sirnaomics is an RNA therapeutics biopharmaceutical company with product candidates in preclinical and clinical stages that focuses on the discovery and development of innovative drugs for indications with medical needs and large market opportunities. Sirnaomics is the first clinical-stage RNA therapeutics company to have a strong presence in both China and the United States, and also the first company to achieve positive Phase IIa clinical outcomes in oncology for an RNAi therapeutics for its core product, STP705. Learn more at www.sirnaomics.com.

Contact:

Dmitry Samarsky, PhD

Chief Technology Officer, Sirnaomics Ltd.

Email: [email protected]

Investor Relations:

Nigel Yip

Chief Financial Officer, China, Sirnaomics Ltd.

Email: [email protected]

US Media Contact:

Alexis Feinberg

Tel: +1 203 939 2225

Email: [email protected]

Asia Media Contact:

Bunny Lee

Tel: +852 3150 6707

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Sirnaomics Ltd.
Midwest Hospice Agency Adds a Fifth Clinical Team in Nebraska to Meet Growing Need

FREMONT, Neb., March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- St. Croix Hospice is proud to announce expansion of service in Nebraska with the addition of a new location in Fremont. This will provide additional expert hospice staff and resources to serve Fremont and nearby communities in the Eastern part of the state.

"With increased hospice admissions in the Fremont area, we are pleased to meet the need of these communities with a dedicated team," said Heath Bartness, St. Croix Hospice Chief Executive Officer. "Our existing Grand Island, Lincoln, Norfolk and Omaha clinical teams have set the bar for exceptional local hospice care in Nebraska."

According to the 2017 End-of-Life Survey conducted by Nebraska Hospice and Palliative Care Association, 92% of participants expressed a desire for making their end-of-life wishes known. With more Americans utilizing hospice care every year, St. Croix Hospice is proud to expand access to Nebraskans who want personalized, thoughtful end-of-life care from caretakers who know and respect their wishes.

St. Croix Hospice specializes exclusively in hospice with a care model tailored to the unique needs of hospice patients and their families. Care teams see patients wherever they call home, including private residences, nursing homes or assisted living facilities. St. Croix Hospice teams take pride in partnering with families and community providers to ensure a dignified end-of-life transition.

"Not only will Fremont and surrounding communities receive the best personalized hospice care from St. Croix Hospice care teams  they will receive that care from people who know and love these communities," said Jena Fosdick, St. Croix Hospice Regional Director of Clinical Operations who oversees Nebraska clinical teams. "We are ready and excited to provide high-quality care to communities in this part of Nebraska."

About St. Croix Hospice

St. Croix Hospice supports patients, their families and caregivers when they need us the most, delivering exceptional hospice care 24 hours a day, 365 days a year wherever a patient calls home. With branches in Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, South Dakota and Wisconsin, St. Croix Hospice takes pride in round-the-clock availability, prompt response and same day admissions, including evenings, weekends and holidays. Contact St. Croix Hospice 24/7 at 855-278-2764 or stcroixhospice.com.

CONTACT: Amanda Cherico

[email protected]

612-364-6606

SOURCE St. Croix Hospice
DETRIOT, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Established in 1970, the National Black MBA Association (NBMBAA) is dedicated to developing partnerships that result in the creation of intellectual and economic wealth in the black community. Their new Accelerator Program led by Start Co. Ventures, invited the top 3% of 600 companies to compete, of which two of those businesses were Lite Tuition and Grab My Bag, Inc.

Logo for Lite Tuition. Helping students pursue education without the debt. Grab My Bag Logo. Book a flight, book a grab.

On Friday March 4, 2022, Marc D. Alexander, Founder and CEO of Lite Tuition, the only fundraising platform specifically for students to raise funds for tuition, without the burden of debt, and Emory Reignz CEO and Founder of Grab My Bag, a luggage delivery service from the airport baggage claim carousel to the traveler's requested location, competed against each other, with Lite Tuition taking home 1st place and Grab My Bag, Inc. grabbing 3rd in the competition. But the real winners here, will be the students pursuing higher education that these companies will be able to assist through their new partnership.

Emory Reignz, CEO/Founder of Grab My Bag said, "We are ecstatic to be working with Lite Tuition in support of their mission to eliminate student loan debt for millions of students. Students in pursuit of education, shouldn't be weighed down by tremendous debt for the rest of their lives."

This Friday March 18th, 2022, Lite Tuition in partnership with Grab My Bag & the Detroit Pistons and Motor City Cruise, will be awarding a $500 scholarship to a lucky fan, in an effort to promote the amazing opportunities at Lite Tuition, while fueling the fan's education fundraising initiative on the platform.

"We recognize the financial burdens placed on students around the country and want to make sure that higher education is affordable and accessible to all."  Marc D. Alexander, Founder/CEO, Lite Tuition.

Marc will be speaking at this year's Michigan College Access Programs and Personnel (MI-CAPP) in Grand Rapids, and hosting a webinar for NewU University, the first 3-year Bachelor's Degree University in the United States, on March 17, 2022. MI-CAPP brings people together who have an active interest in providing support for success in formal, post-secondary education, Grab My Bag encourages anyone traveling to these events, back to college, or to future education related conferences, to check out their website where they can book a grab for assistance with their luggage once they land.

About Grab My Bag, Inc.

Website: https://www.grabmybag.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GrabMyBagInc

Instagram: https://instagram.com/GrabMyBagInc

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/GrabMyBagInc

Media Contact

Company Name: Grab My Bag, Inc.

Phone: 833-244-9994

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Grab My Bag, Inc.
Hoffa to Retire After 23-Year Career as General President

LOS ANGELES, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- More than a thousand attendees joined together for the 2022 James R. Hoffa Memorial Scholarship Fund Dinner in Los Angeles to honor Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa as he approaches the end of his final term as the head of the 1.4 million-member union.

Hoffa announced he was retiring at the end of his current term two years ago and leaves the Teamsters Union as the second-longest serving General President with 23 years at the helm. Hoffa was elected by direct-members' vote five times  1998, 2001, 2006, 2011 and 2016.

"I look around this room and see the faces of men and women that I have had the honor of working with for more than two decades," said Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa. "Together, we brought this union back from the brink of financial ruin. We organized and built Teamster power through industry-leading contracts. We saved the pensions of millions of active and retired members. And we helped return the Teamsters to the most powerful union in the world! Thank you for all you have done for this union."

Hoffa grew up on picket lines and in union meetings. He is the only son of James R. Hoffa, former Teamsters General President (1957-1971). Prior to being elected General President, Hoffa worked as a Teamsters laborer in Detroit and Alaska in the 1960s. He then spent 25 years as a labor attorney representing members, local unions and Joint Councils. From 1993 until his inauguration as General President in 1999, Hoffa served as Administrative Assistant to the President of Joint Council 43 in Michigan.

Hoffa, who leaves behind a powerful legacy as one of leading voices in labor this generation, officially retires on March 22, 2022 at the end of his term.

Founded in 1999, the James R. Hoffa Memorial Scholarship Fund has awarded more than 4,000 college scholarships to the sons and daughters of Teamster members.

Founded in 1903, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters represents 1.4 million hardworking men and women throughout the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico. Visit www.teamster.org for more information. Follow us on Twitter @Teamsters and "like" us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/teamsters.

Contact:

Galen Munroe, (202) 439-7427

[email protected]

SOURCE International Brotherhood of Teamsters
Community Project Funding to Support the Development of the Food Is Medicine Greenhouse at The Center's Children's Specialty Hospital

ROCK HILL, N.Y., March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The Center for Discovery (TCFD) was awarded $605,000 through Congressionally Directed Spending for its Community Project Funding, sponsored by longtime supporter of TCFD, US Senator Charles Schumer. The award will be used for the development of the Food Is Medicine Greenhouse at The Center's Children's Specialty Hospital for complex disabilities, which is currently under construction and scheduled to open in early 2023.

The Food Is Medicine Greenhouse will support The Center for Discovery's comprehensive model of care, which emphasizes the medicinal and therapeutic value of high quality, nutrient-dense food  led by The Center's Department of Nourishment Arts (DNA)  and will undoubtedly strengthen the standard of care for the highly complex and vulnerable population the specialty hospital will serve. The Center's farm currently spans over 300 certified organic and biodynamic acres in rural Sullivan County, New York.

The Greenhouse will significantly advance the Children's Specialty Hospital and The Center's robust Food is Medicine program by way of: providing optimal food and nutrition for patients of the specialty hospital and The Center's broader program; providing educational, therapeutic, and pre-vocational opportunities for individuals admitted into the specialty hospital, as well as children from surrounding communities who will attend the adjacent daycare and 853 special education school; supporting nutrition and culinary training programs that will lead to improved outcomes for patients and their families most of whom will come from underserved communities where healthy eating is an unmet challenge; and, providing additional healthy and affordable food options to the surrounding Sullivan County community, which has historically had some of the poorest health outcomes in New York State.

"Over the years, I've been a tireless fighter for The Center For Discovery's frontline workers and those they serve, and today I'm proud to deliver over $600,000 to build the Food Is Medicine Greenhouse to strengthen the standard of care for their highly complex and vulnerable population through high quality, nutrient-dense food. As the community works together to improve health outcomes and fight food insecurity in Sullivan County, this project will create new healthy and affordable food options for Sullivan County families and children while also providing new educational opportunities for hundreds of children with disabilities attending the special education school and receiving inpatient treatment at the new hospital in Rock Hill," said Senator Schumer.

"We are so grateful for Senator Schumer's ongoing support of our organization and for his dedication to helping The Center realize its dream of creating a first-of-its-kind Children's Specialty Hospital. With the addition of this new greenhouse, we are further equipped to treat children and support their families from a nutritional perspective  getting them back on track to lead optimal, healthy lives - all while learning new skills," said CEO of The Center for Discovery, Patrick H. Dollard.

In July of 2021, The Center broke ground on the Children's Specialty Hospital with the help of a $35 million loan from the USDA which was championed by Senator Schumer during the COVID-19 pandemic. More than a decade in the making, the Children's Specialty Hospital and its multi-disciplinary, whole-person approach to health and education will revolutionize care for those with complex conditions, like autism.

About The Center for Discovery: The Center for Discovery (TCFD) is a leading provider of healthcare and education services for more than 1,200 children and adults with complex conditions, medical frailties and Autism Spectrum Disorders, located 90 miles northwest of New York City. Named a Center of Excellence in 2016, TCFD has long been a leader in developing new models of care for individuals with complex conditions. Located on 1,500 acres of land in Sullivan County, TCFD houses school campuses, residences, medical and research facilities, organic and biodynamic farmland, and leased private businesses offering meaningful employment opportunities. Deeply focused on an individual's personal potential and possibilities, rather than a disability, TCFD strives to create better care and unique and challenging opportunities for the most vulnerable populations. For more information about TCFD, please visit www.tcfd.org.

The Center for Discovery: Michael Rosen

Executive VP of Marketing and Strategic Communications

(917) 232-5556

[email protected]

Senator Schumer:

Allison Biasotti

(202) 224-7433

SOURCE The Center for Discovery
DUBLIN, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The Fortia Group ("Fortia"), a global M&A firm focusing exclusively on eCommerce exits, announced today that it has secured several new mandates for exits in the eCommerce space. In addition, Fortia is expanding its services to include aggregator corporate financing, naming another key industry veteran to its advisory panel, and launching a "Learning Hub" on its website to resource eCommerce sellers exploring an exit.

It's been a lucrative 2021 for eCommerce aggregators, raising $12.5 billion, creating at least 10 unicorns and a significant number of companies worth more than $100 million. These companies have started deploying much of that newly raised capital, positioning the next generation of eCommerce entrepreneurs for well-earned exits if they find the right buyers.

"I received quite a few private offers prior to working with Fortia but felt that I would have been selling the business short if I hadn't worked with professionals in the space," said Andy Lam, founder of Upward Baby, who is currently working with the firm on his exit. "Being as this is my first exit, having the right team by my side every step of the way was a critical factor for me, and Fortia has done that and more."

Fortia, with decades of M&A and eCommerce experience, works with eCommerce entrepreneurs to secure the best and most lucrative deals possible.

"We selected The Fortia Group to advise us on our eCommerce exit for three reasons," said Jani Viheruori, CEO Avanto Lifestyle, "their depth of M&A experience, their professional and granular approach to the exit process, and their relationships with all the relevant buyers."

The Fortia Group continues to grow, is on target to complete >30 exits by the end of 2022 and aims to become the premier investment bank for eCommerce.

As part of its best-in-class M&A process for eCommerce, Fortia has secured the ability to team up with a leading global investment bank to advise aggregators on corporate finance matters e.g., financing.

Fortia Co-founder and CEO Emmett Kilduff, a former investment banker with Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse, will lead that initiative. Aggregators can contact him directly for more information.

To accommodate Fortia's explosive growth, the firm recently welcomed industry veteran Richard Jalichandra as an eCommerce and M&A Advisor. Jalichandra brings extensive eCommerce experience: he founded 101 Commerce, the first institutionally backed Amazon aggregator, and he has been involved in over $5 billion of financings for aggregators in the past 18 months. A long-time tech executive, he has also led 43 M&A transactions worth nearly $2 billion and raised over $300 million in debt and equity financing.

"In a very young industry, The Fortia Group has already earned a reputation for its deep expertise and ever-expanding list of lucrative exits," commented Jalichandra. "I'm excited to contribute to a team committed to delivering thoughtful, world-class advice to its clients."

Fortia also rolled out its "Learning Hub" on its newly redesigned website to serve as a resource center for sellers who are exploring exits. Resources include webinars, articles, buyer-and-seller tips, and a complete 90-page Exit Guide for Amazon FBAs, which is free to download .

ABOUT THE FORTIA GROUP

The vision of The Fortia Group is to become the leading investment bank for eCommerce. This vision is executed through three core offerings: advising on eCommerce exits, corporate financing for aggregators, and an investment syndicate exclusively focused on aggregators of eCommerce brands.

First and foremost, Fortia brings decades of M&A, corporate finance, and eCommerce expertise to advising eCommerce entrepreneurs on their exits. To date, Fortia has managed multiple seven-and-eight figure exits. With additional mandates for brands in categories such as baby, beauty, home, outdoor and supplements, Fortia is on track to advise on >30 exits in 2022.

Secondly, the newly launched investment syndicate exclusively focused on aggregators of eCommerce brands. Lastly, the ability to team up with a world-leading investment bank to advise aggregators on their corporate finance needs, as detailed above.

To learn more visit, https://thefortiagroup.com/ .

Media Contact: Kim MacKenzie

[email protected]

SOURCE The Fortia Group
Annual charitable event raises support for nonprofit organizations in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

WASHINGTON, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- President Joe Biden will make an appearance at The Ireland Funds 30th Annual National Gala at The National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, March 16th. He is expected to address the organization's 800+ guests at the sold-out event. President Biden, whose family traces its ancestral roots to Co. Louth and Co. Mayo, has long been known for pride in his Irish ancestry.

The 2022 Gala marks the 30th anniversary of The Ireland Funds National Gala in Washington, DC and will be the most successful in the history of the event raising over $1 million on the night for charitable causes across the island of Ireland.

For 30 years, the annual event has celebrated and recognized the political, cultural, business, and philanthropic achievements of the Irish diaspora and generates support for the work of The Ireland Funds across the island of Ireland. The Ireland Funds is one of the largest private grant makers to the nonprofit sector in Ireland and was established in 1976 for friends of Ireland around the globe to constructively express their goodwill through private philanthropy benefitting the island of Ireland.

"It is an extraordinary honor to have both the President of the United States and the Taoiseach with us for this milestone gathering," said Caitriona Fottrell, President & CEO of The Ireland Funds. "It is a true celebration of the deep bonds of friendship that connect the United States and the island of Ireland."

The evening will recognize the political, civic, and business achievements of several great leaders. An Taoiseach, Micheal Martin, TD Prime Minister of Ireland, will attend the event as part of his multi-stop St. Patrick's Day visit to the U.S. and will receive The International Leadership Award for his longstanding commitment to public service. Special recognition will be given to former National Gala honorees including Senator Patrick J. Leahy, President Pro Tempore; Senator Pat Toomey; and Matthew R. Shay, President & CEO, National Retail Federation.

Guests of note expected to attend include H.E. Daniel Mulhall, Irish Ambassador to the U.S; The Hon. Claire D. Cronin, U.S. Ambassador to Ireland; H.E. Dame Karen Elizabeth Pierce DCMG, British Ambassador to the US; Andrew Elliott, Director/Counselor of the Northern Ireland Bureau; The Hon. Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives; and The Hon. Richard E. Neal (D-MA-1) Chairman of Friends of Ireland in Congress.

All media must RSVP in advance for on-site coverage and must be at the event by 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, March 16. Please email Sean O'Leary, [email protected] to secure media credentials for the event.

ABOUT THE IRELAND FUNDS

The Ireland Funds is a global philanthropic network established in 1976 to promote and support peace, culture, education, and community development throughout the island of Ireland, and Irish-related causes around the world. With chapters in 12 countries, The Ireland Funds has raised over $600 million for deserving causes in Ireland and beyond, benefiting more than 3,200 different organizations.

SOURCE The Ireland Funds
Speaking on the collaboration with Nobel Peace Laureate Kailash Satyarthi, Anuraag Bhatnagar, Chief Operating Officer, The Leela Palaces, Hotels and Resorts, said, "True to the Leela brand, we strive to not only be the epitome of true Indian luxury but also to remain socially conscious in everything that we do by actively contributing towards the overall development of the community. We feel privileged to be able to support the great work that Kailashji has been doing and make a humble contribution towards empowering children through protection and development. Children are our future, and every child has the right to feel safe and receive quality education. We will continue to work with KSCF to make this a meaningful collaboration."

Welcoming The Leela's association with KSCF, Nobel Peace Laureate Kailash Satyarthi said, "It gives me immense happiness to note that The Leela Palaces, Hotels and Resorts has joined hands with us to help create a child friendly world through our Bal Mitra Grams. Compassion towards children and the will to empower them to become meaningful citizens will go a long way in freeing them from shackles of exploitation."

Icons of India by The Leela is an initiative aimed at recognizing and nurturing the essence of India and the richness within, through a celebration of India's finest who are the world's best. Through this initiative, The Leela aims to create meaningful experiences that inspire guests and allow them to connect through a shared passion. The brand had earlier announced sarod virtuosos Amaan and Ayaan Ali Bangash as their Icons of India by The Leela.

The Bangash duo recently created an EP, 'We For Love' to support Kailash Satyarthi's 'Justice For Every Child' campaign and create awareness for child abuse. The proceeds from this also support Kailash Satyarthi Children's Foundation. The album was unveiled at an elegant evening of engaging conversations and soulful music held at The Leela Palace New Delhi. The evening was a befitting symbol of the coming together of The Leela, Nobel Peace Laureate Kailash Satyarthi and Amaan and Ayaan Ali Bangash and the synergies that can be created between brands, art, culture, music and philanthropy.

The Leela is the essence of true Indian hospitality imbued with a distinct aesthetic that celebrates the country's traditions, art, cuisine, artisanal craft and culture and is rooted in its offering of India's rich legacy to all its esteemed guests. As the brand gears up to embrace the next phase of its growth trajectory, it continues to evolve and focus on experiential and conscious luxury while remaining true to its ethos of 'Atithi Devo Bhava  Guest is God'.

ABOUT THE LEELA PALACES, HOTELS AND RESORTS

Headquartered in Mumbai, The Leela Palaces, Hotels and Resorts is owned by a Brookfield Asset Management-sponsored private real estate fund and operates eleven award-winning properties in major cities and leisure destinations across India. These include the flagship hotel in the capital city of New Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai, Udaipur, Jaipur, Gurugram, East Delhi, Goa, Mumbai and Gandhinagar. The Leela celebrates each hotel through its unique location, art, culture and cuisine with thoughtful services, celebratory rituals and immersive experiences. The Leela Palaces, Hotels and Resorts was voted the World's Best Hotel Brand twice in a row by Travel + Leisure, USA, World's Best Awards Survey, 2020 and 2021. The brand is well poised to embrace the next phase in its growth trajectory with upcoming projects which include a business hotel in Hyderabad. An epitome of true Indian luxury hospitality, The Leela is committed to providing guests with unforgettable stays in settings that capture the essence of India. The brand has a marketing alliance with US-based Preferred Hotels & Resorts and is a member of the Global Hotel Alliance.

ABOUT KAILASH SATYARTHI CHILDREN'S FOUNDATION

Kailash Satyarthi Children's Foundation (KSCF) founded by Nobel Peace Laureate Kailash Satyarthi is a leader in child protection and child development. It envisions a world free of violence against children and works on an array of issues that affect vulnerable children and their families. Building on Mr. Satyarthi's pathbreaking work of 40 years on promoting and protecting child rights, KSCF works in partnership with multi stakeholders both at the grassroots and global level, with governments, businesses, civil society, communities and children.

For more information, please visit our website www.theleela.com and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

More Images: https://bit.ly/3MZdlFJ

SOURCE The Leela Palaces, Hotels and Resorts
Ben Spencer, Partner and a Principal of Fund Management at Titan, said, "We are thrilled about our expansion to San Diego, a city that has long been an attractive and competitive real estate market particularly as work-from-home flexibility has risen nationally, and more and more people have chosen to relocate to this appealing city." Kurt Browning, Partner at Titan, added, "North Park is an excellent location for our first multifamily investment in California. We are excited to be partnering with the talented designers and developers at Malick in San Diego and with the innovative real estate investment team at Thornburg."

"North Park is where I live and work," said Andrew Malick, Founder and Principal of Malick Infill Development. "I am proud to be developing another project in my neighborhood and can't wait to open the doors and meet my new neighbors."

"Malick and Titan have proven track records of owning and developing successful real estate projects similar to 4250 Oregon," said David Bennett, Director of Real Estate at Thornburg. "Their partnership on this attractive and high-quality development in the competitive San Diego market allows us to continue adding to a diversified mix of real estate investment opportunities for our investors."

Titan, Malick, and Thornburg will work closely together to bring the project to fruition, with construction expected to be completed by June 2023.

The 4250 Oregon project is funded in part by Titan Development Real Estate Fund II, which closed in February 2020, as well as Thornburg Real Estate Ventures, a real estate group and wholly-owned subsidiary of Thornburg Investment Management. Titan's Fund II targets investments in multifamily and industrial projects.

About Titan Development

Titan Development is a leading Southwest full-service development and real estate investment firm. Titan has developed 13 million square feet of real estate totaling more than $2.5 billion in project cost since the firm was formed in 1999. Titan Development has a wealth of real estate development experience in many asset classes including private equity fund investment and management, and has offices in Austin, TX, and Albuquerque, NM.

Titan Development's first private equity fund Titan Development Real Estate Fund I (TDREF I) raised $112 million and invested in a variety of real estate asset classes. Titan Development Real Estate Fund II (TDREF II) raised $95 million and commenced in November of 2020. TDREF II focuses on industrial and multifamily development in secondary and tertiary markets. TDREF II has identified all fund projects, has committed 80% of the total fund equity to eleven projects and has identified the remaining projects which will commence construction in early 2022. To learn more, please visit www.titan-development.com.

About Malick Infill Development

Malick Infill Development is an urban infill development firm based in San Diego, California, focused on placemaking, transit-oriented development, and enhancing walkability. Their most recent 127 unit mixed-use project, Parco in National City, was fully leased in only 9 weeks. For more information, please visit www.malickinfill.com.

About Thornburg Real Estate Ventures

Thornburg Real Estate Ventures helps clients satisfy their diversification and target return needs by providing access to quality real estate investment opportunities. Thornburg Real Estate Ventures is the dedicated real estate group and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Thornburg Investment Management, a global investment firm delivering on strategy for institutions, financial professionals, and investors worldwide. Founded in 1982, Thornburg Investment Management oversees $49 billion in client assets ($47 billion AUM and $1.9 billion AUA as of December 31, 2021). Thornburg's U.S. headquarters is in Santa Fe, New Mexico with offices in London, Hong Kong and Shanghai. For more information, visit www.thornburg.com.

Media Contact, Titan:

Lisa Baker, Lambert & Co.

[email protected]

603.868.1967

Media Contact, Thornburg:

Michael Corrao, Director of Global Communications

[email protected]

505.467.5345

Media Contact, Malick Infill Development:

Linda Skemp

[email protected]

310.662.3182

SOURCE Titan Development
"The acquisition of the Majic portfolio of products is an excellent strategic fit for True Value," said John Vanderpool, Division President, True Value Manufacturing & General Paint. "The Majic paint brand deepens our strong portfolio of products, which today includes our flagship EasyCare brand, and enhances our capabilities in the agricultural and other specialty segments of the paint industry. Customers of both companies will benefit from the higher levels of investment that True Value plans to make in research and development, as well as improving supply chain resiliency and customer support."

Chris Kempa, CEO of True Value Company said, "This acquisition is another example of True Value's commitment to investing in its business, aggressively pursuing growth and ensuring that our retailers have what they need to win in the marketplace."

"True Value's focus on quality and service to paint retailers, and their commitment to the associates who power our organizations, mirror our company culture as a family-owned business," said Yenkin-Majestic President and CEO Andrew O. Smith. "True Value has been a respected partner of ours for many years, and we know they will take the Majic product line to new heights. We can think of no finer company to carry forward the legacy of our consumer paint business." He added, "This transaction also allows us to focus our resources and reinvest in our polymers business."

About True Value Company

True Value Company, headquartered in Chicago, is one of the world's leading hardlines wholesalers with a globally recognized brand and over 70 years of experience serving independent hardware retailers. True Value Company provides its customers in over 60 countries an expansive product set of market-customized assortments at highly competitive prices, superior product availability, innovative marketing programs and a la carte value-added services like eCommerce ship-to-store, store remodel support and True Value University, all within a flexible model that requires no membership. With 13 regional distribution centers, and approximately 2,500 associates serving over 4,500 stores, True Value Company celebrates independence and drives retail excellence across the U.S. and internationally. Learn more at www.TrueValueCompany.com.

About Yenkin-Majestic

The Yenkin-Majestic Paint Corporation, based in Columbus, OH, is the owner of OPC Polymers, one of North America's leading suppliers of coatings resins. OPC Polymers serves the paint industry through continuous innovation in its broad portfolio of alkyd, copolymer, and specialty resins. This family-owned business began in 1920. Learn more at www.opcpolymers.com.

SOURCE True Value Company
The plaintiffs, who have resided in rent-regulated apartments previously owned by a web of corporate entities controlled by the Trumps across Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island, were granted leave on March 11, 2021 by a New York State Supreme Court in Brooklyn to proceed with charging Trump and his inner circle of engaging in racketeering activities and fraud under the Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act, commonly known as "RICO". The plaintiffs' complaint alleges that the Trumps fraudulently inflated the costs of improvements to their properties to justify illegal rent increases under the Rent Stabilization Law. The increases were permanent, and allegedly compounded rent obligations for each successive tenant whose rent would then include both the fraudulent rent overcharges and all subsequent legal rent increases.

Jerrold S. Parker, founding partner of Parker Waichman LLP, a nationwide law firm, explained that the Trump scam was revealed in the first installment of an exhaustive Pulitzer-Prize winning New York Times special investigation, "Trump Engaged in Suspect Tax Schemes as He Reaped Riches From His Father," which debunked the former president's claims of self-made wealth and revealed a business empire riddled with tax dodges. In a follow-up piece, "As the Trumps Dodged Taxes, Their Tenants Paid a Price," The New York Times journalists interviewed housing advocates who insisted that the tenants' claims "should be fought." Mr. Parker answered that call to action.

"The reason the Trump family did this," explained Parker, "was to lessen the impact of estate taxes from the transfer of the buildings once they passed from Fred Trump to his children." Nevertheless, it was the tenants of the Trump-owned buildings that would suffer, and continue to suffer. "Today, the rents of these apartments are the fruit of a poisoned tree, as the financial burden from the fraudulent base rents are carried over, year after year, from tenant to tenant. It must be stopped. The rents must be rolled back, and those who are responsible must be made to re-pay the tenants for their outrageous activities."

For further information, please contact:







Parker Waichman LLP

6 Harbor Park Drive

Port Washington, New York 11050

(516) 466-6500

http://www.yourlawyer.com

SOURCE Parker Waichman LLP
World-class AI diagnosis software merges with nation's premier healthcare consumerism consulting group Tweet this

The combined consulting and technology services allow healthcare providers to:

Organize their digital front door

Assist their patients in selection of the most appropriate care venue to save time and money

Provide a differential consumer experience both online and in-clinic

Increase provider and staff efficiency through:

Artificial Intelligence assisted dynamic medical interviews



Calculation of emergency severity index (97.5% accurate)



Accurate clinical diagnoses that are organized by probability (94% accurate)



Customizable rules engine for procedures, testing, routing, and any other desired activity



Automatic documentation of Review of Systems and History of Present Illness and placement into the EHR

Mr. Brandon J. Robertson, CEO, takes the helm after his seven years at UCP Merchant Medicine. He has led the development of over 135 urgent care centers for major health system clients across the country. His vision of the modern urgent care model has revolutionized on-demand healthcare and the consumer experience.

"UCP Merchant Medicine is excited to join forces with Intellivisit," said Robertson. "Integrating their Artificial Intelligence clinical decision support tools into our modern urgent care and digital first platforms establishes our clients as industry leaders. This merger will allow us to expand our capabilities at a critical point for the healthcare industry.

Drew Palin MD, Chairman of Intellivisit and now Chairman of UCP Merchant Medicine noted, "When we started to develop the Intellivisit Artificial Intelligence platform, we wanted to improve outcomes and efficiencies in the healthcare industry. UCP Merchant Medicine's vision for on-demand healthcare across both digital and traditional channels fits perfectly with our mission. We look forward to continuing to push the envelope to advance the healthcare industry."

For more information on our services, please visit ucpmm.com.

About UCP Merchant Medicine

UCP Merchant Medicine is the leading management consulting firm in urgent care, retail care, telehealth, and related on-demand consumer-driven healthcare. UCP Merchant Medicine focuses on creating a new front door to health systems and building new relationships with consumers. UCP Merchant Medicine provides health systems and medical groups a full-service, turn-key approach to Modern Urgent Care development and performance improvement. The Modern Urgent Care performance outcomes include Net Promoter Scores of 90+, Door-to-door times of 35 minutes or less, and EBITDA margins of 30%+ which can be deployed in 11 months from start to first site opening.

About Intellivisit

Intellivisit was founded in 2016. Intellivisit has developed a platform of core technologies that leverage dynamic, symptom-specific inputs from patients and cutting-edge machine learning systems to create decision support and recommendations for clinicians and caregivers. Our AI system has over 220 million data points, covers 40,000 symptoms, 4,000 diagnoses, 7,000 medications, and 3,000 lab images and tests. All of this is backed by over 37,000 hours of physician curated data.

SOURCE UCP Merchant Medicine
The launch of an official website enables users from around the world to have a simple way to make cryptocurrency donations to Ukraine. Anyone is now able to select the desirable amount in selected cryptocurrencies to donate, connect a wallet, and confirm a transaction within the same user-friendly interface.

The fundraising process will be traceable in real-time on the website. The overall amount of donations will be summed up and tentatively expressed in USD at the Coingecko rate.

The website also makes it possible to add more cryptocurrencies to the initiative thanks to the involvement of Everstake, the biggest decentralized staking provider in the industry. The company's officers are in direct contact with the community representatives willing to take part in helping the people of Ukraine. The crypto community does not want to stand aside and watch Ukrainians suffer from the unprovoked aggression by the Russian Federation and the subsequent humanitarian disaster unseen in Europe since the Balkan war.

"Freedom has always been at the bedrock of the crypto community. It is the same fundamental value that Ukraine is currently fighting for, and the crypto community expressed its strong desire to help Ukraine right after the onset of this abysmal war. As a part of this great community and as a Ukraine-based company we feel an obligation to help in whatever way we can. That is how and why Aid For Ukraine came to be," Sergey Vasilchuk, CEO at Everstake said.

So far, users can donate to the existing wallets of the Ministry of Digital Transformation in BTC, ETH, USDT (TRC-20), DOT, SOL, DOGE, and XMR. The initiative has also added ICX, EOS, and NEO. Aid For Ukraine will add other cryptocurrencies over time.

"ICON Foundation is joining global community efforts by pledging $1M towards aid and relief for the Ukrainian people. I hope that our technology and community can make a small contribution in this time of need," Min Kim, founder of ICON states.

Aid For Ukraine is cooperating with the cryptocurrency exchange FTX which converts crypto funds received into fiat and sends the donations to the National Bank of Ukraine. This marks the first-ever instance of a cryptocurrency exchange directly cooperating with a public financial entity to provide a conduit for crypto donations. Earlier this month, FTX already converted $1 million worth of SOL and transferred it to the National Bank of Ukraine.

"At the onset of the conflict in Ukraine, FTX felt the need to provide assistance in any way it could. By working with the Ministry of Digital Transformation to set up payment rails and facilitate the conversion of crypto donations into fiat currency, we have given the National Bank of Ukraine the ability to deliver aid and resources to the people who need it most. We are grateful for the opportunity to work with Sergey and the Everstake team as they continue to work tirelessly in helping Ukrainians as they suffer from this conflict," Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder and CEO of FTX commented.

The crypto community has already donated more than $80 million to Ukraine, with over $50 million going to the official accounts of Ukraine's Ministry of Digital Transformation. Aid For Ukraine seeks to raise more donations for Ukraine in the crypto community. Every contribution is important and valuable.

"Today, crypto is playing a significant role in Ukraine's defense. Crypto assets proved extremely helpful in facilitation of funding flows to Ukrainian citizens and soldiers, as well as in raising awareness and engaging people worldwide. The amount of crypto crowdfunding for our country is already the biggest in history so far. We expect that the NFT collection will give the next boost to the crypto fundraising process. Huge thanks to the crypto community for this unprecedented support of Ukraine and its defense of the principles of democracy and freedom in face of the war waged by the Russian Federation," Oleksandr Bornyakov, the Deputy Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine on IT industry development said.

The funds will be used to help the Armed Forces of Ukraine as well as Ukrainian civilians in dire need of humanitarian aid.

To learn more about Aid For Ukraine and support its efforts, please visit: https://donate.thedigital.gov.ua/ .

About the initiators of Aid For Ukraine

About the Ministry of Digital Transformation

The Ministry of Digital Transformation is one of the governmental authorities in Ukraine. Main mission is to build the most convenient and user-friendly country in the world. The Ministry is focused on creating "state in a smartphone". This combines both Diia mobile application and Diia web portal, where citizens store e-docs and get access to public services.

The Ministry's vision is that the state should not be associated with a scary monster, corruption and bureaucracy, but become a convenient friendly service. State must provide quality and efficient service to citizens and businesses. This global goal is expanded into 4 specific strategic goals of the Ministry until 2024:

Transfer 100% of all public services for citizens and businesses online.

Provide 95% of transport infrastructure, settlements and their social facilities with access to high-speed Internet.

To teach 6 million Ukrainians digital skills.

Increase the share of IT in the country's GDP to 10%.

About FTX

FTX.COM is a cryptocurrency exchange built by traders, for traders. It offers innovative products, including industry-leading derivatives, options and volatility products, tokenized stocks, prediction markets, leveraged tokens and an OTC desk. FTX.COM strives to be an intuitive yet powerful platform for all kinds of users, and to be the most innovative exchange in the industry. FTX.COM has grown quickly since its founding, becoming one of the most respected cryptocurrency exchanges in the world in less than 3 years.

To learn more about FTX.COM , please visit: https://ftx.com/

FTX.COM is not available to US residents or residents of other prohibited jurisdictions, as set out in its Terms of Service.

About Everstake

Everstake is a Ukraine-based company and the biggest decentralized staking provider in the blockchain industry, trusted by 625,000 users. The company has used enterprise-level hardware to run nodes for the most popular blockchain networks since 2018. Everstake employs 100+ experts across the world and creates complex blockchain products, such as lending protocols, staking pools, blockchain bridges, and marketplaces. The company has been heavily involved in the development of projects like Metaplex, Wormhole, and Everlend.

Media contacts

Liliia Tulupenko, PR & Communications at the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine: [email protected]

M Group Strategic Communications (for FTX): [email protected]

Vlad Likhuta, Head of Growth at Everstake: [email protected]

SOURCE Everstake
DUBLIN, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The "U.S. Continuing Medical Education Market - Industry Outlook & Forecast 2022-2027" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The U.S. continuing medical education market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 5.92% during the forecast period.



Healthcare is one of the industries where online and blended learning is replacing traditional classroom training at an incredible pace. Online learning is personal and is accessed using smartphones, tablets, and laptops at your choice of time and place. Online courseware is designed and built to be engaging and interactive, using quality images, video, audio, and animation to help users comprehend and retain knowledge.



Next-Generation Simulation Technology For CME

Changes in medical practice that limit class hours and patient availability, increased diagnostic, management possibilities, and technological advances have contributed to the increasing use of simulation techniques in medical education.

Simulation technology as an educational tool is revolutionizing medical education, including the acquisition and maintenance of skills and knowledge, integrating technology into a comprehensive clinical curriculum that includes certification and recertification, and adopting proficiency and awareness, practical and competent improvement, and measurement of results. Thus, it will drive demand in the Continuing Medical Education Market in the US in the forecast period



Preference Towards Short Time CME Courses

Time is a challenging factor for physicians across the globe. Allocation of more time on other CME programs will further pressure their schedule. Physicians around the world prefer shorter educational activities required to manage their patients. Most young physicians prefer concise (i.e., <_5 minutes_="minutes_" online_="online_" text-based="text-based" activities="activities" and="and" interactive="interactive" clinical="clinical" decision-making="decision-making" />

Physicians are the most critical assets for any healthcare system. Thus, there is a need for a structured process for continuous training, exposure, learning, and improvement to continue applying their skills and knowledge correctly. Vendors can use this as an opportunity to thrive in the healthcare education market

U.S. CONTINUING MEDICAL EDUCATION MARKET SEGMENTATION

The E-learning delivery method will witness an absolute growth of more than 70% in the forecast period. Increased internet coverage and the evolution of gadgets have helped the education system adapt to new media to attract students.

Some of the main benefits of the internet-based CME include improved access, convenience, and flexibility, reduced travel expenses, and time. But classroom learning still has the highest share in S. Continuing Medical Education (CME) Market. It is preferred as face-to-face interaction with the students, and the professors are more appealing.

Many group activities help discuss and solve cases, thus providing better brainstorming and knowledge transfer sessions

VENDOR LANDSCAPE

The vendors in the CME market are start-up educational companies, branded medical schools, NGOs, physician associations, Insurance companies. In addition to this, the military institutions also provide CME programs to physicians

Mednax Creqs has launched a new cloud-based continuing education platform. This unique and improved online portal is designed to help physicians, advanced practice providers, and other medical professionals across the US to earn AMA PRA Category 1 credits and nursing contact hours

KEY HIGHLIGHTS

COVID-19 has positively impacted the CME programs; there is increased demand for the CME programs for the latest technology and infectious diseases provided online

Increased competitiveness and an increased number of healthcare professionals in various counties force physicians to pursue CME programs to stay competitive. This factor is driving demand in CME Market in the US

KEY GROWTH FACTORS

Introduction of Next-Generation Simulation Technology For CME

Increased Demand for Mobile Platform Education

Increased Adoption of CME Among Non-physicians Healthcare Professionals

Increasing Preference for Short Time CME Courses

Growth in Student Enrolment for Medical Schools

KEY VENDORS

AcademicCME

AffinityCE

Albert Einstein College of Medicine

of Medicine AMA Ed Hub

American College of Cardiology

American Medical Seminars

American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery (ASMBS)

Antidote Education Company

Ao North America

Aspirus

AXIS Medical Education

Ballad Health

Baptist Health South Florida

Baylor College of Medicine

BorderRAC

Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM)

(BUSM) Brody School of Medicine East Carolina University

of Medicine Bryan Health

Bureau of Infectious Disease and Laboratory Sciences

The Center for Forensic Psychiatry

The Carlat CME Institute

Cine-Med

CME Outfitters

CME Procedures

Continuing Education Company

COPIC Insurance Company

Curi

Current Reviews

EB Medicine

Essential CME

EXCEL CME

Florida Psychiatric Society

Forefront Collaborative

Great Valley Publishing Company

Georgia Chapter of the American College of Cardiology

Greeley Company

Haymarket Medical Education

HonorHealth

Indiana University School of Medicine

Kenes Group

Lowell General Hospital

MagMutual

The MEDICAL MUTUAL Liability Insurance Society Of Maryland

Medicus

Med Learning Group

Med-IQ

MedScape

MLMIC Insurance Company

NORCAL Mutual Insurance Company

Oakstone CME

Opus Medicus

Orthopaedic Trauma Association

Penn Medicine Lancaster General Health

PESI Healthcare

Relias

Research to Practice

Rockpointe Corporation

Stanford Medicine

Salus Global

The Society for Simulation in Healthcare

Tower Health

UpToDate

University of North Dakota

University of California, Irvine

World Class CME

Key Topics Covered:



1 Research Methodology



2 Research Objectives



3 Research Process



4 Scope & Coverage

4.1 Market Definition

4.2 Base Year

4.3 Scope of The Study



5 Report Assumptions & Caveats

5.1 Key Caveats

5.2 Currency Conversion

5.3 Market Derivation



6 Market at a Glance



7 Introduction

7.1 Overview

7.2 Impact of Covid-19



8 Market Opportunities & Trends

8.1 Introduction of Next-Generation Simulation Technology For CME

8.2 Increased Demand for Mobile Platform Education

8.3 Increased Adoption of CME Among Non-Physicians Healthcare Professionals

8.4 High Preference for Short-Term CME Courses



9 Market Growth Enablers

9.1 Adoption of Digital Learning

9.2 Growth in Student Enrolment for Medical Schools

9.3 Shortage of Skilled Physicians

9.4 Consistent Expansion of Healthcare Industry & Occurrence Of New Diseases



10 Market Restraints

10.1 Pharma Influence Leading to Biased CME Content

10.2 Increasing Patient Pressure on Physicians

10.3 Heterogeneity of CME Training Programs



11 Market Landscape

11.1 Market Overview

11.1.1 US: Continuing Medical Education (CME)

11.2 Market Size & Forecast

11.2.1 Delivery Mode

11.2.2 Specialty

11.2.3 Providers

11.3 Five Forces Analysis



12 Delivery Mode

12.1 Market Snapshot & Growth Engine

12.2 Market Overview

12.3 Classroom-Based Training

12.3.1 Market Overview

12.3.2 Market Size & Forecast

12.4 E-Learning

12.5 Regularly Scheduled Series (RSS)

12.6 Journals



13 Specialty

13.1 Market Snapshot & Growth Engine

13.2 Market Overview

13.3 Oncology

13.4 Cardiology

13.5 Infectious Disease

13.6 Orthopedic

13.7 Dental

13.8 Primary Care

13.9 Gastroenterology

13.10 General Surgery

13.11 Pediatric

13.12 Allergy & Immunology

13.13 Endocrinology & Metabolism



14 Providers

14.1 Market Snapshot & Growth Engine

14.2 Market Overview

14.3 NPO And Physician Membership Organizations

14.4 Publishing/Educational Company

14.5 School of Medicine

14.6 Hospital/ Healthcare Delivery Systems



15 Competitive Landscape

15.1 Competition Overview

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/53jfmj

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
LOS ANGELES, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Vision Films Inc. ("Vision") announces the VOD release of psychological thriller Seal of Desire on April 12, 2022 from filmmaker Markiss McFadden. Produced, written, directed and starring McFadden, the provocative and romantic film was conceived with two important messages in mind, diversity and strong female characters. It was shot on location in and around Las Vegas.

Seal of Desire Movie Poster

Synopsis : An attractive and very charming psychologist, who specializes in couples therapy, plays both sides as counsels, exposing cheating spouses and seducing their heart-broken wives. But the lines between love and trust, passion and obsession become blurred when the player becomes the pawn.

Watch the trailer: youtube.com/SealofDesire

Starring: Markiss McFadden (Transformers: Dark of the Moon), Jackie Moore (Westworld), Tyler Abron (A Rich Christmas), Brittney Anyone Clemons (Insecure), and Rayvn Collier (Deadly Games, Paradies).

Lise Romanoff, CEO and Managing Director of Vision Films says, "Seal of Desire is a moving film with a beautiful cast, full of taboos, tantalizing intrigue, and suspense. We are proud to be releasing this film from a prolific, multicultural filmmaker that features strong female leads."

Filmmaker Markiss McFadden shares, "" While developing this story it was very important to me to write and present strong female characters. Equally important was to feature a diverse cast and crew. We hope that audiences who respond to psychological thrillers such as Dexter or Mr. & Mrs. Smith find equal pleasure in this film, and we can't wait to reach audiences everywhere."

Seal of Desire will be available April 12 on major streaming and cable platforms across the U.S. and Canada and on DVD at major online retailers.

About Vision Films

Vision Films is a leading independent sales and VOD aggregator specializing in the licensing, marketing, and distribution of over 800 feature films, documentaries, and series from some of the most prolific independent film producers in the world. Led by Lise Romanoff, Managing Director/CEO Worldwide Distribution, Vision Films releases 2-4 films a month across Theatrical, VOD, DVD, and television platforms. Visionfilms.net

Media Contact:

Andrea McKinnon

(818) 415-9442

[email protected]

SOURCE Vision Films, Inc.
Strong data growth fuels German cloud storage market: Frankfurt storage location helps Wasabi Technologies meet ever-increasing demand for data sovereignty and flexible storage solutions

BOSTON and FRANKFURT, Germany, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Wasabi Technologies , the hot cloud storage company, today announced the opening of its first German storage region in Frankfurt, Germany. With this step, the company meets the ever-increasing demand for flexible storage and ensures more proximity to German customers as well as partners looking for compliance-secure solutions in their own country. Following the recently announced location in Paris , the new location in Frankfurt marks Wasabi's next step in its continued global company growth.

The amount of data in municipalities, schools, and companies of all sizes is growing steadily and rapidly across Germany due to increased innovation, new smart city solutions, and widespread digitalization in the education and healthcare sectors. As a result, the demand for cloud storage is increasing regularly in the region. In addition, various EU and country-specific data protection and sovereignty regulations reinforce the need for local data storage solutions. The new Wasabi storage location is based in the Equinix Frankfurt hub, which not only allows Wasabi to address these data sovereignty concerns in Germany, but to also benefit from rigorous environmental and energy management standards.

"The German cloud market is growing rapidly. Wasabi's expansion to Frankfurt helps us meet the growing demand there - while alleviating data sovereignty concerns. We continue to grow in EMEA with a sole focus on helping our customers get the most out of their data by providing them with a cost effective, high performance storage solution close to home," said Richard Czech, VP EMEA, Sales at Wasabi Technologies.

Wasabi's Hot Cloud Storage has redefined the industry with a solution that is one-fifth the cost compared to Amazon S3, with no fees for egress or API requests and no vendor lock-in. By using Wasabi, companies are able to store all of their data securely and cost effectively - and can access it at any time.

To meet the growing demand for cloud storage, Wasabi has begun a comprehensive global rollout of additional storage locations, which include in EMEA Amsterdam, London, and Paris, with more to be added in the coming months in APAC and North America. The company will also continue to expand its fast growing channel partner network across Europe, which to date includes distribution partners Exclusive Networks and ERBERTLANG, and a network of hundreds of resellers and MSPs.

Marc Fischer, Director of Sales at Wasabi-partner ERBERTLANG on the opening: "We are very pleased that Wasabi is now offering access to a data center near Frankfurt in addition to the location in Amsterdam. This means that we can now offer resellers a storage location for their data within Germany, which is particularly important for sensitive industries and represents a compelling argument when offering GDPR-compliant cloud storage."

For more information about Wasabi Technologies and all current storage locations, visit https://wasabi.com/locations/ .

About Wasabi Technologies

Wasabi provides simple, predictable, and affordable hot cloud storage for businesses all over the world. It enables organizations to store and instantly access an unlimited amount of data at 1/5th the price of the competition with no complex tiers or unpredictable egress fees. Trusted by tens of thousands of customers worldwide, Wasabi has been recognized as one of technology's fastest-growing and most visionary companies. Created by Carbonite co-founders and cloud storage pioneers David Friend and Jeff Flowers, Wasabi has secured nearly $275 million in funding to date and is a privately held company based in Boston.

Follow and connect with Wasabi on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and our blog.

Wasabi Technologies PR contact:

Ballou for Wasabi

[email protected]

SOURCE Wasabi Technologies
LONDON, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Windward (LSE: WNWD), the Predictive Intelligence company applying AI to transform global maritime trade, announced today the launch of the "Russia" sanctions solution as a part of Windward's Maritime AI platform. The solution will allow Windward users to minimize risk exposure in maritime trade as it relates to ongoing sanctions against Russia.

In response to the recent Russian invasion into Ukraine, heavy economic sanctions were imposed days prior to the invasion and have since escalated rapidly. Amongst the most prominent organizations affected are Sverbank and VTB, two of the largest Russian financial institutions, state-owned Sovcomflot, Russia's largest maritime and freight shipping company, and the Russian Maritime Register of Shipping. Adding to these complexities, both the US and the UK have announced new bans on imports of Russian oil, gas and energy. The sanctions affect not only the vessels, companies, and individuals listed but also every other entity that is connected through complex ownership links and potentially the cargo itself.

To assist customers by minimizing their risk exposure, Windward is launching the new "Russia" sanctions solution, enabling stakeholders to understand the full scope of Russian-related trade including cargo destinations and sources, allowing them to conduct business in confidence and in accordance with new, rapidly evolving restrictions. Companies and vessels flagged by the Windward database as connected to Russia will be flagged in the platform as Moderate Risk (Amber).

The platform's analytics tools will support organizations in analyzing and flagging crude oil and other potentially banned or sanctioned cargoes as they are exported out of Russian and into destination countries.

As the conflict evolves, every organization will be building their own risk approach and policy. Since the start of the invasion, organizations are increasingly making decisions not only for legal reasons but for ESG considerations as well, which have significant implications on a company's reputation and customer and employee retention. Windward's Maritime AI platform allows every company to configure, monitor and adjust their practices based on their business preferences and the evolving trade restrictions.

"Windward is committed to providing our customers with the utmost visibility during these turbulent times," said Ami Daniel, Co-Founder & CEO of Windward. "As the fog of the conflict and increased sanctions make conducting trade even more complex, we will continuously update our platform so our customers can continue to conduct business with confidence."

Windward's Maritime AI solution is powered by advanced machine learning and behavioral analytics models, empowering its clients across the government, finance, shipping, energy sectors, and beyond to optimize business practices and efficiently navigate all aspects of maritime risk in real-time.

Windward offers a much-needed level of certainty and confidence to entities' that have been impacted by the conflict. As such, Windward is offering its Maritime AI platform to new users for a period of two weeks, at no cost and without asking for any commitment.

About Windward

Windward (LSE: WNWD), a publicly traded company on the London Stock Exchange, is the leading Predictive Intelligence company fusing AI and big data to digitalize the global maritime industry, enabling organizations to achieve business and operational readiness. Windward's AI-powered solution allows stakeholders including banks, commodity traders, insurers, and major energy and shipping companies to make real time, predictive intelligence-driven decisions, providing a 360 view of the maritime ecosystem and its broader impact on safety, security, finance, and business. For more information visit: https://windward.ai/.

Windward Media Contact

Sarah Schloss

Headline Media

[email protected]

+19145065105

SOURCE Windward
NEW YORK, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Furthering its commitment to women in craft, and in celebration of Women's History Month, Guatemalan-made Zacapa Rum is excited to support nonprofit fair trade shop and partner, The Little Market, with the launch of the Made in Guatemala Collection. Available exclusively on thelittlemarket.com starting today, each item in the collection is made by female artisans in Guatemala and hand-selected by Zacapa Rum Brand Ambassador and The Little Market Council Member, Jordana Brewster. Purchases of these items will support The Little Market's ongoing commitment to creating employment opportunities for artisans in underserved communities, celebrating cultural techniques and traditions, and bringing attention to social justice and human rights issues.

Each one of Jordana's picks is a hand-crafted work of art that represents practices and customs passed down across generations. Beginning today, a selection of woven bags made from repurposed huipil, a traditional Mayan woman's blouse, are available in six unique colorways and three sizes - coin purse, envelope clutch and bikini bag. Each pattern is one-of-a-kind, differing by region and town and representative of the weaver's heritage and personality. In addition, Jordana chose glassware from Cantel, the purchase of which supports efforts to create safe working environments, living wages and financial security for artisans. Glassware comes in various shapes and sizes including stemless wine, cocktail, low ball and high ball glasses and a water pitcher.

"I am thrilled to curate this very special collection with my two trusted partners, Zacapa Rum and The Little Market, and help continue their endeavors to uplift female crafters," explains Zacapa Brand Ambassador and The Little Market Council Member, Jordana Brewster. "The purchase of these goods allows artisans in Guatemala to grow their businesses, express their heritage and move towards financial independence. I can't think of a better way to celebrate Women's History Month."

A spirit rooted in craft and steeped in the artistry of its female network, Zacapa Rum is inspired by The Little Market and its mission to create work for women in underserved communities locally, nationally and globally. With liquid expertly blended by Master Blender, Lorena Vasquez and handwoven petate bands that encircle each bottle, Zacapa Rum, like the exquisite creations by the makers on The Little Market, is a work of art thoughtfully and expertly crafted by female hands.

"As a brand that supports hundreds of female petate weavers across Guatemala, we know that when women can learn and participate in dignified, safe work, they are empowered to grow their skills, support themselves and reinvest their earnings into their families and communities," says Brand Manager, Dina Krannich. "The Made in Guatemala Collection holds a special place in our hearts. Zacapa is truly a Guatemalan brand: from the first pressing of sugar cane to our high-altitude aging to the final bottling, every step in our rum's journey takes place in Guatemala, so collaborating with The Little Market on this collection is the perfect partnership."

Zacapa Rum has also partnered with famed mixologist and Co-Founder of the all-female bartending competition, Speed Rack, Lynnette Marrero, to create original cocktails that pay tribute to the Mujeres Fuertes - or strong women - in its family. The Mujeres Fuertes Cocktail Collection is inspired by this team of female leaders and brand ambassadors behind the premium rum - Lorena Vasquez, Jordana Brewster, Hannah Skvarla, Chef Grace Ramirez and Lynnette Marrero - and honors each woman's personality, style and legacy. For those toasting Women's History Month from home, these signature serves are a delicious accompaniment to the handblown glassware in the Made in Guatemala Collection.

Items in The Little Market's Made in Guatemala Collection, curated by Jordana Brewster and supported by Zacapa Rum, range from $18 to $56 and are available now at thelittlemarket.com while supplies last.

Be sure to follow @ZacapaRumUSA on Instagram for delicious cocktail content and news, including exclusive recipes from the Mujeres Fuertes Cocktail Collection.

RON ZACAPA Rum. 40% Alc/Vol. Imported by The Ron Zacapa Co., New York, NY. Enjoy responsibly. Only share with those 21+.

About Zacapa Rum

Crafted in Guatemala, Zacapa Rum is a work of art and an expression of patience, richness, quality and master blending. The Zacapa story embodies the heart and soul of the powerful female artists behind it. Zacapa belongs on the tables of friends and communities, gathered to savor simple pleasures and strengthen connections. Zacapa's Master Blender of over 36 years, Lorena Vasquez is one of only a few female leaders in a traditionally male-dominated industry. She brings her expressive character and special approach to blending, harnessing the best ingredients from Guatemala to create one of the world's best-tasting rums. Zacapa has the honor of being the first brand to be inducted into the International Rum Festival's Hall of Fame. Zacapa No. 23, Zacapa Edicion Negra and Zacapa XO are available at fine liquor stores, bars and restaurants around the world. For more information, visit https://www.zacaparum.com/ .

About Diageo North America

Diageo is a global leader in beverage alcohol with an outstanding collection of brands including Johnnie Walker, Crown Royal, Bulleit and Buchanan's whiskies, Smirnoff, Ciroc and Ketel One vodkas, Casamigos, DeLeon and Don Julio tequilas, Captain Morgan, Baileys, Tanqueray and Guinness.

Diageo is listed on both the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: DEO) and the London Stock Exchange (LSE: DGE) and their products are sold in more than 180 countries around the world.

For more information about Diageo, their people, brands, and performance, visit www.diageo.com. Visit Diageo's global responsible drinking resource, www.DRINKiQ.com, for information, initiatives, and ways to share best practices. Follow on Twitter and Instagram for news and information about Diageo North America: @Diageo_NA.

About The Little Market

Founded in 2013 by Lauren Conrad and Hannah Skvarla, The Little Market is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, fair trade shop dedicated to the economic self-sufficiency of women and other underserved communities through dignified income opportunities. With a mission anchored in the fundamental belief that every person has the right to safe jobs and fair livable wages, The Little Market's goal is to break the cycle of poverty and create a brighter, more sustainable future for artisans, their families, and their communities. To learn more and shop the store, please visit www.thelittlemarket.com . Follow on Instagram and Twitter @TheLittleMarket and @shopthelittlemarket on Facebook.

Media Contacts

Jenna Kaplan/Johanna Cyran

Zacapa Rum, Bullfrog + Baum

[email protected]

Jazmine Settles

DIAGEO

[email protected]

Sunshine Sachs

The Little Market

[email protected]

SOURCE Zacapa Rum
The Greenrose Holding Company (OTCQX:GNRS) Inc, which plans to become a multistate cultivator and producer of cannabis products, revealed that it closed its previously announced acquisition of the assets of Arizona-based True Harvest LLC.

Under the terms of the deal, Greenrose paid a consideration of $57.6 million at the close, consisting of $12.5 million in cash, $23 million in the form of a convertible note, $4.6 million in assumed debt, and $17.5 million in shares of the companys stock.

Contingent upon True Harvest achieving a certain price point per pound of cannabis flower relative to total flower production within 36 months of the closing of the transaction, Greenrose will pay additional consideration of up to $35 million in the form of an earnout, payable in shares, said Greenrose.

READ: Greenrose Acquisition renamed as The Greenrose Holding Company after closing of business combination with Theraplant
Bitcoin and Ethereum remained steady, unable to gain back some of the losses incurred late last week, with the EU set to follow the US and vote on its own regulatory framework for crypto assets today.

Bitcoin was down 0.42%, changing hands at US$38,978, unable to recover over the weekend after dipping below the key support level of US$40,000 last Friday.

Ethereum was down 0.08% to US$2,584, with cryptos seemingly settled over the past two days with the equity markets closed.

The EU is set to vote on a proposed rule today, which could effectively amount to ban of Bitcoin.

The vote would look to limit the amount of proof-of-work mining that takes place, a key component in mining Bitcoin tokens.

A final decision is reportedly in the balance, and the outcome either way could see huge swings in the market, so it's one to keep an eye out for later.

According to Naeem Aslam, a market analyst at AvaTrade, there is unclarity among traders about what cryptos' leading token is worth.

The tug war between the bulls and the bears has confused traders, but one thing is clear: in this tug war, it was bears who have been winning the battles, Aslam added.

But this doesnt mean they have won the war, as history is clearly on the side of the BTC bulls.

He added that this week could be a big one for Bitcoin, and investors will need to keep an eye for key support and resistance levels.

Going into this week, traders will be looking at two essential price levels, and both of them are extremely important for the Bitcoin price.

Firstly, the support is at US$30,000, and secondly, the resistance is at US$50,000. The Bitcoin price needs to break out of this ugly consolidation zone, and only then we could see that a new trend has formed.

In some of the altcoins, Terra was up 3.87% to US$91.03, Solana was down 1.65% to US$80.76 and Avalanche was down 2.80% to US$69.85%.
Cellular Goods PLC (LSE:CBX), the UK-based wellness company, has launched outdoor marketing campaigns in Manchester and London.

The campaign will run over the next two months and feature advertisements to be displayed on more than 100 digital screens and high-impact print billboards across prominent high-street locations. In addition, more than 20 digital screens will feature the advertisements at health and fitness destinations at David Lloyd and Harbour Clubs in London.

The move is part of Cellular Goods' nationwide marketing campaign which kicked off with the publication of a white paper highlighting the age prevention benefits of cannabigerol (CBG) and cannabidiol (CBD) used in its products and the start of product sales on Amazon Marketplace from February this year.

The promotional push is aimed at boosting Cellular Goods' Look Better (skincare) and Feel Better (supplements) product ranges. The advertisements will appear on different dates and durations on each location.

"We're pleased to announce the beginning of our outdoor marketing campaign which will complement our ongoing national marketing campaign aimed at introducing our brand and premium products to a broad consumer audience. We are committed to continue delivering marketing initiatives to not only continue raising awareness about our brand, but also to teach Britain about cannabinoids and their potential to improve people's wellness," said Anna Chokina, the chief executive officer of Cellular Goods.
Oriole Resources PLC (AIM:ORR) chief executive Tim Livesey said the latest results from its soil sampling programme were hugely significant as they were helping confirm proof-of-concept for the companys Central Licence Package in Cameroon.

The highest reported read-out was 838 parts per billion (ppb) of gold on the Mbe licence area.

In all, Oriole has received assays for 4,785 soil sediment samples covering its Mbe and Ndom licences that have identified multiple gold-in-soil anomalies.

These are thought to relate to the northeast-trending geological feature called the Tchollire Banyo shear zone corridor.

The company said sampling of its remaining four priority-one grids is ongoing.

"Our initial stream sediment sampling programme confirmed gold in a number of drainage basins covering more than 50-kilometre strike length of the Tchollire-Banyo Shear Zone corridor, said CEO Livesey.

The soil sampling results are providing further definition to those anomalies, enabling the team to focus in on the most prospective areas that will lead naturally towards trenching and drill targeting.

"These results are hugely significant as they are confirming proof-of-concept for the Central Licence Package. We are seeing multiple areas of gold mineralisation in a brand-new gold district where there has been no historical exploration."

Oriole owns 90% of the Central Licence Package, a district-scale collection of eight licences covering 3,592 square kilometres of previously unexplored land prospective for gold.
Sales in Britains managed restaurant, pub and bars sectors rose above pre-pandemic levels in February, according to market research group CGA.

The latest Coffer CGA Business Tracker revealed like-for-like sales rose 3% year-on-year compared to (pre-pandemic) February 2019, after falling 1.0% on a two-year comparison basis in January.

Restaurants increased like-for-like sales by 9% in February, just outpacing the 7% growth for bars, which benefited from the scrapping of requirements for vaccination passes in late-night venues, CGA said. Pubs had a tougher month, ending down 1% on the pre-COVID-19 levels of February 2019.

London continues to struggle to recapture former glories. Managed groups like-for-like sales inside the M25 in February were 4% below February 2019, compared to growth of 6% beyond the M25.

These figures show managed groups are building momentum after two years of turmoil. Delivery and late-night bars are particularly buoyant at the moment, and underlying demand for hospitality experiences remains strong; however, margins are being tightly squeezed by fast-rising costs, and the cost-of-living crisis is likely to dent consumer spending as the year goes on. Some businesses remain extremely vulnerable, and theres a powerful case for government support on tax and other issues to help them fuel the UKs post-COVID-19 economic recovery, said CGAs Karl Chessel.

GA collected sales figures directly from 62 leading companies for the February edition of the Coffer CGA Business Tracker.
Cobra Resources PLC (LSE:COBR) said its 2022 exploration programme for the Wudinna project in South Australia is fully funded and will focus on expanding its recent rare earths discovery and on updating the gold resource estimate.

We are pursuing a three-pronged strategy of gold, rare earths, and iron oxide copper gold, with highly encouraging indicators across all three, said chief executive Rupert Verco.

This intense period of activity is also expected to see Cobra achieve its 75% earn-in to the Wudinna project milestone in Q3 2022," he said.

Last month, the London-listed company announced it had encountered further gold mineralisation on the Clarke prospect, part of Wudinna, and had also intercepted additional rare earth elements (REE).

READ: Cobra hits gold and rare earths in latest round of drilling at Clarke

Cobra said it is re-analysing retained samples from previous drilling programmes to test the extent of the REE mineralisation found close to existing gold occurrences.

The company has outlined its plans for the project, including timelines, in a slide presentation and video, both released today on its website.
Severn Trent and fellow water utility Anglian are to set aside 100mlnt a year to tackle growing public anger over the amount of sewage being pumped into the UKs rivers and waterways.

Liv Garfield, Severn Tents chief executive, admitted that the utility is moving slower than the public wants adding that the industry hasnt managed to keep pace with expectations.

When you look at the evidence in the data, the situation improves year on year.

The two utilities said they will ensue ensure storm overflows and sewage treatment works do not harm rivers according to official guidelines.

Garfield added: The only way to make a real difference is to identify clear and actionable commitments and provide real transparency on our progress.

We cannot do this alone; we need everyone to understand their role in river health.

That is why we are committed to redoubling our own efforts and investment to help others reduce their impact as well as our own.

The frequency and volume of sewage pouring into rivers from storm overflows has been a growing problem for water companies since Brexit.

Last September, the government allowed the industry to dump unprocessed sewage into rivers and the sea, as Brexit and the pandemic disrupted normal water treatment.

Britains exit from the European Union had made it more difficult to get hold of water treatment chemicals, a situation made worse by port disruptions caused by Covid.

A report in January from parliaments Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) blamed the poor water quality in UK rivers on "chronic" underinvestment and multiple failures in monitoring, governance and enforcement.

Only 14% of English rivers meet good ecological status and not a single river in England has received a clean bill of health for chemical contamination, the EAC report said.

Using Environment Agency guidelines, Severn and Anglian have said they endeavour to ensure storm overflows and sewage treatment works do not harm rivers.

Severn is expected to invest around 100mln each year into the new plans, which also include helping wildlife and getting people more access to rivers.

Anglian chief Peter Simpson added: As the Environment Bill became the Environment Act, we made it clear we felt even more action was needed to ensure the future health of our rivers  by coming together as an industry, securing the right investment as part of the regulatory process, and working collaboratively with other sectors.

Brexit is cited as one of the reasons pollution in Britains rivers has soared as alongside the pandemic supplies of water treatment chemicals were disrupted prompting the giving to give the sector more leeway to dump sewage in waterways.

Shares in Severn Trent were little changed at 2,828p.
Wirecard (ETR:WDI)s ex-chief executive Markus Braun was charged with fraud, breach of trust and accounting manipulation by Munich prosecutors following a 21-month investigation into the collapse of the German-based payments group.

In 2018, the company was worth 24bn before crashing into insolvency in June 2020 and admitting half its operations and 1.9bn in corporate cash did not exist.

Braun, who has been in custody since July 2020 and denies any wrongdoing, could face up to 15 years in prison if found guilty, the Financial Times said.

He was charged with 25 cases of organised professional market manipulation and breaches over trust of hundreds of millions in loans that the company gave to its Asian business partners.

Prosecutors also claim Braun and co-defendants had been aware since 2015 the company was loss-making and knowingly received loans from banks and bond investors to cover losses.

Markus Braun was not a member of the gang that embezzled millions, his spokesperson said Monday, adding his client was unaware of criminal ongoings.

The groups former deputy finance director and head of accounting Stephan von Erffa and an ex Dubai-based manager in charge of a Wirecard (ETR:WDI) subsidiary, who cannot be named as they are a chief witness, were also charged on Monday.

Jan Marsalek, the companys chief operating officer and who was thought to be at the centre of the fraud, has been in hiding since June 2020 and therefore cannot be charged under German law.

He was last spotted in Minsk, Belarus but is likely now to be hiding in Russia, according to people close to the matter.

Wirecard provided the financial backbone for countless fintech companies including Monzo, Revolut, Loot, Curve, Funding Circle, Atom, Tandem and Pockit before its collapse.
Caspin Resources Ltd (ASX:CPN) has found significant rhodium mineralisation from drill hole YARC0022 at the XC-22 Prospect at its Yarawindah Brook PGE-Nickel-Copper Project in Western Australia.

Significant rhodium up to 465 ppb associated with platinum and palladium have been identified.

Rhodium is an extremely rare and valuable platinum group element (PGE).

Caspin plans to undertake selected re-assaying of past and upcoming drilling for the full PGE suite.

Another step closer to economic discovery

Caspin chief executive officer Greg Miles said: This is an interesting new development for XC-22 and indeed our entire Yarawindah Brook Project.

Its a pleasant surprise given this is the first time weve ever assayed for rhodium and bodes well for the discovery of more mineralisation.

Because of its value, small amounts as low as 100ppb can make a significant contribution to the economics of PGE deposits.

Weve now got an extensive assaying program ahead of us and if we can demonstrate that rhodium mineralisation occurs consistently with platinum and palladium at XC-22, then we could be another step closer to an economic discovery.

Significant results

Following the significant results in YARC0022, the company analysed the lower PGE-rich mineralised zone for the full six PGE suite of elements - iridium, osmium, rhodium, and ruthenium, as well as platinum and palladium.

This analysis has returned significant grades of rhodium associated with the already recognised platinum and palladium mineralisation, with a peak value of 465ppb rhodium.

Grades greater than 100ppb, or 0.1 g/t, are considered highly significant.

The revised intercepts are as follows:

 13 metres at 0.17 g/t palladium, 0.74 g/t platinum, 0.11 g/t rhodium, 0.26% nickel, 0.21% copper from 101 metres, including 2 metres at 0.40 g/t palladium, 2.45 g/t platinum, 0.41 g/t rhodium, 0.23% nickel, 0.09% copper from 112 metres.

When adding the minor gold contribution, this can be expressed as 13 metres at 1.08 g/t 4E, 0.26% nickel & 0.21% copper, including 2 metres at 3.29g/t 4E, 0.23% nickel & 0.09% copper.

Implications at Yarawindah

Despite the value of rhodium, routine analysis is rarely undertaken because of the scarcity of the metal and significant additional cost to assay the full six-PGE suite.

Prior to Caspins involvement in the project, only five samples had ever been assayed for rhodium as part of a metallurgical sighter program in 2006.

The company is extremely encouraged that its first-ever assaying of rhodium has returned such significant results.

Caspin will now review all of its past exploration results to select zones of PGE-rich mineralisation for six-element PGE assay, with the aim to identify further rhodium mineralisation.

The current phase of drilling at XC-22 is progressing well.

Assaying for rhodium will be conducted after confirmation of platinum and palladium mineralisation, with a focus on the pyroxenite-peridotite contact zone, which appears to be the host of mineralisation intersected so far.
Critical Resources Ltd (ASX:CRR) has appointed Cyr Drilling International as the drilling contractor for the planned upcoming maiden drill program at its Mavis Lake Lithium Project in Ontario, Canada.

The program, which comprises 49 holes for a total of 5,000 metres, is expected to commence in April 2022.

Previous exploration results have demonstrated excellent potential for resource definition and expansion.

Further expand mineralisation extent potential

Critical Resources managing director Alex Biggs said: We are pleased to announce the appointment of Cyr Drilling as our contractor for the conduct of drilling activities at Mavis Lake.

Cyr provides a strong track record in safety, a high level of expertise and employment of best practice principles.

Historical drilling at Mavis Lake has returned multiple high-grade lithium intersects downhole.

The purpose of this drill program is to confirm historic drilling from 1956 to 2016 and further expand the mineralisation extent potential of the observed pegmatites.

We welcome Cyr Drilling as our drilling partner for Mavis Lake and look forward to working together on the Project.

Planned drilling

Drilling on the property has occurred intermittently since 1956.

Work will be focused on the southern pegmatite outcrop (Pegmatite 6) with the remainder taking place on the northern outcrops (Pegmatite 17 and 18).

By drilling validation holes, infill holes and extensional holes, the company will be moving closer to delineating a JORC compliant mineral resource.

Previous exploration campaigns at Mavis Lake have confirmed the presence of lithium-bearing pegmatites.

The recently conducted airborne survey demonstrated the potential continuity of geological trends between Pegmatite 6 and Pegmatite 18.

This potential continuity represents new areas of interest for the company that will be investigated via surface mapping and sampling with the aim of identifying new drill targets

Permitting and stakeholder engagement

Permitting is progressing well and as expected.

Critical Resources will update the market in due course.

Mavis Lake Project

The Mavis Lake Lithium Project, 19 kilometres east of the town of Dryden, Ontario, is close to the Trans-Canada highway and railway major transportation arteries linking larger cities such as Thunder Bay, Ontario, to the southeast and Winnipeg, Manitoba, to the west.

The region, a well-established lithium province with multiple projects, boasts of excellent infrastructure with hydro-power located a few kilometres to the southwest of the project.

Previous drill programs have yielded high-grade lithium oxide intercepts including:

 55.25 metres at 1.04% lithium oxide from 80.75 metres; and

 26.30 metres at 1.70% lithium oxide from 111.9 metres including 7.70 metres at 2.97% lithium oxide from 130.5 metres.

These results present significant exploration potential and a future work program has been determined.
Moho Resources Ltd (ASX:MOH) has set the diamond drill rig turning at the Omrah nickel prospect of the Silver Swan North Project in Western Australia, targeting an untested electromagnetic (EM) conductor that was confirmed with geophysical interpretation of historic EM survey data.

The diamond drilling has been designed to follow up shallower reverse circulation (RC) drilling, which bottomed-out at 165 metres of depth in hole 21SSC005.

Based on geophysical modelling, Moho expects to intersect the EM conductor at about 400 metres of depth, hosted in an ultramafic rock unit prospective for massive nickel sulphide mineralisation.

Assays still pending for RC drilling samples

The Omrah and Wise prospects  identified through review of historic geophysical and geological data  were tested with RC drilling in January, completing 3,060 metres over 14 holes.

Assay results from this program are undergoing final quality assurance procedures prior to release, the data from which will likely aid in further drill targeting at the prospects.

Moho has also been awarded a $150,000 exploration grant by the West Australian government, which will cover up to 50% of direct drilling costs associated with the various campaigns undertaken to test for massive nickel sulphide mineralisation at the Omrah and Wise nickel prospects.

From here Moho Resources will:

conduct diamond core logging, cutting, and assaying;

undertake down-hole EM surveying of diamond hole and selected RC holes;

await assays on diamond core;

finalise assays and report on RC drilling; and

deliver half diamond core and preliminary report to DMIRS to recoup 80% of cofounded drilling grant.

About Moho Resources

Moho Resources is an Australian mining company focused on gold and nickel exploration at the Empress Springs, Silver Swan North and Burracoppin projects.

The company considers Empress Springs in Queensland, which comprises three adjacent exploration permits with a total area of around 773 square kilometres, to have the potential for base metal mineralisation.

The Silver Swan North Project is around 50 kilometres northeast of Kalgoorlie and covers about 55 square kilometres within the gold-rich Kalgoorlie Terrane, while Burracoppin further to the west is also prospective for gold.
Hygrovest Ltd (ASX:HGV) is continuing to focus its new investment efforts on themes like disease testing, biotech, cryptocurrencies and decarbonization.

At the same time, the company is also focused on its existing cannabis portfolio companies that outperform the industry.

Hygrovest recorded a loss of 20% for the financial year to 28 February 2022 compared to the 63% loss in the listed Canadian cannabis index.

The poor performance of listed cannabis securities has underlined the merits of the decision of Hygrovest shareholders to remove the cap on non-cannabis investments in December 2021 and focus on new investments in sectors other than cannabis.

The following are updates from Hygrovests portfolio companies:

Weed Me. This month Hygrovest completed a second C$1 million investment tranche into Weed Me. Weed Me continues to outperform the industry and continues to outpace its budget forecast. The company now has a revenue run rate higher than many bellwether companies in the space and continues to show great margins. As the terms for Hygrovest's investment were negotiated in mid-2021, the second tranche of the investment comes at a significant discount to the value the company has generated since then.

This month Hygrovest completed a second C$1 million investment tranche into Weed Me. Weed Me continues to outperform the industry and continues to outpace its budget forecast. The company now has a revenue run rate higher than many bellwether companies in the space and continues to show great margins. As the terms for Hygrovest's investment were negotiated in mid-2021, the second tranche of the investment comes at a significant discount to the value the company has generated since then. Medio Labs/Brainworks. The company has recently informed Hygrovest of some large and unexpected customer wins with an expectation of material revenues over the next several months. As these revenues are verified, Hygrovest will review the valuation.

The company has recently informed Hygrovest of some large and unexpected customer wins with an expectation of material revenues over the next several months. As these revenues are verified, Hygrovest will review the valuation. Valo Therapeutics. Valo continues to progress its planned Phase-1 candidate PeptiCRAd-1 immunotherapy which remains on track to enter the clinic in Q1 2022. They are preparing all the necessary logistics at the clinical study sites so that they can treat their first patient in Q1 2022. Valo is concurrently making progress towards a stock market listing and associated financing round sometime in 2022. Valo has commenced many of the preparatory workstreams required for the contemplated listing including the appointment of issuers council, identification of a target shell, preparation of financial accounts, appointment of an additional communications agency, etc.

Valo continues to progress its planned Phase-1 candidate PeptiCRAd-1 immunotherapy which remains on track to enter the clinic in Q1 2022. They are preparing all the necessary logistics at the clinical study sites so that they can treat their first patient in Q1 2022. Valo is concurrently making progress towards a stock market listing and associated financing round sometime in 2022. Valo has commenced many of the preparatory workstreams required for the contemplated listing including the appointment of issuers council, identification of a target shell, preparation of financial accounts, appointment of an additional communications agency, etc. Vintage Wine Estates (VWE). VWE recently announced that its Board of Directors has authorised the repurchase of up to US$30 million in aggregate value of the companys common stock and/or warrants through 8 September 2022. Hygrovest is encouraged to see this as companies typically take such action when they believe their stock is undervalued and they expect to have excess cash flows.

VWE recently announced that its Board of Directors has authorised the repurchase of up to US$30 million in aggregate value of the companys common stock and/or warrants through 8 September 2022. Hygrovest is encouraged to see this as companies typically take such action when they believe their stock is undervalued and they expect to have excess cash flows. Southern Cannabis Holdings (SCH). Consolidated revenue from February 2022 is up about 20% on January and consolidated profit is back in the black since last September 2021. Restructuring of clinics and the investment in products is paying off and the Prescription Vape business continues to grow month-over-month. SCH expect the positive trends to continue with a record revenue number in March and an overall profitable quarter.

In addition to continued capital investments in new sectors, Hygrovest continues to leverage its portfolio platform so investee companies can help each other from a technical and commercial standpoint.
Cauldron Energy Ltd (ASX:CXU) has raised $0.75 million in a placement managed by Everblu Capital.

The capital raise, which attracted oversubscriptions well beyond the $0.75 million target, ensures the explorer is funded to advance its suite of gold, uranium and sand projects.

Specifically, Cauldron will use the funds to complete an exploration program at its Blackwood Gold Project in Victoria.

The placement is expected to settle on March 15, with shares piqued to commence trade the following day.

Strong support for unique commodity mix

Commenting on the success of the placement, Cauldron executive chairman Simon Youds said he was pleased with the raising outcome.

Cauldron is delighted with the strong response to the placement and strong support for the companys unique commodity mix and strategic direction to simultaneously advance its gold, uranium and sand project interests.

The Companys Blackwood Gold Project in Victoria is located in Victorias golden triangle, a province that has clusters of high-grade gold mines, including Fosterville, Bendigo and Ballarat, among many others.

Victoria has produced an incredible 70 million ounces of gold to date, comprising 30% of all gold mined in Australia, and the Blackwood Gold Project is nestled in a highly prospective region with historic high-grade production.

The Companys Yanrey Uranium Project is world-class and has the potential to grow, while sand is a highly sought-after commodity and the companys sand project provides it with exposure to this burgeoning industry.

The fine print

Cauldron will issue slightly more than 44 million new ordinary shares to investors thanks to the $0.75 million placement.

Investors picked up the shares at $0.017 apiece, representing:

An 11% discount to the five-day volume-weighted average price (VWAP);

A 12% markdown from the 14day VWAP;

A 16% discount to the 28day VWAP; and

A 19% markdown from the last closing price of $0.021 on March 10, 2022.

In addition to their placement shares, subscribers will receive one new option for every three shares subscribed for, meaning Cauldron will distribute roughly 14.7 million options.

The options can be exercised on or before March 15, 2024, and carry a 3.4 cent exercise price.

The placements lead manager, Everblu Capital, is entitled to a placement fee of 6%, as well as 10 million options.
Ukraines president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has indicated he would meet Vladimir Putin for peace talks

FTSE 100 closes 41 points higher

Polymetal back on top

UK fuel hits another record

4:55pm: FTSE 100 closes 41 points higher

The FTSE rebounded on Monday, a sign that investors are becoming more comfortable with the financial risks of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The UK's blue chip index finised the day at 7,196 points, a 41-point gain or 0.6%.

The initial fighting in Ukraine prompted an outbreak of risk aversion in markets, but for now the situation seems to have settled down, at least for markets," IG's Chris Beauchamp said.

However, Beauchamp is predicting the bullish sentiment will continue.

"Western intervention still looks highly unlikely, and for now negotiations continue. What is harder to tell is whether the coming months will see a real slowdown in growth. For now it looks like bullish sentiment will revive, but there are still plenty of unknowns to deal with.

4:00pm: FTSE 100 lifted by tentative Ukraine optimism

The Footsie gained 47 points, or 0.66%, with early market sentiment that peace talks between Russia and Ukraine are progressing well having remained throughout the day.

That sentiment was echoed in the US markets, with all the indices minus the Nasdaq up.

3.40pm: North Sea investment a possibility, say Downing Street

According to a Downing Street spokesperson, Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the bosses of offshore oil and gas companies are said to have discussed the possibility of increasing investment in the North Sea.

The move would help ease the reliance on imported gas and boost the supply of domestic gas.

The Prime Minister and CEOs discussed increasing investment in the North Sea oil and gas industry and boosting supply of domestic gas, the spokesperson said.

This included how the UK can remove barriers facing investors and developers, and help projects come online more quickly.

3.30pm: Russia turns to yuan

Russias finance minister Anton Siluanov has said the country may lean on its reserves of Chinese yuan to pay Wednesdays interest payment on its debts in an attempt to avoid a default.

According to Reuters, Siluanov said this would mean Moscow has met its obligations to avoid defaulting on the debt.

The country cannot pay from its reserves of US dollars, euros, sterling and yen following sanctions on its central bank.

It is believed Russia is blocked from accessing around US$320bn in foreign exchange reserves, most of which are held in overseas financial centers, although it still has access to its gold and yuan reserves.

Earlier today, it was reported by the Guardian that Russia may use its own currency, the rouble, to pay the interest on its debt, although that move would have likely resulted in a default given the currency has tanked, with US$1 equalling 120.50 roubles.

Moscow is due to pay US$117mln interest payments on two dollar-denominated bonds.

2.54pm: Polymetal regains top spot

Polymetal International PLC (LSE:POLY) regained its place as the biggest riser on the Footsie, up 6.81%, as the index gained 57 points.

FTSE Russell, a subsidiary of the London Stock Exchange, had announced earlier it would be booting four Russian-linked stocks from the 100 and 250 lists, with Polymetal and Evraz PLC (LSE:EVR) facing the chop in this Friday's review.

That caused the Anglo-Russian mining company to fall towards the bottom of today's fallers and risers on the blue-chip index, but has since rallied to regain top spot.

2.30pm: US markets open higher as expected

As expected, the US markets opened higher as investors across the pond react to comments made by both Ukrainian and Russian ministers that peace talks are progressing well.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average opened 304 points or 0.93% higher, while the S&P 500 gained 26 points, a 0.62% climb.

The Nasdaq index climbed by 41 points or 0.32%.

2.20pm: Commodities being hit by war

Russias invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent sanctions imposed on Moscow have caused serious dislocations of commodities, and the longer the Fed and governments take to try and control the issue, the worse the problem will get, according to George Lagarias, chief economist at Mazars.

"The result in failing to predict Russias invasion has been further upheaval in the equities market, where volatility (if extrapolated to year-end) would reach that of the Euro Crisis. At the heart of this crisis is not the financial system like 2008. Instead, its the global commodities markets. Errant commodity prices exacerbate inflation and put pressure on all asset classes.

"Sanctions on Russia are taking an enormous toll on western markets. Volatility for stocks and bonds is one thing. But commodities markets are experiencing serious dislocations. As a result, global markets are trendless and in desperate search of a paradigm- and leadership.

The Fed, the worlds de facto central bank and the organisation everyone is looking to, may now persist that inflation is its primary mandate, but it surely knows it can do precious little to stop prices rising due to shortages. The nature of this crisis is so unique, that it may even have to consider new tools, like Quantitative Easing was in 2008.

"The simultaneous fall of stocks and bonds coupled with crippling volatility in the alternatives space confirms that we are living through another systemic event. The quicker investors and policymakers realise that, the more contained the consequences.

But every day that passes when the Fed is focused on inflation it cant contain and developed market governments worry about debt and fiscal outlays, is a day when a systemic problem is getting worse. That day will eventually cost billions of freshly printed money and prolong any sort of return to market normality.

Investors should be on the lookout for policy announcements soon, lest the Great Commodity Crisis seriously threatens both investment portfolios and cash."

2.00pm: UK fuel hits another record

UK fuel prices hit another record over the weekend as a surge in crude oil pushed prices higher.

Diesel hit 173.4p per litre, up 22p from the previous month, while petrol reached 163.5p per litre.

Crude oil retreated today by 5.99% to US$102.78 a barrel, with hopes that will soon translate to a fall in prices at the pumps.

RAC fuel spokesman Simon Williams said, The price hikes seen over the weekend are still a result of the oil price rise which began at the start of the month and peaked early last week.

As the oil price has now fallen back, we should hopefully reach the peak and start to see prices going the other way to reflect the big drop in wholesale costs seen at the end of last week, subject to no further spikes in the barrel price this week.

1.30pm: Scottish Mortgage down, Nasdaq set to open higher

The tech-heavy Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust PLC (LSE:SMT) was down 2.23%, with the Nasdaq expected to open higher after adding 0.45% in pre-market trading.

Meituan, which is the sixth-largest holding in the trust at 3%, and Nio, which is at number 11 and comprises 2.3% of its portfolio, both experienced double-digit losses as the Chinese markets tanked following a rise in Covid cases.

Hong Kong's Hang-Seng index was hit most, falling 4.97%, while the Shanghai Stock Exchange fell 2.60%.

12.55pm: Housebuilders lead the way

Housebuilder Persimmon PLC (LSE:PSN) leads the way as todays biggest climber on Londons blue-chip index, up 5.85%.

Taylor Wimpey PLC (LSE:TW.) also makes up the top five, up 3.65%, with housebuilders seemingly boosted by a news story over the weekend surrounding the cladding on buildings, according to Liberum.

Sources close to a PwC study suggest the bill to remedy unsafe cladding on buildings between 11 and 18 metres is expected to be less than 1bn, significantly lower than previous government claims of 4bn.

The story also cites that the cost of footing the bill will not solely fall at the feet of developers, but a wide range of companies alongside government contributions.

12.35pm: US preview with stocks expected to open higher

US stocks are expected to open higher as Russia and Ukraine resume virtual talks aimed at ending the conflict that has continued to escalate.

Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.28% in Monday pre-market trading, while those for the broader S&P 500 index gained 0.78% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq added 0.45%.

The diplomatic efforts to end the war follow an escalation in the conflict over the week as Russia attacked a Ukraine base close the country's border with Poland, killing 35 people and wounding 134, according to a Ukrainian official. Russia is also reported to have asked China to provide it with military equipment.

Stock index futures rose as trading got underway on Monday, while gold and crude oil slipped, as once again, there was hope that the Ukraine conflict could end after officials from both sides gave their most upbeat assessments yet on Sunday about the progress in peace talks, commented Fawad Razaqzada, market analyst at ThinkMarkets. "Apparently, there could be positive results within days."

Stocks closed with losses on Friday after the markets declined in the final hour of the trading session as investors remained cautious due to the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war.

The Dow lost 0.69% to 32,944, while the Nasdaq plunged 2.18% to 12,844 and the S&P 500 shed 1.3% to 4,204.

You can understand why the markets have reacted positively to the headlines given the fact that developments in Ukraine have been the primary driver of risk appetite," Razaqzada added. "But so far, every bit of optimism has led to pessimism and disappointment, with Russian forces continuing their military operations regardless. Will this prove to be another such scenario?"

Also this week, the US Federal Reserve is expected to hike interest rates by 25 basis points when the Federal Open Market Committee wraps up its two-day meeting on Wednesday.

Will the Fed surprise the market with a 50 basis point hike? I doubt it, Razaqzada said.

Although inflation has continued to soar, a 25 basis point hike is a good way, the Fed would feel, to get the hiking cycle started without scaring the markets.

12.15pm: Evraz and Polymetal set for the boot

Index provider FTSE Russell said it would be deleting four UK-listed Russian-focused companies from its indices after brokers refused to sell their shares.

Included on the list are FTSE 100 companies Roman Abramovichs Evraz PLC (LSE:EVR) and todays top riser Polymetal International PLC (LSE:POLY), as well as FTSE 250 companies Petropavlovsk and Raven Property Group.

Evraz and Polymetal International were due to drop out of the FTSE 100 into the FTSE 250 in the March review this Friday, but instead will be replaced by NB Private Equity Partners and Standard Life Private Equity Trust, with the move taking effect from next Monday.

The London Stock Exchange's subsidiary said, "that the ability to buy or sell shares of the index constituents below is severely restricted due to major international brokerage firms no longer supporting trading of these securities and therefore there is insufficient institutional liquidity and market depth.

11.50am: Russia expects business to return

The Footsie has retreated from some of its early morning gains and is now only two points, or 0.0034%, ahead of Friday's close.

Russian authorities seem confident that businesses that have suspended operations in the country, including Shell and McDonalds, will return at some point, at least according to the economic development minister Maxim Reshetnikov.

"It depends on the foreign retail chains themselves," Reshetnikov told reporters.

"It is their decision to what extent and how to continue their activities here. At the moment, we are well aware that there are such decisions, but these decisions are associated with the suspension of activities, and a significant proportion of these decisions are due to problems with logistics, among other things. Foreign companies are facing the same problems as Russian business," he said, commenting on the withdrawal of foreign stores and retail chains from Russia.

"And when a week ago we had a meeting with foreign business that operates in Russia, the first question they raised was related to logistics, to the need to reconfigure production chains, to find suppliers in Asian countries and replace European suppliers with Asian ones," the minister said.

"At the moment, those decisions that have been made, they concern the suspension of activities, teams are being preserved, wages are being paid in accordance with existing labor laws," Reshetnikov said.

"Therefore, we assume that a significant part of business, reconfiguring these chains, will return to operations in Russia, because our market has not gone anywhere, companies have generated earnings here for a long time, they have had a profitable business in our country, and this gives us reason to hope that the situation will return to normal," Reshetnikov said.

11.20am: China's rising Covid cases

China has put 17.5mln people in the city of Shenzhen, its tech manufacturing hub, into lockdown following a rise in Covid infections, with the country reporting its largest climb in daily cases in nearly two years.

That news has seen the Chinese currency hit a 1-month low, with one yuan equalling US$0.16.

It is perhaps no surprise that the tech-heavy Hang Seng Index plunged 11% as stocks such as Meituan, Xpeng and Nio slumped by double digits, given Shenzhen is the tech centre of China.

The Shanghai Stock Exchange also lost 2.6%, with the neighbouring Hong Kongs Hang Seng index down nearly 5%,

According to Victoria Scholar, head of investment at interactive investor, a combination of rising covid cases and slowing economic growth could see the Eastern powerhouse cut interest rates as early as tomorrow.

If they were to do so, that would go against the grain for global monetary tightening amid the backdrop of surging commodity prices and broader inflation.

Another issue China has had to deal with is how invested it gets with Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.

So far, President Xi Jinping has failed to outright condemn the attacks but also hasnt provided any financial and military support to Moscow.

It may be forced to make a decision either way in the coming days should peace talks between Russia and Ukraine reach a standstill, with reports Vladimir Putin is asking for military and financial aid, while the US has warned Beijing that it will be next to face sanctions should they intervene.

10.50am: Oil dragging the Footsie

With Shell PLC (LSE:SHEL, NYSE:SHEL) and BP PLC (LSE:BP.) dragging on the FTSE, some analysts are noting that despite reports of "substantial progress" in peace talks, the conflict in Ukraine seems to be escalating.

The FTSE has come off its earlier best levels, up 21 points (0.3%) to 7177.

Traders don't need much more than any good headline to grab hold of, said market analyst Neil Wilson at Markets.com.

"Russia is asking China for military aid and says Western shipments of weapons are legitimate targets. Russia says it can make debt repayments in rubles...default imminent, possibly on Wednesday."

Amid further lockdowns in China, which are looking like hitting Apple among others, Wilson added: "For now, market positioning is still very pessimistic, with the Vix holding above 30 though the term structure is looking healthier than it was a week ago. The rip for equities on Friday on those comments indicate how short the market is right now."

With the FTSE down 3% in the year to date versus the DAXs 14% decline this year, he noted the German index had was leading the way in Europe.

The DAX was "massively oversold, so conditions for further short squeeze are there, though I would caution that any jump is a bear market rally. I feel like we are in a sell strength kind of mode."

10am: More confidence

London's blue chips shares are showing more confidence now, with the Footsie making a stronger go of it, up 52 points (0.7%) to 7208.

It is trailing behind other bourses across the Channel, which have more ground to recover, with Germany's DAX up 3%, while Milan and Paris indices are both up 2%.

On the hopes that both sides of the Ukraine war gave their most upbeat assessments over potential peace talks, market analyst Fawad Razaqzada at ThinkMarkets said: "Apparently, there could be positive results within days. You can understand why the markets have reacted positively to the headlines given the fact that developments in the Ukraine have been the primary driver of risk appetite.

"But so far, every bit of optimism has led to pessimism and disappointment, with Russian forces continuing their military operations regardless. Will this prove to be another such scenario?

"If last week was anything to go by, I wouldnt hold my breath."

Topping the FTSE leaderboard now is Russia-focused miner Polymetal International PLC (LSE:POLY), up another 15.6% thanks to bargain hunters.

9.15am: Manufacturers' inflation warning

Prices are being hiked at the highest rate on record, according to a report from the manufacturing sector that is the latest sign that rising coats are feeding through to balance sheets.

The survey by trade body Make UK and accountants BDO showed 58% of manufacturers had increased prices at the beginning of 2022, against 51% in the same period last year and the highest figure since the survey began in 2000.

The survey, polling 287 companies, took place between 1 February and 21 February, and does not yet take account of the commodities crisis following Russias invasion of Ukraine.

"Companies are now facing eye-watering increases in costs which are becoming a matter of survival for many," said Make UK chief executive Stephen Phipson.

"While some of the increases are driven globally, the government cannot use this as a shield from the fact some are self-imposed and, added together, are now forming a perfect storm for companies."

(Read more here.)

8.21am: Slow creep higher

The FTSE 100 crept higher in early trade on Monday, continued where it left off last week and in contrast to falls seen on Asian markets.

London's blue-chip index had added seven points in early trading to 7162.

Oil prices retreating from their highs means the index is being held back by oil giants Shell PLC (LSE:SHEL, NYSE:SHEL) and BP PLC (LSE:BP.), down 1% and 2.6% respectively.

Brent crude futures are down 3.2% to US$109.04 and WTI 3.4% to US$105.60.

Markets are reacting to positive comments around the Russia-Ukraine war, with Ukrainian negotiator and presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak tweeting that, "Russia is already beginning to talk constructively... ... I think that we will achieve some results literally in a matter of days".

A Russian delegate echoed the sentiment and US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman also highlighted that Russia was showing signs of interest to engage in talks.

Top of the FTSE leaderboard is British Airways owner International Consolidated Airlines Group, a perennial source of market optimism on all things pandemic and Ukraine-related of late.

Next in the list are aerospace supplier Melrose Industries, housebuilder Persimmon PLC (LSE:PSN), broadcaster ITV PLC and Lloyds Banking Group PLC.

With more questions than answers currently available, any short-term market rallies are currently lacking conviction," said market analyst Richard Hunter at Interactive Investor.

6.39am: Modest start predicted

The FTSE 100 is expected to open modestly higher amid hopes the Russia-Ukraine conflict could be headed towards a ceasefire and possible end.

Comments from both sides after the latest round of diplomatic talks were suggestive of a thawing of relations.

Indeed, Ukraines president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has indicated he would meet Vladimir Putin for peace talks.

The mood was tempered by a report in the Financial Times that Russia had approached China for military equipment. Beijing has thus far failed to condemn Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.

Michael Hewson, of CMC Markets, did not share the optimism of some of his fellow commentators.

The sad reality is that any ceasefire remains some way off, with Russias behaviour over the weekend pointing to increasingly desperate measures to crush Ukrainian morale by a campaign of indiscriminate bombing, as they widened their target area to parts of western Ukraine.

There is also a concern that any new Russian measures might include the use of biological and, or chemical weapons.

Asias main stock markets were mixed with Japan and Australia higher, and China and Korea headed lower.

Looking ahead, the Federal Open Market Committee meets on Tuesday and Wednesday and chairman Jerome Powell has already said he will be recommending a 0.25% hike in rates, the first since December 2018.

On the corporate front, we have updates from Ocado, Deliveroo, Cineworld and Wetherspoons on what is shaping up as a fairly busy week for corporate news.

Around the markets

Pound US$1.3020 (-0.13%)

Bitcoin US$38,631.60 (2.22%)

Gold US$1,977.70 (-0.37%)

Brent crude US$109.87 (-2.96%)

6.50am: Early Markets - Asia / Australia

Asian stocks were mostly lower on Monday as China is facing its worst COVID-19 outbreak since the country clamped down on the pandemic in 2020.

Shenzhen, the biggest city in the manufacturing hub of Guangdong province, told all non-essential businesses to suspend production or have employees work from home for a week starting Monday.

The Shanghai Composite in China slumped 2.57% and Hong Kongs Hang Seng index plunged 4.7%.

Japans Nikkei 225 rose 0.58% while South Koreas Kospi fell 0.59%.

Australias S&P/ASX200 ended the day 1.21% higher, led by gains for banks.

READ OUR ASX REPORT HERE
Murchison Minerals is advancing two district-scale battery metal plays in the favourable Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Quebec

As any mining investor will tell you, the key criteria to picking a junior stock comes down to project, jurisdiction, commodity and team. Canadian firm Murchison Minerals (TSX-V:MUR, OTCQB:MURMF, TSX-V:MUR.V) Ltd safely ticks all four boxes.

The group is advancing two district-scale battery metal plays in the favourable Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Quebec.

Murchisons strategy is simple: seek out energy metal plays - be it nickel, copper, cobalt or some combination - that have camp-scale potential, establish a dominant land position in the area, and use the latest technologies available to pinpoint the deposit.

That strategy is on display at its HPM project in Quebec, a 576-square-kilometre HPM project is home to at least 50 defined anomalies and targets that range from bulk-tonnage low-grade targets, through to high-grade showings.

In late 2021, the firm quadrupled its land package after its exploration program demonstrated that the property hosts significant nickel-copper-cobalt mineralization.

CEO Troy Boisjoli explained the firms thinking behind the acquisition of the additional 43,689 hectares of mineral claims at the HPM Project.

The evolution of the project is down to the exploration approach that weve used, Boisjoli told Proactive.

Murchison identified conductive anomalies through a VTEM survey on the property, giving it a line of sight to nickel bearing sulphide mineralization and the ability to get onto the ground to prospect the anomalies.

After confirming the conductivity on the ground the firm sampled them and examined the geochemistry for the presence of sulphide mineralization in the rock. Its increasing probability of discovery, Boisjoli said.

We move forward using that exploration approach into the drill program, where you have a very linear approach going from airborne geophysics, on the ground prospecting, to drilling. We drilled our initial eight holes into a target called PYC and intersected nickel-bearing sulphide mineralization. That is continuing to build our confidence in the camp-scale potential at HPM.

Camp-scale potential

Recently, drilling at the PYC target revealed three broad zones of nickel-copper-cobalt mineralization totaling 62.21 metres (m) of composite thickness, including 7.41m grading 0.23% nickel equivalent (NiEq), including 1.8m at 0.52% NiEq. Another hole intersected five broad zones of the same mineralization totaling 69.9m of composite thickness, including 39.5m grading 0.24% NiEq, including 7.6m at 0.37% NiEq and 1.26% NiEq over 0.58m. The results, when coupled with historical work at the Barre de Fer and Syrah targets, indicate that HPM has camp-scale potential.

The 2021 airborne survey only covered around 15% of HPMs total land package, so the next step will be to fly another VTEM survey on the remaining 85% of the property to define more anomalies that are prospective for nickel-bearing sulphide mineralization.

Thats not all that Murchison is focused on, however. Over in Saskatchewan, the company is hoping to apply a similar strategy at its Brabant Lake (BMK) zinccoppersilver project  a project that Boisjoli calls foundational due to its resource and location.

BMK contains zinc, copper, lead, silver, and gold resources of 2.1 million tonnes indicated and 7.6 million tonnes inferred and is open in all directions. The project area is believed to be highly prospective to host additional VMS-type mineralization as VMS deposits are rarely found alone.

Right now, the BMK deposit is the only known significant VMS deposit in the area. The potential at BMK is very significant, the Murchison CEO said.

Pillars in place

Boisjoli knows a good project when he sees one, having previously been involved in the discovery of another district-scale project in Saskatchewan  the Arrow uranium project owned by NexGen Energy. Few CEOs know the province as well as Boisjoli and have had the same success in taking a project from exploration to feasibility and everything social and community engagement-wise along the way.

He is backed by a rock-solid team, including venerated mining executive JC Potvin, a co-founder of Murchison who now serves as its executive chair. Bringing strong technical expertise to the boardroom is vice president exploration John Shmyr, who has been working on BMK for almost four years now.

Add to that an impressive shareholder base that includes the likes of Michael Gentile, a noted mining investor with a knack for picking winners, who holds just under 10% of Murchisons fully diluted shares.

As for the fourth investment pillar  commodity  well, its a good time to be in the battery metals space. Nickel is currently at a 14-year high, putting Murchison in a prime position to take advantage of the positive momentum in the market.

Fueling the green energy transition

End users are also becoming even more focused on environmental and social issues when it comes to securing supply. How much of a carbon footprint will it take to source raw materials needed, and what are the social implications of the mining operation?

From an ESG perspective, HPM is well positioned with a hydroelectric dam providing power nearby and other infrastructure already in place, meaning less disruption to the surrounding land. Whats more, the projects nickel-bearing sulphides are more favourable from a battery metals perspective.

The transition to a new economy is predicated on a stable supply, and a stable supply chain in a secure jurisdiction, Boisjoli said. Ultimately that is what will be required for the transition to be successful.

Murchison is hoping to emerge as one of Canadas main battery metals providers at a time when buyers are looking to North America for a secure supply of raw materials.

The interest that we're seeing is a direct result of that transition and the recognition that nickel, copper and cobalt are all  critical to the transition, Boisjoli said. There needs to be investment to develop those secure supply chains that are going to facilitate that transition. At the early stages of developing a battery metals project in Quebec, we feel like Murchison is very well positioned to add significant shareholder value.

Contact Angela at angela@proactiveinvestors.com

Follow her on Twitter @AHarmantas
Scott Williamson, Managing Director of Blackstone Minerals Ltd (ASX:BSX, OTCQX:BLSTF) returns today with insights about the release of their Pre Feasibility Study.

The time has finally come for the Blackstone story to move to a stage where investors and shareholders can feel some level of comfort. The Pre Feasibility Study (PFS) is a major milestone for the company as it makes its way to becoming a nickel miner and a producer of battery cathodes.

The PFS is basically the script to what the end goal will look like in 2025. The next stage of the Definitive Feasibility Study will only differ marginally. - Scott Williamson

It has been a while since I last spoke with Scott Williamson. In this episode, we explore the meaning and workings of the PFS. As one of the major steps in the journey, I wanted Scott to talk to us and explain what all the facts and figures mean for the company and shareholders.

This episode is what we have been waiting for since the Scoping Study which we talked about in a previous Coffee With Samso back in 2020: The First Step in Creating a Green Nickel Mine - Blackstone Minerals Ltd (ASX: BSX).

When we look back at the very first episode: Blackstone Minerals Limited - Not just Mining Nickel, Scott positioned their journey. Today's story is the next step that brings Blackstone to another level. I feel that this could probably be the last step where shareholders can jump on this story as a "cheap" valuation.

It is with this thought that I urge readers to Do Your Own Research - DYOR (always a healthy habit to have) and decide if this is a good place to put your hard earned money.

Tune in to find out how Blackstone will generate billions.

Chapters

00:00 Start

00:20 Introduction

00:50 Scott updates on the PFS.

02:40 CAPEX

03:23 Good Payback and Margins of the Business.

05:11 The Coop Story.

06:40 What does the PFS mean for shareholders?

09:12 Can Investors take the PFS as a Green Light?

11:12 How does the Ta Koa Nickel Project compare to world standards?

14:13 How feasible is 2025?

17:01 The 50% third party Feed - will that be a problem?

19:32 ESG compliant feed.

20:24 Timeline for Mining and Refinery.

21:14 Is there pressure to start earlier?

22:48 How is the mineral resource coming along?

24:49 What are the Challengers for Blackstone?

26:58 What could derail the Blackstone Story?

28:26 What are the Brokers/Funders saying?

30:33 How are shareholders taking the PFS and how should they take it?

33:25 Raising $850M should be easy.

34:26 Conclusion

PODCAST

About Scott Williamson

Managing Director, Blackstone Minerals Limited

Qualifications: BEng (Mining), BCom, MAusIMM

Scott Williamson is an experienced Managing Director with a demonstrated history of working in the mining and metals industry. He is skilled in Open Pit and Underground Mining, Corporate Finance, Investor Relations and Project Planning. A strong business development professional with equity capital markets experience, Scott graduated from West Australian School of Mines and Curtin University of Technology. Scott holds a WA First Class Mine Managers Certificate and is a member of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy.

About Blackstone Minerals Limited

Blackstone Minerals Limited (ASX: BSX) is developing the district-scale Ta Khoa Project in Northern Vietnam where the company is drilling out the large-scale Ban Phuc Nickel-PGE deposit. The Ta Khoa Nickel-PGE Project has existing modern mine infrastructures built to International Standards including a 450ktpa processing plant and permitted mine facilities.

Blackstone Minerals also owns a large landholding at the Gold Bridge project within the BC porphyry belt in British Columbia, Canada with large scale drill targets prospective for high-grade gold-cobalt-copper mineralisation. In Australia, Blackstone Minerals is exploring for nickel and gold in the Eastern Goldfields and gold in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. Blackstone Minerals has a board and management team with a proven track record of mineral discovery and corporate success.

The Ta Khoa Nickel-Copper-PGE Project

The Ta Khoa Nickel-Copper-PGE Project is located 160 km west of Hanoi in the Son La Province of Vietnam and includes an existing modern nickel mine built to Australian standards, which is currently under care and maintenance. The Ban Phuc nickel mine successfully operated as a mechanised underground nickel mine from 2013 to 2016. In the Ta Khoa Nickel-Copper-PGE Project, previous project owners invested more than US$136m in capital and generated US$213m in revenue during a 3.5-year period of falling nickel prices. The project was placed into care and maintenance in mid-2016 during some of the lowest nickel prices in the past 10 years.

Existing infrastructure associated with the project includes an internationally-designed 450 ktpa processing plant connected to local hydro grid power with a fully-permitted tailings facility and a modern 250-person camp.

Since commencing maiden drilling in August 2019, Blackstone Minerals has made significant progress at Ta Khoa, drilling over 9,000 m of diamond core in more than 47 holes into the Ban Phuc DSS deposit and the highly prospective King Cobra discovery zone. An initial scoping study evaluating mining and processing options is well advanced, including potential in-country downstream processing to deliver high-value nickel sulfate into Asias rapidly expanding electric vehicle (EV) industry. The recently announced MOU with Asias largest and the worlds second-largest EV battery cathode manufacturer, Ecopro BM Co Limited represents a significant step towards making this a reality.

Please let Samso know your thoughts and send any comments to info@Samso.com.au. Remember to Subscribe to the YouTube Channel, Samso Media and the mail list to stay informed and make comments where appropriate. Other than that, also feel free to provide a Review on Google.

For further information about Coffee with Samso and Rooster Talks visit: www.samso.com.au

About

Samso is a renowned resource among the investment community for keen market analysis and insights into the companies and business trends that matter.

Investors seek out Samso for knowledgeable evaluations of current industry developments across a variety of business sectors and considered forecasts of future performances.

With a compelling format of relaxed online video interviews, Samso provides clear answers to questions they may not have the opportunity to ask and lays out the big picture to help them complete their investment research.

And in doing so, Samso also enables companies featured in interviews to build valuable engagement with their investment communities and customers.

Headed by industry veteran Noel Ong and based in Perth, Western Australia, Samsos Coffee with Samso and Rooster Talk interviews both feature friendly conversations with business figures that give insights into Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) companies, related concepts and industry trends.

Noel Ong is a geologist with nearly 30 years of industry experience and a strong background in capital markets, corporate finance and the mineral resource sector. He was founder and managing director of ASX-listed company Siburan Resources Limited from 2009-2017 and has also been involved in several other ASX listings, providing advice, procuring projects and helping to raise capital.

He brings all this experience and expertise to the Samso interviews, where his engaging conversation style creates a relaxed dialogue, revealing insights that can pique investor interest.

Noel Ong travels across Australia to record the interviews, only requiring a coffee shop environment where they can be set up. The interviews are posted on Samsos website and podcasts, YouTube and other relevant online environments where they can be shared among investment communities.

Samso also has a track record of developing successful business concepts in the Australasia region and provides bespoke research and counsel to businesses seeking to raise capital and procuring projects for ASX listings.

Disclaimer

The information contained in this article is the writers personal opinion and is provided for information only and is not intended to or nor will it create/induce the creation of any binding legal relations. Read full disclaimer.
Helium One Global Ltd (AIM:HE1, OTCQB:HLOGF) said the interpretation of Phase II 2D seismic data at Rukwa in Tanzania had identified multiple areas of interest at both the Lake Bed and Karoo Group levels.

The area surveyed was not previously covered by historic 2D seismic, so any newly identified closures would be in addition to the company's current resource base and prospect portfolio, said the company statement.

Airborne, ground-based surveys and data interpretation will be used to identify any drill prospects to incorporate into the 2022 campaign.

On this, Helium One added that talks are advanced over a containerised rig, which has the capacity and capabilities of a conventional drilling rig but can be broken into modules with the dimensions of standard ISO containers thus enabling quicker transportation.

David Minchin, chief executive, added: "Indications coming from ongoing interpretative work on 2D Seismic are very exciting and the team are confident that a number of new prospects will be generated, enhancing our portfolio of drill-ready targets.

Within a very competitive drilling rig market, driven by increased oil and gas prices, the company remains confident that we will secure a suitable rig for drilling at Rukwa within the 2022 drilling season."
Adriatic Metals PLC (LSE:ADT1, ASX:ADT, OTCQX:ADMLF) has appointed experienced mining executive, Mike Norris, as the chief financial officer, with immediate effect.

Norris is a qualified chartered accountant with over 30 years of commercial and operational experience in the mining industry.

He was most recently CFO at ASX-listed Highfield Resources, based in Spain.

Prior to that, he was finance director for London-listed, African gold producer Avocet Mining (AIM:AVM) PLC, where he oversaw the construction and commissioning of the Inata mine.

He has also held the positions of Head of Business Performance at Anglo American and CFO of Kennecott Greens Creek Mining Co., an underground silver-zinc mine, when it was then owned by Rio Tinto.

"I am delighted with the appointment of Mike to the team as he has an impressive commercial, operational and managerial track record with listed-companies on both the LSE and ASX, said Paul Cronin, Adriatic's chief executive.

His extensive experience will be especially valuable over the coming 12 months as the Vares silver project advances towards production in the second quarter of 2023.

Cronin also expressed gratitude to Geoff Eyre, who is leaving.

I would like to thank Geoff for his contributions to Adriatic, including his involvement in the US$244.5mln project finance package secured last year. I wish him well in his future endeavours."
Clean Air Metals has two diamond drills operating at the Thunder Bay North Project focused on increasing drill density within the PEA mine plan in preparation for feasibility studies and large-diameter drill bulk sampling year by year within the proposed PEA mine plan

Clean Air Metals Inc (TSX-V:AIR, OTCQB:CLRMF) has announced new appointments to underscore its commitment to sustainable mining at its flagship high-grade polymetallic Thunder Bay North Project in Ontario, Canada.

Kris Tuuttila has been appointed as director of Sustainability, Permitting and Community Relations, while Dr Geoff Heggie has been promoted to vice president-exploration, the company said.

At the same time, the company has initiated a search for a chief operating officer to lead the technical studies to advance the Thunder Bay North Project towards execution. The COOs immediate priorities will include pre-feasibility level metallurgical optimization as well as investigate options to achieve net zero emissions related to the onset of feasibility studies at the project.

"Following the company's recent $12.5 million financing, these executive appointments signal the company's commitment to sustainable mine development at the Thunder Bay North Project. The project features a rare combination of peer-leading platinum, palladium, copper and nickel grades, proximity to infrastructure and skilled workforce and relatively low initial capital intensity, Clean Air Metals CEO Abraham Drost said in a statement.

The company noted that Tuuttila brings 19 years of management experience in environmental consulting for projects across Canada. He has directed multi-disciplinary environmental projects and impact assessments relating to various stages of mine development in northern Ontario, including at the Lac des Iles palladium mine 60 kilometres northwest of the Thunder Bay North Project. Tuuttila has developed meaningful relationships with various Indigenous communities of northwestern Ontario and has been instrumental in signing several partnership agreements to provide economic and training benefits to the area's First Nation communities, it added..

Dr Heggie, who began his career at Clean Air Metals as exploration manager, previously worked on the Thunder Bay North Project for seven years, the company said. He earned his BSc in Geology at the University of Saskatchewan, his MSc at Lakehead University and his PhD at the University of Western Australia. He is an expert in ultramafic/mafic-hosted Ni-Cu-PGE deposits and on Mid-Continent Rift geology in North America. Previously a senior geologist at Noront, Dr Heggie was involved in the systematic integration of geology and geophysics by the Noront team that resulted in the discovery of the McFaulds No. 8 VMS lenses of the Nikka deposit.

Clean Air Metals also announced the resignation of Dawn Lamswood from the position of vice president-exploration. However, it said Lamswood will continue as senior geological consultant to the company, working closely with Dr Heggie.

We also extend our best wishes to Dawn Lamswood and wish her all success personally and professionally as she continues to work closely with the company and other clients. Dawn has made a solid contribution to the start-up of the company, which is very much appreciated," Drost added.

The company also said that under its approved Equity Incentive Plan, officers and directors of the company have been granted 1,148,999 Restricted Share Units (RSUs), and 1,400,000 long term incentive (LTI) share options for five years at an exercise price of C$0.30. Total outstanding securities granted under the Equity Incentive Plan for all personnel now stands at 6.49% of issued and outstanding shares.

Clean Air Metals presently has two diamond drills operating at the Thunder Bay North Project focused on increasing drill density within the PEA mine plan in preparation for feasibility studies and large-diameter drill bulk sampling year by year within the proposed PEA mine plan in preparation for metallurgical optimization. A third drill will be mobilized to more remote greenfields exploration sites outside the mine plan area in the search for the source of high-grade massive sulphide intercepts identified in the system.

The company and its First Nation partners at the Fort William First Nation, the Red Rock Indian Band and the Biinjitiwaabik Zaaging Anishinaabek have an unparalleled opportunity for regional economic development at Thunder Bay North.

Contact the author at jon.hopkins@proactiveinvestors.com
Colin Porter, Golden Shields vice president exploration, told investors the company is extremely encouraged by the latest results from Mazoa Hill

Golden Shield Resources (CSE:GSRI) Inc has revealed new drill results from the prospective Mazoa Hill target on its Marudi Mountain project in southern Guyana.

The results confirmed high-grade, continuous mineralization at the target, Vancouver-based Golden Shield said.

Highlights from the final four holes of a seven-hole program include 50 metres at a grade of 9.10 grams per ton (g/t) gold.

Golden Shield said it interprets a deeper zone of 12 metres grading 5.47 g/t gold to represent a downdip continuation of the high-grade intersection from another of the seven assay results released earlier in March. The deeper four intersections in the hole are outside the historical resource, it added.

Colin Porter, Golden Shields vice president exploration, told shareholders that the company is extremely encouraged by the latest results from Mazoa Hill.

The identification of significant and continuous high-grade mineralization outside the existing resource area is confirming our revised structural model, Porter said in a statement. The next round of drilling will be designed to further refine this model and establish the criteria for an updated resource calculation later in the year."

Golden Shield is waiting for the results from 848 metres drilled in six drill holes at the Toucan Creek prospect on the property.

Additional drill targets on the Marudi project will be identified in the coming weeks and additional drill testing carried out.

Golden Shield owns 100% of the Marudi Mountain, Arakaka and Fish Creek high-grade gold projects in in Guyana.

Contact Angela at angela@proactiveinvestors.com

Follow her on Twitter @AHarmantas
Create your account: sign up and get ahead on news and events

NO INVESTMENT ADVICE

The Company is a publisher. You understand and agree that no content published on the Site constitutes a recommendation that any particular security, portfolio of securities, transaction, or investment strategy is...

In exchange for publishing services rendered by the Company on behalf of FPX Nickel Corp named herein, including the promotion by the Company of FPX Nickel Corp in any Content on the Site, the Company receives from...
Washington, March 14 : US President Joe Biden and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron have reaffirmed their commitment to hold Russia accountable for its war on Ukraine, according to the White House.

The two leaders made the commitment during a phone call on Sunday during which they discussed the current situation in Ukraine as Russian forces engaged in continued bombing and shelling of major cities.

In a statement, the White House said Biden and Macron also "reviewed recent diplomatic engagements and underscored their commitment to hold Russia accountable for its actions and to support the government and people of Ukraine".

The two leaders' conversation came hours after a military training base in the western city of Yavoriv was struck by a barrage of Russian cruise missiles.

Latest updates on Russia-Ukraine War
Kiev, March 14 : Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has renewed his call to NATO leaders to establish a no-fly zone over his country, warning that it was only a matter of time that Russian missiles would also fall on the alliance's territories.

The President's call on Sunday night came after 30 missiles struck Lviv earlier in the day, while the shelling of the International Centre for Peacekeeping and Security located near the Ukraine-Poland border killed 35 people and injured 134 others.

Referring to the shelling of the Centre, Zelensky said that "nothing was happening there that could threaten the territory of the Russian Federation. The NATO border is only 20 kilometres away", reports Ukrayinska Pravda.

"Last year, I clearly warned NATO leaders that if there were no harsh preventive sanctions against the Russian Federation, it would go to war. We were right.

"Now I am repeating again: if you do not cover us with a no-fly zone, it is only a matter of time before Russian missiles fall on your territory, on NATO territory, on the homes of NATO states' citizens," the President added.

A no-fly zone refers to any region of airspace where it has been established that certain aircraft cannot fly.

It can be used to protect sensitive areas, such as royal residences, or brought in temporarily over sporting events and large gatherings.

The US has ruled out a no-fly zone over Ukraine because it could mean NATO forces shooting down Russian aircraft to clear the skies, the BBC reported.

US President Joe Biden said do so would lead to an escalation, which he described as "World War Three".

UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has also confirmed that his country would not help enforce a no-fly zone over Ukraine because fighting Russian jets would trigger a "war across Europe".
New Delhi, March 14 : After a two-year delay, negotiators from more than 190 countries are gathering in Geneva on Monday for a fortnight-long critical discussions around a global strategy to help stem the tide of biodiversity loss.

This is the last time countries will discuss the agreement, known as the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), before the Convention on Biological Diversity's (CBD) 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP15).

The Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework has been called the biodiversity equivalent of the Paris Climate agreement.

"The world is clearly eager for urgent action to protect nature," said Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity. "And we have no time to spare. Together we must ultimately deliver a truly historic agreement that puts us firmly on the path to living in harmony with nature." Scientists have issued repeated warnings about the dangerous decline in biodiversity. A landmark 2019 global biodiversity assessment found that "nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history -- and the rate of species extinctions is accelerating, with grave impacts on people around the world now likely".

The assessment warned that up to one million species face extinction, many within decades and called for transformational change to address the crisis.

Three critical areas to address in Geneva are.

Campaign for Nature, an organisation working around the world to build support for nature conservation, sees three major areas where negotiators must make progress during the Geneva negotiations: A global target to protect and conserve at least 30 per cent of the world's lands and inland waters and oceans.

This science-based target, known as 30x30 will address both the largest drivers of biodiversity decline, habitat loss and overexploitation and help to prevent future pandemics.

Additionally, the recently-released IPCC report underlined the urgent need to protect at least 30 per cent of the planet to achieve both biodiversity and climate goals.

The target has been endorsed by more than 89 countries and has been supported by numerous regional and international bodies including the G7, and World Conservation Congress.

Advancing the rights and leadership of indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs) have been among the most effective stewards of biodiversity since time immemorial.

The proposal to protect or conserve at least 30 per cent of the planet's land and ocean by 2030 will only be possible with the leadership of indigenous peoples and local communities and with full recognition of their rights.

Negotiators must include the principle of free, prior and informed consent in targets and increase support and funding for IPLC land tenure.

Enhancing finance to meet biodiversity goals.

Closing the global biodiversity finance gap and achieving a comprehensive, ambitious and just post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework will require increased financial resources from all sources and from all parties, particularly from those countries where per-capita consumption creates disproportionate impacts on global biodiversity, says Campaign for Nature.

Developed countries need to increase financial support for biodiversity in developing countries to at least $60 billion annually. A number of governments, philanthropists, companies and investors have demonstrated leadership in increasing their international biodiversity funding commitments, which is estimated at this stage to total over $5.2 billion per year.

Brian O'Donnell, the Director of Campaign for Nature, said: "During a time of wars, a pandemic, and a climate and biodiversity crisis, the world is in desperate need of hope and positive leadership.

"The Geneva negotiations offer a chance for countries to secure a better future for all life on earth. Global leaders should support the ambitious, necessary and achievable target to safeguard at least 30 per cent of the world's lands and waters. They can advance the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities, and commit the funding needed to effectively address the biodiversity crisis.

"All world's people, and the natural systems on which we all depend are counting on negotiators to be bold and constructive." Originally scheduled for Geneva from January 12-28, in-person meetings of the UN Biodiversity Conference's two subsidiary bodies and Open-ended Working Group tasked with developing Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework will continue till March 29.
Bijnor : , March 14 (IANS) The Bijnor police have arrested a 38-year-old woman for allegedly 'honey-trapping' a trader, killing him and then his wife before burying both in the backyard of her house.

The shocking details emerged during the interrogation of Roma Devi, a widow, who was in a relationship with Rajesh Agarwal, 55, a resident of Krishna Colony in Aligarh.

She had an eye on his three shops and a house.

According to reports, Agarwal had suddenly disappeared along with his wife Babita on February 28.

A missing person report was filed by Babita's brother, Manoj Kumar Rana, a resident of Ghaziabad, following the incident.

Police investigation revealed that Roma had an extramarital affair with Agarwal and she wanted to acquire his property as the couple did not have a child.

She connived with her 19-year-old son, Tushar Singh, lover Mukesh Singh and his brother Dheeraj Singh to get the businessman and his wife killed in their house. Later, their bodies were buried in the backyard of Roma's home in Hamidpur.

Superintendent of Police (Bijnor) Dharamveer Singh said, "Roma Devi worked in a salon run by Babita and was a regular visitor at the latter's house. Therefore, she became our prime suspect. During interrogation, she confessed to the crime. We have recovered a car, motorbike, mobile phone and the murder weapon. The bodies have been sent for post-mortem. All accused persons are in judicial custody."
Kanpur Dehat : , March 14 (IANS) A group of villagers, who were dancing to the tunes of election campaign songs of the BJP to celebrate the victory of the party, were brutally attacked by a group of people in Kanpur Dehat district.

The incident took place at Nyora Mastpur village.

A complaint has been filed at the Rasoolabad police station of the district in this regard.

Satya Prakash, a resident of Mastpur Nyorai, stated in his complaint that he was playing DJ at his house to celebrate the victory of BJP in the state Assembly elections and he, his family members, relatives and locals were dancing on BJP election theme songs.

"A group of people, who were sympathisers of Samajwadi Party, arrived at the spot and asked the DJ operator to stop playing BJP election theme songs. When the DJ operator protested, they abused him, barged into the house and beat them up severely," Satya Prakash alleged in his complaint.

Rasoolabad police station in-charge Pramod Kumar Shukla said an FIR has been lodged against the accused under the relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code on the complaint.

"All the injured have been admitted to hospital for necessary treatment and care. Raids are underway to arrest the accused," Shukla further said.

It may be recalled that on Friday night, in Aurraiya district, a wedding procession was attacked when they played the BJP's election songs.
Kiev, March 14 : Authorities in Ukraine's Luhansk have said that a mass evacuation of citizens from the separatist region has been planned for Monday as Moscow's war on Kiev has continued for 19 days now.

In a Facebook post late Sunday night, Head of Luhansk Military/State Administration Serhiy Haidai said that people from local settlements will be brought to the Novozolotarivka railway station from where they will be evacuated in a train scheduled to leave at around 2 p.m. Ukraine time (at about 6 p.m. IST), Ukrayinska Pravda reported.

Haidai said that women, children and the elderly will be given first priority and the evacuation will start during a ceasefire.

The Luhansk Military Administration has already informed residents of the time and place from where they should board the buses that will take them to the station.

The evacuation is primarily for the residents of Lysychansk, Severodonetsk, Rubizhne, Zolote, and Hirs'ke, according to Haidai.

Due to constant Russian shelling of humanitarian corridors on Sunday, there were no evacuation from Popasna, Shchastya and Hirs'ke.

On February 24, Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine's separatist Donbas region, which comprises Luhansk and Donetsk, which paved the way for the ongoing war.

Since then, the region has come under heavy fire by the Russian forces On Sunday night , the forces dropped phosphorus shells in Luhansk's Popasna, said the Ukrayinska Pravda.

This type of ammunition is prohibited by the Geneva Convention.
Prayagraj : , March 14 (IANS) A probe has been ordered into the mysterious death of a youth, who was allegedly beaten to death by some unidentified persons for celebrating the victory of the ruling BJP.

The district police, after carrying out an initial probe, had termed it a case of road mishap but later ordered a detailed probe after reports started surfacing that the youth was beaten to death for celebrating the ruling's party victory.

Scores of BJP supporters, on Sunday, gheraoed the Bahariya police station, accusing local police of not taking action against the guilty. Locals alleged that a sub-inspector rank police official had intentionally downplayed the incident, terming it a case of road accident despite the fact that the youth was allegedly assaulted by the supporters of Samajwadi Party.

The BJP supporters have demanded action against the errant police official.

Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Ajay Kumar told reporters that Babu Ram, a resident of Newada has submitted a written complaint with the Bahariya police station that his son Satish Chauhan, 22, died in a road mishap due to head injury on Saturday night.

The SSP said the father told police that his son was returning to Newada from Mubarakpur block and his bike skidded.

The SSP, however, said some people of the village alleged that the youth was not killed in the road mishap but he was intentionally assaulted by some unidentified persons which resulted in his death.

He said after surfacing of two different theories, the police have launched a detailed probe into the incident. The body has been sent for post mortem.

The SSP made it clear that once the senior cops receive the autopsy report and other forensic evidence, necessary action would be taken.
Saharanpur : , March 14 (IANS) The Saharanpur police have arrested the main accused in the firing incident which took place outside the Deoband jail.

Five persons were earlier arrested in the incident which took place on Saturday.

The main accused, Neeraj Singh sustained injuries during the encounter with the police while his accomplice escaped.

A bike, a pistol and live cartridges have been recovered by the police from his possession. Police are looking for the missing suspect.

Meanwhile, Neeraj is being treated at the hospital, said police.

According to police sources, the city Kotwali police of Muzaffarnagar received a tip-off that Neeraj Singh, who opened fire at the jailer outside Deoband jail, was about to reach Budhana Road with his associate.

The police intercepted the two but the miscreants opened fire and tried to flee.

Police also retaliated and fired in which one was shot in the leg and held, while the other one managed to escape.

The injured miscreant Neeraj Singh is the main accused in the case.

Deputy superintendent of police (City), Kuldeep Singh said, "Arrested accused has six criminal cases registered against him. Neeraj had a key role in the attack at Deoband's jailer. At present, the police are investigating the rest of his criminal history." An FIR has been filed against unknown persons for a "murder attempt" apart from "insult and provocation".

During the investigation, it came to light that one Lavish Kumar, 25, had come to meet his uncle who is a prisoner since 2019, but he was not allowed to meet after which there was a verbal spat with jail officials.
Kiev, March 14 : The US Embassy in Kiev on Monday asked American nationals in Ukraine to leave the war-torn nation as Russia continued its assault for the 19th day.

Taking to Twitter, the Embassy said: "We urge US citizens to depart Ukraine now via ground transport if safe. Border crossings are open. Consider routes & risks; roads may be crowded, exposed to combat or have damaged infrastructure.

"Sheltering in place may be the best option for some." In a similar notice issued on March 9, the Embassy had asked Americans to "depart Ukraine immediately" as the security situation throughout the country "continues to be violent and unpredictable due to ongoing military attacks by Russia, with active fighting in country and uncertain safety conditions"

The Embassy's announcement on Monday came shortly after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke to Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dymtro Kuleba.

Blinken said in a tweet that they spoke about Washington's "steadfast support of Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity and ongoing efforts to stop (Russian President Vladimir) Putin's war of choice".

On his part, Kuleba said they both agreed that" more needs to be done to stop Russian aggression and hold Russia accountable for its crimes".

He thanked the US for "firmly standing by the people of Ukraine".

Latest updates on Russia-Ukraine War
North Korea:This photo, captured from North Korea's Central TV on Jan. 28, 2022, shows one of two surface-to-surface tactical guided missiles that the North test-fired from a transporter erector launcher (TEL) the previous day. (Yonhap/END/IANS) Image Source: IANS News

Seou, March 14 : South Korea and the US have detected signs that North Korea is preparing to conduct another intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) system test as early as this week, informed sources here said on Monday.

Such indications emerged after Seoul and Washington accused Pyongyang on March 11 of having tested a new ICBM system on February 27 and March 5 ahead of a full-range ICBM test, reports Yonhap News Agency.

The North has characterised the two launches as "reconnaissance satellite" development tests. South Korean and US officials believe they involved the Hwasong-17 ICBM unveiled during a military parade in October 2020.

"Though we can't say definitively when a missile will be launched, we have been keeping close tabs on the possibility," a government source told Yonhap News Agency.

Asked to comment on the possibility of another North Korean missile test, an official at Seoul's Joint Chiefs of Staff refused to make "prejudgment" but stressed South Korea's "robust" readiness posture.

Weather conditions and other variables are expected to affect the timing of the North's possible launch.

Should the North press ahead with a new launch, the North could fire a missile from a transporter erector launcher (TEL) at the Sunan airfield, the site of the two previous tests, observers said.

In the earlier tests, the North fired the missile at a high angle from the airfield and engineered it to travel on a trajectory of a medium-range ballistic missile.

The missile fired on February 27 flew about 300 km at a top altitude of 620 km, while the one fired on March 5 travelled around 270 km at a top altitude of 560 km.
Tehran, March 14 : Iran's economic benefits has been the focal point in the indirect talks between Tehran and Washington for the past months in the Austrian capital Vienna, said Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh.

"The nature of the fundamental discussions between us and the US is that the economic benefits for the Iranian people must be observed," Xinhua news agency quoted Khatibzadeh as saying.

The sanctions prevented Iran from enjoying the economic advantages of the 2015 nuclear pact, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), said Khatibzadeh, adding that the entire chain of sanctions on Iran must be terminated as a result of the negotiations in Vienna, he said.

Iran does not accept the so-called "red lines" in the anti-Iran sanctions imposed by the US, he added.

On March 11, Josep Borrell, EU's high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, announced a pause in the negotiations, saying that "a pause in Vienna talks is needed, due to external factors".

Iran signed the nuclear deal with the world powers in July 2015.

However, former US President Donald Trump pulled ut of the agreement in May 2018 and reimposed unilateral sanctions on Tehran.

Since April 2021, eight rounds of talks have been held in Vienna between Iran and major parties to the JCPOA, namely Russia, China, France, the UK and Germany, in a bid to revive the deal.

The US has been indirectly involved in the talks.

Over the past days, reports from Vienna suggested that the negotiators were "close" to an agreement with few key issues remaining which required "political decisions" of the parties.
New Delhi, March 14 : The Income Tax Department on Monday conducted search operations on 28 premises of Omax Bulilder Group in connection with alleged tax evasion.

According to information, the search operations started this morning and are underway in Noida, Faridabad, Gurugram and Delhi.

The I-T team is likely to summon the Chartered Accountants of the firm to examine the transactions of last three to four years.

It will also record the statements of those present on the premises at the time of search.

Sources have indicated that the team will also seize a few material.

No official information has been provided by the department as of now.
Colombo, March 14 : The fuel crisis, caused by the shortage of foreign exchange, has severely impacted the Sri Lankan society, worsening the country's economic woes.

Minister of Energy Gamini Lokuge on Sunday told journalists that at least seven months will be needed to end the current fuel and gas queues in the country, reports Xinhua news agency.

Long queues of vehicles lining up outside fuel stations is a common sight around the country. While Sri Lanka has managed to procure adequate supplies of petrol, used by most private motor cars, the country still suffers from diesel shortages.

Diesel is used by buses, trains, power plants and many industries, and due to the shortages in diesel many industries are operating at a suboptimal level.

In the first week of March, between 80 per cent to 90 per cent of private buses were not operating due to inadequate diesel.

Meanwhile, Sri Lanka has a number of diesel-run power plants that the country depends on to provide an uninterrupted supply of power during the dry season, between January and May.

The Ceylon Electricity Board has been forced to shut down 350 megawatts of diesel power plants from late February due to lack of fuel supply, which has brought about frequent power cuts in the past few weeks.

Sri Lankan medical unions had been urging the government to exempt hospitals from the island-wide power cuts.

The fuel shortages have also affected the country's agriculture with farmers unable to operate machinery or transport their produce to the market.

Data shows that, from 2010 to 2020, Sri Lanka's average import expenditure on fuel was $3.725 billion per year.

By the beginning of December 2021, Sri Lanka's forex reserves were sufficient for just a month of imports and the Ministry of Finance, faced with a severe dollar shortage, was not willing to release significant amounts of foreign exchange to purchase fuel.
Pauri : , March 14 (IANS/ 101Reporters) After resisting institutionalised healthcare for centuries, some women from Uttarakhand's nomadic Van Gujjar community seem to be opening up to it. They would also like to train as community health workers under the Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA) programme, which aims to provide healthcare to marginalised communities such as the Van Gujjars, who stay in forests.

Van Gujjar Tribal Youth Organisation has picked up this slow but emerging sentiment during their field interactions. "Their main concerns are the safe delivery of the baby and their vaccination later on. Instances of people getting hurt during the felling of trees have also necessitated hospitalisation," says Meer Hamza, president of this youth organisation.

Traditionally, the women from the community would double up as midwives and deliver babies at home. But the changing forest use has affected their lifestyle in recent years and given rise to health complications among menstruating girls and pregnant women that warrants the attention of the formal healthcare system, of which they have nothing to speak of.

Add to this, they don't get to access the healthcare schemes. Hamza explains why, "Since a majority of the community lives in temporary settlements in the forest, they don't have land documents, most don't hold a ration card, and they are not part of the gram panchayat. Now since the government schemes are implemented via gram panchayat, they miss out on vaccination drives for their children and fail to obtain their birth certificates." For the same reason, ASHA workers, who play an important role in implementing the health-related schemes in rural areas, don't visit these communities, Hamza alleges. The apathy doesn't end here. "Since the Van Gujjar women aren't regularly monitored by ASHA workers, government doctors often refuse to treat them and send them to private hospitals instead. Delays such as these have caused the death of infants and new mothers in a few cases," he claims.

Contrary to Hamza's claims, Sujata Singh, deputy director, Women Empowerment and Child Development, Uttarakhand, told 101Reporters that ASHA workers visit the Van Gujjars regularly for the checkup.

Hamza feels the only way the Van Gujjar community will lap up the formal healthcare is if some of their own women become ASHA workers. "They feel hesitant to talk to women from outside their community, also because of the language barrier," he shares what these women have told him in the past. The existing midwives, who are well-versed in the traditional medicine, should be the first ones to go up for the ASHA training, he suggests.

However, Tarun Joshi, president of Van Panchayat Sangharsh Morcha in Uttarakhand, says, "We have been trying to increase the participation of the Van Gujjar women in the Van Gujjar's meetings but they don't leave their homes at all." This, in turn, reduces their chance to access the social schemes that have been floated by the state government to promote institutional deliveries and neonatal care and reduce infant mortality rates.

These women prefer home birth and mistrust the modern healthcare. "It's how we have lived our lives, inside the forests, for ages," says Mano Bibi, a village elder. The younger Fatima Biwi echoes the views: "We feel safe when our child is delivered in our home. Only when the complications arise do we go to the hospital." The 30-year-old recalls the time when she took her five-year-old daughter, who is sick with a blocked artery, to hospitals in nearby Rishikesh and Dehradun but the visits didn't help much.

However, Dr Anupa Lal, a Dehradun-based gynaecologist, sounds a word of caution against home deliveries. "Since delivery is a complicated process, improper techniques used in home deliveries can cause arterial blockages, affect the development of the brain and even lead to cerebral palsy." Since this forest-dwelling community is stuck to their old beliefs, Hamza feels they need to be sensitised about their healthcare rights and amenities through workshops and the government needs to do more. "We had written a letter to the state education department to open an anganwadi centre [which looks after the basic health and child care in villages] two years ago but nothing has moved," Hamza shares. But Singh defends this, saying, "the state provides anganwadi centres in areas with more than 200-300 residents, but the Van Gujjar community lives in small numbers." Joshi feels a lot of these healthcare problems can be resolved by reclassifying the Van Gujjars as a Scheduled Tribe from the current Other Backward Class status. "The Bhotia tribe in Uttarakhand gained a lot from the ST status," he makes his case while signing off.

(The author is a freelance journalist and a member of 101Reporters, a pan-India network of grassroots reporters)
Kiev, March 14 : A pregnant woman who was injured during the Russian shelling of a maternity hospital in Ukraine's Mariupol city on March 10, has died, which increased the overall fatalities in the attack to four, a media report said citing a journalist as saying.

The Ukayinska Pravda newspaper quoted Voice of America journalist Asya Dolina as saying in a Facebook post that "the pregnant girl seen in video/photo reports from the bombing site of the children's hospital no.3 in Mariupol (maternity hospital), the one who was carried on a stretcher, did not survive".

"Her unborn child did not survive," she added.

The hospital strike, one of the worst attacks since Russia started its war on February 24, also injured 17 others.

The Mariupol City Council on Sunday claimed that in 24 hours, there were at least 22 bombings.

"Altogether, nearly 100 bombs have been dropped on Mariupol... 2,187 residents of Mariupol have died to date because of the Russian attacks," it said.

The City Council said that the Russian troops are deliberately targeting residential buildings and densely populated areas, razing children's hospitals to the ground, and completely destroying the city's infrastructure.
New Delhi, March 14 : The Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM), a coalition of over 40 farmers' unions, is holding a closed-door meeting on Monday to discuss the fallout of the assembly election results, especially in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab, and also the plan of action for the Minimum Support Price (MSP), a demand put forth to the government.

The SKM, a consortium of multiple farmer organisations from across the country, had spear-headed the more than a year-long farmers' agitation ever since the government had introduced the now-repealed three farm laws in the form of ordinances in mid-2020.

In November 2021, the Parliament repealed the three contentious farm laws after which the government had tried to reach out to the SKM members to include them in a committee that will discuss the other demand on MSP.

Meanwhile, the SKM had declared to create awareness among the voters in states that had assembly elections, especially in Uttar Pradesh - where in Lakhimpur Kheri, four farmers were among those mowed down by a vehicle belonging to the son of Union Minister for Home Ajay Misra Teni.

"The meeting is taking place from 11 a.m. at the Gandhi Peace Foundation premises here," confirmed SKM spokesperson.

The meeting would have the core members of the SKM but also have a number of representatives from across India to discuss and review the position of each of their demands put forth when the Morcha had agreed to suspend their agitation after the three laws were repealed.
New Delhi, March 14 : With the most serious oil shock in decades now a reality, US President Joe Bidens attempt to cushion the blowback continues to meet resistance from the two allies he needs the most, the Guardian reported.

Saudi Arabia's Crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, and his counterpart in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Mohammed bin Zayed, are yet to agree to a phone call with Biden - a scenario all but unthinkable during previous administrations.

Biden's immediate priority is for both countries to help exert maximum economic pressure on Russia by cranking up their oil output.

Each capital is a major supplier of oil, with excess capacity, which would soften the effect on US consumers through fuel prices before midterm elections in November that threaten Democratic control of Congress.

With relations between the Middle East oil powers and Washington at their lowest ebb in modern times, though, a reckoning is due that may realign the regional order on terms that favour Riyadh and Abu Dhabi.

Both leaders have made it clear that they will settle for nothing less, and are ready to extract their price, the Guardian reported.

As if to show the Biden administration what it could do, the UAE ambassador to Washington, Yousef al-Otaiba, said on March 10 that it favoured production increases "and will be encouraging Opec to consider higher production levels", leading oil prices to fall by 13 per cent the next day.

But no action to increase supply followed and by the week's end the price per barrel was back up to almost $130, an uncomfortably high level for Biden to take to the midterms.

However, the standoff involves far more than oil.

In Riyadh, Prince Mohammed feels snubbed by Biden's refusal to engage with him ever since he took office.

The murder of the Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi by the Crown Prince's security aides, the war on Yemen, the jailing of rights activists and the boycott of Qatar have made him a pariah to the administration, the Guardian reported.
Tokyo, March 14 : Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has urged ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) lawmakers to unite to win the upcoming House of Councilors election and ensure a stable coalition government.

Kishida, president of the LDP, made the remarks at a party convention, emphasising the importance of its coalition with its smaller partner Komeito, reports Xinhua news agency.

He dismissed an emerging view that the relationship between the LDP and Komeito has become awkward over cooperation in the election, which will possibly be held in July.

"Is there any other option than LDP-Komeito that can be entrusted with governing the country when we face history-making challenges? I don't think so," Kishida said at the convention.

"At times, upper house elections have triggered a big political change. Let us unite as one and secure a victory," said the Prime Minister, who was elected LDP president last September.

The House of Councilors' election is a key test for Kishida as head of the LDP and also as Prime Minister, who will be judged by voters on his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and the economy.

"The stage is set for cooperation in the House of Councilors election. We will look at the situation in each constituency and seek substantive cooperation that will produce results," said Natsuo Yamaguchi, chief of Komeito.
Chennai, March 14 : Founder leader of the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK) Thol Thirumavalavan on Monday called upon the Congress, Left, and other secular forces to unitedly fight against the BJP in the 2024 general elections.

In a statement, the noted Dalit leader said that BJP was speaking only about communal divide and polarisation and that it was dangerous for society as a whole.

The BJP does not speak about scientific advancements or industrial developments or even on employment for youths but focuses only on communalism, the Member of Parliament from Chidambaram said.

He said that the secular and progressive parties must extend their support to the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin in his effort to forge a social justice front. He said that the disunity among secular forces should not be a reason for the return of the BJP to power in 2024.

The BJP retaining power in four out of the five states where elections were held was not a big development as made out by the Prime Minister but instead, it was just retaining the power. He said that even in Uttar Pradesh, the BJP fared badly and came back to power with a lesser number of seats than what it has had in 2017.

Thol Thiruvamavalavan said that if the Congress and other secular parties had fought the elections in UP together, then the picture would have been different and called upon a unity of all these forces against the BJP in the 2024 elections.

He also said that the judgment of the Madurai bench of the Madras High court against honour killing of a Dalit youth was a welcome verdict and said that it was a way forward to prevent honour killings.

The senior leader called upon the state government to form a separate police wing to prevent honour killings as also another police wing to prevent Communal tensions as necessitated by the Supreme Court of India.
Puducherry, March 14 : The Education Minister of Puducherry A. Namassivayam has said that free bus services for students in the Union Territory will commence in a week.

The minister, while speaking to mediapersons at an event organised by the Puducherry Directorate of School education said that the tenders for the bus services have been received and bus operations would commence within a week.

During the programme, Chief Minister N. Rangaswamy handed over the appointment orders of 158 pre-primary teachers or Bala Sevikas. He said that just as the pre-primary teachers were posted, the Government of the Union Territory of Puducherry would soon fill the vacancies of lower division clerks and upper-division clerks in the territory.

The education minister said that the Chief Minister had kept his word in handing over appointment orders to the Pre-primary teachers and added that classes for LKG and UKG have commenced functioning on Monday morning in all the four regions, Puducherry, Karaikkal, Yanam, and Mahe under the Union Territory of Puducherry.

Namassivayam also confirmed that syllabus for Classes X, XI, and XII would be completed before the commencement of the board examinations.
New Delhi, March 14: Mir Suleman Dawood, the 35th descendent of the founders of Balochistan, is living in exile in London from where he is lobbying with governments across the world to support the Baloch struggle for independence.

India Narrative met with Dawood, the third-generation ruler of Balochistan after the princely state's annexation by Pakistani forces in 1948. He spoke with Rahul Kumar at the Marriott hotel Marble Arch, close to the busy Edgware Road, London. Dawood says that the Baloch struggle is consolidating and there will be surprises for Pakistan and for the region in the days to come.

Excerpts from the interview: Q: There has been a flare-up in Balochistan with deadly attacks on Pakistani security forces. Many people say the Baloch got their weapons from the Taliban after the fall of Kabul.

A: The Baloch uprising is a home-grown issue which is unconnected to the Afghan situation. The Baloch and the Taliban do not see eye-to-eye.

After the takeover of Afghanistan was becoming imminent, a lot of weapons went to Iran. The Baloch fighters got their weapons even when the American forces were present on Afghan soil. American weapons have been available in Pakistan's tribal areas for a while.

Ever since the US coalition forces were present in Afghanistan, weapons, army uniforms, blankets and other equipment had been trickling out. So, it is a long shot believing that we got the weapons from the Taliban.

Q: The China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is seen as a resource-exploitation project by the Baloch community with large numbers of Chinese nationals working in the region. Do you fear the Chinese might outnumber the Baloch in the future? A: The China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is on occupied land. Whoever Pakistan has asked to invest in Balochistan is doing so illegally. Because Balochistan is occupied by Pakistan, the Chinese are not welcome there. For us they are coming through the occupier force-the Pakistani military.

I don't think China will succeed in CPEC. Even though Pakistan is providing legitimacy to foreign investments in Balochistan, Pakistan itself is not legitimate as far as CPEC is concerned. Not much progress is happening on the project and China is not getting any money in return from Pakistan.

I don't feel that the Chinese will outnumber the Baloch as the Chinese are settling in different parts of Pakistan-Gwadar, Karachi, Islamabad and Lahore. The Chinese are present in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa but do not have a presence in Baloch rural areas.

Q: There is a lingering suspicion that China intends to convert the Gwadar Port into a military facility. Do you think the powerful Pakistan military is unaware of it or is it in cahoots with China to make Gwadar a military base? A: The Gwadar port is a military project with two issues that connect it-military and energy security. China requires a land route for these two. The Chinese are fearful that tensions in the South China Sea (SCS) can create problems for it, therefore, it needs a land route to import and export.

China has a large population and it needs energy from the Middle East, therefore Gwadar suits it well. The Pakistani military is defrauding China by taking money from them. It is aware of China's intentions regarding Gwadar.

Q: Have the Khans of Kalat taken a back seat in the struggle for independence? Do you think the princely state can become a rallying point for the Baloch people-a symbol of hope and aspiration for an independent Baloch nation? A: We have never taken a back seat in our freedom struggle. In 1948, after Pakistan occupied Balochistan by force, Prince Abdul Karim, my grandfather's brother was the first one who started the uprising. When my grandfather Yar Khan was arrested by Pakistan in the fifties, fighters led by Nawab Navroz Khan went to the mountains with tribes to wage an armed struggle.

The Khanat of Kalat is an institution by itself and its head has certain responsibilities. The Khan is the head of tribes and is also the head of the judicial system called the jirga.

As the head, I am doing my best for the Baloch people and for Balochistan. I have taken up the Baloch cause at the US Congress in February 2012 and have been to the parliaments of every European country espousing freedom for the Baloch people. I have also approached Japan, Bangladesh and even the earlier Afghanistan government for support.

We were a country for nearly 600 years and have existed as a civilisation for 6,000 years after we built the foundations of Balochistan between the 13-14th centuries.

As an independent nation, we were sandwiched between Iran, Afghanistan, India and the Arabian Sea. We had agreements with Nadir Shah of Iran, the rulers of Afghanistan and also the British Crown. Kalat used to keep ambassadors in foreign countries like Oman and Ottoman. But now Ottoman itself is so many countries.

From our point of view just three princely states were not part of British India-Kalat or Balochistan, Nepal and Bhutan. Even Kashmir was part of India under the British.

Q: When will Balochistan gain independence? Will the world take up the cause of the Baloch people? A: We were an independent nation.

The tripartite agreement that we had with Lord Mountbatten-the last viceroy of India, was signed by my grandfather Mir Ahmad Yar Khan and Sultan Ahmed-the Kalat Prime Minister, with Mohammed Ali Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan for Pakistan after discussions held between 1 June to 7 August 1947.

Besides being the viceroy, Mountbatten was also the legal representative of the British Crown. As an independent princely State, we had a treaty with the British Crown. We were the guests of the British Crown unlike other princely States.

We have internationalised the Baloch struggle for independence. The governments across the world know about our struggle now. Because of geo-politics, the situation has changed a lot. We are progressing slowly but surely.

There will be surprises for Pakistan and in the region as we consolidate our struggle. I can't talk about what these surprises will be. I am living in the UK as a refugee. I am living out of my country for our generation's future.

Q: How do you foresee the future of Pakistan? A: Pakistan is a failed State. It is an illegitimate nation that has been forced upon people by the British. It was a country made for the military, not people. It was created to protect British interests.

Balochistan was an independent nation. Large parts of Sindh are a part of Balochistan. On the other hand, Khyber Pathtunkhwa belongs to Afghanistan. What I am trying to illustrate is that Pakistan is not a country.

It will not last long as it is a military nation and their military is corrupt. Pakistan is bankrupt and has no economic or foreign policy.

The Pakistani establishment is the terror outfit of the region. Every terror organisation is linked to Pakistan, whether these are internal terror groups or foreign terror organisations. Every terror incident leads to the Pakistani Army. In the future the Pakistani army might even be put on the list of terror organisations.

Q: Where do you see India in this entire situation? A: I would like India to wake up and act. Much water has flown under the bridge.

I do not see India anywhere in the Baloch struggle. Maybe perhaps twice-once Prime Minister Modi spoke from the Red Fort about Balochistan and another time an Indian ambassador mentioned us at the UN.

The Indian media is naAve about the history of Balochistan. The archives in Delhi have numerous records about Balochistan yet Indian journalists keep getting their facts wrong.

(The content is being carried under an arrangement with indianarrative.com) --indianarrative
New Delhi, March 14: To what extent would the economic sanctions against Russia cripple its economy? While most researchers and analysts have said that the stringent sanctions against Russia would deal a "death" blow to its economy, many citizens opine that these measures will have a limited impact on their lives especially since Moscows economic engagements with China have only deepened. Last week, even India and Russia held talks on potential joint projects in the energy sector. The two sides have also been looking at alternative mechanisms for payment and other transactions.

Several countries including Belarus, Myanmar Ivory Coast, Cuba, Venezuela, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iran, Iraq, Liberia, North Korea, Syria, and Zimbabwe are among those in the sanctioned list. But Russia with its size and natural resource deposits cannot be clubbed with other countries.

With 11 per cent of global oil reserves, sanctions against Russia have become a cause for worry for the West. Russia also accounts for 21 per cent of gas production in the world and is one of the largest exporters of wheat.

Russian President Vladimir Putin during a televised discussion last week said that Moscow's exports of oil and gas are continuing as usual, including the supplies through Ukraine. Russia supplies more than 40 per cent of Europe's total energy requirements. While there are talks of reducing dependence on Russia, it will take time. "Can the European countries, which are already reeling under economic pressure, after the Covid pandemic take such chances, the pains of the sanctions will hit Europe," an analyst told India Narrative.

"We are respecting all of our obligations in terms of energy supplies," Putin said.

Russia' energy exports to Europe have continued.

"Russia despite the expulsion of some of its banks from the SWIFT inter-bank system. It means that the world cannot completely do without Russia's resources," Gulf News said in a report.

"Russia has alternatives not available to many countries that were previously boycotted. This is why many other nations have not made any move on sanctions," the report said.

Anna Koroleva, a senior Russian journalist at Expert, a local business weekly, told India Narrative that there has been no significant impact yet of the sanctions on the lives of the citizens.

"Banks are working as usual. Now no one is withdrawing anything from ATMs, plastic cards are working, we have our own payment system "MIR", which has long been used by all pensioners and those who receive social support," she said, adding that the initial panic among citizens just after the Russian invasion of Ukraine has not settled.

Daily supplies of essential items are continuing, she said.

(The content is being carried under an arrangement with indianarrative.com) --indianarrative

Latest updates on Russia-Ukraine War
Istanbul, March 14 : Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis pledged to boost mutual cooperation "despite their disagreements".

Erdogan and Mitsotakis met in Istanbul behind closed doors on Sunday, Turkey's presidential office said in a statement, adding the main agenda of the discussions was bilateral and international relations, including the Russia-Ukraine conflict, reports Xinhua news agency.

Erdogan and Mitsotakis agreed to keep communication channels open and improve bilateral relations despite some disagreements between the two countries, said the statement.

The Turkish leader told the Greek Prime Minister that he maintains his belief in taking relations to a high level and making progress in issues that strained their relations.

The relations between the two NATO allies have long been at odds over a series of issues, including maritime and energy issues in the Aegean Sea and the Mediterranean Sea.

Meanwhile, addressing the Greek community at the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Istanbul earlier in the day, Mitsotakis called for an immediate ceasefire on all fronts in Ukraine so that new opportunities for dialogue, reconciliation, and peace might be present.
New Delhi, March 14 : The Enforcement Directorate (ED) is conducting raids at multiple locations in Chhattisgarh in connection with Rs 54 crore Prevention of Money Laundering case lodged against businessman Subhash Sharma.

A source close to the development said that the ED is rading eight places in Chhattisgarh. The officials are looking for incriminating documents related to the case.

Sharma was arrested on March 6 from Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport when he was about to board a flight. He is currently in ED's custody till March 15.

The ED initiated money laundering investigation on the basis of multiple FIRs registered by Chhattisgarh Police and the CBI against Sharma and others for fraudulently obtaining loans from various banks through companies owned and controlled by him.

The total Proceeds of Crime (POC) involved in the FIRs is around Rs 54 crore. Investigations by the ED revealed that during 2009 and 2014, the loans obtained fraudulently by the companies owned and controlled by Sharma were diverted and used for investment in non-intended businesses.

A part of the Proceeds of Crime was also utilized to purchase immovable properties in the name of shell entities.

Most of the companies of Sharma did not have any business activities and were created only for the purpose of routing of loan funds received to other companies.

The ED said that an order of attaching movable and immovable properties worth Rs 39.68 crore derived out of the Proceeds of Crime had been issued.
New Delhi, March 14 : Television actor Ali Merchant has entered the reality show, 'Lock Upp' as its 14th contestant. His entry has caught the attention of many, because of all the controversies around his marriage with actress Sara Khan on 'Bigg Boss 4', who too is a part of the show.

"I'm happy that I'm getting in. I think I was waiting for a show like this for a very long time," he told IANS, adding: "When I was in 'Big Boss', I was there for 10 or 11 days as a guest. And I was very young at that time. Then there was a very emotionally disturbing element.

"But now I have a different perspective to life where I have a lot of clarity and I think in the last 12 years, there's a lot of things that you realize, so it's a very different perspective now and then." Ali has been through a lot of ups and downs in life and for him getting inside the show or facing the contestants inside, nothing seems to be challenging.

As he said: "Post 'Bigg Boss' I started getting very few good works. I had practically no work. So, I started working in a factory and everyday had to travel for five hours. Later I started doing music videos and became known in the industry. Now, I am among successful DJs. I believe in doing everything with perfection. Same I will do inside the show." Ali's marriage with Sara has created a lot of controversy. He has already spoken a lot about his ex-wife. In fact, once in an interview he said that his marriage was the biggest mistake of his life. Now, when the actor is entering the show and will be facing Sara, how he is going to deal with it.

He replied: "It is a human tendency that if everything falls at its place nobody is going to question but if you take any wrong step, people start questioning your decision. Same happened with me at that time. When two people are in love, the next step obviously is marriage.

"It would have happened after a year of relationship. That time I was quite young and getting married on national television looked like a great thing to us. But after coming out of the show I realised that things couldn't be worked out." "Of course my relationship with Sara has a lot of affect on my career but now I have moved on and don't want to say anything bad about her." On the show, if he has to reveal secrets of his life, will he be able to share them and he answered firmly: "I am walking the path of redemption. This show for me is redemption. I am accepting all the sins and every single thing that I have done." When asked, if he has to perform a task with Sara, is their past going to affect his game and he said: "I will not let it affect my game and I know how to be best in everything I do." Whom he thinks will be the biggest challenge inside 'Lock Upp' for him: "I think the strongest contestant till now is Munawar Faruqui and he is going to be the biggest challenge for me. He is very real and straightforward. I like his game and he is really doing well inside the show," he concluded.

Kangana Ranaut hosted reality show 'Lock Upp' streams on MX Player and ALT Balaji.
Kiev, March 14 : At least two people were killed on Monday after a nine-story apartment building in Kiev was struck by Russian shelling, Ukraine's State Emergency Service (SES) said.

The building has been partially destroyed between the ground floor and the second floor, and a fire broke out on the second and third floors, reports Ukrayinska Pravda citing the SES as saying.

The SES said three people have been hospitalised, and nine others were treated on the spot.

SES units have rescued 15 people and evacuated 63 people, while a search for more possible victims buried continues.

In another development also in Kiev, the city administration has said that an Antonov aircraft "plant", not Antonov Airport, has come under fire by Russian forces, reports the BBC.

The Antonov aircraft manufacturing facility is located at Sviatoshyn Airfield, about 10 km from the Kiev city centre.

Videos circulating on social media show a thick plume of dark smoke above the factory.

Elsewhere in Ukraine, the SES has confirmed that a rocket strike on the town of Stavysche in the Zhytomyr region has left at least 4 people injured, while an airstrike has damaged a TV tower near Rivne.

The two incidents also took place on Monday.

Meanwhile, air raid sirens could be heard in many regions across the country - from Lviv and Transcarpathia to Kharkiv and Odessa.
New Delhi, March 14 : Shares of HDFC Bank rose significantly on Monday after the Reserve Bank of India lifted the restrictions on the bank regarding its business generating activities planned under the 'Digital 2.0' programme.

In December 2020, the RBI had directed HDFC Bank to temporarily stop all launches of the 'Digital Business' generating activities and sourcing of new credit card customers on certain incidents of outages in the Internet banking, mobile banking and payment utilities of the bank over the past two years.

In August last year, RBI had relaxed the restrictions on the bank and allowed the lender to issue new credit cards.

However, the restrictions on all new launches of the digital business generating activities planned under 'Digital 2.0' were to be reviewed by the RBI.

At 1.17 p.m., the bank's shares traded at Rs 1,436, up 2.8 per cent from Friday's close.

In the past one week, or five sessions, HDFC Bank has outperformed the broader market by gaining over 10 per cent, as compared to a 6 per cent rise in the Sensex, data showed.
New Delhi, March 14 : Dash and Dot debuted their Fall/Winter 2022 collection at Paris Fashion Week, which was inspired by the rich history of Indian textiles and craftsmanship. It's a celebration of traditional Indian craftsmanship presented on a global scale in ready-to-wear silhouettes. The goal was to bring affordable luxury from India to the rest of the world.

Each piece incorporated a component of sustainability. Starting with coats and jackets made from upcycled bohris and jute bags embellished with mirror work, the collection demonstrates how Indian artisanship can help upcycle even the most basic textile. The shirts were created using a one-of-a-kind embroidery technique that made use of waste sewing threads from export factories. The collection embraced carpet making's traditional history, with materials hand knitted using organic cotton and recycled polyester threads.

Dash & Dot's Fall/Winter Collection empowers Indian artisans and forges a link between the global fashion industry and India's time-honoured techniques. The goal was to blur the distinction between Indian craftsmanship and ready-to-wear clothing.

Speaking of his experience at Paris Fashion Week 2022, Ashray Gujral, founder of Dash & Dot said, "Being welcomed to showcase Indian history and being a part of the global community was truly an enriching experience. It was everything one could ever dream of. It was even more heartwarming to witness our Indian workmanship being appreciated so much. To be surrounded in an environment of creative people who do what we do makes us realize how much we love the process of creating." More specifically, Ashray believes that there is a lot of hard work and team effort that goes into making the luxurious brand accessible to global platforms such as Paris Fashion Week.

Ashray advises young Indian fashion brands seeking a global audience, saying, "We shouldn't be ashamed of the fact that we are from India." We come from one of the world's richest textile and artisanship histories, and it is critical for us as designers to take on the responsibility of bringing that rich history into the present day." (IANSlife can be contacted at ianslife@ians.in)
New Delhi, March 14 : Rosewalk, a luxury hospital for women has launched an initiative to recognise the incredible contribution of some women who are skilled at riding bicycles. Rosewalk launched its latest campaign, ##BeAnExtraordinari #BREAKTHEBIAS, in response to this initiative and to support female bikers. The bike ride began on March 13 from Rosewalk to various parts of Delhi.

Recognizing these women's unwavering spirit, Rosewalk invited all female bikers to be a part of the change. This initiative provided them with a platform on which they were applauded for breaking the stereotype and sharing their biking experience with the entire country.

Rosewalk, through this initiative, honours female bikers who have broken the stereotype that riding a bike was only for men. This initiative by one of the best women's hospitals will allow them to conquer the roads.

It costs nothing to participate in Rosewalk's initiative. One can simply join the women-led initiative and participate in the convoy to become a part of this campaign.

(This article is website exclusive and cannot be reproduced without the permission of IANSlife) IANSlife can be contacted at ianslife@ians.in
Baghdad, March 14 : The Iraqi Ministry of Foreign Affairs has summoned the Iranian Ambassador to the country to protest against Tehran's ballistic missile attack on the semi-autonomous Kurdish region's capital Erbil.

The attack has "caused damage to civilian facilities and homes of citizens, in addition to spreading fear among the residents of those areas", Xinhua news agency quoted the Ministry as saying in a statement.

The Ministry reiterated its "condemnation of the flagrant violation" of the sovereignty and territory of Iraq, stressing that such attacks will cast a shadow over the regional situation and make it more complicated.

The Kurdistan Regional Government has said 12 long-range ballistic missiles were fired at 1 a.m. on Sunday from the east outside Iraqi borders toward a new building of the US Consulate in Erbil and the surrounding residential areas, leaving one civilian injured.

Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) on Sunday claimed the missile attack on an Israeli base in Erbil, saying the move came in response to an Israeli airstrike on Syria's capital Damascus on March 7, in which two IRGC officers were killed.

The attack prompted the Iraqi Ministerial Council for National Security to issue a statement demanding "frank and clear explanations" from the Iranian side.

The Council, headed by Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, stressed Iraq's constant rejection of settling scores between countries and entities by violating Iraq's sovereignty, noting its lands cannot be used to attack neighbouring countries.
Lucknow, March 14 : Contrary to the perception that the BJP lost in the first phase of UP elections and later regained ground, the available data shows that the ruling BJP won handsomely in the first phase. The party's march to victory was somewhat halted in the second and final phase where the SP gained ground.

The first phase of polls was considered tough for the BJP, mainly because of farmers' agitation and Jat anger.

Besides, this was the first time that Jats and Muslims were voting together after the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots.

Jayant Chaudhary was also riding high on the wave of sympathy since this was the first election after his father Ajit Singh's demise.

The results however show that the BJP not only won 46 seats out of 58 in the first phase but also got almost 50 per cent vote share. The combined vote share of SP and RLD, has been pegged at just 31 per cent.

Clearly, a large chunk of Jats did not vote for SP and the memories of Muzaffarnagar riots were not fully wiped out. In fact, out of 24 Jat-dominated districts in the phase, BJP won 18, just one less than 2017. RLD, the party of Jats, could win just four and SP two.

The only setback for BJP was Kairana in Shamli, from where Union home minister Amit Shah had launched the campaign this time. The SP alliance swept all three seats of Shamli.

The BJP swept six districts - Gautam Buddh Nagar, Ghaziabad, Bulandshahr, Hapur, Agra and Aligarh - in this phase. The RLD came up with an improved performance, with seven seats in the phase, up from one last time.

In the second phase, there were six districts with highest Muslim population which gave the SP-RLD alliance a fair chance to do well.

Out of nearly 2 crore voters in this phase, over 35 per cent or nearly 70 lakhs were Muslims. Five out of nine districts had more than 40 per cent minority population while Rampur was a Muslim majority district. In a perfectly bipolar contest, SP did have a larger vote share than the BJP but it did not convert into larger share of seats.

The BJP won 32 seats and SP 23 though seat-wise, this was SP's second-best performance after seventh phase.

In 2017 too, SP had performed better in Rohilkhand, but votes had split between BSP and the SP-Congress alliance, ultimately benefiting BJP. But this time, the Muslim vote seems to have consolidated behind the SP.

In the third phase, the BJP performed well in the region called Yadavland.

Although almost 50 per cent of the 59 seats across 16 districts falling in the phase were part of the Yadav belt with a heavy concentration of the influential caste, it was the non-Yadav OBCs like Shakyas, Lodhs, Kurmis and Dalits played an equally important role in deciding the outcome.

Despite half a dozen districts with SP influence, including Etawah and Mainpuri falling in this phase, SP and RLD could win only 15 seats. BJP and Apna Dal (S) won 44 seats.

SP's vote share went up nearly 10 per cent but the party could add only six more seats to its kitty.

Karhal was the most watched out seat in the phase from where SP president Akhilesh Yadav was in the fray and BJP had fielded Union minister S.P. Singh Baghel, a former SP loyalist. Akhilesh's uncle, Shivpal Yadav, contested from Jaswantnagar, another bastion of the Samajwadi Party.

The BJP won all seats in four Bundelkhand districts - Jhansi, Lalitpur, Mahoba and Hamirpur in this phase.

The fourth phase had nine districts of Avadh region, Terai and Bundelkhand and included BJP bastion Lucknow and Congress stronghold Rae Bareli.

All eyes were also on Lakhimpur Kheri to know the impact of farmers unrest and October 3 incident in which union minister's son allegedly ran over four farmers and three of his supporters were lynched in retaliatory violence.

While BJP won all eight seats of Lakhimpur Kheri and Pilibhit, the impact of freebies like ration distributed among the poor during the pandemic showed favourable results for BJP in this phase.

The Samajwadi Party fell way behind in this phase and could win just 10 seats out of 59.

By the time of the fifth phase, the BJP and allies had already crossed the majority mark of 203.

The phase had Ayodhya and big pockets of non-Yadav OBC voters. While BJP won the Ayodhya Sadar seat, it had to taste defeat on two seats of the district.

A major shocker for the BJP was the defeat of deputy chief minister Keshav Maurya who tasted defeat in Sirathu. The SP swept Kaushambhi and BJP won in Gonda.

The SP performed reasonably well, winning 22 seats out of 61. The BJP and its alliance won 36.

The SP also did well in Pratapgarh and Sultanpur, to make up for the poor show in third and fourth phases. The sixth phase of polls included Gorakhpur, a Yogi bastion. The BJP swept all seats of Gorakhpur, Kushinagar and Deoria while SP scored victory in BSP's traditional bastion Ambedkar Nagar.

In the last two phases, it was the consolidation of Nishad voters, the non-Yadav OBCs, towards the BJP that emerged as the big deciding factor. The BJP had allied with Nishad Party that caters to non-Yadav OBCs and has a dominant presence in the districts of Purvanchal.

Prominent candidates like Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath from Gorakhpur urban, Ajay Kumar Lallu from Tamkuhi Raj, Azad Samaj Party founder Chandrashekhar Azad from Gorakhpur Urban, Swami Prasad Maurya from Fazilnagar, Ram Govind Chaudhary from Bansdih and other ministers like Surya Pratap Sahi from Pathardeva, Satish Chandra Dwivedi from Itwa, Jai Pratap Singh from Bansi, Shree Ram Chauhan from Khajani and Jai Prakash Nishad from Rudrapur were in the fray.

Maurya lost in Fazilnagar, and Ram Govind Chaudhary in Bansdih. Basic education minister Satish Chandra Dwivedi also lost in Itwa. Ajay Kumar Lallu also trailed to the third position in Tamkuhi Raj.

In the seventh phase of polls, Prime Minister Narendra Modi campaigned extensively and the BJP swept all seats of Varanasi and Sonbhadra.

The SP swept Azamgarh, the parliamentary seat of SP chief Akhilesh Yadav, and Ghazipur. The SP and BJP shared equal number of seats - 27 each.

SP alliance partner, SBSP, won four seats in this phase. Its president O.P. Rajbhar won a keen contest in Zahoorabad.
Sanaa, March 14 : Forces of the Saudi-led coalition have repelled advances by the Houthi militia on two fronts in Yemen's oil-rich province of Marib, a military source said.

Coalition airstrikes targeted the Houthi combatants in the western district of Sirwah and southern district of Al-Jubah, just a few miles away from the government-controlled central city of Marib and adjacent Safer oil fields, the source told Xinhua news agency.

"The strikes killed dozens and destroying several of their vehicles, forcing them (Houthis) to retreat," he added.

Meanwhile, the coalition said it launched 12 airstrikes on the Houthi militia in Marib in the past 24 hours, destroying eight vehicles and inflicting heavy casualties on the militia group, Riyadh's Al-Arabiya TV reported.

Houthi media also reported the coalition airstrikes in Marib but did not provide details.

The Houthi rebels have recently lost several strategic districts in the oil-rich central-south province of Shabwa and the central province of Marib.

Yemen has been mired in a civil war since late 2014 when the Iran-backed Houthi militia seized control of several northern provinces and forced the Saudi-backed government army of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi out of the capital Sanaa.
Hyderabad, March 14 : Popular production house Zee Studios has apparently bagged two Telugu biggies. It is reported that Zee Studios is one of the major investors for Ram Charan's upcoming biggie, while it will also be a part of superstar Pawan Kalyan's upcoming multi-starrer.

Ram Charan's 'RC15', which has director Shankar Shanmugam on board, is currently into making. As per the reports, Zee Studios will hold the non-theatrical rights of the big-ticket movie, for their investment in the production On the other hand, Zee Studios has the scope to join hands with Peoples Media Factory and Fortune Four Cinemas for an upcoming biggie.

Pawan Kalyan and his nephew Sai Dharam Tej will be a part of this Telugu remake of Tamil's hit movie 'Vinodhaya Sitam', which has Peoples Media Factory and Fortune Four Cinemas as the producers. Now that Zee Studios will invest in this much-anticipated movie venture, it will produce the movie jointly.

Well, the official announcement regarding the same is expected to be out soon. Zee Studios is also in plans to co-produce more Telugu films in the coming months, an online source suggests.
Kinshasa, March 14 : At least 75 people were killed and 125 others injured following a freight train derailment in Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), local authorities said.

Although the accident took place on March 11, the toll was confirmed by the National Railway Company of Congo (SNCC) only on Sunday, reports Xinhua news agency.

The derailment of the 15-wagon train took place in the district of Lubudi in Lualaba province, Fabien Mutomb, Director General of the SNCC, said According to the Ministry of Communication and Media, the train lost control before several wagons ended up in a ravine due to a locomotive traction failure, without providing further details.

Train accidents are often reported in this part of the country due to the poor conditions of locomotives and dilapidated rails.
Patna, March 14 : Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Monday pulled up Assembly Speaker Vijay Sinha after BJP MLA Sanjay Sarawgi pointed out an issue of Lakhisarai in the house.

Vijay Sinha had recently brought breach of privilege motion in the house after two SHOs and a DSP rank officers allegedly misbehaved with him in his home district Lakhisarai on February 9.

Under the special privilege motion, he asked the chief secretary and DGP of Bihar to take action in this matter. Unfortunately, no action has been taken against alleged SHOs and DSP.

Sanjay Sarawgi, a BJP leader took up the issue during the Question hour of Vidhan Sabha and asked the minister to inform the house about the action taken report.

As the chief minister is also holding the home minister portfolio, he got upset. He stood from the seat and directly told the speaker that the house cannot run like this. "This is my fourth stint as chief minister and have never come across any situation like this where a question is repeatedly asked in the Assembly. The House cannot run like this. You (Speaker) cannot interfere in every matter. The investigation is currently underway. We neither frame nor save anyone. Who are you to adjourn the house over a question of a particular place?" Kumar asked.

"I will ask the department concerned to provide the status of the investigation. If anyone has any doubt, I will hold a meeting on this matter today," Kumar said.

Replying to the chief minister, Speaker Sinha said: "The members of the entire house including you (Chief Minister) elected me as the speaker. I am a custodian of the house and it is my duty to strengthen the voice of every public representative of the house. This issue has been pointed out thrice in the house and legislators of ruling and opposition parties have the same stand. Despite this, the issue was not addressed by the home department. The situation is as such that despite sitting on the chair of the speaker, I am unable to raise issues of my areas (My district)," Sinha said.

"When I visit my constituency, people ask me that I am sitting on such a big post but unable to address the issues of my areas. Why has the state government not taken action against two SHOs and a DSP?" Sinha said.

"When it comes to the constitution, people like me are always eager to learn from you (Chief Minister) and other senior members of the house. You are more knowledgeable than me but please don't disrespect the Speaker's chair," Sinha said.
New Delhi, March 14 : Union Minister for Petroleum Hardeep Singh Puri on Monday informed the Rajya Sabha that the government is looking for an alternate market for fuel purchase amid the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Responding to a question during 'Question Hour', he said that the government has been exploring all options such as currency to facilitate purchase, supply of oil in markets, insurance and freight.

In response to Congress lawmaker Shakti Singh Gohil's question whether the government intends to reduce diesel rates, the Minister said that the prices of diesel were deregulated. "Whenever we felt that the common man needed more relief, we went ahead and reduced the price. In November 2021, we brought down the fuel prices by Rs 10," Puri said in the House.

Congress MP K.C. Venugopal said that petrol prices have increased 63 times and diesel 61 times. He also said that since November, the government has not hiked the price and asked whether the price will remain the same or will be a hike or not.

The Petroleum Minister also informed that Venezuela is a country which was subjected to sanctions by another country. He further said that there was hope and expectation that oil from other sanctioned countries would become available, the Organisation of Oil Exporting Countries (OPEC) countries would increase their oil production and there would be persuasion by the international community in this regard.

Puri also said that neither the union government nor the oil companies are going to float oil bonds.

"All legitimate steps would be taken to maintain prices of oil," he said.
New Delhi, March 14 : Russia has called for the possibility of moving the UN Headquarters from the US to a neutral country.

Director of the Department of International Organizations of the Russian Foreign Ministry Pyotr Ilyichev said: "We are positive about the idea of moving the UN headquarters to a neutral state. Such a step would make it possible to remove unnecessary tension from the complex process of searching for collective answers to the global challenges of our time.

"In addition, our work would become much less politicized than it is now." At the same time, he noted that the likelihood of this is low, since this requires the consent of many countries, and at the moment this cannot be achieved, RT News reported.

"For its adoption, the consent of all or at least the majority of the UN member states is required, which is currently unrealistic to mobilise, in particular, due to the significant financial costs of such a step.

"Not in favour of the initiative is the fact that in 2014 the capital reconstruction of the Secretariat building was completed, including the General Assembly Hall, which now meets all modern technical standards," a Ministry official said.
Tokyo, March 14 : Materials that formed the Earth may have been formed very far out in the early solar system and then been brought in during the turbulent early history of the solar system, suggests a study.

Earth is believed to have formed partly from carbonaceous meteorites, which are thought to come from outer main-belt asteroids.

The new study led by researchers at Tokyo Institute of Technology suggests these asteroidal materials may have formed very far out in the early solar system and then been transported into the inner solar system by chaotic mixing processes.

The findings, published in the journal AGU Advances, suggest that the surface minerals present on outer main-belt asteroids, especially ammonia (NH3)-bearing clays, form from starting materials containing NH3 and carbon dioxide (CO2) ice that are stable only at very low temperature, and under water-rich conditions.

Based on these results, the study proposes that outer main-belt asteroids formed in distant orbits and differentiated to form different minerals in water-rich mantles and rock-dominated cores.

To understand the source of the discrepancies in the measured spectra of carbonaceous meteorites and asteroids, using computer simulations, the team modelled the chemical evolution of several plausible primitive mixtures designed to simulate primitive asteroidal materials. They then used these computer models to produce simulated reflectance spectra for comparison to the telescopically obtained ones.

Their models indicated that in order to match the asteroid spectra, the starting material had to contain a significant amount of water and ammonia, a relatively low abundance of carbon dioxide (CO2), and react at temperatures below 70 degrees Celsius, suggesting the asteroids formed much further out than their present locations in the early solar system.

If true, this study suggests that Earth's formation and unique properties result from peculiar aspects of the solar system's formation.

"Whether our solar system's formation is a typical outcome remains to be determined, but numerous measurements suggest we may be able to place our cosmic history in context soon," said lead author Hiroyuki Kurokawa from the Institute's Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI).

There will be several opportunities to test this model, for example, this study provides predictions for what the analysis of Hayabusa 2 returned samples will find. Hayabusa is the Japanese state space agency JAXA's asteroid sample-return mission.

This distant origin of asteroids, if correct, predicts that there will be ammoniated salts and minerals in Hayabusa 2's returned samples. A further check on this model will be provided by the analyses of returned materials from NASA's OSIRIS-Rex mission.
Chennai, March 14 : Actress Amala Paul seems to have fond memories of her trip to Indonesia's Pink Island in 2019.

The actress recently took to Instagram to share her pictures, shot during a trip to a country that is popularly known as the 'Land of Thousand Islands." Posting pictures from her trip back then, the actress said, "Call me a beach bum and I'll probably say 'yes ma'am'. Throwback to my trip to Pink Island, Indonesia -- 2019.

"Fun fact: Pantai Merah or simply, the pink beach Komodo Island, is one of the seven pink sand beaches across the world. What makes the sand appear pink under the sun are microscopic residents, organisms called Foraminifera.

"They produce a red pigment on the coral reefs and leave small red particles behind that blend with the white sand, forming a soft pink tint that glows beautifully and is visible from the shore, water, and viewpoints on the hills." The actress also posted pictures of her visit to Komodo Island in Indonesia.
Bengaluru, March 14 : Karnataka Health Minister K. Sudhakar on Monday said that the government is deliberating on measures to accommodate students who have returned from the war-torn Ukraine.

Measures will be taken to ensure continuation of their education. "We are discussing about reducing fee for medical courses," Sudhakar stated in the Legislative Council.

Terming the death of Naveen Shekarappa Gyanagoudar, a student from the state in the Russian shelling at Kharkiv in Ukraine "unfortunate," he said that 22,000 students from the country were stranded in Ukraine. All of them have been brought back safely, he said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi was in continuous touch with authorities there. Many nations have taken up such an endeavour to bring back their students from Ukraine, he said.

"Students from neighbouring countries used Indian flags to find a way through. Medical students have returned to India from war-torn Ukraine. Their future education will be taken care of," he assured.

Meanwhile, Education Minister B.C. Nagesh informed the council that a fine of Rs 51.26 lakh had been imposed on 4,317 teachers for improper evaluation of answer papers of SSLC (Class 10) students in the state.

The mistakes regarding evaluation had taken place during Covid crisis. Those teachers who are found guilty are being warned, he explained.
Los Angeles, March 14 : The 27th annual Critics Choice Awards celebrated the best in television and film at a glittering ceremony here at the Fairmont Century Plaza Hotel. Jane Campions 'The Power of the Dog', as reported by IANS, and the comedy drama series 'Ted Lasso' led the night's winners with four trophies each. The dark comedy series 'Succession' took home three awards.

The night's big moment came when Halle Berry received the See Her Award from Issa Rae, who joked that the Critics Choice Association, the organisers of the awards, only fed the attendees hummus and wine, so reading the teleprompter might be a little challenging, reports 'Variety'.

Berry, however, delivered a passionate speech of her own, thanking Rae for inspiring her with her work. "You have rearranged the way we see ourselves as women of colour on television and in the world," she said.

As she reflected on her career, Berry revealed that she used to think she was "winning" by playing a part for a white man. But those roles didn't really work. Why? "Because I'm not a white man," she said, according to 'Variety'. "So, for those roles to work, they would have to be substantially changed. It would have to be written with the reality of my journey, in all of its beauty, and all of its pain." Berry continued: "This is why I am so grateful to be standing and living in this moment where women are standing up and we are telling our own stories. ... We will write, we will produce, we will direct and -- if we're brave enough -- will star in it all at the same time. We will use our emotional intelligence, and we will tell stories that don't fit preconceived notions." On a night of inspiring speeches, 'Ted Lasso' star Hannah Waddingham, standing alongside cast mates Brett Goldstein and Juno Temple, became emotional as she spoke about the Ukraine war. (Waddingham and Goldstein nabbed back-to-back honours for supporting actor and actress.) "It would be remiss of us to not throw the focus to the most important thing that is happening in the world at the moment," she said. "Our beautiful brothers and sisters and for me more importantly, the babies in Ukraine, who are being decimated at the moment from this putrid, putrid torrent of abuse." Waddingham continued: "Please think of them as much as you can and give as much as you can. We are so grateful for this, but may this stop. May this stop, please." During the telecast, late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel was on hand to present the Lifetime Achievement Award to Billy Crystal -- one day before the showbiz icon's "seventy-blank" birthday, reports 'Variety'. He later noted he'll actually be "74 tomorrow; I just can't remember." After teasing Kimmel that he'd really requested [Jimmy] Fallon to present the award, Crystal said that watching the clip reel made him think of only one word: "residuals".

"This is a lifetime achievement award, which is a little scary when they say they want to give it to you. So I called my doctor and said, 'Do they know something that I don't?' But to me, it's a creative achievement award. My lifetime achievement award is my family." Other highlights included the acceptance speech from 'Dopesick' star Michael Keaton (winner of best actor in a limited series or movie made for television), who joked about needing to go to the bathroom again, a nod to his SAG Award win when the actor had to sprint to the stage to receive his trophy.

"I love this time of year because it's springtime, it's awards season, and you can just smell that fake humility out there," he joked, reports 'Variety'.

Keaton then delivered an emotional tribute to the real people affected by opioid addiction, especially those near where 'Dopesick' was filmed in Virginia.

"One thing I'm proud about regarding this series is I think we really treated all those folks down there and in the world with real dignity," Keaton said, referring to a woman in her 70s who worked at a coffee shop in the area. "And she told me ... she was taking care of her [grandchild] because the parents, who are in their 20s, could not because they're incapacitated because of addiction. And I think of all those women, like my mom and my sisters." Another heartfelt moment came from Jean Smart, who was a double winner, as 'Mare of Easttown' was named best limited series, and she won the comedy actress prize for 'Hacks'.

On-stage, Smart called 'Hacks', the HBO Max comedy drama series, a "gift on a silver platter", before dedicating her trophy to the creators Lucia Aniello and Paul W. Downs, who had their first child, a boy, on Saturday.

Smart revealed that, on Friday, Aniello was at home on her computer, watching a remote feed and directing an upcoming Season 2 episode between contractions: "I kid you not. This woman is my idol."
Hassan, : March 14 (IANS) Posing as nurses, child lifters have kidnapped a new-born baby boy from the government hospital in Hassan district of Karnataka.

The incident took place on Sunday midnight in the Arakalagudu Government hospital.

According to police, a complaint has been lodged in this regard and the statement of the baby's mother, who is a labourer from Assam, recorded.

The police said that the child lifters gained entry from the back door of the hospital dressed as nurses. Since they were in uniform, no one had questioned them.

However, the act of child lifters had been recorded on CCTV camera and police are working on the clues. The Resident Medical Officer of the hospital Dr Deepak had lodged a complaint in this regard with Arakalagoodu police station.

The woman from Assam got admitted to the hospital on Sunday evening at 7 p.m. after experiencing labour pain and later she gave birth to a baby boy.

The child lifters had entered the hospital at about 7 p.m and waited till midnight to carry out the crime.

Further investigation has been taken up.
Seoul, March 14 : The top nuclear envoys of South Korea, the US and Japan on Monday denounced North Korea's recent missile tests and called on Pyongyang to cease acts that could escalate tensions, Seoul's Foreign Ministry said.

Noh Kyu-duk, special representative for Korean Peninsula peace and security affairs, his US counterpart Sung Kim and Japan's Takehiro Funakoshi spoke on the phone amid rising tension on the Korean Peninsula over the possibility of Pyongyang's intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) system test, reports Yonhap News Agency.

The trio denounced the North's recent spate of ballistic missile launches as violations of UN Security Council resolutions and urged it to return to dialogue at an early date, the ministry said in a release.

They also agreed to closely monitor Pyongyang's moves and remain in close cooperation to respond to its acts, it added.

South Korea and the US accused Pyongyang on March 11 of having tested a new ICBM system on February 27 and March 5 ahead of a full-range missile test.

Seoul and Washington have detected signs that North Korea is preparing to conduct another ICBM firing as early as this week, according to informed sources.

Concerns have persisted that the North could engage in more provocative acts as it made a veiled threat in January to lift its years-long self-imposed moratorium on nuclear and ICBM tests.
Chandigarh, March 14 : Holding the Gandhis solely responsible for the complete rout of the Congress in all the recent Assembly polls, PLC chief Capt Amarinder Singh on Monday slammed the Congress Working Committee (CWC) for blaming him for the defeat in Punjab instead of gracefully admitting their own blunders.

"The Congress has not only lost in Punjab but also in UP, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur and the Gandhis are entirely to be blamed for the party's shameful defeat," he said, adding that the fact was that the people, across the country, had lost faith in the leadership of the Gandhis.

Pointing out that many senior leaders within the party were outrightly blaming the infighting in the Punjab Congress and the 'anti-party' statements of Navjot Sidhu for the abysmal performance in Punjab, the former chief minister said the Congress was comfortably placed in the state till he was sacked to favour certain sycophants.

The party had dug its own grave in the border state the day they decided to back an "unstable" and "pompous" person like Sidhu, and naming a corrupt man like Charanjit Singh Channi as chief minister just months before the polls, he said.

The CWC leaders who were claiming that there was a strong "anti-incumbency" against his (Capt Amarinder's) government had conveniently forgotten that he had won every election for the party since 2017, the last being the civic bodies election in February 2021, just seven months before his unceremonious removal, he pointed out.

"These leaders are just sycophants who are trying to shield the family by shifting blame and closing their eyes to the writing on the wall," he said, adding that the Congress had no future under the present setup.

Capt Amarinder said the real reason for the party's defeat in Punjab was the failure of the high command to first favour and then fail to reign in people like Sidhu, who indulged in tarnishing the image of the party for their own personal gains.

He said: "In their efforts to discredit me, the party high command joined hands with Navjot and others, and in the process ended up discrediting the party totally".

Capt Amarinder said though he did not owe any explanation to the CWC or the Congress party, he had chosen to react to the comments of these leaders just to clarify his position to the people of Punjab, to whom he still felt accountable.

The former chief minister said that he had been sending fortnightly reports on his government's achievements to AICC acting president, Sonia Gandhi, and not once had she complained on them.

"Even three weeks before they sacked me, I had offered to quit but Sonia Gandhi had insisted that I stay and lead the party in 2022 elections," said Capt Amarinder.

He said the real reason for the Congress defeat in Punjab was the failure of the high command to reign in people like Sidhu, who indulged in tarnishing the image of the party for their own personal gains.

"In their efforts to discredit me, the party high command joined hands with Navjot and others, and in the process ended up discrediting the party totally," he said.
New Delhi, March 14 : "Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink", has begun to hold true for Karachi, Pakistan's largest city located along the Arabian Sea, with a host of famous beaches. Yet the city has apparently become parched due to decrease in the flow of the Indus River, which feeds its aquifers, besides the laxity on the part of the government to deal with the problem that is becoming intense with each passing day.

If the residents of Karachi are to be believed, water shortage has intensified so much over the past few years that the public has no choice, but to buy water from private contractors to fulfil their needs. This has given a fillip to the 'tanker mafia', which is minting money by charging monumental sums from the affected masses, who have warned of staging protests, if nothing is done soon to redress the issue.

The worst affected are the economically backward masses, who can ill-afford to earn a decent living, let alone buy exorbitantly priced water tankers. Going by residents' accounts, water tankers cost as high as 5,000 PKR, leaving the financially challenged masses with no choice, but to arrange funds somehow to buy one for their survival.

"There is absolutely no water supply in the city. People are facing immense difficulty in performing daily chores including washing utensils, doing the laundry and even bathing," said Mohammed Ahmed, another resident.

He added that there were a number of people, who were the sole breadwinners of large families and barely managed to earn around 15,000 PKR per month. "The situation is really hard for them to handle as they have to manage various other expenses too of their entire households," he added.

"I came to live in Karachi three years ago. My family has bought a house here, but all these years we have never received any water supply," said Mohammed Sayed, a resident.

He added that the water shortage is so grievous that the residents have no choice, but to purchase water tankers. "We are managing with the help of water tankers. A small 'Mazda' truck tanker costs 2,200 PKR and we use it for 15-20 days," he added.

"No MNA or MP has ever contacted us. They just approach us around election time, asking for votes. They are nowhere to be seen thereafter," maintained Mohammed Sayed.

"Karachi is facing extreme shortage of water. We appeal to the government to resolve issues related to its water supply at the earliest. God willing, we shall get justice, else the public will take to the roads and stage a wholehearted protest to oust the 'tanker mafia' and get the water supply restored," said Nazakat Ali, another resident.
New Delhi, March 14 : Former BharatPe Co-founder and Managing Director Ashneer Grover has hit back at the company's Board, saying he never bought a dining table worth Rs 10 crore as being reported.

In a tweet, Grover said he would rather put Rs 10 crore in business and create employment for 1,000 of people.

Reports surfaced last week, claiming that Ashneer "purchased a Porsche" when he was at BharatPe and "told multiple people at the company that he spent millions on a dining table".

"Is it a space rocket? Is it a time machine? No it's a Rs 10 cr dining table!! I don't hold the Guinness World Record for the most expensive table ever. Nor do I intend to. Press - don't fall for BharatPe Board (undisclosed sources) lies - you'll lose your credibility like them," Ashneer tweeted.

According to reports, "office frugality clashed with the couple's apparently glitzy lifestyle, rubbing some employees the wrong way." "Grover and his wife upgraded their modest home for a rented penthouse and renovated another luxury property," the reports claimed.

Ashneer said that the dining table he has at home is not even worth 0.5 per cent of the amount being reported.

"I'd rather put Rs 10 crore in business and create employment for 1,000 of folks so that they can earn & put dignified meals on their tables for their families. Score; Self Goal (Loss of Credibility) by BharatPe Board/Investors - 1 : Lavishness - 0," he further tweeted.

The fintech platform recently sacked Ashneer's wife Madhuri Jain Grover over alleged financial irregularities during her tenure as Head of Controls to the tune of crores of rupees.

Post this, Ashneer had resigned, saying that he is being forced to quit a company of which "I am a founder".

In a statement, BharatPe said it "reserves all rights to take further legal action against him (Ashneer Grover) and his family".
New Delhi, March 14 : The Ukrainian authorities have asked to suspend sending of French volunteers to the country after a Russian strike on the Yavoriv military training ground in the Lviv region, as a result of which up to 180 foreign mercenaries were killed.

"According to our information, one of the main organisers of sending French volunteers to Ukraine, Hugo Pellegrini, announced that at the moment the recruitment of volunteers for the International Legion has been suspended by the decision of the Ukrainian side," Izvestia reported.

As a result of the strike of the Russian Armed Forces, at least one Frenchman was killed, RT reported.

On March 13, the Russian army attacked the training centers of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the village of Starichi and at the military training ground Yavorovsky with precision weapons.

According to the Ministry of Defence, up to 180 foreign mercenaries were destroyed.

According to the department, there was a training and combat coordination point for foreign mercenaries, as well as a storage base for weapons and military equipment coming from foreign countries.
New Delhi, March 14 : As the second part of the budget session resumed on Monday, the parliamentarians demanded a policy for students evacuated from Ukraine so that they can continue their studies in India.

Congress Member of Parliament from Kerala, Kodikunnil Suresh demanded to waive education loans taken by students pursuing education in Ukraine by invoking the clause of 'act of war' to save them from falling in a debt trap. He said that the evacuated students face an uncertain future due to their inability to complete their education.

Suggesting to set up a student welfare wing in every embassy as a policy intervention to help students, Kodikunnil Suresh demanded government to extend specialised help to students to overcome the mental trauma faced in the war zone. Another Congress member Rajmohan Unnithan claimed that thousands of students from Kerala were still stranded in Sumy in Ukraine and demanded that the government take urgent steps to bring them to safety.

Congress leader and MP from Assam Abdul Khaleque said the government should have taken steps earlier to evacuate students from Ukraine and not have waited till the hostilities broke out. He pointed out that students had to reach neighbouring countries of Ukraine on their own which can't be termed as evacuation.

However, the the Centre in the Lok Sabha assured that it will look into the issue of Indian students.
Jammu, March 14 : Four policemen were injured in a cooking gas cylinder explosion in J&K's Doda district on Monday, police said.

The LPG cylinder explosion occurred in Bhaderwah jail.

"The cylinder caught fire and exploded leaving four policemen injured. The injured policemen are under medical observation," a police officer said.
New Delhi, March 14 : A fire broke out at a house in Delhi's Kotla Mubarakpur area on Monday afternoon due to an LPG cylinder explosion, an official said.

The official told IANS that the fire department received a call about the cylinder explosion at 15.18 p.m. from House No. 662/6, Bapu Park, Kotla Mubarakpur, after which two fire tenders were pressed into service.

No injuries or casualties were reported in the incident. "The situation is currently under control," the official said.

Meanwhile, a Delhi Police official posted at the Kotla Mubarakpur police station told IANS that it was a minor incident and the fire was doused within minutes.

"There was no loss of life or property," he said.

The incident comes just one day after a massive fire engulfed a slum area in Gokalpuri village in Delhi, claiming seven lives.
Gandhinagar, March 14 : Gujarat Congress legislator from Bhiloda constituency Anil Joshiyara died on Monday following prolonged illness due to Covid-19. Following his death, the Speaker of the Assembly adjourned the proceedings for the day.

Shailesh Parmar, the deputy Leader of Opposition Party (dyLOP) in the Gujarat Assembly, informed the House about the legislator's death.

"Just now, we have received the information about the loss of our senior leader and the sitting MLA from Bhiloda, Anil Joshiyara. I request the House to observe two minutes silence and the House to be adjourned for the day," said Shailesh Parmar.

The revenue minister and the spokesperson of the BJP government, Rajendra Trivedi, said, "We also heard about the legislator's death and we are deeply grieved by the loss and support Parmar's proposal and request the Speaker to adjourn the House." Neemaben Acharya, the Assembly Speaker, condoled the death of the legislator and said, "The House will observe a two minute silence/prayer and thereafter the House will be adjourned for the day." The senior Congressman had been admitted in a private hospital in Chennai since more than a month, after being treated for Covid-19 and resultant effects.
Bhopal, March 14 : A day after four members of banned organisation Jamaat-e-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) were arrested from Madhya Pradesh's capital Bhopal, on Monday they were produced before the court which sent them to 14-day police custody.

The police submitted before the Bhopal district court that several fake documents have been recovered from the possession of JMB members. These documents including Aadhaar card have been procured from UP's Saharanpur, police said and requested 14 days custody for further investigation in the matter.

A senior police official said, UP police has been informed about it and a team of Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) will be sent to Saharanpur for further investigation.

The police will find out the possible involvement of other persons who provided shelters to these JMB members. Police have claimed that arrested terrorists have been living as tenants in Bhopal for one-and-a-half year. During the preliminary investigation, police found that they (arrested persons) came out of the building only on Friday to offer namaz.

"The court has allowed 14-day police custody of arrested terrorists for further investigation. Now, we will find out the possible link of other people in the matter and those who provided help," a senior police officer said.

Meanwhile, state Home Minister Narottam Mishra has directed the police to issue high alert in the capital and conduct a search operation of suspected people.

Four members of Jamaat-e-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) were arrested from two locations in Bhopal on Sunday. The operation was carried out by a joint team of state police and the centre's agencies in Aishbagh and Karond areas in the early hours of Sunday based on a tip-off.

During the raid police recovered a large quantity of jihadi literature, electronic equipment and incriminating documents.
Chennai, March 14 : Mina Swaminathan, distinguished chair, Gender and Development, at the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation and wife of illustrious agriculture scientist Dr M.S. Swaminathan, passed away at her Chennai residence on Monday. She was 88.

Mina Swaminathan was a teacher-educator and writer on early childhood education (ECE). She was the Chairman of the Study Group on the Development of the Preschool Shild and the report of this committee was the basis of the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) - a landmark intervention in the field of early childhood care and development.

She was also a founder member of the Centre for Women's Development Studies, New Delhi in 1987 and Vice Chairman of the organization from 1987 to 1993.

She is survived by her husband and her three daughters - Soumya Swaminathan, Chief Scientist, World Heath Organisation (WHO), Madhura Swaminthan, Professor, Economic Analysis Unit, Indian Statistical Institute, and Chairperson MSSRF, and Nitya Rao, Director, NISD, University of East Angelica, UK.

Tamil Nadu Governor R.N. Ravi, in a tweet, expressed deep condolences at the passing away of Mina Swaminthan. "An eminent teacher educator, and prolific writer who will always be remembered for the gender equality, woman and child development," he wrote.

Chief Minister M.K. Stalin visited her Teynampet residence to pay his last respects and expressed grief and condolences to Dr Swaminathan and other family members.
Bengaluru, March 14 : Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Technology Park (ARTPARK), the first of its' kind in the country, a not-for-profit foundation has been launched in the city on Monday.

ARTPARK promoted by the Indian Institute of Science (IISc Bengaluru), with the seed capital of Rs 230 crore from the governments (Rs 170 crore from Centre and Rs 60 crore from the state government).

Launching the office of ARTPARK at IISc Campus, C.N.Ashwath Narayan, Minister for IT/BT and S and T said, ARTPARK intending to use futuristic technologies to connect the unconnected will work with a focus on creating a globally leading AritificiaI Intelligence and Robotics Innovation ecosystem in India.

He further said: "Jobs are the need of the hour. ARTPARK has been set up to effectively use technology, specifically AI and Robotics, for the country's betterment. The ARTPARK has the objective of channelising innovations to create a societal impact by executing ambitious mission-mode R and D projects in healthcare, education, mobility, infrastructure, agriculture, retail, and cyber-security aiming to solve problems unique to India".

"This initiative to push the narrative for 'Connecting the unconnected' by ARTPARK will help the youth outside urban India not only access the next generation of digital work but also acquire the skills they need to thrive in an AI-driven future. Karnataka will take a leadership role to create the new economic growth model for Atmanirbhar Bharat," Narayan told.

On the occasion, 'ARTPARK Innovation Summit 2022' themed "Connecting the Unconnected- Building a smart, sustainable rural economy" was held.

Dr Rajiv Kumar, Vice Chairman, NITI Aayog, who attended the summit virtually, said: "India has the potential to become a world leader by unlocking the full potential of its rural economy, futuristic technologies like 5G, AI & Robotics will help realise this at a much faster pace and create the next big wave of jobs.

"Digital and physical connectivity innovations are critical to India's growth and Atmanirbhar vision. ARTPARK facilitates bringing together Industry, academia, and government to discuss creating the next model of job growth outside of metros by leveraging cutting edge technologies" said Dr S Chandrasekhar, Secretary, Department of Science and Technology.

Prof Rangarajan, Director, IISc, Chair BOD ARTPARK said that IISc is at the forefront of research in frontier technologies like 5G and UAVs, and ARTPARK is using that expertise to create a better India for tomorrow.

Umakant Soni, CEO, ARTPARK, said that an AI-driven experience economy will result in $15.7 trillion of new economic value by 2030 as per PWC Research. To have India at the forefront of the AI and Robotics revolution, we need to explore these technologies to create new jobs in rural India.

TV Mohandas Pai (ex Infosys, Chairman Aarin Capital), Prashanth Prakash (Accel), Dr ChintanVaishnav (Mission Director, Atal Innovation Mission), Shri Ram Sevak Sharma (CEO, NHA, ex-Chairman TRAI) Vaibhav Gupta (CEO and Co-founder of Udaan), VivekRaghavan (Chief AI Evangelist, EkStep), Subhashis Banerjee (CIO, ARTPARK), Abhishek Singh (CEO MyGov), Prof Ashutosh Sharma, Scientist & Former DST Secy, GoI, Dr E.V. Ramana Reddy, ACS, attended the summit and shared their views.
New Delhi, March 14 : The process for obtaining Cabinet Committee on Security's (CCS) approval for design and prototype development of the Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA) has been initiated, the Parliament was told on Monday.

"Fifth-generation fighter aircraft, due to very special features, are costlier than fourth generation fighter aircraft. Since AMCA is an indigenous 5th generation aircraft, it is less costlier than similar aircraft available outside," Minister of State for Defence Ajay Bhatt also told the Rajya Sabha in a written reply to a question by member Shanta Chhetri.

Earlier, the Director General of Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA), Girish S. Deodhare had revealed that the configuration of the prototype was frozen, the preliminary service quality requirements were finalised, and the preliminary design review was completed. The critical design review is due later this year.

The development cost of the 25-tonne AMCA is estimated to be around Rs 15,000 crore. As per the ADA's timeline, the first prototype's rollout is expected by 2025-26 and the production of the Mark-1 jets slated to begin in 2030-31.

The AMCA project is very important for the Indian Air Force, which is grappling with just 30-32 fighter squadrons, against the sanctioned strength of 42.

The detailed AMCA designing, which was sanctioned in December 2018, meets the IAF's preliminary staff qualitative requirements but the requisite powerful engine remains a major problem.

The first two squadrons of AMCA Mark-1 will have the existing General Electric-414 afterburning turbofan engine in the 98 thrust class. The next five Mark-2 squadrons will have a more powerful 110 kilonewton engine.
London, March 14 : UK researchers have developed a way to generate more realistic and accurate expressions of pain on the face of medical training robots during physical examination of painful areas.

The new approach by the Imperial College London team could help to reduce error and bias by doctors during physical examination.

The findings, published in the journal Scientific Reports, suggest this could also help teach trainee doctors to use clues hidden in patient facial expressions to minimise the force necessary for physical examinations, and may also help to detect and correct early signs of bias in medical students by exposing them to a wider variety of patient identities.

"Improving the accuracy of facial expressions of pain on these robots is a key step in improving the quality of physical examination training for medical students," said Sibylle Rerolle, from Imperial's Dyson School of Design Engineering.

In the study, undergraduate students were asked to perform a physical examination on the abdomen of a robotic patient. Data about the force applied to the abdomen was used to trigger changes in six different regions of the robotic face - known as MorphFace - to replicate pain-related facial expressions.

This method revealed the order in which different regions of a robotic face, known as facial activation units (AUs), must trigger to produce the most accurate expression of pain. The study also determined the most appropriate speed and magnitude of AU activation.

The researchers found that the most realistic facial expressions happened when the upper face AUs (around the eyes) were activated first, followed by the lower face AUs (around the mouth). In particular, a longer delay in activation of the Jaw Drop AU produced the most natural results.

When doctors conduct physical examination of painful areas, the feedback of patient facial expressions is important. However, many current medical training simulators cannot display real-time facial expressions relating to pain and include a limited number of patient identities in terms of ethnicity and gender.

The researchers say these limitations could cause medical students to develop biased practices, with studies already highlighting racial bias in the ability to recognise facial expressions of pain.

"Underlying biases could lead doctors to misinterpret the discomfort of patients - increasing the risk of mistreatment, negatively impacting doctor-patient trust, and even causing mortality,a said co-author Thilina Lalitharatne, from the Dyson School of Design Engineering.

"In the future, a robot-assisted approach could be used to train medical students to normalise their perceptions of pain expressed by patients of different ethnicity and gender." --IANS

rvt/vd

A

A
Chennai, March 14 : AIADMK leader and former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister O. Panneerselvam on Monday said that state Chief Minister, M.K. Stalin is maintaining a studied silence over the obstructionist attitude of the Kerala government on the execution of repairs at the Mullaperiyar dam.

He said that the CPI-M which is in power in Kerala and the DMK in Tamil Nadu are allies in the state and still the Chief Minister was maintaining a silence on the Kerala government creating obstructions for the repair of the Mullaperiyar dam.

Panneerselvam said that the Tamil Nadu left parties as well as the Chief Minister are keeping mum on the issue and not taking this up with the Kerala government even though Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and Stalin are on good terms. He pointed out that the Kerala Chief Minister had recently come to Chennai to participate in the book launch function of the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister.

The former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister called upon the state Chief Minister to take up the issue with his Kerala counterpart to ensure that no hindrance is created in the repair work.
Hong Kong: Medical support team arrives

Members of the Mainland medical support team arrived in Hong Kong today to provide assistance in treating COVID-19 patients in the city, the Government said.

Welcoming the 75 Mainland personnel comprising healthcare professionals from different disciplines, Under Secretary for Food & Health Dr Chui Tak-yi said: I think they will work and collaborate very closely with the medical teams (of) the Hospital Authority. The focus of their work is in providing care at the AsiaWorld-Expo (community treatment facility). I think with their support, we will be able to increase the scope and the scale of the services and provide more timely care for the patients there.

With the medical teams assistance at the AsiaWorld-Expo treatment facility, the Government expects that the overall patient flow will speed up, allowing the Hospital Authority to concentrate its manpower on handling patients with more serious clinical conditions in public hospitals.

Secretary for Food & Health Prof Sophia Chan said in a press statement: I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to the central government and the Guangdong Provincial Government for recruiting experienced Mainland healthcare workers to come to Hong Kong within a short period of time and assist us in fighting the epidemic. It is a great boost for our anti-epidemic efforts.

Noting that Hong Kong is now focusing its medical resources on reducing the number of severe cases and deaths, Prof Chan added that the countrys healthcare team could help more patients receive timely and appropriate treatment.

Other members of the support team will arrive in Hong Kong progressively, the Government added.

This story has been published on: 2022-03-14. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Mumbai, March 14 : Actress Sukhmani Sadana has opened up on her character in the web series 'Apharan 2' in which she plays a strong character named Nafisa.

Talking about her character, Sukhmani says: "I play the role of Nafisa in 'Apharan 2'. This is the first time that I've played a badass woman. Nafisa is someone everyone fears, she is super hardcore, strong, tough and very dangerous. But the best part is not even that." Sukhmani is known for her roles in 'Sacred Games' and 'Tandav'. She has also been part of several travel shows on television besides hosting live events.

The actress says her character plays an important role in making the web series more intriguing.

"One of the most exciting parts of 'Apharan' is when Nafisa brings a twist and a surprise element. You have to watch the show to know more," she adds.

'Apharan 2' also stars Nidhi Singh, Varun Badola, Jeetendra and Snehil Mehra, among others. Directed by Santosh Singh, 'Apaharan 2' will premiere on Voot Select on March 18.
New Delhi, March 14 : A court here on Monday granted bail to former Congress councillor Ishrat Jahan in a case related to the alleged larger conspiracy in the 2022 Delhi riots.

Ishrat Jahan was allowed bail by Additional Sessions Judge Amitabh Rawat, who have reserved his order last month after hearing the submissions.

She was arrested by Delhi Police Special Cell on February 26, 2020, and was charged under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, Indian Penal Code, tnhe Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act, and the Arms Act.

During the last hearing, advocate Pradeep Teotia appeared for Ishrat Jahan and Special Public Prosecutor Amit Prasad appeared for the government.

Ishrat Jahan's counsel, in the last hearing, had argued that she has been a lawyer and a young political person.

"She has a brilliant acumen. I was victorious from a ward where Muslims were less in number. Both the sects had given the vote to her. No Muslim had even won from the said ward." Teotia argued.

Further, he argued that she was a popular lady, saying they have no "single iota of evidence" regarding her involvement in the conspiracy.

As per the prosecution, Ishrat Jahan was in touch with other accused with whom she had no connection and the same was only to further the object of conspiracy to commit riots.

Police had stated that Ishrat Jahan was protesting against the contentious Citizenship (Amendment) Act in the Khureji Khas area on February 26, and "instigated" the large crowd to stay put after the police asked them to vacate the road. The police claimed that due to her instigation, the crowd pelted stones on security personnel.

Earlier, in 2020, in a bail plea, she had stated symptoms of Covid-19 and has been advised to remain in seven-day home isolation before testing could be done.
Bengaluru, March 14 : Karnataka Police have joined hands with green activists who are fighting to save trees in Bengaluru.

The tree lovers have welcomed the move by the police department and appreciated it for being responsive to the demand of protecting greenery in the capital city.

The police will now summon those who put nails on trees recklessly to place advertisements to the police station and give them a stern warning about their mindless act.

The police will also make them get the nails out of the trees and apply tree balm mixtures, which help trees to heal.

Parisara Manju, the President of Midita Foundation, has lodged a complaint with the Whitefield police station in Bengaluru in this regard.

Talking to IANS on Monday, Manju said members and volunteers of his organisation are tired of removing nails from the trees in the city.

Manju said the police have assured them of support to save trees in the city.

Prashanth Foundation has also extended its support to the move of protecting trees in Bengaluru.

The nail menace is rampant in HAL, Varthur Kodi, Whitefield and even the trees in front of the DCP's office are not spared, said Manju.

These organisations, along with the local people, have joined hands to form the 'Vruksha Bachao Andolan Samiti' to ensure nail-free trees in Bengaluru.

"We have developed a healing balm for trees. Enamel paint mixed with neem oil will be applied on the trees after removing the nails. The miscreants who put nails on trees will be made to apply the balm," he said.
New Delhi, March 14 : Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday presented a budget of over Rs 1.42 lakh crore for the union territory of Jammu and Kashmir for the year 2022-23 in the Lok Sabha.

The budget was tabled by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman amid opposition from some members including Congress MP Manish Tewari, who demanded for more time to discuss the budget. Opposition members are opposing a motion by the Finance Minister seeking suspension of certain rules to allow the Lok Sabha to take up the discussion on the same day.

Tewari said: "While scrapping Article 370, the government had said that Jammu and Kashmir will be emotionally integrated with the country and the pace of development will be increased. After 33 months, I would like to ask if the government is successful in achieving both the goals and I humbly say 'no'. Law and order situation was sensitive in 2019 and is more sensitive in 2022." Tewari said.

Tewari asked when statehood of Jammu and Kashmir will be restored as Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah have assured the House in the past.

Questioning ongoing delimitation process, Tewari said that as per his knowledge local political parties are not happy with the process and they need to be actively involved in the whole exercise. He demanded for provision of representation of Sikh minority in the assembly.

Participating in the discussion, BJP Member Jugal Kishor Sharma lauded Prime Minister Narendra Modi for scrapping Article 370 and said that development in the Union Territory has increased since August 2019. He also complimented Prime Minister Modi for his handling of the Covid-19 crisis in Jammu and the rest of India and providing free ration and Covid vaccine.

TMC Member Sougata Ray termed it as budget for bureaucratic expenditure and said, "I opposed abrogation of Article 370 and still oppose it as it was a wrong step and the country has to pay for it in future. Apart from fulfilling BJP's agenda it has no meaning." Union Minister Dr Jitendra Singh asked will Congress commit on the floor of the House to bring back Article 370 if they return to power.
Gandhinagar, March 14 : The Gujarat government on Monday informed the state Assembly that a little less than 300 lions, lionesses and cubs have died in the last two years of natural and unnatural causes in and around the Gir sanctuary.

Replying to questions of various Congress MLAs, Minister of Forest, Environment and Climate Change, Kiritsinh Rana, informed the House that a total of 283 lions in Gir, which is the only abode for Asiatic lions in the world, died till December 2021.

During the same period, more than 300 leopards have also died in the state, Rana said.

The minister further informed that 63 lions died of natural causes while five died unnaturally, 57 lionesses died natural deaths while 16 died unnaturally.

Out of the 142 lion cubs which died, 134 died naturally while eight died of unnatural causes.

Replying to a question on what steps have been taken by the government to curb the unnatural deaths of the big cats, the minister said that patrolling is being carried out day and night by the forest department officials.

Joint patrolling is also being carried out in collaboration with the Paschim Gujarat Vij Company Limited (PGVCL).

As per the 2020 Lion Census, with a 29 per cent rise in population from the previous Census conducted in 2015, there are 674 Asiatic lions in Gujarat.

The state has a total of 206 lions, 309 lionesses, 130 cubs and 29 other unidentified big cats.

Replying to a question by Congress MLA Virji Thummar, Rana informed the House that during the same period, Gujarat saw deaths of 333 leopards, including 242 adults and 91 cubs. Out of that, over 27 per cent or 90 deaths were due to unnatural causes, including that of 23 cubs.

The opposition Congress alleged that the Gir National Park has 376 open wells which have turned into death traps for the animals.
March 14 : In a video that surfaced on Twitter, Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchans daughter Aaradhya Bachchan can be seen talking about Hindi poems with a lot of confidence. While netizens were impressed with her, and see her carrying forward her familys legacy, dad Abhishek Bachchan reacted to the compliments she was receiving.

A Twitter user shared a video, where Aaradhya can be seen in her school uniform, talking about Hindi poems. It appeared that she was speaking at an online Hindi elocution competition held at her school. Aaradhya spoke with confidence and praised the language as she said that poetry is the best way to learn a language. "Hindi ke madhurim shabdon ki jab lari piroyi jaati hai, tab kavi ke vaani se ek mithi kavita ban jaati hai," the 10-year-old said. She continued, "Hindi hamari rajbhasha hai. Kavita bhasha ka sabse sundar roop hai, aur kehte hain, ki kisi bhi bhasha ko yadi aasaani se sikhna ho, to kavita dwara sikho. To isi kavita ki mithaas lekar, hum primary ke bacche, aapke saamne, sundar kavitayein prastoot karne jaa rhe hain. Asha hai, in kavitaon mein aapko Hindi ke prati hum bachchon ka pyaar awasya dikhai dega. (Hindi is our national language, and poems are the best form of a language. It is said that if you want to learn a language easily, you should learn it through poems. We, the primary students, will present beautiful poems to you, and we hope that you will see the love we have for Hindi through these poems)."

After such a longggg time Seeing this Princess  Can't tell how beautiful she is lookin' in this beautiful two cute ponytails  Aaradhya Bachchan at her school's Hindi Elocution Competition 2021-22 

VC: @DaisMumbai Thank you very muchhh for sharing  #AaradhyaBachchan pic.twitter.com/izfvCLxlxD  Aaradhya Rai Bachchan Official ARB (@WeLoveAaradhyaB) March 13, 2022

Sharing the video, the Twitter user wrote, After such a longggg time seeing this Princess. Can't tell how beautiful she is lookin' in this beautiful two cute ponytails Aaradhya Bachchan at her school's Hindi Elocution Competition 2021-22 VC: @DaisMumbai Thank you very muchhh for sharing #AaradhyaBachchan.

Another user retweeted the video and tagged Aaradhya's father Abhishek and grandfather Amitabh Bachchan. The user captioned it as, "The legacy continues." Abhishek reacted to the compliment Aaradhya was garnering with folded-hands emoji.

Fans also called Aaradhya a super combination of the Bachchan and Rai genes. A Fan compared Aaradhya to Abhishek, Amitabh Bachchan, and great-grandfather, late poet Harivansh Rai Bachchan. "That confidence and flair of her great grandfather, grandfather and father!" he wrote. Some also compared her to her mother Aishwarya Rai, as one of them said, "What a bright child! Just like her mum." Another commented, "Seems like Aaradhya has her mothers voice," while another said she was "Aishwarya number 2."

One fan even said Aaradhya is a great combination of the Bachchans and Rais. The netizen wrote. "So cute she is! Stay blessed! Super Bachchan Rai combination." A Twitter user commented, Aaradhya is a born actress. She will be one of the greatest actresses in Indian cinema...look at her confidence facial expression ...oratory...great going kiddo." Another said, "She speaks so well. A beautiful, well spoken young lady with the confidence to match. I love it, my youngest daughter is the same age as Aaradhya I showed her this clip and she also loved it. thanks for inspiring your peers Aaradhya."
Chennai, March 14 : One of Tamil cinema's well known costume designers and celebrity stylist N J Sathya wed Gokila at the Atheeswarar temple in Coimbatore on Monday.

The wedding was a private affair with only close family and friends being present.

Actor and director Sasikumar was among those who attended the wedding and wished the couple.

Taking to Twitter, Sasikumar posted pictures of the wedding and said in Tamil, "My best wishes for your married life to have a sweet beginning," and added, "Wish you a happy married life." The costume designer first shot into the limelight when he was chosen to design the costumes of actor Vijay in 'Bairavaa'. The costume designer has gone on to design costumes for top actors including Vijay, Vijay Sethupathi, Sivakarthikeyan, Sasikumar and Simbu.
New Delhi, March 14 : The Centre on Monday said that the proposal for acquisition of five fleet support vessels is in advanced stage of negotiations.

Minister of State for Defence Ajay Bhatt in a written reply to MP V. Vijayasai Reddy in Rajya Sabha said, "For design and construction of fleet support vessels, Hindustan Shipyard Limited (HSL) has entered into a collaborator contract as per extant procurement procedures. Presently, the case is at advanced stage of negotiations." The vessels are expected to be 230 metres long and have a displacement of 45,000 tonnes.

Visakhapatnam-based HSL is expected to deliver the first fleet support vessel (FSV) to the Indian Navy within four years of the go ahead.

The project, estimated to cost between $1.5 billion and $2 billion and will involve transfer of technology from Anadolu Shipyard, part of the TAIS consortium of Turkey.

HSL signed an agreement for technical collaboration with Anadolu Shipyard where they will provide engineering services, planning and preparation of specifications. The transfer of technology will also boost India's shipbuilding capabilities under the Make in India project.

Earlier, the HSL had planned to have a strategic partnership with Hyundai Heavy Industries but dropped it following the latter's insistence on constructing the first ship in South Korea and procuring major components from the global shipping giant.
New Delhi, March 14 : The Global Kashmiri Pandit Diaspora (GKPD), a Kashmiri Pandit civil society movement, has said that there has been no comprehensive plan for the return and rehabilitation of the community from the Narendra Modi-led government.

Speaking to IANS after an event here on Vivek Agnihotri's Anupam Kher-starrer 'The Kashmir Files', the GKPD co-founder, Dr Surinder Kaul on Monday said, "We are waiting for a comprehensive plan for the return and rehabilitation of the community in exile to our homeland, Kashmir. We are hopeful that our community will get justice." Upset that justice has eluded the Kashmiri Pandits for the past 32 years, Kaul said that it is the duty of the government to bring justice and to help the displaced community to return to the valley. He said no government in power has thought about setting up a tribunal or a judicial commission to probe the exodus of the minority communities in Kashmir.

"Hundreds were killed, many raped, houses were set on fire, temples were desecrated and lot more atrocities were inflicted upon the community since 1989 in Kashmir. Genocide was committed against the community, but no government has recognised this," Kaul said.

He said the State of Rhode Island in the US has officially recognized the genocide of Hindus in Kashmir and showed a certificate issued by the state government to this effect.

"After watching 'The Kashmir Files' they officially said that the genocide of Hindus in Kashmir had occurred," Kaul said, noting that nothing of this sort had happened here. "Till the movie was not out, how many talked that there was really a massacre of Kashmiri Pandits. Those who knew have been trying to keep it hidden. Why? Now, everybody is talking," Kaul said.

He added: "At least this government abrogated Article 370, they have opened Kashmir, but for us returning to our homes still remains a dream and this government has not made any plan so far." The GKPD is now supporting a Private Member's Bill in Parliament moved by the Congress Rajya Sabha MP Vivek Tankha. "He is bringing the Bill on our request. The government has to think and consider," Kaul said.

When asked whether the GKPD is taking the help of the Congress to put pressure upon the Centre, he said: "Vivek Tankha is a Kashmiri, he is doing it on his own as a community member and it is not the Congress party." The GKPD, Kaul said, has been working hard to check the disinformation spread by vested interests against the exodus and the Kashmiri Pandit community in general.

In conclusion, he reiterated that the Modi-led government needs to take proactive steps to enable the return and rehabilitation of Kashmiri Pandits.

(Deepika Bhan can be contacted at deepika.b@ians.in)
New Delhi/Mumbai, March 14 : Tata Sons Chairman N. Chandrasekaran has been appointed as Air India Chairman, a group spokesperson said. The development comes as the Tata Group scouts for a new Air India CEO-MD.

Earlier this month, ex-Turkish Airlines head Mehmet Ilker Ayci, who was named as the new Air India CEO-MD, declined the position. No reason was given for Ayci's decision.

Last month, the Tata Group-led Air India announced the appointment of Ayci as the new Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of the airline. At that time, Ayci while accepting the position said he is "delighted and honoured to accept the privilege of leading an iconic airline and to join the Tata Group".

He was expected to take the charge on or before April 1.

Ayci, 51, until recently was the Chairman of Turkish Airlines and was also on its Board of Directors prior to that.

Recently, the Tata Group bought the debt ridden state-owned Air India from the Central government by placing a bid of over Rs 18,000 crore at an auction and on January 27, it took over the full control of the airlines.
Bhopal, March 14 : A day after she was seen vandalising a liquor shop in Bhopal, BJP leader Uma Bharti on Monday wrote to Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan reminding him of his promise to launch an anti-liquor campaign.

In her letter, the former chief minister wrote that she has been raising her concern against use of liquor for the past one-and-a-half years and was assured of help by the state government.

Further, Bharti mentioned that she has also made the same appeal to state BJP president V. D Sharma and received the same promise from him. "One-and-half years back, when I had spoken to you on this matter, you (Shivraj) had asked me to run an awareness campaign. I also spoke to state BJP president V.D Sharma on the issue," the letter read.

Seeking the chief minister's cooperation for running a mass level awareness campaign across the state, she said: "People are supporting the move against liquor and therefore the government should support it. Liquor shops located in the prohibited areas should be shut immediately," Bharti said in her letter.

Former MP Chief Minister also claimed that the liquor vend is a nuisance in the areas, creating safety issues for women and girls. She also lamented that the labourers often end up spending their entire earnings on alcohol.

She also mentioned about her act of vandalising a liquor shop in Barkhera Pathani area on Sunday. Bharti said that she was protesting against liquor shops operating illegally in Azad Nagar on Sunday, during which a group of women came to her and they were crying. "Women told me that they could not even come out to their rooftop because drunk people misbehave with them. It made me angry and I picked up a stone and threw it towards a liquor shop," Bharti said.

Meanwhile, Bharti also expressed her gratitude to chief minister Chouhan for meeting her recently. Two days ago, Chouhan had stated that he has assured Bharti that the state government will run a public awareness campaign involving public representatives, citizens and social organisations regarding use of alcohol and drug de-addiction in the state. However, Bharti's action on ground came just two days after meeting with Chouhan.
New Delhi, March 14 : Europe now faces a deficit in sunflower oil because exports from Ukraine have stopped, with the available stocks projected to last between 4 and 6 weeks, the EU vegetable oil industry association has warned.

"Beyond that period, it is likely that [the] lack of availability of crude sunflower seed oil and limited alternatives will lead to a shortfall of refined/bottled sunflower seed oil on the European market, and that this will be felt up to the consumer level," reads the latest FEDIOL press release, RT reported.

According to the association, the conflict in Ukraine has already prevented approximately 200,000 tonnes of sunflower seed oil per month from being shipped to European ports.

The EU sources between 35 per cent and 45 per cent of the oil it consumes from Ukraine, FEDIOL explains, adding that such volumes are difficult if not impossible to replace on short notice.

Producers are already redirecting the oil destined for biodiesel back to the food market, FEDIOL says, predicting that rapeseed oil, soybean oil, and tropical oils could also be used as a replacement.

Since the beginning of Russia's military operation in Ukraine on February 24, the country's Black Sea ports have been closed, leaving dozens of cargo ships stranded and disrupting shipping.
New Delhi, March 14 : While bad lifestyle choices are usually blamed for the poor dental health, it turns out that genes may also have a role to play in the oral health.

Lack of a dental healthcare regime and improper eating habits are believed to be the leading cause of tooth decay.

A study led by the American Dental Association states that genetic factors are involved in a whopping 60 per cent of tooth decay cases. Oral health issues such as oral cancer, gum disease, misaligned teeth or genetic oral abnormalities can all be inherited.

Another recent study showed that poor oral hygiene produces gum-disease bacteria and accelerates oral microbiome ageing faster than previously thought.

The study by the Chinese Academy of Sciences showed that within 24-72 hours of the interruption of oral hygiene, there was a steep decrease in the presence of 'good oral bacteria' and the beneficial anti-inflammatory chemicals they are associated with.

An increase of 'bad bacteria' typically present in the mouths of patients with periodontitis, a severe gum disease which can lead to tooth damage or loss, was also discovered.

At the same time, most oral health issues are preventable. Following a good dental health regime and avoiding certain foods can go a long way in ensuring perfect teeth and oral health.

"Oral disease such as gingivitis can be hereditarily transferred and needs extra attention if the family has a history. Although, regardless of our genetic makeup, oral problems like cavities are preventable," said Dr. Mohender Narula, Dental expert & Co-founder, MyDentalPlan Healthcare.

Besides brushing twice a day at least for two minutes, one should also maintain proper hydration - it is both for a healthy teeth and body.

"Visiting the dentist biannually is also a must. It helps in receiving targeted approaches towards oral wellness and can also recognise significant issues at a very initial stage," Narula said.
Thiruvananthapuram, March 14 : The Kerala Assembly on Monday witnessed a debate on the pet project of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan - the K-Rail. As expected the treasury benches batted for it, while the Congress led opposition termed it as an ecological, environmental and economic disaster if it becomes a reality. At the end of it, the treasury benches said come what may they will go ahead with it and the opposition walked out expressing their displeasure.

If completed, the project will see a 529.45 km corridor connecting Thiruvananthapuram to Kasaragod and a high speed train will cover this distance in around four hours. It will cost Rs 63,940 crores. NITI Ayog says it might cost Rs 1.24 lakh crores and is expected to be completed in 2025 according to the detailed project report.

When the opposition sought leave to discuss this project, much to their surprise, Vijayan who last month shot it down, on Monday agreed to hold a two hour discussion on it.

Leader of Opposition V.D. Satheesan pointed out various discrepancies in the project in its preliminary feasibility report, the final feasibility report and what Vijayan said about this project on the floor of the assembly.

"He (Vijayan) says they have had discussions with the people, but that discussion was a monologue where things were told, what should have been done was a dialogue." "he ridership in the first report says they expect 40,000 passengers daily and two months later in the final report says the ridership expected is over 80,000. With regard to the embankment needed to build this in the first report it says it's 89 kms, in the second report it becomes 236 kms and in the detailed project report it says 384 kms. This is nothing but data fudging, which is a criminal offence," said Satheesan.

He pointed out that the Vizhinjam container port terminal work is stuck because of non availability of limestones.

"The fact of the matter is K-Rail will need more limestones even if the entire Western Ghats is demolished and used. This project has come at a time when the whole world is conscious of the climate change phenomenon and this project of the CPI-M is 60 years old and we will not allow this project at all," added Satheesan.

Vijayan however failed to answer any of the points raised by Satheesan and instead just said that the project is environmentally and economically viable and is meant for our future generations.

"We held discussions with lots of people across the state and we did not get a negative response at all and the general impression was everyone wanted it to be finished at the earliest. The ongoing protests against this project have caused a lot of damage and numerous police and revenue officials have been attacked. Come what may, we will go ahead with this project as this is one which is much needed for the development of the state," said Vijayan.

He later invited the opposition legislators to come and watch a presentation on K-Rail where all their doubts will be answered on Tuesday.

Satheesan later told the media outside the assembly that they are certain that this project will be one which will finish off Kerala and they will go ahead with their already announced protests from Saturday with more than 1,000 rallies across the state.
New Delhi, March 14 : Russia on Monday blocked Instagram for nearly 80 million users in the country, after its parent company Meta allowed posts with calls for violence against Russian soldiers and President Vladimir Putin on Facebook and Instagram in some countries.

The social media platform was inaccessible for the vast majority of the country's population, according to internet monitoring service GlobalCheck.

Russian influencers on Instagram posted farewell messages to their followers, asking them to follow them on other social media platforms, or download VPN (virtual private network) software to bypass the ban.

Instagram has also provided a platform for Russians to speak out against the war, including wealthy oligarchs and their families, reports The Verge.

Last week, the Russian government's communication agency had announced that it would block Instagram in Russia beginning March 14.

Instagram Head Adam Mosseri said that over 80 per cent of people in Russia on Instagram follow accounts from outside of Russia.

"The situation is terrifying. We're trying to do all we can to help keep people safe. We've made encrypted chats available to everyone in Ukraine and Russia. We've encouraged everyone in the region to make their accounts private," he had said in a video message.

As Russia considered designating Meta as an extremist organisation for applying its policies to speech in the context of Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine, the social network said that its decision was taken in "extraordinary and unprecedented circumstances".

In a rare move, Meta allowed posts with violent speech towards Russian soldiers on Facebook and Instagram in specific countries, including calls for harm or even death of President Putin or Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.

Nick Clegg, President of Global Affairs at Meta, had said last week that their policies are focused on protecting people's rights to speech as an expression of self-defence in reaction to a military invasion of their country.

"The fact is, if we applied our standard content policies without any adjustments, we would now be removing content from ordinary Ukrainians expressing their resistance and fury at the invading military forces, which would rightly be viewed as unacceptable," he argued.

Latest updates on Russia-Ukraine War
New Delhi, March 14 : Pallavi Joshi, producer of 'The Kashmir Files' and also plays one of its pivotal characters, has said that her role was a very challenging one.

The award-winning film and television actress essays the role of Professor Radhika Menon, a JNU professor who motivates her students to fight for 'Azad Kashmir'.

When asked why she chose to play the character, Joshi said: "When I was talking to the Kashmiri Pandits about their trauma, I could sense the villain they were staring at. I made up my mind to do the character and play the role so vehemently that every Indian should hate the character." She was addressing the media in the Capital along with the rest of 'The Kashmir Files' team.

Joshi's character, believed to have been modelled after Booker Prize-winning author Arundhati Roy, is heard declaring in the film, "Kashmir has never been an integral part of India and this is a historical fact. Agar India Britain se apni Independence ke liye lad sakti hai toh Kashmir kyun nahi (If India can fight the British Raj for independence, then why not Kashmir)?" When asked if the character was defaming the university, Director Vivek Agnihotri said: "Research and Google, and you will get the answers."
New Delhi, March 14: New Delhi has embarked on an aggressive Neighbourhood First policy. Not only have Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government shown an urgent need to develop friendly relations with the neighbours, the BJPs thrust on informal party to party engagements to boost relations is also increasing. BJPs Vijay Chauthaiwale, who is in charge of handling the partys foreign affairs department since 2014, is now in Dhaka at a time when India, Bangladesh and Nepal have pressed the pedal on finalising the Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal Motor Vehicles Agreement (BBIN MVA) pact.

On March 7 and 8, a meeting between India, Bangladesh, and Nepal on the same was held in New Delhi. Bhutan too participated in the meeting but as an observer.

Bhutan has decided to play the role of an observer and not be a full-fledged part of the agreement.

Chauthaiwale will meet senior officials and party members of Bangladesh's Awami League.

Amid changing geopolitical contours, this is Chauthaiwale's first trip to Dhaka. Sources said he is expected to invite members of the ruling Awami League to India as well.

In a tweet he said, "Visiting Bangladesh on the invitation of Bangladesh Awami League to initiate party to party dialog. Looking forward to my first trip to Bangladesh." "The party to party meetings are becoming equally important for the BJP, though they fail to grab the headlines. Much of the groundwork is done in these meetings which are crucial for feedback and overall analysis of the status," a foreign policy watcher who did not wish to be identified told India Narrative.

He added that for the BJP, the informal channel of engagements hold as much importance as the official government to government dealings to take relations forward.

Chauthaiwale was in Kathmandu in August last year just after the swearing in of Nepal's Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba. Following his visit, a three member delegation of the Nepali Congress led by Foreign Minister and head of party's international department Prakash Sharan Mahat paid a visit to New Delhi in October.

Importance of regional connectivity The Russian invasion of Ukraine has underscored the importance of regional connectivity. The BBIN initiative that envisages closer connectivity among the member countries through rail and road can be a game changer. The treaty will also help in increasing trade between the countries.

Sources said that the party to party engagements will also help in taking the connectivity agenda forward.

South Asia is one the least integrated blocs in the world but reducing red tape will help in boosting regional trade. Consider this. For India, it is more cost effective to trade with the US or even Brazil than with the neighbours.

Currently, trade among the BBIN countries is just 6-7 per cent of the total trade though the potential is "much higher".

(The content is being carried under an arrangement with indianarrative.com) --indianarrative
Islamabad, March 14 : Pakistan has been left with only five days of diesel stocks following oil prices in the international market hitting around $112 per barrel that stood at $94 per barrel before the start of Russia-Ukraine war, Express Tribune reported.

The war has caused the falling of global diesel stocks and other middle distillates to the lowest seasonal level since 2008.

The Oil Companies Advisory Council (OCAC), a body of oil industry, had already warned the Pakistani government about the diesel shortage crisis due to depletion of stocks globally. Other reason was that Pakistani banks had also put the oil companies in high-risk category and refused to grant loans.

The OCAC had also written a letter to Pakistani central bank governor to intervene in this regard.

The Pakistan State Oil (PSO) - the state-run oil marketing company -- has informed the energy ministry (petroleum division) about the situation in a letter sent to the director general oil.

The company pointed out that oil marketing companies (OMCs) had defaulted in oil imports, especially high-speed diesel (HSD), from December to March because of the Russia-Ukraine war, Express Tribune reported.

The PSO said it had resulted in a shortfall of 205,000 metric tons of diesel imports from January to March 2022.

According to the US Energy Information Administration, distillate fuel oil inventories in the US fell by 21 per cent to 30 million barrels that were below the pre-pandemic five-year seasonal average and at the lowest level since 2005. The stock in Europe also fell by 8 per cent to 35 million barrels -- below the pre-pandemic five-year average at the lowest level since 2008.

Latest updates on Russia-Ukraine War
Chennai, March 14 : The Tamil Nadu Bharatiya Janata Party unit will screen the Hindi movie "The Kashmir Files" on March 16 evening at Rohini Silver Screens here.

In a tweet, atate BJP president K. Annamalai said: "@BJP4TamilNadu cordially invite's all for the special screening of #KashmirFiles in Rohini Silver Screens, Chennai on 16th March at 5.30 p.m." "This important movie on one of the dark time in our nations history deserves our attention!"

"The Kashmir Files" is a movie about the exodus and killing of Hindus in Kashmir by insurgents during 1980-1990.

According to a BJP official, for now the party is screening only one show and the future course will be decided later.
Patna, March 14 : An owner of a Common Service Centre (CSC) was gunned down in Bihar's Saharsa district on Monday afternoon.

The police said that the deceased -- who has been identified as Ramesh Kumar Chaudhary -- sustained six gunshot injuries and died on the spot. The incident occurred at Shahpur Balua Mor under Nauhatta police station.

Following the incident, over 200 agitated persons attacked the Nauhatta police station and damaged government properties.

"The victim was the owner of a CSC, which is associated with the Central Bank of India. He was on the way to the district headquarters in Saharsa for some work when two bikers intercepted him at Shahpur Balua Mor and opened fire on him indiscriminately," said D. Kumar, SHO of Nauhatta police station.

After committing the crime, the duo ensured that Chaudhary was dead and fled from the spot while firing in the air.

Following the incident, the traders of the locality brought pulled down the shutters of their shops and protested against the local police.
Kochi, March 14 : The Kerala government on Monday filed an appeal in the division bench of the High Court against a single bench verdict which ordered the former to pay the Rs 1.5 lakh compensation to an eight-year-old girl and her father, who were publicly humiliated by a woman police official.

Incidentally, it was after several rounds of hearing that the singe bench judge Justice Devan Ramachandran in the last week of December after taking a humane position all through the hearings in the case, asked the Kerala government to pay Rs 1.5 lakh as compensation to the girl for the rude behaviour of lady police official Rejitha towards them.

The judge then delivering the judgement said, "We cannot let our daughters grow up in anger, so immediate remedial steps must be taken. No one can dispute that her fundamental rights under Article 21 to lead a dignified life were violated." Incidentally Jayachandran, the father of the minor girl, then said that if the state government without filing an appeal before a higher bench gives Rs 1.5 lakh compensation as directed by the single bench, the former will share it and part of the compensation will be allotted towards empowering 'adivasi' (tribal) children and another portion will be given to the Chief Minister's Distress Relief Fund (CMDRF).

However Jayachandran after hearing the decision of the Pinarayi Vijayan government which has filed an appeal, said now it's the government which is paining them.

The girl had approached the Kerala High Court seeking compensation for the trauma she faced due to Rejitha, the official of 'Pink Police', an all-women team that aims at protecting women in public, private and digital spaces.

In her petition, the girl said that despite several pleas, no action was taken against the woman police official, therefore they moved the court to seek justice and after the trial began, the girl's family said that since they failed to get justice from any quarter, they have rejected the unconditional apology that the erring police official had tendered.

The incident occurred on August 27, last year when 38-year-old Jayachandran and his daughter were outside their house in the outskirts near Attingal to watch the movement of a huge trailer carrying equipment to the ISRO unit.

Suddenly Rejitha, the woman police official, found her mobile phone missing and accused Jayachandran, who was standing near the police patrol vehicle, of stealing it. She said that he must have given the mobile to his eight-year-old daughter who she thought was his accomplice.

Rejitha publicly humiliated the father and the daughter and threatened to take both of them to the nearby police station. The entire scene was witnessed by a large crowd.

Later, Rejitha found the mobile phone in the vehicle. The entire sequence of events was filmed by an onlooker, who shared it on social media and it went viral.

On August 31, Jayachandran approached the state Police Chief Anil Kant, seeking action against Rejitha as his daughter was in a state of shock for being publicly humiliated.

Promising action, Kant asked the South zone Inspector General of Police, Harshita Attaluri, to conduct a probe following which Rejitha was transferred.

However, it was found out that Rejitha was transferred to a more convenient location and there was no action taken against her.

Finding no further action in September, the family observed a day-long protest before the Kerala Secretariat protesting inaction against the woman police official. When this went unnoticed, the family approached the high court.
New Delhi, March 14 : The Minister for the Development of North Eastern Region, G. Kishan Reddy, in a written reply in the Lok Sabha on Monday informed that the North Eastern Development Finance Corporation Ltd.'s 36 proposals have been given in-principle commitment of Rs. 74.77 crore under NEVF - in Healthcare, Edutech, Agri& Agri Allied, Tourism, Food Processing, IT & ITES etc. sectors.

The Corporation has organized a Startup Investment Festival,to provide a platform to local entrepreneurs to showcase their business ideas and to pitch for investment through access to capital for scaling up their businesses. It will also help them avail other facilities like handholding support, advisor network, investor network, marketing support.

The North East Venture Fund (NEVF) is a dedicated venture fund for the NE promoted by NEDFi, Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region (MDoNER) and the Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI).

It was launched in September, 2017 with a corpus of Rs. 100 crore, with contributions of Rs. 45 crore as interest free loan from MDoNER, Rs. 30 crore by NEDFi itself and Rs. 25 crore from SIDBI. It is registered with the Securities Exchange Board of India (SEBI) under SEBI (AIF) Regulations, 2012, as a sector agnostic fund. Till date, a total of 36 proposals have been given in-principle commitment (sanction) of Rs. 74.77 crore under NEVF - in Healthcare, Edutech, Agri&Agri Allied, Tourism, Food Processing, IT&ITES etc. sectors.
Moscow, March 14 : Russia does not rule out taking "full control" of Ukraine's major cities, the Kremlin has said.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said, "The Russian armed forces do not reject taking 'full control' of Ukraine's major cities to ensure maximum security for citizens.".

Peskov also says that, at the beginning of the war, Russian President Vladimir Putin allegedly gave the order "not to assault the cities immediately, including Kiev", Ukrayinska Pravda reported.

The reason for that was "the deployment of weapons by militants in the cities". It is unclear what was meant, although Russia says it is "demilitarising Ukraine", namely destroying these weapons.

Earlier, an artillery shell hit a nine-storey apartment building in the Obolon' district of Kiev, killing two people.

Ukrayinska Pravda reported the building was partially destroyed between the ground floor and the second floor, and a fire broke out on the second and third floors.

There were three victims, and 17 people rescued from under the rubble.

An airstrike on the town of Okhtyrka in the northeast of Ukraine in Sumy region on Monday has killed at least 3 civilians.

Pavlo Kuzmenko, Mayor of Okhtyrka said: "Okhtyrka - its residential neighbourhood, residential houses - was bombed at night. At least 3 people died, others have not been found yet. Behind me, houses are burning."

Latest updates on Russia-Ukraine War
Amaravati, March 14 : Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy's brother-in-law and an evangelist Brother Anil Kumar appears to be out to queer the pitch for the ruling YSR Congress Party with plans to float a new political outfit.

After Jagan Mohan Reddy's sister Y.S. Sharmila defied him to launch a separate political party in Telangana, now her husband Anil Kumar has initiated similar efforts in Andhra Pradesh, apparently at her behest.

Anil met leaders of various groups of backward classes, scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and minorities in Visakhapatnam on Monday. He later told the media that they spoke about the problems they were facing.

"They spoke about their hardships. They said there is nobody to take care of them. Since they had extended support (to YSRCP) on my appeal, it's now my duty to stand by them. I can't go back on my word," he said.

Anil told them that he will think and decide how to undo the injustice. "It has to be a serious decision. Starting a new party is not that easy. It's not an industry," he remarked.

In an apparent reference to Chief Minister Jagan Mohan Reddy, the evangelist observed that chief minister's post a job given by the people to serve them.

He said he would bring to the notice of the government the issues raised by the BCs, SCs, STs, Muslims and Christians. On whether he would seek an appointment with Jagan Mohan Reddy, Anil said he has not met him for two-and-a-half years as both of them were busy.

Responding to another query, he said the leaders during the meeting demanded that he float a political party. "They also felt that their problems will be solved if they have a CM from backward classes. I told them to do whatever they want," he said.

Anil also responded in affirmative when asked if the leaders he met wanted Sharmila to float a party in Andhra Pradesh.

When Jagan Mohan Reddy was leading YSRCP's poll campaign in 2019, his mother Y.S. Vijayamma, sister Sharmila and brother-in-law Anil were all with him.

However, after YSRCP came to power with a landslide majority differences appeared among them.

After lying low for more than one-and-a-half years, Sharmila took a plunge into politics in neighbouring Telangana by floating the YSR Telangana Party (YSRTP) last year. Vijayamma attended the party's launch programme and blessed her daughter even as Jagan Mohan Reddy made it clear through his aides that he differs with his sister.

In January, Sharmila hinted at launching a party in Andhra Pradesh. "Never say never," she said when she was asked whether she was planning to launch a party in Andhra Pradesh.

"It would be foolish if those in power think they would remain in power forever. Those who are not in power, can never come to power if they feel they can't. So never say never," she had said.
New Delhi, March 14 : Come this Holi, some relief is in sight for thousands of home buyers, as funds may begin to be pumped into the stalled Amrapali housing projects very soon.

The Supreme Court has been informed that out of the six banks, four -- the Bank of Baroda (BoB), the Bank of India (BoI), UCO Bank, and the Punjab & Sindh Bank (PSB) -- are on board to infuse money in court-monitored Amrapali projects. And, the State Bank of India (SBI) and the Punjab National Bank (PNB) have assured the top court that a policy decision in connection with funding of the projects will be taken by the end of this week.

A bench comprising Justices U.U. Lalit and Bela M. Trivedi was informed that four banks have sanctioned funding for the stalled housing projects and the remaining two banks - the SBI and the PNB - have scheduled a meeting later this week, after which funds may begin to flow into the projects.

Kumar Mihir, counsel for home buyers, said: "This is certainly good news for the homebuyers. We expect the total funding from the banks will be close to Rs 1,500 crore." During the hearing, advocate M.L. Lahoty, representing the home buyers, and the forensic auditor have pointed out comprehensively, how funds were diverted to Indore projects from home buyers' funds and they need to be recovered. The counsel said no investment was made by Prem Mishra, Amrapali's collaborator in Indore, and all Indore projects are prima facie Amrapali projects only.

On March 7, the Supreme Court had directed the consortium of banks to follow the footsteps of BoB, which has issued a sanction order to grant funding for the stalled Amrapali housing projects, and take a decision on funding Amrapali projects within two days.

The top court said it hopes the approval order is passed by the banks, since it is in the final stages, and emphasised that the money should be released by the banks before the next date of hearing.

In its February 21 order, the top court had noted that Alok Kumar, advocate for UCO Bank, Bishwajit Dubey, advocate for BoB, and Megha Karnwal, advocate for SBI, have accepted that the banks concerned are in the process of reaching final stages of decision within a week's time.

The top court was informed that the matters will be concluded at the topmost levels of these banks, whereafter funding can immediately begin.

Siddhartha Dave, senior advocate appearing for National Building Construction Corporation (NBCC), submitted that his client has already put in more than Rs 109 crore and the situation requires immediate intervention.

"Considering the circumstances on record and with a view to ensure steady flow of funds, we direct the members of the Consortium of Banks to place on record their final decisions within seven days from today and to start effecting the funding within a week thereafter so that at least Rs 300 crore are released by way of first tranche on or before March 15, 2022," said the top court in its order.

The SC-appointed receiver, senior advocate R. Venkataramani, had informed the top court that there is no further need for deliberations or exchange of information in connection with funding of the projects. He added that the top court may direct the consortium of banks to release funds in the course of this week, in order to facilitate him and NBCC to plan the further execution of the work and also clear outstanding liabilities without any further delay.
New Delhi, March 14 : The Supreme Court on Monday reiterated its concern regarding fake claims for Covid death compensation and that it may direct a probe by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) in this matter.

It suggested that inquiry into alleged fake death claims could be entrusted to the government auditor's office.

A bench of Justices M.R. Shah and B.V. Nagarathna said: "We never visualised that this kind of fake claims could come. It's a pious world. We never thought this scheme could be misused." The bench added that if some officers are also involved in it, then it is "very serious".

As advocate Gaurav Kumar Bansal pointed out at the Section 52 in the Disaster Management Act, which addresses such concerns, Justice Shah said: "We need somebody to file a complaint." Counsel suggested a random examination of the compensation claims by the state legal services authorities.

During the hearing, the top court said its earlier order regarding ex-gratia of Rs 50,000 to the family members of those who succumbed to Covid is "very clear" and the payment is to be made for each death. The bench made this observation while dealing with an application filed by the Assam government, seeking clarification whether each of the children of the deceased parents would be paid compensation, in case there is more than one child.

The bench clarified that ex gratia payment of Rs 50,000, ordered by it, is to be paid for each death due to Covid-19 and not to each child of the affected family.

In January, the top court had directed all the state governments to reach out to those children, who have lost their parents to the viral disease, and pay them compensation.

On March 7, the Supreme Court expressed concern at doctors issuing fake medical certificates to people for claiming ex-gratia compensation for Covid deaths, and added that it might order a probe into the matter.

The Centre had submitted that an outer limit may be fixed for submitting Covid death related claims, otherwise the process will become endless, and added that some state governments have come across fake medical certificates issued by doctors.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta also pointed out that the apex court's order on ex-gratia compensation, through a doctor's certificate, has been misused in certain cases.

Expressing concern on fake medical certificates, the bench said: "What is worrying is the fake certificate given by doctors... it is a very serious thing." It also agreed with Mehta's submissions that there should be a time limit for registering Covid death claims. "There must be some time limit, otherwise the process will go endlessly....".

The top court was hearing a plea filed by Bansal in connection with the disbursal of ex-gratia compensation by state governments to the families of Covid victims. It is monitoring the disbursal of Rs 50,000 ex-gratia for Covid-19 deaths by various state governments.
New Delhi, March 14 : Even as India on Monday reported the lowest single-day Covid tally in 680 days, with only 2,503 new cases in the last 24 hours, doctors caution against being complacent as the virus is seeing a resurgence in many countries in Europe and Asia.

Although many countries across the globe have relaxed Covid-related norms, including the use of masks and Covid surveillance, scientists, including the World Health Organisation (WHO) have been warning of the possibility of another global surge.

India has also relaxed several norms including opening up of schools, workplaces, airports, etc. Government guidelines on the use of masks continue, but it is hardly followed on the ground.

"It is prudent to not pursue a zero Covid policy, and therefore accept that there will be surges periodically, especially with the onset of newer variants," Dr. Lancelot Pinto, Consultant Pulmonologist, P.D Hinduja Hospital & MRC, Mahim, Mumbai, told IANS.

Data from Johns Hopkins University has shown that the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy have seen an upswing in cases this past week, USA Today reported. China is also facing its severest domestic Covid-19 outbreaks in two years, the Global Times reported.

There has been a sharp rise in the number of asymptomatic patients, forcing several major cities to go into lockdowns.

Further, South Korea, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand are also seeing a record surge in Covid cases.

So can this wave spread to India, leading to a fourth wave? "There is no doubt that Covid can happen again in India and the spike can reappear in the next couple of months. We really cannot be complacent in whatever we are doing," said Dr Suranjit Chatterjee, Senior Consultant Internal Medicine, Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals.

A non peer-reviewed research by IIT Kanpur, had earlier, using a statistical model predicted that India will see a fourth wave of the pandemic that may start around mid June and peak from mid to late August this year.

"A majority of the surges across the world at present are being caused by the BA.2 variant of Omicron, and most of the infections caused still appear to be of a mild nature. As long as this continues to be true, we need to learn to live with SARS-CoV-2," Pinto said.

However, it is very difficult to predict the severity of a new wave "because right now, most of the people in the world have gained their antibodies and immunity against this virus", Dr. Avi Kumar, Consultant - Pulmonology, Fortis Escorts Heart Institute, told IANS.

Kumar noted that since the pandemic is continuously changing its size and severity, it is very difficult to predict the fourth wave "but yes we have to keep ourselves guarded".

The experts urged the government to try and limit economic disruptions as much as possible in the wake of a new wave, while also ensuring that the vulnerable and the old are protected by measures such as vaccinations and boosters, based on sound scientific evidence.

"More attention to ventilation of indoor spaces, as this is going to be a critical determinant of spread in the future," Pinto said.
Chennai, March 14 : A seventy-year-old retired Tamil teacher, D. Devaraj Athiyasaraj is preparing to spread awareness among students about the ancient Tamil culture with his fourth documentary film, 'Kumari Kandam'.

The retired teacher who is also a historian has already made three other documentaries on Tamil culture which include, "A American Kalloriyin Varalaru', 'Sarkar Potta Utharavu' and 'Pasumalai Thanthai'. He has also authored 25 books.

In his latest documentary, 'Kumari Kantham'(Kumari Continent) he details the origin of Tamil civilization and how the Tamil king Pandyan launched the first Tamil Sangam or meeting of Tamil scholars. The documentary also features the history of the Vaigai river, the lives of known Tamil poets, and the rich ancient traditions of the Tamil people. It was shot in 2D and 3D formats.

While speaking to IANS, the Tamil teacher who is also an exponent of the rich culture of Madurai said, "I want our youth to have more knowledge on the ancient culture of Tamils and its origin. Our old Sangam period literature books, 'Kali Thogai' and 'Pari Padal' have mentioned that ancient Tamil originated in Kumari continent and scholars had described this place as Lemuria continent.

He added that Kumari Kandam was the cradle of civilization and proof of the ancientness of Tamil culture.

"The proof of the ancientness in Tamil culture and Kumari Kandam as the seat of it is evident from the 'sanga pulavar shrine' in Madurai Meenakshi Amman temple and Nakkirar Temple." He said that his documentary will be screened for the general public and in schools and colleges to create awareness about the rich and ancient culture of Tamil people.
New Delhi, March 14 : The Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM), a coalition of over 40 farmers' unions, on Monday announced the next phase of its nationwide agitation. The SKM will observe April 11- April 17 as MSP Legal Guarantee Week.

The SKM also planned a nationwide protest on March 21 regarding the role of the government in the Lakhimpur Kheri incident, wherein four farmers among others, were mowed down by a vehicle allegedly belonging to MoS Home Ajay Misra Teni.

In a meeting of all the organisations associated with the SKM at Gandhi Peace Foundation in Delhi, it was unanimously decided that during this week (April-11-17), all the constituent organisations associated with the Samyukta Kisan Morcha will organise dharnas, demonstrations, seminars, demanding legal guarantee of Minimum Support Price (C2+50 per cent) as recommended by the Swaminathan Commission, to all farmers on all their agricultural produce.

After reviewing the legal process in the Lakhimpur Kheri case, concerns were expressed that the police administration and the prosecutors together are trying to protect the criminals and implicate the innocent farmers. "It is a matter of surprise that in such a serious case, the son of the Union Minister got bail so soon while the farmers implicated in the same case are still in jail," the Samyukt Kisan Morcha said and expressed serious concern at the news that a key witness in the case has been attacked after Monu Mishra's release.

The SKM decided that there would be no relaxation in the legal battle in this matter, and full legal help would be given by the Morcha to the families of the farmers, a statement after the meeting said.

The Morcha reviewed the written assurances given by the Central Government to the Samyukt Kisan Morcha on December 9 and found that even after three months, the government had not acted upon its key assurances. There is no trace of the assurance of forming a committee on MSP. Except Haryana, the police cases registered against the farmers during the agitation in other states have not been withdrawn. Delhi Police has spoken of partial withdrawal of some cases but there is no concrete information about that as well.

"Nothing has happened about the cases registered during Rail Rokos across the country," the SKM claimed.

The Samyukt Kisan Morcha has decided to organise a nationwide protest on March 21, regarding the role of the government in the Lakhimpur Kheri incident, and the betrayal of the assurances given to the farmers' movement.

The Morcha reiterated that the SKM supports the call for Bharat Bandh by trade unions on March 28 and 29, and that farmers across the country will actively participate in it.

Representatives of farmers' organisations from Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Bihar, Jharkhand, Assam, Tripura, Odisha, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh participated in this meeting convened by the coordination committee of the SKM, statement said.
New Delhi, March 14 : The BJP on Monday appointed central observers and co-observers to elect the leader of legislative party (chief minister) in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur.

The party has appointed Union Home Minister Amit Shah and former Jharkhand Chief Minister Raghuvar Das as central observers for Uttar Pradesh.

In a statement, the BJP national general secretary Arun Singh said, "Parliamentary Board of the Bharatiya Janata Party has appointed central observers and co-observers for the election of the leader of the legislative party in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Manipur and Goa Assembly." For Uttarakhand, the BJP has appointed Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and Minister of State for External Affairs Meenakshi Lekhi as observers for election of leader of legislative party.

Similalry, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and Union Law and Justice Minister Kiren Rijiju have been appointed central observers for Manipur.

For election of legislative party leader in Goa, the BJP has appointed Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar and Union Minister of State for Fisheries, Animal Husbandry L. Murugan as central observers.

The party has created history by winning Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand for the second consecutive term. It has also won the majority in Manipur for the first time on its own. Also, the party is set to form the government in Goa for third term by winning 20 out of the 40 Assembly constituencies.

A senior party functionary said that after appointment of central observers and co-observers, the process of election of new chief ministers in these four states has been started. "Now, the central observers will call a meeting of the legislative party to elect a new leader. After the election of the leader of the legislative party, the BJP will stake claim to form the government and a new government will be sworn in at the earliest," he added.
Mumbai, March 14 : The Centre on Monday issued a notification confirming the resignation of Bombay High Court's Additional Judge, Justice Pushpa V. Ganediwala, who quit her post last month after some controversial judgements delivered last year.

The Ministry of Law & Justice said that Justice Ganediwala's resignation has been accepted with effect from February 11, 2022 - a day before her tenure was due to expire - as the Supreme Court collegium did not recommend extending her term or elevating her.

Justice Ganediwala, of the Nagpur Bench of Bombay HC, shot to headlines for two verdicts in child sex abuses cases delivered in January-February 2021 that generated immense controversy, and were later overruled by the Supreme Court.

One pertained to the proposition that direct 'skin-to-skin' contact was necessary for constituting an offence of sexual assault under the POCSO Act, and another of holding a minor girl's hand to open the zip of the man's pant did not constitute an office under POCSO but under the IPC.

Following widespread reactions to the verdict, the apex court collegium revoked its recommendation of January 20 to make her a permanent judge of Bombay HC, and in February 2021, it recommended extending her term as an Additional Judge by one year.

Appointed as Bombay HC Additional Judge on February 13, 2019, after there was no further extension or elevation as a permanent judge, Justice Ganediwala resigned from her post last month and her resignation has now been officially accepted by the President.
San Francisco, March 14 : Blue Origin on Monday announced that its fourth human flight for the New Shepard programme will include Saturday Night Live fame Pete Davidson.

This NS-20 flight, which is the 20th in the Jeff Bezos-owned company's history, is tentatively slated for liftoff at 8.30 a.m. CDT (7 p.m. IST) on March 23, from Launch Site One in west Texas.

Besides Davidson, the crew flying includes angel investor Marty Allen, nonprofit founder Sharon and her husband Tricor CEO Marc Hagle, entrepreneur Jim Kitchen, and Dr. Commercial Space Technologies founder George Nield.

Davidson is Blue Origin's second star passenger, after Star Trek fame William Shatner took a trip with the commercial space company last year.

The typical 11-minute flight will carry the crew members far above the Karman line - an internationally recognised boundary of space that lies 62 miles (100 km) above the Earth's surface.

The company stated that each astronaut on board NS-20 will carry a postcard to space on behalf of Blue Origin's foundation Club for the Future, whose Postcards to Space programme gives students access to space on its rockets.

The Club's mission is to inspire future generations to pursue careers in STEM for the benefit of Earth.

Blue Origin's third flight to suborbital space took place in December, last year. It was the first to carry six astronauts to space, as the last two missions carried only four.

The company blasted off its first human flight on July 20, while the second flight to space occurred on October 13, last year.
Kiev, March 14 : Ukraine anti-aircraft defence shot down a missile in Kiev and its wreckage fell on a residential neighbourhood destroying a five-storey building.

Anton Herashchenko, Advisor to the Head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs confirmed that he saw the missile being shot down and the wreckage fell in Kiev, near Kurenivka.

Vitalii Klitschko, Mayor of Kiev said that missile wreckage fell onto the road. One person was killed and six were injured, with two taken away by ambulance.

An empty tram was completely destroyed. Windows were shattered, the balconies of the nearest houses and commercial premises on the ground floors were damaged, Ukrayinska Pravda reported.

Earlier reports said Russia does not rule out taking "full control" of Ukraine's major cities, the Kremlin said.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said, "The Russian armed forces do not reject taking 'full control' of Ukraine's major cities to ensure maximum security for citizens.".

Peskov also says that, at the beginning of the war, Russian President Vladimir Putin allegedly gave the order "not to assault the cities immediately, including Kiev", Ukrayinska Pravda reported.

The reason for that was "the deployment of weapons by militants in the cities". It is unclear what was meant, although Russia says it is "demilitarising Ukraine", namely destroying these weapons.

Earlier, an artillery shell hit a nine-storey apartment building in the Obolon district of Kiev, killing two people.

Ukrayinska Pravda reported the building was partially destroyed between the ground floor and the second floor, and a fire broke out on the second and third floor.

There were three victims, and 17 people rescued from under the rubble.

An airstrike on the town of Okhtyrka in the northeast of Ukraine in Sumy region on Monday has killed at least 3 civilians.

Pavlo Kuzmenko, Mayor of Okhtyrka said: "Okhtyrka - its residential neighbourhood, residential houses - was bombed at night. At least 3 people died, others have not been found yet. Behind me, houses are burning."

Latest updates on Russia-Ukraine War
New Delhi, March 14 : With a view to address the issues related to gaps or loss of learning among students, during and after the lockdown, National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has developed bridge course modules for out-of-school children including various activities which are helpful for bridging the learning gaps.

Different States have also been requested to prepare and implement School Readiness Module Bridge Course in classrooms for initial one or two months for each grade. The information was given by Minister of State for Education, Annpurna Devi in a written reply in the Lok Sabha on Monday.

NCERT has also prepared 'Alternative Academic Calendar' which is a week-wise learning plan for grades 1 to 12.

"The spread of Covid-19 pandemic has impacted school education across the world. Schools in States and Union Territories were closed as a precautionary measure to protect the students fromthe coronavirus," she said.

She said that COVID-19 has interrupted the learning of students from pre- school to grade 12. Education is in the concurrent list of the Constitution and majority of the schools are under the domain of respective State and UT Governments. During pandemic, Ministry of Education had several consultations with the States and UTs to assess the various aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic, she added.

The Alternative Academic Calendar consists of interesting activities and challenges related to topics and themes in the syllabus. It maps the topics and themes with the learning outcomes & facilitates teachers and parents to assess the progress in students' learning in a variety of ways. Also links for e-resources have been provided for those learners who have access to the internet.

A National Mission on Foundational Literacy and Numeracy called 'National Initiative for Proficiency in Reading with Understanding and Numeracy (NIPUN Bharat)' has also been launched by the Ministry of Education (MoE) on July 5, 2021 under the aegis of Samagra Shiksha, the minister said.

The National Mission lays down priorities and actionable agendas for States to achieve the goal of proficiency in foundational literacy and numeracy for every child by grade 3. Vidya Pravesh module has been launched for class 1 students. This is a play based on 3 months of school preparation program for children entering in Class I.

According to the ministry of education, in addition, a comprehensive initiative called PM eVIDYA has been initiated which unifies all efforts related to digital, online, on-air education to enable multi-mode access to education.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
New Delhi, March 14 : India and Canada held Foreign Office Consultations in Delhi on Monday to discuss progress in a wide range of bilateral matters.

The Indian delegation was led by Ministry of External Affairs's Secretary, East, Saurabh Kumar, while the Canadian delegation was led by Deputy Minister of Foreign and Global Affairs Marta Morgan. The last FOCs were held in March 2021 in a virtual mode.

"The discussions were cordial and friendly. Both sides reviewed the progress of bilateral cooperation in domains such as political, security, trade and investment, education, science and technology, consular and mobility. They agreed that the two countries should continue work to renew the momentum in relations and convene meetings of bilateral dialogues and working groups," the MEA said in a statement.

The FOCs also provided a timely opportunity to exchange assessment on regional, multilateral and global issues of mutual interest.

Both sides agreed to continue their productive consultations, and the next round will be held in Ottawa at convenient dates.
Hyderabad, March 14 : The Telangana High Court on Monday suggested three BJP MLAs, who were suspended from state Assembly last week, meet the Speaker.

Hearing a petition by the MLAs challenging their suspension, a division bench suggested that they meet the Speaker and hoped that he would take an appropriate decision.

The suggestion came when counsel of the three legislators pleaded that the court pass an order directing the Speaker to allow them to attend the session from Tuesday.

The court observed that the final decision on revoking the suspension of the MLAs has to be taken by the Speaker. It directed that the Legislature Secretary take the responsibility of facilitating a meeting of the suspended MLAs with Speaker Pocharam Srinivas Reddy.

Raghunandan Rao, Eatala Rajender, and T. Raja Singh filed a petition before the division bench after a single judge refused to stay the suspension from the House for the entire business session.

Earlier in the day, on the direction of the court, the judicial registrar of the court went to the Assembly and served the notice personally on Legislature Secretary Narasimha Charyulu. The court had also directed the city Police Commissioner to ensure that registrar get access to the Assembly building and personally serve the notice.

The division bench gave the direction after counsel of the BJP MLAs brought to its notice that a notice earlier ordered by a single judge could not be served on the Legislature Secretary.

All three MLAs of BJP were suspended from the Assembly for the entire session by the Speaker on March 7.

Protesting over the government's move to commence the budget session without the Governor's address, the BJP legislators tried to disrupt the proceedings.

On a resolution moved by the government, the Speaker announced their suspension for the entire session.

The MLAs argued that their suspension was against the rules of the Legislative Assembly and the Constitution.
Mumbai, March 14 : Reliance Industries' subsidiary Reliance New Energy Ltd on Monday signed definitive agreements to acquire "substantially" all of the assets of Lithium Werks BV for a total transaction value of $61 million, including funding for future growth.

The assets include the entire patent portfolio of Lithium Werks - a leading provider of cobalt free and high-performance 'Lithium Iron Phosphate' (LFP) batteries, its manufacturing facility in China, key business contracts and hiring of existing employees as a going concern.

Founded in 2017, through acquisition of certain assets of 'Valence' and 'A123' industrial division, the management of Lithium Werks has over 30 years of battery expertise and nearly 200 MWh annual production capacity including coating, cell and custom module manufacturing capability.

According to the RIL, with the recent resurgence in demand for LFP batteries, Lithium Werks is uniquely positioned to take advantage of the global opportunities.

"LFP is fast gaining as one of the leading cell chemistries due to its cobalt and nickel free batteries, low cost and longer life compared to NMC and other chemistries," said Mukesh Ambani, Chairman of Reliance Industries.

"Lithium Werks is one of the leading LFP cell manufacturing companies globally and has a vast patent portfolio and a management team which brings tremendous experience of innovation across LFP value chain." Ambani also said: "We are looking forward to working with the Lithium Werks team and are excited about the pace at which we are progressing towards establishing an end-to-end battery manufacturing and supply ecosystem for India markets.

"Along with Faradion, Lithium Werks will enable us to accelerate our vision of establishing India at the core of developments in global battery chemistries and help us provide a secure, safe and high-performance supply chain to the large and growing Indian EV and Energy Storage markets."
Bengaluru, March 14 : Thousands of Devdasis (sex workers) staged a massive protest in Bengaluru on Monday demanding acceptance of their demands.

The protest is being staged in Freedom Park. The agitation would continue overnight.

U. Basavaraju, the honorary president of the Karnataka Rajya Devdasi Mahileyara Vimochana Sangha, stated that the Sangha along with the Karnataka State Devdasi Women's Children's Struggle Committee has submitted memorandums many times but their demands have been totally ignored till date.

The pension of Devdasis should be increased from a minimum of Rs 3,000 to Rs 15,000, he said.

The loan amount given to Devdasis has been reduced from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 30,000. This should be increased to Rs 5 lakh, he stated.

A survey of Devdasi women's children should be conducted and the government should place no conditions to claim subsidies on marriages. Now, there is a rule that if the boy and girl of two Devdasi women get married, they will not be subsidized. They have to be married to a man or woman outside the community of Devdasis, he explained.

--IANS mka/bg

IANS AAA
Bhubaneswar, March 14 : The Ministry of Civil Aviation has approached the Ministry of Defence (MoD) seeking permission for Odisha government to develop a civil enclave at the Amarda airstrip, which was built during World War-II.

The was revealed in the Rajya Sabha by Minister of State for Civil Aviation, V.K. Singh, while replying to a question raised by BJD MP Amar Patnaik.

Singh said the Amarda (Rasgovindpur) airstrip in Mayurbhanj district, belonging to Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), is included in the UDAN scheme document.

Last month, the Odisha government had requested the MoD to accord permission for using the Amarda airstrip for operations under UDAN. Odisha Chief Secretary S.C. Mahapatra had written to Defence Secretary Ajay Kumar in this regard.

On March 7, the Ministry of Civil Aviation had approached the MoD to consider the request of the government of Odisha for granting permission to develop a civil enclave at the airstrip, the Union minister informed the House.

Bhubaneswar to Amarda and vice-versa was offered as state sponsored route under bidding round UDAN 4.1 and the Airports Authority of India (AAI), the implementing agency, received one bid.

A multi-disciplinary team of AAI had visited the airstrip on September 16, 2021 and conducted inspection of the existing site along with state revenue department officials, he said.

The team also mentioned the requirement of additional land for development of the airport for IFR operations of Code C aircraft.

Disclosing the details about airports identified under UDAN scheme, Singh said the airports at Jharsuguda, Rourkela, Utkela, Jeypore and Rangeilunda have been identified/awarded under UDAN so far.

Similarly, Amarda Road, Angul, Barbil, Birasal, Gudari, Hirakund, J.K. Pur, Jeypore, Lanjigarh, Nawapara, Padampur, Rairangpur, Raisuan, Rangeilunda, Sukinda, Therubali, Tushra and Utkela are the unserved airports available in the UDAN scheme document for the state of Odisha.

A total of 60 routes have been awarded under UDAN for the state and 18 have been operationalised till date, he added.
Bengaluru, March 14 : The Karnataka High Court bench, headed by Chief Justice Ritu Raj Awasthi, is slated to pronounce the judgement on the hijab issue on Tuesday morning.

The matter has been listed in the first half of the day.

The three-judge bench, which also comprised Justice Krishna S. Dixit and Justice Khaji Jaibunnesa Mohiyuddin had reserved the matter for judgement earlier after hearing arguments and counterarguments.

Six students from the Udupi Pre-University College for girls had started a protest over being refused to enter classes wearing a hijab, and the protest spread to other districts to become a major controversy, and even led to tension, as some Hindu students started coming in saffron shawls.

The girls approached the High Court and demanding that they should be allowed to enter class rooms while wearing hijabs. As it issued interim orders that no hijab or saffron shawl is allowed in the schools and colleges, petitioners have challenged this in the Supreme Court. However, the apex court refused to hear the matter and asked the petitioners to seek relief from the High Court.
Hyderabad, March 14 : Flybig, India's newest scheduled commuter airline, on Monday launched its maiden flight service from GMR Hyderabad International Airport to Maharashtra's Gondia.

The service is a UDAN initiative, which is aimed to bolster the regional connectivity to the travelers to Tier 2 and 3 cities.

GMR Hyderabad International Airport Ltd CEO Pradeep Panicker flagged off the flight.

The daily flight S9401 will depart from Hyderabad at 6.20 a.m. The return flight number S9402 will arrive at Hyderabad at 1.50 p.m.

With this service, the number of domestic destinations from the Hyderabad International Airport has reached 70. Before the outbreak of Covid-19, this number was 55.

"With the rising demand of passenger traffic since the beginning of the second quarter of 2021, we have added new domestic and international destinations from the Hyderabad International Airport. Air travel demand has grown significantly in the last couple of years. With travel bouncing back, travellers are revisiting their favourite destinations and exploring new places like never before," Panicker said.

"To cater to this travel demand there has been a constant effort to add destinations that have not been connected across India, especially from Tier 2 and Tier 3 towns. Hyderabad city has the advantage of location in making this possible. As an airport operator, it gives a great deal of satisfaction that we have enabled it for those who want to fly from such remote places," he added.

Gondia, which has a large number of rice mills, is known as 'Rice City'. It is also famous for the Navegaon National Park, Nagzira Wildlife Sanctuary, Kachargadh Caves, Hazra Fall, and other tourist spots in and around.

Flybig has connected Hyderabad, Gondia, and Indore. The Indore-Gondia-Hyderabad flight was flagged off on Sunday virtually by Union Civil Aviation Minister, Jyotiraditya Scindia.

The flight reached Hyderabad from Gondia on Sunday. The flight from Hyderabad was flagged off early Monday morning.

Flybig has announced plans to rapidly increase its national footprint and operational network, by adding 3 more cities viz. Indore, Gondia and Hyderabad, taking the total number of cities in its network to 11.
New Delhi, March 14 : The BJP is keeping its aspirants guessing in three states as the party has not decided who will be the Chief Minister in Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur with the delay in calling the legislative party meetings. The party emerged victorious in four state assembly polls and there is no certainty over the chief ministers except in Uttar Pradesh.

Aspirants for the chief minister post in Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur are keeping their fingers crossed and leaving no stone unturned to lobby for themselves. "The delay has kept everyone guessing about the party leadership's decision and has also provided them with an opportunity to lobby for themselves," a party insider said.

Many in the party feel that wirh no clear message from the central leadership even four days after the declaration of results, ir has fuelled speculation that the leadership might go in for a change of chief minister in Goa, Manipur and Uttarakhand, where sitting chief minister Dhami lost.

In Uttarakhand, the BJP has won the assembly polls by a two third majority but incumbent chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami lost from Khatima. After Dhami's defeat many aspirants are eyeing the post of chief ministers which include Members of Parliament and MLAs. Many MLAs have visited the national capital to seek support from senior leaders to become chief minister of the hill state.

A senior party functionary in Uttarakhand told IANS that while almost five MLAs have offered to resign for Dhami to re-contest, many others have started lobbying for the post.

In Goa, while incumbent Pramod Sawant is the frontrunner for the post, many other aspirants are also trying their luck to become chief minister in the coastal state. "With extra time everyone is trying to become chief minister and pushing their candidature before seniors," a party leader in Goa said.

Similarly in Manipur incumbent N Biren Singh is the strongest candidate for the post but with a delay of four days a few are thinking that they might get the chance to lead the party.

The BJP on Monday appointed central observers and co-observers to elect the leader of the legislative party (chief minister) in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur.
Bengaluru, March 14 : The ongoing hijab row in Karnataka will be discussed in the state Assembly on Tuesday, with Speaker Vishveshwara Hegde Kageri fixing a time for discussion on the issue under Rule 69.

Former Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy raised the issue in the Assembly on Monday and demanded that he should be allowed to talk about uniforms at schools and colleges in the state. He maintained that it is necessary to discuss the issue as the uniform row has affected the education sector in the state.

Giving example of how Shivamogga, the birthplace of Raastra Kavi Kuvempu, the celebrated Kannada litterateur, witnessed violence, Kumaraswamy claimed that it has affected the students' education and academic environment.

Intervening Kumaraswamy's speech, Congress MLA Zameer Ahmad Khan, a friend-turned-foe, said that Kumaraswamy had earlier said that hijab should not be allowed, and now he suddenly wants a discussion on the issue after 45 days.

This led to a heated exchange of words between JD(S) members and Zameer Ahmad Khan. Kumaraswamy maintained that even as he gave a proposal for a debate on the issue during the joint session, he did not get a chance to discuss it in the House.

"This is a sensitive matter. For the past two months, the education sector has suffered many negative implications. There should be cordial atmosphere in the state," he said.

Kumaraswamy added, "I do not have any fear. The party's stand and the government's stand are different. The government has the responsibility of protecting everyone." Minister for Law and Parliamentary Affairs, J.C. Madhuswamy, said that the issue can't be taken up for discussion as per rules. The debate on budget and the speech of the Governor are allowed. This issue (uniform row) is pending in the court, he said.
Moscow, March 14 : Colonel-General Mikhail Mizintsev, head of the National Defense Control Center of the Russian Federation, said on Monday that the successful operation to unblock Mariupol made it possible to open humanitarian corridors and begin mass evacuation of the population.

"The successful operation to unblock the city made it possible today to open humanitarian corridors for the exit of civilians and to begin mass evacuation of the population, which had been held hostage by neo-Nazis for a long time," Mizintsev said, RT reported.

He also announced the destruction of almost all neo-Nazi firing points that were equipped in the suburban areas of Mariupol.

In addition, he reported the liquidation of the main forces of neo-Nazis in positions in residential areas along the perimeter of Mariupol.

He said almost all the neo-Nazi firing points that were equipped in the suburban areas of Mariupol had been destroyed.

As emphasised in the Russian Ministry of Defense, 200 buses have already been organised to take people out of the city. Fifty buses have arrived in the city and are ready to pick up people.

Mariupol remained one of the hottest spots on the map of Russia's special operation in Ukraine. Russia said the 'neo-Nazis' who settled here held civilians hostage and sabotaged the work of any humanitarian corridors.
Brussels, March 14 : The EU "is not at war with Russia", European Council President Charles Michel told El Pais in an interview published on Monday.

Western nations should not get involved in the conflict between Moscow and Kiev, he said, arguing that a confrontation between Russia and NATO would mean nothing short of nuclear world war, RT reported.

"Russia is a nuclear power and we are well aware that if this conflict turns into [a conflict] between NATO and Russia, we will roll down into the Third World War," the former Belgian Prime Minister told El Pais on Saturday, following Friday's EU summit in Versailles, France.

Michel advocated for dialogue, warning that "all conflicts are dramatic, extreme and often difficult", but Russia's nuclear capabilities add a whole new "dimension of a different nature" to any potential military standoff with Moscow.

"I advocate pragmatism," he said, adding that Europe should focus on pressing issues at hand like humanitarian access to areas affected by the military action, the status of Ukraine's nuclear power plants, and peace negotiations between Moscow and Kiev.

"We need to talk to whoever is in Kremlin today, because democracies should talk to nations even if they are deemed not democratic," Michel said.

Latest updates on Russia-Ukraine War
New Delhi, March 14 : The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs on Monday expressed disappointment at the "abysmal" 3.68 per cent women representation in the Central Armed Police Force (CAPFs).

The reaction of the panel, headed by Congress' Anand Sharma, came in its report on 'Demand For Grants' on Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), submitted to the Rajya Sabha on Monday.

The Committee observed that in 2016, it was decided by government to reserve 33 per cent posts at constable level for women in the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) to begin with and 14-15 per cent posts at constable level in border guarding forces such as the Border Security Force (BSF), Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB), and the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP).

"The Committee is disappointed to note that women constitute only 3.68% of the total strength of CAPFs. The Committee recommends that MHA should take concrete steps to increase the representation of women in CAPFs," the report said.

It also recommended that phase-wise recruitment drives for women may be conducted on fast track, particularly in the CISF and the CRPF, and also that steps should be taken to create a conducive environment in the border outposts by creating separate arrangements, so that women are motivated to join security forces.

The Parliamentary Standing committee on MHA, in its 237th report, had also expressed aanguish over women being abysmally under-represented in the state police force as they constitute only 10.30 per cent of the entire police force.

According to the Bureau for Police Research and Development, the total sanctioned strength of women in the state police forces is 20,91, 488, whereas the actual strength is as low as 2,15,504.

The panel, in the latest report, also observed that that the CAPFs function under much stress, given the nature of their duty which requires their postings in harsh climatic conditions. So, to ease their mental state and reduce stress, leaves at appropriate intervals are a necessity, so that they can spend time with their families, it recommended.

It also noted that the MHA is examining/deliberating on increasing the leaves of CAPFs personnel while the proposal should be considered positively and finalised at the earliest, as it would boost the morale of the CAPFs. "Proposals for additional posts may also be positively considered for enabling the decision," the report said.

Referring to deferred work of Census 2021, the Committee was of the view that the census being a pan-India decadal exercise should present the culture, traditions and diversity of the different regions of the country along with the numerical data.

It sad that the number of questions in the census have increased but the annual reports have not been written by the registrars/officers for the past few censuses.

"Therefore, the Committee recommends that the MHA may take up with Registrar General of India (RGI) to restart the publication of annual reports from the upcoming census onwards," the panel report said.
Bengaluru, March 14 : Ahead of the Karnataka High Court verdict on the hijab matter on Tuesday, Bengaluru Police Commissioner Kamal Pant on Monday issued prohibitory orders, banning any gatherings, protests, as well as celebrations of any type in any public place of the city for 7 days, between March 15 and March 21.

Since the issue involved rules regarding uniforms in schools and colleges and their enforcement, various types of reactions after pronouncement of the judgement can not be ruled out.

In order to maintain public order in the city it is appropriate to issue prohibitory orders, the Police Commissioner said in his order.

The special three-judge bench, headed by Chief Justice Ritu Raj Awasthi, will pronounce the judgement on Tuesday morning with the matter being listed in the first half of the day. The three judge bench, which also comprises Justice Krishna S. Dixit and Justice Khaji Jaibunnesa Mohiyuddin, had reserved judgement after hearing arguments and counter-arguments in daily hearings.
New Delhi, March 14 : Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Monday that after the removal of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir, as many as 890 Central laws have become applicable, giving the people of J&K what was denied to them in the last 70 years.

Speaking at the debate on Budget 2022-23 for J&K in the Lok Sabha, she said that what B.R. Ambedkar gave to the SC/ST communities is now available to the people of Jammu and Kashmir.

"This country cannot have two symbols, two Prime Ministers or two Constitutions. We have a Constitution which we respect... And every time we discuss the people who gave us the Constitution, we all respectfully raise the name of Ambedkar," she said.

She further said that a total of 1,198 startups have been registered in J&K while more than 200 startups have been funded till date.

"Rs 143 crore was given to the MSME units in J&K under Emergency Credit Guarantee Scheme during the Covid-19 pandemic," she stated.

Responding to questions raised by MPs on the employment situation in J&K, Sitharaman said, "As per CMIE, which monitors the Indian economy, the unemployment rate has come down. In 2016 it was 20 per cent, and by late February this year it came down to 13.2 per cent." Earlier, Sitharaman presented the Budget for Jammu and Kashmir for the year 2022-23 financial year amid opposition from some members of opposition parties, including Congress MP Manish Tewari, who demanded more time to discuss the Budget.
Chennai, March 14 : Water conservation experts in Tamil Nadu have demanded increased budgetary allocation for the augmentation and rejuvenation of water bodies in the state, contending that during all budget sessions, the issue of funding to restore water bodies and water tanks is discussed but does not materialise.

The Tamil Nadu budget for financial year 2022-23 is to be presented in the Assembly on March 18 and experts are seeking to sensitise Finance Minister P.T.R. Thiaga Rajan of the urgency of the matter.

Talking to IANS, water management and disaster risk reduction expert, Professor S. Janakarajan, said: "There have not been any major announcements regarding on water resources and it is to be noted that regulation of water supply from reservoirs is of paramount importance." He said that in Delta regions, the reservoir supply was unregulated and that the job of the officials is completed the moment the reservoirs are opened and that nothing is done to ensure that water reaches the tail end.

Chennai-based think tank Centre for Policy and Development Studies' C. Rajeev told IANS that the groundwater situation in Tamil Nadu "is getting worse by the day".

"There are instances of farmers digging bore wells as deep as 1,500 feet to find groundwater and the solution is to convert all the abandoned bore wells into rainwater harvesting structures." He also said that the capacity of lakes should be increased so that at least 50 per cent of the rainwater from catchment areas is held in these lakes.

"The capacity of urban lakes can be improved by deepening, desilting, and plugging sewage outfall," he said.

Chennai Water Resources Foundation Chairman Ramesh K.P. said: "The Tamil Nadu government had appointed a 14-member committee headed by retired IAS officer V. Thiruppugazh to look into the planning of stormwater drains after the heavy rains and deluge that had hit the state in the past few years. However here also it has not gone forward due to paucity of funds and the expectations are on the new budget."
New Delhi, March 14 : Defence Minister Rajnath Singh will make a statement in the Parliament on Tuesday over inadvertently firing a missile that landed in Pakistan.

The Defence Ministry had stated that an unarmed supersonic missile "accidently" took off from Sirsa and landed at a place 124 km within the Pakistani territory on last Wednesday.

Last Friday, the DefenceA Ministry "regretfully" explained it as "a technical malfunction".

The ministry in a statement had said: "On March 9, 2022, in the course of a routine maintenance, a technical malfunction led to the accidental firing of a missile." The Indian government has taken a serious view of the matter and "ordered a high-level court of enquiry".

"It is learnt that the missile landed in an area in Pakistan. While the incident is deeply regrettable, it is also a matter of relief that there has been no loss of life due to the accident," said the ministry.

On the same day, Pakistan foreign office had summoned India's charge d'affaires and lodged a protest over what it termed as unprovoked violation of its airspace.

In a statement, it warned New Delhi of "unpleasant consequences" over what it claimed was an Indian originated but unidentified high-altitude supersonic object that crashed in its territory.

In its statement, the foreign office urged India to take effective measures to avoid such violations in the future.

The missile was cruising at an altitude of 40,000 feet and endangered passenger flights in both Indian and Pakistani airspace, and also civilians and property on the ground, the Pakistan foreign office said.

Major General Babar Iftikhar, Director General of Pakistani armed forces' Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), had said that at 18:43 hours on March 9, "a high-speed flying object was picked up inside Indian flying territory by Air Defence Operations Centre of the Pakistani Air Force. From its initial course the object suddenly maneuvered towards Pakistani territory and violated Pakistan's airspace, ultimately falling near Mia Channu." Addressing a press conference on the incident, Iftikhar said that there were no human casualties.

"When it fell, it damaged some civilian property. Thankfully no loss or injury to human life was caused," he said.
New Delhi, March 14 : The Centre has allowed Sikhs working in the aviation sector to continue carrying small sized 'kirpan' within the airport premises.

In Sikh religion, 'kirpan' or a dagger is considered a holy object.

The Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS) amended its order issued on March 4 by deleting the para restricting the entry of Sikh employees inside the airport carrying 'kirpan' of specified size. The new order issued on March 12 restored the position prior to March 4.

As per the order, the length of the kirpan's blade should not be more than six inches, and its total length should not exceed nine inches.

In its earlier circular, Sikh travellers on domestic flights were allowed to carry the specified length 'kirpan' on their body.
New Delhi, March 14 : Modelled on the lines of the work done as part of the Clean Ganga Mission for the river and acknowledging that the growing water crisis is on account of degradation of river ecosystems, the Environment, Forest and Climate Change Ministry on Monday launched an ambitious river rejuvenation plan through forestry intervention for 13 major rivers and their tributaries across India.

The Ministry is aiming that the forestry interventions will increase overall health of the rivers and recharge groundwater from the increased cumulative forest cover by 7,417.36 sq kms across these 13 riverscapes.

The proposed interventions will also help to sequester 50.21 million tonnes CO2 equivalent in 10-year-old plantations and 74.76 million tonnes CO2 equivalent in 20-year-old plantations, it hopes.

The Detailed Project Report (DPRs) on rejuvenation through forestry interventions were released for rivers Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas, Sutlej, Yamuna, Brahmaputra, Narmada, Godavari, Mahanadi, Krishna, Cauvery, and Luni. These DPRs are funded by National Afforestation & Eco-development Board, under the Ministry, and prepared by the Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education (ICFRE), Dehradun.

These 13 rivers collectively cover a total basin area of 16,11,149 sq km that represents 49.01 per cent of the geographical area of the country. The length of 13 rivers, including all of their tributaries (202 in all) within the delineated river-scapes is 42,830 km.

Environment, Forest and Climate Change Minister Bhupender Yadav explained how the DPRs envisage convergence of budgets from multiple line ministries and will be part of Green India Mission II.

"Any scheme without the participation of people, the community will not succeed and therefore, along with the forestry interventions, we need this to be a work of community participation," he said, adding that his Ministry needs to take the message to the community in a language that the members of the public would understand.

Terming the whole exercise as a "much needed initiative", Jal Shakti Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat said: "We are custodians of the jal (water), jungle and zameen (land) and we are duty-bound to hand it over to the future generation as we got it or even better." "These reports are going to be the mainstay of the actions that the Ministry would take going forward so that our responsibility towards our lifelines are fully understood," Environment, Forest and Climate Change Secretary Leena Nandan said and assured the state governments that the Ministry will be with them on every step of implementation.

The proposed cumulative budget outlay of 13 DPRs is Rs 19,342.62 crore. These DPRs are expected to be executed through the state Forest Departments as nodal departments and with convergence of schemes of other line departments in the states towards the activities proposed in the DPRs and funding support from the Centre.
New Delhi, March 14 : The Delhi High Court on Monday sought the Central government's stand on a plea seeking its diplomatic intervention in a case of Kerala nurse Nimisha Priya, who was awarded a death sentence by a Yemeni Court, in connection with the murder of a Yemini citizen five years ago.

During the course of the hearing, counsel appeared for 'Save Nimisha Priya International Action Council' pleaded before the High Court to issue direction to the Centre to facilitate negotiations with the family of the victim on behalf of the nurse to save her life by paying the 'blood money' -- compensation paid by an offender or his kin to the family of the victim -- in accordance with the law in Yemen.

Justice V. Kameswar Rao, however, asked, "This happened in Yemen. How does this court have jurisdiction then? How is this maintainable?" The counsel argued that under the Shariat law, legal heirs can be compensated and in turn, the death sentence can be commuted. "Due to the socio-political situation in Yemen, travel to the Western Asian country is not allowed and there is no way for her family or well-wishers to visit Yemen and pay the 'blood money' to secure her release," the counsel said, seeking a direction to the Central government to facilitate negotiations through proper channels.

Accordingly, the bench asked the stand of the Central government through its counsel.

The hearing into the matter will continue on Tuesday.

"It is learnt from the lawyer who represented her (Nimisha) before the appeal court that the option for 'blood money' is kept open by the appeal court. A copy of the judgment is yet to be received and the limitation for appeal before the Supreme Judicial Council is 40 days only. If the appeal before the Supreme Judicial Council is dismissed, execution may take place any time," the plea read.

It was alleged that Nimisha has been held guilty of murder after she gave sedatives to a man named Talal Abdo Mahdi who "kept her passport and kept her like a slave" in Yemen, the plea said.

It also said the deceased physically and financially abused her and locked away her passport so she could not come back to India. Nimisha and a friend then gave sedatives to the deceased, leading to his death due to overdose.

It also alleged that Mahdi had forged documents to show that he was married to her. She had sought his help to start her own clinic but he cheated on her financially and later started torturing her.

On March 7, a Yemen court had dismissed the appeal of Nimisha in the murder case in which she, along with another person, is the prime accused.

Hailing from Palakkad, Nimisha, a nurse by profession, reached Yemen in 2012 with her husband.
New Delhi, March 14 : The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Monday filed a supplementary chargesheet against two alleged operatives of Hizb-ut-Tahrir in connection with the Madurai Iqbal HuT case before a Special Court in Tamil Nadu.

Hizb-ut-Tahrir (HuT) is affiliated to ISIS and the accused were working at behest of them.

The NIA chargesheeted Bava Bahrudeen alias Mannai Bava and Ziyavudeen Baqavi both the residents of Tamil Nadu.

Earlier in May 2021, the NIA filed a chargesheet against two accused in the case.

Initially a case was lodged at Police Station Thideer Nagar in Tamil Nadu's Madurai district and later the probe was taken over by the NIA.

Investigation revealed that the accused persons are members of an extremist Islamic outfit named Hizb-ut-Tahrir (HuT) which is affiliated to ISIS.

They were engaged in radicalising and recruiting "gullible" youth to establish an Islamic State, Caliphate or Khilafah and enforce a draft constitution written by the radical Islamic preacher, Taqi al-Din al-Nabhani, the founder of HuT.

Investigation also revealed that accused were organising meetings to recruit members and also conducting secret classes to indoctrinate, radicalise and motivate youth to work towards establishment of Islamic State by overthrowing the Government of India.

They had also conspired to establish new cells in various districts of Tamil Nadu and Kerala through social media platforms such as Facebook and YouTube in order to spread the ideology of HuT.
Kiev, March 14 : Recruitment centres for mercenaries have been opened in Syria, where over a thousand people have been recruited in recent days and about 400 people have already arrived in Russia, according to the General Staff of the Ukrainian armed forces.

Camps have been set up near the Ukrainian border in Russia's Rostov and Gomel regions for their accommodation and training, UNIAN reported.

"The Russian occupiers continue to accumulate reserves on their territory for waging war against Ukraine," it said.

According to Ukraine's armed forces of Ukraine, detachments of Syrian mercenaries are now being formed, "who are ready to carry out the criminal orders of Russian commanders for a reward".

Russia has opened 14 mercenary recruitment centres in Syria and is also training mercenaries from Libya, the Main Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine's Ministry of Defence said.

"Putin's Russia has opened 14 recruitment centres for mercenaries in Syria in the territories controlled by the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Damascus, Aleppo, Hama, Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor. After a short training, the mercenaries will be transported to Russia through the Khmeimim airbase by two Tu-134 aircraft which can carry up to 80 passengers and Tu-154 (up to 180 passengers) to the Chkalovsky airbase, Moscow region," UNIAN reported.

Latest updates on Russia-Ukraine War
Moscow, March 14 : In large Ukrainian cities, nationalists are threatening and forcing men aged 18 to 60 to enroll in territorial defence battalions, said Colonel-General Mikhail Mizintsev, head of Russia's National Defense Control Center.

"In large cities such as Kharkiv, Odessa and Nikolaev, members of nationalist formations, under the threat of physical reprisals against men family members aged 18 to 60 years, forcibly push them to enroll in territorial defence battalions," Mizintsev said, RT reported.

He added that the inhabitants of Ukraine are intimidated, so they are forced to agree.

The Russian side is strictly complying with the ceasefire obligations for the withdrawal of civilians along the humanitarian corridors during the special operation in Ukraine, Mizintsev claimed.

"Despite the endless streams of lies and disinformation, the Russian Federation continues to fully fulfil its humanitarian obligations," he said.

Mizintsev added that Russia is opening humanitarian corridors in Kiev, Chernihiv, Sumy and Kharkiv directions.

"The silence regimes introduced by the Russian armed forces are strictly observed," a spokesman for the Russian Ministry of Defense said.

Earlier, Russia said that the successful operation to unblock Mariupol made it possible to open humanitarian corridors and begin mass evacuation of the population.

"The successful operation to unblock the city made it possible today to open humanitarian corridors for the exit of civilians and to begin mass evacuation of the population, which had been held hostage by neo-Nazis for a long time," a spokesman said, RT reported.

Latest updates on Russia-Ukraine War
Chandigarh, March 14 : International kabbadi player Sandeep Singh from Nangal Ambiyan village was shot dead by assailants during a match at Malian village in Jalandhar district on Monday.

At least 20 bullets were pumped into his head and chest. The disturbing video of the crime went viral.

A former captain of the Indian kabaddi team, Sandeep hailed from Nangal Ambian village in Shahkot. He is survived by his wife and two sons, who are currently in England, where he was settled.
Jaipur, March 14 : As the advent of early summers in Rajasthan have led to the temperatures rising in the middle of March, the Meteorological Department has warned of heat wave in the next two days in different parts of the state.

As per the department, the heat may wreak havoc in western Rajasthan this summer.

On March 15 and 16, heat waves are likely in Barmer and Jaisalmer districts and the Meteorological Department has issued a heat wave warning and a 'yellow alert'.

Meteorological Department Director Radheshyam Sharma said that heat waves can push the temperatures high in Barmer and Jaisalmer, as well as in other districts too.

According to the Meteorological Department, heatwave may continue in the western areas of the desert state for the next few days. On Tuesday, heat wave is likely to prevail in Barmer, Jodhpur, and Jaisalmer in western Rajasthan, and on Wednesday in Bikaner, Barmer, Jodhpur, Jaisalmer, and Jalore districts.

Winters had also wreaked havoc this season and smashed all records.

At the same time, rains, hailstorm, and winds lashed the state a few days back. Now, the heat wave warning in the middle of March has driven people inside as the temperature is soaring each day.
Gandhinagar, March 14 : Manisha Kukadia, an SC councillor in Surat Municipal Corporation (SMC) who jumped ship from the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) last month, returned to her original party AAP on Monday.

Five AAP corporators in the SMC had left the party and joined the BJP more than a month ago. All the five were inducted into the saffron fold in the presence of Gujarat Minister of State (MoS) for Home, Harsh Sanghvi.

After joining the BJP, Manisha Jagdishbhai Kukadiya of Ward No. 5 had alleged that the AAP discriminated against the SC community and that she was a victim of this discrimination.

The AAP in Surat had issued a show-cause notice to corporator Vipul Movliya for his 'suspicious' activities besides suspending all the five councillors who left the party.

The AAP had alleged that all the defectors were lured with monetary gains and other temptations, an allegation that was denied by all the five corporators, who claimed that their voices were not heard in the party.

But on Monday, Manisha returned to the AAP fold, Gujarat AAP chief Gopal Italia announced.

The AAP corporator said that she had joined the BJP without pressure from anyone.
New Delhi, March 14 : Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla on Monday took a serious view of members leaving the house without waiting for the reply of the minister concerned during debates in the house.

"Those MPs who do not stay in the House, I have taken a serious view of this and this is a matter of deep concern. Do not give a reply. And, I will also tell their parties that they are not fielded during debates," he told the house.

His warning came as Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman mentioned that she was responding to the point raised by a Congress member who was not present in the House. Sitharaman was replying to the debate on the 2022-23 Budget and supplementary demands for grants for 2021-22 of the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir.

Birla said the minister need not respond to the point as the member was not present. After the Minister's reply, the House passed the demands for grants for Jammu and Kashmir for 2022-23, and supplementary demands for grants for 2021-22.
New Delhi, March 14 : In order to create a "robust" framework and synergy amongst the Union Ministries, state governments and private sector for promoting India as a "medical and wellness" tourism destination, the Tourism Ministry has formulated a National Strategy and Roadmap for Medical and Wellness Tourism.

The ministry has also constituted a National Medical and Wellness Tourism Board with Tourism Minister as its Chairman.

Union Tourism Minister G. Kishan Reddy in a written reply in Lok Sabha on Monday informed the House that as part of its on-going activities, Tourism Ministry releases global print, electronic and online media campaigns under the 'Incredible India' brand-line to promote various tourism destinations and products of the country.

'Medical Visa' has been introduced, which can be given for specific purpose to foreign travellers coming to India for medical treatment. 'E- Medical Visa' and 'E-Medical Attendant Visa' have also been introduced for 156 countries, the minister said.

Reddy noted that the ministry also provides financial assistance under Market Development Assistance Scheme to Medical Tourism Service Providers accredited by National Accreditation Board for Hospitals & Healthcare Providers (NABH) for participation in Medical Tourism Fairs and other programmes.
Patna, March 14 : In wake of Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar having a heated exchange with Speaker Vijay Kumar Sinha in the Assembly on Monday, RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav claimed the former's working style is fast becoming of a dictator.

"Chief Minister Nitish Kumar wants to centralise power in his own hand. He is behaving like a dictator. Whatever happened in Bihar Vidhan Sabha on Monday reflected his dictatorship attitude to common people. I want to ask the people of Bihar to decide whether they live under a dictator or under democracy," he said at a party event in Muzaffarpur.

"Speaker Vijay Sinha pointed out that the officialdom is so dominant in Bihar that a 'Thanedar' (SHO) is not listening to him, the one who is sitting on the highest constitutional post of Bihar. Imagine what would happen to MLAs of opposition and ruling parties of the state. They are not listening to MLAs like me," Tejashwi Yadav said.

"Jitan Ram Manjhi or Mukesh Sahani pointed out that the bureaucrats are not listening to them despite being coalition partners in the Nitish Kumar government. Mukesh Sahani claimed that a peon is not giving him any respect despite he being the Animal Husbandry and Fisheries Minister in the government.

"I want Nitish Kumar to clarify whether he is running a 'sarkar' (government) or circus," he added.

Tejashwi Yadav, who is the Leader of Opposition, also alleged that if law enforcement agencies conduct raids on the Chief Minister's Principal Secretary, "they would find billions of rupees".

"The bureaucrats are directly involved in liquor operations in Bihar," he alleged.
New Delhi, March 14 : There are only around 150 Great Indian Bustards left across the country, including 128 in Rajasthan alone and less than 10 birds each in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, the Lok Sabha was informed on Monday.

This number of 150-odd Great Indian Bustards (GIBs) was arrived at through studies conducted by the Wildlife Institute of India (WII), Dehradun, and the government is taking various steps for the protection of the birds in the country, Minister of State for Environment, Forest & Climate Change, Ashwini Kumar Choubey, said in reply to a question in the Lok Sabha.

The Great Indian Bustard is listed in Schedule-I of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, thereby according it the highest degree of legal protection from hunting. Important habitats of Great Indian Bustards are designated as national parks/sanctuaries for their better protection.

The Ministry has also constituted a task force for suggesting eco-friendly measures to mitigate the impacts of power transmission lines and other power transmission infrastructures on wildlife, including the Great Indian Bustard.

The other important steps taken by the government for the protection of the birds include a site for establishment of a conservation breeding centre for the Great Indian Bustard at Kota district in Rajasthan in consultations with the state forest departments of Rajasthan and Gujarat by the WII and international experts under the project titled 'Habitat Improvement and Conservation Breeding of Great Indian Bustard -- An Integrated Approach'.

The ministry, with financial support from the National Authority for Compensatory Afforestation Funds, has sanctioned an outlay of Rs 33.85 crore for the duration of five years for the programme.

Currently, a satellite conservation breeding facility with incubator, hatcher, chick rearing and housing for captive birds has been set up at Sam, Jaisalmer, which is managed by WII scientists and Rajasthan forest department with technical assistance from International Fund for Houbara Conservation and Reneco, Abu Dhabi.

A total of 16 Great Indian Bustard chicks, (artificially hatched from eggs collected from wild) are being reared presently in the satellite conservation breeding facility at Sam, the Lok Sabha reply said.

The species has been identified for conservation efforts under the component 'Species Recovery Programme' of the centrally sponsored scheme -- Development of Wildlife Habitat.

Incidentally, the Great Indian Bustard has also been included in Appendix I of Convention on Migratory Species (CMS) on the basis of a proposal submitted by India.

It was also the mascot of the prestigious 13th CMS Conference of Parties held in Gandhinagar, giving wider publicity to the conservation of the species, the reply stated.
New Delhi, March 14 : About 656 tons per day (TPD) of biomedical waste was generated across the country in 2020, out of which 590 TPD was collected and treated by common biomedical waste treatment facilities, the Parliament was told on Monday.

Further, about 84.61 TPD of incremental Covid-19 biomedical waste was generated between May 2020 to February 2022 from healthcare facilities, quarantine centres/camps, sample collection centres, laboratories, home care/ home isolations centres engaged in treatment, diagnosis and quarantine of Covid-19 infected or suspected patients, Minister of State for Environment Ashwini Kumar Choubey told the Lok Sabha in a written reply.

The Central Pollution Control Board had issued guidelines for handling, treatment and disposal of waste generated during treatment, diagnostics and quarantine of Covid-19 patients in March 2020 and also developed an application, COVID19BWM to track the generation and treatment of this waste in the treatment facilities, he added.

The Minister said that there are no reported cases of violation of guidelines but the CPCB has issued notices to 33 facilities across the country for not reporting data on COVID19BWM, of which 15 are in Karnataka, 5 in Maharashtra, two each in Bihar, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, and Telangana and one each in Odisha, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh.

There are 208 common biomedical waste treatment facilities operational in the country as per the information furnished by SPCBs/PCCs for 2020, and there are none in nine states/Union Territories. The BMW treatment and disposal in these areas is done through captive treatment facilities operated by healthcare facilities themselves, he added.
Chandigarh, March 15 : International kabaddi player Sandeep Singh from Nangal Ambiyan village was shot dead by assailants during a match at Malian village in Jalandhar district on Monday.

At least 20 bullets were pumped into his head and chest. The disturbing video of the crime went viral.

Hailing from Nangal Ambian village in Shahkot, Sandeep was a professional circle kabaddi player and played in the stopper position. He had ruled the sport for more than a decade and played in Canada, the US and the UK, other than Punjab.

He is survived by his wife and two sons, who are currently in England, where he was settled.

As per initial reports, Sandeep was one of the biggest organisers of circle kabaddi tournaments in the region. Settled in England, Sandeep had come to India to attend some weddings and host kabaddi tournaments.

The former Indian kabaddi player hailed from Nangal Ambian village in Shahkot.

He had started his career playing state-level matches and was known as 'Gladiator' by his fans.

-- Except for the title, this story has not been edited by Prokerala team and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed
Djoemoe Airport, Djoemoe, Suriname [ DOE / ]

If you are planning to travel to Djoemoe or any other city in Suriname, this airport locator will be a very useful tool. This page gives complete information about the Djoemoe Airport along with the airport location map, Time Zone, lattitude and longitude, Current time and date, hotels near the airport etc... Djoemoe Airport Map showing the location of this airport in Suriname. Djoemoe Airport IATA Code, ICAO Code, exchange rate etc... is also provided.

Djoemoe Airport Info:

Djoemoe Airport IATA Code: DOE Djoemoe Airport ICAO Code: Latitude : 4.01667 Longitude : -55.4833 City : Djoemoe Country : Suriname World Area Code : 379 Airport Type : Small Timezone : America/Paramaribo Djoemoe Airport Timezone : GMT -03:00 hours Current time and date at Djoemoe Airport is 12:20:53 PM (-03) on Wednesday, May 4, 2022

Looking for information on Djoemoe Airport, Djoemoe, Suriname? Know about Djoemoe Airport in detail. Find out the location of Djoemoe Airport on Suriname map and also find out airports near to Djoemoe. This airport locator is a very useful tool for travelers to know where is Djoemoe Airport located and also provide information like hotels near Djoemoe Airport, airlines operating to Djoemoe Airport etc... IATA Code and ICAO Code of all airports in Suriname. Scroll down to know more about Djoemoe Airport or Djoemoe Airport, Suriname.

Djoemoe Airport Map - Location of Djoemoe Airport Load Map Suriname - General Information Country Formal Name Republic of Suriname Country Code SR Capital Paramaribo Currency Dollar (SRD)

 1 SRD = 0.048 USD

 1 USD = 20.804 SRD

 1 SRD = 0.046 EUR

 1 EUR = 21.955 SRD

 More SRD convertion rates Tel Code +597 Top Level Domain .sr

This page provides all the information you need to know about Djoemoe Airport, Suriname. This page is created with the aim of helping travelers and tourists visiting Suriname or traveling to Djoemoe Airport. Details about Djoemoe Airport given here include Djoemoe Airport Code - IATA Code (3 letter airport codes) and ICAO Code (4 letter airport codes)

Coordinates of Djoemoe Airport - Latitude and Longitude (Lat and Long) of Djoemoe Airport

Location of Djoemoe Airport - City Name, Country, Country Codes etc...

Djoemoe Airport Time Zone and Current time at Djoemoe Airport

Address and contact details of Djoemoe Airport along with website address of the airport

Clickable Location Map of Djoemoe Airport on Google Map.

General information about Suriname where Djoemoe Airport is located in the city of Djoemoe. General information include capital of Suriname, currency and conversion rate of Suriname currency, Telephone Country code, exchange rate against US Dollar and Euro in case of major world currencies etc...

DOE - Djoemoe Airport IATA Code
Among many leading-edge producers of packaging for retail products, All Packaging Company has been awarded Top Retail Packaging Solutions Provider. The annual ranking recognized All Packaging Companys competencies in areas such as implementation of latest technologies and processes, development of sustainable packaging solutions, and focus on helping brands improve their presentation through innovative packaging concepts.

With a focus on continuing advancements in technology, and increased pressure on retail brands to capture consumers interest, Retail Tech Insights magazine published its latest issue  the Retail Packaging Edition. The issue focused on leading developers and manufacturers of packaging and sought to identify the best retail packaging solutions providers, using the latest technologies and processes to help retail brands attract and win new consumers. Forward-thinking packaging solutions were a key element in consideration for top retail packaging solutions provider.

All Packaging Company demonstrated innovations and implementations of new capabilities that enables the company to provide packaging solutions to brands that werent possible a decade ago. Some of the advancements that were integral in being selected as Top Retail Packaging Solutions Provider included the companys Automated Inventory Management (AIM) system, high-speed quality control systems, 3D proofing, laser cutting, child-resistance innovations, customer cost-saving assembly automations, and sustainability advancements. Technology enables us to help our customers elevate their brands in unique ways, as well as activate efficient and effective packaging fulfillment operations, says Brad Nelson, Marketing Manager. Mr. Nelson adds, communication, and truly understanding our customers objectives, limitations and opportunities helps us partner in ways that drive real value, efficiency and speed to market.

Innovative, Creative, Collaborative is a slogan All Packaging Company believes defines part of what makes them unique and has helped them achieve recognition such as this recent award. The company believes that with todays dynamic market conditions, elevating brands requires unique and creative approaches to stay ahead in the challenging competitive marketplace.

About All Packaging Company

All Packaging Company, based in Aurora, Colorado, is part of Mill Rock Packaging Partners, and with their multiple manufacturing plants, provides a comprehensive all under one roof completely domestic solution for its customers custom printed paperboard folding carton packaging needs.

For more information, see the All Packaging Company website at allpack.com.
The acquisition expands Denver Crowd's presence in Colorado, allowing it to serve more regional organizations and improve their online presence. That includes working with firms on website design, social media strategy and digital advertising.

Denver Crowd, a Denver-based Digital Marketing and Advertising agency, has announced the acquisition of web consulting firm the Pottle Group, another company based in the Mile High City.

The acquisition expands Denver Crowd's presence in Colorado, allowing it to serve more regional organizations and improve their online presence. That includes working with firms on website design, social media strategy and digital advertising.

Some of Denver Crowds existing clients include the City of Boulder, Woods Boss Brewing Company, Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado, SportsObsession.com, Veterans to Farmers, The Missouri Democratic Party, and Hovland Snowskates.

Denver Crowds services include website design and development, eCommerce management, paid search, SEO, content marketing and social media management.

The Pottle Group clients that will join Denver Crowd include the real estate investment firm of Fleisher Smyth & Brokaw, Breckenridge-based Flame Restaurant Group, Storm Restaurants, and Swan Mountain Womens Center, Greenwood Village-based Masten Fine Frames & Gifts, Modis Restaurants and noted abstract artist Kathi Graves based in Charlotte NC.

Denver Crowd is excited to continue fulfilling website management services for the Pottle Groups existing book of clients while offering a new suite of digital advertising and social media marketing strategies to further elevate their businesses and brands.

Alex Schupp, founder at Denver Crowd, made a statement on the acquisition and his history with Hal Pottle, founder at the Pottle Group:

As Hal and I began to collaborate on a few projects in 2021, we noticed how aligned our businesses were  both in the services we provide and in the strong relationships we have built with our clients. I am extremely grateful for Hals and his teams partnership as we work with our new clients to serve their businesses and brands.

About Denver Crowd

Denver Crowd Ltd. is an award-winning digital marketing agency in Denver, Colorado. Working with brands such as the City of Boulder, Woods Boss Brewing Company, Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado, SportsObsession.com, Veterans to Farmers, The Missouri Democratic Party and Hovland Snowskates, Denver Crowd provides digital transformations and uses digital marketing and advertising to further the missions of the businesses, brands and nonprofits it supports.

http://www.denvercrowd.com
The Swift system is a perfect match for our portfolio. We believe Swift answers a serious need for patients suffering with HPV related warts and verrucae. As we have experience with microwave products, we are enthusiastic about this technology in dermatology.

Emblation Limited, the global leader in medical microwave technology, is delighted to announce an agreement with Bo Medical, a specialist distributor of medical and aesthetic devices and products, for the exclusive distribution of Swift microwave therapy.

Alongside Calista Medical in Switzerland, the agreement with Bo Medical, based in the Netherlands, signals the launch of Swift in mainland Europe. Swift is already available in clinics across the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

Swift is the pioneering microwave therapy treatment for skin. With treatment times in seconds, Swift provides Dermatologists and Podiatrists with a new, precise, and effective procedure for benign skin lesions.

The Swift treatment works by delivering a highly controlled dose of energy into the tissue, which creates heat and stimulates an immune response. This reduces the risks associated with destructive modalities, and results in highly effective outcomes for stubborn skin lesions.

The Swift system is a perfect match for our portfolio. We believe Swift answers a serious need for patients suffering with HPV related warts and verrucae. As we have experience with microwave products, we are enthusiastic about this technology in dermatology, said Richard Struik, Managing Director of Bo Medical.

Jonathan Williamson, Chief Commercial Officer of Emblation, commented, We are really looking forward to launching Swift with Bo Medical. Their deep knowledge of microwave technology, coupled with their experience and vast network in Dermatology and Aesthetics across the Benelux region make them a perfect partner for us.

About Emblation Emblation is an award-winning medical technology company, revolutionising the way microwave energy is used in healthcare. Its aim is to improve on traditional treatments using the unique advantages microwaves deliver  accurate, repeatable procedures, and better clinical outcomes.

Emblations technology is transforming the treatment of HPV infections globally, and is widely used in Dermatology, Podiatry and Oncology, with a number of disruptive applications under development in associated fields of medicine.

The company was started in 2007 by joint co-founders Gary Beale and Eamon McErlean (Chief Executive Officer and Chief Technology Officer), the inventors behind the technology. They form part of the management team, with over 50 years of experience in this field.

Emblations medical devices can be found in 1000s of clinics and hospitals across the UK, US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand and the company is headquartered in central Scotland, UK.

About Bo Medical

Bo medical technologies has been working in the medical and aesthetic market for more than fifteen years. New products and technologies can be found in our extensive international network of Key Opinion Leaders and through our presence at the most important international conferences.

Bo Medical distribute new medical and aesthetic devices and products in the Benelux and run the business in much the same way as you would: dedicated, focused and enthusiastic. A large customer base in dermatology enables rapid adoption of new products & technology.
Annette Boggs, Founder of Above and Beyond Real Estate We want our clients to expect more and stress less, which is why we place our highest priority on delivering concierge service

Above and Beyond 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 affiliation will ensure that Above and Beyond Real Estates practical, seasoned professionalism is powered by the industrys most advanced platform.

Above and Beyond Real Estate is led by Annette Boggs, whose three-decade career has allowed her to perfect her strategic approach  one thats targeted, accurate, and honest. Boggs unique blend of experience, deep local knowledge, and first-class service has helped her make her mark on the industry. After completing more than 1,000 real estate transactions in the past decade alone, Boggs exhibits a passion for service best evidenced by the number of repeat clients and testimonials shes earned.

From first-time homebuyers to out-of-state investors, the Above and Beyond Real Estate team of professionals gives each client its complete attention, providing them with the resources, insight, and knowledge needed for ultimate success. With a client-focused mindset, the company assists clients in finding their ideal home amid the gorgeous ocean views and mild weather of Central Coast communities, including Carmel, Pacific Grove, Pebble Beach, Monterey, and more.

Partnering with Side will ensure Above and Beyond 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 Above and Beyond 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, Above and Beyond Real Estate will join an exclusive group of Side partners, tapping into an expansive network from coast to coast.

At Above and Beyond Real Estate, we want our clients to expect more and stress less, which is why we place our highest priority on delivering concierge service, said Boggs. By partnering with Side, we gain access to state-of-the-art technology, marketing, administrative, and legal services, creating an even more seamless experience for clients and empowering us to focus on creating that first-class care they deserve.

Side is led by experienced industry professionals and world-class engineers who develop technology designed to improve agent productivity and enhance the client experience. Based on its belief that homeownership is a fundamental human right, Side is on a mission to improve the public good by providing top-performing real estate agents, teams, and indie brokerages with the best system, support, service, experience, and results.

About Above and Beyond Real Estate

Above and Beyond Real Estate blends concierge service with practical know-how and deep local market knowledge to help illuminate the steps toward buying or selling a home along Californias Central Coast. Providing game-changing resources and practical advice with a gentle touch, Above and Beyond Real Estate delivers transformative experiences by helping clients grow their wealth through deliberate property decisions. For more information, visit http://www.aboveandbeyondca.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.
With the launch of this new webinar series, our hope is to show more people a behind-the-scenes look into the life changing work at ALYN. This series could help jumpstart an elevated level of pediatric care worldwide.

American Friends of ALYN Hospital, a non-profit focusing on raising funds and awareness for Israels only pediatric rehabilitation center, is launching a new webinar series called Align with ALYN focused on the far-reaching implications of ALYN Hospitals research. The first installment will take place on March 22, and, in celebration of Womens History Month, will feature ALYN Hospitals Director General, Dr. Maurit Beeri.

In additional to serving as Director General, Dr. Beeri also heads the Multidisciplinary Clinic for Infants and Children with Feeding Disorders. She trained as a pediatrician at Hebrew University Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem and holds a Masters Degree in Public Administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University as a Wexner Israel Fellow.

During her presentation, Never Letting Go: How ALYN Hospital Managed to Continue Caring for Children When the Whole World Stopped, Dr. Beeri will provide valuable insight into how non-profits can continue to make a difference even in extreme and unprecedented situations. Participants will have the opportunity to engage in a Q&A session with Dr. Beeri.

The world may have stopped when COVID-19 hit, but care for our patients couldnt, Dr. Beeri said. In my presentation, Ill explore how ALYN adapted our innovative treatments to comply with pandemic regulations, ensuring that despite the frustrating situation, our children still felt hope, support, and opportunity.

Future webinars will feature other ALYN star doctors and therapists sharing the global applications of their work and the impact it has both inside and outside of the facility. ALYNs holistic and innovative approach to caring for children with disabilities focuses on providing patients tools to live with the greatest possible amount of independence and mobility.

We say that ALYN is Israels best kept secret, said Maayan Aviv, Executive Director of American Friends of ALYN. With the launch of this new webinar series, our hope is to show more people a behind-the-scenes look into the life changing work at ALYN. This series could help jumpstart an elevated level of pediatric care worldwide.

The webinar will begin at 12:15 p.m. EST, which is 7:15 p.m. in Israel. Registration is required, but there is no fee to attend. A recording of the event will be sent to all registrants. To register, click here.

About American Friends of ALYN Hospital

Since 1934, American Friends of ALYN Hospital (AFAH) has supported ALYN Hospital in Israel. AFAH focuses on increasing awareness of ALYNs life-changing work and raising funds to support it. Learn more about American Friends of ALYN Hospital, upcoming events and giving opportunities online at alynus.org.

About ALYN Hospital

Established in 1931, ALYN Hospital is Israels only pediatric rehabilitation facility providing innovative care and individualized treatments for children with a wide range of congenital and acquired conditions, including cerebral palsy, neuromuscular diseases, spinal cord injuries, brain injuries and burns. ALYN Hospitals goal is to provide children with diverse disabilities with tools to live with the greatest possible amount of independence and mobility. Learn more at https://www.alyn.org.
Erin Logan has completed her new book Reporting Facts and Running from the Truth: a gripping memoir that shares the TV anchors struggle to find self-worth beyond a job title. The engrossing work highlights the importance of learning from mistakes, the power of forgiveness, living in the present, and exiting stage left from negative situations or people.

For nearly two decades, Erin Logan has been a familiar face in many local news markets across the countrymost recently, as an anchor in Cleveland and a reporter in New York City. Her passion for the business began in high school and grew deeper in college at Syracuse University and in graduate school at Boston University. Throughout her journalism career, shes learned a lot about herself and so many others. The common denominator: there are way too many people who are not living in the present, putting an enormous amount of pressure on themselves, and looking to others for approval as a measure of self-worth.

In Erins case, she allowed her job title to define her and could never fully answer her dads question: Are you truly happy in all aspects of your life? Since fully realizing the significance of that question, Erin has been a strong advocate for women and teen girls struggling with self-esteem issues. She created a program called REVIVE, a free series of workshops. She also got an online certificate in nonprofit executive leadership at the University of Notre Dame.

Author Erin Logan sets the stage of her work, writing, Its May 2020 in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. At this point, the phrase If you cant finish a project during this time, you never will has become very clear. Shortly after this horrible, unfortunate mug shot on the cover of this book happened in 2010, there was never a question of whether I would write a book. The books title, Reporting Facts and Running from the Truth, was decided almost immediately. My job as a news anchor and reporter has always been to report facts. As far back as senior year in high school, I was running from the truth. I figured by 2015, I would be ready to write, but that wouldve been the worst time. I was thirty-seven and fearing that the BIG four-zero was creeping up on me. I was engaged, then not engaged, and switching jobs from one station to another in Connecticut.

Published by Page Publishing, Erin Logans impactful tale encourages readers to discover their authentic selves and pursue lives that bring them real, sustainable joy.

Readers who wish to experience this inspiring work can purchase Reporting Facts and Running from the Truth 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.
Norma Sullivan, a former nurse and musician, has completed her new book Fluffy the Bear: an adorable narrative of chasing after ones dreams despite what others might think.

Published by Page Publishing, Norma Sullivans colorful tale will transport readers to the cold arctic tundra where Fluffy the polar bear lives with his family. Despite his thick fur, the cold arctic air chills Fluffy to the bone and he longs for warmer weather. After reading about a magical place called Miami, Fluffy embarks on a difficult journey to find the sunshine state of Florida where he hopes to make a new home.

As Fluffy journeys south with his cousin James, they meet a very intelligent dolphin that helps them along their way. Readers of all ages will enjoy the charming illustrations that accompany Fluffys tale and find inventive new characters that spring to life within the pages of Sullivans story.

Readers who wish to experience this engaging work can purchase Fluffy the Bear 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.
...during the three decades since I completed my undergraduate degree, I have not found a single textbook covering those topics.

Author Richmond S. Anderson, Sr. has published his first book, Perspective on Analytical Writing a Focus on Feature and Editorial Writing, which acts as a guide for students studying Mass Communications, specifically on the African continent. The book will give students a simplistic point of view on the topics they are learning and assist them in grasping the course material and the concepts of feature and editorial writing.

Having worked as a professor for over 20 years, Anderson found himself lacking the perfect book to help his students fully understand feature and editorial writing, so he created it himself. He begins the book by explaining what analytical writing is, and then dives deeper into individual writing styles, and how and when each should be used.

Since I have not had the opportunity to travel extensively within Africa, it would be ignorant to say that there are no textbooks at all discussing feature and editorial writing on the African continent, Anderson said. What I can safely say is that, during the three decades since I completed my undergraduate degree, I have not found a single textbook covering those topics.

Although it is not the core focus of the book, there is emphasis placed on perspective to provide a deeper understanding for students as a foundation to grasp the key concepts. Ultimately, Perspective on Analytical Writing a Focus on Feature and Editorial Writing will aide both professors and students in their endeavors of teaching and learning to grasp the concepts of feature and editorial writing.

Perspective on Analytical Writing a Focus on Feature and Editorial Writing

By Richmond S. Anderson, Sr.

ISBN: 978-1-6655-4096-4 (softcover); 978-1-6655-4095-7 (e-book)

Available through Author House, Barnes & Noble and Amazon

About the author

Richmond S. Anderson, Sr., is an Assistant Professor and Chairman of the Department of Political Science at the University of Liberia, located in Monrovia, Liberia, West Africa. He is also an Adjunct Professor of Mass Communication at the same university. Prior to his teaching career of over 20 years, Anderson was a print journalist. He worked as both a news editor and Editor-in-Chief at the Liberia News Agency (LINA) and other local publications, from the late-1980s to mid-1990s. He is also an honorably retired Second Lieutenant of the Armed Forces of Liberia and is happily married with several children. For more about the author or his book, visit: https://www.authorhouse.com/en/bookstore/bookdetails/833479-perspective-on-analytical-writing-a-focus-on-feature-and-editorial-writing.

General Inquiries, Review Copies & Interview Requests:

LAVIDGE

Lindsey Gobel

317.435.2116 | lgobel@lavidge.com
The water is a natural attraction drawing locals and vacationers automatically to its enticing ambiance.

"When I first began in the real estate business over forty years ago, there were restaurants and bars lining the waterfront along the New Jersey coastline, states Barry Bielat of, Bielat Santore & Company, Allenhurst, New Jersey. Now, with the exception of New Jersey boardwalk locations, few remain. Over the years, waterfront real estate became more attractive to wealthy individuals and/or real estate developers who saw the opportunity to convert a restaurant property on the water into a mansion resort for their private residence, or into a multi-unit townhouse development to create multiple for sale residences with high price tags on the water.

However, there are still limited waterfront restaurant hold-outs that dot the New Jersey coast; and because of their locations and spectacular panoramic water views, many are time-stamped institutions. One such restaurant and bar, The Waters Edge, 11 Whitecap Way, Berkeley Township, New Jersey was just sold to the regional restaurant company B2 Bistro + Bar, according to Bielat, the broker for the sale. The water is a natural attraction drawing locals and vacationers automatically to its enticing ambiance, continues Bielat.

Nestled on the Barnegat Bay, the Waters Edge is a wonderful place to meet friends and family for savory food and mouthwatering drinks. The restaurants massive 7,000+ square foot outdoor deck, equipped with three Tiki-Bars, a full outdoor kitchen, 23 dock and dine boat slips and house-owned pontoon boats scouring the bay to bring anchored boaters to land, only adds to the allure of this summertime oasis in Ocean County, New Jersey. There is even a built-in pool and pool bar for those who need to cool off on a sizzling summer day.

According to Stephen Valentine, managing partner at B2 Bistro + Bar, We will be building a premier destination-style restaurant which will be open 365 days a year. The community is fantastic down here. This venue will have something for everyone, Valentine says. B2 Bistro's menu includes American and Mediterranean fare, including fresh seafood, burgers, steaks, wood-fired pizza, sushi and always the best craft beers on tap. Their other restaurants are in Red Bank, Point Pleasant Beach, North Brunswick, Toms River, and Reading, Pennsylvania.

About Bielat Santore & Company

Bielat Santore & Company is an established commercial real estate firm. The companys expertise lies chiefly within the restaurant and hospitality industry, specializing in the sale of restaurants and other food and beverage real estate businesses. Since 1978, the principals of Bielat Santore & Company, Barry Bielat and Richard Santore, have sold more restaurants and similar type properties in New Jersey than any other real estate company. Furthermore, the firm has secured in excess of $500,000,000 in financing to facilitate these transactions. Visit the companys website, http://www.123bsc.com for the latest in new listings, property searches, available land, market data, financing trends, RSS feeds, press releases and more.
Bob The Baker Boy, one of the countrys go-to names when it comes to customized cakes for all occasions, partners with Swiss confectionery brand Nestle through its new line of sweets, the KitKat Tarts.

Originally part of our signature Happiness Bake Box made with KIT KAT, the Assorted Mini Tarts (in collaboration with Nestle) are now available as standalone items, says Bob the Baker Boy founder May Ee Fong. This allows everybody to get a piece of this decadent sweet treat right when they want it.

According to May Ee Fong, the KitKat tarts are a new way to enjoy both their baked goods and Nestles iconic wafer. Those who will indulge in this collaborative treat can get the tarts in different flavors: black tea KitKat ganache with matcha KitKat, rose lemonade ganache with rose lemonade agar-agar, coffee Milo gao siew dai, and lemonade ganache with lemonade agar-agar.

Whats more fun with the tarts made with Nestle products is that they not only include Nestles popular flavors, May Ee Fong continues. Each variant shows that KitKat blends well with Asian-inspired flavors and aromas, which is very important because they appeal to both locals and foreigners alike.

This is not the first collaborative project between Bob the Baker Boy and Nestle; not long ago, they have worked jointly to create the KitKat Happiness Box, which featured different cakes made with Kitkat, that fused both their signature flavors.

My favorite from the Happiness Bake Box is the Moist KIT KAT Chocolate Muffin. Made with our signature chocolate muffins, we cored it with KIT KAT wafer spread, finished with cocoa hazelnut ganache, chopped KIT KAT fingers, and KIT KAT bites mix-ins. They are your decadent pick-me-ups after a long day at work, May Ee Fong adds. Perfect for any occasion, from big celebrations to small gatherings, even in afternoon tea parties!

KitKat is my favorite confectionery, May Ee Fong shares. As a child, its my dessert of choice, and it has been that way since. Being able to create cakes and tarts now, using KitKat as my star ingredient, is such an honor for me.

This collaboration with Nestle continues till July 2022. Those interested to enjoy the assorted mini tarts made with Nestle, as well as other creations under Boy the Baker Boy, may visit the cake shop to place their orders. They may also inquire via the Bob the Baker Boy website for unique gifting ideas for corporate orders, baby showers or customised cake orders.

For more information, contact:

May Ee Fong

Founder,

Bob the Baker Boy

hello@bobthebakerboy.com

+65 94994015

https://bobthebakerboy.com/


Vin de Bordeaux We are thrilled with our sales results in the U.S., said Bernard Farges, President of the Bordeaux Wine Council (C.I.V.B.) It is a credit to the people of Bordeaux and our many U.S. partners to have overcome recent challenges and create opportunity for growth across such a wide range of Bordeaux"

Bordeaux producers are feeling optimistic about the U.S. wine market. The Bordeaux Wine Council (C.I.V.B.) reports that year-end 2021 sales of Bordeaux wines in the U.S. increased 67% in value to peak at $395 million (349 million euros), and 24% in volume to reach 247,000 HL as compared to 2020. The 2021 results represented the highest volume sales increase of Bordeaux wines to the U.S. over a 12-month period since 1985.

The United States was the second largest export market for Bordeaux wines, by volume and value. The recognition of quality and affordability of the 2018 and 2019 Bordeaux wine vintages, as well as the suspension of the 25% tariffs on French wines contributed to the acceleration of Bordeaux wine sales and bodes well for the future. These strong business results coincide with new benchmarks in sustainability: as of fall 2021, more than 75% of Bordeaux vineyards are certified sustainable, an all-time high which has driven positive trade and consumer recognition.

We are thrilled with our sales results in the U.S., said Bernard Farges, President of the Bordeaux Wine Council (C.I.V.B.) It is a credit to the people of Bordeaux and our many U.S. partners to have overcome recent challenges and create opportunity for growth across such a wide range of Bordeaux wines.

The strong growth reveals sustained momentum for the Bordeaux category in the U.S. wine market. Upward sales trends have impacted 65 of Bordeauxs diverse AOCs (Appellations dOrigine Controlees), and all wine styles: reds, dry whites, rose, sweet, and sparkling wines. While red wines remain the most prominent category, dry white Bordeaux wines have become increasingly popular: the U.S. is now the number one market for dry white Bordeaux, representing 5.2 million bottles in annual sales. Overall, American consumers have supported growth across a wide range of Bordeaux wines ranging from more affordable, everyday selections to classified growths from prestige AOCs such as Medoc (Pauillac, St. Estephe, Saint Julien, Margaux), Graves and Saint-Emilion.

To support positive trends, the Bordeaux wine region is committed to continuing investment in dynamic U.S. marketing and education campaigns that support increased consumer and trade awareness, including outreach to young consumers and buyers who place a high value on sustainability.

To request more information, please contact our press relations team.

MEDIA CONTACT  US

Helen Gregory (helen@gregoryvine.com)

Katie Keith (katie@gregoryvine.com)

MEDIA CONTACT CIVB  INTERNATIONAL

Cecile Ha (cecile.ha@vins-bordeaux.fr)

ABOUT Bordeaux Wine Council (C.I.V.B.)

Bordeaux Wine Council (C.I.V.B.) was created by the French Law dated August 18, 1948. It unites representatives from the three families in the Bordeaux wine industry: winegrowers, merchants and traders. The CIVBs 4 missions:



Marketing mission: stimulate demand for Bordeaux wines, recruit new, younger consumers and ensure their loyalty to the brand. Provide education for the trade and strengthen relationships.

Technical mission: build knowledge, protect the quality of Bordeaux wines and anticipate new requirements related to environmental, CSR and food safety regulations.

Economic mission: provide intelligence on production, the market, the environment and sale of Bordeaux wines around the world.

The industrys general interests: protect the terroirs, fight counterfeiting, develop wine tourism.

# # #
Professional IT and Managed Services company Cornerstone.IT welcomes Patrick Boyd as Client Systems Architect (CSA). Boyd joins Cornerstone.IT after 10 years as Director of Technology at the law firm of Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz. Mr. Boyd will be responsible for managing Cornerstone clients and also act as Virtual Chief Information Officer (vCIO) to the companys Managed Services clients.

Having been in our clients shoes, Patrick has a firsthand understanding of their needs, says Jim Moreo, Principal, Cornerstone.IT. Patrick has strong managerial skills and is well versed in translating business requirements into implemented technology solutions. We are thrilled to have Patrick on our team. Our clients will benefit from his expertise and experience.

Boyds IT career spans four decades in professional service industries. He holds a BS in information systems and an MBA, both from Tulane University. He is adept in a variety of technologies and is ITIL Certified. With his background and experience, Patrick augments Cornerstones commitment to its clients long-term success.

About Cornerstone.IT

Cornerstone Information Technologies, LLC (Cornerstone.IT) is an award-winning Professional IT and Managed Services Provider. A national leader in legal technology, founded in 2003, Cornerstone.IT helps firms modernize their IT with an emphasis on reducing costs, decreasing risks, and staying productive. Cornerstone.IT is compliant and maintains strict adherence to the NIST 800 171 standards. To learn more visit https://www.cornerstone.IT.

Cornerstone cares for your technology so you can care for your business.
Divi Resorts 2022 St. Patrick's Day Sale We hope travelers will take advantage of our 40% off St. Patricks Day sale so they can relax and enjoy our award-winning resorts, warm beaches, popular restaurants and bars, modern rooms and suites, and fun amenities!

St. Patricks Day is almost here, and Divi Resorts celebrating the luck of the Irish with 40% off 2022 Caribbean vacations on Aruba, Barbados, Bonaire, St. Croix, and St. Maarten. For one week only, rates are as low as $145 per night (room only) and $193 per person, per night (all-inclusive) for travel from April 18, 2022 to December 20, 2022. Plus, travelers who sign up for the companys Divi Devotion Discount will receive an additional 5% off for a grand total of 45% off.

Its great to see so many travelers returning to the Caribbean for their dream vacation! With the easing of entry requirements, especially for fully vaccinated and boosted travelers, 2022 is certainly a wonderful year to vacation in paradise,said Marco Galaverna, President & COO of Divi Resorts. We hope travelers will take advantage of our 40% off St. Patricks Day sale so they can relax and enjoy our award-winning resorts, warm beaches, popular restaurants and bars, modern rooms and suites, and fun amenities!

Exclusive St. Patricks Day Sale rates are as follows:



For one week only, from March 14 to March 21, 2022, travelers can take advantage of 40% off vacations on Aruba, Barbados, Bonaire, St. Croix, and St. Maarten for travel from April 18, 2022 to December 20, 2022. To check availability, travelers can visit http://www.diviresorts.com/specials or use promo code LUCKY40. Reservations can also be made by calling 1-800-367-3484 (toll-free US) or 1-919-419-3484 (international).

Divi Resorts backs its bookings with a pay over time program, a best price guarantee, and optional trip insurance. When it comes to resort safety, the resort has implemented Divis CLEAN CHECK program with strict health and cleanliness protocols to safeguard and protect guests. Each resort is also adhering to all local government directives. For more information on the CLEAN CHECK program, visit http://www.diviresorts.com/clean-check.htm.

Divi Resorts tropical Caribbean locations provide a wide variety of on-site amenities, including fabulous freshwater pools, exhilarating land and water sports, diving and snorkeling, restaurants with mouthwatering menus, lively bars with creative cocktails, and indulgent spas. Ideal for solo travelers who dont want to pay an extra room supplement, or families who need room to spread out in large suites, Divi Resorts checks all of the boxes!

About Divi Resorts: The Caribbean vacation expert for over 50 years, Divi Resorts features a collection of seven premium resorts spanning the five stunning islands of Aruba, Barbados, Bonaire, St. Croix, and St. Maarten. Divi Resorts offers a best price guarantee, optional travel insurance, travel agent rates, a Divi Devotion Discount, and other programs. For more information on Divi Resorts, call 1-800-367-3484 or visit http://www.diviresorts.com.

Sale Terms & Conditions: http://www.diviresorts.com/specials.htm

Pay Over Time Program: For the pay over time program, all rates and any applicable fees are subject to the provider of the services.
Youre on, Cowboy!: Lessons Learned From Taking Risks, Taking Names and Knowing When to Fold is a memoir that retraces the path that led Jerry Hodge to become wildly successful in business and eventually successful in marriage.

Throughout the book, readers will see how the author was always a risk-taker and a betting man who has never backed down from a challenge. This tenacity helped him grow a local pharmacy from a single storefront in Amarillo, Texas, into a national brand worth millions. He was City Commissioner and Mayor for a town he loved dearly, and he might be the only person to go toe-to-toe with both Oprah Winfrey and Boone Pickens and lived to talk about it. And after two unsuccessful marriages, he found Margaret, the one true love of his life.

Hodge pens various moments throughout his life, such as a grueling diagnosis that had him counting his days and saying his goodbyes. His health crisis inspired him to clarify what is truly important in life and what kind of legacy is worth leaving behind.

Youre on, Cowboy! isnt intended to be a how-to-book and was initially a journaling project Hodge began as a way to write down his stories for his family. The book is full of the kind of tough-love fatherly advice that highlights key values such as always having integrity, refraining from doing business with untrustworthy individuals and when something seems impossible, figuring out how to do it anyway.

By the end of the book, readers will see how Hodges experiences have been anything but ordinary, yet he writes about his life with humor, unpolished honesty and an endearing balance between self-confidence and humility. Readers will be entertained by the authors anecdotes and adventures and will walk away with inspiring lessons that follow them into their own lives and businesses.

Youre on, Cowboy!: Lessons Learned From Taking Risks, Taking Names and Knowing When to Fold

By Jerry Hodge

ISBN: 978-1-6657-0873-9 (softcover); 978-1-6657-0874-6 (hardcover)

Available at Archway Publishing, Amazon and Barnes & Noble

About the author

Jerry Hodge lives in Amarillo, Texas, where he has been a successful businessman and community leader for nearly 60 years. An Oklahoma native, Hodge moved to Amarillo the summer before he started high school and later received his pharmacy degree from Southwestern Oklahoma State University. He purchased a local pharmacy in Amarillo in 1966 and turned it into a multi-million dollar national business by the time he sold it in 2014. He also served as Amarillo's mayor and a board member of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. After selling his company, Hodge and his wife Margaret have been involved in philanthropic efforts to help Amarillo and the state of Texas. He was named 2018 Man of the Year by the Amarillo Globe-News. To learn more, please visit https://youreoncowboy.com/.

General Inquiries:

LAVIDGE  Phoenix

helmore@lavidge.com| 480-998-2600
"It is an honor to be recognized by the Cyber Security Global Excellence Awards. We look forward to continuing our work connecting and securing the largest organizations in the world to ensure uninterrupted access to applications while users work from anywhere," said Paul Martini.

iboss, the leading Zero Trust Edge cloud security provider, announces it has been recognized across three categories by the 18th Annual Globee Cyber Security Excellence Awards, including Hot Security Company of the Year, Cloud Network Security and Most Innovative Cloud Security.

iboss enables the modern, distributed workforce to connect securely and directly to all applications from wherever they work. The iboss Zero Trust Edge is a purpose built, patented, cloud delivered security service built on a containerized architecture. This approach enables organizations to move to a Zero Trust Architecture in an orderly, non-disruptive way in full compliance with NIST 800-207 tenets. A Zero Trust Architecture built on iboss consolidates network security technologies (SWG, CASB, DLP, IPS, malware defense, browser isolation, firewall) into a single unified cloud platform and eliminates the need for a VPN while securing any device, regardless of location. iboss shifts the focus from protecting the network perimeter to protecting resources.

The iboss platform is purpose-built to meet the security and connectivity needs of modern, distributed workforces, said Paul Martini, co-founder and CEO of iboss. Our Zero Trust platform protects resources no matter where they are located by making them inaccessible to attackers and only accessible by trusted users. It is an honor to be recognized by the Cyber Security Global Excellence Awards. We look forward to continuing our work connecting and securing the largest organizations in the world to ensure uninterrupted access to applications while users work from anywhere.

The prestigious Globee Annual Cyber Security Global Excellence Awards recognize cybersecurity and information technology vendors with advanced, groundbreaking products, solutions and services that are helping set the bar higher for others in all areas of security and technologies. More than 55 judges from around the world representing a wide spectrum of industry experts participated in the judging process.

View the list of the 18th Annual 2022 Cyber Security Global Excellence Awards winners here: https://globeeawards.com/cyber-security-global-excellence-awards/winners/

About iboss, Inc.

iboss is a cloud security company that enables organizations to reduce cyber risk by delivering a Zero Trust service designed to protect resources and users in the modern distributed world. Applications, data and services have moved to the cloud and are located everywhere while users needing access to those resources are working from anywhere. Built on a containerized cloud architecture, iboss delivers security capabilities such as SWG, malware defense, browser isolation, CASB and data loss prevention to protect all resources, via the cloud, instantaneously and at scale. This shifts the focus from protecting buildings to protecting people and resources wherever they are located. Leveraging a purpose-built cloud architecture backed by 230+ issued and pending patents and more than 100 points of presence globally, iboss processes over 150 billion transactions daily, blocking 4 billion threats per day. More than 4,000 global enterprises trust the iboss Cloud Platform to support their modern workforces, including a large number of Fortune 50 companies. iboss was named one of the Top 25 Cybersecurity Companies by The Software Report, one of the 25 highest-rated Private Cloud Computing Companies to work for by Battery Ventures, and CRNs Top 20 Coolest Cloud Security Companies of 2022. To learn more, visit https://www.iboss.com/
Intelligent.com, a trusted resource for online degree rankings and higher education planning, has published a recent survey report that examines the impact of the student debt crisis. The study highlights how loan cancellation will influence the upcoming elections in 2024. Research experts surveyed 1,250 registered voters from diverse educational backgrounds.

According to the report, 21 percent of respondents, who are Democratic voters, will not vote for President Biden in the next election if he does not take action to cancel student loans. Twenty-nine percent of respondents say Biden should cancel unpaid student loans for all borrowers. Likewise, 26 percent of voters want the government to cancel up to $10,000 per borrower, and 22 percent say they should forgive up to $50,000 per borrower. Sixty-five percent of Democrats say they will consider Biden for reelection, regardless of his stance on student loan cancellation. In contrast, 20 percent of Republicans say they will not consider voting for Biden without student loan forgiveness, and 61 percent will not vote for him under any circumstances.

The study also indicates that student loan cancellation will influence how people vote during the midterm elections. Seventy-five percent of respondents say they will consider political candidates based on their perspective on student loan debt. Democrats are also more likely to consider how candidates respond to or handle student loan forgiveness. Eighty-two percent of Democrats agree that a candidates position on this issue is crucial when choosing who to vote for, compared to 71 percent of Republicans and 73 percent of Independents.

Americans with student loan debt are more likely to express dissatisfaction with how Biden has handled the issue. Eighteen percent of respondents say they are very dissatisfied with how Biden has handled the student loan crisis, while 16 percent are somewhat dissatisfied. Conversely, 23 percent are somewhat satisfied, and only 14 percent are very satisfied. Twenty-nine percent of voters are neutral about Biden's response to student loan cancellation.

Intelligent.com created and paid for this study, which was administered via the online survey platform Pollfish. The survey was distributed to registered voters starting on February 25, 2022 and ending February 26, 2022. Appropriate respondents were selected based on a screening question. To access the complete report, please visit https://www.intelligent.com/1-in-5-democrats-wont-vote-for-biden-in-2024-if-he-doesnt-forgive-student-loans/.

ABOUT INTELLIGENT.COM

Intelligent.com provides unbiased research to help students make informed decisions about higher education programs. The website offers curated guides that include the best degree programs as well as information about financial aid, internships, and even study strategies. With comprehensive, user-friendly guides and hundreds of program rankings, Intelligent.com is a trusted source among students and prospective students. To learn more, please visit https://www.intelligent.com/.
Starting from March 8, IT Ukraine Association, the largest professional community of Ukrainian tech companies, launches a series of weekly webinars in support of Ukraine. The recurring webinars will feature personal frontline stories about Ukrainians resilience and determination to defend their country on different forefronts and give insights on how the world can unite and take action to stand with Ukraine. The non-profit LinkedIn live series Talk to Ukraine: Reinforcing the Business Frontline will go live every Tuesday and will be centered around the first-hand experiences of war witnesses, stories of rapid business transition, and how the global community can stand together to create strength and uniformity, supporting Ukraine.

The world has been witnessing unprecedented events: the country of Ukraine, an independent state in Eastern Europe, has been attacked by Russian military forces. Russias President, Vladimir Putin, has waged the full-scale war, the largest in the last 77 years in Europe, taking the lives of thousands of people, leaving millions homeless, and causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damage. With the Talk to Ukraine series, IT Ukraine Association is starting a global conversation to share how the people of Ukraine together with the world can join hands to stand up to defend against the threat to Ukrainian sovereignty, democracy, and common values.

The webinar series will focus on the first days of implementing business continuity plans and how, even during the time of war, IT professionals continue to be one of the key drivers of the Ukrainian economy by working efficiently, generating consistent results, and bringing business value to clients. Each of the webinars will also cover how:



Ukrainian businesses are combating the economic war while the national army is fighting on the frontline

Ukrainian companies stay strong and efficient by prioritizing the safety of their employees and their families

The clients loyalty keeps the Ukrainian economy up and running and transforms the lives of people and business

Ukrainian professionals are supporting their colleagues and how companies are putting their business continuity plans to work to ensure uninterrupted service delivery

Please, join the Talk to Ukraine: Reinforcing the Business Frontline webinar live. Your voice and actions matter.
Against a Blackened Sky: a gripping tale of a potential post-apocalyptic world. Against a Blackened Sky is the creation of published author Jan Steen, a dedicated husband and current resident of Washington state.

Steen shares, Against a Blackened Sky, the story of one mans falling-out with organized religion, is told by a future observer whose knowledge of history is incomplete. Without sanctioned access to historical accounts, the storyteller has pieced together an explanation of mans predicament that seems plausible to him. His problem is that he cannot accomplish in his own life the virtues that he admires in the subject of his story. In his partial understanding, he looks back longingly to a time he feels to be simpler than the complex world he lives in.

The storyteller is a member of the crew who man a lunar-based laser. The subject of his narrative, Colonel Smith, was a member of the pioneering crew who laid the foundation for the establishment of that base.

In Colonel Smiths day, a world now past, satellite technology became obsolete. The need for a moon-based laser became desperate in the pursuit of peace and security.

Through a series of mishaps, Colonel Smith is marooned alone on the moon and must endure a year of solitude. It is during that time that he is able to rethink and ultimately to redirect his life. When at last he is rescued, he returns to an Earth that will be profoundly affected by the work he helped to begin on the moon.

In a world of tightening alternatives, man has not lost his battle with technology but rather has surrendered to it. It is the storytellers lament that man has given up without a struggle.

Should the story of the teller and of his subject seem ill-fated and harshness and gloom seem to hang over the tragedy of their lives, it is only because the message of hope has been missed. The door has been opened, and we have stepped through, but the door has not closed behind us. We might yet step back through, close that door from the other side, and find another opened to us.

Amazing grace.

Published by Christian Faith Publishing, Jan Steens new book is based on a manuscript he initiated over thirty-eight years ago.

Steen shares a thought-provoking and energetic fiction for the consideration of science fiction aficionados.

Consumers can purchase Against a Blackened Sky at traditional brick & mortar bookstores, or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or inquiries about Against a Blackened Sky, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919.
Since joining Dresdner Robin in 2014, Neuls has led residential, commercial and institutional development projects throughout his tenure. (Image courtesy of Dresdner Robin) I say with confidence that every project to which Ive had the pleasure of contributing has consistently aligned with the firms mission  to create transformative results, said Matthew Neuls.

New Jersey-based land-use consultancy Dresdner Robin announced today that Matthew Neuls PE, CME, LEED AP has been promoted to associate director of engineering. For decades Neuls has worked on a variety of site, civil and public works engineering projects including multiblock urban redevelopments in Jersey City and will continue to manage all aspects of site design and construction in his new role.

Since joining Dresdner Robin in 2014, Neuls has led residential, commercial and institutional development projects throughout his tenure. With a range of specialties, he has a background in regulatory compliance for coastal resources, flood hazard and water-quality permitting for both state and federal agencies. He is especially skilled in stormwater management and grading design, as well as wastewater-utility design.

We are thrilled to name Matthew as our new associate director of engineering, said Tony Ianuale, chief financial officer and chief operating officer of Dresdner Robin. He has outstanding skill and has worked on some of our largest projects to date. His many years of experience in the field have honed his ability to bring our clients visions to life.

Throughout his time at Dresdner Robin, Neuls has served as manager for several projects, including Hudson Exchange West in Jersey City, a mixed-use complex consisting of two 36-story towers with a street level retail component and open space amenities. He also served as project lead for the Ellipse Building, a 376-unit residential structure located on the Jersey City Hudson Waterfront. Neuls successfully navigated the site plan preparation for the 41-story building, which required unique considerations for utility and drainage systems due to inadequate support from waterfront fill material, as well as Federal and State regulations.

I say with confidence that every project to which Ive had the pleasure of contributing has consistently aligned with the firms mission  to create transformative results, said Matthew Neuls. Its very gratifying to grow with a company that is passionate about its work and the impact it makes on our clients and the communities in which we work.

Neuls has also served as the Municipal Engineer of Record (EOR) to three communities, as well as engineering consultant to several land-use boards throughout New Jersey. He has been recognized as an expert witness in the field of Civil Engineering by the New Jersey Superior Court and has presented testimony regarding compensatory mitigation for coastal resource impacts to the New Jersey State Senate Environment and Energy Committee.

Dresdner Robin has been involved with dozens of recent local projects, including a housing complex, which provides low- and moderate-income housing with 20 units reserved for veterans. The firm also completed the first phase of environmental remedy at The Cove, a remediation project for a contaminated zone overlooking Liberty State Park.

About Dresdner Robin

Dresdner Robin is a leading land-use consultancy covering the New York, New Jersey and Philadelphia metro markets. The full-service firm provides creative solutions that emphasize service, client satisfaction and technological innovation, with specialties in site/civil engineering, land surveying, environmental services, planning, surveying and landscape architecture in the revival of urban landscapes. Dresdner Robins multi-functional teams are strategically located in offices throughout the New York City, New Jersey and Philadelphia metro areas. For more information about Dresdner Robin, visit https://www.dresdnerrobin.com/.
Hope in the Storm: Fighting through Lifes Challenges: a potent testament to the authors faith. Hope in the Storm: Fighting through Lifes Challenges is the creation of published author Joe Gacheru, a loving husband and father who has worked for Indigenous Services Canada for the past fifteen years as a public health nurse, nurse manager, and Regional Homecare Coordinatorand most recently, as the Jordans Principle Regional Coordinator. Gacheru has formerly worked as a health director for a First Nation community in Alberta, Canada. He also worked for seven years as a live-in assistant with LArche in Canada, supporting persons with disabilities in a home setting.

Gacheru shares, I very much know that when we or our loved ones are going through some tough experiences, like a prolonged sickness, what we want to hear and what we want to know is that God still caresto feel His closeness and to know He knows what we are going through. We want to know that God hears our prayers even in the middle of the night when no one else is there.

What I strongly believe is that not a single prayer slips by God, because theres no time of day He isnt listening. God heard you ten years ago, and He heard you last week, and He hears you right now, and Hes already listening for your tomorrow. In fact, Hes listening so well, He already knows what youre going to say.

I also know very well that God never says, Oops. God is in control of the trials. God is not on his throne wringing his hands as he waits for the outcome of events.

Take it from me, my friend: no matter how dysfunctional your background, how broke or broken you are, where you are today, or what anyone else says, you matter to our living God.

Published by Christian Faith Publishing, Joe Gacherus new book will encourage and empower readers to seek a strong connection with God.

Gacheru shares in hopes of helping others survive the valleys of life when hope seems lost.

Consumers can purchase Hope in the Storm: Fighting through Lifes Challenges at traditional brick & mortar bookstores, or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or inquiries about Hope in the Storm: Fighting through Lifes Challenges, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919.
Logo for JA of Southern Nevada

Junior Achievement of Southern Nevada (JASN) is running its JA Inspire Virtual Career Fair with vFairs. This event started on February 15 and will last until May 16. Anyone interested in attending it can register and login here.

The aim of this event is to make 8th to 12th grade students aware of the different career paths they can take when they graduate high school. The organization's mission is to help young adults succeed in the global economy, with training in financial literacy and career development.

This 90-day event is rife with learning and hiring opportunities for students. The organizers reported that the event was quite immersive and visitors were impressed with the look and feel. They also added that it offers the experience of a live event without any of the hassle involved. In addition, businesses also found it more convenient as they did not have to lose manpower by allocating resources for in-person representation.

Within the event, attendees will be able to visit virtual exhibit booths for various organizations, and view videos, download documents, ask questions and interact with booth representatives. Likewise, organizations represented at the event receive great overall exposure from such virtual booths, as they allow reps to publish content, field inquiries and connect directly with attendees.

Michelle Jackson, President and CEO of Junior Achievement of Southern Nevada stated, JA Inspire is a great opportunity for businesses to connect with students to share career options and recruit them for their jobs, enabling them to become workforce ready, And it's free and easy to participate in for all students, schools, businesses statewide.

Muhammad Younas, CEO & Founder of vFairs, added, It is great to see our software being put to good use for such good causes. We are glad that we helped JASN make career opportunities and professional development available to youngsters.

The JA Inspire Virtual Career Fair will be live till May 16, 2022, and anyone interested can register and participate in this free event.

About Junior Achievement of Southern Nevada

Junior Achievement of Southern Nevada, Inc. is dedicated to providing financial education to K-12 students with age-appropriate virtual and live curriculum that spans from budget management to economic principals, workforce skills and credit. Founded locally in 1996, the local nonprofit organization has reached more than 450,000 students in the Las Vegas area with the help of 285 businesses and 6,800 business role models. For more information, visit http://www.jasnv.org and follow on Instagram and Facebook.

About vFairs

vFairs is the world's leading virtual & hybrid events platform, helping organizations of all sizes host events online. Featuring intuitive 3D virtual venues and expansive features that help you create a custom virtual experience for your audience. Access fully functional webinars, virtual exhibit booths, networking features, content sharing, and more. Every vFairs event is supported by our renowned customer service team, who's there to help every step of the way.
Fear Not Little Flock: a powerfully optimistic read that presents a message of hope. Fear Not Little Flock is the creation of published author Karen Bennett CAP, CSW, O.M., a loving wife, mother, and grandmother who is a Certified member of the International Association of Administrative Professionals.

Bennett shares, Dear reader (unbeliever or believer),

This book was born out of one of Bethel Holiness Pentecostal Apostolic Ministries Bible studies (School of Purpose and Promise) as we studied the very relevant topic the future, this was given to me as teacher at the closing of the year 2019 for the new year 2020. You see, we had just completed a study called hope for the future, which also depicts the end-time, signs of the Lords second coming, the antichrist reign, etc., and so as customary, I sought the Lords direction as to what should be our next lesson. I was divinely instructed and felt compelled with these words: stay on the topic as it is relevant to the times. I obeyed and structured the lesson accordingly for 2020. Then came the virus that took over the world and threw the globe in chaosCOVID-19.

The futurethis topic speaks to both the future of the saved or believers and the damned or unbelievers. We got to a portion in the lesson that outlined heaven as the final dwelling place of the saints under the subhead Heaven A Safe Deposit for Treasures/Investments. Our guided scriptures led us to Luke, chapter 12, verses 1534, where the Lord told the parable of the rich fool who had no investments for heaven and his unpreparedness for an eternity in heaven. The Lord further reminded his little flock (verse 32) not to be anxious over the cares of this world, lifes luxuries, pleasures, and richesor even basic needs. One who worries, he says, about these things is a person of little faith. He continued to counsel and instructed the little flock as he told them, Fear not, it is your fathers good pleasure to give you the kingdom (verse 32).

Hence, as we observed these unprecedented times (COVID-19) where people everywhere are worried, filled with anxiety, fatigue from job loss, death, the basic needs of life, and the future in many aspects, we got stuck at verse 32, Fear not, little flock, and started exploring some of the fear nots in the scriptures.

Be encouraged! Be empowered! Be enriched in faith and confidence that has for you a great recompense of reward as you overcome and live in victory, boldness, and Gods precious love for you as you explore and apply these practical tips for triumph and positive changes in your life. Repent and be baptized everyone of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and all that are afar off, even as the Lord our God shall call. Acts 2:38-39.

Published by Christian Faith Publishing, Karen Bennett CAP, CSW, O.M.s new book will encourage readers both personally and spiritually.

Bennett shares a message of hope in consideration of the many challenges facing the modern world.

Consumers can purchase Fear Not Little Flock at traditional brick & mortar bookstores, or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or inquiries about Fear Not Little Flock, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919.
Law Office of Blumenthal Nordrehaug Bhowmik De Blouw LLP For more information about the lawsuit against Canus Corporation, call (800) 568-8020 to speak to an experienced California employment attorney today.

The San Francisco employment law attorneys, at Blumenthal Nordrehaug Bhowmik De Blouw LLP, filed a lawsuit against Canus Corporation alleging the company violated Labor Code  2699, et seq. seeking penalties for DEFENDANTs alleged violation of California Labor Code  201, 202, 203, 204, 210, 221, 226(a), 226.7, 351, 510, 512, 558(a)(1)(2), 1194, 1197, 1197.1, 1198, 1198.5, and 2802. The lawsuit against Canus Corporation is currently pending in the Contra Costa County Superior Court, Case No. C22-00368. To read a copy of the Complaint, please click here.

According to the lawsuit filed, Canus Corporation allegedly failed to accurately record Plaintiff and other Aggrieved Employees' time worked. Employees, as a condition of employment, were required to submit to mandatory screening questions prior to arriving to the work site for the day and prior to clocking into the timekeeping system. Employees were working off the clock while submitting to mandatory testing, among any other testing required for employment. Additionally, Plaintiff's off-duty meal breaks were occasionally interrupted by work assignments.

PAGA is a mechanism by which the State of California itself can enforce state labor laws through the employee suing under the PAGA who do so as the proxy or agent of the state's labor law enforcement agencies. An action to recover civil penalties under PAGA is fundamentally a law enforcement action designed to protect the public and not to benefit private parties. The purpose of PAGA is not to recover damages or restitution, but to create a means of "deputizing" citizens as private attorneys general to enforce the Labor Code.

For more information about the lawsuit against Canus Corporation, call (800) 568-8020 to speak to an experienced California employment attorney today.

Blumenthal Nordrehaug Bhowmik De Blouw LLP is a labor law firm with law offices located in San Diego County, Riverside County, Los Angeles County, Sacramento County, Santa Clara County, Orange County and San Francisco County. The firm has a statewide practice of representing employees on a contingency basis for violations involving unpaid wages, overtime pay, discrimination, harassment, wrongful termination and other types of illegal workplace conduct.

***THIS IS AN ATTORNEY ADVERTISEMENT***
"Everyone makes mistakes. However, when dealing with a car insurance company, drivers should avoid doing costly mistakes," said Russell Rabichev, Marketing Director of Internet Marketing Company.

For many drivers, car insurance is an expensive investment. Any mistake can be costly and the policyholder can end up wasting hundreds, or even thousands of dollars each year.

Drivers should avoid doing the following major car insurance mistakes:



Choosing a high deductible. As long as a driver can afford to pay it, it is good to have a high deductible. Many drivers that want to pay lower car insurance rates are choosing higher deductibles. However, raising the deductible may not make a major difference depending on the policyholder's driving record and type of vehicle. Drivers that have bad driving records won't save that much on their premiums if they choose a higher deductible.

Sacrificing coverage for lower premiums. There are many insurers that brag they offer the lowest insurance prices. That doesn't mean they are the best companies or they offer the best services. A cheap policy is not always equal to a quality product. Drivers should ensure they are not purchasing just the minimum required coverage in order to save a few bucks. Drivers who select to carry just the lowest limits required by law, are putting themselves at risk. Drivers are recommended to carry enough coverage to protect the value of their cars and assets.

Not buying Uninsured/Underinsured motorist coverage. Uninsured drivers are putting honest drivers at risk every day. In case of an accident, the uninsured driver does not have the liability coverage to pay for the medical bills or property damage coverage to pay for the damage they have done.

Not checking the provider. Before purchasing coverage from a company, drivers should check the company's financial solvency. By doing so, drivers will avoid signing an insurance deal with a company that doesn't pay reimbursements.

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 names insurance companies, etc.

For more information, please visit http://compare-autoinsurance.org/
JoBeth McCoy, D.O. After living all over the south during training, I have learned that there is no place like home and the people there. I am looking forward to serving the kidney needs of my local community in Carthage, said Dr. JoBeth McCoy.

Nashville-based Nephrology Associates, P.C., the largest renal care provider in the greater Middle Tennessee area, announces the opening of a part-time location in Carthage, TN.

Effective March 1, 2022, patients in the Carthage community can now see Dr. JoBeth McCoy at the newest Nephrology Associates clinic location. Serviced twice a month, this part-time location will allow for the expansion of quality kidney care to rural communities across Middle Tennessee.

It's always a great story to tell when someone returns to help their hometown community. With the addition of Dr. McCoy in our new Carthage office, we will bring back the highest levels of community care for those with renal disease, said Dr. Ashish Soni, Nephrology Associates President.

A graduate of Smith County High School, McCoy speaks fondly of her time in the Carthage community and looks forward to returning home, After living all over the south during training, I have learned that there is no place like home and the people there. I am looking forward to serving the kidney needs of my local community in Carthage, said Dr. JoBeth McCoy.

Dr. McCoy earned her Bachelors Degree in Health Sciences from Tennessee Tech University before attending medical school at Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine in Spartanburg, South Carolina. After completing her residency training in Birmingham, earning the role of Faculty and Chief Resident during her time there, McCoy returned to Middle Tennessee to complete her Nephrology fellowship at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

To schedule an appointment at Nephrology Associates  Carthage, call 615-449-1459 today.

Nephrology Associates, P.C. is a leading provider of renal care for all aspects of kidney disease and related conditions. Founded in 1985, Nephrology Associates is the largest nephrology practice in the Nashville community and has established a tradition of excellence in helping patients achieve their highest level of independence, while managing their disease process. As the recipient of the 2019 RPA Exemplary Practice of the Year Award, Nephrology Associates dedication to excellence is evidenced by the credentials of its 33 physicians who serve in a variety of office-based and acute care settings as well as on an array of hospital committees including managed care, critical care, nutritional support and ethics. Nephrology Associates understands well that quality of care is key for every patient and is dedicated to providing comprehensive, holistic and personalized care for its patients. To learn more about Nephrology Associates, visit http://www.tnkidney.com.
P2 Science, Inc. (P2), a green chemistry company, today announced the launch of the first product in the bioderived and patented CitroComplex line of high-performance natural oil complexes. CitroComplex Hair is designed for use in a very wide range of haircare products and imparts the following benefits: protection from heat and UV damage, hydration and moisture retention, frizz reduction, combability, shine and gloss addition, styling and overall improvements in hair health. Like other P2 products, CitroComplex Hair is built on P2s proprietary green chemistry platform. As such, its supply chain extends back to upcycled forestry by-products from Forest Stewardship Council certified pine trees.

Commercial production of CitroComplex Hair is underway at P2s state-of-the-art green chemistry manufacturing facility in Naugatuck, CT. Samples and product literature are available at the companys website, and CitroComplex Hair can be purchased directly on the companys e-store  also on the website.

Weve been working on this product for many months based on input from thousands of customers and on insights gained from many thousands of hours of our own formulation and consumer test work. said Neil Burns, CEO of P2. This CitroComplex Hair is, by far, our most ambitious product yet and we cant wait to share it with our customers around the world.

Theres been an overwhelming demand for sustainable haircare ingredients that doesnt compromise on performance, said Ryan Cheng, VP Business Development at P2. CitroComplex Hair can deliver effectively on both fronts which makes this ingredient very exciting!

The CitroComplex Hair launch represents the 15th green chemistry-based product to be commercialized by P2 since April of 2020. The CitroComplex product line is part of P2s Plant a Forest initiative, where P2 plants a tree for every kilogram of product sold. Each tree removes about 1 ton of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere during its life.

About P2 Science:

P2 Science is a green chemistry company, co-founded by Professor Paul Anastas, head of the Yale Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering. P2 has developed and patented technologies for converting renewable feedstocks into high-value specialty products. Investors in P2 include BASF Venture Capital, Heritage Group Ventures and Chanel. The company started up its first manufacturing plant in September 2018 which produces renewable aroma chemicals and cosmetic ingredients. For more information, visit http://www.p2science.com.


This is a strategic acquisition that expands our reach to the western United States and complements our established suite of services, said Peak Seven CEO Darren Seys.

Peak Seven, is excited to announce the acquisition of Bigfoot Web, LLC., an established digital development ad agency based in Denver, CO. Bigfoot Web has a diverse portfolio of both B2C and B2B customers, which will enhance Peak Sevens existing book of clients.

Bigfoot Web was founded by renowned digital marketer Keith Roberts in Denver. Roberts will stay on as part of the executive team at Bigfoot. Bigfoot Web will also retain its name but add the tagline A Peak Seven Company to build upon the Florida firms well-established brand.

This is a strategic acquisition that expands our reach to the western United States and complements our established suite of services, said Peak Seven CEO Darren Seys. I am excited to collaborate with Keith to rapidly expand Bigfoot, which developed a great client base and stellar reputation over the years.

Peak Sevens acquisition will dramatically expand Bigfoot Webs suite of services to include the addition of branding, video production, and even stronger digital marketing and development capabilities.

I could not have found a better company than Peak Seven to ensure we continue to deliver for our clients, Roberts said of the merger. Their extensive in-house horsepower gives Bigfoot the back-end it needs to enjoy rapid growth while maintaining our excellence.

The acquisition will bring economic growth to both Denver and Boca Raton, adding at least 10 new jobs in Denver and an additional four high-paying jobs in Boca Raton. Bigfoot Webs day-to-day Account Services will be directed by Julia Klein, a Peak Seven executive who now resides in Denver.

Peak Seven plans to introduce to the Denver market its flat rate all-in retainer model that has been successful with the firms current home building, yachting, fitness, spirits, and aerospace clientele.

The acquisition will merge two talented teams that both serve mid-size to large companies across the U.S. Seys plans to incorporate increased automation to deliver results while maintaining the human element that has helped propel Bigfoot Web and Peak Seven to success through the years.

About Peak Seven

Peak Seven is a full-service ad agency established in 1999 with a strong reputation for branding, technology, video, and digital marketing solutions. Peak Seven is located at 40 SE 5th Street, Suite 401, Boca Raton, Florida 33432.


Piper Varsi, a writer with a degree in psychology and extensive experience in business ownership, has completed her new book Ultimate Deceit: a brilliant account that raises awareness to man that there are terrifying abductions going on for generations long. It sheds light upon the issue of extraterrestrial entities from sightings and encounters over the years.

Ultimate Deceit is a series of true accounts experienced by the author that takes the reader into a deeper mind-bending world of incredible occurrences. It presents factual events that involve interaction by EBEs (extra biological entities) with human beingsevents that even today have been suppressed by world governments and just lately partially disclosed by the US Navy. Read about the authors own experiences related to her own medical examinations, implants, and other experimentation conducted in her organs by other beings!

Lately, the Pentagon, through the Defense Department, confirmed that photographs and videos by the military of unidentified aerial phenomena were indeed legitimate images of unexplained objects maneuvering in the skies and seas of our planet. While the authors own experiences were with discoid-type craft, there are many other shapes mentioned in this book, like spheres, cylinders, triangles, and so on, all describing a dazzling array of face-to-face encounters, abductions, sightings, and landings. The author presents undeniable proof that shows carvings and drawings from ancient civilizations that existed thousands of years ago (and that perhaps were even more advanced than ours today) and which depict advanced technologies like flying aircraft, plus figures of humanoid beings, proof literally written in stone!

Published by Page Publishing, Piper Varsis manuscript carries her own experiences in regard to encounters with extraterrestrial entities plus a couple of eyewitness accounts. The author has been documenting her experiences to bring awareness to people in a global scale for she has always felt that the world governments avoidance of inciting panic has denied people from the actual truth.

Readers who wish to experience this well-written work can purchase Ultimate Deceit 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
1 Grant Island Grant Valkaria, FL 32949 Since aligning with Engel & Volkers in 2018, my team and I have been able to confidently go after our market's most premium real estate to secure and represent the top listings.

Engel & Volkers Florida today announced the co-listing of 1 Grant Island in Grant-Valkaria, represented by real estate advisors, Marcie Bolt and Sherri Jacobs with Engel & Volkers Melbourne Beachside. With an asking price of $4,499,983, the compound has broken the local record for both the private island and town itself.

If you're looking for a private home to get away from the rest of the world, this private island compound will let you hear your own thoughts, said Jacobs. The wood work is mesmerizing in the sunlight and will take you to a different place. I'm excited to list and showcase this beautiful property locally as well as around the world with Engel & Volkers, to find that special person who can appreciate the uniqueness of this tropical island hideaway.

The one-acre, double lot boasts a 4,885 square foot main house, guest cottage and additional working quarters. There is also an adjacent lot available for purchase to expand the compound. The custom-made buildings are constructed of exotic purpleheart, greenheart, and wallaba woods imported from South America. The main house is two-stories, with an atrium in-between the east and west wing. It features wraparound terraces, floor-to-ceiling windows with hurricane glass that provide breathtaking 360-degree views of the sunrise and sunset. There are two private docks, including one on the east channel side of the property and another on the Intracoastal Waterway on the west side, as well as a private helipad.

Since aligning with Engel & Volkers in 2018, my team and I have been able to confidently go after our market's most premium real estate to secure and represent the top listings, said Bolt. I am proud to have recruited talented advisors, such as Sherri, so that we can team up from time to time on co-listings. Being part of such a collaborative network on a local and international level, in addition to its fresh approach to marketing, helps me enhance my offerings to best support my clients.

Bolt was the Broker/Owner of an independent, local brokerage, Tropic Coast Realty until she joined forces with Engel & Volkers in 2018 to open her first franchise, Engel & Volkers Melbourne Central. Since then, she has expanded with Engel & Volkers Melbourne Beachside.

As the Florida real estate market continues to benefit from relocating buyers, Engel & Volkers has been the state leader in representing clients in selling luxury properties for record prices, said Peter Giese, CEO of Engel & Volkers Florida. Since opening her second shop on the beachside of town, Marcie has grown her business significantly.

Nestled between Sebastian and Melbourne on the Indian River, Grant Farm Island was developed from the estate of John L. Smith in the late 1950s. The 50-acre island, about a half-mile long, was originally used for farming before the north end was developed as VIP Island (Vacation Island Playground) in the 1960s by real estate agent Ronald Rathbun. Rathbun divided the land into 105 lots, 50 feet wide by 100 feet deep, which he sold for $1,995, or $10 down and $10 a month. The original plan was for a causeway to connect the island to both the mainland and the beaches, but the plan did not materialize, so it remains accessible only by boat or helicopter.

###

Press contact:

Linzee Werkmeister, Junior Vice President, Marketing & Franchise Support

Email: Linzee.Werkmeister(at)evrealestate.com

Tel: (239) 348-9000

About Engel & Volkers:

Engel & Volkers is a global luxury real estate brand. Founded in Hamburg, Germany in 1977, Engel & Volkers draws on its rich European history to deliver a fresh approach to luxury real estate in the Americas with a focus on creating a personalized client experience at every stage of the home buying or selling process for todays savvy homeowner. Engel & Volkers currently operates approximately 240 shop locations with 5,000 real estate advisors in the Americas, contributing to the brands global network of over 14,000 real estate professionals in more than 30 countries, offering both private and institutional clients a professionally tailored range of luxury services, including real estate and yachting. Committed to exceptional service, Engel & Volkers supports its advisors with an array of premium quality business services; marketing programs and platforms; as well as access to its global network of real estate professionals, property listings and market data. Each brokerage is independently owned and operated. For more information, visit http://www.evrealestate.com.

About Engel & Volkers Florida:

Engel & Volkers Florida is the Master License Partner of the global luxury real estate brand Engel & Volkers in the state of Florida. Recognized for uniquely recruiting, training and equipping some of the top professionals in the real estate industry, Engel & Volkers Floridas exclusive business model positions its franchisees at the top of the premium market to gain market share and support their bottom line. The company represents franchise locations in 44 markets: 30A Beaches, Amelia Island, Belleair, Boca Raton, Bonita Springs-Estero, Cape Coral, Clermont, Delray Beach, Destin, Fort Lauderdale, Fort Myers Downtown, Gainesville, Hollywood Beach, Islamorada, Jacksonville, Jacksonville Beach, Jupiter, Madeira Beach, Marco Island, Melbourne Beachside, Melbourne Central, Melbourne Downtown, Miami Coconut Grove, Neptune Beach, Ocala, Olde Naples, Orlando, Orlando Downtown, Orlando-Winter Park, Palm Beach, Palm Coast, Pompano Beach, Ponte Vedra Beach, Sarasota, South Tampa, St. Augustine, St. Pete, St. Pete Beach, Stuart, Tampa Water Street, Venice Downtown, Vero Beach, Wellington, and Windermere.

Engel & Volkers Florida is continuing to strategically strengthen and expand its presence in premium real estate markets across the state of Florida. If you would like to know more about the Engel & Volkers brand or how to join its global networkwhich is known for demonstrating competence, exclusivity and passion, feel free to call our corporate office, located at 633 Tamiami Trl N, Suite 201, Naples, FL 34102 USA. Tel: +1 239-348-9000.

For more information about Engel & Volkers Florida, please visit http://www.florida.evrealestate.com
Statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate that more than two-thirds of Medicare beneficiaries have multiple chronic conditions. It is critical for seniors to take an active role in the management of their chronic care. Seniors should be educated on their chronic condition and what they can do to avoid or reduce complications from it as they age.

Statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate that more than two-thirds of Medicare beneficiaries have multiple chronic conditions, such as cancer, diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease and lung disease.(1) It is critical for seniors, notes Dave Rich, CEO of Ensurem, a Florida-based insurance technology and product distribution firm, to take an active role in the management of their chronic care. Seniors should be educated on their chronic condition and what they can do to avoid or reduce complications from it as they age. But just as important, says Rich, is selecting a Medicare health insurance plan that provides adequate coverage of their doctors and treatments.

While Original Medicare provides coverage for chronic conditions, many Medicare health plans offered by private insurance companies also offer additional health-related benefits, like coverage of over-the-counter medications, in-home support services, nutrition counseling and transportation to medical appointments. Some also offer expanded benefits for nonmedical services, such as meal delivery and transportation to the grocery store.

For those enrolled in both Medicare and Medicaid, a Special Needs Plan (SNP) is another option. A chronic condition SNP offers coverage to those who have diabetes, end-stage renal disease, heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and other illnesses.

Managing Your Chronic Condition

When living with a chronic health condition, says Rich, knowledge is king. It is important to understand which doctors and treatments are covered under a specific plan and which are not. A licensed insurance agents specializing in Medicare solutions from a wide variety of top-rated insurance carriers can provide clarity on each plans offerings, and what changes in coverage might be advisable.

Along with the proper Medicare insurance coverage, part of dealing with a chronic condition, or a multiplicity of them, says Rich, is maintaining a healthy lifestyle. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), older adults can benefit from regular, moderate physical activity. This is true even for people with medical conditions such as arthritis, heart disease, obesity, and high blood pressure.

Fitness expert and Ensurem brand ambassador Denise Austin, who recently turned 65, encourages older adults to keep moving. Regular activity positively impacts our physical health as well as our mental and emotional wellbeing. It can help give us more energy and greater self-confidence, enabling us to embrace our later years.

Austin recommends incorporating a blend of aerobic exerciselike walking, along with strength training and stretching daily. She also advocates commitment. Quick fixes wont do once we reach a certain age, says Austin. Instead, its all about making real, meaningful lifestyle changes.

Chronic conditions, in other words, says Austin, need not be a deterrent to a healthy lifestyle. Dave Rich agrees. Through Medicare and your insurance broker, he says, you should learn all you can about your condition or conditions and how to best manage them. There is a wealth of information available.

About Ensurem:

Ensurem, headquartered in Largo, FL, is a leading technology and product distribution company serving carriers and consumers within the massive U.S. senior market. The company offers Medicare Advantage, Medicare Supplement, vision, dental, hospital indemnity and final expense insurance. It also provides end-to-end solutions for carriers, including product development, digital marketing and consumer-centric insurance technologies. For more information, please visit ensurem.com.

1. Health Policy Data Requests - Percent of U.S. Adults 55 and over with Chronic Conditions. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 6 Nov. 2015, cdc.gov/nchs/health_policy/adult_chronic_conditions.htm.

2. Physical Inactivity Poses Greatest Health Risk to Americans, Research Shows. American Psychological Association, apa.org/news/press/releases/2009/08/physical-inactivity#:~:

3. Top 5 Side Effects of a Sedentary Lifestyle. Vein Clinics of America, 28 Feb. 2022, veinclinics.com/blog/top-5-negative-effects-of-a-sedentary-lifetyle/.

4. The National Council on Aging, ncoa.org/article/the-top-10-most-common-chronic-conditions-in-older-adults.

5. Embracing Aging after 50: Staying Strong & Fit with Exercise. Denise Austin, deniseaustin.com/blog/embracing-aging-staying-fit-with-exercise.
Im so pleased Jennifer is rejoining us in this capacity, states Janice Farr, Senior Vice President of Property Management at Sun Realty. Her experience and sharp skills will translate well in her new role at Sun.

Sun Realty, a leading Vacation Rental Management (VRM) company operating in the Outer Banks of NC, is pleased to announce that Jennifer Hurd has joined the companys rental management team as its Rental Operations Director. Jennifer brings over 30 years of vacation rentals experience to her new role at Sun, including a previous 14-year career with the company. Jennifer began with Sun originally working in the Duck rental office, before leading the largest office in Kill Devil Hills as Rental Manager. Before leaving the company, she helped open Suns Corolla office, growing the companys reach up into the northern Outer Banks market. After the start-up of a new rental management company, and leading that program for the past 18 years, Jennifer is now back at Sun Realty to assist with owner success, office and team development, and to lead revenue management and performance objectives.

Im so pleased Jennifer is rejoining us in this capacity, states Janice Farr, Senior Vice President of Property Management at Sun Realty. Her experience and sharp skills will translate well in her new role at Sun.

Jennifer is based in Sun Realtys Kill Devil Hills office and can be reached at (252) 441-4402.

About Sun Realty

Sun Realty is a real estate sales and vacation rental company on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Established in 1980 by founder and CEO Paul Breaux, Sun covers the entire Outer Banks with 7 offices: Harbinger, Corolla, Duck, Kitty Hawk, Kill Devil Hills, Salvo and Avon. Sun Realty represents the largest selection of vacation rentals on the Outer Banks and has a sales team in every office. Visit http://www.SunRealtyOBX.com and http://www.SunRealtyNC.com for more information.
In The Magic of Normal, you will meet the woman who grew up in Iran and travel with her to Europe, the Middle East and Africa where she organized the worlds first transatlantic telesurgery: Operation Lindberg. From there she moved to the Silicon Valley where she would lead a team to a $21 billion sale of a pharmaceutical start-up that developed a lifesaving blood cancer drug. This is a story about family and the strong bonds and relationships that gave one woman the strength and determination to overcome the obstacles around her. It is also a story about a highly skilled and awarded businesswoman in the biotech industry, and a cancer patient and survivor during Covid-19. This is a story that will inspire entrepreneurs, mothers, sons, daughters, and dreamers.

I dedicate this book that traces my private and professional journey, to all those whose lives have been interrupted and dream of returning to normal one day. I dedicate it to every patient going through the uncertainty and torment of cancer. I want you to know you are not alone. You are shielded with science, innovation, and discovery. In front of you lies comradely, courage and hope states Maky in her book dedication.

Published by Page Publishing, The Magic of Normal, written by Dr. Maky Zanganeh, COO of Summit Therapeutics with Cheryl Berman, founder, CEO and Chief Creative at Unbundled, provides hope, courage, and inspiration.

Readers who wish to experience this potent work can purchase The Magic of Normal online at the Apple iTunes Store, Amazon, Google Play or Barnes and Nobel.

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.
This panel will show treasurers how to leverage real-time payments to make informed and timely cash and investment decisions.

Transcard also is exhibiting at the conference. Transcard will be showcasing its suite of embedded payment solutions that enable banks, businesses, and Fintechs of all sizes to use a single platform to make, manage, and receive any type of payment, sent through any payment rail (including real-time), and originating from any bank account. By managing all payments from a single platform, users can instantly see the status of all payments, access key metrics, and search historical payment data.

The speed of payments is accelerating, driven by technological advances and regulatory enablers that are transforming transactions. From frictionless payments that use digital architecture, to embedded payments that originate from non-financial merchants, faster payments are now core to treasury. The emergence of faster payments can help multinationals and other businesses optimize their liquidity.

The successful rollout of faster payments in the United States provides treasurers with a powerful new tool for managing liquidity, Bloh said. Real-time payments are helping treasurers achieve real-time intraday visibility into their companys cash positions and greater insights into liquidity. Yet the reach of these technological advances is not universal. This panel will show treasurers how to leverage real-time payments to make informed and timely cash and investment decisions.

A representative of BNY Mellon also will participate in the panel discussion.

Global Treasury Americas West is scheduled for March 16 to 18 at the Marriott Marquis in San Francisco. The event will bring together treasurers from the worlds fastest-growing companies for three days of in-depth discussions on how to meet the challenges of todays business environment. Sessions will cover topics such as treasury technology, liquidity management, and team building.

The panel will be held on March 16 from 3 to 3:45 p.m.

About Transcard

Transcard makes frictionless payments a reality with comprehensive global payment solutions designed for banks, Fintechs, and businesses of any size and in any industry. Transcard offers a groundbreaking suite of embedded payment solutions for business-to-business (B2B) payments, business-to-consumer (B2C) payments, consumer-to-business (C2B) payments, account-to-account (A2A), and Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS). Our solutions combine unmatched multi-rail capabilities, embedded workflows, best-in-class integration, no-touch reconciliation, and bank-grade security. These are some of the reasons that 550 businesses and over 200 banks trust us with their payments.

Learn more at http://www.transcard.com.
Effective as of March 7, 2022, Tropos Technologies, Inc., dba Tropos Motors, (Tropos) has terminated its agreements with Cenntro Electric Group, Ltd., and all of its subsidiaries, affiliates and related entities (Cenntro).

Also effective as of March 7, 2022 Tropos has terminated its Distribution and Cooperation Agreement with Mosolf SE & Co., KG (Mosolf), and Tropos Motors Europe, GmbH (TME).

As previously announced on March 2, 2022, Tropos entered into an agreement with Sevic Systems SE (Sevic), based in Frankfurt, Germany, as a strategic channel supply partner.

About Tropos Technologies, Inc. and Tropos Motors

Tropos Technologies, Inc. is a Silicon Valley-based OEM that manufacturers and distributes all-electric, street-legal vehicles, specializing in utility e-LSVs  electric low-speed vehicles  and trucks under the Tropos Motors brand. These vehicles are designed for corporate, fleet, first-responder, agriculture, last-mile delivery, and construction applications. Tropos employs the latest EV technology, experienced engineering, and modern design aesthetics. The Tropos Motors ABLE is a full line of durable, versatile, and available eCUVs (electric Compact Utility Vehicles). The Tropos Motors product line is capable of handling large payloads and towing capacities and can operate in extremely tight quarters with a short wheelbase and turning radius. Tropos Motors eCUVs can be operated indoors, outdoors, and off-road. Available in countless configurations, their trucks are ready to work as hard as you do, no matter the job.

For more information, please visit http://www.troposmotors.com.

Contacts for Media Inquiries:

Tropos Technologies & Tropos Motors

Kristal Ferchau

kristal@tropostechnologies.com

###

Any statements contained in this document that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements as defined in the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Tropos Technologies and BIB Technologies undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations.
Venture Construction Group companies exhibited at the Natural Disasters Expo, held on Feb. 7-8 at the Miami Convention Center. Staff from Venture Construction Group of Florida (VCGFL), Venture Construction Group (VCG) and VCG International (VCGI) attended the event and provided live demos of their latest software and technology. Held for the first time, the event included an array of industry keynote speakers from the National Hurricane Center, NASA, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and other leading global experts in weather monitoring, disaster recovery and emergency response. The event, which was free to attend, featured 100 speakers and 100 live demos to explore the latest in cutting-edge technology, maximize recovery methods, and discover new ways to achieve community outreach and preparedness.

Knowledge is crucial for all of us to advance in the industry. Our commitment to service begins by continuously educating ourselves on best practices and new technologies, said Stephen Shanton, CEO and president of Venture Construction Group of Florida (VCGFL), Venture Construction Group (VCG), VCG International (VCGI).

The two-day expo included presentations on emerging global trends in disaster recovery and relief program awareness and emergency readiness. Exhibitors included companies specializing in health and safety, environmental management, energy management, infrastructure, meteorology, sustainability, insurance, regulatory affairs, waste and public protection, seismology, atmospheric science, transportation, and actuary management. Presenters shared developing trends on the potential impact of future natural disasters, emergency response management, and business recovery post-disaster.

VCGFL is a leader in commercial construction, restoration, renovations, roofing, storm damage repairs, and 24/7 emergency services throughout Florida, Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, Bahamas, and the Caribbean. VCG a is a full-service general contractor that provides construction, remodels, renovations, property management services, storm damage repairs, consulting, independent 3rd party property damage assessments, and 24/7 emergency services to residential and commercial property owners. VCGI is a global leader in commercial and industrial construction, restoration, and storm damage repairs, and 24/7 emergency services through the Bahamas and the Caribbean, North America, Australia, Asia, and Africa.

About Venture Construction Group of Florida

Founded in 1998, Venture Construction Group of Florida (VCGFL) is an award-winning leader in construction, restoration, renovations, roofing, storm damage repairs, and 24/7 emergency services throughout Florida, Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, Bahamas and the Caribbean. Specializing in residential, industrial and commercial projects, VCGFL assists homeowners, property managers, condominium boards, homeowner associations, association boards, hotels, and business complexes with general contractor services, roofing, specialty construction, historical restoration, water and flood mitigation, and property repairs due to fire, flood, water, wind and hurricanes. With offices in Boca Raton, Ft. Myers, Naples, Panama City Beach, Orlando, Stuart, Tampa, San Juan, and Nassau, VCGFL is committed to operational excellence and exceptional customer service. VCGFL takes care of the details every step of the way including roofing, siding, windows, drywall, flooring, paint, gutters to rebuilding properties after major storm events from hurricanes, tornadoes, and hailstorms. VCGFL has earned leading industry awards including Roofing Contractor Magazines Top 100; Better Business Bureau (BBB) Southeast Florida and Caribbean 2021 Torch Award for Ethics Finalist; Gold Coast Builders Association (GCBA) Silver PRISM Award for Safety Team of the Year, GCBA Gold PRISM Award for Craftsmanship- Commercial Exterior, GCBA Silver PRISM Award for Craftsmanship- Commercial Exterior, Owens Corning Pinnacle Award for Safety, Construction Business Owner Award, Roofing Alliance MVP Award, Coatings Pro Contractor Award, Pro Remodeler Forty Under 40 Award, Qualified Remodeler Top 500 Remodelers Award, Qualified Remodeler Master Design Award, Florida Roofing and Sheet Metal Contractors Association S.T.A.R. Spotlight Trophy for the Advancement of Roofing Awards in Sustainability and Community Service. Shanton is a certified member of the WindStorm Insurance Network and is a WIND Certified Umpire, WIND Certified Appraiser, and WIND Certified Fellow. VCGFL carries advanced accreditations and is an exclusive certified National Storm Damage Center Preferred Contractor and Certified Member of the United Association of Storm Restoration Contractors. VCGFL is a proud member of Exterior Insulation and Finish Systems (EIFS) Industry Members Association (EIMA); Florida Roofing and Sheet Metal Contractors Association (FRSA); Gold Coast Builders Association (GCBA); Insurance Appraisal and Umpire Association (IAUA); National Association of Environmentally Responsible Mold Contractors (NAERMC); National Association of Home Builders (NAHB); National Roofing Contractors Association (NRCA); NRCA Qualified Trainer; Property Liability and Resource Bureau (PLRB); Restoration Industry Association (RIA). VCGFL is a registered U.S. Federal Government Contractor and holds leading manufacturer certifications including Owens Corning Platinum Preferred Contractor, Mule-Hide Legacy Contractor, Certified CertainTeed Contractor, and Duro-Last Certified Contractor status. VCGFL credentials have been vetted and screened through independent third-party Global Risk Management Solutions. For more information, call 866-459-8351 or visit us online at http://www.VCGFL.com.

About Venture Construction Group

Founded in 1998, Venture Construction Group (VCG) is a licensed general contractor and an award-winning leader in construction, restoration, renovations, roofing, storm damage repairs, and 24/7 emergency services. VCG services commercial and residential properties throughout the East Coast, Greater Mid-Atlantic Region, Gulf Coast, and Midwest. Operational excellence is our mission in every project we undertake, and we pride ourselves on providing exceptional customer service. Specializing in commercial projects, VCG assists property management companies, condo associations, multi-family structures, hi-rises, retail/business plazas, government facilities, hotels, and resorts with comprehensive general contractor services, restoration, mitigation, specialty construction, historical restoration, remodels, property repairs, and rebuilds due to fire, flood, water, wind, hail, and hurricane damage. VCG has earned prestigious awards including the Construction Business Owner Award, Pro Remodeler Forty Under 40 Award. VCG is committed to operational excellence and exceptional customer service. CEO Stephen Shanton is a proud member of the prestigious Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC). Entrepreneur Magazine hails YEC Consists of Some of the Most Well-Respected Minds in Entrepreneurship. Shanton is a proud member of the WindStorm Insurance Network and is a WIND Certified Umpire, WIND Certified Appraiser, and WIND Certified Fellow. VCG is an exclusive certified National Storm Damage Center Preferred Contractor, Certified Member of the United Association of Storm Restoration Contractors, Certified Member of Exterior Insulation and Finish Systems (EIFS) Industry Members Association (EIMA), Certified Member of National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), Owens Corning Platinum Preferred Contractor, Mule-Hide Legacy Contractor, Certified CertainTeed Contractor, and Duro-Last Certified Contractor. VCG credentials have been vetted and screened through independent third party Global Risk Management Solutions. With offices nationwide and a solid reputation throughout the country, we are able to respond to your needs with quality, ease, and top-notch service. For more information, call 866-459-8348 or visit us online at http://www.VentureConstructionGroup.com.

About VCG International

VCG International (VCGI) is a global leader in commercial and industrial construction, restoration, storm damage repairs, and 24/7 emergency services throughout the Bahamas and the Caribbean, North America, Europe, Australia, Asia, and Africa. With over 30 years of experience and the worlds leading industry accreditations, VCGI leads the way in best practices throughout the globe. Learn more at http://www.VCGInternational.com.

About the Natural Disasters Expo

The Natural Disasters Expo brings thousands of disaster specialists, government service providers, weather experts, insurers, and disaster relief efforts from across the globe all under one roof. The event includes the Storm Expo, Flood Expo, Heat & Flood Expo, and the Earthquake Expo. Learn more at https://www.naturaldisastersshow.com/.

Media Inquiries:

Alexis Bott

Elev8 Consulting Group

Ph: 386-243-5388

Web: http://www.elev8cg.com

###
Jay Akridge, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs and diversity, has announced the launch of a national search for the next dean of Purdue's College of Education. Dean Nancy Marchand-Martella is stepping down from her deanship, effective July 1, to become provost and executive vice chancellor of academic affairs at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs.

While we will miss her terrific leadership of the Purdue College of Education, we wish Dean Marchand-Martella every success in her new position, Akridge said.

The Search Advisory Committee will be chaired by Gary Bertoline, senior vice president for Purdue Online and Learning Innovation.

Advisory Search Committee members are:

Siddika Selcen Guzey, associate professor of curriculum and instruction.

Scott Hanback, superintendent, Tippecanoe School Corporation.

Rachael Kenney, associate professor of mathematics and curriculum and instruction.

Yukiko Maeda, associate professor of educational studies.

Sean McCan, director, Office of Graduate Studies, College of Education.

Beth Niedermeyer, superintendent, Noblesville School Corporation.

Kathryn Obenchain, associate dean for learning, engagement and global initiatives, College of Education.

Megan Purcell, clinical associate professor of human development and family studies.

Ala Samarapungavan, professor of educational psychology.

Kristen Seward, clinical assistant professor of educational studies.

David C. Stanley Jr., assistant professor of educational studies.

Greg J. Strimel, assistant professor of technology leadership and innovation.

Jacquelyn Thomas-Miller, director of advising and retention, College of Education.

Phillip VanFossen, director and James F. Ackerman Distinguished Professor of Social Studies Education.

On-campus interviews will be planned for early fall, and an interim dean will be named later in the spring. The search website can be found here.

Anyone wishing to nominate candidates for the position can send names to Gary Bertoline at bertolig@purdue.edu or Ruth Ann Weiderhaft at weiderhaft@purdue.edu.
A police officer with the Tippecanoe County Police Department sits in the middle of North River Road.
Created and produced by marblemedia, Race Against the Tide puts sand sculpting teams to the test as they compete against each other and also against the ticking clock of the tide. Competitors dig, pound, and carve their way to extraordinary sculptures entirely made of sand, before the tide comes crashing in to take their creations back out to sea. In each episode, competitors are challenged with nailing the theme, impressing the judges and avoiding elimination.D360 believes that the natural jeopardy created by Mother Nature and basic science provides authentic high-stakes drama and truly unique format beats.The original 10 x 30 series, commissioned by CBC, was filmed on the shores of the Bay of Fundy, New Brunswick, in Canada  home to the highest tide in the world. First options for the Race Against the Tide format have now been signed in Australia, Belgium, France, Germany, New Zealand, and the UK & Ireland. Eureka Productions (Holy Moley, Full Bloom, The Voice) has taken the format in Australia, Free Kings (Bake Off, Junior Bake Off) for Dutch-speaking Belgium, BBC Studios (Bake Off, Dancing With the Stars) for both French and German-speaking territories in Europe, EQ Media Group (Cooks on Fire, Buying Byron) in New Zealand, and Tern Television (Inside the Zoo, Scotlands Sacred Islands with Ben Fogle) for the UK & Ireland.Commenting on what he believed the programme could do, Chris Culvenor co-CEO of Eureka Productions said: We are excited to add Race Against the Tide to Eurekas slate. Set in stunning coastal locations, this high-stakes race against Mother Nature is truly event television, featuring incredible sand sculpting skills and eye-popping reveals. It's a distinctive hit format that's the perfect fit for the Australian audience and our breath-taking beaches.Added Diane Rankin, Distribution360s SVP rights and executive producer: We are thrilled to head into MIPTV with the momentum of such prominent production companies signed up to develop [Race Against the Tide] in their own territory. Creatives immediately saw the opportunity for this environmentally friendly competition series to have a uniquely localised look and feel that showcases their own coastal backdrops and beaches.
Russian aggression has created a dire and deadly situation across Europe. Russias invasion of Ukraine has not only resulted in a tragic loss of life, but also threatens global energy markets particularly in Europe.

Oil and natural gas is vital  it is the lifeblood of transportation, electricity and heating  and as one of the largest suppliers to Europe, Russia has the means to strangle the continent by cutting off a reliable flow of energy. But Vladmir Putins threats dont hold the same weight when American oil and gas producers stand in solidarity with Ukraine, Europe and democracies everywhere.

American oil and gas companies have announced they will end business activities with Russia. ExxonMobil halted all operations in Russia and announced it will cease any new future investment. The companys actions align with those of its European counterparts  BP, Shell, and Total have all made separate announcements aiming to end operations or new investment connected to the country.

U.S. LNG has also provided an invaluable lifeline to much of Europe over the past few months. Low supplies heading into the fall, coupled with a cold and icy winter had already caused rising demand on the continent. Europe desperately needs an alternative source of natural gas  which can be provided by the United States.

This winter, U.S. LNG exports to Europe shattered existing records. Exports of LNG from the United States to the European Union (EU) and the United Kingdom (UK) nearly doubled from November 2021 to January 2022, hitting 6.5 Bcf/dthe most LNG shipped to Europe from the United States on a monthly basis to date. And in February of this year, Europe received nearly 70% of all exported U.S. LNG cargoes.

Importantly, the LNG heading to the shores of import terminals like Barcelona and Dunkirk is not coming at the expense of everyday Americans. In the past decade, we have undergone a complete transformation in American energy. Thanks to the rise of oil and gas production in the Marcellus and the Permian Basin, America went from a net energy importer to a net energy exporter, but that status is now in jeopardy. In short, we are armed with a critical fact: we are capable of producing more oil and gas than we consume if we have the right energy policies in place.

This transition from a nation reliant on imported foreign oil and gas to one critical to meeting the worlds energy demand is what paved the way to our position of strength today. From the roughnecks in West Texas who help the state produce 26 percent of Americas natural gas supply alone, to the engineers at the refineries along the Gulf Coast, we have built a resilient energy system that can provide for our own people, as well as those well beyond our borders.

Moreover, our prolific energy production has enabled the United States to create strategic petroleum reserves of crude oil. While releases from this stockpile are not a long-term solution to addressing high commodity prices or geopolitical conflicts, they can provide access to an emergency supply of oil that can be used to offset a severe supply shortage.

Energy security is not just a theory spun by policy wonks to support the oil and gas industry  its the real, tangible need to ensure when our nation and our allies face threats, that we are not beholden to any other foreign powers because of a dependency on foreign energy supplies. With deep oil and gas reserves and shale basins breaking production records, Americans are at the mercy of no one but ourselves.

Thanks to American perseverance and ingenuity, today we dont have to imagine a world in which the United States energy security is beholden to countries like Russia. From Pennsylvania to Texas, we are prepared to supply our allies and fuel democracy for another generation.

Ed Longanecker is the President of the Texas Independent Producers & Royalty Owners (TIPRO) Association.
The Power of the Dog won the BAFTA Award for Best Film and Jane Campion scored the Best Director prize for helming it at a gala in London Sunday.

ADVERTISEMENT

Belfast was named Best British Film, while Joanna Scanlan earned the Best Actress honor for After Love and Will Smith took home the Best Actor statuette for King Richard.

Troy Kotsur picked up the Best Supporting Actor trophy for CODA, which also won the prize for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Ariana DeBose was presented with the Best Supporting Actress award for West Side Story, the winner in the Best Casting category.

Summer of Soul was deemed Best Documentary, Encanto Best Animated Film and Drive My Car Best Film Not in the English Language.

Jeymes Samuel won the BAFTA for Best Debut by a British Filmmaker for The Harder They Fall.

Dune picked up the prizes for Best Score, Cinematography, Sound, Production Design and Visual Effects.

No Time to Die earned the honor of Best Editing, while cast member Lashana Lynch won the Rising Star Award.

FOLLOW REALITY TV WORLD ON THE ALL-NEW GOOGLE NEWS!

Reality TV World is now available on the all-new Google News app and website. Click here to visit our Google News page, and then click FOLLOW to add us as a news source!

Cruella snagged the Best Costume prize and The Eyes of Tammy Faye was recognized for Best Hair and Makeup.

Rebel Wilson hosted the ceremony and Shirley Bassey performed "Diamonds Are Forever" in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the James Bond film franchise.
Christian Nodal is set to be honored at the seventh annual Latin American Music Awards on April 21 with the Extraordinary Evolution Award.

ADVERTISEMENT

The award is given to a young performer who has demonstrated change and accelerated growth in a short period of time, Telemundo announced on Monday.

Previous recipients include Ozuna, Becky G and Maluma.

Nodal will also be performing at the Latin AMAs and is nominated for five awards including Favorite Solo Artist - Regional Mexican and Favorite Album - Regional Mexican for Ahora.

The 2022 Latin American Music Awards will air on Telemundo at 7 p.m. EDT from the Michelob Ultra Arena at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas.

Bad Bunny leads all artists with 10 nominations followed by Jhay Cortez with eight and J Balvin, Karol G and Rauw Alejandro with seven.
Albert Brooks, Mark Ruffalo and other stars are honoring William Hurt in the wake of his death.

ADVERTISEMENT

Celebrities paid tribute to Hurt on social media Sunday after the actor died at age 71.

Brooks, who worked with Hurt on the 1987 film Broadcast News, mourned the actor on Twitter.

"R.I.P. William hurt. So sad to hear this news. Working with him on Broadcast News was amazing. He will be greatly missed," Brooks wrote.

M. Night Shyamalan, who directed Hurt in the 2004 film The Village, also remembered the actor online.

"I'm so sad to hear of the passing of William Hurt . I had the privilege of directing him in The Village. He was a master of his acting craft. Every take was new and revealing. #rip," Shyamalan said.

Mark Ruffalo, who starred with Hurt in Avengers: Infinity War and other films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, remembered Hurt as a "great actor."

"Wow, another Major loss to the acting community. Great actor. Great mind. RIP," Ruffalo tweeted.

FOLLOW REALITY TV WORLD ON THE ALL-NEW GOOGLE NEWS!

Reality TV World is now available on the all-new Google News app and website. Click here to visit our Google News page, and then click FOLLOW to add us as a news source!

Russell Crowe recalled a moment from his time with Hurt on the set of the 2010 film Robin Hood.

"William Hurt has passed. On Robin Hood, I was aware of his reputation for asking character based questions, so I had compiled a file on the life of William Marshall. He sought me out when he arrived on set. I handed him the stack. Not sure if I've ever seen a bigger smile. RIP," Crowe wrote.

Patton Oswalt remembered Hurt as a "beyond brilliant" actor.

"William Hurt was a beyond brilliant film & stage actor, and then he went and guested on @TheKOQ and was so deadpan, low-key hilarious. 'This is good cake. And I'm not a cake guy.' RIP," Oswalt said.

Hurt died Sunday morning at his home in Portland, Ore. The actor was known for such films as Broadcast News, Body Heat and Kiss of the Spider Woman, and for playing Thaddeus Ross in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Katonah, NY (10536)

Today

A few showers this morning with overcast skies during the afternoon hours. High 64F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 30%..

Tonight

Considerable clouds this evening. Some decrease in clouds late. Low 51F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph.
Brattleboro, VT (05301)

Today

Cloudy early, then off and on rain showers for the afternoon. High 54F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 50%..

Tonight

Cloudy skies this evening will become partly cloudy after midnight. Slight chance of a rain shower. Low 47F. Winds light and variable.
BRATTLEBORO  During a public hearing this week, two teenagers got more of a taste of the political world they seek to enter via an initiative aimed at allowing them to vote at a younger age."I 
Domestic abuse survivors often find themselves, for a myriad of reasons and circumstances, unable to hold their abusers accountable for the havoc they create. Vermont News & Media spoke with experts in domestic violence, including Project Against Violent Encounters, about the complex reasons why survivors often choose not to cooperate with law enforcement.
Brattleboro, VT (05301)

Today

Cloudy with occasional showers. High 54F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 50%..

Tonight

Cloudy skies early, then partly cloudy after midnight. Slight chance of a rain shower. Low 47F. Winds light and variable.
Don't miss the big stories. Like us on Facebook.

James Lyall is executive director of the ACLU of Vermont. The opinions expressed by columnists do not necessarily reflect the views of Vermont News & Media.
Adam JOHANSEN against Denmark, Application no. 27801/19

Publisher Council of Europe: European Court of Human Rights Publication Date 1 February 2022 Citation / Document Symbol ECLI:CE:ECHR:2022:0201DEC002780119 Other Languages / Attachments Decision Cite as Adam JOHANSEN against Denmark, Application no. 27801/19, ECLI:CE:ECHR:2022:0201DEC002780119, Council of Europe: European Court of Human Rights, 1 February 2022, available at: https://www.refworld.org/cases,ECHR,622f080f4.html [accessed 4 May 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Johansen v. Denmark: Danish-Tunisian national's Article 8 complaint against his stripping of citizenship and deportation order found inadmissible

On 3 March 2022, the ECtHR released its decision in the case of Johansen v Denmark. The case involved a dual Danish and Tunisian national who had his Danish citizenship stripped on account of terrorism charges. The applicant had lived most of his life in Denmark but travelled to Syria in September 2013 and stayed until February 2014 undertaking training with the Islamic State. In October 2017 the applicant was convicted and sentenced to four years imprisonment by the District Court in Denmark. In November 2018, the Supreme Court ruled in favour of depriving the applicant of his Danish nationality and expelling him from Denmark with a permanent ban on return. The applicant complained that the withdrawal of his Danish citizenship and expulsion order violated his rights under Article 8 of the Convention.

The Court determined that the Supreme Court's decision to strip the applicant of his Danish nationality had been carefully taken into account and had not been arbitrary. Furthermore, it continued that the Danish authorities had acted diligently and swiftly and had given the applicant opportunity to contest the previous rulings. It considered that it was legitimate for Denmark to take a firm stand against terrorism and therefore was satisfied that a thorough assessment which balanced competing interests had been made when deciding on the deportation order. The Court thereby concluded that the decision was not disproportionate to the legitimate aim pursued and rejected the applicant's complaint as inadmissible and manifestly ill-founded.

ELENA Weekly Legal Update - 4 March 2022
OVG Luneburg 4. Senat, Beschluss vom 09.02.2022, 4 LA 74/20,

Publisher Germany: Oberverwaltungsgericht Publication Date 9 February 2022 Citation / Document Symbol ECLI:DE:OVGNI:2022:0209.4LA74.20.00 Other Languages / Attachments German decision Cite as OVG Luneburg 4. Senat, Beschluss vom 09.02.2022, 4 LA 74/20,, ECLI:DE:OVGNI:2022:0209.4LA74.20.00, Germany: Oberverwaltungsgericht, 9 February 2022, available at: https://www.refworld.org/cases,DEU_THUER_OBER,622f09e94.html [accessed 4 May 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Germany: Administrative Court holds that women in Eritrean military part of national service do not belong to a particular social group but are exposed to a real risk of serious harm

On 9 February 2022, the Higher Administrative Court of Luneburg rejected the state's application for leave to appeal the Administrative Court of Hanover's judgment and clarified questions it raised. The case concerned an Eritrean woman who obtained subsidiary protection in Germany and sought to attain refugee status on the grounds of persecution in the form of gender-based violence for being a woman in the national service.



The Court firstly referred to the "particular social group" requirement in this case for refugee recognition. It referred to the necessary element of a "clearly defined identity" and set out that it is not satisfied solely by the fact that a large number of people are affected in a comparable way by an act of persecution. It continued that persecution based solely on gender relates to a particular social group only if the group is regarded as different by the society surrounding them. The Court concluded that women in the Eritrean national service do not constitute a particular social group as the clearly defined identity is missing and they are not regarded as different by the rest of Eritrean society. In this conclusion, the Court referred to evidence that sexual assaults occur to women and girls in and outside of the national service and additionally to male conscripts in the national service. However, the assaults do not occur because women are perceived as different for being women in the national service.



The Court furthermore relied on evidence by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and EUAA to determine that although the applicant could not be granted refugee status on account of the particular social group requirement, women who are called to the military part of the national service in particular have a considerable probability of serious harm from sexual assault by superiors and that due to the numerous reports of these widespread assaults there is no reason to believe that this information outdated.



Based on an unofficial translation within the ELENA team.

ELENA Weekly Legal Update - 4 March 2022
CASE OF SHENTURK AND OTHERS v. AZERBAIJAN (Applications nos. 41326/17 and other applications  see appended list)

Publisher Council of Europe: European Court of Human Rights Publication Date 10 March 2022 Citation / Document Symbol ECLI:CE:ECHR:2022:0310JUD004132617 Other Languages / Attachments Decision Cite as CASE OF SHENTURK AND OTHERS v. AZERBAIJAN (Applications nos. 41326/17 and other applications  see appended list), ECLI:CE:ECHR:2022:0310JUD004132617, Council of Europe: European Court of Human Rights, 10 March 2022, available at: https://www.refworld.org/cases,ECHR,622f0b1c4.html [accessed 4 May 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Shenturk and others v. Azerbaijan: Turkish nationals extra-legal transfers from Azerbaijan to Turkey violated their rights under ECHR

On 10 March 2022, the ECtHR published its judgment for the case of Shenturk and Others v. Azerbaijan. The case concerns four Turkish nationals who moved to Azerbaijan where they worked in private schools and companies affiliated with the Gulen movement. Their asylum requests in Azerbaijan were ignored and they were expelled to Turkey, where they were arrested and taken into custody for alleged involvement in the so-called Fetullahist Terrorist Organisation / Parallel State Structure. The applicants complained that their detention and subsequent removal from Azerbaijan to Turkey were in breach of Articles 3, 5 and 13 ECHR and Article 1 of Protocol No. 7 to the Convention in the case of the first applicant.



Firstly, the Court assessed the alleged violation of Article 5(1) and noted that the whole period of detention of the first applicant and the various periods of detention of the second, third and fourth applicants were not based on a formal decision authorising their detention as required by the domestic law and were accordingly unlawful within the meaning of Article 5(1). Moreover, the Court found that the applicants' removal to Turkey constituted a breach of the formal extradition proceedings and of the relevant international safeguards.



In its analysis of the complained violation of Article 3, the Court contended that the national authorities had at no time examined the applicants' fears of ill-treatment if returned to Turkey and that the decision to remove them from Azerbaijan based on the cancellation of the passport or residence permits was only a pretext to conduct an "extradition in disguise". The Court thus considered that the applicants were denied effective guarantees of protection against arbitrary refoulement and that the respondent State had not complied with its procedural obligation under Article 3 by failing to assess the risks of the applicants being subjected to treatment contrary to that provision. Based on the above, the Court concluded that there had been a violation of Article 3.



Lastly, as regards the complaints under Articles 5(4), 13 and Article 1 of Protocol No. 7, the Court decided that it was not necessary to give a separate ruling and referred to its findings under Articles 5(1) and 3.

ELENA Weekly Legal Update - 11 March 2022
NEW MILFORD  Opposition is building in town to a proposal to widen the bridge on the scenic Cherniske Road.

The one-lane bridge, which is west of the intersection with Sawyer Hill Road and Cherniske Road, was built in the 1930s. For the past few years, the town has been considering widening it to two lanes. Through public meetings and written letters, many residents are growing increasingly upset over that proposal, which is one of a few options.

In 2017, the Cherniske bridge was evaluated by the town and received a poor rating. While the town tried to repair it, the bridge continued to deteriorate and the town finally closed it in January 2021. It has been closed ever since, as the town evaluates different options to reconstruct it and fund the project.

For the past few Town Council meetings, several dozen residents in total have shared their feelings about preserving scenic roads and keeping a one-lane bridge.

Robert Gambino, a former New Milford mayor and member of the Northville Residents Association, referenced a letter signed by 37 residents in the Cherniske Road neighborhood.

The letter says the Town Council, mayor and public works department are in violation of New Milfords scenic road ordinance.

The ordinance reads in part that ...regulation of future alterations and improvements of designated highways shall be carried out so to preserve to the highest degree possible the scenic characteristics of the highway which are indicated in the records of the Town Council as the basis for its designation as a scenic road.

Mayor Pete Bass said the town is not violating the towns scenic road ordinance by proposing a two-lane bridge. He noted that state officials consider a one-lane road to be an antiquated design, and the town would lose out on a state grant if it kept the road as one lane.

If theyre (the state) saying the bridge currently is an obsolete design, than that would supersede a scenic road ordinance, he said.

If alterations or improvements to scenic roads are needed, they must conform to speed limits, according to the ordinance.

Scenic values are correlated with lower speeds, and alterations shall not be made in such a manner as to unnecessarily encourage increased speed, the ordinance states.

A narrow road is correlated with high scenic beauty, the ordinance continues.

The ordinance also says the Town Council and mayor need to appoint an advisory committee that addresses alterations or improvements being proposed to a designated scenic road. While there had been a scenic road committee for Cherniske bridge in the past, there isnt one now.

Moving forward, however, Bass said he plans to hold public meetings about the bridge, which will be open to all residents, and not just involve those who live near the bridge.

At the Feb. 28th Town Council meeting, Gambino said there are 27 scenic roads in town, and theyre what makes the town bucolic.

Do whats right for the scenic roads of this town, Gambino said. New Milford is one of the most beautiful towns in Connecticut.

Options, costs

The town is looking at four possible options for reconstruction of the Cherniske Road bridge: A single-lane bridge with a box culvert (pre-cast) removal and construction for $940,000; a single-lane poured (build forms and pour concrete) bridge for $1.43 million; a double-lane box culvert for $1.11 million; and a double-lane poured bridge for $1.6 million.

Jack Healy, the towns public works director, said estimates are sometimes as much as 30 percent inaccurate because of the increase in material costs.

The current bridge is about 16-feet wide. A two-lane bridge would be 22-feet wide, Healy said.

Everyone wants to maintain the single-lane bridge, said Adrienne Aurichio, a resident on Cherniske Road who spoke at several town meetings on this topic. She added the two cost options where the bridge remains one lane would be acceptable.

The town has approved $600,000 in American Rescue Plan Act funds to go toward the repair of the bridge.

Grant funding is also available through the state. The state would pay 50 percent of the construction cost. However, in order to qualify for the grant, the town would have to comply with the states conditions, which is to widen the bridge to two lanes.

Healy said the only way the state would fund a one-lane bridge is if the average daily traffic count is below 100 cars per day.

On that road, its over 400 cars per day, Healy said.

When evaluating costs, Bass referenced the 63 other bridges in New Milford.

How do we manage the repairs and the costs as were going through the other bridges, comparative to this? Bass said. Also, when were using taxpayer dollars, is this something we would use on an obsolete design?

He said the town is not looking to change scenic roads.

Theyre a critical part of our town, theyre a part of our heritage and we want to keep them, he said.

Healy plans to provide a more detailed breakdown on the different bridge costs at the March 28 Town Council meeting. Ultimately, Town Council has the final say on which kind of bridge is built.

There is no date yet set for the construction of a new bridge. Healy said he would like to issue a contract by late fall or early December, and issue a purchase order at the end of December or early January 2023.
Ben Lambert / Hearst Connecticut Media

NEW HAVEN  Police are investigating after a person with a gunshot wound was dropped off at Yale New Haven Hospital Saturday.

Police said they received a call around 2:30 p.m. that a person was shot and dropped off at the hospital by an unknown car. Officers were able to find the victim, a 42-year-old New Haven man, who was being treated for non-life-threatening injuries.
The unionists called for all charges to be dropped to facilitate negotiations with the casino.

NagaWorld Casino workers hold up placards during a protest outside the National Assembly building after several union members were arrested, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, January 5, 2022.

A court in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh Monday released on bail eight union leaders who represent the striking workers of the NagaWorld Casino, providing hope that the months-long labor dispute is heading toward a resolution, a released union member told RFA.

The decision by the Phnom Penh municipal court reverses the appellate courts decision last week to deny bail on the grounds that the labor leaders were still under investigation.

Ry Sovandy, one of the eight who was released Monday, told RFAs Khmer Service that the group plans to continue advocating for the rights of their coworkers and their union, despite their time in jail.

Our stance is that the union has to be reinstated and the workers who want to work should be allowed to return, she said. Our position is purely based on the willingness of the workers. We will not accept any condition that leads to a dissolution of the union or only allows one party, the NagaWorld company, to win in this dispute.

Thousands of NagaWorld workers walked off their jobs in mid-December, demanding higher wages and the reinstatement of the eight jailed union leaders, three other jailed workers and 365 others they say were unjustly fired from the hotel and casino, which is owned by a Hong Kong-based company believed to have connections to family members of Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen.

Cambodian authorities have called the strike illegal and alleged that it is supported by foreign donors as a plot to topple the government. But a series of mass arrests in recent weeks have been attributed to alleged violations of pandemic health regulations in Cambodias capital. Activists said the charges were trumped up to break up the strike.

The eight leaders of the Labor Rights Supported Union of Khmer Employees of NagaWorld released Monday are: Ry Sovandy, Hay Sopheap, Khleang Soben, Sun Srey Pich, Touch Serey Meas, former union member Sok Narith, union secretary Chhim Sokhon, and union president Chhim Sithor.

They had been detained for 74 days, accused of inciting social unrest.

The three other jailed workers are still being held in Phnom Penh Prison for obstructing the implementation of measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The newly released leaders called on the court to drop all charges against them and to release the remaining three so that negotiations with NagaWorld can proceed.

The release came two days after the eight wrote separate letters to Minister of Labor and Vocational Training Ith Sam Heng, stating that they wanted to be released on bail to continue talks that will allow the workers to return to their jobs, Ry Sovandy said.

While imprisoned, Ry Sovandy said that she and the seven other union leaders faced a number of difficulties, but she said the group was especially disheartened over the abuse the strikers, many of whom are women, suffered at the hands of authorities. She commended the workers for persisting despite the harassment.

I hope the Labor Ministry will continue to intervene to end this dispute between the company and the union. And I think it is unjust if the charges against us are not dropped because we have not incited anyone to commit crimes, Ry Sovandy said.

In their bail request letter, the eight called for all employees on strike to be allowed to return to work. They said they would appeal to workers who were laid off to stay home during negotiations until a legal settlement is in place. They also called for the company not to retaliate against the striking employees.

The Phnom Penh-based Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights applauded the decision to release the eight unionists on bail, but Deputy Director Am Sam Ath said they should be completely freed before they enter negotiations.

They did nothing wrong. The charges against them should be dropped, he said. They might still be under judicial pressure if they negotiate while still out on bail. Drop all the charges so that they can participate in transparent negotiations, which is the only way to reach a fair solution that respects integrity.

Authorities on Monday again arrested a large group of demonstrating NagaWorld employees. The 162 arrested this time were forced onto waiting buses and taken to detention in a COVID-19 quarantine center in a Phnom Penh suburb.

Interior Minister Sar Kheng led a March 9 meeting to resolve the labor dispute, with the participation of ministers of several ministries such as the Ministry of Labor, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Health and officials from Phnom Penh. The results of the closed-door meeting were not announced.

Translated by Sok Ry Sum. Written in English by Eugene Whong.
Authorities in China locked down most of the northeastern province of Jilin on in a scramble to contain a highly transmissible variant of COVID-19, deploying troops to the region to keep order and aid in a mass testing and quarantine operation.



The National Health Commission said it had confirmed 1,337 locally transmitted cases of the "stealth" omicron variant B.A.2 during the last 24 hours, 895 of which were in Jilin, where police permission is now being required to leave the province or travel within it.



Some 7,000 reservists were sent to Jilin, using drones to carry out aerial spraying and disinfection, according to state broadcaster CCTV.



Several buildings in Beijing were sealed off at the weekend, while Shanghai reported 713 cases so far this month, of which 632 were asymptomatic. All schools in Shanghai moved to online teaching from .



Hong Kong on reported 26,908 new cases and 249 deaths during the past 24 hours, but its figures include results from home tests using rapid antigen tests, as well as PCR tests conducted by health authorities and labs.



But chief executive Carrie Lam stopped short of imposing further restrictions on a city where authorities are currently using sewage monitoring and other test data to lock down specific buildings and neighborhoods at a time, and where there is a ban on public gatherings of more than two people.



Across the internal border in Shenzhen, authorities reported 75 newly confirmed cases on , prompting the city government to order a week-long, citywide lockdown from pending three rounds of compulsory mass PCR testing.



Public transportation has been suspended, and residential communities closed to people coming or going, with employees ordered to work from home.



Video footage uploaded to social media showed long lines for PCR testing, and empty shelves in local supermarkets after households stocked up on essentials ahead of the lockdown.



"The supermarket normally has vegetables, grains, rice, which are all normal daily supplies," a resident says in one video clip. "Shenzhen is a first-tier city, but we can't get a hold of vegetables or rice now, because the whole city has to fight this outbreak."



Residents queue to undergo nucleic acid tests for the Covid-19 coronavirus in Yantai, in China's eastern Shandong province, March 14, 2022. Credit: AFP Door-to-door testing

Some districts, including Longhua, Nanshan, Futian and Luohu, are under particularly stringent measures, with residents banned from leaving their homes, and forced to wait for door-to-door testing teams.



Shenzhen officials played down fears on social media, seeking to reassure residents that there would be enough rice, noodles, oil, meat, eggs and poultry for everyone, with the authorities taking measures to prevent hoarding and price-gouging.



In neighboring Dongguan, mass PCR testing was also under way, with public transportation suspended, residential compounds under lockdown and factories, businesses and industrial sites closed, with schools moving to online teaching.



Shanghai resident Gu Guoping said the constant rounds of mass testing were "a waste of resources ... inconveniencing people and delivering benefits to particular vested interests."



Another Shanghai resident surnamed Zhang said there are partial lockdowns in the city's Xuhui district, as well as on university campuses.



"Many schools, residential compounds, hospitals, where they have had cases or contacts of cases have been closed, and nobody is allowed to leave Shanghai right now," she said.



"More than 50 percent of people are still allowed to go out, while the rest have to stay home eating takeout," Zhang said. "It's very hard to get takeout now, and everyone is hoarding, rushing to buy stuff, so groceries are hard to come by."



In the northern province of Hebei, traffic restrictions are in place in Lanfang, downtown Cangzhou and Qingxian county, with roadblocks on major and minor roads in and out of Guangyang district.



Chinese infectious disease expert Zhang Wenhong warned that China is likely only at the very start of an exponential rise in COVID-19 cases, as rail operators cut train services and offered free refunds to people who had already bought tickets.



Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
A Mirage 2000-5 fighter jet crashed into the sea off Taiwans southeastern coast during a routine training mission.

The Taiwanese military reported another fighter jet air crash on Monday, the second since the beginning of the year, and has grounded its fleet of French-built Mirage planes as it investigates.

A Mirage 2000-5 multirole fighter jet crashed into the sea near Taitung on the islands southeastern coast during a routine combat training mission, the military said in a statement, adding that the pilot managed to eject safely and has been hospitalized for observation.

The army is searching for the aircraft and conducting an investigation into the accident, the statement said.

Air force Inspector-General Liu Hui-chien told reporters that the Mirage fleet would be grounded while the investigation was carried out.

Taiwan purchased 60 Mirage 2000 fighters in 1992 and last year signed a technical support service agreement with the French manufacturer Dassault Aviation S.A to help maintain the aging Mirage fleet.

On Jan. 11, a F-16V  one of the most advanced fighters in Taiwans possession, crashed in the sea off the west coast, killing its sole pilot.

The Taiwanese air force suspended combat training for its U.S.-made F-16 fleet for over a week but put them back in action in late January.

Heavy flight demands

In recent months, the islands military airplanes have been scrambled regularly as China continued almost daily incursions into Taiwan's air defense identification zone (ADIZ).

The rate was noticeably high in January. On Jan. 23 the PLAAF (Peoples Liberation Army Air Force) deployed 39 aircraft in the island's ADIZ.

Analysts say that the incursions may be strategically intended to wear down Taiwans air capabilities through near constant overuse and shortened maintenance schedules.

Due to PLAAF increasing activities in Taiwans southwest, the Mirage aircraft originally based in Hsinchu were transferred to Taitung for training and tasks execution, said Shen Ming-Shih, acting deputy chief executive officer at Taiwans Institute for National Defense and Security Research.

As the investigation into the crash is being conducted, it cannot be ruled out that personnel and machine failure was due to heavy flight demands, he said.

But this incident would not stop Taiwans air force from performing the task of preventing Chinese incursions, Shen said.

Last year, two F-5 fighter jets crashed into the sea near the southeastern coast in an apparent collision during a training mission, resulting in two deaths.

The Taiwanese air force suffered four crashes in 2020 including two helicopters and two fighter jets  an F-5 and a F-16.
The UK on Monday hit out at authorities in China and Hong Kong after they put pressure on a London-based rights group to take down its website, threatening prosecution under a draconian national security law applicable anywhere in the world.



Hong Kong's national security police wrote to Benedict Rogers, CEO of Hong Kong Watch, ordering him to take down the group's website, which recently criticized the Hong Kong government's handling of a skyrocketing COVID-19 wave in the city.



"You and Hong Kong Watch are obliged to remove the website ... without delay, and immediately cease engaging in any acts and activities in contravention of the national security law or any other laws of Hong Kong," the police letter said. "Should you fail to do so, further action will be instituted against you and Hong Kong Watch without further notice."



The group has been highly critical of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP)'s rights record in Hong Kong, particularly following a city-wide crackdown on pro-democracy activists, opposition politicians and journalists after the national security law was imposed on the city from July 1, 2020.



British foreign secretary Liz Truss said the letter was a clear attempt at intimidation.



"The unjustifiable action taken against the UK-based NGO Hong Kong Watch is clearly an attempt to silence those who stand up for human rights in Hong Kong," Truss said in a statement on Monday.



"The Chinese Government and Hong Kong authorities must respect the universal right to freedom of speech, and uphold that right in Hong Kong in accordance with international commitments, including the Joint Declaration," she said, in a reference to the U.N.-register treaty governing the 1997 handover of Hong Kong to Chinese rule.



"Attempting to silence voices globally that speak up for freedom and democracy is unacceptable and will never succeed," she said.



The police letter also accused Rogers of "collusion with a foreign power" under Article 29 of the law, saying he had lobbied for sanctions against Hong Kong, thereby interfering in China's internal affairs and undermining its national security.



"A person who commits the offense shall be sentenced to imprisonment of not less than 3 years [with a maximum penalty of] life imprisonment," said the letter, which confirmed that the Hong Kong Watch website is currently being blocked by the Hong Kong authorities.



The U.K. suspended its extradition treaty with Hong Kong after the national security law took effect.



'Extraterritoriality' clause



Hong Kong Watch said the group is one of the first foreign organizations to be targeted under the law.



Group patron Lord Patten of Barnes, the last colonial governor of Hong Kong, said Chinese and Hong Kong officials are "trying not only to stamp out freedom of expression and information in Hong Kong but also to internationalize their campaign against evidence, freedom and honesty."



Lord Alton of Liverpool, who was sanctioned by China last year, said the letter was a significant escalation on the part of the Chinese government.



"It signifies the attempted application of the abhorrent 'extraterritoriality' clause of the draconian national security law which Beijing imposed on Hong Kong," he said.



"The result of that appalling law is the total destruction of Hong Kong's freedoms and autonomy, and now the regime is using that law to try to undermine freedom around the world. It is ... a shocking attempt to intimidate and threaten an organization which has been at the forefront of global advocacy for Hong Kong."



Rogers, who was turned away by Hong Kong immigration officers at the city's international airport when he last tried to travel there five years ago, said the group wouldn't be silenced by such threats.



"We will not be silenced by an authoritarian security apparatus which, through a mixture of senseless brutality and ineptitude, has triggered rapid mass migration out of the city and shut down civil society," he said. "We will continue to be a voice for the people of Hong Kong and those brave political prisoners who have been jailed under this authoritarian regime."



He said it was ironic that many Hong Kong police officers and government officials still hold foreign passports, send their children to be educated in the West, and have their savings held in Western banks overseas to avoid Xi Jinpings anti-corruption campaigns.



Voices silenced



Pro-democracy activist Joey Siu, who advises Hong Kong Watch, said many dissenting voices have already been silenced within Hong Kong itself.



"The Hong Kong government has used the national security law to disband and dissolve various civic groups and to arrest most of the pan-democrats during the past few months," Siu told RFA. "They want to stop them from taking Hong Kong's voice onto the international stage, and dampen concern in the international community to the human rights situation [in the city]."



"The national security law can be applied to anyone, anywhere in the world, to foreigners transiting through Hong Kong, as well as to permanent residents and Chinese nationals," she said.



Attempts to load the Hong Kong Watch website from Hong Kong on Monday resulted in a notice saying "unable to connect to this site," with the site only accessible via a VPN.



An official who answered the phone at the Hong Kong police force declined to comment "on individual cases" when contacted by RFA on Monday.



Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
Southeast Asias construction boom is fueling demand for sand, often to the detriment of riparian communities.

More than 100 families in the Lao capital Vientiane are calling on authorities to investigate a sand dredging company after their activities in the Ngeum River allegedly caused landslides that damaged several houses, sources in the capital told RFA.

Sand is a hot commodity in Southeast Asia, needed to support a booming construction industry. But digging it up from the bottoms of rivers can be disastrous for the environment, accelerating erosion and leading to landslides that destroy buildings near riverbanks.

The families, from Thasommor village the citys Xaythany district, say that the company has been taking the sand without reinforcing the riverbank.

There were some landslides near my moms plot of land because of the sand dredging, a resident of the village told RFAs Lao Service March 11. The landslides even affected my brothers house, which had to stop construction.

Residents of the village petitioned the authorities to rectify the problem in the past, but they say that they received no response. They say they desperately need an embankment to protect their land and homes along the Ngeum.

Another villager told RFA that the problem with the company has been going on for years, with authorities never taking the villagers concerns seriously.

A third villager said that although his house is not near the river, he frequently hears complaints from other villagers about landslides caused by dredging. He said that prior to the dredging, damage to homes from landslides never happened.

There is no embankment around here. It is a private company that does the dredging. The company may have a concession to operate like this, but I dont know much about that, he said.

An official from Xaythany districts Natural Resources and Environment office told RFA that if the Thasommor residents are experiencing damaged homes due to landslides, they should ask their village chief to write a letter to the office so that authorities can investigate.

The Vientiane administrative office and Vientiane energy and mines sector have, however, not authorized any Lao company to operate a sand dredging business along the Ngeum, the official said. There is therefore no information regarding which companys sand dredging ships are allegedly causing the problems, he said. The official added that frequent flooding in the country is the main cause of landslides.

In order to prevent landslides along the Mekong River and its tributaries, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment said companies with sand dredging concessions can operate only seven months per year, from December through June. When the rainy season starts, all the companies must stop their work. But some companies do not follow these instructions, RFA has confirmed.

In 2018, the Ministry of Public Work and Transport and the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment proposed that the Lao government stop issuing dredging concessions along the Mekong and its tributaries to Lao companies.

Sand dredging is a problem in other riparian communities along the Mekong. RFA has reported on the environmental damage from dredging in Cambodia, Myanmar and Vietnam, in addition to Laos. Though the regions governments have attempted to regulate the practice, high prices for sand fueled by high demand in places like Singapore often lead companies to ignore restrictions.

Translated by Phouvong. Written in English by Eugene Whong.
Residents say the monks are helping to form the groups and even receiving weapons training.

Monks and members of the Pyu Saw Htee militia train at a firing range in Sagaing region, Feb. 11, 2022.

Ultranationalist Buddhist clergymen, including outspoken monk Wirathu, are throwing their support behind the pro-junta Pyu Saw Htee militia in its fight against prodemocracy paramilitaries in Myanmars Sagaing region, including by undergoing weapons training clad in saffron robes, residents said Monday.

Members of the prodemocracy Peoples Defense Force (PDF) paramilitary group have demonstrated some of the fiercest resistance to junta troops and their militia-backed offensive in Sagaing since the military seized power in a Feb. 1, 2021, coup. The military is better equipped and has embarked on a scorched earth campaign in the region with the help of the Pyu Saw Htee, but residents say that a new tool has been added to its arsenal: hardline monks from the Ma Ba Tha group.

A video recently went viral on social media in Myanmar purportedly showing members of the Ma Ba Tha on a tour of several pro-junta villages in Sagaing in support of forming Pyu Saw Htee units. The video appears to show the monks helping to train people and delivering Buddhist sermons.

In one clip, Ma Ba Tha leaders known as sayadaws  including Wah Thawa, Wira Raza, and Pandita  appear to be holding guns in their hands and telling residents that the PDFs are killing people and setting fire to villages. One monk is heard to say, Wirathu himself visited the villages yesterday and raised the morale of residents.

Sources told RFAs Myanmar Service that the footage was filmed on Feb. 27 at the Yadanar Kan Myint Htei Monastery during a Pyu Saw Htee training camp graduation ceremony in Taze townships Kabe village. They confirmed that pro-junta monks have been carrying guns and taking part in some of the fighting in the region.

An eyewitness from Tazes Kyunle village told RFA that the Pyu Saw Htee groups were led by Ma Ba Tha monks and that Wirathu is involved.

There are Pyu Saw Htee and Ma Ba Tha monks, he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

These monks are not local monks. All the local monks are gone. They have fled to safety. Some villagers said they saw Wirathu. [Such actions are] totally against the rules observed by the [Buddhist clergy] and we condemn it.

According to the eyewitness, nearly half of the 350 houses in Kyunle are pro-military and mostly Pyu Saw Htee. Residents who do not support the Pyu Saw Htee have fled their homes, he added.

Another resident of the area who declined to be named said the armed monks had summoned Tazes inhabitants to the Yadanar Kan Myint Htei Monastery and Kyunles Lay Thar Monastery and told them not to accept the PDF.

Since the local monks fled the Yadanar Kan Myint Htei Monastery, they took over the place and tried to turn the villagers against the PDFs, he said, adding that all the monks at the Lay Thar Monastery are junta supporters.

Tayza Nanda, an abbot of the pro-democracy Spring Revolutionary Monk Network in Taze, told RFA that the Ma Ba Tha sayadaws are working in the region with the support of the military.

These monks have been backed by the military from the beginning, he said. What they are saying and doing now is all in line with Wirathus preaching and now they are taking up arms. They are [junta chief Sen. Gen.] Min Aung Hlaings followers who support evil.

Real monks cant even preach to those who carry weapons, let alone carry arms themselves, Tayza Nanda added.

RFA could not independently confirm allegations that Wirathu is involved with the Pyu Saw Htee. Attempts to contact Wirathu went unanswered Monday.

Junta Deputy Information Minister Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun confirmed to RFA that militia groups had been formed to protect these villages from PDF attacks.

Since the PDFs are threatening villages that do not support them, we have formed militia groups there to provide security for these villages, he said. We have not provided monks with weapons. There is no reason to do that.

Zaw Min Tun noted that he had never said a word before about the PDF-supporting monks who reside there and are carrying arms, without providing details about his claims.

A member of the Taze PDF told RFA that on March 6 his group attacked a Pyu Saw Htee unit led by sayadaw Wah Thawa in Kabe village, and that the unit fled with many wounded.

Wah Thawa is no longer in the area. He has fled to Kanbalu. Wah Thawa, who was seen in the footage with a pistol and bullet-proof vest, was the leader, he said. Monks hold even more authority in rural areas than village administrators, so [the junta] tried to use the monks to do their organizing of Pyu Saw Htee units.

The Taze PDF member said the Pyu Saw Htee and the Ma Ba Tha group attacked small villages in the area, including Kyunle and Kabe, and had forced the locals to join them.

Ultranationalist monk Wirathu hands himself in to face charges of sedition at a police station in Yangon, Nov. 2, 2020. Credit: Reuters Using religion for political gain

Rajadhamma, an abbot with the Buddhist Mandalay Sangha Union, said Wirathu had cultivated close ties in the past with the monk leaders of the Pyu Saw Htee group in Sagaing  Wah Thawa, Wira Raza and Pandita.

All three of them used to live close to Wirathu in the past. We can even say that they are the actual leaders of this group, he said. Now they are taking weapons training for killing others. Holding guns and learning how to shoot is completely inappropriate for our religion.

Ultranationalist Buddhist monk Wirathu was charged by the deposed National League for Democracy government with sedition in May 2019, but the charges were dropped by the junta in September 2021 and he was set free. He is currently touring towns in Mandalay and Bago regions, and witnesses say the military has provided him security.

Political analyst Than Soe Naing told RFA that reports of the Ma Ba Thas involvement with the Pyu Saw Htee suggest the militia is using religion for political gain in Myanmar, a Buddhist-majority country.

The majority of people in our country are Buddhists and they all love and respect the monks, so [the military is trying] to use the monks for their benefit, he said. We have never heard about an entire group of monks taking up arms training.

Myanmars military has killed at least 1,672 civilians since the coup and arrested nearly 9,625 others  mostly during peaceful anti-junta protests.

According to a report issued last week by Data for Myanmar, a research group that documents the impact of conflict on communities, pro-junta forces have burned more than 6,700 houses to the ground in 186 locations in nine regions and states since the military coup. Last month, the group said most of the junta-sponsored arson had occurred in Sagaing region.

Last month, a post went viral on social media that allegedly showed a leaked document from the juntas Northwest Military Command ordering the delivery of more than 2,000 weapons to 77 pro-junta militia groups and calling for the formation of more militia units in remote villages in Sagaing. RFA was unable to independently confirm the authenticity of the document.

Reported by RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.
Arrest is part of a broader effort to limit interaction between locals and foreign visitors.

Tibetan tour guide Pasang Norbu's hometown in Shigatses Gampa (in Chinese, Gangba) county in the Tibet Autonomous Region, in an undated photo.

A Tibetan tour guide working in western Tibets Shigatse municipality was detained by Chinese police this month as authorities ramp up efforts to limit contacts between local residents and foreign visitors to the tightly controlled Himalayan region, Tibetan sources said.

Pasang Norbu, a resident of Shigatses Gampa (in Chinese, Gangba) county in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), was taken into custody on March 11 and beaten by police who accused him of running an illegal business, a Tibetan living in exile told RFA.

Pasang Norbus business is legally registered by the official tourism administration in the TAR, and he even paid 18,000 yuan [U.S. $2,827.79] for a permit to run it, RFAs source said, speaking on condition of anonymity to protect his contacts in the region.

Police had ignored his permit, though, and had warned him twice to shut his business down, the source said.

A middle-school graduate aged in his 20s, Norbu was described by sources in Tibet as a very decent person and always friendly with everyone, RFAs source in exile said. He owns seven tour bikes, all in very good condition, and his familys livelihood depends on his tour guide service.

He has a mother named Tsamchoe and his 13-year-old sister Choedon is still in school, the source added.

No information was immediately available regarding Norbus whereabouts in detention or present condition.

Pema Gyal, a researcher at London-based Tibet Watch, confirmed Norbus arrest, also citing sources in the Shigatse area.

Its true that Pasang Norbu was arrested by Chinese authorities in Shigatse, but he is not the only one to have been detained. The Chinese government has recently been increasing its controls on many privately owned Tibetan tourist services and has been holding their owners on unreasonable charges, Gyal said.

Growing pressure

Tibetan tour businesses have come under growing pressure in recent years from Chinese authorities concerned about foreign visitors unmonitored contact with Tibetans who have returned to their home areas to work as tour guides after spending time in India, sources say.

One guide, Kunchok Jinpa, 51, died on Feb. 6, 2021, in a hospital in Lhasa after being transferred in critical condition from his prison, where he had been serving a 21-year prison term for sharing news of Tibetan anti-mining protests in Driru (Biru) county with RFA and other outside media.

He had gone to live and study in exile in India in 1989 and returned nine years later to Tibet, where he was widely respected in his community, sources told RFA in an earlier report.

Tibet was invaded and incorporated into China by force 70 years ago, 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.
In just a couple of hours, 64 mostly unarmed Vietnamese soldiers were killed and nine were captured.

In an unusually bold move, the Vietnam government has commemorated the 34th anniversary of a battle against the Chinese navy in the South China Sea with a ceremony led by the prime minister and a front page editorial Monday in the ruling partys mouthpiece.

Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh made an unprecedented visit to the Memorial for the Johnson South Reef Battle in the south-central province of Khanh Hoa province at the weekend. He paid tribute to the 64 Vietnamese soldiers who were killed in the incident on March 14, 1988. Chinh was the first top Vietnamese leader to lead such a commemoration of the fallen soldiers.

Johnson South, or Gac Ma in Vietnamese, is a reef in the Spratly islands in the South China Sea. In mid-March 1988, the Vietnamese navy sent two transport ships and a landing ship to try to claim some of the reefs in the disputed Union Banks, including Johnson South.

While the Vietnamese soldiers were moving construction material onto the reef and putting up a flag, they came under fire from the Chinese troops. According to China, the Vietnamese opened fire first.

In just a couple of hours, 64 mostly unarmed Vietnamese soldiers were killed and nine were captured, the largest loss suffered by the Vietnamese military at sea since the end of the Vietnam War. Johnson South Reef has been under Chinas control since.

For a long time, the battle was not talked about in public and up to now, is still not included in the school curriculum. When mentioned by Vietnamese state-controlled media, they tend to omit the word China and replace it with foreign forces. Vietnamese leaders have seemingly wanted to avoid offending China, and for the public not to dwell on the command mistakes that might have led to the defeat.

Netizens and activists, however, have been asking on internet forums why the soldiers were not armed and why were they not allowed to fight back.

A screenshot of Nhan Dan daily's frontpage on March 14, 2022. The main article at the foot of the page is an editorial with the headline: Eternal glory to the sea defenders. Credit: Nhan Dan. Front page news

Things have changed this year.

Nhan Dan daily, the Communist Partys official newspaper, on Monday ran three articles on the Johnson South Reef battle and the Spratlys on its front page.

The main article, titled Eternal glory to the sea defenders, condemned the Chinese navy for being a blatant force, ignorant of justice and reason, and said their military action was totally unprovoked.

Another report covered an incense-offering ceremony to commemorate the martyrs on the 34th anniversary of the Gac Ma Battle in Danang.

The top article reported on Prime Minister Chinhs visit to Khanh Hoa province, the administrative headquarters of Vietnams Spratly islands.

Chinh was quoted as ordering the local government to develop the Spratlys into an economic, cultural and social center in the South China Sea.

This is a clear message of maritime sovereignty and self-reliance, said a Vietnamese analyst who doesnt want to be named as he is not authorized to speak to foreign media.

Another political analyst and prominent blogger, Huy Duc, wrote on his Facebook page: This [the prime ministers order] is a strategic step towards setting up our policy fortress to defend Vietnams sovereignty at sea and our islands.

No country can pick its neighbors but a dignified nation would never be imprisoned by geography, Duc said.

Zachary Abuza, a professor at the National War College in Washington, D.C., said that the Vietnamese government is trying to signal resolve, especially as the world is pre-occupied with the war in Ukraine.

I think you also have to look at it in the context of the war in Ukraine, Abuza said.

In his opinion, the Vietnamese government has been overtly pro-Russia and abstained on the U.N.vote against Moscow due to their long historical relations and the fact that they are one of the largest consumers of Russian weaponry.

And yet the [Ukrainian] war should leave the Vietnamese very nervous, Abuza warned.

(President Vladimir) Putins justifications to launch an offensive war on the flimsy basis of having once controlled that territory and historical affinity sets a very dangerous precedent for Chinese aggression in Southeast Asia, in general, and Vietnam, in particular, he said.

China claims sovereignty over all of the Spratly islands, where Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam all have claims.
More than 100 people who were evacuated from a steel plant in the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol have arrived in Zaporizhzhya, the Mariupol city council said, as Russian forces resumed their assault on the complex.

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.

The council said in a statement that the people who arrived in Zaporizhzhya -- a city about 230 kilometers northwest of Mariupol -- were receiving assistance after emerging from weeks in the bunkers of the sprawling Azovstal plant.



Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said 156 people were evacuated. She said several hundred more people remained inside the plant and tens of thousands of women, children, and elderly remain in Mariupol.



"There is no medicine, water, or communication services," she said at a briefing on May 3, adding that the authorities needed to rescue everyone who wants to escape.



The United Nations and International Committee of the Red Cross coordinated the evacuation of women, children, and the elderly from the steel works.

"We would have hoped that many more people would have been able to join the convoy and get out of hell. That is why we have mixed feelings," Pascal Hundt of the ICRC told journalists on a video conference call.



Osnat Lubrani, UN humanitarian coordinator for Ukraine, said that 101 women, men, children, and older people could finally leave the plant, and several dozen more joined the convoy in a town on the outskirts of Mariupol. Some evacuees decided not to stay with the convoy and headed to destinations other than Zaporizhzhya, Lubrani said.



A few women who arrived in Zaporizhzhya held up handmade signs calling on the Ukrainian authorities to evacuate soldiers still holed up in the plant and their relatives and loved ones who are trapped.



UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he hoped the continued coordination with Kyiv and Moscow will lead to more humanitarian pauses that will allow civilians safe passage from the fighting.

WATCH: Current Time reporter Borys Sachalko comes under fire as he accompanies a Red Cross team attempting to evacuate a village that lies between Russian-occupied Kherson and Ukrainian-held Mikolayiv in southern Ukraine.

Despite the calls for additional evacuations, Russian troops began to storm the plant soon after the latest group of people got out, Ukraine's Center for Strategic Communications under the National Security and Defense Council said in a statement on May 3.



According to the Vereshchuk, Russia purposely resumed the assault after some civilians got out.



"This was their plan: to allow some civilians to leave and then continue bombing. However, civilians remain there, there are people who did not have time to get out from under the rubble because the blockages were so heavy that in two days they simply could not lift them physically. We need to continue the humanitarian operation, including Azovstal," Vereshchuk said.

French President Emmanuel Macron also urged that evacuations from the steel plant be allowed to continue.



Macron spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin by phone on May 3, calling on Russia to rise to the level of its responsibility as a permanent member of the UN Security Council by ending its devastating aggression, an Elysee statement said.



The storming of the plant comes days after Putin said he had called off plans for such an operation. Putin instead said he wanted Russian forces to blockade the sprawling plant "so a fly can't get through."

Later on May 3, Russian strikes began targeting the western city of Lviv. The strikes happened just before 8:30 p.m. local time. It wasnt immediately clear what was targeted.



Mayor Andriy Sadoviy wrote on social media that people in the city should take shelter. Train service out of Lviv was suspended.



Sadoviy acknowledged in another message that the attacks had damaged power stations, cutting off electricity in some districts.



The governor of the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine said Russian troops shelled a coke plant in the city of Avdiyivka, killing at least 10 people and wounding 15 more.



"The Russians knew exactly where to aim -- the workers just finished their shift and were waiting for a bus at a bus stop to take them home," Pavlo Kyrylenko wrote in a Telegram post. "Another cynical crime by Russians on our land."

Kyrylenko said 11 more people were killed in the shelling of four towns in the region. The number includes five killed in the town of Lyman and four in Vuhledar.



Kyrylenko said the death toll on May 3 was the highest on a single day since a Russian strike on a train station in the city of Kramatorsk killed 57 people on April 8 and injured 109 others.

WATCH: Ukrainian troops southeast of Kharkiv survey heavy damage to a community cultural center, reflecting on the impact on locals, now all but gone.

Ukrainian officials say the Russian military also struck railroad infrastructure across the country on May 3.



Oleksandr Kamyshin, head of the state-run Ukrainian railways, said the Russian strikes hit six railway stations in the countrys central and western regions, inflicting heavy damage.



The governor of the Dnipro region, Valentyn Reznichenko, said Russian missiles struck railway infrastructure in the area, leaving one person wounded and disrupting train service.

Earlier on May 3, in a video address to the parliament in Kyiv, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced 300 million pounds ($376 million) worth of extra military aid for Ukraine.

Britain has already sent military equipment, including missiles and missile launchers, to Ukraine. The new aid will consist of electronic warfare equipment, a battery radar system, GPS jamming equipment, and thousands of night vision devices.



In his speech, Johnson referred to a 1940 address by World War II leader Winston Churchill as Britain faced Nazi Germany's aggression.

"The British people showed such unity and resolve that we remember our time of greatest peril as our finest hour," Johnson told the Verkhovna Rada. "This is Ukraine's finest hour, an epic chapter in your national story that will be remembered and recounted for generations to come."

"We will carry on supplying Ukraine...with weapons, funding, and humanitarian aid, until we have achieved our long-term goal, which must be so to fortify Ukraine that no one will ever dare to attack you again," Johnson said.

In Brussels, the EU's executive indicated it was prepared to propose another sanctions package to punish Moscow for invading Ukraine. But Slovakia and Hungary will not support sanctions against Russian energy, including on oil imports.



The two countries say they are too reliant on Russian oil and there are no immediate alternatives.

The sanctions will also target the Russia's largest bank, Sberbank, which will be excluded from the global banking communications system SWIFT, unnamed diplomats said.

Fighting also raged in the strategic port city of Odesa and across Ukraine's east. A 15-year-old boy was killed in a fresh Russian strike on Odesa, the city council said.

Ukraine's second-biggest city, Kharkiv, was under shelling, the military said on May 3, while the General Staff said Ukrainian forces were defending the approach to Kharkiv from Izyum, some 120 kilometers to the southeast.



Since Russia launched its unprovoked war on February 24, its troops have failed to completely take over any major Ukrainian city.

On the diplomatic front, Germany's conservative opposition leader traveled to Kyiv on May 3 for meetings with Ukrainian officials, but Chancellor Olaf Scholz made clear that he wouldn't be visiting Ukraine any time soon.

Friedrich Merz, who heads former Chancellor Angela Merkel's center-right Union bloc, visited the town of Irpin, on the outskirts of Kyiv, which has been heavily bombarded by Russian forces.

Scholz refused to go to Ukraine because of Kyiv's refusal to invite Germany's head of state, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, whom Ukrainians accuse of cozying up to Russia during his time as foreign minister.

"It can't work that a country that provides so much military aid, so much financial aid...you then say that the president can't come," Scholz told public broadcaster ZDF late on May 2.

The United States warned that Moscow was planning to formally take over regions in Ukraine's east.



Michael Carpenter, the U.S. ambassador to the OSCE, said Russia is planning to imminently annex the territories of Luhansk and Donetsk in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region, using referendums after failing to overthrow the government in Kyiv.



Russia encountered surprisingly staunch resistance in the north around the regions of Kyiv and Chernihiv, which forced it to redeploy its troops in the south and east, where fighting has intensified in recent days.



Ukraine's east and south are seen as key strategic goals for Russia, allowing it a land link to Crimea.

Separately, Russia's state news agency TASS quoted the Defense Ministry on May 3 as saying that more than 1 million people, including nearly 200,000 children, had been taken from Ukraine to Russia in the past two months.



Defense Ministry official Mikhail Mizintsev said those civilians "were evacuated to the territory of the Russian Federation from the dangerous regions" of Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine, and from other parts that came under Russian control.

No details were provided on the location or circumstances of the moves.

With reporting by Reuters, AP, AFP, BBC, and dpa
Reports that Moscow has asked China for military equipment have raised fresh questions about how far Beijing is willing to go in backing Russia as it faces cutting sanctions and mounting international pressure over its war in Ukraine.

The Russian call for help -- which was reported by the Financial Times and several other major newspapers on March 13, citing U.S. officials -- consists of requests for military hardware and other forms of assistance and has raised concerns that China may help the Kremlin undermine European and Asian efforts to punish it for its February 24 invasion of Ukraine and curb its war against Ukraine.

The officials did not detail the specific equipment that Moscow had requested or the Chinese response, but assistance from Beijing would mark a significant development signaling ardent ties between China and Russia in the face of international condemnation of the Kremlin's invasion and its targeting of civilian areas in Ukraine with rockets and artillery.

The revelations -- which both China and Russia have said are untrue -- come against the backdrop of a series of leaked U.S. intelligence reports surrounding Beijing's relationship with Moscow and in the run-up to Russia's invasion, including that Russian President Vladimir Putin informed Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in early February about his war plans.

The leaked intelligence reports are part of a strategy by Washington to dissuade Beijing from increasing its support of the Kremlin by laying out political, economic, and reputational consequences that China could suffer for backing Moscow more strongly.

"We don't know exactly what Moscow asked for, but this is consistent with a pattern of leaks the U.S. intel community has done over the course of this crisis and those leaks have proven to be credible so far," Alexander Gabuev, a senior fellow at the Moscow Carnegie Center, told RFE/RL. "This is aimed at putting pressure on China to say publicly that it won't sell arms or dual-use technology to Russia."

The reports also come as U.S. national-security adviser Jake Sullivan met in Rome with Yang Jiechi, China's top foreign policy official, on March 14. The talks are part of a follow-up conversation to U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi's virtual meeting in November but will also focus on China's support of Moscow and its position toward the war.

How Far Will Beijing Go?

China has tried to portray itself as an impartial actor in the Ukraine crisis and repeatedly called for a diplomatic solution to the crisis. European and Ukrainian officials have also called for Beijing to play a role in pressing Putin to negotiate, with China even being mentioned as a potential mediator.

But China has so far refused to condemn Russia for invading Ukraine and shown few signs that it is willing to abandon the tight cooperation it has built with Moscow in recent years in the face of Western pressure.

While looking to create some official diplomatic distance between it and Russia recently, Beijing has backed Moscow's narrative of the war through its state-controlled domestic media coverage and promoted Russian disinformation campaigns abroad, including a debunked claim that the United States is developing biological weapons in Ukraine.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said on March 14 that reports that Moscow had asked for military equipment for its campaign in Ukraine were "disinformation" and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also denied them, saying Russia had the "self-sufficient potential to continue the [military] operation."

Andrew Small, a fellow at the German Marshall Fund in Berlin, says that given the extent of China-Russia ties, it's plausible for Beijing to assist Moscow with such a request, but a lot depends on how much of a cost China is willing to pay for such support and what kind of "collateral damage to its reputation" such a move could bring.

"The [United States] is saying with these leaks that they are watching closely and will expose any moves [from Beijing to Moscow] and attach a cost to them," Small told RFE/RL. "That's not something the Chinese have had to deal with before and it's creating more pressure."

During comments to the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee on March 8, CIA Director William Burns hinted at how increasingly brutal tactics against Ukraine have created new tensions within the China-Russia relationship.

"I think [Beijing is] unsettled by the reputational damage that can come with their close association with President Putin," Burns said. "I think they're a little unsettled about the impact [the war has] on the global economy. I think they're a little bit unsettled by the way in which [Putin] has driven the Europeans and the Americans much closer together."

Sullivan has also pointed toward some potential areas of strain between Beijing and Moscow, when discussing earlier leaked reports that Xi was briefed on Russia's plans for Ukraine, although perhaps not informed about the wider scope of the invasion.

"China, in fact, was aware before the invasion took place that [Putin] was planning something, [but] they may not have understood the full extent of it," Sullivan told CNN on March 13. "Because it's very possible that Putin lied to them the same way that he lied to Europeans and others."

Complicated Ties

The U.S.-China talks in Rome are unlikely to yield anything concrete and it's uncertain if the Americans' pressure campaign will succeed in limiting Chinese support for Russia as its economy is in free fall and its military assault has faced stiff Ukrainian resistance.

"What benefit does China have at the moment to throw the Russians under the bus?" Raffaello Pantucci of London's Royal United Services Institute told RFE/RL. "Moscow may not look as strong as it did before the invasion, but it's still on China's side and a powerful actor. Given the more hostile mood in the West towards Beijing, there's little upside right now for China to abandon Russia."

In Rome, Sullivan intends to warn Yang about any future efforts from China to bolster Moscow's war or undercut Ukraine, the United States, and their partners. "We will not allow that to go forward and allow there to be a lifeline to Russia from these economic sanctions from any country, anywhere in the world," he said in the CNN interview.

Beyond the reported request for military equipment, China could also offer some form of economic relief to Russia.

Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said on March 13 that sanctions had deprived Moscow of access to $300 billion of its $640 billion in gold and foreign-exchange reserves. He added that there was international pressure on Beijing -- predominantly from its largest trading partner, the United States -- to shut off more.

While Xi has expressed concern and frustration about the impact of sanctions on global finance and the Chinese economy, Beijing is treading cautiously and so far is respecting sanctions against Russia.

But the Carnegie Center's Gabuev says to expect Beijing to be as active in the Russian economy as it can be while still respecting the sanctions regime.

The oil and gas sector, which so far has not been hit, is an area of interest for China, but Beijing will likely wait for the Russian economy to continue to decline and then make deals that "serve China's economic interests and frame them as assistance."

"Once the Russian economy finds its bottom and it's clear what is permissible and what is not, China is likely to search for more commercial opportunities [in Russia]," Gabuev said.
More than two weeks after Russias unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, the death toll is mounting as Moscows forces pound civilian areas across much of the country. Buzzfeed News correspondent Christopher Miller, who has been in Ukraine since January, joins host Steve Gutterman to discuss.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine has prompted tens of thousands of middle-class Russians to abruptly flee abroad as they stare at a bleak future in their increasingly isolated homeland.

Many say fear of the economic and political fallout from the war and the prospect of men being sent to fight in Ukraine were the primary reasons they decided to leave everything behind and flee the country.

But due to an ever-increasing number of crippling sanctions piled upon Russia, they don't have many destinations to choose from, with many Western countries restricting visas for Russian citizens. Meanwhile, thousands of international flights have been cancelled, as Russian airlines are barred from flying over many Western countries.

"We bought tickets to Tashkent because it was immediately available for a reasonable price," said Marina, who fled to Uzbekistan along with her husband and their three young children on March 3.

Russians are going to countries that don't require a visa, such as the former Soviet countries of Armenia, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan. Turkey is a top destination because of its direct flights, visa-free regime, and a sizeable Russian-speaking community. Those with more financial resources have left for the United Arab Emirates.

Many new Russian emigrees told RFE/RL that they had only a few days, if not hours, to make such a "life-changing decision" and leave. "We bought tickets at 7 p.m. on March 2 for the flight at 2:30 a.m. the following morning," Marina said. "In two hours we packed and headed to the airport with two suitcases."

There has been an overwhelming sense that the situation in Russia -- with stores closing and companies laying people off and foreign goods disappearing from the shelves -- will deteriorate further, and that "it won't get any better or easier" anytime soon, Marina explained.

Rumors of martial law being imposed by President Vladimir Putin in early March caused more panic. Martial law would mean a military mobilization of men, the closure of borders, and various restrictions on people's everyday lives and activities.

"We were afraid that the borders would be closed the very next day. So, we left everything -- our apartment and cars -- and jumped on the plane," Marina said.

Yulia, a Russian citizen who fled to Kyrgyzstan, tells a similar story. "We even forgot to pack some of the most basic things -- like toothbrushes and soap -- because we were in such a hurry," Yulia told RFE/RL.

Yulia and her daughter are now in a hotel in the southern city of Osh. She says there are several other Russian citizens living in Osh temporarily as they consider their next steps.

One of them is Yakov, who left Russia after taking part in anti-war protests. He was among the thousands of demonstrators detained recently by Russian police. Yakov was released after paying a fine of 10,000 rubles (about $105).

Yakov doesn't want to live in Russia under its current government. He said that "the laws are becoming increasingly stricter since the war began" and the authorities have further tightened people's freedoms, which were already restricted.

"Now, one can end up with a 15-year prison sentence for taking part in anti-government protests," Yakov said, referring to a law passed on March 4 that criminalizes spreading "false news" about the Russian military.

Yakov describes himself as a political activist. But thousands of other ordinary Russians -- many of them uninterested in politics -- are also leaving Russia.

New Realities

Russians woke up to a new reality that deprives them of the lifestyle they have been accustomed to in recent years. The new sanctions mean travel restrictions, the exodus of Western companies from Russia, and the suspension of major debit and credit cards, among others.

The ruble immediately dropped in value and tens of thousands lost their jobs overnight after Western shops closed.

The fear of being left on the wrong side of the new Iron Curtain by not being able to travel again was the reason 40-year-old businessman Aleksandr Medvedev decided to leave.

Medvedev fled to Turkey along with his wife and their three children, all under 5 years old. "We left not only for the sake of our children, but for ourselves too, just to be free to do what we can and want to do," Medvedev said. "Besides, I don't want to fight in this senseless [war] and die for it."

The exact number of the new Russian emigres is unknown but some estimates have more than 200,000 leaving the country as of March 12.

In early March, the Russian publication Kommersant quoted the head of the popular online travel agency Pososhok as saying that ticket prices to certain destinations skyrocketed as Russians rushed to buy one-way tickets. "I noticed how people are purchasing tickets en masse, tickets are selling out," Kiril Faminskiy said.

The price of a one-way ticket to Dubai rose from about 40,000 rubles ($360) to 200,000 rubles ($1,800), amid the high demand. Tickets to Istanbul"became five times more expensive," he said.

"Many people I know are emigrating," said Yelena Khanpira, who flew to Turkey with her husband and their child on March 3. "Some two dozen of my friends and acquaintances are leaving."

Khanpira and her husband are planning to stay in Turkey "for a couple of months and look for work." The couple haven't yet decided if they want to call Turkey their new home or move to a third country.

Marina and her husband in Tashkent face a similar dilemma. The young parents don't rule out that their eldest child will start school in Tashkent next year. For now they are keeping their options open. "The only thing we're sure about is that we won't return to Russia until Putin is out of power," Marina said. "He is destroying our country. We made the right decision to leave."

Marina Aronova of RFE/RL's Siberia.Realities and Almira Abidinova and Bolot Kolbaev of RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service contributed to this report
The URL has been copied to your clipboard

The code has been copied to your clipboard.

Kyiv authorities say a Russian shell hit a nine-story residential building in the Obolon district in the early morning hours of March 14. Current Time's Boris Sachalko and Ivan Lubish-Kirdey were on site and spoke with residents of the damaged building.
As the Russian military continues its deadly strikes against Ukraine, a fourth round of talks between the two sides on ending Moscow's unprovoked invasion failed to make progress, but are set to continue on March 15.

The discussions, which were being held via video link after three previous in-person meetings, come as Russia intensifies assaults across Ukraine.

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.

European Union member states, meanwhile, agreed on a fourth package of sanctions against Russia, the office of the French EU Presidency announced on March 14.

The Russian military allowed a first column of cars to escape the besieged Black Sea port of Mariupol, which had been surrounded since the first week of the invasion, but blocked an aid convoy trying to reach the city.

Mariupol has suffered the worst humanitarian crisis of the war so far, with hundreds of thousands of desperate people sheltering in basements without food or water under the relentless Russian bombardment.

Russian forces shelled the capital, Kyiv, killing at least one person, while the Defense Ministry in Moscow said fragments from a shot-down Soviet-made Ukrainian missile ripped through the center of the eastern city of Donetsk, killing 23 people. It released footage of a missile on a busy street and vehicles destroyed by shrapnel.

The claim could not be independently verified.

On the 19th day of the invasion, the fourth round of talks made no breakthrough other than a planned resumption on March 15, with Mykhaylo Podolyak, a senior adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, saying the pause was to allow for "additional work in the working subgroups and clarification of individual definitions."

The diplomatic efforts have raised hopes that Moscow might open the way for more civilians to evacuate even as Russian forces keep up their pressure on the capital and other major cities.

Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said that some 4,000 people were able to evacuate via 10 humanitarian corridors on March 14 but that many more remained in the danger zone.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said suffering in Mariupol was "simply immense" and that the bodies of civilians and combatants remain trapped under the rubble or "lying in the open where they fell."

The fight for Mariupol is crucial because it lies in an area that could help Russia establish a land corridor to Crimea, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014.

Petro Andryushchenko, adviser to the mayor of Mariupol, said on March 14 that a local cease-fire arranged with the Russian forces besieging the city held long enough for the first cars to leave for the city of Zaporizhzhya, about 225 kilometers away.

He said about 150,000 residents had left the city using humanitarian corridors, while some 350,000 residents remained in the city.

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.

"They are living in a dramatic situation right now. No water, no electricity at the moment in some areas," he said. "People collect snow to melt it and use it for drinking and cooking."

Some areas have been completely destroyed and it may not be possible to repair the houses in them. Some people have had to bury their loved ones in backyards, he added.

Andryushchenko also expressed concern that the situation in the city may worsen within hours.

Nine people died and another nine were wounded on March 14 when Russian forces hit a television tower outside the western Ukrainian city of Rivne, local authorities said.

Air strikes were reported across the country, including the southern city of Mykolayiv and the northern city of Chernihiv, where heating was knocked out for most of the town.

Explosions were reported overnight around the Russian-occupied Black Sea port of Kherson.

Russian forces also fired at the airport in the western city of Ivano-Frankivsk, which is less than 150 kilometers north of Romania and 250 kilometers from Hungary.

Local authorities in a district in northern Kyiv said an artillery shell hit a nine-story residential building, killing two people, and a pregnant woman who was injured last week in an air strike on a maternity hospital in the city of Mariupol died along with her unborn child.

WATCH: Thousands of people have fled the town of Irpin near Kyiv, after civilian areas came under sustained Russian attack. RFE/RL spoke to some of the people who remain. (WARNING: Viewers may find the content of this video disturbing)

U.S. President Joe Biden has sent his national-security adviser to Rome to meet with a Chinese official over worries that Beijing is amplifying Russian disinformation and may help Moscow evade Western economic sanctions.

Jake Sullivan met with China's top diplomat, Yang Jiechi, in Rome and "raised directly and very clearly" concerns over China's support for Russia, State Department spokesman Ned Price said on March 14.

Backing Russia in the wake of Moscow's invasion of Ukraine would have implications for China's relationships around the world, including with U.S. allies and partners in Europe and the Indo-Pacific region, Price said at a press briefing.

The White House said in a statement that Sullivan and Yang discussed a range of issues in U.S.-China relations, "with substantial discussion of Russia's war against Ukraine."

Ahead of the talks, Sullivan bluntly warned China to avoid helping Russia evade sanctions. "We will not allow that to go forward," he said. Russia denied it needed China's help.

In Washington, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a letter on March 14 that Ukrainian President Zelenskiy will address the U.S. Congress via video link on March 16.

"The Congress remains unwavering in our commitment to supporting Ukraine as they face Putin's cruel and diabolical aggression, and to passing legislation to cripple and isolate the Russian economy as well as deliver humanitarian, security, and economic assistance to Ukraine," Pelosi and Schumer wrote in the letter.

"We look forward to the privilege of welcoming President Zelenskiy's address to the House and Senate and to convey our support to the people of Ukraine as they bravely defend democracy," they added.

While U.S. lawmakers have backed Ukraine with stiff sanctions against Russia and billions of dollars in aid and weapons to Kyiv, Zelenskiy has repeatedly called for Washington and its NATO allies to set up and enforce a no-fly zone over Ukraine.

Most U.S. lawmakers and the White House are opposed to such a move, saying it would bring NATO into direct contact with Russia's military and thus risk escalating the war.

And in an extraordinary protest, an anti-war demonstrator interrupted the main news program on Russian state TV Channel One on March 14, holding up a sign behind the studio presenter with slogans denouncing the war in Ukraine.

Meanwhile, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres sounded the alarm over Russia raising the alert level for its nuclear forces, calling the move a "bone-chilling development."

"The prospect of nuclear conflict, once unthinkable, is now back within the realm of possibility," Guterres told reporters, and repeated his call for an immediate cessation of hostilities.

President Vladimir Putin last month said that Russia's nuclear forces should be put on high alert, raising fears that Russia's invasion of Ukraine could lead to nuclear war. U.S. officials have said they have seen no reason so far to change Washington's nuclear-alert levels.

Russia and the United States have by far the biggest arsenals of nuclear warheads after the Cold War that divided the world for much of the 20th century, pitting the West against the Soviet Union and its allies.

With reporting by AP, Reuters, and dpa
PDF version [PDF:233KB]

Highlighting 1.5C & 2050 Carbon Neutrality

On Nov. 13, COP26 concluded "successfully" with the adoption of the Glasgow Climate Pact. I enclosed the word "successfully" in quotation marks because there have been a variety of assessments as to what the convention actually achieved. For example, environmental activist Greta Thunberg denounced the summit: "It is not a secret that COP26 is a failure... Two weeks of business as usual, blah, blah, blah!" Prior to COP26, Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain, the host country, enumerated what he aimed at achieving at COP26: (1) securing global net zero by mid-century and keep warming to 1.5C within reach; (2) adapting to protect communities and natural habitats; (3) mobilizing finance; and (4) completing negotiations on the Paris Agreement's rule book. Although incomplete, it may at least be said that these results have been achieved. It is with mixed feelings that I believe COP26 was a success, surpassing previous expectations. Of the above expected outcomes, Britain placed the greatest emphasis on its aim of holding the global average temperature to an increase of 1.5C. The Paris Agreement states: "This Agreement... aims to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change... including by: Holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels" and "In order to achieve the long-term temperature goal... Parties aim to reach global peaking of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as soon as possible... and to undertake rapid reduction thereafter... so as to achieve a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases in the second half of this century." Consolidating the most demanding target of 1.5C from the range of temperature targets provides a basis for aiming to achieve global net zero by 2050, a 45% reduction in global emissions by 2030, phasing out coal power, ending the sale of internal combustion automobiles, and other goals. That is why, at the G7 Cornwall Summit which Britain hosted, it first incorporated into the Summit Communique the 1.5C target, net zero by 2050, transitioning away from unabated coal capacity, halting public financing for coal power abroad, and other initiatives. Britain's next strategy was to align with Italy, the G20 host, to have similar messages reflected in the G20 Leaders' Declaration, but China, India, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and other countries strongly opposed such a move. They argued that attaching particular emphasis on the 1.5C and 2050 net zero goals was almost equal to the renegotiation of the Paris Agreement. China and India, both of which are highly dependent upon coal, pushed back strongly against eliminating coal from their domestic energy mixes, and Saudi Arabia and Russia also followed suit over concerns that elimination of coal might be extended to all fossil fuels including oil and natural gas. The result was that the G20 summit only reconfirmed the temperature targets instituted under the Paris Agreement. Phasing out of domestic coal capacity was not included as a G20 commitment. That is why President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Johnson were disappointed with the G20 outcome on climate. Based on this series of events, I forecasted that COP26 would probably not reach an agreement beyond what was agreed to at the G20 summit. However, the Glasgow Climate Pact adopted at COP26 includes, among other commitments, (1) a resolution to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5C; (2) recognition that limiting the rise in temperature to 1.5C requires reducing global emissions by 45% by 2030 relative to the 2010 level and to net zero around mid-century; (3) consequently, the 2020 decade is regarded as the "critical decade" and calls on COP27 to adopt a work plan to scale up the level of ambitions during this period of time; and (4) a request for the parties to revisit and strengthen their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) as necessary to align with the Paris Agreement temperature goal by the end of 2022. This clearly surpasses what was achieved at the G20 Summit. Predictably, China, India, Saudi Arabia, and other nations reacted negatively to broaching the 1.5C target. G20 is a forum where clashes arise between G7 nations and emerging countries. However, COP offers a strong voice not only to major economies but also to vulnerable, less-developed nations and small island nations that are susceptible to the damage wreaked by climate change, as well as the influence of environmental NGOs inside and outside of the chambers. China, India, and other emerging nations are concerned about the effect that the 1.5C target will have on their economic growth. Resource-rich nations are worried about the effect on their fossil fuel exports. On the other hand, small island nations and less-developed nations anticipate that raising the temperature target hurdle will increase the need for assistance for climate change adaptation as well as loss and damage due to its effects. During the informal stocktaking plenary by the COP26 president, massive pressure to conform emerged. The plenary erupted into great applause whenever strong support for the 1.5C goal was expressed. Britain succeeded in leveraging that conference sentiment to push the 1.5C goal to the forefront. In addition, the agreement includes the wording "...to accelerate the... phasedown of unabated coal power and phase-out of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies." At the United Nations General Assembly in September, President Xi Jinping announced that China would not build any new coal-fired power projects abroad. That is why the G20 included in its message, just as the G7 had, a halt to public financing for new coal capacity abroad. Despite that, the COP26 agreement extends to domestic coal capacity. The original proposal was worded "phase-out coal," which was much broader in scope than the electricity sector alone. Encountering strong opposition from China, India, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and other nations, just as with the 1.5C target, the wording was modified to "phase-out of unabated coal power." However, even at the final stage of the convention, India, China, South Africa, and other nations were still not satisfied. India argued that "inexpensive and stable electric power for poor people is the top priority for countries." Considerations were added that revised "phase-out" to "phasedown" and included the wording "while providing targeted support to the poorest and most vulnerable in line with national circumstances and recognizing the need for support towards a just transition." Even though the European Union, small island nations, and other countries rallied in unison against this, they accepted it reluctantly from the standpoint of passing a package that would achieve an overall consensus. Nevertheless, it deserves attention that wording targeting specific energy sources was included for the first time in the Paris Agreement and related decisions. In this way, the 1.5C target was strongly highlighted and the formulation of a very ambitious work plan in line with that was incorporated. Together with the coal phasedown, while toned down from the original proposal, the Glasgow Climate Pact is lauded by environmentalists as a historic agreement.

Heavy Consequences of COP26

While Britain's diplomatic skill in working out an agreement beyond the line agreed at the G20 deserves accolades, I cannot simply be jubilant. It is because Britain's strong push of the 1.5C target and net zero in 2050 has significantly altered the nature of the Paris Agreement, which was established while striking a delicate balance between the top-down approach of setting temperature targets for the entire world and the bottom-up approach where each country sets targets according to its specific national circumstances. Aiming for global net zero by 2050 will likely create a fierce battle between developed and developing nations over limited carbon budgets through the year 2050. Already India has argued that if developed nations strongly push global net zero by 2050, they should achieve net zero much earlier than 2050, go into negative emissions thereafter and give carbon space to developing nations. It has also contended that if developed nations are demanding that developing nations raise their NDCs in order to ultimately achieve net zero emissions, they should substantially increase financial flows to developing countries to $1 trillion annually. While the world is significantly off track from the 2C pathway, Europe and the United States pushed through a further ambitious target related to 1.5C. This will likely come back to haunt developed nations over the coming decade in the form of incessant pressure from developing nations calling on them to achieve carbon neutrality much more rapidly and to significantly increase assistance to developing countries. The agreement calls for NDCs to be strengthened in line with the Paris Agreement temperature goal and be submitted by the end of 2022, but it is very unlikely that China and India will revise their targets. Both nations, which have embraced the 2060 and 2070 net zero targets, will no doubt argue they are respecting the Paris Agreement provision of "net zero in the second half of this century." Rather, as the host country of the 2022 G7 Summit, Germany, which has the Green Party in the coalition government, could propose that G7 nations move forward the 2050 net zero target and further raise 2030 NDCs with a view to urging China and India to follow suit. The argument over coal phaseout is likely to resurface with certain target years. This could further extend to the phaseout of all fossil fuels. Such a discussion is completely divorced from the reality of the energy landscape. A major cause of the energy crisis, which is overwhelming Europe and spreading to Japan, is that supply has not kept up with the increase in energy demand generated by the economic recovery. A significant cause of that imbalance is the stagnation in upstream investment in petroleum and gas. Meanwhile, in the COP world, the US and EU nations have put their names on the joint declaration to end public financing for the fossil fuel sector. This could further stagnate upstream investment, resulting in tightening of energy supply in the future as well. The environmental fundamentalism originating in Europe has been demonizing coal and resulted in the global rise in gas demand. While the Biden administration is prohibiting domestic oil production in federal lands, it has called on OPEC and Russia to ramp up production. While Britain is at the forefront of coal bashing, power shortfalls due to very weak wind and skyrocketing gas prices obliged it to mobilize old coal power plants in order to maintain power supply. These are contrary to the climate narrative, which is calling for the phaseout of fossil fuels. This shows that when secure and affordable energy supply, as the most fundamental policy requirement, is at risk, the climate agenda could easily be set aside. The Paris Agreement has substantially changed global awareness of climate change, and in fact many people  perhaps even most  would say they are concerned to some degree about climate change. However, the crucial test is how much they are willing to pay to tackle the issue. A survey conducted by Chicago University and AP in 2018 found that seven out of 10 Americans thought climate change is happening, and that some 60% said climate change is mostly or entirely caused by humans. On the other hand, while 57% would support a proposal that would add $10 to their annual electricity bills to combat climate change, a striking 67% would oppose policies that increased their own yearly costs by $120 or more. Obviously, there are limits to willingness to pay, and these limits are very much lower than would be required to meet the relevant climate targets. The International Energy Agency's recent report Net Zero Emissions by 2050 assumes a carbon price of $75/tCO 2 in 2025 and $130/tCO 2 in 2030. This implies that citizens of the US, where per capita emissions are about 16 tCO 2 per annum, would have to shoulder an additional cost burden of more than $1,000 per year in 2025. This does not seem likely to be politically viable. It seems clear, then, that there is a wide gap between the public's expressions of general concern about climate change and their actual willingness to pay. Furthermore, that willingness to pay is far lower than the required level of carbon pricing consistent with meeting the 1.5C target. This gap will, naturally, be still greater in developing countries.

Eco-Fundamentalism as Grist for China's Mill

We should also recognize that China is acting craftily amid the surge of eco-fundamentalism in global climate politics. By setting a carbon neutrality target for 2060, 10 years later than that of other developed countries, China has secured room for maneuver, and as soon as the failure of the carbon neutrality targets in developed countries becomes evident, China will criticize them and procrastinate over its decarbonization target. Chinese companies are the principal beneficiaries of the green agenda, holding 70% of the global solar market, and representing seven out of the 10 largest wind turbine manufacturers. The trend towards electric vehicles (EVs) is a particularly advantageous development for China, sweeping away the decades of accumulated technological advantage in internal combustion engines of its major international competitors, and providing a short-cut to automobile power status. Dependence on Middle Eastern oil has long been the Achilles' heel of global energy security, but a shift towards renewables, battery storage and EVs could cause a different risk, namely growing dependence on China for fundamental strategic minerals and the high-value components manufactured from them. Phasing down of fossil fuels use in developed countries will result in lower procurement cost of fossil fuels to China, while at the same time increasing energy costs in developed countries themselves, delivering competitive advantage to China. China's plans for a regional and then a world electrical power grid raises security concerns around cyber-attacks and politically motivated disconnections. Whether the world can succeed in meeting the 1.5C target or not is critically dependent on Beijing's course of action. Some believe that developed countries can prevent Chinese free-riding by taking coordinated actions, such as the Carbon Border Adjustment Measures (CBAMs). In practice this will be very difficult to achieve. Creating an explicit carbon price in the form either of emissions trading permits or a carbon tax will be almost impossible in the US given the current Congressional situation, and China, India and Russia will be united in opposition and will threaten retaliation. Germany, which is extremely dependent on exports to China, is already referring to the idea of a "carbon club," comprising the EU, the US, Japan and China, which would be exempt from the CBAMs, thus defeating the object of preventing Chinese free-riding. The problem appears to be insoluble. The divided and acrimonious world that is being created by a battle over limited carbon space will permit China to further enhance its global economic presence and influence while the developed, democratic world becomes economically, politically, and militarily weaker. This is a particular concern for Japan, which is feeling an increasing security threat from China.

Japan's Carbon Neutrality Challenges

Japan faces great challenges in its pursuit of carbon neutrality. Since the world entered the implementation phase of the Paris Agreement in 2020, countries have been increasingly under pressure to announce their 2050 carbon neutrality goals and update their NDCs for 2030. Last October, former Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga announced that Japan would aim to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. In July 2020, three months before Suga's announcement, Japan entered a process of formulating the Sixth Strategic Energy Plan, which seeks to introduce a new energy mix that will underpin its new NDCs. Japan's previous NDCs formulated in 2015 pledged a 26% reduction of GHG emissions from 2013 levels by 2030. Under this target, Japan's total power generation was made up of a 44% share of non-fossil fuels (2224% from renewables, 2022% from nuclear). This energy mix fulfilled three requirements: restoring energy self-sufficiency to around 25% (surpassing pre-2011 Fukushima disaster levels), lowering electricity costs and setting a GHG reduction goal that was comparable with other developed countries. This NDC was designed to reduce fossil fuel imports and accelerate the adoption of renewable energy through Japan's Feed-In Tariff (FIT) policy. The 2030 target was formulated based on a bottom-up approach. The 2030 GHG emissions target was to be pursued with certainty, as it was calculated against existing policies and technologies. On the other hand, the 2050 goal committed Japan to an 80% reduction in GHG emissions and was regarded as a "vision" or "aspirational direction" amid multiple uncertainties based on a top-down approach. The differentiated use of the words "target" and "goal" further reflect the nature of these approaches. Despite this, raising the 2050 goal from an 80% reduction to carbon neutrality has almost eliminated these differences. At the 2021 Leaders' Climate Summit hosted by the US in April, Suga announced that Japan would aim for a 46% reduction from 2013 levels by 2030 and continue strenuous efforts to meet a 50% reduction. This target is not based on a bottom-up approach. At the time of this pledge, discussions of a new energy mix were still underway. The Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) allegedly advised Suga that the new target should be lower than a 40% reduction, judging from progress towards Japan's previous target. Still, Suga and Environment Minister Shinjiro Koizumi insisted on a figure close to 50% for the sake of "consistency" with Japan's 2050 carbon neutrality goal. They must have felt pressure from the US and Britain as the COP26 host. In other words, Japan's bottom-up approach was replaced by a top-down approach. This implies that the 2030 target  set simply by linear back-casting from the 2050 goal  has come to be characterized by its aspirational, visionary nature. The non-binding nature of the NDCs may have pushed Japan's back. In July 2021, METI proposed a draft of the Sixth Strategic Energy Plan with a new energy mix in 2030 where non-fossil fuels will account for 5660% of Japan's total power generation (3638% from renewables, 2220% from nuclear). Compared with the previously proposed energy mix, the share of renewable energy was substantially raised, while the share of nuclear was maintained. In addition, projected total power generation in 2030 was lowered from 980 GWh to 870 GWh. These figures have been criticised as "playing a mathematical game" and their feasibility is highly questionable. A higher share of renewables will increase the cost of FIT subsidies from 4 trillion yen ($35 billion) to 6 trillion yen ($53 billion), not including the additional costs of integrating intermittent renewable energy sources into the power system. The majority of flat areas suitable for solar power plants have already been exploited. Despite high expectations for offshore wind power, wind conditions in the seas surrounding Japan are not as favorable as those in the North Sea. Restarting nuclear power plants has been slower than expected. Unlike European countries, Japan does not have grid connection with neighboring countries, which makes it more challenging to swallow large amounts of intermittent renewable power generation. Japan's energy costs are the biggest concern. Japan's marginal abatement cost for reducing GHG emissions is much higher than other developed countries. Japan's industrial electricity tariff is already the highest among major countries, being two to three times that of nations such as the US, China and South Korea. While METI assumes lower fossil fuel costs, partly compensating for higher costs for subsidizing renewable energy, ongoing fossil fuel price hikes make this assumption questionable. The Japanese government needs to regularly review the cost of implementing this energy mix and compare it with its major trading partners. Otherwise, the international competitiveness of Japanese manufacturing industries may be at risk. If Japan is serious about reaching carbon neutrality by 2050, the construction of new and more advanced nuclear power plants is essential. Nuclear energy has its own challenges, namely widespread "nuclearphobia" and soaring initial investment costs. For addressing the latter problem, regulated asset-based policies deserve consideration. The ruling Liberal Democratic Party has vowed to introduce Small Modular Reactors, which could make nuclear installation much more affordable. "Nuclearphobia" is the most challenging part. However, while geopolitical and geoeconomic risks soar  and while Japan is likely to deepen its dependence on solar and wind energy, and inflows of Chinese panels, windmills and batteries  Japan does not have the luxury to rule out the nuclear option. Making energy policy a slave to opinion polls is irresponsible. It is time to mobilize political mettle. This article first appeared on the March/April 2022 issue of Japan SPOTLIGHT published by Japan Economic Foundation. Reproduced with permission.

March/April 2022 Japan SPOTLIGHT
Roanoke Rapids, NC (27870)

Today

A few isolated thunderstorms developing this afternoon under partly cloudy skies. Gusty winds and small hail are possible. High 86F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 40%..

Tonight

Scattered thunderstorms during the evening. Partly cloudy skies after midnight. Low 59F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%.
'Gun Control' has been signed into law by President Biden with the support of turncoat Republicans.

In the middle of the night, the U.S. Senate passed the Violence Against Women Act Reauthorization Act of 2022 (VAWA). Some gun rights groups raised alarm bells when this act passed the U.S. House of Representatives last year with Republican support. At the time, Republicans like Dan Crenshaw said that the anti-gun provisions of the bill would be removed and accused Gun Owners of America (GOA) of fearmongering to fundraise.

Democrats and Republicans led by Senator Jodi Ernst negotiated the bill's anti-gun provisions.

Republican politicians, who previously vowed never to vote for the bill unless the anti-gun provisions were removed, voted yes with those anti-gun provisions fully intact.

The following Republicans voted for this: h/t@JSNMGC

 Barrasso (R-WY)

 Blunt (R-MO)

 Capito (R-WV)

 Collins (R-ME)

 Cornyn (R-TX)

 Ernst (R-IA)

 Graham (R-SC)

 Grassley (R-IA)

 Hyde-Smith (R-MS)

 McConnell (R-KY)

 Moran (R-KS)

 Murkowski (R-AK)

 Portman (R-OH)

 Shelby (R-AL)

 Thune (R-SD)

 Tuberville (R-AL)

 Wicker (R-MS)

 Young (R-IN)

Prominently among those Republicans to betray the Second Amendment was Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith. Senator Hyde-Smith had previously released a statement to AmmoLand News that she would never vote for the bill in its anti-gun version. .....
Rutland, VT (05701)

Today

Cloudy with periods of rain. High 53F. Winds ENE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch..

Tonight

Mostly cloudy. Slight chance of a rain shower. Low 43F. Winds light and variable.
In the last two years, businesses have all faced huge labor shortage and constant increasing input costs, and now they are feeling the burden of mandatory infrastructure fees in Ho Chi Minh City. Although many business associations have spoken out and voiced their views against these fees, no response has come in as yet from City authorities.

Constant price increase

At a recent meeting with the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Industry and Trade, Ms. Tran Hoang Phu Xuan, Vice Chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City Textile and Garment Association, said that the most difficult thing for businesses in the garment industry today is the constant increasing price of raw materials. The price of cotton yarn has increased by nearly 70% in the last two years, and raw material for the textile industry has also increased by 40%.

This constant increasing cost in prices is not just affecting the garment industry, but it is also having a ripple affect across many manufacturing and export industries, who too are facing difficulties when the price of raw material jumps as soon as there is a fluctuation in world price. Wood production and exports are typical examples of businesses under such pressure. Although Vietnam is one of the major exporters of wooden furniture, the country also depends a lot on imported wood materials.

Russia has been the supplier of raw wood to Vietnam, but now the conflict between Russia and Ukraine is creating a supply shortage, which is pushing up the price of wood materials in other markets such as the EU and the US. An alternative wood source is being looked into, but it will take time and it will not be resolved soon. According to experts, the wood industry not only faces difficulties in procuring raw materials but also has to be cautious about embargo on Russian products. At this time, enterprises must consider the proportion of wood products imported from Russia as against products exported to two major markets today, namely, the US and the European Union.

Labor intensive enterprises, such as textiles, footwear, and furniture, have been affected strongly by rising input costs as well as many labor problems, especially with a rising number of Covid-19 cases. Mr. Nguyen Chi Trung, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Gia Dinh Group, said that his business is facing major difficulties due to labor shortage. In the last two years, as the pandemic spread, a large number of workers moved back to their hometowns, but the number of workers returning back to their workplace again amount to only about 80%. Now, the number of people infected with the Covid-19 virus has also increased, forcing businesses to give workers leave of absence of almost seven to ten days, and in some cases even longer. This has caused some departments to work with only about 50% of their work force. Shortage of workers has made some businesses slow down operations and as a result are late in their product deliveries.

The current war situation in Ukraine is now worsening, which is creating a huge shortage of containers at ports, which is subsequently pushing up transportation costs of Vietnamese goods to major markets such as the US and the European Union. The cost of shipping goods from Ho Chi Minh City to the US has increased about ten times more due to the Russia-Ukraine conflict compared to when the market was stable. Expenses have skyrocketed, but output prices could not be increased because of earlier signed contracts with customers, especially those signed until July and August, causing huge financial burden to the exporters. If there is any price increase after the signing of a contract, it must be sustainably low and not increase sharply, because consumers in many countries are also tightening their wallets due to many unpredictable fluctuations across the globe.

Fees need adjustment

Mr. Nguyen Chi Trung said that while businesses are still in difficult situations, support policies such as loans are not yet readily accessible. If from April, Ho Chi Minh City continues to apply the fee for seaport infrastructure, all costs will increase by 10% to 15%, which will also continue to erode profits of enterprises. Mr. Trung said that the Vietnam Leather, Footwear and Handbag Association along with six other associations have submitted a proposal to Ho Chi Minh City to delay the implementation of the seaport infrastructure fees, but there has been no response on this issue yet. Ms. Xuan, representing enterprises in the garment industry, said that at this time, businesses urgently need support and it is necessary to review the fee rates and delay the application deadline to collect fees for seaport infrastructure in Ho Chi Minh City.

According to several enterprises across seven industrial fields, the collection of fee for seaport infrastructure in Ho Chi Minh City is absolutely unreasonable. First and foremost, the application time from June to September 2021 is not justified, as most businesses had to stop operations during this period because of the raging covid-19 pandemic, but still had to continue to pay for running costs such as worker wages, loan interests, inventory and storage costs. From October to December 2021, most businesses could only operate at 30% to 70% capacity due to shortage of workers and lack of raw materials. In early 2022, when enterprises started to resume production, input costs continued to increase. Therefore, the collection of seaport infrastructure fee at this time increased the burden on enterprises.

Although it is nearing the time to start collecting the fees, Ho Chi Minh City has not yet publicly announced the use of these fees for any specific infrastructure projects. However, businesses are continuing to pay a variety of fees related to infrastructure, such as toll fee, road use fee, and BOT fee. Businesses have to pay a rather large fee for transportation when going through BOT stations. For instance, from Khanh Hoa to Cat Lai port in Ho Chi Minh City, there are seven BOT toll stations. Every container that passes through these BOT toll stations has to pay two times, while going and coming. Hence, on an average each year, one seafood enterprise in Khanh Hoa with 3,000 export containers has to pay around VND 7.5 bn for BOT toll station fee. When burdened with this new fee, a medium-sized seafood enterprise outside Ho Chi Minh City will have to pay an additional VND 5.5 bn per year.

Therefore, associations have proposed that Ho Chi Minh City delay the collection of the above fees until the end of December 2022. At the same time, the general fee must be adjusted at VND 250,000 per one 20ft container, VND 500,000 per one 40ft container, and VND 15,000 per ton for liquid cargo. This should also be adjusted for non-container bulk cargo for all import and export shipments, temporary import for re-export, goods in bonded warehouses, cargo transhipment and goods transit as well as the place to register to open the declaration for the shipment.

Thanh Lam
Danvers, MA (01923)

Today

Light rain early...then remaining cloudy with showers in the afternoon. Expect mist and reduced visibilities at times. High 53F. Winds E at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%..

Tonight

Showers early, then partly cloudy overnight. Expect mist and reduced visibilities at times. Low 47F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
Plus, Hannahs Family Center gets a $20K grant, and how coffee lovers can help rescue dogs
The Lemon Grove City Council unanimously voted May 15 to deny a zoning change that would have allowed developer Matthew Philbin to fix up three, run-down buildings to provide housing to the homeless, veterans and seniors.

Philbin, CEO of Anthem Real Estate Ventures, Inc., said he wanted to create a 16-unit multifamily housing spread that would allow for private kitchens and bathrooms where only shared ones exist now. Philbin purchased the buildings at 2555, 2561 and 2572 Crestline Drive for about $750,000. All are currently unoccupied.

Philbin was seeking a zoning clearance, looking to create Crestline Manor. The complex sits on nearly two-thirds of an acre and consists of a one-bedroom cottage, a three-unit triplex and a 12-room home.

Philbin also owns 86 apartment and residential care units in the county and rents out a large portion of those to people who were formerly homeless.

But the City Council agreed with city staff that the proposed project would not comply with Lemon Groves General Plan.

Advertisement

Development Director David DeVries told the City Council that the buildings are considered nonconforming, because the area is zoned for single-family residences.

Before Lemon Grove incorporated in 1977, the buildings were under San Diego County oversight and the county granted their use as a residential care facility.

DeVries said Lemon Groves Municipal Code allows for changes from one nonconforming use to another nonconforming use under certain conditions. He said allowing the buildings to become multifamily apartments would violate current zoning. If it remains being used as a residential care facility, it can stay that way in perpetuity.

The City Council heard testimony from a group of residents who raised concerns about the type of tenants who would be living there. Most of them cited fears of a repeat of what had happened at a home next door, at 2545 Crestline Drive. The property was cited by the city in 2016 for having 22 bedrooms and being used as a boarding house for people who were physically or mentally challenged but still able to live independently. The city ordered that the facility be turned back into a five-bedroom home.

Although DeVries explained that the complex Philbin owns is not connected with the one next door, many residents had a difficult time separating them.

Several formerly homeless persons, a representative from St. Pauls PACE program and another from Independence for Life Choices explained the need for Philbins type of housing in Lemon Grove.

Landlord Matt Philbin looks over a sign the city of Lemon Grove put up explaining what Philbin wanted to do with the interior of three buildings on Crestline Drive. (Karen Pearlman/San Diego Union-Tribune )

Philbin said his plan was to put in individual bathrooms and kitchens so that residents would not have to share those. He stressed to the City Council that none of the footprints of the buildings would change  no additional buildings were coming, no units or beds were to be added.

Had the City Council OKd the zoning change, upgrades would have been mandatory for items such as fire sprinklers, a fire alarm system and ADA accessibility.

Mayor Racquel Vasquez, who toured the site, said she understood the communitys concerns. However, Vasquez reminded residents and the City Council that by not allowing a zoning clearance, the property would stay as it is  with at least 14 beds that could be occupied.

The owner has the option to move forward without any hesitation with the current designated uses of the property, Vasquez said. Im not sure that is what the community wants, to have this property used in its current capacity It can be utilized in a fashion that does not fit the desire of the residents who live there.

With the City Council voting against the changes, the same amount of people will still be allowed to live on the premises, but they will be living with less private space.

Now what I cant do is move walls, Philbin said. I wanted to add bathrooms and kitchens to eliminate interior common areas. So now when a person wants to take a shower or wash dishes, they will have to walk through the hallway and enter a shared washroom or kitchen.

While that may seem like only an inconvenience, Philbin said they are actually roadblocks, and that some groups will not be able to move in because of them. Only certain housing vouchers are OKd by the government and other organizations for dwellings that dont offer individual bathroom and/or kitchen facilities, he said.

Philbin said military veterans with housing vouchers from the Veterans Affairs Supporting Housing program will not be eligible to rent the majority of the living spaces.

Developer Ginger Hitzke, who saw two affordable housing complexes come to fruition in Lemon Grove in this decade, said she was disappointed in the city for not allowing the changes Philbin had in mind.

She said the city should have encouraged Philbin to look for a conditional-use permit instead of leading him down a dead-end path for a zoning clearance.

The city missed an opportunity to create permanent, supportive housing, Hitzke said. It would have cost them nothing if they had worked out some sort of covenant with (Philbin) and it would have given them control. It is seriously disappointing adhering to these old land-use laws as if they were laws from god or physical laws from the universe. They do have a right to deviate from them.

karen.pearlman@sduniontribune.com
Ray Chavez, the nations oldest surviving veteran of the attack on Pearl Harbor, died Wednesday at the age of 106.

Kathleen Chavez, who had been her fathers live-in caregiver for more than 20 years, said he passed away peacefully in his sleep between 3 and 6 a.m. Wednesday. His health had declined in recent months and he was on hospice care when he passed.

A memorial Mass for Chavez will be held at 10:30 a.m. Dec. 13 at St. Michaels Catholic Church at 15546 Pomerado Road in Poway. A burial will full military honors will follow at Miramar National Cemetery in San Diego.

Kathleen also said that she will be flying to Oahu in her fathers honor for the 77th annual Pearl Harbor memorial on Dec. 7 as a guest of the Spirit of Liberty Foundation. Chairman Richard Rovsek is planning a wreath-floating service in Rays honor.

Chavez surged into national prominence three years ago when fellow Pearl Harbor veterans recognized him as the oldest survivor of the 1941 Japanese attack that ushered the U.S. into World War II.

Advertisement

At its peak, the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association had 58,000 members. Today, there are fewer than 200, according to Stu Hedley, 97, who heads the associations now-10-member San Diego chapter.

Ray Chavez was a very active member for years and I admired the man, said Hedley, 97, a retired Navy chief petty officer who served on the USS West Virginia at the time of the attack.

Because of his senior position among Pearl Harbor vets, Chavez was a frequent guest at commemorative events around the country, including a visit to the White House last Memorial Day weekend.

The soft-spoken Chavez often said he was overwhelmed by the media attention but he was proud to represent his country.

Ray was the epitome of the greatest generation, said Richard Rovsek, a trustee of the nonprofit Spirit of Liberty Foundation in Rancho Santa Fe, which underwrote many of Chavezs trips over the past six years. He was always proud to be an American and proud of the military.

Oldest Pearl Harbor survivor Ray Chavez turns 105 years old.

Chavez was born in San Bernardino in 1911 and grew up in San Diegos Old Town and Logan Heights communities, where his large family ran a wholesale flower business.

In his early 20s, he married and had a daughter. In 1938, at the age of 27, he joined the Navy and was assigned to the minesweeper USS Condor at Pearl Harbor.

At 3:45 a.m. Dec. 7, 1941, Seaman 1st Class Chavezs crew was sweeping the east entrance to the harbor when they spotted the periscope of a Japanese midget submarine. After depth charges were dropped to sink the sub in 1,500 feet of water, the rest of the morning passed uneventfully.

He told the Union-Tribune that he was asleep at home in nearby Ewa Beach when the Japanese bombing raid began at 8:10 a.m.

My wife ran in and said, Were being attacked and I said, Whos going to attack us? Nobody. She said that the whole harbor was on fire and when I got outside I saw that everything was black from all the burning oil.

He spent the next nine days on continuous duty in and around Pearl Harbor and said the scenes he witnessed left deep emotional scars.

Photos taken of Ray Chavez during his years in the U.S. Navy from 1938 to 1945. The Poway Navy veteran was the nations oldest surviving Pearl Harbor veteran until his death Nov. 21, 2018, at the age of 106. (Howard Lipin / San Diego Union-Tribune)

Over the next four years, he rose to the rank of chief, serving on transport ships that delivered tanks and Marines to shore in eight Pacific battles. Although he wasnt injured during the war, he retired from the Navy in 1945 with psychological wounds from the carnage he witnessed.

He said that after a couple of the battles he saw, he started to shake, Kathleen said. First it was his hands, then it was his arms. By the time the war was over, his whole body shook.

During his exit physical from the Navy, a doctor wanted Chavez to spend some time recovering in a mental health clinic, but he feared it would impact future job opportunities. He declined the offer and moved back to San Diego, where he got a job at a nursery. After two years working outdoors in the fresh air, he got better, Kathleen said.

In the 1950s, he and his wife, Margaret, suffered an unimaginable blow when their daughter, son-in-law and 18-month-old granddaughter were killed in a car accident.

To mend their broken hearts, they adopted 5-year-old Kathleen from a San Diego orphanage in 1957. She, too, served in the Navy, from 1974 to 1991 and was recognized as the Navys first woman jet engine mechanic. She had lived with her father since her mothers death in the mid-1980s.

Chavez, an avid reader and traveler, spent 30 years as a groundskeeper at UC San Diego. Then he ran his own landscaping and grounds-keeping business in the Poway area until he finally retired at age 96.

Poway Mayor Steve Vaus described Chavez as a beloved hometown figure.

Poway knew Ray not only as the oldest Pearl Harbor survivor but one of the last of the greatest generation, Vaus said. And though he was a humble hero, he was still idolized and fawned over more than anybody else ever in Poway.

When he was 101, Chavez fell and broke his arm and his health and weight declined. Kathleen signed him up with personal trainer Sean Thompson, who she said extended her fathers life by several years by getting him back in shape.

Kathleen said her father never spoke about his Pearl Harbor experiences until 1991, when he was invited to attend the 50th anniversary memorial in Hawaii.

It was such a moving experience for him, that he and Kathleen went back to the Pearl Harbor events more than a dozen times.

We went last year and if he was still alive, we were going back again next month, Kathleen said. I think he enjoyed the experience but he never saw himself as any different from the other men he served with. Hed always say, Im no hero. I just did my job.

Chavez was the child of Mexican immigrants and Kathleen said her father experienced some racism and discrimination as a high school student and in the Navy. But he remained a patriotic citizen.

From the age of 21, he voted in every election, mostly for Democratic candidates. He told Rovsek that the only Republican he ever voted for was Dwight D. Eisenhower, an Army veteran.

Chavezs political leanings caused a minor kerfuffle last May when he was invited to meet President Trump at the White House, Kathleen said. The night before his Oval Office visit, Chavez was interviewed at his hotel by a CNN reporter and said on video aired nationally about Trump: I didnt vote for that guy.

Nonetheless, Chavez charmed the president the following morning and Trump later praised him during a public Memorial Day service.

The crowd just stood up and erupted, said Rovsek, who escorted the Chavezes to Washington, D.C. A White House source told Rovsek on Wednesday that President Trump is planning to honor Chavezs memory in the coming days.

On Dec. 7, Hedley will host the local Pearl Harbor Survivors Associations annual memorial service aboard the USS Midway Museum. Chavez, and five other local members who passed this year, will be honored with a two-bell ceremony.

Kathleen said she wont be able to attend the local Pearl Harbor memorial service because she will be flying to Oahu, as a guest of the Spirit of Liberty Foundation, to attend the 77th Pearl Harbor anniversary memorial in her fathers honor. Rovsek is arranging a wreath-floating ceremony for Chavez in Pearl Harbor.

Rovsek described Chavez as a man of few words, but he did say Chavez was troubled by the state of politics in the U.S. today.

He said to me, cant we just keep America together? Why are we so divisive. In my life time, Ive never seen the divisiveness I see today. It made him sad, Rovsek said.

Kathleen Chavez said the public is invited to attend her fathers memorial mass at St. Michaels parish. In lieu of flowers, she suggests donations be made to VFW Post 7907 by calling (858) 257-3412 or visit vfw7907.com/.

pam.kragen@sduniontribune.com
The San Marcos Unified School District board tentatively passed a $227 million budget Tuesday, narrowly avoiding anticipated deficits for the 2018-19 school year.

The school district, which serves about 20,000 students in North County, originally expected to run a deficit of more than $17 million for the coming school year. However, increases in state education funding helped stave off that shortfall. The district made spending cuts in recent months, and drew on other funds to close the remaining gap between revenue and expenses.

The budget approved Tuesday projects that San Marcos schools will spend about $227.3 million in the 2018-19 school year, and bring in revenues of $220.5 million. The balance of about $6.8 million comes from district reserves, and from one-time state funds, said Assistant Superintendent for Business Services Mark Schiel. That will leave the district with a balanced budget, but with little left over.

We will have our required 3 percent minimum reserve, but there will be nothing above and beyond that at the end of next school year, Schiel said.

California state law requires districts to maintain reserves of at least 3 percent, Schiel said, but the average reserve for Unified School Districts is about 17 percent. If a school district falls too far below the requirements for maintaining balanced budgets and adequate reserves, the County Office of Education may step in to offer support, and intervene directly in spending decisions and labor agreements, according to the state Legislative Analysts Office.

Advertisement

If a district remains in the red, it may lose the authority to govern itself, and be placed under control of the State Superintendent of Education. To avoid that, San Marcos school officials are planning for potentially steep cuts in coming years, while lobbying for state legislation to boost school funding further.

In the 2013-14 school year, Gov. Jerry Brown and the state Legislature adopted a new funding formula called Local Control Funding Formula, which provided base funding for each student, plus additional money for low-income students, English language learners and foster youth, who typically need additional services.

The state planned to phase in the new funding formula over multiple years, and in its compromise budget this spring, it added $3.67 billion for schools, Schiel said. That hike, along with increased enrollment in San Marcos, translated into an additional $10.8 million over the districts 2017-18 budget.

However, increasing costs of special education, transportation, energy and health care have caused school expenses to surge, even as the state ramps up funding, officials said.

Local contributions to the California State Teachers Retirement System (CalSTRS) have also climbed. As the state shifted responsibility for those payments to employers, districts shares of pension costs have risen, and will nearly double from last year to 2024-25, according to the California School Funding Coalition. Retirement costs for other school staff are also climbing.

The districts pension contributions for teachers rose to 8.25 percent in 2012-13, but will nearly double to 16.28 in 2018-19, Schiel said. For classified school employees such as custodians, bus drivers and nutrition workers, the districts share of contributions to the state CalPERS pension fund will climb from 11.417 percent in 2012-13 to 18.06 percent in the coming school year.

Moreover, San Marcos labor agreements have long included a clause that guaranteed that all employees receive raises that ensure they are in fourth place in the county, compared to salaries at all other unified school districts in San Diego. Those pay hikes are issued on top of the cost-of-living increases provided through the Local Control Funding Formula. Salaries and benefits currently represent 89 percent of San Marcos total spending  or $186 million out of $220 million.

The Legislative Analysts Office has cautioned about the escalating costs of school payroll.

Given employee costs are the largest component of a districts budget, bargaining agreements that increase district costs at a faster rate than school district funding are particularly problematic, the office stated.

The districts pay guarantee will be under review during ongoing negotiations with the districts teachers union, the San Marcos Educators Association, as well as its classified employees union.

How do we fairly compensate our employees, within the parameters of the funding we are given? Superintendent Melissa Hunt said. We value our employees, we want to attract and retain the highest quality teachers and staff members we can, within the financial constraints we have. Were not alone in that challenge.

Unlike other North County school districts including Oceanside and Escondido Union, which have seen the number of students decline in recent years, San Marcos has growing enrollment, and receives additional state money for those new students.

But with fewer English learners, foster youth or socio-economically disadvantaged students than some other districts, San Marcos receives a lower per pupil funding than other districts in the region. San Marcos gets $8,271 per student, compared to the county average of $8,987 per student, the district stated. By comparison, Oceanside Unified School District receives $9,115 per student, and San Diego Unified gets $9,568.

To trim expenses, officials will consider cost cutting measures including increasing class sizes to reduce payroll costs, eliminating some administrative positions, returning some teachers from special assignments back to classroom positions, and eliminating a training program for new teachers.

The school board will formalize its vote on the new budget at its meeting on Tuesday, June 26.

deborah.brennan@sduniontribune.com Twitter@deborahsbrennan
San Marcos Unified School District issued layoff notices to 67 teachers and seven administrators.

Valley Center-Pauma Unified School District issued layoff notices to 30 teachers.

Layoffs in both districts are aimed at balancing school budgets.

San Marcos Unified School District issued pink slips to employees who may be laid off because of funding shortages, school officials said, while Valley Center Unified School District has notified 30 teachers that their positions could be cut.

At its board meeting March 6, the San Marcos Unified School District Board voted to issue layoff notices to about about 87 teachers and seven administrators to help balance its books. At the same meeting, however, the school board approved an early retirement program for teachers that allowed it to reduce teacher layoffs to 67, said Henry Voros, assistant superintendent of human resources for the district.

Thats still too many teachers to lose, Voros said. The district has 20,939 students, and employs 1,097 teachers, so cutting 67 positions would reduce its teaching staff by about 5 percent, with potential corresponding increases in class sizes.

It is absolutely gut-wrenching, because we have so many employees that serve this district and students and community with fervor and excellence, that its difficult to issue even one layoff notice, to be honest, he said.

The district was required to notify employees by March 15 if they may be laid off, Superintendent Melissa Hunt stated in a message posted on the school website. Some of those teachers and administrators could keep their jobs if the state boosts school funding for the next fiscal year. Schools will have a better glimpse of their financial future in May, when Gov. Jerry Brown issues his revised budget for California.

Advertisement

The notices that are issued by March 15 are preliminary in nature, Voros said. They can be rescinded at any time in the future, and that is absolutely the districts hope to rescind as many as possible.

The district has warned that its funding is not keeping pace with escalating costs for employee pensions and other costs. In her letter, Hunt said that some unexpected state and federal funds have helped fill that gap, but the district will likely remain in the red, with shortfalls of about $11 million this year and almost $21 million by 2019-20.

It aims to trim $20 million over two years through labor concessions from its unions and management employees, officials said at previous board meetings. It also plans to cut some teaching positions and increase class sizes.

According to board documents, positions slated for possible elimination at the districts elementary schools include 20 classroom teachers, six physical education teachers and 12 music teachers. Five sixth-grade teachers, five social workers, a school psychologist and 4.5 special education positions may also be cut.

San Marcos middle and high schools may lose seven English teachers, six math teachers, six social science teachers and 14 other positions for classes including science, foreign languages, career technical education and independent study.

In addition, one principal on special assignment, three assistant principals, a special education coordinator, director of the English learners resource center, and communications director could be cut, the district stated.

It pains us greatly to face possible reductions of programs and people we know make a difference in the lives of our students, Hunt wrote.  Nonetheless, it is our duty to the community to ensure the financial health of our district and to live within our financial means.

San Marcos is also negotiating labor agreements with the San Marcos Teachers Educational Association, and its classified employee union, which represents non-teaching employees. San Marcos teachers earn between $39,663 for those in the lowest tier and first year of employment, to $100,274 for those with 27 or more years of teaching experience, according to the districts salary schedule. Officials said they hope to achieve some cost-cutting measures through bargaining talks.

Valley Center-Pauma Unified School District also aims to cut costs through staff reductions, though its $45.5 million budget is still balanced at this time, Superintendent Rod McCowan said. The district enrolls 4,009 students and has 200 full-time teaching positions, he said. It issued 30 layoff notices as a precaution this month, but doesnt expect to let go that many teachers, he said.

We want to offer a rich, comprehensive program, and to do that we couldnt lay off 30 teachers, he said. We will probably do about half of that.

In order to reduce layoffs and maintain school programs, officials will carefully trim costs from each department, McCowan said. And some staff cuts could come from attrition, he said, as employees leave on their own.

We also have had several resignations and retirements, he said. So the actual number would probably be even less. I think the overall number looks bigger and worse than it really is.

Other North County school districts, including Poway, Oceanside, Vista, Carlsbad, Escondido elementary and high school districts, Fallbrook Elementary and Solana Beach, have not issued layoff notices, officials said.

deborah.brennan@sduniontribune.com Twitter@deborahsbrennan
Twice in the last two months, Kendra Riley appeared before legislative committees to implore for the passage of a bill that she feels could ease the burden for parents who endure the heartbreaking ordeal that befell her family in March 2020.
One night when she couldn't sleep, Mary Vincent got out of bed and drew her face. Within an hour, her large, dark eyes were looking back at her, drawn in pencil and accompanied by handsome high cheekbones, firm jaw and generous mouth. She even drew the tiny dent on the tip of her nose.

Considering that she hadn't drawn anything more demanding than a shopping list since childhood, her proficiency was remarkable, but not to her.

"I've always been good with my hands," she said.

True -- except she doesn't have hands.

In 1978, when she was a 15-year-old-runaway hitchhiking down the California coast, she hopped into a truck driven by a man old enough to be her grandfather. He was old enough to be safe, she reasoned. She was wrong. After raping her, he hacked off her forearms and left her to die along a Central Valley highway.

Today she's an artist living in Gig Harbor. She has two sons (16-year-old Luke and 14-year-old Alan), a fierce parrot, a couple of dogs and hamsters, a tank of fish and a 21-year-old boyfriend, Kurt Wright, whom she calls Mr. Right.

Happy with Wright, Vincent is still linked in the public mind with Mr. Wrong. Extreme cruelty makes criminals famous, and this one is famous for more than cruelty.

He's also famous for the break he got from the legal system. Convicted of first-degree rape and attempted murder, Vincent's attacker served only eight years of a 14-year sentence before being paroled for "good behavior."

Remembering his threat to finish the job, Vincent lived on fear's edge until he was arrested in Florida in 1997 for carving up another woman. This time he killed somebody, and this time he was sentenced to death. He died in jail last year from cancer at age 74.

The state of Florida flew Vincent down for the trial. She didn't flinch when asked to identify him but didn't dare take a deep look, either. "I wanted to see his eyes," she said. "Eyes are important. When he was on top of me, I was looking at the ax, trying to stay alive. I asked later if I could look him in the eye, but it didn't happen."

He took her arms, her innocence and cast a large shadow on her life, but one thing Vincent refuses to give him is a name. She never uses it. When he comes up, which isn't often, she calls him "my attacker."

He's the blight she tries to ignore, and that policy carries over into her art.

Now 39, she's entering what she thinks of as her third phase. First she was a victim, then a survivor, and now she's an artist.

As an artist, she focuses on powerfully upbeat women. Using chalk pastels and working in a vein that blends elements of Alberto Vargas' pinups with the decorative intensity of Maxfield Parish, she creates her own version of female action figures. They're delicately made sex symbols that know with absolute assurance how to take care of themselves.

Don't mess with her scantily clad samurai women. Kneeling, one of them looks over her shoulder to cast a cold eye at anybody dumb enough to threaten her. Each hand holds a giant sword. Her grip is light, but her muscles are flexed and ready.

Vincent also draws family portraits on commission, working from photographs. Even when she isn't trying to, she can't help making her subjects look good. Double chins disappear, hair shines and eyes sparkle.

Pointing to a drawing she was finishing on the kitchen table, she said she was proud of the hands. "Hands are where the connection is," she said.

The parrot flew to her shoulder and shrieked. No bigger than a parakeet, its voice is shrill as a police whistle. She reached up and stroked its chest with the metal finger of her prosthesis.

"You're spoiling him," said her son Luke. He likes the two dogs, a white terrier and a black dust-mop mutt, but has reservations about the bird, which he says can bite without warning and doesn't know when to shut up.

Vincent is fond of the bird partly because of its bad temper. What she allows in the parrot she can't allow in herself. "I've never indulged myself in anger and hate. I wouldn't be here if I had."

Her tough times came early. A middle child in a military family of seven children, she left home in a hurry one day when a sister told her that their dad was coming home with one of his migraines and was mad at her. "You better run," said the sister.

"I left home to save my life," Vincent said. "It wasn't to seek wild times. I didn't know anything about the world or the opposite sex."

She lived in the streets, spending nights behind garbage cans and inside unlocked cars. "It was safe to do that back then," she said, without irony. When she hitched the ride that nearly killed her, she was in a tentative, general way, beginning to head home.

"He threw me off a cliff," she said. "I should have broken bones. I should have bled to death. I didn't, and I never passed out. I remember everything. I wanted to give up and go to sleep, but I felt someone there with me, a presence who wanted me to survive. A voice told me to get up and get help, or someone else would die."

Afterward, her parents came to get her but were, in her opinion, never much help. "They couldn't handle it," she said. "They took it harder than me. I'm telling them, 'I need you,' but they couldn't do it. They were more interested in what they felt about what happened to me than what I felt."

After finishing high school in Las Vegas, Vincent traveled around looking for a place to create her own life. She found it in Gig Harbor. She likes the people, working-class like herself, and she likes the view of the wide water, the ever-changing gray of the sky and the sense of forest creeping in around the edges of the town.

"I didn't have a family, so I wanted to make one," she said. "I remember being 4 years old and somebody asking me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I said, 'I want to be mother to the world.' When I became a mother, I really had something big to live for."

She didn't get to enjoy it for long. After her attacker got out of jail, she froze up inside. Afraid to stay in one place too long, she went through a series of bodyguards and ended up living in a deserted gas station.

Although she mourns for the woman who died, the arrest and death of the man responsible has given her a "tremendous feeling of freedom."

The nightmares are still there. She's still afraid to go to sleep and can't sleep long. "I've broken bones thanks to my nightmares. I've jumped up and dislocated my shoulder, just trying to get out of bed. I've cracked ribs and smashed my nose. Every day I pray to God to make a space I can breathe in, and every day God gives it to me."

Here's what she gave herself: Her prosthesis arms are the cheap kind, with metal fingers that moved stiffly in one direction and not side to side. Using spare parts from broken-down refrigerators and old stereo systems, she modified them into the up-to-date model she wears today. Her new fingers turn in all directions.

"I like to tinker," she said. "So did my grandfather. He was an artist, too. I guess I get it from him."

He was not a pool shark. She surprises people when she takes out the cue and lines up the ball. Under 5-foot-4 and barely 100 pounds, she doesn't look as if she'd be competitive in the sport Minnesota Fats made famous, but she is. Friends who can't bear to lose don't play her.

"I focus on where I want the ball to go and I do the math, the angles and the ricochet," she said. "The rest comes naturally."

Bowling comes naturally too, after she designed her own system of holding the ball.

In Gig Harbor, nobody gawks when they see her at the lanes unscrewing her metal hand and replacing it with one that has a form core. They're used to her. She presses down and the core expands inside the ball, giving her a good grip with a coil spring that assures a quick release. When the strikes pile up, it's nothing special.

"There's all this stuff in the world that's been discarded," she said. "If you keep working with it, it will work with you."

Another thing she gave herself is a mom. She divorced her first husband but hung onto his mom.

"I needed a mom, and I found one. It's my mother-in-law, Pat Platt, who lives nearby. When anyone asks me if I'm close to my mom, I say yes, because Pat's my mom now."

Although she's scraping by on a meager and recently reduced combination of disability and welfare payments (about $600 a month) and a small trickle that comes in from her art commissions, she's hoping eventually to be able to support herself and her boys by art alone.

Right now she's looking for a job, as she's behind on rent and has medical debt from a son's illness. She's also working on designing a card to advertise her services as portrait illustrator. (Single-person illustrations in pencil start at $300, and her framed paintings of power-figure women in chalk pastel start at $1,800. To contact her about the art, call 253-858-1105.)

By midafternoon, the dogs are barking at the front door, demanding a walk. Wright gets her a cape and wraps it around her shoulders. She holds up each of her shapely feet, covered in fishnet stockings, so that he, on his knees, can strap on fancy black pumps, which clasp at the ankle and cost $7.50 "on sale," she said, with triumph.

Down the driveway they run in a light rain, dogs yapping in the lead. She holds the cape over her head with her metal fingers and laughs at the cold.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

For the first time in two years, California kids were permitted to walk into their classrooms without a mask Monday, a moment of celebration for some and worry for others.

While most Bay Area districts opted to lift the mask mandate Monday, not all did. Even in districts where students and staff were allowed to ditch face coverings, some families and staff opted to keep them on.

Berkeley fourth-grader Autumn Vecchiato Winemiller kept her strawberry-covered face mask firmly in place, as did all of her classmates at Ruth Acty Elementary Monday morning.

It feels like Im being introduced to a whole other world, the 10-year-old said. I dont want to be ripping my mask off the second I can. Id rather see how it goes.

In the class next door, however, the teacher and several students went without a mask. In some classrooms, just a few students were maskless, while in others, more than half ditched face coverings.

The decision to make masks optional in schools came as cases, hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19 continued to plummet after the omicron surge.

Across the state, the seven-day average was 8.2 cases and 0.03 deaths per 100,000 people, down from 303 cases and 0.6 deaths in early January.

At schools across the Bay Area, similar scenes played out as staff, students and parents navigate the freedom and associated fears and peer pressure in this next step of the pandemic.

At Raoul Wallenberg High School in San Francisco, the vast majority of students seemed to be keeping their masks on indoors  even in the face of a handful of staff members who had chosen to go without them.

At lunchtime, seniors Aisha Lamha, 18, and Elle Lynch, 17, said they had heard about the new mask choice from teachers but were choosing to still wear their masks indoors, adding that in some ways, its uncool to take it off in class.

Its kind of a political statement, said Lamha. I feel like if you take off your mask then you dont care about COVID, and youre Republican or something.

For other students, keeping their masks on has become both a way of life but also a kind of security blanket, especially after such a prolonged period of isolation and online schooling.

Mask-wearing has kind of helped a lot of people with insecurity and stuff like that, and thats why I think a lot of people are still wearing them, said Matthew Ransom, 15, a freshman. It takes away a social anxiety aspect of school.

Head counselor Katie Baillie was one of the staff members who wasnt wearing her mask on Monday. She said she noticed that being more bare made some of her interactions with kids warmer and more humanizing, even if it would be a while until students felt comfortable taking them off.

School mask mandates have been among the more divisive issues in the education world for months and that has intensified in recent weeks, with protests and petitions calling for the health officials to either lift the mandate or keep it intact through the end of the academic year.

The state authorized public and private schools to let adults and students go without masks as of Saturday, while also strongly recommending they continue wearing them indoors. The easing of the restrictions comes almost exactly two years after schools closed for the first time due to the shelter-in-place order.

The state mask mandate has been lifted in nearly all settings, except in health care, public transit, homeless shelters and similar settings.

At Herbert Hoover Middle School in San Francisco, just a handful of students opted not to wear masks, even as they walked through the hallways to and from class  and passed the whiteboard at the school entrance reminding them that it was their choice.

Most students in one sixth-grade math class said they would continue to wear masks, whether to protect themselves from getting sick or their families from getting sick, but also just because it had become a way of life.

For Quinten Yang, 12, masks are just a new norm for him.

I got used to it, said Yang, adding that if he started seeing other kids choosing not to wear masks, he would feel unsafe being at school.

His math teacher Amy He said that while she had conflicted feelings about the choice to wear a mask at school, she decided to keep it on to let things play out.

The fact that no students have taken their masks off today tells me that I think most of them, or at least their parents, are still concerned about COVID-19 and getting sick, she said. The moment I take this off, Im going to get sick. Maybe not COVID-19, but something.

Private schools were also navigating the change, trying to balance both sides in the debate.

No faculty or staff member should direct students to stay fully masked or to take off all masks when in a classroom or office, Gary Cannon, principal at Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory in San Francisco, said in a note to parents. This change will likely be welcomed by some and be concerning for others.

The majority of Bay Area districts and many private schools lifted the mask mandate as of Monday, but Oakland was among the outliers, keeping not only an indoor mask requirement, but an outdoor one for the next two weeks. Officials there said they would be consulting with labor unions to discuss indoor masking.

The East Bay district, however, was surrounded by schools with no mask mandate, including those in Alameda, Piedmont, Berkeley and San Leandro.

In West Contra Costa Unified, district officials notified families and staff over the weekend that the mandate would be lifted as of Monday.

El Cerrito High teacher Lauren Ryan, whos on the United Teachers of Richmond executive board and is a resource specialist, said she was upset by the short notice and disappointed the district didnt discuss the change with the teachers union before making its decision.

Ryan, who has a life-threatening medical issue, said she messaged her students and families Sunday to ask them to keep masks on in her classroom.

I shared my medical information, which I dont think I should have to do, she said. I just said, Im just pleading with you guys.

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.

So far, all students have come to class with masks on, but she is among teachers in the district offering incentives to those who wear masks. Shes handing out extra raffle tickets for prizes, which she typically gives out for turning in schoolwork. She also plans to give regular mask users doughnuts or other treats every few weeks.

Another teacher in the district was handing out candy to students wearing masks and planned to give rewards in the coming weeks to the class with the highest percentage of mask wearers.

District officials, however, said they were informing educators that such incentives were discouraged.

Back at Acty Elementary in Berkeley, kindergarten teacher Jackie Murillo was among a handful of school staff who opted not to wear masks indoors, although she kept a mask hanging from a chain around her neck to wear in the office or other areas of the elementary school.

We just had a little talk about it in class, she said a few minutes into the school day, adding the message was no judging regardless of ones choice.

They dont know anything but masks, she said of her students, about half of whom still wore them. Its such a hard habit to break.

Acty Elementary Principal Mary Cazden walked around the school Monday morning, taking down MASK UP signs reminding students to wear their masks, saying that whatever teachers, families and students decide will be respected.

Everyone has a different relationship with COVID, she said.

Families, individuals and communities have experienced the pandemic differently, echoed San Francisco school board member Matt Alexander, who said the challenge is to balance the needs of everyone.

I really understand the passion and where people are coming from, and I really respect it, he said, adding he also doesnt want to take on the role of health official. In the end, we just need to be listening carefully to people with another point of view.

In addition to Oakland, Los Angeles, San Diego and Sacramento were also among districts keeping the mandate in place.

Two years into this pandemic, families in Oakland and Los Angeles have to reckon with the fact that their kids still dont get to enjoy an unencumbered educational and social experience at school like kids in Berkeley or Santa Monica will, said Megan Bacigalupi, executive director of California Parent Power, which advocates for parent rights, and an Oakland Unified parent. Whats disturbing about these districts not following public health guidance is that people who have no public health or medical training are making decisions based on politics, not science.

Back in Berkeley, parent Sarrita Min is keeping her two daughters in masks for the time being  except maybe one day a week, when the school tests students and staff.

If all the kids in her daughters classrooms test negative, then it will be maskless Thursday.

Her 10-year-old daughter Phoebe said the idea is scary, maybe a little.

I know wearing a mask is safer, she said. Weve just been wearing them for so long.

Jill Tucker and Annie Vainshtein are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: jtucker@sfchronicle.com, annie.vainshtein@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jilltucker, @annievain
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill into law Monday that will salvage admission to UC Berkeley for thousands of new students next fall, just hours after California lawmakers approved the legislation to free all state colleges and universities from the portion of an environmental law that led to an enrollment cap for the fall at the states premier public campus.

The state Assembly and Senate moved with lightning speed to approve, with no opposing votes, SB118, to remove public college enrollment as a separate consideration under the California Environmental Quality Act, known as CEQA. Newsom signed the bill hours later.

Instead, CEQA will cover each campus long-range development plan  and within that a schools total population, students and employees alike. Key to the bill is that a school will have 18 months to rework its plan if a judge finds that its growing overall population created significant environmental impacts. Only if the problem persisted could a judge order the school to shrink in size.

The law takes effect immediately and nullifies a legal ruling that required UC Berkeley to freeze fall enrollment at 2020 levels  which triggered the rapid writing of this bill from state Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, Assembly Member Phil Ting, D-San Francisco, and other concerned lawmakers.

On behalf of the thousands of students who will benefit from todays vote, I want to thank Californias legislators for their quick and effective response, UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ said in a statement after the Legislatures vote.

The train wreck, as some lawmakers called the UC Berkeley situation, came about after a local group called Save Berkeleys Neighborhoods sued the university under CEQA to get the campus to stop adding new students without providing enough housing for them. A judge ordered a temporary enrollment cap for next fall while the case is being litigated, and the state Supreme Court upheld that cap on March 3.

On Monday, Christ added that the university is trying to remedy its housing crisis. UC Berkeley houses a lower portion of its student body than any UC undergraduate campus, at roughly 22%.

UC President Michael Drake praised the bills passage as providing a more transparent and more predictable process for analyzing and managing the environmental impact of campus populations (and) ensuring students are not harmed because of ongoing policy disagreements.

The state Supreme Court ruling drew national attention this month when the university announced it would have to withhold about 5,000 letters of admission in order to slash next falls in-person enrollment by 2,629 students as required.

We have a 2 million-degree shortfall in the state, Ting told the Assembly before its vote, noting that the Legislature has been directing the University of California to increase in-state admissions. This (court ruling) was a major blow to that mission.

Skinner noted that student housing remains a crisis across all the states colleges and universities, and that SB118 does not fix all the problems.

Several students also spoke up to lawmakers, urging a yes vote. Some declared, We are not pollutants on the environment.

This is an attack on every single student who attends school in the state of California, said Jackson Mills, a UC Davis student. We are not going to stand for this.

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.

Among the few opponents who spoke out against the bill Monday was Phil Bokovoy, president of Save Berkeleys Neighborhoods.

After the vote, Bokovoy called the bill poorly drafted and confusing.

In his testimony Monday, he told lawmakers that more than 10% of UC Berkeley students suffer homelessness during their education, and that more go hungry. We dont want new students to have to live in cars, campers and hotel rooms like they are in Santa Barbara, he said.

The new law also authorizes $50,000 to go to the UC regents for the purposes of this act.

Nanette Asimov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: nasimov@sfchronicle.com Twitter: NanetteAsimov
Mayor London Breed is embarking on a 10-day trip to four European destinations to meet with local leaders and airlines to sell San Francisco to tourists and businesses, a bid to help the city rebound economically from the pandemic.

The mayor is leaving Monday night with officials from San Francisco International Airport and the San Francisco Travel Association, the citys tourism bureau, to try to revive international travel, which is critical to the citys economy, her spokesman Jeff Cretan said.

To do so, she has to battle negative perceptions of the city: viral videos of thieves targeting out-of-state license plates for car break-ins, shoplifters sweeping drugstore shelves, and people sleeping or using drugs on the streets as the city grapples with the opioid overdose crisis have soured San Franciscos image nationally and internationally.

Breed said Monday that on a similar trip last month to New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C., she heard from business leaders that safety was at the top of their mind and assured them the city was deploying more police officers and ambassadors to tourist hot spots. She also said the airport, hotels and rental car companies were working to warn visitors against leaving suitcases visible in their car, for example.

We want them to have a good experience, we want them to be safe, we want them to not lose their valuables and passports, because that is going to have a tremendous impact, Breed said after a news conference Monday at Salesforce Park announcing an upcoming series of events to draw workers and visitors back downtown. If that continues, if the people who commit those crimes continue, then guess what? Our economy will plummet and all of the resources and the programs and things that we do will suffer.

The 10-day tour is Breeds first international trip as mayor, halfway through her first full term. It will take place as shes been praised for the handling of the pandemic that kept deaths in San Francisco lower than other major urban areas, but as the city has struggled to bounce back economically. Prior to the pandemic, the city was dependent on drawing tourists from across the country and abroad to fill hotels, restaurants and its convention center. The emptying out of downtown offices has hurt small businesses that rely on workers and in doing so has shrunk tax revenue, which is essential to funding the citys budget.

Travel to San Francisco International Airport from Europe through December was just 20% of what it was in 2019, said Doug Yakel, an airport spokesperson, so there is still a lot of ground to recover.

Europe is SFOs primary tourism target this summer, Yakel said, since many nations have eased or lifted COVID travel and testing requirements. Along with Breeds visit, SFO plans marketing campaigns across Europe promoting San Francisco. SFO will continue a program offering incentives to new airlines starting service to San Francisco or to airlines that add flights to San Francisco to or from new cities, Yakel said.

In her annual State of the City address last week, Breed acknowledged negative public perceptions  mentioning headlines often in the right-wing media and said that for too long, we took our economic success for granted. She said San Francisco can be the economic leader our state needs ... but we have to work at it.

The citys tourism and hospitality sector is projected to rebound over the next year, but at a slower pace than budgeted, a recent analysis reported. Remote work is leading to lost business tax revenue, although the level of loss is expected to be less than previously projected, the report said.

The mayors trip is paid for by SFO, which is run by the city but has a budget separate from other departments. Officials from SF Travel, which organized the mayors recent trip to sell San Francisco to major U.S. cities including New York and Chicago, will also be joining. The cost of the trip for the mayor and her staff is expected to total $25,000, Yakel said.

Given San Franciscos proactive leadership among U.S. cities during the pandemic, there is a good story for the mayor to share, Yakel said, and we are confident that her attendance on this trip will ultimately benefit not only the airport, but other businesses that rely on air service from SFO.

She will be stopping in London, Brussels, Frankfurt and Paris. The bulk of her time will be meeting with airlines  Air France, British Airways, Air Belgium, Lufthansa and Virgin Atlantic among them  to get ahead of their schedule planning for next year and try to bring more flights to San Francisco.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

Shell be meeting with executives at Britains Heathrow and Gatwick international airports and Brussels International Airport, as well as with other local officials. She will also be talking to Mayor Anne Hidalgo in Paris and doing media interviews in London, Frankfurt and Paris to drum up interest in San Francisco.

SFO was previously a gateway for visitors from Asia, but strict pandemic quarantine restrictions in Asian countries have hindered those trips from bouncing back during the pandemic, Cretan said.

Europe is a real opportunity for us, he said. We need to get out there.

Breed will return March 26.

Chronicle staff writer Michael Cabanatuan contributed to this report.

Mallory Moench (she/her) is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mallory.moench@sfchronicle.com Twitter:@mallorymoench
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

On a Thursday afternoon, Alison Heller arrived at Rockridge Improvement Club in Oakland right when it opened at 4 p.m. But she wasnt there just for fun  she was coming in to refill the bars supply of fentanyl test strips.

We just restocked yesterday, but Im sure they need more, Heller said, as she took the plastic lid off the fishbowl in the bathroom. Sure enough, eight of the bowls 12 strips had already been taken. Heller promptly restuffed the bowl.

Heller is a co-founder of the nonprofit FentCheck, which orders fentanyl test strips from a Canada-based manufacturer, BTNX, and brings them into bars, restaurants and other venues in the Bay Area after adding easy-to-read, printed instructions to each strip and packaging them in a plastic fishbowl.

The test strips are one way that an increasing number of Bay Area business owners  primarily those of bars and restaurants, but even in places such as art galleries and tattoo parlors  are responding to the fentanyl crisis. And many, having had the test strips since the summer or earlier, say that demand is brisk.

To use the strips, people take a tiny fraction of a drug, mix it with water and then dip the strip into the mixture and wait to see if it turns up positive for fentanyl. That way, people intending to use drugs that are not fentanyl, like cocaine or ecstasy, can test to see if its been cut with the dangerous opioid.

Scott Ayers, who owns Rockridge Improvement Club, said demand for the strips is higher than hed thought it would be. His bar receives around 100 test strips a week, with restocks almost every other day.

Its crazy, he said. Some people come in just for the strips.

Stephen Lam / The Chronicle

FentChecks co-founders say the strips are one form of harm reduction, decreasing the chance that a recreational user would overdose after unknowingly consuming fentanyl-laced drugs.

People are going to experiment anyway, Heller said, adding that testing their drugs gives them the opportunity to be safe. Harm reduction is for everybody, and were targeting a demographic that doesnt realize its for them.

The demand for the strips comes amid an increasingly deadly drug overdose epidemic. In San Francisco, about 7 in 10 overdose deaths in the past two years have involved fentanyl.

But fentanyl was very rarely the sole drug found in the system of people who fatally overdosed, medical examiner data shows. And because fentanyl can be lethal in very tiny amounts, even the slightest cross-contamination  intentional or not  could have serious consequences.

Fentanyl test strips havent always been well-received. Heller and her FentCheck co-founder Dean Shold, whos also the chief technology officer for the Alameda Health System, said that some worried that it was enabling and even encouraging drug use, a sticking point in debates around harm reduction as an approach to helping addicts.

For his part, Ayers said he was a little shocked to hear about some of his fellow bar owners keeping the fentanyl test strips in their venues  it almost seems like youre greenlighting it, in a way, he said.

But like other business owners, Ayers, whos worked in bars and as a musician for 25 years, ultimately decided that he might as well face the realities of drug use, especially recreational, in places like bars  something he said has never been uncommon in his years of experience.

Now, after having had FentCheck along with Narcan  the nasal spray that can reverse overdoses  in his bar for a few months, he says its fantastic.

You dont want someone to die in your bar, right? he said, adding that hes never had to use Narcan. Thats much worse for business than anything else.

Stephen Lam / The Chronicle

Jason Lujick, who owns the Legionnaire on Telegraph, was all in with FentCheck when Heller told him about it casually one night when she was waiting at his bar to meet a date. His was one of the earliest bars to start keeping it, and he quickly told his friends in the industry that they should get on board.

Im a huge proponent, he said. Its so low-cost, and it saves lives.

The concept is catching on. Heller and Shold have taken FentCheck to New York, Philadelphia, San Diego, Portland and Reno, and they hope to continue expanding it, even into schools  UC Berkeley recently partnered with the nonprofit to make the strips available on its campus. The two pay for the test strips  which go for around a dollar each  themselves, relying on donations to keep the nonprofit afloat.

Many of the venues involved host fundraisers for FentCheck or provide a donation themselves, Heller said.

Lujick keeps his FentCheck, along with Narcan, at the end of the bar next to the water. That way, if anyone has questions  and they do, he said  they can easily ask the bartenders about it.

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.

Like Ayers, Lujick emphasized that having the test strips available doesnt mean he wants people doing drugs in his bar  one of the questions people frequently ask him when they see his FentCheck setup.

No, I dont want people doing cocaine, heroin or molly in my bar, but theyre going to, he said. If any business owner, bar, owner, restaurant or whatever thinks that people arent doing drugs in their business, theyre out of their minds.

And he said he thinks that many people arent aware of just how dangerous their drugs might be.

The biggest issue here in the last couple of years is that now everythings laced with an opiate that is a hundred times stronger, he said of fentanyl. And people are dying left and right from it, and we have to do something to stop it.

Business owners also said that, since keeping FentCheck strips, theyve noticed that all kinds of customers are grabbing them, either to keep in their purse or pocket for later, or to use that night.

Melissa Meyers, who owns the Good Hop in Oakland, said that some people are surprised to see the strips in her bright, light venue.

Its just that concept that drugs lie in a darker world, she said. The reality is, your neighbor whos clean-cut, and you would never think that they would do something like that, is doing that.

Above all, she said, like the other business owners, she believes its important to give people the opportunity to be safe.

It doesnt hurt us to offer it, Meyers said. Nobodys going to die because were offering the ability to check your drugs.

Danielle Echeverria is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: danielle.echeverria@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @DanielleEchev
Randy Faris/Getty Images

A woman was killed after the vehicle she was in crashed into a tree in Antioch early Sunday morning, according to Antioch police.

Witnesses told police that the victim, described as in her early 20s, was the only occupant of the vehicle that hit the tree in the residential area of Hillcrest Avenue and Laurel Road around 3:00 a.m.
In the mid-1990s, developer Patrick Kennedy approached UC Berkeley with a deal he thought it couldnt refuse.

Kennedy owned a piece of property on Oxford Street, directly across from campus, that was approved for 56 apartments. Kennedy, who was short of cash at the time, was willing to sell it to the university for a bargain price of $500,000. There was some initial interest from UC Berkeleys administration, but after months of going back and forth, the deal fizzled out. Kennedy eventually raised the cash to build it himself. The entire complex leased up before it was sheet-rocked, Kennedy said.

UC Berkeley couldnt get it together to buy it, Kennedy said. At that time they were a bureaucracy that couldnt act nimbly if their lives depended on it.

A quarter-century later, it would not be much of an exaggeration to say that UC Berkeleys life  or at least its ability to grow as one of the premier public universities in the world  depends on whether it can act nimbly to produce student housing as fast as possible.

Over the past month the University of California  and thousands of students  has been the target of a lawsuit filed by Save Berkeley Neighborhoods. The organization argues that UC violated state environmental laws  the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA  by increasing enrollment by 30% over the past 17 years without properly analyzing the impact that the larger number of students would have on everything from traffic to housing costs.

The lawsuit has prompted a flurry of legal maneuverings that has left things very much up in the air. First, the plaintiffs landed a big win when a judge ordered UC Berkeley to freeze enrollment at 2020 levels. That prompted the university to announce that it would cut in-person fall enrollment by 2,629 students, in part by forcing over 1,000 incoming freshmen to spend their first semester online rather than in-person.

Marissa Leshnov/Special to The Chronicle

On Friday, identical bills were introduced in both the state Assembly and Senate that would give the University of California system 18 months to address CEQA-related issues before a court ruling on enrollment growth can be issued. The bills, which will go before the budget committee on Monday for an informational hearing, would be retroactive, meaning that UC Berkeley would be able to welcome its full class this fall.

But whatever happens to the lawsuit, the fact is that the university  and the city that grew up around it  has failed miserably over the past 50 years to build enough housing for its students. Today, just 22% of roughly 40,000 students live in UC Berkeley-owned housing. The result is a student/housing imbalance that is felt by anyone looking for a place to live well beyond the borders of the campus.

Meanwhile, the university and the city are scrambling to make up for past mistakes. From the rolling lawns along the western edge of campus, pile drivers can be heard driving steel deep into the earth for what will be a 775-bed residence hall that will house transfer students, a group that makes up 21% of all undergraduates. Along the western edge of campus, demolition crews are knocking down a retail complex  it housed Urban Outfitters  to make way for an apartment complex with about 120 beds.

And last week the university announced a deal to relocate about 55 unhoused residents currently living in Peoples Park, a UC-owned, 2.8-acre open space that is scheduled to be developed with a pair of dorms big enough to accommodate about 1,100 students. Other projects in the works include a 750-bed complex at University Village in Albany. Construction on that project  which has been vociferously opposed by a group of neighbors  will start this year, according to Chancellor Carol Christ.

I made a commitment when I became chancellor to double the number of university-owned beds in our housing system within 10 years and we are well on our way to meeting that goal, said Christ, who was appointed chancellor in 2017.

Marissa Leshnov/Special to The Chronicle

These projects have all faced opposition from Berkeley residents who fear that the race to put up dorm rooms for an ever-expanding student body will wipe out both the citys bohemian charm and what remains of its working class.

Harvey Smith, who is part of a nonprofit working to preserve Peoples Park, said that it is a totally inappropriate place to building housing.

We are definitely in favor of housing and we are particularly in favor of housing for the homeless, he said. Our issue is build it in an appropriate spot. That is why we are opposed to building in Peoples Park.

Harvey argues that the university should build housing on campus rather than spreading into surrounding neighborhoods. He objects to a plan to knock down Evans Hall and leave it as open space. Rather than do that, he argues, the university should put dorms there and allow the Peoples Park  which is off-campus, but owned by UC  to remain as is.

Harvey said the UC system is to blame for the housing shortage  and the swelling student body  and that city residents should not suffer because of its negligence.

They talk about the crisis and the dire need for housing, but we have known about this for 57 years, he said. We like the university being here. Its a site of incredible innovation. But we also want our city to survive. What brought me here was not just the campus but the city itself.

But that point of view is increasingly rare in a city that is quickly becoming known for embracing density rather than NIMBY politics.

The city is working on its housing element, which will create capacity for more density on both the Southside and downtown. This will likely include about four sites for 12-story mid-rises on the Southside and some taller buildings downtown. Between those two areas, new development at BART stations and allowing fourplexes on single-family zoned areas, it will allow Berkeley to exceed the 9,000 units the state is requiring the city to accommodate over the next eight years.

Kennedy, the developer, has spent the better part of 25 years building in Berkeley. While the university sat on its hands, he managed to complete eight projects totaling 500 units, often overcoming years of litigation and opposition.

When I first started in Berkeley, there would be hundreds of people attending public hearings to stop a 40-unit apartment building in downtown Berkeley, he said.

Those days are gone.

It has turned around 180 degrees, he said. It has become politically incorrect to fight against housing. You might not get invited to your neighbors cocktail party if you are a NIMBY.

The changes wont come fast enough for thousands of students, however. Brandon Yung, a fourth-year urban studies major, says he wakes up every day with his roommates feet two feet from my head. He pays $1,000 a month to share a 110-square-foot room in North Berkeley, which is slightly cheaper than Southside options near campus.

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.

With so many people crammed into such a small space, it can be nearly impossible to find a quiet patch of floor on which to study. He recently became exasperated trying to read about the urban-rural inequality divide in China while one roommate was on a Zoom call and the other was making a smoothie.

The irony is not lost on Yung that he is studying the current housing crisis while very much living it.

We are Berkeleys oldest constituency  we have been here longer than the city itself  but we are an inherently transient population that is unable to establish ourselves in the local political power structure of the city, he said. The result is we get screwed at every turn.

Urban studies major Noah Rumbaoa, who will graduate this year, commutes from his parents house in Fairfield because there are no affordable options in Berkeley. The 80-mile round-trip commute is expensive  about $35 a day in gas, tolls, and parking  so Rumbaoa often takes a bus to the El Cerrito del Norte BART Station and then the train to downtown Berkeley. That trip can take an hour and a half. The commute has made it difficult to take advantage of Cals rich campus life.

Its hard for me to attend clubs or events just because a lot of the time I just cannot make myself drive to Berkeley, he said. The cost of going isnt worth it. I feel like I missed out on a lot of opportunities.

City Council Member Lori Droste said students like Rumbaoa are living the ramifications of the housing shortage.

Increased student homelessness. Students clamoring to find an apartment that is $3,000 a month or piling into single family homes with dozens of students living there, she said. There is just a dearth of housing. These kids dont have much of an alternative at this point.

Council Member Rigel Robinson, who represents the Southside, has a unique perspective on the UC housing situation because he graduated from the university just three years ago. As a student government leader, he led a crusade to stop a hotel from being built downtown because he felt it should be housing.

It is so frustrating in a district that so embodies change that the neighborhood has grown so little in 50 years, he said. And now we are paying the price for it.

Robinson has moved six times in his seven years in Berkeley.

It has been a matter for bouncing around from one frying pan into a fire and then into another frying pan, Robinson said.

He said the neighbors fight for the enrollment cap really overplayed their hand.

Now there are families all across the country that have seen what people are willing to do to preserve their neighborhoods in amber, he said. No matter what cost it extracts.

J.K. Dineen is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jdineen@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @sfjkdineen
Nick Otto/Special to The Chronicle

I was stunned to read recent tweets by Los Angeles podcaster Amber Nelson, who recounted being invited to a friends house for dinner and then, later that night, being asked to pay for it. $20 for a plate of what sounds like average penne alla vodka, and shes not at some tourist trap in Hollywood? And yes, she brought wine to the party, like a normal person would. Maybe this would fly if the party were at least catered, with a magician or something extra, but it sounds to me like our girl got scammed. Is this a thing people do? Do read the many responses, with each subsequent story more heinous than the last. Definitely write to me if this ever happened to you because I want to know all about it.

Speaking of, check out these adorable stories of eating with friends and family, by the students of San Francisco literary organization 826 Valencia and published in Whetstone magazine. One piece, by 14-year-old LoyaltyKouture Turner, made me cry with laughter, reminding me of a time when I went to a friends house and cried when I tried a tuna salad sandwich. (So sue me, I was 8!) When peoples food is nasty it makes me mad. I was at my friends house and somebody made lasagna and I ate it and I threw it away. It didnt taste like anything even though it had sauce and ground beef. Wasnt seasoned. I ate it because I was spending the night at a friend's house. This person is still my friend and I make sure I eat before I come over to their place.
Regarding Paying more to fill up is not really that costly (Letters to the Editor, March 11): By saying that the high cost of gas is not a big deal shows a total lack of consideration and respect similar to Steven Colbert saying that he would not mind having gas at $15 a gallon and advising everyone to buy an electric car.

I agree that for many people, such as millionaires and paper pushers working at home, the cost of gas would not affect their wallet. Unfortunately, for our essential workers making minimum wage and having to drive their old cars to their jobs, it is a big deal and every dollar counts.

Arnaldo Dallera, Tiburon

Polands dubious record

Regarding Kudos to Poland (Letters to the Editor, March 10): I agree that Poland is doing a wonderful thing by welcoming so many Ukrainian refugees. However, the letters statement that Poland doesnt build fences like we do is patently false. Poland fenced its border to keep out Middle Eastern refugees in 2015.

Now, some refugees originally from the Middle East and Africa, i.e. people of color, fleeing Ukraine have reported being mistreated. The Ukrainian neighbors Poland are welcoming in are overwhelmingly white and Christian. The racism inherent in Polands treatment of refugees is, sadly, similar to ours.

Todd P. Silverstein, San Rafael

Dont block housing

Regarding UC Berkeley enrollment fight: Neighbors complain theres not enough housing, then try to block it, officials say (sfchronicle.com, March 11): As a student who attends UC Berkeley, I am absolutely dismayed that Berkeley residents are willing to deny so many students the chance to attend this university.

It makes no sense to me to block attempts to address the student housing crisis and then make no effort to collaborate with the university.

This win by the advocacy group is dangerous for the future of other UC campuses because this could inspire other residents across California to file lawsuits to restrict student enrollments under the same guise of overcrowding.

I do believe that UC Berkeley officials need to provide more accessible housing for students, and I urge the university to follow the proper environmental protocols.

However, the way to address this issue is not by punishing the university, but by rewarding it with more funding and more resources. This way, our already underfunded campuses will have the ability to provide housing that meets the demands of the cities.

Esther Kane, Berkeley

Roll back bridge tolls

Bridge tolls are a regressive tax that disproportionately affect low-income working class. The increase in bridge tolls this year, due to regional Measure 3, is supposed to benefit everyone yet whose cost falls on the minority.

Every morning, Bay Bridge congestion is in direction to San Francisco, at night, it backs up going to Oakland, to Vallejo. This is telling. The majority of the people crossing the bridge everyday need to commute to work in cities that they cant even afford to live in. These are the essential workers for which telecommuting isnt an option, many of which require a vehicle for work.

Not only is the tax unequally applied, the fines for those who do not pay their toll fees on time are extremely punitive. According to the SPUR report, Bridging the Gap, the majority of toll offenders come from low-income communities with higher proportions of people of color. According to the report, a one weeks commute to S.F. can end up costing more than half a weeks wages from full-time work at minimum wage.

Stop the rise in bridge tolls, stop fining toll offenders.
Attacks on a states economy can inflict immense damage, but sanctions and other tools of economic warfare are unlikely to defeat a superior military power. Instead, economic disruptions may prompt the state to fight even harder to defend itself. The anger and anxiety economic disruptions produce can accelerate rather than conclude a war.

A failed economic assault on ancient Rome offers a window into the possibilities and perils of this strategy.

This ancient case study begins in the late summer of 89 B.C., when Mithridates VI of Pontus  the ruler of a medium-sized kingdom along the southern Black Sea coast (present-day northeastern Turkey)  declared war on Rome. The trigger had been a Roman allys recent raid on Pontus.

At the time, the Roman state extended from the Atlantic Ocean to modern Turkey, but its power was rooted in Italy. Mithridates lacked the military capacity to invade Italy or directly attack the city of Rome. Instead, the king decided to damage the Roman heartland indirectly by attacking buffer states that separated his realm from the Roman provinces along the Aegean coast, before breaking through into Roman territory outside Italy. Through these attacks, he sought to turn allied states against Rome and disrupt the Roman economy.

Mithridates strategy unfolded across 88 B.C. As his armies swept through Roman Asia Minor, they captured Roman officials, seized cities and confiscated the local treasuries that supported the Roman regime. Then, once he had secured these lands, Mithridates sent out a letter that was received as an order to kill Roman businessmen, tax collectors and government contractors whose fortunes depended on the Roman governments activities in the region.

With that one letter, the rhetorician Valerius Maximus would later write, he killed 80,000 Roman citizens, businessmen who were spread throughout the cities in Asia. Other sources count as many as 150,000 Roman men, women and children living in the cities and towns of Asia Minor who were rounded up and killed by people acting on Mithridates orders.

Forces loyal to Mithridates also attacked the Athenian island of Delos, the most important commercial port linking Italy with the Greek world. The geographer Strabo wrote that traders engaged in the import-export business favored Delos, but it was frequented by Romans more than any other people. The geographer Pausanias recorded Mithridates forces putting to death the foreigners residing on the island before plundering much of the property belonging to the traders.

These attacks suggest that Mithridates targeted Roman business and commercial interests in order to chill the financial relationships that linked Rome to its provinces in the eastern Mediterranean. All these killinigs of Romans abroad instilled fear  and also represented a direct assault on the economy of the Roman homeland.

First century Rome possessed an extremely sophisticated financial sector in which credit flowed easily, and wealthy people based much of their fortunes on their holdings of nomina, creditor notes that functioned like modern bonds. Romans could hold, sell or exchange nomina with one another or cash them out, facilitated by bankers working in the Roman Forum.

This Roman financial system depended upon bankers correctly estimating the credit risk of individual debtors so that they could accurately price the loans they held or sold. This process worked well under normal conditions. But Mithridates killed so many tax collectors, contractors and traders based in Asia Minor and Delos that the nomina tied to business activities there lost all of their value at once. The sophistication of the Roman financial sector compounded the damage because these suddenly worthless nomina had been sold to investors, used as collateral to buy houses and served to capitalize Roman banks. Huge amounts of wealth disappeared from Roman banks, investors and property owners overnight.

The Roman economy crashed. In a speech delivered in 66 B.C., Cicero recalled how very many people lost large fortunes in Asia ... there was a collapse in credit at Rome, because repayments were interrupted. Indeed, it is not possible for so many people in one state to lose their property and fortunes without the result that many others are dragged into the same calamity with them. The historian Philip Kay has compared the financial crisis Mithridates caused to the subprime mortgage crisis in the U.S.

But unlike the 2008 U.S. financial crisis, Romes public finances collapsed alongside its private wealth thanks to Mithridates economic warfare. Tax revenue collected by Roman contractors in Asia paid for the distribution of subsidized grain to Roman citizens, one of the few public welfare programs the republic provided. With Asia occupied by Mithridates and Romes tax collectors dead, the Roman poor faced a sudden disruption to the funds that ensured their food supply. Such a desperate sense of panic fell upon the city that a mob killed one of Romes chief judicial magistrates when he tried to mediate a dispute between lenders and debtors.

Rome struggled to respond to this economic crisis. Its leaders introduced emergency measures to restrict the amount of debt lenders could take on and to compel lenders to renegotiate loans that could not be repaid. Rome also injected capital into the economy by minting large numbers of silver coins, some of which were made from bullion borrowed by the state from the treasuries of Roman temples as an emergency measure.

None of this worked particularly well. Then, as Roman anxiety and anger rose, the great commanders Marius and Sulla pushed Rome into a civil war sparked by an argument over who would lead the army against Mithridates.

It is hard to imagine Mithridates economic attack inflicting greater damage on the Republic. Yet ultimately, this economic war failed to defeat Rome. And it would end up in disaster for Mithridates.

Few Romans would have known the name Mithridates before 88 B.C. But once Mithridates directly affected the life of every Roman citizen, the Republic had no choice but to pour their resources into his defeat. The republic fought on, pushing back Mithridates from Roman territory and forcing him to sign a peace treaty in 84 B.C.

Rome fought two more wars with Mithridates until 63 B.C., when his own son betrayed him, and the old king killed himself so he could avoid being paraded through the city of Rome in a triumphal procession.

That would have been the only way Mithridates ever reached Rome.

Edward Watts holds the Alkiviadis Vassiliadis endowed chair and is professor of history at UC San Diego. He is author of the new book, The Eternal Decline and Fall of Rome: The History of a Dangerous Idea and of Mortal Republic: How Rome Fell Into Tyranny. He wrote this piece for Zocalo Public Square.
PBNJ Productions/Getty Images/Tetra images RF

San Francisco firefighters were investigating the cause of a one-alarm fire that caused major damage to a home in the citys Oceanview neighborhood early Monday, displacing a family and killing their dog.

Crews responded to a home on De Long Street just before 3 a.m. after receiving a 911 call about a structure fire, said San Francisco Fire Lt. Jonathan Baxter.
NEVADA CITY, Calif.  In the Gold Rush, Northern California attracted prospectors looking for financial independence. Now, this area is at the vanguard of a new movement  people seeking to use only the energy they produce themselves.

Angry over blackouts, wildfires caused by utilities and rising electricity bills, a small but growing number of Californians in rural areas and in the suburbs of San Francisco are going off the grid. They can do so because of a stunning drop in the cost of solar panels and batteries over the past decade. Some homeowners who have built new, off-grid homes say they have even saved money because their systems were cheaper than securing a new utility connection.

There have long been free spirits and survivalists who have lived off the grid. But the decline in solar and battery costs and growing frustrations with utilities appear to be laying the groundwork for more people to consider doing so.

Nobody is quite sure how many off-grid homes there are, but local officials and real estate agents said there were dozens here in Nevada County, a picturesque part of the Sierra Nevada range between Sacramento and Lake Tahoe. Some energy experts say that millions of people could eventually go off the grid as costs drop. A fully off-grid system in California can run from $35,000 to $100,000, according to installers. At the low end, such systems cost roughly as much as an entry-level Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck.

Its not just the doomsayers or the eco-hippies, said Diane Vukovic, who has researched the laws and regulations about going off the grid for Primal Survivor, an organization that helps consumers with disaster preparedness. People want to have that self-reliance. Its become so much cheaper and easier that at this point, theres very little reason not to do it if you have the means to make the investment now.

People going off the grid argue that utilities are not moving fast enough to address climate change and are causing other problems. In Northern California, Pacific Gas & Electrics safety record has alienated many residents. The companys equipment caused the 2018 Camp Fire, which killed dozens and destroyed the town of Paradise, about 70 miles north of Nevada City. The utilitys effort to prevent fires by cutting off power to homes and businesses has also angered people.

One of those residents is Alan Savage, a real estate agent in Grass Valley, who bought an off-grid home six years ago and has sold hundreds of such properties. He said he never loses power, unlike PG&E customers. I dont think Ill ever go back to being on the grid, Savage said.

For people like him, it is not enough to take the approach favored by most homeowners with solar panels and batteries. Those homeowners use their systems to supplement the electricity they get from the grid, provide emergency backup power and sell excess energy to the grid.

The appeal of off-grid homes has grown in part because utilities have become less reliable. As natural disasters linked to climate change have increased, there have been more extended blackouts in California, Texas, Louisiana and other states.

CLARA MOKRI/NYT

Californians are also upset that electricity rates keep rising and state policymakers have proposed reducing incentives for installing solar panels on homes connected to the grid. Installing off-grid solar and battery systems is expensive, but once the systems are up and running, they typically require modest maintenance and homeowners no longer have an electric bill.

RMI, a research organization formerly known as the Rocky Mountain Institute, has projected that by 2031 most California homeowners will save money by going off the grid as solar and battery costs fall and utility rates increase. That phenomenon will increasingly play out in less sunny regions such as the Northeast over the following decades, the group forecasts.

David Hochschild, chair of the California Energy Commission, a regulatory agency, said the states residents tend to be early adopters, noting that even a former governor, Jerry Brown, lives in an off-grid home. But Hochschild added that he was not convinced that such an approach made sense for most people. We build 100,000 new homes a year in California, and I would guess 99.99% of them are connected to the grid, he said.

Some energy experts worry that people who are going off the grid could unwittingly hurt efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. That is because the excess electricity that rooftop solar panels produce will no longer reach the grid, where it can replace power from coal or natural gas plants. We dont need everybody to cut the cord and go it alone, said Mark Dyson, senior principal with the carbon-free electricity unit of RMI.

Solar Panels and a View

Pepe Cancino moved from Santa Monica to Nevada County in 2020 after he and his wife, Diane, lost their jobs during the pandemic. They bought 5 acres with spectacular views of snow-capped mountains. Cancino, 42, a former home health care worker, picked up a chainsaw and an ax and began learning how to build a house and generate his own power.

CLARA MOKRI/NYT

When they finish their two-bedroom, 2 1/2-bathroom home this fall, the family, including their 15-year-old daughter, will generate electricity and use a well for water.

There were a lot of moments, Cancino said, where we were like, This is a lot of work. But they are pleased with the results.

Their energy system includes solar panels on two shipping containers, one of which doubles as an office and possible future guesthouse. Another set of panels will sit atop their 2,100-square-foot home. They also have backup propane generators for snowy days.

The Cancinos went off the grid because hooking up to PG&E would have cost more than the $50,000 they spent on solar panels, batteries and generators.

Nevada County, founded in 1851, stretches almost 1,000 square miles, with peaks as high as 5,000 feet above sea level. Black bears roam freely and a single snowfall can blanket the ground with 3 feet of powder.

Although the county leans liberal, interest in off-grid living bridges the partisan divide. Solar and batteries offer the self-reliance conservatives crave and the environmental benefits progressives seek.

But Scott Aaronson, a senior vice president for security and preparedness at the Edison Electric Institute, a utility industry trade group, said that although off-grid living might appeal to some, it was like having a computer not connected to the internet.

Youre getting some value, but youre not part of a greater whole, he said. When something goes wrong, thats wholly on you.

Some homeowners have lived without a grid connection for years, but interest in cutting the cord surged after PG&E began to frequently use power shut-offs as a fire prevention tool in 2019, said Craig Griesbach, director of the Nevada County building department.

The county last year published a document to help homeowners go off the grid while complying with building codes. Griesbach said officials from as far as Los Angeles had contacted his office for advice on off-grid rules.

Fifteen or 20 years ago, you wouldnt have been able to do this, he said.

PG&E said homeowners in rural areas such as Nevada County had always been more likely to go off the grid because extending power lines over long distances simply costs more.

Falling Costs and Better Technology

A decade or two back, off-grid homes included a patchwork of solar panels, diesel or propane generators, and lead acid batteries. A system that could run a furnace, a refrigerator, and washer and dryer could cost well over $100,000.

Most current off-grid systems rely heavily on solar panels because their cost has fallen to less than 4 cents a watt from about 11.4 cents a watt in 2000, not including state and federal incentives, according the California Solar and Storage Association. Lithium-ion batteries  weighing as little as 30 pounds, requiring minimal maintenance and costing $10,000 to $20,000  have replaced banks of lead acid batteries that used to cost tens of thousands of dollars, could weigh thousands of pounds and needed regular upkeep. Generators are often used but serve mostly as an emergency backup, as they do for homes connected to the grid, said Aaron Schroeder, who installed the systems used by the Cancinos.

Off-grid systems are particularly attractive to people building new homes. Thats because installing a 125- to 300-foot overhead power line to a new home costs about $20,000, according to the California Public Utilities Commission. In places where lines have to be buried, installation runs about $78,000 for 100 feet.

Thats why Wim Coekaerts went off the grid in his 2,800-square-foot home in Woodside, near Stanford University.

His plot sits just across the street from homes that are connected to PG&E. But the utility told him it would cost $100,000 for new electric service, and building a trench for the line, based on regulatory estimates, could add $300,000 or more. So he spent $300,000 after federal tax credits on solar panels and a large battery.

After a year of living in the house, Coekaerts, an executive at Oracle, is happy with his choice. While his neighbors on PG&E have lost power three times, he said, he hasnt gone without it even for a nanosecond.

When it was really bad weather the first time, I was nervous, said Coekaerts, a native of Belgium who moved to the United States in 1997. Now I feel comfortable.

He has never had to ration his use of appliances and has had no problems charging two Teslas. He has been producing so much electricity that he started mining Bitcoin.

His system cost a lot because he bought a very large battery to soak up energy from solar panels for use when the sun isnt shining. But electric cars may soon play that role, making it cheaper to go off the grid.

Electric cars available now arent designed to send power to homes. But newer models such as the Ford F-150 Lightning and the Hyundai Ioniq 5 will have that ability, said Bill Powers, a San Diego engineer who plans to go off the grid with the help of an electric car. The holy grail to me now is in electric vehicles.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
The stories of a 19th century gold discovery depicted at Sutters Fort State Historic Park in Sacramento may undergo significant changes as California State Parks seeks to provide a more inclusive and historically accurate interpretation of the memorial site, a press release from the California Department of Parks and Recreation said Friday.

Visited by hundreds of tourists and Bay Area elementary school students each year, Sutters Fort was deemed a historic landmark in 1961 and is known for its ties to the Donner Party. It has also long honored Swiss immigrant John Augustus Sutter, whose 1839 arrival in the Central Valley led to the development of what would eventually become Sacramento, in addition to Sutters Mill, where gold was famously discovered in 1848 by Sutters associate James Marshall, subsequently kicking off the California Gold Rush.

Sutters name is ubiquitous in the state, from San Franciscos Sutter Street to the city of the same name in Sutter County, as well as wineries, health care providers and college residence halls.

But now, park officials have announced new plans for the historic site as they aim to address the lesser-told story of how Sutter also played a role in exploiting, murdering, enslaving, and assaulting the Indigenous people who lived in the area since time immemorial and whose forced labor was instrumental in the construction of the fort.

While Sutters Fort [State Historic Park] focused on John Sutters role as Sacramentos founder and a pioneer of the California dream, the park missed talking about the real impact of Sutter and on the Native American people, John Fraser, Capital District Superintendent of California State Parks, said in the press release. State Parks is committed to telling a more accurate and inclusive story so that everyone will feel comfortable visiting this historic park and reflect on its complex past.

Park officials said theyve spent this past year consulting with local tribes, who are sharing their perspectives on the memorial and helping to develop a more complete history that will be relayed at the site's educational exhibits.

The National Park Service will also update the sites original historic landmark nomination, including more information on the Native Sons of the Golden Wests efforts to sustain the site in the late 19th century.

The Sutters Fort website now reflects some of this history, including how the construction of the fort and the California Gold Rush led to an even greater exploitation of Native people across California.

In the coming weeks, California State Parks will host two virtual workshops for the public, inviting them to share their input on the proposal on March 23 and April 14 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.

The plan is part of California State Parks Reexamining Our Past initiative, a larger effort that aims to evaluate and rectify the names of existing parks, monuments and transportation systems with discriminatory roots across the state. Last October, the California State Park and Recreation Commission voted to rename what is now called Sue-Meg State Park through the initiative, following a formal request from the Yurok tribe.

Read the full proposal for Sutters Fort here.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

California Gov. Gavin Newsom is calling on Disney to undo plans to relocate approximately 2,000 employees from California to Florida over a recent bill passed by the latter state's Legislature.

The bill, dubbed the "Don't Say Gay" bill by critics, bans lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade. Supporters of the bill bristle at the "Don't Say Gay" characterization, noting that the curriculum ban applies only to younger age groups and arguing the bill does not bar discussion of LGBT issues should they come up in a manner not tied to official curriculum. However, critics point out that the bill also empowers parents to bring lawsuits over content that is considered not "age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students" at any grade level, which is vague enough language that the bill could have a general chilling effect on discussion of LGBT issues.
LVIV, Ukraine - Emptying a museum is a gargantuan task, and the entire workforce of the Andrey Sheptytsky National Museum in Lviv had been at it for a week before the final piece - a century-old portrait of the museum's namesake - was taken down, leaving the last of its walls bare.

Ihor Kozhan, the director of the grand gallery opposite Lviv's opera house, explained the rush.

"There is an egomaniac in Moscow who doesn't care about killing children, let alone destroying art," he said. "If our history and heritage are to survive, all art must go underground."

Across Ukraine, artists, gallerists, curators and museum directors are desperately but carefully unhooking, wrapping and stashing away the country's hefty cultural endowment as Vladimir Putin's onslaught closes in. Statues, stained-glass windows and monuments are being covered with shrapnel-proof material. Basement bunkers are crammed with paintings.

As Russian bombardments have so far been heavier in the eastern half of the country, two of Ukraine's richest cities in terms of cultural heritage, Lviv and Odessa, have had the benefit of extra time. Volunteers in the latter, for instance, took days to stack hundreds of sandbags around a monument to the Duke of Richelieu, a Frenchman who was one of the cosmopolitan port city's founders. Just his head and his outstretched right arm remain uncovered.

Kyiv and Kharkiv, the country's two biggest cities, were struck early in the war and have already suffered devastating losses.

The windows of Kharkiv's main art museum have been blown out, subjecting the 25,000 artworks inside to freezing temperatures and snow for weeks. The city's opera and ballet theaters were extensively shelled.

Twenty-five works by one of Ukraine's most celebrated painters, Maria Prymachenko, famed for her colorful representation of Ukrainian folklore and rural life, were burned when Russians bombed the museum housing them in a town outside Kyiv. Other museums in the capital are boarded up, their works still inside because those who would have evacuated them have fled.

"City centers are seriously damaged, some of which have sites and monuments that date back to the 11th century," Lazare Eloundou, the director of the United Nations' world heritage program, told reporters last week. "It is a whole cultural life that risks disappearing."

The deliberate destruction of a country's or culture's heritage is a considered a war crime, but UNESCO has not yet canceled its next summit, which is scheduled to take place in Russia.

As Russian troops attempt to encircle Odessa, the Fine Arts Museum there has encircled itself with razor wire.

"Trust me, it looks really wild to me, too," said Kirill Lipatov, the museum's director of science.

As in Lviv's museums, the walls inside are now bare, Lipatov said, but he declined to reveal whether its most valuable works had been evacuated outside of the city. Some of the pieces were painted inside the museum - an ornate palace dating back to the 1820s - and have never left it, including iconic 19-century Russian works by Ivan Aivazovsky and Ilya Repin.

"The first thought that came to mind for me is that a Ukrainian museum is protecting Russian masterpieces from Russian aggression," Lipatov said. "I can't wrap my head around it."

Even as they struggled to believe it, museum directors also said their plight was hardly unfamiliar. Ukraine has been stripped of artwork by invaders multiple times over the past century.

After Russia's invasion and annexation of Crimea in 2014, dozens of works that were located on the peninsula were transferred to Russian museums. During World War II, thousands of works were taken by Nazi soldiers to Germany. A portrait of Yakov Galkin, the director who evacuated Odessa's Fine Arts Museum during World War II, hangs in Lipatov's office.

Saving art was secondary only to saving lives, many of those interviewed said, because Ukrainians' pride in their culture serves as a deep well of inspiration for its resistance to invasion. Putin has made it clear that he considers Ukraine to be part of greater Russia, a contention artists here say denies Ukraine's distinct heritage.

"With each invasion, some loss of culture is inevitable," said Taras Voznyak, director of the Lviv National Art Gallery. "Putin knows that without art, without our history, Ukraine will have a weaker identity. That is the whole point of his war - to erase us and assimilate us into his population of cryptofascist zombies."

While museums often have their own bunkers, or wider networks in Europe they can rely on to house some of their art, independent galleries and artists are relying on each other.

One of the most successful efforts to protect Ukraine's contemporary art is underway in the western city of Ivano-Frankivsk, where an artists' collective has converted a subterranean cafe into a bunker. Working day and night with a network of van drivers, the works of more than 30 artists - from delicate collages to hanging sculptures to giant, 6-by-14-foot paintings - have been whisked here from all over Ukraine. Eleven artists who fled their homes have also been offered residencies to keep producing art through the war.

"A lot of our artists are questioning their role - like, shouldn't I pick up a gun? Does art as a weapon act too slowly?" said Anna Potyomkina, 25, a curator who is part of the collective. "But creating art when Russia is bombing museums and studios is a big and necessary part of the resistance."

Except for the piles of art swathed in bubble wrap waiting to be taken to the bunker, the collective is full of familiar creative culture: funky furniture, Apple computers, a shelf devoted to books on gender and feminism, walls covered with sticky notes and pictures of members and their friends looking stylish and happy before the war.

Yaryna Shumska, a Lviv-based performance artist and painter who describes herself on her website as a chronicler of "the memory of objects and their invisible stories," would love to transport her most cherished artworks to Ivano-Frankivsk but worries they would get damaged in the process. If she needs to flee Lviv, she's likely to leave her art where it is, and hope the bombs fall elsewhere.

"My friend's studio in Kharkiv was bombed and all that's left is an empty catastrophe," Shumska said in her studio, cluttered with enormous paintings on canvas, some of which are dedicated to her husband, who died in October. "It's an impossible question to ask yourself: Can I say goodbye to my work, which is almost like an extension of my body?"

The survival of so much Ukrainian art will ultimately depend on where the bombs fall.

In Odessa, Lipatov said the 123-year-old Fine Arts Museum is so delicate that it would surely burn to the ground if it were hit with a shell.

The bunker in Ivano-Frankivsk is not bombproof either. A direct hit would bury the hundreds of pieces stashed there, saving only some of them in a best-case scenario. Last week, Russia bombed the city's airport.

"Right now, this is all we can do," Potyomkina said. "Right now no one is famous, no one is jealous, nobody's art is more important than anyone else's. All the rivalries and existential crises are on hold. We have to do everything we can right now, or else we risk losing it all."

- - -

The Washington Post's Siobhan O'Grady in Kyiv contributed to this report.
Vadim Ghirda/AP

Fox News correspondent Benjamin Hall was injured Monday in Ukraine while reporting outside of Kyiv and has been hospitalized, the network said.

The network said it had only sparse information about the nature of the journalists injuries. Hall is a longtime war correspondent who has covered conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and other countries. He joined Fox News in 2015 and became a State Department correspondent for the network last year.
In March 2020, California became the first state to issue a stay-at-home order to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

Two years later, COVID-19 policies here and elsewhere are being rolled back, a shift that is sowing division among those who once agreed how best to handle the pandemic.

One of the most contentious changes in California has been the lifting of the statewide school mask mandate.

As of late last week, the state no longer requires that students and teachers wear masks inside classrooms, although certain districts, including in Los Angeles and Sacramento, will keep the rules in place for now. Nationwide, 68% of major school districts no longer require masks, according to the tracking site Burbio.

Given the fierce debate, we asked readers how they felt about Californias school mask mandate ending. Polling suggests that Californians are pretty split on the issue, and your responses reflected that.

Youve been writing to me about your hesitations around taking off masks  what one reader described as akin to not finishing a course of antibiotics. Or youve worried that the change has come far too late, as students social development has already suffered irreparably over the past two years.

I heard from hundreds of teachers, parents, students, school counselors and community members with plenty of opinions about school mask mandates. Here are some of their takes, lightly edited for clarity and brevity:

As a teacher with multiple autoimmune diseases and immunocompromised students in my classes, I am worried for myself and my kids. I cant understand the level of selfishness and lack of empathy in these decisions.  Margaret Colburn, Los Angeles

I am thrilled that the masks are coming off of my young kids. It is well past time! We know how low risk kids are, they deserve the normal childhoods we all enjoyed.  Melinda Ulu, Santa Cruz

Cases are down at my sons middle school, and they havent had a positive test among staff or students in a couple weeks. However, I will tell my son to wear a mask until the new rules shake out. If cases start to rise again, Id rather be ahead of the curve on that.  Brooke Habecker, Redwood City

Im a student in Los Angeles, so Ive endured some of the most overbearing COVID-19 measures since we went back to school in August. Cases have descended to less than 1,000 a day, and we have a high vaccination rate. If not now, then when?  Shane Masterson, Los Angeles

I am a school counselor. I feel uneasy about the mask mandates and how schools (in Santa Clara County) are making it optional, but strongly encouraged. It might create further divisions and arguments between students that want to remain masked out of caution and those that prefer to be maskless. It is one more component about which kids and parents will be divided, and such division will now be visible and obvious to everyone.  Christina Soto, Sunnyvale

Im happy that its being lifted, but I dont think everyone will stop and thats OK! I teach at a middle school, so I know students and colleagues who will continue to mask because of their health or, in students case, insecurities about their appearance. I think its appropriate for them to make that choice and feel comfortable at school. I, personally, am excited just to see all their weird little faces again (and Im sure vice versa).  Ed Chaney, Clovis

My kids are 8 and 12, healthy and fully vaccinated, so I think they will be OK with or without masks. But on the other hand, we have worked so hard over the past two years to not get COVID; it seems silly to drop our main defense now. I would feel much more comfortable if only vaccinated students could shed their masks. As parents, we have had to make so many impossible choices and changes over the last two years, I am just exhausted.  Leslie Suen, Truckee

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Bloomberg photo by Jason Alden

A London mansion reportedly owned by members of Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska's family has been occupied by protesters opposing the invasion of Ukraine.

The group made their way into the home on Belgrave Square -- one of the city's most affluent districts -- at 1 a.m., according to a member of the group, who declined to give his name. They plan to remain in the property until the war is over and refugees streaming out of Ukraine have been housed, he said.
A pregnant woman, her face pale, lies on a stretcher. Her left hip is covered in blood as she is rushed out of a hospital in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, which had just been hit by an airstrike.

The gripping picture, captured by photographer Evgeniy Maloletka for the Associated Press, encapsulated the toll on civilians of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. It was shared, and the strike condemned, around the world - but little was known about the woman herself.

Now, the AP reports that the woman and her baby died in horrific conditions in the aftermath of the attack on the hospital - arriving for surgery with her pelvis crushed and hip detached.

Surgeon Timur Marin told the AP that medics delivered the baby via Caesarean section but that the infant showed "no signs of life."

The woman, whose name has not been revealed publicly, is part of a civilian death toll from the war in Ukraine that the United Nations puts at 596, although it said it "believes that the actual figures are considerably higher."

The woman's story illustrates the perilous situation facing those who are pregnant in Ukraine, where at least 31 attacks on health-care facilities or equipment have been documented by the World Health Organization since the start of Russia's assault 212 weeks ago.

According to the United Nations, "80,000 Ukrainian women are expected to give birth in the next three months while oxygen and medical supplies, including for the management of pregnancy complications, are running dangerously low."

In Mariupol, a southern port in Ukraine that officials say has been under Russian bombardments for days, a maternity hospital was hit on Wednesday. Ukrainians blamed Russian forces; Moscow has claimed without evidence through its spokespeople that the hospital was emptied of patients and used as a base for Ukrainian military activity.

Videos and photos taken at the scene show children and injured pregnant women being led away from the hospital after the attack. Mariupol's city council said Thursday that three people, including a child, were killed, while 17 - among them children, women and medical workers - were injured. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the attack an "atrocity."

"What kind of country is this, the Russian Federation, which is afraid of hospitals and maternity hospitals and destroys them?" Zelensky said in a video address late Wednesday. Global leaders condemned the attack, with Britain's minister for the armed forces, James Heappey, calling it a "war crime."

Among the photos and videos that circulated in the aftermath of the attack, one featured the pregnant woman being evacuated on a stretcher amid the rubble.

She was sent to another hospital, the AP reported, drawing on testimony from medics and the surgeon who treated her. The woman reportedly told medics to "kill me now" when she realized that she was losing her baby.

The woman's surgeon said attempts were made for "more than 30 minutes" to resuscitate her but in the end, she and her baby "both died." Her body was picked up from the hospital, medics told the AP, but they were not able to to record the woman's name.

Another injured pregnant woman who was captured by photographers fleeing the maternity hospital gave birth on Friday, according to AP photos. In one, Mariana Vishegirskaya, wearing the same top as when she was pictured walking down the stairs of the Mariupol hospital after the strike, holds her newborn daughter close to her chest as she lies on a hospital bed.

International organizations say the attack on the Mariupol maternity hospital was not the first.

In a joint statement published Sunday, the leaders of the WHO, the United Nations Population Fund and UNICEF demanded an end to attacks on health-care facilities or equipment.

"To attack the most vulnerable - babies, children, pregnant women, and those already suffering from illness and disease, and health workers risking their own lives to save lives - is an act of unconscionable cruelty," their statement said.
If you want to live by the beach and next door to "Yellowstone" star Kevin Costner, be prepared to pay up.

An oceanfront horse ranch adjacent to the movie star's property in Carpinteria, CA, has landed on the market for $109 million. Sean Matthews with Compass and Eric Haskell with The Agency are co-listing the property.

Known as Rancho Carinoso, the serene, 4.2-acre spread boasts an oceanfront horse ranch with its own private beach. It also offers bragging rightsliving near the acclaimed actor.

Pricey property

Just 33 listings are available in Carpinteria, with a median list price of $1.2 million. Oceanfront properties like this one are a rare occurrence on the market, according to Matthews.

"This incredibly special slice of coastline is unlike any other beachfront estate on the market today," he says.

The ranch ranks as runner-up for most expensive home in this coveted coastal townright behind a $160 million compound.

So why the nine-digit price tag?

The estate has incredible sentimental value to my client, as he and his family have enjoyed the home for generations," Matthews says.

As one of the last large beach estates on the Southern California coast, he adds, it is the kind of property you run across only once in a blue moon.

The seller, Arthur Cameron III, is the grandson of a Texas oil tycoon, Arthur Cameron, and the actress Kay Aldridge. In a statement, the owner, who also owns a 377-acre ranch 40 minutes outside Santa Barbara, describes the listing as "an unparalleled place to grow up and live within.

Celeb central

Costner purchased his nearby 10-acre property in 2006 for $28.5 million. In 2017, he placed the home on the market for $60 million. After a price reduction to $49 million, it came off the market the following year.

Located just south of Santa Barbara, the seaside community neighbors the town of Montecito. Both places are a favorite of celebrities, including Ellen DeGeneres, George Lucas, Ashton Kutcher, and Mila Kunis.

Growth factor

While the waterfront equestrian estate is an idyllic spot, the home on the ranch is surprisingly small. The 2,500-square-foot modern design from 2014 offers three bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms, and a detached 1,000-square-foot garage.

A buyer has options to add to or expand the two existing structures with multiple building sites on the property. And the land isn't limited to homes.

The property is zoned for nine horse stables and offers a state-of-the-art drip irrigation system allowing for turnkey landscaping, says Matthews.

There are other features to attract a buyer. Boaters can enjoy docking a yacht conveniently in front of the homesite just off the private beach. Since the property is located on a surf break, activities such as swimming, boating, fishing, or lobster diving are all available.

Owners can keep a hangar of water toys, such as small boats and kayaks, on the beach portion of the property, the listing notes. The acreage also comes with private nature hiking trails, fruit trees, and ATV access on the grounds.

The picturesque, private horse trail leads directly to the beach, where horse riding is allowed at all times of day or night. That's not something permitted on the public beach, which limits equine activity to certain hours.

This is a rare, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to own a piece of California's iconic coastline and make it your own, Matthews says.

The post Oceanfront Home Next Door to Kevin Costner Surfaces for $109M appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com.
Get out the soap and hot water to cleanse those reusable face masks; the mask mandate for flights, buses, trains and ferries will remain in effect for another five weeks.

Last week, the Transportation Security Administration announced that it will extend the security directive for mask use on public transportation until April 18, 2022.

In response to the update, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, BART, Caltrain and San Francisco Bay Ferry have each complied with the directive and are extending their requirements.

This also applies to: while waiting for transit, while inside our stations, while paying fares, as well as riding paratransit and taxi services, Stephen Chun, public information officer for Muni, told SFGATE.

Masks will continue to be required when inside airports and while flying.

The previous federal mandate was in effect until March 18 but there has been a general understanding that the mandate was bound for another extension.

Given the fact that were still coming out of omicron, Id be surprised if we were done with masks, Doug Yakel, spokesperson for SFO, told SFGATE last month. These extensions typically go for months at a time.

In a statement, the TSA said that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is using this extra month to continue revising its framework for when masks will be required in public transportation spaces. This revised framework will be based on the COVID-19 community levels, risk of new variants, national data, and the latest science, the statement said.

BART began measuring face mask compliance in September 2020 and continues to update its results. The data for last month's count reveals a near-perfect adherence from Bay Area riders. According to BARTs analysis  which was conducted across four surveys a month  98% of riders were wearing a mask that covers their mouth and nose.
61 beauties are shortlisted for 2022 Miss World Vietnams semi-final round.

The primary rounds were held at the HCMC University of Technology (HUTECH) on March 13 with the participation of jury members, including journalist Tran Huu Viet, Miss Vietnam 1992 Ha Kieu Anh, Miss Vietnam 2018 Tran Tieu Vy and Miss World Vietnam 2019 Luong Thuy Linh.



The semi final round will take place in HCMC on April 9 and the climax night of the final round will be held in the Southern coastal city of Vung Tau, Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province on May 27.

Miss World Vietnam beauty contest was held for the first time in 2019, aiming at looking for a Vietnamese representative at the Miss World beauty pageant. Women aged 18 to 27 who are at least 1.65m tall and have had no cosmetic surgery are eligible to enter the contest. Participation is limited to unmarried women who have never given birth or parented a child.



Beside the top three places of the winner, 1st runner-up, 2nd runner-up, the organization board will also present minor titles of the Beauty with a Purpose, Miss Sea, Miss Fashion, Miss Talent, Miss Communications and Miss Sport.

Miss World Vietnam 2019 Luong Thuy Linh (C), fisrt and second runners-up, Nguyen Ha Kieu Loan (R) and Nguyen Tuong San (L) Selected contestants Selected contestants



By Tieu Tan  Translated by Kim Khanh
Update Required

To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.
Try out LudingtonDailyNews.com for only 99 per month for the first 3 months, $9.99 a month after.

 Unlimited website access 24/7

 Unlimited e-Edition access 24/7

 The best local, regional and national news in sports, politics, business and more!

With a Digital Only subscription, you'll receive unlimited access to our website and e-Edition. Our digital products are available 24/7 and are accessible anywhere, anytime.
Try out WhiteLakeBeacon.com for only 99 per month for the first 3 months, $5.30 a month after.

 Unlimited website access 24/7

 Unlimited e-Edition access 24/7

 The best local, regional and national news in sports, politics, business and more!

With a Digital Only subscription, you'll receive unlimited access to our website and e-Edition. Our digital products are available 24/7 and are accessible anywhere, anytime.
Investing is a lot like playing chess. While there are some basic strategies that will help you win over the long term, it's really about anticipating your opponent's next move and using that to your advantage. As an investor, you are always on the lookout for new investment opportunities. You have to be!

After all, there is no exciting time like the present to invest and make profits from it. However, there are many mistakes that people make in the capital market which can lead to losses or failures in the long run. You need to be able to look at the big picture and make smart decisions based on what you see.

So here are some common mistakes investors do:

Mistake #1: Lack of planning

Many investors dont plan their actions and this leads to their failure. A newbie investor has the tendency to be greedy and trade too much, or do too many things at one time, which can cost him a lot of money. They should learn how professional investors plan their investment strategies to avoid mistakes and make a profit over time.

Professional investors do not buy or sell stocks based on news. Instead, they come up with their own plans and strategies that are created by a team of financial analysts. Before making an investment or funding decision, they will study market news and economic reports to find out what companies are doing well, who will bring them good profits, and how long they should keep investing.

Mistake #2: Not Investing Enough

Investors should deploy a balance of investments to avoid making mistakes when they invest in a new company.

Capital, time, and expertise are necessary in order to make it big in the stock market. There is no room for mistakes when investing in a company. It is important for investors to learn from the mistakes that others have been through before they dive into making their own investment.

One of the common mistakes that investors do is not investing enough in a new company. It's natural for people to underestimate potential when they see it but it's also important not to lose out on opportunities because of this.

Mistake #3: Failing to Learn and Grow as an Investor

Since you have made mistakes 1 and 2 already, it is important that you don't make the third one by not investing enough time into growing as an investor. The lack of learning and growth as an investor is a big mistake that many people make. The more time you put into becoming an expert, the better it will be for your investments.

In order to avoid the mistake of not investing enough time to grow as an investor, take a few minutes each day or week to learn from other experts in the field. There are endless online resources and books for learning about investing. Stay current with what is happening in your industry.

Moreover, it is important to invest time and money in ways to achieve success: self-education, mentorship, training seminars and conferences, printed material for reading for investment purposes should be developed into collections that you can return to again and again. You should also pay attention to your health: eat right, get adequate exercise, and sleep at night because your physical well-being will affect your mental well-being.

Mistake #4: Not diversifying!

One of the important lessons that you learn when you start investing is the importance of diversifying your investments.

For example, if you invest in just one company, then your returns will be dependent on that companys performance. But more than likely, the share price of one company will be very volatile and it will show a lot of movement up and down. Whereas if you invest in multiple companies, then your returns are less conspicuous to any volatility or movements of one company.

The same principle can be applied to other asset classes as well. For example, if you invest with just stocks then your returns are dependent on the fluctuations in stock prices only. If instead, you were to invest with both stocks and bonds then chances are otherwise.

Mistake #5: Ignoring tax implications!

Investors are often too busy with other aspects of their business to make sure they are properly filing their taxes. What they might not realize is that this can lead to hefty fines, penalties, and even jail time.

The mistake that investors make is not giving tax implications enough thought because it feels like the tedious part of the job. They think it has no impact on their business or profits.

But if an investor ignores tax implications then they are setting themselves up for a world of hurt. They will end up paying more in taxes than they need to or worse, end up getting into trouble with the authorities.

Understanding what you need to do and when will help avoid these mistakes and keep your investment endeavors running smoothly and without worry!

Conclusion:

It's important to know that the stock market is always changing and you should learn from your mistakes. Investing in stocks, real estate, gold or any other financial instrument comes with risk, but if you avoid making these 5 costly mistakes, you'll have a much better chance of success. Are there any other investment mistakes that you've made?
The government is looking at creating a fund for agritech startups, Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal said on Sunday.

The government is looking at significant participation of startups in defence R&D as huge opportunities are there in drones, defence and technical textile sectors for entrepreneurs, the minister said at a webinar.

Technology and innovation will be the key driving force for India and its economy, he said.

''We are looking at significant participation of startups in defence R&D. We are looking at creating a fund for agritech startups,'' Goyal said.

India has the third largest startup ecosystem in India with over 65,000 registered startups in just five years.

''It is these startups that will fuel India's Atmanirbhar drive,'' he added.

At another function, the minister stated that one can find many opportunities, like even in the current war crisis.

''The present Ukraine-Russia crisis is a wakeup call for all of us, not to be dependent on crude oil and defence equipment,'' Goyal has said.




Passage of this bill ensures these Schuylkill County projects will soon receive direct federal funding including:





Alvernia University CollegeTowne in Pottsville - $2 Million





$2 million for Alvernia Universitys campus in downtown Pottsville to fund programming, classroom, and technology upgrades for the new campus and support the development of two new programs, a B.S. in Nursing and Bachelor of Logistics.





Columbia Street Arch Bridge in Schuylkill Haven- $3 Million





Requested by the NEPA Alliance, this direct funding will contribute to replacing the entire Columbia Street bridge in Schuylkill Haven. The bridge was built in 1921 and is currently in poor condition and carries an average 10,447 vehicles per day.





Schuylkill County Intermediate Punishment Facility - $1.06 Million



Requested by Schuylkill County, this federal funding will support equipping and securing a newly constructed facility. A 2018 study identified a need for such a facility to eliminate overcrowding at the County Prison and a facility for mental health and addiction treatment for inmates. This federal funding supports equipment and security needs for the new facility.





The following projects outside of Schuylkill County will receive funding: $1 million for Lebanon Valley Colleges nursing program. The funding will support construction of a facility to house the four-year nursing program, the only nursing program in Lebanon County.

$1 million for the Berwick YMCA to construct a new gymnasium and community center to serve the area with recreation programs, food distribution, childcare, and other community support programs.

$2.5 million for the Borough of Jim Thorpe to make improvements to Memorial Hall which serves as the main municipal building for the borough government.

$750,000 to study Reading-Philadelphia Rail Service to investigate the feasibility and economic benefits of linking these cities through reliable rail service.

$2.675 million for Revitalizing Independence Street in Shamokin to execute a plan to improve the appearance and safety of Downtown Shamokin.

Passage of this bill is the culmination of more than a year of working with stakeholders in our communities to identify and secure federal support for their critical needs, said Rep. Meuser. These federal funds will be instrumental for completing these projects, to improve our infrastructure, accelerate revitalization, and improve Pennsylvanians quality of life. This process has allowed me to bring my districts needs directly before Congress without interference from unelected bureaucrats directing federal funding. I appreciate community leaders collaboration with my office to see this process through and I look forward to continuing to work with stakeholders in the Ninth District to deliver federal support for local needs.

Passage of this bill is the culmination of more than a year of working with stakeholders in our communities to identify and secure federal support for their critical needs, said Rep. Meuser. These federal funds will be instrumental for completing these projects, to improve our infrastructure, accelerate revitalization, and improve Pennsylvanians quality of life. This process has allowed me to bring my districts needs directly before Congress without interference from unelected bureaucrats directing federal funding. I appreciate community leaders collaboration with my office to see this process through and I look forward to continuing to work with stakeholders in the Ninth District to deliver federal support for local needs.

Congressman Dan Meuser and community leaders have worked for the last year to identify projects with most need and greatest potential impact for direct federal funding.
To continue, please log in, or sign up for a new account.

We offer one free story view per month. If you register for an account, you will get two additional story views. After those three total views, we ask that you support us with a subscription.

A subscription to our digital content is so much more than just access to our valuable content. It means youre helping to support a local community institution that has, from its very start, supported the betterment of our society. Thank you very much!
San Mateo, CA (94402)

Today

Lots of sunshine. High 74F. Winds WNW at 10 to 20 mph..

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies early will give way to cloudy skies late. Low 49F. Winds WSW at 10 to 15 mph.
The moves are a reflection of changing workplace culture in Silicon Valley. Tech companies, which often offer lifestyle perks in return for employees spending long hours in the office, are preparing to adjust to a new hybrid work model.

The new dinner time is an inconvenience because the last of the companys shuttles that take employees to and from their homes typically leaves the office at 6pm. It will also make it more difficult for workers to stock up on hefty to-go boxes of food and bring them to their refrigerators at home.

Many Meta employees are scheduled to return to the companys offices March 28, although some will continue to work from home and others will come into the office less often. Credit:AP

Meta, parent company of Facebook, told employees that it was cutting back or eliminating free services such as laundry and dry cleaning and was pushing back the dinner bell for a free meal to 6.30pm from 6pm, according to seven company employees who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

At Meta, for example, many employees are scheduled to return to the companys offices March 28, although some will continue to work from home and others will come into the office less often.

The changes could be a warning shot for employees at other companies that are preparing to return to the office after two years of the coronavirus pandemic. Google, Amazon, Meta and others have long offered creature comforts such as on-site medical attention, sushi buffets, candy stores and beanbag chairs to lure and retain top talent, which remains at a premium in the tech industry.

Meta has had a difficult past few months, although company officials say the changes to perks are not related. For years, the company dominated the social media landscape. Now it is undergoing dramatic changes as its user growth stalls and younger competitors such as TikTok gain traction worldwide. Investors have been questioning the long-term prospects of the companys advertising business model. Its market capitalisation has dropped by half, to $US515 billion ($715 billion). And some employees are debating whether they should be searching for new jobs as they see the value of their stock-based compensation plummet.

The changes could be a warning shot for employees at other companies that are preparing to return to the office after two years of the coronavirus pandemic.

Last year, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company would be shifting its focus to the metaverse, an immersive online virtual world that has yet to be created. Wide swaths of the company were reorganised around Zuckerbergs vision for augmented- and virtual-reality products, and employees who were not willing to get on board said they felt pushed out of the company.
Chinas stock rout cost the nations richest tycoons more than $US52 billion ($72 billion) on Monday.

Zhong Shanshan, known as Chinas king of bottled water, led the plunge as his fortune fell by $US5 billion, while Tencent Holding Ltd.s Pony Ma dropped $US3.3 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Tencent CEO Pony Mas fortune fell by $US3.3 billion after a report the company is facing a record fine for violating anti-money laundering rules. Credit:Bloomberg

Shares of Zhongs Nongfu Spring Co. tumbled 10 per cent in Hong Kong trading  the most in 18 months  though he still remains Chinas wealthiest person with a fortune of $US60.3 billion. Tencent fell the most since 2011 after a report that its facing a record fine for violating anti-money laundering rules. Pony Ma, once the countrys wealthiest person, is now third with a net worth of $US35.2 billion.

The slide in Chinese stocks accelerated Monday after US officials said Russia asked Beijing to help with the war in Ukraine, raising concerns over a backlash against Chinese companies, potentially even sanctions. The Hang Seng China Enterprises Index tracking shares traded in Hong Kong sank the most since November 2008, while the Hang Sang Tech Index tumbled 11 per cent for the worst decline since its inception.
The vast over-water stage is once again taking shape at Mrs Macquaries Chair, ready for the opening night on March 25 of Opera on the Harbour, The Phantom of the Opera.

Its a very visible statement that Opera Australia is back in business after two torrid years of mass cancellations, job losses and near financial collapse. Much less visible but even more significant are the winds of change starting to blow through the company as it considers its role and purpose in coming years.

Lyndon Terracini will step down from his role at the end of 2023. Credit:Dominic Lorrimer

There is a new CEO at the helm  Sydneysider Fiona Allan returned home from the UK to take over from Rory Jeffes at the end of last year  and a new board chair in Glyn Davis, appointed when David Mortimer stepped down after nine years in the role.

But as significant as these changes are, they are dwarfed by the announcement last month that veteran artistic director Lyndon Terracini will end his tenure at the end of 2023.
Comments by the Northern Territorys Chief Minister at a public meeting in Yuendumu promising consequences for the police shooting of an Aboriginal man amounted to political interference and were a catastrophe for the perception of justice within the grieving community and beyond, the police union says.

Police Association president Paul McCue on Monday lashed Labors Michael Gunner and his Police Minister Nicole Manison for their visit to the remote Warlpiri community on November 12, 2019 at the height of nationwide demonstrations over the death of Kumanjayi Walker.

The Northern Territorys Chief Minister, Michael Gunner. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

It was three days after the shooting and one day before officer Zachary Rolfe was charged with murder. Mr Gunner said the comments were specifically and only about the recommendations, findings and outcomes of the coronial inquest, not about charges, and had been deliberately taken out of context.

According to local media reports from the time, the Chief Minister was addressing questions from community members about their desire for the coronial inquest to be conducted in Yuendumu, when he said:
The year before COVID-19 hit, a record number of international students chose to enrol in Queensland, bringing billions of dollars to the state.

Then the pandemic left the world  and most world travel  at a standstill.

Now the flights have resumed and the borders are open but government bodies fear students are not returning quickly to Queensland, which is hurting tourism and could fetter the local economy for years to come.

In a newly released consultation paper, the Queensland government has conceded many international students now trickling back to Australia are choosing other states despite border restrictions being lifted.
One of Perths major hospitals has had just one patient in intensive care due to COVID-19-related illness this year, with others suffering major traumas and incidentally testing positive for the virus once admitted.

It is the first indication of how many people in hospital are being treated with COVID-19  as opposed to for COVID-19  with the state government refusing to release this data.

Royal Perth Hospital ICU department head Dr Anton Leonard. Credit:Nine News Perth

Of the 50,000 cases recorded since WAs Omicron wave began, four people have died in hospital with COVID-19, each suffering from unrelated serious health conditions. None were on a ventilator prior to their death.

Royal Perth Hospital ICU department head Anton Leonard on Monday said the hospital had not yet treated a patient presenting with severe COVID-related lung disease.
The state-owned Forestry Corporation suffered a $20 million loss last year, with NSW taxpayers forced to pay $441 per hectare to log critical native forests.

The net cost of destroying more than 13,500 hectares of red gum, ironbark and cypress trees - largely for woodchip exports and firewood - was $6 million, while one-off recovery costs following the Black Summer bushfires soared to $14 million.

Half of the states native forests were scorched in the Black Summer bushfires. Credit:Sam Mooy

Critics have called on the government to join Victoria and Western Australia in phasing out the loss-making industry and instead bolster softwood plantations, which delivered a $3873 profit for every hectare logged last year, the corporations annual report shows.

The Western Australian government announced last year it would ban native forest logging from 2024 and released its transition package for workers last week. Victoria will phase out the industry by 2030.
London: Britains top court has refused WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange permission to appeal against a decision to extradite him to the US to face spying charges.

The court said on Tuesday (AEDT) it had refused because the case didnt raise an arguable point of law.

Assange has sought for years to avoid a trial in the US on a series of charges related to WikiLeaks publication of a huge trove of classified documents more than a decade ago.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange greets supporters from a balcony of the Ecuadorian embassy in London 2017. Credit:AP

A British district court judge had initially rejected a US extradition request on the grounds that Assange was likely to kill himself if held under harsh US prison conditions. US authorities later provided assurances that the WikiLeaks founder wouldnt face the severe treatment that his lawyers said would put his physical and mental health at risk.
London: The Queen has restated her pledge to devote her life to service after being forced to miss her first Commonwealth Day service in nearly a decade.

The 95-year-old monarch pulled out of attending the event at Westminster Abbey on Monday (Tuesday AEDT), with the decision reported to be related to her comfort rather than a specific illness.

The Queen, who will be 96 in April, is already working a carefully paced public schedule as she makes concessions to older age. Credit:PA/AP

She was represented by Prince Charles  who will succeed her as Head of the Commonwealth upon her death  while she watched the service from home. Her declining health continues to create headlines in Britain as it prepares for national celebrations in June to mark 70 years since her accession.

Having recently recovered from a bout of COVID-19, the Queen said in a statement she hoped the people of the Commonwealth could draw strength and inspiration from what we share during these testing times.
~Keeping an eye on the ball for special needs education.~

PHILIPSBURG:--- President of Peridot Foundation Gracita Arrindell states:  at an event held at the John Larmonie Center on Friday, March 12th, in commemoration of International Womens Day 2022 special honors were bestowed on Ms. Alisha J. Brookes Director and board of Excellence Learning Academy Foundation.

The programs main highlights were touching presentations of two well-known local personalities: Educator and poet Ms. Lysanne Charles and Attorney at Law Brenda B. Brookes. Both speakers brilliantly held the attention of the audience with their insights of explaining this years IWD theme #BREAKTHE BIAS. The meaning of this years theme was further illustrated by their respective personal experiences and effects of biases on their lives as well as on the day to day lives of marginalized people locally and internationally.

Arrindell continues: Peridot Foundation appreciates and acknowledges the work of a young foundation its Director Ms. Alisha J. Brookes and board of Excellence Academy Leaning Foundation for its work in the field of Special Needs Education.

This Foundation and similar institutions that cater to special needs education need more support and encouragement, thereby making our society a more caring and accepting one in Sint Maarten.

Highly motivated, determined, passionate, and humble are a few words describing our Honoree. An Educator by profession currently employed as a Pedagogical worker/instructor at the National Institute for Professional Advancement (NIPA) a mother and advocate for Special Needs Education is, in brief, a description of Ms. Brookes. She obtained her bachelors degree in early childhood education from Mohawk College, USA. Taught at the local Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. School as a teachers assistant for three years while completing her Bachelor's degree in Social & Human studies with a major in Education. Ms. Brookes has a master's degree in Educational Administration that includes several accredited certifications in special needs and special needs education.

Equipped with her knowledge and experiences gained, most importantly seeing the need in our community in this area of education, without hesitation took the step to open her own after school educational program for kids ages four to twelve years. In 2017 after school program was forced to shut down when 80% of school equipment and other materials were lost due to the devastation of Hurricane Irma. With her resilience and motivating mindset, she re-opened her afterschool program just one month after at a new location. Armed with three folding tables and eight plastic chairs Ms. Brookes worked her way back and up to serving over ninety students in her after-school educational program.

Gracita said: Her aim is to create a safe, healthy, academic program for our special needs student community regardless of the setbacks she encountered made her stand out. The encouragement and support of many parents of children with special needs led her to establish and become the Director of Excellence Learning Foundation that caters to children from infancy to school age, after-school educational development programs for kids ages four to eighteen. In 2018 she opened her special Education Program and Childcare firmly focused on education and advocacy for children and persons with special needs. A young woman who continues to strive for excellence and break- biases in the area of special needs education with love and determination. Ms. Alisha Brookes, a shining example for our community in general and for Special Needs Education in particular is hereby encouraged to continue the good work. Thank you for your services.



Arrindell concludes:  special thanks goes out to Charlotte Brookson Academy for the performance Arts performing students: who delighted the evening with the rendition of the Sint Maarten anthem, and beautiful dance and song: Rachel Augusma, Jaydon Samuel, Shevonni Boodram, Jaleena Hendrickson- Brown.

Our gratitude goes out to sponsors Holland House Hotel, Spa impulse, Divico, Kams Trading, City Mall store for making this celebration a very memorable one.
PHILIPSBURG:--- The President of the Windward Islands Teachers Union (WITU) Stuart Johnson reacted to Honorable Member of Parliament (MP) Christophe Emmanuel via a press release on Monday morning.

Johnson minced no words in saying, "MP Emmanuel needs to know which direction he should take his concerns and do not so at the expense of the unions."

There is much concern about the selective payout by Government but it hasn't gone unnoticed by WITU.

"As a responsible union, we are addressing all matters in a professional way by ensuring all due diligence takes place. We are not in the times anymore where emotions and fanfare will solve our concerns, especially one as serious as the proposed cost-cutting measures affecting our members," Johnson stated.

It was just on Friday, March 4th, 2022 WITU received the official change of membership on the Committee for Civil Servants Unions (CCSU) as per a letter dated Monday, February 17th, 2022 from the Prime Minister.

The Honorable Prime Minister Silveria Jacobs ratified the change to enable President Stuart Johnson to become Member and Vice-President Roxsana Pantophlet to become a Substitute member for WITU on the CCSU.



"Perhaps MP Emmanuel needs to be reminded that he has an arsenal of options at his disposal through the legislative body which he is a member of," Johnson stated.

"Why hasn't the MP officially called the Minister of Finance and/or the Prime Minister to Parliament? Why not make use of the Question Hour in Parliament to handle this concern?" Johnson questioned.

Johnson added, "Has MP Emmanuel considered presenting a motion of no confidence or a motion of disapproval? He has done it in the past for less motivation without any true merit."

In MP Emmanuels own words dated January 27th, 2022 he stated, We have given motions of no confidence for less.

Johnson empathically stated, Another path MP Emmanuel should have thought of would be to have requested an audience with the unions through the Windward Islands Chamber of Labor Unions (WICLU) to formally bring the matter to the unions' attention.

"It is unfortunate that political mileage is being sought but it will not be at the expense of this Union. Go take up the matter where it should be as a duly elected member of Parliament and not via the media nor on the back of this union," Johnson concluded.
~Receives Letter of Support from Royal Patron Princess Beatrix of the Netherlands.~

BONAIRE:--- The Nature Conservation Network Organization the Dutch Caribbean Nature Alliance (DCNA) will host its next Board Meeting on Sint Maarten from the 14th to the 17th of March. DCNA Board meetings are critical for discussing and strategizing on the most effective way to support protected area management organizations in the Dutch Caribbean, especially in light of the significant challenges brought about by the global Covid-19 pandemic and other pressures faced by the Park Management Organizations. Park Management Organizations also have the opportunity to update attendees on some of the challenges and successes the parks are experiencing as they continue to safeguard nature in the Dutch Caribbean. Various governance decisions are also taken during the biannual meetings, including decisions related to financial good-governance, the disbursement of the DCNA Conservation Trust Fund, and the support the DCNA network provides in terms of its regional and international lobby on behalf of the conservation organizations in the Dutch Caribbean.

The DCNA conservation network provides support to the Protected Area Management Organizations of all six islands of the Dutch Caribbean: Aruba National Parks Foundation, STINAPA Bonaire, CARMABI Curacao, STENAPA St. Eustatius, the Saba Conservation Foundation, and the Sint Maarten Nature Foundation. Another critical component discussed during the Board Meeting is the importance of implementing a strategy that will help foster the development of sustainable tourism for the islands, enabling the Dutch Caribbean to emerge from the challenges brought about by the Pandemic with a greater focus on green and blue economies. Aside from conservation managers and the various experts of the Board of DCNA, observers from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN-NL), BirdLife Netherlands, Observation International, and the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality (LNV) also participate in DCNA Board Meetings.

DCNAs Royal Patron Her Royal Highness Princess Beatrix of the Netherlands also recently commended the Conservation Network Organization for their recently organized Board Congress held last November in Curacao. During an official letter from the Royal Palace to the Chair of DCNA Dr. Hellen van der Wal, the Princess commended the organization on their continued support for the protected area management organizations on all six islands while especially providing the means to nature organizations to execute their tasks.
Marigot:--- Voters registered in Saint-Martin are called to the polls, Sunday, March 20, 2022, for the 1st round of the territorial elections.

19 polling stations will be open to voters throughout the territory, from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., according to the attached calendar.

Polling stations are open all day. Each citizen registered on the voters' list is called upon to vote. Voters must present themselves at the polling station to which they are attached, with their identity document - and the certificate of registration on the electoral list or the voter's card if they are in possession of these documents.

Presentation of your ID is mandatory. Voters living on the Dutch side or Anguilla, having dual nationality, must present their French identity document.

Citizens registered on the voters' list are called upon to fulfill their civic duty. It is requested to elect the list of candidates who will lead the Collectivite of Saint-Martin for the next 5 years. 6 lists are in the running for these territorial elections 2022-2027.
~Ministry of TEATT informs community to be aware of international developments~

PHILIPSBURG:--- The Ministry of Tourism, Economic Affairs, Transportation, and Telecommunication will soon be adjusting fuel prices upwards after further developments regarding Russias recent invasion of Ukraine. According to the Ministry, which is responsible for the adjustment of fuel prices on St. Maarten, global oil prices are at an all-time high and are expected to continue to fluctuate.

The Ministry monitors prices daily primarily via an independent source, the Platts Oilgram Price Report. Further research shows that fuel prices have not been this high since 2008.

The increase in fuel prices on Sint Maarten is directly related to amongst others, the sanctions recently placed on Russia, but there are also other contributing factors such as the slow recovery from the pandemic, oil production companies shifting from cheaper winter gas to more expensive summer varieties, as well as widespread supply and demand issues. Presently, the National Fuel Price Average in the U.S. is just about US$ 4.17/gallon, with some States hitting surpassing $5/ gallon.

As the Russia and Ukraine crisis continues, it is expected to see further fluctuation in the gasoline prices, which also impacts the cost of import of food and other goods to the island. The Ministry further stated that as a country is so heavily dependent on imports, the effects of global developments on prices locally cannot be effectively controlled.

The ministry will continue to observe the current fluctuation in global oil prices and will be making the necessary adjustments. The Ministry is also advising the community to be aware of the current developments and the effects it will have on fuel pricing locally.
Edith (Edi) Marie Smith, daughter of the late Glen Lester and Dorothy Jane Allison, was born in Youngstown, OH on Friday, October 11th, 1963, and she departed this life on Saturday, April 30th, 2022, having attained the age of 59 years. In addition to her parents, she was preceded in death b
RTS award winning actress Sinead Keenan is to play the role of DCI Jessica James in ITVs critically acclaimed and RTS nominated crime drama, Unforgotten, created and written by renowned screenwriter Chris Lang and produced by Mainstreet Pictures. Dublin born Sinead, who was also BAFTA nominated for her role as Melanie Jones in Little Boy Blue, begins filming her new role later this month alongside BAFTA nominated Sanjeev Bhaskar who has played DI Sunil Sunny Khan in four previous series of the hugely successful cold case murder drama.Commented Sinead Keenan:I have long been an admirer of Chris Langs work so I am absolutely delighted to be joining the Unforgotten team. Im very much looking forward to working with the extraordinary cast led by the brilliant and incredibly lovely, Sanjeev Bhaskar. And Im hoping that if I play my cards right I might even get to take a peek in Sunnys backpack!Directed by Andy Wilson (Unforgotten, Endeavour, Ripper Street), who has directed all 24 episodes of the ITV drama since its debut on the channel in 2015, Unforgotten is produced by Guy de Glanville (Unforgotten, Gold Digger, Age Before Beauty) and executive produced by Sally Haynes, Chris Lang and Laura Mackie for Mainstreet Pictures. Andy Wilson and Guy de Glanville also executive produce the series.Commented Chris Lang:And so it begins, a new Unforgotten journey - and its scary, for Sunny and the Bishop Street team, for the audience, for all of us. But its also very, very, exciting, and I cannot wait for you to meet DCI Jessica Jessie James, played by the always brilliant, Sinead Keenan.The new series opens with the clock ticking down to DCI Jamess first day in her new job with an unforeseen and devastating introduction to her family life. Determined to make a good first impression with her new colleagues, will Jess be in the right frame of mind to deliver and inspire the team? And inevitably how will the ghost of much-loved former colleague Cassie Stuart haunt her? After all, Cassie will be big shoes for her to fill. Does she have the resolve, professionalism and spirit to live up to her much-admired and respected predecessor? Jesss first case is the discovery of human remains in a newly renovated period property in Hammersmith, London. But how long have they been there and is this a murder dating back to the 1930s or has the body been disposed of in more recent times?As the murder mystery unfolds, well explore the lives of several central characters Jay, played by Rhys Yates (The Outlaws, Silent Witness), Bele with Martina Laird (Summerland, The Bay) in the role, Tony played by Ian McElhinney (Game of Thrones, Derry Girls), and Max Rinehart (Jekyll and Hyde, Miss You Already) as Karol, who on the face of it appear seemingly unconnected to the victim. Hayley Mills will also play Tonys wife, Emma. DI Khans loyal and hard-working cold case investigations team are also back together for the series with Jordan Long as DS Murray Boulting and Carolina Main as DC Fran Lingley reprising their roles. Returning to the series are Georgia Mackenzie as pathologist Dr Leanne Balcombe, Michelle Bonnard as Sunnys partner, Sal and Pippa Nixon as DC Kaz Willets.Commented Laura Mackie and Sally Haynes on behalf of Mainstreeet Pictures:Its a new era for Unforgotten and were delighted that the brilliant Sinead Keenan is joining Sanjeev Bhaskar to head up another gripping and emotional investigation. Unforgotten has been commissioned for ITV by Head of Drama, Polly Hill, and Drama Commissioner, Huw Kennair Jones. Huw will oversee production of the drama from ITVs perspective.Commented Huw Kennair Jones:Once again Chris has created a fascinating set of characters and woven a compelling story that the many Unforgotten fans are going to love. And we're thrilled Sinead is joining Sanjeev and the rest of the team in what is going to be another brilliant series for the ITV audience.Filming for this new series will be taking place in London, Tilbury, Bath and Paris with Andy Wilson once again directing the series. Each of the six episodes in this fifth series will be written by Chris Lang who is also known for his work on Innocent, The Hookup Plan, Dark Heart, A Mothers Son and the soon to be aired ITV drama, The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe. Unforgotten producers, Mainstreet Pictures, are an ITV Studios label, founded in 2013 by Joint Managing Directors and Executive Producers, Laura Mackie and Sally Haynes.A Mainstreet production for ITV, Unforgotten is co-produced with MASTERPIECE in association with BBC Studios, who will distribute series five and the previous four series internationally.
Geneva, 13 March 2022 (SPS) -The family of ailing Sahrawi human rights defender Yahya Mohamed Elhafed Iaazza, held for 14 years in a Moroccan prison, demands his immediate freedom after the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention concluded that he was arrested and tried by Morocco for his activism, forced to confess under torture and denied the right to a defence attorney.



In a scathing rebuke of Morocco's human rights practices, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) has urged the Moroccan authorities to immediately release Yahya Mohamed Elhafed Iaazza, Western Sahara's longest-held political prisoner, after finding that he had been targeted solely for his Sahrawi identity and his political and human rights activities, and should have never been arrested, tried or imprisoned. The decision falls into a long chain of decisions rendered by the UN Working Group, documenting the systematic use of arbitrary detention and long-term prison sentences used to silence Saharawi human rights defenders.



The 307 member-organisations of the Geneva Support Group for the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights in Western Sahara join the call for the immediate release of Elhafed Iaazza and all other imprisoned Saharawi human rights defenders.



The Groups members welcome the decision by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention and call upon all States to ensure its effective implementation by the Kingdom of Morocco. They also calls upon the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ms Michelle Bachelet, to disclose publicly the systematic and serious violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law as documented by her office and to ensure a prompt visit to the region and to all imprisoned Saharawi human rights defenders.



In its opinion, the UN Working Group concludes that Elhafed Iaaza, a 55 year-old father of three was arbitrarily arrested in 2008 in the Moroccan city of Tan Tan on the basis of his Sahrawi origin and being an influential Sahrawi activist with a leading role in the movement for the independence of Western Sahara.



At the time of his arrest, Elhafed Iaaza was president of the Tan Tan branch of CODESA, a Sahrawi human rights organization, where he advocated on behalf of Sahrawi victims of torture and political prisoners. Elhafed Iaaza was accused of organizing a protest on 27 February 2008 that led to the death of a Moroccan police officer and which he never attended: the UN Working Group has found no grounds for this prosecution. Citing numerous irregularities at Elhafed Iaazzas trial, in 2009 Amnesty International called for his release.



The opinion of the WGAD was welcomed by Elhafed Iaaza's family, worried that time is running out for him due to his ill health and the inhuman conditions he has faced in the Moroccan prisons. "We demand that the Kingdom of Moroccan do what the UN has urged and immediately release my father, whose health has severely deteriorated due to the pitiful conditions of his detention, the mistreatment he suffers at the hands of his jailers and his lack of access to care and medication", said his daughter Fatou Elhafed Iaazza, who has been working tirelessly to achieve justice for her father ever since he was taken away when she was just ten years old. "My father should never have set foot in prison. He belongs at home with his family".



In addition to concluding that Elhafed Iaazza was politically persecuted, the WGAD listed multiple human rights violations committed by the Moroccan authjorities against him. He was arrested without a warrant, denied a defense lawyer and the right to defend himself and forced to sign a confession under torture that was later used as evidence against him at trial, thus also being denied due process. Concluding that the Moroccan court that tried Elhafed Iaaza lacked independence, the UN Working Group has referred the case to the UN Special Rapporteur for the Independence of Judges and Lawyers.



"The issue is clear: why is Morocco holding an innocent man in prison?" said jurist Tone Soerfonn Moe, Elhafed Iaaza's Oslo-based international representative. "We have been asking this question for years, ever since Yahya Mohamed was arrested and now, the UN Working Group has added its voice. Yahya Mohamed was racially discriminated against and unfairly imprisoned for his identity as a Sahrawi, his human rights activities and his tireless advocacy for his people's right to a referendum on self-determination, which the UN Security Council promised in 1991. This remains the only reason for his imprisonment and he must be immediately released".



Elhafed Iaazza is known as the "father" of Sahrawi political prisoners, many of whom are very young activists and students who are terrified when they first arrive in Morocco's notorious prison system. "My dad has not been allowed to be a father to us since his arrest, but he took many young Sahrawi prisoners under his wing, comforted them and taught them to survive their ordeal physically and mentally", said his daughter Fatou Elhafed Iaazza. "That is just who he is: a great, kind, loving man. We need him back".



In addition to being deprived of his freedom, Elhafed Iaazza has suffered excruciating torture, ill treatment and prolonged isolation during his 14 years of detention. He suffers from asthma, rheumatism and the effects of long-term hunger strikes, including one that lasted 62 days in protest of his arbitrary detention and torture, as well as the inhumane treatment and systematic racial discrimination that he and other Sahrawi political prisoners suffer. In November 2020, Elhafed Iaazza was exposed to Covid-19 when an infected prisoner was placed in his cell and he was subsequently disappeared by the prison for a total of 8 weeks; a violation that was documented and forcefully denounced in a joint communication of 7 January 20212 by a group of independent UN Special Rapporteurs and echoed by Front Line Defender in their ongoing campaign for the release of Elhafed Iaazza.3.



Background



Elhafed Iaazza is one of many Sahrawis who are targeted by Morocco through arbitrary detention and judicial harassment for their activism on Western Sahara, a UN recognized Non-Self-Governing Territory south of Morocco and north of Mauritania that the Kingdom of Morocco has invaded in 1975 and subsequently partly occupied and annexed. Latest published report refers that there are currently 40 Saharawi human rights defenders imprisoned within Moroccan jails, 30 of which has been sentenced to long term prison sentences.



062
Milton, PA (17847)

Today

Rain diminishing to a few showers this afternoon. High 68F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%..

Tonight

A few clouds. Low 48F. Winds NNW at 10 to 15 mph.
Hazleton, PA (18201)

Today

Cloudy early, then off and on rain showers for the afternoon. High 64F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 50%..

Tonight

Mostly cloudy skies this evening will become partly cloudy after midnight. Low 48F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph.
Pablo Zapata, acting representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Romania, was received on Monday by Crown Custodian Margareta, with joint actions in support of Ukrainian refugees on the agenda of talks.

"Following the Crown Custodian's dialogue with High Commissioner Filippo Grandi, Her Majesty's House and the UNHCR Romania Agency discussed possible joint actions in support of Ukrainian refugees, both in their temporary settlement in Romania and in their transit through our country. The actions concern in particular education, social integration and assistance to those with refugee status," the Royal House said in a Facebook post.

The UNHCR Representative and the Crown Custodian were of the opinion that efforts to support Ukrainian refugees would be long-lasting and would require both educational, social, medical and professional integration.

Prince Radu also attended the meeting at Elisabeta Palace.
Deputy Dan Tanasa, AUR (Alliance for the Union of Romanians) is displeased by the fact that Parliament will not be working on Tuesday, because it is the celebration of the National Day of Hungarians Everywhere.

He had an intervention in the plenum on Monday regarding the Chamber of Deputies' schedule for this week.

"We cannot ignore that the Romanian Parliament once again is celebrating the National Day of Hungarians Everywhere in absentia, all Parliament is sent home so that we do not offend, or upset certain colleagues in Parliament. Seeing how in Budapest there was a directive given to all diplomats to not participate in manifestations dedicated to Romania's National Day, seeing how in the Romanian Parliament there are dignitaries of the Romanian state that show contempt for the Romanian nation, we consider this a mockery to common sense and towards the Romanian Parliament, to once again be sent home and the Romanian Parliament to not work on March 15," Tanasa said.

The Standing Bureau decided that deputies can only work one day this week in the plenum, namely on Monday. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday they will have activities in the select committees.
President of the Republic of Bulgaria will be on a working visit to Romania on Tuesday, Agerpres reports.

According to the Presidential Administration, Rumen Radev will be received by President Klaus Iohannis at 15.30 at the Cotroceni Presidential Palace.The two officials will have one-on-one and official talks, followed by joint press statements.
Romania will ask for the reallotment of funds that remain unspent from previous European programs, intended for the Romanian economy, in order to intervene to assist the business environment, PM Nicolae Ciuca announced on Monday evening.

"We are crossing a complicated period, marked by multiple crises, which require decision and efficient measures of countering the price hikes. In this sense, I discussed with the Ministry of Finance, who is in Brussels and is discussing with European counterparts from ECOFIN, to find solid measures at the level of the European Union for the economic support of member countries. We already have a mechanism that worked during the pandemic period and could be extended and even developed in the context of other crises which we are facing today. Romania will request reallotment of unspent funds from previous European programs, aimed for the Romanian economy, in order to intervene in the business environment, of Romanian enterprises. This package needs to deal with the challenges raised on the European market and to guarantee continuity, stability and predictability, for both the business environment, as well as for the population," PM Nicolae Ciuca specified, at Victoria Palace.
The Minister of National Defence, Vasile Dincu, had a conversation on Monday with his Ukrainian counterpart, Oleksii Reznikov, regarding the developments of the security situation in Ukraine, the Ministry of National Defense reported.

"The Romanian Minister of Defense reiterated the solidarity with the Ukrainian people, the total and unconditional support of the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine in the internationally recognized borders. In this context, the Romanian official mentioned the efforts of the Romanian authorities and civil society to provide the necessary support to the Ukrainian refugee population following the military aggression of the Russian Federation," informs a press release of the Ministry of National Defense, transmitted to AGERPRES.

Dincu also reminded of the operation, in northeastern Suceava, of the logistic center for storage and distribution of aid for the provision of humanitarian assistance to Ukraine.

The Ukrainian Minister of Defense thanked for the support provided so far, including for the humanity shown by the Romanian people towards the Ukrainian refugees, stressing that, in the current situation, any help is necessary and welcome.
Minister of National Defence, Vasile Dincu, stated, on Monday evening, that the drone fallen near a village in Bistrita county was an intelligence-information drone and had no explosives on board.

"It's not a very large drone, it's a toy of a drone, a meter and a bit in wingspan. It's an intelligence-information drone, the type has been identified, it has no explosives. It's a drone that fell in Rachitele and was brought by the children of the village and it wasn't dangerous. It's Soviet-made, it wasn't used and isn't in the use of armies at this time, it's been taken out of use after 1989," said Dincu at Digi24.

He mentioned that he had discussions with representatives of Ukraine about this drone, and they were trying to obtain information, to identify the place where it left from, because "it's clear it's a drone coming from their territory," because it hasn't a very large autonomy.

"One of the essential elements of Russian propaganda in this period was that of discouraging the population, now there is a powerful offensive to discourage the countries around Ukraine from support, attempting to destroy solidarity, to frighten the populations in this area and that's why, somehow, these areas were rather pretexts, in order to show something else is possible. A commission that traveled today to Bistrita has studied it, probably tomorrow we will have conclusions regarding the technical matters, upon its analysis. Today we only had the essential elements regarding what it could do, at best it can collect information, it doesn't a very large wingspan and is also very old," Dincu explained.

In what regards the drone that crashed in Zagreb, Croatia, the Defence Minister stated that it passed through Romanian airspace for three minutes on the north-west border, entered Hungary, where it flew for 40 minutes and crossed into Croatia, where it crashed.
The chairwoman of the E-Romnja organization, Carmen Gheorghe, was awarded by the US State Department, on Monday, for the promotion of Roma women's rights.

Carmen Gheorghe is among the twelve laureates of the International Women of Courage. Established by the US Secretary of State in 2007, this title recognizes the women that demonstrated exceptional courage and leadership in supporting peace, justice, human rights, gender equality and the promotion of women, through personal sacrifices, often placing their lives in danger.

Carmen Gheorghe stated, for AGERPRES, after the awards ceremony that took place at the US Embassy in Romania, that the organization that leads the fight for the rights of Roma girls and women in communities and society.

"Practically, we are not talking only about rights, but also access, we are organizing communities into initiative groups, we are fighting together with groups of Roma girls and women for access to infrastructure, water, decent services, equal treatment in public institutions or in the education system and so forth," she mentioned.

According to the E-Romnja chair, to be a Roma woman in Romania implies "a battle on all fronts" - "in the community, family, society, with the institutions, the system and the press."

Carmen Gheorghe enumerated among the problems of Roma women in Romania aspects that regard access to reproductive healthcare, education, services, in situations of sexual abuse or domestic violence.

The ceremony broadcast online from Washington saw the attendance of US First Lady, Jill Biden, and State Secretary Antony Blinken.

Jill Biden decried the silencing of women by violence, hatred, discrimination and isolation.

The US First Lady added that President Biden is aware of the fact that the voices of women were at the center of resistance against tyranny and that no country that oppresses half of its population can prosper.

In his turn, US State Secretary Antony Blinken declared that the USA are increasing their efforts to support the rights of women, given that they, together with girls, face restrictions in regards to education, employment, their freedom of expression, their ability to move freely in other communities and countries.

He also pointed out that millions of women have fled Ukraine with their families, and millions other remained to help their country in the fight against Russia.

Blinken expressed appreciation for Carmen Gheorghe's fight to support the rights of Roma women and girls and the fight against social exclusion.
The first 8 ambulances donated by the Italian Government as humanitarian aid for Ukraine have arrived on Monday in the northeastern Siret Border Crossing Point, according to the chairman of the Suceava County Council, Gheorghe Flutur, Agerpres reports.

According to him, humanitarian aid for Ukraine are "pouring" everyday through the Siret border point, this being a "sign of solidarity" of the European Union with the Ukrainians that are tried by the armed conflict in their country.Flutur said that these eight ambulances sent by the Italian Government are part of a lot of 22 of such vehicles, which are about to be sent as aid in Ukraine.The chairman of the Suceava County Council specified that these ambulances were picked up at the border by the deputy governor of the Chernivtsi region, Artur Muntean, and that they will be sent to Chernivtsi, Lvov or other areas where they are needed.Flutur also said that the ambulances, B type, are not new, but they are necessary for saving people during this period. The other 14 ambulances from Italy will arrive in Suceava at the end of this week.
Senate President Florin Citu will be on a working visit to Washington DC between March 24 and 30, accompanied by fellow Senators Robert Cazanciuc and Radu Oprea from the Social Democratic Party, Liberals Alina Gorghiu and Roberta Anastase, Ion Narcis Mircescu from the Save Romania Union, and Lorand Turos from the Hungarian Democratic Union of Romania.

"During the visit to Washington DC, the Senate delegation will have a series of official contacts with representatives of the US Senate and House of Representatives, as well as of the Department of State on subjects significant for the Romanian-American political, parliamentary, economic and security bilateral relationship, as well as on current international files," reads an internal memorandum approved today by the Senate's Standing Bureau.
Germany's Federal Minister of Economic Development and Co-operation Svenja Schulze will be in Romania today, according to the German Embassy in Bucharest, Agerpres reports.

The schedule includes a visit to the Blue Dot centre for refugee children and families from Ukraine coordinated by UNICEF and local partners at the Sighetu Marmatiei border crossing area.Schulze will hold talks with UNICEF staff and refugees and will meet Mircea Abrudean, head of the Chancellery of the Prime Minister of Romania."The subject of discussion will be the situation at the Romanian-Ukrainian border, especially the humanitarian situation and aid for refugees from Ukraine, as well as current foreign policy issues," the embassy said.The German official will then visit a nearby refugee transit camp."Putin's war against Ukraine has caused immeasurable suffering to women, men and children in Ukraine. Particularly children are suffering from the war. Many children are taking refuge with their mothers, but many are travelling without parents, alone or with other relatives, neighbours, or acquaintances. For these children, the UNICEF Blue Dot centres are an important shelter and a first point of contact. I want to thank the Romanian authorities, UNICEF staff and the many volunteers for their tireless personal commitment. Together we can overcome this challenge and support those who seek protection," Schulze is quoted as saying in a press statement released by the embassy.Germany is the second largest contributor to UNICEF, with the Federal Ministry of Economic Development and Cooperation (BMZ) alone providing around 621 million euros in funding in 2021. At present, BMZ is providing another two million euros, with additional funding to enable children and young people, especially those traumatised by war and forced migration, to have access to psychosocial care."UNICEF-run Blue Dot centres provide support and protection, as well as essential services specifically for refugee children and their families (...). The Blue Dot centre in Sighet has been operating since March 1, 2022, and has since provided support to more than 5,000 people (40% of whom are children). A total of 26 such centres have been set up so far along the escape routes. Each centre can deal with between 3,000 and 5,000 people a day," according to the German Embassy.
Italy and Romania are part of a common family and, together, prove unity and solidarity, stated, on Monday, the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Luigi Di Maio, who is on official visit to Bucharest.

"At several kilometers from the border we are watching a disaster and, beside the fact that there are very many fatalities, we also have many refugees - 2.8 million. With Minister Aurescu we agree that we must firmly condemn the Russian Federation for the attack and aggression on Ukraine and to express our solidarity for Ukraine. Italy and its NATO allies support the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine and we are working tirelessly to constrain Russia to stop this war through sanctions that are harder and harder to support. At the same time, we are continuing on the path of diplomacy, that we have never wanted to interrupt and in which we still want to believe. Even in this dark moment, we must have the conviction that there is no alternative to the diplomatic solution. The objective is a ceasefire and for the humanitarian corridors to support refugees be allowed," said Di Maio, during a joint press conference held together with Romanian Foreign Minister, Bogdan Aurescu.

He added that his presence in Bucharest and in Chisinau wants to show the support that the Government of Italy is granting to the current security context.

"Thank you for the welcome that Romania makes to Italian refugees, proving solidarity and generosity," the minister completed.

"Italy is fulfilling its role and we have supported the proposal to use the temporary Directive of March 4 of the European Council. Italy is helping the Government and people of Ukraine in the humanitarian realm and, last week, we made a decision to allot 110 million euro as support for the Ukrainian budget," said Di Maio.

The Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs said that measures need to be taken at the level of the EU in order to not depend on Russian gas imports.

"We must find the solutions, to find a European strategy for this Russian gas to not be needed, to find a possibility to transit and supply gas. Furthermore, the European Union must establish a maximum limit for the price of gas in order to avoid speculations," he said.

Di Maio pointed out that, in terms of bilateral relations, Italy is granting particular importance to Romania as a European and Euro-Atlantic partner.

"We are one of the first investors in Romania, given the companies registered and as a commercial partner of Bucharest at the global level. (...) The vibrant Romanian community in Italy, but also many Italians working and living in Romania stand testimony to the relations between our countries within the European Union," the Minister emphasized.
The Minister of Labor, Marius Budai, declared on Monday that 223 persons, refugees from Ukraine, have currently been employed in Romania, in the areas of production and services.

Asked, in Parliament, about how many refugees from Ukraine were hired in Romania until now, the Minister of Labor replied: "223 persons. 48 persons through the National Agency for Employment (ANOFM), the rest of people were hired through the direct relation of employer - employee, but by registering the work contract in labor territorial inspectorates".

He specified that Ukrainian citizens were hired in the areas of "production and services".
The National Recovery and Resilience Plan will go through an optimization process, which will take into account the current reality, "no reform will be removed from the PNRR", the Social Democratic Party (PSD) chairman Marcel Ciolacu said on Monday.

"No reform will be removed from the PNRR. Instead, the solutions and optimization of PNRR (...) I had a discussion today with Mr. Vilceanu (Minister of Investment and European Projects, ed. n.), for example, on hospitals. As the former USR (Save Romania Union) ministers said that the hospitals included in the PNRR are all with feasibility studies, otherwise they could not be included, Mr. Rafila (Minister of Health, ed. n.) discovered that 40 pct of the hospitals, listed astray on that list, do not have feasibility studies. It is obvious that PNRR will go through a beef up process taking into account the current reality. Not that PSD wants or not, that it wants PNL (National Liberal Party, ed. n.) or not, the USR wants. The context has changed. I am glad of the Commission's decision to extend by another year the last financial year, as implementation, and then our chances, we still have there grants of 14 billion, our chances of absorbing that money are increasing considerably," Marcel Ciolacu said.
Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca received, on Monday, at the Victoria Palace, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of the Government of the Italian Republic, Luigi di Maio, the discussions regarding especially the situation generated by the military aggression in Ukraine, both from the perspective of the military, economic and social effects, as well as from that of the management of the humanitarian crisis and the flow of Ukrainian refugees, the government informed in a release.

"We welcome the European Commission's initiative to support member states that host refugees on national territory. Romania is among the states that will benefit from support for civil protection, given the implications of the humanitarian crisis. The funds will be used to provide assistance and accommodation conditions to the victims of this humanitarian catastrophe," the prime minister was quoted as saying in the government statement.

The discussions also focused on energy issues and solutions to increase energy independence. The economic component of the bilateral relationship represented an important theme of the meeting, in the context in which Italy is one of the most important economic partners of Romania, ranking second in terms of trade exchanges, the press release stated.
President Klaus Iohannis welcomed on Monday, at the Cotroceni Presidential Palace, Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of the Italian Republic Luigi Di Maio, context in which the former expressed Romania's support for the adoption of new sanctions to maintain high pressure on the Russian Federation, the Presidential Administration informed in a press release.

"The Romanian-Italian political-diplomatic relations are at an excellent level, and the two countries act as privileged partners, based on the strong historical, cultural ties and also through the deep connections created by the Romanian community in Italy and the Italian one in Romania," shows the cited source.

Klaus Iohannis presented Romania's efforts to help Ukraine through the Suceava Humanitarian Center and welcomed Italy's involvement in making this logistics hub operational. In context, the president stated that this humanitarian hub will also be used to support the Republic of Moldova, which is facing an increasing number of refugees. He appreciated that the Italian Foreign Minister will travel to Chisinau to discuss with the Moldovan authorities the best ways to cooperate in managing the large number of Ukrainian refugees.

President Iohannis also addressed the issue of energy security, including in the context of discussions at European level, stating that the European Union must diversify its supply sources, opening up to countries such as Azerbaijan, Qatar or Egypt, and accelerate interconnections between Member States and the development of energy infrastructure. The president underscored the importance of stepping up investments in renewable sources and in the civil nuclear sector, but also the use of gas as a transitional source, in order to increase energy independence at Union level.

In terms of bilateral economic relations, President Iohannis encouraged Italian companies to continue investing in Romania.

Italian Foreign Affairs Minister Luigi Di Maio, on an official visit to Romania, highlighted the strong relations between the two countries and appreciated the way Romania is handling this difficult situation, thanking our country for the solidarity and support shown to all refugees fleeing from the military conflict in Ukraine.

The Italian official stressed the importance of unity at European level regarding the sanctions aimed at severely sanctioning Russia, but also support for Ukraine, as well as the importance of continuing efforts to strengthen the European project in various fields, including energy, to ensure energy security of the EU.

Luigi Di Maio expressed his country's readiness to support humanitarian efforts both in Ukraine and in the states neighboring Ukraine.
Romania and Italy will continue to strengthen cooperation at all levels to strengthen both the security and the prosperity of the European space and the two states, Foreign Affairs Minister Bogdan Aurescu said on Monday at the joint press statements held with Italian counterpart Luigi Di Maio, who is on an official visit in Bucharest.

"Naturally, the main topic of our talks has been the serious security situation in Ukraine, which affects the entire European and Euro-Atlantic space. We are clearly calling on Russia to end its illegal aggression against Ukraine, to stop hostilities, to withdraw its troops from the entire territory of Ukraine," minister Aurescu said.

He added that he reaffirmed Romania's full support for Ukrainian refugees coming to our country, recalling that Italy was the first state to use the humanitarian logistics center organized in Suceava, which became operational on March 9.

The head of the Romanian diplomacy mentioned that, starting with February 24, the Romanian authorities facilitated the safe transit of over 2,000 Italian citizens who came from Ukraine.

He stressed that the talks focused, in "detail", on the fact that the Republic of Moldova also needs enhanced support, both for the management of refugee flows that are in large numbers on the territory of this state, and in terms of other challenges that Chisinau has to deal with.

Minister Aurescu said that Romania and Italy are "closely" coordinating with the North Atlantic Alliance to strengthen the position of deterrence and defense on the Eastern Flank, which is extremely necessary in the current security context, and thanked his counterpart in Rome for the support it provides for the acceleration of the process of creating the NATO battle group on the Romanian territory.

Another topic addressed by the two foreign ministers was the European Strategic Security Compass, Aurescu stating that Romania's position is that the founding document should reflect transatlantic solidarity and complementarity of action between the EU and NATO, as well as the level of threat posed by Russia to the European security architecture.

According to minister Aurescu, Romania and Italy are actively involved in EU-level talks aimed at adopting additional sanctions against Russia.

Bilaterally, the Minister of Foreign Affairs added, Romania and Italy have a consolidated Strategic Partnership, meant to be developed and adapted to the current realities at European and international level.

Bogdan Aurescu also pointed out that the strong ties between the two states are also strengthened by the large Romanian community in Italy and thanked his counterpart for the way in which the peninsular authorities integrated this community.

In terms of economic cooperation, Aurescu mentioned that Italy remains the second most important trading partner of Romania, and in 2021 a new all-time high of trade was recorded - 16 billion euros.

The head of the Romanian diplomacy also thanked his counterpart for the constant support that Italy gives to our country for accession to the Schengen Area.
The humanitarian aid delivered by the Romanian Orthodox Church (BOR) as of March 10 to the war-besieged Ukraine and its refugees is worth 18,823,874 RON, the Press Office of the Romanian Patriarchate informed on Monday.

"Against the dramatic background of the Ukraine war and of the humanitarian catastrophe caused by it, the Romanian Orthodox Church has mobilized right from the first days of this conflict waged by Russia against an independent and sovereign country, providing multiple assistance to the Ukrainian refugees who arrive to Romania, the Republic of Moldova and to the citizens left back in Ukraine. The dioceses on the border with Ukraine, the Metropolitan Church of Bessarabia, the Archdiocese of Suceava and Radauti, the Diocese of Maramures and Satmar and the Diocese of Tulcea were the first to offer humanitarian assistance at the border crossing points receiving refugees and where the dislocated Ukrainians keep coming," BOR said.

The online platforms ajutacubucurie.ro launched by the Romanian Patriarchate in cooperation with the Filantropia Federation, and fiideajutor.ro of the Archdiocese of Iasi were also activated.

As of March 10, as many as 4,310 priests and volunteers had provided round the clock assistance in eight-hour shifts. Money and products were provided - hot meals, food, baby food, sanitary products, medicines, blankets, clothing, toys, etc. the Romanian Patriarchate reports.

To this add a series of ongoing social services: translation - 42,707 beneficiaries; counseling and guidance - 29,587 beneficiaries; medical services - 9,048 beneficiaries. As far as refugee accommodation is concerned, 8,174 places were identified, of which 7,521 with meals included.

BOR announced having organized so far 128 humanitarian transports on the Romanian territory, 47 to Ukraine and 10 to the Republic of Moldova.

The volunteers of the Chapel of the People's Salvation Cathedral organized between March 2 and 8 a blood donation campaign in collaboration with the National Defense Ministry's Blood Transfusion Center. This action will continue on Tuesday and Wednesday at the headquarters of the General Inspectorate of the Romanian Gendarmerie.
As many as 2,087 new cases of people infected with SARS-CoV-2 were recorded in the last 24 hours in Romania, up 461 from the previous day, with more than 18,000 RT-PCR and rapid antigenic tests performed, the Health Ministry informed on Monday, Agerpres reports.

Of the new cases, 217 were in re-infected patients, who tested positive more than 90 days after the first time they recovered from the disease.Most of the newly confirmed COVID-19 cases in Romania since the previous reporting were recorded in Bucharest City - 852, and in the counties of Cluj - 150, Ilfov - 106, Timis - 95, and Constanta - 93.As of Monday, 2,794,081 cases of people infected with the novel coronavirus were confirmed in Romania.- Hospitalisations -As many as 3,839 people with COVID-19, up 123 from the previous reporting, including 254 children, are hospitalised in Romania at specialist care facilities.Out of the total number of hospitalised patients, 551 patients, down 29, including two children, are in intensive care.Of the 551 patients admitted to ICU, 489 are unvaccinated against COVID-19.- Deaths -According to the ministry, another 20 Romanians infected with SARS-CoV-2 - 10 men and 10 women - are reported dead in the last 24 hours.Out of the total 20 patients who died, 15 were unvaccinated and five vaccinated. The vaccinated patients were over 50 years of age.All deaths were in patients with comorbidities.Since the beginning of the pandemic, 64,381 people diagnosed with the SARS-CoV-2 infection have died in Romania.
The Managing Director of the Romanian Red Cross, Ioan Silviu Lefter, said that following the discussions held with the Romanian and Ukrainian authorities, a safe humanitarian corridor on the Siret-Chernivtsi relationship was opened, being in discussion for the next week two other such corridors, Agerpres reports.

Ioan Silviu Lefter made the remarks in a press conference at the Victoria Palace at the end of the working meeting that Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca had with the representatives of the governmental institutions and those of the non-governmental organizations involved in the management of the refugee situation in Ukraine."The Red Cross acts under a special law, we are partners of the government in emergency situations and this is a situation of extreme urgency. We have mobilized in two plans - in the national plan I can say that we have launched a national appeal to collect both products and money to purchase different products and not only, I am referring here also to tents, to the barracks, which we can use both internally and externally. We have mobilized all our branches at all customs points. They're all there. We have mobilized all the branches in the country, which also do collections. Personally I have been in all the customs in the north of the country on several occasions. I can say that I participated with (Suceava County Council's head, ed. n.) Mr. Flutur two weeks ago in a discussion with the governor of the Chernivtsi area and we managed to open a safe humanitarian corridor on the Siret-Chernivtsi relationship. As a result, there are passing through the only humanitarian aid to Ukraine. (...) We are in the discussions of finding some safe corridors to be able to take next week humanitarian convoys to the north, through Sighetu Marmatiei and maybe also to Isaccea, to pass them beyond for the population of Ukraine," said Ioan Silviu Lefter.He also spoke of the aid sent from several national societies of the Red Cross and the Red Crescent, following the international appeal launched from the Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent."I am in a permanent connection with our president, Francesco Roca, so that help has begun to come from the other national societies of the Red Cross and the Red Crescent. So far, 44 trucks have entered Ukraine, 14 from the Romanian Red Cross, the rest from the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in the world. Turkey has entered with many trucks, the Bulgarians have entered, the Greeks have entered, the Italians have entered, the Chinese have entered with aid and we have signals that they will come from many national Red Cross and Red Crescent societies. (...) Equally, the Vice-President of the Federation, who is vice-president of the Europe area, was also visiting us, also for assessing the situation. (...) There is a great interest on the part of the Federation to support the Red Cross here and, first of all, the Romanian Government in an effort to bear more easily, let's say, this wave of refugees. At the headquarters of the Red Cross was sent a chief of operations from the Federation, who worked in conflict zones, I am referring here to Syria, Afghanistan, has a great experience in terms of refugees, with six more employees from the Federation. Because, we have to admit, we are well organized, but we have not faced the wide range of problems that this great humanitarian drama offers us," Lefter said.
Salvati Copiii [Save the Children] Romania warns about the risks the refugee children from Ukraine are facing, including human trafficking.

Ever since the war started in Ukraine, 4,442 Ukrainian children and 3,775 adults - women, elderly, men with a documented medical condition, extended families - have received humanitarian assistance from Salvati Copiii Romania. Moreover, psycho-emotional services have been provided to children who were forced to abandoned their home, according to a press release of this organization sent on Monday to AGERPRES.The Salvati Copiii teams working at the border checking points and refugee centres have more than 45 experts (coordinators, psychologists, educators, social assistants) and 56 volunteers, some of them speaking Ukrainian."What is urgent now is to provide fast humanitarian assistance, information and emotional support, both at the border and at the centres where they are accommodated. And children coming from the childcare centres in Ukraine are even more vulnerable," said the representatives of the organization.They pointed out Salvati Copiii is the only NGO present in the two refugee camps in Siret and Radauti, working especially to help the children.The children who took refugee from Ukraine have been received at the border with staple foods, hygiene products, clothes, shoes, pampers, pacifiers, baby bottles, baby strollers, hot water thermoses, toys, blankets and other products, while the mothers received free of charge phone cards from the mobile phone companies, emotional support, translation and counseling about the asylum procedure, travel means, map and address of the asylum seekers centres etc.
National leader of the National Liberal Party (PNL) Florin Citu said on Monday that the Ministry of Energy has to come up with the latest amendments to the offshore drilling law, adding that a governing coalition meeting on this subject will take place on Tuesday, Agerpres reports.

"We are ready in Parliament, we are ready in the coalition; the Ministry of Energy has to come up with the latest changes. Last time in the coalition there were some additional requirements for the Ministry of Energy for some additions; since they come to the coalition they will pass, it will be very fast. (...) Some estimates of thresholds: in the end, everyone agrees that in terms of the division of revenues from this operation, a larger part will go to the Romanian state and a smaller part to privately-owned companies, it is true. (...) I suggested the division to be 60-40 percent, but the idea is also how we make this percentage and we have to see the amount we will have as income. (...) Tomorrow is the coalition meeting. We will see tomorrow the changes it comes up with," said Citu at the Senate House.He said that in terms of energy prices, there is a need for medium and long-term solutions, namely a cross-party agreement for investment in the field until 2026 and the offshore drilling law.The Senate chairman also mentioned that energy prices will be capped for a year, but warned that the national government deficit should not be exceeded.
The simple motion "Again with the tank over Justice", initiated by the Save Romania Union (USR) against Minister Catalin Predoiu was rejected on Monday by the Chamber of Deputies plenum.

There were 192 votes "against", 80 votes "in favor" and 3 abstains.
The subsidy transferred in 2021 from the state budget to balance the social security budget was 12 billion RON, meaning approximately 15% of the values of pensions paid from the social security budget, maintain the representatives of the National Union Bloc (BNS).

Thus, the unionists urge the Government not to increase the contribution transferred to the Pension Pillar II (mandatory private pension funds - e.n.), at least not until the analysis of the technical assistance supplier is finalized.

According to the quoted source, the Labor Ministry initiated last week a Government Emergency Ordinance by which it proposed raising the social security contribution transferred to Pension Pillar II from 3.75% to 4.75%, "this initiative being justified by the necessity to respect arrangements in the PNRR [National Recovery and Resilience Plan]".

"Why are we increasing the quota of the CAS [social insurance contributions] transferred to Pension Pillar II if we are not interested what pensions this system is to pay? About consultancy with no real use and about reform measures we expect nothing of! The preparation and negotiation of the PNRR in a state of opaqueness (as if it was the best kept state secret) brought us to the situation in which the implementation of this document offers us still countless unpleasant surprises. A month ago, the public opinion took notice that the Citu Government committed through the PNRR to keep the level of pension costs relative to the GDP nearly unchanged for 50 years. We are discovering very many commitments in the PNRR made under the pressure of lobby structures. Some were unmasked by the press and eliminated, some others remained hidden in the hundreds of pages of the PNRR. They are visible now, however, and they show us how permissive the Citu Government was with regard to the influences of the business environment and, at the same time, how little interest he had in the welfare and future of this country's citizens," claim the BNS representatives.

"The contempt seems, however, even greater if we have in view the rest of the commitments assumed through the PNRR regarding Pension Pillar II. It seems the Citu Government has taken, 'copy&paste', from the requests of administrators of pension funds and without a shade of judgment assumed it as public policy. [They] have assumed through the PNRR the financial viability of Pension Pillar II as a measure of reform, but in fact the Citu Government was exclusively concerned with the viability of the funds administrators' business. Not even a word about the participants, about guaranteeing their rights, about the safety and security of their investments, about how the pensions from this pillar will be paid," mentions in the release.
Virgil Popescu should have been replaced long ago as Minister of Energy, Save Romania Union (USR) Acting Chairman Catalin Drula told Parliament on Monday, in a press statement at the end of the USR National Bureau meeting, Agerpres reports.

"We need gas, electricity, promoting the market. Instead, they come up with a scheme wrong from the start, which caps the manufacturer, that is, even if someone wants to enter the market, if you put the price-current at producer price, it discourages investments. They have politicized from top to bottom these companies that should produce for Romania. This is a man who should have left a long time ago and he is not the only one in this government," said Catalin Drula.USR is summoning Minister of Energy Virgil Popescu again in Parliament, Drula added, adding that USR will submit a request to this effect with the Standing Bureau of the Chamber of Deputies and estimated that the minister will have to come to Parliament next week."In terms of energy - a disaster, concerning fuel, a disaster, concerning gas, a disaster as regards electricity. We will summon Virgil Popescu back in Parliament. Virgil Popescu is the Minister of Energy for the third year. Generally, we are talking about these government ministers having been in office for three months. In Virgil Popescu's case, we are talking about three years in which he has not been able to pass the offshore law. He should have found a simple, correct taxation formula to stimulate investments and allow us to extract the gas. We have been hearing for at least three years that the power plant in Iernut (central Mures County, ed. n.) is supposed to be finished. We have 10 billion euros for which he does not have the user guides for investments in energy production," Drula said.On the other hand, Catalin Drula criticized the coalition leaders, Florin Citu (National Liberal Party leader - ed.n) and Marcel Ciolacu (Social Democratic Party leader - ed.n.), for sending opposition messages, instead of offering solutions to problems, in the context in which they assumed the government. In this regard, he said that the coalition leaders would represent an "opposition group to the Ciuca government"."If you assumed the government - and they promised us to accomplish a 70 percent government - then you cannot come and not have solutions every day and attack the government. Take it down, appoint another prime minister, change the ministers or leave the government, if you are capable," Drula further affirmed.
*** THREE Bedroom/ 2 FULL Bath/1Car Garage One Story Condo Unit *** Rental property for the past SEVEN Years. Last tenant of 4 years for $1000/month. ** Seller is Licensed Broker in the State of Missouri ** ** Needs some TLC ** Sold "AS IS" Seller to provide no warranties, no inspections and no repairs. **
ST. LOUIS  Its the end of an era at Major Brands.

After more than 80 years of independence, the states largest alcohol distributor is being merged into New York conglomerate Breakthru Beverage. CEO Sue McCollum is stepping down after a decade in charge.

Its been an eventful decade: McCollum stepped into the job as her husband, then-CEO Todd Epsten, was dying of cancer, and she immediately had to fight to keep the business alive. Major suppliers switched to rivals without notice and took about half the companys spirits business. Then they and other suppliers launched a campaign in the courts and Jefferson City to overturn the franchise law protecting the rest.

She built the company back by acquiring two other local distributors, and then battled the defectors in court, shoring up the franchise law and forcing millions of dollars in payouts.

But in 2020, McCollum sold her share in the business to Chicagos Wirtz family, which co-owns Breakthru. And now Major Brands is being folded into the larger concern.

She sat down this week to talk about it. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Question  So how does it feel to be leaving?

Answer  Nostalgic. It all happened so quickly. I initially thought I would just be keeping the business going. I never thought there would be all these challenges to keep it.

But I took it on with this fantastic Major Brands team, and we proved how important relationships are. In some of our battles, we had more than 400 customers ask us how they could help. Retailers would come in during legislative fights and say, You guys gotta stay in business. Well do whatever we can. Its been a remarkable journey.

Q  What was it like coming into the business like you did?

A  It was like being in the middle of a hurricane. Everything was happening so fast, and everything that was happening was unprecedented. I had other wholesalers call me and say, Were taking you out.

But this one day, there was this moment of clarity: I could fight for this business and lose it, I could give up, or I could fight for this business and win. And giving up was the same as losing, so I decided I might as well fight.

Did I think we could lose? Sure. And if we didnt prevail in these franchise lawsuits, our business was toast. But it was from that moment of clarity that we moved forward. And we rebuilt our company.

Q  Why sell your share in 2020? Youd worked so hard to keep the business independent.

A  I wanted to do two things at one time: one was continue to run the business, but also to begin to do some more philanthropic work. I thought, Why wait to do some of the things I want to do now and make an impact now? I established a foundation at the time, and theres more to come on that.

And now with the sale, the timing just feels right. To me, it always was about legacy and leaving things better than I found them, and in 2020, we surpassed our record revenue mark set in 2012.

So now I get to continue to do the work in the community, and I also retain ownership of two beer distributors in South Florida.

Q  What are your hopes for the nonprofit?

A  We dont have all the accoutrements yet, but Im a believer in leveling the playing field and Im a fighter for the underdog. And I want to really look at how we can address some of these systemic racial and gender inequities we have.

Q  Are you going to be focused on St. Louis or more broadly?

A  The focus will be on St. Louis, but, gosh, what an opportunity to use St. Louis as a place we can find solutions that work everywhere.

Q  Will anything change at Major Brands after the sale? With every merger, theres concern about synergies.

A  To me, this is the perfect second stage for Major Brands. Breakthru Beverage is not in Missouri, they dont have anyone else working here.

We have all our suppliers. The team will stay the same. And were a very successful company. So theres very much the intent to keep this company as it is.

Theres also real appreciation for our culture and our engagement with the community. Our Safe Home program, which offers people safe rides home, has been recognized as something Breakthru wants to bring to other markets.

Q  What are the trends in the industry right now? It seems like consolidation is one.

A  Well, in the state of Missouri, Major Brands competitor is Southern Glazers, and they operate in 46 states. Major Brands operates in one. So consolidation is a factor, for sure.

And then as far as other trends, consumers have never had more choice. You go to a ballgame, its just not beer and peanuts anymore. You go to a Chiefs game, youre going to see beer and spirits logos all over the place. And we dont split occasions into beer occasions and spirits occasions anymore. Anytime works for either one. And I dont think were going back.

Q  Whats the best advice youve ever gotten?

A  Theres a Steve Jobs quote about how you cant connect the dots in your life going forward, you can only connect them looking backward, and you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in the future. So I really tell people every experience you have in life will end up having meaning and its our job to make each and every one of them meaningful at the time we have them.

In my role at Major Brands, I have used every job and experience Ive ever had. I knew how bars worked because I worked at a bar. I had a broad background in public affairs: If we needed to issue a statement, I wrote it. Law school helped when I was in litigation with the largest spirits supplier in the world.

Q  Whats your favorite drink?

A  Well, I cant just have one. I like champagne if its wine. I love a Makers Mark on the rocks with a slice of orange. And you cant beat a City Wide or Mich Ultra.

The business news you need Get the latest local business news delivered FREE to your inbox weekly. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
ST. LOUIS COUNTY  One of the regions most important assembly lines took another hit from abroad Monday.

Germany said it would buy 35 Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jets and use upgraded European-made fighters to do jobs it once reserved for Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornets. Boeing had banked on German orders of Super Hornets and Growlers, their electronic warfare variants, to keep busy thousands of workers north of Lambert Field and across the country.

It feels like the market for the Super Hornet is gradually eroding, said Loren Thompson, a longtime defense industry consultant and executive with the Lexington Institute. That probably means Boeing will need Congress to keep the line viable.

Washington has already extended the Super Hornet line years beyond expectations. And in a statement Monday, the company said it remains confident in the next generation capabilities and unique value proposition its planes have to offer.

Introduced in the 1990s, the Super Hornet is Boeings all-purpose naval workhorse, built to live on a carrier deck and handle any mission thrown at it, from dogfights and airstrikes to refueling planes midair. Over the past two decades or so, Congress has put more than $50 billion toward nearly 700 planes.

But Navy officials are increasingly insisting on putting more of their limited resources into developing their next-generation fighter, and theyve been looking for money in the Super Hornet program. And since the F-35 became available, its become the favorite of foreign allies.

Germany bucked that trend two years ago with announcement of plans to buy Super Hornets. But it was a political decision: Germany and France were working together on their own next-generation jet, and France had made clear to Germany that buying the F-35 could torpedo the effort.

Since then, though, more and more Western allies have chosen the F-35. Then Germany installed a new leader, triggering a review of the Super Hornet buy. And when Russia invaded Ukraine, new German Chancellor Olaf Scholz promised a huge defense buildup in response, including the newer, stealthier F-35, and also the next-generation program.

Boeing continues to pursue a deal in India. Back home, it appears to have convinced Congress to direct the Navy to buy a few more Super Hornets over admirals objections in this years defense budget, which may continue as war in Europe boost U.S. defense spending.

Im sure they can keep that going for a few more years, said Richard Aboulafia, managing director at AeroDynamic Advisory.

Still, while Boeing has defied the odds on Capitol Hill for years, lobbying there isnt getting any easier. Navy leaders have publicly opposed new Super Hornets, saying they dont see any practical use for them past the 2030s.

And the foreign sales keep falling through, too.

The strategy, said Thompson, the longtime defense industry consultant, is coming unraveled here.

German reaction to Ukraine war could sting Super Hornet German chancellor suggests his country could buy Lockheed Martin's newer, stealthier F-35s instead of St. Louis-made Super Hornet.

The business news you need Get the latest local business news delivered FREE to your inbox weekly. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
Daniel Neman Daniel Neman is a food writer for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Follow Daniel Neman 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

It was ridiculous. I couldnt lift the package of chicken breasts without a winch.

There were only three breasts in the package  and if you want to be technical, it was only a breast and a half. Yet the thing weighed about three pounds.

Three pounds is, technically, the size of an entire fryer chicken. Fryers can be as small as 2 pounds (or as large as 4 pounds). We can assume that these particular breasts came from a roaster, but still. The breasts were huge, and that was without skin and bones.

There is nothing wrong with that, as far as it goes. More food means more people can be fed and, with luck, more leftovers. The problem comes when you are trying to cook to a recipe.

I was on this particular hunt for chicken recently when I was going to make Chicken Kiev, the recipe for which appears elsewhere on these pages. I was using a recipe that dates back to 1975.

It wasnt that long ago in the grand scheme of things, but it was a different epoch in terms of chicken evolution.

Chickens back then were, for lack of a better term, normal. They were properly proportioned, at least for a chicken. I mean, chickens always look kind of funny, but at least they could stand up without threatening to topple over.

When the great Craig Claiborne said to use one chicken breast per Chicken Kiev, he meant one that weighed perhaps 8 ounces, not 16. Cooking his recipe now means having to make adjustments; I sliced the breasts horizontally in half to come up with the proper size.

For the sake of science, I tried to use a one-pound breast in the recipe. It was an utter failure. I couldnt pound the chicken thin enough to use  Chicken Kiev requires a thin fillet so it can be wrapped around a mound of herbed butter. When I finally got the chicken thin enough, it fell apart in shreds. And still, there was twice as much chicken as I needed.

I dont blame the farmers. Farmers look to fill a need. Americans like chicken breasts much more than legs and thighs, so farmers, breeders and geneticists try to supply chickens with as much breast as possible.

If it were only chickens, Id keep my grumbling to myself. But a walk down the aisles of any grocery store reveals that food just isnt the same size.

Shallots used to be almost a secret ingredient used only by those in the know. When they werent popular, they were more or less the size of a dried fig.

But now, there are more and more people in the know, resulting in increased demand for shallots. Agricultural science has responded, and now shallots are twice as big as they used to be.

Again, there is nothing inherently wrong with that. They still taste the same, you just get more shallot per shallot.

But if you see a recipe from more than a few years ago calling for one shallot, youll be much happier if you cut one of todays monster shallots in half.

At least chicken breasts and shallots are getting bigger. Everything else is getting smaller, for obvious economic reasons.

Cans of vegetables and fruit have contained 14 or 14 fluid ounces for so long that it feels normal now. But those are odd numbers, or at least unusual, so I looked up pictures of old cans. Sure enough, they all started out at 16 ounces. Of course they did.

Candy bars are a particularly annoying example. The prices naturally keep going up, but the 3 Musketeers bar of my youth that weighed 2.06 ounces now weighs 1.92 ounces. The Hersheys bar that was formerly 1.875 ounces (I assume it was originally 2 ounces) now checks in at 1.55 ounces. Kit Kat bars, which started out at 1 ounces, now weigh 1 ounces.

OK, I did not see that one coming.

Stay up to date on life and culture in St. Louis. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
ST. LOUIS  A man from Arkansas who drove to Pagedale to sexually assault a 14-year-old girl was sentenced Monday to 18 years in federal prison.

Prosecutors say Jerrell West, 32, of Forrest City, met the girl online and began communicating with her daily.

On April 19, 2020, he drove to her home in Pagedale, saying he wanted her to come live with him. He picked her up and took her to a truck stop south of Ste. Genevieve, where he sexually assaulted her in the back seat, they said.

West then drove her home. Investigators later traced a cellphone number to West and the girl picked him out of a lineup.

West was indicted that May on a charge of traveling with intent to engage in sexual conduct with a minor. He was convicted at trial by a federal jury last August.

We hope today's 18-year sentence will empower the victim to see that 100% of the blame sits squarely on child predator Jerrell West, said Akil Davis, acting head of the St. Louis office of the FBI.

Davis said Pagedale police's "quick action enabled agents to use a large number of advanced techniques to produce overwhelming and undeniable evidence against the perpetrator.

Shake off your afternoon slump with the oft-shared and offbeat news of the day, hand-brewed by our online news editors. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
Updated Monday night with Major Case Squad statement

SAUGET  The Major Case Squad of Greater St. Louis is asking for the public's help in identifying several people believed to have been in the area of a nightclub where a fatal shooting occurred on Sunday.

Police officers found a 29-year-old Black Jack man dead early Sunday morning in the overflow parking lot of the Oz Night Club in the 300 block of Monsanto Avenue.

St. Clair County Coroner Calvin Dye Sr. later confirmed Jonathan Brown died of a gunshot wound to the head. Police were called to the area about 6:45 a.m. Sunday, and Dye said Brown was pronounced dead at 10:30 a.m.

On Monday night, the Major Case Squad tweeted a series of photos of people "believed to have been in the area when the shooting occurred."

Anyone with information on the case or the individuals shown in the photos is asked to call the Sauget Police Department at 618-332-6500, St. Clair County police dispatchers at 618-825-2681 or CrimeStoppers at 866-371-8477.
ST. LOUIS  A Ferguson man who formerly worked as a school security officer for the Ferguson-Florissant School District on Monday admitted filming his sexual abuse of an underage girl.

Mark A. Bennett, 48, said he abused the child for years, taking both pictures and videos that were later found by investigators.

Bennett, of the 500 block of Chartier Drive, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in St. Louis by Zoom to one count of production of child pornography, which carries a sentence of 15 to 30 years in prison.

As part of his plea, prosecutors agreed to ask for no more than 25 years in prison, concurrent to any sentence he receives for related charges in St. Louis County Circuit Court, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jillian Anderson said.

Bennett is scheduled to be sentenced June 13.

Shake off your afternoon slump with the oft-shared and offbeat news of the day, hand-brewed by our online news editors. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
EDWARDSVILLE  A Fredrickstown, Missouri man has been indicted in Madison County for sex crimes against a 12-year-old boy.

William E. McKay, 36, of Fredericktown, Missouri, was indicted on Thursday by a Madison County grand jury on five counts of predatory criminal sexual assault of a child, all enhanced Class X felonies.

The case was originally presented by the Madison County Sheriffs Department.

According to court documents, between Nov. 1 and Dec. 26 McKay allegedly performed a number of sex acts on the boy.
A 23-year-old man arrested in Las Vegas on Friday is the third suspect to be charged in connection to a car chase in St. Louis that culminated in the shooting of two officers in Ferguson.

St. Louis County police said Johnny Lewis, of the 800 block of Canaan Avenue, will be extradited from Nevada.

He is charged with resisting arrest by fleeing and creating a substantial risk of serious injury or death. Once here, he will be held on a $50,000 cash-only bail.

Police previously said that officers on Jan. 26 started following a white Toyota 4Runner SUV that had been spotted at the scene of a homicide hours earlier.

The SUV fled, weaving in and out of traffic as officers chased it into Ferguson. The SUV driver eventually lost control and crashed near West Florissant Avenue and Lang Drive, according to court documents.

There, at least one of the SUVs occupants, while running away, fired at the officers, and officers shot back, according to St. Louis County police.

One of the men in the car, 23-year-old Equan Hopson, of St. Louis, was shot and later died from his injuries.

St. Louis police Officer Colin Ledbetter, in his fourth year as a St. Louis police officer, was shot at least twice and another officer was also shot in the leg. Both survived.

Two men in the back seat of the vehicle, August Burns, 23, of Florissant, and Clyde Thomas, 35, of Farmington, were both charged shortly after with resisting arrest. Burns was also charged with unlawful possession of a firearm.

Police confirmed they were not looking for additional suspects in connection to the case.
KIRKWOOD  The Kirkwood School District has relocated its central offices to the historically Black neighborhood of Meacham Park, a move designed to bring the community together.

Who would have guessed in the 80s that the Kirkwood School District would have come in this community? No one, said Harriet Patton, president of the Meacham Park Neighborhood Improvement Association.

The J. Milton Turner School building on Milwaukee Street on the southern edge of the district is now home to Superintendent David Ulrich and other administrators. The building opened as Meacham Park Elementary School in 1925 at the urging of Black parents who wanted a better education for their children in their own neighborhood.

Later renamed for former slave and educator James Milton Turner, it remained an all-Black school until the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregated schools were unconstitutional.

After the school closed in 1976, efforts to turn it into a museum were unsuccessful. The district sold the building in 1980. Various businesses called the building home for decades before it was renovated in the 2000s.

The district bought the building back last year. The districts former administrative offices on the North Kirkwood Middle School campus will be converted to eight classrooms. Office furniture and files are being installed this month.

To have it back in the Kirkwood family is something we could only dream of, Ulrich said.

Some hints of the former school remain, including lockers lining the hallways and glazed tile on some walls.

Patton, who attended Turner Elementary and graduated from Kirkwood High in 1969, said the districts return to the school is supported by Meacham Park neighborhood residents as the latest effort to relieve racial tension in the mostly white suburb of Kirkwood.

The racial tensions and neglect that plagued Meacham Park after it was annexed by the city of Kirkwood in 1991 culminated in a shooting rampage at City Hall in 2008. The tragedy took the lives of two city police officers, four city officials and the man who shot them, Charles Lee Cookie Thornton of Meacham Park.

The U.S. Justice Department worked on a mediation agreement to address concerns of Meacham Parks residents. In the nearly 15 years since the shooting, residents have made their own strides to connect the community.

The school district returning to its roots is a positive move, Patton said.

The past is behind us. Some things you just have to let go, she said. Im happy theyre there. They planted a seed, watered it and its growing.

The legacy of Turner, one of the founders of Lincoln University in Jefferson City, is displayed in old clippings and photos at the school, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The district has hosted free COVID-19 testing for the community at the school. There are plans for volunteers to offer tutoring for students.

Were coming together, working together, and we need to stay together, Patton said.

Stay up to date on life and culture in St. Louis. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
ST. LOUIS  Eight area high school students were welcomed to a seat at the table here Monday, to directly tell a sitting congresswoman their experiences of growing up exposed to racism and gun violence.

We know what it looks like, U.S. Rep. Cori Bush, D-St. Louis, told them. How is this affecting you?

After facing strong bipartisan rebukes nationally over continued commitment to her defund police activism, and recent vote against Russian sanctions and other measures, Bush was welcomed at the youth speak-in as one of their own.

By the end of the one-hour event, held in her district at historic Sumner High School, she was in tears.

Seven Robinson, 17, of Vashon High, spoke about how his emotions have been shut off like a water line since his friend was recently killed.

We lose people so much, it becomes normal, he said. You become numb to pain.

Tyania Daniels, 17, of Jennings High, could count on both hands the number of people shes known who have been shot. Whats more, she said, the past two years added another layer of trauma to the mix.

Its hard to hear that you lost a teacher, Daniels said of the COVID-19 pandemic. Its hard to hear you lost someone to gun violence.

She said many children have been struck by stray gunfire.

You never know what could happen, said Daniels, who wants to be a pharmacist one day.

Kenneth White III, 18, of Cardinal Ritter College Prep, said youths often live in fear of getting robbed or killed.

This is nothing new, he said. Its just getting worse.

While most of the panelists knew somebody who had been a victim of gun violence, White was one. In 2021, on Interstate 70, he was shot six times, a detail he didnt share until after the panel was over. Instead, he spoke publicly about how environment plays a large role, starting at home. He said staying busy with good after-school programs is vital.

Dont make time for negativity, he said.

Stephon Riggins, 17, of Sumner High, added: The first step to a revolution  is a change of thought.

And that change does not come easily.

Moriah Morrow, 17, who lives in Florissant, said she experienced racism transitioning from a majority Black school to Villa Duchesne, a majority white, private Catholic school for girls in Frontenac. She said some teachers acted surprised by her intelligence because shes Black.

Morrow is a leader, but she said shes grown weary of having to educate people about Black history and racism thats easily found through a basic Google search.

To the white people, please, please unlearn racism, she said. And take the burden off of Black people.

Bush vowed to support the panelists, and anyone watching the discussion online, by helping them connect with services in the community. She told them that therapy had helped her get through trauma and PTSD that she didnt even know was there, some of which happened as a teenager.

I am not going to push under the rug that you feel these things, she told the group, adding: What we need from you is joy. You need to live life. You need to enjoy life. You deserve that.

At the event, Bush announced a new program called Congress In Your Classroom that is supposed to continue and broaden Mondays discussion to two representatives from any high schools in her district that want to participate. There will be a recurring meeting with her, as well as a smaller group of students that will suggest policy changes.

Bush said she and representatives of her office will also be visiting schools of all levels to enhance civic engagement and help connect students and their families with resources.

Zipporah Lawal, 18, a senior at Hazelwood East, said in an interview that she was walking away from the panel feeling empowered.

We have more of a voice than we think, she said.

Stay up to date on life and culture in St. Louis. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
JEFFERSON CITY  A panel of Missouri judges released a tentative outline of the states new Senate districts Monday following the failure of a citizen-led commission to draw new boundaries.

The new map for Missouris 34 Senate seats will be formally submitted to the Secretary of States office Tuesday, giving candidates two weeks to determine where they will run before filing for the 2022 election closes.

The Judicial Redistricting Commission deeply appreciates the input provided by citizens during our public hearing and through the website, said Western District Appeals Court Judge Cynthia L. Martin, who chaired the commission. That input was thoughtfully considered, subject to the requirements of the Missouri Constitution that Senate districts be established using methods and criteria in an order of priority.

Among the significant changes is the 24th district, a suburban St. Louis district now held by Sen. Jill Schupp, D-Creve Coeur.

Schupp is term-limited and Rep. Tracy McCreery, D-Olivette, has filed to run in the 24th District. But the new map places McCreery in the neighboring 14th District, which is currently held by Sen. Brian Williams, D-University City.

McCreery could not be reached for comment. State Senate candidates must at least live in part of the old district from which a new one is drawn.

In the far western suburbs, the new 10th District stretches from Wentzville to the mid-Missouri city of Fulton. Republican Joshua Price of Mexico is among a trio of GOP candidates who filed to run for the seat, but the new map places him in the 18th District, now held by Sen. Cindy OLaughlin, R-Shelbina.

Former state Rep. Stephen Webber, a Columbia Democrat and chair of the state party during the 2018 election cycle, said he was definitely considering a run for the Boone County-based 19th District when Senate Majority Leader Caleb Rowden, R-Columbia, is term-limited in 2024.

Webber faced Rowden in an expensive race in 2016, narrowly losing to the Republican.

Due to population growth in the Columbia area over the last decade, the 19th sheds heavily Republican Cooper County under the judge-approved plan, making the district more favorable for Democrats. The Democrats last held the seat in 2009.

But Republicans could offset their loss with a pick-up on the western side of the state.

The Independence-based district of Senate Minority Leader John Rizzo could flip to the Republicans in 2024 when Rizzo becomes term-limited. His 11th District takes in more Republican-leaning areas of eastern Jackson County under the plan.

Elsewhere, competitive races are possible in the west St. Louis County-based 15th District in 2024 and the Springfield-based 30th District this November.

The Judicial Redistricting Commissions work came as part of the once-per-decade redistricting process that adjusts political boundaries to account for changes in the population.

A panel of citizens was unable to agree on a final version, triggering the call for the judicial commission to draw the new lines.

Martin said the judges worked to divide the population equally, while also creating districts that are contiguous and compact. The panel also considered the racial make-up of the population and current city and county boundaries.

The Senate currently has 24 Republicans and 10 Democrats.

The Judicial Redistricting Commissions work has been thorough and labor intensive, and was purposefully undertaken with the goal to file a constitutionally compliant plan and map well in advance of the commissions constitutional deadline to avoid disenfranchising voters given the candidate filing deadline and the deadline for preparing ballots, Martin said.

Members of the commission included appellate judges Thomas Chapman, Michael Gardner, Gary Lynch, Angela Turner Quigless and Mary Sheffield.

Jack Suntrup of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.

Updated at 2:47 p.m.(tncms-asset)25f761ea-9fea-11ec-b6db-00163ec2aa77[1](/tncms-asset)(tncms-asset)26264606-a0bf-11ec-a709-00163ec2aa77[2](/tncms-asset)

GOP plan for Missouri Senate axes two Democratic seats, adds one in mid-Missouri The plan isnt likely to last as Democrats and Republicans work against a Jan. 23 deadline to finalize a state Senate map.

Get Government & Politics updates in your inbox! Stay up-to-date on the latest in local and national government and political topics with our newsletter. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
CHICAGO  A proposal to prohibit firing workers for trace amounts of marijuana in their systems moved closer to passage when the Illinois House of Representatives approved the measure earlier this month  but employers remain very leery about it.

The chief sponsor, state Rep. Bob Morgan, a Democrat from the Chicago suburb of Deerfield and an attorney who does cannabis consulting, said the change would let people, especially medical cannabis users, use a legal product on their own time and not fear losing their job.

But employers fear the change will only lead to more fights in court over who qualifies and how the law is applied.

The House voted 61-41 to pass the bill, largely along partisan lines, with Democrats in favor and Republicans opposed.

The measure underwent two amendments that helped get the Illinois Sheriffs Association and Illinois Manufacturers Association to drop opposition and go neutral. The bill now is being considered in the Senate.

In general, the proposal would prohibit employers from firing or refusing to hire someone based on a positive test for tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the main ingredient in marijuana that gets users high  unless the worker shows signs of impairment or tests higher than the threshold for driving under the influence, which is 5 nanograms per milliliter of blood, or 10 nanograms per milliliter of other bodily fluid such as saliva or urine.

Employers would still be able to set zero-tolerance levels to exclude workers in safety sensitive positions such as law enforcement, firefighters and federal workers or contractors, who are prohibited from using cannabis by federal law.

Certain workers could also be prohibited from marijuana use: those who carry a firearm; those who perform medical procedures or emergency services; those who work with hazardous or flammable materials or drugs; those who work with heavy machinery, aircraft, watercraft or motorized vehicles; and anyone who performs critical services and works with critical infrastructure.

While federal law still prohibits marijuana possession, medical marijuana has been legalized in 37 states, and 18 states including Illinois allow recreational use. While legalization has expanded, the number of workers testing positive in the workplace generally has risen since 2016, testing company Quest Diagnostics reported.

The overall cannabis positivity rate in the U.S. workforce in 2020, the most recent year available, was 4.4%, down slightly from a 16-year high in 2019.

Workplace drug testing has disrupted the supply chain, as 72,000 truckers out of 3 million registered lost their jobs due to failed tests since the beginning of 2020, according to government data reported by the New York Post. More than half of those failed tests were due to cannabis.

THC remnants can remain in the body for weeks. Thats why the cannabis legalization advocate NORML has long called for testing performance, rather than testing for drugs, to determine if someone is impaired on the job.

Julie Schauer, board vice president of Parents Opposed to Pot, called the proposal a breach of the legislators responsibility to public safety. She predicted the proposal would lead to more workplace accidents and higher workers compensation and insurance costs.

Illinois lawmakers approved legalization effective in 2020 based in part on the promise that employers would have protections against workers being high on the job. The attempt to roll back those protections now, Schauer said, is typical of the marijuana industry getting its foot in the door, then trying to expand its market.

This is a grab by the industry, she said. They always ask for more.

Todd Maisch, president of the Illinois Chamber of Commerce, said the group agreed not to oppose the bill, but has serious concerns about how it will play out.

Nobody should be happier about this than trial lawyers, he said. This is going to lead to litigation, theres no doubt about it.

One concern is that research has not established a clear correlation between the amount of THC in a persons bloodstream and the level of impairment. Employers also would like the definition of safety sensitive jobs to include ancillary duties, such as not just someone driving a truck, but those loading it.

Sponsoring Sen. Robert Peters, a Chicago Democrat, was hopeful the Senate would approve the measure before its scheduled adjournment April 8.

Attorney Brittany Robinson knows firsthand how cannabis testing in the workplace can keep people out of a job. Last year, she was accepted for a position as an assistant public defender for Cook County, but lost the job due to testing positive for cannabis.

The situation has changed since then. A cannabis drug screening is no longer required to work non-safety-sensitive positions at Cook County, and assistant public defenders are no longer considered safety sensitive.

Robinson has since started her own law business in Chicagos Hyde Park, doing criminal defense work, with some real estate and business work.

Im running a viable business, she said. My clients are the ones I have to answer to. Im sure theyre not worried about my personal marijuana use.

She called the proposed change in the law a step in the right direction.

Its like drinking alcohol, youre not testing to see if theres alcohol in their system from last night, you just want to make sure theyre not drunk, she said. Its the same with cannabis. Its legal. As long as youre not putting other people in danger, and not impaired while conducting business, it shouldnt be a problem.

2022 Chicago Tribune. Visit chicagotribune.com.
WASHINGTON  Joe Biden will almost certainly be the last U.S. president born as a member of the silent generation demographic group who were children during World War II, came of age in an economic boom that built middle class wealth, and cemented the role of the United States as the worlds leading industrial power.

Over the latter half of his life, Biden, 78, saw the share of national wealth going to that middle class fall and the gains from U.S. growth concentrate in a handful of regions. Now, with a roughly $2 trillion investment package unveiled on Wednesday, Biden wants to reverse that half century trend and steer capital to neglected people and parts of the country.

Democrat Bidens jobs and infrastructure plan and the corporate tax increase to help pay for it, contrasts with the deference to private markets begun by Republicans with Ronald Reagans election in 1980, and nursed through rounds of tax cuts and deregulation, by both parties.

Whether it was Bill Clintons moves to reduce social welfare and deregulate the financial sector, or Barack Obamas hesitance to go big on spending in the last recession, there has been a reluctance by both parties to intervene too deeply for decades.

Rural and Rust Belt America faded and there was little progress on bridging the wealth gaps between Black and white.

Bidens plan harkens to the Democratic leaders of his young adult years in the 1960s  President John Kennedys aspirational focus on public ventures such as the moon landing, or Lyndon Johnsons Great Society push to strengthen the social safety net. It also echoes President Dwight Eisenhowers 1956 act for the government to mostly pay for building interstate highways.

I am struck by the scale, the structure, MIT economics professor Simon Johnson said of Bidens plan. They seem to have taken on board the idea that you can boost productivity, boost growth, and spread it around the country, with the right public investments.

Epic battle looms

The battle over the legislation in the U.S. Congress is expected to be epic.

Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, suggested on Wednesday that any bill Democrats propose may be a Trojan horse for a massive tax increase. Republicans have said they wont support Democratic efforts to inject goals like stopping climate change or equality into a spending bill.

The proposal follows the more than $5 trillion committed over the last year to fighting the coronavirus, much of it used for direct payments to families and the unemployed.

The scars from the pandemic may run deep, and the proposed pipeline of federal dollars into communities, technology research, and job generating building projects are a way to keep the healing underway, according to the administration.

Many ideas in the plan have been percolating in universities and other institutions for years.

Johnson, for example, argued in a 2019 book that private capital will never fully substitute for government investment in things like new utility networks or complicated basic research.

The Biden approach is arguably distinct in the breadth of what it wants to confront in one fell swoop  from deficiencies in child care services to electric vehicle charging stations  and in its diagnosis of whats needed.

The demographic and economic decline of small towns and many mid-sized cities has been underway for decades under Democratic and Republican presidents even as the rhetoric of both promised to reverse it.

The share of U.S. GDP paid to wages and salaries has declined as well, which many economists believe contributes to rising inequality.

Biden wants to put the public purse behind that promise with both infrastructure programs and funding for research hubs to try to level the playing field between middle America and the San Franciscos and Bostons of the world.

Decades ago, the United States used to spend 2% of its GDP on research and development, Biden noted in a speech on Wednesday. That figure is now less than 1%, even as other countries have increased investment.

Weve fallen back, he said. The rest of the world is closing in and closing in fast. We cant less this continue.

The plan represents a major effort to tackle the countrys widening geographic inequalities ... It shows an understanding of how infrastructure can create access and opportunity  or wall it off, said Kenan Fikri, research director of the bipartisan Economic Innovation Group.

The gap in wealth between Blacks and whites has shown little progress over the past 30 years, regardless that 16 of them were with Democrats in the White House.

The Biden proposal aims investment at Black communities, including those affected by port pollution or other environmental blight, and industries with a large proportion of Black workers.

An unlikely radical

Biden, on the surface, is an unlikely figure to push such a radical shift in federal policy. He first took public office in 1970, the year that U.S. workers share of national income peaked. He had a long career working from the very Democratic center he is now looking to transform, supporting bank-friendly bills that drew criticism on the campaign trail.

But he became president in a year when the arguments against government intervention he heard as a senator and as a vice president under Obama seem to have run their course.

Some of Bidens old colleagues, including Democratic economists such as Lawrence Summers, say Biden is off base.

In comments on the stimulus plan in February, Summers acknowledged there was tremendous suffering but said this goes way beyond what is necessary.

Others say it is time to give the more liberal wing of the party, dormant for decades, time to make their case once again  and are pushing Biden to go even farther.

This is not nearly enough, said Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democratic congresswoman from New York.
Decades ago, we committed rash but serious crimes that landed us in prison as children. Ed Ramsey grew up in Kansas City in 1980s, in a community where role models encouraged young men to pursue criminal behavior rather than education. Michael Vincent grew up in neighborhoods in north St. Louis, where drugs and violence were prevalent, bouncing around between 13 different schools before dropping out before high school. As kids, we were mandatorily sentenced to life without parole, without consideration of our youth or any other mitigating evidence.

But our crimes do not define us. We are living proof that hope is not lost for children who commit even very serious crimes. Kids change and grow. We are grateful that we had the opportunity to prove this to the Missouri Parole Board, and are now home and able to give back to our community as a result. We are writing this op-ed in hopes that other people imprisoned as kids might be given the same opportunity to show they have changed and deserve a second chance.

A Supreme Court ruling in 2012 made mandatory life without parole sentences for children unconstitutional, and the Missouri Legislature passed a law making us parole eligible at 25 years. Thanks to that change in the law, and the advocacy of the MacArthur Justice Center, we were given an opportunity to demonstrate our rehabilitation and readiness for release.

For the first time, we got to present mitigating evidence about our youth at the time of the crime, and evidence about how we have grown and matured since, including opportunities we took advantage of opportunities in prison to help other people. Ed was a hospice worker for over 16 years, comforting incarcerated patients in their dying moments. And he cofounded a program that ran group counseling sessions with at-risk teens. For Michael, his participation in the intensive therapeutic community was life-changing.

After completing this intensive, strict program, he went on to teach classes on subjects such as anger management.

The parole board acknowledged our growth and development, and we finally got to go home. Ed was released in December 2021, after 33 years in prison. Michael was released in October 2020, after 31 years and 10 months.

Transitioning back into the community was a welcomed challenge. Ed found opportunities to mentor young athletes as they navigate the struggles of being a teenager in Kansas City.

Michael found steady work at a chemical plant, where he excels, and he continues to find joy reconnecting with his family. Both men have a newfound appreciation for everyday life. Last session, the Missouri Legislature expanded parole eligibility to all juvenile offenders after 15 years, recognizing that children deserve this same second chance at freedom.

We are a living example of what scientific and statistical studies tell us about kids who commit crimes. Because of their still-developing brains, adolescents are more likely to engage in short-sighted, impetuous behavior, especially in a social situation. But kids age out of criminal behavior. In fact, people sentenced to lengthy prison terms for crimes committed as children show the lowest risk of recidivism.

None of this is an excuse for the harms we caused  harms that had a ripple effect for countless people whose lives we touched. Being sorry about what we did is not enough. Instead, a long time ago we dedicated our lives to help others  not to try to undo what we did, but in hopes of steering other young people in a direction where there would be no more victims.

It does a disservice to our communities to keep people in prison when they are ready and able to safely return to society. The Supreme Court held that life sentences are excessive for all but the rarest juvenile offender whose crime reflects irreparable corruption, rather than transient immaturity.

Now, Missouri wants to take away this second chance for nearly 200 juvenile offenders. But the Supreme Court case law tells us that all children deserve a meaningful chance for release from prison when they have demonstrated their growth and maturity. We encourage you to call your representative and ask them to ensure children arent thrown away for life. Lawmakers should vote no on Senate Bill 664.

Ed Ramsey and Michael Vincent were both formerly incarcerated on life without parole sentences for crimes they committed as kids.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was not unexpected but the poor performance of the Russian military was a surprise, even to the Ukrainians. One of those surprises was the Russian inability to gain air superiority. The Russian air force has dominated the skies over Syria for years. But in Ukraine Russian helicopters (transports and gunships) as well as large transports were more often seen, and shot down, than Russian jet fighters and ground attack aircraft. The Russian helicopters still operate inside Ukraine, but have to do so carefully because the Ukrainians have received over 10,000 modern portable anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons, which were distributed to hundreds of small teams of twenty or so soldiers and local volunteers who know the local terrain and secondary roads better than the Russians. These teams are directed to roads used by Russian convoys or areas where combat vehicles are concentrated and carry out surprise attacks. Local civilians report Russian activity and this is passed on to the attack teams. Ukraine also receives recent commercial satellite photos of Russian activity. Ukraine also has over twenty armed (with laser guided missiles) TB2 UAVs purchased from Turkey before the invasion with more delivered, via Poland, in early March.

The inability of the Russians to deal with TB2 is another mystery. Russia has encountered hostile TB2s in Libya and Armenia. In Libya Turkish forces were backing one faction in 2020-21 while Russian forces were supporting another. The TB2s inflicted a lot of damage on the Libyan forces Russian supported. This included destroying the new mobile Pantsir anti-aircraft system Russia had brought to Libya to deal with UAVs like the TB2. In 2021 Russian supported Armenian forces who were defeated by Turkish supported Azerbaijani forces. Ukrainians assumed that by early 2022 Russia had finally responded to the TB2 threat. For reasons still unexplained, that was not the case.

The initial airstrikes on Ukrainian military bases, using hundreds of ballistic and cruise missiles, was also a failure because the Ukrainians received a warning from a reliable source a few hours before the attack and were able to disperse most of their troops and aircraft before the missiles hit.

Russian fighters and ground attack aircraft were not used, even though both of these aircraft types have been used regularly in Syria. The most likely reason for the absence of the jets in Ukraine was the lack of smart (GPS guided) bombs and laser guided missiles for these aircraft. Russian was seen using these bombs and missiles, briefly, in Syria. The reason was that, while Russia had developed these guided weapons at greats expense, it could not afford to buy many of them. Those used in Syria simply verified the guided weapons worked. Some had problems and Russia used the Syria experience to fix that. If Russia does have a small stockpile of these weapons, they are reserved for national emergencies. The Ukrainian invasion was, according to captured Russian planning documents, supposed to be over in fifteen days with a new pro-Russia government installed in the capital Kyiv. That was not considered a national emergency but an internal security operation.

The Russians underestimated the degree of Ukrainian resistance and key senior Russian officials believed most Ukrainians would support the Russian liberation effort. These attack plans were kept secret, in part because most Russians were more realistic and opposed a large-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The situation maps showing Russian troops in Ukraine are also misleading. Ukraine is a big country and the Russian forces are spread over a large area. Russians dont control much territory as they concentrate on maintaining control of a few roads using roadblocks, check points and armed escorts for some supply convoys. Most of the time the roads are available to any civilian vehicles. This enables the Ukrainian ambush teams to reach a portion of a road suitable for an ambush, conceal themselves and their vehicles and wait for the approaching convoy. These battles mean Russian troops deeper inside Ukraine are usually short of fuel, ammunition, medical supplies, food and reinforcements. That accounts for the poor morale among the Russian forces and their lackluster performance. Another problem is that many of the 100,000 Russian troops inside Ukraine are conscripts doing their one year of service and banned, by law, from serving in a combat zone unless there is a national emergency. Ukraine has about 200,000 soldiers and reservists as well as over 100,000 armed volunteers defending Ukraine. These defenders have the support of nearly all Ukrainians while the invaders do not.

All these errors and poor decisions by Russian military and political leaders dont guarantee a Ukrainian victory, but they make such a win a possibility.

One of the more embarrassing failures was the Russian inability to deal with the Turkish TB 2 armed UAVs Ukraine purchased from Turkey before the invasion. When Russian found out that Ukraine had ordered and received more TB2s after the invasion began, they complained to Turkey that it was taking sides in the war. President Erdogan of Turkey responded that the firm that developed and manufactured the TB2 was a private company and encouraged to sell as many TB2s as possible, especially to export customers. It was also known that the firm making the TB2 has Erdogans MIT-trained and entrepreneurial son-in-law as their technical director.

Ukraine used the TB2 as a mobile anti-vehicle weapon that could quickly reach a Russian supply convoy, especially one carrying fuel, and destroy a few vehicles with laser guided missiles and immobilize the convoy long enough for one of the ground teams to reach the location and finish the work. Russian drivers were smarter than their leaders and learned to abandon their vehicles and walk away before Ukrainian ground forces arrived. The TB2 was embarrassing for the Russians in other ways, as it demonstrated how Turkey could develop and produce effective combat UAVs before Russia could.

Four months before the invasion, Ukraine used one of its armed Turkish TB2 UAVs to destroy a Russian self-propelled howitzer in eastern Ukraine. Russian forces had used this howitzer to break the ceasefire by shelling a Ukrainian position, killing one soldier and wounding two others. This was the first combat use of the TB2 in eastern Ukraine (Donbas) where Russian soldiers and Russian-backed locals sought to take over and annex two Ukrainian provinces in 2014. Swift and unexpected Ukrainian resistance quickly halted the Russian advance and since 2015 there have been a series of ceasefires that are regularly broken, and then revived by the Russians. This practice continued after the invasion,

Ukraine received its first TB2s in 2019 and used them mainly for surveillance, obtaining a growing number of videos showing Russian forces violating the Donbas ceasefire. Ukraine was reluctant to use the TB2 laser guided missiles, as the Russians might interpret that as an escalation and try harder to shoot down the TB2s. Ukrainians soon discovered that the TB2s were indeed vulnerable to ground fire and anti-aircraft missiles, but not so vulnerable that the risks outweigh the benefits. That was the Turkish experience when they used the armed TB2s aggressively against irregulars in Syria, Iraq, Eastern Turkey, Armenia and Libya. That included destroying modern anti-aircraft systems designed to eliminate large UAVs like the TB2. The first use in Donbas was justified by the need to deal with a Russian violation of the ceasefire. The Russians declared the TB2 use an escalation (true) and unprovoked (false). To the Ukrainians that indicated the TB2 missile had the desired effect.

At the end of 2018 Ukraine spent $69 million on two Bayraker TB2 UAV systems. Each system contains six UAVs, three truck-mounted ground control systems, two remote video terminals, which troops can use and maintenance gear. The first system was delivered in 2019 and the other in 2020. By 2022 Ukraine had received over twenty TB2s.

Ukraine is the second export customer for Bayraktar, as Qatar had earlier ordered one system. The primary customer is the Turkish military, which already has six systems and plans to buy 151 UAVs, mostly as systems but also spares for expected operational losses to accidents or enemy fire. Even before the 2021 use of an armed TB2 in Donbas, Ukraine had ordered 24 more TB2s for use by the army and navy.

The small Turkish firm that developed Bayraktar borrowed heavily from commercial technology that has already proved itself. As a result, Bayraktar was the first Turkish locally designed and built UAV of its class to enter service (with the Turkish Air Force) in 2014.

Bayraktar is a 650 kg (1,433 pounds) aircraft with a 55 kg (110 pound) payload and an endurance of 24 hours. In 2016 Bayraktar TB2 was equipped to carry two 22.5 kg (50 pound) Turkish made Mam-L laser-guided missiles. With a range of 8 kilometers, the Mam-l weighs half as much as the American Hellfire and is light enough for Bayraktar TB2 to carry two of them. These are used regularly against PKK separatists in Turkey and Islamic terrorists and rebel groups in Syria.

Since the late 1990s, Turkish firms have developed and deployed several workable UAV designs. But Bayraktar was the most reliable, affordable and had the most features compared to their Turkish competitors and was competitive with similar Chinese UAVs.

Turkish UAV development has been going on since the late 1990s when Israel was still an ally and supplier of weapons and tech to the Turks. By 2003 an anti-Israel Islamic government was running Turkey and local UAV development was crippled but not destroyed as military and technical relationships with Israel were severed.

The smaller Turkish firm that developed Bayraktar UAVs paid closer attention to the Turkish experience with Israeli UAV tech and managed to develop and manufacture competitive UAVs sooner than the larger Turkish firms that paid more attention to Turkish politics than to customer needs. The Bayraktar TB2 was very similar to the Israeli Heron UAV, which was the primary UAV for the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces). Bayraktar also paid a lot of attention to software development, learning much from the experience of the Israelis and Americans. The latest Bayraktar TB2 flight software not only takes off and lands automatically but can also move from its parking spot on an airfield, taxi to the runway and takeoff without human intervention other than commands from the airbase flight controllers. In flight, the control software has several redundancies, as in backup procedures for various emergencies, that make Bayraktar TB2 a safer and easier to operate UAV. Ukraine probably could have obtained a similar UAV from China for less money but Bayraktar already had a reputation for reliability and better software than most. Another bonus for buying UAVs from Turkey is that Russia is trying, with mixed success, to turn Turkey into an ally. The Turks are not cooperating. Ukraine also does business with China, which is also an ally with Russia but believes business is business.
The U.S. Air Force continues to lose competent pilots and the rate of loss keeps increasing because there are more pressures on career pilots to leave. This makes it difficult to find a solution to its persistent and growing pilot shortage.

Many studies have been commissioned, many experiments conducted and while there has been some progress the problem persists. There are always new reasons to get out so collecting and analyzing reasons for leaving has become an ongoing task. The problem has been around since the late 1990s. The latest crisis has been caused by a problem that has been around forever but has now become a major source of pilot loss. Its all about family life and most pilots marry women with a college degree. That has gone from 11 percent in the 1970s to 84 percent now. Pilots wives are often better educated than their husbands and can earn more except for the disruptions caused by military life. The wives find that the military is a good place to be if you are starting a family, but not so much when the kids get older and mom seeks, and often finds, a new career that is not compatible with the periodic moves to a new base. Women now comprise the majority of college graduates in the United States and have become a key source of trained and capable candidates for the growing number of jobs requiring those skills. Wives of pilots cannot consider a lot of the attractive job offers available because of the constant moves pilots and their families must make. The wives can often make more than the pilot husbands. As a result, even more pilots, once their obligatory term of service is done, get out.

Another frequently cited problem is inadequate pay. The air force looked into the matter by performing a cost/benefit analysis of paying pilots more to remain in the air force versus recruiting and training new pilots. The air force has previously used cash bonuses to persuade pilots to stay, but it has been pointed out that not all pilots cost the same to train and you still need new pilots to replace those that retire or are shifted to non-flying jobs. The key issue here was the need to hold onto more of the older and experienced pilots.

The study found that there were considerable differences in what it cost to train pilots depending on what type of aircraft they flew. Transport pilots cost the least. A C-17 (four engine jet transport) pilot cost $1.1 million to train, and these were the pilots who could most easily shift to being commercial pilots. Other types of transport pilots were somewhat more expensive to train. The C-130J (four engine turboprop transport) cost more ($2.5 million) because these aircraft often operated from more primitive airbases and under combat conditions. Special purpose transports, like the RC-135 (an older four engine jet transport) used for electronic warfare and intelligence tasks cost $5.5 million for pilot training.

Pilots for combat jet aircraft are the most expensive to train. The least expensive are F-16 pilots ($5.6 million) with the most expensive being F-22 pilots ($10.9 million). Bomber pilots are more expensive with the older bombers (B-52) more expensive ($9.7 million) than more recent models like the B-1 ($7.3 million). Much of pilot training cost is the expense of taking their aircraft into the air, which is essential (as experience has shown) compared to alternatives like realistic simulators. It was also found that aircraft with better flight control software and more efficient cockpits cut training costs. The best example of this is the F-35 but the trend had been noted in other aircraft when cockpits and flight control software were upgraded. While the F-35 requires less training it is more expensive to operate and because of that, pilots for the F-35 are still very expensive to train.

The air force (and the military in general) have another problem and that is the long tradition of pay based on rank and time in service. This has long been recognized as archaic and inefficient. Commercial firms, even those providing military contractors for combat jobs overseas, pay according to what the market demands. There is a premium on skills regardless of age or rank. For example, a former special forces NCO with lots of combat experience is going to get paid a lot more than a senior infantry officer with limited combat experience. The special forces NCO not only handles a more dangerous job but one requiring superior intelligence and training levels. That can also be seen in what professional athletes get paid versus what support staff and their managers earn. Tech industries also have to face the fact that special, and relatively rare, talent has to be paid the market rate if you want to have the people you need.

The air force, being the most technical of the military services, has long had problems with this issue and nowhere was that more obvious, and painful in the relatively new job of operating remotely controlled aircraft (UAVs). In September 2018 the U.S. Air Force released their study of using warrant officer ranks for career pilots as part of a solution to the growing pilot shortage. The air force study concluded that the army use of warrant officers for those who prefer to be career pilots (mainly of helicopters) would not work but having officer pilots specializing in flying who could advance up to the rank of colonel (O-6) might. Actually, there was no agreement on what might work but air force leadership agreed something had to be done. Many departing pilots just wanted to fly and current air force leaders do not like the idea of warrant officer pilots even though it works fine for the Army.

The study quoted departing pilots listing why they were leaving (lack of opportunity to fly) and why they would stay (belonging to a combat squadron full time and concentrating on flying). The air force continued to see the problem as one of money and pilots spending too much time away from their home base because of foreign deployments. The study missed the point. The departing pilots were not concerned about rank and were willing to accept the relatively rank-less commercial pilot jobs where pay depended on experience and the number of different skills (different types of aircraft) you were qualified to fly. Departing air force pilots wanted that sort of thing in the military.

The air force could easily adopt a similar system while retaining current ranks. You have pilots holding ranks O-1 (2nd lieutenant) to O-4 (major) but with some symbol to indicate these are flight officers and have them eligible for additional pay (as is not the case with current flat rate flight and combat pay) for skills. Since squadrons are commanded by O-4s or O-5s you would have no problems with these flight command officers having to deal with O-5s and O-6s under their command. Flight officers with leadership skills could leave the squadron duty for higher rank, and fly a lot less and lose some of the valuable skills flight officers got paid for. The air force has to be flexible in this area but the main thing is to follow the commercial pilot and airliner solution of paying for skills, not rank. This is largely what the army warrant officer system is. There are four warrant ranks roughly equal in pay to the commissioned officer ranks O-1 to O-4. On top of that, there is flight and other special pay and the guarantee that you will spend most of your time flying and belonging to an army aviation unit. That is what most of the departing pilots want to do; fly a lot and belong to a squadron that does it well because they get lots of practice.

Meanwhile, the air force has other flight officer problems which it has been forced to solve by returning to older (but long discarded) solutions. In mid-2017 the air force graduated its first female enlisted UAV pilot. What was notable about this was not that this sergeant was a woman but that she was one of the few sergeants the air force had reluctantly allowed to apply for UAV pilot school. The first three air force sergeants graduated from the 34-week enlisted UAV pilot course in May 2017. The enlisted course is longer than the six month one most officers take because the air force insists that all UAV operators must be able to pilot a manned aircraft. This is taken care of by sending most enlisted applicants (and some officers who are not pilots) to flight school where they must qualify (as pilots) on a single engine propeller driven trainer aircraft. This is done in order to learn basic flight skills in the air.

The air force expects sergeants proceeding to UAV operator school to suffer the same attrition (fail) rate (15 percent) as officer trainees. This has been the experience of other services and nations that allow NCOs to pilot large UAVs. The air force NCOs (sergeants) get flight pay, like officers do, for piloting UAVs and that is now justified because operating a UAV, especially an armed one, is a lot more intense and stressful that piloting most manned military aircraft. Originally the air force agreed to give their UAV pilots (back then all pilots transferred from fighter, bomber or transport squadrons) flight pay while operating UAVs to maintain morale.

The air force also tried using civilian contractors to handle the pilot shortage. By mid-2016 that was seen as counterproductive because the contractors were paid up to three times what officer operators made. The contractors were all former air force pilots with experience operating these UAVs and word quickly spread that if an officer was fed up with being stuck with another tour of duty as a UAV operator they could retire (if they had at least 20 years service) or resign and apply for a contractor job.

Until late 2015 the air force had hoped that higher cash bonuses would solve the problem but it didnt. The air force offered $35,000 a year in bonuses for air force pilots who volunteered or were persuaded to serve as UAV operators. The job was simply something most air force pilots did not want to do. Many in Congress expressed reluctance about just throwing money at the problem, especially when there was a proven and cheaper solution for this; allow enlisted (sergeants) airmen to operate UAVs and make a career out of it. The air force had done this before, during World War II when it was still part of the army. But that was changed during World War II and the air force refuses to consider going back to what worked in the past, even though it works fine for the other services and some other countries.

One thing that prompted the air force to change its mind in 2015 was political pressure. Congress had asked the GAO (Government Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress) to look into the matter. This involved interviews with a representative sample of UAV operators and that documented how UAV operators were overworked and the air force was unable to get as many as it needed. This meant that existing crews had to work longer hours (60 or more a week). This caused a lot of stress. UAV operators each spend about 1,200 hours a year controlling UAVs in the air, versus 450 hours for army helicopter pilots and even less for air force pilots in the combat zone. The problem was that UAV operators (all of them pilots of manned aircraft) get none of the enjoyable aspects of flying (operating a jet, especially a fighter) and a lot more of the drudgery (constantly monitoring instruments and what is going on below). Operators did report that the air force had addressed a lot of the earlier problems; poor training, loss of career opportunities, especially promotions. The main problem was that few officer UAV operators wanted to be UAV operators. And those few who did choose it as a career were just as worn down by the grind like everyone else.

By 2015 it was obvious that UAV operators were a growing segment of the pilot population. In 2013 UAV operators were nearly nine percent of all air force pilots, triple the percentage in 2008. The air force was unable to get enough manned aircraft pilots to volunteer to do a three-year tour as a UAV operator and could not train non-pilot officers fast enough to be career UAV operators. UAV operators were leaving the air force at three times the rate of pilots of manned aircraft. Worst of all, UAV operators were not shown the same respect as pilots who go into the air aboard their aircraft. Despite the GAO study the head of the air force continued to insist that all UAV operators be officer pilots. But a growing number of air force officers became aware that a lot of Air Force NCOs could handle this job and that NCOs in the other services had long been doing just that. So in late 2015 the air force brass finally relented and soon hundreds of air force NCOs were becoming UAV operators and by the 2020s thousands will.

Another aspect of the UAV pilot shortages is the fact that software is replacing a lot of pilot functions and, eventually, taking the place of human pilots. Many larger UAVs already have the ability to take off, follow a predetermined course, carry out a mission, and then land, all by itself (or "autonomously"). One can make a case for officers being in charge here but as commanders of the autonomous UAVs, not their operators. This is the ultimate solution and probably one reason why the air force keeps insisting that UAV pilots be officers. Flight control and pattern analysis software takes a lot of the work out of operating a UAV. Pattern analysis software can spot what is being looked for on the ground and is rapidly approaching the point where it does the job better than human observers. The future seems to be officers commanding several UAVs, each largely operated by software. Each officer would then be assisted by one or two NCOs to help deal with any situations requiring human intervention. The trouble is that sort of software is not here yet and not for another five or ten (or more) years. In the meantime, the air force brass was forced to do the unthinkable and return to the World War II practice of using NCOs as pilots. Alas, this worked in World War II because the NCO pilots could shoot back at the enemy and many proved quite good at it. That may have something to do with the air force reluctance to change but now they must and, as the army has already demonstrated NCOs, can handle armed UAVs quite well and that warrant officer pilots are the pilot shortage solution the air force is looking for but will not adopt. That is a leadership problem, not a pilot retention problem.

The experience with contractors filling critical personnel shortages offers a potential solution to the career wives impact on pilot retention. One surprising bit of information that came out of the two years of covid19 shutdowns was the discovery that a lot of military jobs can be performed effectively remotely. That has led to a major effort to adapt remote work to for many new or undiscovered uses. One of those undiscovered opportunities is to offer the career-minded wives with air force or government jobs they could handle remotely, along with being the wife of a pilot. There are a lot of benefits to be a wife and mother while the spouse is a pilot. Child care and education is less of a hassle. But the constant movements to new bases is a major minus. The ambitious, highly educated and career minded wives should be seen as an opportunity, not a problem. Creating an opportunity for the wives to get challenging, well-paid portable jobs would improve pilot retention as well as support services for a new generation of pilots where there will be more automation and need for more skilled support personnel who can be civilians.
Elon Musk, the South African entrepreneur who has become the wealthiest (over $200 billion) individual on earth, acquired that wealth by being innovative and acting quickly. Such was the case when Russia invaded Ukraine before dawn on February 24th and the Ukrainian minister of digital transformation contacted Musk for help in dealing with Russian efforts to cut Ukrainian access to the Internet. Starlink officials had already been negotiating with Ukraine to provide Starlink service locally. Musk agreed to help and within four days hundreds of Starlink satellites were moved into position to provide Ukraine with high-speed Internet service using hundreds of Starlink user kits Musk sent to Ukraine. Currently about 20 percent of the initial Starlink global network satellites are in orbit. These are active over a few areas so reviewers and other volunteer users can test the system. So far it appears to be a success but Musk also has to make Starlink resistant to attacks from hostile governments, and the Russians appear to be the first ones coming after it. Musk has responded by modifying the Starlink software to deal with some of the Russian mischief while modifying the design of newly manufactured Starlink satellites to resist efforts to disrupt service. Meanwhile, Russia is seeking to sever the fiber optic cables that connect Ukraine to the global Internet and going after Internet service inside Ukraine. Starlink is on its way to becoming the first satellite communications service that can claim to be combat tested. This is always a major selling point for military gear or any equipment that is built to survive use in a combat environment.

SpaceX puts 227 kg (500 pound) Starlink satellites into orbit, but not their intended 540-kilometer-high LEO (Low Earth Orbit), but to a lower orbit of about 200 kilometers. This enables the reusable SpaceX SLV (satellite launch vehicle) to carry more satellites which reach their ultimate orbital height by using their low power electric thrusters that use small quantities of krypton gas to adjust the orientation or orbit of the satellite. If any of the satellites are defective, as if their thrusters dont work, they will self-destruct by falling into the earths atmosphere and burning up. Normally the Starlink thrusters successfully get each satellite to its higher orbit and are later used to aim the satellite towards a lower orbit when that satellite breaks down or is no longer needed. Without the thrusters it would take a dead satellite a lot longer to drift lower and ultimately take the final plunge into the thicker atmosphere where it is vaporized.

The full Starlink system will consist of over 11,000 small satellites and SpaceX met its goal of having nearly 2,000 satellites in orbit by 2021. Starlink offers high-speed Internet service worldwide and is not concerned with objections by foreign nations. This is especially true when one Chinese backed network, LinkSure, which promises to provide free wi-fi worldwide and make money with ads and reselling user data sought to upstage Starlink. There is a major problem with LinkSure because it is subject to Chinese censorship, while Starlink is not. This is what concerns nations like China, Russia, North Korea and Iran that all seek to impose tight control over local Internet users.

Starlink was designed for users in remote areas where there was no affordable Internet service. Starlink impressed early users, including those reviewing it for various tech and consumer publications, because it worked as promised. Starlink delivered download speeds of over 50 Mbps and upload speeds of 15 or more Mpbs. Most Internet users worldwide get by with 10/5 Mpbs and high-end users expect what Starlink supplies. Currently Starlink costs $499 for the small dish used to send and receive signals and a modem to make the Starlink signal compatible with current computers, plus $99 a month for service. Many Chinese, Russian and Iranian Internet users have the cash and courage to use foreign satellite communications services that are not censored and StarLink is an attractive solution because of its small satellite dish, which is 110mm (four inches) wide and 479mm long, and weighs four kg (8.8 pounds. It has to be mounted outside but can be under a then non-metallic material that will conceal from the thought police.

For Russia and China, Starlink is but the latest irritation from SpaceX. China is trying to recreate the reusable boosters that make SpaceX launches so much cheaper without making their launch services even more unreliable than SpaceX. From a military point of view, Starlink is a major problem because Russia and China have been creating anti-satellite weapons that could cripple a conventional satellite communications and surveillance system. It would be much more expensive, time-consuming and uncertain to cripple an LEO network that is built around the concept of surviving major damage and continuing to operate. This makes Starlink a favorite with the new U.S. Space Force, and SpaceX is one of several commercial firms that advise the Space Force on communications security. China is going after SpaceX from many directions using bribes, intimidation, propaganda, litigation and whatnot to take down a major, unexpected, threat. Russia has not got the resources for that but supports the Chinese efforts to destroy SpaceX and Starlink.

Musk is often in trouble with hostile or overly controlling governments, like Russia, China and California. Although born and raised in South Africa, he attended college and acquired citizenship in Canada and the United States. Most countries and states in the United States are glad to have Musk operating within their borders because he creates lots of jobs and local, taxable, assets.
BRUSSELS--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Over the last weeks, we have been deeply affected by the war in Ukraine and its impact on many innocent people including our own employees and partners. We condemn any form of violence and hope that peace can quickly be re-established. Our primary concern in this crisis, is the safety of our employees and their families.

Bridgestone has been carefully assessing the impact of this challenging situation. As a result, we decided to suspend our manufacturing activities in Russia, until further notice. The decision will take effect next Friday 18 March after the necessary preparations. The company has also decided to freeze any new investments and suspend all exports to Russia with immediate effect.

We continue to care for our more than 1000 employees in our passenger tyre production plant in Ulyanovsk and our sales offices. Therefore, we will support our employees financially at this time.

As the situation further unfolds, Bridgestones global and regional management will continue to closely monitor the situation and flexibly adapt plans when needed. We expect manufacturing output outside Russia to remain stable in the coming weeks.

The last two weeks have transformed the world with more than two and half million people having already fled their homes. Many of our employees have participated in spontaneous volunteer activities to support the refugees from Ukraine. Bridgestone EMIA has made a 1 million Euro donation to the Red Cross, in addition to the 2.5 million Euro donated by Bridgestone Corporation to UNHCR (Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees), and we will continue to evaluate how we can help alleviate the humanitarian crisis.

About Bridgestone in Europe, Russia, Middle East, India, and Africa:

Bridgestone in Europe, Russia, Middle East, India, and Africa (Bridgestone EMIA) is the regional Strategic Business Unit of Bridgestone Corporation, a global leader in tyres and rubber building on its expertise to provide solutions for safe and sustainable mobility. Headquartered in Zaventem (Belgium), Bridgestone EMIA employs more than 20,000 people and conducts business in 40 countries across the region. Bridgestone offers a diverse product portfolio of premium tyres and advanced solutions, backed by innovative technologies, improving the way people around the world move, live, work and play.

For more information about Bridgestone in EMIA, please visit www.bridgestone-emia.com and www.bridgestonenewsroom.eu. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220314005327/en/

Media information: Liesbeth Denys, Director Public Affairs and Communications EMIA: +32 478 78 26 22

Source: Bridgestone
TOKYO--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd. (DNP), Uniadex Ltd. (Uniadex) and Global Mobility Service Inc. (GMS) are pleased to announce the establishment of a Philippines-based logistics and delivery matching service joint venture (JV). The JV, to be known as 3Q DASH TECHNOLOX, INC., was initiated on February 4, 2022 and has been launched in anticipation of further expansion in logistics demand, and continuous growth going forward amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220220005064/en/

(Photo: Business Wire)

JV Background

The Philippines has witnessed increased logistics flows due to several years of solid economic growth. Numerous delivery-related time and cost challenges have arisen, however, including shortages of delivery drivers, severe and chronic congestion in the city center, and delays in the delivery mechanism infrastructure. At the same time, due to the impact of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, online shopping and food deliveries have seen sharply increased usage, and delivery-related challenges are becoming more serious.

In anticipation of overcoming these challenges, and of expected continuous growth of the delivery in the future, the three partners have established a Philippine-based JV, and will provide a logistics and delivery matching service targeting Last Mile logistics1.

1: Last Mile logistics. In the logistics industry, the last one mile refers to the delivery of parcels and packages from the final delivery base to end users, such as residences and work places.

Overview of New JV

Company name 3Q DASH TECHNOLOX, INC. Representative Philip B. Sanvictores, President Location 6/F Electra House Bldg., 115-117 Esteban Street, Legaspi Village, Makati City 1229, Metro Manila Philippines Business Internet-driven matching service between shipper and delivery drivers in the logistics and delivery area, along with other related services Capital PHP 11 million (approx. $215,000) as of February 4, 2022 Shareholder structure Netmarks Philippines, Inc. (Uniadex affiliate). DNP Asia Pacific Pte Ltd. (DNP subsidiary). Global Mobility Service Philippines, Inc. (GMS subsidiary). Date of establishment February 4, 2022

JV Business

Uniadex Philippines-based subsidiary will take the logistics delivery matching system developed by DNP, and integrate it into a cloud environment, which the new JV will provide to shippers and delivery drivers, as a delivery matching platform.

GMS provides employment opportunities and support for improved living conditions for drivers of three-wheeled motorcycle taxis through FinTech services. Under the new JV such drivers will mainly be responsible for the delivery of parcels and packages.

By providing this service, the new JV will provide shippers with merits, such as reducing the workload associated with delivery arrangements, securing delivery drivers, shortening delivery time and the realization of appropriate delivery charges. In addition to creating new employment opportunities for drivers, support will also be provided to help overcome poverty challenges, and improve living conditions.

Introducing DNP

The DNP Group is a comprehensive printing company that continues to provide new value targeting the realization of a sustainable and better society that enjoys more comfortable lifestyles. By combining our uniquely nurtured strengths in printing and information (P&I), we will deepen cooperation with our partners and provide a variety of products and services extending over a broad array of fields to our clients companies, organizations, consumers and regional society.

Company name Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd. Representative Yoshinari Kitajima, President Head office 1-1-1 Ichigaya-Kagacho, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo Business Printing business consisting of information and communications, lifestyle and industrial supplies and electronics Date of establishment January 19, 1894

Introducing Uniadex

Uniadex collaborates with six companies in the Peoples Republic of China and Southeast Asia to support the creation of an ICT environment that Japanese companies expanding overseas can use with confidence. In 2001, Uniadex established Netmarks Philippines Inc. a Makati City, Metro Manila-based company providing comprehensive services for the realization of an optimal IT infrastructure environment, such as the building of a network with a high security level between local businesses and Japan.

Company name Uniadex, Ltd. Representative Tsuneo Toh, president and CEO Head office 1-1-1 Toyosu, Koto-ku, Tokyo Business The one-stop provision from planning and design of system infrastructure to operation, maintenance and construction, including hardware, software, networks and cloud computing in Japan and overseas as an ICT infrastructure total service company. Date of establishment March 4, 1997

Introducing GMS

GMS is a FinTech startup working for financial inclusion by creating credit for the 1.7 billion poor and low-income people in the world. By analysing vehicle data collected via GMS-developed MCCS2, and the financial data acquired in collaboration with financial institutions, it is possible to visualize the creditworthiness of drivers, and provide financial service-driven opportunities, such as loans and leases to those previously unable to pass credit screening processes.

2: MCCS (Mobility-Cloud Connecting System) is a GMS-developed system that can specify the location of a car and remotely control the car engine safely.

Company name Global Mobility Service Inc. Representative Tokushi Nakashima, President / CEO Head office 4F Sumitomo Shiba Daimon Bldg. II, 1-12-16 Shibadaimon, Minato-ku, Tokyo Business Provision of financial inclusion-type FinTech services Provision of MCCS and Mobility Service Platform (MSPF) based mobility services and services leveraging secondary data. Date of establishment November 25, 2013

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220220005064/en/

Media Contact

DNP; Yusuke Kitagawa 81-3-6735-0101, [email protected]

UNIADEX; Public Relation Office 81-3-4579-1081, [email protected]

GMS; Misora Ohara 81-3-6264-3113, [email protected]

Source: Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd.
DALLAS, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Texas Pacific Land Corporation (NYSE: TPL) (the Company) today announced that the Companys board of directors approved a stock repurchase program to purchase up to an aggregate of $100 million of our outstanding common stock. Acquisitions pursuant to the stock repurchase program may be made through a combination of open market repurchases in compliance with Rule 10b-18 promulgated under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, privately negotiated transactions, and/or other transactions at the Companys discretion. In connection with the stock repurchase program, the Company intends to enter into a Rule 10b5-1 trading plan that would generally permit the Company to repurchase shares at times when it might otherwise be prevented from doing so under securities laws. The stock repurchase program will expire on December 31, 2022 unless otherwise modified or earlier terminated by our board of directors at any time in its sole discretion.

About TPL

Texas Pacific Land Corporation is one of the largest landowners in the State of Texas with approximately 880,000 acres of land in West Texas, with the majority of its ownership concentrated in the Permian Basin. The Company is not an oil and gas producer, but its surface and royalty ownership provide revenue opportunities throughout the life cycle of a well. These revenue opportunities include fixed fee payments for use of our land, revenue for sales of materials (caliche) used in the construction of infrastructure, providing sourced water and/or treated produced water, revenue from our oil and gas royalty interests, and revenues related to saltwater disposal on our land. The Company also generates revenue from pipeline, power line and utility easements, commercial leases and seismic and temporary permits related to a variety of land uses including midstream infrastructure projects and hydrocarbon processing facilities.

Visit TPL at http://www.TexasPacific.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220314005764/en/

Investor Relations

[email protected]

Source: Texas Pacific Land Corporation
FILE PHOTO: The logo of Chevron is seen at the company's office in Caracas, Venezuela April 25, 2018. REUTERS/Marco Bello/File Photo

By Marianna Parraga and Matt Spetalnick

HOUSTON/WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Chevron Corp. is preparing to take operating control of its joint ventures in Venezuela if Washington relaxes sanctions on Caracas to boost crude supplies after banning Russia's oil imports, according to three people familiar with the situation.

The U.S. oil major has begun assembling a trading team to market oil from Venezuela, two of the people said. If U.S. approvals are received, Chevron aims to expand its role in the four joint ventures it shares with state-run company PDVSA, they added.

Chevron has asked the U.S. government for a license broad enough to have a greater say at its joint ventures in Venezuela, a first step to recovering crude output and exports, and to control where oil is sent, the three people said. Since 2020, Chevron has delegated most decision making to state-run PDVSA.

U.S. officials have made clear, however, that any new authorization will depend on whether Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro takes further political steps, two sources said, such as releasing more jailed Americans and setting a firm date for resuming negotiations with the Venezuelan opposition.

Chevron's proposed moves could revitalize Venezuela's oil output and exports after years of underinvestment and sanctions shrank it to about 755,000 barrels per day (bpd) last month from 2.3 million bpd in 2016. Chevron's joint ventures with PDVSA had produced about 200,000 bpd before U.S. sanctions and lack of financing cut their output.

LOGISTICS TEAM

A date has not been set for issuing the authorization. But Chevron has begun preparations for employees to get Venezuelan visas in Aruba, ready to head to Caracas if the U.S. Treasury eases restrictions, the people said.

Last week, U.S. President Joe Biden banned U.S. imports of Russian oil, adding to an array of sanctions after Russia invaded Ukraine, an action Moscow has called a "special military operation."

Chevron aims to begin moving Venezuelan oil to refineries as soon as next month. Last week's U.S. ban on Russian imports allows oil under existing contracts to arrive in the country through April 22.

"Since Venezuelan barrels were banned in the United States in 2019, and Colombia and Mexico reduced key exports to the United States, Russian barrels have been feeding the Gulf refiners", said one person involved in the talks.

Chevron had vastly reduced its presence in Venezuela after Washington tightened sanctions on Venezuela in 2020. For years, Chevron and other PDVSA venture partners have requested more operating oversight.

The United States is drafting a new license that would allow Chevron to assume a more active role in Venezuela, a person familiar with the matter said. Washington is considering similar oil-for-debt authorizations for Spain's Repsol and Italy's Eni SpA. They collectively are owed billions of dollars by their Venezuela joint ventures.

Chevron declined to comment, but reiterated in a statement its operations in Venezuela comply with U.S. sanctions and remain "a constructive presence in Venezuela."

PDVSA and Venezuela's oil ministry did not reply to requests for comment.

A State Department spokesperson said the U.S. government "does not preview sanctions actions" but added: "We have made clear that we would review some sanctions policies if the Venezuelan parties made meaningful progress in the Venezuelan-led negotiations in Mexico toward a democratic solution."

The U.S. Treasury Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

POLITICAL TALKS

This month, Washington quietly restarted diplomatic engagement with Venezuela, a close ally of Russia. Last week, Maduro released two jailed Americans, and Washington has insisted others also be freed. Maduro has expressed a willingness to resume a dialogue with the opposition after he suspended talks in Mexico in October. U.S. officials want a firm commitment to discussing free elections.

On Sunday, U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan told NBC any sanctions relief for Venezuela must be tied to "concrete steps" by Maduro.

The Biden administration had not previously made Venezuela a foreign policy priority. That changed when Middle East and U.S. shale producers would not boost their crude supplies when the White House asked them to do so after the Ukraine invasion.

Congressional Republicans and even some of Biden's fellow Democrats such as U.S. Senator Bob Menendez have opposed any deal that would benefit the socialist president. Washington condemned Maduro's 2018 re-election as a sham.

The United States imported 670,000 barrels per day (bpd) of Russian oil and fuel last year. One of the few countries in a position to replace those imports is Venezuela. Before sanctions, its oil went mainly to U.S. Gulf Coast refiners.

TIMELY APPROVAL

Chevron-marketed barrels could help PBF Energy, Valero Energy, and Phillips 66 fill their supply gap, the source said. All have operations geared to run heavy oils.

Chevron has held parallel talks with PDVSA to expand its joint ventures' governance. Any agreements likely would be temporary unless Venezuela enacts deep reforms of its oil legislation, which require PDVSA to be the majority stakeholder in any joint venture.

While PDVSA President Asdrubal Chavez supports an expanded operating role for Chevron, some Venezuelan top officials resist the change, three sources familiar with the matter said.

Venezuela holds about 300 billion barrels of oil reserves, the world's largest, but has not been able to hit its production targets due to underinvestment, poor maintenance, lack of supplies and U.S. sanctions.

(Reporting by Marianna Parraga in Houston and Matt Spetalnick in Washington; editing by Gary McWilliams and David Gregorio)
By Noor Zainab Hussain and David Henry

(Reuters) -Citigroup Inc on Monday followed rival Wall Street banks by accelerating its withdrawal from Russia, saying it is no longer taking on new clients and will further cut its exposure, raising the prospect it could take substantial losses.

Citigroup's decision follows rivals JPMorgan Chase & Co and Goldman Sachs Group Inc, which last week said they were unwinding their operations in Russia and not pursuing new business there. European lenders, such as Deutsche Bank, have made similar moves.

Citigroup has exposure of nearly $10 billion in Russia, the most of any U.S. bank, and had previously warned it could lose nearly half of that in the worst-case scenario.

Citigroup declined to comment Monday on the financial impact of the decision. The bank's shares rose nearly 2% in early trading, outperforming the broader market.

The bank had already planned to exit its Russia consumer business prior to Moscow's invasion of Ukraine. It said last week that it was operating that business on a more limited basis while sticking with its plan to sell the franchise.

"We have now decided to expand the scope of that exit process to include other lines of business and continue to reduce our remaining operations and exposure," Edward Skyler, executive vice president for global affairs said Monday.

The decision means Citigroup will also be giving up its institutional and wealth management clients in Russia.

The bank will stop soliciting any new business or clients in Russia, Skyler said. It reiterated a previous commitment to "provide assistance to multi-national corporations, many of whom are undergoing the complex task of unwinding their operations."

Citigroup's withdrawal will take time to execute, Skyler said, citing "the nature of banking and financial services operations."

Before Citi issued its statement, Wells Fargo analyst Mike Mayo on Monday lowered his price target for the stock saying he expects Citi will have to book $1.5 billion of charges in the first quarter for expected losses on its Russian loans and business.

Mayo's new first quarter earnings estimate of $1.10 per share is down from $1.60. He had previously estimated Russia charges of only $300 million.

Wall Street analysts currently estimate, on average, that Citi will earn $1.89 in the first quarter, according to I/B/E/S data from Refinitiv.

Analysts have said that losses in Russia could restrict the bank's share buyback plans.

(Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru and David Henry in New York; Writing by Matt Scuffham; Editing by Anil D'Silva, Megan Davies and Nick Zieminski)
SK On, the battery-making unit of South Korea's third-largest conglomerate SK Group, announced Monday that it has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Ford Motor Co (NYSE: F) and Koc Holding As to form a joint venture to produce electric vehicle (EV) battery cells in Turkey.

The company currently has battery production sites in the United States, Hungary, China, and South Korea.

The joint venture in Turkey underlines a strategy by SK On and Ford to expand their cooperation beyond North America to Europe. The joint venture called "BlueOval SK" is to produce about 60 gigawatts hours (GWh) annually in traction battery cells and array modules with the potential to expand.

"It is our great pleasure that SK On cooperates with Ford through BlueOval SK, the battery joint venture, as well as that we found the new partnership in Europe," SK On CEO Jee Dong-seob said in a statement on Marcy 14. "We will achieve successful joint ventures with great partners in Europe as well as in the U.S."

Ford said the joint venture with Turkey would solidify its presence in Europe. "This proposed new battery joint venture is a prime example of how we are leveraging strategic partnerships to strengthen our business," said Ford's Europe business head Stuart Rowley.

By Michael Elkins | [email protected]
FILE PHOTO: A view of the exterior of the JP Morgan Chase & Co. corporate headquarters in New York City May 20, 2015. REUTERS/Mike Segar

(Reuters) -JPMorgan Chase & Co will resume hiring unvaccinated individuals from April 4, the bank said in an internal memo seen by Reuters on Monday, as it looks to ease rules put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The bank is also dropping the mask mandate in it offices for all employees, making wearing masks voluntary for both vaccinated and unvaccinated employees, according to the memo.

Mandatory testing for unvaccinated staffers, asking employees to report COVID-19 infection and associated contact tracing and notifications will be discontinued on April 4, the memo said.

"We are learning to live with COVID as part of our new normal," the bank said in the memo, as cases decline and vaccines continue to offer high levels of immunity.

The shift highlights a growing inclination among corporations and government officials to seek a return to normalcy. The bank, however, said that masking mandates might return if there was another spike in cases.

Employees in New York City must continue to meet vaccination requirements unless the city lifted the order, the memo said, adding the Wall Street giant would also continue to offer complimentary home testing kits.

(Reporting by Niket Nishant in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva)
FILE PHOTO: A view of the city skyline and Huangpu river, ahead of the annual National People's Congress (NPC), in Shanghai, China February 24, 2022. Picture taken February 24, 2022. REUTERS/Aly Song/File Photo

BEIJING (Reuters) - China will ensure stable economic operations this year, keep economic growth, employment and prices within reasonable ranges, state media quoted the cabinet as saying on Monday.

China's economy faces new downward pressure and difficulties and challenges increase, the cabinet was quoted as saying after a regular meeting.

China will "strengthen cyclical adjustments and put stabilising growth in a more prominent position, deepen reforms and opening up to strive to achieve the full-year targets and tasks", the cabinet said.

China is targeting slower economic growth of around 5.5% this year as a property downturn and lacklustre consumption cloud the outlook for the world's second-largest economy.

China will enhance the availability of financing for small firms and lower comprehensive financing costs, the cabinet said.

China will closely monitor changes in the international situation and commodity prices and the possible impact on China's economy, and take steps to cope with it, the cabinet said.

The government will quicken the pace of tax refunds to help firms, the cabinet added.

China has pledge to deliver tax cuts and tax rebates totalling around 2.5 trillion yuan ($393 billion) this year.

($1 = 6.3644 Chinese yuan renminbi)

(Reporting by Kevin Yao and Beijing newsroom; Editing by Toby Chopra)
FILE PHOTO: U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) leads a group of legislators to introduce a bill to ban Russian energy imports, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S., March 3, 2022. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Sarah Bloom Raskin's nomination to become the top bank regulator at the Federal Reserve, already stalled by Republicans, was dealt a heavy blow on Monday after she lost the backing of a senator from President Joe Biden's Democratic Party.

Raskin's "previous public statements have failed to satisfactorily address my concerns about the critical importance of financing an all-of-the-above energy policy to meet our nation's critical energy needs," Senator Joe Manchin, a conservative Democrat from West Virginia, said in a statement.

"I have come to the conclusion that I am unable to support her nomination," he said.

With Manchin casting a thumbs down on her nomination, Raskin would need to win over at least one Republican in the evenly divided U.S. Senate to have a hope of being confirmed.

Raskin, however, is the most contentious of Biden's five nominees to the Fed's Board of Governors and faces strong Republican opposition. The Democratic president also has nominated Fed Chair Jerome Powell for a second term.

Manchin's announcement "probably" ends her nomination "as a practical matter," Senator Pat Toomey, the Senate Banking Committee's top Republican, told Bloomberg TV. "I'm not aware of any Republican support for Ms. Raskin."

After Manchin's statement, the White House signaled it was sticking with her and was trying to line up Republican support.

Senator Susan Collins, a moderate Republican whose support Democrats have courted on key votes in the past, told reporters she also would not vote for Raskin, citing "gaps in experience" among other issues.

Toomey and his fellow Republicans on the banking committee have blocked Raskin's nomination from advancing by refusing to appear for a panel vote on the Fed nominees. They say past remarks indicate she would further a green energy policy that they fear could reduce fossil fuel companies' access to capital.

Manchin, who represents the country's second-biggest coal producing state and one that voted overwhelmingly for former President Donald Trump in the 2020 election, has been a persistent roadblock for Biden administration initiatives.

Powell, expected this week to announce the first in a series of interest rate hikes to combat soaring inflation, has broad bipartisan support. Several Republicans have also said they will vote to confirm a second Fed nominee, Davidson College's Philip Jefferson.

Toomey on Monday told Bloomberg TV he would vote against Biden's pick for Fed vice chair, current Fed Governor Lael Brainard, as well as against Michigan State University's Lisa Cook, who if seated would be the first Black female Fed governor.

(Reporting by Susan Heavey, Dan Burns, Katharine Jackson, Andrea Shalal and Moira Warburton; Writing by Ann Saphir; Editing by Cynthia Osterman, Paul Simao and Tim Ahmann)
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel said its government websites were hit by a cyber attack on Monday but that service had since been restored.

The Communications Ministry described it as a "broad cyber attack." It did not accuse any group of carrying it out.

The government services and information website later tweeted that the attack had blocked access to "a number of websites, including government sites" but that full service had been restored.

The Israel National Cyber Directorate, which oversees cyber defenses, in a report published last year said it had witnessed "a dramatic increase" in the scale and quality of cyber-attacks worldwide and in Israel.

In some cases officials have pointed a finger at Iran or Iranian-backed groups.

(Reporting by Ari Rabinovitch; Editing by Howard Goller)
Atlanta, March 14, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Acuity Brands, Inc. (NYSE: AYI) (Company) today announced that the Company is planning to release its fiscal 2022 second-quarter earnings results on Tuesday, April 5, at 6:00 a.m. (EDT) to be followed by a conference call at 8:00 a.m. (EDT). Neil Ashe, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Acuity Brands, will lead the call.

The conference call and earnings release can be accessed via the Investor Relations section of the Company's website at investors.acuitybrands.com . The online replay will remain available for a limited time following the call. A replay of the call will also be posted to the Investor Relations site within two hours of the completion of the conference call and will be archived on the site.

To learn more about Acuity Brands, please visit the Company's website . Acuity Brands uses its website as a channel of distribution for material Company information. Financial and other material information regarding Acuity Brands is routinely posted on the Company's website and is readily accessible.

About Acuity Brands

Acuity Brands, Inc. (NYSE: AYI) is a market-leading industrial technology company. We use technology to solve problems in spaces and light. Through our two business segments, Acuity Brands Lighting and Controls (ABL) and the Intelligent Spaces Group (ISG), we design, manufacture, and bring to market products and services that make the world more brilliant, productive, and connected. We achieve growth through the development of innovative new products and services, including lighting, lighting controls, building management systems, and location-aware applications.

Acuity Brands achieves customer-focused efficiencies that allow the Company to increase market share and deliver superior returns. The Company looks to aggressively deploy capital to grow the business and to enter attractive new verticals.

Acuity Brands is based in Atlanta, Georgia, with operations across North America, Europe, and Asia. The Company is powered by approximately 13,500 dedicated and talented associates. Visit us at www.acuitybrands.com .

# # # # #
Second quarter revenue of $34.0 million increased 28% sequentially and

8% year-over-year compared to FY2021

Enzo Biochem posted highest quarterly revenue in history of the Company

Enzo Life Science revenue reached $10.4 million, an increase of 39% year over year

Received LDT regulatory approval from New York State for CT/NG/TV molecular tests

Q2 FY22 product margin increased to 49% compared to 40% in Q1 FY22 and 47% Q2 FY21

CEO advances strategy to focus on core competencies while strengthening and augmenting management team

Conference call and live webcast scheduled for today,Monday, March 14, 2022 at 4:30 pm (ET)

NEW YORK, March 14, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Enzo Biochem, Inc (NYSE: ENZ), a leading biosciences and diagnostics company, today reported financial results for the second quarter ended January 31, 2022 and provided a business update on recent corporate and operational developments.

The Company delivered an impressive second quarter demonstrating positive performance across our extensive product and services offerings. The $34 million in revenue posted this quarter is the highest quarterly revenue in the history of the Company, said Hamid Erfanian, Enzos Chief Executive Officer. Also during the quarter, Enzos executive management team implemented several strategic initiatives and plans for further expansion of commercial opportunities related to Enzos full range of products and services.

Our approach is one of focused return, prioritizing those key segments that will provide the best short term and long term returns on investment. Building on this strategy, we are also augmenting our c-suite and management team to strengthen our capabilities in our highest growth product areas. On the lab side, we are leveraging our success during the pandemic to expand higher margin testing business and new customer groups while building our product menu. While current data suggest that COVID-19 testing will remain an important modality for identifying disease and guiding clinical care, we are building on our success in this area by prioritizing resources and technology to expand our focus on other business segments and growth areas. Enzo has compelling opportunities in our core services business around womens health, sexually transmitted infection testing, and lab-to lab services. We are further leveraging the strength, capabilities, and proximity of our Clinical Lab Services and Life Sciences divisions (all located at our Farmingdale campus) to continue to drive cost efficiencies across the business and position the company well for key partnership discussions or strategic opportunities that would complement our integrated model, Mr. Erfanian added. We are also launching new initiatives that will expand upon the $10 million of savings recently achieved. The corporate goal is to achieve an additional $10 million in cost savings with $5 million of it targeted for this calendar year.

Second Quarter 2022 and Recent Business Highlights

Received NY State Department of Health approval for the use of Enzos CT/NG/TV Test on our GENFLEX proprietary platform. This test is a real-time PCR-based method for N. gonorrhoeae / C. trachomatis / T. vaginalis (NG/CT/TV) detection in urine collected in Aptima transport tubes, vaginal swab collected in Aptima Multitest transport tubes, gynecologic specimens collected in ThinPrep Pap Test PreservCyt Solutions, and endocervical swab collected in Aptima Unisex transport tubes.

Hamid Erfanian and Bradley Radoff were appointed to the Companys Board of Directors on January 3, 2022. The Company also announced that directors Dov Perlysky and Rebecca Fischer concurrently stepped down from the Board to facilitate a smooth transition for the new Board members. Additionally, Dr. Mary Tagliaferri became the Chair of the Board of Directors.

The Company is actively engaged in a search to augment its executive team including adding a VP of Commercialization, Director of Research & Development, and General Counsel.

Second Quarter 2022 Financial Results

Total second quarter revenue was $34.0 million, an increase of 8% from $31.5 million in the second quarter last year. The gains reflected increased sales in the Enzo Life Science segment and continued COVID-19 related testing. Consolidated gross margin was 48% versus 50% in the year ago period.

Enzo Clinical Lab revenues totaled $23.7 million in the second quarter, an increase of 20% from $19.7 million in the first quarter of fiscal 2022. This performance was driven by services accession count rebounding off the summer lows. During the quarter, Enzo generated over 100,000 accessions in each month. Clinical services margin of 47% climbed more than 400 basis points from the preceding quarter, but was lower than the 51% gross margin in the year-ago comparable period. The sequential increase was due to the testing mix and ongoing cost-saving initiatives.

Enzo Life Sciences revenue was $10.4 million, an increase of 39% compared with $7.5 million in the year ago period. The average product order value remained over $1,000 per order for the 6th consecutive quarter, even when adjusted for a large bulk order during the quarter, due mainly to increased penetration and servicing higher value markets. Gross margin improved by 940 bps to 49.4%, over the 40.0% margin in the first quarter and increased 200 basis points as compared to the 47.4% in Q2 2021.

Research and development expenses remained flat at $0.8 million, or 2% of total revenue, consistent with the year ago period. Selling, general and administrative expenses, including one-time compensation expenses, increased to $14.5 million from $11.0 million in year ago period. The higher SG&A expense was primarily due to investments in sales, marketing and IT to support growth. Included in SG&A expense this quarter was compensation expense (on a net basis) of $1.7 million due to severance and other discrete matters. Legal and other expenses increased primarily due to strategic projects and other legal matters.

GAAP net loss totaled $2.7 million, or ($0.05) per share, compared with income of $2.3 million, or $0.05, in the year-ago quarter.

Adjusted EBITDA in the quarter totaled $2.5 million, versus adjusted EBITDA $4.3 million in the second quarter of 2021.

Cash flow from operations was a use of cash of $0.6 million for the quarter. Cash and cash equivalents, restricted cash and marketable securities totaled $34.6 million as of January 31, 2022 compared to $44.2 million at the end of fiscal year 2021, due to strategic initiatives, board and corporate matters, investments in inventory and greater investment in working capital.

First Half 2022 Financial Results

Total revenues of $60.6 million during the six-month period ended January 31, 2022, increased $0.5 million compared to revenues of $60.1 million for the same period in 2021. Based on the first two quarters, the Company's annual revenue run-rate exceeds $120 million on an annualized basis.

Enzo Clinical Lab revenue of $43.4 million during the six-month period ended January 31, 2022, declined 4% compared to revenues of $45.2 million for the same period in 2021.

Enzo Life Sciences revenue of $17.2 million during the six-month period ended January 31, 2022, increased 15% compared to revenues of $14.9 million for the same period in 2021.

Consolidated gross margin was 45%, as compared to 46% in the year-ago period. This was consistent year-over-year due to a rebound in Enzo Life Sciences gross margin in the second quarter after the Ann Arbor closure expenses in the first quarter.

Research and development expenses, net, were $1.6 million for the six months ended January 31, 2022 and 2021, or 2.6% of total revenue. Selling, general and administrative expenses for the six months ended January 31, 2022 were $25.5 million, or 42% of total revenue, compared to $21.0 million, or 35% of total revenue for the same period in 2021. The increase is due to hiring and investments in sales and IT support. Included in SG&A expense this quarter was compensation expense (on a net basis) of $1.7 million due to severance and other discrete matters.

Net loss for the six months ended January 31, 2022 was $5.0 million, or ($0.10) per share, basic and diluted, compared to net income of $2.6 million, or $0.05 per share, basic and diluted, for the six months ended January 31, 2021.

Conference Call and Webcast Information

The Company will host a conference call on Monday, March 14, 2022, at 4:30 pm, Eastern Daylight Time, to review the operational, corporate, and financial highlights. To participate in the conference call, please dial the following numbers prior to the start of the call or click the webcast link below to participate over the internet:

Domestic: 877-407-0792 International: 201-689-8263 Conference ID: 13727738 Webcast: https://viavid.webcasts.com/starthere.jsp?ei=1534782&tp_key=e4c55220d3

A replay of the call will be available via webcast for on-demand listening shortly after completion of the call on the Investor Relations section of the Companys website, https://www.enzo.com, and will remain available for approximately 90 days. Please access the Companys website at least 15 minutes ahead of the conference to register, download, and install any necessary audio software.

Adjusted Financial Measures

To comply with Regulation G promulgated pursuant to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, Enzo Biochem attached to this news release and will post to the investor relations section of the Companys website (https://www.enzo.com) any reconciliation of differences between GAAP and Adjusted financial information that may be required in connection with issuing the Company's quarterly financial results.

The Company uses EBITDA as a measure of performance to demonstrate earnings exclusive of interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. Adjustments to EBITDA are for items of a non-recurring nature and are reconciled on the table provided. The Company manages its business based on its operating cash flows. The Company, in its daily management of its business affairs and analysis of its monthly, quarterly and annual performance, makes its decisions based on cash flows, not on the amortization of assets obtained through historical activities. The Company, in managing its current and future affairs, cannot affect the amortization of the intangible assets to any material degree, and therefore uses EBITDA as its primary management guide. Since an outside investor may base its evaluation of the Company's performance based on the Company's net loss not its cash flows, there is a limitation to the EBITDA measurement. EBITDA is not, and should not be considered, an alternative to net loss, loss from operations, or any other measure for determining operating performance of liquidity, as determined under accounting principles generally accepted in the United States (GAAP). The most directly comparable GAAP reference in the Company's case is the removal of interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.

We refer you to the tables attached to this press release, which includes reconciliation tables of GAAP to Adjusted net income (loss) and EBITDA to Adjusted EBITDA.

About Enzo Biochem

Enzo Biochem is a pioneer in molecular diagnostics, leading the convergence of clinical laboratories, life sciences and intellectual property through the development of unique diagnostic platform technologies that provide numerous advantages over previous standards. A global company, Enzo Biochem utilizes cross-functional teams to develop and deploy products, systems and services that meet the ever-changing and rapidly growing needs of health care today and into the future. Underpinning Enzo Biochems products and technologies is a broad and deep intellectual property portfolio, with patent coverage across a number of key enabling technologies.

For more information, please visit Enzo.com or follow Enzo Biochem on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Forward-Looking Statements

Except for historical information, the matters discussed in this release may be considered "forward-looking" statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Such statements include declarations regarding the intent, belief or current expectations of the Company and its management, including those related to cash flow, gross margins, revenues, and expenses which are dependent on a number of factors outside of the control of the Company including, inter alia, the markets for the Companys products and services, costs of goods and services, other expenses, government regulations, litigation, and general business conditions. See Risk Factors in the Companys Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended July 31, 2021. Investors are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could materially affect actual results. The Company disclaims any obligations to update any forward-looking statement as a result of developments occurring after the date of this release.

Contact:For Enzo Biochem, Inc.

David Bench, CFO212-583-0100[email protected]

Investors:

Bob YedidLifeSci Advisors, LLC646-597-6989[email protected]

Media:

Lynn GranitoBerry & Company Public Relations212-253-8881[email protected]

ENZO BIOCHEM, INC. (in thousands, except per share data) Three months ended Six months ended Selected operations data: January 31, January 31, (unaudited) (unaudited) 2022 2021 2022 2021 Total revenues $ 34,046 $ 31,466 $ 60,565 $ 60,121 Gross profit $ 16,208 $ 15,821 $ 27,454 $ 27,718 Gross profit % 48 % 50 % 45 % 46 % (Loss) income before income taxes (2,655 ) 2,302 (4,974 ) 2,601 Income taxes - - - - Net (loss) income $ (2,655 ) $ 2,302 $ (4,974 ) $ 2,601 Basic net income (loss) per share ($0.05 ) $0.05 ($0.10 ) $0.05 Diluted net income (loss) per share ($0.05 ) $0.05 ($0.10 ) $0.05 Weighted average shares outstanding - basic 48,472 48,006 48,472 47,951 Weighted average shares outstanding - diluted 48,472 48,053 48,472 47,973 Selected balance sheet data: 1/31/2022 (unaudited) 7/31/2021 (unaudited) Cash and cash equivalents including restricted cash of $1,000 at January 31, 2022 and $750 at July 31, 2021 and marketable securities $34,639 $44,252 Working capital 40,562 44,506 Stockholders' equity 65,126 68,586 Total assets 108,822 113,691

The following table presents a reconciliation of reported net (loss) income and basic and diluted net (loss) income per share to non-GAAP net (loss) income and basic and diluted net (loss) income per share for the three and six months ended January 31, 2022 and 2021: ENZO BIOCHEM, INC. Non-GAAP Reconciliation Table (Unaudited, in thousands, except per share data) Three months ended Six months ended January 31, January 31, 2022 2021 2022 2021 Reported GAAP net (loss) income $ (2,655 ) $ 2,302 $ (4,974 ) $ 2,601 Adjusted for: Discrete severence and other related compensation expenses 1,688 - 1,688 - Discrete legal and settlement expenses 1,305 1,973 2,033 1,973 Strategic initiatives expenses 1,092 - 2,230 - Facility closure and separation expenses - - 384 - Non-GAAP net (loss) income $ 1,430 $ 4,275 $ 1,361 $ 4,574 Weighted Shares Outstanding: Basic 48,472 48,006 48,472 47,951 Diluted 48,472 48,053 48,472 47,973 Diluted - non-GAAP 48,971 48,053 48,999 47,973 Basic and diluted earnings per share: Basic net income (loss) per share GAAP ($0.05 ) $0.05 ($0.10 ) $0.05 Diluted net income (loss) per share GAAP ($0.05 ) $0.05 ($0.10 ) $0.05 Basic net income (loss) per share non-GAAP $0.03 $0.09 $0.03 $0.10 Diluted net income (loss) per share non-GAAP $0.03 $0.09 $0.03 $0.10

The following table presents a reconciliation of reported GAAP net (loss) income for the three and six months ended January 31, 2022 and 2021, respectively to EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA: ENZO BIOCHEM, INC. EBITDA & Adjusted EBITDA Reconciliation Table (Unaudited, in thousands) Three months ended Six months ended January 31, January 31, 2022 2021 2022 2021 GAAP net (loss) income $ (2,655 ) $ 2,302 $ (4,974 ) $ 2,601 Plus (minus): Depreciation and amortization 705 635 1,406 1,295 Interest (income) expense (68 ) 49 (107 ) 100 EBITDA $ (2,018 ) $ 2,986 $ (3,675 ) $ 3,996 Adjusted for: Foreign exchange loss (gain) 450 (625 ) 831 (461 ) Discrete severence and other related compensation expenses 1,688 - 1,688 - Discrete legal and settlement expenses 1,305 1,973 2,033 1,973 Strategic initiatives expenses 1,092 - 2,230 - Facility closure and separation expenses - - 384 - Adjusted EBITDA $ 2,517 $ 4,334 $ 3,491 $ 5,508

Source: Enzo Biochem, Inc.
FLE PHOTO: The booth of fast food restaurant company Yum China Holdings Inc. is seen at an investment and trade fair in Hefei, Anhui province, China May 17, 2017. REUTERS/Stringer

(Reuters) -Yum China Holdings Inc said on Monday a COVID-19 resurgence in the country in recent weeks had dented sales in the first quarter, setting back the revival its KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell joints had last year.

Same-store sales decreased around 20% from a year earlier for the first two weeks of March and was still trending down in recent days, after falling nearly 4% for the two months combined in January and February, Yum China said.

"Entering March, the situation has rapidly deteriorated with the highly transmissible Omicron variant causing outbreaks across China, including economically important regions of Guangdong, Shanghai, Shandong and Jilin," the company said.

The restaurant chain recorded a 1% fall in same-store sales last year, an improvement from the 9% decline in 2020. However, tight curbs on travel and dining out due to the rapid spread of the Omicron coronavirus variant have hurt sales this year.

The company projected an operating profit for the first quarter to be in a range of $165 million to $200 million, compared with $342 million a year earlier.

China has reported more local symptomatic COVID-19 cases so far this year than it recorded in all of 2021, as the highly transmissible Omicron variant triggers outbreaks from Shanghai to Shenzhen.

Over 1,100 Yum China restaurants were temporarily closed or offering only takeaway and delivery services, as of Sunday. It had more than 12,000 restaurants, as of February end.

Yum China's shares, which have taken a beating in recent days due to an auditing dispute between Beijing and Washington, fell as much as 10.5% to $33.55, a three-year low.

(Reporting by Praveen Paramasivam in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel and Krishna Chandra Eluri)
A man walks in front of the headquarters of Petroleo Brasileiro S.A. (Petrobas) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil March 9, 2020. REUTERS/Sergio Moraes

By Tatiana Bautzer and Gram Slattery

SAO PAULO/RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - State-run Brazilian oil company Petrobras is close to reaching an agreement to sell to U.S. private equity firm EIG Energy Partners control of a natural gas pipeline that connects Bolivia and southern Brazil, three people with knowledge of the matter told Reuters.

Petroleo Brasileiro SA, as the company is formally known, is expected to receive more than $500 million for the 51% stake in TBG, added one of the sources, who requested anonymity to discuss private negotiations. The bid could reach up to $1 billion depending on details of the talks.

Under negotiation is Transportadora Brasileira Gasoduto Bolivia-Brasil (TBG), which operates the Brazilian section of the pipeline, called Gasbol.

The roughly 2,600 km (1,600 mile) pipeline system is the main transportation network for natural gas in the south of Brazil. It generated more than 900 million reais ($180 million) of operating profit for its owners in the first nine months of last year.

Gasbol can transport up to 30 million cubic meters per day (1.1 billion cubic feet per day) of natural gas from Bolivia to consumer markets in Brazil.

Petrobras declined to comment on the talks. EIG did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Last year, EIG sold a 27.5% stake in TBG to Fluxys Belgium NV for an undisclosed amount in order to remove a regulatory conflict that could have prevented it from bidding for control of the asset.

TBG will be the third gas pipeline company privatized in recent years in Brazil.

In 2016, Petrobras sold Nova Transportadora do Sudeste (NTS), which runs through southeastern states, for $5.2 billion to a consortium led by Canada's Brookfield Asset Management and Brazil's Itausa SA .

In 2019, Petrobras sold pipeline company TAG for $8.7 billion to France's Engie and Canadian pension fund CDPQ.

($1 = 5.0939 reais)

(Reporting by Tatiana Bautzer in Sao Paulo and Gram Slattery in Rio de Janeiro; Editing by Brad Haynes and Matthew Lewis)
In Collaboration with Qinghua Fenjiu, the Chef Along with the Production Team Were Welcomed by the Swedish Ambassador

Beijing, China--(Newsfile Corp. - March 14, 2022) - The Swedish Embassy in China has recently welcomed Sohu Food Channel's popular program 'Ambassador's Gourmet Parour' inside the embassy. The team of 'Ambassador's Gourmet Parour' went to the embassy on Wednesday March 9, 2022, and it was accompanied and sponsored by the team of a renowned Chinese wine, Qinghua Fenjiu. This collaboration was intended to allow Chinese netizens to experience the collision between food and wine and use their taste buds to crack the Swedish food code.





Ambassador's Gourmet Parour

To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/8457/116628_de429715741218ae_001full.jpg

"It has been a refreshing experience to host these great people at our embassy and this program was a true food fusion and finding common culinary grounds between Swedish and Chinese cuisine," said Helena Sngeland, the Swedish Ambassador to China, while talking about Ambassador's Gourmet Parour. "Just like China, Sweden is also fond of dumplings and our different regions also have different recipes and practices for making dumplings," she added. The ambassador along with the staff of the Swedish embassy extended a very warm welcome with great hospitality to the guests.





Chef Mattias Lundahl

To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/8457/116628_de429715741218ae_002full.jpg





Swedish potato dumplings with caramel onions, white asparagus, roasted almonds and sea buckthorn

To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/8457/116628_de429715741218ae_003full.jpg

The dish that was cooked in this show was the traditional Swedish potato dumpling, which is actually a vegetarian dumpling with white bamboo shoots and a typical Swedish lingonberry sauce. It was prepared by the renowned Chef Mattias Lundahl, who hosted this show and cooked for the ambassador and staff. In this dish, the dough is made of fresh potatoes, combined with fresh vegetables, the fragrant but not greasy Swedish dumplings can be said to be very different from Chinese dumplings.





The editor-in-chief and guests tasting the food

To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/8457/116628_de429715741218ae_004full.jpg





Beetroot mousse with chocolate, raspberry and sourdough

To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/8457/116628_de429715741218ae_005full.jpg

Just like the people of China, Swedes also have a unique love for desserts. Chef Mattias Lundahl therefore made a great dessert using beetroot, which is abundant in Sweden. According to the chef, because beetroot itself has a sweet taste, it is healthier to use it to make desserts without adding a lot of sugar. 'Ambassador's Gourmet Parour' is a program founded by Sohu Food Channel that advocates the concept of "when the footsteps can't reach, the taste buds can reach first". This collaboration alongside Fenjiu was aimed at breaking the dimensional wall between diplomacy and the people.





Qinghua Fenjiu

To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/8457/116628_de429715741218ae_006full.jpg





Photo of Zhang Weidong, General Manager of Fenjiu International Trade Co., Ltd. and Helena Sangeland, Swedish Ambassador to China

To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/8457/116628_de429715741218ae_007full.jpg

Renowned famous Chinese wine Qinghua Fenjiu enjoys a cordial relationship with Sweden since 1921. Swedish archaeologist Anderson and Chinese scholars discovered the Yangshao Culture and discovered the Xinghua Village site, where the wine vessels were discovered. Zhang Weidong, the General Manager of Fenjiu International Trade Co., Ltd. present Fenjiu to the Swedish ambassador as a classic symbol of Chinese culture. Moreover, this event also signifies the strategic direction of Fenjiu to expand overseas markets by building a multi-level international marketing system for Fenjiu and taking it to the European markets and beyond.

To watch this entire program, please click the link below:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAoQA37fmRM

For more information, please visit the website at:

www.fenjiu.com.cn

Contact: Zheng Xingsheng

Tel: +86351 270 9799

Website: https://www.fenjiu.com.cn/



To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/116628
Highlands Ranch, Colorado--(Newsfile Corp. - March 14, 2022) - Foremost Lithium Resource & Technology Ltd. (CSE: FAT) (OTCQB: FRRSF) (FSE: F0R0) ("FAT" or the "Company") (www.foremostlithium.com), is pleased to announce that field operations have commenced for its ten (10) diamond drill hole ("DDH") 1,500-meter program. This is the first drilling program for the Company since 2018. The focus of this drill program is to test ten (10) new spodumene pegmatite targets on the Zoro project. Gogal Air Services (Snow Lake, Manitoba) has mobilized Bodnar Drilling of Sainte Rose du Lac, Manitoba to the FM-21-064 drill pad by helicopter to begin drilling. Gogal Air Services shall also provide rotary air support, core storage, and preparation facilities for the project. Drill core samples will be shipped to Activation Laboratories (Ancaster, Ontario) for assaying services. Drill and helicopter pads for each of the 10 holes were cut and prepared by Moss Linecutting of Snow Lake. Figure 1 below shows an image of the location of the FM-21-064 drill pad.





Figure 1 - Picture from Gogal Air Services helicopter mobilizing crew and equipment to the FM-21-064 drill pad

To view an enhanced version of Figure 1, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/4689/116622_8fa493aa44d3fab4_001full.jpg





Figure 2 - picture of Gogal Air Services set-up for core logging and logistical command center.

To view an enhanced version of Figure 2, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/4689/116622_8fa493aa44d3fab4_002full.jpg

Table 1 and Figure 3 illustrate the specific drill targets that will be tested for lithium oxide (Li 2 O%) mineralization. The expected host rocks for the lithium mineralization are spodumene-bearing pegmatite dykes. The locations of the drill holes are indicated by the RED STARS on Figure 3.

Table 1- Summary of 2022 Zoro property drill targets. All drill holes dip -50 degrees, trend 65 degrees except DDH FM22-60 which trends 245 degrees. The total depth of each hole is expected to be 150 meters.

Foremost Lithium Drill Hole Collar Location UTM and Coordinates (NAD83 Zone 14) DRILL HOLE NAME UTM EAST UTM NORTH 1 FM22-64 459306 6081579 2 FM22-65 459175 6081481 3 FM22-66 459114 6081185 4 FM22-67 459997 6080468 5 FM22-68 460234 6079765 6 FM22-69 460176 6079680 7 FM22-70 459334 6079699 8 FM22-62 458931 6079786 9 FM22-63 458753 6079680 10 FM22-60 458597 6080125

Foremost Lithium 2022 drilling locations



Figure 3 - Map of the ZORO Lithium Project, Snow Lake area, Manitoba. Red stars indicate new 2022 drill targets identified with Mobile Metal Ion (MMI) Technology, a proven advanced soil geochemical exploration technique. Solid black lines are lithium-bearing pegmatites on the property.

To view an enhanced version of Figure 3, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/4689/116622_8fa493aa44d3fab4_004full.jpg

Scott Taylor, President, and CEO of Foremost Lithium states: "I'm pleased to confirm that we are now executing our drilling operations on Zoro. Foremost is finally getting back to work for its shareholders. The Company is anxious to test these 10 new high-quality targets for high grade lithium oxide (Li 2 0) mineralization based upon data interpretation by our technical team headed up by Dr. Mark Fedikow. We seek to replicate this proven exploration approach and develop more drill targets for further extensive drilling in 2022. Results of the program will be released once available to keep shareholders fully up to date on any new discoveries."

This 1,500-metre diamond drill hole program on the Zoro Lithium Property is being supported by the $300,000 grant awarded in September to Foremost Lithium from the Manitoba Mineral Development Fund ("MMDF"). The MMDF was launched by the Government of Manitoba in August 2020 with the specific goal of jump-starting mineral and economic development initiatives throughout the province. The MMDF is administered through the Manitoba Chambers of Commerce and aims to support new economic development opportunities that capitalize on existing assets and infrastructure across Manitoba.

Technical information contained in the press release has been approved by the Company's VP of Exploration, Dr. Mark Fedikow, P. Geo, who is a "Qualified Person" within the meaning of National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects.

About Foremost Lithium Resource & Technology Ltd.

Foremost Lithium is an energy technology company focused and committed to become one of the first North American Companies to produce high quality battery-grade lithium hydroxide. Lithium hydroxide is a strategic battery mineral mainly consumed in the production of cathode materials for lithium-ion batteries. Lithium based batteries power the daily use of consumer electronics, enable electrification of the transportation sector, and provide stationary grid storage, critical to developing a clean-energy economy. The Company is prudently and systematically exploring and building tonnage on its four lithium properties, Jean Lake, Grass River, and Zoro located in Snow Lake, Manitoba, and Hidden Lake in the Northwest Territories. Foremost Lithium also holds assets in precious commodities with its Winston Gold/Silver Project in New Mexico, USA.

For further information please contact:

Scott Taylor

President and CEO

Foremost Lithium Resource &Technology

[email protected]

1 604 330-8067

Twitter: @lithiumlane

Follow us and contact us on social media:

Twitter: @foremostlithium

Linkedin:https://www.linkedin.com/company/foremost-lithium-resource-technology/mycompany

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ForemostLithium

Forward-Looking Statements

All statements in this press release, other than statements of historical fact, are "forward-looking information" with respect to Foremost within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Foremost provides forward-looking statements for the purpose of conveying information about current expectations and plans relating to the future and readers are cautioned that such statements may not be appropriate for other purposes. By its nature, this information is subject to inherent risks and uncertainties that may be general or specific and which give rise to the possibility that expectations, forecasts, predictions, projections, or conclusions will not prove to be accurate, that assumptions may not be correct, and that objectives, strategic goals and priorities will not be achieved. These risks and uncertainties include but are not limited to market conditions, exploration findings, results, and recommendations, as well as those risks and uncertainties identified and reported in Foremost' s public filings under Foremost' s SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com. Although Foremost has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those described in forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause actions, events or results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Foremost disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information, whether because of new information, future events or otherwise unless required by law.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/116622
Mr. Bawa's Industry Expertise Will Boost Rritual's Advancement, Having Served as VP Marketing at McCain Foods Canada, and Global Marketing Director, Frozen Pizza, Nestle Switzerland

Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - March 14, 2022) - Rritual Superfoods Inc. (CSE: RSF) (FSE: 0RW) (OTCQB: RRSFF) ("Rritual" or the "Company") is excited to announce the Company has the privilege of appointing Mr. Vikram Bawa to its Board of Directors.

"Vikram Bawa brings tremendous expertise and a vast network to the Rritual team, and we are thrilled to have him join us to grow the Rritual presence throughout North America," said Mr. Warren Spence, Rritual CEO. "Vikram is a Senior Global Marketing Leader who has achieved tremendous results, and understands, firsthand, the commitment it takes to have a single-minded focus on the consumer, which is a hallmark of the Rritual philosophy."

Mr. Vikram Bawa Food Industry Career Expertise Highlights

Vice President Marketing - McCain Foods Canada - Led all Marketing functions, including Retail, Food Service, Innovation and Consumer Insights

- Led all Marketing functions, including Retail, Food Service, Innovation and Consumer Insights Global Marketing Director - Nestle, Switzerland - Leading the Frozen Pizza Division

- Leading the Frozen Pizza Division Senior Marketing Director - Nestle Canada - Leading the Marketing function for Nestle Frozen Prepared Meals

"Rritual Superfoods presents an exciting opportunity for me, and I am excited to join the team and help to support the growth model, contributing a results-oriented business strategy to win consumers for Rritual's high quality product line," said Mr. Bawa.

Rritual product offerings are all USDA-certified organic and are a caffeine-free option that can be mixed with other beverages or enjoyed by itself. Rritual's proprietary Immune-Synergy Six Mushroom Blend is the only functional health product on the market that contains a daily prebiotic blend which nourishes a healthy gut microbiome and facilitates balanced digestive function.

About Rritual

Rritual Superfoods is the first award winning, premium brand in the emerging functional superfood market. At the forefront of innovation in the space, we have entered the market with plant-based elixirs and smoothies and continue to consistently expand our offering to meet and exceed our customer's needs. As a company, we believe in the power of plant-based nourishment and the vital life force that adaptogens, superfoods, and mushrooms can offer our bodies. Our products are made with mindfully-selected, organic functional mushrooms and adaptogenic herbs, traditionally consumed for their ability to support a healthy response to stress and help optimize mental, cognitive, digestive, and immune health. For more information, visit www.rritual.com.

Follow Rritual on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.

For further information please contact:

Warren Spence - Chief Executive Officer and Director

Investor Relations:

E-mail: [email protected]

Telephone: (844) 809-5709

Functional Foods Market

According to Grandview Research*, it is estimated that the global functional food market is projected to reach $275 billion by 2025, growing at 7.9% each year with consumers putting more emphasis on health and wellness.

*https://www.grandviewresearch.com/press-release/global-functional-foods-market

Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Forward-Looking Information

This news release contains forward-looking statements and forward-looking information within the meaning of Canadian securities legislation (collectively, "forward-looking statements") that relate to Rritual's current expectations and views of future events. Any statements that express, or involve discussions as to, expectations, beliefs, plans, objectives, assumptions or future events or performance (often, but not always, through the use of words or phrases such as "will likely result", "are expected to", "expects", "will continue", "is anticipated", "anticipates", "believes", "estimated", "intends", "plans", "forecast", "projection", "strategy", "objective" and "outlook") are not historical facts and may be forward-looking statements and may involve estimates, assumptions and uncertainties which could cause actual results or outcomes to differ materially from those expressed in such forward-looking statements. No assurance can be given that these expectations will prove to be correct and such forward-looking statements included in this news release should not be unduly relied upon. These statements speak only as of the date of this news release. In particular and without limitation, this news release contains forward-looking statements relating to the Company's plans to leverage third party manufacturing and logistics, the Company's broader retail distribution plans and the Company's other plans, focus and objectives.

Forward-looking statements are based on a number of assumptions and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond Rritual's control, which could cause actual results and events to differ materially from those that are disclosed in or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the impact and progression of the COVID-19 pandemic and other factors set forth under "Forward-Looking Statements" and "Risk Factors" in the final long form prospectus of the Company dated February 26, 2021 and available under the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Rritual undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as may be required by law. New factors emerge from time to time, and it is not possible for Rritual to predict all of them or assess the impact of each such factor or the extent to which any factor, or combination of factors, may cause results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statement. Any forward-looking statements contained in this news release are expressly qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/116626
Phoenix, Arizona--(Newsfile Corp. - March 14, 2022) - The Stock Day Podcast welcomed US Nuclear Corp. (OTCQB: UCLE), a radiation, chemical detection and specialty drone, holding company specializing in the development and manufacturing and sales of radiation and chemical detection instrumentation. CEO of the Company, Bob Goldstein, joined Stock Day host Everett Jolly.

Jolly began the interview by commenting on a recent press release detailing the Company's plan to send radiation surveillance drones to Ukraine. "We have to do whatever we can to support the people of Ukraine," said Goldstein. "We decided to send them a drone with surveillance radiation detectors," he shared. "Ukraine has sixteen reactors, including the largest reactor in Europe," said Goldstein. "Russia has also been firing on the Chernobyl plant, as well as the newer operating plants and nuclear waste facilities."

"Besides radiation detection, are there any other uses for drones in Ukraine?" asked Jolly. "Absolutely," said Goldstein, adding that the Company is able to equip their drones with a variety of capabilities, including biological and chemical toxin detection, visual surveillance, and food medicine or equipment delivery.

The conversation then turned to the Company's potential role in the initiative to combat global warming and provide a low-carbon source of nuclear energy in France. "We have the capability of supplying radiation detection materials," said Goldstein. "We have no active contracts in France yet, but we are working on it."

Jolly then asked about the energy dependency of the United States. "There are countries that are pro-nuclear reactors and some that are against it," explained Goldstein. "In the United States, our nuclear reactor boom ended twenty years ago, however there are some currently being constructed in Georgia and a new concept advanced tech nuclear plant under construction in Wyoming," he said. "Nuclear energy is one of the few energy sources that have no carbon footprint and can supply power day and night and all year long," added Goldstein, noting the beneficial impact the adoption of nuclear energy could have globally. "I think nuclear power plants will come back up in the US in the near future."

"Are there other ways your company will be able to help the people of Ukraine?" asked Jolly. "We are going to be setting up a funding site to aggregate donor contributions," shared Goldstein. "We will also be trying to send them as many drones as we can and take special orders from them if they need bigger payloads or different measurements to be made."

To close the interview, Goldstein elaborated on the Company's potential as their technologies continue to prove their usefulness and relevance globally. "We're working hard to make money, but also working to do good for the world."

To hear Bob Goldstein's entire interview, follow the link to the podcast here: https://audioboom.com/posts/8046938-us-nuclear-corp-discusses-radiation-surveillance-drone-delivery-to-ukraine-with-the-stock-day-po.

Investors Hangout is a proud sponsor of "Stock Day," and Stock Day Media encourages listeners to visit the company's message board at https://investorshangout.com/.

About US Nuclear Corp.

US Nuclear Corp is a radiation, chemical detection and specialty drone, holding company specializing in the development and manufacturing and sales of radiation and chemical detection instrumentation. Through its four operating divisions (Technical Associates (TA), Overhoff Technology (OTC), Electronic Control Concepts (ECC), and Cali From Above (CFA), US Nuclear Corp. harbors more than 100 years of combined experience in supplying top of the line instrumentation to any industry utilizing radionuclides. This includes nuclear power plants, national laboratories, government agencies, homeland security, military, universities and schools, research companies, hospitals, medical and dental centers, energy companies, weapons facilities, first responders, local governments, and manufacturing plants.

Safe Harbor Act

This press release includes "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ from expectations, estimates and projections and, consequently, you should not rely on these forward looking statements as predictions of future events. Words such as "expect," "estimate," "project," "budget," "forecast," "anticipate," "intend," "plan," "may," "will," "could," "should," "believes," "predicts," "potential," "continue," and similar expressions are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements involve significant risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results to differ materially from the expected results.

Investors may find additional information regarding US Nuclear Corp. at the SEC website at https://www.sec.gov, or the company's website at usnuclearcorp.com.

CONTACT:

US Nuclear Corp. (OTCQB: UCLE)

Robert I. Goldstein, President, CEO, and Chairman

Rachel Boulds, Chief Financial Officer

(818) 883 7043

Email: [email protected]

About The "Stock Day" Podcast

Founded in 2013, Stock Day is the fastest growing media outlet for Nano-Cap and Micro-Cap companies. It educates investors while simultaneously working with penny stock and OTC companies, providing transparency and clarification of under-valued, under-sold Micro-Cap stocks of the market. Stock Day provides companies with customized solutions to their news distribution in both national and international media outlets. The Stock Day Podcast is the number one radio show of its kind in America.

SOURCE:

Stock Day Media

(602) 821-1102

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/116650
Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - March 14, 2022) - Xtra-Gold Resources Corp. (TSX: XTG) (OTCQB: XTGRF)("Xtra- Gold" or the "Company")is pleased to announce today that the Toronto Stock Exchange ("TSX") has accepted a noticed filed by the Company of its intention to renew its prior normal course issuer bid for a further one year period. The Company intends to proceed with a normal course issuer bid to purchase up to 4,000,000 common shares of the Company (the "2022 Bid").

The Company is commencing the 2022 Bid because it believes that the current market price of its common shares may not fully reflect the underlying value of the Company's business and its future business prospects. The Company believes that the purchase of common shares for cancellation is in the best interests of the Company's shareholders by increasing the respective proportionate shareholdings and therefore increasing the respective equity interest in the Company for all remaining shareholders.

As of March 9, 2022, the Company has 46,585,917 common shares issued and outstanding. The 4,000,000 common shares that may be purchased by the Company under the 2022 Bid represent approximately 10% of the public float (41,587,062 as of March 9, 2022) of the Company. The 2022 Bid will commence on March 16, 2022 and will terminate on March 15, 2023 or at such earlier date in the event that the number of shares sought in the 2022 Bid has been repurchased. The Company reserves the right to terminate the 2022 Bid earlier if it feels that it is appropriate to do so.

All shares will be purchased on the open market through the facilities of the TSX, and payment for the common shares will be in accordance with TSX policies. The price paid for the common shares will be the market price at the time of purchase. Purchasing may be suspended at any time, and no purchases will be made other than by means of open market transactions during the term of the 2022 Bid.

The maximum number of common shares that may be purchased on a daily basis is 3,502 common shares representing 25% of the average daily trading volume 14,009 for the last six calendar months, except where purchases are made in accordance with "block purchases" exemptions under applicable TSX policies. The common shares purchased by the Company will be cancelled.

The Company has engaged Haywood Securities Inc. to act as broker through which the 2022 Bid will be conducted.

Previous purchases were made by the Company under a prior normal course issuer bid (the "2021 Bid"), the results of which are noted hereunder.

Results of 2021 Bid

Pursuant to a previous notice of intention to conduct a normal course issuer bid, under which Company sought and received approval from the TSX to purchase up to 4,000,000 Common Shares for the period of March 16, 2021 to March 15, 2022, the Company has purchased, as of February 28, 2022, 414,000 Common Shares on the open market at an average purchase price of $0.995 per share. As of March 9, 2022, the issued and outstanding number of Common Shares is 46,585,917 shares and the public float of the Common share is 41,587,062 shares.

About Xtra-Gold Resources Corp.

Xtra-Gold is a gold exploration company with a substantial land position in the Kibi Gold Belt, in Ghana West Africa.

Contact Information

For further information please contact:

James Longshore, Chief Executive Officer

Telephone: 416-628-2881

E-mail: [email protected]

Website: www.xtragold.com

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/116645
By Andrea Shalal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States told allies in NATO and several Asian countries on Monday that China had signaled willingness to provide military and economic aid to Russia, at Moscow's request, to support its war in Ukraine, a U.S. official said as top U.S. and Chinese officials met in Rome.

The message, sent in a diplomatic cable and delivered in person by intelligence officials, also said China was expected to deny those plans, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan was meeting with China's top diplomat Yang Jiechi in Rome, following his warning that China faced consequences if it helped Russia evade Western sanctions and amid reports Russia had asked China for military equipment.

Russia denied the reports, saying it has sufficient military resources to fulfill all of its aims in Ukraine. China's foreign ministry spokesperson described the reports as "disinformation."

Russia began its invasion of neighbor Ukraine on Feb. 24, calling it a "special operation" to demilitarize and "denazify" Ukraine. Ukraine and Western allies call this a baseless pretext for a war of aggression.

Disclosure of both Russia's request and China's response is part of a deliberate strategy by U.S. officials to counter disinformation by being far more open about intelligence matters than usual, the U.S. official said.

The diplomatic cable, or demarche, was relatively vague about China's willingness to provide arms to Russia, but intelligence officials were expected to share more details during in-person briefings, said the official.

Sullivan on Sunday said Washington was watching closely to see how far China provided economic or material support to Russia.

"We are communicating directly, privately to Beijing, that there will absolutely be consequences for large-scale sanctions evasion efforts or support to Russia to backfill them," Sullivan said. "We will not allow that to go forward and allow there to be a lifeline to Russia from these economic sanctions from any country, anywhere in the world."

(Reporting by Andrea ShalalEditing by Grant McCool)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Washington would be open to "diplomatic alternatives" to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon if a deadlock sparked by sanctions against Russia makes a formal return to the 2015 nuclear deal impossible, State Department spokesperson Ned Price said on Monday.

Talks taking place in Vienna were paused last week after Russia demanded sweeping guarantees that Russian trade with Iran would not be affected by sanctions imposed on Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine - a demand Western powers say is unacceptable and Washington has insisted it will not agree to.

(Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk and Simon Lewis)
Company to unveil long-term growth strategy in rapidly expanding ag-tech and subscription food delivery sectors

CORONA, Calif., March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Advanced Container Technologies, Inc. (Ticker: ACTX), announced that its key executives will be attending the 34th Annual ROTH Conference, March 13-15, 2022 in Laguna Niguel, California.

The Annual Roth Conference is one of the largest of its type in the nation, focusing on small-cap businesses and features company presentations, Q&A sessions, and 1-on-1 meetings.

ACTX has a long-term growth strategy that is focused on several key inter-related vertical markets that provide unique synergy and opportunities.

The company's chief initiative is to revolutionize the direct-to-consumer food delivery or "meal kit" market. Through its "Produce Now" division, the company offers uniquely clean, pure and fresh produce directly to consumers through a home delivery subscription service. This food is grown indoors in the company's own controlled environment farms with no pesticides, herbicides or harmful chemicals, and is, in fact, "better than organic."

The company's goal is to give consumers a cleaner, healthier alternative to food grown outdoors, where it is continually exposed to pathogens, contaminants and chemicals.

Douglas Heldoorn, CEO of Advanced Container Technologies, said he is looking forward to participating in the conference and sharing the company's strategic plans.

"In 2020, amidst a global pandemic, we were able to make key strategic moves that fortified the company for future growth and expansion," Heldoorn commented. "The Company is ideally positioned for scale and growth: We have the right products in the right markets, and we expect great interest as we share our story with the Roth Capital Conference attendees."

For more information on Advanced Container Technologies, call: (951) 381-2555 or visit: www.advancedcontainertechnologies.com.

Safe Harbor Statement

This press release contains forward-looking statements. These statements are made under the "safe harbor" provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Statements that are not historical facts, including statements about ACTX' beliefs and expectations, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties, and a number of factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statement. In some cases, forward-looking statements can be identified by words or phrases such as "may," "will," "expect," "anticipate," "target," "aim," "estimate," "intend," "plan," "believe," "potential," "continue," "is/are likely to" or other similar expressions. All information provided in this press release is as of the date of this press release, and ACTX undertakes no duty to update such information, except as required under applicable law.

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/actx-to-attend-the-roth-conference-301501618.html

SOURCE Advanced Container Technologies, Inc.
SINGAPORE, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Azentio Software ("Azentio"), a Singapore-headquartered technology firm owned by funds advised by Apax Partners, today announced that Bank of Abyssinia ("BoA") has successfully gone live with iMAL*IslamicFinancing and iMAL*ProfitCalculationSystem in less than four months, to support the growth of its Islamic window operations.

Azentio's Shariah-compliant profit calculation and distribution system makes profit distribution highly efficient. With the company's AAOIFI-certified Islamic banking suite, BoA will be able to compete with both, Islamic banks and conventional banking methods of interest payouts, in rates and customer satisfaction, reducing time-to-market for new products and distribution of profits. All profit rate adjustments are made within the confines of the rules of Islamic jurisprudence and handled automatically by the system.

Mohammed Kateeb, Global Head of Islamic Banking and President of Middle East & Africa at Azentio, commented, "We are proud to support BoA, one of the leading private banks in Ethiopia, to achieve the highest levels of transparency and complete automation to manage the restricted and unrestricted Islamic investments, compute and share profits as prescribed by the Shariah. iMAL*IslamicFinancing and iMAL*ProfitCalculationSystem were integrated online with the bank's existing core banking platform and are running smoothly as standalone applications. The approach we adopted during the implementation phase was an innovative deviation from the normal one, enabling BoA to save the costly process of migration iterations, frequent CIF and account updates maintenance."

Abdulkadir Redwan, Director - Interest Free Banking at BoA, said, "Islamic banking has been growing rapidly in recent years in Ethiopia. Choosing the right technology partner was critical to stay nimble and move fast. We made a great choice in partnering with Azentio, because of their in-depth experience, system understanding, vast industry expertise and the team professionalism. This partnership will create an edge for our Islamic banking operations to operate in a more Shariah-compliant manner and comply with the National Bank of Ethiopia's regulations."

About Azentio Software Private Ltd

Azentio Software provides mission-critical, core and vertical-specific software products for clients in banking, financial and insurance services primarily across the Middle East and Africa, Asia Pacific, and India.

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/azentio-software-successfully-delivered-its-shariah-compliant-profit-calculation-and-distribution-system-for-bank-of-abyssinias-islamic-window-operations-in-record-time-301500895.html

SOURCE Azentio Software Pvt Ltd
RNA, cell & gene therapies, artificial intelligence, CRISPR and oncology related deals dominate the landscape

Biotech companies in U.S. awarded largest sums of capital, followed by Mainland China and UK

LONDON, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Clarivate Plc (NYSE: CLVT), a global leader in providing trusted information and insights to accelerate the pace of innovation, today announced the release of a new report, Biopharma deals in review: Review of an extraordinary 2021 and expectations for the future Biopharma Deals, which highlights emerging market trends and features detailed analysis of the key deals of 2021 and potential implications for 2022. This year's report finds RNA, cell & gene therapies, AI, CRISPR and oncology related deals dominated the landscape in 2021. In addition, U.S. biotech companies raised the majority of capital followed by Mainland China and the UK.

While the volume of biotech investments has lessened, 2021 was yet another extraordinary year for biopharma deal-making. Trends driving licensing, collaborations and joint ventures included: a maturation of deals toward co-development and co-commercialization, the increasingly global nature of deal-making, continued energy around oncology therapeutics and pharma companies seeking footholds within the enabling technologies underpinning next-generation treatments.

As the COVID-19 pandemic evolves to become endemic, life science industries will continue to assess the changing drug development landscape. Emerging trends suggest innovators and investors will drive the next great advances in human health. This year's Biopharma Deals report findings, include:

Investments continue record-breaking trends, while M&As track downward - Continuing the record-setting pace in the first half of 2021,1 a new record was set for global biopharma licensing, collaborations and joint venture deals in all of 2021. A record 1,968 deals were announced in 2021, and the total value of these ventures for which financial details were disclosed was $213.6 billion, up from $198.2 billion in 2020.2 Overall, 2021 had the highest total financing and deals value over the past five years. This was driven by a number of high-value transactions; 72 deals were worth at least $1 billion for a combined value of $136.5 billion, reaching a new height. This compares with 58 such deals worth $118.0 billion in 2020, 40 such deals valued at $92.5 billion in 2019 and 31 such deals worth $63.6 billion in 2018.3

Continuing the record-setting pace in the first half of 2021,1 a new record was set for global biopharma licensing, collaborations and joint venture deals in all of 2021. A record 1,968 deals were announced in 2021, and the total value of these ventures for which financial details were disclosed was $213.6 billion, up from $198.2 billion in 2020.2 Overall, 2021 had the highest total financing and deals value over the past five years. This was driven by a number of high-value transactions; 72 deals were worth at least $1 billion for a combined value of $136.5 billion, reaching a new height. This compares with 58 such deals worth $118.0 billion in 2020, 40 such deals valued at $92.5 billion in 2019 and 31 such deals worth $63.6 billion in 2018.3 Top deals are increasing - Several of the top deals in 2021 involved co-development and/or co-commercialization of assets. Well-financed biotech companies are becoming less interested in capital investments and more interested in deals that grant them the ability to retain commercialization rights and integrate their assets across the development lifecycle.

- Several of the top deals in 2021 involved co-development and/or co-commercialization of assets. Well-financed biotech companies are becoming less interested in capital investments and more interested in deals that grant them the ability to retain commercialization rights and integrate their assets across the development lifecycle. Biotech companies in the United States awarded largest sums of capital - A deep dive into BioWorld data showed that, in 2021, biotech companies based in the United States raised the majority from private and venture sources  accounting for 67% of all monies raised worldwide. Massachusetts-based companies accounted for 30% of all VC financing. Companies from the San Francisco Bay area collected 13% of the global total, just ahead of Mainland China-based biotechs, which had a 12% share of the global take. Biotech companies based in the United Kingdom attracted a 9% share of the total, nudging just ahead of the San Diego cluster (8%). In addition, partnerships established by companies in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region indicate there is growing interest in accessing global markets, potentially with the goal of maximizing the returns on investment beyond what can be achieved in their local markets. These partnerships primarily focus on gene, RNA and oncology therapies, in keeping with the themes observed across all deal-making in 2021.

- A deep dive into BioWorld data showed that, in 2021, biotech companies based in the United States raised the majority from private and venture sources  accounting for 67% of all monies raised worldwide. Massachusetts-based companies accounted for 30% of all VC financing. Companies from the San Francisco Bay area collected 13% of the global total, just ahead of Mainland China-based biotechs, which had a 12% share of the global take. Biotech companies based in the United Kingdom attracted a 9% share of the total, nudging just ahead of the San Diego cluster (8%). In addition, partnerships established by companies in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region indicate there is growing interest in accessing global markets, potentially with the goal of maximizing the returns on investment beyond what can be achieved in their local markets. These partnerships primarily focus on gene, RNA and oncology therapies, in keeping with the themes observed across all deal-making in 2021. RNA technology gains traction with investors - The COVID-19 pandemic has propelled adoption of RNA-based vaccines and therapies, helping to pave the way for others to enter the market. Both established and start-up companies are investing money into determining where mRNA, self-amplifying RNA (saRNA), small interfering RNA (siRNA) and RNA interference (RNAi) will have the greatest benefit.

The COVID-19 pandemic has propelled adoption of RNA-based vaccines and therapies, helping to pave the way for others to enter the market. Both established and start-up companies are investing money into determining where mRNA, self-amplifying RNA (saRNA), small interfering RNA (siRNA) and RNA interference (RNAi) will have the greatest benefit. Investments in CRISPR are likely to benefit rare diseases - CRISPR techniques also have the potential to transform therapeutic approaches for diseases with very few treatment options. As a result, CRISPR has emerged as a hot platform in the past decade, with a number of biotech companies developing therapeutic approaches using the technology.

CRISPR techniques also have the potential to transform therapeutic approaches for diseases with very few treatment options. As a result, CRISPR has emerged as a hot platform in the past decade, with a number of biotech companies developing therapeutic approaches using the technology. Oncology-related deals and M&As dominate the landscape - Oncology-focused deals accounted for a large proportion of global biopharma licensing, collaborations and joint venture transactions (29% of all deals) in 2021. Of these, 25 were valued at more than $1 billion, and nine reached at least the $2 billion mark.4

Mike Ward, Global Head of Life Sciences and Healthcare Thought Leadership, Clarivate: "The desire to develop innovative medicines that will deliver better and more robust health outcomes for patients will continue to be a key driver for biopharma deal-making activity. While pharma companies will still look to acquire potential blockbuster treatments to replace existing products that are losing patent protection, others are urgently seeking inroads to the enabling technologies being developed by biotechs, such as gene and cell therapies, genome-editing, antibody-drug conjugates, RNA technologies and AI/ML applications, which are expected to underpin the next generation of transformative blockbusters."

Clarivate is committed to supporting customers across the entire drug, device and medical technology lifecycles to advance, create and protect innovation. By combining patient journey data, therapeutic area expertise, artificial intelligence and analytics in ways that unlock hidden insights, data-driven decisions and accelerate innovation, Clarivate's end-to-end research intelligence is designed to enable customers to make informed evidence-based decisions and better understand the changing landscape.

The full Biopharma Deals Report can be accessed here.

Join the conversation, use hashtag #BioPharmaDeals2022 and mention Clarivate for Life Sciences & Healthcare on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Methodology for the Report

Clarivate technology and experts harmonize billions of datapoints from thousands of sources and provide a unified view to drive decision-making for a variety of use cases, including deal-making, forecasting, portfolio strategy and more. Leveraging data and insights from BioWorld and Cortellis Deals Intelligence, as well as a proprietary, predictive analytics which draw on more than 20 traits from across the entire body of Cortellis data, including 110,000+ life sciences deals, 36,000+ contracts and 9,500+ unredacted contracts, Clarivate drew upon technology and expertise to harmonize datapoints from multiple sources to provide a unified view of deal-making in 2021 and potential implications.

To learn more about Clarivate data products, visit www.clarivate.com.

About Clarivate Clarivate is a global leader in providing solutions to accelerate the lifecycle of innovation. Our bold mission is to help customers solve some of the world's most complex problems by providing actionable information and insights that reduce the time from new ideas to life-changing inventions in the areas of science and intellectual property. We help customers discover, protect and commercialize their inventions using our trusted subscription and technology-based solutions coupled with deep domain expertise. For more information, please visit clarivate.com.

Media Contact Catherine DanielDirector, External Communications, Life Sciences & Healthcare [email protected]

1 Source: Biopharma deals in review: a look back at an energetic H1 and what to expect next. Clarivate, [online], Available at: https://clarivate.com/lp/biopharma-deals-in-review/. (accessed on February 21, 2022).

2 Carey, K. Deals reach a record $213.5B, as M&As in 2021 struggle (January 12, 2022). BioWorld, [online], Available at: https://www.bioworld.com/articles/515071-deals-reach-a-record-2135b-as-m-and-as-in-2021-struggle. (accessed on February 21, 2022).

3 Source: BioWorld; Cortellis Deals Intelligence

4 Source: BioWorld; Cortellis Deals Intelligence

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/clarivate-deals-report-highlights-emerging-trends-in-biopharma-deal-making-301501201.html

SOURCE Clarivate Plc
New smart search solution for documenting patient diagnoses and health concerns that is just what the doctor ordered

CARMEL, Ind., March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Clinical Architecture, a leading provider of healthcare interoperability and data quality solutions, is excited to announce the release of their newest product offering, SeekDx.

SeekDx provides a smart, clinician friendly diagnosis search that returns an appropriate ICD-10-CM code and clinically oriented SNOMED CT code that streamlines the documentation of patient diagnoses and health concerns in the inpatient and ambulatory setting.

Physician burnout has skyrocketed to the top of the agenda in medicine with the Harvard School of Public Health and other institutions deeming it a 'public health crisis1.' What is frustrating physicians the most? Documentation. A staggering 44% of physicians indicate that documentation takes too long2. SeekDx helps by arming providers with an easy-to-use, reliable way to simplify the creation of relevant, consistent, and complete patient documentation.

The United States Core Data for Interoperability (USCDI) requires that SNOMED CT and ICD-10-CM be used when documenting conditions, diagnoses, problems, and health concerns3. SeekDx supports the correct selection of these standard codes directly, without the complexity, ambiguity, and cost of an interface terminology, where studies have shown that differences in mapping can lead to loss of granularity of the clinician's intent.4

"Clinical Architecture is excited to provide a new approach to diagnosis search and documentation in the inpatient and ambulatory setting," said Charlie Harp, Chief Executive Officer at Clinical Architecture. "Our approach directly leverages the standard terminologies needed for clinical, administrative, and billing purposes so a patient's diagnosis is clear, unambiguous, and not subject to change by external forces. Our goal is to provide an alternative to organizations who are looking for a simple, elegant diagnosis search solution without the cost and complexity of existing solutions in the space."

SeekDx supports this goal by providing:

A powerful, smart search that:

Returns SNOMED CT, ICD-10-CM, and other meaningful data needed to support clinical, administrative, and billing processes.

Leverages broad synonymy and a wide range of filtering capabilities to help providers and coders easily arrive at the proper diagnosis codes.

Supports end user favorites, displays the most commonly selected terms first, and provides drill-down search when more specific coding is needed.

An Unparalleled Ability to Capture Clinical Intent by:

Empowering providers to document diagnoses at the appropriate level based on their specialty and care setting.

Allowing providers and coders to choose exactly what they want to include in the patient record by coding directly to SNOMED CT and ICD-10-CM.

Eliminating costly, time-consuming patient data reconciliation to ensure clinical intent is maintained when updates to standards occur.

Clinical Architecture will be unveiling SeekDx at HIMSS22 in Orlando, Florida, March 14-18, 2022. To learn more, visit Clinical Architecture at Booth #3811 or visit our website at www.clinicalarchitecture.com/seekdx .

About Clinical Architecture

Founded in 2007, Clinical Architecture delivers healthcare enterprise data quality solutions focused on managing vast amounts of disparate data to help customers succeed with analytics, population health, and value-based care. We comprehensively address content acquisition and distribution, master data management, reference data management, data aggregation, semantic interoperability, normalization, clinical decision support, and clinical NLP. Our solutions are currently used by 4 of the top 5 health systems, HIEs, population health vendors, and EHR vendors as well as The Joint Commission, the CDC, the Defense Health Agency (DHA), and other government organizations. For more information, visit www.clinicalarchitecture.com.

1. Datz T. Leading health care organizations declare physician burnout as 'public health crisis'. Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/leading-health-care-organizations-declare-physician-burnout-as-public-health-crisis/.

2. Berg S. Family doctors spend 86 minutes of "pajama time" with EHRs nightly. American Medical Association. https://www.ama-assn.org/practice-management/digital/family-doctors-spend-86-minutes-pajama-time-ehrs-nightly.

3. United States Core Data for Interoperability Data Classes: Problems. Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. https://www.healthit.gov/isa/uscdi-data-class/problems#uscdi-v2.

4. Burrows EK, et al. Standardizing Clinical Diagnoses: Evaluating Alternate Terminology Selection. AMIA Jt Summits Transl Sci Proc. 2020 May 30;2020:71-79. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32477625/.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/clinical-architecture-announces-the-release-of-seekdx-for-clinical-and-billing-documentation-301501576.html

SOURCE Clinical Architecture
ST HELIER, Jersey, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Global X ETFs, a leading global provider of exchange-traded funds (ETFs), today announced that it has engaged liquidity provider DRW, a diversified trading firm, as a market maker for its newly launched digital assets ETPs. The addition of DRW, with its deep expertise in rapidly changing crypto markets will help provide the platform with liquidity from launch.

The Global X Bitcoin ETP (BT0X) and the Global X Ethereum ETP (ET0X), listed on Deutsche Borse Xetra and each with an arranger fee of 0.65%, are physically-backed exchange traded products that seek to track the value of Bitcoin and Ethereum, respectively. These products are issued by Global X Digital Assets Issuer Limited and provide cost-efficient investment strategies for investors seeking direct access to Bitcoin and Ethereum, with the relative transparency and security of debt securities trading on a regulated stock exchange.

George Taylor, Head of Capital Markets at Global X, commented: "We strive to provide investors with reliable liquidity across all of our products, and this sentiment becomes particularly important in a new and evolving asset class like cryptocurrency. DRW has unparalleled institutional and markets expertise and is a leading player when it comes liquidity provision. Global X and DRW share a commitment to innovation, and we are thrilled to expand our relationship with the DRW team to provide liquidity to our digital assets ETPs."

Bernardus Roelofs, Head of ETF Institutional Sales & Trading at DRW, commented: "We are honoured and excited to provide liquidity for Global X's Bitcoin and Ethereum ETPs on Deutsche Borse Xetra and OTC to institutional counterparties. As a leading global liquidity provider in ETFs, crypto ETPs, spot and derivatives, we are focused on expanding the partnership with Global X as the demand for crypto products continues to increase."

About Global X ETFs

Global X ETFs was founded in 2008. For more than a decade, our mission has been empowering investors with unexplored and intelligent solutions. Our product lineup features 90 ETF strategies and over $40 billion in assets under management.i While we are distinguished for our Thematic Growth, Income and International Access ETFs, we also offer Core, Commodity, and Alpha funds to suit a wide range of investment objectives. Explore our ETFs, research and insights, and more at www.globalxetfs.eu.

Global X is a member of Mirae Asset Financial Group, a global leader in financial services, with more than $620 billion in assets under management worldwide.ii Mirae Asset has an extensive global ETF platform ranging across the US, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Europe, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam with over $80bn in assets under management.iii

Risk Information

Cryptocurrency Exchange Traded Products (ETPs) are designed for financially sophisticated investors. They may not be offered to retail investors in the UK as the sale of the ETPs to such investors has been banned by the UK regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority. The value of an investment in ETPs may go down as well as up and past performance is not a reliable indicator of future performance.

Global X has classified the ETPs as 7 out of 7, which is "the highest" risk class.

This rates the potential losses from future performance at a very high level, and poor market conditions are very likely to impact the ability for investors to receive a positive return on investment. Investors might not receive payments in their local currency or the currency in which they wish to be repaid, meaning that final return may depend on the exchange rate between the two currencies or units of account. The product invests in the digital asset cryptocurrencies, which are traded on various digital exchanges and are generally characterized as presenting high risk, but which also allows for the opportunity of high returns. Given the fact that the products invest in one volatile digital asset, the product has a higher risk than other products using the diversification method of investing in a basket of digital assets. The product does not include any protection from future market performance so investors could lose all or some of their initial investment. If Global X is not able to pay investors what is owed, they could lose your entire investment.

Prospectuses, Key Investor Information Documents (KIIDs) and Final Terms for the ETPs are available in English at www.globalxetfs.eu. Access is restricted for investors that are not eligible to invest in the ETPs including in particular UK retail investors.

This information is not intended to be individual or personalised investment or tax advice and should not be used for trading purposes. Potential investors should consult a financial advisor or tax professional for more information regarding their investment and/or tax situation.

Investing involves risk, including the possible loss of principal. Any reference to past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results.

Information provided by Global X Management Company LLC (Global X ETFs or Global X). Information is not addressed to or intended to be disseminated to UK retail investors to whom the sale of the ETPs is banned by the UK regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority.

i Source: Global X, as of 2/3/22ii Source: Mirae Asset, as of June 2021iii Source: Mirae Asset, as of 25/2/22

Media Contact: Audrey Belloff, [email protected]

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/global-x-taps-drw-as-liquidity-provider-for-its-digital-assets-exchange-traded-products-etps-301500800.html

SOURCE Global X Digital Assets Issuer Limited
TORONTO, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ - Info-Tech Research Group, a leading global IT research and advisory firm, has released its 2022 trends report on the IT talent market. This new research contains insights and strategies on how organizations can incorporate new ways of working to build and keep the best team.

The "IT Talent Trends 2022" report findings are based on insights from 245 IT professionals who participated in an industry survey. The survey data for the 2022 report is diverse, with representation from 12 countries and 18 industries, including manufacturing, government, financial, education, telecom, and health care.

While the pandemic forced the world to work differently for the past two years, looking forward, Info-Tech's research indicates that to compete, successful organizations will need to incorporate new ways of working into their business models  beyond simply having a remote work policy. The IT talent market will never be the same, and organizations must reevaluate their employee experience from the bottom up to weather the shift to the new normal successfully.

Five Trends Identified in Info-Tech's IT Talent Trends Report for 2022:What employees are looking for is changing. The biggest change from 2019, pre-pandemic, to today is an increase in the importance of culture, flexible or remote work, and work-life balance.

Organizations that fail to keep up with this shift in priorities will see the greatest difficulty in hiring and retaining staff. The five trends that Info-Tech's research has revealed should be top of mind for IT leaders as they build and retain the best team. The five IT talent trends for 2022 are:

Strategic Recruiting Finds Good Talent  As the economy has stabilized, more jobs have become available, creating a job seeker's market. This is a clear sign of confidence in the economy, however fragile, as new waves of the pandemic continue. The (Not So) Great Resignation  Movement in the job market, such as new jobs posted and voluntary turnover, can indicate increased confidence in the economy. During the height of the pandemic, both employees and employers were focused on stability to ensure lifestyle or survival and managing through the uncertainty. Organizations now looking to manage retention need to provide an employee experience driven by culture and purpose. Grow Your DEI Practices Into Meaningful Actions  Having DEI policies in place is only the beginning. Meaningful change and conversations need to take place before they will have a lasting effect. IT departments must be ready to work with HR to take ownership of any shortcomings related to DEI within their department. Remote Work Is Here, Can Your Culture Adapt?  With most organizations embarking on a hybrid work model, leadership must ensure this change is supported by the organization's culture. Not a post-pandemic fad, remote work is the natural, if accelerated, evolution of work culture in a digital world. Management Skills Drive Success in a Remote World  The expansion of remote work presents new challenges for managers, from managing remote employees' productivity to building team connectedness in the age of videoconferences. Organizations must ensure managers have the right skills to manage these new ways of working effectively.

Over the past two years, organizations have ventured into unprecedented ways of working and supporting their employees as they tried to maintain productivity through the pandemic. This has made lasting changes to both business models and employee expectations, and these effects will continue to be seen long after we return to a "new normal."

Top research takeaways from the IT Talent Trends Report for 2022:

The survey found that 47% of respondents are hiring external talent to fill existing gaps, with 40% using external training programs to upgrade current employees. Survey respondents cited skill shortages in highly technical areas like Security and Enterprise Architecture.

IT is faring better than other departments according to survey results, with 70% stating voluntary turnover is less than 10% compared to 47% stating it is above 10% at the organization level.

Salary and Compensation was identified by 57% of respondents as the reason employees resigned. Professional Development and Opportunity for Innovative Work are also included in the top three reasons for resignation, which indicates that when employees feel stagnant in their role, they will look elsewhere for opportunities.

Despite being important to potential job seekers, only 33% of organizations reported that they delivered DEI training over the past year. Respondents list time and resources as barriers to implementing DEI initiatives.

Going into 2022, 76% of employees rate remote/flexible work as being "very important" in choosing an employer. And most respondents believe that the majority of roles in IT are capable of being performed remotely. 91% of organizations plan to offer remote work, but 23% of leaders are not open to the idea at all.

72% of respondents report their IT department is very effective at managing remote staff. However, front-line staff rate remote management effectiveness lower than managers or senior leaders.

Download and read the full IT Talent Trends Report for 2022.

To learn more about Info-Tech Research Group and to download the latest industry 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. This program provides unrestricted, on-demand access to IT, HR, and software industry content, as well as the ability to speak with subject-matter experts from a group of over 200 research analysts. To apply for access, contact [email protected].

About Info-Tech Research GroupInfo-Tech Research Group is the world's fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, 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.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/it-talent-trends-for-2022-released-by-info-tech-research-group-301501885.html

SOURCE Info-Tech Research Group
CUYAHOGA FALLS, Ohio and GREENWICH, Conn., March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Associated Materials (the "Company") and SVPGLOBAL, a global investment firm with over $18 billion of assets under management, today jointly announced that funds managed by SVPGLOBAL completed the acquisition of Associated Materials.

Associated Materials is a vertically integrated building products company with $1.6 billion in annual revenues and a market leader in vinyl windows, vinyl cladding, and metal siding and trim. The Company has been proudly serving its customers since the inception of its Alside brand in 1947 and today owns other leading brands, including Gentek, Alpine, and Preservation, and sells popular product models and brands including Mezzo and Regency windows, Ascend and Align composite cladding, Charter Oak and Sequoia Select vinyl siding, and Sierra Steel and Satinwood metal siding and trim. Associated Materials has over 4,400 employees and operates its own 126 Alside and Gentek supply centers in the United States and Canada along with 11 manufacturing facilities.

David Geenberg, the Co-Head of SVPGLOBAL's North American Investment Team, said, "We are excited about Associated Materials' strong position in growing end markets and are focused on supporting the Company through its next chapter of evolution and growth. We look forward to helping the Associated Materials team create value by leveraging SVPGLOBAL's experience and relationships across the building products sector."

Associated Materials President & CEO, Brian C. Strauss, remarked, "The Associated Materials team is excited to partner with SVPGLOBAL as we further invest in growing our business and continue to provide best-in-class products and service to our customers. We are proud of what our team has been able to accomplish in building Associated Materials into the company it is today and look forward to continuing to generate value and achieve strong financial results."

Moelis & Company LLC acted as financial advisor to the Company while Schulte, Roth and Zabel LLP served as the Company's legal counsel. Rothschild & Co acted as exclusive financial advisor to SVPGLOBAL, and Milbank LLP provided legal counsel.

Funds managed by SVPGLOBAL now own 100% of Associated Material's equity. Financing for the transaction was led by RBC and Credit Suisse, with UBS, KKR Capital Markets, Macquarie, BMO and PNC participating. Kirkland & Ellis provided legal counsel to SVPGLOBAL in regards to its financing.

About Associated MaterialsAssociated Materials' mission is to create successful partnerships with contractors, builders, distributors, and dealers by providing, installing, and servicing industry leading exterior building products and solutions. The Company helps partners create or restore exceptional residential, multi-family, and light commercial structures that are energy-efficient, comfortable, long-lasting, and beautiful for the home or building owner. The Company operates 11 manufacturing facilities in the United States and Canada, which produce vinyl windows, vinyl & composite siding and accessories, and metal building products. The Company also operates 126 supply centers across the United States and Canada under the Alside and Gentek brands, respectively. For more information, visit associatedmaterials.com.

About SVPGLOBALStrategic Value Partners, LLC and its affiliates ("SVPGLOBAL") is a global investment firm that focuses on event-driven, special situations, private equity and financing opportunities. The firm uses a combination of sourcing, financial and operational expertise to unlock value in complex situations. Today SVPGLOBAL manages more than $18 billion in assets under management, and since inception, has invested almost $41 billion of capital, including approximately $17 billion in Europe. The firm, established by Victor Khosla in 2001, has approximately 140 employees, including approximately 60 investment professionals, across its main offices in Greenwich (CT), London and a presence in Tokyo. Learn more at www.SVPGLOBAL.com.

Forward-Looking StatementsStatements in this press release regarding this transaction and our future results of operations, financial performance, liquidity and prospects include "forward-looking statements." Forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in such forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, our ability to close the transaction; our ability to retain key personnel and maintain relationships with suppliers, customers, employees and other third parties following the transaction; declines in remodeling and home building industries; and the impact of COVID-19 on the Company's business, industry and the economy generally. Additional information concerning these and other important risks and uncertainties can be found in the Company's annual and quarterly reports made available to its lenders and noteholders. While the Company believes that its assumptions are reasonable, it is very difficult to predict the impact of known factors, and, of course, it is impossible to anticipate all factors that could affect actual results. The Company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances, and you are cautioned not to unduly rely on such forward-looking statements.

Media Contacts:

Todd Fogarty, Richard Goldman, Emma YoungKekst CNC[email protected] (212) 521-4800

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/svpglobal-completes-acquisition-of-associated-materials-301502020.html

SOURCE Associated Materials and SVPGLOBAL
FILE PHOTO: Chinese President Xi Jinping arrives for the opening session of the National People's Congress (NPC) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China March 5, 2022. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins/File Photo

(Reuters) - Saudi Arabia has invited Chinese President Xi Jinping to visit the kingdom in a trip that could happen as soon as May, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.

The visit could help the kingdom deepen its ties with Beijing at a time of strained relations with Washington.

Since U.S. President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, the strategic partnership between Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil exporter, and the United States has been tested by Riyadh's human rights record, particularly in light of the war in Yemen and the 2018 murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

In an interview with The Atlantic published earlier this month, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman said he did not care whether Biden misunderstood things about him.

Saudi Arabia is planning to replicate the warm reception it gave to former U.S. President Donald Trump in 2017 when he visited the kingdom on his first trip abroad as president, the Journal report said.

"The crown prince and Xi are close friends and both understand that there is huge potential for stronger ties," the report https://www.wsj.com/articles/saudi-arabia-invites-chinas-xi-to-visit-kingdom-amid-strained-u-s-relations-11647284211?mod=latest_headlines quoted a Saudi official as saying. "It is not just 'They buy oil from us and we buy weapons from them'."

Saudi government and China's foreign ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Reuters.

(Reporting by Akriti Sharma in Bengaluru, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien and Tim Ahmann)
(Tribune News Service)  It made for an unusual exercise at Langley Air Force Base. A group of intelligence specialists were handed some new communications gear and directed to set up a C3 operation  command, control and communications  as if theyd just been dispatched to a remote and unused airfield.

Unusual because the observers  a team from Air Combat Commands new Agile Battle Lab operation  werent there to grade the airmen. They were there to learn.

The lessons were about a new Air Force focus on preparing airmen for tasks outside their specialties and to move the force to a mindset more like the expeditionary units at the Navys Little Creek base, the Marines who board Norfolk-based amphibious ships and the Armys Fort Eustis-based 7th Transportation Brigade.

We dont want them to have to wait for a comms specialist, said Master Sgt. Andrea Murray, the Agile Battle Labs Langley-based intelligence integration manager.

They did great. They got everything up and running in 10 minutes ... their web was running I think at 10 times the usual speeds, she said.

And they showed a new technology developed by the lab and its contractor, including satellite links, on-the-ground gear, software and stuff Im not going to tell you about was simple to set up in difficult terrain and then operate.

Even a pilot could do it, she said, grinning at the labs commander, Lt. Col. Adam Chitwood.

Looking at the Langley exercise as a learning experience, rather than a way of assessing what airmen know and how well they do already-defined tasks, is emblematic of the Air Forces new Agile Combat Employment push, Chitwood said.

Its about technology, its about training, its about unit structure, he said. But really, its about human beings. 

It is also about moving fast, he said.

Thats why the lab has developed its chat-bot, an app that lets airmen, like the ones at the Langley exercise, give staff real-time feedback about what theyre experiencing.

Thats information an exercise observer cant always see, Chitwood said. And it can be information about issues the lab might never otherwise hear about in any kind of focused way.

That feedback doesnt always involve the labs new hardware, either.

If youve got one airman saying his hands are cold, well thats one thing, Murray said. If youve got 40 saying it, you probably need to ask about whether theyre getting gloves.

To keep the C-3 initiative on a fast track, Murrays already been out to DavisMonthan Air Force Base in Arizona to introduce the C-3 systems that the intelligence airmen tested at Langley to the 354th Fighter Group, which files A-10 Thunderbolts in the challenging missions of close air support and forward air control.

Shes heading out shortly to Hill Air Force Base in Utah, on the same mission.

Since the Langley exercise, shes also been hosting groups at her Langley offices, introducing the system and other Battle lab initiatives.

The work does involve some changes in mindset, Chitwood said.

The focus on technology thats easy to set up and use, and robust enough to stand rough handling in difficult environments by airmen who arent necessarily expert is a design challenge thats different than what a lot of engineers are used to.

Once ready to use, acquiring equipment can mean moving faster than procurement departments sometimes like to move.

And as for the airmen, he said:

Theres a mindset thing, in terms of taking risk. When you try something new, youre going to worry youre not going to do it as well as what you already know ... but you know, we sign up because we want to serve and we want to do the best job we can.

That, he said, is what makes the battle labs efforts work.

dress@dailypress.com

2022 The Virginian-Pilot.

Visit pilotonline.com.
CLEARWATER, Fla. (Tribune News Service)  A Coast Guard helicopter successfully evacuated a 7-year-old girl from a cruise ship 264 miles southwest of Clearwater on Sunday, the agency says.

The girl and her father were flown to Johns Hopkins All Childrens Hospital in St. Petersburg. Her condition was not released Monday.

A crew member aboard the cruise ship Carnival Dream alerted the Coast Guard that a girl onboard was in distress with abdominal pain.

The Carnival Dream sails from Galveston, Texas, to destinations in the Caribbean and the Panama Canal.

Video released by the Coast Guard show the girl being lifted into the helicopter inside a rescue basket while the chopper hovers above the ships stern. The video shows the rescue happened at night.

The girl was in stable condition during the flight Sunday.

The evacuation was conducted by a MH-60 Jayhawk Helicopter that left from the Coast Guard air station in Clearwater. The decision to bring the girl ashore was made in consultation with a Coast Guard surgeon.

2022 Tampa Bay Times.

Visit tampabay.com .
Stars and Stripes is making stories on the coronavirus pandemic available free of charge. See more stories here. Sign up for our daily coronavirus newsletter here. Please support our journalism with a subscription.

A contingent of up to 2,200 U.S. Marines has begun arriving for a six-month rotation to Australias northern city of Darwin, the Marine Corps and Australian Defence Department announced Monday.

During their 11th deployment to Darwin since 2012, Marines will train with the Australian troops and other friendly forces to respond to a crisis in the region, the Marines said in their statement.

It is an honor to build upon the continuing legacy of the outstanding U.S.-Australian alliance and AUKUS agreement, the rotational forces commander, Col. Chris Steele, said in the statement, referring to a defense pact reached last year between America, Australia and the United Kingdom.

The force includes a command element from the 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, with most Marines coming from Southern California. Theyre supported by a detachment from U.S. Army Pacific, the statement said.

We are excited to  integrate two highly capable and interoperable forces that advance our shared goals, demonstrate the strength and endurance of our alliance, and contribute to regional security, Steele said.

The U.S. military often uses the term interoperability to describe the ability of one countrys armed forces to use another countrys training methods and military equipment.

Up to 2,200 Marines from Camp Pendleton, Calif., will be in Darwin until the rotation wraps up in October, according to a statement from the Australia Defence Department.

The rotation will build on last years deployment, which coincided with the 70th anniversary of the ANZUS treaty between Australia, New Zealand and United States, Col. Marcus Constable, the leader of Headquarters Northern Command, said in the statement.

Australias alliance with the United States is our most important defense relationship and is central to Australias strategic and security arrangements, he said.

The allies training will include humanitarian assistance, security operations and high-end live fire exercises, Constable said.

Marines arriving for the past two deployments have isolated on arrival to avoid importing the coronavirus into Australia.

Australia closed its borders in March 2020 and has since had some of the longest lockdowns in the world. The country, which has reported more than 3.5 million COVID-19 cases and over 5,000 deaths, reopened to vaccinated tourists last month.

Measures to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus for this years rotational force are not as stringent as those faced by Marines for the previous two rotations.

Marines were tested before boarding flights and those with positive tests remained in the United States, rotational force spokesman Capt. Joseph DiPietro said in an email Monday.

The Marines are restricted to their Australian bases for their first seven days and then tested for COVID-19, he said.
Earlier this month, the International Criminal Court announced it was investigating possible war crimes in Russias invasion of Ukraine, including the alleged use of cluster munitions and vacuum bombs, targeting of civilians and an attack on a nuclear facility.

Neither Russia nor the United States is a member of the International Criminal Court. Ukraine isnt either, although it has previously accepted the courts jurisdiction within its borders.

The current ICC at The Hague sprang from the Nuremberg trials of high-level Nazis after World War II. But the concept of an international war crimes tribunal goes back more than 500 years, to an empire that no longer exists and a case that ended in a beheading.

In the late 15th century, the Holy Roman Empire stretched across much of Central Europe, comprising dozens of independent and mostly German-speaking city-states, although its power was waning. To the west, the kingdom of France was taking shape. And sandwiched between the two was the Duke of Burgundy, Charles the Bold (or the Terrible, depending on whose history youre reading), who was constantly trying to expand his control in both directions.

In 1469, the duke acquired a number of territories in the Alsace and Upper Rhine regions in a complex deal with the Holy Roman Empire. No one bothered to ask the people living in these regions what they thought of the deal, so when Peter von Hagenbach, one of the dukes knights, assembled an army and showed up to govern the place, the people were somewhat hostile. It didnt help that Hagenbach spoke French and these people spoke German.

Had the duke sent someone with a light touch, who could have won over the hearts and minds of the people, the acquisition of the region could have been hugely helpful to the duke, who had visions of becoming the Holy Roman emperor, according to Gregory S. Gordon, a law professor and international tribunal expert who has written about the case.

But light touch was not Hagenbachs vibe. He soon levied taxes, probably in violation of the arrangement with the Holy Roman Empire, and, according to an account by the French historian Prosper de Barante that Gordon quoted, when representatives of the town of Thann complained to Hagenbach that the taxes were too high, he had them executed without any sort of trial.

He made farmers abandon their fields and work for him; his soldiers mistreated people in whose homes they were quartered; and Swiss merchants passing through the area, who were not subject to his authority, were imprisoned and abused.

But his chief atrocity, according to Gordon, appears to have been mass rape. Hagenbachs soldiers terrorized the women of the region, and Hagenbach was said to have personally raped a young nun. In another sadistic episode recounted by Barante, Hagenbach invited all the married couples in a town to a party. Once they arrived, the women were made to strip naked and put a cloth over their heads while the men were confined to another room. Each man was then forced to guess which nude woman was his wife; guessing correctly meant the husband was allowed to die by alcohol poisoning rather than being thrown down the stairs.

Recent historians have questioned the veracity of these more outlandish stories about Hagenbach, which come from the writings of enemies, who may have been angrier about Hagenbachs anti-corruption reforms. But even these revisionist historians, as Gordon referred to them, acknowledged that he was strict, gruff and increasingly cruel to the people he governed, and that his harshness may have included sexual violence.

In any case, by 1474, an alliance of Swiss and Austrian soldiers, with Frances encouragement, united against Burgundy, and Hagenbach holed up in the walled city of Breisach, where he planned to exterminate the residents. In the end, his own soldiers mutinied and offered him up to enemies.

Hagenbach was repeatedly tortured and allegedly confessed to his crimes. But rather than having him summarily executed or given over to a lynch mob, the archduke of Austria convened a jury of 26 representatives of the sovereign regions that had allied against Burgundy to decide his fate.

The trial began at 8 a.m. on May 9, 1474, in an open-air court packed with people hoping to witness an execution. The prosecutor said Hagenbach had trampled under foot the laws of God and man by committing murder, conspiracy to commit murder, perjury and rape. The defense claimed the ad hoc court had no authority, that Hagenbachs sexual encounters had been consensual, and that his other acts were on the direct order of Charles the Bold.

The defense counsel implored: Sir Peter von Hagenbach does not recognize any other judge and master but the Duke of Burgundy from whom he had received his commission and his orders. He had no right to question the orders which he was charged to carry out, and it was his duty to obey. Is it not known that soldiers owe absolute obedience to their superiors?

He asked that the court adjourn so interrogators could ask the duke himself whether Hagenbachs claims were true, but the court ruled that it didnt matter, as such a defense would be contrary to the law of God.

By 4 p.m. on the same day, the jury found Hagenbach guilty and sentenced him to death. Representatives of seven towns vied for the chance to be the executioner. Hagenbach asked for forgiveness for his crimes and for other things even worse than that. Then he was beheaded.

(Hagenbachs mummified head is on display at a museum in France, and The Washington Post recommends that you not Google this, because it is gruesome.)

For centuries, the tale of Hagenbachs life and death was largely buried in history books. But the English scholar Georg Schwarzenberger unearthed it in 1946 as the international community was preparing for what would become the Nuremberg trials. Schwarzenberger was born a German Jew and had emigrated to Britain in 1934; most of his family died in the Holocaust.

Here, in the Hagenbach trial, was precedent, Schwarzenberger wrote in op-eds and books, for the jurisdiction of an international tribunal, the concept of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and the rejection of the superior orders argument.

Apparently, the Nuremberg prosecutors and judges noticed, because they cited the Hagenbach case, which had taken place only a few hundred kilometers from Nuremberg, several times over the next few years. And at Nuremberg, the superior orders argument, now often called the Nuremberg defense, also largely failed. What a judge in 1474 called contrary to the law of God essentially became Nuremberg Principle IV: The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.
When Russia invaded Ukraine last month, a spate of wishful thinking ran through the West that China, a great power with friends on both sides, might step in to mediate a cease-fire.

Chinas government struck a pose of neutrality, called for a peaceful resolution and said it supported the principle of territorial integrity. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made a public plea to Chinas Xi Jinping to intervene.

But Xi has been missing in action  and in practice, his policies have been far less neutral than advertised.

China hasnt condemned the invasion and initially didnt even call it a war. It still hasnt acknowledged which countrys tanks crossed the others borders.

Xi has talked by telephone with Russian President Vladimir Putin, but he hasnt talked with Zelenskyy.

China supports Russia in resolving the issue through negotiation, Chinas official summary of the Xi-Putin call said.

Last week, Chinas foreign minister called Russia his countrys most important strategic partner and said their relationship was ironclad.

Meanwhile, Chinas Foreign Ministry has endorsed Russian propaganda claims that the U.S. military is running bioweapons laboratories in Ukraine. The charge is false; the U.S. has funded programs to destroy old bioweapons, not produce new ones.

Theres a contradiction at the heart of Chinas foreign policy. China wants to be seen as a neutral power. But the way it calculates its interests  giving top priority to reducing the global influence of the United States  makes neutrality on issues involving Russia, its biggest ally, almost impossible.

Less than three weeks before Russias invasion of Ukraine, Xi welcomed Putin at a summit meeting in Beijing and declared that their partnership had no limits.

Chinas policy is based on Xi Jinpings view of Chinas interests, and he sees the United States as implacably hostile, Bonnie Glaser, a China scholar at the German Marshall Fund, told me. He sees Russia as his only ally against the United States and the other democracies. ... I dont think China can in any way be neutral.

At a strategic and diplomatic level, theyve clearly leaned toward Russia, agreed Evan Feigenbaum, a former State Department official now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Its a deliberate choice.

The war in Ukraine may have unsettled Chinas leaders, but it doesnt appear to have shaken the Xi-Putin partnership, CIA Director William Burns told Congress last week.

China has invested a lot in the relationship, Burns said. I dont expect that to change anytime soon.

Still, two big factors limit how far China is willing to lean in Russias direction.

Economics is the first: Chinas prosperity depends on global trade, not trade with Russia, so it wants to avoid running afoul of the massive sanctions the U.S. and its allies have put in place against Moscow. Last week, Russian officials reported that China had turned down an emergency request for aircraft parts, apparently to maintain Chinese access to Western suppliers like Boeing and Airbus. But on a less visible level, Chinese banks are working with Russian banks to use Chinas UnionPay to replace Visa and Mastercard, shut down by sanctions.

The pattern, Feigenbaum said, is an attempt to straddle the sanctions: complying where necessary, but still looking for opportunities to make deals with Russia.

A second limit involves Chinas desire to maintain a good relationship with Europe, where most countries have been quick to support Ukraine.

Theres a potential for Chinas relationship with the European Union to get much worse, Feigenbaum said. China may want to avoid that.

One limit that hasnt seemed to affect Chinas policies, though, is Beijings long-standing adherence to principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity. They have essentially jettisoned those principles, Feigenbaum said.

For all those reasons, the idea that China might serve as a neutral mediator to help end the war never had much of a chance.

In any case, it probably wasnt very workable. Chinas diplomats have little experience mediating international disputes, least of all in Europe. And while officials from Ukraine and Russia have met three times, their positions have been too far apart to produce even a temporary cease-fire.

Several international leaders have offered their services as mediators  Frances Emmanuel Macron, Israels Naftali Bennett, Turkeys Recep Tayyip Erdogan  without success. Putin appears intent on pursuing his military offensive as far as he can before entering serious negotiations.

But China was never neutral to begin with. And that reflects what may be the most important fact about the new world disorder that Putins invasion has unleashed:

Chinas Xi has made a choice. He believes the coming decades will be dominated by confrontations between the United States and China, with Russia as Chinas sole important ally.

For anyone pondering the parallels between this new period and the Cold War, theres an eerie echo of the Sino-Soviet alliance that once sought to dominate Eurasia  only this time, with China as the senior partner.

Doyle McManus is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times.
Like most Americans, Ive spent the last few weeks contemplating the implications of Russias unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, including those that extend beyond ever-increasing gasoline prices and grocery bills.

As I was explaining to my inquisitive 6-year-old, war is, sadly, a perennial state of human existence.

This isnt the first war of her lifetime, and no matter how much we strive for peace throughout the world, it wont be the last. But unlike the wars of the recent past  even those in which U.S. troops were committed  the fight in Ukraine feels closer to home.

The images and stories of ordinary men taking up arms, of women constructing Molotov cocktails in their town squares and of families resolutely hunkering down in defense of their nation are as terrifying as they are compelling.

They are hopeful, too. They remind us that when their culture, freedoms and way of life are under assault, many people will risk and even lose their own lives to ensure their long-term survival.

What would we do in such circumstances? A recent Quinnipiac University poll posed that same question to Americans: Would you stay and fight or leave the country?

A bare majority, 55%, said they would stay and fight, while 38% said they would leave.

When confronted with a terrible hypothetical that would put them in the shoes of the Ukrainians, Americans say they would stand and fight rather than seek safety in another country, said Quinnipiac polling analyst Tim Malloy.

Thats one way to spin it, I guess.

For me, the fact that just under half of my friends and neighbors would hypothetically abandon their homeland and all it stands for in the face of a foreign invader is less than encouraging. Many people dont even seem to have hypothetical patriotism, let alone fortitude.

Further disheartening is that the youngest Americans, those ages 18-34 and most physically capable, were even less likely to stay and fight. Only 45% said they would remain, while 48% would flee. Comparatively, two-thirds of the 50-to-64-year-old cohort said they would remain.

Thats not wholly surprising given that so much of the recent discontentment with America is concentrated among the youth.

Equally unsurprising is that political differences also play a role in willingness to defend our nation. Republicans (68%-25%) and independents (57%-36%) said they would stay and fight, while Democrats said, 52%-40%, that they would leave the country. That seems consistent with our political divide. Many people on the left find America, because of its historical failures and present-day inadequacies, unworthy of our defense.

But there are elements of that thinking on the political right now, too. For all the chest-thumping of the MAGA right, a surprising number of people believe that the U.S.  much like Ukraine  has brought destruction upon itself and any attack would be wholly warranted if not deserved.

I dont disagree that we are a decadent society  one that has generally enjoyed so much freedom for so long that we have sometimes lost all perspective. To wit, I received a promotional email this month from a childrens clothier explaining that, in an effort to defend the children of the world from ongoing violence and discrimination, it would donate equal amounts to a domestic LGTBQ nonprofit and an international aid organization. As if transgender policies in Texas and Florida (even if one believe them to be misguided) are the moral equivalent of deadly rocket attacks on a childrens hospital in Ukraine.

They are not.

America, in spite of its shortcomings and failures, is worth defending. Our highest ideals  liberty, equality and democracy  would never be truly achieved if we were to turn and run from an invader. While I have no delusions about my ability to fight, if we ever faced an existential crisis like the people of Ukraine now face, I would choose to stay. I hope more of us would do the same.

Cynthia M. Allen is a Fort Worth Star-Telegram columnist.
ODESA, Ukraine  Local officials disappearing, public warnings that protests will be considered extremism and signs of Ukrainian resistance anyway: This is what life looks like inside some Ukrainian cities now under the control of Russian troops, according to new photos and videos from those areas posted to social media.

Ukrainian officials claims that Russian forces have abducted at least two mayors to install pro-Russian replacements marks a new phase in Moscows invasion, now in its third week.

Russias advance through some parts of Ukraine may have stalled. But in the cities already captured, there has been popular pushback against what appear to be attempts at installing friendly lawmakers and quashing protests.

How Moscows forces handle the Ukrainian towns and cities already under its control could provide clues to Russian President Vladimir Putins potential endgame for this invasion and the troubles he may encounter. U.S. officials have said that its unclear what the ultimate goal of Putins military offensive may be. If the plan is to occupy Ukraine, then Ukrainians are showing that there will be significant resistance.

In one video posted to social media and verified by The Washington Post to be in the southern port city of Melitopol, Russian military vehicles drove through the street earlier this month blaring an announcement that demonstrations are prohibited and a curfew runs from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. People responded by booing.

In another video from Melitopol that was widely circulated Sunday, pro-Russian lawmaker Galina Danilchenko addressed citizens on local television and said that there are people in the city who are calling on you to take part in extremist actions and to not listen to their provocations.

Thats a line out of the Kremlins playbook: Officials in Russia have designated opposition groups and their protests as extremist, equating them with terrorist groups such as al-Qaida.

Danilchenko said a committee of the peoples chosen leaders would be making all administrative decisions in the city. In a separate video message published later Sunday, Danilchenko said that Russian state television channels would now be broadcast in Melitopol, so people could get accurate information.

British intelligence had warned publicly before the invasion that the Kremlin was planning a similar strategy to replace Ukraines president with pro-Moscow politicians. So far, President Volodymyr Zelensky has remained free.

Melitopol, with about 150,000 residents, was among the first cities to fall under Russian military control two weeks ago. Zelensky said Russian forces had captured the mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov, which sparked protests over the weekend. In videos verified by The Post, crowds in the city chanted, Bring back the mayor and Wheres our mayor?

Videos circulated by Ukrainian officials appeared to show Fedorov being led away by Russian soldiers on Friday with what resembled a hood over his head. Zelensky called the alleged abduction simple terrorism.

He said it was the latest in a number of actions against mayors across the country who do not cooperate with Russian forces trying to occupy their cities and towns.

Despite the Russian occupation of the city, Fedorov, who is ethnically Russian, had encouraged recent demonstrations in Melitopol against the invasion.

Russia has accused Fedorov of terrorist activities, according to the Associated Press. The prosecutors office of the Luhansk Peoples Republic, a Moscow-backed rebel region in eastern Ukraine, has claimed without presenting evidence that Fedorov was financing the nationalist militia Right Sector to commit terrorist crimes against Donbas civilians.

Then on Sunday, Ukraines foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, accused Russian forces of abducting Yevhen Matveyev, the mayor of Dniprorudne, a city of about 18,000 people in southeast Ukraine.

Getting zero local support, invaders turn to terror. I call on all states & international organizations to stop Russian terror against Ukraine and democracy, Kuleba tweeted.

While at least two other Ukrainian officials cited Matveyevs kidnapping by Russian forces, the reports could not immediately be independently verified by The Post.

With a second mayor now apparently abducted, Olexandr Starukh, the regional governor of Zaporizhzhia, said Sunday on Facebook that war crimes are becoming systemic. He said Matveyev has been kidnapped. Lesia Vasylenko, a Ukrainian lawmaker, called the alleged kidnapping a terrorist tactic.

Zelensky said in an address Saturday that Russian forces have switched to a new stage of terror, when they are trying to physically eliminate representatives of the legitimate local Ukrainian authorities. He called the capture of Fedorov a crime against democracy.

The Ukrainian president said democratic countries would equate Russias actions with those of ISIS terrorists, and asked for guarantees of full security to all heads of communities across the country.

Videos posted to social media Sunday and verified by The Post showed large crowds carrying blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flags in the southern port city of Kherson, which is now under Russian military control. The crowds were chanting in Ukrainian.

Freedom to Ukraine! the protesters said in unison.
KYIV, Ukraine  The sidewalks were covered in bits of glass and bloodstains. A green trolley car sat crumpled, a taxi smashed into its side. Next to a crushed car lay what appeared to be a body, covered by a piece of tarp.

In a park across the way, Irina Kostiuk, 38, stood staring at the scene, clutching her bleeding hand. She had been inside one of the buildings damaged in the Monday morning attack in Kyivs Podilskyi district, volunteering at a humanitarian aid center to help disabled civilians. Around 11 a.m., she heard a loud boom and felt the windows shatter.

The shock wave knocked me off my feet, and glass debris got me a bit, she said. I was lying on the floor for a few minutes, waiting to see what happens next.

City officials later described the attack as a missile or rocket strike that hit near a checkpoint close to residential buildings. It killed at least one person and wounded several others.

As at many other temporary checkpoints in the capital, the trolley car damaged in the attack had been serving as a temporary barricade, dragged into the street to slow down traffic.

The strike came only a few hours after apparent Russian shells struck a nine-story residential building in Kyivs Obolon district, at around 6 a.m. Residents fled the badly damaged building as firefighters tried to extinguish the flames and rescue those trapped inside. At least one person was killed in that incident as well, according to Red Cross volunteers at the scene.

The two attacks left residents in Kyiv on edge, with fears mounting that if Russian forces continue to close in on the capital, it could soon face immense damage and high civilian casualties, comparable to what has unfolded in the besieged cities of Kharkiv and Mariupol.

By midmorning, the second building was no longer on fire, but the damage had rendered much of it unlivable. One area was badly burned. Most of the windows were shattered, exposing the insides of apartments to winter weather.

The broken windows offered views into lives that until Monday morning had been peaceful. Through one, a tapestry hanging on a wall fluttered in the wind. Through another, shelves of cassette tapes appeared untouched.

On one damaged balcony with a small Ukrainian flag planted on the ledge, several residents stood solemnly looking down at the crowd of journalists gathered below.

Emergency workers helped evacuate residents and pets. One family clutched a pet turtle as they left the scene. Others went in and out of the destroyed building, carrying plastic bags of clothes and other belongings to their cars.

The strikes sparked fears over what could come next for the city. Kyiv has come under bombardment but so far has been spared the worst of the fighting seen elsewhere in northern and eastern Ukraine. Half of the citys 4 million residents have fled, according to officials. Those who stayed behind are bracing for a Russian offensive to take the capital.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and key advisers have stayed, posting defiant videos of themselves there to rally Ukrainians. On Sunday, Zelensky visited a Kyiv hospital to award medals of honor to injured soldiers.

Russia has denied targeting civilians in what it calls a special military operation, despite evidence of such attacks verified by The Washington Post, among others.

Tamara Tilchik, 64, who lives just around the corner from the buildings in Kurenivka that were badly damaged, stood staring at the cordoned-off area in disbelief on Monday.

Its a beautiful residential area, she said. I could never imagine in my worst nightmare that Russia would invade us.

Volodymyr Borysovich, 54, stood to the side, gazing up at the shattered balconies above.

His friends Serhiy and Natalia and their daughter, Alina, who is disabled, live on the buildings third floor. Now they are not picking up their phone, he said as he puffed anxiously on a cigarette.

The casualties in Kyiv on Monday added to the wars devastating toll on civilians, who have borne the brunt of Russian bombardments, sieges and indiscriminate violence since the Feb. 24 invasion.

The United Nations has confirmed the deaths of nearly 600 civilians  though the actual count, it cautions, is probably much higher. Ukrainian officials say Russian attacks have killed thousands of people: Just in the besieged port city of Mariupol in southern Ukraine, more than 1,500 people have died, according to its mayor.

Kostiuk, who had volunteered at the humanitarian organization whose office was damaged Monday, said she didnt know why the area was struck.

There were checkpoints here, and I guess our humanitarian office is also a strategic object. Its hard to say, she said.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko, who came to survey the scene, said in a video he posted that this is what Russias war against civilians looks like: destroyed buildings, destroyed infrastructure.

Lives are getting lost, he said. Thats the war that Russia started.

Hassan reported from London and Berger from Washington.
Several thousand U.S. Marines and sailors are among the roughly 30,000 troops from 27 NATO and partner countries taking part in Norways largest military exercise since the end of the Cold War.

The biennial Cold Response exercise kicked off Monday and includes land, sea and air drills. This years record number of attendees was confirmed months before Russia began its invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24.

I think this exercise is a good counterpart, a good companion to the ongoing reinforcement of the (alliances) eastern flank that has been taking place since Russias invasion began, Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said in a telephone interview.

The war is prompting fears of further Russian aggression in other parts of Europe, and some of the activities in the drill are planned for areas less than 200 miles from the Russia-Norway border.

The II Marine Expeditionary Force is the largest American military unit participating in the exercise, Defense Department spokesman John Kirby said in a briefing last week, adding that some 3,000 Marines are taking part.

Elements of 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing, 2nd Marine Division, II MEF Information Group and 2nd Marine Logistics Group will conduct numerous field training exercises above and below the Arctic Circle, U.S. European Command told Stars and Stripes on Thursday.

Third Battalion, 6th Marines will train with allies on the Dutch amphibious transport ship HNLMS Rotterdam, the command said.

Overall, about 220 aircraft and more than 50 ships are taking part in the drills, and the total number of participants has more than doubled from the last edition in 2020, making it the largest Norway-led exercise in over three decades, according to the Norwegian military.

Both American and Norwegian officials have attempted to assuage worries that the Cold Response exercise could exacerbate tensions between NATO and the Kremlin.

The U.S. and other NATO allies have so far refused to send troops into Ukraine, although they have been arming Ukrainians and have imposed harsh sanctions on Moscow. The U.S. has also sent thousands of troops to Eastern European NATO member states amid concerns that Russian forces may try to enter their territory.

Moscow declined an offer to observe the exercise this year despite acceptance of similar invitations in the past, Lt. Gen. Yngve Odlo, head of the Norwegian joint operations headquarters, told government broadcaster NRK earlier this month.

Norway is a long-standing member of NATO, whereas fellow Nordic countries Sweden and Finland are not, though they are considered security partners.

However, interest in NATO membership has markedly increased in both countries amid Russias latest attack. Under the alliance treatys Article 5, an attack on one ally is considered an attack on all members and calls for a collective defense.

Both Sweden and Finland are participating in Cold Response.

The events in Ukraine follow worries over possible Russian aggression in the Arctic that have grown over the past decade alongside the Kremlins military buildup in the region.

In a further sign of the regions importance to Moscow, President Vladimir Putin last year upgraded the status of Russias Northern Fleet to a military district, a move that consolidated a large part of the countrys Arctic capabilities under one roof, and announced that it would be supplied with nuclear-capable Kh-47M2 Kinzhal hypersonic missiles.

The Northern Fleets headquarters is about 90 miles from Russias border with Norway.

While analysts largely agree that a Russian attack in the Nordic region  be it overt and traditional or covert and hybrid  remains unlikely for the time being, the unpredictability displayed by Putins invasion of Ukraine has put the region on edge.

Unlike Norway, the main concern of Sweden and Finland is that they are not NATO members, and this puts them in a vulnerable position, Jason Moyer, a program associate for the Global Europe Program at the Washington, D.C.-based Wilson Center, said in an email to Stars and Stripes.

Both Nordic countries have brushed aside Russian threats of military and political consequences if they were to join the bloc. Not only has Moscows invasion of Ukraine galvanized support for membership among Swedes and Finns, but its also provided the alliance with purpose for decades, Moyer said.
WASHINGTON  U.S. military personnel will remain in Poland to help defend the NATO country despite a Russian missile attack over the weekend on a Ukrainian military facility about 15 miles from the Ukraine-Polish border, a senior U.S. defense official said Monday.

Russia on Sunday launched more than a couple dozen [air-launched] cruise missiles at a military training center in Yavoriv, Ukraine, damaging at least seven structures, the official said.

About 35 people were killed in the Russian strikes, Ukrainian officials said Sunday. However, the U.S. official on Monday could not verify the casualty count.

The strike was Russias closest yet to a NATO country since the war in Ukraine began Feb. 24. Under NATOs common defense policy, the U.S. military is required to come to the defense of Poland  or any NATO country  if attacked.

The U.S. has roughly 8,750 troops in Poland  more than half of whom were sent to the country in the past six weeks as tensions increased with Russia leading up to its invasion of Ukraine. Some U.S. troops were already in the country on a rotational basis.

But the defense official said those troops will not reposition as Russias offensive strikes creep further west.

"This has not changed our posture and it certainly hasn't precipitated any specific decision to move or reposition anybody else into or out of Poland," the official said.

The U.S. does not know why Russia launched the strikes in western Ukraine, chief Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Monday, adding Russian targeting justification is not always clear to us.

This is now the third significant strike in western Ukraine, he said. It certainly appears as if the Russians are broadening their target set.

Kirby shot down assertions that Russia could have targeted the facility to disrupt foreign security assistance to Ukraine, telling reporters at the Pentagon that the Yavoriv facility was not used for delivering such equipment and materials to the country.

We've been very careful about not wanting to talk about the routes through which security assistance is getting to Ukraine, he said. I would just tell you that we have multiple routes to get security systems into the hands of the Ukrainians. This was not one of them.

The U.S. continues sending security assistance and President Joe Biden on Saturday approved an additional donation of $200 million in defense material from Defense Department stocks to Ukraine, according to the White House. In total, the U.S. has pledged $1.2 billion in security assistance to Ukraine in the past year.

We are in constant communication with our Ukrainian counterparts about the types of assistance that they need, Kirby said.

Russia launched the missiles that struck Yavoriv from long-range bombers in Russian airspace  not from inside Ukrainian airspace  the official said, noting a no-fly zone over Ukraine would not have prevented the missile strikes.

For the advocates of a no-fly zone, this is an example of [how] a no-fly zone inside Ukraine would have had no effect on this particular set of strikes, the official said.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, among others, has called for the United States and other NATO countries to enforce a no-fly zone over Ukraine as Russia continues its airstrikes on the country.

NATO members have rejected a no-fly zone because it would draw alliance forces into direct combat with Russian warplanes.

Last year, I warned NATO leaders: if there are no strict preventive sanctions against Russian, itll start the war. And I was right, Zelenskyy said, according to a Monday tweet by the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I repeat once again: if you dont close our sky, Russian missiles will fall on your territory, on NATO territory. Its only a matter of time.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will attend a NATO defense ministers meeting Wednesday in Brussels, Kirby said. After that, Austin will also visit Slovakia and Bulgaria this week "to again make clear our firm commitment to NATO's eastern flank.

As of Monday, Russia has launched more than 900 missiles into Ukraine, the official said.

The Sunday strikes came after Russian troops launched long-range ballistic missiles Friday at two military airfields in the western Ukraine cities of Luska and Ivano-Frankivsk, which are about 70 and 130 miles from the Polish border, respectively.

While those strikes werent the first time that Russia had targeted areas in western Ukraine, its forces have largely stayed away from the part of the country that borders NATO nations such as Poland and Slovakia, and their ground forces remain in eastern Ukraine.

"It's not like there hasn't been any airstrikes in western Ukraine since the beginning of this operation 16 days ago, it's just that we haven't seen that as a routine, Kirby said Friday. Now you've got two in one day. That's notable."
The United Arab Emirates and Israel are lobbying the U.S. to formulate a security strategy for the Middle East should the Iran nuclear deal be revived, with the war in Ukraine and surging oil prices providing leverage to obtain guarantees they failed to secure in 2015.

The erstwhile foes, which established diplomatic relations in 2020, are demanding a coherent approach that includes boosting missile defense and intelligence sharing, five people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be identified because the discussions are private.

Israel and the UAE have approached Biden administration officials separately but are coordinating amid concern that Iran would use an oil windfall to channel more funds to armed proxy groups around the Middle East, three of the people said.

A State Department official said the U.S. was committed to a region where its partners are secure from external aggression and was working with them to confront threats from Iran.

A senior Biden administration official said there were ongoing discussions about the evolving threat landscape. The officials did not confirm any U.S. commitment to a specific or new plan.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry declined to comment, and the Defense Ministry did not respond to a request for comment. The UAE Foreign Ministry didnt respond to an email seeking comment.

Gulf Arab governments and Israel opposed the 2015 deal that curbed Irans nuclear program in return for sanctions relief, saying it failed to address their concerns over the Islamic Republics ballistic missile capabilities or its support for militias including Lebanons Hezbollah and Yemens Houthis.

Resentment has festered since, pushing Gulf Arab governments to expand ties with Russia and China as a hedge against creeping U.S. disengagement from the region.

Relations have deteriorated to such an extent that they have been reluctant to rally around U.S. efforts to isolate Moscow and reassure energy markets as President Vladimir Putins invasion of Ukraine drives oil prices to 13-year highs.

Talks to revive the deal were suspended last week after 11 months with no clear alternatives in place to handle Tehrans accelerating nuclear activities, potentially adding to regional security concerns.

The Biden administrations determination to calm energy markets even as it tightens sanctions has given the UAE, OPECs third-largest producer, new leverage in discussions with U.S. officials.

Barbara Leaf, Senior Middle East Director at the White Houses National Security Council, visited Abu Dhabi to reduce tensions last week, meeting with powerful security chief Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed and Sultan Al Jaber, who heads the state oil firm Adnoc, three of the people said.

The talks centered around the UAEs demand for security guarantees and Bidens desire to squeeze more crude barrels out of OPEC, they added.

Shortly after that meeting the UAE issued a statement via its envoy in Washington saying it would call on fellow members of OPEC+ to boost oil output faster.

Oil prices fell and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken welcomed the overture. The UAE oil minister later tempered expectations, reiterating his country remained committed to the oil producers cartel.

OPEC+, which is dominated by Saudi Arabia and includes Russia, has so far resisted calls from the White House and major oil consumers to speed up production.

Saudi Arabia, which carries most weight in OPEC and is a key holdout, has made no comment since the UAE statement.

The State Department official confirmed that the U.S. had held regular, senior level discussions with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and others on a collaborative approach to managing market pressures stemming from Russias invasion of Ukraine as well as on the range of issues facing our countries.

Saudi Arabias relations with the U.S. have been strained since Biden was elected with a promise to turn the worlds biggest oil-exporter into a pariah over the 2018 murder of critic Jamal Kashoggi.

President Joe Biden has chosen to communicate directly with King Salman, rather than the powerful crown prince who runs the kingdoms day-to-day affairs.

That policy means the White House has lost much of its leverage in Riyadh, with a growing number of administration officials quietly advocating a change of course, according to several people with knowledge of the discussions.

U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson may travel to Saudi Arabia this week, Sky News reported, using his better relations with the crown prince to push for more relief for oil markets.

U.S. relations with the UAE are also at their lowest ebb in years, a fact thats been acknowledged publicly but has only been addressed in the wake of the Ukraine war.

The depth of the discord surfaced at the UN Security Council, when the UAE surprised allies by abstaining in a U.S.-led vote condemning Russias invasion.

The UAE is exploiting renewed U.S. attention to ask for broader Patriot and THAAD coverage of the region following a spate of missile and drone attacks on Abu Dhabi this year, two of the people said.

The U.S. is expected to throw in some other sweeteners, including a package of measures targeting Yemens Iran-backed Houthi rebels, behind recent strikes on Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia, the people said.

This will likely include additional sanctions and the closure of Houthi social media accounts, but will stop short of reinstating the groups designation as a foreign terrorist organization.

The State Department official said the U.S. would not relent in designating Houthi leaders and entities who contribute to regional instability and humanitarian suffering.

The UAE has called on the U.S. to put the Houthis back on the terror list in the wake of the missile strikes that targeted Abu Dhabi as recently as February but aid groups say this would hamper their ability to deliver food to civilians facing one of the worlds worst humanitarian catastrophes.
(Tribune News Service)  A Navy veteran faked dozens of medical records claiming she had grave health issues, and lied about a drunken driver hitting her car while on active duty, as part of a scheme to steal over $1 million from the government, federal officials in Maryland say.

The woman also admitted to helping her then-husband and dad, both military veterans, to get more than a half million dollars in veteran disability benefits they werent entitled to, the U.S. Attorneys Office for the District of Maryland said in a March 11 news release.

Angela Marie Farr, age 36, of Leonardtown, Md., pleaded guilty to organizing the conspiracy to steal at least $1,010,000 from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and the Social Security Administration, the office said. She served in the Navy from 2005 until 2007 before she was administratively discharged.

McClatchy News has reached out to Farrs attorneys for comment and was awaiting a response.

The documents Farr faked stated that Farr, her husband, and her father were homebound and required full-time assistance for basic tasks such as eating, bathing, and dressing, since they were purportedly wheelchair bound, according to officials and court documents obtained by McClatchy News.

They also claimed they had military service-connected traumatic brain injury and seizures, an indictment said.

However, all three individuals lived ordinary, active lives, according to the release.

Farr ran an online marketing business, her then-husband would regularly work out at a CrossFit gym and Farrs dad supervised a logistics unit of 25 people while a civilian employee of the Navy, the release added.

The documents Farr filed for herself claimed she suffered multiple seizures daily, required round-the-clock care for basic functions such as toileting and showering, and claimed that she also suffered from an aneurysm, heart attack, and leukemia, according to officials.

The alleged scheme began in 2009, two years after Farr was discharged from the Navy, when she said she suffered post-traumatic stress disorder after being sexually assaulted while on duty three years earlier, according to her plea agreement. This is when she also falsely claimed to VA that she was seriously injured in a traffic accident when she was struck by a drunk driver while driving on duty in 2006.

Farr proceeded to forge over 70 pages, claiming they were from the Navy, that were purportedly authored by criminal investigators, psychologists, and physical therapists, the agreement said. As a result, the VA rated her as 70% disabled.

She continued to file more false medical records while seeking more money in 2015, court documents show. Her mother is accused of falsely acting as her caregiver when VA representatives visited her home at the time, resulting in her disability rating increasing to 100%.

Farr also exaggerated her then-husbands and her fathers existing medical conditions by submitting false claims to the VA, according to officials. Her then-husband, a former Army member, got $370,912 in VA benefits and her father got $168,074 that they werent entitled to.

In 2016, Farr applied for SSDI benefits claiming the same disabilities that she said she had when submitting the false medical records to the VA, the release said.

In that application, Farr claimed that she was unable to work and was forced to medically retire, despite the fact that she was working for the Department of Defense at the time she applied.

Farr and Pace were divorced in December 2017, the indictment said.

Shes been ordered to pay restitution for the money fraudulently obtained as part of the conspiracy, the attorneys office said.

If convicted on all counts she pleaded guilty to, she could face a maximum 15 years in federal prison, prosecutors said. Her sentencing is scheduled for Aug. 4.

2022 The Charlotte Observer.

Visit charlotteobserver.com.

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Opposition parties across the political spectrum have given the government a 'fail' grade over its temporary fuel tax cuts.

Fuel taxes have been slashed by 25 cents a litre for the next three months as the government acts to counter soaring petrol prices.

National Party leader Christopher Luxon says the petrol tax tweaks will provide some relief but does not address the wider cost of living crisis.

"It's not just fuel that's gone up and petrol prices that are going up; food's up 13 per cent and weekly rents are up $150 a week. People deserve a break.

"The best way we think to do that is adjusting the tax thresholds; returning the extra tax Labour's grabbing from inflation back to people so they've got cash in their pockets."

Luxon estimates this could save the average earner $870 a week, while the ACT Party says it could deliver $187 per person through its 'carbon tax refund' policy.

ACT leader David Seymour says the refund will be taken up through the Emissions Trading Scheme and come out of what he calls the government's "climate slush fund".

Photo: RNZ / Angus Dreaver.

ACT leader David Seymour.
Simon Bridges is announcing he is retiring from politics and will leave Parliament in the coming weeks.

Bridges is currently the MP for Tauranga and Nationals Finance spokesperson.

Its been a privilege to be MP for Tauranga since 2008, a senior Minister and Leader of the Opposition. Ive enjoyed every minute of it, but its time, says Bridges.

I will formally hand in my resignation to the Speaker in the coming weeks.

I love the National Party and this year I will have been a proud member for 30 years. For the first time in a while, National is in a good place under Chris Luxons leadership with momentum heading into the next election.

I am proud to have played a significant role recently in getting National back in the hunt for government in 2023. I have every confidence in National to win the election.

Im excited about the future and exploring commercial opportunities.

But more important to me than being a politician or a businessman, Im a partner to Natalie and dad to Emlyn, Harry, and Jemima. This week my oldest two children turn 10 and 8 years old, and I want to be able to give them the best of me.

Bridges held several Cabinet portfolios under John Key and then Bill English including Labour, Energy and Resources, Transport, Economic Development, Communications, and Associate Climate and Finance.

He was Leader of the National Party and Opposition from February 2018 to May 2020.

Chris Luxon.

Chris Luxon applauds Simon Bridges contribution

National Party Leader Christopher Luxon has thanked retiring MP Simon Bridges for his immense contribution to building a better New Zealand.

Simon has been an absolute champion for Tauranga, for New Zealanders and for the National Party over his 14-year career in Parliament. He was an excellent local MP, Minister, Leader of the National Party and colleague.

As a Minister, Simon held portfolios focusing on the economy, infrastructure, transport, broadband and the Governments finances.

As Transport Minister, Simon relentlessly pushed for upgrades to core infrastructure to drive productivity and help Kiwis get from A to B faster and safer. New Zealanders have Simon to thank for many of our improved state highways, which will be part of his lasting legacy.

Recently, Simon has been the Opposition Finance Spokesperson, where he has been holding Labour to account for a cost of living crisis that is taking Kiwis backwards.

Most importantly for me, since I became Leader Simon has been a trusted advisor and confidant. I am going to personally miss his contribution to the National Party caucus.

I want to pay tribute to Simons relentless efforts to make New Zealand a better place  and also thank Natalie, Emlyn, Harry and Jemima for letting their husband and dad spend so much time away from home to help achieve that goal.

Simon, go well. I wish you the very best.

Luxon will announce Nationals new Finance spokesperson in the coming days.

The process to select a candidate to stand for National in the Tauranga by-election will begin in the coming weeks.
Get website access for only 99 per month for the first 3 months, then $8.50 a month after. Cancel anytime!

 Unlimited website access 24/7

 Unlimited e-Edition access 24/7

 The best local, regional and national news in sports, politics, business and more!

With a Digital Only subscription, you'll receive unlimited access to our website and e-Edition. Our digital products are available 24/7 and are accessible anywhere, anytime.
Do you already have a paid subscription to any of the SWNewsMedia newspapers? If so, you can Activate your Premium online account by clicking here. Activation will allow you to view unlimited online articles each month. To activate your Premium online account, the email address and phone number provided with your paid newspaper subscription needs to match the information you use in setting up your online user account. If you are having trouble or want to confirm what email address and phone number is listed on your subscription account, please call 952-345-6682 or email circulation@swpub.com and we'll be happy to assist.
Press Release

March 14, 2022 Dispatch from Crame No. 1,234:

Sen. Leila M. de Lima on the Autopsy Result of the New Bataan 5 I couldn't even bear to finish reading the news reports on the result of the autopsy done on Chad Booc who was killed with his companions, fellow Lumad school volunteer teacher Jurain Ngujo II, community health worker Elegyn Balonga, and their drivers, Tirso Anar and Robert Aragon. It painted a harrowing picture of what could have really happened in the last moments of their young lives. Brutal! I can't imagine how their loved ones must have felt. With the preliminary results of the autopsy done on Chad Booc, it is but right to demand for further, and independent investigation on the incident that led to their deaths. Impunity murdered these young people who could have lived comfortable lives given their credentials but chose to serve the poor and marginalized. Our humanity has become so debased in the last six years that we treat young people like them as enemies of the State and kill them with unconscionable brutality in the name of national security. It may be easier to just send our sympathies to their families, ma-shock ng konti tapos move on na, but we shouldn't. We must continue to resist this prevailing culture of impunity and the blatant attempt to desensitize us from these atrocities being done to our people. Ibalik ang hustisya sa ating bayan. (Access the handwritten version, here: https://issuu.com/senatorleilam.delima/docs/dispatch_1234)


The Taos News delivered to your Taos County address every week for a full year! We offer our lowest mail rates to zip codes in the county. Click Here to See if you Qualify. Plan includes unlimited website access and e-edition print replica online. Your auto pay plan will be conveniently renewed at the end of the subscription period. You may cancel at anytime.
You are here Media > News

Director Eve Patten awarded Shared Island funding for project on Irelands cultural borderscape

14 March 2022 - The IRBORDCUL project led by Professor Eve Patten, Director of the Trinity Long Room Hub is among the sixty-two projects in Ireland and in Northern Ireland that have been awarded funding from the North-South Research Programme.

Announced by the Taoiseach Micheal Martin T.D. and Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science Simon Harris T.D. on the 2 March 2022. The first funding call under the Shared Island initiative run by the Higher Education Authority has awarded a total of 37.3 million in research funding for collaborative research projects between academics and non- academic institutions across the Island of Ireland.

Irelands Border Culture: Literature, Arts, and Policy, is a two-year collaboration between Professor Eve Patten, TCD, and Dr Garrett Carr of the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queens University, Belfast. Funded under Strand 1 of the programme, It will bring literary and visual resources from Irish border culture and identity to life in order to illuminate Irelands cultural borderscape.

Through this project we hope to capture the impact, over the past century, of cultural policies on the creation of an Irish border culture and identity. Professor Eve Patten

The project will archive and research these resources for what will become a sustainable and innovative open access digital archive, and include material ranging across creative literature, literary journalism, cinema, travel writing, photography and theatre production.

In tandem, the project will also examine the history and impact of cultural policy, understood as the cultural incentives and funding initiatives generated by government, civic, institutional, and philanthropic bodies over the period of the borders existence.

Commenting on the projects aims, Principal Investigator Professor Eve Patten said:

With the marking of the centenary of Irish partition in 2021, it might be assumed that the cultural and literary history of the Irish border is a well-researched entity. In fact, despite some pioneering studies, there is still a major knowledge gap on this subject. Through this project we hope to capture the impact, over the past century, of cultural policies on the creation of an Irish border culture and identity.

Second Principal Investigator Dr Garrett Carr said:

A key part of my work has been to give a platform to border voices, and this project will create a resource doing just that. Futhermore, it will make accessible a whole range of expression from the entire 100 year history of the border, creating an important bank of knowledge.

Really impressed by the level of interest and calibre of proposals for our #SharedIsland North-South Research Programme.



Delighted to announce the award of 37m in funding for 62 cross-border research partnerships with @SimonHarrisTD @hea_irl today. pic.twitter.com/Y60LchkbW5  Micheal Martin (@MichealMartinTD) March 2, 2022

Professor Eve Patten is the Director of the Trinity Long Room Hub and a Professor in the School of English at Trinity College Dublin. A scholar in nineteenth and twentieth-century British and Irish literature, she has lectured and written widely in this field: she is editor of Irish Literature in Transition, 1940-1980 (Cambridge UP, 2020), and author of Ireland, Revolution, and the English Modernist Imagination (forthcoming from Oxford UP, 2022). Eve has been a frequent contributor to the Irish Times, RTE and the BBC, and is series editor for Liverpool University Presss Studies in Irish Literature. She has also served on various boards for the Irish Arts Council, the Irish Research Council and the Royal Irish Academy, and was a member of the inaugural committee of the Trinity Long Room Hub.

Dr Garrett Carr of the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queens University, Belfast, is the author of The Rule of the Land: Walking Irelands Border (Faber & Faber, 2017). Garretts research has a prominent place in international media discussions around Brexit, nationalism and landscape, bringing those discussions to the past and lived present of Irelands border. His curatorial practice also relates to those themes. His exhibition of cartography Mapping Alternative Ulster has toured to four venues in the region and Garrett continues to work extensively with visual artists concerned with the border. The Border Peoples Parliament (2018) saw 150 people from the border area meet in Belfasts parliament buildings to discuss the future of their region and resulted in many outputs, including a Border Manifesto that has been exhibited across Europe.
Thank you for Reading!

Please log in, or sign up for a

new account and

Purchase a Subscription

to continue reading.
thanixravindran BHPian

Join Date: Feb 2022 Location: Chennai Posts: 147 Thanked: 961 Times

Re: Impact of the Russia-Ukraine war Quote: vishnurp99 Originally Posted by I feel that we are reading too much into this. Mark Z is under lot of pressure due to the focus on privacy and personal data security in the recent past. Remember Cambridge Analytica. FB/meta is just trying to get on the right side of political discourse with this announcement.



This makes them look good to the American public at large. On the ground nothing changes since selective and biased censorship policies is nothing new. Almost everybody on the left and the right have complained about it at some point.



I, for one, do not believe that Meta is acting on its own or to divert focus. This has all the footprints of the US security establishment behind the scenes. Key giveaway for this is



1. The countries where this policy exemption is carried out - All eastern European countries only and no USA or Western/Central European countries.



2. Allowed Far Right posts supporting Azov. Despite Ukraine, 'Far Right' support is a clear 'No' in Western Europe.



So, this in my opinion is a testing waters for reaction. For future mischief, all you need a is a precedent to follow.



For those who could still not grasp this with Indian context, imagine there is a war with our western neighbor over 'K' and if the companies decided to side with our neighbor based on someone else's policy (Justification can always be easily found - Freedom struggle is one of them) and started blocking the Indian posts/news or worse allow posts with explicit death threats to the Indian side, will it be okay?



If you do not want to think about international events, here is the step by step guide with an imaginary but plausible situation



1. Elections happen and results are contested (Justification - EVMs anyone?).

2. Social media companies 'decide' one side is correct and decides to allow only that side's content.

3. Not stopping there, they further decide to allow posts with death threats against the other side.



Already there is enough divisive public discourse and this will end up having a real 'external' threat if you fell out of favor. I sincerely hope the upcoming Indian IT law provides protections and balances as well lay out clear rules for social media companies.



We can argue that the same thing can happen even with home grown companies or with Government control. Absolutely yes and it will be even worse. This is the reason these 'experiments' should not be done. Any strongman ruled countries will use this 'ruse' to further their own agenda of control.



In many ways, this 'event or invasion or war' is unique and is showing the world, new ways and endless possibilities of warfare. I know social media is full of hate speech despite moderation and things happening covertly but making it openly allowed as a policy exemption will not be anyone's good. All the mainstream media both print and visual has political leanings which is still okay but what happens if they allow to broadcast or publish death threats to other side as a policy exemption.I, for one, do not believe that Meta is acting on its own or to divert focus. This has all the footprints of the US security establishment behind the scenes. Key giveaway for this is1. The countries where this policy exemption is carried out - All eastern European countries only and no USA or Western/Central European countries.2. Allowed Far Right posts supporting Azov. Despite Ukraine, 'Far Right' support is a clear 'No' in Western Europe.So, this in my opinion is a testing waters for reaction. For future mischief, all you need a is a precedent to follow.For those who could still not grasp this with Indian context, imagine there is a war with our western neighbor over 'K' and if the companies decided to side with our neighbor based on someone else's policy (Justification can always be easily found - Freedom struggle is one of them) and started blocking the Indian posts/news or worse allow posts with explicit death threats to the Indian side, will it be okay?If you do not want to think about international events, here is the step by step guide with an imaginary but plausible situation1. Elections happen and results are contested (Justification - EVMs anyone?).2. Social media companies 'decide' one side is correct and decides to allow only that side's content.3. Not stopping there, they further decide to allow posts with death threats against the other side.Already there is enough divisive public discourse and this will end up having a real 'external' threat if you fell out of favor. I sincerely hope the upcoming Indian IT law provides protections and balances as well lay out clear rules for social media companies.We can argue that the same thing can happen even with home grown companies or with Government control. Absolutely yes and it will be even worse. This is the reason these 'experiments' should not be done. Any strongman ruled countries will use this 'ruse' to further their own agenda of control.In many ways, this 'event or invasion or war' is unique and is showing the world, new ways and endless possibilities of warfare.
What just happened? Just as we were seeing signs that the chip shortage was improving, the crisis has potentially been exacerbated. First by the invasion of Ukraine, and now through an outbreak of Covid-19 cases in the Chinese tech center of Shenzhen.

Apple supplier Foxconn and several other manufacturers have suspended production in Shenzhen following a rise in Covid-19 reports. Sixty new cases were reported Sunday, and now all businesses except those that supply food, fuel, and other necessities have been ordered to close or work from home, reports AP. Additionally, all 17.5 million residents must undergo three rounds of testing.

Those infection numbers are low compared to most other countries, but China has an extreme zero tolerance strategy that sees quarantines and lockdowns of entire communities or cities even if just a few Covid-19 cases are discovered.

Foxconn, the worlds biggest contract manufacturer of electronics that counts Apple and Samsung among its customers, has suspended production at its Longhua and Guanlan factories until further notice, though it will use sites in other cities to support production. The firm's touch panel subsidiary, General Interface Solution (GIS) Holding, is also halting production.

A subsidiary of Taiwans largest circuit board maker, Unimicron, is stopping production from today, writes Nikkei Asia. Some of China's largest tech companies have their headquarters in Shenzhen, including Huawei, Tencent, and Oppo.

Shanghai, home of chipmaker SMIC, is also introducing restrictions today, including the suspension of buses to other provinces and requiring a negative PCR test from anyone attempting to leave or enter the city.

GEM Services, a Taiwanese power-management chip packaging and testing company, is suspending production at its Shanghai plant.

I hate to be the bad news bear , but Shenzhen, a major manufacturing and distribution hub in China just announced FULL LOCKDOWN!! RIP US SUPPLY CHAIN pic.twitter.com/ajNiII8xfk  Eric Yeung  (@KingKong9888) March 13, 2022

There are concerns that the lockdowns will impact supply chains in a chip industry that had been showing signs of improvement recently. The market is also dealing with the Ukraine invasion. Around half of the world's supply of neonneeded for the lasers used in chip manufacturingcomes from two companies in Ukraine, both of which have ceased production since Russian forces attacked the country.

Photo by Robert Bye
In a nutshell: Nintendo will open its first Super Nintendo World themed play land in the US at Universal Studios Hollywood in 2023. Nintendo said the area will be a "visual spectacle of vibrant colors and architectural ingenuity" located in a newly expanded section of the park. It'll feature a new ride and interactive areas, complete with themed shopping and dining experiences.

Nintendo partnered with Universal in 2015 to bring the gaming giant's iconic characters and worlds to amusement parks around the globe. Construction on the first Super Nintendo World started in Japan in mid-2017 and was expected to be completed before the start of the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.

The pandemic forced Nintendo to push the grand opening back, but we did get a preview of the new area during the Nintendo Direct in December 2020. Super Nintendo World opened to the public on March 18, 2021.

Universal Studios Hollywood will mark the countdown with a "takeover" of its feature presentation retail store with Super Nintendo World theming. The shop is located just inside the park's main entrance, where visitors will be able to purchase apparel, plush characters and more.

Nintendo is also working on themed areas at parks in Orlando and Singapore, but opening dates for those haven't yet been announced. A Donkey Kong area is additionally being added to complement the existing Mario-themed area in Japan and should open in 2024.
In brief: Reports indicate Foxconn is planning to build a new $9 billion factory to manufacture various electronics in the Middle East. Most odd is that one of the locations in consideration is a Saudi Arabian city that doesn't exist yet.

Sources recently told the Wall Street Journal that the Saudi government is negotiating with electronics supplier Foxconn for a new $9 billion factory in its planned future city of Neom. The factory would be for semiconductors, displays, EV components, and surface-mount technology.

The proposed site of Neom.

Neom is a city-state Saudi Arabia plans to build on the coast of the Red Sea near Jordan and Egypt. The Saudi government announced its plans for Neom in 2017 as part of its "Vision 2030." Spanning 10,000 square miles and costing $500 billion, Neom is supposed to be powered by AI, renewable energy, and high-speed wireless.

However, the insiders say Foxconn is also in talks with the United Arab Emirates to locate the plant within its borders, about 2,300 km southeast of Neom.

If confirmed, the facility could be part of Foxconn's recently-announced plans to establish itself in the EV market by 2025. Earlier this month, Foxconn revealed it wants to build EV factories in Taiwan, Europe, India, Mexico, and South America over several years, though it didn't mention the Middle East.
Mobile UK, a trade association of British mobile network operators including Virgin Media O2, EE, Vodafone, and Three, has urged the UK's Competition and Markets Authority or CMA to regulate Apple's iCloud Private Relay.

The UK network operators claimed that the service is bad for users, anti-competitive, and a threat to the security of its users and the country.

UK's CMA to Regulate iCloud Private Relay

According to MacRumors, the UK network operators have raised concerns that iCloud Private Relay can negatively impact internet safety, business competition, and user experience.

The iCloud Private Relay was launched with Apple's iOS 15, ensuring that all traffic leaving your iPhone, Mac computer, or iPad is encrypted using two separate internet relays, so companies can't use your personal information like your location, IP address, and online activity to create a profile about you, according to 9to5Mac.

After a formal complaint about the iCloud Private Relay was filed, Mobile UK claimed that the service had undesired side-effects for users.

Also Read: iCloud+ Private Relay: How to Set It Up on Mac

Mobile UK noted that iCloud Private Relay affects users in many ways, beyond what level of privacy a user wants.

Apple users had a bad browsing experience after using the service. This pushed users to migrate away from the Safari browser to apps downloaded from the App Store, where Apple can earn a commission.

iCloud Private Relay prevents network providers from viewing Safari's network traffic and all unencrypted applications, according to MacHash.

In preventing network operators from seeing the traffic, Mobile UK said that the iCloud Private Relay does not allow service providers to understand patterns across mobile networks. This prevents them from effectively diagnosing customer issues.

Also, iCloud Private Relay is alleged to compromise malware, content filtering, anti-scamming, and phishing protection the network providers provide.

Mobile UK also stated that iCloud Private Relay is a threat to national security because it impairs the insights available under the Government's investigatory powers, with implications for law enforcement regarding terrorism, child sexual abuse, serious organized crime, and exploitation.

Private Relay allows Apple to leverage its considerable market power into many areas of the market, thus entrenching its position.

Mobile UK said due to iCloud Private Relay, some providers were unable to use the traffic data to develop their competing mobile browsers in the future and other services that compete with Apple.

Restrictions on Network Providers

Network providers would no longer use web traffic data over Safari to create their digital products and services that compete with Apple.

For example, a network provider can no longer have access to information about a user's content viewing habits to create content that competes with Apple TV.

Also, a network provider may no longer be able to share consumer insight with third-party companies that give digital advertising services in competition with Apple Search Ads.

Mobile UK asserts that the ability of UK Internet Service Providers or ISPs to differentiate and compete in the market on better terms is actively undermined by iCloud Private Relay since Apple is becoming an ISP itself.

In September 2021, iCloud Private Relay suffered a security flaw and leaked IP addresses.

Earlier in 2022, iCloud Private Relay suffered an error in iOS 15 Beta.

Related Article: Apple iCloud Private Relay to Release as Beta Feature when iOS 15, iPadOS Releases This Fall-Why?

This article is owned by Tech Times

Written by Sophie Webster

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
The new Apple Silicon Pro is expected to be similar to Mac Studio's approach. Experts said that this latest laptop of the iPhone maker will combine two M1 Ultra SoCs.

Apple Silicon Pro was first introduced in the recent Peak Performance event. After it was launched, the new laptop led to some speculations about an internal enhancement, especially with its chipset.

During the Mar. 8 event, the giant tech firm announced that it would make Apple Silicon Pro one step ahead of Mac Studio's M1 Ultra by reusing the current in-house chipset and tweaking it.

Apple Silicon Pro Similar To Mac Studio's Approach?

According to Apple Insider's latest report, the new Apple Silicon Pro will combine two M1 Ultra chipsets into a single 40-core SoC.

Also Read: Apple Boasts Magic Mouse in Black-Silver Design Along With New Trackpad, Keyboard With Touch ID

This is comparable to the approach used by Mac Studio in the advanced M1 Ultra, which also combines two M1 Max SoCs using the so-called UltraFusion.

If this is true, then an interconnection similar to UltraFusion will also be used to connect the two M1 Ultra chipsets.

Some leakers claimed that the new interconnect component would be integrated into the new 2022 Mac Pro once it arrives this coming September.

However, there's still an issue. Experts said that the interconnect would have the same limitations as UltraFusion. This means it will be limited to the same 128 GV of RAM since it doesn't have new bridging tech.

Two New Apple Laptops To Arrive

Screen Rant reported that there would be a total of two Apple laptops that will arrive this year.

These are specifically the new MacBook Air and the 13-inch MacBook Pro. The new MacBook Air (J413) is considered a single version that features the latest M2 chipset.

Meanwhile, the new MacBook Pro (J493) might also offer a single-SoC tech similar to MacBook Air. If you want to see more details about these two new Apple devices, you can visit this link.

Previously, Peloton's Apple Watch support is expected to expand to all of the company's devices. Meanwhile, the new Mac Mini is expected to get M2 and M2 pro-SoCs.

For more news updates about Apple and its upcoming technologies, always keep your tabs open here at TechTimes.

Related Article: Apple M1 Ultra Benchmark LEAKS | Same Performance as AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X?

This article is owned by TechTimes

Written by: Griffin Davis

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
SpaceX's holy grail is considered to be its advanced Starship rocket. This means that this giant spacecraft is the most-treasured creation of the independent space agency.

But, what makes Starship so important to SpaceX? The company's CEO, Elon Musk, already said that they are currently relying on their expertise to develop and manufacture reusable spacecraft models.

This ability of SpaceX is also their main way to make human life multi-planetary (compatible with other planets). Thanks to the space agency's experienced and talented experts, they can create the Starship rocket.

Why SpaceX's Holy Grail is Starship?

SpaceX's Starship is a fully reusable rocket, acting as the second stage for the agency's Starship system. CNBC reported that it is composed of two stainless steel components.

Also Read: Elon Musk Shares How Ukrainians Can Protect Starlink Terminals as SpaceX's Comms Systems Likely Targeted

This advanced rocket can carry more than 100 metric tons of cargo each launch. Since the space industry is now focusing on lunar exploration, there's a chance that Starship will attract more investors for SpaceX.

"Lunar and beyond investment was about $1 billion from private investors in 2021, the highest sum we'd seen to date," said Brooke Stokes, an associate partner at McKinsey.

Because of this, critics estimated that Elon Musk's space agency could increase its valuation by trillions of dollars if its Starship becomes successful in future space missions.

SpaceX Further Upgrades Starship

According to Teslarati's recent report, SpaceX is enhancing its Starship reusable spacecraft. Specifically, the space agency is making efforts to improve the domes and noses of the rocket.

Once the enhancements are complete, Starship is expected to be easier to assemble. The new versions are expected to be flatter and have lesser components when it comes to domes. The nosecone of the rocket also went a drastic design change.

If you want to see the actual enhancements made by SpaceX on its Starship, you can visit this link.

Previously, SpaceX secured three NASA contracts, allowing it to fly NASA's astronauts to the International Space Station. Meanwhile, the recent SpaceX Starlink launch could deliver 50 additional internet satellites.

For more news updates about SpaceX and other giant space agencies, always keep your tabs open here at TechTimes.

Related Article: SpaceX Launches 47 Satellites to Orbit in its 9th Falcon 9 Launch in the First 9 Weeks of the Year

This article is owned by TechTimes

Written by: Griffin Davis

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Tehachapi, CA (93561)

Today

Abundant sunshine. High 77F. E winds shifting to NNW at 15 to 25 mph..

Tonight

Clear skies. Low around 45F. Winds WNW at 10 to 15 mph.
Not everything, however, has remained hidden. Two of the "militiamen" involved in the case had a direct relationship with the Bolsonaro Clan.

On March 14, 2019, gunmen shot dead socialist councilor Marielle Franco, a black woman who stood out in her fight for the defense of minorities in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. She died along with her driver Anderson Gomes, after participating in a political rally downtown.

Long before it was known that members of the police were involved in this crime, her murder became an emblem of the impunity with which the Brazilian far-right operates.

On Monday, human rights defenders and social activists in Brazil and abroad are holding events to demand that the Brazilian justice find and punish the intellectual authors of a crime with clear political overtones. Until now, however, the judicial process has not even begun. Nor have the families of the victims had access to the police investigations.

One after another, five local commissioners have taken on investigations that were delegated to others because they did not conclude them. Until now, the Brazilian national and subnational authorities have not answered who had Marielle killed.

Two former police officers were arrested two years ago and accused of being the perpetrators of the crime. They are still imprisoned but have not been tried because the authorities have not formed a jury to do so. The assassins have not clarified who ordered the crime or what the motives were.

Quem manndou matar Marielle Franco , e por que ?

Quem ela atrapalharia sendo candidata ao senado pelo estado do RJ??? Quem??? Quem?..

A resposta esta em uma rachadinha. pic.twitter.com/g0vFDqJ59B  FernandoANTIFAS13 (@luisAntifas13) March 14, 2022

Referring to the bribery scandal known as Ranchadinha, in which the Bolsonaro Clan is involved, the tweet reads: "Who ordered the killing of Marielle Franco and why? Who would prevent her from being a candidate for senator for Rio de Janeiro state? Who? Who?... The answer lies in the ranchadinha."

Not everything, however, has remained hidden. As a result of investigations, authorities were forced to reveal some information about the alleged perpetrators of the crime.

In this regard, for example, outlet Jacobin recalled that two of the "militiamen" involved in the case had a direct relationship with the family of President Jair Bolsonaro. One of them worked in the office of his son, Flavio Bolsonaro, a Federal senator involved in several influence peddling scandals.

The other militiaman lived in the private condominium where the far-righ president lives. "There they appear together in several photographs at social events," the Brazilian outlet said.
As part of his campaign to rally international support, the Ukrainian president will also address the Canadian Parliament on Tuesday.

The Russia-Ukraine conflict continues on Monday as relevant parties are working to broker a peaceful solution. Following are the latest developments of the situation.

Zelensky will speak to the US Congress on Wednesday. Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky will address virtually the U.S. Congress on Wednesday at 1 p.m., House and Senate Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer announced.

On Tuesday, he will also address the Parliament of Canada. Last week Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invited Zelensky to hold this event.

Virtual round of negotiations concludes. The Russian and Ukrainian delegates concluded the talks without reaching concrete results, but with the commitment to resume negotiations on Tuesday.

"In the negotiations, we have taken a technical break until tomorrow for additional work in the subgroups and to define certain definitions. The negotiations continue," said Mikhail Podoliak, adviser to the office of the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Ukrainian neo-Nazis launch 'Tochka-U' cluster warhead in Donetsk. The attack left 20 civilians dead and 28 wounded. The shelling of Donetsk was carried out from Krasnoarmeysk, which is controlled by Ukrainian nationalist units.

"The cluster munition from the Tochka-U rocket shows that the purpose of the attack was to kill as many civilians as possible in Donetsk. The launch decision is made by the command of the Ukrainian troop group after the approval of the leadership of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Kiev," the Russian Defense Ministry said, adding that the use of "Tochka-U" in a city where there are no firing points of the Armed Forces is a war crime.

#Zakharova: Attacks against their own nuclear facilities have become the signature of the current Ukrainian regime. The blame for this lies squarely with Kiev, the American masters of Vladimir Zelensky and US vassals in @NATO.



 https://t.co/41zjCLBm96 pic.twitter.com/DRp0t0DwRm  MFA Russia  (@mfa_russia) March 14, 2022

Russian and Ukrainian delegations will resume talks on Monday via video link. "Negotiations go non-stop in the format of video conferences. Working groups are constantly functioning. A large number of issues require constant attention. On Monday, March 14, a negotiating session will be held to sum up the preliminary results," Mykhailo Podoliak, advisor to the Head of the President's Office of Ukraine, tweeted on Sunday night.

External electricity supplies have been restored at Chernobyl nuclear power plant. This happens four days after its disconnection from the power grid, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said. Ukrainian specialist teams repaired one of the two damaged power lines at Chernobyl on Sunday, enabling all required off-site power to be delivered to the plant. The plant will be connected to the Ukrainian electricity grid on Monday morning.

"This is a positive development as the Chernobyl nuclear power plant has had to rely on emergency diesel generators for several days now," the IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi said. "However, I remain gravely concerned about safety and security at Chernobyl and Ukraine's other nuclear facilities."

I dont think we can expect any kind of condemnation from the West of this heinous terrorist attack committed with cluster munitions. They were closing their eyes and denying ongoing massacre of Donbass people for 8 years, why would they open their eyes now? #Donetsk #DonbassWar https://t.co/Q1tfPL89Zi  Dmitry Polyanskiy (@Dpol_un) March 14, 2022

Russia bombs aircraft factory. The Kiev mayor's office reported that one person died and six citizens were injured as a result of a Russian bombing that targeted the Antonov aircraft factory. In the Ukrainian capital, another attack left one dead and 12 wounded in a residential area.

France will add Russians to the EU blacklist. French Economy Minister Bruno Le Mayor indicated that his country will submit to the European Union (EU) dozens of names of people close to the President Vladimir Putin to be added to the list of sanctioned Russian citizens.

The sanctions against Russia seek to provoke a debt default. The Russian Finance Ministry stated that the sanctions against its country are aimed at causing an artificial default on Russian debt service.

"Statements that Russia cannot meet its public debt obligations do not correspond to reality. The freezing of foreign currency accounts of the Russian Government and Central Bank show the desire of foreigners to create an artificial default," authorities indicated.


The United States has the largest prison population of more than 2 million and the highest prison population rate of 629 prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants.

Driven by a motive to seek profits, a system originally designed for rehabilitation has become "big business" that thrives on violations of the human rights of migrants and minorities, said a Mexican expert in strategic studies, referring to private prisons in the United States.

Private prisons were founded in the 1980s to make up for bed shortages in federal and state ones. The U.S. government pays private prison management companies for each inmate, so the more prisoners, the higher the earnings, said Raul Benitez Manaut, a professor at the Center for Research on North America at Mexico's National Autonomous University.

This money-making endeavor has been supported by what he calls the U.S. "iron fist" policy on street crime, which for the past 30 years has "given the police incentives to send more people to prison for minor crimes, in collusion with prosecutors and judges." Prison privatization in the U.S., on the rise in the last three decades, has adulterated the essence of the prison system by turning it into business whose profitability relies on the number of inmates.

The U.S. has the largest prison population of more than 2 million and the highest prison population rate of 629 prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants, according to the latest data from the Institute for Crime and Justice Policy Research at the School of Law of Birkbeck of University of London. Low-income groups and ethnic minorities are the main victims of the police and judicial practices feeding private prisons.

Black and Latino Americans were incarcerated at about 5 times and 1.3 times respectively the rate of white Americans, according to the U.S. News and World Report in October 2021. "The Black population is larger than the white one in U.S. prisons because many Afro-descendants do not have the money to pay for a lawyer and avoid jail," said Benitez, adding that "judges normally favor the white population, and often punish the Black and Latino population, so those are human rights violations."

We have a racist criminal justice system that costs us billions of dollars, ruins lives and allows private prisons to profit off of human misery. The private prison racket has got to end. pic.twitter.com/kfLhwsZKL4  Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) May 3, 2019

The rise in undocumented migrants heading to the U.S. has benefited owners of private detention centers, as they receive money for each migrant held, and employ detainees as extremely cheap labor. The criminalization of immigration has contributed to the high number of people behind bars, and many migrants are held in detention centers operated by private companies, where their human rights are violated or limited.

As of September 2021, 79 percent of people detained each day in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody were held in private detention facilities, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. The GEO Group and CoreCivic are the two largest owners, managers and operators of private prisons in the United States, with combined revenue in 2020 of more than US$4 billion.

The companies are also large donors to political campaigns, such as that of former U.S. President Donald Trump, and hire firms to lobby for their interests among lawmakers and in the upper echelons of U.S. power.

Benitez said that government officials, from the local and regional levels and up, and operators of private prisons benefit from the current system, with which in mind the federal government "cannot and does not want to" eradicate prison privatization. "It's a vicious circle."
Youth in their 20s who have fallen into the swamp of preventing the return of Corona and poverty
Louisiana's teacher shortage is growing more urgent, and some state lawmakers want to try to lure retired teachers back to the classroom by offering more money.

The push comes on the heels of state report that showed around 50,000 students per day go without their regular teacher amid the scramble to fill gaps.

"And I think that is probably a small number," state Superintendent of Education Cade Brumley said last week, meaning it is likely higher than 50,000.

Brumley made his comments after a discussion on the subject by the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education last week.

The ranks of aspiring teachers are down 30%.

+2 Aspiring teachers down 30% in Louisiana as state faces shortage, lack of diversity in classrooms Louisiana's teacher workforce is suffering from a variety of ills, including a 30% drop in the ranks of aspiring teachers, a glut of educators

About 1 in 4 teachers is either uncertified or teaching outside their field of expertise.

"Our schools are in crisis," Larry Carter, president of the Louisiana Federation of Teachers, told BESE last week. "There is no other way to put it."

State Rep. Rick Edmonds, R-Baton Rouge, is the sponsor of one of three bills aimed at getting retired teachers back in schools.

Under current rules, teachers can only earn 25% of their annual retirement pay if they return to a public school system job.

Edmonds wants to boost that to 50% of their their final average compensation, which is based on a formula.

The measure would only apply those who retired by Dec. 31, 2021, which he said is aimed at preventing a surge of teachers who want to take advantage of any new policy.

The more lenient rule would also be capped at three years, which he said will allow time to see if the change works and if the shortage eases.

Louisiana's teacher shortage is raising alarms: 'Fewer teacher candidates than ever' Louisiana's teacher shortage is getting worse with retirements on the rise, the number of new teachers plunging and superintendents finding it increasingly difficult to fill classroom jobs.

Edmonds said he thinks allowing former teachers to earn 50% of what they are getting is the only approach that has a chance of clearing the Legislature. "I think there is enough people that see the same thing that they know this is at least a half a step in the right direction," he said.

The state has about 74,000 retired teachers who would be eligible to return to work, according to the Teachers' Retirement System of Louisiana.

They collect an average of $27,378 per year, which raises questions on how many educators would return to the classroom for half that amount.

Those who did so would likely work only a partial school year even with the more liberal pay rules.

Teachers are paid an average of $51,666 in Louisiana.

Michael Faulk, executive director of the Louisiana Association of School Superintendents, said he believes the Edmonds' bill has the best chance of winning approval because it includes a three-year cap.

Louisiana's biggest teacher shortage? Black men are a rarity in public schools While African-Americans make up about half of the students in Louisiana's public schools, only 5% of teachers are black men.

Rep. Troy Romero, R-Jennings, has filed a similar bill to the Edmonds' measure  House Bill 26.

The scoop on state politics in your inbox Get the Louisiana politics insider details once a week from us. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up

The Edmonds' proposal is House Bill 22.

What prompted the BESE discussion was a first-of-its-kind survey done in December by the state Department of Education that got responses from 74% of school sites.

The review showed that low-performing schools have more vacancies than others and charter schools more than traditional ones.

Respondents said the two hardest jobs to fill are school bus drivers  65%  and classroom teachers  53%.

During the discussion, BESE President Jim Garvey, of Metairie, wondered aloud whether offering teachers pay hikes to work in troubled public schools would help the problem.

But Doris Voitier, another BESE member and superintendent of the St. Bernard Parish School District, said any such pay bump would have to be significant to generate interest.

Voitier said her school system has little difficulty filling elementary school jobs but high schools and special education are another story.

More than two thirds of those who took part in the poll said principals and other administrative jobs are "easy" to fill.

Holly Boffy, a BESE member who lives in Lafayette, said teachers are the single biggest factor in student success.

"It is one of the most important issues we are facing," Boffy said of the shortage.

Another measure, House Bill 30, would remove the earnings cap entirely for former teachers.

Rep. Larry Frieman, R-Abita Springs, said allowing teachers to earn 50% of their benefit would not be enough to get them back in the classroom.

Frieman noted that, under the current rules, a retired teacher could be fully paid at a private school and keep their full state pension.

"If they can do that why can't they do that in the public school system?" he asked.

Louisiana had just such a law enacted in 2001, which was changed significantly in 2010 and again in 2020, said Katherine Whitney, director of the TRSL.

The current cap on what retired teachers can earn does not apply to the private sector.

Under Frieman's bill, those who take advantage of the new policy could not get additional retirement benefits or accrue more service.

The 17-member TRSL Board of Trustees last Thursday voted to oppose Frieman's bill and take a neutral stance on Edmonds' measure. It did not take a position on Romero's legislation.

Brumley said the long-term solution for ending the teacher shortage is convincing more people to enter the profession.

"I think retirees being able to return to work is important but it is not the solution," he said.
Zoe Stewart, age 6, watches as she gets a Band-Aid after getting vaccinated against Covid-19 at a vaccination event for children ages 5 to 11 at City Park's City Putt in New Orleans, La. Tuesday, Dec. 28, 2021. The event, put on by the The Louisiana Department of Health, goes from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesday. Those who received a first vaccination shot receive a $100 visa debt card and a free ticket to Celebration in the Oaks is given for those receiving secondary doses. (Photo by Max Becherer, NOLA.com, The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate)
Rio Tinto has launched a $US2.7 billion ($3.7 billion) bid to assume full ownership of the Canadian company that owns 66 per cent of the giant Oyu Tolgoi copper project in Mongolia.

The Anglo Australian miner has offered $C34 a share to buy out the 49 per cent of Turquoise Hill that it does not already own, offering a 32 per cent premium to the last closing price on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

Rio Tinto says it wont rely on Russia for its Oyu Tolgoi mine in neighbouring Mongolia Credit:Bloomberg

Rio Tinto chief executive Jakob Stausholm said the company strongly believed in the long-term future of the mine.

That is why we want to increase our interest in Oyu Tolgoi, simplify the ownership structure, and further strengthen Rio Tintos copper portfolio, he said.
I would rather go to hell than to a homophobic heaven. If hed said nothing else, Desmond Tutu, the Anglican Archbishop of South Africa, could be forever remembered for this bold aphorism. The Bible recommends death for male homosexuals (Leviticus 20.13) and centuries of church dogma maintained the anathema; but against this authority Tutu declared that hatred of same-sex relations was ungodly.

A picture by Sean Loughrey shows this brave leader laughing for joy after the release of Nelson Mandela in 1990 after 27 years in prison. The tiny image is one of 400 works in a gripping exhibition at the NGV called Queer: Stories from the NGV Collection. The premise of the show is not necessarily to foreground the work of LGBTQIA+ artists, but to represent stories that the massive NGV holdings can tell about the historical experience of sexual diversity.

Visitors admiring works at the National Gallery of Victorias exhibition QUEER. Credit:Getty

Youll be surprised who turns up in the chronicles of the closet. A handsome proportion of European aristocracy had non-canonical leanings, to say nothing of artists. The point is not to out various household names, like Botticelli or Shakespeare. Rather, the exhibition presents a whole history of sexuality that artists grapple with today.

The keynote of the show is the visual extravagance that arose from protest. In European tradition, sexuality could be handled decorously, with aesthetic conventions hinting at lascivious content but still remaining comfortably tasteful. But to make space for themselves in a heteronormative world, queer activists required energetic solidarity. The result is a brazen out-there quality, a thrill of group exposure that makes sexuality shockingly visible.
The Port Fairy Folk Festival has triumphantly returned with large crowds packing its five stages for a line-up of international and local artists.

Kutcha Edwards on stage at the weekend return of Port Fairy Folk Festival. Credit:

Organisers were thrilled with the weekends capacity turn out in the popular tourist town. Now in its 46th year, the festival had to be postponed last year due to COVID-19 restrictions.

The festival is widely regarded as an important contributor to the local economy, attracting visitors from around the country to the area, but the Folkie also provides an important platform for the artists of all stripes from Victorias western district region.

This years event saw the inaugural Archie Roach Foundation stage host seminars and workshop sessions featuring Peek Whurrong and Gunditjmara traditional owners, in addition to live music from local First Nations artists Lee Morgan, Amos Roach and Nola Lauch.
The leaders of Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovenia are travelling to Kyiv on a European Union mission Tuesday to meet with Ukraines top leadership as Russias offensive moved closer to the centre of the capital.

The visit by the leaders of three countries which belong to the EU but also NATO, comes as a series of strikes hit a residential neighbourhood in Kyiv.

Firefighters work to extinguish a fire at a residential apartment building in Kyiv after it was hit by a Russian attack. Credit:Chris McGrath/Getty Images

Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki of Poland announced he was joined by Petr Fiala of the Czech Republic and Janez Jansa of Slovenia.

Joining them is Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Polands deputy prime minister for security but also the leader of the conservative ruling party, Law and Justice, a position which allows him to be the most powerful politician in Poland.

They are to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal.

Morawiecki said on Facebook that he and the other leaders were making their trip in agreement with the European Union, citing the chairman of the Council of the European Union, Charles Michel, and the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.

He said the United Nations had been informed of the visit.

In such critical times for the world it is our duty to be where history is forged, Morawiecki said.

Because its not about us, but about the future of our children who deserve to live in a world free from tyranny.

The visit had been planned for several days but was kept secret for security reasons, Michal Dworczyk, the head of Morawieckis office.

He said that a proposal of concrete help for the nation would be presented to Ukraines leaders.

AP
The sub-variant of COVID-19 tipped to become dominant in Australia by the end of the month may be up to seven times more transmissible than the original form of the virus, experts say, although the countrys pandemic prognosis is more positive than it was in January.

Coronavirus cases have increased in recent weeks, with the reproduction number  the average number of people a case infects  pushing above one in NSW and Victoria as Omicrons BA.2 sub-variant spreads.

School-aged children and teenagers have driven the recent rise in cases, and NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard has flagged cases could double by April. The state recorded 8911 new cases on Monday.

Associate Professor James Wood, an applied mathematician in the University of NSWs School of Public Health, estimated the BA.2 sub-variant is about 25 to 30 per cent more transmissible than its predecessor, BA.1.
One of the aged care industrys leading financial strategists says residents with the ability to pay large deposits should be charged more to generate an additional $3 billion revenue for the cash-strapped sector.

Aged care groups have voiced support for the proposal, to be launched next week by chartered accountancy firm StewartBrown, which specialises in providing advice to the aged care sector.

At the moment, what you pay if youre in aged care, its inequitable, said Grant Corderoy, a senior partner at StewartBrown regarded as one of Australias foremost aged care financial experts.

Aged Care Minister Greg Hunt Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Around 240,000 Australians live in aged care homes and pay either a daily fee set at 85 per cent of the aged pension, or a Refundable Accommodation Deposit  a lump sum costing hundreds of thousands of dollars (it varies depending on providers) when they enter a home. This lump sum is refunded to the residents family when they die, or is returned to the resident if they leave the home.
After a pandemic-enforced cancellation of the Moomba Parade last year, it was as though participants were making up for lost time.

Monday mornings cloud and fog gave way to a stunningly warm, sunny day for Melburnians to put on a suitably loud and colourful show.

More than 1500 marchers wound their way along Birdwood Avenue next to the Royal Botanic Gardens, making plenty of noise with cymbals, drums, saxophones and bagpipes. Dancers moved non-stop to rock, techno, pop and folk music blaring from speakers.

Visually, the theme was big and bold, too. There were floats with giant popcorn pieces and books. People wore super-sized seagull, lyrebird, puppy, koala and even spider outfits.
The weather bureau has called off a severe thunderstorm warning for heavy rain and flash flooding in Melbournes inner and eastern suburbs, but says it will continue to monitor the situation.

The Bureau of Meteorology, in an alert issued just after 5pm, said severe thunderstorms were detected on the radar near Preston, Reservoir and the area east of Pakenham.

Intense thunderstorms are forecast for Monday evening. Credit:Chris Hopkins

The bureau said a humid and unstable air mass was hovering above the state and thunderstorms were forecast to hit areas near the CBD just after 6pm, but the alert was cancelled about 6.50pm.

Another severe thunderstorm warning for heavy rainfall was issued on Monday evening for the Central, Mallee, and South-West districts. It was cancelled about 9pm.
A Perth mother has backflipped on her hesitation around vaccines after her 12-year-old child was hospitalised with COVID-19 and spent three days in a ventilation bubble.

Jasmine Evans told 9 News Perth she had originally held off vaccinating her son Tyson due to fears of side effects, but she is now urging every parent to protect their children.

I wish I had [had him vaccinated] earlier because I think that the result of contracting COVID is a lot less life-threatening to a vaccinated child, she said.

In a plea to other parents on social media at the weekend, the Mahogany Creek mother said she had been worried Tyson would get symptoms from the vaccine and was on the fence about the need for children to have the jab.
Australia has launched legal action against Russia over the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 in Ukrainian airspace eight years ago, an attack that left 298 people dead.

The legal move is a sharp escalation that confronts the Russian state, rather than individual perpetrators, over the deaths.

The move joins Australia and the Netherlands in formal proceedings against the Russian Federation in the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) in a bid to force a negotiation over compensation payments to the families of the victims.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison agreed on the legal action in a call with Dutch counterpart Mark Rutte on Monday in the belief there was overwhelming evidence to prove Russia was responsible under international law for the downing of the aircraft.
Key findings from the natural disasters royal commission have been ignored and not put into practice, according to former emergency services chiefs, who say the federal government must take a more active role in preparing the nation for greater damage under climate change.

Deadly floods have ravaged NSW and Queensland, leading to accusations the federal and state governments have been too slow in their responses. The latest escalation in the public slanging match came on Monday when NSW claimed it had to wait five days for a response from the federal government to its request for Australian Defence Force personnel to assist in Lismore.

Severe flooding hit Lismore on March 1. Credit:Elise Derwin

Emergency Management Australia director-general Joe Buffone defended the Commonwealths disaster response and argued the federal government enacted its Disaster Response Plan on February 25, which enabled the state government to make its request for support directly to the ADF.

In February 2020, the federal government commissioned the Royal Commission into Natural Disaster Arrangements, directly after the Black Summer bushfires. Prime Minister Scott Morrison said at the time the commission would be focused on practical action that has a direct link to making Australians safer and gave it a six-month turnaround so recommendations can be acted upon before our next bushfire season.
Washington: Russia has asked China for military equipment since its February 25 invasion of Ukraine, multiple US news outlets reported on Sunday, citing US officials.

The Washington Post said the unidentified US officials did not state the kind of weaponry that had been requested or how China had responded. CNN reported that Russia was seeking drones among other equipment.

Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin promised to strengthen ties when they met at the Winter Olympics. Credit:AP

In addition to military equipment, the US official quoted by the New York Times said Russia has also asked China for additional economic assistance to help counteract the battering its economy has taken from broad sanctions imposed on it by the West. It also reported that US officials were determined to keep secret their means of collecting the intelligence on Russias requests which the US has now partially publicised.

Russia, which calls its action in Ukraine a special operation, and China have tightened cooperation as they have come under strong Western pressure over human rights and a raft of other issues.
London: Informal, symbolic protests have always been a hallmark of war as citizens feeling powerless look for ways to show where they stand.

Americans renamed sauerkraut liberty cabbage, hamburgers liberty sandwiches and German measles liberty measles during the First World War. Republican congressmen infamously renamed French fries freedom fries and French toast freedom toast in their basement canteen in 2003 to express their fury at French opposition to the US-led war in Iraq.

The similarity of poutine to the Russian President has forced Canadians to rethink their name for the chip, gravy and cheese curd dish. Credit:Kathleen Adele

German linguists then called on the nation to retaliate by using French words in place of their English equivalents. Today, Vladimir Putins horrifying invasion of Ukraine has led to many similar acts of defiance.

Restaurants in Quebec have rebranded the name of the famous French-Canadian dish poutine (chips, cheese and gravy) after realising that it sounds like Putin in French.
Moulin Rouge! is burning down the house in London's West End, and actor Simon Bailey has a bird's eye view of it all as the villainous Duke of Monroth. It was a little rough going for the U.K. transfer of the Tony-winning musical, kicking off its run right as Omicron hit. But now, the show has bounced back, and a handful of Olivier nominations later, it's once again delighting audiences. Here, Bailey tells us about the joy he feels getting to do this show eight times a week.

Simon Bailey as the Duke in the West End production of Moulin Rouge!

( Matt Crockett)

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

How's the show going?

It's going great. We had a minor little blip around Christmastime; we were the first to get re-struck with Covid. We'd done everything in our power to avoid it and the testing was rigorous, this and that. And then, one day, genuinely, it was half the company.

That sort of mirrors the Broadway situation. They were the first show to cancel in March 2020.

Yeah. I'm really good pals with Broadway cast members Ricky Rojas and Tam Mutu, and we were discussing how the situations mirrored each other. So, then we got back on and then the rest of us got it. It was just crazy. But I suppose that's the nature of the beast. If you're in a room full of lots of people, it was just going to be unavoidable, and everyone got it at the same time  literally, at the same time. It actually meant, in a kind of selfish way, that we could just get it, it was done, and move on. But we seem to be back on track, and I'm not being paid to say this, but our producers, across the board, were absolutely amazing. We had Zooms every day to make sure that everyone was ok. They really told us to take the time and come back when we could, not because we felt we had to.

And you're back now, Olivier nominations in hand. I've always said this show is like the best wedding party that you could possibly go to. Is it as fun to do as it looks, or is it just hard as hell?

I don't have to do as much dancing as everyone else, so physically, it isn't as difficult for me. And every show has its demands, but what you see really is what you get with the show. It is so much fun to do. And we have the bolster of having an audience who genuinely gets on board with everything that is being done. That opening is 10, 12 minutes of theatrical joy. One of the best parts of my job is that I get this amazing entrance, which is so cool, and then I get to sit there and watch the audience. The best part of this thing is watching everybody reacting to what's happening on stage. This is why I think Moulin Rouge! is probably the best show that anyone could possibly have put on after something as catastrophic as we've all been through. People are slack-jawed sitting there, touching the person next to them going "Are you seeing this as well? Is this a dream?"

Simon Bailey (center) with the cast of Moulin Rouge! at the Piccadilly Theatre in London

( Johan Persson)

Had you worked with Tam, your Broadway counterpart, before? Or were you just friends?

We were friendly through the scene. We had done a few concerts together and I got to know him a bit during Love Never Dies, because I'm really good pals with Ramin Karimloo. I had to be so quiet about getting the role, and it's not that I don't trust Tam, but you really couldn't say anything to anybody, because once you tell somebody, it's on them not to say something by accident. The announcement came out the day after the Broadway cast had gone back into rehearsal, and I got a message from Tam saying "Well, well, well." And I was like "Yeah, it's me, dude." He was lovely and over the moon for me, and he let me get on with it, which I really respected. Ricky had fun with it. When it was announced that it was coming to London, Ricky sent me a text saying "if this isn't you, I don't know who it is." So when I told him, he took a bit of pride in that. I credit it to Ricky Rojas, for sure.

I've often said I want to live in Alex Timbers's brain, because I truly have no idea how he came up with the mechanics of Moulin Rouge! What was it like for the company to put this whole thing together?

A lot of us had seen the film, but because the show had only just opened in the States before the pandemic, there wasn't really a chance for anyone to go over and see it. So, we were coming in not knowing what the show's structure was necessarily going to be. Day one, when you're doing the model boxes and people are describing what your costume will look like, we were the ones I was just talking about, going "Is this real life?" When Alex came over and we started to work with him, he would just kind of nonchalantly say "And then this goes into this and then this comes in and then you'll fly down there and then the swing comes in," and we're like "Can we just have two seconds?" Because each one of those ideas needs 10 minutes to process. It was almost too much, but in a beautiful way. We were all so excited and it hasn't wanted. We love the fact that we get to do this every single day.
Manhattan is the brightest star in the New York City constellation  a crowded island full of busy and prosperous people constantly on the move. In such a place, it often feels like there is no room for anyone who doesn't have somewhere to be at all times, and one of the dirty secrets of New York is that out-of-place people (criminals, the poor, the mentally ill) get pushed off Manhattan and onto smaller islands located in the waters where the East River meets the Long Island Sound: Randall's Island, Rikers Island, and (the unfortunate resting place for a fair number of residents of the former two) Hart Island, which serves as the "Potter's field" for New York City and is the largest mass gravesite in the United States. If you die in New York City and no one claims your body (or no one is willing to pay for its disposal), you will be buried on Hart Island.

That is the subject of Tracy Weller's Hart Island, which is now performing at the Gym at Judson in a production by Mason Holdings and director Kristjan Thor. Billed as a "multimedia theatrical meditation," the play weaves together the testimony of six individuals with ties to the island, identified only by their initials: M.R. (a compellingly reserved Nora Cole) had a child who died just days after being born. G.D. (the achingly sympathetic Julie Asriyan) had a troubled boyfriend who fell (or jumped) off a bridge. A.E. (no-nonsense and yet very relatable Jimmy Crowell II) is a nursing student who worked at a facility on Randall's Island for elderly addicts. H.T. (James Foster Jr., seeming like he just got off shift from doing this actual job and came to the theater) drives the bus that takes inmates from Rikers Island to dig graves on Hart Island (for the outrageous wage of 50 cents an hour). R.I. (powerfully soft-spoken David Samuel) and N.E. (a haunting Daniel Kublick) are two of the guys who do the digging.

Tracy Weller plays the narrator, and Julie Asriyan plays G.D. in Hart Island.

( Maria Baranova)

The spine of the play is the narrator (portrayed by the playwright herself), who uses her NPR voice to convey historical facts about the East River's northern islands for some sort of documentary. Cloistered in a sound booth overlooking the stage, she is simultaneously removed from the other characters and deeply affected by their stories, as well as the shocking facts she encounters in her own script: Rikers is the de facto largest mental institution in the world; much of Rikers is landfill which is decomposing and poisoning the waters around New York; the trenches on Hart Island can hold 162 adults or 1,000 infants.

Weller appears choked-up by these facts, unable to continue her narration. Situated in the tower, she comes across like a type of emotional conductor, signaling how we are to react to this information. This is superfluous and distracting, as is an early bit about the voice actor arriving late after just getting the gig the night before. The stories of Hart Island are powerful on their own, and don't need to be buttressed.

Weller and Thor layer them beautifully in a staging that supports the distinct clarity of each story while putting them in conversation in surprising ways. Characters seem to be at once on Hart Island, in the stories as they are relaying them, and in a support group, all of which are conveyed by Christopher and Justin Swader's multi-tier set. A level of mulch brings the earth into the theater and seems to contain secrets, like an archeological site. Mentally, you'll still be digging hours after the end of the play as you entertain connections between these characters that might not be immediately apparent.

Nora Cole (foreground) appears in Tracy Weller's Hart Island, directed by Kristjan Thor, for Mason Holdings at the Gym at Judson.

( Maria Baranova)

At the same time, Hart Island feels like the theatrical equivalent of someone who cannot choose which accessory to wear, so opts for all of them. On top of the multiple layers of storytelling in the performances, Yana Biryukova's projections compete for our eyeballs (and sometimes contradict the script, as in a segment about Pangea). That competes with Phil Carluzzo's immersive sound design and Christina Tang's moody and unpredictable lighting, which more than once left me wincing. The sensory overload of form regularly overwhelms the content.

This is too bad, because the stories of Hart Island should be heard more. New Yorkers mostly treat them with an out-of-sight, out-of-mind attitude, only becoming engaged when the invisible dare to become too visible on our morning commutes. It shouldn't take horrible acts of violence in the subway for us to care about the plight of the least fortunate  and we should know by now that exiling them to smaller islands around our own will never be a viable long-term solution.
Van Buren, AR (72956)

Today

Scattered thunderstorms developing this afternoon. A few storms may be severe. High 71F. Winds E at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 50%..

Tonight

Thunderstorms. A few storms may be severe. Low 62F. Winds E at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%. 1 to 2 inches of rain expected.
Georgia state Sen. Bo Hatchett, R-Cornelia, speaks to reporters Friday, March, 11, 2022, in Atlanta, after the state Senate passed a bill to ban the teaching of "divisive" racial concepts in Georgia public schools.
A customer looks at copy of TurboTax on sale at Costco Wholesale.
Steve Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and is the author of Scare Pollution: Why and How to Fix the EPA."
Stan Greer is the senior research associate with the National Institute for Labor Relations Research.
Staff Reporter

RaeLynn Ricarte is the author of two books and an award-winning editor and reporter with more than 25 years in the newsroom. She now covers government in Eastern Washington for The Center Square.
Instant unlimited access to all of our E-Editions and content on thechiefnews.com.

The Chief E-Edition Newsletter emailed to you each week, the night before the paper hits the street!

This subscription is for NEW or RENEWING online subscribers.

(The charge will appear as "Country Media Inc." on your credit card statement)
Instant unlimited access to all of our E-Editions and content on thechronicleonline.com.

The Chronicle E-Edition Newsletter emailed to you each week, the night before the paper hits the street!

This subscription is for NEW or RENEWING online subscribers.

(The charge will appear as "Country Media Inc." on your credit card statement)
The City of St. Helens is inviting interested vendors and volunteers to participate in Citizens Day in the Park 2022.

Citizens Day is an annual community event hosted by the City of St. Helens at McCormick Park. The event is focused on strengthening community connections by encouraging people to turn off technology and enjoy a day of fun activities in St. Helens largest park.

Activities are family-friendly, free, and designed for a wide-age range. This year, Citizens Day in the Park will take place from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, June 25.

+9 PHOTOS / Citizens Day: Community celebration Another busy day for the St. Helens City Council, only this time participating councilors jo

Vendors are welcome at Citizens Day but need to pre-register. Space is limited, and vendors are encouraged to apply for a spot early. There is no vendor fee and concession fees are being waived for this event. To promote community resources and shopping local, space preference is being given to local non- profits and businesses. Each booth is being asked to host a family-friendly activity.

To find out additional vendor information and fill out an application form, visit the Citys Citizens Day event website at www.sthelensoregon.gov/community/page/citizens-day-park.

Volunteers are a vital part of making Citizens Day a success. Volunteers are needed to assist with the event set up and clean up, welcome booth, serving food, and more.

Any groups or individuals interested in volunteering should fill out an interest form at www.sthelensoregon.gov/community/page/citizens- day-park. A City staff member will follow up with you after receiving your interest form.

The barbecue lunch is free to the community thanks to the generous donations of many local businesses. If you are interested in donating to Citizens Day, please contact Deputy City Recorder Lisa Scholl at lscholl@sthelensoregon.gov.

History

Citizens Day in the Park was first hosted in 2017. It was created by the St. Helens City Council to encourage people to meet other community members and enjoy the Citys largest park. The annual event includes a free barbeque lunch, live music, lawn games, vendors, and more.
Photo: David M. Benett/Getty Images for The Londoner Hotel

Earlier this month, British Trinidadian designer Maximilian Davis dropped out of the LVMH Prize for Young Designers, where he was a semifinalist. Turns out its because hes Ferragamos newly appointed creative director. Davis, 26, succeeds Paul Andrew, who left the Italian house last year.

Davis graduated from the London College of Fashion and has already worked with a handful of designers including Grace Wales Bonner and Asai. He is a member of Fashion East, a fashion collective based out of East London that cultivates and supports young designers. He recently showed his collection in London, which included a sheer hooded gown, a corset dress with attached sleeves, and sharp tailored suits.

In an Instagram post, he said hes looking forward to articulating my vision elevated by the codes of Italian craftsmanship, quality and innovation. We look forward to the new energy Davis will bring to Ferragamo, mixing his Trinidadian heritage and tailored aesthetic with the DNA of Ferragamo. His own brand will be on hold. (Daviss new role is effective this week.)
Batavia, NY (14020)

Today

Showers early, then cloudy in the afternoon. High around 55F. Winds N at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 30%..

Tonight

Some passing clouds. Low 39F. Winds NW at 5 to 10 mph.
UNION SPRINGS - Leonard L. Beers, 90, formerly of Norwich and Otego, passed away Jan. 18, 2022. A memorial graveside service will be held at 11 a.m., Friday, May 6, in Evergreen Cemetery in Otego. Arrangements are with Lewis, Hurley & Pietrobono Funeral Home, Oneonta.
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.

Follow Melanie Tucker 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
Click the image to the left and log in to get your exclusive reader perks.
Michael Reagan, the son of President Ronald Reagan, is an author, speaker and president of the Reagan Legacy Foundation. Send comments to reagan@caglecartoons.com and follow

@reaganworld on Twitter.
Meet Trooper! Trooper is 5-years-old. His favorite activities include sleeping, going on walks and sticking his head out of the car sunroof. T
Press Release

March 14, 2022 Bong Go lauds national efforts to strengthen pandemic response, supports initiatives to bring vaccines to the grassroots Senator Christopher "Bong" Go commended the government's efforts to strengthen the local response to the COVID-19 pandemic as the Coordinated Operations to Defeat Epidemic (CODE) Team, led by the National Task Force (NTF) Against COVID-19, conducted its latest round of nationwide multi-stakeholder dialogues. As Chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Go also urged national and local officials to step up their information campaigns on the benefits of vaccinations. He stressed the need for more localized public education and outreach efforts to build up public trust and combat vaccine hesitancy in the grassroots. "Maraming salamat po sa National Task Force Against COVID-19 sa pagsasagawa ng mga team visits at road shows sa iba't ibang lugar ng bansa para isulong ang pagbabakuna," Go said in a video message during the events dubbed "Bida Tungo sa New Normal". "Bagama't hindi mandatory ang vaccination laban sa COVID-19, patuloy nating hikayatin ang mga hindi bakunado na magpabakuna na. Ilapit natin sa kanila ito at ipatindi natin ng mabuti. Isulong din natin ang pagbibigay ng booster shots sa mga nakakumpleto na ng kanilang bakuna," he added. The CODE Team has so far conducted visits in San Fernando City, Pampanga (March 9); Dagupan City, Pangasinan (March 10) and Baguio City (March 11) to monitor and assess the local pandemic response and vaccination programs. Continuing his message, the senator warned that many at-risk and vulnerable Filipinos remain unvaccinated. He renewed his appeal to local officials to conduct house-to-house inoculations for those who are unable to travel due to health or mobility issues. "Panawagan ko sa mga LGUs, suyurin niyo ang inyong mga komunidad ng mga hindi makalabas at makapunta sa mga vaccination centers, katulad ng mga senior citizens," encouraged Go. "Nananawagan naman ako sa ating mga kababayan na magtiwala sa bakuna. Studies show that fully vaccinated individuals have a hugely decreased risk of developing severe illness from COVID-19. Kaya huwag tayong matakot. Ang bakuna ay makakapagbigay ng akmang proteksyon sa atin at sa ating mga mahal sa buhay," he assured. Earlier this year, the government announced simplified procedures to increase the vaccination uptake. It aims to inoculate 77 million Filipinos and complete the 12 to 17 age group by the first quarter of 2022. It is also targeting to fully vaccinate 90 million Filipinos and provide over 72 million individuals with booster shots by the second and third quarter, respectively. In the end, Go praised the ongoing success of the vaccination program and other interventions in reducing the number of COVID-19 cases in the country which experienced a sudden surge following the entry of the Omicron variant in late 2021. Figures have dropped from 39,004 new cases during the most recent peak in January 15 to less than 1,000 cases in March. The 592 cases reported on March 11 bring the total number of confirmed cases to over 3.7 million. "Mga kababayan, let us put a stop to this pandemic at magpabakuna na tayo sa ating pinakamalapit na vaccination site. Ito ang tanging susi o solusyon para makabalik na tayong lahat sa ating normal na pamumuhay. Magtulungan tayo kung gusto nating manumbalik ang dating sigla ng ating mga komunidad," said the senator. "Sa ating pagkakaisa at pagbabayanihan, sigurado akong malalampasan natin ang pagsubok na ito. Kami ni Pangulong (Rodrigo) Duterte ay nandirito handang magserbisyo sa inyong lahat sa abot ng aming makakaya," he concluded.
14 AGs Sue Biden Administration Over DOJs Call to Investigate Protesting Parents

Fourteen Republican attorneys general, led by Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, have sued the Biden administration for not responding to a Freedom of Information request related to the Department of Justice calling for surveillance of parents expressing opinions at school board meetings and other forums.

The lawsuit follows a chain of events that began last October.

It was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana Indianapolis Division. It asks the court to force the Biden administration to respond to the requests for information.

It names President Joe Biden, Attorney General Merrick Garland, the U.S. Department of Justice, Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, and the U.S. Department of Education as plaintiffs.

The coalition, led by Rokita, are from the states of Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas and Utah.

On Oct. 4, Garland issued a memo on the disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff and called for the FBI and other federal law enforcement agents to monitor activities in school districts nationwide.

Six months later, the attorneys general argue, the Biden administration has provided no evidence of any spikes in threats against school personnel by American parents.

Garland issued the memo after the National School Board Association (NSBA) sent a Sept. 29 letter to the Biden administration lamenting that parents were opposing the teaching of critical race theory and other divisive ideologies, referring to parental protests as domestic terrorism.

Garlands memo attacked dissent by parents during local school board meetings in an effort to intimidate parents into giving up their constitutional rights to direct the upbringing and education of their children, the attorneys general argue.

They anticipated his memo was based on the NSBAs false accusations against parents. Garland confirmed this during his Oct. 21 testimony before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee. He said, the National School Board Association, which represents thousands of school boards and school board members, says that there are these kinds of threats. When we read in the newspapers reports of threats of violence.

According to his testimony, the White House asked for examples of specific threats. However, no such threats were presented.

The National School Board Association apologized for the language it used in the letter the day after Garland testified, on Oct. 22. More than half of its state affiliates distanced themselves from the national group, some pulling dues and membership.

But these actions werent enough, the attorneys general argue. Garland still hasnt rescinded his memo. And the administration hasnt responded to their request for information six months later.

The 14 attorneys general sent a letter Oct. 26 requesting information from Biden and Garland. It followed an Oct. 18 letter sent by a 17-state coalition. Theyve demanded Garland rescind his memo instructing the FBI to investigate parents and produce all communications of any federal officials or agencies related to the Sept. 29 NSBA letter.

They never received a response, they said, prompting the lawsuit.

We just want the facts, Rokita said. Rather than cooperate, the Biden administration has sought to conceal and downplay its culpability. What are they hiding? Why wont they come clean? Hoosiers and all Americans deserve to know.

The Biden administration wants to sweep under the rug these inexcusable assaults on parents freedom of speech, he added. But were fighting for full transparency and accountability for this misconduct so it doesnt happen again.

By Bethany Blankley
2 Million Chickens and Turkeys Have Died in New US Bird Flu Epidemic

After several new outbreaks in Missouri and Iowa, along with other states, more than 2 million birdsmainly chickens and turkeysdied between February and March because of the highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), federal officials said in a recent update.

In New Castle, Delaware, between late February and early March, roughly 1.4 million poultry died after becoming infected with bird flu, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in a March 10 update on its website.

A total of 496,272 commercial layer chickens died after contracting HPAI in Cecil County, Maryland, according to the agency, while another 150,000 commercial broiler chickens died in Queen Annes County, Maryland.

Significant outbreaks and deaths were confirmed in Kentucky, Missouri, Indiana, South Dakota, and Iowa. Smaller outbreaks were seen in New York state, Maine, Connecticut, Michigan, and Virginia, according to the USDA.

Officials say the highly pathogenic avian influenza is found in 12 U.S. states as of March 12. Authorities, including those from the USDA, say that in the recent outbreak, HPAI also has been found in backyard flocks in several states, not just on commercial farms.

Officials had previously said that more than 50 million U.S. chickens and turkeys died during an HPAI epidemic between December 2014 and June 2015, driving up egg and chicken prices. Some countries also banned the importation of U.S.-produced poultry meat because of fears of bird flu spreading to other countries.

Avian influenza is triggered by the influenza Type A virus, and its broadly categorized based on a combination of two groups of proteins on the surface of the influenza, according to the USDA. Because of the protein combinations, avian influenza viruses are either classified as either low pathogenic or highly pathogenic based on their genetic features and the severity of the disease they cause in poultry.

Most viruses are of low pathogenicity, meaning that they cause no signs or only minor clinical signs of infection in poultry, the agency stated.

Since 2002, there have been four detections of bird flu that have leaped to humans from birds in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Avian flu in humans can potentially cause severe respiratory disease with a high mortality rate.

The CDC stated that the recent bird flu cases dont present an immediate public health concern. No human cases of these viruses have been detected in the United States during the recent outbreak.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A Polish soldier who had joined as a foreign fighter in Ukraine prepares to return home after his base, Yavoriv International Peacekeeping and Security Centre, was bombed overnight in western Ukraine, on March 13, 2022. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)

Eyewitness Account of Volunteer Fighter at Ukraine Military Base Where Russian Airstrike Killed 35

'It was terribly chaotic. There was no command structure. Some people were running around, others were screaming.'

KOTY, UkraineThe Russian missiles that slammed into a Ukrainian military facility four miles from the village of Koty, Ukraine, on March 13 lit the morning sky red and sent smoke billowing to the clouds.

As the village church bells rang in alarm, the windows of the farmhouses trembled, barn doors swung open, and terrified locals ran to their basements.

At the training facility, formally known as the Yavoriv International Peacekeeping and Security Centre, soldiers and volunteers ran for cover amid the chaos as missiles battered the barracks, over and over, where some 300 men slept hours earlier.

Thirty-five people died in the attack and 134 were injured, according to Governor of Lviv Regional State Administration Maksym Kozytskyy.

Shortly after 6 am, the first missiles hit the base. And then chaos. Everybody ran for the woods. It was terribly chaotic. There was no command structure. Some people were running around, others were screaming. It was horrible, one of the foreign volunteers stationed at the base told The Epoch Times.

By noon, first responders had put out all of the fires at the facility as the flattened ruins of barracks smoldered.

The training base was used to station foreigners who came to fight for Ukraine, according to the man, who asked to remain anonymous.

The soldiers who survived the blasts were told to head into the nearby forest and dig in, the volunteer fighter told The Epoch Times. Later, they were given the choice to return to their home countries or to stay. The man decided to go home, shocked by the reality of war and too terrified to continue.

More than 30 Russian cruise missiles targeted the large facility. Some of the missiles were intercepted, according to Kozytskyy.

Later that day, two Ukrainian soldiers patrolled the area nearby in a car that had been damaged during the airstrike. They told The Epoch Times that men who fled the barracks after the first missile exploded were pummeled by debris. The missiles hit the barracks exclusively, he said, reducing them to piles of rubble and brick.

The International Peacekeeping and Security Centre, which has hosted NATO drills and Western officials, including NATO Military Committee Chair Adm. Rob Bauer, is 15 miles from Ukraines border with Poland.

Since the start of the war, the center has become a training ground for foreign volunteers who came to fight for Ukraine, the volunteer told The Epoch Times. Some of the men at the facility were taken there after arriving on Ukraines border and declaring they wanted to enlist. They came from Portugal, France, England, Germany, Austria, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and the United States, the man said.

The volunteer fighter said he didnt receive much training at the base. He believes Russians determined the facilitys location from photos of the base that were posted to social media by the volunteer soldiers, despite a prohibition on such activity.

Our own ignorance led to our own demise, he said.

The town of Koty which is 7 miles from the Yavoriv International Peacekeeping and Security Centre base that was bombed overnight in western Ukraine, on March 13, 2022. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)

The women who cooked for those stationed at the facility lived in Koty, as did some of the men who served there, according to a local shop owner, who said she was shocked to be so near the carnage of war.

At the local church that morning, people prayed for peace and clear skies, according to a local resident who lives nearby.

God should awaken those who wage war, he said.

Tom Ozimek and Dan Skorbach from NTD Television contributed to this report.
A Ukrainian soldier (L) carries rocket-propelled grenades (RPG) next to abandoned strollers in Irpin, north of Kyiv, Ukraine, on March 12, 2022. (SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP via Getty Images)

4th Round of UkraineRussia Talks Paused

UN says 2.8 million people have fled Ukraine

The fourth round of negotiations between Ukrainian and Russian delegations on a possible ceasefire has been paused until March 15, an adviser to the Kyiv government has announced.

A technical pause has been taken in the negotiations until tomorrow, the adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, wrote in a March 14 Twitter post. For additional work in the working subgroups and clarification of individual definitions. Negotiations continue.

A day earlier, Russian and Ukrainian officials said there appeared to be signs of a possible deal on a ceasefire in the near future, although few details were provided. The previous round of negotiations yielded few results.

According to my personal expectations, this progress may grow in the coming days into a joint position of both delegations, into documents for signing, Russian negotiator Leonid Slutsky, a member of the state Duma, told state-run media on March 13. Podolyak said Moscow started to talk about something and not just throw out ultimatums.

Amid the March 14 talks, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky separately announced that he plans to give a virtual address to the U.S. Congress on March 16. Hes expected to again call for a no-fly zone over Ukraine, although top officials in the Biden administration and NATO have repeatedly rejected that suggestion.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Western countries need to help us fight.

Provide us with all necessary weapons, Kuleba said. Apply more sanctions on Russia and isolate it fully. Help Ukraine force [Russia] into failure, and you will avert a larger war.

An aerial view shows smoke rising as an armored vehicle is shot next to a building, as Russias invasion of Ukraine continues, in Mariupol, Ukraine, as uploaded in this handout drone video obtained by Reuters on March 13, 2022. (Azov Mariupol/Handout via Reuters)

Since the start of the conflict on Feb. 24, more than 2.8 million people have fled Ukraine into neighboring countries including Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Moldova, Russia, and others, according to the U.N. refugee agency.

People continue to flee the war in Ukraine every minute, the agency wrote on Twitter on March 14, noting that they need continued support.

Before the talks were held, air raid alerts sounded in cities and towns around the country early on the morning of March 14 as Ukrainian officials said Russian forces shelled several suburbs of Kyiv, Ukraine.

Through state-run Sputnik News, Russian Ambassador to the U.N. Vassily Nebenzia said on March 14 that Moscow believes Ukrainian forces are actively preparing for provocations with the use of chemical substances in order to accuse Russia of reportedly using chemical weapons, claiming that Ukrainian nationalists transported to Zolochiv to the northwest of Kharkov about 80 tons of ammonia.

Neither Ukrainian nor U.S. officials issued public comments on the recent Russian claim of a chemical false flag attack. Previously, White House officials have said that the allegations are preposterous and total nonsense, and theyve said that its Moscow thats preparing to use chemical weapons.

Allegedly, we are preparing a chemical attack, Zelensky said late last week. This makes me really worried because weve been repeatedly convinced: If you want to know Russias plans, look at what Russia accuses others of.
Minister of National Defence Anita Anand speaks at the Ottawa Conference on Security and Defence in Ottawa on March 11, 2022. (The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick)

Amid Russia-Ukraine War, Be Fully Cognizant of China Threat, Says Canadas Defence Minister

Europe is not the only fault line in global security amid Russias ongoing attacks against Ukraine, warns Defence Minister Anita Anand, while also emphasizing the need to address the threats from Chinas assertive activities.

Speaking at the Ottawa Conference on Security and Defence on March 11, Anand said that the war in Ukraine presents consequences for the rules-based international order and that such a global security threat also impacts Canada and its North American allies and multilateral partnerships.

But she also noted the implications of Russias invasion of Ukraine for potential security threats in the Indo-Pacific region.

What this crisis has demonstrated more than ever, is that Europe is not the only fault line in the global security environment at the current time, Anand said.

We have to be fully cognizant about Chinas range of assertive activities in the Indo-Pacific region and around the world.

She said China is seeking to achieve its geopolitical goals through a mix of political, economic, and military means, including coercive behaviours in the East and South China Seas,  irresponsible and very concerning behaviours in cyberspace, theft of intellectual property and sensitive technology, as well as hostage diplomacy tacticsas seen in the arbitrary detention of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor.

During a question-and-answer session, when asked how Chinas increased powers factor into the recalibration of Canadas defence, Anand pointed to the need to address the potential threats of a Russia-China alliance.

We have to be clear-eyed about the fact that the [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] alliance and the countries that comprise it are being tested every day, not only in terms of the conflict in Ukraine, but also in terms of the threat that Russia and China present individually and potentially in collaboration with each other, Anand said.

Our Indo-Pacific Strategy that we are developing,  is incredibly important. Working with our alliesincredibly important, she noted. Because we cant be on our back foot relating to responses to threats. We have to be prepared and assume that those threats exist based on the information we see. And as I outlined in my speech, there are numerous indications of the existing threats in regards to those two countries.

Anand said that as Canada continues to develop the Indo-Pacific Strategyas Prime Minister Justin Trudeau requested of her in her mandate letterthe Royal Canadian Navy is looking to increase its presence in the region with more port visits and more training and exercises with international partners and allies.

She added that a key part of the mandate letter relates to modernizing the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) to strengthen the continents defence, noting that the governments recent budget invested over $252 million in initial funding to that effort to deter and defeat aerospace threats to the continent.

Canada has also made landmark investments in increasing Arctic defences, including through joint exercises, new patrol vessels, and enhanced intelligence and surveillance capabilities.

Make no mistake, Canada will be at the table [with the United States] in the short term with a robust package to modernize NORAD, a system that has kept Canadians and Americans safe for over 60 years, Anand said.
Volunteers pass an improvised path under a destroyed bridge as they evacuate an elderly resident in Irpin, some 16 miles northwest of Kyiv, Ukraine, on March 11, 2022. (Efrem Lukatsky/AP Photo)

Analysts Question Accuracy of Putins Intel From Ukraine Frontlines

Analysts are observing how well informed Russian President Vladimir Putin is of the real situation in Ukraine, over concerns that he could be making decisions in the war without accurate updates as information filters through the ranks, said Odessa-based Volodymyr Dubovyk, an associate professor with the Center for International Studies at Ukraines Mechnikov National University.

He might really think that Russians are winning, having an upper hand in Ukraine, Dubovyk said of Putins view of the conflict from Moscow.

But they are not winning, Dubovyk said of the Russian forces, adding that it is unclear whether there is anyone to advise Putin of the real situation on the ground.

People are afraid [that]  no one is there to tell him the news that, Mr. President  we need to withdraw, we need some exit ramp, the academic said. And Putin, of course, is not known [to be] someone who is a quitter. He got himself up on that escalation tree, and he doesnt know quite well how to climb down.

But he will have to learn to do that because he is not going to get his objectives met here in Ukraine, Dubovyk told NTD News on March 11.

Russia has said its special military operation in Ukraine is to disarm Ukraines military and topple its neo-Nazi government in order to protect Russians living in pro-Russian parts of eastern Ukraine from abuse and genocide.

Once again, I speak to the Ukrainian soldiers, Putin said in his speech announcing the invasion. Do not allow neo-Nazis and Banderites to use your children, your wives, and the elderly as a human shield. Take power into your own hands. It seems that it will be easier for us to come to an agreement than with this gang of drug addicts and neo-Nazis.

The Kremlin is demanding Ukraine sign a neutrality agreement that would prohibit it from entering NATO, and that it recognize Crimea as Russian, recognize the regions of Luhansk and Donetsk as independent, and cease all military action.

Despite the difficulties facing Russian troops in their mission to demilitarize Ukraine, Dubovyk believes the Russian leadership still wants to continue to fight the war.

I think [Russia] still believes they might bring some reinforcements and provide more gasoline and food to the troops who are locked down in various places in Ukraine. I think they might be trying to proceed that way, he said.

Although Russia attacked and destroyed much of Ukraines military assets in the first 48 hours of the invasion, Dubovyk said that the Ukrainian people have held strong in their resistance of the occupying forces, supported by foreign assistance to their military and sanctions from countries like Western NATO allies, but also South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan in the East.

The Ukrainians also have the upper hand of a higher morale, because the people are fighting to defend their land and their freedom, Dubovyk said.

Many of them left their families and their kids in the towns and cities behind their backs. So its not some abstract conflict to them; they know exactly what theyre defending, they know whats going to happen to those towns, he said.

Meanwhile, on the Russian side, Dubovyk said that according to Ukrainian investigators version of events, morale is really low.

The investigators, hearing from some of the 2,000 Russian prisoners of war, have reported that many Russian soldiers are questioning the war.

Dubovyk said that some common themes reported from conversations with PoW have been: Why are we here? What are we doing? They are no fascists here  these people are just civilians and the Ukrainian military is fighting bravely against us because they see us as invaders.

He also said some PoW were thinking, Our officers, they told us we will be seen as liberators, that people will come out to us with flowers, and they will congratulate us as [people] who brought them freedom.

But, he said, they soon realize that Ukrainians have been fighting for their freedom against the occupying forces.

Some of those troops that Russians brought in are professionals with a lot of experience, but many of those are not, they are 18-, 19-, 20-year-old guys, rookies, who have been brought [in] without any experience and they are terrified, Dubovyk said. Theyre leaving their weapons and are deserting, they are destroying their own equipment, their tanks, and theyre trying to escape toward the border with Russia and go back to Russia.

Russias advances have been varied across Ukraine. Some cities in the east near the long-contested Donbass region, like Mariupol, are now in a terrible situation following days of bombings and food and power shortages.

A person is carried out after the destruction of Mariupol childrens hospital as Russias invasion of Ukraine continues, in Mariupol, Ukraine, on March 9, 2022 in this still image from a handout video obtained by Reuters. (Ukraine Military/Handout via Reuters)

Ukrainian government forces and Russian-backed separatist forces have been at war in the Donbass since 2014. Over 14,000 people had already died in the armed conflict before Russias invasion on Feb. 24, with roughly 75,000 troops fighting in trench warfare along a 260-mile-long line of contact through some densely populated areas.

Given the protracted conflict, U.S. President Joe Biden has repeatedly said that the United States will not send troops to fight in Ukraine, and that the United States and NATO will not fight a war against Russia in Ukraine because a direct conflict between NATO and Russia is World War III, something we must strive to prevent.

In the current escalation, Ukrainian cities in the north, west, and some in the south like Odessa remain mostly untouched.

Dubovyk put Russias slow progress down to Ukraines strong civilian resistance, without which the Ukrainian military would be failing to resist the Russian offensive.

There are tens of thousands of ordinary Ukrainians who are working with the military to support the defense of the country, Dubovyk said, performing important duties like evacuating people, distributing food and water, and diverting Russian pre-planted sabotage groups that were sent into Ukraine before the invasion.

Soldiers of the Territorial Defense Forces of Ukraine, the military reserve of the armed forces of Ukraine, receive food in the warehouse in an underground garage that has been converted into a training and logistics base in Kyiv, Ukraine, on March 11, 2022. (Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images)

The invasion is now dragging through a third week. For days, Russian forces had been lined up just tens of miles away from the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, but for now appear to have dispersed. It remains unclear what they were waiting for before dispersing, although Dubovyk said it could be that the Russian forces have now realized how difficult it will be to take and hold Kyiv, given the strong resistance put forward by the Ukrainians in defense of their homes and land.

[The Russians are] really afraid of going into the city because they are afraid of urban warfare. They know that city was very much fortified, that people have all these javelins and attacking machine guns and so on. And they would expect firing from every window and from around any corner, he said.

He noted that unlike what was seen in Afghanistan, Ukraine is not a failed state.

In [the] case of Ukraine, the government is working under the bombs, in the shelters, everyone is showing up to work including medical personnel, including professors in universities, we even do our lectures online these days. So Ukraine is very much united.

Dubovyk warned that he thinks Russia will try to force more concessions and inflict more pain on Ukraine by shelling civilian targets if the conflict continues unresolved.
People wear masks to protect themselves from COVID-19, while listening to the annual general meeting at the lobby of Foxconn's office in Taipei, Taiwan on June 23, 2020. (Ann Wang/Reuters)

Apple Supplier Foxconn Halts Operations at Its Shenzhen Sites Due to COVID-19 Lockdown

Foxconn has halted operations in the Chinese business center of Shenzhen after authorities announced a partial lockdown because of a rise in COVID-19 cases across the country, fueled by the highly transmissible Omicron virus variant.

In a March 13 statement, a spokesperson for the Taiwan-based Foxconn, also known as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., said it was suspending production at two campuses in Shenzhen in compliance with the local governments new Covid-19 policy.

Foxconn is the worlds biggest contract manufacturer of electronics, supplying components to a number of companies that include Apple and Samsung.

Its two campuses in Shenzhen are located in Guanlan and Longhua, however, the company does the majority of its production at a plant located in the central Chinese city of Zhengzhou.

Due to our diversified production sites in China, we have adjusted the production line to minimize the potential impact, Foxconn said.

The company, which is owned by Taiwanese billionaire Terry Gou, didnt state when production at the Shenzhen base would resume. A spokesperson said the bases will remain closed until the local government says they can reopen, and in the meantime, facilities in other cities will be used to support production.

Foxconn said all employees have been required to have COVID PCR test on top of existing prevention measures to ensure the health and safety of our employees.

Shenzhen, a tech hub near Hong Kong, was placed under a citywide lockdown on March 14 amid a spike in new COVID-19 cases.

The lockdown comes amid the Chinese Communist Partys (CCP) so-called dynamic-zero policy regarding coronavirus outbreaks, which utilizes strict measures such as mass testing, digital surveillance, mandatory isolation, and targeted lockdowns in an effort to control outbreaks.

Officials in Shenzhen have halted public transport and ordered all nonessential businesses to suspend operations March 1420, the regime announced on March 13. Residents in the city of 17.5 million people have been ordered to work from home, and three rounds of citywide testing were to start on March 14.

There have been a total of 8,639 deaths and 709,726 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in China since Jan. 3, 2020, according to the latest data from the World Health Organization. However, the CCP has been criticized for underreporting its virus numbers.

Despite the strict measures put in place by the regime, the country is currently battling its biggest COVID-19 outbreak since the start of the pandemic.

Critics fear that such strict measures could cause further disruptions to the global supply chain.

A number of other prominent Chinese technology companies are located in Shenzhen, including SZ DJI Technology Co., Tencent, Oppo, and Huawei.

Foxconns touch panel subsidiary, General Interface Solution, also said it would allocate some of its production to other facilities amid the lockdown, Nikkei Asia reported.

A spokesperson for Unimicron, Taiwans largest manufacturer of printed circuit boards, told Nikkei Asia that its subsidiary in Shenzhen would pause production on March 14.
People walk amongst the debris at the crash site of MH17 passenger plane near the village of Grabovo, Ukraine, on July 17, 2014. (Dmitry Lovetsky/File via AP)

Australia, Netherlands to Sue Russia Over MH17

Australia and the Netherlands have launched a joint action against Russia over the 2014 downing of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17.

The action will be filed in the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) and names Russia as responsible for the incident under international law.

Flight MH17 was shot down on July 17, 2014 while flying over separatist, eastern Ukraine.

All 298 people onboard were killed, including 193 Netherlanders, 43 Malaysians, and 38 Australians.

This is an important step in the fight for truth, justice and accountability for all of the victims of MH17, including the 38 who called Australia home, Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne told reporters on March 14.

Family members of victims of the MH17 crash protest outside the Russian Embassy, lining up empty chairs for each seat on the plane, in The Hague, Netherlands, on March 8, 2020. (Piroschka van de Wouw/Reuters)

Attorney-General Michaelia Cash said the Convention on International Civil Aviation, also known as the Chicago Convention, requires states to refrain from using weapons against civil aircraft in flight.

That obligation is of paramount importance in preserving the safety and security of international civil aviation, Cash told reporters. The downing of Flight MH17 was a clear breach of the Chicago Convention. A breach for which Russia bears responsibility.

It caused tremendous grief and suffering to the next of kin of the victimspain aggravated by the absence to date of any acknowledgement by Russia of its responsibility, she said.

Russian authorities withdrew from negotiations in October 2020, leaving agencies in Australia, Belgium, Malaysia, and the Netherlands to continue their investigations.

Senator Michaelia Cash during an appearance at Education and Employment Committee at Parliament House on March 25, 2021 in Canberra, Australia. (Sam Mooy/Getty Images)

Cash said the legal action will be based on evidence concluding that:

Flight MH17 was shot down by a Russian Buk-TELAR surface-to-air missile system;

The missile system was transported from Russia to an agricultural field in the east of Ukraine on the morning of July 17, 2014an area under the control of Russian-backed separatists;

The missile system belonged to the Russian Federations 53rd Anti-Aircraft Military Brigade, and was accompanied by a trained Russian military crew;

From the launch site, the Buk-TELAR fired the missile that shot down Flight MH17, killing all 298 people on board;

The missile could only have been fired by the trained Russian crew of the Buk-TELAR, or at least by someone acting under their instruction, direction or control; and

The Buk missile system was returned to the Russian Federation shortly after the downing of Flight MH17.

Australia and the Netherlands will seek a declaration from the ICAO that Russia breached the Chicago Conventionand order it to re-enter negotiations in good faith to resolve the matter of full reparations for injury caused by Russias breach.

Further, they are requesting the ICAO notify the assembly that Russia is in default under the Chicago Convention and that the voting power of the country be suspended. Any further punitive sanctions need to be considered by the body.

Foreign Minister Payne said the action was complementary to an ongoing civil action by Dutch authorities in its national courtsthat Australia is apart ofas well as an action for human rights breaches at the European Court of Human Rights.

Trial judges and lawyers view the reconstructed wreckage of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, at the Gilze-Rijen military airbase, southern Netherlands, on May 26, 2021. (Peter Dejong/AP Photo)

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said in a statement that the legal efforts would provide justice to the families of victims.

While we cannot take away the grief of those whose loved ones died as a result of Russias actions, the Australia government will pursue every available avenue to ensure Russia is held to account so that this horrific act never happens again, he said.

The latest announcement comes just hours after Australias Department of Foreign Affairs revealed the latest tranche of sanctions against Russia, this time targeting 33 oligarchs.

The penalties will cover the heads of Russian state-owned enterprises and the armed forces following sanctionsnumbering around 460from the United States, United Kingdom, European Union, Canada, and New Zealand.

Swept up in the Australian sanctions are Gazprom CEO Alexey Miller, Rossiya Chairman Dmitri Lebedev, Rostec Chair Sergey Chemezov, Transneft CEO Nikolay Tokarev, Vnesheconombank Chairman Igor Shuvalov, Russian Direct Investment Fund CEO Kirill Dimitriev, and Chelsea Football Club owner Roman Abramovich.
Australian Billionaires Raise $210 Million For Worlds Biggest Solar Project

Andrew Forrest and Mike Cannon-BrookesAustralias most vocal billionaires on climate changehave invested a further $210 million towards the worlds biggest intercontinental renewable power system.

Sun Cables $30 billion Australia-Asia Power Link (AAPowerLink) project had already received nearly $50 million from Forrest and Cannon Brookes in 2019 through their respective investment firms, Squadron Energy and Grok Ventures.

AAPowerLink is set to break numerous records once completedincluding the longest high-voltage cable in the world, carrying 3 GW (gigawatts, or billion watts) through 4,200 km of undersea cabling from the Northern Territory to Singapore.

This will be powered through 17 to 20 GW of solarnearly matching Australias total solar capacity of 25 GWacross a 12,000 hectare area, 35 times the size of New Yorks Central Park.

Map of Sun Cables Australia-Asia Power Link (AAPowerLink). (Sun Cable)

To help maintain power at all periods, the project plans to build a whopping 36 to 42 GWh (gigawatt-hour) battery storage system, which at current prices alone could cost between $10 and $15 billion.

The project hopes to deliver up to 15 percent of Singapores electricity needs through its undersea cabling. However, at the cables maximum rated power of 3 GW, the same battery will be able to output for just 12 to 14 hours.

Forrest said the ambitious task would position Australia at the forefront of the green energy transition.

Sun Cables vision will transform Australias capability to become a world-leading generator and exporter of renewable electricity and enable decarbonisation, Forrest said in a statement (pdf).

Im proud to be a cornerstone investor in Sun Cable, its team and its vision. This capital raise is a critical step in developing the Australia-Asia PowerLink, and I applaud Sun Cable realising this mission.

Fortescue Metals chairman Andrew Forrest (L)and Atlassian CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes (R). (Justin Benson-Cooper/AAP, Brook Mitchell/Getty Images)

Cannon-Brookes also believes AAPowerLink could lay the groundwork for future energy export projects.

This brings Australia one step closer to realising our renewables exporting potential. We can power the world with clean energy, and Sun Cable is harnessing that at scale, he said.

Its a blueprint for how we export energy across the world. We fully back this vision.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel has championed the theory of mankinds effect on temperatures on Climate Change (IPCC). However, systemic bias in the IPCCs data selection has raised concerns among critics about the hypothesis of a man-made climate change narrative.

Both Forrest and Cannon-Brookes have expressed a great deal of interest in shifting energy away from carbon dioxide due to concerns that gas drives climate change.

To this end, Forrest has spearheaded numerous green energy projects, including a partnership with Airbus to research hydrogen planes along with the southern hemispheres biggest renewables hub.

On the other hand, Cannon-Brookes has instead opted to take a more direct route by making an attempt to takeover AGL Energyone of Australias biggest energy suppliersto shut its coal power stations faster.

However, the onset of Russias invasion of Ukraine has elevated concerns that reliance on renewables creates an even stronger dependence on gas. Gas remains key in supporting renewables by firing up during periods of low wind or sunlight.

But some experts believe battery power will remain inadequate at supporting renewables. For example, AAPowerLinks 12-14 hour, 3 GW battery could run dry after an overcast day.

They do have a role to play, but not on the big grid, Professor of Engineering at the University of Melbourne Iven Mareels told The Epoch Times. You can never build batteries enough to store for the grid.

Fears have also grown that the rapid uptake of renewables has given rise to slavery, with the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) cautioning Australian companies to report the risks of slave labour in their supply chains.

The shift to renewable energy has revealed a number of areas of emerging modern slavery supply chain risk for energy companies, the AHRC said.
Scientia Clinical Research Ltd lab in Randwick in Sydney, Australia on Nov. 5, 2020. (Pool/Getty Images)

Australian Clinicans Not Declaring Conflicts of Interest For Pharma Funded Studies: Experts

Researchers from the University of Sydney have called for more transparency after their review revealed that nearly half of 120 pharmaceutical trials had missing or incomplete declarations of conflict of interest (COI).

Disclosures are crucial to keeping research transparent, said co-author Assoc. Prof. Barbara Mintzes from the University of Sydney.

Conflicts of interest in research refer to situations when the authors judgement may be compromised or appear to be so due to financial or personal reasons.

Funding from pharmaceutical companies often require disclosure of conflict as pharmaceutical industry funding is associated with a bias towards study results that are more favourable towards the tested product, Mintzes said.

She said that the importance of full disclosure of pharmaceutical industry funding has long been recognised, and it was a requirement for authors to report on it.

Though a disclosure does not eliminate conflicts of interests such as biased reporting, Mintzes said that disclosing it allows readers to consider the possible impact on the research.

The study found discrepancies in COI by examining pharmaceutical companies reports of their payments to health professionalsas listed publicly by Medicines Australiaand compared these with authors own declarations.

The team examined 120 randomised controlled trials for pharmaceuticals published from January to August 2020, consisting of 323 Australian authors in total and found 46.7 percent of the trials had missing or inaccurate COI declarations.

Randomised controlled trials (RCT) are experiments where participants are randomly assorted into the testing group that tests the drug or the control group that receives a placebo.

They are often used to test for the safety and efficacy of medical interventions as it allows researchers to examining the difference in outcomes between the testing and the control group.

Of the 120 RCTs examined in the Sydney study, there were 89 incomplete or missing declarations amongst 78 researchers from 56 studies.

Within the 89 discrepant declarations, 51.7 percent stated no competition of interests, and 43.8 percent gave incomplete statements.

A small minority of the studies omitted the companys name or left out a section for COI entirely in the article making up 4.5 percent of the statements.

The median value of undisclosed payments reached $8,944 (US$6,543) with a range from $140 to $97,600 AUD (US$102$71,394) for the highest and lowest values for undisclosed payments.

Companies listed on Medicines Australia need to declare payments to individual clinicians for consultancies, speaking, advisory boards and educational events. Though this has been a requirement since October 2015, underreports of COI still significant.

Mintzes said despite the significant findings of the study, the results underestimate the true extent of underreporting of conflicts of interest in Australia.

Currently, disclosure for COI for Medicines Australia is self-regulated, and not all types of payments require to be reported, with payments for food and drinks often excluded. Additionally, not all companies are members of Medicines Australia, and with only authors who are also health professionals listed publicly, this may explain how some underreported COIs go undetected.

The authors noted that Australia is not the only country witnessing similar issues with significant discrepancies found in Danish and US physician studies.

The discrepancies highlight the need for more transparent and comprehensive COI reporting, the authors concluded.

Our study adds to the evidence that under-reporting of COI is likely widespread globally.
Cranes work on a building site in Melbourne's central business district in Melbourne, Australia, on Oct. 2, 2018. (William West/AFP via Getty Images)

Australian Political Parties Asked to Prioritise Housing at the May Federal Election

The Australian housing sector is calling on political parties to make home-ownership a priority in their agenda if they win the upcoming federal election in May.

The Housing Industry Association (HIA), a peak body representing members working in the residential building industry across Australia, said its research suggested that three in four Australians believed people should be able to possess their own home.

Among the respondents who were currently tenants, 85 percent desired to become homeowners. However, only 42 percent felt they would attain this goal one day.

In addition, over 50 percent of those surveyed said incentives supporting home-ownership would be helpful to them, and two-thirds believed the government should help Australians acquire what was often the largest purchase in their lives.

HIA remains dedicated to changing this statistic, and we believe that it is an objective that should be adopted by all political parties contesting the upcoming federal election, HIA managing director Graham Wolfe said.

He said the association had long held the imperative that the federal cabinet should include a minister for housing considering the sectors importance to Australian society. Additionally, the HIA called for the government to give housing the spotlight it deserved.

The housing affordability challenges facing Australian households can only be addressed if the supply of housing can align with demand, Wolfe said.

A general view of the Lacrosse building in the Docklands in Melbourne, Australia, on June 16, 2017. (Scott Barbour/Getty Images)

The association calculated that the country would need to erect 1.66 million houses to satisfy the need arising from population growth. Therefore, it called for state governments to release land supply to accommodate new housing development.

At the same time, it mentioned that systemic issues existed in all jurisdictions zoning, subdivision and development processes.

It continues to take more than a decade to bring unzoned land to market as shovel-ready land, the HIA said.

Furthermore, the association said the issue of underinvestment in social and community housing had been ongoing for decades.

While the Australian government had set up the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation bond aggregator to improve social housing outcomes, the HIA called for an additional funding mechanism to incentivise more private businesses to invest in projects that increased community housing supply.

Meanwhile, the HIA indicated that the residential building industry was experiencing an incessant shortage of skilled trade workers. And before the COVID-19 pandemic occurred, the number of Australians studying trade qualifications related to the sector had gone down steadily.

To offer a solution to the above issue, the association suggested that the federal government attract more skilled and productive young workers from other countries by removing the ceiling of 160,000 migrants per year and establishing appropriate visa arrangements for students and skilled foreign workers.

Apart from the imperatives for political parties that the HIA raised, the organisation emphasised that home-ownership matters would remain one of its solid foundations in the current uncertain situation.

Our resolve to uphold our core value of home-ownership for all Australians is a message all sides of politics will be hearing from HIA in 2022, Wolfe said.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers at the Otay Mesa commercial facility seized more than 3,100 pounds of methamphetamine, fentanyl powder, fentanyl pills and heroin as part of the second largest methamphetamine bust along the southwest border in the history of the agency, based on information developed by DEA, working jointly with HSI on Oct. 9, 2020. (DEA)

Beijing Avoids Taking Effective Action to Stem Flow of Fentanyl Amid US Opioid Crisis: Experts

Beijing has made only modest and half-hearted efforts toward curbing the flow of synthetic opioids such as fentanyl from manufacturers in China to foreign markets, where the drugs are causing record numbers of overdose deaths, particularly in the United States.

The communist regime is also continuing to place its geopolitical interests ahead of any effective reforms regarding the issue, according to a recent Brookings Institution report authored by Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the think tank. She has called opioids the cause of the deadliest U.S. drug epidemic ever, noting that drug overdose deaths soared to new levels between October 2020 and September 2021, with 104,288 Americans losing their lives. Of that number, opioids accounted for 78,388 deaths.

In Felbab-Browns analysis, an already grave opioid crisis took a turn toward even more severe lethality 10 years ago when synthetic opioids such as fentanyl displaced plant-based opioids and came to be used increasingly as ingredients of drug cocktails that also contain cocaine and methamphetamine.

Evolving Supply Chains

For years, many of the more than 5,000 firms in Chinas pharmaceutical industry have supplied fentanyl directly to the United States. The report described Chinas chemical export sector as a poorly regulated shadow industry with between 160,000 and 400,000 manufacturers and distributors, many of them operating without licenses or hiding their activities behind shell companies.

Still, others hide the fentanyl they produce amid other products made in enormous volumes. Right up until 2019, brokers in China exported fentanyl to the United States, disregarding U.S. laws against the importation of their product.

The United States raised the issue with Beijing in the hope of bringing about much stricter oversight over the production and export of these drugs within China, and this effort did result in the regulation of fentanyl analogs and two fentanyl precursors in 2018 and 2019, according to the report.

But drug suppliers simply changed tack, routing shipments to cartels in Mexico, which then supply the drug to U.S. markets. The manufacturers and distributors didnt abandon the supply of drugs to U.S. streets so much as find proxies to bring the narcotics there.

The report details how, even now, some Chinese dealers tailor their approach specifically for Mexican cartels. Felbab-Brown cited investigative research by Washington-based nonprofit C4ADS revealing how Chinese sellers bundle fentanyl and meth precursors, along with cocaine fillers, in Spanish-language ads and tout the ability of the bundled drugs to slip through customs in Mexico.

Denying Responsibility

In the face of U.S. pressure, Beijing has insisted that it can do only so much to curb nonscheduled sales of meth and fentanyl precursors to drug cartels and has rejected blame for the U.S. opioid epidemic.

The fact that Chinese criminal groups are less likely to murder their real or perceived foes than some Latin American cartels gives Beijing a further excuse for leniency, except in those relatively rare cases where Chinese criminal syndicates act directly counter to the interests of Beijings ruling elite, according to the report.

Beijings stance is that U.S. social problems are to blame for the crisis, and it shouldnt be laid at the door of China, a nation that it says has shown benevolence and cooperation in anti-drug efforts.

Yet heightened tensions between Washington and Beijing in recent years have meant the regime has withheld the kind of assistance that is really needed to stop the supply of fentanyl to U.S. cities. In recent years, things have gotten worse, not better, even as increased attention has focused on the crisis and the role of overseas suppliers.

Up until 2018, Chinese police acted on U.S. tips and arrested Chinese fentanyl dealers. But Chinese authorities havent acted on intelligence or indictments from U.S. officials since that time. Cooperation between the law enforcement agencies of China and Mexico over fentanyl trafficking and the trade of precursor agents is next to nonexistent.

Chinas counternarcotics cooperation with the U.S. has been subordinated to the overall deteriorated geostrategic relationship between the two countries, the report reads. Indeed, without significant warming of the overall U.S.China relationship, China is unlikely to intensify its anti-drug cooperation with the United States. U.S. punitive measures, such as sanctions and drug indictments, are unlikely to change that.

East Asia and Australia

Political frictions have similarly hampered cooperation between Chinese and Australian agencies, according to the report.

It describes China as the principal supplier of precursor chemicals used in methamphetamine production in both East Asia and Mexico. Between the 1990s and the mid-2010s, meth produced in southern China went both to domestic markets and to East Asia and Australia, the report states. Here, too, increased calls for action at the diplomatic level have had only a partial effect on the global drug trade.

At first Beijing was defensive and dismissive about any claims that China was the supply source of Australias meth epidemic. But as time passed, it grew willing to cooperate with Canberra, the report reads.

The formation of Task Force Blaze, a Sino-Australian organization based in Chinas Guangdong Province, in November 2015 led to the seizure of shipments of meth from China to Australia and to 130 arrests in its first year of operation alone. But this didnt end the flow of meth precursors and pre-precursors from China to drug producers in Burma (Myanmar) and other nations.

Chinese drug smuggling networks distribute meth in Asia, Australia, and New Zealand, while Mexican cartels relying heavily on precursors from China are marketing finished meth in the United States.

While the supply chain looks different on the surface, the prevalence of Chinese manufacturers and suppliers is as marked as before.

Playing Beijings Game

The Brookings report suggests that the United States can take a number of steps to counter Chinas role in the narcotics trade.

Emphasizing Chinas interest in nipping domestic opioid consumption in the bud and encouraging Beijing to ramp up its anti-money laundering efforts can have no ill effects. But the report suggests that the long-term effects of such approaches will be slight.

What may make more of a difference is the implementation of self-regulatory mechanisms for chemical and pharmaceutical industries on a global level. Such an approach may have an effect on the availability of precursor agents for drug traffickers. More cooperation among the anti-trafficking agencies of different nations is also needed, according to the report.

As the United States grapples with its opioid crisis and looks urgently for ways to stem the number of deaths caused by the crisis, one of the worst mistakes it could make would be to offer Beijing an enormous prize in exchange for cracking down on China-based drug trafficking, according to Jonathan P. Caulkins, a professor at Carnegie Mellon Universitys Heinz College and expert on the global drug trade.

In Caulkinss analysis, nothing about the fentanyl trade is really unique to China, given the relative ease with which precursor agents for synthetic drugs can be produced anywhere. For a smaller and impoverished country such as Bolivia or Afghanistan, the drug trade might be vital to its livelihood, but even now, the money that Chinas pharmaceutical companies derive from the illegal drug trade is relatively insignificant in the scheme of things.

The total dollar value of Chinese exports of fentanyl, or precursors, is almost certainly less than $25 million per year and possibly more like $10 million, Caulkins said. Theyre getting a very tiny share of the value. Most of the value is created further down the supply chain, not in China.

Given that China is the second-biggest economy in the world, and the Chinese pharmaceutical industry is gigantic, this is more of a round-off figure for them, a tiny activity in terms of dollars and the number of people involved.

Caulkins said it may be the case that Beijing could clamp down on the illicit trade more effectively if it chose to do so, but its well aware of the severity of the opioid crisis in the United States and the potential use of the crisis to gain leverage and extract concessions in return for taking action.

China understands that this is a problem for America, and they want to trick or dupe the United States into trading something, he said. Many people here think about this issue in a way thats not informed by economics and markets. My biggest worry is that the United States will make the catastrophic error of trading something diplomatically important in exchange for Chinas cooperation.

For Washington to adopt a policy on Taiwan more in line with Beijings preferences would be a huge mistake, he said, because the United States would have given up something important.

Even if Beijing does honor a promise to take tougher action on opioids, another player would likely step in and continue the supply of fentanyl to the U.S. streets, Caulkins said. Hence the United States needs to find solutions that dont play into Beijings hands and end up simply turning the trade over to new traffickers.
Canadian Armed Forces soldiers clear the ice runway from any bumps in preparation for takeoff on Feb. 24, 2022, in the vicinity of Deadhorse, Alaska. (Cpl Hugo Montpetit, Canadian Forces Combat Camera, Canadian Armed Forces Photo)

Canadian Military Begins NORAD Arctic Air Defence Operation

After a string of military exercises in northern Canada and the United States in recent days, the Canadian military will conduct a NORAD-specific exercise this week aimed at strengthening the continents defence against a variety of threats, including those originating from Russia.

The Arctic air defence operation, dubbed Operation Noble Defender (NB), involves Canadian and U.S. personnel and equipment and stretches from the Yukon to Newfoundland and Labrador, and also covers Alaska and areas off the coast of Greenland.

The security of our Arctic is not negotiable, tweeted Defence Minister Anita Anand while announcing the operation on March 13.

What were looking to do is confirm our ability to respond to threat aircraft as well as cruise missile type threats that would come within the Canadian NORAD region, Canadian NORAD Region Commander Major-General Eric Kenny told CBC News on March 14.

The North American Aerospace Defense Commands (NORAD) exercise runs from March 14 to 17.

The exercise will likely not be noticeable to civilians due to aircraft flying at high altitudes and in remote areas, NORAD said in a statement, but there will be an increased military presence in Whitehorse, Yellowknife, and the 5 Wing Goose Bay air force base in Newfoundland.

NB is a series of NORAD operations which validate the commands capability to defend Canada and the United States against threats from every avenue of approach, and demonstrate the ability to integrate with other defense and security partners for a holistic defense of North America, says the organization in a statement.

The latest exercise took place last October and involved U.S. special operations forces conducting activities such as maritime infiltration and special reconnaissance.

NB is taking place after the annual Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) northern exercise, Operation NANOOK, concluded on Feb. 28. Troops from the U.S., the U.K., and France participated in long-range patrols, complex logistical support, and under-ice diving activities, according to the Department of National Defence.

NB is but one of many joint exercises with the U.S. taking place in the Arctic this winter, with different U.S. services or commands taking the lead.

The CAF says over 400 personnel are taking part in the exercises, along with 10 aircraft and the Navy ship Brandon.

Some of the exercises occur on a recurrent schedule and are not in response to Russias invasion of Ukraine, but Russia is the dominant threat in the Arctic, according to NORAD.

The organization says that long-range cruise missiles being launched from Russia and travelling through northern approaches to strike Canadian or U.S. targets has emerged as the dominant military threat in the Arctic.

NORAD came into existence in 1958 to centralize continental air defence systems to protect against the threat of Soviet bombers. It was expanded in 2006 to include a maritime warning mission to counter potential terrorist threats. With the northern waters being subsequently increasingly passable, maritime traffic and great power competition in the region became an increasing concern.

Canadas main role in NORAD is hosting 47 radar sites, part of the North Warning System (NWS). Having been built at the end of the 1980s, its considered in urgent need of replacement.

Its radar capabilities are becoming increasingly challenged by modern weapons technology, including advanced cruise missiles and hypersonic weapons, says a National Defence backgrounder on the NWS.

The Liberal governments 2021 budget announced a $163 million commitment to NORAD modernization, but the replacement cost of the NWS alone is estimated at over $10 billion.

Anand told the Ottawa Conference on Security and Defence on March 11 she would soon unveil a robust package to modernize NORAD, reported the Globe and Mail.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin smile during the welcoming ceremony on the final day of the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing on April 27, 2019. (Valery Sharifulin/Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images)

China Eyeing Russian Energy, Assets, Shares to Find Openings to Strengthen Power

China is considering buying energy, assets, and stakes in Russias bulk commodities companies.

Albert Song, a current affairs commentator familiar with the Chinese financial system, told The Epoch Times that during the Russia-Ukraine war, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has a huge appetite for commodities as part of its goals to expand its aggressive powers to race against the U.S. and obtain a certain voice on the global stage.

Potential targets include Russian companies like PJSC Gazprom, the worlds largest natural gas company; and RUSAL, the worlds second-largest aluminum company. Potential Chinese buyers are heavyweight state-owned enterprises: China National Petroleum Corp., Sinopec Group, Aluminium Corporation of China Ltd., and China Minmetals, people familiar with the matter said, according to Bloomberg on March 8.

Additionally, the CCP might look to acquire Russias gold reserves through a secret trading channel, which may be settled with foreign exchange secretly because all of Russias gold is stored in central bank vaults and cannot be sold on the global market. Its troublesome for Russia, Song said.

U.S. senators on March 8 introduced a bill to close a loophole in the Wests sanctions, proposing secondary sanctions for those trading with Russia using its $132 billion in gold reserves, Axios reported.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine, the United States and other Western countries have imposed a series of sanctions on Russia, including freezing its foreign exchange reserves. This has made Russias gold reserves a key funding resource for Moscow in shoring up its war.

According to Song, the CCPs quiet support of Russia is similar to its past responses to the United States sanctioning other countries. For example, when the United States sanctioned Iran and banned its crude oil exports, the CCP provided Iran with cash and other materials to help it smuggle crude oilships without transponders delivered Iranian crude oil reported as Malaysian or Omani exports into Chinese ports, Song said.

Russia and China Enhance Bilateral Trade

Song has maintained that the CCP might now consider it the right time to incorporate Russian energy out of concern for easing its pressures from soaring energy and food prices worldwide.

Petrol and gas costs soared after Russias invasion of Ukraine. On March 6, crude oil prices in the global market hit a record high not seen since the global financial crisis of 2008, which resulted in a surge in costs of downstream products.

Russias gas giant Gazprom CEO, Alexei Miller (L), Russian President Vladimir Putin (2nd L), and Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli (R) attend the ceremony marking the welding of the first link of The Power of Siberia main gas pipeline, near the village of Us Khatyn, outside Yakutsk, on Sept. 1, 2014. (Alexey Nikolsky/Ria Novosti/AFP via Getty Images)

China deems Russian energy as the ballast for its bilateral trade cooperation with Russia. Russia is Chinas largest source for energy imports, second-largest source for crude oil imports, and largest source for importing electricity.

In 2021, China imported energy products from Russia worth 334.29 billion yuan ($53.49 billion), standing for 65.3 percent of total goods imported from Russia, according to data from Chinas Ministry of Commerce.

Andrey Denisov, Russian Ambassador to China, said in a Jan. 25 press conference that Russia and China are forming an energy alliance in the area of developing new energy sources, renewable energy sources, and the processing of raw materials for use in the energy sector.

Notably, however, Song says that Putin seems to dislike the RMB (Chinese Yuan), citing that in February, when Putin visited China, Russian and Chinese authorities and enterprises signed 15 cooperation documents, and trade settlement was made in foreign currency, not RMB.

Trade cooperation between China and Russia has showed signs of significant growth in the past year before Russia launched its war on Ukraine on Feb. 24.

According to data from Chinas Ministry of Commerce on Feb. 9, China exported home appliances, automobiles, and construction machinery to Russia, and e-commerce trade between the two countries increased 187 percent from January to November last year.

Chinas General Administration of Customs reported on March 7 that the first two months of 2022 saw Russian-Chinese trade increase by 38.5 percent year-on-year, exceeding the 35.9 percent growth rate the whole year prior. In 2021, Russian-Chinese trade totaled $146.87 billion.

In the face of western sanctions, Russia is further leaning toward the CCP. It is a state of mutual support between two powers, Song said.

CCP Interests in Europe

In Europe, the CCP has dropped one of its major strategic deployments, according to Song.

Ukraine is a critical transit point for the Belt and Road Initiative, the CCPs global infrastructure project, which has been in operation for decades.

Like Russia, Ukraine was selling energy and minerals to China, and would have been a vital transit for the planned China-Europe railwayall of which has disappear due to the war. Therefore, the war between Ukraine and Russia is for real a dilemma for the CCP, Song said.

Using Chinese puns, the CCPs mouthpiece Xinhua claimed on Feb. 28 that Europe now faces its doomsday, saying that the energy crisis could bring Europe to a standstill because natural gas reserves in Europe are currently at their lowest-ever level in 10 years due to the Russia-Ukraine war. The Chinese saying, cut off its gas (Duanqi) can be understood as cut off its breath.

Although the CCP is trying to uncover new opportunities to reinforce its power and reap interests during the Russia-Ukraine war, Song believes that the CCP will end up being the loser in the war, no matter who it supports.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Russian President Vladimir Putin shakes hands with Chinese leader Xi Jinping during a signing ceremony following the Russian-Chinese talks on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok on Sept. 11, 2018. (Sergei Chirikov/AFP/Getty Images)

Chinas Complex Russia Calculation

Beijing pays lip service to the West as it continues to enable Russias military operations

Commentary

Beijing is trying to play a clever game by supporting Russias war in Ukraine while balancing its actions and rhetoric, in light of the Wests surprisingly strong reaction to the invasion.

Make no mistake about it, although progress has been slower than anticipated, barring any unforeseen developments, Russia will prevail in this conflict with Ukraine. Furthermore, Beijing will not condemn its Russian partner after describing the partnership between the two nations as rock solid.

Beijing is, therefore, attempting to maintain credibility in the West, where its economic interests are enormous, and with its expansive and forward-looking alliance with Russia.

A Mixed-Bag Alliance

That said, Beijings support for Moscow is complex, with a blend of advantages and disadvantages.

For example, Beijing wants to minimize the economic impact of the sanctions on Russia, and yet will not go as far as sacrifice its own economic interests to help Moscow weather the sanctions. Thats understandable. With its diminishing foreign currency reserves and shrinking markets in Europe, China itself is becoming more economically vulnerable.

Furthermore, no matter how much it tries to play both sides, Beijing has lost much of its goodwill with Europe and the West through its toxic trade policies, rampant technological theft, as well as its support of Russias invasion.

No one seriously believes Beijings assertions that it wants peaceful coexistence or to move beyond a Cold War mentality as it fully supports an unprovoked war in Ukraine. The Chinese Communist Partys (CCP) objective is to replace America and rule the world, and everybody knows it.

Russia Embraces China

At the same time, the invasion has driven Russia deeper into Chinas arms. That shouldnt surprise anyone, least of all either nations. They formed their alliance well before the invasion and likely planned it together as a pushback against U.S. power.

But now that its under extensive economic sanctions from the West, Russia needs China more than ever. More than 300 Western corporations have withdrawn from Russia in the past two weeksfrom airlines to fast food, to internet firmscrushing the Russian economy.

A woman walks past a closed Chanel shop in Moscow on March 10, 2022. (AFP via Getty Images)

For example, Moscow is relying upon Chinas telecom giant Huawei to fill the digital isolation gap left by Western internet service providers. Russia has virtually nowhere else to turn for internet service and other necessary digital capabilities.

Possible Ukraine Outcomes

In a geopolitical context, the outcome in Ukraine could go a few different ways. A destabilized Europe with strained U.S.-relations and diminished U.S. influence, for example, could be a big win for both Beijing and Russia. It could render NATO irrelevant if non-existent.

If, however, NATO somehow grows stronger and helps Ukraine to repel Russia, it could quickly expand the war. Indeed, Russian President Vladimir Putin may already be doing so with up to 16,000 Syrian fighters on their way to Ukraine. But if Ukraine somehow remains independent, it would lead to further losses for both Beijing and Moscow in terms of European market access and influence around the world.

Such an outcome may well depend on Europes desire or capability to push back against Moscow and the ability of the United States to strengthen the Atlantic relationship rather than looking weak on the world stage.

A third and very favorable outcome would be for Russia to consolidate its gains in Crimea, establish client states in Luhansk and Donetsk, and enforce neutrality of whats left of Ukraine. This would give Russia a big win without triggering a wider conflict and NATO a way out.

Advantages Accrue to Both Moscow and Beijing

One advantage that the invasion does give China, however, is insight into how Beijing may prepare for, or even avoid, the problems that Russia is dealing with, should the Chinese regime invade Taiwan. The extent of that advantage is not clear, however.

Another advantage is the fact that trade between the two has skyrocketed by almost 40 percent over last year, to about $147 billion. Its a crucial, mutually beneficial relationship. As the worlds largest importer of food, China needs Russian food and its resources. Recent trade deals include China importing Russian oil, gas, coal, and grain. As the worlds largest wheat exporter, its more critical for Russia more than ever.

A combine harvests wheat in a field near the village of Suvorovskaya in Stavropol region, Russia, on July 17, 2021. (Eduard Korniyenko/Reuters)

Conversely, Russia needs Chinas financial assistance, as well as its high-tech expertise and consumer products. For example, Chinas UnionPay payment system, which competes with Mastercard and Visa, is being adopted by Russia.

At the same time, the Russia-China axis is strategic in scope, intended to challenge the current liberal order led by the United States in Europe and in the Asia Pacific region, both militarily and economically. Chinas cross-border interbank payment system (CIPS) is designed to replace the SWIFT system. This would provide immunity to U.S. financial sanctions. Other nations wishing to avoid U.S. control over their economies will welcome an alternative to SWIFT, as well.

Conflicting Goals

As noted earlier, on the one hand, China is trying to balance its relationships with the current global leaders, and on the other hand, leverage its partnership with Russia. Some view Russia as the more powerful part of the alliance, but Russias aggression belies its desperation, not its superiority.

One key point with regard to the power relationship is to consider in the China-Russia alliance is where the interests of each partner lie, both in the short and long terms.

In the short term, Russias interests include conquering Ukraine, resuscitating its economy, and possibly conquering former satellites of the former USSR. Chinas interests are deposing U.S. global financial control and possibly taking control of Taiwan.

In the long term, Russia wants to dominate Europe, while China wants to push the United States out of the Asia-Pacific region as well as dominate Europe. That would include, by the way, Russia.

In the meantime, both nations face some similar challenges.

For example, at the macro level, both are facing stiff economic challenges. China desperately needs to shift its economy from debt-based real estate development to domestic consumption. Russias economic implosion is vastly more dramatic and makes it the weaker of the two.

At the micro level, both governments essentially rule their respective countries via dictatorship.

Perhaps not so coincidentally, both have grown more isolated on the world stage. As noted in an earlier post, Chinese leader Xi Jinping hasnt left Beijing in over two years. He may well be facing internal challenges within the CCP. Meanwhile, Putin is holed up in a mountain bunker.

As in all wars, there are outcomes both anticipated and unexpected. But ultimately, it appears that Chinanot Russiahas the most to gain and to lose from the war in Ukraine.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Chinas Tech Companies Amplify Russian Propaganda on Ukraine

Punish them in the marketsand with sanctions

News Analysis

Chinas state media, including its most serious news outlets, the Peoples Daily and China Daily, are amplifying Russian propaganda on the war in Ukraine, including anti-American and anti-North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) narratives.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has gone so far as to compare the situation to Taiwan and justify, in the nationalist tabloid Global Times, an invasion of that island democracy.

The CCP-controlled media in China labels Vladimir Putins invasion a special military operation to stop what Moscows disinformation calls a genocide of Russians in Ukraine and NATO expansion that supposedly threatens Russia and China. This propagandistic twisting of the truth whitewashes Putins bloody and unprovoked war against a sovereign state into something one might expect a doctor to perform.

Here the CCPs disinformation is at its worst, given that Moscow has destroyed multiple hospitals in Ukraine, including childrens and maternity hospitals. Beijing is using its power of censorship to misuse its own tech companies, forcing them to scrub Chinese social media of attempts by regular Chinese citizens to provide alternative perspectives, including by drawing attention to the bombing of these hospitals, along with the destruction of schools and apartment buildings.

Firefighters work on putting out a fire after bombings on the eastern Ukraine town of Chuhuiv on Feb. 24, 2022. Russian armed forces were trying to invade Ukraine from several directions. (Aris Messinis/AFP via Getty Images)

Chinas propaganda apparatus is, perhaps most flagrantly, promoting Russias story that the United States funds a Ukrainian biological weapons lab in the country. A favorite technique of Russian propagandists is to twist the truth of a legitimate story, for example, the statement by U.S. Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland about a biological lab whose materials would be dangerous if captured by Russians, to falsely claim that the lab was engaged in U.S.-sponsored weapons research. This claim is of course false, and Nuland said no such thing.

Central to Chinas take on Russias invasion of Ukraine, from its official statements to its censored and filtered social media, is an anti-American and anti-NATO subtext.

In diplomatic statements and social-media discussions alike, Russias war on Ukraine is rationalized as a necessary step for resisting Western (and mainly U.S.) aggression, wrote Maria Repnikova and Wendy Zhou in the Atlantic on March 11. Chinese officials have never explicitly endorsed Russias invasion, but they have explained this conflict as reverberating from military escalation triggered by the United States.

U.S. officials rightly reply that Moscow is flat-out lying in its propaganda. But Russias lies, when amplified by a global propaganda and disinformation network that is both diverse and layered in its approach, are pervasive enough to confuse the public in many countriesincluding democracies like France, Germany, Britain, Canada, India, Bangladesh, and of course the United Statesto keep them from effective measures that unify the democracies and their allies, and contain Moscow and Beijings violent and global ambitions.

Chinas tech giantsincluding Sina Weibo, Tencent, and ByteDanceare forced by the CCP to participate in the Russian disinformation campaigns by promoting Moscows story and scrubbing any views sympathetic to Ukraine. Many of these companies enjoy large-scale investment from the West, including through passive institutional funds that supposedly subscribe to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) principles of investing.

A man holding a phone walks past a sign of Chinese company ByteDances app TikTok, known locally as Douyin, at the International Artificial Products Expo in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China, on Oct. 18, 2019. (STR/Files/Reuters)

But investors are starting to see the writing on the wall for China. Last week was one of the worst in a year for Chinese stocks and bonds, including the tech stocks that promote Moscow and Beijings destructive propaganda.

Institutional investors in the United States and Europe are drastically reducing their exposure to Chinese assets, many of which could be delisted in the United States due to their failure to comply with Securities and Exchange Commission accounting requirements, or sanctioned for their participation in not only genocide against Uyghurs and others in China, but now for deepening or continuing their engagement with Russias economy.

This is added to downward pressure on Chinese assets due to increasing coronavirus cases, a housing slump, rising commodity prices, and problems for companies seeking to sell shares in Hong Kong. Chinese assets are also negatively affected by a more generalized downward pressure from monetary tightening by the U.S. Federal Reserve, which will pull money out of non-U.S. government assets internationally, and into the safe harbor of U.S. treasuries.

The Fragrant Harbors Hang Seng Index was down 5.6 percent last week, with its tech stocks down 11 percent. Tencent and Alibaba suffered in the trading, which reflects regulatory overreach that is now extending to an increasingly recognized misuse of Chinese companies by the CCP for its propaganda purposes.

Chinese companies listed offshore are under both pressure from the United States, which wants more accounting transparency to the point of that required of all other publicly-listed companies, and Beijing authorities, who ironically see their own tech companies, when listed abroad, as a national security threat.

Along with the Chinas economic opening to Russia, while the rest of the world imposes economic sanctions, the promotion of Moscows propaganda by the CCP should make very clear to which powers the Party and its tech companies have thrown their support: to the dictatorial and bullying regimes globally that commit evil against regular citizens in Ukraine, Taiwan, China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, the United Arab Emirates, and beyond.

It is time for investors to pull out of China and its allies entirely, as their money is being used to fuel the propaganda and war machines of two of historys worst dictators, Xi Jinping and Putin, and other lesser but allied dictators globally. Investment in these countries is increasingly bloody and a risk to democracies everywhere. It must stop.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
An insightful expose on some of the more troubling aspects of anti-Christian discrimination

42min | TV Episode | 2021

We live in some extremely divided times in Western countries. But while many people may know of how ordinary civilians are being affected by required sensitivity courses and vaccine mandates in the United States, others may not be aware of whats going on in the military and how it is being purged of so-called undesirables by certain nefarious forces at the highest levels of power. In one of the latest Crossroads TV episodes, hosted by Joshua Philipp, we can begin to see what exactly is going on in our armed forces.

Philipp first interviews Air Force Reserve Lieutenant Colonel Brandi King. King talks about how in the past, through a series of phone calls and emails, she was constantly warned against trying to submit an order for a religious exemption to getting one of the mandatory vaccines that have been foisted on all military personnel.

The warnings ultimately culminated in her commander threatening her career if she continued to try and avoid taking the mandated shots. And just as with many selfless patriotic service members, although she points out that her own retirement has been jeopardized, she adds but Im not the only one.

Lieutenant Colonel Brandi King describes her ordeal in Crossroads: Pentagons War on Religion. (The Epoch Times)

Another military officer, Air Force Major Kim Bitter, who has served 22 years as a flight nurse, also had her career thrown into jeopardy. Similar to King, she was ordered by her superiors to get a vaccine shot. Since she was leery of getting the experimental jab because of an underlying medical condition, she requested to first confer with her own private physician in order to make sure it was okay.

Bitter was advised by her private doctor that since she had an auto-immune disorder and the vaccines targeted people with compromised immune systems, she should not take any. Even though she had signed medical documents (with her private physicians letterhead and all), the military denied her medical exemption.

She said she then submitted her religious accommodation paperwork almost immediately after the medical request and that was also denied. Her command told her that she only had 72 hours to respond from there, or shed be out-processed. She said that her moral principles prevented her from caving to the governments demands.

Philipp notes that while military law allows for exemptions to getting the vaccine shots, it has had little intention of recognizing this legally protected right. Being forced out of the military or put on Inactive Ready Reserve (IRR) can be devastating to military personnel and cause them to lose their retirements, pensions, and benefits, such as VA medical care.

Crossroads host Joshua Philipp in Crossroads: Pentagons War on Religion. (The Epoch Times)

He also points out that, to date, only two members of the U.S. Marine Corps have been granted vaccine mandate exemptions based on their religious beliefs. Still, even those minute exceptions are currently being called into question by the government.

Oddly, a superior number of medical and administrative exemptions have been granted in the past.

Some of the personnel that are still on active duty volunteered for clinical trials where they were given placebo vaccines, and even though they are protected by administrative exemptions, their status is nonetheless unvaccinated. This is a glaring double-standard since the Department of Defense (DoD) has been stressing the entire time that everyone must be vaccinated. For some reason, faith isnt a good enough reason to qualify for an exemption.

Philipp also reveals how the military has discriminated against Christians specifically, for many years, via the manipulation of legal lingo. More recently, in 2021, the government announced that it was going to begin purging the military of racism and extremism. Although details were sketchy at first, some of the talks that the government advised commanders to give to the personnel under them appeared to be increasingly targeted in a discriminating fashion at those who are religious.

Attorney Mike Berry, who represents a number of military personnel, testified before the U.S. House Services Committee that he discovered a projection slide found in a DoD training manual, that categorizes both Catholics and Evangelical Christians as religious extremists within the armed forces. On the slide, these two were right alongside terrorist groups such as Hamas and Al-Qaeda, as well as the Ku Klux Klan.

Crossroads: Pentagons War on Religion. (Epoch Times)

The episode goes on to reveal how many whistleblowers began to step forward and reveal that the DoD itself may have been pushing for discrimination under the guise of anti-discrimination, as well as forcing anti-American indoctrination on military personnel.

Details began to emerge that pointed to Marxist-fueled critical race theory (CRT) as the origin of these discriminatory forceswith all of the common catchphrases weve heard before, such as systemic racism and white privilege. Meanwhile, books that literally discriminate against whites, such as White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo, have allegedly become required reading.

In the past, these types of hyper-divisive tactics have been utilized under communism. But instead of pitting the social classes of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat against one another, race and gender are used by the new communists as primary divisors. In other wordsits the same old game with different names. Philipp goes on to delve into how history is linked with much of the chaos transpiring in modern society.

This episode is backed up by both factual information and insightful interviews. One of the more scary correlations about all of this is how both the public and private sectors are pushing not only physically invasive mandates on our bodies (i.e. shots) but also psychological mandates on our minds (required CRT training, sensitivity training, etc).

Crossroads: Pentagons War on Religion

Starring: Joshua Philipp

Running Time: 42 minutes

MPAA Rating: Not rated

Release Date: February 20, 2022

Rated: 5 stars out of 5

Watch on Epoch Cinemavisit the link here.

Follow EpochTV on social media:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EpochTVus

Twitter: https://twitter.com/EpochTVus

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
The RCMP has charged Wanping Zheng with "breach of trust" for using his status as a Canadian Space Agency engineer to negotiate on behalf of a Chinese aerospace company. (Screenshot via YouTube)

CSIS Warned Canadas Space Agency About Engineer Now Charged in Relation to China

Canadas spy agency repeatedly warned the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) about one of its former engineers who now faces charges for allegedly using his position to negotiate on behalf of a Chinese aerospace company, according to new court documents obtained by CBC News.

The RCMP said in a statement on Dec. 8, 2021, that its investigation led to a charge of breach of trust against Wanping Zheng, who acted outside of his duties at the federal space agency when he helped a Chinese aerospace company negotiate agreements on installing satellite station facilities in Iceland in 2018.

The investigation was launched in October 2019 by the RCMPs Integrated National Security Enforcement team, whose mandate is to counter foreign interference, including activities carried out on behalf of foreign actors that constitute a risk to Canadas economy and institutions.

New court filings show that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) had warned the CSA on multiple occasions about Zheng, and had even refused to give a presentation to the CSA knowing that Zheng would be present, CBC reported on March 13.

An affidavit used to obtain search warrants on Zhengs phone and emails shows that CSIS sent three warnings to the space agency regarding his reliability status, which refers to a personnel security status within the federal government that is required before an employee can gain access to certain protected information, assets, or work sites.

The first warning from CSIS came in 2015, but the agency didnt provide details about its concerns. The same year, CSIS also asked the agency if Zheng would have had access to information related to certain CSA intellectual property.

The court files say CSIS routinely reports on anomalies or irregularities without passing on specific details.

The purpose of this procedure is to trigger an internal or police investigation without revealing or compromising their intelligence gathering techniques, the affidavit says.

The federal intelligence agency followed with two more warnings in the spring of 2016.

In the following year, CSA renewed Zhengs security clearance for two years rather than the usual 10 years as part of an effort to monitor Zhengs compliance with its internal policies, the court documents say.

When concerns about this individuals private activities outside of their employment arose, the CSA took actions, including an internal inquiry and restricting access to information, CSA spokesperson Andrea Matte told CBC, adding the agency would not comment further on the matter while the case is before the court.

In September 2017, CSIS refused to give a presentation at the CSA when it learned that Zheng would be attending. The incident eventually led to an internal investigation of the engineer in 2018, CBC reported.

According to the court documents, while Zheng was still working at the agency, CSA technicians had noticed the presence of unauthorized software from a foreign company. At least one secure file transfer service and a messaging application were identified on the computer, which violated CSAs internal policy, the documents say.

In September 2019, the CSA reported its suspicion to the RCMP that Zheng had transmitted protected information to a third party. Zheng resigned in December that year after 26 years with the agency.

None of the allegations against Zheng have been proven in court. He is scheduled to return to court this week.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas testifies before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington on May 26, 2021. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Deportations Plunge Under Biden

Deportation rates have fallen dramatically under President Joe Biden, with the administration removing far fewer illegal aliens in 2021 than were deported under President Donald Trump.

In the roughly one-year period between October 2020 and September 2021, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) deported just 59,011 illegal immigrants, according to newly released data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), an arm of DHS.

Thats down 68 percent from 2020, when the federal government removed over 185,000 illegal aliens under Trump-era immigration rules. The drop is even more pronounced compared to Trumps 2019 deportation rates: that year, DHS deported more than 250,000 illegal aliens.

The significant drop comes as Border Patrol agents along the southern border find themselves inundated with unprecedented levels of illegal immigration.

There can be no doubt, the ICE removal report shows that President Bidens immigration executive orders have all but abolished ICE, Preston Huennekens, government relations manager at the Federation for American Immigration Reform, told The Epoch Times in an email. Bidens policies have eviscerated ICEs ability to do its job, endangering American citizens and prioritizing radical politics over the rule of law.

Biden has taken a far more laissez-faire approach to border security than Trump. He halted construction on Trumps border wall almost immediately after taking office, leaving construction materials that had already been paid for by the federal government sitting unused along the border. At the same time, he reduced the number of border agents, leaving the remaining agents struggling to stop the unprecedented inflow of illegal immigrants into the country.

He also overturned Trumps Remain in Mexico policy, which required that those seeking asylum in the United States remain in Mexico until their asylum applications were approved.

Critics say the record levels of illegal immigration are a result of the Biden administrations relaxed enforcement measures.

While estimates of how many illegal aliens have entered the country since Biden took office vary, U.S. Customs and Border Protection data show that about 2 million people illegally crossed the border in 2021, a nearly fourfold increase from illegal crossings a year earlier.

In a March 11 statement, DHS defended itself from charges of failing to enforce immigration law, saying that it has focused on removing dangerous felons and other criminals who pose a risk to society.

In January and February 2021, ICE issued interim enforcement priorities, focusing its personnel and resources on aggravated felons and other serious criminals, the statement says.

On September 30, 2021, Secretary [Alejandro] Mayorkas released updated enforcement priorities to better focus the Departments resources on the apprehension and removal of noncitizens who are a threat to our national security, public safety, and border security and advance the interests of justice by ensuring a case-by-case assessment of whether an individual poses a threat.

For the first time, enforcement priorities now require an assessment of the individual and the totality of the facts and circumstances to ensure resources are focused most effectively on those who pose a threat.

Many illegal aliens who are apprehended by Border Patrol agents have been released into the United States after being processed, a policy labeled catch and release.

According to an October 2021 letter by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), in the January-through-August period in 2021, roughly 500,000 illegal aliens were released into the United States after being detained by border security under the catch and release policy.

For Americans living in the border region, the massive uptick in illegal immigration has had a pronounced effect on security.

Border towns have faced constant dangers from drug and human traffickers, and encounters with these criminals have left several Americans dead.

In a statement to The Epoch Times, John Ladd, an Arizona-based rancher, discussed the measures hes had to take to protect his family and property.

Weve got a gun at every door in the house, Ladd said. We had to go through all that again with the familyyou better understand if youre going to shoot somebody, the consequences, and you better make sure youre really in danger.

Republicans have accused the Biden administration of enabling this humanitarian crisis by its attitude toward enforcing immigration law.

The cause of all of this is simple, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) stated during an October 2021 press conference. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris refuse to enforce the law.

Cruz and other critics of the administrations immigration policy have demanded that Biden reverse his immigration policies and restart construction on the southern border wall, ending the policy of catch and release, and reinstating the Remain in Mexico asylum-seeker policy.
A patrol car with the Department of Homeland Security logo in Washington on July 27, 2017. (Paul J. Richards/AFP via Getty Images)

DHS Collected Americans Financial Records in Bulk: Sen. Wyden

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has collected Americans financial records in bulk, according to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).

Wyden revealed the existence of a DHS financial surveillance program in a March 8 letter to the departments inspector general, calling for an investigation into the previously unknown activities.

Wyden said he has recently learned that Homeland Security Investigations (HSI)a law enforcement component of DHSwas operating an indiscriminate and bulk surveillance program that swept up millions of financial records about Americans.

After my staff contacted HSI about the program in January 2022, HSI immediately terminated the program, Wyden wrote to DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari.

The senator said his office was briefed by HSI on Feb. 18the first time Congress had been told about the program.

HSI told my staff that it used custom summonses to obtain approximately six million records about money transfers above $500, to or from Arizona, California, New Mexico, Texas, and Mexico, Wyden wrote. HSI obtained these records using a total of eight customs summonses, which it sent to Western Union and Maxitransfers Corporation (Maxi), demanding records for a six-month period following the order.

Wyden said the HSI financial surveillance activities are highly problematic for numerous reasons, including the fact that only eight summonses were used to obtain more than 6 million records.

The customs summonses authority only permits the government to seek records that are relevant to an investigation, he said.

HSI should have known that this authority could not be used to conduct bulk surveillance, particularly after the Department of Justice inspector general harshly criticized the Drug Enforcement Administration in 2019 for using subpoenas to conduct a bulk surveillance program involving records of international phone calls.

Wyden also said the HSI database allows hundreds of law enforcement agencies unfettered access to the financial records without any court supervision.

The fact that DHS immediately shuttered the program after being contacted by the senator further suggests a lack of internal oversight, he said.

I write to request that you thoroughly investigate the program to determine whether HSIs surveillance of Americans was consistent with DHS policy, statutory law, and the United States Constitution, the letter reads.

Reacting to Wydens revelations, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) called the HSI program blatantly illegal.

This practice presents real-world harms to people who, for good reason, would like to keep private the transfer of money and the identifying information that goes with it, EFF, an international nonprofit digital rights group, said in a March 10 statement.

Sharing financial and other personally identifying records of domestic violence survivors, asylum seekers, and human rights activists could expose them to danger, particularly given that TRAC allows hundreds of law enforcement agencies unfettered access to these records.

EFF agreed with Wydens call for an investigation into the program, noting that the 6 million-plus records should be immediately purged. It also said companies such as Western Union and Maxi should stand up to the government and protect consumer privacy.

Companies like Western Union and Maxi should stop caving to these overbroad administrative subpoenas for sensitive customer information by filing motions to quash. These administrative subpoenas are government requestsnot official warrants, signed by a judge, that legally compel the company to hand over all of this data, EFF stated.

Companies should answer only when compelled by law to do so. Until then, they have an obligation to protect their customers information, and that obligation should extend to protections from overly-broad and easily rebuttable government fishing expeditions.

Western Union offered the following statement when contacted by The Epoch Times: Western Union is committed to protecting the personal data of our customers, as well as combatting serious criminal activity such as money laundering, human trafficking, and human smuggling.

We also actively work with law enforcement agencies globally to promote privacy principles while enabling law enforcement to combat crime. We are unable to comment further on law enforcement investigations.

Maxi didnt respond by press time to an email from The Epoch Times seeking comment.
Elon Musk, founder and chief engineer of SpaceX, speaks at the 2020 Satellite Conference and Exhibition in Washington on March 9, 2020. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Elon Musk Faces Legal Challenge Over Claim That His Tesla Financing Tweet Was True

Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk may soon be heading for a courtroom battle with company shareholders who claim that they have lost billions of dollars because of Musks 2018 tweet on taking Tesla private.

A ruling in favor of the shareholders would allow them to focus at trial solely on connecting Musks allegedly false statement to their stock market loss.

Investors are asking the district judge to decide on key legal issues by himself, without putting them to a jury.

Meanwhile, U.S. District Judge Edward Chen is skeptical about Musks claim that the tweet was true.

Musk has defended himself, saying Saudi Arabias sovereign wealth fund had agreed to support his attempt to take the company private, and hence his tweet about it was true.

Last week, during a hearing, Musk asked a federal judge to nullify a subpoena from securities regulators and throw out a 2018 court agreement in which he had to have someone pre-approve his posts on Twitter.

Musk lawyer Alex Spiro contends that the subpoena from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has no basis in law and the SEC cannot take action on Musks tweets without court authorization.

Spiro has said that shareholders are over-thinking the 2018 tweet. I do worry about dissecting it too much, he told Chen, adding that context matters.

Musk is rich enough that he could have funded the going-private transaction himself, Spiro said.

The SEC has in the past denied issuing subpoenas in the Musk Twitter case.

Musks August 2018 tweet indicating that he might take Tesla private and that he had funding secured led to a course reversal for the stock, making the price volatile.

Musks erratic tweet led to intense regulatory scrutiny, civil lawsuit, $40 million fine and cost him Teslas chairmanship for three years.

By Bibhu Pattnaik

 2021 The Epoch Times. The Epoch Times does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
EU Approves Ban on Luxury Items to Russia in Conjunction With G-7

The European Union approved on March 14 a ban on exports to Russia as part of its fourth round of sanctions in response to Russias invasion of Ukraine.

The new sanctions come as the United States and the other industrial nations comprising the Group of SevenCanada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdomalong with the European Union, have said they intend to strip Russia of its most favored nation status and will work to deny the country the benefits of international trade.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced on March 11 the fourth package of restrictive measures against Russia, which also include a total ban on exports of luxury goods to Russia.

The EU luxury goods sanctions are expected to hit France and Italy the hardest, as the sanctions are focused on designer brands favored by Russian elites.

Those who sustain Putins war machine should no longer be able to enjoy their lavish lifestyle while bombs fall on innocent people in Ukraine, said von der Leyen, and added they were taking further measures to drain resources [Russia] uses to finance this barbaric war.

The EU sanctions package includes a ban on exports of luxury cars worth over 50,000 euros ($54,760).

Several European carmakers had already voluntarily suspended sales to Russia due to public outcry over the conflict.

The measure would apply to automobile models from the companies listed above, as well as Ferrari. The export ban would also include boats and planes, as well as chairlifts and motorbikes worth more than 5,000 euros ($5,474).

Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Volkswagen AG (parent company of Porsche and Audi) halted their vehicle exports to Russia at the beginning of March.

Luxury car exports to Russia represent about 2 percent of global sales for Europes major luxury vehicle brands.

The European carmakers hope that robust global demand will compensate for the loss of exports to Russia.

Luxury vessels owned by Russian oligarchs in Europe have also come under scrutiny as individual sanctions against them have ramped up.

The European Union is Russias largest trading partner, and imports from Russia to Europe are worth approximately 94.1 billion euros ($100 billion) according to the United Nations Comtrade international trade statistics database.

The EU trade restrictions were announced in conjunction with a new round of American sanctions that are expected to impact the Russian economy.

The White House said that the United States is taking more steps in a bid to further isolate Russia from the global financial system and will act to revoke Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) with Russia

However, officially stripping Russia of this status will require a vote by Congress, which is expected sometime between March 1418.

This action will demote Russia to the same trade status as North Korea and Cuba, countries the United States also excludes from PNTR.

The Biden administration issued an executive order to ban the export of luxury American goods, including high end-watches, luxury vehicles, high-end apparel, high-end alcohol, jewelry, and other goods frequently purchased by Russian elites.

The elites who sustain Putins war machine should no longer be able to reap the gains of this system and squander the resources of the Russian people, the White House said.

The U.S. sanctions will also prevent the importing of goods from several targeted sectors of Russias economy, levy individual penalties on Russian elites and their family members, and ensure that Russia cannot obtain financing from global financial institutions.

The executive order also prohibits imports from Russia of products such as alcoholic beverages, seafood, and non-industrial diamonds from Russian state-owned diamond companies such as Alrosa.
First NATO Country Calls for No-Fly Zone in Ukraine

Estonias Parliament has called for the creation of a no-fly zone in Ukraine as Russias air attacks continue, becoming the first NATO member state to do so.

The Riigikogu (Parliament of Estonia) asks the U.N. member states to take immediate steps to establish a no-fly zone in order to prevent massive civilian casualties in Ukraine, the Parliament stated on March 14, noting that it expresses its support to the defenders and the people of the state of Ukraine in their fight against the Russian Federation that has launched a criminal war.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, when asked about whether a no-fly zone should be implemented, told reporters that its a matter that as you know has been analyzed by a number of countries that considered that possibility as a risk of escalation that could create a global conflict.

We need to be prudent  even if I understand the dramatic appeal of the Ukrainian government, Guterres said.

Since the start of the conflict on Feb. 24, Ukrainian officials have repeatedly called for a no-fly zone over the country. However, top NATO and White House officials have said that there has been no consideration for a no-fly zone in Ukraine, as that would involve U.S. or NATO planes shooting down Russian ones.

The Biden administration stated that such a move could provoke the Kremlin to further escalate attacks, including nuclear strikes.

Were going to continue to stand together with our allies in Europe and send an unmistakable message. We will defend every single inch of NATO territory with the full might of the united and galvanized NATO, U.S. President Joe Biden said last week.

The United States and NATO will not fight a war against Russia in Ukraine, because a direct conflict between NATO and Russia is World War III, something we must strive to prevent, according to Biden.

On March 14, battles continued around many of Ukraines main cities, including the capital Kyiv. Ukraine said it would try to evacuate civilians through 10 humanitarian corridors on March 14.

Russia denies targeting civilians, describing its actions as a special operation to demilitarize Ukraine. Ukraine and Western allies have called this a baseless pretext for Russias invasion of the democratic country of 44 million people.

Front-line states, such as Poland, which has welcomed more than half of the total number of people fleeing Ukraine; Slovakia; Romania; Hungary; and Moldova have taken in the vast majority of the refugees, some of whom have then headed farther west.

Polands border guard stated that about 1.76 million people had entered the country since the fighting started, with 18,400 arriving during the early hours of March 14.

Reuters contributed to this report.
An employee of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) receives her COVID-19 vaccination at a site opened by the LAUSD for its employees in Los Angeles, Calif., on Feb. 17, 2021. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images)

Former Employees Allege School District Denied COVID-19 Vaccine Religious Exemptions

POMONA, Calif.More than 20 former Hacienda La Puente Unified School District (HLPUSD) employees, all of whom objected to the districts employee coronavirus vaccination mandate, are suing the district, alleging that they were wrongfully denied exemptions on religious grounds.

The plaintiffs Pomona Superior Court lawsuit alleges religious discrimination, harassment, and retaliation. They seek unspecified compensatory and punitive damages in the amended suit brought on March 10.

The sincerity of an employees stated religious belief is usually not in dispute and is generally presumed or easily established, the suit states. Employers are not and should not be in the business of deciding whether a person holds religious beliefs for the proper reasons.

Instead of following the law to approve the plaintiffs bids for religious exemptions and reasonable accommodations, the school district denied their requests and terminated them, the suit states.

An HLPUSD representative couldnt be immediately reached for comment.

The Board of Education on Sept. 23, 2021, approved a resolution requiring, in part, that all district employees report their COVID-19 vaccination status to human resources and that as of Oct. 16, 2021, employees would only be allowed on campus if they were fully vaccinated and submitted proof of being so.

The resolution allowed exemptions for medical and religious reasons with the provision those exempted tested weekly.

The school board listed 18 misleading and/or exaggerated factors to support the resolution mandating that its employees be vaccinated to safely work within the district, signaling the boards contempt for employees who would seek religious exemptions to the mandate, the suit states.

Two of those examples included the boards finding that COVID-19 vaccines available in the United States have proven safe and highly effective at curbing the spread of the coronavirus as well as another conclusion that the coronavirus continues to pose a serious health risk, especially to individuals who are not fully vaccinatedneither of which are supported by scientific data, the suit states.

The plaintiffs submitted requests for religious accommodation, maintaining that accepting or receiving any of the three currently available COVID-19 vaccines would be a violation of their sincerely held religious beliefs, in part because all of the vaccines are developed and produced from aborted fetal cell lines, the suit states.

Plaintiffs sincerely held religious beliefs compel them to abstain from accepting or injecting any of these products into their bodies, regardless of the perceived benefits or rationales, according to the complaint.

Each plaintiff received a denial letter from the HLPUSD that states in part, The purpose of this correspondence is to inform you that the district has considered your request and supporting materials and hereby denies your request for exemption.

The HLPUSD further stated in its denial letters that accommodations could not be provided to the plaintiffs due to the undue hardship presented by the requests, but the district completely fails to provide factual evidence to support a claim of undue hardship, the suit states.

Further evidence of HLPUSDs discrimination with these denials is present in HLPUSDs turning a blind eye to the current state of the science, which clearly indicates that vaccinated individuals spread COVID-19 just as unvaccinated individuals, the suit states.

The districts malicious and reckless actions are causing intense undue stress for its former employees, who were forced to choose between keeping their jobs, which they loved, and honoring their most deeply held religious beliefs about life, purpose and death, the suit states.

The plaintiffs in the suit are Thuy Monge, Jamie Askus, Alice Acevedo, Ida Aguayo, Jose Araiza, Marisol Arevalo, Diana Ayala, Maechelle Brown, Noemi Covarrubias, Desteny Flores, Elizabeth Hernandez, Heidi Holguin, Melissa Lomenzo, Vanessa Lozano, Dora Luna, Melissa Lucht, Romelia Mancillas, Benny Morales, Miranda Noriega, Melissa Ramon, Ashley Smith, Matthew Solorzano, Kerry Stavert-Wooten, Brittney Strand, Marysol Thomas and Sean Van Gundy.

The suit doesnt state the jobs the plaintiffs held in the district.
A Fox News channel sign is seen at the News Corp. building in New York on March 20, 2019. (Kevin Hagen/Getty Images)

Fox News Reporter Seriously Injured While Covering Ukraine War: Official

Fox News correspondent Benjamin Hall was seriously injured during an incident near Kyiv on Monday, said Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott in a statement.

Earlier today, our correspondent Benjamin Hall was injured while newsgathering outside of Kyiv in Ukraine, Scott said in a statement. We have a minimal level of details right now, but Ben is hospitalized and our teams on the ground are working to gather additional information as the situation quickly unfolds.

Irina Venediktova, Ukraines prosecutor general, posted a photo of a Fox News reporters press badge on Facebook and said that Hall is in intensive care under medical supervision after he was injured earlier Monday.

Hall, she added, was not at a Ukrainian military facility when he was seriously wounded and accused Russian forces of targeting civilians. Its not clear if Hall was injured by Russian or Ukrainian forces.

The safety of our entire team of journalists in Ukraine and the surrounding regions is our top priority and of the utmost importance, Scott also said in her statement. This is a stark reminder for all journalists who are putting their lives on the line every day to deliver the news from a war zone.

Hall, who has three young daughters, has been reporting on the war from Kyiv for several weeks, Fox News said.

This is news that we hate to pass along to you, but its obviously what happens sometimes in the middle of a conflict, Fox anchor John Roberts said during a broadcast on Monday. A Fox News journalist has been injured while news gathering outside of Kyiv. Very few details, but teams on the ground are working as hard as they can to try to gather more information.

Roberts, who did not name the journalist, added: A reminder, of course, this is in a war zone, that information changes very quickly and we are working as hard as possible to get the best information that we possibly can and get all the details on what has happened. The safety of our Fox team, of course, is of the utmost importance, and our highest priority.

Several other Fox News personalities responded to Halls injury.

Please say a few prayers for our [Fox News colleague [Hall], who was injured today while news gathering outside of Kyiv. He is hospitalized right now, and we have no further details at the moment, wrote Bill Melugin on Twitter. Shannon Bream, another Fox host, added that she is praying fervently for [Hall].

Other details about the incident were not clear. Russian officials have not made any public comments following Venediktovas social media post.

On Sunday, American journalist and former New York Times staffer Brent Renaud was killed in Irpin near Kyiv, officials said. Another journalist was reportedly injured in the incident.
Full Force of NATO to Respond if Russia Attacks Poland, Other Allies: Sullivan

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Sunday that a Russian attack on Poland or any other NATO ally would be met with a full force response, with his remarks coming after Russian missiles struck a military training facility in Ukraine around a dozen miles from the Polish border.

Sullivan made the remarks on CBS Face the Nation program when asked whether any strike into Polish territory or airspace would be viewed by the United States as an attack on the NATO alliance.

If there is a military attack on NATO territory it would cause the invocation of Article 5, and we would bring the full force of the NATO alliance to bear in responding to it, Sullivan said. The Article 5 provision is that an attack on one NATO ally is considered an attack on all.

Pressed on whether an accidental errant shot would be treated as an attack and trigger the same kind of response, Sullivan replied, Look, all I will say is that if Russia attacks, fires upon, takes a shot at NATO territory, the NATO alliance would respond to that.

Smoke rises over Irpin, north of Kyiv, Ukraine, on March 12, 2022. (Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images)

Russia, for its part, has warned that it considers arms shipments from NATO countries into Ukraine as legitimate targets.

We warned the United States that the orchestrated pumping of weapons from a number of countries is not just a dangerous move, it is a move that turns these convoys into legitimate targets, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told Russian state-run media on Saturday, describing the weapons corridors as a thoughtless transfer that would bring consequences.

Action followed that warning when a Russian airstrike on the Yavoriv military training area in western Ukraine early Sunday left at least 35 people dead, according to the Lviv regional administration.

Lviv regional military administration chief Maksym Kozytsky said in a Facebook statement that around 30 missiles were fired from Russian warplanes and hit the military base, which is about 12 miles away from the Polish border.

Following the strike on Yavoriv, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky reiterated his plea to NATO for a no-fly zone.

If you dont close our sky, it is only a matter of time before Russian rockets fall on your territory, on NATO territory, Zelensky said in a video address released shortly after midnight.

Western powers have repeatedly rejected imposing a no-fly zone over Ukraine, saying such a move risked pulling NATO into the conflict directly and potentially sparking World War Three.

They insist, however, that NATO allies will defend every inch of the territory of its allies, a pledge Sullivan highlighted in his remarks, as did a senior British official on Monday.

Britains Sajid Javid, UK Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, told Sky News on Monday morning that if even a single toecap of a Russian soldier crossed into NATO territory, it would mean war.

Weve been very clear even before the border that if there was an attack on any NATO country, even if just a single toecap of a Russian soldier steps into NATO territory, then it would be war with Russia and NATO would respond.

British intelligence said Monday that over 2.5 million refugees have been forced from their homes as a result of Russias invasion of Ukraine.

Indiscriminate Russian shelling and air attacks are causing widespread destruction, it said in a March 14 update, which cited the U.N. as saying that there have been 1,663 civilian casualties since the offensive was launched on Feb. 24.

As with previous such estimates, the true figures are likely to be significantly higher and will continue to climb as long as Russian operations continue, the UK Ministry of Defense added.

Russia rejects the term invasion or war in reference to the conflict, instead calling it a special military operation to disarm Ukraines military and oust the countrys political leaders, who it claims are dangerous nationalists.

Jack Phillips contributed to this report.
Giant Asian Invasive Spider Likely to Spread Along East Coast: Study

The Joro spider, an invasive arachnid species that is native to eastern Asia and first spread across Georgia in 2013, is expected to colonize through most of the East Coast, according to a new study.

The good news is that the bright yellow spider, which is about the size of a childs hand and has blue-black markings, is mostly harmless to people and pets due to their fangs often being too short to puncture human skin, researchers at the University of Georgia (UGA) said. They also normally dont bite unless threatened.

People should try to learn to live with them, Andy Davis, a research scientist and one of the authors behind a recent study about the invasive species told UGA Today, a publication by the university. If theyre literally in your way, I can see taking a web down and moving them to the side, but theyre just going to be back next year.

Benjamin Frick, a co-author of the study who works as a researcher in the School of Ecology, recommended people not to be violent toward the spider as it isnt necessarily bad that they are spreading along the East Coast.

The Joro spider, a large spider native to East Asia, is seen in Johns Creek, Ga., on Oct. 24, 2021. (Alex Sanz/AP Photo)

Theres no point in excess cruelty where its not needed, Frick said. You have people with saltwater guns shooting them out of the trees and things like that, and thats really just unnecessary.

Davis pointed out that the spiders, which predominantly hail from Japan, appear to not have much of an effect on local food webs or ecosystems and they also may serve as an additional food source for native predators like birds.

According to the study, Joro spidersor Trichonephila clavatacolonize much of Japan, which has a similar climate to East Coast regions and is a contributing factor to the spider being able to survive and spread.

Researchers explained that, unlike its closely-related species, the golden silk spider, which has already successfully invaded the same region over the last 160 yearsthe Joro spider has about double the metabolism and a 77 percent higher heart rate, making Joros capable of spreading further north and withstand brief freezes that would kill off its cousins.

A golden silk spider (Nephila-clavipes) is seen at Juan Diaz mangrove in Panama City, Fla., on March 9, 2022. (Luis Acosta/AFP via Getty Images)

It looks like the Joros could probably survive throughout most of the Eastern Seaboard herewhich is pretty sobering, Davis said.

Joros also have a unique way of travel, called ballooning or kiting, a process in which spiders use their silks to carry them across the wind to new locations. This ability has enabled them to spread fast across the state of Georgia, but it isnt the only reason, as humans also factor into the equation.

The potential for these spiders to be spread through peoples movements is very high, Frick said, noting that the chances of the spiders climbing into a car or into luggage is quite high.

Anecdotally, right before we published this study, we got a report from a grad student at UGA who had accidentally transported one of these to Oklahoma, he added.

It is unclear how the spiders exactly traveled from east Asia, but researchers say the first Joros likely arrived in the United States via stowaways on shipping containers. The presence of the Joro spiders golden web was hard not to notice in Georgia, as it took over yards all over the state last year, unnerving some residents.

From NTD News
Let me begin by making my prejudice perfectly clear.

In the late summer of 1963, shortly before I entered Staunton Military Academy (SMA) as a 7th grader 200 miles from my home, my mother took me from Boonville, North Carolina, into Winston-Salem to watch the recently released movie Lawrence of Arabia. My five younger siblings remained at home, and spending this time alone with Mom marks this event as a special moment from my childhood.

T.E. Lawrence in 1918. (Public Domain)

Director David Leans film blew me away and remains one of the touchstones of my childhood. Scenes from that movie, which starred Peter OToole as Lawrence, somehow implanted themselves into my brain and being. When I reached SMA, I checked out Lawrences Revolt in the Desert from the library and read it twice. I even wrote to Mom and asked her to send me a box of dates, such as Lawrence might have eaten. How she found this exotic fruit in rural North Carolina at that time I have no idea, but I received a package of dates in the mail.

Not only have I since seen that movie multiple times, but Ive also read Lawrences Seven Pillars of Wisdom, The Mint, and his anthology of short poems, Minorities, the latter two published long after his death. Ive devoured as well several biographies written about this man.

So be warned: I consider Lawrence one of the most remarkable figures of the 20th century. Heres why.

Preliminary Preparation

Thomas Edward Lawrence (18881935) was, like his four brothers, illegitimate. His father, Sir Thomas Chapman, left his wife and family to live with Sarah Junner, a governess whom Chapman had gotten pregnant. Adopting the name Lawrence in an attempt to conceal this scandal, the family left Ireland for Oxford, England, where Lawrence later entered high school and eventually studied history at Jesus College. From 1910 to 1914, he worked as an archaeologist for the British Museum in the Middle East.

During adolescence and youth, Lawrence underwent self-imposed training and discipline which, unbeknownst to him, would later serve him well during World War I. He practiced a sort of asceticism, going long periods without food and toughening his body. He took extended bicycle trips, venturing into France and then into the Middle East. He studied military historyhis thesis for Oxford University was on crusader castles in Syria. His archeology work at Carchemish (on the border between Syria and Turkey today) made him conversant in Arabic, and because he asked so many questions of the workmen on the site, he also gained a solid understanding of Arab culture and its tribal structures.

T.E. Lawrence at Rabigh, north of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in 1917. (Public Domain)

As a result, when World War I erupted, Lawrence had inadvertently created in himself a special set of skills that would prove invaluable to the British war effort and to the Arabs desire to shake off the Turkish yoke.

The War Years

Once war had erupted in Europe in 1914, Lawrence joined the army, was commissioned a lieutenant, and was posted in December of that year to Cairo. There he worked for two years, chiefly as a map officer. In 1915, two of Lawrences younger brothers died in the fighting in Europe. Feeling increasingly guilty for sitting out the war in an office, he jumped at the chance to travel to Arabia and appraise the newborn Arab revolt against the Turks, allies of the Germans. Eventually, Lawrence became a permanent adviser to Sherif Feisal, a leader of this uprising.

From this partnership came the military exploits that destroyed or pinned down thousands of Turkish troops and that gave Lawrence his fame from the postwar years right up to the present day. With no previous military experience in the field, he proved himself a master of tactics and guerrilla warfare, blowing up scores of bridges and railways, and striking hard and fast with small bands of men at Turkish encampments and outposts and then retreating again into the desert.

In one brilliant maneuverhe started with a handful of men and picked up others as he advancedhe marched on the port city of Akaba on the Red Sea, destroyed a Turkish command near that city, and captured Akaba. On Oct. 1, 1918, he and the Arabs under his command entered Damascus along with British Gen. Edmund Allenby.

Fame and Anonymity

After the wars end, Lawrence fought to secure for the Arabs the freedom he had promised them during the revolt, promises he knew at the time might be impossible to keep. In the Sykes-Picot Treaty of 1916, Britain and France had divvied up large parts of the Middle East, leaving no room for postwar Arab independence. After this diplomatic failure, Lawrence would go on to write Seven Pillars of Wisdom, and then join the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the Tank Corps using pseudonyms.

Book cover of Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

He chose to hide his identity, not very successfully, because of the tremendous fame and acclaim that descended on him after the war. American journalist and photographer Lowell Thomas had met Lawrence in Jerusalem in 1918, conducted interviews, taken many pictures, and promoted his reputation first in America and then in Britain with his lantern slide shows and speeches. Thus was born Lawrence of Arabia.

All his life, Lawrence had a love for speed and for machines that could deliver that speed. On May 19, 1935, soon after his retirement from the RAF, he died of head injuries incurred while riding one of his motorcycles, a Brough Superior SS100. Interestingly, his death helped inspire one of his attending physicians, Dr. Hugh Cairns, to research and develop helmets for motorcycle riders.

A 20th-Century Icon

Following his death, Lawrence remained a figure of fame and romance. As Scott Anderson of Smithsonian Magazine wrote: Today, T.E. Lawrence remains one of the most iconic figures of the early 20th century. His life has been the subject of at least three moviesincluding one considered a masterpieceover 70 biographies, several plays and innumerable articles, monographs and dissertations. His wartime memoir, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, translated into more than a dozen languages, remains in print nearly a full century after its first publication.

Theatrical poster for Lawrence of Arabia. (Columbia Pictures)

Lawrence was an imperfect man. For the rest of his life, for example, he bore the physical and mental scars of the war, including a beating and possible rape by Turks who didnt recognize their captive. Doubtless other ghosts, like his illegitimacy and his dissatisfaction with the treatment of the Arabs following the war, plagued him as well.

Yet as John E. Mack tells us in his book A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T.E. Lawrence, Lawrence was also a man of many talents. For example, he writes that Lawrence enabled others to make use of abilities they had always possessed but, until their acquaintance with him, had failed to realize. Mack later adds that his fundamental importance for human history, and his lasting ability to influence the lives of others, derives as much from the example of what he was as from what he did.

Perhaps these same qualities inspired Winston Churchill to offer this eulogy for his friend Lawrence: I deem him one of the greatest beings alive in our time. I do not see his like elsewhere. I fear whatever our need we shall never see his like again.
Benedict Rogers, co-founder and chief executive of the UK-based human rights group Hong Kong Watch, speaks at the National Press Club in Washington on July 15, 2019. (Lynn Lin/The Epoch Times)

Hong Kong Threatens British Rights Activist With National Security Law

The UK-based human rights group Hong Kong Watch (HKW) has become the first foreign entity targeted under the new national security law that China has imposed on Hong Kong.

In a recent letter sent to Benedict Rogers, the co-founder and chief executive of the British NGO, Hong Kong police accused the group of seriously interfering in local affairs and jeopardizing [the] national security of China. HKW disclosed the formal warning in a March 14 statement.

This makes Hong Kong Watch one of the first foreign organizations to be targeted under the draconian law, the statement reads, referencing the contentious national security law that Beijing imposed on Hong Kong in mid-2020.

The new law grants Beijing sweeping powers to punish what authorities broadly define as subversion, secession, collusion with foreign forces, and terrorism with up to life in jail. It also empowers the police to request that internet service providers delete information on national security cases.

Law enforcement warned in the letter and a subsequent email that HKW could be fined HK$100,000 ($12,800) or its chief executive could face a three-year jail term. They asked the NGO to take down its website within 72 hours and cease any activities in contravention of the law.

Should you fail to do so, further action will be instituted against you and Hong Kong Watch without further notice, the police stated.

Rogers said the letter exemplified the danger of Hong Kongs national security law, but vowed to continue to be a voice for the people of Hong Kong.

Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam at a press conference in Hong Kong on Dec. 20, 2021. (Vincent Yu/AP Photo)

Police confirmed that authorities had blocked HKWs website in the Chinese-ruled city, as previously reported in early February, stoking concerns of internet censorship.

Response

The latest message from Hong Kong authorities drew a stern response from politicians.

Chris Patten, Hong Kongs last British governor, told HKW, This is another disgraceful example of Mr. Putins friends in Beijing and their quislings in Hong Kong trying not only to stamp out freedom of expression and information in Hong Kong but also to internationalize their campaign against evidence, freedom, and honesty.

The UKs Lord Alton of Liverpool called the move a direct assault on freedom of expression worldwide and a shocking attempt to intimidate and threaten a foreign advocacy group for Hong Kong.

I hope the British government and other governments in the free world will take this threat very seriously, respond swiftly and robustly to condemn it, he said.

A number of U.S., British, and Canadian lawmakers also condemned the act, many of whom are patrons of the group, including Sam Brownback, former U.S. ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom; Alistair Carmichael, the UK chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Hong Kong; Sir Iain Duncan Smith, former leader of the UKs ruling Conservative Party and co-chair of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China; and Canadian Sen. Leo Housakos.

Even as the world watches the appalling attack on Ukraine, said Duncan Smith, this attempt by China to arrest British citizens outside of China should remind us all that totalitarian China is a threat to freedom everywhere.

Hong Kong has long enjoyed freedoms not seen on the Chinese mainland, and Beijing committed to protecting those rights and the citys democratic system for at least 50 years after the territory was handed back to China from British colonial rule in 1997.

Since the national security law came into force, more than 50 civil society organizations have been forced to close in Hong Kong over the past 20 months, according to HKW.

A girl lights candles at the site after the Goddess of Democracy statue, a memorial for those killed in the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, was removed from the Chinese University of Hong Kong on Dec. 24, 2021. (Vincent Yu/AP Photo)

While Hong Kong has its own Legislative Council, Beijing mandated changes to the makeup of the council to ensure an overwhelming pro-Beijing majority and required that only those it determines to be patriots can hold office.

Hong Kongs last remaining pro-democracy newspaper, Apple Daily, was forced out of business in mid-2021. Library books and school curriculums have also been investigated for alleged secessionist messages. The legislature later passed a new film censorship law in October to safeguard national security. By the end of last year, a Hong Kong university removed a monument that commemorated the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.

All the citys major pro-democracy figures have either been jailed, sought asylum abroad, or been intimidated into silence.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Oh, the mystique that some people ascribe to wine in their rush to canonize it out of all proportion to what it really is, or should be: a beverage.

Or the denunciation some people heap on inexpensive bottles. I have heard elitist oenophiles use terms to disparage wine they wouldnt deign to try.

I reflect on some of the phrases Ive heard from those who want to place wine on a pedestal, elevating it to near mythical status or trying as best they can to create an image that has no bearing whatsoever on the product.

Champagne is one of mans highest art forms, he said just minutes before he removed the cork and poured for us a horrid example of the stuff. It was so bad most of us looked around for a potted palm into which to dump our glasses. (I was, I admit, worried about planticide.)

Magnificent! said the host of a nearly dead French red Burgundy that had no fruit left in its aroma and was thin and acrid.

Then there are those who prejudge wines based on price or region and imitate Debbie Downer.

I dont drink white wine, she said, taking a tiny sip of an utterly sublime German riesling, which she then dumped into the spit bucket before trying some red plonk.

South African pinotage?! he grumbled. No thanks. He never tried it. I did and liked it a lot.

Unfortunately, in nearly five decades of writing about wine, Ive met all manner of people who say things about wine that are way off base or who rave about greatness that simply doesnt exist.

I never correct them. (Well, almost never. Once I had to speak up. It was in a Southern California restaurant. The waiter told me I was wrong when I said the wine I ordered was spoiled.)

Thirty years ago, I heard a blowhard say something about how great wines were almost always expensive. Weeks later, a wine merchant invited several of us (including the blowhard) to a blind tasting of 12 reasonably priced blended red wines whose average price was about $4 a bottle.

The tasters liked two of the wines better than the 10 others. The blowhards favorite was $4.25. One of the wines was a $25 Napa Valley Reserve cabernetwhich the blowhard didnt like at all.

When I began writing about wine in the mid-1970s, approximately 30 percent of all the wines that I evaluated had some form of flaw that made the wine basically not enjoyable at all, if not completely undrinkable.

So much has changed in the world of wine today that we can find extremely fine, if perhaps a bit simple, wines from literally dozens of places that are making excellent table wines at extremely low prices.

I was chatting last week with a friend who lives in Virginia. He suggested that he often hears people disparaging all the wines being made in Virginia today. Thats so far off base, its ridiculous, he said.

The last time I was in Virginia was about 15 years ago, and I completely agree. And things have improved since then. I have also tasted excellent wines from Missouri, Michigan, and several other locations that 20 years ago might have been considered risky.

Just because a wine is $5.99 is absolutely no reason to disparage it. By contrast, I have tasted wines that sold for $100 a bottle and were particularly uninteresting or even undrinkable.

Not every wine has to offer a nirvana experience or cost a mortgage loan to acquire.

Wine of the Week

2020 Raeburn Chardonnay, Russian River Valley ($20): The nose displays a light citrus aroma with hints of subtle spices, some aging in oak barrels, and a relatively rich midpalate but good acid in the finish. Often seen at $15 or so. Good value.
The damaged studio at the Kurdistan 24 TV building, after an overnight attack in Arbil, the capital of the northern Iraqi Kurdish autonomous region, on March 13, 2022. (Safin Hamed/AFP via Getty Images)

Irans Missile Attack in Iraq Targeted Civilian Residence: White House

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on March 13 that Irans missile attack on the Kurdistan Region of Iraq targeted a civilian residence.

In a press briefing, Sullivan said the United States condemns the attack in the strongest terms and that the barrage of missiles had targeted a civilian residence in Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, without any justification.

No injuries or deaths have been reported from the attack.

The United States stands with Prime Minister Kadhimi and the leaders of the Kurdistan Region, President Nechirvan Barzani, and Prime Minister Masrour Barzani, in condemning this assault on the sovereignty of Iraq and its Kurdistan region, Sullivan said. We will support the Government of Iraq in holding Iran accountable, and we will support our partners throughout the Middle East in confronting similar threats from Iran.

The United States of America stands behind the full sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity of Iraq, Sullivan added.

Officials in Kurdistan, a semi-autonomous region, confirmed the missiles were fired late on March 12.

Just a day later on March 13, Irans Revolutionary Guard claimed responsibility for the attack, which it said was in retaliation for Israels recent crimes, including an airstrike in Syria the previous week in which two Revolutionary Guard officers were killed.

Once again, we warn the criminal Zionist regime that the repetition of any evil act will draw harsh, decisive, and devastating responses, the Revolutionary Guard said, referencing the government of Israel.

Iranian state media described the target as an Israeli strategic center, while another outlet claimed that it was operated by Mossad, Israels intelligence agency.

Meanwhile, the Fars News Agency, which is managed by Irans Revolutionary Guard Corps, appeared to suggest that the attack was linked to a January 2020 airstrike ordered by then-President Donald Trump, which killed the regimes top Iranian military commander, Qasem Soleimani.

Missiles hit the Israeli-American bases at 01:20 local time; thats not a coincidence. IRGC-QF chief Soleimani was killed in #Iraq on 7Jan2001:20 Iraq time, the news agency wrote in a Twitter post.

I strongly condemn the terrorist attack on Erbil and call on its resilient people to keep calm and follow the guidance of the security services, Kurdistan Prime Minister Masrour Barzani said after the attack.

A damaged building after an overnight attack in Erbil, the capital of the northern Iraqi Kurdish autonomous region, on March 13, 2022. (Safin Hamed/AFP via Getty Images)

The launch of a rocket by Irans Revolutionary Guard carrying a Noor-2 satellite in northeastern Shahroud, Iran, on March 8, 2022. (Iranian state television via AP)

We call on the United Nations, the United States, the European Union, the Arab League, the federal government, the Iraqi parliament, and the Iranian government to urgently investigate these baseless attacks, the Kurdistan regional government wrote on social media.

The missile attack comes amid stalled talks to revive Irans tattered 2015 nuclear deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

Negotiations in Vienna over the deal have reportedly been paused due to Russian demands about sanctions targeting Moscow in response to its ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

Moscow reportedly demanded guarantees from the United States that Western sanctions against Russia will not affect the countrys rights to economic trade with Iran under the nuclear deal.

Speaking on March 5 about the negotiations, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov cited the avalanche of aggressive sanctions that the West has started spewing out over Russias invasion of Ukraine, according to The Moscow Times.

Josep Borrell Fontelles, the European Unions foreign policy chief, said in a March 11 Twitter post that although negotiations were paused, a final text is essentially ready and on the table. He added that officials will continue to work to overcome the current situation and to close the agreement.

In early February 2022, the Biden administration waived several sanctions related to Irans civilian nuclear activities. The move was an effort to entice Iran back to the 2015 nuclear deal. The United States withdrew from the 2015 deal under former President Donald Trump, who then imposed tight sanctions on Iran.

However, a number of lawmakers have argued against lifting those sanctions.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) warned on March 13 that sanctions relief for Irans terrorist regime should be completely off the table, adding that Iran is openly targeting Americans with missile strikes.

Jack Phillips contributed to this report.
David Solomon, chairman & CEO of Goldman Sachs speaks during the Bloomberg Global Business Forum in New York on Sept. 25, 2019. (Kena Betancur/AFP via Getty Images)

It Is Not Wall Streets Job To Ostracize Russia: Goldman Sachs CEO

Despite whats happening in Ukraine, it was not the responsibility of businesses to engage in politically-motivated exits, according to Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, as his bank decided to leave the country following a multitude of international corporations that have forfeited their operations in Russia.

The task of deciding a boycott lies with the United States government, while the job of a financial institution is to make sure it is executing against the legal letter of the law of those sanctions, as well as the spirit of the sanctions, Solomon said in an interview with Time magazine.

I dont think businesses are supposed to decide how global trade works in the world. Government sets policy and then businesses follow that policy. I happen to agree very strongly with the policy, Solomon said.

Whats going on in Ukraine is absolutely horrible. I think the actions taken are reasonable and powerful actions. But you ask, are we doing a good job, ostracizing Russia? Thats not our job. And by us, I mean the financial industry broadly.

After the Russian invasion, a former Goldman Sachs banker posted an open letter to Solomon on LinkedIn, asking that the company terminate its operations in Russia and relocate staff from Moscow in order to remain on the right side of history. Goldman Sachs later announced on March 10 that they were exiting the country, becoming the first major bank to make such a move.

Goldman Sachs is winding down its operations in Russia to maintain compliance with regulatory and licensing requirements, the company said in a statement. Some of the employees from the Moscow office are being shifted to Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Goldman Sachs is said to have had a total Russian exposure of $940 million by the end of 2021, including $650 million in credit, accounting for less than 10 basis points of the banks total assets, as per analysts from Bank of America.

In early March, Goldman Sachs revealed that it scaled down Russian exposure in its GQG Partners international equity fund to around $222 million, down from more than $1.7 billion in September 2021. At the end of February, the fund only had 0.99 percent exposure in Russia.

Coming into 2022, we saw attractive growth opportunities and valuations in many Russian companies, the bank said in a March 3 update (pdf). 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.

A few hours after Goldman Sachs announced its exit from Russia, JPMorgan Chase also declared that it was moving out. In its most recent filings, Russia was not listed in the top 20 countries where the company had the greatest financial exposure. JPMorgan Chase employs about 160 people in Moscow.

Deutsche Bank, with $3.18 billion in credit-risk exposure to Russia and Ukraine, said that it had scaled down its exposure in Russia in recent weeks.
Illegal migrants board a bus after being apprehended near the border between Mexico and the United States in Del Rio, Texas, on May 16, 2021. (Sergio Flores/AFP via Getty Images)

Its Time to End Illegal Immigrant Ghost Flights

Commentary

As the world focuses on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we must not forget that the Biden administration is working every day to undermine our own bordersboth national and state.

The immigration crisis, which President Joe Biden has created and sustained at the U.S.Mexico border, is a complete tragedy of human life, national security, and basic morality. Bidens open border is fueling the illegal drug trade, human trafficking, and other harmful smuggling operations. Its providing an easy target for criminals and foreign agents who want to harm Americans. And its eroding the legitimacy of our already struggling legal immigration system.

Despite all indications that the problems at the border will get worseand only more dangerous for immigrants and Americans alikethe Biden administration has actively ignored the border crisis and allowed it to metastasize.

Rather than fixing the problems created by the Biden open border policy, the administration is simply trying to spread out the pain, so that it seems less serious. Since at least December 2021, the Biden administration has been secretly relocating people who crossed the border illegallyincluding unaccompanied childrento U.S. cities and towns through so-called ghost flights.

The administration has been filling flights (and in some cases buses) with people who have crossed the border illegally, allowing them to be spirited away to communities away from the border. We know these relocations have happened in California, Florida, Kentucky, New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. Theres little reason to think the list isnt much longer. We dont know exactly who these people areor precisely where theyve been takenbecause the administration isnt releasing manifests or giving state or local officials any notice. However, we do know that the people being transported arent being checked by law enforcement or public health officials for criminal records or COVID-19, respectively.

Thankfully, I met with a group of lawmakers last week who are working to impose transparency on the Biden administration.

Rep. Dan Meuser (R-Pa.), along with 56 other members of Congress, has sponsored the Immigration Transparency and Transit Notification Act. The law would force the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Health and Human Services to notify federal, state, and local officials about these relocationsboth before they happen and in quarterly reports to Congress. This would allow governors to know whos coming into their states and to provide an extra layer of protection for the unaccompanied children who are being taken to new, unfamiliar places.

First, this is exactly the sort of popular, rational, commonsense legislation that Republicans should be developing while they prepare to retake the majority in January (barring some extraordinary event, this is almost a certainty in the House and a serious likelihood in the Senate).

But at the most basic levelbeyond partisanship or legislative goalsAmericans have the right to know who their government is bringing into their hometowns and communities. The Biden administration has been airdropping peoplewho have already broken the law by attempting to sneak into the countryinto cities and towns across the United States without checking their criminal histories or screening them for COVID-19.

That the administration has been doing this in the dead of night without telling anyone tells you everything you need to know. They know theyre doing something Americans dont wantso theyre sneaking around.

Meuseralong with Reps. Brian Babin (R-Texas), Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), and the more than 50 other co-sponsors of the Immigration Transparency and Transit Notification Actare doing exactly the right thing in holding this administration accountable and forcing it to be honest about these ghost flights.

I hope every American who opposes this dishonest, sneaky Biden relocation program contacts his or her Congress member and senators and urges them to support this legislationand approve it when potential Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) likely assumes the role in January 2023.

From Gingrich360.com

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
If we could each use the internet only in the ways that serve us, what a world we could live in. (Daisy Daisy/Shutterstock)

Just More than 2 Percent of University Wifi Used On Education, Study Finds

A recent study on students at a university in the UK has found that just more than two percent of the total internet activity though the universitys WiFi was used on education.

There was four times more social media activity, ten times more search activity and three times more shopping activity over the academic year [compared to education internet activity], the authors said.

A better balance between education activity and distraction activity is needed for WiFi at universities, the team wrote.

The team studied the internet activity of 12,000 students and 1,000 staff at a university by observing their internet usage, tracking the domain of the websites they accessed.

Online activities were gathered from the University Network through an academic year from September 2018 to May 2019

Based on the domain, the team then categorised network activity as educational if the domain contained edu, search activity if domain is google.com, social media, shopping and so on.

Overall, the network activity that consumed the most university WiFi was cloud and technology taking up 61 percent of online activity.

However, the activity was understood as devices backing up and storing information therefore were not interpreted as user behaviour.

University WiFi consumption for the UK academic year based on WiFi at University: A Better Balance between Education Activity and Distraction Activity Needed, Sep. 2018 to May 2019. (The Epoch Times)

Of the remaining 39 percent of activity, more than 20 percent of internet activity was consumed through search engines, such as Google and Bing, a bit more than eight percent consumed through social media and over 6 percent consumed through online shopping.

These three activities totalled up over 31 percent of the total online activity overall and made up around 80 percent of the 39 percent that reflected students online behaviour.

Other activities included streaming and gaming detected, though both activities consumed less than one percent of overall WiFi usage.

Online Activity Distraction or Education

The team analysed if students online activity served as a distraction or contribution to education by drawing correlations between online behaviour.

The team deemed social media and streaming activitysuch as going on YouTubewas deemed to be a distraction with less than 0.1 correlation between social media and educational activity.

Some online shopping and searching activity, however, were deemed to be related to education.

While the actual items searched for or shopped for could not be identified, the positive correlations [of less than 0.3] between shopping and education and search and education suggest that shopping and search activity may have some link to education activity, the authors wrote.

Nonetheless the authors concluded that the overall low level of activity in the education classification on a University WiFi was of concern.

The students also acknowledged that their internet usage was concerning.

Of the 834 responses from the 12,000 students majority of the students estimated that approximately 60 percent of their time on the internet was distracting.

Additionally, a total of 70 percent of students in response to a question in the survey indicated that their internet use was probably not or definitely not good for their health.

The present research suggests that Universities need to consider how WiFi is used and the extent to which providing ubiquitous access to the internet is beneficial to students, the team wrote.

The authors also found that the vast majority of the users behaviour on the University WiFi was interacting with websites controlled by three technology companies of Google, Amazon, and Facebook.

There are concerns [by the UK government] that Google, Facebook, Amazon and other technology companies are not sufficiently governed by legislation in what they can do to attract user attention and can exploit any means to achieve their goal, the authors wrote (pdf).

Previous research in Malaysia and Sweden (pdf) had also indicated that Facebook usage was linked with reduced academic activity, and the team therefore saw Facebook taking up over 90 percent of all social media usage as a concern.

Action is required to reduce distraction activity and increase educational activity by users of WiFi in Universities, the team concluded.

Environmental and psychosocial competencies or promoting harm reducing factors should be considered for preventing pathological internet use.

The study was published in the third volume of Computers & Education Open journal, all studies in the journal have been peer reviewed.
Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson poses for a photo in the office of Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) before a meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington on March 9, 2022. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Ketanji Brown Jackson, the Descendant of Slaves Who Would Diminish Our Freedoms

Commentary

President Joe Bidens Supreme Court nominee, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, while testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee last year after being nominated for the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, was asked by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) how she defined judicial activism.

She replied: I think judicial activism is when a judge is unable or unwilling to separate out their own personal views of a circumstance or a case and they view consistent with those views rather than the law, as theyre required to do.

But if the history of Supreme Court nominations has taught us anything, it is that theres no such thing as a judicial activist who admits to being a judicial activist. When in 2009 then-Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) asked Obama-appointed Justice Sonia Sotomayor to define judicial activism during her confirmation hearings, she replied: I dont describe the work that judges do in that way.  Hopefully judgesand I know that I dont approach judging in this way at allare not imposing policy choices, or their views of the world or their views of how things should be done. That would be judicial activism, in my sense, if a judge was doing something improper like that.

This from the present Supreme Courts most notorious activist justice, who during oral arguments on Bidens COVID mandates two months ago described not her views of the world but of a fantasy world, falsely claiming, We have over 100,000 children, which weve never had before, in serious condition, and many on ventilators. Even left-wing media declared her tendentious assertion groundless.

In December, during oral arguments on the Mississippi abortion case the high court will decide later this year, this jurist who claims not to be imposing policy choices or her views of how things should be done compared babies within the womb to cadavers, remarking regarding whether pain is felt when an abortion is performed that about 40 percent of dead people who, if you touch their feet, the foot will recoil.

There are spontaneous acts by dead brain people. So I dont think that a response by a fetus necessarily proves that theres a sensation of pain or that theres consciousness, she said.

Justice Elena Kagan, Obamas other SCOTUS appointment, who was his solicitor general, charged with advocating his policies before the court, also condemned activism during her confirmation hearings in 2010, declaring that judges should think of themselves, as I indicated before, only as policing the constitutional boundaries, only as ensuring that the legislature does not overstep its constitutional role by interfering with the states or by violating individual rights, not making the fundamental policy decisions for this nation, like Congress.

As Princeton politics professor Keith Whittington has noted, Sotomayor, Kagan, and the other liberal justices on the court during their tenure, form a tight bloc, voting together but rarely voting with [Justice Clarence] Thomas or [the late Justice Antonin] Scalia.

As was the case with Sotomayor and Kagan, we already know that Jackson is going to be an activist justice, no matter what clever verbal dance she performs before senators and the TV cameras. We know it from what shes done, not what shes said, and we know it from her personal background.

Jacksons nomination is historic, and a development for which every American can be proud. As this first woman of African descent has noted, my ancestors were slaves on both sides.

Yet despite her inspiring life story, Jackson seems to be what one Sen. Barack Obama called Judge Janice Rogers Brown, the first black woman to sit on the California Supreme Court, during her nomination to the D.C. Circuit in 2005: a political activist who happens to be a judge. Biden touts Jacksons qualifications. She graduated Harvard magna cum laude, and Harvard Law cum laude, but as Obama also said with regard to Brown, There are a lot of real smart people out there whom you would not put in charge of stuff. The test of whether a judge is qualified to be a judge is not their intelligence. It is their judgment.

Jackson apparently considers disorderly conductlike repeatedly screaming profanities in defiance of police warnings during a public gatheringto be free speech protected under the First Amendment. She also, in Brown v. Government of the District of Columbia in 2018, actually concluded that panhandling was free speech and that Washington panhandling laws were suppressing it. Plaintiffs have plausibly alleged that the panhandling provisions at issue are content-based laws that restrict protected speech in public forums, she wrote in her decision.

She would be the first federal public defender ever placed on the Supreme Court, having during her short tenure a decade and a half ago saved a drug dealers lawyer from jail time, gotten a convicted illegal handgun owners case dropped, and represented terrorists seeking release from incarceration in Guantanamo Bay, and so Republican senators have reasonable worries that shell be soft on crime. Its in the economic realm, however, that Jackson constitutes the greatest threat to liberty, and has displayed the most questionable judgment.

Her father having been chief attorney for the Miami-Dade County school board, and her mother the principal of a high-end Miami public school, it should come as no surprise that Jackson has a tendency to rule in favor of labor unionspublic school teachers unions may be the most dependable supporters of the Democratic Party to be found.

But when Jackson in 2018 insisted that her district court had jurisdiction when 17 federal worker unions tried to get three of President Donald Trumps executive orders pertaining to collective bargaining declared unconstitutional, she was humiliated by the D.C. Circuit when judges appointed by presidents of both parties struck it down.

As the D.C. Circuit noted, Jackson had claimed that the Federal Labor Relations Authoritys expertise in addressing the workers grievances, which the law directs the agency to do, was potentially helpful but not essential to resolving the unions claims. Therefore the unions should be able to turn to Jacksons court.

But, as the appellate court pointed out, that is not the law. The question we must ask is whether agency expertise may be brought to bear on the claims, not whether the expertise is essential.

The decision overturning Jackson added that many of the claims of the 17 unions, with which Jackson agreed, are not so grand as they suggest, requiring resolution by the judicial branch rather than an executive agency, but rather require interpreting the Federal Service Labor Management Relations Statute (FSLMRS)the very law that the FLRA is charged with administering and interpreting. Regardless, the Supreme Court has clarified that an agencys relative level of insight into the merits of a constitutional question is not determinative.

In her first ruling as a D.C. Circuit judge, in February, Jackson stopped the same agency, the FLRA, from enacting a rule that would relieve it from having to bargain with workers over trivial matters regarding conditions of employment, such as office seating arrangements. Clearly, she prefers employees to employers.

Tone is another clue. In her overruled 2018 decision, she found Trump administration Justice Department attorneys arguments clever, but ultimately unpersuasive. She begins sentences with of course eight times in a ruling of about 60 pages. The end is nigh, she quips as she accuses the Trump administration of an improper exercise of his statutory authority to regulate federal employee labor relations.

The signs are that the nomination of Jackson will be historic not only in terms of her sex and ethnicity, but in what it may come to mean, if she is confirmed, in judicial intrusion affecting the individual freedom provided by safe communities, a government free of senseless regulations and union-imposed burdens, and employers ability to succeed free of labor harassment.

If her confirmation slides through as smoothly as expected, the public may one day wonder why this woman who made history wasnt scrutinized with a more critical eye.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Tributes are flowing for Labor Senator Kimberley Kitching, who died from a suspected heart attack, aged 52, in Melbourne on Thursday night** Labor Senator Kimberley Kitching appearing at a Senate Estimates Committee at Parliament House in Canberra, Monday, Oct. 23, 2017. (AAP Image/Mick Tsikas)

Labor Party Isolated, Bullied Deceased Senator: Union Boss

Kitching's passing spotlights Left-Right split

A Victorian union boss has alleged that prior to the untimely passing of Kimberley Kitching, the senatorknown internationally as a hawk on China issueswas facing isolation and bullying from her own party colleagues.

Union boss Earl Setches said that Kitching was facing increased isolation by the party, given her more conservative leanings on many issues.

She was just alone, Setches said in comments obtained by news.com.au. Theres been no democracy in the party for the last few years. Its just mad. Its just insane.

Kitching a member of the Labor Right faction, in fact, she played a pivotal role in Australias implementation of the Magnitsky Act, which gives the government the power to sanction overseas human rights violators.

However, her strong stance on human rights and foreign interference from China had caused consternation among some ALP powerbrokers Setches said.

A point he noted was demonstrated by the Australian Labor Partys refusal to fund air tickets for Kitching to receive the prestigious 2021 Sergei Magnitsky Human Rights Award in London, which she ended up paying for herself.

Further, she was not included in the ALP shadow cabinets email listdespite being the Shadow Assistant Minister for Government Accountabilitywhich contained the partys position on the media topics of the day. Fellow cabinet members later intervened to ensure she was on the list.

Setches also claimed the senator was removed from committees and denied any questions during Senate hearings for the past year.

An additional difficulty for the senator was her membership of The Wolverineswhich irked certain ALP powerbrokersan influence group comprised of mainly conservative Australian MPs critical of the CCP.

The issue came to a head when former intelligence boss Allan Gyngell, former head of the Office of National Assessments, was invited to an ALP caucus where he said The Wolverines was immature, juvenile, and destructive, according to The Australian. Further, Labor powerbroker Dennis Richardson, a former head of the Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), said the group added no value to the Australia-China debate.

Kitching had also been at odds with Left faction members over other issues such as climate change.

The Labor Party in an email to The Epoch Times has refused to comment on the allegations by Setches.

Labor Senator Kimberley Kitching in the Senate chamber at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia on June 15, 2020. (AAP Image/Mick Tsikas)

Both major political parties in Australia are contending with ongoing struggles between internal factionsdivided along ideological linesvying for influence over their partys direction and policy platform.

In recent months, the centre-right Liberal Partys factional struggles have spilled over with party leaders reluctant to endorse conservative candidate Lincoln Parker to run for the seat of Warringahknown for being the electorate of former Prime Minister Tony Abbottconcerned he would struggle against progressive, female candidate Zali Steggall.

Meanwhile, tributes for Kitching poured in from across the political spectrum and human rights advocates.

Bill Browder, behind the worldwide Magnitsky movement, said Kitching was a brave justice warrior and was not intimidated by the evil regimes she advocated against.

We will carry on in her memory and I hope others will too, he said in a statement in a post on Twitter.

Kitching passed away from a suspected heart attack on March 10, aged 52.

She had been driving before she was forced to pull over by the side of the road during the medical episode during which she was able to call her husband Andrew Landeryou.

Landeryou and emergency services were unable to treat Kitching who died at the scene of the incident.
Honorary doctorate recipients from left to right: Professor Sir Peter Donnelly, Mr Leigh Clifford AO, Dr Francis Gurry, Professor Colin Wilks, Dr Mark Schipp and Professor Allan Fels AO in Melbourne, Australia on Feb. 28, 2022. (Melbourne University)

Critics Lambast Foundation for 6 White Men Grant Fiasco

Sparks heavy criticism

Australias largest medical research foundation has been criticised for prioritising equality over merits after cutting the University of Melbourne from future grants because the school awarded its honorary doctorates to six white men.

The Snow Medical Research Foundation, which has donated over AU$90 million (US$65 million) to medical research in the last two years and donated $16 million to Melbourne University in 2021, suspended the institution from future applications of Snows prestigious fellowship program on March 7.

The funding freeze was announced a week after Melbourne University published a photo of six Caucasian men receiving the schools honorary doctorates during a ceremony with a press release outlining their achievements.

Snow Medical Chair Tom Snow, who is also chair of LGBT+ group Equality Australia, accused the university of having sent a message to every woman and person of diversity that white men will be rewarded ahead of you.

This award is not just about rewarding amazing things that these people have done. Its also about sending a signal and being an inspiration to people, he told the ABC on March 8.

In a statement, the foundation said only men had been appointed with honorary doctorates over the last three years at Melbourne University, an outcome that Snow Medical believed does not align with the universitys stated goals of gender equality and diversity.

This comes despite the university previously noting on its website that other receivers of the award, including three women and an Indigenous man, couldnt attend the in-person ceremony and that these honorary doctorates will be conferred at a later date.

Tom Snow, however, insisted the university should have responded by deferring the ceremony.

Social commentator and mens issues advocate Bettina Arndt argued that even if white men were the only recipients on this occasion surely a university must make such awards on the basis of intellectual merit, not a persons physical attributes or skin colour.

A former self-proclaimed feminist, Arndt, said it is an insult to the university to suggest that they should allow rewards for scholarship to be at the whim of bullies, such as private benefactors promoting identity politics.

Most ordinary Australians are appalled to find our universities being captured by this dangerous ideological push, she told The Epoch Times.

The reputation of Australias higher education system is already suffering as a result of the gender and cultural equality movement, Arndt noted. This comes to the great pleasure, no doubt of our Asian competitors who welcome the brain drain which includes some of our best and brightest, who happen to be white men.

We are now seeing promotion committees in our universities systematically discriminating in favour of women who are rapidly making their way through to the higher ranks of these institutions, she said.

The fact that there are still some men at the top reflects the fact that in the past when decisions were made on merit, more men were willing and able to put in the huge hours required to crawl up the ladder.

In response to the funding halt, Melbourne University said Snow Medical had made its decision based on a single event, which was not a true reflection of the university and the steps it was taking to build a diverse university community, reflective of broader society.

A number of academic individuals applauded the Foundations action as an advocacy act for diversity. Doug Hilton, head of WEHI medical research institute, told the Australian he thought it was fabulous when a foundation or funding organisation links their culture or aspirations to the money.

However, University of Queenslands Emeritus Professor of Law Gabriel Moens believed the Foundations response to the situation reveals favouritism towards equality of results.

This version of equality requires that people are represented in positions of influence and power influence and power in accordance with their numerical strength in society, Moens noted.

While gender equality is reasonable in the sense that everyone deserves to be treated equally, it is also unreasonable because the movement does not recognise that the achievement gap, including pay differentials between men and women, are often caused by issues that have nothing to do with discrimination, he added.

Among them are individual choice and the fact that women often take time out of their careers for child-rearing purposes.

Rather than equality of results, people should strive for equality of opportunity, which would remove all impediments to employment, Moens suggested. However, the outcome might not reflect the numerical strength of different groups/sexes in society.

The law professor also told The Epoch Times he doesnt believe there is systemic bias against women and indigenous people in academic fields as it would be very unwise.

Bias is the enemy of progress and violates the principle that people should be treated in a dignified manner and that their individuality is recognised, he added.
Russia is advancing a narrative that it is working to eliminate U.S. biolabs in Ukraine, and claimed it uncovered evidence of a U.S. bioweapon program during a special operation. China has likewise pushed the narrative. The United States and NATO partners are warning that Russias claims could be laying the groundwork for a false flag attack, which Russia could blame on either Ukraine or the United States.

Meanwhile, President Joe Biden is also warning that the situation could escalate into a third world war, if NATO is drawn into the conflict. And Biden has drawn a line in the sand, saying that if Russia launches attacks on any NATO territory, the United States will retaliate with full force. Alongside this, Russia has stated that U.S. military supplies to Ukraine will be regarded as targets for attack.

In this live Q&A with Crossroads host Joshua Philipp, well discuss these stories and others, and answer questions from the audience.

Subscribe to the new Crossroads newsletter and stay up-to-date!

Follow EpochTV on social media:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EpochTVus

Twitter: https://twitter.com/EpochTVus

Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/EpochTV

Gettr: https://gettr.com/user/epochtv

Gab: https://gab.com/EpochTV

Telegram: https://t.me/EpochTV

Parler: https://parler.com/#/user/EpochTV
E.U. and Ukrainian flags flying near the European Parliament in Strasbourg, eastern France on March 7, 2022. (Frederick Florin/AFP via Getty Images)

Russia-Ukraine (March 14): EU Imposes 4th Set of Sanctions Against Russia for War

The latest on the RussiaUkraine crisis, March 14. Click here for updates from March 13.

EU Imposes 4th Set of Sanctions Against Russia for War

The European Union announced late Monday that the 27-nation bloc has approved a new set of sanctions to punish Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine.

France, which holds the E.U. presidency, said the bloc in consultation with our international partners, has approved a fourth package of sanctions targeting individuals and entities involved in the aggression against Ukraine, as well as several sectors of the Russian economy.

The French presidency said in a statement that the bloc also approved a declaration to the World Trade Organization on suspending the application of the most-favored-nation clause for Russia and suspending the examination of Belarus application for accession to the WTO.

If Russia is suspended, its companies would no longer receive special treatment throughout the bloc.

___

NATO Chief Says Russia May Use Chemical or Biological Weapons in Ukraine

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg warned on March 13 that Russia might use chemical or biological weapons in the fight with Ukraine, which the head of the alliance said would amount to a war crime.

In recent days, we have heard absurd claims about chemical and biological weapons laboratories, Stoltenberg said during an interview with German newspaper Welt am Sonntag, adding that he believes the Kremlin is trying to create a false pretext to justify the unjustifiable.

Stoltenbergs warning came as Russian officials claimed on March 7 that the U.S. military has been involved with the development of chemical or biological weapons in laboratories across Ukraine, a project backed by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, an agency within the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD).

Now that these false claims have been made, we must remain vigilant because it is possible that Russia itself could plan chemical weapons operations under this fabrication of lies. That would be a war crime, the NATO head said.

Read the full article here.

___

Ukrainian President to Virtually Address US Congress

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will deliver a virtual address to members of both chambers of the U.S. Congress on March 16 to provide an update on the Russian invasion.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced the meeting in a March 14 joint letter to their congressional colleagues.

The Congress, our country, and the world are in awe of the people of Ukraine, who have shown extraordinary courage, resilience and determination in the face of Russias unprovoked, vicious, and illegal war, Pelosi and Schumer wrote.

As war rages on in Ukraine, it is with great respect and admiration for the Ukrainian people that we invite all Members of the House and Senate to attend a Virtual Address to the United States Congress delivered by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine on Wednesday, March 16th at 9:00 a.m.

Read the full article here.

___

UN Chief Warns Nuclear War in Realm of Possibility Over Ukraine

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Monday that the prospect of a nuclear war is now within the realm of possibility as Russia continues its weekslong invasion of Ukraine.

Two weeks ago, the U.N. chief said at the time that the concept of a nuclear conflict is inconceivable, but he noted that the Kremlins decision to place its nuclear forces on high alert was a chilling development.

Days after Russian forces entered Ukraine on Feb. 24, President Vladimir Putin ordered his countrys nuclear deterrent forces to be placed on a heightened state of alert. Putin said it was due to economic sanctions imposed by Western countries on his country.

Read the full article here.

___

The First Humanitarian Convoy Flees Besieged Mariupol

The humanitarian crisis remains bleak in Ukraine, and more than 2.8 million people have fled.

Moscow on Monday allowed the first convoy to escape besieged Mariupol, home to the worst humanitarian crisis of the conflict.

In the first two hours, 160 cars left, Andrei Rempel, a representative of the Mariupol city council told Reuters.

The city continues to be bombed but this road is not being shelled.

But local authorities say as many as 2,500 civilians have died so far, a toll that cannot be independently confirmed.

Russia says it does not target civilians.

But Kyrylo Tymoshenko, a senior aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, later said Russia had yet again blocked a humanitarian aid convoy trying to reach the city with supplies.

Obtaining safe passage for aid to reach Mariupol and civilians to get out has been Kyivs main demand at several rounds of talks. All previous attempts at a local ceasefire in the area have failed.

___

World Court to Rule in Ukraine Case Against Russia on March 16

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Monday said it would rule in the case that Ukraine has brought against Russia on March 16.

In a hearing which was boycotted by Russia on March 7, Ukraine asked the court to order Russia to cease military activities because it said the invasion was based on a faulty interpretation of the U.N. genocide treaty.

___

Parliament of NATO Country Estonia Calls for Immediate Establishment of No-Fly Zone

The parliament of Estonia on Monday called for U.N. member states to take immediate steps to establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine to prevent further civilian casualties as Russias multi-front war against the country rages on.

Estonia is the first NATO member nation to formally call for the implementation of a no-fly zone amid Russias ongoing invasion.

The Riigikogu (Parliament of Estonia) expresses its support to the defenders and the people of the state of Ukraine in their fight against the Russian Federation that has launched a criminal war, and calls on showing absolute support to Ukraine in its war for maintaining its freedom, sovereignty, and territorial integrity, Estonias parliament said in a statement Monday.

___

Spain Asks China to Use Influence to End War

Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares said Monday that he has asked his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi to use Beijings influence over Moscow to end the war in Ukraine.

We are at a historical moment that requires responsibility and vision of all world leaders, Albares told Wang during a telephone conversation on Monday, according to a statement from the ministry.

It said that Albares condemned the Russian aggression on Ukraine by telling Wang that Russia has undermined the foundations of peace and stability in Europe and threatens the international community.

___

Mariupol Evacuation Underway After Multiple Prior Ceasefire Failures: Mayors Adviser

Evacuation of the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol is underway after multiple prior failures to secure a ceasefire that would allow for the safe operation of a humanitarian corridor, according to an adviser to the citys mayor.

Petro Andrushenko, an adviser to the mayor of Mariupol, said in a Monday post on Facebook that, as of 1 p.m. local time, a ceasefire was being observed along a corridor leading out of the city toward Zaporizhia.

Lets help everyone out! Call, write to everyone whom you reach! he wrote, while cautioning that local Ukrainian authorities are unable to officially guarantee safety down the corridor.

Still, he said that the evacuation route was operational and that residents are able to leave using their own modes of transport. He said around 160 vehicles had already managed to depart Mariupol via the corridor.

Read the full article here.

___

Putin Spokesman: Russias Invasion Going According to Plan

The top Kremlin spokesman said Monday that Russias invasion of Ukraine is still going according to plan and within the timeframe that was approved in advance.

The Russian armed forces are using modern high-precision weapons, hitting only military information infrastructure facilities. All plans of the Russian leadership will be implemented in full within the timeframe approved in advance, asserted Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, to state-run media.

Peskov declined to comment on how long the war, described by Russias government as a special military operation, will last. Peskov also appeared to dispute a significant number of reports and claims from Ukrainian officials who said Russia was targeting civilian infrastructure, including hospitals.

Read the full article here.

___

Ukraine, Russia Negotiations Concluded but Will Resume on Tuesday

Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said talks with Russia had concluded for the day Monday but will resume on Tuesday.

The two countries held negotiations by video link for the first time on March 10 in what is considered the fourth round of talks after three largely fruitless meetings held in person on the Belarusian border.

A technical pause has been taken in the negotiations until tomorrow, Podolyak wrote on Twitter. Negotiations continue.

He said earlier that communication is being held, yet its hard.

___

Kremlin Denies Media Reports Alleging That Russia Asked China for Military Assistance

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Monday denied media reports alleging that Russia asked China for military assistance to help advance its offensive in Ukraine.

No, Russia has its own potential to continue the operation, which, as we have said, is unfolding in accordance with the plan and will be completed on time and in full, Peskov told his daily conference call with reporters.

Peskov also stressed that the operation in Ukraine was going as planned and that the Russian military were ensuring the maximum security of the civilian population.

He added that at the same time, the Defense Ministry, while ensuring the maximum security of the civilian population, does not rule out the possibility of taking full control of large settlements that are now practically surrounded, except for areas used for humanitarian evacuation.

___

Germany Wont Provide Any Further Details About Weapons Supplies to Ukraine

The German government says it wont provide any further details about weapons supplies to Ukraine.

Government spokesman Wolfgang Buechner told reporters Monday that to avoid security risks Germany would not divulge any more information on what arms are supplied to Ukraine or how.

Defense Ministry spokesman Arne Collatz added that it is the goal of the Russian aggressors to cut Ukraines supply routes and make (their) defense harder, and we dont want to facilitate this.

Germanys Transport Ministry said separately that it has switched off the online streams of cameras on the countrys highways for security reasons, but declined to elaborate.

__

Ten Humanitarian Corridors Agreed for Monday: Ukrainian Deputy PM

Ukraine will try to evacuate trapped civilians through 10 humanitarian corridors on Monday, including from towns near the capital Kyiv and in the eastern region of Luhansk, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereschuk said.

We will, once again, try to unblock the movement of the humanitarian convoy carrying food and medicine to {the port city of Mariupol) from Berdiansk (in southeastern Ukraine), she said in a video address.

__

Ukraine Peace Talks Begin

Ukraine said it had begun hard talks on a ceasefire, immediate withdrawal of troops, and security guarantees with Russia on Monday, despite the fatal shelling of a residential building in Kyiv.

Both sides reported rare progress at the weekend after earlier rounds have primarily focused on ceasefires to get aid to towns and cities under siege by Russian forces and evacuate civilians.

Posting online ahead of the talks, Ukrainian negotiator Mykhailo Podolyak wrote: Negotiations. 4th round. On peace, ceasefire, immediate withdrawal of troops & security guarantees. He later said discussions had started but were hard, because the political systems of Russia and Ukraine were too different.

__

Chernobyl Powerline Damaged by Russian Forces Again After It Was Repaired

The Ukrainian state power company says the power line supplying the site of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster has been damaged by Russian forces again after it was repaired.

The Ukrenergo company said in a statement Monday that its technicians had started to supply power Sunday evening but before the power supply was fully restored, the occupying forces damaged it again. Ukrenergo said it will attempt another repair.

The power is used to feed pumps and other equipment which keep spent nuclear fuel at the former power plant cool to prevent radiation leaks.

The Chernobyl site is also equipped with diesel generators, and Belarusian authorities said last week that they had set up an emergency power supply from the nearby border.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has played down concerns over the safety of nuclear waste at Chernobyl, saying that cooling ponds there are large enough to keep the spent fuel in a safe condition even if the power supply is interrupted.

___

Talks to Resume as Russia Pressures Ukrainian Capital Kyiv

Russias military forces kept up their punishing campaign to capture Ukraines capital with fighting and artillery fire in Kyivs suburbs Monday after an airstrike on a military base near the Polish border brought the war dangerously close to NATOs doorstep.

A new round of talks between Russian and Ukrainian officials raised hopes that progress would be made in evacuating civilians from besieged Ukrainian cities and getting emergency supplies to areas without enough food, water, and medicine.

Air raid alerts sounded in cities and towns all around the country overnight, from near the Russian border in the east to the Carpathian Mountains in the west, as fighting continued on the outskirts of Kyiv. Ukrainian officials said Russian forces shelled several suburbs of the capital, a major political and strategic target for an invasion in its 19th day.

Ukrainian authorities said two people died and seven were injured after Russian forces struck an airplane factory in Kyiv, sparking a large fire. The Antonov factory is Ukraines largest aircraft manufacturing plant and is best known for producing many of the worlds biggest cargo planes.

Russian artillery fire also hit a nine-story apartment building in a northern district of the city, killing two more people, authorities said. Firefighters worked to rescue survivors, painstakingly carrying an injured woman on a stretcher away from the blackened and still-smoking building.

___

Ten Humanitarian Corridors Agreed for Monday: Ukrainian Deputy PM

Ukraine will try to evacuate trapped civilians through 10 humanitarian corridors on Monday, including from towns near the capital Kyiv and in the eastern region of Luhansk, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereschuk said.

We will, once again, try to unblock the movement of the humanitarian convoy carrying food and medicine to {the port city of Mariupol) from Berdiansk (in southeastern Ukraine), she said in a video address.

___

US Official: Russia Seeking Military Aid From China

A U.S. official said Russia asked China for military equipment to use in its invasion of Ukraine, a request that heightened tensions about the ongoing war ahead of a Monday meeting in Rome between top aides representing the United States and China.

In advance of the talks, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan bluntly warned China to avoid helping Russia evade punishment from global sanctions that have hammered the Russian economy. We will not allow that to go forward, he said. China in turn accused on Monday the United States of spreading disinformation.

Chinese state broadcaster CCTV said the talks with the United States were underway around 11:50 a.m. Rome time (1050 GMT), but gave no other details.

___

Russian Attacks in Western Ukraine Prompt More People to Flee

People fleeing what until recently had been the relative safety of western Ukraine joined thousands crossing into eastern Europe on Monday after Russia stepped up attacks, prompting fears of an even larger exodus.

Moscow widened its assault on Sunday with an attack on a base near the border with NATO member Poland. Ukraine said 35 people were killed at the base while Moscow said up to 180 foreign mercenaries died and a large number of foreign weapons were destroyed. Ukraine also reported renewed airstrikes on an airport in the west of the country.

With the war well into its third week, the number of refugees fleeing the Russian invasion has already reached 2.7 million, the U.N. data showed, in what has become Europes fastest-growing refugee crisis since World War Two.

However, millions of people have also been displaced inside Ukraine, with many evacuated only as far as the western regions, including to cities like Lviv.

___

Taiwan Says ASUS Will Evacuate Russia After Ukraine Urges Exit

Taiwanese personal computer maker ASUS will consider its reputation and put in place a plan to evacuate its staff and business in Russia, Taiwans economy minister said on Monday, after a Ukraine minister asked it to leave the country.

Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraines deputy prime minister and minister of digital transformation, tweeted a letter on Thursday to ASUS Chairman Jonney Shih calling on the company to end its business in Russia. Moscow has invaded Ukraine in what the Russian government calls a special operation.

@ASUS, Russians have no moral right to use your brilliant technology! Its for peace, not for war! Fedorov added in a separate tweet.

Taiwan Economy Minister Wang Mei-hua, asked about the letter, said Taiwan stands with other democracies and has taken action against Russia, but could not comment on what individual companies were doing.

The company, formally called ASUSTeK Computer Inc, did not respond to a request for comment.

Instagram Users in Russia Told Service Will Cease From Midnight

Instagram users in Russia have been notified that the service will cease from midnight on Sunday after its owner Meta Platforms said last week it would allow social media users in Ukraine to post messages such as Death to the Russian invaders.

An email message from the state communications regulator told people to move their photos and videos from Instagram before it was shut down, and encouraged them to switch to Russias own competitive internet platforms.

Meta, which also owns Facebook, said on Friday that the temporary change in its hate speech policy applied only to Ukraine, in the wake of Russias Feb. 24 invasion.

The company said it would be wrong to prevent Ukrainians from expressing their resistance and fury at the invading military forces.

The decision was greeted with outrage in Russia, where authorities have opened a criminal investigation against Meta and prosecutors on Friday asked a court to designate the U.S. tech giant as an extremist organization.

The head of Instagram has said the block will affect 80 million users. Russia has already banned Facebook in the country in response to what it said were restrictions of access to Russian media on the platform.

___

Ukraines Largest Steel Firm Says Shells Hit Avdiivka Coke Plant

Ukraines largest steel company Metinvest said shells hit the territory of its Avdiivka coke plant on Sunday, damaging some of its facilities.

Earlier, the general prosecutors office said five rockets had hit the plant, which had already suspended operations in the wake of Russias invasion of Ukraine.

Metinvest, majority-owned by Ukraines richest man and business magnate Rinat Akhmetov, said nobody was hurt in the shelling, which hit two coking shops and other areas.

The sites thermal power plant, which supplies heat to the neighboring town of Avdiivka, has stopped working, it said.

Avdiivka is one of the largest coke plants in Europe and the major manufacturer of coke for steel-making in Ukraine.

___

Ukraine Has Started Using Clearview AIs Facial Recognition During War

Ukraines defense ministry on Saturday began using Clearview AIs facial recognition technology, the companys chief executive told Reuters, after the U.S. startup offered to uncover Russian assailants, combat misinformation, and identify the dead.

Ukraine is receiving free access to Clearview AIs powerful search engine for faces, letting authorities potentially vet people of interest at checkpoints, among other uses, added Lee Wolosky, an adviser to Clearview and former diplomat under U.S. presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

The plans started forming after Russia invaded Ukraine and Clearview Chief Executive Hoan Ton-That sent a letter to Kyiv offering assistance, according to a copy seen by Reuters.

Clearview said it had not offered the technology to Russia, which calls its actions in Ukraine a special operation.

Ukraines Ministry of Defense did not reply to requests for comment. Previously, a spokesperson for Ukraines Ministry of Digital Transformation said it was considering offers from U.S.-based artificial intelligence companies like Clearview. Many Western businesses have pledged to help Ukraine, providing internet hardware, cybersecurity tools, and other support.

Tom Ozimek, Jack Phillips, Lorenz Duchamps, Joseph Lord, The Associated Press, Fox News, and Reuters contributed to this report.
The CDC says long COVID is a wide range of new, returning or ongoing physical and mental health problems people can experience four or more weeks after first getting infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. (Shutterstock)

Long COVID: An Explainer and Research Roundup

Researchers are working to better understand the physical and mental health problems some people can experience long after first getting infected with COVID-19. We've summarized what's known so far about the collection of symptoms known as long COVID.

As the COVID-19 pandemic enters its third year, researchers are learning more about the long-term effects of the infection and about a collection of symptoms and complications commonly called long COVID.

Shortness of breath, fatigue and brain fog are among the most common symptoms of long COVID. For some, these symptoms persist after getting infected with coronavirus. For others, new complications arise weeks or months later.

There are many unanswered questions, like how common long COVID is, who is more likely to get it and why. And theres still no consensus in the medical community over the definition, diagnosis and treatment of long COVID.

I think were still scratching the surface, says Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security, whose research focuses on emerging infectious disease, pandemic preparedness and biosecurity.

Below we have addressed some of the key questions about long COVID and summarized several studies that journalists can use to bolster their reporting. Keep in mind that knowledge and research in this field is rapidly evolving, and we will update this piece periodically as new analyses comes to light.

What is Long COVID?

Theres no universal definition for long COVID.

The CDC says long COVID is a wide range of new, returning or ongoing physical and mental health problems people can experience four or more weeks after first getting infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

People with long COVID commonly have a combination of symptoms, including shortness of breath, fatigue, difficulty concentrating or thinking (brain fog), headache, sleep problems, dizziness, rash and joint or muscle pain, among others. Some people who develop a severe COVID-19 infection can also develop autoimmune conditions. Others may experience complications that affect their heart, lungs, kidneys or skin.

The World Health Organization has a wider window for symptoms that can be considered long COVID. Instead of the CDCs four weeks, it says long COVID occurs usually 3 months from the onset of COVID-19 with symptoms  that last for at least 2 months and cannot be explained by an alternative diagnosis. These symptoms may have persisted since the initial illness, gone away and reappeared, or be new.

As of July 2021, long COVID can be considered a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Is Long COVID the Correct Term?

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention uses the umbrella term post-COVID conditions. It also lists other terms used for the condition, including long COVID, long-haul COVID, post-acute COVID-19, long-term COVID, chronic COVID, post-acute COVID syndrome.

Scientists use the umbrella term post-acute sequalae of SARS-CoV-2 infection, or PASC. Long COVID falls under this umbrella; so does multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) and adults (MIS-A), which is a rare but severe immune response to COVID-19 infection.

The World Health Organization says, Post COVID-19 condition, also known as long COVID, refers collectively to the constellation of long-term symptoms that some people experience after they have had COVID-19. People who experience post COVID-19 condition sometimes refer to themselves as long-haulers.

The Associated Press Stylebook recommends either long-haul COVID-19 or long COVID-19. We dont use the medical term, the stylebook says, referring to PASC. The New York Times uses long Covid.

Whats the Difference Between Long COVID and Post-ICU Syndrome?

Patients who spend time in the ICU can develop post-intensive care syndrome, or PICS, which can include severe weakness, problems with thinking and judgement and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), according to the CDC. PICS is a well-established medical diagnosis that existed long before COVID-19.

Its really important to separate long COVID from conditions such as post ICU syndrome, because anybody thats admitted to the intensive care unit on a ventilator is not going to recover [quickly], says Adalja.

Part of the current research is focused on distinguishing conditions that are only the result of COVID-19 infection from those that result from hospitalization and other treatments for severe illness from the infection.

Some symptoms that can occur after hospitalization are similar to some of the symptoms that people with initially mild or no symptoms may experience many weeks after COVID-19, according to the CDC. It can be difficult to know whether they are caused by the effects of hospitalization, the long-term effects of the virus, or a combination of both.

Who gets Long COVID?

Long COVID can occur in people who get severely sick, have a mild illness or dont have symptoms.

Whereas older patients and those with underlying health conditions might have an increased risk for severe disease, young people, including those who were physically fit before SARS-CoV-2 infection, have also reported symptoms lasting several months after acute illness, according to the CDC.

In September 2021, the National Institutes of Health announced the establishment of national study to understand how people recover from COVID-19 and why some people do not fully recover after the viral infection seems to have cleared. The study is called Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery Initiative, or the RECOVER Initiative. The project, which will include several universities and hospitals, is still in its initial phases and hasnt enrolled patients yet.

How Common is Long COVID?

We dont know yet, mainly because theres a lack of long-term studies. Estimates of long COVID vary widely in the current literature, ranging from 5% to 80%, according to the CDC.

According to the World Health Organization, about 10% to 20% of people who get COVID-19 experience mid- and long-term effects after they recover from the initial illness.

According to the U.K.s Office for National Statistics, an estimated 1.3 million people, or 2.1% of the population, self-reported long COVID. The estimate is based on a survey of 305,997 people over a four-week period ending on Jan. 2, 2022.

WHO has developed medical codes for long COVID, which can help with documentation and surveillance of the condition around the world.

Long COVID can also occur in children, but it appears to be less common than in adults. It has also been more commonly reported in women, but researchers dont know why.

How is Long COVID Diagnosed?

Diagnosing long COVID isnt simple. No laboratory test can definitively distinguish long COVID at this time. In its guidance to clinicians, the CDC recommends a list of tests for evaluating people for long COVID.

Some patients who develop long COVID may have never had a positive test for the infection or may have received a negative test because of waning antibody levels or false-negative results, the CDC explains.

Adalja says he first rules out post-ICU syndrome and other preexisting medical conditions that may have gone undiagnosed. He then looks to see if the patients lingering symptoms interfere with their daily activities. An example is someone who used to be able to go up the stairs but now gets winded after a few steps. He added that he doesnt consider chronic cough to be a symptom of long COVID, because it occurs after many viral infections and can last weeks.

And then youre left in the end with a diagnosis of exclusion: No, they werent in the ICU. Yes, this [limits daily] activities. And no, this is not something that thats caused by another illness that that could be present. And then you kind of back into the diagnosis of long COVID, Adalja says.

The CDC notes that doctors shouldnt solely rely on lab or imaging results to assess patients.

Lack of laboratory or imaging abnormalities does not invalidate the existence, severity, or importance of a patients symptoms or conditions, the agency says.

COVID-19 can affect different parts of the human body. (Centers for Disease Control, CDC)

How is it Treated?

Theres no single treatment or drug for long COVID, because its not just one illness. Many post-COVID conditions can improve through already-established approaches that manage symptoms, according to the CDC. For instance, breathing exercises can improve shortness of breath.

Across the U.S., hospitals and medical centers are establishing clinics for patients who have long COVID, bringing together different specialties to address the patients needs. At least 66 hospitals and health systems have post-COVID-19 clinics, according to Beckers Hospital Review.

Many post-COVID conditions can also be managed by primary care providers, according to the CDC.

Its not going to be, in the end, something that is going to be amenable to take this pill and your long COVID goes away, says Adalja. And I think until we understand whats going on in those patients, its more going to be like precision medicine than one size fits all.

How Can Long COVID be Prevented?

Do your best to not get COVID, says Adalja.

Research also suggests that vaccinated people are less likely to develop long COVID.

A briefing by the U.K. Health Security Agency, published on February 2022, examines 15 studies that reported on the effectiveness of vaccines against long COVID. It finds that people who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 have a lower risk of developing long COVID compared with those people who are partially vaccinated or unvaccinated.

How Does it Compare with Other Infectious Diseases?

COVID-19 is not the first infectious disease to have lingering effects.

After the 1918 flu, some people had long-haul flu symptoms called Von Economo Encephalitis, which the late, renowned physician and author Dr. Oliver Sacks later wrote about in his book Awakenings, turned into a namesake movie, says Adalja.

Other diseases that can have lingering effects include mononucleosis, or mono, and Lyme disease.

Naseem S. Miller joined The Journalists Resource in 2021 after working as a health reporter in newspapers and medical trade publications, covering a wide range of topics from correctional health care to clinical trials. She has an undergraduate degree in molecular and microbiology and a masters degree in multimedia journalism.

This story was originally published in the Journalists Resource Blog.
Major US Companies Exit Russiabut Dont Be Fooled

China is where they make their money

Commentary

A number of highly influential tech companies have suspended their operations in Russia. Their collective decision was, of course, inspired by the events in Ukraine.

The first week of March saw the likes of Netflix, PayPal, Mastercard, and Visato name just four U.S. multinationalsall exit the Russian market. Will they return? In truth, only time will tell.

Representatives from Netflix told TechCrunch that it refused to comply with a new Russian law that requires streaming companies to host 20 Russian propaganda channels. Because of this ridiculous demand, Netflix has decided to pause all future projects it had planned to produce in Russia.

Likewise, Adobe, the multinational computer software company, also announced plans to exit the Russian market. According to a statement, the San Jose, California-based firm said its decision was motivated because of a fear that Adobes products and services would be used to support an unlawful war.

Companies leaving Russia is good news. The more, the better.

However, as youll see, when it comes to actually making money, the Russian market isnt as lucrative as many might imagine.

Would the same companies be as quick to remove themselves from the Chinese market? After all, China is a country where genocide is taking place and innocent women and children are slaughtered. But dont expect major U.S. companies to remove themselves.

Why?

Because theres money to be madea lot of it.

On March 5, as Reuters first reported, PayPal announced plans to shut down services in Russia with immediate effect. Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov even shared a Twitter post discussing a letter he had received from PayPal CEO Dan Schulman.

However, as Politico recently noted, for U.S. tech giants such as PayPal, the Russian market amounts to only a tiny fraction of their overall annual revenue, and as with a number of other big tech companies, China is where the real money is made. In 2020, PayPal Holdings became the first foreign operator with complete control of a payment platform in China, and in 2021, the worlds largest fintech company made a concerted effort to expand its digital footprint in China.

According to market research firm iResearch, the Chinese market is especially lucrative. In the span of five years, between 2016 and 2021, the market size of cross-border e-commerce in China doubled to 6 trillion yuan from 3 trillion (roughly $942 billion from $471 billion). PayPal is eyeing up a sizable slice of this profit-laden pie.

A smartphone with the PayPal logo is placed on a laptop in this illustration taken on July 14, 2021. (Dado Ruvic/Illustration/Reuters)

Then theres Mastercard, another payment behemoth. On the same day that PayPal announced plans to pull out of the Russian market, Mastercard announced that it was suspending its network services in the transcontinental country as well. Cards issued by Russian banks are no longer supported on the Mastercard network. In China, however, they very much are.

In fact, MasterCard Worldwide and Bank of China recently started MasterCard MoneySend, which leverages MasterCards global payment network and card products to provide Chinese consumers with a convenient, fast, safe, and reliable way for cross-border person-to-person money transfer, were told.

In Russia, as the aforementioned Politico piece highlights, when it comes to actual money, U.S. tech companies (including fintech companies) have relatively little on the line. The likes of Apple, Google, Meta and Netflix combined stand to lose between 1 percent to 2 percent of their multibillion-dollar revenues if they remove all of their services from Russia. A number of U.S. gaming companies also have pulled out of the Russian market.

Yet again, however, China, the largest consumer of video games in the world, is where the real money is made. One of the companies to extricate itself from the Russian market is Epic Games, a Cary, North Carolina-based video game and software developer and publisher. Epic Games has close ties with Tencent, a Chinese company that has close ties with the Chinese regime. Riot Games, another U.S. gaming company that recently halted its Russian operations, also is closely associated with Tencent. Activision Blizzard, a video game company based in Santa Monica, California, recently pulled out of Russia. At the same time, however, its invested heavily in the Chinese market.

Back home, Chinese companies that aid Russia now face sanctions. But what about U.S. companies that aid China, the biggest threat to the United States? As China continues to circle Taiwan and as CCP-backed hackers continue to attack U.S. government agencies, important questions need to be asked.

Perhaps the most important question of all is this: U.S. multinationals are willing to pull out of Russia, but are they willing to do the same in China? For these companies, cutting off Russia is the easy part. Cutting off China, on the other hand, is an entirely different matter.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Cars and a building of a hospital destroyed by an aviation strike amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine, in Mariupol, Ukraine, in this handout picture released on March 9, 2022. (Press service of the National Police of Ukraine/Handout via Reuters)

Mariupol Evacuation Underway After Multiple Prior Ceasefire Failures: Mayors Adviser

Evacuation of the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol is underway after multiple prior failures to secure a ceasefire that would allow for the safe operation of a humanitarian corridor, according to an adviser to the citys mayor.

Petro Andrushenko, an adviser to the mayor of Mariupol, said in a Monday post on Facebook that, as of 1 p.m. local time, a ceasefire was being observed along a corridor leading out of the city towards Zaporizhia.

Lets help everyone out! Call, write to everyone whom you reach! he wrote, while cautioning that local Ukrainian authorities are unable to officially guarantee safety down the corridor.

Still, he said that the evacuation route was operational and that residents are able to leave using their own modes of transport. He said around 160 vehicles had already managed to depart Mariupol via the corridor.

The Mariupol City Council was cited by Interfax Ukraine as saying that a number of evacuees had already passed Berdyansk and were continuing to move in the direction of Zaporizhia.

There is also confirmation that currently a ceasefire is being observed along the established humanitarian corridor, the city council said in a statement, according to Interfax.

The Red Cross earlier called for an urgent ceasefire to be implemented in Mariupol to prevent a worst-case scenario.

The ICRC said in a statement Sunday that, a worst-case scenario awaits the hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped by heavy combat in Mariupol unless the parties reach a concrete humanitarian agreement urgently.

Mariupol has seen heavy Russian shelling in recent days, with Ukrainian authorities saying 2,500 people in the city have been killed. Ukrainian officials said that three people were killed in an attack on a Mariupol hospital last week.

The aftermath of Mariupol Hospital after an attack, in Mariupol, Ukraine, on March 9, 2022, in this image taken from video provided by Mariupol City Council. (Mariupol City Council via AP)

Andrushenko told Reuters last week that a steady barrage of Russian shelling of Mariupol had prevented prior efforts at evacuation.

The bombardment had continued without any gaps, without any pause, hitting houses and buildings along the evacuation routes, Andrushenko said.

They want to absolutely delete our city, delete our people. They want to stop any evacuation, he added.

Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych has said Russia was deliberately preventing the evacuation of civilians from Mariupol because it had failed to seize the strategically important city. Control of Mariupol would allow Russia to connect pro-Moscow enclaves in the east and Russian-annexed Crimea to the south.

Russia has denied targeting civilians or civilian infrastructure. Moscow calls its military actions in Ukraine a special military operation meant to disarm its military and oust the countrys political leaders whom the Kremlin claims are dangerous nationalists. Ukraine and its Western allies call the Russian invasion a groundless act of aggression.
Students and parents wearing face coverings wait in line for the first day of the school year at Grant Elementary School in Los Angeles, Calif., on Aug. 16, 2021. (Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images)

Masks Still Required for LA Students Even After State, County Lift Mandate

Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) said that it will, at least for now, keep its students masked up even after the end of Californias statewide mask mandate for indoor public places.

This Monday marks the first day many students in California come to school without having to wear a mask. For over 600,000 students of LAUSD, however, an indoor mask mandate remains in place as a result of negotiations between the school district and its teachers union.

The second-largest public school district in the nation, LAUSD said it is still working with partners, including United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), to come up with a plan to shift from mask requirements to strongly recommending wearing masks indoors. Per a September 2021 agreement, any changes to the districts health and safety protocols must be negotiated between both the district and the union.

I am 100 percent committed to upholding our science-based approach to COVID-19 protocols, LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho, who assumed office this February, said in a statement. I strongly support amending Los Angeles Unifieds previously negotiated agreements to align with current health guidance released by the State of California and the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.

Los Angeles Unified continues to take a science-based approach to COVID-19 policy and is currently working with labor partners and other stakeholders to transition from required indoor masking to a strong recommendation for indoor masking, Carvalhos statement continued. He didnt indicate when the indoor mask mandate might phase out.

LAUSD officials will meet with UTLA leaders again on March 16 to discuss the matter, the teachers union said, reported Los Angles Daily News.

Throughout the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic, the UTLA has been in strong support of restrictive public health measures, including the universal mask mandate and a now-delayed plan to vaccinate all eligible children in the district. It has also pushed back on Gov. Gavin Newsoms attempt to reopen school buildings for in-person instructions, condemning the Democrat for propagating structural racism.

Los Angeles isnt the only big city where the teachers union advocates to keep the mask mandate. In the wake of Seattle Public Schools announcement that masks will become optional across the district beginning March 14, the Seattle Education Association criticized the move, claiming that the union was left out of the discussion.

We are deeply disappointed by Seattle Public Schools masking announcement today which is completely contrary to its prior statements and commitments to its educators and the community, the unions leadership wrote. It is particularly frustrating given that we had scheduled to bargain masks all day on Friday, March 11.
Middle School Assistant Principal Takes His Own Life on Campus

PLACENTIA, Calif.An Orange County school was placed on lockdown after a faculty member was found dead by suicide on campus on March 14.

Moises Plascencia, the assistant principal at Kraemer Middle School in Placentia, was found dead in a private staff area on March 14, Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District Superintendent Dr. Jim Elsasser said in a statement sent to parents, according to CBS Los Angeles.

Fellow staff members and students were not present nor was the occurrence witnessed by anyone, Elsasser wrote. His passing, and the manner in which it occurred, has left us devastated, confused, and heartbroken.

Students were sent home following the incident and will resume back to the regular schedule the next day on March 15, school Principal Michael Young wrote in a statement.

The school is deploying mental health professionals to the school to support students, staff, and families affected.

Anyone impacted by this incident is encouraged to come to the multipurpose room for mental health support at any time throughout the remainder of the week, Young wrote.

Plascencia leaves behind a wife and children.

No further information was released.
A volunteer disinfects the area as it snows during the COVID-19 lockdown in Changchun in northeast China's Jilin province on March 12, 2022. (Chinatopix Via AP)

More Chinese Cities in Lockdown as COVID-19 Outbreak Spreads

China on March 13 placed two more cities under lockdown, including its southern business center of Shenzhen, amid a fresh spike of COVID-19 cases across the country fueled by the fast-spreading Omicron variant.

The new restrictions came after the countrys leader Xi Jinping and health experts signaled the communist regime might switch to a softer COVID-19 response model.

The Chinese regime currently has a so-called dynamic-zero policy that attempts to bring outbreaks under control as soon as possible through measures including mass testing, digital surveillance, mandatory isolation, and targeted lockdowns. Critics say such harsh measures hurt the economy and send ripples through global supply chains.

Despite stringent control efforts, domestic infections continue to surge in recent days. China reported 1,807 confirmed local infections on Sunday, more than triple the 476 the previous day. The National Health Commission also announced 1,315 asymptomatic local cases, which the country didnt classify as confirmed cases.

The cases reported on Sunday were scattered in 19 of the countrys 31 provinces.

While Chinas current case count is likely not to reflect the actual total, given that the Chinese regime is known to grossly underreport its virus numbers, the official figure is climbing at the rate that the county has never seen since the first outbreak in Wuhan two years ago.

Residents in a locked-down community look out from a closed gate as a worker in protective gear monitors access on March 13, 2022, in Beijing. (Ng Han Guan/AP Photo)

The flare-up prompted officials in several Chinese cities to step up efforts. Cangzhou, a city south of Beijing, announced a lockdown of its 7 million residents on Sunday. The city authorities said no one was allowed to leave home, according to a notice posted on its official Wechat account.

Shenzhen, a city with 17.5 million people, will be placed under a week-long lockdown while conducting three rounds of citywide testing starting from March 14, according to a Sunday government notice.

The southern tech hub that hosts the countrys tech giants like Tencent and Huawei orders all businesses except those in essential sectors to close or work from home. The city will suspend public transport including buses and subways, read the notice.

In the financial hub of Shanghai, the inter-city bus service will be halted from March 14. The city authorities have ordered its 24 million residents not to leave unless necessary. Anyone entering or leaving the financial hub must present a negative PCR test result.

Jilin Province, where infections accounted for nearly 80 percent of the national total, is stepping up COVID control measures, according to Zhang Yan, deputy director of the provincial Health Commission.

The outbreak reflects emergency response mechanisms in some areas are not sound enough, Zhang said at Sundays news briefing.

Two cities in Jilin Province have been placed under lockdown since March 11. Changchun city gave its 9 million residents a stay-at-home order, with one household permitted to send one person out to buy necessities every two days. The nearby city of Jilin has been placed under regional lockdown.

Jilin, a city that bears the same name as the surrounding province, is rolling out the seventh round of mass testing of its 3.6 million people on Sunday.

While the city hasnt announced a citywide lockdown, the authorities send people who received positive results and their close contacts to centralized quarantine centers.

The city is scrambling to complete the construction of an isolation facility with 6,000 rooms, as well as three makeshift hospitals with 10,000 beds for COVID-19 patients, the state-aligned news agency Xinhua said on Sunday. Jilin has built three temporary hospitals with 1,200 beds to deal with patients with mild or no symptoms, stated the report.

Residents line up for coronavirus screening during a COVID-19 lockdown in Changchun in northeastern Chinas Jilin province on March 12, 2022. (Chinatopix Via AP)

The mayors of Jilin city and Jiutai district in Changchun city were dismissed without specifying reasons, Xinhua reported.

Six Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials, including a deputy chief of provincial public security department, were removed from their roles due to the regional outbreak in Dongguan, a nearby city of Shenzhen, the Party-owned China Daily announced on Sunday.

Officials should resolutely hold the bottom line of avoiding large-scale resurgence, Sun Chunlan, Chinas vice premier, said on March 12.

Sun urged local authorities to stem regional clusters as quickly as they can, in preparation for the CCPs 20th Party Congress this year.

Top CCP officials will gather to hold the twice-a-decade Party Congress in October or November, during which a new group of top leaders will be chosen. Party leader Xi is seeking an unprecedented third five-year term in office after becoming a paramount leader in 2012.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg talks with soldiers during a visit of the Adazi military base, north east of Riga, Latvia, on March 8, 2022. (Toms Norde/AFP via Getty Images)

NATO Chief Says Russia May Use Chemical or Biological Weapons in Ukraine

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg warned on March 13 that Russia might use chemical or biological weapons in the fight with Ukraine, which the head of the alliance said would amount to a war crime.

In recent days, we have heard absurd claims about chemical and biological weapons laboratories, Stoltenberg said during an interview with German newspaper Welt am Sonntag, adding that he believes the Kremlin is trying to create a false pretext to justify the unjustifiable.

Stoltenbergs warning came as Russian officials claimed on March 7 that the U.S. military has been involved with the development of chemical or biological weapons in laboratories across Ukraine, a project backed by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, an agency within the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD).

Now that these false claims have been made, we must remain vigilant because it is possible that Russia itself could plan chemical weapons operations under this fabrication of lies. That would be a war crime, the NATO head said.

On March 6, the Russian Ministry of Defense issued a statement on Telegram accusing Ukraine of having destroyed pathogens being studied at a lab in Ukraine that the ministry says is funded by the DoD.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki has dismissed these claims as preposterous, saying they are exactly the kind of disinformation operation weve seen repeatedly from the Russians over the years in Ukraine and in other countries, which have been debunked.

This is all an obvious ploy by Russia to try to justify its further premeditated, unprovoked, and unjustified attack on Ukraine, Psaki said on March 9. Now that Russia has made these false claims, and China has seemingly endorsed this propaganda, we should all be on the lookout for Russia to possibly use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine, or to create a false flag operation using them.

The Chinese regime also appeared to repeat Russias allegations about the biological laboratories on March 7. A U.S. State Department spokesperson told The Epoch Times that the allegation is Russian propaganda and total nonsense.

Meanwhile, Polands President Andrzej Duda told the BBC on March 13 that if Russia should use chemical weapons in Ukraine, the move would be a game-changer and NATO would have to think seriously about how to respond.

Everybodys hoping that this is not going to happen. But as we say in Poland, using a little bit of an English expression, if [President Vladimir Putin] uses any weapons of mass destruction, then this will be a game-changer in the whole thing, Duda said, adding that NATO leaders will have to sit at the table and  really have to think seriously what to do if the situation escalates to these heights.

Mimi Nguyen Ly and Reuters contributed to this report.

From NTD News
Official: Drone That Crashed in Croatia Carried a Bomb

ZAGREB, CroatiaA military drone that apparently flew all the way from the Ukrainian war zone over three European NATO-member states before crashing in an urban zone of the Croatian capital was armed with an explosive device, Croatias defense minister said Sunday.

The Soviet-made aircraft crossed Romania and Hungary before entering Croatia, slamming into a field near a student dormitory late Thursday. About 40 parked cars were damaged in the large explosion, but no one was injured.

Traces of explosives and clues suggesting that this was not a reconnaissance aircraft were found. We found parts of an air bomb, Croatian Defense Minister Mario Banozic said at the crash site.

He said that this further raises a question about whether the drone belonged to Russia or Ukraine.

There are elements that indicated it could have come from both, he said.

Air crash investigators have pulled most of the drones remaining parts from a large crater it created on impact, including a partly damaged black box that should reveal the drones flight path.

Croatian officials have criticized NATO for what they called a slow reaction to a very serious incident and called into question the readiness of the military alliances member states to respond to a possible attack.

NATO said the alliances integrated air and missile defense had tracked the objects flight path. But Croatian officials said the countrys authorities werent informed and that NATO reacted only after questions were posed by journalists.

If this situation had been detected and resolved in time in neighboring countries, we would not be here today, Banozic said.

We will seek answers to what happened. The defense ministers of Romania and Hungary said that day they were evaluating what happened. We are waiting for an answer, he said.

Croatian investigators identified the unmanned aircraft that crashed in Zagreb as a Soviet-era Tu-141 that was used for reconnaissance missions in both countries in the 1980s.
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown speaks at the state capital building in Salem, Ore., on Feb. 20, 2015. (Steve Dipaola/Reuters)

Oregon Court Rules Governor Unlawfully Used Clemency to Release Convicted Felons

A judge has ordered a pause on early releases of prisoners who committed crimes as juveniles, granting in part the relief sought in a lawsuit filed against Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, a Democrat, by two district attorneys and four family members of homicide victims.

Brown has granted early release to nearly 1,200 convicted felons, including 10 convicted murderers, since March 1, 2020.

Marion County Circuit Court Judge David Leith ruled on March 1 that the governor had unlawfully conferred her clemency powers to the Oregon Parole Board.

The board lacked delegated authority to hear the parole cases of the offenders at issue, Leith wrote in his ruling. It was only the [Governors] clemency order that purported to provide that authority.

According to Linn County District Attorney Doug Marteeny, a petitioner in the suit, that transfer of authority shielded Brown from accountability for commuting the sentences of inmates convicted of violent crimes.

What the governor attempted to do was commute [sentences] without having the label that she was the one who released them, said Marteeny in a public written statement.

The judge found that the governor was exercising her authority improperly, and releasing those convicted of murder, rape, and child sex abuse, he continued.

The court ordered the parole board to refrain from conducting or carrying out the release process, which was scheduled to move forward this month.

Governor Brown has misapplied her clemency powers since early 2020, Kevin Mannix, lead attorney for the petitioners, stated in a brief obtained by The Epoch Times. We have a victory for crime victims in that the Board of Parole will not be able to shorten sentences for 250 violent criminals.

The suit further asserted that Brown had granted clemency to people who had not requested early release through the legal process.

Convicted criminals must initiate the process to seek forgiveness and state their case by demonstrating remorse, rehabilitation, and a desire and capability to reasonably re-enter society, the petitioners claimed.

They also argued that Brown improperly failed to notify victims or their families and district attorneys of pending releases as required by law.

That part of the suit has been denied.

We will continue to challenge Gov. Browns willingness to ignore the experienced voices of prosecuting attorneys and the anguished cries of crime victims, said Monique DeSpain, attorney for the petitioners, in an email to The Epoch Times.

Surviving family members who joined the suit include Randy Tennant, whose mother in law was killed by her grandson when he was just 17, and Samuel Williams whose daughter, Jessica, was stabbed to death, mutilated, and then set on fire by Carl Alsup, then 17, and two others in 2003.

I am disappointed that the governor is allowed to ignore the voice of crime victims and district attorneys in the clemency process, Mannix wrote.

The state has indicated that it will appeal the judges decision regarding the parole board process.

The governor continues to believe that executive clemency is an important tool that can be used to address systemic failures in our criminal justice system while we work to make lasting change, and she will continue to exercise her clemency authority, the Governors office wrote in response to the ruling.

We will cross-appeal to defend what we have won and to continue to push for the right of victims and district attorneys to be heard in the clemency process, said Mannix.
One in three Australians said COVID-19 has had a big impact on their decision to change jobs. (William West/Getty Images)

160,000 Australians Eligible to Work Interstate Under New JobPass Scheme

The federal government has announced the expanded JobPass scheme, which will is expected to reduce regulations for licensed and registered workers who wish to apply for interstate jobs.

The scheme is designed to address impediments to labour mobility across the state. It would allow licensed tradies in one jurisdiction to be immediately considered registered interstate in an equivalent occupation, without delays, additional fees or paperwork.

The Cabinet estimated that the plan would boost the economy by $2.4 billion over 10 years, helping over 168,000 people take up jobs in another jurisdiction each year, including occupations in construction, mining, real estate, automotive, security and manufacturing sectors. But tradies are recommended to contact the relevant regulator in the state or territory they intend to move to for more information.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said in 2020 that the scheme will create jobs, increase output, competition and innovation, and result in lower prices for consumers and businesses.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg speaks during a press conference in the Blue Room at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, on June 3, 2021. (Sam Mooy/Getty Images)

From July 1, more businesses and workers will be featured in JobPass as more work licences and registrations become part of the scheme.

It is considered part of the Morrison governments drive for red tape reduction for businesses as the nation enters the post-pandemic recovery phase and the border starts to open up.

New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania, the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory have signed up for the plan. Western Australia is on track to join by the middle of the year.

Ben Morton, the Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister and Cabinet, said in 2020 that deregulation is about the ease of doing business and getting rid of unnecessary, disproportionate, and inefficiently implemented regulation.

The West Australian MP said the Morrison government has adopted a practical approach to solving problems, where regulation must be fit for purpose and lightest touch.

The wider scheme also entail changes to Australian consumer law so that trusted overseas product safety standards are used alongside domestic laws, accelerating approvals and cutting costs.

The Deregulation Taskforce moved to the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet in 2020, so it is co-located with and tightly integrated to the rest of the whole-of-government deregulatory machinery.
Overwhelming Need to Investigate COVID-19 Vaccine Tinnitus: Researchers

A group of researchers who evaluated the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) found there is a need to carry out more studies on COVID-19 vaccine-related tinnitus.

In an article published for the March edition in the Annals of Medicine and Surgery, about 12,247 cases of COVID-19 post-vaccination tinnitus were reported until Sept. 14, 2021. Tinnitus is when one experiences ringing or other noisesthat are not external soundsin one or both ears, affecting between 15 and 20 percent of all people, says the Mayo Clinic.

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first review evaluating any otologic manifestation following vaccine administration and aims to evaluate the potential pathophysiology, clinical approach, and treatment. Although the incidence is infrequent, there is a need to understand the precise mechanisms and treatment for vaccine-associated-tinnitus, said the researchers.

Because of the relatively high number of cases, they argued that there is an overwhelming need to discern the precise pathophysiology and clinical management of vaccine-associated-tinnitus because despite several cases of tinnitus being reported following SARS-CoV-2 vaccination, the precise pathophysiology is still not clear.

The researchers, led by Syed Hassan Ahmed with the Dow University of Health Sciences, noted that stress and anxiety following COVID-19 vaccination could also play a role. Whether vaccine-related anxiety, they said, plays a role in the cause of tinnitus should be evaluated.

Ahmed and the other researchers asserted that they believe the benefits of COVID-19 vaccines outweigh the side effects.

Dr. Gregory Poland, the head of the Mayo Clinics Vaccine Research Group in Minnesota, told Medpage Today that he developed tinnitus soon after receiving his first COVID-19 vaccine shot.

It was like someone suddenly blew a dog whistle in my ear, Poland told MedPage Today, adding that the tinnitus symptoms have been life-altering. It has been pretty much unrelenting.

Poland continued to say that he can only begin to estimate the number of times I just want to scream because I cant get rid of the noise or how many hours of sleep Ive lost.

The noise that he hears can be particularly loud at night when there are no masking sounds.

Despite the tinnitus, Polandwho said hes received numerous emails about individuals who developed tinnitus after getting the COVID-19 shottold the outlet that he is still a proponent of the COVID-19 vaccine and received a booster dose.

The tinnitus, he added, occurs in both ears, noting that it is worse in the left than in the right ear.

What has been heartbreaking about this, as a seasoned physician, are the emails I get from people that, this has affected their life so badly, they have told me they are going to take their own life, Poland said.

A spokesperson for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which runs VAERS, noted that tinnitus is a common condition, heterogenous in nature, and has many causes and risk factors, adding that hundreds of millions of people have received mRNA COVID-19 vaccination under the most intensive monitoring in U.S. history.

The Epoch Times has contacted the CDC for comment.
The new name for the Orange County Superior Court's West Justice Center is revealed in a livestreamed ceremony in Westminster, Calif., on Nov. 6, 2020. (Screenshot via Superior Court of California County of Orange)

Piano Teacher Convicted of Molesting 8 Girls in Orange County

SANTA ANA, Calif.An Orange County piano instructor was convicted on March 14 of molesting eight girlswith a ninth testifying as a witness in his trialover 18 years.

John Mordecai Scott, 65, was initially accused of molesting 11 girls, but one didnt want to participate in the non-jury bench trial before Orange County Superior Court Judge Steve Bromberg, and charges related to another alleged victim were dismissed before the verdict.

Scott, who is scheduled to be sentenced on May 13, faces 111 years to life in prison for his conviction on 26 sex-related counts. The defendant, who was out on bail during the trial, was immediately taken into custody when the verdict was announced.

The first crime occurred in 1996, with a girl whose breast was groped during one lesson and her legs spread at other times during a metronome-like exercise to work on timing in the music, Deputy District Attorney Kristin Bracic said in her opening statement of the trial. She said Scott instructed the girl not to tell her parents about what happened.

The girl didnt come forward until 2002, when she made a complaint to his former employer at Music Makers, but she was told he didnt work there anymore, Bracic said.

Another girl, who was 11 when she took lessons from Scott in his Lake Forest home, saw that he would leave pornographic magazines lying around the house. Scott sexually assaulted that victim with his finger and took semi-nude photos of the girl.

Another victim was 15 when she took racy photos with the defendant, Bracic said. The girl put on various dresses for photos, and he insisted she undress in front of him.

The teen went to the police, but no charges were brought at the time.

In 2002 to 2005, another victim was 7 years old when she started taking lessons from Scott at her home, Bracic said.

Once he walked in on her as she relieved herself in the bathroom under the guise of ensuring she washed her hands. Scott groped her once and also slipped in pages from pornographic magazines in the music sheets. That incident prompted the girl to finally tell her mother, and it was the last lesson, Bracic said.

In another incident in May 2006, Scott nearly got caught as he approached a 17-year-old girl on the street to pay her to model for pictures, Bracic said. That alleged victim didnt participate in the trial.

Two narcotics officers saw the activity and stopped to question him, and Scott said initially he thought the girl was 18, Bracic said. A report was taken, but no charges were filed.

In June 2007 he showed pornographic images to an 11-year-old girl during a lesson at his home and suggested she pose for pictures, which she refused to do, Bracic said.

Despite telling her parents about the incident, no charges were filed at the time.

Between May 2010 and October 2013, another girl took lessons when she was 8 to 11 at Coast Band Music in Mission Viejo, Bracic said. The defendant took a lot of pictures of her, the prosecutor said. He also used the metronome game of spreading her legs to the music, the prosecutor added.

In January 2011 through July 2014, another girl took lessons from him beginning when she was 8, Bracic said. By that time, Scott was divorced from his wife and was giving lessons at Coast Band Music and his home, she said.

Once, while the girls mother waited in the car, he did a lesson where he took a ton of pictures of the girl while showing her pictures of nude women, Bracic said.

The girl said she didnt want to take lessons from him anymore, but after some negotiations, she agreed to one last make-up lesson at Coast Music. After that, she told her family what had been happening, Bracic said.

That sparked another police investigation.

Another victim took lessons from him from July 2011 through June 2014, beginning when she was 13, Bracic said. He did the metronome exercise with her, molested her, and showed her pornographic pictures.

The youngest alleged victim was 5 to 6 years old in September through May 2013 when she took lessons, Bracic said. That girl was autistic, the prosecutor said. Bromberg dismissed charges related to that alleged victim.

Another victim took lessons in 201314 when she was 14 years old. The two engaged in inappropriate talk and Scott showed her porn.

The Orange County Sheriffs Department investigation that led to the charges began in August 2014, Bracic said. Investigators found images of three girls in his files with some considered pornographic but the vast majority being child erotica.

Scotts attorney, Ed Munoz, told the judge his client trained and instructed hundreds of people over the years, including some students in their 80s and some as young as 5.

Munoz said his client is rather an ordinary man in many respects who has a profound passion for music, and he was actually pretty good at it.

Scott was able to earn a living as a musician, but then a viral infection caused deafness in his left ear, ending his career, Munoz said. His wife encouraged him to take up photography, which he did, and he started offering piano lessons to make ends meet, the attorney said.

He tried to meld [music and photography] together, Munoz said. Scott is a very demonstrative and needy person, who likes to embrace and touch peopleeven the parents of his students, Munoz said.

Scott would even provide photography for some of the parents for their businesses, Munoz said.
Ammon Bundy speaks to a crowd of about 50 followers in front of the Ada County Courthouse in downtown Boise, Idaho, on April 3, 2021. (Darin Oswald/Idaho Statesman via AP)

Police: Ammon Bundy Arrested in Trespassing Case

MERIDIAN, IdahoGubernatorial candidate Ammon Bundy has been arrested after refusing to leave a hospital in connection with a child welfare case, police said Saturday.

Bundy was arrested at about 1:15 a.m. on Saturday on suspicion of misdemeanor trespassing at St. Lukes Meridian Medical Center in Meridian, west of Boise, the Idaho Statesman reported.

Ammon Bundy is dragged from the Idaho Senate Chambers gallery by Idaho State Troopers after returning to the Idaho Statehouse in Boise, Idaho, on Aug. 26, 2020. (Darin Oswald//Idaho Statesman via AP)

The arrest concerned a 10-month-old determined to be suffering from severe malnourishment and at risk of injury or death, the Meridian Police Department said in a news release. The babys parents had refused to let officers check on its welfare after the family canceled an appointment.

Bundy urged his followers to go to the hospital to support the family.

Bundy wrote on Twitter on Saturday that last night my very good friend Diegos grandson was medically kidnapped because a medical practitioner called (child protective services) for a missed doctor appointment. If this happened to them, it could happen to you.

One other person was arrested on suspicion of trespassing at the hospital, and two people were arrested earlier Friday in a related incident on suspicion of resisting or obstructing police.

Bundy is well-known for participating in armed standoffs with law enforcement, notably at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon in 2016, and on federal land near his familys ranch in Nevada in 2014.

Hes also scheduled to stand trial this week on three charges from a previous trespassing case at the Idaho Capitol.
The structure of the New Safe Confinement (NSC) covering the 4th block of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, which was destroyed during the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, is pictured on Nov. 22, 2018. (Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images)

Power Supply Resumed at Chernobyl After Nuclear Plant Was Seized by Russian Forces: Officials

Ukraine says it has resumed the power supply to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant after it was seized by Russian forces in February, energy officials in Kyiv said Sunday.

A broken power line at the site was reportedly restored at 18:38 CET by the repair personnel of Ukrenergo, Ukraines transmission system operator, meaning external electricity supplies to the plant can now be resumed.

Ukraines Energy Minister German Galushchenko said in a statement that specialists from the national power grid had been able to successfully restore the connection.

Today, thanks to the incredible efforts of (Ukrainian energy) specialists, our nuclear power engineers and electricians managed to return the power supply to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which was seized by the Russian occupiers, Galushchenko said.

Our Ukrainian energy engineers, by risking their own health and lives, were able to avert the risk of a possible nuclear catastrophe that threatened the whole of Europe, he added.

The power supply to Chernobyl is used to keep running pumps that keep thousands of spent nuclear fuel cool, thus preventing radiation leaks.

Russian forces captured Chernobyl, which is located along the UkraineBelarus border and about 60 miles north of Kyiv, just days after invading Ukraine on Feb. 24.

Ukrainian officials told the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that power had been cut off from the plant on Wednesday and it had to use emergency generators.

Officials said that there was enough diesel fuel to run the on-site generators for 48 hours, while the IAEA said there had been no critical impact to safety after officials, including Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, warned about a potential radiation leak overnight.

A nuclear accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986 killed hundreds and spread a radioactive cloud west across Europe.

Abandoned gas masks lay on the floor of a classroom in a school on 26 May 2003 of the deserted town of Prypyat, adjacent to the Chernobyl nuclear site. (Sergei Supinsky/AFP/Getty Images)

The Ukrainian government warned that, just like in the previous Soviet disaster, the wind could transfer a radioactive cloud across Ukraine, Russia, and other parts of Europe.

On March 10, Ukraine officials lost all communications with the power plant, the countrys regulatory authority informed IAEA, meaning that they could not provide IAEA with updated information about the site.

Ongoing fighting around the nuclear power plant has made it impossible to carry out repairs, the government said.

However, Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, told state-run outlets on March 9 that the site was operating as normal and that both Russian and Ukrainian specialists were jointly controlling the situation.

Zakharova also said that the Ukrainian governments allegations regarding a potential radiation threat were false.

The actions of the Russian military in this dangerous situation were motivated by the necessity to prevent a nuclear provocation from Ukrainian nationalists, who seem to have nothing to lose. As a matter of fact, they have been trained to do it. That is why Russian troops are taking Ukraines nuclear facilities under control, Zakharova said.

Rafael Grossi, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), points on a map of the Ukrainian Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant on March 4, 2022, in Vienna, Austria. (Joe Klamar/AFP via Getty Images)

IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said Sunday that the team of Ukrainian specialists had repaired one of two lines that had been damaged at the plant, meaning they would now be able to deliver all required off-site power to the plant.

However, Grossi expressed concerns over the future safety of the plant and has proposed a framework that would enable IAEA to provide technical assistance to ensure the safe operation of the plant.

Grossi said he has discussed the proposal with the Ukrainian and Russian Foreign Ministers Dmytro Kuleba and Sergei Lavrov, last week.

This is a positive development as the Chornobyl NPP has had to rely on emergency diesel generators for several days now, Grossi said. However, I remain gravely concerned about safety and security at Chornobyl and Ukraines other nuclear facilities.
American journalists Brent Renaud and Juan Arrendo were shot crossing a bridge at the Irpin checkpoint in Kyiv, Ukraine March 13. Renaud, a Southern Methodist University graduate was killed. File photo Feb. 25, Ukrainian soldiers take positions on a bridge in Kyiv. (Emilio Morenatti/AP Photo)

Praise for World Changer Journalist Killed in Ukraine

The U.S. journalist shot and killed in Kyiv on March 13 has been described as someone who cared about people and social justice.

Brent Renaud, 50, was shot with another American photojournalist, Juan Arredondo, 45, while traveling by car at the Irpin checkpoint, near Kyiv.

Renaudwho graduated from Southern Methodist University located in Dallas, Texaswas hit in the neck and killed. Arredondo was taken to hospital after being wounded in the lower back.

Brents level of commitment was profound, said SMU Professor Bruce Levy to The Epoch Times on March 14.

Brent Renaud was absolutely a world changer, said SMU Professor Bruce Levy to The Epoch Times on March 14. Levy worked with Renaud on a pioneering outreach to at-risk children in Dallas, Texas when Renaud was a student there in 1994. Renauds current work with refugees was perfectly consistent with the person I knew. Levy said. (Jemal Countess/Getty Images for Peabody Awards)

He was one of these people who, when involved in something, was all in. He gave his all. He was someone who cared deeply about humanity and social justice.

The university website proclaims, World Changers Shaped Here.

Thats what Renaud was, said Levy, who worked with him in the pioneering Inter-community Experience Program.

Renaud was a beloved figure, he said.

Certainly, I saw the seeds of that in his earlier life. He was in an at-risk neighborhood all the time.

He was a real community leader even then and a beloved figure by the children and parents.

Im not surprised at all that he documented the plight of refugees. Its perfectly consistent with the person I knew. He was absolutely a world changer, without a doubt.

Levy said there had been an outpouring by his former students.

Outpouring of Sadness

I keep up with my friends and former students on social media and I let them know about Brent. Theres been an outpouring of sadness and anger about how this happened.

Whenever a journalist dies in a situation like that, it really hits home, and affects all of us.

Renaud graduated from SMU in 1994 with a major in English Literature and a minor in Sociology.

He had vast experience covering wars, natural disasters, and extremist military groups.

With his brother, Craig, Renaud produced programs for HBO, Discovery, PBS, and Vice news, winning a Peabody Award for Last Chance Highan HBO series focused on at-risk youth on Chicagos west side.

While in hospital Arredondo relayed his story to Italian journalist Annalisa Camilli in a video interview and released to the Associated Press.

We crossed the first bridge in Irpinwe were going to film other refugees leavingand we got into a car. Somebody offered to take us to the other bridge, we crossed the checkpoint and they started shooting at us, Arredondo said.

The driver turned the car around, and my friend, Brent Renaud was shot and left behind. I saw him being shot in the neck shot and we got split.

Arredondo was taken to by ambulance to a hospital in Kyiv, and at the time of his statement, was unaware of Renauds condition.

Irpin is a suburb of Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine. Though the details of the shooting were not immediately clarified by Ukrainian authorities, it appears the pair were shot near the vehicle checkpoint by Russian forces.

Time said Renaud had been near Kyiv for a Time Studios project featuring global refugees

We are devastated by the loss of Brent Renaud, a statement from the company read. Our hearts are with all of Brents loved ones.

Run and Gun

In a 2013 interview with Filmmaker magazine, Renaud said he learned during the war in Iraq to travel lightly in a combat or disaster zone.

More than once we witnessed network news crews with the traditional set up of a producer, soundman, and camera operator being left behind by American military units for lack of space in the vehicles.

Large crews are seen as a liability when things get heated.

For us getting left behind is never an option, and in Iraq, we always showed up for combat missions carrying only a small digital camera and wireless microphones that we operated ourselves.

No tripods, no lights, no production assistant to carry equipment. Sometimes there would not be even a single seat available for a reporter in a Humvee or an armored personnel carrier, in which case we would sit on the hump under the dangling feet of the gunner working the 50-caliber machine gun, or even on top of a tank.

Whatever it takes. Run and gun.

An Arkansas native, Brent Renaud served as a visiting distinguished professor for the Center for Ethics in Journalism at the University of Arkansas. He and his brother founded the Little Rock Film Festival and Brent Renaud was co-founder of the Arkansas Motion Picture Institute.

He is survived by his brother, his brothers wife, and his 11-year-old nephew.
Russian President Vladimir Putin (C) speaks with his press secretary Dmitry Peskov (2nd R) in a file photo. (Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP via Getty Images)

Putin Spokesman: Russias Invasion Going According to Plan

The top Kremlin spokesman said Monday that Russias invasion of Ukraine is still going according to plan and within the timeframe that was approved in advance.

The Russian Armed Forces are using modern high-precision weapons, hitting only military information infrastructure facilities. All plans of the Russian leadership will be implemented in full within the timeframe approved in advance, asserted Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, to state-run media.

Peskov declined to comment on how long the war, described by Russias government as a special military operation, will last. Peskov also appeared to dispute a significant number of reports and claims from Ukrainian officials who said Russia was targeting civilian infrastructure, including hospitals.

U.S. military officials have repeatedly said that Russias invasion appears to have been slowed or even thwarted in some places by Ukraines military. Satellite images that purported to show a 40-mile-long column of Russian armored vehicles remained stationed outside of Kyiv for more than a week, although recent satellite photos suggested that the column has dispersed.

But Peskov said that Putin did indeed instruct the Ministry of Defense to refrain from an immediate assault on large settlements, including Kyiv and said Ukraines military and nationalist fighters placed military equipment in residential and densely populated areas.

A Ukranian serviceman (L) walks in front of a destroyed apartment building after it was shelled in Kyiv, Ukraine, on March 14, 2022. (Aris Messinis/AFP via Getty Images)

His remarks came after Russian National Guard chief Viktor Zolotov noted that the operation was slower than they had hoped.

Not everything is going as fast as we would like, Zolotov said in comments posted on the Russian National Guards website, adding, But we are going towards our goal step by step and victory will be for us.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian government negotiator Mykhailo Podolyak, who on Sunday said Russia was beginning to talk constructively, wrote ahead of the talks, Negotiations. 4th round. On peace, ceasefire, immediate withdrawal of troops & security guarantees.

He later said discussions had started but were hard because the political systems of Russia and Ukraine were too different.

Podolyak said he believed Russia still has a delusion that 19 days of violence against (Ukrainian) peaceful cities is the right strategy.

On Monday, there were reports of explosions around Kyiv as Russian forces inched closer to the capital. Ukraines State Emergency Service said that a residential building of Obolon was hit by shelling.

Moscow on Sunday fired missiles at a base near the border with NATO member Poland in what Britain called a significant escalation. Ukraine said 35 people had been killed while Moscow said up to 180 foreign mercenaries died and many foreign weapons were destroyed.

Reuters contributed to this report.
Contents from a tailings pond is pictured going down the Hazeltine Creek into Quesnel Lake near the town of Likely, B.C. on Aug. 5, 2014. (The Canadian Press/Jonathan Hayward)

Regulator Fines Engineers 8 Years After Mount Polley Disaster in BC

Three engineers have been disciplined nearly eight years after one of Canadas worst mining catastrophes.

Engineers and Geoscientists British Columbia, a provincial regulatory and licensing body, said in a statement that its years-long investigation into the Mount Polley disaster was among its most complex cases.

As a result, two former engineers have been ordered to pay a combined $226,500 while a third has been temporarily suspended and ordered to complete additional training.

This marks the final chapter in a long and difficult story for our province and our professions, CEO Heidi Yang said in the statement.

The tailings dam at the Mount Polley copper and gold mine, owned by Imperial Metals, failed in August 2014, releasing more than 25 million cubic metres of mining wastewater and tailings into surrounding waterways in B.C.s Interior.

The regulator reviewed thousands of documents including contracts, technical reports and drawings, correspondence and daily site reports, it said.

During the disciplinary hearings, it did not make allegations or findings as to the cause of the embankment failure, it said.

Former engineers Todd Martin and Stephen Rice were ordered to pay $94,000 and $132,500, respectively, in fines and legal fees after the panel found both acted unprofessionally.

Martin resigned his licence in 2020, while Rice resigned in 2018. Neither is permitted to practise professional engineering in British Columbia, however they can reapply under conditions.

The regulator said Martin, who was responsible for the geotechnical engineering work at the mine, admitted in a consent order that some of his work was not consistent with prudent engineering practices, including his failure to recommend drilling to improve embankment foundation soils and his failure to record important field observations in 2011.

Rices unprofessional conduct included failing to properly fill the role of review engineer and allowing a junior engineer with little experience in embankment design to act in a senior role on the project, the regulator said.

Laura Fidel, who was the junior engineer in question, was found to have failed to ensure sufficient observation of the dam and to monitor seepage flows that could provide evidence of unsafe embankment conditions. The panel ordered her to undergo more training and suspended her registration as a professional engineer for two months.

Martin, and lawyers for both Fidel and Rice, could not immediately be reached for comment.

In June, British Columbias chief auditor of mines found changes in 2016 to the provinces requirements for tailings storage facilities made after an independent investigation into the disaster have generally improved the management of mining waste. However, it also found the Mines Ministry is not consistent in its approach to enforcement at tailings storage facilities that arent in operation, in contrast to its systematic approach for operating ones.

The Mines Ministry and Environment Ministry could not immediately be reached for comment.

After the breach, Engineers and Geoscientists B.C. says it also took actions to improve dam safety, including producing professional practice guidelines relating to dam foundations, updating existing guidelines to clarify certain duties and hosting professional development seminars.

It is currently updating guidelines on legislated dam safety reviews, it said.

The conclusion of these cases, combined with resources weve developed to improve dam safety, will strengthen our professions and our provinces environmental safeguards, Yang says in the statement.
A pharmacy technician grabs a bottle of drugs off a shelf at the central pharmacy of Intermountain Healthcare in Midvale, Utah, on Sept. 10, 2018. IHC, along with other hospitals and philanthropies, are launching a nonprofit generic drug company called "Civica Rx" to help reduce cost and shortages of generic drugs. (George Frey/Getty Images)

Reshoring Pharmaceuticals: Take the Advantage Away From China

News Analysis

Pharmaceutical drugs are one of the most crucial areas where the United States is too dependent on imports. China is the number one source of U.S. imported drugs, by volume.

President Joe Bidens State of the Union address on March 1 highlighted restoring U.S. manufacturing, while several White House initiatives specifically mentioned pharmaceuticals. But there is still much to be done.

A U.S. Department of Commerce study found that 87 percent of the generic drugs and 90 percent of all prescriptions sold in the United States come from China, including 97 percent of all antibiotics and 80 percent of all active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs).

The severe supply chain disruptions that occurred during the pandemic, and the shortages of drugs, personal protective equipment (PPE), and medical equipment, reaffirmed how fragile U.S. supply chains are, and how dependent the United States is on China for essential materials and products, including pharmaceuticals and pharmaceutical inputs.

The pandemic exposed the major risks in supply chains and the urgent need for manufacturing semiconductors, pharmaceuticals.  With the federal governments focus and potential funding, we can rebuild our manufacturing base in America, Rosemary Coates, founder and executive director of the Reshoring Institute, told Powder & Bulk Solids on March 2.

Even before the pandemic, the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission warned the government that the United States was too dependent on China for imports, particularly medicine.

During trade deal negotiations, Chinese economists recommended that Beijing should decrease its exports of raw materials for vitamins and antibiotics in a bid to gain an advantage over the United States. The fact that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) could weaponize drug exports is a clear threat to national security.

Vitamins and supplements in a store in San Francisco, California. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Apart from supply chain disruptions, manufacturing drugs in China poses a number of problems, including business risk, loss of competencies, knowledge loss, and brand damage, while it opens U.S. companies to intellectual property (IP) theft.

Another threat is low-quality products. Four years ago, one of Chinas largest domestic vaccine manufacturers distributed roughly 250,000 substandard doses of diphtheria, tetanus, and whooping cough vaccine. Last year, the FDA issued a warning letter about faulty medical devices produced by Foshan Biours Biosciences of China.

Fortunately, the Reshoring Institute reported that there has been a general trend of reshoring American manufacturing. BCI Global, a leading supply chain consulting firm, reported that over 60 percent of European and U.S. companies expect to reshore at least part of their manufacturing in the next three years, and one out of five companies expects to repatriate the majority of its China and Asia production.

Former President Donald Trump pioneered a number of initiatives to promote U.S. domestic production of medicines. In 2020, the Trump administration awarded $354 million to Virginia-based company Phlow, whose import supply chain was endangered, to produce drugs.

The Biden administration continued Trumps efforts with the Buy American executive order, which also applied to pharmaceuticals.

In 2021, the U.S. Department of Defense awarded a grant of $69.3 million to Continuus Pharmaceuticals, to construct a manufacturing plant in Massachusetts. Civica Rx received government funding to construct a plant in Virginia, to produce drugs that had formerly been imported.

Under the Defense Production Act, the White House designated the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) to establish a public-private consortium to produce critical drugs in the United States, beginning with 50 to 100 drugs from the FDAs essential medicines list.

Another government program, the American Rescue Plan, allocated $60 million to the HHS to set up a platform for the production of APIs. The White House earmarked $2.7 billion for domestic COVID vaccine manufacturing. And in central Virginia, public and private partners pledged $2.5 million for the establishment of accelerators focused on pharmaceutical manufacturing and research and development.

On Feb. 24, 2022, Biden signed Executive Order 14017, Americas Supply Chains, launching a comprehensive interagency review of U.S. critical supply chains, including pharmaceuticals and APIs. The reviews are led by the Department of Commerce, the Department of Energy, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Health and Human Services, and are meant to complement the work of Executive Order 14001, A Sustainable Public Health Supply Chain, which was issued on Jan. 21, 2021.

More recently, according to Bidens State of the Union address, the pandemic underlined the problems in the U.S. supply chain. The administration identified pharmaceuticals as one of a number of reshoring efforts that it will prioritize.

According to a report by the National Association of Manufacturers, the United States still leads the world in pharmaceutical innovation. The association recommends that in order to maintain this lead, the United States should protect IP rights, boost innovation through investment and tax incentives, and increase domestic production. This includes tax breaks and grants for drug research.

Reshoring would be another way of bolstering U.S. domestic production, while breaking U.S. dependence on China.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Yan Sa Kai vigilantes pose with motorcycles donated to them by Kebbi State government in August 2020. Photo courtesy of Murtala Gotomo.

Thousands in Nigerias Kebbi State Displaced by Running Bandit Battles

Running battles in Nigeria between heavily armed bandits and security forces have claimed more than 80 lives since March 6 while thousands of local villagers near the clashes have become internally displaced, The Epoch Times has learned.

The firefights between motorcycle-riding bandits armed with assault rifles and small landowners using homemade single-shot rifles have been frequent since early January, and fit into the emerging picture of lawlessness spreading across five of Nigerias northwestern states.

At least 18 soldiers and a policeman were killed on March 8 when a bandit gang ambushed a convoy of vehicles in scenic Kebbi state, known for its herds of transient elephants and hippos in the Sokoto River.

Deputy Gov. Samaila Dabai Yombe said a convoy of armed security protecting him was ambushed by bandits in the town of Kanya, in southeastern Kebbi as they made their way toward Wusagu County, according to Reuters.

Officials pose with Yan Sa Kai vigilantes in the town of Mairairai, Kebbi State, Nigeria, on Aug. 1, 2020. (Courtesy of Murtala Gotomo)

The bandit gang wasnt identified but could have been any among the dozens that use the roads traversing southern Kebbi, which borders Niger state on the south, Zamfara to the east, and Sokoto to its north.

The ambush was preceded by a bloody clash in nearby Sakaba County on March 6, that saw 62 armed volunteers known as vigilantes killed by bandits, officials told The Epoch Times. More than 50 of the terrorists were reportedly killed in the encounter, said Garba Rabiu, the special security adviser to Kebbis state governor.

A subset of the vigilantes in Kebbi known as Yan Sa Kai stormed the sparsely forested Birnin Daji area of Sakaba County on March 6, police spokesman Nafiu Abubakar told The Epoch Times.

The team targeted remnants of bandit terrorists fleeing military airstrikes in Niger state to neighboring Zamfara state.

There is an ongoing operation in that [area] and the Yan Sa Kai [the vigilantes] is part of itonly that this time around, they went on their own, Abubakar said.

According to Reuters, the bandits were tipped off to the operation, leading to a deadly ambush of their motorcycle column by the terrorists.

They lay in ambush, hid their motorcycles in the shrubs, circled us, and opened fire from different directions, Usman Sani, a retired soldier who heads the Yan Sa Kai group in Kebbi, told Reuters. Sixty-two vigilantes were killed in the battle, he said.

Of that number, 14 were reportedly vigilantes from Niger state who had joined forces with their Kebbi counterparts.

There were vigilantes from Niger that were involved, Umar Bagna, commissioner for internal security in Niger state, said in a phone call.

They [terrorists] came into Niger and we chased them out. They moved over to Kebbi. We recorded some casualties on our own sidethey killed some of our vigilantes and other voluntary support group members  but again, they too suffered losses, and our vigilantes have control, Bagna said.

The terrorists recorded more than 50 casualties in the encounter, Rabiu said.

The operation happened in the night, and they carried most of their dead away, but from the corpses we recovered after we followed up with air support, they lost more than 50 people.

Terrorists Access Way

The clashes occurred along the boundaries of Kebbi with Zamfara and Niger statesa major access way for terrorists in the embattled region, according to Rabiu. Dozens of civilians had been killed by terrorists transiting in the area in recent months, forcing residents in six adjoining districts to flee, he said.

Unlike Zamfara and Niger stateswhere terrorists are taking towns and setting up their own governmentsthe terrorists in Kebbi attack for resources with which they acquire weapons, Rabiu said.

These bandits who have absolute knowledge of the local terrain often penetrate into Kebbi to areas where they suspect there is a large concentration of cattle to rustle, said Rabiu, lamenting that the military is unable to protect all communities in the state.

There are a lot of ungoverned spaces, he said.

The number of bandits in the northwestern states has swelled during the past 11 years and now totals more than 10,000, according to expert Murtala Rufai.

Rufai and War on the Rocks coauthor James Barnett, a research fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, have assessed that the bandits outnumber the terrorist insurgencies known as Boko Haram, Ansaru, and Islamic State of West Africa, and are currently taking more lives in their attacks.

Vigilantes are increasingly taking up significant roles in place of the military in Kebbi and the countrys north, retired army major Gabriel AdOfikwu told The Epoch Times.

[They are] a response to the murderous activities of the [bandits] who have been going about killing and appropriating lands, he said.

Rabiu acknowledged seeking help from vigilantes.

We make use of them where there is the absence of military presence. We engage them one way or the other to assist the military because of their knowledge of the local terrain.

The Yan Sa Kai vigilantes in Kebbi have deployed against bandits in nearby Niger, Zamfara, and Kaduna states, Rufai said.

Their [operation] is beyond their own territory. It is [the] fear of invasion that has made them form this group and move towards addressing this problem [of banditry] in their neighboring communities, he said.

They share borders with Zamfara, Kaduna, and Niger, and these are frontline states [for banditry].

He says their constant harassment of bandits has infuriated the terrorists, who have in recent months retaliated with a series of targeted attacks across the northern region.

The latest clashes ensued hours after a feared bandit warlord, Bello Turji, granted an interview to Daily Trust newspaper and blamed the bandits activities on the governments approval of vigilantes.

If the government had brought them to order, things wouldnt have been this bad, he said. Because its a volunteer groupthey were not established by law.

Turji reprised his letter to Nigerian authorities reported by The Epoch Times in January, offering to disarm only if vigilantes would disarm as well.
Retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg speaks to the media in the lobby at Trump Tower in New York City on Nov. 15, 2016. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Russia Asked China for Military Aid in Ukraine Conflict: Lt. Gen. Kellogg

Both Russia and China deny the allegations

Retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg told Fox News that Russia has asked China for military assistance amid its military operation in Ukraine, confirming a series of anonymously sourced media reports to that effect, while Chinese and Russian officials have denied the allegations.

Theres a real tell here, and heres what the tell is. Hes going to China to get military support, and economic support as well, Kellogg said in an interview on Fox Business that aired on March 14, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

He wouldnt be reaching out to the Chinese for military aid or support if he wasnt having some real problems with his own military, Kellogg said, adding that he believes the battlefield should be extended in light of this development.

Extend it by giving the Ukrainians as much support as we can, he said, adding that theres got to be ways we can get them those jets, referring to the Polish MiG-29 fighter jets whose transfer to Ukraine has stalled.

Ukraine asked for the MiGs to bolster its air defenses. Polish authorities have offered to supply the jets via NATO, a proposal rejected by the Pentagon as too risky since it could be seen by the Russian side as an escalation.

Youve got to be creative how you do it, I understand that. But we should give them everything. I dont care if its a rock, I dont care if its a BB gun, I dont care if its a MiG-29, Kellogg said.

We just need to help them out and keep pressing the envelope on Putin. We know hes stretched and thats why I made the comment about the tell. He wouldnt be going to the Chinese if he was not having problems in the fight today.

MIG-29 fighter aircraft fly at a military airbase in Vasylkiv, Ukraine, in a file image. (Gleb Garanich/Reuters)

Never Heard of That

China has denied any Russian requests for military aid.

Ive never heard of that, Liu Pengyu, spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in the United States, told CNN in a statement when asked about reports about such a request from Moscow.

Separately, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian told a briefing on March 14 that the allegations on the matter disseminated by the U.S. are false information.

Liu, meanwhile, called the situation in Ukraine disconcerting and called for utmost restraint and preventing a massive humanitarian crisis.

Since Russia launched its special military operation in Ukraine, some 2.5 million people have fled their homes, the United Nations says, with Western officials calling the exodus one of the biggest refugee crises since World War II.

Ukrainian refugees walk into Poland through the Medyka border crossing on March 10, 2022. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov also denied the claims, telling Reuters on March 14 that Russia is able to take full control of major Ukrainian cities with no help from China.

Russia possesses its own independent potential to continue the operation, he said. As we said, it is going according to plan and will be completed on time and in full.

Concern Over Potential Chinese Military Aid to Russia

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told CNNs State of the Union on March 13 that the United States is watching closely to see whether China does provide support to Russia, be it material support or economic support.

It is a concern of ours, Sullivan told the outlet. And we have communicated to Beijing that we will not stand by and allow any country to compensate Russia for its losses from the economic sanctions.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan speaks during the daily White House press briefing in Washington on Feb. 11, 2022. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Crippling sanctions have been imposed on Russia in the wake of its military action in Ukraine. International Monetary Fund chief Kristalina Georgieva told CBS on March 13 that the impact of the sanctions is quite severe and that the IMF expects a deep recession in Russia.

Georgieva said the IMF no longer considers a Russian sovereign debt default as improbable. She warned of continuing effects of the Ukraine crisis on Russia and Ukraines immediate neighbors, because of their close trade relations with Moscow and as a result of the refugee wave.

The Red Cross, meanwhile, has called for an urgent ceasefire to be implemented in the besieged city of Mariupol to prevent a worst-case scenario.

The ICRC said in a March 13 statement that a worst-case scenario awaits the hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped by heavy combat in Mariupol unless the parties reach a concrete humanitarian agreement urgently.

Ukrainian officials have said that more than 2,500 people have been killed in Mariupol amid the Russian offensive.

Russias military operation in Ukraine has been dealt a number of setbacks in the face of poor planning and unexpectedly staunch Ukrainian resistance, a number of military analysts have said.

Michael Kofman, director of Russia studies at CNA, called Russias initial operation a shambolic attempt at regime change, with little planned or organized, noting smart Ukrainian efforts at defending in the face of an unimpressive Russian attempt to adjust and prosecute this tragic war.
A Ukranian serviceman (L) walks in front of a destroyed apartment building after it was shelled in Kyiv, Ukraine, on March 14, 2022. (Aris Messinis/AFP via Getty Images)

Russia Confirms First Loss of GRU Spy in Ukraine Conflict

Russia confirmed on Monday that it lost a top intelligence agent from the Russian military intelligence agency.

Alexey Glushchak, a captain with Russias Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces (GRU), died in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol last week, said Russian officials in a statement.

Due to the strict secrecy of the military operation, the circumstances of the death of the Tyumen hero are not disclosed, Russian officials said in a statement. Glushchaks cause of death was not specified.

Several local media outlets published photos of his funeral online.

Ukrainian officials last week alleged that their forces recently killed a top Russian general, Vitaly Gerasimov, in fighting around Kharkiv.

Ukraines military said that Gerasimov is a Russian military commander, major general, chief of staff and first deputy commander of the 41st Army of the Central Military District of Russia and added that he was a veteran in Russian campaigns in Syria and Chechnya.

Maj. Gen. Vitaly Gerasimov, the first deputy commander of Russias 41st army. (Ukraine Ministry of Defense)

In a call with reporters about a week ago, a senior U.S. military official, who requested anonymity, said that we cannot confirm that the general has been killed, referring to Gerasimov. The Department of Defense has not reached out to Russias Ministry of Defense, the official said.

Russian state media reported last week that Andrei Sukhovetsky, deputy commander of the 41st Combined Arms Army of the Central Military District, was killed in combat last week.

The death comes as raid alerts sounded in cities and towns all around the country overnight, from near the Russian border in the east to the Carpathian Mountains in the west, as fighting continued on the outskirts of Kyiv. Ukrainian officials said Russian forces shelled several suburbs of the capital, a major political and strategic target for their invasion.

Airstrikes were reported across the country, including the southern city of Mykolaiv, and the northern city of Chernihiv, where heat was knocked out to most of the town. Explosions also rang out overnight around the Russian-occupied Black Sea port of Kherson.

The Russian military said 20 civilians in the separatist-controlled city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine were killed by a ballistic missile launched by Ukrainian forces. Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said a further 28 people were injured by the Soviet-made Tochka-U missile, which carried a shrapnel warhead.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Russia Says It May Have to Service Foreign Exchange Debt in Roubles Due to Sanctions

Russias finance ministry is preparing to service some of its foreign currency debt on Wednesday, but such payments will be made in roubles if sanctions prevent banks from honoring debts in the currency of issue, the ministry said on Monday.

Is that a default?  From Russias point of view, we are fulfilling our obligations, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said in an interview with state TV aired on Monday.

Western sanctions over events in Ukraine have cut Russia off from key parts of global financial markets and have frozen nearly half of the countrys $640 billion gold and FX reserves, triggering the worst economic crisis since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union.

Siluanov said Russia has to pay coupons on its Eurobonds on March 16 and has already asked Western banks to carry out the transaction.

But should a major part of Russias reserves be frozen, the payment could run into particular challenges as the possibility of those payments going through would depend on sanctions.

The government is due to pay $117 million on two of its dollar-denominated bonds on Wednesday.

If we see complications with executing the order then on Tuesday we will prepare a relevant transfer order in the rouble equivalent, Siluanov said in the TV interview.

Russia has the necessary funds to service its external obligations and may also use a yuan part of its gold and forex reserves if there is such a need, he said.

Several Russian banks have been banned from the SWIFT international payments network, hampering efforts to move money outside of Russia.

The freezing of the central bank and the governments foreign currency accounts can be seen as a desire by several Western countries to organise an artificial default, Siluanov said.

The Chinese currency accounted for 13.1 percent of the Russian central banks foreign currency reserves in June 2021, compared with just 0.1 percent in June 2017, with Moscows dollar holdings dropping to 16.4 percent from 46.3 percent in the same period.

China is Russias top export market after the European Union. Russian exports to China were worth $79.3 billion in 2021, with oil and gas accounting for 56 percent of that, according to Chinas customs agency.
Customers inspect kitchen stoves at an electronic store in Stavropol, southern Russia, on Dec. 17, 2014. (Eduard Korniyenko/Reuters)

Russia to Include Electronics Firms on List of Essential CompaniesReport

Russias trade and finance ministries will widen the criteria for systematically important firms to include companies from the electronics sector, the TASS news agency quoted Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko as saying on Saturday.

Russias government on Friday proposed a raft of support measures, including some for suppliers to state-owned companies and the IT sector, as it seeks to weather the impact of Western sanctions on its economy.

The most important task for us is to develop our products and accelerate import substitution of what was brought in from outside, Chernyshenko said.

He said support for firms in the electronics sector was needed from the banking system.

In all sectors of the economy there are now preferential loans and subsidised rates, and the possibility of preferential lending through regional budgets is also being looked at, Chernyshenko said.
A man wounded in this morning's air strikes at a nearby military complex is assisted by medical staff outside Novoiavorivsk District Hospital on March 13, 2022 in Novoiavorivsk, Ukraine. (Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

Russia, Ukraine at Odds Over Casualties in Strike on Yavoriv Training Base

TRUSKAVETS, UkraineRussian and Ukrainian officials have offered contrasting accounts of the casualties from the missile attack on a military training facility in Yavoriv, Ukraine, on March 13.

Hours after the aerial strike, the governor for the region said 35 people were killed and 134 were wounded. A spokesperson for the Lviv Regional Administration told The Epoch Times on March 14 that according to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, no foreigners were killed in the attack.

However, the Russian Defense Ministry offered a starkly different account roughly 13 hours after the attack, claiming that a high-precision long-range weapon had killed up to 180 foreign mercenaries.

A number of Western countries at the state level encourage the participation of their citizens as mercenaries of Ukraine in hostilities against units of the Russian troops. All responsibility for the death of this category of foreign citizens in Ukraine lies on just the leadership of these countries, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement. We know all the locations of foreign mercenaries in Ukraine. They will continue to be targeted.

A satellite view of the International Peacekeeping and Security Center in Yavoriv, Ukraine. (Google Maps)

A foreign volunteer soldier who served at the base at the time of the attack told The Epoch Times that the facility housed recruits from the United States, England, Germany, Poland, France, and other countries.

The U.S. Embassy in Warsaw, Poland, told The Epoch Times that it didnt know if any U.S. citizens were killed in the attack. The German, Polish, and British embassies didnt respond to requests for comment.

Jesper Soder, a Swedish citizen who was at the Yavoriv facility at the time of the attack, survived.

After last nights bombing, our base was totally destroyed. Several dead and total chaos reigned. My mission was to defend and protect Western soldiers on the ground to actually go to Kyiv today. Mission canceled, as you can imagine, Soder wrote on Facebook on March 13.

Alekcandra Sassa Haydari, a Swedish national, hasnt yet heard from her son. She believes that he was at the Yaroriv base at the time of the bombing. In a Facebook comment, Soder said he saw her son at the base.

Volunteers at the Medyka border crossing between Ukraine and Poland told The Epoch Times that they met a man from the UK who said he had survived, but that two of his friends were killed in the attack.

Russian missiles struck the facility, formally known as The International Peacekeeping and Security Center (IPSC) at roughly 6 a.m. on March 13, flattening the barracks, which housed about 300 men, according to accounts from first-hand witnesses. Maksym Kozytskyy, governor of the Lviv Regional State Administration, said a total of 30 missiles targeted the base, some of which were intercepted.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken condemned the attack in a March 13 statement.

We condemn the Russian Federations missile attack on the International Center for Peacekeeping and Security in Yavoriv, close to Ukraines border with Poland. The brutality must stop, Blinken wrote on Twitter.

Prior to Russias invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, the IPSC served as a training facility for Ukrainian soldiers. The center has hosted NATO drills and Western officials, including NATO Military Committee chair, Adm. Rob Bauer.

While exact figures are difficult to confirm, thousand of foreign citizens are believed to be in Ukraine as volunteers in the war.
Supporters of the Fridays for Future movement hold a sign with the logo of bank messaging system SWIFT and the Russian flag during a demonstration against the war in Ukraine on March 3, 2022, in Berlin. (John MacDougall/AFP via Getty Images)

Russian Investors Find Short-Term Solution to Western Sanctions Against Moscow, Expert Says

Russian businessmen are converting their foreign assets into Chinese yuan for temporary hedging, according to experts

Converting foreign assets into Chinese yuan assets may be a short-term solution for Russian investors in the wake of Western sanctions against Moscow, according to experts.

The exclusion of major Russian banks from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or SWIFT, shuts them out from the U.S.-dominated international fund transfer system. Although this severely limits Moscows ability to engage in transactions, Russian investors could get around it in the short term by holding assets in the Chinese Yuan (RMB), Mike Sun, an investment specialist in North America, told The Epoch Times.

Given that the sanctions have pushed Russia toward financial autarky, Russian investors are looking for ways to minimize their loss for the short term.

A Hong Kong banker told the Chinse edition of Nikkei Asia, a Japan-based financial newspaper, that recently there had been a noticeable conversion of assets in the emerging markets into RMB assets.

According to the latest from SWIFTs RMB tracker, RMBs share as a global payments currency reached 3.2 percent in January 2022, the highest since 2015. In addition, RMBs payments value increased by 10.85 percent compared to December 2021.

Meanwhile, the U.S. dollars and euros share as global payment currencies dropped slightly compared to December last year, falling to 39.92 percent and 36.56 percent, respectively.

Usually, in extraordinary times such as war, people tend to sell off assets in higher-risk currencies and turn them into more reliable currencies such as dollars and euros. However, the RMBs global share and value has increased amid the Russia-Ukraine conflict, as it appears that some investors considered it a risk-off currency. Risk-off describes the sentiment of traders and investors in the financial market reducing their exposure to risk and focusing on protecting their capital.

In this regard, U.S. private investment consultant Mike Sun suggests that the recent surge in RMB assets purchases is primarily due to Russian investments. Many Russian investors are converting their foreign wealth to RMB assets in an attempt to prevent or minimize short-term losses from Western sanctions.

The current economic sanctions imposed on Russia by the United States and European nations have expanded to a number of Russian billionaires, freezing their assets and funds in foreign countries. Many Russian investors were alarmed by those measures and began to convert their foreign assetsin major currencies such as USD, EUR, and GBP (British pounds)into RMB to reduce risks.

Sun said that many Russian businessmen own luxury houses in places such as the United Kingdom and the United States. As they saw the risk of sanctions, they proceeded to sell their properties, converting them into assets in Chinese yuan for temporary hedging.

On Feb. 26, the White House announced the launch of a joint task force to collectively hunt down the physical assets of sanctioned Russian companies and oligarchstheir yachts, jets, fancy cars, and luxury homes. Similarly, England and France have proceeded to freeze the assets of several Russian oligarchs, according to BBC.

RMB assets may bring liquidity to Russia amid the freeze on roughly half of Russias foreign exchange reserves held in G7 nations. According to The Business Times citing data from Russias Central Bank, as of June 2021, about 13 percent of Russias foreign reserves are in Chinese yuan assets, equivalent to about $77 billion.

The Chinese state-run Global Times reported on March 10 that the China Foreign Exchange Trade System is doubling the Chinese yuans trading band with the Russian ruble in the inter-bank foreign exchange market to help prevent currency arbitrage in the wake of the rubles recent plunge.

The article said that the Chinese yuan deposit service offered by Russias VTB Bank would have a profound impact on the global monetary system as an attempt to explore alternatives to the U.S. dollar-centered system.

Russia is increasing its use of the RMB and connectivity with Chinas international payment system, attempting to mitigate the fallout of international sanctions.

According to the Chinese state-owned NetEase news portal, the Russia-Ukraine conflict has caused the United States to shift its focus onto Russia, creating an excellent opportunity for Chinas RMB to internationalize, becoming a more active currency used globally.

However, Sun said it is quite challenging for Chinas RMB to achieve internationalization as the basic premise is that the currency must be freely convertible. Yet, the Chinese Communist Party strictly controls its currency exchange.
Paramedics find low ground after an air-raid siren sounds on the outskirts of Novoiavorivsk, Ukraine, on March 13, 2022. (Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

Russias Claims It Killed up to 180 Foreign Mercenaries in Yavoriv Strike Are Pure Propaganda: Ukraine Officials

Ukrainian officials have called Russias claims it has killed up to 180 foreign mercenaries during a strike on Yavoriv military base pure Russian propaganda.

The countrys Defense Ministry spokesperson Markiyan Lubkivsky told CNN that the claims are simply not true and that no foreigners have yet been confirmed among the dead at the training area, which is around 12 miles away from the Polish border and roughly 25 miles from Lviv, located in western Ukraine.

This is not the truth. Pure Russian propaganda, Lubkivsky said.

Lubkivskys comments come after Russias Defense Ministry on March 13 said that up to 180 foreign mercenaries and a large consignment of foreign weapons were destroyed in the attack at the Yavoriv International Center for Peacekeeping and Security.

Russian Ministry of Defense spokesperson Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said in a briefing that high-precision long-range weapons were used to strike the Ukrainian armed forces training centers at Yavoriv, as well as a separate facility in the village of Starichi.

At these facilities, the Kyiv regime deployed a point for the training and combat coordination of foreign mercenaries before being sent to the areas of hostilities against Russian military personnel, as well as a storage base for weapons and military equipment coming from foreign countries, Konashenkov said, according to the Moscow-based RIA news agency.

As a result of the strike, up to 180 foreign mercenaries and a large consignment of foreign weapons were destroyed. The destruction of foreign mercenaries who arrived on the territory of Ukraine will continue.

The defense ministry added that Moscow would continue its attacks against foreign mercenaries.

The Lviv regional administration said in a statement on Sunday that at least 35 people were killed in the attack after around 30 missiles were fired from warplanes over the Black and Azov seas and hit the military base.

Another 134 people were hospitalized in the incident, Lviv Governor Maksym Kozytsky said in a Facebook statement.

Ukraine said foreign military instructors have previously worked at the Yavoriv military base. However, a NATO official told Reuters that there were no personnel from the alliance there.

Konashenkovs comments come after Moscow warned on Saturday that it may target NATO countries supplies to Ukraine if they continue to supply weapons to the country.

We warned the United States that the orchestrated pumping of weapons from a number of countries is not just a dangerous move, it is a move that turns these convoys into legitimate targets, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told Russian state-run media on Saturday.

He added that Moscow had warned about the consequences of the thoughtless transfer to Ukraine of weapons like man-portable air defense systems, anti-tank missile systems, and so on.

Ukraines President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly called on Western nations to deliver more weapons to his country, specifically for Russian-made planes, so that it can defend itself amid the Russian attack.

Zelensky has also repeatedly called on the West to implement a no-fly zone over Ukraine.

However, Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that he would view any country that declares a no-fly zone over Ukraine as a participant in the armed conflict.

Meanwhile, U.S. President Joe Biden has vowed to defend every inch of NATO territory, calling an attack against one member of the alliance an attack against all.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) questions Dr. Anthony Fauci during a hearing in Washington on Jan. 11, 2022. (Greg Nash/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

Sen. Paul Unveils Measure to Eliminate Dr. Faucis Position

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on March 14 introduced a measure that would eliminate Dr. Anthony Faucis position.

Fauci has been director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), since 1984.

Paul said the measure, proposed as an amendment to the government funding bill, is necessary because Fauci has become a dictator-in-chief.

No one person should have unilateral authority to make decisions for millions of Americans, Paul, a doctor, said in a statement, adding that one of his goals was to ensure that ineffective, unscientific lockdowns and mandates are never foisted on the American people ever again.

Fauci has recommended strict measures during the COVID-19 pandemic, including shutting down businesses deemed non-essential and imposing forced masking on children.

The measure would turn the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases into three separate institutes, with one focusing on allergic diseases, one focusing on infectious diseases, and one focusing on immunological diseases. The institutes would be part of the NIH.

The directors of the new institutes would each take a portion of the responsibilities Fauci currently has.

The directors would be appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate for a single 5-year term.

Dr. Anthony Fauci arrives for an event at the White House in Washington on Jan. 21, 2021. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

Fauci was appointed to his post during the presidency of President Ronald Reagan, a Republican. Fauci was not confirmed by the Senate.

The amendment, if passed, will create accountability and oversight into a taxpayer-funded position that has largely abused its power, and has been responsible for many failures and misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic, Paul said.

An NIH spokesperson told The Epoch Times via email that the agency does not comment on pending legislation.

Fauci and the institute he heads did not return requests for comment.

Pauls office didnt respond when asked if he has secured support for the measure from any colleagues.

Democrats control both chambers of Congress and have frequently praised Fauci throughout the pandemic, while Paul and many fellow Republicans have been increasingly critical of the doctor.

Former President Donald Trump leaned heavily on Faucis advice when the pandemic started and President Joe Biden tapped Fauci as his chief medical adviser upon taking office in 2021.

Fauci has said he made policy recommendations based on the scientific data at the time when each recommendation was made and that the science on the pandemic has repeatedly evolved.

The NIH has been reorganized before. In late 2011, Congress passed a funding act that abolished the National Center for Research Resources and created the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences.
Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) speaks at a press conference at the U.S. Capitol on Dec. 15, 2020. (Nicholas Kamm-Pool/Getty Images)

Senate Armed Services Committee Member Requests American Airpower in Ukraine

The Biden administration should expedite the supply of aircraft and air defense systems to Ukraine, according to Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

While commending the lethal aid provided by Washington to Ukraine, Ernst expressed strong disagreement with the administrations decision to delay and deny neighboring Poland the option to transfer fighter jets to Ukraine.

Supporting Kyivs war against the Russian invasion is among the most urgent missions that the West has faced in a generation, Ernst wrote in a March 10 letter (pdf) to President Joe Biden that was also signed by 41 other lawmakers.

We urge your administration to work with Poland and our NATO allies to expedite the transfer of urgently-needed airpower, air defense systems, and other combat and support capabilities from the United States, NATO allies, and other European partners to Ukraine, the letter reads.

Today, Russias assault is trained on the Ukrainian people, public infrastructure, farms, hospitals, daycares, places of work, and even their homes. The Ukrainian military is in dire need of more lethal aid today to defend the foundations of their country that will allow it to function in the future.

Washington cannot allow Russia to gain an advantage just because the United States failed to support Ukraine with the necessary weapons and medical supplies, the letter states. It called on the administration to deliver the needed airpower to Ukraine without delay and help save the lives of countless civilians.

NATO member Poland had announced on March 8 that it was willing to send its MiG-29 jets to Germanys Ramstein Air Base, which could then be deployed to Ukraine. Poland asked other member states of the NATO alliance to follow suit.

However, the United States quickly put down the proposal, with State Department Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland stating that Poland hadnt consulted Washington about the offer.

The prospect of fighter jets departing from a U.S./NATO base into airspace thats contested with Russia over Ukraine raises serious concerns, according to Pentagon press secretary John Kirby.

It is simply not clear to us that there is a substantive rationale for it. We will continue to consult with Poland and our other NATO allies about this issue and the difficult logistical challenges it presents, but we do not believe Polands proposal is a tenable one, Kirby said.

Russia has already warned that any support provided by a nation to the Ukrainian air force will be seen as directly participating in the conflict. Joe Biden has denied that Washington has any plans to send U.S. troops to fight for Ukraine. NATO has also affirmed that it doesnt want to enter into direct conflict with Russia.
Senator Seeks Information on Spike in Disease Rates in Military Database

A U.S. senator is seeking information on the spike in disease rates reported in a U.S. military database.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) asked Unissant, the company that manages the militarys Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED), for details on how the firm runs the system.

According to the database, there were spikes in various diseases during the COVID-19 pandemic. The military has acknowledged the figures but asserts that the rise in diagnoses actually stems from an underreporting of data in previous years.

The military has taken DMED offline to identify and correct the root cause of the data corruption, a spokesperson told The Epoch Times in February.

Johnson was told shortly after, that the military created and preserved a full backup of the DMED in response to a preservation request, but the military has largely failed to provide adequate responses to three letters sent to Pentagon officials, the senator said.

Because of the lack of transparency, Johnson has turned to Unissant, he said in a March 7 letter (pdf) to its CEO, Manish Malhotra.

Johnson asked whether Unissant was aware of the alleged issues with DMED.

If so, what are those issues, when were those issues uncovered, who uncovered those issues, and to what extent did Unissant communicate those issues to DoD? the missive stated. It seeks a list of all instances where issues were found in the DMED and all communications between Unissant and the Pentagon referring to or relating to the DMED since Aug. 1, 2021.

Johnson wants the information and records by March 21.

Unissant and the Department of Defense didnt respond to requests for comment.

Johnson previously wrote to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, noting that figures from whistleblowers communicated to Thomas Renz, an attorney representing them, indicated a 2,181 percent spike in hypertension, a 551 percent increase of Guillain-Barre syndrome, and a 472 percent spike in female infertility for 2021, when compared to the five-year average from 2016 to 2020.

Johnson raised concerns that DMED was taken offline after he asked that all records referring to, relating to, or reported to DMED be preserved.

Let me be clear, any attempt to alter data contained within DMED without preserving all records before and after these changes are made to the database will completely undermine my preservation request and will be considered an active effort to mislead Congress, Johnson said in one of the letters (pdf), dated Feb. 8.

Enrico Trigoso contributed to this report.
Shackletons Antarctica Misadventure: An Early Example of Modern Heroism

Commentary

In a notable article published on the Forbes, Paolo Gallo, who writes about leadership issues, has argued that The time has come to change our model of heroism. Specifically, he argues that being a hero is no longer a mythical classification reserved for  a few legendary men and women, or worse still, peacocks who spend all their time strutting in front of the mirror or under the spotlight. For him, a person is a hero if he or she acts with dignity and compassion in their everyday lives.

Gallos intriguing and novel view of heroism came to mind when the discovery of HMS Endurance, Sir Ernest Henry Shackletons vessel, was announced last week.

The vessel sank approximately four miles from where it was lost in November 1915. It lies 3,000 metres (9,850 feet) below the waters surface in Antarcticas Weddell Sea.

The discovery was welcomed with incredulity by the international community. Discovering Endurance was long deemed to be an impossible task because of unwelcoming climatic conditions.

But the vessels resting place has now been found following a search conducted by the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust, using a South African icebreaker, Agulhas II, which was equipped with remotely operated submersibles. The pictures taken of the vessel are remarkably illuminating and show a well-preserved ship with boots and utensils visibly lying on the deck.

Shackleton attempted to cross Antarctica from sea to sea by land. He was an intrepid adventurer who achieved feats that most people could only imagine in their wildest dreams. Shackletons vessel was prophetically named Endurance because the pursuit of his dream required endurance, skill, and courage.

The stern of the Endurance with the name and emblematic polestar. (Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust/National Geographic)

Interestingly, the Endurance was discovered on March 5, 2022, exactly 100 years after the funeral of Sir Shackleton, who died at age 47 of a heart attack. He is buried in Grytviken on the South Georgia Island, a British Overseas Territory located between the southeast coast of Argentina and Antarctica, close to his greatest achievement as a polar explorer and adventurer. He was a member of an era known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. He was preceded by Roald Amundsen, who was the first person to navigate the Northwest Passage in 1906.

Shackletons name is often mentioned alongside famous adventurers like mountaineers Edmund Hillary and Steve Fossett, aviator Charles A. Lindbergh, astronaut Yuri Gagarin, and frontiersman Hugh Glass, who was attacked by a grizzly bear and survived his horrendous injuries. Leonardo DiCaprio in The Revenant portrays Glasss exploits.

However, while Shackletons stupendous achievements as an adventurer are certainly impressive, it is his actions after failing to cross Antarctica by land that makes him into a real hero and an example of the new model of heroism promoted by Gallo.

The members of Shackletons expedition vacated the Endurance because it had been trapped in pack ice that slowly crushed the vessel. The intrepid sailors then endured an extended period of hibernation on ice floes in challenging weather conditions. Eventually, after many months, when the ice disintegrated, Shackleton launched lifeboats and embarked on a perilous voyage to South Georgia Island, a voyage of more than 1300 kilometres (809 miles). During this voyage, Shackleton functioned as a real leader under most trying circumstances attempting to save the lives of his crew.

While Shackletons project was unsuccessfulhe was unable to cross Antarctica overlandhis spirit of survival has captured the imagination of people, and his determination to survive and save the lives of the members of his expedition made his contributions to humanity memorable and meaningful.

Shackletons extraordinary journey raises the question of whether the world is still a place where intrepid adventurers can discover new frontiers while potentially sacrificing their life if necessary to explore uncharted waters, outer space, imposing mountains, or dense jungles.

Old boots left inside the historic Shackleton hut, which was used by polar explorer Ernest Shackleton and his team during the golden age of exploration at the turn of the last century, were seen near McMurdo Station Antarctica, on Nov. 11, 2016. (Mark Ralston/AFP via Getty Images)

As modern societies have become complacent and materialistic, people may be fearful of the unknown and, hence, may tend to avoid thrill-seeking adventures.

Does heroism belong to a different era?

But as Shackleton has demonstrated, heroism does not necessarily involve the conquering of new frontiers.

Heroism lies in peoples ability to respond appropriately, and in unexpected ways, to severe challenges that life throws up.

For example, this new model of heroism is exemplified by the iconic television pictures of the Piano Man, who welcomes Ukrainian refugees at the Polish border and invites them to take part in his performances.

The Piano Man, Davide Martello, travelled from Germany to offer a little bit of joy to refugees to recreate a semblance of normality in abnormal times. Martello certainly fits this new model of heroism. This heroic act, playing the piano, restores peoples faith and a belief in the indomitable spirit of humanity.

Sir Edmund Hillary, who conquered Mt. Everest, put it succinctly when commenting on his memorable and history-making climb of the worlds highest mountain, he said that It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.

Returning to the discovery of the final resting place of Shackletons Endurance: the greatest challenge lies in respecting the resting place of the wreckage. That means that no attempt should be made to raise objects from the vessel.

The vessel is classified as a monument under the Antarctic Treaty, signed in Washington on Dec. 1, 1959, the preamble of which recognises that it is in the interest of all mankind that Antarctica shall continue forever to be used exclusively for peaceful purposes and shall not become the scene or object of international discord.

In respecting the resting place of the Endurance, the international community might want to display the values of restraint and respect for history. These values demonstrate that the new model of heroism has a key role to play in international relations.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
James and Ibtissem Cole at the matinee of Shen Yun in London on March 13, 2022. (Mary Mann/The Epoch Times)

LONDON, U.K.I think the dancers are made of rubber! They are so supple. Its amazing, said Ibtissem Cole, an investment manager. She and her husband James Cole, chairman of a waste business, were among the audience at the Shen Yun Performing Arts matinee on March 13.

Shen Yun is a New York-based performing arts company presenting 5,000 years of Chinese culture before the communist era.

Its like being transported into the past, said Mrs. Cole. Its a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon and its a learning experience for us. And there are so many messages which are being transmitted through art and dance.

It was a very special event, added Mr. Cole. He enjoyed the pieces that highlight the spirituality of Chinese culture, and the state of religious freedom in China today.

Its very important to remember that we are mere mortals in a tiny little universe, he said. But actually, the world is a much bigger place. And we are just a part of that for the time being.

I think the Chinese culture is a combination of happiness, wisdom, the ability to connect to the abstract, but also full with sad events because of whats happening in China today, said Mrs. Cole. So we love that contrast and combination of the good and the bad, the positive and negative. But there is definitely a strong message of hope and perseverance. And a call to just carry on and express emotions, the past, the present and the future through art.

Dr. Christina Loughran (L) at the matinee of Shen Yun in London on March 13, 2022. (Lily Zhou/The Epoch Times)

Keep an Open Mind at Shen Yun

Christina Loughran used to be a criminal barrister and is now a psychologist in a top law firm. Ms. Loughran is ethnically Chinese with roots in Hong Kong.

I came to this country when I was six, in 1968, because my father didnt want his children growing up in a communist regime in the future, she said.

She learned more about her own cultural roots through Shen Yun.

Its very exciting and the colors are very glorious. Its difficult to put on a show like that with Chinese dance because I never knew what classical Chinese dance was.

Like many aspects of traditional Chinese culture, classical Chinese dance, was almost lost due to the Cultural Revolution when all that was old was deemed undesirable.

Thats something I think that the world needs to know and recapture, commented Ms. Loughran. Because there has been a lot of bad publicity because of COVID and communism. I felt that its good to capture the cultural Chinese aspect of Imperial China before communism, to show the glory of the culture.

To anyone who has yet to purchase tickets to Shen Yun, she encourages them to see another side of China: Keep an open mind and not be sucked into the present political climate of whats going on in China through communism, and to rediscover the cultural artistry of original Imperial China.

Reporting by Mary Mann and Lily Zhou.

The Epoch Times is a proud sponsor of Shen Yun Performing Arts. We have covered audience reactions since Shen Yuns inception in 2006.
Stop Using Blood Money: Ukrainian Vice PM Calls on Chinas UnionPay to Cut Services in Russia

Ukraines Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov has urged Chinas state-owned UnionPay to align with global sanctions and cut ties with Russia.

Russian money is bloody! It helps Russian missiles attack dwelling houses, kindergartens, and hospitals in Ukraine, and kill civilians! Fedorov posted in Chinese on Twitter on March 12, calling on UnionPay International (UPI), a subsidiary of China UnionPay that offers cross-border transactions, to suspend services in Russia.

The latest message followed a March 8 post with the same message written in English, along with a letter sent to UPIs CEO Li Xiaofeng. Fedorov pressed the company to stop doing business in Russia until the countrys attacks on Ukraine end with fair order restored.

Aided by the Chinese Communist Party, which has largely sided with Moscow and refused to denounce its invasion of Ukraine, UnionPay is the provider of most card payments in China and is used in 180 countries and regions. Numerous Russian banks, such as Rosselkhozbank, Pochta Bank, and Gazprombank, already offer services with UnionPay.

Fedorovs appeal has yet to receive a response from UPI.

From Big Tech to fast food, companies have been distancing themselves from Russia in the wake of its attack on Ukraine, which began on Feb. 24. As of March 11, compiled data shows that more than 340 companies have withdrawn from Russia, while others announced to scale back their businesses.

The European Union, the United States, and their allies announced on Feb. 26 to cut off a number of Russian banks from SWIFT, the main international payment system, as part of their state-level economic actions to hold Moscow accountable for its assault on Ukraine.

In a bid to isolate Russia from the global financial system, Mastercard and Visa, the worlds biggest credit card and digital payment processors, announced suspension of their credit card services to Russian banks on March 5. The move has largely barred Russian users from the services when they are overseas.

Rushing to switch to a Chinese card system, Russias biggest lender Sberbank, alongside Alfa Bank and Tinkoff Bank, said on March 6 that it would soon start issuing cards powered by Chinas UnionPay, coupled with the countrys central bank-supported credit card provider Mir.

Fedorov has kept urging foreign companies to sever ties with Moscow, including Taiwanese electronics company AsusTek Computer. Yet. the recent call on UnionPay is the first one posted in the Chinese language.

The March 12, the post in Chinese drew responses from overseas Chinese web users. Many expressed solidarity with Ukraine and urged for secondary sanctions against UnionPay.

I am sorry. I am Chinese yet such things are not at all [what] our people should be involved with, netizen Ning Meng Tao wrote in comments.

Dictator[s] always stand on [the] same side, wrote another user named Siu.

A large Ukranian flag with the slogan We Stand With Ukraine written on it in Chinese characters is seen on the outside wall of the Canadian Embassy in Beijing on March 1, 2022. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

Besides Visa and Mastercard, American Express and PayPal have also announced a withdrawal of their services. PayPal said that it will block all electronic wallets of Russian accounts from March 18, after suspending its services in Russia earlier this month.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on March 7 that China talks a lot about the importance of upholding international order, stability, respecting sovereignty, but has offered no action when it comes to the Ukraine crisis.

Early last week, China reaffirmed its partnership with Russia, as its foreign minister, Wang Yi, said the two neighbors enjoyed a rock-solid relationship and would be free from interference or discord sown by third parties.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki, however, said in a March 7 press briefing that Moscow cant backfill the impact of Western sanctions by relying on China. Its just not possible, she said, given that the G7 countries alone make up about half of the global gross domestic product, while Russia, Ukraine, and China, account for about 15 percent.
Taiwanese air force pilots run to their armed U.S.-made F-16V fighter at an air force base in Chiayi, Taiwan, on Jan. 5, 2022. (Sam Yeh/AFP via Getty Images)

Taiwan Military Warns Away 13 Chinese Aircraft From Its Air Defense Zone

Taiwan scrambled assets from its air force on March 14 to warn away 13 Chinese military aircraft that flew into its air defense identification zone (ADIZ).

The incursion is the latest in a two-year campaign of harassment and intimidation by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as it seeks to coerce Taiwanese leadership away from ties with the West and to give up its democratic government.

The last large-scale incursion in 2022 took place in late January, when 39 Chinese aircraft crossed into Taiwans ADIZ.

The ADIZ isnt airspace directly over Taiwan, but the immediate surrounding area in which aircraft identification and location information are controlled for the sake of national security.

Scrambling aircraft and other military assets to respond to repeated CCP incursions comes at a significant cost to Taiwan. In 2020, the associated monetary costs of such responses accounted for nearly 9 percent of Taiwans entire annual military budget.

The CCP maintains that Taiwan is a part of its territory. However, the island has been self-governed since 1949 and has never been under CCP control. Taiwan has its own military, constitution, and democratically elected government.

CCP leader Xi Jinping vowed that Taiwan would be united with the mainland, and hasnt renounced the use of force to accomplish that goal.

Meanwhile, leaders of the U.S. intelligence community recently said that China is the No. 1 threat to the United States and would attempt to seize Taiwan in the coming years.

Taiwans Ministry of Defense said the latest incursion, which included 12 fighter jets and one electronic warfare aircraft, took place north of the main island. Taiwanese fighters warned the Chinese aircraft away from the area, and Taiwans military also deployed air defense missiles in response.

The incursion happened on the same day that a Taiwanese fighter jet crashed into the sea during a training mission and two weeks after a Chinese aircraft reportedly crashed into the sea near Vietnam.

Taiwans military is currently under a heightened state of alert because of fears that the Chinese military could seize upon the global uncertainty surrounding Russias invasion of Ukraine, and use the situation to launch an assault on the island.

Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen announced an all-out-defense strategy on March 12. In 2021, she vowed to defend Taiwans democratic government from authoritarian aggression.

We will continue to bolster our national defense and demonstrate our determination to defend ourselves in order to ensure that nobody can force Taiwan to take the path China has laid out for us, she said in October 2021. The path that China has laid out offers neither a free and democratic way of life for Taiwan, nor sovereignty for our 23 million people.
Jonney Shih, Chairman of Taiwan's AsusTek Computer, during a press conference in Taipei on May 30, 2016. Asus has announced a complete withdrawal of its Asus Cloud services from Chinas cloud storage market to avoid having to comply with its intrusive cybersecurity law. (Sam Yeh/AFP/Getty Images)

Taiwan Says ASUS Will Withdraw Business From Russia Amid Calls From Ukraine

Taiwan-based electronics company ASUS will pull out business from Russia in consideration of its reputation, Taiwans economy minister said on Monday, following a letter from a Ukrainian minister urging the company to cut ties with Moscow.

Ukraines deputy prime minister Mykhailo Fedorov issued a letter to ASUS chairman Jonney Shih on March 10 urging the company to end any relationship and stop doing business in the Russian Federation until the Russian aggression in Ukraine is fully stopped.

We appeal to you to stop relationships with Russia-based clients and partners, including supplying hardware and electronics, providing technical support and services by your company and its affiliates to the Russian Federation, Fedorov said in a letter posted on his Twitter account.

ASUS did not release a statement following Fedorovs letter, nor did it respond to a request for comment.

Speaking on the sidelines of a parliament session, Taiwans economy minister Wang Mei-hua reaffirmed the countrys support for democracies and that Taiwan had taken measures against Russia, though she could not comment on specific corporate actions.

Wang said that ASUS will provide overall consideration to its reputation and will perform relevant business and personnel evacuation as soon as possible, based on her initial understanding of the companys situation.

ASUS does not provide a breakdown of revenue by country. For the third quarter of last year, it reported Europe accounted for only a third of its revenue.

The company does have a fully-owned Russian sales unit, though it has similar units all over the world, and a product support unit in Ukraine, according to its latest quarterly report.

Russias invasion of Ukraine has sparked concerns that China may be emboldened and decide to invade Taiwan, a de facto independent country that the communist regime sees as a part of its territory.

Taiwan said it condemned Russias attack on Ukraine and pledged to join sanctions against Moscow. Premier Su Tseng-chang said on March 1 that Taiwan will work with Western countries in their ban of selected Russian banks from the SWIFT international payment system.

Currently, there is not much trade between Taiwan and Russia. According to data from Taiwans Ministry of Economic Affairs, Taiwan exported $1.3 billion worth of goods to Russia in 2021, while importing $5 billion of Russian products. Meanwhile, Taiwans trade with Russia accounts for only 0.76 percent of the islands total trade.

Yen Su-chiu, deputy secretary-general of the Taiwan Electrical and Electronic Manufacturers Association, said that Taiwanese technology firms may face debt and cash flow issues due to the sanctions, even though Russia only makes up 1 percent of Taiwans electronic exports.

Yen said this is because most of these technology corporations have facilities in countries that have imposed sanctions against Russia, local newspaper Focus Taiwan reported on Sunday.

Frank Fang and Reuters contributed to this report.
Activists rally to support transgenders on the steps of the City Hall, in New York, on Oct. 24, 2018. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Tennessee Bill Would Restrict Childrens Access to Permanent Gender Alteration Medical Procedures

A Tennessee bill proposes to restrict childrens access to hormone therapy, puberty blockers, and other medical procedures that would allow for an alteration to their gender.

House Bill 2835, or the Youth Protection Act, would specifically prohibit a child who hasnt reached puberty from getting hormone therapy or other gender alterations, such as surgeries, even if parents approve. If they have reached puberty but are still a minor, they must get parental consent.

We have age restrictions on our youth for a number of different reasons that are there to protect them, Tennessee state Rep. John Ragan, a Republican, told The Epoch Times. These protections are multifaceted and across the board.

The bill makes it illegal to perform procedures that would facilitate the minors desire to present or appear in a manner that is inconsistent with the minors sex.

Scientifically, at a cellular level, one is either male or female, Ragan said. Theres no denying that, aside from some genetic malfunctions. But what some have decided is that whats between their ears should conquer reality. The reality is thats not true.

One can identify as a bird, but when they step off the top floor of a building, they arent going to fly. The laws of physics will operate on them, regardless of what they think.

Once someone is over 18, that person can choose whether to accept reality or not, but while a child is growing and exploring different ways of existing in the world, committing to making a permanent medical alteration is not the smartest thing to do, he said.

There are claims that this reduces suicide rates, but as someone whos earned a living with statistics, the statistics Ive seen tell another story, he said.

A Higher Risk of Suicide

Ragan shared one study that examined 324 sex-reassigned persons (191 male-to-females, 133 female-to-males) in Sweden that concluded that people with transsexualism, after sex reassignment, have considerably higher risks for mortality, suicidal behavior, and psychiatric morbidity than the general population.

The study defines transsexualism, or gender identity disorder, as a condition in which a persons gender identity contradicts his or her bodily sex characteristics.

The study found substantially higher rates of overall mortality, death from cardiovascular disease and suicide, suicide attempts, and psychiatric hospitalizations in sex-reassigned transsexual individuals compared to a healthy control population.

In a 2004 Guardian article, the Birmingham University Aggressive Research Intelligence Facility (ARIF) assessed the findings of more than 100 follow-up studies of post-operative transexuals.

ARIF concluded that none of the studies provided conclusive evidence that gender reassignment is beneficial for patients.

A Step Too Far

The function of childhood is to carry space for change, Ragan said.

Children want to be many different things when they are growing up and many of them are unrealistic, but its a part of their imagination, Ragan said. However, when they insist a body alteration to go along with their mental picture, its going a step too far.

The measure is being proposed as transgender legislation takes many different forms across the nation, such as in Texas, where Gov. Greg Abbott has directed state agencies to investigate reports of transgendered children receiving gender-affirming care as child abuse. This followed an opinion (pdf) issued by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in which he classified gender-affirming treatment for transgendered youths such as hormone therapy, puberty blockers, and other procedures as forms of child abuse.

Ragan also has sponsored another measure making its way through the state legislature that would prohibit males from participating in female sports.
U.S. Capitol Police detain protesters outside of the House Chamber on Jan. 6, 2021. Nolan Cooke, 23, of Savoy, Texas, was one of the first to break through a line of U.S. Capitol police officers, according to court documents. Cooke pleaded guilty March 9 to a list of charges. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Texas Man Pleads Guilty Over Breach of US Capitol Charges

Nolan Bernard Cooke, 23, one of 60 Texans charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol, pleaded guilty on March 9 to a felony charge of civil disorder for helping lead the breach.

Cooke faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. His sentencing hearing is scheduled for June 10.

On March 8, Guy Wesley Reffitt, 49, of Wylie, Texas, became the first person to be convicted by a jury for his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol breach. Hell be sentenced on June 8.

Hundreds of defendants have been charged in connection with the incident, according to the U.S. Attorneys Office for the District of Columbia.

The Dallas FBI field office has arrested more people for their part in the Jan. 6 breach than any field office in the United States.

Cooke, of Savoy, Texas, was arrested on charges of unlawful activities on Capitol grounds, disorderly or disruptive conduct, entering and remaining on restricted buildings or grounds, and acts of civil disorder.

He was among the first line of those who broke through U.S. Capitol police officers, according to court documents.

A tip to authorities that Cooke had filmed the breach and posted video and photographs online, led to an investigation. Cooke posted a personal message to a friend on Instagram.

I wouldnt want anyone other than you with me to take on the revolution, the message reads.

Cooke went to Washington because he wanted to be heard, he told authorities. According to court documents, he brought firearms with him, but left them in a car.

In exchange for his plea, Cooke wont face any other criminal charges.

Two North Texans have pleaded guilty to taking part in the Capitol breach. Troy Smocks, 59, of Dallas, was sentenced to 14 months in prison in October 2021 after pleading guilty to a felony count of making an interstate threat based on social media posts from his Washington hotel room on Jan. 6 and Jan. 7, 2021.

In November, Frisco resident Jenna Ryan was sentenced to 60 days in prison after she pleaded guilty to a Class B misdemeanor for parading, demonstrating, or picketing within a Capitol building. She was released in February after serving her sentence.

Ryans punishment of 60 days in prison was stricter than most who pleaded to a similar misdemeanor, which ranges from 24 months of probation to six months in prison, according to WFAA in Dallas.

I think a ticket and $500 fine is the proper punishment for people involved, Ryan said.

At the FBI Field Office in Dallas, Special Agent in Charge Matthew DeSarno said in a statement that individuals charged and arrested used the guise of the First Amendment-protected activity to incite violence and wreak havoc.
The Fall of 4 Police Chiefs in Northeastern China: Atrocities Behind Their Fall

Commentary

The Chinese regime is purging the political and legal system before its 20th national congress convenes later this year. As part of the clean-up, another senior police officer in Chinas northern Liaoning Province was recently put under investigation.

On March 1, the Chinese Communist Partys (CCP) top disciplinary body announced the investigation of Wang Dawei for serious disciplinary violations on its official website.

Wang was a deputy governor of Liaoning Province, police chief of the Provincial Public Security Department, and deputy team leader of education and rectification of the provincial political and legal system.

Wang is the fourth head of Liaoning Provincial Public Security Department to be investigated in the past 21 years.

Wangs three predecessors include Li Feng, who served as the provincial police chief from 2001 to 2002. He was investigated in 2016 for corruption. Li Wenxin, who succeeded Li Feng as the provincial police chief and stayed in the position until 2011. He was investigated for accepting bribery in 2021. Xue Heng, who was the provincial police chief from 2011 to 2013. He turned himself in for investigation in 2021. He was removed from the CCP in February 2022 for serious violations of discipline and law.

Wang became the police chief of Liaoning Province in 2013. Before that, he was a deputy police chief of Heilongjiang Province, Chinas most northeastern province bordering Russia.

According to Wangs public profile, he started his career in the trade and commerce industry and worked in multiple government bodies in different locations. In 2007 he became the top CCP leader of the municipal political and legal body of Harbin City of Chinas northeastern Heilongjiang Province. In 2009, Wang was appointed deputy chief of the Provincial Public Security Department of Heilongjiang.

It is worth mentioning that at the time Wang took up his new position in Liaoning in 2013, the countrys biggest public outcry broke out when the torture and abuse of inmates in Masanjia Labor Camp in the provincial capital of Shenyang City shocked people at home and abroad, causing no less trembling and sorrow than the current chained-up woman in Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province.

Masanjia Labor Camp Hell on Earth: Chinese Commentator

In early April 2013, the Chinese Lens Magazine published a 20,000-word investigative report titled Out of Ma San Jia [Labor Camp], based on a diary written by female detainee Liu Hua that was secreted out of the labor camp by 62-year-old petitioner Wang Guilan who hid it in her vagina, and interviews of approximately 20 former inmates.

The numerous torture methods in the labor camp as recorded in the diary, such as the tiger bench, solitary confinement, designated inmates consistent monitoring, hanging on cuffed wrists, electric batons, and the death bed, are so shocking and horrifying that the report was followed by a flood of angry comments and posts online in China and around the world.

The guards in Masanjia Labor Camp used two high-voltage electric batons simultaneously on Falun Gong practitioner Wang Yunjies breasts for several hours, causing severe ulceration. She died in July 2006. (Courtesy of Minghui.org)

Cao Baoyin, an outspoken media figure at the time, said in a self-made video program that the Mashanjia Womens Labor Camp in Liaoning is 18-layers of hell where our mothers, our sisters, and our daughters are tortured, and the correctional officers of the labor camp are dressed in uniforms but behave like wild animals when torturing women detainees there. Even animals dont do that to their own kind, he said. His video was soon removed from Chinas video platforms.

Masanjia Labor Camp, also known as Ideology Education School of Liaoning Province, was established in 1956 in accordance with the regimes re-education through labor system on land that was formerly a graveyard.

The labor camp had two separate male sections and one female section, but was expanded in 1999 to imprison Falun Gong practitioners when former CCP leader Jiang Zemin ordered the nationwide massive suppression of the spiritual practice. It set up a second female section which was used exclusively to detain and persecute Falun Gong female practitioners, according to a report last year on Minghui.org, a website that reports on the persecution of Falun Gong. Masanjia Labor Camp and Masanjia Womens Labor Camp refer to the same camp.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a meditation practice that features moral teachings based on three core tenets, truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance, along with a set of meditative exercises.

The expose Out of Masanjia reported that the multiple abuse methods and devices were previously used exclusively on special groups and specific categories of people and later used to torture other inmates. These special groups and specific categories of people refer to Falun Gong practitioners.

From 2000 t0 2013, there were over 8000 reports and periodicals on the Minghui website, exposing and condemning the physical and psychological persecution of Falun Gong practitioners at the Ma Sanjia Labor Camp.

However, the Out of the Ma Sanjia report did not tell the extent and scope of torture used on the prisoners. It didnt reveal that the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners at the Ma Sanjia Labor Camp was not unfamiliar to those mainland Chinese who were able to work around the regimes internet firewalls and see the news from outside China.

For example, Ai Xiaoming, a professor of Chinese at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, wrote in an article titled The Vagina Is RoaringFacing Masanjia in 2013:

The Masanjia atrocities are not isolated or the first of their kind. Earlier, the well-known lawyer Gao Zhisheng wrote a letter to the top leaders of China, strongly demanding that the atrocities be stopped. As I recall, he wrote that the sexual organs of nearly every one of the victims had been attacked. The facts revealed in his letter were horrifying, and the lawyers experience was even more tragic. Under the threat of violence, the public, including myself, was silent.

Gao was a human rights lawyer and one of Chinas Top Ten Lawyers. He was persecuted severely and suffered brutal torture for defending human rights. He is still under detention by the CCP, but neither his family nor the outside world knows his whereabouts or whether hes still alive.

Chinese human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng. (The Epoch Times)

In order to call for an end to the persecution of Falun Gong, he wrote three open letters to Hu Jintao, the CCP general secretary and Wen Jiabao, former prime minister, in 2005.

In one of the letters he wrote: The 610 Office had become a symbol of power and was continuing to deal with our people by killing them physically and mentally, by handcuffing and chaining them, by electrocution, and by the tiger bench. This Mafia-like power continues to torment our mothers, our sisters, our children, and our entire nation.

He described the attacks on the sexual organs of Falun Gong practitioners, male and female alike, by 610 officers and police, and used the phrase extremely nasty.

According to an article on the Minghui website titled The Crimes Carried Out in Masanjia Forced Labor Camp are Supported by CCP Money and Awards, Wang Maolin and Dong Jufa, both officials of the CCPs Central 610 Office, an illegal organization dedicated to the persecution of Falun Gong, visited Masanjia in early July 2000 and made a detailed report to Jiang Zemin, who soon appropriated six million yuan ($950,000) to the labor camp and ordered 610 Office Head Liu Jing to set up Masanjia Reformation Through Education Base as soon as possible. Those who did not give up their belief in Falun Gong were tortured inhumanely in Masanjia. Staff of the camp were later rewarded by the CCP and their brutal torture methods became a model for the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in labor camps nationwide.

When the CCP announced on Nov. 15, 2013, it would close the notorious labor camps amid both domestic and overseas condemnation of the system, the outside world was skeptical about how much would actually change for prisoners.

According to Amnesty International, some camps were simply changing the sign out front. What was formerly a re-education through labor camp became an enforced-drug labor campa place for treating drug addicts, or was repurposed in other ways. After the sign changes, the same population as before remained within the facility, as reported by The Epoch Times in 2013.

Now, with the fall of Wang, the fourth consecutive head of the Liaoning Provincial Public Security Bureau to be disgraced since 2001, it is hard to imagine the rule of law existing in Liaoning. The 21 years during which the four heads of the Liaoning Provincial Public Security Bureau served were the same 21 years in which the Falun Gong adherents were persecuted.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
David Leong and Paul Dennhardt at the Shen Yun Performing Arts performance at The David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center, New York City, on March 13, 2022. (Sherry Li/The Epoch Times)

NEW YORKNew York City is Americas capital for the arts. From great orchestras to ballet, the city has the nations finest artists congregated. Paul Dennhardt and David Leong are fight directors who choreograph fighting scenes in productions ranging from Shakespeare to contemporary.

It was just so expressive and so evocative and just the extension of the movement that went beyond the dancers body out into the universe. That was beautiful. And I thought the comedic elements were fun, I enjoyed that, said Dennhardt, at a Shen Yun matinee performance at The David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center.

Shen Yun Performing Arts curtain call at The David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center, New York on March 13, 2022. (Larry Dye/The Epoch Times)

Although New York-based Shen Yuns mission is about reviving 5,000 years of Chinese culture, audiences often feel that Shen Yun is much more than a cultural performance.

Dennhardt described it as the beauty and expressiveness of the whole human spirit.

Theres a common humanity I think that we all share and a connection to the Divine. It then communicates to me a message of harmony that I wish [was] in our world today, he elaborated. If we could all use the arts to celebrate our common humanity and the beauty of life, maybe wed have a lot less discord in this world.

He also understood that despite Shen Yuns efforts to share the beauty of Chinese culture with the world, the company is unable to perform in China.

I just think its amazing that youre keeping traditional Chinese arts alive. In an era where politically its not allowed back in China and bringing that to the rest of the world. I thank you for that.

Shen Yuns digital backdrop is a patented technology that allows the stage to be extended endlessly. The dancers give off the impression that they can travel to different worlds or fly high into the sky.

I love the projections, I really was astonished the first time someone leaped down and then shot up into the projection on screen. I thought that was very effective, commented Dennhardt.

The music of Shen Yun is played by a live orchestra. The ensemble is highlighted by traditional Chinese instruments like the pipa, erhu, and Chinese percussion. The erhu is also featured on stage and Leong shared his appreciation for the soloist.

I dont know the [name of the] instrument [with] two stringed instruments. That was amazing, said Leong.

I love the woman who played the traditional Chinese instrument. I thought that was so expressive for an instrument with two strings. It just was captivating for me, added Dennhardt.

Shen Yun uses dance and music to tell stories of both ancient and modern China.

The storytelling, the variety of the stories of the traditional Chinese and then bringing the modern, contemporary society into it. I like that a lot too, said Leong.

Reporting by Sherry Li and Maria Han.

The Epoch Times is a proud sponsor of Shen Yun Performing Arts. We have covered audience reactions since Shen Yuns inception in 2006.
UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss will meet with officials in Washington today to discuss further support for Ukraine after the UK and United States were thanked by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for their moves to sanction Russian oil. (Peter Nicholls/PA)

This May Be the ActorPresidents Finest Performance, but Will He Bring the Whole House Down?

Commentary

No one can doubt the courage of Ukraines 44-year-old president, Volodymyr Zelensky, in defying Russias invasion of his nation, or the courage and suffering of its people, but his judgment is another matter.

His goal, even before the invasion, seems to have been to lead the world to war.

He initially downplayed the threat posed by Vladimir Putins forces amassing on the Ukrainian border. On Jan. 28, he held a press conference and chastised Western leaders for exaggerating the danger saying, We see troops coming and going  some being withdrawn.

He particularly disapproved of the decisions by the UK and United States to evacuate staff from their embassies in Kyiv, stating: Diplomats are like captains. They should be the last to leave a sinking ship. And Ukraine is not the Titanic.

But then, his position changed dramatically, and not because Russia invaded his country. He flip-flopped before then.

He knew that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had threatened that Moscow would retaliate if its demands for a halt to NATO expansion werent met. Yet, on Feb. 19 at the Munich Security Conference, Zelensky defiantly made it plain that he not only wanted Ukraine to join NATO, but he also wanted its nuclear weapons on Ukrainian soil.

Putin responded by telling his people, This is the very red line that has been talked about many times. They crossed it.

I raised these issues in my last article and a week later, Tucker Carlson picked up on the same theme.

At a public press event at the Munich Security Conference, Kamala Harris encouraged Ukraine to become a member of NATO. I appreciate and admire President Zelenskys desire to join NATO. Carlson told his viewers. Message: Up yours, Vladimir Putin, go ahead and invade Ukraine. And of course, Vladimir Putin did that just days later.

Zelenskys incendiary speech warned delegates that NATO indifference could be a repeat of the mistakes that led to two world wars in the last century.

The annexation of Crimea and the war in Donbas affects the whole world. This is not a war in Ukraine, but a war in Europe, he claimed, adding: How did it happen that in the 21st century, Europe is at war again and people are dying? Why does it last longer than World War II?

This was now his turn to exaggerate, as he was speaking before the current invasion.

By claiming that Ukraines territorial dispute with Russia over Crimea and the Donbas region was on par with the Nazi takeover of most of Europe, he also was seeking to make this the Wests problem. But his speech ended up making a bad situation worse by provoking Russia to launch its full invasion.

Zelensky knew he was picking a fight he couldnt possibly win without the help of NATO forces. In doing so, he was gambling with the lives of his fellow countrymen, women, and children, but at least he had Kamala Harris at his side. So, does that make her an accessory?

Since then, he has been endlessly lobbying NATO countries for their support while rejecting offers to be evacuated from Kyiv. He once famously said: I need ammunition, not a ride.

Via a historic first video link into the House of Commons, Zelenskys speech received a standing ovation from the packed chamber after quoting Shakespeare and his version of Churchills We will fight them on the beaches speech, made in that same room over 80 years ago.

Zelensky told MPs that Ukraine wasnt seeking this [conflict], which is correct, but what did he expect would happen when he made his fateful speech in Munich?

He ended his 10-minute address with: Find a way to make our sky safe. Do what you can, what you have to do, and what is obliged by the greatness of your country and your people.

Rousing stuff and Boris Johnson responded accordingly. He told MPs: In a great European capital now within range of Russian guns, President Volodymyr Zelensky is standing firm for democracy and for freedom.

The British have so far responded by sending more weapons. Almost doubling the 2,000 light anti-tank missiles they already delivered, along with longer range Javelin missiles and surface-to-air missiles.

Comparing the Russian invasion to 9/11, UK Foreign Minister Liz Truss later threatened, We want a situation where they [Russia] cant access their funds, they cant clear their payments, their trade cant flow, their ships cant dock and their planes cant land,

Thats fightin talk, but what Zelensky really wants are NATO no-fly zones, NATO boots on the ground, and, eventually, NATO nuke silos underground, which could lead to war between Russia and the United States that would surely only end in one MAD (mutually assured destruction) way.

People in high places in the West seem to agree with him to the point of adulation. One exception is Germanys new chancellor, Olaf Scholz, who, after meeting with Putin, opposes NATO membership for Ukraine in the near future. The United States, for now, also opposes no-fly zones, since that would require NATO to shoot down Russian planes.

But just imagine the reaction in Beijing if NATO demanded that China recognize Taiwans right, as Truss put it in her speech about Ukraine, to choose their own security arrangements. Why not try asking them if they want to join NATO, even if the island lies between the East China Sea and the Pacific Ocean? Though of course, NATO wont dare to even call Taiwan a nation, lest it upsets the CCPmight is the only right they recognize there.

Putins foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, told journalists that Russias goals are limited to making sure Ukraine never again poses a military risk. He also claimed it will be up to Ukrainians to choose what government they should haveprovided it doesnt join NATO or try to take back Crimea.

This is the same demand he made to Zelensky before Russia invaded, before many people diedwith a lot more deaths still to comeand before parts of his country lay in ruins.

If Ukraine had chosen to become neutral, it would have been joining nations such as Finland, Malta, Ireland, Japan, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Sweden, Turkmenistan, Costa Rica, Austria, and even the Vatican City. Not much use to NATO though.

While Western outrage and concern at the human misery now being inflicted is understandable, at the same time, its hypocritical. America and coalition forces were once the aggressors that invaded Iraq in 2003 under the false pretext that it had weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

According to a Lancet study, that war led to about 655,000 deaths from March 2003 to June 2006, and the regional destabilization it created eventually allowed the terrorist group ISIS to establish its bloody caliphate, bringing the death toll much, much higher.

To justify that invasion, then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair stood up in Parliament and falsely told MPs that Iraq could deploy WMDs that could target British bases in Cyprus within 45 minutes. His sole proof turned out to be a plagiarized dodgy dossier.

That was a lot of deaths on the off-chance that Saddam Hussein might have a weapon. And there was no intelligence to say he was going to use ithow could there have been as no WMDs were ever found in Iraq, whereas, Zelensky has admitted to the world his plans to site them in Ukraine and aim them in Russias direction.

Today, there are many calls for Putin to be tried for war crimes, yet the architects of the invasion of Iraq received no sanction over the deaths they caused there. Indeed, Sir Tony Blair just received the highest level of knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II.

To turn Zelenskys Titanic metaphor against him: Is he now acting like the captain who wanted to reach America so fast that he ended up steering his ship into an iceberga Russian one? And are our leaders risking making all of us his passengers?

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
South Carolina Republican Party Chairman Drew McKissick gestures as he speaks to the Richland County GOP convention in Columbia, S.C., on April 30, 2021. (Meg Kinnard/AP Photo)

Trump Lays Out Strategy for South Carolina Midterms at Save America Rally

Former President Donald Trump mapped out his strategy for the South Carolina Republican Partys role toward winning in midterm elections during his Save America rally in Florence, South Carolina.

Eight months from now, the people of South Carolina are going to vote to fire the radical Democrats, Trump said on March 12. Youre going to elect an incredible slate of true America-first Republicans. Youre going to reelect your governor, Henry McMaster, and together, were going to end Nancy Pelosis political career once and for all.

Trump criticized President Joe Biden, saying the nation has watched in horror as everything that Joe Biden touches turns into a calamity and a total disaster.

Its one train wreck after the another, said Trump, who won South Carolina by 55 percent in the 2020 general election.

Trump said that in 2020, all but two of the 122 candidates that he endorsed in congressional primaries won their elections.

Hes now endorsing Republican state Rep. Russell Fry to replace U.S. Rep. Tom Rice (R-S.C.), who was among the House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump on the allegation that he had provoked the breach of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Right here in the 7th Congressional District, Tom Rice, a disaster, Trump said. Hes respected by no one. Hes laughed at in Washington. He was never thought highly of in Washington.

In a response to Trump after the rally, Rice put out a statement in which he said that Trump is consumed by spite, according to a local CBS affiliate.

I took one vote he didnt like and now hes chosen to support a yes man candidate who has and will bow to anything he says, no matter what, Rice said.

Trump then turned his criticism to Republican Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), who also voted to impeach Trump on the allegation that Trump was somehow responsible for Jan. 6.

In the 1st Congressional District you have another horrendous RINO known as crazy Nancy Mace, Trump said, using the acronym for Republican in Name Only.

In 2020, Mace had mounted a bid for the GOP nomination in the 1st Congressional District. With Trump and Mace on good terms at the time, he had thrown his support behind her.

Two years ago, she begged for my endorsement and I pledgedand she pledgedto be America first all the way. Instead, the first thing Nancy Mace did when she got to Washington was start attacking Republicans and hold a fundraiser for wacky Liz Cheney.

Maces office didnt immediately respond to a request by The Epoch Times for comment on Trumps statements.

During his speech, Trump endorsed Maces Republican primary challenger Katie Arrington.

In 2018, Arrington defeated longtime congressman and former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, winning the Republican nomination to challenge former Rep. Joe Cunningham (D-S.C.) in the states 1st Congressional District, which comprises Charleston and its surroundings. The primary win came after a public disagreement between Sanford and Trump.

However, Arrington was defeated by Cunningham in the general election by a 1.4 point margin.

In his earlier endorsement of Arrington, Trump blamed her defeat on a serious car crash right before the election that left Arrington badly injured and unable to campaign. He indicated that hes confident Arrington can win if shes on the ballot in November 2022.

Local Effects

Because South Carolina has a Republican-led House and Senate, what some have described as a potential red wave of Republican victories may be more of a ripple in the state; meanwhile, a few local municipal officials, such as Dorchester County Councilwoman Harriet Holman, have switched to Republican from Democrat. She was appointed to fill a vacated seat on the council by Gov. Henry McMaster in 2018 and was reelected in 2019.

Holman, who retired from the U.S. Army as a lieutenant colonel in 2010, told The Epoch Times that upon review of her values, shes always aligned with those of the Republican Party when it comes to pro-life and economic principles, as well as supportinginstead of defundingthe police and military.

When I look back, Ive really been upholding conservative values despite my Democratic ticket, so, to me, the right thing to do was to switch to Republican, Holman said.

Since 2018, four Democrats holding county offices across South Carolina have switched to the GOP, including Darlington County Clerk of Court Scott Suggs, who called the Democratic Party unrecognizable compared to previous years.

Political Evolution

State Republican Party Chairman Drew McKissick told The Epoch Times that the local switches arent what political scientists would describe as political realignment, but instead a creeping political evolution.

It started at the top of the ticket in a lot of these rural counties and is gradually evolving its way down the ticket, McKissick said. They would vote Republican for president and maybe federal offices, but then Democrat the rest of the way down. Eventually, they are voting Republican as well but theyre still voting Democrat for courthouse jobs and city council before they break ties and go straight ticket.

McKissick said the first time Republicans beat Democrats in South Carolina with straight-ticket voting was in 2016 by 2.5 points. In 2018, Republicans beat Democrats with straight-ticket voting by 8.5 points, he said, and in 2020, that grew to 17 points.

That is a lot of rural, culturally conservative Democrats and independents who had been splitting their ticket now walking into the ballot box and pressing that Republican button and walking out, McKissick said.

The trend of voting Republican grew out from urban to suburban areas and has now moved into rural areas.

It really got on steroids since Donald Trump came on the scene in 2015, he said. I got elected in May 2017, and I saw at least four counties out of 46 at the time when we didnt even have a county party chair.

However, he said, by 2019, there was a major turnout for county party chairs.

Its like a dam has broken, and its been going on for a while, he said. Its accelerating because of the growth were seeing because of President Trump and his message and in reaction to the Democrats message going in the opposite direction.

No Proclamation From the Gods

South Carolina Democratic Party Chairman Trav Robertson told The Epoch Times that it would be disingenuous to hold Holman and others as an example of a growing trend in switching parties, for two reasons.

Down in Dorchester, there was a swing district, and they drew a line and made every single district a firm Republican district, he said. Well, I think that the gerrymandering in that circumstance will be thrown out by the courts. The fact is, she switched parties because there are seven Republican districts that have been drawn through reapportionment.

In addition, he asserted that Holman had a debt to pay to McMaster because he had initially appointed her to the seat.

So theres no shocker here, Robertson said. This isnt a great proclamation from the gods.

Robertson said the switches from Republican to Democrat have been too far and few between, and that Holman herself will be lucky to hold on to any seat she runs for in the midterms.

The South Carolina primary is on June 14, with the primary runoff on June 28.

Joseph Lord and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
UK Condemns China After Hong Kong Police Threaten to Jail UK Rights Activist

The UK has criticised the Beijing and Hong Kong authorities for issuing threats to a UK-based human rights group, calling such behaviour unjustifiable.

Hong Kong Watch, an NGO which monitors the human rights situation in the former British colony, said in a statement on March 14 that it had received a formal warning from the Hong Kong Police Forces National Security Department regarding its website possibly breaching the national security law.

The Hong Kong Police accused the group of jeopardising Chinas national security, and warned that it could face a fine of HK$100,000 (US$12,772) or its Chief Executive Benedict Rogers could face three years in jail.

Campaigner Benedict Rogers speaks at a rally for democracy in Hong Kong at Trafalgar Square in London on June 12, 2021. (Laurel Chor/Getty Images)

UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said in a statement: The unjustifiable action taken against the UK-based NGO Hong Kong Watch is clearly an attempt to silence those who stand up for human rights in Hong Kong.

The Chinese government and Hong Kong authorities must respect the universal right to freedom of speech, and uphold that right in Hong Kong in accordance with international commitments, including the Joint Declaration.

Attempting to silence voices globally that speak up for freedom and democracy is unacceptable and will never succeed.

In a letter addressed to Rogers, the Hong Kong Police Forces National Security Department said the rights group had been lobbying foreign countries to impose sanctions or blockade and engage in other hostile activities against the Chinese and Hong Kong authorities, and had been seriously disrupting the formulation and implementation of laws or policies.

It accused Hong Kong Watch of violating Article 29 of the national security law, which criminalises collusion with foreign forces to endanger national security.

In its letter, the Hong Kong Police also confirmed that they are using the national security law to block Hong Kong Watchs website in Hong Kong.

In reaction, Rogers said in a statement, By threatening a UK-based NGO with financial penalties and jail for merely reporting on the human rights situation in Hong Kong, this letter exemplifies why Hong Kongs national security law is so dangerous.

He said Hong Kong Watch will not be silenced and will continue to be a voice for the people of Hong Kong and those brave political prisoners who have been jailed under this authoritarian regime.

Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong and a patron of Hong Kong Watch, said: This is another disgraceful example of [Russian President Vladimir] Putins friends in Beijing and their quislings in Hong Kong trying not only to stamp out freedom of expression and information in Hong Kong but also to internationalise their campaign against evidence, freedom, and honesty.

Sir Iain Duncan Smith, a former leader of the Conservative Party, said, Even as the world watches the appalling attack on Ukraine, this attempt by China to arrest British citizens outside of China should remind us all that totalitarian China is a threat to freedom everywhere.

PA Media contributed to this report.
UK Government Urged to Halt Sealing of Fracking Wells Amid Energy Crisis

The UK government has been urged to withdraw its instruction to plug the countrys only shale wells and lift the ban on fracking to alleviate the energy crisis which has been worsened by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The government imposed a moratorium on shale gas mining in England in 2019 after two minor earthquakes were attributed to fracking operations.

Last month, energy company Cuadrilla said the governments Oil and Gas Authority (OGA) had ordered its two horizontal shale wells in Lancashire to be filled and abandoned.

But there have been calls from Conservative lawmakers for the ban to be lifted to alleviate the acute energy crisis that has been going on since last year. The calls have grown louder since Russia invaded Ukraine last month, prompting the UK to commit to phasing out imports of Russian oil by the end of the year.

On March 9, Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said the government is open to the idea of fracking and thinks it didnt necessarily make any sense to plug the shale wells.

But Cuadrilla chief executive Francis Egan said on March 14 that work to concrete up the wells will have to start imminently in the absence of any official confirmation that the government wanted to halt the move.

Egan said there had been repeated contact with the Business Department and the OGA since last week, but the only clear and unambiguous response was confirmation from the OGA that June 30 remains the legal deadline to plug both wells with cement.

As it takes between two and three months to complete the work we must start on site imminently, he said.

He urged the government to formally withdraw its instruction to plug the wells.

He also called for sensible protections to be put in place to ensure that companies like Cuadrilla and others arent forced to suffer the risk and financial cost of operating in a position where a government can keep changing its mind and require wells to be cemented whilst they are eminently useful.

If we are serious about energy security, as a very basic first step we must not concrete up these wells, and then we need urgently to lift the shale gas moratorium and use these and additional wells to produce domestic shale gas, he said.

Prime Minister Boris Johnsons official spokesman said: We want to keep all options available to us, given these unique circumstances we find with the war in Ukraine, to help us move away from Russian gas.

Beyond that we havent provided any further updates but we will do so if that changes. While we are developing our plans, which we are going to set out this month, the moratorium on shale gas does remain in place.

PA Media contributed to this report.
A tractor spreading fertilizers to a field of winter wheat near the village of Husachivka in Kyiv region, Ukraine on April 17, 2020. (Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters)

Ukraines Farmers Stalled, Fueling Fears of Global Food Shortages

The Russian invasion of Ukraine threatens millions of tiny spring-time sprouts that should emerge from stalks of dormant winter wheat in the coming weeks. If the farmers cant feed those crops soon, far fewer of the so-called tillers will spout, jeopardizing a national wheat harvest on which millions in the developing world depend.

The wheat was planted last autumn, which, after a brief growing period, fell dormant for the winter. Before the grain returns to life, however, farmers typically spread fertilizer that encourages the tillers to grow off the main stalks. Each stalk can have three or four tillers, increasing the yield per wheat stalk exponentially.

But Ukrainian farmers  who produced a record grain crop last year  say they now are short of fertilizer, as well as pesticides and herbicides. And even if they had enough of those materials, they cant get enough fuel to power their equipment, they add.

Elena Neroba, a Kyiv-based business development manager at grain brokerage Maxigrain, said Ukraines winter wheat yields could fall by 15 percent compared to recent years if fertilizers arent applied now. Some farmers warn the situation could be much worse.

Some Ukrainian farmers told Reuters their wheat yields could be cut in half, and perhaps by more, which has implications far beyond Ukraine. Countries such as Lebanon, Egypt, Yemen, and others have come to rely on Ukrainian wheat in recent years. The war has already caused wheat prices to skyrocketrising by 50 percent in the last month.

The Ukrainian farming crisis comes as food prices around the world already have been spiking for months amid global supply chain problems attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic. World food prices hit a record high in February, and have risen over 24 percent in a year, the U.N. food agency said last week. Agriculture ministers from the worlds seven largest advanced economies were due Friday to discuss in a virtual meeting the impact of Russias invasion on global food security and how best to stabilize food markets.

International food and feed prices could rise by up to 20 percent as a result of the conflict in Ukraine, triggering a jump in global malnourishment, the United Nations food agency said on Friday.

A farmer shows a newly harvested grain in Stadnytca village, some 170km South from Kiev, Ukraine on Aug. 10, 2009. (Genya Savilov/AFP via Getty Images)

Ukraine and Russia are major wheat exporters, together accounting for about a third of world exports- almost all of which passes through the Black Sea.

Svein Tore Holsether, president of Norway-based Yara International, the worlds largest maker of nitrogen-based fertilizers, said he is worried that tens of millions of people will suffer food shortages because of the farming crisis in Ukraine. For me, its not whether we are moving into a global food crisis, he said. Its how large the crisis will be.

Ukrainian officials say they are still hopeful the country will have a relatively successful year. Much of that hope rests with farmers in the west of the country, which, so far, remains distant from the shooting.

But officials are taking measures to protect domestic supplies to ensure Ukraines population gets fed  posing another possible hit to export shipments. Agriculture Minister Roman Leshchenko said on Tuesday the country was banning the export of various staples, including wheat. Leshchenko has acknowledged the threat to Ukraines food supply and that the government was doing what it can to help farmers.

We understand that food for the entire state depends on what will be in the fields, he said in televised remarks Monday.

Moscow says it is conducting a special military operation in Ukraine to demilitarize and capture dangerous nationalists. It has denied deliberately targeting civilians and civil infrastructure, despite documented attacks on hospitals, apartment buildings and railroads.

Grain exports are a cornerstone of Ukraines economy.

In the coming weeks, farmers should also start planting other crops, such as corn and sunflowers, but they are struggling to get the seeds they need, said Dykun Andriy, chairman of the Ukrainian Agricultural Council, which represents about 1,000 farmers cultivating five million hectares.

Andriy warned that the fuel is the critical problem now. Unless farmers can get diesel to run their equipment, spring farmwork will be impossible and this years harvests doomed. Farmers are desperate, he said. There is a big risk that we dont have enough food to feed our people.

Maxigrains Neroba said farmers are facing fuel shortages because military needs take priority.

Grain is poured from a combine harvester into a tractor in the village of Mala Divytsa, Ukraine on July 27, 2015. (Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images)

Ukrainian farmer Oleksandr Chumak said little work is happening in his fields, some 200 km north of the Black Sea port of Odessa. He farms 3,000 hectares (about 7,500 acres) where he grows wheat, corn, sunflowers and rapeseed. Even if he had enough fuel to get his equipment into the fields, he said he had insufficient fertilizer for all of his crops and no herbicides.

Usually we have maybe six to seven tons (of wheat) per hectare. This year, I think that if we get three tons per hectare, it will be very good, Chumak said. He added he remains hopeful that Ukrainian farmers will find a way to grow enough food to feed their countrymen, but he does not expect much will be exported.

In northern Ukraine, he said friends of his have been reduced to skimming fuel from a ditch that was filled with diesel after a Russian attack on a train spilled fuel from several tankers. Other friends, in the occupied areas near Kherson, are scavenging diesel from ambushed and abandoned Russian tanker convoys, Chumak said.

Currently, he spends much of his time preparing for a Russian assault. I live in Odessa. Every day I see rockets fly over my house.

Val Sigaev, a grain broker at R.J. OBrien in Kyiv, who evacuated last week, said it is unclear how much of the usual spring farming  planting and fertilizing  would be possible. High prices for natural gas  a major input for fertilizer  sent fertilizer prices up, so some farmers postponed purchases.

Some people think we could plant as much as half of the crop, Sigaev said. Others say that only the West will see plantings and what is produced will be strictly for Ukrainian needs.

The situation is especially dire in the southern port city of Kherson, the first Ukrainian city Russia captured after invading the country on Feb. 24. Spring-like weather adds to farmers urgency, if they dont tend to their fields now this years harvest will be a bust.

Andrii Pastushenko is the general manager of a 1,500-hectare farm just west of the city, near the mouth of the Dnipro River. Last autumn, they sowed about 1,000 hectares of wheat, barley and rapeseed. His farm workers need to get into those fields now, but cant, he says, and theyve lost access to fuel. Were completely cut off from the civilized world and the rest of Ukraine.

Additionally, many of Pastushenkos 80 workers cannot come to work at the farm because they live a few miles to the north, across the front line. The managers problems are compounded because the region is drier than other agricultural areas of the country and his fields need to be irrigated. And that too requires fuel.

Unlike many, Pastushenko has a 50-metric ton nitrogen-based fertilizer stockpile. With the fighting all around him, however, hes not sure thats such a good thing: Fertilizer is highly explosive. If something drops from a helicopter, it could blow the whole place, he said.

He said he fears the harvest will be poor. Last year, his wheat and barley fields yielded about five metric tons per hectare. If he doesnt spray insecticide  which he says he cant get  and spread fertilizer, he doubts hell get a third of that amount.

Ive no idea whether well be able to harvest something, he said. Something will come off the ground, but it wont be enough to feed our cattle and pay our staff.

About 150 km west of Pastushenkos farm is the Black Sea port of Odessa, which remains under Ukrainian control. In peacetime, much of Ukrainian agricultural exports find their way onto ships at the port, Ukraines busiest. Today, no ships are leaving and the city is besieged by Russian forces.

Much of Ukraines harvest was due to be exported to North Africa, the Middle East, and the Levant. According to the United Nations World Food Program (WFP), Ukraine supplies Lebanon with more than half of its imported wheat, Tunisia imports 42 percent, and Yemen nearly a quarter. Ukraine has grown to become WFPs largest supplier of food.

For some countries, rising prices could hammer governments as well as consumers because of state food subsidies.

Egypt, which has become increasingly dependent on Ukrainian and Russian wheat over the past decade, heavily subsidizes bread for its population. As the price of wheat rises, so will pressure on the government to raise bread prices, said Sikandra Kurdi, a Dubai-based research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute.

The countrys food subsidy program currently costs the government about $5.5 billion annually. Currently, nearly two-thirds of the population can buy five loaves of round bread daily for 50 cents a month.

Other developing countries with similar subsidies will also struggle with rising wheat prices. In 2019, protests over bread price increases in Sudan contributed to the overthrow of the head of state, Omar al-Bashir.

For countries that provide large subsidies, rising food prices will mean that either governments take on more debt or consumers will pay higher prices, Kurdi said.

By Maurice Tamman
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky attends a joint press conference with his counterparts from Lithuania and Poland following their talks in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Feb. 23, 2022. (Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images)

Ukrainian President to Virtually Address US Congress

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will deliver a virtual address to members of both chambers of the U.S. Congress on March 16 to provide an update on the Russian invasion.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced the meeting in a March 14 joint letter to their congressional colleagues.

The Congress, our country and the world are in awe of the people of Ukraine, who have shown extraordinary courage, resilience and determination in the face of Russias unprovoked, vicious, and illegal war, Pelosi and Schumer wrote.

As war rages on in Ukraine, it is with great respect and admiration for the Ukrainian people that we invite all Members of the House and Senate to attend a Virtual Address to the United States Congress delivered by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine on Wednesday, March 16th at 9:00 a.m.

The Congress remains unwavering in our commitment to supporting Ukraine as they face Putins cruel and diabolical aggression, and to passing legislation to cripple and isolate the Russian economy as well as deliver humanitarian, security and economic assistance to Ukraine.

Russias advance into Ukraine, which began at the end of last month, has been stalled by Ukrainian resistance, denying Russian President Vladimir Putin a quick advance into Kyiv, Ukraines capital city.

On March 11, the Senate approved $13.6 billion in financial and military aid to Ukraine as part of a larger $1.5 trillion omnibus spending measure.

Since the invasion began, Zelensky has pushed for the United States and its Western allies to increase aid to Ukraine, particularly calling for high-tech U.S. jets and a ban on imports of Russian oil to further weaken the Russian economy, which has plummeted in a matter of weeks.

We need planes, Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.) recounted Zelensky saying during a March 5 virtual meeting with a bipartisan, bicameral group made up of more than 280 members of Congress. The Ukrainian president was also reported to have said that we are all one big army now and that the Ukrainian people are the embodiment of unity for democracy for the whole world now.

Please help us and please dont allow our brave and strong people, many times smaller than Russia, to be exterminated, Zelensky reportedly said during the virtual meeting.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) led a bipartisan group of lawmakers in an effort to ban Russian oil importswhich has since been put in placebut providing fighter jets has been a far more controversial issue.

Many lawmakers worry that sending U.S. jets to Ukraine could rapidly escalate the situation, which has already put Europe at risk of a full-scale ground war and has put Russia and the United States closer to war than theyve been since the fall of the Soviet Union. While U.S. lawmakers have roundly condemned the Russian invasion, members of both parties are anxious to avoid an escalation or ground war between the two nuclear-armed superpowers.

However, other lawmakers are in favor of delivering U.S. jets to Ukraine.

The Ukrainian military is in dire need of more lethal aid today to defend the foundations of their country that will allow it to function in the future, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) said.

The Pentagon is less in favor of the plan.

It is simply not clear to us that there is a substantive rationale for it, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said when asked about the issue. We will continue to consult with Poland and our other NATO allies about this issue and the difficult logistical challenges it presents, but we do not believe [the proposal] is a tenable one.

Zachary Steiber and Naveen Athrappully contributed to this report.
Bolivian citizens and Ukrainian expatriates wait for the arrival of deported refugees Mykhailo Karpenko and Oksana Karpenko in Santa Cruz, Bolivia on March 13, 2022. (Cesar Calani/The Epoch Times)

Ukrainian Refugees Expelled by Bolivian Government Return After Public Outcry

SANTA CRUZ, BoliviaNear the exit door of immigration at the Viru Viru International Airport, a crowd of Bolivian and Ukrainian supporters gathered during a March 13 demonstration to celebrate the arrival of two refugees deported the day prior by immigration officials.

Ukrainian citizens Mykhailo and Oksana Karpenko arrived at the same port on March 12 and Bolivian immigration authorities detained the couple for roughly 15 hours, despite having the correct paperwork, including a formal letter of invitation from a Ukrainian expatriate and Bolivian citizen whos lived in the country for 45 years.

After the lengthy detention, officials denied the refugee couple entry and deported them to Argentina.

Word of the surprising humanitarian rejection spread quickly, mobilizing Bolivian human rights groups and the Ukrainian consulate to pressure officials from socialist President Luis Arces regime to allow the couple to return from Argentina.

The couples host in Bolivia, Ludmila Kundenko, told The Epoch Times the Ukrainian consulates in Brazil and Argentina were also involved in the effort to return her displaced countrymen.

Ukrainian refugees Mykhailo and Oksana Karpenko exit immigration at Viru Viru International Airport on March 13, 2022. (Autumn Spredemann/The Epoch Times)

The most important thing right now is their lives. They [the refugees] are my countrymen, the children of my brothers, she said.

Kundenko is no stranger to flight from persecution. In 1976, she arrived in Bolivia as the first refugee to flee the Soviet Union and seek asylum in the South American nation.

Since then, she created what she called a beautiful life for herself in Bolivia in the Amazonian department of Santa Cruz.

In the spirit of paying it forward, she offered to help others seeking refuge from Russias war in Ukraine.

I opened a door for more Ukrainians and Russians to come here. Its wasnt just people from Ukraine [fleeing the Soviet Union], she added while waving a colorful banner displaying the colors of the Ukrainian flag.

Behind Closed Doors

Since Russia launched a full-scale military invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, Bolivia has maintained a neutral stance on the conflict.

Representatives from the country abstained on the United Nations General Assembly votes to reprimand Russia for the ongoing bombardment and also the establishment of an official human rights council inquiry.

Bolivian officials havent outwardly spoken in favor or against the actions of Russian President Vladimir Putin since the onset of the war with Ukraine.

However, officials from socialist President Luis Arces administration moved quickly after the immigration debacle on March 12 and invited the deported refugees to return from Argentina on a government-paid airline ticket, along with issuing a formal apology.

During a press conference held at Viru Viru airport on March 13, the general director of immigration Katherine Calderon formally welcomed the young couple back to Bolivia.

General Director of Immigration, Katherine Calderon addresses reporters during a press conference while standing beside Ukrainian refugees Mykhailo and Oksana Karpenko in Santa Cruz, Bolivia on March 13. (Autumn Spredemann/The Epoch Times)

The [regional] director of immigration in Santa Cruz and three other employees involved [with the deportation] were already fired because it was against the law. The national government doesnt support their actions, Calderon told reporters when asked why officials sequestered the refugees.

Furthermore, the director said the couple has been granted refugee status for as long as they want.

She also invited Ukrainian citizens from all over the world to come to Bolivia, claiming they will be granted immediate refugee status, going forward.

After the press conference, Ukrainian refugee Oksana Karpenko told The Epoch Times, Were so grateful to be here.

When asked if they thought others would also flee the conflict in Europe and seek asylum in Bolivia, Mykhailo Karpenko said, I doubt it. Its very expensive to come here.

The Karpenkos declined to elaborate after being questioned about what happened during the initial 15-hour session with immigration authorities on March 12.

This was a point of concern for human rights groups and supporters of both nationalities outside the terminal since Bolivia has a history of illegal detention and solicitation of bribes both from immigration authorities and police officers.

It isnt the first time theyve done this, one of the crowd supporters who asked to be called Juan said about Bolivian government officials.

Law 251 pertains to the handling of displaced people from other nations and has existed on the books in Bolivia since 2012. It states the government must grant asylum regardless of country, race, religion, or monetary disposition, if asked.

Though Juan noted historically, the Bolivian government has granted refugee status to criminals and terrorists, who enter at the discretion and convenience of the socialist government.

So why not people fleeing a war? he asked rhetorically.

Juan cited the famous case of Walter Chavez, a former Shining Path guerrilla terrorist who the Bolivian government granted asylum after fleeing criminal charges from the Peruvian government.

Im glad those [immigration] officials were fired. Bolivia could be punished by international organizations for this offense, he said regarding the deportation of the Ukrainian couple.

Bolivian lawyer Luis Flores echoed this sentiment, explaining to The Epoch Times, It wasnt legal, what they did [immigration officials]. The Ukrainians had to be granted refugee status when they arrived, simple at that. Its the law.

It Takes A Village

Consuelo Medina is a member of the Bolivian human rights group Ana Barba. She stood outside immigration in the terminal with other members of the organization for more than two hours before the refugee couple arrived, brandishing a sign that read my home is your home.

Medina told The Epoch Times, I dont agree with the war. Im here as a Bolivian citizen to support the people of Ukraine.

A band played music and the crowd of supporters cheered as the Karpenkos finally exited airport security on March 13.

Kundenko embraced them while wearing a traditional Ukrainian style floral crown, which has become a symbol of national pride.

Ludmila Kundenko speaks to reporters outside Viru Viru International Airport in Santa Cruz, Bolivia on March 13. (Cesar Calani/The Epoch Times)

Its a celebration for Ukraine and for Bolivia, Kundenko said.

She added that were it not for the overwhelming demand for clemency by the Bolivian people and pressure from multiple Ukraine consulates, the refugee couple would likely still be stuck in Argentina.

Clutching a bouquet of flowers one Bolivian supporter handed her outside immigration, Oksana Karpenko said, It feels so good to be here.
A rocket launches from missile system as part of a ground-based intercontinental ballistic missile test launched from the Plesetsk facility in northwestern Russia on Dec. 9, 2020. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)

UN Chief Warns Nuclear War in Realm of Possibility Over Ukraine

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Monday that the prospect of a nuclear war is now within the realm of possibility as Russia continues its weekslong invasion of Ukraine.

Two weeks ago, the U.N. chief said at the time that the concept of a nuclear conflict is inconceivable, but he noted that the Kremlins decision to place its nuclear forces on high alert was a chilling development.

Days after Russian forces entered Ukraine on Feb. 24, President Vladimir Putin ordered his countrys nuclear deterrent forces to be placed on a heightened state of alert. Putin said it was due to economic sanctions imposed by Western countries on his country.

The United States military has not changed its nuclear posture following Putins order, a senior U.S. military official told reporters in early March. Russia and the United States are in possession of most of the worlds nuclear weapons.

Guterres also said Monday that he has been in close contact with several countries including Germany, India, Israel, France, Turkey, and China to discuss mediation efforts to end the conflict.

The U.N., he added, is going to allocate a further $40 million from its Central Emergency Response fund to ramp up humanitarian aid for Ukraine.

While several members of Congress have urged the enforcement of a no-fly zone over Ukraine, the United States and NATO have dismissed such proposals.

We will not fight a war against Russia in Ukraine. A direct confrontation between NATO and Russia is World War III something we must strive to prevent. But we already know [Russias] war against Ukraine will never be a victory, said President Joe Biden on March 11 at the White House.

Were going to continue to stand together with our allies in Europe and send an unmistakable message. We will defend every single inch of NATO territory with the full might of the united and galvanized NATO, Biden said after providing new sanctions against Russia.

Later on Monday, Russian forces let the first column of cars escape Ukraines besieged port of Mariupol but blocked an aid convoy trying to reach the city, Ukraine said, after 10 days of failed attempts to rescue civilians under relentless bombardment.

The southeastern port, totally surrounded by Russian troops since the first week of the invasion, has suffered the worst humanitarian impact of the war, with hundreds of thousands of people sheltering in basements without food, water, or medicine.

Reuters contributed to this report.
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick in Houston, on March 15, 2016, said removing tenure from Texas Universities will one of his priorities in the next legislative session, if re-elected. 2016. (Bob Levey/Getty Images)

University Head Refuses to Back Down Over Tenure Battle

University of Texas President Jay Hartzell has told the schools professors that he will defend tenure for faculty because removing it will cripple Texas ability to recruit and retain great faculty members.

Hartzell made the comment in a letter in response to Lt. Gov. Dan Patricks announcement last month that he would seek to eliminate tenure for new hires at all of the states public universities and add the teaching of critical race theory (CRT) as grounds to revoke a professors tenure.

The subject is certain to be an issue in the state, as Patrick is seeking reelection and has consistently vowed that ending tenure for Texas state universities will be a top priority in next years legislative session.

At stake is the decision of who will be the gatekeepers of what is taught in Texas schoolsteachers and professors, or the University of Texas Board of Regents and the states voters.

Professors who are granted tenurean indefinite appointment for distinguished university faculty that guarantees lifetime job securitygenerally are immune from termination, except for cause or extraordinary circumstances, according to the American Association of University Professors.

Patrick said Texans are going to have a say in what the curriculum is.

This is right, he said, because legislators distribute taxpayer dollars on behalf of the people of Texas.

Patrick was reacting to a resolution by the recent Faculty Council of the University of Texas declaring that the teaching of critical race theory was included in the fundamental rights of faculty to academic freedom, with a view to a professors ability to teach CRT and gender justice.

I am outraged by the University of Texas at Austin faculty councils 41-5 vote on a resolution in support of teaching critical race theory, Patrick said. I am further outraged that the faculty council told the Legislature and the UT Board of Regents, that it is none of their business what they taught.

Tenured professors must not be able to hide behind the phrase academic freedom, and then proceed to poison the minds of our next generation.

Former President Donald Trump banned federal agencies from conducting racial sensitivity training related to CRT, calling it divisive, anti-American propaganda.

Students in our universities are inundated with critical race theory, Trump said. This is a Marxist doctrine holding that America is a wicked and racist nation, that even young children are complicit in oppression, and that our entire society must be radically transformed.

Trump canceled the planned training of CRT by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and opposed the teaching of the New York Times 1619 Project in public schools.

Critical race theory is being forced into our childrens schools, its being imposed into workplace training, and its being deployed to rip apart friends, neighbors, and families, Trump said.

The fight between Patrick and the University of Texas will continue, Hartzell indicated.

In his written statement, Hartzell said that tenure allows for professors to explore controversial topics through their research and with their students without fear of repercussion for unpopular ideas.

Tenure is important to Texas universities and removing it will not help.

Patrick said, Universities across Texas are being taken over by tenured, leftist professors, and it is high time that more oversight is provided.
White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan leaves the U.S. Capitol after a closed-door briefing with Senators on Feb. 14, 2022 in Washington. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

US Holds 7-Hour Talks With China Following Reports Beijing Signaled Willingness to Help Russia

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan met with Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi in Rome on March 14, following reports that Russia had requested military and economic support from China for its ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

The meeting lasted some seven hours. A brief official statement from the White House said that it followed up on concerns initiated during a call between Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping and President Joe Biden late last year, and included a substantial discussion on Russias invasion of Ukraine.

Shortly before the meeting, unnamed officials from within the Biden administration State Department sent information to allies in Europe and Asia claiming that Russia had requested military and economic assistance for its war from China and that CCP officials had signaled a willingness to assist, according to the Financial Times.

The claim was repeated by retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg during an interview on Fox News on March 14.

Hes [Putin] going to China to get military support, and economic support as well, Kellogg said.

He wouldnt be reaching out to the Chinese for military aid or support if he wasnt having some real problems with his own military.

Both China and Russia denied the allegations.

The United States has further warned that the CCP would be subject to economic penalties and global isolation should it choose to support Russias invasion.

When asked directly about the diplomatic cable and whether the reports were true that the CCP had in fact signaled intent to assist Russia, State Department spokesperson Ned Price refused to comment directly.

Instead, Price spoke of the broader implications of Chinese support to Russia in the event that the CCP did decide to support the war in Ukraine.

The national security advisor and our delegation raised directly and very clearly our concerns about [Chinas] support to Russia in the wake of the invasion and the implications that any such support would have for [Chinas] relationship not only with us, but for its relationships around the world, Price said in reference to Mondays meeting in Rome.

The White House statement also said that the meeting underscored the importance of maintaining open lines of communication between the United States and China.

The United States has increasingly attempted to organize its allies to pressure the CCP, asserting that China would be subject to immense economic hardship should it provide overt support to Russias war efforts.

China is already assisting Russia in a less overt manner by refusing to cooperate with international economic sanctions. Additionally, in mainland China, state propaganda routinely promotes Russian talking points on the war. Attempts by Chinese citizens to categorize the war as an invasion on social media are censored.

Damir Marusic, a senior fellow at think tank the Atlantic Council, said that Ukraine would become the first post-Cold War proxy war between the United States and China if the CCP did indeed choose to support Russia overtly.

If China sends arms to Russia, the Ukraine War becomes the first US-Chinese proxy war, Marusic wrote in a tweet.

Notable that Russia in that role assumes the secondary role that is increasingly its destiny: to be a pawn of China.

The deepening of the Sino-Russian partnership follows a Feb. 4 joint announcement by Xi and Russian President Vladamir Putin which stated that their partnership had no limits, and closely follows reports that Chinese officials knew about the invasion weeks ahead of time and asked Russian counterparts to postpone the war until the conclusion of the 2022 Beijing Olympics.

As Marusic noted, Russia has become increasingly reliant on China economically since the first round of sanctions which followed the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014. Now, the Russian economy is under crippling international sanctions, and is being propped up through increased connections to the Chinese economy.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) said that the move to ask China for military and economic assistance signaled a hardening of the China-Russia partnership against the West.

Russia asked their friends in Communist China for military and economic aid, Blackburn wrote in a tweet.

This is the new axis of evil forming in plain sight, and the U.S. cannot turn a blind eye.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan speaks to the news media about the situation in Ukraine during a daily press briefing at the White House on Feb. 11, 2022. (Leah Millis/Reuters)

US Concerned About Escalation From Russia but Not Changing Nuclear Posture: White House

The Biden administration is very concerned that Russia might escalate its invasion of Ukraine and use nuclear weapons, U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Sunday.

In an interview with CNNs Dana Bash on State of the Union, Sullivan said the United States was monitoring Russias moves closely but noted that officials have not yet seen anything that would require them to change their nuclear posture.

We are watching this extremely closely, and obviously, the escalation risk with a nuclear power is severe, and it is a different kind of conflict than other conflicts the American people have seen over the years, Sullivan said.

And the American President, Joe Biden, has to take that responsibility extremely seriously, even as we redouble our efforts to support the Ukrainians. As things stand today, the United States has not adjusted our nuclear posture, but it is something that we monitor day by day, hour by hour, because it is a paramount priority to the president.

When asked if the Biden administration was concerned about the situation, Sullivan said, Anytime you have a nuclear power fighting in a conflict zone in Europe near NATO territory, of course we have to focus on and be concerned about the possibility of escalation, the risk of escalation.

However, Sullivan again doubled down on his previous comment that officials have not seen anything that would require us to change our nuclear posture at this time.

Within days of invading Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his nuclear forces on high alert, blaming the hostile actions and statements of Western nations and NATO.

Western countries are not only taking unfriendly actions against our country in the economic area. Im speaking about the illegitimate sanctions that everyone is well aware of. However, the top officials of the leading NATO countries also make aggressive statements against our country as well, Putin said in a televised meeting with top ministers.

As a result, Putin said that he has ordered the minister of defense and the chief of the general staff [of the Russian armed forces] to transfer the deterrence forces of the Russian army to a special mode of combat duty.

The deterrence forces include command of Russias vast arsenal of nuclear weapons, although it is unclear what a special mode of combat duty refers to.

Putins order means that Russias nuclear weapons are prepared for the increased possibility of launch, raising the possibility that Western nations could be subject to nuclear strikes if they get too involved in the Ukraine conflict.

The presidents actions drew swift condemnation from Western officials, including NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who said Putins order adds to the seriousness of the situation.

However, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on March 9 called Putins threat to use nuclear weapons in the UkraineRussia conflict a bluff.

I think that the threat of nuclear war is a bluff. Its one thing to be a murderer. Its another to commit suicide, Zelensky told German newspaper Die Zeit. Every use of nuclear weapons means the end for all sides, not just for the person using them. Rather, Putins threat shows a weakness. You only threaten the use of nuclear weapons when nothing else is working. I am sure that Russia is aware of the catastrophic consequences of any attempt to use nuclear weapons.

On March 13, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators said that there had been progress in talks between both sides regarding a potential end to the conflict.

The Kyiv government is continuing to demand an end of the war and the withdrawal of [Russian] troops, Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Zelensky, wrote on Twitter, adding that he believes Ukraine will achieve some results literally in a matter of days.

Meanwhile, Leonid Slutsky, a member of Russias delegation and head of the State Dumas Committee on International Affairs, was quoted by state-run media outlet RIA Novosti as saying that significant progress had been made in the talks.

While both sides appear to be optimistic about the potential to end the more than two-week-long conflict, no further details were provided.
Sung Kim, U.S. Special Envoy for North Korea, speaks during trilateral meeting between Japan, the United States, and South Korea, to discuss North Korea, in Tokyo, Japan, on Sept. 14, 2021. (David Mareuil/Pool via Reuters/File Photo)

US Envoy Calls on China to Condemn North Koreas Recent ICBM Tests

The United States special envoy to North Korea has called on China to condemn North Koreas recent missile launches, which are believed to have involved an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) system, the State Department said Sunday.

The State Department said that special envoy Sung Kim conveyed his strong condemnation of North Koreas recent launches to his Chinese counterpart Liu Xiaoming in a phone conversation on March 10, saying that they posed a serious threat to international peace and security.

He expressed concern that these launches demonstrate the DPRKs determination to advance its unlawful weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs and continue an increasingly escalatory path, it said in a statement, referring to North Koreas official name.

Kim also called on China to help urge North Korea to cease its destabilizing activity and return to dialogue, reiterating the United States willingness to resume denuclearization talks that have been stalled since 2019.

Representative Kim emphasized that the [Peoples Republic of China] and the United States share an interest in ensuring regional stability, and he called upon Beijing to join Washington in publicly condemning the DPRKs missile launches, it added.

China has been North Koreas top ally since the two sides signed a treaty in 1961, and also North Koreas biggest trading partner, accounting for more than 90 percent of its trade volume.

South Koreans watch a television broadcast reporting the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, airing at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea on March 28, 2018. (Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images)

In March last year, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Chinese leader Xi Jinping exchanged messages in which they reaffirmed alliance in fighting against hostile forces. Xi described the two countries alliance as a common treasure, and that China would be willing to work with North Korea.

The Biden administration has said it is open to a dialogue with North Korea without preconditions, but North Korea accused Washington of having hostile policies such as military drills and sanctions against Pyongyang that it must withdraw before any talks can resume.

The U.S Treasury Department on March 11 claimed that North Korea had conducted 11 ballistic missile launches since the start of 2022, the most recent being on March 4, which Pyongyangs state-run media said was an attempt to test cameras installed on a spy satellite.

Washington concluded that North Koreas recent tests on Feb. 26 and March 4 involved a new intercontinental ballistic missile system that the Kim regime first unveiled during a military parade in 2020.

The purpose of these tests, which did not demonstrate ICBM range, was likely to evaluate this new system before conducting a test at full range in the future, potentially disguised as a space launch, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said.

A total of 11 countriesthe United States, Albania, Brazil, France, Ireland, Norway, the United Kingdom, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and South Koreahave voiced condemnation of North Koreas missile tests and urged the U.N. Security Council to be unified in condemning Pyongyangs unlawful acts.

The United States has also imposed fresh sanctions on two Russians and three Russian companies accused of assisting North Korea in procuring components for its nuclear weapons programs.
A child wears a pin she received after receiving her first dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine in Southfield, Mich., on Nov. 5, 2021. (Jeff Kowalsky/AFP via Getty Images)

US Government, Pfizer All Agreed to Delay Decision on Companys COVID-19 Vaccine for Young Children: Bourla

The U.S. government and Pfizer reached an agreement to delay the U.S. regulatory decision on the companys COVID-19 vaccine for children as young as 6 months old, Pfizers CEO said on March 13.

We all agreed its better if we wait for the three doses to come out, CEO Albert Bourla said on CBS Face the Nation.

Pfizer and its partner BioNTech have been testing their vaccine on children aged 6 months to 4 years but announced in late 2021 that they were expanding the clinical trial to three doses because the two-dose primary regimen didnt trigger a sufficient immune response in some of the kids.

Instead of waiting for the expanded trial to be completed, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) soon after asked Pfizer for data on the vaccine. Because of the spike in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations from the Omicron virus variant, regulators were considering expanding emergency use authorization for the shot to the young population.

Officials appeared poised to grant the expanded authorization in February, but days before a scheduled vaccine advisory panel meeting, they announced they were postponing the decision.

The data that we saw made us realize that we needed to see data from a third dose, as in the ongoing trial, in order to make a determination that we could proceed with doing an authorization, Dr. Peter Marks, the director of the FDAs Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, told reporters on a call. He said he hoped the move would reassure people that the FDA was making sure that anything that we authorize has the safety and efficacy that people have come to expect from our regulatory review of medical products.

FDA officials declined to provide more insight into the reason for the postponement. Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former FDA chief who sits on Pfizers board, said it stemmed from a low number of cases overall in the clinical trial.

Most kids are not getting symptomatic COVID, he said.

Asked about the situation, Bourla said on March 13 that FDA officials were very keen for the company to send the data over, but Pfizer executives were a little bit reluctant to submit on two doses, because we felt that the three-dose [regimen] is what kids will need.

Eventually, the parties reached an agreement, according to the executive.

Its one thing to have a vaccine out there, its another thing to have a clear picture for the parents that all scientists, that they all agreeCDC, FDA, the industry, academiathat this is the right thing to do for the kids, Bourla said, adding that he believes three doses will likely provide a very strong set of evidence where everybody will agree.

Some experts have questioned the need for a vaccine in young children, noting waning effectiveness in older kidsthose 12 to 17 have been advised to get a third dose because of that declinethe possibility of side effects, and the fact that children are far less likely to suffer symptomatic or severe cases of COVID-19 when compared to older age groups.

Others say the benefits of the vaccinesome level of protection, even if insubstantial, against infection, and stronger protection against severe diseaseoutweigh the risks and that kids should have that protection available to them.

Bourla said the data on how a three-dose regimen works for children as young as 6 months will likely be available in April, and that authorization could come in May, if it works.

Regulators, Im sure, will do their utmost to review them fast, he said, and we will be ready with manufacturing.
Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) speaks as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken testifies before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs in Washington on March 10, 2021. (Ken Cedeno/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

Rep. Smith Seeks to Pressure China to Stop Its Gross Human Rights Violations

Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) said he will soon introduce a new proposal to hold China accountable for its human rights violations, while pushing forward stalled legislation to stop Beijings state-sanctioned practice of harvesting organs from prisoners of conscience.

The proposal would see China lose its permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) status unless the communist regime shows serious and sustained efforts to, or record of, human rights protections, Smith said in a recent interview with EpochTVs American Thought Leaders program.

We have leverage. Theyre [China] an export economy. Without that, the economy grinds to a halt, Smith said. If thats what it takes to protect their people from the slave-like conditions, then we have to do it.

In 2000, Congress approved legislation to give China permanent most-favored-nation status, now known as PNTR, which paved the way for Chinas accession to the World Trade Organization. The status opened the U.S. market to Chinese products with trade advantages such as reduced tariffs.

Since then, Chinese goods have flooded the U.S. market, costing millions of American manufacturing jobs. The U.S. trade deficit with China has ballooned simultaneously.

Stripping China of its trade status would deeply hurt the Chinese economy, as the United States is Chinas biggest trade partner.

I think if we implement the Xinjiang law well, and if we do my bill, I think we are going to see reform, Smith said, referring to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which was enacted late last year and bans all imports from Chinas far-western Xinjiang region because of forced labor concerns.

In Xinjiang, more than 1 million Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities are currently being detained in internment camps, where theyre known to be subjected to abuses including torture, forced labor, and forced sterilization. Both the Trump and Biden administrations have designated Beijings policies in Xinjiang as genocide and crimes against humanity.

Tibetans, Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Hongkongers, Southern Mongolians, Taiwanese, and Chinese democracy activists join together to call on governments to stand against the Chinese Communist Partys suppression of freedom, democracy, and human rights, in front of the United Nations headquarters in New York City on Oct. 1, 2020. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

The Chinese Communist Party [CCP] is vicious. It is cruel. It uses torture as an element of ensuring peoples compliance, Smith said. Torture is the means by which they do everything.  Its absolutely pervasive.

Smith recalled in 1995 when Tibetan monk Palden Gyatso brought a cattle prod to a congressional hearing, telling lawmakers how such a device was forced into his mouth as one of several different tortures he was subjected to while being imprisoned in China.

At that hearing more than 20 years ago, Gyatso said (pdf) he was also tortured by being suspended in the air while being beaten with rifle butts, pierced with bayonets, and burned with hot water.

Gyatso was arrested in 1959, the year of the Tibetan Uprising, before spending the next 33 years in Chinese prisons. He was released in 1992 and then went into exile in India. He died at the age of 85 in 2018.

They put those cattle prods on the genitals, in the mouth, under the arms, all places where theres extreme sensitivity, and they torture people to the point of brokenness and death, Smith said. And they use it against the Falun Gong, the Christians, the Buddhists, the Uyghurs, any political dissidents.

Falun Gong

Minghui.org, a U.S.-based website that monitors the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China, documented the horrifying death in 2000 of Chen Zixiu, who lost consciousness and died after being torturedincluding repeated jolts from a cattle prodfor two days in a Chinese prison.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline involving meditative exercises and moral teachings. Since 1999, millions of Falun Gong adherents have been detained inside prisons, labor camps, and other facilities in China, with hundreds of thousands tortured while incarcerated, according to estimates from the Falun Dafa Information Center.

Detained adherents have also been victims of Chinas state-sanctioned forced organ harvesting, a crime described by a former Trump administration official as genocide.

Its a nightmarish abuse to think that you could be losing major parts of your body with the intent that you die at the end, Smith said.

Organ harvesting became not just a way of repressing, but also a way of making huge amounts of money for the dictatorship by literally stealing their organs and selling them.

Falun Gong practitioners take part in a parade marking the 22nd anniversary of the start of the Chinese regimes persecution of Falun Gong, in Washington on July 16, 2021. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

China has been a top destination for transplant tourists because of Chinese hospitals ability to find matching organs for patients in days or weeks, much faster than developed countries with established organ donation systems. The Chinese regime has dismissed allegations of its engagement in organ harvesting as rumors and said the country has a national donation system for organ procurement.

In 2019, a London-based peoples tribunal concluded that the state-sanctioned practice of forced organ harvesting was happening on a significant scale in China, with Falun Gong practitioners being the main source of organs.

U.S. lawmakers in March 2021 reintroduced legislation in the Senate and the House to stop China from sourcing organs from prisoners of conscience. Smith was the prime sponsor of House bill H.R.1592, while Senate bill S.602 was introduced by Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Chris Coons (D-Del.).

So at the core of it [the bill] is that idea of personally sanctioning the perpetrators of these heinous crimes. And we have not been able to get the bill marked up or voted on, which is unfortunate. Were trying. Were going to keep trying, Smith said.

Smith said nobody expects China to improve its human rights overnight, but China is heading in the wrong direction.

Now it is worse, and it gets worse and more worse, more victims, more victims, more victims. We need to turn that ship around and use every lever if possible, and trade is our most potent means to try to get them to change.

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.
Russia and Ukraine are holding their fourth round of talks. Both sides say they are making progress, even as fierce fighting continues.

An award-winning American journalist was shot dead in Ukraine on Sunday. The shooting occurred while he was reporting from a suburb of Kiyv, the Ukrainian capital. Another journalist was wounded.

A man is wanted after a video shows him stabbing two employees at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The man was denied entry before jumping into an employee area with a knife.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki talks to reporters during the daily news conference in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House on March 14, 2022. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

US Warns China of Consequences If It Aids Russia

The United States is warning China of consequences if it aids Russia in the war with Ukraine.

While the nature of these consequences has not been made clear, officials have said that the United States will initiate a response in the event of Chinese aid to Russias war effort.

Should [China] provide military or other assistance that of course violates sanctions oror supports the war effortsthat there will be significant consequences, but in terms of what the specifics look like, we will coordinate with our partners and allies to make that determination, White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Monday.

Psakis counterpart at the State Department, Ned Price, said on Monday that the United States is watching very closely the extent to which China and any other country supports Russias war effort, and that any such support would be a cause for concern.

These statements came following an intense seven-hour meeting in Rome, Italy, between U.S. national security advisor Jake Sullivan and Chinese director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission Yang Jiechi. During the meeting, Sullivan directly expressed deep concerns about Chinas alignment with Russia at this time, and the potential implications and consequences of certain actions, a senior administration official told reporters of the meeting.

Officials have refused to speak to intelligence matters, or confirm or deny whether China has aided Russia or is open to doing so in the future.

According to earlier reports by the Financial Times and The Washington Post, a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, said that in recent days, Russia had requested support from China, including military equipment, to press forward in its ongoing war with Ukraine. The official did not provide details on the scope of the request.

Psaki has repeatedly downplayed the level of support China could give Russia that would counteract the sanctions put in place by the U.S. and its allies, pointing out that the West makes up half the worlds economy while China makes up 15 to 20 percent.

Meanwhile, the fourth round of negotiations between Ukrainian and Russian delegations on a possible ceasefire has been paused until Tuesday, said an adviser to the Kyiv government on Monday.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky also announced plans to give a virtual address to the U.S. Congress on Wednesday. Hes expected to again call for a no-fly zone over Ukraine. Top officials in the Biden administration and NATO have repeatedly said they will not impose a no-fly zone or send troops to fight in Ukraine as such actions would expand the conflict.

Over the weekend, President Joe Biden authorized an additional $200 million in security assistance to Ukraine for anti-tank and air defense capabilities. This comes in addition to $13.6 billion approved by Congress to aid Ukraine.
What Do You Do If You Dont Trust Your Doctor Anymore?

Commentary

Like it or notand I certainly dontthe COVID-19 pandemic changed practically everything about our lives.

One of the traditionally most satisfying, even heartwarming, of relationships that has been majorly affected is doctorpatient.

On or about New Years, I wrote:

Do you trust your doctor anymore? Honestly?

I dont mean Dr. Anthony Fauci. How can anybody trust him, with all the prevarications, constant shifts in policy and deceptions, not to mention denying U.S. taxpayer support for gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and other aspects of the doctors dark past revealed in great detail in Robert F. Kennedy Jr.s book?

Im talking about your own personal doctor, the man or woman who has been your friend and trusted counselor for years, maybe decades. How do you feel about that person? Has it changed?

Of the 465 people who wrote answers in the comments section, easily 90 percent were upsetor worse, sometimes considerably worseabout the decline in this once-treasured relationship.

It was a select group of The Epoch Times readers responding, and subject to whatever gloss you would give that, but I suspect they arent alone in their discontent. You hear it from people everywhere you go.

Nevertheless, since I wrote that article, that discontent has only grown as we have learned from Drs. Robert Malone, Peter McCullough, and others more about the degree to which we were deceived.

More is undoubtedly yet to come after a judge in Texas decreed that it was of paramount importance that the FDA produce 55,000 pages every 30 days of Pfizer COVID vaccine documents until all are released. (The FDA wanted 75 years to do this.)

So what does one do?

Does one throw away the family doctor with his/her degree, if they have it, from HarvardYaleVanderbiltMichigan medical schools or some other august institution, not to mention their affiliation with some supposedly great hospital listed high on the U.S. News & World Reports rankings such as Mass General, UCLA, Mt. Sinai, or wherever?

It was those same institutions, working at the behest of our government, that carried out all the COVID decrees and mandates. They did so most entirely unquestioningly because so much of their funding came from that same government, via Medicare; yet more government money came if COVID was listed as the cause of death, making mortality statistics dubious at best.

These institutions were so obedient to the government (terrified of it, actually), they have restricted freedom of medical speech from their doctors, the case of Baylor suing McCullough being the most notorious example.

Ironically, the problem of our great medical institutions is quite similar to our higher educational institutions. They both rely on huge government stipends (some of it coming, more or less surreptitiously, from another government whose initials are CCP).

Still, do you cut your relationship with your doctor merely because theymost likely to protect their jobs and livelihoodobeyed the diktats of the institutions for which they worked?

What if something happens to you or one of your loved ones that necessitates a remedy only available with a modicum of confidence at those institutions, such as open-heart surgery?

Its not an easy situation.

With that in mind, I attended a conference for a few hours on March 13 at Nashvilles Opryland, where many alternative medical techniques were on display. Some seemed interesting, but I had no way of evaluating which were real and which were, well, the kind of thing you might find at one of those neo-60s wandering Renaissance Faires, basically somebodys hobby that they insist is a cure-all for humanity.

Some of the doctors present were practitioners of something I have come to know as functional medicine. WebMD describes functional medicine doctors as those who use specialized training and techniques to find the root causes of complex illnesses. They may investigate multiple factors causing a condition, or they may look into multiple conditions causing one symptom.

Fair enough, I guess. But, at the same time, I see ads that read Functional Medicine TrainingFinish in as Fast as 10 Months. Hmmm

Wikipedia, not surprisingly, is less flattering to functional medicine, describing it as a form of alternative medicine that encompasses a number of unproven and disproven methods and treatments. (Sort of like Wikipedia itself these days.)

Once again, it seems We the People are on our own. We are going to have to make our own medical determinations for ourselves going forward.

Maybe, it will be a combination of methods, alternative and conventional. (I took ivermectin, obtained underground, when exposed to COVID, and never told my doctor. I never, to my knowledge anyway, contracted the disease.)

One thing we have learned, if we didnt know it already, is that anything close to socialized medicine is horrific for our health and virtually all aspects of our lives, unless we enjoy being controlled and turned into automatons. As with everything else, the less government in health care, the better.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Wisconsin GOP Appeals Redistricting Loss to Supreme Court

Wisconsin Republicans are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to reject an electoral map drawn by the states Democratic governor, Tony Evers, which they say is racially skewed, in favor of one crafted by the Republican-controlled state legislature.

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court of Wisconsin voted 43 to adopt congressional and legislative districts drawn by Evers over those prepared by the legislature. The maps adopted still reportedly favor Republicans, but by smaller margins than the Republican-drafted maps.

Republicans approved maps in 2011 when they controlled the legislature and the governorship, but this time, the Democratic governor and the Republican legislature couldnt agree on new maps after the 2020 Census results were published. State justices were asked to draw the maps to be used in the next elections.

Currently, six state Assembly districts have a black majority, but the maps provided by the governor would raise that number to seven, according to an analysis by The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Republicans currently hold five of the states eight congressional seats, while Democrats hold three.

Republicans stated in the emergency application (pdf) filed with the U.S. Supreme Court that Everss maps mark a radical redraw from Wisconsins past redistricting plans and that they make Wisconsin home to the 21st-century racial gerrymander.

In Wisconsinjust as everywhereracially gerrymandering districts perpetuates the very harm that the Voting Rights Act was enacted to eliminate, Republicans wrote in the application.

The case is Wisconsin Legislature v. Bostelmann, court file 21A471. Marge Bostelmann is a member of the Wisconsin Elections Commission. The emergency application was addressed to Justice Amy Coney Barrett. Evers filed a response to the application with the high court on March 11. The legislature responded to Everss filing on March 12.

The Supreme Court could act on the application at any time.

Race dominated the drawing and adoption of this plan, the product of an untheorized and deeply wrong rewriting of the Voting Rights Act, the application reads. These court-ordered districts, each touching Wisconsins largest city of Milwaukee, mark a radical redraw from Wisconsins past redistricting plans.

Previously, there were six majority-Black assembly districts and two majority-Black senate districts that ranged between 51 and 62 percent Black voting-age population. All were wholly contained in Milwaukee County. But now? By order of the Supreme Court of Wisconsin, Wisconsin election officials must intentionally dial down the Black voting-age populations of these existing districts to meet the new quota of 50 percent.

In his reply to the application, Evers said the electoral maps devised by the Supreme Court of Wisconsin should be left alone.

Over the past five months, the State of Wisconsinthrough its highest courthas exercised its sovereign responsibility to devise legislative maps. To ensure a fact-driven and thorough process, the Wisconsin Supreme Court received four rounds of briefing and hundreds of pages of expert reports, held a five-hour oral argument, and issued two comprehensive and careful opinions, the reply reads.

Ultimately, the Wisconsin Supreme Court adopted a final legislative map on a schedule consistent with unanimous and bipartisan guidance from the Wisconsin Election Commission (WEC), which saw a serious risk of disruption and confusion if the map were not finalized by March 1, 2022. WEC based that advice on a detailed description of the States electoral calendar, its own experience with the States highly decentralized election system, and the need for arduous (sometimes manual) work at both the state and county level to implement new districting data in advance of deadlines that are now a mere month away.

In their submission to the U.S. Supreme Court, the Republican brief blows past all this, paying virtually no heed to the facts on the ground or this Courts recent orders[,] according to Everss reply.

They also ask this Court in the first instance to issue an unprecedented injunctionone that would require Wisconsin to use a map that failed in the States political process, that the States map-drawer did not adopt, and that (as the court  noted) is problematic under the Voting Rights Act, it reads.

The Epoch Times reached out for comment to Thomas Charles Bellavia and Joshua Adam Matz, the counsel of record for the Wisconsin Elections Commission and Evers, respectively. No replies were received as of press time.
The owners of G-Zen, a landmark vegan restaurant in Branford, have announced plans to close the restaurant after 11 years.

Ami Beach and Mark Shadle, who opened the upscale East Main Street eatery 11 years ago, said Monday that G-Zen will close its doors April 30. They're evolving the brand, and will focus on a new fast-casual vegan concept in West Hartford, incorporating elements from both the restaurant and G-Monkey Mobile, the couple's popular vegan food truck.

G-Monkey Plant-Fueled Fast Food will open later this year at 625 New Park Avenue, in the space most recently occupied by Citizen Chicken & Donuts and before that, Hartford Baking Company. Beach said Monday they're aiming for a potential June 1 debut.

The G-Monkey brick-and-mortar concept will begin in West Hartford, but the intention is to open more locations, they said, including on the shoreline.

Photo courtesy of Jeff Skerik

"We are aiming to do this in a scalable way, which we could have never attained with G-Zen," Beach said. "We see it being something we can replicate, and we do want to come back to the shoreline [with this concept.] We've never had a concept that we could really run with, and I feel like this is why we're doing this, to make it more accessible and just normalizing vegan [food.]"

The new restaurant will offer many of the more casual items from the truck menu, which were also featured at G-Zen. G-Monkey will serve housemade plant-based dishes like soups, veggie burgers and bowls, chili fries, "raw" tacos, vegan versions of grilled cheese and Reuben sandwiches, burritos and raw desserts.

Beach said the West Hartford menu would feature several varieties of housemade vegan burgers, including one with grilled pineapple, sriracha and coconut bacon, inspired by the couple's second home in Culebra, Puerto Rico. She also envisions "disco fries" with mushroom gravy and vegan cheese, and plant-based milkshakes made with oat milk.

Courtesy of GMonkey

Shadle, who for years was the executive chef and co-owner of It's Only Natural in Middletown, said G-Monkey truck customers have been asking them to bring the concept to greater Hartford for years. They have a fan base in the region thanks to frequent stops at the Billings Forge and Coventry Farmers Markets, and they have established a presence at GastroPark, the West Hartford food truck park just down the street from their new brick-and-mortar.

In the statement on G-Zen's website, Beach and Shadle acknowledged they'd faced operational difficulties over the past two years, like most restaurateurs during the COVID-19 pandemic, and felt the fast-casual route would be a better business model for the future.

"We realized that it was a sign to make things more simple, streamlined and more approachable to bring our vision to the next level and thrive, not just survive," they wrote. "We have always been about SUSTAINABILITY on every level. The size and diversity of our G-Zen menu, complexity of execution and the intense labor involved did not seem sustainable moving forward, especially with sourcing ingredients, supply chain issues, and rising food and labor costs."

Courtesy of GMonkey

"[G-Zen] is still so well-loved," Beach said. "But knowing that we need to [let go] of that so we can manifest what we want, which is an easier concept to run...more attainable and more approachable to run for us as business owners."

The Branford restaurant will remain open with normal hours until April 30, and will be BYOB with no corkage fees, the couple said.

All existing gift cards that have not been redeemed by that date will be honored in West Hartford, as will all Toast G-Zen Rewards points.
New Haven chef and restaurateur Emily Mingrone made history last year when she was named Connecticut Restaurant Association's first female Chef of the Year. As she accepted the award, she felt like she'd arrived.

"People I had worked under were in that room, too," she said. "I was just like, 'Hell yeah.' It's really awesome."

The chef-owner of Tavern on State in New Haven (and the upcoming Fair Haven Oyster Co.) isn't the only Connecticut female chef making waves.

In February, Macarena Ludena, the head chef at Cora Cora in West Hartford, was nominated for a James Beard award in the Best Chef: Northeast category. Renee Touponce, the executive chef at Mystic's Oyster Club, was recently featured in a New York Post writeup, which mentioned her prowess with charcuterie made from fish and seafood. Chrissy Tracey, a plant-based chef in New Fairfield, was the first vegan chef to become a cast member in the Bon Appetit Test Kitchen.

Beyond the national recognition, women in Connecticut's culinary industry are crafting world-class food, bringing creativity and innovation to menus and leading kitchens with thoughtful and equitable management approaches. We caught up with some of the state's top chefs to learn more about their careers, their challenges and their triumphs.

What made you fall in love with food and want to pursue a career in the culinary industry?

Renee Touponce: I grew up in a mixed home of Italian and Puerto Rican [family], so I was always surrounded by so much food and the love behind that. I was always constantly in the kitchen. [In high school] a friend asked if Id ever thought about going to culinary school. Something just clickedit made sense for me in the moment, and I went for it.

Courtesy of Idlewild Photo Co.

Chrissy Tracey: I was about eight years old when I knew I was obsessed with food. My mom would say, "You're a distraction in the kitchen!" So I'd spend my afternoon making fake meals outside in my backyard, with foraged elements. I always say that's what started my love for foraging, which is super intrinsic to the food that I create.

My mom would always say to me, "Make a seat at the table for yourself." - Chrissy Tracey

Emily Mingrone: My dad is a chef, and I grew up eating really good food. That was one of the catalysts for me to want to create really good food, because I was always kind of underwhelmed by my experiences dining out.

Kristin Eddy, executive pastry chef at Millwrights, Simsbury: With baking, it's the consistency of it...using the same four or five ingredients and creating this really intricate baked good. I really love that you could start with just something so simple, flour, eggs, sugar, butter, and go wherever with it.

Courtesy of Lisa Nichols

Are there challenges youve faced as a woman in the industry?

Mingrone: I prefer to lead with guidance and conversation, as opposed to yelling and screaming, and a lot of people [in her past jobs] had a hard time with that technique, from a boss perspective. They were just like, Youve got to be harder on them. And Im like, I really dont think I do.

Michelle Greenfield, chef-owner of Allium Eatery, Westport: I went to culinary school, and when you get your uniform, its a mens uniform. It was a high-waisted, tapered leg, polyester pantsI had to go buy another pair that looked like it, but I would get yelled at because I wasnt in uniform. Im like, Your pants dont fit me.

Lisa Nichols / For Connecticut Magazine

April Gibson, executive chef at The North House, Avon: This just happened [last week.] My name is on the menu, but a guest kept saying "he" [to refer to the chef.] If you actually read the menu, you'd see "April."

"I went to culinary school, and when you get your uniform, its a mens uniform." - Michelle Greenfield

Jes Bengston, executive chef at Terrain in Westport: I think a lot in my earlier years, I felt like I was passed up on a few occasions for roles that I was really qualified for, or if I wasn't qualified for, I would have been the next person in line forI felt like I was passed up on that pretty often. When I was 25, I was cooking in kitchens with men in their 30s, 40s, 50s. I think it would have been strange for everyone had I been a superior to anyone older than [me], and a male.

Submitted photo / Jes Bengston

Touponce: Ive been in environments where it isnt healthy, and dudes [were] very creepy and super forward. Unfortunately, thats always been the [kitchen] energybooze, knives and sex. You guide your way through it, and choose to ignore it or put it to the side. You do have to work harder, and always be on top of your game.

Ashley Flagg, executive chef at Millwrights, Simsbury: Its definitely historically a boys clubyou have to work at a higher level. You dont get to really screw up in the same way the guys do. I dont think we get that same leeway. But I think in generalwe have to hold ourselves to a higher expectation to get the same recognition that the guys would get with little to no expectation.

Courtesy of April Gibson

What makes you most proud of your work?

Eddy: We have the open window [from the kitchen] into the dining room. When a table gets dessert, and the first thing I see is them pull out their phone and want to take a photo, that's instant validation for me. Nobody needs to even say anything, but just the fact that they're thinking to themselves, "Wow, that's beautiful, I want to remember this."

"Its definitely historically a boys clubyou have to work at a higher level. You dont get to really screw up in the same way the guys do." - Ashley Flagg

Mingrone: I find it really cool lately, when I step out into the dining room, to see the number of queer people that dine with us. It seems disproportionate, like I don't see that many people that look like me at other restaurants. So it feels kind of cool to be that sort of respite as well. It seems to be that because I am who I am and I'm in the public eye, it encourages a lot more people like me to support us, and then sort of invigorate that community as well.

Zack Rubin Photography

Bengston: I'm just so happy to hear people talking about women in the kitchen. I think it's really important to not just talk about the things that suck for us, or the challenges, but to be celebrated just for being great chefs.

Ludena: Since the [James Beard] nomination, we've started getting busier and busier. I think that's a blessing for us, my team, my family. We're seeing a lot of new people, new faces.

"If something's not right, or you're being mistreated, you have to say something. Don't just try and be a tough guy and take it." - April Gibson

Greenfield: Even as stressful as [first-time restaurant ownership] is, this is probably the most relaxed I've ever been in my career. When it's yours, and you choose your battles, and you love it, it makes it a lot easier to get up and do it every day.

What advice would you give to younger women entering the industry?

Ludena: I'd tell them, "Don't be scared." Your passion, your motivation...we put more passion in everything. We create life. We can do anything.

Flagg: Don't focus on what somebody else's reality is, just because they are getting promotions that you feel like you maybe deserved. Don't worry about that. Do what you can to improve yourself, make yourself undeniable.

Courtesy of Lisa Nichols

Gibson: Just don't take everything [personally.] I made a mistake doing that many, many times, and it affected my growth and professionalism. And defending yourself and standing up for yourself. If something's not right, or you're being mistreated, you have to say something. Don't just try and be a tough guy and take it, because that's when people think that they can take advantage of you and walk all over you.

Touponce: I can only hope to lead, to pave the way and have these conversations with the younger women in my kitchen and mentor and guide them and teach them. You can do it. It's not impossible. You got this.

Tracey: My mom would always say to me, "Make a seat at the table for yourself." You have to know that you're going to deal with tough situations...but at the end of the day, don't change who you are, or don't make yourself small just because somebody else is trying to make you small.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal and fellow Congressional leaders visited the Ukraine-Poland border Sunday to witness the developing humanitarian crisis firsthand, just hours after Russian airstrikes hammered a nearby Ukrainian town overnight.

The officials have visited soup kitchens and temporary holding centers for the millions of Ukrainian refugees expected to cross the border. Most of them are women and children, Blumenthal said.

We were at the border crossing, seeing some of the women and children fleeing those bombs...literally waking up this morning to missiles hitting their home and the camp, Blumenthal said. The terror and tragedy of this indiscriminate destruction was on their faces, in their tears and their voices.

He described the atmosphere on the ground and among American officials as really, deeply sober.

Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, was joined by fellow Democrat Sen. Amy Klobuchar, of Minnesota, and Republican Sens. Rob Portman, of Ohio, and Roger Wicker, of Mississippi, as they met with Ukrainian refugees affected by the crisis and toured refugee sites along the border.

The group will return to the U.S. Monday after speaking with a number of Polish defense officials in Warsaw, Blumenthal said.

Ive been deeply impressed by the resolve and resilience of Ukrainian people despite the savage, insidious invasion and war crimes by Russia, Blumenthal said, adding he was also impressed by the courage and skill of our American troops helping to supply the Ukrainians as well as bolster the NATO defense.

The United Nations is investigating allegation of war crimes, the Associated Press reports.

Early Sunday, Russian warplanes launched nearly 30 missiles at a training ground in Lviv, located less than 15 miles away from the Poland border, killing 35 and injuring 134 people, according to reports. After the attack, U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan warned of a robust NATO response should Russian forces attempt any attack on Poland.

Blumenthal called the latest spate of violence very deeply concerning, especially as a sign of the wars westward expansion toward NATO member nations, such as Poland.

If Putin were to directly threaten member nations, the United States would have a moral and legal obligation to ramp up its involvement, Blumenthal said.

In a release, Blumenthal said he would continue pressuring fellow American officials to provide more ammunition, airplanes and other lethal aid. He said it was absolutely urgent to keep Ukrainians equipped in the fight.

He also pointed to need for aid with the humanitarian crisis, with Polish shelters in need of food, living and medical supplies.

Blumenthal asked Connecticut residents to continue donating anything they can, with even clothing and blankets being put to good use.

I saw firsthand piles of blankets, clothing  so I know those that are being collected throughout Connecticut by the Ukrainian -American community are reaching the refugees that need really any and all donations, Blumenthal said.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

NORWALK  Despite significant challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, by some accounts, the citys business community may have actually grown in the past two years.

Between March 1, 2020 and Feb. 28, 2022, the city recorded 609 new business registrations, according to Town Clerk Rick McQuaid.

However, the number of new registrations may be inflated by COVID-19 relief fund policies, McQuaid said.

Keep in mind that to receive COVID relief funds, you need to show a trade name certificate, which caused many businesses in Norwalk to record their trade names, which they had not done up to this time, McQuaid said. The only way we can track new business is by the companies filing their trade names.

Norwalks business climate is recovering from the pandemic, but has yet to reach pre-COVID levels, said Sabrina Church, the citys director for business development. Businesses are still coping with economic losses from the rapid shutdown in spring 2020, she added.

Since the pandemic, we have seen a steady increase in tenant fit-up permits, as well as new business formations, Church said. After the warmer season where traffic to businesses is increased and as case numbers remain low, we should see most businesses being made whole from their economic losses that were exacerbated in 2020.

Church noted, however, many of the new businesses springing up in Norwalk reflect an increased interest in entrepreneurship, which has led to greater diversity in the types and sizes of businesses.

The next couple of months will shine a light on what a post-pandemic economic climate will look like in the city of Norwalk, Church said.

One type of business that saw a particularly strong increase was establishments that sell food, but arent full-fledged restaurants, such as bakeries and specialty shops, Norwalk Chamber of Commerce President Brian Griffin said.

Griffin speculated the increase in food-based small businesses was not due to a hesitancy to eat at restaurants due to COVID, but as the result of an increased interest in turning passion projects into income.

I think people had extra time on their hands and maybe time to think about what they wanted to do in their lives, Griffin said. Its part of our food culture in this country. We are always looking for something unique and special. In the food industry that happens on a large scale too. If you look at what people ate 50 years ago, its very different than what people eat now.

Another positive result of the pandemic business market is an increase in women- and minority-owned businesses, Griffin said.

While Griffin was unable to provide exact numbers for new minority- and women-owned businesses, the chambers annual entrepreneur workshop saw a record number of attendees last year, he said.

The biggest challenge for businesses remains attracting employees skilled in the field and, for those looking to start a business, getting access to capital, Griffin said.

While some businesses faltered and ultimately closed during the pandemic, Griffin said he isnt aware of an abundance of long-established businesses in Norwalk closing because of the pandemic.

Amid the challenges of the pandemic, Norwalk has encouraged entrepreneurs and aided small businesses, Griffin said.

I think weve fared pretty well compared to other communities. I dont want to minimize, it was a very difficult time for a lot of businesses and employees, but I do think Norwalk did quite well and we are well poised to grow as we go forward, Griffin said.

Evidence of the citys commitment to small businesses and the growth of entrepreneurship was the pop-up event on Isaacs Street last week to mark International Womens Day. The event was coordinated by Rebel Daughter Cookies, which opened a storefront in February after three years in business, owner Anne Grossman said.

Among the businesses at the event was Lindsays Handmade Ice Cream, which opened in late 2020 and recently acquired a production space in Norwalk.

Since opening, the biggest challenge, aside from funding the new business, was finding a production space in Norwalk amid an over-saturated real estate market, Lindsays Homemade Ice Cream owner Lindsay Arakelian said. It took Arakelian nearly a year to find a local production space. She was previously traveling to New Jersey to mix her ice cream.

There were so many people looking for space, I couldnt get anything, Arakelian said. The same people, we were all looking at the same spaces. So many people were moving from Brooklyn or the city and brought their businesses with them. Theres so much more development now I finally found something. As a startup, I dont have a lot of resources to go for brand-new construction.

The supply chain shortage also impacted her ability to find and renovate the space, Arakelian said.

The biggest challenge has really been funding, but thats typical for any startup. It takes a lot when youre not working or the job you used to have, you have all this time, but not the money. I took a retail job part-time  it was something to do, to get something flexible, Arakelian said.

Despite the challenges of starting a new business during the pandemic, Arakelian said she has no regrets and has learned extensively over the last year.

Other small businesses in Norwalk that sprung up during the pandemic include Eco Evolution marketplace and artisan collective on Washington Street and Norwalk Art Space, both of which opened about a year into the pandemic.

abigail.brone@hearstmediact.com
Press Release

March 14, 2022 Gordon urges PH to stockpile and conserve fuel Senator Richard J. Gordon has urged the Filipinos to resort to fuel-saving measures considering the recent spikes in oil prices. Gordon, a re-electionist lawmaker, said that the government must also find ways to set aside stock of oil and gas as the Philippines is competing with other countries to get their supply. "Kailangan maghanda ang mga tao kasi hindi natin mapipigilan 'yan. The world is in crisis. Tinigil na ng Amerikano ang pag-supply ng Russia ng langis and then they have to go to their strategic supplies na reserved for them," Gordon told local reporters in Bayugan City, Agusan del Sur last week. "I'm sure dito sa Mindanao, mayroon kayong malalaking tangke. When I was in Subic, we had 28 days of supply of oil sa mga tank farm namin," he added. Over the past ten weeks, the world had faced a rise in fuel prices due to the simmering tension and subsequent invasion of Ukraine by Russia. Because of this, it is projected to cause the rise in the cost of electricity, travel, and goods, since they all use fuel to operate. There is also a move by the public transportation sector to increase the minimum fare, directly due to the alarming increase in fuel costs. Oil price companies recently increased prices in an unprecedented manner for diesel, gasoline, and kerosene. Gordon said that the government should also take a page out of the book of the Philippine Red Cross (PRC) by helping the most vulnerable citizens in alleviating their suffering from exorbitant prices through an Oil Stabilization Fund. "Haharapin natin ang katotohanan, maglagay tayo ng pera para sa pinakagipit. Kami sa Red Cross, we give to the most vulnerable. Hindi puwedeng bigyan lahat," explained Gordon, PRC chairman. "Hinahanap natin ang pinakagipit. 'Yung pamilya na walang hanapbuhay, 'yung pamilya na may persons with disabilities, may mga senior citizens, 'yung widow. Pero ngayon, kailangan maghanap tayo ng kabuhayan," he continued. He also suggested that people find additional sources of income to help offset the losses caused by the oil price hike. To help save in fuel consumption, Gordon urged families to carpool, invest on renewable energy sources at home, and for farmers to consolidate the delivery of their produce to the market. "Dapat magsama-sama ang farmers so they could hire one truck so they could carry all their produce to the market at hindi individual," mentioned Gordon. "At mas maganda kung mas maraming merkado ang pupuntahan ng produkto natin. People would not stop eating, kaya the farmers would have to continue to buy food. Ang problema, fertilizer would cost higher. So dapat talagang masusi ang paggamit ng mga pataba at mga gagamitin," furthered Gordon. Gordon has recently visited the provinces of Agusan del Sur and Norte as part of a two-day campaign stop by the Robredo-Pangilinan tandem, where he is serving as guest candidate in the 12-person slate.
For years, Kosta Diamantis, the former director of Connecticuts school grants program, advocated for a policy that would allow certain construction companies to claim more of the profits from school building projects  while potentially sidestepping the states normal bidding process.

Diamantis used his influence to advance contracts and, ultimately, legislation that would enable construction management firms to self-perform some of the work on schools using their own building crews, according to documents obtained by the Connecticut Mirror.

Those construction management firms traditionally dont get paid to excavate the sites, pour the foundations, erect the walls, wire the buildings or install the plumbing for school projects in Connecticut. Instead, they are hired to review the designs, create the construction schedules and generally oversee the project for municipalities and the state.

The physical construction work for schools has historically been put out to bid so that other subcontractors can compete for those jobs and the millions of dollars that come with them.

But Diamantis wanted that arrangement to change, and to accomplish that goal he convinced lawmakers to alter state law so that school projects could utilize a so-called hybrid construction model. And while implementation of that law has been delayed repeatedly, it is set to go into effect in July.

Diamantis, who previously served as a state Democratic lawmaker for 14 years, said he asked the legislature to add language to an emergency funding bill in 2019 so that construction management firms could use their own employees to build portions of the state-financed schools.

That law enabled state officials and the local school building committees to award portions of a construction project to a construction management firm if they decided it was more cost-effective than a subcontractor.

In an interview this week, Diamantis said allowing pieces of the school projects to be built by construction management firms would save the state and municipalities money and would help to prevent change orders, which can drive up the overall price of construction.

There is a value to that, both to the community taxpayer and the state taxpayer who is investing in these projects, he said.

The hybrid setup, Diamantis said, would allow contractors such as O&G Industries and DAmato Construction to serve as managers on the projects while also using their experienced construction teams to build portions of the new schools.

Diamantis stepped down from his position overseeing the school construction program on Oct. 28, 2021, after being placed on paid administrative leave.

Around the same time, the state received a federal grand jury subpoena for records related to the states school grants program.

Diamantis and several of the largest construction management companies in the state are named in those subpoenas, but its unclear if Diamantis push for the new legislation is of interest to federal investigators.

Construction companies pushed back immediately

The bill Diamantis persuaded lawmakers to pass, however, has ignited numerous complaints from officials within Connecticuts construction industry.

Several industry groups have argued for more than three years that the law would allow construction management firms to bypass the normal bidding procedures for state building projects.

The legislation, Diamantis said, was never meant to subvert the public bidding process on school construction projects.

Absolutely not, he said. That was never the intent of the language.

But thats not how the new leadership at the state Department of Administrative Services and the Office of School Construction Grants & Review explained the situation this week.

Michelle Gilman, the new DAS commissioner, asked lawmakers during a legislative hearing on March 7 to pass a new bill this session that would ban the hybrid construction model that Diamantis repeatedly advocated for.

Noel Petra, who took over the school grant program last year, explained that the language Diamantis helped to introduce in 2019 could allow a construction manager to perform work on a project without ever asking for bids from other companies.

They actually wouldnt be required to bid it, Petra told lawmakers.

Petras statements to lawmakers, Diamantis said, were misleading and meant to create a false narrative about him and the school grant program that he ran for more than six years.

Noel Petra doesnt understand the school construction program, and he certainly doesnt understand how it operates, Diamantis said. The school construction program is an outstanding program, and it shouldnt be used as a tool to throw dirt.

Lora Rae Anderson, a spokeswoman for DAS, said no construction company, to the agencys knowledge, was ever given permission to manage a new school and build part of the same project.

But that wasnt for a lack of trying.

Taking over

Even before the legislation passed in 2019, Diamantis was pitching his new construction model to municipalities.

In early 2018, he sent an email to officials in Bristol informing them that he had a new construction plan, which he claimed would drastically limit price changes and delays on the citys new Memorial Boulevard Arts Magnet School.

I believe this is going to take over  and reduce costs and time, Diamantis wrote. We think, as a team here, you should use it given the nature of the work involved.

The city and the state would benefit, Diamantis argued, if Bristol let the construction manager self-perform a significant portion of the work on the more than $60 million school renovation project.

Emails, letters and meeting minutes obtained by CT Mirror show Bristols school building committee went along with that plan for months, as the citys staff worked to adopt the specific contract language that Diamantis wanted.

But those plans came to an abrupt halt in the fall of 2018, just as Bristol was preparing to choose a construction manager for the project.

Roger Rousseau, Bristols purchasing agent, informed Diamantis that the city received a variety of questions from contractors about the new requirement that 20 percent of the project be built by the construction manager.

The city is requiring the (construction manager) to self-perform with its own employees, one of the contractors wrote. Is there a state or other requirement requiring the city to do this?

In an attempt to answer those questions, Rousseau asked Diamantis to provide some examples where other towns or cities allowed a construction management firm to build part of a school.

The city also requested legal opinions from Diamantis to confirm that the new hybrid model would comply with the states bidding laws.

Those emails went unanswered, according to city officials.

Instead, Bristol hired Donald Doeg, an attorney specializing in construction law, to provide the city with his legal opinion on the matter.

Doeg, who is well known in the states construction industry, pointed out that state law required all of the physical construction work on school projects to be awarded to the lowest qualified bidder.

And he warned that automatically awarding 20 percent of that work to the citys chosen construction manager would open the city up to legal challenges.

Bristol eventually hired DAmato Construction and Downes Construction to manage that school project as part of a joint venture. But the school building committee stripped out the requirement that the companies build 20 percent of the project with their own construction workers.

Diamantis said he disagreed with the legal advice that Bristol received, and the next year he took his proposals to the Connecticut legislature.

Beyond unorthodox

The language that Diamantis helped to tuck into the legislation in 2019 didnt draw much attention when it passed.

It was little more than a footnote on an annual appropriations bill that also approved more than $160 million in state funding for eight different school construction projects.

With several school projects on the line, the bill sailed through the House and Senate in less than a day and was signed by the governor shortly after.

But in the years that followed, those legal changes prompted several groups to issue warnings to state lawmakers and Gov. Ned Lamonts administration.

Talking points that were drafted in preparation for a meeting with Lamont in July 2020 show leaders within the state building trades were deeply concerned with the law and the influence that Diamantis asserted on school projects.

We have emails between the (Office of School Construction Grants & Review) and municipal officials stating that they are creating this hybrid method, they wrote. This is beyond unorthodox.

Lamont, in the wake of the federal investigation into the school grant program, said that he was never presented with those talking points and that the perceived problems with Diamantis never came up at that meeting.

But the opposition to the 2019 law wasnt isolated to a single meeting with the governor.

Similar complaints continued to be shared with Diamantis and other state officials into the summer of 2021, not long before Diamantis left his position at the Office of School Construction Grants & Review.

Groups like the Associated General Contractors of Connecticut warned state officials and the legislature that allowing construction management firms to use their own crews to build parts of the projects could be problematic.

That was especially true, they argued, if there werent more adequate protections put in place to ensure every company had an equal chance at performing work on the school projects.

John Butts, the executive director of the Associated General Contractors, drafted numerous letters and legislative testimony, protesting the ill-conceived legislation that Diamantis championed.

The law, Butts argued, needed to be repealed or significantly reformed in order to protect the sanctity of the public bidding system and the interests of the state.

The general contractors association and other groups successfully lobbied lawmakers in 2020 and 2021 to prevent any municipalities from utilizing the hybrid model until the law could be reformed. It is set to go into effect in July.

And they provided legal recommendations to lawmakers that would ensure every aspect of a school project was put out to bid and that the construction managers wouldnt have an advantage over subcontractors in that bidding process.

Those recommendations were introduced in a bill last year, but the legislation stalled during the session.

Diamantis said he had no objections to the protections those groups wanted to add.

But he said it would be a mistake to prohibit construction management firms from building any part of the schools in the future. Doing so would only cost taxpayers more money, he argued.

The new leaders at DAS dont see it that way.

The policies Diamantis enacted need to be repealed, the agency said, in order to level the playing field and ensure every contract for school construction projects is competitively bid.
BRIDGEPORT  A 40-year-old woman was killed early Sunday after a car struck and then carried her 200 feet before fleeing the scene, officials said.

On Sunday at about 3 a.m., Bridgeport emergency operations received a call for a motor vehicle accident with a pedestrian struck, police said.

The incident occurred near the intersection of Boston Avenue and Remington Street. Officers and AMR were dispatched to the location where they found an unresponsive woman in the westbound lane of Boston Avenue between Remington Street and Dover Street, according to police.

The officers secured the scene while AMR attempted to give medical attention to the unresponsive woman, identified as 40-year-old Kemesha Robert Johnson. She was declared dead by AMR about ten minutes later and the Bridgeport Police Search Crash team was notified, officials said.

A witness on the scene said a 2007 Black Volvo XC90 was driving east on Barnum Avenue. It had stopped at a red light at the intersection of Barnum and Bishop Avenue when it was rearended by a silver or gray Honda Civic, police said.

The Honda backed up and hit a parked car and passed the Volvo on the right, sideswiping the Volvo and a parked car before driving away, police said. The witness told police the driver of the Volvo started following the Honda and attempted to get the license plate.

The Honda was driving west on Boston Avenue, and hit Johnson trying to cross the street at the intersection of Boston Avenue and Remington Street. The Honda carried her about 200 feet until she fell in the westbound lane between Remington and Dover Streets. The Honda Civic fled the scene, traveling west on Boston Avenue towards East Main Street, police said.

The Bridgeport Serious Crash Team arrived on the scene and investigated the fatal crash. They were able to notify Johnsons family, police said.

Anyone with information about the fatal crash can call officer Thomas Gall Bronner at 203-576-7640 or use the Bridgeport police tip line at 203-576-TIPS.
After walking a budget tightrope with no safety net for most of the past two decades, Connecticut state government has socked away almost $4.8 billion since 2018 and could nearly double that by mid-2023.

But while thats three-and-half times what Connecticut saved in the prior 25 years combined, the states debt has somehow gotten worse  by a lot.

State officials secured short-term prosperity and less volatile finances for the foreseeable future by adding billions in long-term obligations to do it  a problem future generations of taxpayers may come to resent.

And as Novembers state-wide elections near, the battle to frame the states financial outlook  as the best of times or the worst of times  is only expected to intensify.

Huge surpluses and extra pension payments

At the Connecticut Business and Industry Associations Jan. 21 economic summit, Gov. Ned Lamont was optimistic.

Weve had a surplus three years in a row. That doesnt very often happen, he said. Right now, were strong.

Lamont, who took office in January 2019, has some good reasons to say that.

Taking advantage of a new savings program the legislature ordered in 2017, the Democratic governor has kept the budget balanced and avoided major tax hikes.

Thats a sharp contrast from the 2010s, a decade plagued by deficit forecasts and remembered for two of the largest tax hikes in state history.

Connecticut, which muddled through most of the past decade with no fiscal cushion, achieved the legal maximum rainy day fund allowed by law under Lamont, 15 percent of annual operating expenses, which amounts to about $3.1 billion.

Equally unprecedented, Connecticut is poised to dump billions of extra dollars into its cash-starved pension funds in just a few years.

With the rainy day fund full, the state hit another first under Lamont last fall, shifting a $1.6 billion surplus from the 2020-21 budget year into the pensions. Thats on top of the $2.9 billion in regular contributions already budgeted for pensions for state employees and municipal teachers.

And with analysts projecting another $4.4 billion in black ink across this fiscal year and next combined, the pension funds could see a short-term infusion of cash like never before.

The governor predicted that once those extra payments are made, the states regular, required pension contributions could drop significantly. That means hundreds of millions of dollars that could support education, health care, transportation, municipal aid or tax relief.

Those surplus projections have been fueled in part by a stock market that has largely been robust since 2018, despite a rough first month in 2022.

Connecticuts economic recovery and fiscal health continue to improve, state Treasurer Shawn Wooden, a Hartford Democrat, said in February, adding that the states cash flow, and not just the surplus, is at a historic high as well. This gives us the potential to continue to responsibly pay down Connecticuts pension liabilities at an accelerated rate.

Even as it saves more, CTs debt increases

But theres another side to that coin.

Connecticut reported $95 billion in unfunded obligations last fall, a combination of bonded debt and unfunded pension and retirement health care responsibilities.

Thats almost 30 percent more debt than the state reported in 2016, before five years of balanced budgets, careful savings and an unprecedented supplemental pension payment.

Connecticut, which already ranked as one of the most indebted states in the nation, appears to have gotten worse.

This is why people have a hard time trusting the people currently running our state government, said Madison Republican Bob Stefanowski, who lost the 2018 gubernatorial race to Lamont and is hoping for a rematch this year. Politicians making political calculations to protect their headlines, rather than protecting the states taxpayers and the bottom line.

Some of that extra debt was really always there.

The legislature adopted more conservative assumptions about pension fund investment returns over the past few years  dropping them from an annual average of 8 percent or more to about 7 percent. Pension debt is calculated over 25 or 30 years, and lowering the assumed revenue from investments means more contributions must come from the taxpayers.

But that wasnt the only change that affected pension debt. Governors and legislatures also refinanced the states pension obligations three times in the past four years.

Debt payments, involving both retirement benefit programs and bonding, consumed only 12 percent of the annual budget in the mid-1990s but were eating nearly 30 percent by 2017. The state had failed to properly save for its pensions for more than 70 years, forfeiting billions of dollars in potential investment earnings needed to cover benefits  and leaving the present generation to make up the difference.

Analysts warned finances would hit bottom around 2030, when spiking payments could be quadruple what they were in the mid-2010s, likely crippling most other programs and forcing unprecedented tax hikes.

Lamont and his predecessor, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, worked with legislatures to smooth out those spikes, shifting billions of dollars in debt, plus interest, onto taxpayers in the late 2030s and 2040s.

But they didnt just lower required contributions for the spike years that are still to come. They also restructured payments in the near-term, making their own budgets easier to manage  while shifting even more burdens onto future taxpayers.

For example, Lamont restructured the teachers pension so that Connecticut actually contributed $128 million less during his first two years in office than it had during Malloys last year on the job.

And the $2.9 billion Connecticut must contribute this year to the two major pension funds combined this fiscal year also is roughly $630 million less than the payments the state would be facing, had it not refinanced both pensions in 2019, according to actuaries projections from three years ago.

In other words, some portion of the big surpluses Connecticut now enjoys stems from slowing down its payment of pension debt.

Its incomprehensible that our debt obligations have gone from $75 billion to $95 billion over the last five years while Gov. Lamont and the Democrats in charge of the legislature take their victory laps, Stefanowski said.

Connecticuts businesses are keeping a close watch on debt levels, but the jury is still out on whether everyone feels good about them.

Our larger businesses are very aware of the long-term liabilities Connecticut has, and that its been a little bit of a noose around the neck, said Chris DiPentima, president and CEO of the Connecticut Business and Industry Association.

And while the CBIA applauds the supplemental pension payments made over the past year and a half, he added, anything that makes state debt levels  and potentially future tax rates  likely to climb remains an impediment to business confidence and job growth.

House Republicans questioned whether pension refinancings couldnt have been delayed until the late 2020s, saving Connecticuts children huge burdens in the future.

Politicians' memories are limited to the election cycle, said House Minority Leader Vincent J. Candelora. They fail to look holistically where we are as a state.

Democrats: Fiscal good news extends way beyond surpluses

But while the overall debt level has increased, Lamont says Connecticut has gained something very valuable: fiscal stability.

For the first time in decades, state officials can look at the planned pension payments  significant though they are  and imagine a scenario in which Connecticut can manage them.

When the state is making its full pension payment plus supplemental payments, it demonstrates to residents and businesses that the state is creating a predictable, sustainable and structural budget environment to increase attractiveness as a great place to establish roots, Melissa McCaw, who stepped down earlier this month as Lamont's budget director, said in February.

The two-year budget Lamont and lawmakers enacted last June increases aid to cities and towns by nearly $200 million per year, on average, without imposing any major tax hikes. Without refinancing, those funds would likely have gone into the pension system, or taxes would have gone up.

And while other states are fearful of what will happen when billions of dollars in emergency federal pandemic relief expires two years from now, Connecticut has relatively little to worry about.

Analysts now project state finances for 2023-24 have a built-in hole of $520 million. But that doesnt include another $680 million they expect to be captured by the volatility adjustment.

Those funds, plus the $3.1 billion in the states rainy day fund, would enable the next governor and legislature to easily manage state finances even without lost federal pandemic relief.

We havent had a recession in a long time, and some of this prosperity is going to be throttled back eventually, Lamont told business leaders.

With the exception of the pandemic-induced economic slump of 2020, Connecticut has not faced a traditional recession since early 2010.

But with probably the biggest rainy day fund per capita  in the country, Lamont added, were relatively well prepared.

Part 2 of the update to A Legacy of Debt, to be published on ctmirror.org on March 20, will examine proposals to reduce the states savings habits and invest more in education, health care, tax cuts and other programs that sacrificed for years as debt payments gobbled up resources.
The Illinois Department of Transportation announces that intermittent lane restrictions began on Route 111 between Horseshoe Lake and Collinsville roads Wednesday, weather permitting. Two-way traffic will be maintained through the work zone by the use of flaggers. This work is needed do pavement repairs and place a new asphalt driving surface. The work is expected to be completed by the end of June.

Drivers are urged to reduce speed, be alert for changing conditions, obey all construction signage and refrain from using mobile devices while approaching and traveling through the work zone.
The First Amendment of the United States Constitution, adopted in 1791 along with other nine other bills comprising the Bill of Rights three years after the ratification of the Constitution, created a lot of clauses dealing with multiple purposes.

There have been a number of legal challenges regarding the First Amendment recently, from Sarah Palin's lawsuit against the New York Times to suits accusing Project Veritas, Fox News, the Gateway Pundit, One America News and others of "intentionally promoting and profiting from false claims of voter fraud during the 2020 election," the New York Times reported.

1. What is the First Amendment?

The First Amendment guarantees freedoms concerning religion, expression, assembly and the right to petition, according to Cornell Law School. It forbids Congress from both promoting one religion over others and also restricting an individual's religious practices. The amendment further guarantees freedom of expression by prohibiting Congress from restricting the press or the rights of individuals to speak freely. Finally, the amendment guarantees the right of citizens to assemble peacefully and to petition their government.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances," the amendment states.

2. Limitations of the First Amendment

The First Amendment has some limitations. Notably, the amendment doesn't prevent a private employer from setting its own rules regarding freedom of expression, but does protect citizens against government limits on expression, according to Middle Tennessee State University.

According to USCourts.gov, the freedom of speech does not include the right:

To incite imminent lawless action;

To make or distribute obscene materials;

To burn draft cards as an anti-war protest;

To permit students to print articles in a school newspaper over the objections of the school administration;

Of students to make an obscene speech at a school-sponsored event;

Of students to advocate illegal drug use at a school-sponsored event.

The First Amendment again only protects against the government, not private employers or consequences from other citizens. Limits to the freedoms in the First Amendment exist as peoples individual rights must be balanced against the rights of society, according to the Voice of America.

For example, a person cannot force the tenets of his or her religion on others while trying to practice that religion. Similarly, harmful speech, such as yelling fire in a crowded room, is not protected speech, nor is publishing a lie that causes harm to someone. Also, different types of speech have different amounts of freedom. Political speech is considered different than commercial speech, which includes advertisements.

According to the American Civil Liberties Union, freedom of speech does not prevent punishing conduct that intimidates, harasses or threatens another person, even if words are used. Threatening phone calls are not constitutionally protected, for example.

3. What the First Amendment does

Middle Tennessee State University states that the First Amendment prevents against the government requiring you to say something you don't want to, or keeping you from hearing or reading the words of others, as you have the right to receive information, even if you never speak or write yourself.

USCourts,gov also states that the freedom of speech includes the right:

Not to speak, specifically, the right not to salute the flag;

Of students to wear black armbands to school to protest a war, as students do not shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate, the Supreme Court has found;

To use certain offensive words and phrases to convey political messages;

To contribute money, under specific circumstances, to political campaigns;

To advertise commercial products and professional services with some restrictions;

To engage in symbolic speech, including the burning of the flag in protest.

The First Amendment also makes it so that the government can not, through "prior restraint," block publication of any material unless it could prove that it would "surely" result in "direct, immediate and irreparable" harm to the nation, the Supreme Court found in U.S. v. New York Times. The public has a "right to know," the court found, which is essential to fully participate in democratic decision-making.

The government's claims of "national security" must always be scrutinized to make sure they are valid, according to the ACLU.

4. What about censorship?

Censorship is the suppression or prohibition of words, images or ideas that are considered offensive, obscene, politically unacceptable or a threat to security. According to the First Amendment Encyclopedia, "censors seek to limit freedom of thought and expression by restricting spoken words, printed matter, symbolic messages, freedom of association, books, art, music, movies, television programs and internet sites."

Censorship by the government, even though it appears to be becoming more common in states like Florida and Texas, is unconstitutional, according to the Carnegie Library. The First Amendment was extended to the states in the 1940s, according to Encyclopedia Britannica. When the government, either at the federal, state or local level, engages in censorship, it goes against the First Amendment rights. The Supreme Court is often called upon to ensure that First Amendment rights are being protected and could be called upon again in the future.

However, private individuals and groups may still engage in censorship. As long as government entities are not involved, this type of censorship presents no First Amendment implications. That includes censoring popular music, movies, art and television to exclude words or images that may be considered "vulgar" or "obscene." Facebook, Twitter and other social media can regulate or restrict speech hosted on their platforms because they are private entities.

The Supreme Court has previously reaffirmed the right to receive information is a fundamental right protected under the U.S. Constitution when it stated in Board of Education v. Pico in 1982 that "the right to receive ideas is a necessary predicate to the recipient's meaningful exercise of their own rights of speech, press and political freedom," according to the American Library Association.

5. The freedom to speech does not equate a freedom from consequences

While everyone is entitled to voicing their own opinions, ideas and views without interference from the government, according to North Texas Daily, what happens after statements are voiced is up to others. When people voice opinions of discrimination, be it racism, homophobia, transphobia, etc., others can voice differing opinions and call out individuals for their negative comments. Individuals can also face backlash for their comments made on social media platforms that are derogatory, racist or otherwise discriminatory.

Individuals can be held accountable for their words and actions by entities like businesses or organizations, including their employer. Hateful speech and political views are not the same thing, per North Texas Daily, as hateful speech causes emotional and mental harm to someone while political beliefs do not. Calling someone out for saying hateful statements is also within a person's freedom of speech.

People who call out others for harmful, hateful statements are not trying to promote censorship, per North Texas Daily. Individuals are entitled not to tolerate hateful rhetoric and are able to say things against it. The First Amendment was created to encourage the flow of ideas and communication between people without government interference.

An individual who does not like being called out for their negative comments can stop voicing those comments on public platforms. Once a statement is on a public platform, others have the right to comment back and condemn those statements.
Salida, CO (81201)

Today

Partly cloudy this morning, then becoming cloudy during the afternoon. High 54F. Winds W at 10 to 20 mph..

Tonight

Clear to partly cloudy. Low 34F. Winds W at 10 to 15 mph.
Instant unlimited access to all of our content on thenewsguard.com.

The News Guard E-Edition Newsletter emailed to you each week, the night before the paper hits the street!

This subscription is for NEW or RENEWING online subscribers.

(The charge will appear as "Country Media Inc." on your credit card statement)


We're always interested in hearing about news in our community. Send us your news, photos, and videos and let us know what's going on!

Submit Here
That release could not be found.
It is essential that African nations advance their plans to build nuclear plants as part of their energy grid. That is why the efforts of Nigeria and Ghana should be hailed as progress for the continent. Africa`s Future Depends on Adopting Nuclear Power Generation

The lack of energy is killing more Africans that any other cause of death. My estimate is that the nations of Africa should acquire at least 1,000 gigawatts-1,000,000 megawatts-of electrical power to raise the standard of living of the populations to that of a modern industrialized society. Nuclear energy must be an increasing share of the continents energy generation.

Construction and operation of nuclear energy will also elevate the skill level of the domestic workforce. Nuclear energy complexes will serve as training centers for skilled workers, engineers and scientists to operate a higher level of technology.

Energy is an indispensable element of the infrastructure platform that every nation requires to expand its economy. Energy poverty sustains poverty because electricity

Energy is vital for:

industrialization manufacturing agricultural & agricultural processing transportation, schools hospitals vaccine production and distribution homes elimination poverty & hunger

Let us encourage more African nations to expand their energy grid with nuclear power

Nigeria invites bids as it prepares to construct its first nuclear power plant, amid security concerns

Busineess Insider Africa

EMMANUEL ABARA BENSON March 2, 2022 10:41 AM

The nuclear power plant is projected to become Nigerias largest power plant and could potentially solve the countrys electricity challenges.

However, there are have been concerns about the countrys ability to manage a nuclear power plant, considering its peculiar security challenges.

Note that the bidding process is very critical to any nuclear power project, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The Nigerian Government said it has commenced the bidding process in preparation for the construction of a 4000 megawatts nuclear power plant in the country.

The Director General of the Nigerian Nuclear Regulatory Agency, Dr Yau Idris, disclosed this while speaking during the Nigerian International Energy Summit in Abuja, yesterday. According to him, the nuclear power plant is projected to become Nigerias largest power plant, and could significantly improve the West African countrys power generation capacity.

Meanwhile, there have been concerns about Nigerias ability to manage a nuclear power plant, considering the delicate nature of such a project as well as the countrys peculiar security situation. Dr Idris addressed these concerns during his speech, stressing that it is wrong for anyone to assume that Nigerias is incapable of managing a nuclear project.

There are mechanisms put in place that ensure any country can build a nuclear power plant. Nigeria is trying to deliver 4,000MW of electricity through nuclear power. We are trying to construct four units and we are at the bidding stage, he was quoted by local media to have said.

It should be noted that the bidding process is very critical to any nuclear power project. A report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IEAE) titled Invitation and Evaluation of Bids for Nuclear Power Plants, detailed the requirements and processes for ensuring a successful bid.

The development of a nuclear programme is a major undertaking requiring attention to many complex and interrelated tasks over a long duration. One of them is the bidding process, which includes the development of bid invitations specifications, the evaluation of bids and the contracting with the successful bidder (contractor). The necessary infrastructure should be developed to the point of readiness for a bidding process to acquire a nuclear power plant (NPP). Therefore, the preparatory phase preceding the bidding process includes numerous activities, such as but not limited to, energy system planning, siting and feasibility studies, environmental impact assessment, development of nuclear related legislation, financing, organization of the regulatory authority, etc, part of the report said.

Nigeria is a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and as such is required to strictly adhere to the requirements for bids. And ultimately, the goal is to ensure that the successful bidder (i.e., the winning contractor) has all it takes to enable the licensing, construction, commissioning and operation of a nuclear power plant.

https://africa.businessinsider.com/local/markets/nigeria-invites-bids-as-it-prepares-to-construct-its-first-nuclear-power-plant/tdn7nn2

Ghana looks to small modular reactor technology for nuclear deployment

ESI Africa

ByTheresa SmithMar 9, 2022

[SERZ72]  123RF.COM

The US and Ghana will partner under the Foundational Infrastructure for Responsible use of Small Modular Reactor Technology (FIRST) to support the West African countrys foray into the nuclear sector.

The FIRST programme, led by the US Department of State, will support Ghanas adoption of small modular reactor (SMR) technology. This includes support for stakeholder engagement, advanced technical collaboration and project evaluation and planning. Japan has been a valuable partner with the US on the FIRST programme and will build on its existing partnership with Ghana to advance Ghanas civil nuclear power aspirations.

Have you read?

US and Ghana sign memorandum with a focus on nuclear

Speaking at a virtual launch of the programme, US Ambassador Stephanie Sullivan said clean, reliable and safe nuclear energy could provide significant benefits to the people of Ghana, including clean energy, agricultural improvements, clean water and advanced medical treatment. Next-generation nuclear energy, like what were working on today, must be part of the solution, said Sullivan.

According to Ghanas Minister of Energy Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh, the decision to include nuclear power in the nations energy mix has led to establishing Nuclear Power Ghana Limited as an Owner Operator and project developer. The FIRST Programme will help Ghana develop the competencies of the Nuclear Power Ghana Limited to build and operate safely Ghanas first nuclear power plant.

From the archives

The drive for an African nuclear energy market

Drawing on 60 years of US experience working with nuclear energy, the FIRST programme provides capacity-building support to partner countries as they develop their nuclear energy programmes. To date, the US Department of State has announced $7.3 million to support FIRST projects around the world.

Professor Samuel Boakye Dampare, Director General of the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission the capacity building activities are meant to strengthen their national technical support organisation. For us regulators, our success will be a very stringent, logical and transparent licensing regime that emphases safety throughout the lifetime of our future power plants(s), whether SMRs or larger reactors, said Dampare.

Initial training in Ghana during 2022 will focus on stakeholder engagement, licensing and regulatory development, financing, workforce development and nuclear security, safety and non-proliferation.

https://lnkd.in/gKAH-teY

Lawrence Freeman is a Political-Economic Analyst for Africa, who has been involved in economic development policies for Africa for over 30 years. He is the creator of the blog: lawrencefreemanafricaandtheworld.com. Mr. Freemans stated personal mission is; to eliminate poverty and hunger in Africa by applying the scientific economic principles of Alexander Hamilton.
The Republic of South Korea has appealed to Nigeria to support its candidate, Dr. Kang Kyung-wha, who is vying for the position of Director-General of the International Labour Organisation.

This appeal was made at the weekend by Kim Young-Chae, the Korean Ambassador to Nigeria

It is expected that on March 25, 2022, the governing body of ILO will elect the next Director-general in Geneva, Switzerland.

While seeking Nigeria's support for Dr Kyung-wha, the envoy stated that a Korean, Yoo Myung-hee, left Director Generalship race of World Trade Organisation (WTO), for Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who eventually won.

The ambassador also acknowledged Nigeria's global influence.

In his words: The influence of Nigeria in the international labour circle is very huge. Just like Myung-hee stepped down during the WTO race, which made the emergence of Dr. Okonjo-Iweala possible, we are counting on Nigeria to reciprocate this gesture.

I have met with the Chief of Staff to the President. I have met with the President of Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Ayuba Wabba, on this issue. We are talking to Nigeria to support our candidate during the election.

Similarly, Dr. Kyung-wha said her experience of which she gained as a Senior Manager in the United Nations (UN) for over 10 years in the field of human rights and humanitarian assistance distinguishes her as a candidate to deliver people-oriented programmes in the ILO.
Prior to the time Baba Alkali Usman was made the Inspector General of Police, President Muhammadu Buhari has given the directive for the upward review of police salary; however, when IGP Baba came on board, among the major things in his agenda is the Police Salary upward review. The IGP has left no one in doubt that it was a major priority for him as the nation's number one police officer.

On so many occasions, IGP Baba has urged Police officers to keep hope alive over salary increment, what this implies is that the issue of salary increase is on the front burner in the IGPs agenda. He took that demand and pressure to the National Assembly and has pursued it with success.

When he went to Benin, the Edo state Capital last year, the Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Baba Alkali Usman told officers and men of the Nigeria Police Force to keep their hope alive over the proposed review of salaries, saying though delayed but it would be materialized.

He assured: I want you to take your job very seriously because we are going to work hard to improve on our welfare.

We are living witness that the Commander in Chief of Armed Forces has graciously asked the salary of the police be reviewed even though it is taking time, it will certainly come.

The Inspector-General advised policemen not to be discouraged as the pay rise will surely happen.

The issue of salary increase for the men and officers of the force, as he continue to admonish the personnel while working round the clock and behind the scene to see that it was done.

Again while talking while reeling out the his achievements to journalists at the Presidential Villa last, the IGP reiterated the effort of the President, Muhammadu Buhari in seeing that Police Salary is increase as the IGP reechoed again to them that the Salaries and Wages Commission is working out a new salary structure for the NPF as directed by the President, His Excellency Mohammadu Buhari, GCFR.

Yet in another remarks, while addressing the Delta State Police Command, on a visit, there said; the IGP assured officers and men of the command that the police under his leadership is doing all within its powers to boost the morale of the men in terms of better welfare and also assured all that a better insurance scheme is on top gear, adding that the welfare of officers is a priority to his administration.

Indeed all through the while, the issue of Police Salary increase has been a top burner before IGP Alkali, his effort in lobbying the National Assembly and the Presidency which culminated in its subsequent approval by the Federal Executive Council, shows that he is not resting, as he is working hard to make sure that the Police rank and file receives their new salary increase as soon as possible.

Even as it is, one may say that he is not the one causing the delay of the payment of the new salary increase , but the truth is that he at the moment working round the clock and working behind the scene to make sure that those concerned have finish all thr official formalities and releases the money for the payment of the new salaries to Police Officers. The IGP it should be noted has no power over official processes that is needed and being done at the moment to ensure the increase takes effect.

However, after much lobbying by IGP Akali, his effort paid off, as in December 2021, the Federal Executive Council approved the Police Salary increase by 20 percent and which will take effect from January this year 2022. It is the delay in effecting the payment that others wants to take advantage to sabotage the peace and security of the nation. If IGP Alkali had been reluctant and failed to pursue it the manner he vigorously did, the good story of the approval of the salary increase and even expectations of commencement of payment of the new package wouldn't have arisen.

Just like Femi Adesina, the Special Adviser to President Buhari on Media and Publicity, said in his article which he titled: Buharis Christmas Bonus for Police, it was indeed a Christmas Bonus for the Police, which the IGP Alkali was behind it.

The Minister of Police Affairs, Maigari Dingyadi, made this known to State House correspondents at the end of the Council meeting presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari.

According to him, major highlight of the increase is the provision of a 20 per cent peculiar allowance for the police.

He said: I am particularly very happy today to inform Nigerians that the Federal Executive Council has approved the review and upgrading of the take home pay of police personnel in this country.

You recall that in Oct. 2020 this country was rocked with End SARS protests and the president addressed the nation appealing for calm, after which he promised that the salary of the police will be reviewed in recognition of the services they have been rendering to the country  maintaining peace and tranquility.

So, FEC has today approved a proposal for the review of their salaries, which will take effect from January 2022.

We have tried to create a situation where their take home pay will be enhanced through the improvement of issues such as duty tour allowance, which has been reviewed to six per cent of their new take home pay, he stated.

The minister also revealed that the Council approved N1.1billion for the payment of outstanding uninsured benefits of the police.

Council has also approved the payment of N1,120, 172,150.00 as outstanding benefits of personnel for uninsured period of 2013-2020.

It has also approved N127,972,269.20 for payment as outstanding death benefits of 5,472 personnel for the uninsured period of 2013-August 2021, not covered under the group life assurance.

Council has also approved N1.2 billion as outstanding burial expenses of personnel for a period of January 2012-2021, he said.

According to the minister, the Council also approved the annual insurance premiums of N750 million as well as the payment of N4, 812,500,000 for repairs and replacement of damaged Police infrastructure in future budgets, starting from 2022.

He said the Council also approved a tax waver in the sum of N18.6 billion for junior officers of the Police in order to increase their take home pay with effect from Oct. 2021.

Similarly government has approved an increase of the current rent subsidy, which is currently between 15-20 percent, amounting to N61 billion.

With the increase, it is now 40 percent of the Consolidate Police Salary Structure (CONPOSS), in the sum of N78.3 billion.

It has also approved payment of an additional six per cent shift duty allowance for officers on Grade Level 01-14 and supervisors allowances for officers on Grade Level 15 and above, totalling about N10.038 billion with effect from 2022.

Most importantly, government has also approved payment of 20 per cent of CONPOSS as a peculiar allowance to boost morale and take home pay of the Nigeria Police personnel, he said.

The minister stated that the Auditor General of the Federation had been directed to cross check the template and claims approved by Council, after which a clean salary structure would be computed and introduced by the Salaries and Wages Commission, which would be adopted as soon as possible.

He said with the new development, government would expect the police to redouble their efforts to justify the confidence reposed in them.

Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Dr Zainab Ahmed, who fielded questions on the salary increase, revealed that the increment was not captured in the 2022 budget. Perhaps that explains the little delay behind the commencement of full implementation.

She, however, stated that after computations and approval, a supplementary budget would be sent to the National Assembly to that effect, to pave way for the payment of arrears and full implementation of the new salary.

With the approval for the salary increase, indeed the IGP struck gold, made available by his strong efforts.

PROBLEMS OF OFFICERS AND MEN PREDATES THE APPOINTMENT OF IGP ALKALI

Majority of things stated in the report published by some national dallies and online medium which include morale of police officers said to be at a low ebb, with many grumbling about poor salaries, a lack of genuine welfare benefits and outdated weapons, are things that are already being taken care of by the IGP, or/and currently being given necessary attention by IGP Alkali. Nigerians are very much aware about the kind of leadership offered in the past that has failed to address critical issues related to police welfare and provision of arms and facilities. Unknown to many, under IGP Alkali and for the first time in many years the Police is now being supplied with armoury and other latest policing devices. This milestone will soon be demonstrated to Nigerians to appreciate the President for supporting the IGP to perform.

Take on the issue of welfare benefits for instance, the Inspector General of Police has since assumption of office made the welfare of the Police his paramount and key issue.

The Inspector-General of Police, IGP Usman Alkali Baba, recently ordered the immediate distribution of Police Uniforms, Kits and accoutrements which the Force recently procured, to various Zones, Commands and Formations in the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) for onward issuance to personnel of the Force. Before now, Police officers are very much aware that they used to buy their uniforms themselves even as there is supposed to be provisions for them.

According to the Acting Force Spokesperson, CSP Olumuyiwa Adejobi in a press release, the resuscitation of the quarterly issuance of uniforms and other accoutrements to members of the Inspectorate, Non-Commissioned Officers (NCOs) and Constable Cadres in the Police Force is in furtherance of the ongoing efforts by the IGP to engender reforms and evolve a new people-friendly Police Force.

The issuance of the new uniforms and accoutrements, which is a continuous exercise, is free of charge to all Inspectors and members of the Rank-and-File of the Force as provisions have been made for the continuous procurement in the Police budget.

A nationwide distribution on police uniforms, shoes, belts, berets, and other accessories was ordered by the inspector General of Police. In a move last seen during the 1990s, Zones, Commands and Formations in the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) have since the 4th of March 2022 have issued out hundreds of thousands of camouflage, blue and black uniforms to police officers across the country.

In the same vein, the IGP has approved the creation of First Aid Unit to be domiciled under the Nigeria Police Medical Service (NPMS), Force Headquarters, Abuja, and the inclusion of advanced First Aid Training to substitute the basic training available in the Nigeria Police Force Training Curriculum.

The Police, in partnership with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), held a train-the-trainers workshop that started from the 23rd through Friday 25th February, 2022, for personnel of the newly created unit, who would be deployed to all Commands and Formations across the nation, and in turn train cadets and recruits at the various Police training institutions.

The IGP equally noted that the establishment of the First Aid Unit would enhance the capacity of the Police Emergency Response System, reiterated the unwavering commitment of the Force leadership to bequeathing to the nation a professional, dependable and responsive policing system.

Furthermore, an Echo Cardio Machine was installed and inaugurated at the Muhammadu Buhari Medical Centre in Garki Abuja while an integrated First Aid Unit was added to the Force Medical Services for training and easy deployment on the field at the Nigeria Police Medical Service (NPMS), Force Headquarters, Abuja, and the inclusion of advanced First Aid Training to substitute the basic training available in the Nigeria Police Force Training Curriculum.

On this, he emphasized the premium value he places on the welfare and general wellbeing of officers and men of the Nigeria Police Force. He noted that it is boondoggle, emphasizing the hazardous conditions Police officers are exposed to on a daily basis.

To alleviate the effect of such hazards on officers and men, the IGP observed that it is imperative to establish a First Aid Unit that will be the first responder to personnel in need of emergency and less complicated medical care.

The IGP equally noted that the establishment of the First Aid Unit would enhance the capacity of the Police Emergency Response System.

According to the IGP, during a recent visit to the Federal Capital Territory Command, Abuja, the IGP restated his commitment towards an improved welfare for officers and men across board. The IGP noted that the issuance of uniforms and accoutrements, which will cut across the Inspectorate and Rank-and-File cadre, will be a continuous quarterly exercise free of charge, as provisions have been made for the continuous procurement in the Police budget.

This, he said is in furtherance of his ongoing efforts to engender reforms and evolve a new people-friendly Police Force.

IGP Alkali declared that the commitment of the Force to constantly providing NPF personnel with better welfare will go a long way to boosting their morale.

While he reiterated the unwavering commitment of the Force leadership towards bequeathing to the nation a professional, dependable and responsive policing system, the IGP enjoined the citizens to never give up on the Force. He urged every individual to make it a point of duty to help the Police by providing accurate and timely information about crime and criminalities to their local Police, so as to help the Force secure the public space in a more proactive manner.

Aside the issue of Welfare, the Inspector-General of Police, IGP Usman Alkali Baba, has revised the Housing SCHEME of the Nigeria Police Force.

A significant amendment to the Housing Policy is the slashing of Equity payments or deposits by Police Officers before acquiring houses financed by the Nigeria Police Cooperative and Multipurpose Society.

Hitherto, officers of the rank of Assistant Superintendent of Police to the rank of Inspector General of Police were required to pay 20 percent of the property value while officers below the rank of ASP were required to pay 10 percent.

The revised equity now requires officers from the rank of ASP to IGP to pay 10 percent as equity while junior Officers pay 5 percent. Other revisions include a downward review of the life of the payment schedule from five (5) to seven (7) years on all properties. A Police Wireless Signal to that effect was issued and circulated in 2021 announcing the change.

It is on note, the IGPs Policy on Housing has revived the housing scheme as more Police officers are now rushing to the Cooperative to enjoy the opportunities that is abound there now.

The Executive Secretary of the Nigeria Police Cooperative, AIG Adamu Usman told this paper "that the IGP believes that housing is more important to the lives of Police Officers than any other thing.

He wants it to be affordable and acquirable through a seamless process.

The report shows that several housing estates relevant to the achievement of this policy are being completed on the orders of the Inspector-General of Police, while new ones are being developed. Houses range from one-bedroom, to duplex; there are detached and semi-detached and are available in all the geo-political zones of the country.

As it is the welfare of Police Officers is a cardinal policy of the Inspector-General of Police. IGP Usman Alkali Baba which reechoed and reassured Officers during his recent familiarization tour to Akwa Ibom and Cross River States, that his administration will put the welfare of Police Officers first while working hard to ensure that working tools and equipment are available to provide professional and quality policing services to Nigerians while protecting officers and their families.

In an extensive interaction with police officers in Cross River State, the IGP commended them for their dedication and professionalism and assured them of improved welfare and working conditions.

He reiterated the importance of training and retraining as a key strategy of his administration to ensure policing in contemporary Nigeria is propped up to manage effectively the ever dilating and dynamic nature of crimes and criminality in the country.

For instance, Vehicles, equipment and accommodation were provided in January 2022 by the Police Trust Fund, Akwa Ibom and Cross Rivers states governments.

The IGPs Legacy on Police Housing reforms, has continued to soar high as the Assistant Inspector-General of Police in charge of NPF Cooperative Society, AIG Usman Adamu has driven IGP Usman Alkali Babas legacy to an enviable height which has been seen in the way the NPF Cooperative Society is providing improved facilities, equipped, cutting-edge and modern Police Post (with patrol van) in one of its estates at Karasana, off Gwarinpa Estate, Abuja. It is pertinent to note that provision of standard, habitable and affordable houses for Officers of the Force is one of the key mandates of the IGP.

In line with the IGPs mandate, the NPF Cooperative Society under the leadership of AIG Adamu has undertaken viable projects to ensuring adequate housing in the NPF.

The new phase of the organization is headed by the Chairman - Board of NPF Cooperative Society, DIG Folawiyo (rtd), mni and the Executive Secretary, AIG Usman Adamu.

The leadership of the Board has further promised that in addition to the existing facilities in all its estates, it will extend the cutting-edge security system and improved facilities to other police estates to boost the standard therein.

Now the average Police officer, can breathe a sign of relieve as Police officers are advised to key into the scheme and secure their dream houses.

The housing section is an off-shoot of Nigeria Police Cooperative Multi-Purpose Society Limited which provide housing scheme to her Cooperators. This section derived her establishment as contained in part 11; section 6 of the Societys Bye-law 2014 as amended. It provides that the Society shall undertake Housing Projects either by developing new estates and constructing new houses or buy over existing estate or houses for allocation to its members.

Part of the IGP Alkalis act of reform within the Nigerian Police includes the passage of the Police Act, 2020, his sure protocol is to identify, elevate and position professionally competent officers to strategic positions, general and specialized trainings for officers, which many of those trainings has been ongoing while some have been concluded.

Again, the Inspector-General of Police recently in line with international best practices while addresses the growing concern for gender mainstreaming and respect for culture and diversity, approved a new and improved dress code for Women Officers which permits them to wear stud earrings, and headscarf under their berets or peak caps as the case may be while in uniform. The dress code was unveiled at the IGPs meeting with Strategic Police Managers on March 3, 2022.

The IGP noted that the Nigeria Police workforce has officers from every local government in the country with a variety of ethnic and religious backgrounds, and an increased inclusion of female folks. This therefore brings the need to guarantee inclusion, gender mainstreaming, ethnic and religious diversity in the work place for optimum output and professionalism. This has informed the improvement for effective global workforce diversity management. Other countries that have adopted same dress code include Canada, the United States of America, Sweden, Turkey, Australia and the United Kingdom amongst others.

The dress code is optional and Senior Women Police Officers have been tasked by the IGP to ensure compliance with the approved standard for women police officers who have opted to adopt the dress code.

With all the enumerated key issues handled by IGP Alkali including the case of Salary increase for the officers and men, it is noteworthy to state that the IGP is working hard to achieve a 21st century policing for the Nigerian Police officers where issues such as their Salaries, Housing, Welfare, safety and others are top of his agenda for an effective 2ist Century Police officer.
Marriott closes Moscow office, provides US$1mn in humanitarian aid

Marriott International has issued a statement confirming that it is closing its Moscow office. The global hotel giant will also comply with sanctions imposed on Russia for the invasion of Ukraine and provide US$1 million to go towards humanitarian aid.

tourismRussianUkraine

By The Phuket News

Monday 14 March 2022, 01:30PM

The Marriott portfolio of brands reaches around the world. Image: Marriott International

The statement reads in full as follows:

We are deeply saddened by the horrific violence impacting the people of Ukraine. We have supported and will continue to support humanitarian efforts through relief organizations, our network of global partners and our own operations, including housing refugees at Marriott properties in neighboring countries. We stand with all of our associates who are being impacted by the war in Ukraine and have earmarked $1,000,000 to our associate relief fund to support them during this tragic time.

We have made the decision, effective immediately, to close our corporate office in Moscow, and pause the opening of upcoming hotels and all future hotel development and investment in Russia. We have been closely monitoring the deteriorating situation in Ukraine, Russia and neighboring countries, and remain in regular contact with our teams on the ground, as we work to comply with sanctions and applicable laws. Our hotels in Russia are owned by third parties and we continue to evaluate the ability for these hotels to remain open.

We deplore the loss of life, widespread impacts to millions of innocent civilians and the humanitarian disaster in Ukraine. We strongly support those working towards peace and an end to the needless suffering.

Marriott brands present in Phuket include JW Marriott, Sheraton, Renaissance, Westin, Le Meridien, Courtyard, Four Points, The Luxury Collection (on Naka Island), also the Phulay Bay a Ritz-Carlton Reserve in Krabi.








Phuket Heroines Festival in full flight

PHUKET: Victory Field in Bang Riang, Thepkrasattri, came alive last night (Mar 13) as the performance of the historical drama recounting the tale of the Phuket Heroines took to the stage for first of three performances of the annual theatrical and light and sound show, including fireworks.

culturetourism

By The Phuket News

Monday 14 March 2022, 12:23PM

This years annual Heroines Festival marks the 237th anniversary of the Heroines leading the defence of the island against Burmese marauders.

Among those present for the occasion were Phuket Governor Narong Woonciew and a host of other leading provincial officials, including Rewat Areerob, President of Phuket Provincial Administrative Organisation (PPAO, or OrBorJor), which organises the event each year.

Also present to take part in the live show was Jariya Anfone, a direct descendent of the Phuket Heroines, Chan and Mook, who after the successful repelling of the invaders were given the titles Thao Sri Soonthorn and Thao Thep Krasattri.

The event is held each year to remember Mar 13 as the day the Heroines achieved victory in 1785 in what was called the Nine Armies War, said Mr Rewat.

Since that time, March 13 of every year is considered Thalang Victory Day, he said.

The victory heralded an era of peace and stability across the island, which people still enjoy today, he added.

And in the year 2022, today is the day of the 237th anniversary of Thalang Victory Day  a day of acquiring peace and tranquillity on our land for all Phuketians, he said.

The historical drama, this year called "Thalang old town, the land of the brave", will be performed for nights, he noted.

The live performance will be held again tonight and tomorrow night (Mar 14-15)

The celebrations honour local traditional customs, and include activities to show people the traditional way of life at the time of the victory, Mr Rewat noted.

The fair also features vendors selling locally produced and OTOP products, and local delicacies, he added.

Governor Narong praised the festival for maintaining local traditions, and the PPAO for the result of its efforts in holding the event.

It is known that Phuket promotes tourism by presenting the local lifestyle, arts and culture of Phuket and the history of the country. Honouring the heroic deeds of the two Heroines and telling the stories of the heroes lets tourists know our history.

They learn valuable cultural information, and the event attracts both Thai and foreign tourists to visit Phuket. This helps to stimulate the economy and increase income for the local people, while instilling a sense among youths and other people to be patriotic, learn and be proud of being Thai. They can develop a sense of value for the land, and join the efforts to develop Phuket Province to be stable, prosperous and sustainable, he said.
Songkran water ritual a health risk, says government

BANGKOK: The Public Health Ministry is advising the public to refrain from taking part in the rod nam dam hua ceremony during the Songkran holiday, saying pouring water on other peoples hands - especially elderly relatives - increases their risk of catching COVID-19.

CoronavirusCOVID-19culturehealthSafetyVaccine

By Bangkok Post

Monday 14 March 2022, 10:38AM

Rod Nam Dam Hua is a tradition during the Songkran festival but the Public Health Ministry said it could pose a risk for senior citizens. Photo: Bangkok Post

Somsak Akkasilp, director-general of the Medical Services Department, yesterday (Mar 13) urged people who plan to return to their hometown during the upcoming Thai New Year holiday to avoid partaking in the tradition to reduce the risk of infections among elderly family members.

The department advises well-wishers to stay one-metre away from their relatives and bow instead, Dr Somsak said.

The nation will take a five-day break over the Songkran period this year, from April 13 to 17, and many people are expected to make the journey to their home provinces to celebrate with their families, reports the Bangkok Post.

The government has said it wont impose a ban on travel this year. Instead, it will roll out a nationwide campaign from March 21-31 to give 70% of the nations 12 million senior citizens a third jab to better protect them from the virus, Dr Somsak said.

Despite reporting the most deaths from COVID-19 since the pandemic began, only 4mn Thais aged 60 and over have received a booster shot, or about 32% of the senior population, according to the ministrys data on Saturday.

Out of the 66 deaths reported yesterday, 83% were senior citizens.
Southern Pines, NC (28387)

Today

Mostly sunny early with isolated thunderstorms developing this afternoon. High 87F. Winds WSW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 30%..

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 61F. Winds WNW at 5 to 10 mph.


Viewed of

Thank you for reading! On your next view you will be asked to log in to your subscriber account or create an account and subscribepurchase a subscription to continue reading.
The new film Harriet helps us imagine moments we will never live.

By inviting us into unfamiliar worlds, and taking us to unrecognizable times, the film challenges how we think and enhances what we understand. And, like the 2013 Oscar winner 12 Years a Slave, the new film can help shape how we view the world, and ourselves, by sharing situations beyond our immediate reach.

Few of us can imagine what African American slaves endured for hundreds of years. How could people sustain any sense of humanity when treated in such inhuman ways? How could they hope for better tomorrows without owning today? And how could they refrain from judging when so many judged them? Decades of racial tension began with the brutal treatment of people only concerned with monetary gain.

Director Steve McQueen, who created the acclaimed Shame in 2011, wanted to learn more about how slavery has defined the Black experience in America. As he shared at the New York Film Festival in October 2013, he hoped to better understand the tensions of today by taking a clear look at the stresses from the past. I could not remember when I first learned about slavery, but all I could feel was the shame, the director said following a screening of the film at the festival. I wanted to create an authentic truth that would help me embrace this issue, master it and make it mine.

Working from a memoir written by Solomon Northrup in 1853, 12 Years a Slave reaches beyond a conventional Hollywood treatment to create a fascinating view of a culture, not just a devastating view of atrocity. With the precision of a documentarian, the director avoids repeating the standard movie cliches about slavery to reveal new dimensions of this experience. He shows that, while those who own and trade slaves may view people as possessions, others show surprising moments of humanity; while those in servitude may view conditions as sentences, others insist on discovering opportunities. McQueen refuses to let any characters resort to comfortable cinema portrayals of villains and heroes. The people arent that simple.

Solomon is a successful musician, and a free man, who lives in Saratoga, N.Y., with his wife and children in the 1840s. When he accepts an opportunity to tour Virginia for a lucrative fee, he never considers the possible risks. But he is tricked by the men who manage the tour, sold to a Southern slave trader, and enters a world foreign to his instincts and sensibilities. Never could he imagine that people would treat people in this way. How he reacts to the severity of change, and confronts his new conditions, reveals how people can endure. Never does Solomon feel sorry for himself; never does he wallow in self-pity. If he cannot always contain his anger, his sense of inner truth fuels a constructive journey. Solomon inspires us to see the complexities of life as well as reminds us to embrace the potential in our own. As this reluctant hero, the actor Chiwetel Ejiofor draws us behind his eyes to reveal a man trying to resolve his life as he hopes to live each new day. He inhabits the role with a sense of passion and focus that brings an authentic energy to each moment.

While we may never realize how such acts of selfishness have damaged generations, 12 Years a Slave reminds us of the power of perseverance to confront and survive. This film can bind us today, as we look forward, by helping us understand what journey others were forced to complete.

12 Years a Slave is rated R for violence/cruelty, some nudity and brief sexuality. It runs 133 minutes and streams online.
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.
Montreal, CA (H4T1V6)

Today

Cloudy with occasional rain during the afternoon. High around 16C. Winds ENE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%..

Tonight

A few clouds. Slight chance of a rain shower. Low near 4C. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph.
EDWARDSVILLE  A Fredrickstown, Missouri man has been indicted in Madison County for sex crimes against a 12-year-old boy.

William E. McKay, 36, of Fredericktown, Missouri, was indicted by a Madison County grand jury on five counts of predatory criminal sexual assault of a child, all enhanced Class X felonies.

The case was originally presented by the Madison County Sheriffs Department.

According to court documents, between Nov. 1 and Dec. 26 McKay allegedly performed a number of sex acts on the boy.

Other indictments issued include:

 Steven C. Perkins, 21, of Granite City, was indicted for aggravated robbery, a Class 1 felony, and resisting a peace officer, a Class A misdemeanor. According to court documents, Perkins allegedly took a Nintendo Switch from a 13-year-old by threatening him and two 12-year-olds, indicating he had a gun. He also is accused of struggled with a Granite City police officer attempting to place him under arrest.

 Jason D. Hinson, 44, of Florissant, Missouri, was indicted for aggravated battery, a class 3 felony. On \Feb. 28, Hinson allegedly struck a man in the face, fracturing his orbital bone, teeth and nose.

 Tiffani L Adams, 24, of Granite City, was indicted for unlawful possession of methamphetamine, a Class 3 felony. On Aug. 29 Adams allegedly had less than five grams of methamphetamine.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

EDWARDSVILLE  Despite a pandemic, despite being an artform thought outside of the arts' popular lexicon, Opera Edwardsville (OE) has thrived and grown, now celebrating its fifth year as a cultural and nonprofit arts organization.

Opera Edwardsville consistently and professionally has proved its chops, putting world-class talent together each season, for dedicated opera fans and the curious alike. Through its education program, OE has opened the doors to a whole new artist world of young performers.

Opera Edwardsville was voted best new organization in the last five years by the Great Rivers and Routes Tourism Bureau.

The board and I are extremely grateful to the members of the Edwardsville Rotary Club for recognizing the powerful impact an arts organization can have for our community, said OE founder and Artistic Director Chase Hopkins, who divides his time between Edwardsville and Chicago with the Haymarket Opera Co., of which he was named general director last year.

With so many fabulous artists joining for Opera Edwardsvilles performances, likewise we are thrilled to be building an educational platform to create new opportunities and support arts education happening in our area.

Hopkins sees Opera Edwardsville as a continuation of the vibrant arts scene happening in Edwardsville.

A sort of spirit child of the great Mississippi River Festival, he explained, bringing top operatic talent to Edwardsville and Madison County from around the world. None of this would be possible without our sponsors and audiences.

In 2021, Opera Edwardsville had the distinction of being the first local organization to be invited to debut the Southern Illinois University Edwardsville Arts and Issues series, with Opera Edwardsville at Dunham Hall. The Arts and Issues series has welcomed illustrious speakers and artists, including Maya Angelou, Ken Burns and George Winston.

OEs concert was the first that Arts and Issues broadcasted live from Dunham Hall on the SIUE campus.

I am proud that OE was asked to perform as part of the SIUE Arts and Issues Series, Hopkins said.

The university is becoming more and more of an important partner for OE. We have collaborated with the music department to present three student-led productions as part of our Opera for Kids initiative.

Those Opera for Kids include Pinocchio, in 2019, The Three Little Pigs, in 2020, and Jack and the Beanstalk last year.

Additionally, OE has presented masterclasses for SIUE vocal students with Karen Brunssen, a renowned voice professor from Northwestern University and the president of the National Association for Teachers of Singing.

Opera Edwardsville is in an unique position to bridge the university and community through the power of live (or filmed) performance, Hopkins said.

Another important reflection of OEs values and effort to support arts education, is featuring a student spotlight performance at Christmastime.

Three years in, the nonprofit Opera Edwardsville found itself at the brink of its existence due to the new coronavirus pandemic. OE adjusted quickly and effectively.

Instead of letting its annual Christmas at the Wildey concert be something of the past, OE created its free-to-view The 12 Days of Opera Edwardsville series, featuring 15 different performers, which was presented online in 2020 and 2021.

Local performers last year included from Edwardsville, Lebanon, Bunker Hill, Belleville, Glen Carbon and St. Louis, including OEs Grammy winning artistic advisor, soprano Christine Brewer, of Lebanon, and award-winning pianist Joseph Welch, originally from Bunker Hill.

When the global pandemic forced us to cancel our live and in-person program for 2020, Opera Edwardsville went digital by presenting a filmed version of our Opera for Kids, The Three Little Pigs, and a replacement series of online performances in place of our signature December concert, which became The 12 Days of Opera Edwardsville, Hopkins explained.

The 12 Days series was filmed on the historic stage of The Wildey Theatre in downtown Edwardsville by St. Louis production company Once Films.

In its first year, The 12 Days of Opera Edwardsville saw 40,000-plus views across YouTube, Facebook and Instagram, with daily performances released via OE email blasts and at OEs Facebook page. In 2021, the online series saw another 40,000-plus views.

I think this is an incredibly exciting way to connect people with opera, and hope to see OE continue its digital presence, Hopkins said.

Opera Edwardsvilles concerts and education programs would not be possible without the generous support of the 2021 OE business sponsors and individual donors, Hopkins said.

"Throughout the years, around 50 donors, five businesses, and three grants have helped offset the cost of every performance, he said. It's through people's enthusiasm and generosity that OE is able to offer programs for free.

I'm very grateful for the relationships we are building with music lovers and business owners alike. I'm particularly grateful for the long-term support of the Edwardsville Rotary Club, Lewis Rice and Stifel, which have been presenting sponsors for OE since the beginning; also, to the new and flourishing relationship with the city of Edwardsville.

Last year, OE received its first special events grant from the city.

A big thanks to the mayor, alderpersons, city administrator and head of finance for their support in our initial application, Hopkins acknowledged. I'm very excited to see municipal support for OE's free concerts that the entire community can enjoy.

He also gave another big thanks to the Edwardsville Parks and Recreation Department and the Edwardsville Public Library.

And, especially to Jill Schardt and Trina Vetter, for their help in making our dream of an outdoor concert a reality, he said. It really is all about the people and the growing OE family that make this project so special.

It's the poinsettias being delivered from Market Basket every December, the champagne popping from Cleveland Heath, and the paintings and artwork from local artists that are featured on our season posters that make OE a true reflection of this community. I'm grateful for everyone that is involved and look forward to the coming year when we will celebrate OE's fifth anniversary!"

Hopkins asked that if youre not a sponsor already, please consider.

We have big plans for Opera Edwardsville and hope to see it continue to grow and develop, he said. This would not happen without the generous donations that come with each sponsorship.

Sponsors also have ticket access ahead of the general public and receive a number of special benefits to recognize their contribution, including complimentary season posters.

OE's 2022 poster features the work of acclaimed local painter and SIUE professor, John DenHouter. The work captures the mood and atmosphere of OE's first outdoor concert at Edwardsville City Park, with a starry night, glowing lights of the stage and dazzling searchlights in the background.

"Taking the stage at the Edwardsville City Park is one of my favorite OE memories," Hopkins recalled. "It has been a goal to present this sort of event, and because we were concerned for the safety of artists and audiences throughout 2021, outdoors made sense.

I'm so glad this forced us to be bold, and get out there, he noted. Having my team from Chicago join for the sound amplification made the event sound incredible, and there is nothing more charming than a duet with the cicadas.

People brought tables, chairs, candles, flowers and picnics to the park for the event.

I was so happy to see this, Hopkins said. This is very much in the spirit of the great outdoor festivals, like, Tanglewood, Ravinia and Glyndebourne. I can't wait to return to the lawn in Edwardsville.

Details of Opera Edwarsdville's 2022 performances as part of its fifth anniversary season have not been released yet, but will be soon, Hopkins promised.

"We've got some jaw-dropping talent headed to Edwardsville this year. Do not miss out!" Hopkins said.

Visit www.operaedwardsville.org or email operaedwardsville@gmail.com for more information and sponsorship opportunities.
As a young attorney practicing before the Federal Communications Commission, I was often asked by my firm to file pleadings at the FCCs Secretarys Office. Since it was early in my career, I didnt have much of a wardrobe or money. I usually showed up in a sport coat and tie with pressed slacks.

While making the nearly daily filings, I would joke around with office staff and we became very friendly as I would ask about their families and children. Things continued along those lines for a number of months until one day I had occasion to put on my good suit. It was a vested, blue, pin-striped number with requisite crisp white shirt and red tie.

When I walked in to make my filings, the staff began to kid me about my fancy suit to which I replied, yeah, this is my lawyer suit. Its then when I realized that the staff didnt know or think I was a lawyer. I had to show my bar identification card before they would believe it, while they said youre too nice to be a lawyer.

Although I was not offended by their mistake, it struck me as strange and perhaps unfair that I was judged by my clothes and my friendly demeanor as what, not serious or rich enough to be a lawyer?

So there is no similar mistake, President Bidens nominee to serve on the United States Supreme Court, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, has been wearing a black robe for nine years while she has served on the federal bench; first as a United States District Judge and then as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

Yet, Republican Senators want to see her bar identification card because they inexplicably question her qualifications to serve on the Supreme Court. The noted racist commentator, Tucker Carlson, who lately only shows respect for Putin, even demanded to see Judge Jacksons LSAT score. Somehow he isnt satisfied that Judge Jackson graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law. Shes a black woman, so Carlson figures that she is getting by, rather than rightly earning her nomination.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham voted to confirm Judge Jackson for her present judgeship, but now calls her an example of the radical left. Graham wont explain his latest flip-flop, but Judge Jacksons endorsement by the Fraternal Order of Police and in a letter to the Senate signed by 63 law enforcement leaders around the country belies any radical tag.

A number of Republican Senators stated that President Biden should not have chosen his nominee based on race or gender or some combination thereof. But President Reagan chose Sandra Day OConnor based on gender, and there was no hew and cry. In fact, the pick was heralded by a unanimous vote by Senate Democrats confirming Reagans pick.

And we have not heard any Republican Senators noting that Judge Jacksons qualifications far exceed those of U.S. Associate Judge Clarence Thomass when he was under consideration, and who was nominated in large measure because of his race. President Bush was replacing Thurgood Marshall on the Supreme Court so the Black-for-Black replacement was obvious and the criterion unchallenged.

Instead, the criticism mixed with skepticism that Judge Jackson is enduring is evidence of the polarized Senate. To be sure, President Biden could have sent any nominee and the GOP would have balked. But is there some misogynism mixed with racism among the GOP senators who question Judge Jacksons qualifications? You decide.

What is clear, however, is that a double standard is being applied that was not present in the GOPs lightning confirmation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to serve on the Supreme Court. The ranking Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Chuck Grassley, is calling for a long and protracted confirmation process of months to consider Judge Jackson.

Fortunately, Judiciary Committee Chairman, Senator Durbin, is having none of that and the process will begin on March 21 and is scheduled to last four days. And, if all goes right, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson will soon sit on the United States Supreme Court. Its long past time for a Black, female, highly qualified jurist to sit on the Court.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

GODFREY  Renovations are planned for five historic buildings at Lewis and Clark Community College's campus.

In August, the college closed two floors of Baldwin and Caldwell Halls in the Main Complex because of safety and health concerns after HVAC problems led to mold growth.

On Monday, Gov. J.B. Pritzker came to the college to announce a $37.5 million state grant through Rebuild Illinois. LCCC President Ken Trzaska said the project has been a long time coming.

"The Main Complex represents our past, but with this investment it also brings to the forefront a critical investment to our future," Trzaska said.

Trzaska said the college has made numerous updates and repairs to the Main Complex over the last three decades. But because of the age of the facility, and the need to integrate modern mechanical and electrical systems, a complete renovation was the only path forward to return the historic complex to full operations.

He said the college has been working over the past 10 years to secure the funding needed to bring the complex to current code and modernization.

The grant was originally appropriated by the state in the Rebuild Illinois Capital Program in 2019. LCCC alumnae state Sen. Rachelle Aud Crowe, D-Glen Carbon, recognized the need for renovations and was instrumental in acquiring the funds, according to Trzaska.

The project features a renovation of about 170,000 square feet in the Main Complex which includes five historic buildings  Baldwin, Caldwell, Wade, Fobes and Reid. The renovations are partially funded through Rebuild Illinois and an additional $12.5 million local match from the school.

Serving 15,000 students, Lewis and Clark is exactly the kind of institution we should be investing in to fuel economic opportunity in this region," Pritzker said. "And thanks to our Rebuild Illinois capital plan, were celebrating nearly $40 million worth of renovations on the L&C campus today."

The renovation work, scheduled to begin next year, will include mechanical, electrical and plumbing upgrades; health and life safety improvements; the replacement of the fire suppression and fire alarm systems; Americans with Disabilities Act work; lighting and elevator upgrades; interior finishes; and upgrades to the roofing systems, windows, and building envelopes.

LCCC Student Trustee Sam Copeland said that many students love the complex.

"Students can certainly feel how historic this building is when the AC broke," Copeland said. "Students can definitely hear how historic this building is as the floors creak as we walk down the hallways.

"I would personally love to see laughter and conversation come back into the hallways of this building," he said.

Rebuild Illinois money is currently funding three deferred maintenance projects at Lewis and Clark Community College totaling just over $1 million. The projects will address fire alarm system and fan coil unit replacements, as well as critical structure and foundation repairs.

Our community, and Lewis and Clark, are grateful for this meaningful investment and for the states confidence in our work as educators, Trzaska said. The Main Complex is the heart of our campus. It represents our history and now will provide a balance between our history and our future.

Local lawmakers were on hand for Monday's announcement.

These state funds are critical for Lewis & Clark to make the needed repairs in order to safely open the main complex in its entirety for students and faculty," said state Rep. Amy Elik, R-Fosterburg.

Lewis and Clark is arguably one of the best community colleges, not only in the state, but in the nation, Elik said. We will keep that reputation with these necessary renovations.

State Sen. Steve McClure, R-Springfield, said the renovations are vital for the entire region.

I dont think people realize that people tend to stay where they go to school," he said. "This is one of the most beautiful campuses I think in the whole country for any community college. But these renovations are going to help so much to sustain that and to bring us into the future here.

Crowe also noted the college's regional impact.

"As a historic building from the mid-19th century, the Main Complex is the heart of campus for students, faculty and visitors," she said. "Repairs and renovations are necessary to offer stability back to the community.

Trzaka said the college was extremely grateful for the work of local and state legislators, the Illinois Community College Board and LCCC's board of trustees for helping "champion the project" and ensure that students will have a "safe and modern space to learn."

This project represents not only an educational impact for our region, but it also represents an incredible economic impact to the region through the jobs a project of this size will bring to the region, Trzaska said.
The Illinois mask mandate ended on Feb. 28 and more than 8.5 million people in Illinois over the age of 5 have been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus. There were just 715 hospitalizations due to confirmed cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday and 45 deaths due to the virus on Thursday, while there were just four reported Monday.

However, there are places that still require masks, Melaney Arnold, public information officer for the Illinois Department of Public Health, wrote in an email. All individuals, regardless of vaccination status, are required to wear face coverings where federally required, including on planes, buses, trains and other forms of public transportation and in transportation hubs such as airports and trains and bus stations, per the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Additionally, congregate facilities like correctional facilities and homeless shelters still require masks as well as health care settings.

"School districts and private businesses can continue to require masks at their discretion," Arnold wrote. "While masks for the general public are not required, there are times and people for whom they are recommended."

People with symptoms of coronavirus, a positive test or exposure to someone with COVID-19 should also wear a mask, Arnold wrote. The CDC has mask use guidance which offers additional information on when to wear a mask and considerations for specific groups of people, such as those with weakened immune systems or medical conditions that put them at higher risk for severe COVID.

"Layering prevention strategies  like staying up to date on vaccines and wearing masks  can help prevent severe illness and reduce the potential for strain on the healthcare system," Arnold wrote.

The CDC states that masks are primarily intended to reduce the emission of virus-laden droplets by the wearer, which is especially relevant for asymptomatic or presymptomatic infected wearers who feel well and may be unaware of their infectiousness to others, which is estimated to account for more than 50% of coronavirus transmissions. Masks also help reduce inhalation of these droplets by the wearer.

The community benefit of masking for coronavirus control is due to the combination of these two effects, the CDC states. Individual prevention benefit also increases with increasing numbers of people using masks consistently and correctly.

Counties where people should wear masks

The CDC's Community Levels can help communities decide what prevention steps, such as masking, to take based on the latest data. Levels include low, medium and high and are determined by looking at hospital beds being used, hospital admissions and the total number of new COVID-19 cases in an area.

Most counties in Illinois currently are described as low, meaning people should wear masks based on their personal preference, informed by their personal level of risk. Those in low areas are advised by the CDC to stay up-to-date on vaccines against the coronavirus and get tested if exhibiting symptoms.

Counties in the area described as low community-level include Madison, Morgan, St. Clair, Monroe, Bond, Clinton, Jersey, Greene, Calhoun, Scott, Cass, Schuyler, Brown and Sangamon.

The next step up is medium, meaning masks should be worn if a person is immunocompromised or at high risk for severe illness or if they live with or have social contact with someone at high risk for severe illness. People with close contacts who are at risk should consider testing for infection before interacting and wear a mask when indoors with that contact. Additionally, immunocompromised people in medium counties should talk to healthcare providers about additional precautions such as wearing masks or respirators when indoors in public.

Like people in low community-level counties, people in medium are encouraged to stay up-to-date on vaccines and get tested if exhibiting symptoms. Medium counties in Illinois include Macoupin, Montgomery, Adams, Pike and Perry.

Finally, people in high community-level counties should wear a well-fitting mask indoors in public, regardless of vaccination status or individual risk (including in K-12 schools and other community settings). For those who are immunocompromised or at high risk for severe illness, masking is especially important in high community-level counties and those individuals should wear a mask or respirator providing them with greater protection.

Those in high community-level counties may also choose to wear a mask or respirator providing them with greater protection in certain situations, including when they are with people at higher risk for severe illness, or if they are at higher risk for severe illness. Additionally, it is important to wear a mask or respirator when an individual is sick or caring for someone who is sick with COVID-19. A respirator will provide the best level of protection when caring for someone who is sick with COVID-19.

Those in high community-level counties should wear a mask indoors, in addition to staying up to date with coronavirus vaccines and getting tested when exhibiting symptoms.

The only high community-level county in Illinois currently is Johnson County in southern Illinois. Missouri high community-level counties include Lewis and Madison.

Children are still recommended to wear masks

Masks are still highly recommended for people at higher risk for severe illness, as some people remain more likely to become very sick with COVID-19. That includes people who are older and people with certain medical conditions, as well as those who are pregnant, may become pregnant or were recently pregnant.

People at increased risk and those who live or visit with them, should talk to healthcare providers about whether they and the people around them should wear a mask or respirator when the COVID-19 Community Level is medium and should wear a mask or respirator providing greater protection when the COVID-19 Community Level is high.

Children ages 2 years and older can wear masks or respirators to protect themselves and others from COVID-19. Parents should choose a well-fitting and comfortable mask or respirator that children can wear properly, the CDC stated. A poorly fitting or uncomfortable mask or respirator might be worn incorrectly or removed often, reducing intended benefits.

Parents should choose masks that are a size that fits over the child's nose and under the chin but does not impair vision, follow the user instructions for the mask or respirator and understand that some types of masks or respirators may feel different if a child is accustomed to wearing cloth or disposable procedure masks.

Although respirators may be available in smaller sizes, the CDC states that respirators are typically designed to be used by adults in workplaces and therefore may not have been tested for broad use in children.

If a child has a medical condition, such as a heart or lung problem, healthcare providers should be consulted before methods are used to improve mask fit or a child uses an ASTM F3502 mask or respirator. If a child has a hard time breathing, gets dizzy, or has other symptoms while trying to adjust a mask or using an ASTM F3502 mask or respirator, choose a cloth or disposable mask, CDC states. They should continue to protect themselves and others.

Other people who should use masks

People with disabilities may have difficulties wearing a mask, which includes people of any age with certain disabilities. Challenges may be caused by being sensitive to materials on the face, the CDC states, difficulty understanding the importance of mask-wearing for protection, or having difficulty controlling behavior to keep the mask in place, Arnold wrote in an email.

People with certain disabilities or their caregivers can assess whether they need to wear a mask, Arnold wrote. To do this, consider the person's ability to:

Wear a mask correctly (proper mask size and fit)

Avoid frequent touching of the mask and face

Limit sucking, drooling or having excess saliva on the mask

Remove the mask without assistance

People who are deaf or hard of hearing may consider:
On March 8, the United States banned the import of Russian oil and gas, the latest in a slew of sanctions imposed on Russia since the invasion.

But from Kyiv to the halls of Congress, people are urging that the West do more. So what more can and should be done?

The categories of options, in rough order of least to most controversial, include diplomatic, humanitarian, economic, military support and direct military action.

Diplomatic efforts should continue. Chances for success in direct talks with Russia may be low, but the cost of pursuing them is too. A greater U.S. focus is persuading China to press Russia for peace, and rightly so. This war isnt in Chinas interest either. Though China hasnt sanctioned or condemned Russia, Putins violation of Ukraines sovereignty doesnt sit well with President Xi Jinping, and financial sanctions and export controls are complicating for any country that trades with both Russia and the West.

Humanitarian assistance has little impact on the war but is essential to minimize suffering. In addition to financial support to humanitarian organizations and the countries receiving the most refugees, the West should facilitate refugee travel elsewhere, through visa-free travel or expedited visa services, particularly where refugees have family support.

Economic efforts thus far have been historic. The U.S., European Union, Canada, and others have imposed the most comprehensive and consequential sanctions the world has ever seen, including sanctioning the Central Bank of Russia to prevent Vladimir Putins government from accessing most of its $630 billion in foreign currency reserves. These efforts are tanking the Russian economy.

While this could reinforce Putins message at home that the West is out to destroy the Russian people, the cost will undoubtedly impede his war effort. Wars arent cheap, after all.

But more can be done with sanctions, too. The U.S. embargo on Russian oil and gas is the first time America has acted out of line with EU allies since the war began. Germany remains opposed to an energy embargo because it is far more dependent on Russia for gas.

But with energy accounting for nearly 40% of Russias federal budget revenue, cutting off this source of income would strike a further blow to Russias ability to continue the war. The U.S. should continue to press the EU to join this effort and help Germany backfill its energy needs.

While sanctions make it harder for Russia to pay for the war, military assistance helps raise the cost of continuing it. The Ukrainian military and its civilian volunteers have proven formidable but need help to drag this out beyond Russias capacity.

More than a dozen countries have provided or agreed to provide lethal assistance to Ukrainian forces. The European Union will provide about $500 million in lethal arms, a first for the EU. The U.S. has announced an additional $350 million in military aid, with new legislation promising a further $3 billion in new weapons. The provision of thousands of antitank weapons has helped the

Ukrainians keep up the fight and stalled Russian efforts to subdue cities like Kyiv.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has specifically asked NATO countries to provide additional fighter jets, but this invites both logistical and practical issues that suggest the reward might not be worth the risk. Russia would undoubtedly view that as an escalation of NATOs participation in the war, which is why Poland has resisted providing its aircraft directly.

It is also unclear how effective this risky resource would be. Many Ukrainian aircraft are already being shot down. If Ukraine had even more air power, Russia would likely respond by taking out airfields and maintenance facilities. This would render additional aircraft useless unless NATO countries were willing to base and service them in NATO territory. This is something they are unlikely to do if they still aim to stay out of the war. At this stage, other munitions likely remain a better bet.

Calls for NATO to implement a no-fly zone over Ukraine, or parts of it, have proven the most contentious question in public discourse, but NATO leaders have remained of one voice against it so far. A no-fly zone might sound benign and feel essential, but it would put NATO pilots and jets in direct conflict with Russian pilots and jets over Ukrainian territory, likely leading to NATO forces shooting Russian forces down, thus spurring the direct war NATO is seeking to avoid.

The greatest fear is surely nuclear conflict, but even conventional warfare between NATO and Russia becomes World War III. As bad as this war is now, expanding it would be worse.

The fundamental interest of the U.S. and our allies is to protect our direct national interests and prevent war from coming home.

Undoubtedly, Russias war in Ukraine presents a threat to interests we have in our integrated global economy, international norms undergirding peace and the very concept of democracy. But any government must first look out for the direct security of its citizens.

When considering what further actions the U.S. and our allies should take, it helps to keep that imperative in mind.
Westerly, RI (02891)

Today

Rain early...then remaining cloudy with showers in the afternoon. High 58F. Winds E at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%..

Tonight

Cloudy skies early, followed by partial clearing. Low 49F. Winds light and variable.
Sovereign Metals has rutile and lots of it.

In fact, it could have the largest rutile deposit anywhere in the world, if the results of ongoing exploration work go its way.

For anyone not familiar, rutile is a significant source of titanium, a metal widely used in aerospace, clean-tech and medical applications, but which is mainly an essential component in paint pigments.

You can get titanium from ilmenite too, and in some cases rutile and ilmenite are found together.

But the kicker is that it's much more carbon and energy intensive to extract titanium from ilmenite than it is to extract it from rutile.

In other words, rutile is a big tick in the green energy box.

Rutile is a significant source of titanium, a metal widely used in aerospace, clean-tech and medical applications, but which is mainly an essential component in paint pigments

Sovereign's Kasiya deposit in Malawi already boasts a resource of 605million tonnes of ore grading 0.98 per cent rutile, with significant graphite credits.

There are also areas of higher grade, which may well end up being mined first, and a sizeable and ongoing exploration programme which is likely to push the resource base on from its current status as the world's second largest rutile deposit to the world's largest.

What's more, just over half of that total resource has been booked in the indicated category, which adds a welcome robustness to the modelling undertaken in the scoping study Sovereign completed at the end of last year.

This study envisaged an operation that would process 12million tonnes of ore per year to produce 122,000 tonnes of rutile as well as 80,000 tonnes of graphite over a 25-year mine life.

That in turn would generate life of mine revenues of US$6.26billion, or US$251million per year.

What's more, the study was to a degree moderated by what can realistically be achieved by Sovereign itself as a junior to mid-tier miner. Accordingly, the capex for the operation as planned rings in at less than US$350million.

What's the likelihood that if a major company swooped in and bought Sovereign out it would create a still larger operation with bigger up-front costs and greater returns? Pretty good.

But at this stage, although there's plenty of interest across the industry - how could there not be, with the world's second largest rutile deposit? - there are no plans to sell.

For one thing, in its management team, Sovereign has a group of people who are more than capable of getting a mine built for themselves and, which is no small point, who have the in-country experience to do it.

For another, there's still plenty more value to be added yet.

'We know we've got an eminently saleable and desirable product,' says Sovereign's chairman Ben Stoikovich.

Indeed, that's one of the first things he made sure got checked even before the resource base got built up. On his line of thinking, there was no point building a big resource if some serious testing of the material hadn't been done first.

To that end he had a couple of tonnes of ore shipped out from Kasiya to Perth early in the process, and the results from the tests that were conducted ticked all the right boxes.

'Potential end-users and off-takers came to us as we published the specs,' he said. And from that point the company really knew it was onto something.

At the moment, there's 129 square kilometres of known mineralization around Kasiya, although it could go bigger in due course.

But there's already so much of it that where mineralization occurs beneath or near known settlements, the current mine plan just carves out those areas and goes round them.

Not too many mines can afford that kind of luxury, but in the case of Kasiya, social licence and economics aren't really in conflict.

In fact, in Malawi, there's a general hunger for major projects of the kind that Kasiya looks like developing into.

Not too many junior miners operate there at the moment, but the ones that do  and investors will be particularly aware of Mkango  have found the jurisdiction to be welcoming and easy to work in.

The green credentials of the process of mining rutile help too, of course.

Although the ground will be disturbed as the rutile is dug up, it will be returned in essentially the same form minus the rutile after the mining is complete. Rehabilitation in this way of doing things is a constant and ongoing process.

What's more, because natural rutile is the purest natural form of titanium and requires very little processing after extraction, its carbon footprint is much smaller. From an ESG point, that's a major tick. But it also works from the point of view of the economics too.

Typically at the moment, rutile sells for around US$1,350 per tonne, whereas ilmenite sells for just US$200 per tonne. The reason?  buyers know they'll incur significant processing costs when they buy ilmenite that they won't incur when buying rutile.

So why doesn't everyone just mine rutile?

The answer is that there aren't that many pure rutile deposits around. Sierra Rutile has one, but are there any others? Not really.

'It's hugely rare,' says Stoikovich.

And that's all to the good.

'We only know of one other deposit like this,' he adds.

'And for each tonne of rutile you're saving up to 2.8 tonnes of carbon. So if a paint producer bought our product they could literally claim that what they are selling is low carbon paint.

'Rio Tinto is one of the biggest participants in this market. They produce predominantly ilmenite, which they smelt in South Africa using coal-fired power.'

So, with all this potential the plan is now to complete a pre-feasibility study by the end of this year, a process which will also run in parallel with environmental and social impact assessment programmes.

And while all that's going on, guess what?  analysts expect the global supply of rutile to decline by 70 per cent between 2017 and 2030 - or 8 per cent per year.

The timing couldn't be better for a project like this and with the shares at 25p currently it will be interesting to watch it run.
UK stock markets started the week on the right foot, as the FTSE 100 closed up 0.5 per cent to 7,193.5, while the FTSE 250 climbed 1.3 per cent to 20,471.25.

Rio Tinto proposed plans to buy the remaining 49 per cent stake of Canada's Turquoise Hill it does not already own for about $2.7billion.

The move comes as the Anglo-Australian miner looks to ramp up the Oyu Tolgoi copper-gold mining project in Mongolia.

Aston Martin Lagonda saw operating losses narrow to 77million last year from 323million in 2020, as revenues jumped 79 per cent to 1.1billion.

The firm said performance was lifted by stronger trading conditions, an 'enhanced luxury customer experience and heightened brand desirability', which led to 'significant growth' in the key markets of the Americas and China.

British insurer Phoenix Group revealed cash generation for the year was better than expected, helped by growing demand for its pension insurance policies.

The company, like other insurers, recovered ground across the board last year after being hit by a pandemic-fuelled slump in business in 2020.

>If you are using our app or a third-party site click here to read Business Live
Russian-focused firms Evraz, Polymetal, Petropavlovsk and Raven Property will be deleted from all FTSE indexes next week after many brokers refused to trade their shares.

FTSE Russell, the company behind the indexes, said the decision came after feedback from its external advisory committee and investors showed that the ability to buy and sell the shares was 'severely restricted', hitting market liquidity.

'Consequently, this will prevent index trackers from replicating the ongoing inclusion of these names within the FTSE Russell indices,' it added.

Booted out: These companies are unlikely to be re-admitted to the FTSE indexes, analysts say

Analysts say that despite giving EFTs a short-term headache, in the longer run, the elimination of these companies from the FTSE indexes will reduce volatility.

'These highlighted firms have seen huge movements in their shares over the past few weeks,' notes Dan Lane, senior analyst at Freetrade.

'Taking them out reduces the bigger index swings somewhat.'

However, in the case of the FTSE 100, the impact will be limited, given that Evraz and Polymetal had already been demoted from the blue-chip index in the latest reshuffle.

Although FTSE Russell did not say if the move was permanent, it appears these companies are unlikely to be re-admitted to the indexes.

'The assumption is that until such time as liquidity (the ability to trade) returns, the shares will remain deleted until further notice,' said Richard Hunter, head of markets at interactive investor.

'Any return to the index would be a complex assumption of this ability to trade, which looks extremely unlikely particularly given the current circumstances.'

But beyond this, the move raises questions about how investors and index-providers are tackling corporate governance standards.

'FTSE Russell has clearly felt enough pressure to address the firms with clear links to Russia and perhaps some problematic figures,' Freetrade's Lane said.

'In that vein, there might be a short-term win for ESG-minded investors and FTSE Russell might get the thumbs up for swift action, but what does this mean for conflicts or less straightforward links in future?

'The FTSE is filled with resource firms present and operational in countries with shaky regimes and unclear governance standards, is this a sign of things to come or a one-off?'

Shares in Evraz, the Russian steelmaker majority-owned by Roman Abramovich, were suspended by the City watchdog last week after the UK hit the Russian oligarch with sanctions

Shares in Evraz, the Russian steelmaker majority-owned by Roman Abramovich, were suspended by the City watchdog last week after the UK hit the Russian oligarch with sanctions.

A day later, its entire board of 10 directors quit, including three Britons - Sir Michael Peat, Stephen Odell and Deborah Gudgeon - all of whom had previously refused to stand down.

Evraz and gold miner Polymetal had been due to drop out of the FTSE 100 and into the FTSE 250 at the March review.

But their deletion from all FTSE indexes means NB Private Equity Partners and Standard Life Private Equity Trust will now be promoted from the Small Cap index to the FTSE 250, FTSE Russell said.

The London Stock Exchange subsidiary added that the index calculation will continue to use the trading price of the four companies until the close on Friday 18 March.

The move follows FTSE Russell's decision last week to drop Russian bonds from its fixed-income indexes.

Gold miner Petropavlovsk and Raven Property, a property investment group focused on commercial property in Russia, will also be booted out of the FTSE 250 next week.

Shares in all these companies have seen wild swings in recent weeks as the war in Ukraine unfolds/

By midday, Polymetal shares were up 1.2 per cent, Petropavlovsk shares were up 2.7 per cent and Raven Property shares were down 14 per cent.
Phoenix Group has hailed its best financial year ever and upped its dividend payout thanks to solid performances by its recently acquired insurance brands.

The blue-chip listed insurer achieved its highest ever bulk purchase annuity (BPA) premiums of 5.6billion and generated a record 1.7billion in cash in 2021, beating its target range of 1.5billion to 1.6billion.

Around 400million of this cash generation was attributed to cost savings arising from the integration of the Standard Life and ReAssure insurance brands.

Records set: Blue-chip listed Phoenix Group achieved its highest ever bulk purchase annuity (BPA) premiums of 5.6billion and generated a record 1.7billion in cash in 2021

Another 1.2billion derived from new business, which jumped 55 per cent from the previous year, with the overwhelming majority coming from its retirement solutions division.

But its workplace arm and other asset-based businesses also contributed a significant amount due to the company winning 41 small schemes during the year.

Following the impressive results, Phoenix Group has announced an increase to its organic dividend for the first time of 3 per cent as part of a recommended full-year dividend of 24.8p per share.

It hopes to generate up to 1.4billion in cash this year, 4billion in total between 2022 and 2024, and continue to prove 'the wedge' by making more cash from new business rather than its 'heritage' assets.

Chief executive Andy Briggs said: 'It has been an outstanding year for Phoenix, with a record set of financial results and significant strategic progress made as we fully embraced our purpose.

'2021 marked a pivotal moment for Phoenix, with 1.2billion of new business from our Open business more than offsetting the run-off of our Heritage business for the first time.

Acquisitions: Phoenix purchased Standard Life from Edinburgh-based investment company Abrdn for 3.2billion in 2018 and ReAssure from Swiss Re in 2020

'This demonstrates that Phoenix is a growing, sustainable business, and enabled the Board to recommend our first-ever organic dividend increase of 3 per cent.'

Phoenix purchased Standard Life from Edinburgh-based investment company Abrdn for 3.2billion in 2018 before gaining the rights to the Standard Life brand name in May last year, while it bought ReAssure from Swiss Re in 2020.

Steve Clayton, a Hargreaves Lansdown fund manager, said: 'This is a pivotal moment for Phoenix. Ever since the Standard Life acquisition, the group has been talking about 'proving the wedge.'

'The revelation that new business is now more than offsetting the natural decline of the acquired legacy books upon which the group is built shows that the group is now driving its own destiny organically.

'The dividend increase announced today leaves the stock trading on a very attractive yield of 7.8 per cent. Phoenix's challenge is now to prove that they can indeed maintain their new business capabilities and support the growth of their dividend into the future.'

Phoenix Group shares closed trading 0.96 per cent higher at 6.32 on Monday. However, their value has declined more than 14 per cent over the last 12 months.
Instant unlimited access to all of our content on tillamookheadlightherald.com.

The Headlight Herald E-Edition Newsletter emailed to you each week, the night before the paper hits the street!

This subscription is for NEW or RENEWING online subscribers.

(The charge will appear as "Country Media Inc." on your credit card statement)


Thank you for reading! On your next view you will be asked to log in to your subscriber account or create an account and subscribepurchase a subscription to continue reading.


remaining of

SUPPORT LOCAL JOURNALISM! On your next view you will be asked to log in to your subscriber account or create an account and subscribepurchase a subscription to continue reading.
Kingsport, TN (37660)

Today

A mix of clouds and sun. High 79F. Winds W at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

Clear to partly cloudy. Low 51F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph.
How Does Your Newspaper Get to You?
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

ALBANY - Menlo Micro, a tenant at Albany Nanotech that is looking to build a domestic manufacturing site possibly in upstate New York, has raised $150 million for the new facility.

The venture capital was raised to pay for a new factory that Menlo Micro wants to build to make its cutting-edge electronic switches, which are used in everything from electric vehicles and smart home devices to 5G cellular networks and aviation.

Such switches are used in almost every type of electronic device, but the Menlo Micro switch combines the attributes of a mechanical switch with moving parts and a solid-state switch that acts more like a computer chip.

The result is a highly-efficient, extremely small switch that is more powerful than a traditional switch. Menlo Micro calls it the Ideal Switch.

The money was raised from Vertical Venture Partners of Palo Alto, Calif. and the Future Shape fund run by Tony Fadell, who is credited as being the co-creator of the iPhone and the creator of the iPod while he was working for Apple. Others also joined in the investment, including Fidelity Management & Research Co. of Boston.

Menlo Micro (the company's name is officially Menlo Microsystems) has a handful of scientists at Albany Nanotech, which is why the company is looking to potentially build its new factory in upstate New York - perhaps even in the Capital Region.

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has tried to convince the company to build its factory in New York, although the company has said it is looking at other states as well. The company may be eligible for federal and state funding, depending on its plans, which could include leasing an existing building.

Most people think of the computer chip industry as making microprocessors used as the brains of devices like smartphones and computers. But the same manufacturing process is used to make mechanical devices as well.

Chips that handle power such as electronic switches are extremely valuable because power consumption is a huge concern as devices become smaller and more energy efficient. The switches are also used in military radios.

Todays funding milestone underscores the confidence our investors have in Menlo Micros transformative technology to fuel the electrification of everything and modernize the ($100 billion-plus) market for (radio frequency) communications, power switching and protection devices in the 21st century, said Russ Garcia, Menlo Micro CEO.

Menlo Micro currently uses a foundry in Sweden to make its chips, which are also known as micro-electromechanical systems, or MEMS.
In 1777, there were no video games or social media to distract teens, and no after-school jobs or biology tests. In Revolutionary War-era Hudson Valley, there was, however, danger and bravery for at least one 16-year-old girl.

On April 26, 1777, Sybil Ludington, the teenage daughter of an American militia officer, jumped on her fathers horse and rode off alone in the rainy, chilly night. The mission? To alert local Hudson Valley patriots that the British were heading towards them in neighboring Connecticut, riding a 40-mile loop to deliver the message.

What happened next has become part of the regions Revolutionary War history  or legend, or a combination of both, depending on whos telling the story of the teenager often referred to as New Yorks Paul Revere. (Its worth nothing that Ludingtons ride supposedly was double the distance and made under worse conditions, and unlike the silversmith from Boston, she wasnt captured by the redcoats.)

Count Vincent T. Dacquino among the believers.

Do I think she took the ride? Unquestionably, said Dacquino, of Mahopac, Putnam County, a retired English teacher who has written four books on Ludington.

Dacquino became intrigued by Ludingtons story in the mid-1990s when, stopped in traffic enroute to his job at a Westchester school, he spotted one of several roadside historical markers dotting the circuitous route shes believed to have taken while raising the alarm in southern Dutchess and what is now Putnam County.

I said, What? Who is this woman? said Dacquino, who retired in 2007 after 35 years teaching at Pelham schools.

What followed was 25 years of research and genealogical sleuthing, resulting in two childrens books on Sybil and two others for adults. (His latest, 2019s Patriot Hero of the Hudson Valley: The Life and Ride of Sybil Ludington, was originally published in 2000 by Purple Mountain Press in Fleischmanns, Delaware County.)

The story of Ludingtons ride has been doubted by some historians, citing the lack of primary sources, but Dacquino said few, if any, women were mentioned in contemporary publications or military dispatches, no matter what contributions they made to the cause of American independence. That honor, he said, was reserved for men.

They didnt write up womens heroism in the newspaper, Dacquino said.

Sounding the alarm: The British are coming

Putnam County Historians Office & Archive Putnam County Historians Office & Archive The Sybil Ludington bronze statue, with Putnam County officials and the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution at the 1961 dedication, and more recently. (Photo Putnam County Historians Office & Archive) The Sybil Ludington bronze statue, with Putnam County officials and the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution at the 1961 dedication, and more recently. (Photo Putnam County Historians Office & Archive)

He said documents in the Ludington family collection at the New York Historical Society in Manhattan include 19th-century letters written by a niece and nephew who passed along details of Ludingtons story from relatives who were alive at the time she made her ride.

According to those letters, a soldier arrived on horseback at the Ludington farmstead around 9 p.m. to tell Col. Henry Ludington, Sybils father, that the British were headed to Danbury, Connecticut to destroy American supplies stored there. Since the soldier was exhausted and his mount spent, the teenage Ludington saddled a fresh horse and continued sounding the alarm across the countryside, using a stick to bang on the doors and shutters at the homes of sleeping militiamen.

Col. Ludingtons regiment arrived too late to prevent the redcoats from destroying the supplies, but the militia harassed the British column as it advanced on nearby Ridgefield, where the Americans were defeated. One of the patriot officers, Connecticut-born Benedict Arnold, had his horse shot out from under him and was nearly killed. (In 1780, Arnold fled to the British side after his unsuccessful attempt to hand over the fortifications at West Point).

Downtime is the best time Make the most of your Hudson Valley weekend, every week with our newsletter.

After the war ended in 1783, Sybil eventually relocated north to Catskill with her husband, Connecticut veteran Edmond Ogden, and their son, Henry, who was born in 1786. After Ogden died of yellow fever in 1799, Sybil ran a tavern and proved to be a successful businesswoman despite competition from more than 20 male-owned establishments in the vicinity, Dacquino said.

In 1811, Sybil moved yet again, this time with her son and his family to Unadilla in southern Otsego County, where Henry established a law practice. She spent the next 20-plus years helping raise her six grandchildren. Henrys death in 1838 left her in near poverty, and she died a year later, on Feb. 26, 1839, at 77. Her body was brought back to her hometown, where she lies buried next to her father in the Presbyterian Cemetery in Patterson, Putnam County.

Posthumous honors and recognition for Sybil Ludington

Vincent T. Dacquino

In the early 1960s, the story of Sybil Ludingtons ride inspired a local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution to commission a statue in her honor. Noted sculptor Anna Hyatt Huntington, a DAR member, created a larger-than-life bronze statue depicting Sybil riding side-saddle on a rearing horse, her raised right hand holding a stick, her mouth wide open to shout the news that the redcoats were on the march. The statue was unveiled on June 3, 1961, along the shore of Lake Glenida in Carmel.

In 1975, U.S. Postal Service issued a stamp in Ludingtons honor as part of its Contributors to the Cause series for the nations bicentennial.

Putnam County Historian Jennifer M. Cassidy says her office receives many inquiries from authors and students alike who want to preserve the Sybil Ludington story, even in the face of skeptics who doubt some or all of that story.

Her story, passed down through generations of the Ludington family, is a Putnam County treasure and serves as an inspiring tale of facing adversity, rising to the challenge, and helping others, Cassidy said. Sybils ride is a story that reflects the patriotic spirit; she is an original American girl. Sybil is Girl Power.

She was an amazing woman, an amazing wife, an amazing grandmother, Dacquino said. She is a symbol of a true American woman.
Diana L. Porter

SCHENECTADY  An early morning blaze that sent three residents of a Mont Pleasant home to the hospital with non-life threatening injuries does not appear to be suspicious, Assistant Fire Chief Don Mareno said.

The trio, who lived in the upstairs apartment, told fire officials that they had to jump out of the building because the smoke was too thick to get down the stairs at 1121 Seventh Ave.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

ALBANY  For weeks, the spiders have garnered outsized headlines tracking their expected relocation to the East Coast.

Zillions of big spiders are about to invade the East Coast, blared one headline.

Another: "They're big! They're spreading! Should we be afraid of Joro spiders?"

The answer is no, said Alexander Sweger, a visiting assistant professor of biology and Union Colleges resident spider expert. They rarely even bite.

For weeks, headlines have been agog about the Joro spider, a large brightly-colored arachnid native to East Asia that could spread to much of the East Coast after proliferating in Georgia last year.

A new study by researchers at the University at Georgia reveals the Joro spider appears better suited to colder temperatures than a related species.

It has about double the metabolism, a 77 percent higher heart rate and can survive a brief freeze that kills off its relatives, according to the Associated Press, citing researchers who said the spider could probably survive throughout most of the Eastern seaboard.

Joros are also found in much of Japan, which has a similar climate to the U.S. The Joro spider was first identified in the U.S. in 2014 and spread in Georgia last year, with media accounts revealing a population in panic.

One person, for instance, recounted to the Wall Street Journal using a broom to sweep down the sweeping golden webs as her daughter stomped on the palm-sized creatures below.

The Joro  Trichonephila clavata  is part of a group of spiders known as orb weavers for their highly organized, wheel-shaped webs, according to the Associated Press.

Females can measure three inches across when their legs are fully extended, a description that has galvanized the public imagination. Joro spiders are also known for their coloring, Sweger said. Yet despite their bright red, blue and yellow hues  which typically evolve as a warning shot against predators  their eyesight is poor and venom weak, making them a low risk for humans.

The size of the spider doesnt mean its going to be particularly dangerous because of their bite, Sweger said.

The spider is an invasive species, and could have deleterious impacts on native ecosystems, he said.

The results are in See the winners of each category of the 2022 Best of the Capital Region contest, as determined by popular vote.

Yet unlike the spotted lanternfly, which feeds on plants, secretes honeydew and overall leaves their hosts weakened, the jury is still out on the potential destructiveness of the Joro.

Theres some evidence that they havet been as destructive as other species have, Sweger said.

Spiders are generally beneficial for the ecosystem because they remove pests, he said.

Sweger said the Joro spreads by using a parachuting technique in order to catch air, with babies then spiraling back down.

That distribution method, paired with their alien look, creates the recipe for widespread public unease, he said.

But while they can disperse rapidly, fears of an invasion are largely misplaced, Sweger said.

Youre not going to have hundreds of three- or four-inch spiders raining down, Sweger said. Ive worked with spiders for 15 years and Im still constantly baffled at how freaked out people get.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

ALBANY  A man who viciously beat and strangled 62-year-old Valena Shepherd in her city high-rise apartment off Lincoln Park is facing 25 years to life in prison for murder.

Lee Williams, 40, known as Dutch, was convicted of the 2020 second-degree murder of Shepherd after an Albany County jury deliberated for less than four hours on Thursday.

The victims blood had been found on Williams jeans and sweatshirt, which police located in a garbage bin in the basement of the building, prosecutors said.

Williams, a former Queens resident who lived for a time in the city mission, has a prior conviction for burglary. He met Shepherds home health aide on a dating website, then began staying with the health aide in another apartment in the high-rise at 1 Lincoln Square, a public housing tower on Morton Avenue, prosecutors said.

On Jan. 4, 2020, a few weeks after Williams moved in, the health aide was planning to take Shepherd to the bank but she could not reach Williams on the phone. The next day, the health aide notified Shepherds son she could not reach her. The son went to his mothers apartment and found her dead, prosecutors said.

The victim, who suffered blunt force trauma to her face and neck and severely broken ribs in the attack, had been strangled by someone using an electrical cord, prosecutors said.

The health aide told investigators that she understood Williams brought Shepherd lunch that afternoon. She said Williams returned sweaty, acting erratically and changed his clothes, prosecutors said.

Two days before the murder, Williams was present as the victim and his girlfriend counted the victim's money, prosecutors said. The count took place in the girlfriend's apartment and prosecutors said the money totaled at least $1,600.

Over the next three months, homicide investigators learned that Williams had stolen Shepherd's engagement ring and pawned it. He was walking around Albany carrying a backpack full of stolen electronics from Shepherd's apartment, then tossed it into a garbage can on Delaware Avenue. A person sent the bag to police, prosecutors said.

Williams, who testified in his own defense, pinned the murder on the home health aide, prosecutors said.

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 jury was unmoved. After a nearly three-week trial before Albany County Judge Andra Ackerman, the jury convicted Williams of second-degree murder.

The case was prosecuted by Assistant District Attorney Michael Shanley. Williams was represented by Assistant Alternate Public Defender Francisco Calderson.

Sentencing is scheduled for May 13.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Tina Walker got the call on Feb. 17, the day 46 students at North Albany Middle school were sent home for various infractions.

Her daughter wasn't even at school that day. Walker had kept her seventh grader home that week after she had a falling out with her teacher over a Black history month lesson.

Two years ago, her daughter was an honors student pulling As at Arbor Hill Elementary school, she said. Now, her grades have plummeted. "They have my daughter labeled in the in-crowd. Because she speaks up for herself, she is labeled as disrespectful," Walker said. (The Times Union is not naming Walker's daughter because she is a minor.)

Walker, who works with teenagers through a step-dance organization she owns, questioned the sweeping suspensions. She said she believes adolescents act out when they lack guidance and structure.

"Why are we not listening to our youth? They are screaming out for help, but instead, we just keep punishing them," Walker said.

In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, schools throughout the region are seeing heightened behavioral challenges  fights, vandalism and general disrespect from students  raising difficult questions about how to best approach school discipline in times of crisis.

Educators say they are in a tough position; they recognize that disruptive student behavior is likely driven by a range of personal, academic and psychological challenges compounded by the ongoing pandemic, but teachers are also burnt out.

In Albany, school officials say teachers first seek restorative solutions to misbehavior rather than punitive ones, but safety has become a concern due to a high number of physical altercations.

"We definitely want to keep students in school, but we have to make sure students are behaving appropriately and are not creating an unsafe environment for other students," Albany Superintendent Kaweeda Adams said in a recent interview. "Just because there is a restorative practice in place, doesn't mean there aren't consequences for behaviors."

The district since mid-winter break has beefed up its security and supplied counselors to students at the high school in response to a Feb. 17 fight between two students in a stairwell that sent a student and an intervening staff member to the hospital.

Suspensions are often joined with restorative supports, such as conflict resolution exercises or a call to home from a school social worker, Adams said. In education, "restorative" means building a community around the students and strengthening their relationships with peers and adults.

"We want to make sure students know what it means to be part of a school community," she said. "Do you need help with school? Do you need a mentor? Often we will see behavioral problems increase when students aren't doing well in school."

The Albany school system historically had one of the state's highest punishment rates. The district has worked to bring down its suspension rate and invested in restorative practices after a 2015 investigation by the Attorney General's Office found that Black and disabled students were far more likely to be suspended than their peers. The district's pandemic challenges threaten that progress.

Numerous studies have found that suspensions do not work and the racial disparities are stark, with students of color disproportionately affected by the practice. In the Capital Region, Black students are between 2 and 10 times more likely than white students to be suspended from school, according to federal civil rights data.

Studies show that being suspended can dramatically increase the likelihood of a student abusing substances, dropping out of school or becoming involved in the criminal justice system.

The state Education Department has not yet published last year's suspension rates, but national statistics suggest the practice dropped off significantly during the 2020-2021 school year when many students were remote. Now many schools are back to suspending students to control the school environment.

School leaders said they anticipated students would need more support in 2021-2022, but were caught off guard by the scope of their needs. Most districts also started the school year with staff shortages and school psychologists have long been in short supply, even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In Rotterdam's Mohonasen district, school officials say they dedicated the first week of school to helping kids make the transition back to the classroom, but it wasn't enough.

"We were trying to be proactive in meeting the needs of the kids, but the reality is that the fall was more challenging than we expected ... students struggling with emotional regulation, physical altercations," Draper Middle School Principal Rick Arket said.

Officials had to set a firm line and suspended a number of students, though the suspensions were followed by restorative circles, Arket said.

The results are in See the winners of each category of the 2022 Best of the Capital Region contest, as determined by popular vote.

"We saw a shift around Thanksgiving. Students started to get into a rhythm and while school is not perfect, we are moving towards getting to a sense of normalcy," Arket said.

Advocates are hopeful the state Legislature will this year pass a law limiting schools' use of suspensions, which they argue just ostracizes children and is ineffective.

"When you suspend someone and then implement restorative practices, you've already got it wrong," said Jasmine Gripper, executive director of Alliance for Quality Education. "The whole idea is that no one is disposable in our community and everyone is a valuable member of our community. It's about the ability to hold people accountable."

The Solutions not Suspensions bill, which has been floating around since 2015, would essentially ban the suspension of students from kindergarten through third grade in New York, prohibit faculty from suspending students for minor infractions, and limit long-term suspensions to a maximum of 20 days, instead of the 180-day maximum that is currently in place.

Johanna Garcia, chief of staff for state Sen. Robert Jackson (D-Manhattan), a sponsor of the bill, said the objective of the proposed legislation is not to restrict educators but to create some parameters around school discipline.

"Recognizing that it has been a challenging year for everyone, we need to acknowledge that there are different ways to deal with inappropriate behavior. It's really a symptom of social-emotional issues that have gone unaddressed," Garcia said.

Many school districts talk about restorative justice, but without system-wide buy-in it's unlikely to work, according to Garcia.

"You have adults who are trying to make a difference, but they are overwhelmed," Garcia said.

Ruth Turner, a former Rochester school administrator known for her restorative justice work who joined the state Board of Regents in March 2021, agrees.

Restorative practices require deep cultural change starting with the staff who conduct daily restorative circles amongst themselves.

"We know that students do better academically, they engage better, they have less of the disruptive behavior when they feel they are in communities with each other," Turner said. "I tell educators, 'I promise you. You will save time down the road.'"

The Rochester City School District has been recognized for its successful implementation of restorative practices on a system-wide scale through a partnership with the University of Rochester. In three years, from 2013-2014 to 2016-2017, the district's overall suspension rate fell from 19 percent to 4 percent. For Black students, it fell from 23 percent to 5 percent.

"It's a shift in thinking. It is heart-and-mind work ... and we have to believe that our students deserve it," Turner said.
State Education Department officials unveiled new educational standards for private schools at the Board of Regents' March meeting Monday, narrowing the scope of what public school districts would have to oversee.

The draft regulations provide multiple "pathways" for non-public schools to demonstrate that they are providing educational programming that is "substantially equivalent" to that of public schools, as New York law requires.

The local review pathway would apply to fewer institutions than it did in the first iteration of the rules, which in 2019 were struck down by a Supreme Court judge who said they must be subject to public comment. The public comment period for a previous version elicited more than 85,000 emails, many of them in opposition.

Under the new rules, most parochial and independent schools are exempt from demonstrating to school districts that they meet the state's academic standards because they would pursue other "pathways."

The department introduced the regulations in 2019 in response to criticisms that some yeshivas in insular Jewish communities were failing to provide a basic secular education and the state was doing little to enforce existing standards.

Our state is rich in diversity, from our cultural, racial, and religious backgrounds to the languages we speak, Board of Regents Chancellor Lester W. Young, Jr. said in a statement. These differences are assets that should be embraced so we can learn from each other. The Board and I are committed to ensuring students who attend school in settings consistent with their religious and cultural beliefs and values receive the education to which they are legally entitled.

After holding numerous in-person and online forums with public and private school stakeholders, the education officials say they incorporated elements of the feedback into the new framework, taking into consideration various instructional models, emphasizing core subjects like math and English, setting clear expectations for school districts and establishing a complaint process.

Many private school leaders asked the state not to create extra paperwork or require them to duplicate existing accreditation processes.

Any school that is accredited or administers state tests is exempt from the review process, as are state-approved private schools serving students with disabilities, according to the proposed rules.

Other non-public schools will be subject to a review by the local school district.

The results are in See the winners of each category of the 2022 Best of the Capital Region contest, as determined by popular vote.

A two-year review process will begin in September 2023 with public school districts identifying all of the independent schools in their boundaries.

School districts will be advised to respect cultural differences. BOCES could have a supporting role, state officials said.

We have an obligation under the law to ensure all students receive an education that enables them to fulfill their potential and teaches them the skills and knowledge needed to contribute to society and participate in civic life, Commissioner Betty Rosa said in a statement. Through our robust stakeholder engagement over the past two years, we listened to all parties, and their feedback is reflected in our new proposed regulations.

Some educational experts who have pushed for more oversight of private education are concerned that the updated regulations are too easy to circumvent.

"The regulations gut the statute by not requiring instruction in the specific areas required under state law," said David C. Bloomfield, an education professor at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center. "These pathways are loopholes that any of the suspect schools can walk through exempting them from any investigation."

Public comments on the proposed guidelines will be accepted from March 30 through May 31, 2022.
Press Release

March 14, 2022 In NPA's 'Birthplace,' Lacson Pushes Unity vs Insurgency

More at: https://pinglacson.net/article/in-npas-birthplace-lacson-pushes-unity-vs-insurgency It is time for the Filipino people to unite and end more than five decades of insurgency that has blighted the Philippines. Sen. Panfilo "Ping" M. Lacson made this call on Monday as he visited Isabela province, where the New People's Army (NPA) was born in Jones town in 1969. "Dapat talaga, the Philippines deserves a better peace and order and prosperity. Dapat magkaisa-isa na tayo para ang kapayapaan at katahimikan mamayani sa ating bansa at tuloy umasenso na tayong lahat (I believe the Philippines deserves a better peace and order and prosperity. We should unite so there will be peace and prosperity in our country and we can live better lives)," Lacson said at the flag-raising ceremony in Cauayan, Isabela. "Our country needs strong leadership, someone with vision and the ability to implement peace and order," he added. Lacson noted that during the five decades of insurgency, more than 2,000 people have been killed while billions of pesos had been lost to the NPAs who collect revolutionary taxes and burn the equipment of businessmen who do not cooperate. Also, he pointed out President Rodrigo Duterte himself has cited intelligence information indicating the Communist Party of the Philippines, NPA and National Democratic Front may have "infiltrated" the campaigns of some camps. Lacson said the Philippines has already experienced twice the scenario of those identified with the CPP-NPA getting government posts - with the NPA gaining strength each time. "Napansin namin, ang lalakas ng armas so pag nasa govt ang CPP NPA lumalakas ang pwersa nila within the govt bureaucracy itself (We noticed that when those in the CPP-NPA join the government, the NPA's weapons become more powerful)," he said, adding the people can no longer allow the CPP-NPA to enter into a "coalition" with the government a third time. In his speech, Lacson also recalled his stint in Isabela in 1988 as then provincial commander of the Philippine Constabulary. During his stint there, he said he stopped the NPA's practice of conducting checkpoints there, and enforced the Constabulary's checkpoints. He cited one mission where the NPA ambushed his men, with Lt. Rosauro Toda - a member of Philippine Military Academy Class 1986 - among the fatalities. Lacson noted the ambush had been meant for him, had Toda's reinforcing group not hit the ambush site ahead of the main force which he was leading. Lacson, who is running for President under Partido Reporma, visited Isabela province with his vice presidential bet, Senate President Vicente "Tito" Sotto III. Sotto, in his speech, noted he had worked for the cityhood of Cauayan. The call of Lacson is in line with the Lacson-Sotto tandem's platform of giving Filipinos a better life by fixing the ills in government (Aayusin ang gobyerno, aayusin ang buhay ng bawat Pilipino), and going after crooks especially in government (Uubusin ang magnanakaw).
We hear the phrase a lot today: Faustian bargain. Newspaper columnists use it; so do TV pundits and talk show hosts. It refers to the ancient tale of Faust whose evil covenant lends him godlike power in exchange for his immortal soul.

Current political commentators most often use the phrase in connection with members of Congress who support Donald Trump in the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him, even though they dont believe it. The reward for this double-dealing is votes, and thus continued tenure in office and the power it conveys.

In the original story, there was no love between Faust and Mephistopheles, the devil who arranged the hellish swap. Nor, I would guess, is there any real love between todays Republican lawmakers and the former president. It is merely a marriage of political convenience.

Thats what makes the case of Albert Speer so different and so fascinating from a Faustian point of view. In 1946, standing before the International War Crimes Tribunal in Nuremberg and facing possible execution by hanging, he made this remarkable statement: If Hitler had had any friends, I would certainly have been one of his close friends.

Born into an upper-middle-class family, Speer was intelligent, handsome, and hard working. With no apparent interest in politics, he seemed almost oblivious to the civic upheaval in the turbulent 1920s of the Weimar Republic. After receiving a degree in architecture from the prestigious Technical University of Berlin, he began teaching there, and one day some of his students coaxed him to attend a Hitler rally. He went, and was smitten. Soon after, he joined the Nazi party. He was 25 years old.

His architectural skills eventually brought him into the Fuhrers inner circle, where he fulfilled Adolf Hitlers megalomaniac dreams by designing some of the most colossal structures ever conceived. Still, he considered himself nonpolitical, just an artist undertaking the commissions of his powerful and generous patron. But World War II changed all that.

When the German armaments minister died in an airplane crash, Hitler appointed Speer to take his place, even though Speer had never been in the army and knew nothing about arms production. But he turned out to be a brilliant choice.

Speer had phenomenal organizing skills. He assembled a highly competent staff. He was dynamic, had the ability to improvise, could make important and crucial decisions quickly, and he encouraged criticism from below. Also, he learned to play the political game in order to do his job more effectively. What Speer accomplished has been called the armaments miracle. By the last year of the war, and despite continuous Allied bombing, he was producing more armaments than there were armies to use them.

After Germanys surrender in 1945, Speer was arrested and indicted for war crimes, specifically for using slave labor in his factories. Many of the workers were concentration camp inmates who lived in appalling conditions. Among the 23 top Nazis tried at Nuremberg, he was the only one who seemed penitent. He pronounced the trial fair and justified, which infuriated his fellow defendants. And though he claimed not to have known about the Final Solution or the gas chambers, he nevertheless accepted full responsibility for all the crimes of the regime. The tribunal was impressed and gave him a 20-year sentence instead of the death penalty. Admirers applauded his stance and called him the good Nazi. Skeptics contend it was merely a clever ploy to avoid the noose.

Sign up for the Observation Deck newsletter Read the latest Times Union opinion, perspective and letters to the editor on Mondays by signing up for our Observation Deck newsletter.

He was 61 when he was released from Spandau prison. His memoirs, Inside the Third Reich and Spandau: The Secret Diaries, published a few years later, made him a best-selling author. More than once during his many interviews, he likened himself to Faust, and Hitler to Mephistopheles, dangling mighty commissions before him that no architect could turn down. More revealing, Speer admitted that even with full knowledge of the consequences, he probably could not resist such a bargain were it offered him again.

But there is more to his bond with Hitler than artist and patron. Speer conceded many times that he was in Hitlers thrall. A colleague once said to Speer, Do you know who you are? Youre Hitlers unrequited love! Hitler may have viewed Speer as the son he never had, or perhaps the artist he never became. Their best times together were planning the great buildings Hitler sketched and Speer designed. This love, if it did exist, might explain why Hitler did not have Speer shot near the end of the war when he found out Speer was countermanding his scorched earth policy. Well never know. Speer was not an emotional man, not even with his wife or his six children. But in his book, Speer admits that he wept uncontrollably when he heard the news of Hitlers death.

So, a Faustian bargain? For sure. But many people  then and now  have sold their souls to the evil one. Albert Speers tragedy was that he seems to have thrown in his heart as well.

Richard Matturro of Stephentown, a former Times Union librarian and retired UAlbany professor, will be conducting an online course called The Good Nazi? Albert Speer: Hitlers Architect for OLLI  Osher Lifelong Learning Institute  at Berkshire Community College beginning March 22. www.berkshireolli.org/AlbertSpeerSpring2022.
Just when we thought it was safe to be optimistic about the future of the regions best-known eyesore, Central Warehouse in Albany, here comes developer Evan Blum with yet another smoke-and-mirrors attempt to retain ownership.

Mr. Blum bought the 11-story building close by I-787 for $1 in 2017, saying he would pay the years of delinquent taxes and revive the monolith as an arts center. Nothing came of it, and now he owes nearly $600,000 in back property taxes and city code violation fines.

A judge waiting for Mr. Blum to come through finally gave up and granted Albany County a foreclosure judgment Feb. 15.

Earlier this month, though, Mr. Blums attorney asked for a temporary restraining order on the foreclosure, saying his client is close to selling another building for $700,000.

In other words, the building hasnt sold. Mr. Blum isnt showing up at county offices with cash to pay off the debt or put workers in the building. This isnt a March Madness redemption story. This is Groundhog Day. Heres hoping the court rules Cut! on Mr. Blums latest plot twist.

More money than sense

Only the Saratoga County officials who created the Saratoga County Prosperity Partnership in 2015 saw its potential.

The Partnership was clearly created out of spite after the long-standing Saratoga Economic Development Corp. refused to allow town supervisors to sit on its board, hoping to keep politics out of its work.

Now, after funneling some $4 million into the Partnership, the county has little if anything to show for it, other than reports from its various presidents trips over the years. The Partnership started struggling financially for the first time during the pandemic as bed tax revenue, which it relied on for funding, tanked.

Earlier this month, the Partnership voted unanimously to transfer all duties to the countys Planning and Economic Development Department.

We bid adieu to the Partnership and look forward to a more unified county approach to economic development.

SUNY back to its senses

Sign up for the Observation Deck newsletter Read the latest Times Union opinion, perspective and letters to the editor on Mondays by signing up for our Observation Deck newsletter.

Normally it wouldnt be news that the State University of New Yorks Board of Trustees plans to do a global search for its next chancellor.

Thats what should happen when seeking a leader for a public university system of 64 institutions that serve nearly 1.3 million students.

Whats more, the search committee will include subcommittees made up of SUNY students, faculty representatives and other stakeholders. An executive search firm, Isaacson, Miller, will help the committee recruit and review applicants, with a goal of presenting the full board with a list of finalists for consideration.

This wouldnt be so noteworthy if it werent such a refreshing departure from the last time SUNY hired a chancellor, picking Jim Malatras, a longtime aide to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, without a search in August 2020. Mr. Malatras resigned this past December after text messages and leaked recordings of his allegedly toxic behavior toward colleagues and employees in previous state and SUNY jobs came to light.

Too bad SUNY has to learn the hard way how to do it right.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

ORISKANY  Past the farm silos along Cider Street, a former airport hangar that's been turned into a make-believe town has been turned into a "cityscape."

In this staged setting, law enforcement authorities train for dangerous situations in the confines of the facades of the fictitious Rosterfield High School, Red Stripe Bar & Grill and the Bean County Courthouse. Officers conduct active-shooter drills and search-and-rescue missions at Readmore Books and the Boom Town Cafe.

But last week, the hangar was filled for the first time with state-funded "violence interrupters," many of whom are formerly incarcerated individuals with a long history entangled in New Yorks criminal justice system.

The dozens gathered there, including several training to become part of Albany's SNUG program, were part of the state's expanded efforts to address gun violence outside of more traditional measures that normally focus on increased police resources.

During a break in their week-long training, they took part in a news conference with Gov. Kathy Hochul and state Division of Criminal Justice Services Commissioner Rosanna Rosado and Homeland Security and Emergency Services Commissioner Jackie Bray.

"Law enforcement will always be critical to our threat response, but equipping law enforcement cannot be our sole focus," Bray said about SNUG, which is poised to see three times its normal funding in the state budget being negotiated at the Capitol.

Absent from the training forum were any debates about the cause of the recent spike in gun violence, or the controversies that have engulfed the states bail laws.

Less than a year ago, former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo had declared a state of emergency on gun violence  a declaration that is still ongoing  as he became swarmed by scandalous allegations that led to his resignation.

Hochul has extended the state of emergency, which has enabled the state to distribute money to help community-based organizations deal with the problems from the fallout of the surge in violence across the state.

Those emergency dollars are now expected to become the typical funding moving forward, based on Hochuls executive budget proposal that includes $224 million for combating gun violence.

Most of that money would be devoted toward law enforcement services, including hiring more police; the governor has been critiqued by her gubernatorial competition and the Republican Party for not being tough enough on crime.

A portion of the money, $25 million, would "triple investment in community-based gun violence response," according to the governors office. Of that, about $16 million is intended to bolster SNUG's outreach, which was initially budgeted at $4.5 million last year.

"Youll be on the front lines to fight gun violence and were all counting on you," Hochul said as some of the trainees held up their phones to broadcast the event to their friends back home.



After the speeches concluded and a group picture was snapped, four people from Albany at the "SNUG" training sat down to discuss what brought them there and what they had learned so far.

Mike Groll/Mike Groll/Office of Governor Kathy Hochul

"Four people sitting here with a felony at one point in life, who were looked at as the problem," 35-year-old Essence Harris said.

SNUG usually enlists people who were previously involved in crime in the community and but now committed to being a credible messenger within that community.

The employees, with their street savvy and criminal backgrounds, strive to prevent issues from escalating into violence. If there are violent acts, they look to make outreach and stop any retaliatory acts that often lead to an unending cycle of violence in inner-city communities.

SNUG's program are funded by the same pot of money that pays for State Police. Many law enforcement officials welcome their efforts that augment what police do but enable the SNUG volunteers to act in a role that leaves them detached from law enforcement.

The credibility of SNUG was solidified two years ago for Harris.

Her nephew was stabbed to death in Albany in March 2020. SNUG was the first group there to help her, she said. They stayed with her family late into the night.

The fatal stabbing was part of a record-high string of homicides in the city during the first year of the coronavirus pandemic as the implementation of new criminal justice policies intended to create more equity in the courts stumbled out of the gate.

The violence in Albany and across the state prompted the state Legislature to declare gun violence a public health crisis; the executive chamber began funneling more money to community resources to quell the concerns.

Since last summer, SNUG has increased its employment by more than 50 percent. It's now around 175 employees. In Albany, the workforce has nearly doubled, up to 21, according to the Division of Criminal Justice Services. That includes people like Harris.

"This is the first time I had a job that I was able to get a job based on what Ive been through," Harris said. "And its the first time Im doing a job that I dont have to be ashamed that I don't have a college degree. I dont have to be ashamed I went to prison."

Community-based groups have been concerned, based on interviews in recent months, that they may see a decline in the funding that they sometimes struggled to use during the spike in violent crime this past summer.

"This is an emergency, this is a crisis and we're addressing it from both sides," Rosado, the DCJS commissioner, said in an interview. "We're arming law enforcement and we're also arming the street teams."

If the Democratic-controlled Legislature agrees to Hochuls spending plan on gun violence, particularly around SNUG, it should mean new outposts in Schenectady, Niagara Falls and Utica.

It would also mean nearly two dozen responders working in hospitals or trauma centers and increased funding for helping people both with immediate needs, like a coat in the winter, and long-term needs, like a sustainable job.

A first priority for the new SNUG members is to make amends so they can uplift their communities.

"I taught these kids a lot of the things that theyre doing," Lafayette Jackson, 42, said. "Im embarrassed to say that. So now Im out here trying to clean up my mess."

He hit his breaking point when one of his biggest fears came true: His mother died while he was in prison.

Jackson said he lost control. He was not allowed to go to the funeral, which left him feeling no closure around his mother's death. He shifted his focus. He got a GED and then an associates degree in business.

When he was released from prison but said he had no resources. He eventually found SNUG and looked to give back after acknowledging his prior history.

Devon King, Jr. was one of the people Jackson taught, but also someone he pulled out of the street life.

"Ive done bad for most of my life," King said. "Im 36 now. I have six children and a wife. I dont want my legacy to be that I didn't do everything in my power to make not only my familys life better, but the kids around me better."

King felt like he had let down his parents, his kids and himself by never graduating high school or college. When he received an acceptance letter from the Albany SNUG program, it was a turning point.

"I dont know if you guys still have your copy, but I actually framed my copy," King said. "Its the only time anything stating that something that I did wrong, or put it in a good light, and said I would be perfect for a job. That changed my life. And with a salary behind it."

King and Dennis Plowden go back 15 years, they said.

Mike Groll/Mike Groll/Office of Governor Kathy Hochul

Plowden, 38, said that for many teens the SNUG programs remain relatively unknown, despite best efforts from state and local partners.



"All they know about is just coming outside and just proving themselves to somebody, just to be accepted," Plowden said. "Thats what all of this is about. They dont want to be bad. They just want to be accepted."

Hes hopeful that SNUG, with the growth of the Albany-based team, can address underlying issues they experienced when growing up in the community.

"Theres a stigma in every ghetto," Plowden said. "Theres also a stigma that nobody cares on this side, the government side. Thats not always true."

Jackson, the relative elder in the group, interjected: "When youre out there, youre one of those children, you think the whole world is against you."

He described the partner organizations and state agencies under one roof last Wednesday in the mock town in Oriskany village as people coming together from their respective silos for a common good.

"You think nobody is rooting for you, you think nobody cares," Jackson said. "People do care, it just takes a village to raise a child."
ALBANY  A new poll found 58 percent of New Yorkers support ending qualified immunity, a practice that can protect on-duty police officers and public officials acting within their duties from liability for civil rights violations.

About 753 voters answered a survey in February commissioned by EndQINY, a grassroots group working to abolish the doctrine. Of them, 32 percent said they strongly supported eliminating the policy and 26 percent said they somewhat supported the proposal.

A bill in the state Legislature sponsored by state Sen. Robert Jackson, D-Manhattan, and Assemblywoman Pamela J. Hunter, D-Syracuse, would create a state-level "cause of action," or legal justification, which would allow individuals who allege their rights have been violated to file lawsuits against the accused officials, where the qualified immunity defense would be prohibited.

The legislation remains stalled at the committee level in the Legislature.

If a plaintiff can point to a prior case from the same federal jurisdiction with an identical set of facts, the public official would not also be entitled to the qualified immunity defense.

The issue was raised in a 2018 case in which Alexander Baxter, a Tennessee man, sued police who unleashed a K9 that bit him after he had already surrendered and was sitting on the ground with his hands in the air. He attempted to sue for excessive force, but a federal appeals court dismissed the claim due to qualified immunity in 2018, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case.

Prior to the incident, another case had held that it was unlawful to unleash a police dog against an unarmed suspect laying on the ground with his hands at his sides without warning.

Still, the court found the facts insufficient when deciding whether to prohibit the use of qualified immunity in Baxters case.

Qualified immunity also has arisen in Capital Region cases involving use of force by police. Last year, the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals declined to grant qualified immunity to a deceased Troy police sergeant, Randall French, who had fatally shot an unarmed DWI suspect in 2016 following a brief car pursuit.

The appellate court upheld a federal magistrate's decision denying qualified immunity in that case, in part, because eyewitness testimony called into question the officer's claim that the shooting was justified.

The appeal focused on a June 2019 decision by U.S. Magistrate Daniel J. Stewart rejecting the city's motion to dismiss the case. He had noted in his ruling that conflicting witness accounts raised too many questions about the city's claim that French was constitutionally authorized to use deadly physical force. The city had argued that French, "in a moment of existential terror, found himself pinned between his squad car and the still accelerating vehicle of Edson Thevenin."

Five months after that Second Circuit decision, the city of Troy settled the federal lawsuit with Thevenin's widow and the couple's two sons for $1.55 million.

Approximately 62 percent of the individuals polled recently on the issue supported a policy requiring the details of constitutional violations allegedly committed by public officials to be made public, regardless of the presence of a court ruling against the accused.

An overwhelming 85 percent said theyd support a measure requiring police officers to wear active body cameras during a search warrant execution. The device would be operational five minutes prior to and after the execution of the warrant. Additionally, 73 percent said theyd support a ban on neck restraints during arrests or while detaining someone, except in the event of an emergency.

The debate on qualified immunity saw a resurgence after the killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minnesota police officer Derek Chauvin, who was convicted of murder and manslaughter charges.

Around 48 percent of respondents in the Hudson Valley and 65 percent in upstate New York supported ending the practice of qualified immunity. In the Hudson Valley, only 23 percent of respondents opposed ending the doctrine; 24 percent said they didnt know. Those numbers were similar upstate, where 18 percent expressed opposition and 17 percent were unsure about how to respond.
ALBANY In an unprecedented move, the state Senate and Assembly revealed their one-house budgets over the weekend with provisions to fully fund the Fair Pay for Home Care Act.

The decision is a major step forward for the highly anticipated legislation, which lawmakers and advocates say needs to pass this year in order to avoid a collapse of the system. New York is facing the worst home care shortage in the nation, according to a recent Mercer labor market analysis.

The bill would raise the minimum wage for home care workers to up to $22.50 an hour. Home health aides currently make as little as $13.20 an hour upstate. With wages higher at grocery stores and fast-food chains, scores of aides have left the industry.

The legislation still needs to be passed in a final version of the states budget, something that typically happens at the end of March. From here, it will be negotiated by state Assembly Speaker Carl E. Heastie, Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Gov. Kathy Hochul.

Hochul did not include the bill in her budget. Instead, she opted for one-time $3,000 bonuses for home care workers that choose to stay in their jobs for a year, a highly criticized choice among advocates.

Ilana Berger, co-executive director of the New York Caring Majority, said that shes hopeful that Hochul will take a lead and address the worsening situation. "The governor needs to do the right thing," Berger said.

Without the legislation, there could be a surge in the number of elderly and disabled people who could be pushed into nursing homes or die without proper care, according to Berger, who added that there are people across the state in dire straits because of the lack of care.

One of them, Renee Christian, a 33-year-old mother from Buffalo, suffers from cerebral palsy. She is entitled to 120 hours a week of home care, but within the last year has received about 70 hour per week.

Previously, during a six-month period, she went without assistance for days and nights, causing her to fall asleep in her wheelchair. Her home care situation has been severe for the last three years. Despite that, she helped her 9-year-old daughter get ready in the morning and make the school bus. Meanwhile, her body started to deteriorate, she said.

Christian is now receiving evening and overnight help. In the mornings, she continues to go without assistance. The lack of care is stopping her from living life to her fullest capabilities, she said, noting she limits when she drinks fluids to avoid using the bathroom on herself.

"I don't get the choice to go to the bathroom when I want to. I gotta wait until I have somebody or I go on myself," she said. "I should be able to just go to the bathroom when I choose like everybody else, but thats not how it works for people like me."

Christian is constantly trying to find help, competing with jobs that can offer workers $17 an hour. The wages arent enough to sustain her aides' livelihoods, Christian added.

Most of them cant afford to pay rent or keep food in their fridges, she said, meaning that disabled people like herself are left to their own devices when those workers decide to go elsewhere.

"We need our support, but it doesnt make us bad people for needing support. Im a really good person and Im really loved in my community. Im a good mother," she said. "My support does not define who I am, when I need it to be who I am."

A coalition of home care workers, providers and patients sent a letter to Hochul on Monday, urging her to include the legislation in the final version of the state budget.

It stated: "The fact that all of us have come together on this issue shows the breadth of support for Fair Pay for Home Care  and the urgency of this growing crisis."
Provided photo

ALBANY La Empanada Llama, a Peruvian restaurant approaching its ninth anniversary in June, was closed from March 1 to 10 after a small fire caused by a gas leak. It reopened Friday.

No one was injured, according to Andrea Lloyd-Coronado, who worked with her parents, Maria and Joseph Lloyd, to launch the restaurant in June 2013 after five years of selling Peruvian food at area farmers markets.
Members of Congress took part in seven significant U.S. House votes this week, while U.S. Senators had four key votes this week.
The Taoiseach donned both Irish and Ukrainian colours at the St Patrick's Day festivities in London yesterday (Sunday March 13).

The tricolour was joined by the flag of Ukraine - carried by London-based Ukrainian Natalia Lesyuk - at the parade which was led by Micheal Martin.

The Taoiseach wore both a blue and yellow scarf and a green scarf in solidarity with war-torn Ukraine as he addressed the gathered crowds.

Speaking on stage, the Taoiseach said, Part of our St Patricks Day programme also of course, given the terrible dark cloud that hangs over the world and Europe in particular, in the form of what has been a barbaric and immoral war on the people of Ukraine, its important that as we come together during the St Patricks Day festival that we highlight and illustrate and show our solidarity with the people of Ukraine.

And were pleased that joining us today as a grand marshal has been Natalia Lesyuk, part of the Ukrainian community here in London, who is with us today and we are with you Natalia and your family back home in Ukraine, in solidarity, and we want to say we will do everything we can to support you and your people and its an honour to have you with us this afternoon at the parade.

Ms Lesyuk, 57, who is from western Ukraine and has been living in London for almost 30 years, said she was very grateful to be a grand marshal in the parade.

She said, Im very grateful that I was invited and to feel Irish community support and solidarity, I think its everything, it means a lot to my people.

Ms Lesyuk said it means a lot for every single Ukrainian who lives around the world in every single country, and she said that for the people back home the carrying of the flag in the parade will show them that theyre not forgotten and they will never be forgotten and they will be supported everywhere.

She said she has been protesting daily to show support for people in Ukraine.

Just to let them know, be brave. They are brave, she said, adding: I cannot comprehend how brave they are, all of them. Fearless. And I know that they will stand there until the last bullet.

Ms Lesyuk said Irelands acceptance of refugees from Ukraine has been incredible, adding that people in Ireland have opened their hearts to Ukrainians.

Ireland has so far accepted 5,500 people fleeing the Russian invasion.

Ms Lesyuk said she had goosebumps thinking about the Irish response, adding: I have no words.
As a result of the EU / EC's three aviation packages in 1986, 1990 and 1992, the EEA area became a common aviation area with harmonized regulation. Through its EEA agreement, Norway gained access to the EU aviation market on an equal footing with all EU countries. Liberalization led to a strong growth in scheduled services, freight and passenger transport, as well as cheaper tickets and the establishment of more low-cost airlines. A new report from the Institute of Transport Economics have looked into how this effected conditions for Norwegian aviation employees.

Although the report shows that the majority who work in aviation in Norway and in Europe have direct employment, more people work without being directly employed in the company they work for and thus have atypical form of employment. Increased proportion of atypical employment contributes to challenging conditions for employees legally and puts pressure on pay and working conditions for all. In addition, several European studies and our interview data show that atypical employment might have a negative effect on air safety.

Airlines are split up and re-organized. Through "regulatory shopping" across national borders, airlines put pressure on other airlines to do the same in order not to fall behind in the competition for customers. Consequently, the industry needs better regulations and better control at national, Nordic and EU level.

Liberalization has led to lower wages for cabin crew

In spite of having lost in wage growth compared to average industrial workers in the last two decades, on average the pilots in Norway still have very solid wages and are one of the job categories that earn the most.

Cabin crew, on the other hand, have gone from being a relatively well-paid to a low-paid occupational group. The fact that a great number of cabin crew work part-time also has a negative effect on their financial situation.

According to Norwegian surveys and research interviews in this report, both pilots and cabin crew experience demanding shifts and report a lot of health problems compared to other occupational groups. Working in aviation puts a strain on family life for many. A great amount also report that they have a bad relationship with their employer.

Measures to improve conditions for employees and companies

The study recommends a number of measures to better regulate the company structures in aviation and implement better control at national, Nordic and EU level. These include:

Change requirements for public procurement. Do not allow collaboration to win public tenders. Introduce an Oslo / Norway model for public tenders.

Implement a benchmark index or a generalization of tariffs or produce a nationwide tariff agreement between the main organizations for the pilots and the cabin crew and NHO Aviation.

Cooperate with the other Nordic countries to improve working conditions both in the Nordic region and in Europe. This may include; the aviation inspectors to use common methods to uncover anti-social conditions, share data, work for a common understanding and application of law, generalize tariffs, implement an Oslo / Norway model, implement collective redress law and Nordic Ecolabelling of airlines.

Set stronger requirements in the tenders for the FOT routes where wage and working conditions are set in accordance with a generalized collective agreement or benchmark index, make tender winners establish a local base, make sure at least one employee on each flight speaks Norwegian, and set a maximum working hours limit at 10 hours a day.

Strengthen the supervisory authority and knowledge of the Civil Aviation Authority through increased resources, ensure that, among other things, all employees on "Norwegian" domestic routes receive work and HSE supervision, and establish a Norwegian national center for aviation research.

Improve Norwegian legislation for employees in the aviation sector by defining the terms home base and operational base, prevent atypical employment situations, and establish a strategy to prevent incorrect use of self-employed.

Work for various measures at EU level, including reducing the maximum permitted working hours from 14 to 10 hours a day, continuing the work against social dumping in aviation and following new developments and issues.

Read an english summary here

Read the full report in Norwegian hereLink to the report

Contact senior researcher Inga Margrete Ydersbond here

Illustration photo: Jon Christian Fjellestad
Cash for a nationwide corporate scandal is coming to the courthouse.

Here's the latest . . .



Jackson County to receive $13 million in opioid settlement



KANSAS CITY, Mo.  Jackson County Executive Frank White, Jr. is announcing today that Jackson County will receive approximately $13 million as part of a historic, nationwide opioid settlement with Johnson & Johnson and major opioid distributors. The county filed a civil lawsuit in 2018 against the nations leading pharmaceutical companies for their deliberate and deceptive marketing strategies of opioid painkillers, resulting in high overdose and fatality rates throughout Jackson County.



The case was managed by a team of attorneys from the firms of Williams Dirks Dameron LLC, Simmons Hanley Conroy LLC, Hardwick Law Firm LLC and Boulware Law LLC, under the direction of the Jackson County Counselors Office.



While the settlement funds will provide us with the opportunity to make real improvements in Jackson County, it is important to remember that these dollars will never come close to repairing the harm done by opioid addiction in our communities, said Jackson County Executive Frank White, Jr. No amount of money will turn back time and fix all the lives that have been irrevocably damaged, all the families that have been broken, nor will it bring back any of the loved ones lost due to a crisis born from the greed of pharmaceutical companies. I am committed to making sure that these dollars are used to repair as much of the damage as we can, while also ensuring that we reduce the pain that continues to happen in Jackson County because of opioid addiction.



County Executive White has requested that the Jackson County Health Department begin planning for the use of the funds, which under the settlement agreement, will be used to assist with prevention and treatment programs related to the opioid crisis. Possible plans include coordinating with the CORE4 jurisdictions as the County looks for opportunities to maximize opioid education and support to the community.



We acknowledge that this settlement will not atone for the immense suffering, loss, and interpersonal harm experienced by many as a result of systemic failures and greed, said Interim Jackson County Health Director Ray Dlugolecki. The Health Department will work collaboratively with partners and those harmed by this crisis to identify an equitable and strategic investment of these dollars to help save lives, reduce harm, and build capacity for controlling this public health crisis.



Settlement funds will be paid over a term of 18 years, with initial payments occurring as early as April 2022. Jackson Countys $13 million allocation is part of a nationwide settlement valued at approximately $26 billion.



###

Developing . . .
Because the newspaper somehow forgot that they're publishing in an increasingly small Midwestern town . . . Today they're running an editorial offering high praise for socialism.



Sure, they're talking about the Swedish model that also funds a world renowned bikini team . . . Which is fitting because most popular understanding of macroeconomics is pretty much a fantasy.

Here's their premise . . .



"The best-treated, most favored and ostensibly intelligent part of our society is the most ungrateful. Indeed, ingratitude has become integral to its social functioning. This, at least in part, explains why, for them, socialism has become a bete noire and an obscenity."

Sure . . .



This screed might appeal to a few post-grad students and economists . . . Everyone else will realize this homespun treatise as yet another sign that the fading dead-tree institution is not only losing touch with their last remaining readers but also becoming increasingly separated from reality.



Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com news link . . .
Quick bit of jock strap talk tonight . . .

KANSAS CITY PUNDITS PRETEND THAT OUR FUTURE DEPENDS ON PRO-SPORTS SUCCESS!!!



The stance is easy to decipher given that the teams spend MILLIONS worth of local advertising.

Even worse . . . Jackson County is confronting at least a BILLION BUCKS worth of a stadium decisions in the next decade.



However, all the cash that pro-sports generate doesn't come close to refunding that money which taxpayers grant to billionaire owners and millionaire athletes.

In fact, let's not forget . . .

"From a return-on-investment standpoint, economists and researchers almost universally agree that stadiums are unlikely to generate anywhere near the level of tax revenue needed to offset the public subsidies tied to their construction."



Here's their side of the argument . . .



There is now competition for the events. The tournaments will be in Kansas City through 2025, but looking forward the city will need to bid on the events again, this time with 4 new teams entering the Big XII Conference.



The Sports Commission is bidding on the World Cup, and will soon know if it will be a host city. Its also looking forward to hosting the NFL Draft in 2023.

Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com link . . .
Middle and high school students in Vigo County seem to be following the statewide trend of less cigarette use, but youth advocates are worried the lure of vaping may have replaced one health hazard with another dangerous habit.
Stay up to date on COVID-19

Get Breaking News

Sign up now to get our FREE breaking news coverage delivered right to your inbox.

Sponsored By: Dorsett Automotive
Instant unlimited access to all of our content on triplicate.com.

The Triplicate's E-Edition Newsletter emailed to you each week, the night before the paper hits the street!

This subscription is for NEW or RENEWING online subscribers.

(The charge will appear as "Country Media Inc." on your credit card statement)


Russian crimes against civilians in Ukraine and what is generally referred to as Russcism have surpassed the atrocities of fascism.

This was stated by Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, Oleksiy Danilov, during a national telethon, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"At the National Security and Defense Council, we are now compiling a dictionary, and the word 'Russcism' already even exceeds 'fascism'. When there were fascists, they were even more tolerant of civilians. Whats happening in Mariupol, Kharkiv and other cities is modern Russcism, which, I emphasize, is even worse than fascism that we saw in the middle of last century," Danilov said.

He also recalled the bombing of a maternity hospital in Mariupol and the cynical remarks made by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

As of today, 85 children have died and almost 100 have been injured as a result of the Russian armed aggression in Ukraine, Ukrinform reported

On March 9, during an air raid, the aggressor destroyed a maternity hospital in the city center, a clinic, a children's ward, and a therapy unit in Mariupol.

On March 10, at a press conference in Antalya, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov acknowledged that the bombing of the clinic and maternity hospital in Mariupol was a purposeful move. He claimed the maternity hospital had allegedly been used as a base for the Azov Battalion.
Cases where Russian soldiers massively refuse to be deployed in Ukraine are being recorded.

This is stated in the operational update on the Russian invasion as of midnight on March 14, 2022, posted on the Defense Ministrys Facebook page.

The eighteenth day of the Ukrainian peoples heroic resistance to the Russian military invasion is over.

Russian occupation forces continue their offensive operation against our nation. They are trying to gain a foothold in the occupied positions and maintain the pace of the offensive in certain areas.

In order to increase the number of groupings in Polissia, Tavriya, and Pivdenyi Buh operational areas, the enemy is forming and deploying to Ukraines borders their strategic reserves.

There have been cases of mass refusals by Russian servicemen to be deployed in Ukraine" to take part in hostilities, despite promises of "war veteran" status, additional daily allowances, and higher salaries.

Ignoring the norms of international humanitarian law, the Russian occupiers continue to destroy stationary military and civilian infrastructure in Ukraine. Thus, on March 13, Russian strategic warplanes carried out missile strikes targeting a number of sites in Uman, Ivano-Frankivsk, and Starychi. In addition, the launches of the Iskander ballistic missiles from the territory of Belarus continue.

Volyn direction: the enemy carried out demonstration operations involving Belarus army units along the State Border of Ukraine.

Polissia direction: units of the occupying forces undertook measures to restore combat capability, regroup their troops, and improve logistics. Not to be caught off guard, the enemy is conducting proactive reconnaissance.

Northern direction: the enemy focused on regrouping, replenishing supplies, and preparing to resume the offensive toward Brovary.

Slobozhansky direction, the enemy is trying to gain a foothold on the gained positions, regrouping troops and trying to resume offensive operations toward the cities of Kharkiv and Sumy.

Izium direction: as a result of active offensive action by Ukrainian troops, the enemy suffered losses in the area of  Topolske, Shpakivka, and Donetsk, being forced to retreat.

Donetsk and Tavria directions: enemy units are trying to carry out assault operations, focusing their main efforts on advancing in the direction of Severodonetsk. Attempts to capture Mariupol remain unsuccessful.

Pivdennyi Buh direction: the enemy is trying to conduct raids and gain a foothold on the gained positions.
Russia is developing a special operation on the territory of Belarus, planning to involve Belarusian soldiers sporting Russian uniforms in the war against Ukraine.

This was stated during the "UA: together" telethon by Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, Oleksiy Danilov, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"Today, a special operation is being developed in Russia to be conducted on the territory of Belarus. Now they are really willing to put Russian uniforms on Belarusian soldiers. Some of the latter are refusing to fight against our country, but now the FSB and the special services that are there on their territory, are persuading Belarusians to put on Russian uniforms and move into our territory. But we are ready for this, and I warn you: if we find Belarusians here, they will face the same rebuff as the Russians and the Chechens," Danilov said.

According to his words, now the Chechens in Ukraine are performing the function that was once performed by the Soviet NKVD security operatives, who were shooting those who attempted to retreat. At the same time, the NSDC secretary mentioned the incident that occurred on March 12, where Chechens shot dead 12 wounded Russians in Kyiv region.
Strong people of an unbreakable country!

Today is the 18th day. The 18th day of our war for life, for Ukraine, for independence.

The beginning of this day was black. Russian missiles and air bombs hit our country again. From east to west.

30 missiles for the Lviv region alone. The shelling of the International Center for Peacekeeping and Security killed 35 people and wounded 134 others.

Nothing was happening there that could threaten the territory of the Russian Federation. And only 20 kilometers away are NATO borders.

Last year, I made a clear warning to NATO leaders that if there were no tough preventive sanctions against Russia, it would start a war. We were right.

I have been saying for a long time that Nord Stream is a weapon that will hit Europe. Now it's obvious.

And now I repeat again - if you do not close our sky, it is only a matter of time before Russian missiles fall on your territory. NATO territory. On the homes of citizens of NATO countries.

An American journalist was killed in the Kyiv region today. Brent Renaud. His colleague was wounded. It was a deliberate attack by the Russian military.

They knew what they were doing. But not everyone in the West seems to know what they are doing.

In the east of our country, the invaders decided to "demilitarize" and "denazify" the Sviatohirsk Lavra of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Moscow Patriarchate.

At the time of the attack, only monks and hundreds of refugees were on the territory of the monastery. No military target in or near the monastery. But Russian troops do not stop even before striking at the monastery.

This fact alone demonstrates that the whole ideology of the Russian state is simply a lie.

Today I visited our guys, our defenders who are recovering from wounds at a military hospital.

We talked. I presented awards. Orders and medals - for courage, for glory for Ukraine.

And I really want my greeting "I wish you good health" to work today as powerfully as our Armed Forces have been holding key frontiers. For 18 days already.

By the way, the Russian military from Ryazan is being treated in the same hospital. He is in the same ward with our defenders. Gets the same aid. From the same doctors. Despite what this guy was doing. Against us, against Ukraine. But Ukrainian doctors saved him. And this is obvious. Because they are people. Not savages. And we have to go through this war so that we all remain human.

I am grateful to all the doctors and nurses who work in Kyiv and Dnipro, in Vinnytsia and Lviv, in Chernihiv and Donbas, in Kharkiv, in Melitopol, in Mariupol...

Everyone!

Mariupol Military Hospital.

Pokrovsk Military Mobile Hospital.

Chasiv Yar Military Mobile Hospital.

Military Medical Clinical Center of the Eastern Region.

Cherkaske Military Hospital.

Military Medical Clinical Center of the Central Region, Vinnytsia.

Military Medical Clinical Center of the Western Region, Lviv.

Military Medical Rehabilitation Center, left Irpen, but continues to work.

Sincere gratitude!

From all of us. From all Ukrainians.

I also visited checkpoints today. I didn't want it to be very public.

Just to support our guys. To talk. Courageous men, cheerful guys. Who defend Kyiv and know that WE will win. It is felt.

We will win due to our unique ability to unite.

We can always care for our people. Ours in spirit, in heart, in sincerity.

I met an extraordinary person there at the checkpoint who supports our defenders every day and brings them a pot of borscht every day. Really delicious! Truly Ukrainian. Wholeheartedly. And I know that our state has been based on such people for centuries. It is thanks to such people that we will survive any dark days. Because we are together. And we always protect our own people. And our own property. NOT for money. Without coercion. NOT like those who came to us. Just because we are Ukrainians.

Important international negotiations. Bulgaria, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Romania, Poland, Britain.

We feel the support of these countries. We feel the support for our army. It is important.

I also spoke with Charles Michel, President of the European Council. About our European perspective, which is becoming a reality.

Now about the negotiations with the Russian Federation.

Representatives of our countries delegations speak in video format every day. Our delegation has a clear task - to do everything to ensure a meeting of the presidents. The meeting that I am sure people are waiting for.

Obviously this is a difficult story. A hard path. But this path is needed. And our goal is for Ukraine to get the necessary result in this struggle, in this negotiation work. Necessary for peace. And for security.

So that we have guarantees - normal, effective. NOT like the Budapest ones and not like in our sky. So that Ukrainians could say: this is what works. These are the guarantees.

It is necessary to talk.

More than ten humanitarian corridors worked. Kyiv region, Luhansk region... 5550 people were saved in one day. In six days - more than 130,000. It is necessary to talk.

And this is also due to negotiations. We have to understand that.

Unfortunately, the humanitarian corridor to Mariupol was blocked. Again. We did everything necessary. Ensured "silence". Russian troops disrupted the movement of cargo and buses.

But we will try again. Until we can help our people. Because they are ours. Our Mariupol. Heroic Mariupol.

Ukrainians!

We are going through the worst ordeal in our history. In our lives. We protect the most precious thing we have. We must hold on. We must fight. And we will win. I know that. I believe in that.

Glory to you!

Glory to our people!

Glory to our heroes!

Glory to Ukraine!
The task of the Ukrainian delegation in the talks with Russian officials is to do everything possible to ensure that the Ukrainian and Russian presidents meet.

This was stated by President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky in his video address to the nation, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"Now about the negotiations with the Russian Federation. Representatives of our countries delegations speak in video format every day. Our delegation has a clear task - to do everything to ensure a meeting of the presidents. The meeting that I am sure people are waiting for," Zelensky said.

He noted that such a meeting is "a difficult story," a difficult but necessary path. "

And our goal is for Ukraine to get the necessary result in this struggle, in this negotiation work. Necessary for peace. And for security. So that we have guarantees - normal, effective. NOT like the Budapest ones and not like in our sky. So that Ukrainians could say: this is what works. These are the guarantees. It is necessary to talk," the president stressed.

He cited the organization of 10 humanitarian corridors as a positive example of previous rounds of the negotiation process. "More than ten humanitarian corridors worked. Kyiv region, Luhansk region... 5550 people were saved in one day. In six days - more than 130,000. It is necessary to talk. And this is also due to negotiations. We have to understand that," Zelensky said.

As reported, on February 28, the Ukrainian and Russian delegations held the first round of talks in Belarus and traveled to their capitals for consultations on further decisions. According to Mykhailo Podoliak, an adviser to the head of the Presidents Office, negotiations between the delegations were difficult, but without any ultimatums.

On March 3, the second round of talks between the Ukrainian and Russian delegations took place.

According to Podoliak, the Ukrainian delegation did not achieve the results it had hoped for in the talks with Russia. At the same time, the parties agreed to jointly ensure humanitarian corridors for evacuating civilians and delivering medicines and food to the sites of the fiercest fighting, ceasing fire for the period of evacuation.

During the third round of talks with the Russian delegation, which took place on March 7, the Ukrainian delegation suggested positive results were achieved in the context of humanitarian corridors logistics.
Russian invaders set up headquarters at the railway station in the temporarily occupied Trostyanets of Sumy region.

"Trostyanets remains occupied by the Russian fascists. Their headquarters are at the Smorodyne railway station. They placed equipment there and fire on populated localities," Dmytro Zhyvytskyy, Head of Sumy Regional Military Administration, posted on Telegram, Ukrinform reports.

As Ukrinform reported, on March 13, Zhyvytskyy informed that Russian military looters had robbed an ambulance substation in Trostyanets. They stole three ambulances. Now the city has only one ambulance left.

On February 24, Russian president Putin declared war on Ukraine and launched a large-scale invasion. Russian troops shell and destroy infrastructure, conduct massive shelling of residential areas of Ukrainian cities and towns using artillery, MLRS, and ballistic missiles.

Martial law was imposed in Ukraine and general mobilization was announced.

ol
The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom will host Nordic and Baltic leaders next week to discuss European security amid Russian aggression.

A relevant announcement was published on the website of the British government.

As noted, the Prime Minister will host the leaders of the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF), a northern European security coalition, bringing together representatives from Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Sweden and Norway. They will discuss the immediate crisis in Ukraine but also long-term energy security and how they can help Ukraine rebuild again after war.

Earlier, Johnson said that an analogue of the Marshall Plan would be developed for the post-war reconstruction of Ukraine.

On February 24, Russian president Putin declared war on Ukraine and launched a large-scale invasion. Russian troops shell and destroy infrastructure, conduct massive shelling of residential areas of Ukrainian cities and towns using artillery, MLRS, and ballistic missiles.

Martial law was imposed in Ukraine and general mobilization was announced.

ol
Tens of thousands of people took to the streets of Canadian cities on Sunday to protest against Russia's war in Ukraine.

As an Ukrinform correspondent reported, the largest rally organized by the Ukrainian Canadian Congress took place in Toronto. About 10,000 people marched along the central part of the city. They held Ukrainian flags and posters with words of support for Ukrainians and demands for the Canadian government to strengthen sanctions against Russia and close the sky over Ukraine.

Thousands rally in Canada in support of Ukraine / Photo: Misha Lytvynyuk, James Coughlan, Ukrainian Canadian Congress  Toronto Branch

In Ottawa, several thousand people joined a rally near the City Hall. Foreign diplomats, including the Ambassador of Estonia, addressed the protesters, assuring them of continued support for Ukraine's sovereignty.

In the capital of the province of Manitoba, Winnipeg, despite the frost, hundreds of people took to the streets to express solidarity with Ukraine.

Rallies in support of Ukraine also took place in Saskatoon and several other Canadian cities.

Canada is home to more than 1.3 million people of Ukrainian descent, being the third-largest Ukrainian community outside of Ukraine and Russia.

On February 24, Russian president Putin declared war on Ukraine and launched a large-scale invasion. Russian troops shell and destroy infrastructure, conduct massive shelling of residential areas of Ukrainian cities and towns using artillery, MLRS, and ballistic missiles.

Martial law was imposed in Ukraine and general mobilization was announced.

ol
During a telephone conversation Sunday, U.S. President Joe Biden and President of France Emmanuel Macron discussed Russia's war against Ukraine and underscored their commitment to hold Russia accountable for its actions.

U.S. President Joseph Biden and President of France Emmanuel Macron discuss Russias war against Ukraine. They reviewed recent diplomatic engagements and underscored their commitment to hold Russia accountable for its actions and to support the government and people of Ukraine, the White House press service reports.

In turn, the press service of the Elysee Palace informs that President Macron had a conversation with Biden, and then talked to President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky.

In a conversation with Biden, Macron expressed condolences over the death of American journalist Brent Renaud in Ukraine. It is noted that the leaders agreed to strengthen sanctions against Russia, support Ukraine, and jointly take all measures to end hostilities.

In a conversation with Zelensky, Macron expressed full support for Ukraine and spoke in detail about the additional assistance that the European Union decided to provide at the recent EU summit in Versailles. The two heads of state exchanged views on the resumption of talks between Russia and Ukraine and agreed on further coordination.

The war against Russian invaders has been going on in Ukraine since February 24.

The United States, the European Union, and other countries have imposed sanctions on Russia as an aggressor state whose international isolation is growing every day.

ol
The Armed Forces of Ukraine have inflicted devastating blows on the enemy's rear infrastructure in order to disrupt its system of logistical support.

The nineteenth day of the heroic resistance of the Ukrainian people to the russian military invasion has begun. Status, position and nature of actions of the defense forces are without significant changes. The Armed Forces of Ukraine inflicted devastating blows on the rear infrastructure (field bases and warehouses) in order to disrupt the system of logistical support of the enemy in the territories of Ukraine temporarily occupied by the occupiers, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine posted on Facebook.

Over the past day, four planes, three helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles (information on the type is being clarified) were hit by the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

The occupying forces did not have significant success in conducting an offensive operation in all directions. The main efforts of the occupiers were focused on consolidating and retaining the previously occupied borders.

Repeated cases of the enemy's use of civilian infrastructure, including religious sites to equip firing positions, deploy weapons and military equipment, have been reported, reads the report.

The moral and psychological state of the enemy remains low, which leads to the refusal of servicemen of the Russian Armed Forces to carry out the orders of the command.

According to available information, a military camp of the Belhorod Military Commandant's Office is located in the city of Belhorod on the territory of the russian federation. The camp holds russian servicemen who have been discharged from hospitals after treatment and are waiting to be sent to units. Also in the specified camp there are servicemen of the Armed Forces of the russian federation who refuse to take part in hostilities, with them actions of pre-judicial inquiry are carried out, the General Staff informs.

Regarding the readiness of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Belarus to wage war with Ukraine, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine notes: According to one of the high-ranking officials of the special operations forces of the Republic of Belarus, special forces of the Armed Forces of Belarus will not take part in the war with Ukraine.

On February 24, Russian president Putin declared war on Ukraine and launched a large-scale invasion. Russian troops shell and destroy infrastructure, conduct massive shelling of residential areas of Ukrainian cities and towns using artillery, MLRS, and ballistic missiles.

Martial law was imposed in Ukraine and general mobilization was announced. Ukraine repels Russian invaders.

ol
Ukraine's position in talks with Russia regarding peace, a ceasefire, the immediate withdrawal of troops and security guarantees remains unchanged.

Mykhailo Podoliak, an adviser to the head of the President's Office, said this on Twitter, Ukrinform reports.

"Negotiations. 4th round. On peace, ceasefire, immediate withdrawal of troops & security guarantees. Hard discussion. Although Russia realizes the nonsense of its aggressive actions, it still has a delusion that 19 days of violence against Ukraine's peaceful cities is the right strategy," he wrote.

Negotiations. 4th round. On peace, ceasefire, immediate withdrawal of troops & security guarantees. Hard discussion. Although Russia realizes the nonsense of its aggressive actions, it still has a delusion that 19 days of violence against  peaceful cities is the right strategy pic.twitter.com/BhFLgBSKiu    (@Podolyak_M) March 14, 2022

On February 28, the Ukrainian and Russian delegations held the first round of talks in Belarus and traveled to their capitals for consultations on further decisions. Podoliak noted that negotiations between the delegations were difficult, but without any mandatory ultimatums.

On March 3, the second round of talks between the Ukrainian and Russian delegations took place.

According to Podoliak, the Ukrainian delegation did not achieve the results it expected in the talks with Russia. At the same time, both parties agreed to jointly provide humanitarian corridors for the evacuation of civilians, as well as for the delivery of medicines and food to the sites of the fiercest fighting with the possibility of a temporary ceasefire for the period of evacuation.

During the third round of talks with the Russian delegation, which took place on March 7, the Ukrainian delegation received positive results in the context of the logistics of humanitarian corridors.
Russian invaders continue to destroy the residents and settlements of the Luhansk region.

According to Ukrinform, the head of the Luhansk regional military administration, Serhii Haidai, announced this on Facebook and published a photo of burning apartment blocks.

"Ghost towns. The occupiers continue to destroy the inhabitants and settlements of the Luhansk region. Some 57 cases of shelling of towns and villages in the Luhansk region over the past day. Peaceful residents were killed and injured as a result of the 'Russian liberation.' It is extremely difficult to count them exactly, because the shelling does not stop," he wrote.

Haidai said that 47 private and multi-storey buildings and infrastructure facilities were damaged or destroyed in the cities of Sievierodonetsk, Lysychansk, Rubizhne and Popasna on March 13.

The shelling also damaged two schools and a gas pipeline in Sievierodonetsk.

He said that there is lack of employees of the State Emergency Service, because it is burning everywhere, and enemy shells continue to fly.

"Towns in the region cannot be recognized. [] In the photo, you can see Sievierodonetsk, there are similar photos in each settlement of the region, the residents of the region are heroes. Our regional center is a complete ruin. The humanitarian situation is critical," Haidai wrote.

On February 24, Russian President Putin announced the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine. Russian troops have been destroying cities, killing civilians, shelling and destroying key infrastructure and residential buildings. Martial law was imposed in Ukraine and general mobilization was announced.
The enemy has set up camps to accommodate and train mercenaries from Syria near the Ukrainian border in Rostov (Russia) and Gomel (Belarus) regions.

According to Ukrinform, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine announced this on Facebook.

Russian troops, following the criminal orders of the military-political leadership of the Russian Federation, continue the offensive operation against Ukraine. However, to date, the main tasks of defeating groups of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, reaching the administrative borders of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions and establishing control over the left bank of Ukraine have not been fulfilled.

Russian invaders continue to accumulate reserves on their territory to wage war against Ukraine. They are forming detachments of mercenaries who are ready to carry out the criminal orders of Russian commanders for a reward. According to available information, mercenary recruitment centers were opened in Syria, where more than a thousand people have been recruited in recent days, and about 400 people have already arrived in Russia. Camps for their accommodation and training have been set up near the Ukrainian border in Rostov (Russia) and Gomel (Belarus) regions.
Units of the Ukrainian Ground Forces have ambushed Russian forces, destroying another batch of enemy equipment and seizing ammunition.

According to Ukrinform, the press service of the Ukrainian Ground Forces reported this on Telegram.

"The occupiers were ambushed by our military. There is a lot of ammunition and equipment captured from the enemy," the statement reads.

According to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, from February 24 to March 14, Russian forces lost more than 12,000 troops, 389 tanks, 1,249 armored fighting vehicles, 150 artillery systems, 64 multiple launch rocket systems, 34 air defense systems, 77 aircraft, 90 helicopters, 617 vehicles, three ships/boats, 60 fuel trucks, and eight UAVs of the operational and tactical level.
An unmanned aerial vehicle, most likely of Russian origin, was found in the Romanian municipality of Dumitra, just over 100 kilometers south of the Ukrainian border.

This was reported by the Balkan Observer on Facebook, according to Ukrinform

Local police have launched an inquiry after a resident of the Bistrita-Nasaud district in the Eastern Carpathians reported that an unidentified drone had landed on a lawn near his home.

A local police spokesman claimed the model had no equipment or signs to suggest that it was a military or war-related aircraft.

However, according to images circulating on the Internet, the "model" is actually a Russian Orlan-10 drone, used to gather intelligence and spot targets.

Orlan-10 drones are exclusively Russian-made and have been used continuously in Russia's aggression against Ukraine since 2014.

Earlier, Croatian Defense Minister Mario Banozic said a military drone, which apparently flew out of Ukraine's combat zone and across the territory of three European NATO allies before exploding in the urban area of the Croatian capital, was armed with an explosive device. No official confirmation followed that the UAV belonged to Russia.

As Ukrinform reported earlier, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video address it is a matter of time until Russia's launches missiles at NATO allies if the bloc fails to introduce a no-fly zone over Ukraine.

On February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the launch of the invasion of Ukraine. Russian troops have been shelling and destroying infrastructure, massively bombing residential areas of Ukrainian cities and villages using artillery, multiple rocket launchers, and ballistic missiles.
The Parliament of the Republic of Estonia has adopted a resolution calling on UN member states to close the sky over Ukraine.

"The Parliament of the Republic of Estonia has adopted a resolution calling on UN member states to close Ukraine's sky to protect it from the Russian aggressor. This is the first decision taken by the parliament of the country which is EU and NATO member. It is difficult, responsible, and honorable to be the first," Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Ruslan Stefanchuk posted on Facebook.

He thanked President of the Estonian Parliament Juri Ratas and all members for their courage and devotion to Ukraine.

Stefanchuk noted that the decision should be an example of determination for other parliaments around the world. "After all, parliamentarians are representatives of the people, and the peoples of the world demand decisive action to establish peace and close the sky over Ukraine," he added.

He expressed hope that the sky over Ukraine would once again be a source of light and warmth for Ukrainians, rather than the deaths and destruction inflicted by Russia.

On February 24, Russian president Putin declared war on Ukraine and launched a large-scale invasion. Russian troops shell and destroy infrastructure, conduct massive shelling of residential areas of Ukrainian cities and towns using artillery, MLRS, and ballistic missiles.

Martial law was imposed in Ukraine and general mobilization was announced. Ukraine repels Russian invaders.

ol
About 600 houses, 50 schools, healthcare facilities have been destroyed as a result of the enemy shelling of Kharkiv.

"About 600 houses have been destroyed in Kharkiv due to constant shelling of the city by the Russian army... These houses cannot be restored, so people actually lost their homes. Moreover, 50 schools, a number of healthcare institutions, including maternity hospitals have been bombed in Kharkiv," Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov told Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot via videoconferencing, the press service of the Kharkiv City Council posted on Telegram.

According to Lightfoot, the main task now is to save people's lives and end the war, and the U.S. position is very important in this matter. Terekhov underscored the need to close the sky over Ukraine and stop the bloodshed.

On February 24, Russian president Putin declared war on Ukraine and launched a large-scale invasion. Russian troops shell and destroy infrastructure, conduct massive shelling of residential areas of Ukrainian cities and towns using artillery, MLRS, and ballistic missiles.

Martial law was imposed in Ukraine and general mobilization was announced. Ukraine repels Russian invaders.

ol
President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen has informed President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky of the fourth package of sanctions, which can be approved by the Council of EU today by written procedure.

Putin's war is becoming more brutal by the day. I just informed President of Ukraine Zelensky of the 4th package of sanctions. The EU is with the Ukrainian people, von der Leyen posted on Twitter.

The official noted that the EU had supported Ukraine with a 1.2 billion macro-financial assistance package and 500 million in humanitarian aid.

Zelensky also underscored the importance of sanctions pressure on Russia.

Discussed with President of the European Commission von der Leyen the EUs support for Ukraine in countering Russian aggression. Increasing sanctions pressure on Russia is important. We also appreciate significant financial assistance. Ukraine continues to move towards membership in the EU, Zelensky wrote on Twitter.

On February 24, 2022, Russian president Putin launched an unprovoked war against Ukraine. Russian troops began destroying Ukrainian cities and towns using MLRS, airstrikes, and missile attacks. The Armed Forces of Ukraine, territorial defense units, and the entire people of Ukraine repel the invaders and inflict significant losses on them.

The European Union, along with key international partners, has imposed a package of sanctions on Russia's economy, Russian officials, and oligarchs, including Putin himself, which will be further stepped up if Russia continues its aggression.

ol
Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba spoke with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian ahead of his visit to Moscow.

Spoke with Iranian FM Hossein Amirabdollahian ahead of his visit to Moscow tomorrow. Iran is against the war in Ukraine, supports a peaceful solution. I asked to convey my message in Moscow: Russia must stop bombing civilians, commit to the ceasefire, and withdraw from Ukraine, Kuleba posted on Twitter.

As reported, the Iranian Foreign Minister is going to arrive in Moscow on March 15 for talks which are expected to focus on the situation around the nuclear deal.

ol
Without much success, the enemy continues to launch missile and bomb strikes by aircraft, destroying military and civilian infrastructure in Ukraine. Russian troops also strengthened the protection of the Ukrainian-Belarusian border by units of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Belarus.

Given the current situation, the invaders have strengthened the protection of the Ukrainian-Belarusian border by units of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Belarus, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine posted on Facebook.

As noted, the occupiers are trying to seize populated localities near the town of Izium, Kharkiv region.

The defense forces continue to conduct a defense operation within the Southern, Eastern, and Northern Operational Zones.

Occupying troops continue offensive operation against Ukraine. The main goal of hostilities on the territory of our State by the enemy has not been achieved, the General Staff stressed.

As noted, in most areas, when trying to move forward, the enemy faces resistance from the Armed Forces of Ukraine and civil resistance from the local population.

Receiving repulse and incurring losses, the occupying forces are increasingly forced to turn to defense and surrender to Ukrainian defenders, the General Staff underscored.

On February 24, Russian president Putin declared war on Ukraine and launched a large-scale invasion. Russian troops shell and destroy infrastructure, conduct massive shelling of residential areas of Ukrainian cities and towns using artillery, MLRS, and ballistic missiles.

Martial law was imposed in Ukraine and general mobilization was announced. Ukraine repels Russian invaders.

ol
Moldovan President Maia Sandu has visited a checkpoint on the Ukrainian-Moldovan border to discuss the status of border crossing operations, queues and the procedure for registration of humanitarian goods.

According to Ukrinform, the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine reported this on Facebook.

"Our strength is in support and unity: we thank Moldova for its help! The President of the Republic of Moldova, Maia Sandu, visited the Palanca-Udobne-Mayaky checkpoint on the Ukrainian-Moldovan border," the statement said.

During the meeting, special attention was paid to Ukrainians heading to Moldova for evacuation.

Sandu expressed her deep support and full assistance to Ukraine. She also talked to volunteers who help refugees and thanked them for their help to Ukrainian citizens.

On February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine. Russian troops have been shelling and destroying key infrastructure, residential areas of Ukrainian cities and villages using artillery, multiple launch rocket systems and ballistic missiles.

Martial law was imposed in Ukraine and general mobilization was announced.

Ukraine filed a lawsuit against the Russian Federation with the UN's International Court of Justice in The Hague.

Photo credit: State Border Guard Service of Ukraine, Facebook
Minister for Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba with the Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom, Liz Truss, over the phone further actions on the application of additional sanctions against Russia.

He announced this on Twitter, Ukrinform reports.

"Pressure must increase until Russia ceases its meaningless aggression and stops barbaric war crimes. Grateful to the UK for stepping up support for Ukraine," said the head of Ukrainian diplomacy.

As Ukrinform reported, on March 13, Kuleba and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken coordinated further support for Ukraine.
The Fund for the Reconstruction of Ukraine should be created based on Russian government and oligarchs assets frozen in the West.

This was stated by Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki during a joint press conference with the Prime Ministers of Ukraine and Lithuania, Denys Shmyhal and Ingrida Simonite following the Summit of the Lublin Triangle (Ukraine, Poland, and Lithuania) in a mixed format, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"This hope (for the restoration of Ukraine's infrastructure - ed.) should be based on a large fund built based on frozen and confiscated Russian assets. These assets have been accumulated on the blood of innocent people. They should serve to rebuild a sovereign and independent Ukraine," Morawiecki said.

He stressed that, together with Lithuania, Poland will provide political and diplomatic support to Ukraine.

"I am convinced that thanks to these actions, Ukrainian independence will be protected, and with it, the security of Lithuania, Poland, and all European countries will be strengthened. Russia's hands can reach great lengths, so we must resolutely repel the barbaric actions of the Russian state," said the Polish Prime Minister.

Read also: 200 planes carry aid to Ukraine from 30 countries through Poland

Morawiecki noted that Russia is now " indiscriminately striking and brutally destroying not only military infrastructure but also civilians, killing children, women, bombing clinics, maternity hospitals, as in Mariupol, destroying normal lives of millions of people."

He assured that Poland was passing on all this information to other European capitals so that no one would "rock their conscience to sleep and try to return to the so-called business as usual."

"There is no and cannot be a return to business as usual," Morawiecki stressed.

According to him, Russia seeks to destroy the humanitarian efforts of Poland, Lithuania, and other European nations with a missile strike on the International Peacekeeping and Security Center in Lviv region near the border with Poland.

"Putin seeks to cause panic among the civilian population, and it does not matter to him that this Center is on the way of millions of Ukrainians escaping the horrors of war. The objective of the Russians is also to destroy this humanitarian work carried out by Poland, Lithuania, and Europe, helping innocent people, women, and children, the Polish Prime Minister stressed.

Morawiecki noted that even more sanctions should be imposed on Russia, which would hit the Kremlin hard. According to him, after Russia launched its aggression in Ukraine, three sanction packages were imposed on Moscow, but this is still not enough.

"We are working on another package. We are concerned that sanctions have not yet been imposed on all oligarchs cooperating with Putin. We are negotiating to cease cooperation with Russia on many platforms, in fact on all possible platforms, with the Western world," said the Polish Prime Minister.

According to the Polish PM, it is necessary to approve the schedule of Europe's abandonment of Russian energy as soon as possible.

Morawiecki noted that Warsaw is urging European partners to impose further trade restrictions on Russia. According to him, every truck on the Polish-Belarusian border is already being checked to see if dual-use goods are being shipped to Russia.

The Polish Prime Minister stressed that Ukraine is now fighting not only for its own independence, but also for that of Poland, Lithuania, Finland, and all Eastern European countries.

"We must help Ukrainians defend their freedom because they are also defending our freedom," Morawiecki concluded.

The Summit of the Lublin Triangle at the level of Prime Ministers was held in a mixed format: the Prime Ministers of Poland and Lithuania met in Warsaw, while the Prime Minister of Ukraine joined them from Kyiv online.

Since February 24, Ukraine has been heroically defending itself against Russia's armed aggression from the north, east, and south.

Photo: KPRM
Thousands have joined a peaceful demonstration #mothersforpeace in Finlands capital city, Helsinki, to support Ukraine.

The relevant statement was made by the Ukrainian Association in Finland on Facebook, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

This time we have united with the friendly demonstration #mothersforpeace. Our warm thanks to Reetta Rajala and Susanna Makaroff for the organization of the event, to the artists for the passionate performance, and to all who joined the protest, the association wrote.

A reminder that, on February 24, 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin initiated a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, starting a war. Russian troops are shelling and destroying the key infrastructure facilities, launching air strikes on residential areas in Ukrainian cities and villages.

Photo: Ukrainian Association in Finland/ Facebook

mk
facebook like button Tweet tweet button for twitter

Published March 14, 2022

Musicians with Dallas Brass are guest clinicians for VAPA's Annual Brass Day, March 28.

Want to go?

WHAT: VAPA Annual Brass Day March 28

WHEN: 9:30 a.m. registration

WHERE: Lobby of Emy-Lou Biedenharn Recital Hall

COST: Free

INFO: Online registration and schedule at VAPA Brass Day

PUBLIC PERFORMANCE: Dallas Brass and ULM students, 7:30 p.m., Monday, March 28, Emy-Lou Biedenharn Recital Hall, free and open to the public

The University of Louisiana Monroe School of Visual and Performing Arts hosts the Annual Brass Day on Monday, March 28.

Brass Day is a day-long, free educational clinic for all brass players. Registration begins at 9:30 a.m. in the lobby of Emy-Lou Biedenharn Recital Hall. For online registration and a detailed schedule of events, visit https://www.ulm.edu/music/brassday.html.

Featured guest artists and clinicians are the musicians of Dallas Brass, one of Americas foremost musical ensembles.

The public is invited to the free performance of Dallas Brass and ULM students at 7:30 p.m. in Emy-Lou Biedenharn Recital Hall.

VAPA Professor of Music James Boldin, D.M.A., said brass musicians of all ages can learn from VAPA faculty and the renowned professionals of Dallas Brass.

We are especially excited about this years Brass Day because high school and college attendees will have the opportunity to share the stage and perform a work with the Dallas Brass. In addition, the Dallas Brass and ULM faculty will provide several masterclasses and other sessions designed to help students of all levels improve their performing skills, Boldin said.

Michael Levine, founder and artistic director of Dallas Brass, said working with young musicians has always been a priority. More than 250,000 students have performed with Dallas Brass since its founding in 1981.

Our objective is to show them that being involved in music is something they can do for a lifetime, both for their own enjoyment and, in turn, to bring joy to others, Levine said. We maintain that the better you play, the more fun and rewarding it is.

About Dallas Brass

Dallas Brass was founded in Dallas, Texas, by artistic director Michael Levine. Musicians include Buddy Deshler and Garrett Klein on trumpet, Juan Berrios on horn and alto horn, Jim Lutz on trombone, Paul Carlson on Tuba, and Josh Carlson, percussionist.

The group has a unique blend of traditional brass instruments with a full complement of drums and percussion, which creates a performing entity of extraordinary range and musical challenges. The Dallas Brass repertoire includes classical masterpieces, Dixieland, swing, Broadway, Hollywood, and patriotic music.
facebook like button Tweet tweet button for twitter

Published March 14, 2022

Want to go?

WHAT: Womens Symposium

WHEN: 12-5 p.m., Wednesday, March 16

WHERE: Bayou Pointe

COST: Free for ULM students, $25 for faculty, staff, and active alumni, and $40 for the community

TICKETS: Women's Symposium 2022 - University of Louisiana Monroe Alumni Association

The University of Louisiana Monroe Womens Symposium partners with the ULM Alumni Association to host the 6th Annual Womens Symposium on Wednesday, March 16, from noon-5 p.m. at Bayou Pointe Event Center.

The Womens Symposium highlights women who make the Northeast Louisiana community stronger.

The symposium is open to everyone. Admission is free for ULM students with ID, ULM faculty, staff, and active alumni tickets are $25, and community members tickets are $40.

To register, visit Women's Symposium 2022 - University of Louisiana Monroe Alumni Association.

The keynote speaker is Leslie Durham, the Alternate Federal Co-Chairwoman for the Delta Regional Authority, appointed by President Joe Biden. Born and reared in Tensas Parish, since January 2016, Durham has served as Gov. John Bel Edwardss DRA Designee. Edwards appointed Durham to serve on the following: Broadband for Everyone in Louisiana Commission, chairperson, Rural Water Infrastructure Committee, chairperson, Rural Revitalization Commission, 4.9 GHz Spectrum Task Force, Jobs for American Graduates Louisiana Board of Directors, and Delta Agriculture Research and Sustainability District.

During the symposium, there will be an awards ceremony. The 2022 award and scholarship winners include:

Legacy Award  Dr. Gwenn Jackson

Lisa Miller Distinguished Leader Award  Ashley Hubenthal

Kristin Chandler Rising Professional Award  Maggie Generoso

Vanguard Award  Monroe Mayor Friday Ellis

Emerging Student Leader Scholarship  Brook Little

Empowering Student Leader Scholarship  Anna Grigsby

For more information, contact Leigh Hersey, Ph.D., Womens Symposium chair, at hersey@ulm.edu.
Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan  Today the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, government and civil society partners briefed Members of Parliament on progress and key issues related to statelessness in the Republic of Kazakhstan, and discussed solutions to eradicate it.

The briefing was opened by Mr. Akan Rakhmetullin, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs; Ms. Elvira Azimova, Commissioner for Human Rights; Ms. Michaela Friberg-Storey, UN Resident Coordinator; Mr. Hans Friedrich Schodder, UNHCR Representative for Central Asia; and Mr. Arthur van Diesen, UNICEF Representative in Kazakhstan. The briefing was moderated by Ms. Aigul Kuspan, Chairperson of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Security of the Mazhilis of Parliament.

The United Nations reaffirms its support to the important work of Kazakhstan to eradicate statelessness. Through continued commitment, and in the spirit of the 2030 Agenda to ensure no one is left behind in the countrys sustainable development, Kazakhstan can achieve this ambitious goal, and serve as a model for the rest of the world, said Ms. Michaela Friberg-Storey, UN Resident Coordinator in Kazakhstan.

As most situations of statelessness can be prevented or resolved through legislation, parliamentarians play a critical role in bringing the scourge of statelessness to an end, stressed Greetings from the Secretary General of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), Mr. Martin Chungong.

The briefing received an analysis of the compliance of national legislation of Kazakhstan with international citizenship and statelessness standards, commissioned by UNHCR, as well as the publication Kazakh language of the joint IPU-UNHCR Handbook for Parliamentarians on good practices in nationality laws for the prevention and reduction of statelessness, which provides practical guidance to support law reforms to ensure that no child is born stateless, that no one is arbitrarily deprived of nationality, and that stateless persons are identified, and their naturalization facilitated.

Since the launch of the Global #IBelong Campaign to End Statelessness in 2014, Kazakhstan has made good progress in addressing and preventing statelessness. Main achievements include amendments to the Code on Marriage and Family to ensure birth registration for all children born in Kazakhstan; implementation of a country-wide statelessness identification and documentation campaign and establishment of statelessness determination procedures.

Based on the progress made by Kazakhstan to address statelessness and the countrys progressive ratification of universal human rights instruments, UNHCR has strengthened its advice and support for a possible accession to the 1954 and 1961 Statelessness Conventions. We remain committed to continue supporting the Government, Parliament, and authorities in accelerating achievement of the #IBelong Campaign to end statelessness by 2024, said Mr. Hans Friedrich Schodder, UNHCR Representative for Central Asia.

Statelessness in Kazakhstan and neighboring states largely resulted from the dissolution of the Soviet Union. While many residents were able to confirm or acquire the nationality of Kazakhstan or another successor state, some remained in legal limbo. Currently over 7,800 stateless persons are known to still require a nationality in Kazakhstan, though their actual number is likely higher.

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter
Cairo, 14 March 2022  UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, alongside the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, organized a two-day joint roundtable  the third of its nature  in support of the drafting process of the Asylum Law in Egypt on 13  14 March 2022.

The roundtable was jointly inaugurated by Minister Plenipotentiary Ms. Neveen El-Husseiny, Deputy Assistant Foreign Minister for Migration, Refugee Affairs and Anti Human Trafficking at the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Mr. Pablo Mateu, UNHCR Representative to Egypt and to the League of Arab States.

In the opening remarks, Minister Plenipotentiary Ms. El-Husseiny reiterated the role Egypt is playing in hosting refugees, and the services offered particularly in the fields of health and education and highlighted the importance of cooperation between UNHCR and the Ministry. Ms. El-Husseiny also noted that the roundtable is a continuation of a series of joint capacity development activities undertaken jointly by UNHCR and the Government of Egypt. Mr. Mateu commended Egypt for its generosity in hosting refugees. He added that positive progress has been made over time, and that UNHCR stands ready to provide all the needed support to the Government of Egypt on protection-related issues in general, and on the adoption of an asylum law and thereafter in particular.

On day one of the roundtable, renowned law professor Dr. Ibrahim Daraji explained the basis of refugee systems, while UNHCR Deputy Representative, Ms. Aseer Al Madaien, spoke in detail about the elements required for transitioning refugee status determination (RSD) and other elements from UNHCR to the government, providing various specific examples including Kenya, Morocco, Thailand and Turkey. This was complemented by a presentation on the various steps of reception and registration of refugees and asylum-seekers. During the second day, Dr. Daraji provided a refresher session on the definition of a refugee and the associated legal framework, followed by an overview on RSD, sources of information and the detailed interview process in this respect, as well as data protection and policy presented by UNHCRs protection team.

The roundtable was concluded with a panel discussion held with the attendees by Minister Plenipotentiary Ms. El-Husseiny, and Mr. Mateu, facilitated by Ms. Al Madaien, where issues in relation to the way forward, foreseen challenges, UNHCRs role and means of support were discussed.

Fifteen participants from the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Justice, Interior, Parliamentary Affairs and the Public Prosecutors Office participated in the two-day roundtable held in Cairo.

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter
The Norwegian government last week announced contributions of a total of NOK 300 M (USD 33.5 M) to UNHCR and the joint UN refugee response plan in Ukraine and the neighboring countries, who have already received more than 2.8 million refugees.

This important and timely contribution comes in addition to Norways already significant flexible funding to UNHCR. In 2021, Norway was the largest contributor of unearmarked funding to UNHCR. The contribution comes at a significant time and allows UNHCR to scale up the response and activities inside Ukraine and for the many refugees, who continue to seek safety in the region.

The humanitarian situation in Ukraine is very dire, and with the speed and scale of the refugee exodus this has immense impact on the countries, neighboring Ukraine. We are extremely grateful for donors like Norway who reacts promptly and allows us to provide lifesaving assistance to the most vulnerable inside Ukraine and support the national responses in the neighboring countries, says Henrik M. Nordentoft, UNHCRs Representative to the Nordic and Baltic Countries.

In only a few weeks, since 24 February, more than 2.8 million people have fled Ukraine, the majority women and children. In addition, it is estimated that some 1.85 million people are internally displaced inside the country. UNHCR is present in Ukraine and in all neighboring countries, and we are working closely with authorities, other UN agencies, and partners, in order to provide emergency relief and cash assistance to the most vulnerable communities.
A UNHCR staff member stores diapers along with food, hygiene products and other donated items at the Budomierz border crossing in Poland.  UNHCR/Valerio Muscella

Following fast-growing displacement, a quickly deteriorating humanitarian situation and spiraling needs, donations from the private sector towards relief efforts for Ukraine have reached record-breaking amounts, UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, said today.

More than 2.8 million people have been forced to flee the country as refugees since 24 February, and at least 2 million more have been displaced within the country. UNHCR fears millions more will be displaced if the war continues.

In just over two weeks, companies, foundations and philanthropists have contributed over US$200 million towards UNHCRs Ukraine emergency response. The private sector is demonstrating its generosity and solidarity through direct contributions, while also launching creative initiatives to help engage stakeholders such as employee giving schemes and match funding. The donations come as UNHCR urgently appeals for US$510 million to provide initial emergency assistance to those displaced inside the country and for refugees throughout the region. As more people flee every day and are increasingly in need of urgent humanitarian support, UNHCRs funding requirements are also likely to grow.

At this moment, all eyes around the world are on Ukraine. We stand in solidarity with people fleeing for their lives, whose families are being torn apart. We thank the private sector for their overwhelming generosity, said UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Cate Blanchett.

Contributions from the private sector have already enabled UNHCR to respond quickly since the start of the crisis, for example by arranging airlift and truck convoys of assistance both to refugees and displaced people inside Ukraine, and by rolling out emergency cash assistance to those in need so they can find safe shelter, warmth, and food. UNHCR is also providing protection services such as psychosocial support and targeted care to the most vulnerable, including unaccompanied and separated children, deploying scores of emergency experts to help set up reception facilities, and reinforcing operations inside Ukraine and throughout the region.

I want to thank the companies, foundations and philanthropists from around the world for the kindness and generosity they have shown in helping the people fleeing the war in Ukraine. Millions are in desperate need of urgent assistance. As the crisis deepens, I call on the private sector to continue its support, said the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi.

In response to the escalating crisis, the IKEA Foundation, UNHCRs decade-long partner, has committed EUR20 million to support the agencys response to the humanitarian emergency.

Per Heggenes, CEO, IKEA Foundation, said: This is a human tragedy. We believe everyone deserves a safe place to call home and we have pledged to do all we can to help the children and families affected by the deadly war. UNHCR has been our long-standing partner and they have a proven track record. We therefore call on the worlds governments, businesses, and philanthropies to join us and increase the relief support for UNHCR and the people fleeing Ukraine.

As the private sector rallies to support the response to the Ukraine emergency, UNHCR is also appealing to the world not to forget the many humanitarian crises that are far from the spotlight, where people forced to flee are still in dire need of support.

Generous private sector donors include: IKEA Foundation, XTX Markets, CTP, Fast Retailing, Akelius Foundation, Samhallsbyggnadsbolaget i Norden AB, The Schorling Foundation, BNP Paribas Foundation, INDITEX, Google.org, Volkswagen, Binance Charity, Novo Nordisk Foundation, HEARTLAND, Latter-day Saint Charities, Liberty Mutual Insurance, Sony Group Corporation, TikTok, Zegna, Generali, Cargolux, Pernod Ricard, Kering Group, Shiseido, The Foundation at Sanofi, Chanel Foundation, La Caixa Foundation, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, Mazda Motor Corporation, Amplifon, Deloitte, FastPartner, JYSK, Z Zurich Foundation, Bain & Company, Cisco, BioNTech, Royal Humanitarian Foundation of Bahrain, Fujitsu Ltd., Supercell, Stiftung RTL - Wir helfen Kindern e.V., Ryan Reynolds & Blake Lively, NTT, Restaurant Brands International, Capcom Co., AUDI, Porsche, Marks & Spencer, H&M Group, Banco Santander, Vodafone Foundation, BBVA, Usine Foundation, Haldor Topsoe, Software AG, Armani, BASF Stiftung, Continental, NEXI, Valentino, Prada Group, SAP, Toyota Motor Corporation, Kao Corporation, Adidas, Roschier, Gucci, FUJIFILM Holdings Corporation, Jones Day Foundation, Ripple, Koei Tecmo Holdings.

For more information on this topic, please contact:
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


(Photo : Tingey Injury Law Firm via Unsplash)

In today's legal environment, few white-collar cases involve a small scope.

Because white-collar legal work can encompass numerous elements, it's rarely simple - and as such, it requires a nuanced approach. To best represent clients, attorneys need to possess certain knowledge and skills, such as an intrinsic ability to communicate with numerous stakeholders and previous experience working on similar matters.

Clients hoping to facilitate a favorable outcome in their white-collar case should confirm their legal team can provide the following four crucial components.

1. Considerable Experience in White-Collar Work - Which Can Often Be Found Within US Firms, Neil Gerrard Says

While numerous law firms have added white-collar practice groups in recent decades, some may not be as well-positioned as others to address legal needs that relate to businesses operating in various locations.

Law firms' ability to address companies' related legal needs has, in fact, escalated at a faster pace in some countries, according to Neil Gerrard, former partner of Dechert LLP's white-collar practice.

"If a client goes to a law firm in the U.S., they can expect a good level of experience, but there is more of a risk in the UK," Gerrard told the legal publisher Lawdragon. "There are still too many lawyers who are rebranded former litigators without a specialist white-collar background."

The U.S., according to 2021 data, is generally perceived as the dominant nation in enforcing and prosecuting global economic crime, due to factors such as the U.S. issuing more money laundering violations and having had more success prosecuting matters under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) than the UK has had with Bribery Act 2010-related prosecution.

"I would say that the UK is currently five to seven years behind the U.S.," Neil Gerrard told Lawdragon. "And Europe is five to seven years behind the UK."

2. A Thorough Understanding of Current Regulations

White-collar matters can touch on a number of regulatory and compliance issues - particularly if more than one country is involved.

Corruption, antitrust, and other infractions have become violations that government agencies around the world have focused on more fervently in recent years.

At the same time, companies have increasingly sought to avoid many of those types of regulatory and compliance-related issues. The potentially sizeable fines and threat of reputational damage have served as motivation for organizations to proactively assess and monitor their liability both within the area where they're headquartered and any regions where the company conducts business, where its operations could be subject to local and national laws and regulations.

Conducting extensive risk reviews in foreign markets where companies function, according to Neil Gerrard, is vital to make sure the organization thoroughly comprehends - and is complying with - local and national laws and practices, as requirements and standards can differ from one country to another.

"Businesses need to be on the front foot with compliance, obtaining preemptive legal advice as early as possible from lawyers who are real specialists," Neil Gerrard told Lawdragon. "Then when you create systems and processes to ensure compliance, they also need to link back to your home jurisdiction, and to the U.S. if you are engaged in international business."

3. Resources That Extend Beyond the Firm - Offering a "Geographically Broad Reach," Former Dechert Attorney Neil Gerrard Says

Approximately 40% of in-house legal departments worked with up to 10 law firms in 2021, according to KPMG's 2021 Global Legal Department Benchmarking Survey.

Corporations may outsource work to a law firm for a number of reasons, including having limited internal resources or requiring dedicated sector expertise. Law firms can also sometimes supply an extensive network of service providers in multiple locations.

When assembling a group to work on a case, Dechert's white-collar team, for instance, is able to pull professionals from its New York, Washington, D.C., London, Paris, Hong Kong, and other locations - allowing the firm, as Neil Gerrard said, to select the truly best people to perform various types of work, based on their level and type of experience and language capabilities. Other qualifications, such as having served as a U.S. attorney or senior lawyer in the UK's Serious Fraud Office, may also come into play.

"We have lawyers on the ground in the U.S., Europe, and Asia, and within all those offices the team is multicultural and multilingual," he told Lawdragon. "That experience in managing multi-office teams and the ability to operate in different jurisdictions is crucial."

Sometimes one law firm cannot provide all the assistance that's needed in a case, due to its range. If that could be a concern, companies may want to consider working with a firm that can tap into external resources if needed - such as leveraging relationships the firm has built over the years with qualified attorneys who practice in locations where the firm doesn't have an office.

Local attorneys can serve as a wealth of knowledge about the particular nuances of the law and how legal proceedings operate in a given country - which may be particularly helpful in white-collar matters.

"These investigations now span continents, take years to resolve, and involve dozens, if not hundreds, of parallel and competing strands," Neil Gerrard told Lawdragon. "You simply cannot now separate a domestic prosecution or investigation from what is happening elsewhere in the world, which is why clients need counsel who are culturally nuanced and have a geographically broad reach."

4. The Ability To Collaborate With Other Entities

White-collar matters - particularly ones that span multiple locations - can involve a significant amount of coordination. Various authorities' stances on the charges may not line up and the involved legal and other parties in the case need to be able to effectively share documentation and determine what procedural steps will be taken and when.

Dechert's white-collar practice, during the time period when Neil Gerrard led it, established a thorough system to share and communicate information when working on a four-year case involving European aerospace leader Airbus SE, the UK's Serious Fraud Office, France's Parquet National Financier, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the U.S. Department of State.

Along with organizing work activities among attorneys from three other law firms, e-discovery consultants, external export-control practitioners, and forensic accountants, Dechert's team - which in addition to Neil Gerrard included U.S.-based partner Ben Barnett and other firm members - established a disclosure strategy involving a technology-assisted review process that helped the documents in the case be submitted to the authorities faster, while accommodating for national security laws, data protection, and language differences.

In 2020, Dechert and the other parties received the Most Important Development of the Year award from Global Investigations Review for their work on the unprecedented, multijurisdictional case.

Neil Gerrard, in a statement about winning the award, cited the collective teamwork as a factor in the case, calling working with such an impressive group of legal and other professionals an "honour and privilege."

While in some instances, lawyers may be called in to help defend an organization against regulatory-related accusations and other issues, in Neil Gerrard's 2019 Lawdragon interview, he also stressed the importance of proactively positioning an organization to avoid the appearance of misconduct - with help from its legal team.

"You cannot operate two separate compliance systems," Gerrard said. "Your lawyers need to be specialists in the U.S. and your home country, plus have the international reach to assist you elsewhere in the world when necessary."
March 14 2022

KR Developments have opened a public consultation into emerging proposals to deliver 230 student bedrooms at South Ward Road, Dundee.

A variety of ensuite studios and three to five-bedroom apartments are planned, including a fifth-floor rooftop amenity space as well as an on-site gym for the car-free build.

A fragmented urban block near Dundee House will be knitted back into the streetscape by establishing a hard edge while retaining an interior courtyard as outdoor amenity.

Matching a lighter brick along South Ward Road with red brick for the taller element, a nod to the nearby DC Thomson headquarters, the project will make use of emphasised brick piers to draw attention to the entrance block and fifth-floor amenity space.

A formal planning application is expected from 56Three Architects in the summer.
Stockholm, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 14th Mar, 2022 ) :Europe saw the world's biggest rise in arms imports in the past five years, a trend set to accelerate following recent rearmament commitments amid the threat posed by Russia, researchers said Monday.

While arms exports declined globally by 4.6 percent in 2017-2021 compared to the preceding five years, Europe posted a 19-percent increase, according to a study published by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

"Europe is the new hotspot", Siemon Wezeman, co-author of the annual report for over three decades, told AFP.

"We are going to increase our military spending not just by a little bit but by a lot. We need new weapons and a lot of that will come from imports", the senior researcher said, adding that the majority was likely to come from other European countries and the US.

Germany in particular has already announced plans to up its military spending, as have Denmark and Sweden.

European countries spooked by Russia's invasion of Ukraine are expected to beef up their militaries with fighter jets, such as the American F-35, missiles, artillery and other heavy weapons.

"Most of these things take a bit of time. You have to go through the process, you have to decide, you have to order, you have to produce. This generally takes a couple of years at least", Wezeman said.

He said the upward trend actually started after Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea, with the effects visible now.

Europe's share of the global arms trade has already risen from 10 to 13 percent in the past five year, and this share will increase "substantially", according to Wezeman.

The opaque nature of many contracts and donations of weapons without payment make it difficult to provide an exact figure for the world arms trade but experts estimate turnover at close to $100 billion (91 billion Euros) annually.
Minister for Information and Broadcasting Chaudhry Fawad Hussain on Monday said imminent failure of no-trust motion would definitely give a fatal blow to the opposition, bent upon hatching conspiracies against a democratically elected government

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 14th Mar, 2022 ) :Minister for Information and Broadcasting Chaudhry Fawad Hussain on Monday said imminent failure of no-trust motion would definitely give a fatal blow to the opposition, bent upon hatching conspiracies against a democratically elected government.

"All the cards are with us and we will decide what might be the next move and whatever the next move should be, I assure you that it will be the last game of these 'three jokers' who will simply vanish from political scene after failure of the no-trust motion," he said while addressing a news conference after meeting of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf's (PTI) core committee here.

Flanked by PTI's Additional Secretary General, Aamer Mehmood Kiani, he said the opposition would remorse its no-trust move as Prime Minister Imran Khan had devised a comprehensive strategy to foil it.

The entire party stood by the prime minister, said Fawad who expressed optimism that all the allied parties including Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM), Balochistan Awami Party (BAP), Grand Democratic Alliance (GDA) and Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid would remain part of the PTI's alliance.

Sharing details of the core committee meeting with media, he said the entire party including leadership and its parliamentarians had reposed full confidence in the prime minister and resolved that only he could lead the country in these critical time.

He said the core committee had not only rejected the opposition's bid to revive the horse trading culture, but also condemned their tactics of offering millions of rupee to the PTI's legislators for shifting their loyalties in case of the no-trust motion.

Fawad said those, who offered bribe the PTI's legislators, did not dare to repeat the practice after it was brought into knowledge of the ruling party's leadership.

He said most of the core committee members called for an early session of National Assembly, and added the NA speaker had power to convene it.

Dates of March 21, 22 and 23 were of sheer importance due to meeting of foreign ministers of members' states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation taking place in Pakistan, he said, adding it was suggested that the session should not coincide with the event.

He said the huge crowd at recent public meetings of the prime minister had once again proved that not only the PTI was a Federal party, but PM Imran was the national leader.

By seeing such a huge crowd in the 'Jalsas' (public meetings) of the prime minister, the opposition parties' leaders were trembling, he added.

Taking a dig at Pakistan Peoples Party Chairman, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari for illegally spending resources of the Sindh government, Fawad said his "short march" got a lukewarm response from Punjab.

He said the prime minister held unprecedented public gatherings in different cities including Mailsi, Mandi Bahauddin, Hafizabad and Lower Dir. The next one would be in Swat and "the mother of all Jalsas" at D-Chowk Islamabad was also around the corner, he added.

"Those who want to compete with us should first see where the public stand," he said throwing challenge to the opposition leaders to hold a single public meeting in a way the prime minister did by pulling massive crowd.

He recounted the PTI's major initiatives that put the country on path of progress included health card, reforms in industrial sector, low-cost houses, dams, and others.

Prior to the subcontinent partition, Quaid-i-Azam did fight against "Hindu-biased mindset", and now the prime minister was fighting the elements who toed the the foreign powers due to their interests and assets abroad.

He took exception to the opposition leaders including Shehbaz Sharif, Asif Zardari and others for orchestrating a campaign against Prime Minister Imran Khan and the PTI government on his foreign policy initiatives.

Fawad said the country had an independent foreign policy after a long hiatus which surely enhance the prestige of the Pakistanis. There would be no compromise on Pakistan's sovereignty, he added.

He ruled out any NRO like-concession to the opposition leaders, saying the prime minister would not bow to their tactics.

To a query, he said Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain was like a brother to the prime minister. The PML-Q supported the PTI from the beginning and their support in future would be crucial.
2022 EJK Award Winners and Honors Announced

Mon, 03/14/2022 - 10:45am | By: Tracy van Straaten

March 8, 2022, Brooklyn, NY: The Ezra Jack Keats Foundation (EJK Foundation), in partnership with the de Grummond Childrens Literature Collection at the University of Southern Mississippi (USM), today announced the winners of the 2022 Ezra Jack Keats Award (EJK Award), as well as four honor books. The annual EJK Award celebrates exceptional early career authors and illustrators for portraying the multicultural nature of our world in the spirit of Ezra Jack Keats. This year, the virtual award ceremony will be held on Thursday, April 7, 2022, 2pm ET, during the Fay B. Kaigler Childrens Book Festival at USM in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Register now.

The 2022 Ezra Jack Keats Award winner for Writer is:

Paul Harbridge for Out Into the Big Wide Lake

Illustrated by Josee Bisaillon

Published by Tundra Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House

The 2022 Ezra Jack Keats Award winner for Illustrator is:

Gracey Zhang for Lalas Words

Written by Gracey Zhang

Published by Orchard Books, an imprint of Scholastic

The 2022 Ezra Jack Keats Award Honor winners are:

Writer Honors

Joanna Ho for Playing at the Border (illustrated by Teresa Martinez, published by Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins)

Anne Wynter for Everybody in the Red Brick Building (illustrated by Oge Mora, published by Balzer & Bray, an imprint of HarperCollins)

Illustrator Honors

Marta Bartolj for Every Little Kindness (written by Marta Bartolj, published by Chronicle)

Kenesha Sneed for Many Shapes of Clay (written by Kenesha Sneed, published by Prestel, an imprint of Penguin Random House)

The spirit of Ezra Jack Keats can be found in all EJK Award and Honor Books, a spirit that reflects in an ever expanding definition of diverse childrens literature, said Deborah Pope, Executive Director of the EJK Foundation. This years EJK Award winning and honor books provide inclusive stories about children with many shades of skin, children who happen to have Down Syndrome, children dealing with loss, children who live in the city or country, in the U.S. and abroad, and children having trouble sleeping through the night. EJK Award books entertain while opening childrens minds and hearts. This year is no exception.

Added Ellen Ruffin, curator of The de Grummond Childrens Literature Collection at The University of Southern Mississippi, The de Grummond Childrens Literature collection is thrilled to encourage the creation of beautiful and engaging books for the diverse children of our country. Its an honor to work with the amazing members of the EJK Award committee, to celebrate these authors and illustrators, and together build a library in which children see themselves and others in the books they read every day.

On winning the Writer Award, Paul Harbridge said, I learned about diversity teaching English as a Second Language to immigrants in Toronto, the most culturally diverse city in the world, and as a speech-language pathologist working first with persons from the Deaf community and later with adults with developmental disabilities. But the best lesson about diversity came from growing up with Linda, my little sister with Down Syndrome. Yes, she was different in some ways but at the same time she was not different at all. Like me and my other brothers and sisters, she needed a chance to explore the world around her, encouragement to go after her goals, a pat on the back when she succeeded, and a reassuring hug when she stumbled. And that is the beauty of Ezra Jack Keatss books. In The Snowy Day, Peter could have been from any background, any gender, or ability. Winning the EJK Award for Writing is so special to me because it means, in my own small way, I am carrying on Mr. Keatss work to show the world that, despite our differences, at heart we are all the same.

On winning the Illustrator Award, Gracey Zhang said, When I was writing and illustrating Lalas Words, I sought to create a story that came from my own experience of familial relationships and communication that felt decidedly unique and my own. While sharing stories with others, many of whom were also children of immigrants, I found a common understanding and that we shared similar experiences. I purposely set the book in the neighborhood of Ridgewood, Queens, a vibrant and diverse community of people and buildings I fell in love with. I was extremely moved when I received the call for the Ezra Jack Keats Award for Illustratoran award that stands for acceptance of differences and recognition of our diversities and strength. To have Lala recognized for furthering these values is an immense honour and celebration of those stories we share.

About the Ezra Jack Keats Award

Since its inception, the EJK Award has celebrated over 100 exceptional early career authors and illustrators for portraying the multicultural nature of our world, the universal experience of childhood and the importance of family and community. Past winners include now renowned bookmakers Oge Mora, Meg Medina, Christian Robinson, Bryan Collier, and Sophie Blackall.

The Ezra Jack Keats Award is co-produced by the EJK Foundation and the de Grummond Childrens Literature Collection at The University of Southern Mississippi. A distinguished selection committee of childrens literature and early childhood education specialists, librarians, authors and illustrators review the entries and announce the winners and honorees on the second Tuesday in March each year.

About the Ezra Jack Keats Foundation

The Ezra Jack Keats Foundation has actively fostered childrens creativity and love of reading since 1985. The Foundation awards 70 EJK Mini-Grants for arts and literacy programs annually to public schools and libraries across 50 states; administers the EJK Bookmaking Competition, for grades 3-12, in the nations largest school system for 35 years running; and with the EJK Award, has encouraged exceptional early career authors and illustrators to create childrens books that reflect our diverse culture for thirty six years. The EJK Foundation is proud to protect and promote the work of Ezra Jack Keats.

About Ezra Jack Keats and The Snowy Day

Ezra Jack Keats (1916-1983) is considered one of Americas greatest childrens book illustrators and authors. The first book he wrote and illustrated was The Snowy Day, published in 1962. In 1963 it was awarded the Caldecott Medal, the most prestigious childrens book award for illustration in the United States. Keats went on to write and illustrate over 20 now classic books including Peters Chair, Whistle for Willie and A Letter to Amy. He wanted no child to be an outsider. If we could see each other exactly as the other is, he wrote, this would be a different world.

The Snowy Day broke the color barrier in mainstream childrens publishing by being embraced across social and ethnic lines. The vivid illustrations and text, beloved by generations of readers, have earned it a place in the pantheon of great childrens literature. In January 2020, New York Public Library revealed that The Snowy Day was the most circulated book in its 125-year history, and in 2017 the U.S. Postal Service issued a The Snowy Day Stamp.

About the de Grummond Childrens Literature Collection

The de Grummond Childrens Literature Collection is one of North Americas leading research centers in the field of childrens literature. Founded in 1966 by Dr. Lena Y. de Grummond, the Collection holds the original manuscripts and illustrations of more than 1,300 authors and illustrators, as well as 180,000+ published books dating from 1530 to the present. The collection contains the works of many notable authors and illustrators including Randolph Caldecott, John Newbery, Kate Greenaway, H.A. and Margret Rey, Ezra Jack Keats, and the papers of popular young adult author, John Green. Researchers from across the United States and around the world visit the collection on a regular basis to study its extensive holdings.
Faculty, Staff at USM Coastal Operations Receive Awards

Mon, 03/14/2022 - 14:27pm | By: Van Arnold

Faculty and staff of Coastal Operations at The University of Southern Mississippi (USM) have been awarded funds to support their individual and collaborative pursuits through the Faculty and Staff Development Awards program.

Dr. Jacob Breland, Interim Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs, Coastal Operations, explains that the awards were originally conceived as part of the Coastal Operations Symposium planned for fall 2021. This event would provide faculty the opportunity to give micro-presentations about their research leading to collaborative work that contributes to the three pillars guiding Coastal Operations' vision: Understanding the Ocean and Coasts, Improving Coastal Resilience, and Supporting the Blue Economy.

While we decided to postpone the Symposium due to continuing COVID-19 concerns, the Faculty and Staff Development Awards were an important complementary component we wanted to maintain, said Breland. These awards represent an investment in the continued success of our highly qualified faculty and staff by providing needed funds for individual and collaborative research, travel, professional development, etc.

Coastal Operations staff were invited to submit proposals for Staff Development Awards to be used for activities such as travel, professional development, training, purchase of materials and/or equipment, etc. The maximum award amount is $1,000 for individual proposals and $2,000 for group proposals.

Eleven proposals from 16 unique staff members were received. Four of the proposals were collaborative. The committee chose to fund seven of the proposals  six individual and one collaborative. Altogether $8,000 in funding was allocated.

Staff Development Award recipients are required to submit a post-award report describing the use and impact of awarded funds.

Coastal Operations faculty were invited to submit proposals for Faculty Development Awards to be used to for activities such as materials and/or equipment purchase, travel, professional development, training, etc. The maximum awarded amount was $3,000 for individual proposals and $5,000 for group proposals.

Nine proposals were submitted, and the Committee chose to fund all nine - five individual and four collaborative. Altogether, $33,500 in faculty development funding was awarded.

Staff awards included:

Laura E. Blackmon  Awarded $1,000 in funding for a professional retreat for all Marine Education Center staff members.

The staff development retreat will have a twofold impact on the MEC and the University. First, the MEC staff will fortify team bonds and enhance understanding of workplace expectations to deliver exceptional participant experiences during MEC programming. Second, the University will benefit from a staff retreat that will provide structured time for long-range strategic planning at the MEC.

Colette Byrnes  Awarded $1,000 in funding for attendance at the Association of Collegiate Conference & Event Directors, International (ACCED-I) conference in Atlanta, GA.

The ACCED-I conference will provide trainings and discussions on how events are handled at colleges and universities across the United States. This is an opportunity to learn best practices from other institutions and engage in valuable networking. Event Services has also prioritized unit funding to allow their Graduate Assistant, Nikeshia Hunter, to also attend the conference and gain valuable professional development and experience.

Marci Calcote  Awarded $1,000 in funding to purchase an iPad

Purchasing an iPad will allow Marci to transition from her desk to the One Stop easily allowing for better service to students in the One Stop and assistance in training for the Student Service Specialists. Additionally, Marci will be able to transition to other spaces during high-volume events such as Orientation and others.

Stacy Henley  Awarded $1,000 in funding for attendance at the 2022 Women in Higher Education Mississippi Network (WHEMN) conference in Oxford, MS.

The conference provides tips and strategies around becoming even more efficient and effective in the workplace. WHEM provides an opportunity to join peers in an atmosphere built on collaborative support and experiential sharing.

Tiffany Kersten  Awarded $1,000 in funding for attendance at the Envisioning a Student-Centered Future conference in Denver, CO.

The conference provides a wealth of learning opportunities surrounding advisement strategies, online learning, adult degree programs, retention, and professionalism, all of which will benefit Tiffany, and the Advisement Center greatly.

Mary Maner and Dylan Tyner  Awarded $2,000 in funding for attendance at the National Career Development (NCDA) Career Practitioner Institute 2022 Conference.

The 2022 conference focuses on Career Development Strategies for Marginalized Groups and will benefit the ongoing collaboration between Career Services and Advisement & Recruitment, which includes outreach ad sharing of resources between the University and underserved communities in coastal Mississippi.

Joyce Powell  Awarded $1,000 in funding for attendance at the 2022 Women in Higher Education Mississippi Network (WHEMN) conference in Oxford, MS.

Attendance at WHEMN will help Joyce further develop her skills and perform even more effectively in her new role as Assistant Director of the School of Leadership. The conference will provide exposure to other practitioners and their best practices and allow her to brainstorm new topics and ideas to share with others at Southern Miss.



Faculty awards included:
Your browser does not support the video tag.
Cardinal Michael Czerny continues in his role as Pope Francis' special envoy, departing for Slovakia on Wednesday before traveling toward Ukraine to bring the Pope's closeness to Ukrainian refugees crossing the border.

By Vatican News staff writer

Following his recent four-day mission to Hungary, Cardinal Michael Czerny, the interim Prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, is expected to leave again for Slovakia to bring Pope Francis' closeness to refugees crossing into the country from neighbouring Ukraine.

Read also 11/03/2022 Cardinal Czerny listens to the pain of Ukrainian women fleeing war The interim Prefect of the Vatican Dicastery for Integral Human Development, Cardinal Michael Czerny, wraps up his mission to Hungary and Ukraine in the Pope's name, spending ...

Pope's closeness to Ukainian refugees

According to the Holy See Press Office, the Jesuit Cardinal will arrive in Slovakia on 16 March, and will travel to the Ukrainian border in the following days.

Through his envoy, the Holy Father wishes, once again, to convey his prayerful closeness to those fleeing the fighting in Ukraine and suffering violence at the hand of other men, the press statement said.

Continuing care and concern

Cardinal Czerny stayed in Hungary and briefly visited Ukraine from 7 to 10 March, while Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, the Popes Almoner, went to Ukraine, entering via the Polish-Ukrainian border. He went first to Budapest, where he met Ukrainian refugees at the two main train stations in the Hungarian capital and many volunteers who were helping the refugees there and in other locations he visited, including the Jesuit Refugee Service center in Budapest.

He also traveled to the Hungarian-Ukrainian border town of Barabas, where refugees enter Hungary and where the Hungarian government, Caritas Hungary and other charitable organizations welcome them. From there he was driven across the border to Beregove, Ukraine, to meet with the local Eastern and Latin-rite Catholic bishops.

Pope Francis announced he was sending the two papal envoys during the Angelus prayer on 6 March.
GRACE PIZZINI is a News and Features Reporter for The Vidette. Pizzini can be contacted at gepizzi@ilstu.edu. Follow Pizzini on Twitter at @gepizzini

IF YOU SUPPORT THE VIDETTE MISSION of providing a training laboratory for Illinois State University student journalists to learn and sharpen viable, valuable and marketable skills in all phases of digital media, please contribute to this most important cause. Thank you.
JACK ALKIRE is a Photographer for The Vidette. Alkire can be contacted at dbalkir@ilstu.edu. Follow Alkire on Twitter at d.jack_alkire

IF YOU SUPPORT THE VIDETTE MISSION of providing a training laboratory for Illinois State University student journalists to learn and sharpen viable, valuable and marketable skills in all phases of digital media, please contribute to this most important cause. Thank you.
The armed resistance to Myanmars military regime that seized power from a democratically elected government over a year ago is holding firm against a wave of brutal offensives in recent months and may even be gaining strength, analysts say.

Having taken root in much of the countryside, they add, resistance forces are starting to pressure the overstretched military in some towns and cities as well.

The military is having to fight not just out in the sticks; theyre having to fight right around these provincial towns, said Matthew Arnold, an independent analyst tracking Myanmars post-coup violence.

Galvanized by the militarys bloody crackdown on the mass protests that met its February 2021 coup, towns and neighborhoods across the country have been banding together, mostly with crude rifles and explosives, to oppose the juntas power grab. At least 350 militias, so-called peoples defense forces, or PDFs, have announced themselves since the putsch.

Sustained conflict

Even seasoned Myanmar watchers struggle to grasp the full scale of a guerrilla war being waged by mostly remote and disjointed forces with little but a common cause to bind them. They say many of the PDFs are likely no more than Facebook groups. Others come and go or consolidate, and run the gamut from cells of a half-dozen urban warriors planting homemade bombs to army-like units of 1,000 or more fighters spread over wide reaches of rugged hills.

Putting numbers on the resistance is almost impossible, said Anthony Davis, a Bangkok-based security analyst with Janes defense publications.

But there can be no question that millions of people support PDF activity which certainly appears to have become entrenched and in some areas may possibly be growing, he added.

Of Myanmars 330 townships, more than 250 have seen some form of armed resistance since the coup, said Arnold, and at least 150  nearly half  have had sustained conflict.

For me the most important story in all of this is that theres definitely been an effect of what you might call settling, where conflict has really settled into the bulk of townships of certain areas, he said.

Along Myanmars borders, with India to the west and China and Thailand to the east, PDFs are teaming up with ethnic minority-led rebel armies that have been fighting with the military for autonomy for decades, drawing on their guerrilla combat knowhow and, more sparingly, weapons.

Most of the countrys two-dozen or so rebel armies have kept out of the post-coup fight, holding to formal or tacit cease-fires with the military. But at least four have committed to the resistance: the Kachin Independence Army, Karen National Liberation Army and Karenni Army in the east and the Chin National Front in the west.

With some 15,000 troops among them by some estimates, those four armies command only a fraction of the manpower of Myanmars roughly 350,000-strong military. Arnold, though, says the rebel groups provide enough of a foundation to help keep the wider armed resistance going.

And for all its soldiers, the military is struggling to hold much of the countryside on so many fronts, says Min Zaw Oo, executive director of the Myanmar Institute for Peace and Security, a local think tank.

The PDFs usually do not fight head to head with the regime; in most cases they are easily chased out.... But the regime doesnt have sufficient troops to hold the area. By the time the [military] leaves the area, [the] PDFs come back, he said.

In general ... the regime controls major cities and towns, but in remote areas where the PDF is active, these are the areas the regime could not establish control, he added.

Some of that may be starting to change.

Attacks increase

Rebel army officials and PDF fighters told VOA last month of plans to step up attacks on urban areas. Arnold says that seems to be happening, with repeated attacks over the past few months on Loikaw, the capital city of eastern Myanmars Kayah state. In Myanmars west, he said guerrilla groups have also started harassing towns much more regularly in recent weeks.

The resistance is becoming much more active in these kinds of provincial towns in these core regions like Sagaing and Magwe, where theyll do attacks on military bases or police stations right inside the town itself, said Arnold.

Min Zaw Oo said the military was for now repelling most attacks on its positions in urban areas with relative ease, though. And while resistance forces were still growing in Sagaing and Magwe, he said the offensives the military began launching with the start of Myanmars dry season late last year were now pushing them back from towns in Kayah and just across the border in southern Shan state.

Davis, from Janes, said the militarys dry-season operations were succeeding at disrupting the resistances still-germinal infrastructure and organization in some key areas. The thousands of civilians the offensives have displaced  the United Nations says 440,000 since the coup  are making it harder for PDFs and rebel armies to fight back as well, he added.

It remains to be seen though whether these Tatmadaw successes  which in many areas rely on scorched earth tactics  are sustainable over time, Davis said, calling Myanmars military by its Burmese name.

He and most other analysts are not predicting a definitive battlefield victory for a resistance movement still vastly outgunned and lacking a central command or even much coordination. But neither do they expect the resistance to fold in the face of a military reportedly straining to bolster its ranks by arming pro-junta militias, decommissioning whole police units to send them to the front, and giving civil servants combat training so they can guard key positions.

If that doesnt reek of desperation, I mean, I dont know what does, said Arnold.

A spokesperson for the regime could not be reached for comment.

The regime labels resistance groups terrorists and claims it replaced the previous government legally for ignoring allegations of fraud in a 2020 election that local and international poll watchers say the militarys proxy party lost fairly and decisively.

Rights groups say the regime has killed over 1,500 civilians since the coup and accuse the military of launching indiscriminate air and ground assaults on towns and villages amounting to war crimes.
PHNOM PENH  Just over 30 years ago, a crackling radio in a refugee camp on the Thai border brought Sam Sophal word that the United Nations was coming to his war-ravaged homeland of Cambodia.

For Sam Sophal, who survived the Khmer Rouge genocide only because his mother bribed Khmer Rouge executioners with her silver watch, the promise of peace was irresistible.

The U.N. Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) arrived on March 15, 1992, with great expectations, the first U.N. nation-building operation after the collapse of the Soviet Union sparked hope that democracy would flourish around the world.

But long before last year's shambolic fall of Afghanistan and the costly international missions in Iraq, Kosovo and elsewhere, Cambodia would serve as an early warning of the flaws and limitations of nation building.

At the time, UNTAC was the most ambitious and expensive U.N. mission but despite its $1.6 billion cost and $20 billion in subsequent international aid, hopes of creating a vibrant democracy faded long ago.

I felt very proud during the UNTAC time because I was the first generation to bring peace to Cambodia, says Sam Sophal, 60, who got a job as a translator with the mission soon after its launch.

Now I see we have gone backwards. To one-party rule, he said under the shade of a Jujube tree in his Phnom Penh backyard.

Prime Minister Hun Sen, the same man in power before the UNTAC mission, remains leader, presiding over what critics call an authoritarian government with most opposition leaders in exile or in jail.

Government spokesman Phay Siphan rejects accusations that Hun Sen is an autocrat, saying he has worked for peace and democracy since 1979.

The United Nations said in a statement UNTAC's original mandate of restoring to the Cambodian people and their democratically elected leaders their primary responsibility for peace, stability, national reconciliation and reconstruction had been fulfilled.

BLUE SKY

A prophecy that foretold of a god with blue eyes that would one day bless and restore the land had spread through villages during Cambodia's darkest years.

So when UNTAC arrived with their sky-blue flag and helmets they were seen as an incarnation of that deity, some even painting their homes a U.N. shade of blue, recalled Youk Chhang, executive director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia.

Conflict, genocide, invasions, refugees ... and then suddenly there was blue sky, he said.

A former French colony, by the early 1990s Cambodia had endured decades of devastation after getting sucked into the Vietnam War. During the four-year Khmer Rouge killing fields regime an estimated 1.7 million people, about a fifth of the population, perished.

A Vietnamese invasion toppled the Khmer Rouge in 1979, setting off a war in which the ousted Maoists and two other factions battled the invaders and their Cambodian allies.
Monday morning at least two apartment buildings in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv were struck by missiles, killing at least two. It comes as Ukrainian and Russian officials met via video link to discuss a way to end the fighting. Plus, what losing Ukraines historical sites would mean to the world.
Brent Renaud, an award-winning American journalist, was shot dead in Ukraine Sunday, and his colleague was injured when their car was fired on near a checkpoint.

Ukraine's Interior Ministry said that Renaud was killed in Irpin, an area near Kyiv that has come under intense Russian shelling in recent days.

The 50-year-old filmmaker, from Little Rock, Arkansas, was in Ukraine to collect material for a documentary on refugees, The Associated Press reported.

Renaud was traveling in a vehicle with Colombian American photojournalist Juan Arredondo when they came under fire.

Arredondo, who was injured in the attack, described the assault in a video taken in a Kyiv hospital by Italian journalist Annalisa Camilli.

"We crossed the first bridge in Irpin, we were going to film other refugees leaving, Arredondo says in the video, which was shared online. We crossed the checkpoint, and they started shooting at us.

Arredondo says that Renaud was hit in the neck. Both he and Renaud were Nieman Foundation for Journalism fellows at Harvard University from 2018-2019.

Kyiv regional police released a statement saying that Russian troops had opened fire on the journalists.

The U.S. State Department, United Nations and former colleagues paid tribute to Renaud on Sunday.

State Department spokesperson Ned Price described the attack as another gruesome example of the Kremlins indiscriminate actions.

We are horrified that journalists and filmmakers  noncombatants  have been killed and injured in Ukraine by Kremlin forces, Price said on Twitter. We extend condolences to all those affected by this horrific violence.

Director-General of UNESCO Audrey Azoulay condemned the killing and reinforced that media should not be targeted.

Journalists have a critical role in providing information during a conflict, and should never be targeted, Azoulay said in a statement. I call on the respect of international humanitarian standards, to ensure that journalists and media workers are protected.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said the attack on Renaud and Arredondo is a violation of international law.

Russian forces in Ukraine must stop all violence against journalists and other civilians at once, and whoever killed Renaud should be held to account, CPJs senior program director, Carlos Martinez de la Serna, said in a statement.

Renaud contributed to several news outlets including HBO, The New York Times, VICE and PBS.

In a statement Sunday, TIME magazine said Renaud had been in the region working on a TIME Studios project on refugees.

We are devastated by the loss of Brent Renaud. As an award-winning filmmaker and journalist, Brent tackled the toughest stories around the world, often alongside his brother, a joint statement from Edward Felsenthal, editor-in-chief and president of TIME and TIME Studios Ian Orefice, read.

Our hearts are with all Brents loved ones. It is essential that journalists are able to safely cover this ongoing invasion and humanitarian crisis in Ukraine, the statement said.

Renaud and his brother Craig Renaud won a Peabody award in 2014 for their HBO series Last Chance High about a school on Chicagos West Side.

Christof Putzel, a filmmaker who together with Renaud won a 2013 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University award for their documentary on gun trafficking, paid tribute to his friends dedication to reporting.

"Nowhere was too dangerous," Putzel told the AP. He was just the absolute best war journalist that I know. This is a guy who literally went to every conflict zone.

"It was his bravery but also because he deeply, deeply cared," Putzel added.

Russia troops are reported to have targeted several journalists covering the war in Ukraine.

Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders on Saturday said that Russian soldiers fired at a vehicle carrying Victoria Roschina, a reporter for the Ukrainian media outlet Hromadske UA, then robbed her.

Swiss photojournalist Guillaume Briquet was fired on and robbed March 6. Like Roschina, he was in a car clearly marked Press.

Local media reported that his attackers took Briquets passport, cash, laptop and other equipment.

Sky News on March 5 broadcast dramatic footage of its five-person news crew being fired on as they flee their car and look for shelter. Two of the journalists were hit in the attack.

Some information for this article came from The Associated Press.
Hong Kong authorities are warning a British citizen that he faces imprisonment if he ever returns to the city.

Benedict Rogers is a co-founder of Hong Kong Watch, a Britain-based NGO that campaigns for freedom and human rights in Hong Kong.

In a letter sent to Rogers on Thursday, Hong Kong authorities stated that his charity organization had committed a foreign collusion offense under the citys much-feared national security law and jeopardized Chinas national security.

"A person who commits the offense shall be sentenced to imprisonment of not less than 3 years to life, part of the letter read.

The activist later said the letter came as a surprise.

In theory, I knew this could happen, but I never expected for it to go this far, Rogers told VOA by phone.

Rogers had contacted the Hong Kong government over fears that the Hong Kong Watch website had been blocked in the city following reports the site hasnt been accessible since early February.

I contacted the Hong Kong government to ask for an explanation and the letter I then received from the police and an email from the national Security Bureau was their response to my inquiry, he told VOA.

The reply to Rogers all but confirmed that authorities are using the powers of the national security law to prohibit users in Hong Kong from accessing the organizations website.

Rogers is the first person living outside Hong Kong whom authorities have targeted with the national security law since it came into force nearly two years ago.

British government reaction

British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss released a statement via Twitter on Monday, calling for the Chinese government and Hong Kong authorities to respect the universal right to freedom of speech.

The unjustifiable action taken against the UK-Based NGO Hong Kong Watch is clearly an attempt to silence those who stand up for human rights in Hong Kong, Trusss statement read in part. Attempting to silence voices globally that speak up for freedom and democracy is unacceptable and will never succeed.

The letter also asked Rogers to close down the Hong Kong Watch website. A statement released via Hong Kong Watch said the organization will continue to be a voice for the people of Hong Kong."

Rogers later brushed off any concerns that this organization would shut down.

No, we certainly wont close down the organization or the website, and I think our role and our work is needed now more than ever. We are a British-based organization, were registered in the United Kingdom, our advocacy is around the world, but we dont have any operations in Hong Kong itself or personnel or presence in Hong Kong at all, he told VOA.

Rogers, 47, lived in Hong Kong between 1997 and 2002 and has long advocated for further democracy in the city.

His activism, however, has caught the attention of Hong Kong authorities before.

Rogers was denied entry into Hong King when he attempted to visit friends in 2017. Immigration officials at the Hong Kong International Airport refused to let Rogers into the territory, giving no explanation. The rejection prompted Rogers and others to form Hong Kong Watch in December of that year.

Following pro-democracy protests in 2019, Beijing implemented the national security law for Hong Kong in 2020, prohibiting acts deemed as supporting secession, subversion, terrorism or collusion with foreign forces.

The legislation has since been vigorously enforced, with authorities clamping down on at least 150 dissidents in the city, including dozens of Democratic lawmakers and political figures while at least 50 Hong Kong-based civil society groups have disbanded.

According to the security measure, anyone who violates the law worldwide can still face criminal prosecution.

Eric Yan-ho Lai, an analyst and fellow at Georgetown University Law School in Washington, said the far-reaching effects of the measure enforced by extradition agreements could see Rogers at risk if he travels overseas.

Practically speaking, Mr. Rogers and/or his colleagues related to Hong Kong Watch could be arrested by National Security Police in Hong Kong, and it is possible that countries with extradition agreements with Hong Kong and/or China would be requested for extradition through the Interpol Red Notice or any direct request, he told VOA.

Several countries including the United States and Britain have cancelled their extradition agreements with China since Hong Kongs national security law came into effect. Countries in Europe, Africa and Asia all continue to hold extradition arrangements with the territory.

Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong found himself denied entry into Malaysia in 2015 and Thailand in 2016 and was both times deported to Hong Kong. Wong is currently serving time in prison for his role in the Hong Kong protests in 2019 and still faces charges under the national security law.

In general, those countries that made extradition agreements with Hong Kong and/or China could be risky for him. Thailand would be a possible example given its track record of handling Joshua's entry.

This is also a proper time for governments with extradition agreements with Hong Kong and/or China to review their agreements, Yan-ho Lai added.
The Chinese city of Shenzhen is in lockdown, following an uptick in COVID-19 cases. Shenzhen, often described as Chinas Silicon Valley, is home to several Apple suppliers, including Foxconn.



The citys public transportation has closed, and residents are being tested.

Meanwhile, former U.S. president Barack Obama has tested positive for COVID, but his wife Michelle has not. Both are vaccinated.

"Michelle and I are grateful to be vaccinated and boosted," Obama posted on Facebook. "It's a good reminder that, even as cases go down, you should get vaccinated and boosted if you haven't already to help prevent more serious symptoms and giving COVID to others."

India announced Monday that it is opening its COVID vaccination campaign to 12-to-14-year-olds. Previously, vaccination was limited to those 15 years old and older.



Indias Health Ministry also announced Monday that everyone over 60 is eligible for the COVID vaccine. Previously, people were with a potential co-morbidity condition were not eligible to receive the shot.



It's really miraculous that we were able to see the scientific advancements we needed to have vaccines for this illness generated in less than a year after the pandemic was declared, Mihir Mankad, Doctors Without Borders-USA's senior advisor for global health advocacy and policy, said in a recent statement. But what we have failed at doing, and we continue to fail at doing, is to ensure that these tools are equitably available across the world.



Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Centers reports there have been more than 6 million global deaths related to the coronavirus.
Aid groups say Eritrean refugees in Ethiopia are facing increased attacks and growing hunger as humanitarian access to the displaced persons camps remains limited. The aid groups are calling on Ethiopian authorities to protect refugees and allow much-needed assistance into besieged areas of the country.

Eritrean refugees living in Ethiopia continue to face hunger and attacks as fighting in the countrys northern areas continues.

According to refugees who spoke to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, unidentified men attacked the Barahle camp last month, killing five people.



Faith Kasina is the U.N. refugee agency spokesperson for Eastern Africa, the Horn of Africa, and the Great Lakes region.

She says Eritrean refugees are fleeing conflict areas to safer areas.

The conflict has also reached some of those refugee camps in those three regions where we have seen refugees being displaced, forced to flee yet again," said Kasina. "Others have been wounded and some have also been killed. The situation continues to be extremely worrying for refugees, particularly because a lot of them have to deal with the reality of being forced to flee yet again.

Ethiopia hosts at least 140,000 Eritreans who fled persecution and other abuses in their country.

Most of the refugees are sheltered in the Tigray region, scene of the heaviest fighting between Ethiopias government forces and the Tigray Liberation Peoples Front rebel group. Others have moved south to the Afar and Amhara regions, where the TPLF is battling pro-government militias.

Humanitarian agencies have had difficulty accessing the populations in need because of roadblocks and insecurity.



The U.N. humanitarian office says it was recently able to distribute 100 metric tons of healthcare and nutrition supplies to Tigray. The aid helped about 10,000 people and at least 22,000 refugees.

Another 190,000 received assistance in Afar and Amhara.

Kasina of the U.N. refugee agency says more people are left without shelter.



With the deterioration of the security situation and the ongoing conflict many people, including refugees, are likely to be further displaced to flee their homes or where they are living in settlement in urban areas to other areas that are relatively safer in search of assistance, in search of security," said Kasina.

Amnesty International Horn of Africa researcher Fisseha Tekle says some Eritrean refugees are leaving Ethiopia altogether.

A number of Eritreans are leaving to other countries especially through Kenya border to Uganda," said Tekle. "Most of them while en route they are arrested by police officials at the border or after crossing the border and many of the times they are taken to court and fined especially in Kenya though some of them were able to make it to Uganda.

The U.N. humanitarian agency says its operations in the north of the country continue to be restricted, at a time when about 870,000 people need its assistance each week.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has confirmed the bloc is poised to impose a fourth round of sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.

Speaking in Skopje during a visit to the capital of North Macedonia on Monday, the EU's top diplomat accused Moscow of targeting civilians in its war against Ukraine, noting that "more than" 2,400 civilians had died in the besieged port city of Mariupol alone.

"Putin's war is not only about Ukraine, it's about security and stability of our European continent. It affects all of us," Borrell said, adding that another package of sanctions targeting Russia's steel, coal, and energy sectors, as well as its market access and membership in international financial institutions.

"This will be another major blow to the economic and logistic base upon which the Kremlin is building the invasion and taking the resources to finance it," Borrell said. He gave no further details.

Some of the most severe fighting is taking place in Mariupol, a major port city in eastern Ukraine, where Russian forces have shelled a maternity ward and blasted apartment buildings, leaving the city in ruins.

The unceasing barrages into the city have also thwarted repeated attempts to bring in food and water and evacuate tens of thousands of trapped civilians.

Russia on Monday said it had created conditions to open humanitarian corridors and that a mass evacuation of people had begun.

Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said a convoy had been trying to reach the city to deliver aid and help evacuate women and children, but, as with similar attempts over the past week, that as of early in the afternoon it had not been able to reach the city.
Gunmen killed at least 13 gendarmes in an ambush Sunday at Taparko, a mining town in northern Burkina Faso regularly targeted by jihadist fighters, security sources said.

"A team from the gendarmerie at Dori fell into an ambush set by armed individuals this afternoon near Taparko," a security source told AFP. As well as the 13 confirmed dead, a number of other gendarmes were missing, the source added.

Another security source said reinforcements had been called in and were searching the sector for eight missing gendarmes.

An additional eight gendarmes were wounded in the attack, two of them seriously, and they had been evacuated for treatment in Tougouri.

The attack came as two people were killed and several others injured when a bus hit a landmine Sunday, also near Taparko.
German prosecutors said Monday they have charged Wirecard's former chief executive Markus Braun and two other high-ranking managers for the colossal commercial fraud that led to the collapse of the payment company.



The trio are accused of market manipulation, embezzlement and gang fraud on a commercial scale, said prosecutors, noting that the indictment itself runs to 474 pages.



The German fintech company, once touted as a shining star of innovative start-ups, crashed in June 2020 after admitting that a missing 1.9 billion euros ($2.1 billion) from its balance sheets likely didn't exist.

The time it took for prosecutors to file formal charges underlined the intricate and complex web of fraudulent transactions that investigators travelled across the world to unravel.



Among victims of the fraud were banks that had provided credit of 1.7 billion euros to Wirecard. Bonds worth 1.4 billion euros had also been issued, which are unlikely to be repaid.



"All the accused group members were acting in an industrial fashion in these six cases of fraud, because that is how they secured their own salaries, including partially profit-related portions," prosecutors said in a statement.



Braun for instance, received at least 5.5 million euros in dividends, they said.



Wirecard's troubles began in January 2019 with a series of articles in the Financial Times alleging accounting irregularities in its Asian division, headed by chief operating officer Jan Marsalek.



But the financial technology company was able, at that time, to repeatedly fend off claims and the FT's journalists themselves came under investigation over the reports.



The huge scam unravelled in June 2020 when auditors Ernst & Young said they were unable to find 1.9 billion euros of cash in the company's accounts.



The sum, which made up a quarter of the balance sheet, was supposedly held to cover risks in trading carried out by third parties on Wirecard's behalf and was meant to be sitting in trustee accounts at two Philippine banks.



But the Philippines' central bank has said the cash never entered its monetary system and both Asian banks, BDO and BPI, denied having a relationship with Wirecard.



While key figures in the company have since been detained, including Braun, the company's former COO Marsalek, who is wanted by German prosecutors, remains at large.
Malian soldiers and jihadists have carried out a wave of summary executions since December in the conflict-torn Sahel state, says Human Rights Watch, which is urging the government to investigate.

A report due to be published Wednesday said at least 107 civilians  including traders, village chiefs and children  had been killed recently in central and southwestern Mali since December.

Most of the victims were summarily executed, according to the report seen by AFP, which is based on the testimony of 49 people.

Members of the security forces were linked to at least 71 civilian deaths over the period, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said, while jihadists were linked to 36.

The numbers constituted a "dramatic spike, said HRW Sahel director Corinne Dufka.

"This complete disregard for human life, which includes apparent war crimes, should be investigated and those found to be implicated appropriately punished," she added.

Mali, an impoverished nation of 21 million people, has over the past decade been wracked by Islamist violence. Vast swaths of the country are in thrall to myriad rebel groups and militias.

Thousands of soldiers and civilians have been killed and hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to flee their homes.

Mali's under-equipped army has also often been accused of committing abuses during the brutal conflict.

But the army-dominated interim government, installed after a 2020 military coup, regularly rejects such accusations.

Among other incidents, the HRW report cited one in central Mali in January in which soldiers allegedly killed five civilians.

A witness told the rights group that "white soldiers" as well as Malian troops had been involved.

The report did not mention the identity of the white soldiers. However, France, the United States and others say that Russian private security firm Wagner has deployed hundreds of fighters to Mali.

Mali's government has repeatedly denied the claims.

HRW said the government had told the rights group that the gendarmes had opened investigations into two alleged incidents of military abuses mentioned in the 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:

11:50 p.m.: Multiple sources, including The Kyiv Independent, Ukraines English-language media outlet, report large blasts in Kyiv, local time 5:45 a.m.

10: 30 p.m.: President Joe Biden said Monday that the U.S. will continue to support Ukraine in fending off Russian aggression and will provide assistance to refugees fleeing the country in search of safety.

We will make sure Ukraine has weapons to defend against the invading Russian force. We will send money and food and aid to save Ukrainian lives, Biden said in a tweet.

We will welcome Ukrainian refugees with open arms, he said.

9:35 p.m.: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken released a statement late Monday: The United States welcomes the passage of New Zealands new sanctions regime, which allows the imposition of sanctions on those responsible for, or associated with, Russias invasion of Ukraine. It also gives the New Zealand government the power to sanction individuals and entities that are of economic or strategic relevance to Russia and will ensure Russia cannot use New Zealand to circumvent sanctions imposed by the international community.

8:44 p.m.: Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy thanked Marina Ovsiannykova, an anti-war protester who interrupted a Russian state TV broadcast, in his daily video address in Telegram, switching to Russian to say, "I am thankful to those Russians that do not cease trying to get the truth out, who fight against disinformation and tell the truth, tell real facts to their friends, relatives. And personally to the girl who entered the studio of Channel 1 with a poster against the war. To those who are not afraid to protest, before your country closes totally from the rest of the world, turning into a very big North Korea. You need to fight, you shouldn't miss your own chance."

8:13 p.m.: Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said late on Monday that negotiations with Russia are to continue on Tuesday, according to Reuters. Zelenskyy also said he spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett as part of a negotiation effort to end the war with Russia "with a fair peace."

7:44 p.m.: New Zealand's government said it would introduce a new policy that will enable about 4,000 family members of Ukrainian New Zealanders to move to the country in the short-term following Russia's invasion, Reuters reported on Tuesday. Ukrainian-born New Zealand citizens and residents will be able to sponsor a Ukrainian family member and their immediate family, Immigration Minster Kris Faafoi said in a statement. Those accepted will be granted a two-year work visa and their children will be able to attend school.

7:09 p.m.: The International Atomic Energy Agency said late Monday that power had been restored at Ukraine's Chernobyl nuclear power station, the site of the world's worst nuclear disaster in 1986, the Agence France-Presse reported.

5:41 p.m.: An anti-war protester interrupted the main news program on Russian state TV Channel One on Monday, holding up a sign behind the studio presenter with slogans denouncing the war in Ukraine. The sign, in English and Russian, read: "NO WAR. Stop the war. Don't believe propaganda. They are lying to you here." Pavel Chikov, head of the human rights group Agora, said the woman, Marina Ovsiannykova, an employee of the TV channel, had been arrested and taken to a Moscow police station.

3:57 p.m.: A pregnant women who was injured last week in an air strike on a maternity hospital in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol has died along with her unborn child. The woman was in the maternity ward of the hospital when Russian forces shelled it, and she was pictured in a widely distributed photograph being rushed to an ambulance on a stretcher holding her swollen belly. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reports.

3:26 p.m.: We are horrified to learn that our fellow correspondent Benjamin Hall was injured as he covered the Ukraine war, said Shaun Tandon, President of the State Department Correspondents Association, on Monday. We know Ben for his warmth, good humor and utmost professionalism. We wish Ben a quick recovery and call for utmost efforts to protect journalists who are providing an invaluable service through their coverage in Ukraine, he added. Hall works for the American television network Fox News.

3:19 p.m.: A reporter for Fox News was hospitalized in Ukraine Monday. A memo from Fox News, shared on social media, said that its correspondent Benjamin Hall was injured while newsgathering outside of Kyiv. The memo said Hall is being treated in hospital and that Fox has few details about what happened. Hall, a State Department correspondent who joined Fox News in 2015, has covered conflict previously including in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. He has reported for U.S. and British media including the New York Times, The Times of London and the BBC, according to Jessica Jerreat, VOA's Press Freedom Editor.

2:45 p.m.: U.S. State Department Spokesman Ned Price said his office is closely monitoring China and other countries to see if they provide financial or other support to Russia. VOAs Nike Ching reports.

2:40 p.m.: U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan met with Chinese Communist Party Politburo Member and Director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission Yang Jiechi in Rome, Italy on Monday. Mr. Sullivan raised a range of issues in U.S.-China relations, with substantial discussion of Russias war against Ukraine, according to an official statement from his office. They also underscored the importance of maintaining open lines of communication between the United States and China, the statement added.

2:38 p.m.: Russian forces let a first column of cars escape Ukraine's besieged port of Mariupol on Monday after 10 days of failed attempts to rescue civilians under relentless bombardment, according to Ukrainian officials. But the Russians blocked an aid convoy trying to reach the city, Reuters reported.

2:13 p.m.: More than two weeks into a war he expected to dominate in two days, Vladimir Putin is projecting anger, frustration at his militarys failures and a willingness to cause even more violence and destruction in Ukraine, in the assessment of U.S. intelligence officials. The Associated Press has the story.

1:54 p.m.: Police on Monday moved in to evict squatters who had occupied a London mansion suspected of belonging to Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska, who was placed on Britain's sanctions list last week in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Reuters reported.

Wearing riot gear, officers entered the multi-million dollar mansion which the squatters had earlier occupied in Belgrave Square. However, they remained in a standoff with the squatters who gathered on the balcony at the front of the property where they had unfurled a Ukrainian flag and placed a banner reading 'This property has been liberated'.

"You occupy Ukraine, we occupy you," said a statement from the squatters, who described themselves as anarchists.

"Squatting in residential buildings is illegal but we are working to identify the appropriate use for seized properties while owners are subject to sanctions," a spokesman for Prime Minister Boris Johnson told reporters. "We certainly don't think people should break the law."

1:49 p.m.: EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has confirmed the bloc is poised to impose a fourth round of sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.

1:46 p.m.: Ukraine is on fire, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Monday. The country is being decimated before the eyes of the world. The impact on civilians is reaching terrifying proportions, he said at a press gathering at U.N. headquarters in New York.

Guterres expressed grave concern that the war could interrupt the global food supply chain. We must do everything possible to avert a hurricane of hunger and a meltdown of the global food system, he said, noting that this was one of many grave concerns related to the fallout from Russias invasion of Ukraine.

In a word, developing countries are getting pummeled, Guterres said. They face a cascade of crises  beyond the Ukraine war, we cannot forget COVID and the impacts of climate change  in particular, drought. In response, he announced the establishment of a new Global Crisis Response Group on Food, Energy and Finance in the U.N. Secretariat to work with member states.

Make no mistake: everyday people, especially women and children, will bear the brunt of this unfolding tragedy, he said. We need peace now.

1:32 p.m. : The Ukrainian government is doing what it can to keep the countrys economy running. Still, its money is running out fast. The International Monetary Fund executive board approved a $1.4 billion loan to Ukraine on March 10. But experts say it wont last for long. VOAs Oksana Bedratenko has the story, narrated by Anna Rice.

1:28 p.m.: Four U.S. senators visited Poland over the weekend to speak to Ukrainian refugees, VOA's Eastern Europe Chief Myroslava Gongadze reports. Senator Amy Kobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, said Congress is looking at more ways to boost Ukraines defenses.

12:52 p.m.: Thousands of people have fled the town of Irpin near the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, after civilian areas came under sustained Russian attack. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty spoke to some of the people who remain with no electricity or gas for heating and with corpses yet to be cleared from the streets. (WARNING: Viewers may find the content of this video disturbing.)

12:28 p.m.: Pianists this week are trying to keep spirits up at the train station in Lviv, Ukraine, as exhausted refugees continue to flee the war, Reuters reports.

12:05 p.m.: In Photos: Russia's Invasion of Ukraine, March 14, 2022

11:51 a.m.: Ukrainian families crossing the border into Poland say taking their pets with them made the journey to escape the Russian invasion more difficult. But they tell VOAs Celia Mendoza the pets are like family and leaving them behind was not an option.

11:32 a.m.: U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Mark Warner praised Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyys efforts to counter Russian disinformation. VOAs National Security Correspondent Jeff Seldin has more on Warners comments, delivered at an event organized by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Monday.

11:12 a.m.: U.S. drugmaker Pfizer Inc said on Monday it would maintain its humanitarian supply of medicines to Russia but would refrain from starting new clinical trials in the country and recruiting patients for ongoing studies, Reuters reports.

Pfizer said it would work with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and other regulators to transition all clinical trials to alternative sites outside Russia. It will continue providing drugs to the patients already enrolled in studies.

A voluntary pause in the flow of medicines to Russia would be "in direct violation of our foundational principle of putting patients first", Pfizer said. "Ending delivery of medicines, including cancer or cardiovascular therapies, would cause significant patient suffering and potential loss of life," it added.

The sanctions, which leave out medicine and medical equipment, have cut off Russian banks from the international financial system, thereby disrupting the movement of goods into the country. Pfizer said it would donate all profits from its unit in the country to causes that provide support to the people of Ukraine. Pfizer, which does not own or operate any manufacturing sites in Russia, said it would stop all planned investments with local suppliers intended to build manufacturing capacity in the country.

10:58 a.m.: Harvard Universitys Nieman Foundation, which runs programs promoting and elevating the standards of journalism, has published a remembrance of American journalist Brent Renaud who was shot and killed in Irpin, Ukraine yesterday. Renaud was a documentary filmmaker and photographer and a member of the Nieman class of 2019.

10:41 a.m.: Polands Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau addressed the United Nations Security Council as the current chairman of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Monday. Speaking about Ukraine, he said the door to diplomacy is still open. We cannot stay indifferent, he said. VOAs UN Correspondent Margaret Besheer reports.

10:27 a.m.: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will deliver a virtual address to members of the U.S. House and Senate on Wednesday. The Congress, our country and the world are in awe of the people of Ukraine, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Shumer said in a statement released Monday. Zelenskyy spoke by video with House and Senate lawmakers earlier this month, delivering a desperate plea for more military aid. Congress recently approved $13.6 billion in emergency military and humanitarian aid for Ukraine.

10:18 a.m.: The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has highlighted Ukraines unique culture in a series of Twitter posts, and described efforts to preserve it in the face of Russias military invasion. On Monday UNESCO brought attention to traditional Cossack songs from the Dnipropetrovsk Region in Ukraine, which recount the tragedy of war.

10:00 a.m.: The United Nations Security Council holds its annual meeting with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Monday. Among its key duties is monitoring the repeatedly broken ceasefire in eastern Ukraine, according to UN organizers. Poland holds the rotating chairmanship of the OSCE, and its Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau is in New York and will speak at the UNSC meeting. He will also meet U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and other U.N. officials. Under Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs Rosemary DiCarlo is also expected to brief, the UN stated. VOAs UN Correspondent Margaret Besheer is monitoring the proceedings.

9:35 a.m.: Rescue efforts continued Monday at an apartment building hit by Russian artillery in Ukraines capital Kiev, The Associated Press reports.

9:28 a.m.: Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a law allowing Russian airlines to operate leased planes without a foreign certificate, Reuter quoted news agency Tass as saying Monday. Sanctions imposed after Russias invasion of Ukraine give leasing firms until March 28 to free themselves from deals with Russian airlines.

9:21 a.m.: Warsaws central railway station is packed on a chilly evening. Two trains have arrived from the border and disgorge a mass of disheveled, tired people, and blinking children, to join the already jam-packed main entrance hall, where families clutch bowls of soup and bottled water proffered by the volunteers. VOAs Jamie Dettmer, in Poland, spoke with some of the refugees and has this Reporters Notebook account of their journey.

9:19 a.m.: Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said 20 civilians were killed and another 28 wounded by a ballistic missile launched by the Ukrainian forces Monday in the eastern city of Donetsk, center of the separatist Donetsk region, The Associated Press reports. Konashenkov said the missile was fired from an area northwest of Donetsk controlled by Ukrainian forces. His claim could not be independently verified, AP added.

9:06 a.m.: The Ukrainian state power company said Monday the power line supplying the Chernobyl nuclear facility was damaged by Russian forces again, after it was repaired, according to The Associated Press.

The Ukrenergo company said in a statement that its technicians had started to supply power Sunday evening but before the power supply was fully restored, the occupying forces damaged it again. Ukrenergo said it will attempt another repair.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has played down concerns over the safety of nuclear waste at Chernobyl, saying that cooling ponds there are large enough to keep the spent nuclear fuel in safe condition even if the power supply is interrupted.

8:33 a.m.: A top Red Cross official says the ongoing Russian war on Ukraine has become nothing short of a nightmare for those living in besieged cities. Robert Mardini, the director-general of the International Committee of the Red Cross, also called the war catastrophic for civilians affected by the fighting. He told The Associated Press on Monday that people are out of drinking water, food, medical supplies and fuel for heating  particularly in the surrounded Ukrainian city of Mariupol. While the Red Cross continues to speak with Russian and Ukrainian leaders, theres so far been no established routes for people to safely leave Mariupol and some other areas facing intense warfare. Earlier, Mardini said on Twitter that history will look back with horror if no agreement is reached in Mariupol.

8:19 a.m.: The European Union said Monday it is providing concrete assistance to the people of Ukraine including medical and shelter supplies.

8:05 a.m.: Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian will head to Moscow on March 15 for discussions on the Iran nuclear deal, the Iranian Foreign Ministry said. The announcement comes days after France, Britain, and Germany warned of a risk that talks on an almost-completed revived nuclear deal could collapse over Russias demands to have its trade with Iran guaranteed amid massive sanctions on Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reports.

7:47 a.m.: Two people were killed in Russian strikes on Ukraines capital Kyiv Monday, and an aircraft factory was set ablaze, Reuters reports. At least one person was killed when a Russian shell smashed into an apartment block in Kyiv on Monday and a second person was killed by falling debris after a missile strike on another part of the Ukrainian capital, city authorities said.



Ukrainian television footage showed firefighters clambering through rubble and up a ladder into what was left of the smoldering apartment block that was hit in Kyiv's Obolon district. A corpse lay on the ground, the face covered.



Also, three Russian rockets hit the Antonov aircraft factory in Kyiv and firefighters "localized" a blaze at the plant, Deputy Mayor Mykola Povoroznyk said. There were no immediate reports of any deaths at the factory.



Meanwhile, more than 2,400 civilians have been killed in the southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol since Russia invaded the country last month, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Monday. Borrell, speaking at a news conference in Skopje, said that more than 2.6 million people have fled Ukraine and the number of refugees could swell to 4-5 million.

7:32 a.m. On her first Shabbat away from the fighting in Ukraine, Rabbi Julia Gris twice led services to welcome the Jewish holy day. A week earlier, Ukraine's only woman rabbi had been fleeing the war that scattered her Odesa congregation from Moldova to Romania and Israel. Some stayed behind, braving the Russian shelling.

7:04 a.m.: The UN refugee agency reports that as of Monday, over 2.8 million refugees have fled Ukraine since Russia launched its invasion on February 24. Two U.S. college students have developed a website to try to help Ukrainian refugees seeking shelter in the region. UkraineTakeShelter.com is an independent platform connecting Ukrainian refugees with potential hosts and housing, according to their website. The concept was developed by Avi Schiffmann and Marco Burstein, two undergraduate students at Harvard University, who say that the platform acts as a public bulletin board matching refugees with people offering places to stay and has been attracting thousands of viewers since it was launched earlier this month. Observers note this is one of many efforts, public and private, underway to assist Ukrainian refugees in the region.

6:57 am.: Talks between Russia and Ukraine have resumed Monday, a scheduled meeting held through a video conference.

The parties actively express their specified positions. Communication is being held yet its hard, Mykhaylo Podolyak, a senior adviser to Ukraines President Volodymyr Zelenskiyy, said in a Twitter post. The reason for the discord is too different political systems.

Earlier, Podolyak said he was ready for a difficult discussion with Russia, to resume the planned negotiation. The fourth round of negotiations. On peace, a cease-fire, an immediate troop pullout and security guarantees. Podolyak said. Since Russias invasion of Ukraine, the two countries have attempted to negotiate three times before March 14 but with no clear outcome.

6:00 a.m.: A bipartisan group of senators are calling for assistance in Ukraine since Russias invasion of the country in February.

Some favoring the no-fly zone, delivery of the aircrafts and air defense system, reports VOAs Eastern Europe Chief Myroslava Gongadze.

5:30 a.m.: Ukrainian and Russian delegations resume peace talks Monday, a day after Russia launched a lethal cruise missile attack on a western Ukraine military base just 25 kilometers from Poland, a NATO member. At least 35 people died and 134 were wounded in the attack on the International Center for Peacekeeping and Security.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday in his daily nighttime address that Sunday was a black day for the country because of the attack.

The president said he had given a clear warning to Western leaders about the likelihood of an attack at the base where NATO units train with Ukrainian troops.

Meanwhile, Ukraines human rights ombudswoman says the Russians used a phosphorus munition in an overnight attack on the eastern Ukrainian city of Popasna in the Luhansk region.

Ukraines human rights ombudswoman, Liudmila Denisova, shared a photograph purporting to show the alleged attack, but did not say if Ukraine had concrete evidence, Reuters reported. The bombing of a civilian city by the Russian attackers with these weapons is a war crime and a crime against humanity according to the Rome convention, she said. VOA was not immediately able to verify the claim.

While phosphorus is not considered a chemical weapon, its use against human beings is banned under international law.

4:51 a.m.: Australia has imposed fresh sanctions on wealthy Russian entrepreneurs because of the Kremlins invasion of Ukraine. The move is part of Australias strategy to penalize people of economic and political value to Russia. For VOA, Phil Mercer reports from Sydney.

4:30 a.m.: Sundays closing ceremony of the 2022 Winter Paralympics in Beijing marked the end of an almost six-week run for international sports in the Chinese capital that began with the opening of the Winter Olympics on February 4th.

President Xi Jinping was on hand as the Paralympic flag was passed to the mayor and vice-mayor of Milan  Cortina, Italy, where the next Winter Paralympics will be held in 2026.

The Beijing Paralympics opened just eight days after Russia, aided by Belarus, invaded Ukraine. The International Paralympic Committee, after initially declining to bar Russian and Belarusian athletes, reversed course and removed their 83 athletes  71 from Russia and 12 from Belarus.

Ukraine, with only 20 athletes competing, finished second to China in the medal standings. The ceremony ended a run for Asia of hosting four of the last eight Olympics and Paralympics, starting with the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

4:00 a.m.: Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba called on allies to assist in the countrys fight against Russias invasion and avert a larger war.

Some Western governments fear that doing so could pull other countries, including NATO member states, into the war, according to Reuters.

We need you to help us fight. Provide us with all necessary weapons. Apply more sanctions on Russia and isolate it fully, Kuleba said in a Twitter post Monday.

3:54 a.m.: Every Sunday, dozens of Ukrainian and Russian Christian believers congregate at First Russian Baptist Church in Mount Crawford, Virginia. As Russias invasion of Ukraine continues, these worshippers say they condemn violence and are focusing on what unites them. VOAs Yahya Barzinji visited the church, spoke to congregants and filed this report narrated by Namo Abdulla.

3:35 a.m.: Russia continues its unprovoked attack on neighboring Ukraine as the invasion rolls through a third week. On Sunday dozens of people were killed when Russia launched a missile attack on a military training base in western Ukraine near the countrys border with Poland. VOAs Arash Arabasadi has more.

3:15 a.m.: A government source told Reuters Monday that Germany will purchase up to 35 F-35 fighter jets. The news agency reported earlier that the government in Berlin had decided in principle to buy the U.S. fighter jets.

2:30 a.m.: A residential nine-story building in Ukraines capital Kyiv was on fire Monday due to Russian shelling, the Kyiv Independent newspaper reported.

State emergency service officials said that the fire broke out shortly after 5 a.m. local time in Obolonskyi district of Ukraines capital.

1:30 a.m.: The WHO warned that the war in Ukraine could lead to COVID-19 outbreaks in the region.

Ukraines vaccination rate is about 34% but vaccination efforts have all but stopped due to the fighting. Approximately 2 million Ukrainians have been forced to flee and many inside and outside of the country are living in close quarters where the virus can spread quickly. Since the outbreak, the country has also experienced a polio outbreak and a nationwide polio vaccine program had to be halted due to the fighting.

The WHO also denounced Russian attacks on health care facilities and workers. The organization has reported 31 attacks against health care facilities, ambulances and other locations resulting in 12 deaths.

A joint statement from UNICEF, WHO and the United Nations Population Fund said: For the sake of health workers, and for all people in Ukraine who need access to the lifesaving services they provide, attacks on all health care and other civilian infrastructure must stop.

12:30 a.m.: The U.K. Ministry of Defence reported that Russian naval forces have established a distant blockade of Ukraines Black Sea coast effectively isolating Ukraine from international maritime trade.

In addition to preventing trade in and out, Russian naval vessels are conducting missile strikes and Russia conducted an amphibious landing of forces from the Sea of Azov, the ministry reported.

12:15 a.m.: Exclusive via Reuters: Ukraine war must end, Russias fertilizer and coal king says

The war in Ukraine is a tragedy that must be stopped or there will be a global food crisis as fertilizer prices are already too high for many farmers, Russias coal and fertilizer king Andrei Melnichenko said on Monday.

The events in Ukraine are truly tragic. We urgently need peace, Melnichenko, 50, who is Russian but was born in Belarus and has a Ukrainian mother, told Reuters in a statement emailed by his spokesman.

As a Russian by nationality, a Belarusian by birth, and a Ukrainian by blood, I feel great pain and disbelief witnessing brotherly peoples fighting and dying.

12:00 a.m.: President Joe Bidens National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan will fly to Rome on Monday to meet with Chinese Foreign Policy Adviser Yang Jiechi to discuss the two countries stances on Russias war in Ukraine.

Beijing has been unwilling to strongly condemn Russias actions or to levy sanctions since Russias invasion of Ukraine. The New York Times reported on Sunday that Russia has requested military and economic aid from China. Sullivan is expected to tell his counterpart that the U.S. condemns any effort to help Russia evade sanctions or conduct the war.

We are communicating directly, privately to Beijing, that there will absolutely be consequences for large-scale sanctions evasion efforts or support to Russia to backfill them, Sullivan said Sunday on CNN. We will not allow that to go forward and allow there to be a lifeline to Russia from these economic sanctions from any country, anywhere in the world.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
Nigerian teachers, who have been striking since February 14, said they are extending their strike for another two months. The teachers accuse the government of failing to honor agreed-upon benefits. Meanwhile, about eight million Nigerian students are unable to attend school.

Civil engineering student Favour Nwokeforo, who is entering his final year, had hoped for better news on Monday. With his bags packed for school, he said his hopes were dashed after the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) announced the extension of its strike by eight more weeks.

"I'm not happy," Nworkeforo said. "No student will plan a semester timetable with strikes in between, much less a final year student. We haven't even started some courses. It's very disappointing and I hope the strike can be resolved soonest."

ASUU said the salary negotiations with authorities late Sunday fell through and that the extension is to enable authorities resolve the issues.

Strikes over pay are not unusual at public universities in Nigeria controlled by the government.

In 2009, ASUU and Nigerian authorities signed a $500 million agreement to end strikes in the country. The agreement was to ensure timely payment of salaries and the improvement of public schools in Nigeria.

ASUU says authorities failed to "satisfactorily" meet the terms of this agreement.

The unions chairman, Emmanuel Osodeke, could not immediately comment. But ASUU's decision to shut down the universities is keeping nearly eight million students like Nwokeforo away from classes.

Two weeks ago, the National Association of Nigerian Students, NANS, organized protests aimed at pushing the government and ASUU to reach a compromise.

NANS zonal leader Umar Faruq said the students will hold more street protests until ASUU and authorities settle their differences.

"We intend to block the roads that lead to most cities of Nigeria, especially the federal capital territory (Abuja)," Faruq said. "What we held last two weeks is part of the action plan."

Nigeria's Labor Minister Chris Ngige has said authorities already paid $230 million in earned allowances and revitalization fees to the lecturers union  and that the government doesnt have any more money to pay the union.

This is the sixteenth time ASUU will be going on strike in two decades. In 2020, the unions strike lasted nine months, the longest in recent history.
The chairperson of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said Monday that Russia's targeting of Ukrainian civilians, as well as schools and hospitals, is "state terrorism."

"The invading force started to target the civilian population and infrastructure in an attempt to break the spirit of the Ukrainian people," Zbigniew Rau said. "This is deplorable and shameful and amounts to state terrorism. Schools, hospitals and kindergartens are being deliberately targeted with internationally banned weapons."

The United Nations has said it has credible reports that Russian forces are using cluster munitions in populated areas.

Rau, who is Poland's foreign minister, addressed the U.N. Security Council Monday in his capacity as the chairperson-in-office of the OSCE for 2022.

Russia is an OSCE member, and Rau said Moscow has accused him of bias in response to the conflict.

"I have only one response to this kind of allegation: The impartiality ends where blatant violations of international humanitarian law start," he said.

Rau urged Russia and Belarus, which is hosting Russian troops on its territory and has been accused of allowing missiles to be fired from its soil, to stop this "cruel endeavor." He said it serves neither their government nor their people's interests and will only further isolate both countries internationally.

"The door to diplomacy is still open, and I call on Russia to engage in a meaningful and substantial dialogue to seek a peaceful solution to the current crisis," Rau said.

Rau said he expects Moscow to honor its international obligations and commitments, adding that any sustainable political solution "must fully respect sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders."

Russia's envoy dismissed the OSCE chairperson's offer for diplomacy, saying he had picked a side in the conflict and was, therefore, not an honest broker.

"The point of the work of the chairperson in office is precisely to solve disagreements between participating states and to bring positions closer; it is in no way to take biased steps which further inflame confrontation, and especially not to head up an anti-Russian campaign in the OSCE," Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia told the council.

Situation worsening on the ground

U.N. political chief Rosemary DiCarlo told the meeting that the situation worsened over the weekend, with Russian forces launching deadly strikes in the west of the country.

"Ukrainian cities are under unrelenting shelling and bombardment, with many civilians killed daily," she said.

This image contains sensitive content which some people may find offensive or disturbing. Click to reveal This image contains sensitive content which some people may find offensive or disturbing - Click to reveal A body of a person is seen on ground near a building destroyed by shelling as Russia's attack on Ukraine continues, in Kyiv, Ukraine, March 14, 2022.

The U.N. human rights office put its verified toll since the start of the conflict at 636 civilians killed and 1,125 injured as of midnight Sunday but acknowledges that it is likely much higher. Meanwhile, nearly 2 million people have become displaced inside the country and 2.8 million have fled to neighboring countries.

"We must not allow any questioning of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders," DiCarlo added.

Her boss, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, addressed reporters outside of the Security Council chamber. He announced $40 million from the U.N. central emergency response fund for meeting urgent needs in Ukraine, where food, water and medicine are growing scarce.

"This war goes far beyond Ukraine," he warned of the humanitarian implications.

Guterres said it is threatening food security for millions in the developing world, as Russia and Ukraine are responsible for nearly one-third of the planet's wheat trade and more than half the world's supply of sunflower oil for cooking.

"Now their breadbasket is being bombed," Guterres said.

It is especially concerning for the United Nations, as Ukraine supplies the World Food Program with more than half of its wheat supply. With 41 million people on the brink of famine in 43 countries, a poor or nonexistent harvest from Ukraine will make it much harder to feed them.

The Kyiv government has made repeated appeals for the West to close the skies over Ukraine with a no-fly zone. Asked about this, Guterres said a number of countries have analyzed that possibility, but that it could risk escalating the conflict into a global one.

"It is based on that analysis, that I think we need to be prudent, even if I understand the dramatic appeal of the Ukrainian government," he said.

The U.N. chief repeated his calls for the war to stop and dialogue to begin.

"We need peace. Peace for the people of Ukraine. Peace for the world," he said. "We need peace now."

Meanwhile, the sponsors of a draft Security Council resolution on the humanitarian situation in Ukraine, which has been in negotiation for two weeks, said they will not seek a vote in the council but will take it to the wider membership in the General Assembly.

"Obviously, it would have been difficult in the Security Council, no need to explain to you why," France's envoy Nicolas de Riviere said in response to a reporter's question.

Russia holds a veto in the 15-nation council.

"We think it's time to take action to move to the General Assembly and have the whole membership supporting an initiative on humanitarian access, on cessation of hostilities, on respect of international humanitarian law, on respect of the Geneva Conventions," Ambassador de Riviere said. "So we are very optimistic we can do that. The sooner the better. The situation on the ground deteriorates by the hour."
The United States honored 12 women from Colombia, Iraq, Libya, Myanmar, Vietnam and other countries, with the State Department saying they have demonstrated leadership and a willingness to sacrifice for others at an "International Women of Courage Award" ceremony Monday in Washington.

This year's honorees include Syeda Rizwana Hasan, an environmental lawyer from Bangladesh; Simone Sibilio do Nascimento, one of Brazil's most prominent prosecutors; Ei Thinzar Maung, Myanmar's pro-democracy opposition National Unity Government Deputy Minister for Women, Youths, and Children Affairs; Josefina Klinger Zuniga, a human rights and environmental defender from Colombia; Taif Sami Mohammed, Iraq's deputy finance minister known for fighting corruption; Facia Boyenoh Harris, who advocates for women's rights and speaks out against gender-based violence in Liberia; Libya's first woman foreign minister, Najla Mangoush; Moldova's parliament member Doina Gherman, who promotes women's inclusion; transgender activist Bhumika Shrestha who is from Nepal; Carmen Gheorghe, who promotes women's rights in Romania; Roegchanda Pascoe, a crime prevention activist from South Africa; and jailed Vietnamese journalist Pham oan Trang.

Jailed Vietnamese journalist absent in virtual ceremony

Pham oan Trang did not attend Monday's virtual award ceremony, since she is currently in prison.

Pham Doan Trang is seen as a leading advocate for human rights, rule of law, and the inclusion of all voices in political spaces in Vietnam. She was sentenced to nine years in prison on Dec. 14, 2021, for "making, storing, distributing or disseminating information, documents and items against the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam," according to Amnesty International.

"We condemn her unjust imprisonment. We call for her immediate release," said Secretary of State Antony Blinken during Monday's ceremony.

Pham Chinh Truc is Pham Doan Trang's brother. He attended the trial in December with their 81-year-old mother. Pham Chinh Truc told VOA Vietnamese he raised objections at the hearing and called the verdict "completely absurd and unacceptable."

"Trang was convicted under Article 88 'Propaganda against the State of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,'" he said in the VOA interview. "As far as I know, this article has been criticized by many individuals, social organizations, and even the United Nations, who have asked the Vietnamese government to revoke this law because it is too vague. Its boundaries are not clear, but it has been used to arrest many people who have views that are contrary to the views held by the party and state."

Pham oan Trang was a journalist with government media before leaving to write independently on democracy and free elections, according to advocacy group The 88 Project.

The United States values its comprehensive partnership with Vietnam but believes firmly that "in order for this country to thrive, it needs to embrace the openness, transparency, inclusion, and respect for the rights of all of its citizens that Pham oan Trang has relentlessly sought through her writing and advocacy," said U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam Marc Knapper in a pre-taped message.

Burmese award winner

Hundreds of thousands of civilians have been displaced since a military coup that toppled the democratically elected government of Myanmar, also known as Burma, on Feb. 1, 2021.

The U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) said the number of internally displaced people in the country is now over 800,000. Some 440,000 people have been newly displaced since the coup, adding to an existing 370,000 who had fled their homes previously.

This month, Myanmar's junta stripped the citizenship of 16 prominent opposition figures, including senior members of the National Unity Government, which is leading the resistance to the military regime.

Ei Thinzar Maung is among the NUG members whose citizenship was revoked.

She was honored with the State Department's 2022 Women of Courage Award for her commitment to democracy and work for a strong, inclusive and democratic Myanmar that respects human rights.

"We are not going to ever give up. Democracy must be restored," said Ei Thinzar Maung in a pre-taped message. While being forced into hiding due to torture and death threats, Ei Thinzar Maung continues to speak out against the 2021 military coup. She is the youngest woman to run in Myanmar's general election held in 2020.

A champion of the rights of women and young people, Ei Thinzar Maung also advocated for ethnic minorities. She was beaten and jailed for more than a year after leading a 644-kilometer march from Mandalay to Yangon in 2015 to protest a national education law that excluded ethnic languages and restricted student unions.

On Oct. 30, 2020, she spoke to VOA Burmese in its Weekly Women's Corner program.

"I'm 25 years old and I've been competing as an adult, but in the eyes of others they see me as a child. No matter what I say."

She added, "Look around us and in Asia. Now the Thai student movement is led by students. The Hong Kong movement is led by students. There are a lot of students in the political process in Burma."

Bangladesh's honoree

Syeda Rizwana Hasan, a Bangladeshi lawyer, is also one of the recipients of the International Women of Courage Award this year.

The State Department says she has shown exceptional courage in her mission to protect the environment and defend the rights of marginalized Bangladeshis. As chief executive of Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association, she has won cases against deforestation, pollution, unregulated ship breaking, and illegal land development.

"In the context of Bangladesh, this award is important because it shows that working on environmental issues is important. It is also a recognition that this difficult job is done by a female leader," Syeda Rizwana Hasan said in an interview with VOA's Bangla Service.

Monday, first lady Jill Biden spoke during the ceremony about the barriers and struggles awardees continue to face.

"For 16 years, these awards have lifted up the voices of women around the world. It has shined light on the struggles and strength of women in the global north, south, east and west," Biden said.

"We will tell your stories, even when you cannot."

VOA Vietnamese, Burmese and Bangla services contributed to this report.
Marina, a 34-year-old mother of a seven-year-old boy, waves a hand in what she thinks is the direction of Ukraine. I have to stay near Ukraine, and my husband, that is where my heart is, she says. America, Britain, Spain, Italy, what would I do there without him, she says, after I ask her whether she will leave Poland to settle somewhere else, if Russias war on her country drags on.

It took Marina more than a day to reach the Polish border on the train from just west of Kyiv. She says it was stultifying and claustrophobic in the packed train mainly full of women and children; the windows were shut tight and during the night hours and the lights were off to ensure the train wasnt targeted. The babies wailed; younger children complained on the journey to safety.

Because of the ban on men of fighting age leaving Ukraine, Marina, like hundreds of other Ukrainian women, had to leave her partner behind, and it clearly pains her. I did it for my son, she says. We were scared for him. There was terrible shelling. I was very frightened, she says. She tells me this as she cleans my hotel room. She was the head of procurement for a Ukrainian company and with remarkable speed got this cleaning job. Needs must, she shrugs.

Many businesses in Warsaw and other Polish towns are going out of their way to employ Ukrainians, if just for temporary work. Ukraines neighbors have flung open their doors and hearts to fleeing Ukrainians, offering aid, free transport and accommodation as a wave of dispossessed humanity arrives hour after hour at border crossings and at train and bus stations in-country.

They are met by yellow or orange-vested volunteers as well as government workers. In Warsaw firefighters are taking a lead. They dole out hot meals, bottled water and blankets and help move them on to reception centers or distribute them among charitable Polish families to shelter. Mobile telephone operators T-Mobile and Orange offer free SIM cards that allow the refugees to contact relatives back home at no cost.

Warsaws central railway station is packed on the chilly evening I visit. Two trains have arrived from the border and disgorge a mass of disheveled, tired people, and blinking children, to join the already jam-packed main entrance hall, where families clutch bowls of soup and bottled water proffered by the volunteers.

On the trains, there was no food but people would get bottled water into the train at station stops, 25-year-old Yulia says. She has arrived with her eight-year-old sister and mother. They took a day to get by train to Lviv from Kyiv, where their neighborhood was under intense bombardments, and then they had a 13-hour bus ride from the border to Warsaw. We had no plan when we traveled, she said. But on a Facebook forum I found someone in Warsaw offering a room even before we got here, she added proudly. She had a job with DHL and they are carrying on paying her. Not just a little but all my wages. Isnt that unbelievable, she says.

Most refugees arent as lucky or as organized. At the central station, they try to make sense of their surroundings; try to get the bearings on a future thats unknown and unknowable; they struggle to take in the immediate options outlined by the volunteers, and their eyes dart to the commotion around them. Others take a blanket and gather belongings  a battered suitcase, plastic bags  and find some space to rest. One older woman sits slumped, sleeping on a stair. In a corner a play area has been set up and the toddlers and younger children become absorbed with a doll or a car or a balloon.

Outside the station others crowd into a marquee set up by a group of charitable groups. We served 30,000 meals today, a volunteer tells me. Other refugees file up for buses laid on by Warsaws firefighters to ferry them to reception centers. A skyscraper looms over the dystopian scene, with the LG brand lit up, flashing the marketing tag, The Future Is Here.

Stores and buses in Warsaw have taken to displaying the yellow-and-blue Ukrainian flag. The welcome stands in stark contrast to how Poland, along with neighbors Hungary, Slovakia and Romania, responded during the 2015-2016 refugee crisis. All resisted taking in asylum-seekers from the Middle East or burden-sharing with other more hard-pressed European Union countries.

Empathy, and history

There are historical reasons for the different treatment, Poles say, pointing to Ukraines proximity and the cultural and linguistic ties linking the two countries. But theres also an underlying sense of what could be described as preemptive empathy. When asked, Polish volunteers of all ages say they are helping because of a compelling moral duty, but many also mention anxieties about the war spilling over. Some even worry they could suffer a similar plight to the hordes of Ukrainians they are trying to assist.

An historical anxiety feeds Polish alarm. Eastern European borders were decided on the battlefields of Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic States and western Russia the past century. Historian Timothy Snyder has dubbed the region the bloodlands, noting in his book of the same name: In the middle of Europe, in the middle of the twentieth century, the Nazi and Soviet regimes murdered some fourteen million people. He adds: Mass violence of a sort never before seen in history was visited upon this region, he notes. With that history lodged in the background, Poland is undergoing a genetic shudder.

But as the numbers of Ukrainian evacuees climb remorselessly, some worry Polands welcome mat for Ukrainians may start to become threadbare.

In a sense it already is  not because of any hardening of hearts, although some fear that might happen if the numbers of refugees climb as high as some predict. Financial resources are short. On Saturday the Polish government approved an $1.82 billion fund to help cover the costs of the mass Ukrainian influx. Polish families will get $274 a month for the next two months for housing Ukrainians; and every refugee will get $70 a month.

But Polish politicians acknowledge this isnt enough and volunteers are already complaining much more has to be done for the dazed and disoriented refugees turning up in Poland. Much of the burden is being carried by volunteers.

I have had so far 20 Ukrainians overnighting with me since Russia invaded, says Mia, a human resources manager. Last night I had a woman who cried a lot, but I could see she was trying to control her emotions so as not to upset her two children. Another one a few days ago also had children but could not stop weeping. She kept showing me photographs, saying, these are my dogs and cats, this was my house two weeks ago and this is my house now. It was destroyed, she added.

Joanna Niewczas, a volunteer coordinator at the Torwar conference hall in central Warsaw, which has been transformed into a refugee center, catalogued last week in an open letter serious deficiencies in the aid effort. She warned the crowded and unhygienic facilities posed a huge risk of an epidemic due to the lack of sanitary requirements. She complained: Volunteers are responsible for organizing several thousand meals a day by calling restaurants and asking for donations; we are not able to provide meals to refugees because of the number of them. We have not been given funds.

The UN says about 2.5 million Ukrainians have fled their country so far. About 1.7 million have gone to Poland alone - the largest influx of refugees the country has seen since World War II. More than 214,160 have crossed into Hungary, 165,199 into Slovakia and around 90,000 into Romania. More than 300,00 have entered tiny Moldova, one of Europes poorest countries, since February 24 and on Saturday its foreign minister, Nicu Popescu, said the country was facing a humanitarian catastrophe and had reached breaking point with its health and social services overwhelmed.

And Poland, wealthier and larger, is also struggling. Rafal Trzaskowski, Warsaws mayor, has warned the citys ability to absorb refugees was at an end, and that unless an international relocation system was established it would be overwhelmed soon, too.
On her first Shabbat away from the fighting in Ukraine, Rabbi Julia Gris twice led services to welcome the Jewish holy day.

A week earlier, Ukraine's only woman rabbi had been fleeing the war that scattered her Odesa congregation from Moldova to Romania and Israel. Some stayed behind, braving the Russian shelling.

She first led an online service for those congregants scattered abroad. Then, she officiated one in person for a small group in Poland, taken in by a Christian couple near Warsaw.

Gris lit Sabbath candles that she had carried from Ukraine, while her 19-year-old daughter Izolda played the guitar and sang, just as she had during services back home in her Reform community, Shirat ha-Yam.

"There were so many stories, so much crying and so much pain," Gris said. "For those who are here, and even more so for those still in Ukraine."

Gris and her daughter found safety after a 30-kilometer (20-mile) walk lugging suitcases and their two cats, reaching the border with Poland where they negotiated a 40-hour wait without food, water or toilets.

The mother and daughter are part of the exodus from Ukraine that has become the fastest-growing humanitarian crisis in Europe since World War II.

With some 200,000 Jews in Ukraine, one of the world's largest Jewish communities, it is inevitable that many Jewish people are also among those fleeing.

International Jewish organizations have mobilized to help, working with local Jewish communities in Poland, Romania, Moldova and elsewhere to organize food, shelter, medical care and other assistance.

The reality that so many Jews have joined the mass civilian exit from Ukraine exposes the deceitfulness of Russian claims that it's there to "denazify" Ukraine. In truth, Ukraine has steadily grown into a pluralistic society, led by a Jewish president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

"Why is a Russian regime that claims to be "denazifying" Ukraine brutalizing a country led by a democratically elected and proud Jew?" said David Harris, the CEO of the American Jewish Committee (AJC), who visited Poland this week to assess the needs of refugees. "Why is Moscow adopting Nazi-like tactics of the 1930s  fake history, phony grievances, blitzkrieg, attacks on civilians and civilian institutions, and murder of children?"

Gris said she always felt very much at home in Ukraine, a Russian-born Jew who had never felt discrimination.

Now Russia's invasion has plunged the country into an acute humanitarian crisis affecting Jews and non-Jews alike. Jewish organizations say they are there to help all refugees irrespective of faith. But for some Jews, the organizations' involvement is essential to helping them emigrate to Israel or stay true to their faith's observances, for instance by getting kosher food.

Aside from the AJC there are others helping. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), a New York-based Jewish humanitarian organization, has so far evacuated thousands of Jews to Moldova and helped several thousand more after they reached Poland and other countries.

Poland's chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich, said some of the Jewish refugees plan to go to Israel while others intend to join family in countries like Germany or Britain. Others, he said, "have to figure out what to do with their lives  do they want to settle in Poland or elsewhere?"

The dark historical irony isn't lost on Schudrich. Eight decades ago, Jews desperately tried to flee German-occupied Poland and other eastern European countries under Nazi German rule. Six million of them were exterminated.

"The struggles that people had, the splitting up of families, saying goodbye and never knowing if you would see each other again, and most times you didn't," Schudrich said. "And to think now that Jews and others are not fleeing out of Poland but into Poland, and we, the small Jewish community of Poland, can now welcome them."

Gris is awaiting a sponsorship letter in hopes of going to the U.K. She was ordained a rabbi at the Leo Baeck College in London and has friends and colleagues there who are supporting her.

Wearing a sequined kippa and a ribbon pinned to her chest in the blue and yellow of Ukraine's flag, Gris said that she never experienced anti-Semitism in her 22 years of living in Ukraine.

It was the fact that she was Russian that made her nervous after Russian troops attacked Ukraine on Feb. 24. Friends advised her that she would be better off leaving. Ukrainian authorities froze her bank account  a step taken against Russian and Belarusian citizens. At the border, she said Ukrainian guards asked, "How do we know you're not a spy?"

Gris said she could understand that reaction from a nation under attack, but it still hurt because "my heart and soul is with Ukraine."

Gris, 45, was born in Bryansk, Russia, before the breakup of the Soviet Union. She embarked on her spiritual journey as a teenager at a time of a broader revival of Jewish life in eastern Europe. Judaism, like other religions, had been suppressed by the officially atheistic ideology of the communist era.

In her youth she was told by a rabbi that she was so wise that she could even aspire to being a rabbi's wife. But she said to herself: "No, I will be a rabbi myself."

Gris doesn't know where the war will lead but fears that Jewish life will never be the same there.

On Saturday, her second Shabbat in safety, she was joined in Warsaw by a member of her Odesa congregation  two-thirds of whom have fled now  a reunion that was comforting to them both.

She denounced Russian propaganda, and recounted how her own mother, who is still in Russia, didn't believe that Russia attacked Ukraine. "I had to tell her yes, I can hear the sirens and the bombs myself!"

Now she feels her life in Odesa may be lost forever. "I don't know when I can go back," Gris said fighting back tears. "Or if I will go back."
American actor William Hurt, known for much-loved films such as "The Big Chill" and "A History of Violence," has died at age 71, US media reported Sunday.

Multiple outlets cited Hurt's son, Will, who said in a statement: "It is with great sadness that the Hurt family mourns the passing of William Hurt, beloved father and Oscar winning actor, on March 13, 2022, one week before his 72nd birthday. He died peacefully, among family, of natural causes."

The actor had been diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer in May 2018, but his son's statement did not specify whether the disease contributed to Hurt's passing.

Hurt built his reputation on his willingness to play quirky and unusual characters such as a Russian police officer in "Gorky Park" (1983), a wealthy and aloof husband in Woody Allen's "Alice" (1990) and a man seeking to build a machine that would benefit blind people in "Until the End of the World" (1991).

His first film role was as an obsessed scientist in Ken Russell's 1980 film "Altered States." Appearing opposite Kathleen Turner in Body Heat in 1981 turned him into a sex symbol, and he won the best actor Oscar in 1985 for playing a gay prisoner in "Kiss of the Spider Woman."

Hurt was also nominated for Oscars as a teacher of deaf students in "Children of a Lesser God" (1986) and as a slow-witted television anchorman in "Broadcast News" (1987).

For his second Academy Award, Hurt played a Philadelphia mobster in David Cronenberg's "A History of Violence." He appears in the film for only about 10 minutes, but he made a huge impact with critics, who praised his "creepy" and "funny" character.

In recent years, Hurt made himself known to younger moviegoers through his turn in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Thaddeus Ross, a blustering general who was present on the day Bruce Banner became the Hulk.

In addition to "The Incredible Hulk," Hurt's character appeared in four Marvel films including "Captain America: Civil War," "Avengers: Infinity War," "Avengers: Endgame" and "Black Widow."

Hurt was born March 20, 1950 in Washington, DC, but as his father was a U.S. diplomat, he traveled widely as a child.

After his parents divorced, his mother married Henry Luce III, the heir to the Time-Life empire, and moved to New York.

Hurt stayed close by, studying theology at Tufts University before enrolling at the renowned Juilliard School of performing arts in New York.

Despite his spreading fame, Hurt did not settle in Hollywood but set up his home in Oregon. In interviews, he had shown he was uneasy with stardom.

"I'm not comfortable with all this. I'm not comfortable with walking the red carpet in a tuxedo and seeing all the women with their boobs pushed up and all the men dressed as penguins," he told one interviewer.

His private life, however, read like something straight out of Hollywood.

Hurt married aspiring actress Mary Beth Supinger after finishing his studies at Tufts and followed her to London to study drama. They divorced on their return to New York.

In the late 1980s, he was sued by a former live-in love, ballet dancer Sandra Jennings, who is the mother of one of his sons.

He had two other sons from another marriage and a daughter, Jeanne, from a relationship with French actress Sandrine Bonnaire.

Hurt spoke fluent French and was also an avid private pilot.
Ukrainian officials say Russian troops fired artillery on suburbs of the capital, Kyiv, Monday, as Russian and Ukrainian delegations held a fourth round of talks without signs of a breakthrough.

The talks, which are taking place by video link rather than in neighboring Belarus as in the past, paused for the day, but are set to resume Tuesday.

Ukrainian negotiator Mykhailo Podolyak tweeted after the talks, "Communication is being held yet it's hard." He had raised hope of progress on Sunday by saying that Russia had been "listening carefully to our proposals" and was beginning to talk "constructively."

Officials in Kyiv say at least one person was killed when a shell hit a nine-story residential building in a northern district of the city early Monday. They say Russian forces also struck an airplane factory in the capital, sparking a large fire.

The violence comes a day after Russia launched a lethal cruise missile attack on a western Ukraine military base just 25 kilometers from NATO-member Poland. At least 35 people were killed and 134 wounded in the attack on the International Center for Peacekeeping and Security.

A senior U.S. defense official said Monday that "almost all of Russia's advances remain stalled" inside Ukraine. That includes Russian advance forces outside of Kyiv, which are about 15 kilometers from the city center, and a convoy of Russian troops around the city, according to the latest U.S. assessment.

In a rare positive development Monday, Ukrainian officials in the southern city of Mariupol said a convoy of civilian cars was able to leave the besieged city through a humanitarian corridor after many previous attempts to evacuate civilians collapsed. Officials said 160 cars left in the first two hours the corridor was open.

Ukrainian officials say as many as 2,500 civilians have died in the Mariupol since Russia began its attacks on the southern port city. The figure could not be independently confirmed.

Fox News reported one of its journalists, Benjamin Hall, was seriously injured Monday while reporting outside of Kyiv. The development comes one day after an American journalist was killed while reporting on the war. Brent Renaud, an award-winning filmmaker and reporter, died in Irpin, a suburb of Kyiv, according to officials.

Washington has dismissed Kyiv's appeals for a no-fly zone over the country and rejected a Polish proposal to send their Russian-made jets to a U.S. airbase in Germany to be sent to Ukraine. On Saturday, President Joe Biden authorized up to $200 million worth of American assistance in the form of military education and training for the Ukrainian army, following a previous security assistance package worth $350 million.

"Almost all" of the initial $350 million package has been delivered to Ukraine, according to Pentagon press secretary John Kirby. He said work is starting on the next $200 million package and that the United States is working "as fast as we can and as nimbly as we can."

Four U.S. senators visited Poland over the weekend to speak to Ukrainian refugees. Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar said Congress is looking at more ways to boost Ukraine's defenses.

"We're not going to give (Russian President) Vladimir Putin a road map of how that can be done," she told VOA in Warsaw. "There are many ways  whether it is more drones, whether it is other weapons  that we can help, and clearly we are all committed to doing that. We must do more."

Members of the delegation also told VOA they were concerned about the humanitarian crisis the invasion has unleashed.

"It's heartbreaking to see what's happening," said Republican Senator Rob Portman, who is retiring this year. "We had a chance to visit with refugees coming over the border and heard their stories of bombings and their homes being destroyed, families split up."

Republican Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi told VOA he was "angry" over Russia's demands to hold on to its gains.

"I really reject any of this talk about a settlement whereby Ukraine would retain part of their territory and Russia would get to keep some of the conquered area," he said.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the decision by NATO countries not to initiate a no-fly zone over Ukraine is based on an "analysis that I think we need to be prudent, even if I understand the dramatic appeal of the Ukrainian government."

In Russia, an anti-war protester interrupted state TVs Channel One evening news broadcast in Moscow, holding a poster that said "No War" in English, and underneath those words, Stop the war. Dont believe the propaganda. Here they are lying to you, in Russian.

The poster was signed in English, "Russians against the war."

Talks with China

In another development Monday, U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan and officials from the National Security Council and the State Department met in Rome with China's top diplomat Yang Jiechi.

The talks included a "substantial discussion of Russia's war against Ukraine," according to the White House, and "also underscored the importance of maintaining open lines of communication between the United States and China."

Media reports emerged Sunday that Moscow has requested military and economic assistance from China for Russia's war in Ukraine. Earlier, the White House warned China of severe "consequences" if it helps Russia avoid sanctions.

State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters Monday that the United States is watching very closely the extent to which China or any other country provides any form of support to Russia.

"We have communicated very clearly to Beijing that we won't stand by, we will not allow any country to compensate Russia for its losses," he said.

Chinese arms sales to Russia would have "a devastating impact on the U.S.- China relationship, because it would clearly align the Chinese with the Russians, against the United States, Europe in a war," Robert Ross, a political science professor of at Boston College, told VOA.

China is in a unique position because of its partnership agreement with Russia, according to Stephen Roach, a senior fellow at Yale University's Jackson Institute of Global Affairs. He told VOA that China has "considerably greater" leverage over Russia than even Western countries that have implemented "unprecedented sanctions" on Russia.

"China has something that the West does not have, and that is the partnership" with Russia, he said.

Sullivan on Sunday responded to growing concerns that Russia would use chemical weapons in Ukraine.

"We can't predict a time and place," he said on CBS, noting an escalation of rhetoric from Moscow falsely accusing the United States and Ukraine of developing chemical or biological weapons to use against Russian troops.

Ukraine's human rights ombudswoman said the Russians used a phosphorus munition in an overnight attack on the eastern Ukrainian city of Popasna in the Luhansk region.

VOA was not immediately able to verify the claim. While phosphorus is not considered a chemical weapon, its use against human beings is banned under international law.

Eastern European chief Myroslava Gongadze, White House correspondent Anita Powell, Senior diplomatic correspondent Cindy Saine, National security correspondent Jeff Seldin, U.N. correspondent Margaret Besheer, State Department Bureau Chief Nike Ching, and Mandarin Service reporters Lin Yang and Si Yang contributed to this report.

Some information also came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
Ukrainian and Russian delegations resume peace talks Monday, a day after Russia launched a lethal cruise missile attack on a western Ukraine military base just 25 kilometers from Poland, a NATO member. At least 35 people died and 134 were wounded in the attack on the International Center for Peacekeeping and Security.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday in his daily nighttime address that Sunday was a "black day" for the country because of the attack.

The president said he had given a "clear warning" to Western leaders about the likelihood of an attack at the base where NATO units train with Ukrainian troops.

"This does not come as a surprise to the American intelligence and national security community," U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said during a Sunday appearance on CNN. "What it shows is that Vladimir Putin is frustrated by the fact that his forces are not making the kind of progress that he thought that they would make."

"If Russia attacks, fires upon, takes a shot at NATO territory, the NATO alliance would respond to that," warned Sullivan in an interview on the CBS network's "Face the Nation" program.

President Zelenskyy Sunday night said he has attempted to arrange a meeting with Putin, but has been unsuccessful even though Ukranian and Russian delegations talk every day to make arrangements for humanitarian corridors and ceasefire agreements.

Meanwhile, Sullivan and officials from the National Security Council and State Department are scheduled to meet Monday in Rome with Chinese Communist Party Politburo Member and Director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission Yang Jiechi.

The discussion will be "part of our ongoing efforts to maintain open lines of communication between the United States and the People's Republic of China (PRC). The two sides will discuss ongoing efforts to manage the competition between our two countries and discuss the impact of Russia's war against Ukraine on regional and global security," according to NSC spokesperson Emily Horne.

Media reports emerged Sunday that Moscow has requested military and economic assistance from China for Russia's war in Ukraine. Earlier, the White House warned China of severe "consequences" if it helps Russia avoid sanctions.

Sullivan on Sunday also responded to growing concern Russia will use chemical weapons in Ukraine.

"We can't predict a time and place," said Sullivan on CBS, noting an escalation of rhetoric from Moscow falsely accusing the United States and Ukraine of developing chemical or biological weapons to use against Russian troops.

"That's an indicator that the Russians are getting ready to do it" and blame it on others, according to Sullivan.

On NBC's "Meet the Press," Sullivan said, "We've consulted with our allies and partners about it, and we are prepared for that eventuality." He echoed U.S. President Joe Biden's warning from last week that Russia would face severe consequences if such weapons are deployed.

Ukraine's human rights ombudswoman says the Russians used a phosphorus munition in an overnight attack on the eastern Ukrainian city of Popasna in the Luhansk region. VOA was not immediately able to verify the claim. While phosphorus is not considered a chemical weapon, its use against human beings is banned under international law.

In a video released shortly early Monday local time, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy renewed a plea for NATO to impose a no-fly zone over his country, predicting if that does not happen "it is only a matter of time before Russian rockets fall on your territory, on NATO territory."

In recent days, satellite imagery and media reporters have indicated Russian armored units are poised to relaunch a major offensive to attempt to take Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, after a lull.

An award-winning American filmmaker and journalist is among the latest casualties of the conflict near the capital.

Brent Renaud died in Irpin, a suburb of Kyiv, according to officials.

"It is one more example of the brutality of Vladimir Putin and his forces as they've targeted schools and mosques and hospitals and journalists," said Sullivan on CNN's "State of the Union" program.

Renaud, who had previously worked for The New York Times, NBC and HBO, "paid with his life for attempting to expose the insidiousness, cruelty and ruthlessness of the aggressor," said a statement from Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine's interior minister.

In recent days, the focus of the invasion has shifted to the besieged southeastern Ukrainian port city of Mariupol.

"We have already evacuated almost 125,000 people to the safe territory through humanitarian corridors," President Zelenskyy said in a video address released earlier Sunday. "We're doing everything to counter occupiers who are even blocking Orthodox priests accompanying this aid, food, water and medicine. There are 100 tons of the most necessary things that Ukraine sent to its citizens."

Jeff Seldin and Cindy Saine contributed to this report. Some information also came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
Former president of the Plurinational State of Bolivia, Evo Morales, denounced the pressure exerted by the United States on Latin American heads of state. Washington incites them to take a stance against Moscow.

Evo Morales launched an international movement against NATO. He has already brought together numerous trade unions by calling attention to the threat posed by the Atlantic Alliance to world peace.
Canadian volunteers, in full combat gear, gathered at Warsaw airport awaiting transfer to Ukraine.

The Russian government has already announced that volunteer foreign fighters in Ukraine will be considered mercenaries and subjected to criminal prosecution.

On the Ukrainian side, the government boasted about having received more than 66,000 applications from volunteers all over the world, a third of whom have already been drafted.

The government of Senegal is the only one to have protested against the recruitment of mercenaries on its territory. It ripped into the Ukrainian ambassador for posting ads on the internet to recruit jihadists.
Welcome back to the Ridge, where yes, before you ask, people are still secretly huffing homemade ether in their surgery. Morale is low, guys. I mean, people arent even excited that Bree invents matches. Matches! Kind of a wild thing to choose as your first invention when you literally traveled back in time to warn your parents that they die in a house fire, but okay! All of this is to say that Frasers Ridges air feels heavy and is only getting heavier.

Jamie is still dealing with two highly delicate situations that could easily become major conflicts at any moment. Lets start with his dealings with the Cherokee. Last week, he took on the job of Indian Agent to be a liaison between local tribes and King George only because the other option for the position was Richard Brown, and that guy objectively sucks as a human being. Of course, taking a position that once again ties Jamie closely to the crown is risky, seeing that he knows the Revolutionary War is coming and plans to be on the side of the rebels fighting the crown. Awkward, right? He runs into a major problem right away, as is Jamies way.

Jamie meets with Cherokee leaders who are requesting that England supply them with guns. Settlers are not respecting the treaty lines (surprise, surprise!) and encroaching on their land and hunting grounds, and they would like to be able to defend themselves. Seems reasonable. Still, Jamie is hesitant to even agree to broach the subject with England. This choice bothers Young Ian, Jamies number two here, a great deal. But Jamie has his reasons.

Before explaining himself, though, he needs to have sex with his wife. In a truly wild and unnecessary scene, two Cherokee women try to have sex with Jamie because it would be like an honor or something, but he politely tells them no  and then is so revved up that he goes home and immediately requires some time alone with his wife. Claire is very into it! These grandparents are horny as hell. Afterward, Jamies pillow talk consists of asking for some clarification on the Revolutionary War: Does Claire know which side the Cherokee will fight on? Basically, hes worried about giving the Cherokee guns from the crown because it would most likely mean that when the war comes, theyll be fighting for England and against Jamie  hed be arming his enemy. If he doesnt get them guns, it puts them at risk right now, but they might be more apt to take up arms against England when the time comes, which might ultimately be better for them anyway. Unfortunately, Claires U.S. history is a little fuzzy, and she cant be of assistance.

Jamie decides not to tell Major MacDonald about the request from the Cherokee, but Young Ian cant keep quiet any longer. So Jamie has to explain the basics of the Revolutionary War and his reasoning for his actions  and remind Ian that now that he is on the whole time-travel thing, he needs to remember that knowing whats to come is both a blessing and a curse. And thats that on that. Or so Jamie thinks.

Claire might not have the deets on the Revolutionary War, but youd think Jamie might ask the other two time travelers he knows just as, like, a basic due diligence kind of thing. I mean, Roger was a history professor and Bree studied history for a while and was fully aware of the significance of the Battle of Alamance last season, so maybe she might have some intel? But no, Jamie is satisfied with his decision. Ian, not so much.

Many things are going on at the Big House this week, but the most pressing is certainly that Marsali goes into labor  and the situation is precarious. Claire is terrified that she might have to give Marsali a C-section, which will save the baby but not the woman who has become her surrogate daughter (okay, but seriously, the development of the Claire-Marsali relationship throughout the run of this show is Outlander at its best). Eventually, Roger rouses Fergus from his latest drunken stupor and gets him to his wifes side. Fergus proceeds to use some, uh, tactics he learned while living in a brothel to help Marsali along. When everybody in the house can hear Marsali screaming out in pleasure, theyre all like, Uh, I gotta go see a guy about a thing. Except for Claire, God bless her.

Bree ends up bumping into Ian, looking quite distressed. Unlike his uncle, Ian has more questions about the role the Cherokee and other tribes might play in this impending war. Bree has some answers, but none that make Ian feel any better: She tells him how, yes, a new nation will be formed after the war, and although white people will tell all the Native tribes that they are a part of it, they wont be, not really. She tells him how theyll be forced off their land and about how much they will suffer. Ian feels heaps and heaps of guilt  that blessing and a curse thing Jamie was talking about is real. And its because of this guilt and knowledge of the future that, later, Ian will refuse to drop the subject with Jamie. He tells his uncle that because they know about the injustices the Cherokee and other tribes will face, shouldnt they give them every opportunity to defend themselves? He vows to help them, even if Jamie continues to refuse.

Back at the Big House, Marsali safely delivers a baby boy. It seems like maybe Marsali and Fergus have turned a corner, but it doesnt last long. Their son is born with dwarfism, and once Fergus realizes this, he runs out of the room; he cant even look at the boy. Its pretty fucked up. Marsali, however, showers that little baby with so much love and affection. And she wont be the only one  a few days later, Jamie comes by Marsali and Ferguss cabin and overhears Ian inside. He has come to give the baby, Henri-Christian, a blessing. Ian confesses to Marsali that he had a child too, when he was with the Mohawk. He doesnt say anything more, but it completely puts everything into perspective for Jamie. Next thing we know, Claire finds Jamie writing a letter to the governor recommending they give the Cherokee the guns theyre requesting. Now Jamie knows that he fights so hard on their behalf because theyre Ians family, and Ian is his family. Come what may, he says, knowing he only has so much control over his future.

The second delicate situation Jamie is still managing is that of Tom Christie. Jamie may think he has more control over this situation than the Cherokee one, but the jurys still out. Control is Tom Christies problem too. He doesnt have enough of it on Frasers Ridge. He builds a big church, and Jamie tells him he needs to turn it into a Freemason meeting house where all people are welcome and also threatens him after learning of a rumor spreading among his people that Claire might be a witch, after a funeral in which the deceased wasnt actually dead. Tom isnt a fan of Claires for several reasons, but mainly its that she isnt afraid to stand up to his idiotic ideas about health care and women. He has no authority in this place and so tries to hold on to what little authority he has elsewhere  mainly with his daughter, Malva. Malva has been Claires little shadow, wanting to learn as much as she can about healing. Tom hates this. One day, after being reamed out by Jamie, he takes it out on Malva, who he finds studying some papers instead of doing chores. He goes to whip her with his belt, but because of his lame hand, hes unable to. Its only because of this that he decides to let Claire operate on it. Claire says she has to wait until the wound on his other hand heals, but whenever that operation does take place, it should be an interesting dynamic to watch. Claire may be scared of the ghosts that haunt her and of losing Marsali, but shes not afraid of someone like Tom Christie.

Other Notes

 Wow, what a funeral to kick off Tom Christies new church, huh? Granny Wilson is being laid to rest only for her to wake up  and then die a few minutes later. Claire immediately realizes the woman is suffering from an aortic aneurysm, but no one else really gets that. Hey, at least it gives Mrs. Wilson enough time to give her son-in-law notes on her terrible funeral (okay, fine, they make up before she officially dies). What a way to go out!

 Henri-Christians birth is only complicating the dire situation between Fergus and Marsali. When Claire finds more bruises on Marsalis wrist, she asks her straight up if Fergus is doing this to her. Marsali explains she was so fed up with him being drunk that she lost her temper and attacked him  he grabbed her to defend himself. She also says that Fergus has been drinking because he blames himself for what happened to Claire and Marsali at the hands of the Browns. All of this points to everything getting worse before it gets better.

 Rogers young friend Aidan has certainly grown attached to him. Aidan shows up at Roger and Brees cabin one night and tells them he got lost on his way home. Roger offers to walk him back. He has a soft spot for Aidan and his mom, Amy. No good can come from this.

 While Bree gets annoyed that everyone is more interested in her getting pregnant again than her inventions, it turns out that she and Roger are trying to have another baby. Even with the war coming? These people are looney tunes.

 Lizzy and Kezzie AND Josiah are flirting SO HARD. Im scared.
Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos by HBO and Hulu

Two months after Elizabeth Holmes was convicted of four out of 11 counts of fraud and conspiracy at her blood-testing company Theranos, Hulus The Dropout has arrived. The series follows the trajectory of the now-disgraced Silicon Valley darling who was once viewed as a visionary CEO poised to change the world of medicine. Holmes dropped out of Stanford University at age 19 to found a biotech start-up that claimed it could perform a wide variety of diagnostic tests using only a drop or two of blood. Such technology would indeed represent a revolutionary scientific breakthrough, and the allure of the concept helped Holmes grow to become the youngest self-made female billionaire. But as reporting by the Wall Street Journals John Carreyrou first revealed in 2015, Theranoss well-guarded product didnt deliver on its lofty promises.

The end credits of each episode of The Dropout remind us that the show is based on the ABC News investigative podcast of the same name, which contains interviews with investors, patients, and former Theranos employees, as well as recordings of deposition testimony. But just how faithful is Hulus onscreen adaptation to its real-life source material? In case you dont have time to delve into the history yourself, were comparing the major players (except for some whose images werent as easy to find  sorry, Edmond Ku) from each episode to their onscreen counterparts. The Dropouts finale will stream at 3 a.m. ET on April 8. As new episodes air each week until then, well keep track of where the show sticks to fact and where it may have dipped into fiction.

Elizabeth Holmes (Played by Amanda Seyfried)

Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos by HBO and Hulu

Seyfried has dutifully recreated the most well-known aspects of the Theranos CEO, from Elizabeths baritone voice to her irregular blinking patterns and her black-turtleneck uniform. But The Dropout, interested in the internal motivations of its main character, also includes details that predate Elizabeths fame. Elizabeth truly did design a time machine as a child, and she did declare that she would rather be a billionaire than the president when she grew up (though according to John Carreyrous book Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, she made her declaration to relatives, not her neighbors). In 2002, she was accepted to Stanford University as a Presidents Scholar. The summer before she started college, she took a trip to China for a Stanford language program. There, she met Ramesh Sunny Balwani, who would later become her partner in both romance and business. At the time of their first meeting, she was 18, and he was 37.

While studying chemical engineering in college, she wrote a patent application for a patch that could diagnose medical conditions through blood testing and then treat them with the appropriate antibiotics. Elizabeth began raising money for this early, more ambitious predecessor to her final idea. According to Carreyrou, she initially called the company Real-Time Cures. The name Theranos was adopted after she narrowed her focus to blood testing. In the show, Elizabeth changes her idea before she officially founds the company, making Theranos her first and only iteration.

Elizabeth has testified that she was raped while attending Stanford and decided to process that experience in part by building a life with her company. She formally dropped out in March 2004, at age 19. Per the New York Times, Elizabeth contacted Balwani, who comforted her after she told him she had been raped. Carreyrou reported that records show the pair were living together by July 2005. Elizabeth later alleged that he was physically and emotionally abusive throughout their relationship.

The show remains largely true to Theranoss various obstacles. In the early days of the company, before Elizabeth could afford a better location, she was almost hit by a stray bullet. The start-up consistently failed to produce working prototypes. Carreyrou reported that the company recorded results that were played back during demos to potential investors. Theranos later conducted trials with terminal cancer patients. While the results did not affect treatment, according to Carreyrou, that was not communicated to concerned employees. Missed deadlines and misinformation from Elizabeth eventually prompted the Theranos board to decide to depose the young founder, but she was able to convince them to give her another chance. The company decided to focus on the retail market, targeting partnerships with Walgreens and Safeway. The partnership with Walgreens, paired with a lack of reliable Theranos tests, would eventually prompt the covert use of existing third-party technology in conducting blood tests.

Elizabeths demeanor and appearance reportedly began to change over as the company grew. The Dropout hypothesizes that she intentionally practiced lowering her voice. (Former employees have stated that Elizabeths characteristic voice was fake, while her family has maintained that the baritone is natural.) Elizabeth made it clear that employees were replaceable and pushed for longer hours and faster results. She recruited assistants to monitor her employees on Facebook and increased security, siloing off teams within the company. The Dropout features a scene where an assistant hands a self-help book to Elizabeth after an employee quits. In real life, Elizabeth was actually emailed a link to that book, which was bluntly titled The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isnt.

The Dropout gets plenty of other small details right. A former employee said she saw Elizabeth jamming out to hip-hop in her car before morning meetings; Elizabeths enthusiastic dancing recurs throughout the show. The Theranos founder did display a Yoda quote, Do or do not, there is no try, on a wall in Theranoss building, and she did indeed own a paperweight that somehow fit the phrase What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail? Meanwhile, Seyfried often recites Elizabeths quotes about Theranos verbatim. That applies not only to footage from interviews for the press or a documentary crew, but also to the testimony obtained by The Dropout podcast. During her trial, Elizabeth alleged that her ex-boyfriend, Sunny Balwani, was actually to blame for the companys wrongdoing.

Ramesh Sunny Balwani (Played by Naveen Andrews)

Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos by Getty Images and Hulu

Elizabeths ex-boyfriend was allegedly her partner in crime in more ways than one. Ramesh Balwani, known by his nickname Sunny, is currently on trial facing 12 counts of fraud and conspiracy. Compared to Elizabeth, much less is known about Balwanis personal life. Born in Pakistan, Balwani came to the U.S. in 1986 for college and became a millionaire as an executive at a software start-up. When he met 18-year-old Elizabeth at age 37, he was married to artist Keiko Fujimoto. The pair divorced in 2002.

Though we couldnt confirm whether Balwani shared his story with Elizabeth in Beijing like he did in The Dropout, Balwanis attorney did tell ABC that Balwani got involved in Theranos because his father died of a preventable heart attack. Meanwhile, Carreyrou reported that before Balwani formally joined the company, some employees already knew he was Elizabeths boyfriend. (The two shared a Palo Alto apartment.) However, they concealed their romantic relationship from the board and investors once he joined the company in 2009 as president and chief operating officer.

In court testimony obtained by The Dropout podcast, Balwani stated that he gave Theranos a $13 million interest-free loan to support the companys mission. (In The Dropout, he invests $20 million as part of an ultimatum issued by Elizabeth to protect her CEO position.) Balwani liked to display his wealth via the expensive cars he drove to work. Carreyrou reported that one of his license plates read DASKPTL, in a reference to Marxs text. Another read VDIVICI, in a reference to the latter part of the Latin translation of I came, I saw, I conquered.

At Theranos, Balwani built a reputation as the enforcer. According to Carreyrou, he was often haughty and demanding toward employees, barking orders and dressing people down. His romance with Elizabeth persisted up until Theranos began to unravel; text messages from 2016 show Elizabeth texting, I love you, with Balwani replying, For me you are a manifestation of love itself. These records of their conversations also confirm that The Dropout accurately portrayed Elizabeths habit of affectionately calling Balwani tiger. Balwanis romantic relationship with Elizabeth reportedly ended when he left Theranos around May 2016. Entering his trial, Balwani continued to maintain his innocence. Per Vanity Fair, he has claimed that he never made money from Theranos and thus could not have defrauded any investors or consumers.

Christian Holmes (Played by Michel Gill)

Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos by Getty Images and Hulu

In interviews, Elizabeth often named her father, Christian Holmes IV, as one of her idols. Christian worked for government agencies in Washington, D.C., including the State Department and the Agency for International Development. He was related to Charles Louis Fleischmann, an immigrant who founded a successful yeast company that it made his family one of the wealthiest in America in the late 1800s. His fathers grandfather established the Cincinnati General Hospital and the University of Cincinnatis medical school. Elizabeth said she was inspired by the humanitarian work her father did as a public servant, and she pointed toward his familys history as a sign that medicine was in her blood. Reportedly, she also started studying Mandarin because of him; according to Bad Blood, Christian often traveled to China for work and thought his children should learn the language.

As shown in The Dropout, Christian held a vice-president position at Enron in 2001, the year that it famously collapsed due to fraud. With the company going bankrupt, Christian was laid off. Despite the financial blow, the Holmes family could still afford to pay their daughters Stanford tuition. And Christian remained well connected: Elizabeth testified that venture capitalist Don Lucas, a critical early investor for Theranos, was introduced to her by one of her dads college acquaintances. Lucas later introduced her to Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, who made another hefty investment in her company.

Christian Holmes (Played by Sam Straley) and Noel Holmes (Played by Elizabeth Marvel)

Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos by Hulu and HBO

Christian Holmes V, Elizabeths younger brother, also worked at Theranos as a senior manager. In 2011, he recruited several of his fraternity brothers from his alma mater, Duke University, to join the company in managerial roles. In The Dropout, its not completely clear if Elizabeths brother does much work at the company. But emails shared during Elizabeths trial showed that Christian, who had no experience with blood testing, made clinical decisions. He once even reprimanded Theranoss lab director for being uncomfortable with defending a problematic test result.

Christian and Elizabeths mother, Noel Holmes (nee Daoust), hailed from a strong military lineage. Her father was a West Point graduate, and her side of the family can allegedly trace its roots back to one of Napoleon Bonapartes famous field generals. Noel previously worked as an aide on Capitol Hill, but paused her career to raise her children. According to Carreyrous Bad Blood, Noel had a phobia of needles and fainted at the mere sight of a syringe. She was a staunch supporter of Theranos, though she was not as directly involved in the company as her son. She told Fortune that she and her husband allowed Elizabeth to drop out and use her tuition on Theranos because they wanted her to follow her dream, help people, and change the world.

Dr. Phyllis Gardner (Played by Laurie Metcalf)

Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos by Getty Images and Hulu

The no-nonsense Stanford professor of medicine is one of Elizabeths earliest skeptics in The Dropout. The real-life Dr. Phyllis Gardner did indeed meet with then 19-year-old Elizabeth and reject the concept that evolved into the basis for Theranos. In an interview with The Dropout podcast, Gardner said that the introduction occurred after a former Panasonic executive highly praised Elizabeth and her idea. (In the show, perhaps to streamline the number of characters, Elizabeth comes on the recommendation of fellow Stanford professor Channing Robertson.) Gardner, who had experience working for both pharmaceutical and biotech start-ups, explained that it was not feasible to develop a microfluidic patch that could test blood and deliver the appropriate antibiotics.

Though Elizabeths reaction in the show might be a bit more confrontational than Gardner recalls (the professor told The Dropout podcast that Holmes merely blinked at the criticism and left), Metcalf does a good job of replicating Gardners irritation at Elizabeths attitude. She just seemed absolutely confident of her own brilliance, Gardner told the BBC. She wasnt interested in my expertise and it was upsetting. According to Business Insider, Gardner knew Richard Fuisz, Elizabeths former neighbor, from her time working at a major drug delivery company called ALZA. Gardner and Fuis later formed a group chat with Ian Gibbonss widow to discuss news about Theranos. Gardner was quoted in Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrous 2015 expose on Theranos. The day the article was published, Gardner and Elizabeth were both attending an event as members of Harvards Medical School Board of Fellows. While The Dropout brings the two women together in tense conversation, Gardner told The Dropout podcast that she did not directly confront Elizabeth that day.

Richard Fuisz (Played by William H. Macy)

Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos by Chitownhustler/Wikimedia Commons and Hulu

Richard Fuisz served as a key source in Carreyrous investigation and was credited for connecting Carreyrou with Theranoss former medical director. A businessman, physician, medical inventor, and former undercover CIA agent, Fuisz lived next door to the Holmeses in Virginia. His wife, Lorraine, was close with Elizabeths mother, Noel. The Holmes family later moved to Texas, where Elizabeths father would be laid off while she was in high school. After Elizabeth left for Stanford, the family moved back to Virginia. Fuisz offered his former neighbors a free house, though they declined the offer. The Dropout simplifies the timeline, moving Fuisz to Texas so that the Holmeses can meet with him shortly after the Enron layoff.

Macys mustached portrayal of Fuisz is proud and vindictive; Carreyrou wrote in his book that the real-life Fuisz was known for holding grudges. Fuisz was said to be deeply offended that the Holmes family did not ask him for advice, given that Theranos was a company that fell under his area of expertise. In 2006, he filed a patent for a mechanism that could supplement a blood-testing device. The Dropout features a dramatic standoff where Fuisz reveals to Noel that he filed the patent because he hadnt been consulted. In reality, the Fuiszes and Holmeses were already not on speaking terms by the time the patent application became publicly available. Theranos itself didnt learn about the patent until five months later. Beyond a message sent to the general contact email on Theranoss website, Fuisz did not bring up the patent.

In 2011, Theranos hired renowned attorney David Boies to sue Fuisz and his sons, alleging that they stole information for the patent. The lawsuit was eventually settled outside of court in 2014, but 82-year-old Fuisz apparently still isnt over it. In March, he tweeted that the patent had nothing to do with Theranos tech and the lawsuit was instead a vendetta by the Holmes family caused by [j]ealousy.

Ian Gibbons (Played by Stephen Fry)

Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos by CBS News and Hulu

The Dropouts portrayal of this respected scientist is largely supported by accounts from his widow, Rochelle. Ian Gibbons was a biochemist with a Cambridge education and a penchant for patenting inventions. He was friends with Channing Robertson, the Stanford professor who mentored Elizabeth and served on Theranoss board. Under Robertsons recommendation, Ian joined Theranos. Two years after he was named the companys chief scientist in 2005, Ian was diagnosed with colon cancer.

Rochelle told Jarvis on The Dropout podcast that Ian was uneasy about Theranoss business moves  he felt that Elizabeth was peddling claims about technology that did not exist yet. Worried about people getting hurt as well as his own scientific integrity, Ian shared his concerns with Robertson in confidence. Robertson told Elizabeth, who immediately fired Ian. The personable scientist, however, had charmed his co-workers so much that that they were able to successfully lobby for his return. Unfortunately for Ian, he was demoted to a position that involved evaluating resumes instead of performing any significant lab work.

Ian was among a group of Theranos executives subpoenaed by Fuiszs lawyers to testify for the Theranos lawsuit. Ian did not want to commit perjury, but feared the consequences of telling the truth. His wife told The Dropout podcast that the impending trial and Elizabeths intimidation tactics triggered signs of depression. Per Vanity Fair, Ian was convinced he was going to be fired after Elizabeth requested a meeting in May 2013. Rochelle told The Dropout podcast that the next morning, she discovered that her husband had overdosed. He died a week later in the hospital at age 67. Rochelle said Theranos responded to the news of Ians suicide by demanding she turn over any company intellectual property left in his possession.

Dr. Jay Rosan (Played by Alan Ruck)

Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos by IBF - International Business Forum/YouTube and Hulu

According to Carreyrous Bad Blood, Theranos contacted Walgreens via email in January 2010 to describe blood-testing technology that the company had (supposedly) developed. Jay Rosan, a physician who asked people to call him Dr. J, was the vice-president of health innovation for Walgreens at the time. He spearheaded plans to place Theranos tests in Walgreens stores. After Walgreens agreed to a preliminary contract for a pilot project, the retailer sent a delegation to meet with Theranos. The Dropout uses this meeting to pit Rosan against a far more skeptical Wade Miquelon, played by Josh Pais. Rucks Rosan chases the executive vice-president and chief financial officer for Walgreens down, earnestly arguing that the older generation would become irrelevant if it did not embrace technological innovation. In reality, the real Rosan had gotten Miquelon on board before the meeting; Carreyrou reported that Miquelon seemed to be a big fan of Elizabeths already.

Walgreens did hire consultant Kevin Hunter to evaluate Theranoss laboratories for issues. Hunter grew frustrated and suspicious when his requests to see the lab or test Theranoss tech were repeatedly denied. He told Jarvis on The Dropout podcast that company security was so tight that Sunny Balwani followed him to and from the bathroom. Despite Hunters misgivings, Walgreens executives like Rosan and Miquelon chose to push forward with a partnership amid fears that Theranos would choose rival CVS instead.

In 2013, Rosan and other Walgreens executives commemorated the formal partnership by performing a cover of Imagine with Theranos-themed lyrics (The Dropout opts for a parody of the much jauntier What I Like About You). The first Theranos Wellness Center opened in September of that year. The goal was for Theranos tests to be implemented in stores nationwide; ultimately, however, the tests only made it into about 40 stores. Not long after Carreyrous 2015 report revealed that Theranos was using standard third-party equipment rather than its own technology, the partnership dissolved. Walgreens sued for the $140 million it said it invested; Theranos eventually settled for just under $30 million. By then, Rosan had already left his position at the company. According to his LinkedIn, he currently serves as a co-founder of Medovation, a company that aims to help health-care start-ups succeed.

Tyler Shultz (Played by Dylan Minnette)

Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos by Getty Images and Hulu

Tyler Shultz, a former Theranos employee turned whistleblower, served as a source for Carreyrous investigation. He met Elizabeth in fall 2011 through his grandfather George Shultz, the American diplomat who served as Ronald Reagans secretary of State and held several other prominent government positions. Tyler, then a 20-year-old junior at Stanford, told Elizabeth he wanted to be an intern at Theranos. According to Tylers book Thicker Than Water, she said the company typically didnt accept interns. Tyler believed she made an exception for him because she was trying to get his influential grandfather to join the Theranos board at the time.

After graduating from college, he returned to the company in a full-time position. His first day at work happened to be the same day Walgreens opened its first Theranos Wellness Center. Tyler later befriended Erika Cheung, a fellow recent graduate. The two were part of a team responsible for verifying the accuracy of blood tests before devices were used with real patients. After becoming friends in the show, Tyler stays at the upstairs lab while Cheung is moved to the secretive room known as Normandy. According to Carreyrou, Tyler eventually was also sent to the Normandy area the following year, in early 2014. Over time, he grew increasingly troubled by several practices he observed that he did not feel were scientifically sound.

A scene where Tyler performed an original song about Elizabeth at her 30th-birthday party is based in fact, though Tyler said in his book that the lyrics were centered on company marketing slogans. (Per Tylers account, Henry Kissinger later recited an original limerick about Elizabeth in which he declared that she was not the next Steve Jobs  Steve Jobs was an earlier version of her.)

The Dropout omits one of Tylers early attempts to hold the company accountable: He contacted the New York State Department of Health under an alias to discuss concerns about proficiency testing and subsequently made an anonymous complaint about Theranos to New York States Laboratory Investigative Unit. Tyler said he never received a reply. After he later pressed Elizabeth on some claims made by Theranos in a one-on-one meeting, he found himself transferred to a team where he did not interact with Theranos devices.

Tylers frustrations culminated in an April 2014 email that referenced some data hed gotten from Cheung and expressed his concerns about cherry-picked research and quality-control failures at the company. He received a scathing response from Sunny Balwani via email. Tyler replied with his two weeks notice but ended up leaving the company that same day.

Meanwhile, Tylers grandfather had grown extremely close with Elizabeth after joining Theranoss board, and he often invited her to family events. Tyler stated in his book that although he repeatedly tried to convince his grandfather of Theranoss fraudulent practices, George remained confident in Elizabeth. After Tyler spoke to Carreyrou, Theranos claimed to know he had been a source for the story. Tyler was blindsided by a conversation in which he lied to his grandfather and said he had not talked to Carreyrou. He then discovered that two Theranos lawyers were waiting upstairs with documents for him to sign.

His step-grandmother later helped him contact an attorney who advised George that Tyler should not sign what Theranos wanted him to. After this refusal, Tyler was allegedly followed by private investigators. In Thicker Than Water, he stated that his parents gave him pepper spray and he began sleeping with a knife by his bed. In addition to the emotional toll of this ordeal, he told Uproxx that his family ended up spending between $400,000 to $500,000 on lawyers.

Today, Tyler serves as the founder and CEO of his own biotech start-up, Flux Biosciences. The company also happens to focus on medical testing, though he assured Truffld in 2021 that the similarities with his former employer end there. Im trying to take what I saw at Theranos and do the exact opposite, pretty much across the board, he said. Tyler told CBS that his grandfather never apologized, but he did acknowledge before his death that Tyler had been right about Theranos.

Erika Cheung (Played by Camryn Mi-young Kim)

Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos by Getty Images and Hulu

Erika Cheung was another former Theranos employee who became a key whistleblower. She told the Wall Street Journal that she first spoke to a recruiter at a job fair when she was a senior at the University of California, Berkeley. In October 2013, after interviewing with Elizabeth herself, Cheung was hired at Theranos. Per California Magazine, she became close friends with Tyler Shultz and had lunch with the fellow recent graduate every day. The pair felt uncomfortable with the reliability of Theranos devices as well as the way the company handled data. But when Cheung raised concerns directly to Sunny Balwani, she told ABC that he insinuated that she would lose her job if she questioned Theranoss methods again. Carreyrou reported in Bad Blood that Balwani also berated Cheung when he ascertained through Shultzs email that Cheung had shared data.

Ultimately, Cheung quit Theranos after seven months, unable to reckon with potentially harming real patients. Like other sources for Carreyrous piece, she was followed and told that Theranos would sue her if she did not reveal what she had shared and to whom. Concerned about contacting a fellow whistleblower, Shultz cut contact with Cheung, though she did show up unannounced to check on him and bring him a lamp. In September 2015, Cheung emailed a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services field inspector. She explained that Theranos did not have consistently working devices, cheated on proficiency testing, and had misled a state inspector. Her message prompted a surprise inspection by the federal health regulator that eventually led to the shutdown of Theranoss lab. Cheung later testified in Elizabeths trial and went on to co-found a nonprofit that advocates for ethics in emerging companies.

David Boies (Played by Kurtwood Smith)





Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos by Getty Images and Hulu

In addition to Theranos, David Boiess high-profile clients have included disgraced producer and sexual predator Harvey Weinstein and major corporations like Goldman Sachs. The famed attorney began his legal career in institutional corporate law and eventually started his own firm, Boies Schiller Flexner, in 1997. He gained national recognition for representing the government in a landmark antitrust case against Microsoft, serving as Al Gores lawyer in Bush v. Gore, and overturning Californias Prop 8 ban on same-sex marriage. In 2010, Fortune called him corporate Americas No. 1 hired gun. The following year, a Theranos investor asked Boies to represent Elizabeth. Per the New York Times, he accepted about 400,000 shares of Theranos in place of half of his and his firms fees. By 2015, he was part of Theranoss board.

Ahead of the publication of Carreyrous first piece exposing Theranoss fraudulent practices, Boies sent a 23-page letter to the Wall Street Journal that he characterized as a warning, but Carreyrou said explicitly threatened litigation. Carreyrou found out some of his sources were scared that they would not be able to defeat the renowned lawyer in court. Referencing the firms efforts to follow and intimidate Theranos whistleblowers, Carreyrou compared Boies Schiller Flexners tactics to those of thugs. While Boies told the Times that he took issue with that specific comment, he said that Carreyrous reporting on Theranos was excellent overall, noting that overwriting aside, even his personal comments about me were within the realm of fairness. Boies stopped representing Theranos in August 2015 after reportedly clashing with Elizabeth for speaking optimistically to shareholders without consulting him. Half a year later, once Theranos found a replacement, he also left the companys board.

John Carreyrou (Played by Ebon Moss-Bachrach)





Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos by Getty Images and Hulu

Wall Street Journal journalist John Carreyrous reporting, which he documented in his book Bad Blood, was instrumental in the takedown of Theranos. His investigation into the company began in early 2015, when he received a tip from a Missouri pathologist named Adam Clapper. Clapper had made a skeptical post about Theranos on his pathology blog, which led Richard Fuisz to put him in contact with other people with concerns, including Phyllis Gardner. Sensing a story, Clapper reached out to Carreyrou. According to Carreyrou, his first and most important source was former Theranos lab director Adam Rosendorff. Carreyrou would also speak with several other ex-Theranos employees (including Tyler Shultz and Erika Cheung) as well as doctors who had concerns about results their patients had received from Theranos devices.

The Dropout combines two tense, real-life meetings that Carreyrou and his editor at the Wall Street Journal had with delegations from Theranos. While the company refused to answer most of the reporters questions on the grounds that it had to protect trade secrets, lawyer David Boies did crucially admit that Theranos was on a journey and not running all of its tests on proprietary devices. As suspected sources were being followed and threatened with legal action, Elizabeth also attempted to kill Carreyrous story by appealing directly to Rupert Murdoch, who owned the Wall Street Journal and had been a lead investor in Theranoss latest round of funding. Still, in October 2015, the newspaper published Carreyrous first piece, A Prized Startups Struggles, on its front page. Theranos vigorously denied the claims as lies. Per Vanity Fair, employees chanted Fuck you, Carreyrou at the Palo Alto headquarters. But Carreyrous follow-up pieces held up as the company came under increased scrutiny and federal investigation. When Elizabeth ultimately went on trial, Carreyrou covered the courtroom proceedings as the host of the podcast Bad Blood: The Final Chapter.

William Billy Evans (Played by Garrett Coffey)

Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos by Getty Images and Hulu

Elizabeths partner and rumored husband comes from a wealthy family, founders of the Evans Hotel Group, a hotel chain in Southern California. Billy Evans was first spotted with the disgraced Theranos founder in 2018 at the Burning Man festival. According to Business Insider, Evans is eight years younger than Elizabeth. Per his LinkedIn profile, he graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2015 and later worked for LinkedIn and then a tech start-up called Luminar Technologies. Little is known about the start of Evans and Elizabeths relationship, but their romance turned serious relatively quickly: Sources told Vanity Fair that the pair had a secret wedding in 2019, a year after they were first publicly seen together. In many photos of the couple, Elizabeth can be seen wearing Evanss MIT signet ring around her neck. Some suspect that it served as an engagement ring instead of expensive jewelry that she might have to hand over amid her legal struggles. Elizabeth and Evans became parents to a son, William Holmes Evans, in 2021, delaying the start of Elizabeths trial. The New York Times reported that Evans often sat in the row reserved for her family once the trial began. At the time, CNBC reported that the couple were living together on a $135 million estate in one of Silicon Valleys wealthiest towns. While Elizabeth is free on bond, she is ostensibly still calling that residence with Evans home.

Balto (Played by unnamed dog)

Photo: Hulu

In 2017, as Theranos began to collapse, Elizabeth took a flight across the country to purchase a 9-week-old Siberian husky named Balto. According to Vanity Fair, she told colleagues that her new puppy was named for a famed sled dog who led a dangerous journey to bring crucial medication to Alaskans during a diphtheria epidemic. She began taking Balto with her everywhere, including to work. Balto, who wasnt potty-trained, reportedly left messes throughout the Theranos headquarters for assistants to clean up. When asked about Baltos breed, Elizabeth was said to earnestly insist that he was a wolf.
NASA says American aboard International Space Station will come back on Russian rocket 'for sure'
Decatur, IL (62521)

Today

Cloudy. High around 65F. Winds ENE at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Considerable cloudiness. Occasional rain showers after midnight. Low 52F. Winds E at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 40%.
General Figliuolo announced the news at Rome book launch.

Italy's emergency coronavirus commissioner, Francesco Paolo Figliuolo, has said that he will be standing down from the role on 31 March.

The army general and logistics expert announced the news on Saturday at the Libri Come event in Rome during the presentation of his new book, Un Italiano, co-written with journalist Beppe Severgnini.

The date chosen by Figliuolo to stand down coincides with the end of the Italian government's covid state of emergency legislation which has been in place since 31 January 2020.

"I think I have done my part", Figliuolo said during the book launch at the Auditorium Parco della Musica, adding that he had "seen beautiful things and less beautiful things".

Figliuolo has served as Italy's covid commissioner since 1 March 2021 after the newly-installed premier Mario Draghi fired his predecessor Domenico Arcuri over complaints about the sluggish pace of the country's vaccine campaign.

As of today, 49.3 million people in Italy - more than 91 per cent of the population over the age of 12 - have received at least one dose of the covid vaccine.
Award-winning journalist, war correspondent and author Janine di Giovanni will speak at the Center for American Studies in Rome on Monday 21 March.

The free event, scheduled at 19.00, is organised by The American University of Rome, in partnership with the American Club of Rome.

In her talk, titled A Life as a War Correspondent, Janine di Giovanni will share the "darkest sides of our recent history which, unfortunately, echoes what is happening on the ground in Ukraine" at this time.

A war reporter for almost three decades, di Giovanni has covered conflicts zones around the world including the first Palestinian intifada, the siege of Sarajevo, the Rwandan genocide, as well as wars in Sierra Leone, Somalia, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Chechnya, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

She also reported extensively in Iraq, pre and post-invasion, and covered both the Arab Spring and the conflict in Syria.

Di Giovanni's reportage focuses on war crimes, global terrorism, refugee issues and sexual violence during wartime, with the aim of documenting first-hand evidence that can be cited in subsequent war crimes tribunals.

Formerly a senior foreign correspondent for The Times and contributing editor for Vanity Fair, she now writes for leading publications including the New York Times, the Washington Post and The Guardian.

She is the recipient of multiple prestigious accolades including the National Magazine Award, two Amnesty International Prizes, and the Courage in Journalism Award.

To register your attendance at her talk at the Centro Studi Americani on Via Michelangelo Caetani 32, click here.
Placeholder while article actions load

Long before the war in Ukraine, Indias Prime Minister Narendra Modi decided that international card networks could be used as instruments of statecraft  and that he should channel the rising economic power of his countrys 1.4 billion people to resist the dominance of Visa Inc., Mastercard Inc. and American Express Co. Everyone cannot go to the border for the security of the nation, Modi said in a 2018 speech. If you develop a habit of using RuPay card  that will also become a medium to serve the nation.

Like Russias Mir and China UnionPay Co., RuPay is a homegrown card network, promoted by the National Payments Corporation of India since 2012. New Delhi has pushed it so aggressively over the last few years that a worried Visa Inc. has complained to the U.S. government about the lack of an even playing field in India, according to Reuters. Mastercard has grumbled as well. Meanwhile, Discover Financial Services Diners Club as well as Mastercard and American Express have gotten into regulatory trouble with the Reserve Bank of India over data localization rules.

The decision by global card firms to boycott Russia over its invasion of Ukraine may amplify nationalist sentiments. But will RuPay ever become a serious alternative? It may take more than patriotism to take on the entrenched payment institutions.

Advertisement

Modis unhappiness with Western networks  at least, based on what he said publicly in 2018  was about sharing processing fees with foreigners. However, in the wake of card platforms suspension of Russian clients access to merchants overseas, the link between plastic and politics has acquired a more serious dimension: circumventing potential denial of service.

With active state patronage, RuPay has issued more than 600 million cards, giving it a 60%-plus share in India in late 2020, up from just 15% in 2017, according to the RBI. However, most of the instruments are debit cards, linked to no-frills savings accounts that the Modi government opened in large numbers for the poorer sections of society as part of its financial inclusion campaign. The 1% to 2% of the population with meaningful purchasing power isnt quite ready to junk their Visa or Amex cards.

Winning over the credit-card customers who spent 878 billion rupees ($11 billion) with merchants in January  50% more than debit-card users  wont be easy. Since the spending classes want a card thats also accepted overseas and by e-commerce websites, NPCI has set up an entity dedicated to internationalizing RuPay.

Advertisement

A 10-year-old tie-up with Discover Financial does give RuPay cards some acceptance in foreign markets. In a presentation to investors in 2020, Roger Hochschild, the chief executive officer of Discover, called it a tremendously successful collaboration: We provide technology for them so that they issue using our account number ranges. We provide a chip spec for them, we provide secure remote commerce connectivity for them and they take care of everything in market, he said.

However, if the ultimate goal is to lower the nations vulnerability, relying so heavily on the technology of yet another American card firm isnt a great solution. Nor is RuPays other partnership  with Japans JCB International Co.  likely to give it the heft it needs.

But India has something better than plastic that it can internationalize. Unified Payments Interface, a public utility operated by NPCI, is a mobile phone-based technology under Indian control. Apps running over it are handling as much in merchant payments as debit and credit cards put together. Including person-to-person transfers, digital transactions are five times as big as cards payments and growing rapidly. NPCIs international wing signed a deal with Dubais Mashreqbank PSC last year to let the 2 million Indians who visit the Gulf emirate annually use UPI.

Advertisement

Rather than stitching deals from country to country, India could opt for another solution: Nexus, which is the Bank for International Settlements blueprint for 24/7, real-time cross-border payments. The prototype, developed with the cooperation of NPCI and the Monetary Authority of Singapore, could link up the digital payment systems that exist in 60-plus nations  with room for more to join. Nexus wont be another app. Rather, it could become the world wide web of payments, a set of rules any country can adopt.

When Singapores PayNow established the worlds first cross-country link with Thailands PromptPay last year, the arrangement enabled real-time fund transfers to mobile numbers in the other country. It doesnt yet allow users to pay via QR code, which would make it merchant-friendly. But it shouldnt be too hard to add this functionality in a multi-country setup.

In the long run, moving beyond plastic  and taking a more internationalist, open-network approach like Nexus  might be a more viable strategy than nationalism to wriggle out of the chokehold of the giant payment platforms. Many of the senior professionals in Indias policy circles are old enough to have carried credit cards that were valid only in India and Nepal. They may be wary of a Western-dominated globalized future, but they will not want to be pulled back to an insular past.

Advertisement

More From This Writer and Others at Bloomberg Opinion:



Nexus Could Be Bankings Next Big Thing: Andy Mukherjee



Why China Wont Help Russia Around Sanctions: Shuli Ren



Bitcoin May Serve Many Masters in the War in Ukraine: Tim Culpan

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.

GiftOutline Gift Article
Placeholder while article actions load

Read More: Ex-Malaysia PM Najib Razak Faces Court for Biggest 1MDB Corruption Trial Malaysias state-owned investment fund, 1MDB, was supposed to promote development. Instead, it has spurred investigations around the world into deal-making, election spending and political patronage under former Prime Minister Najib Razak. The figures are mind-boggling: Of the $8 billion that 1MDB raised via bond sales, the U.S. alleges more than half was siphoned off. Angry voters ousted Najib in a 2018 election that ended his partys 61 years of rule, and two years later he was convicted in the first of a series of trials. Goldman Group Inc. has agreed to pay more than $5 billion, including a record $2.3 billion fine in the U.S., and enter its first-ever guilty plea for its role in the scandal.

1. What is 1MDB?

Advertisement

Its a government investment company -- full name, 1Malaysia Development Bhd -- that took shape in 2009 under Najib, who led its advisory board. Its early initiatives included buying privately owned power plants and planning a new financial district in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysias capital. The fund proved better at borrowing -- it accumulated $12 billion in debt -- than at luring large-scale foreign investment.

2. Whats the issue?

Much of the money raised was allegedly embezzled. The U.S. Justice Department says that some $2.7 billion of the $6.5 billion Goldman helped raise for 1MDB was stolen by people connected to Najib and diverted for bribes, a luxury yacht, fine art and even funding for the Martin Scorsese movie The Wolf of Wall Street. According to a U.S. indictment, a small coterie of Malaysians, led by businessman Low Taek Jho (known as Jho Low), diverted money from 1MDB into personal accounts disguised to look like legitimate businesses, and kicked back some of those funds to officials. There were questions about a $681 million payment that landed in Najibs personal bank account (he has said most of the money was returned). Malaysias then-attorney general cleared Najib of wrongdoing in 2016. But after losing office, Najib was charged with corruption, breach of trust and money laundering. The first trial involved $10 million deposited in his personal accounts from a former 1MDB unit. He was found guilty in 2020 on all seven counts and sentenced to 12 years; an appeals court upheld the conviction in December 2021. Jho Low, a fugitive, has also denied any wrongdoing.

Advertisement

3. Wheres the money?

Scattered, but slowly coming in. Under a July 2020 settlement, Malaysia dropped all criminal charges against Goldman in exchange for a $2.5 billion cash payment and at least $1.4 billion from seized 1MDB assets being returned with the help of U.S. prosecutors and Goldman. (Goldman made $593 million working on three bond sales that raised $6.5 billion for 1MDB in 2012 and 2013 -- far more than what banks typically make from such deals.) The banks October 2020 settlement with the U.S. Justice Department included the largest-ever penalty for foreign bribery. Goldman units also paid $350 million to Hong Kongs financial regulator, $122 million to Singapores government and 96.6 million pounds ($126 million at the time) to the U.K.s Financial Conduct Authority.

In addition:

Advertisement

 U.S. prosecutors struck a deal in 2020 with Jho Low to recoup almost $700 million worth of assets, including a Beverly Hills hotel and real estate in New York and London. Thats in addition to $260 million of assets, including a $126 million super yacht, seized earlier on Malaysias behalf.

 The U.S. reached a $60 million settlement with the producers of The Wolf of Wall Street. The production company was co-founded by Riza Aziz, Najibs stepson and a friend of Jho Low.

 Malaysia moved to seize $340 million in PetroSaudi Internationals accounts in London.

 Singapore said it would return S$35 million ($25 million at the time) forfeited by former Goldman banker Roger Ng.

4. Whats happened with the investigation?

The U.S. Justice Department has been at the forefront, focusing on bribery, theft and money laundering. A small Malaysian unit of Goldman pleaded guilty to a single conspiracy charge. But the parent company avoided a criminal conviction under an agreement that allows the bank to put off any prosecution as long as it cooperates with ongoing U.S. investigations and submits compliance reports. (A conviction might have cost it some institutional clients.) According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, some potential witnesses were scared to talk because they feared retaliation. Several other countries also conducted probes. Singapore and Switzerland have fined some banks for lapses in anti-money laundering controls. Malaysia also has said it is looking into allegations that China offered to help fend off probes into 1MDB in the U.S. and elsewhere in exchange for stakes in infrastructure projects in Malaysia. A former Najib aide testified that the ex-premier offered projects to China in return for help resolving 1MDBs debt.

Advertisement

5. Who else is charged?

 Jho Low, a bon vivant who said he did consulting work for 1MDB, is portrayed by U.S. prosecutors as the central figure who set up shell companies to collect proceeds from the fund and arranged withdrawals for payoffs and for his own lavish spending. He has been charged in absentia in Malaysia and the U.S. with money laundering and other offenses. Malaysian police have bemoaned the lack of help from other jurisdictions in finding him, after saying they had located him and were in talks with a party they suspect of protecting him. Jho Lows settlement with the U.S. didnt include an admission of guilt or release him from criminal charges.

 Goldmans former Southeast Asia Chairman Tim Leissner pleaded guilty to U.S. charges including conspiracy to launder money and admitted to bribing officials in Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates to get bond deals for Goldman. He agreed to forfeit $43.7 million and was expected to be sentenced this year.

Advertisement

 Ng was extradited from Malaysia to the U.S. to face similar charges. After a long delay tied to the coronavirus outbreak, his trial began in February 2022, with Leissner as the prosecutions star witness. (The U.S. Federal Reserve has banned both men from the financial industry.)

 Malaysia leveled charges of securities law violations against Leissner, Ng, Jho Low and 1MDBs former general counsel, Jasmine Loo Ai Swan.

 PetroSaudi International directors Tarek Obaid and Patrick Mahony were charged by Malaysia in absentia in 2020 for allegedly receiving $300 million from 1MDB through unlawful activity.

 Ex-1MDB President Arul Kanda was charged along with Najib for allegedly tampering with a state audit report into the fund. Both men have denied wrongdoing.

 Rosmah Mansor, Najibs wife, was charged with money laundering and tax evasion. Luxury items and cash seized from properties linked to the former first couple were valued at about 1.1 billion ringgit ($259 million). According to U.S. prosecutors, Jho Low in 2013 allegedly funneled $27.3 million that was looted from 1MDB to a New York jeweler who designed a pink diamond necklace for her.

Advertisement

 A Justice Department employee pleaded guilty to funneling money into the U.S. to pay for a lobbying effort to influence the 1MDB probe, with the filing identifying the funds source as Jho Low.

6. Exactly how much money is involved?

In all, 1MDB raised more than $8 billion in bond sales and accumulated billions more in debt through loans and interest payments. Swiss investigators say about $7 billion of 1MDB funds passed into the global financial system from 2009 to 2015. Some 1MDB projects are going ahead under the new government, including the plan for a new financial district and a $34 billion property and transport hub. As for 1MDB, it has been reduced to a shell after the finance ministry took over its assets and debt.

7. Why does it matter?

Authorities in Asia, the U.S. and Europe have been working to coordinate their investigations into the money trail from 1MDB, as well as legal approaches toward Goldman and asset recovery. Their findings could potentially identify, and help close, loopholes in the global financial system that open the way for corruption.

Advertisement

8. Who else is involved?

 The Fed banned ex-Goldman banker Andrea Vella from the financial industry for life, saying the former co-head of investment banking in Asia engaged in unsafe and unsound practices by failing to ensure all of Goldmans internal committees were aware that the 1MDB bond deals involved Jho Low.

 Swiss bank BSI, which was caught up in the scandal, lost its license to do business in Singapore for breaches of money laundering rules.

 Malaysia central bank governor Muhammad Ibrahim resigned in 2018 amid questions over the role the monetary authority played in a land-purchase deal linked to 1MDB. The monetary authority set up a review of the deal.

 UBS Group, DBS Group, Credit Suisse, United Overseas Bank and Standard Chartered are among those that have drawn penalties from the Singapore central bank for anti-money laundering lapses. They said they will strengthen controls in their businesses.

 Singapore has banned at least eight financial professionals in connection with 1MDB.

More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com

2022 Bloomberg L.P.

GiftOutline Gift Article
Placeholder while article actions load

Corruption is a cancer that eats away at a citizens faith in democracy, said a certain vice president, back in 2014. Now commander in chief, Joe Biden must confront a corruption problem unfolding on his watch: the spiraling costs of misspent Covid funds. Wp Get the full experience. Choose your plan ArrowRight In recent court filings, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has described a massive fraud scheme in which nonprofit organizations in Minnesota illegally diverted aid money intended to feed needy kids and used the proceeds to purchase real estate, cars and other items. All told, the groups received some $65 million from federal food programs during the pandemic.

While shocking, the incident is by no means anomalous. As Congress has doled out almost $6 trillion in relief funds, crooks and con men have lined up to get their share. Theyve created fake companies, stolen identities, invented employees, misstated their earnings, and otherwise conspired to siphon off taxpayer money. The Secret Service, which has opened more than 900 Covid-related criminal cases, estimates that $100 billion may have been misappropriated.

Advertisement

Even that may be understating the problem. As little as 23% of the $800 billion doled out by the Paycheck Protection Program actually found its way into workers pockets. A Department of Labor study estimated that more than $87 billion in emergency unemployment benefits were improperly paid. The Small Business Administration has (among other blunders) disbursed more than $6.2 billion to loan applicants it now suspects of identity theft. Somehow, the Internal Revenue Service managed to issue 2.2 million stimulus checks  worth about $3.5 billion  to dead people.

Only in government could such calamitous neglect be considered business as usual.

Of course, some level of fraud is inevitable with huge federal outlays, and Covid provided an especially tempting target. As businesses shut and the national economy ground to a halt, the governments understandable priority was simply to get checks out the door. That often meant officials relaxed safeguards, waived vetting procedures, and generally proceeded heedlessly. From the start, experts warned of a looming disaster.

Advertisement

Yet the problem wasnt simply a lack of oversight. As the relief effort geared up, task forces, watchdogs and oversight panels were empowered across the government to prevent malfeasance. Among other safeguards, the CARES Act, passed in March 2020, established the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee  consisting of inspectors general from nine separate agencies  to prevent and detect fraud, waste, abuse and mismanagement.

What was lacking was any kind of groundwork for such an effort. As one former member related, the accountability committee had to hire staff, create an elaborate database, and find a sophisticated analytics team to track trillions of dollars in spending  all almost overnight. Meanwhile, government agencies failed to create uniform standards for reporting the necessary data. One result, as the committees chairman has conceded, was that the information it produced was gibberish to most people.

Fixing such deficiencies must be a priority. As a start, a dedicated data portal that tracks big government outlays in real time would make it easier for officials to monitor for fraud and make more informed decisions about how to respond. With such a system in place, the accountability committee could be made permanent and be tasked with continuous oversight of big projects, such as the $1 trillion infrastructure bill Congress passed last year.

Advertisement

Upgrading antiquated technology would also help. As the Partnership for Public Service has found, 80% of the federal information-technology budget is spent maintaining legacy systems  some decades old  while investment in new ones often goes unfunded. This can lead to almost comical missteps: One reason the IRS kept sending money to corpses was because the Social Security Administration had simply failed to share the relevant data.

Finally, the government needs to stop creating incentives for fraud. Community groups that steer federal funds to the needy  like those the FBI is probing in Minnesota  are typically paid a fixed percentage of outlays in administrative fees, for example, meaning that theyre encouraged to dole out as much as possible. Because they also act as watchdogs over such programs, the problem compounds. Such a system is simply asking to be abused.

To his credit, Biden has announced several efforts to combat pandemic fraud. But more focus and investment will be required to stop the cancer of corruption for good.

The Editors are members of the Bloomberg Opinion editorial board.

More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com/opinion

2022 Bloomberg L.P.

GiftOutline Gift Article
Placeholder while article actions load

The pandemic forced a pause on colleges requiring standardized testing, long the gold standard for admissions in the U.S. As Covid-19 restrictions ease, widespread mandatory reliance on the ACT and SAT entrance exams isnt springing back as quickly. One reason is that schools anticipate more Covid disruptions and want to provide predictability to applicants. Another is concern over large race-related gaps in SAT scores, which have been blamed for unequal educational opportunity for non-White students.

1. What are the SAT and ACT?

The SAT, administered by the New York-based College Board, and the Iowa City-based ACT are decades-old screening tools for U.S. college admission. Both are multiple-choice, written exams heavy on math and reading, taken by high school students typically in their junior year, sometimes senior. The SAT was invented in the 1920s. Harvard University, in the early 1930s, was the first school to use the SAT as an instrument in admissions decisions, initially to determine recipients of one small scholarship program, according to Nicholas Lemann, author of The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy. The College Board, an association of educational institutions, adopted the SAT to replace a battery of essay tests during World War II, a change billed as temporary that instead proved lasting. Lemann said. College Board membership expanded greatly after the war, and the SAT became a mass-administered exam. The ACT emerged in the late 1950s as a competitor.

Advertisement

2. How important are they?

In a 2018 survey by the National Association for College Admission Counseling, nearly half of colleges said they gave considerable importance to ACT and SAT test scores in deciding which applicants to accept, down from 60% in 2004. The scores are also considered for scholarships, an important means of tuition support for many students. Some large public systems such as the University of Georgia and the University of Florida still require them. A high score on the SAT or ACT will not compensate for a non-competitive grade point average in high school, the University of Georgia says on its website. Your record of three to three-and-a-half years worth of rigorous academic work in the classroom will be the primary focus of any admission decision.

3. Who has moved away from the tests?

Advertisement

The Common Application, the nonprofit behind the standardized application form, said only 5% of about 850 member schools are requesting scores in 2021-2022, compared to 55% in 2019. The University of Chicago and Brandeis University were among schools that had stopped requiring testing before Covid-19. The pandemic, by forcing the cancellation of most in-person testing, accelerated the reconsideration of standardized tests. All eight Ivy League schools have made them optional for current high school juniors. Harvard has suspended it for students as young as current 8th graders, and Cornell, for some of its undergraduate schools, wont even accept scores. The University of California system abolished testing requirements. Test-optional admission is the new normal, said Bob Schaeffer, interim executive director of FairTest, a nonprofit that has led the test-optional movement for 30 years. These schools arent going to go back even if they want to in most cases. The College Board in 2021 also eliminated the essay section from the SAT.

4. Whos still taking the tests and sending scores?

Even though many colleges arent mandating scores, at least one group of students are still sending them: wealthier ones. In the current application cycle for current high school seniors, 52% of students in the wealthiest households submitted scores this school year, according to data from the Common Application through February. Only 39% of the poorest did so. Applications among first-generation students -- those whose parents didnt receive bachelors degrees -- grew by 21% from two years prior. Only 37% of underrepresented minorities sent in scores in 2021-22, compared to 52% of non-unrepresented minorities. Its not clear how schools are evaluating students without testing.

Advertisement

5. Whats the concern about racial disparities in testing?

The use of standardized tests to measure aptitude and intelligence is one of the most effective racist policies ever devised to degrade Black minds and legally exclude Black bodies, Ibram X. Kendi wrote in his bestselling book, How to Be an Antiracist. In the most recent report for the class of 2021, the mean score was 1,112 for White students and 934 for Black students. (The overall mean score was 1,060. A perfect score is 1,600.)

6. What explains the disparity in scores?

A variety of factors, according to experts. For one thing, wealthier families can afford to send their high schoolers to test-prep courses that teach strategies for excelling on written exams. Wealth also influences the quality of schooling a given child receives. William Spriggs, an economist at Howard University in Washington, D.C., says Black students are less likely to be in schools where there are advanced math courses, such as calculus. Priscilla Rodriguez, a vice president at the College Board, said the SAT is not a racist instrument. Every question is rigorously reviewed for evidence of bias and any question that could favor one group over another is discarded, she said. Further, changes made to the test over its 100-year history have removed all vestiges of an aptitude or IQ test.

Advertisement

7. What alternatives are there?

Bowdoin College, which led the way by making admission tests optional starting in 1969, considers what courses were available at an applicants high school, whether the student chose the most or least challenging and how the person performed relative to peers. James Nondorf, vice president for enrollment at the University of Chicago, said students can show their strengths in competitions such as chess, debate or math. (About 68% of applicants to Chicago chose to apply with test scores this year, down from 75% in 2021.) I love entrepreneurship competitions, hack-a-thons, coding competitions, Nondorf said. In some ways its better than testing. It showcases a particular skill as opposed to testing, where youre seeing a whole set of things measured.

More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com

2022 Bloomberg L.P.

GiftOutline Gift Article
Jamestown, site of the first permanent English settlement in North America, is seen last month, sandwiched between the James River and a swamp. (Julia Rendleman for The Post)

Retropolis The Past, Rediscovered
Placeholder while article actions load

Beijing shuts down Shenzhen over covid Wp Get the full experience. Choose your plan ArrowRight Chinas government responded Sunday to a spike in coronavirus infections by shutting down its southern business center of Shenzhen, a city of 17.5 million people, and restricted access to Shanghai by suspending bus service. Everyone in Shenzhen, a finance and technology center that abuts Hong Kong, will undergo three rounds of testing after 60 new cases were reported Sunday. All businesses except those that supply food, fuel and other necessities were ordered to close or work from home.

Case numbers in Chinas latest surge are low compared with other countries and with Hong Kong, which reported more than 32,000 on Sunday. But mainland authorities are enforcing a zero tolerance strategy and have locked down entire cities to find and isolate every infected person.

Advertisement

Shenzhen is home to some of China's most prominent companies, including telecom equipment maker Huawei Technologies, electric car brand BYD Auto, Ping An Insurance and Tencent Holding, operator of the popular WeChat message service.

On the mainland, the government reported 1,938 new cases, more than triple Saturdays total.

About three-quarters, or 1,412 cases, were in Jilin province in the northeast, where the industrial metropolis of Changchun was placed under lockdown on Friday and families were told to stay home after a spate of infections.

In Shanghai, Chinas most populous city with 24 million people, the number of cases in the latest surge rose by 15 to 432.

 Associated Press

Turkey, Greece pledge more cooperation

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis agreed in talks Sunday to improve ties, despite long-running disagreements between the NATO members, Ankara said.

Advertisement

Both countries have key roles to play in the changing security situation in Europe after Russias invasion of Ukraine, and their increased cooperation would have benefits for the region, the Turkish presidency said in a statement.

Turkey shares a maritime border with both Russia and Ukraine in the Black Sea, has good relations with both countries and has offered to mediate in the conflict.

After a five-year hiatus, Greece and Turkey agreed last year to resume exploratory talks to address their own differences in the Mediterranean, but little progress has been made so far.

Ankara and Athens have been at odds for years over issues ranging from conflicting Mediterranean maritime claims to airspace and migration.

Greece said both sides emphasized building a positive agenda mainly in the area of the economy.

Advertisement

 Reuters

First covid-era elections held in Colombia: Colombians voted for a new congress Sunday and cast ballots in presidential primaries to choose party candidates for the May contest, as the country held its first elections since the pandemic began. Leftist Sen. Gustavo Petro emerged as the current leader in the race for the presidency. With nearly all votes counted, he won the primary for the Historical Pact, a coalition of left-wing parties, with 80 percent of the more than 5.4 million votes cast in its primary. Team Colombia, a coalition of conservative groups, drew 3.9 million voters to its primary, which was won by Federico Gutierrez, a former mayor of Medellin who has criticized some aspects of the 2016 peace deal with Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. A group of centrist parties known as the Hope Coalition got 2 million voters in its primary, which was won by mathematician Sergio Fajardo, who also ran in 2018. The three will compete in the May 29 presidential election along with several other candidates from smaller parties.

 From news services

GiftOutline Gift Article
Trusted local news has never been more important, but providing the information you need, information that can change sometimes minute-by-minute, requires a partnership with you, our readers. Please consider making a contribution today to support this vital resource that you and countless others depend on.
The killing of Kumanjayi Walker, a 19-year-old Aboriginal man in Yuendumu, reminds us that the law does not always equal justice when it comes to Aboriginal experiences within the criminal process. In the wake of Northern Territory police officer Zachary Rolfes acquittal, the Walpiri people have stood strong and dignified in their calls for ceasefire, police accountability and control of their homelands.

This case begs the question: how much longer can the law justify the killing of Aboriginal people?

Zachary Rolfe (right) has been acquitted of all charges related to the death of Kumanjayi Walker, whose photo is used courtesy of his family. Credit:

Without cavilling with the not guilty verdict or the conduct of the trial, there are legitimate concerns about the training and recruitment of the Northern Territory Police Force. How is it that NT police officers are trained and drilled that an edged weapon equals a gun, as Rolfes lawyer argued, and in this instance that the three bullets Rolfe shot into Kumanjayis body were a lawful response to his threat of having a pair of medical scissors?

It wasnt just the shooting of Kumanjayi that sent shockwaves across the desert; it was also the fact he died alone in the most undignified way inside a police station while the rest of his family and community sat outside wailing and waiting for answers, wondering if he was dead or alive the same day the Walpiri buried his uncle.
Five new trainee journalists have today begun their careers at The Sydney Morning Herald.

The Heralds editor, Bevan Shields, said the group was chosen from hundreds of applicants after demonstrating the hunger, intelligence and creativity needed to be great reporters.

The Heralds new trainees: Anthony Segaert, Millie Muroi, Angus Thomson, Billie Eder and Angus Dalton at the Heralds office in North Sydney. Credit:Dominic Lorrimer

Theres lots of doom and gloom around about the transformation of media but these five outstanding trainees are proof the future of journalism at the Herald is bright, Shields said. They display a deep understanding of the Heralds status as the home of high-quality, independent journalism in Australia.

Many of the cadets who joined in more recent rounds - such as North Asia correspondent Eryk Bagshaw, Spectrum editor Melanie Kembrey, senior writer Michael Koziol and sports reporter Tom Decent - now power the newsroom.
Time to complete paperwork to give builders access to a new block has blown out as costs started escalating rapidly. Strategic Property Group managing director Trent Fleskens, who helps investors develop properties, said he had seen about a 40 per cent increase in costs since late 2019 before the pandemic arrived. At the end of the day there has to be a level of transparency and trust between the two parties. Washington Avila, builder Mr Fleskens said builders would have lost money on most projects that were priced and started before early 2021. You have this mismatch in a market where it costs more to buy land and build than it does to buy an established property, Mr Fleskens said.

Choice one: pay more to finish WAtoday spoke to numerous 101 Residential customers who accepted that a cost increase was reasonable under their contract as the builder had been delayed more than 45 days and labour and supplies were becoming more expensive. However, they all expressed concern that 101 Residential gave clients no documentation or calculations to justify the price increase. The Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safetys Building and Energy division has the authority to resolve disputes for home building contracts worth less than $500,000. A Building and Energy spokeswoman said a builder can only seek a cost increase for changes in cost between when the contract was signed and the date of the increase.

She said builders must provide owners with a written statement setting out the reason for a price rise and corresponding costs, within ten working days of becoming aware of these. The spokeswoman said if an owner believed a price increase was unjustified or excessive, they may lodge a complaint with the regulator. Building and Energy may then require the builder to provide evidence. A building site in Perths outer suburbs. Credit:Patrick Cody When asked to supply details, 101 Residential told one customer it was not possible to maintain relationships with suppliers. The builder, which is part of the Scott Park Group, told the client it would supply a cost breakdown to the regulator for review, as it has done a number of times in the past 18 months.

Each time we have been able to justify more than the costs being passed on to the client, the company wrote to one customer. Washington Avila, who runs builder West Coast Residential, said he gets notifications of cost increases from suppliers every month and at one stage steel prices escalated weekly. Mr Avila said the lower end of cost increases in the $15,000 area did not warrant a detailed breakdown but changes in the $30,000 to $50,000 band did. I mean, at the end of the day there has to be a level of transparency and trust between the two parties, he said. Mr Avila said it would be reasonable for a builder to show their customer initial quotes for major items like windows, timber or Colorbond and later correspondence from the supplier about cost increases.

Choice two: pay even more to terminate If the price increase is more than five per cent for a regulated contract the customer has the right to terminate the contract but must reimburse the builder for costs incurred up to that point. When 101 Residential customers asked how much termination would cost they received no supporting information apart from a list of works completed to date. However, the builder listed pre-start meetings as one of the costs it wanted compensation for, when no pre-start meeting had occurred. Unfortunately for customers wanting to abandon their home build, the regulator cannot review the builders estimate of costs incurred up to the termination of the contract. Building and Energy recommend customers engage a lawyer before terminating a contract.

101 Residential was asked why it would not provide its customers details to support the cost increases it claims but it did not provide an answer. Nor did it say how it could spend $68,000 on a project before termination without doing any work on site. Everybody has been fighting for labour resources in the market for the past two years. Sharon Yap, Australian Institute of Quantity surveyors WA 101 Residential general manager Peter Bisby said the company worked hard to minimise disruptions caused by the building boom and was available to talk through any issues or queries at the appropriate time and in the appropriate place with our clients. The present conditions have lengthened approvals and construction times however we continue to design, build and complete homes in a timely manner, he said.

Tristan Kirkham, managing director of New Home Building Brokers, said some builders were struggling to pay suppliers because they could not get milestone progress payments as supply shortages extended build times. This is the most extreme Ive ever seen, he said. Im very concerned for the builders at the moment. He said the situation worsened when the industry lost two to three per cent of its workers when vaccination became mandatory. Mr Kirkham expected the workforce would grow now borders were open but the industry still had another tough six months ahead.

Loading He said people should not avoid building, but suggested they own the copyright to their design so they were not locked into one builder, and monitor the market over coming months while they progress design and approvals. Australian Institute of Quantity Surveyors WA president Sharon Yap said the building industry in WA had been very competitive in the first six months of the pandemic as builders fought to secure jobs to give them some certainty about future work. Ms Yap, who represents professional cost estimators, said prices then started going up due to global transport problems and WAs border restrictions, restricting supply while government incentives drove up demand. Ms Yap said government grants put a lot of money into the market but there was not the capacity to deliver the homes.

Everybody has been fighting for labour resources in the market for the past two years, she said. Not much fun for builders either Builders in WA have two trade bodies, Master Builders WA and the Housing Industry Association of WA. HIA WA executive director Cath Hart said there was a perception that builders were doing well but HIA was regularly hearing from members about the stress and emotional toll of running their businesses in a time of unreliable cashflow. We urge consumers to keep lines of communication open with your builder  they share many of the same frustrations as their clients, she said.

Loading Master Builders chief executive John Gelavis said roof timber increasing around 85 per cent above what builders were quoted eight months ago. In many instances, suppliers are advising two choices: either pay the higher price, as they are unable to honour their quotation from 8 months ago, or not receive the timber, he said. The building and construction industry is building through a pandemic, so patience, understanding and kindness is required as we work through this challenging period. Mr Gelavis said builders should present a proposed cost increase in a level of detail customers could easily understand.
Experts warn Perth could be walloped with rain bombs described as tsunamis from the sky as climate change intensifies weather systems known as atmospheric rivers.

An atmospheric river is a long, narrow pipeline for water vapour to be sucked up from the ocean and then dumped on land. Curtin University sustainability expert Peter Newman said if a big one hit Perth, the Swan River could rise four metres in a day, possibly more if it was associated with a tidal or storm surge.

Perth flood mapping shows eastern suburbs landmarks that would be submerged if the water level rose 2 metres. Credit:Department of Water and Environment Regulation

State government mapping of a one-in-100 year flood event would see the Swan River rise by two metres between Fremantle and the city, rising to five metres around the eastern suburbs, and higher rises in the rural areas upstream towards the hills.

Older houses in Midland, Guildford, Bassendean, Ascot, Henley Brook and Herne Hill  constructed prior to the state undertaking flood mapping  would be inundated. Other suburbs near the river at the highest risk of flooding are Redcliffe, Ashfield, Maylands, Shelley, Mount Pleasant, Applecross, North Fremantle, East Perth and Salter Point.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) and two other United Nations agencies issued a joint statement calling for an immediate stop to attacks on healthcare facilities  also viewed as war crimes. An elderly woman shelters in basement, where there is no electricity or heating, in Irpin. Credit:AP WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and the executive directors of UNICEF and UNFPA, the UNs childrens fund and its population fund respectively, called for healthcare to be shielded from all acts of violence. Attacks on healthcare facilities and services since the start of the war have led to at least 12 deaths and 34 injuries, and affected access to health services, they said. These horrific attacks are killing and causing serious injuries to patients and health workers, destroying vital health infrastructure and forcing thousands to forgo accessing health services despite catastrophic needs, they said.

Second mayor kidnapped Loading The head of the Zaporizhzhia regional administration said the mayor of the town of Dniprorudne, Yevhen Maveyev, had been kidnapped by Russian forces. If confirmed, he becomes the second local leader to be taken by Russian troops after the mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Fyodorov, was seen being marched out of government building on Friday. Russia on Sunday installed a new mayor in Melitopol on Sunday  potentially the first signs of a so-called puppet government being introduced in Ukraine.

Despite the violence, both sides said they thought progress could be made at bilateral talks that have been held periodically since Russia invaded on February 24. Russia is already beginning to talk constructively, Ukrainian negotiator and presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said in a video posted online. I think that we will achieve some results literally in a matter of days. A Russian delegate to talks with Ukraine, Leonid Slutsky, was quoted by RIA news agency as saying they had made significant progress and it was possible the delegations could soon reach draft agreements. Neither side said what these would cover. Three rounds of talks between the two sides in Belarus, most recently last Monday, had focused mainly on humanitarian issues. Air strikes near the Polish border

The attack on the Yavoriv International Centre for Peacekeeping and Security, a base just 25 kilometres from the Polish border that has previously hosted NATO military instructors, came a day after Russia warned convoys of Western arms shipments to Ukraine could be considered legitimate targets. Ukrainian soldiers take cover from incoming artillery fire in Irpin on Sunday. Credit:AP Regional Governor Maksym Kozytskyy said Russian planes fired around 30 rockets at the facility, adding that some were intercepted before they hit. At least 35 people were killed and 134 wounded, he said. The statement could not be immediately independently verified. Nineteen ambulances with sirens on were seen by Reuters driving from the direction of the Yavoriv base and black smoke rose from the area. Britain said the incident marked a significant escalation in the conflict. US President Joe Biden has said NATO would defend every inch of its territory if Russias invasion spills over into member states of the Western defence alliance.

Loading Russia confirmed it had attacked the Yavoriv training facility, adding the strike had killed up to 180 foreign mercenaries and destroyed weapons supplied by outside nations. Defence ministry spokesperson Igor Konashenkov told a briefing that Russia would continue its attacks against what he called foreign mercenaries. While Western nations have sought to isolate Russian President Vladimir Putin by imposing harsh sanctions, the United States and its allies are concerned NATO will be drawn into the conflict. Even so, they have committed to continuing to send what they call defensive military supplies to Ukraine. Drone that crashed in Croatia carried explosive device

Meanwhile, Croatias defence minister confirmed that a military drone that flew over three NATO states before crashing in Zagreb was armed with an explosive device. Ukraines second city, Kharkiv, continues to come under heavy Russian bombardment. Credit:AP The Soviet-made aircraft crossed Romania and Hungary before entering Croatian airspace and slamming into a field near a student dormitory late on Thursday. Traces of explosives and clues suggesting that this was not a reconnaissance aircraft were found. We found parts of an air bomb, Mario Banozic said at the crash site. He said the drone could have belonged to either Russia or Ukraine. Croatian officials have criticised NATO and called into question the readiness of the military alliance to respond to a possible attack.

NATO said the alliances integrated air and missile defence had tracked the objects flight path, but Croatian officials said NATO only reacted after the event. Ukraine claims Russia used phosphorus bombs Ukraines human rights monitor said Russia used phosphorus bombs in an overnight attack on the town of Popasna in the eastern Luhansk region, calling it a war crime. She shared a photograph purporting to show the alleged attack, but did not say if Ukraine had concrete evidence. The claim could not be immediately verified. In eastern Ukraine, Russian troops were trying to surround Ukrainian forces as they advance from the port of Mariupol in the south and the second city Kharkiv in the north, the British Defence Ministry said. The city council in Mariupol said in a statement that 2187 residents had been killed since the start of the invasion. Again, that toll could not be verified.

Loading Kharkiv has suffered some of the heaviest bombardment. Videos from one resident, Teimur Aliev show bombed buildings lining streets, burnt cars riddled with shrapnel holes and debris strewn around. We will stitch up the wounds and the pain of our country and our city. We are ready to build it and we are ready to renew it when the war is over. Were not going anywhere, Aliev, a 23-year-old musician, said of his food distribution network, which now has dozens of volunteers. British intelligence also said Russian forces advancing from Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014, were trying to circumvent Mykolayiv as they look to drive west towards Odessa. Air strikes on Mykolayiv killed nine people on Sunday, regional Governor Vitaliy Kim said online.

In Chernihiv, around 150 kilometres north-east of Kyiv, firefighters rescued residents from a burning building after heavy shelling, video from Ukraines emergency service showed. The office of Ukraines Prosecutor General said at least 85 children had been confirmed killed since the start of the Russian offensive, but that number is believed to be much higher. Moscow denies targeting civilians. It blames Ukraine for failed attempts to evacuate civilians from encircled cities, an accusation Ukraine and its Western allies strongly reject. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday nearly 125,000 people had been evacuated via humanitarian corridors agreed with Russia. The Kremlin describes its actions as a special operation to demilitarise and deNazify Ukraine. Ukraine and Western allies call this a baseless pretext for a war of choice.
Salisbury, MD (21801)

Today

Partly to mostly cloudy with scattered showers and thunderstorms developing this afternoon. Gusty winds and small hail are possible. High 81F. Winds W at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%..

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 57F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph.
Wilmington, DE (19810)

Today

Cloudy early, then off and on rain showers for the afternoon. High around 75F. Winds WNW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%..

Tonight

A few clouds. Low 56F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph.
Host Dolly Parton speaks at the 57th Academy of Country Music Awards on Monday, March 7, 2022, at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher)
Hong Kong: More private hospital beds provided

In response to the Government's earlier appeal, private hospitals have been gradually providing more hospital beds for receiving non-COVID-19 patients and recovering COVID-19 patients referred from the Hospital Authority (HA).

The Government noted that this has enabled the HA to focus its resources and manpower to combat the current epidemic.

On March 13, 149 HA patients were using hospital beds in private hospitals under the arrangement of low-charge beds and Public-Private Partnership Programme.

Over the past week, there were 94 to 157 HA patients using hospital beds in private hospitals daily.

The authority will continue to closely liaise with private hospitals, with a view to referring more suitable patients to private hospitals for treatment.

Various private healthcare institutions have been actively participating in the operation of community isolation facilities to provide medical support to people who are subject to isolation.

The Government is encouraged by the fact that various private hospitals have indicated an interest in sending medical teams to participate in the operations.

The Social Welfare Department and the HA will closely collaborate with private hospitals, such that the relevant holding centres may start service as early as practicable.

Furthermore, various private hospitals are providing outpatient or telemedicine services for COVID-19 patients to offer diagnosis and treatment to infected people in the community.

The Government expressed gratitude to the medical and health sector for assisting in anti-epidemic efforts and joining forces to serve the community to combat the fifth wave of the epidemic.

This story has been published on: 2022-03-14. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
The May print and digital edition will be distributed at the L.A. Screenings in Los Angeles. Copies will be available at the Fairmont Century Plaza and at the major studios in Hollywood. The magazine will also be sent out as an email blast to approximately 35,000 media executives. It will also be extensively promoted in our newsletters, websites and social media handles for several weeks. Our digital editions are easily accessible: they can be read on a desktop, laptop or tablet, and with the Issuu app for iOS or Android you can download the edition for on-the-go reading. Here are the value-added free benefits you will receive from advertising with us in May: Your company will also get an article up front in the magazine. The article includes a color image of a program, the headshot of your executive and his/her highlighted quote. The company profile will also be published in Diario TV Latina. The profile will also run on TVLatina.tv. You will receive invaluable social media exposure by having your profile tweeted to @tvlatinas followers. You can feature up to ten video clips in your own Screening Rooms on our video portals TVLatinaScreenings.tv and WorldScreenings.com. You will also get your complete program listings in a digital edition of TV Listings, which will be available to our online database of 35,000 readers. Your listings will also be included in the TV Latina App (Spanish language) and in the World Screen App (English language), both available for iOS and Android devices. Your companys product news will receive priority treatment in our daily newsletters, weekly newsletters and websites. We can offer you the following options:  A single-page advertisement in the print and digital edition for US$1,500.

 A 2-page spread before the first page of editorial in the print and digital edition for US$2,000. You can also add an embedded video to your advertisement in any of our digital editions. The cost is US$500 per enhanced page. To learn more about this innovative service, click here. DEADLINES Space Reservations: April 28

Advertising Materials: May 2 For more information, please contact Ricardo Guise on rguise@worldscreen.com

or Dana Mattison on dmattison@worldscreen.com.


You have permission to edit this image.

Edit Close
Analysts say a miscalculation from either side during the tense struggle could risk dragging NATO into the conflict.
National Nurses Week is May 6 to May 12, an annual celebration that recognizes the critical role nurses perform in our hospitals and for our community. This year, we recognize our nurses for their continued commitment and unfailing dedication to our patients and their families, and for alway
Today

Rain ending this morning. Remaining cloudy through the afternoon with some late day peeks of sunshine.

Tonight

Turning out partly cloudy.

Tomorrow

Pleasant with times of clouds and sun.
Feast and Field celebrates the female movers and shakers who are currently making waves in agriculture and culinary industries through their first-hand accounts and tasty recipes  plus we look into the future of farming and females.
The views expressed by public comments are not those of this company or its affiliated companies. Please note by clicking on "Post" you acknowledge that you have read the TERMS OF USE and the comment you are posting is in compliance with such terms. Your comments may be used on air. Be polite. Inappropriate posts or posts containing offsite links, images, GIFs, inappropriate language, or memes may be removed by the moderator. Job listings and similar posts are likely automated SPAM messages from Facebook and are not placed by WFMZ-TV.
Stage and screen star Felicity Kendal is set to headline the upcoming 40th anniversary production of Michael Frayn's hit comedy Noises Off as Dotty Otley.

Most recently seen as Evangeline Harcourt in the WhatsOnStage Award-winning Best Musical Revival of Anything Goes at the Barbican Theatre, Kendal's previous stage credits also include Lettice and Lovage, Hay Fever, Relatively Speaking, Mrs Warren's Profession, among many others.

The beloved play-within-a-play comedy follows the on and off-stage antics of a group of hapless and accident-prone actors.

Under the direction of Lindsay Posner (who previously directed Noises Off at London's Old Vic), the piece is set to open at the Theatre Royal Bath (21 September to 1 October 2022), before heading to Richmond Theatre (4 to 15 October), Theatre Royal Brighton (18 to 22 October) and Cambridge Arts Theatre (25 to 29 October).

Produced by Theatre Royal Bath Productions, the play is also eyeing a West End transfer.

Further casting and creative team members are to be announced.




Normally, it is my husband saying squirrel to me when in mid-sentence I change gears to a new topic. But, last weekend, it was yours truly yelling at my husband to help me with a squirrel situation.
Willmar, MN (56201)

Today

A mix of clouds and sun during the morning will give way to cloudy skies this afternoon. High around 60F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Overcast. Low around 45F. Winds light and variable.
Winchester, VA (22601)

Today

Sunshine and clouds mixed. Slight chance of a rain shower. High 76F. Winds WNW at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

A few passing clouds. Low 51F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph.
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP)  China banned most people from leaving a coronavirus-hit northeastern province and mobilized military reservists Monday as the fast-spreading stealth omicron variant fuels the country's biggest outbreak since the start of the pandemic two years ago.

Workers line up for COVID test outside an office building on Monday, March 14, 2022, in Beijing. Chinese authorities reported more than 1,300 locally transmitted cases of COVID-19 across dozens of mainland cities Monday as the fast-spreading variant commonly known as "stealth omicron" fuels China's biggest outbreak in two years. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP)  China banned most people from leaving a coronavirus-hit northeastern province and mobilized military reservists Monday as the fast-spreading "stealth omicron" variant fuels the country's biggest outbreak since the start of the pandemic two years ago.

The National Health Commission reported 1,337 locally transmitted cases in the latest 24-hour period, including 895 in the industrial province of Jilin. A government notice said that police permission would be required for people to leave the area or travel from one city to another.

The hard-hit province sent 7,000 reservists to help with the response, from keeping order and registering people at testing centers to using drones to carry out aerial spraying and disinfection, state broadcaster CCTV reported.

Hundreds of cases were reported in other provinces and cities along China's east coast and inland as well. Beijing, which had six new cases, and Shanghai, with 41, locked down residential and office buildings where infected people had been found.

"Every day when I go to work, I worry that if our office building will suddenly be locked down then I wont be able to get home, so I have bought a sleeping bag and stored some fast food in the office in advance, just in case," said Yimeng Li, a Shanghai resident.

Residents line up for COVID test on Monday, March 14, 2022, in Beijing. Chinese authorities reported more than 1,300 locally transmitted cases of COVID-19 across dozens of mainland cities Monday as the fast-spreading variant commonly known as "stealth omicron" fuels China's biggest outbreak in two years. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

While mainland China's numbers are small compared to many other countries, and even the semi-autonomous city of Hong Kong, they are the highest since COVID-19 killed thousands in the central city of Wuhan in early 2020. No deaths have been reported in the latest outbreaks.

Hong Kong on Monday reported 26,908 new cases and 249 deaths in its latest 24-hour period. The city counts its cases differently than the mainland, combining both rapid antigen tests and PCR test results.

The city's leader, Carrie Lam, said authorities would not tighten pandemic restrictions for now. "I have to consider whether the public, whether the people would accept further measures," she said at a press briefing.

A worker collects a delivery for residents under lock down in a community on Monday, March 14, 2022, in Beijing. Chinese authorities reported more than 1,300 locally transmitted cases of COVID-19 across dozens of mainland cities Monday as the fast-spreading variant commonly known as "stealth omicron" fuels China's biggest outbreak in two years. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

Mainland China has seen relatively few infections since the initial Wuhan outbreak as the government has held fast to its zero-tolerance strategy, which is focused on stopping transmission of the coronavirus by relying on strict lockdowns and mandatory quarantines for anyone who has come into contact with a positive case.

The government has indicated it will continue to stick to its strategy of stopping transmission for the time being.

Officials on Sunday locked down the southern city of Shenzhen, which has 17.5 million people and is a major tech and finance hub that borders Hong Kong. That followed the lockdown of Changchun, home to 9 million people in Jilin province, starting last Friday.

People wearing face masks walk through the Central district in Hong Kong, Monday, March 14, 2022. Chinas mainland is seeing a widespread surge of new infections across its main cities. The numbers are small relative to Hong Kong, which had reported 32,000 cases Sunday. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

On Monday, Zhang Wenhong, a prominent infectious disease expert at a hospital affiliated with Shanghai's Fudan University noted in an essay for China's business outlet Caixin, that the numbers for the mainland were still in the beginning stages of an "exponential rise."

China's vast passenger rail network said it would cut service significantly, and both China Railway and airlines said they would offer free refunds to people who had already bought tickets. Shanghai suspended bus service to other cities and provinces.

Shanghai has recorded 713 cases in March, of which 632 are asymptomatic cases. China counts positive and asymptomatic cases separately in its national numbers. Schools in China's largest city have switched to remote learning.

Jen Zoratti | Next A weekly look towards a post-pandemic future delivered to your inbox every Wednesday. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement.

Residents walk their dog past shuttered shops in the Huaqiangbei area, the world's biggest electronics market, in Shenzhen, southern China's Guangdong province Monday, March 14, 2022. Officials on Sunday locked down Shenzhen due to rising coronavirus infections, which has 17.5 million people and is a major tech and finance hub that borders Hong Kong. (Chinatopix Via AP)

In Beijing, several buildings were sealed off over the weekend. Residents said they were willing to follow the zero-tolerance policies despite any personal impact.

"I think only when the epidemic is totally wiped out can we ease up," said Tong Xin, 38, a shop owner in the Silk Market, a tourist-oriented mall in the Chinese capital.

Much of the current outbreak across Chinese cities is being driven by the variant commonly known as "stealth omicron," or the B.A.2 lineage of the omicron variant, Zhang noted. Early research suggests it spreads faster than the original omicron, which itself spread faster than the original virus and other variants.

"But if our country opens up quickly now, it will cause a large number of infections in people in a short period of time," Zhang wrote Monday. "No matter how low the death rate is, it will still cause a run on medical resources and a short term shock to social life, causing irreparable harm to families and society."

___

Associated Press video producer Olivia Zhang in Beijing and researcher Chen Si contributed to this report from Shanghai.
ATHENS, Greece (AP)  Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said Monday he had tested positive for COVID-19 and would be self-isolating at home, a day after a trip to Istanbul.

ATHENS, Greece (AP)  Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said Monday he had tested positive for COVID-19 and would be self-isolating at home, a day after a trip to Istanbul.

Mitsotakis held talks Sunday with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and met with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, who is considered the spiritual leader of the worlds Orthodox Christians.

Mitsotakis, wearing a mask, said in a video posted on Instagram that the result of his daily coronavirus test was positive on Monday, and he would therefore be working from home.

Mitsotakis held talks over lunch with Erdogan in Istanbul on Sunday in a rare meeting between the leaders of the two neighboring countries. Relations between Greece and Turkey are strained over a series of issues, including territorial and energy exploration rights in the Mediterranean, which led to a naval standoff in mid-2020.

Jen Zoratti | Next A weekly look towards a post-pandemic future delivered to your inbox every Wednesday. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement.

The two discussed bilateral and international relations, as well as Russias invasion of Ukraine, the Turkish presidencys communications directorate said.

Earlier, Mitsotakis had met with the 82-year-old Bartholomew, who is based in Turkeys largest city, and attend a church service there.

Both Erdogan and Bartholomew are fully vaccinated and have previously tested positive for the virus  Erdogan on Feb. 5 and Bartholomew in December. Erdogans wife Emine had also contracted the virus and both have since recovered, as has Bartholomew, who had suffered mild symptoms at the time.

Greece has seen a total of more than 2.6 million confirmed positive coronavirus cases and more than 26,500 deaths since the start of the pandemic. More than 7.5 million of the country's roughly 11 million population are fully vaccinated.

___

Follow APs coverage of the pandemic at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic
WASHINGTON (AP)  Democrats on the House Oversight Committee are seeking an investigation into a U.S. Postal Service plan to replace its aging mail trucks with mostly gasoline-powered vehicles.

Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., wears an embroidered shirt in honor of Ukraine as she arrives ahead of President Joe Biden's first State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress at the Capitol, Tuesday, March 1, 2022, in Washington. (Evelyn Hockstein/Pool via AP)

WASHINGTON (AP)  Democrats on the House Oversight Committee are seeking an investigation into a U.S. Postal Service plan to replace its aging mail trucks with mostly gasoline-powered vehicles.

The plan largely ignores White House calls to replenish the mail-service fleet with electric vehicles and has drawn sharp criticism from the Biden administration, Democratic lawmakers and environmentalists, who say it falls far short of President Joe Bidens goals to address climate change.

In a letter Monday, Democrats on the oversight panel asked the agency's inspector general to investigate whether the Postal Service complied with the National Environmental Policy Act and other laws when awarding a 10-year contract to Wisconsin-based Oshkosh Defense to supply up to 165,000 new mail trucks.

Only 10% of the initial order will be for EVs; the remaining 90% will use traditional gasoline-powered engines.

The Environmental Protection Agency, the White House Council on Environmental Quality and numerous environmental stakeholders have raised concerns that the Postal Service did not meet its NEPA obligations in issuing the contract, the lawmakers said in a letter to Tammy Whitcomb, the Postal Service inspector general.

Given the substantial public interest in this acquisition and the significant deficiencies" in the environmental analysis identified by EPA and the White House, "it is critical that Congress understand whether the Postal Service properly met its statutory environmental obligations, the lawmakers wrote.

The letter is signed by five Democratic lawmakers, including Rep. Carolyn Maloney of New York, the panel's chair, and Gerry Connolly of Virginia, chairman of a subcommittee on government operations.

The lawmakers said they strongly support purchase of electric vehicles for the Postal Service fleet, saying it would "significantly cut emissions and position the Postal Service as an environmental leader in the U.S.

A spokeswoman said the inspector general's office received the letter Monday and was reviewing it.

The Postal Service awarded Oshkosh Defense a contract worth up to $11 billion over 10 years to replace its 230,000-vehicle fleet. The company has said it will make the Next Generation Delivery Vehicles at a reconfigured warehouse in South Carolina, creating 1,000 new jobs.

The Postal Service said last month that it believes it has met all its obligations and is moving forward despite widespread criticism.

The agency carefully reviewed and incorporated feedback" from EPA and the White House regarding the new contract and believes there is no legal or other basis to delay the (vehicle-replacement) program, said spokeswoman Kim Frum.

The new contract will deliver 5,000 electric vehicles beginning in 2023 and "provides significant environmental benefits through the introduction of safer and more environmentally friendly vehicles,'' Frum said. Flexibility built into the contract allows for more electric vehicles "should additional funding become available,'' she added.

In their letter, lawmakers cited a host of concerns raised by EPA, including allegations that the contract was awarded before the environmental review was completed, and that the Postal Service omitted important data on climate change and other issues in completing the review.

Shelley Cook | Uplift A weekly review of funny, uplifting news in Winnipeg and around the globe that is delivered to your inbox each Wednesday. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement.

The USPS review underestimates greenhouse gas emissions of the new fleet, "fails to consider more environmentally protective feasible alternatives and inadequately considers impacts on communities with environmental justice concerns,'' the EPA said in a Feb. 2 letter.

The EPA called the proposal "a crucial lost opportunity to more rapidly reduce the carbon footprint of one of the largest government fleets in the world.'' The mail-service fleet comprises more than 230,000 vehicles, nearly one-third of the federal governments overall fleet.

The new vehicles are greener than current models, which have been in use for three decades or more, but most will be powered by gasoline.

An electrified fleet would save about 135 million gallons of fuel per year, said Adrian Martinez, an attorney for the environmental group Earthjustice who has urged the Biden administration to force the Postal Service to suspend or delay the contract and develop a more eco-friendly plan.

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a Republican donor and ally of former President Donald Trump, has said the 10% EV production is the best the Postal Service can do, given its "dire financial condition. An additional $3.3 billion would be needed convert the entire USPS fleet to battery-powered electrics, DeJoy said.

The Postal Service decision conflicts with Bidens goal to convert all of the federal governments vehicles to zero-emissions models by 2035. The Postal Service is controlled by a board of governors and does not take orders from the president. Biden has nominated two people to serve on the board, but they have not been confirmed, leaving the panel under control of a Republican chairman, Roman Martinez.
LONDON (AP)  Britains top court on Monday refused WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange permission to appeal against a decision to extradite him to the U.S. to face spying charges.

FILE - WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange greets supporters from a balcony of the Ecuadorian embassy in London, May 19, 2017. Britains top court on Monday March 14, 2022, refused WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange permission to appeal against a decision to extradite him to the U.S. to face spying charges. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein, File)

LONDON (AP)  Britains top court on Monday refused WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange permission to appeal against a decision to extradite him to the U.S. to face spying charges.

The court said it refused because the case didnt raise an arguable point of law.

Assange, 50, has sought for years to avoid a trial in the U.S. on a series of charges related to WikiLeaks publication of a huge trove of classified documents more than a decade ago.

The case is now expected to be formally sent to British Home Secretary Priti Patel, who will decide whether to grant the extradition.

A British district court judge had initially rejected a U.S. extradition request on the grounds that Assange was likely to kill himself if held under harsh U.S. prison conditions. U.S. authorities later provided assurances that the WikiLeaks founder wouldnt face the severe treatment that his lawyers said would put his physical and mental health at risk.

In December, the High Court overturned the lower courts decision, saying that the U.S. promises were enough to guarantee that Assange would be treated humanely.

Monday's news narrows Assange's options, but his defense team may still seek to take his case to the European Court of Human Rights. Nick Vamos, the former head of extradition at the Crown Prosecution Service, said Assanges lawyers can also seek to challenge other points that he had lost in the original district court decision.

Barry Pollack, Assange's U.S.-based lawyer, said Monday that it was extremely disappointing that Britain's Supreme Court is unwilling to hear the appeal.

Mr. Assange will continue the legal process fighting his extradition to the United States to face criminal charges for publishing truthful and newsworthy information, he said.

Assange's British lawyers, Birnberg Peirce Solicitors, said they can make submissions to the Home Secretary within the next four weeks, ahead of her making any decision.

American prosecutors say Assange unlawfully helped U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning steal classified diplomatic cables and military files that WikiLeaks later published, putting lives at risk.

But supporters and lawyers for Assange argue that he was acting as a journalist and is entitled to First Amendment protections of freedom of speech for publishing documents that exposed U.S. military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan. They argue that his case is politically motivated.

Shelley Cook | Uplift A weekly review of funny, uplifting news in Winnipeg and around the globe that is delivered to your inbox each Wednesday. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement.

If convicted, Assange's lawyers say he could face up to 175 years in jail in the U.S., though American authorities have said the sentence was likely to be much lower than that.

Assange has been held at Britain's high-security Belmarsh Prison in London since 2019, when he was arrested for skipping bail during a separate legal battle. Before that, he spent seven years inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden to face allegations of rape and sexual assault.

Sweden dropped the sex crimes investigations in November 2019 because so much time had elapsed.

Assange's partner Stella Moris, who has two young children with him, said Sunday they have been given permission to marry in prison later this month.

___

Eric Tucker in Washington and Danica Kirka in London contributed to this report.
TORONTO - Anita Li is gearing up to launch her own media outlet in just a few weeks. The Green Line is an independent news venture that aims to engage the community through interactive journalism.

TORONTO - Anita Li is gearing up to launch her own media outlet in just a few weeks. The Green Line is an independent news venture that aims to engage the community through interactive journalism.

"I wanted to do journalism in a different way, with a community-driven approach to news gathering," she says.

Anita Li, seen in an undated handout photo, is gearing up to officially launch her own media outlet called The Green Line in just a few weeks. It is a Toronto-focused independent news venture that aims to engage the community through interactive journalism. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-Michael Cooper, *MANDATORY CREDIT*

The Green Line plans to dive into issues that affect Toronto, while allowing residents to play a role in tackling those issues. Its mission is to include that input in its reporting along with additional insight and analysis.

That brings reporters, sources and residents together to have discussions and share different perspectives. Ideally, the approachenables the community to shape its own narrative and effect change on matters it cares about.

"We want to report on solutions from community members and reflect it back on to them so they can feel empowered to take action on the solutions they come up with," Li explains.

More and more journalists are starting their own media ventures, largely online, because the barriers to entry in the digital world are lower than ever before and because it's where readers hungry for specific content are increasingly willing to donate or subscribe financially for access to it.

While Li's project supports a new kind of journalism, it simultaneously seeks to address and combat problems the industry has been facing for years: the collapse in traditional advertising revenue; the rise of social media, the spread of misinformation and disinformation; and the challenge of captivating and informing a younger audience that doesnt engage with traditional newspapers, television or radio.

"Its about meeting people where they are," she says.

Li has worked at several traditional media organizations in Canada throughout her journalism career. She has also worked in the U.S., where she witnessed a more diverse media ecosystem. She wants to help push Canadian media in that direction.

The appetite is there for deeper, more extensive and hyperlocal journalism, Li says.

The Green Line will join a growing number of Canadian names in the "digital startup" space: British Columbia's the Tyee, which recently became a non-profit news organization; the magazine Local, which delves into urban health and social issues in Toronto; Calgary pop-up journalism outlet the Sprawl; community-oriented digital media outlet the Hoser in Toronto; and subscription-based the Logic, which does in-depth reporting on tech and the innovation economy.

These independent outlets are increasingly helping fill the gaps left by legacy media, whose funding model has changed drastically over the past 25 years as the digital era disrupted its traditional advertising revenue.

Almost 300 local Canadian papers either shuttered or merged with other publications from 2011 to 2020, according to News Media Canada data.

In the latest example, Postmedia Network Canada Corp. last month announced a dealto buy the Irving familys New Brunswick newspaper chain, Brunswick News Inc. for $16.1 million in cash and shares, further consolidating local outlets within a national company.

A recent report from the Public Policy Forum calls for "urgent" action from the Canadian government to support public-interest, fact-based journalism through policies and initiatives. One recommendation put forward is the enhancement of the $50 million program launched by the federal government in 2019 to help news outlets hire reporters to cover underserved communities, known as the Local Journalism Initiative. (The Canadian Press has a contract with News Media Canada to provide editorial oversight and distribution of LJI content, but CP does not assign or edit the stories).

Readersare the largest source of revenue for the Narwhal, a non-profit online investigative journalism outlet launched by Emma Gilchrist in 2018. Its coverage is focused on climate change and the environment, and its readers are willing to pay for that content. It doesnt have investors or run advertising. In addition, Gilchrist and her team have been able to secure philanthropic grants to support the work.

"We kind of took the whole rulebook for traditional media and threw it out the window," she says.

And the Narwhal is growing. Gilchrist has increased her staff to 22 from two.

"Theres a real frustration amongst people around not being able to get in-depth, context-rich coverage," she says. "Theyre just so thankful that were covering the stories that we are and are pleased to support the work and help make it happen."

Shelley Cook | Uplift A weekly review of funny, uplifting news in Winnipeg and around the globe that is delivered to your inbox each Wednesday. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement.

Brent Jolly, president of the Canadian Association of Journalists, says that there is room for traditional media organizations and newer media ventures to collaborate, currently a more common occurrence south of the border. It could provide Canadians with a more diverse, well-rounded media landscape.

"A legacy media outlet has, for example, established distribution channels, brand recognition, and other resources, such as legal services, that can be a huge asset when undertaking a major public service journalism project," he says.

A successful example of that is New York-based ProPublica, an independent, non-profit investigative journalism organization that has partnered since 2008 with a number of legacy outlets, including The New York Times.

Jolly believes there is the potential for a huge degree of reciprocity, not just in the reporting process, but also when it comes to sharing knowledge on how the digital transformation will influence journalism's future.

"Newer media ventures bring new skills, such as audience engagement and a targeted and segmented audience, to the table."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 13, 2022.
Expect to see more WestJet planes arriving at and departing from Winnipeg.

Expect to see more WestJet planes arriving at and departing from Winnipeg.

The Calgary-based airline is preparing to resume near pre-pandemic service levels, WestJet announced Monday. Flights in Winnipeg should reach 91 per cent of 2019 activity this summer, according to chief commercial officer John Weatherill.

Regular services will hit 84 per cent of pre-COVID levels across WestJets network, Weatherill told the Free Press after a news conference at the Winnipeg Richardson International Airport.

"We expect there will continue to be new variants that will emerge, and we expect there will continue to be ups and downs in recovery," Weatherill said. "But we think, generally, the trend towards recovery has now taken hold."

At its slowest, WestJet sent out 40 flights daily  a fraction of its pre-pandemic average of over 700 flights per day.

"We suspended service to many critical destinations," Weatherill said during the news conference. "The past two years have been incredibly challenging for our business."

The airlines goal is to double current weekly departures  from todays 76 to almost 170  by August, he said.

WestJets summer schedule highlights nonstop flights from Winnipeg to 14 destinations, including Halifax, Ottawa, Kelowna and Las Vegas. There will be six daily flights from Winnipeg to Calgary, WestJets global hub. Another five will fly daily to Toronto, and three daily to Vancouver.

The airline  which includes WestJet, WestJet Encore and Swoop  will increase flights to Regina, Saskatoon and Thunder Bay, Weatherill said.

The announcement marks a "light at the end of the tunnel," according to Nick Hays, the Winnipeg Airports Authoritys CEO.

"Its definitely good news," he said. "Were certainly seeing, this summer and beyond, a really robust uptick (in travel plans). Its absolutely going in the right direction, and Im hopeful to see more of the same."

The skyrocketing cost of oil will likely hike plane ticket prices.

"Fuel is a significant cost for any airline, and were not excluded from that," Weatherill said. "We are evaluating and monitoring what that means for the long-term."

WestJet isnt yet compensating for fuel prices through added fees, but a surcharge isnt off the table, Weatherill said Monday.

"I think peak summer is going to be a little more expensive, so Id encourage anyone whos thinking of travelling this summer to book earlier rather than later," he said, noting both fuel and demand play a role.

RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Winnipeg Airports Authority president and CEO Nick Hays says the announcement by WestJet on Monday is definitely good news and marks a light at the end of the tunnel.

More flights into Winnipeg is crucial for the provinces hard-hit tourism sector, said Linda Whitfield, Travel Manitobas vice-president of communications and stakeholder engagement.

The industry was on the path to $2.2 billion in annual revenues by 2022 before COVID-19 interfered, Whitfield said. Now, a tourism strategy team including Travel Manitoba, the province and Manitoba Chambers of Commerce aims to grow visitor spending to $2.5 billion by 2030.

"WestJets return to a pre-pandemic number of flights is welcome news in our efforts to reach our strategys targets," Whitfield said.

Removing federal public health measures, like a required COVID-19 test before re-entering Canada, is a priority for the air travel industry to resume normal operations.

Our view is that the science supports that (the tests) can be removed, particularly in an industry where everyone working in travelling is fully vaccinated," Weatherill said.

The Winnipeg Airports Authority sang a similar tune last week.

"Testing remains an impediment to getting people moving again," Tyler MacAfee, vice-president of communications with the authority, wrote in an email. "We have seen an increase in travel each time restrictions were lessened."

WestJet is also preparing for a wider range of flights from Winnipeg, should its proposed acquisition of Sunwing be accepted.

On March 2, Westjet announced its intention to take over the warm weather brand. Transport Canada and the competition commissioner must both review the deal and report their findings to the transport minister, who makes the final decision.

"We believe there will be lots of opportunity for us to offer increased service," Weatherill said.

It could mean more jobs for Manitobans, he added. Sunwing jets  which are registered in Europe  are worked by European pilots, flight attendants and technicians. Canadians could take those positions, Weatherill said Monday.

Want to get a head start on your day? Get the days breaking stories, weather forecast, and more sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement.

The airline is struggling to hire people as it ramps up operations.

"I think thats one of the things that surprised us, was how difficult itd be to bring back frontline workers," Weatherill said. "Thats why were building back gradually over time rather than in a big jump."

The company has 2,300 staff in Manitoba, he said. It currently employs 8,490 workers overall, down from roughly 14,000 in 2019, according to The Canadian Press.

WestJet generates $63 million in tourism spending to Manitoba annually and outputs half a billion dollars in the economy, Weatherill said.

"Air connectivity is the foundation to Manitobas long-term recovery," said Premier Heather Stefanson, who attended the Monday news conference. "It is key to drive business, investment and tourism."

gabrielle.piche@winnipegfreepress.com
OTTAWA - Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown and high-profile Conservative Pierre Poilievre spent Monday battling over a seven-year-old election promise to prohibit face coverings during citizenship ceremonies  a sign of what could be the makings of a tense rivalry between candidates in the Tory leadership race.

Patrick Brown announces his candidacy for the federal Conservative Leadership at a rally, in Brampton, Ont. on Sunday, March 13, 2022. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young

OTTAWA - Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown and high-profile Conservative Pierre Poilievre spent Monday battling over a seven-year-old election promise to prohibit face coverings during citizenship ceremonies  a sign of what could be the makings of a tense rivalry between candidates in the Tory leadership race.

Brown, who launched his bid on Sunday, blasted longtimeOttawa-area MP Poilievre over his actions back in 2015 when the party promised to create a "barbaric cultural practices" tip line and require people's faces to be visible during citizenship oaths.

The attack came as Poilievre spent the past few days meeting with cultural community leaders in the Greater Toronto Area and promising to cut red tape for immigrants wanting to access the necessary licences they need to work in regulated industries.Among those he met with were members of the Armenian, Muslim and Pakistani communities as well some of the party's candidates from the area.

Regardless of who is chosen as leader Sept. 10, Conservatives know they must make inroads with immigrants and racialized Canadians if theyhope to pick up seats in the region as well as other major cities and suburbs, considered key to defeating three-term Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Poilievre pledged Monday to revive similar programs that were in place under the last Conservative leader who did well in communities of visible minorities: former prime minister Stephen Harper, at least prior to 2015.

He promised toincentivize provinces to require occupational licensing bodies to decide on an immigrant's application within 60 days of receiving their paperwork, rather than forcing them to wait for months.

As well, Poilievre pitched offering small loans to immigrants who might need to take extra courses to gain a professional or trade licence to work in their respective field.

As Poilievre made these pledges, Brown, who is positioning himself as the candidate who stands for religious freedoms, released a statement saying the MP lacks credibility on any policy that impacts minority communities given his role in the Conservatives' 2015 election campaign.

It was during that race when the party, then led by Harper, promised to create a tip line for so-called "barbaric cultural practices." Conservatives at the time said it was meant to report things like forced marriage.

During that election, Poilievre was running for re-election as a candidate. He was also a member of Harper's government when it introduced a bill banning people from wearing face coverings during citizenship ceremonies. That was ultimately struck down in court. The promise was also included in the party's election campaign, when Harper also mused about possibly extending it to federal public servants.

Brown said Monday that Poilievre has never spoken out against these measures. The MP also has Jenni Byrne on his team, who was the party's national campaign manager in 2015.

"This is the same campaign which platformed those two abhorrent policies, and lost the Conservatives the 2015 general election," Brown's statement read.

"Even if he attempts to distance himself from his silence today, it would be a hollow gesture in an insincere bid to gain votes."

Poilievre responded Monday by calling Brown a "liar," accusing him of mischaracterizing what Harper was doing.

"There was no niqab ban," he said in a statement released on social media.

"I would never support that, nor did Mr. Harper. What Mr. Harper proposed was that a person's face be visible while giving oaths at citizenship ceremonies."

Poilievre, whose statement didn't address the past proposal of a "barbaric cultural practices" tip line, added he would continue to support immigration and equality.

In response, National Council of Canadians CEO Mustafa Farooq tweeted that "leadership requires accountability" and pointed out some of Poilievre's fellow MPs have apologized for what happened in 2015.

Among those is Edmonton MP Tim Uppal, a co-chair on Poilievre's campaign, who has apologized for his role as a minister in promoting the ban on niqabs during citizenship ceremonies.Before the leadership race, Uppal said the party was still dealing with the fallout from racialized communities because of the 2015 campaign.

Want to get a head start on your day? Get the days breaking stories, weather forecast, and more sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement.

A post-mortem from the Conservatives' 2021 election loss submitted in January came to a similar finding, according to three sources who spoke to The Canadian Press on the condition of anonymity.

Melissa Lantsman, a newly elected Ontario MP who is also supporting Poilievre in the race, shared on social media last fall that while she was stood in favour of banning the niqab during citizenship ceremonies in 2015, her "view has since evolved."

Michael Diamond, a campaign strategist who, among other campaigns, worked on Peter MacKay's 2020 Conservative leadership bid, said Brown's attack over the issue and targeting of Byrne is a "proxy" attack on Harper, who is highly respected among the membership.

"It seems like folly to me to attack the last campaign of the man who remains the most popular figure in this party."

He added it's still early days in the race and cautioned that the debates playing out between the campaigns and on social media were occurring in an "echo chamber."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 14, 2022.
A Winnipeg writer hopes his book about an abandoned Kenyan boy who grew up to help thousands of vulnerable children might offer some comfort to Ukrainian children now fleeing their homes.

A Winnipeg writer hopes his book about an abandoned Kenyan boy who grew up to help thousands of vulnerable children might offer some comfort to Ukrainian children now fleeing their homes.

Dozens of copies of The Biggest Family in the World, written by Paul H. Boge and illustrated by Winnipeg artist Faye Hall, were handed out last week by a local Christian charity to families at the train station in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih.

"The thing that really captivates me is the photo of the girl," Paul H. Boge said about the youngster clad in a puffy pink jacket, black boots and Minnie Mouse toque and clutching a copy of the book.

Another photo shows the little girl holding her mothers hand as they are about to board the train with the mother now carrying the picture book.

Boges book tells the story of Charles Mulli, abandoned by his family at age six, who clawed his way out of poverty to become a wealthy entrepreneur and then sold his businesses to help tens of thousands of orphaned or disadvantaged children in Kenya. The title of the book is based on Mullis view that all those he helped were like his own children, thus becoming part of "the biggest family in the world."

Originally released in Canada in 2015 by Castle Quay Books, the text of the book was recently translated into Ukrainian, with the digital files sent to a Ukrainian distributor and a thousand copies printed just weeks before the Russian invasion on Feb. 24, said publisher Larry Willard.

With the book sales limited by the situation in Ukraine, Boges friend Sasha Romanch, who runs a charity serving children and youth, decided to hand out dozens of copies to families at the Kryvyi Rih train station on March 8, said Willard.

"I know the reason they wanted to give (away) books was because the kids were scared," said the publisher, who has offices in Burlington, Ont. and Florida.

"We just thought it was nice that one of our books was going to comfort kids leaving their homes."

For Boge, the unknown fate of the little girl clutching his book in a sea of adults keeps tugging at his heart. A civil engineer by day, Boge hopes the books message helps her and other children leaving Ukraine navigate the uncertainty ahead of them.

"Just because youre in war now, and youre probably going to be a refugee, its not hopeless," said Boge, chair of Mully Childrens Family Canada, which raises funds to support the Kenyan organization.

Subtitled The Charles Mulli Miracle, the 32-page book was previously translated into Mandarin, German and Russian, with all versions featuring the original artwork by Hall, said Willard.

"Its a compelling story of someone who says I dont need any more houses or money, Im just going to help kids," he said of books message.

Want to get a head start on your day? Get the days breaking stories, weather forecast, and more sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement.

Boge has written three other books about Mulli, as well as a biography of the late Winnipeg minister and housing activist Harry Lehotsky.

The reach of the book to war-torn Ukraine amazes Hall, who has donated all her royalties to Mully Childrens Family, the charitable organization founded by Charles Mulli.

"As an artist you dont think of fame or the effect of your work across the world," says Hall, who also illustrated the Seven Whole Days, written by English poet and Anglican priest Malcolm Guite.

"This one project seems to make all my painting worthwhile."

Coincidentally, the little girl in a pink parka mirrors Halls cover painting featuring a young Kenyan girl wearing sweater in the same bright pink.

brenda@suderman.com
A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of sitting down for lunch with Wally Chartrand.

Opinion

A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of sitting down for lunch with Wally Chartrand.

He is an Indigenous knowledge keeper, traditional pipe carrier, sweat lodge holder, sun dancer, and a shkabeh, which means helper. He is also on the executive management team at Ma Mawi Wi Chi Itata in Winnipeg, as the keeper of the spirit.

For columnist Shelley Cook, meeting Wally Chartrand meant much more than just having an interview with the Indigenous knowledge keeper. (Shelley Cook / Winnipeg Free Press)

I met Chartrand once before, briefly last year in a sharing circle at the end of a conference we both attended. We barely spoke then, he accepted my Facebook friend request after the conference wrapped.

More recently, he graciously agreed to meet me for an interview when I messaged him out of the blue last month. Initially, when I messaged him, I wasnt sure that hed even remember or know who I was.

"I write for the Winnipeg Free Press. Im doing a series on elders in Manitoba and Im wondering if you would be interested in being interviewed" read part of my message.

"Yes, I remember you and yes, Id love to contribute to your story," he responded.

Leading up to our meeting, I was both excited and nervous. For me, this was more than an interview and a story.

Being able to write this story was an honour and it gave me a reason and access to reach out, but in a deeper and more personal way, I was so grateful for the opportunity to sit down and listen to him, and to learn from the knowledge he keeps.

The first time we met it was at the Cork and Flame restaurant on Portage Avenue. I offered Chartrand a tobacco tie and thanked him for meeting me. We sat for nearly three hours. He was generous with his words and knowledge, speaking softly but steadily while I listened. He welcomed my questions and assured me that there was no such thing as a bad or stupid question.

"Thats how we learn," hed say.

I am only just starting to learn about my Indigenous culture and, if I am being honest, I often have an overwhelming feeling of imposter syndrome.

I didnt grow up in ceremony or learning about or practicing a traditional way of life. Ive always known who I am on the surface  a card-carrying Indigenous person from Brokenhead. But I have always felt disconnected from my roots, and when I was young I used to pretend that I was someone and something else, because I felt a lot of shame and internalized racism for who I was.

I know I am not alone in this. I have heard other Indigenous people tell me how heavy the imposter syndrome gets for them. The journey many of us are on to reclaim ourselves and our culture can be difficult because it has no map, and its hard to figure out where and how to even start.

Of course, its hard. The Canadian government did everything in its power to try to kill our culture. It went so far as to ban Indigenous ceremony and cultural practices through the Indian Act in the late 1800s in an effort to assimilate Indigenous people into the colonized Canadian society.

So many of us are still feeling those effects and trying to find our way back to a path that our ancestors were push off of.

Shelley Cook | Uplift A weekly review of funny, uplifting news in Winnipeg and around the globe that is delivered to your inbox each Wednesday. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement.

Thankfully, there are shkabehs like Chartrand to help us find our path.

During a second interview at the Ma Mawi offices in Headingley, he said something that caught my attention. A teaching he collected from someone else many years ago.

"Now that youve heard this story, now its your story. It belongs to you too," he said. "Nothing belongs to us, just like Mother Earth doesnt belong to us. The same goes for our stories, they dont belong to us, but theyre there to be shared."

You can read the story I wrote about Wally Chartrand in the March 12 edition of the Free Press or online at winnipegfreepress.com.

shelley.cook@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @ShelleyACook
Hundreds gathered outside of the Manitoba Legislative Building Sunday to rally support for Ukraine for the third week in a row, flags of blue and yellow hoisted along with protest placards.

Hundreds gathered outside of the Manitoba Legislative Building Sunday to rally support for Ukraine for the third week in a row, flags of blue and yellow hoisted along with protest placards.

Russia launched a full-scale invasion of the neighbouring nation nearly three weeks ago, leading to scores of causalities, including Ukrainian civilians. While many Ukrainians have stayed to defend their nation, millions have also fled as refugees, as the west supports the country with military and humanitarian aid.

A wreath was placed at a Taras Shevchenko statue as people gathered for the rally. (John Woods / Winnipeg Free Press)

The Sunday rally, organized by the Ukrainian Canadian Congresss Manitoba chapter, again called for the federal government to provide Ukraine with more weapons, economic and humanitarian aid; for NATO to implement a no-fly zone over Ukrainian airspace; more economic sanctions against Russian oligarchs and businesses; and further support for refugees fleeing the now war-torn nation.

The rally also honoured Taras Shevchenko, a poet who called for Ukraines independence in his works and is considered a national hero. A wreath of blue and yellow flowers and wheat was laid in front of a monument to the 19th century activist on the west grounds of the Manitoba Legislative Building  he died March 10, 1861.

Iryna Konstantiuk, an University of Manitoba senior instructor of Ukrainian and Russian languages and Ukrainian culture, took to the podium to discuss Shevchenkos 19th century poetry and the war now raging.

"This week Ukrainians all over the world honour Taras Shevchenko, the Ukrainian great poet, writer, artist, public and political figure, as well as folklorist and ethnographer," she told the crowd.

"Over the centuries of Ukraines struggle for independence, Taras Shevchenko became a symbol of national pride, resistance and patriotism."

Chief Garrison Settee received tobacco from Joanne Lewandosky, President of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress. (John Woods / Winnipeg Free Press)

Images of Shevchenko were prominent during the 2013-2014 Ukrainian revolution, which ousted a Russia-friendly president and precipitated the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian war in 2014.

"Today the attention of the whole world is on Ukraine. Russia is committing genocide and war crimes  shelling, bombing and carrying out rocket strikes against civilians and Ukrainian cities," she said.

Rally volunteer Mariana Sklepowich, a 38-year-old Ukrainian-Canadian who emigrated in 1993, said Shevchenkos work is a point of national pride.

Want to get a head start on your day? Get the days breaking stories, weather forecast, and more sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement.

"(The rally was about) how his words resonate so much today, in addition to all the calls to action our community have been putting forward, its really poignant how 200 years later, the same sort of messages, the same words ring so true to us as a community, as a nation," she said.

A row, flags of blue and yellow were hoisted along with protest placards at the rally. (John Woods / Winnipeg Free Press)

"Constantly fighting for their freedom, their rights and liberties Keep fighting, you will prevail," she said, quoting the poet.

Sklepowich said the weekend rallies have been a chance to grieve communally, as the war threatens her loved ones in the western city of Lviv near the border with Poland.

"Its been very hard to focus on anything other than (the war)," she said.

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @erik_pindera
At a funding announcement in Winnipeg, the federal minister responsible for housing promised more help is on the way for Canadians feeling the squeeze from rising costs.

At a funding announcement in Winnipeg, the federal minister responsible for housing promised more help is on the way for Canadians feeling the squeeze from rising costs.

Minister of Housing, Diversity and Inclusion Ahmed Hussen was in Charleswood to announce nearly $11.5 million in federal funding that helped pay for renovations to 188 co-operative-owned homes that are more than 40 years old.

Part of the rising cost of housing is also because of a lack of adequate supply, so we need to build more supply in this country, and we are willing to be a partner to remove the barriers to doing so, he said Monday.

Hussen said Ottawa will continue to partner with the City of Winnipeg and non-profit organizations to construct more rapid and affordable housing, and will keep paying into the bilateral housing agreement managed by the province.

All of that money is flowing, and is it enough? No, its not. I know the need is great here, this is in many ways ground zero (for) a large urban population of homeless people.

The federal government has doubled its funding contributions since last year toward tackling homelessness in the Prairie province, Hussen said.

MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Ahmed Hussen, Minister of Housing and Diversity and Inclusion, said Ottawa will continue to partner with the City of Winnipeg and non-profit organizations to construct more rapid and affordable housing.

Well keep at it, well keep partnering with everyone in Manitoba whos willing, to build more affordable housing here.

Hussen made the announcement Monday morning at Westboine Park Housing Co-operative, along with Winnipeg South Centre MP Jim Carr and Brent Turman of Assiniboine Credit Union. The credit union contributed $8 million to the renos.

The housing co-op on Shelmerdine Drive has 188 homes, most built in 1978, that cost about 15 to 20 per cent less than market value. About 450 residents are part of the co-op, ranging in age from six months to 87 years old. The funding resulted in new roofs, siding, insulation, windows and doors, with energy efficient upgrades.

Want to get a head start on your day? Get the days breaking stories, weather forecast, and more sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement.

The repairs were desperately needed, said Coral Hetherington, president of the co-ops board.

Without the funding from Assiniboine Credit Union and CMHC (Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.), I can honestly say that many of us would have lost our homes, Hetherington said, adding many of the residences had roof damage.

It was raining on the inside, basically, she said. We actually had homes that were uninhabitable.

The co-op spent $750,000 of its own equity on the renovations, which began in 2019.

Hetherington said thanks to the funding, the co-ops housing charge is only increasing by one per cent for the coming year, and it is still able to offer safe, affordable housing.

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca
COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns were lonely enough without being marooned in a new city  the situation sticker-maker extraordinaire Amy Jackson found herself in last year.

COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns were lonely enough without being marooned in a new city  the situation sticker-maker extraordinaire Amy Jackson found herself in last year.

The 34-year-old from The Pas and Opaskwayak Cree Nation had been in Winnipeg for about a year, pursuing a masters degree in Native studies at the University of Manitoba. At the best of times, a year isnt much time to build a whole new social circle, and the best of times, it was not.

Jackson could hardly have guessed shed soon leave school as an entrepreneur with an international following and a bricks-and-mortar store in the works.

"I was still relatively new to the city, so I was alone for weeks at a time. It was really difficult, and I thought, Man, if Im depressed, Im sure tons of people are."

Jackson started looking for something that would fill her time and take her mind off the pandemic doldrums. As one of those people with mosaics glued to their laptop lids, that meant making stickers.

"I started creating as an outlet, as a way to cope," she said. "I thought then, it would be so fun to do some digital design work. Its something that Ive always wanted to tap into."

Jackson opened up an app and started designing. The world already had its fair of depressing things in it, she said. She geared her designs to balance it out.

"I really wanted to counteract that with some humour  lets remember our humanity and remember we can make jokes and have a good time together, you know?"

Stickers are one of the many products.

With that, Nativelovenotes was born.

A year later, the companys merchandise includes not only stickers, but also stationery, buttons, jewelry, phone accessories, prints, clothing and home wares.

The goods are plastered with phrases such as "Ever sick," "Live Laugh Skoden," and "Go smudge yourself." But other designs tackle more serious issues. They denounce racism, the Indian Act and the colonizer mindset. Or, like the sticker that says, "Intergenerational trauma ends with me," they show a desire to make the world a better place.

One thing is clear about Jacksons already abundant catalogue of designs: they have struck a chord.

"It blew up really quickly. I think within the first week, I had 1,500 followers on Instagram when I started sharing my work," she said.

That number has since ballooned to more than 25,000, and Jackson said support has been pouring in from across the globe.

"Weve sent to most European countries, to Indigenous folks who are living up there. Weve had a lot of people in Australia, New Zealand, South America, and then of course, spread across North America and to Hawaii and the Polynesian islands," Jackson said.

The ubiquity of interest in her products, which she describes as "unapologetically rezzy," took Jackson by surprise.

"It makes me feel really excited. I also feel really fortunate that Ive tapped into such an important  I dont want to call it a market, because its more than a market  into a broader community that we didnt know we could connect with each other in this way."

RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Nativelovenotes owner Amy Jackson founded the business online and dropped out of university to become a full-time entrepreneur.

Julianna McLean of Saskatoon (via James Smith Cree Nation), who bought three coffee mugs with the words "Colonizer tears" arched above a rainbow for herself and her kids, said Nativelovenotes provides a connection to home and proud reminders of who she and her children are as Indigenous people.

"Everything that shes posting is so relatable to me. And the things for my kids say, Here, dont forget yourself. Im sending you this little love note," she said. "Its these little droplets, which is what Nativelovenotes offers. Its like these little drops of who we are, and it makes space for that to exist."

In Winnipeg, Jackson, four core staff and a few casual helpers are gearing up for their next big move.

On May 7, Nativelovenotes will open its storefront at 1116 Portage Ave. Jackson and company will share the building with another Indigenous-owned business, Turtle Woman Indigenous Wear, which sells Indigenous clothing and regalia, as well as supplies and other goods.

Turtle Woman owner April Tawipisim said shes happy to see Indigenous creators such as Jackson thriving and excited to share the space.

"Im looking forward to working with them, seeing all theyre offering, and maybe somewhere down the road we can work on a project together or something," Tawipisim said.

Want to get a head start on your day? Get the days breaking stories, weather forecast, and more sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement.

Besides setting up the store, Jackson said in the long run, shes aiming to take control of her printing by purchasing the printers and supplies to make her products in-house.

Its an exciting time for the burgeoning entrepreneur, and to celebrate the years boom, shes throwing a party April 29 at Club 200, complete with "rezzy activities" like jigging contests and leg wrestling. Its a grand see-you-never to pandemic isolation.

"I love a good party," she said with a laugh.

Despite the success, Jackson has no doubt shell return to university to finish her masters, then a doctorate in history.

Her mom always told her she was the most determined person she ever met, Jackson said, so why not determine to do it all?

fpcity@freepress.mb.ca
BIRTH control and access to contraception should be available at no charge, to improve reproductive health and save public spending. The federal government is dragging its heels on a national pharmacare program, and Manitobans cannot wait any longer for free access to contraception.

Opinion

BIRTH control and access to contraception should be available at no charge, to improve reproductive health and save public spending. The federal government is dragging its heels on a national pharmacare program, and Manitobans cannot wait any longer for free access to contraception.

The Manitoba government should implement no-cost contraception. An IUD in Manitoba can cost $380, while birth-control pills can cost up to $20 a month and hormone injections $180 a year. How is a student working a minimum wage job supposed to afford this? How will they afford contraception without money?

Contraception is expensive for someone living paycheque to paycheque and struggling to pay for groceries. What about a 15-year-old who is seeking birth control, but their parents disapprove? It has been shown that price remains the most significant barrier to accessing contraception.

Many other countries already subsidize universal access to contraception, in full or in part; these include the UK, France, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Italy and Germany.

No-cost contraception allows menstruating people to choose whether or when they have children. This grants them greater control over their bodies, lives and future, and respects their ability to pick the contraception that best fits their needs.

Free contraception is a good fiscal policy, with numerous health and socio-economic benefits. An unintended pregnancy can be costly to the public system in many ways. Pregnancy is a medically risky event. Some women have medical conditions made worse by pregnancy and require birth control. For example, those with polycystic ovarian syndrome or endometriosis may require contraception to subdue symptoms related to their conditions.

Adolescent parenting is associated with lower lifetime educational achievement, low income and

increased reliance on social support programs. Access to free

contraception helps to prevent teen pregnancies.

Unplanned pregnancies cost the health-care system $320 million a year in Canada, and research has shown that an increase in IUD use could decrease these costs by more than $35 million. Studies in the U.S. have shown that for every $1 invested in contraception, $7 is saved in future health-care costs.

Manitoba has some of the highest rates of teen pregnancy in Canada. Colorado had a 54 per cent decrease in teen pregnancies, a 64 per cent decline in teen abortion rates, and savings of up to US$70 million after providing free IUDs to teenagers. Along with cost savings, there are numerous societal and health benefits.

Want to get a head start on your day? Get the days breaking stories, weather forecast, and more sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement.

Access to contraception allows women to plan and manage their lives. Mothers who had access to no-cost contraception were four times more likely to wait an ideal amount of time before their next pregnancy. Pregnancies spaced close together can increase the risk of poor health outcomes for both mothers and infants.

Adolescent parenting is associated with lower lifetime educational achievement, low income and increased reliance on social support programs. Access to free contraception helps to prevent teen pregnancies.

Pregnancies that end in abortion or miscarriage are still more expensive to the health system, and they carry higher health risks than contraception. "Broad consensus exists among experts, including the World Health Organization, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Canada, that increasing access to contraception is a cost-saving endeavour," writes Dr. Michelle Cohen, an assistant professor in family medicine at Queens University.

The research on no-cost contraception is there, and demonstrates the immense benefits. Universal coverage for prescription contraception is a good policy, as it helps the most vulnerable people in our communities, reduces gender inequality and improves health outcomes for parents with cost savings in the long term.

Manitoba would benefit greatly from the implementation of no-cost contraception.

Paige Mason is a member of Access Manitoba Free Birth Control
NEW YORK (AP)  A Russian tycoon whose name arose prominently in the illegal political contribution case against two associates of Rudy Giuliani was secretly charged with conspiracy in a New York court, prosecutors revealed Monday.

NEW YORK (AP)  A Russian tycoon whose name arose prominently in the illegal political contribution case against two associates of Rudy Giuliani was secretly charged with conspiracy in a New York court, prosecutors revealed Monday.

Conspiracy and illegal campaign contribution charges that were lodged against Andrey Muraviev in September 2020 in Manhattan federal court were unsealed by prosecutors who told a judge that the businessman was not in custody and was believed to be in Russia.

An indictment returned against Muraviev in September said some of Muravievs money was used for political contributions and donations aimed at launching a business to acquire U.S. retail cannabis and marijuana licenses, but the source of the funds was disguised as coming from the Giuliani associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman.

U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a release that Muraviev "attempted to influence the 2018 elections by conspiring to push a million dollars of his foreign funds to candidates and campaigns. He attempted to corrupt our political system to advance his business interests."

The release described Muraviev as a "Russian oligarch."

Michael J. Driscoll, head of New York's FBI office, said Muraviev conspired with Parnas, Fruman and Andrey Kukushkin to make illegal contributions.

"The money Muraviev injected into our political system, as alleged, was directed to politicians with views favorable to his business interests and those of his co-conspirators," Driscoll said. "As todays action demonstrates, we will continue to aggressively pursue all those who seek to illegally effect our nations elections."

Parnas and Fruman were involved in Giulianis unsuccessful efforts to get Ukrainian officials to investigate Joe Bidens son during Bidens campaign for president.

Giuliani remains under criminal investigation as authorities decide whether his interactions with Ukraine officials required him to register as a foreign agent, but he wasnt alleged to have been involved in illegal campaign contributions and wasnt part of a recent New York trial.

Prosecutors said Muraviev's money was used to reimburse and fund federal and state political donations in Florida, Nevada and Texas, and Muraviev agreed that his money could also be used for donations to politicians in New York and New Jersey.

Want to get a head start on your day? Get the days breaking stories, weather forecast, and more sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement.

Muraviev, 47, traveled to Nevada as part of the conspiracy and received regular updates from Kukushkin about the political progress of their pursuit of cannabis and marijuana licenses, the indictment said.

Kukushkin, a Ukrainian-born investor, was scheduled to be sentenced on Tuesday after he and the Soviet-born Parnas were convicted of campaign finance crimes at an October trial in Manhattan.

Kukushkin's lawyer, Gerald Lefcourt, asked a judge Monday to consider sentencing Kukushkin to a counseling program and community service that would allow him to volunteer to work 28 hours a week assisting with the Ukrainian refugee crisis. After the Muraviev charges were unsealed, Lefcourt described the government's timing as a "publicity stunt" designed to influence Kukushkin's sentencing.

Prosecutors have asked that Kukushkin be sentenced to four to five years in prison, which would be consistent with the calculations of federal sentencing guidelines. In a pre-sentence submission, they dismissed as "self-serving" Kukushkin's claims that he never agreed to help steer Muraviev's money to U.S. political candidates and was unaware of U.S. election laws.

Fruman, who pleaded guilty in September to a single charge of solicitation of a contribution by a foreign national, was sentenced in January to a year and a day in prison.

Parnas awaits sentencing.
LVIV, Ukraine (AP)  Russia and Ukraine kept a fragile diplomatic path open with a new round of talks Monday even as Moscow's forces pounded away at Kyiv and other cities across the country in a punishing bombardment the Red Cross said has created nothing short of a nightmare for civilians.

A Ukrainian firefighter drags a hose inside a large food products storage facility which was destroyed by an airstrike in the early morning hours in Brovary, north of Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, March 13, 2022. Waves of Russian missiles pounded a military training base close to Ukraine's western border with NATO member Poland, killing 35 people, following Russian threats to target foreign weapon shipments that are helping Ukrainian fighters defend their country against Russia's grinding invasion.(AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

LVIV, Ukraine (AP)  Russia and Ukraine kept a fragile diplomatic path open with a new round of talks Monday even as Moscow's forces pounded away at Kyiv and other cities across the country in a punishing bombardment the Red Cross said has created nothing short of a nightmare for civilians.

Shortly before dawn on Tuesday, large explosions thundered across Kyiv as Russia pressed its advance on multiple fronts.

Elsewhere, a convoy of 160 civilian cars left the encircled port city of Mariupol along a designated humanitarian route, the city council reported, in a rare glimmer of hope a week and a half into the lethal siege that has pulverized homes and other buildings and left people desperate for food, water, heat and medicine.

The latest negotiations, held via video conference, were the fourth round involving higher-level officials from the two countries and the first in a week. The talks ended without a breakthrough after several hours, with an aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy saying the negotiators took a technical pause and planned to meet again Tuesday.

The two sides had expressed some optimism in the past few days. Mykhailo Podolyak, the aide to Zelenskyy, tweeted that the negotiators would discuss peace, cease-fire, immediate withdrawal of troops & security guarantees.

A woman with her belongings and food, sits on a chair in an improvised shelter in a subway that city residents use as a bomb shelter while a train passes by in the opposite line in Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, March 13, 2022. (AP photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

Previous discussions, held in person in Belarus, produced no lasting humanitarian routes or agreements to end the fighting.

In Washington, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday that while the Biden administration supports Ukraines participation in the talks with Russia, Russian President Vladimir Putin would have to show signs of de-escalating in order to demonstrate good faith.

And what were really looking for is evidence of that, and were not seeing any evidence at this point that President Putin is doing anything to stop the onslaught or de-escalate, she said.

Displaced Ukrainians onboard a Poland bound train in Lviv, western Ukraine, Sunday, March 13, 2022. Lviv in western Ukraine itself so far has been spared the scale of destruction unfolding to its east and south. The city's population of 721,000 has swelled during the war with residents escaping bombarded population centers and as a waystation for the nearly 2.6 million people who have fled the country. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

Overall, nearly all of the Russian military offensives remained stalled after making little progress over the weekend, according to a senior U.S. defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the Pentagon's assessment. Russian troops were still about 15 kilometers (9 miles) from the center of Kyiv, the official said.

The official said that Russian forces have launched more than 900 missiles but that Ukraine's airspace is still contested, with Russia not achieving total air superiority.

Overnight, air raid alerts sounded in cities and towns around the country, from near the Russian border in the east to the Carpathian Mountains in the west, and fighting continued on the outskirts of Kyiv. Ukrainian officials said Russian forces shelled several suburbs of the capital.

A Ukrainian firefighter drags a hose inside a large food products storage facility which was destroyed by an airstrike in the early morning hours on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, March 13, 2022. Waves of Russian missiles pounded a military training base close to Ukraine's western border with NATO member Poland, killing 35 people, following Russian threats to target foreign weapon shipments that are helping Ukrainian fighters defend their country against Russia's grinding invasion.(AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

Ukrainian authorities said two people were killed when the Russians struck an airplane factory in Kyiv, sparking a large fire. The Antonov factory is Ukraines largest aircraft plant and produces many of the worlds biggest cargo planes.

Russian artillery fire also hit a nine-story apartment building in the northern Obolonskyi district of the city, killing two more people, authorities said.

And a Russian airstrike near a Ukrainian checkpoint caused extensive damage to a downtown Kyiv neighborhood, killing one person, Ukraine's emergency agency said.

People walk past a crater from the explosion in Mira Avenue (Avenue of Peace) in Mariupol, Ukraine, Sunday, March 13, 2022. The surrounded southern city of Mariupol, where the war has produced some of the greatest human suffering, remained cut off despite earlier talks on creating aid or evacuation convoys. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)

Kateryna Lot said she was in her apartment as her child did homework when they heard a loud explosion and ran to take shelter.

The child became hysterical. Our windows and the balcony were shattered. Part of the floor fell down, she said. It was very, very scary.

In an area outside Kyiv, Fox News reporter Benjamin Hall was injured while reporting and was hospitalized, the network said.

In this photo released by Ukrainian State Emergency Service, a firefighter hugs an elderly woman after evacuation from an apartment building hit by shelling in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, March 14, 2022. (Ukrainian State Emergency Service via AP)

In Russia, the live main evening news program on state television was briefly interrupted by a woman who walked into the studio holding a poster against the war. The OVD-Info website that monitors political arrests said she was a Channel 1 employee who taken into police custody.

A town councilor for Brovary, east of Kyiv, was killed in fighting there, officials said. Shells also fell on the Kyiv suburbs of Irpin, Bucha and Hostomel, which have seen some of the worst fighting in Russias stalled attempt to take the capital, local authorities said.

Airstrikes were reported across the country, including the southern city of Mykolaiv, and the northern city of Chernihiv, where heat was knocked out to most of the town. Explosions also reverberated overnight around the Russian-occupied Black Sea port of Kherson.

A Ukrainian firefighter walks outside a destroyed building after it was hit by artillery shelling in Kyiv in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, March 14, 2022. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)

Nine people were killed in a rocket attack on a TV tower in the western village of Antopol, according to the region's governor.

In the eastern city of Kharkiv, firefighters doused the smoldering remains of a four-story residential building. It was unclear whether there were casualties.

In the southern city of Mariupol, where the war has produced some of the greatest suffering, the city council didnt say how many people were in the convoy of cars headed westward for the city of Zaporizhzhia. But it said a cease-fire along the route appeared to be holding.

A resident sits outside a destroyed building after it was hit by artillery shelling in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, March 14, 2022. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)

Previous attempts to evacuate civilians and deliver humanitarian aid to the city of 430,000 were thwarted by fighting.

Ukraines military said it repelled an attempt Monday to take control of Mariupol by Russian forces, who were forced to retreat. Satellite images from Maxar Technologies showed fires burning across the city, with many high-rise apartment buildings heavily damaged or destroyed.

The Kremlin-backed leader of the Russian region of Chechnya said on a messaging app that Chechen fighters were spearheading the offensive on Mariupol.

A carer holds Sascha, a baby goat with deformed hoofs rescued from Ukraine at the Ada veterinarian clinic in Przemysl, Poland, Monday, March 14, 2022. A veterinarian clinic in the eastern Poland has set up a rescue service for the pets left behind in Ukraine during the war. They have already helped rescue more than 400 animals from the war zone. (AP Photo/Daniel Cole)

Robert Mardini, director-general of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said the war has become nothing short of a nightmare" for those living in besieged cities, and he pleaded for safe corridors for civilians to leave and humanitarian aid to be brought in.

"The situation cannot, cannot continue like this, he said. History is watching what is happening in Mariupol and other cities."

A pregnant woman who became a symbol of Ukraines suffering when she was photographed being carried from a bombed maternity hospital in Mariupol last week has died along with her baby, The Associated Press has learned.

Volunteers sew Ukrainian flags and first aid kits at a workshop in Lviv, western Ukraine, Monday, March 14, 2022. Russian forces have continued their assault on Ukraine, firing on suburbs around the capital of Kyiv and other cities, even as the two countries held another round of diplomatic talks. The fighting is now in its third week. Thousands of soldiers and civilians have died and the war has forced more than 2.8 million people to flee Ukraine. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

Mariupol residents including Natalia Koldash rushed to shelter inside a building Sunday as an unidentified plane passed overhead.

We have no information at all, Koldash said. We know nothing. It looks like we are living in a deep forest."

Associated Press video showed debris from a damaged residential building and another building that a young man named Dima described as an elementary school.

Internally displaced have lunch at school cantine in Lviv, western Ukraine, Monday, March 14, 2022. Overnight, air raid alerts sounded in cities and towns around the country, from near the Russian border in the east to the Carpathian Mountains in the west, and fighting continued on the outskirts of Kyiv. Ukrainian officials said Russian forces shelled several suburbs of the capital. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

There was no military at this school, he said. Its unclear why it was hit.

The Russian military said 20 civilians in the separatist-controlled city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine were killed by a ballistic missile launched by Ukrainian forces. The claim could not be independently verified.

The U.N. has recorded at least 596 civilian deaths since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, though it believes the true toll is much higher. Millions more have fled their homes, with more than 2.8 million crossing into Poland and other neighboring countries in what the U.N. has called Europes biggest refugee crisis since World War II.

Firefighters extinguish an apartment house after a Russian rocket attack in Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, Ukraine, Monday, March 14, 2022. (AP Photo/Pavel Dorogoy)

All day crying from the pain of having to part with loved ones, with my husband, my parents, 33-year-old refugee Alexandra Beltuygova said in the Polish border town of Przemysl after fleeing the industrial Ukrainian city of Dnipro.

I understand that we may not see them. I wish this war would end, she said.

Russias military is bigger and better equipped than Ukraines, but its troops have faced stiffer-than-expected resistance, bolstered by arms supplied by the West.

During a meeting in Rome with a senior Chinese diplomat, U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan warned China against helping Russia.

Two administration officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information, said China had signaled to Moscow that it would be willing to provide both military support in Ukraine and financial backing to help stave off effects of Western sanctions, which include a fourth set of EU sanctions announced late Monday.

Want to get a head start on your day? Get the days breaking stories, weather forecast, and more sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement.

The Kremlin has denied asking China for military equipment to use in Ukraine.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russia has its own potential to continue the operation and that it was unfolding in accordance with the plan and will be completed on time and in full.

___

Associated Press writer Lolita C. Baldor in Washington and 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
This year Earth Day will be occurring in a few days. It seems appropriate to take a break from the steady stream of information about the Covi
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, St. Paul District, anticipates construction to begin in April at its Fountain City Service Base in Fountain City, Wisconsin.

The Corps recently awarded a $10.2 million contract to Newt Marine Service out of Dubuque, Iowa, for Mooring Dolphin replacement and an $18.6 million contract to Kraemer North America out of Plain, Wisconsin, for the design-build of a straight-line mooring solution at the districts Fountain City Services Base in Pool 5A of the Upper Mississippi River, located in Fountain City.

The Fountain City Service Base Sustainment and Modernization Project is a two-phase project to improve the function and safety throughout the service base.

The two objectives of the project are to replace the deteriorated mooring dolphins on the west side of the Fountain City harbor channel and modernize the service base.

Phase 1 of this project will include replacing severely deteriorated mooring dolphins on the west side of the Fountain City harbor channel. The St. Paul District anticipates construction of replacement Mooring Dolphins to begin in April.

Phase 2 of this project will include straightening out of the existing harbor wall, leveling the grade at the service base, adding two crane cells and updating electrical and water infrastructure Construction on Phase II is anticipated to begin in the summer of 2022 and could continue through the fall of 2024.

Construction noise from driving piles is anticipated during summer months through the fall of 2024.

The project is a very important opportunity to modernize and upgrade the Fountain City Service Base with safer and more efficient infrastructure, said Rob Maroney, Corps of Engineers project manager. The Fountain City Service Base supports navigation up and down the Mississippi River.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
WASHINGTON  Heres a look at how area members of Congress voted over the previous week.

House votes

Homeland Security oversight: The House has passed the DHS Basic Training Accreditation Improvement Act (H.R. 5616), sponsored by Rep. Val Butler Demings, D-Fla., to require the Homeland Security Department to send accreditation status reports on its training programs to Congressional oversight committees. Demings said stricter accreditation standards for new Homeland Security officers would position them to effectively safeguard the American people, our homeland, and institutions. The vote, on March 7, was 390 yeas to 33 nays. Yeas:

Emmer R-MN (6th)

Cybersecurity partnerships: The House has passed the National Cybersecurity Preparedness Consortium Act (S. 658), sponsored by Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, to authorize the Homeland Security Department to partner with private nonprofit groups on cybersecurity training efforts. A supporter, Rep. John Katko, R-N.Y., said the bill will help provide training, exercises, technical assistance, and other important resources to state and local governments, critical infrastructure, and industry partners. The vote, on March 7, was 403 yeas to 19 nays. Yeas:

Emmer R-MN (6th)

Tribal border agents: The House has passed the Shadow Wolves Enhancement Act (H.R. 5681), sponsored by Rep. John Katko, R-N.Y., to reclassify a special unit of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers (known as shadow wolves) working on Tohono Oodham Nation land in southern Arizona as special agents. Katko said the reclassification would improve pay for the shadow wolves and enable recruitment of new tribal members into the special unit. The vote, on March 8, was 387 yeas to 33 nays. Not voting:

Emmer R-MN (6th)

Black colleges: The House has passed a resolution (H. Con. Res. 70), sponsored by Rep. Alma S. Adams, D-N.C., condemning violence against historically black colleges and universities. Adams called the resolution a needed response to the recent despicable, cowardly bomb threats to more than 30 historically black colleges and universities. The vote, on March 8, was unanimous with 418 yeas. Not voting:

Emmer R-MN (6th)

Military, security spending: The House has passed an amendment to a bill (H.R. 2471), sponsored by Rep. Hakeem S. Jeffries, D-N.Y., to fund the Defense Department, Homeland Security Department, and associated military and national security programs in fiscal 2022. A supporter, Rep. Kay Granger, R-Texas, said the spending provides our military and our troops with the resources they desperately need, and also ensures the safety and security of the American people by increasing overall funding for Homeland Security by 11 percent. The vote, on March 9, was 361 yeas to 69 nays. Yeas:

Emmer R-MN (6th)

Domestic spending: The House has passed an amendment to a bill (H.R. 2471), sponsored by Rep. Hakeem S. Jeffries, D-N.Y., that would fund federal discretionary domestic programs in fiscal 2022, including an 11.8 percent increase in funding for the legislative branch and 6.7 percent overall increase in funding for nondefense programs. A supporter, Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro, D-N.Y., called the funding an effort to show just how government can work for working people once again and to achieve the betterment of humankind. An opponent, Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, said it increased irresponsible spending while failing to solve the problem of security at the border with Mexico. The vote, on March 9, was 260 yeas to 171 nays. Nays:

Emmer R-MN (6th)

Importing Russian energy: The House has passed the Suspending Energy Imports From Russia Act (H.R. 6968), sponsored by Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, to bar imports from Russia of natural gas, oil and petroleum products, and other energy resources. Doggett said: To take the energy out of Putins brutal assault, we place energy on our sanctions list. It may cost more to fill your tank, but we must work to stop Putins tanks from crushing families and freedom. An opponent, Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, said: There is no way I could vote to exchange getting oil from Putin for getting oil from some other tyrant who wants to destroy America. The vote, on March 9, was 414 yeas to 17 nays. Yeas:

Emmer R-MN (6th)

Along with roll call votes this week, the House also passed the Extension of Continuing Appropriations Act (H.J. Res. 75), making further continuing appropriations for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2022.

Senate votes

Postal Service changes: The Senate has passed the Postal Service Reform Act (H.R. 3076), sponsored by Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney, D-N.Y. The bill would establish a health benefits programs for Postal Service workers and retirees while ending a requirement that retirement health benefits be prepaid, and establish new budget and service reporting requirements for the Postal Service. A supporter, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said the bill sought to give the Postal Service the tools that it needs to be successful and to fulfill its essential mission and to hold the USPS accountable for improved performance. An opponent, Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, said it failed to adequately improve the Postal Services finances while shifting the cost of providing retiree health benefits onto taxpayers. The vote, on March 8, was 79 yeas to 19 nays. Yeas:

Klobuchar D-MN, Smith D-MN

Trade diplomacy: The Senate has confirmed the nomination of Maria L. Pagan to be a Deputy U.S. Trade Representative. Pagan, currently a legal official at the Trade Representative Office, has been a trade lawyer for the federal government since the 1990s. A supporter, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said Pagan is an expert on a host of issues from trade in services to government procurement, and she has litigated several disputes before the WTO. The vote, on March 10, was 80 yeas to 19 nays. Yeas:

Klobuchar D-MN, Smith D-MN

Earmark spending: The Senate has rejected an amendment sponsored by Sen. Mike Braun, R-Ind., to the Consolidated Appropriations Act (H.R. 2471), that would have barred funding for earmark spending on individual appropriations at the request of a member of Congress. Braun said the drafting of the spending bill just before it was sent to Congress meant there had been no time for legislators to review proposed earmark spending. An amendment opponent, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., said details about the earmark spending had been publicly available on the Internet since summer 2021. The vote, on March 10, was 35 yeas to 64 nays. Nays:

Klobuchar D-MN, Smith D-MN

2022 spending: The Senate has agreed to the House amendment to the Consolidated Appropriations Act (H.R. 2471), sponsored by Rep. Hakeem S. Jeffries, D-N.Y., that would fund federal military and discretionary domestic programs in fiscal 2022. A supporter, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called the legislation the strongest, boldest, and most significant government funding package we have seen in a very long time. The vote, on March 10, was 68 yeas to 31 nays. Yeas:

Klobuchar D-MN, Smith D-MN

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
The Winona Film Society, located in the Winona Arts Center, 228 East 5th, is offering award winning films by foreign and independent filmmakers.

Films are shown at 7 p.m. on Fridays with the coffeehouse and gallery available at 6 p.m. Admission is $5 per person.

The featured film on March 18 is the Korean film, Minari.

Directed by Lee Issac Chung, this is a tender and sweeping story about what roots us. It follows a Korean- American family that moves to an Arkansas farm in search of their own American dream. The family changes completely with the arrival of their sly, foul-mouthed but incredibly loving grandma. Minari shows the undeniable resilience of family and what really makes a home.

English and Korean with subtitles. 115 minutes.

Effective March 18, The Winona Art Center will no longer require a proof of Covid vaccine or a negative test but will continue to have masks required at all times.

For more information visit the Winona Arts Center website at: winonaarts.org or Facebook: WinonaArtsCenter.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
A lawsuit filed against the federal government, the Dodge County Sheriffs Office and Dodge County District Attorney Kurt Klomberg was dismissed Friday by United States District Judge Brett Ludwig.

In the dismissed federal lawsuit, Selepri Amachree said he was illegally detained in the Dodge County Jail for more than six months by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

According to the suit, Amachree  an African immigrant who has had permanent legal resident status in the United States for 50 years  was taken into custody on Feb. 27, 2017, at the Dodge County Sheriffs Office in Juneau. A federal judge ordered Amachree to be released from jail in September 2017.

Defendants who were named in the suit include U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement; ICE officers Brent Kriehn and Joseph Halase; Board of Immigration Appeals; Dodge County Sheriff Dale Schmidt; Klomberg; retired Dodge County Detective Robert Neuman; and Dodge County.

Ludwig, who serves in the Eastern District of Wisconsin where the suit was filed, dismissed the case with prejudice meaning it cannot be refiled. In the order granting the defendants motion to dismiss, Ludwig is highly critical of Amachrees attorney, John Gorby of Chicago. He said Gorby repeatedly failed to meet court deadlines and comply with court orders to file concise motions or responses.

... for persistent verbosity and incoherence, the Court will again dismiss the case pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8(a), which governs pleadings, Ludwig wrote.

Amachree expressed disappointment about the dismissal.

The case wasnt dismissed on its merits, it was dismissed because there were a lot of details and we used too many words to get that point across, he said. It wasnt dismissed because Schmidt, Klomberg and ICE didnt do anything wrong, it was dismissed because it took too many pages to describe how wrong it was.

Gorby said, Judge Ludwig is being very harsh with me. Theres no question that my complaints were long but I wanted to lay out the facts.

Klomberg issued a press release Monday. In it he wrote, After reading his rambling pleadings, I came to the conclusion that the suit was more about damaging my reputation than seeking legal recovery. His pleadings were concocted with statements taken out of context from larger discussions in a manner designed just to create controversy. I believe that this whole episode was motivated by a desire to punish myself and others for declining to work with Amachree or his organization.

Klomberg said he decided in 2014 that he could not permit the District Attorneys Office to be associated with Amachree or Extreme intervention and nothing has changed since that time.

The Dodge County District Attorney continues to decline to work in any way with Selepri Amachree or organizations associated with him, Klomberg said.

Schmidt said in a release, I am grateful that the federal court has concluded that no viable claim was alleged in this case and dismissed the lawsuit. I take my responsibility to protect those who are confined in our jail seriously and, as was done in this case, we continue to utilize thorough background investigations to vet those who seek access to the Dodge County Jail. The Dodge County Sheriffs Office is proud to continue to work alongside our federal law enforcement partners and the Dodge County District Attorneys Office in an effort to prevent harm to those we serve.

Amachrees detention in 2017 relates to an order to deport him issued Nov. 7, 2002, that was appealed. The order was part of a drug conviction, but federal courts eventually determined that such convictions were not grounds for deportation and Amachrees case was sent by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals to the Board of Immigration Appeals on Feb. 7, 2007. For unexplained reasons, the BIA did not act on the matter for 10 years, until Amachree had been in custody at the Dodge County Jail for six months.

When it did act, the deportation order was immediately vacated and Amachree was freed.

The day Amachree was taken into custody, he was at the sheriffs office to meet with Schmidt regarding a background check that was conducted because Amachree had been meeting with clients at the Dodge County Jail. Amachree operates XTreme Intervention, a business that enrolls drug-addicted people into treatment programs, typically Teen Challenge programs that are out of state, and transports them to the program.

The lawsuit contended that Amachrees arrest was the result of a conspiracy between the Dodge County Sheriffs Office, Dodge County District Attorney and ICEs Chicago office. It cites email exchanges in the days before his arrest.

The day that arrest took place, Schmidt sent an email to 30 people including local police chiefs, Dodge County Circuit Court judges, the Dodge County District Attorney, Dodge County administrator and others. That email alleged that Amachree was taking advantage of people financially and behaved inappropriately with female clients but also stated, I have no evidence at this time to proceed with a criminal investigation.

The claim against Neuman stated that he was negligent in his investigation of Amachree and falsely alleged Amachree had used an alias, broken into the homes of women and assaulted women.

In the lawsuit, Amachree denied the allegations about inappropriate behavior and financial misconduct and characterized parts of the background investigation as being based on hearsay and false information. The suit also stated that the false allegations Schmidt made in the email on Feb. 27, 2018, have damaged his reputation and business.

Amachree has continued to live in Beaver Dam and operate XTreme Intervention.
Portages Public Works Department has a new director with several years of road and bridge project experience as well as a background in water in sewer lines to bring to the city.

Phil Livingston was introduced as the new public works director Thursday night at the Portage Common Council meeting. City Administrator Shawn Murphy welcomed Livingston along with finance director Jennifer Becker to the full common council. Both started at the end of February in their new roles.

Livingston said in an interview he was excited to move to Portage with his fiance and start his career in the public sector. He grew up in Illinois in the western suburbs of Chicago in the city of Batavia and went to college at UW-Platteville.

Thats where I made connections to this area, Livingston said. I made a lot of friends from the Reedsburg area including my fiance who is from Reedsburg.

For over eight years, Livingston worked as a project manager for a Chicago-based construction company. During that time Livingston oversaw a number of road and bridge projects.

In that time I also worked on utility projects underground, Livingston said. This included telecommunication along with water and sewer projects.

Although Livingston has experience in a variety of projects, he said the shift to the public sector will broaden his experience.

This job will allow me to work on different types of projects with a wide scope, Livingston said. These projects include upgrading Portages aging infrastructure such as water and sewer lines.

Livingston takes over the department from Murphy who was overseeing public works over the last couple of months since former public works director Aaron Jahncke left the department last summer.

Even though he has only been on the job for a few weeks, Livingston has goals for Portage.

I want to help make the city a true destination for visitors and make it better for the people already living here, Livingston said. One of our big issues is addressing the aging infrastructure of Portage.

Portage is known as one of the oldest municipalities and is often considered the third oldest settlement in Wisconsin.

We are working to prioritize projects to address the aging infrastructure because it is a high concern for the department, Livingston said.

He said has felt welcome in the community.

So far its been great, Livingston said. Everyone has been incredibly welcoming at city hall. People have been bringing me up to speed in the last two weeks as I get acclimated to Portage.

Be the first to know Get local news delivered to your inbox! Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
Former state Supreme Court Justice and GOP-appointed special counsel Michael Gableman is set to address the legally impossible task of decertifying Wisconsins 2020 election as a featured speaker at two election data events in Utah, his office confirmed Monday.

One of those events  on March 25 in South Jordan  will feature a woman indicted last week for election tampering after the 2020 election, according to the event listing.

Gableman, who recently released the second interim report in his review of the Nov. 3, 2020, election in Wisconsin, is set to explain the decertification report, according to an event listing shared on Facebook. Angela Joyce, a spokesperson for Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, said on Friday that Gableman would be responsible for his own expenses.

Gableman staffer Zakory Niemierowicz confirmed on Monday that Gableman will be attending the event after being invited to speak. Niemierowicz said the former conservative justice will address the entire report, not just the part about decertification.

The Wisconsin State Journal reported last week that Gablemans interim report falsely claimed nursing homes in Dane and Milwaukee counties had 100% voter turnout, when in fact the percentage of registered voters who cast ballots in all but one Dane County facility ranged from 42% to 91%. Gableman insinuated that malign actors had filled out ballots on behalf of nursing home residents, even though there is no evidence of widespread fraud.

Gableman, who was hired by Vos last year to review the election at a cost of $676,000 to taxpayers, is also set to speak March 26 in St. George, Utah. The event listing misidentifies Gableman as a Wisconsin Supreme Court justice; he has not been on the court since 2018.

Tina Peters, indicted by a grand jury last week over election tampering after the 2020 election, is scheduled to tell her incredible story of exposing Dominion fraud at the March 25 event.

Thats a reference to Dominion Voting Systems, a company consistently targeted by people who question the results of the 2020 presidential election. It is one of the many entities or people Gableman has subpoenaed during the course of his investigation, despite no evidence that the company was complicit in widespread fraud, or that any widespread fraud happened at all. Dominion currently has several outstanding lawsuits against Fox News and prominent election deniers for allegedly spreading false claims that the company was involved in fraud.

A county clerk in Colorado, Peters faces felony and misdemeanor charges including criminal impersonation, identity theft, first-degree official misconduct and failing to comply with the secretary of state. She is currently running to be secretary of state in Colorado.

Reached for comment, event organizer Sophie Anderson said, I have no interest in contributing to a smear campaign. She added that Gableman is a hero.

Anderson then requested questions in writing but did not immediately respond to them.

The Utah events will be Gablemans next in a string of public appearances following the release of his second report. In the past two weeks, Gableman has appeared on podcasts or television shows  with the Gateway Pundit, Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon  that have consistently cast doubt or provided a platform for people to cast doubt on the 2020 election results. Both the Gateway Pundit and Carlson, through his Fox affiliation, are targeted in defamation lawsuits regarding alleged wrongful claims about the 2020 election that they made or helped circulate.

Gableman, who previously traveled to Arizona to observe that states widely criticized recount and to South Dakota for a symposium led by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, has had no shortage of election deniers working for him in his GOP-ordered review of Wisconsins 2020 election. Gableman also made a baseless claim at a pro-Donald Trump rally in 2020 that the election in Wisconsin had been stolen by bureaucrats.

Joyce confirmed Monday that taxpayer money Gableman used to travel to South Dakota and to a Chippewa County Republican Party event will be deducted from his future payments.

Documents revealed last year that Gableman had hired Andrew Kloster, a former member of the Trump administration, and Ron Heuer, the president of the Wisconsin Voter Alliance, which last year filed a lawsuit asking the Wisconsin Supreme Court to toss Wisconsins presidential election results and replace the will of voters with electors appointed by the states Republican-controlled Legislature.

Records ordered to be released last week by a Dane County judge show Gableman has also had regular communications with Erick Kaardal, an attorney for the conservative Thomas More Society, and Harry Wait, president of the conservative group Honest Open Transparent Government.

Kaardal is actively challenging the use of private election grants provided to the states five largest cities to help administer the 2020 election during the COVID-19 pandemic.

While Gableman ramps up his call for decertifying the 2020 election, he faces a growing number of state lawmakers, including a handful of Republicans, urging him to wrap up the probe.

I wish this whole 2020 election stuff would be done because we have to continue to look forward at 2022 and 2024, but we also have to make sure people have confidence in their elections and I think that falls on elected officials to push back against misinformation, Assembly Majority Leader Jim Steineke said in a Monday interview on the Wisconsin Eye program Newsmakers.

Recounts, reviews and court decisions have affirmed that President Joe Biden defeated Trump by close to 21,000 votes in Wisconsin.

86 subpoenas

Last week Gablemans office provided to Rep. Mark Spreitzer, D-Beloit, copies of 86 subpoenas. Spreitzer had requested the documents earlier this month.

Niemierowicz wrote in an email to Spreitzer the list included in-state subpoenas that were served along with the out-of-state subpoenas that were signed by Vos. Vos name was misspelled twice in the email.

Several of the subpoenas were issued to local and state election officials, the mayors of the states five largest cities and two companies that make vote-counting systems, Election Systems & Software and Dominion Voting Systems. Many of the subpoenaed parties have rejected Gablemans requests for in-person meetings or documents, while the former state Supreme Court justice has also withdrawn some requests, including one filed with immigrant rights group Voces de la Frontera Action.

Other subpoenas for out-of-state entities were never actually issued and further underscore the broad and unusual scope of Gablemans review. Drafted subpoenas that were never served include those for organizations Gableman has long criticized as part of his review  the Center for Tech and Civic Life, or CTCL, and the National Vote at Home Institute, including the groups consultant Michael Spitzer-Rubenstein.

CTCL, a group largely funded by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to help administer the 2020 election, provided millions in private election grants to cities across the state  funds that Republicans, including Gableman, have targeted as unfairly increasing turnout in the Democratic strongholds of Milwaukee, Madison, Green Bay, Kenosha and Racine.

Court rulings have found nothing illegal about the more than $10 million in grants CTCL distributed to about 214 municipalities in 39 of Wisconsins 72 counties, including many solidly won by Trump. Nor did CTCL turn down grant requests from any of the Wisconsin municipalities that made them.

Other subpoenas drafted by Gableman targeted two Hyatt Regency hotel employees and an engineering director for Airbnb.

Spreitzer, a member of the Assembly elections committee, described the list of subpoenas as a real fishing expedition.

Its clear to me that theres no actual organized plan here, that they dont know what theyre looking for and at this point it seems like the litigation around some of these subpoenas is being used as an excuse for the new contract that Speaker Vos signed that will continue to waste more taxpayer dollars over the coming months, Spreitzer said last week.

Vos recently signed a new contract extending Gablemans probe through April 30. Gablemans effort was originally planned to be completed last fall but failed to meet several deadlines.

The new contract maintains Gablemans existing budget, but does allow for the possibility of added funds to cover the costs of multiple lawsuits related to the probe. The contract also stipulates that Gableman consult with Vos after the lawsuits are concluded to determine if the review should end or if additional investigation is warranted.

We would all like it to end, quite frankly, but there are still some lawsuits out there, Steineke said of Gablemans review.
Academics condemn silencing of scientists over Russian invasion

Professor Lynn Morris says universities 'value independent inquiry, intellectual excellence, integrity, and academic freedom and institutional autonomy'.

Academics have condemned an alleged instruction by an official from South Africas Department of Science and Innovation (DSI) to muzzle scientists over the Russian invasion of Ukraine, University World News reports.

... News of the attempt to muzzle South African scientists expressing themselves on the Russian invasion was published by global research and policy publication Research Professional News.



The publication wrote that public science organisations were instructed via e-mail on 1 March by a senior DSI official to not comment in public on the invasion.



Staff members at the department, as well as science bodies, including the National Research Foundation and the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory, were told that they should not engage in any action of any kind which could be construed as a political commentary or political reaction to the developments in Ukraine ...

"At no time will Wits muzzle its researchers, scientists or academics"

Professor Lynn Morris, the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of research and innovation of the University of the Witwatersrand, said she was dismayed at the invasion of Ukraine by Russia and sympathised with all those impacted by the war.

Morris said Wits University values the right of its staff and students to have their voices heard and to publicly express their views, without fear or favour, adding that members of the university have roles as public intellectuals, members of the global civil society, and as intellectual leaders, and the ability to partake in robust engagement.

We value independent inquiry and trust, intellectual excellence and integrity, and academic freedom and institutional autonomy  in light of these commitments and values, at no time will Wits muzzle its researchers, scientists or academics or abide by or support any institutional or governmental call to do so."

She said Wits executives are actively working through local and international organisations to express their views on freedom of speech, academic freedom and institutional autonomy.

Read the full article here: https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20220310080616923
Scientific diplomacy and cooperation in this time of war

Scientific diplomacy must be given a chance to help enhance mutual understandings across political divides.

As the vice-president of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) responsible for membership matters, I have been involved in formulating a position for the IUPAP about scientific cooperation with Ukraine and with Russia in this extremely difficult time of war.



Interestingly, IUPAP is in its centennial year, and South Africa was one of only 13 founding members of the union that committed to a global agenda for physics ahead of many more scientifically advanced countries of that time, which I think is remarkable.



Jan Smuts was prime minister of the Union of South Africa at that crucial time following World War I, but he had the vision for science as a catalyst for peace, and this remains truer today than ever before.



A global, communicative, collaborative, and cooperative community for science is of paramount importance for critical, evidence-based thinking and discourse as it impacts on human lives and on our planet with existential proportions, and increasingly now we should think about our interests in space as well.



The IUPAP, during the darkest days of the cold war, apartheid and many other difficult political eras over the past 100 years, has always been able to do two things with care and responsibility.



Firstly, the global physics community has kept open the channels for scientific cooperation across all political and other divides, including with apartheid South Africa, in the hope and expectation that enhanced scientific collaborations are an important means to develop improved understandings between different peoples that contribute to world peace.



Secondly, and it has also at various times in its history expressed its concerns about any activity or intervention, including war, that impacts negatively on our ability to engage scientifically on a global scale.



It is entirely appropriate, then, that IUPAP has issued its statement on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which I am very glad to have had a hand in.



On the other hand, I think it would be inappropriate for the international science community to bar any scientist from any scientific activity, including in this time of war.



So long as the work upholds the ethics and principles of science of the highest ideals, for example, the endeavour does not contribute to weapons capabilities or does not enhance in any way Russias war effort, I can see no reason to disallow Russian scientist participation in international scientific activities.



Many Russian academics are standing up to the Russian government under extremely difficult circumstances, and it would be remiss of us to leave them out in the cold.



Scientific diplomacy must be given a chance to help enhance mutual understandings across political divides, a point that I will come to again below.

What about academic freedom?



But the real matter, in the context of my views above, that I would like to address in this commentary relates to the news report from South Africa published in University World News roundup titled Government tells science agencies not to comment on Ukraine in the context of my views above.



If this statement is, indeed, an official government statement, and I have my doubts as to how high up the political chain this comes from, then of course this is counterproductive as this does not advance peace, and neither does this advance science, with mutually destructive consequences.



This is damaging to our own science system in our country, to our reputation for critical, independent thinking, and only serves a narrow political purpose and should, therefore, be rejected.



It is not clear to me who issued this statement, but whoever gave this instruction very likely knows that this is an unsatisfactory statement for the well-being of the South African academic community which aspires for the highest ideals of integrity and independence, principles that are essential for the success of the academic endeavour in our country.



It is meant to throw doubt in the minds of academics. It sets us back as a nation. It should be countered.

Academic vs political discourse



I am writing this commentary in my personal capacity, and I dont expect that my university or the government will come knocking at my door asking awkward questions, the types of experiences that many have had during the height of apartheid and in other autocratic regimes around the world since practically all of time.



Before I go on, I think it is useful, especially in an academic setting, to distinguish a little more carefully between academic discourse and political discourse.



The academic process ideally is based on independent, critical thinking, on evidence-based research, on reproducibility of results, on pursuing the facts, on unearthing the truth, on not seeking favours, on interrogating ideas rather than which office or hierarchical structure this comes from, and so on, and so on.



Political discourse, on the other hand, is a different type of conversation, and it is seeping more and more into our science spaces, with negative consequences.



It is often based on group mentality, on populism, on expedience, on convenience, sometimes on exploitation, often on untested ideas, usually on emotion, and it is often a power struggle.



The concepts of a quid pro quo usually loom large in a political conversation, which is often based on short-term interests for short-term gain.



Much of it is inconsistent, even at the best of times. The result can be divisiveness which is difficult to counter in an academic setting that thrives on mutual respect, personal courage and an environment that respects the circulation of ideas.



So, my first reaction in considering the flawed government statement is to encourage academics to speak up on any matter in your personal capacity based on your conscience, based on principles of democracy, of fairness, of integrity, on solid evidence, on history, on precedence and so on.



This is not only our right to do so, but also our obligation as citizens of a democratic country.



You should expect and even encourage rebuttals to your views, and you should be open to criticism and other viewpoints based on cogently argued standpoints.



And this should happen in an open, transparent, and collegial manner. There is absolutely nothing controversial about this as I describe the environment that is essential for science to thrive in, which is needed for societal benefit.



This environment cannot be regulated by politicians, and it would be dangerous for our democracy if there are attempts to do this. Here, we need to better understand the role played in science diplomacy as different from political diplomacy as alluded to earlier.



Democracies need independent checks and balances to function successfully, or else we will spiral into a morass.



Our South African Constitution fully protects us as academics to speak up on any matter of relevance to society as long as we adhere to high standards of ethics in our work. The smartest way to do this in these times of political over-sensitivities is to do so in your personal capacity.



There are interesting, and often sobering intersections between academic discourse and political discourse, sometimes with catastrophic consequences. But I grudgingly admit that both discourses are needed for societies to function, and the tension between the two is necessary.



Having addressed the responsibilities of individual scientists to speak up, I wish now to turn my attention to scientific organisations.

Institutions should also speak up

I can see how institutions, government agencies and, national laboratories, among others, can have a difficulty in stepping up to the plate to publicly make their views heard at an institutional level for it takes a lot of courage to seemingly bite the hand that feeds you, and there can be unpredictable consequences if you do so.



With South Africa being a member of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), the quid pro quo is clear for all to see. The ANC also has a strong allegiance to the former Soviet Union because of the struggle years, as many of our leaders were in exile in Russia.



I feel that, even if we do not accept the position taken by the South African government, we should at the very least understand this position considering the politics of the day.



This is, nevertheless, an embarrassment to us as scientists and makes a mockery of the many Russian scientists, both within and outside that country, who have risked so much to make a stand.



Institutions should be able to speak candidly about any activity or intervention, including war, that impacts negatively on the ability to achieve their mission of engaging science on an international scale in an unencumbered way.



Put simply, it is not in the interests of our institutions to remain silent on any matter that degrades our international scientific cooperation. We have collaborations with Ukrainian scientists, for instance, and so why should our scientific institutions not express concerns at any efforts that undermine this?



Silence on the part of individual academics or our scientific institutions at this time is not helpful. I dont think that we should be cowed into submission. It is useful for us to prick the conscience of those who are pushing this flawed point of view to get them to see their error of judgment.



Having said this, I also cannot blame any colleague who chooses to remain silent on this matter at this time. There can be a heavy price to pay if we stand up for what we believe in, as history shows.



But, if more people of conscience choose to do so, bravely, and no matter the consequences, then this world could be a better place.



Every academic and every researcher in South Africa, irrespective of their affiliation, must fiercely protect our spaces for free intellectual thought, unfettered by the politics of the day, which is of short-term interest for short-term gain. Politicians have a near-sightedness that we should try to understand, even if we do not accept.



Professor Nithaya Chetty is the Dean of the Faculty of Science at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. In his book, The Struggle for the Soul of a South African University, co-authored with Christopher Merrett, he articulates the principles that he has championed in the fight for academic freedom in South Africa. He writes in his personal capacity.

This article was first published in University World News.
Bushveld Complex functioned as a big magma tank

Scientists find that large, long-lived, and entirely molten magma chambers did exist in Earths crust.

An international group of researchers led by geologists from Wits University in Johannesburg have come up with multiple lines of evidence indicating that the Bushveld Complex in South Africa functioned as a big magma tank in the ancient Earths crust. This research was published as a paper in Scientific Reports.

Professor Rais Latypov from the School of Geosciences at Wits University says While re-examining thin-sections of Bushveld chromitites, we noticed a very puzzling observation: chromite often occurs as individual grains that seemingly suspended within matrix minerals. This observation leads us to a critical question: why have the chromite grains failed to sink towards the chamber floor despite being much denser than the host melt?

To answer this question, the researchers have studied chromitite in three-dimensions (3D) using high-resolution X-ray computed tomography and revealed that nearly all chromite grains are closely interconnected to form a single continuous 3D framework. This gave us an answer to the above question: chromite grains are not able to settle freely towards the chamber floor simply because they are all bound together in self-supporting 3D frameworks attached to the chamber floor, says Dr Sofya Chistyakova from the School of Geosciences at Wits University.

There is only one process that may result in the formation of such 3D frameworks of chromite crystals. This is an in situ self-nucleation and growth of chromite grains, for example, when all new chromite grains nucleate and grow on pre-existing chromite grains directly at the chamber floor. This happens from the parental melt that is saturated in chromite as the only crystallising phase.

This logically brought us to a long-known Cr mass balance issue  normal basaltic melts contain only a very small amount of Cr so that the formation of thick chromitite layer requires extraction of Cr from a very large volume of liquid that must be present as a thick melt layer in the chamber. Simple mass balance calculations indicate that a 1 metre thick layer of chromitite will require a magma column of 2km to 4km thick, says Latypov.

Latypov and his co-authors believe that the enormous lateral extent of chromitite layers indicate that during the formation of massive chromitites the Bushveld chamber was operating as a giant magma body of more than 400km in diameter, with a column of the resident melt likely attaining a few km in thickness. This conclusion is at odds with a currently emerging school of thought is that such large, long-lived and largely molten magma chambers are non-existent in Earths history, says Latypov.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan will meet with his Chinese counterpart, Yang Jiechi, in Rome on Monday as part of a follow-up conversation to President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping's virtual meeting last November. Sullivan is shown here at the White House on December 7, 2021, in Washington, DC.
'Alzheimer's disease is the only illness where the person passes away twice.' Latino caregivers say they're facing more barriers
Bathsheba Mchuza, founder and sales officer for Uyogaplus project, shows the growing of mushroom during a workshop on "Applications of Juncao Technology and its Contribution to the Achievement of Sustainable Agriculture and the Sustainable Development Goals in Tanzania" in Kinondoni District, outskirts of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on March 10, 2022. [Photo by Herman Emmanuel/Xinhua]

DAR ES SALAAM, March 11 (Xinhua)  Participants in a workshop held in Tanzania's capital Dar es Salaam wore broad smiles as they were exposed to the wonders of a Chinese Juncao technology saying the technology spelled a bright future for mushroom growers and livestock keepers in the country.

Juncao, which in Chinese literally means "mushroom" and "grass", can be used, as its name suggests, to grow edible and medicinal mushrooms, as livestock feed or as a green barrier to control soil erosion and stop desertification.

The Juncao technology has been developed by the National Engineering Research Center for Juncao Technology of the Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University (FAFU) of China.

The technology has a multi-faceted approach of cultivating mushrooms for food and medicinal purposes while at the same time addressing soil erosion for maintaining the volume of arable land, and also supporting livestock feed development.

On the third day of the workshop on "Applications of Juncao Technology and its Contribution to the Achievement of Sustainable Agriculture and the Sustainable Development Goals in Tanzania" organized by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN-DESA), the participants visited Uyogaplus, a mushroom farm at Mabwepande in Kinondoni District on the outskirts of the commercial capital Dar es Salaam.

The Uyogaplus project is an intensive program of health and economic empowerment of women and youth through mushroom production in Tanzania.

"We have been producing mushrooms by using sawdust, banana leaves, and other supplements which are very expensive. We are now in the process of adopting Juncao grass as a substitute for sawdust," said Bathsheba Mchuza, founder and sales officer for Uyogaplus project.

Uyogaplus has established a nursery for cultivating Juncao grass for growing mushrooms, said the 25-year-old woman university graduate, adding that the Juncao grass seedlings were planted in February 2021 after they were supplied by the Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA) based in Morogoro region that introduced the technology to the project.

"By using Juncao grass to cultivate mushrooms the future looks brighter," Mchuza told the participants of the four-day workshop that brought together national policy makers, academicians, researchers, farmers, livestock keepers and experts from FAFU and the UN.

Mchuza is among 5,000 mushroom growers in Tanzania who are producing 1,000 tons of mushrooms annually.

Elly Ligate, a senior lecturer, researcher and national Juncao technological consultant at the SUA, with over five years of experience in Juncao technology projects in Tanzania, said the Juncao technology is being championed by the Ministry of Livestock and Fisheries in Tanzania mainland and the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock in Zanzibar, adding that farmers and local government authorities in the country have widely accepted the technology.

"I see good opportunities as far as Juncao technology is concerned. This technology is comprehensive as it involves production of grass and mushrooms. The Juncao grass is very important in our country in eliminating challenges of shortage of fodder," Ligate, an ecologist, told Xinhua on the sidelines of the workshop.

"The second challenge that we want to address is environmental degradation. If we provide grass to livestock keepers it will improve carrying capacity and minimize the pressure on the land. In that case, management of the land will be a little easy," said Ligate, a PhD graduate at Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University of China (FUFA) where he also learnt about the Juncao technology.

Asimwe Rwiguza, director of Grazing Land and Animal Feed Resources in the Ministry of Livestock and Fisheries, said intensification of high forage producing species such as Juncao grass is a useful strategy to ensure sustainable pasture production in order to feed the existing and ever-increasing number of livestock throughout the year.

Rwiguza said the Juncao technology is expected to conserve the environment through sustainable livestock production, especially in semi-arid areas of the country where animal pastures are limited and land degradation is high.

Lin Zhanxi, inventor of Juncao technology, and chief scientist and director of the National Engineering Research Center for Juncao Technology of the FAFU of China, said on a video conference that Juncao technology is helping in adapting and mitigating challenges posed by climate change.

Yuan Lin, the economic and commercial counselor of the Chinese Embassy, said during the past two decades, this handy and practical technology has taken root in more than 100 countries.

Participants visits Uyogaplus Farm during a workshop on "Applications of Juncao Technology and its Contribution to the Achievement of Sustainable Agriculture and the Sustainable Development Goals in Tanzania" in Kinondoni District , outskirts of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on March 10, 2022. [Photo by Herman Emmanuel/Xinhua]

Elly Ligate, a senior lecturer, researcher and national Juncao technological consultant at Sokoine University of Agriculture, shows the Juncao grass during a workshop on "Applications of Juncao Technology and its Contribution to the Achievement of Sustainable Agriculture and the Sustainable Development Goals in Tanzania" in Kinondoni District , outskirts of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on March 10, 2022. [Photo by Herman Emmanuel/Xinhua]

(Source: Xinhua)
Taikonaut Wang Yaping, dressed in festive costumes, wishes children across China "vigorous and healthy growth" while holding a red balloon, in a screenshot obtained from a video. [Xinhua]

"I hope all girls with space dreams guard your vision of going to the sea of stars. One day, before you know it, when you look up, you will see that your dream is already within reach," said Wang Yaping, China's second woman astronaut.

GENEVA, March 7 (Xinhua)  Wang Yaping, China's second woman astronaut who is now on a six-month mission on board the country's Space Station, has recently recorded a video message for the United Nations (UN) office in Geneva, Switzerland, sending her greetings to women around the world on the occasion of International Women's Day on March 8.

"I hope all girls with space dreams guard your vision of going to the sea of stars. One day, before you know it, when you look up, you will see that your dream is already within reach," Wang said.

She said that space has never changed its environment or lowered its threshold because of the arrival of women, and that ample flight data show that there are no significant differences in the ability of the sexes to adapt and work in space.

Women "can all complete the same training and assessment as men astronauts at a high standard. And many physical and psychological characteristics of women can play an advantage in space, being complementary to men astronauts," she said.

"It is conceivable that more and more women will participate in manned spaceflight missions. It will have a very important impact on the large-scale and long-term human exploration of space in the future," she said.

Screen image taken at Beijing Aerospace Control Center on Jan. 8, 2022 shows the Shenzhou-13 astronauts in China's space station core module conducting the manual rendezvous and docking experiment with the Tianzhou-2 cargo craft. [Xinhua/Guo Zhongzheng]

"Ladies, although our nationalities, ethnicities and occupations are different, but women all over the world are making the world more vibrant and more harmonious and warmer through their own efforts," she said.

"I would like to take this opportunity to thank every women for their selfless dedication, I also wish every women would pick the brightest stars for the lives and careers we love in our own starry sky."

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.

In her first space mission, Wang, who once dreamed of being a teacher, 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.

"I love to be a space teacher, facing the lovely children in front of the screen, including my daughter," Wang said in the video message.

Eight years later, she delivered another live space lecture in China's space station on Dec. 9, 2021.

Screen image taken at Beijing Aerospace Control Center on Nov. 8, 2021 shows Chinese taikonaut Wang Yaping (R) completing extravehicular activities (EVAs). [Photo by Guo Zhongzheng/Xinhua]

(Source: Xinhua)
Ruidoso is a small village located in Lincoln County, New Mexico, United States of America. It comprises the city of Ruidoso Downs and the unincorporated area of Alto as a part of its suburbs. The village is at present home to a population of 8000 people.

Geography Of Ruidoso

Aerial view of Ruidoso, New Mexico.

Ruidoso is a resort town situated in southern Lincoln County with an elevation that ranges from 2,000 m to 2,300 m. The village is located in the Sierra Blanca Mountain range of south-central New Mexico, where it merges with the Sacramento Mountains to the south. Ruidosos westernmost and southern border follows the Otero County line. Ruidoso is bordered to the east by the city of Ruidoso Downs. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Ruidoso covers a total area of 41.7 sq. km, of which only 0.05 sq. km or 0.12% is occupied by water.

Climate Of Ruidoso

Ruidoso has a dry-summer subtropical climate which often is referred to as the Mediterranean under the Koppen Climate Classification. Many of the Mediterranean climate regions have relatively mild winters and hot summers. The average temperature for the year in Ruidoso is 10.2 C. The warmest month is July, with an average of 18.8 C, and the coldest month is January, having an average temperature of 1.9 C. The average annual amount of precipitation in Ruidoso is 553.7 mm. The city receives the most rainfall in the month of August with 119.4 mm of rainfall, while it receives the least rainfall in April with an average of 17.8 mm of rainfall.

The Population Of Ruidoso

In 2020, Ruidoso had a population of 8,069 people with a median age of 50.9 and a population density of 189 people per square kilometer. The population has increased by 0.50% since the last census, which recorded a population of 8,029 in 2010. The largest ethnic groups in Ruidoso are non-Hispanic White representing 59.8% of the villages population, the Hispanic community making up to 37.4%, two or more races at 1.68%, Black or African Americans at 0.55%, Others at 0.33%, Asians at 0.17%, and Native Americans at 0.06%.

Around 93% of Ruidoso residents are U.S citizens, and 13.6% were born outside the United States. The most common hometown for foreign-born residents of New Mexico is Mexico, followed by the Philippines and Germany. The largest university in Ruidoso is Eastern New Mexico University Ruidoso Branch Community College. The student population of Ruidoso is skewed towards women, with most students being White, followed by Hispanic or Latino, and American Indian or Alaska Native. The most popular majors in Ruidoso are General Studies, Nursing Assistant & Patient Care Assistant, and Pre-Nursing Studies.

The Economy Of Ruidoso

Welcome sign to the resort village of Ruidoso, New Mexico. Editorial credit: Andriy Blokhin / Shutterstock.com

Ruidoso is currently at a growing rate of 0.7%, and the median household income is $50,114, which has increased by 15% between 2018 and 2019. The economy of Ruidoso employs more than a third of its population in different industries. The largest industries in Ruidoso are Construction, Retail Trade, and Accommodation & Food Services, while the highest paying ones are Public Administration, Educational Services, and Agriculture & Forestry & Mining.

Brief History Of Ruidoso

Captain Paul Dowlin, a retired army Captain, built Dowlins Mill where the Carrizo Creek and Rio Ruidoso merge along the eastern foothills of White Mountain. Dowlin had served at nearby Fort Stanton, and the Mill he has built also served as a dance hall, general store, and moonshine supply. San Patricio (located in Hondo Valley) was initially known as Ruidoso but was renamed in 1875 in honor of a Catholic priests patron saint. Early Hispanic people used the term Ruidoso to describe the noisy creek. Today, Ruidoso grew around Dowlins Mill. By 1885, a general store, post office, blacksmith, and cabins were built. A ski area opened on a sloping meadow at Cedar Creek in 1935, and Ruidoso kept growing. The town and river were hit by devastating flash flooding on July 26, 2008. The remnant circulation of Hurricane Dolly caused damage to approximately 500 structures and killed one person. Around 900 people were evacuated, and initial damage estimates for Ruidoso were between $15  20 million. The village of Ruidoso entered into a Sister City relationship with Puerto Penasco Sonora, Mexico, in March 2016.

Tourist Attractions In Ruidoso

Spencer Theater for the Performing Arts - a landmark 514-seat world-class theater in Ruidoso, New Mexico. Editorial credit: GSPhotography / Shutterstock.com

The small village of Ruidoso attracts thousands of visitors annually with its museums, hiking trails, and famous Ski Apache, the southernmost ski resort.

Ski Apache

Winter at Ski Apache, New Mexico.

Ski Apache is the most famous attraction in Ruidoso. The vast resort has over 55 runs and trails over 750 skiable acres of land, 11 lifts, and slopes for skiers that suit everyone regardless of how skilled they are. During summers, visitors can take a gondola ride to the top of the mountain, where they can take a zip line tour on the way down, starting at over 11000 feet. Ski Apache also offers trails for mountain biking and hiking.

Bonito Lake

A view of Bonito Lake.

Bonito Lake is a beautiful reservoir in the Sierra Blanca Mountains. The lake is located near Lincoln National Forest at an altitude of 7,380 feet, keeping the water cool year-round. Bonito Lake contains a large population of rainbow trout and is surrounded by many great campsites. Visitors go to the lake for fishing, camping, and hiking.
Fox News correspondent Benjamin Hall, who had been deployed in recent weeks to cover the war in Ukraine, has been hospitalized after being injured while reporting near Kyiv, the network said on Monday.
WASHINGTON, DC - DECEMBER 07: National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan talks to reporters about President Joe Biden's conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House on December 07, 2021 in Washington, DC. Sullivan reported that the conversation focused on Nordstream2 pipeline and the Russian military buildup near its border with Ukraine. Biden said the United States is prepared with economic penalties if Russia does invade. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
National robotic-assisted surgery programme to provide less invasive surgery for thousands of cancer patients in Wales

A national robotic-assisted surgery programme allowing surgeons to perform complex procedures with more precision and control is being launched in Wales.

The All-Wales Robotic Assisted Surgery Network, developed by health boards, the Life Sciences Hub Wales and the Moondance Cancer Initiative, will provide less invasive surgery for thousands of cancer patients across the country.

The surgery involves the use of highly advanced robotic surgical instruments under the control of a surgeon.

It will initially be used in Wales for some Colorectal, Upper Gastrointestinal, Urological and Gynaecological cancers.

The Welsh Government will support the network with funding of 4.2m over five years, alongside 13.35m provided by health boards over 10 years.

Health and Social Services Minister Eluned Morgan said: The All-Wales Robotic Assisted Surgery Network is an ambitious and important programme helping to improve outcomes for patients and the NHS in Wales.

It will put Wales at the forefront of international research for the use of robotic surgical techniques. This pioneering service will also encourage specialist staff to come to Wales to train and practice.

It will initially be provided in the Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board area, with the first patient expected to receive treatment in June. Once fully established, patients in north Wales will no longer need to travel to England to receive robotic-assisted surgery.

Cardiff and Vale University Health Board is expected to offer the surgery from June  adding to the capacity of its existing robot  and other health boards across Wales are expected to follow.

The programme will be delivered by health boards in partnership with medical technology company, CMR Surgical, which will provide the equipment, maintenance and training, as well as supporting research into the adoption of robotic-assisted procedures.

Jared Torkington, Lead Clinician for the National Robotic Assisted Surgery Programme, said: Technological advancements have had a profound effect on surgery over the last few decades, minimising the invasiveness of procedures, improving outcomes, and reducing hospital stays.

This national programme will deliver better patient outcomes and embraces the latest innovation.

With the progression of robotic assisted surgery, the next 20 years will see even more radical change, bringing with it the promise of a future where healthcare is even less invasive and better able to fit the individual needs of patients.

Chris Martin, Chair at Life Sciences Hub Wales, said: The world of surgery is undergoing a period of significant innovation and change that promises to bring huge benefits to patients. We are now entering the next and perhaps most exciting phase in the evolution of healthcare, driven by rapid developments in technology.

Dr Mark Slack, Chief Medical Officer of CMR Surgical, said: This is a landmark move by NHS Wales and one that will bring many benefits to surgeons and patients providing them access to life changing innovation. We are proud to be part of this programme and believe countries around the world will be looking towards Wales as a potential model for implementation of surgical robotics using advanced technology.

We would like to thank NHS Wales for choosing us as a partner in this exciting robotics programme to address overwhelming needs for improved surgical care and outcomes for cancer patients in Wales.

Mr Mohamed Abdulmajed, Consultant Urological and Pelvic Oncology Surgeon at Ysbyty Gwynedd, said: We are certainly looking forward to becoming the first surgical discipline to use robotics to treat patients who require major cancer surgery in North Wales.

Robotic-surgery has many advantages for patients compared to open surgery including a smaller wound, less blood loss, shorter hospital stay and earlier recovery allowing the patient to return to work sooner.

We are confident that the provision of robotic surgery in North Wales will help to recruit and retain staff. It also gives us the opportunity to provide training for staff locally, which in turn, will increase the amount of robotic surgery we are able to offer to cancer patients across North Wales.
Virtual awareness session to help hairdressers and beauticians spot the signs of domestic abuse

Hairdressers and beauticians across the region are being invited to attended a virtual domestic abuse awareness session.

Organised by North Wales Police, Would You Make the Cut gives employees in the industry the opportunity to to learn about the dynamics and effects of domestic abuse, hear real survivor stories and get tips and advice on what you can do to help.

The aim of this session is for domestic abuse survivors, police officers and domestic abuse specialists to provide key information on how health and beauty professionals can give advice, and where to signpost customers who they know are suffering from domestic abuse.

The last session, held in October 2020 was very popular and received great feedback.

PC Mike Taggart, Strategic Domestic Abuse Officer in North Wales Police Protective Vulnerable People Unit said: After lots of enquiries about further training to the beauty industry, we will be holding another session for all to attend. We look forward to seeing you all there!

There is no limit on spaces, and North Wales Police is encouraging as many people to attend as possible. You can take part in the session on Monday 21st March 2022, 10am  12:30pm via Microsoft Teams. Join conversation (microsoft.com)
Volunteers across Wrexham rally together to provide donations for the people of Ukraine

A team of volunteers who have joined together to provide much needed help to the people of Ukraine have been praised by the mayor of Wrexham.

Whilst the time of unease continues, people from across the UK have come together to lend a hand or provide donations for those affected by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

On the Wrexham Industrial Estate, where one of the local collection points is taking place, queues of vehicles lined the car park with items for the cause or offering to take boxes to the arranged drop off point.

Inside the unit of F. Lloyd Warehousing, volunteers were organising donations into categories and boxes. This ranged from food, clothes and toiletries, to toys for the children.

Boxes were then collected by volunteers who have been delivering the supplies to the Polish border with Ukraine.

Heres a few of the truck loads of donations leaving Wrexham to Poland, which SHARE has collectively managed to fill with The Polish Intergration Support Centre (PISC), with your enormous support over the last few weeks. Thank you Chester & North Wales. #Ukraine #poland   pic.twitter.com/NeH3egtXj8  SHARE (@shareshopsuk) March 12, 2022

The Mayor of Wrexham, Councillor Ronnie Prince, was invited to come and see all the tireless work the volunteers were doing in their bid to help.

He got to speak with some of the organisers bringing the humanitarian effort together just before the convoy set off for the border.

Having seen for himself the scale of the operation, he said: It is so humbling to see so many people coming together to help those in their time of need.

Of course, the reasons for this initiative beginning are devastating but it is another way in which Wrexham shows strength and support for Ukraine during these testing times.

I would like to thank all the people who have donated or given their time to package the supplies into boxes or transport them to the border.

I also give my thanks to those who have organised all this. You are all doing such vital work and you are a credit to the community of Wrexham.
A 4th dose of Covid-19 vaccine will be needed, Pfizer's CEO says, but the company is working on a shot to handle all variants
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern last week announced significant new sanctions would be placed on Russia, including oligarchs, individuals and companies responsible for or associated with the invasion of Ukraine.

The Russia Sanctions Bill was rushed through parliament under urgency on March 9. It provides a targeted, autonomous sanctions regime on the Russian government. A Bill of this nature has never been brought before our Parliament, but with Russia vetoing UN sanctions we must act ourselves to support Ukraine and our partners in opposition to this invasion, Ardern said.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern answers a question during a press conference at Parliament in Wellington, New Zealand. (Robert Kitchin/Pool Photo via AP)

New Zealand could not previously impose economic sanctions outside the UN. According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, it has been restricted to sanctions authorised by the UN Security Council in regulations under the United Nations Act 1946. The new law circumvents this while the government considers a broader sanctions regime.

The Ardern government initially responded to Russias invasion by issuing travel bans, prohibiting exports to the military and suspending bilateral foreign ministry consultations. International pressure to apply wider sanctions soon followed. The Wall Street Journal noted on March 1 that while the US and its allies were ramping up sanctions, New Zealanda member of the Five Eyes intelligence network including the US, Canada, Australia and the UKwas the one country sitting out.

The NZ parliament has united behind the Sanctions Bill, with National, ACT, the Maori Party and the Greens, which is part of the government, voting unanimously in support. The main opposition National Party last year attempted to introduce a similar autonomous sanctions law, principally aimed at China, but was blocked by Labour.

Ardern said New Zealand had tried to work with the UN in recent years on relevant issues. However, with the Ukraine crisis, she said, the multilateral system had failed. Ultimately if we had a Security Council that was more functional, we would not be in this situation in the first place, Ardern added.

The move further exposes the falsehood of New Zealands decades-long posturing over its independent, approach to foreign policy. Washington suspended defence agreements with Wellington under the ANZUS treaty, which included Australia, in 1985 after the David Lange-led Labour government adopted a nuclear-free policy and refused entry to US warships.

Since then, successive governments have worked to rebuild relations with Washington. In 2001 the Helen Clark-led Labour government, supported by the left-wing Alliance, despatched SAS troops to the invasion of Afghanistan, followed by army engineers to Iraq. Hillary Clinton used her official visit to Wellington in 2010 as Secretary of State to formally end the 25-year rift and restore the two countries military relationship.

Wellington, however, retained a certain room to manoeuvre. Successive administrations have operated trade and diplomatic ties with countries that suited their immediate purposeparticularly China. Labour has maintained a delicate balancing act with Beijing, the countrys major trading partner, while coming under intensifying pressure from the US and Australia to more overtly join the anti-China confrontation.

The US-NATO war against Russia has now provided the opportunity to advance a strategy that has been under preparation for some time. A NZ Defence Ministry assessment released in December demanded a more aggressive military stance against both China and Russia, which were accused of undermining the international rules-based systemi.e. the post-World War II rules established by Washington to enforce its global hegemony.

The new law provides for sanctions on people, services, companies, and assets related to those in Russia who are responsible for or associated with the invasion, or that are of economic or strategic relevance to Russia, including oligarchs. It also allows for sanctions against other states complicit with Russias illegal actions, such as Belarus.

The first tranche of sanctions will be relatively straightforward, such as travel ban extensions and banking restrictions. The list of those banned from travelling to NZ has just been published and includes Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The second tranche will take longer to activate and will involve identifying more people to be targeted. Russian investment in New Zealand is only about $NZ40 million, but according to Ardern its not just about whats already invested here, but what might be invested here.

A host of purported peace organisations and pseudo-left groups are playing a central role in whipping up support for the intensifying diplomatic and financial isolation of Russia, while suppressing longstanding anti-war sentiment among the population.

The Green Party, notwithstanding that the declared centre-piece of its global affairs policy is to join with peoples around the world to oppose war, dutifully fell into line. Foreign affairs spokeswoman Golriz Gharhaman said the Greens were initially concerned about not wanting sanctions to affect ordinary Russians. Supporting the Bill, however, she declared: We feel it is focused on those most responsible and it has a higher level of transparency than sanctions regimes previously [proposed].

Among the most vociferous advocates is Greenpeace Aotearoa whose director, Russel Norman, a former Green Party leader, said the government was acting too slowly. It was necessary, he declared, to make it very clear to the elites that run Russia  that what theyre doing is completely unacceptable, and were going to freeze their assets if they continue to do it. Norman is organising a flotilla to Helena Bay north of Auckland to protest a locally-based wealthy Russian resident, Alexander Abramov.

The pseudo-left International Socialist Organisation has taken part in protests, including at the Russian embassy in Wellington, and posted material online with the slogan We stand with Ukraine! accompanied by the Ukrainian flag. Ukraine is depicted as an innocent party caught in the crosshairs between US imperialism on the one hand and Russian imperialism, on the other.

Standing with Ukraine is not an anti-war positionit is the slogan of the ruling elites in every capitalist country, including New Zealand. It means support for the current pro-EU and pro-NATO Ukrainian government which is falsely depicted as democratic and was complicit in preparing the conditions for the invasion. The branding of Russia falsely as an imperialist power only serves to diminish the central responsibility of Washington and its allies for the war.

The corporate media and business elite are joining in the demonisation of Russia. Sky TV has dropped Russia Today (RT), a Russian government-funded 24-hour news channel, from its services. A Sky spokesman claimed the Broadcasting Standards Authority had warned broadcasters of the need for particular care when reporting on crises. The move follows a pattern of censorship aimed at RT and other media sources with Russian connections imposed across the US and Europe.

A major liquor supplier, Liquorland, has also declared it will not promote or buy any more Russian products. The West Auckland Trusts, which owns 26 retail stores and hospitality venues, announced this week it was stopping selling Russian-made products and would replace their shelves with a Ukrainian flag.

In the increasingly foetid political atmosphere, reports are emerging of New Zealand resident Russians receiving abuse and harassment, including children bullied at school. The Russian Orthodox Church in Mt Eden was reportedly vandalised earlier this week. Photos posted online showed red paint thrown on the door, and posters comparing Putin to Hitler. This came less than a week after a Christchurch shop selling Russian goods was vandalised with graffiti.
As COVID infections increase sharply, Australias state and federal governments are again responding by ending the token restrictions that remain.

Amid warnings that the BA.2 variant of Omicron will fuel a surge that could eclipse the COVID tsunami of December-January, the entire preoccupation of the political establishment is to continue the profit-driven live with the virus program, whatever the consequences in illness and death.

Having dispensed with almost all safety measures as Omicron entered the country in December, Australias governments are now ending any semblance of a coordinated, society-wide public health response to the pandemic. Their policies are the same as those of Prime Minister Boris Johnson in Britain and President Joe Biden in the US.

On Friday, the Labor Party-majority national cabinet held its latest meeting on COVID. The extra-constitutional body, composed of Prime Minister Scott Morrisons Liberal-National government and the state and territory administrations, has dictated coronavirus policies by decree for most of the past two years.

Scott Morrison addresses National Press Club [Image: ABC News screen shot]

Fridays document declared as a priority transition[ing] to no longer requiring quarantining of all close contacts as soon as possible. During the height of the last Omicron wave, which has still not ended, governments neutered close contact rules, essentially excluding all workplace transmission.

Only individuals who lived with someone who had tested COVID-positive were deemed close contacts and required to isolate, in most jurisdictions for just seven days. Now, even they will be compelled to attend work and study, despite being likely to have the virus, given the transmissibility of Omicron BA.2.

The national cabinet requested urgent advice from the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee on the proposal. This body has functioned as a hand-raising committee for government decisions. The only purpose of the advice will be to provide the policy with a veneer of medical authority.

The ending of close contact rules is the focal point of a push to keep COVID-positive workers on the job. The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing system was allowed to crash during the last surge, to justify shifting to less reliable and self-administered rapid antigen tests.

National cabinet has now decided to transition to not routinely undertaking PCR testing in otherwise healthy people with mild respiratory illness and promote voluntary self-isolation while symptomatic for this group. In other words, people who almost certainly have the virus will not be able to get a reliable test and will be permitted to forgo any isolation.

The imperatives driving these policies were spelt out very bluntly. It was necessary to reinforce business and individual responsibility for prevention, preparedness and response efforts. As with the countrys ongoing flooding crisis, individuals are on their own and governments are responsible for nothing.

National cabinet said the priority was to ensure health, economic and social measures are in place to address the impacts of a possible new COVID-19 wave, including workforce shortages, supply chain issues, and pressures on specific sectors and individuals.

That is, the governments acknowledged that a new surge is likely already developing, which their policies will help fuel. The only issue is to make sure major businesses are not impacted by their workers having to isolate when they fall sick. In January, as many as half of all truck drivers were off at one time due to COVID. Treasury estimated total workforce shortages at 10 percent.

Morrison reinforced the message at a press conference on Saturday. After defending his governments criminally negligent response to the floods, Morrison declared that the country was now living with the virus like the flu. The likening of COVID to influenza, condemned by all principled epidemiologists as dangerous medical misinformation, is part of the official national cabinet program for the final phase D of the reopening.

Morrison said it makes a lot of sense to get rid of the close contact rule because it was starving businesses of staff.

The prime minister acknowledged that the mass reopening of face-to-face teaching in the schools had resulted in a greater spread of the virus. While the state and federal authorities are covering up the infection tolls, it is clear from reports to the Committee for Public Education that virtually every school in the country has probably been hit by infections.

Large clusters have emerged. At Castle Hill High School in northwestern Sydney, for instance, there are 650 confirmed active infections in a school population of roughly 2,000. In New South Wales (NSW), the twice-weekly provision of rapid tests to students was ended after the fourth week of term. The measure was largely cosmetic, but its termination means nobody knows how much COVID there is in the classrooms.

Mask requirements were also ended in the public schools, but a number of Sydney private schools are reintroducing a mandate due to rising infections.

Morrisons reference to the schools was not an expression of concern over children and teachers contracting a potentially deadly disease. Instead, he raised that kids were catching the virus at school and bringing it home to their parents, preventing them from going to work. The solution was to end close contact isolation!

The PM did not mention BA.2 by name but said, We discussed the mutations of the existing variant with Omicron yesterday, but were largely talking about the same virus. The difference with Omicron and Delta is like a completely different virus. The comment was made in response to a journalist who asked if there were any circumstances under which restrictions would be reintroduced. Oh no, I cant see that, Morrison replied.

In reality, BA.1, the initial Omicron variant, has killed more people in Australia than any previous iteration of the virus. Some 3,351 deaths have been reported this year amid the Omicron spread, compared with 2,239 fatalities in the two years prior.

Medical experts, moreover, have stated that BA.2 is so different from BA.1 that it should be considered an entirely new variant. Initial studies have shown that BA.2 is both more transmissible and lethal than the initial Omicron strain. It is fuelling a massive surge in Hong Kong, that is claiming a greater number of lives, per capita, than any wave of the virus around the world.

Hardly any cases are genomically sequenced in Australia. According to the latest NSW Health surveillance report, however, BA.2 accounted for two-thirds of sequenced infections in the final fortnight of February.

University of NSW School of Population associate professor James Wood told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation he and other researchers forecast that BA.2 would account for 90 percent of infections in the state by the end of the month.

NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard predicted that cases could double in six weeks. But the NSW government rejected advice from the state health authorities for the reintroduction of indoor mask mandates and density limits on venues. All the other governments, Labor and Liberal-National alike, hold the same position.

In Western Australia (WA), over 4,000 infections are being recorded nearly every day, after the state Labor government abandoned a suppression policy that had prevented an Omicron wave in December-January. At his Saturday press conference, Morrison congratulated WA Premier Mark McGowan on this let it rip program.

In five of the past seven days, daily national infections have exceeded 30,000, with more than 40,000 on one day. In NSW, cases are frequently above 13,000, after having been below 10,000 most days for several weeks. Given the dismantling of testing, the official numbers likely understate the true extent of transmission several times over.

Even as the politicians and corporate media present the pandemic as a thing of the past, it is entirely possible that current infections are comparable to those at the height of the Omicron wave, when more than 100,000 cases were being recorded each day. Now the governments are unleashing an even more deadly variant.
Outbreaks of the highly transmissible Omicron BA.2 coronavirus subvariant surged across China over the weekend. According to the National Health Commission, there were 1,938 new confirmed cases of infection on Saturday across 31 provinces. The vast majority of cases, 1,421, were detected in the northeastern province of Jilin. Media reports indicate that the case count nearly doubled to just under 3,400 on Sunday.

In response, Chinese authorities have initiated emergency measures to contain the spread of the virus, including mass testing, contact tracing and lockdowns. Residents of Jilin City have undergone six rounds of testing, according to local officials. The neighboring city of Changchun, home to 9 million residents and Chinas largest automobile producer, has been put into lockdown. The mayors of both Jilin City and Changchun have been fired in the wake of the virus spread, the largest outbreak in China since February 2020.

Lockdowns, including the closure of schools, workplaces and nonessential businesses, have also been implemented in Shanghai, home to 25 million people and one of the worlds largest ports, where 64 cases were detected in one day. In Shenzhen, located on Chinas border with Hong Kong, its 18 million residents went into lockdown after 60 infections were detected.

These lockdowns, part of Chinas Zero COVID public health policy, have been denounced by the Western media as draconian (the Associated Press). Other outlets have been more reserved, such as the Guardian, calling the effort challenging. All only acknowledge in passing that, in pursuing such a scientifically guided policy to fight the pandemic, China has only suffered 4,636 coronavirus deaths since December 2019, and only four deaths since April 2020.

Visitors line up outside an office building that was closed off after a case of coronavirus was detected on Sunday, March 13, 2022, in Beijing. The number of new coronavirus cases in an outbreak in China's northeast tripled Sunday and authorities responded with protective measures. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

Nor does the Western media note that previous lockdowns have proven successful. Outbreaks of Omicron earlier this year in Tianjin, population 14 million, and Xian, population 13 million, were successfully contained through such stringent measures. It does not require political agreement with the Stalinist government in Beijing to acknowledge these facts.

There is concern within China, however, among both the population and public officials, that even the immense public health measures that currently exist will falter in the face of the virulence of the BA.2 subvariant. At a press conference Sunday, Lin Hancheng, a public health official in Shenzhen, warned, If the prevention and control is not strengthened in time and decisively, it is easy to cause large-scale transmission in the community and a rapid increase in cases.

Hancheng then called on the citys populace to do a good job in personal protection such as wearing masks, washing hands frequently, ventilating more, disinfecting frequently, and maintaining social distancing, actively cooperate with nucleic acid testing, make every effort to block the risk of epidemic transmission.

The danger of lifting the Zero COVID policy in China has been demonstrated in Hong Kong. At the start of the year, there had only been 13,000 confirmed cases in total in the Special Administration Region. Restrictions were lifted just as Omicron and BA.2 hit the city, causing total cases to skyrocket to more than 706,000 in less than three months. Total deaths have shot up from 213 to 3,993, with the city attaining the highest per capita daily death rate in the world.

If such an approach were taken across China, millions would be infected within weeks and tens of thousands would be dead.

The Omicron BA.2 subvariant has also begun surging across Europe. Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Switzerland and the United Kingdom have all seen sharp upturns in their daily confirmed COVID-19 case counts, many just weeks after experiencing a surge of the Omicron BA.1 subvariant. There are currently more than 63,000 daily new cases in France, nearly 68,000 daily new cases in the Netherlands, and at least 186,000 daily new cases in Germany.

Hospitalizations in Europe are also on the rise, indicating that serious illness from BA.2 has already begun to take hold among those infected and that it is only a matter of time before another wave of deaths begins. Daily deaths across Europe currently stand at around 1,500 deaths each day.

In countries where the BA.2 wave has seemingly peaked, such as Denmark, test positivity rates and deaths are still rising, indicating that their surveillance system is inadequate for knowing the true spread of the virus.

The stark difference in the evolution of the pandemic in China and Europe is a consequence of the complete surrender to the pandemic by the capitalist European governments. All restrictions aimed at preventing the spread of the disease ended in Britain on March 2. The German government is slated to end all mask mandates by March 20. In France, one negative test just two days after COVID-19 exposure is sufficient to exit isolation. In Spain, the Socialist Party-Podemos government has effectively declared the pandemic over, despite hundreds of deaths each week.

Such policies are directly responsible for the 1.7 million official COVID-19 deaths in Europe since the start of the pandemic. A recent study on excess deaths published in the Lancet show that the true number of deaths caused by the pandemic in Europe is likely closer to 3.2 million. It remains unclear how many millions or tens of millions of patients across the continent had or continue to suffer from Long COVID symptoms, including potentially lifelong heart, lung and brain damage.

The rapid spread of BA.2 in Europe is also a warning for workers and youth in the United States, where there have been more than 81 million confirmed COVID-19 cases and nearly 1 million official deaths. While the first wave of Omicron in December, January and February has largely died down, data indicates that the descent has plateaued and cases of BA.2 are now on the rise.

Despite knowing that the next surge of the pandemic is just around the corner, the Biden administration has abandoned all public health measures. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) now only recommend masking when hospitalizations, not cases, are rising, which will allow the pandemic to spread for weeks before any action will be taken. Critical data such as centralized death reporting has been ended.

Nearly 200,000 people in the US have died from COVID-19 since mid-November and the start of the first Omicron wave. The policies of Biden and his advisors are setting up the American working class for an even greater tide of death.
The trial of four far-right militia men charged with plotting to kidnap and kill Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer ended its third day in the US District Court in Grand Rapids, Michigan on Thursday.

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer [Credit: AP Photo Paul Sancya]

According to court records, the trial was then suspended due to an essential trial participant testing positive for COVID-19. It is expected to resume on March 17.

Jury selection was completed on Tuesday, followed by opening arguments on Wednesday and Thursday and initial questioning of witnesses.

The defendantsAdam Fox, 38; Barry Croft, Jr., 46; Daniel Harris, 24; and Brandon Caserta, 33are accused of conspiring to kidnap Whitmer in retaliation for temporary anti-COVID lockdown measures she imposed in March of 2020. Three of the defendants are also charged with conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction. If convicted, all four face up to life in prison. The trial is expected to last a month.

The defendants were arrested on October 8, 2020, following the issuance of a federal complaint two days earlier. Their arrest and trial were the outcome of an FBI investigation that began in the spring of 2020 based on information obtained from social media that a group of individuals was discussing the violent overthrow of certain government and law enforcement components.

Initially, a total of 14 men, some of whom were linked to the paramilitary Michigan Watchmen and the fascist Boogaloo movement, were arrested and charged in connection with the terror plot. Six were indicted by federal authorities and the remaining eight were charged by Michigan prosecutors. Two of the six indicted by the US Justice Department, Ty Garbin and Kaleb Franks, subsequently turned states evidence and are expected to testify for the prosecution in the current trial.

The prosecution alleges that the plot was conceived in April of 2020, the same month that far-right militia forces held armed demonstrations at a number of state capitols calling for the lifting of temporary lockdowns and other social distancing measures taken by state governments to contain the spread of the coronavirus. Then-President Trump and his fascistic allies within the Republican Party encouraged the protests, replete with Confederate and Nazi insignia. Billionaire far-right Republicans, including the Koch Brothers and the Grand Rapids-based DeVos family, funded groups that organized the protests.

Following such demonstrations on April 15 at the Michigan State Capitol in Lansing and the Capitol buildings in Virginia and Minnesota, Trump notoriously tweeted: Liberate Michigan, Liberate Minnesota, and Liberate Virginia.

The Michigan plot was part of a broader conspiracy by fascistic militia elements to kidnap and/or kill governors who were resisting the efforts of the corporate ruling elite, spearheaded by Trump, to lift all pandemic restrictions and force workers back into unsafe work locations, factories and schools. Plots were reported against Virginia Governor Ralph Northamlike Whitmer, a Democratand Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, a Republican.

These plots and the forces involved were incorporated into the conspiracy led by the Trump White House that culminated in the January 6, 2021 storming of the US Capitol for the purpose of overturning the presidential election and imposing a fascistic regime.

In his opening argument on Wednesday, Assistant US Attorney Jonathan Roth outlined evidence that the plotters planned to kidnap Whitmer at her vacation home in Elk Rapids, Michigan, hogtie her, blow up a nearby bridge and kill any police who sought to stop them. Roth told the jury: To accomplish that, they would shoot, blow up and kill anybody who got in their way, in their own words, creating a war zone here in Michigan.

Citing evidence provided by informants and surveillance of the defendants, Roth said they cased Whitmers vacation house, drew up maps, held training exercises, conducted target shooting using human silhouettes, and built practice bombs.

This was not just talk, he said. Their actions were louder than and just as disturbing as their words. It is their actions that show just how serious they were about doing this.

Roth said the defendants were followers of the far-right Boogaloo movement, which calls for a second American Civil War. Prosecutors showed the jury a photo of alleged ringleader Adam Fox carrying a rifle on the lawn of the Michigan State Capitol in 2020, wearing the standard Boogaloo attirea floral Hawaiian shirt.

As for the defendants words, he cited Fox, as saying, We just want the bitch, we want the tyrant bitch. Other suspects talked about murdering her and crushing her skull.

Defendant Barry Croft, Jr. was recorded in April 2020 as saying, All its going to take is one state to burn out and hang its governor and then those dominos will start to fall.

All four defense attorneys presented their clients as individuals enraged by the pandemic restrictions who made violent boasts among themselves, often under the influence of drugs, but never intended to carry out their threats and violated no laws. They were, according to the defense narrative, merely hapless victims of an FBI plot to entrap them and set them up for prosecution.

Christopher Gibbons, who represents Fox, played up the alleged role of Dan, an undercover informant. Gibbons said it was Dan who recorded conversations by members of the group and took the lead in planning actions and training exercises.

Dan is continuing to provide access, but theres no crime, Gibbons told the jury. The Watchmen arent breaking the law. The Watchmen are talking. Theyre talking political talk, militia talk. But theyre not breaking the law. He described his client as a broke misfit.

Joshua Blanchard, the attorney for Barry Croft, Jr., said, This was stoned, crazy talk, and not a plan. Referring to a militia meeting in Dublin, Ohio, he said, Virtually everyone there was stoned, absolutely bonkers, out-of-their mind stoned.

The presiding judge, Robert James Jonker, is a George W. Bush appointee. Jonker allowed a motion to release the names and identities of the FBI informants who will be testifying against the militia members. Before the jury was selected, he told the prospective jurors that they were not to consider the politics of the defendants. The only thing that matters is the evidence, what witnesses say under oath, and what the exhibits show you. Thats the only basis of your decision, he instructed the jury pool.
I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.  attributed to Albert Einstein

In 2017, the World Socialist Web Site published a series of interviews with leading experts on the subject of nuclear war. They spoke on both the inherent dangers of such a conflict, even of a limited nuclear exchange, as well as the decades-long effort by the American military, media and political establishment, to conceal the true horror that such a war would bring.

Today we are republishing the first of these interviews, in which Steven Starr, a senior scientist at Physicians for Social Responsibility who maintains the website Nuclear Famine, spoke on the fallacy that any country could somehow win a nuclear war.

The threat of nuclear war is now more acute than at any time in history. The continuous eastward expansion of NATO following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 has culminated in the US-NATO provocation of Russias invasion of Ukraine, which has already had immense global repercussions.

Thousands of soldiers and civilians have been killed in Ukraine and nearly 3 million people have been displaced. The Western media and sections of the political establishment recklessly demand that NATO impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine, in which NATO aircraft would attempt to shoot down their Russian counterparts. This would immediately provoke a direct confrontation between the worlds two largest nuclear-armed powers, with incalculable consequences.

Amid the war in Eastern Europe, the coronavirus pandemic continues unabated. According to estimates of excess deaths, between 18 and 20 million people have likely died directly or indirectly from COVID-19 during the past two years. A nuclear war would raise such a scale of death from the millions to the billions.

The pandemicwhich amounts to a social crime of staggering dimensionshas proven once again the willingness of the capitalist ruling elites to sacrifice the lives of millions of people, as took place in World War I and World War II. The same ruling elites are entirely capable of starting a nuclear war, which could quickly snuff out all human life and potentially all life on Earth.

The fundamental conclusion that must be drawn from the present drive to World War III and the ongoing pandemic is that capitalism is a bankrupt social system which threatens the health and very existence of humanity. The international working class must overthrow world capitalism and build a new society upon socialist foundations, based on nuclear and military disarmament, social equality and scientific planning.

All workers who understand the present dangers and the need to build a revolutionary movement to stop the drive to war and stop the pandemic should make the decision to join and build the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) as the world party of socialist revolution.

* * * * *

Bryan Dyne: First, could you tell me something about your background and how you became so involved in exposing the full consequences of nuclear war?

Steven Starr: Ive been fixated on nuclear war ever since experiencing the Cuban Missile Crisis in third grade. I remember the teachers huddled around a little black and white TV set and telling us to not look at the flash and to sit against the interior of the walls. All the duck-and-cover drills left an imprint on me.

Later on, I came across Carl Sagans book A Path Where No Man Thought: Nuclear Winter and the End of the Arms Race which was published in 1990. In it, Sagan talks about the atmospheric research that was done in the 1980s that shows the climatic and environmental consequences that would be caused by a nuclear war. Sagan and four other NASA scientists looked at the data collected on the global dust storms on Mars and specifically were looking at the difference of the Martian surface temperature when there was a dust storm and when there wasnt. Then they asked, What could cause something similar on Earth? The answers they came up with are volcanic eruptions or nuclear war.

A nuclear fireball lights up the sky (Photo: Federal government of the United States, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

This made me realize just how dangerous the nuclear arsenals of the US and Russia really were. Even with the simple atmospheric models of the 1980s, it was clear that the massive firestorms created by a nuclear war would produce enough smoke and black carbon soot to block the majority of sunlight from reaching the surface of Earth. The original nuclear winter research predicted that a war fought with the nuclear arsenals of the 1980s would create temperatures colder than those experienced at the height of the last Ice Age 18,000 years ago. This would leave the Earth virtually uninhabitable. The recent research found that the original studies actually underestimated the consequences of nuclear war.

These peer-reviewed studies done in 2007 predict that even a war fought between India and Pakistan, in which a total of 100 atomic bombs were detonated in their cities, would produce enough soot and smoke to create the coldest temperatures experienced in the last 1,000 years. This would significantly decrease production of rice, corn and grain crops for several years, and the latest estimates from medical experts predict that as many as 2 billion people would starve as a result.

This modern research also shows how the hot smoke in the stratosphere would produce ozone losses of 20 to 50 percent over populated areas in the Northern hemisphere. A fair-skinned individual outside in June during mid-day could get a painful sunburn in as little as six minutes. And a war fought with existing US and Russian nuclear arsenals is predicted to make agriculture impossible for a decade or longer, dooming most people to die from a nuclear famine.

Beginning in the late 1990s, I began to wonder why more research wasnt being done on this topic, especially since the nuclear arsenals had changed significantly and because climate models had come a long way since the first study was done in 1983. Vastly improved computers allowed us to study the impact of nuclear war, not just the effects of a single weapon. What I learned was that there had been an active attempt to suppress this research and it had been done in a variety of ways.

First was a study published by the National Center for Atmospheric Research in 1986 by Starley Thompson and Stephen Schneider, which claimed that the original nuclear winter studies overestimated the amount of soot that would be tossed into the upper atmosphere. Starley and Schneider used a primitive model (with a 20-day run) to incorrectly claim that only 50 percent of the smoke generated from the nuclear explosions would make it into the stratosphere and that the rest would be rained out. The phrase nuclear autumn was derived from this non-peer reviewed study and was used to belittle the previous work.

The nuclear autumn story was published by Foreign Affairs and was then spread to a variety of news outlets including National Review, the Wall Street Journal, Time magazine and the New York Times. In 2000, Discover magazine even included nuclear winter in its list of The Twenty Greatest Scientific Blunders in History.

After the success of the smear campaign against nuclear winter, most people eventually accepted this narrative and funding for new research dried up. This had a big impact on the public, who got the impression that the nuclear winter theory had been disproven. As a result, this issue is hardly ever talked about now in the mainstream media.

BD: Do you think there were political pressures involved in turning nuclear winter into nuclear autumn?

SS: There was definitely a lot of backlash from various industrial and military interests against the first nuclear winter research. The scientists were called frauds and the research labeled bad science. One of the reasons for this is that over the years, trillions of dollars have been spent on nuclear weapons. If the conclusions of the nuclear winter researchthat nuclear war is suicide for all peoples and nationshad gained widespread acceptance and understanding, it is likely that the whole nuclear weapons industry would have been shut down.

The scientists were pressured into stopping nuclear winter-related research because the funding for such research was cut. They should have gotten the highest award for making people aware of these dangers but instead they were persecuted. Taking away funding is a very effective way to silence the scientific community.

It didnt work perfectly. Sagan, for example, continued to give talks and reports about this topic, and many scientists remained interested and concerned. My first attempts in 2001 to help find funding for new nuclear winter research projects were unsuccessful in large part because most people I contacted, including anti-nuclear weapon activists, believed that nuclear winter had been scientifically discredited. When Brian Toon, Alan Robock, Mike Mills and other scientists finally managed to get the newest research done (beginning in 2007), it was mostly self-funded using the resources of their labs. Theyve tried to get funding from the National Academy of Sciences for more detailed follow-up work on the many catastrophic effects of nuclear winter, but they havent been successful.

Even so, the science in their recent studies has been peer-reviewed and has survived all criticism of the global scientific communityit is considered to be top-notch science. Whats more, the scientists were essentially quite conservative in their estimates and predictions. For example, their findings indicated that 7 million tons of smoke would rise into the stratosphere after the India-Pakistan 100-atomic-bomb war, but the scientists used 5 million tons for their estimates on effects. Likewise, for their two models of a US-Russian nuclear war, the largest weapon they used in their calculations was a 100-kiloton bomb, when in reality most Russian weapons are 800 kilotons, and many US weapons are 300 and 475 kilotons. Using these more conservative figures acted to reduce the likely thermal effects and corresponding amounts of smoke released by their hypothetical wars.

BD: So what do politicians and generals think will happen if there is a nuclear exchange between the US and Russia? Do they realize the environmental dangers of nuclear war?

SS: Its hard to get an answer from any ranking elected official. They always have a cadre of assistants surrounding them that make it hard for you to give them something to read. However, my friend Greg Mello, the secretary and executive director of the Los Alamos Study Group, was once able to pose the question of nuclear winter to the US Nuclear Weapons Council. This group includes the head of the US Strategic Command and is what makes US policy on nuclear weapons. Their attitude was essentially, We dont believe in nuclear winter. Their focus is instead stopping nuclear terrorism and other scenarios that only involve a single nuclear weapon.

This makes no sense. The United States and Russia each have about 1,000 of what I call launch-ready nuclear weapons. In the US, this means that the solid-fuel engines of the intercontinental ballistic missiles are powered up 24 hours a day, awaiting the order to launch. It only takes minutes for the president to open the nuclear briefcase, which accompanies him at all times, and give the order to fire these weapons. A similar briefcase also follows President Putin.

These launch-ready weapons are inherently dangerous. They are supposed to act as a deterrent, but think about what deterrence actually means. Its based on the idea of being capable of inflicting unacceptable retaliation on somebody. If you attack us, well destroy you. But classical deterrence doesnt say you have to launch your weapons in 15 minutes or less, it just says you have to at some point be able to launch them. The short time frame came in when the military decided it needed to launch their weapons upon warning of attack, before the attack arrived.

In other words, launch-ready nuclear weapons are essentially preemptive weapons. If the US early warning systems detect a missile launch, the President can order a launch of retaliatory nuclear strike before incoming nuclear warheads take out communication systems and weapons. Of course, if this is a false warning of attack, then the retaliatory strike becomes a first-strike and a nuclear war has started.

Moreover, if somebody has launched a nuclear strike against the silos in which your nuclear weapons are housed in, you dont retaliate by targeting their empty silos. You target their cities. Russia only has about 230 cities with a population greater than 100,000 and the US has 312. So its not that hard to wipe out a couple hundred cities in an initial salvo.

For many years, the entire global dialogue about nuclear weapons has focused primarily on the possible use of a single nuclear weapon by terrorists. This fits the official narrative on terrorism, but it ignores the existential danger posed by a nuclear war fought with existing US and Russian nuclear arsenals.

There is another problem with focusing only on a single nuclear weapon. Lets say NATO or Polish forces attack Kaliningrad, an important but isolated enclave for the Russian navy. Russia doesnt have the conventional forces to stop such an attack; would it use nuclear weapons to prevent the loss of Kaliningrad? Once a US/NATO-Russian war begins, how does it stopwhich side will admit defeat? Once nuclear weapons are used, what prevents more from being used?

The strategists often say, Oh, well, Russia will back down. What if they dont? And why would they back down on their own border? Any US/NATO-Russian direct military conflict will very likely lead to a full-scale nuclear war.

BD: You mention in one of your articles that the US is sleepwalking towards nuclear war. Is this sleepwalking or a deliberate policy?

SS: Thats a legitimate question. I agree with you. Sleepwalking was the most polite way I could say it.

To give an example, Foreign Affairs published an article in 2006 written by Keir Lieber and Daryl Press called The Rise of Nuclear Primacy. It was very disquieting, basically claiming that the weapon systems in the US had gotten to the point where it could undertake a first strike against Russia and Russia would lose any ability to retaliate. Nuclear primacy conveyed the idea that the US could win a nuclear war against Russia should the US attack firstexcept that Lieber and Press took no account of the environmental consequences of such a first strike. Robock and Toon tell us that the resulting nuclear famine from such a nuclear first strike would kill the inhabitants of the side that won the war.

Russia also fears that the US/NATO Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) that has been deployed at sea and on land surrounding Russia could be used as part of a US first-strike. This is because Russia considers BMD to have offensive capabilities, that it could be used as a mop up system to take out any surviving Russian missiles not destroyed in a nuclear first strike.

This has led to Russia targeting the US/NATO Ballistic Missile Defense sites that the US has set up in Eastern Europe, including the operational system in Romania and the one being built in Poland. Russia also sees a special threat from these facilities because they can also be used to launch nuclear-armed cruise missiles. This fact has been widely discussed on Russian mass media and the Russian people are demanding that Putin take some action against these sites.

BD: Given how dangerous nuclear war is, what do you think of the increasingly hysterical denunciations of Russia and the Russian government in the US media and by the Democrats and Republicans?

SS: Its very disconcerting to see the leadership of both the Democrats and Republicans to come out with this type of thinking. These anti-Putin and anti-Russian stories keep coming up on thousands of different media sources simultaneously, including the New York Times and Washington Post, which are supposed to be the newspapers of record, and it acts like a smear campaign. Almost all such stories are based on no information or false information and they have created a narrative that is pushing us toward war with Russia. There are no two ways about it.

A war with China wouldnt be any better. China happens to be a strategic partner of Russia. They also have 20-30 ICBMs that carry three-megaton warheads; each warhead could set 600 square miles on fire. China also has submarine-launched ballistic missiles that can be armed with nuclear warheads.

Yet there is no discussion of the existential threat of nuclear war in the US. This has to be the starting place for any discussion on nuclear weapons. If we have the best scientists in the world telling us that a nuclear war would wipe out most of the human race, that should be our primary concern. Why should these arsenals even be allowed to exist?
In recent weeks, the highly infectious Omicron variant of COVID-19 has surged across New Zealand and is now completely out of control, placing tremendous pressure on the already overstretched and underfunded public health system.

There are now more than 20,000 daily cases, up from around 200 in early February. More than 200,000 people have the virus, in a country of five million. The Labour Party-Greens coalition government admits that the real infection rate could be five times as high.

The explosive outbreak has undoubtedly shocked working people and public health experts internationally who previously saw New Zealand as a model for dealing with the coronavirus. For most of the pandemic, the country had one of the lowest rates of infection. Until October 2021, it had recorded fewer than 4,300 cases, and just 27 COVID-related deaths.

Medical staff test shoppers who volunteered at a pop-up community COVID-19 testing station at a supermarket carpark in Christchurch, New Zealand. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)

Two years ago, the government implemented a relatively strict lockdown, which eliminated COVID-19. It did so out of fear of a developing mass movement among tens of thousands of workers, who were demanding a lockdown. The lockdowns were initially opposed by the teachers and nurses unions. Subsequent outbreaks were also stamped out, and a border quarantine system was introduced, saving thousands of lives and allowing daily life to proceed with few restrictions for most of 2020 and 2021.

Internationally, governments imposed partial lockdowns and other public health restrictions only with extreme reluctance and to prevent strikes and walkouts by the working class. These measures, which were never sufficient to stop the pandemic, were viewed by big business as an unacceptable imposition on the right to make profits. All governments, with the exception of China, adopted the policy of prioritising profit and production over life. The official underestimated figure of more than six million dead was the result of the conscious decisions of capitalist governments.

According to the Economist s modelling, the pandemic has killed about 20 million people worldwide. While governments increasingly act as though the pandemic is over, and the media has largely dropped COVID from the top storiesreplaced by warmongering against Russia over UkraineOmicron continues to kill about 50,000 people per week. There are fears that the more dangerous BA.2 Omicron variant is causing a new global surge.

The pandemics horrific death toll, comparable to that of World War I, was entirely preventable; it is the outcome of political decisions that have prioritised profits and production over the lives of working people.

In October last year, the New Zealand government succumbed to intense pressure from big business and from other countries, to ditch its elimination policy. This included the intervention in September of former Prime Minister and banker John Key, who lambasted the government for creating a smug hermit kingdom comparable to North Korea.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced the transition away from elimination in the middle of a Delta outbreak on the basis that it was no longer possible to contain outbreaks. The decision to scrap restrictions came two days after an anti-lockdown rally in Auckland, led by the far-right Destiny Church.

New Zealand joined Australia, Singapore and other Asia-Pacific countries which lifted restrictions around the same time. Politicians and the media adopted the mantra that COVID-19 would become endemic, and people must accept the deadly virus permanently circulating in the community.

In response to Omicron, which entered New Zealand in January, Ardern promised there would be no lockdowns, and schools and businesses will remain open.

New Zealands rate of infection is now one of the highest in the world. According to the Financial Times  COVID tracker, on March 6, New Zealand had 433.2 confirmed cases per 100,000 people, which is higher than the official rates in the United States, Britain and Australia during the height of the Omicron wave in those countries in January.

This crisis threatens to bring a tidal wave of severe illness and deaths. The number of COVID-related deaths has nearly doubled since the start of the year to 113 (as of yesterday). The government has admitted recently that the death toll was being under reported and has now been revised upwards. While this is still low by world standards, experts have warned that it is only the beginning, as deaths lag behind hospitalisations. There are nearly 900 hospital patients with COVID, up from just 14 on February 8.

Omicron has ripped through schools, exposing the government lies, repeated by the trade unions, that they posed a low risk of transmission. On Friday, Newshub reported that 75 percent of schools have had cases of the virus.

The grossly underfunded hospital system is already overwhelmed, and services have been cut back to cope with the influx of COVID patients. Hundreds of staff have been infected.

In response to the vertical rise in cases, the government has lifted more restrictions, helping the virus spread even faster. It has slashed the mandatory isolation period for positive cases and household contacts from 10 days to 7 and is dismantling the border quarantine system.

In a dangerous and criminal move, the Ministry of Health announced last week that healthcare workers in COVID wards can be asked to continue working while infected with the virus.

The Ardern government claims that the availability of vaccines means society can live with the virus, and that the Omicron wave will subside once large numbers of people are infected. These are bare-faced lies.

Firstly, just half of New Zealanders have received a third dose of the Pfizer vaccine, which is essential to reduce the risk of infection and severe disease from Omicron. Secondly, the experience of country after country proves that vaccination alone cannot stop the virus from spreading, causing significant levels of illness and death, and mutating into more infectious and deadlier variants.

Ardern falsely declared in January that it was nigh on impossible to stop Omicron. In fact, China, a country of more than a billion people, is successfully maintaining a zero COVID policy. Millions of lives have been saved through the use of isolation, quarantine, mass testing, and rapid lockdowns where cases are detected. If all countries took the same approach, coordinated internationally, the pandemic would be over in a few months.

New Zealands elimination policy was popular in the working class and contributed to Labours re-election in 2020. The decision to ditch the policy was made behind the backs of the population, in a completely anti-democratic manner, and against the advice of public health experts.

There was no organised opposition to the governments about-face, above all because the trade unions collaborated with the state and big business to enforce the new policy. Like their counterparts internationally, the unions herded people back into unsafe schools, universities and workplaces.

The unions do not represent the working class; these organisations speak for a privileged layer of the upper middle class, close to the Labour Party, who oppose any measures that could seriously impact corporate profits and the share market.

In addition to the perfidy of the unions, workers seeking to fight back against unsafe conditions and the soaring cost of living are confronted by the anti-democratic powers of the state. In an action without precedent in recent decades, the Employment Court on March 3 banned a one-day strike by 10,000 healthcare workers. The Public Service Association had already sought to undermine the strike by cancelling it for Auckland, the largest city.

In stark contrast with this attack on workers who have borne the brunt of the pandemic, the political establishment has embraced the extreme right. An anti-vaccination protest involving several right-wing groups was allowed to occupy the lawn outside parliament and surrounding streets, for three weeks. Its demands for an end to vaccine mandates were amplified by the media and the opposition National Party, ACT, the Maori Party and the right-wing nationalist NZ First.

While Ardern fulminated against the protest, her government is implementing the far-rights program for COVID to be allowed to spread.

The pseudo-left groups and publicationsthe International Socialist Organisation (ISO), the Daily Blog, Organise Aotearoa (OA) and Socialist Aotearoa (SA)are all, in one way or another, aligned with the government. They either remain silent about the policy of mass infection (like SA and OA), politely suggest that Labour should do more to protect people (like the ISO), or praise Arderns courageous leadership (Daily Blog).

All these middle-class tendencies seek to subordinate workers to the trade unions, with which they have close ties, and through them to the Labour government itself.

The Socialist Equality Group alone calls on the working class to intervene with its own, independent political program, to stop this rapidly worsening crisis. Workers and young people cannot accept the ruling classs agenda of unending sickness and deaths from a virus that can be controlled and stamped out.

The fight against COVID is a political struggle, not simply a medical one. It can only succeed to the extent that it is guided by a socialist perspective to abolish capitalism throughout the world. Capitalist governments have proven that there is no limit to the number of deaths they will accept in the interests of profit.

To fight for a properly-funded elimination strategy, the SEG calls on workers to form new organisations: rank-and-file safety committees, controlled by workers, should be built in every school, university, hospital and every other workplace. These have to be independent of the corporatist trade unions, Labour, their pseudo-left hangers on and every capitalist party.

The task of these committees must be to unite the working class in New Zealand, as well as internationally, against the agenda of mass infection. Ending the pandemic requires a globally coordinated campaign, utilising the most advanced scientific knowledge and resources.

Specific demands will include the temporary closure of schools, universities and nonessential businesses, combined with mass testing of the population, and a stepped-up vaccination campaign.

Workers and small business owners must be fully paid during the lockdown, and students supported to undertake remote learning.

Workers in essential industries including healthcare, public transport, food production and distribution, must be given appropriate PPE, including N95 masks, and be triple vaccinated. Strict physical distancing must be enforced. The necessary employment to allow these measures must be undertaken.

The managed isolation and quarantine system at the border must be reinstated and expanded to provide decent and safe accommodation for everyone entering the country.

Workers must reject the lie that these measures are too expensive. An elimination strategy can be paid for by redirecting the tens of billions of dollars that Labour has given to the banks and corporations over the past two years to bail them out and prop up their profits.

The billions wasted on the armed forces and intelligence agencies to prepare for war must also be redirected towards the war against COVID-19.

The Socialist Equality Group calls on workers and young people to share this statement widely with workmates and friends, and to contact us to discuss these urgent issues.
Anti-war protests are continuing in Russia, despite aggressive police repression and a battery of new laws criminalizing opposition to the war in Ukraine. According to the Russian-language human rights project OVD-Info, which receives funding from the European Commission, 668 people had been detained in 36 cities as of the end of the day yesterday.

Police detain demonstrators during an action against Russia's attack on Ukraine in St. Petersburg, Russia, Tuesday, March. 1, 2022. Protests against the Russian invasion of Ukraine resumed on Tuesday, with people taking to the streets of Moscow and St. Petersburg and other Russian towns despite mass arrests. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)

The previous weekend saw around 10 times as many detentions in twice as many cities. Since the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, OVD-Info has documented more than 14,000 arrests of anti-war demonstrators within Russia, with more than 170 people remaining in custody. Many others have been released but face pending legal actions on the basis of a slew of new laws and regulations that dramatically restrict free speech, as well as limit access to some of the most popular social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

One new restriction prohibits any speech or conduct that would distort the purpose, role and tasks of the Russian Armed Forces, as well as other units during special military and other operations. The maximum penalty under the expanded new laws, which attaches to any person convicted of knowingly spreading false fakes, is a prison sentence of 15 years. The vague language of the law, together with the severe punishment for its violation, opens the door to arbitrary persecution of any expression of dissent relating to the war.

While the anti-war demonstrations have largely been rooted in sections of youth and the middle class, and are politically dominated by the pro-US liberal opposition, they reflect, if in a very limited and distorted sense, anti-war sentiments that are widely and deeply felt throughout the population. The crackdown by the Putin regime is not least of all aimed at intimidating the many workers who have not joined the demonstrations, and at preempting the emergence of a genuine anti-war movement within the working class.

The Kremlin has now banned major social media platforms, including Facebook and Twitter, where many videos and statements opposing the war were shared and watched by millions. Instagram will be blocked starting March 15.

Police officers detain a demonstrator during an action against the Putin government's invasion of Ukraine in St. Petersburg, Russia, Tuesday, March 1, 2022. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)

In one short video that has been viewed nearly 10 million times, police in St. Petersburg detained a well-known artist and survivor of the Siege of Leningrad, Yelena Osipova, 77, who was carrying two large hand-made signs calling for the elimination of nuclear weapons worldwide.

Banners at demonstrations have read, No to war, please, and We are for peace. In videos posted on social media, anti-war protesters chant Shame, Ukraine is not our enemy, and Putin, withdraw the troops. A common chant, which can be heard in the background of Osipovas arrest, is the simple three-syllable No to War (nyet voinye), which has also seen widespread use as a social media hashtag (#).

A number of audio recordings purporting to capture the verbal and physical abuse of detained anti-war demonstrators circulated widely on Russian-language social media platforms over the past week, gathering hundreds of thousands of interactions across multiple platforms.

In one, dated March 6, 26-year-old feminist activist Alexandra Kaluzhskikh is verbally and physically abused during an interrogation at a police station in Brateyevo, a suburb of Moscow, after attending a rally at Komsomolskaya Square. In another, 22-year-old Marina Morozova confronts an interrogator who douses her with water, kicks her in the arm, and waves a pistol in front of her face.

The tabloid Komsomolskya Pravda, which is aligned with the Russian Communist Party, published an article claiming that the recordings are fake, warning that anyone distributing them can be subject to prosecution under the newly expanded laws against spreading fakes.

The recordings have been published and amplified in sections of the Russian media aligned with the right-wing, pro-western opposition within Russia, including imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny. This includes platforms like Novaya Gazeta, whose co-founder and editor-in-chief dedicated a recent Nobel Prize to Navalny, and Mediazona, a project founded by two members of the punk band Pussy Riot, which has received substantial support from Western politicians.

The reported abuse of anti-war demonstrators at the Brateyevo police station have also been carried in the pro-NATO western media, where they have been used to underscore the authoritarian character of Russia, contrasting it to its allegedly democratic adversaries. Notwithstanding their hypocritical expressions of sympathy for the anti-war protesters persecuted by Moscow, there is no doubt that a genuine anti-war movement in the West, when it emerges, will face similarly brutal repression.
In a brutal act of mass murder, the US-backed Saudi monarchy executed 81 men Saturday, the largest such massacre in the history of the kingdom. The Saudi government did not say how the executions were carried out, but beheading is the method it usually employs against its victims. Seven of those executed were Yemenis, one was Syrian, and the rest were Saudi citizens.

The barbaric action received only perfunctory attention in the American media, in sharp contrast to the saturation coverage of every alleged atrocity carried out by Russian forces in Ukraine. The White House and State Department did not issue any public statements.

While the Saudi Ministry of Interior claimed that the capital crimes for which the 81 had been executed included terrorism and multiple heinous crimes that left a large number of civilians and law enforcement officers dead, it gave no details of the alleged offenses or name any of the supposed victims killed by those executed.

The death toll was largest in a single day of executions since the bloodstained kingdom was founded by Ibn Saud in 1932, when he united the Arabian Peninsula in the wake of the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I by British and French imperialism.

The largest previous mass execution came in 1980, when 63 men were put to death after Islamist militants seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca in an effort to overthrow the regime. In 2016, the monarchy executed 47 people, including the Shiite Muslim leader Nimr al-Nimr, to suppress political opposition in the eastern provinces, largely populated by the Shiite minority.

Similar political considerations were apparently involved in Saturdays bloodbath, as Shiite young men were the majority of those executed. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salmanthe real ruler of Saudi Arabia under the nominal reign of his senile, 85-year-old father King Salmanhas focused internal repressive measures on Shiite opposition, portraying all dissidents as agents of Iran.

Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammad bin Salman Al Saud (Credit: en.kremlin.ru)

The regime dropped the death penalty for drug offenses in 2019, resulting in a sharp fall in state killings in 2020. This underscores the fact that Saturdays mass execution, which produced a greater death toll in a single day than during all of 2020 or 2021, was for political offenses.

The Ministry of Interior issued a lurid statement portraying the victims as linked to foreign terrorist groups, including ISIS and Al Qaeda (both of them past beneficiaries of Saudi government support), who targeted government officials and vital economic sites, killed police and planted land mines, all without any evidence. The ministry did not even bother to present confessions extracted from the prisoners.

Some prisoners were said to be linked to the Houthis, the Yemeni group that overthrew a Saudi-backed regime and has been fighting a protracted war against Saudi military intervention in that country since 2015.

Human rights groups, including those formed by Saudi dissidents in exile, condemned the executions and said that the majority of the victims were from the brutally oppressed Shiite minority in the eastern region.

Reprieve, an advocacy group that tracks Saudi executions, said in a statement, The world should know by now that when Mohammed bin Salman promises reform, bloodshed is bound to follow, adding, We fear for every [prisoner] following this brutal display of impunity.

The statement noted the upcoming visit of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to Riyadh, to beg for Saudi oil to replace Russian gas, and pointed to the contrast between US and European denunciation of Russian actions in Ukraine and rewarding those of the crown prince.

The Iran-based Shiite news aggregator Ahlul Bayt News Agency (ABNA) reported that those killed in the mass executions included 41 from the peace protest movement in Al-Ahsa and Qatif [eastern Saudi Arabia], under the false accusation of committing terrorist acts, and accused the Saudi regime of committing more crimes against innocent people, exploiting the so-called war on terror and making use of the current international situation, where the world is preoccupied with what is happening in Ukraine, to carry out a horrific massacre against a group of young people who only exercised their legitimate right of expressing their right to freedom.

The European Saudi Organization for Human Rights said that in the cases it had been able to document, the charges involved not a drop of blood, even under the rules laid down by the Saudi monarchy to establish criteria justifying executions. The nature of the charges in many of the cases could not be determined because of judicial secrecy and intimidation of family members of those put to death.

The group said it had documented cases in which prisoners had been tortured, held incommunicado and denied access to lawyers, despite the official claims that all the victims had full access to legal defense.

Ali Adubusi, the head of the group, said in a statement: These executions are the opposite of justice. Some of these men were tortured, most trials were carried out in secret. This horrific massacre took place days after Mohammed bin Salman declared executions would be limited. It is the third such mass killing in the seven-year reign of King Salman and his son.

Adubusi was referring to the long interview with the crown prince published in The Atlantic last week, one of the most shameful efforts to glorify the Saudi butcher. Bin Salman is portrayed in the article as an autocratic but liberal reformer who seeks to put an end to mass executions.

Such grovelingonce the province of New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman and other admirers of brute forcehas been out of favor in the American corporate press since the crown prince was publicly linked to the killing of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi, a regular op-ed contributor of the Washington Post. Khashoggi was murdered and dismembered inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey in 2018, by a hit squad dispatched by bin Salman.

The Saudi regime has been emboldened by the US-led war hysteria over Ukraine, not only to intensify its internal repression, but also to step up its near-genocidal war in Yemen. The assault on Yemen which began in 2015 has driven millions to the brink of starvation, creating what international agencies have characterized as the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, with more than 377,000 dead. The US government has been the principal enabler of these attacks, providing targeting information and replenishing Saudi weapons stockpiles.

According to a report Sunday in the Wall Street Journal, Saudi-led forces in Yemen carried out more than 700 airstrikes in February, the most since 2018, killing hundreds of Yemeni civilians. Most of the bombing raids have been focused on the oil-rich Marib area, where a Houthi offensive threatens to take the last significant portion of northern Yemen still under control of the Saudi puppet regime of ousted president Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi.
25 years ago: Worker protests sweep Europe

German coal miners demonstrating, 1997

On March 16, 1997, over 100,000 workers from Belgium and throughout Europe descended on the capital city of Brussels to protest against mass layoffs and the destruction of social conditions.

The Belgian protests were part of a wave of working class protest that swept the continent. Throughout western Europe, working people were confronted with mass unemployment, the destruction of social gains built up over generations, and the imposition of draconian economic programs. In eastern Europe, after a period of shock and confusion in the face of the social catastrophe unleashed by the reintroduction of the capitalist free market, workers began to assert their class interests.

In Russia, March 27 saw the largest working class demonstrations since the Stalinist bureaucracy liquidated the Soviet Union in 1991, with millions of workers going on strike and marching in demonstrations. In Germany, angry coalminers occupied the capital of Bonn for three days to protest government plans to cut subsidies to the mining industry and wipe out thousands of jobs. In France, tens of thousands of interns and residents struck hospitals and staged demonstrations in the last week of March to protest a freeze on health spending. In Italy, over 300,000 workers joined demonstrations against the center-left government of Romano Prodi, demanding an end to attacks on social benefits.

The spontaneous actions in defense of jobs and living conditions provoked crises within several European governments and raised anxiety within ruling circles throughout the continent over the potential for social discontent and working class struggles spilling across national boundaries.

The Belgian protest, in particular, suggested a growing international consciousness among European workers. It came in response to French carmaker Renaults decision to shut down its plant in Vilvoorde, throwing 3,100 workers onto unemployment lines. In the wake of the announcement on the Belgian facility, it was revealed that the automaker also planned to eliminate the jobs of another 3,700 workers at plants throughout France. An estimated 3,000 more jobs were at stake at parts companies which supplied the Belgian plant.

The day after Renault announced plans to cut its French workforce, Belgian workers met and voted unanimously to march on the Renault factory over the border in France to make a direct appeal to French workers. Official unions, the CGT and CFDT, made no call for strike action, but in response to the appeal hundreds of French workers walked out to join the demonstration by their Belgian counterparts and representatives from the European Federation of Engineering Workers called its first-ever Europe-wide warning strike. Actions then developed far beyond what had originally been planned by the union bureaucracy. Workers also descended on Paris from throughout Europe to demonstrate outside company headquarters.

50 years ago: Striking Spanish shipbuilders fight with police

A recent photo of the port of Ferrol

On March 20, 1972, a strike by Spanish shipbuilders working the El Ferrol Naval Base ended in defeat after escalating into street fighting between workers and the Francoist police over the previous week.

The strike had been called by the local organization of the Workers Commissions ( Comisiones Obreras ) in Ferrol, an important port in the northwest of Spain. Workers Commissions and all independent working class organizations were illegal in Francos Spain, with the fascist-controlled Vertical Union being the only legal trade union. Despite their illegality, the Workers Commission in Ferrol had massive support among the 4,000 ship workers. The strike was called after the Vertical Union attempted to impose a new contract agreement without a vote. On March 9, the Workers Commission held a meeting in which workers voted to reject the agreement and to authorize a strike.

The next day, the shipyard management fired and locked out several leaders of the Workers Commission. One worker, Ramiro Romero, was attacked by security guards after refusing to sign a penalty notice accepting his firing. In response, workers occupied the shipyard and formed barricades to keep out security guard thugs. By the afternoon of March 10, police were deployed to break the strike. They beat workers and threatened to kill them with revolvers and machine guns. Workers fought back and defended their barricades armed only with stones and iron bars from the yards. In the initial fighting police killed two workers: Rey Rodriguez, a 38-year-old father of four, and a young worker, Daniel Niebala. Hundreds of others would be injured and arrested. The town of El Ferrol was placed under total police control. Police blocked off several major roadways and bridges to the shipyards and cutoff telephone lines to keep workers isolated from support.

In Francos Spain, working class struggles, no matter how militant, immediately ran up against the power of the state. Cut off from revolutionary traditions by the weakness of their own organizations, and physically cut off by the Franco regime from the broader population, the workers ended the strike on March 20. There was never any official investigation into the events, and no one was ever held responsible for the killing of Rodriguez and Niebala.

75 years ago: US gains 99-year leases over military bases in the Philippines

Manuel Roxas and U.S. Ambassador Paul V. McNutt sign the Military Bases Agreement in Malacanang Palace

On March 14,1947, Philippine President Manuel Roxas formally signed an agreement granting the US 99-year leases over military bases in the country. The neo-colonial provisions of the deal, which effectively gave the US control over strategic sections of the archipelago, highlighted the sham character of Washingtons decision to grant formal independence in 1946.

Among more than a dozen facilities, the agreement granted the US complete control over Clark Air Base on Luzon, the main military airfield in the country. It provided for its expansion to 130 acres. The deal also gave the US Subic Naval Base in Zambales. It would become the largest naval facility in the country, with an area of 262 square miles, roughly the size of Singapore.

All future Philippine governments were also sworn to enter into negotiations with the United States, at the latters request, to permit the United States to expand such bases, to exchange such bases for other bases, to acquire additional bases, or relinquish rights to bases, as any of such exigencies may be required by military necessity.

The agreement gave the US extraordinarily broad rights over the surrounding areas of bases under their control, potentially extending to entire villages and even cities. The US could employ any and all public facilities in the country, including roads, waterways, infrastructure and virtually everything else, under conditions no less favorable than those that may be applicable from time to time to the military forces of the Philippines.

The Philippines was also compelled to join any US war at Washingtons request, a provision aimed at ensuring the country would function as a key American outpost throughout southeast Asia.

With the Japanese defeat in World War II, the US had moved rapidly to reestablish control over the Philippines. The archipelago had been among the first neo-colonial possessions of American imperialism, seized in the 1898 Spanish-American War and pacified only after a brutal counterinsurgency war that killed hundreds of thousands of Filipinos.

The US had signed a secret agreement in 1946 with Roxas predecessor Sergio Osmena, for the future military bases deal. Shortly thereafter, it permitted the first national elections to be held, and granted independence. While the Truman administration presented this as a democratic and magnanimous step, the American Congress passed a resolution mandating that the US president could withhold, acquire and retain any bases within the Philippines, by such means as he finds appropriate.

100 years ago: British colonial police kill Kenyan protesters

Harry Thuku

On March 16, 1922, British colonial police in Nairobi, Kenya, fired into a crowd and killed at least 30 unarmed protesters. The demonstrators had assembled to protest the arrest and detention of nationalist leader Harry Thuku, president of the East African Association (EAA).

Thuku had drawn up a petition to the British authorities on behalf of the EAA against the taxation, land theft and forced labor of African workers and peasants by the colonial government, which was dominated by a small number of white settlers. In response to the petition, the British authorities arrested Thuku and imprisoned him on March 14.

Thousands of Africans assembled at the police station where Thuku was detained to protest the arrest on March 15 and again on the next day. The second protest was led by Mary Muthoni Nyanjiru.

After a delegation of men returned from meeting with Sir Charles Bowring, the Colonial Secretary, and told the protesters that Thuku would receive a hearing, the men in the crowd began to disperse. But Nyanjiru is reported to have shouted, You take my dress and give me your trousers. You men are cowards. What are you waiting for? Our leader is in there. Lets get him. She then led a group of women to pull down a corrugated aluminum barrier that surrounded the police compound. Nyanjiru was shot by the police or by white settlers who also fired into the crowd.

Thuku was exiled without trial by the colonial regime to Kismayu in what is now Somalia. He was not allowed to return to Kenya until 1931.
The response from Boris Johnson's Conservative government to the Ukrainian refugee crisis has been brutal and laced with breathtaking hypocrisy. Having played a leading role, along with the US, in provoking the Russian government into launching its catastrophic invasion, British imperialism is indifferent to the millions of people they have forced to flee for their lives.

Some two and half million refugees have already left Ukraine. Four million, and possibly as many as seven million, are anticipated. Of these, the vast majority are in Poland, where a largely voluntary effort centred on the countrys large Ukrainian population is seeking to house as many as 1.5 million people.

Women take care of children as they sit with their possessions at the train station in Warsaw, Poland, Sunday, March 13, 2022. More than 1.5 million refugees have arrived in Poland since the start of Russia's invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, out of a total of around 2.7 million people that the United Nations say have fled so far. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)

Following the invasion, the European Union (EU), on March 2, ordered its members prepare to receive a mass influx of refugees. A directive instructed member states to allow those fleeing to stay for at least one year, with the option of extending their stay to three, with no visa requirement. In contrast with the EU's general attitude towards refugees and asylum seekers fleeing poverty and imperialist generated bloodbaths, Ukrainian refugees are also allowed to receive social benefits, housing, education and be able to work.

Britain is no longer in the EU, and the marginal loosening of Fortress Europe's brutal rules to those fleeing the worst refugee crisis in Europe since World War 2, does not apply. The Tory government insisted it would enforce its own visa rules to refugees from Ukraine. Johnson told parliament, The EU already, because of its Schengen border-free zone, has its own arrangements with Ukraine. They differed for a long time from those of the UK, but what we do have is a plan to be as generous as we possibly can to the people of Ukraine He added, What we wont do is simply abandon all checks. We dont think that, that is sensible, particularly in view of the security concerns, the reasonable security concerns about people coming from that theatre of war.

By Wednesday last week, only 957 Ukrainians had been granted visas to enter the UK, around 0.05 percent of the total and 4.5 percent of the 22,000 that had applied to the UK. By Friday the figure has risen to just 1,305 visas. The government continued to insist on onsite processing of forms, personal security checks and biometric data capture before only those with close family ties to Britain could enter the country.

Many reports emerged last week of Ukrainian refugees confronting incompetence and chaos in their efforts to stay with families and friends in the UK. Despite Johnson's claims of a huge and very generous visa programme, the implementation of the Ukraine Family Scheme has resulted in hundreds of traumatised people becoming victims of a vicious bureaucratic roller coaster.

Many arrived at the British Visa Application Centre (VAC) in Lviv, Ukraine only to find the office closed and the next available appointments the following week in Prague, Czech Republic. VACs are scattered in around 140 countries, but access to them is through a privately run portal run by visa outsourcing outfits such as TLSContact or VFSGlobal. Refugees, who have left their homes in mortal danger and without documentation are being shunted from one to the other in pursuit of biometric data and correctly completed forms.

Marianne Kay, whose 79-year-old mother is trying to reach the UK, described the atmosphere at a VAC in Rzeszow, Poland, near the Ukrainian border, where people are gathering from early morning in freezing temperatures. Marianne told the BBC people were desperate, shouting at each other all time. Staff were overwhelmed and there is absolutely no way that people who work here can process so many applications. So its not working. People are very frustrated, very angry. They ran out of patience. If this continues for much longer, it does feel like there will be riots.

Marianne had to wait two days in Rzeszow to even get the visa application processed. She and her mother will now have to travel to yet another VAC in Warsaw to see if their application has been successful.

At the Brussels VAC just 60 visa applications per day has overwhelmed the poorly staffed service. Politico.eu reported an A4 sheet stuck to the VAC office door apologising if we are unable assit (sic) all of you quickly. A couple with two children and a mother in law were turned away because only one of them had filled in a form. They would have to return later with correctly completed forms to get fingerprinted. The family had driven 2,500 km from Irpin, near Kyiv, when bombs starting falling, have been sleeping in their car and have run out of money.

An Afghan man, with Ukrainian citizenship, his wife and three children abandoned his cosmetics shop to flee Odesa as the war neared. The family had been waiting for hours outside the VAC. He said that the UK always has been the most difficult country to get in for the refugees.

Over 300 refugees hoping to reach the UK have arrived at Calais, France only to be turned back by the UK Border Force or French police and told they too had to go to Brussels or Paris for their biometric data to be taken. The Home Office, with its massive resources, had set up a trestle table offering bottled water, crisps and biscuits.

A temporary VAC was supposed to be set up in Lille, Franceover 100 km from Calaisto which those turned back by the border forces were to be referred. Summing up the anti-immigration agenda that social policy is geared to, Home Secretary Priti Patel said the Home Office had not set up a VAC in Calais on the pretext it might attract people considering the desperate trip across the English Channel by inflatable dinghy.

The Daily Mail reported hundreds making their way from Calais to Lille only to find that the pop-up VAC did not yet exist. 22-year-old Roksolana, told the Mail, 'We were told that the visa centre would be open for business on Thursday but nothing's happened. It's just one of the many lies that we've been told by the British Government.

Official brutality quickly generated broad disgust, with 182,000 people signing a petition calling for visa restrictions to be waived, forcing the matter to be debated in Westminster today.

Labours Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper called for the army to be used and more processing centres to be opened and various Tories, including Brexit hard right MPs such as Steve Baker, urged action in line with their support for NATOs proxy war in Ukraine.

So determined was the government to keep Ukrainians out that Patel raised concerns with the Irish governmentwho have allowed refuge to over 2,500 people fleeing warThe Independent reported, Priti Patel told Dublin she was concerned that the countrys welcoming policy towards Ukrainian refugees would allow them to reach the UK by the back door.

By late last week, the government conceded marginal changes. Patel allowed that biometric data could be collected after refugees had arrived in the UK, although confusion persists over whether a second route beyond the Ukraine Family Scheme will be opened. Patel's Home Office was reported as having conceded that families of people already in the UK on temporary visas could travel to the UK. This, however, was too much for Johnson. Instead, a scheme to allow third parties, such as employers and local authorities to sponsor refugees is to be introduced.

Once they arrive, desperate Ukrainians are to be utilised as cheap labour for Britain's collapsing services and building industries, all of which have been reporting disastrous post Brexit labour shortages, intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic. Founder of building firm Redrow, Steve Morgan, personal worth 881 million, announced he intended to fund 1,000 Ukrainian refugees. Late February, immigration minister Kevin Foster tweeted, later deleted, a comment that refugees could apply to the seasonal worker scheme, mostly aimed at recruiting fruit pickers for backbreaking work in farms.
Weather Alert

...The Flood Warning is extended for the following rivers in Indiana... White River at Edwardsport. White River at Elliston. Wabash River at Montezuma. .Multiple rounds of rain over the last few days will lead to minor flooding along lower portions of the White River and upper portions on the Wabash River. Additional rainfall later this week should keep portions of the White and Wabash above flood stage through Saturday. PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS... Motorists should not attempt to drive around barricades or drive cars through flooded areas. 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 MONDAY EVENING... * WHAT...Minor flooding is forecast. * WHERE...Wabash River at Montezuma. * WHEN...Until Monday evening. * IMPACTS...At 18.0 feet, Montezuma agricultural levee is overtopped. Fourteen hundred acres of low bottomlands flood. * ADDITIONAL DETAILS... - At 10:45 AM EDT Wednesday the stage was 13.0 feet. - Forecast...The river will rise to 13.4 feet just after midnight tonight. It will then fall to 13.3 feet and begin rising again early tomorrow afternoon. It will rise above flood stage early Friday morning and continue to rise to 17.1 feet early Saturday afternoon. It will then fall below flood stage Monday morning. - Flood stage is 14.0 feet. - http://www.weather.gov/safety/flood &&
TUPELO, Miss. (WTVA) - A fourth suspect is in custody for the December murder of a man in Plantersville.

Anthony Dixon, 32, of Guntown, was arrested on Friday, March 11, according to Lee County Sheriff Jim Johnson.

Hes charged with capital murder for the death of Justin Mayfield. Deputies found Mayfield dead inside a home on County Road 746 on Dec. 22, 2021.

Investigators determined armed robbers broke into the house. Mayfield fought back but was shot and died from his injuries. The robbers allegedly stole cash and narcotics, then left.

Officers found weapons and large amounts of marijuana and cash there.

The three other suspects are Gavin Jeffers, 28, of West Point; Christopher Clayton, 21, of Fulton; and Shanery Hampton, 29, of Macon.
Pick any memorable detail at random from the overview montage at the beginning of Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives.: an immortal dog, an undercover operation, a circle of picketers. More notable than any of those individual pieces, though, is the whole itself.

Almost a tacit admission that a four-part documentary series with this title wouldnt exist without things turning out badly, the show begins at the end, teeing up a tell-all conversation with Sarma Melngailis. In the ever-calcifying Netflix house style, theres the former proprietor of trendy New York eatery Pure Food and Wine, looking straight into the camera and describing how on the verge of turning her restaurant into a blooming culinary empire, the arrival of one enigmatic individual helped to upend it all.

More from IndieWire

Much like the reputation of Pure Food and Wine in an enthralled subset of New York socialites, Sarma becomes the prism through which to view everything that made her the subject of media attention in New York and beyond. Her former employees and associates meticulously lay out the highs and lows of working at the street-level raw food restaurant, outlining a steady ascension that maybe could have continued were it not for the efforts of one other determined individual. Though he doesnt participate directly in the series, Bad Vegan outlines how the man who arrived in Sarmas orbit as ambitious Twitter mutual Shane Fox gradually became a slow-played agent of tumult in all those best-laid plans.

It doesnt take long for Bad Vegan to show Foxs veneer begin to melt away and reveal some more manipulative aims underneath. Its a key distinction that the series draws, acknowledging how someone could be taken in by the idea of Fox without also reveling in putting that same behavior on a glorified swindler pedestal. In some ways, constructing something so dependably designed to carry the viewing audience forward is a level-headed counterpoint to some of the more sensational instincts that a story like this Pure Food and Wine saga might otherwise call out for.

Story continues

Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives. - Credit: Netflix

Netflix

Chris Smith, the director behind American Movie and other rapid-response Netflix docs such as Fyre and Operation Varsity Blues, does include a few tiny stylistic flourishes that keep this from being purely a rote recollection of events. (Phone call transcripts pass by against hovering looks at the New York City skyline rather than against a sterile, black background.) But apart from one gigantic storytelling swing that comes into focus the more that Sarmas story narrows, this is mainly a vehicle for a behind-the-scenes companion piece to a tabloid fascination.

Its not exactly a secret, given how hes introduced in the opening seconds of the series, that Foxs presence in the greater Pure Food and Wine ecosystem  not to mention being a key part of Sarmas personal life, too  decays in some unavoidable ways. Bad Vegan includes a sizable amount of personal communication between the two that, if not proves, at least paints a picture of an unsettling, toxic relationship. The more that those Gchats and texts and emails become the focus, its more evident that Bad Vegan itself is not built to gawk at salacious details.

If anything, it builds an incremental case for how the slow boil of pressure from the restaurants growing spotlight, coupled with an emotionally fragile interlocutor with a penchant for dark secrets, could be a recipe for a kind of break with reality. With the caveat that much of the input for this project comes from people just as mystified by the insular decisions that Sarma came to make as the companys finances started to waver and dip, Bad Vegan takes a straightforward approach to showing how that muddying of the waters had real, tangible consequences.

The emotionless Instagram selfies and the fraught recorded phone calls on display here are not the stuff of lavish, salacious excess. Bad Vegan isnt demanding sympathy, but it does try to mimic that constant dangling of answers coupled with a fraught codependent relationship. Its a trajectory thats telegraphed from fairly early on, one where threats and disappearing funds become a series of tests to prove commitment. Theres a healthy dose of skepticism in Bad Vegan that helps it avoid framing this saga as a love story gone wrong, and maybe its most insightful decision is to emphasize how numbing that ratcheting strain becomes on Sarma herself. It strives to recreate that sense of exhaustion and frustration at a lack of a definitive conclusion that Sarma claims to have felt in the bleakest parts of this story.

Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives. - Credit: Netflix

Netflix

In that way, Bad Vegan isnt designed to be some grand uncovering of an unknown conspiracy, either. Aside from Sarma, arguably the main narrative voice giving this story its shape is Vanity Fair writer Allen Salkin. His outlining of events is largely built on what already worked its way into his reporting or is drafting on the other screenshotted headlines from Vulture, the New York Post, and elsewhere. Bad Vegan stops short of becoming a trenchant piece of media criticism, but it at least tries to grapple with the points where public perception of the Pure Food aura didnt match the atmosphere inside the kitchen.

Even as its successful in tapping into a certain sense of despair, Bad Vegan is always working at something of a deficit in unwrapping Fox. He and Sarmas relationship is the black box that everyone is trying to unlock, but that pursuit of answers and context becomes the preoccupation for the series at the expense of nearly all else. Particularly over the runtime of a four-part series, it becomes clearer that these friends and family members are mainly there to speak to Sarmas motivations. Getting a fuller view of the story preceding the spiral is at least a focus, however single-minded.

As tends to be the case in the more honest pieces of true-crime-adjacent deep dives, Bad Vegan is a story without winners. The book covers and the perks and the vacations shown here only end up being a liability and a fuel for the engine that drove this venture off a cliff. Theres a temptation to categorize Sarmas story as one with shocking twists and turns or one that maps onto the recent run of true-life facades that involves both a meteoric rise and a spectacular fall. But theres a sadness and hurt here that comes through more than any fascination with the extraordinary. However the various contributors to this project may end up categorizing Sarmas culpability (or lack thereof), hardly anyone is delivering their personal verdict with a smile.

Grade: B

Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives. premieres Wednesday, March 16 on Netflix.

Best of IndieWire

Sign up for Indiewire's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Click here to read the full article.
Cropped shot of a young woman looking depressed while staring out the window of a train

PeopleImages

Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is widely practiced throughout 30 countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, although the World Health Organization (WHO) considers the highly dangerous procedure a violation of human rights. During the pandemic, FGM cases skyrocketed to an all-time high in Hargeisa and Somalilands second-largest city, Burco. A survey found that 61 percent of residents believed that FGM was increasing amid the pandemic lockdown, AP News noted, but sadly, Somaliland had the highest rate of FGM cases before the COVID-19 crisis with 98 percent of girls between the ages of five and 11 receiving the dangerous practice. Now, some activists within the country are calling for a stop to the tradition.

How is female circumcision conducted?

FGM procedures are normally performed by unlicensed medical professionals in Somaliland. Using a razor blade and an anesthetic syringe, female cutters typically remove the external parts of a young girls genital area. The procedure can vary depending on the circumstance. FGM is usually conducted on young girls between infancy and age 15, the WHO notes. Many of the women in Somaliland undergo the most severe kind of female circumcision where their vaginal areas are sewn shut until marriage compared to the less severe form of the procedure where the clitoris or labia are surgically removed.

Government and health officials believe FGM rose in Somaliland during the pandemic because many schools were shut down, leaving young girls susceptible to cutters. The spiraling economic conditions forced parents to rush their daughters into marriage, for which FGM is usually a cultural expectation.

The procedure has dangerous complications

There are no health benefits for women and girls to undergo the dangerous procedure. FGM can lead to complications such as severe bleeding, problems urinating and the development of cysts. Additionally, the practice has been known to cause infections, as well as complications in childbirth and increased risk of newborn deaths. According to the WHO, more than 200 million girls and women alive today have undergone FGM.

Story continues

The procedure is normally carried out by unauthorized medical workers, there is evidence to suggest that some health care providers participate in the practice. This is known as medicalization.

Sadly, the cost to correct some of the medical mistakes from the procedure can be expensive. Health complications of FGM in high prevalence areas are said to cost an estimated 1.4 billion USD per year and are projected to rise to 2.3 billion by 2047 if nothing is done to stop the health hazardous practice.

Why is FGM still practiced in certain countries?

There are many social and societal factors that allow for FGM to continue in certain countries. Some cultures believe the tradition is a necessary part of preparing for adulthood and marriage. Others believe that the cultural practice ensures premarital virginity and marital infidelity. A few women undergo the procedure for religious reasons.

What is being done to stop the harmful practice?

When COVID-19 impacted Somaliland and other FGM-affected areas, activists and government officials were on the verge of implementing an anti-FGM policy, which would ban the practice for good. Currently, Burkina Faso, Sudan, Djibouti, Eqypt are the only countries that have anti-FGM laws in place, according to the WHO.

Government officials and the agency hope to develop educational programs and health initiatives to inform people about the high-risk factors of FGM and its potential health complications. There have also been plans to develop legislation that would penalize people who continue to conduct the procedure, but there are still a number of challenges ahead.

Many countries lack the necessary funding to educate and train staff to maintain these types of initiatives. Cultural and religious groups have pushed back against the proposition out of fear of going against their religious beliefs, and in the case of Somaliland, lawmakers are largely compromised of men who may not understand the health significance of outlawing such a harmful practice. However, Somalilands minister Mustafe Godane Cali Bile does appear to be in favor of change amid the rise of startling FGM cases. During a recent national television conference, the minister said that he was hoping the practice will be illegal by the end of the year.

RELATED CONTENT: The Sexual Awakening Of A Church Girl
Angkor Wat built by Suryavarman II this place is the largest temple religious monument in the world.

Getty Images

Mother Nature's light show at twilight  both at dawn and dusk  is no doubt one of the most striking sights to behold every day. But some locations highlight the experience more than others. So the sleep company Mornings.co.uk took a look at the best places in the world to watch the sunrise and sunset in its new study.

To determine the list, the company analyzed data from Tripadvisor in November 2021 by searching "Things to Do" using the keywords "sunrise" and "sunset" in every country and state.

"Places with the highest number of mentions of, respectively, 'sunset' and 'sunrise' in their reviews were deemed the best places to watch sunset or sunrise," the survey methodology explains, adding that any place with either word in its name was removed, as were attractions offering sunset and sunrise tours.

Crater of Haleakala volcano at sunrise, Haleakala National Park, Hawaii

Getty Images

Using that data, Mornings.co.uk determined that the best place in the world to watch the sunrise is the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Angkor Wat in Cambodia, which had 10,404 mentions on Tripadvisor. Next was Hawaii's Haleakala Crater on Maui, quite a distant second with 3,933 mentions, followed by the Taj Mahal in Agra, India, with 2,819 mentions. Indonesia also had a good showing at the top of the list with Borobudur Temple in fourth, Mount Batur in eighth, and Cadillac Mountain in 10th place. The Grand Canyon also made the list of best places to watch the sunrise  coming in at no. 5.

Dusk brings out a different list, with Key West's Mallory Square on top with 9,811 mentions, followed by the United Arab Emirates' Burj Khalifa at no. 3, and New York City's Top of the Rock at 30 Rockefeller Center ranking with 4,968 mentions. New York also is home to the ninth-place winner: the Empire State Building. Angkor Wat was named a top sunset spot as well, coming in eighth place. Others on the list include Florence's Piazzale Michelangelo; Indonesia's Tanah Lot and Uluwatu Temples; Australia's Mindil Beach; and the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

Story continues

People gather at Mallory Square in Key West to see the sunset as boats go by on the water

Jim Feng/Getty Images

The view from Piazzale Michelangelo over to Florence at sunset

Getty Images

For the full list, visit mornings.co.uk's best places to see the sunrise and sunset list.
STRINGER

China appears to be losing the battle to contain COVID-19, but its not yet ready to admit defeat.

Facing the worst national outbreak since the first wave of the pandemic, authorities have introduced lockdown restrictions in cities across the country, with production lines falling idle in the tech hub of Shenzhen and offices shuttered in the financial capital Shanghai.

Under President Xi Jinping, the Chinese government has stuck to a strict zero-COVID policy since the virus emerged in Wuhan in late 2019, locking down entire cities whenever cases emerge and using mass testing and strict quarantining to bring local outbreaks under control.

But Chinese virologists say the arrival of the Omicron variant and its new stealth subvariantboth of which appear to evade Chinas Sinovac vaccinecould leave that policy in tatters.

For those in the Americas or Europe, the case numbers reported from China still seem pretty small: Authorities confirmed 1,337 new locally transmitted cases in mainland China on Monday. By contrast, the U.K. is currently seeing more than 200,000 cases a day, according to the main COVID tracker.

But the example of Hong Kong, the former British colony that is officially semi-autonomous, is worrying. Omicron appears to be running virtually unchecked through the population of the island territory, which has registered an average of 40,000 cases a day over the past week despite widespread vaccination.

Worst-hit on the mainland is the northeastern province of Jilin, bordering North Korea, where many residents are restricted to their homes except for grocery shopping trips every other day. Jilin has recorded more than 4,000 cases in the past fortnight.

But multiple smaller outbreaks have also been recorded. Shenzhen, a city of 17.5 million people bordering Hong Kong, registered 66 new cases on Saturday, prompting authorities to suspend public transport, close factoriesamong them the huge Foxconn plant that produces the Apple iPhone. Residents have been told to stay home for the next week except when they are called for three rounds of compulsory testing.

Story continues

A prominent infectious-disease expert from Shanghai, Zhang Wenhong, said in an article for the Chinese business outlet Caixin that the outbreak was being driven by the Omicron BA.2 stealth subvariant, the most infectious lineage yet of the SARS-Cov-2 virus.

The Only Way to Resolve the Wuhan Lab Leak Controversy

Zhang, whose plain-spoken appeals for people to put up with lockdown restrictions at the beginning of the pandemic made him a prominent figure, said that the case numbers suggested the beginning of an exponential risebut China had no option but to try to contain the virus.

If our country opens up quickly now, it will cause a large number of infections in people in a short period of time, Zhang wrote, according to a translation carried by the Associated Press. No matter how low the death rate is, it will still cause a run on medical resources and a short-term shock to social life, causing irreparable harm to families and society.

Foxconn, Apples manufacturing partner, said it would use its diversified production sites in China to minimize the impact of the Shenzhen lockdown.

But from a wider economic viewpoint, the lockdownsboth in Shenzhen and the industrial hub of Dongguancould hardly have come at a worse time. Panic selling saw Chinese tech stocks listed on the Hong Kong exchange fall 11 percent on Mondaytheir worst single-day fall since the 2008 crashbecause of wider fears that China could be dragged into the conflict in Ukraine, or that Chinese companies doing business in Russia might face Western sanctions.

If China sticks with its zero-COVID policy, despite the spread of Omicron, one option is to insist that manufacturers introduce closed management systems, where workers live and work in a COVID-free bubble. The Chinese used such a system to protect last months Winter Olympics in Beijing, where staff and volunteers wore hazmat suits to marshal and test visiting athletes and even robots to feed them. Making that work in a megacity like Shenzhen or Shanghai would be harder.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Get the Daily Beast's biggest scoops and scandals delivered right to your inbox. Sign up now.

Stay informed and gain unlimited access to the Daily Beast's unmatched reporting. Subscribe now.
FIND A CHAIR: On Thursday night, designer Cynthia Rowley showcased her latest collection with an interactive presentation of musical chairs at Lotte New York Palaces Villiard Ballroom. While the designer opted out of presenting her fall collection during New York Fashion Week, she still wanted to host a fun event to reveal a collection of new styles, which are set to release this summer.

Eighty girls and guys  80 original looks. Its almost an all-new collection; the guys are wearing our cardigans and pajamas, Rowley said of each attendees outfit, all of whom the designer dressed for the event. Approximately 60 of the evenings looks  ranging from voluminous and playful, girly dresses of varying lengths to tunics over pants and more  were noted to be from her latest collection.

More from WWD

When everyones walking around, its like a runway show, Rowley said of the fashionable game, which was followed by a dinner party set with floral blooms from McQueens Flowers and faux colorful tiered cakes.  EMILY MERCER



WORTH THE WAIT: At 93, the multidimensional artist William Klein is about to get his professional day in the sun this summer with a major retrospective at the International Center of Photography.

The New York City cultural destination will showcase Kleins fashion, street and other photography, as well as some of his paintings and films starting on June 3 and running through Sept. 12. William Klein: YES; Photographs Paintings, Films, 1948-2013 will occupy the downtown museums entire space.

The New York City-born Klein got his start as a studio assistant for Fernand Leger in Paris in 1948. Trained as a painter, Klein became more widely recognized for his fashion and street photography in the mid-50s and returned to it in the late 80s. His fashion shots were featured prominently in Vogue and in a few books including Life Is Good and Good for You in New York. The retrospective will feature black-and-white images of Harlems street scene in the 50s and a shot from Nina and Simone, Piazza di Spagna, Rome, 1958. There will also be a 2005 convivial group image that Klein shot of Marc Jacobs and friends.

Story continues

William Klein, Nina and Simone, Piazza di Spagna, Rome, 1958.  William Klein - Credit: William Klein/Courtesy of ICP

William Klein/Courtesy of ICP

Klein once told WWD, I find it satisfying that what Ive done in photography has had so much influence on how people take photographs and what they look at and how they look at things. Fashion photography I couldnt care less. I did it for money and for all the possibilities of developing my skills technically.

William Klein, Antonia and Yellow Taxi, New York, 1962.  William Klein - Credit: William Klein/Courtesy of ICP

William Klein/Courtesy of ICP

Klein has resided in Paris for most of his life. Some of his early work will be among the 200-plus pieces on view, as well as more recent images from a 2013 Brooklyn shoot.

Klein has said, I came from the outside, the rules of photography didnt interest me. There were things you could do with a camera that you couldnt do with any other medium  grain, contrast, blur, cock-eyed framing, eliminating or exaggerating gray tones and so on. I thought it would be good to show whats possible, to say that this is as valid of a way of using the camera as conventional approaches.

William Klein, Dorothy Juggling White Light Balls, Paris, 1962.  William Klein - Credit: William Klein/Courtesy of ICP

William Klein/Courtesy of ICP

The artist also created documentary films about the former heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali, the musician Little Richard and the Pan-African Festival of Algiers. Klein also created fiction films about the beauty industry, imperialism and consumer culture.

Seemingly always in on the joke that he wryly relayed with his work, Klein once told WWD, You do things for yourself and you do things for other people, and you hope these things coincide.  ROSEMARY FEITELBERG

GIRL FROM IPANEMA: Brazilian-born, Milan-based designer Raquel Diniz has Ipanema Beach on her mind.

With good reason, she has just spent the past few months working on the first flagship for her namesake brand, slated to open in Milans Via Santo Spirito next July, where the floor will pay homage to her homeland. Instead of putting patterns on the walls, which get tiring, I went for a motif on the floor with different stones that nods to Ipanema but not in an obvious way, she said at the Paris presentation of her fall 2022 collection at the Hotel de Crillon.

Diniz, who is married to fashion investor and Formula 1 mogul Lawrence Stroll, came to Milan to study at Istituto Marangoni, before going to work for public relations maven Noona Smith-Petersen. To ensure she had an appropriate wardrobe to work events for clients such as Valentino  where I wanted to eventually work, the designer said  she put her design skills to use making outfits for herself.

People started asking me where I had bought these dresses. I sold one, two, three, then I had to give up the day job and work in my living room, she remembered.

Made-to-order turned into a ready-to-wear business in 2016. Presented twice a year during Milan Fashion Week, the range was soon picked up by the likes of Matchesfashion, Net-a-porter, Harrods, Antonioli and the now-defunct Montaigne Market.

A look from the Raquel Diniz fall 2022 collection. - Credit: Courtesy of Raquel Diniz

Courtesy of Raquel Diniz

Poised for further expansion, Dinizs foray into America was curtailed when Barneys folded. And then the pandemic hit, and the demand for the kind of feminine and flirty numbers that is her specialty plummeted.

The opening of this 750-square-foot space feels like a corner has finally been turned, she said. It will carry a high summer collection, featuring her exuberant floral designs and knack for color  including her favorite, the sunny yellow of the ipe amarelo flower native to Brazil. Her pre-fall and fall lines, inspired by the graphic lines and contours of the Oscar Niemeyer-designed Palazzo Mondadori.

A new category for the brand is knitwear, which she feels fit the woman always on the go  working, traveling, interested in new cultures and new places, she designs for. There will also be upcycled leather jewelry, created in collaboration with Italian designer Maria Sole Ferragamo.

Working on this first flagship also whetted her appetite for interiors. Its opening a whole other avenue for me. Im in love with building things  maybe a homewear line, she mused. In the meantime, theres one immediate benefit she is looking forward to. My living room will be a bit more quiet, she laughed.  LILY TEMPLETON



POWER COUPLE: Tailoring Italian brand Hebe Studio is branching out with a mens line, unveiling new designs that blur the lines between gender for its fall 2022 collection.

Hebe Studio has garnered a dose of additional attention by dressing Damiano David, the Italian lead vocalist of the Maneskin band who won the Eurovision song contest last year. The artist contributed to a spike in demand for mens Hebe Studio styles.

Hebe Studio presents a mens line for its fall 2022 collection. - Credit: Courtesy image

Courtesy image

With Hebe Studio, we want to empower women, read a statement issued by the company, but we also liked the idea of how women and men can become accomplices in the way they dress, thanks to the suit which has no gender.

In addition, Hebe Studios suit enhances female strength and it is a statement piece that also brings out the androgynous side of every woman. It is definitely an evergreen, perfect for every season and every occasion.

Hebe Studio presents the male line for its fall 2022 collection. - Credit: Courtesy Image

Courtesy Image

The designers of the Italian label presented a collection of tailored suits for men in a color palette that included pink, turquoise, red, burgundy, orange, beige and green, and shirts in equally pop shades. The suits are made with wool, viscose and satin. The brand also introduced a selection of sheer and long-sleeved T-shirts.

Each suit is 100 percent Made in Italy at Hebe Studios atelier, with prizes ranging from 900 euros to 2,000 euros.  ALICE MONORCHIO

Best of WWD

Sign up for WWD's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Click here to read the full article.
An in-house Louisiana State Police investigator said his recommendation to supervisors to have a trooper arrested following the in-custody death of Ronald Greene, a Black motorist, was ignored.

Police video that the Associated Press obtained shows at least six of the troopers on the scene of Greenes arrest are white.

Lt. Johnny Brown, the head of criminal investigations in the LSP Monroe field office, told a legislative committee Friday that only once in his career was his recommendation to arrest a trooper not followed. The Senate Committee of State Police Oversight was formed after Greenes death to provide reform recommendations for the states law enforcement agency.

POLITICAL FALLOUT: Governor kept mum amid conflicting accounts of Ronald Greene's deadly arrest

Greene died after a May 2019 police pursuit when he crashed his vehicle outside Monroe. State Police initially claimed Greenes death was the result of injuries from the accident. An FBI autopsy ruled out that possibility, and police body camera video showed troopers beating, dragging and shooting Greene with their stun guns.

Col. Lamar Davis, superintendent of the Louisiana State Police, speaks about the agency's release of video involving the death of Ronald Greene, at a news conference in Baton Rouge in May.

Senators were limited to what they could ask Brown at Fridays meeting, focusing only on general questions and nothing specific to the Greene case. But the lawmakers attempts at vaguery were pointed enough to indicate they wanted to know if State Police higher-ups withheld information related to Greenes death.

Sen. Katrina Jackson, D-Monroe, asked Brown if a supervisor had ever asked him to exclude information from a report.

Im not going to commit a crime for anyone, Brown answered.

Accompanying Brown at the meeting was Gail Holland, deputy general counsel for the state Department of Corrections and Public Safety. Numerous times throughout the questioning from senators, Holland and Brown consulted with one another before he responded. At times, Holland prevented Brown from answering questions, repeating the ground rules committee chairman Sen. Franklin Foil, R-Baton Rouge, stated at the start of the meeting.

Story continues

CHANGES COMING?: Louisiana senators to review State Police use-of-force rules

AFTERMATH: Louisiana State Police leaders eyed in federal probe of deadly arrest of Ronald Greene

Sen. Cleo Fields, D-Baton Rouge, expressed his frustration with the inability to ask questions directly about how State Police handled their internal investigation of Greenes death. He suggested to Brown that he hire his own private attorney rather than rely on the state agencys counsel.

I dont need an attorney, Brown answered sharply. Ive reported everything that happened during that case.

Fields and Jackson then went to extra lengths to tell Brown that they did not believe he was involved in any coverup, describing him as honorable. Jackson also vouched for Browns long, unblemished track record as a trooper.

The committees recommendations for changes within State Police should ensure that officers such as Brown are able to perform their work without interference, Fields added.

We want people like him to wake up and go to work and not feel any pressure, the senator said.

Louisiana Illuminator is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jarvis DeBerry for questions: info@lailluminator.com. Follow Louisiana Illuminator on Facebook and Twitter.

This article originally appeared on Monroe News-Star: LSP ignored recommendation to arrest trooper in Ronald Greene case
A Providence man fleeing in a car from the Seekonk police was arrested after he crashed and flipped in East Providence, according to the police.

Albert Rosario, 32, is accused of striking a Seekonk police officer with the car as he escaped from them in a Home Depot parking lot, according to the Seekonk police.

Responding to the report of a larceny in progress, several Seekonk police officers went to the Highland Street store shortly before noon, but Rosario ran from the store and got into a car, the Seekonk police said.

Officers tried getting Rosario out of the car, but he got away, striking one officer and driving toward another, according to the police.

A pivot on police discipline in Rhode Island?: How officers' bill of rights might change

With the police in pursuit, Rosario struck several vehicles on Route 6, according to the Seekonk police. After getting into East Providence, Rosario's vehicle struck a car, then flipped onto its roof, according to East Providence Lt. Brian Mulvey.

The Seekonk police officer who was struck was taken to a hospital and treated for minor injuries, according to the police. A person in the East Providence car also had minor injuries, according to Mulvey.

Rosario faces multiple charges in both states, including assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, use of a motor vehicle in the commission of a felony and shoplifting in Massachusetts.

Charges in Rhode Island include receiving stolen goods, drug possession, and reckless operation, according to Mulvey.

jperry@providencejournal.com

(401) 277-7614

On Twitter: @jgregoryperry

Be the first to know.

Sign up for our breaking news alerts

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Man who flips car in East Providence was running from Seekonk police
A Missouri police officer who was shot along with two other officers during a violent confrontation at a Joplin shopping mall this week will not recover from his injuries, Police Chief Sloan Rowland said Thursday.

Rowland announced that patrol officer Jake Reeds family said he was being prepared to donate organs and that his "heroic actions" would "bring life" to others.

Were so proud, so thankful and forever in debt for his service to this community. ... Jake is an outstanding young man, Rowland said.

Joplin Mayor Ryan Stanley described Reed as one of our best.

I cant imagine trying to replace him, Stanley said.

Cpl. Benjamin Cooper died on Wednesday after being shot in the initial confrontation on Tuesday. A third officer, Rick Hirshey, remains in serious but stable condition, Rowland said.

Investigators work the scene of a deadly shooting on Tuesday in Joplin, Missouri.

Reed joined the force in 2017. He and Cooper were among the first officers to confront 40-year-old Anthony Felix, who shot both officers, stole a patrol car and fled the scene.

He later crashed the car and was on foot when Hirshey saw him trying to steal another vehicle and positioned his patrol vehicle to stop the theft. Felix shot Hirshey through the windshield and hit him in the face, Rowland said. Rowland described Hirshey as "trying to end this violent rampage."

Hirshey retired three months ago after more than 20 years of service but returned to the department as a member of the "crime free" team. He will face serious health problems and several surgeries in the coming days, the chief said.

NEWS AT NIGHT: Sign up for USA TODAY's free Evening Briefing newsletter

Felix was then shot and killed by Capt. William Davis, Rowland said. Davis, a veteran of more than 15 years who serves as the department's public information officer, left cover and exposed himself to stop the suspect.

If not for Capt. Davis actions, additional officers and citizens could have been killed, Rowland said.

Story continues

Joplin City Manager Nick Edwards opened Thursdays press conference announcing Reed's status by saying, The tragedy continues." He added that hed spoken with the father of one of the officers who was shot, and said that father shared with him that his sons hope would be that they would improve officer pay and fully staff the police department.

Police have not released any information about Felix.

Contributing: The Associated Press

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Joplin shooting: Second Missouri officer won't survive, police say
The next HBO Max original series is a look into the criminal underworld of '90s Japan.

Loosely inspired by real life, Tokyo Vice stars Ansel Elgort (West Side Story) as reporter Jake Adelstein, an American journalist who wants to explore "the neon-soaked underbelly" of '90s Tokyo. The first trailer for the new show features Jake declare that "I want to know the real Tokyo," and that "giving up and going home is not an option." Later on in the trailer, Jake meets a member of the yakuza, who tells him that he risks death by writing about the infamous Japanese criminal organization.

Tokyo Vice also stars Ken Watanabe as a Japanese detective, and Rinko Kikuchi, Rachel Keller, Ella Rumpf, Hideaki Ito, Show Kasamatsu, Tomohisa Yamashita in additional roles.

The title Tokyo Vice obviously evokes Miami Vice, and the connections aren't just superficial. Michael Mann, the celebrated director who helped create the original Miami Vice TV series in the '80s and directed the 2006 film, is an executive producer on Tokyo Vice and directed the first episode. The series as a whole was created and written by Tony-winning playwright J.T. Rogers.

The first three episodes of Tokyo Vice launch on HBO Max on April 7, with two more episodes joining each Thursday until the finale on April 28. In Japan, the first episode will land on WOWOW  the country's leading premium pay TV broadcaster who co-produced the show with HBO Max  on April 7, with subsequent episodes recurring every Sunday from April 24 through June.

Watch the trailer above.

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.

Related content:
Andy Serkis says Priti Patels debut feature faced enormous problems (Getty Images)

Andy Serkis has slammed Priti Patel during his Baftas speech for her response and handling of Ukraines ongoing refugee crisis.

The 57-year-old actor and director, well known for playing Gollum in The Lord Of The Rings, poked fun at the UK home secretary a week after her office revealed only 300 visas had been issued out of a total of 17,700 family scheme applications for Ukrainian refugees to come to the UK.

The crisis had earlier been labelled Europes worst since the Second World War.

A world-class director is a visionary empowered to change the world with a story that they are burning to tell, Serkis said while introducing the award for best director.

Bringing together and leading a huge family of supremely talented strangers on a difficult and chaotic journey, whilst hopefully creating an atmosphere that inspires inclusivity and values every single member of that family equally, he added.

So it is no surprise that Priti Patel on her debut feature Hostile Environment found enormous problems, the filmmaker quipped.

And that her follow-up movie All refugees are welcome but some are more welcome than others is a complete nightmare.

Fans applauded The Batman actor for calling out Patel, soon after he made the comments on the UK politician.

Kudos to Andy Serkis for giving the dig to Priti Patel in his Baftas intro, wrote one person on social media. Never let these f****** sleep.

Haha this was the perfect reation to that Andy Serkis condemnation of Priti Patel by Stephen Graham pic.twitter.com/Yu4ElPXQ1v  Catherine (@kazzie89) March 14, 2022

Another person added: Andy Serkis coming in with the shade towards Priti Patel, things you love to see.

Story continues

andy serkis called out priti patel very skillfully there. love u andy  #BAFTA2022  han  (@ithanbi) March 13, 2022

Andy Serkis taking aim at Priti Patel about refugees being welcomed into the UK.



King shit. DRAG HER. #EEBaftas  Darryl Griffiths  (@LegallyBOD) March 13, 2022

I am so here for Andy Serkis calling out Priti Patel, wrote another person.

woooo! Andy Serkis dig on Priti Patel! yesss #BAFTAs  Babs  (@BabsSheKing) March 13, 2022

Serkis also reflected on the Russian invasion of Ukraine while on the red carpet.

He told the PA news agency that its important to celebrate the arts as they hold humanity together.

Its a difficult situation having a celebration like this when such horrendous, horrific things are happening not too far away from here, he told the PA news agency.

But I think its also important that arts are celebrated because arts do hold humanity together, and actual freedom of speech and the power of storytelling is something that I think Ukrainians would totally applaud.

So if we hold them up tonight and reflect the enjoyment and the passion back to them, I dont think its a bad thing.

On Sunday (13 March), UK prime minister Boris Johnson was urged to sack Patel over her departments handling of the Ukrainian refugee crisis.

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said Patels response to the humanitarian catastrophe had been utterly shameful.

Additional reporting by PA

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.
Brett Johnson has touched down in the Middle East.

The Milan-based designer has opened a 1,200-square-foot store at The Dubai Mall, which is showcasing the brands spring 2022 collection in an oiled gray herringbone showroom with dark gray glass displays designed by Thomas Pheasant for Baker. Limestone pillars, oak veneer alpine panels and marble tables line the stores interior while a limestone facade exterior greets shoppers walking down Fashion Avenue. The collection itself is inspired by a romantic getaway in Portofino, Italy, reflecting Johnsons post-pandemic travels with his wife.

More from WWD

I am truly blessed to have such a prominent location within Fashion Avenue in the ultra-prestigious, Dubai Mall, which means my team has done a phenomenal job in their efforts to help garner this position within such a short amount of time of the brands existence, Johnson said.

The store opens just months after Johnson was named artistic director of the Washington Wizards.

Johnson considers Dubai to be the global epicenter of luxury and said being close to his contemporaries pushes him to work harder on his craft.

I feel confident in my design aesthetic combined with all the hand-selected materials from Italy and Italian craftsmanship to stand tall against the major brands, he said. As a true and pure luxury African American designer, this is a groundbreaking feat [that] Im immensely honored to hopefully inspire others to pursue this lane. The fact that I am a Black luxury designer was the crux of my architectural decision to have a false perspective exterior facade of the store  Ill let others figure out the picture Im trying to paint and hidden secret details inside the boutique.

The Brett Johnson brand is also available in over 40 stores and online on Saks Fifth Avenue, Farfetch and Yoox.

Sign up for WWD's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Click here to read the full article.
Sarah Godlewski, Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate

Democrat Sarah Godlewski is going up Monday with her first broadcast and cable TV ad buy in her bid to claim the party's U.S. Senate nomination.

The seven-figure buy will run for the next several weeks and includes broadcast, cable and digital messages in every major market across the state.

In the 30-second ad, Godlewski mentions her role as state treasurer while taking a swipe at Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, who is running for a third term.

Subscribe to our On Wisconsin Politics newsletter for the week's political news explained.

"Dairy farms disappearing, prices up, COVID still not gone," Godlewski says in the ad. "And whats Ron Johnson done? Voted against new jobs and told us to take mouthwash to cure COVID."

Godlewski's jab concerned Johnson's comment in December that mouthwash was one way to protect from COVID-19. But the manufacturer of Listerine and medical experts said studies of the idea hadn't yet concluded it was a proven antidote.

More: U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan can't get U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson on the phone and accuses the Oshkosh Republican of being homophobic

More: Democrat Sarah Godlewski puts $1 million in U.S. Senate campaign, hires 3 key staffers

The jobs' reference concerned Johnson's vote against the $1.2 billion infrastructure bill. Johnson said money needed to be spent on infrastructure but opposed the legislation for not being fully paid for, adding the country needed to "stop further mortgaging our children's future."

While Democrats have a large primary field, the ad space so far has been dominated by Milwaukee Bucks executive Alex Lasry, whose campaign has spent more than $3 million on TV spots.

Lasry's early ad push appeared to pay off in the most recent Marquette University Law School Poll, which showed him with 13% support among Democrats. Lasry trailed Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, who registered 23% support. Barnes has yet to air any ads.

Story continues

Outagamie County Executive Tom Nelson registered 5% support in the poll, with Godlewski at 3%.

It's still very early in the race as the candidates are trying to raise their name IDs as well as gather support from potential primary voters. Nearly half of those Democrats polled in the Marquette survey had no preference in the race.

Our subscribers make this reporting possible. Please consider supporting local journalism by subscribing to the Journal Sentinel at jsonline.com/deal.

DOWNLOAD THE APP: Get the latest news, sports and more

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Democrat Sarah Godlewski releases her first TV ad in U.S. Senate bid
Would Mikhail Gorbachev have invaded Ukraine if he, and not Vladimir Putin, were president of Russia? Most Kremlin-watchers would probably say no. Its hard to imagine that the architect of perestroika would have embarked on the wholesale destruction of a country of 40 million.

Its equally hard to imagine independent Russias first president, Boris Yeltsin, attempting genocide. Russian forces committed numerous atrocities on Yeltsins watch in two Chechen Wars, but they stopped short of exterminating the population and claiming it had no right to exist. Indeed, even Soviet Party boss Leonid Brezhnev, who launched invasions into Afghanistan and Czechoslovakia, did not pursue the kind of scorched-earth strategy Putin has unleashed on Ukraine.

Historians call these kinds of what if questions counterfactuals, and they are useful because they help identify the factor or factors that best explain some phenomenon. Because neither Gorbachev nor Yeltsin nor Brezhnev can be imagined attacking Ukraines civilian population as indiscriminately as Putin, it follows that the driver behind the genocidal war is Putin.

Some analysts argue that geopolitics is more important than individuals, that any Russian leader would have felt impelled to protect the country against NATO enlargement and possible Ukrainian membership.

That may very well be true, but the counterfactual demonstrates that not every Russian leader would have tried to counter NATO by invading and destroying Ukraine and its people. Gorbachev would probably have engaged the West in negotiations. Yeltsin might have blustered at first, but he too would have ultimately sat down at the table with Western interlocutors. Brezhnev would have delivered a lengthy speech about Western imperialism and he might have even invaded, but he would have done his best to keep the destruction to a minimum, if only because Ukrainians, like the Czechs and Slovaks he liberated in 1968, were fellow Slavs in need of their own liberation from capitalist imperialists.

Story continues

In a word, no Putin, no war of destruction, what the Nazis called a Vernichtungskrieg.

But the centrality of Putins role in the war goes beyond his personality and psyche, which may or may not have been warped by two years of Covid-induced isolation in a bunker and malformed by his many years in the KGB. Putin has also constructed a type of regime with himself as its indispensable core. A closer look at this regime helps clarify the nature of the threat Putin poses not just to Ukraine but to the rest of the world.

Putin is the undisputed leader of an authoritarian political system he built over the last 20 years. Unlike Yeltsin or Gorbachev or Brezhnev, he is a charismatic leader who courts praise from the masses and elites and has constructed a personality cult that features him as a hypermasculine man who bares his chest and carries long rifles. As Putins deputy chief of staff, Vyacheslav Volodin, noted in 2014, If there is Putin, there is Russia. If there is no Putin, there is no Russia! Which is to say that Putin is Russia and Russia is Putin.

Analysts have usually shied away from asking just what type of regime has these specific characteristics, preferring to say that Putins Russia is Putinist or merely authoritarian. But there is a word that many historians and political scientists use for an authoritarian state with a charismatic leader who promotes a personality cult. That word is fascism. Mussolinis Italy and Hitlers Germany fit the bill, but so does Stalins Soviet Union and Kims North Korea. Fascism, in other words, can be found on the political right or the political left. And, as most Ukrainians and many Russians agree, its now the best word to describe Putins Russia.

Fascist systems often have several other characteristics. They routinely employ coercion and violence in their everyday dealings. They promote chauvinist and racist ideologies. They usually have expansionist ambitions.

We can see these same elements in Putins regime. Putin destroyed Chechnya and is hellbent on destroying Ukraine. Hes ordered the assassinations of a score of political opponents and is snuffing out any wisps of protest against the war. He promotes a supremacist Russian ideology. And hes demonstrated his imperial ambitions in Georgia, Belarus and Ukraine.

Indeed, Putins trajectory increasingly resembles that of Hitler. Both men came to power after their countries experienced imperial dismemberment and economic collapse. Both promised to revive their nations glory and enjoyed enormous popularity. Both militarized and pursued state capitalism. Both relied on the army and secret police. Both identified their nations with themselves. Both promoted reactionary ideologies that identified one nation  Jews for Hitler, Ukrainians for Putin  as the enemy. And both used their national minorities living in neighboring states as pretexts for expansion. Both were also consummate liars and had deranged personalities. In this scheme of things, Putins invasion of Ukraine is equivalent to Hitlers attack on Austria, Czechoslovakia or Poland. And we all know what happened afterward  a Vernichtungskrieg.

Naturally, the past never repeats itself exactly. The horrors of the Holocaust are unique, and a world war is anything but inevitable  especially if Ukraine survives or even wins.

But whatever the outcome, the history of other fascist regimes suggests that Putins Russia will follow in their footsteps. Russia will be either aggressive and victorious or aggressive and humiliated. Either way, the war in Ukraine is not the end of the Wests troubles with Putin.

Its the beginning.
The escalation of Russias military offensive in Ukraine, including attacks on health care facilities, could prolong the pandemic, U.N. agencies warned Sunday.

Amidst the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which has already put health systems and health care workers under enormous strain, such attacks have the potential to be even more devastating for the civilian population, reads a joint statement issued by the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and the United Nations Population Fund.

The statement cited 31 attacks that destroyed or damaged health care facilities since the beginning of the Russian invasion, curtailing Ukrainians access to services, including vaccinations against COVID-19.

Humanitarian partners and health care workers must be able to safely maintain and strengthen essential health service delivery, including immunization against COVID-19 and polio, and the supply of life-saving medicines for civilians across Ukraine as well as to refugees crossing into neighbouring countries, the statement says.

Vaccination rates in Ukraine were low, even before the invasion. Only about 35.7% of the population had received two COVID-19 vaccine doses as of Feb. 23, according to Reuters. Daily cases peaked at 41,694 on Feb. 10 and have been decreasing since, although the war has impacted access to testing. Ukraine has reported 106,985COVID-19-related deaths during the pandemic.

Ukrainian health care workers have been told to take note of patients symptoms, instead of seeking COVID tests, Dr. Oleksandr Matskov, deputy director of the General Public Health Center of Ukraine, told The New York Times.

The war has upended life across the country and has eclipsed COVID concerns for many everyday Ukrainians.

People are not frightened about COVID anymore, Dr. Marta Saiko, head of the therapy department at the Clinical Municipal Emergency Hospital in Lviv, told The New York Times. People are frightened of the war.

Over 2.8 million people have fled Ukraine since the Russian invasion, according to U.N. data last updated on Sunday. Most have sought refuge in Poland, where border staff have not been requesting vaccination certificates or COVID-19 tests, according to Euronews.

Story continues

Families queue to board trains to Poland, at the main train terminal on March 14, 2022, in Lviv, Ukraine. (Photo: Dan Kitwood via Getty Images)

Typically, travelers from outside the E.U. are required to show a negative COVID-19 test result and proof of vaccination or recovery certificate to avoid quarantine, according to the Polish governments website.

Jean-Claude Cordeau, head of the Urban Search and Rescue mission in the Polish village of Medyka, looks after refugees making the crossing from Ukraine, including small children arriving with hypothermia.

COVID at this border crossing here in Medyka is obviously not a priority, Cordeau told Euronews. Not a priority for us, and not a priority for refugees that are arriving.

Still, WHOs Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove warned the pandemic is not over and said the chaos in Ukraine is a breeding ground for infectious diseases.

Certainly, this pandemic is not taking a break, despite the fact that we have this war, despite the fact that we have challenges and many countries are facing challenges right now, Van Kerkhove said during a WHO press briefing on Wednesday.

The BA.2 variant, also known as stealth omicron, has driven Chinas biggest COVID-19 outbreak since the beginning of the pandemic in early 2020.

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said Sunday an additional booster shot is necessary to prevent future infections.

Pfizer CEO @AlbertBourla tells @margbrennan his company is working very diligently to make a covid vaccine that will protect against variants & will protect for at least a year. pic.twitter.com/yf2baRwy4K  Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) March 13, 2022

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.

Related...
Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/Photos by Facebook/Twitter

As Vladimir Putin continues his senseless onslaught on Ukraine, his opponents continue to chip away at the fortunes he, his family and his cronies have amassed.

Activists have grown restless waiting for the authorities to seize some of their assets and have taken the matter into their own hands in London and the south of France.

Pierre Afner, who has been documenting Russian riches in the French resort enclave of Biarritz for years, was arrested on Monday for breaking into the lavish seaside Alta Mira villa belonging to Putins daughter Katerina Tikhonova. There he found documents including copies of Russian passports belonging to Tikhonova and her wealthy ex-husband Kirill Shamalov, son of Nikolai Shamalov, one of Putins oldest and dearest friendsboth sanctioned by the U.S. since 2018.

Afner also found a vast array of bizarre decorations, including fake songbirds in a gilded cage and rare art, in addition to books in Russian. He posted the treasure trove on his Facebook page just hours before police took him into custody Monday morning.

Facebook

A small group of squatters also broke into a six-story London mansion belonging to the family of Oleg Deripaska on Monday and hung a Ukrainian flag and banners declaring, The property has been liberated and Putin go fuck yourself.

The property, which is said to be worth around $65 million, is located in Belgrave Square, one of the most luxurious addresses in Central London. Deripaska was sanctioned by the British government last week for ties to Putin.

The protesters who occupied the property said they were from a group called No Fixed Abode Anti-Fascists and said they wanted to open the opulent property up to people fleeing the war in Ukraine.

Five squatters (two inside) have taken over a large house on Belgrave Square, they say belongs to a Russian oligarch.



The three on the balcony say they plan to open it up to Ukrainian refugees but given the large police presence outside, this obviously isnt going to happen. pic.twitter.com/jYnbnadFEc  Theo Usherwood (@theousherwood) March 14, 2022

In France, Afner also said he intended to open the villa to Ukrainian refugees. Neither the Alta Mara, estimated to be valued at around $3.7 million, nor three other villas along the coast associated with Putin, including one belonging to his ex-wife, have been sequestered by French authorities.

Story continues

Though Putin has never confirmed that Tikhonova is his offspring, the 34-year-old is the daughter of his ex-wife Lyudmila Aleksandrovna Ocheretnaya who he divorced in 2014 after nearly 30 years of marriage. It is an open secret that she is Putins child.

French activist Pierre Afner entered the villa of Putin's daughter Alta Mira in Biarritz changed the locks, and declared the villa was ready to accept Ukrainian refugees.



The villa has eight bedrooms and three bathrooms pic.twitter.com/OWCqghHtdx  Amichai Stein (@AmichaiStein1) March 13, 2022

Tikhonova, who is the director of the National Intellectual Development Foundation, made several appearances at Russian-led business conferences over the last several years. She was also among the first to take the Russian vaccine against COVID-19.

Afner, who also posted a video from the terrace overlooking the sea where he planted a Ukrainian flag, was arrested with the Ukrainian activist Sergei Troyan Saveliev, who was also photographed inside the Putin-tied estate. Supporters called for their release, posting on social media, The police should protect the people, not the oligarchs. Sergei, Pierre and other activists did not steal the villa, they did not take a single item, they tried to equip and prepare the Putin-Shamalov villa for receiving refugees, activist Vladimir Osechkin posted on Facebook.

Biarritz is one of a number of European sea resorts, including the Italian island of Sardinia and the island nation of Malta, that have wilfully sought to attract wealthy Russian investors in recent years. A number of their super yachts and villas have been seized since the start of Russias invasion of Ukraine.

On Sunday, British housing minister Michael Gove said he supported the idea that Russian property seized as part of sanctions be used to house refugees. I want to explore an option which would allow us to use the homes and properties of sanctioned individuals for as long as they are sanctioned for humanitarian and other purposes, Gove told BBC Sunday. There is quite a high legal bar to cross and were not talking about permanent confiscation but we are saying, youre sanctioned, youre supporting Putin, this home is here, you have no right to use or profit from it and... if we can use it in order to help others lets do that.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Get the Daily Beast's biggest scoops and scandals delivered right to your inbox. Sign up now.

Stay informed and gain unlimited access to the Daily Beast's unmatched reporting. Subscribe now.
LVIV, Ukraine (AP)  Russian missiles pounded a military base in western Ukraine on Sunday, killing 35 people in an attack on a facility that served as a crucial hub for cooperation between Ukraine and the NATO countries supporting its defense. The barrage marked an escalation of Moscows offensive and moved the fighting perilously close to the Polish border.

The attack so near a NATO member-country raised the possibility that the alliance could be drawn into the fight, and was heavy with symbolism in a conflict that has revived old Cold War rivalries and threatened to rewrite the current global security order.

More than 30 Russian cruise missiles targeted the sprawling facility at Yavoriv, which has long been used to train Ukrainian soldiers, often with instructors from the United States and other countries in the Western alliance. Poland is also a transit route for Western military aid to Ukraine, and the strikes followed Moscows threats to target those shipments.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called it a black day, and again urged NATO leaders to establish a no-fly zone over the country, a plea that the West has said could escalate the war to a nuclear confrontation.

If you do not close our sky, it is only a matter of time before Russian missiles fall on your territory. NATO territory. On the homes of citizens of NATO countries, Zelenskyy said.

In addition to the fatalities, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said that 134 people were wounded in the attack.

Ina Padi, a 40-year-old Ukrainian who crossed the border with her family, was taking shelter at a fire station in Wielkie Oczy, Poland, when she was awakened by blasts Sunday morning that made the glass in the windows shake.

I understood in that moment, even if we are free of it, (the war) is still coming after us, she said.

Since their invasion more than two weeks ago, Russian forces have struggled in their advance across Ukraine, in the face of stiffer than expected resistance, bolstered by Western weapons support. Instead, Russian forces have besieged several cities and pummeled them with strikes, hitting two dozen medical facilities and leading to a series of humanitarian crises.

Story continues

Ukrainian soldiers take cover from incoming artillery fire in Irpin, the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, March 13, 2022. (Photo: Felipe Dana/Associated Press)

The U.N. has recorded at least 596 civilian deaths, though it believes the true toll is much higher, and Ukraines Prosecutor Generals office said that at least 85 children are among them. An American filmmaker and journalist was also killed Sunday. Millions more people have fled their homes amid the largest land conflict in Europe since World War II.

Talks for a broad cease-fire have so far failed, but the Kremlins spokesman said another round would take place on Monday by videolink, according to Russian state news agency Tass. Meanwhile, U.S. President Joe Biden is sending his national security adviser to Rome to meet with a Chinese official. There are worries in Washington that Beijing is amplifying Russian disinformation and may help Moscow evade punishing Western economic sanctions.

Zelenskyy said he will continue negotiating with Russia and making requests for a meeting with Putin, which, so far, have gone unanswered by the Kremlin. Daily talks, Zelenskyy said, were necessary to establish a cease-fire and add more humanitarian corridors, which saved more than 130,000 people in six days.

The attacked training base near Yavoriv is less than 25 kilometers (15 miles) from the Polish border and appears to be the westernmost target struck during Russias 18-day invasion.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken condemned the attack, tweeting: The brutality must stop.

The base has hosted NATO drills, and a senior official, Admiral Rob Bauer, previously hailed it as embodying the spirit of military cooperation between Ukraine and international forces.

As such, the site is a potent symbol of Russias longstanding concerns that the expansion in recent years of the 30-member Western military alliance to include former Soviet states threatens its security  something NATO denies. Still, the perceived threat from NATO is central to Moscows justifications for the war, and it has demanded Ukraine drop its ambitions to join the alliance.

Russian fighters also fired at the airport in the western city of Ivano-Frankivsk, which is less than 150 kilometers (94 miles) north of Romania and 250 kilometers (155 miles) from Hungary, two other NATO allies.

NATO said Sunday that it currently does not have any personnel in Ukraine, though the United States has increased the number of U.S. troops deployed to Poland. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the West would respond if Russias strikes travel outside Ukraine and hit any NATO members, even accidentally.

The city of Lviv, in western Ukraine itself, so far has been spared the scale of destruction happening to its east and south. Its population of 721,000 has swelled during the war, with residents escaping bombarded cities and as a waystation for the nearly 2.6 million people who have fled the country.

Ukrainian and European leaders have pushed with limited success for Russia to grant safe passage to civilians trapped by fighting. Ukrainian authorities said more than 10 humanitarian corridors would open Sunday, with agreement from Russia, including from the besieged port city of Mariupol, where the city council said 2,187 people have been killed.

But such promises have repeatedly crumbled, and there was no word late Sunday on whether people were able to use the evacuation routes. Officials did say that a convoy carrying 100 tons of aid was expected to arrive in Mariupol on Monday.

The suffering in the port city is simply immense, the International Committee of the Red Cross said Sunday, noting that hundreds of thousands of its residents are facing extreme or total shortages of basic necessities like food, water and medicine.

Dead bodies, of civilians and combatants, remain trapped under the rubble or lying in the open where they fell, the Geneva-based organization said in a statement. Life-changing injuries and chronic, debilitating conditions cannot be treated.

The fight for Mariupol is crucial because its capture could help Russia establish a land corridor to Crimea, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014.

Meanwhile, continued fighting on multiple fronts caused more misery in Ukraine on Sunday and provoked renewed international outrage.

In the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv, near the Black Sea, authorities reported nine people killed in bombings. They said Russian airstrikes on a monastery and a childrens resort in the eastern Donetsk region hit spots where monks and others were sheltering, wounding 32 people.

Around the capital, Kyiv, a major political and strategic target for the invasion, fighting also intensified, with overnight shelling in the northwestern suburbs and a missile strike Sunday that destroyed a warehouse to the east.

Kyiv Region police said on its official website that Russian troops opened fire on a car carrying two American journalists. The U.S. State Department said Brent Renaud died. Juan Arredondo was wounded.

In the Kyiv suburb of Irpin, Ukrainian soldier Alexei Lipirdi, 46, said that the Russians want to intimidate us so that we will not be calm, but he and his unit remain defiant. As he spoke, smoke billowed from distant buildings and cars stood damaged or abandoned.

The citys mayor said only about 10,000 of its 60,000 residents remain. Many who stayed behind are the old or sick and those who are caring for them.

At a suburban hospital, doctors said 80% of their patients are civilians wounded by shelling. Patient Volodymr Adamkovych, his abdomen bandaged, said he was wounded when his home was hit. He spent the night in his basement before he could reach doctors.

___

Associated Press journalists from around the world contributed to this report.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.

Related...
Rich in humanistic values, Wolfoo has won over the hearts of millions of people across the globe.

NEW YORK, March 11, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- An animated web series popular with kids worldwide, Wolfoo enjoys wide appeal that stems from the humanistic values deftly woven into stories about fun everyday situations. The series has been twice awarded the Youtube Diamond button, with more than 2 billion monthly views and counting. Yet it is a little-known fact that Wolfoo is indeed the pride of Vietnamese people.

Wolfoo is a collection of animated characters in the WOA ecosystem owned by SCONNECT, a Vietnam-headquartered company specialized in creative content.

Originally produced in English, Wolfoo has been dubbed into many other languages, such as Spanish, French, Portuguese, Japanese, etc. To expand its market, the producer has registered images of Wolfoo characters as trademarks in the United States and Vietnam. In addition, in Vietnam, the producer has also copyrighted the scripts of the Wolfoo animated web series and secured protection for the Wolfoo brand.

Wolfoo is steadily asserting itself as the animation brand taking the lead in holistic integration of entertainment and education through a rich ecosystem of products familiar and attractive to children across the world. Spanning a diverse range of topics, each episode raises children's awareness about proper behaviors, helps them form healthy habits, and equips them with essential life skills. Wolfoo also fosters the development of personality traits and skills for children, namely courage, gratitude, compassion, empathy, humility, integrity, persistence, creativity, curiosity, teamwork, emotional self-control, and communication.

Wolfoo learns how to express gratitude towards loved ones (PRNewsfoto/SConnect)

The secret to success

Speaking about his choice to target the international market rather than the domestic one, Ta Manh Hoang, CEO of SCONNECT which owns the ecosystem of creative products under the WOA brand said, "We believe in the principle that sometimes choice matters more than effort. It is important to choose the right direction from the start, no matter how difficult it may be, because you will attain greater and more enduring gains upon success. Breaking into a market of high standards will push us to harness all possible resources for development. It is akin to tackling a hard math problem, requiring perseverance that will be rewarded many times over once solved. After capturing international market share, our return to the domestic market and future growth will be smooth sailing."

Story continues

Behind the scenes (PRNewsfoto/SConnect)

"Every WOA product has clearly-defined core values. After determining the core values of a product, WOA comes up with a coherent action plan and commits itself to delivering these values through said product and service. Thus, we ensure sustainability and distinctiveness in doing business," Ta Manh Hoang asserted.

Ta Manh Hoang assessed that the digital environment, harsh as it is, also opens up numerous learning and capacity-building opportunities for Vietnamese production teams. "Youtube is an open space, with very specific rules. Not only does Youtube help creators develop content but also guide them on how to do business and fairly split profits. We have learnt a lot from Google, particularly Youtube. Through our steady development on this platform, we have matured a great deal. I have every confidence in our Vietnamese staff; they are young, proactive, quick learners, and multi-taskers. Every person on our team enjoys a clear path of skill and career development. And that is how we can walk far," Ta Manh Hoang remarked.

WOA constantly conducts research and development, and expands its portfolio to meet the demands of customers. Take Wolfoo for example. In addition to short episodic content, the production team is also working on serial content for the Wolfoo Series, with massive investment in film technology so as to offer a product of superior quality. While the short episodes of Wolfoo revolve around daily happenings, Wolfoo Series takes the audience on exciting long-running adventures in the worlds of magic, toys, etc.

As the audience's trust and support is an invaluable asset, WOA endeavors to always deliver tangible values and best satisfy the audience through the expansion of the Wolfoo ecosystem. In 2022, WOA expects to launch the online game Wolfoo and the 2000-square meter Wolfoo City edutainment center, complete with the Wolfoo cast of characters.

As a commercial brand of SCONNECT CO., LTD, WOA commits to foster connections for values across the world. Being a producer of creative products, WOA is taking the lead in fast delivery of service and a strong portfolio geared towards global connectivity and development.

Cision

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/wolfoo---vietnamese-animation-taking-the-world-by-storm-301501513.html

SOURCE SConnect
Our directory features more than 18 million business listings from across the entire US. However, if we're missing your business, add your business by clicking on Add Your Business.
York native Zach Rath, from about high school on, always had in the back of his mind that someday he wanted to own and operate a bed and breakfast. Along with his wife Carrie, hes been doing just that for the past nine years or so down in Darien, Georgia.

By the time you read this column, Linda and I will be on our way home from spending a delightful four days and three nights as Zach and Carries guests at the Open Gates Bed & Breakfast located in Darien.

Zach, who is the son of Heidi Boettcher-Rath and Glen Rath, grew up in York and attended Emmanuel-Faith School through the seventh grade. These days, he gives back by donating a stay at the Open Gates for the schools annual fundraiser auction held annually in November. We were lucky enough to be the recipient for the 2020 event and made the trip a part of my retirement celebration.

Im happy to help the school by doing this every year, said Zach. But Im also doing it for me. It feels good to keep connected to the York community where I grew up.

After graduating from York High School in 1997, Zach went on to Southeast Community College in Lincoln where he earned an Associates Degree in Food Service Management and Culinary Arts. Along the way he worked in several food service jobs ranging from bussing tables at Chances R Restaurant to working at the Knolls Country Club and Valentinos in Lincoln.

After graduation from SCC and wanting to see the world he applied to agencies that hired crews to work on cruise lines. He signed on with a company that ran 150-passenger ships, one on the west coast and one on the east coast.

The schedule there was three months on and then one month off, said Zach. He also did service on a river boat in Europe for a season.

I burned out a little bit then and ended up moving to New Zealand for a year where I backpacked across the country, he added.

Returning to the states, he went back to the water where he spent the next ten years being the chef on private motor yachts for four or five different agencies/owners over that time period.

I liked that much better, said Zach. It gave me a lot more freedom to plan menus and do things the way I wanted. During that time, Newport, Rhode Island served as his home base during the summer and during the winter season he would head south to Fort Lauderdale, Florida or St Marten.

It was during one of those times in Fort Lauderdale that he met Carrie in 2010 where she worked in real estate management. The two had a long-distance relationship for a couple of years with Carrie often flying to ports when Zach had some downtime.

We knew that for our relationship to move forward we would have to transition Zach back to land, said Carrie. It was then when the bed and breakfast idea that had always been in the back of Zachs mind came to the front.

They looked for B & B locations in the Savannah area before coming across the Open Gates location which was for sale in Darien. That was in 2013 and they closed on the property in August of that year.

It completely changed our lives, said Zach. We have been blessed here in Darien and the people are so nice here. It was nice to get back to a smaller community.

The history of the Open Gates house reflects the history of the Darien community. The original part of the house was built in 1876 during the reconstruction of the city as Darien was burned to the ground during the Civil War. It was built by a wealthy timber man named Isaac Means Aikens as timber was the main industry in Darien after the war.

The original bed and breakfast started in 1987 and passed through one more owner before Zach and Carrie purchased the property in 2013. The bed and breakfast features five guest rooms and can accommodate up to 12 people for any one night.

From our perspective, we couldnt have had a better time anywhere else. Zach is an award-winning chef and the breakfasts we enjoyed during our stay were outstanding and you end up meeting some very interesting people along the way. He and Carrie are very gracious and helpful in pointing out places to go and things to see while staying in Darien.

That included the chocolate shop across the street, the King George state historical site, the Hofwyl-Broadfield Plantation, St. Simon Island, Driftwood Beach on Jekyll Island and maybe our favorite, the Waterfront Wine & Gourmet shop with the small bar in the back where all the locals gather. Zach said it was Dariens version of the Cheers bar where everyone knows your name. We made it down there several times during our stay there. Met some great people.

And all those people we met in Darien had nothing but good things to say about Zach and Carrie. Just my humble opinion here but they seem to have reached pillars of the community status in Darien. They have added another operation, the Dockside Inn, to their holdings and maybe best of all, are interested in bringing a Treasure Hunt to the Darien community.

Zach said they would love to host more people from the York area so if youre looking for a great restful vacation spot where youll have a great time and enjoy some great breakfasts, some great seafood and make some great new friends, why not give him a call at 954-336-9213. Youll be glad you did.
YORK  Misty Mousseaux, 36, of Kearney, an inmate at the Nebraska Center for Women in York, has been sentenced to an additional two to four years in prison, because she was again convicted with assault by a confined person.

She had previously been charged with alleged assault and sexual assault of fellow inmates.

Mousseaux earlier pleaded guilty to the charge and was sentenced in York County District Court by Judge James Stecker.

The prosecution was also initially seeking the designation of Mousseaux as a habitual criminal which would have created the ability to tack on an additional 10-60 years in prison. The habitual criminal allegation was based on Mousseauxs prior convictions, which include: a conviction of attempted robbery on Sept. 14, 2010, in Hall County for which she was sentenced to 40-60 months in prison; and a conviction of second degree assault on March 21, 2013, in Hall County, for which she was sentenced to a term of 3-5 years in prison.

The habitual criminal allegation, however, was later dismissed by the prosecution in return for Mousseauxs guilty plea to the assault charge.
Felipe Vazquez's mother Monday described conversations she had with her son about the 2020 shooting that took the life of Lincoln Police Officer Mario Herrera.

"I asked him what happened, to tell me the truth," Adela Gonzalez, of Albuquerque, New Mexico, told the jury, her words translated from Spanish.

As Vazquez's trial for first-degree murder, attempted first-degree assault on an officer and five other felonies moved into the second week, jurors heard from both of his parents.

On Monday, his mother. Gonzalez, said her ex-husband, Epignio Vazquez, picked up Felipe for a summer vacation when he was 10 or 11 and never brought him back.

Their divorce when he was about 3 had been hard on Felipe, she said. So she didn't report it when he took their son first to Colorado and then Nebraska. And she didn't have much contact with her son after.

But after his arrest for the shooting at the age of 17, Gonzalez said she got video phone calls from him while he was in custody. He told her that on Aug. 26, 2020, police had surrounded his dad's house at North 33rd and Vine streets.

She didn't know it, but police were looking for Velazquez on a felony warrant and he'd barricaded himself inside his stepbrother's bedroom.

"He told me that he was afraid," Gonzalez said. "He broke a window with his hand, and he had to run away."

She asked him why he didn't just come out and turn himself in.

"And what did he say?" Lancaster County Attorney Pat Condon said.

"That he was just afraid and wanted to run away," Gonzalez said.

Vazquez told her he had a gun and fired it into the air.

In fact, police say he fired three shots. One struck Herrera in the torso.

He ultimately died from his wound on Sept. 7, 2020.

Condon asked her about one recorded conversation.

"He told you he didn't think the state could prove their case, correct?" he asked her.

"Yes," she said.

"And that he didn't intend to shoot the officer?" Condon continued.

"That was not his intention. He didn't want to do it," Gonzalez said.

"That's what he told you," Condon clarified.

"Yes, correct," she said.

In the end, that will be a question for the jury.

The case continues in Platte County District Court where the trial was moved due to pretrial publicity.

Reach the writer at 402-473-7237 or lpilger@journalstar.com. On Twitter @LJSpilger
On March 13, the Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia virtually inaugurated the FlyBig Airlines` Indore-Gondia-Hyderabad flight. "Today, we have connected Madhya Pradesh with Maharashtra and Hyderabad. Apart from big cities, Indore needs to be connected with other smaller cities, said Scindia.

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan was also present at the launch event. Indore and Gondia share old relationships and it is our responsibility to bring these cities closer. So, this is the beginning. According to Scindia, Indore is now connected with a total of 21 cities; earlier it was 12.

"In the coming days, we are planning for smaller planes and helicopters to connect each city across the country till the last mile," he added.

Also read: Mumbai Airport staff returns lost Rs 20,000 cash to flyer; shows integrity

Indore-Gondia-Hyderabad flight services will be run under UDAN RCS (Ude Desh Ka Aam Naagrik- Regional Connectivity Scheme) with a reasonable fare, the FlyBig Airlines` CEO earlier said. The Civil Aviation Minister informed that from March 27 onwards, the government would be removing the restrictions on global connectivity while domestic restrictions were removed on October 18, 2021.

Madhya Pradesh minister Tulsi Silavat, MPs Shankar Lalwani and Sumitra Mahajan were also present at the launch event.

(With inputs from ANI)

Live TV

#mute
On March 14, SpiceJet announced that it will launch 60 new domestic flights to its fleet this summer. The summer schedule starts from March 27 and ends on October 29.

In a statement, the airline said it will launch eight industry-first flights, which will operate on the Gorakhpur-Kanpur, Gorakhpur Varanasi, Jaipur-Dharamshala and Tirupati-Shirdi sectors, in the summer schedule.

"The airline has added 60 new domestic flights to its schedule, including seven UDAN flights, eight industry-first flights, new connections and additional frequencies," the statement read.

Also read: Aviation Minister flags off daily Indore-Gondia-Hyderabad flight under RCS-UDAN

Under the UDAN scheme, financial incentives from the Centre, state governments and airport operators are extended to selected airlines to encourage operations from unserved and underserved airports, and keep airfares affordable.

Indian carriers have increased their domestic services by 10.1 percent to 25,309 weekly flights in the upcoming summer schedule as compared to 22,980 last season, aviation regulator DGCA said.

(With inputs from PTI)

Live TV

#mute
Tata Group has announced Tata Sons' Chairman Natrajan Chandrasekarana will be the new chief of Air India. The announcement comes after Turkey's Ilker Ayci declined to be the chief executive of Tata's Air India.

Tata Group earlier appointed Turkish Airlines former CEO Ilker Ayci as the chief executive of recently acquired Air India, but the announcement met with a lot of opposition in India and a delayed scrutiny from Govt.

Also read: SpiceJet to launch 60 new domestic flights this summer

N Chandrasekaran is the current Chairman of Tata Sons, the holding company and promoter of more than 100 Tata operating companies. He played a key role in acquiring Air India from Government of India by placing a winning bid.

Tata Sons chairman N Chandrasekaran recently issued a message to the Air India staff. In the message, the chairman said Tata Group is committed to making Air India world class. He also mentioned that the group will work to make Air India best in customer service. "We want AI to be best in class in customer service. We want AI to be the most technologically advanced airline in the world", said N Chandrasekaran.

Air India was handed over to Tata Group on January 27, completing a full circle as the airline returned to the Tatas after 69 years. Through a competitive bidding process, the government sold Air India to Talace Pvt Ltd, part of Tata Group, for Rs 18,000 crore.

Live TV

#mute
New Delhi: Young and talented Tara Sutaria is a very hardworking and dedicated actress. Nowadays, The actress is running a busy schedule to complete her shooting schedule.

Recently Tara took to her social media sharing a short video which she posted early in the morning while she is on her way to her shoot for 'Ek Villian Returns'. She wrote on the story saying - "OMW #EkVillianReturns"

She also shared a glimpse from her dubbing for her other film 'Heropanti 2'.

Tara has been actively running to complete the shoot of 'Heropanti 2' where she will be seen with Tiger Shroff. Her fans are also eager to see her coming with Tiger again after 'Student of the Year 2'.

Tara Sutaria will soon be seen in Heropanti 2 and 'Ek Villian Returns'.
New Delhi: Actor Anupam Kher attended the press conference of his recently released film `The Kashmir Files` in New Delhi on Monday, along with the film`s director Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri and actor-producer Pallavi Joshi.

The film has brought the spotlight on the killings and forced exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits from the valley in the late 1980s and afterwards.

Amid the buzz, the Kerala unit of Congress claimed in a tweet, now deleted, that more Muslims were killed in Jammu and Kashmir during 1990-2007 than Pandits.

Responding to this after the press conference, Kher told ANI, "The kind of love that the storm has created from this film, the kind of people who are going to watch this film, what Kerala Congress has said is not important. I think they are trying to find what are the opinions of the actors or director of the film. I don`t want to give them that pleasure."

He added, "There is a democracy in our country, everyone has constitutional rights, so let them speak. But slowly, it seems like no one is listening to them because they do not talk about anything in the nation`s interest. They do not talk about how to take the country forward. There is destruction in everything they say, there is no constructive thing. So, why should we talk about such people who have no love for the country and have no love for the people who have been living as refugees in their own country? I pity them. Unfortunately, they are in very pathetic condition."

Kher also talked about his crucial role in representing the Kashmiri Pandits.

He said, "`Kashmir Files` is not just a film for me, it is a wound for me that has not been filled in life for years and it might never be filled. The kind of lives my relatives, friends have lived 32 years back, when they were thrown out from their houses, environment, jobs, city and villages. Later their tragedy was not acknowledged by the people in the country. I was representing all those 5 lakh people whose exodus took place on January 19, 1990."

He also shared his acting process of taking inspiration from his personal life.

He said, "Pushkar Nath was my father`s name and I kept this name in the movie so before every shot, I thought of him that if he would`ve been in this situation then how he would`ve reacted. This thought process became realistic for me."

Kher concluded by sharing that he tried his best to feel the pain of the people he portrayed.

"I say without any diffidence that my tears in every shot were real. After every shot, I have cried dreadfully. Not because of me, but because of all those people. After doing a scene, I would go to the hotel, eat food and take shower, but what about the people who I have portrayed. Were they killed or did they flee away in that truck or were their sisters and mothers were raped? That thought used to make my heart tremble," he signed off.

The film, which was released in theatres on March 11, also stars Mithun Chakraborty, Darshan Kumar, and Pallavi Joshi in pivotal roles.
Four Bangladeshi nationals, arrested in Bhopal on Sunday, have been sent to police custody for 14 days, news agency ANI reported today. As per Madhya Pradesh ATS, accused are allegedly associated with terror group Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh and are involved in preparing a remote base for sleeper cells.

Further inputs awaited
New Delhi: After achieving a tremendous victory in the 2022 assembly election in Punjab, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is now ready to set foot in West Bengal politics.

The AAP on Monday announced that it will be contesting the 2023 Panchayat elections in West Bengal and has already begun campaigning for the same, reported ANI.

Aam Aadmi Party will contest the 2023 Panchayat elections in West Bengal. On the instructions of the party high command, its local unit has already started its campaign. AAP held a rally in Kolkata on 13th March: Sanjoy Basu, Incharge, AAP, West Bengal  ANI (@ANI) March 14, 2022

Aam Aadmi Party will contest the 2023 Panchayat elections in West Bengal. On the instructions of the party high command, its local unit has already started its campaign. AAP held a rally in Kolkata on March 13, Sanjoy Basu, Incharge, AAP, West Bengal told ANI.

The announcement comes after the Arvind Kejriwal-led party gained a sweeping win in Punjab scoring 92 out of 117 seats.

The part has also decided to contest the Assembly election in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh following the electoral mandate in Punjab.

To set foot in Himachal Pradesh, Aam Aadmi Party leaders on Friday held a grand road show in poll-bound state. The event was headed by Delhi Health Minister Satyendra Jain.

Meanwhile, controversy erupted in West Bengal over the killings of two councilors.

The BJP on Monday demanded answers from West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who also holds the home portfolio, over the killings of two TMC and Congress councillors on the previous day.

Congress councillor Tapan Kandu and TMC councillor Anupam Dutta were on Sunday evening shot dead in separate incidents in Purulia's Jhalda and Panihati in North 24 Parganas district respectively.

During Zero Hour, Siliguri's BJP MLA Shankar Ghosh demanded answers from Banerjee over the incidents, following which saffron party legislators staged a walkout from the House.

Live TV
New Delhi: Preparations for the oath-taking ceremony of Punjab Chief Minister-designate Bhagwant Mann began in Khatkar Kalan on Monday as the entire state gears up to welcome its new CM.

Visual released by news agency ANI shows pandal and chairs being set up in the ceremonys venue in Khatkar Kalan.

Punjab | Preparations for 16 March oath ceremony of CM designate Bhagwant Mann begins in Khatkar Kalan 4-5 lakh people are expected to attend this ceremony. Venue will be of 100 acres size-50 acres for main event&50 acres for parking:A Venu Prasad, Addl Chief Secy to Punjab Govt pic.twitter.com/NvfTUEZOzV  ANI (@ANI) March 14, 2022

According to A Venu Prasad, Additional Chief Secretary to Punjab Government, at least 4-5 lakh people are expected to attend Manns inaugural ceremony.

The venue is over 100 acres size, out of which 50 acres is reserved for the main event and the rest 50 acres will be utilised for parking.

Khatkar Kalan, the chosen venue for Bhagwant Manns inauguration ceremony, is the native village of revolutionary freedom fighter Bhagat Singh.

Earlier, Bhagwant Mann invited the people of Punjab to his oath-taking ceremony at the birthplace of legendary freedom fighter Bhagat Singh.

Mann also requested people wear `Basanti colour` turbans and shawls as Bhagat Singh is known to dawn it.

"I request people to reach Khatkar Kalan on March 16th (for the swearing-in ceremony). I request my brothers to wear Basanti turbans that day and sisters to drape similar colour shawls/stoles. We will colour Khatar Kalan in `Basanti rang` that day," said Mann.

AAP national convenor Arvind Kejriwal also requested the people to attend the oath-taking ceremony on March 16.

Meanwhile, Mann submitted his resignation as Lok Sabha MP on Monday to House Speaker Om Birla.

Live TV
New Delhi: Several BJP leaders including Chief Ministers of Karnataka, Tripura, Goa and Madhya Pradesh have heaped praise on Vivek Agnihotris latest film The Kashmir Files and have decided to make it tax-free in their respective states.

Ever since its release, The Kashmir Files, which is based on the forced exodus and genocide of Kashmiri Pandits in the late 90s and films the excruciating details of the aftermath, has been receiving positive feedback from the fraternity as well as the audience in general.

As the movie gains mass popularity every day, heres a list of states that have made The Kashmir Files tax-free:

Madhya Pradesh

In a tweet on Sunday, Madhya Pradesh CM Shivraj Chouhan said the film is a "heart-wrenching narration of the pain, suffering, struggle, and trauma faced by Kashmiri Hindus in the 90s".

He said the movie needs to be watched by maximum people, hence the state government has decided to make it tax-free.

The MP government also said that the policemen in the state will be provided leave to watch the film.

Gujarat

The Gujarat government on Sunday decided to make 'The Kashmir Files' tax-free in the state. The decision was announced by Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel via a tweet.

Honourable Gujarat CM, thank you very much. This will help the common people of Gujarat see the biggest tragedy in independent India, read the tweet.

Karnataka

Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai announced that he is making the movie tax free in the state on Sunday.

"A blood-curdling, poignant & honest narrative of the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from their home land. To lend our support to the movie & encourage our people to watch it, we will make the movie tax-free in Karnataka," Bommai tweeted.

Haryana

Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar, who watched The Kashmir Files on Sunday was also one of the leaders to make the movie tax-free in his state.

Goa

Goa's caretaker Chief Minister Pramod Sawant on Monday said the movie will be declared tax-free in his state.

Tripura

Tripura government has decided to make the film 'The Kashmir Files' tax-free in Tripura, Tripura CM Biplab Kumar Deb announced on Monday.

Rajasthan

Though Rajasthan has yet not made the movie tax-free, BJP leader and former Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje on Monday urged the Rajasthan government to make the recently released film 'The Kashmir Files' tax-free.

Live TV
New York: As the war between Moscow and Kyiv rages on, India`s Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations, R Ravindra on Monday (March 14) said that New Delhi has been consistent in calling for an immediate end to all hostilities in Ukraine.

While addressing a UNSC briefing, Ravindra said our Prime Minister (Narendra Modi) has repeatedly called for an urgent ceasefire and that there is no other path left but of dialogue and diplomacy. He noted that the human toll continues to mount and the humanitarian situation has become dire.

Highlighting India`s evacuation from Ukraine, Ravindra said India undertook intensive and immediate steps to evacuate its nationals. Till date, about 22,500 Indians have returned home safely. "We are grateful to all our partners for their support in our evacuation efforts. We call for direct contacts and negotiations with a view to cease hostilities," he added.

Ravindra also said that India has been in touch with both the Russian Federation and Ukraine in this regard and will continue to remain engaged. "We continue to underline the need to respect the UN Charter, international law and the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states."

He also lauded the role played by Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and said, "OSCE has been playing an important role in facilitating the implementation of the package of measures across both sides of the contact line in eastern Ukraine. However, recent developments in Ukraine and consequent deterioration of security situation have halted the functioning of the Special Monitoring Mission."

He said that India supports support OSCE Minsk Group`s continued efforts for a peaceful resolution of the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. He continued saying that India believes that any lasting resolution of the conflict can only be achieved peacefully through diplomatic negotiations and we call on Parties to implement the agreement reached.

We note with concern that steps that have been committed, have yet to materialize."While noting the ongoing global counter terrorism efforts and contributions of OSCE, we would like to take this opportunity to reiterate the importance of this issue."

"OSCE was among the first regional organizations to strongly condemn the terrorist attack on Indian Parliament in 2001. OSCE needs to take into account such cross-border terrorist acts and other new and emerging threats. In this context, the eight-point action plan on counter-terrorism proposed by India`s External Affairs Minister on 11 January 2021 while addressing the Council, also merits serious consideration of the OSCE," Ravindra said.

He further said that the challenges confronting the OSCE community come from different sources they include not only challenges to sovereignty, but threats to peace from ethnic tensions and violent separatism within States.

The OSCE, as the world`s largest security organization, is also addressing some of the toughest transnational threats such as proliferation of weapons, terrorism, cyber security, migration, environmental damage and drug trafficking, he said.

Concluding the briefing, Ravindra said, India recognizes the "significant contribution of OSCE to the promotion of a rules-based international order and strengthening multilateralism".

Live TV
New Delhi: Former union minister Uma Bharti on Sunday (March 13, 2022) hurled a stone at a liquor store in the Barkhera Pathani area of Bhopal. The BJP leader walked into a liquor store and threw a stone at alcohol bottles while claiming that the shop has been creating problems for women in the locality.

Sharing a video on her Twitter handle, the BJP leader said, "Several liquor stores sell alcohol to people in this slum inhabited by labourers in Bhopal's Azad Nagar. The entire savings of labourers is wasted on alcohol. The residents including women protested against the shops which are set up against government norms."

The administration repeatedly assured of shutting these shops, but no action was taken over the years. Today, I have asked the civic authorities to shut these liquor shops and kiosks within a week, the former Madhya Pradesh chief minister said.

A video of the incident went viral on social media. In the video, the former Madhya Pradesh chief minister, surrounded by her supporters and local residents, is seen entering the liquor shop, lifting a stone and hurling it at some bottles kept on the shelf. After that, her followers raise slogans in her support and also chant 'Bharat Mata ki jai'.

Take a look:

Through her act, the former Union minister has warned the local administration to get the liquor shop shut within a week. For the last six months, the Bharti has been aggressively campaigning against the consumption and sale of liquor. The BJP leaders attack on a liquor shop was the "first of many steps" she will be taking in this direction.

Live TV
CBSE Class 10th, 12th Term 1 Result 2022: The Central Board of Secondary Education is likely to declare CBSE Class 12th Term-1 examination results soon. As per media reports, the result can be announced this week.

However, the Board has not made any such official announcement yet.

Once CBSE Class XII Term-1 exam results are declared, students can check them via different methods.

CBSE Class 12th Term-1 2022 Results: How to check

Once CBSE Class 12th Term-1 2022 Results are announced, students need to visit CBSE's official website (cbse.nic.in).

On the homepage of the CBSE website, students need to click on the ' results ' link.

' link. Students will be redirected to a new page (http://cbseresults.nic.in) where they need to click on the ' CBSE Class 12th Result 2022 ' link.

' link. Students will then have to enter their credentials including their roll numbers and click on the 'submit' option.

Students can check their CBSE Class 12th Term-1 Result 2022 displayed on their screens.

Other ways to check CBSE Class 12th Term-1 2022 Results?

CBSE Class 12th students can also check their Term 1 2022 results via the DigiLocker app and the Unified Mobile Application for New-age Governance (UMANG) app.

Last year, the CBSE had announced that the board examinations for 2022 will be conducted in two terms. The Term-I exams for major subjects were held between November 30 and December 11 last year.

The weightage of Term-I and Term-II exams will be decided at the time of declaration of Term-II result and accordingly, the final performance will be calculated, the board said.

CBSE sends Term-1 examination results for Class 10 to schools

The CBSE has communicated the results of the Term-I exams for Class 10 to the schools, it has said in an order.

"The Board is informing the schools only about the theory performance of their students of Class X in a collective manner. Hence, the performance of individual student will not be available on the website," the CBSE said in a circular on March 11.

Performance of Term 1 exam of class X has been communicated to the schools by CBSE. Only scores in theory have been communicated as internal Assessment /practical scores are already available with the schools.@EduMinOfIndia @dpradhanbjp @ncert @PTI_News @PIB_India @DDNewslive  CBSE HQ (@cbseindia29) March 12, 2022

It said it has communicated the results of only theory performance of the students since the information about practical/project/internal assessment is already with schools. Since it was Term-I only, the board has not issued any mark sheet or passing certificate, which it said will be issued only after the Term-II exam.

CBSE Class 10, 12 term-II board exams to start from April 26

The CBSE has announced that the term-II board exams for Class 10 and 12 will commence from April 26. The Board said that it has kept a considerable gap between any two papers in the term-II exams owing to the prolonged school closure due to the pandemic.

The term-II exams for Class 10 will end on May 24, while for Class 12 students, the papers will end on June 15. The Board also said that the exams will commence at 10.30 AM.

While releasing the date sheets for term-II exams, the Board said Friday that it has given a considerable gap between two papers in almost all the subjects in both the classes "as the schools were closed due to pandemic which has led to learning losses".

It also said that other competitive examinations including JEE-Main have been taken care of while preparing the date sheet.

"These date sheets have been prepared by avoiding nearly 35,000 subject combinations to ensure that no two subject examinations of a student fall on the same date," it said.

"Despite the fact that temperature would be on a little higher side, the time of start of the examination will be at 10.30 AM because it will not be possible to start the examination earlier as examinations will be conducted in 26 more countries other than India. Similarly, because of the same reason, examinations cannot be conducted in two shifts," the board said.

Live TV
Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala`s Leader of Opposition (LoP) and Congress leader VD Satheesan on Monday (March 14) said that the party has no information about their tweets on `The Kashmir Files` film but assured probe into the row. "We don`t have any idea about that. Kerala Congress or UDF in Kerala never discussed such a matter on this film on any platform... I`ll check with the authority concerned. We will enquire and take action," the Congress leader told ANI.

The Kerala unit of Congress had claimed in a tweet, now deleted, that more Muslims were killed in Jammu and Kashmir during 1990-2007 than Pandits, inviting the wrath of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which called the statements "insane".

'The Kashmir Files' has brought the spotlight on the killings and forced exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits from the valley after the Pakistan-sponsored terrorists ran amok there in the late 1980s and afterward.

The deleted tweet of the Kerala unit of the Congress posted from its official Twitter handle attempted to project a statistical perspective to the issue of the killings and exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits, arguing that 15,000 Muslims were killed during 1990-2007 against 399 Pandits.

To further dim the spotlight on the agonies of the Kashmiri Pundits, the Kerala Congress in another tweet, part of a series, claimed that over one lakh Muslims were killed in the erstwhile state in the wake of the communal riots (1948) after the partition of the country while no Pandits were killed in retaliation.

The tweets were posted with '#KashmiriPandit issue'. The Kerala Congress also sought to shift the onus for the exodus to the BJP, saying "the migration suited the agenda of the BJP for the Hindu-Muslim division while carrying out the Ram Mandir issue in Ayodhya".

Another tweet claimed that the then Jammu and Kashmir Governor Jagmohan was an RSS man, and he, in place of providing security to the Pandits, asked them to leave the valley en masse.

"Pandits left the valley en masse under the direction of Governor Jagmohan who was an RSS man. The migration started under the BJP-supported VP Singh government," claimed the Kerala unit of Congress in another tweet, arguing further that the BJP supported VP Singh`s government came to power in J&K in December 1989 and exodus began the very next month and BJP continued to support VP Singh till November 1990.

Live TV
Various political parties have started a slugfest around the pain and agony suffered by the Kashmiri Pandit community during their forced exodus from Kashmir valley in the year 1989. Congress has said that VP Singh-led Janata Dal government, where BJP was an ally, was in power when the incident took place. While RSS associate Jagmohan Malhotra was the governor of Jammu and Kashmir.

In today's DNA, Zee News Editor-in-Chief Sudhir Chaudhary is joined by the two top craftsmen - veteran actor Anupam Kher and popular director Vivek Agnihotri - who have presented the agony of the Kashmiri Pandit community on screen through the movie "The Kashmir Files".

During the interaction, actor Anupam Kher, who is playing the lead role in this movie - narrates how he felt a personal connect with the movie as he was among one of the victims when the exodus took place. Kher tells Zee Media that movie was one of the toughest projects of his life where he "didn't act", but just communicated his feelings. Anupam Kher tells Zee News Editor-in-Chief Sudhir Chaudhary that he used to cry after shooting each and every scene of the movie.

Director Vivek Agnihotri, who is winning accolades for the movie, expressed his discomfort over what he termed as "reduction of Kashmiri Padits' pain in numbers." Agnihotri ridiculed attempts made to downplay the incident. "Is it not unfair even if only a single person dies in a communal incident in independent India," Vivek Agnihotri said during the show.

Narrating about the feedback received from viewers, the director also told Zee Media how an 80-year-old woman - who was his mother's age - came to him tried to touch his feet after watching the movie.

Watch DNA to for Anupam Kher and Vivek Agnihotri's detailed interview on The Kashmir Files and a detailed analysis of the politics around the subject.
New Delhi: In a tragic incident, five Indian students have been killed here in a road accident in Canada's Ontario province. The accident between a passenger van and a tractor trailer took place on Saturday (March 12, 2022) on Highway 401 in the Quinte West city in Southern Ontario.

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Monday mourned the death of five Indian students.

"Deeply mourn the passing away of 5 Indian students in Canada. Condolences to their families. Pray for the recovery of those injured. @IndiainToronto will provide all necessary support and assistance," Jaishankar tweeted.

Deeply mourn the passing away of 5 Indian students in Canada. Condolences to their families. Pray for the recovery of those injured. @IndiainToronto will provide all necessary support and assistance. https://t.co/MAkMz0uwJ7  Dr. S. Jaishankar (@DrSJaishankar) March 14, 2022

The victims, Harpreet Singh, Jaspinder Singh, Karanpal Singh, Mohit Chouhan and Pawan Kumar, were aged between 21 and 24 years. The police said that they were all students in the Greater Toronto and Montreal areas.

Meanwhile, high Commissioner of India to Canada Ajay Bisaria, who is in touch with friends of the victims for required assistance, termed the incident a heart-breaking tragedy.

Heart-breaking tragedy in Canada: 5 Indians students passed away in an auto accident near Toronto on Saturday. Two others in hospital. Deepest condolences to the families of the victims. @IndiainToronto team in touch with friends of the victims for assistance, he said on Twitter.

Heart-breaking tragedy in Canada: 5 Indians students passed away in an auto accident near Toronto on Saturday. Two others in hospital. Deepest condolences to the families of the victims. @IndiainToronto team in touch with friends of the victims for assistance. @MEAIndia  Ajay Bisaria (@Ajaybis) March 14, 2022

Two other passengers were taken to a nearby hospital with serious injuries following the crash, the police said, adding that an investigation into the accident was underway even though no charges have been laid.

Live TV
Ottawa: In a heartbreaking tragedy, five Indian students were killed in a road accident in Canada, said India`s High Commissioner Ajay Bisaria on Monday, adding that two others were injured and were hospitalized.

The accident occurred on Saturday on the Ontario highway and two injured students were rushed to the hospital.

5 Indian students passed away in an auto accident near Toronto on Saturday, March 13. Two others in hospital. Team of Consulate General of India in Toronto in touch with friends of the victims for assistance: Ajay Bisaria, High Commissioner of India to Canada  ANI (@ANI) March 14, 2022

Taking to Twitter, Ajay Bisaria expressed deepest condolences to the families of the victims.

"Heart-breaking tragedy in Canada: 5 Indian students passed away in an auto accident near Toronto on Saturday. Two others in the hospital. Deepest condolences to the families of the victims. @IndiainToronto team in touch with friends of the victims for assistance," India`s High Commissioner to Canada said.

Heart-breaking tragedy in Canada: 5 Indians students passed away in an auto accident near Toronto on Saturday. Two others in hospital. Deepest condolences to the families of the victims. @IndiainToronto team in touch with friends of the victims for assistance. @MEAIndia  Ajay Bisaria (@Ajaybis) March 14, 2022

According to Quinte West Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) the deceased students were identified as Harpreet Singh, Jaspinder Singh, Karanpal Singh, Mohit Chouhan, and Pawan Kumar.

They were traveling west in a passenger van on Highway 401 Saturday morning when they collided with a tractor-trailer at around 3:45 am.

The investigation into the crash remains ongoing, and no charges have been laid.

Live TV
New Delhi: Former US President Barack Obama on Monday (March 14, 2022) said he has tested positive for the coronavirus and that he had a scratchy throat for a couple days.

Taking to Twitter, Obama also informed that her wife, Michelle, has tested negative.

"I just tested positive for COVID. Ive had a scratchy throat for a couple days, but am feeling fine otherwise. Michelle and I are grateful to be vaccinated and boosted, and she has tested negative," Obama, who served as the 44th president of the US, wrote.

"Its a reminder to get vaccinated if you havent already, even as cases go down," he added.

Replying to the tweet, Prime Minister Narendra Modi wished Obama a quick recovery

"My best wishes Barack Obama for your quick recovery from COVID-19, and for your family's good health and wellbeing," PM Modi said.

My best wishes @BarackObama for your quick recovery from COVID-19, and for your family's good health and wellbeing. https://t.co/mCrUvXlsAp  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) March 14, 2022

It is noteworthy that the US, the worst-hit Covid-19 country in the world, has so far reported more than 79 million infections and about 9,67,000 deaths.

Live TV
Srinagar: Kashmir Zone Police on Monday (March 14) busted the Hizbul Mujahideen terror module involved in the recent killing of Sarpanch Shabir Ahmed Mir. IGP Kashmir range Vijay Kumar said "police have busted the Hizbul Mujahideen terror module involved in the recent killing of Sarpanch Shabir Ahmed Mir and arrested three terrorist associates actively involved in the act."

Kulgam Police busted a module of HM ( Hizbul Mujahideen) out involved in the recent killing of Sarpanch Shabir Ahmad Mir and arrested three actively involved terror associates and recovered incriminating materials, including two Pistols on their disclosure, added IGP.

Taking to the Twitter Kashmir Zone Police informed that the "vehicles used in the commission of crime have also been seized." During the investigation, it was learnt that the Sarpanch was killed by HM terrorists Mushtaq Yatoo on the directions of HM Chief terrorist Farooq Nalli, Police added.

On March 11, late evening terrorists barged into the house of Sarpanch in Adoora village of Kulgam district fired upon sarpanch Shabir Ahmad Mir son of Mohammad Abdullah Mir at his native village Adoora in kulgam district injuring him critically. The injured was immediately shifted to district hospital Kulgam where doctors declared him brought dead.

Live TV
New Delhi: Karnataka government has prohibited all the public gatherings in Bengaluru from March 15 to March 21 in view of the controversial Hijab row case verdict, announced Kamal Pant, Commissioner of Police, Bengaluru.

The Karnataka High Court will pronounce the verdict on the ongoing Hijab controversy on Tuesday (March 15).

All types of gatherings, agitations, protests, or celebrations in public places are prohibited in Bengaluru for one week from March 15 to March 21, said Kamal Pant, Commissioner of Police, Bengaluru.

Karnataka | All types of gatherings, agitations, protests, or celebrations in public places are prohibited in Bengaluru for one week from March 15 to March 21: Kamal Pant, Commissioner of Police, Bengaluru  ANI (@ANI) March 14, 2022

The Karnataka High Court bench, headed by Chief Justice Ritu Raj Awasthi, is slated to pronounce the judgement on the hijab issue on Tuesday morning.

The matter has been listed in the first half of the day.

The three-judge bench, which also comprised Justice Krishna S. Dixit and Justice Khaji Jaibunnesa Mohiyuddin had reserved the matter for judgement earlier after hearing arguments and counterarguments.

The Hijab controversy, the echo of which was heard in Lok Sabha as well and reached several other states including Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, began when six students from the Udupi Pre-University College for girls protested after being refused to enter classes wearing a hijab.

The protest soon spread to other districts to become a major controversy, and even led to tension, as some Hindu students started coming in saffron shawls.

The girls later approached the High Court and demanded that they should be allowed to enter classrooms while wearing hijabs.

Live TV
Chandigarh: The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD -B)  a familial force, once a dominant Panthic force in Punjab polity, the Parkash Singh Badal led Shiromani Akali Dal(SAD) s now struggling for its very survival with its tally plummeting to just three seats which even forced the Sikh high priest to intervene and gave a call to all the splinter Akali factions to join under the aegis of Akal Takht while the prominent opposition Akali factions have sought riddance of SAD from Badal clan.

The SAD(B)which had bagged 56 seats in 2012 assembly election came down to 15 seats in 2017 and further shrunk to its lowest tally of 3 in 2022 assembly elections even its most seasoned and experienced candidates saw the face of defeat.

To much surprise of Sikh leadership, the officiating Jathedar of Akal Takht Giani Harpreet Singh in his message said that the decimation of SAD was not only threatening to Sikhs but to the whole nation. Giving an example of Sikhs contribution to Indias struggle, Giani Harpreet Singh gave a call to all the SAD factions to discard their egos.

This is the time when all the Sikh groups should gather under the aegis of Akal Takht for the revival of SAD which is not just a political party but an ideology and this ideology have to survive, said the officiating Jathedar.

One of the prominent Akali faction SAD(Delhi) led by Paramjit Singh Sarna has even announced to hold a meeting of Sikh bodies as well as Sikh intelligential to contemplate over the present situation of SAD after its humiliating defeat on hands of AAP. We will also invite the Jathedar of Akal Takht to lead us and he has to act unbiased for the sake of SAD said Sarna.

Sarna said after the announcement of the Punjab assembly election results on March 10 he was in touch with several Sikh bodies, Sikh religious personalities, intellectuals, industrialists, businessmen, etc. to sit together and make a decision for the revival of SAD.

President of Manjit Singh GK led Jag Aasra Guru Ott (JAGO) has even floated the idea of the formation of a Federation to collectively take up the Sikh issues. Like Sarna, he also preferred getting the SAD rid of the Badal family.

They (Badals) have transformed a Panthic party into a familial party which is the main reason for peoples disenchantment from them which led to its complete rout in Punjab.

Live TV
A 10th standard girl was on Monday stabbed by a 21-year-old man in the premises of her school in Pune, police said. The incident took place in the school premises in Vadgaon Sheri area of Pune. The accused consumed poison after stabbing the girl, both have been admitted to a nearby hospital, senior police official Rohidas Pawar told media. The motive of the incident is not yet known yet, he added.

"Teachers and others rushed the girl to a nearby hospital where she is undergoing treatment. The man has also been hospitalised. Further probe into the incident is underway," Pawar said further.
New Delhi: Elections are always full of surprises and shocks. The recently-concluded Assembly polls were no different as Ganesh Chandra Chauhan, who used to carry puri sabji for rickshaw pullers during Covid-19 lockdown, has received people's mandate in Uttar Pradesh.

Chauhan, a sanitation worker who contested the UP Assembly Elections as a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate, won by a margin of 10,553 votes.

"BJP and people gave the message that even an ordinary worker can reach greater heights," he told ANI.

"PM honoured sanitation workers in Allahabad (Prayagraj), he washed their feet and sent the message that sanitation workers can't be lowly. If they are cleaning the dirt of society, it shows they are definitely great," Chauhan added.

"During Covid-19, I used to carry 'poori-sabzi' in a vehicle for rickshaw pullers. Several people from Bihar live in Sant Kabir Nagar. When I was given a ticket, people came to meet me, they were emotional. The day I won, rickshaw pullers came and hugged me," he said.

During COVID I used to carry 'poori-sabzi' in a vehicle for rickshaw pullers. Several people from Bihar live in Sant Kabir Nagar. When I was given ticket, people came to meet me, they were emotional. The day I won, rickshaw pullers came and hugged me: Ganesh Chandra Chauhan pic.twitter.com/LtVyUs2Gub  ANI UP/Uttarakhand (@ANINewsUP) March 14, 2022

He fought from the Dhanghata seat in Sant Kabir Nagar district and received as many as 83,241 votes, around 38.5% of the total votes polled.

It is notable that in the 403-member Uttar Pradesh assembly, the BJP has won 255 seats, 53 more than the halfway mark of 202. Its allies Apna Dal(S) and Nishad Party clinched 12 and 6 seats respectively.

The Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party (SP) won 111 constituencies and its allies Rashtriya Lok Dal of Jayant Chaudhary 8 and Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party of Om Prakash Rajbhar grabbed 6.

While Congress managed to win two seats, Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) could only get one seat despite polling 12.88 per cent votes.

Live TV
New Delhi: A husband has knocked on the door of the Supreme Court against a High Court of Madhya Pradesh's decision which declined his request to get a divorce from his wife who he alleged was 'not a female'.

The Supreme Court has now issued a notice to a wife on the husband's plea seeking divorce on the ground that he has been cheated as the medical history of his spouse did not reveal she was not a 'female', news agency ANI reported on Monday (March 14, 2022).

A bench of Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and MM Sundresh have asked the wife to file a reply to the husband's petition challenging a Gwalior bench of Madhya Pradesh High Court order dated July 29, 2021.

"Learned counsel for the petitioner has drawn our attention inter alia to page 39 to contend that the medical history of the respondent shows "Penis + Imperforate hymen" thus respondent is not a female. Issue notice returnable in four weeks," the court said.

The man has challenged judgment whereby Trial Court's order dated May 6, 2019, taking cognizance against respondent that was set aside and the private complaint filed by the petitioner (man) was dismissed on the ground that, only on the basis of oral evidence and sans any medical evidence, no offence under Section 420 (cheating) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), 1860 is made out.

The petition said that the man and woman's marriage was solemnized in July 2016. The petition said that after solemnization of marriage, the wife did not consummate for a few days on the pretext that she is undergoing a menstrual cycle and thereafter she left the matrimonial house and returned after a period of 6 days.

The petition also stated that later when the husband again tried to consummate, he found that there was no presence of vaginal opening and she had a small penis, like a child, ANI news agency reported.

Post this discovery, the petitioner took his wife for a medical check-up, where it was diagnosed that she has a medical problem called `Imperforate hymen` (A medical condition in which hymen covers the whole opening of the vagina), the petition said.

The petition further mentioned that the woman was advised to undergo surgical repair but the doctor also told the petitioner that even if an artificial vagina is created through surgery, consummation may take place but the chances of getting pregnant are close to impossible. After this medical examination, the petitioner felt cheated and called up the father of his wife, to take his daughter back.

The petition also highlights that the woman underwent surgery and then returned to her husband`s house after her father allegedly forcibly entered the man's house and threatened him to keep his daughter.

The man, however, later filed a complaint before local police and a petition in court seeking a divorce.

(With agency inputs)

Live TV
New Delhi: Employees State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) has invioted applications for the Social Security Officer (SSO)/ Manager Gr-II/Superintendent posts on regular basis. The company is looking to fill up 93 deaths through this recruitment drive.

The interested and eligible candidates can apply for the posts through the official website, esic.nic.in. The last date to apply is April 12, 2022.

ESIC Recruitment 2021: Important dates

Starting date for online application submission: March 12, 2022

Last date for online application submission: April 12, 2022

Last Date for Payment of Fee: April 12, 2022

ESIC Recruitment 2021: Vacancy details

Post: Social Security Officer (SSO)/ Manager Gr-II/ Superintendent

No. of Vacancy: 93

Pay Scale: 44,900  1,42,400/- Level-7

ESIC Recruitment 2021: Category wise vacancy details

UR: 43

OBC: 24

SC: 09

ST: 08

EWS: 09

Total: 93

ESIC Recruitment 2021: Eligibility Criteria

Only those candidates who have a Degree from a recognised University and Working knowledge of computer including use of office suites and database can apply.

ESIC Recruitment 2021: Age Limit

Candidates must be between 21 to 27 years old to apply.

ESIC SSO Recruitment 2021: Application Fee

For UR/OBC/EWS: 500/-

For SC/ST/PWD/ Departmental Candidates, Female Candidates and Ex-Servicemen: 250/-

ESIC Recruitment 2021: How to Apply

Interested candidates may apply online through the website of ESIC esic.nic.in.

Check ESIC SSO Recruitment 2021 Notification here- esic.nic.in

Live TV
New Delhi: Capital markets regulator Sebi on Monday imposed a total fine of Rs 20 lakh on four entities for indulging in non-genuine trades in the case of illiquid stock options on BSE.

In four separate orders, the regulator slapped a fine of Rs 5 lakh each on Prerna Traders Pvt Ltd, Manish Garg HUF, Irawati Enterprises LLP and Abhishek Jain HUF.

The orders came after Sebi observed large scale reversal trades in the stock options segment of BSE, leading to the creation of artificial volume.

In view of the same, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) had conducted an investigation into the trading activity from April 2014 to September 2015.

Pursuant to the investigation, it was observed that these entities were among the various others, which indulged in execution of reversal trades in the stock options segment.

The reversal trades are alleged to be non-genuine in nature as they are executed in normal course of trading which leads to false or misleading appearance or trading in terms of generating artificial volumes, Sebi said.

By indulging in such trades in stock options, they violated the provisions of PFUTP (Prohibition of Fraudulent and Unfair Trade Practices) norms, it added.

In a separate order, the market regulator has slapped a monetary fine of Rs 5 lakh on Rajendrakumar Chhotamalji Mehta for indulging in fraudulent trading in the shares in Pine Animation Ltd, Sebi said in a notice.

Sebi conducted an investigation into the scrip of Pine Animation Ltd from March 2013 to January 2015, as huge rise in traded volume and price was observed on BSE in Pine's scrip. Mehta violated the PFUTP norms, it added.

Through a separate order, Sebi has levied a fine of Rs 1 lakh on Asha Prakash Shetty for violating the insider trading norms in the matter of Titan Company Ltd.

The regulator noted that Shetty, who was an employee of Titan, had failed to comply with the provisions of PIT (Prohibition of Insider Trading) norms by failing to make requisite disclosures regarding the four transactions she carried out while in the employment of the company.

She was required to make disclosures to the firm for each of the transactions within two business days.

Disclosure requirements were triggered because the traded value of Shetty's transactions in the scrip exceeds Rs 10 lakh. However, she failed to do so.

The order follows an investigation carried out by the regulator between April 2018 to March 2019.

In a separate order, the market regulator has imposed a penalty of Rs 1 lakh on Nitin Tailor for flouting disclosure norms in the case of Varun Beverages Ltd.

He failed to make the requisite disclosures, pertaining to executing transactions in Varun Beverages' shares, within the stipulated time and thereby, violated insider trading rules.

Tailor was the employee of Varun Beverages at the time of violation of rules, Sebi noted.

On five occasions, the value of his trade exceeded Rs 10 lakh. However, on one occasion, Tailor submitted that he made one disclosure in June 2017.

Live TV

#mute
New Delhi: 7th Pay Commission latest update: The Central government employees might be in for some good news soon as regards the 18 months-pending Dearness allowance (DA) arrears this week. Media reports have been constantly speculating that the Modi government may credit Rs 2 lakh in the account of the government employees at one go.

A few media reports said that a cabinet meeting regarding increase of dearness allowance of central government employees could take place on March 16, thus meaning that the Modi government will have a good Holi gift for the employees, as per media reports.

Earlier media reports cited Shiv Gopal Mishra, Secretary (Staff Side) of the National Council of JCM stating that the council has placed its demand before the government however both sides have not arrived at any conclusion as yet. Media reports further said that talks have been held with the Cabinet Secretary, which still remains inconclusive. The Labour union has been constantly pressing demands for a one time settlement of dearness allowance arrears.

According to Mishra, a joint meeting of the JCM with the officials of the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) and the Ministry of Finance, Department of Expenditure is to be held soon. It is expected that a one-time settlement of 18 months DA arrears will also crop up during the meeting.

The Dearness Allowance and Dearness Relief of Central government employees and pensioners were restored to 31% from 17% from October 2021, however the arrears have not been deposited as yet.

A Zee Hindi report, quoting Shiv Gopal Mishra of the National Council of JCM, had previously mentioned that the DA arrears of Level-1 employees range from Rs 11,880 to Rs 37,554. Whereas, for Level-13 (7th CPC basic pay scale Rs 1,23,100 to Rs 2,15,900) or Level-14 (pay scale), the DA arrears in the hands of an employee will be Rs 1,44,200-2,18,200 that will be paid, quoted the reports.

According to the annual report of the Department of Expenditure, there are a total of 48 lakh central employees in the country and about 60 lakh pensioners.

Live TV

#mute
New Delhi: The OnePlus 9 Pro is currently on sale for the lowest price possible ahead of the OnePlus 10 Pro launch event, which is expected to take place next week. The gadget is priced at Rs 59,999 on Amazon. The OnePlus 9 Pro was initially priced at Rs 65,999 when it was released in India. So you're receiving a Rs 6,000 discount on this premium phone.

Amazon is shipping the 8GB RAM + 128GB storage device at the stated price. There is also a Rs 8,000 discount offer on an SBI bank credit card. If you have this bank card, you will be able to purchase the OnePlus 9 Pro for Rs 51,999. Those looking to sell their old phone can also take advantage of a Rs 16,600 exchange offer, making the deal even better. The exchange rate is determined by the condition of your smartphone. To get a better bargain, OnePlus owners should also check the exchange rate on the official website of OnePlus India.

The OnePlus 9 Pro is a flagship phone released by OnePlus in 2021. Qualcomm's top-tier Snapdragon 888 SoC, which has powered 2021 premium phones, is found under the hood. While the future OnePlus 10 Pro will have a more powerful CPU, the previous model has a decent core that will suffice for your gaming demands. It has a 65W fast charger, twin stereo speakers, a 4,500mAh battery unit, and an optical in-display fingerprint sensor as standard. The device is also IP67 rated, which means it is resistant to water and dust.

A curved QHD+ AMOLED display of 6.7-inches in size is included. The screen supports a refresh rate of 120Hz for smoother scrolling and gaming. There is a quad back camera configuration for photography and video, comprising a 48-megapixel primary camera with OIS, a 50-megapixel secondary ultrawide-angle sensor, an 8-megapixel telephoto camera, and a 2-megapixel monochrome camera.

The company said last year that the OnePlus 8 and subsequent models would receive three years of major Android OS updates and four years of software updates. Because the OnePlus 9 Pro was released with Android 11, it will very certainly receive the Android 13 OS update as well.

Live TV

#mute
New Delhi: As thousands of would-be fighters from outside the country volunteer to help Ukraine defend itself against Russia`s invasion, some may also face legal consequences in their home countries.

Citizens of Canada, Georgia, India, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States are among the volunteers, according to media reports.

Below is a summary of some of the laws governing foreigners who have signed up for Ukraine`s "international legion."

IS IT LEGAL FOR AMERICANS TO VOLUNTEER?

U.S. citizens are not barred from serving in another country`s military, the State Department`s website says. Serving as an officer or fighting against a country that is at peace with the United States can be grounds for giving up citizenship voluntarily, but Supreme Court precedent says foreign military service alone cannot be used to strip Americans of citizenship.

A separate U.S. law dating back to 1794, the Neutrality Act, prohibits citizens from making war against foreign governments at peace with Washington and carries a prison sentence of up to three years. The law, which could technically apply to volunteer military action against Russia, was used to prosecute Americans involved in an attempted coup in Gambia in 2014. But otherwise, it has been rarely enforced in modern history, according to David Malet, a professor at American University in Washington, D.C.

"Absent links to domestic terrorism, its hard for me to imagine Americans being prosecuted for going to Ukraine," Malet said.

WHAT ABOUT AUSTRALIAN, BRITISH AND INDIAN VOLUNTEERS?

Britons traveling to Ukraine to fight could be subject to prosecution upon return, according to a UK Foreign Office travel advisory last updated Wednesday. Asked by Reuters what charges would apply to UK volunteers, a spokesperson for the British Foreign Office declined to comment.

The United Kingdom`s Foreign Enlistment Act, last updated in 1870, blocks citizens from joining foreign militaries fighting countries at peace with Britain, but it has not been applied to modern conflicts. The UK Foreign Secretary initially voiced support for citizen volunteers to fight in Ukraine, but later warned against any travel there.

Australian prime minister Scott Morrison has urged his countrys citizens not to join the military fight in Ukraine, telling reporters last month that there are "uncertainties" about the legal position of foreign civilian combatants.

The Indian Ministry of Home Affairs did not respond to a request for comment about the legality of Indian citizens joining the Ukraine forces.

In a case involving Indians traveling to Iraq in 2015, the ministry told the Delhi High Court that allowing Indians to participate in another country`s conflict "would lead to the allegation that the Indian government is promoting terrorism in other countries."

HAVE ANY COUNTRIES GIVEN THE ALL-CLEAR?

Germany has said it will not prosecute volunteers who join the fighting, and Danish and Latvian leaders said they would allow their citizens to volunteer. Canadian defense minister Anita Anand has said whether Canadians volunteer is "an individual decision."

WHAT IF FOREIGN FIGHTERS ARE CAPTURED IN UKRAINE?

International law requires Russian forces to treat foreign fighters as prisoners of war, regardless of their nationality, said Daphne Richemond-

Barak, a professor with the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy in Israel. That means Russian soldiers must give volunteers who are captured food, water and medical treatment.

However, a Russian Defense Ministry spokesman last week said Western "mercenaries" fighting for Ukraine would not be treated as lawful combatants and would face criminal prosecution or worse, according to Russian news agency TASS.

COULD VOLUNTEERS BE PROSECUTED FOR WARTIME CONDUCT?

Because volunteers will be fighting as members of the Ukrainian army, they are unlikely to face charges in their home country over their specific actions in the war, with the exception of prosecution for war crimes or similar conduct, experts say.
New Delhi: Two days after ordering a lockdown of the 9 million residents of the northeastern city of Changchun amid a new spike in Covid-19 cases, China on Sunday (March 13, 2022) shut down another city, Shenzhen, which has a population of over 17 million, to control the recent surge of coronavirus infections.

The high-tech Shenzhen city will seal all communities, villages and suspend bus and metro services from Monday to Sunday due to the latest Covid-19 outbreak. In a statement, city authorities urged the residents to work from home and to step out only to buy daily necessities.

New locally transmitted coronavirus cases in China has surged to more than 3,100 on Sunday, which is the highest in two years.

China on brink of biggest Covid-19 crisis since Wuhan

The situation is such that China is on the brink of its biggest Covid-19 crisis since Wuhan, a report has claimed. The coronavirus is said to have first broken out in Wuhan in December 2019 before it spread to almost all parts of the world.

In Shanghai, China's most populous city with 24 million people, the number of Covid-19 cases in the latest surge rose by 15 to 432. The city government called on the public not to leave unless necessary.

The recent spike in cases has also forced authorities to close schools in Shanghai and put several northeastern cities under lockdown as various provinces continue to fight the Omicron variant.

It is noteworthy that the Covid-19 infections in China are on the rise when most of the countries are opening up following a decline in cases.

(With agency inputs)

Live TV
Lviv: Russian forces fired artillery strikes on suburbs northwest of Kyiv overnight and targeted points east of the capital, the head of the Kyiv region said Monday (March 14, 2022).

A town councilor for Brovary east of Kyiv was killed in fighting there, regional administration chief Oleksiy Kuleba said on Ukrainian television. He also reported strikes overnight on the northwest towns of Irpin, Bucha and Hostomel, which have seen some of the worst fighting in Russia's stalled attempt to take the capital.

The general staff of Ukraine's armed forces said Monday morning that Russian troops have not made major advances over the past 24 hours despite expanding strikes to the west.

Ukrainian forces are targeting Russian bases, targeting their logistical abilities, the general staff said in a statement on Facebook marking the 19th day of the war.

The general staff accused Russian forces of setting up firing positions and military equipment in churches and other civilian infrastructure so that Ukrainian forces can't fire back. The accusation could not be immediately verified, though Associated Press reporters have seen Russian armoured vehicles in residential areas.

ALSO READ | Russian airstrike hits base in western Ukraine, kills 35

An artillery strike hit a nine-story apartment building in the Obolonsky district of northern Kyiv on Monday morning, destroying apartments on several floors and igniting a fire. The state emergency agency, which released images of the smoking building, said no casualties have been reported so far.

Live TV

Live TV
Lviv: Waves of Russian missiles pounded a military training base in western Ukraine on Sunday (March 13, 2022), killing 35 people in an attack on a facility that served as a crucial hub for cooperation between Ukraine and the NATO countries supporting it in its defense against Moscow's grinding assault.

More than 30 Russian cruise missiles targeted the sprawling facility, which lies not far from the border with NATO member Poland and that has long been used to train Ukrainian military personnel, often with instructors from the U.S. And other countries in the western alliance.

Poland is also a transit route for Western military aid to Ukraine, and the strikes followed Moscow's threats to target those shipments. An attack so close to the border was heavy with symbolism in a conflict that has revived old Cold War rivalries that gave birth to NATO and threatened to rewrite the current global security order.

Since Russia's invasion more than two weeks ago, at least 596 civilians have been killed, according to the U.N., though it believes the true toll is much higher. Millions more have fled their homes amid the largest land conflict in Europe since World War II.

Despite its superior firepower, Russia has struggled in its advance across Ukraine, in the face of stiffer than expected resistance, bolstered by Western weapons support. Instead, Russian forces have besieged several cities and pummeled them with strikes, hitting two dozen medical facilities and leading to a series of humanitarian crises.

Many civilians have been caught in the barrage, and Ukraine's Prosecutor General's office said Sunday that at least 85 children have been killed. An American journalist was killed and another wounded when their car was fired upon at a Russian checkpoint Sunday, police said.

Meanwhile, U.S. President Joe Biden is sending his national security adviser to Rome to meet Monday with a Chinese official amid concerns that country is amplifying Russian disinformation, and Pope Francis called for peace.

The attacked training base near Yavoriv is less than 25 kilometers (15 miles) from the Polish border and appears to be the westernmost target struck during Russia's 18-day invasion.

The base has hosted international NATO drills and a senior NATO official, Admiral Rob Bauer, previously hailed it as embodying the spirit of military cooperation" between Ukraine and international forces. As such, the site is a potent symbol Russia's longstanding concerns that the 30-member Western military alliance is a threat to Moscow by operating so close to its territory.

NATO denies that it poses any threat, but Russia has repeatedly demanded Ukraine drop its ambitions of joining the alliance as a pre-requisite for ending the war.

Lviv governor Maksym Kozytskyi said most of the Russian missiles fired Sunday were shot down because the air defense system worked. Those that got through killed at least 35 people and wounded 134, he said.

Russian fighters also fired at the airport in the western city of Ivano-Frankivsk, which is less than 150 kilometers (94 miles) north of Romania and 250 kilometers (155 miles) from Hungary, countries that also are NATO allies.

NATO said Sunday that it currently does not have any personnel in Ukraine, though the U.S. Has increased the number of American troops deployed to Poland. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the West would respond if Russia's armaments travel outside Ukraine and hit any NATO members, even accidentally.

Biden has been clear, repeatedly, that the United States will work with our allies to defend every inch of NATO territory and that means every inch, Sullivan said on CBS News' Face the Nation.

Sullivan is headed to Rome on Monday to meet with senior Chinese foreign policy adviser Yang Jiechi. Their talks will center on efforts to manage the competition between our two countries and discuss the impact of Russia's war against Ukraine on regional and global security, said Emily Horne, speaking for the White House national security council.

Lviv itself so far has been spared the scale of destruction unfolding to its east and south. The city's population of 721,000 has swelled during the war with residents escaping bombarded population centers and as a waystation for the nearly 2.6 million people who have fled the country.

Ukrainian and European leaders have pushed with limited success for Russia to grant safe passage to civilians trapped by fighting, though Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said authorities have managed to evacuate nearly 125,000 people from combat zones.

Ukrainian authorities said more than 10 humanitarian corridors would open Sunday, with agreement from Russia, including from the battered and besieged port city of Mariupol, where the city council said 2,187 people have been killed.

The suffering in the port city is simply immense, the International Committee of the Red Cross said Sunday, noting that hundreds of thousands of its residents are facing extreme or total shortages of basic necessities like food, water and medicine. Dead bodies, of civilians and combatants, remain trapped under the rubble or lying in the open where they fell, the Geneva-based organisation said in a statement.

Life-changing injuries and chronic, debilitating conditions cannot be treated. Zelenskyy said in a video address that a convoy carrying 100 tons of humanitarian aid was headed to the city, whose capture could help Russia establish a land corridor to Crimea, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014.

Live TV
New Delhi: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will deliver a virtual address to the US Congress on Wednesday (EST) as the Russian forces pace towards the capital Kyiv amid a highly intensified military attack, reported PTI.

Zelenskyy will speak to the members of the House and Senate during the virtual address, the Democratic leaders announced.

This will mark Zelenskyys second address to the house since the onset of the Russian invasion. Before this, the Ukrainian President spoke via video conferencing with the House and Senate lawmakers earlier this month in a desperate plea for more military aid.

The Congress, our country and the world are in awe of the people of Ukraine, said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in a statement Monday.

According to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, all the lawmakers will be allowed to take part in the talk that will be delivered via video at the US Capitol.

The virtual address comes after the US Congresss recently approved $13.6 billion as a part of the emergency military and humanitarian aid for war-torn Ukraine.

We look forward to the privilege of welcoming President Zelenskyy's address to the House and Senate and to convey our support to the people of Ukraine as they bravely defend democracy, the leaders said.

Russia, launched a military operation, as it calls it, on Ukrainian soil on February 24. The country has already invaded several Ukrainian towns and facilities, including Europes largest nuclear power plant, Zaporizhzhia.

So far, at least 2.17 million people have been forced to leave Ukraine amid constant bombings and shelling.

Live TV
Washington: U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, who is due to meet with China`s top diplomat Yang Jiechi in Rome on Monday (March 14, 2022), warned Beijing it would "absolutely" face consequences if it helped Moscow evade sweeping sanctions over the war in Ukraine.

Russia asked China for military equipment after its Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, sparking concern in the White House that Beijing may undermine Western efforts to help Ukrainian forces defend their country, several U.S. officials said.

Sullivan plans in his meeting with Yang to make Washington`s concerns clear while mapping out the consequences and growing isolation China would face globally if it increases its support of Russia, one U.S. official said, without providing details.

Asked about Russia`s request for military aid, first reported by the Financial Times, Liu Pengyu, spokesperson for China`s embassy in Washington, said: "I`ve never heard of that."

He said China found the current situation in Ukraine "disconcerting" and added: "We support and encourage all efforts that are conducive to a peaceful settlement of the crisis."

Liu said "utmost efforts should be made to support Russia and Ukraine in carrying forward negotiations despite the difficult situation to produce a peaceful outcome."

Sullivan told CNN on Sunday that Washington believed China was aware Russia was planning some action in Ukraine before the invasion took place, although Beijing may not have understood the full extent of what was planned.

ALSO READ | Russia-Ukraine war: Russian airstrike hits base in western Ukraine, kills 35

After the invasion began, Russia sought both military equipment and support from China, the U.S. officials said.

Sullivan told CNN Washington was watching closely to see to what extent Beijing provided economic or material support to Russia, and would impose consequences if that occurred.

"We are communicating directly, privately to Beijing, that there will absolutely be consequences for large-scale sanctions evasion efforts or support to Russia to backfill them," Sullivan said. "We will not allow that to go forward and allow there to be a lifeline to Russia from these economic sanctions from any country, anywhere in the world."

The meeting, planned for some time, is part of a broader effort by Washington and Beijing to maintain open channels of communication and manage competition between the world`s two largest economies, a senior Biden administration official said.

No specific outcomes were expected, the source added, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said the meeting`s focus was to "implement the important consensus" reached during the virtual meeting held between Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Joe Biden in November, which discussed "strategic stability" and arms control issues.

The two sides will exchange views on U.S.-China relations as well as international and regional issues of common concern, he said in a statement published on the ministry`s website.

Wang Huiyao, head of a Beijing think tank and adviser to the Chinese government, warned of "an escalatory spiral" in a column published in the New York Times on Sunday, and said China was "uniquely positioned to act as a neutral mediator between a Western-supported Ukraine and Russia" to end the war.

"Unpalatable as some in the West may find the idea, it is time to offer the Russian leader an off-ramp with Chinas help," Wang wrote.

U.S. officials were skeptical about the proposal given China`s ties to Russia and its spreading of misinformation related to the war.

CHINA, RUSSIA TRADE TIES

The United States on Saturday said it would rush up to $200 million worth of additional weapons to Ukrainian forces as they try to defend against Russian shelling in the largest war in Europe since World War Two.

Washington and its allies have imposed sweeping, unprecedented sanctions against Russia and banned its energy imports, while providing billions of dollars of military and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine.

Individually and together they have appealed to China, Gulf nations and others that have failed to condemn the Russian invasion to join in isolating Russia from the global economy.

Beijing, a key trading partner of Russia, has refused to call Russia`s actions an invasion, although Xi last week did call for "maximum restraint" in Ukraine after a virtual meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron.

Xi also expressed concern about the impact of sanctions on global finance, energy supplies, transportation and supply chains, amid growing signs that Western sanctions are limiting China`s ability to buy Russian oil.

However, Hu Xijin, former editor-in-chief of the state-backed Chinese Global Times newspaper, said on Twitter: "If Sullivan thinks he can persuade China to participate in sanctions against Russia, he will be disappointed."

While in Rome, Sullivan will also meet with Luigi Mattiolo, diplomatic adviser to Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, to continue coordinating the strong global response to Russian President Vladimir Putin`s "war of choice," the U.S. official said.

Washington and the Group of Seven advanced economies on Friday ratcheted up pressure on Russia by calling for revoking its "most favored nation" trade status, which would allow them to jack up tariffs on Russian goods.

Trade made up about 46% of Russia`s economy in 2020, much of that with China, its biggest export destination.

Live TV
Since the discovery of the Adelie Land meteorite in 1912, scientists have plucked more than 45,000 meteorites from the ice in Antarctica.

Each of these "space rocks" carries a story about the composition of our solar system and the conditions that existed early in its development. Scientists recently estimated that as many as 300,000 more meteorites and their stories are still out on the ice, waiting to be found. And now they have a map showing where to look.

Scientists have been actively searching for meteorites in Antarctica for decades because the polar landscape offers several advantages. The contrast between rocks and ice, and the lack of many terrestrial rocks, make meteorites easier to spot. The dry desert environment also helps preserve the meteorites, some of which fell to Earth more than 1 million years ago.

Still, finding small rocks that are spread across an icy landscape covering 14 million square kilometers (5.4 million square miles) can be a challenge. To increase their chances, scientists have been focusing searches in "meteorite stranding zones"--areas where the local geology, the flow of the ice, and climate conditions have caused meteorites to aggregate at the surface. Such stranding zones have traditionally been discovered by chance--often close to a research station--or by scanning maps and satellite images of areas with blue ice. Nearly all meteorites are found on blue ice, which lacks snow cover and allows meteorites to be exposed at the surface.

Veronica Tollenaar, a glaciologist at the Universite libre de Bruxelles, and colleagues have been working to identify more of these meteorite hotspots. They developed an Antarctic-wide probability map based on a machine-learning algorithm that incorporates previous meteorite finds, along with a wide array of satellite observations from NASA, the Canadian Space Agency, the U.S. Geological Survey, and commercial sources. "To find meteorites, we need several factors to combine favorably," Tollenaar said.

On the map at the top of the page, notice the high probability of meteorites along the periphery of the continent and near mountainous areas. This makes sense, given that this is typically where blue ice is found. But the researchers show that the ice's surface temperature and velocity are also important factors.

"If temperatures rise too much, or if ice flow velocities are too fast, we do not find any meteorites," Tollenaar said. She explained that if temperatures are too high, the meteorites sink into the melted ice and disappear from the surface. And if the ice flows too fast, meteorites are carried away from the ice surface before they have a chance to accumulate in large concentrations.



Note the low probability of meteorites in the lower-right quadrant of the continental map. Tollenaar thinks the blue ice in this region--close to the coast but sitting at low elevation--is simply too warm. Surface temperature data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites indicate that meteorite hotspots are located in blue ice areas that stay below -9C (16F) for 99 percent of the time.

"It is truly the extreme warm days that separate meteorite-rich blue ice areas from areas absent of meteorites," Tollenaar said. In just a short time, "warm" temperatures can cause the ice surface to melt--which is even more enhanced around a meteorite due to its heat-absorbing dark color--causing the rock to sink into the ice and out of sight.

But as the map shows, there are plenty of blue ice areas where the temperature and ice velocity appear favorable for stranded meteorites. The researchers developed a "where-to-go" index, which ranks the hotspots based on their potential for a field visit. The Allan Hills area is near the top of this list. Located relatively close to McMurdo Station, more than 1,000 meteorites have already been found here. Also high on the list is an as-yet unexplored region in the Fimbulheimen mountain range, located 120 kilometers (75 miles) from Novolazarevskaya Station. The area's ample blue ice is visible in the detailed image above, acquired on February 27, 2022, with the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8.

Tollenaar is particularly intrigued by a hotspot located in the Ellsworth Mountains. "This area is quite far from areas where meteorites have been previously found," she said, "and that illustrates that the algorithm allows us to make a continent-wide analysis to identify potential areas."

NASA Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey, MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE and GIBS/Worldview, and data courtesy of Tollenaar, V., et al. (2022). Story by Kathryn Hansen.

larger images



Please follow SpaceRef on Twitter and Like us on Facebook.
ESA's team for the European Service Module is based at the Agency's technical heart ESTEC in The Netherlands.

From here around 60 people oversaw the design and reviewed it together with NASA and industrial partners to ensure everything would meet specifications.

"We had a lot of experience and know-how working on the Automated Transfer Vehicles that shipped fuel and cargo to the International Space Station, but the European Service Modules are completely new, and much more complex," says ESA's Orion engineering team leader Antonio Preden. "Getting the design ready, checked and reviewed and taking into account how everything would be built up was an interesting time."

Design and review

Over 20 companies around Europe contributed to building the spacecraft module, with most of the hardware sent to Bremen, Germany, to be assembled by prime contractor Airbus.

"In many ways the design and review process was more intense than the actual building process," adds ESA's Assembly Integration and Verification Engineer Dominique Siruguet. "Once we had our solid plan and all partners and industry agreed on the design and implementation process, the next step was to put it all together."

The structure itself, the backbone of Orion, starts at Thales Alenia Space in Turin, Italy. Once they deliver the bare structure to the Airbus integration hall, the tireless work begins installing 20 000 parts, 11 km of cables, 33 engines, and 11 tanks for fuel, water and air.

Many parts for the European Service Module are made-to-measure for Orion and as marvels of engineering, they can take many months to prepare. These so-called long-lead items are ordered years in advance, sometimes before the contracts or even the design reviews have been signed off.

Integration and shipment

In Bremen parts started streaming in from 10 countries in Europe as well as USA, and technicians had the daunting but satisfying task of putting them all together.

"Building Europe's first human-rated hardware for a crew vehicle is like a huge puzzle - with the added complication of ensuring timely delivery," says ESA's project coordination manager for the European Service Modules Philippe Berthe. "International cooperation and commitments are key to the success, with each company providing their expertise and components to get everything delivered on time."

Working around the clock over the last five years, technicians built and verified the European Service Module test article as well as separate flight models - often simultaneously. The first complete European Service Module was shipped to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in 2018 and is now atop the rocket that will launch it around the Moon for Artemis I.

The second European Service Module was delivered last year, and steady progress is being made on the third module.

International collaboration

The cooperation with NASA on Orion was a unique challenge says Max Bottacini, ESA's chief engineer for the European Service Module.

"Each system has interfaces carefully designed and verified by both space agencies and their prime contractors.

"In spite of some difficulties the result is now tangible: a fully qualified and delivered first European Service Module ready for Orion's first mission around the Moon this year. This is the result of good technical work and high spirit of cooperation on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Many thanks to the technical teams of the agencies and industries for this achievement!"

Over the next few weeks in the run-up to the first Artemis launch, ESA's Orion blog will look at the hardware and service contributions to the European Service Module by country.

Please follow SpaceRef on Twitter and Like us on Facebook.




According to Congress Chairwoman Maria del Carmen Alva , the Head of State will be received at 5:00 p.m.





The spokespersons met this morning after Alva suspended a Congress' plenary session a few minutes after it began to address this issue as a priority theme.





On March 11, Prime Minister Anibal Torres asked Congress to receive the President of the Republic during a plenary session on March 15.





Torres reported that the presidential message to be presented during said Congress' plenary session was approved through an official letter during an ordinary Council of Ministers session on March 9.





The approval came within the framework of the provisions of Paragraph 7 of Article 118 of the Political Constitution of Peru





The Constitution states that among the powers and obligations of the President of the Republic is to deliver an address to Congress at any time and compulsorily, in person and in writing, once the first annual ordinary legislature has been set up.





It added that "the annual messages contain a detailed statement of the situation of the Republic and the improvements and reforms that the President deems necessary and convenient for consideration by Congress."





"The messages of the President of the Republic, except for the first one of them, are approved by the Council of Ministers," it concluded.





(END) VVS/CVC/RMB

The Board of Spokespersons of the Peruvian Congress has agreed to approve President Castillo 's request to attend the Parliament's plenary session on Tuesday to deliver an address.Publicado: 14/3/2022
For the BioNutrients experiment, the specially engineered yeast and its powdered food source are held in the container at the left. Its lid holds a membrane that allows carbon dioxide from the yeast to escape. The clear tube at right protects another filter system leading into the compartment with the microorganisms. To activate the yeast and begin the experiment, astronauts on board the space station will inject water through the filter, making it sterile. The water will dissolve the nutrient powder and the yeast will grow and multiply in this liquid environment, producing an important nutrient for human health. Credits: NASA's Ames Research Center/Dominic Hart

Dark leafy greens and vibrant hued root vegetables, such as carrots and sweet potatoes, are rich in nutrients essential for health.

But some vitamins, even those provided in the form of nutritional supplements, lack the shelf-life needed to span multi-year human missions to Mars, as envisioned by NASA's Artemis program. Planning ways to supply astronauts with vital nutrients for long-duration missions may require making or growing it in space. NASA's BioNutrients experiment is testing technology to do just that.

BioNutrients is more than halfway through a five-year trial aboard the International Space Station. The experiment, developed by scientists at NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley, assesses the stability and performance of a hand-held system to manufacture fresh vitamins on-demand in space. Astronauts are not consuming the nutrients during this study, but the products are intended to be safe to eat.

BioNutrients test units, called production packs, contain specially prepared microorganisms, in this case yeast, that churn out vitamins - beta carotene and zeaxanthin. Astronauts start the production of nutrients by grabbing a pack, which is stored at room temperature, adding water, shaking to mix the contents, and warming the packs in an incubator - a device that controls environmental conditions such as temperature.

Roughly once a year, a set of production packs that were stored on the space station return to Earth aboard a SpaceX Cargo Dragon resupply spacecraft. The BioNutrients team processes these packs in their laboratory at Ames, along with an additional set of packs that were never flown in space. On the same day as the ground experiments, an astronaut performs production runs aboard the orbiting laboratory. This helps the researchers see how well the system performs in space compared to on the ground. Here, Aditya Hindupur, lead scientist for the BioNutrients experiment, inspects one of the production packs after removing them from an incubator in a lab at Ames.

Even after 33 months in space, the yeast are visibly producing the orange-colored beta carotene and zeaxanthin nutrients. When samples from in-space production runs return to Earth, the BioNutrients team further analyzes them to measure the yeast's growth and the nutrients they produced. The team examines how the packaging and the growth media, or "yeast food," perform. Additionally, the team assesses how easy it is for the crew to operate the system as well as keep an eye on microbial contaminants to ensure the nutrients are safe for human consumption.

Please follow SpaceRef on Twitter and Like us on Facebook.
Quiero saludar y desear el mayor de los exitos a los mas de cuatro millones de escolares que hoy empiezan sus clases presenciales o semipresenciales. Compartimos la emocion de su primer dia comprometidos a seguir trabajando para un adecuado retorno en todo el pais. #TodosVuelven
Presidente @PedroCastilloTe: "Queridas ninas y ninos, es una inmensa alegria, luego de dos anos, retornar a las aulas. Desde el Gobierno garantizamos la educacion. Hemos desplazado a los ministros a las regiones y estan reportando las acciones por el inicio del Ano Escolar 2022". pic.twitter.com/WXiiAUUxos
YEREVAN, MARCH 14, ARMENPRESS. It has been for over a week, the Azerbaijani side is not allowing the representatives of Artsakh to restore the alleged disruption of the gas pipeline, Human Rights Defender of Armenia said in a statement, adding that as a result, more than 100.000 people have been deprived of heating in cold weather conditions.

In parallel, the electricity is being regularly cut. This further worsens the difficult humanitarian conditions which has been emerged during and after the war.

As a result, hospitals, schools, kindergartens, temporary shelters for displaced persons are deprived of their basic living conditions; it is impossible to exercise the right to health care of people, and the right of children to education.

Moreover, it has been a week since the Azerbaijani military forces have been shooting intensively in the direction of the peaceful villages of Artsakh; Khramort village and Askeran city of Askeran region, and Karmir Shuka and Khnushinak villages of Martuni region. In Khramort village, a peaceful civilian was injured.

All these are aimed at maintaining an atmosphere of fear and terror among the people living in Artsakh, with ultimate aim of making Armenians to leave and annihilate Artsakh from its indigenous Armenian population, the Ombudswoman said.

I strongly condemn the ongoing criminal policy of the Azerbaijani state. I call on international organizations to clearly respond to the situation and to increase the pressure on Azerbaijan to stop this criminal behavior.

Human Rights are universal, and they should be viewed outside the geopolitical framework.

This statement has been sent to international organizations and diplomatic missions, she said.
YEREVAN, MARCH 14, ARMENPRESS. Chairwoman of the Armenian parliamentary standing committee on protection of human rights and public affairs, Taguhi Tovmasyan, has sent letters to international human rights organizations, drawing their attention on the current humanitarian crisis in Artsakh as Azerbaijan obstructs to repair the damaged gas pipeline and the residents of Artsakh have been left without gas supply since March 8.

The humanitarian crisis in Artsakh is deepening. Its more than a week there is no gas in Artsakh. The Azerbaijani forces ban the Russian peacekeepers even to approach the exploded section of the gas pipeline, and there is no opportunity to repair that section of the pipeline. As a result today we both have a problem with transport in Artsakh, as well as there are a number of problems in production units, people have a problem of bread production in their country. This is a very serious alarm, over which I have sent different letters to a number of international organizations dealing with human rights and asked them to focus their attention and urgently respond to the topic of the humanitarian crisis that has started in Artsakh, she said at the committees session today.

According to the lawmaker, if this situation continues further, there will also be an electricity crisis in Artsakh as the system is operating in an overload mode, and that productivity volumes could not last long. Therefore, she didnt rule out that Artsakh may face a problem of electricity supply in the future.

In this respect I want to once again draw the attention of everyone in the world to the humanitarian crisis that has started in Artsakh, the MP said.
YEREVAN, MARCH 14, ARMENPRESS. Vice Speaker of Parliament of Armenia Ruben Rubinyan received today the delegation led by the European Unions Special Representative for the South Caucasus and the Crisis in Georgia Toivo Klaar, the Parliaments press service said.

Issues relating to the Armenia-EU partnership, as well as ensuring regional stability were discussed during the meeting.

The sides also touched upon the Azerbaijani sides attempts of making provocations and pressures against the civilian population of Artsakh, as well as the facts of creating artificial problems for the restoration of vital infrastructures.

The sides exchanged views about the normalization of the relations between Armenia and Turkey.
YEREVAN, MARCH 14, ARMENPRESS. Secretary of the Security Council of Armenia Armen Grigoryan met today with the European Unions Special Representative for the South Caucasus and the Crisis in Georgia Toivo Klaar, the Office of the Secretary of the Security Council said in a press release.

The sides discussed the situation on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border and the steps being taken to raise the level of security and stability on the border. In this context the necessity of launching the demarcation and delimitation process of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border was emphasized.

Armen Grigoryan presented both the humanitarian crisis and security situation in Nagorno Karabakh. The sides highlighted the importance of the comprehensive and lasting settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict under the mandate of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairmanship.
YEREVAN, MARCH 14, ARMENPRESS. The Investment Committee of Armenia held its first session today chaired by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, the PMs Office said.

The session was attended by the deputy prime ministers, the chief of staff at the PMs Office, the ministers of Economy, Finance, the deputy ministers of Justice, Emergency Situations, Economy and other officials.

Dear colleagues, we are starting the first session of the Investment Committee on the management of public investments. I would like to remind that this Committee has been created in order to assess the priorities of public and capital investments and while making decisions to be able to be guided by the maximum efficiency factor, as well as to place this work in the context of budget planning, the PM said.

A number of issues on the agenda were discussed during the session of the Committee.
YEREVAN, MARCH 14, ARMENPRESS. President of the Republic of Artsakh Arayik Harutyunyan received today several members of the Union of Artsakh Reserve Officers NGO, the Presidential Office said.

The current security and humanitarian problems and the ways of overcoming them were discussed at the meeting.

The meeting participants also discussed issues relating to solving the social and housing problems of officers of the military reserve and their families.

President Harutyunyan assured that all the issues and problems will be properly solved within the existing opportunities.
YEREVAN, 14 MARCH, ARMENPRESS. The Central Bank of Armenia informs Armenpress that today, 14 March, USD exchange rate down by 3.31 drams to 514.97 drams. EUR exchange rate down by 4.51 drams to 564.56 drams. Russian Ruble exchange rate up by 0.11 drams to 4.66 drams. GBP exchange rate down by 6.60 drams to 671.52 drams.

The Central Bank has set the following prices for precious metals.

Gold price down by 508.84 drams to 32760.68 drams. Silver price down by 7.56 drams to 424.76 drams. Platinum price stood at 16414.1 drams.
By Trend

Iran and Azerbaijan relations will be further strengthened as result of the new conditions created between the two countries, Director General of the Protocol Department of the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Mehdi Honardust told Trend.

Honardust made the remark commenting on the results of the 15th meeting of the State Commission on Cooperation in Economic, Trade and Humanitarian Spheres between Azerbaijan and Iran held in Baku.

After the meeting, a Memorandum of Understanding on establishing new communication links between East Zangazur economic region and the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic through the territory of Iran, as well as, a number of documents have been signed between the Government of the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The director general stressed that the main part of Iran's foreign policy is the development of relations with the region countries.

Iran's new government (which has been power since August 2021) has made it a priority to strengthen ties with neighboring countries in many areas, especially in the economic sphere.

"Iran is committed to making greater efforts to strengthen economic, political and security relations with Azerbaijan," he said.

The two countries are interested in developing relations in various areas, including, transit, energy, agriculture, industry and other fields, he said.
YEREVAN, MARCH 14, ARMENPRESS. President of the Bright Armenia party Edmon Marukyan has been appointed Ambassador-at-Large according to the decision of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.

The respective decision is posted on e-gov.am.

Marukyan said in a statement on social media that at the proposal of the Prime Minister he will be involved in Armenias foreign policy sector with a status of Ambassador-at-Large.

In this difficult period for our state and region I will continue serving the Republic of Armenia and the national-state interests with high responsibility, Marukyan said.
YEREVAN, MARCH 14, ARMENPRESS. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will hold talks with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian in Moscow on March 15, ARMENPRESS reports the Russian Foreign Ministry informs. The parties will discuss the situation with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on Iran's nuclear program and the developments in Ukraine.

"The Ministers will pay special attention to the situation over the Comprehensive Joint Action Plan on the Iranian nuclear program in the context of the completed negotiations in Vienna. The situation in Ukraine in the context of the special operations by the Russian Armed Forces will be addressed," the statement said.
YEREVAN, 14 MARCH, ARMENPRESS. On March 14, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Armenia held meetings with the heads of diplomatic missions accredited in Armenia and representatives of international organizations.

As ARMENPRESS was infomred from the press service of the MFA Armenia, during the meetings the foreign diplomats were briefed on Azerbaijan's actions aimed at causing a humanitarian crisis in Artsakh, including the continuous disruption of gas supplies, targeting of infrastructure and civilians, and other psychological pressures on Artsakh population.

In the context of preventing the humanitarian crisis, the need for a balanced, clear response from the international community was emphasized.
YEREVAN, 14 MARCH, ARMENPRESS. Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan had a telephone conversation with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, ARMENPRESS was informed from the Office of the Prime Minister.

The interlocutors touched upon the issues on the US-Armenian agenda, attached importance to ensuring the continuity of the strategic dialogue in order to develop and strengthen bilateral cooperation in various spheres. The Prime Minister thanked the American side for its consistent support to Armenia in the democratic reforms, stressed that the further strengthening of democracy is the absolute priority of the Armenian Government, and that our country will resolutely continue to move in that direction.

Nikol Pashinyan and Antony Blinken referred to the processes taking place in the South Caucasus, the situation around Nagorno Karabakh and the escalating tensions.

The parties stressed the need for stability and peace in the region, emphasizing the need for a comprehensive settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict within the framework of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs, which will contribute to the establishment of peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia and the US Secretary of State exchanged views on the delimitation and demarcation of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border, the chances for unblocking communications in the region, as well as the ongoing dialogue between Armenia and Turkey.

The sides also referred to the processes taking place in the international arena, including the situation in Ukraine.
YEREVAN, 14 MARCH, ARMENPRESS. At the annual MITT Moscow tourism exhibition, which will take place from March 15 to 17, Armenia will once again present its tourism potential with a single pavilion, ARMENPRESS reports the Facebook page of the Tourism Committee of the Ministry of Economy of Armenia informs.

"With the support of the Tourism Committee of the Ministry of Economy, 13 tourism companies from Armenia will take part in the exhibition.

MITT Moscow is the largest tourism exhibition in Russia and the CIS countries, in which Armenia has participated every year. Russia is one of the largest tourism markets for Armenia. The largest tourist flows in 2021 were from Russia. Last year 350,569 Russian tourists arrived in Armenia.

During the three days, the Armenian pavilion will present the diversity of touristic offers of Armenia: adventure, gastronomic tourism, wine destinations, Yerevan and regional festivals, real experiences, cultural values of Armenia, etc.," the statement reads.

Hea dof the Tourism Committee of Armenia Sisian Boghossian will meet with his Russian and CIS partners to discuss the current challenges and their impact on tourism, as well as the importance of ensuring the continuation of the cooperation in the exisiting situation.
YEREVAN, 14 MARCH, ARMENPRESS. Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan had a telephone conversation with the Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau, ARMENPRESS was informed from the Offic eof the Prime Minister.

Prime Minister Pashinyan thanked the Canadian side for its readiness to support the development of democratic institutions in our country and the reforms being implemented in that direction. The Prime Minister attached importance to the recent visit of Canada's Special Envoy to Europe Stephane Dion to Armenia, and expressed hope that the meetings and discussions will strengthen cooperation between the governments of the two countries in various fields. Nikol Pashinyan stressed that the Armenian Government will continue to move in the path of advancing the agenda for the development of democratic institutions.

Justin Trudeau expressed the readiness of the Government of Canada to further contribute to the strengthening of democracy in Armenia and the deepening of bilateral ties in various fields.

The Prime Ministers of Armenia and Canada discussed the escalation of tensions over Nagorno-Karabakh and highlighted the comprehensive settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict within the framework of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs aimed at ensuring stability and peace in the region.

The interlocutors exchanged views on the processes taking place in the South Caucasus, including the opportunities of delimitation and demarcation of the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan, as well as the Armenian-Turkish dialogue.

The situation in Ukraine was touched upon.
716 | April 29, 2022 17:31 Denmark becomes the first country to stop its Covid vaccination program

704 | April 29, 2022 16:07 A group of students who participated in the 44-day Artsakh War received support from the Armenian Relief Society

674 | April 30, 2022 09:38 Azerbaijani officials should specify which territories they see in the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan - Grigoryan

674 | April 29, 2022 15:20 Psychological seminar held in Stepanakert

636 | April 29, 2022 15:53 Armenian, Azerbaijani, Russian FMs' meeting to be held in Dushanbe

608 | April 29, 2022 15:00 Euro zone inflation hits record high of 7.5%

608 | April 30, 2022 12:01 Russian operation in Ukraine contributes to freeing world from Western oppression - Lavrov

592 | April 30, 2022 10:40 NATO doing everything to prevent political agreements between Russia and Ukraine  Lavrov
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement Monday noting that Armenia had responded to the proposals submitted by Azerbaijan.

March 14, 2022, 14:46 MFA: Armenia has responded to proposals of Azerbaijan

STEPANAKERT, MARCH 14, ARTSAKHPRESS: The Republic of Armenia responded to the proposals of the Republic of Azerbaijan and applied to the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairmanship to organize negotiations for the signing of peace agreement between the Republic of Armenia and the Republic of Azerbaijan on the basis of the UN Charter, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Helsinki Final Act, the foreign ministry said in a statement.
By Azernews

By Ayya Lmahamad

Azerbaijan's Energy Minister Parviz Shahbazov and Turkey's Energy and Natural Resources Deputy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar have discussed bilateral energy cooperation as part of the Antalya Diplomacy Forum.

The parties expressed satisfaction with the benefits of long-term Azerbaijan-Turkey energy cooperation for both countries. They emphasized the TANAP's contribution to Turkey's natural gas needs.

Furthermore, the parties reviewed the progress of the Igdir-Nakhchivan project and exchanged views on the potential expansion of cooperation in natural gas and electricity.

Azerbaijan and Turkey collaborate in a variety of economic fields and have completed major energy and infrastructure projects such as Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan, Baku-Tbilisi-Kars, and TANAP.

Turkey imports Azerbaijani natural gas through the South Caucasus Gas Pipeline (Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum) and TANAP. Azerbaijan supplies gas to Turkey only from the Shah Deniz field. The supplies have been made since July 2007.

The construction of the Igdir-Nakhchivan natural gas pipeline is a major post-war project. The project was launched after a trilateral peace agreement signed by the Azerbaijani, Russian and Armenian leaders on November 10, under which all the economic and transport communications in the region will be unblocked. The pipeline will run from Turkeys eastern Igdir region to Nakhchivan through Azerbaijans newly-liberated territories, thus ensuring the exclaves energy security.

In 2021, Azerbaijan and Turkey signed the Shusha Declaration on Allied Relations, which focuses on defence cooperation, promoting regional stability and prosperity, and establishing new transportation routes.

The two countries set up a goal to bring the mutual trade turnover to $15 billion in 2023. As of 2021, the trade turnover between the two countries amounted to $4.6 billion.

It should be noted that so far, Turkey is Azerbaijans second-largest investor followed by the UK.

Additionally, Turkey was one of the first countries that expressed its interest and readiness to participate in the restoration of Azerbaijans liberated territories.
Beijing blasted Washingtons recent allegations as disinformation that Russia sought military assistance from China to conduct its special operation in Ukraine, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian said at a briefing on Monday, Tass informs.

March 14, 2022, 17:44 Beijing rejects false US claims that Russia sought Chinese military aid for Ukraine op

STEPANAKERT, MARCH 14, ARTSAKHPRESS: "The allegations on the matter disseminated by the US are false information," the diplomat specified.
Russias invasion of Ukraine is too burdened with the weight of European history, nuclear one-upmanship and Cold War rivalry

As the first shock of Russias invasion of Ukraine fades, it is becoming more and more clear that far from being a recrudescence of Stalinist barbarism, President Vladimir Putins action was another act in a continuing Cold War for which US President Joe Biden, Donald Trump and their predecessors were no less responsible. Inspired by his spectacular electoral victories, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, caught between his American mentor and Russian arms supplier, has to be especially careful in responding to this manifestation of old wine in a new bottle.

There are several equivalents in this country of Ukraines predominately Russophone Donbas region where, curiously, Russian speakers outnumber ethnic Russians. Secessionist trends are always strong in such situations, and Indias history shows how malign neighbours like China and Pakistan have exploited New Delhis clumsy handling of grievances among Khalistani Sikhs and the Nagas and Mizos. But nothing in India, not even the volatile Jammu and Kashmir situation, can quite match the international dimensions of what constituted the former Soviet Union. Nor is the Kashmir dispute likely to provoke the interests of the sole remaining superpower, which underlies most global crises today.

But thanks to the United States, regime change is nowadays regarded as a legitimate policy objective. Moreover, the Western media went to town claiming that Ukraine had the worlds third-largest nuclear weapons stockpile until it gave them up. But while these weapons were physically in Ukraines territory, formal control vested in the Commonwealth of the Independent States and operational control in Russia. Belarus and Kazakhstan, which also had residual Soviet nuclear warheads and missiles, returned them to Russia, while Ukraine entered into a number of interlinked international agreements, including treaties with Russia, the United States, Belarus and Kazakhstan, the Lisbon Protocol to the Start-1 treaty, and the Minsk Protocol. They covered Ukraines sovereignty, surrendering nuclear weapons, constitutional reform, the ceasefire in the Donbas and self-government for the Donetsk and Luhansk self-proclaimed republics and restoring border control to Kyiv.

Drafted by the Trilateral (Ukraine, Russia and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe) Contact Group on Ukraine with French and German mediation, the Minsk Agreements failed to deter the Donbas rebels. Pressured by a Washington that was convinced that the so-called end of history meant a unipolar world, in 1994 Ukraine handed over its nuclear arsenal to Russia in exchange for commitments that outside powers would refrain from the threat or use of force against [its] territorial integrity or political independence.

Washington and London probably never thought that they would have to enforce the guarantee. They may not intervene openly even now. But just as the Donbas rebels are believed to be armed, trained and financed by the Kremlin, it should surprise no one if leaked documents reveal one day that the American and British intelligence services armed the Ukrainians while the Western news agencies were crying wolf about an imminent Russian invasion.

These developments took place against the background of Moscows 2008 invasion of Georgia after Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili sent troops into separatist South Ossetia. Russias military intervention indicated that the wheel had turned full circle since 1991 when Mikhail Gorbachev showed himself a bigger democrat than Abraham Lincoln: while he allowed the Soviet republics to go their own way, Lincoln fought a bitter bloody war to defeat the Confederacy. If Mr Putin set the clock back, he did so only after the US overthrew established regimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. It would have done the same in Syria if Russia had not supported President Bashir al-Assad.

The Ukraine crisis also suggests parallels with Libya whose leader, Col. Muammar Gaddafi, must have bitterly rued being persuaded to abandon his nuclear programme when he was toppled, tortured and murdered by rebels who drew their strength from the Western sponsors of the Arab Spring. No wonder Kim Jong-un in North Korea and Irans ayatollahs will place no faith in American promises or deal with the US except from a position of strength. Even American allies like Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Taiwan talk of self-reliance. Taiwan, which abandoned its nuclear programme in the 1980s, is considering a limited arsenal of five warheads to deter the Peoples Republic of China. South Korea invokes the North to justify its own case for the deterrent. Japans former Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, suggests Tokyo might host US nuclear weapons. Belarus wants to renounce its non-nuclear status.

When the Warsaw Pact (created as a response to West Germanys induction into the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, or Nato, in 1955) was dissolved in 1991, Moscow believed that Nato would follow suit. The Americans decided otherwise. Also reneging on the promise by James Baker, President H.W. Bushs secretary of state, that Nato would not expand, President Bill Clinton invited former Warsaw Pact members and post-Soviet republics to join Nato, whose enlargement became a crucial feature of his foreign policy.

Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic were the first to join. Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia followed. Then came Albania, Croatia, Montenegro and North Macedonia. Last year, Nato officially recognised three states -- Bosnia-Herzegovina, Georgia and Ukraine -- as potential future members.

At this rate, Nato might even one day invite Russia to join. There is a precedent for John Foster Dulles, the US secretary of state who called non-alignment immoral and who inspired the Dull, Duller, Dulles quip, himself claimed to have stopped the full flow of Jawaharlal Nehrus eloquence by inviting the founder and high priest of non-alignment to join Natos eastern counterpart, Seato, or the South-East Asia Treaty Organisation. Dulles had explained he had included Pakistan in Seato because not only were the Gurkhas the finest fighting men in Asia, but were sturdy Muslim Pakistanis. However, to accommodate Russia in Nato, the US must first accomplish the regime-change of the century by replacing Mr Putin in the Kremlin with a pro-Western politician.

All this highlights the intricacies of a situation that is not simple like imperial Germany marching into little neutral Belgium in 1914, when Germanys Chancellor earned worldwide condemnation by dismissing the guarantee of Belgian neutrality as only a scrap of paper (ein Fetzen Papier). Russias invasion of Ukraine is too burdened with the weight of European history, nuclear one-upmanship and Cold War rivalry to be dismissed as a black-and-white case of unprovoked aggression. It presents Narendra Modi with a complex diplomatic challenge of unparalleled sophistication for Russia is the principal weapons supplier to this American protege in the Quad.
In the restaurant world, a lot of the spotlight shines on the entrees, but those who love to eat out know that the real stars of the show are 
Getting government to be open with the people it serves has always been a Sisyphean effort - rolling a large rock up a hill, only to have it roll back down right when it got near the top.

And over the last few years, it seems, the rock has gotten bigger, the hill created by government has gotten steeper, and the number of people pushing the rock - journalists, citizen advocates, government officials sympathetic to transparency efforts - has gotten smaller.

More and more, it seems, government officials want to keep the public from information they need to know and deserve to know.

Government officials exploiting new technology to communicate in secret.

Government officials hiding and manipulating statistical information that might save our lives.

Government officials ignoring existing transparency laws, and forcing citizens to undertake expensive and time-consuming legal action to obtain information in hopes of discouraging them and forcing them to give up seeking it.

Government officials unnecessarily and illegally delaying the release of public information in hopes the citizens will eventually no longer need or want the information.

Government officials opposing or seeking to undo the open government laws to make it more difficult for the public to seek and obtain information - often hiding behind a concern for personal privacy or the threat of jeopardizing law enforcement investigations to justify closing off public access to records.

Government officials whining about public criticism for their lack of transparency. The news on the open government front lately in New York hasnt been all dire.

Gov. Kathy Hochul has pledged to operate a more open government than her predecessor, Gov. Andrew Cuomo. By just pledging to be more transparent, shes invited the spotlight on herself and her administration - a positive development.

Sunshine Week To learn more about Sunshine Week, visit www.newsleaders.org/sunshine-week-about, follow @SunshineWeek and look for #SunshineWeek hashtags on Twitter.

And while shes gotten off to a slow start, she has made changes in open government laws to give citizens more access to records and to give citizens a better opportunity to be successful in challenging attempts to keep records secret. For that, she deserves credit, and we encourage her to continue down this road.

Thanks to the pandemic, citizens can view their government in action without leaving their homes through state-mandated remote telecasting of meetings. While its not as easy to call out public officials online as it is by attending meetings in person, this technological shift does make it easier for more people to watch their government in action and become involved.

But there is so much more that needs to be done.

Its tempting for us all, in the face of push-back from government officials, to just stop fighting, to leave the rock at the bottom of the hill and walk away.

But the results of that would be tragic, and against our own self interests.

Its appropriate that we in the journalism community use the start of Spring to host Sunshine Week - the week we remind the citizens of their right to know and remind government officials of their obligation to be transparent and cooperative with the citizens they serve.

Sunshine Week. Shine the light on government. Sunshine, the best disinfectant to combat dirty politics.

It serves as a reminder that we have a right to know what government is doing, how its spending our money, what information its using to base its decisions upon.

That we have a right to ask for information and to have it provided to us in a timely manner.

That we have a right to attend meetings and to review the same documents that public officials are reviewing in real time so we know how decisions are being made and what questions to ask.

Journalists have always been at the front lines as watchdogs against government secrecy. But these days, there are fewer of us  a situation that many in government routinely exploit.

We in New York still have strong press associations like the New York News Publishers Association and the New York Press Association fighting for laws to make government more open, to make more information available and to make it easier for citizens to access information.

But if we as citizens want transparency, we cant leave it to others. More than ever, citizens need to be their own advocates.

Citizens also can band together to help one another.

A recently formed group of citizens from around the state regularly shares its experiences, expertise and collective efforts to fight for open government. Theyre called the New York Coalition for Open Government. They do research and share ideas and information, and they advocate for transparency.

And government officials can be more transparent and avoid dealing with time-consuming requests for information by upgrading their websites to make it easier for them to post more information online in a timely manner. The more information that citizens can access on their own, the less they have to ask for.

Wed also like to point out that while many government officials try to hide their actions from public scrutiny, not all are trying to push the rock down the hill.

Many well-intended, honest public servants - elected officials appointees and staff - understand their obligation to be transparent and work with the citizens to provide them with the information they want and deserve. They should be recognized and applauded.

If Sunshine Week accomplishes anything, we hope it reminds you, the citizens, of your right to know what your government is doing, your right to demand information, and your obligation to fight for open government yourselves.

And we hope it reminds public officials of their obligation to serve the citizens above themselves by honoring and fulfilling the publics right to know.

Keeping government transparent is an uphill battle.

But its one we must continue to wage, and one thats worth the struggle.

Mark C. Mahoney is editorial page editor of The Daily Gazette in Schenectady.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
Toyota Motor Corp.'s supplier Denso Corp. said that it was the target of a ransomware attack last week. However, this couldn't cause any disruption in the operation of the automaker, claims a Bloomberg report. Denso claimed that it promptly responded to unauthorized access to its networks in Germany on Thursday. This came as the second recent cyberattack against a Toyota supplier.

(Also Read: Toyota to review production plans as global disruptions hinder output)

Toyota had to idle all of its factories in Japan owing to a cyberattack on Kojima Press Industry Co., which is one of the automaker's suppliers. The production resumed after a day, but it came as another blow to Toyota, as the automaker has been aiming to revive its production lost in recent months owing to the semiconductor shortage and Covid-19 related disruptions.

The report claims that a group named Pandora allegedly accessed Denso's systems, threatening to disclose the suppliers trade secrets such as emails, invoices and part diagrams on a website on the dark web. This is not the first time an automotive company faced such a ransomware attack. Previously as well, several automakers and their suppliers have become targets for cyberattacks. Such cyber-attacks not only endangers the automaker's crucial classified data but disrupt the overall operations as well.

Toyota had been relatively resilient to supply chain snags through most of the pandemic. The auto company has been aiming to ramp up its production to make up for lost output and meet soaring global demand for new vehicles. However, it announced a production cut in Japan a few days ago. Last Friday, it said that it's would cut the company's Japan production output by 20 per cent in April, 10 per cent in May and five per cent in June.

First Published Date:
Not only battery electric vehicles, but the Italian government aims to subsidise hybrid electric vehicles as well.

Italy plans to offer up to 6000 euros subsidy to new electric car buyers in an attempt to promote zero-emission mobility in the country. The Italian government aims to offer the subsidy on the purchase price of new electric vehicles as part of its strategy to support the country's automotive industry, reports Reuters.

(Also Read: Germany ready to ban petrol cars but wants to keep ICE engines: What it means)

The Italian government reportedly has set aside 8.7 billion euros for subsidising the new electric vehicles until 2030. This includes around 700 million euros to be offered as subsidy in this year, the report further claims.

Reuters also reports that the subsidy of up to 6,000 euros is subject to the purchase of new electric vehicles that cost up to 35,000 euros and includes a 2,000 euro contribution linked to the scrappage of a polluting internal combustion engine-powered car.

Not only battery electric vehicles, but the Italian government aims to subsidise hybrid electric vehicles as well. The subsidy will be applicable for the hybrid electric vehicles that cost up to 45,000 euros. For these hybrid electric vehicles, the country will offer subsidies of up to 2,500 euros. The plan also includes incentives of 1,250 euros for the new internal combustion engine-powered Euro-VI compliant cars when older vehicles are scrapped, reports the new agency.

Italy is not the only country that is offering incentives and subsidies to electric vehicle customers in an attempt to promote zero-emission mobility. Several other countries such as Norway too have announced similar measures to encourage the consumers to shift from internal combustion engine vehicles to electric vehicles.

The European countries are aiming at achieving zero-emission mobility through several different measures. One of them is offering subsidies and incentives to the new electric vehicle buyers. Another move is imposing a deadline for internal combustion engine vehicles.

First Published Date:
Beijing (Gasgoo)- On March 14th, Changan Autos intelligent auto brand, AVATR, announced that its first production model, the AVATR 11, has been listed in the Road Power-Driven Vehicle Manufacturing Enterprises and Products Catalog of Chinas Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).

Photo credit: AVATR



The Catalog complies to the policy that all vehicles aimed to sell on the Chinese market must be listed on the website of the MIIT. The AVATR 11 is on track for mass production and will debut at the Auto China 2022 in April.

Along with the update, AVATR also released configuration details on the AVATR 11. Positioned as a mid-to-large size intelligence electric vehicle, the AVATR 11 has a 2975mm wheelbase, with 4880mm in length, 1970mm in width, and only 1601mm in height, indicating a sporty appearance.

Photo credit: AVATR

Power-wise, the AVATR 11 is equipped with a 195kW electric motor in the front and a 230kW electric motor in the back, allowing a maximum power of 425kW. Moreover, AVATR proudly introduced that the vehicle can run from 0-100km/h in less than 4 seconds.

Photo credit: AVATR

Additionally, the AVATR 11 is powered by CATLs 90.38 kWh ternary lithium-ion battery packs, allowing a maximum of 600km of range. An upgraded 700km-range version is being developed, the automaker added. Thanks to its 750V high-voltage charging system, the vehicle can be charged from 30% to 80% in 15 minutes.

As to the vehicle's intelligence, the AVATR 11 is loaded with 3 LiDARs, 6 millimeter-wave radars, 12 ultrasonic radars, and 13 cameras on a 400TOPS computing platform.

Notably, the company previously set a target to launch four vehicle models in four years.
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.

XPeng joins three European auto associations

XPeng announced today that it had become a member of three European automotive associations, namely the Association for Electromobility in Europe (AVERE), the Automobile Industry Association of the Netherlands (RAI Vereniging) and BIL Sweden.

Changan releases new pictures about LUMIN

Changan released some pictures about its A00-class model LUMIN, which will adopt brand-new logo and has a lovely style in appearance.

VOYAH Dreamer to hit market on April 7

The VOYAH Dreamer, the new mid-large MPV model from the brand, will hit the market on April 7. The new vehicle will offer two seating options, four seats or seven seats.

AVATR 11 to debut at Auto China 2022 in April

On March 14th, Changan Autos intelligent auto brand, AVATR, announced that its first production model, the AVATR 11, has been listed in the Road Power-Driven Vehicle Manufacturing Enterprises and Products Catalog of Chinas Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).

Sunwoda EVB to build 30GWh battery production base in Zhuhai

Sunwoda Electric Vehicle Battery Co., Ltd. (Sunwoda EVB) on March 11 signed an agreement with Zhuhai municipal government for the investment in a battery manufacturing project, according to a post on the WeChat account of Sunwoda Electronic Co., Ltd. (Sunwoda), the parent of Sunwoda EVB.



China adds about 247,000 charging piles in February, up 219.6% YoY

By the end of Feb. 2022, there had been 2.864 million charging piles deployed across China, up 62.9% from the same period of last year, according to the China Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Promotion Alliance (EVCIPA).



PATEO bags RMB300 million, with IPO coming soon

Chinas V2X explorer, PATEO, recently received RMB300 million strategic investment from the government-backed Shanghai Guosheng Capital while preparing for an IPO.



FAW Groups Changchun factories said to halt production

With the sudden COVID outbreak hitting the city of Changchun hard, the Changchun-based automaker, FAW Group, is reportedly in production halt from March 13th  March 16th, according to local media outlets.



CATL seizes 48.02% share of Chinas Feb. power battery installed capacity

In February 2022, China's power battery outputs reached 31.8GWh, soaring 236.2% year on year, while also rising 7.1% month on month, according to the China Automotive Power Battery Industry Innovation Alliance (CAPBIIA).
Beijing (Gasgoo)- With the sudden COVID outbreak hitting the city of Changchun hard, the Changchun-based automaker, FAW Group, is reportedly in production halt from March 13th  March 16th, according to local media outlets.

Photo credit: Hongqi



At press time, the auto group has yet to respond to the rumor.

According to FAW Group, Changchun is the manufacturing home base for most of the companys sub-brands, including Hongqi, FAW Jiefang, FAW Bestune, FAW-Volkswagen, and FAW Toyota.

The Hongqi and Bestune vehicles are produced in the Weishan Factory, while FAW Jiefang vehicles are manufactured in its Changchun base.

The FAW-Volkswagen factory holds the production responsibility for FAW-Volkswagen and Audi models, including the CC, Magotan, Bora, C-Trek from the Volkswagen lineup, and the A4, A6, Q5, and Q3 models from the Audi lineup.

Additionally, several FAW Toyota models are also made in Changchun, namely, the RAV4 and the Harrier.

In fact, the sudden COVID outbursts have fitfully affected the auto industry. Not long ago, in February, Boschs Suzhou factory was severely hit when the virus came to town. The slashed supply has directly dented the sales of many local automakers in February, including Changan Auto and Great Wall Motor, both affected by the shortage of Boschs ESP components.
RTHK: Stones to hit the road in Europe, marking 60 years

The Rolling Stones will embark on a European tour this summer, playing stadiums and arenas, to mark their 60th anniversary as a band, the British rockers said on Monday.

Called "SIXTY", the 14-show tour will kick off in Madrid on June 1 and travel to 10 countries in total. In Britain, the band will perform at Anfield Stadium in Liverpool, their first show in the city for more than 50 years, as well as two concerts at London's Hyde Park.

Frontman Mick Jagger, 78, and guitarists Keith Richards, 78, and Ronnie Wood, 74, will be joined by drummer Steve Jordan for the tour. Charlie Watts, who joined the Stones as drummer in 1963, died last year aged 80.

"Looking forward to seeing you all this summer!" Jagger posted on Twitter, alongside a video of the band performing live across the decades.

The set list will include Stones classics such as "(I Cant Get No) Satisfaction" and "Paint It Black", as well as "a selection of unexpected tracks" from their vast back catalogue, according to a press release. The tour will also have a new stage production.

The Stones, who wrapped up the North American leg of their "No Filter" tour in November, will also play in Munich, Amsterdam, Bern, Milan, Brussels, Vienna, Paris and Stockholm. (Reuters)

This story has been published on: 2022-03-14. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
By Azernews

By Ayya Lmahamad

Azerbaijan's Compulsory Insurance Bureau and Turkey's Motor Insurers' Bureau have signed a protocol on the integration of "Green Card" civil liability insurance systems of vehicle owners.

Compulsory Insurance Bureau Executive Director Rashad Ahmadov and Motor Insurance Bureau Director Mehmet Akif Eroglu signed the document in Baku on March 14.

The protocol aims to simplify and speed up border crossing procedures between Azerbaijan and Turkey and to help prevent the use of false documents.

Moreover, following the integration, the procedure of sale and purchase of "green card" insurance policies will be simplified.

Border crossing procedure simplification

Speaking at the meeting, Rashad Ahmadov stated that the integration of civil liability insurance systems "Green Card" between Azerbaijan and Turkey will simplify and speed up border crossing procedures.

He noted that Azerbaijan has been using this system since 2016.

"Its advantage is the driver's civil liability insurance abroad. It is possible to register trucks, cars, buses and motorcycles under the green card system. The dynamics of insurance cases in the countries-participants of this project is multidirectional," he said.

Ahmadov added that once the systems are integrated, the procedure for selling and purchasing green card policies will be simplified.

Trade relations expansion

Turkish Insurance Association Chairman Atilla Benli noted that the integration of systems of civil liability insurance of vehicle owners "Green Card" between Azerbaijan and Turkey will help expand trade relations between the two countries.

He mentioned that the main purpose of systems integration is to strengthen cooperation and develop insurance systems.

"The protocol signed today will contribute to commercial transportation between Azerbaijan and Turkey," he said.

Turkish model of insurance

Moreover, Central Bank Director-General Ziya Aliyev stated that Azerbaijan plans to integrate the Turkish model of insurance.

He noted that the insurance sector has been developing for 15 years in Azerbaijan and now accounts for about one percent of GDP.

"This sector has great potential for further development. In addition, we have a number of joint projects with Turkey, which we plan to develop. The Turkish insurance sector has a 150-year history, and for Azerbaijan, it is a great experience which can be applied," he said.

Concerning the integration of the Turkish insurance model in Azerbaijan, he stated that it is planned to expand the development of market infrastructure and the compulsory insurance sector to that end.

Aliyev went on to say that the Central Bank has created a corresponding program for the development of this sector, focusing on mandatory insurance, public and business information, digitalization, infrastructure, and support tools.

"The insurance sector is also included in the new development program of the Central Bank of Azerbaijan, including in the area of financing," he said.
Shanghai (Gasgoo)- Chinese power battery maker Sunwoda Electric Vehicle Battery Co., Ltd. (Sunwoda EVB) on March 11 signed an agreement with Zhuhai municipal government for the investment in a battery manufacturing project, according to a post on the WeChat account of Sunwoda Electronic Co., Ltd. (Sunwoda), the parent of Sunwoda EVB.

Sunwoda EVB, Zhuhai municipal government signing agreement; photo credit: Sunwoda



Under the agreement, Sunwoda EVB plans to plow 12 billion yuan ($1.887 billion) in the construction of a battery manufacturing base in Zhuhai city, Guangdong province. Covering an area of around 800 mu (533,300 square meters), the completed manufacturing facility is designed to feature a yearly production capacity of 30GWh power batteries and energy storage batteries.

The company aims to build the Zhuhai factory into an all-new base dedicated to manufacturing lithium ion batteries and a benchmark plant focusing on producing cells, modules, and battery systems for EV power and energy storage batteries.

Moreover, under the project, the upstream and downstream production capacity pivoting on terminal battery products will be deployed, the application of optical storage and super-fast charging technologies will be promoted, and the R&D and testing facilities for lithium ion batteries will be established.

The agreement was signed only 9 days after Sunwoda unveiled the Sunwoda EVB's plan to ink an investment deal with Zhuhai municipal government. According to the statement released then, Sunwoda EVB would set up a subsidiary, temporarily named Zhuhai Sunwoda New Energy Co., Ltd., to advance the implementation of the project.

For the first two months of 2022, Sunwoda EVB recorded a power battery installed capacity of 0.46GWh, accounting for 1.55% of China's total volume, according to the data from the China Automotive Power Battery Industry Innovation Alliance.
Flagstaff police are searching for Juan Bernardo-Valenzuela Santa Cruz in connection with a shooting early Sunday.

The shooting happened shortly before 3:30 a.m. Sunday at a home on South Yale Street, according to Flagstaff Police Department spokesman Sgt. Odis Brockman. Brockman said the shooting stemmed from an argument and the victim's injuries were non-life-threatening.

Officials said the suspected shooter has been "tentatively identified" as Cruz of Flagstaff. He was described as a 130-pound, 5-foot-7 Hispanic male with dark-colored hair. A vehicle description was not immediately available.

He is believed to be armed, according to Brockman. Police are seeking the public's help in locating Cruz. Officials warned not to approach the man, but instead, call the Flagstaff Police Department at 928-774-1414 or Silent Witness at 928-774-6111. Tips can also be submitted anonymously online at https://new.tipsubmit.com/en/create-report/anonymous/flagstaff.az.gov?fbclid=IwAR1afIbZXDpROt05VITzPNRq6NfrTdSF01TEjrvGkSixahuYM_wqOFbSMS0.

Reporter Bree Burkitt can be reached at 928-556-2250 or bburkitt@azdailysun.com.

Love 0 Funny 2 Wow 2 Sad 2 Angry 0

Get local news delivered to your inbox! Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
Political parties are a hard habit to break.

According to a Gallup Poll, 62% of Americans dont believe the two major parties are doing a good job of representing Americans. And yet, despite registrations declining, a majority of American voters still identify as members of one of the two parties, and the vast majority limit their voting to candidates from them.

Third parties are seen as spoilers, costing Al Gore the presidency in 2000 and Hillary Clinton in 2016, and not doing much else. The fear of disrupting a system, even one viewed as corrupt, is crippling America.

The indoctrination into the duopoly starts early, and everything in our political culture reinforces the view that no matter how unhappy we are with our choices, the only options are left and right. Little attention is paid, in the climate of our duopolistic system, to the most fundamental purpose of our government  provide solutions that make our lives better. The two parties arent interested in solving problems, as a solved problem cant be used to drum up their base.

The good news when it comes to a course correction might stem, tragically, from the disheartening polarization thats currently gripped our nation. Signs are showing that people are sick of it, and, outside of the partisans in the media and on social media, people are ready for a different approach to politics.

This is why youre seeing so many third parties and nonpartisan organizations spring up to engage Americans interested in change. But who are these Americans, and what are their political beliefs? In short, what are they looking for in an alternative party?

Its easy to assume that theres some middle ground inhabited by most Americans between the left and the right, and on certain topics thats true. Most Americans support some common sense gun control measures, whether theyre gun owners or think that gun ownership leads to violence. Most Americans want to minimize police violence while still supporting our law enforcement officers.

However, on other topics, most Americans are more on the left or the right. Most Americans do believe in climate change and think that more needs to be done to combat it, aligning more with the left. But they also believe that unemployment payments should be limited, and work should be encouraged  standing closer to the political right. Most Americans support investing in small businesses while also raising the minimum wage. Its not clear where these voters, when their individual views are analyzed, fall on the left-right spectrum. And while they may say that theyre in the middle, thats not always the case.

So its not always a middle ground that Americans are looking for. In many cases, its shared ground.

Axios reported on the findings of a think tank, Populace, conducted in 2020 that revealed that Americans are united by nine of the 15 top priorities for voters of each major party, including access to high quality health care, community safety, reforming the criminal justice system, building up opportunity for our middle class, and infrastructure. Eighty percent of voters support term limits. The areas of overlap go on and on. And yet, we hardly see movement in the federal government.

There are many parties and candidates out there fighting for these reforms and attempting to bring Americans together, but the system  built up by the current two parties  makes it harder and harder with each ballot access law and party recognition hurdle for these groups to gain traction. But, outside of that, the biggest hurdle is viability  shedding the image that third parties are spoilers who have no chance of winning elections.

But the only thing thats stopping a party that better reflects the majority of the American population who currently believes theyre not represented well by either party is those Americans deciding that they can do better, and knowing that their vote can usher in change.

Electoral reforms such as ranked-choice voting and nonpartisan primaries can help with this, but breaking the major political party habit is going to require people to believe change is possible. Trust in our institutions is low and declining. The Forward Partys goal is to rebuild that trust, to show people whats possible when they have elected officials who are interested in fixing problems for them. But the ultimate goal isnt to be the third party or to replace one of the current parties. The American people are way too varied in their beliefs to ever be well-represented by a few parties.

By shifting our voting from the binary choice of left versus right, we can find that just right lies not in one party, but in a well-balanced multi-party system where a focus on values and problem-solving become the new political habit. Where elected officials from a variety of parties are willing to work together in good faith to solve problems, and to try out solutions they disagree with but that are proposed by people who truly believe they will work.

Lets restore governance to its fundamental purpose  lifting the nation with solutions for all Americans. Lets move the nation forward.

Matt Shinners is interim executive director of the Forward Party. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0




(CGTN) U.S. President Joe Biden had harbored bold plans to implement a "China containment" strategy that he believed would succeed on a grand scale. He had sought to recruit nation-states from all over the world to stand united in efforts to weaken China's economic and diplomatic influence on the world stage.

Nonetheless, the Biden administration discovered that their schemes could not succeed, since China has already enjoyed robust and vibrant economic ties with many countries and they felt reluctant to break away from that.

Hence, Biden and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken had to change course by revamping previous foreign policy directives, such as the "Pivot to Asia," "Quadrilateral Security Dialogue" (the U.S., Australia, India and Japan), and the White House issued a revised report on the U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy on January 11.

Washington Beltway thought leaders, U.S. State Department and Pentagon officials had thought they hatched brilliant schemes to sabotage China's rise. They received support from the UK, EU, Japan, Australia and India but their "China containment" fantasies collapsed when Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the "special military operations" in Ukraine on February 24.

Consequently, the world was forever changed the moment Russian troops entered into the recognized territories of Ukraine. Washington had to rethink its stance on which nation is their "greatest threat," and for the time being it appears to be Russia and no longer China. Accordingly, the U.S. had to refocus their eyes on the European continent and to place their beloved "Pivot to Asia" on a brief hiatus.

India unwilling to forsake Russia

Additionally, the U.S., EU and UK are pushing ahead on very tough economic sanctions against Russia but not everyone is on board with them. The U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy could be scrapped, since India, a key partner for the U.S., has refused to join in on sanctioning Russia and has also called for the United Nations Security Council to support a closer investigation on allegations that the U.S. had biological weapons laboratories in Ukraine.

Delhi and Moscow still have close bilateral ties while the Indian Defense Ministry purchases or manufactures over 60 percent of its weapons that are linked to Russian weapons contractors that have just been sanctioned by the United States. Hence, Delhi won't follow up on sanctions, since they risk getting "de-militarized" by default.

Washington, by baiting Russia into the Ukraine conflict, has ruptured its bilateral relations with Delhi. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi stood keen to support the U.S. on the Indo-Pacific strategy but they will not abandon their long-held ties with the Kremlin, especially on account of India continuing to buy up more deliveries of Russian oil and gas imports and energy requires energy imports to keep their transmission grids operational.

The Indian government takes seriously its formal neutrality pact and does not seek or wish to meddle into the foreign affairs of other nations. By adhering to the neutrality stance, Delhi intends to embark on "the path of diplomacy and dialogue" to resolve the Russia-Ukraine crises and that is in the world's best interests.

Meanwhile, India's United Nations Permanent Representative T.S. Tirumurti has expressed concerns over the biological weapons laboratories that Russians troops have uncovered in Ukraine. Along with Brazil, China and Russia they support a deeper investigation on the matter under the "Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention (BTWC)."

"In this context, we would like to underline the importance attached by India the BTWC as a key global and non-discriminatory disarmament Convention, prohibiting an entire category of weapons of mass destruction," Tirumurti is quoted by NDTV as saying.

India's courage to push back on Brussels, London and Washington will create a widening rift between Delhi and the Western powers. The U.S. cannot make the Indo-Pacific strategy successful without the firm partnership with India.

Modi will not drop his endearing friendship with Russian President Vladimir Putin in order to score short-term political points with Washington and India recognizes that unless other nations will deploy troops to Ukraine, Kyiv will not defeat Moscow under a prolonged military conflict scenario.

World sees Biden as weak

Putin's "special military operations" in Ukraine had also exposed a serious flaw to the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy. The Washington seen as a staunch military defender of its friends and allies is no more. Perhaps, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had anticipated the U.S., EU, UK and NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) would come to Kyiv's rescue if Russian troops enter its territories, but the Ukrainians were mistaken with their optimistic assumptions.

Biden announced in his State of the Union Address on March 2, he would not deploy U.S. troops to Ukraine. All other European nations followed up on Biden's lead by doing the same. The U.S. failed to show strength and the Ukrainians cannot escape their doomed fates.

As such, the Indo-Pacific strategy has lost its relevance. India has already shown skepticism by opposing the sanctions on Russia. Delhi does not see Washington as their savior and rescuer should they choose to raise diplomatic tensions against Beijing.

Therefore, the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy has ceased to exist as a key tactic for Washington's "China containment" pact. The U.S. State Department will need to return to the drawing board to rewrite a new "stop China" plan. They are not likely to succeed with that new venture in the future as well.
HOA treasurer

Q: Do we know why Ms. Li was being evicted? That is not a rapid process.

A:The HOA sold a lien for HOA dues to a Vulture Investor, Home Expo Financial, Inc and the Seabreeze Management and the HOA just wanted her gone so the Sheriff was called and told that she was threatening the Staff at Seabreeze. I tried to stop them and had a plan to help her but they held an illegal emergency meeting without notifying me the Treasurer. We voted to not do this 24 hours earlier.(edited)

Q: So, youre a voting member of the HOA that voted against this action, but they did so regardless of the vote?

A: I was Treasurer and voting member. A vote was held to not sell it and the the HOA Lawyer and Seabreeze manager convinced the HOA president to call an emergency meeting, violation of By Laws without notice to me a voting member. They voted to sell Lien for $32,000. To Vulture Investor. I protested that it was an illegal meeting and they ratified their bad actions. (edited)

-----

Nextdoor needs an angry emoji. This sounds very illegal and should be considered a reason for what led up to her being viciously killed. Where was a person with training in mental illnesses? Not being implemented yet? The City has a hand in what went wrong as well.(edited)

-------

They sent numerous Pert teams to our building for one tenant we had. Makes me wonder as well.

----------

I heard about this & believe that other action could have been taken with someone with mental illness & who was being forced out of her home. Why couldn''''t a stun gun have been used? Just sad.

------

Two female Sheriff Deputies had TAZERS but the Sheriff in charged called in for SDPD Canine Unit. Ms Li was terrified of all dogs. She had kitchen knife and lunged at the Canine officer and wounded him and then the bullets from guns flew out of control. So Sad. I asked the Lead Guy to wait for the PSYCHIATRIC EMERGENCY RESPONSE TEAM (PERT) with a Psychologist, but they did not wait.(edited)

-----------

sounds like they were pretty determined to get her out of the unit by all means possiblethis is so tragic and unnecessary. Another life lost for a profit motive

-----------

This should never have been handled this way. At all.

----------

I was on the HOA Board and I tried to stop the other Board members from selling Yan Li''''s lien to a Vulture Investor who is due to steal $300,000 of Yan Li''''s equity she paid in to her condo. The 4 male members of the HOA did this in an emergency meeting without me being notified. I told them to reverse the action and they would not. I spoke to the Sheriff Deputies and the female Deputies tried to allow me to help but their leader got angry with me trying to help. He said I needed to back up. I said please don''''t kill her and wait for the PER Team. He chose to use force after I told him that force was not the only answer.

Everyone did not do what they could.. The HOA did not provide the Sheriff Deputies with the emergency contact information. The HOA and Seabreeze Managment did not help. They deleted her emergency contact information. They sold the property out from under Yan Li and did not attempt to get help from local mental health professionals. I did but I was not allowed to have any information about her even when I was on the Board. No one did all they could.

I offered to pay that versus selling it to a Vulture Investor to steal her $300,000 equity while she was sick. I was on the Board and the Treasurer of the HOA and the 4 other male members held an illegal meeting in violation of the ByLaws to sell it to the Vulture Investor. Would you want this to happen to your Mother or Sister?

I was on the Board and the Treasurer at the time and we voted to not sell the lien and the next day the President Daniel Torres called an emergency meeting. That next day meeting, they did not invite me or reach me, which was illegal. I asked them to reverse their action and they refused and ratified the previous illegal meeting actions. I protested and they retaliated against me. I tired to save her life and they wanted some un-holy deal that the HOA attorney brought to them. I saw it as illegal. Hence their efforts to retaliate against me.
The Southeast Nebraska Education Agency Board selected a construction firm for the new Beatrice elementary school during the Boards meeting on Monday.

Beatrice Public Schools Superintendent Jason Alexander began the meeting by discussing the scope of the building project.

Again, to identify the project, were looking at a 100,000-120,000 square foot building, pre-school through fifth grade, Alexander said. We know that, with the pre-school, we may have some additional square footage that may be necessary So were in the process of the design face of this, figuring out exactly how many square feet were looking at. But the building will support six to seven sections of kindergarten through fifth grade classes.

The Boards selection committee met in early February to review proposals from construction firms. Based on the committees findings, the Board met to rank the companies.

The selection committee then determined to seek further information from four of those highest ranked firms, he said. We invited four back for interviews There was Hausmann, Sampson, Boyd Jones and Johnson Controls They were very good interviews. Each one of those firms was given 10 to 15 minutes for why they wanted to do the project. And then we were given the opportunity to ask questions.

It was the general consensus of the selection committee that each of the companies had the ability to provide the construction management at-risk services required However the selection committee is required to rank those proposals in order of preference based on the selection criteria.

The committees findings gave preference for Johnson Controls. The SNEA Board voted to accept and adopt those findings.

So that leaves us with the second part of the action items, which is to delegate authority to myself and Derek Aldridge to begin negotiating the contract with Johnson Controls as the construction manager at-risk, he said.

The Board approved the action item unanimously. Alexander said the firm could break ground as early as this summer.

Im really optimistic that we can still make July work, he said. A lot of that will just depend on how the conversations go with Johnson Controls and how they sub-contract All the companies we interviewed were very positive that they could get started in July or August.

Alexander said the SNEA Board would not need to meet again until after negotiations.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 1
At least 11 Billings Fire Department firefighters traveled to Seattle over the weekend to compete in the "Conquer Cancer Stair Climb" competition.

The event is a fundraiser in the battle against leukemia and lymphoma.

Firefighters dressed in full fire gear including boots, coats, helmet, gloves and breathing apparatus  weighing 60 pounds or more - run up the stairs of the Columbia Center in Seattle, the tallest building in the West.

The race covers 69 flights of stairs, at least 1,396 steps, and gains nearly 800 feet in elevation. Winners in the past have made the trip in anywhere from 11 minutes to 15 minutes.

The Billings team included Shawn O'Brien, Andy Ekblad, Halley Evenson, Mike Gates, Lori Johnson, Josiah Lassloffy, Cory Letendre, Mike Ritter, Matt Starin, Pete Sulser and Cameron Abell. The team raised more than $20,000 for cancer research and treatment.

All of BFDs participants finished in the top 16%, according to Mike Parnell who attended the event.

Contestants must raise their own funds and pay their own way to Seattle. In all, participating firefighters from across the country raised more than $1.7 million. In all, the competition has raised more than $22 million.

Love 2 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
Thanks to the overwhelming support of the community, St. Vincent Healthcare associates and providers, and generous sponsors, more than $117,000 was raised through the 8th annual St. Vincent Healthcare Foundation's Call for Kids Mediathon on Cat Country 102.9 and Q2 News. This was the largest total of funds raised in the eight years of the campaign.

Funds raised benefit St. Vincent Childrens Healthcare services, including the regions first Pediatric Intensive Care Unit staffed 24/7 by Pediatric Intensivists and the only Pediatric Surgery program serving eastern Montana, northern Wyoming and the western Dakotas.

Gifts received through our Call for Kids Mediathon help make it possible for St. Vincent Healthcare to provide our pediatric patients with a continuum of care that is unparalleled in our region, said St. Vincent Foundation Executive Director, Tyler Wiltgen. Philanthropic support for our pediatric programs is making a difference in the lives of our most vulnerable patients and their families, and is one way in which we fulfill our mission.

Donations may still be made by visiting svhkids.org, or by texting KIDS to 32037.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
A jury has convicted Kaylea Lynn Mullendore, 31, of negligent homicide, one count of criminal endangerment and one count of misdemeanor driving without a license while failing to reach a consensus verdict on four other counts of criminal endangerment in Yellowstone County District Court Monday evening after a weeklong trial and more than seven hours of jury deliberations.
By Azernews

By Ayya Lmahamad

Georgian Economy and Sustainable Development Minister Levan Davitashvili has said that Azerbaijan is among the main electricity exporters to Georgia, Trend has reported.

He noted that Azerbaijani electricity exports to Georgia amounted to about 601.1 million kWh, following Russia with 1.2 billion kWh.

The minister added that Georgia has great potential for renewable energy development, however, the country is still dependent on electricity imports.

Earlier it was reported that Azerbaijan ranked first among the top exporters of petroleum gases to Georgia in January 2022. During the reported month, Azerbaijan exported $51.4 million worth of petroleum gases and other gaseous hydrocarbons to Georgia, which is by 57.6 percent more compared to the same month in 2021.

Azerbaijan and Georgia are collaborating in a variety of economic fields. Azerbaijan and Georgia signed a number of cooperation agreements in 2021 as part of a meeting of the joint intergovernmental commission on economic cooperation.

Simultaneously, as part of the trilateral business forum held in Baku in December 2021, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey signed five memorandums and agreements on cooperation.

In 2021, the two countries' trade turnover totaled $763.6 million, with exports accounting for $661 million and imports accounting for $102.6 million.
Ellette Whitcomb, an eighth-grader from Sussex School in Missoula County, won the 57th Treasure State Spelling Bee held at Montana State University on Saturday.

Whitcomb was announced as the winner after she correctly spelled the words phlebotomy, integument and phosphorescent in the final rounds of the bee. It is one of the longest-running academic competitions in the state, and it draws students grades 4 through 8 from private schools, public schools and homeschools around the state.

In a few months, Whitcomb will head to Washington D.C. to represent Montana during the Scripps National Spelling Bee, held May 29 through June 30. She and other competitors from around the country will have a shot at winning $50,000 at the bee in National Harbor, Maryland.

It just seems not real  like a dream. I wanted to get first, but I didnt think I was going to be able to do it, Whitcomb said. I have dance six to seven days a week, so I would sort of fit in practicing words on the sheet that I was given as much as I could.

The top 60 spellers from 44 Montana counties traveled to compete in the state bee, which was held in Bozeman for the first time this year. They worked their way through school and county bees, winning in a potential field of over 48,000 contestants.

Matthew Henry, Gallatin County Superintendent of Schools, said its a big deal that the state bee was held in Bozeman this year.

Media company Lee Enterprises relinquished sponsorship of the competition in 2019. The Montana Television Network assumed sponsorship shortly afterward, and Henry offered to assist them in directing the bee in Bozeman.

The Treasure State Spelling Bee would have been held in Bozeman for the first time in 2020, but it was canceled around the time that COVID-19-related restrictions took effect, Henry said. Last year, the state bee was held online.

Im not sure if there is any other competition similar to it where a person is competing against themself in their knowledge of words, Henry said. The kids are pretty good at this.

Clara Harmon of Helena  the 2019 Treasure State Spelling Bee champion  advised the 2022 state champion to be willing to study, to be prepared for anything at the national bee and to be ready to have fun, during a luncheon.

Representing Montana at the national spelling bee in Washington D.C. was amazing, she said. Washington D.C. is a really big place. Its very different from Montana.

Carter Rayburn of Florence was last years state champion. He was eliminated in the first round of the 2021 Scripps National Spelling Bee, at 139th place.

Henry said that spelling bees are one of these holdout academic competitions with a history that goes way back into the 1870s and 1880s, and there are very few of those in schools around Montana and the nation.

A lot of kids who win their classroom spelling bee or school spelling bee dont realize they are that great at spelling until that moment, he said. The bees are great for helping kids to recognize their talents and abilities.

Montana Superintendent of Public Instruction Elsie Arntzen, speaking at the luncheon, said the most important thing that happens, whether its in a public or private setting, is learning, and Saturdays state bee was an outcome of learning.

Arntzen said the bee is also about family, as evidenced by the extended families who were sitting around tables after two years of dealing with the unknown of the coronavirus. The virus affected everyone from families to income to communities, she said.

Is Montana resilient? Yes. Are Montana families resilient? Yes, Arntzen said. How about our kids? Our kids are more resilient because of what happened than ever- than any other generation, and we need to hold that learning so dear.

Helena Dore can be reached at hdore@dailychronicle.com or at 582-2628.

Love 1 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
A North Dakota Agriculture Department program that reimburses a portion of feed or livestock hauling expenses for drought-stricken ranchers will disburse money this week to hundreds of producers.

The state in late August reactivated the Emergency Feed Transportation Assistance Program and approved $2.5 million to fund it. The program aids producers who do not qualify for the U.S. Department of Agricultures Emergency Assistance for Livestock Program.

We opened the program last November after the drought drastically reduced forage production, Agriculture Commissioner Doug Goehring said. Many producers had to purchase and transport supplemental feed, co-products or silage, or move breeding livestock to a feed source.

The program covers expenses incurred between April 8 and Dec. 31 of last year. Nearly 350 producers applied for assistance. They should be reimbursed for nearly half of their eligible costs, according to the Agriculture Department.

Three-fourths of North Dakota last summer was in either extreme or exceptional drought, the two worst categories. The eastern half of the state is no longer in any drought category, but long-term drought persists in the west. The latest U.S. Drought Monitor map shows much of central North Dakota remaining abnormally dry, and much of the west in moderate or severe drought, with a big chunk of the northwest still in extreme drought.

Adequate feed for cattle this winter was a concern, and some ranchers culled their herds. North Dakota ranchers at the start of this year had 1.85 million cattle and calves, a 5% drop from the same time a year earlier, according to federal data supplied by the North Dakota Stockmen's Association.

The state and federal governments have implemented numerous programs to help drought-stricken farmers and ranchers. Details on available drought resources in North Dakota can be found at https://www.nd.gov/ndda/drought-resources. Producers can access the federal Agriculture Department's Disaster Assistance Discovery Tool or Disaster-at-a-Glance fact sheet at www.farmers.gov.

Federal officials also are beginning to dole out drought disaster aid to ranchers this month. President Joe Biden in September signed off on $10 billion in assistance for agricultural producers impacted by weather disasters including drought in 2020 and 2021, with $750 million earmarked for ranchers stricken by drought last year. The U.S. Department of Agriculture plans to distribute at least half of the money by the end of this month.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
NATIVE Inc. nonprofit founder Lorraine Davis is seeking a seat on the Mandan Public School Board.

Davis said her focus is student improvement; teacher recruitment and retention; college, career and military readiness; and school facilities and growth.

I would like to work with school administrators and educators to accomplish equity in education, taking a student-centered approach to helping students achieve academics, graduation, and life skills," she said in a statement.

Davis is the founder and CEO of NATIVE Inc. and Native American Development Center, which serves Native Americans and others. Davis also has served on advisory boards and coalitions handling homelessness, behavioral health and economic development.

Davis and her husband, Scott, have three children who attend schools in the district.

School board members serve three-year terms. Three of the nine seats are up for election this year. The election is June 14. Davis is the first person to publicly announce her candidacy for the board.

More information on Davis' campaign can be found at www.facebook.com/VoteLorraineDavis or on Twitter @VoteLorrDavis.

Reach Sam Nelson at 701-250-8264 or sam.nelson@bismarcktribune.com.

Love 3 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 1
Officials looking to preserve scenic views in North Dakota's oldest state park are hopeful local property owners will agree to easements on their land.

Two landowners say they understand the issue of protecting Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park's scenery, but they're not completely on board with the proposal.

The 2021 Legislature budgeted $50,000 to pay landowners for viewshed easements west of the park south of Mandan. Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer commanded the Seventh Cavalry there from 1873-76 prior to his death at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. The easements would stop development within the 81.21-acre area.

Morton County has had a building moratorium in the park area for two decades. County officials a few years ago began discussing the idea of a permanent regulation, and in 2020 they wrote to the state about protecting the viewshed.

Three landowners would be affected by easements, which the state parks chief said would be voluntary. The parcels are directly west of the Custer House and Cavalry Square.

"I'm really excited for this opportunity," Parks and Recreation Department Director Cody Schulz said. "It allows us to strike a balance between protecting the natural beauty and historical significance and doing it in a way that's voluntary with these landowners and through collaboration."

Viewshed easements have been done at national parks and national monuments but "are fairly unique in North Dakota, as far as I'm aware," he said.

Building moratorium

Since 2000, Morton County has had a building moratorium in a nearly 400-acre area around the park, affecting 17 landowners.

In 2019, the county discussed a potential, permanent policy to restrict development in the area after a resident's inquiry about a building permit properly issued to a landowner. The idea of a permanent regulation brought objections from landowners and didn't advance, Planning and Zoning Director Natalie Pierce said.

In 2020, the county told the state the method to protect the viewshed is not regulation but purchases of scenic easements or land, which "Morton County is not in a financial position to execute."

"If there is no movement from the state to protect the viewshed by the conclusion of the 2021 legislative session, the county is planning to lift the building moratorium completely," the county wrote to state lawmakers and agency heads.

County Commissioner Andy Zachmeier said the county will see what the state is able to accomplish with easements.

"Eventually it's got to be addressed," he said of the moratorium.

Landowners

Landowner Linda Morrow Schauer said she has no plans to sign an easement but would have to consider the cost and what all would be involved.

She said she is not in favor of protecting the viewshed, saying, "They didn't protect me and my land, so why should I protect them?" She didn't elaborate.

Brandon Koch, who lives on property his father owns bordering the park, said his family has had private meetings with park officials, but the $50,000 budget for all landowners "seems a little low."

His family "probably won't" sign an easement, he said. His family had to obtain a variance to build their house, and would like to develop their land for livestock.

He said he understands the viewshed issue, but sees alternatives such as using certain colors for buildings or planting tree rows.

"If they had a program where they'd help with tree row planting, we'd jump on that more than the lease agreement," Koch said.

Parks and Recreation has made some initial calls to the landowners and is working toward in-person meetings, department spokeswoman Kristin Byram said.

Schulz said Parks and Recreation is working with the Attorney General Office "regarding our parameters," and will discuss with landowners the lengths of what any easement would be. The department is interested in it being a multiyear easement.

He said the hope would be to have everything finalized by the end of June 2023.

Reach Jack Dura at 701-250-8225 or jack.dura@bismarcktribune.com.

Love 3 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 1

Be the first to know Get local news delivered to your inbox! Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
A Missoula, Montana, man has died from injuries suffered in a March 4 crash on Interstate 94 west of Mandan.

Scott Walden, 46, died Friday, according to the North Dakota Highway Patrol.

Walden was driving a westbound GMC Sierra that was pulling a trailer loaded with a pickup. It collided with an eastbound 2020 Freightliner pulling double box trailers that slid out of control on the icy highway and crossed the median into oncoming traffic. A passenger in the GMC, 49-year-old Antonina Walden, of Missoula, suffered serious injuries, the Patrol said.

The driver of the Freightliner, Hashi Shire, 37, of Richfield, Minnesota, suffered injuries that were not life-threatening, according to the Patrol. A passenger, 27-year-old Ahmed Ahmed, of Minnetonka, Minnesota, was not injured.

The crash is still under investigation.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 2 Angry 0
Grants were awarded at the recent quarterly meeting in Jamestown. McKenzie-area Black Leg Brewery is getting $66,000 to fund planning, design and consulting for a newly developed bison-branded beer.

The largest grants this quarter are for $100,000. They're going to a Hillsboro-area operation that turns wheat straw into food containers, and a Bottineau dairy looking to develop a new ice cream sandwich.

Other projects that were awarded grants deal with ethanol production, corn hybrids, genotyping, hemp drying, cattle feed and electronic tarp systems. A full list of recipients can be found at https://www.nd.gov/ndda/news.



APUC will hold its next grant application hearing May 18-19 in Watford City. Applications must be received by April 1. For more information, go to https://www.nd.gov/ndda/apuc.
A South Dakota ethics board has moved to hire an outside attorney as it considers a pair of ethics complaints against Gov. Kristi Noem. The complaints were sparked from allegations the Republican governor interfered in a state agency to aid her daughters application for a real estate appraiser license and misused state airplanes. The retired judges who sit on the Government Accountability Board decided any legal advice shouldnt come from the lawyer who usually advises the board because she works under the states attorney general. Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg initiated the complaints. The boards decision Monday was a procedural move as it approaches a key juncture for the complaints.
The State of Wyoming has created an app that enables citizens to lay claim to roadkill that they'd like to cook as a meal. Built into the latest Wyoming 511 app, the new feature was timed with a new law legalizing people to pick up roadkill for eating. According to officials, there are at least 6,000 animals killed annually on Wyoming roads. From the Associated Press:

Wyoming's new roadkill feature within the state Department of Transportation app helps people quickly claim accidentally killed deer, elk, moose, wild bison or wild turkey after documenting the animal and reviewing the rules for collecting roadkill to eat.

Another purpose is to help people follow the rules. For safety reasons, roadkill in Wyoming may not be collected after dark, along interstate highways or in construction zones[]

Unlike in other states such as Alaska, roadkill meat in Wyoming can't be donated to anybody, including charities.

The whole carcass must be retrieved, not just the antlers or hide. In Oregon, which allows people to claim roadkill with an online form, people must surrender the head and antlers to wildlife authorities within five days but in Wyoming the whole animal is fair game.
When Mercy Hospital workers went on strike in the fall, it reverberated far beyond Catholic Health System.

There also was a lot at stake for Kaleida Health, the main competitor of Catholic Health.

The contract settlement, following a nearly six-week strike in South Buffalo, set the stage for labor negotiations at Kaleida by hammering out benchmarks for staffing levels  sure to be among the hotly contested issues once Kaleida talks start this week.

Catholic Health's labor contract matters because not only are the two hospital systems engaged in an intense competition for patients, they also are competing for nurses and other health care workers during a severe staffing crunch.

The Catholic Health contract sets a bar that Kaleida officials will need to consider as they negotiate with their own workers.

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.

And there are a lot of them.

Kaleida said the two unions it will be bargaining with represent 6,293 of its workers, or about 63% of its payroll. That workforce is spread across all Kaleida facilities, including its hospitals, nursing homes, business office and medical clinics.

Unlike an agreement at Catholic Health that specified a strike last fall could only happen at Mercy Hospital, Kaleida has no such assurances if negotiations were to head south in the next couple months.

So the stakes are even higher in Kaleida's contract talks, said Larry Zielinski, a former Buffalo General Medical Center president and an executive in residence for health care administration at the University at Buffalo School of Management.

"If there's a walkout like we had at Mercy, it would be across the Kaleida system," Zielinski said. "It would be a significant situation."

Neither Kaleida nor the unions hope it gets to that point.

Kaleida, Communications Workers of America Local 1168 and 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East will sit down for their first joint bargaining session on Wednesday, less than three months before the current three-year deal expires May 31.

It's also possible the talks could go past the expiration date  as previous negotiations have.

And while the Kaleida negotiations aren't the only recent labor talks  negotiations are ongoing at Mount St. Mary's Hospital in Lewiston and the contract at Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center expires June 1  they are by far the largest.

How it shakes out has the potential to affect tens of thousands of people, including workers, their families and their patients  not to mention the financial position of Kaleida.

Staffing will be key

Like other health systems, staffing has progressively gotten tighter at Kaleida over the course of the pandemic, stretching remaining employees thin as they scramble to take care of more patients, according to two longtime Kaleida employees who are 1199SEIU members and part of the bargaining committee.

Charles Williams, a patient care assistant in the neuro-intensive care unit at Buffalo General, said he sometimes has 15 patients to take care of during a shift, often more. For the nurses he works with, they're stretched to care for at least six patients.

"When you lack staff, and appropriate numbers for safe staffing, it directly impacts your bedside, your patient care and how much time you can give to each patient and the family," said Juliette Negron, a registered nurse at John R. Oishei Children's Hospital.

Their comments are similar to the ones echoed in the fall by the striking workers of Mercy Hospital.

The Mercy agreement secured specific staffing provisions, such as nurse-to-patient ratios in the medical-surgical area of 1:4 during the day and 1:5 at night.

James Scordato, 1199SEIU's vice president of the Western New York hospital division, said the current Kaleida contract does not have staffing ratios in it. But the unions will be looking to secure ratios in the new deal similar to what was won at Catholic Health.

"We're going to look at that bar and, more than likely, we're going to try to achieve it, if not do better," he said.

Scordato said those talks could be aided by New York's safe staffing legislation, which mandates hospitals submit staffing plans to the Health Department by July 1 and then implement those plans by Jan. 1, 2023.

Catholic Health, CWA agreement could influence future hospital labor deals in WNY and beyond The agreement union members will vote on this weekend is one that many health care officials in Western New York see as a significant deal that will shape future labor talks at other hospitals.

He predicted union members could be voting on a new contract with Kaleida around the time those staffing plans are submitted in July.

In a statement, Kaleida Chief Administrative Officer Michael Hughes acknowledged the system's workforce "has been stretched and worked to the max," handling more and sicker patients while watching some of their colleagues leave for retirement, enter travel work or get fired over the state's vaccine mandate.

To provide relief, he said Kaleida over the past nine months has offered incentives and bonuses, introduced recruitment bonuses, hired more than 400 nurses as well as hundreds of agency staff.

"We know that maintaining and enhancing our workforce is critical to our sustainability and providing the highest-quality health care to Western New York," Hughes said. "We believe that our employees are more than deserving of an increase. Equally important, we are committed to work together to address the serious staffing challenge."

Lessons from Mercy

For both sides, a strike comes with big economic costs.

While striking Mercy workers missed paychecks, Catholic Health shelled out as much as $7 million a week for replacement workers to keep the hospital operating.

The 41-day strike ended up costing Catholic Health about $89 million, which was about 55% of the organization's $160 million operating loss in 2021.

Kaleida will no doubt want to avoid similar costs.

The system hasn't disclosed its 2021 financial results, but it was well into the red in 2020  like many Western New York hospitals during the pandemic's first year.

In 2020, Kaleida reported a nearly $61 million loss on revenue of $1.3 billion, even after receiving $87 million in federal relief.

Losses like that will make Kaleida officials especially mindful of the higher labor costs they would incur by beefing up staffing. That's why those union demands are likely to be one of the main sticking points in the negotiations.

Hughes, however, said Kaleida has "made a commitment to address staffing in the new contract in the most responsible way possible."

"We hope that all of us will work together to solve issues in a positive and creative manner," he said.

Next steps

On Thursday, six days before the first joint bargaining session, the nearly 50-member union bargaining committee was busy going through contracts article by article inside 1199SEIU's office in Buffalo. Papers, binders and laptops were atop tables as members prepared proposals to present to Kaleida on Wednesday.

"Our commitment is to sit down and bargain the best agreement that we can on behalf of our members, and it's time to roll up our sleeves and get to work," CWA Area Director Debora Hayes said.

Hughes, too, said Kaleida is committed to reaching an agreement that "rewards our workforce, helps preserve jobs, improves our healthcare services and strengthens Kaleida Health for the long term."

The room where the unions were caucusing Thursday is the same room where bargaining will take place with Kaleida. The space also has room for at least 30 union spectators, meaning members will be able to be present and see the process firsthand.

The two sides will start with a two-day-a-week schedule, bargaining every Wednesday and Thursday, Hayes said. How bargaining progresses will determine how that schedule needs to be expanded, she added.

Hayes and Cori Gambini, president of CWA Local 1168, said an overarching theme of the discussions will be "dignity and respect on the job."

"We have very similar priorities in that people, No. 1, want a fair contract with no concessions," Hayes said. "People want to make sure that they are fairly compensated for the work that they come in and do every day. And our members have made it clear to us that we have to deal with staffing."

Jon Harris can be reached at 716-849-3482 or jharris@buffnews.com. Follow him on Twitter at @ByJonHarris.

Buffalo Next Must-read local business coverage that exposes the trends, connects the dots and contextualizes the impact to Buffalo's economy. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
By Azernews

By Laman Ismayilova

Renown carpet designer Zahra Aliyeva has played an exceptional role in Azerbaijan's carpet weaving art.

She could pass on the carpet weaving traditions and its forgotten technologies to the Azerbaijani weavers.

Her beautiful decorative carpets are kept in the country's museums and private collections abroad.

Nizami Cinema Center has premiered a documentary "Knots of Life" dedicated to the outstanding carpet designer.

In her remarks, the Carpet Museum director Shirin Malikova spoke about the life and work of carpet weaver, Honored Cultural Worker Zahra Aliyeva who has been working at the museum since 1997.

" Zahra Aliyeva has been learning the secrets of the carpet weaving art from an early age. For many years she has been enthusiastically sharing her knowledge with students, passing on carpet weaving traditions and its forgotten technologies," she said.

Zahra Aliyeva expressed her deep gratitude to President Ilham Aliyev and everyone who highly appreciates her art.

Film director Mubariz Naghiyev shared interesting facts about the filming process with the audience.

The documentary reflects Zahra Aliyeva's invaluable experience and creative life.

The film "Knots of Life" was produced by Salnamefilm Studio LLC by order of the Culture Ministry.

The film also includes archival materials and memories of outstanding carpet designers Latif Karimov, Jafar Mujiri and Kamil Aliyev.
For the past 10 years, Dan Syracuse called his annual imperial stout-tasting event The Russians Are Coming as a nod to the 18th century origins of Russian imperial stout as a strong, dark brew made in England for export to Russia.

This year, Syracuse realized that name was not appropriate in light of Russias brutal invasion of Ukraine. Instead, he held his first Ukrainian Freedom Imperial Stout Celebration on Sunday at his Pizza Plant Italian Pub on Transit Road in Amherst, with stout sales going to benefit Buffalos Dnipro Ukrainian Cultural Center.

We are looking forward to the continued evolution of this tasting event, whose previous name now unfortunately means the opposite of freedom, Syracuse said. We decided to make lemonade out of lemons and turn it into a benefit.

In so doing, Syracuse is among several Western New York beer sellers jumping on the beer wagon to support Ukraine through sales of special brews. Buffalo Brewing Company created a Lviv Cocktail Euro Lager that put $2 from every pint sold toward Ukraine relief through Sunday. Big Ditch Brewing expects a 50-gallon batch of a new Ukrainian Dark Lager to be ready in a couple of weeks. Several WNY beer houses have held events devoting a portion of beer sales to the cause.

Perhaps the biggest effort is being brewed by 42 North Brewing Company in East Aurora, which launched a global invite to fellow breweries to help craft two special beers to benefit Global Empowerment Mission, a Poland-based relief organization providing aid to Ukrainian refugees in Poland as well as families still in Ukraine.

The beers are called Resolve in honor of the resolve of the Ukrainian people, and one of the two recipes came from 42 Norths first brewer, Naz Drebot, now owner of 2085 Brewery in Kyiv, Ukraine, said 42 North manager partner John Cimperman.

Our friend Naz helped us build 42 North in 2015, and many of the recipes we still make today are his, Cimperman said. Naz loved living in Western New York, and it felt a lot like home to him because of our neighborly attitude.

When Drebots U.S. work permit ran out, he opened a brewery in Portugal before returning to his homeland in Kyiv, Cimperman said. When he spoke to his friend about the new beer, Cimperman said Drebot conveyed that he is humbled, he is grateful, and most important, he is safe in Kyiv  at the moment.

Drebot contributed the recipe for Resolve Freedom India Pale Kellerbier, while 42 North brewer Matt Matuszewski designed Resolve Freedom Kellerbier. Both will be ready in two to three weeks. Meanwhile, Cimperman has put out a call for other breweries to start producing Resolve, and so far 10 have accepted, including several in Europe and two local ones, Thin Man in Buffalo and 1927 Brew House in Cheektowaga.

Cimperman said he hopes that breweries that cant help make Resolve will at least get a couple of kegs to put on their taps.

Learn more at resolveukrainebeer.com.

At Sundays stout-tasting, Andrew Puhacz, treasurer of the Dnipro Ukrainian Cultural Center, said Buffalos two Ukrainian centers are collaborating to share more ways to help in the coming weeks. Puhacz was offering United for Ukraine buttons and small Ukrainian flags in exchange for donations to the Ukrainian American Freedom Foundation, providing medical and humanitarian aid on the ground via Poland.

While Puhacz was at Syracuses tasting party, his fellow leaders of Dnipro gathered at the Genesee Street center to begin forming a refugee crisis committee in hopes of bringing Ukrainian refugees to Western New York and helping Ukrainians already here get legal status to stay longer.

Dnipro President Emil Bandriwsky said the center will be holding informational meetings for the community and updating a calendar of local fundraisers at ukrainiansofbuffalo.com.

Besides events at Ukrainian cultural centers and churches, he said other cultural centers are reaching out to help. On Saturday, Dnipro will host a Polish Ukrainian Solidarity Night featuring Polish and Ukrainian food, beers and liquors, music and dance, raffles to benefit Ukraine and an update from Adrian Kubicki, general consul of the Republic of Poland in New York.

The Italian Cultural Center of Buffalo is planning a Stand Together for Ukraine event on Sunday, March 27, while the Buffalo Irish Center will hold its own Benefit for Ukraine event on Saturday, April 10.

On Sunday at Dnipro, Bandriwsky motioned to a row of flags displayed around the centers meeting room, including the flags of Poland, Italy and Ireland donated by those cultural centers. I gotta buy more flagpoles, he said.

He said Dnipro welcomes participation from anyone wanting to assist with local efforts on behalf of Ukraine.

We have had such strong support from the people of Buffalo and Western New York, Bandriwsky said. Everyone is afraid of being nuked by Russia, so nobody wants to go to war against them, but there are things people can do to help.

Even drinking beer. The Buffalo Beer League is keeping a list of beer-related ways to help Ukraine and promises to keep updating it at buffalobeerleague.com/help-support-the-people-of-ukraine-by-drinking-local-beer-at-these-spots.

Buffalo Next Must-read local business coverage that exposes the trends, connects the dots and contextualizes the impact to Buffalo's economy. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
Hunger makes the best sauce, and every dish tastes better with a backstory. So before illuminating the many charms of Cafe Bar Moriarty, here's the tale so far.

Buffalo-born Thomas Moriarty fell hard for Spanish food as a Canisius High School exchange student, applying to culinary school to score a return visa. Two years later, after graduating, he worked for a Massachusetts beef farm, which fed his interest in learning about various cuts of beef. That led him to France, where they train butchers to patiently take animals apart at the seams, instead of running primal cuts through bandsaws American-style to produce cheaper meat. To pay for his butcher school tuition, Moriarty worked at a small bed-and-breakfast while completing his apprenticeship.

His wife and business partner, Caitlin, first laid eyes on him in Coles in 2012. In 2018, they opened Moriarty Meats in the former Zarcones on Grant Street. It was the only place like it in Buffalo: local beef, lamb and pork offered in fresh retail cuts, a few animals each week, a couple of fresh seafood options, and a freezer full of lamb stew, beef stock and sausages.

In 2019, they bought the former Vinos restaurant at 1650 Elmwood Ave., and moved upstairs with their two children. The butcher counter there opened in 2020. Then they bought the building next door, with its tiny parking lot, for a restaurant where they now serve a few dishes drawn from daily strengths of the bustling butcher shop next door. Cooking is Andrew Bauerschmidt after years of butcher shop work. The menu changes weekly, depending on what meat and seafood they can fix up and sell for a tasty profit.

Which is how Cafe Bar Moriarty became the Buffalo restaurant known for reminding people of that little place they loved in Europe.

Channeling the blue-collar cafes of Spain and France, the menu is tiny with about a dozen choices. The usual lineup includes four plates of the week ($11-$18), four small plates, or pinxtos, the Basque term, ($6-$10), and four tapas of a bite or two ($2.50).

Give it a scan, step up to the bar and order, maybe the ham and potato croquettes ($6). Three golden-brown orbs with hearts of mashed potatoes and ham are dotted with saffron aioli, and white beans stewed with salt cod and herbs ($10), pale legumes verdant with a profusion of herbs and good olive oil, savory with fat white flakes of barely, gently briny cod.

Then settle in at the bar, a table or high-top, with a Kronenbourg lager ($5.50), a tumbler of house wine ($5) or elderflower soda ($2.99).

Four or five plates of the week include Buffalo nods like boeuf on weck, thinly sliced roast beef on kummelweck with horseradish mayonnaise ($14), and a double cheeseburger with cheddar and housemade dill pickles ($12).

Both suggest that you should let your butcher cook for you, whenever possible. Rosy flesh tender enough to bite through cleanly is rarer than rare in Buffalo, but Moriarty nails it. Crusty edges on the smashburger-style patties, check. Starting with superior beef from New York animals, Moriarty does meat right.

More plates of the week get inspiration from afar. Housemade boudin blanc sausage over buttermilk-herb-dressed radicchio, endive and croutons ($14) is a brawny lunch salad with a French accent. Pork bocadillo ($13) is a roast pork sandwich on baguette, boasted plancha-seared seasonings and relish made from Basque piparra peppers. As with boeuf and burger, the bocadillo baguette was well-suited to the engineering demands of a hearty sandwich, without being so crusty it drew blood.

Another yeasty triumph is the Iraqi samoon under Moriartys lamb shashlik ($13), a grilled kabab of seasoned ground lamb served on fresh pointy-ended pita bread from nearby Buffalo Bakery. Fresh mint, dill and parsley, pickled beets, garlicky yogurt, black-and-white sesame seeds and a shower of sour red sumac flakes beckoned to eye as well as tongue. A Fulbright scholar recently returned from six months in Istanbul declared it the best kabab she has had in the U.S.

Its gone, but it will be back. Thats the challenge of market-driven dining, developing trust in the proprietors suggestions. Show up on the right day and feast on picanha ($22), sirloin with a crisped fat cap, confit leeks and anchovy aioli. Roast veal, sweetbreads, pork schnitzel and more butchers choices make appearances.

Two caveats: Perhaps unshockingly at a butcher shop restaurant, vegetarians dont have much to choose from. The schedule is tiny, too, four days a week for lunch and three early dinners, no reservations. Nine-to-fivers still have Saturday, though.

The suspense for Cafe Bar Moriarty was longer than the wait for a prize prosciutto, and even more rewarding. The couple who brought their love for Spanish food home to Buffalo have built their dream restaurant, on their terms, and invited you for lunch.

Cafe Bar Moriarty wont make you chicken tenders and french fries. But it will make you happy.

Cafe Bar Moriarty

1650 Elmwood Ave.

Hours: 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Thursday through Saturday.

Prices: tapas, $2.50; small plates, $6-$10; plates of the week, $11-$22.

Atmosphere: amiable buzz

Parking: small lot

Wheelchair accessible: no

Gluten-free: few options

Outdoor dining: in summer

Send restaurant tips to agalarneau@buffnews.com and follow @BuffaloFood on Instagram and Twitter.

The Buffalo News: Food & Drink Get what you need to know about Western New York's dining and bar scene, including restaurant openings and closings, delivered to your inbox every Wednesday. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
Peking Quick One has expanded the definition of Chinese takeout for Tonawandans since 2010. As other businesses came and went in the plaza between Brighton and Eggert, the restaurant at 359 Somerville Ave. has been a steady beacon of Northern Chinese home cooking with an excellent Chinese-American program.

Owner Jinying Lin has shepherded her place through tough times, expanding takeout courier business to make up for the drop-off in dining room numbers from Chinese University at Buffalo students.

Its counter service now, with food presented in takeout containers whether youre sitting down to eat or not. Little else has changed. The fish tanks remain a balm to people waiting for takeout. Customers still help themselves to chopsticks and free tea, and pour water from pitchers in the dining room cooler.

The Chinese-American repertoire is fundamentally sound and priced to move. Get a load of the lunch deal: $6.95 from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. ($8.95 otherwise). That brings one of 25 entrees  like roast pork lo mein, General Tsos chicken, or shrimp with broccoli  with a choice of white rice, vegetable fried rice or vegetable lo mein, plus spring roll or soup.

That said, what most thrills me here is the Northern Chinese offerings.

Split cucumber ($6.95), the cold marinated cucumber salad alive with garlic, chile, cilantro and toasty sesame oil, is so addictively refreshing that when my child away at college was homesick, I sent them an approximating recipe to ease their pain.

Hot and spicy shredded beef ($10.95) is like marinated beef jerky Sichuan style, jacked with Sichuan peppercorn, anise and orange rind. It arrives in a corona of florescent tangerine-colored chile oil with matchsticked ginger as a vegetal crunch counterpoint to the meaty chew.

Hot and sour shredded potatoes ($7.95) and its less racy brother, stir-fried potatoes with green pepper ($7.95), demonstrate a quality of spuds only Chinese cooks have shown me: raw crunch. Matchsticked, then briefly poached, potato shreds are wokked for smokiness, then dressed with vinegar and chile oil. The effect is a vibrantly flavored pasta salad with snap.

Compared to other Northern Chinese specialists, Peking Quick One has a rudimentary dumpling department, from steamed pork with cabbage ($5.95) to fried pork, leek, shrimp ($8.45). Leekophiles will find big leek veggie fried dumplings ($7.95), a pair of empanada-sized turnovers, a happy place.

Chinese egg dishes are underappreciated as unchallenging and universally appreciated comfort food. Pan-fried tofu with egg ($8.95), a protein-packed omelet gently browned in a hot pan, made me wish for buttered toast. Stir-fried leek with egg ($8.95) adds an allium cast and tomatoes ($8.95), a Chinese homestyle touch. Stir-fried leek with dry tofu ($9.95) adds a chewier soybean curd, the texture of paneer.

Those are vegetarian triumphs, if you ask for no pork, but vegans can get fed well here, too. Potatoes, string beans minus pork, crispy cabbage, bok choy and mushroom, and an eggplant, green pepper and potato saute are available, along with General Tsos tofu, and vegetables in garlic sauce.

Sour cabbages stew with noodles ($9.95) is one Peking Quick One dish that ought to appeal to Germans, Poles, Slavs and other sauerkraut-loving peoples of the world. Thick-sliced housemade fermented cabbage retains robust crunch after getting simmered with sliced pork and clear, chewy mung bean starch noodles, resulting in a tangy, satisfying munchfest.

Hot and chili chicken ($12.95) offers crispy chicken nuggets Sichuan style, coated in spices and fried twice, emerging half-hidden in a nest of whole chile peppers. The ensuing Easter egg hunt might challenge your chopstick skills, but theres no finer bite than the last morsel emerging from the jetsam between your bamboo tips.

Poached spicy slices of pork ($12.95) is my other nomination for heat-seekers. Not for its blazing chile levels, but the flavor and sensations of carefully calibrated dual heats: tingly-numbing Sichuan peppercorn against resonant chile oil, a combination called ma-la in Chinese cuisine.

A chile oil slick hides cabbage, bean sprouts, sliced pork and chewy cellophane noodles, meant to be dragged out of the soybean-paste-enriched substrate, onto rice. (Not a soup. Do not drink.)

Less fiery, twice as rich, is spicy double-cooked pork ($12.95). Thats braised pork belly sliced and tossed in spices before meeting a hot pan, crisping amid a welter of chiles and garlic, plus an umami blast of fermented soybean paste. Bell peppers add vegetable bites, but this is some straight-up pig pleasure.

The big pig option is the braised pork hock ($15.95), a skin-on joint the size of a slow-pitch softball thats been cooked so you can cut it with a spoon. Layers of skin, fat and meat give diners options.

Crispy fish in jalapeno ($12.95) offers impeccably fried slices of whitefish wok-fried with jalapeno chiles, a treatment whose texture survives takeout delays.

From mild to wild, these homestyle Northern Chinese dishes are fun for the whole family, at budget-friendly prices, ready in about 20 minutes. Its better than fast food: its Peking Quick One.

Peking Quick One

359 Somerville Ave., Tonawanda, 716-381-8730

Hours: 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Wednesday through Monday. Closed Tuesday.

Prices: lunch specials, $6.95; dinner combos, $8.95; entrees, $7.95-$15.95.

Atmosphere: quiet cafeteria

Parking: lot

Wheelchair accessible: no, 6-inch step.

Gluten-free: few choices

Outdoor dining: no

Send restaurant tips to agalarneau@buffnews.com and follow @BuffaloFood on Instagram and Twitter.

The Buffalo News: Food & Drink Get what you need to know about Western New York's dining and bar scene, including restaurant openings and closings, delivered to your inbox every Wednesday. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
For 14 years as a whistleblower, all James Hannum could do was wait as his allegation of inflated trucking invoices wound its way through federal court.

His waiting has ended.

The U.S. Attorney's Office on Monday announced a nearly $7 million settlement with three trucking companies over what the government alleged to be systematic overbilling of Department of Defense shipments from September 2005 to October 2013.

Hannum will receive more than $1.3 million of the settlement. But Daniel C. Oliverio, counsel for Hannum, said the overall dollar settlement is "on the very low side."

And the settlement took far too long to reach since Hannum first filed his federal lawsuit in 2008, with the government deciding to intervene in 2018 against YRC Freight Inc., Roadway Express and Yellow Transportation Inc  10 years after Hannum initially filed his complaint under seal.

"I am at a loss why it took the government 14 years to settle this case," Oliverio said. "Ive never experienced anything like this in my entire career."

Hannum, a Dunkirk resident, had been employed by Roadway Express Inc. at its Buffalo facility when he went to federal court in 2008 with the overbilling claim.

Hannum had alerted the company about his concern but "really got nowhere," Oliverio said. "So he came to see us. Obviously, he was concerned whether he was part of something that was illegal."

Hannum was not involved in the fraud, Oliverio said. Instead, Roadway deliberately kept its computer system from decreasing the amount invoiced when the actual scale weight was less than that stated on the bill of lading, according to the government's court papers.

The U.S. Attorney's Office intervened in the court case in 2018 against the wishes of Oliverio, who asked the office to "let us handle it," on behalf of Hannum, he said.

Hannum, who remains employed at the company, was employed as a service planner, or supervisor, when the U.S. Attorney's Office intervened. For many years before he was employed as a weight and inspections supervisor.

"For all those years, while still working, this case was hanging over his head," Oliverio said.

Once federal lawyers intervened, "he requested the government to do something, but to no avail," Oliverio said. "This was very disappointing, and it's unbelievable it took this long. I just hope this never happens again."

Oliverio credited Assistant U.S. Attorney David M. Coriell for helping resolve the case after it had languished for years.

On Monday, U.S. Justice Department officials announced the settlement with YRC Freight Inc., Roadway Express and Yellow Transportation Inc.

The companies shipped military freight across the country and were paid based in part upon a shipments weight.

For more than seven years, the companies allegedly reweighed many shipments before final delivery, and when the reweighs showed that a shipment weight was more than the original weight, they charged Defense Department for the higher weights, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office. But when the reweighs showed that a shipment weight was less than the original weight, the companies allegedly concealed the lower weights and instead charged the original, inflated weights.

We expect companies to do business with the government honestly and fairly, said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian M. Boynton, head of the U.S. Justice Departments Civil Division, in a statement. This settlement demonstrates the departments continuing commitment to hold accountable those who defraud the government and, by extension, the American taxpayers.

U.S. Attorney Trini E. Ross for the Western District of New York, in a statement, said "these companies, which purposely overcharged for these services and then made false statements to cover up their actions, are now being held accountable for their behavior.

Restitution accounts for nearly $2.5 million of the overall $6.8 million settlement, with Hannum to receive more than $1.3 million as his share.

The settlement is neither an admission of liability by the companies nor a concession by the government that its claims are not well-founded, according to the signed agreement.

The companies have merged under a parent company called YRC Worldwide, with its U.S. operations referred to as Yellow Transportation.

We remain confident that we complied with the then-existing rules and our contractual obligations, said Leah Dawson, Yellows executive vice president and general counsel, in a statement. "While we believe we had strong defenses, we decided, in the best interests of all parties, to resolve this matter for a small fraction of the amount originally demanded."

The disputed reweighs of freight shipments between 2005 and 2013 pre-date current management, the company said.

The deal settles a nearly 13-year-old civil case in which the company denied "the governments core allegations," according to its statement.

We are pleased to have come to a resolution, said Darren Hawkins, CEO of Yellow. Now we can continue to focus on the important work ahead. With our nations current supply chain constraints and the critical role Yellow plays in delivering freight, theres no time for distraction."

The companies sought to dismiss the case in 2019, saying in court papers that the government agencies were responsible for verifying the correct amount of transportation charges before paying. The government knew the companies' position that it was not required to process negative reweighs, and the agencies had administrative remedies to stop payments.

"These remedies, if acted on in 2008, would have been applicable to any alleged overcharges from 2005 forward," according to the companies' court papers. "The government did none of these things, ever."

The Buffalo News: Good Morning, Buffalo The smart way to start your day. We sift through all the news to give you a concise, informative look at the top headlines and must-read stories every weekday. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
The attorney for a man accused of killing a Niagara Falls woman and sawing her body into pieces seven years ago, said Monday he wants to offer a psychiatric defense at next month's trial.

Niagara County prosecutors objected, saying the deadline for giving notice of such a defense is long past.

State law says a defense attorney must file a mental health defense notice within 30 days of arraignment, which in Yasin Abdu-Sabur's case occurred in March 2020.

County Judge John J. Ottaviano called defense attorney Robert R. Fogg's request "very, very, very late."

But there's a loophole in the law. A judge is allowed to let a defendant use a psychiatric defense after the deadline "in the interest of justice and for good cause shown."

Ottaviano gave Fogg until Friday to submit his reasons for making the request.

Abdu-Sabur has another option: If he doesn't want to go to trial, he could plead guilty to the murder of Terri Lynn Bills in exchange for a sentence of 18 years to life in prison  an offer disclosed during Monday's court proceeding by prosecutors Doreen M. Hoffmann and Mary Jean Bowman.

That sentencing commitment was made by now-retired County Judge Matthew J. Murphy III in late 2021.

"With respect to the sentencing commitment made by the former judge, I will hold that in abeyance," said Ottaviano, who ordered the sides to return before him March 25.

If convicted of the murder at trial, Abdu-Sabur's maximum sentence would be 25 years to life.

Niagara Falls police said Bills, 46, was killed June 6, 2015, in Abdu-Sabur's home on Pierce Avenue. Her body was found 10 days later in the basement of an abandoned house on Willow Avenue. Her head, hands and feet were missing.

Abdu-Sabur, now 38, was arrested in February 2020 in Spartanburg, S.C., where he had moved. In May 2020, he was ordered to give a DNA sample for comparison to blood police found in the Pierce Avenue house.

Because of a gag order imposed at the arraignment by now-retired County Judge Sara Sheldon and still in effect, attorneys could not respond to media questions.

But in the courtroom Monday, Fogg noted that he was not the original attorney in this case.

The arraignment was handled by a public defender, and in late March 2020, the case was reassigned to the Niagara County Conflict Defender's Office  a group of attorneys on the public payroll part time to handle cases for poor defendants when conflicts of interest rule out the regular public defender's staff.

The attorneys who originally represented Abdu-Sabur have left the Conflict Defender's Office.

Fogg made his first appearance in the case Aug. 13, shortly after the previous attorneys asked for psychologists to examine Abdu-Sabur to determine if he was competent to stand trial.

The doctors reported Oct. 7 that he was competent, and Fogg said Dec. 10 he wouldn't challenge that finding.

But now Fogg is interested in using a defense of "not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect," or by reason of "extreme emotional disturbance." Such a strategy would force the prosecution to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Abdu-Sabur didn't have those mental issues.

Fogg told Ottaviano he's reviewed "12 boxes of files" and the defendant's medical records.

"I believe there's an issue with his psychiatric competence," Fogg said Monday.

There was no hint of a postponement for the trial, now set to begin with jury selection April 18, and Fogg said he was not offering the psychiatric defense as a delaying tactic.

"I consider myself an honorable attorney and an officer of the court," he said.

Sign up for our Crime & Courts newsletter Get the latest in local public safety news with this weekly email. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
Less than a week ago, according to Buffalo police, a 31-year-old Hertel Avenue man called police and asked to be taken to Erie County Medical Center for psychiatric treatment.

Early Monday morning, he called police again. This time, he told them someone was trying to kill him.

A short time later, after unsuccessfully trying to get the man to drop the knife he was holding, two Buffalo police officers shot and wounded him outside his apartment building.

As of Monday afternoon, he was listed in serious but stable condition at ECMC, police said. They have not released his name.

"It became apparent rather quickly this was an individual who was in crisis, suffering a mental health episode," Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia said during an afternoon news conference, where he outlined the earlier encounter with the man.

Authorities plan to release footage from officers' body-worn cameras in 48 to 72 hours, the commissioner said.

Police were called to 1945 Hertel, near Shoshone St., about 4:36 a.m., according to archived police radio transmissions on broadcastify.com.

According to Gramaglia, when officers encountered the man in the stairwell of his apartment building, he was holding what was described as a large "survival" knife.

Officers quickly recognized they needed to exit the stairwell, Gramaglia said. They backed out of the building, past the sidewalk and into the middle of Hertel Avenue. They tried talking him into putting down the knife.

The man, knife in hand, lunged at officers, Gramaglia said.

That's when two officers shot him multiple times.

Police taped off a scene surrounding the intersection of Hertel and Shoshone Street, about two blocks west of Main Street, for several hours.

The officers at the scene did not have Tasers, a less-lethal method of subduing a subject, the commissioner said.

"The officers tried their hardest  they were very calm, they were very collected," he said. "But, like I said, it escalated rapidly and at that point, there was no other options left."

Before the shooting, officers called for an ambulance to be sent to the scene. They believed they'd be transporting the man for a mental health examination, Gramaglia said.

Gramaglia said he did not know precisely how many times officers fired and how many times the man had been shot, but said he was hit in both hands, an ankle, the neck and possibly in the side of his body.

Police and prosecutors are "looking at charges" against the man, he said.

Police have not released the names of the officers who fired the shots.

When the man was taken to ECMC last week, there was an "incident" involving ECMC police, Gramaglia said. He did not offer any further details.

Gramaglia said he toured ECMC's Comprehensive Psychiatric Emergency Program on Thursday, which he said gave him a "deeper look into just how much they have to deal with." He said there continues to be a "resource problem" when it comes to dealing with mental health issues.

"ECMC is working very hard, but there has to be another answer," he said. "It can't always fall down to the police."

The last time a police officer shot someone in Buffalo, according to the police department, was Sept. 12, 2020, when an officer shot Willie Henley, a mentally ill homeless man, near Genesee and Ash streets.

The department began issuing Tasers earlier this month. In the last two weeks, about 170 officers have received the required 10-hour training.

Officers in the Northeast District  also known as E District  received the department's first allotment of Tasers on March 3. On March 8, additional allotments were distributed to all five police districts in the city, the commissioner said.

Officers on the midnight shift in the Northwest District  also known as D District  who responded to Monday's call on Hertel have not been issued Tasers yet.

The police department's Behavioral Health Team, which pairs specially trained officers with mental health clinicians, operates weekdays from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. The department says it would like to expand the hours the team operates, but it would take additional funding.

Members of the team have "engaged with" this man in the recent past, Gramaglia said.

Would having a Behavioral Health Team officer at the scene Monday morning have changed anything?

"In this situation, probably not," Gramaglia said. "It rapidly escalated."

Here are pieces of the encounter, as reflected in police radio communications archived by broadcastify.com. (The recording does not capture every transmission.)

 About 4:36 a.m., police were dispatched to the upper unit of 1945 Hertel. A person reported "someone's trying to kill him," the dispatcher tells officers. But the man "won't answer any of 911's questions."

 About 12 minutes later, an officer on scene tells the dispatcher, "The gentleman who said he called is coming down the stairs at officers with a knife, refusing to put the knife down."

 About a minute later, an officer says, "We're retreating. He's still coming forward."

 About 50 seconds later, an officer reports, "Shots fired. Shots fired."

 Several seconds later, another person says, "Suspect's down. Shots were fired."

 Close to 30 seconds later, another officer says, "No officers injured. Suspect down." Officers are told the ambulance dispatch was asked to "step it up" and "They're on the way."

 About 20 seconds later, an officer says he's going to check the condition of the person shot and that he was starting CPR.

 About a minute later, an officer asks the dispatcher to inform the ambulance dispatcher that the man has "one in the shoulder, one in the upper neck area."

 Less than two minutes later, Buffalo Fire Department radio transmissions report "confirmed three gunshot wounds."

The officers involved have been placed on paid administrative leave, per departmental regulations.

Reach Aaron at abesecker[at]buffnews.com or 716-849-4602.

Sign up for our Crime & Courts newsletter Get the latest in local public safety news with this weekly email. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
A student at Emerson School of Hospitality pummeled a teacher's head and stabbed her in the eye last week, exactly one month after a stabbing and shooting at McKinley High School.

And an 8-year-old girl was attacked by another student on the school bus on the way home from Herman Badillo Bilingual Academy last week.

The incidents magnified growing concerns regarding Buffalo Public Schools ability to keep children and teachers safe.

"It shattered my heart as a mother when I saw the video of my 8-year-old daughter being brutally beaten with no one to stop it or help her, the girls mother, Jennifer Vellon, said in an email about Monday's incident.

The adult school bus driver failed to immediately stop the bus and intervene in the life of our child."

Channel 4, which first reported the incident, reported on Thursday that the bus driver has been removed from service, and that both the school district and the bus company, First Student, were investigating the situation.

On Friday, the girls mother said in a statement to local news outlets that school district officials still had not contacted her.

"To this date, four days later, the school district has not communicated with us as to what actions they are taking, Vellon said. We only learned of some action taken when they recently released a statement to the media.

"Something must be done to protect not just our child but all the children. The silence, lack of empathy, or support from school officials adds insult to injury."

On Sunday, Interim Superintendent Tonja Williams disputed the assertion that no school officials reached out to the 8-year-old's family.

"I have been informed that the family has been contacted by multiple members of the school community at various times to provide support, guidance and insight into how the incident has been handled," Williams said in an email. "In addition a restorative circle to promote healing was facilitated by school and district officials, between the victim and the student who committed the offense's parents.

"The building principal and the school's student support team and crisis team have also been in contact with the family of the offending student and the students who witnessed the incident to support their wellness."

But Vellon was not the only one complaining about what they considered to be a lack of communication and support. Parents of McKinley students expressed similar sentiments on Feb. 9, when they stood outside in the cold, wondering whether their children were safe after receiving panicked texts from them.

At the time, parents knew only that the school was locked down because someone had been shot, and the shooter remained on the loose. Later, they would learn that a student had been stabbed and a security officer had been shot outside the school.

Teens charged in McKinley stabbing, shooting held without bail The 17-year-old arrested Monday, the second teenager charged in a four-day span, pleaded not guilty to charges of second-degree attempted murder, second-degree assault and second-degree criminal possession of a weapon.

But while parents waited outside McKinley on Feb. 9, the only information they received came from their children and police officers on the scene, leaving them frustrated and angry with district officials.

The district's handling of the situation at McKinley that night and in the days that followed proved to be the catalyst for Superintendent Kriner Cash's departure from Buffalo.

School Board President Lou Petrucci said the board is aware of concerns regarding safety in the schools, and is expected to vote on Wednesday to hire a security firm to assess how things are handled in the district, as part of its review of the shooting and stabbing at McKinley.

"We're commissioning a security firm to take a deep dive into our procedures and policies and make sure they're best for the district," he said. "We felt as a board it would be a good idea to take a look at all our security responses.

Petrucci said the board is aware of the need for more staff to help with certain aspects of security.

"As much as I would love to hire more resource officers, more bus aides, is that lag time  recruitment takes time," he said. "It takes time to onboard people."

Nobody to listen

Vellon said that on Tuesday, her family received a video taken by other students of the incident on the bus.

The child complained of injuries to the ear, side of face, one of her legs and one of her arms, as well as a "busted upper lip," said Robert Quintana, a former Buffalo Council member, whom the family contacted. Their account contrasted with that given by the district.

"The school has said nothing to the parents," Quintana said Friday, adding that the family learned from the media  not the district  that the bus driver had been removed from service.

Vellon asked that the other child not be near her daughter when her daughter returned to school, he said.

Buffalo leaders point to progress under Cash but say school district faces challenges School security, the Covid-19 pandemic and student attendance all are pressing issues in the district. But Buffalo has an unprecedented opportunity to leverage nearly $300 million in federal funding.

After Channel 4 aired the story about the attack on Vellons daughter, parents of another child who was beaten on a different bus two weeks ago told a community activist the same thing happened to their child, Quintana said.

That incident also was captured on video, showing what he said was a seventh grader hitting a third grader. The third graders family was afraid to come forward because they feared retaliation, he said.

"They fear their child is going to be kicked out of school, they feel they dont have anybody whos going to listen to them, Quintana said.

Teacher afraid of student

On Wednesday, an Emerson student had been suspended for arguing with a teacher. She was in the main office waiting for a parent to take her home, according to information provided by the Buffalo Teachers Federation.

She left the office and vandalized the Black History Month decorations on the teachers door, according to the information from the union. The teacher went to the office to tell the principal what had happened.

As the teacher walked past the student on the way back to her classroom, the student ran up behind her, pushed her down and hit her in the head multiple times, according to an incident report from the Buffalo Police Department.

The student stabbed the teacher in the eye with what the teachers union described as a plastic shiv . Police said school security recovered an edger brush from the student when they apprehended her.

The teacher suffered an injury to her left eye and nasal passage and bruising on her right hand and left leg, according to police. She told police she is afraid of the student and wants an order of protection.

2 students stabbed, 3 others suspended following altercation at Fountain Plaza The students were both male, ages 16 and 17. Both were taken to area hospitals for treatment.

The girl was charged with assault and criminal possession of a weapon with the intent to use it.

This is not the first time this school year that students at Emerson have been involved in a stabbing.

In November, two Emerson students were stabbed by three other students from Buffalo School of Culinary Arts and Hospitality Management on West Huron Street, across a parking lot from Emerson, when they were getting off the Metro Rail train at Fountain Plaza.

News Staff Reporter Aaron Besecker contributed to this report.

Sign up for our Crime & Courts newsletter Get the latest in local public safety news with this weekly email. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.

Mary B. Pasciak Reporter I have been writing for my hometown paper for more than two decades. These days, I write about how the pandemic is affecting our community. If you have a story idea, call or text me at 716-710-9393, or email me at mpasciak@buffnews.com. Follow Mary B. Pasciak 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
You know the saying that every vote counts? There could be a twist on that in village elections this year, because if a race is close, every vote will be counted twice.

That's because of a state law that requires a manual recount of any contest where the margin of victory is 20 votes or less, or if the margin is 0.5% or less. There are different interpretations on whether it applies to village elections, but village clerks are running their elections on the assumption that it does.

Residents in some villages go to the polls Tuesday, and it's quite common to have a low voter turnout with just a few votes separating candidates.

That could happen next week in North Collins, where three candidates are vying for mayor: incumbent Vincent George, and two former mayors: Michael Gullo and John Mrozek. There also are contests for three trustee positions. George Jablonski, Charles Lantaff and incumbent Trustee Corinne Leone are seeking to fill two four-year trustee positions. Richard Bley and Ryan Maggio are running for a single two-year trustee term.

"There are times in the village we only have 80 people come and vote. They can be very close," said North Collins Village Clerk Jan Hutchinson.

The village does not usually have such a full field. Elections in the village are held every other year, and on the ballot this year is a special election to fill a trustee vacancy. Hutchinson said there are more than 700 registered voters in the village, and she asked for 400 ballots.

"If I get 400, I'll be thrilled," she said.

Village clerks in Erie County held a meeting Wednesday and learned that they should contact the Erie County Board of Elections if they have a close race so a manual recount can be conducted.

A spokesman for the state Board of Elections said the new law does not apply to villages, but would apply for village elections conducted by a county board of elections.

"Its not in the article that deals with village elections, its in a different section of the law that only applies to county boards," said John Conklin.

But an attorney with the New York State Conference of Mayors said the new provision applies to villages since it is not inconsistent with the law governing village elections.

"It's, in our opinion, going to affect a lot of villages," said Rebecca J.L. Ruscito of the conference of mayors.

The Erie County Board of Elections supplies the machines and technical assistance for village elections.

"We would provide personnel and material assistance any way we can to help accomplish that canvass," Board of Elections spokesman Derek Murphy said.

Other races Tuesday include:

Alden: Trustees Mary Refermat and Loren Prucnal are seeking the mayor's post.

Angola: Incumbents John Dybowski and Valerie Stonitsch are running unopposed for two trustee positions.

East Aurora: Mayor Peter M. Mercurio is unopposed for another term. Four candidates are running for three seats on the Village Board: incumbent Ernest S. Scheer, Mary A. "Molly" Flynn, Katherine Grace Viger and Peter A. Schwan.

Farnham: Incumbent trustees Elizabeth Huffnagle and Dennis Rubeck are being challenged by Kevin Burkley and Robert Maurer.

Gowanda: Incumbent Trustees Wanda J. Koch and Peter A. Sisti are unopposed for new terms.

Hamburg: Longtime Trustee Thomas P. Tallman is running for mayor. He has no opposition. Holly McClure Park and Jeffrey A. Davis are unopposed for two trustee seats and Michael J. Biehler is unopposed for village justice.

Springville: Timothy P. Michaels and Allison K. Duwe are running for mayor. There are two candidates for two trustee seats, Mary C. Padasak and Lindsay K. Buncy.

Elizabeth Huffnagle is an incumbent trustee in Farnham. A previous version was incorrect.

The Buffalo News: Good Morning, Buffalo The smart way to start your day. We sift through all the news to give you a concise, informative look at the top headlines and must-read stories every weekday. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
Niagara Falls Mayor Robert M. Restaino has the power to call special meetings of the City Council anytime he wants.

But Councilman Donta L. Myles says that from now on, if he doesn't think a special meeting is necessary, he won't attend.

"From here on out, if it's a special meeting that has no time sensitivity, they need not expect me," said Myles.

He skipped the last special meeting, which Restaino called for 6 p.m. on a Friday, in part because he had a family commitment and in part because he didn't approve of holding it.

The agenda for that Feb. 25 meeting, which Restaino called with three days notice, contained seven items.

Council Chairman John K. Spanbauer said only two of them were time sensitive: contracts for the state's USA Niagara Development Corp. to continue to manage Old Falls Street programming, and with the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority to fund trolley service in the city this year.

Both contracts had to be approved by Feb. 28, and the Council's next regular meeting was to be March 1, Spanbauer said. Its previous meeting was Feb. 16.

Myles said if Restaino had contracts that needed approval by Feb. 28, he must have known about them well in advance and shouldn't have needed a special meeting.

"He's either doing it as a power flex, or it's poor time management between him and the administration," Myles said.

The remaining agenda items were the award of a contract to install a new gate at the public works yard; the purchase of thermal imaging cameras for the Fire Department; permission to install a historical marker at the Amtrak station; funding for a mentoring program at the LaSalle Educational Club; and changing the budgeted police roster from 92 officers and 26 detectives to 90 officers and 28 detectives.

After all those were approved unanimously in an eight-minute meeting, with Myles absent, only three items were on the agenda for the regular March 1 meeting.

Restaino declined to comment, but Spanbauer said he met with the mayor to discuss the topic Monday.

"The bottom line is, the mayor will call special meetings when he thinks it's necessary to do so. I support this mayor," Spanbauer said.

Restaino called special meetings on Nov. 15 with seven agenda items, Dec. 20 with 10 agenda items, and Jan. 14 with five items.

Other than special meetings the Council itself called to work on the 2022 budget, only two other special meetings were held in 2021. On June 1, one item was considered  a moratorium on permits for short-term rentals  and on Aug. 25, nine items were considered.

The Council always tries to take August off, but it usually ends up with a special meeting that month anyway.

Restaino's calls for special meetings do not include any opportunity for the public to address the Council, as they can at regularly scheduled meetings.

Spanbauer said he expects some discussion about changing that.

"My personal opinion is, I would like to see the public speak on agenda items at a special meeting," Spanbauer said.

On Jan. 6, Paul W. Wolf, president of the New York Coalition for Open Government, wrote to Restaino, asking for fewer special meetings and allowing public comment.

Monday, Wolf sent a letter to the Council saying Restaino didn't respond.

"The City Council should not allow the mayor to continue calling special meetings where the public is not allowed to speak," Wolf wrote. "While the city charter provides the mayor the power to call a special meeting and to limit the business items on the agenda, the Council also has powers that it can utilize to address this situation."

Although allowing public comments is typical for a local governing body, the state Open Meetings Law doesn't require it.

Get Government & Politics updates in your inbox! Stay up-to-date on the latest in local and national government and political topics with our newsletter. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
One of the more noticeable byproducts of the pandemic was a realization that many parents related: Their kids didn't have nearly as many colds and infections as they had before Covid-19 hit.

First school and many other activities shut down, then everyone was wearing masks when students returned to school.

But now, a week and a half after the mask mandate in New York schools was lifted, the sniffles are back, along with a nasty intestinal bug.

"It's traveling through my house," Lindsey Tuskes of the Town of Tonawanda said of a respiratory illness. "It's just an average run-of-the-mill virus."

Her daughter, Abigail, was sick on Monday with a migraine. By Monday evening she had a sore throat and respiratory symptoms. A Covid-19 test was negative, and the 9-year-old returned to school Friday. But by then, her brothers, Joshua and Aiden, and their mother, came down with it. Abigail, Joshua and Aiden are triplets.

Tuskes said she remarked to her husband recently that it did not take long for the kids to get sick after the mask mandate was lifted. But she does wonder where the virus came from.

"My kids are still masking. I have no idea where she got it," Tuskes said.

Some might liken this maskless March to the first few weeks of school in September, when children get together in the classroom and start trading germs. Before the pandemic, children getting sick with a mild virus was expected.

Pediatrician Dr. Lauren Kuwik said she doesnt notice children getting sick when they go back to school in the fall, but she does when they go to day care for the first time.

They get sick all the time and we tell parents to expect 10 colds that very first year of day care, Kuwik said.

She said the days after the masks were lifted in schools seem more like the first year of day care.

It feels a little bit more like that. These kids feel like they just started day care, they havent built up their immunity system and theyre going to get a whole bunch of colds and viral GI bugs, Kuwik said.

She said over the past two weeks her practice has been swamped with calls about a gastrointestinal illness going around. It lasts one to three days, and includes vomiting and diarrhea, she said.

The most important thing for that is hand washing, she said.

Kuwik said she has seen very few cases of Covid-19 since Feb. 1. But the symptoms of a cold or a GI bug could be the symptoms of Covid-19, so children with those symptoms should be tested for it, she said.

These kids havent been exposed to anything over the past two years, Kuwik said. As Covid died down and people were mingling more, there were more illnesses that we hadnt seen for the past year and a half resurging.

Children may be coming down with more illnesses, but that has not translated to more admissions to John R. Oishei Children's Hospital, according to chief medical officer Dr. Stephen J. Turkovich.

Kids are getting sicker on the outside of the hospital; theyre not really sick enough to be admitted to the hospital, which is good news, Turkovich said.

Covid-19 cases have dropped in children, as they have in the community at large. Wednesday was the first day there were no Covid-19 patients in Childrens since October. There were only three patients admitted in March, Turkovich said.

And cases of flu are way down.

We havent had a patient admitted with the flu since early January, Turkovich said.

Physicians are keeping an eye on respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, which usually causes mild, cold-like symptoms but could become serious. The cases of RSV are low, Turkovich said.

One virus that seems to be on the uptick, but its always been kind of simmering, is rhinovirus, which is the common cold virus, Turkovich said.

The flu and RSV respond to mask mandates, he said, but the common cold germ is harder to kill off surfaces.

Hospital admissions are also lower than we would typically see in the winter season, Turkovich said.

But visits to the emergency department have gone up about 20% over the previous week. The hospital is seeing a number of children with dehydration from the intestinal virus.

Thats also something that can occur in the springtime, so its hard to know if thats related to the mask mandate or not, Turkovich said.

Its difficult to know the effect of children being exposed to fewer germs in the last two years, he said.

Its the big crystal ball, its really hard to know, Turkovich said. Weve been through two years of very unpredictable viral seasons.

RSV peaked here in mid-October, when generally it peaks in December and January, he said.

Generally, RSV is the No. 1 driver of pediatric admissions to the hospital and specifically to the pediatric ICU in the winter, he said.

He said most viruses go through a cycle that peaks, and then they burn out.

We were wondering if we would see a rebound in RSV as the mask mandate lifted, and we really havent, Turkovich said.

And there usually are two surges of flu, one Influenza A and then usually Influenza B, he said.

We havent seen much of either, he said.

He said there could be an uptick over the next month or so, or it could be similar to last year with a very low presence.

Its really unpredictable, Turkovich said.

The Buffalo News: Good Morning, Buffalo The smart way to start your day. We sift through all the news to give you a concise, informative look at the top headlines and must-read stories every weekday. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
By Azernews

By Vugar Khalilov

Azerbaijan does not recognize the so-called parliamentary elections in Georgias Abkhazia region, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry reported on March 14.

In a statement published on its website, the ministry said: The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Azerbaijan reaffirms its support for Georgia's sovereignty and territorial integrity and does not recognize the so-called 'parliamentary elections' held in Abkhazia region of Georgia on March 12, 2022, as well as its results.

According to the statement, the ministry believes that it is necessary to continue negotiations for a peaceful resolution of the Abkhazia issue in accordance with international law's norms and principles.

With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Abkhaz-Georgian ethnic conflict erupted in Georgia's Abkhazia region.

The conflict, one of the bloodiest in post-Soviet history, has yet to be resolved. The Georgian government has proposed significant autonomy for Abkhazia on several occasions. However, both the Abkhaz government and the Abkhazian opposition are opposed to any sort of union with Georgia. The Abkhaz regard their independence as the result of a liberation struggle against Georgia, whereas Georgians believe Abkhazia has always been a part of Georgia.

During the conflict, Abkhaz separatists conducted an ethnic cleansing campaign, displacing up to 250,000 people and killing over 5,000 ethnic Georgians.
Exactly three years ago, transit planners were forced to scrap grand plans for a skywalk linking the redeveloped Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad Terminal to KeyBank Center across South Park Avenue.

An unanticipated maze of underground utility lines at the base of a planned support tower suddenly made too expensive the idea that thousands of Buffalo Sabres fans could leave Metro Rail trains at a new DL&W station in a "coatless crossing" to the arena. And as Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority efforts to seek federal money for resurrecting the historic terminal continually failed, it appeared the concept of a direct rail-arena connection faced long delays.

Buffalo waterways, rural broadband get boosts under federal spending bill The Buffalo Riverwalk near the DL&W Terminal, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery and the Erie County Department of Health's mental health and substance abuse programs will get substantial funding, too.

But at least some federal money for the skywalk and a host of other waterfront and transit-oriented projects has finally arrived.

On Monday, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer, Sen. Kirsten E. Gillibrand and Rep. Brian Higgins gathered outside the DL&W Terminal near the Edward M. Cotter fireboat to announce $10 million for everything from new electric buses and related charging infrastructure to the proposed Riverline project through the Old First Ward.

"This is going to boost Buffalo like never before," Schumer said at the waterfront gathering, noting the abandoned DL&W right-of-way will also be transformed into a linear walkway and bikeway similar to New York City's Highline.

Even without new infrastructure dollars, NFTA remains bullish on Metro Rail extension The wait continues for Western New York commuters anticipating the proposed extension of Metro Rail to Amherst, even as the nation's new $1.2 trillion infrastructure package finances New York City megaprojects.

"This was once a great connector, and instead of being a uniter, it became a divider," he said. "Now, we'll be able to begin transforming this 1.5-mile line to bring downtown and the waterfront together ... and reclaim one of Buffalo's natural treasures."

At the news conference, Schumer, Gillibrand and Higgins said the money will be aimed at "green" projects for expanded walking and biking access to the Buffalo waterfront. And as the NFTA prepares to introduce electric buses to its fleet later this year, the lawmakers said its Cold Spring maintenance facility can now count on overhead equipment to charge new buses.

But the most visible project, claiming $2 million in money from Washington, will be the skybridge set to open with a new Metro Rail station at the DL&W in 2024. Thomas George, the NFTA's director of public transit, said the new money will pay for utility relocation and allow for a bridge near the intersection of South Park Avenue and Main Street. It will allow rail passengers attending arena events to disembark at the DL&W, cross the terminal on its second floor and directly enter KeyBank Center.

"It was one of the missing pieces, and this really fills the gap," George said in an interview, adding planners can now address the utility relocation, as well as all other options for entering and exiting the arena.

"We've always pursued it," he added.

How Higgins envisions spending $189 million for Buffalo's waterfront development "I'm talking about a vision that could dramatically change the whole waterfront environment over the next 24 months to three years," Rep. Brian Higgins said.

Planners will also continue studying stairway entrances to the terminal via a tower at the foot of Illinois Street, he said, and from an adjacent parking garage. The goal, George added, is for skywalk construction to coincide with the planned opening in 2024 of the new Metro Rail station on the DL&W's first floor adjacent to the Buffalo River.

The money announced Monday by the lawmakers amounts to at least partial success in obtaining federal support for the DL&W project. And it followed criticism from Higgins just after the NFTA suspended the skywalk project in 2019 noting a possible "softening of their commitment" and lack of interest by potential developers.

Since then, however, the authority has signed up the Savarino Cos. as the project's developer, even after it failed on several occasions to obtain federal grants in the face of stiff competition. But now the new money will help the NFTA on the $3 million skywalk that is considered one of the most attractive aspects of the DL&W project.

Other projects to be addressed by the new federal dollars include:

 Riverline: Will receive $900,000 to transform the 1.5 mile DL&W corridor into a greenway connecting downtown Buffalo and its waterfront. The land is owned by the NFTA and the project is spearheaded by the Western New York Land Conservancy, and the new money is earmarked for design, development and construction of the first phase.

"The Riverline will connect to the Buffalo River, to Canalside and to the Shoreline and Empire State trails," said Riverline Director Jeff Lebsack, "helping to ensure equitable access to our redeveloping waterfront. These connections further our goal to be a part of a healthy, inclusive and opportunity-rich city with vibrancy in every neighborhood."

Infrastructure bill's local impact likely to kick off in the spring "It's the largest infusion for infrastructure for Western New York certainly in 70 years and maybe even longer," said Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer, a New York Democrat who compared the effort to the construction of the interstate highway system starting in the 1950s.

 Electric bus equipment: $1.76 million for overhead charging stations at the NFTA's Cold Spring maintenance garage, capable of servicing 10 electric vehicles.

 New electric buses: $4.84 million in a U.S. Department of Transportation grant to help the NFTA's planned conversion to electric buses. With the first electric buses set to arrive later this year, it allows the authority to continue phasing out carbon emitting vehicles.

 Riverwalk improvements: $1 million for new bicycle and pedestrian improvements along "various public spaces" adjacent to the DL&W Terminal and in the Ohio Street corridor.

The Buffalo News: Good Morning, Buffalo The smart way to start your day. We sift through all the news to give you a concise, informative look at the top headlines and must-read stories every weekday. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
WASHINGTON  The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs on Monday unveiled a sweeping proposal to revamp its health care system  including plans for a new "rightsized" hospital in downtown Buffalo  but the process of getting that plan approved is likely to be a long and laborious one.

"The aging Buffalo VAMC will be replaced with a rightsized facility proximate to Buffalos health care corridor in order to increase synergies with neighboring providers and resources," the VA said in its recommendations to a congressionally mandated commission reviewing the agency's health facilities. "Outpatient capacity will be both consolidated and expanded to meet current and future veteran demand."

But that proposal is already caught up in a contentious process that will likely take more than two years to resolve. The Buffalo proposal is just part of a nationwide plan that includes the proposed closure of three veterans hospitals and the restructuring of many other facilities: moves that the VA will have to defend publicly in cities across the country.

"We have a year to prove ourselves," Veterans Secretary Denis McDonough said last week in a preview of the plan on a webinar sponsored by the Rand Corp.

Congress has not yet confirmed the members of the VA Assets and Infrastructure Review Commission, which is supposed to hold hearings on the specific proposals. Then next February, the commission will send a report to President Biden in which it can either accept or reject the VA recommendations. Biden then will send the report to Congress, which has the option of rejecting it in total or letting it become law.

In drawing up its recommendations, the VA took a deep dive into the demographics of individual markets and their facilities and then tailored each recommendation for each place.

The agency determined that Buffalo needs a new facility, McDonough said, because the current hospital is dated and because the population of veterans in the area is projected to remain high.

In its written proposal, the VA said it wants to build a $1 billion hospital in Buffalo because the current one  a building that opened in 1949 on Bailey Avenue adjacent to the University at Buffalo South Campus  is too big, too old and poorly located.

The current facility, which has more than 1.1 million square feet of space, had an average of 109.4 patients a day for inpatient stays in fiscal 2019, the VA said.

The number of veterans enrolled in the VA health system in Western New York is projected to shrink 15.8% by 2029, while the demand for inpatient medical and surgical services is projected to shrink 13.9%, the VA report said. The agency forecasts demand for inpatient mental health services to fall, too, while projecting an increase in demand for long-term care, rehabilitation and outpatient services.

That being the case, the VA said it makes sense for Buffalo to have a new veterans hospital better aligned with what veterans will need in coming years. The report did not say, however, how big the new Buffalo VA hospital would be or specify anything about its design.

The VA said the current hospital, which lacks central air conditioning and has rooms and hallways that are too small, "does not meet current design standards." Its infrastructure systems are failing, so the facility costs $14.1 million annually to maintain and needs $260.9 million in improvements. The VA concluded it would be more efficient in the long run to replace the existing Buffalo hospital with a new one.

In addition, "the Buffalo VAMCs current location is sub-optimal; it is not proximate to the medical corridor in downtown Buffalo, which was created to foster collaboration among member institutions, their employees, and the community," the VA report said. "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, including with VAs academic affiliate, the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo."

Most importantly, the VA said, veterans would get better care in a new facility.

"Quality is improved through the proposed replacement Buffalo, New York VAMC," the agency said. "This new infrastructure will aid in improving the patient experience with care delivery provided in modern spaces and aid in the recruitment of staff with facilities offering the latest technology."

The VA also proposes closing two clinics in Buffalo and relocating their services to the new hospital. Meanwhile, the agency proposes replacing the current Batavia VA Medical Center, which was built in 1932, with a new facility adjacent to the current outdated one.

The Batavia facility would also become a hub for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder.

"The Batavia VAMC has 12.0 acres available for additional development," the VA noted. "Relocating and expanding outpatient services to a purpose-built, rightsized facility on the Batavia VAMC campus will meet the growing needs of the veteran population."

A VA hospital on the Medical Campus? Fruit Belt parking, housing among questions on new proposal The construction of a new VA facility at the Medical Campus would also mean a big change for the University District, which would lose the hundreds of employees and daily visitors who now frequent the veterans hospital.

The Buffalo News first reported earlier this month that the VA wants to build a new hospital in Buffalo  a move that would likely stir some opposition in the nearby Fruit Belt neighborhood, where residents complain of parking congestion and rent increases that they blame on the burgeoning Medical Campus.

Opposition to local proposals in the VA plan has already surfaced in other parts of the country. On Sunday, Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, a Staten Island Republican, held two events to protest the proposed closure of the Brooklyn VA Medical Center. And the South Dakota congressional delegation last week announced its opposition to the curtailing of services at three rural clinics in that state.

But McDonough said it's important for the VA to take a comprehensive look at its facilities and make sure they are properly aligned with where veterans will be living in the future.

What's more, he said it's important for the VA to replace facilities that, in some cases, have long outlived their usefulness.

"We have one facility that has a tree growing through the building," he said at the Rand event. "That's not clinical best practice."

The Buffalo News: Good Morning, Buffalo The smart way to start your day. We sift through all the news to give you a concise, informative look at the top headlines and must-read stories every weekday. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
OLAF FUB SEZ: According to Nobel Prize-winning physicist Albert Einstein, born this date in 1879, The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.

. . .

ST. PATS WARM-UP  The Druids, an award-winning folk band from County Kildare, Ireland, return to the Buffalo Irish Center, Abbott Road, at 7 p.m. tonight. Tickets are $20.

Author and historian Bill Donohue will talk about his Irish heritage dating back to the Civil War in an Irish-American Heritage Month program at 6 p.m. Tuesday in Tewksbury Lodge, 249 Ohio St. $10 donation encouraged.

. . .

SIGN IN  Purple Heart recipients can apply for the Washington, D.C., Honor Flight in September beginning Tuesday. Call Russ Ward at 716-587-1120.

. . .

ALMOST SPRING  An informational meeting for vendors and others interested in the upcoming 20th season at the Alden Farmers Market will be held at 6 p.m. Tuesday in the Community Center, 13116 W. Main St., in Alden Town Park. To reserve a spot, call 716-937-6177 or email secretary@aldenny.org.

. . .

LOOKING BACK  Melissa Brown, executive director of the Buffalo History Museum, is guest speaker at the free online IMAGINE lecture series at 12:30 p.m. Tuesday. On Zoom at https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89546140559.

Keisha N. Blaine, University of Pittsburgh history professor and columnist for MSNBC, gives a free talk, Fannie Lou Hamer and the Power of the Vote, at 7 p.m. Tuesday in the Montante Cultural Center at Canisius College. Live stream at https://canisius.zoom.us.

Marge Murray, an Explore Buffalo docent, shares her personal collection of Kenmore photos and postcards in a free program, Kenmore Then and Now, at 7 p.m. Tuesday in the Tonawanda-Kenmore Historical Society Museum at 100 Knoche Road, Town of Tonawanda. RSVP appreciated. Call 716-873-6279 or email info@kentonhistory.org.

University at Buffalo architect Kelly Hayes McAlonie talks about pioneering architect Louise Bethune and her place in the womens movement in the Gilded Age at 6 p.m. Wednesday in the Buffalo History Museum. Admission is free.

. . .

HAPPY BIRTHDAY  John Conlin, Rich Newburg, Bob Willoughby, Rebecca Elkin-Young, John Murphy, Eva M. Doyle, William J. Magavern, Zachary Schneider, Rose Mary LaJudice, Dana Saylor, Garrett Martin, Janz Castelo, Janet Alston, Kathy Moll, Cathleen Levato, Mary Schibetta, Beth Ann Renaud, Jackie Cascardi Zakrzewski, Heidi Mahoney, Jonathan Herr, Jean L. Whipkey, Dolores Lewandowski, Erin Schmelzer, Debbie Bosworth, Chad Filipski, Cathy Maghran, Abbey Maurer, Laurie Naab, Matthew R. Welch, Jason Pastore and Dolores Dolly Plewinski.

AND TUESDAY  Laura Meyers, Randy Rodda, Betty Jean Grant, Chris Seefeldt, Kevin Hardwick, Lisa Noonan, Joanne Giolli, Ann Nowocien, Edwin Seifert, Mary J. Patterson, Lynda Bessey, Randy Labedz, Mark Kurzanski, Dawn Beard, John Saunders, Father Joseph Bayne, Jim Horncastle, Collin Patrick Meegan, Ann Francis, Ron Hillman, Rose Pawlak and Edwin Seifert.

To submit birthdays and other items of interest to Reporters Notebook, please email olaffub@buffnews.com or send a letter to Reporters Notebook, Buffalo News, Box 100, Buffalo, NY 14240.

The Buffalo News: Good Morning, Buffalo The smart way to start your day. We sift through all the news to give you a concise, informative look at the top headlines and must-read stories every weekday. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
Royden Cave, the 19-year-old SUNY Buffalo State freshman killed early Sunday morning, was recalled fondly by the principal of the Brooklyn school he graduated from in 2021.

"He was a very pleasant young man, loved by his peers and his family," said Rashid Ferrod Davis, principal of the Pathways in Technology Early College High School.

19-year-old Buffalo State student killed in off-campus shooting, college says College officials identified the victim as Royden Cave, a Brooklyn native and a freshman criminal justice major.

"Royden had just come back to visit us and talk to other students about his first semester of college, so this definitely comes as a shock to all of us," Davis said. "He talked about how he was happy. He was growing up, and even with Covid he was able to be in college. So this is really heartbreaking."

Cave was shot around 3:40 a.m. at a house party at 326 Bird Ave. He succumbed to his injuries a short time later at Erie County Medical Center.

"Detectives are vigorously working this case," Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia said shortly after his swearing-in ceremony as commissioner. "Our detectives are vigorously working this case and are coming up with some leads."

"The information that we have is that there were Buff State students there," Gramaglia said. "There were others, but it was a Buff State gathering."

Gramaglia said he did not know whether Cave lived at the address or whether it was rented to Buffalo State students.

He appealed to those living there for help solving the case.

"We know there were multiple witnesses there that can provide us information, and we ask them to come forward," Gramaglia said.

The police commissioner said witnesses can call the confidential tip line at 716-847-2255, Crime Stoppers at 716-867-6161 or the Police Department's homicide office.

Davis described the high school Cave attended as a small community, where everyone knows one another. Davis reached out to Cave's parents Monday and arranged for guidance counselors to be available at the school for students who needed to talk to someone.

Cave studied computer information systems at the school, which partners with New York City College of Technology, the City University of New York and IBM. He was one of the six of the school's 95 graduates to enroll at Buffalo State.

Cave applied to Buffalo States criminal justice program, but was still exploring whether he wanted to go into law or law enforcement, Davis said.

He was only 19, but he was connected and on the right path, he said.

Staff members from Buffalo State's Counseling Center were available Monday to meet with students, staff and faculty at the school's Weigel Health Center.

"On behalf of the entire Buffalo State community, I express my heartfelt condolences to the Cave family and Royden's beloved friends," President Katherine S. Conway-Turner said in a statement. "Our hearts ache for you during this difficult time."

Mark Sommer covers preservation, development, the waterfront, culture and more. He's also a former arts editor at The News.

The Buffalo News: Good Morning, Buffalo The smart way to start your day. We sift through all the news to give you a concise, informative look at the top headlines and must-read stories every weekday. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.

Mark Sommer News Staff Reporter Mark Sommer covers preservation, development, culture, the waterfront and more. He's also a former arts editor at The News. Follow Mark Sommer 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
The concept of bail reform does not have to be all or nothing. The case of Kahill Reeves, an 18-year-old Buffalo man arrested eight times since New Years Eve, represents an extreme example, but it calls attention to adjustments that should be made in New York States valuable bail reform laws.

Reeves is charged with several crimes involving automobile thefts and car chases. Two of the alleged incidents occurred on consecutive days in January. His alleged crime spree was enabled by the fact that he was issued appearance tickets, rather than held in jail, after several of his arrests.

Appearance tickets are part of new criminal reform laws that took effect in 2020. The laws intentions are good  people accused of crimes should not have to spend months in jail awaiting trial simply because they cant raise bail money.

Erie County District Attorney John Flynn told The News that the requirement for appearance tickets, rather than giving judges the discretion to set bail for most misdemeanors or low-level felonies, allowed Reeves to continue victimizing others.

Thats why the whole appearance ticket part of bail reform needs to be changed, he said.

Flynn is an important messenger on this subject. He instituted a bail reform policy in his office before Albany passed a state law. Unlike many supporters and critics of the policy, he understands the laws values and its imperfections.

The bail reform law was passed as part of the state budget in 2020. As we said a year ago, the governor and the Legislature can revisit the topic in this years budget, which is due April 1.

Some Democrats as well as Republicans in Albany have spoken about the need for some changes, though Democratic leadership has shown no inclination to make revisions this year. They should rethink that approach. The need  socially and politically  is obvious.

In April 2020, the Legislature responded to public alarm over the perceived defects of the new bail law by making adjustments to the reforms, adding 15 new categories of crime that would be eligible for bail and allowing judges to set cash bail for anyone considered a persistent felony offender.

Former Brooklyn Assemblyman Joseph Lentol, an original sponsor of the reform laws, calls for a similar tweak this year, one that would address cases such as that of Buffalos Reeves. Lentol, a Democrat, wrote an opinion piece for the Albany Times Union this month in which he suggested lawmakers create a recalcitrant misdemeanor category, allowing bail for individuals with multiple open misdemeanor cases.

This approach will help stop the arrest-to-release merry-go-round that gives the perception of a breakdown in public safety, Lentol wrote.

There is no definitive data yet showing Americas rise in violent crime can be traced to bail reform. For one thing, crime has risen in states where cash bail remains the norm. But cases such as Reeves are real. The Legislature needs to take note.

The start of bail reform in New York coincided with the coronavirus pandemic, which put severe strains on the economy and residents mental and physical health. Those effects will take years to analyze and understand.

Politicians who want to return to the days of keeping individuals accused of crimes locked up because they cant afford bail, while wealthy people accused of crimes go free, are misguided. The threat of long periods of incarceration was also used to coax confessions out of the accused, even if they were innocent.

Bail reform can, once again, stand to be reformed. But making it the scapegoat for all crime in society amounts to a political scare tactic that depends on emotion rather than reason.

  

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.
By Azernews

By Vugar Khalilov

United Nations Environment Programme experts have visited Karabakh, special representative of Azerbaijani president in the liberated territories (except Shusha region) Emin Huseyov has reported.

The United Nations Environment Programme experts visited Karabakh. During the visit, the experts were shown the environmental situation of the region and were briefed about the future development plan, Huseynov wrote on his Twitter account on March 14.

Armenias three-decade occupation of Azerbaijani territories extensively damaged the ecosystem, wildlife, and natural resources in and around the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Armenians occupation, including its use of prohibited weapons during the war, damaged nature, biological diversity, water reservoirs in Azerbaijan's territories.

Armenians also resorted to large-scale acts of ecological terror in regions they had to leave under the trilateral November peace deal that stipulated the return of Azerbaijans occupied territories.

The Coordination Headquarters that is headed by the Head of the Presidential Administration Samir Nuriyev established on November 24, 2020, in line with the presidential decree to address the issues in Azerbaijan's liberated territories in a centralized manner.

Currently, the work is underway to restore Azerbaijan's liberated lands. Azerbaijan will rebuild its recently liberated areas in four stages. The initial stage includes the solution of the issues of governance and security, infrastructure, while the subsequent stages include the solution of the issues of social services activities, reconstruction, and development of the economy.

In 2021, Azerbaijan allocated $1.5 billion for the reconstruction of liberated territories, followed by AZN 2.2 billion ($1.2 billion) in 2022. These funds will be used primarily to restore infrastructure (electricity, gas, water, communications, roads, education, health, and so on) as well as cultural and historical monuments.
One hundred forty-one countries voted in favor of a U.N. General Assembly resolution deploring Russias aggression against Ukraine and demanding the immediate and complete withdrawal of all Russian forces from Ukrainian territory. Four countries joined Russia in voting against the resolution: Belarus, North Korea, Eritrea and Syria.

Former President Trump called Russias recognition of two breakaway territories in eastern Ukraine as genius, smart and a pretty savvy move ahead of its military invasion. When Trump was president, he repeatedly questioned NATOs purpose and efficacy, calling it obsolete, while charging that the U.S. is saddled with paying an unfair share.

Trump only cares about power and money. In the 2016 election, Vladimir Putin didnt want Hillary Clinton to beat Trump. Putin helped the Trump campaigns in 2016 and 2020 with sweeping disinformation campaigns. Anyone loyal to Trump, no matter how despicable they are, will receive Trumps endorsement. Trump became Putins puppet.

At the 2018 Helsinki Summit, Trump, in a stunning rebuke of the U.S. intelligence community, declined to endorse the U.S. governments assessment that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election, saying he doesnt see any reason why Russia would be responsible.

Trump also praised North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as seriously tough.

Trump admires dictators who hold complete autocratic control with unlimited governmental power. The four most dangerous men in the world are: Putin, Kim Jong Un, Chinas Xi Jinping and Trump. They represent the greatest threat to democracy, freedom and peace in the world.

President Biden has masterfully helped organize a global coalition, with major sanctions against Russia and a coordinated plan to supply the Ukrainian military with arms. The Biden plan to unite NATO and fund humanitarian aid to Ukraine is making America great again.

Tom Graham

East Aurora
Canada looks to reinforce Arctic sovereignty through diplomacy, military, says minister

National Defence Minister Anita Anand is planning a trip to the Arctic, as she gathers her allied counterparts in Arctic countries for a joint discussion on the security of the region in light of Russian aggression in Ukraine.

Anand told CBC News she spoke to all three territorial premiers on Friday about her intention to visit. The minister said she is also having ongoing discussions with the defence ministers of Sweden, Finland, Norway and Denmark.

"What is so important is the collective will to act together as allies regarding Arctic sovereignty and I will be gathering all of these ministers together for a joint discussion," Anand said.

Anand said she will soon introduce a spending plan for modernizing the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD), a bilateral organization between the U.S. and Canada created to defend the continent from air attack.

"It is extremely important for NORAD modernization that we have these continued discussions," she said.

Cpl Hugo Montpetit/Canadian Armed Forces

Ottawa has committed to work with the U.S. on replacing the North Warning System with technology that includes next-generation over-the-horizon radar systems that can detect targets at long ranges.

Anand also said Ottawa is buying new military equipment, including two new polar ice breakers, and is expected to award a contract for 88 new fighter jets this year.

Military exercises to have 'deterrent and defensive effect'

Canada began an Arctic air defence operation Monday, known as Noble Defender, with the U.S. that will run until March 17 and include flying over sparsely populated areas at high altitudes.

"This exercise will have a deterrent and defensive effect," Anand said.

"We are very much aware and prepared to undertake additional exercises as necessary."

Master Sailor Dan Bard/Canadian Armed Forces

The Canadian Armed Forces on HMCS Brandon are additionally training in mine warfare with the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard as part of exercise Arctic Edge off the coast of Juneau, Alaska.

Story continues

The exercise involves military personnel using remote underwater vehicles to practice finding and removing mines from the sea bed.

"The theme of the exercise really is building relationships with other security partners in the Arctic," said Lt.-Cmdr. Mike Wills, the commanding officer of HMCS Brandon.

"The conflict in Ukraine didn't result in the scheduling of this exercise, but certainly it perhaps highlights the importance."

Time for Canada to step up, critics say

Russia has been flexing its military presence in the Arctic like never before using nuclear submarines and nuclear-powered icebreakers, even laying claims to a bigger chunk of a region within 200 nautical miles from Canada's coastline.

"Canadians' safety is at risk if we do not step up to the plate and adequately defend," said Conservative MP Bob Zimmer, critic for northern affairs and Arctic sovereignty. "We need leadership."

Zimmer said Canada's response to Russia's military buildup is overdue and he doesn't think Canada is ready for an offensive encounter in the Arctic.

Meanwhile, the NDP's national defence critic, Lindsay Mathyssen, is calling on Ottawa to spend more on northern communities.

"This is about investing in the infrastructure they've ignored for quite some time," she said.

WATCH | Canada aims to reinforce Arctic sovereignty:

Yukon Premier Sandy Silver said funding for highways, airports, digital security and energy is now more important than ever.

"We need peace and stability right across the north," Silver said.

"Foreign countries are paying a lot of attention to the north and it's time that Canada does the same."

Silver said he's been concerned about Arctic sovereignty for years, and intends to raise the issue at the Council of the Federation meetings this summer with the prime minister and premiers.

Call to demilitarize region

The Arctic Council, a high-level intergovernmental forum that addresses issues faced by Arctic governments and Indigenous Peoples, put its work on hold due to the invasion of Ukraine. Russia is the current chair.

"It's worrisome," said Dalee Sambo Dorough, the international chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC)  one of the six Indigenous organizations, known as Permanent Participants, on the Arctic Council.

"It's my hope that it doesn't escalate or go even further."

The ICC, which emerged from the Cold War to strengthen unity among Inuit, has long called for the Arctic to be declared a zone of peace  something Dorough expects members to reaffirm to a "much higher level of priority" due to the conflict in Ukraine at its July 2022 general assembly.

Cpl. Angela Gore/Canadian Armed Forces

It's conceivable that war between Russia and NATO would extend to the North American Arctic, but it's more likely to extend to the European Arctic near Norway, the Barents Sea and North Sea, according to Michael Byers, Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and International Law at the University of British Columbia.

He said Canada needs more surveillance in the region, but not because the country should be worried about a possible Russian attack.

"We're protected by distance and climate from Russia today," Byers said.

"Our involvement in this is through NATO and the theatre is in Europe, it's not in the Canadian Arctic."
The Lewchuk family felt heartbroken watching the invasion of Ukraine unfold, but have found a creative way to hopefully make a difference. From left to right: Sophie, Simon, Ollie (seated), Ben, Ashley and Sam. (Giacomo Panico/CBC - image credit)

Four children and their parents are spreading the word about the plight of Ukrainians during the Russian invasion, raising more than $6,000 in the process for the Red Cross's efforts in the eastern European country.

Sophie Lewchuk, 12, and her brothers, Sam, 10, Ben, 8 and Ollie, 6, have been creating pins of the country's blue-and-yellow flag and selling them at school.

"I thought it was a really cool idea," Sophie told CBC Radio's In Town And Out. "Because even if we were just making pins, it is actually, like, helping people of Ukraine. So I definitely thought that was a cool aspect."

Russia's military forces kept up their punishing campaign to capture the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv on Monday after an airstrike on a military base near the Polish border brought the war dangerously close to NATO's doorstep.

A new round of talks between Russian and Ukrainian officials raised hopes that progress would be made in evacuating civilians and getting emergency supplies to besieged areas. The talks were later put on hold Monday and were expected to resume Tuesday.

Parents Simon and Ashley Lewchuk said they were inspired after Simon attended a rally in support of Ukraine outside the Russian Embassy, where many people were wearing blue and yellow.

The family has also participated in rallies at Ottawa City Hall and on Parliament Hill.

Giacomo Panico/CBC

The children started by telling friends and neighbours about their pins, but soon brought them to school. They sell for a suggested $5 each, although Sophie Lewchuk said she's given some to students who didn't have the full amount.

So far, they've sold more than 900.

"I've just been bringing pins, like, every day this week to school," she said.

The family also has a personal connection to the conflict, with a branch of Simon's Lewchuk's family immigrating from Ukraine to Saskatchewan.

"I'm really proud of them," he said about his children's initiative. "And I feel inspired and just really encouraged when you see any young kids  and particularly our children  just wanting to engage with the world."

Story continues

Noticed by ambassador

The pins are made by cutting blue and yellow fabrics, gluing them together and attaching pins  with all four children helping in some way.

Their efforts haven't gone unnoticed.

After seeing a social media post about the pins, Darius Skusevicius, Lithuania's ambassador to Canada, invited the family to attend an event at the embassy  one celebrating his country's independence  and bring their pins with them.

The siblings said attending the event, alongside members of parliament and other dignitaries, was fun.

"'[It's] cool to meet new people that we haven't seen yet," Ollie said.

Ashley Lewchuk said that like many families, they initially felt helpless and heartbroken watching the invasion of Ukraine.

"It's a small thing," she said. "But it's a really neat way to show our kids what compassion looks like  and that a small gesture can go a long way and empower other people to try and make a difference."
Eco (Atlantic) Oil & Gas Ltd (AIM:ECO, TSX-V:EOG) has struck a deal to acquire JHI Associates Inc, the owner of an interest in a key offshore licence in Guyana which is being explored by ExxonMobil.

A cashless US$52mln deal will see Eco increase its shareholding to 100% from 7.35%, to become the sole owner of JHI's US$15mln cash balance and its 17.5% working interest (WI) in the Canje Block. It will issue 1.1994 new Eco shares for every 1 JHI owned by JHI shareholders. As a result, JHIs current shareholders will own the equivalent of some 34% of Eco shares.

Eco said the deal adds to its strategic acreage position in Guyana and paves the way for further drilling activity over the coming years.

"Being a shareholder of JHI since last year has given us a deep understanding of the Canje Block and its prospectivity. It has also given us the opportunity to get to know the great management team at JHI and their technical and business achievements to date, said Eco chief executive Gil Holzman.

We believe that there is considerable strategic rationale in acquiring JHI. Eco's ambition is to become the go-to small-cap exploration vehicle for investors seeking exposure to high-impact drilling programs in three of the world's most exciting hydrocarbon provinces in Guyana, Namibia and South Africa.

Holzman added: This transaction adds to Eco's strategic acreage position in Guyana and ensures that there will be a number of drilling catalysts over the next couple of years on Eco's eight offshore blocks.

John Cullen, JHI chief executive, commented: "This transaction provides JHI's shareholders access to Eco's exciting portfolio of exploration opportunities in the emerging oil basins of Namibia and South Africa, and in Guyana with their Orinduik block, while maintaining their exposure to the Canje Block, where we have been working steadily with our partners to identify the next prospect to drill.

It also represents the culmination of a tremendous amount of work from JHI's technical team which, over the last six years, saw two supermajors join the Canje Block, and three wells drilled providing valuable information towards unlocking the potential of the deeper water portions of the Guyana-Suriname Basin.

JHI will have the right to appoint two non-executive directors to Ecos eight-member board.

The acquisition is expected to close in the second quarter of 2022 subject to the completion of due diligence, partner and regulatory approvals.

Exxon-operated Canje is located adjacent to the Stabroek area, the American oilers flagship block offshore Guyana.

Stabroek, as many Eco shareholders already understand, is the stellar oil block in the region. It flanks Ecos own Orinduik block and is host to the vast majority of Exxons multi-billion barrel oil discoveries offshore Guyana.

The large-scale Liza field development is located within Stabroek and is rapidly ramping up to a new production peak of 220,000 barrels of oil per day in the coming months.
The Association of Wisconsin Snowmobile Clubs (AWSC) announces five Wisconsin communities  including Chippewa County  as a Snowmobile Friendly Community awardees for 2022-2026.

In addition to Chippewa County, other communities honored are Arbor Vitae, Conover, Lodi, and Marinette County.

These communities achieved their Snowmobile Friendly Community status by working closely with their Snowmobile Club to complete a 21-page application describing how they and their Snowmobile Club volunteers and landowners provide and advocate for safe and responsible snowmobiling in their area.

All SFC Awardees receive two retro-reflective, high-visibility, 24x36 highway signs to let all visitors know they are entering a Snowmobile Friendly Community.

Created through a partnership between the AWSC and the Wisconsin Department of Tourism, the Wisconsin Snowmobile Friendly Community Program utilizes a statewide Evaluation Panel, to include a state Department of Tourism professional to ensure the program evaluates and accurately identifies which Wisconsin communities and snowmobile clubs are truly best at welcoming, preserving, and providing snowmobile access, support, and services for snowmobilers and their families.

The Snowmobile Friendly Community Award is a four-year designation/term, and communities may reapply for subsequent awards.

All 2022 Snowmobile Friendly Community Awardees will be formally recognized during the AWSCs annual Spring Convention in Green Bay on 26 March. Annually this statewide convention serves as the final major snowmobiling event for the 610+ Wisconsin Snowmobile Clubs and 72 Wisconsin counties that create and maintain over 24,000 miles of public snowmobile trails throughout Wisconsin.

For additional information: AWSC Phone (800) 232.4108/(608) 846.5530, www.awsc.org/Email: awsc@awsc.org

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
Nebraska lawmakers are looking to up the ante on a package of incentives meant to attract more teachers to Nebraska.

A bill (LB1218) would create the Teach in Nebraska Today Program, which would provide first-year educators up to $5,000 a year for up to five years. The bill is one of the Education Committees priorities this year, as lawmakers look to address the teacher shortage impacting Nebraska schools.

The program was added as an amendment to a bill that, as introduced, would strike the requirement for a basic skills test and provide other avenues for candidates to enter the teaching profession.

Sen. Lou Ann Linehan of Elkhorn, a member of the Education Committee, said the teaching crisis is a long time coming. Teaching vacancies have been increasing for years across the U.S., but the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the issue. Some educators left the profession due to burnout.

According to the Nebraska Department of Education, 14% of teacher positions across 143 school districts were unfilled during the 2021-22 school year. In addition, the number of districts that reported open positions increased from 53 to 143 from 2020-21 to 2021-22.

Linehan said one of the reasons for the shortage is the low pay most teachers earn early in their careers, which discourages many students from pursuing teaching jobs. She said many teachers dont earn high pay until later in their careers.

Its not a 21st century pay scale, Linehan said.

The Teach in Nebraska Today Program would incentivize Nebraskas teaching students to stay in the state, but could also recruit teachers from out of state, said Sen. Lynne Walz of Fremont, chair of the Education Committee.

The Nebraska Department of Education would choose which applicants receive aid. Though Walz said the program would prioritize first-year teachers, remaining money could be allocated to teachers in their second or third year. The program could award up to $5 million each fiscal year, according to the bill.

The program is designed as student loan assistance, according to the bill, but Linehan and Walz confirmed that teachers would not need student loan debt to qualify for the program. Linehan said the aid could also help teachers with other financial needs, such as a down payment on a house or buying a car.

Weve got to do something, Linehan said.

Teachers would need to be working full time in order to qualify for the program. The bill defines full time as, at a minimum, working an average of four hours per contract day.

The Education Committee recently advanced LB1218 to the full Legislature. If passed, the program would begin in 2023.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
WeCrashed isnt a look at the rise and fall of WeWork, the flexible workspace company, but the couple behind it, producers say.

What was fascinating to us was there was a relationship  like a love story  at its heart, says Executive Producer Drew Crevello.

Tracking the partnership between Adam Neumann and Rebekah Paltrow gave actors Jared Leto and Anne Hathaway something other than investments and deals to play.

Were these idealistic visionaries or was there a cynicism there? Crevello asks. Or both? People want black and white answers here but theres a lot of gray. We feel confident that weve laid out our story and provided enough for you to draw your own conclusions.

Leto pictures the story in artistic terms: This is a painting, its not a photograph. Its not a documentary. Its impressionistic.

Both he and Hathaway did considerable research into the Neumanns' lives. They learned about the lifestyles they led, the effect success had on them and the mistakes they made with employees.

The insurance against things slipping into caricature is to dive into as much truth as possible, Leto says. To capture the Israeli billionaires accent, he watched hours of footage and became buried in the interviews. He was very verbose.

Hathaway also took a deep dive into her characters background. Shes very interested in spirituality, sharing the books that shes read, so I immersed myself in those, the Oscar-winning actress says during a Zoom conference. I also worked with a researcher who gave me amazing, amazing research on Rebekahs life, world. It is a world I was not born into but I am familiar with. I just sort of did my own investigative reporting. I would find people that knew her and I asked them questions. It was very interesting to kind of hear peoples experience with her versus the way shes portrayed in the media.

Among Paltrows contributions: WeGrow, a private school. When WeWork started to experience financial issues, she stepped down as CEO of WeGrow.

Gwyneth Paltrow, Rebekahs cousin, is mentioned in WeCrashed, but shes not a character. I think Gwyneth is someone who gets a lot of attention from the media and shed probably prefer I just say, Were good, and leave out the details," Hathaway says.

WeCrashed does detail the kind of work environment the Neumanns created.

At the beginning, you see that these are people who had very sincere intentions, Hathaway says. I really think they wanted to make the world a better place. How they executed that is a lot more complicated. I do think they were people  certainly in my characters case  who looked at the world and was trying to leave it better than she found it.

Adam Neumann set out to build something that he was proud of, Leto says. I think he set his sights on a pretty impossible goal and achieved something pretty remarkable.

Nevertheless, theres still the story of a company questioned about its business model and its ability to turn a profit. Both Neumanns left the company and others were charged with changing its fortunes.

Executive Producer Lee Eisenberg says WeCrashed investigates how a persons past informs the present. Those who have seen it debate Neumanns motives  did he believe anything he was saying or did he fly too close to the sun?

Because so much was written about the companys rise and fall, the love story appealed to the producers. You dont talk about the love story in the founding of Facebook or Uber, Crevello says. So it felt very unique to us. And, honestly, it felt like the truth of WeWork. There was not a way to tell the story of WeWork without telling the story of Adam and Rebekah.

WeCrashed premieres March 18 on AppleTV+.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
North Hanover Street in Carlisle is no stranger to ribbon cuttings.

In the past year, the street welcomed Carlisle Creative Vibes, Playa Bowls and Dough and Arrows among other new faces, but some businesses are making the cut a second time after moving to North Hanover Street from other locations nearby.

Boutique on Pomfret, No Common Scents and Mary Williams Photography all plan to open or have already reopened in their new North Hanover Street homes.

Boutique on Pomfret

Its bittersweet, Boutique on Pomfret owner Leslie Rhodes said of the move. Thats the phrase that keeps floating around here.

Rhodes opened the boutiques new location at 101 N. Hanover St. on Feb. 26 after moving from her previous location at 16 W. Pomfret St.

Rhodes said the decision to move came when she learned that the owner of the previous location (and prior owner of Boutique on Pomfret), Judy Mohr, was moving to South Carolina.

She said the next person in line for the spot at 101 N. Hanover St. was Tami Shaffer, owner of No Common Scents, but that Shaffer decided to move to a different spot, leaving the door open for Rhodes.

I called the rental company right away and thats how it happened, because somebody would have jumped on that pretty quickly, Rhodes said.

She said the new location was great and the businesss future was more certain than in the Pomfret Street building, making the decision to move a no-brainer.

I love this block, Rhodes said of Pomfret Street as tears swam to her eyes. I get emotional when I talk about it.

Rhodes said that other than the location, nothing about Boutique on Pomfret will change, including its name.

Pomfret Streets going to be with me on Hanover Street, Rhodes said.

She said her husband did pretty much all of the renovation work on the new location and that the move happened quickly.

Im excited, Rhodes said. I think its going to be a great opportunity.

No Common Scents

Shaffer opted not to take the open spot at 101 N. Hanover St., instead moving her bath and body shop, No Common Scents, two doors up from 15 to 5 N. Hanover St. in the former location of Kindred Kaboodle.

Shaffer said the owners of the new location are doing extensive renovations on the exterior of the building. She announced on No Common Scents Facebook Page that the business plans for a soft opening March 19 and a grand re-Opening the week after that.

She said she moved in preparation of expansion.

I have been here in this location for six years, Shaffer said. ... I found that people are really loving my product so I started expanding my product line.

The change of location will also bring about some other changes in Shaffers shop.

For starters, Shaffer said that during COVID-19, she and her husband started a flower farm to add to the business.

My bouquets are pretty unique and I love them and Im bringing them in and I need the room, Shaffer said.

She said the new location even has a courtyard to accommodate her flowers.

Shaffer said her packaging, which she designs herself, will also look a little different, and described the new style as eco-chic.

A recent addition is the continued sale of laundry detergent that Shaffer said she launched a few months ago. Shaffer said a friend of hers is moving from North Carolina and will introduce her line of apothecary products at Shaffers new location as well.

Shaffer said she was a little heartbroken about the move because people liked the shop she created.

Its recreating a whole new environment, thats what Im nervous about, Shaffer said. Its like a blank canvas again.

However, she said she strives to stay true to her vision and has all kinds of ideas swirling in her head.

Mary Williams Photography

Anyone looking for Mary Williams Photography will now have to look a little higher.

Mary Williams, the businesss owner, moved from her previous street-front location at 115 W. High St. to the second floor of 213 N. Hanover St. last April.

She said the move came because her lease at her former location ended and the property owners wanted to expand the location of what was formerly the Brick restaurant into her old space.

I didnt plan on moving and during COVID there was the uncertainty of whats to come for the future for all small businesses, and to find a location that suited my needs with high ceilings and shooting space ... that was a challenge, but doors opened where they needed to be and it worked out great, Williams said. Its a great location now, Im very happy.

She said that while the move was extremely stressful at the time, shes very happy for One13 Social and thinks that it all work out for the better.

Williams said the biggest difference in her new location is that shes higher up. She said that while people go in less easily, the new studio offers a more private and comfortable setting for her clients.

Another difference is that Williamss new location is bigger.

Its definitely more space than I had before and more individual rooms to make it as far as interior what the old studio was to the new studio. I have a hair and makeup room, I have a reveal room that I show the pictures and its very cinematic colors in there and then the shooting room is very big, high ceilings.

Williams said she has another studio in York and that her location there remained the same throughout her move in Carlisle.

Maddie Seiler is a news reporter for The Sentinel and cumberlink.com covering Carlisle and Newville. You can contact her at mseiler@cumberlink.com and follow her on Twitter at: @SeilerMadalyn

Love 3 Funny 1 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0

Be the first to know Get local news delivered to your inbox! Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
Motorists who frequent the I-83 South bridge over the Susquehanna River currently do so free of charge, and if the Cumberland County Board of Commissioners has its way, that will continue to be the case.

Cumberland County Director of Planning Kirk Stoner shared updates on the Pennsylvania Department of Transportations tolling proposals for the I-83 South Bridge during Carlisle Borough Councils meeting Thursday night.

The county commissioners approved a resolution opposing PennDOTs tolling of the bridge during their Jan. 10 meeting, almost a year after PennDOT announced it was considering the bridge for its PennDOT Pathways Major Bridge Public-Private Partnership (P3) Initiative.

Tolling the I-83 bridge that connects the lower West Shore to the south end of Harrisburg, commonly called the South Bridge, is intended to help pay for construction of a new bridge.

The current bridge is approaching the end of its lifespan, according to PennDOT. The replacement bridge would be widened to five lanes each direction, with a total cost of $500 million to $650 million, according to PennDOTs current plans.

Stoner said Thursday that the estimated toll would be $1 to $2.

The actual toll amount would be determined after the P3 company would come in and work through the construction preparation process and determine how much the bridge would cost, Stoner said. The tolls would offset the cost of that bridge.

Stoner said the tolls would be a projection of the traffic crossing the bridge.

Two weeks ago I introduced a motion at the Harrisburg Area Transportation Study Technical Committee to oppose the project and that was also passed at the coordinating committee, Stoner said.

Stoner explained some of the countys concerns at Thursdays meeting and said that when considering a project such as the tolling on the bridge, regional and interstate traffic are factors to consider.

So in the case of the South Bridge, youre looking at 73% of the traffic on that bridge, 125,000 vehicles per day ... has origin within 10 miles of that bridge, so its local traffic, Stoner said. When you broaden that out, 9% of that traffic, only 9%, has an origin and destination greater than 25 miles away from the bridge.

Stoner said other tolling proposals have involved interstate traffic with considerable distance between origin and destination and no strong incentive to use local roadways instead.

Given the local nature of that bridge, theres an estimated 30% of the traffic that would detour onto surrounding streets to avoid the toll, Stoner said.

He said West Shore communities dont have the capacity for that.

Were concerned about our communities and the impact on the communities of traffic, of congestion, quality of life, first responders trying to get through the traffic, especially during rush hour, Stoner said.

Stoner said the county has met with eight municipalities in the area and they agreed with the county to oppose the tolling project. Some municipalities are looking into a lawsuit against PennDOT and are moving forward with that, he said. The Sentinel previously reported that Camp Hill was considering legal action in January.

Its our hope that we call to attention the impacts of that fee on our community, so with the detour traffic but also with the families that live there, Stoner said. You know the $1 to $2 may not seem like a lot to some folks, but to some folks it can be the difference between being able to go to work and have a job or not, so I think thats a big concern that we need to raise ... as we move ahead.

Stoner said the countys resolution did not include a suggestion for an alternate source of funding, however PennDOT released its Transportation Revenue Options Committee report in July and that report included 18 revenue options for the funding deficit.

In this case I think again were trying to get a square peg in a round hole for tolling on the South Bridge before weve really considered the other broad range of options, Stoner said.

Maddie Seiler is a news reporter for The Sentinel and cumberlink.com covering Carlisle and Newville. You can contact her at mseiler@cumberlink.com and follow her on Twitter at: @SeilerMadalyn

Love 1 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0

Get local news delivered to your inbox! Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
By Azernews

By Laman Ismayilova

This year marks the 190th anniversary of Khurshidbanu Natavan, a great poetess and the daughter of Mehdi Gulu khan, the last ruler of the Karabakh khanate.

On March 14, President Ilham Aliyev signed an order to celebrate famous poetess Khurshidbanu Natavan's 190th anniversary.

The Culture Ministry has been tasked with developing and implementing a plan of action in this regard.

The Cabinet of Ministers is in charge of all issues that arise as a result of the order.

Khurshidbanu Natavan was born on August 6, 1832, in the town of Shusha. Being the only child in the family and descending from Panah Ali Khan, she was the only heir of the Karabakh khan, known to the general public as the "daughter of the khan".

She grew popular through her relationship-themed ghazals and rubaiyat. Kindness, friendship, humanism and love were the main themes of Natavan's ghazals.

Her romantic poems express the feelings and sufferings of a woman who was not happy in her family life and who lost her son. She adopted the pen name Natavan, a Persian term meaning "powerless", after her sons tragic death in 1885. Some of her poems are still used in folk songs.

In addition to poetry, Natavan was also engaged in painting. She was exceptionally good at pencil sketching and attractive embroidery as well. Her landscape sketches were the first-of-a-kind in European style in Azerbaijani art, which perfectly combined the concepts of the Western and Oriental art forms. Her embroidery works were regarded as masterpieces.

After her father's death, she was closely engaged in philanthropy, promoting the social and cultural development of Karabakh.

Even though she took over the Karabakh Empire at the young age of 13, Natavan successfully established her literary career and managed the responsibilities of developing her city, Shusha.

She did a lot for the welfare of people, including building waterworks, opening schools and building hospitals.

Prominent for her charity and social activity, Natavan was the first to provide her home city Shusha with drinking water.

Among her famous deeds was a water main that was first laid down in Shusha in 1883, thus solving the water problem of the townsfolk.

Moreover, she also did a lot for the development and popularization of the famous breed of Karabakh horses. Karabakh horses from Natavan's stud were known as the best in Azerbaijan. In an international show in Paris in 1867, a Karabakh horse named Khan from Natavan's stud received a silver medal.

The daughter of the khan was also active in sponsoring one of the first literary societies. She established the first literary society in Shusha and went on to sponsor several more across the country. Majlis-I Uns (Society of Friends) became a renowned poetic group in Karabakh.

In 1858 the poetess met in Baku with French writer Alexander Dumas and presented her manual works.

The French novelist is said to have been charmed by her oriental beauty, literary and artistic talent. As an honored guest at Natavan's family home, he was given a chess set after playing chess with his host.

The Alexandre Dumas Museum in Paris houses a hand-crafted pouch given by Natavan to the French writer when she defeated him in a chess game upon his halt in Shusha during his trip through the Caucasus.

Natavan died in 1897 in Shusha. As a sign of respect, people carried her coffin on their shoulders all the way from Shusha to Aghdam, some 30 km northeast, where she was buried in a family vault.
SCRANTON  Pennsylvania's former top state prosecutor was arrested over the weekend and is expected to be formally charged with driving under the influence, Scranton police said Monday.

Kathleen Kane, a Democrat who resigned as attorney general after being convicted of perjury in 2016, was involved in a two-vehicle crash in the city about 6:30 p.m. Saturday, Scranton Police Chief Thomas Carroll said.

Police did not release details about the crash, and until charges are filed there is no paperwork with information about the investigation.

Spotlight PA reported that Carroll declined to say if Kane's blood was tested for alcohol level or why she was suspected of having been drinking.

Kane's cellphone would not accept messages Monday and she did not respond to a text message seeking comment.

Kane, 55, was the first Democrat and remains the only woman to have been elected as the state's attorney general.

While in office, she leaked grand jury documents about a civil rights leader who had been investigated to embarrass the rival prosecutor who ran the probe and declined to bring charges. Kane then lied to the grand jury investigating the leak, a jury found.

She served more than eight months of a 10- to 23-month county jail term and lost her law license.

Love 0 Funny 3 Wow 1 Sad 1 Angry 2
Claudia Jones, the USA TODAY Women of the Year honoree from Alaska, is working to empower Spanish-speaking women all over the world.

Claudia Jones is one of USA TODAYs Women of the Year, a recognition of women across the country who have made a significant impact. The annual program is a continuation of Women of the Century, a 2020 project that commemorated the 100th anniversary of women gaining the right to vote. Meet this years honorees at womenoftheyear.usatoday.com.

Everyone told Claudia Jones she was crazy.

When the Mexico native, now an Alaska resident, told people she was thinking of starting an online, nonprofit program that would focus on educational trainings taught by experts in their field, her friends dismissed it. She wanted to call it MORE Latinoamerica, with MORE serving as an acronym for Mindfulness/Mindfulness, Opportunities/Oportunidades, Resilience/Resiliencia and Equity/Equidad. (Jones loves it because it works perfectly for both English and Spanish.) The program would target Spanish-speaking women, particularly in Latin America; it was Jones response to United Nations research that shows women in the Latin America and Caribbean regions experience some of the world's highest levels of income inequality.

Her cause was noble, friends said. But no one was going to sign up for online trainings, they warned her.

But when COVID-19 hit in March 2020 and everyone went into quarantine, everything online exploded, Jones recalled. When she finally launched in August 2020, there was instant high demand for all her trainings, which include courses on personal finance, how to build a LinkedIn profile, nutrition, tips for home schooling and more. Since its creation, MORE Latinoamerica has helped more than 15,000 people, according to Jones. For her dedication to helping women advance their education, Jones has been chosen as the USA TODAYs Women of the Year honoree from Alaska.

Jones grew in Veracruz, Mexico, located about 250 miles east of Mexico City, and moved to the United State in 2013 after marrying her husband. Currently, Jones juggles teaching Spanish as a second language at Mat-Su College, part of the University of Alaska system, running MORE Latinoamerica and her family, which includes son Liam, who's 5. She hopes that soon, MORE Latinoamerica can award grants to women worldwide who want to open their own business.

Story continues

Jones, 42, knows that continuing education, even if it comes through a certificate program instead of a degree, is critical to achieving gender equity around the globe. And while she appreciates that so many nonprofits focus on empowering younger women, she wants all women, regardless of age, to know someone is fighting for them to get opportunities, too.

Women always have the power to remake themselves, Jones said. Who says a 50-year-old cant change her life?

The following conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Your life purpose is to empower women through trainings  why is education the way to do that?

Personally, if I had not had an education, it would have been very difficult for me to overcome the adversities in my life. But I had those opportunities because I grew up in an upper middle class family in Mexico  a lot of women dont, and I wanted to give others the same resources I had.

The programs Ive coordinated (through MORE Latinoamerica) have had a great impact on the lives of those who have participated. The testimonies of the final evaluations show that the people who went through the workshops and internships acquired skills that prepared them to face professional challenges, strengthened their self-esteem, understood life from a multicultural and diverse perspective, discovered an inner potential and generated friendships and contacts, helping create a professional network.

Who paved the way for you?

In 2001, at 21, I got a scholarship to participate in the Global Student Leadership program. The objective of the program is to empower young women at Manhattanville College in New York. I met Michaela Walsh, founder and first president of Womens World Banking. She started the GSL program in 2000, and she became my mentor.

Claudia Jones juggles teaching at Mat-Su College in Alaska with expanding her online nonprofit.

Who did you pave the way for?

I have returned several times to New York to be a role model for the GSL program. In Mexico, the program was replicated twice with the support of Michaela Walsh and two local universities. Now, with MORE Latinoamerica we have helped more than 15,000 people, including women in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Honduras, Mexico, Spain and Venezuela.

What is your proudest moment?

I learned English when I was older, and my proudest moment is having been accepted to teach Spanish as a second language at Mat-Su College. Another proud moment is when the American Mothers Association named me Alaska mother of the year for 2022.

What is your definition of courage?

To dare to do something despite being afraid.

Follow national correspondent Lindsay Schnell on Twitter at @Lindsay_Schnell

Women of the Century: Civil rights leader Elizabeth Peratrovich, senator Lisa Murkowski among 10 influential women from Alaska

Explore the project

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: USA TODAY Women of the Year: Alaska honoree helps Spanish speakers
A local educator is doing more than teaching her students to follow their dreams. She is inspiring them by following her own.

Morgan Comnick, a teacher at the Fredericktown Alternative Learning Center, is working on her ninth book and celebrating new life for her first book, "Spirit Vision," recently re-released as an audiobook. The "Spirit Vision" audiobook hit number one in the Christian-Fiction books, new release category on Amazon and was still in the top 200 when last checked.

Comnick, who lives in Farmington, said she grinned from ear to ear when she found out she was a number one bestseller on Amazon.

"I could not contain myself," Comnick said. "My mind is still in disbelief. Becoming a bestseller in any way fills my heart with warmth. Its first week out on Amazon and Audible, it was also in the top 100 Audiobooks that Tackle Bullying in Young Adult works and top 225 audiobooks in Contemporary Fantasy for teens."

Comnick said these subcategories Amazon placed on "Spirit Vision" are beyond its two main categories, but the genres are near and dear to her heart.

"Knowing others see the dedication and passion I put behind a multi-layer story means the world to me," Comnick said. "I would be nowhere without my wonderful narrator, Abby Anderson. Her skill, endearing personality, and support expand my book's world, and I love how it has become our project."

Comnick said producing an audiobook has been one of her biggest dreams as an author.

"It has been a lot of work but has also given me the biggest reward in my career so far," Comnick said. "It is the next step of this series' journey and I am blessed to be given this opportunity most authors aspire to achieve."

Comnick said, "Spirit Vision" is about a shy, nerdy, 15-year-old girl, Stary Moon, who starts having strange dreams.

"When arriving at school, a dead body is discovered and Stary realizes it is the young woman she saw in her dreams," Comnick said. "She encounters the deceased maiden's spirit in addition to her rude friend, the two revealing their names to be Maren and Umbra. Their fates are now intertwined as Stary discovers from these spirits that she is God's Chosen Spirit Warrior, the one who can help them gain entry into Heaven by helping them track Maren and Umbra's murder. If not, Stary is next."

Comnick said Stary is trying to balance life as a normal high school girl trying to get asked to the homecoming dance and learning to use her new spiritual and light powers. No big deal.

"I am elated we can share this world and these characters with a new audience," Comnick said. "This has always been one of my ultimate goals for my works that are like babies to me. It takes a fresh take on the story."

Comnick said her writing style is based on what inspires her.

"All my works have two to three core genres, but I balance it with elements that can connect to as many readers as possible while still making, what I hope is, entertaining and impactful in some light story," Comnick said. "I was nicknamed 'The Queen of Details' in intermediate school. Adjectives and figurative language are my jams."

Comnick said Japanese graphic novels called manga, with their rich beautiful art and stories, have changed her life.

"I aim for my books to be a written interpretation of that, a deep tale in your head, a world that overlaps our own, that magic can be in plain sight," Comnick said. "Currently, I focus on young adult and new adult, but there is something for everyone."

Comnick said she has not yet published a standalone, full book, but actually all of her creations are part of several series. She said, never fret, she has dozens of ideas for future books.

"My ninth book is part of my new adult 'The Hunter and The Bringer' series," Comnick said. "It is called 'Before and After' and it is a short story collection and fan book for the series, allowing the readers to learn more about the characters, the organizations, and their mechanics in exclusive short stories before and after the series main timeline, playlists, bios, fun facts, weapon and monster encyclopedias, interviews and more, all in the same sarcastic style Val and Jeremy are known for."

Comnick said writing has always been a comfort in the way it let her be herself. She said she did not know how to voice normal emotions such as sadness, anger, or confusion and instead would become extremely shy and chipper all the time.

"My notebook was my anchor, protector, friend," Comnick said. "Combining that with my overactive imagination made becoming an author a dream job. The unexpected best part was sharing these characters and the world I lovingly crafted from my soul with the world, and having them like them too becomes my drive, allowing my creative juices to flow."

Comnick said she encourages her students and others to follow their dreams and persevere despite any obstacle. She said wonderful friends she has made along the way have been some of the greatest blessings.

"I am so grateful to have incredible and compassionate teachers who fostered the traits that made me myself," Comnick said. "I would not be where I am today without them."

Comnick's books are all available for purchase on Amazon or select copies are available at the Fredericktown branch of the Ozark Regional Library.

Comnick also has a monthly crowdfunding program on Patreon to help support further audio versions of her other books.

"Currently, our goal is to raise the funds to pay for an audiobook version of my new adult series, 'The Hunter and The Bringer,' with two on-board, talented and fantastic professional narrators, a male and a female, to absorb you into this world of sarcastic, monster hunting realm," Comnick said. "I have a Patreon and it is full of lovely, shining stars that make my world incredible and dreams even sweeter because now they are our dreams."

Comnick said patrons can select tiers to gain access to exclusive merchandise, videos, stories, first looks, previews and more.

Victoria Kemper is a reporter for the Democrat News. She can be reached at 573-783-3366 or at vkemper@democratnewsonline.com

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0

Be the first to know Get local news delivered to your inbox! Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
A Farmington man was sentenced to 16 years in federal prison on Friday.

James L. Rodgers, 42, of Farmington, appeared before US District Court Judge Audrey G. Fleissig Friday and was sentenced to 16 years in prison to be followed by a lifetime of supervised release for the receipt of child pornography and the coercion and enticement of a minor.

According to the plea agreement, on or between May 1, 2019, and Oct. 9, 2019, in St. Francois County, Rodgers utilized the internet and social media websites to communicate with multiple victims under the age of 10. Rodgers used the social media sites to request the victims to engage in sexual acts and that they produce and send to him images and videos of such sexual acts over the internet.

An examination of the Rodgers cell phone by law enforcement also revealed he was distributing child pornography with others over the internet. On Sept. 22, 2019, Rodgers shared 11 videos and nine images of child pornography and again on Sept. 27, 2019, Rodgers exchanged five videos and 16 images of child pornography over a social media platform.

The case was investigated by the Missouri State Highway Patrol.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 1 Sad 1 Angry 7
The board of directors for St. Francois County Joint Communications, which governs 911 service in St. Francois and Ste. Genevieve counties, agreed to streamline emergency siren service, heard an update on the Simms Mountain Tower project, and recognized employees who addressed tower issues in the middle of the night last Wednesday.

The siren software upgrade is timely, since this is Missouri Weather Preparedness Week. The board gave Director Alan Wells the go-ahead to spend a little more than $18,000 to streamline emergency siren service throughout the Ste. Genevieve and St. Francois county area using an automated program.

Currently, the sirens have to be manually tended to after the National Weather Service issues warnings or watches in a polygon, or multi-sided area. Formerly, they issued warnings to whole counties, which often necessitated sirens to be sounded across unaffected areas.

Used to, it was, if a county is in that activation area, we'd set off the whole county, but there's some discrepancies there, Wells recounted. That storm might be hitting Blackwell and in Farmington, the sun is shining but you're still setting off the tornado sirens.

If you do that and you cry wolf too many times, is a citizen going to pay attention to it when you really need them to? So the weather service now does polygon of the affected area, not necessarily by county, which is really an advantage, they've done a lot better job with their notifications.

The tweaks to the siren systems would include Farmingtons sirens, which operated under their former, independent dispatching system although the citys dispatching service has now been folded into St. Francois County 911 for more than a year now.

In both systems, currently the sirens have to be triggered by the operators themselves.

It tends to tie up a civil defense channel the whole time the system is going through the warning network, and the operators position then is tied up, they can't do other things while they're setting off those sirens, and often, during an emergency situation, you need as many hands on deck as possible, Wells said.

By moving Farmington to the civil defense channel instead of their police department channel, all cities can be put on the automated system.

I see nothing but advantages here with this type of the network and program, Wells said. It comes with a low price of about $18,000 and some change, but we're freeing up personnel at the time of a disaster. I think it's money thats going to be well spent.

The new Simms Mountain Tower project to build a signal 100 feet higher than the current tower is about to come to a close in the next several weeks, signifying a major improvement over a system thats been on that big hill since the 1980s.

Board Chairman Ron Bockenkamp called attention to the diligence of Wells, new Deputy Director Chuck Farr and IT Systems Administrator Allen Stegall as they responded to a malfunction on the current Simms Mountain Tower last Wednesday. The men attempted to brush aside the accolades, while Bockenkamp pointed out it was important to let the public know that the emergency system requires 24-7 vigilance.

Sarah Haas is the assistant editor for the Daily Journal. She can be reached at 573-518-3617 or at shaas@dailyjournalonline.com.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0

Get Government & Politics updates in your inbox! Stay up-to-date on the latest in local and national government and political topics with our newsletter. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
The Farmington City Council held a public hearing regarding an ownership issue at the former Mineral Area Regional Medical Center, and discussed a proposed safety requirement for local businesses when it met in regular session Thursday at Long Memorial Hall.

The council held a public hearing and later a first reading of legislation on an application for a final plat at 1212 Weber Road.

Explaining the reason for the application, Development Services Director Tim Porter said, This is the property at the old Mineral Area Hospital. Right now there are three separate owners on one single lot. The city has the property with the Senior Center and the IT Department.

"The new homeless shelter is owned by East Missouri Action Agency and the main hospital building is owned by Sharo Shirshekan. This is simply a plat that puts the property in three different lots to allow for each property owner to have their own lot.

During the public hearing, a resident living in the county but adjoining the hospital property raised a concern about her lot not being large enough to run a new drain field. She wants to acquire some land from Shirshekan or sell him her home. She also has issues with people from the homeless shelter crossing her property.

Mayor Larry Forsythe assured the resident he would address the issue with City Administrator Greg Beavers and try to come to an agreement with Shirshekan.

During committee reports, Councilor Adam Parks went over several items discussed in the most recent meeting of the Public Safety Committee, which he chairs.

We heard from [Police] Chief Baker that they are hiring an animal control officer who will hopefully start in April, he said. They are still going through the hiring process. They are hiring three positions now and three later in the year. On April 14, Chief Baker will give us the 2021 crime statistics report.

In a discussion held during the committee meeting, Parks had mentioned that some businesses don't want to install Knox Boxes at their location. (The boxes are mini safes where the fire department can access business keys instead of damaging a building for a fire entry.)

According to Porter, the 2005 International Fire Code has a requirement that the boxes be installed on commercial buildings.

There was an appeal made to the Building Code Advisory Board last week, he said. They have asked you to amend the code so that it be voluntary instead of mandatory. Mr. Beavers recommended that we also run it before the Public Safety Committee since it does impact public safety.

The council discussed having draft legislation on the matter prepared for one of its April meetings.

Councilor Chris Morrison asked Fire Chief Todd Mecey to address the council about the Knox Box situation.

We feel its an important program, Mecey said. It is more geared for protection of the business owner than firefighter safety. If we are called to a business for an investigation and the building is not occupied, an alarm is sounding, it gives us the ability to access the business without forcing entry and causing damage.

"The primary concept is around protecting the business owner. There is a secondary issue on flow path control. Depending on where the fire is located in the building, sometimes we would prefer to open a door rather than break out a door. Once we break out that door, we lose that flow path control.

In his Public Works Committee report, Morrison informed the council that a citizen had stormwater drainage issues from a city drain pipe. He also mentioned a discussion about the Ste. Genevieve Avenue water main replacement bids that will be opened next week.

We also talked about bids for excavation, hauling, asphalt, concrete and some tree trimming, he said.

Additionally, Morrison said the committee discussed the ongoing issue of redirecting traffic for the Weber Road Project. We are still working on a solution.

In other business, the council approved a resolution for an agreement with Redmond and Sons Excavating for 2022 excavation and hauling.

The council also approved a resolution for an agreement with Kingsland Concrete for new curbs, removal and replacement of concrete curbs, gutters and sidewalks for 2022.

The council approved a third resolution for an agreement with Lead Belt Materials for asphalt street improvements for 2022.

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

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0

Get Government & Politics updates in your inbox! Stay up-to-date on the latest in local and national government and political topics with our newsletter. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
Fredericktown and Arcadia Valley school districts are preparing a regional Transition Fair for all high school juniors and seniors who are receiving special education services.

The sixth annual fair will be held at First Baptist Church in Farmington on Wednesday. Twelve area school districts have been invited to participate. The fair will focus on information that will help students transition into the adult world.

The fair starts at 9:15 a.m. with a keynote speaker from Vocational Rehabilitation, and concludes at 1 p.m.

During the fair students will attend five breakout sessions, hear a keynote speaker, talk with employers, agencies and community service providers, win door prizes, and generally focus on their future.

Some of the topics include, "How to get a job and keep it," "Money," "What do employers expect from their employees?," "Getting involved in the community," "Insurance," "Buying your first car," "Success in college," and much more.

About 50 exhibits will be set up in the vendor sessions. The focus of these exhibits will be employment/training options, colleges, armed forces and outside agencies. Students will have an opportunity to talk to the vendors so they can discover what opportunities are available in their community.

One organizer noted, the future holds many new challenges for students and it is their hope that the transition fair will provide them the information they may need for a successful transition into the next phase of their lives.

Anyone who would like more information on the event can contact Shawnnett Williams at 573-783-8001 or Shawnnett.Williams@fpsk12.org.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
Vladimir Putins war on Ukraine became inevitable when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky declared that he wanted his country to be a member of NATO. That was a red line for Russia.

Russias military buildup against Ukraine began soon after. Zelensky had the choice of withdrawing his call for NATO membership, or preparing for war. He chose to resist Putins threats because he assumed NATO, especially the U.S., would pressure Putin to stop short of war. He was wrong; His country is paying a terrible price

Zelensky now has two choices: He could resign and make way for another government that doesnt seek NATO membership. Or he could fight on and be a hero for Ukrainians and others who think its better to defend their freedom even though it destroys the country. Its a tough call. But as Ukraines cities are destroyed and refugees pour into neighboring countries, the question should be asked: Was this worth it?

Putins political pressure on Ukraine will not cease even if Zelensky withdraws his request for NATO membership. The Russian leader has held power for twenty-two years; he is determined to bring back to power in Kviv a pro-Moscow leader like the one ousted a 1914 uprising. He would not stop pressuring Kviv until it ousts Zelensky.

When will this war end? Not until Zelensky is gone and Russia controls major ports on the Black Sea and large cities in the eastern half of the country. Putin says he doesnt intend to deprive Ukraine of sovereignty but it must cooperate with Moscow, in effect a satellite country.

What happens to three Baltic States, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, that were part of the Soviet Union, not satellites, until the USSRs breakup in 1990? As fully functioning democracies, they applied for NATO membership and were accepted in 2004. If Putin chose to undermine their independence, he would face the combined forces of NATO. It already has troops stationed there to warn Moscow.

Putin called the Soviet Unions breakup the greatest strategic disaster of the 20th century. Experts on Russia claim he is determined to recreate a Soviet-type sphere of influence in eastern Europe that would include Poland, Hungary, and Romania.

It is now clear that Putins larger ambitions will not bear fruit. His invasion has united Europe in a way that appeared impossible earlier. Nowhere is this more evident than decisions of Germanys new government to cancel the Nordstream 2 Gas pipeline. greatly increase defense spending, and reverse a policy on sending arms to Ukraine Putin now realizes NATO will hold firm against his ambitions.

Its time for diplomacy to find a solution to this national tragedy. Frances President Macron has talked to Putin but this has not succeeded.. Another country, China, may have more influence with Putin because he and President Xi Zinping recently concluded an agreement to support each other. This was before Putins war in Ukraine, and could now give Peking more leverage in Moscow.

How long will Vladimir Putin remain as leader in power? One possibility is those closest to him politically will work against him when economic sanctions threaten their livelihood. Another possibility is Putins health will force him to share power with one or more leaders. This occurred in 1953 when a very ill Josef Stalin was replaced by a troika of leaders who chose detente over confrontation with Washington.

But its also possible that Putin will never give up, and depend on the police and intelligence services to support him.

The good news is that Ukraines war has unified the West, triggered an insurgency that slows the invasion, and ruined Russias economy. Kviv may turn out to be Putins Waterloo.

The writer is a political scientist who lives near Charlottesville. E-mail: nuechtd@cstone.net
On the chopping block were county contributions to organizations. Some of the contributions are mandated such as the contribution to the health department while others, like funding Legal Aid, are not. Currently, requests for contributions in the upcoming fiscal year total approximately $2.2 million with some numbers yet to be refined.

Several items were decreased from the requested amount while others were cut completely. Supervisors opted to reduce the countys contribution to the Thomas Jefferson EMS Council from the requested $8,130 to just $1,000, choosing to see if the group could get its act together. The board also reduced the $54,000 request from Germanna Community College to just $5,000. The college has asked for additional funding for several years to contribute towards its upcoming construction project at the Locust Grove Campus. The supervisors have declined the increased ask each time. The group also opted to fund the Boys & Girls Club at $1,000, down from its $5,000 request and $2,000 allocated in the current fiscal year budget. Just $500 has been allocated for the fair, half of its $1,000 request. The same amount was chosen for the Madison Senior Center. The Culpeper Soil and Water Conservation District was flat funded at $31,333. Seven hundred and fifty dollars was allocated to Northern Virginia 4-H, down from its $3,550 ask. Legal Aid is set to receive nothing compared to its $2,000 request.
In 2011 it was C-H-O-C-A-G-O. Now, its C-H-O-C-A-G-N-O.

Passengers flying out of Charlottesville Albemarle Airport will soon have only four non-stop destination options when United Airlines ends flights between Charlottesville and Chicagos OHare International Airport this summer, airport officials said. The move comes after American Airlines stopped flights between the two destinations in November 2020 and now disconnects the airport from the busy Midwest airline hub.

Passengers who choose to fly out of CHO will still be able to fly to major hubs in the eastern part of the country, including Charlotte, Atlanta, New YorkLaGuardia and WashingtonDulles.

CHO Deputy Executive Director Jason Burch said airport staff want to work with the airlines and demonstrate demand for Chicago flights.

Outside of COVID, outside of the pilot shortage and all the other challenges, were looking to see if we can put together a strong case as to why wed like to see that service back, he said.

The American service to OHare started in 2011, after the airport offered the airline more than $700,000 in incentives. United service to OHare started in 2017.

But Chicago service is unlikely to return in the near future, as regional airlines like SkyWest Airlines, which operated United Express flights between Charlottesville and Chicago, continue to pull back regional routes amid a pilot shortage.

During a conference call last month, SkyWest CEO Chip Childs said 6,000 early retirements taken by pilots at major airlines during COVID and the steep demand recovery has resulted in a new, much higher demand for experienced SkyWest pilots, particularly captains.

This demand has created an imbalance of pilots here and across the regional industry, he said. Of course, pilot attrition was anticipated and planned for in our models and strategies. However, the rapid increase in captain attrition was not.

Childs said the pipeline for new pilots is strong, but the timing creates an imbalance and production constraint for the next year or so.

To help correct this imbalance, were working with our major partners to notably reduce schedules for the foreseeable future and have worked with our pilot group to implement upgrade and retention incentives, he said.

Weeks after the call, The Points Guy, a travel website, first reported that United was dropping 17 domestic routes  all operated by regional carriers  from its route map including the flights between Charlottesville and Chicago.

United representatives did not respond to a request for comment about the cut, but told other media outlets that it makes regular adjustments to its schedule in response to market demand and staffing resources to ensure we can best serve our customers.

On Thursday, SkyWest filed a required notice that it will terminate air service in 29 airports, including Shenandoah Valley Airport, that it covers under Essential Air Service program contracts, on or before June 10.

EAS is a federal government program that subsidizes commuter and certificated air carriers to serve communities that otherwise would not receive any scheduled air service. Carriers bid on contracts which are awarded by the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Although SkyWest Airlines, Inc. would prefer to continue providing scheduled air service to these cities, the pilot staffing challenges across the airline industry preclude us from doing so, the company said in the filing.

According to documents, SkyWests contract for the Shenandoah airport was supposed to end March 31, 2023. SHD is currently the only EAS eligible community in the state.

It is important our community works together to continue to utilize the current SkyWest Airlines [doing business as] United Express service so SHD remains attractive to any new carrier, the airports website says.

Richmond International Airport still has non-stop flights to Chicago on American, United and Southwest Airlines.

Burch with CHO said the airport anticipates United adding an additional flight to Dulles this summer and American adding another flight to Charlotte. As much as the airport staff want to regain service that the airport has lost, theyre also talking to airlines about adding service to new destinations in the future, he said.

What we dont want to do is jump on a bandwagon for an airline going to a market thats just a questionable thing. and then our community doesnt respond to it, he said.

Places in Florida are popular destinations for Charlottesville airport travelers, but an Allegiant Air service to Orlando ended abruptly in 2014, fewer than 100 days after Allegiants first flight here from the Sunshine state.

Were looking at Chicago, but you know, were also looking at some of the markets that we can connect to that our community seems to want to go to, Burch said.

Get local news delivered to your inbox! Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
By Azernews

By Vafa Ismayilova

Azerbaijan has made public the five basic principles for normalizing relations with Armenia, the Foreign Ministry reported on its website on March 14.

Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Leyla Abdullayeva made the remarks in an interview with the local media.

For the normalization of relations, Azerbaijan proposes the following principles:

- Mutual recognition of respect for the sovereignty, territorial integrity, inviolability of internationally recognized borders and political independence of each other;

- Mutual confirmation of the absence of territorial claims against each other and acceptance of legally binding obligations not to raise such a claim in future;

- Obligation to refrain in their inter-State relations from undermining the security of each other, from the threat or use of force both against political independence and territorial integrity, and in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the UN Charter;

- Delimitation and demarcation of the state border, and establishment of the diplomatic relations;

- Unblocking of the transportation and other communications, building other communications as appropriate, and establishment of cooperation in other fields of mutual interest.

To recap, after submitting fundamental principles to Armenia on the normalization of relations between the two countries, Armenia turned to the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs for peace talks.

Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov earlier told Anadolu news agency that Azerbaijan had sent a five-point proposal to Armenia to normalize relations and was awaiting a response from the opposite side.

"The message is this: the factor of occupation is gone. In this situation, the Azerbaijani side, despite all the difficulties and problems of the past, is in favor of normalizing relations with Armenia," he said.

He stressed that Armenia has not responded to Azerbaijan's proposal for almost a year.

The minister described Azerbaijan's recent new proposal to Armenia as a sign of goodwill.

"We have proposed to the Armenian side some fundamental principles, which include the normalization of relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia. We expressed our readiness to develop relations on the basis of certain principles. Armenia should consider this and give its answer," he said.

Bayramov underlined that if Armenia sincerely wants to normalize relations, then this is a very good opportunity for them.

"Armenia's response will be known in the near future, and we will, of course, take appropriate steps," he said.

He added that a one-page proposal was submitted to the opposite side, where fundamental principles were identified and proposed.

"If the Armenian side wants to normalize relations, it must immediately express its attitude towards this proposal. However, I would like to point out that all the principles mentioned in this document are the principles of international relations," he said.

Moreover, he stated that these proposals include the issue of demarcation of the borders between the two countries, which Azerbaijan has repeatedly proposed.

"The Azerbaijani side offered to resolve these issues, but Armenia always put forward preconditions. Preconditions for starting the process are unacceptable. A group of bilateral cooperation should be created, and this group should start working. There are five main points. Our proposals consist of five points," he said.

A Moscow-brokered ceasefire deal that Baku and Yerevan signed on November 10, 2020, brought an end to six weeks of fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The Azerbaijani army declared a victory against the Armenian troops. The signed agreement obliged Armenia to withdraw its troops from the Azerbaijani lands that it has occupied since the early 1990s.

The peace agreement stipulated the return of Azerbaijan's Armenian-occupied Kalbajar, Aghdam and Lachin regions. Before the signing of the deal, the Azerbaijani army had liberated around 300 villages, settlements, city centers, and historic Shusha city.
Your morning rundown of the latest news from overnight and the stories to follow throughout the day.

Sign Up View all of our newsletters.
Vitali Klitschko, the former heavyweight boxing champion of the world who is now the mayor of the embattled city of Kyiv, Urkaine, was on cable news last week. He was speaking in broken Rocky Balboa English, sending a message to the world.
Gambias telecom market is dominated by the incumbent telco Gamtel, which retains a monopoly on fixed-line telephony services. There are five mobile network operators providing effective competition, though Giraffe Telecom was only licensed in January 2022 and is yet to be assigned spectrum.

The market leader is Africell, with about 62% of the market, while Comium and QCell compete closely for second and third place. Gamtels mobile unit Gamcel is by far the smallest operator, having suffered from underinvestment in recent years. Comium has also suffered from financial difficulties: its failure to pay accumulated fees resulted in the government having sought a temporary suspension of its services in mid-2021.

Mobile penetration is well above the African average, itself a testament to the poor condition of the fixed-line infrastructure and the lack of availability of fixed services in many rural areas of the country.

Although the incumbent has a relatively well-developed national fibre backbone network, low fixed-line penetration has hindered internet usage. There are only four licensed ISPs, which are small operators serving local areas, and so competition is minimal. Their limited services are complemented by the fixed-wireless offerings of three of the MNOs.

The government has embarked on a National Broadband Network program aimed at closing the digital divide affecting many parts of the country. Gamtel launched services based on this network in late 2019, though on a limited scale. Despite efforts to improve internet connectivity, the country ranks among the lowest globally in terms of digital readiness.

Key developments:

MOICI grants Giraffe Telecom The Gambia s fifth mobile licence;

Government confirms long-standing Gamcel privatisation plans;

Africell launches LTE services, competing with QCell;

Government liberalises the international gateway;

QCell launches its Qodoo Mobile Money service, follows with LTE;

Gamtel launches fibre services based on the National Broadband Network;

International Network Management Center (IINMC) opens, facilitating traffic on ACE cable;

Gamtel contracts Huawei for fibre backbone project;

Report update includes Gamtels financial data, ITUs data for 2020, updated Telecom Maturity Index charts and analyses, assessment of the global impact of the pandemic on the telecoms sector, regulators market data for Q4 2020, recent market developments.

Get a Full Copy of this Report

Developing Telecoms market report summaries are produced in partnership with BuddeComm, the worlds largest continually updated online telecommunications research service.

The above article is a summary of the following BuddeComm report:

Report title: Gambia - Telecoms, Mobile and Broadband - Statistics and Analyses

Edition: January 2022

Analysts: Henry Lancaster, Peter Lange

Number of pages: 108

Companies mentioned in this report: Gambia Telecommunications (Gamtel), Gamcel, Africell, Comium, QCell, Globacom, Thuraya, GamNet, QuantumNet, Netpage, Airtip

Single User PDF Licence Price: US$890

For more information or to purchase a copy of the full report please use the following link: https://www.budde.com.au/Research/Gambia-Telecoms-Mobile-and-Broadband-Statistics-and-Analyses/?r=83
MTN Group has announced it is reducing shares in MTN Nigeria as it looks to attract new investors to fuel expansion plans.

Currently, MTN Group has a 75.6% stake in MTN Nigeria and it is now working to reduce that down to 65% in the medium term.

In a statement, MTN Group reiterated its commitment to the Nigerian and South African market at a bi-national conference.

South Africa and Nigeria are the two highest revenue drivers for the group making up almost two-thirds of yearly turnover.

An MTN Nigeria delegation led by chairman Ernest Ndukwe and chief executive Karl Toriola met with group chairman Mcebisi Jonas and Group President and CEO Ralph Mupita.

Jonas said the meeting was to align plans in the Nigerian market to group activities to lead digital solutions offering in Africa.

Mupita says: Nigeria and South Africa are our largest operations, contributing two-thirds of the value of the Group. Supporting the strengthening of economic and business relationships between the two countries is in line with our strategic priority to create shared value.

Ndukwe added the company intends to connect 2,000 more rural communities in Nigeria and the operator has secured spectrum to connect Nigeria to 5G.
Malaysia plans to make a final decision on its 5G network this week, according to the communications minister Annuar Musa.

Reuters reports that the minister told the news service last week that the government is aiming to announce its decision on whether to go ahead with its plan for a single state-run 5G network on Wednesday.

This issue has been rumbling on for some time, not least because there has been opposition to the idea of only one wholesale 5G network. As we reported late last year, four operators  Celcom, DiGi.com, Maxis and U Mobile  recommended that the government allow two wholesale 5G networks, each to be built and operated by a consortium of carriers.

Digital Nasional Berhad (DNB), the state agency tasked with deploying 5G, thinks differently, however.

Carriers have complained that the plan would result in a nationalised monopoly more costly than deploying 5G on their own. DNB has said it will charge operators less to access its 5G network than the cost they incurred for 4G.

The cabinet was due to discuss the plan on Friday. However, its deliberations have not yet been made public.

The wholesale network approach has not been a major success so far. While opposition from operator groups like the GSMA was fairly predictable, it seems some governments are having problems with making the concept work.

Notable examples are South Africa, where plans for a wholesale open-access network (WOAN) have now been abandoned and Mexico, where Altan Redes is having cash-flow problems.
On March 14, President of the European Council Charles Michel made a phone call to President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev.

During the conversation, the sides discussed the post-conflict period in the South Caucasus, contacts and the process of normalization between Armenia and Azerbaijan, as well as the opening of communications and delimitation of borders.

The head of state expressed his gratitude to President Charles Michel for his efforts to normalize relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

President Charles Michel noted that the European Union will continue to support stability, peace and prosperity in the South Caucasus.

They also discussed the development of recent events in Ukraine and its possible impact on regional security in the South Caucasus.
Safaricom, the newest telecom operator in Ethiopia, has signed a five-year lease agreement with state-owned power utility Ethiopian Electric Power (EEP) to share dark fibre-optic infrastructure in the Horn of African nation, the first infrastructure deal with Ethiopia.

Under the deal, Safaricom will use a network of optical ground wire (OPGW) cables already installed along the high voltage transmission lines owned by EEP. The five-year lease agreement to share the infrastructure was signed by the CEO of EEP Ashebir Balcha (pictured, left), and CEO of Safaricom-Ethiopia, Anwar Soussa (pictured, right).

Anwar hailed Ethiopia's move to cooperate with Safaricom in the infrastructure sector and expressed his company's willingness to work with the EPP in a win-win situation. "We are grateful for the spirit of cooperation from EEP on the win-win partnership to support our contributions to the digital transformation of Ethiopia," he said.

Safaricom said that it has finalised preparations to launch commercial operations to provide telecom service to Ethiopians, becoming the first private and foreign entity to offer these services in the country.

The shared infrastructure will be used as part of Safaricom ETs network to provide national telecommunications services in the forms of voice, data, video, text, messages, and conferencing, it is stated on the signing ceremony.

The first phase of the lease agreement allows the telecom firm to share 4097km, the second phase 2078km, and the third phase 2904km long optic-fibre lines, according to the EEP.

The state-owned electric producer currently has 15,000 kilometres of fibre optic cable. At least 8,745 kilometres are being used by Ethio Telecom on lease.
Continuing what has been a very eventful period for the satellite operator, Intelsat has announced a partnership with the leading Kenyan operator Safaricom to expand LTE coverage in the country.

The multi-year contract with Intelsat is intended to help Safaricom modernize its network and expand LTE coverage to more subscribers across the whole country. Intelsat will provide Safaricom with both cellular backhaul over satellite and enterprise connectivity services.

The availability of a Safaricom LTE service everywhere will enhance connectivity for the 68.9% of the Kenyan population that lives in rural areas. Intelsat says that bringing such services to these challenging, hard-to-reach places supports the Kenyan governments vision for a digitally empowered citizenry.

It adds that the power of its global satellite network, combined with Safaricoms expertise, will ensure secure coverage, even in the most remote areas of the country. Intelsat says its network delivers carrier-grade and resilient bandwidth where and when it is needed most, ensuring a seamless, reliable experience for businesses to operate optimally, while end users can stay in touch with family and friends, watch videos or access a full range of e-services such as banking, health care and education.

This strategic partnership enables Safaricom to leverage our global hybrid network and expand its LTE coverage to remote areas and more subscribers in Kenya, helping them increase their revenue and provide an improved, more reliable experience to their customers, no matter where they are, said Intelsat director of sales in Africa, Hans Geldenhuys. The reach of our network across the African continent also offers growth opportunities as Safaricom looks to expand its activities in other countries in the region.

This is proving a busy month for Intelsat. Just over a week ago Intelsat announced support for operators in Brazil, Mali and the Democratic Republic of Congo in connecting hard-to-reach areas.
Guthries, the chicken-finger only restaurant pioneer, returns to Dothan with the opening of its newest restaurant Tuesday, March 15 at 189 John D. Odom Rd. just off U.S. 84 West.

As part of its grand opening celebration, Guthries will offer the first 250 customers who purchase a signature Guthries Box chicken finger meal a free gift card redeemable for another Guthries Box during a future visit. This includes golden fried chicken fingers, crispy fries, creamy coleslaw, buttery Texas toast, and Guthries signature dipping sauce.

As the first restaurant in the country to build a menu only around scratch-made chicken fingers, the new Dothan location is part of Guthries strategic growth plan focused on the Southeastern U.S. that includes at least five more restaurants in the Wiregrass spread as far as Troy down to Geneva and over to Southwest Georgia.

When we first learned about the chance to bring Guthries back to the community, we jumped at the opportunity, said Guthries Dothan co-owner Sam Klement. Were premium chicken fingers, crinkle fries, homemade coleslaw, and sauce-loving locals that will live and breathe Dothan. The timing was just right, and in light of everything weve gone through as a community over the last few years, were excited to offer Dothan residents, families, and visitors a chance to experience the absolute best chicken fingers in the world.

For more than 50 years, Guthries has drawn in crowds across the country for its hand-breaded chicken fingers rooted in a tradition of fresh, hot, and fast, with a generous dash of southern hospitality. Rounding out Guthries simple, yet classic menu is hand-chopped coleslaw, crinkle cut French fries, Texas toast and its signature dipping sauce. Guthries history across the Wiregrass spans generations with restaurants stretching from Tallahassee to Panama City Beach, Auburn, Columbus, and Tuscaloosa with many customers enjoying a Gut Box, or a Guthries Box, for decades.

Weve remained true to who we are since the original Guthries opened in Haleyville, Alabama, and then expanded into the very first chicken fingers-only restaurant in Auburn, Klement said. While our menu hasnt changed, were still evolving as a restaurant brand. Were going to be a big part of the Dothan community and the surrounding region. We know that everyone is going to love the freshness and speed of service that families and friends have come to enjoy for generations.

The new Dothan Guthries iwill be open Monday through Sunday from 10:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. To contact the store, visit guthrieschicken.com.
A factory of steelmaker Hoa Phat in northern province Hung Yen. Photo by VnExpress/Nghi Tran

With domestic steel prices up nearly 8 percent in 10 days, contractors are caught in a dilemma: continue work and suffer losses or suspend work and suffer fines.

The Vietnam Steel Corporation (VNSTEEL) has upped its prices by 7.6 percent for both rolled and bar products.

Its rolled steel prices reached VND18.57 million ($807) per ton, which is higher than the historic peak of VND18.3 million reached last year.

Prices have been rising on the back of global price rises.

Steelmaker Hoa Phat Group has increased its D10 bar prices to VND18.43 million per ton Mar. 11 from Mar. 1s VND17.42 million.

Fridays was the third hike within over a week without a downward adjustment in between.

The Vietnam Association of Construction Contractors (VACC) has warned that high construction steel prices will drag the industry down.

It estimates that steel makes up 18-20 percent of the costs of building high-rise apartments, and the proportion is even higher for bridges and roads.

Prices of other construction materials have also gone up. The association has asked the authorities to take price stabilization measures, but this has not happened yet.

"The construction industry makes up for 8-9 percent of Vietnams GDP, thus any disruption can affect Vietnams growth target," Nguyen Quoc Hiep, VACC chairman, told the Tuoi Tre newspaper.

Many contractors are in a dilemma of whether to keep construction going at losses because of high material prices, or stop working and be penalized for slow progress, he said.
Six riparian countries are expected to identify adaptation measures relating to the Mekong River's flow regime by the end of 2022, according to the Mekong River Commission (MRC).

Anoulak Kittikhoun, the new MRC Secretariat Chief Executive Officer (CEO), told VnExpress International in Hanoi last week that the commission has begun a joint study with China and Myanmar that will examine the changing hydrological conditions found in the entire Mekong River basin.

The study was approved at a meeting of the MRC and Dialogue Partners in September 2021 in Vientiane, Laos.

At that meeting, Phonepaseuth Phouliphanh, Acting Chairperson of the MRC Joint Committee for 2021, had said the study could propose different adaptation measures, including better information sharing and coordination of water infrastructure for the six Mekong countries to effectively address flood and drought risks and water fluctuations.

In 2020, former CEO An Pich Hatda had said that the joint study aimed at finding out what were the causes of the record low flow of water in 2019. Hatda hoped the joint study would provide scientific evidence. People blamed mainstream hydropower projects a lot, but related parties "needed to properly understand the causes," Hatda said.

Kittikhoun said the project had been delayed because of Covid and related people could not travel within the six riparian nations. The four-member MRC (Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and Cambodia) experts have reached agreement with China and Myanmar on methods, input data, and modeling.

MRC and related countries will work together to reach a common understanding about the changing of flow regimes and develop a preliminary version for cooperation, Kittikhoun said.

Noting that the basin was in the fourth year of drought at present, he stressed that the Mekong basin was entering a very critical stage with countries experiencing climate change impacts and various other developments.

Anoulak Kittikhoun, MRC Secretariat Chief Executive Officer, in Hanoi on March 10, 2022. Photo by VnExpress/Viet Anh

Referring to the joint study, Kittikhoun said downstream countries and China could have come up with actionable recommendations in terms of criteria for better and more consistent notification regime for dams. This means the riparian countries can develop a common understanding about what is needed and when it should be implemented.

"At this moment, the MRC is looking for China and its members to share more operational data from their dams especially to deal with critical flow situations and emergencies," he said.

The MRC targets building a core river monitoring network, creating longer term forecasts of droughts and floods, from one to three months, Kittikhoun said.

This would allow people in downstream countries to prepare and adjust their social and economic activities, he added. However, this requires active cooperation from six countries, he stressed.

At present, the MRC can only forecast mainstream water levels five days in advance during the flood season.

This is not enough, Kittikhoun said.

He noted that hydropower was a key resource for Laos to develop its economy, but it should do this transparently, share information and consult other countries on projects.

"Countries in Mekong want to make sure that development is responsible, sustainable and does not cause significant impacts to neighbors. If it does, they need to discuss and find ways together to address [related issues]. This is what cooperation is about."

Regarding the situation in Vietnam, Kittikhoun said there were two key factors affecting water flow in the Mekong Delta. First one is rainfall, which the country cannot control and the second was activities in upstream countries.

Therefore, Vietnam needs to cooperate not only with China, but also Laos, Thailand, and Cambodia to achieve better information sharing on the flow regime.

Kittikhoun suggested that Vietnam works with Cambodia on a sub-basin management plan as the flow regime in Tonle Sap Lake and the development in the Cambodian floodplain and delta would have direct consequences on the Mekong Delta of Vietnam.
In the 30 years since Moldova and the United States began diplomatic relations, weve never faced a moment as urgent and as challenging as the one that we face today, declared Secretary of State Antony Blinken on a recent visit to Moldova. The Kremlins unprovoked war on Ukraine has kicked off a humanitarian crisis that is having a vast effect across the surrounding region, including on Moldova. More than 240,000 people from Ukraine have crossed the border into Moldova, fleeing for their lives. And their number are sure to grow.

Secretary Blinken expressed gratitude to Moldova for welcoming and protecting all those fleeing Russias war on Ukraine. The United States will do all that it can to help, said Secretary Blinken: Our administration has requested of Congress $2.75 billion in emergency assistance and humanitarian assistance, both to meet the needs of vulnerable people and communities inside Ukraine and also to help countries like Moldova supporting refugees and address the humanitarian crisis from outside Ukraine. He added that the international community also has a responsibility to assist Moldova in this task.

The United States supports the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Moldova as it pursues the path of democracy, a more inclusive and prosperous economy, and a closer relationship with the countries and institutions of Europe.

The United States continues to engage with Moldova on a broad range of issues, including delivery of hundreds of thousands of COVID-19 vaccines and millions of dollars in pandemic-related assistance. Greater energy security is vital for Moldovas sovereignty, and Secretary Blinken noted, We will invest $18 million over the next years to help strengthen and diversify Moldovas energy sector.

The U.S. also supports the OSCE-led negotiations to find a comprehensive settlement to the Transnistrian conflict that upholds Moldovas sovereignty and territorial integrity with a special status for the region of Transnistria. Countries that respect human rights, uphold the rule of law, and support inclusive and accountable governance for all their citizens, produce the best solutions to even the most difficult problems, said Secretary Blinken. Thats why the U.S. supports Moldova as it fights corruption, enacts democratic reforms, and develops an independent media.

The partnership between the United States and Moldova is built on shared interests and shared values. Were grateful to Moldova for 30 years of friendship, said Secretary Blinken, and we look forward to the next 30.
On March 2, the United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to condemn Russias unprovoked and unjustified war against the sovereign nation of Ukraine and to demand that the Russian Federation immediately, completely and unconditionally withdraw all of its military forces from the territory of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders.



The vote took place at a rare emergency special session of the General Assembly, as Russian tanks rolled into Ukrainian cities and Russian missiles crushed civilian infrastructure and killed hundreds of innocent people. 141 nations across the world voted in favor of the UN resolution. 5 authoritarian states, -- Russia, Belarus, Syria, North Korea, and Eritrea -- voted against it; 35, including Cuba, the PRC, India, Venezuela and Iran, abstained.



As this vote revealed, said Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the overwhelming majority of the international community stands in strong support of the core principles of the United Nations and upholding the UN Charter  and stands against Russias reckless attempts to change the borders of another sovereign country by force, to replace its will for the will of the Ukrainian people.



President Joe Biden said the vote by the UN General Assembly shows the majority of nations recognize Russian President Vladimir Putin is not only attacking Ukraine, he is attacking the very foundations of global peace and security. . .If we do not stand up to Putins Russia, President Biden declared, it will only inflict further chaos and aggression on the world. Russia stood isolated with the support of only four brutal, authoritarian states.



Following the vote UN General-Secretary Antonio Guterres told reporters, The message of the General Assembly is loud and clear: End hostilities in Ukraine now. . . . The territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine must be respected in line with the UN Charter.



U.S. Representative to the United Nations Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said after the vote, Let us continue to come together to support the Ukrainian people. And let us demonstrate the true power and true purpose of the United Nations for all.



President Biden pointed out that the United Nations was founded to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war. . . . Together, he declared, we must  and we will - hold Russia accountable for its actions. We will demonstrate that freedom always triumphs over tyranny.
There has been lots of media coverage of lithium projects in recent months, and the spotlight has especially been shining on Thacker Pass, with gallons of virtual ink devoted to the stories of the protesters and concerns about the effects of the mine.

I keep reading through all these stories, which often have similar themes, but I was caught up short when I read a Jan. 27 E&E News story on How an anti-trans group split the fight against a lithium mine. The story said two of the lead people in the fight against Thacker Pass, Max Wilbert and Will Falk, are part of a self-described radical environmental group, Deep Green Resistance, that advocates for a world without industrial civilization, and this group has some views that are anti-trans, and that has caused some of the people protesting the mine to split with Wilbert and Falk.

Reading this story probably caused some people to ponder, radical environmentalism and anti-trans? How do those two things connect?

Who really knows, but one thought that crossed my mind was  binary thinking.

If people see the world as either being one extreme or the other, so the only way to fix the problems of our industrial civilization is to do away altogether with all technology, rather than grappling with some messy compromises in the middle that might actually have a chance of working in reality, then maybe the notion that there might be some fluidity between male and female would offend that same sensibility.

The world is complicated, and it takes pushes and pulls from both sides to muddle through to some kind of a solution.

Did I say the world is complicated? The saga of the Thacker Pass protesters gets more complicated. A Feb. 9 post on the Protect Thacker Pass website said, Several false statements have been circulating about Protect Thacker Pass co-founders Max Wilbert and Will Falk in the media as part of a calculated effort to sabotage our opposition to the Thacker Pass lithium minean effort that is being encouraged by Lithium Americas Corporation and their public relations firm.

The story said Falk and Terry Lodge had to terminate their legal representation of People of the Red Mountain, a group protesting the Thacker Pass project, because People of the Red Mountain were spreading false information in their attempt to fight the mine.

Also, Wilbert and Falk will work with anyone who will work to stop the mine, including transgender people.

Another thing I thought about binary thinking and being completely on one side of an issue, is that you are then more willing to throw out various bits of information that seem to support your side of an issue, without really digging into the facts, and you might even play fast and loose with the facts.

Opponents of Thacker Pass sometimes throw out a piece of data like, this mine will use 1.7 billion gallons of water  thats a lot of water! But what about all the facts and the context of that water use?

Maybe we do need to get rid of all technology to have a more peaceful, beautiful world. Probably not going to happen, though, unless we have a collapse of civilization due to polarized, binary thinking.

And I picture myself out on a snowy prairie wrestling coyotes for food and Im not so sure.

Radical environmentalists sneer at the idea of a technological fix to greenhouse gas emissions, and a lot of people are generally skeptical of technology, but wed better give it a shot. Of course electric vehicles using lithium batteries are not completely green  being human is not completely green  but as more and more technology becomes more green, that makes all the technology even greener. If Thacker Pass converts to the use of electric trucks in the years ahead, then the amount of diesel burned at the mine will drop, and the lithium batteries that go into electric vehicles will start out with a smaller carbon footprint.

In this issue we have a story about Nevada Gold Mines converting their TS Power Plant to natural gas and solar, along with also working on a variety of steps, large and small, to reduce power use; and we have a story about the Environmental, Social and Governance focus at mine sites.

Mining is inherently not a very green enterprise, but we keep learning better ways to get those resources we want while doing less damage to the earth.

In this issue Glenn Miller says that since he helped co-found Great Basin Resource Watch back in 1994, the environmental organization has done a lot to help make mining more environmentally responsible. But after decades of teaching environmental science, he has come to see climate change as the critical issue of our time, and he believes it is very important that we get the lithium we need for battery power. He resigned from GBRW because of his disagreement with the way they are fighting the Thacker Pass project.

The people in GBRW, on the other hand, believe the best course of action is to continue to take steps to try to make sure that the mine plan is as environmentally responsible as possible, even if that means a big slowdown to the process of developing the mine.

And the push and pull on both sides of the worlds complicated issues will continue.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 1 Sad 0 Angry 0

Be the first to know Get local news delivered to your inbox! Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
Western Exploration Inc. is a new, public company focused on the Aura Project in northern Elko County, where the predecessor private company has been exploring since the late 1990s but decided to go public to raise more money to advance the project.

Western Exploration Inc.s chief executive officer, Darcy Marud, said moving the project forward is beyond the scope of private investors, but Western Exploration LLC will still exist in Nevada as a 100% owned subsidiary of Western Exploration Inc. in Canada.

He said the private company spent roughly $35 million since 2013 and now needs $5 million to $10 million a year.

The Aura Project, which is roughly 74 miles north of Elko and 20 miles north of the Jerritt Canyon Mine, includes three deposits  Doby George, Gravel Creek and Wood Gulch. A technical report reflects an indicated resource of 652,271 gold equivalent ounces and an inferred resource of 665,357 gold equivalent ounces.

Doby George is our most advanced, and our goal is to get it to a prefeasibility study in 18 to 24 months, Marud said.

Homestake Mining operated Wood Gulch as a gold and silver surface mine a few years, closing it in 1991. Wood Gulch produced 34,782 ounces of gold and 67,000 ounces of silver.

Marud said Western Exploration hopes to connect Wood Gulch underground to nearby Gravel Creek.

Gravel Creek needs a lot more drilling, and plans call for it be to be an underground mine, Marud said in a phone interview. He reported that a float concentrate test showed 4 ounces per ton of gold in the concentrate and 52 ounces per ton of silver.

Plans call for geophysics, geochemistry, and geology to be completed over high-priority exploration targets at Wood Gulch and Gravel Creek to further define targets for drilling in 2023, and for 6,562 feet of large diameter diamond drill core at Doby George.

Western Exploration stated that the work at Doby George would be to advance the metallurgical understanding and geologic interpretation for the pre-feasibility study. More than 800 drill holes were completed at Doby George between 1987 and 2017, and there was earlier metallurgical work done by Homestake, Independence Mining Co., and Atlas Precious Metals Inc.

Western Exploration reports that metallurgical test work for all three deposits has shown that well-established processes can be used to extract gold and silver from the known mineralization. At Gravel Creek, the newest discovery, processing would be whole ore flotation, while Doby George and the former open pit Wood Gulch would be heap leach operations, the company stated.

All the companys claims are on U.S. Forest Service-managed land and cover 14,826 acres.

I really enjoy working with them. We communicate well with them. We communicate early and often, said Greg Van Oosbree, a geologist and minerals administrator for the Aura Project for the Forest Service out of the Elko office for the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest.

Western Explorations exploration has been done on a phased basis with the USFS under the companys current plan of operations, he said.

Van Oosbree also said Western Exploration has done a really good job with earthwork and reclamation at its drill sites, staging areas and exploration roads, and Western Exploration LLC received the Nevada Excellence in Mine Reclamation in 2019 at Doby George based on what the state agencies observed before the Sugarloaf Fire.

Its recovered pretty well from the fire in the last four years, he said.

Western Exploration engaged GoldSpot Discoveries Corp. in January to assist with data compilation and modeling at the Aura Project. GoldSpot will merge historic drill data to further refine the Aura model and assist in defining additional exploration targets for the second half of this year and in 2023.

GoldSpot has a large, collaborative team of geoscientists and data scientists focused on maximizing the chances of discovery by extracting the most out of all available data utilizing proprietary machine learning technology and geoscience expertise, Western Exploration stated in an announcement outlining corporate objectives.

The executive chairman and president of GoldSpot, Denis Laviolette, said that we are excited to see Western Explorations advanced understanding of geology and mineralization controls at Aura. We believe that our leading technology, combined with the work done to date will open up new opportunities for exploration and ultimate resource definition and expansion.

During the years as a private company, Marud said exploration depended upon money for drilling, so some years there was an hiatus, but a private equity company, Golkonda LLC, became a partner in 2013 and Agnico Eagle came in as an investor in 2017.

Their interest is Gravel Creek in particular, because the deposit is good grade and very wide, said Marud, who joined Western Exploration LLC on Jan. 1, 2018, and added that the rest of the team has been with the project since the 1990s.

He said that we estimate if we start mining it will probably be four to five years from now, and Western Exploration would look to sell the project because were built to be an exploration company.

The public company was formed after a go-public reverse takeover of Crystal Peak Minerals Inc. and an arrangement that included temporary creation of WEX Holdings Inc.

When the transaction was completed to form the public company, Marud stated that the company was pleased to announce the launch of Western Exploration Inc., which marks a significant milestone to our vision of being a premier precious metals exploration company in Nevada focused on the advancement of the Aura Project.

Toronto-based Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd., which has invested more than $17 million in support of exploration initiatives at the Aura Project and provides technical expertise through a joint committee, holds 17.9% of Western Exploration Inc.

Golkonda LLC holds 69.5% of the company.

Western Explorations head office is in Reno, and the company is registered in Vancouver. There also is a small office in Mountain City, which is the nearest town to Wood Gulch and Gravel Creek.

The new board includes the chairman, Marceau Schlumberger; Brian Kennedy, the lead director; Gerard Munera, John Rogers, Nicolas Schlumberger and Marud.

Love 1 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 1
Department 2  Judge Al Kacin

March 1

Wyatt Custer Ermisch, 31, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit possession of a controlled substance and was sentenced to 270 days in jail.

Jose Espinosa-Herrera, 38, pleaded guilty to willful injury to or destruction of property, was given a suspended sentence of 120 days in jail, was placed on probation for nine months and was ordered to pay $452.38 restitution to the victim.

Gabriel Roy Jim, 41, pleaded no contest to statutory sexual seduction and was sentenced to 36 to 96 months in prison.

Chet Leon Jonas, 45, pleaded guilty to possession of a Schedule I and II controlled substance for the purpose of sale, was given a suspended sentence of 12 to 32 months in prison and was placed on probation for 18 months.

Andrew Michael Smith, 32, pleaded guilty to attempted grand larceny of a motor vehicle and was sentenced to 149 days in jail. In a separate matter, he pleaded guilty to larceny from a person, was given a suspended sentence of 15 to 38 months in prison to be served consecutively to the previous sentence, was placed on probation for two years and was ordered to pay $2,332.95 restitution to the victim.

March 3

Roy Eugene Jones, 58, pleaded guilty to three counts of unlawful act related to human bodily fluid and was sentenced to 25 days in jail and was ordered to pay $4,500 in fines.

Department 3  Judge Mason Simons

Feb. 22

Octavio Adolfo Juarez Jr, 26, pleaded no contest to attempted possession of a Schedule I or II controlled substance, was given a suspended sentence of one year in jail and was placed on probation for one year.

Brayden Robert Penny, 45, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit possession of a controlled substance, was given a suspended sentence of one year in jail and was placed on probation for one year.

Feb. 23

Joshua Wayne Kennedy, 37, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit aggravated stalking, was given a suspended sentence of one year in jail, ordered to pay $2,992.03 restitution to the Elko Countys Sheriffs Office for extradition costs, and placed on probation for one year.

March 1

Ryan Glenwood Kelly, 37, pleaded guilty to carry concealed explosive, pneumatic gun, firearm or dangerous weapon without a permit and was sentenced to 24 to 60 months in prison.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 2
President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has sent a congratulatory letter to newly elected President of South Korea Yoon Suk-yeol.

Dear Mr. Yoon,

I sincerely congratulate you on the occasion of your election to the post of the President of the Republic of Korea.

I attach a particular importance to the friendly relations developed between the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Republic of Korea. I believe that the cooperation in the areas of mutual interest between our countries that will celebrate this year the 30th anniversary of establishing the diplomatic relations will continue to evolve and expand by our joint efforts for the sake of welfare of our peoples.

I wish you good health, happiness and success in your future activities for the welfare of your friendly people.

Sincerely,

Ilham Aliyev

President of the Republic of Azerbaijan

Baku, 14 March 2022
ELKO  More than likely you do not have to visit a Social Security office to do business with us.

You might not have to call, either.

Our online services webpage at www.ssa.gov/onlineservices provides you a wide variety of self-service options you can use on your phone, tablet, or computer. You can even apply for retirement, disability, or Medicare online.

You can get the most out of your online experience if you have a personal my Social Security account. With it, you can:

 Get your Social Security Statement instantly.

 Request a replacement Social Security card, in nearly all states and the District of Columbia.

 Appeal a decision we made on your claim.

 Find out if you qualify for benefits.

Already receiving benefits? If so, you can use your personal my Social Security account to:

 Get your benefit verification letter for Social Security, Medicare, and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) instantly.

 Check your information and benefit amount.

 Change your address and telephone number.

 Start or change your direct deposit.

 Request a replacement Medicare card.

 Get a replacement SSA-1099 or SSA-1042S instantly for tax season.

 Report your wages if you work and receive disability benefits or SSI.

Create or sign in to your personal my Social Security account today at www.ssa.gov/myaccount to take advantage of these easy-to-use features.

Please share our online services page with family and friends who need this important information!

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
The University of Idaho is just one stop on Nolan Cummings path  but its a vital stop. Cumming will graduate in May 2023 with a degree in agribusiness from the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences and commission as an Ensign in the Navy  one step closer to his goal of becoming a naval aviator.

Cumming grew up on his familys cattle ranch in Jiggs, Nevada and developed a love for aviation. He started flight lessons at age 15 and flew an aircraft solo before he could drive a vehicle. He worked in aviation maintenance at the local airport during high school and wanted a career that would allow him to fly.

Joining the military was always in the back of his mind and after meeting with Air Force and Navy recruiters, and a lot of praying, the path became clear.

I kind of wrote it off because there was never a guarantee that Id be able to fly because you dont always have a say, he said. But I put that by the wayside and decided that the adventure and the ability to go into the Navy would be worth it and now the path that Im on will allow me to fly, hopefully.

After graduating from high school in 2016, Cumming enlisted in the Navy as an aviation structural mechanic.

I didnt know what the Navy would be like, he said. If I want to fly, Im going to have about a 10-year commitment, and I didnt want to give anyone 10 years if I dont know what theyre about. So, I decided to do my four years as enlisted and see if I liked it and found out that I loved it.

Once he knew he was on the right path, Cumming set his sights on completing his goal of flying. Naval aviators are required to have a bachelors degree, so Cumming applied for the Seaman to Admiral-21 (STA-21) enlisted-to-officer commissioning program.

The program allows participants to remain on active duty and pays for part of their tuition, fees and books. Only about 50 sailors are selected each year, and of those spots, only a few are reserved for aspiring pilots. After a lengthy process of applications, interviews, retaking the SATs and a little luck, Cumming was selected.

By the grace of God, I was able to slip into one of those spots, he said. I actually got into it selected as an alternate, and no one ever gives up their spot, but come to find out the guy ahead of me was too short.

Cumming applied to three universities with Naval ROTC programs and U of I was at the top of his list  despite never stepping foot on campus.

I wanted to come back to the west coast, and Ive always loved Idaho, he said. I needed to submit a degree plan as soon as possible and Ms. Gleason had my degree plan the next day. So, I said, alright, Im going to Idaho.

While he did consider majoring in mechanical engineering, Cumming decided to follow in his fathers footsteps and pursue an agribusiness degree to broaden his education outside of aviation.

My dad had an agricultural business in Elko, so I grew up living on the ranch and being with my dad and being around his business, so I wanted to follow in his footsteps and do ag business, he said.

After his first class, he knew hed made the right decision.

The professors are incredible. My first class was with Norm Ruhoff and being able to be around him made me stoked about my degree after going through those classes, he said. Its just down to earth, the entire department and college is.

Cumming hopes to one day use his agribusiness degree on his own operation.

My fiancee is also from an agricultural background. So, it would be awesome if we had some land of our own someday so we can get back into agriculture, he said.

For now, Cumming is looking forward to getting back to his passion  and helping others along the way.

I just want to get in the seat. But you cant be there just for the flying, you have to be there for the people too, he said. They need good officers and I want to be that person. I have met some incredible leaders while Ive been enlisted so I want to do the best I can when I get there. Its a lot more than flying.

Amy Calabretta is the marketing and communications manager at the University of Idaho College of Agricultural and Life Sciences.

Love 5 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
We are busy getting ourselves ready for the 93rd Academy Awards, and some of our excited movie-loving followers have been asking about previous winners. So, let's have a look back on the last couple of years...

Nomadland won Oscar for Best Picture 2021

The 2021 Academy Award for Best Picture was won by Nomadland, Chloe Zhaos fictional drama following the experiences of a widow who travels around the United States in a van after losing her livelihood in the Great Reccession.

Before being presented with the prized gong, Zhao had already won the Oscar for Best Director, becoming just the second woman and the first Chinese woman to win the Academy Award for directing. Nomadland was also awarded the top prize by the Producers Guild of America, the Directors Guild of America, the Golden Globes and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.

At the time, film critic Peter Bradshaw described it as a gentle, compassionate, questioning film about the American soul, praising Frances McDormands quiet, self-effacing performance as one of the best of her career.

Who was nominated for the 2021 Oscars Best Picture?

"Nomadland" - An old woman embarks on a journey through the American West after losing it all in the Great Recession.

"The Trial of the Chicago 7" - The astonishing true story of seven people put on trial for their role in the uprising at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois.

"Mank"  An imaging of 1930s Hollywood from the perspective of alcoholic screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz as he attempts to finish the screenplay of his iconic Citizen Kane.

"Promising Young Woman"  After suffering a tragic event, a vengeful young woman seeks out revenge against those who cross her path.

"Minari" - A Korean family moves to Arkansas to start a farm in the 1980s.

"The Father" - A man refuses all assistance from his daughter as he ages. As he tries to make sense of his changing circumstances, he begins to doubt his loved ones, his own mind and even the fabric of his reality.

"Sound of Metal" - A drummer begins to lose his sense of hearing and he attempts to reconcile the twist of fate that has thrown his life into turmoil.

"Judas and the Black Messiah"  Searing historical drama on the life of Fred Hampton, Chairman of the Illinois Black Panther Party, who was betrayed by FBI informant William O'Neal.

Parasite won Oscar for Best Picture 2020?

The stand-out film from the previous years award night was Parasite which picked up four Oscars in total and made history in the process. The South Korean thriller was named Best Picture at the 92nd Academy Awards, becoming the first non-English language film to win that accolade.

Bong Joon-ho also won the awards for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay to complete a legendary Oscars hat-trick. After receiving the awards, Bong told reporters: "I feel like I'll wake up to find it's all a dream. It all feels very surreal.
Russian invasion of Ukraine headlines

- At least two killed after Russian missile hits a residential building in north-west Kyiv on Monday morning; at least two people were killed and twelve were wounded in the attack.

- Russian journalist and TV producer Marina Ovsyannikova arrested after staging an anti-war protest during a nightly news broadcast on a state run channel.

- Diplomatic talks between Russia and Ukraine are expected to restart after brief break. This comes as the mayor of Mariupol reports that the city's "last reserves of food and water are running out

- 35 are dead and over 100 people are wounded after a Russian attack on a Ukrainian military base which sits around 10 miles from the Polish border

- 2.8 million Ukrainians have fled their country since the invasion began

- US warns China that military and economic support to Russia could bring about serious financial consequences for the country.

- US journalist and award-winning filmographer Brent Renaud killed near by Russian troops in Kyiv; Fox News journalist Benjamin Hall has also been injured while in Ukraine.

Russia - Ukraine conflict information

- Can families in the US sponsor Ukrainian refugees?

- Gas prices are up around the world. Where are people seeing the quickest increase?

- Ukrainian officials say Russia is preparing a "false flag" operation on the Chernobyl nuclear power plant

- How does the Russian government prevent protests against the Kremlin?

Related News
BEIJING -- Foreign experts and observers have spoken highly of Chinese President Xi Jinping's insights regarding the endeavors of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the Chinese people in the new era, saying they help decode China's success and chart the course toward high-quality development.

CPC leadership key to development

When participating in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region delegation's deliberation at the Fifth Session of the 13th National People's Congress on March 5, Xi, also general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, said "upholding the overall Party leadership is the path we must take to stick to and develop socialism with Chinese characteristics."

"Exercising full and rigorous self-governance of the Party is the path we must take to maintain the Party's vigor and vitality and ensure its success on the new journey," he added.

Nourhan al-Sheikh, a professor of political sciences with Cairo University, said that from the eradication of absolute poverty to the successful hosting of the Beijing Winter Olympics, China's unprecedented achievements cannot be separated from the strong leadership of the CPC.

Under the CPC's leadership, China has fulfilled the goals of economic and social development, embarking on "a path that suits its own national conditions, which has brought important inspiration to the world, especially developing countries," she added.

Khalid Rahman, director general of the Institute of Policy Studies, an Islamabad-based think tank, said that under the CPC's leadership, China has become the second largest economy in the world and its development has brought about broad benefits.

Notably, China's success in eliminating extreme poverty can be regarded as a miracle, the scholar said.

Kingphet Mongkhonvilay, deputy director of the general office of the Lao People's Revolutionary Party Central Committee, said that through full and strict self-governance and anti-corruption fight, the CPC wins support from the Chinese people.

The CPC has also strengthened its long-term governance capacity, and ensured that the power entrusted by the people is always used for their well-being, the official said.

Volker Tschapke, honorary president of Germany's Prussian Society, told Xinhua that for China, "there will be only one way into a successful, prosperous, and peaceful future, which is the overall CPC leadership, with the very special Chinese way of the very special Chinese socialism."

Road to better life

"Socialism with Chinese characteristics is the path we must take to realize the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation," Xi said, adding that "working hard in unity is the path the Chinese people must take to make historic achievements."

Anna Malindog-Uy, a professor and researcher with Manila-based think tank Philippines-BRICS Strategic Studies, said "Socialism with Chinese characteristics is the solid guarantee to meet Chinese people's desire for a happy life and the goal of 'common prosperity'."

The scholar said that the country's efforts for rural vitalization and agricultural modernization will improve people's life in rural areas.

In the view of Cavince Adhere, a Kenya-based scholar of international relations, China has made various commitments during the "two sessions" with an aim to promote domestic development and contribute to the well-being of people across the world.

The unity of the nation and the Chinese people's ability to pull in the same direction are critical to fulfilling the commitments, Adhere said.

More opportunities for world

Expounding on his vision of development, Xi said "putting into practice our new development philosophy is the path we must take to develop our country into a strong nation in the new era."

Eduardo Regalado, a senior researcher at the Cuban Center for Studies on International Politics, said that China is pursuing higher-standard opening-up and promoting the high-quality cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative, sharing development opportunities with other countries.

The new development philosophy, which is being blended into various aspects of China's economic and social development, is of great significance for the world, the researcher added.

With its development philosophy, China is expected to make new contributions to the world, for example in ecological protection, said Hamed Vafaei, director of the Center for Asian Studies at the University of Tehran.

Sheriff Ghali, a professor of political science at Nigeria's University of Abuja, said that by fostering a new pattern of development and promoting high-quality growth, the Chinese economy will become more dynamic and bring more opportunities to the world.
Visitors to the exhibition (Source: NDO)

The exhibition opened at the Museum of Dien Bien Phu victory in Dien Bien province on March 13. Eentitled In the footsteps of the General, it is held to mark the 68th anniversary of the Dien Bien Phu Victory. It helps visitors better understanding on the life and career of General Giap and the glorious tradition of the Vietnam Peoples Army, thus inspiring the youth to build a strong and prosperous nation.

The poetry-photographic exhibition recreating the historic victory of Dien Bien Phu and on General Vo Nguyen is divided into three parts.

The first part introduces the famous Dien Bien Phu Campaign under the leadership of General Vo Nguyen Giap. The second features everyday moments of the legendary General. The third reflects the love and respect of the Vietnamese people for General Giap through emotional moments on the day of national mourning.

The exhibition will run until April 25./.
A training course on building capacity-based continuous training management system for nurses opens in Hanoi on March 13. (Photo: suckhoedoisong.vn)

Attending the course are 18 health workers in charge of managing nursing staff at centrally- and provincially-run hospitals selected to develop a system for continuous training system for nurses on a trial basis.

During the seven-day course, experts from the VNA and IMS will give their opinions on each hospitals plan for nurses continuous training.

IMS Vice President Kitagami Yoko said based on each hospitals functions and patient database, the course provides guidelines for the trainees to establish a training programme and goals suitable for nurses different capacity levels.

IMS operates 139 hospitals and medical facilities that provide high-quality healthcare services and technical support for the development of such training management system.

Online exchange connects Vietnamese, Japanese youngsters

Kanagawa Governor Yuji Kuroiwa, Japanese artists as well as Vietnamese and Japanese students perform the song entitled "Aoi Sora" at the event (Photo: VNA)

Vietnam FestaOnline - Kanagawa is a friend of Vietnam, an online exchange among Vietnamese and Japanese youngsters took place in Tokyo on March 12, the first of a series of events leading up to the Vietnamese Festival in Kanagawa, reported Vietnam News Agency.

Addressing the programme, Kanagawa Governor Yuji Kuroiwa said that the event aims to reaffirm the close relationship between the Japanese prefecture with Vietnam. After two years of suspension due to COVID-19, Kanagawa is determined to organise the Vietnamese Festival this autumn, he said.

For his part, Vietnamese Ambassador to Japan Vu Hong Nam hailed the idea of organising the Vietnam FestaOnline, which contributes to strengthening connections and mutual understanding among youngsters of both countries, thus helping promote ties between Vietnam and Japan. He said he hopes the youth of Vietnam and Japan will stay united to maintain peace in the world.

The programme, which was broadcast live on YouTube, consisted of a conference on the Kanagawa-Vietnam friendship, a contest to make Banh xeo (crispy Vietnamese pancake), and an art performance.

Speaking to Vietnam News Agency following the programme, Kuroiwa said that he was strongly impressed by the first Vietnam-Kanagawa Festival seven years ago, with over 400,000 participants.

The organisation of the Vietnam FestaOnline affirmed that exchange activities between the two sides continue despite the pandemic, he said, expressing hope that such activities will be further expanded.

Meanwhile, Ambassador Nam said that the programme, a joint effort of TVK company, Kanagawa authorities and the Vietnamese Embassy in Japan, showed that the linkage between Vietnamese and Japanese youngsters is developing despite COVID-19.

Gac Ma soldiers remembered in ceremony in Da Nang

A war veteran lit incense to remember 64 naval soldiers who died on duty 34 years ago while defending the Gac Ma (Johnson South) Reef in Vietnam's Truong Sa (Spratly) archipelago. (Photo: VNA)

War veterans who used to be stationed on the Truong Sa (Spratly) Archipelago held a ceremony in the central city of Da Nang on March 13 to commemorate 64 soldiers of the Vietnamese navy who died on duty 34 years ago while defending the Gac Ma (Johnson South) Reef in Vietnam's Truong Sa (Spratly) archipelago on March 14, 1988.

The veterans and the fallen soldiers families offered incense and then released rafts with flowers on Han River in memory of the soldiers.

Head of a liaison committee for Truong Sa veterans Nguyen Van Tan said among the fallen soldiers in the Gac Ma battle, nine were from Da Nang and one from neighbouring Quang Nam province.

Tan stressed that their bravery sacrifice will be remembered forever and that they have made the Vietnam Peoples Navys history more glorious.

The event aims to not only pay homage to the soldiers who lost their lives in safeguarding the countrys sovereignty but also inspire patriotism among young people, said Colonel Hoang Duy Lap, former commander of the navys Engineer Regiment No.83 who directly fought in the battle at Truong Sa in 1988.

Dong A University took the occasion to present ten gift packages, worth 1 million VND (43.71 USD) each, to families of the fallen soldiers in Quang Nam and Da Nang.

Shrimp exports set to hit over 4 billion USD this year

Vietnamese shrimp exports are poised to rake in more than 4 billion USD in 2022, representing an annual rise of 2.56%, according to reports discussed at a conference held on March 11, reported VOV News.

Photo for illustration. (Source: VOV)

The hybrid conference on the shrimp sectors development, co-organised by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) and the Peoples Committee of the Mekong Delta province of Soc Trang, featured the participation of 28 coastal cities and provinces nationwide.

As part of his address at the event, Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Phung Duc Tien requested that relevant agencies and localities identify difficulties and challenges currently facing the sector so the MARD can take them into account during its works toward sustainable growth.

Minister Tien himself listed a number of obstacles and shortcomings, including difficulties caused by COVID-19, outdated farming and rural infrastructure, along with environmental pollution.

Participants put forward a series of solutions at the event, such as forming linkages among shrimp farming localities, developing a scenario for brackish water shrimp production in the context of the ongoing complicated nature of the pandemic, and increasing the application of technological advances.

According to a report issued by the Vietnam Directorate of Fisheries, despite issues relating to abnormal weather patterns and COVID-19, the sector produced 970,000 tonnes of shrimps last year, representing an annual rise of 4.3%.

Shrimp export turnover expanded by 5.4% on-year to roughly 3.9 billion USD in 2021, with Soc Trang and Ca Mau contributing more than 2 billion USD to the overall total.

As planned, this year will see the countrys shrimp farming area reach 750,000 ha for a production of 980,000 tonnes.

Seminar highlights strong research passion of Vietnamese women scientists in France

At the event (Photo: VNA)

Vietnamese students and women scientists in France gathered at a seminar held in both in-person and online formats on March 12 in Paris to share their stories during the pursue of their passion for science, reported Vietnam News Agency.

Five speakers at the seminar are successful scientists of different generations, who have made great contributions to the promotion of the relations between Vietnam and France.

70-year-old Le Toan Thuy, head of the Biomass research team at the Centre for the Study of the Biosphere from Space and the oldest speaker at the event, highlighted difficulties facing women scientists during their career. She encouraged women who love science not to abandon their passion. Dr Thuy initiated the BIOMASS satellite project for forest biomass assessment, which is scheduled to be launched in 2023.

Meanwhile, Dinh Thi Lan Anh, a third-year PhD student at the Paris Observatory said that support from leadership officials is necessary for women scientists to develop their career.

Participants at the event recognised contributions by Vietnamese women scientists undertaking scientific research in France, inspiring younger generations to follow the path of older generations of women scientists./.
The Bac Lieu Wind Power Plant has 62 power turbines with a total estimated capacity of 99MW. (Photo: VNA)

At a recent Vietnam-US Business Summit in Hanoi, the VCCI leader said following the orientation, the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) has introduced its Green Index initiative with support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), aiming to promote environmental institutional reform and sustainable investment activities.

Cong said he believes that Vietnamese and US enterprises have good chances for successful cooperation in liquefied natural gas, and clean and renewable energy in contribution to the countries trade growth and energy security.

Director of the Ministry of Industry and Trades Department of Electricity and Renewable Energy Hoang Tien Dung noted Vietnam has set a target that by 2030, renewable electricity will account for 45 percent of the national power generation capacity, reflecting its orientation towards renewable energy.

The implementation of the power source and grid development programme will cost an estimated 14 billion USD, so Vietnam needs the participation of businesses, especially those from the US, in resources and technology sharing.

Ken Haig, Head of Energy and Environment Policy for Asia-Pacific & Japan at Amazon Web Services (AWS), suggested to boost investment attraction in the sector, Vietnam needs a long-term strategy.

He also expressed his support for increasing the use of solar and offshore wind power and hoped the USs investment in renewable energy in Vietnam will contribute to the nations sustainable development in the time to come.

Kris Karafa, Chief Operating Officer at Gen X Energy, said the firm is willing and ready to pour capital into wind power projects, particularly offshore ones. Gen X Energy has partnered with Binh Thuan province in many renewable energy projects./.
By Trend

The total amount of damage from January riots in Kazakhstan amounted to about 30 billion tenge ($59.6 million), Kazakhstan's First Deputy Prime Minister Roman Sklyar said, Trend reports.

A total of 28 billion tenge ($55.6 million) from the republican budget will be directed for the restoration of 18 facilities.

Some of 42 buildings of state administrations were damaged during the January events in 8 regions of the country. These are the cities of Almaty, Shymkent and Almaty, Zhambyl, Kyzylorda, Atyrau, Aktobe and East Kazakhstan regions.

Technical survey was carried out for all objects, as a result of which the need for current repairs of 28 buildings, also major repairs and reconstruction of 14 buildings was established.

The current repairs at 21 facilities have been completed to date. A total of five buildings will be repaired until the end of March 2022, the remaining two objects - in May and June this year, the first deputy prime minister informed.

Work is also underway on 14 state facilities that require major repairs and reconstruction. Completion of work will be in March according to the schedule for seven buildings, five objects in June 2022.
Photo: MOH

At the reception ceremony, Chairwoman of the Vietnam Fatherland Front Committee in Ho Chi Minh City To Thi Bich Chau thanked the Long Chau pharmacy system for the donation contributing in protecting the health and life of the people of Ho Chi Minh City in particular and the country in general as well as relieving anxiety for infectious people with a difficult circumstance.

To receive free Molnupiravir pills from the Long Chau pharmacy chain, people have to show poor household certificates issued by the local government in the places where they are living under the form of the Vietnam Fatherland Front Committee in Ho Chi Minh City./.
The visit, which will be made at the invitation of President Nguyen Xuan Phuc on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of bilateral diplomatic relations (June 24,1982-2022), has a historical meaning in the Vietnam-Sierra Leone ties as it will be the first by a head of State of one country to the other.



Vietnam Exhibition House at Expo 2020 Dubai (Photo: VNA)



Since Vietnam and Sierra Leone set up their diplomatic relations on June 24, 1982, the two sides have maintained good political relations. Vietnam attaches importance to fostering ties with African countries, including Sierra Leone. Meanwhile, Sierra Leone supported Vietnam's candidacy for the UNESCO Executive Council (2015-2019), the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC in 2016-2018 tenure), and the United Nations Security Council (2020-2021).



The two countries have engaged in economic cooperation and worked together in some other fields. In 2020, two-way trade reached 49.26 million USD, up more than 200 percent from the 17 million USD recorded in 2018, with Vietnams overwhelming exports of 47 million USD. Sierra Leone is operating one project in marketing and human resources management in Vietnam with investment of 33,185 USD. Vietnam has yet to run any project in Sierra Leone.



In order to strengthen their all-round ties, the two countries signed a number of memorandum of understanding on cooperation in some areas, including agriculture and salt production, rice trade and fisheries. They also reached an agreement on economy-trade, culture and technology in 2003.



Recently, when presenting his credentials to the Sierra Leone President, Vietnamese Ambassador Luong Quoc Thinh highlighted Vietnams interest in further bolstering the sound friendship and cooperation between the two countries.



The diplomat proposed that both sides promote coordination at international and multilateral forums, especially the UN. He asked Sierra Leone to support Vietnam in setting up relationship with the African Union and back the viewpoints of Vietnam and the ASEAN on the East Sea issue.



President Julius Maada Bio affirmed his country wants to reinforce and strengthen collaboration with Vietnam in all fields. He said he hopes the visit will be a valuable chance for both sides to continue to promote their already-sound friendship.



The visit is expected to be a new progress in the bilateral relations in the context of African countries, including Sierra Leone, expanding their relations with Asia-Pacific countries, including Vietnam./.
Delegates at the seminar (Photo: VNA)

Attending the seminar, there were five speakers, who are successful scientists of different generations and have made great contributions to the promotion of the relations between Vietnam and France.



70-year-old Le Toan Thuy, Head of the Biomass research team at the Centre for the Study of the Biosphere from Space and the oldest speaker at the event, highlighted difficulties facing women scientists during their career. She encouraged women who love science not to abandon their passion. Dr Thuy initiated the BIOMASS satellite project for forest biomass assessment, which is scheduled to be launched in 2023.

Meanwhile, Dinh Thi Lan Anh, a third-year PhD student at the Paris Observatory said that support from leadership officials is necessary for women scientists to develop their career.

At the seminar, participants recognised contributions by Vietnamese women scientists undertaking scientific research in France, inspiring younger generations to follow the path of older generations of women scientists./.
A war veteran lit incense to remember 64 naval soldiers who died on duty 34 years ago while defending the Gac Ma (Johnson South) Reef in Vietnam's Truong Sa (Spratly) archipelago. (Photo: VNA)



The veterans and the fallen soldiers families offered incense and then released rafts with flowers on Han River in memory of the soldiers.



Head of a liaison committee for Truong Sa veterans Nguyen Van Tan said among the fallen soldiers in the Gac Ma battle, nine were from Da Nang and one from neighbouring Quang Nam province.



Tan stressed that their bravery sacrifice will be remembered forever and that they have made the Vietnam Peoples Navys history more glorious.



The event aims to not only pay homage to the soldiers who lost their lives in safeguarding the countrys sovereignty but also inspire patriotism among young people, said Colonel Hoang Duy Lap, former commander of the navys Engineer Regiment No.83 who directly fought in the battle at Truong Sa in 1988.



Dong A University took the occasion to present ten gift packages, worth 1 million VND (43.71 USD) each, to families of the fallen soldiers in Quang Nam and Da Nang./.
The success of surgery and treatment for the patient not only confirms the capacity of Vietnamese doctors and nurses, but also the deep affection of the Vietnamese people for the people of South Sudan. (Photo: TDO)

That is part of the letter from a South Sudanese United Nations employee to the doctors and nurses at the Vietnam level 2 Hospital rotation 3 when he received successful operation and treatment of a rare form of appendicitis.

Earlier, the 29-year-old patient with persistent abdominal pain was examined at many hospitals in Uganda, Kenya and Egypt but was not diagnosed and treated effectively. The pain caused the patient to put off his marriage plan, greatly affecting his psychological and spiritual life.

The patient was admitted to the Vietnam level 2 Hospital in a state of anxiety and despair, when the pain increased. Recognizing that this was a complicated case, the doctors of the hospital held a consultation and confirmed the diagnosis of chronic appendicitis with right inguinal pain, a rare form of appendicitis.

With careful examination, accurate diagnosis, offering the most comprehensive and optimal treatment plan; and with professional and dedicated care, the doctors and nurses of the Vietnam level 2 Hospital rotation 3 successfully operated and treated the patient, bringing happiness to him.

The success of the operation has confirmed the qualifications and professional skills of the Vietnamese team of doctors and above all, the profound humanity when the Vietnamese doctor is always wholeheartedly for the patient so that they can find meaningful happiness in life./.
A lorry drives out of the Hong Leng Huor Dry Port on the western suburb of Phnom Penh, Cambodia on Jan. 13, 2022. (Photo by Phearum/Xinhua)

RCEP has signaled the Asia Pacific's collective commitment to mutual prosperity, peaceful co-existence, and a comprehensive post-pandemic recovery grounded on free and rules-based trade, the official said.

PHNOM PENH, Jan. 31 (Xinhua) -- The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) free trade agreement, which took effect on Jan. 1, has affirmed the resurgence of multilateralism, Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Prak Sokhonn said.

He made the remarks during the opening of a two-day virtual seminar on RCEP on Thursday, which was attended physically by the leaders of the foreign ministry and via video conference by heads of Cambodia's diplomatic mission and consular office abroad, according to a ministry's press statement released on Friday.

"He (Sokhonn) further highlighted that its entry into force has signaled the Asia Pacific's collective commitment to mutual prosperity, peaceful co-existence, and a comprehensive post-pandemic recovery grounded on free and rules-based trade," the statement said.

The signing ceremony of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement is held via video conference in Hanoi, Vietnam, Nov. 15, 2020. (VNA via Xinhua)

The seminar aimed to support the realization of RCEP's full potential by strengthening the knowledge and understanding among the ministry's leaders, officials and diplomats vis-a-vis the agreement.

Sokhonn also underlined the important roles of Cambodia's missions abroad in leveraging and supporting the successful implementation of Cambodia's new Investment Law, RCEP, the Cambodia-China Free Trade Agreement (FTA), and the Cambodia-Korea FTA to facilitate the promotion and diversification of trade, attract foreign direct investment, and enhance national economic potential.

RCEP was signed on Nov. 15, 2020 by the 10 member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the bloc's five FTA partners, namely China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, making it the world's biggest trade deal, according to the statement.

RCEP covers approximately 30 percent of the world's population, accounts for about 30 percent of global gross domestic product, and represents some 28 percent of global trade, it added.

Editor: WXL
Paul Kim, deputy chief of Hong Leng Huor Transportation, dubbed the RCEP "a huge New Year gift for businesses and peoples in the region and the world at large," saying that the agreement will "serve as a driving force for regional and global economic recovery in the post-COVID-19 pandemic."

PHNOM PENH, Jan. 21 (Xinhua) -- The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) free trade agreement, which entered into force on Jan. 1, is a huge New Year gift for the regional and global economy, business people in Cambodia said.

The RCEP is a mega trade agreement signed by 10 ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) member states Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, and its five free trade agreements partners, namely China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.

Paul Kim, deputy chief of Hong Leng Huor Transportation, said the RCEP would eventually eliminate up to 90 percent of regional trade tariff and non-tariff barriers, which will further promote the flows of goods and services, deepen regional economic integration and increase regional competitiveness.

"With preferential tariff rates under the RCEP, I believe that people in the member countries will enjoy buying products and other necessities at a competitive price during the Spring Festival season this year," Paul said.

He dubbed the RCEP "a huge New Year gift for businesses and peoples in the region and the world at large," saying that the agreement will "serve as a driving force for regional and global economic recovery in the post-COVID-19 pandemic."

Collectively covering about one-third of the world's population with 30 percent of the global gross domestic product, the RCEP will increase the member economies' incomes by 0.6 percent by 2030, adding 245 billion U.S. dollars annually to regional income and 2.8 million jobs to regional employment, according to an Asian Development Bank's study.

A crane truck lifts a container at the Hong Leng Huor Dry Port on the western suburb of Phnom Penh, Cambodia on Jan. 13, 2022. (Photo by Phearum/Xinhua)

Focused on trade in goods and services, investment, intellectual property, e-commerce, competition and dispute settlement, Paul said the deal offers opportunities for regional countries to defend multilateralism, trade liberalization and promote economic cooperation.

Hong Leng Huor Transportation specializes in various services ranging from freight forwarding, dry port operations, customs clearance, road transportation, warehousing and distribution to e-commerce and last-mile delivery.

"RCEP will facilitate logistics, distribution and supply chain resilience as it simplifies customs processes, shipment clearances and other provisions," he said. "Despite the pandemic, trade has remained surprisingly strong during the past two years, and we're excited to witness how RCEP would further facilitate trade and, thus, regional economic growth, in the years to come."

He is confident that the RCEP will further boost cross-border trade and investment among the member countries in the long run.

"For Cambodia, with tariff concessions, the deal will definitely further boost goods traded between Cambodia and other RCEP member states, especially with China," he said.

Ly Eng, an assistant to the general manager of Hualong Investment Group (Cambodia) Co., Ltd, said her company had recently imported mandarin oranges to Cambodia from South China's Guangdong province for the first time under the RCEP.

Photo taken on Jan. 13, 2022 shows containers at the Hong Leng Huor Dry Port on the western suburb of Phnom Penh, Cambodia. (Photo by Phearum/Xinhua)

She hopes that Cambodian consumers will have more options in buying vegetables and fruits with products from China such as mandarin oranges, apples and crown pears.

"It will make China and other RCEP member countries easy to exchange goods faster," Ly Eng said, adding that the prices would also be lower.

"We also hope that more and more Cambodian tropical fruits and other potential agricultural products will be exported to the Chinese market in the future," she said.

Ny Ratana, a 28-year-old vendor of Lunar New Year decorations at the Chbar Ampov Market in Phnom Penh, said 2022 is a special year for Cambodia and other 14 Asia-Pacific countries now that the RCEP took effect.

"I'm confident that this agreement will boost trade and investment and create new jobs as well as benefit consumers in all 15 participating countries due to preferential tariff rates," he told Xinhua.

"It will definitely facilitate regional economic integration, enhance regional trade flows and bring about economic prosperity for the region and the world," he added.

Editor: WXL
Photo taken on Sept. 3, 2020 shows a tree in a tropical rainforest in south China's Hainan Province. (Xinhua/Pu Xiaoxu)

HAIKOU, March 12 (Xinhua) -- When Tao Fengjiao was struck by lightning while planting trees in south China's Hainan Province, she emerged largely unscathed, with only a plume of black smoke rising from her hat.

Her fellow planters, all women, were terrified and thought that Tao had been killed, until she slowly got to her feet.

"They all said that the miracle testified to the old saying that 'one good turn deserves another.' It must have been a blessing in return for my years of tree-planting efforts," she said.

Tao, 63, hails from Qizi Bay, Changjiang Li Autonomous County. The bay, located on the tropical island of Hainan, was once a desert with hardly any living plants, but is now covered with lush green vegetation thanks to Tao and her sisters. The rural women, dubbed the "green detachment of women" by locals, have been planting coastal-protection forests around the bay for over three decades.

Tao still recalls the bay's sad condition back in the 1990s.

"No trees or grass would grow on the land," she said, adding that whenever a typhoon hit, the sky would be filled with dust and sand, and several local fishermen died due to the loss of visibility.

The local government had launched an afforestation project, hoping to increase the area's vegetation coverage. In 1992, a businessman took over the project on the barren land and paid the locals 7 yuan (about 1 U.S. dollar) per day per person to plant trees.

In Changjiang, most of the local men earned their living through fishing. Therefore, it was mainly the women that joined the tree-planting business, expecting some extra money to help their husbands ease the financial burden.

However, none of them were able to grow trees in the vast desert, with its high temperatures all year round.

Some German experts were responsible for guiding the project, but they shook their heads in sympathy, saying that the local geographical conditions made the mission impossible. As the efforts seemed to be futile, the businessman gave up the project.

The local government sent several local forestry experts to continue studying seed breeding at the bay and started to provide subsidies for the "green detachment of women" for planting trees.

Guided by these local experts, the female tree-planting team persevered with their work, focusing on two species. One was a plant nicknamed "wild pineapples," which usually grows to between 4 and 14 meters tall, while the other was the casuarina tree, an evergreen plant that measures between 6 and 35 meters tall. It was hoped that these two would help to anchor the ever-shifting sand.

However, the project was really hard work for the women. To protect the tree saplings from being blown away by the strong wind, they had to soak them in fresh water first, thus increasing their weight.

Back then, the rural Changjiang had no paved roads, nor any suitable vehicles that could carry the trees. Tao had to load about 60 kg of saplings onto her shoulders and walk bare-foot across the scorching sand.

"When we ran out of fresh water, we drank from cow troughs. The hot weather in the desert often turned our food bad, but we persevered. We could plant up to 400 trees a day at that time," said Tao.

Some people couldn't stand the tough conditions and left. But due to Tao's persistence, the team grew to more than 60 people at its peak.

Their decades of hard work paid off. To date, the tree-planting team has successfully grown about 5.88 million trees covering an area of 2,253 hectares, according to the latest statistics released by the county's forestry authorities.

"We're not just planting trees for a living, but also to protect local people's lives," Tao said.

At the end of 2018, the local government opened a museum to the public celebrating the women's tree-planting efforts. Tao is now one of the museum guides.

Though she may not recognize many Chinese characters on the display boards due to her poor education, she still vividly recalls scenes and stories from the past.

"I just cannot hold back my tears whenever I look back on the tough times we've been through. I love the trees as much as I love my kids," Tao said. 

Editor: WRX
Aerial photo taken on March 12, 2022 shows the newly-built community isolation facility located in Fanling, south China's Hong Kong. The fourth community isolation facility (CIF) in Hong Kong constructed with the support from the China mainland has been put into operation after it was handed over to the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government. The newly-built CIF provides over 350 rooms with more than 1,000 beds for emergency isolation. (Xinhua)

HONG KONG, March 13 (Xinhua) -- The fourth community isolation facility (CIF) in Hong Kong constructed with the support from the China mainland has been put into operation after it was handed over to the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government.

John Lee, chief secretary for administration of the HKSAR government, visited on Sunday the newly-built CIF located in Fanling, Hong Kong, which provides over 350 rooms with more than 1,000 beds for emergency isolation.

The facility, which covers an area of about 20,000 square meters, is composed of modular cubicles, with each room equipped with basic furniture and bedding, air conditioner and smoke sensor, among others.

Designed and built by the China State Construction International Holdings Ltd., the construction of the facility was completed in less than 20 days.

To speed up the moving-in process, the Security Bureau of the HKSAR government introduced an electronic self-registration form, which allows occupants to scan a QR code and fill out a simple form with information such as meal requirements and contact numbers after they are assigned a room.

During his visit, Lee expressed his gratitude to the central government's aid towards the construction of CIFs in Hong Kong.

Lee said that under the staunch support of the central government, as well as the effective coordination of the Liaison Office of the Central People's Government in the HKSAR and the efforts of the construction personnel from the China State Construction International Holdings Ltd., four CIFs providing a total of 8,900 beds for emergency isolation were handed over to the HKSAR government in less than two weeks' time.

"This assists Hong Kong in achieving the anti-epidemic strategy of 'early identification, early isolation and early treatment'," said Lee.

On Sunday, Hong Kong registered 13,335 new COVID-19 cases by nucleic acid tests, and 19,095 additional positive cases through self-reported rapid antigen tests, official data showed. 

Photo taken on March 11, 2022 shows the newly-built community isolation facility located in Fanling, south China's Hong Kong. The fourth community isolation facility (CIF) in Hong Kong constructed with the support from the China mainland has been put into operation after it was handed over to the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government. The newly-built CIF provides over 350 rooms with more than 1,000 beds for emergency isolation. (Xinhua)

Editor: Zhang Zhou
HEFEI, March 5 (Xinhua) -- Chopping pork meat, hollowing out green peppers, and then stuffing the meat into them, Adrien Brill was learning to make a Chinese delicacy at a local household in a small village in east China's Anhui Province.

The whole process was filmed as well. Brill, an American expat living in Huangshan City of Anhui, was making yet another culinary video to cater to the tastes of his 100,000 followers on the short-video platform Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok.

"I started making short videos on Douyin last September. I make all kinds of delicacies, including Chinese and Western delicacies. I think it's meaningful because this gives me an opportunity to share my cultural experiences and learn about the cultural experiences of others," said the 32-year-old.

In 2014, Brill met his then-girlfriend Qiu Tong in Chengdu, capital of southwest China's Sichuan Province, when he was learning Chinese at Sichuan University. He followed Qiu to her hometown of Huangshan after graduation, and they got married in 2019.

Brill's relationship with China goes back to his infancy when he was babysat by a Chinese nanny.

"The nanny didn't speak much English, so I was exposed to many Chinese words every day. The first sentence I spoke, being an infant, was Chinese, not English, according to my parents," he recalled.

His interest in China and Chinese culture grew stronger after he spent a month in China during the summer of 2006 with his mother, a language teacher who got a summer job there.

"That was my first time in China. Since then, the idea of coming to China was rooted deeply in my mind. The idea was like a little fire at first, but it gradually lit up my whole world," said Brill, who finally decided to come to China in 2009 to volunteer at a kindergarten in Chengdu.

Brill had a good time savoring different Chinese delicacies in Chengdu, and he also cooked for himself when he missed the food in America.

In order to satisfy his stomach, Brill had to cook more often after he resided in Huangshan with his wife Qiu, as it is difficult to find authentic Western food in a small city like Huangshan. He has called his parents multiple times for the recipes of different foods he used to have during his childhood, such as lasagna, strawberry tart and pumpkin pie.

As a result, his Western culinary skills improved quickly despite residing in China.

Brill also learned how to make Chinese food, including moon cakes, fried rice and braised pork with brown sauce, to please his wife and mother-in-law, and of course himself, as well.

He has posted 54 culinary videos so far on his Douyin account, with one episode receiving over 158,000 likes alone. Besides showing people how to make food, Brill also shares the cultural background and his personal story behind each food, which adds more flavor to his show. It only took him five months to attract more than 100,000 followers on his account.

"Food is a big part of the culture. I look forward to exploring more places in China and learning to cook more dishes. I really enjoy my life here in China. It has become my second home," said Brill.

Editor: WXL
United Airlines Allows Unvaccinated Staff to Return to Work

NEWS PROVIDED BY

Liberty Counsel

March 14, 2022



CHICAGO, March 14, 2022 /Christian Newswire/ -- United Airlines will allow 2,200 unvaccinated employees to return to their jobs this month, according to a staff memo sent March 10. The memo noted that the COVID-19 pandemic is "beginning to meaningfully recede."

Employees who were granted religious or medical exemptions and put on unpaid leave can return to work starting March 28. In a memo, Kirk Limacher, United's vice president of human resources, cited the decline in case counts and hospitalizations from the Omicron variant and the recently relaxed mask guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Chicago-based carrier, however, stopped short of setting the policy in stone.

"Of course, if another variant emerges or the COVID trends suddenly reverse course, we will reevaluate the appropriate safety protocols at that time," the memo indicated.

United was the first major U.S. airline to institute a companywide shot mandate in August 2021 for all of its staff, who had to be "fully vaccinated" by September 27, 2021, or face possible termination. Of the company's 67,000 employees, hundreds were fired or put on leave, while others were placed in non-customer-facing positions.

Last December, United Chief Executive Scott Kirby showed he still believes the company made the right decision in introducing and enforcing the shot mandate. "We did this for safety," said Kirby, defending the mandate. "We believe it saved lives. We don't compromise on safety."

United employees brought a lawsuit against the company for being placed on unpaid leave as part of their religious or medical accommodations.

A U.S. appeals court on Feb. 17 ordered a new review of a decision not to block United from enforcing the mandate. The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 to return the issue to a U.S. district judge who had rejected a request for an injunction blocking the mandate while employees argue their case.

Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said, "No one, including United Airlines employees, should be forced to take the COVID shots against their sincerely held religious beliefs or in light of health concerns. In the name of 'safety,' United has fired hundreds of staff, placed others on unpaid leave or moved them out of their current jobs, but companies cannot be allowed to force people to take these injections. United's decision to impose the shot mandate was foolish, shortsighted and abusive."

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



Related Links



lc.org/


Saudi Real Estate Refinance Company (SRC), a wholly owned company of the Public Investment Fund (PIF), has signed an agreement with Saudi National Bank (SNB) to sell a real estate financing portfolio worth SR1 billion ($266.58 million), which is considered to be the largest bank refinancing in the kingdom.

The agreement was signed in the presence of Majid bin Abdullah Al Hogail, Minister of Municipal and Rural Affairs and Housing, and Ammar Alkhudairy, Chairman of SNB by Fabrice Susini, CEO of SRC, and Majed Al Ghamdi, Chief Executive Officer of Retail at SNB.

The agreement aims to refinance the portfolio to provide long-term liquidity to the Saudi home financing market and facilitate risk management in the sector.

Susini said the company continues to expand its partnerships with originators to boost the rate of Saudi homeownership to 70% by 2030, in line with the objectives of the Vision 2030 housing program through supporting the home financing market and originators by providing the best innovative financial solutions and increase the home finance sectors contribution to the GDP.

He added that the agreement signed with SNB is the largest home refinancing agreement in the banking sector, which is an evidence of the company's continuous support for home financing originators through liquidity and risk management solutions to provide affordable home financing and to increase home ownership.

Al Ghamdi said: "Our long-term partnership with SRC will enable us to provide housing finance solutions that fulfil the needs and requirements of Saudi families. The liquidity generated through this partnership will enable us to provide more home financing solutions to citizens in the Kingdom, broadening our already-large beneficiary base. The partnership also provides us with the capital and risk management tools that are critical to our overall operations and capital allocation to achieve the objectives of the Housing Program - one of the Kingdom's Vision 2030 programs."

The home financing sector has witnessed a significant growth in recent years in the number of loans reaching 300,000 loans worth SR140 billion in 2020. In 2021, more than 260,000 contracts worth more than SR150 billion were registered, the statement said. - TradeArabia News Service
Pfizer to continue humanitarian supplies of medicines to Russia, all profits of Russian branch to be directed to humanitarian aid to Ukraine

The American pharmaceutical company Pfizer will continue humanitarian supplies of medicines to the Russian Federation, all the profits of the Russian branch will be directed to humanitarian aid to Ukraine.

"Pfizer will immediately donate all profits of our Russian subsidiary to causes that provide direct humanitarian assistance to the people of Ukraine. This will be in addition to all other recently announced donations from Pfizer to Ukraine. In addition, we will no longer initiate new clinical trials in Russia and will cease enrollment of new patients in our ongoing clinical trials in the country," Pfizer said on its website on Monday.

The company also clarified that it will transfer all current clinical trials to alternative sites outside the Russian Federation, but will continue to provide the necessary medicines to patients already included in clinical trials.

"While Pfizer does not own or operate any manufacturing sites in Russia, we will terminate all planned investments with local suppliers to increase manufacturing capacity in the country," the company said.

At the same time, the company notes that the voluntary suspension of drug supplies to the Russian Federation "would be a direct violation of the fundamental principle of patient priority."
On Saturday, Polish President Andrzej Duda signed a law on assistance to Ukrainian citizens who arrived in Poland in connection with armed Russian aggression.

According to the provisions of the Act, citizens of Ukraine, who left their homeland due to Russian aggression, will be able to stay in Poland for 18 months legally. It will apply to people who came to Poland directly from Ukraine and declared their intention to stay in the territory of the country.

The provision has been made for voivodship governors' and local authorities' assistance to citizens of Ukraine. It may consist, among other things, of accommodation or the provision of collective meals all day long. Any entity, primarily a natural person running a household, which provides accommodation and meals to Ukrainian citizens fleeing war, may receive a benefit after submitting an application in a municipal office. The benefit will be paid for a maximum of 60 days, and a Council of Ministers' regulation will determine its amount.

An Assistance Fund is going to be established. Its funds will be used mainly to finance or co-finance tasks related to aid provided to citizens of Ukraine. Citizens of Ukraine who are fleeing the war will also have the right to work in the territory of Poland. It entails access to social benefits or funding to reduce the fee paid by the parent for a child's stay in a creche, children's club or day-care centre. Citizens of Ukraine may also apply for a one-off cash benefit for subsistence amounting to PLN 300 per person. In particular, it is about covering expenses for food, clothing, footwear, personal hygiene products and housing fees.

Every citizen of Ukraine, legally residing in Poland, will be guaranteed access to the public health care system on the same principles as Polish citizens.

Solutions will also be introduced to ensure education and upbringing for children or students who are citizens of Ukraine covered by the provisions of the Act.
Russian occupiers shot down a column of civilians, which consisted exclusively of women and children, while trying to evacuate from the village of Peremoha, Kyiv region, the Defense Intelligence Agency of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said on Saturday.

"After the circumstances of the tragedy were clarified, according to updated information as of 11:30 p.m. on March 12, it turned out that people tried to escape from the invaders on their own, so they began evacuation without the 'green corridor' agreed by the parties. And this is very dangerous, because the occupying units destroy the civilian population without regret. There are many examples of such war crimes during these 16 days of war. We urge all citizens who are in danger to follow the official information on evacuation routes and use only safe routes," the Defense Intelligence Agency said on Telegram.

Earlier, the Intelligence Agency reported that on March 11, when the invaders shot at a column of civilians who were trying to evacuate from the village of Peremoha (Baryshivka district of Kyiv region) towards the village of Hostroluchia, seven people died, including one child. The exact number of wounded was unknown.
Russia is trying to repeat the experience of creating pseudo-republics in Kherson region, but it will not succeed, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky believes.

"The occupiers are trying to repeat the sad experience of the formation of pseudo-republics on the territory of Kherson region. They blackmail local leaders, put pressure on deputies. They are looking for someone to bribe. To organize the so-called 'KHPR.' Just as stillborn as the 'DPR' and 'LPR,'" he said in a video message on the night of Saturday to Sunday.

At the same time, he added: "I want to say to some figures who did not have the squeamishness to refuse to talk with the occupiers... I want to say  if one of them is suddenly tempted by offers from the occupiers... You sign a verdict. The verdict is to follow more than 12,000 invaders who failed to understand in time why Ukraine should not be encroached upon."

"An emergency meeting of Kherson Regional Council was held. A total of 44 deputies decided that Kherson region is Ukraine, and there is no place for any pseudo-republics," he said.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky has said that Russia is a greater evil for the whole world than North Korea.

"The evil that deliberately bombs peaceful cities... The evil that even shells ambulances and blows up hospitals... It will not be able to stop in one country. If it has the strength to go further," Zelensky said in a video message on Sunday night.

The head of state noted that now Ukraine has the greatest support for aspirations and independence from the whole world than ever in its history.

"And Russia is not just among the enemies. It is even more of an enemy, more evil than North Korea. This is exactly what the Americans think, for example. Ordinary people in all states. Like ordinary people in all European countries. And I am grateful to them for the extraordinary support. Grateful for understanding our struggle. As we are united by one dream  to live freely on our land. And we have the right to what everyone has in the free world. To a safe sky, as well as to our own land," he stressed.

Zelensky also added that on every occasion he repeats to friends and partners that they must do more for Ukraine. "Because it's not only for Ukraine. It's for everyone in Europe," the president said.
Podoliak on murder of NYT journalist: how much longer will the United States ignore the war, the killings of its citizens and will not close the sky over Ukraine?

Adviser to the head of the President's Office Mykhailo Podoliak, commenting on the murder of a New York Times journalist in Irpen by Russian military, said that there are no questions about Russia's non-compliance with the rules of war, there is a question of how long the United States will ignore the war and will not close the sky over Ukraine.

"Today in Irpin, the Russian military shot dead a U.S. citizen, journalist Brent Anthony Renaud. There are no questions about Russia's non-compliance with the rules of the warfare. There is only one question: how long will the United States ignore the war, kill its citizens and not close the sky over Ukraine?" he said on Twitter on Sunday.

Earlier it became known that Russian troops killed New York Times correspondent Brent Renaud in Irpen, another journalist was wounded.

Ukrainian Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova has reacted to the killing of New York Times journalist Brent Renaud by Russian invaders by saying the time has come for international partners to take responsibility and help Ukraine.
American journalist Brent Renaud was indeed killed in a shelling attack by Russian invaders on Irpin, Kyiv region, The New York Times has said on Sunday.

However, the newspaper specified that the deceased journalist had not been working for it lately and The New York Times press badge he was wearing had been issued for an assignment "many years ago."

"We are deeply saddened to hear of Brent Renaud's death. Brent was a talented filmmaker who had contributed to the New York Times over the years. Though he had contributed to The Times in the past (most recently in 2015), he was not on an assignment for any desk at The Times in Ukraine. Early reports that he worked for Times circulated because he was wearing a Times press badge that had been issued for an assignment many years ago," it said on Twitter.
Govt negotiating with global companies to establish new logistics chains for supply of gasoline, diesel to Ukraine  PM

Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal has said the government is negotiating with the world's largest companies supplying gasoline and diesel to establish new logistics chains for the supply of these products to Ukraine.

"We are negotiating with the world's largest companies for the supply of gasoline and diesel, we are developing new logistics chains for the supply of these products to Ukraine," Shmyhal said in his address on Saturday evening.

The prime minister also recalled that to improve the provision of automotive fuel, the government has prepared for the adoption by the Verkhovna Rada a bill abolishing the excise tax on fuel and reducing the VAT rate from 20% to 7%, which should stabilize prices and prevent shortages.

"We are also considering a proposal to reduce VAT to 0% if the logistics costs of fuel suppliers grow," he said.
Ministry of Infrastructure waiting for EU to refuse permits for intl road transport for carriers in Russia, its allies

The Ministry of Infrastructure of Ukraine expects refusal to issue permits for international road freight transport for carriers of Russia and its allies.

According to the Minister of Infrastructure of Ukraine Oleksandr Kubrakov on his Telegram channel, yesterday at a multilateral online meeting of the ministers of Poland, Austria, the Czech Republic, France, Germany and Ukraine, as well as the EU Commissioner for Transport, the parties discussed the need for new transport sanctions.

"I once again stressed the importance of blocking access for Russian and Belarusian vehicles (primarily trucks) to the EU road system. In particular, we expect the refusal to issue permits for international transportation of goods for the carriers of the occupier and its allies. It is necessary to ensure a trade blockade of Russia," Kubrakov said.

He also said that from the very beginning of the full-scale phase of the war, the Ministry of Infrastructure completely refocused its work on two key areas  providing the affected regions with humanitarian aid and evacuating people from there.

According to Kubrakov, Ukrzaliznytsia evacuated more than 2 million people, most of them from Kyiv and Kharkov. Of these, almost 250,000 were evacuated abroad, namely to Poland, Romania, Hungary, Moldova, Germany, Slovakia and other countries.

He thanked Ukraine's partners for their support in this direction, in particular, for providing preferential living conditions and moving around the country by rail or road  similar decisions were made by Poland, Germany, Hungary, Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Switzerland, Denmark, Finland.

According to Kubrakov, Ukraine managed to establish logistics for the transportation of humanitarian aid.

"We quickly rebuilt our logistics system. In the first 10 days of March, Ukrzaliznytsia alone was able to deliver almost 15,000 tonnes of humanitarian aid to the affected regions. We transport it both by freight and passenger cars. Many times more aid is transported by trucks, including from abroad," the minister said.

He also called on all European countries to join the new transport coalition  as this is an important contribution to the common victory.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky has visited the wounded defenders of Ukraine undergoing treatment in a military hospital, the press service of the head of state reported.

"The military was brought to this medical facility with injuries of varying severity after the fighting in Kyiv region," the report says.

The head of state awarded the military with orders and medals for courage and dedication, and also noted the hospital staff for their exemplary work in difficult conditions. Zelensky talked to the hospital management, asked about the needs of the institution and the special measures taken during the war.
Yanbu Cement Company reported a revenue of SR934 million ($248.92 million) for the year ending December 31, 2021, a slight decline from SR939.99 million reported in the previous year.

The net profit after zakat and tax was SR159.56 million, compared to SR281.02 million in the previous year, a 41.5% decline.

The main reason for the decrease in net profit is due to the reduction in average price despite the fact that sales volumes were higher and the high cost of revenues as a result of less production, said the company in a bourse filing.

Increase in general and administrative expenses also contributed to the decline in profit, it said. - TradeArabia News Service
Advisor to Ukrainian president's office head: Session for preliminary results of talks with Russia to take place on Mon

Talks with Russia are continuing as a videoconference non-stop; a negotiating session for preliminary stocktaking will be held tomorrow, on March 14, advisor to the head of the Ukrainian presidential office Mykhailo Podolyak said.

"Again. Negotiations go non-stop in the format of video conferences. Working groups are constantly functioning. A large number of issues require constant attention. On Monday, March 14, a negotiating session will be held to sum up the preliminary results," Podolyak wrote on Twitter on Sunday.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky, addressing European leaders, has said that if they do not close the sky over Ukraine, it is only a matter of time before Russian missiles fall on the homes of citizens of European countries and citizens of NATO countries.

"Last year, I clearly warned NATO leaders that if there were no tough preventive sanctions against the Russian Federation, it would go to war. We were right. I have been saying for a long time: Nord Stream is a weapon that will strike across Europe. Now it is obviously. And now I repeat again: if you do not close our skies, it is only a matter of time before Russian missiles fall on your territory, on NATO territory, on the homes of citizens of NATO countries," Zelensky said in a video message on Sunday night.
French President Emmanuel Macron held separate telephone talks with Ukrainian Presidents Volodymyr Zelensky and U.S. Presidents Joe Biden, the president's press service has reported.

The press service said that the purpose of the talks was "to achieve a ceasefire and start negotiations to end the war in Ukraine."

During a conversation with Zelensky, Macron "expressed his full support" and spoke about the additional assistance that the European Union decided to provide to Ukraine at the summit in the Palace of Versailles.

"The heads of the two states discussed the continuation of negotiations between Russia and Ukraine," the press service said.

Macron and Biden during the conversation "agreed to strengthen the sanctions already imposed against Russia, support Ukraine and jointly take all useful initiatives to stop hostilities."
US Dpty Secretary of State: Signs Russia ready for substantive talks with Ukraine

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said in an interview with FoxNews that there are certain "signs of readiness for serious negotiations" with Ukraine in Russia.

"We are seeing some signs of readiness for real, serious negotiations," she said.

Sherman said Western pressure on Moscow contributed to this, adding, "we must help the Ukrainians in every possible way."
Zelensky: Killing of US journalist in Irpin by Russian military is deliberate, they knew what they were doing

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky said that the killing by the Russian military of American journalist Brent Renaud, who worked on a project on refugees for The New York Times in Irpin, was deliberate, they knew what they were doing.

"Today [March 13], American journalist Brent Renaud was killed in Kyiv region. His colleague was wounded. It was a deliberate attack by the Russian military. They knew what they were doing. But it seems that not everyone in the West knows what they are doing," Zelensky said in a video statement on Sunday night.
The Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) has dealt blows to the rear infrastructure of the enemy. The enemy is demoralized and refuses to obey the orders of the command, the 'refuseniks' are kept in the military camp of the Belgorod military commandant's office, where pretrial investigations against them have been opened, the AFU's General Staff has said.

"The moral and psychological state of the enemy remains at a low level. This leads to the refusal of the military personnel of the Russia's Armed Forces to obey the orders. According to available information, a military camp of the Belgorod military commandant's office is located on the territory of the Russian Federation in the city of Belgorod. The camp contains Russian military personnel who, after treatment, were discharged from active duty. Pretrial investigation measures are taken on them," the General Staff reported on Facebook as of 6:00 a.m. on Monday.

According to the report, the AFU had inflicted crushing blows on the rear infrastructure (field bases and warehouses) to disrupt the enemy's logistics support system in temporarily Russia-occupied areas of Ukraine. The AFU added it had shot down four more Russian aircraft, three helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles (information by type is being specified).

The occupying troops did not have significant success in conducting an offensive operation in all directions of advancement. The main efforts of the invaders were focused on securing and maintaining control over previously occupied areas.

Again, frequent cases of the use of civilian infrastructure by the enemy, in particular religious sites for equipping firing positions, placing weapons and military equipment, are recorded.

The General Staff said special armed forces of Belarus will not participate in Russia's war against Ukraine.
As a result of airstrikes on the residential sector of the city of Akhtyrka, Sumy region, three people were killed, mayor of the Akhtyrka territorial community Pavlo Kuzmenko said.

"There was an air bombardment in Akhtyrka today. And it was in the residential sector, private houses. At least three civilians were killed," he said in a video message.

The mayor said that the search continues.
As a result of artillery shell hitting a multi-storey building in Obolonsky district of Kyiv on Monday morning, the building was partially destroyed, no one was previously injured, adviser to the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Anton Gerashchenko said.

"On March 14, at 05:09 in Obolonsky district at 20 Bohatyrska Street, there was a partial destruction from the 1st to the 3rd floors and a fire in the apartments on the 3rd and 4th floors as a result of an artillery shell hitting a nine-story residential building. Preliminarily there were no victims," Gerashchenko said in a Telegram message on Monday.

Some 33 people and eight units of the State Emergency Service were involved.
Rescuers sifting through wreckage from Russian airstrike in Antopil, Rivne region  police

Law enforcement officers are inspecting and removing fragments of ammunition near the TV tower in the village of Antopil, Rivne region, which was subjected to an airstrike on Monday morning, the National Police of Ukraine have said.

"Employees of the explosives service of local State Emergency Service in Rivne region are inspecting the scene and seizing fragments of ammunition. About twenty more police officers, together with rescuers, are clearing the rubble of the administrative building located near the TV tower," the police said.

Law enforcers said that two explosions were today, March 14, around 05:20.

Information about injured or killed persons is being verified.

Ukraine's Security Service SBU agents arrived at the scene to document the crime.

Earlier it was reported that a television tower in Rivne region was damaged in an air strike on Monday morning.
Russian servicemen are massively refusing "'tours of duty in Ukraine" to participate in hostilities, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said in a report as of 00:00.

"Cases of mass refusal of Russian military personnel from 'tours of duty in Ukraine' to participate in hostilities are recorded, despite promises regarding granting the status of a war veteran, additional daily payments and an increased official salary," the General Staff said.

The General Staff also said that in order to build up groupings in Polissia, Taurida and Pivdennobuzky task force regions, the enemy is forming and moving strategic reserves to the Ukrainian borders.

"Neglecting the norms of International Humanitarian Law, the Russian occupiers continue to destroy stationary facilities of military and civilian infrastructure on the territory of Ukraine. Thus, on March 13, missile attacks were carried out on targets in the settlements of Uman, Ivano-Frankivsk, and Starychi using strategic aircraft. In addition, launches of the Iskander OCR from the territory of Belarus continue," the General Staff said.
The Riyadh Region Municipality has banned construction or demolition activities in the city from the Maghrib call to prayer (5pm - 6 pm) until 7 am.

Violators of the prohibition will be fined SR10,000, according to an Arab News report quoting the municipality's Twitter account.

The regulation aims to keep neighbourhoods and residents free from disturbances, said the tweet.
The ambassadors of Great Britain, the United States, Canada, the EU and Japan jointly condemn the kidnapping of the mayors of Melitopol and Dniprorudne by the Russian-occupation forces.

"Ambassadors jointly condemn the abduction of the Mayors of Melitopol and Dniprorudne by Russian occupying forces. This is yet another escalation of the invasion, and an ugly trend, in which civilian political leaders are targeted," the British Embassy in Ukraine said on Twitter on Monday.

The ambassadors called for the immediate release of all elected officials abducted by Russian temporarily occupying forces, and for Russia to cease illegal, desperate attempts to undermine Ukraine's democracy.
KYIV. March 14 (Interfax-Ukraine) Ukrainian authorities will do everything possible to unblock the movement of a humanitarian convoy with food and medicine from Berdiansk to Mariupol on Monday, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine Iryna Vereschuk said.

"We will once again try to finally unblock the movement of a humanitarian convoy with food and medicine from Berdiansk through Mangush to Mariupol," Vereschuk said in a video message on Monday.

She also said that to date, ten humanitarian corridors have been agreed across the country.

So, in addition to the corridor from Berdiansk to Mariupol, humanitarian routes will also operate in Kyiv (from the villages of Bohdanivka and Novobohdanivka to Brovary, from the village of Peremoha to Brovary, from the village of Bobryk to Brovary, from the city of Hostomel to the village of Bilohorodka, from the village of Nemishaevo and Vorzel to the village of Bilohorodka, from the village of Dmytrivka to the village of Bilohorodka) and Luhansk regions (from the city of Severodonetsk to the city of Sloviansk, from the city of Popasna to the city of Sloviansk, from the village of Hirske to the city of Sloviansk).
The Russian army did not stop shelling the infrastructure and industry of Kharkiv region on Monday night, as a result of which there were killed and wounded in the city, the police of Kharkiv region said.

"Kharkiv region has gone through a difficult night. Russian occupiers non-stop hit residential areas, hospitals, infrastructure and industry facilities. As a result of numerous destructions and fires, there are dead and wounded," the ministry said on Facebook on Monday morning.

Law enforcement officers said the enemy increased the intensity of shelling of Kharkiv and the settlements of the region.

"Despite all the difficulties of wartime, law enforcement officers continue to conscientiously fulfill their professional duties. The main areas in which the police are actively working are protecting the population from the consequences of military aggression: assistance in evacuation, social support, distribution to families that suffer most from enemy shelling, food. Police officers visit lonely people and the elderly, families with many children, with the support of volunteers, provide them with humanitarian assistance," the police said in the statement.

It is noted that the police continue to maintain law and order, patrol the service areas, fight crime and offenses.

The police said that citizens can notify the 102 service around the clock about the facts of violation of the law, contact additional communication lines. People can also report important information to the police using the @Kharkiv102_bot chatbot.

"Kharkiv investigators go to all places of shelling of objects in Kharkiv and the region to document the criminal activities of the Russian military. An effective counteraction to the facts of looting has been established, and every day the police detain lovers of easy money to bring them to justice," the police said.
Civilian casualties from February 24, 2022, when Russia started the war against Ukraine, to 24:00 on March 12, 2022, amounted to 1,663 civilians (in the summary a day earlier it was 1,581), including 596 dead (579), the Office of the High Commissioner UN Human Rights (OHCHR) has said.

"OHCHR believes that the actual figures are considerably higher, especially in Government-controlled territory and especially in recent days, as the receipt of information from some locations where intense hostilities have been going on has been delayed and many reports are still pending corroboration," OHCHR said in the report.

According to the report, this concerns, for example, Volnovakha, Mariupol, Izium, where here are allegations of hundreds of civilian casualties. These figures are being further corroborated and are not included in the above statistics.

"Most of the civilian casualties recorded were caused by the use of explosive weapons with a wide impact area, including shelling from heavy artillery and multi-launch rocket systems, and missile and air strikes," OHCHR said.

According to confirmed UN data, 124 men, 85 women, 10 boys and six girls died, while the sex of 27 children and 344 adults has not yet been identified.

Among the 1,067 injured, are 14 girls and four boys, as well as 39 children, whose sex is yet unknown.

Compared with the previous day, according to the UN, one child died and three were injured.

OHCHR said that in Donetsk and Luhansk regions, as of midnight on March 13, there were 111 (105) dead and 431 (385) injured in government-controlled territory, and 26 (25) dead and 127 (117) injured in territory controlled by Russia-occupied so-called "republics."

In other regions of Ukraine under government control (Kyiv, as well as in Zhytomyr, Zaporozhia, Kyiv, Sumy, Odesa, Mykolaiv, Kharkiv, Kherson, Dnepropetrovsk, Cherkasy and Chernihiv regions), the UN recorded 459 (449) dead and 509 (500) wounded.

OHCHR said that according to the Presidential Commissioner for Children's Rights and Child Rehabilitation, as of 09:00 on March 13, 85 (79) children had been killed and more than 100 children had been injured in government-controlled territory.

OHCHR also notes the report of the National Police of Kharkiv region, according to which, as of 18:00 on 12 March, 205 civilians had been killed in the region (201).

An increase in figures in this update compared with the previous update (as of 24:00 midnight on 11 March 2022 local time) should not be attributed to civilian casualties that occurred on 12 March only, as during the day OHCHR also corroborated casualties that occurred on previous days.
As a result of the armed actions of the Russian army in Ukraine, some 90 children were killed, more than 100 were wounded, the Prosecutor General's Office (PGO) of Ukraine said.

"Some 90 children were killed and more than 100 wounded as a result of the Russian armed aggression as of the morning of March 14, 2022. Most of the victims were in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Donetsk, Chernihiv, Sumy, Kherson, Mykolaiv and Zhytomyr regions," the PGO said in a statement in a Telegram channel on Monday.

In particular, as they say in the statement, only on March 13 in Mykolaiv region as a result of attacks of the civil infrastructure two children were lost and two more are wounded.

The PGO also says that 379 educational institutions were damaged as a result of bombing and shelling, some 59 of which were completely destroyed. Most of the destruction, namely 119 educational institutions, recorded in Donetsk region; while 30 in Mykolaiv, some 28 in Sumy, some 35 in Kyiv, some 21 in Kherson regions and some 24 in Kyiv.

"These figures are not final due to the lack of the possibility of inspecting the scenes where the Russian armed forces are conducting active hostilities and in the temporarily occupied territories," the PGO said.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba called on the world to provide Ukraine with all the necessary weapons, apply more sanctions against Russia and completely isolate it in order to avert a larger war.

"To those abroad scared of being 'dragged into the Third World War.' Ukraine fights back successfully. We need you to help us fight. Provide us with all necessary weapons. Apply more sanctions on Russia and isolate it fully. Help Ukraine force Putin into failure and you will avert a larger war," Kuleba said on Twitter on Monday.
The situation around Mariupol remains a priority for the Ukrainian military-political leadership and diplomats, adviser to the head of the President's Office Oleksiy Arestovych has said.

"The most difficult situation is now in Mariupol, near Mariupol. There, the Russians are simply demolishing the city, erasing it from the face of the earth. Our military there have successes. Yesterday they made another attempt at an armored breakthrough of Mariupol, they took prisoners. More than 2,500 people have been killed there, according to official reports from the local authorities, as far as I understand. And this is a catastrophe that the world has not properly assessed. Now Ukraine's president made Mariupol, for the third day already, his top priority. Both the head of the President's Office, and the president, and all our diplomats are making great efforts: they are making everyone aware of the catastrophe - everyone, including churches, and international organizations, and leaders of the leading countries of the world," Arestovych said on TV telethon on Monday.

He also said that the humanitarian convoy for Mariupol scheduled for Sunday could not be delivered.

At the same time, about 50 units of Russian equipment, which were part of a convoy of 200 units, were destroyed in the Melitopol area.

"According to preliminary data, verified, more than 50 pieces of equipment were destroyed. Not 200, as first reported  the convoy itself was 200. And when we looked at how much was destroyed  about a quarter, 50. But this is actually a lot," Arestovych said.

He also said that the next round of talks, scheduled for Monday, will be held in video format.
The situation around Mariupol remains a priority for the Ukrainian military-political leadership and diplomats, Adviser to the head of the President's Office Oleksiy Arestovych has said.

"The most difficult situation is now in Mariupol, near Mariupol. There, the Russians are simply demolishing the city from the face of the earth. Our military there have success, yesterday they made another attempt to break through the armored Mariupol, recruited prisoners. But the question is that for this the Russians simply demolish the city from the face of the earth. Over 2,500 killed, this is according to official reports from the local authorities, as far as I understand. And this is a disaster that the world has not properly appreciated. Now the President of Ukraine has designated Mariupol as topic number one for himself, for the third day already. Both the head of the office, and the president, and all our diplomacy are making great efforts: they raised everyone, both churches, and international organizations, and other leaders of the leading countries of the world," Arestovych said on the air of the telethon on Monday.

He also said the humanitarian convoy for Mariupol scheduled for Sunday could not be delivered.

However, about 50 units of Russian equipment, which were part of a convoy of 200 units, were destroyed in Melitopol area.

"According to preliminary data, verified, more than 50 pieces of equipment were destroyed. Not 200, as they first reported the column itself was 200. And when they looked at how many were destroyed, about a quarter, some 50. But this is actually a lot," Arestovych said.

He also said that next round of talks, scheduled for Monday, will be held in video format.
Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine Iryna Vereschuk has said that Russian prisoners of war will be exchanged or they will be punished in Ukraine.

"We are not barbarians and not a horde, like the Russian army. We will work as defined by international humanitarian law. And we will definitely form an exchange fund. Russian prisoners of war will be exchanged, or they will be punished in Ukraine," the press service of the ministry quoted Vereschuk as saying.

She said that the necessary regulatory and legal framework has already been streamlined in the field of treatment of prisoners of war in Ukraine, a procedure has been developed, a Coordination Headquarters has been created and executive secretaries have been identified.

At the same time, the deputy prime minister said that the Russian authorities do not care too much about the fate of their dead and wounded soldiers.

"Consequently, in such a situation it is difficult to predict how much the Russian side will be interested in those of its soldiers and officers who find themselves behind bars with us. As well as the format in which there can be an exchange of prisoners. And in general  what will be the attitude of Russia to this problem, which already has a serious scale," she said.

Vereschuk said that a prisoner-of-war exchange system is currently operating, in which the International Committee of the Red Cross is involved.

"Special cards are filled out for each of the prisoners, they are sent to the Red Cross. I have already seen the lists, and I am amazed by the years of birth of children whom the Russian Federation sent to war: 2002, 2003. I am shocked. After all, they used to say that this is a professional army of Russia, but actually children are fighting," she added.

As reported, Vereschuk headed the Coordinating Headquarters for the treatment of prisoners of war.
Israel has taken on the difficult but noble mission of mediating in the search for peace and ending Russian aggression against Ukraine, Head of the President's Office Andriy Yermak said on Facebook on Monday.

"We are also conducting an intensive dialogue with Israel regarding its participation in the humanitarian component. In constant contact with National Security Advisor Dr. Eyal Hulata. We have already achieved the first results: as part of the evacuation, Israel will start to let in relatives of Ukrainians who are already in this country. I thank my colleagues and hope for the success of our common diplomatic efforts," he said.
The Water & Effluent Treatment (WET) business of L&T Construction has secured a significant contract in the UAE.

The international arm of the business has been awarded the project by a prestigious client for the supply, installation, testing, and commissioning of water distribution network and large meter connections in Dubai, the company said.

The scope includes water distribution networks of 137 km GRE pipelines, micro tunnelling works, SCADA and associated civil, mechanical and electrical works.

This project adds another customer to the companys clientele signifying the expansion of the WET business in the Middle East, it said.

Further, the Gujarat Water Infrastructure Limited (GWIL) has placed engineering, procurement and construction orders for the design and construction of the Dhanki - Navda Bulk Pipeline project that aims to enhance water supply capacity to meet the future demands of Amreli, Junagadh, Botad and Rajkot districts of Gujarat. The scope includes design and construction of 99 km bulk transmission MS pipeline, 10.5 ML RCC raw water sump and pumphouse and associated electromechanical and instrumentation works. The business is also executing another bulk pipeline project at the same location for GWIL.

Larsen & Toubro is an Indian multinational engaged in EPC projects, hi-tech manufacturing and services. It operates in over 50 countries worldwide. A Significant contract has a value between Rs1,000 crores and Rs2,500 crores ($130 million to $ 326.59 million), the company said.
The Ukrainian delegation's positions before the fourth round of negotiations with Russian representatives on Monday remain unchanged, and Kyiv will demand above all a ceasefire and the withdrawal of all Russian forces from Ukrainian territory, Mykhailo Podoliak, advisor to the Ukrainian presidential office chief, said on Monday.

"The fourth round of negotiations with the Russian delegation is to begin literally within a few minutes. We will finally try to prove to them that the 19th day of the war is the 19th day of the great feat of Ukraine," Podoliak said in a video address.

"Our positions are unchanged: peace, an immediate ceasefire, and the withdrawal of all Russian troops. Only then will we be able to talk about any neighborly relations and political settlements," Podoliak said.

The adviser to the head of the President's Office also said that Ukraine would definitely win. "You cannot even doubt it," Podoliak said.
Some 1.758 million people from Ukraine crossed the border of Poland after the start of Russian aggression, the Chancellery of the Prime Minister of Poland said.

"Some 1.758 million people fleeing Ukraine have crossed the Polish border since the beginning of Russia's aggression against this country. Some 82,100 people were cleared by Polish Border Guard officers yesterday," the Chancellery of the Prime Minister of Poland said on Twitter on Monday.
The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation is conducting a special operation on the territory of Belarus to dress Belarusian servicemen in the military uniform of the Russian Federation for their invasion of Ukraine, Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council Oleksiy Danilov has said.

"Today, a special operation is being developed on the territory of Belarus by the Russian Federation. Today they have a great desire to put on the Belarusian military in Russian military uniforms. Some Belarusians are refusing to fight against our country. Today, Belarusians are being persuaded to change into Russian uniforms and enter our territory dressed as Russian soldiers," Danilov said during the telethon on Sunday.

According to him, Ukraine is fully prepared for such a scenario.

"But I warn you: if we find Belarusians here, they will receive the same rebuff that Russians and Chechens have today," he said.
As result of airstrike by occupiers in Buchansky district, two private houses, store destroyed  police

As a result of an air strike by Russian troops on the village of Komarivka in Buchansky district of Kyiv region, two private houses and a store were destroyed, information about the killed and injured is being clarified, the police of Kyiv region said.

"Today, March 14, at 04:40, Russian troops launched an airstrike on the village of Komarivka in Buchansky district. As a result of the shelling, two private houses and a store were destroyed. Information about the killed and injured is being specified," the regional police said on its Facebook page.

The police also said the police record the consequences of the explosion.
Russian troops continue to use artillery, tanks, grenade launchers and mortars to destroy residential buildings in Zaporizhia region, the regional state administration reported.

"The enemy is trying to gain a foothold on the borders of temporarily occupied territories, but the military and residents of Zaporizhia region do not allow the enemy to realize such plans. So, in one of the areas of warfare, an enemy mortar crew and accumulations of equipment were found, on which an artillery strike was inflicted - probably, in addition to enemy equipment, our military hit the enemy's ammunition," the message on the regional state administration Facebook page says.

It is noted that the enemy continues to use artillery, tanks, grenade launchers and mortars to destroy residential buildings, and also uses civilian infrastructure for military needs and leaves no plans for an offensive operation in Zaporizhia direction.

It is also noted that the humanitarian convoy at the Berdiansk-Mariupol section returned to Berdiansk again.

"Today, Mariupol remains completely blocked both for evacuation and for humanitarian cargo. And the occupiers again do not allow the delivery of medicines, food and other things to Mariupol, which is now urgently needed for residents of the city. I note that this is not the first time when the occupiers not only disrupt the evacuation through the 'green' corridor, but also prevent the delivery of humanitarian goods," Zaporizhia Regional State Administration reported.

The information emphasizes that in the temporarily occupied Melitopol, the Russian military warn local population from a loudspeaker about the ban on rallies, "because people go to protest for free Ukraine."
The equipment of the television tower in the village of Antopil, Rivne region, which was hit by an airstrike on Monday morning, is currently disabled, experts are looking into the damage, the Service for Special Communication and Information Protection of Ukraine said on its Telegram channel on Monday.

"On-air digital broadcasting is temporarily unavailable. The concern's specialists are already investigating the situation and are doing everything possible to resume the broadcasting of Ukrainian television channels," the Special Communications Service said in a statement.

At the same time, the service said that in addition to broadcasting, you can get free access to Ukrainian television channels on satellite, on Youtube, OTT services, as well as on Diia.
In Kyiv region, Russian troops launched a missile attack on a television and radio repeater in the village of Vinarovka, Stavischensky territorial community, Head of the regional military administration Oleksiy Kuleba has said.

"Today, at about 8:45 am, the occupiers launched a missile attack on a television and radio repeater in the village of Vynarivka, Stavyschenska merged territorial community. The building of the service center was damaged. There were no casualties among the civilian population," Kuleba said in the Telegram channel.
MPs propose to extend law on legal regime in temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine to territories occupied by Russia after Feb 24

MPs propose extending the law on legal regime in the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine to the territories occupied by the Russian Federation as a result of the military aggression launched on February 24.

The corresponding draft law No. 7157 On Ensuring the Rights and Freedoms of Citizens and the Legal Regime in the Temporarily Occupied Territory of Ukraine due to military aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine was registered in the Verkhovna Rada by a group of MPs on Sunday, the parliament's website reports.

The bill, in particular, proposes to amend the law On Ensuring the Rights and Freedoms of Citizens and the Legal Regime in the Temporarily Occupied Territory of Ukraine.

The document provides that the decision to recognize the temporarily occupied territories is made by the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, and put into effect by the President of Ukraine.

According to the bill, under martial law, the legal regime of the temporarily occupied territory is determined, changed and canceled by the decision of the National Security and Defense Council and put into effect by a presidential decree.

MPs propose to introduce a new article into the law, according to which the elections of deputies of the Verkhovna Rada of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, deputies of local councils, village, settlement, city heads, local and any other referendums held in the temporarily occupied territory, including with the assistance or participation of state bodies and bodies of local self-government, formed in accordance with the Constitution and laws of Ukraine, are invalid and have no legal consequences.

As reported, the law On Ensuring the Rights and Freedoms of Citizens and the Legal Regime in the Temporarily Occupied Territory of Ukraine applied only to the temporarily occupied by Russia Crimea and certain areas of Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
Some 15 settlements in Donetsk region are under shelling by Russian troops, victims being specified  National Police

As of Monday, March 14, some 15 settlements in Donetsk region are under shelling by Russian troops, information about the killed and injured is being specified, the National Police of Ukraine said.

"The operational report of the police of Donetsk region on March 14, 2022. Under the shelling of the Russians were 15 settlements, namely Mariupol, Avdiyivka, Vuhledar, Volnovakha, Maryinka, Krasnohorivka, Kramatorsk, Druzhkivka, Andriyivka, Sviatohorsk, Kamianka, Pavlivka, Zaitseve, Ivanivka, Verkhniotoretske. As a result of the strikes of the Russian troops, there are killed and wounded," the National Police said in the Telegram channel.

The report states that at least 37 facilities have been damaged, most of which are residential houses of civilians. Information about the victims is specified.

"The occupiers fired at Avdiyivka, damaging a coking plant, residential buildings, a school, a gas pipeline. Kramatorsk received a missile attack, according to preliminary information, there are people killed. There is information from Mariupol about constant air raids. People cannot leave the bomb shelters, they are in an extremely critical condition," the National Police said.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has reproached Germany for the fact that its policies helped build the current government in Russia, ZDF has reported.

"I'm sorry to say this: you really helped build the current government in Russia. And we hope that you too will do a lot to stop the Russian war machine," Kuleba said on the ARD TV talk show on Sunday evening.

The minister said that Ukraine needs all the weapons necessary for self-defense.

"I don't think it's fair that in the past few years Germany has had large-scale defense cooperation with Russia," Kuleba said.

The foreign minister also called for tougher punitive measures against Russia. Kuleba noted Germany for some difficult decisions in the early days of the war, but added that when he hears from his colleagues in the European Union why certain sanctions have not yet been introduced, he always receives the same answer.

"They always say: it's because of Germany," Kuleba said.

The minister also said that Ukraine should become a member of the European Union. According to him, this will be impossible in the blink of an eye.

"But we expect the German government to also support this decision, because Ukraine is part of Europe, and Europe will be safer with Ukraine," the Ukrainian foreign minister said.
Dubais Drydocks World, Petrofac and TenneT have completed the Alpha and Beta topsides of Hollandse Kust Zuid (HKZ) project that will produce renewable electricity in 2023 to cover the annual needs of over two million Dutch households.

The HKZ grid connection will connect the offshore wind farm with the Dutch mainland. The Beta topside, the second of two High Voltage Alternating Current (HVAC) offshore transformer station topsides, successfully sailed away from Drydocks World Dubai's fabrication yard to the Netherlands on February 18 2022, following the Alpha topside in November 2021.

The Drydocks World is committed to supporting its customers through the energy transition and beyond, with collaborative projects such as the HKZ grid connection exemplifying its involvement in the shift to a greener world.

The offshore wind farm will cover an area of 235.8 sq km and be made up of four 350 MW offshore wind farms, which will be connected to two 700 MW offshore substations: the already installed HKZ Alpha topside and the recently delivered HKZ Beta topside.

Capt Rado Antolovic PhD, CEO Drydocks World was joined by Elie Lahoud, Petrofac and Marco Kuijpers, TenneT at Expo 2020 in the DP World Pavilion, on March 14 to celebrate the sail away of both topsides.

The collaboration across companies demonstrates how working together  across borders and industries  is essential to make the energy transition possible and showcases the commitment of Drydocks World, Petrofac and TenneT.

Capt Antolovic said: At Drydocks World, we are committed to supporting our customers and industry with innovative low carbon and net zero solutions to energy production. As such, completing our part in the HKZ Alpha and Beta topside project is a major milestone for us and we are looking forward to working on similar projects which will help create a better and more environmentally conscious future. We look forward to seeing the installation of both platforms in Holland.

Lahoud, Chief Operating Officer Engineering & Construction at Petrofac, said: We are proud and happy to have reached such a significant milestone on this important project, working with our partners to help our client TenneT and the Dutch government increase wind energy production capacity offshore of the Netherlands. We look forward to our installation of the second topside, together with the final completion and commissioning work, and scheduled handover of the project later this year."

Marco Kuijpers, Director Large Project Offshore at TenneT said: With the completion of the Beta topside, the offshore grid that TenneT is building in the North Sea is starting to take shape. Hollandse Kust Zuid is the first connection of an offshore wind farm to the Maasvlakte. Wind energy plays a crucial role in the energy transition, also in industry, and I am proud that TenneT - together with Petrofac and Drydocks World - can contribute to a sustainable future in this way."

The HKZ Alpha and Beta topside project is an end-to-end collaboration between Drydocks World, Petrofac and TenneT, committed to producing greener energy.

Petrofac awarded the contract to Drydocks World to complete fabrication, commissioning and load out for two topsides, Alpha and Beta, including the Engineering, Procurement and Construction scope of HVAC systems.

Mammoet, a heavy lift and transport specialist was commissioned to perform the weighing, transport and the load-out of the almost 4.000 tonnes topsides onto a specialised transport vessel. Petrofac is responsible for the complete Engineering, Procurement, Construction and offshore installation of the Alpha and Beta platforms, for client TenneT, a European grid operator.-- TradeArabia News Service
The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration says that the majority of Europeans support Ukraine's entry into the European Union.

In particular, in the press service of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration, with reference to a sociological survey of the French Institute of Public Opinion, it was stated that in Poland 91% of respondents support Ukraine's accession to the EU, in Italy - 71%, in Germany - 69%, in France - 62%.

Among other results: 84% of Europeans have a positive view of Ukraine; some 75% positively assess Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky; some 79% approve economic and financial sanctions against Russia; a total of 67% approve the supply of military equipment to Ukraine; some 87% approve of accepting refugees; a total of 68% are in favor of creating a European army.
Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili, in her annual report on the situation in the country in the parliament on Monday, asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to return the Ukrainian ambassador to Tbilisi.

"In my annual report in the parliament last year, I asked the Georgian government to return our ambassador to Kyiv, and today I am asking my colleague and friend Volodymyr Zelensky from this tribune to return the ambassador to Tbilisi to strengthen the connection between our peoples in these difficult minutes," Zourabichvili said.

"Only Russia stands to gain" from any disagreement between Georgia and Ukraine, she said.

"I will not go back to the issue of the pardoning of Saakashvili as I have already given an answer once, she said.

Zourabichvili said that using the events in Ukraine to revive this issue "only means deepening polarization in our society."

"Any attempt to cause any disagreement between us and Ukraine is unacceptable, and I will not let that happen," she said.

Zourabichvili pointed out the positions of the Georgian government and opposition towards Ukraine and assistance to it.

"The ruling majority, instead of seeking accord in society, is calling the opposition a traitor or a party of war. The opposition, for its part, unequivocally declares any statement or decision of the authorities pro-Russian, instead of looking for ways to achieve accord. Both these approaches are totally unacceptable, both inside the country and outside it, and they are to a certain extent dangerous," Zourabichvili said.

She called on the ruling majority and opposition to consolidate on issues relating to Georgia's accession to the European Union and "unconditional" support of Ukraine.

Immediately after the events in Ukraine, President Zelensky recalled the ambassador from Tbilisi for consultations over the statements by the Georgian government that Georgia would not join the international sanctions against Russia, and also over the fact that the Georgian government was obstructing the sending of Georgian volunteers to Ukraine.

In spring 2021, Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili recalled the ambassador from Kyiv for consultations over the Ukrainian authorities' support of former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, who is on the wanted list for crimes in Georgia.
Russian forces are suffering losses in the Melitopol-Vasylivka direction (Zaporizhia region), Zaporizhia Regional Military Administration has reported.

The Armed Forces of Ukraine are confronting Russian troops, who continue attacking in this direction.

An AFU missile forces unit continues attacking enemy units in the front and in the rear.

The invaders are suffering losses in the direction of Melitopol - Vasylivka. Devastating blows were inflicted on the rear structure - enemy field bases and warehouses, in order to destroy logistics in the occupied territories.

The Zaporizhia Regional Military Administration is currently calculating enemy losses. At least 50 pieces of enemy military equipment have been lost.
The Center for Strategic Communications and Information Security under the Ministry of Culture announces yet another confirmation that the Russian army is preparing a chemical attack against Ukraine.

"The presence of chemical specialists was discovered in the occupation contingent of the Russian Federation. So, four days ago, as a result of a battle with Russian troops near the settlement of Staromlynivka (south of Velyka Novosilka, Donetsk region), a large number of invaders were destroyed," the report says.

It clarifies that among the received documents of the Russian military, certificates of an officer of the Russian Armed Forces with a narrow-profile specialization named Aftaev Aleksandr Viktorovich were found.

"According to the documents, before his death in Ukraine, Aftaev served in military unit 21222 - and this is the Federal Office for the Safe Storage and Destruction of Chemical Weapons in the city of Penza. And before serving in the army, he graduated from the Saratov Military Institute of Biological and Chemical Safety. Thus, the documents received may indicate that Russia is preparing a terrorist attack against Ukraine to use chemical weapons," the Center said.
During talks with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky discussed countering Russian aggression, the work of humanitarian corridors, in particular, in Mariupol, and Ukraine's path to EU membership.

"I held talks with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis. I reported on the course of countering Russian aggression. We appreciate defense, humanitarian support of Greece. I stressed the need to ensure the work of humanitarian corridors, especially in Mariupol. Also Ukraine's movement towards EU membership was discussed," Zelensky wrote on Twitter.
Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba had a telephone conversation with the head of Swedish diplomacy Ann Linde, during which the parties discussed the possibility of imposing new sanctions against the Russian Federation.

"Call with my Swedish counterpart Ann Linde on the need to impose new and heavy economic sanctions on Russia. We must hinder the ability of the Russian war machine to commit further war crimes and kill more Ukrainians. I also emphasized the need to speed up Ukraine's EU accession," Kuleba wrote on Twitter on Monday.
On March 14, the third batch of humanitarian aid to Ukraine from the Chinese Red Cross Society will be shipped from Poland, and on March 15 it will be delivered to Lviv, the Chinese Embassy in Ukraine told Interfax-Ukraine.

Earlier, the first and second batches of humanitarian aid from China were transferred to Ukraine in transit through Romania and Hungary, respectively.

In addition, given the lack of food for residents of some regions of Ukraine, recently Chinese enterprises that have been operating in Ukraine for many years began to use their canteens and equipment for making bread and processing buckwheat. Food products are sold at cost to local residents who come and go shopping in droves, the embassy said.
Almost half of the renewable energy facilities worth over $5.6 billion and with a capacity of almost 4 GW are in the area of active hostilities, the Ukrainian Association of Renewable Energy (UARE) said.

"Some 47% of the installed capacity of renewable energy power plants is located in the regions where active hostilities are taking place. Total investments in the Ukrainian RES sector over the last ten years amount to $12 billion according to the Ukrainian Renewable Energy Association. As a result of the Russian military invasion, assets worth more than $5.6 billion in capital investment are currently in active hostilities regions," the association said in the press release.

In addition, according to its calculations, more than $ 3.6 billion in capital investment is in the regions adjacent to the areas where active hostilities are taking place.

"Accordingly, more than 3,970 MW of RES capacities are in areas of imminent threat of complete or partial destruction," the association said, adding that by the beginning of 2022, the installed capacity of renewable energy was 9.5 GW.

As noted in the association, some 89% of the wind farms capacity is located in areas where active hostilities are currently underway, another 9% are located in close proximity to regions with active hostilities. The vast majority of wind farms in Ukraine were built in the south of the country with the highest wind potential - Zaporizhia, Kherson, Mykolaiv, Odesa regions.

The association also said that 37% of ground, 35% of roof / facade solar power plants and almost half (48%) of biomass stations are also located in areas of active hostilities, 34%, 19% and 42% respectively - in neighboring areas with an extremely high probability of hostilities.

According to the association, the situation is slightly better with biogas stations and small hydropower plants: 29% of biogas plants 16% of small hydropower plants are located in areas of active hostilities.

"Some of RES stations have already been shut down - some of them due to equipment damage, others - because of electric transmission lines destruction. There are registered cases of destruction of wind turbines, solar panels, electrical equipment of RES stations, electric transmission lines, and electrical substations. Soldiers of the Russian occupation forces steal all the equipment from the stations, everything that can be stolen and taken away," the association said.

According to it, given the cost of capital investment, the cost of restoring generation capacity, transmission lines, equipment, compensation for health and lives of renewable energy workers in Ukraine, Ukrainian renewable energy sector will demand compensation from Russian invaders in international courts.

"Damage caused by the Russian occupiers to all Ukrainian and international businesses on the territory of Ukraine must be compensated through international litigation," the association said.
The British fintech startup Revolut is becoming available to Ukrainians in the EU from Monday, March 14, the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine announced on its Telegram channel.

"The company has simplified many of the requirements for creating an account, and also waived a number of fees for currency exchange and account replenishment, and provided the opportunity to access your money by linking the program to a Ukrainian bank account. Friends and relatives in Europe also will be able to quickly and safely transfer money," the Ministry of Digital Development said.

The ministry said that opening an e-money account in the EU usually requires proof of the right to reside in Europe. The company has simplified this requirement so that as many Ukrainians as possible can create an account to access their funds.

"In the Revolut mobile app, one gets a virtual bank card that is convenient to use anywhere in the world. One can pay from the card in the local currency of the country where you are, or withdraw the necessary cash. This is very convenient due to the low interest on currency conversion. Also other functions will also be available: instant money transfers between cards, spending analytics, money transfers abroad," the ministry said.

As reported, Revolut became a resident of Diia.City in February 2022 and announced plans to open more than 100 technical vacancies in Ukraine in 2022.
Ten wounded at during missile attack on Yavoriv training center in serious condition, no foreigners among them  Kozytsky

Ten people wounded in an air strike on the Yavoriv training center are in serious condition, Head of Lviv Regional Military Administration Maksym Kozytsky said today at a briefing.

"As of this morning, ten people are in serious condition," he said.

Answering a question from journalists, Kozytsky said that not a single foreign citizen was injured in the bombing.

As reported, on the morning of March 13, the Russian armed forces launched a missile attack on the Yavoriv training center in Lviv region. Kozytsky said more than 30 rockets were fired, 35 people died and 134 were injured and hospitalized.

On this fact, criminal proceedings have been opened over offenses provided for by Part 3 of Article 110 and Part 2 of Article 437 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (trespass against territorial integrity and inviolability of Ukraine and planning, preparation and waging of an aggressive war).
Bybit, a global leading cryptocurrency exchange, is supporting inaugural digital art chapter of Art Dubai 2022, a global platform for artistic expressions from the Middle East, at Madinat Jumeirah, Dubai.



After a three-year break, Art Dubai goes beyond the realms of physical art to empower creatives in the digital dimension in its 15th edition, its most ambitious and extensive to date.



Bybit has welcomed Sheikha Latifa bint Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum into the Bybit universe for its inaugural participation as Lead Partner of Art Dubai 2022.



Bybit is the Lead Partner of Art Dubai Digital, a new section of the iconic art fair to bridge between the rapidly-developing crypto-sphere and the international art market.



Bybit and Art Dubai meet at the intersection of digital art forms and human creativity amidst the paradigm shift of our times. Artists and creatives are no strangers to digital innovations and the blurring of boundaries between visions and realities, with roots in digital artistry going back to the 1980s. The global pandemic has accelerated the building of new worlds and the coming together of new artistic communities in the digital space.



The new Art Dubai Digital section brings to life art forms transcending conventional constraints. Showcasing 17 presentations from both traditional galleries and digitally native ones, the digital section gives a voice to emerging artists and market participants, many of whom are first-timers at an international art fair.



Art lovers looking to experience the art or support an artist can join the fair through the Bybit NFT Marketplace, now offering 15 artworks from the participating galleries of Art Dubai.



Art Dubai 2022 also presents Bybit Talks, a new addition to facilitate dialogues between the crypto space and the art world to make crypto, web3 digital practices and NFTs concepts and opportunities more accessible to the public.



Bybit's presence at Art Dubai 2022 includes a limited run of NFTs at the booth featuring artists and art collectives MIRL (Made in Real Life), Song Ting, Viia Yeon, Maruchef, Hyuck, S.R Innovation Lab, Oscar Oiwa, Yeo Huang Joo, Saule Dyussenbina, Ziyang Wu, Yasuo Nomura, Kevin Heisner and SIM_Moby.



The timely drive for digital art highlights the zeitgeist of a post-pandemic world of mixed realities. The Bybit NFT Marketplace provides an integrated one-stop destination for artists, creators and collectors, to create, and sell or trade on the Ethereum ERC-721 standard through their spot accounts  providing the tools of digital ownership to collectors of all knowledge and skill levels.



"Art Dubai's admirable work in elevating talent to the global stage, particularly with artists from underrepresented regions, echoes Bybit's endeavour to democratize next level trading for the broader public. NFTs are one of the new tools to reinvent and rewire the art market, and a new generation of artists and art patrons are drawn to a new parallel world that rewards authenticity and the imaginative minds," said Igneus Terrenus, Head of Communications at Bybit.



"There are two important legs in the projects. We have galleries from the physical world and galleries that only exist in the metaverse. And to complement these and help understand what they're going to be showcasing, we have one of the most exciting educational programs today, among them is Bybit Talks by Bybit, the sponsor of the digital section, and the Global Art Forum," said Pablo del Val, Artistic Director of Art Dubai at the opening address.



"In the last two years, the 3D world lost approximately half a dimension. At the same time, new multiple dimensions have been discovered online. We are now extensions of our devices and this changes everything. It's the kind of paradigm shift that civilization sees every few 100 years. We've been going through these changes arguably for the last 30 years and now in a more and more accelerated manner, evidenced in the mainstreaming of crypto, blockchain technologies and NFTs over just the last year, remarked Shumon Basar, Commissioner, Global Art Forum.



In the two and a half dimension, digital artifacts and crypto economies are as real or unreal as anything else. And there's such rapid growth in digital platforms, it's often difficult to keep track even for seasoned insiders. So the Bybit talks will explore the unknown past and the possible futures of NFT, how our ideas and experiences of media buy change with decentralized institutions, and what kind of values beyond merely the monetary is at stake with these new technologies.- TradeArabia News Service
The Prime Ministers of the Lublin Triangle countries (Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania) call on the Russian and Belarusian peoples to speak out decisively and demand from their governments to stop military aggression against Ukraine.

"Deplore in the strongest terms Russia's unprecedented, brutal, unprovoked military invasion against Ukraine. We consider this premeditated attack against a sovereign, peaceful and democratic state as a blatant violation of fundamental principles of international law," the prime ministers said in a joint declaration.

According to the statement, referring to the Resolution of the UN General Assembly, the sides: demand that Russia immediately cease all its military operations and unconditionally withdraw all its forces and military equipment from the entire territory of Ukraine and immediately and unconditionally cancel the decision on the status of certain regions of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions of Ukraine; condemn the indiscriminate use of Russian military force against the civilian population and civilian infrastructure, including schools, hospitals and residential buildings protected by international humanitarian law.

"We call upon international community to further increase pressure upon the Russian Federation, including through further expansion of strong, consistent and long-lasting sanctions policy and by massive practical support to Ukraine which has been fighting in self-defence," the prime ministers said in the joint declaration.

The sides also condemn reckless and extremely dangerous attacks by Russian troops on nuclear power plants and nuclear facilities in Ukraine, and call on international organizations, in particular the IAEA and the UN, to respond to Ukraine's demands and ensure the security of nuclear facilities in Ukraine, as well as to ensure the protection of humanitarian corridors for evacuation of the civilian population.

"Condemn the involvement of Belarus in this aggression against Ukraine and call on Minsk to abide by its international obligations. At the same time, we consider that future democratic Belarus has its place among friendly European nations and that the Lublin Triangle remains open to their representatives," the officials said.

The prime ministers also said Ukraine should be offered the status of a candidate country for joining the European Union.

"Poland and Lithuania express their joint, unwavering support to the democratically elected authorities of Ukraine and the people of Ukraine, who took up the arms in order to defend the sovereignty of their country and the values of the entire free world: liberty, democracy, respect of fundamental human rights as well as the human dignity," according to the declaration.

In addition, Ukraine, Poland and Lithuania are calling on their partners to take emergency action to coordinate the response to the growing humanitarian crisis at the European level.
EU has no evidence of Russia's request to China for help in war with Ukraine

The European Union (EU) has no evidence of the existence of a request from the Russian authorities to Beijing regarding the provision of military and economic assistance in the war with Ukraine.

At the moment, the EU can neither confirm nor deny any claims that Russia has requested Chinese assistance. The EU has no evidence that such a request was made, European Commission Spokesperson Nabila Massrali said at a briefing in Brussels on Monday, answering a question from journalists about possible EU action if China provides military or economic assistance to Russia.

According to her, the EU is in close contact with the United States "on all issues related to the war in Ukraine, including the position of China."

Earlier, CNN, citing two U.S. officials, reported that Russia had asked China for military assistance in Ukraine, including drones, as well as economic assistance for its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. According to one of the officials, the requests came after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The official declined to detail China's reaction, but indicated that the country had reacted.
Employers, in order to promptly attract new employees to perform work, as well as eliminate personnel shortages and labor shortages, can conclude fixed-term employment contracts with new employees for the period of martial law or the period of replacement of a temporarily absent employee, the Ministry of Economy said.

According to the explanation on its website, the reasons for concluding such contracts may be the actual absence of workers who, as a result of hostilities, were evacuated to another area, are on vacation, downtime, temporarily lost their ability to work, or whose fate is temporarily unknown.

The Ministry of Economy recalled that martial law in Ukraine was introduced by presidential decree No. 64 of February 24 from 5:30 on February 24, 2022 for a period of 30 days.
The European Commission is discussing how best to move forward with work on developing an opinion on Ukraine's request to grant Kyiv membership.

This was announced on Monday in Brussels by representative of the European Commission Ana Pisonero. She said that at the summit in Versailles, the leaders of the European Union approved the decision of the European Council to request an opinion. Pisonero said the European Commission understands the importance of this step for the people of Ukraine. It will move quickly with work on this opinion. To date, the commission have to think how best to do it. The absolute priority is to stop the Russian invasion and ensure that support is delivered to the people in Ukraine and to the refugees, according to her.

Journalists also raised the issue of the possibility of using the frozen assets of Russia to restore Ukraine. To this, representative of the European Commission, Eric Mamer expressed the opinion that this issue is premature. He said it is the middle of the war now. The destruction is increasing every day, the number of victims is also increasing every day. The priority is to support Ukraine and its people in resisting this takeover.
The National Bank of Ukraine has appealed to Himamauli Das, Acting Director of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), to initiate preventive investigations into tax residents and businesses controlled by Russian residents around the world in order to prevent the spread of international terrorism, the regulator's press service said on Saturday.

"Russia's war against Ukraine is accompanied by horrific terrorist acts that are killing Ukrainian civilians But until that happens, it is our duty to convince you to take preemptive measures to prevent the death toll among civilians from rising further," the press service of NBU Deputy Governor Serhiy Nikolaychuk said.

The NBU also urged FinCEN to warn banks and other financial institutions (based in the United States, the UK, Switzerland, the EU countries, etc.) that are servicing Russian capital about possible sanctions against them as potential accomplices in the financing of international terrorism.
About 400 Syrian mercenaries arrived in Russia with aim of subsequent engagement in war against Ukraine  AFU General Staff

Mercenary recruitment centers have been opened in Syria, where more than 1,000 people have been recruited in recent days, about 400 have already arrived in Russoa with the aim of subsequent engagement in the war against Ukraine, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said.

According to available information, camps have been set up near the Ukrainian border in Rostov (Russia) and Gomel (Belarus) regions for their accommodation and training. The Russian occupiers continue to accumulate reserves for waging war against Ukraine.

According to the General Staff operational information as of 12.00, the Russian occupation troops continue the offensive operation against Ukraine, however, the enemy has not completed the main tasks of defeating the Armed Forces of Ukraine, reaching the administrative borders of Donetsk and Luhansk regions and establishing control over the left-bank part of Ukraine.

In Mykolaiv and Kryvy Rih directions, the occupation troops were stopped.

The enemy continues to bomber aviation, using ammunition of great power and indiscriminate action against the civilian population.

In Volyn direction, the enemy continues measures to strengthen the protection of the Ukrainian-Belarusian border, conducts aerial reconnaissance of individual sections of the terrain along the border.

In Polissia direction, the Russian occupying troops are not abandoning their attempts to overcome the barrier line along the Irpin River and gain a foothold in the area of the settlements of Bucha and Irpin. They are trying to organize the conduct of defensive operations. Subversive and reconnaissance groups are being trained to act under the guise of military personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

In Siversky direction, the enemy is regrouping with the aim of resuming an offensive attempt in the direction of Kyiv.

In Slobozhansky direction, the enemy is concentrating its main efforts on restoring the losses received as a result of a decisive rebuff near the city of Kharkiv and a counterattack by the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Izyum region.

In Donetsk and Tavriysky directions, the enemy continues to conduct active hostilities. Due to the numerical advantage in certain areas, it has a partial success.

In Pivdennobuzky direction, the enemy is trying to continue the offensive in the direction of Kryvy Rih. It entrenched on the achieved lines, regroups troops and replenishes supplies. Does not leave attempts to cordon off Mykolaiv.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky promised in the evening to talk about the results of negotiations with Russia, the next round of which is taking place on Monday.

"The video meeting of the delegations has already started today. It continues. Everyone is waiting for news. We will definitely report back in the evening," he said in a video statement and on Monday afternoon.

At the same time, he called on the Ukrainians to "hold on, fight to win." "To come to the peace deserved by Ukrainians. Unbiased peace. With security guarantees for our state, our people. And to put it on paper in negotiations, complex negotiations," he said.

Zelensky said "the Russian state has been preparing for war for decades. They have accumulated a significant military resource for the sake of evil, for the sake of conquering their neighbors. And for the sake of destroying Ukraine, Europe as we know it, which we value."
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky, addressing fellow citizens on Volunteer Day, said that today all Ukrainians are volunteers.

"Today we are essentially celebrating our Ukrainian holiday, Volunteer Day. It is our ability to instantly unite during trials, find a common language, fight together, create our character. Ukrainian character. We cannot notice each other in ordinary life. Agree, this is with us happens and happened. But when we see a threat to our life, our spirit, when we see a threat to Ukraine, our state, we do not hesitate for a minute if we are Ukrainians. We unite, we do everything to protect our own," Zelensky said in a video statement on Monday.

As the president said, Ukrainians do not need to be convinced to become volunteers, they do not need to be encouraged to start helping one by one.

"Ukraine for us is not just a territory, as for the occupiers. They do not distinguish anything here, they do not understand anything. That is why everything is just a target for them. Ukraine for us is millions of happy moments, native symbols, memorable places. We feel this land. Ukraine for us is our life, and therefore millions of people stood up to defend our state today. Therefore, today we are all volunteers. Everyone who protects Ukraine, our children, who protects our future. Everyone who feels this free call. A call to defend Ukraine..." he said.

Zelensky also said all those involved in the defense of the state, in particular, the military, journalists, representatives of territorial defense and business, diplomats, technicians, food and humanitarian aid suppliers, doctors, drivers, rescuers, and others.

"I am grateful to everyone. And I sincerely congratulate you. To each of the volunteers. To all who work together for victory," the head of state said, adding that it was the people's strong support for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the sincere volunteer movement, the mass entry of citizens into territorial defense and the solidarity of all Ukrainians is the basis for the victory and liberation of the country.
Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba called on a number of large companies to leave the Russian market, and governments and consumers to boycott them.

"At the same time, there are a number of large companies that have not yet left Russia. These are Leroy Merlin, Metro, Auchan, and Spar retail chains, Pirelli and Bridgestone Tyre auto products, Accor and Intercontinental Hotel hotels, Otis Worldwide, Honeywell, Mohawk Industries, Arconic in mechanical engineering, Oriflame, Kimberly-Clark, Koti Retail, Ecco, Salvatore Ferragamo, Philip Morris in cosmetics and related products, in the food industry  these are restaurants PapaJohn's and Kellogg's, medicine  Bayer, banks  Raiffeisen, OTP Bank, Citigroup, Societe Generale, UniCredit, Intesa Sanpaolo. I once again urge them to leave the Russian market as quickly as possible, and the rest of the governments and consumers to boycott these companies until they stop working in Russia," Kuleba said at an online briefing on Monday.

The minister added that as of Monday morning, 209 companies had completely withdrawn from the Russian market and ceased interaction with Russian partners, and 378 had partially limited their work.

"We are not happy with this, we know these companies, we know their maneuvers and tricks, their attempts to stay in the Russian market in one form or another, and we will squeeze them out," Kuleba stressed.
Germany takes a low-key position on disconnecting new Russian banks from SWIFT and abandoning Russian energy carriers, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has said.

"The issues in which we see Germany's restrained position are: firstly, the disconnection of new Russian banks, primarily Sberbank, from the SWIFT payment system, and secondly, these are energy supplies to Germany. There is an objective problem there, indeed from the point of view of Germany's dependence on Russian energy resources. But it can also find a solution if there is political will to do this," Kuleba said at an online briefing on Monday, answering a question from Interfax-Ukraine.

The minister said that just as Russia continues to inflict new strikes on the territory of Ukraine with missiles, hailstones, the EU, including Germany, should not stop on the issue of applying sanctions against Russia.

"Germany played an important role in the application of the first EU sanctions packages and in the fact that Nord Stream 2 was stopped. We are grateful for this, and we respect Germany's contribution to the fight against the Russian aggressor. But the war continues, and more and more painful strikes have to be carried out against Russia. Just as Russia continues to inflict new strikes on the territory of Ukraine with missiles, hailstones, the EU, including Germany, should not stop," Kuleba said.


More than 6000 kids from underprivileged families are benefiting from schools run by Mamoom Akhtar in West Bengal.

Partho Burman | TwoCircles.net

Support TwoCircles



KOLKATA  It was the summer of 2001. Mamoon Akhtar, a slum dweller from Tikiapara, was returning home during the afternoon when a child named Ahmed, aged 7, ran up to him and pleaded with him to free his mother from a man who was forcing his mother to sell narcotics, something she despised. With the assistance of the police, he intervened to resolve the conflict. Before leaving, Akhtar inquired about Ahmeds activities. Sir, I want to learn, the boy replied.

His response moved Akhtar. He recalled an incident from his school days when he was asked to leave his school for not paying his fees.Despite his traumatic childhood, Akhtar was able to finish high school.

Akhtar invited Ahmed to study at his home. He handed the young Ahmed a pencil and a notebook. On the second day, Ahmed returned with three children. On the third day, he arrived with four more.

This sparked hope in Akhtar. He asked his mother for permission to set up an informal school in a 300-square-foot room at his home and she agreed. He cleaned the room and bought a polythene sheet for the kids to sit on. In addition, I set up a blackboard. Thats how it all started back in 2001. How a small street encounter transformed my life, Akhtar told TwoCircles.net.

To ensure that no child is denied an education due to a lack of funds, he founded Samaritan Help Mission (SHM) in 2001, where he started providing quality education to children from economically disadvantaged families in Tikiapara, Howrah district, a neighbourhood where 80 per cent of the population is Muslim. Children, who previously did not attend school, are doing so now.

Mamoon did not have a stable source of livelihood at the time, but he wanted to make sure he didnt disappoint the children. He continued to conduct classes and began collecting newspapers and old books from his neighborhood. He sold them to raise funds for the slum pupils stationery. He invited several of the communitys college-going girls to join him in the classroom. He made them an offer of Rs 100 every month. He also requested his students to make a monthly contribution of Rs 5 for their education. They may bring in newspapers and old books instead of Rs 5 if they couldnt afford it, he told them.

I didnt want the kids to believe they were destitute, so they are getting help. They needed to believe that their education was earned and that they deserved it. So, whether its Rs 1 or Rs 5, I implore them to pay, he said.

The school was administered by the poor for the poor, Akhtar, who will turn 50 this year, said.

In 2003, he came across a newspaper cutting while taking a walk. It included a photograph of a woman with some children. She was Lee Alison Sibley, an actress, social crusader and the wife of the American Consulate General in Kolkata. He sent her a letter asking for assistance. She responded with gratitude but declined to provide any assistance. Mamoon thanked her with a second letter.

Lee Alison Sibley eventually supported the cause and gave Rs 10000. As a Muslim, I informed her that I dont work for just Muslims. I solely work for the benefit of humanity. Because I think that hunger and poverty have no religion, Mamoon recalled.

An article about her visit was published in a newspaper and Ramesh Kacholia, a Mumbai resident read it. He then sent his son to contribute Rs 11000 to him. For SHM, this was a watershed moment.

A co-educational English medium institution named Samaritan Mission School was founded in 2006. In 2008, the state of West Bengal granted it certification.

Akhtar told TwoCircles.net that many of the students at his school came from economically challenged backgrounds. Their fathers work as rickshaw pullers or daily labourers and some of them are in prison. But their children are receiving a good education and performing well. I may not be able to do so for the country, but I will do all in my power to eliminate illiteracy in Tikiapara, he said.

Three schools with 6500 students are now in operation. Samaritan Mission School High, Rebecca Belilious English Institution  a primary school and Samaritan Public School, which is located in Bankra, Howrah district, 10 kilometers from Tikiapara. Another school is coming up in the same complex at Bankra by January 2023. The total number of students is projected to reach 10,000. The exterior work on these schools has been completed.

Children receive education from nursery to grade 12. The medium of education is English, with Bengali as the secondary language. Howrah Municipal Corporation approached him to administer the inactive Tikiapara Municipal School based on his model of work. Akhtar took over the school in 2019, and in less than a year, it grew to 400 kids. It was once an Urdu-medium school, but it has since been transformed into an English-medium school.

Gradually, the social reformer broadened the scope of Samaritan Help Missions services to include health, sports, womens livelihood and elderly care. 600 households get rations and medication every month from SHM. He started a vocational training programme as a source of income for widowed and divorced women. Around 400 women are employed as dressmakers.

Mamoon is the only son among five siblings and comes from a poor family. His father worked as a competent fabricator in the iron industry, while his mother took care of the family. Married with four kids, three of whom are students at his school. I am a firm believer in the ideas of Prophet Mohammad and Swami Vivekananda. I read a lot about them, Mamoon concluded.



Partho Burman is an award-winning independent journalist based in Kolkata. He writes inspirational, motivational and environmental stories. He tweets at @ParthoBurman
Ukrainian information troops are working to inform Russian citizens about war crimes committed by their army in Ukraine.

So, on the website of the Children's Hospital of St. Petersburg and a number of others, materials from the Kharkiv Tribunal. Nuremberg 2022project about the crimes of the Russian army appeared on the main page. This information was posted on the project website.

When you try to go to the main page of the hospital, materials about the shelling of residential areas of cities and villages are displayed, because of which civilians died, including many children.

The Kharkiv Tribunal. Nuremberg 2022 website is also displayed when browsing a Russian travel site for searching and renting villas abroad.
More than 2,000 residents of the temporarily occupied by Russian forces town of Bilozerka in Kherson region took to the streets on Monday in protest against the invasion, the Information Resistance website said.

"A protest against the orcs started in Bilozerka near Kherson. More than 2,000 people took to the streets. They closed off a road and blocked the movement of a column of Russian [military] vehicles. The occupants responded with shooting off in the air," it said on Telegram.
A day later, more than 1,600 people were evacuated from Luhansk region from Severodonetsk, Rubizhne, Lysychansk, Popasna, Hirske and Kremenna along the humanitarian corridor, head of the Luhansk military-civilian regional administration Serhiy Haidai said.

"Today, more than 1,600 people have been rescued from the 'Russian world.' About 600 civilians from Severodonetsk, 480 from Rubizhne, 260 from Lysychansk, 130 from Popasna, 80 from Hirske and 82 people from Kremenna have been evacuated through the humanitarian corridor," he said on Telegram.

The convoy from Luhansk region will arrive in Sloviansk, where everyone will be provided with temporary shelter, necessary assistance and the subsequent opportunity to reach safer regions of Ukraine by rail.

On March 13, some 1,600 women, children and the elderly were also evacuated from Luhansk region along the humanitarian corridor.
Since the beginning of Russian aggression in Ukraine, WHO, through the Surveillance System for Attacks on Health Care (SSA), has recorded 31 attacks on the country's healthcare system, 12 people were killed, and 34 were injured.

According to the WHO website, as a result of these attacks, medical facilities were damaged or destroyed in 24 cases, and ambulances were damaged or destroyed in five cases. Access to basic health services and their affordability suffered.

"WHO is verifying further reports, as attacks continue to be reported despite the calls for protection of health care," the organization said on the website.

WHO emphasizes that attacks on doctors and health workers directly affect people's ability to access basic healthcare services, especially women, children and other vulnerable groups.

Since the beginning of the war, more than 4,300 births have taken place in Ukraine, and 80,000 women are expected to give birth in the next three months. Oxygen and medicines, including for treating pregnancy complications, are dangerously low.

"The health care system in Ukraine is clearly under significant strain, and its collapse would be a catastrophe. Every effort must be made to prevent this from happening," WHO says.

In addition, three organizations of the UN system  UNICEF, UNFPA and WHO  in a joint statement called on the Russian Federation to stop attacks on the Ukrainian healthcare system.

"We call for an immediate ceasefire, which includes unhindered access so that people in need can access humanitarian assistance," the organizations said.
Member of parliament Halyna Tretyakova (the Servant of the People faction), the head of the parliamentary committee on social policy, has proposed to deregulate certain conditions of labor relations for the period of martial law in order to quickly attract workers and eliminate personnel shortages and labor shortages.

She registered relevant bill No. 7160 on the organization of labor relations under martial law in the Verkhovna Rada on Monday.

According to it, employers are allowed to conclude fixed-term employment contracts with new employees for the period of martial law or for the period of replacement of a temporarily absent employee. The Ministry of Economy has already given such a recommendation on its website on Monday.

The bill also gives the employer the right to transfer an employee to another job not stipulated by the employment contract for the period of martial law without his consent (with the exception of transfer to work in another area where active hostilities continue).

In addition, the employer, if the document is accepted, will be able to terminate the employment contract with the employee in connection with the liquidation of the enterprise due to the destruction of all its production, organizational or technical capacities as a result of hostilities. The employee must be warned about such dismissal no later than 10 days with the payment of a severance pay in the amount of at least the average monthly salary.

In turn, the employee, in connection with the conduct of hostilities in the area of his work, can terminate the employment contract on his own initiative without a two-week warning period (with the exception of forced engagement in community service or at critical infrastructure facilities), the bill says.

The document allows for an increase in normal working hours during martial law up to 60 hours a week, and for employees with reduced working hours - up to 50 hours a week, the start and end time of daily work is determined by the employer.

"A five-day or six-day working week is set by the employer by decision of the military command together with the military administrations," one of the articles of the document also reads.

In addition, the duration of the weekly uninterrupted rest can be reduced to 24 hours.

Among other norms of the bill, the organization for the period of martial law of personnel records management and archival storage of personnel documents at the discretion of the employer, a number of restrictions on overtime work are removed, the use of the labor of women (except for pregnant women and with a child under one-year old) is allowed in heavy work and work with harmful or dangerous working conditions.

"If it is impossible to pay wages due to hostilities, the payment of wages may be suspended until the enterprise's ability to carry out its main activities is restored," one of the articles of the bill states.

The document also, if adopted, will allow stopping certain provisions of the collective agreement, refusing to provide an employee with any type of leave, except for maternity leave and parental leave, if such an employee is involved in performing work at facilities classified as critical infrastructure.

At the same time, during the period of martial law, the employer, at the request of the employee, may grant unpaid leave without restriction.

The bill also contains an article on the suspension of an employment contract - this is a temporary release of the employer from the obligation to provide the employee with work and the temporary dismissal of the employee from the obligation to perform work under the concluded labor contract, which does not entail the termination of labor relations.

"Reimbursement of wages, guarantee and compensation payments to employees in the event of suspension of the employment contract in full is assigned to the state carrying out military aggression," the bill says.
Australia and the Netherlands intend to seek compensation from the Russian Federation through the International Civil Aviation Organization in the case of the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in Donbas in the summer of 2014, which was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, The Guardian reported.

"The Russian Federation's refusal to take responsibility for its role in the downing of flight MH17 is unacceptable and the Australian government has always said that it will not exclude any legal options in our pursuit of justice," Australia's foreign minister Marise Payne said, who together with attorney general Michaelia Cash announced the launch of the legal action.

The amount of compensation that these countries will seek from Russia is not specified.
President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen briefed President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky about the fourth package of sanctions against Russia.

"Putin's war is becoming more brutal by the day. I just informed President Zelensky of the fourth package of sanctions. The EU is with the Ukrainian people. We support them with a EUR1.2 billion macro-financial assistance package and EUR500 million in humanitarian aid," she said on Twitter.
Russia is ahead of Iran and North Korea in the number of sanctions imposed against it, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has said.

"In general, against Russia, in punishment for the brutal violation of international law and Russian aggression against Ukraine, the world community has already introduced 3,612 restrictive measures in the 18 days since the invasion. Together with the restrictions that have been introduced since 2014, the total number of sanctions imposed against Russia is 6,366. At the moment, Russia is ahead of Iran and North Korea and has become the sanctioned world leader, the leader in the number of sanctions imposed against it," Kuleba said at the online briefing on Monday.

The Ukrainian Foreign Minister stressed that while Ukrainian children are dying from Russian air bombs, new sanctions should continue to be applied.

"We have a clear list of those sanctions that we still want to be applied, and we are following this list very clearly," Kuleba said.

The minister urged companies and governments to stop buying Russian oil, coal and gas.

"We also insist on closing world ports for Russian ships, refusing to process cargo that is sent to ports in the Russian Federation, disconnecting new Russian banks from the SWIFT system, primarily Sberbank of Russia," he said.
15-year-old boy killed in the shelling of kindergarten in Chuhuyiv, investigation launched - prosecutor's office

On March 14, Russian troops shelled a kindergarten in Chuhuyiv, Kharkiv region.

"A 15-year-old boy was killed by shell fragments. A number of private houses were also damaged," the press service of Kharkiv Regional Prosecutor's Office reports.

Investigators of the SBU in Kharkiv region, under the procedural leadership of the regional prosecutor's office, began a pretrial investigation into violations of the laws and customs of war, combined with premeditated murder (Part 2 of Article 438 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine).
Some 20 tonnes of humanitarian aid delivered to Balakleya, supplies to Izium fail due to fighting - Sinehubov

On March 14, it was possible to deliver humanitarian aid to Balakleya, Kharkiv region, Oleh Sinehubov, the head of the regional military administration, said.

"Finally, about 20 tonnes of humanitarian aid have been delivered to Balakleya. I want to thank all involved and the drivers directly, who carried aid under shelling," Sinehubov wrote in his Telegram channel.

At the same time, according to him, it was not possible to deliver humanitarian cargoes to Izium, since active hostilities are taking place there.

Sinehubov said that during the day the regional humanitarian headquarters unloaded six wagons and seven trucks of products, clothing, and medicines.

"Special thanks to our friends from the central and western regions of Ukraine, partners from abroad for their constant assistance," he said.

Humanitarian aid is distributed to the points of Ukrposhta, Nova Poshta and to the territorial communities of the region.
Yermak thanks Israel for decision not to circumvent sanctions against Russia

Head of the President's Office Andriy Yermak thanked Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid for a fair decision and a right position not to circumvent sanctions against the Russian Federation.

"Israel showed a clear understanding of the situation and commitment to the just cause. We are grateful to Yair Lapid for the fair decision and the right position," Yermak wrote on Twitter.

Earlier, Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said that "Israel will not become a route to bypass Western sanctions against Russia," The Times of Israel reported on Monday.

"Israel will not be a route to bypass sanctions imposed on Russia by the United States and other western countries," Lapid said on Monday.

He noted that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is coordinating on this issue with the Central Bank of Israel, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Economy and other structures.

Lapid also reiterated Israel's readiness to contribute to a peaceful resolution of the problem.

"Israel will do everything it can to assist mediation efforts, to stop the shooting and restore peace," the Foreign Minister said, adding that Israel is working together with the United States and European countries.
Ukraine calls on UN, Red Cross, OSCE to set up group of observers for work of humanitarian corridors

Ukraine has called on the UN, the International Committee of the Red Cross and the OSCE to create a group of observers for the work of humanitarian corridors, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration Olha Stefanishyna said.

"Ukraine has proposed to the UN, the International Committee of the Red Cross and the OSCE to create a special group of international observers who will monitor the security situation around the delivery of humanitarian aid to the affected regions of Ukraine on the terms of preliminary agreements reached with Russia," the official said.

Stefanishyna noted that the situation around humanitarian corridors still remains difficult due to constant shelling from Russia.

"Even the fact that the convoys are moving under the auspices of the Red Cross does not stop the Russian army from shelling. We once again call on international organizations to ensure monitoring of the situation, facilitation of dialogue with Russia and countering the manipulations and horrific propaganda of the Russian Federation," Stefanishyna stressed.
The Estonian Parliament called on the UN member states to close the sky over Ukraine from the Russian aggressor, Verkhovna Rada Chairman Ruslan Stefanchuk said.

"The Parliament of the Republic of Estonia [Riigikogu] adopted a decision calling on the UN member states to close the skies of Ukraine from the Russian aggressor. This is the first decision of the parliament of a country that is part of the EU and NATO," Stefanchuk wrote on Facebook on Monday.

He thanked the Estonian colleagues for this decision, "for their courage and devotion to Ukraine."

"This decision should become an example of determination for other parliaments of the world. After all, parliamentarians are representatives of the people. And the peoples of the world demand decisive action to establish peace and close the skies over Ukraine," the speaker of the parliament noted.
Nine people were killed and the same number were injured as a result of a missile attack by the occupying forces on a television tower in the village of Antopol near the city of Rivne on Monday morning, said head of Rivne Regional Military Administration, Vitaliy Koval.

"This morning in Rivne region, two missiles hit a television tower and an administrative building near it. As of 18:00, we we have ninr dead and nine injured. Work is actively continuing," Koval said at a briefing on Monday.
European cultural funds condemn the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, the Minister of Culture and Information Policy reports.

"European cultural funds condemn the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine. Among them are the European Cultural Foundation, the Danish Arts Foundation, the Romanian Cultural Foundation, the National Cultural Fund of Bulgaria," Tkachenko wrote in the Telegram channel.

In addition, the European Cultural Foundation, within the framework of the Cultural Solidarity program for Ukraine, launched support for initiatives in the following areas: countering disinformation and countering fakes; assistance to artists, cultural workers, social activists forced to leave Ukraine; developing artistic works and projects that counteract the brutal realities of war and support peaceful life in Ukraine and Europe.
The U.S. administration is studying the possibility of a trip by U.S. President Joe Biden to Europe in the coming weeks in connection with the situation in Ukraine due to the Russian invasion and further build-up of Russian military aggression, NBC TV channel reported on Monday, citing informed sources.

According to them, the trip has not yet been planned, and its probable duration is unknown.

It is noted that the President of the United States may visit Brussels.

Last week, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris paid a visit to Poland and Romania, the TV channel recalled.
The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), the Association of MBAs, the Business Graduates Association (BGA), and the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD) issued a joint statement to suspend any activity for accreditation of Russian institutions.

"We are deeply concerned about the rapid escalation of the humanitarian crisis that is the result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. We are committed to supporting our Ukrainian business schools, as well as staff, faculty and students as they defend their way of life and sovereignty," the press service of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine quotes the statement.
Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal expressed gratitude to all the western neighbors of the Ukrainian state, as well as Lithuania and other EU countries for the warm welcome and support of refugees from Ukraine.

"Grateful to Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Moldova, Lithuania and many other European countries for the support, hospitality, warm attitude and attention provided to Ukrainian women and children. It's urgent to stop the aggressor so that Ukrainians can return back home!" Shmyhal wrote on Twitter on Monday.
The United States, within the framework of new sanctions against Russia due to the war unleashed by Russia against Ukraine and the continued build-up of hostilities, does not exclude the possibility of a complete embargo on trade with Russia, CNBC reports, citing U.S. Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo.

Thus, Adeyemo said in an interview with the TV channel that the United States was still considering a complete trade embargo and blocking Russia's access to international waterways.

The official noted that the United States, among other things, is discussing a ban on the import of nickel, uranium and titanium from Russia, as well as a ban on the crypto assets of Russian structures.

Earlier it was reported that the EU, as part of a new package of sanctions against Russia, is considering the abolition of the most favored nation status for Russia, measures against the Russian elite, restrictions on access to crypto assets, as well as other restrictions.
The Ministry of Social Policy warns girls and women crossing the state border in connection with military operations in Ukraine about the danger of falling into a situation of human trafficking.

"The Ministry of Social Policy, together with the Government Commissioner for Gender Policy, initiated the development and distribution of leaflets for girls and women crossing the state border in connection with military operations on the territory of Ukraine in order to prevent human trafficking. The leaflets were developed with the support of the Support to Ukraine's Reforms for Governance (SURGe) project funded by the Government of Canada and implemented by Alinea International," according to the ministry's press service.

It is noted that the Ministry of Social Policy appealed to Zakarpattia, Lviv, Chernivtsi regional state administrations, as well as the Administration of the State Border Guard Service, with a request to distribute leaflets at checkpoints across the state border and control points.

The ministry also applied to the State Emergency Service of Ukraine with a request to include information on safety rules in the SMS mailing list in order to prevent human trafficking in war conditions.
Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov reported on the work on Ukraine's obtaining air and missile defense systems, emphasizing the priority of this task.

"Strengthening air and missile defense is now the main priority, we are working around the clock to get the appropriate assistance or acquire the necessary weapons. Frankly, this is not easy. After all, not everyone who makes the relevant decisions has the same fortitude as Ukrainian citizens," Reznikov wrote on Facebook on Monday.

According to him, the Ukrainian Air Forces, as well as army air defense units, have already destroyed 167 aircraft and helicopters of the occupying army, as well as dozens of missiles that the enemy tried to fire at the cities of Ukraine.
EU permanent reps agree another package of sanctions against Russia, it will be posted, enter into force soon - French permanent reps

The French Presidency of the EU Council announced that the Committee of Permanent Representatives of the EU countries in Brussels (COREPER) had agreed on another package of sanctions against Russia in connection with Russia's military aggression against Ukraine.

"The approval of COREPER II, in cooperation with our international partners, of the fourth package of sanctions, which targets individuals and legal entities involved in the aggression against Ukraine, as well as several sectors of the Russian economy," the French Presidency said on Twitter.

"These measures will come into force as soon as they are published in the Official Journal of the European Union," the statement said on Monday evening.

It also says that the permanent representatives approved a statement to the WTO about Russian aggression against Ukraine, regarding the suspension of the most favored nation clause in relation to Russia, and the suspension of consideration of Belarus' candidacy to the WTO.
A British journalist suffered a shrapnel fracture in both legs as a result of the fighting of the Russian occupation forces in Ukraine, said Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova.

"A fragment fracture of two lower limbs is a 'Russian world' diagnosis made by Ukrainian doctors to a British journalist. At the moment, the journalist is placed in intensive care under the supervision of doctors. The tragedy happened today two hours ago," wrote Venediktova.

She did not name the journalist, but published part of his accreditation card from the American corporation FOX NEWS.

Venediktova emphasized that the journalist was not at a military facility, performing an editorial assignment.
Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, 26 humanitarian corridors have been activated, thanks to which about 150,000 people have already been evacuated from the regions of active hostilities, Deputy Head of the President's Office Kyrylo Tymoshenko said.

"Humanitarian corridors that we make from cities where active hostilities are taking place ... This applies to Donetsk, Luhansk, Sumy, Kharkiv, Kyiv, Zaporizhia regions. For all the time we have launched 26 humanitarian corridors. Through them, first of all, by buses a lot of people were taken out. We can say that about 150,000 people," Tymoshenko said on the air of the telethon on Monday evening.

Regarding the situation with the delivery of humanitarian cargo to Mariupol, he said that at present the humanitarian convoy is 60 km from Mariupol, but the Russian troops do not let it through.

At the same time, according to Tymoshenko, a few hours ago, the Ukrainian side managed to resolve the issue of a small number of people leaving the city in their own cars.

"A small part was able to leave, and they are being accepted in Zaporizhia region," the official said.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who is making his first official visit to Turkey, discussed developments in Ukraine.

"We've discussed developments in the context of Ukraine and Russia, as well as bilateral relations with the friendly and allied Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, Olaf Scholz, who made his first official visit to our country. As two NATO allies, we have common views and concerns," Erdogan wrote on Twitter on Monday.

In turn, the German Chancellor noted that with each bomb, Russia is moving further and further away from the world community.

"I am meeting with the President of Turkey at a time when war is raging in Europe. With each bomb, Russia is moving further and further away from the world community. Hence our joint appeal to President Putin: Wait, the solution can only be diplomatic!" Scholz stressed on Twitter.
The number of refugees from Ukraine to Moldova is gradually declining, the head of the Emergency Situations inspectorate of the Interior Ministry of Moldova, Alexander Oprea, said.

"The number of refugees arriving on the territory of Moldova is gradually decreasing. According to the Border police, the flow of refugees to Moldova began to decline from March 8. At the same time, refugees continue to leave Moldova for the EU countries," he said.

He said that from March 8 to March 13, some 242 bus trips were made and more than 8,000 people were transported to the border with Romania. Over 4,000 people from Ukraine arrived in Romania by train, including a special trip for refugees organized by the Moldavian Railway.

Oprea added that special trips for refugees have been organized in recent days: several trips have been made to Istanbul, Frankfurt am Main, Tel Aviv. The sky over Moldova remains closed, flights are operated only by special order of the State of Emergency Commission.

"If as of March 8, some 128,759 refugees were staying in Moldova, then as of March 14, there were 102,836 people, of whom 48,405 were children. There are 96 authorized accommodation centers in Moldova, two special centers organized by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. More than 4,000 places for accommodation remain available," Oprea said.

In connection with the situation in Ukraine, the Moldovan parliament declared a state of emergency in the country for a period of 60 days, starting from February 24.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has discussed growing tensions surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh and the situation in Ukraine in a telephone call with his Canadian counterpart Justin Trudeau on Monday.

"The prime ministers of Armenia and Canada have discussed growing tensions surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh, and from the perspective of ensuring stability and peace in the region noted the importance of a comprehensive resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh issue as part of the co-chairmanship of the OSCE Minsk Group," the press service for the Armenian government said.

The parties exchanged views on the processes happening in the South Caucasus, including possibilities of delimitation and demarcation of the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan and the dialogue between Armenia and Turkey, it said.

"The current situation in Ukraine was addressed," the press service said.

Pashinyan also thanked Canada for its readiness to facilitate the development of democratic institutions in Armenia and said that the country will continue on the path of strengthening them.

Trudeau, for his part, expressed the Canadian government's readiness to continue facilitating the strengthening of democracy in Armenia and deepening bilateral ties in various sectors.
Ceremony held to commemorate Gac Ma battle martyrs

Hundreds of lanterns were burned and released into the sea in a ceremony held on Sunday evening in the central province of Ha Tinh to commemorate the Gac Ma battle martyrs.





War veterans, relatives, and local authorities released hundreds of lanterns into the Ha Tinh sea to commemorate 64 martyrs in a naval battle more than three decades ago to defend Gac Ma (Johnson Reef) of Vietnams Truong Sa (Spratly) archipelago.





This was an annual activity held following a Buddhist ritual to show respect for the dead and pray for peace.





The event also helps to remind and educate younger generations about the predecessors sacrifice and dedication to protect the sacred sovereignty over sea and islands of the Fatherland.





On March 14, 1988, China sent missile defense ships and soldiers to attack the Johnson Reef, Collins Reef, and Lansdowne Reef of Vietnams Spratly archipelago.





Sixty-four Vietnamese naval soldiers sacrificed their lives in an unequal battle to safeguard the countrys sovereignty at sea.


Al-Azhar condemned Friday terrorist attack on a mosque in Afghanistans capital Kabul that left dozens of worshippers dead and injured.
Russia said Wednesday it has banned entry to several dozen Japanese officials, including Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, after Tokyo joined international sanctions against Moscow over its military campaign in Ukraine.
Egypt reported on Thursday 861 new coronavirus infections, bringing the total number of cases since the outbreak began in February 2020 to 494,519 according to the daily update of the country's Ministry of Health and Population.

The ministry also recorded 12 coronavirus-related fatalities over the past 24 hours, bringing the total tally of deaths to 24,269.

The daily report added that the total number of recoveries increased to 424,098 after 641 patients were discharged from hospitals nationwide in the past 24 hours.

Following a remarkable rise in the two preceding months driven by the fifth wave of the pandemic, Egypt's daily coronavirus infection toll has been on the downward curve since last week of February.

On Monday, daily coronavirus cases recorded in Egypt fell below 1,000 for the first time since 13 January, with the country reporting 923 new cases.

Presidential Advisor for Health Affairs Mohamed Awad Tag El-Din said on Monday that Egypt has passed the difficult phase of the latest wave of the coronavirus pandemic.

Egypt plans to vaccinate 70 percent of citizens in two months, Khaled Abdel-Ghaffar, the acting health minister, told media on Monday.

Egypt has fully vaccinated more than 50 percent of the target groups of citizens aged above 18 years of age and has administered first vaccine shots to 65 percent of them, Abdel-Ghaffar added.

More than 30,805,992 million citizens have been fully vaccinated to date, and over 41,403,964 million citizens have received their first dose, according to the ministry figures.

Moreover, over 1,439,495 million citizens have received their booster shots.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Some 2.5 million people have fled Ukraine since Russia invaded two weeks ago, and around two million more have been internally displaced by the "senseless" war, the United Nations said Friday.

The UN was planning for four million people to flee the country following the full-scale Russian invasion which began on February 24.

But it said it would be no surprise if that figure shot up, given the scale of the exodus.

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, said 2,504,893 people had now fled Ukraine, with six in 10 of them now in neighbouring Poland to the west.

"The number of refugees from Ukraine, tragically, has reached today 2.5 million," the agency's chief Filippo Grandi tweeted.

"We also estimate that about two million people are displaced inside Ukraine. Millions forced to leave their homes by this senseless war."

The number of refugees from Ukraine  tragically  has reached today 2.5 million.



We also estimate that about two million people are displaced inside Ukraine.



Millions forced to leave their homes by this senseless war.  Filippo Grandi (@FilippoGrandi) March 11, 2022

UNHCR said the number of internally displaced people in Ukraine was at least 1.85 million, while an additional 12.65 million people are thought to have been directly affected by the conflict.

'Unprecedented' Flow

The UNHCR had been working on the estimate that four million people may eventually seek to leave Ukraine as the war continues.

But spokesman Matthew Saltmarsh said: "It is quite possible that that planning figure of four million will be revised up.

"We've just touched 2.5 million and that's in just over two weeks, so that really wouldn't be a surprise," he told reporters in Geneva, via video link from Poland, close to the Ukrainian border.

He said the rapid flow of refugees was "certainly unprecedented since World War II" in Europe.

"UNHCR commends the efforts of hosts and the immense solidarity shown by locals, volunteers and humanitarian organisations, who have been providing support for accommodation, transport, food, and financial and material donations," Saltmarsh said.

Paul Dillon, the spokesman for the UN's International Organization for Migration, said 116,000 of those who had fled Ukraine were third-country nationals.

Before Russia invaded, more than 37 million people lived in Ukrainian territory under the control of the Kyiv government.

More than 280,000 of those who have fled Ukraine have already made their way to other European countries, the UN said.

Russian strikes hit civilian targets in central Ukraine's Dnipro city on Friday, as Moscow's troops edged closer to the capital.

Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said Thursday that half the city's 3.5 million population had fled and the capital "has been transformed into a fortress".

Freezing Wait To Cross

"UNHCR repeats its urgent call for the protection of civilians and civilian infrastructure, respect for international humanitarian law, and again thanks neighbouring countries for keeping their borders open to those fleeing," Saltmarsh said.

He said the agency was working with the local authorities in border nations to improve the reception conditions at the frontier, where people wait in line for hours to cross, often in freezing temperatures.

The agency is working to provide heating points where especially vulnerable people, such as pregnant women, the elderly and the disabled, can sit and keep warm while they wait.

UNHCR is also rolling out an emergency cash programme to tide refugees over.

And within Ukraine, Saltmarsh said the agency was ramping up its plans to help the millions of people forced to leave their homes.

"Core relief items for around 1.5 million people mobilised from UNHCR global stockpiles are in the pipeline," he said.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Egypts Ministry of Health and Population announced on Saturday that it will issue weekly, instead of daily, reports on the number of coronavirus infections and deaths, as the fifth wave of the pandemic gradually subsides.

The weekly reports are scheduled to be issued on Saturdays as per directives by Khaled Abdel-Ghaffar, the countrys acting health minister, according to a statement.

The decision was taken after the country started witnessing a consistent decline in infection rates in the last two weeks, with a retreat in the occupancy rates at isolation hospitals, Hossam Abdel-Ghafar  the spokesperson for the ministry  explained.

Following a remarkable rise in the two preceding months as a result of the fifth wave of the pandemic, with the country reporting 2,000 cases a day since late January, the countrys daily coronavirus infection and death tolls have been on a downward trend since the last week of February.

On Monday, Presidential Adviser for Health Affairs Mohamed Awad Tag El-Din said Egypt has gotten past the difficult phase of the latest wave of the pandemic, attributing January and Februarys spike to the highly infectious Omicron variant.

The spokesperson expressed his hope that the decline of infections locally and globally continues, stressing the importance of getting vaccinated.

He also urged citizens to continue adopting anti-coronavirus safety measures, especially during the month of Ramadan that will start in early April.

On 22 December 2021, Egypt detected its first three cases of the Omicron variant in Egyptian nationals returning from abroad at Cairo International Airport.

Since the pandemic hit Egypt in February 2020, the ministry has reported a total of 495,373 coronavirus infections, including 24,277 deaths and 424,831 recoveries.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


The US and China are sending top aides to Rome on Monday as tensions between the two countries mount over the Russia-Ukraine war and worries spread that the conflict will take even darker turns.

In advance of the talks, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan bluntly warned China to avoid helping Russia evade punishment from global sanctions that have hammered the Russian economy. ``We will not allow that to go forward,'' he said.

US officials are also accusing China of spreading Russian disinformation that could be a pretext for chemical or biological weapons attacks launched by Vladimir Putin's forces in Ukraine.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has put China in a delicate spot with two of its biggest trading partners: the US and European Union.

China needs access to those markets, yet it also has made gestures supportive of Moscow, joining with Russia in declaring a friendship with ``no limits.''

In his talks with senior Chinese foreign policy adviser Yang Jiechi, Sullivan will indeed be looking for limits in what Beijing will do for Moscow.

``I'm not going to sit here publicly and brandish threats,`` he told CNN in a round of Sunday news show interviews. ``But what I will tell you is we are communicating directly and privately to Beijing that there absolutely will be consequences'' if China helps Russia ``backfill'' its losses from the sanctions.

``We will not allow that to go forward and allow there to be a lifeline to Russia from these economic sanctions from any country anywhere in the world,'' he said.

The White House said the talks will focus on the direct impact of Russia's war against Ukraine on regional and global security.

Biden administration officials say Beijing is spreading false Russian claims that Ukraine was running chemical and biological weapons labs with US support.

They say China is effectively providing cover if Russia moves ahead with a biological or chemical weapons attack on Ukrainians.

When Russia starts accusing other countries of preparing to launch biological or chemical attacks, Sullivan told NBC's ``Meet the Press,'' ``it's a good tell that they may be on the cusp of doing it themselves.''

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby, on ABC's ``This Week,'' said ``we haven't seen anything that indicates some sort of imminent chemical or biological attack right now, but we're watching this very, very closely.''

The striking US accusations about Russian disinformation and Chinese complicity came after Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova alleged with no evidence that the US was financing Ukrainian chemical and biological weapons labs.

The Russian claim was echoed by Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, who claimed there were 26 bio-labs and related facilities in ``which the US Department of Defense has absolute control.''

The United Nations has said it has received no information backing up such accusations.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki called the claims ``preposterous.``

``Now that Russia has made these false claims, and China has seemingly endorsed this propaganda, we should all be on the lookout for Russia to possibly use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine, or to create a false flag operation using them,'' Psaki tweeted last week. ``It's a clear pattern.''

Sullivan told ``Face the Nation'' on CBS that the Russian rhetoric on chemical and biological warfare is ``an indicator that, in fact, the Russians are getting ready to do it and try and pin the blame elsewhere and nobody should fall for that.''

The international community for years has assessed that Russia has used chemical weapons in carrying out assassination attempts against Putin detractors such as Alexei Navalny and former spy Sergei Skripal.

Russia also supports the Assad government in Syria, which has used chemical weapons against its people in a decade-long civil war.

Testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday, CIA Director William Burns also noted grave concern that Russia might be laying the groundwork for a chemical or biological attack of its own, which it would then blame on the US or Ukraine in a false flag operation.

``This is something, as all of you know very well, is very much a part of Russia's playbook,'' he said. ``They've used these weapons against their own citizens, they've at least encouraged the use in Syria and elsewhere, so it's something we take very seriously.``

China has been one of few countries to avoid criticizing the Russians for their invasion of Ukraine. China's Xi Jinping hosted Russian President Vladimir Putin for the opening of the Winter Olympics in Beijing, just weeks before Russia launched the Feb. 24 invasion.

During Putin's visit to China last month, the two leaders issued a 5,000-word statement declaring limitless friendship.

The Chinese abstained on UN votes censuring Russia and has criticized economic sanctions against Moscow. It has expressed its support for peace talks and offered its services as a mediator, despite questions about its neutrality and scant experience mediating international conflict.

But questions remain over how far Beijing will go to alienate the alliance and put its own economy at risk. Sullivan said China and all countries are on notice that they cannot ``basically bail Russia out ... give Russia a workaround to the sanctions,'' with impunity.

Chinese officials have said Washington shouldn't be able to complain about Russia's actions because the US invaded Iraq under false pretenses.

The US claimed to have evidence Saddam Hussein was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction though none was ever found.

On CNN, Sullivan said the administration believes China knew that Putin ``was planning something'' before the invasion of Ukraine.

But he said the Chinese government ``may not have understood the full extent of it because it's very possible that Putin lied to them the same way that he lied to Europeans and others.''

Sullivan and Yang last met for face-to-face talks in Switzerland, where Sullivan raised the Biden administration's concerns about China's military provocations against Taiwan, human rights abuses against ethnic minorities, and efforts to squelch pro-democracy advocates in Hong Kong.

That meeting set the stage for a three-hour-long virtual meeting in November between Biden and Xi.

Sullivan is also to meet Luigi Mattiolo, diplomatic adviser to Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, while in Rome.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Minister of Foreign Affairs Sameh Shoukry started on Sunday an Asian tour that includes Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and Pakistan in light of Egypt's distinguished relations with these countries, a statement by the ministry said.

Egypts top diplomat is scheduled to discuss with the foreign ministers of these countries and other senior officials boosting bilateral relations and other issues of common interest.

Shoukry  as the president-designate of the UN Conference of Parties on Climate Change (COP 27) that Egypt will host in Sharm El-Sheikh this November  will also discuss preparations for the conference along with other matters pertaining to climate change.

Additionally, the FM will participate in the 48th session of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which will be held in Islamabad, Pakistan, from 22 to 23 March.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Households across North Africa are rushing to stock up on flour, semolina and other staples as food prices rise following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, both key wheat exporters to the region.

The scramble is worse coming just weeks before the start of the holy month of Ramadan, when Muslims traditionally break a dawn-to-dusk fast with lavish family meals.

Tunisia, Morocco and Libya, along with several other Arab countries, import much of their wheat from Ukraine and Russia.

Some fear the Russian invasion could lead to hunger and unrest, with memories of how rising food prices played a role in several Arab uprisings last decade.

In one supermarket in the Tunisian capital, the shelves were bare of flour or semolina, and only three packs of sugar sat on a shelf near a sign that read: "One kilo per customer, please".

Store managers said the problem was "panic buying", not shortages.

Shopper Houda Hjeij, who said she hadn't been able to find rice or flour for two weeks, blamed the authorities.

"With the war in Ukraine, they did not think ahead," the 52-year-old housewife in Tunis said.

Bulk-buying ahead of Ramadan, which is expected to start in early April this year, is common in Muslim countries.

But some say the war in Ukraine has sparked a shopping frenzy.

Fear of war

Hedi Baccour, of Tunisia's union of supermarket owners, said daily sales of semolina -- a staple across North Africa used in dishes of couscous -- have jumped by "700 percent" in recent days.

Sugar sales are up threefold as Tunisians stockpile basic foodstuffs, said Baccour, who insisted there were no food shortages.

Each day pensioner Hedi Bouallegue, 66, makes the round of grocery shops in his Tunis neighbourhood to stock up on products like cooking oil and semolina.

"I am even ready to pay double the price," he told AFP.

Baker Slim Talbi said he had been paying three times as much for flour than in the past, "although the real effects of the (Russia-Ukraine) war have not hit us yet".

"I am worried" about the future, Talbi added, citing Tunisia's dependence on Ukrainian wheat.

Tunisia imports almost half of the soft wheat used to make bread from Ukraine. Authorities say the North African country has enough supplies to last three months.

Oil-rich Libya gets about 75 percent of its wheat from Russia and Ukraine. Morocco also relies heavily on the same source for supplies.

Algeria -- Africa's second-largest wheat consumer after Egypt -- does not import any from the two warring eastern European countries, instead sourcing it from Argentina or France, according to the bureau of cereals.

"There won't be any shortages -- wheat shipments regularly arrive at Algiers port," said harbour official Mustapha, who declined to give his full name.

Despite reassurances, panicked citizens recently ransacked semolina stocks in Algeria's eastern Kabylie region.

"War in Ukraine and all the semolina warehouses have been stormed," Mouh Benameur, who lives in the area, posted on Facebook.

Recession, pandemic, recovery

Food prices were on the rise in North Africa before Russia invaded Ukraine more than two weeks ago.

Moroccan official Fouzi Lekjaa pointed to a global economic pick-up following a pandemic-induced slump.

"With the recovery, the market price of cereals and oil products rose," he said.

Mourad, 37, a shopper in the Moroccan capital Rabat, said climate change and drought -- the worst in his country in decades -- were also to blame.

To keep prices affordable and avoid a repeat of bread riots that erupted in the 1980s, Tunisia subsidises staples like sugar, semolina and pasta.

For the past decade, it has set the price of a baguette loaf of bread at six US cents.

Algeria plans to scrap subsidies on basic goods, but has not yet done so.

After a truck drivers' strike this week, Morocco said it was mulling fuel subsidies for the sector "to protect citizens' purchasing power and keep prices at a reasonable level," according to government spokesman Mustapha Baitas.

In Libya, which found itself with two rival prime ministers this month, sparking fears of renewed violence, food prices are also hitting the roof.

At a Tripoli wholesale market, shopper Saleh Mosbah blamed "unscrupulous merchants".

"They always want to take advantage when there is a conflict," he said.

Summaya, a shopper in her 30s who declined to give her full name, blamed the government.

"They reassure people by saying there is enough wheat," she said, carrying two five-kilo (11-pound) bags of flour. "I don't believe them."

Search Keywords:

Short link:


More than a dozen UN agencies and international aid groups said Monday that 161,000 people in war-torn Yemen are likely to experience famine over the second half of 2022, a fivefold increase from the current figure.

The stark warning came in a report by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, ahead of an annual fund-raising conference that the United Nations is hosting on Wednesday.

The IPC is a global partnership of 15 UN agencies and humanitarian organizations working in Yemen and funded by the European Union, the USAID, and UKAID. It tracks and measures food insecurity in conflict-stricken regions.

The report underscores the dire situation in the poorest Arab nation that plunged into civil war in 2014, when Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels took control of the capital, Sanaa, and much of the country's north, forcing the government to flee to the south, then to Saudi Arabia.

A Saudi-led coalition entered the war in March 2015, backed at the time by the US, in an effort to restore the internationally recognized government to power.

The war has deteriorated largely into a stalemate and caused one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.

``These harrowing figures confirm that we are on a countdown to catastrophe in Yemen and we are almost out of time to avoid it,'' said David Beasley, head of the World Food Program, appealing for immediate funding to ``avert imminent disaster and save millions.''

The IPC report says 19 million people in Yemen, out of a population of more than 30 million, are likely to be unable to meet their minimum food needs between June and December, up from 17.4 million.

Also, 2.2 million children, including 538,000 already severely malnourished, and about 1.3 million women, could be acutely malnourished by the end of the year, the report said.

``More and more children are going to bed hungry in Yemen,'' said Catherine Russell, UNICEF's executive director. ``This puts them at increased risk of physical and cognitive impairment, and even death.''

The report stressed the war in Yemen is the main driver of hunger and the crisis is likely to deteriorate due to the war in Ukraine.

Yemen depends almost entirely on food imports, with 30% of its wheat imports coming from Ukraine, the UN agencies said.

``Peace is required to end the decline, but we can make progress now. The parties to the conflict should lift all restrictions on trade and investment for non-sanctioned commodities,'' said David Gressly, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Yemen.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Egypt is not currently in discussion with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a new loan, Minister of Planning Hala El-Said told Reuters News Agency on Monday.

Answering a question about whether Egypt is in talks with the IMF for a new loan, El-Said added that when something happens, the Egyptian government will announce it, describing the IMF as a great support for Egypt.

On Thursday, during the IMF media roundtable discussion about Ukraine, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said that she was worried for Egypt and the impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on MENA countries.

For the countries that are relying on tourism, Ukrainian and Russian tourists were a big part. Think of Egypt, for example, now they're going to be hit, she said.

Egypt is among the top destinations for Ukrainian tourists, with about 1.5 million visiting the country in 2019.

Despite the coronavirus pandemic, almost 727,100 Ukrainian tourists visited Egypt in 2020.

According to Russian Ambassador to Egypt Georgy Borisenko, about 125,000 Russian tourists visited Egypt during the first two weeks of 2022.

If we have sustained high food and energy prices, how is this going to impact people in Egypt? she said, revealing that the IMF is already engaged in discussion with Egypt on how to target vulnerable populations and businesses.

Georgieva did not mention in her talk if the discussions with the Egyptian government includes new loans.

In January, the IMF upgraded Egypts real GDP growth by 0.4 percent in 2022 to 5.6 percent, compared to the funds October 2021 projections.

According to the IMF officials, Egypt managed to do well amid the pandemic compared to oil-importer countries.

The World Bank also raised its projection for Egypts real GDP growth in 2022, according to its global economic prospect report that was issued in January.

Accordingly, the World Bank upgraded its forecasts for Egypts real GDP growth to 5.5 percent in FY2021/22 while maintaining the countrys outlook for FY2022/23 at the same rate of 5.5 percent.

Egypt received $2.77 billion in emergency support from the IMF in May 2020 to ensure that the government had enough foreign currency to fund essential imports and other needs during the coronavirus pandemic.

In June 2020, the Stand-by Arrangement (SBA) programme loan provided the Egyptian government with $5.4 billion over the subsequent 12 months in three tranches, the third and last one of which was in June 2021, to counter the impact of COVID-19 on the economy.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


In a meeting with the chairman of Australias Fortescue Group Andrew Forrest in Cairo on Monday, Egypts Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouy said that Egypt is keen on exploring opportunities for cooperation with international partners in renewable energy, especially in green hydrogen.

Madbouly said Egypt is preparing to launch a national strategy to increase the production, use and export of clean energy, especially green hydrogen, in parallel with the preparations for hosting the UN Conference on Climate (COP27) in November in Sharm El-Sheikh, the Egyptian cabinet said.

Madbouly also encouraged the Australian group to establish and expand green hydrogen projects in Egypt like the Benban Solar Park in Upper Egypt's Aswan, which houses more than 32 solar energy projects with a total capacity of about 1,465 megawatts.

For his part, Forrest reviewed his Groups expertise in the area of green hydrogen, expressing its readiness to pump investments to produce energy from green hydrogen in Egypt.

Forrest said that Egypt's capabilities make it an ideal choice to become a regional hub for energy produced from green hydrogen and to export energy to Europe.

At the end of the meeting, an agreement was reached to intensify talks between the Ministry of Electricity and the Australian company in order to quickly finalise the blueprints for the proposed projects to be implemented in Egypt.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


A team from Egypts Red Crescent (ERC) has set up a relief centre at the Ukrainian-Romanian border to provide aid to Egyptians and Arabs fleeing Ukraine amid the Russian invasion, the Egyptian Cabinet announced.

The ERC set up the relief centre in cooperation with the Romanian Red Cross at the Siret border-crossing.

The ERC team arrived in Romania four days ago.

The centre aims to provide medical aid, meals and psychological support to those in need, in addition to helping Egyptians reach Bucharest for their return to Egypt.

In media statements on Sunday, the executive director of Red Crescent Ramy El-Nazer said that the ERC received over 2,000 messages from Egyptians asking for help in Ukraine and its neighbouring countries through social media.

El-Nazer added that another team from the ERC arrived in Poland to assist Egyptians who want to return.

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine on Thursday 24 February, Egypt has expatriated hundreds of citizens who crossed from Ukraine to Romania, Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary.

Prior to the Russian invasion, around 6,000 Egyptians lived in Ukraine, 3,000 of which were students studying at the countrys universities.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Egypts Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry delivered on Monday a message from President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi to Malaysian Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob in Kuala Lumpur during the FMs first stop in an Asian tour that includes Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and Pakistan, the Egyptian foreign ministry said.

El-Sisis message to Yaakob conveyed Egypts wish to enhance bilateral relations and discussed the preparations for the UN Conference on Climate (COP27) in Sharm El-Sheikh in November.

The Egyptian FM and Malaysian prime minister discussed the recent developments in economic and trade relations between the two countries.

The volume of trade exchange between Egypt and Malaysia reached about $1 billion in 2021, recording an 80 percent increase compared to 2020, according the foreign ministry.

Minister Shoukry also met with Malaysias Minister of International Trade and Industry Mohamed Azmin Ali on Monday evening, where they discussed the development in cooperation between the two countries in trade and investment.

Following the meeting, Ali held a working dinner in honour of Shoukry and attended by the Malaysian ministers of finance and economy and representatives of the Malaysian business community, including chairman of the Malaysian Petroliam Nasional Berhad (Petronas).

The Malaysian minister of international trade and industry said during the event that Egypt remained Malaysias largest trading partner in the North Africa region and has been among Malaysias top six largest trading partners in Africa in 2021.

The minister also said that there has been an increase in Malaysias exports to Egypt largely due to high demand for Malaysian palm oil and palm-based agriculture products, while the increase in imports from Egypt was due to increased demand for Egyptian fruits and petroleum products.

As for Petronas investments, the minister said that its investments in Egypt reached more than $9 billion since 2003.

Minister Shoukry said the Egypt-Malaysia Business Council will soon be reactivated to resume its vital role in boosting the economic relations between the two countries.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Egypt's Ministry of Health and Population has vaccinated more than one million people against the coronavirus in the past week as part of its door-to-door campaign in remote rural areas.

The campaign, which started on 7 March, is meant to preserve the public's health and boost herd immunity, the health ministry said in a statement on Monday.

The ministry has deployed 1,400- member medical teams across seven governorates -- Menoufiya, Fayoum, Minya, Sohag, Qena, Luxor, and Aswan -- to inoculate the people who had registered on the ministrys vaccination website, said Hossam Abdel-Ghaffar, the health ministry spokesman.

The campaign is providing its services with the help of 3,500 wellness education teams that visit houses, bus stops, popular markets, schools, and industrial zones to ensure that all eligible citizens have received the inoculation, Abde-Ghaffar added.

The spokesman stated that the health ministry is planning to expand the door-knocking and awareness campaigns.



Egypt, which started its vaccination campaign in early 2021, has so far fully vaccinated more than 30.8 million people with the two primary doses, and more than 40.5 million people with the first dose.

Over 1.4 million citizens have received the booster shot, the ministry said on Friday.

The country plans to vaccinate 70 percent of its eligible population  12-year-olds and above  by the second half of 2022.

Driven by a fifth wave of the pandemic, the country had witnessed a spike in reported coronavirus cases over the past two months, recording the highest single day infection on 5 February at 2,298 cases. However, infections have dropped sharply since mid-February.

The health ministry announced on Saturday it has started issuing weekly, instead of daily, reports on the number of coronavirus infections and deaths as the fifth wave subsides.

Egypt has thus far reported a total of 495,373 coronavirus cases, including 24,277 deaths and 424,831 recoveries since the pandemic hit Egypt in February 2020, according to the ministry's Friday update.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Egypt will launch a national dialogue on climate action by the end of March to engage the public in the country's plans to mitigate the impacts of climate change ahead of COP27, Minister of Environment Yasmine Fouad said on Monday.

The dialogue capitalises on Egypts presidency of the UN Climate Change Conference COP27, which will be held in the Red Sea resort city of Sharm El-Sheikh in November, to inform the public about the challenges resulting from the global phenomenon, Fouad, also the COP27 ministerial envoy and coordinator, added.

The national dialogue will comprise a set of activities for Egypts youth, women, and children, including launching the first training programme for university students on climate change, in addition to a competition on climate action for school and university students, Fouad noted.

Fouad made the announcement during a meeting in m Cairo with the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Patricia Espinosa.

Fouad and Espinosa discussed Egypts preparations for hosting COP27.

The minister Fouad also reviewed the main elements of the country's National Climate Change Strategy 2050, which she said is based on improving the standard of living in business management.

During COP26 in Glasgow late last year, Egypt launched its National Climate Change Strategy 2050 with five main objectives, including cutting emissions in various sectors to maintain sustainable economic growth, promoting the use of renewable energy sources, producing energy from waste, and using alternative energy forms like green hydrogen.

Fouad said that Egypt has embarked in recent years on climate-focused programmes, launching a package of economic tools to finance green projects in the fields of renewable energy, and electric vehicle manufacturing.

Egypt also launched initiatives for substituting plastic bags with single-use ones.

Fouad added that another package is set to be launched in the field of waste management, with the participation of the national banking sector in climate finance.

In recent months, Sharm El-Sheikh city has embarked on several green projects to coincide with COP27, including increasing green spaces and promoting electric vehicles to lower carbon emissions. These projects include plans to construct three solar power plants to charge cars, operate hotels, as well as tourist and government facilities.

The environment minister added that these steps are being implemented in cooperation with the ministries of electricity, tourism, environment, the banking sector, and the United Nations Development Programme.

Meanwhile, Espinosa lauded Egypt's efforts to create a national momentum that will encourage all citizens to participate in climate action while simultaneously creating new partnerships on the regional and global fronts.

On Saturday, Espinosa met with Egypts President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi and Foreign Minister and President-designate of COP27 Sameh Shoukry, where she expressed her hope that the conference will be a turning point in climate action.

Egypt has been in talks with a host of international partners concerning the preparations for COP27.

El-Sisi said Egypt will adopt during its presidency of COP27 a comprehensive and neutral approach, stressing that the summit will support efforts to reduce emissions and provide funding for developing countries to deal with climate change.

Egypt has formed a high level committee headed by Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly that includes several ministers and officials that will organise the event.

Last month, Egypt appointed the distinguished Egyptian economist Mahmoud Mohieldin  who has been serving as an executive director at the International Monetary Fund  as the countrys high-level champion for climate action at the COP27.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Iran claimed responsibility Sunday for a missile barrage that struck near a sprawling US consulate complex in northern Iraq, saying it was retaliation for an Israeli strike in Syria that killed two members of its Revolutionary Guard earlier this week.

Iran claimed responsibility Sunday for a missile barrage that struck near a sprawling US consulate complex in northern Iraq, saying it was retaliation for an Israeli strike in Syria that killed two members of its Revolutionary Guard earlier this week.

Iraq's Foreign Ministry on Sunday summoned Iran's ambassador to protest the attack, calling it a flagrant violation of the country's sovereignty.

No injuries were reported in Sunday's attack on the city of Irbil, which marked a significant escalation between the US and Iran. Hostility between the longtime foes has often played out in Iraq, whose government is allied with both countries.

The attack drew harsh condemnation from the Iraqi government, which called it a ``violation of international law and norms'' and demanded an explanation from the Iranian leadership. Iraq's Foreign Ministry spokesman Ahmad al-Sahhaf told The Associated Press that the ministry summoned the Iranian ambassador, Iraj Masjedi, to deliver the diplomatic protest.

The United States strongly condemned the strike and said it was an unjustified attack on a civilian residence.

``We will support the Government of Iraq in holding Iran accountable, and we will support our partners throughout the Middle East in confronting similar threats from Iran,'' the White House national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said in a statement. ``The United States of America stands behind the full sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity of Iraq.''

No US facilities were damaged or personnel injured, State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters in Washington. The US had no indication the attack was directed at the United States, he said.

Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard said on its website that it attacked what it described as an Israeli spy center in Irbil. It did not elaborate, but in a statement said Israel had been on the offensive, citing the recent strike that killed two members of the Revolutionary Guard. The semi-official Tasnim news agency quoted an unnamed source as saying Iran fired 10 Fateh missiles, including several Fateh-110 missiles, which have a range of about 300 kilometers (186 miles).

The source claimed the attack resulted in multiple casualties. There was no immediate comment from Israel on the allegations or the Iranian missile barrage.

An Iraqi official in Baghdad initially said several missiles had hit the U.S. consulate in Irbil, which is new and unoccupied, adding that it had been the intended target of the attack. Later, Lawk Ghafari, the head of Kurdistan's foreign media office, said none of the missiles had struck the U.S. facility but that residential areas around the compound had been hit.

Following a Cabinet meeting, the Iraqi government in Baghdad reiterated its refusal to allow Iraq to be used to settle scores between other countries and said it has requested an explanation from the Iranian leadership.

Satellite broadcast channel Kurdistan24, which is located near the U.S. consulate, went on air from their studio shortly after the attack, showing shattered glass and debris on their studio floor.

The attack came several days after Iran said it would retaliate for an Israeli strike near Damascus, Syria, that killed two members of its Revolutionary Guard. On Sunday, Iran's state-run IRNA news agency quoted Iraqi media acknowledging the attacks in Irbil, without saying where they originated.

The missile barrage coincided with regional tensions. Negotiations in Vienna over Tehran's tattered nuclear deal hit a ``pause'' over Russian demands about sanctions targeting Moscow for its war on Ukraine. Meanwhile, Iran suspended its secret Baghdad-brokered talks aimed at defusing yearslong tensions with regional rival Saudi Arabia, after Saudi Arabia carried out its largest known mass execution in its modern history with over three dozens Shiites killed.

Iraqi security officials said there were no casualties from the Irbil attack, which they said occurred after midnight and caused material damage in the area. They spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

One of the Iraqi officials said the ballistic missiles were fired from Iran, without elaborating. He said the Iranian-made Fateh-110 missiles likely were fired in retaliation for the two Revolutionary Guards killed in Syria.

U.S. forces stationed at Irbil's airport compound have come under fire from rocket and drone attacks in the past, with U.S. officials blaming Iran-backed groups.

The top U.S. commander for the Middle East has repeatedly warned about the increasing threats of attacks from Iran and Iranian-backed militias on troops and allies in Iraq and Syria.

In an interview with The Associated Press in December, Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie said that while U.S. forces in Iraq have shifted to a non-combat role, Iran and its proxies still want all American troops to leave the country. As a result, he said, that may trigger more attacks.'

The Biden administration decided last July to end the U.S. combat mission in Iraq by Dec. 31, and U.S. forces gradually moved to an advisory role last year. The troops will still provide air support and other military aid for Iraq's fight against the Islamic State.

The US presence in Iraq has long been a flash point for Tehran, but tensions spiked after a January 2020 U.S. drone strike near the Baghdad airport killed a top Iranian general. In retaliation, Iran launched a barrage of missiles at al-Asad airbase, where U.S. troops were stationed. More than 100 service members suffered traumatic brain injuries in the blasts.

More recently, Iranian proxies are believed responsible for an assassination attempt late last year on Iraq's Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi.

And officials have said they believe Iran was behind the October drone attack at the military outpost in southern Syria where American troops are based. No U.S. personnel were killed or injured in the attack.

Al-Kadhimi tweeted: ``The aggression which targeted the dear city of Irbil and spread fear amongst its inhabitants is an attack on the security of our people.''

Masrour Barzani, prime minister of the semi-autonomous Kurdish-controlled region, condemned the attack. In a Facebook post, he said Irbil ``will not bow to the cowards who carried out the terrorist attack.''

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Germany plans to buy up to 35 US-made F-35 fighter jets and 15 Eurofighter jets, a parliamentary source said Monday, as part of a major push to modernise the armed forces in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The F-35 jets made by Lockheed Martin would help replace Germany's decades-old Tornado fleet, according to media reports confirmed by the source.

Tornados are the only jets capable of carrying US nuclear bombs stationed in Germany that are a key part of NATO deterrence.

Lockheed's F-35 stealth jets are considered the most modern combat aircraft in the world, and their unique shape and coating make them harder to detect by enemy radar.

The additional Eurofighter jets Germany plans to purchase, made by a consortium that includes Airbus, would reportedly be used for other operations, including electronic warfare and escort missions.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz last month pledged to invest 100 billion euros ($112 billion) in the nation's chronically underfunded Bundeswehr.

The spending boost marks a major reversal for Europe's top economy, upending its policy of keeping a low military profile in part out of guilt over World War II.

After years of criticism that the country wasn't shouldering enough of the financial burden in the NATO military alliance, Scholz also vowed to spend more than two percent of Germany's gross domestic product annually on defence, surpassing NATO's target.

The shift was prompted by the return of war to the European continent following Russia's invasion of Ukraine on February 24, shaking Germany's sense of security and shining a harsh spotlight on the state of its armed forces.

The F-35 purchase however raises questions about the future of a common European fighter jet being developed with Spain and France.

Known as the Future Combat Air System (FCAS), the plane is slated to replace French-made Rafale jets and German and Spanish Eurofighter planes by 2040.

Scholz sought to allay fears that the project might become unnecessary late last month, by saying the joint European project was an "absolute priority".

"It is important to me that we build the next generation of combat aircraft and tanks in collaboration with European partners," he said.

But the German Bundeswehr has to replace its Tornado fleet in the short term because it has become "obsolete", Scholz added.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Deputy governor of the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) Sherif Loqman said on Monday that financial inclusion rates have increased by more than 110 percent over the past five years, rising from 27 percent in the end of 2016 to 56.2 percent by the end of 2021.

Addressing a conference on the future of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)  which is organised by the Union of Arab Banks (UAB) in the Upper Egyptian city of Luxor  Loqman said that the CBE is seeking to offer equal financial services to all Egyptians.

He added that the CBE is acting to promote banking culture among the different segments of society.

The deputy governor said that expanding SME finances is meant to achieve the goals of financial inclusion.

Moreover, he noted that SME finances have increased by 253 percent since 2015, and now exceed EGP 400 billion.

The banking sector has also outlined plans to expand technical support services offered to SMEs, Loqman said, emphasising that this is the most important step in the coming period.

Furthermore, he stressed that banks offer innovative solutions to help meet the needs of the SME sector.

About 50 percent of the countrys economic sectors are not involved in banking services, Loqman told the conference, adding that the CBE is currently working to include those sectors through non-financial services.

The CBE deputy governor also discussed early decisions to rehabilitate the infrastructure for digital transformation in terms of cash and bank transactions.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Here are the latest developments in Russia's war in Ukraine as the conflict enters its 19th day.

China hits back after aid claims

China accuses Washington of spreading "disinformation" over Beijing's role in the Ukraine conflict, without directly addressing reports in US media that Russia is seeking Chinese military and economic aid.

The Chinese embassy in Washington DC says it has no knowledge of the requests, which are reported shortly after the White House announces a high-level US delegation will meet a top Chinese official in Rome Monday.

Washington has warned Beijing against helping Russia evade sanctions.

Strike hits Kyiv apartments

One person is killed and 12 others injured after an air strike on a residential building in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv.

The toll was revised down from an earlier figure of two dead.

Russia-Ukraine talks Monday

Talks between the two sides are to resume Monday by videoconference, according to Ukrainian negotiators and the Kremlin, after both sides hail progress at earlier rounds aimed at ending more than two weeks of fighting.

Moscow says West wants 'artificial default'

Russia's finance ministry accuses foreign countries of trying to force the country into an "artificial default" through unprecedented sanctions.

Russia has said it will hit back with its own measures, and has put limits on local media and international news sources.

On Monday, Instagram was no longer accessible after Moscow accused parent company Meta of allowing calls for violence against Russians.

Meta had earlier said it would permit calls to violence like "death to the Russian invaders" from users in Ukraine, drawing criticism including from the UN.

Black Sea blockade

Britain's defence ministry says Russia has established a naval blockade on the Black Sea coast, "effectively isolating Ukraine from international maritime trade".

"Russian naval forces are also continuing to conduct missile strikes against targets throughout Ukraine," it says

Nearly 2,200 killed in Mariupol

Nearly 2,200 residents of Ukraine's besieged city of Mariupol have been killed since hostilities began, the local authorities say, raising the toll by almost 1,000 since Wednesday.

Mariupol faces "a worst-case scenario" if the warring parties do not urgently reach a "concrete humanitarian agreement", the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) warns.

Turkey has asked Russia for help securing the safety of its citizens in the besieged city, where multiple attempts to evacuate civilians have failed.

Zelensky warns NATO

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warns NATO could see member states come under Russian attack if they don't act to impose a no-fly zone over his country.

He warns it is "only a matter of time" before Russian rockets hit NATO territory, a day after 35 people were killed in Russian air strikes on a military training ground outside Lviv, near the Polish border.

Russia says the strike killed up to 180 "foreign mercenaries".

Kadyrov says he's in Ukraine

Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov says he is in Ukraine's Hostomel, an airfield near Kyiv captured by Russian forces early in their invasion.

The Chechen former rebel-turned-Moscow-ally, who has been accused of numerous abuses, calls on Ukraine to surrender "or you will be finished".

US journalist killed

A US journalist is shot dead in Irpin, medics and witnesses say, becoming the first foreign reporter killed since Russia's invasion.

Papers found on the reporter's body identify him as 50-year-old video documentary maker Brent Renaud.

Power restored to Chernobyl

Electricity has been restored at Ukraine's retired Chernobyl nuclear power plant that was seized by Russian forces in the first days of the invasion, energy officials in Kyiv say.

But the IAEA continues to warn that staff at the site face a "dire situation" because they have been unable to rotate out.

Hundreds held in Russia protests

Russian police detain more than 800 people across 37 cities for protesting Moscow's "military operation" in Ukraine.

Nearly 15,000 people have reportedly been detained at rallies across the country since the invasion began February 24.

Nearly 2.7 million flee

Almost 2.7 million people have fled the war in Ukraine, more than 100,000 of them in the past 24 hours, the UN says. More than half have gone to Poland.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Conflict talks between Russia and Ukraine are set to resume Monday, negotiators and the Kremlin have said after both sides hailed progress at earlier rounds aimed at ending more than two weeks of fighting.

The talks would resume by video conference on Monday, Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and part of the negotiating team, said late Sunday.

His statement, on Twitter, confirmed an earlier statement by Dmitry Peskov, the spokesman for the Russian presidency.

"Negotiations go non-stop in the format of video conferences," Podolyak wrote Sunday in an English-language post on Twitter.

"On Monday, March 14, a negotiating session will be held to sum up the preliminary results," he said.

Peskov was quoted earlier by Russian news agencies as saying that negotiations were scheduled to continue Monday.

The confirmation of the next round of talks come after both sides said they were making headway at the negotiations aimed at ending more than two weeks of direct fighting between the Russian and Ukrainian armies.

Leonid Slutsky, a senior member of Russia's negotiating team, told the state-run television network RT that "significant progress" was made following several rounds of talks hosted on the border of neighboring Belarus.

"If we compare the positions of both delegations at the start of the talks and now, we see significant progress," he told the network according to Russian news agencies.

"My own expectations are that this progress could develop over the next few days into a unified position held by both delegations in documents to be signed," agencies cited him as saying.

Negotiators from Moscow and Kyiv have held several rounds of talks since Putin sent in troops to the country. Turkey this week hosted a first meeting between the Russian and Ukrainian foreign ministers.

Earlier Sunday, Podolyak, wrote on Twitter that Russia had stopped issuing "ultimatums" and instead "carefully listens to our positions".

Zelensky said Saturday that Russia had adopted a "fundamentally different approach" in the talks.

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin, who ordered his army into Ukraine on February 24, this week said there had been "some positive shifts" in the dialogue and that negotiations were being held almost daily.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Russia and Ukraine launched a fresh round of talks on Monday in an effort to end Moscow's devastating war, despite deadly air strikes in the capital Kyiv and an eastern pro-Moscow separatist region.

As the fourth round of talks to end more than two weeks of fighting began, Russian-backed separatists said fragments from a shot-down Ukrainian Tochka missile landed in the centre of Donetsk, killing 17 civilians, including children.

Ukraine said it would demand "peace, an immediate ceasefire and the withdrawal of Russian troops" during the talks.

"Only after this can we talk about regional relations and about political differences," Kyiv's lead negotiator Mikhailo Podolyak said in a video statement posted to Twitter.

A Russian air strike on a residential building in the Ukrainian capital earlier killed at least one person and injured a dozen, the country's emergency service said.

Another person was killed when an Antonov aircraft factory in Kyiv and a nearby residential building were targeted by Russian shelling, city officials said.

Russian troops, which invaded Ukraine on February 24, edged closer to the city and kept up their siege of the southern port city of Mariupol, where officials said nearly 2,200 people have been killed.

The United Nations estimates almost 2.7 million people have fled Ukraine since the invasion, most of them to Poland as neighbouring countries struggle to provide for the arrivals.

"Nowhere is safe anymore," said Yilena, 38, displaced to the Ukrainian city of Dnipro, considered a safe heaven for people fleeing heavy fighting in cities like Kharkiv.

In Dnipro, the whirring of air raid sirens that lasted for five hours -- the longest since the war began -- leaving many in the city fearful for what could lie ahead.

'World War III'

Ukrainian and Russian representatives were meeting via videoconference on Monday, a Ukrainian presidential adviser and a Kremlin spokesman both said before the latest strike.

"Our goal is that in this struggle, in this difficult negotiating work, Ukraine will get the necessary result... for peace and for security," President Volodymyr Zelensky said.

Talks between Kyiv and Moscow have yet to yield a ceasefire and Russian forces have shown no sign of easing their onslaught.

The aim was "to do everything to ensure a meeting of presidents. A meeting that I am sure people are waiting for," said Zelensky.

"We see significant progress," Leonid Slutsky, a senior member of Russia's negotiating team, told state-run television network RT Sunday.

In an attack dangerously close to NATO member Poland, Russian air strikes on a Ukrainian military training ground near the border killed at least 35 people and wounded more than 130 on Sunday.

Zelensky has urged NATO to impose a no-fly zone, but the United States has ruled out any direct intervention, with President Joe Biden warning that NATO fighting Russia "is World War III".

"If you do not close our sky, it is only a matter of time before Russian missiles fall on your territory, on NATO territory, on the homes of NATO citizens," Zelensky repeated on Monday.

Washington and its EU allies have sent funds and military aid to Ukraine and imposed unprecedented economic sanctions on Russia.

As Moscow felt the bite of international sanctions, Russia's finance ministry accused foreign countries of wanting to force Russia into an "artificial default" and said it would meet its debt obligations.

'Defining moment'

In a sign Moscow may have underestimated the challenge it would face, US officials told media that Russia had asked China for military and economic aid for the war.

US diplomat Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly asking for military help could be a "defining moment" for China's Xi Jinping.

Beijing later accused Washington of spreading lies over China's role in the Ukraine war, without directly addressing the US media reports.

That came hours after the White House said National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan would meet top Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi in Rome on Monday.

Beijing has declined to directly condemn Moscow's invasion and has repeatedly blamed NATO's "eastward expansion" for worsening tensions, echoing the Kremlin's prime security grievance.

The latest fighting in Kyiv's suburbs left a US journalist dead -- the first foreign reporter killed in Ukraine since Russia's invasion began on February 24.

In an intelligence update on Sunday, Britain's defence ministry said Russia had established a naval blockade on the Black Sea coast, "effectively isolating Ukraine from international maritime trade".

Russian naval forces are also conducting missile strikes against targets throughout Ukraine, it said.

Meanwhile, efforts continued to get help to the devastated southern city of Mariupol, which aid agencies say is facing a humanitarian catastrophe.

'No honour, no mercy'

A humanitarian column headed there had to turn back again on Sunday, a city official told AFP, after the Russians "did not stop firing." It is expected to try again on Monday.

A total of 2,187 residents have now died in days of relentless Russian bombardment, the city council said Sunday.

Zelensky has accused Moscow of both blocking and attacking humanitarian convoys, although he said Sunday that another 125,000 people had been evacuated that way across Ukraine.

Russia's forces had earlier focused on eastern and southern areas of Ukraine -- home to more ethnic Russians -- but in recent days have moved to the country's centre.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told ABC that Russia was "clearly, at least from an air strike perspective... broadening their target sets".

In Kyiv, only the roads to the south remain open, according to the Ukrainian presidency. City authorities have set up checkpoints, and people are stockpiling food and medicine.

The north-western suburb of Bucha is entirely held by Russian forces, along with parts of Irpin, Ukrainian soldiers told AFP. Some blocks in the once well-to-do suburb have been reduced to rubble.

The Russians are encountering resistance from the Ukrainian army to both the east and west of the capital, according to AFP journalists on the scene.

Zelensky says the Russians have suffered "heavy losses" of about 12,000 troops -- although Moscow put the number at 498, in its only toll released March 2.

About 1,300 Ukrainian troops have been killed, according to Kyiv.

And in Russia, Instagram was no longer accessible Monday after Moscow accused its parent company Meta of allowing calls for violence against Russians on its platforms.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said talks with Russia concluded for the day Monday but will resume on Tuesday.

The negotiations, which took place by video conference, were the fourth round involving higher-level officials from the two countries and the first held in a week.

Previous discussions, held in person in Belarus, did not produce lasting humanitarian routes or agreements to end the fighting in Ukraine.

``A technical pause has been taken in the negotiations until tomorrow,`` Podolyak wrote on Twitter. ``Negotiations continue.''

He said earlier that ``communication is being held, yet it's hard.''

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares said Monday that he has asked his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi to use Beijing's influence over Moscow to end the war in Ukraine.

``We are at a historical moment that requires responsibility and vision of all world leaders,'' Albares told Wang during a telephone conversation on Monday, according to a statement from the ministry.

It said that Albares condemned ``the Russian aggression on Ukraine'' by telling Wang that ``Russia has undermined the foundations of peace and stability in Europe and threatens the international community.''

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Qatar's foreign minister met Monday with his Russian counterpart in Moscow for talks on Russia's obstruction of a new Iran nuclear deal and on the Ukraine conflict.

Russia and Qatar will maintain contact on the situation in Ukraine, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at a press conference following talks with Qatari top diplomat Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani on Monday.

"I believe that we both found the conversation useful and agreed to maintain contact on the issue. I would like to reiterate that we appreciate Qatars willingness to contribute to efforts to achieve the desired results," Lavrov pointed out.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani stressed that the State of Qatar will spare no effort to provide everything that would support a peaceful solution to the Russian-Ukrainian crisis through consultation and work with its partners, noting that the State of Qatar has always believed in diplomatic solutions to international crises.

"We also appreciate the fact that Qatar seeks to make the most of its opportunities to facilitate agreements on the issues on the agenda based on the interests of common European security, including Ukraines security and Russias security and the need to make sure that no threats come from Ukraine to Russia," Lavrov said.

He stressed that there should be no threats to those seeking to protect the Russian language, Russian culture, and traditions, including religious ones, "as well as to those who wish to live in the country without having to face any kind of discrimination, particularly discrimination stemming from neo-Nazi sentiment."

The Qatari diplomat briefed Lavrov on the results of his recent meetings and contacts with foreign ministers of European countries, stressing the need for urgent international efforts to reach a peaceful solution to the crisis, with the need to ensure the safety of civilians and consider this the safety of civilians a top priority.

Sheikh Mohammed headed to Moscow just hours after speaking with US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Iran's Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian about Russia's new demands on the Iran talks, which Moscow has linked to sanctions imposed over its invasion of Ukraine.

Ten months of negotiations in Vienna have brought Western countries agonisingly close to renewing a 2015 deal on regulating Iran's nuclear programme. The United States withdrew from the accord in 2018 and Iran has since rolled back on its commitments.

The talks have been halted again, however, after Russia demanded guarantees that Western sanctions imposed following its invasion of Ukraine would not damage its trade with Iran.

Qatar, a neighbour of Iran with close ties to Washington, has been stepping up efforts to encourage the United States and Iran to move towards a new deal.

In a flurry of contacts, Sheikh Mohammed also discussed the Iran deal while in France and Germany this week and spoke on Sunday with his Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Face to face, President Joe Biden's national security adviser warned a top Chinese official on Monday about China's support for Russia in the Ukrainian invasion, even as the Kremlin denied reports it had requested Chinese military equipment to use in the war.

US adviser Jake Sullivan and senior Chinese foreign policy adviser Yang Jiechi met in Rome, with the Biden administration increasingly concerned that China is using the Ukraine war to advance Beijing's long-term interest in its competition with the United States.

Sullivan was seeking clarity on Beijing's posture and was warning the Chinese anew that assistance for Russia, including helping it avert sanctions imposed by the US and Western allies, would be costly for them.

``The national security adviser and our delegation raised directly and very clear our concerns about the PRC's support to Russia in the wake of the invasion, and the implications that any such support would have for the PRC's relationship not only with us, but for its relationships around the world,'' said State Department spokesman Ned Price, using the initials for the People's Republic of China.

In advance of the talks, Sullivan bluntly warned China to avoid helping Russia evade punishment from global sanctions that have hammered the Russian economy. ``We will not allow that to go forward,'' he said. Russia, however, on Monday denied it needed China's help.

``No, Russia has its own potential to continue the operation, which, as we have said, is unfolding in accordance with the plan and will be completed on time and in full,'' said Dmitry Peskov, President Vladimir Putin's spokesman.

Meanwhile, White House officials are discussing the possibility of Biden traveling to Europe to meet with allies for in-person talks about the crisis in Ukraine, according to three US officials.

The officials, who were not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the trip hasn't been finalized.

One possibility is a visit to NATO headquarters in Brussels on March 24 with other potential stops in Europe, according to one of the officials.

The prospect of China offering Russia financial help is one of several concerns for Biden. A US official said that in recent days, Russia has requested support from China, including military equipment, to press forward in its ongoing war with Ukraine.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, did not provide details on the scope of the request.

The Russians have seen significant losses of tanks, helicopters, and other materiel since the start of the war more than two weeks ago.

Ukraine, while overmatched by Russian forces, is well-equipped with anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles.

The Biden administration is also accusing China of spreading Russian disinformation that could be a pretext for Putin's forces to attack Ukraine with chemical or biological weapons.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has put China in a delicate spot with two of its biggest trading partners: the US and European Union. China needs access to those markets, yet it also has shown support for Moscow, joining with Russia in declaring a friendship with ``no limits.''

Asked at a daily briefing about the reported Russian request for assistance, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said: ``The US has been spreading disinformation targeting China recently over the Ukraine issue. It is malicious.``

``What is pressing now is that all parties should exercise restraint and strive to cool down the situation, rather than fueling the tension,`` Zhao told reporters. ``We should promote diplomatic settlements instead of further escalating the situation.``

The White House said Monday's Sullivan-Yang talks focused on the direct impact of Russia's war against Ukraine and on regional and global security.

Biden administration officials say Beijing is spreading false Russian claims that Ukraine was running chemical and biological weapons labs with US support.

They say China is effectively providing cover if Russia moves ahead with a biological or chemical weapons attack on Ukrainians.

When Russia starts accusing other countries of preparing to launch biological or chemical attacks, Sullivan said Sunday, ``it's a good tell that they may be on the cusp of doing it themselves.''

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby, on ABC's ``This Week,'' said ``we haven't seen anything that indicates some sort of imminent chemical or biological attack right now, but we're watching this very, very closely.''

The striking US accusations about Russian disinformation and Chinese complicity came after Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova alleged with no evidence that the US was financing Ukrainian chemical and biological weapons labs.

The Russian claim was echoed by Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao, who claimed there were 26 bio-labs and related facilities in ``the US Department of Defense has absolute control.'' The United Nations has said it has received no information backing up such accusations.

There is growing concern inside the White House that China is aligning itself with Russia on the Ukraine war in hopes it will advance Beijing's ``vision of the world order'' in the long term, according to a person familiar with the administration view who spoke on condition of anonymity because the official wasn't authorized to comment publicly.

The international community has assessed that Russia used chemical weapons in attempts to assassinate Putin detractors such as Alexei Navalny and former spy Sergei Skripal.

Russia also supports the Assad government in Syria, which has used chemical weapons against its people in a decade-long civil war.

China has been one of few countries to avoid criticizing the Russians for its invasion of Ukraine. China's leader Xi Jinping hosted Putin for the opening of the Winter Olympics in Beijing, just three weeks before Russia invaded on Feb. 24.

During Putin's visit, the two leaders issued a 5,000-word statement declaring limitless ``friendship.``

The Chinese abstained on UN votes censuring Russia and has criticized economic sanctions against Moscow.

But questions remain over how far Beijing will go to alienate the West and put its own economy at risk.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Russia's war against Ukraine is threatening the global food supply and putting developing countries, especially the world's poorest, at risk, the United Nations chief and the head of the UN food agency warned on Monday.

More than 40 African and least-developed countries import at least one-third of their wheat from Ukraine and Russia, and 18 of them import at least 50%, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters.

These countries include Egypt, Congo, Burkina Faso, Leban, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen, he said.

``All of this is hitting the poorest the hardest and planting the seeds for political instability and unrest around the globe,'' the secretary-general warned.

David Beasley, executive director of the World Food Program, told The Associated Press during a visit to the Ukrainian city of Lviv that 50% of the grain the program buys to feed ``the 125 million people we reach on any given day, week or month'' comes from Ukraine, as does 20% of the world's supply of corn.

``So (the war) is going to have a dynamic global catastrophic impact,'' Beasley said.

Guterres announced an additional $40 million from the UN's emergency fund to get critical supplies of food, water, and medicine into Ukraine, where at least 1.9 million people are displaced.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


The European Union's foreign policy chief says the 27-country bloc is finalizing its new round of sanctions against Russia for its ``barbaric'' invasion of Ukraine.

Josep Borrell said Monday that the fourth package of coercive measures would target Russia's market access, membership in international financial institutions, and steel and energy sectors.

``We are listing more companies and individuals playing an active role in supporting the people who undermine Ukrainian sovereignty,'' Borrell said, after talks in Skopje on Monday with North Macedonia's Prime Minister Dimitar Kovachevski.

``This would be another major blow (to the) economic and logistic base upon which the Kremlin is building the invasion.''

Search Keywords:

Short link:


North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has criticized his "predecessors" for depending on South Korea to develop its Mt. Kumgang resort and ordered the destruction of "all the unpleasant-looking facilities" built by the South.

The North's state-run Korean Central News Agency said on Wednesday that during an inspection trip to the scenic resort, Kim said that "due to the mistaken policy of the predecessors who tried to get benefits without efforts after just offering the tourist area, the mountain was neglected for more than 10 years." He instructed officials "to remove all the unpleasant-looking facilities of the south side with an agreement with the relevant unit of the south side and to build new modern service facilities our own way."

South Korean tours to the mountain once symbolized rapprochement between the two Koreas. Tour operator Hyundai Asan spent some W1 trillion building a hotel and other facilities at the site and running the tours, which were halted after a South Korean tourist was shot and killed by North Korean soldiers in 2008.

Kim was also quoted as saying, "Mt. Kumkang is our land won at the cost of blood and even a cliff and a tree on it are associated with our sovereignty and dignity," adding, "We will always welcome our compatriots from the south if they want to come to Mt. Kumgang... but what is important is for our people to have the shared view that it is not desirable to let the south undertake the tour of Mt. Kumgang, our famous mountain."


Chinese health authorities reported nearly 3,400 COVID-19 cases on Sunday, double the previous day, forcing lockdowns on virus hotspots as the country contends with its gravest outbreak in two years.

A nationwide surge in cases has seen authorities close schools in Shanghai and lock down several northeastern cities, as almost 19 provinces battle clusters of the Omicron and delta variants. The city of Jilin has been partially locked down, with hundreds of neighborhoods sealed up, an official announced Sunday, while Yanji, an urban area of nearly 700,000 bordering North Korea, was fully closed off.

China, where the virus was first detected in late 2019, has maintained a strict 'zero-COVID' policy enforced by swift lockdowns, travel restrictions and mass testing when clusters have emerged. But the latest flare-up, driven by the highly transmissible Omicron variant and a spike in asymptomatic cases, is challenging that approach.

Zhang Yan, an official with the Jilin provincial health commission, admitted Sunday that local authorities' virus response so far had been lacking. "The emergency response mechanism in some areas is not robust enough, there is insufficient understanding of the characteristics of the Omicron variant... and judgment has been inaccurate," he said at a government press briefing.

Residents of Jilin have completed six rounds of mass testing, local officials said. On Sunday the city reported over 500 cases of the Omicron variant. The neighboring city of Changchun -- an industrial base of 9 million people -- was locked down Friday. The smaller cities of Siping and Dunhua, both in Jilin province, were locked down Thursday and Friday, according to official announcements.

The mayor of Jilin and the head of the Changchun health commission were dismissed from their jobs Saturday, state media reported, in a sign of the political imperative placed on local authorities to squash virus clusters.


The Russian claim was echoed by Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, who claimed there were 26 bio-labs and related facilities in "which the U.S. Department of Defense has absolute control." The United Nations has said it has received no information backing up such accusations.

The striking accusations about Russian disinformation and Chinese complicity came after Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova alleged with no evidence that the U.S. was financing Ukrainian chemical and biological weapons labs.

Sullivan said on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday that when Russia starts accusing other countries of preparing to launch biological or chemical attacks, "it's a good tell that they may be on the cusp of doing it themselves." He also said China and other countries should not try to help Russia work around the sanctions and the U.S. has made it clear that other countries should not bail out the Russian economy. "We will ensure that neither China nor anyone else can compensate Russia for these losses," Sullivan said.

The White House has accused Beijing of spreading false Russian claims that Ukraine was running chemical and biological weapons labs with U.S. support. U.S. officials said China was attempting to provide cover for a potential biological or chemical weapons attack on Ukrainians by the Russian military.

The talks between National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and senior Chinese foreign policy adviser Yang Jiechi will center on "efforts to manage the competition between our two countries and discuss the impact of Russia's war against Ukraine on regional and global security," said Emily Horne, speaking for the White House National Security Council.

President Joe Biden is sending his national security adviser for talks with a senior Chinese official in Rome on Monday as concerns grow that China is amplifying Russian disinformation in the Ukraine war and may help Russia evade punishment from economic sanctions.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki last week called the claims "preposterous." "Now that Russia has made these false claims, and China has seemingly endorsed this propaganda, we should all be on the lookout for Russia to possibly use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine, or to create a false flag operation using them," Psaki tweeted Wednesday night. "It's a clear pattern."

Sullivan, who appeared on several of the Sunday news shows before his trip, told "Face the Nation" on CBS that the Russian rhetoric on chemical and biological warfare is an indicator that in fact the Russians are getting ready to do it and try and pin the blame elsewhere and nobody should fall for that."

The international community for years has assessed that Russia has used chemical weapons in carrying out assassination attempts against Putin detractors such as Alexei Navalny and former spy Sergei Skripal. Russia also supports the Assad government in Syria, which has used chemical weapons against its people in a decade-long civil war.

Testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday, CIA Director William Burns also noted grave concern that Russia might be laying the groundwork for a chemical or biological attack of its own, which it would then blame on the U.S. or Ukraine in a false flag operation. "This is something, as all of you know very well, is very much a part of Russia's playbook," he said. "They've used these weapons against their own citizens, they've at least encouraged the use in Syria and elsewhere, so it's something we take very seriously."

China has been one of few countries to avoid criticizing the Russians for its invasion of Ukraine. China's Xi Jinping hosted Russian President Vladimir Putin for the opening of the Winter Olympics in Beijing, just weeks before Russia launched the Feb. 24 invasion. During Putin's visit to China last month, the two leaders issued a 5,000-word statement declaring "no limits" in the friendship between the two countries.

The Chinese abstained on UN votes censuring Russia and has criticized economic sanctions against Moscow. It has expressed its support for peace talks and offered its services as a mediator, despite questions about its neutrality and scant experience mediating international conflict. Chinese officials have also said Washington shouldn't be able to complain about Russia's actions because the U.S. invaded Iraq under false pretenses. The U.S. claimed to have evidence Saddam Hussein was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction though none was ever found.

For Russia, China could be a crucial economic partner in mitigating the severe sanctions levied by the U.S, Britain, the 27-national European Union and other countries, though there are questions as to how far Beijing will go to alienate the alliance and put its own economy at risk.

The Biden administration is looking to impress on China that any efforts to ease sanctions for Russia could have ramifications for its relations with the United States and Western allies.

On CNN's "State of the Union," Sullivan said Sunday that the administration believes China knew that Putin "was planning something" before the invasion of Ukraine. But Sullivan said the Chinese government "may not have understood the full extent of it because it's very possible that Putin lied to them the same way that he lied to Europeans and others."

Sullivan and Yang last met for face-to-face talks in Switzerland, where Sullivan raised the Biden administration's concerns about China's military provocations against Taiwan, human rights abuses against ethnic minorities and efforts to squelch pro-democracy advocates in Hong Kong. That meeting set the stage for a three-hour long virtual meeting in November between Biden and Xi. Sullivan is also to meet Luigi Mattiolo, diplomatic adviser to Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, while in Rome.
The local governor of the Lviv region said 30 missiles hit the military training facility. But central government officials estimated eight missiles struck the base. "The occupiers launched an airstrike on the International Center for Peacekeeping and Security. According to preliminary data, they fired eight missiles," Anton Mironovich, spokesman for the Ukrainian Armed Forces, told the Interfax Ukraine news agency.

That aside, the intelligence assessment was that Lviv should not be considered safe ground. Messages sent to NGOs and projects funded by the United States and drawn from the intelligence assessment warned: "Cities in the West are no longer regarded as safe." NGO workers still inside Ukraine were advised to leave Lviv and seek shelter in border villages, less likely to be targeted by missiles.

The strike on the International Center for Peacekeeping and Security is the westernmost attack by Russia so far and increases fears that Lviv may soon be embroiled in the conflict. More than a week ago VOA reported U.S. intelligence agencies feared Belarus, Russia's ally and a staging ground for the Russian invasion of its neighbor, might throw its troops into the war, and would launch attacks on Ukraine's north-west and center, endangering Lviv. So far Belarus has not entered the conflict directly and the attack on the training center was a Russian strike. But American and European officials remain worried about Belarus.

The base at Yavoriv is only 60 km from Lviv, a major hub for Ukrainian evacuees heading into Poland. It has also been used by NATO military instructors, but Ukrainian officials say they are still trying to establish whether any were on-site for the attack and were injured.

One of Ukraine's biggest military training bases, located 25 km from the Polish border in the west of the country, was struck by Russian missiles in an attack that left 35 people dead and 134 others injured, according to Ukrainian officials.

The targeting of Yavoriv is being seen by some Western diplomats as a message reinforcing a warning issued Saturday by Russia's deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov, who said western arms convoys to Ukraine were now considered by Moscow a "legitimate military target." There has been an uptick in recent days in Russian airstrikes targeting military facilities in western Ukraine. Last week on air-defense facilities and military airfields in western Ukraine, around 130 kilometers south of Lviv.

Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said Friday that Russian forces had carried out long-range missile attacks on two military airfields in the western Ukrainian cities of Lutsk and Ivano Frankivsk. Ukrainian military officials confirmed the strikes but denied Russian claims that the air-defense facilities at both airfields had been destroyed. Local authorities said two Ukrainian servicemen were killed and six people wounded at the Lutsk military airfield.

Russian forces struck the airbase at Ivano-Frankivsk again Sunday morning. The city's mayor, Ruslan Martsinkiv, has urged people living near the base to leave. Ukraine's defense minister dubbed the Russia's airstrike on Yavoriv a "terrorist attack." Oleksii Reznikov tweeted: "Russia has attacked the International Center for Peacekeeping&Security near Lviv. Foreign instructors work here. Information about the victims is being clarified. This is new terrorist attack on peace&security near the EU-NATO border. Action must be taken to stop this. Close the sky!"

The attack so close to the Polish border is alarming European politicians. Norbert Rottgen, a senior German politician and former chair of the German parliament's foreign affairs committee, tweeted: "Attacks on #Lviv for the first time. The city in western #Ukraine is closer to Berlin than Berlin is to Paris. This war will get worse, it will get closer. In order to restore peace in Europe, we must do more, namely everything we can. Waiting is no longer acceptable!"

Ukraine has been intensifying its call for NATO to establish a no-fly zone over the country, something western leaders have repeatedly rejected on the grounds it could result in alliance warplanes shooting down Russian jets, triggering a broader European war, risking a nuclear exchange.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused NATO's leadership of giving the "green light for further bombing of Ukrainian cities" by declining establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine, saying those who oppose the move bear responsibility for civilian deaths going forward. But some military experts are skeptical a no-fly zone could work, pointing out that it would do little to stop the missile strikes, which are causing most of the destruction.

Damir Marusic, an analyst at the Atlantic Council, a New York-based think tank, says that to impose an effective no-fly zone and to protect patrolling NATO warplanes, the western alliance would have to take out anti-aircraft batteries based in Belarus and Russia, otherwise there would a constant risk of NATO aircraft being downed.

Meanwhile, as worries mount about whether western Ukraine will start becoming more of a target, in the east of the country the regional governor of Donetsk, Pavlo Kyrylenko, told Ukrainian television that the town of Volnovakha, now in Russian hands, had been effectively wiped out.

"In general, with its infrastructure as such no longer exists," he told the Ukrainian television channel Direct. Volnovakha endured days of heavy bombardment demolishing the town of 21,000 people. Videos posted on social media show Russian armored vehicles in the center of the burnt-out town. Volnovakha had the misfortune of being located in a militarily important position, lying between the city of Donetsk, held by pro-Moscow separatists, and the still-controlled Ukrainian port of Mariupol, on the Sea of Azov.

Mariupol has been besieged for 11 days. Russian forces also damaged Saturday the Sviatohirsk Lavra, a major Orthodox Christian monastery and pilgrimage site on the bank of the Seversky Donets River near the town of Sviatohirsk. At the time of attack, around 520 civilians and monks were at the site, Ukrainian media have reported.

In a video address from Kyiv Saturday President Zelenskyy accused Russia of waging a "war of annihilation" against Ukraine.
Spending on private education for schoolchildren hit an all-time high as parents feared their children would be left behind in online classes amid the coronavirus pandemic.

According to a poll of some 74,000 students from 3,000 primary and secondary schools across the country by the Education Ministry, parents spent a monthly average of W367,000 on private education, up a whopping 21.5 percent from the year before (US$1=W1,232). The total was W23.4 trillion.

Monthly spending per student has risen from W256,000, though it fell to W289,000 in 2020, when the pandemic started.


Support for president-elect Yoon Seok-youl seems to have split younger voters along gender lines. Some 58.7 percent of men in their 20s voted for Yoon but 58 percent of women in the age group voted for his ruling-party rival Lee Jae-myung in the presidential election last week.

Throughout the campaign, both candidates targeted young supporters who face pressing issues such as unemployment, skyrocketing housing prices, and rising inequality. They were seen as critical swing voters in the neck-and-neck race.

But instead of these issues, gender politics emerged as a flashpoint, with both candidates making campaign promises that were seen as targeting young men, and it was the People Power Party's policies that resonated more.

In the midst of economic stagnation, some young men say they feel left behind, especially since military service remains compulsory for men only. Unemployment among men in their 20s is much higher than for women, and girls are now more likely to be accepted at university.

"On YouTube and online communities that men are exposed to, people talk about how men are treated unequally, how the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family is not doing its job and wasting money, how laws are created in favor of women," said one male voter in his 20s. "I think those kinds of sentiments are shared by many young men."

These young men found representation in Yoon's pledge to abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, for example. A survey in January found that 64 percent of men support the ministry's abolition, compared to 40 percent of women.

"The communities I'm part of, young men in their 20s, every time we'd talk about something related to politics, they mostly went for the PPP," the voter continued.

Yoon also suggested throughout the campaign that gender inequality is not in fact a problem in Korea, claiming in the last presidential debate that structural sexism no longer exists. The day before the election, the Washington Post published an interview in which Yoon identified as a feminist, but after a backlash he retracted the statement, blaming it on an "administrative error" in his written responses.

While some young men did not see Yoon as a perfect candidate, they saw a vote for him as a way to express their dissatisfaction with the establishment. "This is a judgment of Koreans who feel very frustrated with the policies of the current administration," said another male voter in his 20s. "We want a change of government."

Young women, on the other hand, said they leaned toward Lee not so much out of his policies but out of disappointment with the PPP.

One young woman said she was frustrated with the "explicit anti-feminism" espoused by Yoon and other members of the party such as PPP party leader Lee Jun-seok. "As a woman in my 20s, gender was a really important issue that swayed my vote, but I didn't talk about it with many people," she said. "I hesitated to express my support for Lee, especially to my friends who were male -- I was afraid they would think I'm this radical feminist that supports a party just for identity reasons."

Many young women said they believe that gender inequality is still an important issue in Korea, which has the biggest gender pay gap in the OECD and the worst "glass ceiling index" in the Economist rankings published recently. And while young women are more likely to be employed than their male counterparts, they also have a higher workforce dropout rate in their 30s and 40s.

"In Korea in the 21st century, there is still discrimination against women," said one young woman. "We are not at a point where we can abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family."

In the final stretch of his campaign, Lee pivoted his strategy to appeal more to young women. On March 3, in response to Yoon's comment about structural sexism, Lee wrote on Facebook, "I will tackle the systematic gender discrimination in society and provide a better life for women."

He also hosted a rally for women with speakers such as Park Ji-hyun, a young activist fighting online sex crimes, and promoted pledges such as strengthening protections for victims of sexual violence.

But these moves may have come too late. As both candidates tried to appeal to young men throughout the election, some young women were left feeling unheard. "I think the candidates were more geared towards attracting young men than women," said Lee Su-jin, who is in her 20s.

"Five years ago, President Moon Jae-in said, 'I am a feminist president, I will be a feminist president, so women should vote for me,'" said another. "This year it was the opposite."

Some were drawn to the minor Justice Party's Sim Sang-jung, a labor and women's rights activist. The largest portion of Sim's 800,000 votes -- more votes than the 260,000 votes that separated Yoon and Lee -- was women in their 20s. "She is the only one who talked about women's issues seriously," said one female voter.

"Sim's campaign was beautiful. I know she couldn't win. But if more people voted for her, that could show Koreans that there are more people supporting her," said Lee So-jeong, who is in her 30s. "Do I have to vote for a president for the next five years or for the next generation?"

In the end, Yoon won by less than one percentage point, the tightest margin in Korea's history. Many see Yoon's victory as a referendum on the Moon administration, especially its failure to control runaway housing prices and youth unemployment, rather than a ringing endorsement of the conservatives.

Surveys showed that the economy and housing were the top two issues for this year's voters, and voters were attracted by Yoon's promises to deregulate the economy and build 2.5 million new homes. "As many people say, we had to choose a lesser evil," said a woman in her 20s. "I think people in their 20s have lost hope that the Minjoo Party can lead the country to a better economy."

One young woman who was frustrated by Yoon's comments on gender said she is nonetheless hopeful about his economic policies. "I'm not satisfied with how the Minjoo Party has run the country for the last five years," she said. "The previous conservative administrations' economic policies were alright, and I'm expecting that the PPP will run the economy better."

After the close-fought race exposed deep divisions along gender and generational lines, she worries these will only deepen in the wake of the election.

"In past elections, voters split along region or generation. But in this presidential campaign, the candidates also used gender conflict to try to get votes," she said. "And now, even though the election is over, I worry that the issue is not going to be solved, that it's only going to worsen."
KYODO NEWS - Mar 14, 2022 - 11:41 | World, All

Some Asian and Oceanian nations are ramping up weapons purchases as they become increasingly wary of China's growing regional ambition, a report published by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute showed Monday.

The report compared weapons transactions worldwide for the five years through 2021 to the previous five years through 2016. It showed that out of the top 10 arms importers, six were from Asia and Oceania.

India was the top importer, accounting for 11 percent of the total, but imports into the region as a whole actually decreased by 4.7 percent, indicating a wide variance in purchases among sub-regions, the report noted.

Japan's imports increased by 2.5 times, making it the 10th-largest importer in the world. Australia, China, South Korea and Pakistan were also ranked in the top 10.

Asia and Oceania, the world's largest arms importing region over the past 30 years, received 43 percent of global transfers from 2017 to 2021.

"Tensions between China and many states in Asia and Oceania are the main driver of arms imports in the region," the report quoted Siemon Wezeman, senior researcher with the institute's Arms Transfers Program, as saying.

The total global arms trade, including imports and exports, fell 4.6 percent, the report said.

Imports to Ukraine, before its recent invasion by Russia, were "very limited" as the country's budget was tight and major exporters limited supply for fear of escalating the long-running conflict in eastern Ukraine, according to the institute.

As for exports, the United States remained the world's biggest weapons supplier, accounting for 39 percent of the total. The country's exports rose 14 percent. Russia, the second-largest exporter, saw its trade fall 26 percent.

The rise in U.S. exports was mainly owing to increased transactions with Saudi Arabia, Australia, South Korea and Japan, according to the institute. U.S. exports to Japan expanded 2.7 times.

"The USA remains the largest supplier to Asia and Oceania, as arms exports are an important element of U.S. foreign policy aimed at China," Wezeman said.

The United States, Russia, France, China and Germany accounted for more than three-fourths of the world's exports, the report said.

Related coverage:

Moon thrusts South Korea deeper into global arms trade
KYODO NEWS - Mar 14, 2022 - 23:46 | All, Japan, Coronavirus

Japan is considering lifting the COVID-19 quasi-state of emergency for 18 prefectures upon its expiration next week as the number of infections in those areas has been decreasing, a government source said Monday.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's government plans to make a final decision Wednesday on the possible lifting ahead of the emergency's expiration on March 21, the source said.

Officials hope the downward trend of daily coronavirus infection tallies will be enough for Tokyo, Osaka and 16 other prefectures to meet the government's criteria for lifting the emergency.

However, the government will keep a close eye on the number of infections in such areas as some authorities might ask for an extension.

On Monday, a total of 32,471 new infections were reported in Japan, a drop of around 4,600 from a week earlier.

Of those, the Tokyo metropolitan government confirmed 4,836, falling below 5,000 for the first time since Jan. 17.

The Kishida government eased the criteria last week, citing an increase in the number of vaccinated people, the low risk posed by the Omicron variant of causing severe illness and the need for fully resuming economic activities to boost the economy.

The new criteria will allow the government to lift the emergency if the burden on health care seems poised to decrease despite new infections remaining at high levels.

Kishida said Monday at a ruling Liberal Democratic Party meeting the number of infected people in the 18 prefectures "has decreased significantly" and that the government "would like to move the economy and society forward as much as possible."

The quasi-emergency, in place in 18 of Japan's 47 prefectures, puts restrictions on the business hours of restaurants and bars and requests that the public refrain from nonessential travel between prefectures.

Besides Tokyo and Osaka, Hokkaido, Kanagawa, Aichi, Kyoto, Kagawa and Kumamoto are among the 18 affected regions.
KYODO NEWS - Mar 14, 2022 - 07:54 | All, World

U.S. special envoy to North Korea Sung Kim has called on China to join the United States in censuring North Korea over its recent missile launches, which were found to have been tests involving a new intercontinental ballistic missile system, the State Department said Sunday.

The phone call with Kim's Chinese counterpart Liu Xiaoming took place on Thursday, the same day the U.S. government announced its analysis that North Korea had tested the new ICBM system with its two most recent missile launches on Feb. 27 and March 5.

According to the department, Kim told Liu that he was concerned that the two launches demonstrated Pyongyang's "determination to advance its unlawful weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs and continue an increasingly escalatory path."

Noting that ensuring regional stability is in the interests of both countries, Kim called upon China, an important ally and economic benefactor of North Korea, to join Washington "in publicly condemning" the tests and encouraged Beijing to urge Pyongyang to "cease its destabilizing activity and return to dialogue."

Kim also reiterated that the United States "remains open to diplomacy" with North Korea to make progress toward the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, according to the department.

The U.S. government has said the recent tests could be a precursor to an ICBM launch "at full range."

The missiles fired toward the Sea of Japan on Feb. 27 and March 5 were apparently launched on lofted trajectories to limit their flight distance.

North Korea has conducted nine series of missile tests this year. The country also hinted in January that it could resume nuclear and ICBM tests for the first time since 2017, raising concern over the ongoing development of nuclear-capable ICBMs that could potentially reach the U.S. homeland.

Related coverage:

North Korea resumes work on nuclear test site tunnels: S. Korea

North Korea's Kim seeks to expand key missile facility amid ICBM concern

North Korea tests ICBM system in "serious escalation": U.S. official
KYODO NEWS - Mar 14, 2022 - 21:04 | All, Japan

Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party is set to begin internal discussions on nuclear deterrence, taking up the controversial issue of nuclear sharing with the United States, party lawmakers said Monday despite the government's stance against the option.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine and its threat of using nuclear weapons have prompted calls from conservative members including former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for Japan to discuss the topic.

The LDP's panel on national security will hear expert opinions on U.S. and European nuclear deterrence strategies on Wednesday and exchange views, the party sources said.

Japan, which suffered the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II, upholds the three principles of not possessing, not producing and not allowing nuclear weapons on its soil. For years, it has relied on the U.S. nuclear umbrella for deterrence.

Designed to provide collective security for its members, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has nuclear sharing arrangements, under which non-nuclear states host U.S. nuclear weapons for use in the event of a war.

A few days after Russia invaded Ukraine in late February, Abe said Japan should start discussing whether to seek a nuclear sharing arrangement similar to NATO's, without a "taboo."

Sanae Takaichi, the LDP's policy chief who shares a hawkish stance on security with Abe, has said in the event of a contingency there should be an exception to one of the three nuclear principles of "not allowing" nuclear weapons to be brought to Japan.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has dismissed the possibility that the government will start its own discussions about a potential nuclear sharing arrangement.

"Under the Japan-U.S. alliance, extended deterrence is working," Kishida told a parliamentary session on Monday, referring to the state of Japan's security being ensured under the U.S. nuclear umbrella and by its military forces.

"The government is not planning to start discussions about nuclear sharing," Kishida told the parliamentary session.

The latest push by conservative members of the LDP comes as Kishida, elected from a constituency in Hiroshima, has been pushing for a world free of nuclear weapons.

This year, Japan is planning to review its national security strategy adopted in 2013 when Abe was prime minister and two other key documents on defense policy and equipment, to reflect the security environment around Japan that Kishida has said has been getting "severer rapidly."

Japan neighbors both nuclear state China and North Korea, whose nuclear and missile development remains a security concern. It also has a territorial dispute with another nuclear power Russia.

Related coverage:

Ex-Japan PM Abe wants attempts to alter status quo in Asia quashed

Kishida says Japan won't seek nuclear sharing with U.S.

Ex-PM Abe says Japan should discuss nuclear sharing arrangement
Abilene, KS (67410)

Today

Showers this morning, becoming a steady rain during the afternoon hours. High 56F. Winds E at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall near a half an inch..

Tonight

Thundershowers overnight following a period of rain early. Low 51F. Winds NE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%.
VIENNA, March 10 (Xinhua) -- China's Permanent Representative to the United Nations in Vienna Wang Qun said Wednesday that the United States, Britain and Australia must address international concerns about the nuclear proliferation risks of their AUKUS deal.

Wang made the remarks when addressing a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors on the "Transfer of nuclear materials in the context of AUKUS and its safeguards in all aspects under the NPT (Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons)."

The IAEA board on Monday decided by consensus to incorporate the AUKUS issue as a formal agenda item at China's proposal.

In September 2021, the United States, Britain and Australia announced the establishment of AUKUS, under which the United States and Britain will assist Australia in its acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines.

Wang noted the core issue is whether AUKUS involves the illegal transfer of nuclear weapon materials.

The issue bears on the integrity, effectiveness and authority of the NPT and the interests of all IAEA member states, and thus must be clarified, he said.

"If the AUKUS does involve the illegal transfer of nuclear weapon materials, the three countries must completely abolish the cooperation that openly and directly violates the NPT, impairs the international nuclear non-proliferation regime, and undermines global strategic stability and international security order," he said.

"Otherwise, the IAEA member states have the right and responsibility to continue the intergovernmental discussion process to resolve the issue so as to safeguard the authority and effectiveness of the NPT as well as the integrity of the IAEA safeguards system," he added.

China has proposed the establishment of a special committee, open to participation of all IAEA member states, to continue in-depth discussions on AUKUS and submit recommendations to the agency's board and its general conference, according to Wang.

He stressed that before a consensus is reached on a resolution, the United States, Britain and Australia should not carry out cooperation on nuclear-powered submarines, and the IAEA secretariat should not negotiate safeguard issues with the three countries.

The envoy called on all IAEA member states to focus on the core issues of AUKUS and seek solutions to safeguard the NPT and the international non-proliferation regime. 
JERUSALEM, March 14 (Xinhua) -- The two flagship airlines of Israel and Morocco, El Al and Royal Air Maroc (RAM), on Monday signed a codeshare agreement, the Israeli airline said in a statement.

The agreement was signed in a ceremony held at El Al's headquarters at Ben Gurion International Airport outside the coastal city of Tel Aviv.

The event was chaired by RAM CEO Hamid Addou and El Al CEO Avigal Soreq.

The codeshare, which took effect immediately, covers both airlines' nonstop flights between Morocco and Israel.

EL AL operates three regular flights per week between Tel Aviv and Marrakech, while RAM now has four weekly direct flights linking Casablanca with Tel Aviv after a new nonstop route launched on Sunday.

The agreement will offer both airlines' customers more options in terms of schedules between Tel Aviv and Marrakech or Casablanca, the statement said.

The partnership will also provide connections between both airlines' networks thanks to the through passenger and baggage check-in, it added.

El Al noted that the agreement is only a first milestone in the cooperation between both airlines.

Israel and Morocco signed a historic agreement for the establishment of full diplomatic relations in December 2020. 
BEIJING, March 14 (Xinhua) -- Snowstorms are set to hit parts of northern China from Monday to Tuesday, China's meteorological authorities have said.

Snowstorms will drop up to 10 centimeters in parts of Inner Mongolia, Jilin, Heilongjiang and Xinjiang, according to the National Meteorological Center.

The center renewed a blue alert for snowstorms in those regions.

Residents are advised to stay indoors, and local authorities should take precautions concerning roads, railways, electricity and telecommunications.

China has a four-tier color-coded weather warning system, with red representing the most severe warning, followed by orange, yellow and blue. 
TAIPEI, March 14 (Xinhua) -- The Taiwan region of China reported 75 new COVID-19 cases, including two locally transmitted infections and 73 imported ones, the island's disease monitoring agency said Monday.

Of the new local infections, one occurred in Taoyuan, and the other in Keelung, the agency added.

To date, Taiwan has reported 21,363 confirmed COVID-19 cases, of which 15,490 were local infections. 
OUAGADOUGOU, March 14 (Xinhua) -- Thirteen gendarmes were killed on Sunday by unidentified gunmen in an ambush near Taparko, in the Centre-Nord Region of Burkina Faso, the army said in a statement on Monday.

Five other wounded gendarmes have been evacuated for treatment, while an offensive is underway to find the attackers, added the statement.

On Sunday, a team from the gendarmerie of Dori, on an escort mission about 5 kilometers from Taparko, Namentenga province in the Center-North region of Burkina Faso, rescued the victims of an explosion of a bus that hit a landmine the same day in the same region.

It was on returning from this mission around 3:30 p.m. when the team of gendarmes fell into an ambush set by unidentified gunmen near Taparko, according to the statement.

Security in Burkina Faso has worsened since 2015, with terrorist attacks killing more than 1,000 people and displacing over one million others in the west African nation. 
Deputies to the 13th National People's Congress (NPC) leave the Great Hall of the People after the closing meeting of the fifth session of the 13th NPC in Beijing, capital of China, March 11, 2022. (Xinhua/Jin Liwang)

NANNING, March 14 (Xinhua) -- The annual sessions of China's top legislature and political advisory body, which concluded on Friday, have attracted a special foreign follower this year: Jahan Shair Jalal, a Pakistani student in China.

Having lived in the country for more than five years, Jahan Shair Jalal is no stranger to the "two sessions." He is a medical student at Guangxi University of Chinese Medicine in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and works as an intern at a local hospital.

During his internship in Guangxi, the Pakistani student found that China's extensive medical insurance coverage has enabled those from remote areas to enjoy relatively good medical resources.

"China is vast and has a large population, and the local conditions vary from place to place across the country. But the Chinese government has always been devoted to managing its medical resources based on reasonable allocation," said Jahan Shair Jalal.

A wide range of topics with regard to people's livelihoods were discussed at the annual gathering, and this year, Jahan Shair Jalal noticed several specific suggestions and proposals from China's lawmakers and political advisors.

Wei Qin, a deputy to the 13th National People's Congress (NPC), proposed the establishment of an administration bureau for rare-disease services, while Ding Jie, a member of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), advised the joint development of a medical insurance mechanism for rare-disease medicine.

Jahan Shair Jalal is glad to see efforts being made to better protect and treat patients suffering from rare diseases, some of which have already been implemented.

Aside from improvements related to medical care, the Pakistani student is impressed at how the voices of ordinary people are listened to and their concerns addressed. He cited the rights and welfare of delivery workers as a good example.

Since coming to China, Jahan Shair Jalal has got into the habit of ordering his meals via mobile applications. He is amazed at the popularity of online food delivery and the efficiency of the services.

"In my country, only a few big chain restaurants and the courier industry would offer similar jobs. But in China, it's no exaggeration to say that almost everything can be delivered to your doorstep."

"The voices and rights protection of ordinary workers such as delivery guys are taken seriously by the 'two sessions,'" said the young man.

He said that he read about how an NPC deputy's personal experience on the topic inspired her to make a worthwhile proposal at the "two sessions."

In 2019, Huang Chao got her car scratched by a passing deliveryman, and during her interactions with the man she learned more about their working conditions and concerns. After over a year's research on the relevant circumstances, Huang made a proposal to the "two sessions" for more comprehensive regulations aimed at better protecting delivery workers.

In July 2021, Huang's suggestion was partly taken up by relevant departments, and an official guideline on safeguarding the rights and interests of workers in new forms of employment was released.

"After graduation, I would like to take what I have seen and learnt in China back to Pakistan, so that more people know about China and can learn from its successful experience." 
A father brings his malnourished child to be weighed as he receives medical treatment at the malnutrition treating ward in a hospital in Sanaa, Yemen, on March 13, 2022. (Photo by Mohammed Mohammed/Xinhua)



SANAA, March 14 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) warned on Friday that millions of Yemeni people are at risk of famine as a result of the country's years-long military conflict and sharp deterioration of its economy, calling for urgent action.



"Children in Yemen are starving not because of a lack of food, but because their families cannot afford food," the UNICEF said in a statement posted on Twitter.

The UN organization said that "the impact of the economic collapse on the humanitarian crisis in Yemen cannot be understated."

"Without urgent action, millions could be plunged into famine," it warned.

According to the UNICEF mission in Yemen, nearly 400,000 children under the age of five are slipping from acute malnutrition to severe acute malnutrition.

Yemen has been mired in a civil war since late 2014 when the Iran-backed Houthi militia seized control of several northern provinces and forced the Saudi-backed Yemeni government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi out of the capital Sanaa.

The UN is trying to end the civil war that has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced 4 million people, and brought the country to the brink of famine.

A mother holds her malnourished child in her arm when the child receives medical treatment at the malnutrition treating ward in a hospital in Sanaa, Yemen, on March 13, 2022. (Photo by Mohammed Mohammed/Xinhua)



A malnourished child lies on a bed as he receives medical treatment at the malnutrition treating ward in a hospital in Sanaa, Yemen, on March 13, 2022. (Photo by Mohammed Mohammed/Xinhua)



A health worker gets a malnourished child weighed as he receives medical treatment at the malnutrition treating ward in a hospital in Sanaa, Yemen, on March 13, 2022. (Photo by Mohammed Mohammed/Xinhua)


MOGADISHU, March 14 (Xinhua) -- The Somali National Army (SNA) said its special forces arrested three Shabab militants on Monday in an operation in southern Somalia.

SNA officials told state-run Radio Mogadishu that there was no resistance from the militants during the operation in Barire town and its surroundings.

The three, identified as Abdifitah Mohamed, Osman Omar and Adan Moalim, were charged with extortion and bomb attacks in the region, the radio said.

Their case will be handled by the military court, officials said.

The latest military operation came as al-Shabab intensified attacks on government officials in southern and central Somalia during the country's ongoing electoral process. 
FREETOWN, March 14 (Xinhua) -- The Electoral Commission of Sierra Leone on Monday declared June 24 as the official date for the country's 2023 presidential elections.

The presidential elections will go simultaneously with the elections of ordinary members of parliament and local councils representatives, Electoral Commissioner Mohamed Konneh told a press conference in Freetown, the capital.

The commission confirmed that it plans to register eligible voters from Sept. 3 to Oct. 4 for the elections. 
SEOUL, March 14 (Xinhua) -- South Korea's export of the information and communications technology (ICT) products logged a double-digit growth last month, a government report showed Monday.

The ICT export jumped 23.7 percent over the year to 18.88 billion U.S. dollars in February, according to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy.

It was the biggest February figure amid the continued recovery in global demand from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Semiconductor export advanced 24.0 percent to 10.46 billion dollars, topping 10 billion dollars for the 10th straight month since May last year.

Display panel shipment surged 39.3 percent to 2.25 billion dollars, and export for computers and peripherals soared 47.8 percent to 1.58 billion dollars.

Mobile phone export reduced 4.9 percent to 980 million dollars last month.

Among major export destinations, the ICT products export to China, South Korea's biggest trading partner, reached the highest 8.47 billion dollars in February.

It was followed by shipment to Vietnam with 3.09 billion dollars, the United States with 2.08 billion dollars and the European Union (EU) with 1.22 billion dollars respectively.

The ICT import amounted to 11.39 billion dollars in February, sending the trade surplus in the ICT industry to 7.49 billion dollars. 
In his new book "Between the World and Me," Ta-Nehisi Coates describes whiteness as a Dream. The Dreamers, defined by Coates as people who believe themselves to be white, live in varying states of power over black people and other people of color. Usually oblivious to having that power, we don't think too hard about how we got it. The Dream relies on forgetting and denial. The Dream says, "I have nothing to do with slavery. My ancestors weren't on this continent at that time. Everyone has equal access to opportunities. Racism is over." It makes us forget how preferential treatment from the police, courts, banks, unions, and schools have elevated white people above everyone else in the United States. We don't want to wake up from the Dream because waking up would mean losing the power we have as white people, a power built on violence against black people.

I say "we" because I'm a Dreamer and because most of the writers, staff, and readers of the City Paper are, too. I'm writing about "Between the World and Me" as a white man because that's the only way I can read it, and also to respond to New York Times columnist David Brooks' condescending open letter to Coates. In his piece 'Listening to Ta-Nehisi Coates While White,' the conservative columnist conflates Coates' concept of "the Dream" with his own take on the "American dream." It offends Brooks that Coates would reject that dream. "A dream sullied is not a lie," Brooks writes, defending the American dream by presenting it through his family's perspective. "My ancestors chose to come here. For them, America was the antidote to the crushing restrictiveness of European life, to the pogroms. For them, the American dream was an uplifting spiritual creed that offered dignity, the chance to rise."

Advertisement

Brooks' family had a chance to rise. His Jewish family, like my Jewish family, didn't come to America white, but became white in a process that reveals how the goal lines of whiteness shift to serve the Dream's own logic. Whiteness allowed us to integrate into the American dream. But it also made us complicit in the squander of human life that's at the heart of white identity. As Coates made clear in 'The Case for Reparations,' his June 2014 cover story for The Atlantic, there are structural impediments to black families building wealth and gaining power that don't exist for white families. From chattel slavery and the white backlash against Reconstruction to segregation and mass incarceration, a constant thread through U.S. history is the policing of the black body. Coates roots his analysis of anti-black racism in the bodies of people like himself, his friend Prince Jones, who was killed by a Prince George's County police officer in 2000, and his 15-year-old son Samori.

"Between the World and Me" is written as a letter to Samori, and it's built around the question of how to live "within a black body, within a country lost in the Dream." The book is driven by the deep fear that Coates can't protect his son's body. He tells the story of taking his son to the movies on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Samori did not move fast enough for the white woman behind him on an escalator, so she pushed him. To Coates, she was pulling rank, invoking her right to control the body of a black child. When he spoke up to defend his son, a nearby white man got in Coates' face. Coates pushed him, and the white man said, "I could have you arrested." This moment shows what Coates means when he describes control of the black body as the key to understanding racism in the U.S. The Dream isn't just about police killings and Confederate flags. It's about bodies interacting in space, here and now.

Advertisement

This can be jarring for us white people. We love thinking of racism as an abstraction, as something you can be for or against, as something from the past that is over. The Middle Passage, slavery, segregation, and lynching are aberrations on the United States' natural arc toward justice and democracy. When we see racism now, we see it in the Klansmen and skinheads marching on Charleston. Those bad white people are racist, not us good ones. We say that race is a social construct, so how can we even talk about "racism" anyway? I mean, we're all part of the human race, aren't we? All lives matter, right?

Coates takes us out of the abstract and shows us that anti-black racism is as concrete as the bullet that tore through Renisha McBride's face. Going beyond the cerebral wishy-washiness of the white, liberal understanding of race, he focuses on the ways the black male body is policed, judged, and perceived in the U.S.

That specificity is helpful. Coates speaks from his own experience, delivering a blistering critique of a country that has always seen the black male body as something to control, fear, desire, exploit, and kill. By focusing on black men and boys, he mostly leaves out black women, girls, and trans people. Given that the book is a letter to his son, this is an understandable, if disappointing, omission. As Dr. Karsonya Wise Whitehead points out in The Sun, "there has always been push-back to the decades-old assumption that the black male experience automatically includes black women . . . the #BlackLivesMatter movement seems to inform a black man's view of the world and in much the same way, Coates' memoir continues to keep the Gaussian beam of focus squarely and predictably on black men." This critique is necessary, but should not take away from this memoir's importance as a timely, challenging, and necessary work. Readers can appreciate its value while recognizing its limitations.

David Brooks is right to take "Between the World and Me" personally. This is personal. It's about white people like us doing physical, sexual, psychological, and spiritual violence to black people every day. It's about a white woman feeling like she can put her hands on a black child. It's about Martin O'Malley hearing "Black Lives Matter" and responding "White lives matter, all lives matter." It's about white Baltimoreans breaking curfew with impunity while black protesters were being beaten, pepper-sprayed, and arrested at Penn and North. It's about the layers of power and history we carry with us through the spaces we occupy. If Coates' central question is how to inhabit a black body in the context of the Dream, white readers must ask what it means to inhabit white ones. More importantly, we must ask what it will take to wake ourselves up from the Dream. Otherwise, we'll prove Coates right when he says "the Dreamers, at least the Dreamers of today, would rather live white than live free."
New Delhi:

AIIMS Nursing Officer Exam 2020 result has been declared. Candidates who appeared for the AIIMS Nursing Officer Exam 2020 need to visit the official website of AIIMS Patna, i.e. aiimspatna.org to check and download the Nursing Officer Result 2020. Alternatively, candidates can click on the below mentioned direct link to check the AIIMS Nursing Officer Result 2020. It is to note that the AIIMS Nursing Officer Exam 2020 was held on February 23, 2020, and now the result is released for the same.

AIIMS Nursing Officer Result 2020

In order to check and download the AIIMS Nursing Officer Result 2020, candidates need to follow the below mentioned steps:

Also Read: KSET 2020 Exam Update, Revised Timetable To Be Released Soon

First, candidates need to visit the official website of AIIMS Patna, i.e. aiimspatna.org

Navigate, and visit the result section of the official website

A new page will open

Click on the Nursing Officer Result Link

The AIIMS Nursing Officer Result 2020 will open in the PDF format

Download and take a printout of the Nursing Officer Result 2020 for future reference

It is to note that all candidates who are shortlisted in the Nursing Officer Exam 2020 need to appear for the AIIMS Nursing Officer Skill Test 2020. The date, venue and time of the AIIMS Nursing Officer Skill Test will released in due course of time. For more details, candidates need to visit the official website of AIIMS Patna.

Candidates can also click on the below mentioned direct link to check and download the AIIMS Nursing Officer Result 2020.

AIIMS Nursing Officer Result 2020 Direct Link
Mumbai:

Maharashtra government sent a senior IPS officer on compulsory leave on Friday for allowing DHFL promoters Kapil and Dheeraj Wadhawan to travel despite the ongoing coronavirus lockdown. The officer had issued a letter exempting the Wadhawans from the lockdown norms citing a family emergency.

"As per discussion with Hon. CM, Mr Amitabh Gupta, Principal Secretary (special), has been sent on compulsory leave with immediate effect, till the pending of enquiry, which will be initiated against him," tweeted Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh.

The Wadhawans were detained at Mahabaleshwar in Maharashtra's Satara district on Thursday for violating prohibitory orders amid lockdown, police said.

Police found 23 people including members of the Wadhawan family at their farmhouse, an official said.

According to local police officials, the Wadhawan family along with others travelled from Khandala to Mahabaleshwar on Wednesday evening in their cars, even when both Pune and Satara districts are sealed amid ongoing lockdown for containing coronavirus.

Kapil and Dheeraj Wadhawan are accused in Yes Bank and DHFL fraud cases. They were spotted at their 'Diwan farm house' by civic authorities, officials said.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) had recently issued summons to Kapil and Dheeraj Wadhawan in Yes Bank case and asked them to appear on March 17.

The duo reportedly cited the pandemic and skipped the appearance, officials said.

Meanwhile, opposition BJP has latched onto the issue.

Leader of Opposition in the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly Devendra Fadnavis wondered how could one vacation in Mahableshwar with official permission from the police when lockdown is in force.

"No lockdowns for mighty and rich in Maharashtra? One can spend holidays in Mahabaleshwar with official permission from police," the former chief minister said.
New Delhi:

In an apparent attack on the BJP government at the Centre over the action against foreign Tablighi Jamaat members, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav on Wednesday said it should also be probed "when, why and who" gave visas to them.

"Those probing should also voluntarily probe that when, why and who gave visas to those who are being caught. How many tests of coronavirus are being done? And what arrangement is being made for the treatment of other diseases and also for those who are hungry," Akhilesh said in a tweet in Hindi.

Over 900 Tablighi Jamaat members, who had come to India on tourist visas, have been blacklisted by the government for allegedly violating visa conditions for participating in religious activities.

Action was taken against them after over 2,300 Jamaat activists were found to be living at the the organisationas headquarters in Delhi's Nizamuddin despite the 21-day lockdown imposed to check the spread of coronavirus.

"Please also review the transparency in relief funds," Yadav said.

So far, Uttar Pradesh has reported 332 coronavirus cases, of which 176 are linked to the Tablighi Jamaat congregation held in Delhias Nizamuddin last month.

The state authorities have identified around 1,600 people associated with the Jamaat and 1,200 among them have been quarantined. BSP supremo Mayawati in a tweet suggested better coordination between the Centre and states over the coronavirus issue.

"Due to rising cases of coronavirus, the Centre and state governments should act with better coordination and take decisions keeping in mind the interest of 130 crore people of the country. The BSP will welcome such decisions based on 'Sarvjan Hitay'," Maywati said.A
New Delhi:

Maulana Mohammed Saad, the elusive chief of Nizamuddin Markaz of Tablighi Jamaat, was traced by the investigators to Delhi's Zakir Nagar area on Wednesday. The latest media reports say that the cops detected Saad's presence in Zakir Nagar via electronic surveillance. The Markaz chief has reportedly conveyed via his lawyer that he was under self-quarantine and was unable to join the probe. The investigators have told Maulana to hand over all the electronic devices to the cops. The Markaz chief came under radar after over 2,000 Jamaatis were taken out in a 16-hour-long mission from the six-storyed headquarters of the Tablighi Jamaat. Due to the congregation and subsequent travel by the Jamaatis, Nizamuddin emerged as a coronavirus hotspot in the National Capital. Around 30 per cent of the total COVID-19 cases in India are linked to Tablighi Jamaat. While administrative lapses are being questioned, the role of Maulana is also being probed. (Coronavirus LIVE Updates)

This comes days after the Crime Branch of the Delhi Police sent a second notice to Maulana Saad over the Tablighi congregation that was held during mid-March. Maulana has maintained a stoic silence and refused to cooperate. Earlier, there were reports that Maulana Saad was hiding in Mewat. It should be noted that an FIR has been already been lodged against Maulana Saad and five others for violating the coronavirus lockdown.

The Delhi Markaz of Tablighi Jamaat came under the spotlight after seven deaths were reported from Telangana in last week of March. The travel history revealed that all of them had attended the religious congregation in Nizamuddin. On March 30th, the health officials reached the Tablighi Jamaat headquarters and told the people living in the building about the viral infection. Tablighi Jamaat is an Islamic Movement that originated in India. Apart from India, the other biggest congregation of the sect took place in Pakistan, where similar cases of COVID-19 infections were reported. A more serious spread from a sects gathering was reported from Malaysia, where at least 500 from the nearly 16,000 who gathered for the four-day event starting on Feb 27 at the Sri Petaling Mosque compound, according to a New York Times report.

Meanwhile, the Union Health Ministry on Wednesday said that the death count due to the novel coronavirus has rose to 149 and the number of positive cases have also witnessed a major spike. According to the ministry, 5,194 positive cases have been reported till date. While the number of active COVID-19 cases is 4,643, as many as 401 people were cured and discharged and one had migrated, it said. According to the ministrys data updated at 9 am, 25 new deaths have been reported since Tuesday. The total number of cases include 70 foreign nationals. Sixteen deaths were reported from Maharashtra, two each from Delhi, West Bengal, Haryana and Tamil Nadu and one from Andhra Pradesh. Maharashtra has reported the most coronavirus deaths at 64, followed by Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh at 13 each and Delhi at 9.
New Delhi:

Samajwadi Party supremo Akhilesh Yadav on Friday termed as unfortunate the politicisation of the issue of coronavirus and said the government should focus on preparing a roadmap for the unemployed

Politicisation of coronavirus is unfortunate. This diverts attention from core issues and real and justified questions on quarantine, screening, testing of virus, treatment, supply of milk-medicine, vegetable-foodgrain take backseat. Government should remember, bhookh (hunger) cannot be isolated, he said in a tweet in Hindi.

The former UP CM said life of 85 per cent labourers in private sector and 93 per cent in unorganised sector has been hit by the lockdown.

The unemployment rate is increasing and news of 5 crore persons getting unemployed is worrisome. The government should prepare a roadmap for these unemployed otherwise there would be serious problem due to hunger, he said.

Everyone should get medicine and food and employment after lockdown, he said.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Dhaka:

Bangladesh has executed a former military captain for his involvement in the 1975 coup in which the country's founder Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was assassinated, nearly four-and-a-half decades after the massacre. Abdul Majed was hanged at the Dhaka Central Jail in Keraniganj at 12:01 AM (local time) on Sunday, bdnews24.com reported. Jailor Mahbubul Islam said that Mazed was executed by hanging. He was arrested in Dhaka on Tuesday after hiding in India for nearly two-and-a-half decades. On Friday, Majed's wife and four other relatives met him for nearly two hours in the prison. President Abdul Hamid on Thursday rejected his mercy plea, removing the last hurdle for his hanging.

Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal earlier told PTI that the presidential decision meant there was no bar in executing the convict, who was arrested in a surprise development earlier this week from Dhaka's Mirpur area. A specialised police unit arrested Majed, one of the fugitive convicted Bangabandhu assassins, as he returned home after hiding for nearly two and half decades in India. Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal said the "self confessed killer" was not only involved in Bangabandhu's assassination but also took part in the subsequent killing of four national leaders in high security Dhaka Central Jail on November 3, 1975.

He said previous reports indicated Majed was hiding in India but eventually he was arrested from Dhaka as he secretly returned last month. Police's Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CTTC) unit arrested him in a predawn raid at Mirpur area while he was roaming around a shrine. Majed is one of the six absconding ex-army officers who were handed down capital punishment after trial in absentia. A prosecution lawyer said Majed told the court that he returned to Bangladesh on March 15 or 16. The convict, he said, claimed he managed to live secretly in Kolkata for the past 23 years. Twelve ex-military officers were sentenced to death for the August 15, 1975 killing of Father of the Nation Sheikh Mujibur Rahman along with most of his family members. Five of them have been executed while one died of natural causes as he was on the run abroad.

Bangabandhu's elder daughter and incumbent Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and younger daughter Sheikh Rehana survived as they were on a visit to the then West Germany at the time of the putsch, which also toppled Bangladesh's post independence government. The five convicts were hanged at Dhaka Central Jail on January 28, 2010, after a protracted legal procedure while the delayed trial process began in 1996 when an infamous indemnity law was scrapped as it was protecting the assassins from justice until then. Majed was one of the remaining fugitives believed to be hiding abroad with no confirmed whereabouts. The rest of the fugitives included the key mastermind of the coup ex-lieutenant colonel Abdur Rashid.

Interpol issued red alert against the absconders believed to be hiding in several countries including Pakistan. Bangladesh confirmed two cases where two convicts took refuge in the United States and Canada, one of them is said to have shot dead Bangladesh's founder. Dhaka said it was trying to extradite them but Canada declined to entertain the request citing provisions of the country's laws. After the 1975 carnage, Majed was rehabilitated in civil service during the subsequent regime of former military-dictator-turned-politician Ziaur Rahman as an ex-cadre official and posted as the director of National Savings Department. He later fled the country while serving in the finance ministry along with other 1975 coup plotters as the 1996 general elections brought Awami League back to power which vowed to expose to justice Bangabandhu killers in line with its election manifesto.

For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

The Pakistan government has delayed until Tuesday its decision whether to extend the nationwide lockdown or not, as the number of the novel coronavirus cases rose to 5,478 in the country. Prime Minister Imran Khan on Monday chaired a meeting of the National Coordination Committee comprising chief ministers of all provinces and leader of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, where he was briefed about the situation in the country in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak.

Speaking to the media after the meeting, Planning Minister Asad Umar said that the issue of lockdown was discussed and it was decided to have another meeting on Tuesday. The government had enforced a lockdown until April 14 to curb the spread of the virus.

"All provincial chief ministers will attend the meeting and the future course of action regarding the lockdown will be decided tomorrow, he said. He said the decision of reopening the businesses will also be taken in the meeting. The business owners and community will have to bear the responsibility of health of their workers, he said.

Umar also said that it was important to adopt the TTQ strategy - tracing, testing and quarantining. He lauded the people for "behaving responsibly" and said that Pakistan's situation was better than most of the developed countries. Pakistan also announced to extend the closure of the Wagah border for another two weeks from April 16 to 29 due to the coronavirus outbreak, according to a notification isued by the ministry of interior.

Prime Minister's Advisor on Health Dr Zafar Mirza told the media that Pakistan would soon be able to produce N-95 masks locally. He said that already Pakistan was working on producing personal protective equipment. Mirza also said that the ratio of local transmission of virus 52 per cent and more than the imported cases.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court on Monday directed the removal of Mirza from his post for failing to tackle the COVID-19 outbreak in the country. During a hearing on a suo motu case on the coronavirus crisis in Pakistan, a five-member bench of the apex court led by Chief Justice Gulzar Ahmed observed that Prime Minister Khan's Cabinet has become ineffective in the fight against the pandemic. The bench questioned the integrity of Mirza in tackling the COVID-19 crisis and the transparency of his work done. The judges expressed serious doubt over the eligibility of the senior doctor as Prime Minister's advisor on health. Expressing dismay over the government's performance to combat coronavirus, the apex court noted that there is a lack of leadership that could maintain unity in the country.

"There is an army of ministers and advisors in place but no work is being done," the Chief Justice said, adding that "corrupt people" have been kept as advisors in the government. "The prime minister's Cabinet has become ineffective...All the provinces are doing whatever they desire," he remarked and directed the government to remove Mirza from his post.

Later the court issued written orders directing the governments of Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces and the Gilgit-Baltistan authorities to submit the details of actions taken by them to curb the deadly viral infection. However, the written order made no mention of Mirza's removal. On Monday, the Ministry of National Health Services reported that seven more people died in the last 24 hours, taking the total death toll to 93. It said 1,095 people fully recovered but 44 were in critical condition.

According to the reports, worst-hit Punjab province had 2,656 patients, Sindh 1,452, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa 744, Balochistan 231, Gilgit-Baltistan 224, Islamabad 131 and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir 40 patients. So far 65,114 tests were carried out, including 3,233 during the last 24 hours, according to the official data. At least 20 more doctors were tested COVID-19 positive on Monday in Punjab, bringing the number of the medical staff infected by the deadly virus in Pakistan's most populous province to 50. The Pakistan Medical Association has said that more than 100 doctors, nurses and para medical staff have been infected so far across the country, blaming the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf government for not providing them required protective gear.

"The medical staff that is serving on the front line is not being provided with the N-95 masks because of which the lives of doctors, nurses and paramedics are at stake," Pakistan Medical Association President Dr Masoodur Rauf Haraj said. He threatened to go on strike if the government fails to provide the medics personal protective equipment (PPEs). Prime Minister Khan also inaugurated Tele-school education channel. The channel, launched by the state-run Pakistan Television, would run daily 10 hours transmission for students from class 1 to 12. Separately, Khan in a video message appealed to overseas Pakistanis to donate in the special fund to help those badly hit by the crisis. ?No government can fight this Pandemic alone.

We need to work together as one nation. Please step up & help your fellow citizens in this hour of need,? Khan later tweeted. Also, the World Health Organisation (WHO) donated 15 testing machines and 15,000 testing kits to Pakistan.

For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

Anna University is going to reschedule the April and May 2020 semester exams. According to the official notification released on the official website of the university, the semester exams 2020 that were going to be held in the months of April and May for affiliated colleges will be rescheduled. The university will release the revised timetable of the April, May Semester Exams 2020 after the lockdown period gets over. Meanwhile, the lockdown period of 21 days is imposed across the country, which is going to end on April 15, 2020.

Anna University Semester Exams 2020 Details

It is to note that UG and PG Semester exam was scheduled to be commence on April 17, 2020 while the second semester exam for all courses were scheduled to be begin on May 11 and May 8, 2020. However, the university postponed the April and My exams 2020, and will release the revised timetable for the April and May Semester Exams 2020 after the lockdown period gets over.

Also Read: Odisha Schools, Colleges To Remain Closed Till June 17, Check Details Here

Candidates need to visit the official website of Anna University, i.e. annauniversity.edu on regular basis to get the latest updates. Candidates can also click on the below mentioned direct link to check the Anna University April, May 2020 Semester Exams Rescheduling Notification.

Anna University April, May 2020 Semester Exams Rescheduling Notification Direct Link

Meanwhile, many state level and national level entrance examinations are also postponed in the country due to the outbreak of Coronavirus. At this point, everyone is advised to stay at home and follow all precautionary measures to combat the issue of COVID-19 pandemic.
New Delhi:

The Centre has asked the states and the union territories to invoke a stringent law to punish those indulging in hoarding and black marketing of essential commodities, saying such acts cant be ruled out due to the loss of production and labour crisis in the wake of the nationwide lockdown. In a communication to chief secretaries of all states and union territories, Union Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla said the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), under the Disaster Management Act, has allowed manufacture or production, transport and other related supply-chain activities in respect of essential goods like foodstuff, medicines and medical equipment during the 21-day lockdown.

However, there are reports of loss of production due to various factors, especially because of the reduction in labour supply.

"In this situation, the possibility of inventory building/hoarding and black marketing, profiteering, and speculative trading, and the resulting price rise of essential goods cannot be ruled out," he said. Bhalla asked the state governments and the UT administrations to take urgent steps to ensure availability of these essential goods, by invoking provisions of the Essential Commodities (EC) Act, 1955.

These measures include fixing of stock limits, capping of prices, enhancing production, inspection of accounts of dealers and other such actions, he said.

"Offences under EC Act are criminal offences and may result in imprisonment of 7 years or fine or both. State/Union Territory Governments may also consider detention of offenders under the Prevention of Black-marketing and Maintenance of Supplies of Essential Commodities Act, 1980," Bhalla said..

The home secretary said the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, is authorising the states and the union territories to notify orders under the EC Act, 1955 by relaxing the requirement or prior concurrence of the central government up to June 30, 2020.

"I would urge you to personally take urgent steps to ensure availability of these commodities at fair prices for public at large," he said.

The country-wide lockdown was announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on March 24 in a bid to combat the coronavirus threat.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Jaipur:

The administration in Rajasthan's Sri Ganganagar on Thursday imposed a ban on taking pictures and recording videos during distribution of essentials to the needy as it poses threat of spreading COVID-19, an official said. The order was issued to ensure that social distancing is maintained properly in the district, Sri Ganganagar Collector Shivprasad M Nakate told PTI. He said the administration has asked social workers, activists and others not to click selfies or record videos during food and ration kit distribution to the poor. (Coronavirus Outbreak Live Updates)

There were complaints that people gather for clicking selfies during food and ration distribution which breaks social distancing protocol and increases threat of coronavirus spread, Nakate said. The collector directed the NGO workers, donors and social workers to make sure that food and ration kit is given to only one family at time. Action under Section 188 (disobedience to order duly promulgated by public servant) of the Indian Penal Code will be taken against those who violate the order, Nakate said.
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)

LVIV, Ukraine  Russian forces destroyed a theater in Mariupol where hundreds of people were sheltering Wednesday and rained fire on other cities, Ukrainian authorities said, even as the two sides projected optimism over efforts to negotiate an end to the fighting.

The airstrike ripped apart the center of the once-elegant building, where hundreds of civilians had been living since their homes had been destroyed in the fighting, Ukraines foreign ministry said in a statement.

Advertisement

Many people were buried in the rubble, officials said, though there was no immediate word on how many had been killed or injured. Satellite imagery from Monday showed the word children written in large white letters in Russian in front of and behind the building, the Maxar space technology company said.

Another horrendous war crime in Mariupol, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Twitter, calling the bombing a massive Russian attack.

Advertisement

The Russian defense ministry denied bombing the theater or anywhere else in Mariupol on Wednesday.

In Kyiv, residents huddled in homes and shelters amid a citywide curfew that runs until Thursday morning, as Russian troops shelled areas in and around the city, including a residential neighborhood 2.5 kilometers (1.5 miles) from the presidential palace. A 12-story apartment building in central Kyiv erupted in flames after being hit by shrapnel.

And 10 people were killed while standing in line for bread in the northern city of Chernihiv, the Ukrainian General Prosecutors Office said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, meanwhile, went before the U.S. Congress via video and, invoking Pearl Harbor and 9/11, pleaded with America for more weapons and tougher sanctions against Russia, saying: " We need you right now.

U.S. President Joe Biden announced the U.S. is sending an additional $800 million in military aid to Ukraine, including more anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons and drones. He also called Vladimir Putin a war criminal in his sharpest condemnation of the Russian leader since the invasion began.

Ukrainian soldiers and firefighters search in a destroyed building after a bombing attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, March 14, 2022. (Vadim Ghirda/AP)

International pressure against the Kremlin mounted and its isolation deepened as the International Court of Justice, also known as the World Court, ordered Russia to stop attacking Ukraine, though there was little hope it would comply. Also, the 47-nation Council of Europe, the continents foremost human rights body, expelled Russia.

While Moscows ground advance on the Ukrainian capital appeared largely stalled, Putin said the operation was unfolding successfully, in strict accordance with pre-approved plans. He also decried Western sanctions against Moscow, accusing the West of trying to squeeze us, to put pressure on us, to turn us into a weak, dependent country.

Another round of talks between the two sides was scheduled for Wednesday. After Tuesdays negotiations, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said a neutral military status for Ukraine was being seriously discussed by the two sides, while Zelenskyy said Russias demands for ending the war were becoming more realistic.

Advertisement

Hopes for diplomatic progress to end the war rose after Zelenskyy acknowledged Tuesday in the most explicit terms yet that Ukraine is unlikely to realize its goal of joining NATO. Putin has long depicted Ukraines NATO aspirations as a threat to Russia.

Lavrov welcomed Zelenskyys comment and said the businesslike spirit starting to surface in the talks gives hope that we can agree on this issue.

A neutral status is being seriously discussed in connection with security guarantees, Lavrov said on Russian TV. There are concrete formulations that in my view are close to being agreed.

Russias chief negotiator, Vladimir Medinsky, said the sides were discussing a possible compromise for a Ukraine with a smaller, non-aligned military.

Prospects for a diplomatic breakthrough were highly uncertain, however, given the gulf between Ukraines demand that the invading forces withdraw completely and Russias suspected aim of replacing Kyivs Westward-looking government with a pro-Moscow regime.

Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak denied Russian claims that Ukraine was open to adopting a model of neutrality comparable to Sweden or Austria. Podolyak said Ukraine needs powerful allies and clearly defined security guarantees to keep it safe.

Advertisement

Another source of dispute is the status of Crimea, which was seized and annexed by Russia in 2014, and the separatist-held Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, which Russia recognizes as independent. Ukraine considers both part of its territory.

The fighting has sent more than 3 million people fleeing Ukraine, by the United Nations estimate. The U.N. reported that over 700 civilians have been confirmed killed but that the real number is higher.

In going before Congress, Zelenskyy said that Russia has turned the Ukrainian sky into a source of death for thousands of people. But Biden has rejected Zelenskyys requests to send warplanes to Ukraine or establish a no-fly zone over the country because of the risk of triggering war between the U.S. and Russia.

The head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Peter Maurer, arrived in Ukraine to try to obtain greater access for aid groups and increased protection for civilians.

Amid the vast humanitarian crisis caused by the war, the Red Cross has helped evacuate civilians from besieged areas and has delivered 200 tons of aid, including medical supplies, blankets, water and over 5,200 body bags to help ensure the dead are treated in a dignified manner.

Nowhere has suffered more than the encircled city of Mariupol, where local officials say missile strikes and shelling have killed more than 2,300 people. The southern seaport of 430,000 has been under attack for almost all of the three-week war in a siege that has left people struggling for food, water, heat and medicine.

Advertisement

Local authorities said Russian forces took hundreds of people hostage at a Mariupol hospital and were using them as human shields.

Bodies have been buried in trenches in Mariupol, and more corpses lay in the streets and in a hospital basement.

Using the flashlight on his cellphone to illuminate the basement, Dr. Valeriy Drengar pulled back a blanket to show the body of an infant 22 days old. Other wrapped bodies also appeared to be children, given their size.

Breaking News Alerts As it happens Be informed of breaking news as it happens and notified about other don't-miss content with our free news alerts. >

These are the people we could not save, Drengar said.

Nearly 30,000 people managed to escape the city on Tuesday in thousands of vehicles by way of a humanitarian corridor, city officials said.

But with humanitarian aid unable to get in amid the constant bombardment, people burn scraps of furniture to warm their hands and cook the little food still available.

Advertisement

Kyiv regional leader Oleksiy Kuleba said Russian forces had intensified fighting in the Kyiv suburbs and a highway leading west, and across the capital region, kindergartens, museums, churches, residential blocks and engineering infrastructure are suffering from the endless firing.

In other developments, the mayor of the city of Melitopol, who was seized by Russian forces five days ago, has been freed, said Zelenskyy chief of staff Andriy Yermak. No details were given about how he became free.

Ukraine also appeared to have successes, with satellite photos from Planet Labs PBC analyzed by The Associated Press showing helicopters and vehicles ablaze at the Russian-held Kherson airport and air base after a suspected Ukrainian strike on Tuesday.

Associated Press journalists around the world contributed to this report.
New Delhi:

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday said that there are 21 areas in the national capital where containment is underway and said no one will be allowed to enter or exit from these areas. The chief minister asked people to cooperate with the governments Operation SHIELD. I appeal to all living in the containment areas to cooperate with the Delhi govt's Operation SHIELD. These are strict measures but are necessary to protect you and others from COVID-19, Kejriwal tweeted.

SHIELD stands for - Sealing of the immediate area or surroundings after geographical marking, Home quarantine of all the people living in the area, Isolation and tracing of people who have been first and second contacts, Essential supply of commodities is ensured, Local sanitisation of the area by authorities, and Door to door health checks of everyone living in the area.

ALSO READ | 2020 Could See Worst Global Economic Fallout Since Great Depression In 1930s: IMF

Kejriwal also warned of strict action against those misbehaving with healthcare personnel in the city in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak. Will take strictest action against those misbehaving with healthcare personnel, he said.

The warning comes a day after two women resident doctors of Safdarjung Hospital were assaulted following rumours that they are spreading coronavirus in the Gautam Nagar area.

The government will not tolerate this. We will take strictest action against those misbehaving with healthcare personnel, the chief minister said at an online briefing.

People involved in such crimes will not be spared, he added.

According to him, the Delhi government was giving free rations to 71 lakh people in the city.

We understand that people are facing problems, but measures taken by authorities are necessary to contain coronavirus, the chief minister said.

With Agency Inputs
London:

British Prime Boris Johnson spent a second night in intensive care and he was "stable" and "in good spirits" while receiving treatment for coronavirus, a senior health official said on Wednesday. Johnson, 55, was admitted to the Intensive Care Unit of the St Thomas' Hospital here on Sunday "for close monitoring" after his condition worsened.

The Prime Minister is "comfortable, he's stable, he's in good spirits", Edward Argar, serving as the minister of state for health, told the BBC on Wednesday.

The Prime Minister's office also suggested the first review into whether the coronavirus lockdown could be eased would not go ahead as planned on Monday next week, the report said.

Asked on BBC Breakfast when the measures might be lifted, Argar said the scientific evidence "isn't yet there to allow us to make us a decision".

"We have to be over that peak before we can think about making changes," he said, adding: "It's too early to say when we will reach that peak."

A ban on public gatherings of more than two people and the closure of shops selling non-essential goods were among the series of restrictions announced by Johnson on March 23 to tackle the spread of coronavirus.

He had said a relaxation of the rules would be considered in three weeks, which would be on April 13.

But on Tuesday, Downing Street suggested that the review would not go ahead on the scheduled date and would instead take place after the three-week mark.

On Wednesday, health minister Argar said: "We need to start seeing the numbers coming down and that's when you're in the negative.

"That's when you have a sense when that's sustained over a period of time, that you can see it coming out of that. We're not there yet and I don't exactly know when we will be."

He urged people to stay at home "however lovely the weather this Easter weekend".

"If we are, as the statistics appear to show, making a little bit of progress, now's the time to hold to it," he said.

His comments came as the number of coronavirus hospital deaths in the UK rose to 6,159 on Tuesday - a record increase of 786 in a day, the Department of Health and Social Care said, compared with 439 on Monday.

The country also had over 55,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19.

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, who is deputising for Prime Minister Johnson, said on Tuesday he was "confident" Johnson would recover from this illness, describing him as a "fighter".

Raab said Johnson was receiving standard oxygen treatment and was breathing without any assistance, such as mechanical ventilation or non-invasive respiratory support.

The prime minister was originally admitted to St Thomas' on Sunday, on the advice of his doctor, after continuing to display symptoms of cough and high temperature 10 days after testing positive for the virus.

Raab said the prime minister was being monitored closely in critical care.

"And I'm confident he'll pull through, because if there's one thing I know about this prime minister, he's a fighter. And he'll be back at the helm, leading us through this crisis in short order," Raab added.

The Queen and other senior royals sent messages to Johnson's family and his pregnant fiancee, Carrie Symonds, saying they were thinking of them, and wished the Prime Minister a full and speedy recovery.

For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

In one of the clearest hint at the post-April 14 scenario, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has reportedly said that lifting the coronavirus lockdown is not possible at the moment. The latest reports say that during an all-party meeting, PM Modi reportedly said that he has received suggestions from various leaders and almost everyone is of view that lockdown should continue. There are reports that the final decision will be taken after the meeting of the Prime Minister with all Chief Ministers via video conference on April 11. Chirag Paswan, who took part in the all-party meet, said that we are with the Centre. 'Lifting lockdown at this moment is not in the national interest,' Paswan said after the meeting. Senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad said that, 'around 80 per cent of political parties suggested extension of lockdown at Wednesday's meeting with PM Modi.' PM Modi had imposed a 21-day lockdown across India from March 24 midnight. The confirmed cases in India have crossed 5,000-mark on Wednesday with nearly 150 deaths. (Coronavirus LIVE Updates)

During the meeting, PM Modi said that 'my government's priority is saving each and every life. Todays discussion reflects constructive and positive politics, reaffirms Indias strong democratic foundations and spirit of cooperative federalism.' PM Modi called the present situation in the country akin to a social emergency. "States, District administrations and Experts have suggested extension of Lockdown to contain spread of the virus," PM Modi told the leaders of all political parties. Top officials of the Government of India also gave detailed presentations on steps being taken to meet the emerging challenges, including status of distribution of benefits under PM Garib Kalyan Yojana.

On Monday, two major states - Uttar Pradesh and Telangana - had clearly said that they are in favour of the extension of the lockdown. While Uttar Pradesh said that it will not lift the lockdown till a single COVID-19 patient is present in the state, Telangana said that it would request the Centre for an extension. Addressing the party workers on the occasion of BJP's foundation day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday had said that everyone should be prepared for a long battle against coronavirus. Earlier there were reports that the Centre wants inputs from the states on the exit plan. Many believe that a staggered, phased policy may be adopted to bring the country out of the total lockdown. Globally, nations are extending the lockdowns to flatten the curve. While Singapore has announced a month-long shutdown, several European nations have also extended the lockdown period.

Meanwhile, the Union Health Ministry on Wednesday said that the death count due to the novel coronavirus has rose to 149 and the number of positive cases have also witnessed a major spike. According to the ministry, 5,194 positive cases have been reported till date. While the number of active COVID-19 cases is 4,643, as many as 401 people were cured and discharged and one had migrated, it said. According to the ministrys data updated at 9 am, 25 new deaths have been reported since Tuesday. The total number of cases include 70 foreign nationals. Sixteen deaths were reported from Maharashtra, two each from Delhi, West Bengal, Haryana and Tamil Nadu and one from Andhra Pradesh. Maharashtra has reported the most coronavirus deaths at 64, followed by Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh at 13 each and Delhi at 9.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
As many as 25 new deaths were reported in the last 24 hours. (Photo Credit: Reuters File)

New Delhi:

The total number of coronavirus cases in the country rose to 5,274 on Wednesday, registering an increase of 485 cases in the last 24 hours, while the death toll stood at 149, the Union Health Ministry said.

The number of active COVID-19 cases is 4,714 and as many as 410 people were cured and discharged and one had migrated, it said. The total number of cases include 71 foreign nationals.

As many as 25 new deaths were reported in the last 24 hours. Sixteen people died Maharashtra, two each in Delhi, West Bengal, Haryana and Tamil Nadu and one in Andhra Pradesh.

Maharashtra has reported the most coronavirus deaths at 64, followed by Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh at 13 each and Delhi at 9. Telangana, Punjab and Tamil Nadu have reported seven fatalities each.

West Bengal has registered five deaths, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh have reported four each, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Rajasthan have recorded three deaths each.

Two deaths each have been reported from Jammu and Kashmir and Kerala. Bihar, Himachal Pradesh and Odisha reported one fatality each, according to the health ministry data.

The death toll on Tuesday evening was 124.

However, a PTI tally of figures reported by various states as on Wednesday evening showed at least 5,521 cases and 172 deaths while 500 were discharged.

There has been a lag in the Union Health Ministry figures, compared to the number of cases announced by different states, which officials attribute to procedural delays in assigning the cases to individual states.

According to the ministry's data updated at 5 pm, the highest number of confirmed cases in the country is from Maharashtra at 1,018, followed by Tamil Nadu at 690 and Delhi at 576 cases.

The cases have risen to 427 in Telangana while Kerala has reported 336 COVID-19 cases so far. Rajasthan has 328 cases, Uttar Pradesh has 343 and Andhra Pradesh reported 305 coronavirus cases.

Coronavirus cases have risen to 229 in Madhya Pradesh, 175 in Karnataka and 165 in Gujarat. Haryana has 147 cases, Jammu and Kashmir has 116, West Bengal has 99 and Punjab has 91 positive patients so far.

Odisha has reported 42 coronavirus cases while 38 people were infected with the virus in Bihar, Uttarakhand has 31 patients and Assam 27. Chandigarh and Himachal Pradesh have 18 cases each while Ladakh has 14 positive patients so far.

Ten cases each have been reported from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Chhattisgarh. Goa has reported seven COVID-19 infections, followed by Puducherry at five cases.

Jharkhand has reported four cases and Manipur two. Tripura, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh have reported one case each.

"State-wise distribution is subject to further verification and reconciliation," the ministry said on its website.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Mumbai:

Mumbai has reported at least new cases in the last 24 hours, the government said on Thursday. With this the total number of cases in the city has increase to 840 and the death count has increased to 54. Meanwhile, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) said on Thursday that at least 7.5 lakh all residents of Mumbais slum town Dharavi will undergo tests for coronavirus in the next 10-12 days. Dharavi, Asias biggest slum, has recorded 14 positive cases of coronavirus so far, resulting in three deaths.

At the same time, three more coronavirus patients have died in Pune, taking the toll in the district to 21, officials said on Thursday. The fresh deaths were reported since Wednesday night. A 60-old man from Baramati town succumbed to the viral infection in government-run Sassoon Hospital on late Wednesday night, an official said.

According to Chief Executive Officer of Pune Zilla Parishad Ayush Prasad, the elderly person was diabetic and also paralytic. Four members of his family had earlier tested positive for COVID-19, he said. Another elderly person died due to coronavirus in Sassoon Hospital, a health department official said.

A senior health official from the Pune Municipal Corporation said the third victim, a woman, died in a private hospital on Thursday afternoon.

While Maharashtra has reported 1,297 COVID-19 cases in the last one month, highest in the country, data reveals that 80.61 per cent of the cases were detected in the first eight days of April. The number of cases in the state as of Wednesday was 1,135. By Thursday afternoon it had risen to 1,297 with 162 new cases being reported.

Till March 31, the states official COVID-19 count was 220, which jumped by 915 (80.61 per cent) by April 8. The first three coronavirus cases were reported in Maharashtra on March 9 when the state legislatures budget session was underway.

The tally crossed 100 on March 23. The daily increase soon entered in double digits, except on March 26 when only two new cases were reported. State Health Minister Rajesh Tope made consistent appeal to people to stay indoors. Although only 15 people tested positive on April 2, 88 cases were reported the next day and 67 the day after.

In the last five days, the state recorded more than a hundred new cases every day. The fatalities also increased at an accelerated pace in April. Of 72 deaths due to coronavirus till Wednesday, 62 were recorded since April 1. The first death was reported on March 17.
Boris Johnson was shifted to the ICU of St Thomas' Hospital in London on Monday night (Photo Credit: Reuters File)

London:

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, recovering from COVID-19, has been moved out of intensive care as his condition improves, Downing Street said on Thursday evening.

"The Prime Minister has been moved this evening from intensive care back to the ward, where he will receive close monitoring during the early phase of his recovery. He is in extremely good spirits," a Downing Street spokesperson said.

UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, who is deputising for Johnson while he is in hospital, had told reporters during the daily briefing that the Prime Minister continues to make positive steps forwards and is in good spirits.

Earlier on Thursday, Downing Street had confirmed that Johnson continues to improve after he spent a third night in the intensive care unit (ICU) of a London hospital with coronavirus.

The 55-year-old was shifted to the ICU of St Thomas' Hospital in London on Monday night as his condition worsened over 10 days after he had tested positive for coronavirus and went into self-isolation. He has since received "standard oxygen treatment" but has not been diagnosed with pneumonia or required a ventilator to aid his breathing.

"The Prime Minister had a good night and continues to improve in intensive care at St. Thomas' Hospital. He's in good spirits," a Downing Street spokesperson said, providing a health update on the UK PM.

"He's stable, improving, sat up and engaged with medical staff. I've known the Prime Minister for a long time and I wish him well in this difficult time and I think things are getting better for him," UK Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden said earlier on Thursday.

Raab will chair a virtual Cobra emergency meeting on Thursday to discuss a review of the UK's coronavirus lockdown to consider whether the strict social distancing measures should be extended beyond the 21-day period initially announced by Johnson on March 23.

The measures are set to end next Monday but indications are that they would have to be extended.

Welsh health minister Vaughan Gething who will take part in the Cobra meeting said there was "virtually zero prospect" of government experts advising that it was safe to lift the lockdown, adding the measures would continue for "a number of weeks".

"I think rather than speculate about the future, I think we should focus very seriously on the here and now and the present," said Rishi Sunak, the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer who led the daily Downing Street briefing on Wednesday evening.

The senior Indian-origin Cabinet minister, who announced a new 750-million pound fund to support frontline charities across the UK through the pandemic, stressed the importance of the British public continuing to follow the government's stay-at-home guidance especially during what is a usual holiday travel period over a long Easter weekend.

Sunak, who is the next in line in the government's chain of command after UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, also gave his own update on the UK PM's health to confirm that he was sitting up in bed and engaging with his clinical team.

"The latest from the hospital is the Prime Minister remains in intensive care where his condition is improving," he had said.

"The Prime Minister is not only my colleague and my boss but also my friend, and my thoughts are with him and his family," he said, adding that the UK PM's illness is a reminder how indiscriminate this disease is.

The coronavirus death toll in the UK registered another record daily jump of 881 fatalities on Thursday to hit 7,978.

Deputy chief scientific adviser, Dame Angela McLean, had said COVID-19 cases were not "accelerating out of control" in the country and warned against complacency and breaking the lockdown norms.

For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
All 503 legislators, including 56 ministers, will contribute around Rs 17.50 crore for the cause. (Photo Credit: File Photo)

Lucknow:

The Uttar Pradesh cabinet on Wednesday approved a 30 per cent cut in salaries of ministers and state legislators in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak. The reduction will be applicable for a year.

The money will go into the COVID Care Fund set up by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath for strengthening medical facilities to deal with the situation arising out of the coronavirus outbreak, Finance Minister Suresh Khanna said.

The minister said this way, all 503 legislators, including 56 ministers, will contribute around Rs 17.50 crore for the cause.

The Uttar Pradesh cabinet on Wednesday approved a 30 per cent cut in salaries of ministers and state legislators in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak.

The reduction will be applicable for a year.

The money will go into the COVID Care Fund set up by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath for strengthening medical facilities to deal with the situation arising out of the coronavirus outbreak, Finance Minister Suresh Khanna said.

The minister said this way, all 503 legislators, including 56 ministers, will contribute around Rs 17.50 crore for the cause.

Meanwhiel, the Uttar Pradesh government on Wednesday decided to completely seal off coronavirus hotspots in 15 districts to stop to the spread of the infection, announcing curfew-like restrictions there. The orders came as the state's coronavirus count reached 343 with 11 fresh cases being reported.

The news triggered panic buying with earlier reports wrongly saying that entire districts will be sealed off.

The restrictions in these pockets will be stricter than those under the lockdown already in place. Unlike in the lockdown so far, people will not be allowed to go out to buy groceries. Officials said the administration will ensure doorstep delivery of items like vegetables and milk in these clusters.

Passes issued to allow essential movement are cancelled in these hotspots which will remain sealed up to April 15 morning, when the current three-week nationwide lockdown is scheduled to end.

In addition to the creation of these containment zones, the government said it is doubling testing for coronavirus about 1,500 tests will now be conducted in the state every day and will make wearing face covers mandatory for those moving out of their homes.

The identified hotspots include 22 clusters in Agra, 13 in Ghaziabad, 12 each in Gautam Buddh Nagar and Kanpur, seven in Meerut and four each in Varanasi, Sahanaranpur and Maharajganj.

There are three hotspots in Shamli, Bulandshahr, Basti and Firozabad, and one each in Bareilly and Sitapur. State capital Lucknow has eight major and four minor coronavirus clusters. Only the hotspots will be sealed off and not the entire district, he clarified. In other areas, the lockdown will be in place as before.
Almaty (Kazakhstan) :

A three-man crew is set to travel to the International Space Station on Thursday, leaving behind a planet overwhelmed by the coronavirus pandemic. Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner of Russia's Roscosmos space agency and NASA's Chris Cassidy will blast off at 08:05 GMT from Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, where COVID-19 has caused changes to pre-launch protocol. Under usual circumstances, the departing crew would face questions from a large press pack before being waved off by family and friends. Neither will be present this time round because of travel restrictions imposed over the virus, although the crew did respond to emailed questions from journalists in a Wednesday press conference. Cassidy, 50, admitted the crew had been affected by their families not being unable to be in Baikonur for their blastoff to the ISS.

"But we understand that the whole world is also impacted by the same crisis," Cassidy said. Astronauts routinely go into quarantine ahead of space missions and give a final press conference at Baikonur from behind a glass wall to protect them from infection. That process began even earlier than usual last month as the trio and their reserve crew hunkered down in Russia's Star City training centre outside Moscow, eschewing traditional pre-launch rituals and visits to the capital. Roscosmos said on Tuesday that cosmonaut Oleg Skripochka will fly to Russia from the cosmodrome, rather from the usual staging post of Karaganda airport, when he returns to Earth from the ISS later this month.

NASA has not yet confirmed travel plans for Andrew Morgan and Jessica Meir, who will be departing the ISS along with Skripochka on April 17. The ISS typically carries up to six people at a time and has a livable space of 388 cubic metres (13,700 cubic feet) -- larger than a six-bedroom house according to NASA. Those dimensions will sound enviable to many residents of Earth, more than half of whom are on various forms of lockdown as governments respond to COVID-19 with drastic measures. But residents of the ISS frequently feel lonely and crave home comforts. In recent weeks, astronauts and cosmonauts on the ISS and on Earth have been sharing tips on coping with self-isolation.

In a piece for the New York Times last month, NASA's Scott Kelly said his biggest miss during almost a year in space was nature -- "the colour green, the smell of fresh dirt, and the feel of warm sun on my face". While recommending fresh air walks for those still able to enjoy them, Kelly also said there was nothing wrong with people spending more time in front of a screen during isolation. During his time aboard the ISS he "binge-watched Game of the Thrones -- twice" and enjoyed frequent movie nights with crewmates, he wrote.

Two-time cosmonaut Sergey Ryazanskiy has become the face of a 10-week challenge that will see participants post videos of themselves completing physical exercises as part of a competition aimed at both youth and adults. The initiative that Roscosmos is backing aims "to support people in a situation of isolation, instil a healthy lifestyle and thoughts through regular sports, without going out in public places", Ryazanskiy said in a video promoting the "Cosmos Training" challenge. The International Space Station -- a rare example of cooperation between Russia and the West -- has been orbiting Earth at about 28,000 kilometres per hour (17,000 miles per hour) since 1998.

For all the Latest Science News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Chicago:

The US death toll from the coronavirus eclipsed Italy's for the highest in the world Saturday at about 20,000 as Chicago and other cities across the Midwest braced for a potential surge in victims and moved to snuff out smoldering hot spots of contagion before they erupt. With the New York area still deep in crisis, fear mounted over the spread of the scourge into the nation's heartland.

Twenty-four residents of an Indiana nursing home hit by COVID-19 have died, while a nursing home in Iowa saw 14 deaths. Chicago's Cook County has set up a temporary morgue that can take more than 2,000 bodies. And Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has been going around telling groups of people to break it up. Around the world, meanwhile, European countries used roadblocks, drones, helicopters, mounted patrols and the threat of fines to keep people from traveling over Easter weekend. And with infections and deaths slowing in Italy, Spain and other places on the Continent, governments took tentative steps toward loosening the weeks-long shutdowns.

Glorious weather across Europe posed an extra test of people's discipline. Don't do silly things, said Domenico Arcuri, Italy's special commissioner for the virus emergency. Don't go out, continue to behave responsibly as you have done until today, use your head and your sense of responsibility. The outbreak's center of gravity has long since shifted from China to Europe and the United State s, which now has by far the largest number of confirmed cases a half-million and a death toll higher than Italy's count of nearly 19,500, according to the tally kept by Johns Hopkins University.

The death rate that is, the number of dead relative to the population is still far higher in Italy than in U.S., which has more than five times as many people. And worldwide, the true numbers of dead and infected are believed to be much higher because of testing shortages, different counting practices and concealment by some governments. About half the deaths in the U.S. are in the New York metropolitan area, where hospitalizations are nevertheless slowing and other indicators suggest lockdowns and social distancing are flattening the curve of infections and staving off the doomsday scenarios of just a week or two ago.

New York state on Saturday reported 783 more deaths, for a total over 8,600. Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the daily number of deaths is stabilizing but stabilizing at a horrific rate. What do we do now? We stay the course," said Cuomo, who like other leaders has warned that relaxing restrictions too soon could enable the virus to come back with a vengeance. With authorities warning that the crisis in New York is far from over, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that the city's 1.1 million-student school system will remain closed for the rest of the academic year.

But Cuomo said the decision is up to him, and no such determination has been made. In the Midwest, pockets of contagion have alarmed state and city leaders and led to stricter enforcement. Nearly 300 inmates at the Cook County Jail have tested positive for the virus, and two have died. In Wisconsin, health officials expect to see an increase in coronavirus cases after thousands of people went to the polls during Wisconsin's presidential primary Tuesday.

Michigan's governor extended her state's stay-at-home order with new provisions: People with multiple homes may no longer travel between them. And in Kansas, the state Supreme Court heard arguments in a dispute Saturday between Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly and Republican lawmakers who overturned her executive order banning religious services and funerals with more than 10 people. Elsewhere around the world, Italian authorities set up roadblocks around Milan to discourage people from going on Easter weekend trips.

British police kept a close watch on gatherings in parks and at the seaside on one of the hottest days of the year. And France deployed some 160,000 police, including officers on horseback who patrolled beaches and parks. It's useless to pack your bags for a vacation, Paris police tweeted. With religious leaders around the globe urging people to observe Easter safely at home, not in church, the archbishop of Turin, Italy, allowed a video streaming display of the Shroud of Turin, believed by the faithful to be the burial cloth of Jesus, so that they can pray in front of it during the epidemic.

Austria aims to reopen small shops on Tuesday. Spain, with more than 16,300 dead, plans to allow workers in some nonessential industries to return to factories and construction sites Monday. Spanish authorities said they will distribute 10 million face masks at major train and subway stations. We think that with these measures we will prevent a jump in infections, Health Minister Salvador Illa said. Italy continued to include all nonessential manufacturing in an extension of its national lockdown until May 3. But Premier Giuseppe Conte held out hope that some industry could re-open earlier if conditions permit.

Arcuri said that the exit from the lockdown will include increased virus testing, the deployment of a voluntary contact-tracing app and mandatory blood tests as Italy seeks to set up a system of ''immunity passports.'' India extended its lockdown of the nation of 1.3 billion people by two more weeks. But Iran, the site of the worst outbreak in the Middle East, reopened government offices and businesses outside Tehran.

For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday interacted with the floor leaders of various parties, including the opposition, in Parliament to discuss the situation arising out of the spread of coronavirus. The interaction was held through video conferencing and those participated, included Ghulam Nabi Azad, leader of the opposition in Rajya Sabha, and Nationalist Congress Party head Sharad Pawar. PM Modi interacted with leaders of those parties whose combined strength of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha adds up to five.

This is prime ministers first interaction with floor leaders, including those from the Opposition, after the imposition of the nationwide lockdown on March 25 though he had held interactions with chief ministers of all states including those ruled by non-NDA parties.

Also Read | Supreme Court Asks Centre To Prevent Private Labs From Charging High Fee For COVID-19 Testing

On Tuesday, Congress president Sonia Gandhi wrote a letter to PM Modi and suggested few steps that can help the government to contain the spread of COVID-19 in India. The prime minister has been interacting with various stakeholders, including doctors, journalists and heads of Indian missions to get a feedback on ways to check the spread of coronavirus.

Also Read | Nizamuddin Markaz Chief Maulana Saad Traced To Delhi's Zakir Nagar Area Via Electronic Surveillance: Reports

He also recently spoke to various leaders including Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, TMC leader Mamata Banerjee, DMK leader MK Stalin and discussed the COVID-19 situation as well as his governments efforts to contain the spread of the pandemic.

He had also talked former presidents Pratibha Patil and Pranab Mukherjee, and former prime ministers HD Deve Gowda and Manmohan Singh.

(With agency inputs)

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
BALTIMORE  The portrait used to hang in the hallway, welcoming children and parents to the Archbishop Borders School in Baltimore: a smiling Dr. Ben Carson in surgical scrubs, rubbing together the careful, steady hands that helped him become the nation's most famous black doctor.

"The person who has the most to do with your success is you," it reads.

Advertisement

That was before Carson's presidential bid, before he withdrew from the race and endorsed Donald Trump, and before he was tapped to run the Department of Housing and Urban Development. It was before the president failed to condemn white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville, Virginia. And before Carson pushed policies critics say walk back civil rights protections for those living in subsidized housing.

"I took it down," said Principal Alicia Freeman of the portrait she's since placed out of public view. Although the school, whose student body is majority Hispanic, black and low-income, has a reading room funded by Carson's foundation, the doctor's inspirational message now feels hostile, she said.

Advertisement

"He was starting to become offensive."

Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 48 Dr. Benjamin Carson is pictured with 4-1/2 year-old Kathryn Busan. (WALTER MCCARDELL, BALTIMORE SUN)

Carson's story of climbing out of poverty to become a world-renowned surgeon was once ubiquitous in Baltimore, where Carson made his name. In some schools his memoir was required reading, an illustration of the power of perseverance. For a working-class, majority African-American city wracked by racial division and neglect  where a baby born in a wealthy white neighborhood is expected to live two decades longer than one in a poor black area  Ben Carson was hope.

But his role in the Trump administration has added a complicated epilogue, leaving many who admired him feeling betrayed, unable to separate him from the politics of a president widely rejected by African-Americans here. In the last presidential election, nearly 85 percent of city voters cast ballots for Hillary Clinton.

"The Trump virus is weakening Ben Carson's image," said Bishop Frank Reid, a former pastor at Baltimore's Bethel AME Church who met Carson at Yale, where both received their bachelor's degrees. Carson is still respected, Reid said. "But he is no longer the hero he once was."

Carson declined to be interviewed for this story. Instead, he sent a written statement.

"I understand what it means to be poor because I grew up poor," the statement said. "I was fortunate to have my mother who was my compass - always steering me on course, helping me to see beyond our circumstances. That's what I hope to do for the millions of low-income families HUD serves."

Carson was born in Detroit, but Baltimore is the city that claims him. He rose to fame for his groundbreaking surgeries at Johns Hopkins Hospital, and launched his scholarship program here. Carson would sometimes arrange for high school students to visit the National Great Blacks in Wax Museum on the city's east side, where a figure in his likeness stands glossy and smiling in a white lab coat and stethoscope, in the middle of the Famous Marylanders display.

A wax figure depicting Department of Housing and Urban Development secretary Ben Carson, center, from his days as a neurosurgeon stands in a gallery at the National Great Blacks In Wax Museum in Baltimore. (Patrick Semansky / AP)

"This young African-American who grew up in poverty and could have been put in jail or suspended from school made something great of himself. It was the American Dream," Reid said. "We believed he could walk on water."

Advertisement

Emmanuel Williams, 33, grew up in Northwest Baltimore. He learned about Carson in elementary school, a few years after Carson grabbed headlines for successfully separating conjoined twins attached at the skull.

"He was taught during Black History Month," Williams said. "And everyone was so proud because it was happening here in Baltimore. It was mythic."

"Sometimes I think the country looks down on us," he said. "So to have such a brilliant person who's making history and making these great medical advancements in Baltimore? He was our crown jewel, and he was here."

Since taking the reins at HUD, Carson has proposed sweeping rent increases for the poorest subsidized housing tenants, and has begun dismantling key Obama-era regulations designed to address racial segregation. Carson has considered stripping anti-discrimination language from the department's mission statement, and voiced strong support for implementing work requirements for housing aid recipients. In a radio interview shortly after being confirmed, Carson said poverty "is a state of mind."

Now, Williams said, "people feel betrayed."

"He can't come back from this," he said.

Advertisement

The seeds of Carson's approach to policy are scattered throughout his memoir. He has long promoted self-sufficiency and enthusiastically embraced the bootstrap ideology popular with conservatives.

"Success is determined not by whether or not you face obstacles, but by your reaction to them," Carson wrote.

But those messages, now coming from a politician, are being received differently.

"There's a certain consistency to his message, it's just the language is now different," said Kurt Schmoke, Baltimore's first elected African-American mayor. Carson and Schmoke, now the president of the University of Baltimore, have been friends for decades.

"It's more political, more partisan, and in my view, it's harsher," he said.

Schmoke said Carson's achievements and philanthropic work haven't been entirely eclipsed by his association with the Trump administration. But Carson's political turn has changed the way many people see him.

Advertisement

"You can't take away the fact that he's done outstanding things for people throughout his life, that can't be erased," Schmoke said. "But I do think there's clearly more people who view him through a political lens and that affects how he's viewed in this community."

Shaun Verma, a Ben Carson Scholarship recipient from Georgia, says Carson's use of his story of hard work and determination to justify scaling back the safety net for the same communities that raised and revered him "is really disappointing."

"He gave funding to inner city schools with big African-American populations, and opened reading rooms with the message that through education we can fight poverty and discrimination, and he was looked up to because he escaped his circumstances," said Verma, who recently graduated from Johns Hopkins University and now lives in New York.

At 15, Verma founded MDJunior, a nonprofit that aims to improve health care accessibility to underserved communities. As a Carson scholar he attended board meetings and banquets, and got to know Carson personally. Carson's policies, Verma said, have "tainted his long career and commendable service. It's hard to associate all this with a person I looked up to for years."

Some Maryland conservatives embrace Carson's transition to politician. Antonio Campbell, a professor of political science at Towson University and state chairman for Carson's 2016 presidential campaign, said he "remains impressed." Those disappointed with his performance as HUD secretary likely feel that way because of fundamentally divergent values, he said.

The Trump virus is weakening Ben Carson's image. ... He is no longer the hero he once was.  Bishop Frank Reid, a former pastor at Baltimore's Bethel AME Church

"The question is, what is the role of government?" said Campbell, a Republican who is running for U.S. Senate against Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md. When assistance is scaled back, those accustomed to the status quo are bound to be disappointed, he said, adding that Carson "is learning" how to sell his policies to skeptics.

Advertisement

As a child, growing up in a low-income, predominantly black neighborhood in a Maryland suburb, Boateng Kubi saw Carson as the embodiment of possibility.

"He's one of the first people who truly indicated that black boys, black children, have the right to scientific curiosity," said Kubi, a rising second-year student at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and president of the school's chapter of the largest association for minority medical students.

Kubi calls Carson's policy proposals "shocking."

"It feels like he's neglecting the communities he came from, the people who grew up admiring him, who might not have all the money in the world," he said. "I no longer speak of wanting to be the next Ben Carson."

Carson has come back to Baltimore in an official capacity only three times since becoming HUD secretary. Last month the department gave $144 million in revitalization grants to five cities, including Baltimore. But for the announcement Carson sent a representative to the Perkins Homes housing complex 40 miles from HUD headquarters, opting instead to go to Flint, Michigan.

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

Carson doesn't send groups to the wax museum anymore, said co-founder Joanne Martin. But his figure still gets plenty of attention.

Advertisement

Martin has heard her share of complaints about the figures in her museum: Martin Luther King Jr. is too short. Frederick Douglass is too light-skinned. But no figure has been nearly as controversial as Carson's.

"There have been objections to him being in the museum," she said. "People have posted on our website demanding that we remove him."

Martin refuses. He's earned his place in history as a doctor, Martin said, and she's committed to honoring his contributions to medicine.

But she says she feels uneasy about Carson's next chapter, and made a deliberate decision not to update his placard to include any information about his political life.

"We include figures of people who fought for civil rights and appreciated that struggle," she said. "That's not the person he is today."

Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
ADB is also engaged with the private sector to meet its financing needs during this period (Photo Credit: Image for representation)

New Delhi:

Asian Development Bank (ADB) President Masatsugu Asakawa on Friday assured Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman of USD 2.2 billion (about Rs 16,500 crore) support to India in its fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a call, Asakawa commended the Indian government's decisive response to the pandemic, including a national health emergency program, tax and other relief measures provided to businesses and a USD 23 billion (Rs 1.7 lakh crore) economic relief package announced on March 26 to provide immediate income and consumption support to the poor, women, and workers affected by the three-week nationwide lockdown.

"ADB is committed to supporting India's emergency needs. We are now preparing USD 2.2 billion in immediate assistance to the health sector and to help alleviate the economic impact of the pandemic on the poor; informal workers; micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises; and the financial sector," Asakawa said.

ADB is also engaged with the private sector to meet its financing needs during this period, ADB said in a statement.

"ADB assistance for India will be further increased if needed. We will consider all financing options available with us to meet India's needs, including emergency assistance, policy-based loans, and budget support to facilitate swift disbursement of ADB funds, he said.

For all the Latest Business News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

IISc, Bangalore and IITs have use technology for a better cause by developing mobile apps to support the fight against the Coronavirus pandemic. In view of COVID-19 viral infection, Apps like "GoCoronaGo" to "Sampark-o-Meter will be helpful in identifying and filtering people who have come across the paths of COVID-19 positive patients. These Apps with the help of Bluetooth and GPS features will identify the people who have come in contact with Coronavirus positive patients.

The app "GoCoronaGo" has been developed by a team at IISc which can help identify people who may have crossed paths with COVID-19 suspects.

Use of Mobile Apps to Fight against Coronavirus

"The app will help identify people who may have crossed paths with COVID-19 positive individuals or suspects by tracking their interactions in the past using bluetooth and GPS. It uses temporal network analytics in the backend to understand the risk propensity even for distant contacts, understand disease spread and identify high-risk people who are likely to contract and spread the virus," Tarun Rambha, a faculty member at IISc, told PTI.

"It also provides alerts on isolation and proximity scores, and helps enhance social distancing. It also has a geo-fencing feature for those who are under quarantine, and has the ability to provide their symptoms which is used in the risk evaluation," Rambha added.

Also Read: IIT Researchers Developing Robots To Serve COVID-19 Patients In Isolation Wards

A B.Tech student at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Ropar has developed a mobile-based app called "Sampark-o-Meter" which can indicate areas on maps with maximum coronavirus infection possibility. The app generates a 'risk score' after considering various factors and can alert people to take precautionary measures including self-isolate or consulting a doctor. The app would facilitate users to estimate corona sampark risk rating.

"The existing approaches put the onus of responsibility of contact tracing and alerting or isolating the potential suspects on the government only, and are subjected to delays because of which, in most cases, the suspect has further spread the virus to many before being caught. This app, if implemented successfully, can timely alert and more efficiently control the spread," the developer student Sahil Verma said.

Similarly, a team of students and alumni at IIT Bombay, have made a mobile app named "CORONTINE" that will help in tracking the potential or suspected asymptomatic carriers (AC) of coronavirus if they leave their quarantine zone.

"The app is meant to be installed on the mobile of asymptomatic carriers (AC) by an authorized agency (AA). The app will send GPS coordinates of the mobiles periodically to a server under the supervision of AA. If a user leaves a specified quarantined zone marked by a geo-fence, it will be auto-detected. The purpose of the app is to help authorities track the asymptomatic carriers and prevent the spread of the disease," a team member said.

Students at IIT Delhi have also come up with an application to help trace individuals who come in close contact with COVID-19 positive cases.

Using bluetooth, the application will track and alert all individuals who have been in close vicinity of positive coronavirus cases in the past days. The date and region of interaction within the bluetooth radius will also be provided through the application.

"If and when an individual does come in close contact with a COVID-19 positive patient, the app will connect the user with the nearest healthcare facility. Additionally, it will provide guidelines for self-quarantine and supportive care guidelines," said Arshad Nassar, a PhD student at the institute's design department.

IIT Roorkee professor Kamal Jain has developed a tracking app which can strengthen the surveillance system needed to contain coronavirus. "The app can track individuals and also can do geofencing around him or her. The system will get an alert, if geofencing is violated by the quarantined person. In case GPS data is not received, the location will be obtained automatically through the triangulation of mobile towers. If the Internet is not working in a certain area, the location will be received through SMS," Jain said.

"If the application gets off, an alert will be received immediately. The location of the person can be received by sending an SMS to the device. It allows the sharing of quarantined persons/places photographs on a google map, uploading geotag image to a server. Furthermore, administrators can view all reports on a map," he added.

According to Union Health Ministry, the death toll due to the novel coronavirus rose to 166 and the number of cases to 5,734 in the country on Thursday. While the number of active COVID-19 cases is 5,095, as many as 472 people were cured and discharged and one had migrated, the Ministry said.
New Delhi:

Toyota Glanza, the premium hatchback from the automaker, was launched in India in June last year at the price range of Rs 7.22 lakh to Rs 8.90 lakh (ex-showroom, Delhi). The Glanza is the first product of Toyota and Maruti Suzukis partnership in India. Despite Indias auto industry facing the worst slowdown, Toyota Kirloskar Motor managed to sell 24,380 units of the premium hatchback since its launch.

Toyota Glanza is being offered in two variants - G and V, in four different iterations depending on the engine and transmission i.e. G MT, V MT, G CVT, and V CVT. The petrol engine on the Toyota Glanza are BS6 compliant, while there are no diesel engine options.

Toyota Glanza: Looks & Styling

The Glanza looks identical to the Maruti Suzuki Baleno facelift on the outside, however, it has got a new chrome-lined grille. The car even wears the 16-inch same alloy wheels as the Baleno. At the back, the only changes are the addition of the Toyota and Glanza badges and the variant logo.

Also, the interior of the Toyota Glanza is almost exactly the same as that of the Maruti Suzuki Baleno facelift. From the dashboard and steering wheel to 7.0-inch touchscreen for the infotainment system, the Glanza is practically the same as the Baleno. The only difference comes as the Toyota's badges.

Toyota Glanza: Engine

On the engineering front, the G trim of Glanza has the 1.2-litre K12N engine with a mild-hybrid motor that churns out 89 bhp and 113 Nm. The Glanza V trim has the regular 1.2-litre K12M engine without the mild-hybrid system. It churns out 82 bhp and 113 Nm. The Toyota Glanza will get a 5-speed manual gearbox as well as the option of a CVT.

The Toyota Glanza mileage is 21.01 kmpl for the V MT trim, 23.87 kmpl for the G MT (Mild-Hybrid) trim and 19.56 kmpl for the CVT, which are the same for the corresponding variants of the Maruti Suzuki Baleno.

Toyota Glanza: Features

Safety features include dual airbags as standard along with electronic brake-force distribution, rear parking sensors, seatbelt reminder, anti-lock brakes and ISOFIX mounts for child seats.

Also Read: 2020 Hyundai Verna Facelift Launched In India: Specs, features, Price Inside

Other standard features include LED tail-lamps, height adjust for driver seat, automatic AC and a 60:40 split rear seat. On the range-topping 'V' trim, the Toyota Glanza will also get a rear parking camera along with a follow-me-home headlamp feature.
Miku Nepal is a new brand of electric two-wheelers that has just begun its sale in Nepal.

Kaliber Auto Pvt ltd is the authorised distributor of Miku electric vehicles in Nepal. It is also the authorised distributor of Doohan electric scooters in Nepal. Miku Nepal has brought two-electric bikes to Nepal at the moment.

There are many options if one wishes to purchase an electric scooter, but there are very few options for electric bikes in Nepal. So, the launch of these two electric bikes can be an interesting alternative for those who are trying to get an electric bike.

Lets know about the bikes in detail.

1. Miku Max

Photo: Miku

Specifications

Dimension Length: 1685mm

Height: 1065mm

Width: 780mm

Wheelbase: 1205mm Motor BOSCH technology field-oriented control Power 800W Battery 60V20AH lithium battery (portable) Battery weight 9kg Charging time 4 hours Charging cycles 900 cycles Resistance temperature -15 degree celcius to 38 degree celcius Range 60km Top speed 45kmph Acceleration 0-45kmph in 9.8 seconds Climb capacity 21 % Maximum load 100kg Tyre size Front: 3.0-10- Tubeless tyre

Rear: 3.0-10- Tubeless tyre Brakes Front: Disc

Rear: Disc Shock absorber Hydraulic Frame type Steel Colours Orange, white, black, grey, green, blue Price Rs 224,900

Photo: Miku

Miku electric bikes offer a different look than any other electric or non-electric bike in Nepal. Miku Max has a unique floating C-shaped design body giving it a futuristic look. The frame on the bike is made of steel.

There might be a dispute among the people about the floating shape, but the bike can support the weight of 100kg. The bike features a bright circular LED light at the front with MIKU branded on it. At the rear end, it features a cushion designed LED tail light which is a unique addition to the scooter and gives an exquisite look. The bike also features a borderless digital instrumental cluster.

Max is powered by 800W Bosch Motor. It includes a portable 60V20AH lithium battery that weighs 9 kg and provides a range of 60km on a full charge. The battery takes around four hours to get fully charged. The top speed this electric bike can achieve is 45kmph and it achieves that speed in 9.8 seconds. The bike has three-speed modes and also has cruise control.

This electric bike features a hydraulic shock absorber on both ends. The tyres on this bike are tubeless and have disc brakes on both of them for better and safe braking. The bike also has a storage unit with a storage light. Other features on the bike include a USB port and a hidden back hook that lies under the seat.

The price of Miku Max is Rs 224,900.

2. Miku Super

Photo: Miku

Specifications

Dimension Length: 1850mm

Height: 1040mm

Width: 745mm Motor Sunra motor Power 3000W Battery Portable 2*72V20AH lithium Charging time 4 hours Range 135km Top Speed 80kmph Seating capacity 2 person Climb capacity 27 degrees Maximum load 150kg Tyre size Front: 120/70-12- Tubeless tyre

Rear: 120/70-12- Tubeless tyre Brakes Front: Disc

Rear: Disc Shock Absorber Hydraulic Frame type Steel Colours Black, red, blue, yellow, white Price Rs 396,900

Miku Super is an expensive offering from the company. It also has a similar floating C-shaped body with steel frames. The load capacity of this model is higher as it can carry up to 150 kg. Super also features a similar bright circular LED light at the front with MIKU branding. The bike gets an LED backlight and there is a colourful digital instrumental cluster on the bike as well.

Photo: Miku

Powering the bike is a 3000W Sunra motor coupled up with portable 2*72V20AH lithium batteries. Compared to the Max, this is more powerful as it can generate a maximum torque of up to 235Nm. The Super also offers a better range at 135km on a full charge while taking four hours to get fully charged. The bike can achieve a top speed of 80kmph and can reach that speed in 8.5 seconds. Furthermore, there are three speed modes on the bike along with cruise control mode.

Miku Super has a combined braking system with disc brakes at both ends. It has a similar hydraulic shock absorber on both ends for smooth riding on harsh conditions roads. There is a storage compartment on this bike as well.

The price of Miku Super is Rs 396,900.

Since there are very few electric bikes on the market, Miku will directly clash with the electric bikes from SuperSoco.
As the date for the local elections is closing in, all major political parties have started to plan accordingly. But, for small parties, things are not looking too bright as they still do not know what symbol the Election Commission will give them for the forthcoming election.

Section 26 of the Local Level Election Act, 2017, has the provision to hand out election symbols to all candidates in local elections. But, the act states that the symbols of their respective political parties will only be given to candidates belonging to national parties as defined by the Act on Political Parties.

It means the law is apparently discriminatory against small parties. In the run-up to the local elections, they are lobbying for the repeal of the rule. But, the commission says it is not its jurisdiction whereas big political parties that have the potential to change the law are keeping mum.

All animals are equal, but

To be a national party, you have to do more than win an election. According to the act, a party has to win at least 3 per cent of votes in the proportional representation system from the entire country in the latest House of Representatives elections. In addition, they also need to win one seat in the House in the first-past-the-post system.

Therefore, despite the good work done by the candidate, if he/she is from a small party, he/she might not get the election symbol of the party they represent during the local elections.

Instead, they are given election symbols considering them independent candidates. In 2017, smaller parties under the stewardship of Baburam Bhattarai-led Naya Shakti had protested the law. But, their concerns were not heard. The issue is being raised again, but it is unlikely to make headway anytime soon.

Tied hands of the commission

File: Election Commission

Former chief election commissioner Bhoj Raj Pokharel says that the commission cannot do anything about this rule until the law is amended. He says that the commission is doing what the law tells it to do.

It clearly states that the party symbol for the local elections is given only to national parties. The commission cant do anything unless the house or these national parties decide to change it, says Pokharel.

This is the case even if the party does well in the local elections. Even if the party wins a significant number of seats in the local constituencies, unless their presence is in the federal House, nothing changes for them. That is why representatives of only six parties in the country will get election symbols during the local elections this time.

Unheard woes

When the provision about smaller parties needing a set number of votes was put in the law, a lot of smaller parties protested as they felt it was unfair. But, the big national parties did not care about the concerns of a few small parties as they felt that having fewer parties was important for the political stability of the country.

Following the 2017 local elections, it seemed small parties too accepted that idea, which is why they were not speaking about this much. But, they are dissatisfied about not getting an election symbol in the same manner how the national parties were getting them. Hence, they are raising the issue again ahead of the next polls.

Small parties hold a meeting with the Election Commission to demand the law on election symbols for local elections be repealed, in Kathmandu, in March 2022.

Speaking at an all-party meeting on February 14, Prem Suwal, a parliamentarian from the Nepal Workers and Peasants Party, said the law was discriminatory although it was important to give smaller parties the same election symbols they were registered with.

Suwal is believed to have met Home Minister Bal Krishna Khand regularly to talk about this issue, but his concerns are nowhere near to being addressed, he says.

The laws that these major parties made are discriminating against us. Because they like dominating us, why would they want to change the law, he questioned after the meeting.

CPN-UMLs Bishnu Rimal, however, says that talks are ongoing about this. This issue has been discussed in the presence of major political leaders like Sher Bahadur Deuba, KP Sharma Oli, Pushpa Kamal Dahal and Madhav Kumar Nepal. But, these leaders said that it would be wrong to go against the law.

Middle-path solution

But, senior advocate Radhe Shyam Adhikari says these things should not be an issue if the commission is careful and alert while distributing symbols for the next local elections.

The commission should not make mistakes when it comes to parties that regularly contest these elections. The Nepal Workers and Peasants Party should be given its regular symbol of the madal, he says. Even though the law is strict, the commission can be smarter.

Rimal says that his party is willing to accept whatever the Election Commission does.

The effort to amend the law should begin from the commission itself. The commission has not come to us to discuss this matter, he says.
Home  Just In  Oppo A76 coming to Nepal: See if the brands first release this year will impress you

Oppo A76 is all set to get launched in Nepal very soon.

This is a mid-range phone from Oppo which was officially released in India and will make its way here soon in the coming days. This is going to be the first smartphone release from Oppo in Nepal in 2022. Oppo A76 offers a 90Hz screen, an energy-efficient 6nm chipset, and a faster-charging feature.

Lets know what more the phone has to offer before it is officially released here.

Specifications

Dimension Height: 164.4mm

Width: 75.7mm

Thickness: 8.4mm

Weight: 189 grams Display 6.56-inch IPS LCD, 90Hz Screen ratio 89.9% Sim Dual sims Resolution 1,612*720 pixels OS Android 11, ColorsOS 11.1 Chipset Qualcomm Snapdragon 680 4G (6nm) GPU Adreno 610 Storage UFS 2.2 128GB SD Card Slot Dedicated RAM 6GB Camera Front: 8MP, f/2.0

Rear: 13MP, f/2.2, PDAF

2MP (Depth) Sound Loudspeakers 3.5mm headphone jack Battery 5000mAh, li-po, non-removable

Fast charging 33W Sensors Side-mounted fingerprint geomagnetic sensor

Optical proximity sensor

Ambient light sensor

Accelerometer

Gravity sensor

Virtual gyroscope

Pedometer Colours Glowing black, glowing blue Price (Expected) Rs 25,000

Design and display

Photo: Oppo

Oppo A76 flaunts a beautiful glow design. The phone has a glass front while the back and the frame is plastic. The back of the phone exhibits a classy look and also prevents fingerprint smudges. It has a punch hole cut out at the corner on the front while it features the redesigned camera module on the back, which in this class range looks terrific. The phone weighs 189 grams and is 8.4mm thick. There is a side-mounted fingerprint sensor on the phone.

Photo: Oppo

There is a 6.56-inch IPS LCD panel on the phone with a resolution of 1,612*720 pixels. The display has a 90Hz refresh rate and can achieve a peak brightness of up to 600 nits. The display has an 89.9% screen-to-body ratio.

Cameras

Photo: Oppo

Oppo A76 has a dual-camera setup on the rear and a single selfie shooter on the front. The 13MP main camera on the back is coupled up with a 2MP macro sensor. On the front, there is an 8MP camera for shooting selfie photos and videos. The video recording option on both front and back cameras is limited to [email protected] fps only, but this is a common setting for phones in this price range.

Along with capturing photos and videos, the rear camera on Oppo A76 has other shooting modes like night mode, expert or pro mode, panoramic, portrait mode, time-lapse, text scanner, and sticker. Meanwhile, the front camera offers shooting modes like panorama, portrait, night, time-lapse and sticker.

Performance and storage

Oppo A76 runs on Android 11 with ColorsOS 11.1 on top. The phone is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 680 4G (6nm) chipset and the graphics are managed by Adreno 610. This is a power-efficient chipset and a huge upgrade from the 11nm chipset on its predecessor, Oppo A74.

Photo: Oppo

As per the storage option, the phone comes with 6GB DDR4 RAM and UFS2.2 128GB of internal storage option. The storage of the phone can be expanded with a microSD card. Not only the storage but the users have the option to expand their RAM memory by 5GB as well. The internal storage of the phone can be used as virtual RAM.

Battery life, connectivity and price

Photo: Oppo

Oppo A76 has a 5,000mAh non-removable li-po battery backup. The phone also supports 33W fast charging which can be extremely beneficial. The phone can get up to 55% charge in just 30 minutes. Since it has a power-efficient chipset, five minutes of charging the phone can provide the user with two hours of video playback time.

The phone supports a dual 4G network. Along with that, the phone also supports Wifi 5, dual Wifi bands and features Bluetooth 5.0 for pairing with other devices like speakers, earbuds and wearables. The phone also has a 3.5mm headphone jack for audio connectivity.

The price of Oppo A76 in India is INR 14,558. Accordingly, you can expect it for around Rs 25,000 in Nepal.

If the phone will be released in that price range, it will compete against the best smartphones under Rs 30,000 in Nepal.
Home  Business  Minister on a tour to the UAE, Qatar and Seychelles to discuss labour migration

Kathmandu, March 14

Nepals Labour, Employment and Social Security Minister Krishna Kumar Shrestha Kisan is leaving for a tour to the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Seychelles to discuss labour migration issues.

The UAE and Qatar have remained two of the favourite destinations of Nepali migrant workers for the last few decades whereas the African island country of Seychelles has recently approached Nepal to sign an agreement to recruit Nepalis.

First, he will visit the UAE and discuss several issues with his counterpart there. The ministers secretariat says problems relating to the misuse of visit visas and Nepalis stuck there due to that will also be discussed.

In the UAE, he will also meet representatives of Nepali migrant workers and other labour migration stakeholders.

From the UAE, the delegation will go to Seychelles on Thursday, March 17, and return to Qatar on Sunday, March 20.

The delegation will be back in Nepal on Tuesday, March 22.
DUBLIN, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Innovations in API Manufacture 2022" training has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

Research and Markets Logo

This conference brings together researchers from academia and industry from across New England and the US as well as Europe and addresses the most timely topics in this expanding field. Running alongside the conference is an exhibition featuring companies showcasing their technologies and product offerings in this space and is an excellent opportunity to engage and network in this marketplace.



The event is honored to welcome Professor Paul Watts, Distinguished Professor and Research Chair in Microfluidic Bio/Chemical Processing, Nelson Mandela University as the Conference Chairman. This conference will take place physically on-site in Boston as a regular conference. Two Intertwined co-located tracks - Each Registration Provides Full Access to All Tracks and Co-Located Exhibit Hall.



Agenda Topics

API Synthesis

Green Chemistry

Machine Learning

Mechanochemistry

Microwaves

Real-time Monitoring

Scale-up

Sonochemistry

Telescoped Synthesis

Speakers



Conference Chair

Paul Watts, Distinguished Professor, and Research Chair, Nelson Mandela University

Confirmed Speakers to date

Marcus Baumann, Assistant Professor, School of Chemistry, University College Dublin

Maurizio Benaglia, Full Professor of Organic Chemistry, Dipartimento di Chimica, Universita degli Studi di Milano

Rodrigo de Souza, Professor, Federal University of Rio De Janeiro

Leandro Helgueira de Andrade, Associate Professor, UNIVERSITY OF SAO PAULO

Anita Maguire, Professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, University College Cork

David Thompson, Professor, Department of Chemistry, Purdue University

Gianvito Vile, Tenure-Track Assistant Professor in Chemical Engineering, Politecnico di Milano

For more information about this training visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/g3an76

About ResearchAndMarkets.com

ResearchAndMarkets.com is the world's leading source for international market research reports and market data. We provide you with the latest data on international and regional markets, key industries, the top companies, new products and the latest trends.

Story continues

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

press@researchandmarkets.com



For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900



U.S. Fax: 646-607-1904

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

Cision

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/3-day-countdown-to-innovations-in-api-manufacture-conference-on-march-17-18th-2022-in-boston-usa-301501684.html

SOURCE Research and Markets
Attendees Can Interview, Receive Offers on Site

EIGHTY FOUR, Pa., March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- 84 Lumber, the nation's largest privately held building materials supplier, is recruiting for 10 immediate openings at stores in Victor, NY, and Rochester, NY, as the company's business continues to expand nationwide. Interested job seekers can interview for open positions at a hiring event on March 17, 2022, from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 84 Lumber's Victor location (8055 Victor Pittsford Road, Victor, NY 14564).

84 Lumber (PRNewsfoto/84 Lumber)

"At 84 Lumber, we are on the leading edge of the ongoing rise in residential construction across the nation," said Phil Garuccio, divisional vice president at 84 Lumber. "Greater demand for our products means a need for more motivated, dedicated employees who want to take advantage of the phenomenal growth opportunity in our industry. If you have a strong work ethic and are eager for something new, you could be the perfect fit for us."

Hiring event attendees will participate in job interviews and learn more about 84 Lumber's company culture. Some attendees may receive a job offer on site. Open positions include:

Manager trainees (MTs) , who enter an intensive, one-on-one, on-the-job training program that teaches them about the company's business and puts them on a path to become a future leader within the enterprise. Starting compensation for manager trainees is between $43,000 and $50,000 per year with monthly incentive compensation.





Lumber yard, warehouse associates, and non-CDL truck drivers . Applicants need no prior experience and perform essential functions behind the scenes  from the management of supply shipments to the operation of equipment. Starting pay is $15 to $16 per hour depending on experience.



Window service technicians are responsible for servicing windows to builders, including installing screens, balancing windows, and replacing glass. Applicants may also be responsible for loading and unloading trucks, as well as stocking warehouse inventory. Starting compensation is $15 to $16 per hour depending on experience.

Story continues

"As a family-owned company, 84 Lumber is committed to helping our employees build a long-term career with us. We are proud to say that 95% of our store managers started in our manager trainee program," Garuccio said. "We believe that a wide variety of candidates can find a home with the company and open doors for themselves  a person with no construction experience but a desire to learn, military veterans ready to open their next chapter, or someone simply ready to make a fresh start. We'll give every one of them the tools to grow."

Candidates interested in participating in the Hiring Event should pre-register online and complete the form. Registrants will then receive an email from 84 Lumber with the link to apply for the desired position. To save time, Garuccio strongly encourages candidates to apply for positions online before they attend the event.

On-site pre-employment drug screening will be available for applicants at the hiring event. Candidates who advance in the process will also be required to pass a background check prior to employment.

To learn more about 84 Lumber, follow the company on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.

ABOUT 84 LUMBER

Founded in 1956 and headquartered in Eighty Four, Pennsylvania, 84 Lumber Company is the nation's largest privately held supplier of building materials, manufactured components and industry-leading services for single- and multi-family residences and commercial buildings. The company operates nearly 250 stores, component manufacturing plants, custom door shops, custom millwork shops and engineered wood product centers in more than 30 states. 84 Lumber also offers turnkey installation services for a variety of products, including framing, insulation, siding, windows, roofing, decking and drywall. A certified national women's business enterprise owned by Maggie Hardy Knox, 84 Lumber was named by Forbes as one of America's Largest Private Companies in 2018 and one of America's Best Large Employers in 2019. For more information, visit 84lumber.com or join us at Facebook.com/84lumber and linkedin.com/company/84-lumber .

Contact: Jeff Donaldson, BLD Marketing Email: jeff.donaldson@bld-marketing.com Phone: (412) 347-8039 Photos: http://www.bldpressroom.com/84lumber/victor

Cision

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/84-lumber-to-fill-immediate-job-openings-in-rochester-area-by-hosting-hiring-event-on-march-17-301501786.html

SOURCE 84 Lumber
MONTREAL, March 14, 2022 /CNW/ - The Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) is alerting all market participants to economic sanctions imposed by the Government of Canada recently under amendments to the Special Economic Measures (Russia) Regulations. These Regulations were amended in light of Russia's violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.

The Regulations impose broad categories of sanctions on named Russian nationals and Russian entities. Market participants may be directly affected if they intersect with any of the "designated persons" (listed in Schedule 1, 2 or 3 of the Regulations) and their assets or property. While the sanctions apply beyond the scope of Canadian securities law, all market participants are potentially impacted, including issuers, marketplaces, clearing agencies, custodians, all categories of registrants, including crypto asset trading platforms, and pension, investment and mutual funds and their managers. Additionally, other entities such as banks and accounting firms that facilitate relevant transactions, or provide financial or audit services in relation to relevant transactions or designated persons, may be impacted.

All market participants are encouraged to do their due diligence and consider obtaining expert advice to understand, follow and continually monitor their obligations under the Regulations.

The Regulations impose wide-ranging restrictions in a number of areas. It is prohibited for any person in Canada and any Canadian outside Canada to:

Deal in any property, wherever situated, held by or on behalf of a designated person whose name is listed in Schedule 1 of the Regulations.

Enter into or facilitate, directly or indirectly, any transaction related to such a dealing.

Provide any financial or other related services in respect of such a dealing.

Make any goods, wherever situated, available to a designated person listed in Schedule 1.

Provide any financial or related service to, or for the benefit of, a designated person listed in Schedule 1.

Story continues

In addition, certain entities must determine on a continuing basis whether they are in possession or control of property owned or controlled by or on behalf of a designated person. There are also requirements to report any such situation, or any proposed transaction involving such property, to the Commissioner of the RCMP.

It is important to note that some restrictions will impact certain sectors, such as the financial sector (including in relation to new debt or equity financing, in respect of designated persons in Schedules 2 and 3) and energy sector (including an expansive list of goods and services related to oil exploration or production, as outlined in Schedule 4 of the Regulations). It is also important to note that causing, facilitating or assisting in prohibited activities is likewise prohibited. For further information on the Regulations, including any exceptions to the broad provisions, we strongly suggest that market participants review the amended Special Economic Measures (Russia) Regulations and keep apprised of any ongoing changes.

The CSA will continue to monitor the impact of the sanctions on Canadian capital markets, and coordinate with domestic and international regulators.

The CSA, the council of the securities regulators of Canada's provinces and territories, co-ordinates and harmonizes regulation for the Canadian capital markets.

SOURCE Canadian Securities Administrators

Cision

View original content: http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/March2022/14/c4436.html
Debate on a sweeping climate change bill is expected to begin soon in the Maryland House of Delegates after the Senate passed it Monday. The legislation would accelerate state greenhouse gas reduction goals in a bid to make the state carbon neutral by 2045, while requiring large buildings to significantly reduce energy footprints by 2035.

But the Senate abandoned environmentalists most aggressive proposal for reducing dependence on fossil fuels  one that would have outlawed fossil fuel-based heating systems in new buildings. That change came even though a state climate change commission, including three members of Republican Gov. Larry Hogans cabinet, overwhelmingly endorsed such a ban.

Advertisement

The overarching purpose of the bill, named the Climate Solutions Now Act, is to set a 2030 target to reduce Marylands greenhouse gas emissions by 60% below 2006 levels, replacing an earlier 40% emissions reduction goal.

Democrats in the General Assembly have vowed to pass major climate legislation this spring. A similar bill failed last year when leaders in the House and Senate could not agree on how aggressively to cut emissions. But with statewide elections scheduled this year, the leaders have said they expect to reach a compromise.

Advertisement

Still, it remains to be seen whether and how dramatically Democrats might agree to pursue climate action, an issue increasingly frustrating environmentalists and a wing of the party demanding more transformational policy to address the urgency of the climate crisis.

Flooding from rising seas affects many coastal communities as the global climate changes. Legislation to lessen harmful emissions from Maryland is moving in Annapolis, seen here in October 2021. (Paul W. Gillespie/Capital Gazette)

Delegates said they watched the Senate debate closely and, as they take up the bill, expect to bring in proposals of their own to encourage a move away from fossil fuels. The House could move quickly to pass a bill so there is time for the Democratic majority to override an expected Hogan veto before the General Assembly adjourns April 11.

We fully expect that the House and Senate are going to agree on significant climate legislation, said Del. Dana Stein, a Baltimore County Democrat. As for how the House will address the Senates changes to the bill, I cant say what the Houses approach will be.

During 4-1/2 hours of floor debate Thursday, the Republican minority called the climate bill too expensive and cumbersome while not guaranteeing any reduction in the risks the state faces from extreme weather induced by climate change. They said Maryland is too small a state to make an impact on global climate.

Amid the discussion, Hogan released a statement calling the legislation a reckless and controversial energy tax bill, though it does not include tax proposals.

Senate Minority Leader Bryan Simonaire, of Anne Arundel County, suggested it would cost households $10,000 each but, when pressed, said that estimate is tied to the cost of replacing home windows and furnaces. The bill does not apply to homes unless they are greater than 25,000 square feet.

The legislation is so complex that nonpartisan legislative analysts who typically offer cost estimates with every bill did not assign it a price tag. They said the climate bill would create significant costs for building owners, businesses and electricity ratepayers, but may bring long-term energy savings.

Sen. Paul Pinsky, a Prince Georges County Democrat and the bills sponsor, acknowledged that Maryland could not stop climate change on its own. But he said the state must pursue more aggressive action to help lead the nation and world toward reducing global carbon emissions.

Advertisement

Theres not one action the planet can take. It really is starting with small steps, Pinsky said. The only way for us to move forward is to do what we can do in our state.

The Hogan administration says the state is on track to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 50% below 2006 levels by 2030, but some environmentalists are skeptical of that calculation.

On the House side, legislators are evaluating a number of options to promote building electrification given the outcome in the Senate, said Del. Kumar Barve, a Montgomery County Democrat and chairman of the House environment and transportation committee. Rather than file a single companion bill to go with the Senates complex legislation, delegates broke similar proposals into several bills, each of which received hearings in the House last month.

One key element to achieve emissions reduction goals would require buildings 25,000 square feet or larger to reduce emissions by 30% below 2025 levels by 2035, and to stop producing any carbon emissions on-site by 2040. Along with office buildings, grocery stores and hospitals, that includes large multifamily residential buildings  something that drew criticism from some Republicans for placing a burden on low- and moderate-income residents who are most likely to live in apartments, suggesting building owners will pass along costs to renters.

Agricultural and historic buildings would be exempt from emissions reduction requirements, as would public school buildings. But senators agreed to still direct the Maryland Department of the Environment to collect information on school buildings carbon footprints to establish a baseline should lawmakers decide to require energy retrofits in the future.

Other aspects of the bill include pushing the state to purchase more zero-emissions vehicles; establishing a Climate Justice Corps that would employ young people for green energy and environmental justice projects in communities disproportionately affected by climate change; and to better monitor and eventually cap methane emissions from landfills, whose impact on climate change have in the past been vastly underestimated.

Advertisement

But the bill no longer includes the proposal to establish statewide building standards that would have required new structures to include water and space heating systems that do not use fossil fuels.

The idea behind such a policy is that installing fossil fuel-based heating systems in new buildings extends the time it will take to wean the nation off those fuels. While much of the power used by electric heating systems currently comes from fossil fuel-fired power plants, it could just as easily come from renewable sources as the country greens its electricity grid.

Pinsky said the provision was removed after fierce opposition from gas fitters, commercial property owners and utilities, who said the grid could not handle a switch to all-electric new construction without significant investments in new substations and other grid infrastructure. Some opponents expressed fear that the grids reliability could suffer. Small fossil fuel distributors and workers told lawmakers they worried the change could spell the end of their careers.

BGE officials remain concerned that the bill could expose our customers to service reliability risk, and plan to continue to engage constructively as it advances to the House, said Sandy I-ru Grace, the utilitys vice president of governmental and external affairs.

Michael Powell, a lobbyist representing the commercial real estate group NAIOP, said building owners were pleased to see changes to the bill but remain concerned that it does not provide financial incentives to help them with energy retrofits.

Legislators had pulled the idea for an all-electric construction code from a report by the Maryland Commission on Climate Change. It was one of dozens of policy recommendations offered in a building energy transition plan the group released in November after months of discussions, though the commission did not set a timeline for its vision.

Advertisement

The commission approved those recommendations by a 24-2 vote, with support from Hogans secretaries of natural resources, the environment and agriculture. The heads of the state Department of Planning and Maryland Energy Administration opposed it.

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

In place of the building code reforms, the Senate bill would require the Public Service Commission to evaluate the impact of electrifying more buildings. Pinsky said hes hopeful that study would put the concerns to bed.

If you start digging and put in gas pipes, youre going to use them forever. And weve got to move away from fossil fuels, he said. Weve got to move to the 21st and 22nd century solutions.

Environmentalists were disappointed the Senate bill isnt doing more to push the state off fossil fuels, but said they were glad to see lawmakers adamant to still pass significant climate legislation.

Kim Coble, executive director of the Maryland League of Conservation voters, noted that her organizations annual report card, an important badge for Democrats in Annapolis, gave the General Assembly a D and an F for its environmental inaction the past two years.

Theyre motivated to do the right thing because its the right thing to do, because theres an election this year, and because were holding them accountable for it, she said. Were trying to make sure its the strongest bill or bills possible.

Advertisement

But for those whod expected to see more dramatic action, disappointment is a mild way of putting it, said Victoria Venable, Maryland director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network.

When you look at the emissions were cutting, especially with the building sector, we have so much more work to do, she said. Its hard to continue to do the incremental change when what we really need is transformative policy change.
The 27th annual Critics Choice Awards returned to an in-person ceremony Sunday, with Netflixs The Power of the Dog taking home top prizes for best picture and best director for Jane Campion. Will Smith, Jessica Chastain, Troy Kotsur and Ariana DeBose were among the other big winners in the film categories. Television stars Jason Sudeikis, Jean Smart, Kieran Culkin, Jennifer Coolidge, Murray Bartlett, Melanie Lynskey and Lee Jung-jae also won awards.

Nailed It! host and Grand Crew star Nicole Byer was joined by All Americans Taye Diggs to emcee the event, simulcast on The CW and TBS.

More from The Hollywood Reporter

Originally planned to take place Jan. 9, the show was rescheduled due the omicron variant surge in the United States. To accommodate nominees who also attended Sundays BAFTA film awards ceremony in London (which was held earlier at the Royal Albert Hall), the Critics Choice Awards took place at both Los Angeles Fairmont Century Plaza Hotel and Londons Savoy Hotel.

CODAs Kotsur, who attended the London event and earlier earned a BAFTA Award for his role, picked up his first Critics Choice win for best supporting actor. West Side Storys DeBose, who also took home a BAFTA Award, won for best supporting actress and thanked the critics for embracing Steven Spielbergs remake of the 1961 movie musical. She then offered an inspiring message for all the young people watching at home: It doesnt matter how you identify who you are, you are unique, you are talented, you are seeing your value, you are loved and you matter. Please dont ever forget that.

Minaris Alan Kim, who charmed audiences last year when he won best young actor and tearfully accepted his award during the virtual ceremony, walked on stage Sunday to great applause from the audience. Wow, its crazy to look at a video of a younger me, joked the 9-year-old. Ive gotta tell ya, growing up in this business is no picnic. Kim presented the best young actor award to Belfasts breakout star Jude Hill.

Story continues

Belfast also won the best ensemble award, which star Jamie Dornan accepted on his cast-mates behalf. Critics are usually not very nice to me, Dornan said of his surprise that the film won.

Following Maria Bakalova, who showed her support for Ukraine ahead of presenting the best supporting actor award, Dornan also vocalized his support for the country and drew parallels to Belfast. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of telling a story about a place that people dont really have a vague idea about, and telling you about the real people from that place not seen through a politicized or paramilitary lens, which is often the case in Belfast, [but] seeing it through the eyes of family, something we can all relate to. We need to relate to the people and the families through [this] hardship.

Last years best actress winner Carey Mulligan returned to present the award for best actor. In recognizing the incredible, complex and staggering performances by our best actor nominees tonight, we for the most part, continue an age-old Hollywood tradition of rewarding men for acting like complete and utter bastards, she quipped. I can tell you that, however, having auditioned over the years to play nearly all of their wives and girlfriends  and incidentally, Andrew Garfields mother once  theyre all truly, actually very lovely people and fairly normal, which makes their performances this year even more impressive.

Smith won the award for his role in King Richard, and noted that Venus and Serena Williams had joined him, alongside their sister Isha Price. Thank you for entrusting me with your story, Smith said to the sisters. What you were able to do, and what your family was able to do, inspired everyone in this room, everyone in this country and everyone around the world. You all define the American dream.

Ive played real life characters a couple times, Smith told members of the press following his win. It holds an extra burden because when I play someone everyone is going to assume that thats the real story and thats how it was. Theres an awful couple of weeks when the movies finished and you know the family is going to start to see it. Theres an emotional release when people feel honored when you tell a true story.

Successions Culkin, who won best supporting actor in a drama series, admitted he did not have a speech prepared, using his time at the mic to call out colleagues Sarah Snook and J. Smith Cameron, in order, as his favorite performers to work with. His costar Snook also won the award for best supporting actress in a drama series. (Culkin revealed to members of the press following Successions win for best drama series that Snook was unable to attend because she tested positive for COVID-19.)

Insecures Issa Rae was on hand to present the SeeHer Award to Halle Berry. SeeHer and its partners are committed to creating content free of gender bias, Rae said. This award goes to women who embody the movement and inspire all women and girls to see themselves and all the possibilities because we cannot underestimate the power of what it feels like to be seen in the content you consume.

Upon accepting the award, Berry recalled first reading the script for Bruised, which marked her directorial debut last year: I realized that it wasnt written for someone that looked like me. So I went to the producers and I said, Why not me? Why cant it be a Black woman? They said, Why not? Later on, they told me, Now, go find a director. And then finally, I summoned the courage to say, Why not me?

Ive been in the business for 30 years, and I used to think that if I could play the part of a white man, that I was winning, Berry continued. But you know what? I want to know why that didnt work. Because if you didnt know, Im not a white man. For those roles to work, they would have to be substantially changed. It would have to be written with the reality of my journey, in all of its beauty and all of its pain. This is why I am so grateful to be standing and living in this moment where women are standing up and we are telling our own stories.

Smart won best actress in a comedy series (Hacks), and announced she was throwing out her acceptance speech to congratulate co-showrunners and creators Lucia Aniello and Paul W. Downs, who welcomed their first child together over the weekend. Smart noted that Aniello was receiving video feed from the Hacks set on Friday while in labor, directing in between contractions before giving birth to their son  and on Saturday, also earning a DGA Award for directing the series.

Ted Lasso continued its streak, winning best comedy series, best actor for Sudeikis, best supporting actor Brett Goldstein and best supporting actress Hannah Waddingham (the second year in a row the Apple TV+ show won in all categories for which it was nominated). Accepting for best comedy series, Waddingham shifted gears to show her support for Ukraine. At the moment there are beautiful brothers and sisters, and for me more importantly, the babies in the Ukraine that are being utterly decimated at the moment from this putrid, putrid torrent of abuse, she tearfully said. Please think of them as much as you can and give as much as you can.

Lifetime achievement honoree Billy Crystal also brought up his personal connection to Ukraine. My grandmothers were from Odessa and Kiev, he said, remembering that his first audience was his own family. They came to America where they could live free from tyranny. Their laughter was the first laughs I ever got in my life, is the fuel that my engine is still burning today.

Crystal also noted that Monday is his birthday, and he is currently in rehearsals for his upcoming Broadway musical, Mr. Saturday Night. I cant remember when I worked harder and had more fun on a project  and Im serious, he said. Ill be 74 tomorrow  I actually just cant remember!

Michael Keaton delivered one of the nights most stirring speeches when accepting the award for best actor in a limited series for Hulus Dopesick, which offered a broad look at the opioid crisis affecting millions of Americans. One thing Im proud about regarding this series is I think we really treated all those folks down there [in Appalachia] and in the world with real dignity, Keaton said, recalling a waitress he met while filming who was taking care of her grandchild because the parents were incapacitated because of addiction. I think of all those women like my mom and my sisters. Theyre tough. It seems to always fall onto them, those grandmothers who are raising babies because their children cant.

Keaton also expressed support for fellow actor Volodymyr Zelenskyy, president of Ukraine, telling him to keep up the fight. Closing his speech, Keaton added, Theres only one way to change things environmentally, socially and for some sort of racial justice and social justice. Two words: voting rights.

Read the full list of winners here.

Best of The Hollywood Reporter

Click here to read the full article.
SINGAPORE, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Crypto.com, the world's fastest growing cryptocurrency platform, has confirmed the appointment of a number of senior hires in London as it continues to build capability and presence for UK operations.

As the company seeks to establish a hub in the UK capital, Crypto.com has filled six senior operational, compliance, engineering and communications positions with a view to bolstering its core functions. The new hires include:

Nick Charteris - UK General Manager

Matthew Ward - Head of Finance, UK

George Tucker - Head of Communications and Government Relations, EMEA

Rosie Donachie - Global Head of Sustainability and ESG

Joanna Jenkins - SVP of Compliance, EMEA

Mike Warriner - SVP of Engineering, Europe

Founded in 2016, Crypto.com today serves more than 10 million customers and has over 3,000 employees across its offices in the Americas, Europe and Asia. Crypto.com is built on a foundation of security, privacy and compliance, and is designed to accelerate the global adoption of cryptocurrencies through its service offerings.

"The UK represents a strategically important market to Crypto.com," said Kris Marszalek, CEO of Crypto.com. "We are delighted to welcome these senior leaders to the Company and they will all play a vital role in strengthening our capabilities and attracting more talent in this market. This team will also work closely with the regulator as we continue to grow our UK business."

Crypto.com is planning significant investment in the engineering teams in the UK, with more than 400 new hires expected in 2022 to grow the platform and further enable billions of daily cryptocurrency and NFT transactions across our Mobile Apps and market leading low latency trading Exchange.

About Crypto.com

Crypto.com has focused on building a regulated business in every market where the company operates. Crypto.com is built on a solid foundation of security, privacy and compliance and is the first cryptocurrency company in the world to have SOC 2 Type 1 compliance, ISO/IEC 27701:2019, CCSS Level 3, ISO27001:2013 and PCI:DSS 3.2.1, Level 1 compliance, and independently assessed at Tier 4, the highest level for both NIST Cybersecurity and Privacy Frameworks. Crypto.com also holds the industry's largest insurance policy of $750M.

Story continues

Crypto.com is accelerating the world's transition to cryptocurrency. Find out more at crypto.com/us .

For further inquiries please contact press@crypto.com

Cision

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/cryptocom-strengthens-uk-operations-with-senior-hires-301501304.html

SOURCE Crypto.com
Societe BIC

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Disclosure of total number of voting rights and

number of shares forming the capital

as of February 28, 2022

Clichy, France  14 March 2022

Article L 233-8-II of the French Code de Commerce and Article 223-16 of the General Regulations of the French Autorite des Marches Financiers.

As of February 28, 2022, the total number of issued shares of SOCIETE BIC is 44,677,929 shares, representing:

65,671,872 voting rights,

65,272,043 voting rights excluding shares without voting rights

ABOUT BIC

A world leader in stationery, lighters and shavers, BIC brings simplicity and joy to everyday Life. For more than 75 years, the Company has honored the tradition of providing high-quality, affordable, essential products to consumers everywhere. Through this unwavering dedication, BIC has become one of the most recognized brands and is a trademark registered worldwide. Today, BIC products are sold in more than 160 countries around the world and feature iconic brands such as BIC Kids, BIC FlexTM, BodyMark by BICTM, Cello, Djeep, Lucky Stationery, Rocketbook, Soleil, Tipp-Ex, Us. TM, Wite-Out, Inkbox and more. In 2021, BIC Net Sales were 1,831.9 million euros. The Company is listed on "Euronext Paris"," is part of the SBF120 and CAC Mid 60 indexes and is recognized for its commitment to sustainable development and education. It received an A- Leadership score from CDP. For more, visit www.bic.com or follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, or YouTube.

CONTACT

Sophie Palliez-Capian

VP, Corporate Stakeholder Engagement

+33 1 45 19 55 28

+ 33 87 89 3351

Sophie.palliez@bicworld.com



Michele Ventura

Senior Manager, Investor Relations

+ 33 1 45 19 52 98

Michele.ventura@bicworld.com Albane de La Tour dArtaise

Senior Manager, Institutional Press Relations

+ 33 1 45 19 51 51

+ 33 7 85 88 19 48

Albane.DeLaTourDArtaise@bicworld.com







Isabelle de Segonzac

Image 7

+ 33 6 89 87 61 39

isegonzac@image7.fr

2022 AGENDA

Story continues

ALL DATES TO BE CONFIRMED

1st Quarter 2022 Results April 26, 2022 2022 Annual General Meeting 18 May, 2022 1st Half 2022 Results August 2, 2022 3rd Quarter 2022 Results October 27, 2022

Attachment




FILE PHOTO: Ford logo is seen at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, Michigan

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Ford Motor Co's Turkish joint venture will buy the U.S. company's Craiova plant in Romania for 575 million euros ($630 million) and plans to move Courier van production there, the company said on Monday.

Ford Otosan, the joint venture with Turkey's Koc Holding, will pay an additional 140 million euros to Ford over the next decade according to certain capacity utilisation criteria, the company said.

Ford Otosan shares jumped 8.5% to 264.7 liras in response.

The Romanian plant produces Puma and EcoSport passenger models. It will begin production of the Courier along with Puma next year, with battery electric versions of both rolling off in 2024.

Ford Otosan, which is undergoing a 2 billion-euro expansion of its Turkish plant, will likely finance the acquisition with bank loans, CEO Haydar Yenigun told a press conference. It plans to keep paying dividends.

The transaction is expected to be completed in the third quarter pending a regulatory review.

Ford Otosan plans to begin manufacturing Europe's top selling van Transit's electrical and hybrid versions in Turkey next year.

Ford also announced plans, together with Korean battery maker SK On and Koc Holding, to form a joint venture to produce electric vehicle batteries in Turkey.

($1 = 0.9125 euros)

(Reporting by Can Sezer; Editing by Jonathan Spicer and Barbara Lewis)
Crypto Mondays San Juan

San Juan, Puerto Rico, March 14, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Crypto Mondays San Juan is the hottest community-based weekly meetup in Puerto Rico with panelists from all over the crypto world. On Monday, March 14th 2022, Crypto Mondays San Juan is excited to announce that Nick White, COO of Celestia, will be joining on our panel to discuss modular blockchains as the future of blockchain infrastructure.

Nick White holds both a Bachelor of Science (BS) degree and a Master of Science (MS) degree in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. He used to serve as Senior AI Specialist at Zeroth.ai and Co-founder of Harmony Protocol. Currently Nick White is the COO of Celestia, which is a paradigm shift in blockchain architecture that acts as a universal consensus network upon which anyone can deploy their own blockchain. At Celestia, Nick White has also become DeSyn Protocol Advisor where he will assist to connect with more projects in the blockchain industry. DeSyn Protocol is a DeFi Protocol that allows users to create and trade pools-based assets such as ETFs, levered assets, and more via smart contract.

Please join us at the El San Juan Hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico for this unique weekly networking event. This is an opportunity you dont want to miss. Visit our website at https://www.cryptomondays.org/sanjuan and register today!

CONTACT: Isaac Rivera Crypto Mondays San Juan (954) 610-7079




CED grants $93,625 in financial support to Montreal organization.

MONTREAL, March 14, 2022 /CNW Telbec/ - Canada Economic Development for Quebec Regions (CED)

Supporting innovation is a top priority for the Government of Canada. That is why the Honourable Pascale St-Onge, Minister of Sport and Minister responsible for CED, today announced a nonrepayable contribution of $93,625 over three years for the Pole de recherche et d'innovation en materiaux avances au Quebec (PRIMA Quebec). This CED support will enable the organization to launch the Carrefour quebecois de la fabrication additive, a virtual networking platform focused on the needs of Quebec manufacturers.

This new platform will increase awareness of additive manufacturing in Quebec and the development programs and services available in the field. It will also showcase the expertise of various players in the Quebec ecosystem and provide businesses in the industry with the means, adapted to the health situation, to create business opportunities within the sector's industrial offering.

A sectoral organization for industrial research, PRIMA Quebec directs and supports the advanced materials ecosystem, an engine of innovation and growth for Quebec. As the preferred interface between the industrial and academic communities, the NPO plans to equip the additive manufacturing ecosystema thriving marketwith the structural means to stimulate its development.

The Government of Canada recognizes and supports businesses and organizations that are a source of pride in their communities. Quebec's economic recovery relies on a manufacturing sector with organizations that have strong roots in the regional economy. The players in this industry are major contributors to growth, as well as key assets in rebuilding a stronger, greener, more resilient, and more just economy for all.

Quotes

"The manufacturing industry plays a key economic role in Quebec and Canada. By supporting PRIMA Quebec, a notable research and development NPO, our government is encouraging the entire advanced materials sector to work together, hand in hand, to launch a competitive offering in a thriving market. With this assistance, we are demonstrating our commitment to paving the way for our economic recovery and to establishing a position on the international scene."

Story continues

The Honourable Pascale St-Onge, Member of Parliament for BromeMissisquoi, Minister of Sport and Minister responsible of CED

"The Government of Canada is committed to supporting innovative Canadian businesses and organizations. As a veritable economic engine, innovation is key to success as it generates growth to the benefit of businesses and communities. Thanks to CED's support, PRIMA Quebec will be able to develop strategically with the creation of its new platform, a major turning point in the field of additive manufacturing."

The Honourable Marc Miller, Member of Parliament for Ville-MarieLe Sud-OuestIle-des-Surs and Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations

"The Carrefour is an exceptional lever that will enable us to showcase the institutional and industrial players in our ecosystem. We are thrilled with the idea of sparking fruitful collaborations that will unleash the enormous potential of additive manufacturing. This project is perfectly aligned with our mission to stimulate collaborative innovation in Quebec."

Marie-Pierre Ippersiel, President and CEO, PRIMA Quebec

Quick facts

The funds have been granted under CED's Regional Economic Growth through Innovation program. This program targets entrepreneurs leveraging innovation to grow their businesses and enhance their competitiveness, as well as regional economic stakeholders helping to create an entrepreneurial environment conducive to innovation and growth for all, across all regions.

CED is a key federal partner in Quebec's regional economic development. With its 12 regional business offices, CED accompanies businesses, supporting organizations and all regions across Quebec into tomorrow's economy.

Associated links

Stay connected

Follow CED on social media

Consult CED's news

SOURCE Canada Economic Development for Quebec Regions

Cision

View original content: http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/March2022/14/c4932.html
SOITEC



Grenoble INP  Phelma, UGA and Soitec sign their first partnership agreement

Bernin (Grenoble), France, March 14, 2022  Grenoble INP - Phelma, Engineering school in Physics, Electronics and Materials Science of Universite Grenoble Alpes and Soitec (Euronext Paris), a world leader in designing and manufacturing innovative semiconductor materials, are announcing the signing of a three-year partnership agreement.

The agreement will enhance collaboration between the two organizations, with a focus on growing microelectronics as a field of study. It will also provide support for Phelmas students as they transition to working life, and promote recruitment initiatives.

Soitec has an obvious connection with certain programs at Phelma, such as Electrochemistry and Processes for Energy and the Environment (EPEE), Physical Engineering for Photonics and Microelectronics (IPhy), Materials Science and Engineering (SIM), as well as the international Advanced Materials and Nanotech programs, said Anne Vilcot, Director of Grenoble INP  Phelma, UGA.

Supporting Grenoble INP  Phelma, UGA students in planning their careers

Through the agreement, Soitec will help Phelmas students and graduates to kickstart their careers by offering internships, jobs, and international work experience.

Sharing expertise

Soitec experts will also get involved in Phelmas engineering curriculum and participate in career conferences for first-year students covering jobs and career opportunities in specific industries, as well as more cross-disciplinary conferences that focus on societal issues and are open to the wider public.

Participating in campus life

Soitec has committed to participating in conferences, taking part in third-year mock interviews and attending Phelmas Partnership Day.

Phelma is a leading school for microelectronics students. Through the partnership, we want to play our part in training the engineers who will support Soitecs future growth, said Pascal Lobry, EVP People and Sustainability at Soitec.

Story continues

We strive to build close relationships with our partners in all of our regions, which is why we are joining forces with Phelma, said Michael Fievre, Director of the Bernin site.

About Soitec

Soitec (Euronext, Tech 40 Paris) is a world leader in the manufacture of innovative semiconductor materials. The company uses its unique technologies to serve the electronics markets. With more than 3,500 patents worldwide, Soitecs strategy is based on disruptive innovation to meet its customers needs for high performance, energy efficiency and cost competitiveness. Soitec has manufacturing facilities, R&D centers and offices in Europe, the United States and Asia. Fully committed to sustainable development, in 2021 Soitec adopted a corporate purpose to reflect its engagements: We are the innovative soil from which smart and energy efficient electronics grow into amazing and sustainable life experiences.

Soitec, SmartSiC and SmartCut are registered trademarks of Soitec.

For more information, please visit www.soitec.com and follow us on Twitter: @Soitec_EN

About Grenoble INP  Phelma, UGA

Microelectronics and nanotechnologies/Low-carbon energies/Materials/Information technologies/Health/Sustainable development: Thanks to the wide range of scientific disciplines covered by its engineering and masters programs, Phelmas graduates are well equipped to tackle technological and societal challenges.

Key figures: 1,400 students, 380 engineering graduates each year, 120 full-time teacher-researchers from 11 associated laboratories, more than 300 industry and research professionals, and an average of 25% of engineering students embarking on a PhD.

Follow Phelma: https://phelma.grenoble-inp.fr/en / On Twitter: @Phelma_School

More information on Phelmas partnerships with the world of business: https://phelma.grenoble-inp.fr/en/business



Press contact:

Alexis Sableaux, Communications Officer, Grenoble INP  Phelma, UGA







alexis.sableaux@phelma.grenoble-inp.fr

+33 4 56 52 92 05 / +33 7 61 72 92 44

Soitec contact

Investor relations:



investors@soitec.com Media contacts:



Markus Payer



+33 7 85 54 90 84



markus.payer-ext@soitec.com

# # #

Soitec is a French joint-stock corporation (societe anonyme) with a Board of Directors and share capital of 70,301,160. Its registered office is located at Parc Technologique des Fontaines, Chemin des Franques, 38190 Bernin (France), and it is registered with the Grenoble Trade and Companies Register under number 384 711 909.

# # #

Attachment




Sandra Lindsay, a nurse and the director of nursing for critical care at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in Queens, New York, was the first person in the United States to receive an authorized COVID-19 vaccine when she received it on Dec. 14, 2020. Lindsay was photographed in front of a mural honoring front line healthcare workers at the hospital on Feb 18, 2022.

Sandra Lindsay is one of USA TODAYs Women of the Year, a recognition of women across the country who have made a significant impact. The annual program is a continuation of Women of the Century, a 2020 project that commemorated the 100th anniversary of women gaining the right to vote. Meet this years honorees at womenoftheyear.usatoday.com.

Sandra Lindsay is many things to many people: mother, grandmother, proud native Jamaican, critical-care nurse, boss, recent Ph.D. recipient.

But to the wider world, she is best known for rolling up her left sleeve. And for that, she's been named USA TODAY's Women of the Year honoree from New York.

On Dec. 14, 2020, Sandra Lindsay, who had rolled up her sleeves plenty to handle wave after coronavirus wave, became the first person in America to get the COVID-19 vaccine.

To date, more than 200 million Americans have followed her example.

That first jab was the start of a very public role for Lindsay, who had, until then, always prided herself on keeping the lowest of profiles.

That changed, for good and for bad, with that first vaccination.

Yes, she became public face of the vaccine that promised to turn the tide on the pandemic, a source of great pride for Lindsay, a fervent proponent of the vaccine. But she was also pilloried by some on social media, portrayed as a guinea pig who let the government experiment on her with a vaccine that had been rushed into production.

In fact, Lindsay said, she knew precisely what she was getting into, and she welcomed the role.

"I was surprised because this is not the first time we've had vaccines," Lindsay said. "I was just surprised and disappointed with how it became politicized and not seen as we're in a health crisis and this could potentially save millions of lives."

Born in Clarendon Parish in Jamaica, she always dreamed of being a nurse.

"I grew up with my grandparents and my grandmother had some chronic illnesses, and I would take care of her," she said. "And I enjoyed taking care of her."

Story continues

Nurses in Jamaica were respected, their profession desirable. Plus, they wore crisp, white uniforms and hats.

"I wanted to be that person," Lindsay said.

Instead, she migrated to New York in 1986, and became a critical-care nurse, wearing scrubs. She landed at Long Island Jewish Medical Center as a critical-care nurse and director of patient care services.

Long Island Jewish, part of the Northwell Health System, is in New Hyde Park, on Long Island, on the border with Queens. And Queens was among the hardest hit areas of hard-hit New York. On Dec. 13, 2020, her supervisor said the vaccine would be given out at Northwell the next day.

"I was like 'Give it to me. Give it to me now,'" she said. "No second thoughts. No shivers, no fear. I remember texting my son and saying, 'I'm going to get the vaccine today.'"

Sandra Lindsay, left, a nurse at Long Island Jewish Medical Center, is inoculated with the COVID-19 vaccine by Dr. Michelle Chester, Dec. 14, 2020, in the Queens borough of New York City.

She then reached out to her brother, who is also in health care, in Maryland. When she broke the news, that Northwell had the vaccine: "He said, 'Cool. I can't wait to get mine.'"

But there are people who waited to get vaccinated, who are still waiting. She sees them, in the hospital.

"We continue to see unvaccinated people being hospitalized and in poor condition, they they're very sick. They're younger than the first wave and we've had to just use a lot of resources. We're trying to save people and some of it works, sometimes it doesn't work, and then families get upset that we didn't do enough. And staff is burned out, because they're saying: 'Well, this could have been prevented,' and they're heartbroken."

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Who paved the way for you?

Personally in my life, two strong women  my grandmother, Harriet Lindsay, and my mother, Hazel Morgan  instilled in me the values of hard work, humility, professionalism, how to carry myself as a lady, education, pride in what I do. And patience and respect.

Sandra Lindsay, right, a nurse and the director of nursing for critical care at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in Queens, New York, hugs fellow nurse Patricia Rodriguez Feb. 18, 2022. Lindsay was the first person in the United States to receive an authorized COVID-19 vaccine when she received it on Dec. 14, 2020.

Do you feel youve paved the way for others?

I hope that I serve as an inspiration to young women all across the world, both those who look like me in terms of my color and my heritage, and those who don't. I know growing up in Jamaica, beyond my mother and my grandmother, there weren't enough women in prominent places that looked like me. There weren't women on magazine covers that looked me. So I hope that I am among the women who young ladies now can look up to and say, 'I aspire to be like her one day.'

Is being the first American vaccinated for COVID-19 your proudest moment?

Absolutely. Unexpected, but I embraced it and honored to have this platform and to inspire, to educate and to represent the United States, which has given me so many opportunities since I migrated here and also my country of birth, Jamaica.

What is your definition of courage?

Courage is being willing to stand up for what you believe in, stand up for what is right and leading by example.

Is there a guiding principle or mantra you tell yourself?

When people ask 'Why me?' I ask 'Why not me?' And from a woman's perspective, my saying is that I am enough. I'm perfectly imperfect and happy with the way I am, every flaw and everything, and I am enough.

How do you overcome adversity?

I wake up every morning with a prayer of gratefulness, first to open my eyes. Then I ask God to give me strength and guide my path as I take on whatever he throws at me, because I am enough to handle it and why not me? I also meditate through transcendental meditation. That's something I've learned during the peak of the pandemic, where my head felt like it was going to explode.

Grand marshal Sandra Lindsay, a health care worker who was the first person in the country to get a COVID-19 vaccine shot, waves to spectators as she leads marchers through the Financial District as confetti falls during a parade honoring essential workers for their efforts in getting New York City through the COVID-19 pandemic, Wednesday, July 7, 2021, in New York.

So the meditation helps center you. What else has helped you?

I love walking around my neighborhood, in Port Washington, on Long Island, and seeing people. Long walks, long runs. It's a nice neighborhood and, depending on the time of day, people kind of walk together. So you might know who you're going to see on the walk. I may not know their names, but people are present and (say), 'How are you today? And you know, it just makes a difference.

What advice would you give your younger self?

Thats a tough one. I guess to share more of myself. Ive enjoyed every rung of the ladder, even my educational accomplishments. I took the time, step by step, but I've enjoyed that journey and I wouldn't go any faster. I guess I'm always a mystery to people. I don't know why. But that's the only thing I would change: to share more of myself.

Reach Peter D. Kramer, a 33-year staffer, at pkramer@gannett.com or on Twitter at @PeterKramer. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Women of the Century: Feminist icon Gloria Steinem, Barbara Walters and Mary Tyler Moore among inspiring women on New York list

Explore the project

This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Meet Sandra Lindsay, the first person in U.S. to get the COVID vaccine
Leading content services and enterprise imaging provider to showcase technology innovation and interoperability

CLEVELAND, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Hyland Healthcare, recognized as a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Content Services Platforms for the past 12 years, returns to the Health Information Management System Society's (HIMSS) annual trade show to support attendees' quest to re-imagine healthcare interoperability through the company's scalable content services and enterprise medical imaging solutions.

Hyland Healthcare demonstrates connected care technology at HIMSS22

Recent HIMSS 2022 State of Connected Care and Interoperability research reveals that managing unstructured data represents one of the most significant obstacles for health systems. On average, more than 60% of health systems surveyed do not have unstructured patient records and medical images available for decisions at the point of care. Electronic medical records (EMRs) alone typically do not natively incorporate the more than 75% of patient data that is unstructured. Hyland will demonstrate how an enterprise content services and medical imaging platform addresses this challenge by connecting unstructured content, medical images and data, and linking it for use by key stakeholders within their core systems. As a result, health systems and payers accelerate business processes, decrease errors, streamline workflows and improve insight for decisions.

More than 3,700 health systems and payers across the globe rely on Hyland to support their business objectives with two recent examples including:

A recent HIMSS success story shared how UNC Health achieved "One Patient, One Chart" and provided improved operational efficiency enterprise wide by integrating Hyland's content services and medical imaging technology within its Epic workflow. "We have eliminated nine PACS and three reporting systems," says Vineeta Khemani, director of information services division architecture and clinical systems at UNC Health Care. "This not only results in hard cost savings, but also reduces annual support and enhancement costs." Additionally, UNC Health added document capture, machine learning classification, extraction of data and automated workflow to its enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform to improve its "clean pass-through" and invoice-processing rates. Matthew Castellano, system executive director for IT, Business and Revenue Cycle Systems and Innovation, UNC Health notes "Hyland offered solutions that were extensive and scalable across many enterprise use cases, which drives investment value."

The Etemadi Research Group at Northwestern Medicine, through a collaboration with Google Health, created a novel machine learning algorithm to predict lung cancer more accurately and earlier than radiologists alone. Its use of Hyland's Acuo vendor neutral archive (VNA) to extract and deidentify medical imaging data and metadata speeds predictions to notify patients of their results earlier. Acuo's RESTful API query engine allows extraction of key metadata (study modalities, kernels, etc.) that enables Etemadi Research Group to reduce and remove bias in the datasets used to train and validate machine learning (ML) algorithms, without having to extract every eligible DICOM element. The world class Etemadi engineers combined with the high throughput and scalable extraction and deidentification pipeline capabilities of Acuo provide for continual innovation to drive the rapidly changing, AI-enabled future of radiology.

Story continues

Finally, Hyland presents the following new innovations and partnerships that enhance interoperability, insight and healthcare efficiency at HIMSS22:

The newly launched Hyland Clinician Window enables providers to solve the challenge of delivering the more than 75 percent of patient content that is unstructured within EMR workflows. Colleen Sirhal, chief clinical officer and VP of customer success describes one customer's success: "The Hyland Clinician Window is helping physicians at a notable health system in Washington view the patient chart within Epic, saving time by rapidly reviewing patient consult notes, EKGs and medical images captured by any affiliated hospital. In addition, they can see external patient records stored in health information networks through cross enterprise document sharing (XDS). Physicians especially like the gallery view that enables multiple images to be combined in one page, including the ability to dive deeper into the images for advanced analysis through Hyland's NilRead diagnostic viewer that provides access to all medical imaging systems."

Enhancements to Alfresco Elasticsearch assist payers by streamlining operations and improving member services efficiency. It delivers true enterprise-wide search, enhanced scalability and simplified index management.

Improved data processing and analytics within its EI portfolio enables physicians and clinical teams to speed research of large medical imaging study batches through specialized queries, analyzing values of every DICOM header tag, including pixel data. Hyland's bi-directional DICOM web service APIs and rules-based enterprise DICOM routing provides the integration infrastructure to fuel data and AI processing pipelines for advanced analytics.

New functionality in Hyland Workflow allows diagnosticians to improve processing, eliminate errors and enhance productivity by extrapolating quantitative data for inclusion in clinical documentation workflow processes.

Expanded collaboration with AWS to support customers' growing needs for cloud services. Join Hyland at the AWS booth #1041 on Tuesday, March 15th at 10 am to learn why Hyland and AWS fit into the IT strategy of health system Tufts Medicine, formerly known as Wellforce, as they continue to drive a new standard of healthcare in Massachusetts.

SyntheticMR which uses AI to provide volume and population-based reference measurements of the brain tissues, including the industry-first Myelin segmentation, has partnered with Hyland to speed radiologist reporting. Hyland's PACSgear Modlink will enable radiologists to provide accurate reporting while eliminating the typical hours of radiologist time wasted manually dictating quantitative data into reports.

For more information, visit HylandHealthcare.com or stop by booth No. 2759 at HIMSS, which features six stations that demonstrate how content services and enterprise medical imaging improve workflow efficiency and interoperability for clinical care, AP, HR, health information management, revenue cycle and payer business processes.

About Hyland Healthcare

Hyland Healthcare provides connected healthcare solutions that harness unstructured content at all corners of the enterprise and link it to core clinical and business applications such as electronic medical records (EMR) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. Hyland Healthcare offers a full suite of content services and enterprise imaging tools, bringing documents, medical images and other clinically rich data to the healthcare stakeholders that need it most. This comprehensive view of patient information accelerates business processes, streamlines clinical workflows and improves clinical decision making. For more information, visit hylandhealthcare.com.

Media contact:

Megan Larsen

+1.216.339.5898

Megan.Larsen@Hyland.com

Hyland Software, Inc. Logo

Cision

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/hyland-healthcare-demonstrates-connected-care-technology-at-himss22-301501842.html

SOURCE Hyland
ReportLinker

The Indian water and wastewater treatment market is growing and gaining widespread attention. The World Bank commented that India could comfortably achieve 7. 5% gross domestic product (GDP) growth every year, but not 8.

New York, March 14, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reportlinker.com announces the release of the report "Indian Water and Wastewater Treatment Growth Opportunities" - https://www.reportlinker.com/p06244772/?utm_source=GNW

0% unless it implements effective water management strategies. Government agencies are implementing regulatory and funding mechanisms to open up the water and wastewater treatment market for private investments. It is an opportune time for market participants to achieve significant growth as the industry shifts toward deriving more project value-based outcomes (total cost of ownership) and utilizing government expenditure efficiently. Robust governmental initiatives, such as the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation, National Mission for Clean Ganga, Jal Jeevan Mission, and Community Drinking Water Schemes, contribute to the growth of the Indian water and wastewater treatment market. Indias total utilizable water resource is pegged at 1,123 billion cubic meters (BCM). In 2017, it was reported that approximately 946 BCM were consumed across all sectors, including agriculture (91.0%), industrial (2.0%), and domestic (7.0%). According to a 2019 NITI Aayog report on Water Management Index, India is facing the worst water crisis in its history. The report projects Indias water demand to be twice the available supply by 2030, implying severe water scarcity for millions of people. A 2020 World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) report forecasts 30 Indian cities to face a grave water risk by 2050 due to population growth.In a conservative scenario, Indias water demand would grow to 1,100 BCM by 2025, assuming a population growth rate of 1.2% and an annual GDP growth rate of 7.0%. Compared to the estimated availability of 1,123 BCM of water, these projections for water demand indicate an overall net marginal positive balance of only 23 BCM of water by 2025. However, given uneven water distribution, the country is likely to face water scarcity. The water balance figure is estimated to be negative by 2027, reaching a negative 277 BCM by 2050. India needs to take adequate measures now to curb potential water scarcity. This urgency is expected to drive significant growth for the countrys water and wastewater treatment market.

Author: Nideshna Naidu

Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p06244772/?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.



__________________________

Story continues

CONTACT: Clare: clare@reportlinker.com US: (339)-368-6001 Intl: +1 339-368-6001




The PASACAT Extravaganza on Saturday will feature a variety of traditional Filipino folk dances, including Singkil, a famous dance by the Maranao people in Mindanao in southern Philippines. (Sue Brenner)

Participants call rehearsals for this event "Philippine Dance Bootcamp."

All that hard work pay off, though, and you can see the results Saturday when PASACAT Extravaganza is held at the David & Dorothea Garfield Theatre in San Diego.

Advertisement

The two-hour program will celebrate traditional Philippine culture. Under the artistic leadership of choreographer and dance director Joji Ramirez Castro, the ensemble will showcase the island nation's artistry through dance and music.

PASACAT, traditionally a folk dance, traces its roots locally to a dance group known as Philippine-American Society and Cultural Arts Troupe. Now in its 46th year, PASACAT stays true to its mission, which is "to preserve and promote the Asian Pacific culture through the arts, thereby, extending goodwill and enhancing cultural understanding."

Advertisement

PASACAT Extravaganza: 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 8. David & Dorothea Garfield Theatre, 4126 Executive Drive, La Jolla. $20-$25, Discounts for groups of 12 or more. pasacat.org

Twitter: @outdoorlivingsd

michael.rocha@sduniontribune.com
Montero Mining and Exploration Ltd.

Figure 1

Location of the Avispa & Abeja Property and major copper mines in a regional and district context.

Figure 2

Regional geological map (after Sernageomin) showing the Avispa Property exploration concession areas that have be granted and also those in the final stages of the regulatory process.

Figure 3

Satellite image showing the location of previous drilling sites identified on the Avispa and Abeja Property and currently being sampled for geochemical studies.

Figure 4

Satellite image showing the location of closely spaced drill sites completed by a previous holder on the Abeja Property, drill chips of which are currently being sampled for geochemical work.

TORONTO, March 14, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Montero Mining and Exploration Ltd. (TSX-V: MON) (Montero or the Company) continues to consolidate its property holdings at the Avispa copper molybdenum project located in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. The company has finalized the regulatory process for 200.8 km2 of exploration concessions that includes the original Avispa and recently awarded Abeja exploration concessions that were registered in 2021.



The company is also finalizing the regulatory process on an additional 270.5 km2 of Abeja concessions. The company expects the remaining regulatory processes to be completed during Q2 2022. Once completed the company would hold 100% ownership of a total of 473.3 km2 of exploration concessions in a well-defined late Paleocene to early Eocene Cu-Mo porphyry belt of northern Chile.

The Avispa property is located in a well-defined porphyry belt approximately 40 km north of BHPs Spence Cu-Mo mine, KGHMs Sierra Gorda Cu-Mo mine and the recently announced discovery at Sociedad Contractual Minera Bufalo (SCMB) Cerro Bufalo project in the Sierra Gorda district south of Avispa. The consolidated Avispa and Abeja concession are surrounded by major mining companies with exploration and mining concessions with groups including; Codelco Freeport, Glencor, Antofagasta, and SQM. Avispa is also 50 km west of Codelcos Chuquicamata supergiant porphyry copper mine that occurs within a younger late Eocene  early Oligocene porphyry belt.

Dr. Tony Harwood, President and Chief Executive Officer of Montero commented, With advancement of the regulatory process Montero will control a significant land package in this world class porphyry copper district. The presence of major companies such as Glencore, Freeport and Antofagasta actively exploring in the district makes Monteros land package very prospective. The Company continues its mapping and sampling program and will provide updates.

Story continues

Figure 1. Location of the Avispa & Abeja Property and major copper mines in a regional and district context is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/38a822c4-4865-46e7-83ba-51b7e453e90d

Figure 2. Regional geological map (after Sernageomin) showing the Avispa Property exploration concession areas that have be granted and also those in the final stages of the regulatory process is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/7e26f300-4426-4d8b-bc46-562d146e63a8

Figure 3. Satellite image showing the location of previous drilling sites identified on the Avispa and Abeja Property and currently being sampled for geochemical studies is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/c4e8e475-a383-43e8-b907-426e95b140f9

Figure 4. Satellite image showing the location of closely spaced drill sites completed by a previous holder on the Abeja Property, drill chips of which are currently being sampled for geochemical work is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/9cb19d5d-61b8-470b-976c-f2f421e1e66b

Planned Exploration Program

Montero has completed a thorough investigation of historical information on exploration in this highly prospective area. The Company has planned an exploration program that includes; detailed geological mapping, surface sampling, ground and airborne geophysical surveys with the objective of defining drill targets. The Company has completed geological mapping and geochemical sampling transect along the San Salvador River at the southern margin of the Avispa and Abeja Property. This work will help establish the stratigraphic and structural framework to guide future exploration.

Previous companies to have explored Avispa include BHP that conducted limited drilling on the property at 2 km to 3 km spacing as part of a regional exploration program. Montero believes that there is potential for buried porphyry and porphyry-related deposits with smaller footprints than those sought by major companies.

Monteros Chief Geologist, Marcial Vergara, has reviewed publicly available data on Avispa and has conducted a field visit. Marcial previously worked for Codelco and Anglo American, both major operating copper mining companies in Chile. Montero has adopted a prospect generator model at Avispa where it will de-risk the project and carry out limited exploration while seeking a partner to advance the project through the drill phase. This will provide Montero shareholders with exposure to the copper space while it continues to focus on the gold-silver potential of southern Chile.

Qualified Person's Statement

This press release was reviewed and approved by Mr. Mike Evans, M.Sc. Pr.Sci.Nat. and Sr. Marcial Vergara B.Sc. who are qualified persons for the purpose of National Instrument 43-101. Sr Vergara is based in Santiago and has more than 30 years experience in copper exploration experience in Chile.

About Montero

Montero is a junior exploration company focused on finding, exploring, and advancing globally significant gold deposits in Latin America. The Company is in the process of relinquishing its portfolio of battery metal projects in Africa to focus on gold opportunities in Latin America. Monteros board of directors and management have an impressive track record of successfully discovering and advancing precious metal and copper projects. Montero trades on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol MON and has 38,647,485 shares outstanding.

For more information, contact:

Montero Mining and Exploration Ltd.

Dr. Tony Harwood, President and Chief Executive Officer

E-mail: ir@monteromining.com

Tel: +1 416 840 9197 | Fax: +1 866 688 4671

www.monteromining.com

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

CAUTIONARY STATEMENT REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION: This news release includes certain "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities laws. Forward looking information includes, but is not limited to, statements, projections and estimates with respect to the Share Consolidation. Generally, forward-looking information can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as plans, expects or does not expect, is expected, budget, scheduled, estimates, forecasts, intends, anticipates or does not anticipate, or believes, or variations of such words and phrases or state that certain actions, events or results may, could, would, might or will be taken, occur or be achieved. Such information is based on information currently available to Montero and Montero provides no assurance that actual results will meet management's expectations. Forward-looking information by its very nature involves inherent risks and uncertainties that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance, or achievements of Montero to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information. Actual results relating to, among other things, completion of the agreement, results of exploration, project development, reclamation and capital costs of Monteros mineral properties, and financial condition and prospects, could differ materially from those currently anticipated in such statements for many reasons such as: an inability to complete the agreement on the terms as announced or at all; changes in general economic conditions and conditions in the financial markets; changes in demand and prices for minerals; litigation, legislative, environmental and other judicial, regulatory, political and competitive developments; technological and operational difficulties encountered in connection with Monteros activities; and other matters discussed in this news release and in filings made with securities regulators. This list is not exhaustive of the factors that may affect any of Monteros forward-looking statements. These and other factors should be considered carefully and accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. Montero does not undertake to update any forward-looking information, except in accordance with applicable securities laws.




PHOENIX, March 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ --

WHO:

Qwick , the leading on-demand labor marketplace for food and beverage Professionals announces the launch of its services in Washington, D.C., the company's 16th city to launch in since 2018. Qwick is thrilled to launch in our nation's capital and help change the way people work, enabling D.C. hospitality businesses  who could be struggling during this historic labor shortage  to find quality vetted staff. Qwick is rapidly expanding its services and will be operating in at least 30 cities by the end of 2022. By 2024, Qwick's goal is to successfully match 3 million Professional shifts in 30 U.S. cities.

THE NATION'S CAPITAL CAN NOW UTILIZE QWICK FOR FLEXIBLE, ON-DEMAND STAFFING

WHAT:

During its launching phase in D.C. over the next 16 weeks, Qwick is working diligently to sign up top-tier hospitality Professionals on its platform and leverage its unparalleled algorithm to match them with food and beverage shifts in real-time.

For Professionals:

D.C. hospitality Professionals can now take control of their schedules and income by signing up with Qwick in four easy steps: sign up, attend a virtual orientation, complete a profile, and start filling shifts. Qwick empowers Professionals to work how and when they want, all while ensuring they receive an average hourly wage of $19.76 in D.C., $3.66 above D.C.'s $16.10 minimum wage. Qwick shifts are simple, flexible, and pay Professionals in as little as 30 minutes after clocking out. Professionals interested in signing up with Qwick can visit here to get started working shifts in D.C..

For Business Partners:

Hospitality businesses located in D.C., such as restaurants, bars, hotels, catering companies, event venues, and more can now staff shifts with dependable Qwick Professionals. Qwick not only provides certified and vetted Professionals but also utilizes a 5-star rating system to ensure continued quality and reliability. Posting a shift on the Qwick platform takes seconds, and with a 97% average shift-fill rate, Business Partners can confidently rely on Qwick to provide them with quality talent at a moment's notice. Businesses interested in staffing shifts with top-tier Professionals can get started here .

Story continues

WHEN:

March 14, 2022

WHERE:

Washington, D.C.

ABOUT:

Launched in 2018 by human resource technology and hospitality industry veterans Jamie Baxter, Blaine Light, and Chris Loeffler, Qwick provides a platform for food and beverage Professionals to connect directly with hotels, caterers, event venues and restaurants, providing them with the freedom and flexibility to work on their own schedules. Qwick provides hospitality businesses with a 97 percent average fill-rate and immediate access to a pre-vetted and certified sharing workforce. Qwick is currently operating in 16 cities: Phoenix, San Diego, Los Angeles, Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Antonio, New York, Miami, Tampa, Orlando, Atlanta, San Francisco, Nashville, Washington, D.C., and Chicago. It has earned multiple recognitions nationally, including being a "Great Place to Work" in the U.S. Learn more at qwick.com.

SOCIAL MEDIA:

Follow Qwick on Instagram and Facebook , connect on LinkedIn , or visit qwick.com for more information.

Cision

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-nations-capital-can-now-utilize-qwick-for-flexible-on-demand-staffing-301501322.html

SOURCE Qwick
ITA Airways

In relation to the tender for the acquisition of the handling business unit of Alitalia under Extraordinary Administration expiring today, 14 March 2022, ITA Airways announces that it has signed a preliminary agreement with the handling company Swissport International, for a service contract.

ROME, March 14, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- In relation to the tender for the acquisition of the handling business unit of Alitalia under Extraordinary Administration expiring today, 14 March 2022, ITA Airways announces that it has signed a preliminary agreement with the handling company Swissport International, for a service contract.



If the tender is awarded to Swissport International, this preliminary agreement will be consolidated, in compliance with ITA Airways' governance processes, into a long-term service contract for handling activities relating to Rome Fiumicino and Milan Linate airports.

The agreement is based on the general terms and conditions of the Standard Ground Handling Agreement (published by IATA - 2013 and 2018 Editions), with all the exceptions, derogations and special conditions indicated in the applicable EU regulations.

In the event that Swissport International should not be awarded the tender issued by Alitalia under Extraordinary Administration, this preliminary agreement will be terminated. In this case ITA Airways underlines that, based on its interest in the handling business unit of Alitalia in EA and respecting the professionalism of its workforce, it intends to take on the ability to carry out handling activities internally, pursuing the best results in terms of economics and customers service and in full compliance with the applicable regulatory framework.

In both cases, ITA Airways intends to achieve the economic and service level objectives without the need to acquire any stake in the company that will be awarded the tender.

For more information:

LaPresse SpA Communication and Press Office Director

Barbara Sanicola - barbara.sanicola@lapresse.it

+39 02 26305578 M +39 333 3905243

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/d06ba3cd-ed21-4a36-9351-819862762568




Silver Bull Resources, Inc.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, March 14, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Silver Bull Resources, Inc. (OTCQB: SVBL, TSX: SVB) (Silver Bull) wishes to announce changes to its Board of Directors.



Effective March 3, 2022, Jack McClintock has resigned from the Board of Directors for personal reasons. Mr. McClintock has been a member of the Board since 2012. To replace Mr. McClintock, Mr. David Underwood has been appointed to the Board.

Brian Edgar, Chairman of Silver Bull commented, Silver Bull has been very fortunate to have Jack on the Board of Directors since 2012. His deep knowledge and expertise of the global mineral exploration business has been a tremendous asset for the Company. Wed like to thank Jack for his ongoing support over the past decade and wish him well in the future. Mr. Edgar went on to say, We welcome Dave to the Board of Directors. Dave knows the Sierra Mojada project well and has been a supporter of Silver Bull for many years. We look forward to having Daves expertise and contributions on the Silver Bull Board going forward.

About David Underwood

Mr. Underwood, 57, has 30 years of broad exploration experience in Africa and other parts of the world acting in executive and senior technical roles for major and junior exploration and mining companies. Since January 2017, he has been the Vice President of Exploration of Osino Resources Corp. in Namibia. Mr. Underwood is also a co-founder of, and since June 2020 has been a technical advisor for, Lotus Gold, a private company focused in Egypt. He was a co-founder, and from 2014 to 2015 served as the Vice President of Exploration, of BHK Mining Corp. operating in Gabon. Mr. Underwood has held previous roles between 2008 and 2013 with Newmont Mining Corporation, AngloGold Ashanti Limited and Anglo American focused throughout Africa as well as various consulting assignments including for RoxGold in Burkina Faso. Mr. Underwood has a BSc (Hons) degree, is a Fellow of the Society of Economic Geology, and is a Registered Professional Scientist with the South African Council for Natural Scientific Professions.

Story continues

Stock Option Grant

The company also announces the grant of 3,300,000 stock options that are exercisable for a period of five years at a price of C$0.32 per share to various directors, officers, employees and consultants. The options will be subject to vesting over two years. The granting of stock options is part of Silver Bulls strategy to attract and retain talent, as well as motivating its team to work toward ensuring the success and value creation at Silver Bull.

About Silver Bull Resources:

Silver Bulls primary asset is the Sierra Mojada deposit located in Coahuila, Mexico. Sierra Mojada is an open pittable oxide deposit with a NI 43-101 compliant Measured and Indicated global Mineral Resource of 70.4 million tonnes grading 3.4% zinc and 38.6 g/t silver for 5.35 billion pounds of contained zinc and 87.4 million ounces of contained silver. Included within the global Mineral Resource is a Measured and Indicated high grade zinc zone of 13.5 million tonnes with an average grade of 11.2% zinc at a 6% cutoff, for 3.336 billion pounds of contained zinc, and a Measured and Indicated high grade silver zone of 15.2 million tonnes with an average grade of 114.9 g/t silver at a 50 g/t cutoff for 56.3 million contained ounces of silver. Mineralization remains open in the east, west, and northerly directions.

The constraining pit was optimised and calculated using a NSR cut-off based on a silver price of US$15/oz, and a zinc price of US$1.20/lb and assumed a recovery for silver of 75% and a recovery for zinc of 41%. Approximately 60% of the current 3.2 kilometer mineralized body is at or near surface before dipping at around 6 degrees to the east.

CATEGORY TONNES (MT) AG (G/T) CU (%) PB (%) ZN (%) AG

(MOZS) CU

(MLBS) PB

(MLBS) ZN

(MLBS) MEASURED 52.0 39.2 0.04 % 0.3 % 4.0 % 65.5 45.9 379.1 4,589.3 INDICATED 18.4 37.0 0.03 % 0.2 % 1.9 % 21.9 10.8 87.0 764.6 TOTAL M&I 70.4 38.6 0.04 % 0.3 % 3.4 % 87.4 56.8 466.1 5,353.9 INFERRED 0.1 8.8 0.02 % 0.2 % 6.4 % 0.02 0.04 0.4 10.7

For a full summary of the Sierra Mojada resource, please refer to Silver Bulls press release dated October 31, 2018 and filed on its profile at www.SEDAR.com , or by visiting the following link:

https://silverbullresources.com/news/silver-bull-resources-announces-5.35-billion-pounds-zinc-87.4-million-ounces-silver-in-updated-sierra-mojada-measured-and/

The technical information of this news release has been reviewed and approved by Tim Barry, a Chartered Professional Geologist (CPAusIMM), and a qualified person for the purposes of National Instrument 43-101.

On behalf of the Board of Directors

Tim Barry

Tim Barry, CPAusIMM

Chief Executive Officer and Director

INVESTOR RELATIONS:

+1 604 687 5800 info@silverbullresources.com

Cautionary Note to U.S. Investors concerning estimates of Measured, Indicated, and Inferred Resources: This press release uses the terms measured resources, indicated resources, and inferred resources which are defined in, and required to be disclosed by, NI 43-101. We advise U.S. investors that these terms are not recognized by the SEC. The estimation of measured, indicated and inferred resources involves greater uncertainty as to their existence and economic feasibility than the estimation of proven and probable reserves. U.S. investors are cautioned not to assume that measured and indicated mineral resources will be converted into reserves. The estimation of inferred resources involves far greater uncertainty as to their existence and economic viability than the estimation of other categories of resources. U.S. investors are cautioned not to assume that estimates of inferred mineral resources exist, are economically minable, or will be upgraded into measured or indicated mineral resources. Under Canadian securities laws, estimates of inferred mineral resources may not form the basis of feasibility or other economic studies.

Disclosure of contained ounces in a resource is permitted disclosure under Canadian regulations, however the SEC normally only permits issuers to report mineralization that does not constitute reserves by SEC standards as in place tonnage and grade without reference to unit measures. Accordingly, the information contained in this press release may not be comparable to similar information made public by U.S. companies that are not subject NI 43-101.

Cautionary note regarding forward looking statements: This news release contains forward-looking statements regarding future events and Silver Bulls and Arrass future results that are subject to the safe harbors created under the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and the Exchange Act, and applicable Canadian securities laws. Forward-looking statements include, among others, statements regarding the Mineral Resource estimates for the Sierra Mojada projects and the development of the project. These statements are based on current expectations, estimates, forecasts, and projections about Silver Bulls and Arrass exploration projects, the industry in which Silver Bull operates and the beliefs and assumptions of Silver Bulls management. Words such as expects, anticipates, targets, goals, projects, intends, plans, believes, seeks, estimates, continues, may, variations of such words, and similar expressions and references to future periods, are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are subject to a number of assumptions, risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control, including such factors as whether managements focus will be as described in this news release, the results of exploration activities and whether the results continue to support continued exploration activities, unexpected variations in ore grade, types and metallurgy, volatility and level of commodity prices, the availability of sufficient future financing, and other matters discussed under the caption Risk Factors in Silver Bulls Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended October 31, 2021 and our other periodic and current reports filed with the SEC and available on www.sec.gov and with the Canadian securities commissions available on www.sedar.com. Readers are cautioned that forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and that actual results or developments may differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements. Any forward-looking statement made by us in this release is based only on information currently available to us and speaks only as of the date on which it is made. We undertake no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statement, whether written or oral, that may be made from time to time, whether as a result of new information, future developments or otherwise.




Allied Market Research

Increasing use of smart phones and app-based services, extensive adoption of public and hybrid cloud, and growing trend of business outsourcing in the global economy drive the growth of the global SaaS market. Based on deployment mode, the public cloud segment accounted for the major share in 2020. By region, on the other hand, Asia-Pacific would grow at the fastest CAGR by 2030.

Portland, OR , March 14, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- According to the report published by Allied Market Research, the global SaaS market is expected was estimated at $121.33 billion in 2020, and is projected to reach $702.19 billion by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 18.8% from 2021 to 2030. The report provides an in-depth analysis of the top investment pockets, top winning strategies, drivers & opportunities, market size & estimations, competitive scenario, and wavering market trends.

Increasing use of smart phones and app-based services, extensive adoption of public and hybrid cloud, and growing trend of business outsourcing in the global economy drive the growth of the global SaaS market. On the other hand, extortionate cost of implementation and maintenance of SaaS platform solutions hinder the growth to some extent. However, increasing adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) across industries such as BFSI, healthcare, and IT & telecom provide tremendous opportunities in the industry.

Download Report Sample (364 Pages PDF with Insights) at: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/request-sample/15320

COVID-19 Scenario

Numerous businesses across the globe increasingly adopted SaaS-based service due to the stringent lockdown restrictions imposed by the government of various countries, which has impacted the global SaaS market positively.

Moreover, companies are intensively focusing on advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), internet of things (IOT), cloud computing, and analytics across various industries, which has again been beneficial for the industry.

Story continues

Get detailed COVID-19 impact analysis on the SaaS market: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/request-for-customization/15320



The global SaaS market is analyzed across solution type, deployment mode, enterprise size, industry vertical and region.

By solution type, the customer relationship management (CRM) accounted for the largest market share in 2020, garnering more than one-fourth of the global market. The operation management segment, on the other hand, would exhibit the fastest CAGR of 21.o% during the forecast period.

By deployment mode, the public cloud segment garnered the highest market share in 2020, accounting around three-fifths of the global software as a service market. The hybrid cloud segment, however, would cite the fastest CAGR of 20.0% during the forecast period.

By region, the market across North America held the lions share in 2020, garnering around two-fifths of the global market. The Asia Pacific region, on the other hand, exhibit the fastest CAGR of 22.0% during the forecast period by the end of 2030. The other provinces studied in the report include LAMEA and Europe.

The key market players analyzed in the global SaaS market include IBM Corporation, Microsoft, ServiceNow, SAP SE, Google LLC, Cisco Systems, Inc., Adobe Inc., Accenture Plc, Oracle Corporation and Salesforce.com, Inc. These market players have incorporated several strategies including partnership, expansion, collaboration, joint ventures, and others to brace their stand in the industry.

For Purchase Enquiry: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/purchase-enquiry/15320

Access AVENUE- A Subscription-Based Library (Premium on-demand, subscription-based pricing model) at:

hthttps://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/library-access

Avenue is a user-based library of global market report database, provides comprehensive reports pertaining to the world's largest emerging markets. It further offers e-access to all the available industry reports just in a jiffy. By offering core business insights on the varied industries, economies, and end users worldwide, Avenue ensures that the registered members get an easy as well as single gateway to their all-inclusive requirements.

Avenue Library Subscription | Request for 14 days free trial of before buying:

https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/avenueTrial

About Us:

Allied Market Research (AMR) is a full-service market research and business-consulting wing of Allied Analytics LLP based in Portland, Oregon. Allied Market Research provides global enterprises as well as medium and small businesses with unmatched quality of "Market Research Reports" and "Business Intelligence Solutions." AMR has a targeted view to provide business insights and consulting to assist its clients to make strategic business decisions and achieve sustainable growth in their respective market domain.

Pawan Kumar, the CEO of Allied Market Research , is leading the organization toward providing high-quality data and insights. We are in professional corporate relations with various companies and this helps us in digging out market data that helps us generate accurate research data tables and confirms utmost accuracy in our market forecasting. Each and every data presented in the reports published by us is extracted through primary interviews with top officials from leading companies of domain concerned. Our secondary data procurement methodology includes deep online and offline research and discussion with knowledgeable professionals and analysts in the industry.

CONTACT: Contact: David Correa 5933 NE Win Sivers Drive #205, Portland, OR 97220 United States Toll Free: +1-800-792-5285 UK: +44-845-528-1300 Hong Kong: +852-301-84916 India (Pune): +91-20-66346060 Fax: +1-855-550-5975 help@alliedmarketresearch.com Web: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com Follow Us on: LinkedIn Twitter




Sono Group N.V.

Sono Motors Enters Series-Validation Phase

Sono Motors Ongoing Construction of 37 Sion Series-Validation Vehicles and Bodies in White

Components, Vehicle Parameters and the Final Sion Design Have Been Defined

On Track With the Ongoing Construction of 37 Sion Series-Validation Vehicles and Bodies in White

Vehicles Serve to Further Test, Validate and Certify the Sion, as Well as Optimize Sono Solar Technology

The Completion of This Test Fleet in Summer 2022 Sets Sono Motors on Course for Planned Series Production Next Year

MUNICH, Germany, March 14, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Sono Motors, the company that aims to revolutionize the future of solar-powered transport, is currently building a fleet of series-validation vehicles, ushering in the Sion's testing program. These cars consist of series components and correspond to the planned final design, which was established at the beginning of the year (2022) alongside completion of the 2nd generation prototype program and the accompanying definition of components as well as vehicle parameters.

In the coming months Sono Motors will be undertaking testing, validation and certification of the Sion, until the first affordable solar electric vehicle (SEV) for the masses rolls off the production line, expected next year. The test cars will undergo uncompromising practical tests under extreme conditions in Europe and the U.S. This includes testing in different climates, optimizing our solar technology and safeguarding, as well as refining driving dynamics on test tracks and on public roads in addition to crash tests.

The start of the series testing phase is yet another step on our way to climate-friendly mobility of the future. Getting from the first concept in a garage to this point was only possible with hundreds of engineers working tirelessly every day on both the Sion and our Sono Solar technology. The fleet of validation vehicles now follows our successful 2nd generation prototype program and paves the way for planned series production next year, says Jona Christians, CEO and co-founder of Sono Motors. The fleet of 37 vehicles (generation 3) consists of 16 complete cars and 21 test structures.

The public debut for the Sions final design is planned for the summer of 2022. Then some of the series-validation vehicles will most likely additionally go on a Europe-wide test drive tour.

Story continues

Sono Motors will be supported by thyssenkrupp Automotive Body Solutions and Betrandt in series-validation vehicle production. Markus Volmer, CTO of Sono Motors says, "Both partners have not only extensive expertise in automotive engineering but also the necessary infrastructure and capacity to produce our test cars quickly and with high quality. Thus, we are on track for the Sion testing." As an expert in integrated body construction solutions, thyssenkrupp Automotive Body Solutions is responsible for the production of the aluminum space frame. Bertrandt impresses with decades of experience in the field of integrated vehicle development and is responsible for the assembly of the Sion test fleet in Munich.

At an estimated sales price point of just 28,500 euros gross, the Sion will be the first affordable SEV. The outer shell of this family-friendly car will consist of 458 seamlessly integrated solar half-cells and will enable self-sufficiency on short journeys. The energy generated by the solar cells will extend the range of the Sion's 54-kWh LFP battery by an average of 112 km (up to 245 km) per week. Commuters in metropolitan areas thus ideally have to charge their Sion four times less than conventional electric cars of the same vehicle class with a similar battery size. Bidirectional charging technology complements the cars solar integration and is designed to turn the Sion into a sustainable power plant on wheels that will be able to power electronic devices, the home or other electric cars with an output of up to 11 kW.

ABOUT SONO MOTORS

Sono Motors is on a pioneering mission to accelerate the revolution of mobility by making every vehicle solar. Its disruptive solar technology has been developed to enable seamless integration into all types of vehicles to reduce the impact of CO2 emissions and pave the way for climate-friendly mobility.

Sono Motors is developing the worlds first solar electric vehicle (SEV) for the masses, the Sion. Empowered by a strong community, Sono Motors has amassed more than 16,800 reservations with advance payments for the Sion. These vehicles will be produced through contract manufacturing.

Sono Motors' proprietary solar technology has been engineered to enable integration and licensing for a wide range of vehicle architectures that go far beyond the Sion, such as buses, trailers, trucks, camper vans, trains, and boats.

PRESS CONTACT

Christian Scheckenbach | Mobile: +49(0)17618050132

E-Mail: press@sonomotors.com | Website: www.sonomotors.com/press

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This press release includes forward-looking statements. The words "expect", "anticipate", "intends", "plan", "estimate", "aim", "forecast", "project", "target", will and similar expressions (or their negative) identify certain of these forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are statements regarding the Company's intentions, beliefs, or current expectations. Forward-looking statements involve inherent known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and contingencies because they relate to events and depend on circumstances that may or may not occur in the future and may cause the actual results, performance, or achievements of the Company to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward looking statements. These risks, uncertainties and assumptions include, but are not limited to (i) the impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic on the global economy, our industry and markets as well as our business, (ii) risks related to our limited operating history, the rollout of our business and the timing of expected business milestones including our ability to complete the engineering of our vehicles and start of production on time and budget and risks related to future results of operation, (iii) risks related to our unproven ability to develop and produce vehicles and with expected or advertised specifications including range, and risks relating to required funding, (iv) risks related to our ability to monetize our solar technology, (v) risks relating to the uncertainty of the projected financial information with respect to our business including the conversion of reservations into binding orders, (vi) effects of competition and the pace and depth of electric vehicle adoption generally and our vehicles in particular on our future business and (vii) changes in regulatory requirements, governmental incentives and fuel and energy prices. For additional information concerning some of the risks, uncertainties and assumptions that could affect our forward-looking statements, please refer to factors discussed under the caption Risk Factors in our final prospectus under Rule 424(b) filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on November 18, 2021 in connection with our initial public offering as such factors may be updated from time to time in our other filings with the SEC, which are accessible on the SECs website at www.sec.gov and on our website at ir.sonomotors.com. Many of these risks and uncertainties relate to factors that are beyond the Company's ability to control or estimate precisely, such as the actions of regulators and other factors. Readers should therefore not place undue reliance on these statements, particularly not in connection with any contract or investment decision. Except as required by law, the company assumes no obligation to update any such forward-looking statements.

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/39b87bf6-33f8-4e5d-b828-5e948ded7422




ReportLinker

It is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 11. 2% during the period of 20212028. The report highlights trends prevailing in the market and factors driving its growth. The growth of the training manikins market is attributed to technological advancements and the increasing prevalence of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests and cardiopulmonary resuscitation training and awareness programs.

New York, March 14, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reportlinker.com announces the release of the report "Training Manikins Market Forecast to 2028 - COVID-19 Impact and Global Analysis By Type, and Application" - https://www.reportlinker.com/p06244602/?utm_source=GNW

However, issues related to the realism of the training manikins may hinder the markets growth.



Training Manikins have evolved drastically in terms of technology and complexity.These manikins can now be procured with intricate systems that accurately replicate human systems for virtually any medical procedure.



This factor lets trainers allow clinicians to learn, rehearse, and perfect their skills from simple to highly complex processes, including various diagnostic and therapeutic procedures, such as childbirth, respiratory, cardiovascular, neurological, and pharmacological models and simulators.High-fidelity manikins have pulses, BP, breathing, lung sounds, heart sounds, pulse oximetry, and a monitor that displays EKG, arterial waveforms, and pulmonary artery waveforms.



These manikins can be used to create and allow participants to practice procedures, such as CPR, bag-mask ventilation, intubation, defibrillation, chest tube placement, and others.



Laerdal has training manikins and simulators ranging from adults to infants.The SimMan 3G is an easy-to-use, portable, advanced patient simulator for team training with realistic anatomy and clinical functionality, providing simulation-based education to challenge and test students clinical and decision-making skills during realistic patient care scenarios.



Similarly, the SimBaby is an advanced infant patient simulator ideal for training in all aspects of infant care.The SimNew B is another product designed by the company with the American Academy of Pediatrics to meet the Neonatal Resuscitation Program ((NRP) training requirements.



The companys Premature Anne is a 25-week preterm manikin developed in collaboration with the American Academy of Pediatrics designed to facilitate the training in the initiation of proper care and resuscitation of preterm infants. Similarly, Nursing Anne, Nursing Kelly, Crash Kelly, and Harvey are training manikins designed by this company for clinical training in womens health, obstetrics, post-partum, wound assessment and care, gastric tube insertion, maintenance, enemas, cardiopulmonary training, and advanced airway management training.



Based on type, the global training manikins market is segmented into CPR training manikins, infant manikins, and others. The CPR training manikins segment was likely to hold the largest share of the market in 2021.



Moreover, CPR training manikins segment is expected to witness significant growth in its demand. It is projected to rise at the fastest CAGR of 11.7% from 2021 to 2028 due to the increase in sudden out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA), with ineffective cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) being the third greatest cause of death across the world. By application, the market is segmented into hospitals, clinics, and others. The Hospitals segment was likely to hold the largest share of the market in 2021. The segment is expected to witness the fastest CAGR of 11.8% from 2021 to 2028 due to the rise in the usage of training manikins in hospitals worldwide.



A few of the major primary and secondary sources referred to while preparing the report on the training manikins market are the National Center for Health Statistics, Indian Council of Medical Research, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), National Council of State Boards of Nursing, National Health and Medical Research Council, and World Health Organization.

Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p06244602/?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.



__________________________

Story continues

CONTACT: Clare: clare@reportlinker.com US: (339)-368-6001 Intl: +1 339-368-6001




Locked Cycle Flotation Test Results, ALS Metallurgy Kamloops

Locked Cycle Flotation Test Results, ALS Metallurgy Kamloops

Metallurgical testwork results for locked cycle flotation test of Curiu PGE Deposit sample



VANCOUVER, British Columbia, March 14, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- ValOre Metals Corp. (ValOre; TSXV: VO; OTC: KVLQF; Frankfurt: KEQ0, the Company) today provided an update on a metallurgical testwork program for ValOres 100%-owned Pedra Branca Platinum Group Elements (PGE, 2PGE+Au) Project (Pedra Branca) in northeastern Brazil.

We are very encouraged by our first locked cycle flotation test that gave recoveries of 82.9% for platinum, 71% for palladium and 85.2% for gold on an unweathered sample from the Curiu PGE deposit, and have now started testwork on weathered Curiu material, stated ValOres VP of Exploration, Colin Smith. Once both fresh and weathered material flowsheets are established for Curiu, we will continue metallurgical testwork for our other Pedra Branca PGE deposits defined in ValOres 2022 resource re-estimation, which is expected this month.

Highlights of the Metallurgical Testwork:

Recoveries of 82.9% for platinum (Pt), 71% for palladium (Pd) and 85.2% for gold (Au) were achieved by the first locked cycle flotation test on a fresh, unweathered 30-kilogram (kg) sample composited from Curiu PGE deposit drill core;

This locked cycle flotation test produced a concentrate grading 78.4 grams per tonne g/t 2PGE+Au;

Based on the information available to date, no deleterious element thresholds were exceeded, and a detailed elemental analysis on the concentrate is underway.



2022 Locked Cycled Flotation Test

One locked cycle flotation test was completed by ALS Metallurgy Kamloops (ALS) on a composite sample of fresh, unweathered Curiu PGE deposit dill core, following the completion of 22 rounds of recent flotation testwork to optimize flowsheet design. Recoveries of 82.9% for Pt, 71% for Pd and 85.2% for Au were achieved, resulting in a final concentrate grade of 78.4 g/t 2PGE+Au. Based on the information available to date, no deleterious element thresholds were exceeded, and a detailed elemental analysis on the concentrate is underway. Table 1 is a summary of test results from the locked cycle flotation test.

Story continues

Table 1: Locked Cycle Flotation Test Results, ALS Metallurgy Kamloops

is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/fe922a3d-6b90-46b9-800b-29516e3adc99

Testwork Commenced on Weathered and Blended Material

Flotation testwork has commenced on weathered and blended (fresh + weathered) composite samples of Curiu PGE deposit drill core, applying a similar flowsheet as used in the locked cycle flotation test. Preliminary results suggest that adjustments to the flowsheet will be required, after 5 rounds of floatation testwork on the weathered sample, and 2 rounds on the blended sample. No locked cycle tests have been performed on the weathered Curiu material to date.

2021 Metallurgical Drill Program

CLICK HERE for news release dated October 4, 2021, for assay results from the Esbarro and Curiu drill program, and CLICK HERE for news release dated January 18, 2022, for assay results from the Cedro drill program.

ALS Metallurgy Testwork Program

CLICK HERE for news release dated October 4, 2021, for more information regarding the ALS testwork program, and CLICK HERE for more information regarding ALS Metallurgy Kamloops.

Quality Control/Quality Assurance (QA/QC) and Grade Interval Reporting

CLICK HERE for a summary of ValOres policies and procedures related to QA/QC and grade interval reporting.

Qualified Person (QP)

The technical information in this news release has been prepared in accordance with Canadian regulatory requirements set out in NI 43-101 and reviewed and approved by Colin Smith, P.Geo., ValOres QP and Vice President of Exploration.

About ValOre Metals Corp.

ValOre Metals Corp. (TSXV: VO) is a Canadian company with a portfolio of highquality exploration projects. ValOres team aims to deploy capital and knowledge on projects which benefit from substantial prior investment by previous owners, existence of high-value mineralization on a large scale, and the possibility of adding tangible value through exploration, process improvement, and innovation.

In May 2019, ValOre announced the acquisition of the Pedra Branca Platinum Group Elements (PGE) property, in Brazil, to bolster its existing Angilak uranium, Genesis/Hatchet uranium and Baffin gold projects in Canada.

The Pedra Branca PGE Project comprises 51 exploration licenses covering a total area of 55,984 hectares (138,339 acres) in northeastern Brazil. At Pedra Branca, 5 distinct PGE+Au deposit areas host, in aggregate, a current Inferred Resource of 1,067,000 ounces 2PGE+Au contained in 27.2 million tonnes grading 1.22 g/t 2PGE+Au (CLICK HERE for ValOres July 23, 2019 news release). All the currently known Pedra Branca inferred PGE resources are potentially open pittable.

Comprehensive exploration programs have demonstrated the "District Scale" potential of ValOres Angilak Property in Nunavut Territory, Canada that hosts the Lac 50 Trend having a current Inferred Resource of 2,831,000 tonnes grading 0.69% U 3 O 8 , totaling 43.3 million pounds U 3 O 8 . For disclosure related to the inferred resource for the Lac 50 Trend uranium deposits, please CLICK HERE for ValOre's news release dated March 1, 2013.

ValOres team has forged strong relationships with sophisticated resource sector investors and partner Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. (NTI) on both the Angilak and Baffin Gold Properties. ValOre was the first company to sign a comprehensive agreement to explore for uranium on Inuit Owned Lands in Nunavut Territory and is committed to building shareholder value while adhering to high levels of environmental and safety standards and proactive local community engagement.

On behalf of the Board of Directors,

Jim Paterson

James R. Paterson, Chairman and CEO

ValOre Metals Corp.

For further information about ValOre Metals Corp., or this news release, please visit our website at www.valoremetals.com or contact Investor Relations at 604.653.9464, or by email at contact@valoremetals.com.

ValOre Metals Corp. is a proud member of Discovery Group. For more information please visit: http://www.discoverygroup.ca/

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

This news release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Although ValOre believes that the expectations reflected in its forward-looking statements are reasonable, such statements have been based on factors and assumptions concerning future events that may prove to be inaccurate. These factors and assumptions are based upon currently available information to ValOre. Such statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that could influence actual results or events and cause actual results or events to differ materially from those stated, anticipated or implied in the forward-looking statements. A number of important factors including those set forth in other public filings could cause actual outcomes and results to differ materially from those expressed in these forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause the actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements include the future operations of ValOre and economic factors. Readers are cautioned to not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The statements in this press release are made as of the date of this release and, except as required by applicable law, ValOre does not undertake any obligation to publicly update or to revise any of the included forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. ValOre undertakes no obligation to comment on analyses, expectations or statements made by third parties in respect of ValOre, or its financial or operating results or (as applicable), their securities.








Unilateral visa exemption for several European nations proposed

The Tourism Advisory Board (TAB) has put forward a proposal to the Vietnamese Government to resume the unilateral visa exemption for tourists from the UK, Germany, Italy, France and Spain as part of the reopening of the international tourism, a move which is scheduled to start from March 15.













As of June 30, 2021, those five European countries, all of which are key markets for the nation, saw visa exemptions expire.



The agency has therefore proposed extending the visa waiver by up to three years for citizens from the five European countries amid the nation fully reopening international tourism starting from March 15.



Furthermore, other countries, including the Republic of Korea, Japan, Russia, and some Nordic countries, will see visa exemptions expire on December 30 this year.



The TAB has suggested that the unilateral visa exemption policy with the Republic of Korea, Japan, Russia, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, and Belarus be resumed from January 1, 2023.


Acquisition expands Williams footprint into the East Texas region of the Haynesville, increasing in-basin scale and advancing the companys clean energy strategy

Additional volumes committed to Williams Louisiana Energy Gateway project, designed to gather responsibly sourced gas in the Haynesville and connect to premium markets, including Transco and LNG exports

Memorandum of Understanding signed to form joint venture partnership with Quantum Energy Partners in support of constructing the Louisiana Energy Gateway project

TULSA, Okla., March 14, 2022--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Williams (NYSE: WMB) today announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire the Haynesville gathering and processing assets of Trace Midstream (Trace), a portfolio company of Quantum Energy Partners (Quantum), in a transaction valued at $950 million. The combination of the Trace system with Williams existing footprint provides expanded scale in one of the largest growth basins in the country, increasing the companys gathering capacity in the Haynesville basin from 1.8 Bcf/d to over 4 Bcf/d. The acquisition is expected to result in an investment at approximately 6 times 2023 EBITDA, with strong growth anticipated and minimal expansion capital required, thereby supporting Williams strong credit metrics.

As part of the transaction, Trace customer and Quantum affiliate Rockcliff Energy (Rockcliff) has agreed to a long-term capacity commitment in support of Williams Louisiana Energy Gateway (LEG) project. The LEG project is designed to gather responsibly sourced natural gas produced in the Haynesville and connect it to premium Transco markets, as well as growing industrial and LNG export demand along the Gulf Coast.

In further support of the LEG project, Williams signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Quantum to form a joint venture that will enable Quantum to become an equity investor and partner in the project. The partnership brings together Williams expertise as a leading developer and operator of clean energy infrastructure with Quantums abilities as a leading global provider of private capital to the responsibly sourced energy and energy transition & decarbonization sectors.

"Williams continues to increase scale and connectivity in the best and most efficient natural gas basins, and these transactions with Trace, Rockcliff and Quantum represent an important extension of our natural gas-focused strategy," said Alan Armstrong, Williams president and chief executive officer. "We are excited for the opportunity to help Rockcliff continue their success and connect them to growing markets with Quantum as our new partner in LEG. Importantly, this is going to be the flagship of our low carbon wellhead to water venture, proving up what an important role natural gas can play in reducing emissions, lowering costs and providing secure reliable energy here and around the world."

Story continues

"We have been rapidly expanding our Haynesville system to support growth from existing and new customers," added Chad Zamarin, Williams senior vice president of Corporate Strategic Development. "By leveraging our scale, value chain integration and unique capabilities, including our Sequent Energy platform and New Energy Ventures clean energy solutions, we are facilitating the delivery of responsibly sourced gas to meet the climate goals and the energy needs of our customers and our country."

"We are grateful for our partnership with the Trace management team who developed a strategic infrastructure platform with high ESG standards," said Blake Webster, managing director with Quantum. "Partnering with exceptional entrepreneurs like the Trace and Rockcliff teams and building businesses of scale have been hallmarks of Quantums success over the years. We are also excited to establish a partnership with Williams on the LEG project, which we view as a critical bridge to connect responsibly sourced Haynesville natural gas with Gulf Coast LNG markets."

"We are proud of the team and the business weve built at Trace, and we are grateful to see its success continue with Williams," said Josh Weber, Trace chief executive officer. "Over the past four years, we have positioned ourselves in one of the most prolific resource plays in the country to transport responsibly sourced natural gas to premium markets along the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast. Our safe, reliable, and competitive midstream services are what our producer customers have come to expect, and we are confident that Williams will continue to be a good steward of these assets."

The transaction is expected to close in the second quarter subject to regulatory approvals.

Advisors

RBC Capital Markets served as lead financial advisor to Williams; Citi served as lead financial advisor to Trace. Williams was represented by Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP; Trace was represented by Vinson & Elkins LLP.

About Williams

Williams (NYSE: WMB) is committed to being the leader in providing infrastructure that safely delivers natural gas products to reliably fuel the clean energy economy. Headquartered in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Williams is an industry-leading, investment grade C-Corp with operations across the natural gas value chain including gathering, processing, interstate transportation and storage of natural gas and natural gas liquids. With major positions in top U.S. supply basins, Williams connects the best supplies with the growing demand for clean energy. Williams owns and operates more than 30,000 miles of pipelines system wide  including Transco, the nations largest volume and fastest growing pipeline  and handles approximately 30 percent of the natural gas in the United States that is used every day for clean-power generation, heating and industrial use.

About Quantum

Founded in 1998, Quantum Energy Partners is a leading global provider of private equity capital to the responsibly sourced energy and energy transition & decarbonization sectors, having managed together with its affiliates more than $18 billion in equity commitments since inception. For more information on Quantum, please visit www.quantumep.com or contact Michael Dalton at (713) 452-2110.

About Trace

Houston-based Trace Midstream provides midstream solutions to producers with a focus on customer service, safety and operational excellence. Trace has operations in the Haynesville and Midcontinent regions. For more information visit www.tracemidstream.com.

About Rockcliff

Rockcliff is a premier natural gas company focused on developing the prolific East Texas Haynesville shale and is one of the top natural gas producers in the state of Texas. The company is producing certified responsibly sourced gas with top tier emission monitoring technology to fuel the U.S. and global economy. To learn more about Rockcliff, please visit www.rockcliffenergy.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220314005135/en/

Contacts

MEDIA:

media@williams.com

800-945-8723

INVESTOR CONTACT:

Danilo Juvane

918-573-5075

Grace Scott

918-573-1092
Its not too late.

There are still a few weeks left of a special exhibit at the Jamestown Settlement in Williamsburg where Indigenous tribes in Virginia are sharing personal cultural treasures and stories as part of a main exhibit of historical photos.

Debra Martin is a citizen of the Pamunkey tribe. Some of her relatives photos are part of the exhibit.

This is a picture of Uncle Paul here. He was a chief from 1930 to 1937, she said as she points to a photo of her great-uncle Paul Miles paying annual tribute to Gov. John Garland Pollard.

But her most cherished possession in the exhibit is her mothers regalia. A ceremonial dress her mother made during the 1930s, it has been passed on through three generations.

Her mother wore it to ceremonies, pow wows and to the Dog Mart in Fredericksburg, where she and others from Native communities were allowed to participate in the annual market.

I remember this dress from when I was a child visiting my grandparents on the Pamunkey Reservation. It was in an old wardrobe, and I was always enthralled with it, she said. My mother never talked too much about wearing it. And it was something that she sort of left behind, I think because during the period when she was growing up it was not cool to be Indian.

Jamie Helmick is manager for special projects and programs. She said the exhibit is part of an increased effort by the JamestownYorktown Foundation to include Indigenous people in telling their history. A reminder of that former exclusion stands amid the exhibit. One of eight replica ceremonial posts borrowed from an older exhibit outside. It was not carved by an Indigenous person.

FOCUSED is a visual experience of the last 100 years of tribes in Virginia and their resilience despite laws to erase them. There are contemporary photos by Tracy Roberts, a member of the Occaneechee tribe, and photos from the 1940s and 1950s by Baltimore Sun photographer A. Aubrey Bodine. The earliest photos are by anthropologist Frank Speck, who photographed Indigenous tribes in Virginia from 1915 to 1924.

Frank Speck wanted to document the Virginia tribes and the thriving culture they had at that point in time, said Helmick. So, he took as many photographs as he could of the tribes in Virginia.

The exhibit highlights the resilience of tribes here during and after a century of racist laws that tried to erase their culture. Among striking art objects is an opulent turkey feather mantle woven in the 1930s by Mollie Adams of the Upper Mattaponi tribe.

Part of that movement with Speck and everybody else who was fighting the Racial Integrity Act was to try to get tribal members to reclaim a lot of their lost traditional arts, said Helmick. So, this was the first attempt at making a feather mantle that had not been done in some time.

Virginias Racial Integrity Act made identifying as Indigenous illegal. Now, tribal members are telling stories of their histories and cultures, on videos at the exhibit and online at the museums website.

The art here includes pottery, gourds and flutes. Visitors can walk around a vertical glass case that encloses story quilts by Denise Lowe Walters. They tell the history of her tribe, the Nottoway.

Those decades of discrimination led to tribes hiding their identities. Helmick said many tribal members got into the habit of not sharing with the general population they were Native.

So, you can, for decades, probably talk to many Virginia Indians as you move through Virginia, but they probably would never designate themselves as such because they just got in the habit of not saying what their race is, unfortunately. she said. I think the tribes are definitely at a point where theyre trying to move past that and theyre very proud of their culture and you see a lot of cultural reemergence, as you have for the last 400 years, but especially today, now that they feel more comfortable sharing their culture with people, youre seeing a great resurgence of it.

The exhibit will close March 25. If you cant make it, you can still go online to view lectures by tribal members on their art and tribal histories.
Spring and summer are known to animal advocates as kitten season, and the Fredericksburg SPCA wants to help the community get ready to help care for hundreds of tiny fluff-balls.

The SPCA expects over 400 kittens to come into our care this upcoming season and public education and support will be crucial in helping us save lives, said Von Young, marketing and communications manager for the Fredericksburg Regional SPCA. As a Best Friends Animal Society Network Partner, the Fredericksburg SPCA is committed to making Virginia a no-kill state by 2025. This big goal comes with the knowledge that the most vulnerable animal in shelters is also the most unexpectedneonatal kittens.

Young said people often assume that a litter of kittens alone has been abandoned by its mother. In most cases, the mother cat is nearby, and removing the kittens from her can be detrimental to their health.

Its also normal to find a single kitten that appears to be abandoned, as mothers often move their kittens one-by-one to different locations to keep them safe, Young said.

The Fredericksburg SPCA recommends watching and not disturbing a litter of kittens unless they are obviously abandoned, injured or in an unsafe location, such as too near a busy road.

The SPCA said community members can provide shelter and leave food and water out for the mother cat. Once kittens are about 6 weeks old, they can be safely weaned and brought inside for fostering.

The Fredericksburg SPCA will host a Kitten 101 training event Thursday at 5 p.m. Staff will discuss what to do if you discover a litter of kittens, what kind of specialized care to provide to very young kittens, and how to become a foster.

The organization is also seeking supplies ahead of kitten season. The wishlist includes wet and dry food for mothers and nursing kittens, kitten milk replacement and nursing bottles, non-clumping litter, blankets, thermometers, kitchen scales, litter boxes and scoopers.

We encourage businesses and groups in our community to host kitten supply drives and can provide digital assets to help get them started, Young said.

Thursdays Kitten Care 101 is free and will be both in-person and virtual. Those interested can sign up to attend at fredspca.org/events.

Get local news delivered to your inbox! Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
PLATTSMOUTH  Students at St. John the Baptist School turned their knowledge of history into award-winning projects at a recent district competition.

Six students earned medals during the Peru State District History Day Contest on March 4. Brooklyn Walton, Laney Van Erdewyk, Nora Koelzer, Mikena Haag, Kaleb Scherlie and Drue Weeda secured recognition during a virtual awards ceremony. The entire district contest this year was conducted in a virtual format.

St. John the Baptist eighth-grade teacher Virginia Cardwell sponsored the program at the Plattsmouth school this year. She helped students navigate a range of topics under this years theme of Debate and Diplomacy in History: Successes, Failures and Consequences. Teagan Glup, Parker Smith and Vance Poppleton joined Walton, Van Erdewyk, Koelzer, Haag, Scherlie and Weeda as school representatives at the event.

I am so proud of these students because they have proven themselves to be such amazing researchers, hard workers and very talented individuals, Cardwell said.

St. John the Baptist spokeswoman Deb Walton said she was thrilled to learn about the successful outcomes. Local students competed against multiple schools from the southeastern portion of the state for district awards.

We are excited to announce that six of our students placed in the contest, with five out of the six advancing to the state competition on April 9 at Nebraska Wesleyan, Walton said. Congratulations to all our students on this outstanding achievement.

History Day competitions are open to students in grades 6-12. Organizers separate contests into a Junior Division for grades 6-8 and a Senior Division for grades 9-12. St. John the Baptist students competed in the Junior Division.

Students could showcase their research in one of five modes: paper, performance, documentary, exhibit or website. Students could enter the performance, documentary and exhibit categories as either groups or individuals, while those who chose the website category had to enter both group and individual portions. The paper category was on an individual basis only.

The top three winners in each district category were eligible to advance to state. Fourth-place winners also received medals for their efforts.

Local students began compiling information for their projects last fall. They spent three months gathering historical facts before creating documentaries, exhibits and papers.

Haag and Brooklyn Walton earned a state berth with a first-place performance in the group documentary category. They created a project entitled How the Attack on Pearl Harbor Changed Lives.

Koelzer, Weeda and Van Erdewyk all competed in the individual documentary category. All three students collected medals and Koelzer and Weeda advanced to state.

Koelzer earned first place for her project entitled Temperance Backs Organized Crime, and Weeda secured second place for his project called Nuclear Energy Controversy and Reasoning. Van Erdewyk captured fourth place for her project entitled The Kansas Nebraska Act of 1854.

Scherlie collected a state berth with a third-place award in the individual paper category. He produced a project entitled Cuban Missile Crisis.

Poppleton, Smith and Glup entered the group exhibit category at the district contest. They submitted a project entitled Standing Bull: Fight for Rights.

Nebraska National History Day is a non-profit educational program based in Lincoln. The state program is affiliated with the National History Day organization that is based in College Park, Md. The first History Day contest took place in Cleveland in 1974.

The Nebraska organization will sponsor the State History Day Contest on Nebraska Wesleyan Universitys campus in Lincoln on April 9. The top two state winners in each category will have the opportunity to advance to the national contest. Nationals will take place in a virtual format June 12-16.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0

Be the first to know Get local news delivered to your inbox! Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
OMAHA  The president and vice president of the Nebraska State Board of Education said Friday theyre in no rush to revive the controversial health education standards the board put on ice last September.

Board president Patsy Koch Johns and vice president Robin Stevens said the board has no plans at this time to revive the standards. They said the board must address concerns about the standards-writing process before considering a restart.

We at this time have not discussed any plans about bringing it back, said Koch Johns of Lincoln.

The two leaders commented in a news release aimed at clarifying the boards recent actions regarding academic standards.

In it, they pushed back on the perception that the boards recent actions regarding standards were bringing it closer to reviving the standards.

In February, a majority of board members voted down a motion by recently appointed board member Kirk Penner to permanently scrap the health standards.

This month, the majority voted to draft a policy expressing the boards intent to develop academic standards in all subject matter areas, including health. That policy has yet to be adopted.

In the release, Stevens said the board will need a specific vote to restart the health education standards process, and this is not currently an item under consideration by the Board.

To be clear, he said, the conversations, around ensuring the proper policies and processes are in place, are necessary before even considering future draft health education standards.

Stevens, of Gothenburg, is facing two challengers in the race to retain his District 7 seat on the board. Three other board spots are on the ballot this year, including Penner's seat representing District 4.

In an interview Friday, Nebraska Commissioner of Education Matt Blomstedt told the Omaha World-Herald that its unlikely the standards would be revived this year.

Reviewing the process the department uses to develop standards, and potentially making changes, will take time, he said.

I think Im pretty confident in saying its not 2022, and I would find it highly unlikely its 2023, he said.

For more than a year, the state has wrestled with the idea of writing health standards for Nebraska schools. Local school districts currently write their own. The state standards would be recommended but not required for districts.

The initial draft of the standards proposed a year ago was praised by advocates of LGBTQ children as inclusive. The standards contained language recognizing diverse family structures, gender identities and sexual orientations. After complaints the material was not appropriate for children and reflected a political agenda, most of those references were stripped in a second draft. But that draft still was criticized by Gov. Pete Ricketts, who said it promoted gender ideology.

The board postponed the standards indefinitely Sept. 3.

Subsequently, then-board president Maureen Nickels appointed an ad hoc board committee to troubleshoot what went wrong with the process.

On March 4, the board adopted six recommendations from the committee. One was to draft a policy expressing the boards intent to develop academic standards in all areas.

Penner, who voted against the recommendations, said he disagrees with the boards position that it can write standards beyond the core academic areas authorized by the Legislature.

He said the reason the standards failed has nothing to do with process.

The issue isnt the process, its the content of the health standards, he said.

Another recommendation adopted by the board at its March 4 meeting calls for writing a policy to define the boards role in the standards-writing process.

Board members also voted to have the Nebraska Department of Education hire a consultant to review the standards process and suggest improvements.

Blomstedt said Friday that he probably wouldnt get a consultant on board until summer.

I would probably aim for a June time frame, thats usually when we have some chance to dive into those things, he said.

The intent is to examine the process, including looking at how other states do it, before attempting a redo of health standards, he said.

Meantime, critics have been unsuccessful in stopping the health standards with legislative action.

A bill in the Legislature this session would have made clear that the board can write standards only in core academic areas. With 20 days left in the session, that bill proposed by Sen. Joni Albrecht remained in the Education Committee.

In his budget request to state lawmakers, Ricketts included language that would have barred the education department from using any of its appropriation to research, adopt or implement state sex education standards for schools.

Members of the Appropriations Committee last week advanced the budget to the full body without the language, but an amendment has been offered to add it in.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
Since the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan, Hanif has been on the run. He has lived in hiding for months, constantly moving from place to place as he awaits word that he will be cleared for evacuation to the United States.

Hanif served as a security guard for U.S. and NATO special forces in Afghanistan for nearly a decade. But when foreign troops withdrew and the Taliban toppled the Western-backed Afghan government in August, he was left behind.

Speaking to RFE/RL's Radio Azadi by telephone, he expressed his feelings of abandonment by the U.S. government and military for which he risked his life. "In the nine years I worked, I braved great dangers and accompanied the special forces to remote corners of Afghanistan," said Hanif, using only his first name for security reasons. "I feel that no one has helped me."

Hanif is not alone. While more than 80,000 at-risk Afghans were evacuated in the largest U.S. airlift in history, estimates suggest that roughly equal that amount of Afghans who assisted the U.S.-led war remain stranded, including interpreters, aid workers, and some of the best-trained troops in the former Afghan armed forces.

The process of helping them get out is complicated by bureaucracy and fraught with danger, none more formidable than the Taliban, which has been accused of carrying out acts of retribution against those who worked with foreign troops, including hunting down and killing former members of the Afghan security forces.

The situation has outraged U.S. military veterans and others who trained and worked with Afghans. Many of them have pooled their efforts to help their Afghan allies get their paperwork and documents in order, provide food, money, and safe haven, and to even pay for and organize evacuation flights.

Taliban On The Hunt

Seven months into Taliban rule, there are worrying signs that the extremist group is increasingly targeting Afghans who helped foreign forces, and is shutting down possible exit avenues as the West's attention turns to the outbreak of war in Europe.

As Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in late February, reports emerged that the Taliban was conducting house searches in an attempt to uncover Afghans who helped NATO and allied troops or fought for the Afghan military against the Taliban.

Earlier that month, the office of the UN commissioner for human rights said that despite the Taliban's repeated guarantees of amnesty it had received credible reports of the extrajudicial killings of more than 100 former members of the Afghan National Security and Defense Forces, personnel of the former government, or their family members.

On February 27, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid raised alarm when he told a press conference that the Taliban had put a stop to evacuation flights, adding that "people who leave the country along with their families have no excuse" and that the Taliban would be "preventing them" from going abroad.

He later clarified that he only meant Afghans who did not have the necessary travel documents, which have been difficult to obtain considering the country's passport office was only recently reopened.

Reams Of Red Tape

The dangers at home only add to the difficulties Afghans are experiencing as they try to navigate the hurdles of obtaining the documents they need to relocate to the the United States.

Their options include the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program, special permission for Humanitarian Parole in emergency situations, and the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program.

But while the State Department continues to process SIV and Humanitarian Parole applications for Afghans outside the United States, including those who were airlifted from Kabul after the capital fell, those avenues are essentially closed for those who remain inside Afghanistan itself.

This is due to the requirement for in-person screenings, which is not possible in Afghanistan following the suspension of U.S. consular services, meaning Afghans must travel to a third country to be vetted.

And while the Refugee Admissions Program allows for priority referrals for at-risk Afghans -- and includes special priority status for individuals who worked for U.S.-government funded projects in Afghanistan, interpreters for the U.S. government, and stringers for U.S.-based media organizations -- it is considered primarily to be a pathway for individuals outside of the United States who have already fled their country of origin and are seeking protection.

Not Just Soldiers

The tens of thousands of Afghan citizens who helped the U.S.-led war effort goes far beyond security personnel.

Abdullah Sadat worked for various U.S. government-funded development and reconstruction projects in Afghanistan over the past two decades. He claims that many of the people evacuated during the chaotic withdrawal in August were not on any evacuation lists.

"I know about 25 people who had worked with us on various projects who are still stranded here," Sadat told Radio Azadi. "Every day we hear news about the detention of activists and those who have worked for foreign organizations, which makes us worry a lot."

Abdul Qayum Zahid Samadzai, an Afghan journalist who worked for a U.S.-funded media project, says he was detained and tortured by the Taliban intelligence in Kabul earlier this month. "The Taliban detained me in front of Kabul's Serena hotel. They kept me for two days and released me on bail," he told Radio Azadi. "The conditions for journalists are deteriorating by the day as the space for us shrinks."

Samadzai says he has qualified for a priority visa and was accepted for immigration to the United States based on his work with the project. But he remains stranded.

"I want the U.S. to follow up on our cases and evacuate those in danger," he said.

Allies Losing Hope

Hamid, who was part of a group of 120 Afghan guards protecting U.S. and NATO soldiers in Kabul, says that in the months leading up to the U.S. withdrawal he received a recommendation for an SIV.

He believed an SIV, which grants permanent U.S. residence to those who helped the United States abroad, would be his ticket out of Afghanistan. But despite promises he would be on the evacuation list, he was left out as other at-risk Afghans, including many of his colleagues, were flown out of the country.

After months of hiding and regular assurances of help from his former supervisors in the U.S. military, he says, he has yet to gain the approval for the SIV he needs to have at least a shot of escaping his situation.

"I am still waiting but without any hope. I am in grave danger and in hiding. I cannot even leave my home," he told Radio Azadi by telephone. "I have changed my residence multiple times. I even went to provinces outside Kabul to hide among relatives living in remote regions."

Similar stories and pleas for help have been made by thousands of other Afghans who have pleaded for help from U.S. lawmakers, former employers, and others who might listen via social media, e-mails, and hotlines set up by NGOs and the U.S. government.

Many have been documented by the nonprofit Association Of Wartime Allies (AWA), which said in a report issued in late February that about 78,000 Afghans who are eligible to move to the United States remain in Afghanistan.

About 30 percent of SIV applicants it surveyed in Afghanistan have been imprisoned by the Taliban and more than half have been stopped and questioned, according to the AWA. Nearly all face economic hardship, and more than 70 percent reported having to go without food at least once a month.

While the AWA commends "the United States for evacuating some 82,000 Afghan allies that otherwise may not have made their way to safe haven in the United States, we must never lose focus on those left behind."

The report compiled a long list of disturbing messages from Afghans, without corrections to spelling and grammar, to hammer home how the U.S. military withdrawal has upended their lives.

"Since US has lifted Afghanistan I lost my job, and I can't live here because of working with USG me and my wife life is in danger!"

"I am a woman it is extremely hard for me to live afterward in Afghanistan because I have worked with USG as Translator, in these days TBs are killing womens who have worked before so I am waiting from the 6 months for my COM Approval but till that time to get my COM i know i will be killed so please I am kindly requesting of you to work on mu case and please send me my COM and please help me and save my life as I have three little kids pleaelse."

"Taliban are looking after me they searched my house in Herat on 18 Nov 2021 I was hidden in Kabul then in 22 and 23 of Dec 2021 they came to my previous house asked about me the house owner called me that Taliban are looking after you I told them that he was tenant here he is not living here. I am hiding me somewhere with my family to safe my life and my family."

"I am under serious threat because Taliban have been searching for those who have worked for the US government especially linguists, Taliban targets people who had affiliations with US government in an appropriate time and find different excuses for their killings and then make it Seems as they were not involved in the killings."

"I hope one day we can walk freely without fears, I hope one day we can go to shoping with kids with out fears, I hope one day we can speak freely without fears, I hope one day we can take our kids to school, I hope one day we can go to work with out fears. Being in hidden will kill us."

It is a situation that is not acceptable to many U.S. veterans who trained and fought alongside Afghans, and to intelligence specialists, medical professionals, and refugee organizers who depended on their support.

Now hundreds are trying to rescue their Afghan partners through self-funded volunteer groups such as Operation Recovery, Project Exodus, Save Our Allies, No One Left Behind, and Joint Operation North Star. Many of the nonprofits work together under the banner of larger organizations, like the Moral Compass Federation.

'Hang Tight'

Wes Wrather is the chief operating officer of the Florida-based Operation Recovery. He served over two years in Afghanistan before turning his focus to veteran and first-responder causes by way of the NGO, which now works to provide safe passage and repatriation for Afghan allies.

When Afghanistan fell to the Taliban, he told RFE/RL by phone from Kentucky, "a lot of our friends, personal acquaintances, and networks had a lot of deep obligation to help the country and those that we left behind."

He says that his group mainly focuses on helping Afghans who served U.S. and NATO special forces because they were in particular danger of Taliban retribution.

Operation Recovery, which is made up of about 150 volunteers, says it is "honoring the promise" made to Afghans by the United States. Through its expertise and contacts in Afghanistan, the group has taken on a role as a funding vehicle for broader evacuation efforts.

Wrather estimates that directly or indirectly, the group has managed to get between 3,500 to 4,000 Afghans out of the country and "on top of that, we've worked with several vendors that have expertise in that space that can navigate that terrain effectively, despite the Taliban being in control."

The group uses what Wrather calls "shepherds," who are responsible for up to 50 Afghans. These shepherds, most working from the United States, maintain secure communication with their "flock" and share new information about immigration requirements and help with documentation procedures.

The group also has mechanisms in Afghanistan to get food and even cash payments to potential evacuees it has identified.

Wrather says his group is also advising people to "hang tight" and not to go to third countries like Pakistan or Iran because they risk getting stuck there and losing the influence his group has to get them to the United States.

The effort is not cheap. Wrather says the cost of paying for an evacuation flight when it was last available a few months ago was about $700,000. He says the organization depends entirely on private donations.

No Ally Left Behind?

Mike Edwards trained Afghan special forces and now heads the volunteer organization Exodus Relief, which is staffed by fellow U.S. volunteer veterans of the war in Afghanistan.

"We're just working to help each other out to evacuate some of our friends, our Afghan allies that were left over there, the special forces guys we trained," Edwards told RFE/RL by telephone from Alabama. "Meanwhile, we're trying to feed our Afghan partners and keep them safe from the Taliban until we can get them out. And you know, these guys, they're the ones that helped us get a lot of the American citizens out that we got out."

Edwards says there is currently no legal process to evacuate them. He says his group and others like it across the United States are trying to get that changed by pushing for the U.S. government to establish a special visa category for Afghan allies.

The most important thing at the moment, he says, is "keeping these guys safe, and fed, and advocating for them as aggressively as we possibly can to get something done before it's too late and we run out of money."

If that happens, warns Edwards, whose organization also depends entirely on donations, "these guys are left with no other option but to either get killed or, if they are lucky, to get recruited to the other side." That would mean having "some of the best we've ever trained working against us," Edwards said.

"These guys don't want to do that. They're loyal, very loyal to us. They've been working for us this entire time. But at some point in time, there's going to be a line drawn, and we're going to be out of money. And they're going to make a decision," Edward said. "And we're trying to get them out before that happens."

A Continuing Effort

The U.S. State Department has said it will continue its efforts to evacuate at-risk Afghans, with an official telling RFE/RL in written responses to questions that the issue "is of utmost importance to the U.S. government."

The official acknowledged that "coordinating flights out of Kabul International Airport continues to be challenging," but said the government plans to help relocate SIV holders and applicants as often as conditions allow and that "we will be relentless in this effort as we stand by our Afghan allies and their families."

In a separate response, a State Department official said it was aware of media reports regarding the Taliban's refusal to allow Afghans to leave the country.

The official said the issue was raised with the Taliban, and Washington "will continue to engage diplomatically to resolve any issues and to hold the Taliban to their public pledge to let all foreign nationals and any Afghan citizen with travel authorization from other countries to freely depart Afghanistan."

Some U.S.-based volunteers are unconvinced that Washington is doing all it can, however.

Edwards, who said that he feels that the State Department does not seem to "care anything about these guys and making a category for them to get out," says it is a challenge to keep people's spirits up. Many are tired of being stuck in safe houses arranged by his NGO, away from their families for months at a time.

"They're sick of this to the point where they're ready to just go out and let the Taliban just kill them," Edwards said. "We're trying to keep them, keep them motivated, keep them hanging on for a little bit longer in hopes that the U.S. government will eventually or some other government will eventually come along with a process to help us out."
U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican and one of former President Donald Trump's staunchest defenders in Congress, has endorsed U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn's bid for a ninth term, saying the Colorado Springs Republican stood with Trump and fights for conservative values.
A Colorado Springs school district is going on the offensive in the fight against the fast-growing fentanyl crisis in the city, the state and the nation.

District 11, which has been impacted by overdose deaths in recent years, has launched its Fake and Fatal campaign, an initiative focused on educating and training staff members, students and families about the dangers of the synthetic opioid.

We are hoping to get out ahead of this crisis and hopefully avoid more deaths, district spokeswoman Devra Ashby said of the project.

The initial phase of the campaign, Ashby said, is to educate and train teachers and other employees about the seriousness of the fentanyl crisis and what they can do to combat it.

The district has produced a comprehensive awareness video outlining the scope of the crisis in Colorado Springs and El Paso County, the lethality of the drug, and how easy it is to obtain. It also alerts staff members to the warning signs of an opioid overdose and what to do if one occurs.

We recognize that we must start to prepare ourselves and be ready for an increased rise within our own community, said Cory Notestine, D-11s executive director of student success and wellness. We want to get in front of this.

As the video explains, the rise in opioid deaths among teens is too complex to pin on a single cause, but many health care professionals believe the emotional upheaval caused by the COVID-19 pandemic to be a major factor.

Colorado Childrens Hospital has identified a growing mental health crisis in children and teens across the state, exacerbated by feelings of isolation and hopelessness brought on by the pandemic. Because many youths havent yet developed coping mechanisms, their mental health struggles often manifest in complex and harmful ways. Some youths internalize their pain. Some act aggressively, taking their pain out on others. And some turn to drugs.

Weve seen an elevated use of illegal substances to cope with the world that (teens) are living through, Notestine said. Several of our youth have engaged in illegal drugs that have caused overdoses, both in our community and within our school communities, and several of those students have lost their lives.

A drug that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says is up to 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine, fentanyl has become frighteningly simple to buy. Many drugs are being sold on social media, meaning just about any teen with a little money and a working Wi-Fi connection can obtain illegal drugs, the D-11 video explains, as easy as ordering a pizza.

Additionally, because drug dealers are now selling fentanyl in the guise of other drugs like oxycontin and Xanax, many people are ingesting the deadly drug without knowing it.

Fentanyl is being manufactured at extremely low cost, distributed to cartels and other nefarious individuals to be pressed into other pills, such as Percocet, Notestine says in the video.

These other drugs are now being laced with lethal doses of fentanyl, unbeknownst to the purchaser.

Law enforcement officials believe this is how five people died in a Commerce City apartment last month in what is thought to be the largest mass fentanyl overdose in the U.S. The victims thought they were using cocaine, officials said.

The 2021 statistics are expected to be available in May, but Colorados 2020 overdose numbers are staggering. State health data show there were 10 times as many overdoses involving fentanyl in 2020 than there were just four years earlier. Opioid deaths saw a 54% increase in 2020, and fentanyl was a factor in nearly 70% of opioid deaths in the state.

The next phase of the Fake and Fatal initiative, beginning this week, will be to make students and their families aware of the size and breadth of the problem District 11 is trying to combat, Notestine said.

During its Feb. 23 meeting, D-11s Board of Education unanimously approved revisions to its first-aid and emergency medical care policy to allow Narcan to be stored in district schools and used by trained employees in case of an opioid overdose.

Narcan  or naloxone  is an opioid antagonist that can reverse the effects of an overdose if administered properly and soon enough after the event.

This is a serious issue throughout El Paso County, said board President Parth Melpakam. We wanted to make sure our students are safe and protected on our campuses. (Narcan) is an important resource our staff can use to keep our students safe and healthy.

The board also recommended a policy revision that includes the administration of Narcan in the liability exemptions listed under the Good Samaritan law, which exists to shield people from being sued if they give emergency aid to an injured person.

Narcan is not yet available in all D-11 schools, but school nurse lead Bobbi Lahey said several schools have already requested to have a supply on campus, and many district employees have requested to be trained in its proper use.

Obviously, we hope never to have to use it, Lahey said. But its important to have it in stock and to have staff members trained to use it. We hope to eventually have it in every building.

District officials hope that increased awareness of the seriousness and proximity of the fentanyl crisis will help avoid unnecessary deaths, Notestine said.

Yes, this has become a national problem, but we need to fight it at the local level, he said.

The fentanyl crisis is very real, and its right here in our community.
Lawmakers are working into the night Wednesday on legislation that seeks to enshrine the unequivocal right to an abortion in state law.
I know there are many of you who want to help out with the Ukraine crisis, but we want to make sure you dont fall for any scams. My fellow 11
The 31-year-old Eagle County resident and first-time candidate is so far the only candidate to have made the ballot for the Republican-leaning seat, which covers the Western Slope, the San Luis Valley and Pueblo County.
The Botswana Ensemble  a diverse group of Batswana musicians and artistes - set the Al Wasl Plaza on fire Sunday morning during the opening of the Botswana National Day celebrations at the Expo2020Dubai.



The Ensembles performance followed the formal speeches by a representative of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Sheik Nahyan Bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, who is the Minister for Tolerance and Co-Existence, and another by President Dr. Mokgweetsi Masisi at the Stage of Nations.



Clad in their traditional garb, the dancers stormed onto the stage to join Maxy Mma Gauta Sedumedi whose introduction was the essence of all things Botswana, while Ndingo SaChilombe Johwa strummed away at the guitar.



The youthful Khoisan, also part of the Ensemble had a fair share of rave reviews from the crowds that hugged the Al Wasl to appreciate Tswana culture in its diversity as demonstrated through various dance forms such as Tsutsube, Seperu, Hosana, Setapa and Dikhwaere by none other than Kala tsa Kgale from Selebe Phikwe, which also formed part of the ensemble.

The music was on point, while the delivery was superb! Certainly the Ensemble did Botswana proud!




Michael Stumo is CEO of the Coalition for a Prosperous America (CPA). Follow him @michael_stumo
LETTERS: Tool for water conservation in Colorado; make the city work for us
A 15-year-old girl visiting the Outer Banks died Saturday after being struck by a pickup while trying to cross the main highway in Nags Head.

The girl, whose name was not released, was attempting to run from west to east in the 2400 block of South Croatan Highway when she was hit, the Town of Nags Head said in a news release.

When she entered the inside, northbound lane just before 7:40 p.m., she was struck by a 2018 Chevy Colorado driven by a 65-year-old man from Nags Head, the release said.

Three off-duty EMS employees who were nearby immediately started CPR and were able to restore a pulse, but the teen later died from her injuries at The Outer Banks Hospital. She was visiting from Albania, town officials said.

While the incident is under investigation, neither speed nor alcohol are believed to be factors in the crash, the release said, and no charges are expected to be brought against the driver.

Nags Heads police and fire and rescue ... would like to thank everyone who assisted at the scene. Our thoughts are with the families who have been impacted, the release said.
Buffalo, WY (82834)

Today

Cloudy with a few showers. High 54F. Winds N at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 30%..

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies. Low around 40F. Winds W at 5 to 10 mph.
BROWNS SUMMIT  A former state trooper from here faces up to five years in prison after pleading guilty to unlawfully transporting and dealing in firearms  some of them decommissioned law enforcement weapons  which he often sold from the trunk of his patrol car while on duty.

Timothy Jay Norman, 47, pleaded guilty Thursday to dealing in firearms without a license, according to a release from Sandra J. Hairston, U.S. attorney for the Middle District of North Carolina. As part of a plea deal, prosecutors wont oppose the dismissal of two charges of disposing of a firearm to a prohibited person, court documents show.

Sentencing is scheduled for 9:30 a.m. on June 2 at the federal courthouse in Greensboro before U.S. District Court Judge Catherine C. Eagles. Norman also faces up to three years of supervised release and monetary penalties.

The Highway Patrol previously told a local TV station that Norman, who had been with the department since 2012, resigned the day he was arrested in July.

An affidavit attached to the DOJs criminal complaint shows the months-long investigation began with a tip from a confidential informant in January 2021 and later led to three controlled buys by the FBI.

According to the DOJ, 33-year-old felon Tommy Lee Hudson of Reidsville served as a middleman in the sale of weapons. He and Norman had known each other since they both graduated from basic law enforcement training in 2010, the DOJ said in court documents.

Hudson, who was convicted in Rockingham County in 2016 for felony assault with a deadly weapon inflicting serious injury, offered to introduce the informant to Norman, whom he described as his source for buying ammunition and firearms, according to the affidavit.

Hudson told the informant that hed bought many firearms from Norman, and hed done so while the trooper was on duty and in uniform, according to the affidavit. Hudson also said he didnt know of any other cop that would sell a felon a gun.
A bench warrant was issued for Seafood Destiny owner Anthony Knotts on Feb. 18 after he did not show up for a Jan. 3 court date  the latest in a string of missed court dates  over unpaid debts, including one that started out as a $4,915 loan in 2012 that has accrued more than $10,000 in interest, according to court records.
GREENSBORO  Calling it the worst experience of his life, businessman and pastor Anthony Knotts is offering apologies while locked up in the Guilford County Jail.

On Monday, he'll finally go before a judge and explain his actions  the first step in what will be many as Knotts tries to rehabilitate his reputation.

His dilemma started nearly a decade ago with money he borrowed and never repaid. New details from court files and his attorney offer insight on how Knotts ended up in jail given that most civil cases don't lead to debtors doing time.

Knotts has been in jail just over a week after twice missing a critical hearing in a civil case involving that decade-old debt. He asked his attorney to post the apology to the judge, creditors and especially his family.

"Seven days ago, I was a lost person living under the perception of success while facing the pressures and challenges of family and failing," Knotts wrote in a letter that criminal defense attorney Jason Keith, a longtime friend, linked to his personal Facebook page.

The pastor who started the popular restaurant Seafood Destiny, which led to his opening other locations in Guilford County and Chapel Hill, is being held on a bench warrant issued by Superior Court Judge John O. Craig III after Knotts didn't show for two court-ordered appearances to answer questions about his finances.

In his letter, Knotts acknowledged embarrassment over his actions.

"All they did was order him to show up for court and to answer some financial questions," Keith said. "Now hes had to go to jail for the first time in his life."

Outwardly, it seemed Knotts was financially stable with a thriving business that was a magnet for travelers and local dignitaries. But Keith said despite appearances, things weren't as they seemed.

"Heres the hard and scary part: Every business that you see has sustained a lot of hardships and financial trouble people don't see, especially now with COVID," Keith said. "Sometimes they are living check to check and bill to bill  and that's exactly what his situation was. He was drowning in debt and he wasnt in a position to pay it."

Knotts owes more than $100,000 to plaintiffs Ed Cobbler and Pat Lowe, with the earliest loans dating back to 2012 and the interest far exceeding the original loans.

The first debtor's examination was scheduled for Dec. 13, 2021. When Knotts didn't show, a second examination was slated for Jan. 3. After missing that appearance, creditors asked the judge to impose sanctions.

On Jan. 11, a judge issued an order for Knotts to appear in court on Feb. 14 to explain his absences.

Again, Knotts was nowhere to be found. This time, Craig held him in contempt of court, calling it "willful and contemptuous" in the written order.

The order said Knotts should be "arrested, taken into custody and delivered to the Guilford County Detention Center" until the next available civil motion hearing on the court's calendar, which was Monday.

While Knotts had missed a string of court dates over his debts  including one that started out as a $4,915 loan in 2012 that has since accrued more than $10,000 in interest  it was his not complying with the missed Feb. 14 appearance that resulted in Craig signing an arrest warrant on Feb. 18.

"It's not often that somebody gets arrested for a debt they owe," Keith said of the court order. "I dont think Pastor Knotts anticipated that by not answering it, he could go to jail. If a judge orders you to do something, you cannot discount that and not respond to it."

Knotts also has an unrelated court appearance scheduled for later this month for two worthless check charges totaling $19,000 to Performance Food Service of Hickory. In North Carolina, it is a felony to write a worthless check over $2,000.

"I truly believe this has been my belly-in-the-whale experience like Jonah and my Road to Damascus experience like Paul," wrote Knotts, referencing the biblical stories. "Totally humbling, eye-opening but life changing!"

Contact Nancy McLaughlin at 336-373-7049 and follow @nmclaughlinNR on Twitter.
Editors note: The Helena Independent Record received this email early Monday from Valerie Hellermann, who is executive director with Hands On Global. Members of Hands on Global left last week for Siret, Romania, on the Ukraine-Romania border to establish a medical relief team for those fleeing the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Portions of this email have been edited for clarity.

Still confusion. Refugees crossing here in shock. The numbers are down the last two days. Word is there are over 50,000 in a city 40 km from here Chemnitz (Spelling)?

The refugees cross here and there is food and clothing and medical care offered. There are buses to different countries.

And blue waiting tents with country names on them. So basically you can wait there for the next bus out. Seems the first waves have been people with the money to leave and who have a definite place to go.

The next wave were people unsure of where to go but have some money. Now those without means and places to go (are) arriving and the elderly starting to come across. It is all women and children and only elderly men.

We crossed the Ukraine border yesterday and met with the emergency ministry of Ukraine.

We are possibly going to set up a medical clinic on the Ukraine side in a warming tent as there are hundreds of people standing in the cold. Some having walked many hours or days.

We have a young man from Latvia, Oleg, working as our translator he speaks 6 languages and is quite the delightful character.

We have been asked to go the 40 km into Ukraine to the city where there are over 50,000 refugees waiting. We are doing a risk assessment today and last night. Going over and over again in our minds the safety. Met with some reporters last night that informed us to go. We should leave the border at 8 a.m. and leave Ukraine by 4 p.m.

We can get a pass from the Ukraine military so not to wait in (the) border line. The rationale is the bombings are at night and early mornings. We have been asked to help at a maternity and pediatric clinic as so many pregnant women are there (and) they are overwhelmed.

There is a dangerous lack of medical supplies there and we have a lot with us. Here on the Romanian side there is a fabulous tent clinic set up by an ngo from Turkey. We can work there if there are mass casualties but so far not the case. thank God. The Russians are moving into western Ukraine for sure bombings happened.

Today we found out the Ukrainian doctors will send a car and driver for us everyday.

There is a deep sadness watching these refugees with their lives in a suitcase their sons and husbands left behind their children wide eyed with terror and this sense of despair and future unknown in fact the next day unknown.

Editor's note: This email from Hellermann was received a few hours later on Monday.

Today we went to Chernitzi.

We were picked up at the Ukraine border and driven to the ministry of health at the district center. We were told there were over 50,000 refugees here and we have been asked to provide medical care in these shelters. So not the maternity hospital.

This city is 50 minutes from Ukraine border and it is considered safe. It has not been bombed.

The city seems normal except for the stress on all the faces. There is a volunteer center where cargo trucks are being loaded with supplies food water some medicines and going to Kiev and Mariupol. Fighting is apparently quite intense. Our guide s family and husband were still in Kiev. Her 85 year old grandmother cant move well and refused to leave so her parents stay to care for grandmother. Her husband is fighting. Joined the army given a gun and 2 days training As a soldier. No helmets or bulletproof vests.

We start tomorrow we leave Romania at 8 a.m. and will leave Ukraine in order to cross border by dark.

Coming back into Romania today there were long lines of cars and people on foot. There were now many older people. The stress on their faces was unbearable. A woman with her young child was turned away because her documents were not in order. It had taken her a week to get from Kiev. Yesterday 5,342 people crossed.

Valerie Hellermann,

Executive director,

Hands On Global

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief.

Do justly, now.

Love mercy, now.

Walk humbly, now.

You are not obliged to complete the work,

but neither are you free to abandon it.

Love 5 Funny 0 Wow 1 Sad 4 Angry 0
March is Extension Promotion Month in Tennessee. Join us on Wednesday, March 23, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. for our open house.

We will have a light barbecue sandwich meal for you to enjoy. We will have displays, educational programs and tours of the Ron Ramsey Regional Ag Center.

We are celebrating the great educational resource available in your local Extension education programs, which still hold those values set forth over 100 years ago. Early on, Extensions purpose was to share research-based information with farmers across our landscape. Today, our programs still focus on improving the lives of everyday citizens. Our tag line at the University of Tennessee Extension is Real. Life. Solutions.

The United States government, with the passing of the Smith-Lever Act of 1914, formed Extension programs across the United States. President Woodrow Wilson called Extension one of the most significant and far-reaching measures for the education of adults ever adopted by government.

In 2020, UT Extension programs adjusted quickly to the needs of the community in a COVID-19 world. We learned quickly how to connect via computer. Currently, we have a blend of face-to-face meetings as well as online meetings to meet our clienteles needs.

We are located at the Ron Ramsey Regional Agriculture Center in Blountville near the airport. Our address is 140 Spurgeon Lane, Blountville. We invite you to call our office at 423-574-1919.

The University of Tennessee Extension offers its programs to all eligible persons regardless of race, color, national origin, sex, age or disability and is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

Chris Ramsey is an agriculture extension agent at UT-TSU Extension in Sullivan County. His office is at 140 Spurgeon Lane, Blountville, TN 37617. You can reach him at 423-574-1919 or cwramsey@utk.edu.
BRISTOL, Tenn.  Inspired by the #BakeForUkraine trending on social media and feeling a need to do something to support the Ukrainian people, Brady Hard is organizing Bristol Bakes for Ukraine Saturday, April 9.

"There's a lot of bakeries, and just individuals around the country who are baking and then donating the proceeds from whatever they bake to organizations that are supporting Ukraine, and I thought that was really cool," she said.

Hard, who just had a baby, was emotional when she spoke about how heartbreaking it has been to see Ukrainian mothers on TV having to make tough decisions to protect their children.

"I'm a new mom, and seeing these moms have to make these decisions with their babies, its heartbreaking. So, I mean, a bake sale is so trivial, but it's something, and I just want to feel like I can do something," Hard said. "I can't imagine that kind of sacrifice."

Hard believes that despite the various differences between Bristol's community, and the people of Ukraine, food is something that we all have in common. She hopes to tap into Bristol's culinary culture through the bake sale to help a community in need.

"I think that baking and food is a beautiful part of this part of the country, and I think it'd be so cool to learn or find out about (the) recipes or desserts that are special to people from the area," Hard said. "It's a way to do something here in our community to meet other people and come together as a community and help another community."

Hard hopes to raise $5,000 to $10,000 to give to either the Ukraine Red Cross, Doctors without Borders, or World Central Kitchen.

Hard is debating hosting the event on her front porch. However, she is currently looking for a more spacious venue.

Those interested in taking part in Bristol Bakes for Ukraine, can sign up by following the instructions on the events Facebook page at Bake Sale for Ukraine.

Be the first to know Get local news delivered to your inbox! Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
KINGSPORT, Tenn.  Dr. Cheryl Stanski didnt set out to be a pioneer but, as one of this regions first female surgeons, she quickly developed a niche practice that continues to this day.

Stanski, a New Jersey native, joined Holston Medical Group in 2001. In addition to her clinical work, she serves as the groups medical director of outreach. But two decades ago she was the first female surgeon in Kingsport. Not every patient was enamored.

Surgery was definitely a mans field. I trained with a lot of men and was used to that, Stanski said. There were some patients who would refuse to see me because I was a woman and, ironically, it was usually older women. It was different for them seeing women in that role. They were not confident I could take care of them, which was fine. I told them if they wanted someone else, that is what they should do.

Another question she received early on, because her husband was also a general surgeon, some patients asked, Is your husband going to help you?

It didnt take long for that to change, and people became more accepting.

Word of mouth is strong so you take care of patients, do a good job, they tell their friends and, before you know it, you overcome that pretty quickly. Most patients were wonderful, they welcomed me, I was their doctor, and thats all they cared about. There were a handful who were never comfortable, but I never get that now, she said.

While the operating room still likely contains more male surgeons, women are making gains, she said.

There are a lot more female surgeons now. General surgery is still a majority of men, but its getting closer to 50-50. I would say probably 40% of surgeons coming out (of medical schools) are women, Stanski said.

Throughout her practice and to this day, many of her patients were diagnosed with breast cancer.

It almost chose me as much as I chose it. When I started in practice, I was the only female surgeon in the Kingsport area, so a lot of women just felt more comfortable seeing another woman. So I just got a lot of breast cancer patients referred to me, Stanski said.

The more I did, the more I dug into it, and my experience with my breast cancer patients was so rewarding. You really get to know those patients well; you help them through a really difficult time. There is a lot of patient education that needs to happen when a woman is diagnosed with breast cancer, and I felt like that is something I could really do well. Its a very rewarding practice, she said.

Stanski said she worked hard learning about treatment and technique options to offer the latest advances to her patients.

HMG really helped me grow that practice and focus on it. They helped me expand my education in that area, she said. When I wanted to try new, less invasive techniques  cutting edge therapies for breast cancer  they were very supportive. I was able to focus my practice on what I was most passionate about. I still do other, general surgery, but breast is probably 90% of my practice.

Just as the medicinal aspect of breast cancer treatment has evolved at the cellular level to include many targeted therapies with fewer side effects that tackle aggressive cancer cells, so too has the surgical side, she said.

Its a parallel course; very similar. When I started a lot more people had very extensive surgeries  bilateral mastectomies  and felt more was better. We know now its really not. I do a lot more breast conservation, a lot of surgery that is less invasive, easier to recover from and the success rate is just as good. We can take just as good a care with our patients without being so aggressive surgically, Stanski said.

Dr. Stanski completed her undergraduate work at Vanderbilt University in Nashville before completing medical school at Tulane University in New Orleans. When it came time to establish a home and practice, she and her husband, Dr. Thomas Thomas, chose Tennessee.

I always liked Tennessee and enjoyed it when I lived here before, and it has been a great opportunity for us, she said. We really like HMG. We liked the other surgeons, the nurses, the administrators  everybody we met with was very welcoming. We also love the area. Its beautiful here. There is a lot to do. The schools are good, and we felt the people here were nice and welcoming so it would be a good place to raise our family.

The last couple of years have been among the most challenging, she said, with the global pandemic and a nursing shortage across the health care industry.

For a while, elective surgery was canceled. A lot of our patients had cancer so we still operated on those patients, but finding OR (operating room) time was difficult. Still, with the staffing shortages, its been a struggle. There are not nearly as many operating rooms available, and everybody has to be tested for COVID before surgery. Now were seeing a lot of asymptomatic COVID patients so you have to cancel and wait a certain number of weeks before you can do their surgery. It has affected us, Stanski said.

Many of the surgeries that were delayed werent life threatening, but Stanski said she had many miserable patients waiting for some procedures.

Concern over the pandemic prompted some patients to avoid their doctors altogether.

I had a few patients who had breast cancer who just didnt come to the doctor. I had one lady who wasnt going to die of COVID, who had a very aggressive breast cancer developed and grew so  by the time I saw her  it was pretty advanced. Shes going to require a lot more treatment, and its probably not curable at that point, Stanski said. If we were seeing a patient we could advocate for them, but there are some patients who were so afraid of COVID they didnt come in, and they definitely suffered because of it.

HMG has also been somewhat impacted by the nursing shortage, Stanski said.

We have a little bit of nursing shortage. Its not as bad as the hospital, but nationwide there is a shortage of nursing, so that is an area were getting by. It is better than the hospitals. Theres not a ton of applicants. We need more nurses because were growing. People move on to other things, so its hard to fill those positions, she said.

Stanski said her career has remained interesting, challenging and rewarding and now, in addition to her patients, she is embracing a new role helping manage Holston Medical Group.

Im working with the executive team on patient care and, on a larger scale, looking at how HMG as a whole, takes care of our community, she said. Im growing in administration; spending a couple days per week in the executive suite. Its a different approach. I got my MBA a couple years ago. Im still taking care of patients but doing it in a different way.
BRISTOL, Tenn.  Police have identified the man found dead at Wes David Greenway Sunday afternoon as Ronnie L. Meade.

Meades body was found near a passenger train car at the Greenway Saturday afternoon. A release from the police department said the man was believed to be homeless. He was 75 years old.

The release said there was no apparent cause of death and no signs of foul play.

The body was sent to the William L. Jenkins Forensic Center in Johnson City, Tennessee to determine the cause of death.

The investigation is ongoing. The release asks anyone who had been in contact with Mead the weekend of March 11 to contact Bristol Tennessee Police Detective Eric Keller at ekeller@bristoltn.org or (423) 989-5715.
Pastor Tim Campbell loves to make people smile, and he generates grins when he dresses as Colonel Sanders, founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken.

In a white suit, black western bow tie, black dress shoes and cane, he becomes The Colonel.

(Making people smile has) always been his goal even without The Colonel, Tims wife Brenda Campbell said. He loves to make people smile.

Campbell likes to go out as The Colonel as much as possible. The pandemic has made that difficult. He said he is excited to start going to events again.

I dont want to go home and take this off. I want to leave it on and go somewhere, Tim said. If we go to an event or something, Ill say, Man, I look too good just to go home and change clothes. Lets go to Walmart. Well go to Walmart, walk around and Ill do a dozen pictures with people.

Tim, 64, is the pastor at Icard Church of God. Tim has been a pastor since 1982 and The Colonel for 11 years, he said. One thing he said he hopes to do in the future is officiate a wedding as The Colonel.

Tim talked about his time as The Colonel. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Becoming The Colonel

The Colonel started, when I was pastoring in Burnsville. There was a camp for handicapped children in Burnsville. Its called Camp Funshine. They always celebrate every year. They would have a big celebration. When it starts, it goes from Monday through Thursday.

They were celebrating a milestone for KFC. I cant remember what it was. It was an anniversary. They asked me to be Colonel Sanders. People said I looked like Colonel Sanders. Id never played Colonel Sanders before. So, I had a white Easter suit, I found me a cane at the Goodwill, ordered a tie and I got my beard trimmed down like his (signature Van Dyke). It was wonderful just being with those kids.

Ill never forget one young man. He looked like he was maybe 25. I came out of the cabin where I got dressed. Hed come to take me over there (to the celebration.) Ill never forget he walked up to me, looked at me, put his arm around me and he said, Well, I thought you was dead. He was a sweet, sweet fellow and we laughed about it.

I have to explain to a lot of people that Im not really Colonel Sanders. Ive had people come up to me and say, Wow, are you the real Colonel Sanders? And Id say, No, if I was real Colonel Sanders, Id be almost 132 years old.

Community work

It has been slow through this pandemic, but we try to go out in the community and spread cheer everywhere. Thats my motto, Spreading cheer everywhere. We have been in the rest homes. I went as The Colonel. Of course, I go as a pastor but I go dressed as The Colonel.

Sometimes, I get invited to go to birthdays. Ive got a birthday song I sing. I call it, The Colonels Birthday Song. On the last day of last year, we did an anniversary party. I entertained as The Colonel and Brenda went with me. We sang a couple songs and played a game with them.

Sometimes, well go to KFC and buy about four dozen cookies to take to businesses. Well go in and say, We want to bring you a gift for working so hard. We take cookies to the hospital and the rest homes. We take cookies there and give them to the workers, especially during this pandemic. Weve done that twice.

Favorite things to do as The Colonel

Tim: I love going to restaurants. I love walking in a restaurant as The Colonel and them not knowing Im coming. Weve been to JDs Smokehouse. Sometimes well go to a KFC when they dont know were coming. Weve got a list of restaurants we want to go to, but we havent been able to get out. Nellies Southern Kitchen in Belmont, the Jonas Brothers dad owns that restaurant. We want to go there.

I love going to parades. Were hoping to go to Mayberry (Mount Airy) this year, and do the parade there. But its a matter of finding somebody to drive me in the parade. I dont know what were going to do about that.

Brenda: Bended Knee Outdoors, you love to go there.

Tim: Ive never been there as The Colonel though. I would love to go to an event at Bended Knee Outdoors as The Colonel. (Bended Knee Outdoors is a farm in Granite Falls where veterans can go to hunt, fish and ride horses.)

Prayers for veterans

Brenda: Since he found out about Bended Knee Outdoors, hes had little soldiers in the church.

Tim: We pray for our veterans, Ive got little toy soldiers. I keep them in the church and I ask people to take them home and put one in a place where every time they see that little soldier, theyll say a prayer for our veterans. We really support our veterans, especially during this time. They dont get the support they deserve.

Get local news delivered to your inbox! Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
Update, Tuesday, March 15: An agreement has been reached between Price County and the milk hauler. With permits granted, milk will continue to be picked up as usual. Since the matter is resolved, there will not be a County Board meeting on Tuesday, March 15, regarding this matter. Thank you to those who shared concerns with public officials and helped to promptly resolve this issue.

 Corey Geiger, Managing Editor

Associated Press

WILL WE STILL BE FARMING ON MARCH 16?

Thats the question Peggy Holoubek Hainy asked late Friday evening in a message she started writing in all capital letters and eventually shared on her Facebook account. By Monday morning, Hainys post had been shared by over 600 individuals via social media channels.

Never in the 40 years of us farming has the milk trucks been stopped from picking up milk until now, Hainy later wrote. Please keep us and the other farmers affected by this in your thoughts and prayers.

Could farmers be forced to dump milk?

Dairy farmers across the country have had many battles during the pandemic. However, Price Countys 26 remaining dairy farmers with permits to sell milk in the state of Wisconsin now face a new battle. That battle is emanating from their own backyard in the northern reaches of Americas Dairyland.

It appears Price Countys elected officials and county staff members are poised to invoke great economic harm on and potentially put farmers out of business. Thats because Price County once again placed Temporary Weight Restrictions on its county roads due to the spring thaw beginning on Wednesday, March 16.

That alone is not the problem.

Dairy farmers in Price County and many regions throughout the northern U.S. have faced that annual rite of spring passage involving temporary weight restrictions for many years. Everyone knows that unnecessary travel is a no-no because heavy weights inflict damage on vulnerable roads during the spring thaw when ground becomes soft and water begins to move. But milk trucks have always been allowed to roll.

The problem this March is that Price County apparently refuses to offer exemptions for milk truck haulers for loads up to 75,000 pounds even though Wisconsin state statutes allow for such an exemption. Purportedly, county officials will continue to issue waivers for heating fuel and septic services. However, Price County wants to stand by its newly invoked 55,000-pound limit for milk trucks as of this morning, Monday, March 14.

Given the shortage of people holding CDLs (commercial driver license), the high costs of fuel, and the long distance to haul milk from one of Wisconsins northern-most dairy counties, one cheese plant has been telling farmers that they cannot pick up their milk beginning Wednesday, March 16, if Price County fully enforces its new weight restrictions.

To be clear, all other surrounding counties in the area continue to exempt milk trucks from the springtime temporary weight restrictions because those officials know that cows give milk each and every day and milk trucks must roll. However, some officials in Price County dont see it that way.

Are farmers pawns in a road game?

Some people we talked to about this situation have suggested that some officials in the county have held firm because they are concerned funds are not available should milk trucks damage the roads and force costly repairs. Others have inferred that some county leaders are trying to send a message to the state capitol that they need more money to support local roads.

Whatever the case, these folks are posed to inflict economic harm to small business owners who have operated in Price County for generations.

Fixed by Tuesday?

Price County has a pair of public meetings scheduled on Tuesday, March 15  just one day prior to the weight restrictions going into full effect. The first meeting involves the Price County Board of Supervisors.

The second meeting is the Price County Highway & Transportation Committee. That meeting will take place at 1:30 p.m. Agenda item No 2. is Milk Haulers Exemption to Spring Weight Restrictions. Since pandemic restrictions still prevail when it comes to in-person gatherings, the meeting agenda has a conference call number and a conference call code. Agenda item No. 1 is Public Comment and Communications.

Dairy farming is already hard enough. Milk is a perishable commodity.

Will Price County consider those economic circumstances regarding its 26 dairy farm business owners who try to eke out a living in the most northern reaches of America Dairyland and grant a waiver so the milk trucks can keep picking up milk?

Or will Price County officials hold firm and potentially inflict a mortal wound to its surviving farmers?

We will know that outcome this Tuesday.

To comment, email your remarks to intel@hoards.com.

(c) Hoard's Dairyman Intel 2022

March 14, 2022
On display are various respirators researchers at the University of Maryland Robert E. Fischell Institute for Biomedical Devices have tested and 3D-printed molds. In the background, Kevin Aroom, research engineer at the institute, demonstrates fit testing a KN95 mask. Other work related to masks at the Fischell Institute includes testing respirators to determine which ones meet standards. March 3, 2022 (Kim Hairston/The Baltimore Sun )

In the coronavirus pandemics early days, health care workers turned to bandannas and other makeshift protections because they lacked the official stuff. That gave engineers at the University of Maryland an idea.

They called a niche company, ActivArmor of Pueblo, Colorado, that they were helping develop custom 3D-printed casts to help set broken bones.

Advertisement

Could the company pause and make custom masks?

It could. It could even go further and make them clear, reusable and form-fitting without any bruising. And they were a protective N95-grade.

Advertisement

Everyone just wanted to do something to help, said William Bentley, director of the Robert E. Fischell Institute for Biomedical Devices in College Park, which was at the time a new center in the universitys engineering school. We designed, built and tested masks, and ActivArmor made them.

Kevin Aroom, research engineer at the University of Maryland Robert E. Fischell Institute for Biomedical Devices, holds a 3D-printed custom conformal mold for a respirator March 3, 2022. (Kim Hairston/The Baltimore Sun )

The urgency to produce more masks has dropped as mandates eased around the country, reflecting waning cases from the omicron variant. There are ample supplies of masks, mostly disposable, for those who still want or require them.

But no one thinks omicron is the last dangerous coronavirus variant or the final pathogen to emerge. The break from mask-wearing requirements offers government regulators and researchers an opportunity, they say, to vet the many masks on the market and weed out those that are less effective.

They also can turn to their attention to innovation, so that during the next coronavirus wave or a new pandemic, health care providers, first responders and the public have something better that whats available now.

There has been little change or innovation in masks for decades, experts say, though there are nascent efforts in the public and private sectors to develop a more perfect mask  one that is protective, comfortable, reusable and affordable.

Officials at ActivArmor and the University of Maryland institute think they are on to something.

There is no reason to start from scratch, said Diana Hall, president and CEO of ActivArmor, which patented the design and sold 10,000 masks in a year.

The company has since returned to its core business of custom-printed waterproof casts, which Hall views as another pandemic innovation because they allow wearers to wash their hands.

Advertisement

The masks were time-consuming for the small company, which custom-made about half the masks it sold. For those, the engineers had people scan their faces with an iPhone app and made 3D-printed molds in their lab in Maryland. Then, at ActivArmor, a kind of clear, flexible plastic was heated and formed on the molds to make the actual masks.

The other half of the masks sold were ordered from six preselected sizes, a range that meant just about everyone found one that fit.

Hall wants to hand off the project to a large-scale manufacturer and distributor. She believes other firms could use the heat-forming technology, the kind used to mold Solo plastic cups, to make masks for a couple of dollars each.

The six sizes can still be ordered through a company called HMD Technology in Canada, but Hall said they are expensive at $65 and up in U.S. dollars. Even that price is a discount from her initial in-house, money-losing pricing of $99 for the off-the-shelf masks and $149 for the custom masks.

The products themselves look a bit like clear gas masks, with places on each side of the mouth for small replaceable filters or adapters to attach existing respirator-style disks for the most protection.

Hall said the biggest complaint from users was about a bit of moisture buildup inside the mask, which can be wiped off with a cloth.

Advertisement

Their real value is they are transparent, so you can see what the doctor or EMT coming to rescue you is saying. They are the correct shape for most every face. And they are fit tested for their protective seal, she said.

They dont bruise your face, she said. You can run them under the faucet to clean them.

But that wont matter to the masses until the cost comes down, she said.

Registered nurse Jessalynn Dest pulls on a new N95 mask Jan. 14, 2022, as indentations remain from another she had just removed after leaving a COVID-19 patient's room in the acute care unit of Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. (Elaine Thompson/AP)

Government and industry officials hope some new thinking could increase uptake and reduce costs for when masks are again recommended or required.

In the future, we need more effective and well-fitting masks, said Dr. Eric Toner, a senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, during a recent webinar hosted by the center and the Steering Committee on Pandemic Preparedness and Health Security, a nonpartisan educational forum for federal lawmakers and regulators.

Widespread public use of masks could save thousands of lives in the next pandemic, he said.

Advertisement

Toner said it would likely take government funding or reliable markets to incentivize industry to take up the development process and the supply chain to deliver enough of them.

The N95 and KN95 masks most effective in filtering the coronavirus were in such low supply early in the pandemic that state and hospital officials got into bidding wars. That was among the reasons they werent initially recommended to nonmedical consumers, who were directed to less-protective cloth masks, some of which were homemade.

The administration of President Joe Biden only recently was able to buy and mail more than 240 million of the best masks to the public and stock pharmacies and other outlets.

The country wasnt ready with masks for the pandemic, said Stephen Redd, a former deputy director for public health service and implementation science at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Strategic National Stockpile once had supplies, but many were not replaced after the H1N1 flu pandemic in 2009 and other batches expired, he said during the webinar. Even now, some N95 and KN95 masks cropping up for sale online do not meet government specifications.

Also, those specifications were largely created for industrial use, rather than pandemics, so there are no rules for kids masks.

Advertisement

Theres not been much focus on where innovation could take us, Redd said. How do you stimulate innovation in the absence of commercial demand?

Adriana Morante sews masks in 2020 at home in Weston, Florida. (Jessica Larrain/Courtesy)

Ellen White, global business director for respiratory products for the manufacturing giant 3M, told the panel the government needs to start with new regulations to guide the innovation. They should focus on better fit and reusability, in addition to protection, for both adults and children.

They need to be comfortable for users, she said. But we also need to look at the overall supply chain and how they can be brought to scale.

Government officials are thinking about those things, said Sandeep Patel, director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, the federal health department agency responsible for mask stockpiles.

Were trying to get away from single-use masks, he said. The other piece were thinking about is comfort and design, so people feel more comfortable wearing masks for a long time.

Breaking News Alerts As it happens When big news breaks in our area, be the first to know. >

That was a goal when the University of Maryland engineers first called ActivArmor.

Advertisement

The engineers say the work isnt done.

Cost remains the biggest barrier, said Kevin Aroom, a Maryland institute engineer whose face served as one of the initial models for the 3D-printed molds used in making the ActivArmor masks.

These days, he spends more time testing, in batches of 20, off-the-shelf N95 and KN95 masks on behalf of government and industry consumers to see how well they filter. Salt particles are substituted for aerosolized coronavirus in their high-tech machinery. Such testing is crucial in the time of internet forgeries, he said.

But testing, too, could use some innovation. For instance, they eventually could integrate testing equipment into the machines that manufacture masks and other devices.

Aroom, Bentley and others in the institute are eager to turn more ideas and research into commercial products, if someone is willing to fund the research and development.

We created the masks in record time, he said. And people in hospitals are wearing them right now.
A Twitter bot put organisations on notice on International Womens Day, tweeting that organisations gender pay gap if they dared to say anything to mark the annual occasion.

Gender Pay Gap Bot, an automated tool that listened on Twitter for certain keywords, was triggered if a tweet came from a company listed in the UK government gender pay gap database, a service we do not currently have in Australia.

The bot pushed out the difference in median hourly pay between men and women in a tweet that quoted the original IWD-related tweet.

The Gender Pay Gap Bots tweet simply says: In this organisation, women's median hourly pay is 14.6 per cent lower than mens above the original tweet, for example.

The differences varied, from less than 1 per cent to much higher, and in a very few cases the womens hourly pay was actually higher.

Created by copywriter Francesca Lawson and software developer Ali Fensome, the bot was able to utilise the database because in the UK, companies with over 250 employees must disclose their gender pay gap.

Lawson said she was pleased to have drawn awareness to the public availability of that information.

If you have a gender pay gap, now is a good time to acknowledge it and then outline what youre going to do to fix it, she told The Drum.

How Australia ranks in the Gender Pay Gap

The Twitter tool brought attention to the Gender Pay Gap, an internationally established measure of womens position in the economy relative to mens.

In most cases its lower, the result of a whole host of social and economic factors that combine to reduce womens earning capacity over their lifetime.

They include bias in hiring and pay decisions, women and men working in different industries and different jobs, with female-dominated industries and jobs attracting lower wages.

It also comes about because of womens disproportionate share of unpaid caring and domestic work, a lack of workplace flexibility to accommodate caring and other responsibilities  especially in senior roles  and womens greater time out of the workforce, impacting career progression and opportunities.

In Australia, the gender pay gap is 13.8 per cent (as of February 2022), with women earning around $255 per week less than men, according to the federal Workplace Gender Equality Agency.

Australia lacks a public database of gender pay gap

Australia ranked equal last in a scorecard on gender pay gap reporting across six countries, according to a report by the Global Institute for Women's Leadership (GIWL) at King's College London.

"After nearly four decades of gender equality reporting in Australia, many organisations have gender equality policies in place, but evidence suggests that many policies are ineffective," the report said.

To highlight the issue, Equal Pay Day is an annual event noting the continuing differences between mens and womens pay and why fairness and equality demand the closing of the gap.

For now, the Gender Pay Gap bot is only operating with UK data, but the pair have said they may add links to other sources if data become available.

Australia lacks a public register like the UKs that publishes the gender pay gaps of individual organisations, something researchers from the ANU have identified as an important tool to improve the situation.

"Without action, we remain a country that is stuck in low power mode, while others outpace us, said ANU researcher Dr Anna von Reibnitz.
If you receive an unsolicited text message along with a photo of an unknown young woman, dont answer it, experts warn.

In the latest text messaging scam, people throughout the United States have been receiving a text  likely from a number with the same area code as their own  from a rather friendly woman.

its been a little bit since u called, do u want me yet? one text reads.

Others have received texts with similar phrasing. Whats up handsome! I had so much enjoyment the other night. What do you feel ab round 2? another reads.

Many of the texts include a selfie of a red-haired woman, likely in her 20s or 30s  except thats not who is actually sending the text.

I did a double-take, Pam Anson, the director of brand outreach for the Better Business Bureau serving Greater Cleveland, told WOIO. Its a different approach than most scammers take and I didnt think anything too seriously until more of my friends started to say that they also received it.

One theory that has circulated on social media is that the scam is related to sex trafficking. One viral post says that by responding, the person on the receiving end can track your location.

But thats not accurate, says Ron Pierce, president of IT company Trinity Solutions.

Its a spam text message, Pierce told WFMY. Its kind of one of those social myths, it gets circulated every now and then. This one has been going around since at least 2020, and maybe even a little before. Then it used to be just the whole sex trafficking angle, but now its, watch out, they could track you. Its a lie, they cant track you by responding to the text or clicking anything like that.

Thats not to say answering the wrong-number text isnt without some risks, however. By responding, you confirm to the scammer that your phone number is legitimate and they are able to get additional numbers, says Robyn Householder, CEO of BBB Middle Tennessee.

Once they have access to your phone, then they have access to your contact list, she told WSMV. One victim makes it a good day for them.

It also may be a part of a romance scam, which have been on the rise. The Federal Trade Commission says people have lost more than $1.3 billion to romance scams in the past five years  including $547 million last year.

The scammers are deceitful and may try to con you out of your personal information or money, said Angie Barnett, president and CEO of the Better Business Bureau serving Greater Maryland.

Theyre charming, they say the right thing, they make you feel important, Barnett told WMAR. They give you what you need.

All of the experts agree on one thing  dont respond. Screenshot the text and reach out to your local law enforcement, they suggest.
COMPANY NEWS: Atturra, a leading technology services business in designing, implementing, and maintaining IT solutions, today announced a partnership with VaultSpeed, to sell and support the company's SaaS-based data warehouse automation solutions in Australia.

The strategic agreement follows the recent launch of Atturra's new data services practice within its data and integration team, which has award-winning experience of working with vendors including Boomi, Software AG and Snowflake. The addition of VaultSpeed will now enable Atturra to provide its customers with a cloud-based approach to modernising data infrastructure while at the same time maximising existing investments in both data warehouse technology and ETL tools.

"We are excited to welcome Atturra as one of our top partners in the APAC region," said VaultSpeed vice president of global partnerships Andreas Schurch. "Their proven experience and expertise in data warehouse automation in the cloud, as well as their in-depth knowledge of the data integration market in Australia and New Zealand, will be invaluable as we work together to bring new levels of speed and efficiency to our mutual customers in the region."

VaultSpeed's data warehouse automation software accelerates and automates the data warehouse lifecycle's design, build, and maintenance stages. It builds on the Data Vault 2.0 methodology using a code-free approach to speed up agile data integration. It dramatically reduces the cost to provide quality assured enterprise data that meet analysts' requirements for data-driven decision-making.

"We're excited to partner with VaultSpeed's data warehouse automation solution to provide the performance, scalability and flexibility enterprises need to effectively compete in today's cloud-first, data-driven business environment," said Atturra data and integration executive general manager Jason Frost.

"Building data warehouses from scratch is time intensive, involves writing SQL and managing storage. VaultSpeed provides enterprises with the power of data warehouse automation, generating all code and the automation required to centralise and model data. The result is a scalable, highly resilient cloud environment that increases productivity and agility for our customers. It enables them to gather real-time insights and actionable analytics to compete, succeed and emerge stronger in the post-pandemic period ahead."

VaultSpeed will provide Atturra with sales training, certification programs and marketing resources to deliver rapid sales readiness and technical knowledge excellence. For customers, this translates to the highest confidence in Attura's capability to help their business compete with data at scale.

About VaultSpeed

VaultSpeed provides a best-in-class data warehouse automation solution to speed up the process of data integration, building on the Data Vault 2.0 methodology. Enterprise customers worldwide rely on VaultSpeed to simplify the creation and maintenance of their data warehouse. The tool integrates with most popular ETL tools, hundreds of data sources, and top customer choices for cloud data stores like Snowflake, Microsoft Synapse, Databricks, and Google BigQuery. VaultSpeed is headquartered in Leuven, Belgium, with offices in Seattle, Washington and Vilnius, Lithuania.

For more information, visit https://www.vaultspeed.com.

About Atturra

Atturra is one of Australia's most extensive IT services and consulting companies, focused on providing end-to-end transformation services to its clients. Atturra goes to market directly and through several key service offerings, including advisory and consulting, business applications, cloud services, data and integration, management control solutions and change management and adoption.

Atturra is headquartered in Sydney and has offices in Melbourne, Canberra, and Brisbane. With more than 600 people across Australia, Atturra helps both the public and private sectors adapt and grow by delivering business and technology outcomes. Atturra offers its clients scale, market reach, deep capability, robust management processes, and the stability customers look for in a business partner that delivers results. For more information, visit atturra.com.
SHELBYVILLE  A Calumet City man police caught speeding at 115 mph on Illinois 128 in Shelby County is now facing multiple charges, according to prosecutors.

Shelby County States Attorney Nichole Kroncke said Travon N. Brown, 23, was also found to be in possession of cannabis. He was booked on that charge after his arrest on Feb. 28 and charged with speeding in a 55 mph zone, driving without a license, insurance or valid registration.

Kroncke said drivers who break the posted speed limit by more than 35 mph face a maximum jail sentence of up to 364 days.

Brown is due to appear April 11 in Shelby County Circuit Court.

Contact Tony Reid at (217) 421-7977. Follow him on Twitter: @TonyJReid

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
Q: Ive been following the Mark Meadows story. If Meadows did something illegal, who would be responsible for charging him? And could he be charged on the state and federal level?

A.A.

Answer: Meadows was the chief of staff during President Donald Trumps administration. He is also a former member of the U.S. House of Representatives for the 11th district in North Carolina. He left the House to become Trumps chief of staff.

Meadows listed the address of a mobile home in the mountains of North Carolina when he registered to vote. Its unclear whether Meadows ever lived in the mobile home.

He has not been charged with any crime.

By state statute (N.C.G.S.  163-22(d)), the N.C. State Board of Elections is the agency that investigates allegations of violations of election laws.

Patrick Gannon, the spokesman for the board, said that, When warranted by evidence, the State Board refers cases to district attorneys or U.S. Attorneys offices for further investigation or prosecution at their discretion.

We do not generally comment on specific incidents or investigations, or whether a particular matter is being investigated, Gannon said.

According to the state boards Elections-Related Investigations Priorities Policy, such cases are investigated by the general counsel, chief investigator, and other staff members who are needed. They will talk with the executive director about the investigation when necessary.

If a referral to prosecution is warranted, the general counsel or designee will approve the referral in writing. Updates will be provided to the executive director on an ongoing basis.

Q: Why are there signs covered by black plastic on Reynolda Road in Old Town, and beyond? Do we dare hope the rough road is going to be paved?

R.K. and B.S.

Answer: Yes R.K., you and other drivers in that area can dare to hope. Pat Ivey, the N.C. Department of Transportation division engineer for Forsyth County, said part of Reynolda Road/N.C. 67 will be repaved.

Reynolda Road/N.C. 67 from the Yadkin River to Leinbach Drive is included on the 2021-2022 Forsyth County Resurfacing contract scheduled for completion on 10-12-2022, Ivey said.

Q: I saw a wild reckless driver on the highway recently. Who should I have called? How can we alert the N.C. Highway Patrol or local police? Is there a number?

F.M.

Answer: If you are on a highway or interstate and encounter someone driving recklessly, you can call *HP to be connected to the nearest N.C. Highway Patrol communications center.

If you are on a city or county road, call 911.

Q: I have a lot of used syringes. Where can I dispose of them? I know Im not supposed to throw them in the trash.

L.S.

Answer: Youre right, needles and other sharp implements should never be thrown directly into the trash.

The N.C. Department of Environmental Quality recommends placing used syringes and needles in a heavy plastic bottle such as laundry detergent comes in. When the bottle is full, seal the top with heavy tape and place it in the trash.

Thank you

My husband and I would like to say thank you again to the wonderful couple who paid for our meal March 13 at K&W. They said it was in appreciation for wearing our masks. P.A

Email: AskSAM@wsjournal.com Write: Ask SAM, 418 N. Marshall St., Winston-Salem, NC 27101

Get local news delivered to your inbox! Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
Like a lot of people, Margaret Moffett was looking for something she could do to help ordinary Ukrainians.

Digging deep for such relief organizations as the International Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders or Samaritans Purse was a possibility  all are up and running in Ukraine  but that felt a little impersonal.

Its a very American thing to do, Heres some money. I hope it helps, she said.

Instead of stroking a check, Moffett opted for something more unconventional.

She used Airbnb to book a two-night stay in Kyiv, a vacation she will never take, to put cash directly in the hands of a Ukrainian she will never meet.

I just felt helpless and wanted to do it, she said. It was more for my benefit than hers.

Shared, liked and retweeted

Fueled by social media, a recent trend of booking lodging in Ukraine through in-home hosting services like Airbnb took off not long after the Russian invasion.

Per The Washington Post, the whole thing likely started with the social media account@quentin.quarantino that promotes fundraising campaigns.

In a March 3 tweet, the basic idea to rent rooms, apartments or houses in order to immediately get money to Ukraine was floated.

Within days the tweet had been shared and reposted across other mediums. National media outlets such as the Post and CNN picked up on it and amplified the message.

By early last week, Airbnb reported that more than 61,000 nights had been booked in Ukraine with a total value of close to $2 million.

Thats where Moffett picked up on it. A former journalist, she approached it with a healthy amount of skepticism before deciding to act.

I saw a story on CNN.com and thought about it for a while, she said. What are the dangers here?

Shed used Airbnb herself a half-dozen or so times, so she knew the drill. Go to the Airbnb website, type in a destination and anticipated days of travel. The service then checks availability and matches hosts with travelers. Payments are made through Airbnb, which takes a percentage and sends the lions share to the host.

Its pretty simple and normally a reliable service. Sold that it would be reliable, Moffett followed a couple of common-sense guidelines to narrow her choices.

Find somebody with a history (of renting) from before the war and check their designation, she said.

That would be superhost  a seal of approval dictated by actual travelers who have given good reviews about such things as host responsiveness, cleanliness and the accommodations matching what was advertised.

Next, she read comments left under each potential place and host. It was important that any host be an individual whose photo Moffett could see.

I was looking for something that wasnt part of a hotel or a chain, she said.

We are waiting for you

She settled on a spot in Kyiv and a host that had guests in recent months before the invasion.

I picked something really quirky with dark wood and weird shaped rooms, she said. Somebody had stayed there as recently as December. I was willing to risk $60.

That $60 covered a two-night stay from March 18-20; the reaction from the host was worth far more.

Thank you very much, we appreciate your support, the host wrote immediately. When the war is over, we are waiting for you to visit. We will be glad to receive you.

The simple elegance of such gestures was not lost on Airbnb, either.

The company has waived all guest and host fees for rentals in Ukraine, suspended service in Russia and said it would offer short-term housing for as many as 100,000 refugees.

For Moffett and thousands like her, booking a place was more about helping on an individual level.

It just killed me how optimistic she was, she said. I still have journalism instincts, and I wanted to ask questions. But I just couldnt bring myself to ask. I didnt want to know.

Moffett wont take that trip, but the fear that her host would suffer (or worse) is real.

I didnt want to not hear from her again, she said. I know it sounds selfish, but theres nothing else I could do.

Get local news delivered to your inbox! Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
As a semi-respected small-town newspaper editor, regionally known humor columnist and former cigar-chomping, hooch-swilling, skirt-chasing, cholesterol-lowering-medication-taking, underpaid and overworked bureau chief of the fictional yet highly respected Monkey Action News Team, I dont use my journalistic status, real or imagined, to promote goods or services.

I stopped after I gave a thumbs up to Cousin Juniors plumbing business and shortly thereafter he flooded the basement of the VFW hall, ruining 48 miniature American flags and a life-size cutout of Gen. George S. Patton.

But, in the real world, I do make exceptions from time to time. Phil Lee, the rocking troubadour, the self-proclaimed Mighty King of Love, has a new album out, and it is a dandy. Its called Phil Lee & Other Old Time Favorites. I recommend buying it with cold hard cash, a credit card or a handful of that cryptocurrency everyone is talking about.

I can hear some of the skeptics now: Hes only promoting Phil Lees new album in hopes of accessing the backstage debauchery and plethora of gorgeous groupies that are a staple of any Phil Lee show.

And my answer is, in the words of the late, great Hank Williams, mind your own business.

Phil, a North Carolina boy, has been crisscrossing this great nation for decades, sometimes driving a truck, sometimes unleashing his wickedly clever songs on audiences large and small.

He moved to the West Coast a few years ago. Instead of falling into the areas psychedelia or smooth Eagles-like output as some of us feared, he went back to his roots for the new one, back when he was part of the opening act for the farm report on WRAL-TV in Raleigh.

Ill let Phil explain it:

In 1968 (to the best of my recollection your honor) my Grandma Flossie wangled me a job on television playing drums for a guy who became a huge influence on my whole approach to show business  Homer A. Briarhopper. His suits and his Howdy, neighbors wave and the big smile, just the way he engaged the audience and his style of playing to the audience, stuck with me.

Every show was a couple of toe tappers, a few country favorites, a rocker or two for the kids, and always one for the sick and the shut-ins.

He was always inclusive, everybody was welcome and there was literally something for everyone. Fun for the whole family! Unfortunately, I got away from all that for about 60 years, but I wanted to do an album for my mama before she kicked the bucket. Honestly though, it looks like theres a race for the finish at this point that I may win.

My old time favorites on Phil Lee & Other Old Time Favorites include I Like Women, a reworking of an earlier gem called Daddys Jail and the gospel standard Just A Closer Walk With Thee, the song Harry Dean Stanton sings in the film Cool Hand Luke.

Back to Phil:

There are a couple of co-writes and a couple of traditional songs Ive always wanted to do ... it was just songs I had written, songs that my mother was particularly fond of like Daddys Jail or Wheres the Family Today? a co-write with my old friend James Brown, may God rest his soul. These are mostly songs Id always meant to do but they were never right for the arty records I was doing. Its one of those records with no secret devil-worshipping messages, no FUs, just an album of tunes my mama and I like.

There you have it. I say pick up a copy or digital download of Phil Lee & Other Old Time Favorites. I guarantee its better than Cousin Juniors plumbing skills.

Get Phil Lee & Other Old Time Favorites at https://philleeone.bandcamp.com/

Scott Hollifield is editor/GM of The McDowell News in Marion, N.C., and a humor columnist. Contact him at rhollifield@mcdowellnews.com.
Patients are likely to be more forthcoming about feelings of depression and other personal health issues when filling out a tablet questionnaire rather than talking with a nurse, according to a Wake Forest School of Medicine study.

The study was prompted by medical doctors pondering whether patients might be more forthcoming with honest information by completing a self-administered questionnaire.

What the study determined is that tablet screening detected twice as many people with depression, fall risk or intimate partner violence, compared with typical in-person screening by nursing staff.

Participating in the study were three Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist family medicine and three internal medicine practices. The study is published in the March 8 issue of JAMA Network Open.

We think using an iPad provides more privacy for patients and gives us more accurate health information than when nurses verbally do the screening as part of the check-in process for clinic visits, said Dr. David Miller, professor of internal medicine and the studys principal investigator.

It also saves nursing staff time since they dont have to ask the questions while checking a patients vitals and updating their medical information.

Novant Health Inc. said it screens for depression and food/housing insecurity as part of the pre-visit questionnaire on MyChart, but it does not involve electronic screening or on a tablet at its clinics.

For this non-randomized controlled trial, the screening questions for depression, fall risk and intimate partner violence that are asked at every primary care visit were programmed into the mPATH app.

The app was developed by Millers team in 2018 to assist patients with colorectal cancer screening.

All 23,026 patients included in the study were 18 years or older and were seen from June 2019 to February 2020.

Patients in the studys participating practices were asked to complete the mPATH questionnaire while in the waiting room and then return the tablet to the reception desk.

When nursing staff called the person in to check their vitals and place them in an exam room, a nurse simply clicked a button that automatically imported all the information to the patients electronic medical record.

If a patient screened positive for a fall risk, a real-time alert popped up on the patients electronic record, prompting the nursing staff to implement appropriate safety measures.

If a patient screened positive for severe depression or having thoughts of self-harm, an automatic alert popped up in the health record so the doctor had that information before seeing the patient and could evaluate whether immediate clinical attention was needed.

Miller said the accuracy of in-person screening of primary care patients for depression, injurious falls or intimate partner violence is hampered by time pressures, staff discomfort and patients reluctance to disclose sensitive information.

What is new about our study is that practices employed mPATH as part of their usual care, so we could see how tablet-based screening works in the real world, Miller said.

Limitations of the study included that it involved a single health system setting with a predominantly white population and its non-randomized design.

The next step for the study involves the research team conducting a cluster randomized implementation-effectiveness study of the mPATH app in community-based practices.

The projected completion date is March 2023.

Funding for the study was provided through a National Cancer Institute grant.

Concerned about COVID-19? Sign up now to get the most recent coronavirus headlines and other important local and national news sent to your email inbox daily. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
Following approvals by three City Council standing committees, Annapolis Mayor Gavin Buckleys proposal to install an electric ferry from City Dock to Eastport is set for a final vote Monday.

After more than five hours of combined debate, the Finance, Environmental Matters and Transportation standing committees all gave favorable recommendations to the ordinance Buckley is calling the 100% Electric Mobility Plan. The ordinance, O-40-21, would amend the citys capital budget for the current fiscal year and next to spend a combined $1.5 million to acquire an electric ferry and build docking and charging infrastructure at City Dock and the end of Fifth Street in Eastport. It also proposes acquiring electric trolleys and circulator buses.

Advertisement

Buckley has made the proposal the first big initiative of his second and final term in office, arguing the ferry will make the city a trailblazer in green infrastructure. But there has been pushback on both sides of Spa Creek from residents and civic associations who have argued the plan is being rushed without substantive community input. Others have questioned whether the city should be focusing its finances elsewhere.

Ive been talking about the ferry for a long time  and sometimes you have to step forward and move toward it, Buckley said Thursday during Environmental Matters Committee deliberations. You have to take a risk, but you should have faith and trust in the people youve elected.

Advertisement

We have a small plan for a small city that will pack a big punch, he added.

The Eastport Civic Association board supports the city electrifying its fleet, said Bill Reichhardt, the associations president who testified at all three hearings. Reichhardt has instead proposed waiting to spend funds on the plan until a study on its feasibility is done. The Ward One Residents Association submitted similar testimony.

Whats the rush. We feel like we are being shot out of a gun, Reichhardt said during his testimony Thursday. This is not about a boat, this is about doing this right. Its about the public interest being examined before money is being put on the table.

The city will study all aspects of the plan, including the demand for the ferry service, impacts on traffic and parking and the cost of maintenance, City Manager David Jarrell said. Some of the urgency around the proposal is because of an 18 to 24 month lead time for purchasing an electric ferry, he said.

Buckley has promised to secure grant funding from county, state and federal partners to pay for the project in its entirety.

The city is expected to make a $30,000 refundable down payment on the ferry, said Buckley, who has identified a boat built in Sweden that he says is far more advanced than U.S. models.

In all, the electric ferry would cost an estimated $330,000; another $100,000 would go toward planning and conceptual designs for the docking and charging.

In the next fiscal year, which begins July 1, $550,000 would be needed for an electric circulator bus, $50,000 for two electric six-passenger vans and $400,000 for DC charging infrastructure, according to city estimates.

Advertisement

Alderwoman Karma ONeill, a Ward 2 Democrat and chair of the Transportation Committee, said she had concerns about the proposal potentially violating the Jones Act, a federal law that regulates maritime commerce.

Afternoon Update Weekdays Updating you on the day's biggest news before the evening commute. >

Buckley is confident the ferry will receive all the required approvals but if it is in violation of the law, the city wont buy it and will seek other options, he said.

Randy Rowel, the newly appointed chair of the Environmental Commission, also gave testimony Thursday, during which he urged the city to find ways to make the project more inclusive by hiring a more diverse array of contractors.

The ferry would be operated by Watermark Cruises and Tours, but there would be opportunities to hire operators from disadvantaged communities, said Jack Guild, deputy city manager for resilience and sustainability.

There is support among residents who will live close to the proposed ferry stop in Eastport and see the ferry as an exciting draw for tourists and Annapolitans alike.

Funding the plan is a drop in the bucket for the budget when considering the service would likely improve transit as well as water access and add good city jobs, said Chris LeDoux, an Eastport resident, who testified at the Finance Committee on March 3.

Advertisement

Eastport resident Frieda Wildey wrote in written testimony to the Finance Committee that while the legislation is surely groundbreaking the ferry is just not ready to be implemented and leaves unanswered questions, she said, including why a U.S.- or Annapolis-based boat maker cant be used or how the city plans to address parking and flooding around 5th Street.

The Finance Committee approved an amendment to remove any mention to 5th Street from the proposal to allow other Eastport locations to be considered, though that is still the preferred location for the docking site, officials said.
Broken agreement

In 2016, the Obama administration bragged that a deal with Iran had ensured their nuclear program would remain exclusively peaceful. If that were true, why are we in more negotiations designed to produce a similar agreement that will also very likely be ignored? This is what Cal Thomas asked in his March 9 column What is Americas foreign policy?

The answer: Were in negotiations to produce a similar agreement because former President Trump tore up the agreement that Obamas administration negotiated with Iran.

And Iran didnt ignore that agreement. Every indication is that Iran kept its part of the bargain. Its the U.S., thanks to Trump, that broke it. Now were in a worse negotiating situation than we were then.

Surely Thomas knows this. This is either an expression of willful ignorance or an attempt to deceive.

Ricky S. Phillips

Winston-Salem

An alternative scheme

Marc Thiessen suggested in his March 10 column, Send planes to Ukraine now, that President Biden was mistaken to stop the Poles from sending MIG-29s to Ukraine. But he correctly pointed out that the problem was sending them through the U.S. facility at Ramstein. Nothing stops the Poles from inviting Ukrainian pilots to cross into Poland to pick up the planes. And as for selling used F-16s or F-18s to Poland, it would make the Poles more nearly NATO-compatible; were replacing ours with F-35s anyway, so the older planes should be available for sale.

Biden shouldnt just say no! He should propose an alternative transfer scheme. It would be consistent with his actions in support of Ukraine so far that, if a bit slow and step-wise, are pretty much the right things to do.

And while were at it, allow private groups to bring Ukrainian refugees to America. Many of us already contribute to such groups and Id give more if he would do that.

Michael Woods

Kernersville

Kicking the can

The March 8 editorial Pain at the gas pump is on point, but there is more our elected officials can do and should have already done.

As we watch the price at the pump rise each day, whatever the cause of the price increase, its unnerving to read study after study warning of the costs of climate change. The latest, The turning point, is by Deloitte, one of the Big Four accounting firms. The report emphasizes that wise economic decisions on how to respond to climate change are required.

Rep. Kathy Manning has backed the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act that would price carbon and return the oil companies payments to households to help offset increased costs and to spur investment and growth in renewable energy. Her efforts and support are greatly appreciated.

We need bipartisan, innovative solutions that will unite our country. I urge Sens. Richard Burr and Thom Tillis to join their fellow legislators on the Climate Solutions Caucus so that they can influence legislation to help shape a market-based approach to the battle against climate change. Continuing to kick this can down the road is costing more and more each day, its time for some action.

Debra Demske

Winston-Salem

Opportunistic

Unlike many of your letter writers, I dont think that all Republican legislators are evil. Nevertheless, their push for more domestic oil production seems more opportunistic than anything.

Sure, it sounds good on the surface: we need to produce more oil here instead of buying it from Russia. Certainly.

But wouldnt it make more sense to just stop being so reliant on oil? Burning it is harmful.

This is the 21st century. Other options are available. Many of them were included in President Bidens Build Back Better bill.

But Republicans dont dare agree with Biden, even if Biden makes sense. Theyd be replaced by someone even more extreme.

Renee Saunders

Winston-Salem

Priorities

Former President Trumps hidden tax returns are more important than Hunter Bidens laptop.

Children dying because of Russian bombing in Ukraine is more important that $4 gas.

And keeping elections free and fair is more important than making sure the GOP wins in 2022 and 2024.

Some people need to start thinking about where well be 10 years from now rather than where well be 10 minutes from now.

Henry Tubb

Winston-Salem
Nebraska's unemployment rate at the end of the year was not as low as officials originally thought.

After the state Department of Labor did its annual benchmarking process, which aligns estimated data from one employment statistics program with known employment numbers from a quarterly employment census, the December 2020 rate was revised upward, from what was thought to be an all-time national low of 1.7% to 2.3%.

That revised figure still tied Nebraska with Utah for the lowest unemployment rate in the country. The Labor Department noted in a news release that many other states also saw significant adjustments to their unemployment rates because of the benchmarking process.

The statewide rate for January was 2.2%, down slightly from December but significantly lower than the 3.2% rate in January 2021.

Commissioner of Labor John Albin noted in the news release that employment numbers increased by more than 2,700 from December to January, while the number of unemployed people decreased by more than 1,000.

The Lincoln area's unemployment rate rose to 2.3% in January, more than double the 1.1% rate for December, although those numbers are not seasonally adjusted. The rate in January 2021 was 3.3%.

Because of the benchmarking process, revised December unemployment data is not yet available for the state's metropolitan areas.

The Lincoln area's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for December was 1.5%, which tied for second-lowest in the country.

3 charts that show the national jobs picture US unemployment rate These charts will automatically update each month upon the release of the jobs report: US job gains, losses These charts will automatically update each month upon the release of the jobs report: US labor participation rate These charts will automatically update each month upon the release of the jobs report:

Reach the writer at 402-473-2647 or molberding@journalstar.com. On Twitter @LincolnBizBuzz.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0

The business news you need Get the latest local business news delivered FREE to your inbox weekly. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
State Sen. Adam Morfeld is qualified to run for Lancaster County attorney, the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled Monday.

Based on the plain and ordinary meaning of 'practiced law' and 'actively,' we conclude that Morfelds routine activities with Civic Nebraska fall within the meaning of 'practiced law actively' and that he has engaged in such activities for the relevant 2-year period, the opinion said.

The high court affirmed the ruling by Lancaster County District Judge Kevin McManaman, who found the state and Lancaster County GOP failed to prove their contention that Morfeld didn't meet the statutory requirements for him to run for county attorney.

Morfeld, a Democrat whose name will be on the May 10 primary ballot, issued a statement saying the lawsuit was without merit and meant to harass a candidate and circumvent voters.

"Their failure at every level of the litigation in the election commissioner's office, district court and now Supreme Court only exemplifies that," he said.

The case began when the GOP filed an objection to Morfelds candidacy with the Lancaster County Election Commissioner, alleging he didnt meet the qualifications set out in state law that he had practiced law actively for at least the past two years.

The election commissioner denied the objection, the GOP appealed to Lancaster County District Court and McManaman denied the appeal.

The Supreme Court decided to hear the case, finding that it posed a novel question with significant public interest.

At issue was whether Morfelds work as executive director of his nonprofit Civic Nebraska, as co-chair of a group trying to get the medical marijuana issue on the ballot and as a member of the Legislatures Judiciary Committee fit the requirement in state law.

Morfelds attorney argued that it should be liberally defined and that the GOP couldnt overcome the high bar set to remove someone from the ballot.

GOP Attorney David Lopez said the court should look to attorney practice and bar admission rules enacted by the court, which lists various ways attorneys are substantially engaged in the practice of law. He argued none of those applied to Morfeld.

The high court found that neither of the two sets of rules that attorneys presented to define "actively" practicing law existed when the Legislature passed the law in 1969.

"Thus, we are reluctant to characterize those rules as demonstrative of the plain and ordinary meaning in 1969 of the words 'practiced law actively,'" the high court said.

The court went further, saying that a "fundamental canon of statutory construction" is that words should be interpreted based on their ordinary meaning when the Legislature passes a law.

The high court referred to both general and legal definitions, and found that based on those definitions, Morfeld's day-to-day work with Civic Nebraska falls within the definition.

The decision also dismissed issues raised by the GOP that the district court erred by not allowing it to present more evidence or depose Morfeld.

In a decision signed by four of the justices, the high court noted that the courts attention is focused on qualifications to be placed on the ballot.

Ultimately, the electors of Lancaster County are charged with determining whether a candidates experience is meaningful and worthy of support, the opinion said.

Chief Justice Mike Heavican, and justices Stephanie Stacy and Jonathan Papik did not participate.

Morfeld is challenging incumbent Pat Condon, a Republican and longtime deputy county attorney appointed to replace Joe Kelly when he became U.S. Attorney for Nebraska. Condon ran unopposed in 2018.

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

Love 4 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 1

Sign up for our Crime & Courts newsletter Get the latest in local public safety news with this weekly email. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
Felipe Vazquez's mother Monday described conversations she had with her son about the 2020 shooting that took the life of Lincoln Police Officer Mario Herrera.

"I asked him what happened, to tell me the truth," Adela Gonzalez, of Albuquerque, New Mexico, told the jury, her words translated from Spanish.

As Vazquez's trial for first-degree murder, attempted first-degree assault on an officer and five other felonies moved into the second week in Columbus, jurors heard from both of his parents.

On Monday, his mother, Gonzalez, said her ex-husband, Epignio Vazquez, picked up Felipe for a summer vacation when he was 10 or 11 and never brought him back.

Their divorce when Vazquez was about 3 had been hard on Felipe, she said. So she didn't report it when her ex-husband took their son first to Colorado and then Nebraska. And she didn't have much contact with her son afterward.

But following his arrest for the shooting at the age of 17, Gonzalez said she got video phone calls from him while he was in custody. He recounted for her that on Aug. 26, 2020, police had surrounded his dad's house at 33rd and Vine streets.

She didn't know it at the time, but police were looking for Vazquez on a felony warrant and he'd barricaded himself inside his stepbrother's bedroom.

"He told me that he was afraid," Gonzalez said. "He broke a window with his hand, and he had to run away."

She asked him why he didn't just come out and turn himself in.

"And what did he say?" Lancaster County Attorney Pat Condon asked.

"That he was just afraid and wanted to run away," Gonzalez said.

Vazquez told her he had a gun and fired it into the air.

Prosecutors say he fired three shots, one of which struck Herrera in the torso.

Herrera ultimately died from his wounds Sept. 7, 2020.

Epignio Vazquez said he was behind his house when he heard shots in the front yard that he assumed were police firing at his son, then he saw his son and a friend running away.

He didn't see a gun in his hand then or know yet that he'd fired it.

Epignio Vazquez said he shouted at an officer not to shoot his son in the back.

"I think he was afraid from all of the police officers that were around him," he said through a translator.

Epignio Vazquez said he hasn't talked a lot to his son since about what happened that day. He's not supposed to.

The calls from the jail are recorded.

Condon asked about one, where he said Felipe Vazquez told his father he didn't feel bad about it. Epignio Vazquez said he didn't remember that.

On cross-examination later, he said his son told him the opposite.

Condon also asked Gonzalez about a recorded conversation she had with Felipe Vazquez.

"He told you he didn't think the state could prove their case, correct?" the prosecutor asked.

"Yes," she said.

"And that he didn't intend to shoot the officer?" Condon continued.

"That was not his intention. He didn't want to do it," Gonzalez said.

"That's what he told you," Condon clarified.

"Yes, correct," she said.

In the end, that will be a question for the jury.

The case continues in Platte County District Court, where the trial was moved because of pretrial publicity.

Reach the writer at 402-473-7237 or lpilger@journalstar.com. On Twitter @LJSpilger

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 1

Sign up for our Crime & Courts newsletter Get the latest in local public safety news with this weekly email. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
The University of Nebraska is raising the income threshold for a program allowing Nebraska students to attend tuition-free beginning in the 2022-23 school year.

Launched in 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic, the Nebraska Promise guaranteed free tuition for Nebraska undergraduate students from families with a household income of less than $60,000  the median household income in the state.

On Monday, NU President Ted Carter announced the income threshold would be raised to $65,000, which will expand the program to an estimated additional 175 students.

More than 7,000 students have qualified for the free-tuition program at the university's campuses in Lincoln, Omaha and Kearney since it was created.

At the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, that includes 2,969 students, the university said, while 2,831 students at the University of Nebraska at Omaha have accessed the program.

A total of 1,029 students at the University of Nebraska at Kearney, 153 at the University of Nebraska Medical Center and 63 at the Nebraska College of Technical Agriculture have also qualified for the Nebraska Promise.

"Over the past two years, the chancellors and I have heard so many stories of students whose dreams of a college education have been made possible because of the Nebraska Promise," Carter said in a statement.

"We know times are still uncertain and that every dollar matters to students and families," he added. "We've decided to extend the Nebraska Promise to more Nebraska families because access to higher education is more important now than ever."

To be eligible for the Nebraska Promise, students pursuing a bachelor's degree at any NU campus must take at least 12 credit hours and earn at least a 2.5 grade-point average.

Students must also complete the Free Application for Financial Student Aid (FAFSA) each year before the priority deadline in order to remain eligible.

The tuition-free program covers up to 30 credit hours per academic year, and does not apply to costs beyond tuition such as fees, books, or room and board.

Students who receive scholarships and grants from either NU or other sources can apply those dollars to those costs, however.

Carter said the expansion of the Nebraska Promise is among the steps the university is taking to improve access and affordability.

Tuition rates remain frozen at NU for the 2022-23 school year, after regents approved keeping costs steady last year.

The creation of NU's program in 2020 led other area colleges to establish similar free-tuition programs for students from qualifying households.

Nebraska Wesleyan University launched the Access NWU Scholarship, while Union College created the Bridge to Union Scholarship.

Reach the writer at 402-473-7120 or cdunker@journalstar.com. On Twitter @ChrisDunkerLJS

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0

Want to see more like this? Get our local education coverage delivered directly to your inbox. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
In terms of Nebraska history, it doesn't get more high-profile than to have a congressman on trial for three felonies while he's running a reelection campaign.

Historic. Climactic. Dramatic? That's left to be seen.

Certainly, the result will be dramatic, as Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, Nebraska's 1st District congressman, fights for his political life. In the past century, Nebraska has seen other high-profile elected officials face felonies, including a Nebraska attorney general in 1984.

As a sitting U.S. congressman, Fortenberry takes that potential ignominy to a new level.

But that doesn't mean Fortenberry's trial, which starts Wednesday in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom, will be cinematic.

In fact, strip away the fact that he's a congressman, and Fortenberry is no different from the hundreds of federal defendants who get charged every year with lying to the FBI. In other cases, such charges are exactly as they appear in Fortenberry's case: essentially secondary charges to the underlying charge. In his case, Fortenberry was being investigated on suspicion of accepting a foreigner's campaign contributions through a conduit. It is illegal for U.S. politicians to accept money from foreigners or to use U.S. citizens as conduits to obtain foreigners' money.

Fortenberry's campaign raised $30,000 of such money at a 2016 fundraiser. And prosecutors say Fortenberry, despite having misgivings about the source of that money, later asked a connection if he would be able to put a second fundraiser together.

Federal prosecutors allege he lied to agents about the contributions during two separate interviews.

Fortenberry and his attorneys deny he lied. Attorneys John Littrell and Ryan Fraser said the congressman was set up and that he was misled when he was assured he was "trending towards a witness," not a target, in the investigation into the illegal campaign contributions. They will argue that any misstatements were simply a product of a fallible memory of a 61-year-old man, not of a deliberate attempt to deceive.

The four- to five-day trial  which will take place where Fortenberry's fundraiser did, in Los Angeles  is as high-stakes as it gets.

A preview of the key players and issues, based on numerous court filings and public statements in the case:

Fortenberry

A graduate of Catholic High School in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Fortenberry was an executive for Sandhills Publishing in Lincoln and was an at-large member of Lincolns City Council from 1997 to 2001 before running to replace Doug Bereuter, who retired at the end of 2004. His win in 2004 was the only time he faced a Republican primary challenger. He has been reelected eight times and is now seeking a ninth term.

He is stringently anti-abortion and has advanced several conservative causes during his time in office. He also has experience in foreign policy matters. He once co-sponsored the Middle East Partnership for Peace Act, which aims to ease tensions between Israelis and Palestinians by giving grants and loans to startup businesses. In 2014 and 2015, Fortenberry led efforts to obtain the passage of two resolutions publicly condemning the persecution of Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East.

At some point, those interests led to a relationship with Toufic Baaklini.

Baaklini

In 2014, Baaklini founded In Defense of Christians to advocate for the protection of Christians in the Middle East.

A U.S. citizen of Lebanese descent, Toufic Baaklini has served as a go-to guy for a controversial figure and Nigerian billionaire at the center of this case, Gilbert Chagoury. Baaklini assisted Chagoury with financial and political dealings in the United States, according to federal prosecutors.

One of the aims of Baaklinis group was to get more U.S. congressional involvement surrounding these issues, and (Fortenberry) became an important political ally for Baaklini and his organization, prosecutors wrote.

In turn, the two developed a close relationship, texting and emailing often.

How many of you have ever been able to tell Toufic Baaklini no? Fortenberry once asked at an IDC dinner in 2018, looking into the audience for a show of hands. Its unanimous: no one, he said.

Prosecutors say that Fortenberry had his own request of Baaklini. In late 2015, after introducing the resolution to condemn the persecution of Christians, Fortenberry asked Baaklini to assist him in identifying supporters who would contribute to his reelection campaign.

Baaklini advised defendant that he had a group of Lebanese donors in Los Angeles who wanted to support defendant, and defendant, in turn, directed his fundraising consultant, Alexandra Kendrick, to coordinate the event with Baaklini.

Baaklini is now a cooperating witness in the governments case and has agreed to pay a $90,000 fine for his actions.

Chagoury

He is Nigerian-born, of Lebanese descent and lives in Paris.

Prosecutors allege that Gilbert Chagoury is the source of $180,000 in illegal political contributions to four political candidates, including the $30,000 that was funneled to Fortenberrys campaign.

It is not the first time Chagoury has sought to purchase influence or been linked to corruption.

A household name in Nigeria, Chagoury is well-known among people who look into corruption challenges around the world and among people who know about some of the most "corrupt episodes in recent Nigerian political history, said Matthew Page, a former U.S. State Department expert.

Chagourys role of adviser to a notorious Nigerian dictator in the 1990s is well-documented, and he has had other brushes with scandal since. In addition to the $180,000 in illegal contributions to four political candidates, Chagoury separately routed $50,000 to then-U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, in the form of a purported loan that LaHood never disclosed, as required.

In 2015 and 2016, national news outlets reported that he was a top Clinton Foundation donor. Such a donation was legal but was nonetheless controversial as Hillary Clinton was campaigning for president at that time.

He was a key initial financial backer for Baaklini's nonprofit.

Through Baaklini, Fortenberry also came to know Chagoury based on their shared commitment to (In Defense of Christians) and the cause, and the two personally met twice: once in Washington D.C. and once in Paris, prosecutors wrote.

Chagoury agreed to cooperate with the federal investigation and pay a fine of $1.8 million for his actions.

Individual H

Fortenberry developed a third friend over his work for In Defense of Christians. Prosecutors have referred to the Los Angeles physician in court documents only as Individual H, who also is of Lebanese descent. A former board member of IDC, he also has agreed to cooperate with the government.

In January 2016, Baaklini provided $30,000 of Chagourys money in cash to Individual H at a restaurant in LA with instructions that Individual H host a fundraiser for Fortenberry and recruit other individuals (conduits) to contribute Chagourys money to defendants campaign, prosecutors wrote.

Kendrick

At the time, Alexandra Kendrick was a fundraising consultant for Fortenberry.

In early February 2016, Baaklini introduced Kendrick to Individual H as the host of the Los Angeles fundraiser. In the lead-up to the 2016 fundraiser, Kendrick repeatedly emphasized to (Fortenberry) the potential risk of illegal foreign and conduit contributions with this event, prosecutors said.

She relayed ... a cautionary tale in which she coordinated for a different client a fundraiser that similarly had ties with foreign nationals from the same community. (She) later learned that the contributions from that event were illegal foreign and conduit contributions.

Kendrick was so concerned that she told Fortenberry that she would insist that the donors complete the contribution forms in person at her table, given her concerns about possible conduit contributions.

The critical issue

The trial beginning Wednesday will come down to the ability of prosecutors to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Fortenberry knowingly and intentionally lied or tried to conceal the contributions?

It is not enough for Fortenberry to just have been mistaken; he has to have been deliberate in any lies to federal agents.

Prosecutors say Fortenberry wasnt just mistaken.

A short time after the 2016 fundraiser, (Fortenberry) saw Baaklini in Washington, D.C., prosecutors wrote. In a private conversation, defendant asked Baaklini if he thought anything was wrong with the 2016 fundraiser. Baaklini falsely told him no and inquired why defendant was asking.

In response, defendant noted that the money had all come from one family. Baaklini again falsely told defendant nothing was wrong with the fundraiser.

A month later, Fortenberrys resolution condemning the persecution of Christians in the Middle East passed.

Over the next two years, Fortenberry and Individual H kept in contact, largely through texts. In the spring of 2018, Fortenberry was readying for reelection. He went back to Individual H.

Fortenberry "asked Individual H if he would host another fundraising event in Los Angeles for him," prosecutors Mack Jenkins and Susan Har wrote. "Individual H agreed to look into it."

On June 4, 2018, Individual H, who by then was cooperating, called Fortenberry while FBI agents were recording, according to prosecutors.

"During that nine-minute call, Individual H repeatedly discussed with defendant that Baaklini had given Individual H $30,000 cash to contribute to the 2016 fundraiser. He mentioned that Chagoury 'was probably the ultimate source of the money ... because he was so grateful for (Fortenberrys) support (for) the cause.'

Fortenberry did not express surprise or concern or seek clarification about Individual Hs admissions that illegal foreign cash had been funneled to his campaign, prosecutors wrote.

Instead, defendant continued to push the second fundraiser, explaining that he hoped to have some continuation of the fine generosity that he had received from the first fundraiser, prosecutors said.

The defense

Fortenberry's attorneys, John Littrell and Ryan Fraser, have argued that the call was a setup, that Fortenberry relied on assurances he was trending toward being a witness and that he never deliberately misled authorities. Littrell and Fraser also tried to introduce a memory expert to testify to the unreliability of memory. But the judge has declined to allow that person's testimony, in part because, he says, the expert is simply stating the obvious when it comes to memory. The attorneys can argue such matters, the judge ruled.

Chad Kolton, Fortenberry's campaign spokesman, said the "case centers on an approximately 10-minute-long phone call prosecutors directed their informant (Individual H) to make to Jeff Fortenberry to implant information with him they knew he did not have."

"FBI agents then used false pretenses to interview Fortenberry in his home nearly a year later, and when he failed to recall the details of the brief call to their satisfaction, California prosecutors moved to indict him," Kolton said. "Something the FBI's own materials show they planned to do before the interview even took place."

The judge

Judge Stanley Blumenfeld Jr. is a longtime judge in California who was on the state bench for 15 years before becoming a federal judge. He was appointed to two judgeships by celebrities-turned-politicians  to the state court bench by then-California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2005 and to the federal court bench by then-President Donald Trump in 2020.

No-nonsense but polite, he comes to hearings with a command of issues and pointed questions. He cuts off attorneys who veer off topic. Notably, he has bristled at the Fortenberry teams requests to delve into the political views of jurors, and the political donations of Mack Jenkins, the lead prosecutor.

He once was incredulous at an attorneys comment that the judge should recuse himself unless he was planning to dismiss the case against Fortenberry. Maybe give me a serious response, the judge scolded.

Blumenfeld himself served for four years, early in his career, in the same U.S. Attorneys Office that houses the prosecutors in this case. Blumenfeld was, however, an attorney on the civil side. As a state court judge, he presided over more than 200 criminal trials.

The jury

As often is the case in federal court, the judge will do all questioning of prospective jurors. Fortenberrys team fought hard to have the case moved to Nebraska, in part because Fortenberry is from here but also because of their fear of the political views of Californians.

Its vital that we know if people have a bias against Republicans in our jury pool, Littrell told the judge last week.

Blumenfeld wasnt so sure. He agreed that he would try to detect biases, but said a blanket political party inquiry can lead to jurors seeing an easy way out of jury duty by flatly declaring they dont like one party.

The judge suggested that very few jurors review matters only through a political lens  and he questioned if it will even come up that Fortenberry is Republican. Littrell countered that some jurors will figure it out and might assume that Fortenberry is Republican because hes from Nebraska.

In that downtown L.A. courtroom, Nebraska "will seem like a foreign place, Littrell said. I think jurors will assume there are different values there.

The consequence

It's hard to overstate this. A conviction would mean Fortenberry would face up to five years in prison on each of the three counts, though supervised release also is a possibility.

In an interesting twist, it wouldnt necessarily mean that he would be booted from Congress. Congress has had its share of felons over the years  and unless that felony involves treason, it doesnt require automatic dismissal.

That said, Fortenberry is facing a Republican primary challenger for the first time since his original 2004 run. Republican state Sen. Mike Flood of Norfolk has made the indictment the center of a recent ad. Two Democrats are vying to battle the Fortenberry-Flood winner.

Make no mistake: Fortenberry is fighting for his life as a politician and as a free man.

"Jeff Fortenberry has always had great faith in the American people's ability to judge what is fair and just," Kolton said Friday. "When the jury hears the facts in this case, they will recognize his innocence."

The World-Herald's Sheritha Jones and Sara Gentzler contributed to this report.

Love 1 Funny 0 Wow 1 Sad 0 Angry 0
It's about time  that was both the message and the topic Monday as the Legislature gave 40-3 first-round approval to a bill that would provide for year-round daylight saving time in Nebraska.

Sen. Tom Briese of Albion, sponsor of LB283, said the change would "help generate economic opportunity and help grow our state" by eliminating the impact of time changes on work productivity, personal health and medical conditions and commerce.

The time change in Nebraska would take effect only if the federal government authorizes it and if the change is also adopted by at least three neighboring states.

Nineteen states, including bordering Wyoming, already have adopted such a proposed change.

"Everyone hates changing clocks twice a year," Briese said, but that ritual not only is annoying, but has some negative impacts on health and worker safety, as some individuals struggle with the adjustment.

Briese, whose bill was debated one day following this year's change to daylight saving time, said he has had "an overwhelmingly positive feedback" to his introduction of the bill.

Sen. Steve Erdman of Bayard opposed the proposal, arguing that the change would negatively impact workers and families who now benefit from the adjustment of time to reflect seasonal changes in daylight hours.

Erdman was joined by Sens. Robert Clements of Elmwood and Mike Hilgers of Lincoln in voting against advancement of the bill.

Reach the writer at 402-473-7248 or dwalton@journalstar.com. On Twitter @LJSdon

Love 3 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 1

Get Government & Politics updates in your inbox! Stay up-to-date on the latest in local and national government and political topics with our newsletter. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
DULUTH, Minn.  The U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Spar is traveling from Baltimore to its new home port in Duluth.

The crews duties will include maintaining aids to navigation, domestic icebreaking, search and rescue and law enforcement, according to the Coast Guard.

Advertisement

The Spar was commissioned in 2001 and originally based in Kodiak, Alaska. The 225-foot buoy tender left in 2020 for the Coast Guard Yard to undergo maintenance.

The Coast Guard Cutter Alder left Duluth for Baltimore in mid-June 2021 and is expected to move to its new home port in San Francisco this summer.

Advertisement

The Star Tribune reports that the Spars crew will sail through the St. Lawrence Seaway and across the Great Lakes to Duluth.
Since March 2020, nonprofits have served as first responders to meet the urgent needs of communities throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. They helped cities and towns provide resources in response to escalating needs.

The problems created and exacerbated by the pandemic are not over. Many Nebraskans are still hurting and struggling with food insecurity and hunger, having safe and affordable housing and finding quality and affordable child care.

Food Bank for the Heartland continues to see record numbers of individuals and families needing food throughout Nebraska. They distributed enough food for 37 million meals in fiscal year 2021, nearly 9 million more than the previous year. Catholic Charities of Omaha is estimated to provide food to over 260,000 people in 2022, a 400% increase in the number of people served in three short years.

Another nonprofit, Community Action of Nebraska, has distributed $1.7 million in rental assistance across Nebraska to 3,326 clients and 1,534 households in just the last six months. The majority of agencies that provide rental assistance services say requests for assistance are higher than before the pandemic, and there has been an increase in requests for eviction support.

And childcare is critical to help overcome the workforce challenges we are seeing in Nebraska. For all families, no matter their income, the cost of child care can easily equal college tuition, rent or mortgage payments. The past two years have been tough on everyone, but it has been twofold for our parents, many who work frontline jobs in food service, first response and health care. Secure and steady childcare is the key for sustaining our workforce.

The Nebraska Legislature can tackle these problems head on by appropriating federal American Rescue Plan Act dollars in these critically important areas. These are the bills that we believe will best help Nebraskans overcome the impact of the pandemic:

 LB 1203 would appropriate funds for child care programs.

 LB 1201 would help nonprofits provide additional food assistance and modernize the supply chain.

 LB 940 would increase affordable housing.

 LB 1024, LB 1025 and LB 1038 would provide support for North Omaha and South Omaha.

 LB 1063 and LB 1167 would expand and retain Nebraskas workforce.

 LB 1269 would support the rural health care workforce.

 LB 1091 and LB 1055 would provide health care scholarships and premium pay for nurses.

 LB 1066 would support the behavioral health workforce.

 LB 721 would support the University of Nebraskas Rural Health Complex.

The American Rescue Plan Act has provided Nebraska with an unprecedented opportunity to implement strategic investments in communities to drive sustainable change for Nebraskas future.

The Nonprofit Association of the Midlands and the nonprofits they serve hope that the Legislature will appropriate these transformational funds into the areas hit hardest by COVID-19. Using these funds to lift up the Nebraskans most impacted by the pandemic is the best way to ensure a strong and sustainable recovery for our state, our residents and our economy.

Anne Hindery lives in Omaha and is CEO with the Nonprofit Association of the Midlands.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
SOMERS  What Would George Washington Do? That question will be posed and discussed during a virtual panel discussion scheduled from 5 to 7 p.m. March 15 at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside. The discussion will explore the nations first presidents multi-faceted career and his legacies as a political leader, diplomat, businessman and cultural figure, and the relevance of his accomplishments in 2022.

The virtual discussion will be made available for public viewing via livestream.

Featuring the findings of four leading Washington scholars, this panel will move beyond the marble man image of Washington to discuss his efforts to launch the Constitution and ensure the successful launching of the new American republic. His efforts were not limited to the political arena; they also included achievements on the battlefield, as an entrepreneur, and as a planter. The panelists will highlight their recent books and then engage in a conversation with each other and the audience.

Sandy Moats, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, will moderate the panel. Professor Moats recently released her second book on the early American republic, titled, Navigating Neutrality: Early American Governance in the Turbulent Atlantic, which analyzes the role Washingtons 1793 Neutrality Proclamation played in energizing the U.S. governments constitutional responsibilities to support and promote Americas commercial and sovereign interests. Designed to avoid warfare, neutrality encompassed a wide range of issues, including diplomacy, law, defense, commerce, and domestic politics.

Panelists joining Moats are Alexis Taines Coe, Mark McNeilly and David O Stewart. Coe is the New York Times bestselling author of You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George of Washington. Critics of her revisionist book laud the biography for stripping away the myths and providing insight into the complicated man. Mark McNeilly, professor of the Practice of Marketing at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Kenan-Flagler Business School, provides a different view of Washington in his book, George Washington and the Art of Business: The Leadership Principles of Americas First Commander-in-Chief, which analyzes the presidents military career, drawing insightful parallels to business. Rounding out this elite panel is David O. Stewart, author of George Washington: The Political Rise of Americas Founding Father, which explores the development of a president, who honed his skills to become a master politician and take advantage of the political arena.

Washington led the nation from independence to an unprecedented Republican government during a time of deep turmoil and uncertainty. Panelists will explore the challenges he faced, the decisions he made, and the political advice he might offer to a deeply divided United States in 2022.

George Washington was not only the first president, but he was the most important because every decision he made was unprecedented, said Moats. How the new U.S. Constitution would work in practice was a question he confronted every day. We can learn how to govern by studying the choices he made in his two terms.

For more information and registration, visit uwp.edu/csspsevents.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
Last month, Queen Elizabeth of the United Kingdom celebrated her 70th year on the throne. She is the first monarch of the nation to serve this long.

For the rest of the year, there will be ceremonies marking this important anniversary in Britain, the Commonwealth and elsewhere around the world.

Britain played a pivotal role in World War II, when the Anglo-American Special Relationship was truly forged. The alliance between President Franklin Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill was the centerpiece.

At home in Britain, Churchill and King George VI developed a close partnership, vital to national unity in a desperate struggle. Then-Princess Elizabeth worked driving a truck during the war.

Ceremonies are important, and here the British excel. Their monarch has residual ruling powers, including the formality of actually appointing the government following a general election or other, sometimes unanticipated political shakeup.

In the 1960s, Elizabeths husband Prince Philip spoke at UCLA, greeted by an Army ROTC student honor guard that included me. He arrived in a closed Rolls Royce so enormous that he stood before exiting. Philip shook hands and talked with us young men, a classy, kind gesture.

The public role of the Queen or King may be primarily symbolic. Nonetheless, that can become important in a time of national crisis or tragedy, especially war.

Britains government, after the 2016 referendum vote to leave the European Union, embarked on a complicated, painful effort to do so. In contrast to the heroic, historic stand against Nazi Germany, this bizarre ordeal became more like Alice in Wonderland.

Over four centuries ago, namesake Queen Elizabeth I was forcefully in charge of the British Isles. Those were brutal times, when losing a power struggle could cost your life.

That Elizabeth modernized Britain, managing Parliament with prudent skill. She stabilized politics following the tumultuous reign of her father Henry VIII. She confirmed influence in Europe, effectively balancing the nations of that continent.

Today, the Crown and Parliament have subtly complementary roles. Walter Bagehot, long-time editor of the influential weekly magazine The Economist, described the situation brilliantly, with enduring insight.

The world has changed greatly since Bagehots analysis appeared in 1867. However, his fundamental insight remains very valid today. Parliament handles the practical efficient functions of governing while the monarchy handles the largely ceremonial dignified functions. Americans can envy the lack of an imperial presidency there.

Fundamentally important is that the British, unlike the Americans, have no written constitution. Parliament is effectively supreme, though the nation in October 2009 did formally establish an American-style Supreme Court.

The important ceremonial functions address the collective emotions of the people at large regarding government. In the 1930s, King Edward VIII generated great controversy when he wanted to marry Wallis Simpson, an expatriate American. In that different, earlier time, the fact that she was not British generated extensive public attention and debate. She also had been divorced twice. In general, notoriety followed her.

Vastly more important, Edward was sympathetic to Nazi Germany, as well as being personally extremely eccentric and unstable. Adolf Hitler and others at the top of the Nazi regime in Germany considered him a strategic asset, eventually to help control Britain in a conquered Europe. Finally, Edward abdicated to marry his American.

History underscores the importance of Britains Royal Family. Russias invasion of Ukraine reinforces the Special Relationship. Nothing fake about these realities.

Learn more: Walter Bagehot, The English Constitution, and the film The Darkest Hour.

Arthur I. Cyr is author of After the Cold War. Contact acyr@carthage.edu

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
1. Yes. Raising the bar for future developments will boost the citys housing market.

2. Yes. It will help in newer areas, but more needs to be done to change Killeens image.

3. No. The new standards will just slow down homebuilding and drive away developers.

4.No. The ordinance will do little more than drive up the price of new homes in the city.

5. Unsure. Its hard to say what the effect will be until they have been in place for a while.

Vote

View Results
GRAND ISLAND  Eight horses were scratched from Friday afternoons racing at Fonner Park because of a quarantine implemented amid equine health problems.

A 21-day quarantine has been placed on Barn R, where more than 100 horses are stalled. Two horses were euthanized in the last week  one Wednesday and one Thursday. The cause of their illness has not yet been identified.

Fonner Park Chief Executive Officer Chris Kotulak described the quarantine as a precautionary step.

While we have yet to confirm if there has been an outbreak of a virus, we have decided to err on the side of caution and enact immediate precautions, Kotulak said in a statement. The livelihood of many has been affected. The health and welfare of all beings in our stable is always a grave concern. And everyone has a role to play to return to normalcy.

The illness is believed to be the equine herpes neurological virus.

But it is only believed that because of some of the symptoms that the horses have shown, Kotulak said in an interview.

Wednesday, Kotulak was notified that a horse in Barn R had a high temperature and was displaying mobility issues.

Blood and nasal swab samples were taken and driven to the National Veterinary Services Laboratories in Ames, Iowa. Tests were completed Thursday and the lab results were inconclusive. Additional samples were sent for testing Thursday.

That same day a second horse showed similar symptoms. Unfortunately, both horses were euthanized, according to Kotulaks statement.

The horses that were scratched Friday came from trainers who are stabled in Barn R. Horses in that barn are not allowed to race at Fonner.

The Nebraska Department of Agriculture has been notified. It was involved in a discussion with the Nebraska Racing and Gaming Commission, the state veterinarian and the Fonner Park stewards.

Among other steps, precautions have been mandated that disallow any horseman with horses in Barn R to have contact with any other horses in the stable area, according to the Fonner news release. Any horses that arrive may not leave the entire stable area until the quarantine is lifted. Fonner Park has also begun protocol to routinely sanitize the paddock, the starting gate and other common areas for horses.

Fonner will use a three-stage quarantine process.

During the first seven days of the quarantine, which began Thursday, horsemen from Barn R are allowed to put their horses on the outdoor walkers. Each walker will be designated for use by a specific trainer. Those walkers will be sprayed down with disinfectant after each use.

After seven days, if there is not another outbreak, we will then allow those horses and only those horses from Barn R to train on the training track, which is adjacent to Barn R, Kotulak said.

After two weeks, if there is no longer an outbreak, horses from Barn R will be allowed to train on the main track after standard training hours.
The Board of Education of Harford County will consider renaming William Paca/Old Post Road Elementary School and John Archer School at its board meeting Monday.

Environments for student learning, extracurricular activities and other school-sponsored activities shall be designed by the school system as to be equitable, fair, safe, diverse and inclusive, Superintendent Sean Bulson said in a report supporting the changes that will be presented to the board.

Advertisement

The superintendent and HCPS staff believe that maintaining the name of a slave owner as part of a school name is inconsistent with the educational mission of HCPS, the report says.

According to Bulsons report, a petition containing more than 1,500 signatures was forwarded to the board in June 2020, asking the superintendent to rename William Paca Elementary. Since then, speakers at board meetings have supported the removal of Pacas name from the school in Abingdon.

Advertisement

After hearing a student speak on the issue, Vicki Jones, president of the Harford County branch of the NAACP, met with the student and they asked that Paca Elementary be renamed during a board meeting last summer, Jones said.

Harford County was the last county in the state to integrate public schools, Jones said. The demographics of this county have changed significantly and will continue to diversify.

William Paca was born in Abingdon in 1740. A signer of the Declaration of Independence, he was a federal judge, served in the Maryland legislature and became governor of the state. He also owned more than 100 slaves.

William Paca Elementary School was built in 1964 as a second building on the Philadelphia Road campus of Old Post Elementary School, which was built in 1956.

Towson University removed his name from a student housing building last year, which set off an alarm for Harfords NAACP chapter, Jones said.

Recently, NAACP leaders met with the school board to discuss name changes for both William Paca Elementary School and John Archer School, Jones said.

A Harford County physician, Archer was born near Churchville in 1741. He served in the Revolutionary War, held various government positions and served in Congress. He, too, was a slave owner.

John Archer School in Bel Air opened in 1971.

Advertisement

Afternoon Update Weekdays Updating you on the day's biggest news before the evening commute. >

I think it is time and imperative that we continue to move in a direction that instills pride and a sense of belonging in all [county] residents, Jones said. Instead of celebrating and memorializing white men who enslaved people who look like almost 60% of the students, lets create a narrative that values and celebrates a more positive imagery for the students and the community.

The NAACP hopes the school naming issue will help shine a light on the ingrained racism in American society, Jones said. Although our heroes have flaws, we cant accept people who wanted to own human beings, she added.

I hope that by raising awareness and demanding change, we shine a light on how ingrained racism is embedded in communities across the country, including ours, Jones said. We need to honestly look at the people we consider heroes. Not to say we do not accept flaws, we do not accept traitors. You cannot own human beings.

Advertisement

The NAACP expects the name changes to take longer than a year, according to Jones.
A Florida-based inmate advocacy group has sued Scott Frakes, accusing the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services he leads of censorship.

In the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Lincoln, Human Rights Defense Center said the Nebraska prison system on at least six occasions has prevented it from sending books to state prisoners under its approved vendor policy.

The books were self-help litigation manuals for inmates.

The lawsuit asks a federal judge to block Frakes from enforcing the policy corrections has had since May 2021, which prohibits mailed books unless they are sent from Edward R. Hamilton, a Connecticut-based wholesaler of books.

Paul Wright, executive director of the nonprofit organization that advocates on behalf of people held in U.S. detention facilities, said in September the group mailed several legal books to prisoners that were "censored" by prison officials.

Some were sent back with "return to sender" or "refused" with no explanation.

The group's general counsel, Dan Marshall, said that Frakes, who worked at the Washington State Department of Corrections before coming to Nebraska, was named in a lawsuit there challenging the constitutionality of similar restrictions.

In 2003, a federal court in Seattle issued injunctions against Frakes and other state prison officials in a decision later affirmed on appeal.

Marshall said the state of Washington ultimately paid $100,000 in damages to Human Rights Defense Center and $442,000 in attorneys fees for violating the center's constitutional rights.

The new lawsuit alleges Nebraska's policy unconstitutionally restricts the group's First Amendment right to free speech and its right to due process because it wasn't allowed to appeal the decision.

"HRDCs books and magazines inform prisoners about educational opportunities, their constitutional rights, and means for self-improvement while incarcerated, Marshall said in a news release. "Banning these publications from reaching those who are in prison is an affront to the First Amendment, as well as counterproductive to the goals of security and rehabilitation.

The state hasn't yet filed a response to the lawsuit.

Reach the writer at 402-473-7237 or lpilger@journalstar.com. On Twitter @LJSpilger
Collen Raye  creator and female vocalist of a show headed for the Heider Center this coming Friday called Great Country Duets, Hits & More  has a long and impressive resume.

Growing up in Ellsworth, Wisconsin, Raye first started singing in musicals and nightclubs at the age of 15. At 19 she won Minnesotas Horace Heidt Jr. Talent Contest. After majoring in vocal music in college Raye toured extensively in the U.S., performing in theaters and nightclubs and at festivals and casinos.

Although her training began in classical music, Raye has an unusually versatile voice. She regularly performs pop, jazz, rock and show tunes (and has even done some opera).

Shes no stranger to country music, either  one of the shows shes created is a tribute to Patsy Cline. In fact, because country has such a special place in her heart, she says shes especially looking forward to the Heider Center show.

Country songs have so many great stories, Raye said. Theyre so real and I think people relate to them more so than other genres. Plus, country audiences are fabulous  theyre much more free with their appreciation!

Minneapolis-based Bobby Vandell, Rayes country duet partner, has a resume that might be even more impressive than Rayes. As a drummer, hes been inducted into the Midwest Rock and Country Hall of Fame nine times with nine different bands. Since 2019 hes been producing projects with members of Fleetwood Mac, The Doobie Brothers and The Steve Miller Band.

Of late, Vandell has come out from behind the drum set to sing. Like Raye, he also produces his own shows. One is a Merle Haggard tribute. Another is entitled The Real Men of Country Music.

Raye emphasized that theyll be bringing along a top notch four-piece band for the Heider show. The band consists of steel guitar player Joe Savage, bass player Nick Salisbury, guitarist Dan Neale and drummer Patrick Nelson.

These guys are super busy. Theyre so in demand that we could hardly schedule a rehearsal, Raye said. But when we did get together they put their heart and soul into working with me. I cant thank them enough for being so generous with their talent and so professional.

Artists covered in the show are a Whos Who of country music with names like Johnny Cash, June Carter, Crystal Gale, Dolly Parton, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson and many more.

You can tell people that theres something for everybody from old to new, Raye said. Well do everything from Hank Williams to Kenny Rogers to Shania Twain. We have fun and we love what we do.

According to Raye, who also teaches vocal performance, establishing a rapport with the audience is a big part of the show and something she greatly missed during the past two years of Covid lockdowns.

In general, I relate to the audience, she said. Im there for them and they are there for me. By the end of a show I feel like I know them and they know me. I always say it takes a village to do a show.

Although Raye has never performed at the Heider Center, shes no stranger to the area. Thats because shes the mother of Reed Grimm, the former UW-L student who started the band Shoeless Revolution before making a memorable appearance on American Idol.

Raye said that he started singing in her shows at the age of three.

He was kind of an uninhibited kid, she said.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
All 30 seats on the La Crosse County Board are up for reelection on Tuesday, April 5. The Tribune asked candidates a series of questions about their platforms.

The Q&As will be published daily in order of responses, not in numerical order of districts.

Responses for candidates running for District 20 are below.

Jordan Briskey

Age: 20

Education: Currently at Western Technical College

Occupation: Store associate at Blains Farm and Fleet

Political experience: I am new to politics, but I have been serving our community for the last six years. I have been working to build a memorial for our Wisconsin Vietnam Veterans at Veterans Freedom Park. I started the project at age 15, and now the fruition of my hard work has come full circle at the age of 20. In those years I had help from family, veterans, and most importantly the community in raising the funds so that a memorial could be built. We are now in the final stages of completing this memorial. Granite has arrived and the names of the Wisconsin killed in action will soon be etched onto stones. The dedication ceremony is set for June.

Why do you want to serve on the La Crosse County Board and what is something youd want to accomplish if elected?

While working on the memorial I have found my purpose in life is to serve my community. Now I am on my next project to run for the La Crosse County Board for the 20th District. The United STates was founded by young people, and those young people in 1776 made the greatest country on earth. And now in 2022 I am running to bring new, young and fresh ideas to La Crosse County. In our local government many members on the county board fail to acknowledge the problems that are non-partisan or political, for example finally fixing our roads, supporting our local law enforcement and making sure people have access to clean water. A quote from a poet Mattie JT Stepanek says Unity is strength ... when there is teamwork and collaboration wonderful things can be achieved. And I believe with new, young and fresh eyes on the La Crosse County Board, we can make La Crosse County prosper.

La Crosse County has received nearly $22 million in funding from the American Rescue Plan Act. The current board has already divided the funds into categories, but what do you think is the most important project this unprecedented funding should be spent on?

The water on French ISland has been contaminated by PFAS. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and Department of Health Services has issued a drinking water advisory indefinitely and continues to make bottled water available to as many as 4,300 residents on French Island. There will be a referendum on the ballot on the April 5 election. It will ask: shall the state of Wisconsin establish a right to clean water to protect human health, the environment, and the diverse cultural and natural heritage of Wisconsin? It cost the county $5,000 to put this question on the ballot. The county should work with the city of La Crosse to solve this problem. After all, the city owns the airport and they are responsible for fixing this problem. Because the county is receiving this huge amount of money it should be possible to increase spending on roads. There are about 99 miles of broken road across the county. We need to increase spending on roads.

What ideas do you have on improving the collaboration and regionalization between the county and municipalities?

I think that the collaboration between the county and municipalities is very important. Together we can solve these challenges facing our local communities. For example solving the problem of clean drinking water on French Island, expanding high speed broadband projects to rural areas in the county, and lastly provide safe and driveable roadways across the county. These are some good examples of the need for collaboration between the county and municipalities. Because if La Crosse County is successful then Wisconsin is successful, and if Wisconsin is successful then America is successful.

Steve Doyle (i)

Age: 63

Education: Undergraduate degree from University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, Law degree from University of Wisconsin-Madison

Occupation: Lawyer, state representative

Political experience: La Crosse County Board member 1986-present (chair, 2002-11); Wisconsin state representative 2011-present (caucus vice chair, 2017-2020).

Why do you want to serve on the La Crosse County Board and what is something youd want to accomplish if elected?

My main priority in elective office has always been to work together to do better. When I was County Board Chair, I promoted collaboration among our local governments to create the Household Hazardous Materials Program. I worked with the county, the village of West Salem and the private sector to create the West Salem Business Park. Im proud of what weve accomplished, but there is more to be done in the areas of economic development, transportation, tourism and public safety. Our law enforcement agencies already work well together, but the county can provide more resources to promote interagency cooperation. Finally, homelessness has a countrywide economic impact. I have been working with our local elected officials to arrive at a comprehensive solution to a complex problem. Everyone agrees that housing people in a local park is not a long-term solution.

La Crosse County has received nearly $22 million in funding from the American Rescue Plan Act. The current board has already divided the funds into categories, but what do you think is the most important project this unprecedented funding should be spent on?

Lack of affordable child care is a crisis. During the pandemic, our area went from 400 certified child care providers to under 100. Young families have difficulty finding good child care providers, and if they can, the cost is often prohibitive. I recently talked with a couple that was faced with a $1,000 per month child care cost. At that rate, they decided that it made more sense for a parent to stay home. As a result, our local businesses had one less employee available to work. In the restaurant industry, this has led to cutbacks in hours, reductions in the number of days open and, in some cases, business closure. In the healthcare industry, the lack of employees has meant mandatory overtime resulting in employee burnout and workers leaving the field. La Crosse County is in a perfect position to work with our local businesses and nonprofits to take a collaborative approach to creating and maintaining more child care options. Our economy literally depends upon finding a solution so we can get people back to work.

What ideas do you have on improving the collaboration and regionalization between the county and municipalities?

Collaboration starts with conversation. I think the county should return to a practice I started when I was County Board chair. We held an annual Collaboration Conference. It gave our local officials a chance to share ideas, ask for help, and simply meet and get to know one another. I think this blueprint could be expanded to include members of our local business and nonprofit communities as well. As we near the end of the pandemic, this is a perfect time to introduce and reintroduce ourselves to the other people who are making the Coulee Region a great place to live. Some of the county ARPA funds might also be used for grants as an incentive to encourage greater collaboration among our local governments. Sometimes a modest financial incentive or challenge is enough to stimulate ideas for new ways to solve old problems.

Love 1 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0

Get Government & Politics updates in your inbox! Stay up-to-date on the latest in local and national government and political topics with our newsletter. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
WASHINGTON  Heres a look at how area members of Congress voted over the previous week.

House votes

Homeland Security oversight: The House has passed the DHS Basic Training Accreditation Improvement Act (H.R. 5616), sponsored by Rep. Val Butler Demings, D-Fla., to require the Homeland Security Department to send accreditation status reports on its training programs to Congressional oversight committees. Demings said stricter accreditation standards for new Homeland Security officers would position them to effectively safeguard the American people, our homeland, and institutions. The vote, on March 7, was 390 yeas to 33 nays. Yeas:

Kind D-WI (3rd)

Cybersecurity partnerships: The House has passed the National Cybersecurity Preparedness Consortium Act (S. 658), sponsored by Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, to authorize the Homeland Security Department to partner with private nonprofit groups on cybersecurity training efforts. A supporter, Rep. John Katko, R-N.Y., said the bill will help provide training, exercises, technical assistance, and other important resources to state and local governments, critical infrastructure, and industry partners. The vote, on March 7, was 403 yeas to 19 nays. Yeas:

Kind D-WI (3rd)

Tribal border agents: The House has passed the Shadow Wolves Enhancement Act (H.R. 5681), sponsored by Rep. John Katko, R-N.Y., to reclassify a special unit of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers (known as shadow wolves) working on Tohono Oodham Nation land in southern Arizona as special agents. Katko said the reclassification would improve pay for the shadow wolves and enable recruitment of new tribal members into the special unit. The vote, on March 8, was 387 yeas to 33 nays. Yeas:

Kind D-WI (3rd)

Black colleges: The House has passed a resolution (H. Con. Res. 70), sponsored by Rep. Alma S. Adams, D-N.C., condemning violence against historically black colleges and universities. Adams called the resolution a needed response to the recent despicable, cowardly bomb threats to more than 30 historically black colleges and universities. The vote, on March 8, was unanimous with 418 yeas. Yeas:

Kind D-WI (3rd)

Military, security spending: The House has passed an amendment to a bill (H.R. 2471), sponsored by Rep. Hakeem S. Jeffries, D-N.Y., to fund the Defense Department, Homeland Security Department, and associated military and national security programs in fiscal 2022. A supporter, Rep. Kay Granger, R-Texas, said the spending provides our military and our troops with the resources they desperately need, and also ensures the safety and security of the American people by increasing overall funding for Homeland Security by 11 percent. The vote, on March 9, was 361 yeas to 69 nays. Yeas:

Kind D-WI

(3rd)

Domestic spending: The House has passed an amendment to a bill (H.R. 2471), sponsored by Rep. Hakeem S. Jeffries, D-N.Y., that would fund federal discretionary domestic programs in fiscal 2022, including an 11.8 percent increase in funding for the legislative branch and 6.7 percent overall increase in funding for nondefense programs. A supporter, Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro, D-N.Y., called the funding an effort to show just how government can work for working people once again and to achieve the betterment of humankind. An opponent, Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, said it increased irresponsible spending while failing to solve the problem of security at the border with Mexico. The vote, on March 9, was 260 yeas to 171 nays. Yeas:

Kind D-WI (3rd)

Importing Russian energy: The House has passed the Suspending Energy Imports From Russia Act (H.R. 6968), sponsored by Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, to bar imports from Russia of natural gas, oil and petroleum products, and other energy resources. Doggett said: To take the energy out of Putins brutal assault, we place energy on our sanctions list. It may cost more to fill your tank, but we must work to stop Putins tanks from crushing families and freedom. An opponent, Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, said: There is no way I could vote to exchange getting oil from Putin for getting oil from some other tyrant who wants to destroy America. The vote, on March 9, was 414 yeas to 17 nays. Yeas:

Kind D-WI (3rd)

Along with roll call votes this week, the House also passed the Extension of Continuing Appropriations Act (H.J. Res. 75), making further continuing appropriations for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2022.

Senate votes

Postal Service changes: The Senate has passed the Postal Service Reform Act (H.R. 3076), sponsored by Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney, D-N.Y. The bill would establish a health benefits programs for Postal Service workers and retirees while ending a requirement that retirement health benefits be prepaid, and establish new budget and service reporting requirements for the Postal Service. A supporter, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said the bill sought to give the Postal Service the tools that it needs to be successful and to fulfill its essential mission and to hold the USPS accountable for improved performance. An opponent, Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, said it failed to adequately improve the Postal Services finances while shifting the cost of providing retiree health benefits onto taxpayers. The vote, on March 8, was 79 yeas to 19 nays. Nays: Johnson R-WI; yeas:

Baldwin D-WI

Trade diplomacy: The Senate has confirmed the nomination of Maria L. Pagan to be a Deputy U.S. Trade Representative. Pagan, currently a legal official at the Trade Representative Office, has been a trade lawyer for the federal government since the 1990s. A supporter, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said Pagan is an expert on a host of issues from trade in services to government procurement, and she has litigated several disputes before the WTO. The vote, on March 10, was 80 yeas to 19 nays. Nays: Johnson R-WI; yeas:

Baldwin D-WI

Earmark spending: The Senate has rejected an amendment sponsored by Sen. Mike Braun, R-Ind., to the Consolidated Appropriations Act (H.R. 2471), that would have barred funding for earmark spending on individual appropriations at the request of a member of Congress. Braun said the drafting of the spending bill just before it was sent to Congress meant there had been no time for legislators to review proposed earmark spending. An amendment opponent, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., said details about the earmark spending had been publicly available on the Internet since summer 2021. The vote, on March 10, was 35 yeas to 64 nays. Yeas: Johnson R-WI; nays:

Baldwin D-WI

2022 spending: The Senate has agreed to the House amendment to the Consolidated Appropriations Act (H.R. 2471), sponsored by Rep. Hakeem S. Jeffries, D-N.Y., that would fund federal military and discretionary domestic programs in fiscal 2022. A supporter, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called the legislation the strongest, boldest, and most significant government funding package we have seen in a very long time. The vote, on March 10, was 68 yeas to 31 nays. Nays: Johnson R-WI; yeas: Baldwin D-WI

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
More than 30 monsters, from a furry glutton named Burger Bear to a square-headed mad scientist named Dr. Cube, battled at Tellus360 on Sunday, March 13, 2022, as part of the Kaiju Big Battel wrestling event.

Kaiju Big Battel is a New York-based performance group, and bills itself as the worlds only live monster mayhem spectacle. It was founded in 1994 by a student at the Museum School in Boston, Massachusetts. After their Lancaster brawl, the monsters are headed to Brooklyn for a battle in April.

For more information, visit kaiju.com.
For better or worse, actor Greg Sestero has lived in The Room for nearly two decades now.

Released in 2003, The Room was written and directed by filmmaker Tommy Wiseau, and after a few short years of anonymity, exploded in popularity as a so bad its good midnight movie. Much of the films continued success in the zeitgeist is thanks to Sestero, the formerly reluctant star of the film who went on to author a book about its creation, The Disaster Artist, which itself was turned into a film in 2017.

Both Sestero and The Room will come to Penn Cinema, between Lancaster and Lititz, on Friday, March 18. Sestero will introduce the film and conduct a live Q&A with the audience.

I always am fascinated and always enjoy meeting people and talking with them and answering their questions, because as a fellow movie lover, we share that in common, Sestero says by phone from Indiana, where he is attending a film convention.

IF YOU GO What: Screening of The Room featuring a live Q&A with star Mark Sestero When: 7 p.m. on Friday, March 18 Where: Penn Cinema, 541 Airport Road, Lititz Price: $24 More info: penncinema.com

While in Indiana, Sestero says, he made a pilgrimage to Fairmount to visit the gravesite of James Dean. As anyone who has read The Disaster Artist knows, this is fitting, as not only was James Dean one of the first mutual loves Sestero shared with Wiseau, but also because Wiseau would then quote one of Deans Rebel Without a Cause lines and turn it into one of the most enduring lines from The Room  Youre tearing me apart, Lisa!

It's crazy that it's been 20 years, Sestero says. I was just talking to a friend about, like, what is it about a movie that makes people want to keep seeing it and talking about it for 20 years? I guess it comes down, well, sort of like James Dean  it's the mystique. James Dean died almost 70 years ago, but young people still show up, and there's a fascination because there's so many unanswered questions. I think some of us see ourselves in the characters or that value of wanting to introduce it to new people.

While he appreciates the filmslasting legacy, Sesteros focus in the last few years is creating films of his own. In 2017, Sestero wrote and produced a reunion vehicle for himself and Wiseau, the two-part thriller Best F(r)iends. Later this year, Sestero will make his directorial debut with the horror film Miracle Valley. In a Wiseau-style move, Sestero also wrote and will act in the movie.

Attendees to The Room event will get to see an exclusive trailer for Miracle Valley.

Other than tracking down a DVD or Blu-ray copy, the March 18 screening will be the easiest way for fans to see The Room, which is not currently on any streaming services. However, when asked if the films relative unavailability ultimately helps its cult status, Sestero agrees.

Hopefully at some point it does (get added to a streaming service), but I do think the movie is best experienced with a crowd in a theater, Sestero says. I think it's best that it hasn't been streaming, because there's not an experience quite like it.

Much like Rocky Horror Picture Show before it, generations of people have now found something in The Room to cling on to, whether it be its endlessly quotable script, bizarre filming choices or the overall extraterrestrial vibe the film maintains for its full 90-minute runtime. Whatever the reason, Sestero will be hearing some variation of the ubiquitous Oh, hi Mark! greeting for years to come.

The young people (element) is fascinating to me, Sestero says. I was in New Zealand a few years back (for a screening) and there were 11-year-olds and 12-year-olds that came to the show and had the 'Hi Mark!' shirts ... it's always surprising to me, I never take it for granted. I think when you do a movie you don't think anyone is ever going to see and then have it live on around the world, there's a fascination on my end along with, I imagine, the people watching it."
A Columbia man already charged with slashing an EMT with a knife also fired a gun from a police officers holster while being transported in an ambulance during that incident, nearly injuring the officer and a paramedic, according to Lancaster city police.

Jeremic Medina-Dorta, 27, fired the 9mm handgun as he attempted to remove it from the holster of a Lancaster city police officer during a struggle with the officer, a paramedic and an EMT inside an ambulance in the 200 block of North Arch Street at 6:11 p.m. Feb. 12, according to an affidavit of probable cause. The ambulance responded to the area after Medina-Dorta claimed he was under the influence of acid and had glass in his foot.

Once inside the ambulance, Medina-Dorta began kicking and flailing, cutting the EMT in the abdomen with the knife during the scuffle, police said. A pop that sounded like a gunshot was heard during the scuffle, but the officer didn't immediately realize the weapon went off.

The officer later discovered a spent casing inside the guns chamber while performing routine maintenance on it later that night. The officers holster was also damaged.

An inspection of the stretcher used to carry Medina-Dorta uncovered what appeared to be a bullet hole, and a discharged bullet was also found inside ambulance.

A police armorer examined the gun and holster and reviewed the officers body camera footage, determining that Medina-Dorta had grabbed the weapon during the struggle and pulled the trigger.

Medina-Dorta was charged Friday with felony counts of assault of a law enforcement officer and disarming a law enforcement officer and three misdemeanor counts of recklessly endangering another person. He was previously charged with two counts of aggravated assault, three counts of recklessly endangering another person and two counts of criminal mischief for the same incident and is currently awaiting trial on those charges, according to court records.

An attorney was not listed for Medina-Dorta in court documents for the new charges. Samuel Encarnacion, a public defender representing Medina-Dorta for the pre-existing offenses, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.

A preliminary hearing has not been scheduled for the new charges. Medina-Dorta remains in Lancaster County Prison after failing to pay $50,000 bail for the pre-existing charges, court records show.
A years-long investigation resulted in a Lancaster city man being charged for repeatedly raping and sexually assaulting a young girl for more than four years, according to city police.

Ivan Maldonado Jr., 33, raped the girl, who was no more than 7 years old at the time, at three different residences in Lancaster city between August 2007 and March 2012, according to an affidavit of probable cause.

The assaults took place at a residence in the 100 block of East New Street, inside an apartment in the 1900 block of Oregon Pike and at a third address in southeastern Lancaster city, police said. Maldonado was caring for the girl at the time.

Police began investigating Maldonado after the girl first reported the assaults to them in October 2017. Investigators spoke with the girl in May 2021, and she was also interviewed at the Lancaster County Childrens Alliance in November 2017.

Maldonado was charged last week with two counts of rape of a child, three counts of statutory sexual assault and 14 other felonies and misdemeanors. He had not been arrested as of Monday afternoon, court records show.

An attorney was not listed for Maldonado in court documents.

A preliminary hearing has not yet been scheduled.